Ronnie put every ounce into his crocked-up engine, knowing that if it failed they might make a nose-dive fatal to them both. Like an arrow he sped towards the aeroplane which had crept over the North Sea, and across Yorkshire to meet the man who had promised those secret despatches.
Beryl saw deep below the flashes of a lamp—“N. F.,” “N. F.,” in Morse.
Ronald Pryor saw it also and, suddenly turning the nose of his machine, he made a circle in silence around the enemy aeroplane. Again he circled much nearer. The German pilot was utterly ignorant of his presence, so silently did he pass through the air, until, narrowing the circle, he waited for the Fokker to plane down; then, in a flash, he flew past, and, with his hand upon the Lewis gun, he showered a veritable hail of lead upon it.
The Fokker reeled, and then nose-dived to earth, with—as was afterwards found—its pilot shot through the brain, its petrol-tank pierced in five places, and one of its wings hanging limp and broken, such a terrible shower of lead had Pryor directed against it.
Beryl and Ronald Pryor had perforce to return by train to Harbury, but, by previous arrangement, the man Aylesworth had been arrested, and was duly tried by court-martial. It is known that he was found guilty and condemned, but the exact sentence upon him will probably not be known until after the declaration of peace.
And, after all, the doom of a traitor is best left unrecorded.
CHAPTER V.
CONCERNS THE HIDDEN HAND.
One evening—the evening of June 14th, 1916, to be exact—Ronald Pryor came forth through one of the long French windows which led out upon the sloping lawn at Harbury Court, and gazed out upon the extensive and picturesque landscape; the low ridge of hills was soft in the grey and crimson of the summer afterglow.