Our fellow diners drifted away as they had come--singly, and in twos
and threes--and by ten o’clock Horne and I were alone in the deserted
lounge with our cigars and coffee. He was expecting to be rung up at
ten-thirty, he said, and as the time approached I could not help
noticing that he became _distrait_ and nervous, palpably anxious. The
call came promptly, and it was with a look of ill-concealed
apprehension on his face that he rose to follow the summoning flunkey
to the telephone booth. A minute later he returned walking on air.
Twice or thrice he tried to take up the dropped thread of Argentine
reminiscence, finally giving it up as a bad job.
“I can’t help telling you that I’ve just had some very good news,” he
exclaimed, with beaming face. “For six weeks now I have been haunted
by a fear that that last jarring up I got was going to put me out of
the game for good. Yesterday I had the doctors go over me, and now,
after being kept all day on tenterhooks, comes word that, so far as
flying is concerned, I’m going to be as right as rain. Nothing
whatever likely to occur to prevent my going back in a fortnight. I
think I must be just about the happiest man in London to-night. I----”
He checked himself with a deprecatory gesture. “Really, you’ll have to
pardon my outburst, old chap; but I wasn’t half sure that I wasn’t in
line for invaliding out. Besides, I’ve been fairly itching to be ‘up’
all day. There’s been witchery in the air ever since sunrise. I’ve
never known more perfect flying weather. Which reminds me, by the way,
that the Zepps are expected in this vicinity to-night. They were on
the ‘East Coast’ last night, you know. It’s just a little too clear
for their purposes; but the air itself is perfect--_perfect_. There
haven’t been more than one or two other such days for flying as this
one since the war began. You can’t understand it till you’ve been in
the air yourself. It was in the blood of all those chaps at dinner
this evening. They talked about everything on earth except flying; and
were thinking about nothing else but that. Didn’t you notice that they
were as restive as the lions in the Zoo an hour before feeding time?”
Throwing aside all reserve, Horne began to speak of his work--his love
of it, the fascination of it, the great and increasingly important
part it was playing in the war. This was precisely what, hoping
against hope, I had been trying to draw him out on all the evening;
and so, lighting a fresh cigar, I sank back contentedly in my armchair
to play the part of the appreciative auditor. Scarcely was I well
settled, however, when Horne abruptly ceased speaking and leaned
forward with his head cocked in an attitude of attentive listening.
“Did you hear that?” he whispered; “and that, and that?”
“Nothing but the chatter of the first dribble of the supper crowd,” I
answered. “What is it?”
“Bombs,” was the reply; “three or four of them. And, I think,
gun-fire. The Zepps must be nearer London than they have been at any
time since last October. Let’s get down to the Embankment. We can see
from there, if anywhere. They never wander far from the ‘river road.’”
The Strand, packed with the crowds from the emptying theatres, was
plainly oblivious and unalarmed, and I promptly taxed Horne with
letting either the wine or the “perfect air conditions” go to his
head. He said nothing, but, all the way down the black little canyon
of a street along which we threaded our way, appeared to be listening
intently. Not until we were about to emerge into the brighter
blankness of the Embankment did he speak again.
“There have been no more bombs,” he said, “but I think the guns are
going right along. If the sound is too faint for your ‘unattuned’ ear,
perhaps the fact that you hear no shunting of trains or whistling at
Charing Cross or Waterloo (you know of the new order which halts all
trains during air-raids) will convince you that the Zepps are about.
Or if not that, then come along here and have some ocular evidence.
What do you say to that?” And Horne pointed off down past the looming
mass of St. Paul’s to where the stationary beam of a single
searchlight laid low along the eastern horizon.
“I see the searchlight plainly enough,” I said, “but where’s the
Zepp?”
“Take my glass,” said Horne, handing me a small pair of
semi-collapsible binoculars which was evidently a constant companion.
“Now focus on that point of brighter glow, with a shadow behind it,
half-way down the shaft--right there, straight over the back of the
right-hand lion at the foot of the Obelisk.”
I did as directed, fairly to gasp with astonishment as a tiny blur, so
indistinct as to go unnoticed by the passers-by on the Embankment,
sharpened to a long, yellow-ribbed pencil, with pin-points of
light--fireflies escorting a glow-worm--flashing out and disappearing
above and below and round about it.
“The first Zepp to get over London in six months,” I ejaculated
excitedly. “How long will she take to get here? Hadn’t we better get
away from the river and under cover? But no,” I went on, peering
through the glass again; “I don’t think she’s coming this way. Seems
to be standing still. Probably hovering over W----, the old
objective.”
“London! W----!” laughed Horne. “Do you realise that _you_ didn’t hear
any bombs, and that none of these people have any idea that there’s a
raiding Zeppelin, with shells bursting about it, squarely in their
range of vision? That fellow’s all of twenty-five miles away, and as
for its ‘hovering,’ you may rest assured that when you see a Zepp with
incendiary shells bursting _above_ it, it is either badly hit or else
doing seventy miles an hour toward the home hangars. As a matter of
fact, I’ve been expecting to see this fellow begin to drop at any
moment. He’s evidently run into better guns and gunners than he
counted on. Ah! No hope!” (Horne snatched his glass and turned it
quickly on the now agitated searchlight beam.) “He’s gone. Even the
light’s lost him.”
Horne turned around disgustedly, led the way to a bench by the curb,
pushed along a somnolent “match dame” to make room for him, and
wearily sat down.
“He’s slippery game--the Zepp,” he observed presently, after watching
the futile flounderings of the questing searchlight. “I didn’t tell
you, did I, that it was through trying to get a Zepp that I came that
last cropper of mine over Belgium?”
“You know perfectly well you didn’t,” I replied, folding a corner of
the old match-seller’s straggling cloak back over her knees and
sitting down in the space vacated. “Go to it.”
“I was starting on a reconnaissance over a corner of Belgium just as
the Zepp was returning from a raid over France. I got above him, and
just after I dropped my first bomb the ‘Archies’ opened up on me from
the ground and put me out at just about the first shot. Jolly nervy
work, with my machine only a couple of hundred feet above the Zepp. A
little too nervy, perhaps, for I’ve never been quite certain in my
own mind whether it was my bomb or one from the German guns which sent
the Zepp--not wrecked but pretty badly messed up--down into a
sugar-beet field. I headed----”
“Just a moment,” I interrupted, anticipating the end of the tale at
the end of Horne’s next breath. “You’re dumping over your story just
the way a Zeppelin under fire dumps over its bombs. Now please back up
and tell it properly. The night is young, the raiders are now headed
out to sea, and the lady and I are here to follow you to the end.”