CHAPTER III—THE MISSING MAN
The smoking ruins of the schoolhouse and its outbuildings were now visible. The five boys came to the edge of the crater which marked the effect of the explosion of the bomb from the Zeppelin.
From somewhere appeared an old man in a smock, and his hard, weather-beaten face writhed with an emotion unspeakable. His outstretched shaking hand pointed to the spot where the schoolhouse had stood.
“I saw her face at the pane but the moment before. She waved her hand to me,” he said.
His awestricken tone made the American lads tremble. A younger man with his face bloody from a wound above the temple appeared beside the boys with the same startling suddenness.
“’Twas his gran’darter. She teached here,” whispered the wounded man. He laid hold upon the old man. “Come away, Daddie,” he said. “Come away wi’ me now.”
A woman screamed up the road just as Phil Morgan spied a motor ambulance with a huge red cross on it, mounting from the port. Rescue parties were afoot already. There really was nothing the American lads could do at the wrecked schoolhouse. The shrill cry of the woman above them caused all five to turn to look.
“’Tis down! ’Tis down!”
The Americans were just in season to see the Zeppelin crumble like a huge concertina and dive toward the earth. Fire broke out amidships.
The landing of the Hun airship took place far up on the open hill, in a pasture above the road. The boys could see the gigantic British seaman toiling toward the Zeppelin. He was the nearest person to the burning airship as it came down, although there were other men running over the downs toward the spot.
“Cracky!” exclaimed Al Torrance to Belding, “your big chum is going to fight them single handed!”
“Come on, fellows!” Whistler cried, starting away. “We can do no good here. But those Germans must not escape!”
“No chance!” exclaimed Ikey. “They won’t even try. If the English hung every member of the Zep crews they caught the Kaiser would soon have hard work finding men to man the bomb-droppers.”
“Right you are,” Frenchy agreed. “The baby-killers!”
He was still sobbing. Right then and there the Navy Boys would have been glad to take vengeance on the crew of the Zeppelin. The first man was descending out of the burning machine. The Americans saw the huge British sailor spring upon him.
“There was no kamerad stuff,” Torry observed. The two locked and went to the ground, disappearing in a wallow.
At this sight the boys uttered a cheer and leaped the hedge beside the road. They tore up the hill as fast as they could run. A shot sounded, and the spurt of flame and smoke marked the appearance of a farmer with a shotgun. He, however, was firing at the balloon of the Zeppelin, not at her crew.
From the machine a second figure dropped to the ground, and just as the farmer fired his second barrel. This second member of the crew darted away from the burning wreck and disappeared into the furze that covered the summit of the hill.
“That Heinie’s running away, Whistler!” cried Al, but kept on himself with the younger boys toward the airship.
Belding looked at Whistler. “Shall we let him beat it?” the former asked the Seacove boy.
“Not on your life!” Whistler cried. “Come on! If we’re not a match for one Heinie—we two—then——”
They turned directly up the hill, and in two minutes were over the ridge. Instead of the smooth pasture land they had just crossed this side of the hill was of barren soil and covered with boulders. To follow a trail here was scarcely possible, but the two American boys soon found traces of the Hun, where he had broken through the bushes on the summit.
“We don’t know this country,” Whistler said cautiously. “There may be lots of hide-outs around here.”
“He doesn’t know it, either,” Belding declared.
“We don’t know that,” the other boy said sharply. “They say every square foot of England was mapped by German spies before the war. Somehow, that Heinie slipping away the way he did, looks fishy.”
“How so?”
“They always give up—these Zep crews. They know the worst will happen to them is internment. Running away like this will put him in dead wrong, if he’s caught,” added Whistler.
“I suppose that’s so, Morgan,” agreed Belding. “But maybe the poor fish was scared out of his five senses.”
“Let Frenchy tell it, these Heinies don’t own five senses,” Whistler chuckled. “He says they haven’t got more than two.”
“Uh-huh. That might be. Maybe this fellow ran for quite another reason.”
“What’s that?”
“Because he is a spy.”
Whistler digested that idea slowly. It looked reasonable. He knew that it was said sometimes the bombing machines dropped spies on British soil.
“We’d better be careful, then,” he said at last. “The chap may be armed.”
“No ‘maybe’ about it. He’s sure to be,” Belding said vigorously. “We’d look nice getting shot ashore here by a Heinie. What would our folks say?”
“By the way, George,” Whistler Morgan said, “how are your folks? Do you hear from them? When did you come across the pond?”
“One at a time!” exclaimed Belding. “Lil writes me—you remember my sister, Lilian? She was all legs and lanky yellow hair when we were up there in Seacove that summer.”
“I remember her,” Whistler admitted. “She’s a pretty girl.”
“Huh! Think so? She isn’t a patch on your sister, Alice, for looks. And that reminds me—have you heard the news?”
“I’ve not heard much news from home lately, if that is what you mean,” said Whistler. “Guess my mail’s been delayed.”
“Why, say! let me tell you about it. First of all, I came across two months ago and have been on father’s yacht, the Sirius—sub. chaser, you know. Course it isn’t called the Sirius any more. He let the Navy Department have it, you know.”
“Why, George!” gasped Whistler, “I didn’t know you folks had a yacht.”
“Father owns a slew of freight ships. It’s on one of his ships that they are all sailing next month for Bahia.”
“That’s in South America,” said Whistler thoughtfully.
“Yes. Father thinks there is going to be the biggest kind of commercial opportunity in Brazil and other South American states after the war. The Germans will be in bad down there. Father is going to establish a branch of his business in Bahia, and stay himself for a year or more—perhaps until the war’s end.”
“You don’t say!”
“Yes, I do, Country!” laughed Belding. “And Lil and mother are going to take your sisters with them.”
“Wha—what’s that you say?” Whistler ejaculated, in blank amazement.
“I guess you haven’t heard from home lately,” Belding said. “Didn’t you know anything about it?”
“Not a word.”
“They’ll sail on the Redbird. That’s one of father’s biggest ships. You see, Doctor Morgan was in New York and came to see us, so Lil wrote me. And he said how much he desired to send your sister Phoebe off on a long sea voyage. So they made it up, right there and then. Your sister Alice is going, too, and my mother will chaperone the crowd. Tell you what, Phil, if it wasn’t for this man’s war, I’d like to drop everything here and go with them. Some sport! What wouldn’t we do to those girls when the Redbird crossed the equator!”
The boys had been standing in the lee of a big rock while thus conversing in low tones. Suddenly Whistler saw a movement on the hillside below them. A man dived behind a boulder, disappearing like a flash.
“There!” whispered Whistler. “I saw him! Did you?”
“I saw something,” admitted Belding. “Wish that big Johnny Bull friend of mine was here.”
“He’d be a bigger mark for a pistol ball—if the Hun is armed—than we make!”
“Good-night!” breathed Belding. “I don’t wish to consider myself as any such target.”
Nevertheless the two lads did not hesitate to approach the spot where they had caught a glimpse of the escaping German. Whistler Morgan, at least, had been in many a perilous corner since he had joined the Navy as apprentice seaman, and he was not likely to show the white feather now. As for George Belding, Whistler did not know much about him; but when they were some years younger and George had visited Seacove, he seemed to be as courageous a boy as one would wish to meet.
The boys on shore leave of course were without arms of any description. And, as had been suggested, the German might be armed. The Americans took no chances in their search for the enemy.
There was a big boulder just ahead, and at Whistler’s suggestion the two climbed this and, lying flat on their stomachs, wormed their way to the summit, from which a better view of what lay below on the side hill could be obtained.
“Sh! That’s the fellow!” hissed Belding, seizing Whistler’s arm almost at once.
The Seacove boy saw the olive-gray figure at the same moment. The two lay and watched the German making himself comfortable in a little hollow between two rocks some rods below their station. The man had evidently scrutinized all his surroundings and believed himself to be unobserved.
“What’s he got in his bundle?” whispered George Belding.
“Got me. I saw he had that when he dropped from the burning Zep.”
The two had not long to wait to learn just what the man carried with him. Being assured that he was alone, he dropped the bundle and proceeded to untie it. Then he began to remove his flying clothes.
“A disguise,” were the words Belding’s lips mouthed, and Whistler nodded.
The latter was making a thorough scrutiny of the German’s face. Whether they captured the man or not he proposed to know him again if he met him—no matter where.
He was lean-faced, with a prominent nose, and eyes that Whistler thought were gray or a pale blue. He wore a tuft of black whisker on his chin and a little moustache. This, and the way he wore his hair—long and shaggy—made him look anything but Teutonic.
The boys beheld the fellow, stripped of his outer garments, don loose trousers, a farmer’s smock, and a cap. Although he did not look English in the face, he was dressed much as the boys had seen the neighboring agriculturists and drovers dress. He even put on a pair of heavy boots instead of the laced shoes he had worn in the Zeppelin.
“That chap means business,” whispered Belding. And then he suddenly grunted almost aloud, for out of his bundle the spy produced a pair of automatic pistols which he proceeded to hide under the loose blouse he now wore.
“He is prepared to fight,” agreed Whistler under his breath. “We can’t capture him without help, George.”
“You’ve said something, Whistler! One of us will have to go for help.”
“Which shall it be—you or I?” asked Phil in the same cautious tone. “Al and the others would be glad to be in on this.”
“And my friend Johnson, from the Old Kent Road. He’s sober now and worth two ordinary men in a scrimmage,” and Belding smiled broadly.
“Shall I go?”
“All right,” agreed Belding. “But be quick. And if I’m not here, I’ll drop papers to show my trail. I’ve plenty of old letters in my pocket to tear up.”
“Good idea,” said Whistler, preparing to slide feet first down the rock. “Don’t get into trouble with that fellow, George.”
With this admonition he left the other American lad and started back up the hill on the other side of which the huge airship had fallen to the earth.