THE RAIN OF BOMBS.
THE boys in silence watched the secret agent as he further displayed
his gratification over the news conveyed in the telegram by snapping
his fingers and slapping his knees, completing the performance by
vigorous puffing of a big black cigar, of which brand he always carried
a plentiful supply.
Billy and Henri were just aching to learn more about the reported
capture of Anglin (Ardelle), just where the "stone box" that held him
was located, and how the "smiling sleuth" had happened to run into a
net that he could not break through.
But they were well aware that it would not be a bit of use to seek
the eagerly desired information in advance of Roque's disposition to
give it, and they did not dare openly to show personal interest in the
matter.
It was not until the master plotter had burned his cigar to inch
measure that he thought to address the lads, fixing expectant gaze upon
him.
"They jugged the fox in Alsace, on the way to his home den, and filled
up, I suppose, with some choice morsels to regale the enemy."
"Maybe it's another case of 'now you see him and now you don't.'" It
was Henri who plucked up courage to say this.
"Not this time," insisted Roque. "He is tightly in the toils, and never
a chance to show his cunning. His course is run."
It soon became evident that the speaker proposed to be "in at the
death," as fox chasers call the finish.
In less than two hours Vienna, the city gay and unafraid, was behind
the three travelers, and their next goal the imperial territory of
Alsace-Lorraine.
Into Lower-Alsace, on the last leg of the journey, Roque and the boys
took to horse, with cavalry escort. They were again on real fighting
ground.
Henri picked out of a conversation between Roque and the captain of
the troop the words "Homberg castle," later that a group of important
German officers resided there, and still later that within those walls
Anglin was a prisoner.
Billy was immediately posted by his chum as to the situation.
Upon arrival at the castle, Roque, in that mysterious but effective way
of his, established his footing as a privileged guest, and his first
move was to pass the guard at the door of the strong-room, where his
chief rival in the art peculiar was confined.
The boys without reprimand were close at the heels of the German agent.
Anglin was sitting on a bench, under the checkered light of a high,
barred window. While his face showed harsh lines of great strain, the
inevitable smile was in his eyes. He arose instantly from the bench,
and bowed gracefully to the foe who confronted him.
"Monsieur, you are welcome." This to Roque. Upon the boys he bestowed
not the slightest recognition.
Roque, not to be outgeneraled as a diplomat, inclined his head in
return.
"I came a long way to visit you, sir," he politely stated, "and would
have regretted had you felt otherwise than you have intimated."
This fencing with buttons on the foils was soon succeeded by the sharp
points unprotected.
"Ardelle, the longer the breath is in you the more you can tell; is the
breath worth the telling?"
"You speak in riddles, Monsieur," quietly replied the prisoner.
"Do you deny that you are Ardelle?" demanded Roque.
"Am I now on trial?" was the counter-question.
Roque extended a menacing finger. "Have a care, man!" he thundered.
The prisoner calmly ignored the growing wrath of his arch-enemy,
shrugged his shoulders, and with a wave of the hand indicated that
continued argument was useless.
"You will have until to-morrow morning to decide whether you will
accept me as an advocate or an accuser."
The Frenchman turned wearily toward the window, and with his hands
folded behind him stood watching through the bars the little gray
cloudlets pushing their way through the blue expanse of the sky. It
might be that this view would not concern him after the morrow. He was
thus engaged when Roque stamped his way out of the room. Henri would
have paused in the hope of one look from Anglin but the latter seemed
wholly unconscious of the presence of the lads.
Under the steely exterior of Roque, the milk of human kindness had not
wholly curdled, for he sadly said, half to himself and half to his boy
companions:
"He must expect no more than I could expect; when we fail we fail
alone, and so alone must we suffer."
It was about two o'clock in the morning of the day when Anglin, or
Ardelle, was expected to read his fate in the eyes of those assembled
as a military tribunal. The identity of the prisoner was, no doubt,
fully established, for the boys had noted the presence in the assembly
hall earlier in the night of the sandy-topped man who had started the
hue and cry in the Bremen hotel, where the French sleuth was posing as
a public singer.
Billy and Henri were tossing in uneasy slumber. The only sounds inside
the castle were occasional snores from adjoining apartments and from
the outside the whinnying and stamping of the cavalry horses.
Suddenly the quiet was shattered as if by a thunderbolt. The boys
literally tumbled out of bed, gasping from the shock. A blinding flash
at the windows and another crash.
Soul-shaking cries of "fire!" resounded throughout the building, and
through the halls swept volumes of smoke.
The celebrated ancient furniture in the castle, it having been the
summer residence of French nobility, was fine food for flames, and the
red destroyer soon raged in conflagration.
Crash after crash, and with each concussion myriad sparks shot through
great holes in the castle roof.
Bombs were being dropped from aloft.
The boys hastened with other occupants of the upper floors to the broad
staircase in front of the structure. There they paused, elbowed against
the wall by those pressing from the rear. There was no wild confusion
or panic behind them, however, such as might have ensued under the same
terrifying circumstances with other than trained soldiers involved.
When Billy and Henri took to the wall at the head of the staircase
it was a voluntary act on their part. The same thought with both had
impelled the pause:
Had Anglin been released from the fiery vortex or still restrained by
iron bolts and bars?
The room in which the captive was held faced a gallery running at right
angles from the main stairway.
Pulling their jackets up and over their heads, the boys plunged through
the wall of smoke on mission of rescue--a mission without result, for
the door of the place of confinement was wide open, and no one was
there.
The rescuing party of two then turned their intent upon themselves,
and none too quickly, for they had hardly won safety when the castle
enclosure was wholly enveloped by consuming flame.
Farm buildings adjoining were also ablaze, and the wide highway
stretching away to the east showed whitely in the glare.
In the red canopy overhead winged shadows whirred and whirled, dipped
and leaped.
Billy and Henri proceeded down the road to escape the growing heat and
rolling smoke. When the roaring of the fire had somewhat lessened in
their hearing, they detected a familiar hum, just ahead and closing
down beyond the border of the rising mist of the morning.
As aviators, the boys were instantly aware that an aëroplane was
working near and the proof was immediately furnished by the appearance
of the aircraft itself, swooping into the circle of illumination,
skimming close to the surface of the highway.
The lads sprang forward to greet the aërial visitor, and as they did so
a tall figure, hatless and coatless, leaped from the cover of a ditch
nearby, ran like a deer alongside the skimming biplane, and vaulted
into the frame behind the daring navigator.
As the machine took the uplift, Billy and Henri were so close, and the
fire-flow so vivid, that they plainly saw the faces of both the saver
and the saved.
The man who had jumped into the machine was Anglin; the aviator was
Gilbert Le Fane, the noted airman of Rouen, whom our boys had once
followed in flight from Havre to Paris.
From the fire zone there was coming a hurrying body of men, and rifles
began to spit lead at the swiftly rising aircraft. Too late, though,
to reach the height attained by the biplane. A shrill yell of defiance
floated back on the breeze of the morning, and deep and heavy were the
expressions of baffled rage by those grouped in the road below.
Roque and the sandy-haired assistant could be heard above all the rest.
The boys were again in the rôle of innocent bystanders.
When the sun later replaced the flames in lighting up the sky, not a
trace of the French airmen could be sighted, save the marks of their
raid--the blackened ruin of the castle and smouldering remains of the
adjoining buildings.
Investigation instituted by Roque related solely to the escape of the
prisoner. To put a quietus on his rival had drawn him from afar, and
here again the elusive Frenchman had been jerked out of his clutches,
this time into the very sky.
With the fall of the first bomb the single night guard over the captive
had drawn the bolts that he might be ready to quit his post upon first
order with the Frenchman in close custody. The second bomb so stunned
the guard that he knew no more until regaining consciousness in the
rear courtyard outside. He could only account for his presence there
by the belief that the man over whom he had held watch had picked him
up and carried him out of danger. There was a back way that could be
traveled, smoke hidden, without observation.
"But how about the aëroplanes dipping just at the right time and place
to carry him off?"
This was the point that especially puzzled Roque.
A farmer boy, listening, open-mouthed, to the questioning, offered a
solution.
"You see, Monsieur," he bashfully explained, "it was a ghostly noise
that was making between the big noises, like the wind blowing through
the neck of a bottle stuck in a knot hole. I heard it in the road, a
long way."
It occurred to the boys that this distress signal must have been given
before they got away from the roar of the fire, or while they were
probing the smoke in the gallery to reach Anglin.
"They were flying mighty close down and could probably hear a howl
like that, if they were listening for it and knew what it meant." This
opinion was advanced by Billy.
"I don't much believe they could hear a call from the ground, unless it
came from the business end of a gun." Henri was the doubter.
"It is no use to argue," said Roque. "The fact remains that the air
fellow had his bearings, and he got the lead from somewhere. I am not
giving him credit for being a mind reader."
"That reminds me, Mr. Roque," remarked Billy, "that we might test this
bearing business by a little air trip somewhere and soon."
"I have just such a thing in thought," grimly advised Roque, "and I
will warrant that you will hear a few ground sounds before the quitting
minute. We are going to take a down look at Belfort."
Now Belfort is a French fortress, where the soldiers in red and blue
had been finding security every time they were rolled back from the
plains of upper Alsace.
A tremendous amount of gunpowder had been burned on the flat ground
in front of this stronghold, and our boys were in for a smell of
it--something that would recall perilous travel with Colonel Bainbridge
and Sergeant Scott in previous campaigns.
A wire to Friedrichshaven had started on the way the makes of biplanes
that Billy called "Roque's best bet" since the day of the famous race
over Lake Constance.
"Business will soon be looking up," joked Henri, when he heard of the
order for the shipment of "No. 3's."
The presence of Ardelle in this region, extreme southwestern
Germany, had raised suspicion in the mind of Roque that some special
demonstration was brewing, and the lurid performance of the French
airmen in blowing the roof from over his head served to further elevate
the confirmed idea that trouble and the French agent always traveled
together.
Roque was not here to mix in the actual military operations--that was
not his business, but he was ever open-eyed on the trail of the boss
gamester on the other side. He had expected this time to put his rival
on the safe side of the ground, but spades did not prove to be trumps.
Somewhere in the gap of Belfort, as the valley south of the Vosges
mountains is popularly known, Ardelle was, no doubt, preparing for
another comeback, and Roque was scheming to meet him halfway.
There was no chance to get under the guns of the frowning fortress
beyond the frontier, so the only way to size up the situation was to go
over them.
Here was where flying experts jumped to the front.