Part 2

“Wha—what’s that?” Dave’s voice trembled as he came to a dead stop.

“That’s old Jock! Something terrible is happening. Here!” Brand thrust the automatic into Dave’s hand. “You know how to use it. Press the handle, that’s all. March him down into the pasture. Don’t hesitate to shoot. This is war—our war!” He was gone. As he dashed through the brush, Brand felt his blood fairly boiling in his veins. “If anything serious has happened to good old Jock,” he thought savagely, “if one of those devils harms the old man I’ll tear him to pieces with my bare hands!”

Since no further sound reached him, guided only by that one agonizing roar, he made his way as best he could along the slope. Then breaking through a cluster of young beech-trees, he stopped short to stare. The little tableau before him seemed unreal. It might have been taken from some picture.

A young man dressed in civilian clothes, minus a coat, lay flat upon the ground. His eyes gleaming, white teeth showing in a snarl, a golden collie lay with his fore-paws on the prostrate man’s chest. Over them, leaning on his crutch, towered a great gray-haired one-legged Scot. He was saying: “Keep ’im Flash! Don’t ye let ’im stir an inch!”

At the same moment, from the pasture below came the confused murmur of many voices. This was followed by a shout: “Come on, men. They’re ’iding up ’ere somewheres!”

_Chapter IV_ Hans Schlitz

While the sound of voices from below grew louder, Jock said in a steady voice:

“He was changin’ to civies.”

“His uniform must be hidden somewhere close,” suggested Dave.

“Aye. That it must,” Jock agreed.

Brand was not long in locating the uniform half hidden by dead leaves. In a pocket he found an automatic.

“It’s good he didn’t have that in his hand,” said the sturdy Scot, “else I shouldn’t ha’e been here. I caught him doin’ the lightnin’ change act.

“Plannin’ to do the spy act, eh?” He spoke to the man on the ground. The answer was a surly curse.

“All right.” Brand spoke quietly to the dog. “Let him up.”

Flash looked at Jock, read an answer in his eyes, then left his post.

“Get up.” There was a sound like clinking steel in the English lad’s voice.

“He knocked me over,” Jock explained quietly. “That was easy enough, an’ me with but one leg. Then he went on to finish me off. He’s got astonishin’ strong hands, that lad has. He’s all for shakin’ a man. If it hadn’t been fer good auld Flash now—”

“He would have killed you.” Chilled hate was in Brand’s voice.

All of a sudden hands parted the branches of a small oak and there stood the brawny blacksmith from Warmington, the village below Ramsey Farm. He carried an antique fowling-piece.

“So you got one of ’em? That’s grand, me boys!” he approved. “Where now would you say the others be?”

By that time a dozen members of the Home Guard had gathered in.

“My friend from America, David Barnes, has one of them just up here a little way,” Brand replied.

“I’ll say you’ve done a fine job of it,” the blacksmith approved.

“And now then.” He turned to the prisoner. “What may your name be?” He drew pencil and notebook from his pocket.

For a moment the Nazi stood sullenly silent.

“Come now,” the blacksmith insisted. “It’s part of the regulations.”

“Hans Schlitz,” came in a low, defiant voice.

“Hans Schlitz!” The words sprang unbidden from Brand’s voice. “That’s the name of the prisoner who worked on our farm during the World War!”

“I’m his son,” the prisoner snarled. “I’ve paid you a visit to square accounts. I’m sorry we missed.”

“So you meant to bomb our house!” Brand stared almost in unbelief.

“Why not? Your father treated my father, a prisoner of war, like a dog.”

“That,” said the gray-haired blacksmith, “is not the truth. I mind it well. He was housed and fed as one of the family. He worked no harder than the men of the household. He—”

“That’s a lie!” the prisoner snarled. A crimson flush o’erspread the giant blacksmith’s face. He took a step forward. Then he muttered low—“No. It won’t do. Not at all it won’t do. Not to be brawlin’ with a swine like him.”

He stood there for a moment, head bowed as if in prayer. Then his head lifted as he said:

“Here you, Bill and Hugh, take this fellow to the guard house.

“The rest of you,” he waved an arm, “spread out an’ search for the one that’s still free. There was three of them, you all mind countin’.”

There was a murmur of assent. Then they were away. “Come on,” Brand said to Dave after the first man they had captured had been turned over to the blacksmith and a companion. “All this leaves me a bit groggy. Think of their deliberately planning to blow our house off the map!”

“Terrible!” Dave agreed.

“And my father did treat that prisoner well,” Brand said. “I remember his telling of it many times. We saw where their plane cracked up.” Brand’s voice rose. “Finding that plane is important. That third fellow may have been there and finished wrecking it. If not, we’ll be the first to look it over.”

The discovering of the wreck was no great task. The plane had cut a path through a cluster of young trees. In doing this it had stripped off its wings, but its cabin, motor, and instrument board had been left in fair condition.

“The R. A. F. will want to look at this,” Brand said. “They’ll want to know if the Huns have discovered any new tricks,—a bomb sight, or something like that.”

He tried the cabin door. It stuck. Seizing a bar from the smashed landing gear he pried the door open. As he did so something fell at his feet. It was a long, flat pigskin billfold.

Throwing back the flap, he pulled out a handful of papers. The first of these appeared to be some sort of flying orders. He could not read the German print, but the names, written in by hand, were plain enough.

“Fritz Steinbeck,” the boy read aloud. “That may be the dark-haired fellow we caught first.”

“What are the other names?” Dave asked.

“Hans Schlitz, and Nicholas Schlitz. Sayee—” Brand stared. “They may be brothers.”

“And they are!” he exclaimed in a low, tense whisper ten seconds later. “Look! Here’s their picture together.” He held up a thin card.

“Look almost like twins,” Dave suggested.

“Nope,” Brand concluded after a second look. “The one we caught is the older of the two. I only hope,” his brow wrinkled, “that they get this fellow Nicholas. If they don’t—well—” he heaved a deep sigh. “His name may be Nicholas, but for us, if he harbors a grudge, as his brother surely does, he may prove to be Old Nick, the devil himself.” He did his best to suppress a shudder. “I’ll put this in my pocket.” He stowed the billfold away. “Turn it in at the airport tomorrow. Mother will be down tonight. I want to talk the affair over with her.

“Hey, you!” he called a moment later as a boy who could scarcely have been past sixteen put in an appearance. “You’ve got a gun.”

“That I have,” the boy grinned.

“Want a job?”

“That I do. I’m tired of tramping.”

“Right. You just keep an eye on this wreck until someone from the R. A. F. comes along.”

“A Royal Air Force man.” The boy grinned again. “I’ll sure enough be glad to meet one.”

“You’ll get a chance, all right,” Brand promised. “They won’t miss this.”

To Dave he said: “Come on. We’ll go down now.”

They made their way through the shadows cast by young trees in silence. Arrived at the upper side of the broad meadow overlooking the homestead and the village beyond, as if struck by the beauty of the view, they paused to stand there motionless.

How different were their thoughts at that moment!

The American boy was thinking: “How strangely beautiful it all is, as if it had been arranged with great care so that a famous artist might paint it.”

It was just that—the farmhouse built of native stone, centuries old, stood in the midst of orchards and gardens all green and gold with the colors of autumn. Brightest speck of all was Cherry sitting on the gray rocks.

“How like a sprite she is,” Dave was thinking. “And how like an angel she can sing!”

Beyond the farmstead was a broad, green pasture dotted with black and white cattle. To the right of this its walls shattered but still upright, a great, gray Norman castle cast a long, dark shadow.

“It’s like the shadow of war on a weary world,” the boy thought.

As his gaze turned to the left his face brightened. “The village,” he whispered. Never before, he thought, had there been such a village. With its winding street following the whimsical meandering of a narrow stream, with its houses set irregularly along hillsides that sloped away on either side, with gardens running back to the edge of a great grove of beech, oak and yew trees, it all seemed part of a picture-book dream.

“And yet,” he thought, “the people in that village are quite human. They are kind, simple and good. The baker, the blacksmith, the cobbler, and all the rest,—how really wonderful they are! And so kind to a stranger! And yet,”—He was thinking what it might be like tomorrow, or the day after—if the war lasted. And it would last!

As for Brand, he was thinking quite simply and steadfastly, “That’s my home down there. It’s always been my home—has been the home of my people for generations. And yet, if the purpose of one man, or perhaps two, had been carried out on this perfect autumn day, it would have been no home—only a pile of rocks. And beneath that pile would have been the crushed forms of three persons I love.”

“This,” he said aloud, “is war. Come on.” His voice was hoarse. “Let’s get on down.”

_Chapter V_ The Young Lord

The house in which the Ramseys lived was large. Its kitchen was immense—large as the entire first floor of a modern American home. Its fireplace took a five-foot log at its back. Walled round with two-foot thick stone, with flagstone floor and massive beamed ceiling, this room seemed the inside of a fort. And that, in days long gone bye, it might very well have been, for a moat—in these days dry and grown up to shrubs—ran round the house.

It was in this great room, when the day’s work was done and night had shut out both the beauty and the horror of the day, that the family gathered about the cheery fire.

Over the massive glowing logs a teakettle sang. By the hearth lay Flash, the golden collie. Back of him, on a rug, the two young girls played at jacks. Dave, who sat nearest to them, noted with approval that their hair was now neatly combed, their dresses clean, their faces shining—“That’s the part Alice plays,” he thought with approval.

As his eyes swept the circle, Alice knitting, Cherry smiling over a book, Jock and Brand talking about cattle that had strayed, he thought: “This is indeed a happy home.”

At that moment there came the sound of a motor, followed by a loud honk. At once Cherry, with cheeks aglow, was at the door.

She ushered in a young man of medium height, with smooth dark hair and smiling black eyes.

“Good evening, everybody,” he exclaimed. “Thought I’d just drop by to see how you liked the bombing. Stirred you up a bit. I’ll bet on that. I—” He paused as his eyes fell on Dave. Dave was new to him. So too were the small girls who stared up at him.

“Lord Applegate,” Cherry began, “I want you—”

“Forget about the Lord part,” the young man laughed. “I’m not yet a lord. If ever I receive the title it will never fit. Call me Harmon, as you’ve always done, or Lieutenant Applegate of the R. A. F.”

“That,” Brand exclaimed, “is an honor indeed. I only wish—” He did not finish but stared enviously at the Lieutenant’s uniform. “I’d be content if I were only a private,” he whispered under his breath.

“Well, anyway,” Cherry laughingly began all over, “I want you to meet David Barnes. He’s from America. His uncle is a war reporter who knew father in the World War. And so—”

“So he’s paying you a visit. That’s fine.” The young lord who wasn’t yet a lord but was a Lieutenant in the Royal Air Force shook hands with Dave, then accepted a place beside him.

“Where did you get the children, Cherry?” Applegate asked, looking down at the pair who had resumed their game.

“Oh, they are Alice’s,” Cherry laughed.

“Nice work, Alice,” the Young Lord said. “It must have been a very long time since I was here.”

“It has been,” Alice agreed. “Quite too long. But these children,—they are refugees from London. Bombed out, you know.

“You should have seen them when they came!” she added in a low voice, with a grimace. “Their mothers came with them. But they couldn’t stand the eternal silence of this place.”

“So they left you the children?” said Applegate. “Good old Alice!”

“Oh, they’re really a joy!” The girl’s face lighted.

“But Harm!” Her face sobered. “That plane dropped a bomb on the old playhouse. Blew it to bits. You know, you used to come and play with us sometimes long ago—with dolls and things,” she added teasingly.

“With dolls! Good heavens!” he exclaimed.

“And today the dolls had their heads blown off,” Cherry added. “Just think! It might have been our heads that were blown off!”

“Yes,” the young man’s face sobered, “it might have been. That was a real scrap. Didn’t come out so badly on the whole. Did they catch the men who bailed out?”

“Two of them.” Brand’s brow wrinkled. “The Home Guard tells me the other got away.”

“Oh, they’ll catch him,” Applegate prophesied cheerfully.

“I’m not so sure about that.” Brand did not smile. “They did find his parachute and his uniform half hidden under leaves.”

“Oh! Fixing to turn into a spy!” Applegate’s face sobered.

“Alice,” the younger of the two children called. “What is a spy?”

“A spy,” said Cherry, “steals secrets.”

“And blows up castles and bridges. A terrible man!” said Alice. “I know all about it. I’ll tell you a story about a spy when it’s time for bed.”

“Ooo.” Peggy gave a delectable shiver. “After that we won’t dare go to sleep!”

“The most astonishing thing,”—Brand leaned forward in his chair—“is that one of the men we captured today is the son of the prisoner who worked on this farm more than twenty years ago.”

“What?” Applegate exclaimed. “It can’t be possible!”

“How do you expect us to believe that?” Cherry demanded with a wave of the hand.

“I’ll leave it to Dave and Jock,” Brand defended.

“That’s right,” Jock agreed. Dave nodded his head.

“See?” Brand’s voice was low. “What’s more, I’m almost sure the fellow who eluded us is his brother. If you don’t believe that, look at this picture.” He passed the paper and the photo around.

“Hans Schlitz,” Applegate said, musingly, “That’s the name, right enough. I’ve often heard my mother speak of him. Gloomy, brooding sort of fellow, he was. Probably went back to Europe after the war to tell his sons vile tales of the way he was treated. Poisoned their minds with hate.”

“Oh—ah!” Cherry shuddered. “Gives me the creeps to think of that son of his prowling about here at night.”

“Oh come!” Applegate sprang up. “It’s not as bad as all that. Come on, Cherry.” He put out his hands. “How about a song. I’ll do the honors at the old grand. Happy days.”

“I’d love it!” said Cherry, allowing herself to be led away to the corner where a huge grand piano loomed out of the shadows.

Taking up a candle, Alice carried it to that corner, set it on the piano, then tiptoed back.

With this pale light playing across their interesting mobile faces the young Lord and Cherry took their places.

The moments that followed will linger long in David’s memory. Never before had he seen or heard anything like it. The pale light playing on two bright happy faces, eager for all life, and most of all the perfect blending of mellow tones from the ancient piano with the fresh, free joy of Cherry’s voice. Ah! That was something indeed! More than once, without knowing it, he whispered:

“Oh Cherry! I didn’t know you could sing like that!”

From moment to moment the mood of the music changed. Now the girl’s slender form was swaying to “It’s a Lovely Day Tomorrow,” the next she was bringing back for good old Jock’s sake a song loved by all those of twenty years before:

“There’s a long, long trail awinding Into the land of my dreams, Where the nightingale is singing And the white moon beams.”

And then, springing to a place on the long piano bench she cried: “Now! Let’s all sing, Roll out the barrel.”

Long before this songfest was over Dave found himself bursting with a wonderful plan. No, it was not his war. But he could do his bit, couldn’t he? And he would.

When quite out of breath after her last rollicking song Cherry was led to her place by the fire, she exclaimed:

“Oh! It’s wonderful just to live!”

“Yes,” the Young Lord agreed. “It is grand. And yet, perhaps tomorrow we die.

“Come!” He took Brand by the shoulder. “Let’s go out and see the holes those bombs dug for you. I’ve got to report to my C. O. about them.” And so the two of them disappeared into the night.

“Come Peggy. Come Tillie,” Alice called. “Time for a goodnight story. And then to bed.”

“Will you really tell us a spy story?” Peggy begged.

“Perhaps.”

“A real, true spy story!” Tillie was fairly dancing.

“Yes, I guess so.”

At that Alice, the two children, and Flash, the dog, marched into the small dining room to close the door behind them.

“It was the Young Lord who piloted that Tomahawk plane this afternoon,” Jock said in a hoarse whisper. “I have it on good authority, the very best.”

“And he said never a word about it!” Dave marvelled.

“He’s like that.” Cherry’s lips went white. “He never tells of such things. But just think! He nearly crashed!”

“So near I closed my eyes,” Dave replied admiringly. “Young Lord,” he thought. “Not a bad name for a chap like that!”

_Chapter VI_ Lady Spies

When Jock had gone stomping out to follow the Young Lord on his tour of inspection, Dave found himself alone with Cherry.

“Listen, Cherry.” He was more excited than the girl had ever known him to be. “I’ve got a grand idea!”

“That’s what England needs right now,” the girl laughed nervously. “Just think what happened today, and is likely to happen more and more.”

“That’s just it!” Dave leaned forward eagerly. “In all of England there are thousands of anxious people, millions, really, who need a touch of youthful cheer. And you can give it to them!”

“I?” The girl caught her breath. “How?”

“By singing for them as you sang for us tonight—singing over the radio.”

“Oh—o!” Cherry drew in a long breath. “I hadn’t thought of doing that. You—you see, I’m only a local song bird in a little country village. Easter at the church, you know, Christmas carols, parties, and all that. But the radio! I—I—just—”

“Don’t say you couldn’t,” Dave pleaded. “Please say you’ll try. We must each do our bit.” He had forgotten for the moment that this was not his war.

“Yes, I know,” Cherry breathed. “There’s mother, you know. She was a World War nurse. Now she’s directing an entire ward. Alice has her refugee children. And I—I just sit in the sun and tend the sheep.”

“Yes. And you might be the most talked-of girl in England!” Dave was bursting with his new idea. “Just go up to London with me tomorrow. My uncle has a trans-Atlantic news broadcast. He’ll arrange it all. Wi—will you go?”

“Sure! Shake on it.” The girl put out a slim hand.

“It’s just as I thought,” declared the Little Lord, as the men came stomping back into the room a moment later. “Those bombs were rather small. A Messerschmitt can’t carry a heavy load. But they can keep all of England on edge with their nuisance flight.”

“Cheerio!” Cherry sprang to her feet. “At least one Messerschmitt has ceased to be a nuisance, and that, I’m told, is because a certain Young Lord learned how to fly long ago.”

“All part of a day’s work,” the Young Lord grinned. “I’d like just such a scrap every morning before breakfast.”

At that the cook brought in cakes and steaming coffee and they all took seats by the great broad three-inch thick table that had served the Ramsey family for more than a hundred years.

In the meantime Alice was telling her young refugees the promised spy story.

“Once,” she began, “in that other terrible war, the one in which my father and your grandfather fought, there were two spies named Louise and Charlotte.”

“Oh!” Tillie exclaimed with a sudden start. “Are there really lady spies?”

“To be sure,” was the quiet reply.

“Goody!” Tillie clapped her hands. “I’m going to be a lady spy!”

“Yes sir!” Peggy broke in with her high, piping voice. “We’ll both be spies. You be Louise, and I’ll be Charlotte!”

“Wait and see!” the story teller warned. “Let me tell you the story. Then you may not want to be a spy at all!”

“Oh, yes we will!” Tillie insisted. “Aunt Alice (they called her aunt) do we have a spy right here on our farm?” The child’s voice was low, mysterious.

“Hush!” Alice warned. “Don’t dare to breathe a word about that.”

“Tillie!” The younger child’s voice rose sharply, “Let her tell the story!”

And so, while the children lay back among the cushions, Alice told the story of Louise and Charlotte.

“They had lived in France.” Her voice was low and mellow. “Then had come the terrible German soldiers. Louise fled before them. Charlotte hid in a cellar.

“Louise was very bright. She had been a teacher. She could speak French, German and Belgian.

“A great soldier asked her to be a spy. This frightened her nearly out of her wits. But she said ‘all right. I will do it.’

“One dark night a great giant of a man named Alphonse, who had been a smuggler and was a friend of her country, took her hand and said: ‘We will go.’”

“Wh—where did they go?” Tillie was growing excited.

“They went to the border.” Alice smiled. “At the border there was a very high barbed wire fence. You couldn’t go over it. If you tried to go under it you might touch an electric wire that would sound an alarm. Then you would be shot. If you tripped on something it might set off a mine, and you’d be blown to bits.”

“And wa—was—” Tillie got no further. Her sister’s fingers were on her lips.

“Alphonse knew all about these things,” Alice went on. “He made a hole under the fence. The earth was very loose. He had gone under before. They got across safely. Then they were in the land where German soldiers were. And, just when they were breathing easy, a blinding white light swept along the barbed wire fence. It was searching for them.”

“And—did—”

“Alphonse and Louise dropped flat and lay there hiding their faces in the damp earth. The sweeping searchlight came and went, came and went, then came to go away for good.”

“Oh—oo!” Peggy breathed. “They didn’t get them.”

Just then Tillie sat straight up. “Aunt Alice!” she cried. “We _do_ have a spy on our farm. I saw his face at the window. I really did, just now.” At that same instant the dog Flash growled softly.

Visibly shaken, Alice managed to regain her poise. “Shish!” was all she said. Then she went on with her story.

“When this loyal French girl reached her home where German soldiers now were living, she began making lace and selling it from town to town. What was more important, she was finding friends to help her work as a spy. One was a scientist who could do strange things with chemicals, magnifying glasses, cameras and printing presses. Another was a map maker who in shorthand could write three thousand words with invisible ink on a piece of transparent paper so small Louise could paste it to a spectacle lens and carry it across the line that way.”

“What for?” Tillie breathed.

“So none of the German spies could read it,” Alice explained.

“You see,” she went on, “things were happening over there that great French and English officers needed to know. And Louise could tell them. Once there was a terrible battle. Thousands of Germans were wounded. How many? Louise must find out.