CHAPTER X

PLANNING THE ESCAPE

No breaking in was found necessary. The back door opened readily enough. The boys stepped into the rude kitchen and closed the door, listening for a moment in the silence. A meal of sorts was still spread on the plain deal table, but it had evidently been there for some days. The place seemed to have been deserted by its inhabitants without any preparation or warning. The stillness was uncanny, and Bob's voice sounded unusually loud as he remarked:

"Not even a cat left behind."

The poverty of the former occupants was apparent from a glance about the room, on one side of which was a half-cupboard, half-wardrobe, the open door of which showed sundry worn, dirty garments, little more than collections of rags.

"There is another room in front," remarked Bob. "From the look of things here, though, we can hardly expect to find any clothing that will serve our purposes."

Dicky stepped toward the door leading to the front of the building. "It is as silent as the grave, without a doubt," he said as he turned the handle and pushed gently. The door would not open.

"Stand back and let me shove," said Bob.

He put his shoulder against the door and threw his weight against it. The flimsy lock broke at the first strain, and Bob caught himself just in time to save himself from falling. No sooner had the boys gained an entrance to the room than they saw they were not the only occupants of it. On one side stood a low bed, upon which rested the wasted form of an old woman, her white hair pushed smoothly back from her forehead, but spread in tumbled disorder on the pillow.

The old woman was dead.

The locked front door showed she had shut herself in to die, and had died alone. How long she had lain there, as if asleep, for so she appeared, was a matter of conjecture. The thin, gnarled hands, brown with outdoor labor, were folded on her breast. Her face showed that calm with which death stamps the faces of long-suffering, simple-minded peasant folk. The patient resignation through the long years of toil, through years, perhaps, of pain and suffering, suffering more likely than not borne in silence, taken as a matter of course—-all seemed to have culminated in the quiet peace on the seamed dead face.

No wonder the boys involuntarily uncovered and stood for some time without speaking.

"Somebody's mother," said Dicky at last, with a catch in his throat as he uttered the words.

"Yes, perhaps," said Bob, as he gently covered the body with a blanket. "We must bury her decently. Who knows how long she might have lain here but for our chance coming?"

Under a dust sheet, strung on a bit of string along the side of the room, the boys found many women's garments, of the cheapest, simplest sort, and some men's clothing. Dicky stripped off his uniform and pulled on a random selection of what lay to his hand. With the addition of a dirty cap, found on the floor at the foot of the bed, and a pair of coarse boots, one without a heel, that were discovered in the cupboard in the kitchen, Dicky's disguise was complete. Given a plentiful application of dirt on face and hands, and a couple of days' growth of stubble on his chin, no one could have imagined him a smart young officer.

Bob was not so easy to outfit. His larger size made it impossible for him to find a coat that he could get into, so he had to content himself with an old shirt and a dilapidated pair of trousers which did not come near his feet. No other hat or cap could he find.

Toward dusk, at Dicky's suggestion, they went out and made a search for some rude instrument wherewith to dig a grave. They found a broken shovel and a dull adze-like implement. The grave prepared, and dusk having come, Bob was struck with the idea that they had best bury their uniforms.

"If the Germans should happen to clap eyes on us and decided to search us, it would be all up with two Brighton boys," said Bob. "So it's my think that we'd better hide the certain evidences as to our identity."

Dicky not only agreed to this, and started at once to put the idea into practice, but made a further suggestion. "We might give the poor old woman a better resting place further afield, if we knew where to find a graveyard," he said.

"We can search for one," replied Bob. "To carry her away from here would be the best plan, and bury her when we find a proper burial ground. We certainly should not have to take her far."

"If we were discovered doing so, I suppose the fact we were actually carrying our dead, or what the Germans would think was our dead, would help us to get a bit further, too," Dicky argued.

"Fine! And if I can't talk Belgian-French better than any German that ever lived I'll eat my helmet!"

So they took the cupboard door from its hinges, wrapped the body of the dead woman carefully in the tattered blankets from her bed, and laid it on the improvised stretcher.

"We should leave some sort of word as to what we are doing," said Bob.
"Suppose some of her folks come back and do not find any trace of her?
They might never know of her death."

"When we find a place to bury her we will find someone to whom we can tell her story, so much as we know of it," answered Dicky. "Perhaps we might even find a priest to help lay her away."

Thus, without definite plan except to beam their lifeless burden to some decent burial ground, the boys set out. They had not proceeded far along the lane that led away from the house when they heard voices. They plodded on, and passed a group of persons whom they took to be Germans from the deep gutturals in which they spoke. They were close to this group, too close for comfort, but passed unobserved in the gathering darkness.

For half an hour they bore the dead woman, passing houses at times, shrouded invariably in darkness. At last they came to a town. German soldiers were in evidence there, in numbers, but took no notice of the two bent forms bearing the stretcher. Bob, who was leading, bumped into a man in the dark.

"Pardon," said the man.

"Pardon, monsieur," replied Bob at once.

This was met with a soft-voiced assurance, in French that it was of no consequence, the remark concluding with the words, "mon fils."

"Are you the Father?" Bob blurted out in English.

"Yes," came in low tones in return. "I am Pere Marquee, my son. Say no more. You may be overheard. Follow me."

Around a corner, down a lane went Pere Marquee, the boys following with their strange load. Once well clear of the main street, the Father stopped.

"Speak slowly," he said. "I understand your language but imperfectly, my son."

Whereupon Bob promptly told him, in few words, of their quest. He told him, too, that they were American aviators in imminent danger of capture.

"Bring the poor woman this way," said the priest. He led them to a house which he entered without knocking, and asked them to enter. They took the dead woman into a room occupied by two old ladies, and set down their load as Pere Marquee hurriedly told the short story he had heard from Bob.

Dicky was nearest to the priest as he finished speaking and turned to the boys. The old man gave the young one a searching scrutiny, up to that time Dicky had not spoken.

"You, too, are American?" he asked, as if doubtful that so perfect a disguise could have been so hurriedly assumed.

Dicky's answer was short, and made in a tone and with an accent that made the good Father look still more sharply into the boy's eyes.

"No one would dream it," he murmured. "You are very like the poor dead woman's son—-so like that the resemblance is startling. It is no doubt the clothes that make me note it."

"Not altogether," interposed one of the old ladies. "His voice is strangely like that of Franois. I know, for Francois frequently worked here for us until they took him away. If the American would limp as Franois limped, most folk would take him for Franois, surely."

Franois, it was explained, had been hurt when a boy of twelve, and while not seriously crippled, always walked with a slight limp in the right leg.

Once having convinced their new-found friends that they were American soldiers whose object it was to restore Belgium to the Belgians, they all set about the discussion of what should be the next step.

Pere Marquee had known the dead woman. She had been ill for weeks, and he had been expecting to hear she had passed away. Too much was required of him in the village to allow of his leaving it to look after her.

The German colonel was not a hard man, "for a German," said the priest. The soldiers molested but little the townsfolk that were left. After some discussion the Father decided that the best plan would be to have a funeral in the morning, attended by the two American boys openly. Both spoke French sufficiently well to answer any questioning by the Germans. Dicky's disguise was perfect, they all declared. With the addition of the limp, which he decided to adopt, he might even fool some of the townsfolk. Before they lay down on the floor and snatched some sleep Bob's wardrobe had been replenished with old clothes gathered from a house nearby.

Little interest was taken in the funeral next morning so far as the Germans were concerned. For that matter but few townsfolk attended the actual interment. Those who did were very old folk or very young. Not one of them spoke to either Bob or Dicky. The whole affair seemed uncanny to the boys. Bob stooped as he walked at the suggestion of the priest, and Dicky's limp was very naturally assumed. No sharp scrutiny was given them, though each was bathed in perspiration when they regained the shelter of the house where they had spent the night.

"Not a moment must now be lost," said Pre Marquee. "You must get as far away from this village as possible without delay. Your presence here will lead to inquiry before many hours have passed, and subsequent registration. If that comes, you would be shot as spies without doubt, sooner or later. I advised that you take the chance of discovery at the funeral so that we could say that you came from a nearby town for that ceremony and had at once returned. Be sure that I shall select a town in the opposite direction to that in which you will be working your way. I am sure that the end justifies the means, and I wish you Godspeed."

Ten minutes later the two boys slipped out the rear door of the house. Dicky was soon limping through the trees of a thickly-foliaged orchard, Bob close behind. Stooping under the low branches, step by step they advanced. No one was in sight. A last glance behind and the boys ducked through the leafy hedge, wriggled over a low wall, and rolled into a deep ditch beside it. Stooping as low as they could, the boys followed this ditch for some hundreds of yards, until they were well clear of the town, and out of sight of anyone in it. Finally they reached a spot which seemed particularly well suited for a hiding place, and decided to remain there until dark before attempting to proceed further. All the rest of the day they lay in the moist, muddy ditch-bottom. Bob had torn a map from the back of an old railway guide he had seen in the house in which he had slept, and it was to prove of inestimable value to him. To strike north, edging west, and reach one of the larger Belgian towns was the first plan. What they should do once they had accomplished that, time must tell them. So far they had been blessed by the best of fortune, and the part of the country in which they had descended did not seem to hold very many German troops. Even Bob began to hope.