Indeed, in following a Zeppelin at a high altitude and in clouds, I might very easily be mistaken for an enemy attendant aeroplane, and thus draw the fire of our own anti-aircraft guns. In addition, I held no official position in the anti-aircraft service. As far as the newly-formed Joint Naval and Military Air Committee were concerned, I might be a mere man-in-the-street. Therefore I should be compelled to act upon my own initiative. Indeed, I had already offered my invention to the proper official quarter, but had only received a type-written acknowledgment. I, however, was not surprised, because that Department had, I knew, been flooded by the devices of hot-air cranks. Still, as I lay reflecting, I remembered that we could build 1,700 aeroplanes for the cost of one Dreadnought, and a Zeppelin would cost a good deal less than a destroyer. I did not approve of that shrieking section of the Press which was loudly declaring that we had lost the supremacy in aeroplanes which we possessed at the beginning of the war. That was not a fact. We, of course, had no dirigibles worth the name and, perhaps, we were asking pilots to fly machines inferior to the Fokker. Yet we had brought Fokkers down at the front, and with good experimental work and a speedy policy of construction we should, I believed, soon be far ahead of the Central Powers as far as aircraft was concerned. Those days were dark and perilous days for Britain. That something must be done, every one was agreed. Yet, as I tossed upon my bed in that narrow little room in the obscure farm-house, I knew that within my hand I possessed a great, and yet mysterious power--and that power I intended to use and prove at the earliest opportunity. Still I had to reckon with enemies; cool, clever, cunning persons who would hesitate at nothing in order to nullify my efforts, and wreck my machine and all my hopes. Ah! If only Roseye, my well-beloved, would reveal to me the truth. Why did she so persistently refuse? Why? I wondered why? CHAPTER TWENTY TWO. MORE DEVIL'S WORK. Next day I decided that, in view of the fact that our enemies had traced us, it would be best to at once remove our headquarters. Further, in order to attack a Zeppelin, as I intended, we ought to station ourselves upon the line of their advance from the East Coast towards London, and somewhere in proximity to an anti-aircraft listening-post. All three of us held council and decided that, as I knew of a listening-post in East Anglia, I should fly the machine to that neighbourhood, rather than dismantle it and take it by road. It was arranged that Teddy should accompany me, and that Theed should drive Roseye, Mulliner and his father in the car. By this rapid and unexpected flight we hoped to at least evade the unwelcome attentions of that mysterious woman whom Roseye described as having leopard's eyes.