Jack seemed lost in thought. Then he began to pace the room.
"Our noble leader has his thinking apparatus in working order," announced Nat.
"Hum!" mused Jack. "You say the trouble occurred over something in history, eh?"
"Then I guess I've got it!" cried Jack. "Wait a minute, now, until I work out all the details."
He sat down to the table, took out pencil and paper, and began to write. The others watched him interestedly.
"Here we are!" Jack cried at length. "Now to carry out the scheme and bring about a German-French alliance!"
"Here are two notes," said Jack, holding aloft two envelopes.
"We'll take your word for it," remarked Bob Movel.
"One is addressed to Professor Garlach," went on Jack, "and in it he is advised that if he proceeds in the proper manner he can obtain information of a certain incident in history, not generally known, but in which is related how Frederic II, with a small squad of Germans, put a whole army of French to flight. It is even more wonderful than the incident which Professor Socrat related to his class, and if he speaks loudly enough in the classroom, Professor Socrat can't help but hear it."
"What are you going to do with the note?" asked Fred.
"Ah, yes--then," said Jack. "Well, what will happen next will surprise some folks, I think. The information which Garlach will be sure to want to obtain can only be had by going to a certain hollow tree, on the shore of the lake, and he must go there just at midnight."
"Well?" asked Dick Balmore as Jack paused, while the silence in the room was broken by Bony's performance on his finger battery.
"Well," repeated Jack, "what happens then will be continued in our next, as the novelists say. Now come on and help me fix it up," and he motioned for his chums to draw more closely around the table, while he imparted something to them in guarded whispers.
Professor Garlach received the next day a neatly-written note. It was thrust under the door of his private apartment, just as he was getting ready to go to breakfast.
"Ach! Dis is a letter," he said, carefully looking at the envelope, as if there was some doubt of it. "I vunder who can haf sent it to me?"
He turned it over several times, but seeing no way of learning what he wished to know save by opening the epistle, he did so.