"Why, to find that farmer that helped the German chap to strap me to the aeroplane. And he pretended to help us hunt for him. He's a spy, that's what he is."
"He was taken into our lines. I don't know what became of him," said Kenneth. "You must tell the captain to-morrow all about it, and he'll make enquiries. You must be fagged; get to bed. Our men will be jolly glad to have you back again."
Ginger's feat made him the hero of the battalion. The colonel promoted him full corporal, and sent a messenger at once to the Wessex regiment to enquire what had become of the farmer. The reply was that the French authorities had nothing against the man, who had lived in the neighbourhood for years, and he had been allowed to return to his farm. Colonel Appleton at once resolved to arrest him.
"We had better do everything in order," he said, to Captain Adams. "We're in France, and the authorities might feel hurt if we dispensed with them. I'll get the police commissaire of the district to take the matter up as there are no French military officers within thirty miles: it will save time. Tell the Three Musketeers to be ready to go with him to identify the man."
Later in the day the summons came. The three men found Captain Adams in the company of a stout little spectacled functionary, resplendent in a tri-colour sash, and two red-trousered gendarmes. The police commissary not being on the spot, the maire of the neighbouring town had undertaken the task. He had been a sergeant in the army of 1870, and was full of zeal. A motor-car was in waiting. Into this the party crowded. Ginger, clad in a new uniform with the double stripe on his sleeve, fraternised with the gendarmes at once, and conversed with them on the back seat in a wonderful jargon. Kenneth and Harry, as more accomplished in French, sat with the maire in front.
He was a fussy little man, proud of his antiquated military experience. Inclined to dilate on the details of his service under Mac Mahon, he was adroitly led by Kenneth to the business in hand. Then he was full of tactics and strategy.
"We must proceed by surprise, messieurs," he said. "That is a sound principle. I know the place well. We will stop at some distance from the farm house, and advance through the wood in skirmishing order, myself in the centre, the gendarmes supporting me, and you English gentlemen on the flanks. Thus we will converge upon the rear of the farm house, taking care to arrive simultaneously, and carry the place by a coup de main."
It occurred to Kenneth that there were defects in this plan, and that their object was to arrest a spy, not to carry a fortress. But he deemed it best to say nothing. The maire evidently liked the sound of his own voice, and was bursting with elation at having the conduct, after forty years, of what he regarded as a military operation.
"By this means," he went on, "we shall cut off the enemy from his line of retreat, which would afford him good cover if he could reach it. That I take to be sound tactics, messieurs."
About a mile from the farm house, on a hillside above the wood behind it, they came upon a shepherd tending two or three sheep. He looked up as the car ran up the hill, called out, "Bon soir, monsieur le maire!" and watched the car as it descended on the other side. It stopped at the foot, the six men got out, and set off across the field towards the wood. The shepherd, a big man with a wart on his nose, instantly took to his heels, and running downhill on the near slope, out of sight of the maire's party, made at full speed for the wood, about a quarter of a mile from the spot where the maire would enter it.