They nodded in silence to the new arrival, and he joined them.
Daylight faded in the room; the drum in the Sainte Lesse belfry, set to play before the hour sounded, began to turn aloft; the silvery notes of the carillon seemed to shower down from the sky, filling the twilight world with angelic melody. Then, in resonant beauty, the great bell, Bayard, measured the hour.
The airman who had just arrived went to a sink, washed the caked blood from his face and tied it up with a first-aid bandage. Then he began to pace the cafe, his head bent in thought, his nervous hands clasped behind him.
The room was dusky when he came back to the table where his three comrades still sat consulting in whispers. The old innkeeper had fallen asleep on his chair by the window. There was no light in the room except what came from stars.
"Well," said one of the airmen in a carefully modulated voice, "what are you going to do, Jim?"
"Stay."
"What"s the idea?"
The bandaged airman rested both hands on the stained table-top:
"We quit Nivelle tonight, but our reserves are already coming up and we are to retake Nivelle tomorrow. You flew over the town this morning, didn"t you?"
All three said yes.
"You took photographs?"
"Certainly."
"Then you know that our trenches pa.s.s under the bell-tower?"
"Yes."
"Very well. The wind is north. When the Boches enter our trenches they"ll try to gas our salient while the wind holds. But west winds are predicted after sunrise tomorrow. I"m going to get into the Nivelle belfry tonight with a sack of bombs. I"m going to try to explode their gas cylinders if I can. The tocsin is the signal for our people in the salient."
"You"re crazy!" remarked one of the airmen.
"No; I"ll bluff it out. I"m to have a Boche uniform in a few moments."
"You _are_ crazy! You know what they"ll do to you, don"t you, Jim?"
The bandaged airman laughed, but in his eyes there was an odd flicker like a tiny flame. He whistled "La Brabanconne" and glanced coolly about the room.
One of the airmen said to another in a whisper:
"There you are. Ever since they got his brother he"s been figuring on landing a whole bunch of Huns at one clip. This is going to finish him, this business."
Another said:
"Don"t try anything like that, Jim----"
"Sure, I"ll try it," interrupted the bandaged airman pleasantly. "When are you fellows going?"
"Now."
"All right. Take my report. Wait a moment----"
"For G.o.d"s sake, Jim, act sensibly!"
The bandaged airman laughed, fished out from his clothing somewhere a note book and pencil. One of the others turned an electric torch on the table; the bandaged man made a little sketch, wrote a few lines which the others studied.
"You can get that note to headquarters in half an hour, can"t you, Ed?"
"Yes."
"All right. I"ll wait here for my answer."
"You know what risk you run, Jim?" pleaded the youngest of the airmen.
"Oh, certainly. All right, then. You"d better be on your way."
After they had left the room, the bandaged airman sat beside the table, thinking hard in the darkness.
Presently from somewhere across the dusky river meadow the sudden roar of an airplane engine shattered the silence; then another whirring racket broke out; then another.
He heard presently the loud rattle of his comrades" machines from high above him in the star-set sky; he heard the stertorous breathing of the old innkeeper; he heard again the crystalline bell-notes break out aloft, linger in linked harmonies, die away; he heard Bayard"s mellow thunder proclaim the hour once more.
There was a watch on his wrist, but it had been put out of business when his machine fell in Nivelle woods. Glancing at it mechanically he saw the phosph.o.r.escent dial glimmer faintly under shattered hands that remained fixed.
An hour later Bayard shook the starlit silence ten times.
As the last stroke boomed majestically through the darkness an automobile came racing into the long, unlighted street of Sainte Lesse and halted, panting, at the door of the White Doe Inn.
The airman went out to the doorstep, saluted the staff captain who leaned forward from the tonneau and turned a flash on him. Then, satisfied, the officer lifted a bundle from the tonneau and handed it to the airman. A letter was pinned to the bundle.
After the airman had read the letter twice, the staff captain leaned a trifle nearer.
"Do you think it can be done?" he demanded bluntly.
"Yes, sir."
"Very well. Here are your munitions, too."
He lifted from the tonneau a bomb-thrower"s sack, heavy and full. The airman took it and saluted.
"It means the cross," said the staff captain dryly. And to the engineer chauffeur: "Let loose!"
CHAPTER XIX
HONOUR