THE FLYING MAN
While yet the silent figure was some rods away Ruth Fielding realized
that it was no human being. It was not one of the men she had seen in
the garden of Nicko's cottage.
This creature came too swiftly up the path and skimmed the ground too
closely. A light-colored object--swift, silent and threatening of
aspect.
The girl shrank against the hedge, and the next instant--with a rush of
passage that stirred the air all about her--the Thing was gone! It was
again that strange and incomprehensible apparition of the werwolf!
If it was Bubu, the greyhound she had seen at the Chateau Marchand, he
was much lighter in color than when he appeared pacing beside his
mistress on the chateau lawns. The phantom had dashed past so rapidly
that, in the gathering dusk, Ruth could make out little of its real
appearance.
Headed toward the battle lines, it had disappeared within seconds. The
girl, her limbs still trembling, followed in haste to the highway.
Already the creature had been swallowed up in the shadows.
She went on toward the hospital gateway and had scarcely recovered her
self-control when she arrived there. Altogether, her evening's
experience had been most disconcerting.
The two men, dressed alike and apparently of the same height and
shambling manner, whom she had seen in Nicko's garden, worried her
quite as much--indeed, worried her even more than the sight of the
mysterious creature the peasants called the werwolf.
More than ever was she determined to take into her confidence somebody
who would be able to explain the mystery of it all. At least, he would
be able to judge if what made her so anxious was of moment.
And Tom Cameron's disappearance, too! Ruth's worry of mind regarding
her old friend propped her eyes open that night.
In the morning she went over the stock shelves again with the girl she
had trained, and finally announced to Mrs. Strang that she felt she
must return to Clair. After all, she had been assigned to the job
there and must not desert it.
An ambulance was going down to Clair with its burden of wounded men,
and Ruth was assigned to the seat beside the driver. He chanced to be
"Cub" Holdness, one of the ambulance drivers to whom Ruth had been
introduced by Charlie Bragg at Mother Gervaise's cottage the night of
her trip up to the field hospital.
Holdness was plainly delighted to have the girl with him for the drive
to Clair. He was a Philadelphia boy, and he confessed to having had no
chance to drive a girl--even in an ambulance--since coming over.
"I had one of those 'reckless roadsters' back home," he sighed. "Dad
said every time his telephone rang he expected it was me calling from
some outlying police station for him to come and bail me out for
overspeeding.
"And there was a bunch of girls I knew who were just crazy to have me
take 'em for a spin out around Fairmount Park and along the speedways.
Just think, Miss Fielding, of the difference between those times and
these," and he nodded solemnly.
"I should say there was a difference," laughed Ruth, trying to appear
in good spirits. "Don't you get dreadfully tired of all these awful
sights and sounds?"
"No. Excitement keeps us keyed up, I guess," he replied. "You know,
there is almost always something doing."
"I should say there was!"
She saw that while he talked he did not for a moment forget that he was
driving three sorely wounded men. He eased the ambulance over the
rough parts of the road and around the sharp turns with infinite skill.
It was actually wonderful how smoothly the ambulance ran.
Occasionally they were caught in a tight corner and the machine jounced
so that moans of agony were wrung from the lips of the wounded behind
them on the stretchers. This, however, occurred but seldom.
Once one of the men begged for water--water to drink and its coolness
on his head. They were passing a trickling stream that looked clear
and refreshing.
"Let me get out a moment and get him some," begged Ruth.
"Can't do it. Against orders. We're commanded not to taste water from
any stream, spring, or well in this sector--let alone give it to the
wounded. Nobody knows when the water is poisoned."
"But the Germans have been gone from this district so long now!" she
cried.
"They may have their spies here. In fact," grumbled Holdness, "we are
sure they do have friends in the sector."
"Oh!"
"You know that Devil Corner Charlie Bragg drove you past the other
night? The shells have torn that all to pieces. We have to go fully
two miles around by another road to get to Clair. We don't pass Mother
Gervaise's place any more."
Ruth looked at him sadly but questioningly.
"Do you believe that story they tell about one of our young officers
having gone over to the enemy?" she asked.
Holdness flushed vividly. "I didn't know him. I've got no opinion on
the matter, Miss Fielding," he said. "But somebody has mapped out the
whole sector for the Huns--and it has cost lives, and ammunition. You
can't blame folks for being suspicious."
The answer quenched her conversation. Ruth scarcely spoke again during
the remainder of the journey.
They welcomed her in most friendly fashion at the Clair Hospital. But
the first thing she did after depositing her bag in her cell was to go
to the telegraph office and put before the military censor the
following message addressed to the prefect of police at Lyse,
"Will you please communicate with M. Lafrane. I have something of
importance to tell him."
She signed her name and occupation in full to this, and was finally
assured that it would be sent. M. Lafrane was of the secret police,
and Ruth Fielding had been in communication with him on a previous
occasion.
Several days passed with no reply from her communication to the police.
Nor did any news reach her from the field hospital where she had been
engaged, nor from her friends at the front. Indeed, those working near
the battle lines really know less of what is being done in this war
than civilians in America, for instance.
Almost every night the guns thundered, and it was reported that the
Americans were making sorties into the German lines and bearing back
both prisoners and plunder. But just what was being accomplished Ruth
Fielding had no means of knowing.
Not having seen or heard from Henriette Dupay since her return, early
in the following week Ruth started out to walk briskly to the Dupay
farm one afternoon.
Of late the aeroplanes had become very numerous over this sector. They
were, for the most part, American machines. But this afternoon she
chanced to see one of the French Nieuports at close quarters.
These are the scouting, or battle planes, and carry but two men and a
machine gun. She heard the motor some moments before seeing the
aeroplane rise over the tree tops. She knew it must have leaped from a
large field on this side of the Dupay farm and not far below the
gateway of the Chateau Marchand.
Ruth stopped to gaze upward at the soaring airplane. Her figure stood
out plainly in the country road and the two men aboard the Nieuport
must have immediately spied her.
The machine dipped and scaled downward until she could have thrown a
stone upward and hit it. One of the men--masked and helmeted as the
flying men always are--leaned from his seat, and she saw him looking
down upon her through the tangle of stay-wires.
Then he dropped a small white object that fell like a plummet at her
feet!
"What in the world can that be?" murmured the girl to herself.
For a breath she was frightened. Although the aeroplane carried the
French insignia it might be an enemy machine. She, too, was obsessed
with the fear of spies!
But the object that fell was not an explosive bomb. It was a weighted
ball of oiled silk. As the machine soared again and rapidly rose to
the upper air levels, the girl picked up the strange object and burst
it open.
The lead pellets that weighted the globe were scattered on the ground.
Within there was nothing else but a strip of heavy document paper. On
this was traced in a handwriting she knew well, this unsigned message:
"Don't believe everything you hear."
It was Tom Cameron's handwriting--and Ruth knew that the message was
meant for her eye and her eye only!