Chapter XXII: An Hour Too Soon

WITH incoming of the troops convoying the supply train, Captain Neva rejoined his company, and Billy and Henri were promptly adopted by the aviation corps, most of whom spoke both French and English, and all very much inclined to express their admiration of the aëroplane knowledge displayed by the youngsters.

The boys were right on the job, so to speak, when it came to reassembling the parts of new aircraft received by wagon shipment, and so grew in the confidence of the aviation lieutenants that they were quite often permitted to make flying tests of the various machines with only themselves in charge.

If the young airmen enjoyed this concession without watching on the part of the lieutenants, there was no such inattention on the part of a couple of frequenters of a city tavern not far removed from the aviation camp.

Work was evidently slack with this pair of citizens, for hardly a day passed that they did not spend several hours at a tavern table located near a bow-window, which afforded an excellent view of the parade ground and aviation quarters.

One of these constant spectators was remarkable for his size and the vivid hue of his hair, the other for the reason that he paid absolutely no heed to the other patrons of the place, though all appeared to be of his kind, both in manner and attire.

On a particular afternoon, the strangely silent one was deeply engaged with a stump of a pencil in the labor, no doubt, of casting up his accounts on a piece of dirty brown paper, in which had been wrapped his lunch of black bread and sausage.

The puckered lines over his nose indicated thought labor, but the furtively keen glance he occasionally gave to outside movement contradicted the impression that he was of slow order of mind.

The chief actors in the mentioned "outside movement" at the time were two trimly set up lads in new suits of service green, one pulling and the other pushing an armored biplane into its hangar.

"This machine," said the puller, "ran like an ice-wagon to-day but maybe use will smooth her out."

"It's all in the motors," confidently asserted the pusher, "and I'll have the kinks out of them in a day or two."

The man at the table across the way had completed his task, shoved the paper and pencil into his pocket, and was placidly puffing a huge cigar.

His red-topped companion stamped into the room, returning from some excursion in the city, but the smoker did not pass a word of greeting, though the other idlers filled in with noisy welcome.

It was not until the room had been vacated by all but themselves that the curiously assorted pair put their heads together.

"Ricker showed you where the ammunition was stored?"

The red-topped nodded.

"You arranged for the plans with Westrich?"

Again the nod of assent, but this time with softly spoken supplement:

"All good, but there is no chance of us getting to the river now. It's lined with a wall of steel, and even a rat could not pass, day or night, without a triple stamp of authority on its back. And let me tell you, if we light the match for that explosion without an outlet, all the information we will carry will be to the next world."

"If we cannot get through the wall of steel you mention there might be a way of going over it."

The speaker gave a meaning glance out of the window at the aviation camp. A biplane was just rising for test flight, and it was manned by two experts easily identified by the conspiring couple in the tavern.

"Oh, ho, I see," mused the brick-top, "you expect to use those boys in the matter of pulling us out."

"Why not? Have they ever failed us in extremity? Is the peril greater than when they dived into the canyon that our lease on life might be lengthened; did they fail to respond to my summons to do this very work of rescue, delayed through no fault on their part?"

This subject had served to draw the clam out of his shell, and he found relief in relaxing temporarily his studied pose of stolid indifference.

"How are we going to get at them?" asked the willing listener to the rapid-fire praise of the young heroes.

The crafty secret agent (it was Roque, of course) had not been wool-gathering during the silent hour of his sitting at the table.

He had devised several ways of apprising the boys that he needed their services and acquainting them with a working plan that would enable them all to sail out of Warsaw in safety.

Something was going to happen when he willed it that would make the outward passage a memorable one, and success or complete failure of the project was in the close balance of a few more hours.

In real truth, however, Roque did not so greatly weigh his personal welfare as against the service he could render by doing damage to the foe from without as well as from within.

Ready for his call were papers of supreme import, and to lose which at the hands of a searching party would be a calamity the secret agent dreaded even to anticipate.

By the air route he had determined to leave, if by any hook or crook Schneider and himself could get hold of an aëroplane.

Billy and Henri had been aloft for several hours, enjoying a bird's-eye view of the really magnificent city, for the possession of which carnage held sway for hundreds of miles.

"Some town this," Billy remarked as he stepped from the machine, completing the sightseeing tour; "after the war I'd like to start a branch factory here."

"Oh, go 'way," laughed Henri, "it would take a derrick to haul you out of Boston or Bangor, once you set foot again in those burgs."

"You forget, old top," suggested Billy, "that we have already on tap a comeback aëroplane trip across the Atlantic. I'm no quitter."

From a coal-laden wagon the contents was being shot into a chute running into the cellar of one of the big houses taken over for officers' occupancy.

One of the grimy heavers, at sight of the boys, came forward to meet them, wiping his hands on the leather apron he wore, removed his fur cap, and took therefrom a scrap of smutty brown paper and tendered it to Billy.

"Guess he wants you to sign a receipt," said Henri, looking over his chum's shoulder.

Billy's glance at the paper set him staring at the man who presented it.

The latter never raised his eyes--he was using them sidewise upon a group of soldiers standing in front of the mess hall.

The boys saw in the scrawl these words: "Orders for No. 3's, Two Towers, St. Michael road, eight sharp, Thursday evening."

Without a word, Billy returned the paper to the heaver. The officer of the day was approaching. He signed the delivery receipt, but the paper had queerly changed color in the handling.

As the lads slowly walked toward aviation headquarters their minds were all in a whirl. Prisoners they were and prisoners they had been, yet in both instances it had been but the semblance of captivity. While they were held, the rein had been a loose one.

Just back of them the ties of long association, immediately in front of them a trust imposed, a generous parole, when they had gone to the limit in giving the best of themselves, in the one capacity they could serve, to the former rule.

Thursday evening at eight, and this was Tuesday evening at six. Long enough, indeed, for the boys to torment themselves with the reflection that if they did not appear at the appointed hour Roque and Schneider would curse their perfidy, and if they did betray the confidence of the aviation chief in this camp he would pay the penalty.

"It will be no trick at all to take the biplanes for an evening spin; we have done it before without question."

"That's the trouble, Henri", lamented Billy, "it's too easy. If we had to steal the machines, risk our lives before the guns of the sentries, and all that sort of thing, it wouldn't seem such a trial of conscience. But they take us on trust, and without question."

"Yet, here's Roque and Schneider in the lurch, and looking to us for aid. With them we have met about all that is coming to a fellow in this war zone, except death, and pretty near that; we have eaten and slept and starved together."

"There you are again, Henri, and it's 'twixt the devil and the deep blue sea!' any way you put it."

Thursday morning, and as clear as a bell. The Boy Aviators looked red-eyed on the smile of nature. Their cots had squeaked protest all through the night against the tossing of the uneasy nappers.

At noon they had about made up their minds to keep the appointment at Two Towers, and seeking to strengthen this resolution they avoided in every way they could meetings with the aviation chief.

Along about three in the afternoon the wavering youngsters had arranged a compromise, this to be positive. They would deliver the No. 3's to their former owner for choice, and so enable their old friends to get safely away. As for themselves, they proposed to return to camp and "take their medicine"--their dose and the portion that the aviation chief would otherwise be likely to get.

But fate shuffled it another way.

The workday was in the closing minutes. The remaining city thousands who were not in military service were swelling the stream of homegoers in the busy streets.

The driver of a coal wagon, which had drawn up before an imposing structure devoted to the storage of army supplies, and supposed to contain an immense supply of ammunition, suddenly conceived the notion that he was doing overtime duty. At least such was his manner when one of the Big Ben clocks overhead ding-donged the hour of six. Perhaps, too, the movement of gathering up reins and whip had its measure of prompting in the appearance of the driver's mate from some underground space in the big building.

At any rate, the old nags dragging the heavy vehicle were given the full benefit, and without warning, of a long and knotted whip-lash, and covered several city blocks at a lively gait before they realized that they were traveling out of their class.

The heaver who had emerged from the building in response to the clock summons showed tremor of the hands when he lifted them to draw the cape of his greatcoat closer about his throat.

"It's set for eight," he hoarsely whispered; "I turned the key when I heard the strokes outside."

Strangely enough, the wagon kept a course directly to a residence section at once fashionable and quiet, and hardly the possible location of a coal yard or the home, either, of a humble employee thereof.

One of the men in the wagon, the fellow with the hoarse whisper, left the vehicle in a square marked by a tall column with a statue on top, while the driver continued the urging of his horses up the ever ascending street.

Gaining the level above, the horses were given their own heads, which meant a snail's pace. Close at hand were two towers of considerable height.

While the horses plodded on the highroad stretching to the west, pressure on their bits was lacking. The wagon was empty.

Two figures appeared on the terrace back of the twin towers, these terraces rising in tiers from the bank of the fast-flowing river below.

"You left Ricker in the square?" This question put by the man who evidently had just returned from a mission that did not include a ride in a coal wagon.

"He left me, rather," replied the late driver, with a touch of grim humor.

The first speaker held a watch in his hand, consulting it frequently, holding it closer and closer to his eyes as the light faded before the advance of night's shadows.

"Seven o'clock," he announced. "Another hour."

This was the last notation of time by the watch holder.

There was an explosion that, notwithstanding the distance, seemed to shake the everlasting hills to their very foundations.

The men on the terrace stared aghast, each at the other.

"The die is cast," cried the one with the commanding voice, "and an hour too soon!"