Chapter IV: 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!