Aces Up Part 19

"Huh! A lot of good it would do. Honest, Lieutenant, that fellow talks less to us than a cigar store Indian talks to the customers--and that's less than nothin'. He thinks we're worms!"

McGee was about to offer his sympathies when another crew, under Sergeant Williams, came rolling the Camel out to the line. McGee began checking it over with the same minute care which had doubtless gone a long way toward making him an ace. He left inspection to no man. His air mechanic, knowing this, was equally careful in his work. This diminutive lieutenant was as mild as an April morning so long as all was well, but when something went wrong he could say more than a six foot Major-General.

"All set, Sergeant?" McGee asked, finishing his inspection.

"All set, sir. I just put a new valve in that wind driven gas pump. The guy that invented that trick should have been tapped for the simples.

Why don't you hang this thing on a church steeple, Lieutenant, and get one of those Spads?"

"Well, I rather dislike entering a church from the steeple, and I'm sort of partial to this old crate. She's tricky on the ground, but I'm used to her ways and she's a Lulu upstairs."

He swung into the c.o.c.kpit and the Sergeant stood at the prop.

"Switch off?"

"Switch off!"

The sergeant pulled over the propeller two times.

"Contact, sir."

"Contact."

The motor caught, and after it had idled a few minutes McGee began revving it up.

Just then he noticed Siddons come from around the corner of the hangar, carrying what appeared to be a canvas covered pillow. Seeing McGee's plane on the line he stopped in surprise, then proceeded to his plane, where he fitted the pillow into the seat, patting it in place as a woman pats a divan pillow. Then he came across to the side of McGee's plane.

"Did you get orders, too?" he shouted.

McGee cut the gun. "No," he answered truthfully. Satisfied that this would not end the questioning, he added, "The Ack Emma has made some repairs. I'm going to give her a test."

"Oh, I see. Thought maybe I was going to have the pleasure of your company--and your help. Nice morning for my little jaunt, isn't it?"

"Bully!" McGee looked at him closely to discover any hint of fear. It simply wasn't there, and Red was forced to the mental admission that he had never seen such a cool, confident manner displayed by any pilot going over for the first time. "Good luck!" he called, and again began revving his motor.

Siddons turned back to his own plane, and with the most casual inspection, and with no comment to the mechanic, crawled into his cushion padded seat.

McGee, satisfied with the sound of his own motor, nodded to the wing boys to remove the chocks, and taxied to a quick take-off. At two or three hundred feet he turned, came back across the 'drome and headed in the general direction of Paris, climbing steadily and maintaining the direction until to the watching ground crew he became lost to view.

Then McGee swung north and began working back eastward. He pa.s.sed to the west of La Ferte, and having gained an alt.i.tude of fifteen thousand feet, headed directly for the front, intending to cross the line to the north of Belleau and proceed toward Fere-en-Tardenois. Then, if fortune favored him, he could decide upon a deeper thrust into enemy territory.

The cloud strata was exceptionally deep and yet ragged enough to provide frequent glimpses at the world below. The one great danger lay in the fact that he might any minute come unexpectedly upon a German pursuit group. It was probable, however, that on such a morning they would be operating at a lesser alt.i.tude.

The trenches, as he crossed the line, were only faintly discernible, the detail obscured by the blue ground haze so common to the eyes of the pilot operating at high alt.i.tudes. But the strip of barren land on each side of the trenches gave visible evidence of the grimness of the struggle far below, and here and there along the line, miniature geysers spouted fan-shaped eruptions of earth with a grotesque, unexpected suddenness. Then a second later a new pock-mark on the face of an already over-tortured earth showed where the sh.e.l.l had exploded.

It was fascinating to watch. Nerve-racking and ear-splitting as it must be to the mud-splashed creatures in the trenches below, from on high the land within the neighborhood of the zig-zag trenches took on the appearance of a pot of boiling mush--here a crater, there a crater, springing into being with an amazing suddenness that lured the observer into the game of guessing when the next crater would appear.

McGee was engaged in exactly such mental speculation when he was brought to the realization of his own nearness to war by the plane-rocking explosion of a well-placed Archie. Then two other giant black roses bloomed directly in his path. Now he was presented with his own guessing game. Where would the next one be?

He swerved sharply left and dived toward a neighboring cloud. A cloud, while seeming from below to have both form and substance, is in reality but little different from a dense ground fog. It is enveloping, misty, eerie, and cuts off all visible contact with the world. If it covers a large air area, then the pilot may face some nice problems in correct and stable navigation, but if it is only a patch, he drives straight along his course, knowing that he will plunge out into the sunlight with the same suddenness with which he left it. Clouds are particularly welcome when Archie gunners begin to plaster the air with high explosive sh.e.l.ls.

As McGee came out of this cloud, his attention was drawn to a number of black bursts some three thousand feet below, but which cl.u.s.tered around a lone Nieuport flying at a forty-five degree angle to the line of flight which McGee was pursuing. That Archie crew knew their business, and McGee thought they appeared uncomfortably near the Nieuport. Then, as he watched, the Nieuport did a strange thing. Instead of making a sudden change in direction or a quick dive, either of which would compel the gunner to make another quick calculation in his range, it merely rolled once, then dipped twice, and proceeded on its way. The Archie fire ceased as suddenly as it had commenced.

McGee streaked across another open patch of sky and entered another cloud. Coming out of this one he again spotted the lone Nieuport and corrected his own line to correspond with that of the lone flyer below.

Now, studying it more closely, and with more time, he felt sure that it was Siddons' plane. One thing certain, the red, white and blue c.o.c.kades established it as an American manned plane, and who, save a novice, McGee reasoned, would roll and make a slight dip to escape Archie fire.

That particular battery must have been too convulsed by laughter to continue their fire. Had that stupid pilot, whoever he was, forgotten what he had been told concerning Archie fire?

With the same surprising suddenness with which Archies always proclaim their presence, three more black puff b.a.l.l.s inked the air directly ahead of the Nieuport. They were off the mark, but they furnished data for other guns which began filling the air. Evidently the gunners had not yet seen McGee, who was much higher and considerably behind the Nieuport, for they were concentrating on that plane.

To McGee's surprise the Nieuport again rolled, then dipped twice, and the guns below immediately ceased firing. McGee decided it was time to seek the seclusion of a nearby cloud and while driving through it, do a little thinking.

What he had just witnessed was enough to make any experienced pilot think. Someone, flying a Nieuport, had a most novel way of treating with anti-aircraft gunners. He merely rolled over, straightened out, dipped twice, and the guns promptly left off their quarreling. No one could be stupid enough to reason that such manoeuver would discomfit the gunners, and yet in this case the effect was more efficacious than any manoeuver yet invented.

McGee smiled at the stupidity of the thought. It was effective only because it was a signal, prearranged and understood by the anti-aircraft gunners. The pilot of that Nieuport was in communication with the enemy, and McGee believed that man to be Siddons!

It all came to him in a flash. Who, better than Siddons, could have supplied the enemy with the information that brought them over to bomb the green squadron when they were stationed near Is-Sur-Tille? Someone supplied it, for Cowan had found in the pocket of the German flyer whom he, McGee, had brought down, an order disclosing the very fact that the raid had been planned on Intelligence reports. And where had Siddons gone that day after landing at Vitry on the slenderest excuse? The French Major said he had taken off within an hour. And the very next morning the squadron stumbled into a net spread by von Herzmann, and but for the timely and unexpected arrival of a large group of French Spads the harvest would have been great indeed. Could it be that Siddons had crossed the lines the previous afternoon, escaping Archie fire by a simple code of air signals, and disclosed the entire plan to the enemy?

McGee felt a hot wave of ungovernable anger sweep over him. He no longer had any doubts whatsoever. Two and two make four. Siddons was a traitor to his country. To his country? No, doubtless he was one of the many who had been trained for years against this very hour of need. On false records he had gained admission to the American Air Force, and now--

McGee came out of the cloud into the clear sunlight, and began searching the sky for the Nieuport. It was not to be seen. He flew on, encountered other clouds, came out again, but the Nieuport had miraculously disappeared.

McGee flew steadily northeast until he spotted an exceptionally large group of enemy planes, working up from the direction in which he was headed.

It was time to turn around. He was quite too far into enemy territory to feel comfortable, and that swarm of planes made him unusually homesick, even though they were far below him.

But just as he banked into a left turn he noticed that they were nosing down, sharply. He flew along the misty edge of a cloud, watching closely. Down, down, they went, becoming mere specks against the blue-grey ground haze.

They were about to make a landing! There could be no doubt of it, though at this distance and alt.i.tude he could not make out their hangars. On down they dropped, until at last they seemed to be engulfed by a greyish sea that shut out all definite form.

McGee had come for information, and here it was within his grasp if he were only willing to take a chance.

The strata of clouds against which he was flying stretched in the general direction of the place where he had lost sight of the large flight of planes.

He ducked into the clouds and drove along until he estimated that he was somewhere in the right neighborhood.

Coming out into an open sky he located a considerable forest far to his right and another one several kilometers directly ahead. Directly between these a ribbon of white marked its twisting course. That would be the Ourcq, and the forest beyond would be the Forest de Nesles.

And--yes, there just beyond the river was a town--which McGee concluded must be Fere-en-Tardenois--and a little way from its outskirts a group of drab square blocks that caught and held his eyes.

Too much ground haze to make them out. Well, a chance is a chance, he reasoned, as over went the Camel's nose in a long dive.

Twice he checked the dive, only to dive again. He hated to give up alt.i.tude, but he was determined to get a look.

After the third dive, and the loss of several thousand feet, he made out the drab-colored canvas hangars of a German 'drome, and poised on the open field was a veritable swarm of little moths appearing to be drying their wings in the sun. Three of them began racing along the ground and bounded into the air. At the same minute an Archie battery opened from the town. The burst was wide of McGee's plane, but there was no mistaking their sincerity nor the fact that those three harmless appearing moths below were climbing to the attack.

Red gave his Camel all he thought it could stand as he climbed for the protecting clouds. Information was of no value if sealed by a dead man's lips. He had learned far too much this morning to chance any fight with anyone that could possibly be avoided.

The Archie fire continued until he had regained the clouds, and even then two or three more sh.e.l.ls burst harmlessly somewhere ahead in the grey mist wall. He changed his direction sharply and roared along on a full throttle.

His heart was racing with his motor. He felt convinced that the 'drome he had located was a new base for the squadron he had just seen, for were they not coming up from the interior? Doubtless he had stumbled on to a movement of some importance. Just how important he could not know, but G 2 would be delighted with such information. Could that squadron, he wondered, by rare good fortune be the Circus of the famed von Herzmann?