"THERES MANY A SLIP--" Once inside the house, Fred found a scene of orderly confusion.

That is, it looked like confusion to him, but he could see that, for all the bustling and the hurrying that went on, everyone knew just what his part in the work was.

Telephone bells were ringing all the time, and Fred noticed now that wires entered the house through the dining-room window.
Evidently a field telephone system had been installed and connected this house with a whole region, of which, in a military way, it seemed to be the brain.

Then Fred heard a voice that he recognized at once, and started at the sound, until he placed it as that of the captain who had taken Boris away, and remembered that the captain had not seen him, even before he was disguised.
Fred's work, he soon found, was simplicity itself.

He was to do the bidding of any officer.