In Secret

"I don't know how it happened, Yellow-hair," he was explaining as he adjusted and buckled her pack for her, "and whether I slid north or east I never exactly knew. But if there's a path into Les Errues except through the Hun wire, it must lie somewhere below Thusis. Because, unless such a path exists, except for that guarded strip lying between the Boche wire and the Swiss, only a winged thing could reach Les Errues across these mountains."

The girl said coolly: "Could you perhaps lower me into it?"

A slight flush stained his cheek-bones: "That would be my role, not yours. But there isn't rope enough in the Alps to reach Les Errues."

He was strapping the pigeon-cage to his pack as he spoke. Now he hoisted and adjusted it, and stood looking across at the mountains for a moment. Miss Erith's gaze followed him.

Thusis wore a delicate camouflage of mist. And there were other bad signs to corroborate her virgin warning: distant mountains had turned dark blue and seemed pasted in silhouettes against the silvery blue sky. Also the winds had become prophetic, blowing out of the valleys and UP the slopes.

All that morning McKay's thermometer had been rising and his barometer had fallen steadily; haze had thickened on the mountains; and, it being the season for the Fohn to blow, McKay had expected that characteristic warm gale from the south to bring the violent rain which always is to be expected at that season.

But the Fohn did not materialise; in the walnut and chestnut forest around them not a leaf stirred; and gradually the mountains cleared, became inartistically distinct, and turned a beautiful but disturbing dark-blue colour. And Thusis wore her vestal veil in the full sun of noon.

"You know, Yellow-hair," he said, "all these signs are as plain as printed notices. There's bad weather coming. The wind was south; now it's west. I'll bet the mountain cattle are leaving the upper pastures."

He adjusted his binoculars; south of Mount Terrible on another height there were alms; and he could see the cattle descending.

He saw something else, too, in the sky and level with his levelled lenses--something like a bird steering toward him through the whitish blue sky.

Still keeping it in his field of vision he spoke quietly: "There's an airplane headed this way. Step under cover, please."

The girl moved up under the trees beside him and unslung her glasses. Presently she also picked up the oncomer.

"Boche, Kay?"

"I don't know. A monoplane. A Boche chaser, I think. Yes.... Do you see the cross? What insolence! What characteristic contempt for a weaker people! Look at his signal! Do you see? Look at those smoke-balls and ribbons! See him soaring there like a condor looking for a way among these precipices."