The girl did not stir, however, but remained there with her father’s arm about her, wistfully following the dark object with her eyes. Now it went far away and disappeared, now came back again. Now it came very low, now ascended. Now it was directly overhead, then of a sudden it was coming straight toward them, silently and very low, as if it must be another machine altogether....
Out of it climbed Tom Slade of the Flying Corps, and shaking down his heavy garments as he walked he approached the two, his goggles up on his forehead like a prosy old schoolmaster.
“I zink it ees ze capitaine,” said the girl uncertainly.
“I ain’t even a lieutenant,” said Tom Slade. “Is this Mr. Grigou?”
Upon the old man’s acknowledgement he presented his trinket of a credential, that talisman which has won food and shelter for many a sore beset fugitive, in the humble, devastated homes of northern France—a button from the uniform of a French soldier in the old Franco-Prussian war. No compromising note of introduction, bringing possible peril to its holder, could have been so instrumental as this little memento, speaking the language of hallowed sentiment. Your Uncle Samuel knows the value of these little buttons.
I must not linger upon Slade’s personal intercourse with these people. I believe that the information service knew something of conditions there and knew that “Monsieur le Capitaine” was temporarily absent. It would seem to explain the very explicit instructions for Slade’s prompt return. I fancy I can detect another hand in this whole business and I think that Slade was merely the active figure in the enterprise. In any case, it was pretty close work, as they say. I am certain that M. Grigou did not expect Slade. The ways of the information service are dark and mysterious....
Slade was welcomed by this sturdy old Frenchman and his daughter and partook of a late supper with them, the while he spoke of his errand. He had made no attempt, of course, to hide his plane and Jeanne said that he appeared not the least disconcerted at the possibility of the captain’s returning unexpectedly, which, however, she thought unlikely. They knew he had gone to Berlin and he had said he would not return for a couple of weeks or more.
Yet for all that, and making full allowance for the possibility of the information service knowing of this mysterious person’s whereabouts and the duration of his absence, there is something very striking to me in Slade’s sitting there, his airplane outside, chatting with these people with apparently no more concern than if he had looked in for a social call. Perhaps he was safer than he knew.
“But he does not have ze—caire,” said Jeanne, throwing out her hands with a fine suggestion of recklessness. “You see? So. He say if one man come, why he should caire! Oi, la, la, I say to him!”
A very singular thing occurred that night.