CHAPTER PAGE
I. The Mysterious Number Seven[1]
II. Mr. Mark Marx[21]
III. The Shabby Stranger[43]
IV. The Thursday Rendezvous[63]
V. Concerns the Hidden Hand[82]
VI. The Price of Victory[101]

BERYL OF THE BIPLANE

CHAPTER I.
THE MYSTERIOUS NUMBER SEVEN.

“Are you flying ‘The Hornet’ to-night?”

“I expect so.”

“You were up last night, weren’t you? Mac told me so at Brooklands this morning.”

“Yes—Zepp-hunting. I was up three hours, but, alas! had no luck. Two came in over Essex but were scared by the anti-aircraft boys, and turned tail. Better luck to-night, I hope,” and Ronald Pryor, the tall, dark, good-looking young man in grey flannels, laughed merrily as, with a quick movement, he flicked the ash from his after-luncheon cigarette.

His companion, George Bellingham, who was in the uniform of the Royal Flying Corps, wearing the silver wings of the pilot, was perhaps three years his senior, fair-haired, grey-eyed, with a small sandy moustache trimmed to the most correct cut.