CHAPTER XX

THE RETURN OF COUSIN EMILE

Assured by Voissard that he would return to the village, the four Brothers kept up an anxious lookout for him. Five days went by, but Cousin Emile did not materialize. During this time new platoons and squads were formed from those depleted by trench duty, and the two detachments, though smaller, were soon in good order again.

The Khaki Boys were required to be on hand for roll call at 6:30 every morning. Breakfast was followed by daily inspection and parade. After that they drilled until noon. The rest of the day and evening was theirs, unless on some special detail, Taps sounding at the usual time.

Though the resting detachments were well behind the lines, they were not immune from shrapnel directed against passing ammunition and supply-trains, and even against ambulances, as these last rushed the wounded to hospital. Then there was always the danger of being bombed by enemy aeroplanes. Frequently, these Boche planes would appear sailing high overhead, only to be shelled by Archies, and driven back by Allied aircraft. It was not a particularly safe district in which to rest, but it certainly offered plenty of excitement.

For two days after their arrival, the guns kept up a furious racket night and day. Now and then they gleaned some word of the conflict from ambulance drivers or men who had come from the trenches on special errands. The Americans were grittily holding their own, it seemed. They had gone over the top on the very morning in which the Khaki Boys had arrived in rest billets. There had been a wholesale slaughter of Boches. Many machine guns and prisoners had been taken. The Hun's first-line trench had been blown up.

The Boches had beaten a wild retreat to their second trench, and were now engaged in trying to hold it. Many Sammies had been killed or wounded, but the Germans had suffered more in casualties. All this and other news pertaining to the fight that still raged, the Khaki Boys heard. They gloried in the way "our fellows are putting it all over Fritz."

Bob's first move after settling down was to get a pass and go to the village where Gaston was quartered at his expense. Finding that it was not more than twenty miles from their billet, and that he could reach it and return by train, he cordially invited his bunkies to accompany him. Jimmy and Ignace declined to go on the expedition, but Roger good-naturedly consented. "You need a friend on such a dangerous detail," he slyly remarked.

It took the two a whole afternoon and evening to make the trip. Triumphantly returning with his pet just before Taps, Bob tied Gaston up outside the barrack, trustingly expecting him there in the morning. In the night, however, Gaston basely chewed his rope in two and deserted.

Bob, being of the loyal opinion that Gaston was "no yellow deserter," but had been "pinched," he spent his leisure time the following day going from pillar to post savagely asking, "Who's got my goat?"

Toward night he found the lost one in the backyard of a cottage, calmly feasting upon a linen tablecloth, which had appealed to his peculiar appetite.

Bob and the owner of the tablecloth discovered Gaston at about the same moment. Gaston got a beating and Bob a wigging in French, both delivered by an irate housewife. It ended by Bob's going down in his pocket for the price of one linen tablecloth. Gaston, nobly resenting this outrage, charged upon the scolding woman, and thereby added to his master's difficulties. Bob finally roped him, and led him back to billets, sadly pondering as he went on the trials of being "foster-papa to a blamed old goat."

In the morning Gaston had again taken French leave. This time he wandered gaily up to the schoolhouse where a platoon of 509th men were billeted. They received him with open arms, and promptly adopted him as a mascot. In due season Bob appeared, and just as promptly parted Gaston from his new friends. Next day they stole him back again.

Bob's first four days in billet were largely spent in getting his goat, losing it, and getting it again.

On the afternoon of the fifth day he came back to billet from a trip to the schoolhouse looking completely disgusted.

"Those pesky guys have got Gaston again," he announced, as he went over to where his three bunkies sat on the floor, backs propped against the wall, and busily engaged in writing letters. "They can keep him, too. I'm through being a father to an ungrateful brute that tries to butt his foster-parent over on sight."

This nettled confession was received with shouts of unsympathetic laughter.

"Oh, laugh now. It's very funny," jeered Bob. Nevertheless, he laughed, too, as he dropped down beside Jimmy.

"Did he go for you? I'm surprised," teased Roger. "He's such a gentle, friendly beast."

"Did he?" Bob snickered. "Those thieves had him tied to a post out in the school-yard. When he saw his papa, he lowered his head and came on the run. Good thing he was roped. You should have heard those ginks yell. They kidded Bobby to a finish. Said Gaston must have taken me for a Hun, and a lot of stuff like that.

"They've got a mangy old red ribbon tied around his neck with an identification tag hung on it," continued Bob. "It was a blank tag, all right, but they've cut on it with a knife, 'Gaston, Platoon 4, 509th Infantry.' The robbers! Can you beat that? I certainly was good to that beast. Treated him fine, and spent a lot of time and money on him. That's the way, though. Be kind to your goat and somebody else'll get it. Bobby's all through being a foster-papa. He's going to spend his golden hours and copper coins on himself hereafter. I was bitterly deceived in Gaston."

"Hope it won't wreck your young life," chuckled Jimmy.

"Never I like him, that Gaston. He always the too fraish. I think mebbe him Boche goat an' no Franche. So is it he is the no good," giggled Ignace.

"Well, I'm all done with him," declared Bob. "Hope he bowls over a few of those smarties in Platoon 4. He owes it to me to do it. My, what a busy little bunch you are. Guess I'd better write a few letters myself."

"Go to it, then, and don't bother us," retorted Roger. "We want to get through with our writing before mess. To-night----"

Roger was interrupted by a sudden exclamation from Jimmy. The latter's glance happening to stray to an open door at the far end of the long, barn-like room, he leaped to his feet and hurried to it. A uniformed man stood on its threshold, his dark eyes roving up and down the place, as though in search of someone.

"_Mon cher_, Blaise!" he exclaimed with outstretched hand as Jimmy neared him. "It is for you I have been searching."

"We had given you up, sir." Jimmy was radiant with delighted surprise. "We thought you had been detailed to some special movement against the Boches."

"Not as yet." Voissard smiled mysteriously. "I have been in Paris since last we met. But to-morrow night my work begins."

Before he could say more, Jimmy's bunkies had come up, and were respectfully greeting the Flying Terror of France.

"I have come to invite you to the _petit souper_ at the Inn," Voissard presently said. "There we shall be able to talk for a little. I have some things to relate to you of my nephews whom I saw while away. There is also the old matter of the man whom you described to me. Also there is another matter to be discussed."

Cousin Emile's invitation was gladly accepted, and a few minutes later the five men left the barrack for a quaint little inn, to which the aviator conducted them.

Seated together at a rear table, the four Brothers were not concerned as to what they ate. They had found one inn to be about the same as another in regard to "eats." All offered eggs, cheese, brown bread, red wine, and not much else.

In this instance, however, Voissard held a lengthy consultation with the innkeeper himself, which sent him hustling for the kitchen.

"Now while thus we wait I will speak of my nephews first," began the aviator. "Both are now in the Nieuport squad. Each has been out twice, and has a Boche plane to his credit. They send you many good wishes, and are in hopes to see you before long somewhere out here."

He went on to tell them further of the doings of the Twinkle Twins, smilingly answering the countless eager queries put to him by the Khaki Boys.

While they were still discussing the famous Twinkle Twins, their dinner appeared in the shape of two immense, beautifully browned omelets, with other accompanying delicacies, which made them open their eyes. Cousin Emile, it seemed, knew a thing or two about French inns, which they did not.

Directly the meal had been served and the waiter had withdrawn, Voissard reached into a pocket of his sky-blue uniform blouse, and drew from it a small photograph. Handing it across the table to Jimmy, he said simply:

"Look well at this."

Jimmy looked. His gray eyes flashed as he exclaimed: "It's the same old smile! I mean, it's my tiger man! Then your friend, the Prefect of Police, knew him----"

"Very well," finished Voissard. "But not as Charles Black. This man's real name is Adolph von Kreitzen. He is an Austrian, and one of the most villainous creatures of the Central Powers that ever drew breath. Before the war his crimes were many, yet he always eluded capture. During the first two years of the war he did much damage to our cause as a spy.

"Suddenly no more was heard of him. It was thought by my friend the Prefect that he had either entered the German army or been ordered to commit suicide by his master, on account of some failure on his part to carry out a mission intrusted to him. This is often the fate of those whose work as spies displeases their finicky war-lord. He graciously rewards their efforts for the Fatherland with disgrace or death.

"Later, however, it was learned that von Kreitzen had been seen in Belgium. A soldier who had formerly been connected with, the Paris Police Bureau saw and recognized him. He immediately sent word to the Prefect. Men were sent to Belgium to trail him, but again he escaped them.

"That was the last report of him until I went to the Prefect with what you related to me in Paris. My friend immediately recognized von Kreitzen from the description you gave me. I would have gone to your training camp with this photograph had I not received your commander's kind telegram.

"Strange to say, the next day after our meeting in the café, a report came to the Prefect that a man resembling von Kreitzen had been recently seen in Paris. Thus it may well be true that after you saw him in Belfast, he went from there to England, and thence to Paris. Where he is now, who knows?" Voissard shrugged his shoulders. "Perhaps back in Germany; perhaps with his kind on the Western front; perhaps dead. Again he has disappeared."

"I'll tell you a queer thing, sir. I never mentioned it before, even to my bunkies here."

Jimmy recounted to Voissard the attack made on them by the hidden gunman on the evening of their return from Paris to the training camp.

"Somehow I always had an idea that this tiger fellow, von Kreitzen, spotted us in Paris, and trailed us to the village. He saw me and wanted to get me. It rather tallies with what you say about his having been seen in Paris."

"When is a clam not a clam? When it's a blazing old tight-mouth Blazes," was Bob's caustic conundrum, self-answered.

"Well, I had a right to be a tight-mouth if I felt like it," defended Jimmy. "If I'd said a word about it, then you fellows would have either told me I was crazy or else you'd have worried about little Jimmy's health. So I just canned it."

"I wouldn't be surprised if it _was_ that von Kreitzen who went sniping at us that night," said Roger reflectively. "It's not such a wild idea. He might have caught sight of you in Paris, Blazes, and followed you down on the same train. He might have been in another compartment disguised. I don't remember seeing anyone who got off the train that night except four or five Sammies. They went into an _estaminet_ across from the station."

"I saw an old man and a little girl. I remember seeing those doughboys, too," put in Bob.

"So see I him, the solder and 'nother man. He have the much black wheeskar an' the hat over the face. He walk ver' quick no look at nothin'," was Ignace's placid contribution.

"I don't remember noticing anyone in particular," mused Jimmy. "I guess----"

"I guess Iggy saw the most!" interrupted Bob excitedly. "Iggy saw _him_, this von Sweitzer, or whatever his name is. That's about the way he'd fix up to keep shady--false whiskers and his hat over his nose. If you had not been so keen on keeping still, Blazes, we might have figured this thing out long ago."

"It wouldn't have done us any good," demurred Jimmy.

"It would have been some satisfaction, anyhow, to have somebody to lay it to," grumbled Bob.

Thus during the meal the talk continued to center on Jimmy's "tiger man." It was the element of mystery that appealed so strongly to the Khaki Boys. It made them forget for the time the grim reality of war. Long after the meal was finished, they still sat at the table listening to interesting information which Voissard had gathered concerning the intricate spy-system which the Central Powers have established throughout the civilized world.

"I have still the news for you which must interest Blaise most of all," declared Cousin Emile at last, smiling at Jimmy. "Because of his pleasure, I am sure all will be pleased. You said to me, _mon cher_ Blaise, that you would give much to go with me over the lines. _Voila!_ Your wish has been granted. It has not been easy to gain the permission. It has been done, however. To-morrow morning your commanding officer will send for you. I have already talked with him. To-morrow afternoon you and I will be leaving here on a little journey of our own for the glory of France and her Allies."