CHAPTER III
PICKED FOR SERVICE
The coming of the police cleared the little crowd of would-be rioters away in no time. There were only three or four of the Bobbies, but they were plenty. A smiling sergeant came up to Franklin.
"More of your Boy Scout work, sir?" he said, pleasantly. "I heard you standing them off! That was very well done. If we can depend on you to help us all over London, we"ll have an easier job than we looked for."
"We saw a whole lot of those fellows piling up against the shop here," said Franklin. "So of course we pitched in. We couldn"t let anything like that happen."
"There"ll be a lot of it at first, I"m afraid, sir," said the sergeant.
"Still, it won"t last. If all we hear is true, they"ll be taking a lot of those young fellows away and giving them some real fighting to do to keep them quiet."
"Well, we"ll help whenever we can, sergeant," said Franklin. "If the inspector thinks it would be a good thing to have the shops that are kept by Germans watched, I"m quite sure it can be arranged. If there"s war I suppose a lot of you policemen will go?"
"We"ll supply our share, sir," said the sergeant. "I"m expecting orders any minute--I"m a reservist myself. Coldstream Guards, sir."
"Congratulations!" said Franklin. He spoke a little wistfully. "I wonder if they"ll let me go? I think I"m old enough! Well, can we help any more here to-night?"
"No, thank you, sir. You"ve done very well as it is. Pity all the lads don"t belong to the Boy Scouts. We"d have less trouble, I"ll warrant. I"ll just leave a man here to watch the place. But they won"t be back. They don"t mean any real harm, as it is. It"s just their spirits--and their being a bit thoughtless, you know."
"All right," said Franklin. "Glad we came along. Good-night, sergeant. Fall in! March!"
There was a cheer from the crowd that had gathered to watch the disturbance as the scouts moved away. A hundred yards from the scene of what might have been a tragedy, except for their prompt action, the Scouts dispersed. d.i.c.k Mercer and Harry Fleming naturally enough, since they lived so close to one another, went home together.
"That was quick work," said Harry.
"Yes. I"m glad we got there," said d.i.c.k. "Old Dutchy"s all right--he doesn"t seem like a German. But I think it would be a good thing if they did catch a few of the others and scrag them!"
"No, it wouldn"t," said Harry soberly. "Don"t get to feeling that way, d.i.c.k. Suppose you were living in Berlin. You wouldn"t want a lot of German roughs to come and destroy your house or your shop and handle you that way, would you?"
"It"s not the same thing," said d.i.c.k, stubbornly. "They"re foreigners."
"But you"d be a foreigner if you were over there!" said Harry, with a laugh.
"I suppose I would," said d.i.c.k. "I never thought of that! Just the same, I bet Mr. Grenfel was right. London"s full of spies. Isn"t that an awful idea, Harry? You can"t tell who"s a spy and who isn"t!"
"No, but you can be pretty sure that the man you suspect isn"t," suggested Harry, sagely. "A real spy wouldn"t let you find it out very easily. I can see one thing and that is a whole lot of perfectly harmless people are going to be arrested as spies before this war is very old, if it does come!
We don"t want to be mixed up in that, d.i.c.k--we scouts. If we think a man"s doing anything suspicious, we"ll have to be very sure before we denounce him, or else we won"t be any use."
"It"s better for a few people to be arrested by mistake than to let a spy keep on spying, isn"t it?"
"I suppose so, but we don"t want to be like the shepherd"s boy who used to try to frighten people by calling "Wolf! Wolf!" when there wasn"t any wolf.
You know what happened to him. When a wolf really did come no one believed him. We want to look before we leap."
"I suppose you"re right, Harry. Oh, I do hope we can really be of some use!
If I can"t go to the war, I"d like to think I"d had something to do--that I"d helped when my country needed me!"
"If you feel like that you"ll be able to help, all right," said Harry. "I feel that way, too--not that I want to fight. I wouldn"t want to do that for any country but my own. But I would like to be able to know that I"d had something to do with all that"s going to be done."
"I think it"s fine for you to be like that," said d.i.c.k. "I think there isn"t so much difference between us, after all, even if you are American and I"m English. Well, here we are again! I"ll see you in the morning, I suppose?"
"Right oh! I"ll come around for you early. Good-night!"
"Good-night!"
Neither of them really doubted for a moment that war was coming. It was in the air. The attack on the little shop that they had helped to avert was only one of many, although there was no real rioting in London. Such scenes were simply the result of excitement, and no great harm was done anywhere. But the tension of which such attacks were the result was everywhere. For the next three days there was very little for anyone to do.
Everyone was waiting. France and Germany were at war; the news came that the Germans had invaded Luxembourg, and were crossing the Belgian border.
And then, on Tuesday night, came the final news. England had declared war.
For the moment the news seemed to stun everyone. It had been expected, and still it came as a surprise. But then London rose to the occasion. There was no hysterical cheering and shouting; everything was quiet. Harry Fleming saw a wonderful sight--a whole people aroused and determined. There was no foolish boasting; no one talked of a British general eating his Christmas dinner in Berlin. But even d.i.c.k Mercer, excitable and erratic as he had always been, seemed to have undergone a great change.
"My father"s going to the war," he told Harry on Wednesday morning. He spoke very seriously. "He was a captain in the Boer War, you know, so he knows something about soldiering. He thinks he"ll be taken, though he"s a little older than most of the men who"ll go. He"ll be an officer, of course. And he says I"ve got to look after the mater when he"s gone."
"You can do it, too," said Harry, surprised, despite himself, by the change in his chum"s manner. "You seem older than I now, d.i.c.k, and I"ve always thought you were a kid!"
"The pater says we"ve all got to be men, now," said d.i.c.k, steadily. "The mater cried a bit when he said he was going--but I think she must have known all the time he was going. Because when he told us--we were at the breakfast table--she sort of cried a little, and then she stopped.
""I"ve got everything ready for you," she said.
"And he looked at her, and smiled. "So you knew I was going?" he asked her.
And she nodded her head, and he got up and kissed her. I never saw him do that before--he never did that before, when I was looking on," d.i.c.k concluded seriously.
"I hope he"ll come back all right, d.i.c.k," said Harry. "It"s hard, old chap!"
"I wouldn"t have him stay home for anything!" said d.i.c.k, fiercely. "And I will do my share! You see if I don"t! I don"t care what they want me to do!
I"ll run errands--I"ll sweep out the floors in the War Office, so that some man can go to war! I"ll do _any_thing!"
Somehow Harry realized in that moment how hard it was going to be to beat a country where even the boys felt like that! The change in the usually thoughtless, light-hearted d.i.c.k impressed him more than anything else had been able to do with the real meaning of what had come about so suddenly.
And he was thankful, too, all at once, that in America the fear and peril of war were so remote. It was glorious, it was thrilling, but it was terrible, too. He wondered how many of the scouts he knew, and how many of those in school would lose their fathers or their brothers in this war that was beginning. Truly, there is no argument for peace that can compare with war itself! Yet how slowly we learn!
Grenfel had gone, and the troop was now in charge of a new scoutmaster, Francis Wharton. Mr. Wharton was a somewhat older man. At first sight he didn"t look at all like the man to lead a group of scouts, but that, as it turned out, was due to physical infirmities. One foot had been amputated at the time of the Boer War, in which he had served with Grenfel. As a result he was incapacitated from active service, although, as the scouts soon learned, he had begged to be allowed to go in spite of it. He appeared at the scout headquarters, the pavilion of a small local cricket club, on Wednesday morning.
"I don"t know much about this--more shame to me," he said, cheerfully, standing up to address the boys. "But I think we can make a go of it--I think we"ll be able to do something for the Empire, boys. My old friend John Grenfel told me a little; he said you"d pull me through. These are war times and you"ll have to do for me what many a company in the army does for a young officer."
They gave him a hearty cheer that was a promise in itself.
"I can tell you I felt pretty bad when I found they wouldn"t let me go to the front," he went on. "It seemed hard to have to sit back and read the newspapers when I knew I ought to be doing some of the work. But then Grenfel told me about you boys, and what you meant to do, and I felt better. I saw that there was a chance for me to help, after all. So here I am. These are times when ordinary routine doesn"t matter so much--you can understand that. Grenfel put the troop at the disposal of the commander at Ealing. And his first request was that I should send two scouts to him at once. Franklin, I believe you are the senior patrol leader? Yes? Then I shall appoint you a.s.sistant scoutmaster, as Mr. Greene has not returned from his holiday in France. Will you suggest the names of two scouts for this service?"
Franklin immediately went up to the new scoutmaster, and they spoke together quietly, while a buzz of excited talk rose among the scouts. Who would be honored by the first chance? Every scout there wanted to hear his name called.
"I think they"ll take me, for one," said Ernest Graves. He was one of the patrol to which both Harry Fleming and d.i.c.k Mercer belonged, and the biggest and oldest scout of the troop, except for Leslie Franklin. He had felt for some time that he should be a patrol leader. Although he excelled in games, and was unquestionably a splendid scout, Graves was not popular, for some reason, among his fellows. He was not exactly unpopular, either; but there was a little resentment at his habit of pushing himself forward.
"I don"t see why you should go more than anyone else, Graves," said young Mercer. "I think they"ll take the ones who are quickest. We"re probably wanted for messenger work."
"Well, I"m the oldest. I ought to have first chance," said Graves.
But the discussion was ended abruptly.