The Flying Legion | Page 7

of the
inward fires had begun to burn through his self-restraint. "Listen to me, and not a word
till I'm done! You're dryrotting for life, man. Dying for it, gasping for it, eating your heart
out for it! So am I. So are twenty-five or thirty men we know, between us, in this city.
That's all true, eh?"
"Some!"
"Yes! We wouldn't have to go outside New York to find at least twenty-five or thirty in
the same box we're in. All men who've been through trench work, air work,
life-and-death work on various fronts. Men of independent means. Men to whom office
work and club life and all this petty stuff, here, is like dish-water after champagne!
Dare-devils, all of them, that wouldn't stop at the gates of Hell!"
"The gates of Hell?" demanded Bohannan, his brow wrinkling with glad astonishment.
"What d'you mean by that, now?"
"Just what I say! It's possible to gather together a kind of unofficial, sub rosa, private
little Foreign Legion of our own, Bohannan--all battle-scarred men, all men with at least
one decoration and some with half a dozen. With that Legion, nothing would be
impossible!"
He warmed to his subject, leaned forward, fixed eager eyes on his friend, laid a hand on
Bohannan's knee. "We've all done the conventional thing, long enough. Now we're going
to do the unconventional thing. We've been all through the known. Now we're going after
the unknown. And Hell is liable to be no name for it, I tell you that!"
The Celt's eyes were alight with swift, eager enthusiasm. He laid his hand on the other's,
and gripped it hard in hot anticipation.
"Tell me more!" he commanded. "What are we going to do?"
"Going to see the stuff that's in us, and in twenty-five or thirty more of our kind. The stuff,
the backbone, the heart that's in you, Bohannan! That's in me! In all of us!"
"Great, great! That's me!" Bohannan's cigarette smoldered, unheeded, in his fingers. The
soul of him was thrilling with great visions. "I'm with you! Whither bound?"
The Master smiled oddly, as he answered in a low, even tone:

"To Paradise--or Hell!"

CHAPTER III
THE GATHERING OF THE LEGIONARIES
One week from that night, twenty-seven other men assembled in the strange eyrie of
Niss'rosh, nearly a thousand feet above the city's turmoil. They came singly or in pairs,
their arrival spaced in such a manner as not to make the gathering obvious to anyone in
the building below.
Rrisa, the silent and discreet, brought them up in the private elevator from the forty-first
floor to the Master's apartment on the top story of the building, then up the stairway to
the observatory, and thus ushered them into the presence of the Master and Bohannan.
Each man was personally known to one or the other, who vouched absolutely for his
secrecy, valor, and good faith.
This story would resolve itself into a catalogue were each man to be named, with his title,
his war-exploits, his decorations. We shall have to touch but lightly on this matter of
personnel. Six of the men were Americans--eight, including the Master and Bohannan;
four English; five French; two Serbian; three Italian; and the others represented New
Zealand, Canada, Russia, Cuba, Poland, Montenegro, and Japan.
Not one of these men but bore a wound or more, from the Great Conflict. This matter of
having a scar had been made one prime requisite for admission to the Legion. Each had
anywhere from one to half a dozen decorations, whether the Congressional Medal, the
V.C., the Croix de Guerre, the Order of the Rising Sun, or what-not.
Not one was in uniform. That would have made their arrival far too conspicuous. Dressed
as they were, in mufti, even had anyone noted their coming, it could not have been
interpreted as anything but an ordinary social affair.
Twenty-nine men, all told, gathered in the observatory, clearly illuminated by the hidden
lights. All were true blue, all loyal to the core, all rusting with ennui, all drawn thither by
the lure of the word that had been passed them in club and office, on the golf links, in the
street. All had been pledged, whether they went further or not, to keep this matter secret
as the grave.
Some were already known to each other. Some needed introduction. Such introduction
consumed a few minutes, even after the last had come and been checked off on the
Master's list, in cipher code. The brightly lighted room, behind its impenetrable curtains,
blued with tobacco-smoke; but no drop of wine or spirits was visible.
The Master, at the head of the table, sat with his list and took account of the gathering.
Each man, as his name was called, gave that name in