“It means that, as a member of the French secret service, I am carrying out my orders,” came the astonishing rejoinder. “Let me repeat: you are under arrest.”
“But why? What for?” almost exploded Bobby, who had found his voice and nerve. “You have made some extraordinary mistake. Aha! Now I think I know what it means—you’ve got the wrong people, that’s it. Those you are seeking are in that house,—in that house, do you understand! Quick, now, before they get away.”
To further increase Bobby’s agitated and disturbed state of mind the man uttered a gruff laugh, following this with a loud whistle.
Almost instantly, as if in answer, footsteps sounded, and, on turning quickly, Don and Bobby saw three men just leaving the house; the beams from a swinging lantern carried by the foremost now and then throwing weird splotches of light upon their forms, one instant bringing them out in sharp relief, the next allowing the darkness to again gather them in its folds.
“It’s all utterly beyond me,” muttered Don Hale, as he viewed the strange little procession approaching.
The man with the lantern was the mysterious peasant. And, strangely enough, he showed no more surprise at finding the two American aviators so close to his door than if such a visit were the most ordinary and commonplace thing in the world. One of those accompanying him was Jason Hamlin; the other the boys had never seen before.
Jason Hamlin was the first to speak.
“And so we meet under rather peculiar circumstances!” he remarked, harshly. “Let me say, Peur Jamais, that——”
“Let me say something first,” interrupted Bobby, savagely. “Do you know what he tells us?”—he jerked his finger in the direction of the man with the electric torch—“that we are under arrest.”
“So am I,” exclaimed Hamlin, in a voice which shook with suppressed anger.