“It is given to me to know,” he answered, wagging his white head. “So there is no longer any reason why I should not go into the People’s House and bear testimony to the truth. You can go back now. I will carry your message to Lembken before I die.”
Before I could restrain him he had started off along the road, and his quick jog-trot gave him almost as much speed as my scrambling, wild pursuit. I caught him, however, a hundred yards away.
“Bishop Alfred, you must go back to your friends,” I said. “Your idea is nonsense. There is no need to sacrifice yourself.”
He shook his head and detached himself. I stumbled over a projecting root, and when I was on my feet again I saw the old man another fifty yards away. Once more I was approaching him. And then I halted suddenly and drew back among the trees, for just beyond the bend in the road lay the dark airplane, and the old man had stopped beside it, evidently waiting to be taken in.
However, since he continued to wait there, I advanced noiselessly toward it, with the hope of rescuing him, until I realized that the dark airplane was empty.
The occupant had left it, but for what reason, or where he had gone, I could not surmise.
I was just where the old road joined with a small, twisting path that struck back among the trees. Some instinct cautioned me to silence. If I had spoken ... but I did not speak, and then, among the trees, following the crooked trail not fifty paces away, I saw the aviator, walking with head bent downward, evidently unconscious of human proximity.
I held my breath in terror lest the old man should speak. But he stood motionless as a statue beside the dark airplane; he seemed wrapt in a reverie. The hope arose of saving him. That was Hancock’s airplane; his fate, then, lay with Hancock, and Lembken had told me that the Air-Admiral was a Christian. Surely he would take pity on the old, childish man. He knew me. I might appeal to him....
The twisting track, which had hidden him from my eyes, brought him into view once more, clear against the low moon that made the moving figure a silhouette against its circle. I crept up, until suddenly I reeled and nearly fell, overcome by the magnitude of my discovery. For this was not Air-Admiral Hancock, but Hugo Sanson, the madman who ruled the Federation!