"Why not? Have they ever failed us in extremity? Is the peril greater than when they dived into the canyon that our lease on life might be lengthened; did they fail to respond to my summons to do this very work of rescue, delayed through no fault on their part?" This subject had served to draw the clam out of his shell, and he found relief in relaxing temporarily his studied pose of stolid indifference. "How are we going to get at them?" asked the willing listener to the rapid-fire praise of the young heroes. The crafty secret agent (it was Roque, of course) had not been wool-gathering during the silent hour of his sitting at the table. He had devised several ways of apprising the boys that he needed their services and acquainting them with a working plan that would enable them all to sail out of Warsaw in safety. Something was going to happen when he willed it that would make the outward passage a memorable one, and success or complete failure of the project was in the close balance of a few more hours. In real truth, however, Roque did not so greatly weigh his personal welfare as against the service he could render by doing damage to the foe from without as well as from within. Ready for his call were papers of supreme import, and to lose which at the hands of a searching party would be a calamity the secret agent dreaded even to anticipate. By the air route he had determined to leave, if by any hook or crook Schneider and himself could get hold of an aëroplane. Billy and Henri had been aloft for several hours, enjoying a bird's-eye view of the really magnificent city, for the possession of which carnage held sway for hundreds of miles. "Some town this," Billy remarked as he stepped from the machine, completing the sightseeing tour; "after the war I'd like to start a branch factory here." "Oh, go 'way," laughed Henri, "it would take a derrick to haul you out of Boston or Bangor, once you set foot again in those burgs." "You forget, old top," suggested Billy, "that we have already on tap a comeback aëroplane trip across the Atlantic. I'm no quitter." From a coal-laden wagon the contents was being shot into a chute running into the cellar of one of the big houses taken over for officers' occupancy. One of the grimy heavers, at sight of the boys, came forward to meet them, wiping his hands on the leather apron he wore, removed his fur cap, and took therefrom a scrap of smutty brown paper and tendered it to Billy. "Guess he wants you to sign a receipt," said Henri, looking over his chum's shoulder. Billy's glance at the paper set him staring at the man who presented it. The latter never raised his eyes--he was using them sidewise upon a group of soldiers standing in front of the mess hall. The boys saw in the scrawl these words: "Orders for No. 3's, Two Towers, St. Michael road, eight sharp, Thursday evening."