"Why?" asked Arthur, though he had obeyed before he asked the question.
"You haven't any uniform. You'd be spotted at once. If they see me in this rig, they may mistake me for a German officer, you see. That's why I took it. I was sorry to have to do it, but it's war, and all's fair! Now we're off!"
On the word he turned the car around, and they were really off in another moment, racing down the hill that the car had just climbed so laboriously, to have its journey so ingloriously halted.
"It's a wonderful little car. They must use a lot of these for dispatch bearers," said Paul. "Arthur, isn't it lucky that Marcel showed us all about how to run different sorts of cars? I hope he's all right. I bet he enlisted too, if Uncle Henri joined the army when he went to Brussels."
"It runs so smoothly and it's ever so much faster than the fastest horse, of course," said Arthur. "I suppose all the armies must be using automobiles for this sort of work. Where are you going, Paul?"
"I'm going to make a great big circuit, if we're not stopped before we really get started," said Paul. "On foot we never could have got ahead of the Germans in that sweeping flank movement of theirs. But now, when we can make sixty miles an hour, I should think we ought to be able to do it. I think the worst time will be right along here in the first ten miles or so. All I'm hoping is that we don't run into the people who know where Poertner was going in this car. I think we can get by anyone else. But there's no telling where he did start from. Perhaps from Huy."
"Huy? But we were there this morning—and our troops were there, too!" exclaimed Arthur, plainly puzzled.
"That doesn't mean that they're there now. Huy couldn't have held out for more than a few hours against a real attack. And we had very few troops there. Our concentration seems to be further north."
They swept through Hannay at a terrific pace, but not so fast as to prevent them from seeing that the wine shop was still open and that it was full of Raymond's men. Paul sounded a blast on the siren of his car, the peculiar siren that indicated its military character, and laughed at the rush of people to the door of the shop. Then they were out in the open road again.
And now Paul's knowledge of the geography of the country stood him in good stead. Twinkling camp fires showed that they were running toward a country that was literally swarming with Germans. Now more than ever, it was plain that from all around Liege a great advance movement was being pushed. Despite the battle that was still raging behind them, these troops seemed to be in camp, a plain proof that the Germans must still have troops enough and to spare behind them, though here were fresh divisions that would not be engaged at all.