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!