But that could wait. For the moment his task was to meet Vladimir and then to spy out the parsonage. Meeting Vladimir proved easier than he had hoped. He followed the trail of the man on the motorcycle until he was within sight of the grey stone parsonage, and then had his bearings exactly. He approached the hollow cautiously, but no one was around. The ground was fairly soft; there had been rain within the last three or four days. And so, as he approached the spot of his encounter with the superstitious soldier, Fred was able to tell that no visitation had been made to the hollow. He marked the footsteps of the soldier; the man had evidently run from the place.
Looking around cautiously, he saw that everything was clear, and dropped down on hands and knees as he reached the gully. Vladimir was waiting, and in less than a minute explained the secret of the door.
"All right," said Fred. "Now you get back to the house, and either be near the entrance to the passage yourself, or keep someone stationed there. I don't know what's going to happen, so I can't tell you, but I think that maybe I shall get Boris away from the parsonage."
Vladimir's eyes gleamed.
"I am an old man," he said, "and I fear that I am useless. But if I can help to rescue him-"
"If you can help, I'll let you know," said Fred. "But I don't know yet even how I shall set about it. And I think it's more important for someone we can trust absolutely to be in the house. There may be nothing for you to do there, and yet, if anything does come up, you will be needed there very quickly. Shall you go back through the tunnel?"
"No. They may have watched me as I came out, and it will be better for them to see me return. No one suspects the tunnel yet, but some of these Germans are clever."
"Right! Well, I know how to get into it now from this end, and that may help a lot. But I hope that when I use it again Boris will be with me."
He let old Vladimir go out first. Then, after waiting for several minutes, he went up the gully in his turn, and set out boldly and with no attempt to hide his movements, for the parsonage.
There was even more activity there now than there had been when he had first set eyes upon it. There were more automobiles; four of them altogether. At the wheel of each sat a soldier driver in grey uniform, and with a cloth covered helmet. Each car was of the same type, a long rakish grey body, low to the ground. As he neared the house an officer wearing a long, grey coat came out, accompanied by two or three younger men. He turned to speak to them, then got into one of the cars, which immediately drove off. As it went a peculiar call was sounded, more like a trumpet than an automobile horn. Fred guessed then what he afterward learned to be a fact; that the automobiles used by the German staff officers on active service had horns that indicated the rank of the officer using them.
It seemed to Fred that there were more officers than soldiers about. There seemed to be only enough soldiers to provide a guard. Sentries were all about, but there were officers almost in swarms. He walked along, indifferently rather than boldly, and he was sharply challenged when he drew fairly near to the house.
"You can't go any further, youngster," said the soldier. "The staff has taken this house."
Fred stared at him rather stupidly, but turned away. Then he was called back suddenly, and for a moment his heart was in his mouth at the thought that his disguise had been penetrated and that he was about to be made a prisoner. Like Boris, he was concerned only with the effect of this upon his plans. He did not think of his own safety, although, had he been caught, he might have expected the fate of a spy, since he was in disguise within the German lines. It proved, however, that he was not to be arrested. A young captain was eyeing him sharply.
"Come with me, boy," he said. "We are short of servants in the house here. You will do."
For a moment he was indignant, but then his heart leaped happily. If he was taken into the house as a servant, he could find out all and more than he had hoped, and that without risk. CHAPTER IX
"THERES MANY A SLIP-"
Once inside the house, Fred found a scene of orderly confusion. That is, it looked like confusion to him, but he could see that, for all the bustling and the hurrying that went on, everyone knew just what his part in the work was. Telephone bells were ringing all the time, and Fred noticed now that wires entered the house through the dining-room window. Evidently a field telephone system had been installed and connected this house with a whole region, of which, in a military way, it seemed to be the brain. Then Fred heard a voice that he recognized at once, and started at the sound, until he placed it as that of the captain who had taken Boris away, and remembered that the captain had not seen him, even before he was disguised.
Fred's work, he soon found, was simplicity itself. He was to do the bidding of any officer. He was sent on errands, from one part of the house to another; often he carried written messages, handed to him by staff officers, to the room in which three telegraph operators were hard at work. Generally speaking, he was there to do odd jobs and make himself generally useful. Luckily, he was taken for granted. Everyone seemed assured that he was one of the village boys, pressed into service because he happened to be the first one to come along.
But for the first hour or so it was impossible for him to make any attempt to discover if Boris was still in the house. He was too busy, and he dared not spoil his opportunity to learn something really worth while by seeming to spy about. He was rewarded before long for his patience, for just as he was beginning to despair, an officer spied him in a moment when he was not actively engaged upon some errand.
"Here, boy," called the officer, "take this tray!"
Fred took a tray from a soldier who was holding it awkwardly.
"Take it upstairs to the room on the third floor where a sentry is on guard. He will let you in. When the prisoner there has finished his meal, return with the tray to the kitchen. Do not let any knife or fork or spoon stay in the room when you go. So you will make yourself really useful and release a man who can do things for which you are too young."
It seemed to Fred, as he started upstairs with his tray, that this luck was almost too good to be true. He scarcely dared to hope for what had seemed to him the inevitable explanation of his errand. But when the sentry opened the door of the locked room, and he looked in, he saw Boris sitting dejectedly on the side of a bed. It was all he could do to suppress a cry of delight, but he managed it, and he was hugely tickled as he saw Boris's indifferent glance at him. His disguise must be good, or Boris would have known him. He put the tray down, and then walked to the window. He looked down first, and then up. Then with a grin, he turned to his cousin.
"Not a word," he said, quickly. "Do you know me?"
Boris stared; then a smile broke out all over his face. There was no need for him to put his answer into words. Fred came very close.
"Speak low, but do not whisper," he said. "Tell me, what have they done to you?"
"Nothing. Colonel Goldapp has been too busy to see me."
"I don't wonder! Boris, this is no colonel's headquarters. It is more like that of an army corps. And there is at least one general here. His name is von Hindenburg."
"Von Hindenburg? He is commander-in-chief in East Prussia! If he is here, there must be a German concentration in this region! They did not expect that! Oh, I must get out and get the news back-"
"Yes. The wireless is working. I talked this afternoon to Suwalki."
And in a few words he told Boris the essential facts of what had happened since the raid upon the great house on the hill on that morning.
"How often do they come in here?" he asked.
"Only when my meals are brought to me. There will be no one else now to-night, I think, unless Colonel Goldapp sends for me. They are very polite. I think I shall be alone most of the time. They have no idea that I will try to get away, because they think I know they have so many sentries and patrols about that it would be useless for me to try to do it."