ly to
secure his own escape, was likely to prove a death blow to the German
hopes of secrecy.

Frank could not hear what the Germans were saying, but he had no
intention of getting closer in an attempt to do so. Instead, having
satisfied himself that there were no pickets behind the burning inn, he
began crawling cautiously to the rear. It was a difficult task,
especially so because of the petrol, which was no light burden. But he
managed to get well out of the lighted zone and then he decided that it
would be safe to straighten up and walk along.

As he went along the burning building served him well. It gave him a
fixed landmark from which he could lay his course to the spot where he
had left the monoplane and Captain Greene. By looking back from time to
time he could correct his course, when he was crossing fields. And so
without the guidance of roads, and partly to make better time and partly
to avoid stray German pickets, he chose to stay away almost entirely
from the roads and go across country.

From the fields in which they had descended to the inn the distance, as
nearly as he had been able to guess it, was about a mile. He shortened
this somewhat on the return trip. And he was within a quarter of a mile
of the meeting place when he became suddenly conscious of something that
was not just right. At first he was tempted to stop, but he overcame the
temptation. The thing that had warned him of a possible danger was a
trifling noise, yet one that was out of the ordinary. What the noise was
he could scarcely have told. Perhaps the breaking of a twig, perhaps the
slipping of a foot along a suddenly encountered patch of mud. At any
rate he was sure that he had been followed.

He slowed down and now he could hear, or thought he could, the heavy
breathing of at least two men. He was not certain of this; he was
willing to admit to himself that he might be fancying it.

"If they're after me, why don't they take me?" he wondered to himself.
But the explanation came to him almost as soon as he had asked himself
the question. Whoever was following him could reason from the sight of
the can of petrol he was carrying that he was going to some definite
place where that petrol was wanted. And it would require no great
stretch of the imagination for his trailers to decide that he must be
carrying fuel to the aeroplane that had worked such havoc with the
German plans.

"They think I'll lead them to the 'plane," he thought.