“Neither that prince of rascals, Ricker, nor any of his lieutenants were in the party that gave us the slip on the plain. One of our ‘quiet friends’ in the Bzura river region has just reported the presence there of the one-time silversmith, another of the spies we know as Casper, and the Tartar crank, blast his whiskers.”
“Who then ran off with the collier?” inquired Henri.
“That is where I am still guessing,” continued the sergeant, “but I am letting the Cossacks take care of them. No doubt they were bought, body and breeches, and delivered the goods by putting the marked men across the Vistula.”
“Why didn’t you nip Ricker at the outset?” asked Billy.
“Never suspected him until the time the clock was found in the fallen walls of the storehouse, and he failed to report with it for investigation. The whole affair had been charged up against the men who jumped from St. Michael terrace into the river.”
Billy was about to state that he knew all about Strogoff’s official visits to the silversmith’s shop, but it suddenly occurred that the least he said the safer for Henri and himself.
“My first bad break,” asserted Strogoff, “was the night I went alone to that den to take Ricker into custody. I had handled, I thought, worse than he. But I got a biff from the rear with a sand-bag—and you know the rest. I will have to admit,” he concluded, “that for once in my life, at least, I have been bested all around.”
The boys might have told the Warsaw sleuth that they were acquainted with a secret service worker called Roque, who was even a slyer fox than any the big policeman had ever encountered—but, of course, they did not tell him anything of the kind.
The aviation chief was responsible for a break-up of this review of recent adventures, when he called to the young aviators to report immediately at headquarters.
Hastily laying aside the tools with which they had been working on the aircraft, the boys instantly responded to the summons of their chief, while Strogoff started on his way downtown.