"You palmed off a dud on us, sir," he reported, "so we dropped him. I don't think he crashed more than a couple of thousand feet, but it was quite enough to cause the German Intelligence Staff to lose one of their pet stars."
CHAPTER XII
SERGEANT O'RAFFERTY'S LUCKY BOMB
Captain Desmond Blake had hit the mark when he described the soi-disant Belgian lieutenant as a star. Subsequent enquiries revealed the fact that the real lieutenant Etienne Fauvart had been captured by the Germans in an affair of outposts near Dixmude. Armed with the papers found in the prisoner's possession and clad in a Belgian uniform a German staff officer had so successfully impersonated Lieutenant Fauvart that he had deceived the British staff officers. With the express purpose of luring the secret battleplane he had offered his services, and had made a true statement as to the position of the German Zeppelin sheds. Therein lay the secret of his ruse, for the British Intelligence Division already had some knowledge of the Zeppelin base, and finding that the supposed Belgian officer's description tallied with their reports, their suspicions, if any existed, were disarmed. If on the other hand the spy had indicated a Zeppelin station that had an existence only in his imagination he knew that he ran a grave risk of having his information challenged and himself arrested, court-martialled and shot.
Confident in his belief that the British secret battleplane would be rendered incapable of getting within effective distance of the Zeppelin sheds of Olhelt, he did not hesitate to indicate their exact position.
Once he succeeded in getting taken as one of the battleplane's crew he had no difficulty in compelling the machine to make a forced landing. Taking advantage of the excuse to fetch his coat, he had, during Dick's temporary absence, contrived to spray the high tension wire with a powerful corrosive. The wire, it must be explained, led from the magneto in a single length, afterwards branching into a number of subsidiary wires to the respective sparking plugs of the cylinders. By spraying the electric current conductor between the junction and the magneto the whole of the firing was put out of action simultaneously, after the acid had taken time to eat through the guttapercha insulating cover.
When Dick discovered the failure, but was unable at the time to ascertain the cause, he fortunately removed the high tension wires and replaced them with a spare set, which Blake, with commendable forethought, had made in case of emergency.
It will now be necessary to follow Athol Hawke's movements from the time when he followed the unsuspected spy into the wood.
Keeping close to the supposed Fauvart's heels the lad moved rapidly and cautiously, carefully avoiding treading upon dry twigs that littered the ground.