Mrs. Gudrun, whose eye soared with Bobby’s, would have changed color had the feat been possible.
“Do we really climb up that awful ladder to get on board?” she inquired. “I have more nerve than any woman I know; but I wasn’t educated as an acrobat. J’en suis tout baba, Bobby, that you should have let us all in for a thing like this. We’re planted, however, and must go through. What crowds of smart women! What on earth has brought them out so early in the morning? It must have got about that I’m going to be killed!” She gulped and clutched Teddy. “I c-can’t go on in this scene! Make an apology—make an apology and say I’m ill. I am ill—horribly!”
“I feel far from frisky,” said Bobby Bolsover candidly. “Gout all last night in the head and eyes, and—every limb, in fact, that one relies upon in steering a motor. But, of course, I am ready to undertake the helm—unless anybody else would like to volunteer?”
He looked at Teddy, whose eye was clear, whose cheek was blooming, whose golden curls encroached upon a forehead unlined with the furrows of personal apprehension.
“W-what do you say, Teddy?” gasped Mrs. Gudrun.
“I deeply regret.... It is imperatively necessary, dear lady,” said Teddy glibly, “that in your absolute interests I should be at the ‘Fritz’ at twelve. The Paris representatives of the Daily Yelper, the Morning Whooper, and the Greenroom Rag, have appointed that hour to receive particulars of your start; three Berlin correspondents, one from Nice, and the editors of the Journal Rigolo and the Vie Patachon are to hole in ten minutes later; and there will be thousands of telegrams to open and answer. You know that the Syndicate of the Escurial Palace of Varieties have actually tendered to secure the turn. Therefore, though my heart will make the voyage in your company, I—cannot.”
Blue-eyed Teddy melted into thin air. Mrs. Gudrun, looking older than a professional beauty has any right to look, surveyed her companions with a hollow gaze of despair, while outside the aërodrome Paris roared and waited. Bobby, as green as jade, in a complete suit of motor armor, goggles included, leaned limply against the ladder that led upwards to the platform of the aërodrome. De Petoburgh, in foul-weather yachting kit, his glass fixed in his bloodshot left eye by the little mechanical contrivance that keeps it from tumbling, looked back. That debilitated nobleman, though shaky, was game to the backbone.
“I can’t drive a motor, Bolsover,” he said quite distinctly, “but I can drive you. Will you—oblige me—by climbing up that ladder? We follow. After you, dear lady!”
And the three negotiated the giddy ascent. Upon the platform they found the owner of the airship and the four workmen who, under promise of reward and threat of punishment, were to attend the guide-rope. The airship itself, a vast sausage-shaped silk bag of hydrogen, from which depended by rubber-sheathed piano wires a framework of proven bamboo supporting three baskets—one forward, one amidships, and one aft—hovered over the heads of the three depressed adventurers like a shapeless embodiment of adverse Fate. And Paris was growing impatient.
“Tell ’em to stick to the guide-rope, De Croqueville, for their lives,” urged Bobby feverishly, squeezing the hands of the owner of the machine. “Give it ’em in their own lingo; my French isn’t fluent to-day. They’re not to trust to my steering, but just tow us to the Tower and back.”