cted of being spies?" asked Joe, determined to hazard that
question.

Captain Bedell smiled for the first time since the boys had entered his
office. It was a rather grim contortion of the face, but it could be
construed into a smile.

"I am not at liberty to tell you," he said. "Orderly, take the prisoners
away, and give them the best of care, commensurate, of course, with
safe-keeping."

CHAPTER XV

THE FRONT AT LAST

Well, wouldn't this get your----"

"Billiard table!" finished Joe for his chum Blake, who seemed at a loss
for a word.

"Why billiard table?" asked Blake.

"Because they've sort of put the English on us!" And Joe laughed at his
joke--if it could be called that.

"Huh!" grunted Blake, "I'm glad you feel so about it. But this is
fierce! That's what I call it--fierce!"

"Worse than that!" murmured Charlie. "And the worst of it is they won't
give us a hint what it's all about."

"There _is_ a good deal of mystery about it," chimed in Joe.

"All but about the fact that we're in a jail, or the next thing to it,"
added Blake, with a look about the place where he and his chums had been
taken from the office of Captain Bedell.

They were actually in custody, and while there were no bars to the doors
of their prison, which were of plain, but heavy, English oak, there were
bars to the windows. Aside from that, they might be in some rather
ordinary hotel suite, for there were three connecting rooms and what
passed for a bath, though this seemed to have been added after the place
was built.

As a matter of fact, the three boys were held virtually as captives, in
a part of the building given over to the secret service work of the war.
They had been escorted to the place by the orderly, who had instructions
to treat his prisoners with consideration, and he had done that.

"This is one of our--er--best--apartments," he said, with an air of
hesitation, as though he had been about to call it a cell but had
thought better of it. "I hope you will be comfortable here."

"We might be if we knew what was going to happen to us and what it's all
about," returned Blake, with a grim smile.

"That is information I could not give you, were I at liberty to do so,
sir," answered the orderly. "Your solicitor will act for you, I have no
doubt."

Following the advice of Captain Bedell, the boys had communicated with
some of their moving picture friends in London, with the result that a
solicitor, or lawye