Breasting the rise, the police cautiously approached the ridge and glanced over. There in the valley, only five or six hundred yards away, was the aeroplane. Two men in air kit stood beside it.
Scattering into a thin line the police rushed down the slope, every man with a revolver ready in his hand.
But they were just too late. They had only gone a few yards when the men hastily took their places in the machine, there was a loud whirr as the engine broke into action, and while the policemen were still a hundred yards away, the strange machine rose into the air and was gone. A furious volley rattled out from the revolvers, but the range was too great and the breathless policemen had the mortification of seeing the machine disappear rapidly to the south.
Immediately the fastest runner of the party started at a trot for the Professor’s house to send out a warning. But it was not necessary. The aerodromes all over the kingdom had been warned by wireless from the Air Ministry, and already a host of machines were scouting in every direction.
The stranger, flying due south, had reached Bradford before he was signalled. Instantly there was a rush of aeroplanes from all parts of the Midlands to cut him off. But he slipped through the cordon, flying very high and at a tremendous speed. Outside Birmingham a fast scout picked him up and reported by wireless, and from the huge aerodrome at Cheltenham over twenty fighting planes leaped into the air to stop the career of the marauder.
There was now no chance, at least, of his getting away unobserved. He was under constant observation, alike from the air and the ground, and every moment wireless messages were pouring into the Air Ministry reporting his progress. But to catch him proved impossible. Only two of the pursuing machines were fast enough to keep up with the stranger, and even they could not overtake him. So the headlong flight went on, drawing ever nearer to the southern coast. If the stranger could get out to sea all chance of stopping him would vanish.
But, unknown to the furious British airmen, help was close at hand.
Warned by Jules’ wireless messages of the direction the strange machine was taking, Yvette had steered a course to intercept him somewhere in the neighbourhood of Bournemouth, and the Mohawk, with its wireless chattering incessantly, was now swinging lazily at half speed in a big circle between Salisbury and the Hampshire watering-place.
“Over Salisbury now,” called Yvette to Dick, her voice ringing out clearly above the muffled hum of the propeller, the only sound which came from the helicopter, with its beautifully silenced engines.
A few minutes later Dick pointed to the north. “Here he comes,” he shouted.