CHAPTER XVII.
A FREAK OF FATE.
One afternoon, a few days subsequent to their return from the last airvoyage with Strogoff, and while the boys were engaged in making repairsand generally overhauling the No. 3's, who should appear on the aviationgrounds but the selfsame sergeant wearing a brand-new uniform and aprofoundly long face.
"I do not really know," he said, drawing closer to the young aviators,"why I should want to tell you anything about the latest jolt I havereceived in connection with that Ricker deal, but as you were in thegame from first to last, it just seems as though you have a right toshare in all the details, though it sort of rubs it in on myself."
"What's the news, sergeant; give it to us straight."
Billy's bump of curiosity was apparently incurable.
"Neither that prince of rascals, Ricker, nor any of his lieutenants werein the party that gave us the slip on the plain. One of our 'quietfriends' in the Bzura river region has just reported the presence thereof the one-time silversmith, another of the spies we know as Casper, andthe Tartar crank, blast his whiskers."
"Who then ran off with the collier?" inquired Henri.
"That is where I am still guessing," continued the sergeant, "but I amletting the Cossacks take care of them. No doubt they were bought, bodyand breeches, and delivered the goods by putting the marked men acrossthe Vistula."
"Why didn't you nip Ricker at the outset?" asked Billy.
"Never suspected him until the time the clock was found in the fallenwalls of the storehouse, and he failed to report with it forinvestigation. The whole affair had been charged up against the men whojumped from St. Michael terrace into the river."
Billy was about to state that he knew all about Strogoff's officialvisits to the silversmith's shop, but it suddenly occurred that theleast he said the safer for Henri and himself.
"My first bad break," asserted Strogoff, "was the night I went alone tothat den to take Ricker into custody. I had handled, I thought, worsethan he. But I got a biff from the rear with a sand-bag--and you knowthe rest. I will have to admit," he concluded, "that for once in mylife, at least, I have been bested all around."
The boys might have told the Warsaw sleuth that they were acquaintedwith a secret service worker called Roque, who was even a slyer fox thanany the big policeman had ever encountered--but, of course, they did nottell him anything of the kind.
The aviation chief was responsible for a break-up of this review ofrecent adventures, when he called to the young aviators to reportimmediately at headquarters.
Hastily laying aside the tools with which they had been working on theaircraft, the boys instantly responded to the summons of their chief,while Strogoff started on his way downtown.
"You are booked to pilot a couple of old friends of yours in anotherflight to Petrograd," announced the boss airman; "that is if you areready to resign from the police force."
He was smiling when he submitted the last proviso.
The "old friends" were the scouts Salisky and Marovitch, who had justsent another pair of tired aviators to the rest ward, after a gruellingtrip along the firing line in the southwest.
"Are you up to snuff, my laddybucks?" was Salisky's jovial greeting.
"In the pink of condition, Brother-never-wear-out," gaily rejoinedBilly.
"None of your duke's palace entertainments this time," broke in theother iron man, Marovitch.
In destiny had been indelibly written a certain happening that would be,and was, and in the great capital city of the Russians resulted in thetranslation of our boys into an entirely new sphere of action.
But the pilots set out on the familiar route without other thought thanthat, if no unforeseen peril of aeroplaning intervened, they would slideagain into these grounds in the same old way. The scouts had orders toreturn within three days, if it were by consent of the powers that be atPetrograd.
When the biplanes had winged their way along the flow of the Neva to thefixed point for the flight's finish, there was goodly margin on theright side of the time limit.
Once more the young pilots climbed the marble steps of Admiralty Place,preceded by the veteran scouts and special messengers--this time,however, without encountering in the imposing interior any former fiercefoe in parti-colored uniform. By the blood ceremony elected to theCossack brotherhood, the boys could now look without tremor into thesomber eyes of each and every knight of the desert in imperial servicethat they might pass in the wide and high corridors.
But as none of the Dons with whom to exchange the high sign happened tobe about, Billy and Henri soon wearied of the waiting assignment on theoutside of carved and brass-knobbed doors. They flatly informed Saliskythat this part of the contract belonged to himself and Marovitch, and ifthe scouts did not consent to letting their pilots go out and knockaround for a while it would certainly result in two clear cases of St.Vitus dance.
"Get along with you, then," ordered Salisky, with a grin, "but, mindwhat I say, you are not to leave the immediate vicinity, and must returnwithin the next two hours. There is no telling at what o'clock we may becalled upon to sail out of here."
Talk to the winds, old scout, the boys were on the way to the openbefore you had turned the last period.
It was a glorious afternoon on the great Nevskoi Prospekt, themagnificent street overflowing with life.
"There's more people out on runners here than I ever saw before in oneprocession," observed Billy.
"Doesn't look as though all the fine horses were stopping bullets on thebattlefields."
If Henri had not early gone into training as an aviator, he could easilyhave passed muster as a premium giver in an equine show.
"They couldn't drive 'em like this through the streets of Boston,"further commented the U. S. A. boy. "Patrolman Maguire of the trafficsquad would have a picnic on this avenue."
Hark! What tumult this in the block beyond--this mad haste offur-muffled reinsmen to guide toward the curb lines--these shrill criesof warning!
A pair of splendid Orloff stallions, black as Erebus, red nostrilsagape, foam-flecked, raising, with the frantic pounding of theiriron-shod hoofs, upshooting fountains of ice and snow particles, wererunning a frenzied course directly towards the spot where our boys hadbeen viewing the unceasing sweep of sleighs.
Behind the maddened animals, swaying and now and again skimming sidewiseon one runner, and as often lifted clear of the ground, was a sledge ofswan-like outline, from which trailed the dragging ends of furry robes.
As in the span of a clock-tick the young aviators had sight of a childclinging to the high back of the sleigh, a little girl, her hood fallenand twisted over shoulder, and her bright crown of curls tangling abouther set, white face.
With every nerve tense, and as if strung on one wire, Billy and Henrihad a second to think, and in the next time flash to act.
In the passing the sleigh swung dangerously close to the curb, uponwhich the lads were poised for a spring at the wildly careeningconveyance.
With the opportunity, the boys leaped together--Billy went sprawlinginto the pile of furs in the bowl of the vehicle, while Henri had aclose call in getting aboard at all, just managing to grasp thehand-curve of the rear seat, and his knees were sweeping the streetsurface for twenty or thirty feet before he attained foothold on therunners.
The U. S. A. boy leaned far out of the bed of the sleigh, with loweredhands, striving to reach the trailing reins, whipping about in the wakeof the racing steeds.
Two men ahead tried for the curb bits of the high-checked horses, butwere hurled aside like featherweights. Billy had a fleeting glance atone of the brave fellows, lying quite still, face down, in the street.
The width of the avenue--about 150 feet--and its straight length--morethan five miles--had so far afforded a fighting chance of escapingdeath-dealing collision.
The action in this saving venture of our boys cannot be followed in itsrapidity by the telling of
it. When Billy found, with a grab or two,that the reaching of the reins was a long shot, he was up with a jumpand at the scroll-turned front of the sleigh.
The crupper of one of the runaways was at his hand--this horse waslagging a little. The next instant, and the boy was clinging to the reinrings of the top harness and digging his heels into the heaving flanksof the laboring animal. Working forward with the same celerity, Billygot a hand-twist on the reins where they doubled to the bit.
Sawing for dear life, he forced the horse's jaws with the killingcurb--but then it was that the free running steed swerved into the pathof its mate, and the team went down in a crashing mix-up.
The Bangor boy was catapulted forward, clear of the thrashing hoofs, yetwith a falling force that jarred him into oblivion.