A DANGEROUS ERRAND
For a moment Greene was speechless with despair. Fate had tricked him,
it seemed, after he had done his best--and a better best than most men
could even have attempted. Then he grinned.
"We'll have to hoof it," he said. "A good twelve miles, too! If we were
champions at cross-country work it would take us the best part of two
hours. And it's so long since I've used my legs that I don't know how
long I'll be."
"There's one chance," said Frank. "I remember that I saw a little inn on
the road the Germans took this afternoon. We're not so very far from
that now. These little inns along the roads in France all have petrol
for motorists who run short. If I went there I might get some."
Greene shook his head doubtfully.
"The government's taken all the essence it could find," he said, "I
don't believe they'd have any. And, besides, there's a good chance that
the Germans have men there."
"Still it's a chance," said Frank. "Won't you let me try? If I can't get
it we shan't lose much time. And if I do, look at the difference it
would make."
"That's true enough," said Greene. "All right, try it. I'll mend up the
hole, when I find it, and if you do get some essence, we can be off at
once. Good luck!"
Frank was on his way already, slipping away in the direction whence they
had come. Luckily enough, he got his bearings by the windmill from which
he had observed the wood into which the Germans had gone. To make his
way to the road along which he and Henri had first seen the Germans
passing was an easy matter. But he was afraid of roads by this time, and
the more so because he knew that the Germans, having been aroused by the
attack from the sky, would be doubly on the alert. So he stuck to the
side of the road, religiously taking advantage of every bit of cover he
could find to escape the foe.
"They knew they'd given themselves away just as soon as they fired at
us," he reasoned, thinking half aloud as he trudged along, which was a
habit of his. "And I don't believe they know they hit us at all. They do
know that they didn't bring us down at once. Anyhow, there's no reason
for them to be secret any more, and if they stay in that wood, they'll
throw out pickets now, because they'll think that as soon as we went
back and made our report troops would be sent to rout them out. It's up
to me to be mighty careful."
That was good sound reasoning, too. From all he had learned since the
war began, he knew that the Germans were by no means foes to be
despised. They had been pretty generally victorious, but that was not
all. They had shown a capacity for being always ready, for thinking of
everything that might come up to block their plans. And he was sure,
therefore, that the German commander would not argue that the aeroplane
had got clean away just because the probabilities indicated that it
had. He was almost certain to beat the country within a reasonable area
for it, in the hope of finding it crippled and thus unable to carry the
news it had come to get.
"I bet the Germans wouldn't have sent just one aeroplane," he reflected.
"They'd have sent two, so that if anything happened to one, the other
could have brought back the news."
But though he was thinking hard, he didn't linger as he went. Soon he
came to the transverse road along which the Germans had gone, and turned
in the direction they had taken. It was beginning to rain a little now,
and it was very dark. He still stuck to the fields, though he was close
to the road, and he found nothing to bar his way to the inn. When he got
there, moreover, he found the place dark and deserted. Not a soul was in
sight, but there were evidences that spoke as eloquently as men or women
could have done. In the tap room furniture was smashed and broken and
shattered glass was about the floor. Plainly the Germans had stopped as
they went by.
"Of course!" he said, to himself. "If there were people here they took
them along with them. They wouldn't be likely to leave any French
people, whose first idea would be to tell what they had seen! It's
certainly lucky that they didn't see us. We'd be with them now, I
guess."
It was spooky work exploring the abandoned inn in the damp, dark night
and with the knowledge that German soldiers were probably no great
distance away. It was less than a quarter of a mile to the edge of the
wood that had assumed such an important aspect, and he expected at any
moment to hear the footsteps of intruders. None the less he went about
his task quietly and coolly.
"If they had any essence, they'd hide it," he said to himself. "They'd
know that both armies would need it for automobiles and aeroplanes, and
they'd try to keep any they had left. So it won't be in any of the usual
places."
For that reason he did not even leave the main building to make a search
in the stable that was used as a garage. Instead, he went into the
cellar. Here it was still plainer that the Germans had passed through.
His feet stepped into puddles of sticky dampness, and, using his
flashlight, he saw that it was wine. The heads of casks had been knocked
in; broken bottles, too, strewed the floor.
This, however, had not been wanton destruction, he was sure. It had an
object, and that object had been to prevent the soldiers from getting
anything to drink. Troops on an errand requiring such extraordinary
secrecy as had been maintained in this case could not be allowed to
drink any liquor. That would have spoiled in all likelihood the
remarkable discipline of which Captain Greene had spoken.
But, once more, it was not his business to think of what he saw, or to
speculate about it, but to find the petrol if any was to be found. And
he stumbled upon the hidden store quite suddenly, and quite literally,
too. In one corner of the cellar was what looked like a pile of kindling
wood. Harry kicked it indifferently in passing, and was almost thrown
when his feet encountered a resistance more solid than he had any reason
to expect. He looked down, and there, under the kindling, were two
ten-gallon cans of petrol!
"I knew it must be there!" he cried to himself. He was down on his knees
in a moment, shaking the cans to make sure that they were full. One had
never been broached; the other was nearly half full. And this second can
was the one he took. That would be more than enough to get the monoplane
back to headquarters, and there was no reason for burdening himself with
too great a load. He picked up the can, and at the same moment his heart
leaped up into his throat, for overhead there came the sound of heavy
footsteps. For a moment he stood as if paralyzed, listening.
The footsteps continued; guttural voices sounded,--the voices of
Germans. It was impossible to distinguish what they were saying; and it
made no difference, in any case. The only point that mattered was that
they were there; that they blocked the only means Frank had of getting
away with the precious petrol he had so luckily found.
He was safe enough personally. Even if they were led to come down into
the cellar the chances were all in favor of his being able to conceal
himself. What he feared was that some use was to be made of the place,
and that the men whose voices he heard would stay there, thus preventing
him from getting out of the building and so getting the petrol to
Greene. It was more than possible, he thought, that the German
commander, knowing that the presence of his troops in the woods had been
discovered, would decide to use this place for headquarters.
And what he could hear confirmed this idea. There was a continual
tramping overhead. Men came and went. That seemed to indicate that the
occupation was to be permanent. He racked his brains for some means of
escape. Windows there were none in the cellar. He found no trace of a
trap door, such as there would have been in almost any American cellar.
And then the saving thought came to him like a flash. He debated for a
moment, then decided that the risk was worth taking. First he took his
can of gasoline to the steps. Then he poured a little into a broken
bottle, and poured this, in turn, on the wood under which he had found
the cans. He dragged the full can of petrol to the other side of the
cellar. And then, very deliberately, he set a match to the gasoline
soaked wood and retreated to the steps.
The fire he had started blazed up at once, owing to the petrol. And at
once a thick, acrid smoke filled the place. He was well up on the
stairs, and thus safe from being choked. But he was in danger should the
Germans come down, though even so, since the steps were wide, there was
a chance for him. But he did not expect them to come down. He thought
the smoke would drive them out, since as nearly as he could judge his
fire was directly under the room in which the most of the commotion
upstairs was taking place.
It was not long before he heard coughing upstairs, the first sign that
the smoke was doing its work. By that time a brisk fire was burning. It
had run up the posts to the beams that formed the chief support of the
room above, and to his delight Frank saw that these burned far more
fiercely and quickly than he had hoped. Plainly the wood was old and
dry.
Above, as the fire spread, louder cries succeeded the coughing. And then
came the crucial test by which his daring experiment had to stand or
fall. Some one opened the door at the head of the stairs. Now, if ever,
he was to be discovered! But as the door was opened the smoke was drawn
up, and the German who had come to it jumped back.
"The whole place is burning! Get out!" he cried, in German. "There may
be explosive spirits still down there!"
He slammed the door shut, and Frank heard running footsteps above. He
waited until there were no more, and then, almost overcome by the smoke,
slipped through the door. No one was left in the hallway into which he
came. The place was full of smoke. He did not venture to the front door
by which he had entered, but, still dragging his can of petrol, went to
the back. Going through the kitchen, he found another door, as he had
been sure he would and in a moment he was drinking in the cool, fresh
air. The rain that was beating down on him now was welcome.
Just as he reached the open there was a sharp explosion behind him, and
he looked back, to see the windows on the ground floor glowing. That was
the other can of petrol, as he could guess readily enough. At once he
ducked, and, running low, got well to one side of the house. Then, just
as a great burst of flame lighted up the whole scene, he dropped to the
ground, and lay peering toward the road in front of the inn.
A dozen officers and as many men, all in the German uniform, with the
spiked helmets that made them so unmistakable, were in the road, staring
at the burning house. And it was not until Frank saw how angry one of
the officers was that he realized what a useful idea his had really
been. Now detection of the Germans was certain. Investigation was almost
certain to be made of a fire in a building so far out of the range of
the German artillery as this. And so, even if neither he nor Captain
Greene got back in time, the torch he had lighted, meaning only to
secure his own escape, was likely to prove a death blow to the German
hopes of secrecy.
Frank could not hear what the Germans were saying, but he had no
intention of getting closer in an attempt to do so. Instead, having
satisfied himself that there were no pickets behind the burning inn, he
began crawling cautiously to the rear. It was a difficult task,
especially so because of the petrol, which was no light burden. But he
managed to get well out of the lighted zone and then he decided that it
would be safe to straighten up and walk along.
As he went along the burning building served him well. It gave him a
fixed landmark from which he could lay his course to the spot where he
had left the monoplane and Captain Greene. By looking back from time to
time he could correct his course, when he was crossing fields. And so
without the guidance of roads, and partly to make better time and partly
to avoid stray German pickets, he chose to stay away almost entirely
from the roads and go across country.
From the fields in which they had descended to the inn the distance, as
nearly as he had been able to guess it, was about a mile. He shortened
this somewhat on the return trip. And he was within a quarter of a mile
of the meeting place when he became suddenly conscious of something that
was not just right. At first he was tempted to stop, but he overcame the
temptation. The thing that had warned him of a possible danger was a
trifling noise, yet one that was out of the ordinary. What the noise was
he could scarcely have told. Perhaps the breaking of a twig, perhaps the
slipping of a foot along a suddenly encountered patch of mud. At any
rate he was sure that he had been followed.
He slowed down and now he could hear, or thought he could, the heavy
breathing of at least two men. He was not certain of this; he was
willing to admit to himself that he might be fancying it.
"If they're after me, why don't they take me?" he wondered to himself.
But the explanation came to him almost as soon as he had asked himself
the question. Whoever was following him could reason from the sight of
the can of petrol he was carrying that he was going to some definite
place where that petrol was wanted. And it would require no great
stretch of the imagination for his trailers to decide that he must be
carrying fuel to the aeroplane that had worked such havoc with the
German plans.
"They think I'll lead them to the 'plane," he thought. Half a dozen
plans for misleading them came to him. But none seemed practicable.
Frank was intensely dogged in his determination to accomplish anything
he had set out to do. The idea of giving up now, even to mislead his
pursuers and so save Captain Greene from capture, was repugnant to him.
He wanted to foil the men behind him--unless, as was possible, he only
imagined that they were behind him--and still do what he had set out to
do, which was in this instance to refill that empty petrol tank on the
monoplane.
It was the purely accidental movement of putting his hand into his
pocket to dry it off that gave him the idea. It met the pocket
flashlight Captain Greene had given him, and at once he remembered a use
for it of which the aviator had told him. To follow the plan did not
mean that it would succeed, but it represented a chance, anyhow. And so
when he came to the fence which he remembered climbing on his way from
the monoplane, he stopped on the top rail, having pushed his can of
petrol through first. In the field now immediately in front of him, but
far away still, on the other side of the field, lay the monoplane. He
could not see it in the driving rain but he knew that it was there.
There too would be Greene, waiting for him, and in all probability at
this moment straining his eyes watching for his return. On that
depended his chance of success in the plan that had come to him. On
that, and on Greene's presence of mind and quick-wittedness.
So, still astride of the top rail, he began signalling with his pocket
flashlight. He spelled out his message in Morse code, using a long
pressure of the releasing switch for the dash and a short one for the
dot. Word by word he spelled out his message, telling that he suspected
that at least two Germans were trailing him. And at the end he signalled
a request that if he had understood, Greene should wait a half minute
and then imitate an owl's cry. He chose an owl because he had heard one
or two earlier in the night. And he added that if he got the signal he
would keep on heading for the monoplane. He suggested nothing to Greene;
the rest was decidedly up to the aviator. Frank had done his share.
If there were Germans actually within sight of him, they did not attempt
to interfere with him while he was flashing his message. But he had
reckoned confidently that they would not. He was sure that he had not
betrayed the fact that he knew he was being followed, and they would
naturally suppose that this stop for signalling was part of a
pre-arranged plan. He now dropped to the ground, picked up his can and
took two or three quick steps. Then he stopped abruptly and was sure
that he heard a footstep behind him. He grinned to himself, and just
then the hoot of an owl sounded. Then he went on.
"I'll make it easier for them," he said. "Perhaps they wouldn't like to
follow me right across the field!"
So he skirted the fence and the hedge at the side, and went around three
sides of the field to reach the monoplane. And, as soon as it was in
sight, all his suspicions were verified, for from behind there came a
sharp exclamation in German, and he was told to stop, just as a heavy
hand gripped his shoulder.
"Ja, we were right!" exclaimed one man in German. "There is their
aeroplane! Now for the other--"
He never finished the sentence. Instead, he threw up his hands and
pitched forward, just as a revolver cracked sharply in the silent night.
With an oath the man who held Frank threw him aside, at the same moment
shooting in the direction of the flash of Greene's pistol. But the
Englishman's revolver spoke at the same moment, and he too fell. Frank's
ruse had saved the day!