She was, however, very cool to him that evening, and sarcastically inquired why he was not in attendance upon Mademoiselle Duplaix as usual. She only laughed at his denials, and when he suggested that she should ask his friend, Perry Nixon, whether there was any ground for her suspicions, said that when she danced with Mr. Nixon later in the evening she hoped to find something more interesting to talk about than Mademoiselle Duplaix.
Lanning comforted himself with the reflection that if Barbara were indifferent to him she would have said nothing about Yvonne Duplaix, and as he had another dance with her at the end of the program hoped to make his peace then.
When this dance came, however, he could not find her, and afterwards discovered that she had sat it out with the young Silesian. He was angry and felt a little revengeful, but he did not mention Barbara to Perry Nixon when they left the house together and walked to Piccadilly.
He left Nixon at the corner of Bond Street and went to his flat in
Jermyn Street.
He found his man, Winbush, lying on the dining-room floor, gagged and half unconscious. The safe in his bedroom had been broken open, important papers had been stolen from it, and a wooden case, which he had locked in a cupboard there, had been taken away.
Fully alive to the gravity of the loss, and oblivious of the fact that neglect would be attributed to him, he immediately telephoned to the Minister of War.
Then he 'phoned to Nixon's rooms in Bond Street, and Nixon came round at once. Up to that time Lanning had said nothing about the experiments to his friend; now he told him the whole story.
Richard Lanning belonged to the Army Flying Corps, and was not only a good airman, but was an authority upon flying machines. For some time past there had been secret trials of various types of stabilizers, and one invention, somewhat altered at Lanning's suggestion, had proved so successful that safety in flight seemed assured in the near future.
Detailed plans had been prepared, a working model constructed, and only that afternoon these had been secretly exhibited by Lanning in London to a few members of the government and some War Office officials.
Only four men at the works knew anything about the secret, and even their knowledge was not complete, so it seemed impossible that information could leak out, yet the plans and the working model had been stolen.