"None of that!"
Roque pointed a menacing finger at the astonished pair of youngsters.
"I have it beyond doubt that Ardelle was on these very grounds a day or two ago, and by the word of a man who could not be mistaken. Fool that he was not to be sure at the time, and only the garb of a sailor to mislead him."
Then it jointly dawned upon the minds of Billy and Henri that Anglin, the smiling secretary of the eminent director of affairs at Calais, and later in the rôle of a bubbling sailor here in faraway Hamburg, must be the Ardelle about whom Roque was talking.
They realized, too, that through their boyish delight in lending aid and a helping hand to one they had known in intimate association with that best of friends in France, they had unconsciously maneuvered themselves into a dangerous game, a slip in which meant a dance with death.
A tissue message from this very suspect that Roque was so eager to apprehend even then burned against the breast of Henri, a little wad of paper that now represented the price of the world to a pair of bright boys.
Condemned of mixing in the battle of wits between the grim Roque and his strongest wily rival from over the sea, and it were better that the young aviators had tumbled from their aëroplane during the last high flight.
But those who traveled in spirit with Billy Barry, the boy from Bangor, Maine, U. S. A., and his plucky teammate, Henri Trouville, in France and Belgium, can assure that it is no easy task to catch this pair napping.
The courage tempered by that first and continuous baptism of fire was good steel for any emergency.
Roque owned to himself that his quickfire had failed to get results. His informant, himself just returning from a secret mission on hostile soil, had noted the movements of the sailor suspect on the aviation exhibit day, and also the attitude of Henri at the moment when the message was passed. But of the message itself, the reporting agent could have no knowledge. He was not near enough to detect a trick so deftly done.