Read Ebook: Our Young Aeroplane Scouts in Russia; or Lost on the Frozen Steppes by Porter Horace

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Ebook has 1005 lines and 35654 words, and 21 pages

"I'd be inclined to tell the neighbors that the old plant was as empty as a last year's bird nest."

"Not to mention the tracks on the platform," reminded Billy.

"No definite telling when those marks might have been made," continued Henri, "and as I was saying, the talkfest mystery is the one absolute assurance that we are not alone in these diggings."

"In the passing," intimated Billy, "there may be a crack in that hut in which an eye would fit, and there is no use leaving an unsolved problem behind."

Henri grinned. "I've been expecting that, Buddy," he said.

Alongside the counting house the boys moved on all fours, and it did not take Billy long to find a place to put his eye. Just over his head was the checking window--a small aperture, masked by a curtain of green baize, from which projected a rounded shelf. There had been a warp between this projection and the window setting, and through the open seam a free view of the enclosure was presented.

When Billy had completed his look-in, he resorted to the sign language as a means of conveying the word that the room was occupied. Henri, surmising as much from the fragments of conversation sifting through the loose lines of the wooden wall, took his turn as an observer.

In the same rough garb of coal heaver that he wore on the day of delivery to the young aviators of the summons to the twin towers, Ricker was lolling on a rickety bench, and another man equally shabby in makeup was perched upon a dingy counter. On the floor at their feet, gagged and bound hand and foot, was the heavyweight policeman, who had officially invoked the services of the silversmith as an expert examiner of the battered remains of the time clock dug out of the ruins of the explosion-rent military storehouse.

Ricker had occasion to several times admonish his companion for getting too high a pitch in his rumbling voice. These vocal lifts at intervals, no doubt, were the sounds that had from the first convinced the boys of the presence of other life than theirs in the building.

"This carrion," Ricker was saying, prodding the prostrate officer with the toe of a hobnailed boot, "is too much of a blunderhead to kill outright, and it would be a shame to deprive the rats of such a splendid spread of live meat. But, after all, seeing that the game is up here as far as I am concerned, I will let the palace of justice keep their numbskull. There's a lout that will let them know in twenty-four hours after we are gone."

The man on the floor spluttered in his gag and strained at his bonds.

"Heigho, Casper," yawned Ricker, rising and stretching himself, "it's soon farewell to Warsaw for us; we were good citizens, eh, Casper? We leave our mark, too--and we will also leave that crazy Hamar if he does not show his ugly face within the next ten minutes."

Ricker consulted a heavy gold watch, which he produced from the folds of his woollen shirt. Two gunny-sacks, bulging at both ends and roped in the middle, might have furnished evidence that the silversmith was taking most of his stock with him.

The boys, taking turn about at the look-in point, concluded to sheer off for the time being, when Ricker bestowed a parting kick upon the trussed policeman, shouldered the gunny-sacks and started for the door of the counting house.

"I suppose Hamar will know where to find us?" questioned the man called Casper.

"Blast him for a crank, there is no telling anything about him," fumed Ricker; "he had the hour pounded into his addled brain, and it is nobody's fault but his own if he misses fire."

Billy and Henri were prepared for the sport of hide and seek, until they could learn the direction that Ricker and his companion proposed to take.

Each took a corner of the counting house at the rear, and each on the alert to work the disappearing act.

AN EXHIBIT OF NERVE.

Ricker and his companion, however, took a route that relieved the wary watchers of the necessity of doing lively footwork to keep out of sight. The path followed was that across the platform toward the top of the stairway descending to the basement. Through the opening there the pair disappeared.

The first thought then with the boys was to immediately release the prisoner in the counting house from his uncomfortable predicament, but a second thought made this preceding one for debate. Through no fault of their own, and, unconsciously, the lads had been indirectly connected with recent Warsaw operations of Ricker, and to be well rid of him was a matter of self-protection. Having squared themselves with the Cossack, Nikita, the passing of the silversmith would be a final clearance of old scores.

"Let's give them an hour's leeway, and then we'll cut his nobs loose," suggested Henri; "the chap in there would start something mighty quick the minute he got on his feet, and there's no telling what might be coming to us if Ricker was brought to bay. He'd surely think we had betrayed him."

"Yes, and come to think of it, as we did before, the authorities here might not accept graciously our plea of innocence. We'd get it both going and coming. Plenty of time to untie the policeman. He ought to be thankful that it is only one hour instead of twenty-four, and maybe a good sight longer than that, if we did not interfere."

Billy's conclusion would have stood as satisfactory but for a startling development of the instant. Some intuitive process of the mind caused him to cast a glance over his shoulder, and within twenty feet of him, coming with cat-like tread from the far front of the warehouse, was the threatening shape of Hamar. It is doubtful if the hairy henchman of Ricker was then aware of the presence of the boys, and if he had any special purpose for carrying an unsheathed knife in his hand, the reason must be accounted for in the person of the unfortunate policeman on the counting house floor. Hamar was of the fiery brand of conspirator who resented any application of law, and woe to the man who affronted him. The poisoned ring episode was an instance in point.

Henri, gazing in another direction, for the moment, was wholly oblivious of the new peril at hand until apprised by a hiss from Billy. Half turning, the French boy was looking full into the malignant face of the velvet-footed oncomer.

With a side leap that covered several feet, Henri dashed around the cabin, meeting his chum, who had jumped on the other side, at the front entrance, both crossing the threshold at one step, and banging the door behind them. Billy grabbed at the bolt just over the latch, and sent it with a snap into its socket.

"Gee whillikens," he panted, "that was some acrobatic act!"

The door creaked and cracked with the outside pressure that a powerful and infuriated man was exerting against it.

The boys hastily dragged forward the several heavy benches in the room and stacked them up for an additional and supporting barrier.

The next move was to free the policeman, who, though carrying a lot of surplus flesh, would apparently make a fair bid as a full hand in a fight.

Relieved of the gag, what the officer had to say about his late captors was red-hot Russian. When Henri had severed, with his pocket-knife, the last strand of the confining cord, the big policeman regained his feet with astonishing alacrity for such a heavyweight. He speedily worked the stiffness out of his joints by swinging his arms about like a windmill and vigorously stamping up and down the few feet of floor space.

Shrewdly surmising that his rescuers were not conversant with the native tongue, he asked in French: "How many of them out there?"

The door was rattling ominously, and one of the hinges gave way with a scattering of screw fastenings.

"One," answered Henri, "but he's a corker--the fellow with the hair mattress around his ears."

"Oh, oh," exclaimed the policeman, "I gave him a rap with my stick before they downed me. He's of strange breed, not like the rest."

The thought came to both Billy and Henri that Hamar was here to exact blood atonement for the mentioned blow.

The policeman wrenched a heavy oak brace from one of the benches, tested its heft by a long arm swing over his head, and grimly remarked:

"This will drop him if he comes through."

The door gave way with a crash, the piled up benches toppling with the impact, and on top of the whole mass the tiger man with dagger drawn.

Before the fierce intruder could recover his balance, the policeman with bench brace poised for action brought the oaken weapon down with terrific force on the raised right arm of Hamar, a muscle-numbing stroke, which relaxed the latter's grip on the haft of the glittering blade and sent it spinning under the counter across the room. A second blow cut into his forehead.

The men grappled, swayed to and fro in interlocked fury, rolled over the fallen door and out upon the platform. Hamar was at a disadvantage by reason of the blinding effect of blood from the forehead wound, and it was evident that he was seeking to break away from his burly antagonist.

Billy and Henri, wildly excited over the fray, danced around the combatants, narrowly escaping at times a bruising jab from whirling heels.

The fight ranged closer and closer to the head of the basement stairway, the plain intent of the policeman's hairy adversary.

Here it was, by some cunning wrestler's trick, that Hamar broke the hold of the heavyweight, bounded through the opening and down the stairs with an agility that baffled interference.

The policeman, though winded by exertion, did not delay pursuit, and he was not far behind his wily foe when the latter paused for a second as though hesitating over the course to take.

The boys, in the immediate wake of the doughty officer, saw that the fugitive was making the run back in the same direction that they had followed in coming. Speeding along with the policeman, their judgment as to this was verified in the passing under an arch out of which several large stones had fallen.

"He's making for the chimney grating," advised Billy.

The policeman, under ordinary conditions, might have yielded to detective instinct and asked the boy how he knew so much, but this was no time for cross-examination by him, racing through a cellar after a fight for life, and in eager pursuit of a desperate and dangerous enemy.

Hamar had climbed the spikes to the chimney base, and by the time the policeman got his head through the grating was shinning up the big smokestack like a monkey.

The trio in the rear swarmed up the handholds in close pursuit, the fat officer puffing and growling at every reach.

From the wide expanse of the warehouse roof could be seen, quite near, the channel of the Vistula river. Hamar had reached the extreme west line of the elevation, and was looking down into the void that effectually blocked further flight.

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