Tom Slade, Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer Part 19

"There you are!" said Tom, patting _Uncle Sam_ patronizingly in a swift change of mood. "See there? That's the Atlantic Ocean--that is. _Now_ will you hurry? That's a s.h.i.+p coming in--see? I bet it's a whopper, too.

Do you know what--what's off beyond there?" he fairly panted in his excitement; "do you? You old French hobo, you? _America!_ That's where _I_ came from. _Now_ will you hurry? That's Dieppe, where the white[2]

is and those steeples, see? And way across there on the other side is America!"

For _Uncle Sam_, notwithstanding his name, was a French motorcycle and had never seen America.

[2] Dieppe's famous beach.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

A SURPRISE

Down the hill coasted _Uncle Sam_, bearing his rider furiously onward. A fence along the wayside seemed like a very entanglement of stakes and pickets. Then it was gone. A house loomed up in view, grew larger, and was gone. A cow that was grazing in a field languidly raised her head, blinked her eyes, and stood as if uncertain whether she had really seen something pa.s.s or not.

They were in the valley now and the sea was no longer discernible. On they rushed with a fine disdain for poor little Charos, whose village steeple appeared and disappeared like a flash of lightning. The road was broad and level and _Uncle Sam_ sped along amid a cloud of dust, the bordering trees and houses flying away behind like dried leaves in a hurricane. The rider's hair was fluttering like a victorious emblem, his eyes fixed with a wild intensity.

"We'd get arrested for this in America," he muttered; "we--we should worry."

It was little _Uncle Sam_ cared for the traffic laws of America.

Around the outskirts of Teurley they swept and into the broad highway like a pair of demons, and a muleteer, seeing discretion to be the better part of valor, drove his team well to the side--far enough, even, to escape any devilish contamination which this unearthly apparition might diffuse.

They had reached a broad highway, one of those n.o.ble roads which Napoleon had made. They could not go wrong now. They pa.s.sed a luxurious chateau, then a great hotel where people haled them in French. Then they pa.s.sed an army auto truck loaded with mattresses, with the bully old initials U. S. A. on its side. Two boys in khaki were on the seat.

"Is the _Texas Pioneer_ in?" Tom yelled.

"What?" one of them called back.

"He's deaf or something," muttered Tom; "we--should worry."

On they sped till the road merged into a street lined with shops, where children in wooden shoes and men in blouses shuffled about. Tom thought he had never seen people so slow in his life.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DOWN THE HILL COASTED UNCLE SAM BEARING TOM FURIOUSLY ONWARD.]

Now, indeed, he must make some concession to the throngs moving back and forth, and he slackened his speed, but only slightly.

"Dieppe?" he called.

"Dieppe," came the laughing answer from a pa.s.ser-by, who was evidently amused at Tom's p.r.o.nunciation.

"Where's the wharves?"

Again that polite shrug of the shoulders.

He took a chance with another pa.s.ser-by, who nodded and pointed down a narrow street with dull brown houses tumbling all over each other, as it seemed to Tom. It was the familiar, old-world architecture of the French coast towns, which he had seen in Brest and St. Nazaire, as if all the houses had become suddenly frightened and huddled together like panicky sheep.

More leisurely now, but quickly still, rode the dispatch-rider through this narrow, surging way which had all the earmarks of the sh.o.r.e--damp-smelling barrels, bra.s.s lanterns, dilapidated s.h.i.+ps'

figureheads, cosy but uncleanly drinking places, and sailors.

And of all the sights save one which Tom Slade ever beheld, the one which most gladdened his heart was a neat new sign outside a stone building,

Office of United States Quartermaster.

Several American army wagons were backed up against the building and half a dozen khaki-clad boys lounged about. There was much coming and going, but it is a part of the dispatch-rider's prestige to have immediate admittance anywhere, and Tom stopped before this building and was immediately surrounded by a flattering representation of military and civilian life, both French and American.

To these he paid not the slightest heed, but carefully lowered _Uncle Sam's_ rest so that his weary companion might stand alone.

"You old tramp," he said in an undertone; "stay here and take it easy.

Keep away," he added curtly to a curious private who was venturing a too close inspection of _Uncle Sam's_ honorable wounds.

"What's the matter--run into something?" he asked.

"No, I didn't," said Tom, starting toward the building.

Suddenly he stopped short, staring.

A man in civilian clothes sat tilted back in one of several chairs beside the door. He wore a little black moustache and because his head was pressed against the brick wall behind him, his hat was pushed forward giving him a rakish look which was rather heightened by an unlighted cigar sticking up out of the corner of his mouth like a piece of field artillery.

He might have been a travelling salesman waiting for his samples on the veranda of a country hotel and he had about him a kind of sophisticated look as if he took a sort of blase pleasure in watching the world go round. His feet rested upon the rung of his tilted chair, forming his knees into a sort of desk upon which lay a French newspaper. The tilting of his knees, the tilting of his chair, the tilting of his hat and the rakish tilt of his cigar, gave him the appearance of great self-sufficiency, as if, away down in his soul, he knew what he was there for, and cared not a whit whether anyone else did or not.

Tom Slade paused on the lower step and stared. Then with a slowly dawning smile supplanting his look of astonishment, he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed,

"M-i-s-t-e-r _C-o-n-n-e_!"

The man made not the slightest change in his att.i.tude except to smile the while he worked his cigar over to the other corner of his mouth.

Then he c.o.c.ked his head slightly sideways.

"H'lo, Tommy," said he.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

SMOKE AND FIRE

Mr. Carleton Conne, of the United States Secret Service, had come over from Liverpool _via_ Dover on a blind quest after an elusive spy. There had been a sort of undercurrent of rumor, with many extravagant trappings, that a mysterious agent of the Kaiser was on his way to Europe with secrets of a most important character. Some stories had it that he was intimately related to b.l.o.o.d.y Bill himself; others that he gloried in a kins.h.i.+p with Ludendorf, while still other versions represented him as holding Mexico in the palm of his hand. Dark stories floated about and no one knew just where they originated.

One sprightly form this story took, which had been whispered in New York and then in Liverpool, was that a certain young lady (ident.i.ty unknown) had talked with a soldier (ident.i.ty unknown) in the Grand Central Station in New York, and that the soldier had told her that at his cantonment (cantonment not identified) there was a man in a special branch of the service (branch not mentioned) who was a cousin or a brother or a nephew or a son or something or other to a German general or statesman or something or other, and that he had got into the American army by a pretty narrow squeak. There seemed to be a unanimity of opinion in the lower strata of Uncle Sam's official family in Liverpool that the soldier who had talked with the young lady was coming over on the transport _Manchester_ and it was a.s.sumed (no one seemed to know exactly why) that the mysterious and sinister personage would be upon the same s.h.i.+p.

But no soldier had been found upon the _Manchester_ who showed by his appearance that he had chatted with a young lady. Perhaps several of them had done that. It is a way soldiers have.

As for the arch spy or propagandist, he did not come forward and introduce himself as such, and though a few selected suspects of German antecedents were searched and catechised by Mr. Conne and others, no one was held.