Air Service Boys Over The Rhine Part 8

"That's it. A bomb, dropped from an aeroplane, would, very likely, be only a sort of round affair, set to explode on contact or by a time fuse. But if it was a sh.e.l.l fired from a long-range gun, there might be enough of it left, after the explosion, to observe the rifling."

"There isn't a gun with a range long enough to reach Paris from the nearest German lines, unless they have broken through," said Jack.

"Well, the last may have happened; though I should think we'd have got some word of it in that case. There'd be fierce fighting if the Germans tried that, and we'd rush reinforcements out in taxicabs as the Paris soldiers went out once before."

"Do you think then," asked Jack, as they went back, after their brief respite, to their appalling labors, "that they have a gun long enough to fire from their nearest point, which is about seventy miles from this city?"

"I don't know what to think," remarked Tom. "It seems like a wild dream to speak of a gun that can shoot so far; and yet reality is over-topping many wild dreams these days. I'm going to reserve judgment. My chief concern now, though of course I'm not going to let it interfere with my work, is to find my father. If he should have been in here, Jack--"

Tom did not finish, but his chum knew what he meant, and sympathized with his unexpressed fear for the safety of Mr. Raymond.

Digging and delving into the ruins, they brought out the racked and maimed bodies, and there was more than one whose eyes were wet with tears, while in their hearts wild and justifiable rage was felt at the ruthless Germans.

Ten had been killed and nearly twice that number wounded in the third sh.e.l.l from the Hun cannon.

From a policeman Tom learned that one of the two buildings that had been demolished was the number given by Mr. Raymond as the place he would stay.

"The place he picked out may have been full, and he might have gone somewhere else," said Tom. "We've got to find out about that, Jack."

"That's right. I should think the best person, or persons, to talk to would be the janitors, or '_concierges_,' as they call 'em here."

"I'll do that," responded Tom.

Aided by an army officer, to whom the boys had recommended themselves, not only by reason of their rank, but because of their good work in the emergency, they found a man who was in charge of all three buildings as a renting agent. Fortunately he had his books, which he had saved from the wreck.

"You ask for a Monsieur Raymond," he said, as he scanned the begrimed pages. "Yes, he was here. It was in the middle building he had a room."

"In the one that was destroyed?" asked Tom, his heart sinking.

"I regret to say it--yes."

"Then I--then it may be all up with poor old dad!" and Tom, with a masterful effort, restrained his grief, while Jack gripped his chum's hand hard.

CHAPTER VIII

WHERE IS MR. RAYMOND?

Tom Raymond, having gone through a hard school since he began flying for France, soon recovered almost complete mastery of himself. The first shock was severe, but when it was over he was able to think clearly.

Indeed the faculty of thinking clearly in times of great danger is what makes great aviators. For in no other situation is a clear and quick brain so urgently needed.

"Well, I'm sure of one thing, Jack," said Tom, as they walked away from the fateful ruins. "Of those we helped carry out none was my father. He wasn't among the injured or dead."

"I'm sure of that, too. Still we mustn't count too much on it, Tom. I don't want you to have false hopes. We must make sure."

"Yes, I'm going to. We'll visit the hospitals and morgues, and talk with the military and police authorities. In these war times there is a record of everybody and everything kept, so it ought to be easy to trace him."

"He arrived all right, that's settled," declared Jack. "The agent's record proves that."

"Yes. I'd like to have a further talk with that agent before we set out to make other inquiries."

This Tom was able to bring about some time later that day. The agent informed the lad that Mr. Raymond, contrary to his expectations, had arrived only the day before. Where he had been delayed since arriving in Europe was not made clear.

"But was my father in the building at the time the sh.e.l.l struck here?"

asked Tom. "That's what I want to know."

Of this the man could not be certain. He had seen Mr. Raymond, he said, an hour or so before the bombardment, and the inventor was, at that time, in his room. Then he had gone out, but whether he had come back and was in the house when the sh.e.l.l struck the place, could not be said with certainty.

But if he had been in his apartment there was little chance that he had been left alive, for the explosion occurred very near his room, destroying everything. Tom hoped, later, to find some of his father's effects.

"There is just a chance, Jack," said the inventor's son, "that he wasn't in his room."

"A good chance, I should say," agreed the other. "Even if he had returned to his room, and that's unlikely, he may have run out at the sound of the first explosion, to see what it was all about."

"I'm counting on that. If he was out he is probably alive now. But if he was in his room--"

"There would be some trace of him," finished Jack.

"And that's what we've got to find."

The police and soldiers were only too willing to a.s.sist Tom in his search for his father. The ruins, they said, would be carefully gone over in an endeavor to get a piece of the German sh.e.l.l to ascertain its nature and the kind of gun that fired it. During that search some trace might be found of Mr. Raymond.

It did not take long to establish one fact--that the inventor's body was not among the dead carried out. Nor was he numbered with the injured in the hospitals. Careful records had been kept, and no one at all answering to his description had been taken out or cared for.

And yet, of course, there was the nerve-racking possibility that he might have been so terribly mutilated that his body was beyond all human semblance. The place where his room had been was a ma.s.s of splintered wood and crumbled masonry. There was none of his effects discernible, and Tom did not know what to think.

"We've just got to wait," he said to Jack, late that afternoon, when their search of the hospitals and morgues had ended fruitlessly.

Meanwhile the French airmen had been scouring the sky for a sight of the German craft that might have released the death-dealing bombs on the city. But their success had been nil. Not a Hun had been sighted, and one aviator went up nearly four miles in an endeavor to locate a hostile craft.

Of course it was possible that a super-machine of the Huns had flown higher, but this did not seem feasible.

"There is some other explanation of the bombardment of Paris, I'm sure,"

said Tom, as he and Jack went to their lodgings. "It will be a surprise, too, I'm thinking, and we'll have to make over some of our old ideas and accept new ones."

"I believe you're right, Tom. But say, do you remember that fellow we saw in the train--the one I thought was a German spy?"

"To be sure I remember him and his _metzel suppe_. What about him? Do you see him again?" and Tom looked out into the street from the window of their lodging.

"No. I don't see him. But he may have had something to do with sh.e.l.ling the city."

"You don't mean he carried a long-range gun in his pocket, do you, Jack?" and Tom smiled for the first time since the awful tragedy.

"No, of course not. Still he may have known it was going to happen, and have come to observe the effect and report to his beastly masters."