'
He spent five minutes telephoning and then he went out into the
courtyard of the chateau in which he had been installed and shouted
for his automobile. Things would have to move quickly because there was
scarcely an hour and a half before dawn. He looked at the sky and noted
with satisfaction a heavy bank of clouds athwart the pallid east.
He was a young man of infinite shrewdness, and his material and
aeroplanes were scattered all over the country-side, stuck away
in barns, covered with hay, hidden in woods. A hawk could not have
discovered any of them without coming within reach of a gun. But that
night he only wanted one of the machines, and it was handy and quite
prepared under a tarpaulin between two ricks not a couple of miles away;
he was going to Berlin with that and just one other man. Two men would
be enough for what he meant to do....
He had in his hands the black complement to all those other gifts
science was urging upon unregenerate mankind, the gift of destruction,
and he was an adventurous rather than a sympathetic type....
He was a dark young man with something negroid about his gleaming face.
He smiled like one who is favoured and anticipates great pleasures.
There was an exotic richness, a chuckling flavour, about the voice
in which he gave his orders, and he pointed his remarks with the long
finger of a hand that was hairy and exceptionally big.
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