THE STOLEN PAPERS.
"MY papers! The report! Has anybody seen them?"
The owner of the wallet shook it vigorously over the table, to
assure himself that he had not replaced the records there, and then
quickstepped the whole length and around the board, lowering his head
again and again beneath the polished surface to see if the documents he
was excitedly seeking could have possibly fallen on the floor.
"What's that?" cried Roque, starting forward. "You've lost the papers,
you say?"
"I didn't lose them," almost shouted the airman, "they were left on the
table, and if they're gone, they've been stolen."
"Hey, my friend," remonstrated Spitznagle, "we have no thieves in this
house, and no enemies to the cause."
"This is no time to bandy words," roared Roque, "shut and bar the
doors"--this last command directed at Zorn. The giant jumped at the
bidding and sent the bolts rattling into their sockets.
The savage energy of Roque ruled all to silence. Even the power under
the cloak refrained from advising.
The secret agent dismissed suspicion as to the active participants in
the conference, and as to the loyalty of Spitznagle he had not the
slightest doubt. The trial horses must needs be two pale-faced boys
backed up against a window-sill.
Roque, with his hands deep in his pockets, a habit he had when stalking
a suspect, walked around the foot of the table and stood directly in
front of the pair, fixing on them that gimlet gaze he used to terrorize.
Billy and Henri, when at bay, were the most keenly alive; their nerve
always served them most in the supreme test.
They faced their inquisitor without an outward tremor; their previous
anxiety was known only to themselves, and now admirably concealed.
Roque realized that he had no fluttering birds in his hands, and also
was aware that a search of their persons was only required to acquit
or convict these youngsters of the actual theft. He knew that they had
not left the room, though why he had not long ago sent them upstairs to
bed was a slip of mind he could not account for. But it had occurred
to Roque that the boys had been in a position to see the table all
the time since the company adjourned to the fire, and whatever had
happened in regard to the papers they, if not the light-fingered chaps
themselves, must have witnessed the perpetration of the steal. So he
changed his tactics.
"Now, boys," he began with insinuating address, "there is a very ugly
situation here, and as I have always heretofore found you dependable,
cannot I now depend upon you to help me clear this up?"
Henri shook his head, in denial for both. "Search us," he said.
Roque, whose remarkable judgment of human nature has before been noted,
felt in an instant that the suggested search would develop nothing.
"Who took the papers then?" he fiercely demanded.
"We were not on guard duty." Billy was inclined to resent this
bullying, and showed it by his answer.
"Strip them," urged the short airman, who thought he, as the loser,
ought to have a word in the controversy.
Roque waved the man away, and then abruptly moved to where Spitznagle
was sitting, a picture of despair.
"Who was in the house to-night besides those now present?" was the
question fired at Mine Host.
"Nobody but Conrad," assured Spitznagle.
"Who the devil is Conrad?" Roque fairly jumped at this information.
"Why, a poor crippled fellow, as queer in the head as he was in the
legs, that I had helping in the kitchen. He lost his job as cook on the
coast line steamer _Druid_ on account of rheumatism, and they sent him
up here to me."
"'They sent him up,' did 'they?' And now when did 'they' send him up?"
"About a week ago. But what's all this about Conrad you're asking,
Roque? I'll have him in, and you can judge if he is worth a moment's
notice in this kind of affair." Spitznagle started for the kitchen
door, Roque at his heels.
"Conrad, Conrad," called Spitznagle.
"Conrad" had flown, leaving nothing behind him but his rheumatism and a
dingy apron.
"Yell till you're hoarse, you fathead," raged Roque, "and the cows will
come home from nowhere before you get an answer."
While Spitznagle was staring into vacancy, Roque stormed back into the
dining-room and announced:
"We've been the dupes of that spy Ardelle. Nobody but he could have
gotten away with a venture like this. But" (gritting his teeth), "I'll
beat him yet. I say, Vollmer" (turning to the aërial recorder now
minus his records), "you have the whole thing in mind and we'll strike
while the iron is hot. We may outride the warning, for he can't get it
flashed from this coast."
The man in the cloak came to the front on this proposition. "The word
is 'immediate,'" he proclaimed.
A speedy departure was in order, and Roque crooked a finger at the
young aviators, bidding them follow.
"You are going to be mighty useful, my flying friends," he said, "and
you'd better be." There was grim emphasis in these last words.
At noon the next day the boys were again tramping around after Roque
in Cuxhaven. The character of "Dr. Blitz" was no longer in the play.
Roque was trimly set up as an aviation lieutenant, and it was really
wonderful how easily he merged into each part he assumed. "Students" no
longer, Billy and Henri were happy in resuming their flying clothes.
"Best becomes our style of beauty," as Billy would have it.
There seemed to be some unforeseen reason for delay, as the aërial
expedition did not start forthwith, as intended. Indeed, it did not
start from Cuxhaven at all. It might have been that Ardelle's theft of
the guide records had put a spoke in the German wheel, but as to that
the boys could only hazard a guess.
It was on the twentieth day after the adventure in the house of
Spitznagle that the young aviators again had the opportunity of
operating a seaplane with Roque as directing passenger, and the
uninterrupted flight brought them to the island of Amesland, for
though Cuxhaven was counted as the airship base, it evidently was the
intent to project the return attack on the English coast from the
out-to-sea point before named.
What an array of the warcraft of the "upper deep"--the great
dirigibles, seaplanes, destroyer, artillery spotter and scout
aëroplanes. The boys were in their element. Even Roque had a smile for
their enthusiasm. It was not the war spirit that animated Billy and
Henri--they reveled in the show as airmen delighted with the life.
In this camp were none but the suicidally brave type of fighters,
and it was only that kind fit to essay the trackless line of three
hundred miles over the sea. From what the boys, or, rather one of them,
Henri, could learn from the camp talk, a pair of the latest Zeppelin
dirigibles were to participate, but the main movers of this attack
were evidently to be airships of the small, non-rigid Parseval build,
for bomb work. The truth of the matter was, the young aviators, at
the order of Roque, were so taken up with the tuning of a seaplane
just before the fleet went aloft that they could not have listed the
starters with any degree of accuracy.
They only knew positively that they were going aloft, and their own
machine would require their individual attention. About 8:30 that night
the glare of a powerful searchlight from one of the German airships
directed its rays over the heart of the English city of Yarmouth. Two
bombs dropped almost simultaneously.
The boys saw the city below suddenly plunged into darkness. Five more
bombs were hurled from the sky. The fleet then swiftly moved northeast,
and more bombs crashed into the town of Kings Lynn. Roque had assumed
no active part as a leader in the deadly maneuvers--his was a thinking
assignment. It was midnight when the fleet turned eastward and fled
back across the North Sea.
"It might have been London," muttered the secret agent, "if the game
could have been played without a break."
Preparations to repel just such an invasion had been made in the great
city.
Ardelle must have gotten his warning across, but the coast towns failed
to heed it.
The Roque machine kept its speed when the balance of the fleet checked
flight at Amesland. The secret agent was bound for Cuxhaven, doubtless
to plan another tiger spring at the foe. He was all for air campaigning
these days.
"You will witness the sight of your lives, you young cyclones, before
last night's mist of the North Sea dries in your hair."
This significant remark on Cuxhaven docks set the boys in the highest
state of expectancy. It was seldom that Roque billed anything ahead of
time, and surely something extraordinary must be in the wind.
Three days later, from a dizzy height, they witnessed a sky battle
without parallel in military annals, and which dimmed the memory of any
of their previous remarkable experiences in the war zone.
The French coast town of Dunkirk, to which the boys had on a happy day
gone by been delivered by submarine and taken away in a seaplane, was
the ground center of this spectacular conquest of the air--the first of
its kind in the history of the world.
Twenty hours earlier a fleet of British seaplanes had bombarded the
Belgian port of Zeebrugge, held by the Germans, news of which had soon
after reached the mystery man, Roque, by way of one of the innumerable
channels of communication with which he kept himself constantly in
touch.
The German bird craft suddenly appeared over Dunkirk like a flock of
gigantic sea gulls.
Explosive missiles fell as fiery hail upon the town. The tocsin sounded
in the high tower of Dunkirk church, and the blue and white flag of the
town was run up.
The roar of the fort guns, firing shrapnel, was heard, and all around
the German fliers white puffs were bursting, as the pilots guided their
machines in low-swooping spirals.
In compliance with the snappy commands of Roque, Billy circled the
seaplane to every point of observation vantage, while the secret agent
viewed the action of the armored Aviatik biplanes, dashing here and
there with the sun glinting on their steel sides.
"Look there!" shouted Henri, rising and clutching a stay to preserve
his balance. The air was clear, and the scene was open even to the
naked eye.
Billy, at the wheel, risked a glance sideways.
A squadron of British aviators, encamped on the outskirts of Dunkirk,
had taken the air to engage the raiders.
One speedy biplane darted straight toward the German craft. Henri saw
the aviator clutch the levers of his machine in one hand and with the
other unsling a rifle, beginning fire at a German birdman below him.
A half dozen armored aëroplanes of the raiding force swarmed in upon
the daring Briton. His machine was peppered with lead, and it was
apparent that the man had been wounded as he dipped toward the earth to
evade the encircling Germans.
Other English aviators swept into the whirling combat, and to the
rescue of their wounded leader. The raiders turned toward the north,
now being shrapnelled by anti-aircraft guns stationed along the coast.
Roque pointed upwards, signalling for rapid ascent, and at six
thousand feet the seaplane, with tremendous burst of speed, soon
overhauled and outdistanced the slower warcraft, making a wide detour
over the sea, thus avoiding the volleys of rifle shots from the Allies'
infantry near Nieuport.
Roque, looking at his watch, turned to Billy, just behind him,
remarking:
"That much in fifty minutes is not often recorded--of these things they
shall sing on the Rhine."
In Bremen the boys paid grateful tribute to rest after the strain and
stress to which they had been put by their relentless taskmaster.
"I feel," said Billy, "like the hump between my shoulders is going to
be permanent, and I couldn't keep my elbows down to save my soul."
"If I could only get the whirr out of my ears, I'd be satisfied," was
Henri's complaint.
It was not long, however, before the boys found relief from the kinks
in their backs, and were ready and eager for the next move in their
adventurous careers.
Just around the corner from their hotel was the very café where they
had the thrill of seeing Anglin's face in the mirror while they were
dining there with Roque.
"Wouldn't it be funny if Anglin were to bob up again while we are here?"
"I think, Billy, that it would be a tragedy if Roque had any inkling of
it."
"Don't you hold the thought for a moment, Henri, that you could catch
the Calais weasel asleep. Oh, I say, there's a concert on downstairs,"
quickly concluded Billy, as the notes of violin and piano were wafted
above. "Let's hunt the music."
A high tenor voice was merging into the accompaniment when the boys
reached the floor below, and they saw that the singer was one of the
curly-lock type, and in evening attire.
What of the eyes, though, that gleamed upon the Aëroplane Scouts as
they stood in the doorway--the artistic make-up could fool them, but
there was no mistaking the smiling orbs under the blackened eyebrows.
Fox tracks were mixing again!