CHAPTER II.
BETWEEN TWO FIRES.
The boys were aroused in the early morning by the shrill neighing of horses in the courtyard underneath the windows of their sleeping quarters, and other sounds indicating the incoming of a cavalry troop, created sufficient inducement, at least, for an after-waking peek at the night-riders who had cut off a good hour of slumber.
Billy, the first at the window, drew back with a sharp note of alarm.
“The fancy Cossacks!” he exclaimed.
“Quit your jollying,” cried Henri, unbelieving, bouncing out of his cot and barefooting it to the lookout point. “Jumping jimminy,” he excitedly admitted, when he saw one of the red horsemen in the act of dismounting, “you are right, sure enough.”
“But what are they doing here?” questioned Billy. “This is no stableyard.”
“Looking for us,” slyly insinuated Henri.
“Maybe there is more truth than poetry in that proposition.”
The boy from Bangor was taking the matter seriously.
In the interval several Cossacks, trailing their lances, crossed the courtyard to the main entrance of the building where the aviators were housed, and vigorously thumped for admission. These knights of the plain evidently held themselves to be privileged characters.
Billy and Henri, getting into their clothes as quickly as possible, poked their heads over the stair railing, from which location they could see and hear all that was happening in the spacious hall below.
By what they heard, however, they were not enlightened, for it was in the speech unknown to them, but enough and plenty in the sight of no other than the Cossack who had given them the evil eye in Petrograd.
The aviation chief seemed to be strenuously saying “no” to some question put by the giant in scarlet, shaking his head and handsweeping over his shoulder in directing manner.
The insistent intruder finally accepted the advices given, and with his companions again took to saddle, spurring their horses into a clattering gallop out of the paved enclosure.
Just as if they had not been watching and listening, the boys descended the stairs, giving their usual good morning salutations to their fellow aviators, who had all been attracted to the hall by the discussion just concluded.
To give the lads an understanding with the rest as to what it had all been about, the chief mingled French and English in his explanation.
“That big fellow is Nikita, who has been attached to the imperial service on account of his skill and daring as a scout. I heard a story about him only the other day. Along with ten comrades, he was captured through falling into an ambuscade. Three days later he turned up at the camp of his command with two bullets, one through his clothes, and one through his thigh. He was horseless, but carried his long lance. Without horse or weapons, he had crept during darkness from the tent in which he slept, got safely past the German sentries, and then reflected that it was a shame for a Cossack to lose his horse and lance. So, as the story goes, he crept back, recovered both horse and lance and galloped away. The horse was killed by a shot from an outpost, but I see that Nikita still has his lance. I tell you that this is a breed that never lets go.”
This last comment had a jarring effect upon both Billy and Henri. The latter, however, did not restrain a desire for some direct information:
“That’s a fine story, lieutenant, but it doesn’t tell what this wonderful warrior wanted here this morning.”
“He demanded an interview with the dispatch bearers who aeroplaned into Petrograd on a certain date—the same date, by the way, upon which you were detailed as pilots for Marovitch and Salisky. I had difficulty in convincing the Cossack that the men he was seeking were at present scouting along the Vistula south of Warsaw.”
“Where I wish we were this very minute.”
Billy had edged close to Henri to say it.
The aviation chief further advised that the Cossacks had gone to the general’s quarters, and would probably remain in Warsaw until they had completed a mission, of which he (the chief) knew nothing about, but which apparently had to do with some recent happening in Petrograd.
Right there the boys made up their minds that they had all the rest they needed, and Billy, as spokesman, so informed the lieutenant.
“If there are any air scouts going out to-day,” said the boy, “we want to be on the job.”
“All right, my birds,” agreed the lieutenant, “you will be marked first on the list.”
When at last the aerial assignment of the boys for the day was made they were greatly interested to learn that the flight was to be directly across the river, in which direction they had never traveled since the day they came into the city by the written directions of Roque.
The observers they were to pilot were immediately identified with the general’s staff, and the young aviators were duly advised of the rank of their passengers.
“They all look alike to me,” remarked Henri, as he and his chum waited at the hangars for the order to start—“all except Colonel Malinkoff, and he’s my pick every time.”
Nevertheless, the pilots showed proper deference when the officers boarded the aircraft, after briefly outlining the plan of journey. The boys did not take the time nor assume the trouble of telling that they needed no guide notes for this particular voyage!
The same old entrenchments skirted the mud-colored river, but thinly populated now, for the main body of German soldiery there had joined in the new move upon Warsaw from the northwest.
Billy and Henri had each an eye for their former earthy lodging, and marked in memory the very spot in the battlefield where the French boy had landed the firebrand Schneider for his desperate dash in rescue of the grounded colors.
Of the fate of the secret agent and his fighting attendant, however, no tidings came up from the mottled plain.
Somebody might know in the clean, white lodge-keeper’s kitchen, where the canary sang, but there was no available excuse to turn downward the swiftly sailing biplanes when they swept over the one bright spot in all that forbidding surface.
“I can recommend your license as master pilots,” jovially observed one of the officers when the machines again rested in the aviation field, just at sunset.
The other observer nodded approval of the compliment to the youngsters, and both found it not beneath their dignity to give Billy and Henri a hearty handshake.
The young aviators had hardly completed the housing of the biplanes when they were accosted by a loutish lad attired in a smock-frock and leather leggins.
With a pull at his forelock, the boy handed Billy a fold of notepaper, and then shuffled away.
“Some more shady business,” muttered Billy, opening the message.
One line, that was all:
“To-morrow noon. Sign of thumb.”
“Why can’t that fellow let us alone?”
With the petulant words Billy tore the note to shreds and cast them to the wind.
“Between the Cossack and this alleged silversmith,” complained Henri, “we will have more than enough practice as artful dodgers.”
“Got us both going and coming,” gloomily added Billy, “and no show for argument.”
“We don’t have to respond to that message, anyhow.”
“I don’t know about that, Henri; we might be able to convince the crank at the shop that we haven’t any hold on underground wires, and so get rid of him.”
“And then prove an alibi when we meet that Cossack.”
Henri wore a grin as he put this extra spoke in the wheel of hope that his chum was turning.
Humor, however, was not catching to Billy this evening. The boys sat in silence at the mess table, and as silently stole away to bed.
The young aviators had no call for their services the next day, and Billy insisted that they play a quitting visit to the little shop in the square. Besides, he had urged, they were less likely to encounter the Cossack out in the big city than if they idled about headquarters. His motion prevailed, and shortly before the tower clocks sounded the twelve strokes, the chums were rounding the tall column and nearing the symbol of the silversmith.
Ricker had an assistant on duty in front this day, a wild-eyed individual literally overgrown with hair on head and face. When the boys entered the shop the queer-looking clerk spoke not a word, but simply pounded with his knuckles on the counter.
The proprietor of the place quickly appeared from a curtained recess at the rear of the shop, and crooked a finger in beckoning invitation to the visitors to come back and join him.
The hairy assistant went to the street door, and after peering up and down the avenue, nodded clearance to his chief.
The boys perched themselves on a couple of high stools in the work room, while Ricker leaned against a low and broad shelf covered with equipment of the clockmaker’s trade.
Billy was determined to settle matters there and then and get clear of an annoying and dangerous complication.
“This is the last time,” he bluntly stated, “that we will stand for a call here. Just as I told you before, there was a limit to our knowledge of Mr. Roque’s affairs, and as he did not choose to take us all the way, we have no desire to be dragged along by any stranger. Running aeroplanes is our business, and we are not seeking to acquire any other profession. So it’s farewell on the spot.”
Ricker showed a red flush of anger rising to his cheekbones, but he tempered his reply to the boy’s declaration. “Stick to your flying trade, young man, as you will, but on your service the Cause has a claim, and the penalty for ignoring that claim will be exacted to the last farthing, be it blood or bones.”
The implied threat put a tingle in Billy’s spirited makeup, and, jumping from the stool, he impetuously took up the challenge of the silversmith with wordy proclamation:
“When we leave this place, understand me, we don’t return, and, again, not the slightest bit of attention do we pay to any further communication from you. You get me?”
Ricker put another curb on his temper, and his tone was even and subdued, slightly tinged with mockery as he replied to Billy’s forceful speech:
“You bluff beautifully, my young friend, but for one who was hand and glove with the great Herr Georges you wear your chains too lightly.”
“Herr Georges? Is he another growth in your mind?” Billy happened to think at the instant that “Georges” and “Roque” were one and the same person—as the secret agent changed his name as many times and as easily as he changed his clothes. But he let the question go as put, for a feeler, if nothing else.
“Oh, you know the one I mean, though you and I are seemingly at odds in naming him,” confidently asserted Ricker.
“But what of that?” argued Billy. “For all we know, Roque or Georges is beyond interest in the doings of earth, and, what’s more, we have paid our score and have been acquitted of the service.”
The silversmith turned thoughtful for the moment, hesitating as to his next word. Then, deliberately, he questioned:
“Do you mean to tell me that you knew nothing of the plot to blow up the war depot?”
The boys stared at the questioner in affright!