The Man from the Clouds

The Man from the Clouds by J. Storer Clouston

J. Storer Clouston's The Man from the Clouds opens on a British observation balloon adrift over the North Sea in late August 1914, after its towing cable snaps. Sub-Lieutenant Roger Merton, the narrator, and his companion Rutherford drift blind through fog toward what they assume is the German coast. When the balloon nears land, Rutherford, convinced they have crossed the sea, leaps with his parachute and vanishes forever. Merton waits, drops soon after, and lands safely in a clover field, discovering he has in fact been blown back onto British soil. On the shore he meets a man in oilskins who addresses him in German, warns him not to speak it aloud, and asks a cryptic question about how many sheep are on the island. Merton, bluffing as a fellow German agent, fails to answer convincingly, and the man slips away after two misleading whistles. Exhausted, Merton stumbles to a farmhouse belonging the Scollay family, eats, sleeps in their barn, and wakes half-convinced someone searched him in the night. He learns the island is Ransay, in the northern archipelago near a naval base. Determined to expose a spy ring, Merton adopts the persona of a blustering, gluttonous German agent to draw suspicion and flush out confederates. He visits Dr. Rendall's isolated house, where a hastily dropped window blind and the sardonic Irish guest Mr. O'Brien arouse his suspicion, then calls on the laird, Philip Rendall, and his sharp-eyed daughter Jean. Unconvinced he can trust either household, Merton conceals his true identity and story, inventing a tale about landing from a cruiser and locking up a nonexistent uniform coat. An old man with tinted spectacles asks him for a "wax match," a phrase Merton later suspects was a password. That night, walking the shore on a coast-watch with Jean armed with a pistol, Merton is nearly struck by something scythe-like from above; the next day he is shot at from behind a wall while eating lunch, narrowly escaping by dodging fire and giving chase, though the attacker vanishes. He also discovers his hidden parachute has disappeared and that his locked drawer has been picked, exposing his coat lie. Locked in his room by the Rendalls, Merton is rescued when his cousin, Commander John Whiteclett, arrives on patrol duty, having been summoned by the laird. Whiteclett skeptically picks apart Merton's story, offering mundane explanations for nearly every incident, and takes him off the island. A follow-up investigation by a professional detective, Bolton, clears everyone Merton suspected: O'Brien is dismissed as a hard-drinking exile with no German and is sent away, and no proof of espionage is found. Merton, unconvinced, writes up his account, still certain a spy network operates on Ransay. Months later, recovering from wounds in a convalescent hospital, Merton learns from Whiteclett that suspicious activity — submarines, shore signals — has continued on Ransay since O'Brien's departure. Merton proposes to return in disguise as a new "alcoholic patient" for Dr. Rendall, exploiting the doctor's earlier eagerness for a paying resident. With his uncle Sir Francis Merton's help arranging cover papers, a false identity (Thomas Sylvester Hobhouse), and official sanction, Merton dyes his beard, adopts glasses and a limp, and returns to the island as Dr. Rendall's new "patient," posing as a garrulous antiquarian. As Hobhouse, he cultivates ordinary relationships with the Rendalls, the Scollays, and Dr. Rendall, all of whom fail to recognize him. He confirms suspicions about the blind and gathers hints that O'Brien was genuinely disliked by the doctor, weakening the case against him. Jean Rendall's shifting, watchful manner unsettles him, and a walk together retraces the very route of his earlier midnight encounter, reviving his suspicion that something is still concealed. Piecing together the earlier attack, he deduces his assailant likely used a scythe blade on a pole. The narrative reaches its climax when the auxiliary cruiser Uruguay anchors off Ransay for shelter during a storm, and its sailors go ashore buying provisions — eggs, butter, cheese — from islanders including the Scollays. That night the ship explodes catastrophically, killing nearly all aboard save one survivor. Detective Bolton returns to investigate the sabotage, questioning Merton and hinting he has found evidence that someone on the island has not lived there their whole life. Bolton asks Merton to stand by that evening in case he is needed, leaving the mystery of the spy's identity unresolved as Merton awaits further word, having just encountered Jock excitedly trying to show him something about stones near the cliffs at the island's northwest end.

By J. Storer Clouston · First published 1918 · Genre: Spy Fiction, Adventure, Mystery · 33 chapters · 71,757 words

First lines

"My God," said Rutherford, "the cable has broken!"

In an instant I was craning over the side of the basket. Five hundred feet, 700 feet, 1,000 feet, 2,000 feet below us, the cruiser that had been our only link with the world of man was diminishing so swiftly that, as far as I remember, she had shrunk to the smallness of a tug and then vanished into the haze before I even answered him.

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spy thriller · World War I · espionage · British fiction · infiltration · deception · naval warfare · pilot protagonist · Scottish setting · German operatives · wartime fiction · suspense

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The Man from the Clouds is listed on Textopian as a novel by J. Storer Clouston, dated 1918 CE.

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