"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 sc.r.a.p of paper with its mysterious lines of warning, for the time being Bessie and all her troubles pa.s.sing 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 a.s.sist.
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 a.s.sured 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 antic.i.p.ated. 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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.s 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 a.s.sured 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 pa.s.sing 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 p.r.o.noun 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 a.s.sured 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!"
CHAPTER XIV
OFF ON A DARING MISSION
The two air service boys fell to talking earnestly concerning what they should take with them, and how to study a map which their captain had promised to put in Tom"s hands immediately.
This was not of the ordinary kind, but so definitely marked for just such an emergency that even a novice could probably find his way to Metz, granting that he possessed the necessary qualifications of an air pilot.
Presently a messenger came with a package for Tom. This proved to be the chart from the commander of the air squadron. Tom was to make as good a copy as was in his power, for the original was too valuable to risk losing.