Luckily he was an old bombing instructor and knew what to do. A moment later the fuse was cut and the bomb"s detonator removed. It was harmless now. Half a minute later it would have exploded.
Watching keenly from his roof d.i.c.k Manton had seen Barakoff"s aeroplane rise swiftly and silently into the air. He had some slight trouble in starting the Mohawk, and the Russian was a mile away before the Englishman had started in pursuit.
Crouched in the driving seat of the Mohawk, d.i.c.k kept his eyes glued on the machine in front. He soon realised, to his dismay, that the Russian machine was much the faster and was leaving him behind. By the time they had gone ten miles and were out over the open country, he could only just discern the fugitive as a mere speck in the distance, and he realised with a sinking heart that a fleck of mist would enable Barakoff to escape.
Suddenly he discovered that the Russian machine had descended very low.
A moment later it appeared to rise vertically, going up to a great height.
Instantly d.i.c.k followed and to his surprise found himself gaining rapidly. Then the Russian seemed to slip ahead again.
Several times this was repeated, and d.i.c.k at length divined the reason.
The Russian could not run his elevating and driving propellers simultaneously. He travelled in a series of swoops, coming down very slowly as the machine drove forward, and then being compelled to stop the driving propellers while he gained the necessary height to continue his flight. No doubt this was explained by the fact that the planes were too small to keep the machine up without the elevating propellers.
d.i.c.k saw that he held a big advantage. The Mohawk, though slightly slower, could rise and go forward at the same time under the influence of both propellers.
As they sped over Kent, d.i.c.k began to realise with joy that he was gaining. Slowly the poison-fiend began to come back to him.
Then came the critical moment. Five hundred yards ahead and a thousand feet below, Barakoff, close to the ground, must rise soon to gain the elevation he required.
That was the moment for which d.i.c.k had been waiting. He called on his machine for the last ounce of effort he had been holding in reserve.
The Mohawk shot forward. A few seconds later d.i.c.k was directly above the Russian. So far as air tactics went he had won; the Russian was entirely at his mercy.
Then began surely the strangest aerial combat ever witnessed. To and fro the machines dodged, Barakoff striving to gain height and succeeding for a moment only to find his pursuer above him again and bullets whining round him; d.i.c.k striving to force the Russian down to the ground where he must either land or crash. For fully half an hour the machines flitted backwards and forwards around the town of Ashford. d.i.c.k had no fear of the result; his only risk was whether he could send Barakoff down before dusk came. Unless he could do this there was every danger that the Russian would escape under cover of darkness.
At last the end came.
d.i.c.k had forced his antagonist so low that, as a last desperate resort, Barakoff had to leap upward to clear a big group of elms. He miscalculated by a few feet, his machine touched the upper branches and went smashing to earth. Three minutes later d.i.c.k was standing beside the body of the death-dealer.
Barakoff"s machine was a complete wreck and was blazing furiously. The man himself had been flung clear and lay in a crumpled heap, stone dead.
There is little more to tell.
The formula for the powder with which the bomb was charged was found in Barakoff"s laboratory, and with it, in Russian, a prescription which, on being tested, proved to be a complete cure for the disease. It was found just in time to save those who would otherwise have been the victims of the explosion at Finsbury Park.
It was evident that Barakoff must have maintained his laboratory in Soho for months. Obviously the manager of the shop was one of his accomplices, and apparently he had recognised Yvette and deliberately thrown her into Barakoff"s hands. Then realising that discovery was inevitable he had slipped out of the building, probably by a window as neither of the a.s.sistants had noticed him leave. He was never found.
The a.s.sistants themselves proved to be respectable young fellows who had been employed only a few weeks and who clearly knew nothing of the nefarious conspiracy.
Nothing but the Mohawk had prevented Barakoff"s escape! And d.i.c.k Manton received later on the official thanks of the British Government for his daring exploit.
CHAPTER FIVE.
THE MASTER ATOM.
"Oh! la la! How horribly dull life is! I do wish something really startling would happen, d.i.c.k!"
The words were spoken in pretty broken English by Yvette Pasquet, who, charming and _chic_, as usual, was sitting with Jules and d.i.c.k Manton.
The adventurous trio were dining _al fresco_ in the leafy garden of the old-world "Hotel de France" on the river bank at Montigny, that delightful spot on the outskirts of the great Forest of Fontainebleau, a spot beloved by all the artists and _litterateurs_ of Paris.
"Something will happen suddenly, no doubt," d.i.c.k laughed, glancing at his beloved. "It always does!"
"I sincerely hope it will," declared Jules in good English. "We"re really getting rather rusty. I met Regnier yesterday out at Pre Catalan with Madame Sohet, and he hinted to me that some great mystery had arisen; but he would tell me nothing further."
"Regnier, as head of the Service, is always well informed, and like an oyster," Yvette remarked with a laugh. "So I suppose we must wait for something to happen. I hate to be idle."
"Yes. Something will surely happen very shortly," said d.i.c.k. "I have a curious intuition that we shall very soon be away again on another mission. My intuition never fails me."
d.i.c.k Manton"s words were prophetic, for on that same evening before a meeting of the Royal Society in London, Professor Rudford, the world-famed scientist, made an amazing speech in which he said:
"Could we but solve the problem of releasing and controlling the mighty forces locked up in this piece of chalk, we should have power enough to drive the biggest liner to New York and back. We should have at our disposal energy unlimited. The daily work of the world would be reduced to a few minutes" tending of automatic machinery. And, I may add, the first nation to solve that problem will have the entire world at its mercy. For no nation, or combination of nations, could stand even against a small people armed with force unlimited and terrible. And-- gentlemen--_we are on the way to solving that problem_!"
As the words fell slowly and calmly from his lips his hearers felt a thrill of ungovernable emotion, almost of apprehension. For they knew well that he spoke only of what he knew, and the measured phrases conjured up in their keen brains not only a picture of a world where labour had been reduced to the vanishing point, but of a world where evil still strove with good, where the enemies of society still strove against the established order of things which they hated, where crime in the hands of the master criminal, armed with force whose potentiality they could only dream of, would be something transcending in sheer horror all the past experiences of tortured humanity.
Supposing the great secret _fell into the wrong hands_!
The speech at the Royal Society was a nine days" wonder.
The unthinking Press made merry in the bare idea of a lump of chalk being a source of power. Then the transient impression faded as public attention returned to football and the latest prize-fight. But behind the scenes, in a hundred laboratories, students bent unceasingly over their myriad experiments, striving to wrest from Nature her greatest secret, the mystery of the mighty energy of the atom. Since the day when Madame Curie had discovered that in breaking up, yet seemingly never growing less, radium was shooting off day and night power which never seemed to diminish, the minds of the men of science had been filled with the dream of discovering the secret.
Could they learn to accelerate the process? Could they induce radium to deliver in a few moments the power which, expending itself for centuries untold, never seemed to grow less? Could they learn to control it, or would it, when at last the secret was discovered, prove to be a Frankenstein monster of t.i.tanic power, wreaking untold destruction on the world?
A thin, keen-faced man sat facing the British Prime Minister in his private room in Downing Street a few days later. This was Clinton Scott, one of the smartest men of the British Secret Service, a man of wide culture and uncanny knowledge of the underworld of international crime. His profession was the detection of crime; his hobby science in any form.
"We have very disturbing news, Scott," said the Prime Minister, "and I have sent for you because the problem before us is largely of a scientific nature and I know all about your hobby."
Clinton Scott smiled.
"You are aware, of course, of the latest developments in the search for some method of releasing and controlling atomic forces," went on the Prime Minister. "I do not profess to understand them deeply myself, but I have a general idea of what is being done and what success would imply. Professor Rudford, to whom I applied for information on the subject, tells me that such a discovery would revolutionise world conditions. You will understand of your own knowledge all that it implies, and that is why I have sent specially for you in this matter."
"I am at the country"s service," replied Scott.
"Now information we have received from Norway suggests very strongly that the problem has been solved," the other said. "We have no details--nothing in fact very definite at all. But it is certain that some very queer things have been happening. And from what Professor Rudford tells me I am a.s.sured that we cannot afford to neglect them.
Our ordinary men are useless for this kind of thing. Men with a considerable knowledge of scientific subjects are absolutely necessary.
Otherwise matter which, properly understood, would be full of significance will be pa.s.sed over as of no account and quite minor and unessential incidents will be followed up, and there would be serious waste of time. And time is valuable."
"I agree that it is," was the terse reply.
"I want you to go to Norway and look into the matter," the Prime Minister went on. "Of course I will see that you get all the information we have, and you can select your own a.s.sistants."
Clinton Scott suddenly looked grave.
"Is it known at all?" he asked. "Who is behind this--I mean who has made this discovery? You will appreciate my reason for asking. If it is the work of a genuine man of science there would be no immediate danger, though of course such an invention would upset all ideas of international relations. It is literally true, as no doubt Professor Rudford will have told you, that the nation in exclusive possession of such a secret could dominate the world. But there are one or two men in the world who, with such a secret in their possession, would be a real peril to civilisation."
"Do you know a man named Lenart Gronvold?" asked the Premier.
Clinton Scott started visibly.
"Do you mean to say he is in it?" he gasped in utter astonishment.