They needed no second invitation, for they had been fairly bursting with eagerness and curiosity. Questions rained on him thick and fast.
Their fists clenched when he told them of the cruelties to which he had been subjected. They were loud in admiration of the way in which he had met and overcome his difficulties. They roared with laughter when he told them of the alarm clock, and Tom himself, to whom it had been no joke at the time, laughed now as heartily as the rest.
"So that"s the way you got those ropes gnawed through when you were at the farmhouse," exclaimed Frank, when Tom told them of the aid that had come to him from the rats. "We figured out everything else but that.
We thought that you must have frayed them against a piece of gla.s.s."
"I used to hate rats," said Tom, "but I don"t now. I"ll never have a trap set in any house of mine as long as I live."
"If you"d only known how safe it would have been to walk downstairs that day!" mourned Frank.
"Wouldn"t it have been bully?" agreed Tom. "Think of the satisfaction it would have been to have had the bulge on that lieutenant who was going to hang me. I wouldn"t have done a thing to him!"
"Well, we got him anyway and that"s one comfort," remarked Bart.
"To think that you were legging it away from the house just as we were coming toward it," said Billy.
"It was the toughest kind of luck," admitted Tom. "Yet perhaps it was all for the best, for then I might not have had the chance to get the best of Rabig."
"Rabig?" exclaimed Frank, for the traitor had not yet been mentioned in Tom"s narrative.
"What about him?" questioned Billy eagerly.
"Hold your horses," grinned Tom. "I"ll get to him in good time. If it hadn"t been for Rabig I wouldn"t be here. I owe that much to the skunk, anyway."
It was hard for them to wait, but they were fully rewarded when Tom described the way in which he had trapped and stripped the renegade, and left him lying in the woods.
"Bully boy!" exclaimed Frank. "That was the very best day"s work you ever did."
"Got the goods on him at last," exulted Bart.
"The only man in the old Thirty-seventh that has played the yellow dog," commented Billy. "The regiment"s well rid of him. He"ll never dare to show his face again."
"He can fight for Germany now," said Frank, "and if he does, I only hope that some day I"ll run across him in the fighting."
"You won"t if he sees you first," grinned Billy. "He doesn"t want any of your game."
Tom had left one thing till the last.
"By the way, Frank," he remarked casually, "I ran across a fellow in the German prison camp who came from Auvergne, the same province where you"ve told me your mother lived when she was a girl. He said he knew her family well."
"Is that so?" asked Frank with quick interest. "What was his name?"
"Martel," replied Tom.
"Why that"s the name of the butler who used to be in my mother"s family!" cried Frank. "Colonel Pavet was telling me that he had been captured, and had died in prison. I was hoping that he was mistaken in that, for the colonel said he had information that might help my mother to get her property."
"The colonel is right about the man"s dying," replied Tom, "for I was with him when he died."
"It"s too bad," said Frank dejectedly.
"I shouldn"t wonder if he did not know something," said Tom, "for he seemed to have something on his mind. He told me one time that his imprisonment and sickness happened as a judgment on him."
"If we could only have had his testimony before he died," mourned Frank.
"I got it," declared Tom triumphantly.
CHAPTER XXIII
CUTTING THEIR WAY OUT
Frank sprang to his feet.
"What do you mean?" he cried.
"Just this," replied Tom, taking the confession from his pocket. "He told me the whole story and there it is in black and white, names of witnesses and all."
Frank read the confession with growing excitement, while his comrades cl.u.s.tered closely around him.
"Tom, old scout!" Frank exclaimed, as the whole significance of the confession dawned upon him, "you"ve done me a service that I"ll never forget. Now we can see our way clear, and my mother will come into her rights."
"I"m mighty glad, old boy," replied Tom with a happy smile. "I"ve held on to that paper through thick and thin, because I knew what it would mean to you and your mother. But now," he went on, "I"ve been answering the questions of all this bunch and turn about is fair play.
Tell me how our boys are doing. How is the big drive going on? Have we stopped the Germans yet?"
"They"re slowing up," said Bart.
"We"re whipping them," declared Billy.
"I wouldn"t quite say that," objected Frank. "We haven"t whipped them yet except in spots. Of course we"re going to lick them. The whole world knows that now except the Germans themselves, and I shouldn"t wonder if they were beginning to believe it in their hearts. But they"ll stand a whole lot of beating yet, and we don"t want to kid ourselves that it"s going to be an easy job. But we"re holding them back, and pretty soon we"ll be driving them back."
"I"ll bet the old Thirty-seventh has been doing its full share," said Tom proudly.
"You bet it has," crowed Billy. "Tom, old man, you"ve missed some lovely fighting."
"You fellows have had all the luck," refilled Tom wistfully.
"Don"t grouch, Tom," laughed Frank. "There"s plenty of it yet to come.
And I"ll bet you"ll fight harder than ever now, when you think of all you"ve been through. You"ve got a personal score to settle with the Huns now, as well as to get in licks for Uncle Sam."
"You"re right there," replied Tom, as his eyes blazed. "I can"t wait to get at them. My fingers fairly itch to get hold of a rifle."
"But you ought to have a little rest and get your strength back before you get in the ranks again," suggested Bart.
"None of that rest stuff for me," declared Tom. "When you boys get in I"m going to be right alongside of you."
His wish was not to be gratified that day, however, for there was a lull in the fighting just then while the hostile armies manoeuvred for position. But the pause was only temporary, and the next day the storm broke in all its fury.