Chapter XVIII “Live Wires”
Matters in the Schwarzwald were now rapidly nearing a climax; the final contest between German brains and English wit could not much longer be delayed. For the moment Keane and Sharpe, unknown to themselves, were enmeshed in the network of a deathly trap. Nothing less than a miracle, or something approaching the same, could now set them free from their perilous position. One thing was certain, and that was that this clever but unscrupulous mathematician and engineer, who was now their declared enemy, would not hesitate to adopt the most extreme measures to get rid of his unwelcome visitors. Unfortunately his power, which almost approached the supernatural, made him a dangerous and a wily foe.
It was now past midnight, but the two Englishmen, who had left the track some time before at a point where its course was suddenly changed, and had continued their journey by the aid of a luminous compass, and the uncertain light of the moon, came at last to another halt.
“Let us stay here a while, Sharpe,” his companion had whispered. “I have a strong premonition of some impending danger.”
“The deuce you have!” remarked Sharpe, who well knew what this meant in a man like Keane, whose psychic faculties were not to be sneered at.
“Yes. I cannot explain it, but there is some hidden danger right ahead of us; of that I am as certain as that we are in the Schwarzwald. We had better lie down a while and await developments quietly.”
Nothing loath, Sharpe unfastened his shoulder straps, slid his equipment quietly to the ground, and laid himself down beside his companion.
For the moment all was quiet. The moon was hidden behind a bank of clouds, and it was therefore very dark, but sounds travel far in the night air of the forest, and when they conversed, they spoke only in whispers.
“It may be,” remarked Keane, “that the spot we seek is just in front of us, though I cannot see any glade or clearing as yet; it is too dark.”
“Is it likely that there are any booby-traps hereabouts, set by this wily professor?” asked his companion.
“I cannot say; he may have some outer system of defence.”
“Or even a system of ground signals to announce the approach of strangers, whose presence might be undesirable to him,” added Sharpe.
“It is possible,” whispered Keane, whose mind was actively engaged in preparation for eventualities, in view of his inexplicable premonitions. Suddenly he started and touched his comrade lightly with his raised forefinger.
“Hist!” he said, in a voice which could not have carried further than a couple of yards Then he carefully raised his head, and, turning his eyes towards the thicket through which they had come, he tried to read the secret which it contained. His alarm was justified, yet was he mystified not a little, for the more immediate danger seemed to come from behind.
“Can you hear it, Sharpe?”
“Yes, the same crackling of twigs; another wild boar,” remarked his friend facetiously.
Keane shook his head, for his sensitive ears had told him that the footsteps which he had heard were those of human beings. Nor was he mistaken, for a moment later they both heard distinctly, not merely the crackling of twigs and the rustle of the bracken under heavy footfalls, but voices, human voices, conversing in a guarded and careful manner.
“None of your Schwarzwald peasants this time,” he murmured, fingering his Webley already, for he instinctively felt that this time they were beset by danger both before and behind. And indeed, these two men, during all their adventures in the secret service during the war, were never in more deadly peril than at this moment, as they were soon to learn.
Scarcely daring to breathe, much less to whisper now, the two Englishmen watched furtively for the coming of the strangers, who were now less than a score of yards away, but were approaching very stealthily, as though they were searching for something on the ground.
“Who can they be?” wondered Keane. “And what can they be searching for?”
“Poachers,” Sharpe was thinking, “merely poachers, searching for their booby-traps.”
Nearer and nearer came the dark shadows, and both the airmen had their Webleys trained on them now. In that moment they might have shot them down easily, and before long they would regret they had not done so. But that is not the English way, for the ordinary Englishman would give even a dog his chance, as the saying goes. Still, there are dogs and dogs, and sometimes human dogs are worse than the four-footed ones. But the Englishmen were uncertain; they did not know what world-wide conspirators were these two men. They did not know what fearful deeds would happen even that day on the Hamadian desert, two thousand miles away, but all of it engineered from this spot, and made possible by these two men. And as they did not know, they did not fire, but waited.
“Gott in Himmel, where does that verdammt live wire begin?” asked one of the men in a low but vehement voice. It was the professor himself, searching for one of his own man-traps.
Sharpe glanced at Keane, but the other motioned him not to fire.
“We’re learning something, old man!” he whispered. “This is the gateway to the aerodrome.”
The two men had passed them now, passed within six yards, and yet had missed them. They were now groping a little way ahead, looking for secret signs and marks lest they should be hoist upon their own petard.
“Donner und Blitzen! Have you found it yet, Fritz?” called the professor a little louder to his friend.
“Here it is, Professor! Be careful... there are six wires already laid for those verdammt Englishmen, Keane and—what is the name of the other?”
“Sharpe!” rapped out the professor, as though he had known the man all his life.
At these words the two Englishmen looked at each other in blank amazement. And before their astonishment could subside, the opportunity which had been given to them of ridding the world of two great conspirators had passed.
“One—two—six!” they heard the mechanic say, as he helped the professor over the deadly maze, scarcely fifteen yards in front of them, and then their dark forms had merged into the trees and disappeared, their voices becoming fainter and fainter.
“Great Scott!” gasped Sharpe, when he recovered from his astonishment; “we’ve walked right into the hornets’ nest.”
“We should have done if we’d gone another fifteen yards,” replied Keane, wiping the perspiration from his forehead.
“Fortunate you had that presentiment of impending danger,” said his friend.
“We should have been lying dead and half grilled over his deadly wires but for that strange, weird feeling of mine,” replied Keane.
“But there, after all our attempts at concealment, he knows all about us.”
“Even our names seem familiar to him,” remarked the senior airman, greatly puzzled.
“I cannot understand it,” replied the other. “Who can have given him this information?”
“Who indeed?” asked Keane. “It is as great a mystery as the other matter.”
“Can it be the woodcutter or the clockmaker, do you think, for Hans is sure to have called at Jacob Stendahl’s cottage and told him the news.”
But Keane shook his head, as he remarked: “Neither Hans nor yet the woodcutter could possibly have told the professor our names. This evil genius must have other sources of information at his command. Possibly he has an agent at Mulhausen aerodrome, or even at Scotland Yard. To a man like this, a thousand ways are open. I cannot say, but this I know, we are on the edge of the biggest mystery I have ever encountered.”
“And we might easily have shot him. Bah! it would have been better to have fired, Keane,” added Sharpe somewhat bitterly. “Cannot we follow him now?”
“No!” replied his companion, firmly. “It is better as it is.”
“Why?” demanded the other.
“Rest content, Sharpe,” said Keane. “To-day we have discovered the aerodrome; to-morrow we will capture it.”