"I'll sell you ten," said the British tradesman doggedly. "And I'll give the Belgian Government another ten, if you think they'd honour me by accepting them?"
"Parole d'honneur! I can guarantee they will. And of the other fifty?"
"They are for England to take or leave," said Sherbrand. "No doubt I'm an ass, but a man must act according to his lights."
"They are stars, your lights," said Raymond with a crackling oath, "and they point the path of Honour!" He pulled a cheque-book and a fountain-pen from a pocket within his tunic and wrote a cheque on the Crédit Lyonnais for the price of the ten stabilisers, their packing, carriage and duty, saying as he signed, and tossed the lilac slip of paper across the tablecloth: "Your endorsement is my receipt. For the stabilisers—they must be sent not later than to-morrow. I would give something if I could fly back to France with a couple in my valise. But patience! In a week at most we will give the Germans news of us. Perhaps I shall have the good fortune of a rencontre with my Boche pilot-aviator. For—listen, lieutenant! He too possessed the device that solves for the avion the problem of stability. And—listen well!—he carried a young boy with him in the nacelle. It was the man who robbed you. Von Herrnung! Could you not have guessed before?"
It seemed to Sherbrand that he had always guessed. Raymond went on:
"When I read of the finding of the wreck of your 'Bird' in the North Sea, I knew what coup the Prussian and his confederates had carried out. We had met in Berlin, and at the Hanover aërodrome, and at Paris. And—I could have shot him the other day if it had not been for the child. The legions of the modern Attila employ women and babes as bucklers and breastworks, by their Emperor's order. Perhaps he carried the boy for protection!" His moustache bristled like an angry cat's as he added:
"A beastly idea, but the German Idea is bestial. Well, au 'voir! To-morrow, six demie, we start from the aërodrome!"
He rose, whisked his napkin over his mouth, and said, giving Sherbrand a hearty hand-grip:
"I shall be punctual. Do not forget. My compliments to Mademoiselle!"
But Sherbrand was occupied less by thoughts of his angry love than by Raymond's story of the boy in the German warplane. He telephoned to Sir Roland and to Saxham before he drove back to the Club thinking: