CHAPTER XVII.
A FREAK OF FATE.
One afternoon, a few days subsequent to their return from the last air voyage with Strogoff, and while the boys were engaged in making repairs and generally overhauling the No. 3’s, who should appear on the aviation grounds but the selfsame sergeant wearing a brand-new uniform and a profoundly long face.
“I do not really know,” he said, drawing closer to the young aviators, “why I should want to tell you anything about the latest jolt I have received in connection with that Ricker deal, but as you were in the game from first to last, it just seems as though you have a right to share in all the details, though it sort of rubs it in on myself.”
“What’s the news, sergeant; give it to us straight.”
Billy’s bump of curiosity was apparently incurable.
“Neither that prince of rascals, Ricker, nor any of his lieutenants were in the party that gave us the slip on the plain. One of our ‘quiet friends’ in the Bzura river region has just reported the presence there of the one-time silversmith, another of the spies we know as Casper, and the Tartar crank, blast his whiskers.”
“Who then ran off with the collier?” inquired Henri.
“That is where I am still guessing,” continued the sergeant, “but I am letting the Cossacks take care of them. No doubt they were bought, body and breeches, and delivered the goods by putting the marked men across the Vistula.”
“Why didn’t you nip Ricker at the outset?” asked Billy.
“Never suspected him until the time the clock was found in the fallen walls of the storehouse, and he failed to report with it for investigation. The whole affair had been charged up against the men who jumped from St. Michael terrace into the river.”
Billy was about to state that he knew all about Strogoff’s official visits to the silversmith’s shop, but it suddenly occurred that the least he said the safer for Henri and himself.
“My first bad break,” asserted Strogoff, “was the night I went alone to that den to take Ricker into custody. I had handled, I thought, worse than he. But I got a biff from the rear with a sand-bag—and you know the rest. I will have to admit,” he concluded, “that for once in my life, at least, I have been bested all around.”
The boys might have told the Warsaw sleuth that they were acquainted with a secret service worker called Roque, who was even a slyer fox than any the big policeman had ever encountered—but, of course, they did not tell him anything of the kind.
The aviation chief was responsible for a break-up of this review of recent adventures, when he called to the young aviators to report immediately at headquarters.
Hastily laying aside the tools with which they had been working on the aircraft, the boys instantly responded to the summons of their chief, while Strogoff started on his way downtown.
“You are booked to pilot a couple of old friends of yours in another flight to Petrograd,” announced the boss airman; “that is if you are ready to resign from the police force.”
He was smiling when he submitted the last proviso.
The “old friends” were the scouts Salisky and Marovitch, who had just sent another pair of tired aviators to the rest ward, after a gruelling trip along the firing line in the southwest.
“Are you up to snuff, my laddybucks?” was Salisky’s jovial greeting.
“In the pink of condition, Brother-never-wear-out,” gaily rejoined Billy.
“None of your duke’s palace entertainments this time,” broke in the other iron man, Marovitch.
In destiny had been indelibly written a certain happening that would be, and was, and in the great capital city of the Russians resulted in the translation of our boys into an entirely new sphere of action.
But the pilots set out on the familiar route without other thought than that, if no unforeseen peril of aeroplaning intervened, they would slide again into these grounds in the same old way. The scouts had orders to return within three days, if it were by consent of the powers that be at Petrograd.
When the biplanes had winged their way along the flow of the Neva to the fixed point for the flight’s finish, there was goodly margin on the right side of the time limit.
Once more the young pilots climbed the marble steps of Admiralty Place, preceded by the veteran scouts and special messengers—this time, however, without encountering in the imposing interior any former fierce foe in parti-colored uniform. By the blood ceremony elected to the Cossack brotherhood, the boys could now look without tremor into the somber eyes of each and every knight of the desert in imperial service that they might pass in the wide and high corridors.
But as none of the Dons with whom to exchange the high sign happened to be about, Billy and Henri soon wearied of the waiting assignment on the outside of carved and brass-knobbed doors. They flatly informed Salisky that this part of the contract belonged to himself and Marovitch, and if the scouts did not consent to letting their pilots go out and knock around for a while it would certainly result in two clear cases of St. Vitus dance.
“Get along with you, then,” ordered Salisky, with a grin, “but, mind what I say, you are not to leave the immediate vicinity, and must return within the next two hours. There is no telling at what o’clock we may be called upon to sail out of here.”
Talk to the winds, old scout, the boys were on the way to the open before you had turned the last period.
It was a glorious afternoon on the great Nevskoi Prospekt, the magnificent street overflowing with life.
“There’s more people out on runners here than I ever saw before in one procession,” observed Billy.
“Doesn’t look as though all the fine horses were stopping bullets on the battlefields.”
If Henri had not early gone into training as an aviator, he could easily have passed muster as a premium giver in an equine show.
“They couldn’t drive ’em like this through the streets of Boston,” further commented the U. S. A. boy. “Patrolman Maguire of the traffic squad would have a picnic on this avenue.”
Hark! What tumult this in the block beyond—this mad haste of fur-muffled reinsmen to guide toward the curb lines—these shrill cries of warning!
A pair of splendid Orloff stallions, black as Erebus, red nostrils agape, foam-flecked, raising, with the frantic pounding of their iron-shod hoofs, upshooting fountains of ice and snow particles, were running a frenzied course directly towards the spot where our boys had been viewing the unceasing sweep of sleighs.
Behind the maddened animals, swaying and now and again skimming sidewise on one runner, and as often lifted clear of the ground, was a sledge of swan-like outline, from which trailed the dragging ends of furry robes.
As in the span of a clock-tick the young aviators had sight of a child clinging to the high back of the sleigh, a little girl, her hood fallen and twisted over shoulder, and her bright crown of curls tangling about her set, white face.
With every nerve tense, and as if strung on one wire, Billy and Henri had a second to think, and in the next time flash to act.
In the passing the sleigh swung dangerously close to the curb, upon which the lads were poised for a spring at the wildly careening conveyance.
With the opportunity, the boys leaped together—Billy went sprawling into the pile of furs in the bowl of the vehicle, while Henri had a close call in getting aboard at all, just managing to grasp the hand-curve of the rear seat, and his knees were sweeping the street surface for twenty or thirty feet before he attained foothold on the runners.
The U. S. A. boy leaned far out of the bed of the sleigh, with lowered hands, striving to reach the trailing reins, whipping about in the wake of the racing steeds.
Two men ahead tried for the curb bits of the high-checked horses, but were hurled aside like featherweights. Billy had a fleeting glance at one of the brave fellows, lying quite still, face down, in the street.
The width of the avenue—about 150 feet—and its straight length—more than five miles—had so far afforded a fighting chance of escaping death-dealing collision.
The action in this saving venture of our boys cannot be followed in its rapidity by the telling of it. When Billy found, with a grab or two, that the reaching of the reins was a long shot, he was up with a jump and at the scroll-turned front of the sleigh.
The crupper of one of the runaways was at his hand—this horse was lagging a little. The next instant, and the boy was clinging to the rein rings of the top harness and digging his heels into the heaving flanks of the laboring animal. Working forward with the same celerity, Billy got a hand-twist on the reins where they doubled to the bit.
Sawing for dear life, he forced the horse’s jaws with the killing curb—but then it was that the free running steed swerved into the path of its mate, and the team went down in a crashing mix-up.
The Bangor boy was catapulted forward, clear of the thrashing hoofs, yet with a falling force that jarred him into oblivion.