II
Our fellow diners drifted away as they had come—singly, and in twos and threes—and by ten o’clock Horne and I were alone in the deserted lounge with our cigars and coffee. He was expecting to be rung up at ten-thirty, he said, and as the time approached I could not help noticing that he became distrait and nervous, palpably anxious. The call came promptly, and it was with a look of ill-concealed apprehension on his face that he rose to follow the summoning flunkey to the telephone booth. A minute later he returned walking on air. Twice or thrice he tried to take up the dropped thread of Argentine reminiscence, finally giving it up as a bad job.
“I can’t help telling you that I’ve just had some very good news,” he exclaimed, with beaming face. “For six weeks now I have been haunted by a fear that that last jarring up I got was going to put me out of the game for good. Yesterday I had the doctors go over me, and now, after being kept all day on tenterhooks, comes word that, so far as flying is concerned, I’m going to be as right as rain. Nothing whatever likely to occur to prevent my going back in a fortnight. I think I must be just about the happiest man in London to-night. I——”
He checked himself with a deprecatory gesture. “Really, you’ll have to pardon my outburst, old chap; but I wasn’t half sure that I wasn’t in line for invaliding out. Besides, I’ve been fairly itching to be ‘up’ all day. There’s been witchery in the air ever since sunrise. I’ve never known more perfect flying weather. Which reminds me, by the way, that the Zepps are expected in this vicinity to-night. They were on the ‘East Coast’ last night, you know. It’s just a little too clear for their purposes; but the air itself is perfect—perfect. There haven’t been more than one or two other such days for flying as this one since the war began. You can’t understand it till you’ve been in the air yourself. It was in the blood of all those chaps at dinner this evening. They talked about everything on earth except flying; and were thinking about nothing else but that. Didn’t you notice that they were as restive as the lions in the Zoo an hour before feeding time?”
Throwing aside all reserve, Horne began to speak of his work—his love of it, the fascination of it, the great and increasingly important part it was playing in the war. This was precisely what, hoping against hope, I had been trying to draw him out on all the evening; and so, lighting a fresh cigar, I sank back contentedly in my armchair to play the part of the appreciative auditor. Scarcely was I well settled, however, when Horne abruptly ceased speaking and leaned forward with his head cocked in an attitude of attentive listening.
“Did you hear that?” he whispered; “and that, and that?”
“Nothing but the chatter of the first dribble of the supper crowd,” I answered. “What is it?”
“Bombs,” was the reply; “three or four of them. And, I think, gun-fire. The Zepps must be nearer London than they have been at any time since last October. Let’s get down to the Embankment. We can see from there, if anywhere. They never wander far from the ‘river road.’”
The Strand, packed with the crowds from the emptying theatres, was plainly oblivious and unalarmed, and I promptly taxed Horne with letting either the wine or the “perfect air conditions” go to his head. He said nothing, but, all the way down the black little canyon of a street along which we threaded our way, appeared to be listening intently. Not until we were about to emerge into the brighter blankness of the Embankment did he speak again.
“There have been no more bombs,” he said, “but I think the guns are going right along. If the sound is too faint for your ‘unattuned’ ear, perhaps the fact that you hear no shunting of trains or whistling at Charing Cross or Waterloo (you know of the new order which halts all trains during air-raids) will convince you that the Zepps are about. Or if not that, then come along here and have some ocular evidence. What do you say to that?” And Horne pointed off down past the looming mass of St. Paul’s to where the stationary beam of a single searchlight laid low along the eastern horizon.
“I see the searchlight plainly enough,” I said, “but where’s the Zepp?”
“Take my glass,” said Horne, handing me a small pair of semi-collapsible binoculars which was evidently a constant companion. “Now focus on that point of brighter glow, with a shadow behind it, half-way down the shaft—right there, straight over the back of the right-hand lion at the foot of the Obelisk.”
I did as directed, fairly to gasp with astonishment as a tiny blur, so indistinct as to go unnoticed by the passers-by on the Embankment, sharpened to a long, yellow-ribbed pencil, with pin-points of light—fireflies escorting a glow-worm—flashing out and disappearing above and below and round about it.
“The first Zepp to get over London in six months,” I ejaculated excitedly. “How long will she take to get here? Hadn’t we better get away from the river and under cover? But no,” I went on, peering through the glass again; “I don’t think she’s coming this way. Seems to be standing still. Probably hovering over W——, the old objective.”
“London! W——!” laughed Horne. “Do you realise that you didn’t hear any bombs, and that none of these people have any idea that there’s a raiding Zeppelin, with shells bursting about it, squarely in their range of vision? That fellow’s all of twenty-five miles away, and as for its ‘hovering,’ you may rest assured that when you see a Zepp with incendiary shells bursting above it, it is either badly hit or else doing seventy miles an hour toward the home hangars. As a matter of fact, I’ve been expecting to see this fellow begin to drop at any moment. He’s evidently run into better guns and gunners than he counted on. Ah! No hope!” (Horne snatched his glass and turned it quickly on the now agitated searchlight beam.) “He’s gone. Even the light’s lost him.”
Horne turned around disgustedly, led the way to a bench by the curb, pushed along a somnolent “match dame” to make room for him, and wearily sat down.
“He’s slippery game—the Zepp,” he observed presently, after watching the futile flounderings of the questing searchlight. “I didn’t tell you, did I, that it was through trying to get a Zepp that I came that last cropper of mine over Belgium?”
“You know perfectly well you didn’t,” I replied, folding a corner of the old match-seller’s straggling cloak back over her knees and sitting down in the space vacated. “Go to it.”
“I was starting on a reconnaissance over a corner of Belgium just as the Zepp was returning from a raid over France. I got above him, and just after I dropped my first bomb the ‘Archies’ opened up on me from the ground and put me out at just about the first shot. Jolly nervy work, with my machine only a couple of hundred feet above the Zepp. A little too nervy, perhaps, for I’ve never been quite certain in my own mind whether it was my bomb or one from the German guns which sent the Zepp—not wrecked but pretty badly messed up—down into a sugar-beet field. I headed——”
“Just a moment,” I interrupted, anticipating the end of the tale at the end of Horne’s next breath. “You’re dumping over your story just the way a Zeppelin under fire dumps over its bombs. Now please back up and tell it properly. The night is young, the raiders are now headed out to sea, and the lady and I are here to follow you to the end.”