THE SERGEANT'S VOW.
"Do you know what I believe, Buddy," said Billy to his chum, while they
were having a little quiet discussion of their own about the way
Strogoff had been misled; "I believe, sure and certain, that it was a
phony crew on the collier--not a man jack of them regularly on the job."
"Report at once, pard, and get your badge," laughingly urged Henri. "Why
don't you tell it to the sergeant?"
"I'm not taking any chance of getting on his toes just now," was Billy's
reply, shaking his head.
Strogoff, though somewhat crestfallen over the collapse of his eagerly
conceived plan to put the irons on the adroit Ricker and the lesser
lights with him, had lost none of the bulldog tenacity of purpose which
characterized his every movement.
"I will yet put every last one of them against the wall," he earnestly
vowed; "the chief by this time has received my wire, and that coal boat
will be a marked craft wherever it goes. Strange, though," he continued,
"that the skipper should have been so indifferent as to inspection, when
he well knew what he would get if caught at deception."
Billy tipped a significant wink to Henri.
The sergeant, having obtained positive assurance that no man unaccounted
for had either boarded or left the transport from start to finish of its
passage, agreed to the proposal of Captain Walki to immediately return
to Warsaw, and there frame a new course of action.
With clearing sky and no countering winds, the young pilots made the
most of the remaining hours of daylight, and there was safe landing in
Warsaw while the night was yet young.
Strogoff's reception at police headquarters was not such as rejoiced his
soul--the chief had a piece of news for him that had stunning effect.
The regular master and crew of the collier, No. 49 in the shipping
record, the very vessel upon which the sergeant had been hoodwinked,
were even now still in the slow recovery stage from drugging. Only the
night before the whole seven, captain, mate, engineer and deck men, had
been found deep asleep in a dinghy, drifting about the harbor.
"You seem to be losing your grip, Strogoff," snapped the chief in that
steely voice of his.
The sergeant hung his head for a minute, and then, advancing, looked his
chief straight in the eyes.
"For every inch I have gained in unearthing the spy den in our midst,
sir, I have risked again and again that precious possession called life,
and while I may have proved for the once a dull blade against overly
keen ones, it is no sign that I am through."
"Well, well, Strogoff," hedged the chief, "they have had a fall out of
you; that cannot be denied, but, perhaps, after all, you are not
through. The credit of locating the nest is still yours, and you shall
have a free hand to complete the work."
"Thank you kindly, sir;" there was renewed vigor in the tone and manner
of the sergeant; "may I ask what became of the coal boat that was in the
offing when I left?"
"With the discovery of the stupefied sailors, and their identity
established, the harbor patrols were put to work, but no trace of the
vessel was found along the city front."
"No question, then, sir, but that she immediately weighed anchor and
made off down stream--it was not up, I assure you, for I had my glass on
the river from the time we started from Vloclavek."
"That was the theory upon which we acted, sergeant; two dispatch boats
have already taken up the chase."
"And me not in the forefront," cried Strogoff, sounding a note of
disappointment.
"You still have the aeroplane route," suggested the chief.
The sergeant brightened at this. "But no use of a blind run," he sighed;
"in the dark we might overrun a dozen boats like the collier, and never
know it."
"Get your boy wonders and start as soon as you can see, then."
"That is just what I will do, chief, and I would like to have Lowiez
assigned with me."
"Just the man, if there is any fancy shooting to be done," agreed the
chief.
"It might come to that," grimly observed Strogoff.
At sunup the Young Aeroplane Scouts had their second early call within
three days.
"We haven't signed up with the police for the league season, have we?"
inquired Billy, with a slight touch of rebellion.
"They have the colonel's orders back of their request," explained the
aviation chief, "and the officer with the wide front positively declares
that nobody will suit but the pair I see before me. Climb out, boys, and
hustle, or he is likely to have a fit."
"Some lively vacation this, eh, Billy?"
Billy did not catch Henri's remark, for he was over ears in a basin of
ice-cold water.
"I had intended to take a peep behind the picture and see if the belt is
there all right," said Billy, as they passed out of the mess hall in the
direction of the hangars.
"No need," replied his chum; "nobody ever touches that wall relic, and
Stanny's girdle is safe."
Henri's new flying partner, Lowiez, was of swarthy type, and with the
keenest pair of black eyes the boy had ever seen over a human nose. The
outside pockets of his greatcoat bulged with the heft of two heavy
revolvers, and if the carrier should have shown a hesitancy in using
them, if occasion served, a surprise would be coming to any person who
had sized them up.
It might also be stated that Officer Strogoff, with all his cares and
strenuous activities, had lost no flesh overnight.
The young aviators had not been given any advance notice of just where
this day's journey was expected to take them; they only knew that there
was to be a beginning. The end was not until they reached it.
Strogoff was not inclined to be bubbling with information, either, this
crisp morning. Following the boys' usual careful inspection of the
flying machines, the startling words were simply: "Down the river."
Additional orders were to fly low.
Having no trouble to compass a course, merely to follow the flow of the
broad Vistula, the pilots were completely at ease. Under them were the
famous No. 3's, the finest military biplanes, in their opinion, that
ever crossed the country.
In the current below could be seen at intervals all sorts of steam and
sailing craft, iron-sided or slab-sided, modern and ancient, but the
space-filling observer in Billy's biplane, with constant level of field
glasses, had no disposition to waste a word upon any of them.
A certain slow-moving tub, with "49" showing at the beam, would have
caused lung expansion for the heavyweight, but that particular brand of
boat had yet to be discovered.
It was 10:20 o'clock by Billy's watch when a smart tap on the shoulder
roused him from some day dream of far-off Bangor or Boston, and made him
set a little tighter grip on the steering wheel.
At the junction of the Vistula and one of the numerous smaller rivers
emptying into the big channel, several little dispatch boats were
chugging around a large freighter, plowing northward. The hulk was
easing its way at the challenge of the mosquito fleet.
"To the ground," commanded the sergeant, when he had secured the
attention of the pilot.
Billy nicely figured a stop on the river bank within a stone's throw of
the watercraft argument. Henri followed suit with equal exactness of
placing.
Megaphoning through the hollow of his joined hands, Strogoff brought one
of the light draught dispatch boats close to the shore.
A gangplank bridged the way to the deck, and the big policeman lumbered
aboard in a hurry.
"What's the row?"
The officer in command of the boat, detailed from the river patrol,
explained to Strogoff that before passing the mouths of any of the
tributary rivers in the course down, they had been holding up each and
every north-bound vessel for the purpose of inquiry. In every instance
but this one of the freighter, Collier No. 49 had been reported.
"My opinion, sergeant, is that right here the coal tub dodged out of
this channel. The master of the freighter has not spoken a single craft
of collier build below this point."
Strogoff thought a minute. "I am not going to put all of my eggs in one
basket this time," he finally observed, "no matter how fair the
quotations. Two of your boats may proceed, and two are to follow me up
this tributary."
Leaving to the officer addressed the duty of arranging details of the
plan, the sergeant regained the river bank and advised the pilots of the
new course of the biplanes.
Hardly twenty-five miles had been traversed, when the aviation party,
even as one man, caught sight of a hull at a dead standstill in the
sluggish stream. The bow of the big boat listed in a way to suggest that
it had been stranded on a sand or mud bar. There was no sign of life on
her decks.
Strogoff shouted an order to descend, and the pilots circled in prompt
endeavor to land as near as possible to the apparent derelict. No chance
whatever for a deck fall on this old hunker with its topside barrier of
crowding masts.
Once on the ground, Strogoff and Lowiez cast about for a way to reach
the vessel, bow-ended in an extensive marsh between the shore and river
channel.
It was not long before Lowiez discovered in the drift, a hundred yards
or so downstream, one of the ship's boats, by means of which, no doubt,
the bogus crew had landed from the stolen craft. The hulk had been
instantly identified at closer range as the collier sought for--"49"
showing at the stern.
If either of the policemen feared ambush on the hunker, it was not
apparent in their manner of proceeding, except that Lowiez, the
pronounced "fancy shot," kept both hands in his overcoat pockets while
the stout sergeant volunteered to pole the skiff out to the stranded
collier.
Billy and Henri watched them from a perch on a pile of driftwood.
"I can't see to save my neck," observed the Bangor boy, "why that Ricker
crowd, with all their daring and cunning, didn't paint a new number on
the collier, change the papers to suit, and bluff their way nearer to
the Austrian border before they shook the ship."
"For the reason," argued Henri, "that the live-brained leader counted
upon aeroplane pursuit and no chance in the world to escape capture on
the open waterway."
"There's something in that, come to think of it," admitted Billy, "but
there is also some pretty hard sledding ahead of them in the bleak
country back of us," indicating by an overshoulder look at the great
barrens stretching away to the horizon.
"All the more room to hide," observed Henri.
"And to starve and freeze," added his chum.
They could see the two policemen moving about the upper deck of the
collier, but the fact that their search was soundless made it plain to
the watchers that it was a sure thing that the hull had been deserted.
Now in the distance could be heard the chug, chug of the fast-coming
dispatch boats.
As they finally drew alongside the stranded vessel, Strogoff and his
comrade lowered themselves by the side chains to the deck of the first
comer, which then turned toward the shore.
The boys were wondering what the next move would be.
The answer was embodied in a pair of long, sinuous shapes, tawny-hided
and slather-jawed, sleepily stretched full length in the cuddyhouse of
the little craft.
The fugitives were to be trailed across the steppes by Siberian
bloodhounds!