"Anything from Keane or Sharpe yet?" demanded the chief.
"Nothing, sir."
"Then what are these confounded things?"
"More about that aerial brigand, sir."
"Let me see them," and Jones handed the messages to his chief.
Consternation and alarm were both visible on the face of Tempest as he read the news.
"So the devil has already got to work, Jones," he remarked, quoting from the sheets, laconic phrases such as "Oil tanks at Port Said burning for three days. Crew of mysterious aeroplane suspected." (Delayed in transit.) "Wireless station at Karachi utterly destroyed, after brief visit by strange airmen." The third was a wireless message which proved most disconcerting of all to the Commissioner. It announced that a silent aeroplane, showing no distinctive marks whatever, passed over Delhi "this afternoon" at a speed estimated at not less than three hundred miles an hour.
The chief of the aerial police leaned back in his chair and groaned.
"Three hundred miles an hour!" he gasped; "but the silent aeroplane idea is a fallacy. It is impossible with any type of internal-combustion engine. It must either have been too high up for the good people of Delhi to hear it, or its engines must have been shut off, or well throttled down. Bah! I know too much about aeroplanes to swallow that." Then rounding upon Jones, who was standing by awaiting instructions, he said sharply:--
"Did that second message go out to Keane?"