The speaker gave a meaning glance out of the window at the aviation camp. A biplane was just rising for test flight, and it was manned by two experts easily identified by the conspiring couple in the tavern.
"Oh, ho, I see," mused the brick-top, "you expect to use those boys in the matter of pulling us out."
"Why not? Have they ever failed us in extremity? Is the peril greater than when they dived into the canyon that our lease on life might be lengthened; did they fail to respond to my summons to do this very work of rescue, delayed through no fault on their part?"
This subject had served to draw the clam out of his shell, and he found relief in relaxing temporarily his studied pose of stolid indifference.
"How are we going to get at them?" asked the willing listener to the rapid-fire praise of the young heroes.
The crafty secret agent (it was Roque, of course) had not been wool-gathering during the silent hour of his sitting at the table.
He had devised several ways of apprising the boys that he needed their services and acquainting them with a working plan that would enable them all to sail out of Warsaw in safety.
Something was going to happen when he willed it that would make the outward passage a memorable one, and success or complete failure of the project was in the close balance of a few more hours.
In real truth, however, Roque did not so greatly weigh his personal welfare as against the service he could render by doing damage to the foe from without as well as from within.