Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines Part 18

Tom, being mystified by such words, he naturally sought further information.

"What would she do?" he demanded.

"Send me that mysterious message by the little hot-air balloon," Jack announced with a vein of pride in his voice, feeling delighted over having solved the puzzle that had baffled him for so long.

"It hardly seems probable," Tom answered softly. "At the same time it isn't altogether impossible."

"How far are we from the French front, do you think, Tom?" pursued his comrade, determined to sift the whole thing out.

"Twenty miles or so, I should imagine."

"That isn't very far. Once I caught just such a little balloon in a tree in our yard that had a tag on it, telling that it had been set free in a village that lay _seventy_ miles off. The wind had carried it along furiously, so that it covered all that distance before losing buoyancy, and coming down in the heavy night air."

"Yes, I know of other circ.u.mstances where such balloons have traveled long distances before falling. Then again, Jack, this valley extends pretty much all the way to the Verdun front, and the current of air would carry a balloon along directly toward our home patch."

"Oh, Bessie sent it, believe me!" a.s.serted Jack again, more confidently than ever. "And she'll tell us so too, when she gets the chance."

Thus whispering the air service boys arrived at that side of the house where the lighted window on the second floor seemed to indicate that the object of their present concern could be found.

Tom examined the building as well as the limited amount of light allowed. He could easily see that any agile young fellow, himself or Jack for instance, might scale the wall, making use of some projections, and a cement flower trellis as well, in carrying out the project.

"We might throw pebbles up, and bring her to the window," he suggested, though pretty confident at the time Jack would find fault with such an arrangement.

"That wouldn't help her get down here to us, Tom," protested the other.

"And that's what we're planning, you remember; for you said she could accompany us if she felt equal to it. I must go up myself and help Bessie get down. There's nothing else to do, Tom."

It looked very much as though Jack was right. Tom admitted this to himself; at the same time he wished there were some other way by means of which the same end could be gained, or that he could undertake the thing, instead of his comrade.

But to this Jack would never agree. Bessie was his own particular friend; and they had been most "chummy" while aboard the Atlantic liner crossing the submarine infested ocean. Then again that warning had been addressed to him, and not to both, showing that the writer had only been concerned about the danger he, Jack, was running, should his plane be tampered with by some emissary of Carl Potzfeldt.

"All right then; you go, Jack! But be careful about your footing. If you fell it'd be a bad thing in many ways, for even if you escaped a broken neck or a fractured leg you'd arouse the house, and all sorts of trouble would drop down on us in a hurry."

"Don't worry about me, Tom. I'll show you I'm as nimble as any monkey.

Besides, that isn't much of a climb. Why, I could nearly do it with one arm tied fast."

"Go to it!" Tom told him, settling back to watch the performance and give whispered advice if it seemed necessary.

Jack waited no longer. He was wild to find himself once more face to face with the pretty young girl in whom he had taken such an interest.

Her recent sobs and cries still haunted his heart, and he felt certain she must be in great sorrow over something.

He commenced climbing. While his boast about being equal to any monkey that ever lived among the treetops may have been a bit of an exaggeration, all the same Jack was a very good athlete, and especially with regard to feats on the parallel bars or the ladders in a gymnasium.

He made his way nimbly upward, with Tom's eyes following every movement.

It seemed an easy task for the climber. Just what he would discover when he had gained the open window was another question.

The light still remained, for which both boys felt glad. It afforded Jack a goal which he was striving to gain; and it told Tom further down that the inmate of the upper room was awake and still moving about, though her sobs had ceased.

Once Tom fancied he heard something stirring back of the house. He hoped it might not prove to be a servant attached to the Potzfeldt place or an attendant who had charge of the pigeon loft.

Jack was almost up now. He had only to cover another yard of s.p.a.ce when he could look into the room of the lighted window. That was where fresh peril must lie, because his figure would be outlined in silhouette, and any one moving about the grounds might discover that uninvited guests had arrived.

Tom wished he had told his chum to insist that the light be immediately extinguished, if, as they believed, it proved to be Bessie who occupied that room. He hoped his chum would think of it without being told.

There! At last Jack had arrived, and without accident! Now he was cautiously thrusting his head up a little, to peer within.

Tom held his breath. So much depended on what would follow Jack's betrayal of his presence.

"Tell her to put out the light, first of all, Jack!" Tom gently called out, using both hands as a megaphone to carry the sounds.

It seemed that he must have been heard, and his directions understood, for immediately there was another movement above, after which the illumination ceased, as though Bessie had blown out the lamp.

Tom breathed easier, though he still continued to look, and wonder how his chum was going to get the girl safely down from her elevated apartment. Jack was not so fertile in expedients as his chum, and many times depended on Tom to suggest ways and means.

While Tom was still waiting, and hoping for the best, he heard his comrade whisper down to him as he hung suspended, clutching the sill of the open window.

"After all, you'll have to come up too, Tom," he was saying feverishly.

"There are complications that'll need your judgment, knots to untangle that are beyond me."

CHAPTER XXI

IN THE OLD LORRAINE CHaTEAU

What Jack said in his cautious fashion puzzled Tom. For the life of him he could not understand what had arisen, calling for any unusual display of generalship. Surely Jack should have been equal to the task of getting Bessie down from the window, even if he had to make use of knotted bed-clothes in lieu of a rope.

Still he had asked Tom to come up, and there was nothing to do but grant his request. "Complications," Jack said, had arisen. That was a suggestive word, and to Tom's mind seemed to hint at further mystery.

Accordingly he proceeded to imitate the example of his comrade. Jack had shown the way, and all his chum had to do was to follow. As Tom was also an all-around athlete, accustomed to much climbing from small boyhood, after nuts and birds' nests and all such things as take lads into tall trees, he found but little trouble in making the ascent.

When he drew himself alongside Jack, the other gave a sigh of relief.

"Whee! I'm glad you've come, I tell you, Tom," he said. "It was getting too big a job for me to tackle."

"What's happened, Jack?" asked the late arrival on the stone ledge under the window of the upper room.

"First, here's Bessie, Tom," Jack went on. "She wants to shake hands with you. Since we parted, when the steamer was docked, the poor girl has been having all sorts of trouble; and she's glad as can be to see us both again; aren't you, Bessie?"

Tom, feeling a small, trembling hand groping for his, immediately grasped it, and gave a squeeze that must have carried conviction to the heart of the girl.

"Oh, I'm shivering like everything!" she murmured, adding quickly: "But not with fear. It's because my prayers have been answered, and help has come at last, when everything looked so awfully dark--and I'm so very, very hungry."

"Hungry!" repeated Tom, starting, it seemed such a very strange word for the girl to use, even though they were in Germany, where all food he knew must be getting exceedingly scarce.

"Yes, what do you think, that rotten bounder of a spy is half starving the poor girl! He ought to be tarred and feathered, that's what!"

growled the indignant Jack.