“It’s about trying to bring Lucy out of Château-Plessis. Now don’t shake your head and say it’s a difficult undertaking. I know that well enough, but I’m going to try it.”
“Then it is not my advice you wish, but my assistance,” remarked the Frenchman. “Tell me your plan and I promise you all the help in my power. I will lead a guarding squadron to keep off enemy fire—is that what you wish?”
“Just exactly,” said Bob with enthusiasm. “I don’t see why it can’t be done. Anyway, once over their lines, I’ll know if I can bring her safely back. Lucy could crouch down in the observer’s seat so as to be almost entirely sheltered.”
“And you, Harding?” asked Captain Jourdin. “You will direct your anti-aircraft battery? That will be ticklish work at night, but you can keep the Boches wary and unwilling to fly. Once they are up you cannot do much.”
“I can scare them off a part of the line—enough for Bob to make a safe crossing. Our trenches are very near theirs at that point. I’ll need search-lights, of course. With luck we might even find a night when they did not fly. They seem decidedly short of scouts around Château-Plessis. They have massed them at Argenton.”
“But it seems to me you are two wounded men. How are you to accomplish all this?” inquired Captain Jourdin, in the puzzled tone of a man who thought the adventure more gallant than feasible. Before his mind’s eye came some of the many airmen—Allied and enemy—he had seen fall to death. Bob’s chance of safety was no more than theirs, and Lucy must helplessly share his danger.
“I’ll be up in a week—the surgeon said so,” Bob insisted. “And Harding is all right now. He expects they will let him out in three days.”
Captain Jourdin rose quickly at sight of Mrs. Gordon, who was just reëntering the ward. “Your mother has come, Gordon!” he said, with keen surprise and pleasure. “She knows of your plan—we may talk of it?”
“No, but I will tell her right now,” said Bob. “I certainly can’t try it without her consent.”
Jourdin had met Bob’s mother in Governor’s Island days, and now, in the midst of common fears and perils, they seemed rather friends than acquaintances. Mrs. Gordon greeted him warmly as she joined the little group, looking herself again with the dust quite got rid of.