Project Gutenberg's The Zeppelin's Passenger, by E. Phillips Oppenheim

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Title: The Zeppelin's Passenger

Author: E. Phillips Oppenheim

Posting Date: November 25, 2008 [EBook #1931]
Release Date: October, 1999

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE ZEPPELIN'S PASSENGER

By E. Phillips Oppenheim

CHAPTER I

"Never heard a sound," the younger of the afternoon callers admitted,
getting rid of his empty cup and leaning forward in his low chair. "No
more tea, thank you, Miss Fairclough. Done splendidly, thanks. No, I
went to bed last night soon after eleven--the Colonel had been route
marching us all off our legs--and I never awoke until reveille this
morning. Sleep of the just, and all that sort of thing, but a jolly
sell, all the same! You hear anything of it, sir?" he asked, turning to
his companion, who was seated a few feet away.

Captain Griffiths shook his head. He was a man considerably older than
his questioner, with long, nervous face, and thick black hair streaked
with grey. His fingers were bony, his complexion, for a soldier,
curiously sallow, and notwithstanding his height, which was
considerable, he was awkward, at times almost uncouth. His voice was
hard and unsympathetic, and his contributions to the tea-table talk had
been almost negligible.

"I was up until two o'clock, as it happened," he replied, "but I knew
nothing about the matter until it was brought to my notice officially."

Helen Fairclough, who was doing the honours for Lady Cranston, her
absent hostess, assumed the slight air of superiority to which the
circumstances of the case entitled her.

"I heard it distinctly," she declared; "in fact it woke me up. I hung
out of the window, and I could hear the engine just as plainly as though
it were over the golf links."

The young subaltern sighed.

"Rotten luck I have with these things," he confided. "That's three times
they've been over, and I've neither heard nor seen one. This time they
say that it had the narrowest shave on earth of coming down. Of course,
you've hea