Three hours later came still more startling news.
The police officers who had gone from Durham to Chalkley had found that two armed men had made a raid on Professor Fortescue’s house. They had gagged the servants, who were found lying bound and helpless, and the Professor himself was found lying unconscious in his laboratory, having apparently been sandbagged. The raiders had leisurely helped themselves to food, and, having cut the telephone wires, had departed without any particular haste.
But the great leaden safe, weighing several hundredweights, in which the precious radium had been brought to England, was found to have been broken open. The radium was gone!
Nothing in the meantime had been heard of the strange aeroplane. But a few hours later an old shepherd walked into one of the local police-stations and told a queer story.
His sheep the previous evening, he reported, had been disturbed by the passing of an aeroplane which, flying very low, had landed on the moors a few miles away from the Professor’s house. It had stayed there all night and, so far as he knew, was still there. He had been unable to approach it closely as it was separated from where he had been by a deep gorge and a stream which he could not cross without making a détour of several miles. He had seen two men near the machine who had walked away and disappeared in the folds of the moor.
A strong party of police, Cummings added, had left at once for the spot where the aeroplane had been seen, taking the shepherd with them as guide. The place was remote from any road, and it would be an hour or two before they could get there. But the Air Ministry had been warned, and already aeroplanes were going up in the hope of locating the strange machine.
“I must be in this,” said Dick. “Ask him if I can come over. I cannot, of course, go unasked.”
“Of course,” said Cummings in reply to Regnier’s request. “We shall be only too glad to have Mr Manton. Miss Pasquet can come too, if she likes. But I’m afraid he won’t be able to get here in time. We shall either have got these fellows or lost them hopelessly in a few hours.”
Dick turned to Jules.
“Ring up the British Air Ministry,” he said, “and ask them if the strange machine gets off the ground to send us every movement as it is reported. Keep the telephone on all the time. I am going to try to cut these chaps off with the Mohawk. You will have to report to me by wireless every movement as it comes through. From what we have heard I fancy there are very few machines in England fast enough to catch those fellows if they once get started. Of course you will come, Yvette?”