Read The Dirigibles of Death for Free Online

horrible, death-dealing machines in human form. But now that I had in a small measure solved the mystery of the murderers and their purpose, my duty was clear. I must devote every energy, every effort to minimizing the spread of the diseases— I did not flatter myself that they could be completely checked—and must leave the rest to the government. I hurried to Whitehall and sought an immediate interview with Sir Kenyon McDonald. Thanks to the fact that my activities and suggestions had already accomplished results in several cases where Ryndal's disease had developed, Sir Kenyon received me at once. The chief of Great Britain's Secret Service listened with deep attention to my revelations, his keen, gray eyes under their bushy brows like pin-points, his hawk-like face set and stern.
    "The swine!" he commented. "The most damnable, utterly fiendish and amazing plot to destroy a nation that the world has ever known. No war ever held such horrible, dastardly means of destruction. Gas, submarines, bombs—all are humane, insignificant, merciful, compared with this. And why, why, why? England is not at war with any nation. We have no enemies that would resort to such atrocities. What—by Heaven, Doctor I— But never mind. You have rendered your nation a great, an immeasurable service by what you have told me. But for the present, at least until I give my approval—say nothing of what you know.”
    Jimmy Nash Takes Up the Tale
    Honestly I don't know just how to begin. After reading all that Doctor Grayson and Major Leighton and Inspector Maidstone have written, there doesn't seem much more for me to say. And there isn't anything that happened that they have told, that I knew as much about as they did, anyway.
    Everything was kept pretty secret, and about all anyone knew of what was going on was that the black airships were dropping down here, there and everywhere in England, and every time one came down a crowd of crazy, blood-thirsty negroes were let loose to murder anyone and everyone they met until they were killed off like rats. Nobody outside the government officials knew that Major Leighton was working like the devil to find out how the dirigibles worked. Nobody knew what the disease was that the negroes spread, or that it would turn peaceful people into murderers and, of course, no one knew that Doctor Grayson had discovered that the negroes had been made crazy and had been infected just to raise the devil with England. That's a great thing about England. Everything is done on the Q. T. until it's all over but the shouting. In the States everyone on the streets would know a darn sight more about what was going on than the ones who were doing it, and every paper would have three-inch headlines about it before it happened. But over here mum's the word about anything that the officials think the people shouldn't know until they're ready to tell them. Now take this business, for instance. If the papers had said the airships were being sent from some place by radio or something of the sort, and that all the army and navy couldn't stop them, and the best experts were all at sea about how they worked, and if the public had known every time one of the maniacs scratched a man or a woman, he or she'd be liable to become a crazy murderer, everyone would have been scared to death. And if they'd known some damnable enemy had been scheming for years to do this, and had been making maniacs loaded with diseases just to send them over here, and that no one knew who the enemy was or where they came from, everyone would have gone up in the air and raised Ned. So I guess it's just as well to keep things mum the way they do. And maybe it's because the lawbreakers don't know what the bobbies are doing that mighty few of them get clear. Well, I seem to be getting off the trolley a bit and not saying anything about the things that happened or where I came into the picture.
    In the first place I'm an American, and so I wouldn't have had the