THE POISONED RING.
"Stow that yelp," commanded Ricker; "it sets one's teeth on edge. What
are you playing the clown for, anyhow?"
Hamar threw back his hood, and with the black mane draping his temples
and mingling with the mat on his face, eye and tooth glittering in the
shaded glow of the swinging lamp overhead, he was the living picture of
a fabled fury.
In words that ran in a stream of gutturals, deep in his throat, he told
the story of the adventure that had prolonged his street
scouting-mission, and here liberally translated.
"I sold him the ring--the very red man that struck me in the face--it
was a rare work; he knew me not, my head down and covered. His dirty
roubles--see?" (Hamar opened a clenched hand, in the palm of which were
several silver coins.) "He has it on his finger. I told him it would
bring him good luck--bring him to the worms I meant. Ha, ha. Go you,"
addressing the boys; "no fear now."
Ricker stood dumfounded at the completion of this outburst. Then he
faced the young aviators, who had been held spellbound by the weird
performance--meaning the actions, for the words were mere gibberish to
them.
"Do you know what he has done?" exclaimed the silversmith--"why, he has
put the death ring on the Cossack!"
Going behind the counter, Ricker took from under the glass case a tiny
chamois bag and shook it over the polished surface. The bag was empty.
"This man, I tell you," the silversmith cried, aiming an index finger at
Hamar, who had relapsed into sullen indifference, "is a fanatic, not a
patriot, and serves not for any government, but against all governments.
That blow in the face went to his very soul, and here's the result. What
he has taken and used to wreak personal vengeance is known as a
possession of mine, a curio, and often displayed to the curious, for the
ring had this peculiarity--it is poisoned. The heat of the finger starts
a poison to work that lies in the setting--whoever decorates his hand
with it is dead in two weeks!"
"Yes, dead, dead," mumbled Hamar.
"And woe to me if the foxes from the division of justice are in at the
death; is it not enough," groaned the silversmith, "that I am now beset
on all sides?"
The passing thought to Billy and Henri--the wearing of the terrible
jewel would rid them of their savage foe and avert a trial for their
lives.
But, shuddering, the boys resented even the thought of such a relief.
The one overpowering impulse with both of them at the moment was to get
out and away from this ferment of intrigue and passion, out into the
free air, anywhere that offered a change.
With this end in view the lads had been slowly but surely edging, inch
by inch, foot by foot, nearer the door, under cover of the exciting
controversy between Ricker and his hairy henchman.
One twist of the key, a pull at the knob, and the trick was done.
But any mishap, a stumble, a catch in the lock, and Ricker and Hamar
would be on their backs.
It was Henri, lightning fast in every movement, who essayed the first
jump for the door. It was done in an instant when the silversmith, who
was nervously pacing the floor, had faced the curtain in the rear of the
store, and while Hamar had lifted his arms in the act of unfastening the
loops that closed the collar of his heavy greatcoat.
The work of a second, and the bolt snapped back in the lock, the door
rattled on its hinges by the force of its opening, and two lithe figures
leaped out into the night!
If they were pursued they never knew it, for a deer would hardly have
been in the running with them as they dashed across the square.
Once in the great avenue diverging northward, the lads again breathed
freely, but wasted no time in making their way to aviation headquarters.
If they had expected to be immediately hauled before stern judges to
show cause why they should be permitted to live, they were agreeably
disappointed. Not even the lieutenant was there to inquire about their
overstay of leave.
"I can't get that horrid ring business out of my mind," said Henri, half
rising from his cot, after the tired boys had supposedly settled for
much needed rest.
"Neither can I," promptly agreed Billy, who was just as wide awake as
when he first jammed the pillow under his head.
"Do you suppose it might have been that those fellows invented that
story just for our benefit?"
"Not a chance, Henri," replied the U. S. A. boy; "that man Ricker is an
actor all right, but in this show he was real; I'll lay my life on that.
And don't tell me that the long-haired guy wasn't in earnest. Steer me
clear of him on a dark night."
"What do you think we ought to do about it?"
No sleep for Henri until this question was settled.
"There you are," said the sorely perplexed chum; "if we go to warn the
Cossack it may not blunt the claws he has sharpened for us; if we tell
it straight it will put Ricker on the rack, for nobody would believe
that the crank who wished the ring on the red man did it of his own
accord, and with Ricker against the wall there's no telling how far he
would go to fix us good and plenty."
"If it was a fair fight like Schneider put up," argued Henri, "it would
be no strain of conscience, but to let slow poison work when we could
stop it, it seems to me, would class us as first-aid assassins."
"There is no other way then," decided Billy, "but to get the tip,
somehow, to the Cossack in the morning."
If Nikita got the "tip" it did not happen in Warsaw, for the boys were
informed in response to their break-of-day inquiry that the
lance-bearing cavalryman had, the afternoon previous, been urgently
summoned by aerial messenger to report at the headquarters of the
greatest of Russian military commanders, a hundred miles east of Warsaw.
On steeds of tireless breed, and racing with the wind, the red riders
had a long start of now these many hours.
"And that's the end of it," declared Henri, when told that the Cossack
band was by this time far away, and by route known only to themselves.
Billy was as deep in thought just then as were his hands in his pockets.
"What's the matter with chasing them in the biplanes?" he suddenly
asked.
"Man alive," cried Henri, "it is the very ticket!"