Chapter XXV

LOST IN THE AIR OF NIGHT

Petite Jeanne surely was in a tight place. Hugo and the dark lady—for it was she who had been with Hugo in the house—with what they had described as all the material needed to exploit the secret process of the Happy Vale textile mill, were awaiting her. To carry them across the border would be a simple matter. She was close to a “radio-fenced” air-lane. To follow this, even in the night, was a simple matter.

But the little French girl did not propose to follow it. To do this would almost certainly lose for Danby Force his only chance to save his happy little city from ruin.

No, Petite Jeanne could not do that. But what could she do? Should she start her motor and make a try at escape? To do this she realized would be perilous. The spies might be armed. She could not get away on the instant. They might wreck her plane, or even worse.

“And they’d still have their black bag,” she told herself.

She decided on flight, on foot, alone. Where to? She did not know.

Opening the door of her cabin, without a sound she slipped away into the night.

She had barely rounded the corner of a low shed when she heard a door swing open, and Hugo called:

“Here! Where are you? Is there gas enough?”

“Yes,” Jeanne whispered beneath her breath. “But not for such an evil purpose!

“They’ll be after me with a flashlight,” she told herself, thrown into sudden panic.

The large red barn of the farm loomed before her. Into its inviting darkness she crept.

At once a pleasing fragrance reached her nostrils—Nature’s own perfume, the smell of new cut clover hay. Jeanne knew that glorious perfume. More than once as a gypsy she had slept within the shadow of a haystack.

Next instant, with breath coming short and quick, she was climbing a narrow ladder leading to the loft. At its top she tumbled into the welcoming billows of sweet smelling hay.

Creeping far back, she burrowed like a rat and was soon quite lost from sight.

“Never find me here,” she whispered.

She listened. The silence was complete. Then she caught a low, rustling sound.

“Mice in this hay!” She shuddered. She hated mice; yet nothing could induce her to give up this place of hiding.

From far below she heard Hugo call again:

“Here! Where are you?”

A moment later, through the broad cracks of the barn wall she caught a gleam of light, then heard their sharp exclamations upon discovering that she was gone.

“What will they do?” she asked herself. “Will they finally become angry and demolish my plane? My so beautiful dragon fly!” She was ready to weep.

Would they attempt to fly the plane themselves and wreck it? She could but wait and see.

“Never find me here,” she repeated to herself as she sank deep into the fresh cut clover.

In the meantime Rosemary Sample and Willie VanGeldt were speeding to the rescue.

“Strange business this for a steady going stewardess of the air,” Rosemary was saying to herself. “I suppose there are a million girls who believe that being an airplane stewardess is exciting. Nothing, I suppose, is less exciting. But this—this is different, flying through the night with an amateur pilot in a plane that—”

“Willie!” she exclaimed, “We’re on the dot-dash again. Swing over. We’ve got to keep on the dotted line.”

Time passed. An hour sped into eternity, and yet another hour. It was approaching midnight. Rosemary switched on the dot-dot-dot of the directive radio to tune in on her home station and ask for a weather report.

The report filled her with fresh concern. “Willie,” she said in a quiet voice that, after all, was tense with emotion, “we’re headed straight for a thunderstorm. Be in the midst of it in less than an hour if we keep on this air-lane.”

“And if we don’t keep on it,” Willie groaned, “we’re lost, lost in the air at night. I’m for zooming straight ahead. Storm may swing some other way.”

It did not swing some other way. Three quarters of an hour later they were in the midst of it. Lightning flashed from cloud to cloud. The sky was black. Only the steady dot-dot-dot of the directive radio gave them hope.

And then, right in the midst of it, when the wind was tearing at their wings, when their struts were singing and the flash-flash of lightning was all but continuous, disaster descended upon them. Their radio went dead.

“I might have known!” Rosemary groaned within herself. “Perfection, only perfection of equipment and eternal vigilance such as a great transport company exercises can save one in the air.

“But I’ll not say a word!” She set her teeth hard. “Have to carry on.” Snapping on a small light attached to a cord, she set about the task of inspecting the radio connections, a trying task in such a moment of sky turmoil.

In the meantime the ones who had been left marooned in that abandoned farmhouse by Jeanne’s sudden flight were discussing their plight.

For a full half hour they had hunted the missing little French girl. Giving this up at last, they returned to the house.

“What is to be done?” the woman asked.

“There is little to be lost by waiting,” suggested Hugo. He hated darkness and night. “She can’t have gone far. It is pitch dark. A storm is coming up out of the west. She has no light. If she had, we should have seen it. She will be frightened and return.”

“But why did she leave?” the woman asked. “Did you give her cause for fear?”

Hugo shrugged. “Who knows what a gypsy will do? I should not have trusted her.

“She’ll hardly do us harm before dawn,” he added. “I have flown a plane a few thousand miles. In daytime I would attempt a solo flight, but at night, and a storm in sight? No, it would not do.”

After that, having brewed themselves some strong coffee and gulped it down, they settled themselves as comfortably as might be to await the coming dawn.

And Jeanne? Strange as it may seem, hidden away there in the hay, she had fallen fast asleep. Had you been there to waken her and ask her how she could sleep in such a place, doubtless her answer would have been:

“What would you have? I could not be harmed more quickly asleep than when awake. Besides, at heart I am a gypsy. Gypsies sleep where and when they may.”

In the meantime Rosemary Sample and her rich young pilot were battling the storm. Having long since lost the beaten airway, they were flying blind.

The storm was all about them. Now the lightning appeared to leap across their plane wings. Now, caught by a rushing gush of wind and rain, they were all but hurled through space; and now, met by a counter-current, like a ship in a heavy sea they appeared to stand quite still.

All this time, quite unconscious of the tumult, Rosemary was working over the radio. She tested a wire here, a tube there. She pried, twisted and tapped, but all to no avail.

And then, with a suddenness that was startling, they glided from out the storm into a gloriously moonlit world. The earth lay silent beneath them. The whole of it, groves of trees, broad farms, sleeping villages, was bathed in golden glory.

“If only we knew where we were!” Willie sighed.

“But boy! Oh boy! What do you think of my motor now? I didn’t think it would go through that.”

“You wouldn’t,” Rosemary replied drily.

Then of a sudden she fairly leaped to her feet. “It’s working!” she cried. “The radio is working! I’m getting something.

“Willie,” she said a moment later, “turn sharply to the right and keep up that course.”

After that for some time only the zoom of the motor was heard. Then—

“There, Willie! I have it. Dot-dash, dot-dash! Keep straight on. We’ll be on the air-lane in just no time at all.”

And they were.

Dawn found them wide-eyed and resolute, circling the vicinity of that spot where they believed Jeanne’s message had originated.

“Ought to find it,” Willie grumbled. “Getting light enough. Just saw a farmer going out to milk his cows. He—”

“Listen!” Rosemary stopped him. “Hear that! There’s another airplane near here. Yes, yes! There it is over there to the right!”

“It’s strange.” Willie’s brow wrinkled. “They seem to be circling too. Wonder if—”

“They might be looking for Jeanne’s silver-winged plane too.”

“Friend or foe?” Willie’s eyes were fixed for a second on that other plane as if he would read the answer there.

They began making wider circles. The strange plane was lost to view when, with a suddenness that was startling, the girl gripped Willie’s arm to exclaim:

“There! Right down there it is!”

Jeanne had wakened from her sleep in that strange, fragrant bed two hours before. For a long time she had lain there wondering how this affair was to end. She had all but dozed off again when she was wakened by the familiar and, to her at this time, startling sound of an airplane motor.

“My motor!” There was no mistaking that. She knew the sound too well. At once she went into a panic.

“My airplane!” she all but wailed. “My so beautiful big dragon fly! Those terrible people will try to fly it away, and they will wreck it!”

At once she was torn between two desires—the wish to preserve her choicest treasure and her desire to serve Danby Force and his wonderful little city.

If she went to the spies now and offered to fly them across the border, they would permit her to do so, she was sure of that. But would she do it?

“No, oh no!” she sobbed low. “I must not!” She stopped her ears that she might not hear her motor and be tempted too much.

That was how it happened that when Willie and Rosemary came zooming down from the sky to land upon that narrow pasture, she did not hear them at all, and had no notion that they had arrived.

Hugo had Jeanne’s motor well warmed up and was preparing to fly away when Willie’s airplane came to a standstill squarely in their path.

As Rosemary leaped from the plane, the woman came to meet her. She recognized her on the instant.

“That,” she said with no preliminary maneuvers, “is the little French gypsy’s plane. Where is she?”

“If we knew, we would be glad to tell you,” the woman said coldly.

“You know,” Rosemary insisted, “there is no need of covering things up. We know who you are and why you are in America. You need not attempt any violence. My companion is fully prepared to meet you.”

She glanced at Willie who had one hand in his pocket. She hoped he would keep it there. One fears what one does not see. And she believed these people were cowards. There might be a pistol in Willie’s pocket—just might.

Just how the matter would have ended had not a second plane circled for a landing at that moment, no one can say.

Rosemary was astonished and immensely relieved to see Danby Force and two uniformed officers alight from the plane. She was doubly astonished thirty seconds later to see Petite Jeanne, well festooned with clover, spring out from the broad barn door and all but throw herself into the arms of Danby Force as she cried:

“It is saved! My so beautiful big dragon fly is saved! My heart and my happiness, they are saved!”

This spontaneous burst of joy brought a smile even to the grim-faced dark lady.

Jeanne’s heart and happiness were indeed saved. So was the heart and happiness of many another. When, confronted with the facts and charged with spying out the secrets of the Happy Vale mill, the strange woman admitted it freely enough.

“But remember this,” she added, “I am no thief. I had a camera. It was mine. I took pictures. They also were mine. I made drawings with my own hands. Surely that which one creates is his own. I saw things. One cannot be arrested for seeing. And more than this,” she added with a touch of sadness, “I did all this, not for myself, but for thousands in my own land who should be as prosperous as your people in Happy Vale.”

“I believe this,” said Danby Force, “yet that does not justify your action. To rob one community that another may be prosperous gets us nowhere.

“I am willing, however—” he spoke slowly. “I am willing to make matters as simple as possible. If you are willing to surrender the pictures and papers you have in your possession, if you will submit to a search and will leave our land empty-handed, we of Happy Vale will forgive and forget.”

This the dark lady could not refuse. Her papers were surrendered and were taken over by Danby Force.

“As for you!” Danby Force turned to Hugo. On his face was a look in which was strangely mingled sorrow, pity and scorn. “You are an American citizen. This woman has been doing what she could for her people—doing it in a wrong way, but doing it all the same. You—” he paused. “You have sold out your own countrymen to her for gold. You were given the friendship, love, admiration and loyalty of our people. You sold it for a price. You attempted to steal the labor of another’s brain. For this there is no legal penalty. But to know that you have been a traitor, to know that thousands who have admired you will think of you as a traitor, to live all your life remembering that you have been a traitor, that is punishment enough. You may go.”

With bowed head, the once magnificent Hugo disappeared from their sight. And at that Petite Jeanne’s heart was heavy with sorrow. Why? Who could tell?

“And now,” said Willie VanGeldt to the little stewardess when they were alone once more, “what do you think of my motor?”

“I think,” said Rosemary soberly, “that if I hadn’t spent a month’s pay having it put in order, we would not be here at all. It would never have carried us through the storm had it not been for that. So—o! Chalk up one big mark for the Flying Corntassel from Kansas.”

“What? You?” Willie stared.

“Yes,” she smiled. “I did that. But forget it. Only take a solemn vow with yourself and me that you will never, never go into the air again unless a mechanic’s seal of ‘Perfect’ is stamped upon your plane! The little French girl was right—life _is_ God’s most beautiful gift.”

“I will,” said the boy soberly, “if anyone really cares.”

“God cares.” Rosemary spoke soberly, too. “Your mother cares, and I care. That should be enough.”

“Yes,” said Willie huskily, “it is enough.”

Next morning there was a gypsy party in Danby Force’s garden. Over a brightly glowing fire luscious steaks were broiling. The aroma of coffee and all manner of good things to eat filled the air. Jeanne was there and Florence, Willie, Rosemary, Madame Bihari, Danby Force and his mother—a very merry party indeed. By the help of all, a cloud had been driven away from the skies above Happy Vale. Why should they not be merry?

“Tomorrow,” Florence said to Danby Force at the end of the glorious evening, “I shall fly away with my little gypsy friend, Petite Jeanne. I shall not return. But wherever I am, whatever I do, I shall not forget Happy Vale.”

“Nor shall Happy Vale ever forget you,” Danby replied solemnly.

And what happened next to all these people who have become your friends? Well, if you watch for a book called _The Crystal Ball_ and read it you will hear more about them.

Transcriber’s Notes

--Copyright notice provided as in the original printed text—this e-text is public domain in the country of publication.

--Silently corrected palpable typos; left non-standard spellings and dialect unchanged.

--In the text versions, included italics inside _underscores_ (the HTML version replicates the format of the original.)