Thebiplane had hardly scudded its length on the turnpike, when the colonel leaped from the machine, his sudden appearance greeted by salvos, both of cheers and an extra round of rifle discharge.
Billy sat like a statue in the machine, facing a reserve force of grim, gray-garbed veterans standing at attention.
The front rank soldiers eyed the boy curiously, no doubt wondering that one of his years should be serving in the capacity of a full-fledged military aviator on a mission so supremely perilous.
Billy could not understand what Colonel Muller was saying to the commanding officer of this regiment, but he could see the effects rippling through the serried lines, a stiffening of attitude, a closer grip of rifle stock and squaring of shoulders.
The column, solid and compact, the German practice of close formation, moved with clockwork precision down the field to back the general charge against the living wall that barred the way.
"Charge! Charge!" The cry from a thousand throats.
The forces mixed in a struggling, swaying mass, with indescribable noises, the clashing of steel and the squealing of horses, for cavalry had joined the fray.
Billy jumped out of the machine into the dusty road, the sole spectator there of the conflict that raged but a half mile distant.
Colonel Muller had taken to horse and was riding furiously to rally incoming reinforcements for the gray column.
A rattle cut into the sound ruck—the machine guns of the Germans had turned loose, and men were mowed down like ripened corn.
But fainter now in Billy's ears grew the roar of violent contention, alternate advance and retreat serving to shift the tide of battle further northward, and finally stemmed by the final demonstration of the day at Soissons bridge.
Barring the occasional wild gallop of a riderless horse down the road, the young aviator saw no signs of life about him, and he was too far away to hear the groans of the wounded on the sodden field now enfolded by the gathering gloom of evening.
"I wonder if the colonel has forgotten that his carriage is waiting," thought Billy, trying a bit of mental cheer to relieve the strain of his trying position.
The colonel, however, had not lost his memoryalong with his hat, for even then a foam-flecked horse was bringing him back to the driver of his aërial chariot. Mud-bespattered from head to foot, he sent a hearty hail ahead of the pounding hoofs of his weary mount.
"Ahoy, my stranded mariner: is supper ready?"
That reminded Billy of a decided vacancy under his belt, but the glad sight of the colonel was the best tonic for a drooping spirit.
"We will wheel this airship out of the way for a spell and have a bite to eat in the trenches."
Concealing the biplane behind a clump of bushes the colonel gave Billy a hand-up, and the horse cantered away with its double burden in the direction of the slopes.
It was about 7:30 when the colonel and Billy climbed over the slippery slopes to the line of reserve trenches, lowered themselves into one of these holes in the ground, and it was evident that the occupants knew how to convert a ditch into a home.
This trench had a head cover formed of cross-beams, overlaid with branches and earth—a sure protection against shrapnel. There was a long bench of telegraph poles, little cupboards for cartridges and kit, and ramps for reclining chairs or couches, and drains to carry off the rain.
"Come into our parlor, colonel," invited one of the soldiers, leading the way into a subterraneanchamber, which was warmed by a fire in an old perforated petroleum tin.
"It is wonderful what ingenuity and labor can accomplish out of the most unpromising material," observed the colonel.
"Made in Germany, colonel," laughed one of the veterans, "no matter where you put them."
From the business end of the trench a hot meal was speedily produced for the visitors, adding another touch of surprise for Billy.
"Well, my lad, we must report to the general," announced the colonel, who had politely denied the petition of the trench veterans that he try one of their couches for the night.
"You don't mind an air trip in the dark, do you?" inquired the colonel.
"Not a bit," assured Billy, "I've made many a one."
It was quite pitch black when the colonel and Billy rode back across the plain, but the horse was sure-footed, and the way was fitfully lighted by the occasional upshoot of rockets that left a long green stream of stars, revealing the now silent battlefield and its dreadful record of uncounted dead.
While Billy flourished an electric torch in giving the biplane a careful look over, the colonel bestowed a playful slap on the flank of the faithful horse, which sent the animal trotting up the road.
"He knows his number and troop as well as Ido, and will go as straight as a die to the feed trough," asserted the colonel.
"Are you ready, boy?"
"Trim as a ship, colonel."
With a flare on the compass, rising high, Billy held the nose of the biplane in the direction of the heights that centered headquarters.
Small red sparks glowed in the trenches below, and the upper darkness was ever and anon split by signal rockets and leaping flames of light from countless campfires.
Billy, with the aid of the small searchlight in the bow of the biplane, found safe landing, also insuring a sight of the colors to the sentries, who might otherwise be tempted to take a pot shot at the winged, midnight visitor.
Henri was the first to hear the whirr of the incoming aircraft, for which he had for hours held an open ear.
"Here you are at last!" he exclaimed, making an open-arm break for his flying partner. "You haven't lost an eye, or a leg, or anything, have you?" he anxiously inquired.
"Sound as an Uncle Sam dollar, old boy," assured Billy. "But you just bet I'm sleepy."
"I believe even Roque was uneasy about you," said Henri, as he insisted on giving Billy's blanket a snug tug.
That the secret agent proposed to reserve theservices of the young aviators to himself thereafter and during their stay in this locality was made manifest when he told them the next day to make ready for a quick departure in the biplanes. As usual, he furnished no advance particulars.
It appeared that Schneider was also to figure in the expedition in a capacity indicated by his employment of oiling and polishing a service rifle of the 16-shot brand, and the display of a pair of long-barreled revolvers stuck in his belt.
"He looks like an arsenal on parade," commented Billy when the red-haired flyer, in war-like array, passed on the way to conference with Roque.
"There is no peaceful intent about that get-up," admitted Henri. "And let me make another prediction," he continued, still proud of his last previous success as a prophet, "this isn't going to be any pink tea or garden party to which we're going."
"What a head you have," said Billy, beaming with mock admiration.
There was a decided lull in the fighting this day—the ninth since the continuous combat had been commenced, as the soldiers of the two armies were apparently resting on their arms. Some fresh planning, no doubt, was in progress.
The boys wandered around the camp, restlessly anticipating the expected summons from Roque. The latter, however, had not picked daylight in which to operate, for it was long past nightfallwhen Schneider sought and advised the boys that the starting time had arrived.
The moon was working full time when the biplanes set their course, following the turnpike toward La Fere.
Above a farm, which had practically been razed, and on the edge of a ruined district, both Roque and Schneider signaled the pilots to lower the flight, and the biplanes circled groundward, landing near a row of stunted willow trees. They showed no lights, and with the motors silenced lay hidden behind a huge pile of debris, close to a wrecked dwelling, so close that the full moon shining through the shattered roof gave the aviators a dim vision of hopeless confusion, cooking pots and children's toys, broken clocks and tables, knives, forks and books strewn on the floor, beds and everything awry.
Billy and Henri had as yet no inkling of the purpose of this mysterious proceeding in which they were engaged. Their companions did not seem to be in a hurry, either, to enlighten them. Roque and Schneider appeared intent in upward gaze, perhaps hoping that the moon and a dense bank of clouds forming near would soon come together. As a matter of fact, a total eclipse of the great orb above did follow, with the effect of the sudden blowing out of the one lamp in an otherwise dark room.
Curious to relate, it was not long until the moon was replaced in the now black canopy by a small but quite silvery brilliant imitation of the big illuminant.
The diamond-shaped light in the lowering sky flashed this way and that, as if responding to the manipulation of an aërial cable.
Roque was not puzzling about the appearance of the dancing light; it was the message that it conveyed which baffled him, sent, as it were, from within the German lines, and, maybe, of vital concern—aid and comfort to the enemy.
Sentries on the heights had reported night after night of this queer, intermittent flashing in this very place, and when Roque heard of it, he instantly comprehended the meaning.
Some spy within the lines was using a luminous kite to signal information of value to the foe.
This is what had brought the secret agent, an adept in the same kind of game, flying through the night to scotch the play and the player.
Roque and Schneider skirted the ruins, and stumbled over the plowed ground with all the haste that such rough going permitted. The boys, free of any order to stay where they were, cautiously brought the rear. They were mighty curious to see what was going to happen.
Schneider had taken the electric torch from under the pilot's seat in one of the biplanes, and ithad occurred to Billy to follow suit. This precaution served to save the party an ugly tumble or two into forbidding ditches.
The still-hunters had just emerged into a road with a wonderful avenue of trees. The kite telegrapher's hidden nest was near at hand. The position of the kite itself indicated that.
A streak of moonlight breaking through a cloud-rift revealed Roque and Schneider kneeling in the road, and there was a glint of a leveled rifle barrel.
The boys backed up against a tree, expecting momentarily to hear the whip-like crack of the gun. But instead came the bark of a dog—one shrill yelp, then silence again.
The luminous kite, unleashed, followed the moon into the clouds. Roque and Schneider dashed forward, but for nothing else than to use the electric torch in locating a half-loaf of bread, some cheese crumbs and a ball of cord.
The sentry dog had saved its master!
"Nothing to be gained in chasing that fox to-night," growled Roque. "He's deep in the brush before this."
"I'd like to have got a pop at the dog, at least," complained Schneider, patting the stock of his rifle.
The boys having no desire to be the victims of any mistake of identity, marched forward, Billy waving the electric torch, and calling to Roque:
"It's us."
The passwords were unnecessary, for Roque knew all the time the boys were trailing him, but was restrained from objecting by fear of some word reaching the ear of the man they were stalking.
"You gadabouts," he admonished, "you should have been guarding the biplanes instead of prowling around in the dark like this."
The tone of the reprimand, however, was not one of great severity. The boys had disobeyed no order, for none had been given.
"As soon as day breaks," said Roque, as they plodded wearily down the road, "we will continue the hunt in the machines, though I doubt very much whether it will amount to more than a waste of time."
"If I see a man with a dog underneath us, just bring me within rifle shot, young man, and I will show you something fancy in the way of gunning."
Henri, whom Schneider was addressing, mentally resolved that he would be in no haste to perform as suggested.
Conditions, however, were reversed long before this test could be made. Indeed, the reversal, with the dawn, was at hand. The hunters were the hunted.
The thud of iron-shod hoofs, the clank of sabers—a troop of cavalry charging through the woodedavenue—four madly racing footmen in the furrowed field.
Full two hundred yards between them and the biplanes!
Billy and Henri, with much less weight to carry than their stalwart fellow fugitives, and much spryer as sprinters, easily led in the race to the flying machines.
Schneider stopped more than once in his tracks to fire from the hip at the pursuing cavalrymen, but he failed to score a hit until the leader of the troopers had almost ridden him down. One of the long-barreled revolvers emptied the saddle of the rearing charger. Schneider had thrown his rifle away at the last moment, finding his pistol more effective in close quarters.
By this time, the boys, assisted by Roque, who was doing some shooting himself, until all of the cartridges in the revolvers he carried were exploded, had pushed and dragged the biplanes into the road, and ready for the getaway.
Schneider, with a yell, hurled the empty revolvers in the direction of the next comer, then bounded across the first ditch in his way, jammed a shoulder against the now humming machine in which Henri was seated, to give it starting impetus, and at the same instant leaped within the machine.
Both machines were off in a jiffy, and when the cavalrymen in force galloped to the spot, their carbines fell short of range. That they had been chasing airmen was something of a surprise for if they had not been so sure of a capture, the troopers would probably have pumped lead much earlier in the chase.
"Guess he didn't get his man for keeps," remarked Billy to Roque, as a side turn of the aircraft enabled him to look down on the field, where a dismounted rider was getting a helping hand up from a comrade.
"Schneider gave him something to remember, anyhow," grimly replied Roque.
In the other machine the red-topped and red-tempered aviator in the observer's seat was deeply deploring, in no uncertain terms, the loss of a crack-a-jack rifle and two up-to-date revolvers, borrowed for the occasion.
"Hume may toss earth when I tell him his pet irons are gone, but it was a shindy for quick action, and no saving grace."
Schneider evidently intended to tell the aviation lieutenant about the fight before he mentioned the missing weapons.
The next flight planned by Roque was one of long distance—starting twenty-four hours later, and leaving France.
"Good-bye, my young friends, and good luck toyou; if you ever see Colonel McCready again tell him 'here's looking at him.'"
These were the parting words of Colonel Muller, accompanied by a warm hand-grip.
When the flying party finally reached Strassburg, the big German city of the Alsace-Lorraine region, it was a glad day of halting.
They had floated in over a country literally shot to pieces by the concentrated fire of the French and German guns—that is, in French Lorraine—and in the distance viewed the great fortress of Metz. To the aviators it appeared as though the land hereabouts had been devastated by a gigantic earthquake, which had shaken down all the towns and villages into a mass of shapeless, smoke-blackened ruins.
The boys wondered that they did not see more soldiers in the open, and Henri expressed this wonder to his companion in the biplane.
"Oh, but the woods are full of them," assured Schneider, pointing to the small columns of smoke rising here and there from the snow-clad forests.
True it was that these same woods contained thousands and thousands of armed warriors, ever on the lookout, who were gazing across the frontier at the other woods, which concealed countless thousands of soldiers of the Kaiser.
In Strassburg, Roque was again in touch with the invisible strands of the far-spreading web hemaintained. Among his first advices was the most disturbing one that Ardelle had returned and had been making some ten-strikes within the borders of the empire.
The boys shrewdly guessed that something of the sort had happened from the renewal of the German agent's habit of charging almost every sort of disaster to the secret work of his French rival.
Roque realized, as one of the profession, what an important factor is the under-cover man who works within the enemy's lines in the service of his country. And with a keen blade like Ardelle, big things were possible, as past performances indicated.
But even Henri, as a self-claimed prophet, had no idea that the man he knew as Anglin would bob up in Strassburg, though the city was as likely a point as any in the war zone for secret service activity.
When Billy jokingly asked his chum if he had any predictions to fit this occasion, Henri admitted that his second-sight "was off the job."
It soon developed that the secret service experts of both sides were matching wits in this quarter. Reported in Roque's calendar of the week was the giving away by one of his workers in hostile territory of a French attack on the Germans during a fog, with the result that the intended surprise resulted in a rout, and the assailing forcemowed down almost to a man. The mute testimony was in a low-lying valley out in the Lorraine field—700 graves in a space 200 yards wide and about 50 broad.
Then a counter-move, wherein the French had advices from some source unknown of the coming flight of a Zeppelin out of the Black Forest, and three French aëroplanes were ready to charge at the big dirigible, which, after a continuous exchange of fire lasting forty minutes, made narrow escape to the north, just when the lighter craft had succeeded in getting above it for a finishing stroke.
As it came about, and in a queer way, too, the boys were the first to blunder upon a cunning ruse being resorted to by a smooth worker in getting away information under the very nose of the astute Roque.
Billy and Henri, indulging their liking for high places, and having a little leisure to look around, found a favorite perch in one of the famous towers of Strassburg. They were interested, as airmen, in watching the daily flying exhibit of the pigeons 'round about.
"Have you noticed, Henri, the streak of feathers every once in a while that don't stop to associate with this housekeeping bunch? I've seen two of these birds already this morning; they act just likean aëroplane, circle about, and then break away like a bullet. There's one now. Look!"
Henri followed the aim of Billy's finger, and, sure enough, a long-tailed flyer was cutting the air like greased lightning in a straight line west, without the slightest notice of the many of its kind pluming themselves on neighboring towers and housetops.
"They make long visits," commented Billy; "I've watched, but never see any of these air hustlers come back."
"That's funny," observed Henri, "let's borrow a glass this afternoon and find out, if we can, where they start from. Why, this is good sport; we'll be wearing badges next as pigeon detectives."
The boys had small notion then that they were butting into a real business proposition, but one that did not advertise!
They were just curious to find out from where came the busy birds that would not take time to visit with their brothers and sisters.
The most that the tower observers could discover, even with the field glasses, borrowed without leave from Roque's traveling outfit, was that the next bird comer took its bearings over a red-roofed building, rising out of a circle of tall trees, a full mile to the east.
Had it so happened that Roque was in a social mood, and the boys making him a confidant of theirbird study diversion, there would, without doubt, have been no delay in striking at the heart of the problem—and everything else under that red roof.
Carrier pigeons were not beneath the notice of the big man with the delicate touch!
But Roque was not inclined at the time to indulge in fireside fancies. He was hooked up to a procession of events that needed constant attention, and as it was all ground work for the present, he had no use for aviators.
So he missed the first bang at the very musser-up of his plans whom he was, day and night, seeking to locate.
"We'll amble out that way to-morrow and learn how to break pigeons of the loafing habit."
Billy had once had a loft full of pouters in Bangor, that, he claimed, ate their breakfast in bed!
"We'll shake Schneider and start early."
Schneider had been detailed by Roque to keep an eye on the boys, but Henri felt sure that this firebrand would not be interested in pigeons, save in a potpie, so he suggested the "shaking" process.
Trained in the sense of location by their aviation experience, the boys proceeded without difficulty to the sparsely settled neighborhood of the red-roof, which they found to be in the center of a neglected garden, overgrown with weeds.
"Don't see any pigeon loft yet?"
Having been a fancier himself, Billy knew how the birds were housed.
"You might also say that you don't see any pigeons," added Henri. "We've surely run by the station."
"Not on a little excursion like this," maintained Billy. "This is no ghost story."
With the words he led the way up the long gravel walk extending from the rusty iron gate to the front of the house.
"What will we tell them?" he asked, reaching for the brass knocker on the dingy door of the dwelling.
"How will it do to say we are from the gas office?"
"A fool answer fits a fool's errand," agreed Billy as he gave the knocker a sounding rap.
The pounding awakened no sign of life.
"Come on, Billy," urged Henri, "let's go. It's all a crazy move, anyhow, and it was just because we were idle that we ever thought of it."
"I'm going to try the back door," insisted Billy, "and then we'll quit."
There they got a response, probably after an advance inspection. The door was partly opened by a bent, palsy-shaken old man, who in quavering, high-pitched voice inquired their business. The question was in French, and Henri responded:
"We just came out to look at your pigeons, and"—the age fell from the figure in the doorway inthe twinkling of an eye, two long arms shot out, and in steely grip the astonished visitors were jerked inside, the door closing with a slam behind them.
"What's the matter with you?" gasped Billy, whose collar had been given a tight twist by quick-grasping, sinewy fingers.
Another violent wrench of the neck-joint was the rude form of answer. Billy's fighting blood took fire, and he launched a kick at his tormentor which sent the latter spinning, doubled-up, clear across the entrance hall.
The jarred one, recovering his breath, leaped like a panther at the Bangor boy, but Henri gave him the tripping foot, and he measured his length on the dusty floor.
The boys were making a break for the door, when a new figure blocked the way, suddenly emerging from a room nearby—a resolute fellow, with a cold, gray stare, backing up a steadily leveled revolver.
"Been stirring up the monkeys, have you, Fred?"
The fallen man raised himself on his elbow and made the air blue for a moment with his wrathful expressions.
"I'll fix you, you whelps," glaring at the sturdy youngsters who had bested him.
"Stow the threats, Fred," advised the cool-head,who had restored the pistol to his hip-pocket when he sized up the invaders as unarmed.
"What the devil brought you here?"
The newcomer put a snap in the question, but with no change of icy eye.
"What devil sent them here, you'd better ask?"
This suggestion from the battered Fred, who had again regained his feet.
"That will all come out under pressure," intimated the cool one. "As long as you chose to honor us with a visit," he added with quiet irony, "we must get properly acquainted. Show the young gentlemen into the parlor, Fred."
Billy would have started a debate there and then had he not been, as usual, stumped by the French language, which he only understood by fits and starts. He knew for sure, though, that he was in Queer Street, with this sudden shift from the regulation German talk he had been hearing since landing in the empire. It was up to Henri to set matters straight.
Henri, however, had come to the conclusion that the pigeon story was not popular here, considering its effect on the man who had first met them at the door. So he wore a thinking cap on the way to the "parlor."
This apartment was the only one that had a living look, all the others, noted in the passing, cheerless and empty. It was a "sky parlor," beingreached by narrow stairway, only a garret between it and the roof.
An old table, rickety chairs, portable cots and a rusty oil stove were in evidence. There was a wide fireplace with no fire in it. It occurred to Henri that the present occupants of the house did not approve of smoking chimneys.
To get a line on what might be expected, he mildly inquired, with a pale smile:
"Now that we are here, for what are we here?"
He was certain that he himself could not win a prize with the correct answer.
The cold-eyed man could not restrain a short laugh in his throat.
"You are the fellow on the witness stand," he said, "but we must wait for the prosecuting attorney to help us along."
In the waiting time the boys could hear through an open trap-door above them the fluttering and cooing of a score or more slate-colored doves, and it had just dawned upon Billy that there was some particular use for the sheets of oiled tissue and skeins of pack-thread that littered the table.
Therewere no additions to the party in the "sky parlor" until after candlelight. The man called Fred was half-asleep on one of the cots, when suddenly aroused by repeated knocking below. He made stealthy descent, listened at the entrance for a moment, and apparently satisfied with the signal conveyed in the rapping outside, cautiously unbarred and opened the door. The person admitted did not come empty handed, for when he stepped from the stair-landing into the upper room he, and likewise Fred, were carrying market-baskets of goodly size.
"Hello, Gervais," was the hearty greeting he gave to the cool one, the latter engaged, with a well-thumbed deck of cards, in a game of solitaire.
"Hello yourself," returned the gamester, dropping the cards, and coming forward to relieve the newcomer of the market basket.
Billy and Henri were seated in the shadow, beyond the range of the candle rays, and at the time escaped notice. Both had started, however, at the first sound of the new voice.
From a side view the make-up was that of a typical huckster of these parts, fur cap, with ear lappets, corduroy greatcoat and cowhide boots. Between cap and collar bunched a heavy growth of iron-gray whiskers.
The boys did not realize that their instinctive move, occasioned by a certain tone in the voice, had not been amiss until the speaker had turned full face.
Even the luxuriant whiskers could not wholly hide the Anglin smile!
Much to the astonishment of Gervais and Fred, and infinitely more to the surprise of the imitation huckster, the boys at a single bound jointly invaded the circle of light and grasped the elbows of their one-time Calais acquaintance.
"What sort of a hold-up is this?" cried Anglin, in startled recognition; "is it raining harumscarum aviators in Strassburg? By the great horn spoon, it's enough to make me believe I've got 'em to see you under this roof."
"I'll bet you knew that we blew in with Roque," proposed Billy, "for you have a way of seeing seven ways for Sunday."
"You win, laddy-buck, on the first statement, but I'm still up a stump on the proposition of how you got into this house."
"We were loafing," put in Henri, "started out ona pigeon hunt and got the drag when we mentioned it at your back door."
"Pigeon hunt?" Anglin wore a puzzled look.
Henri made quick explanation of the whole affair.
"Ha! I see," exclaimed Anglin. "By the way, you did not happen to mention your tower observations to anyone else, did you?"
This last query had a dead-earnest ring, with a rising note of anxiety.
"Not on your life," assured Henri; "in the first place, the big chief had no time to bother with us; we had no inducement to talk to anybody else, and, all in all, who'd have cared about the bird business, anyhow?"
"Well, it seems there was one fellow who did."
Billy indicated Fred, who was unpacking the baskets.
"There are others," laughed Anglin, much relieved by the boys' statement. Fur cap, wig and false whiskers were tossed onto the mantelpiece, and the huckster was no more.
The baskets had produced a plentiful supply of ham, cold chicken, and the like, and not one of the party could be charged with lack of appetite.
In the glow of good-fellowship, Fred told Billy he was sorry that he had given him so rough a reception.
"Honors are easy, old top," was Billy's jovial acceptanceof the apology, "and I am glad now that we did not break any of your ribs when we banged you around."
"Say, Mr. Anglin, I am afraid, after all, that we may bring down trouble on your head. I just know that Roque will be in a great stew when he finds we are gone and will fairly comb the town to locate us."
The idea had begun to trouble Henri to the extent of spoiling the pleasure of this reunion and indoor picnic.
"I have thought of this," admitted Anglin, "but the danger of discovery is ever the same, and I don't believe this will either hurry or lessen it. Besides, we are prepared, or, rather, had the way prepared for us, to make a run on the slightest warning."
This restored to Henri happier thoughts, though he still held belief that Anglin might have been safer if Roque had no special inducement to immediately lead a searching party throughout the city.
That is just what happened, and it proved not an overly-difficult task for the keen tracker to trace the boys to at least the vicinity of the place where they were hidden.
The men under the red roof were soon made aware of the lurking danger by the tooting of an automobile horn in the avenue bordering the grounds north of the house.
It was a telegraph code set in shrill notes, and it was apparent that Gervais, in alert listening attitude, had comprehended the message, even as the motor-car sounded the final blast in its swift passage out of sight and hearing.
The cool one, in most deliberate way, drawled the words: "Look out."
As effective as if a whole dictionary had been pumped through the window by Anglin's scouts.
The chief calmly resumed the disguise of wig and whiskers, while Fred blew out half-a-dozen candles with little waste of breath. With one tallow dip still alight, and shaded by hand, the doorman then mounted the ladder leading to the garret, thereby causing up there great commotion in the pigeon roost.
When Fred reappeared at the foot of the ladder, it could be dimly seen, he wore a broad grin and a wreath of cobwebs.
"When that flock arrives, empty-footed, old Winkelman will swear like a pirate."
Fred had turned every carrier bird but one loose in the night. The exception was fluttering in his hand, blinking its beady eyes at the glimmer of the lone candle.
Anglin had seated himself at the table and was writing a few words on a scrap of parchment, completing which he deftly attached the tiny roll to the pink leg of the feathered envoy.
Fred lifted the window a few inches and released the bird.
With the utmost care every bit of paper, every inch of thread was picked up and stowed away in the pockets of the three men preparing to vacate.
Billy and Henri were busily figuring in their minds just how they were going to come out of the scrape, when the creak of a shutter, under prying force, was heard on the lower floor.
"They're here at last," muttered Gervais, dropping a hand to his hip, on the revolver side.
Anglin laid a finger on his lips, enjoining silence, and tiptoed down the stairway, the others following in shadowy procession.
On the first floor the leader paused. The attempt to force the firmly hooked shutter had ceased, and no new form of attack was for the moment in evidence. Anglin had removed his cowhide boots, and, with velvet tread, then advanced the entire length of the long hall, motioning those behind him to remain where they were.
He was back again in less than five minutes, and whispered:
"The house, I believe, is completely surrounded. They are waiting for daylight, I suppose, to cinch some sure thing, the nature of which they are not quite certain. If Roque is along and thought I was inside, axes would have been working before this."
"They will find a lot here at daylight," chuckled Fred—"a lot of dust."
The party silently made their way through a side passage to what appeared to have been intended as the dining and cooking domain. Gervais had assumed the duties of guide, and he showed thorough acquaintance with the premises by first producing a dark lantern from a cupboard, and then moving directly to the black mouth of a steeply inclined flight of stone steps descending far below the level.
The spacious cellar was divided into sections by partitions of solid brick. But it was at the center of the foundation wall on the west where Gervais halted.
"Give me a leg up."
Fred gave his comrade the required lift, and Gervais secured a hand-grip on a big drain pipe that curved into the wall. He gave the pipe a strong-arm-twist, and the bull's-eye shine of the lantern revealed an aperture in the masonry, into which the climber squirmed.
Hardly had his feet disappeared, when he had turned about with his head out of the hole in the wall and a hand down to help the next comer to scale the space between the floor and the dislocated pipe.
Billy was given the hoist and crawled over the prostrate Gervais into the narrow passage above;Henri quickly followed, then Anglin, and finally Fred, who lent aid in pulling the pipe back to its moorings.
"'Snug as a bug in a rug,'" quoted Billy, who was really enjoying this method of getting out of a tight place, even though getting into another.
However, the rounded and cemented passage did not squeeze enough to be uncomfortable, and there was steady draught of fresh air coming from somewhere further ahead.
"The good man from whom you leased this property six months ago hardly counted this as one of the improvements you agreed to make," remarked Anglin as they started to wriggle through the drain.
Gervais laughed. "I didn't do anything to the pipe but what had to be done, and 'a stitch in time saves nine.'"
"It is likely to save three that I know of," grunted Fred.
"You can always count on Gervais to think for the future."
The man so complimented by his chief said nothing, saving his energy for the vigorous use of hands and knees necessary to make progress in the smooth channel.
The journey on all fours ended at a heavy grating, through which faint daylight was peeping. Through the barred opening the outlook was into a deep ravine, with a small stream coursing at thebottom, and a dense growth of small timber and bushes rising to the level on all sides.
Directly opposite the entrance of the drain, in a small clearing on the high ground across the gully, the broad windows of a stone cottage reflected the glare of the slowly rising sun.
"There is nothing else to do, my friends, but to lay low until brother Roque completes the scouring of this section. We are well on the way but not yet out of the woods, as the saying is."
This was the view of the chief, and his views were seldom questioned.
It was a rather gloomy prospect, this crouching wait in quarters so confined, but the secret service men counted nothing a hardship, and the boys had to possess themselves in patience.
The capacious pockets of the huckster's greatcoat, with which Anglin had not parted, despite its weight, in the long crawl, contained a supply of food, taken from the baskets before starting.
From the avenue that lay between the ravine and the grounds about the house which they had recently quitted, the cramped company in the drain could hear the rumble of traffic, and once they heard voices in close proximity to their hiding place.
"Giving them something to puzzle about, eh, Gervais?"
"Rather a fuddle for them, chief," agreed thecool one, "and the best of it all, they don't know whom they're after, unless it be these youngsters."
"Oh, I propose that the boys shall be found in due time, but the balance of us will keep dodging to the best of our ability."
"Some ability, too, believe me, boss," was Billy's contribution.
"Well, I believe we can hold our own," complacently observed Fred.
With the wearing of the long day, the prospect of liberation eased the trial of the later hours. As night fell apace, the first greeting to it was the glow of a lamp in one of the windows of the stone cottage.
Gervais moved close to the grating, and fixed intent gaze upon this illumination. In the course of a half-hour his vigilance was rewarded by a sight that he evidently anticipated. Somebody was repeatedly crossing and recrossing the patch of light, now and then deliberately standing in front of the lamp. That "somebody" was making dots and dashes as plain as day to the trained vision of the receiving expert.
"The coast is clear," he announced.
A little pressure and the bars were down.
Out into the night crept the weary five, with the luxurious experience of once more standing erect and having a good stretch.
Having replaced the grating in the drain entranceto a nicety, Gervais led the way down the steep slope of the ravine to the creek, which Billy and Henri attempted to drink dry, so great was their thirst.
"Now is a time when the best of friends must part," said Anglin. "I have been thinking it over, and the suggestion is that you, my young friends, must be relieved of any suspicion of willingly associating with suspicious characters. Gervais, Fred and I have our mission clearly mapped, the cause we serve is supreme, and the safeguarding I propose is of mutual benefit. With you boys here we can have no open acquaintance, and of us, as we are, you must claim no memory. To be brief, you have been detained by rough characters at the other end of town, and you will be there discovered at the roadside in the morning bound and gagged and stripped of all your possessions."
"I am afraid we are mighty poor picking," joked Billy, "but it is all right to give us the truss up, as we brought this shake-up to your door."
"That is neither here nor there now," consoled Anglin; "we must mend the situation as best we can."
And so it came about, at a point remote from the red roof, a passing policeman picked up two much hunted boys who were decidedly the worse for wear.
"You'rea pretty pair, I must say."
True it was, the boys were not fixed for any dress parade when they first faced Roque, immediately after their delivery to the secret agent by the police authorities. The crawl through the drain pipe and the additional effort to give them the appearance of real victims of violent treatment, had served to convert the usually natty and trim youngsters into a couple of quite disreputable looking characters.
It is quite likely that Roque would there and then have put the returned wanderers through the "third degree" of questioning had it not been for a fortunate and welcome interruption in the shape of a messenger, who could not be denied, and who, it proved, brought tidings that wholly changed the line of thought of the stern chief.
"Take these chimney-sweeps to the tub and the clothesline," he gruffly ordered, and Schneider, half concealing a broad grin, accepted the service with celerity.
"You ought to have heard the boss when hefound that you had not reported at quarters last night," said the red-topped aviator, when the trio were out of Roque's hearing. "He took the wind out of my sails, I tell you, and I am not considered slow in the cussing business."
"Where were you, anyhow?"
"In the hands of brigands, of course," gravely advised Billy, with a wink at Henri.
Schneider was so possessed with the prospect of some new and exciting move by Roque, indicated by the manner of the chief upon receipt of the message a few minutes before, that he did not burden the boys by forcing evasive explanations of their mysterious absence.
"If Roque had half a suspicion that we had been in company with his pet enemy, the prince of slyboots," confided Henri, when the chums were alone, "our joint name would be Dennis."
"Gee! If that fellow hadn't bumped in just at the right time, I think we both could have claimed the title of Ananias!"
Billy was a poor hand as a dodger of truth, and much relieved to escape the witness stand in this instance.
The kind of danger with which the boys best loved to toy was again speedily coming to them—the peril of aëroplaning.
Schneider brought the order to report forthwith at the aërodrome.
At the aërodrome an immense Zeppelin airship, as long as an ocean liner, had just been inflated. Roque was engaged in conversation with the captain of the great dirigible when Schneider and his young companions reached the grounds. The pilot of the huge craft and his assistants had already taken their places in the front gondola, the foremost end of which had been screened for their protection, and it was evident that sailing time was near. When the master mariner had exchanged a parting word with the secret agent he entered his room in the central cabin of the Zeppelin, which was in telephonic communication with the front and rear gondolas and other parts of the ship. In the meantime, Schneider had instructed the boys to give the No. 3's an inspection to see if the attendant helpers had properly prepared the machines for a long journey.
The young aviators then surmised that they were to travel as convoys of the monarch of the air, which even then was majestically rising.
Roque hastened to the machine in which Billy was already seated and waved a signal to the waiting Henri in the other biplane, containing also the redoubtable Schneider.
The swift flyers easily overcame the slight lead of the big ship, though it was making 40 knots, and took up the guiding positions. The flight was directlyaway from Lorraine and historic Strassburg.
"I wonder if our huckster friend is in the crowd back there?" was a mental question with Billy.
It was many a day before the young air pilot had a chance to again meet Anglin.
When this journey ended it was in territory remote from that of any former experience of the Aëroplane Scouts—a new battle landscape. It had snowed, and the drab, brown plain of Poland had turned to glistening white. The biplanes floated in a tarnished silver sky, which, pressing down, seemed hardly higher than a gray ceiling. The aviators landed on the clay bank of the winding yellow river, the Bzura, within 400 paces of the German trenches. Gun answered gun across the golden stream, shell on shell spattered into the soft earth, and rifles rattled unceasingly.
Schneider sniffed the powder smoke like a seasoned warhorse. "It's the life!" he exclaimed.
"And the death," added Roque.
He knew that men lay bleeding and broken on the banks of this yellow streak in the white picture.
"You're just right, boss," murmured Billy, nodding his hooded head, "the war map looks all red to me."
Roque, as usual, wherever he went or wherever he was, seemed to carry an Aladdin magic carpet on which to sail, for in the next flight of the biplanesa few miles distant he found a bright spot in this winter scene of rack and ruin—a clean, white lodgekeeper's kitchen, where a canary sang, and where the aërial wayfarers rested and were fed.
"I'll show you even better," he said, "when we break into Warsaw."
The chief also had a particular crow to pick with the defenders of the Polish capital. One of his men, for some time operating with the Russians, had been detected, and the end of a story of brilliant secret service achievement was marked by a little mound of earth in a Warsaw stable yard.
But for the present there were busy days ahead for the aviators in reconnoitering the Russian lines.
Most of the aërial work here was over a plain, flat as a floor. Black dots here and there marked isolated houses, and the Kalish road was bordered by a line of leafless trees with smooth trunks, which reminded the young pilots of a rank of grenadiers.
"What's that bunch over there?" queried Billy, nodding toward a group of horsemen, shrouded in long caftans, wearing lambskin caps shaped like a cornucopia, and bearing lances.
"They are Cossacks," replied Roque, from the observer's perch, "the strange fighters who never surrender."
Billy had later an opportunity for closer view of these reckless riders in the service of the Czar.
The flyers could see that the road below wasthis day crowded with the carts of refugees, trailing in endless procession, on the top of each vehicle the members of the family, the average one man to five women. The boys noted that there were not so many children here as they had seen among the homeless wanderers in Belgium. The same problem was here, however—what are they going to do?
"There they go again," cried Henri, referring to renewed outbreak from the long gray noses sticking out over the top of a brown gun emplacement—belching cones of death, and shooting red flare into the gray-white atmosphere. Then another noise out of the winter-worn copse of trees—pop, pop, pop, the notes of rifle fire, all raising a queer mist over the plain. With all this racketing no soldier could be seen at the point of fire.
If trouble was contagious, the biplane Henri was driving suddenly caught some of it; something went wrong with the motors, and it was a case of get down quick in the long slide, in which performance the young pilot excelled. He landed safely enough, but without choice of place.
The machine was stranded in Sochaezev, a city of the dead. Pale faces were still peering from some of the doors and windows, though almost every roof had been battered in, leaving only the stringers, reminding one of skeletons.
Billy had instantly volplaned in pursuit of the disabled biplane of his partner, and the two experts,assisted by Schneider, were speedily at the work of repair.
Roque impatiently moved about among the ruins, acting as a sentinel, and occasionally turning to the laboring aviators with muttered insistence for haste.
"Hist!"
With the chief's sibilant warning the boys softly laid down the tools and motor parts they were handling, and stood at attention. Schneider drew a revolver from his belt.
Roque, in crouching attitude, held an ear close to the frozen earth surface, and the others took example.
"There's a cavalry troop headed this way," hoarsely whispered Schneider. The pounding of many hoofs, growing louder and louder, was a sound apparent to each listener.
Then as a new diversion, out in the open field to the right of the road, down which the horsemen were galloping, rang out the rapid blows of pikes and spades on the ice-covered soil.
"They're throwing up kneeling trenches."
Schneider had a true ear for war moves.
The grating noise of the closing of a gun breech preceded a tense moment.
By the shifting of sound it was impressed upon the listeners that the oncoming cavalry had left the road and had swung into the plain on the left.
"We'll be between two fires in a minute or so."
This from Roque, as he rejoined his companions standing by the aëroplanes.
"Give us a precious ten minutes and we need not care," volunteered Henri, who had discovered the defect in the machinery which had brought them down.
"Get at it, then," urged Roque.
The boys did "get at it" so vigorously that they raised a perspiration, despite the frigid air.
"It's all right now," triumphantly announced Billy, hastily repacking the tools.
That they had been spared the time required to meet the emergency was due to the fact that the cavalrymen had diverted their course so as to make a sudden frontal charge on the artillerymen from the cover of the ruins.
"Now for a move backward," ordered Roque in low tone; "even though the gunners to the right may wear the gray we would have no show for recognition if we bounced up like a flock of partridges."
So the aviation party cautiously wheeled the biplanes in the deserted street as far as they could from the supposed line of the coming clash.
None too soon were they out of range, for with savage yells the Cossacks rode full-tilt from cover at the German guns and gunners in the shallow trenches.
Amidst the roar of desperate conflict the biplanes whizzed away like great arrows.
"Some speedy tinkering we did in that ghost town, Mr. Roque?"
"Nothing slow," assented Roque, leaning forward to give Billy a pat on the back.
"Where away now?" asked the pilot.
"Back to the lodge for the night," directed the chief.
No such comfort for the boys in the next flight.
They were booked for a journey to Przemysl, the vast underground fortress of Galicia, about which the Russian right end was then snapping like the tip of a whip around a sapling, and later surrounded on all sides by the Muscovite forces.
While viewing the first back-wash of the Austrian forces from the high tide of Russian invasion, the aviators had hurtled through a maelstrom of noise. The yells and shoutings of wagon drivers, the rattling of thousands of wheels over stony roads, the clatter of horses' feet made an indescribable tumult, and to this were added the sounds of infantry fighting.
Roque had reliable advices during one of the stops in the flight that the fortress defenders were still holding their own, and no Russian charge had as yet crossed the barbed wire mazes that circled the city.
Never since the memorable race at Friedrichshavenhad the No. 3 type of biplane attained such velocity as in the finish of this forced run to the Galician stronghold, the final dash over the black-plowed farms through a wet fog and under fire of a Russian battery posted in the hills.
"I feel like I had been hauled through the lower regions by a nightmare," complained Billy, as he later sat with Roque, Schneider and his chum in the Steiber Coffee house.
"I will say," confessed Schneider, "that I never hit the wind so hard before in my flying experience. My eyes must look like two burned holes in a blanket."
"I might say, Schneider," remarked Roque, "that if it had not been for that timely fog you would have hit the ground harder than you ever did before. Those gunners on the hill could not have missed us if given fair sight."
"It has just occurred to me that they came pretty close, anyhow."
"They sure did, Buddy," laughed Billy, following this assertion by his chum. "I almost collided with a shell that sounded like a dozen factory whistles. By the way, Mr. Roque," he continued, "it looks like you were tied up here for some time to come. I don't see any way out of it."
"Do not lose any sleep over that problem, young man; if we got in we can get out. You ought toknow by this time that there is always a hole in the air that cannot be blocked."
"You bet he's right," exclaimed Schneider, slapping his knee for emphasis.
"Hustle for bed, all of you, and stay there until you are called."
With this the chief faced the fire and lighted one of his big, black cigars. He had some thinking to do.
The boys were awakened the next morning by gunfire.
"Oh, lawsy," sleepily murmured Billy, "is there another battle started already?"
Schneider at the first report had gone on his bare feet to the nearest window.
"Nix, fellows," he cried, after short observation, "they're not shooting at men this time, it's wild geese they're popping at."
The besieged garrison was adding to its store of eatables by bringing down wildfowl, which flew in abundance over the town.
"Let me in on that."
Henri owned the idea that he was something of a full hand as a Nimrod.
A voice in the doorway: "You will be 'let in' on bigger game than that."
Roque smiled at the youthful enthusiast, and added:
"There is a man's size job for a half-sized man waiting until you shake the sleep out of your system."
"Get up, you snowbirds, and sing for your salt."