Our Young Aeroplane Scouts in Germany; or, Winning the Iron Cross

by Horace Porter

  CHAPTER IV.

  THE STOLEN PAPERS.

  "MY papers! The report! Has anybody seen them?"

  The owner of the wallet shook it vigorously over the table, toassure himself that he had not replaced the records there, and thenquickstepped the whole length and around the board, lowering his headagain and again beneath the polished surface to see if the documents hewas 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 thetable, and if they're gone, they've been stolen."

  "Hey, my friend," remonstrated Spitznagle, "we have no thieves in thishouse, and no enemies to the cause."

  "This is no time to bandy words," roared Roque, "shut and bar thedoors"--this last command directed at Zorn. The giant jumped at thebidding and sent the bolts rattling into their sockets.

  The savage energy of Roque ruled all to silence. Even the power underthe cloak refrained from advising.

  The secret agent dismissed suspicion as to the active participants inthe conference, and as to the loyalty of Spitznagle he had not theslightest doubt. The trial horses must needs be two pale-faced boysbacked up against a window-sill.

  Roque, with his hands deep in his pockets, a habit he had when stalkinga suspect, walked around the foot of the table and stood directly infront 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 nervealways served them most in the supreme test.

  They faced their inquisitor without an outward tremor; their previousanxiety was known only to themselves, and now admirably concealed.

  Roque realized that he had no fluttering birds in his hands, and alsowas aware that a search of their persons was only required to acquitor convict these youngsters of the actual theft. He knew that they hadnot left the room, though why he had not long ago sent them upstairs tobed was a slip of mind he could not account for. But it had occurredto Roque that the boys had been in a position to see the table allthe time since the company adjourned to the fire, and whatever hadhappened in regard to the papers they, if not the light-fingered chapsthemselves, must have witnessed the perpetration of the steal. So hechanged his tactics.

  "Now, boys," he began with insinuating address, "there is a very uglysituation 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 thisbullying, 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 Spitznaglewas sitting, a picture of despair.

  "Who was in the house to-night besides those now present?" was thequestion 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 thelegs, that I had helping in the kitchen. He lost his job as cook on thecoast line steamer _Druid_ on account of rheumatism, and they sent himup 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'snotice in this kind of affair." Spitznagle started for the kitchendoor, Roque at his heels.

  "Conrad, Conrad," called Spitznagle.

  "Conrad" had flown, leaving nothing behind him but his rheumatism and adingy apron.

  "Yell till you're hoarse, you fathead," raged Roque, "and the cows willcome home from nowhere before you get an answer."

  While Spitznagle was staring into vacancy, Roque stormed back into thedining-room and announced:

  "We've been the dupes of that spy Ardelle. Nobody but he could havegotten away with a venture like this. But" (gritting his teeth), "I'llbeat him yet. I say, Vollmer" (turning to the aerial recorder nowminus his records), "you have the whole thing in mind and we'll strikewhile the iron is hot. We may outride the warning, for he can't get itflashed from this coast."

  The man in the cloak came to the front on this proposition. "The wordis 'immediate,'" he proclaimed.

  A speedy departure was in order, and Roque crooked a finger at theyoung aviators, bidding them follow.

  "You are going to be mighty useful, my flying friends," he said, "andyou'd better be." There was grim emphasis in these last words.

  At noon the next day the boys were again tramping around after Roquein Cuxhaven. The character of "Dr. Blitz" was no longer in the play.Roque was trimly set up as an aviation lieutenant, and it was reallywonderful how easily he merged into each part he assumed. "Students" nolonger, 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 aerialexpedition did not start forthwith, as intended. Indeed, it did notstart from Cuxhaven at all. It might have been that Ardelle's theft ofthe guide records had put a spoke in the German wheel, but as to thatthe boys could only hazard a guess.

  It was on the twentieth day after the adventure in the house ofSpitznagle that the young aviators again had the opportunity ofoperating a seaplane with Roque as directing passenger, and theuninterrupted flight brought them to the island of Amesland, forthough Cuxhaven was counted as the airship base, it evidently was theintent to project the return attack on the English coast from theout-to-sea point before named.

  What an array of the warcraft of the "upper deep"--the greatdirigibles, seaplanes, destroyer, artillery spotter and scoutaeroplanes. The boys were in their element. Even Roque had a smile fortheir enthusiasm. It was not the war spirit that animated Billy andHenri--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 threehundred 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 Zeppelindirigibles were to participate, but the main movers of this attackwere evidently to be airships of the small, non-rigid Parseval build,for bomb work. The truth of the matter was, the young aviators, atthe order of Roque, were so taken up with the tuning of a seaplanejust before the fleet went aloft that they could not have listed thestarters with any degree of accuracy.

  They only knew positively that they were going aloft, and their ownmachine would require their individual attention. About 8:30 that nightthe glare of a powerful searchlight from one of the German airshipsdirected its rays over the heart of the English city of Yarmouth. Twobombs dropped almost simultaneously.

  The boys saw the city below suddenly plunged into darkness. Five morebombs were hurled from the sky. The fleet then swiftly moved northeast,and more bombs crashed into the town of Kings Lynn. Roque had assumedno active part as a leader in the deadly maneuvers--his was a thinkingassignment. It was midnight when the fleet turned eastward and fledback across the North Sea.

  "It might have been London," muttered the secret agent, "if the gamecould have been played without a break."

  Preparations to repel just such an invasion had been made in the greatcity.

  Ardelle must have gotten his warning across, but the coast towns failedto heed it.

  The Roque machine kept its speed when the balance of the fleet checkedflight at Amesland. The secret agent was bound for Cuxhaven, doubtlessto plan another tiger spring at the foe. He
was all for air campaigningthese days.

  "You will witness the sight of your lives, you young cyclones, beforelast night's mist of the North Sea dries in your hair."

  This significant remark on Cuxhaven docks set the boys in the higheststate of expectancy. It was seldom that Roque billed anything ahead oftime, and surely something extraordinary must be in the wind.

  Three days later, from a dizzy height, they witnessed a sky battlewithout parallel in military annals, and which dimmed the memory of anyof their previous remarkable experiences in the war zone.

  The French coast town of Dunkirk, to which the boys had on a happy daygone by been delivered by submarine and taken away in a seaplane, wasthe ground center of this spectacular conquest of the air--the first ofits kind in the history of the world.

  Twenty hours earlier a fleet of British seaplanes had bombarded theBelgian port of Zeebrugge, held by the Germans, news of which had soonafter reached the mystery man, Roque, by way of one of the innumerablechannels of communication with which he kept himself constantly intouch.

  The German bird craft suddenly appeared over Dunkirk like a flock ofgigantic sea gulls.

  Explosive missiles fell as fiery hail upon the town. The tocsin soundedin the high tower of Dunkirk church, and the blue and white flag of thetown was run up.

  The roar of the fort guns, firing shrapnel, was heard, and all aroundthe German fliers white puffs were bursting, as the pilots guided theirmachines in low-swooping spirals.

  In compliance with the snappy commands of Roque, Billy circled theseaplane to every point of observation vantage, while the secret agentviewed the action of the armored Aviatik biplanes, dashing here andthere with the sun glinting on their steel sides.

  "Look there!" shouted Henri, rising and clutching a stay to preservehis balance. The air was clear, and the scene was open even to thenaked 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 sawthe aviator clutch the levers of his machine in one hand and with theother unsling a rifle, beginning fire at a German birdman below him.

  A half dozen armored aeroplanes of the raiding force swarmed in uponthe daring Briton. His machine was peppered with lead, and it wasapparent that the man had been wounded as he dipped toward the earth toevade the encircling Germans.

  Other English aviators swept into the whirling combat, and to therescue 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 sixthousand feet the seaplane, with tremendous burst of speed, soonoverhauled and outdistanced the slower warcraft, making a wide detourover 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 theyshall sing on the Rhine."

  In Bremen the boys paid grateful tribute to rest after the strain andstress to which they had been put by their relentless taskmaster.

  "I feel," said Billy, "like the hump between my shoulders is going tobe 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," wasHenri's complaint.

  It was not long, however, before the boys found relief from the kinksin their backs, and were ready and eager for the next move in theiradventurous careers.

  Just around the corner from their hotel was the very cafe where theyhad the thrill of seeing Anglin's face in the mirror while they weredining 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 ofit."

  "Don't you hold the thought for a moment, Henri, that you could catchthe Calais weasel asleep. Oh, I say, there's a concert on downstairs,"quickly concluded Billy, as the notes of violin and piano were waftedabove. "Let's hunt the music."

  A high tenor voice was merging into the accompaniment when the boysreached the floor below, and they saw that the singer was one of thecurly-lock type, and in evening attire.

  What of the eyes, though, that gleamed upon the Aeroplane Scouts asthey stood in the doorway--the artistic make-up could fool them, butthere was no mistaking the smiling orbs under the blackened eyebrows.

  Fox tracks were mixing again!