The Boy Scouts In Russia Part 8

He let old Vladimir go out first. Then, after waiting for several minutes, he went up the gully in his turn, and set out boldly and with no attempt to hide his movements, for the parsonage.

There was even more activity there now than there had been when he had first set eyes upon it. There were more automobiles; four of them altogether. At the wheel of each sat a soldier driver in grey uniform, and with a cloth covered helmet. Each car was of the same type, a long rakish grey body, low to the ground. As he neared the house an officer wearing a long, grey coat came out, accompanied by two or three younger men. He turned to speak to them, then got into one of the cars, which immediately drove off. As it went a peculiar call was sounded, more like a trumpet than an automobile horn. Fred guessed then what he afterward learned to be a fact; that the automobiles used by the German staff officers on active service had horns that indicated the rank of the officer using them.

It seemed to Fred that there were more officers than soldiers about.

There seemed to be only enough soldiers to provide a guard. Sentries were all about, but there were officers almost in swarms. He walked along, indifferently rather than boldly, and he was sharply challenged when he drew fairly near to the house.

"You can't go any further, youngster," said the soldier. "The staff has taken this house."

Fred stared at him rather stupidly, but turned away. Then he was called back suddenly, and for a moment his heart was in his mouth at the thought that his disguise had been penetrated and that he was about to be made a prisoner. Like Boris, he was concerned only with the effect of this upon his plans. He did not think of his own safety, although, had he been caught, he might have expected the fate of a spy, since he was in disguise within the German lines. It proved, however, that he was not to be arrested. A young captain was eyeing him sharply.

"Come with me, boy," he said. "We are short of servants in the house here. You will do."

For a moment he was indignant, but then his heart leaped happily. If he was taken into the house as a servant, he could find out all and more than he had hoped, and that without risk.

CHAPTER IX

"THERES MANY A SLIP--"

Once inside the house, Fred found a scene of orderly confusion. That is, it looked like confusion to him, but he could see that, for all the bustling and the hurrying that went on, everyone knew just what his part in the work was. Telephone bells were ringing all the time, and Fred noticed now that wires entered the house through the dining-room window.

Evidently a field telephone system had been installed and connected this house with a whole region, of which, in a military way, it seemed to be the brain. Then Fred heard a voice that he recognized at once, and started at the sound, until he placed it as that of the captain who had taken Boris away, and remembered that the captain had not seen him, even before he was disguised.

Fred's work, he soon found, was simplicity itself. He was to do the bidding of any officer. He was sent on errands, from one part of the house to another; often he carried written messages, handed to him by staff officers, to the room in which three telegraph operators were hard at work. Generally speaking, he was there to do odd jobs and make himself generally useful. Luckily, he was taken for granted. Everyone seemed a.s.sured that he was one of the village boys, pressed into service because he happened to be the first one to come along.

But for the first hour or so it was impossible for him to make any attempt to discover if Boris was still in the house. He was too busy, and he dared not spoil his opportunity to learn something really worth while by seeming to spy about. He was rewarded before long for his patience, for just as he was beginning to despair, an officer spied him in a moment when he was not actively engaged upon some errand.

"Here, boy," called the officer, "take this tray!"

Fred took a tray from a soldier who was holding it awkwardly.

"Take it upstairs to the room on the third floor where a sentry is on guard. He will let you in. When the prisoner there has finished his meal, return with the tray to the kitchen. Do not let any knife or fork or spoon stay in the room when you go. So you will make yourself really useful and release a man who can do things for which you are too young."

It seemed to Fred, as he started upstairs with his tray, that this luck was almost too good to be true. He scarcely dared to hope for what had seemed to him the inevitable explanation of his errand. But when the sentry opened the door of the locked room, and he looked in, he saw Boris sitting dejectedly on the side of a bed. It was all he could do to suppress a cry of delight, but he managed it, and he was hugely tickled as he saw Boris's indifferent glance at him. His disguise must be good, or Boris would have known him. He put the tray down, and then walked to the window. He looked down first, and then up. Then with a grin, he turned to his cousin.

"Not a word," he said, quickly. "Do you know me?"

Boris stared; then a smile broke out all over his face. There was no need for him to put his answer into words. Fred came very close.

"Speak low, but do not whisper," he said. "Tell me, what have they done to you?"

"Nothing. Colonel Goldapp has been too busy to see me."

"I don't wonder! Boris, this is no colonel's headquarters. It is more like that of an army corps. And there is at least one general here. His name is von Hindenburg."

"Von Hindenburg? He is commander-in-chief in East Prussia! If he is here, there must be a German concentration in this region! They did not expect that! Oh, I must get out and get the news back--"

"Yes. The wireless is working. I talked this afternoon to Suwalki."

And in a few words he told Boris the essential facts of what had happened since the raid upon the great house on the hill on that morning.

"How often do they come in here?" he asked.

"Only when my meals are brought to me. There will be no one else now to-night, I think, unless Colonel Goldapp sends for me. They are very polite. I think I shall be alone most of the time. They have no idea that I will try to get away, because they think I know they have so many sentries and patrols about that it would be useless for me to try to do it."

"Listen, then, Boris. I will go now. I think they will let me go now. I have been working hard for them about the house. But I will come back later. Stay near your window, so that I can see a handkerchief if you hold it. Then I will throw up a stone with a string tied about, and you can draw up a rope and slip down. If this general is so important we ought to let them know. I will send the word by wireless and then come back."

"Good! It is risky for you. They wouldn't spare you if they caught you trying to help me to get away. But if you can manage it at all, have clothes like the ones you wear ready for me, in a bundle. Vladimir will get them for you."

Fred nodded, and was off at once. He was detained a little time when he went down with the tray, but he pleaded finally with a kindly looking officer, telling him that he was very tired, and had not expected to stay away from home so long, and was allowed to go. He went to the opening of the tunnel, found that the place was unguarded, and decided from the general appearance of the hollow that it was not visited by soldiers. Indeed, it was within the outer line of sentries, and, in a way, safer because of that. Had it been beyond that line, it would have been much harder to reach.

The operator at Suwalki, when he called him by wireless, complained bitterly, saying that he had been trying for hours to get an answer.

Boris's father had been heard from and was extremely anxious to get into touch with his son. But it seemed the news that Fred sent made up for this. The man at Suwalki was incredulous.

"Our information is that General von Hindenburg is many miles from where you are," he flashed back. "Are you sure of your facts?"

"Absolutely sure," Fred answered. "Do you want the exact location of the house used as headquarters? I can describe it for you if you have the village shown on your map."

"Yes. Give it to me," came the answer.

Before he finished his wireless talk, Fred felt that the Russian operator did not fully trust him. Nor did he blame him. He knew the excellence of the German spy system; he had heard a good deal about it from Boris, and, for that matter, before he had even seen Boris at all.

So he only laughed, though he hoped that this feeling would not prevent the Russians from using the information he had given. He could not see just how it was to be useful to them, however. Possibly the fact that von Hindenburg was here, and not to the south, was the important thing.

By this time it was growing dark, and Fred decided that it would soon be safe to try to throw the cord up to Boris's window--as safe, at least, as it would ever be. He got a bundle of clothes from Vladimir, and this time he determined to travel through the tunnel, since he knew that if he went by the outside route he would have trouble in getting through the sentries. Luck was with him again. He was nervous as he opened the door and came out into the night, but there was no one about. At a little distance he could hear steady footsteps; evidently a sentry was walking his beat near by. But Fred's scout training had taught him how to move quietly and he slipped through the gully and toward the house without raising an alarm.

Once he was on the right side of the house, he found shelter in a clump of bushes, where, unseen himself, he could study the situation. His first thought was of the house. He soon found the window of Boris's room. Immediately below it were the windows of corresponding rooms, and one of these was lighted. This made him pause at once. For the rope to be drawn up, or for Boris to show himself before that lighted window for even the moment of a swift descent, might well be fatal. That was one point, but he speedily devised a way of overcoming that.

There was another danger to be considered, and it took him longer to calculate this. Naturally there was a patrol about the house. Fred himself had had to avoid the sentry, making his steady round. Now he lay in the bushes and timed the man's appearances for nearly half an hour.

There were two men, as a matter of fact, and they met on each circling of the house. Fortunately, their meeting came at the very end of the garden. So Fred was able to work out a sort of mental chart of their movements, and to confirm it by timing them. The two sentries met on his side of the house at the eastern end. The first walked west, the second north. The one who walked west had his back to Fred and to the window where Boris waited for a minute. Then he, too, turned north. Then came a blessed interval of just a minute, in which neither sentry was in sight.

Altogether, there was a period of almost two minutes in which no eye would be fixed on Boris's window, unless the sentry chanced to turn and look back.

To make sure, Fred studied both men. And not once did either of them look back or up. Their attention did not seem to centre on the house at all. It was as if their instructions were more to prevent a surprise attack from outside, or the coming of some spy, than to watch those who were already in the house.

Once he had made up his mind, Fred buried himself deeper in the shrubbery and risked using his pocket flashlight while he wrote a note to Boris, telling him what he had learned of the movements of the sentries. He told Boris, also, not to draw up the rope at once, but to climb from his window to the flat roof, something easy enough to manage, and then to move along five paces. There the rope, when it was drawn up, would be invisible against the grey stone of the house wall, whereas, against a lighted window, it would show up so plainly that the most stupid sentry would be sure to see it.

Fred had subst.i.tuted a tennis ball for the stone he had originally intended to throw. The ball had many advantages. In case his aim was bad, the ball would not make a noise if it fell or if it struck against the wall, while the sound of a stone would have betrayed them had he failed to put it through the window. Now he tied his note to the ball, making it firm and secure with the end of a ball of twine. About his body he had coiled a long, very thin, very strong rope. After Boris had the end of the cord he would fasten the rope to his end, and so enable Boris to draw it up. And to guard against losing the end of the cord, he tied it to his own left wrist.

He waited for the sentries to meet; gave the one who stayed on his side a start, and then, taking careful aim, threw his ball. At home Fred had played baseball. More than once a game had depended on the accuracy of his toss of a hot grounder to the first baseman. In basketball games, he had stood, with the score tied, to shoot for the basket on a foul, when the outcome was to be settled by the accuracy of his throw. But never had he been as nervous as he was now. The ball flew straight and true, however. He saw it enter the window. And the next moment a tug on his wrist told him that Boris had it.

He waited breathlessly. Then two short pulls signalled that Boris had read his note and would follow his instructions. He gave three sharp tugs, and then settled down to wait, with beating heart, for now the crucial test was coming. The other sentry was about to appear. If he noticed the thin string, by any chance, the whole scheme would be spoiled and Fred, in all probability, would be caught and treated as a spy.

The man came around the corner of the house, walking slowly, his head down. As he neared the twine he stopped for just a moment and looked up.

Fred scarcely dared to breathe. He knew what had happened. The twine had brushed against the sentry's cheek. But then a puff of wind carried it away, and the man went on, brushing at his cheek, thinking, perhaps, a moth had touched it.

One sharp tug of the twine. That was the signal to Boris to go ahead.

His eyes strained on the window, Fred saw his cousin's figure appear on the sill, saw him climbing swiftly up a water pipe, and then saw him drop to the flat roof, hidden for the moment by a low parapet. Then there was another period of agonized waiting, for again a sentry was to pa.s.s. Fred used the brief interval of enforced inaction to loosen the rope and place it on the ground, tied to the loose end of the twine he took from his wrist, so that it would have a clear pa.s.sage through the bushes. Then the coast was clear again, and he signalled to Boris to draw it up. Up, up went the twine; then the rope started. And at last it dangled against the side of the house. Fred, knowing it was there, could scarcely see it himself. He decided that the sentries would never notice it.