Part 7 (1/2)

Well, if you can manage, it will relieve us greatly. I think we'll be back in less than a month. Keep out of mischief. And write to us as often as you can hear of a steamer that is sailing. If anything happens to you, cable.

I'll arrange with Mr. Bruce, at the Emba.s.sy, to help you if you need him, but that ought not to be necessary.”

Harry was genuinely sorry for his mother's distress at leaving him, but he was also relieved, in a way. He felt now he would not be forbidden to do his part with the scouts. He would be able to undertake what promised to be the greatest adventure that had ever come his way. He had no fear of being left alone for his training as a Boy Scout had made him too self reliant for that.

Mr. and Mrs. Fleming started for Liverpool that night. Train service throughout the country was so disorganized by the military use of the railways that journeys that in normal, peaceful times required only two or three hours were likely to consume a full day. So he went into the city of London with them and saw them off at Euston, which was full of distressed American refugees.

The Flemings found many friends there, of whose very presence in London they were ignorant, and Mr. Fleming, who, thanks to his business connections in London, was plentifully supplied with cash, was able to relieve the distress of some of them.

Many had escaped from France, Germany and Austria with only the clothes they wore, having lost all their luggage. Many more, though possessed of letters of credit or travellers' checks for considerable sums, didn't have enough money to buy a sandwich, since the banks were all closed and no one would cash their checks.

So Harry had another glimpse of the effects of war, seeing how it affected a great many people who not only had nothing to do with the fighting, but were citizens of a neutral nation. He was beginning to understand very thoroughly by this time that war was not what he had always dreamed. It meant more than fighting, more than glory.

But, after all, now that war had come, it was no time to think of such things. He had undertaken, if he could get permission, to do a certain very important piece of work. And now, by a happy accident, as he regarded it, it wasn't necessary for him to ask that permission. He was not forbidden to do any particular thing; his father had simply warned him to be careful.

So when he went home, he whistled outside of d.i.c.k Mercer's window, woke him up, and, when d.i.c.k came down into the garden, explained to him what Colonel Throckmorton wanted them to do.

”He said I could pick out someone to go with me, d.i.c.k,” Harry explained.

”And, of course, I'd rather have you than anyone I can think of. Will you come along?”

”Will I!” said d.i.c.k. ”What do you think you'll do, Harry?”

”We may get special orders, of course,” said Harry. ”But I think the first thing will be to find out just where the signals from that house are being received. They must be answered, you know, so we ought to find the next station. Then, from that, we can work on to the next.”

”Where do you suppose those signals go to?”

”That's what we've got to find out, d.i.c.k! But I should think, in the long run, to some place on the East coast. Perhaps they've got some way there of signalling to s.h.i.+ps at sea. Anyhow, that's what's got to be discovered. Did you see Graves to-night?”

”No,” said d.i.c.k, his lips tightening, ”I didn't! But I heard about him, all right.”

”How? What do you mean?”

”I heard that he'd been doing a lot of talking about you. He said it wasn't fair to have taken you and given you the honor of doing something when there were English boys who were just as capable of doing it as you.”

”Oh!” said Harry, with a laugh. ”Much I care what he says!”

”Much I care, either!” echoed d.i.c.k. ”But, Harry, he has made some of the other chaps feel that way, too. They all like you, and they don't like him. But they do seem to think some of them should have been chosen.”

”Well, it's not my fault,” said Harry, cheerfully. ”I certainly wasn't going to refuse. And it isn't as if I'd asked Mr. Wharton to pick me out.”

”No, and I fancy there aren't many of them who would have done as well as you did to-day, either!”

”Oh, yes, they would! That wasn't anything. We'd better get to bed now. I think we ought to report just as early as we can in the morning. If we get away by seven o'clock, it won't be a bit too early.”

”All right. I'll be ready. Good-night, Harry!”

”Good-night, d.i.c.k!”

Morning saw them up on time, and off to Ealing. There Colonel Throckmorton gave them their orders.

”I've requisitioned motorcycles for you,” he said. ”Make sure of the location of the house, so that you can mark it on an ordnance map for me.