"He won't come just yet. Tell me more about him, and all about yourself."
How strangely lined and pinched and puckered was the young face with its clear red-and-white sprinkled over with brown freckles. Fine dust of dew-beads started upon forehead and temples and cheeks, the half-opened mouth twitched nervously, though he thrust out his under-jaw and knitted his reddish brows in a gallant effort of self-control.
"His name is von Herrnung. He is the German Field Flight officer who took me away from England. I wrote down the date in my Scout's pocket-book so that I mightn't forget. It was July 18th. He was trying Mr. Sherbrand's hawk-hoverer at Hendon. He asked me to go up with him——"
"Great Snipe!" panted Franky weakly. "Are YOU the boy who dropped the wallet with the Clanronald Papers and the scratched message in the North Sea?"
The blue eyes understood. "There was a wallet," said their owner. "I don't know what was inside, of course. But he——"
A spasm of trembling went through the slender body. He bent his head, and blinked his eyes, and the muscles of his throat and jaw worked as though he fought down an hysterical access of tears. And a broad shaft of golden light, falling on the young bare head, showed how the shining red-brown hair had been roughly clipped in ridges, leaving a forehead-tuft oddly streaked with white. Amongst the crowds of homeless exiles endlessly streaming along the roads of this scourged and tortured country, or crouching amongst the wreckage of its ruined villages and battered towns, heads even younger than this boy's had displayed the tragic sign.
"Poor kid!" Franky muttered, recognising it as the result of overwhelming physical shock and unnatural mental strain. "He knew what was inside? ..."
"I don't think so! If he had known when the submarine picked us up in the North Sea—I think he would have killed me! He would like to kill me now, he says"—the apple in the boy's throat jerked—"because through me he has been degradiren—reduced from Captain to Supernumerary Officer Pilot—and has had his Third Class of the Red Eagle taken away! That was done at the big Wireless Station—Nordeich, they called it——"
"Nordeich.... Of course ... in German West Friesland. Thrash along—I'm following you. Did they Court Martial the Flying Man?" Franky whispered; and Bawne whispered back:
"The Emperor punished him! ..."