In their old quarters that first night of their return to Warsaw from the Galician fortress, Henri looked about for a safe place to hide Stanislaws’ belt, which not only produced worry of mind but a positive irritation in the several days’ wearing. The chums lay awake long after the other aviators in the dormitory were deep in slumber, and cudgeled their brains to invent a way of shifting their new responsibility to some likely cache for the time being.
Billy happened to think of the rusty, dusty portrait of some long departed inmate of the house, hanging just outside the door which opened on the stair landing.
He transferred the thought into Henri’s ear, and the pair cautiously tiptoed across the room, taking advantage of the intermittent shafts of light sifting through the tall windows nearest the lamppost at the street corner.
“Gee whiz!” muttered Billy, halting in momentary anguish, after stubbing his toe against a chair leg.
“Ssh!” sibilantly warned Henri; “you’ll wake the dead with your clatter.”
Noiselessly drawing back the door, the boys stood under the iron-framed likeness of the early day representative of the household, Henri holding the moleskin girdle in the crook of his arm.
Billy did the squirrel act in mounting the newel post, and could easily reach behind the picture. His chum passed up the belt, and the climber hooked the brass buckle over the wooden peg from which the portrait was suspended.
“Safe enough now,” he whispered, sliding down from his perch, getting a helping arm from Henri.
Five minutes later the young aviators were sleeping the sleep of the satisfied.