MORE WORK IN PROSPECT
"Tom, sit down here on this bench, won't you? I want to have a little
talk with you about some things that have bothered me a whole lot
lately," said Jack, some days after the exciting experiences narrated in
the two preceding chapters.
"I can give a pretty good guess what they are, Jack, since I see you
staring hard at the slip of paper found attached to the toy balloon
which drifted over our lines from somewhere back of the German front."
"Yes; I own up I do sit and look at that paper, Tom. If it could only
talk I'd know who penned that warning, and my curiosity'd be satisfied
for one thing. But try as hard as I may, I can't be certain whether it
was Mrs. Neumann, or somebody else. But I wanted to speak to you about
Bessie just now."
"What about her, Jack?" asked Tom, knowing how much his chum was
concerned over the unknown fate of the pretty young girl they had met on
the Atlantic liner, and who was apparently anything but happy in the
charge of her legally appointed guardian, Carl Potzfeldt.
"There are several things she told me, half unwillingly, I admit, that I
guess I haven't said anything about to you, Tom."
"Then she confided her secrets to you, eh?" half chuckled Tom; though he
saw his chum was in anything but a humorous frame of mind. "I remember
you told me she felt very bitter toward all Germans because she had lost
her mother when the _Lusitania_ went down."
"Yes. But this had to do with her guardian," Jack continued.
"Oh, I see! Mr. Potzfeldt, Jack? You haven't felt favorably disposed
toward that gentleman at any time since first meeting him."
"Neither have you, Tom, to tell the truth!" declared the other quickly.
"In fact, as I remember it, both of us were pretty much inclined to
believe he was a paid spy of the German Government, working on some line
of dark business over in America. Well, he had to clear out in a hurry,
Bessie told me."
"Did the authorities get track of his scheming work, and was he in
danger of being arrested for plotting against Uncle Sam's interests as a
neutral?" Tom asked.
"It may have been that; but Bessie wasn't sure about it. In fact, she
seemed inclined to believe her guardian had some secret, which was in
danger of being exposed. An old friend of her mother's was interesting
himself in the matter. Given time, he might have made it uncomfortable
for Carl Potzfeldt; and so the gentleman cleared out between two days."
"Taking Bessie with him!"
"Yes. They made as if to go to Chicago, but instead hurried to New York.
When he came aboard at the last call he kept to his cabin for a time,
until we were well away from land. There has been considerable of
mystery about his actions. Bessie is afraid of him, too. She even hinted
that she believed he might have obtained control of her fortune and
herself through fraud, and that this was in danger of being found out at
the time he cut stick and ran."
"All this is interesting, Jack; but just when and how we're ever going
to learn the truth about it I'm unable even to guess. It would be like
hunting for a needle in a haystack to try to find Potzfeldt. He and his
pretty little ward may be hundreds of miles away from here."
"Perhaps you're right, Tom," mused the other sadly, as he stared afar
off toward the north. "I'd be glad of a chance to do something for that
poor girl. She is to be greatly pitied, if she's wholly in the power of
a man who wouldn't hesitate to do _anything_, if he saw a chance
for gain ahead."
"Well, all you can do, Jack, is to live on and hope a lucky chance will
bob up for you. But there's our captain beckoning to me. Perhaps another
battle is on the carpet for to-morrow, and I'll be given a look-in
again."
"Oh, if the lightning would only strike me too!" sighed Jack, enviously.
"Please beg him to figure out something I can do, Tom. If it's only
occupying a place aboard an observation plane or taking photographs of
the Germans regrouping far back of the lines, I'd gladly welcome it.
Anything but sitting here, when all the other pilots are at work."
Tom hurried to join the commander of the Lafayette Escadrille. He had
taken a great fancy to the gallant man, and believed this feeling was in
a measure returned. Jack continued to sit and mope. He really felt
slighted to be left out when so much thrilling work was being done.
He had put away the well-thumbed scrap of paper with its mysterious
lines of warning, for the time being Bessie and all her troubles passing
from his mind. Jack was now full of his own affairs. He found himself
growing a bit discontented because thus far he had been allowed to do so
little for the cause, when his heart was full to overflowing with a
desire to assist.
There were aviators going and coming all the time, and surely many of
them did not excel him appreciably in talents. Why did not those in
charge find something for an ambitious pilot to do? He was striving
daily to master the weak spots in his education; and had not the captain
himself assured him he was doing bravely? He turned to cast an
occasional look toward the spot where Tom and the commander of the air
squadron still talked earnestly. Yes, something was certainly "on tap,"
as Jack expressed it, for he saw the other carefully examining a bit of
paper his companion had evidently placed in his hand.
Jack began to be interested. Perhaps after all it might turn out to be
something quite different from what Tom had anticipated. Had the captain
simply wished to notify the other to be ready to answer a call on the
following morning, surely he need not have taken all this time; nor
would he have given Tom that paper, undoubtedly carrying explicit
instructions.
How the minutes dragged! Jack thought it an eternity before he saw Tom
and the captain separate. He was glad to notice that his chum once more
headed in the direction of the spot where they had been seated on a
bench back of the long row of frame buildings used for permanent hangars
at the Bar-le-Duc aviation field.
Yes, Tom had evidently been told something that pleased him very much.
His smile admitted the fact, and Jack knew by now just how to read the
face of his comrade so as to get a good idea of what was passing in his
mind.
"Looks like good news, Tom," he cried out, for motors were rattling and
throbbing, mechanicians and helpers, as well as pilots, calling to one
another, and all manner of sounds combining to make a great racket.
Tom shrugged his shoulders in a non-committal way, which might mean a
whole lot, and again might express a small fraction of disappointment.
"Yes, I've been given a job, if that's what you mean," he admitted, as
he dropped down once more on the bench alongside Jack, and threw one leg
over the other.
"More fighting to-morrow, possibly?" queried Jack, anxiously. But he
found his curiosity further whetted when Tom shook his head in the
negative.
"Not necessarily this time, it seems," he went on to say; "though of
course you never can tell what you'll strike when once you pass fifty
miles, more or less, behind the enemy front."
Jack pursed his lips up as if about to whistle, but he made no sound. It
was only a visible indication of surprise on his part--surprise, and an
eager desire to know just what his chum was so slow in telling him.
"Another bombing raid, then, is it?"
"Never a bomb going along this time," came the puzzling answer. "Nor is
there going to be a big bunch of planes starting out. I'm to be the only
pilot in the game this time, Jack."
"You're knocking me silly with that, Tom," protested the other young
aviator. "I can see the twinkle in your eyes, as if you were holding
something back, so as to tantalize me. Are you free to tell me what this
business of yours it is the captain has just handed over to you?"
"Oh, surely, Jack. He told me I could take _one_ fellow into my
confidence, and no more. So I mean to tell you all about it."
Tom turned and cast a careful look around. They were not very close to
any of the hangars, it happened; and none of the many helpers and
attendants could possibly overhear what was said, with all that clatter
constantly going on.
"I guess it's perfectly safe for me to talk here, Jack, and not give the
thing away. You know it does seem that the German spies are able to
penetrate nearly everywhere, and pick up all sorts of valuable
information, to send across the line in any one of a dozen different
ways."
"Yes. But go on, Tom."
"It seems there is need of some one to go to-night to a particular place
far back of the German lines--in fact, close to the fortified city of
Metz itself. In a certain place, inside a hollow post, will be found a
paper marked in cipher, and containing much valuable information which
has been collected by one of the ablest of the French spies. He is
really a native of Alsace-Lorraine, and well thought of by the Germans.
As it is utterly out of the question for him to report in person, he has
adopted this way of getting his news to General Petain. And as there is
a scarcity of pilots capable of doing this work our captain has selected
me to undertake it for the cause."
"But Tom, I should have thought he would have picked out some one more
familiar with the ground back there. How can you find your way to that
particular place, if you've never been there before?"
"I've been given directions that are bound to take me right," Tom
assured his worried chum. "There was a man they used for this purpose,
and several times he's brought back the papers; but on his last trip he
had the misfortune to run into a bunch of cruising Fokkers, and they
brought him down. He fell fortunately inside the French lines, so his
papers were saved; but Francois will never handle the controls of a
plane again. He was killed."
"Then there is danger in the game!"
"Certainly there is. But in these times who could dream of passing so
far back of the German front without expecting to be in constant peril?
The papers will be put in a little box previously prepared. Should
disaster overtake us, it will be flung overboard, and before it reaches
the ground everything will have been consumed by the fire that follows."
Jack's eyes began to glitter.
"Just so, Tom! But I notice that you used the plural pronoun when you
spoke. Then you do not go on this mission alone?"
"No, that's right. I have been given permission to pick out my one
companion, for there will be two of us aboard the plane to-night."
Jack tried to keep calm, but it was indeed difficult, and his voice
faltered more or less as he hurriedly went on to say:
"Have you already made your selection?"
"Yes," the other assured him in his tantalizing way. "I wanted to know
whether the captain approved of my choice; which I am glad to say turned
out to be the case."
Jack gulped something down, and then blurted out:
"Did you mention my name at all, Tom?"
"Yours was the only one I had in mind; and Jack, rest easy, you're going
along with me to-night to glimpse the lights of Metz!"