Upon descending to the courtyard, I took a seat on a bench beneath a vine-covered trellis. To stop here for a time, smoking, would seem a natural proceeding, and while I held such a post of recognizance nothing overt could transpire in the environs without my taking note of the fact. Enough had developed already, though, heaven was witness! I lit a cigarette and prepared for a resume.
Like a sleuth noting salient points, I glanced round the rectangular court. At my right, off the gallery, was Miss Falconer’s room shrouded in darkness; at the left, up another flight of stairs, my own uninviting domain. The quarters of Van Blarcom and his uniformed friends opened from the gallery above the street passage, facing the main portion of the inn which sheltered the kitchen andsalle a manger. Such was the simple, homely stage-setting. What of the play?
Bleau, I now felt tolerably sure, was merely a mile-stone on the route of Miss Falconer. Next morning, at sunrise probably, she would resume her journey for parts unknown. Would they arrest her before she left the inn or merely follow her? The latter, doubtless, since they asserted that she was on her way to get the papers that they wanted for France.
Upstairs in the room where Van Blarcom and I had held our conference the shutters had been reopened. There was just one light to be seen, a glowing point, which was obviously the tip of a cigar. If I was keeping vigil below, from above he returned the compliment; nor did he mean that I should hold any secret colloquy with the girl that night. I swore softly, but earnestly. Considering his rather decent attitude, his efforts from the very first to enlighten me as to the dangers I was running, it was odd that my detestation of the man was so thoroughly ingrained and so profound.
The mystery of the gray car had been solved with a vengeance. Instead of being freighted with accomplices, as I had at first thought possible, it had carried the representatives of justice, in the persons of three officers and my secret-service friend. A queer conjunction, that; but then, my ignorance of French methods was abysmal. Perhaps this was the usual mode of doing things in time of war.
Van Blarcom’s explanation, though it made me furious, had brought conviction. There was a certain grim appositeness about it all. The night in New York, the events of the steamer, the unsatisfactory character of the girl’s actions, all fitted neatly into the plan; and the mere personnel of the pursuing party was sufficient assurance, for French officers, as I well knew, were neither liars nor fools. Neither, I patriotically assumed, were the men of my country’s secret-service, however humble their part as cogs in that great machinery, or however distasteful Mr. Van Blarcom, personally, might be to me. And finally, I could not deny that women, clever, well-born, and beautiful, had served as spies a thousand times in the world’s history, urged to it by some sense of duty, some tie of blood.
Yes, that was it, I told myself in sudden pity, recalling how Miss Falconer had stood on the steps in her nurse’s costume, straight and slender, her gray eyes full of fire, her face glowing like a rose. Perhaps she was of the enemy’s country. Perhaps those she loved, those who made up her life, had set her feet in this path that she was treading. If she was a spy,—Lord! How the mere word hurt one!—it wasn’t for ignoble motives; it wasn’t for pay.
I came impulsively to the conclusion that there was just one course for my taking: to see her and to beg, bully, or wheedle from her the unvarnished truth. Then, if it was as I feared, she should go back to Paris if I had to carry her; she should accompany me to Bordeaux, and on the first steamer she should sail from France. Yes; and the army should have its papers, for she should tell me where they were hidden. Her work should end; but these men upstairs should not track her and trap her and drag her off to prison, perhaps to death.
There was danger in the plan, even if I should accomplish it. I should get myself into trouble, dark and deep. Well, if I had to languish behind bars for a while I could survive it. But she might not. As I thought of this I knew that I had made up my mind irrevocably.
It was a problem, nevertheless, to arrange an interview, with Van Blarcom sitting at his window, watching me like a lynx. I couldn’t go up the stairs and batter on her door till she opened it; apart from the reception she would give me it would simply amount to making a present of my intentions to the men across the way. Yet who knew how long they would keep up their surveillance? Till I retired, probably! “I’d give something to choke you and be done with it!” was the benediction I wafted toward the sentinel above.
I was owning myself at my wit’s end when a ray of hope was vouchsafed me. The kitchen door opened and let out a leather-clad figure which strode across the courtyard, lantern in hand, and let itself into the garage. Despite the dimness, I recognized Miss Falconer’s chauffeur, the man she had addressed as Georges when they left the rue St. Dominique. The very link I needed, provided I could get into communication with him in some unostentatious way.
I rose, stretched myself lazily, and began to pace the court. Perhaps a dozen times I crossed and recrossed it, each turn taking me past the garage and affording me a brief glance within. The chauffeur, coat flung aside, sleeves rolled up, was hard at work overhauling his engine, with an obvious view to efficiency upon the morrow. Up at the window I could see the glowing cigar-tip move now to this side, now to that. Not for an instant was Van Blarcom allowing me to escape from sight.
After taking one more turn I halted, yawned audibly for the sentry’s benefit, and seated myself once more, this time on a bench by the door of the garage. Van Blarcom’s cigar became stationary again. The chauffeur, who had satisfied himself as to the engine and was now passing critical fingers over the gashes in the tires, looked up at me casually and then resumed his work. Kneeling there, his tools about him, he was plainly visible in the light of the smoky lantern. He was a young man, twenty-three or-four perhaps, strongly built and obviously of French-peasant stock, with honest blue eyes and a face not unduly intelligent, but thoroughly frank and open in the cast. The actors in my drama, I had to own, were puzzling. This lad looked no more fitted than Miss Falconer for a treacherous role.
How theatrical it all was! And yet it had its zest. I confess I experienced a certain thrill, entirely new to me, as I bent forward with my arms on my knees and my head lowered to hide my face.
“Attention, Georges!” I muttered beneath my breath.
The chauffeur started, knocking a tool from the running-board beside him. His eyes, half-startled, half-fierce, fixed themselves on me; his hand went toward his pocket in a most significant way. In a minute he would be shooting me, I reflected grimly. And upstairs the very stillness of Van Blarcom shrieked suspicion; he could not have helped hearing the clatter that the falling tool had made.
“Don’t be a fool,” I muttered, low, but sharply. “I know where you and mademoiselle come from; I know she is upstairs now; if I wished you any harm I could have had the mayor and the gendarmes here an hour ago! Keep your head—we are being watched. Have a good look at me first if you feel you want to. Then take your hand off that revolver and pretend to go to work.”
Throwing my head back, I began blowing clouds of smoke, wondering every instant whether a bullet would whiz through my brain. I could feel Georges’ gaze upon me; I knew it was a critical moment. But as his kind are quick, shrewd judges of caste and character, I had my hopes.
They were justified; for presently I heard him draw a breath of relief. His hand came out of his pocket.
“Pardon, Monsieur,” he whispered, and began a vigorous pretense of polishing the car.
Again I leaned forward to hide the fact that my lips were moving.
“When you speak to me, keep your head bent as I do.”
“Monsieur, yes.”
“Now listen. Men of the French army are here, with powers from the police. They accuse mademoiselle of serious things, of acts of treason, of being on her way to secure papers for the foes of France. They are watching. To-morrow, if she departs, they mean to follow and to arrest her when they have gained proof of what she is hunting.”
“Mon Dieu, Monsieur!What shall I do?”
There was appeal in his voice. Convinced of my good faith, he was quite simply shifting the business to my shoulders—the French peasant trusting the man he ranked as of his master’s class. And oddly enough I found myself responding as if to a trusted person. I smoked a little, wondering whether Van Blarcom could catch the faint mutter of our voices. Then I gave my orders in the same muffled tones:
“You will tell the servants that you wish to sleep here to-night, to watch the car. You will stay here very quietly until it is nearly dawn. Then you will creep to mademoiselle’s door and whisper what I have told you and say that I beg her to meet me before those others have awakened at five o’clock in—”
Pondering a rendezvous, I hesitated. The room where I had dined, with its stone floor, its beamed ceiling, and dark panels, came first to my mind. I fancied, though, that some outdoor spot might be safer. I remembered opportunely that a passage led past this room, and that at its end I had glimpsed a little garden behind the inn.
“In the garden,” I finished, and risked one straight look at him. “I can trust you, Georges?”
The young man’s throat seemed to close.
“Monsieur le ducwas my foster-brother,Monsieur,” he whispered. “I would die for him.”
Who the deucemonsieur le ducmight be I did not tarry to discover. I had done all I could; the future was on the knees of the gods. Having smoked one more cigarette for the sake of verisimilitude, I rose, stretched myself ostentatiously, and crossed the courtyard to the stairs, where madame was descending. She had, she informed me, been preparing my bed.
“And I wish monsieur good repose,” she ended volubly. “Hitherto, no Zeppelins have come to Bleau to disturb our dreams. Though, alas, who knows what they will do, now that we have lost our most gallant hero? Monsieur has heard of the Firefly of France, he who is missing?”
That name again! Odd how it seemed to pursue me.
“I believe I shall meet that fellow sometime if he’s living,” I reflected as I climbed the stairs.
In my room, my candle lighted, I resigned myself to a ghastly night. I don’t like discomfort, though I can put up with it when I must. The bed looked as hard as nails; the bowl made cleanliness a duty, not a pleasure. And to think that I might have been sleeping in comfort at the Ritz!
Tossing from side to side, pounding a cast-iron pillow, I dozed through uneasy intervals, and woke with groans and starts. I could not rid myself of the sense of something ominous hanging over me. The gray car ramped through my dreams; so did Van Blarcom; and between sleeping and waking, I pictured my coming interview with the girl, her probable terror, the force and menaces I should have to use, our hurried flight.
At length I fell into a heavy, exhausted slumber, from which, toward morning I fancied, I sat up suddenly with the dazed impression of some sound echoing in my ears. Springing out of bed, I groped my way to the window. The galleries lay peaceful and empty in the moonlight, and down in the courtyard there was not the slightest sign of life.
I went back to bed in a state of jangled nerves. Again I dozed, and a dim light was creeping through the window when I woke. I looked out again.
“Hello!” I muttered, for though the hotel seemed wrapped in slumber, the door of the garage now stood ajar. Was it possible that Miss Falconer had stolen a march on me, that the automobile could have left the premises without my being roused? It was only four o’clock, but all wish for sleep had left me. I decided to investigate without any more ado.
I made the best toilet that cold water and a cracked mirror permitted, longing the while for a bath, for a breakfast tray, for a hundred civilized things. Taking my hat and coat, I went quietly down the staircase. The garage door beckoned me, and all unprepared, I walked into the tragedy of the affair.
In the dim place there were signs of a desperate struggle. The rugs and cushions of Miss Falconer’s automobile were scattered far and wide. The gray car had vanished; and in the center of the floor was Georges, the chauffeur, lying on his back with arms extended, staring up at the ceiling with wide, unseeing blue eyes.
Kneeling by the young man’s side, I felt for his pulse; but the moment that my fingers touched his cold wrist I knew the truth. There flashed into my mind queerly, as things do at grim moments, an often-heard expression about rigor mortis setting in. With this poor fellow it had not started, but he was dead for all that. The most skilful surgeon in Europe could not have helped him now.
I never doubted that it was murder. The confusion of the garage was proof of it; and the instrument, once I looked about me, was not far to seek. Divided between rage, horror, and pity, I saw a sort of sharp stiletto suitable for use as a penknife or letter opener, which, after doing its work, had been cast upon the floor.
I remained on my knees beside the lad, smitten with a keen remorse. I knew no good of him; I had even suspected him; but he had an honest face. Why had I not kept watch all night? The instructions I had given, the plan I had thought so clever, might be responsible for the killing; it must have been some echo of the struggle that had roused me when I had wakened and glanced out and gone placidly back to sleep.
Had Van Blarcom caught our whispered colloquy, or surmised it? Helped by his precious colleagues, he must have taken Georges unprepared, throttled him to prevent his shouting, and ended his frantic struggles with one swift, ruthless blow. But why? What sort of soldiers could these be who wore the uniform of a brave, chivalrous country and yet did murder? What sort of mission were they bound upon that for no visible gain or motive they risked desperate work like this?
And the girl upstairs? The thought was like a knife thrust; it brought me to my feet, my heart pounding, my forehead cold and wet. I told myself that she must be safe, that wholesale killing could not be the aim of these wretches, that the gray automobile was not what our one-cent sheets in their tales of gunmen like to call a “murder car.” But what did I know about it? I was in a funk, a funk of the bluest variety. In that one age-long moment I learned what sheer fright meant.
Without knowing how I got there, I found myself in the gallery. The doors that lined it were rickety and worm-eaten; I stared weakly at them. A mere twist of practised fingers, and they could be forced open by any one who cared to try. I thought I heard a faint breathing inside the girl’s room, but I was not sure; I was too rattled. Very guardedly I knocked and got no answer. Then, in utter panic, I knocked louder, at risk of disturbing the whole house.
“Georges,c’est vous?” It was the drowsiest of murmurs, but few things have been so welcome to me in all my life.
“Yes, Mademoiselle.” Though my knees were wobbling under me I summoned presence of mind to impersonate the poor huddled mass of flesh in the garage.
“Attendez donc!”
I could hear her stirring; she believed I had come with some summons, with some news. Well, it was imperative that I should see her. I waited obediently until the door swung open and revealed her in a loose robe of blue, with her hair in a ruddy mass about her shoulders and the sleep still lingering in her eyes.
“Mr. Bayne!”
Such was my relief at finding my fears uncalled for that I could have danced a breakdown on that crazy gallery, snapping my fingers in castanet fashion above my head. I had forgotten entirely the strained terms of our parting; but she remembered. A bright wave of scarlet ran over her face, her neck, her forehead. She gasped, clutched her robe about her, would have shut the door if I had not foreseen the strategic movement and inserted a foot in the diminishing crack, just in time.
“I beg your pardon,” I began hastily. “I am really extremely sorry. But something has occurred that forces me to speak to you.”
“There can be nothing that forces you to come here—nothing!” Her lips were trembling; her voice wavered; the apparent shamelessness of my behavior was driving her to the verge of tears. “Is there no place where I am safe from you? Mr. Bayne, how can you? I shan’t listen to a single word while you keep your foot in the door!”
“And I can’t take it away until you listen,” I protested. “It is perfectly obvious that if I did, you would shut me out. But you can see for yourself that I’m not trying to force an entrance—and I wish that you would speak lower; if we waken anybody, there will be the mischief to pay.”
My voice, I suppose, had an impatient note that was reassuring, or perhaps I looked encouragingly respectable, viewed at closer range. At any rate, she spoke less angrily, though she still stood erect and haughty.
“Well, what is it?” she asked, barring the opening with one slender arm.
“May I ask if you have had a message from me, Miss Falconer?”
“A message? Certainly not!” There was renewed suspicion in her voice.
“H’m.” Then they had intercepted the man before he reached her. “I’m going to ask you to dress as quickly and quietly as possible and come downstairs. Don’t stop in the court, and don’t go near the garage, I beg of you. Just walk on past thesalle a mangerto the garden, and wait for me.”
I expected exclamations, questions, indignant protests, anything but the sudden white calm that fell on her at my request.
“You mean,” she whispered, “that something dreadful has happened. Is it about the—the men who came last night?”
“Yes. But please don’t worry,” I urged with false heartiness. “I’ll explain when you come down.” To cut the discussion short, I turned to go.
Once her door had closed, however, I halted at the staircase, retraced my steps, and, without hesitation, circled the gallery to the rooms of Mr. John Van Blarcom and his friends. I had had enough of uncertainties; henceforth I meant to deal with facts. It was barely possible that I was unjustly anathematizing these gentlemen, that, while they were peacefully sleeping, thieves had broken in below.
Two knocks, the first rather tentative, the second brisker, netting no response, I deliberately tried the knob and felt the door promptly yield to me; then, with equal deliberation, I dropped my hand into my pocket where my revolver lay. If some one sprang at me and tried to crack my head or stab me,—stabbing was popular hereabouts,—I was in a state of armed preparedness. But when I stepped inside I found an empty room, a bed in which no one had slept.
Grown brazen, I strode across to the inner door and opened it. More emptiness greeted me; the four men had plainly taken French leave in their gray car. It was strange that the hum of their departure had not roused me; they must, before starting the motor, have pushed their automobile from the courtyard and out of ear-shot down the street.
For a moment I stood in the deserted room, reflecting swiftly. The situation was desperate; in another hour the inn would be stirring, and Miss Falconer, I felt sure, could not afford to be found here when that came to pass. Murder investigations are searching things. All strangers beneath this roof would be interrogated narrowly. If any one had a secret,—and she certainly had several,—the chances were heavy that it would be dragged to light.
For some reason this prospect was unspeakably frightful to me. Under its spur I hatched the craziest scheme that man ever thought of, and took steps which, as I look back at them, seem almost beyond belief. I must get Miss Falconer off for Paris, I determined. And since it was possible that the villagers would see us leaving, she must appear to go, as she had come, with her chauffeur.
I descended, forthwith, to the garage where the murdered man was lying, shook out and folded the rugs that had been scattered in the struggle, picked up the cushions, and replaced them in the car. Then, borrowing a ruse from the enemy, I set the door wide open, and, puffing and panting, pushed the blue automobile into the courtyard, through the passage, and a considerable distance down the street.
What comes next, I ask no one to credit. Retrospectively, I myself have doubted it. It lives in my memory as a grisly nightmare rather than as a fact. To be brief, I returned to the scene of the crime, shut out any possible audience by closing the door, and disrobed hastily. Then I removed the leather costume of the victim, donned it, laced on his boots, which by good fortune were loose instead of tight, and, picking up his visored cap from the floor where it had fallen, stood forth to all seeming as genuine a member of the proletariate as ever wore goggles and held a wheel.
By this time my teeth were clenched as if in the throes of lockjaw. Had I paused to think for a single instant, all my nerve would have oozed away. But I had no time to spend on thought; I had to work on, to save Miss Falconer. The whole ghoulish business would be futile if the inn servants found the body. The mere flight of all the guests would certainly stir suspicion; let the murder transpire as well, and at once we should be pursued.
The garage, from the looks of it, was not often put to service. A dusty spot, festooned with cobwebs, it cried to the skies for brooms and mops. In the background, apparently undisturbed since the days of the First Empire, a great pile of straw mixed with junk of various kinds lay against the wall; and most reluctantly, my every fiber shrieking protest, I saw what use I might make of this debris—if I could.
“Go for it!” I told myself inexorably, but miserably. “It’s not a question of liking it, you know. You’ve got to do it.” Grimly I wrapped my discarded clothes about the poor chap’s body, dragged it to the straw, and covered it from head to foot. By this action, I surmised, I was rendering myself a probable accessory and a certain suspect; but the one thing I really cared about was my last glimpse of that patient face.
“Sorry, old man,” was all the apology I could muster. “And if I ever get a chance at the people who did it, you can count on me!”
With a sigh of complete exhaustion, I rose and looked about. All signs of the crime had been obliterated from the garage. “I must be crazy!” I thought, as the enormity of the thing rushed on me. “I wonder why I did it? And I wonder whether I can forget it some day—maybe after twenty years?”
As I opened the door to the garden the dim light was growing clearer. I was late; the girl, coated and hatted, ready for flitting, was already at the rendezvous. At sight of me in my leather togs she started backward; then, resolutely controlled, she drew herself up and faced me silently, her hands clutching at her furs, her lips a little apart.
“Won’t you sit down?” I began lamely, indicating an iron bench. It was all so different from the interview I had planned last night! “I want to speak to you about your chauffeur, Miss Falconer. This morning I found him hurt—very badly hurt—”
She drove straight through my pretense.
“Not dead? Oh, Mr. Bayne, not dead?”
“Yes,” I said gently. “He had been dead some time. I would have liked to take my chances with him; but I came too late. No, please!” She had moved forward, and I was barring her passage. “You mustn’t go. You can’t help him, and you wouldn’t like the sight.”
How black her eyes were in her white face!
“I don’t understand,” she faltered. “You mean that he was murdered? But who would have killed Georges?”
“The men who came last night—if you can call them men. At least, appearances point that way,” I said.
“The men in the gray car?” She swayed a little. “But why?”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that.” My tone was grim; there were so many things about this matter that I couldn’t tell.
Her eyes flashed for an instant.
“But how cowardly, how cruel! He never hurt anyone; he was just like a good watchdog, the truest, most faithful soul! If they killed him they did it for some deliberate purpose. And when I think that I brought him here—oh, oh, Mr. Bayne—”
“Yes,” I broke in hastily; “I should like to see them boil in oil or fry on gridirons or something of the sort, myself. But this is very serious; we must keep calm, Miss Falconer. And I know you are going to help me. You have such splendid self-control.”
Though there were sobs in her throat, she pressed her hands to her lips and stifled them. Only her pallor and her wet lashes showed the horror and grief she felt. I wanted desperately to comfort her, but there was no time for it; and besides, who ever heard of a leather-coated comforter in a kitchen garden at 5 A.M.?
“What I wanted to speak about,” I went on rapidly, “was our plans. This may prove a rather nasty mess, I’m sorry to say. The French police, you know, are—well, they’re capable and very thorough; and since you are here at the scene of a murder in aninfirmiere’scostume, they will never rest till they have seen your papers, learned your errand, asked you a hundred things. Unless your replies are absolutely satisfactory, the whole business will be—er—awkward for you. That is why I put on these togs. Yes, I know it is ghastly,” I owned as she shuddered. “And that is why I want to beg you, very seriously indeed, to let me drive you back to Paris and put you under your friends’ protection. After that, of course, I’ll return here to see the thing through and give my testimony about it all.”
It was not going to be so simple, the course I had outlined airily. When I visioned myself explaining to a Frenchcommissairewhy I had come to Bleau at all; why I had set up a false claim to be an artist,—for that circumstance was sure to leak out and look darkly incriminating,—and what had inspired me to take a murdered man’s clothes and conceal his body, I can’t pretend that I felt much zest. Still, if the police and the girl came together, worse would follow, I was certain; and it seemed like a real catastrophe when she slowly shook her head.
“I can’t,” she murmured. “Oh, it’s kind of you, and I’m sorry; but I can’t go back to Paris—not yet, Mr. Bayne. You won’t understand, of course, but I left there to—to accomplish something. And since poor Georges can’t help me now, I must go on—alone.”
If I live to be a hundred, and it is not improbable since I am healthy, I shall never forget that little garden at the inn at Bleau. It was a vegetable garden too, which is not in itself romantic. I recall vaguely that there were beds all about us, which in due course would doubtless sprout into rows of pale green objects—peas and artichokes, or beans and cabbages maybe; I don’t know, I am sure. But then, there was the stream running just outside the wall of masonry; there was the sky, flushing with that faint, very delicate, very lovely pink that an early spring morning brings in France; there was the quaint building, wrapped up in slumber, beside us; and in the air a silent, fragrant dimness, the promise of the dawn.
And then there was the girl. I suppose that was the main thing. Not that I felt sentimental. I should have scouted the notion. If I meant to fall in love,—which, I should have said, I had no idea of doing,—I would certainly not begin the process in this unheard-of spot. No; it was simply that the whole business of caring for Miss Esme Falconer had suddenly devolved upon my shoulders; and that instead of my feeling bored, or annoyed, or exasperated at the prospect, my spirits rose inexplicably to face the need.
Here, if ever, was the time for the questions I had planned last evening. But I didn’t ask them; I knew I should never ask them. In those few long unforgetable moments when I stood in the gallery and wondered whether she were living, my point of view had altered. I was through with suspecting her; I was prepared to laugh at evidence, however damning. As for the men in the gray car and their detailed accusations, I didn’t give—well, a loud outcry in the infernal regions for them. I knew the standards of the land they served, and I had seen their work this morning. If they were French officers, I would do France a service by going after them with a gun.
The girl had sunk down on the ancient bench beside me. Her eyes, wide and distressed, yet resolute, went to my heart. Not a figure, I thought again, for this atmosphere of intrigue and secrecy and danger. Rather a girl, beautiful, brilliant, spirited, to be shielded from every jostle of existence; the sort of girl whom men hold it a test of manhood to protect from even the most passing discomfiture!
But time was moving apace. We must settle on something in short order. I spoke in the most matter-of-fact tones that I could summon, not, heaven knows, out of a feeling of levity concerning what had happened, but to try to lighten the grim business a degree or so and keep us sane.
“I think, Miss Falconer,” I began, standing before her, “that we have got to thrash this matter out at last. You think I’ve behaved unspeakably, trailing you everywhere, and I don’t deny I have, according to your point of view. But the fact is, I didn’t follow you to annoy you; I’m a half-way decent fellow. You have simply got to trust me until I’ve seen you through this tangle. After that, if you like you need never look at me again.”
Her troubled eyes rested on me, half bewildered.
“Why, I’d forgotten all that,” she murmured. “I do trust you, Mr. Bayne. Of course I must have misunderstood you to some way last evening, and I’m afraid I was disagreeable.”
“Naturally. You had to be. Now, if that’s all right and I’m forgiven, may I ask a question? About those men who arrived last night and apparently killed your chauffeur—can you guess who they are?”
“Yes,” she faltered, looking down at the pebbled walk. “They must have been sent by the Government or the army or the police. If the French knew what I was doing, they wouldn’t understand my motives. I’ve been afraid from the first that they would learn.”
Another of my precious theories was going up in smoke. Not seeing why a set of bonafide officers should gratuitously murder a chauffeur, I had been wondering whether the quartet might not be impostors, tricked out in uniforms to which they had no claim. Still, of course, I couldn’t judge. If she would only confide in me! I was fairly aching to help her; yet how could I, in this blindfold way?
“I don’t wish to be impertinent,” I ventured at length, meekly, “and I give you my word I’m not trying to find out anything you don’t want me to. Only, assuming I’ve got some sense,—in case you care to be so amiable,—I’d like to put it at your service. Do you think you could give me just a vague outline of your plans?”
She looked at me in a piteous, uncertain manner. I braced myself for a “No.” Then, suddenly, she seemed to decide to trust me—in sheer desperate loneliness, I dare say.
“I am going,” she whispered, “to a village in the war zone—where there is a chateau. There are things in it—some papers; at least I believe there are. It is just a chance, just a forlorn hope; but it means all the world to certain people. I have to act in secret till I have succeeded, and then every one in France, every one on earth may know all that I have done!”
If I had not burned my bridges, this announcement might have worried me; it was too vague, and what little I grasped tallied startlingly with Van Blarcom’s rigmarole. However, having bowed allegiance, I didn’t blink an eyelid.
“Yes,” I said encouragingly. “Is it very far?”
Her eyes went past me anxiously, watching the inn and its blank windows, as she fumbled in her coat and brought forth a motor map.
“Take it,” she breathed, thrusting it toward me. “Look at it. Do you see? The route in red!”
As I realized the astounding thing I choked down an exclamation. There, beneath my finger, lay the village of Bleau, a tiny dot; and from it, straight into the war zone, the traced line ran through Le Moreau and Croix-le-Valois and St. Remilly; ran to—what was the name? I spelled it out: P-r-e-z-e-l-a-y.
Though it was early in the game to be a wet blanket, I found myself gasping.
“But,” I protested weakly, “you can’t do that! It’s in the war country; it’s forbidden territory. One has to have safe-conducts,laissez-passers, all sorts of documents to get into that part of France.”
“I didn’t come unprepared,” she answered stubbornly. “Before I started I knew just what I should need. I can get as far as the hospital at Carrefonds; and Carrefonds is beyond Prezelay, ten miles nearer to the Front!”
“But—” The monosyllable was distinctly tactless.
She straightened, challenging me with brave, defiant eyes.
“I know,” she flashed. “You mean it looks suspicious. Well, it does; and if I told you everything, it would look more suspicious still. You shouldn’t have followed me; when they learn that we both spent the night here they will think you are my—my accomplice. The best advice I can give you, Mr. Bayne, is to go away.”
“Perhaps we had better,” I agreed stolidly. I had deserved the outburst. “Shall we be off at once, before the servants come downstairs?”
She drew back, her eyes widening.
“We?” she repeated.
“Naturally!” I replied, with some temper. “Imusthave disgusted you last night. What sort of a miserable, spineless, cowardly, caddish travesty of a man do you take me for, to think I would let you go alone?”
“Please don’t joke,” she urged. “It simply isn’t possible. You would get into trouble with the French Government, and—”
“Do you know,” I grinned, “it is rather exhilarating to snap one’s fingers at governments? Just see what success I made of it with Great Britain and Italy, on the ship!”
“You don’t realize what you are laughing at,” she pleaded. “It is dangerous.”
“I won’t disgrace you. I seldom tremble visibly, Miss Falconer, though I often shake inside.”
Her great gray eyes were glowing mistily.
“Mr. Bayne, this is splendid of you. I—I shall go on more bravely because you have been so kind. But I won’t let you make such a sacrifice or mix in a thing that others may think disloyal, treacherous. You know how it looks. Why, on the steamer and on the way up to France and even last evening—you see I’ve guessed now why you followed me—you didn’t trust me yourself.”
“I know it,” I confessed humbly. “I can’t believe I was such an idiot. Somebody ought to perform a surgical operation on my brain. I apologize; I’m down in the dust; I feel like groveling. Won’t you forgive me? I promise you won’t have to do it twice.”
This time it was she who said: “But—” and paused uncertainly. I could see she was wavering, and I massed my horse, foot, and dragoons for the attack.
“You’ll please consider me,” I proclaimed firmly, “to be a tyrant. I am so much bigger than you are that you can’t possibly drive me off. I don’t mean to interfere or to ask questions, or to bother you. But I vow I’m coming with you if I cling to the running-board!”
Her lashes fluttered as she racked her brains for new protests.
“The car is a French make,” she urged,—“which you couldn’t drive—”
“I can drive any car with four wheels!” I exclaimed vaingloriously. “It’s kismet, Miss Falconer; it’s the hand of Providence, no less. Now, we’ll leave these notes in thesalle a mangerto pay for our lodging, which would have been dear at twopence, and be off, if you please, for Prezelay.”
She had yielded. We were standing side by side in the silence of the morning, the dimness fading round us, the air taking a golden tinge. My surroundings were plebeian; my costume was comic; yet I felt oddly uplifted.
“Jolly old garden, isn’t it?” said I.
To pass straight from a humdrum, comfortable, conventionally ordered life into a career of insane adventure is a step that is radical; but it can be exhilarating, and I proved the fact that day. To dwell on present danger was to forget the past hour in the garage, which I had to forget or begin gibbering. Once committed to the adventure and away from the scene of the murder, I found a positive relief in facing the madness of the affair.
While the girl sat silent and listless, blotted against the cushions, rousing from her thoughts only to indicate the turns of the road, I had time for cogitation; and I began to feel like a man who has drunk freely of champagne. Hitherto I had been a law-abiding citizen. Now I had kicked over the traces. Like the distinguished fraternity that includes Raffles and Arsene Lupin, I should be “wanted” by the police, those good-natured, deferential beings so given to saluting and grinning, with whom, save for occasional episodes not unconnected with the speed laws,—Dunny says libelously that my progress in an automobile resembles a fabulous monster with a flying car for the head, a cloud of smoke and gasoline for the body, and a cohort of incensed motor-cycle men for the tail,—I had lived on the most cordial terms.
I was not certain whether they would accuse me of murder or espionage. There were pegs enough, undeniably, on which to hang either charge. Myself, I rather inclined to the latter; the case was so clear, so detailed! My rush from Paris to Bleau,—in order, no doubt, that I might at an unostentatious spot join forces with my confederate, Miss Falconer, whom I had been meeting at intervals ever since we left New York in company,—my behavior there, and the fashion in which we were vanishing should suffice to doom me as a spy.
When the French began tracing my movements, when they joined my present activities to the fact that only by the skin of my teeth had I escaped a charge of bringing German papers into Italy, there would be the devil to pay. I acknowledged it; then—really, this brand-new, unfounded, cast-iron trust of mine in Miss Falconer was changing me beyond recognition—I recalled the old recipe for the preparation of Welsh rabbit, and light-heartedly challenged the authorities to “catch me first.” I had a disguise; if I bore any superior earmarks my leather coat obliterated them; and I could drive; even Dario Resta could not have sniffed at my technic. Better still, my French, learned even before my English, would not betray me. As nurse and asmecanicien, we stood a fair chance in our masquerade.
I might have to pay my shot, but I was enjoying it. This was a good world through which we were speeding; life was in the high gear to-day. The car purred beneath us like a splendid, harnessed tiger; the spring air was fresh and fragrant, the country charming, with here a forest, there a valley, farther off the tiled, colored roofs of some little town. Our road, like a white ribbon, wound itself out endlessly between stone walls or brown fields. In my content I forgot food and such prosaic details till I noticed that the girl looked pale.
“I say,” I exclaimed remorsefully: “we’ve been omitting rolls and coffee! I’m going to get you some at the first town we pass.”
“We are coming to a town now, to Le Moreau.” She was looking anxious.
“Yes? I’m afraid I don’t place it exactly. Ought I to?”
“It is the first town in the war zone. And—and our road passes through it.”
“Oh!” I was enlightened. “Then they will probably ask to see our papers at theoctroi?”
“Yes.”
The car was eating up the smooth white road; I could see the littleoctroibuilding at the town boundary-line, and a group of gendarmes in readiness close by. It was a critical moment. Miss Falconer, I recalled, had said she could get through to Carrefonds; but glittering generalities were not likely to convince these sentries; one needed safe-conducts, passes, identity cards, and such concrete aids. She couldn’t give a reasonable account of herself, I felt quite certain; and even if she did, how was she to account for me?
As I brought the car to a standstill, my conscience clamored, and my costume seemed to shriek incongruity from every seam. In this dilemma I trusted to sheer blind luck—a rather thrilling business. As a gray-headed sergeant stepped forward to welcome us, I looked him unfalteringly in the eye, though I wondered if he would not say:
“Monsieur, kindly remove that childish travesty with which you are trying to impose on justice. We know all about you. Your name is Devereux Bayne. You are a German agent and intriguer; you have smuggled papers; you have murdered a man and concealed his body. Unless you can give a satisfactory explanation of all your actions since leaving New York, your last hour has arrived!”
What he really said was:
“Mademoiselle’s papers?” He spoke quite amiably, a catlike pretense, no doubt.
Miss Falconer was no longer looking anxious. Her hands were steady; she was even smiling as she produced two neat little packets that, on being unfolded, proved to have all the air of permits,laissez-passers, and police cards. Two nondescript photographs, which might have represented almost any one, adorned them, and of these our sergeant made a perfunctory survey.
“Mademoiselle’s name,” he recited in a high singsong, “is Marie Le Clair. She is a nurse, on her way to the hospital at Carrefonds. And this is Jacques Carton, who is her chauffeur?”
A singularly stupid person, on the whole, he must have thought me, hardly fit to be trusted with so superb a car. My mouth, I fancy, was wide open; I can’t swear that I wasn’t pop-eyed. This last development had complete addled me. Marie Le Clair! Jacques Carton! Who were they?
“I wish,” I remarked into the air as we drove on, “that some one would pinch me—hard.”
She smiled faintly. Now it was over, she looked a little tremulous.
“Oh, no,” she answered, “we were not dreaming. Poor Georges! I wish we were!”
Such was the incredible beginning of our adventure. And as it began, so it continued. We breakfasted at Le Moreau. Miss Falconer ate in the dining-room of the small hotel; I sought the kitchen and, warmed by our late success, I did not shrink from playing my role. Then we resumed our journey, and though we showed our papers twenty times at least as the control grew stricter, they were never challenged. I rubbed my eyes sometimes. Surely I should wake up presently! We couldn’t be here in the forbidden region, in the war zone, plunging deeper every instant, in peril of our lives.
Yet the proof was thick about us. In the towns we passed we saw troops alight from the trains and enter them; we saw farewells and reunions, the latter sometimes tearful, but the former invariably brave. We sawdepotswhere trucks and ambulances and commissary carts were filled, and canteens and soup kitchens where soldiers were being fed. At Croix-le-Valois we saw the air turn black with the smoke of the munition factories that were working day and night. At St. Remilly above the towers of the old chateau we saw the Red Cross flying, and on the terraces the reclining figures of wounded men. It seemed impossible that sight-seers and pleasure-seekers had thronged along this road so lately. The signs of the Touring Club of France, posted at intervals, were survivals of an era that was now utterly gone.
With the coming of afternoon, the country grew still more beautiful. Orchards were thick about us, though the trees were leafless now. The little thatched cottages had odd fungi sprouting from their roofs like rosy mushrooms; the trees and streams had a silvery shimmer, like a Corot fairy-land.
Then, set like sign-posts of desolation in this loveliness, came the ravaged villages. We were on the soil where in the first month of the war the Germans had trod as conquerors, and where, step by step, the French had driven them back. We passed Cormizy, burnt to the ground to celebrate its taking; Le Remy, where the heroic mayor had died, transfixed by twenty bayonets; Bar-Villers, a group of ruined houses about a mourning, shattered church. It was the region where the Hun triumph had spoken aloud, unbridled. Miss Falconer sat white and silent as we drove through it; my hands tightened on the wheel.
We had lunched at Tolbiac, late and abominably. Then, leaving the highway, we had taken a country road. Two punctures befell us; once our carburetor betrayed the trust we placed in it. By the time these deficiencies were remedied I had collected dust and grease enough to look my part.
It had been, by and large, a singularly speechless day, which my spasmodic efforts at entertainment had failed to cheer. The girl tried to respond, but her eyes were strained, eager, shadowed; her answers came at random. My talk, I suppose, teased her ears like the troublesome buzzing of a fly.
“She is thinking,” I decided at last, “about those papers. Lord, if she doesn’t find them she is going to take it hard!”
I left her in peace after that and drove the faster. Luck was with us! At the end of our journey everything would be all right.
As evening settled down on us the road grew increasingly lonely. Woods of oak-trees were about us, their trunks mossy, their branches lacing; on our left was a narrow river thick with rushes and smooth green stones. So rutty was the earth that our wheels sank into it and our engine labored. There was a charming sylvan look about the scenery; we seemed to be alone in the universe: I could not recall when we had last seen a peasant or passed a hut.
Suddenly I realized that there was a sound in the distance, not continuous, but steadily recurrent, a faint booming, I thought.
“What’s that noise off yonder?” I asked, with one ear cocked toward the east.
Miss Falconer roused herself.
“It is the cannonading,” she answered. “We have come a long way, Mr. Bayne. In two hours—in less than that—we could drive to the Front. And see!”
The dark was coming fast; a crimson sunset was reddening the river. A little below us on the opposite bank, I saw what had been a village once upon a time. But some agency of destruction had done its work there; blackened spaces and heaped stones and the shells of dwellings rose tier on tier among trees that seemed trying to hide them; only on the crest of the bank, overlooking the wreck like a gloomy sentinel, one building loomed intact, a dark, scarred, frowning castle with medieval walls and towers. I stared at the scene of desolation.
“The Germans again!” I said.
“Yes,” the girl assented, gazing across the water. “They came here at the beginning of the war. They burned the houses and the huts and the little church with the image of the Virgin and the tomb of the old constable—all Prezelay except the chateau; and they only left that standing to give their officers a home.”
With an automatic action of feet and fingers, I stopped the car. Here was the town that she had shown me on the map that morning when we sat like a pair of whispering conspirators in the garden of the Three Kings. The obstacles which had seemed so great had melted away before us. This ruined village, this heap of stones cross the river, was our goal, the key to our mystery, the last scene of our drama—Prezelay.