Chapter VII: 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.