Chapter XI: Under the Red Roof

THERE were no additions to the party in the "sky parlor" until after candlelight. The man called Fred was half-asleep on one of the cots, when suddenly aroused by repeated knocking below. He made stealthy descent, listened at the entrance for a moment, and apparently satisfied with the signal conveyed in the rapping outside, cautiously unbarred and opened the door. The person admitted did not come empty handed, for when he stepped from the stair-landing into the upper room he, and likewise Fred, were carrying market-baskets of goodly size.

"Hello, Gervais," was the hearty greeting he gave to the cool one, the latter engaged, with a well-thumbed deck of cards, in a game of solitaire.

"Hello yourself," returned the gamester, dropping the cards, and coming forward to relieve the newcomer of the market basket.

Billy and Henri were seated in the shadow, beyond the range of the candle rays, and at the time escaped notice. Both had started, however, at the first sound of the new voice.

From a side view the make-up was that of a typical huckster of these parts, fur cap, with ear lappets, corduroy greatcoat and cowhide boots. Between cap and collar bunched a heavy growth of iron-gray whiskers.

The boys did not realize that their instinctive move, occasioned by a certain tone in the voice, had not been amiss until the speaker had turned full face.

Even the luxuriant whiskers could not wholly hide the Anglin smile!

Much to the astonishment of Gervais and Fred, and infinitely more to the surprise of the imitation huckster, the boys at a single bound jointly invaded the circle of light and grasped the elbows of their one-time Calais acquaintance.

"What sort of a hold-up is this?" cried Anglin, in startled recognition; "is it raining harumscarum aviators in Strassburg? By the great horn spoon, it's enough to make me believe I've got 'em to see you under this roof."

"I'll bet you knew that we blew in with Roque," proposed Billy, "for you have a way of seeing seven ways for Sunday."

"You win, laddy-buck, on the first statement, but I'm still up a stump on the proposition of how you got into this house."

"We were loafing," put in Henri, "started out on a pigeon hunt and got the drag when we mentioned it at your back door."

"Pigeon hunt?" Anglin wore a puzzled look.

Henri made quick explanation of the whole affair.

"Ha! I see," exclaimed Anglin. "By the way, you did not happen to mention your tower observations to anyone else, did you?"

This last query had a dead-earnest ring, with a rising note of anxiety.

"Not on your life," assured Henri; "in the first place, the big chief had no time to bother with us; we had no inducement to talk to anybody else, and, all in all, who'd have cared about the bird business, anyhow?"

"Well, it seems there was one fellow who did."

Billy indicated Fred, who was unpacking the baskets.

"There are others," laughed Anglin, much relieved by the boys' statement. Fur cap, wig and false whiskers were tossed onto the mantelpiece, and the huckster was no more.

The baskets had produced a plentiful supply of ham, cold chicken, and the like, and not one of the party could be charged with lack of appetite.

In the glow of good-fellowship, Fred told Billy he was sorry that he had given him so rough a reception.

"Honors are easy, old top," was Billy's jovial acceptance of the apology, "and I am glad now that we did not break any of your ribs when we banged you around."

"Say, Mr. Anglin, I am afraid, after all, that we may bring down trouble on your head. I just know that Roque will be in a great stew when he finds we are gone and will fairly comb the town to locate us."

The idea had begun to trouble Henri to the extent of spoiling the pleasure of this reunion and indoor picnic.

"I have thought of this," admitted Anglin, "but the danger of discovery is ever the same, and I don't believe this will either hurry or lessen it. Besides, we are prepared, or, rather, had the way prepared for us, to make a run on the slightest warning."

This restored to Henri happier thoughts, though he still held belief that Anglin might have been safer if Roque had no special inducement to immediately lead a searching party throughout the city.

That is just what happened, and it proved not an overly-difficult task for the keen tracker to trace the boys to at least the vicinity of the place where they were hidden.

The men under the red roof were soon made aware of the lurking danger by the tooting of an automobile horn in the avenue bordering the grounds north of the house.

It was a telegraph code set in shrill notes, and it was apparent that Gervais, in alert listening attitude, had comprehended the message, even as the motor-car sounded the final blast in its swift passage out of sight and hearing.

The cool one, in most deliberate way, drawled the words: "Look out."

As effective as if a whole dictionary had been pumped through the window by Anglin's scouts.

The chief calmly resumed the disguise of wig and whiskers, while Fred blew out half-a-dozen candles with little waste of breath. With one tallow dip still alight, and shaded by hand, the doorman then mounted the ladder leading to the garret, thereby causing up there great commotion in the pigeon roost.

When Fred reappeared at the foot of the ladder, it could be dimly seen, he wore a broad grin and a wreath of cobwebs.

"When that flock arrives, empty-footed, old Winkelman will swear like a pirate."

Fred had turned every carrier bird but one loose in the night. The exception was fluttering in his hand, blinking its beady eyes at the glimmer of the lone candle.

Anglin had seated himself at the table and was writing a few words on a scrap of parchment, completing which he deftly attached the tiny roll to the pink leg of the feathered envoy.

Fred lifted the window a few inches and released the bird.

With the utmost care every bit of paper, every inch of thread was picked up and stowed away in the pockets of the three men preparing to vacate.

Billy and Henri were busily figuring in their minds just how they were going to come out of the scrape, when the creak of a shutter, under prying force, was heard on the lower floor.

"They're here at last," muttered Gervais, dropping a hand to his hip, on the revolver side.

Anglin laid a finger on his lips, enjoining silence, and tiptoed down the stairway, the others following in shadowy procession.

On the first floor the leader paused. The attempt to force the firmly hooked shutter had ceased, and no new form of attack was for the moment in evidence. Anglin had removed his cowhide boots, and, with velvet tread, then advanced the entire length of the long hall, motioning those behind him to remain where they were.

He was back again in less than five minutes, and whispered:

"The house, I believe, is completely surrounded. They are waiting for daylight, I suppose, to cinch some sure thing, the nature of which they are not quite certain. If Roque is along and thought I was inside, axes would have been working before this."

"They will find a lot here at daylight," chuckled Fred--"a lot of dust."

The party silently made their way through a side passage to what appeared to have been intended as the dining and cooking domain. Gervais had assumed the duties of guide, and he showed thorough acquaintance with the premises by first producing a dark lantern from a cupboard, and then moving directly to the black mouth of a steeply inclined flight of stone steps descending far below the level.

The spacious cellar was divided into sections by partitions of solid brick. But it was at the center of the foundation wall on the west where Gervais halted.

"Give me a leg up."

Fred gave his comrade the required lift, and Gervais secured a hand-grip on a big drain pipe that curved into the wall. He gave the pipe a strong-arm-twist, and the bull's-eye shine of the lantern revealed an aperture in the masonry, into which the climber squirmed.

Hardly had his feet disappeared, when he had turned about with his head out of the hole in the wall and a hand down to help the next comer to scale the space between the floor and the dislocated pipe.

Billy was given the hoist and crawled over the prostrate Gervais into the narrow passage above; Henri quickly followed, then Anglin, and finally Fred, who lent aid in pulling the pipe back to its moorings.

"'Snug as a bug in a rug,'" quoted Billy, who was really enjoying this method of getting out of a tight place, even though getting into another.

However, the rounded and cemented passage did not squeeze enough to be uncomfortable, and there was steady draught of fresh air coming from somewhere further ahead.

"The good man from whom you leased this property six months ago hardly counted this as one of the improvements you agreed to make," remarked Anglin as they started to wriggle through the drain.

Gervais laughed. "I didn't do anything to the pipe but what had to be done, and 'a stitch in time saves nine.'"

"It is likely to save three that I know of," grunted Fred.

"You can always count on Gervais to think for the future."

The man so complimented by his chief said nothing, saving his energy for the vigorous use of hands and knees necessary to make progress in the smooth channel.

The journey on all fours ended at a heavy grating, through which faint daylight was peeping. Through the barred opening the outlook was into a deep ravine, with a small stream coursing at the bottom, and a dense growth of small timber and bushes rising to the level on all sides.

Directly opposite the entrance of the drain, in a small clearing on the high ground across the gully, the broad windows of a stone cottage reflected the glare of the slowly rising sun.

"There is nothing else to do, my friends, but to lay low until brother Roque completes the scouring of this section. We are well on the way but not yet out of the woods, as the saying is."

This was the view of the chief, and his views were seldom questioned.

It was a rather gloomy prospect, this crouching wait in quarters so confined, but the secret service men counted nothing a hardship, and the boys had to possess themselves in patience.

The capacious pockets of the huckster's greatcoat, with which Anglin had not parted, despite its weight, in the long crawl, contained a supply of food, taken from the baskets before starting.

From the avenue that lay between the ravine and the grounds about the house which they had recently quitted, the cramped company in the drain could hear the rumble of traffic, and once they heard voices in close proximity to their hiding place.

"Giving them something to puzzle about, eh, Gervais?"

"Rather a fuddle for them, chief," agreed the cool one, "and the best of it all, they don't know whom they're after, unless it be these youngsters."

"Oh, I propose that the boys shall be found in due time, but the balance of us will keep dodging to the best of our ability."

"Some ability, too, believe me, boss," was Billy's contribution.

"Well, I believe we can hold our own," complacently observed Fred.

With the wearing of the long day, the prospect of liberation eased the trial of the later hours. As night fell apace, the first greeting to it was the glow of a lamp in one of the windows of the stone cottage.

Gervais moved close to the grating, and fixed intent gaze upon this illumination. In the course of a half-hour his vigilance was rewarded by a sight that he evidently anticipated. Somebody was repeatedly crossing and recrossing the patch of light, now and then deliberately standing in front of the lamp. That "somebody" was making dots and dashes as plain as day to the trained vision of the receiving expert.

"The coast is clear," he announced.

A little pressure and the bars were down.

Out into the night crept the weary five, with the luxurious experience of once more standing erect and having a good stretch.

Having replaced the grating in the drain entrance to a nicety, Gervais led the way down the steep slope of the ravine to the creek, which Billy and Henri attempted to drink dry, so great was their thirst.

"Now is a time when the best of friends must part," said Anglin. "I have been thinking it over, and the suggestion is that you, my young friends, must be relieved of any suspicion of willingly associating with suspicious characters. Gervais, Fred and I have our mission clearly mapped, the cause we serve is supreme, and the safeguarding I propose is of mutual benefit. With you boys here we can have no open acquaintance, and of us, as we are, you must claim no memory. To be brief, you have been detained by rough characters at the other end of town, and you will be there discovered at the roadside in the morning bound and gagged and stripped of all your possessions."

"I am afraid we are mighty poor picking," joked Billy, "but it is all right to give us the truss up, as we brought this shake-up to your door."

"That is neither here nor there now," consoled Anglin; "we must mend the situation as best we can."

And so it came about, at a point remote from the red roof, a passing policeman picked up two much hunted boys who were decidedly the worse for wear.