CHAPTER XVI
THE SPY IS SEIZED
It was a happy thought of Dick to use his patrol whistle upon reaching the strip of country where they had seen the sergeant. The latter heard the very first shrill note. He was haunting that stretch of the heath for a purpose, eyes and ears wide open. He ran towards the sound, and came plump on the boys as they raced round a bend in the way, for the two scouts were now following the heath-track where they had last seen the prints of the soldier's ammunition boots.
'Hooray!' yelled Chippy, who was a little in front. ''Ere he is. Hooray!' and Dick joined in the cheer.
'You two again!' cried the astonished sergeant. 'What on earth are you nippers up to?'
'We've discovered a spy, sergeant,' panted Dick. 'He's running after us. He'll be up in a minute.'
At the word 'spy' the sergeant's face underwent an extraordinary change. It filled with wonder, and then a grim alertness sprang to life all over him. He dropped his hand to his holster, and whipped out a big regulation 455 revolver, blue and sombre. The boys formed behind as under cover of a tower of strength, and the spy dashed round the bend.
'Hands up!' bellowed the sergeant, and the spy knew better than to disobey with that grim dark muzzle laid full on his body.
'Heavenly powers!' murmured the sergeant, 'I was right. As sure as my name's John Lake I was right. Didn't I see you on the heath just about here last Thursday?' he demanded of the spy. The latter made no reply. He stood, drawn up to his full height, his hands above his head, and in one of them was a long-bladed hunting-knife of the sort which folds into small compass. Now it was fully opened, and looked a very dreadful weapon. The man was white as death, and gasping fiercely from his run and this frightful surprise.
'Drop that knife,' commanded the sergeant, 'or I'll put a bullet through your wrist.'
The spy's wild eyes were fixed on the English soldier's grim face. He knew when a man meant what he said, and he dropped the knife.
'Step two yards back,' went on the sergeant. The spy did so.
'One o' you boys pick up that knife,' murmured the sergeant; and Dick ran and fetched it.
'Now, I'm in the dark yet,' went on the sergeant quietly; 'all this looks very suspicious, but how do you boys come to reckon you've nabbed a spy?'
Dick began with the boot and the papers hidden in it.
'That's enough, my lad,' said the sergeant. 'We'll lose no time. There's plenty o' reason, I can see, to take him in on suspicion, and after hearing that I'd shoot him at once if he tried to escape. Now you,' he went on to the spy, 'turn right round and march ahead as I tell you. And remember I'm a yard behind you with a cocked revolver. March!'
The spy turned, and went as he was bidden.
'Come on, boys; you must come with me,' said the sergeant and the little party went across the heath, the prisoner turning as the sergeant bade him, and taking as direct a line as possible to the Horseshoe Fort.
An hour later Dick and Chippy found themselves in the presence of the officer in charge of the works at the fort. The prisoner had been handed over into safe keeping, and the sergeant and the two boys had been ordered to report to the colonel himself.
They were shown into a large bare room where a tall man was seated at a great table covered with papers. He stood up, as they went in and saluted, and posted himself in front of the fire.
'Well, Sergeant Lake,' he said. 'What's all this about?'
'I believe, sir, I've got a spy; at least, these boys had him. I only helped to bring him in.' So spoke the modest sergeant.
'Ah, yes, a spy;' and the colonel nodded, as if he had been expecting a spy for weeks, and perhaps he had. 'But this is rather an odd thing to get hold of a spy in this fashion. Let me hear all about it.'
'I can tell you little or nothing, sir,' replied Sergeant Lake. 'I didn't wait to hear all their story. The boys told me enough, though, for me to bring him in.'
'Well,' said the colonel, 'suppose I have the story from one of you boys?'
Dick and Chippy looked at each other, and the latter mumbled: 'You tell 'em. Yer can manage it a lot better 'n me. I shan't, anyhow. Goo on.'
Thus adjured by his brother scout, Dick told the whole story from the moment he saw the startled rabbit until they had run upon the sergeant in their headlong flight. Then Chippy handed over the boot, which underwent the most careful examination at the hands of the colonel. The latter spread out on the table the tiny sheets of paper from the cavity, and studied them long and earnestly. To his trained eyes those marks meant things which the boys had, as was only natural, failed to grasp. He had sat down at the table to examine the papers, and Dick, Chippy, and the sergeant were standing on the opposite side.
At last the colonel leaned back in his chair, and looked at the boys and tapped the papers with his forefinger.
'Oh yes,' he said, 'you've nabbed a spy, and no mistake about it, my brave lads. I feel, personally, that you've done me an immense service, for I should have been simply wild to think that my plans were as good as pigeon-holed in some foreign intelligence office. But, after all, that's only my personal feeling. You've done your country an immense service, and that's a much bigger thing still. Unfortunately, it can never be publicly recognised: this affair must remain a profound secret; and men, you know, have received medals and open honour for smaller things than you have done to-day.'
'We don't trouble at all about that, sir,' said Dick quietly. 'We're not out for what we can get for ourselves: we're boy scouts.'
'I beg your pardon,' said the colonel. 'I beg your pardon. Of course, you're boy scouts, and that puts you on a different footing at once. You look at the thing from a real soldier's point of view—all for his side, and nothing for himself. That's it, isn't it?'
'Theer's Scout Law 2,' growled Chippy; 'it's all theer.'
Ah! Law 2,' said the colonel, who was not, like Chippy, a walking encyclopaedia on 'Scouting for Boys.' 'I should like very much to hear how that law runs.'
Chippy recited it, and the colonel listened attentively as the scout said, 'A Scout is loyal to the King, and to his officers, and to his country, and to his employers. He must stick to them through thick and thin against anyone who is their enemy, or who even talks badly of them.'
'A splendid law,' he said, 'and you boys have obeyed it nobly to-day. And now I'm going to ask you to be very quiet about the seizure of this man. You may, if you wish, tell your parents, but bind them over to strict secrecy. You see, this man belongs to a nation with whom at the moment our own is on the most friendly terms, and it will never do for his capture to get abroad. Now, how are you going to get back to Bardon?'
Dick mentioned the station at which they were all to meet. The colonel looked at his watch, and shook his head. 'You can't do that now,' he said; 'but we'll manage it all right. My chauffeur shall run you over to Bardon direct, and drop you at the station. There you'll meet your friends when they arrive. My Napier will do that comfortably. But we must find you something to eat first. Come with me to my quarters.'
Half an hour later the colonel put the two scouts in his big splendid six-cylinder Napier, and the great car was ready to start. As he shook hands with them at parting, he wished to tip them a sovereign apiece, but the boys would not hear of it. Chippy, to whom the money was a little fortune, was most emphatic.
'Not a bit of it, sir,' he growled—'not a bit of it. If we tek' money for the job, 'ow 'ave we 'elped our country?'
'I quite understand,' said the colonel, smiling, 'quite. You're a pair of trumps, and I honour the feeling. If B.-P.'s movement turns out many more like you it will prove the finest thing we've had in the country for many a day.'
He gave his man a nod, and away shot the huge powerful car along the road which led to Bardon.
True to the colonel's promise, the car drew up outside Bardon Station a few minutes before the train which would bring their friends was due. Dick and Chippy sprang from the tonneau, where they had ridden in immense comfort, thanked the chauffeur, bade him good-night, and sought the arrival platform.
''Ow about Mr. Elliott?' said Chippy; 'we ought to tell 'im.'
'Ah, of course!' said Dick. 'He's our instructor, and the colonel said we might tell our parents. At that rate we might tell Uncle Jim.'
'I shan't tell my folks,' said Chippy; 'they wouldn't bother about knowin'. I'll tell Mr. Elliott instead.'
'All right, Chippy,' said Dick. 'Hullo, here's the train!'
Mr. Elliott was very much relieved when the first faces he saw on the platform were those of the missing patrol-leaders. Wolves and Ravens, too, swarmed out and sprang on their lost comrades, and plied them with eager questions. But to each inquirer Dick and Chippy merely said they had been on duty, and come home another way, and the patrols were left mystified and wondering.
'I've got to report to yer, Mr. Elliott,' said Chippy, and took him aside. Now, the patrols thought that this disappearance and reappearance of the leaders was something in connection with the day's movements, and their questions were checked, for discipline forbids prying into the arrangements made by officers.
The instructor was full of delight when he heard how the missing leaders had spent their time. He congratulated both warmly, and said: 'One to the Boys' Scout movement this time. If you hadn't been out on that scouting-run, the plans of the new Horseshoe Fort would have gone abroad as easily as possible. That's playing the game as it ought to be played.'