The motor-boat swiftly threaded its way into the Seine, guided with the greatest skill, for it was a crowded waterway, and landing was made at the base of a stone staircase leading to extensive grounds, surrounding one of those old time mansions still holding its dignity against the modern building advances and commercial activity now prevailing in what was once Havre de Grace,[169] named from a chapel of Notre Dame de Grace, founded in 1509. From a large bay window of an upper room of the mansion, to which the boys were taken by order of the man with the empty sleeve, they could see great ship building yards and the tall chimneys of sugar refineries.
Looking at the tapestry-hung walls, Billy remarked: “This reminds me of Arras.”
“Sure, it does,” agreed Henri. “But,” he added, “without the noise of the big guns.”
“Wonder if it isn’t train time?”
Jimmy evidently did not approve of all this ceremony over the short journey still before them.
“You’d think it was an affair of state,” he concluded.
“But you must remember, Jimmy,” advised Henri, “that Paris is something of a closed town, these days. They are not advertising for visitors up there, unless they come in uniform, and of the right color. I, for one, don’t want to be searched,” feeling for the packet inside his shirt-front, and giving also a tug to the treasure belt.
“Right you are,” approved Billy, “and when you figure that we haven’t a passport among us. Mine was soaked to a pulp when that old scow blew up and strewed the sea with us. I couldn’t this minute prove that I was from Bangor.”
“We’re all members of the Don’t Worry club,[170] and we have always alighted on our feet,” was Henri’s cheerful view. “Besides, we’re traveling under sealed orders, so to speak, and it’s up to the fellow who is personally conducting this excursion.”
The last mentioned personage just then put in appearance, smiling and making apology for being so long away from his guests.
“I have some rare good news for you,” he impressively announced—“and a plan that will be much to your liking, I think”—looking at Henri, and with a side glance at Billy.
“The letter from my friend, whose name I shall not mention, and which monsieur the captain handed to me, I had not read until I left you, and I knew not until the reading that of the air two of you are masters. It is splendid, and it so beautifully fits. Pardon the enthusiasm of a Frenchman, but so superb is the idea, I must speak this way. You shall go to Paris, not among the locked in of the railway carriages, not in the cabin of some little steamer—like a bird you shall go. Is it not grand?”
Billy had begun to believe that the speaker had stopped too often in the cafés during the visit downtown, but so convincing was the statement which followed that he felt sorry for holding such a belief:
“In this port there have just arrived three of[171] the new military a?roplanes, so much larger than the little ones that have been sent out from the forts in Paris for scouting—these bigger ones give room for an observer to move and signal, and the pilot may attend alone to his duty of managing the machine.
“You understand the foreign make?”
It would evidently have been a so............