"All the same, you are an English officer," Margot persisted, "and what use is the Entente if that doesn't count?"
"Best child, don't be a giddy goose!" Franky implored her. "You don't suppose the Authorities care a bad tomato for an English Loot—what they'd cotton to would have to be a British Brass Hat of the very biggest kind. Look there!—more to your left, little battums!" He indicated yet other Republican cocked hats strung at equal distances down the length of a neighbouring alley, precisely outlining the farther border of the sandwich-shaped halfacre of greensward by which their particular avenue ran. "And there!" His professional eye had noted a big, grey-painted military motor-lorry, numbered, and lettered "S. Aë. F." Behind the driver's seat towered the slender T-shaped steel mast of a Field wireless, whose spidery aerials, pegged to the turf, were in charge of men in képis and blue overalls, while a non-commissioned officer, wearing the telephone head-band of the operator, leaned on the elbow-rest of the tripod supporting the apparatus, his finger on the buzzer-key. Near him his clerk squatted, pencil and pad in readiness, while at a respectful distance from two oblong patches of white in the middle of the green plat of turf, several active upright figures in dark uniforms stood conversing, or walking to and fro.
"Officiers Aviateurs, telegraphists and mechanics of the French Service Aëronautique"—you are listening to Franky—"tremendously well-organised compared with our little footling Flying Corps, tinkered fourteen months ago out of the old Air Battalion of the R. E. These chaps are Engineers—goin' by the dark red double stripes on their overalls and their dark blue képis. Some of their machines'll be out for practice. Despatch-droppin' or bombs. Here's a man with brass on his hat, coming our way.... Takes me for a German soger-orficer I shouldn't wonder!—lots of 'em get their clothes cut in Bond Street. But though you can hide Allemand legs in English trousers"—Franky was recovering his customary cheeriness—"and some of 'em do it uncommon cleverly—you can't deodorise an accent that hails from Berlin."
The officer approaching—a youthful, upright figure walking quickly, with the short, springy steps of a man much in the saddle—proved to be grey-haired and grey-moustached. The double-winged badge of his Service was embroidered in gold upon the right sleeve of his tunic, and upon the collar, a single wing in this case, ending in a star. He carried binoculars suspended from his neck by a rolled-leather thong, and a revolver in a black-leather case was attached to the belt about his middle. There was thick white dust upon the legs and uppers of his high polished black boots, which the grass had scoured from the toes and soles. His bright blue-grey eyes ran over Franky as the slight soldierly salute was exchanged. He said, speaking in excellent English:
"If Monsieur, the English officer, will obligingly mention his name, rank, and regiment, it might be possible to allow him to continue his promenade with Madame, the invention we are testing being the patent of his countryman, and already familiar to the Authorities at the British War Office."
Thus coerced, Franky produced his card, Margot dimpled into smiles, the polite officer saluted again, introduced himself as Raymond, Capitaine-Commandant pilot of the —th escadrille, wheeled and walked away. But he returned to say, this time directly addressing Margot:
"Should Madame la Vicomtesse desire to witness the test of her countryman's—apparatus, there can be no objection to her doing so. But that Madame should keep clear of the vicinity of the"—he pointed to the two oblong strips of white canvas adorning the middle of the expanse of green,—"the signal, intended for the guidance of the aviator, is of absolute necessity, Madame must understand!"
"There won't be any...?" Margot was beginning, nervously.
"Mais non, Madame. Pas d'explosion," the officer assured her, and stiffened to attention facing eastwards, and scanning the sky with eyes that blinked in the dazzling glare of early noon. For the droning whirr of a plane just then reached them, drowning the sign of the hot south breeze that rustled in the tops of the acacias and oaks, ilexes and poplars, that rose about the arena of open ground....
CHAPTER V