TAKING THREE PRISONERS
"Come nothing!" said Beany slangily. "You stay right here until we can talk this thing over, and make some sort of a plan. I don't propose to go into something we can't get out of."
"Well," said Porky, "the only plan I have is so crazy that I'm sort of afraid to tell you about it. But it would certainly be sort of nifty to take those men ourselves instead of running back to the bunch for help. It would kind of put a little gilt on things and would be something to tell Bill and Peggy about when they grow up a little."
Beany was impressed. "I hadn't thought of that," he said. "Looks like we haven't much to tell them about, nothing but the submarine and the secret passage and that sort of thing."
"And the spies back home," added Porky. "No, we ought to wind up with something else. Beside, if I don't get hold of a Hun or two after what we saw and heard back at the Duval farm, I don't think I'll ever live."
"Well, I'm with you," agreed Beany. "Now let's plan. We sure have got to get a prisoner or two our own selves. What's next?"
For twenty minutes the boys, heads close together, whispered rapidly. Then they rose and went noiselessly toward the false hillock.
The last hundred yards they crept, lying flat and motionless whenever a flare lit the sky. They were not frequent, however, and the boys made good progress. When they reached the mound, Porky, who was the best climber, crept to the top. He used the most infinite caution, and there was not a sound to betray his slow, sure progress. Gaining the top, he found what he had expected to find. A sodded opening, like a double trap door, operated from the inside, was slightly opened for air. So cleverly was it arranged with small bushes and grass growing on the trap doors, that it would have been impossible to detect it. Porky felt cautiously about the edges. Then he listened. From below came an unmistakable sound—the noise of a couple of men snoring. The sound was so muffled by the thick steel walls, the earth and stones and sod outside them, that they were able to sleep without fear of detection. Porky shook his head admiringly. He was forced to acknowledge that the ingenuity of the foe seemed to know no bounds. Again he tried the trap doors. They were balanced to a hair and moved upward at his touch. He felt in his pocket, arranged something in either hand, then swung the doors both upward.
It would be untrue to say that a flash of doubt did not pass over the reckless boy at that instant. He thought of the General and of the way in which that great man trusted them to do their part in keeping out of trouble. He had surmised that there were three men below. There was room for a dozen. He had taken it for granted that he and Beany could pull off a stunt that instead might end in their immediate death or worse. But there he was, perched on the top, the heavy trap doors swinging wide, and below in the dense darkness the sound of men snoring. Porky took time to listen. There were snores from two, that was clear, and still another man talked and muttered fretfully in his sleep. Porky could hear no others.
He took a long breath, leaned over the opening, and turned a flashlight below.
As though electrified; three big men sat up and blinked in the glare of the flashlight.
Two of the men cried, "Kamarad!" and instantly held up their hands. The third said calmly, "Thank the Lord! I surrender!" and stood up.
"Not so fast!" said Porky in his deepest tones. He fiddled with the button on his flashlight. The light wavered. Porky kept his face to the men and called back over his shoulder:
"Sergeant, something's wrong with my flash. Send up another!"
"Yes, sir!" answered Beany as gruffly as possible from below. He waited a moment, then scrambling up passed his flash to his brother. Porky put his in his pocket, and bent the light on the men below. An ax stood in one corner with a coil of rope. In another corner was a rough table loaded with strange instruments that Porky did not understand.
"Turn out your pockets!" he commanded, and three revolvers were tossed up, one after the other.
"See that rope?" demanded Porky, pointing his flash directly at the man who had spoken English. "You tell those other fellows to tie you up quick, and tell them to make a good job of it!"
"I surrender," said the man Fritz. "Please don't tie me up, sir!"
"You hear!" said Porky grimly. He called back over his shoulder. "Forward ten paces, Sergeant!"
"Yes, sir," said Beany, and Porky almost giggled as he heard his brother scuffling violently around trying to sound like a squad. But he dared not look away from the men below, who were hastily tying up the man called Fritz. They did a good job, eager to make good with the unseen and most unexpected captors. If the officer above with the boyish voice wanted Fritz tied up, tied up he would be so he could not move. When they finished, the bulky form looked like a mummy.
"Is that a door in the side?" Porky demanded of Fritz.
"Yes, sir," said Fritz.
Porky waited a little. The worst was coming now.
"Tell those men to open that door, and step outside, and if they value their lives, to keep their hands up."
Fritz spoke rapidly in German. What he said was, "These are Americans, you fools! The officer says to step outside, and keep your hands up. You had better do it, if you want to live. They would rather shoot than eat. I know them! Obey, no matter what they tell you."
When he had finished, one of the men, lowering one hand and keeping the other well up in the air, pressed a long lever and a narrow door opened, dislodging a little shower of stones and earth as it moved outward.
"Vorwarts zwei!" cried Porky, making a wild stab at German.
It was understood however. Fear makes men quick, and the two walked briskly out and stood side by side. One of them had stepped through a loop of the rope, and it came trailing after him.
"Tie those men's hands and tie them together. Sergeant," said Porky. He watched, cold with a fright he would never have felt for himself, while Beany, keeping as much out of the light as possible, tied the men, and sawed off the end of the rope.
"Close the door!" demanded Porky.
Beany did so.
"Don't leave me here, sir," cried the man below suddenly. "If the Germans find that we have allowed this spot to be discovered, they will shoot me. If the enemy comes I shall be shot. I will come quietly. I am glad to surrender."
"That's all right," growled Porky. "You are safe for a while. I am leaving a guard here. We want a few English-speaking prisoners, so you are quite safe for a while."
"One of those men outside speaks English also," cried Fritz.
"All right," said Porky. "I advise you to keep still. Sergeant, detail a guard for this place with orders to shoot him at the first outcry."
"Yes, sir," said Beany. He retreated under cover of the darkness, thoughtfully going around the corner of the mound as a flare brightened the sky, and he remembered, in the nick of time, that it wouldn't do to let the two men, carefully bound as they were, see him roaring directions at an imaginary squad. He returned in a minute and saluted, although his form was only a darker shadow in the darkness of the night.
Above, Porky closed the trap doors, and as he did so, cut the ropes by which they were opened and closed. Not even with his teeth could the trussed up prisoner below open them.
Beany had already shut the door in the side and wedged it with a broken piece of gun-carriage.
"Come with me, Sergeant," said Porky, for the benefit of the English-speaking prisoner. "Vorwarts!"
It was a strange group that gave the password a half hour later and advanced to the General's tent. The tent, hidden from observation by blankets and thick masses of boughs, was brightly lighted. General Pershing seemed to scorn sleep. Surrounded by his staff and a group of officers from the lines below, he sat puzzling over the reports they had made. Information was steadily leaking across. Every move they made was reported correctly. Only that very night as soon as it was definitely decided that no attack would be made, the flares from the enemy's lines almost ceased and their guns were silenced, as though they were glad to be assured of a few hours of peace. The positions of the American guns, no matter how cleverly camouflaged, were speedily discovered and gun fire trained on them.
The thing had assumed a very serious look. Losses were piling up. The General listened in worried and puzzled silence.
It was at this moment that the flap of the tent was suddenly opened, and two Germans, their hands tightly bound, stumbled blinkingly into the light. Behind them stood the two boys. There was a moment of surprised silence broken by the older prisoner, as he accustomed his eyes to the light. He glanced about the group, then his eyes rested curiously on his captors.
A look of fury and amazement crossed his face.
"Kinder, kleine kinder!" he muttered scornfully.
The other man was silent.
General Pershing gave a sigh.
"Those twins again!" he said. The boys saluted. "Where shall we leave these, sir?" said Porky respectfully. "We left another back there." He waved into space. Back there might have been anywhere on the continent, as far as his direction showed. "It's sort of a queer place, sir, and we would like some one to see it, because we can't tell what it's all for, and we don't know that we could make the other fellow tell. He speaks English."
Rapidly the General gave the necessary orders. The two men were led off a short distance and placed under close guard. An escort, with a couple of captains and an expert electrician, was named for the boys, and without a question from the General, who knew how to bide his time, the little party filed out of the tent and went back down the trail.
When they were out of hearing, the General laughed and spoke.
"I often wonder," he said, "how those two boys pass the time in their own home. I don't mind trying to run an army, but running those twins is a bigger task than I like to tackle. I am glad they don't know just how glad I will be to hear the story they will tell us when they get the job finished. Three prisoners, and they want an escort of officers and an electrician! Well, they are on the trail of something, I'll be bound! I would like to question those prisoners but I won't spoil the boys' innocent pleasure in what they are doing. But I must say that I want one of you to keep an eye on them every second now until we return to headquarters. They are to be shipped home from there with a special passport, and I will be able to sleep better."
"They came with General Bright, did they not?" asked a Captain.
"Yes, and when he was called to Paris, I foolishly offered to let them stay at headquarters. I thought they would play around and kill time until Bright came back. That's what I get for overlooking their records. Things are bound to happen wherever they go."
"All boys are like that more or less, but this is a lively pair," said the Captain. "They seem to want to know everything. They are studying all my books on the French and English guns now, and I heard one of them say the other day that he had some good ideas on airplanes."
"I hope he takes them home then," said the General. "They are good youngsters, and I'll be glad to get a receipt from their parents for them. They are perfectly obedient, and strict as any old regular about discipline, but no matter what good care we try to take of them, they are always getting into tight places."
"Their coming over here seems a strange thing," said one of the officers. "Sort of irregular."
"There is a reason," said the General. "They don't know it themselves. They were sent across because it seemed a good thing to have a boy's point of view for the boys over there of things over here. When I say they were sent, I do not mean that their expenses were paid. The Potters are amply able to spend money, but it was a good and patriotic thing for them to risk the lives of a fine pair like Porky and Beany. I don't even know their real names. Not that it matters. They would make themselves felt if they were called Percy and Willie. They are that sort."
Talk drifted to other things and time passed until a stir and footsteps outside made it evident that the expedition had returned. The door flap opened and the party filed in, the remaining prisoner in their midst.
The General glanced at him, then bent a steady, steely look on the man's face.
"You!" he said. "A German prisoner, you—"
The man's face lighted.
He stood erect and made an effort to salute with his bound hands.
"Yes, sir," he said in a low tone. "If I'm to be shot, sir, won't you let me tell you how it all happened?"
The General glanced at his wrist watch.
"It is three o'clock," he said. He nodded toward the sergeant. "Take this man in charge. To-morrow at seven o'clock bring him to my tent and I will talk with him."
He turned away and did not glance again at the prisoner as he was led away.
"He knew you," said a Captain.
"He worked for me four years on my apple ranch in Oregon. The foreman wrote me that he and seven others had left suddenly soon after the beginning of the war. I think we will get some very interesting information out of that young man. In the meantime," he turned to the two boys standing as stiffly at attention as their fagged out bodies would permit, "in the meantime, boys, can you tell your little story in half an hour? It is very late, and we have a hard day before us to-morrow."
"It won't take that long," said Porky. "We just went down a little ways, inside our own lines, General, so you wouldn't worry, and Beany, he hears things just like a cat, and there was a little hill, with these men inside, and I climbed on top and talked to them through the trap door, and Beany made believe he was a squad."
"And Porky had two of 'em tie up that Fritz fellow," interrupted Beany, "and made 'em come out the door, and we just made 'em think the squad was guarding the hill, and we brought 'em up here, and they came too easy. And we didn't try to carry arms, General, we just had a couple of monkey wrenches, and say, Porky, I've lost mine! That chauffeur will murder me!"
"A few details missing, however," said the General. "However, that will do for to-night. In the morning, if you like, you may be present when I see the prisoner. Good-night!"