For the next two weeks Marta's rôle resolved itself into a kind of routine. Their cramped quarters became spacious to the three women in the intimacy of the common secret shared by them under the very nose of the staff. With little Clarissa Eileen, they formed the only feminine society in the neighborhood. On sunshiny days Mrs. Galland was usually to be found in her favorite chair outside the tower door; and here Minna set the urn on a table at four-thirty as in the old days.
No member of the staff was more frequently present at Marta's teas than Bouchard, who was developing his social instinct late in life by sitting in the background and allowing others to do the talking while he watched and listened. In his hearing, Marta's attitude toward the progress of the war was sympathetic but never interrogatory, while she shared attention with Clarissa Eileen, who was in danger of becoming spoiled by officers who had children of their own at home. After the reports of killed and wounded, which came with such appalling regularity, it was a relief to hear of the day's casualties among Clarissa's dolls. The chief of transportation and supply rode her on his shoulder; the chief of tactics played hide-and-seek with her; the chief engineer built her a doll house of stones with his own hands; and the chief medical officer was as concerned when she caught a cold as if the health of the army were at stake.
"We mustn't get too set up over all this attention, Clarissa Eileen, my rival," said Marta to the child. "You are the only little girl and I am the only big girl within reach. If there were lots of others it would be different."
She had occasional glimpses of Hugo Mallin on his crutches, keeping in the vicinity of the shrubbery that screened the stable from the house. How Marta longed to talk with him! But he was always attended by a soldier, and under the rigorous discipline that held all her impulses subservient to her purpose she passed by him without a word lest she compromise her position.
Bouchard was losing flesh; his eyes were sinking deeper under a heavier frown. His duty being to get information, he was gaining none. His duty being to keep the Grays' secrets, there was a leak somewhere in his own department. He quizzed subordinates; he made abrupt transfers, to no avail.
Meanwhile, the Grays were taking the approaches to the main line of defence, which had been thought relatively immaterial but had been found shrewdly placed and their vulnerability overestimated. The thunders of batteries hammering them became a routine of existence, like the passing of trains to one living near a railroad. The guns went on while tea was being served; they ushered in dawn and darkness; they were going when sleep came to those whom they later awakened with a start. Fights as desperate as the one around the house became features of this period, which was only a warming-up practice for the war demon before the orgy of the impending assault on the main line.
Marta began to realize the immensity of the chess-board and of the forces engaged in more than the bare statement of numbers and distances. If a first attack on a position failed, the wires from the Galland house repeated their orders to concentrate more guns and attack again. In the end the Browns always yielded, but grudgingly, calculatingly, never being taken by surprise. The few of them who fell prisoners said, "God with us! We shall win in the end!" and answered no questions. Gradually the Gray army began to feel that it was battling with a mystery which was fighting under cover, falling back under cover—a tenacious, watchful mystery that sent sprays of death into every finger of flesh that the Grays thrust forward in assault.
"Another position taken. Our advance continues," was the only news that Westerling gave to the army, his people, and the world, which forgot its sports and murders and divorce cases in following the progress of the first great European war for two generations. He made no mention of the costs; his casualty lists were secret. The Gray hosts were sweeping forward as a slow, irresistible tide; this by Partow's own admission. He announced the loss of a position as promptly as the Grays its taking. He published a daily list of casualties so meagre in contrast to their own that the Grays thought it false; he made known the names of the killed and wounded to their relatives. Yet the seeming candor of his press bureau included no straw of information of military value to the enemy.
Westerling never went to tea at the Gallands' with the other officers, for it was part of his cultivation of greatness to keep aloof from his subordinates. His meetings with Marta happened casually when he went out into the garden. Only once had he made any reference to the "And then" of their interview in the arbor.
"I am winning battles foryou!" he had exclaimed with that thing in his eyes which she loathed.
To her it was equivalent to saying that she had tricked him into sending men to be killed in order to please her. She despised herself for the way he confided in her; yet she had to go on keeping his confidence, returning a tender glance with one that held out hope. She learned not to shudder when he spoke of a loss of "only ten thousand." In order to rally herself when she grew faint-hearted to her task, she learned to picture the lines of his face hard-set with five-against-three brutality, while in comfort he ordered multitudes to death, and, in contrast, to recall the smile of Dellarme, who asked his soldiers to undergo no risk that he would not share. And after every success he would remark that he was so much nearer Engadir, that position of the main line of defence whose weakness she had revealed.
"Your Engadir!" he came to say. "Then we shall again profit by your information; that is, unless they have fortified since you received it."
"They haven't. They had already fortified!" she thought. She was always seeing the mockery of his words in the light of her own knowledge and her own part, which never quite escaped her consciousness. One chamber of her mind was acting for him; a second chamber was perfectly aware that the other was acting.
"One position more—the Twin Boulder Redoubt, it is called," he announced at last. "We shall not press hard in front. We shall drive in masses on either side and storm the flanks."
This she was telephoning to Lanstron a few minutes later and having, in return, all the news of the Browns. The sheer fascination of knowing what both sides were doing exerted its spell in keeping her to her part.
"They've lost four hundred thousand men now, Lanny," she said.
"And we only a hundred thousand. We're whittling them down," answered Lanstron.
"Whittling them down! What a ghastly expression!" she gasped. "You are as bad as Westerling and I am worse than either of you! I—I announced the four hundred thousand as if they were a score—a score in a game in our favor. I am helping, Lanny? All my sacrifice isn't for nothing?" she asked for the hundredth time.
"Immeasurably. You have saved us many lives!" he replied.
"And cost them many?" she asked.
"Yes, Marta, no doubt," he admitted; "but no more than they would have lost in the end. It is only the mounting up of their casualties that can end the war. Thus the lesson must be taught."
"And I can be of most help when the attack on the main defence is begun?"
"Yes."
"And when Westerling finds that my information is false about Engadir—then—"
She had never put the question to him in this way before. What would Westerling do if he found her out?
"My God, Marta!" he exclaimed. "If I'd had any sense I would have thought of that in the beginning and torn out the 'phone! I've been mad, mad with the one thought of the nation—inhuman in my greedy patriotism. I will not let you go any further!"
It was a new thing for her to be rallying him; yet this she did as the strange effect of his protest on the abnormal sensibilities that her acting had developed.
"Thinking of me—little me!" she called back. "Of one person's comfort when hundreds of thousands of other women are in terror; when the destiny of millions is at stake! Lanny, you are in a blue funk!" and she was laughing forcedly and hectically. "I'm going on—going on like one in a trance who can't stop if he would. It's all right, Lanny. I undertook the task myself. I must see it through!"
After she had hung up the receiver her buoyancy vanished. She leaned against the wall of the tunnel weakly. Yes, what if she were found out? She was thinking of the possibility seriously for the first time. Yet, for only a moment did she dwell upon it before she dismissed it in sudden reaction.
"No matter what they do to me or what becomes of me!" she thought. "I'm a lost soul, anyway. The thing is to serve as long as I can—and then I don't care!"
Haggard and at bay, Bouchard faced the circle of frowns around the polished expanse of that precious heirloom, the dining-room table of the Gallands. The dreaded reckoning of the apprehensions which kept him restlessly awake at night had come at the next staff council after the fall of the Twin Boulder Redoubt. With the last approach to the main line of defence cleared, one chapter of the war was finished. But the officers did not manifest the elation that the occasion called for, which is not saying that they were discouraged. They had no doubt that eventually the Grays would dictate peace in the Browns' capital. Exactly stated, their mood was one of repressed professional irritation. Not until the third attempt was Twin Boulder Redoubt taken. As far as results were concerned, the nicely planned first assault might have been a stroke of strategy by the Browns to drive the Grays into an impassable fire zone.
"The trouble is we are not informed!" exclaimed Turcas, opening his thin lips even less than usual, but twisting them in a significant manner as he gave his words a rasping emphasis. The others hastened to follow his lead with equal candor.
"Exactly. We have no reports of their artillery strength, which we had greatly underestimated," said the chief of artillery.
"Our maps of their forts could not be less correct if revealed to us for purposes of deceit. Again and again we have thought that we had them surprised, only to be surprised ourselves. In short, they know what we are doing and we don't know what they are doing!" said the tactical expert.
There the chief of the aerostatic division took the defensive.
"They certainly don't learn our plans with their planes and dirigibles!" he declared energetically.
"Hardly, when we never see them over our lines."
"The Browns are acting on the defensive in the air as well as on the earth!"
"But our own planes and dirigibles bring little news," said Turcas. "I mean, those that return," he added pungently.
"And few do return. My men are not wanting in courage!" replied the chief aerostatic officer. "Immediately we get over the Brown lines the Browns, who keep cruising to and fro, are on us like hawks. They risk anything to bring us down. When we descend low we strike the fire of their high-angle guns, which are distributed the length of the frontier. I believe both their aerial fleet and their high-angle artillery were greatly underestimated. Finally, I cannot reduce my force too much in scouting or they might rake the offensive."
"Another case of not being informed!" concluded Turcas, returning grimly to his point.
He looked at Bouchard, and every one began looking at Bouchard. If the Gray tacticians had been outplayed by their opponents, if their losses for the ground gained exceeded calculations, then it was good to have a scapegoat for their professional mistakes. Bouchard was Westerling's choice for chief of intelligence. His blind loyalty was pleasing to his superior, who, hitherto, had promptly silenced any suggestion of criticism by repeating that the defensive always appeared to the offensive to be better informed than itself. But this time Westerling let the conversation run on without a word of excuse for his favorite.
Each fresh reproach from the staff, whose opinion was the only god he knew, was a dagger thrust to Bouchard. At night he had lain awake worrying about the leak; by day he had sought to trace it, only to find every clew leading back to the staff. Now he was as confused in his shame as a sensitive schoolboy. Vaguely, in his distress, he heard Westerling asking a question, while he saw all those eyes staring at him.
"What information have we about Engadir?"
"I believe it to be strongly fortified!" stammered Bouchard.
"You believe! You have no information?" pursued Westerling.
"No, sir," replied Bouchard. "Nothing—nothing new!"
"We do seem to get little information," said Westerling, looking hard and long at Bouchard in silence—the combined silence of the whole staff.
This public reproof could have but one meaning. He should soon receive a note which would thank him politely for his services, in the stereotyped phrases always used for the purpose, before announcing his transfer to a less responsible post.
"Very little, sir!" Bouchard replied doggedly.
"There is that we had from one of our aviators whose machine came down in a smash just as he got over our infantry positions on his return," said the chief aerostatic officer. "He was in a dying condition when we picked him up, and, as he was speaking with the last breaths in his body, naturally his account of what he had seen was somewhat incoherent. It would be of use, however, if we had plans of the forts that would enable us to check off his report intelligently."
"Yet, what evidence have we that Partow or Lanstron has done more than to make a fortunate guess or show military insight?" Westerling asked. "There is the case of my own belief that Bordir was weak, which proved correct."
"Last night we got a written telegraphic staff message from the body of a dead officer of the Browns found in the Twin Boulder Redoubt," said the vice-chief, "which showed that in an hour after our plans were transmitted to our own troops for the first attack they were known to the enemy."
"That looks like a leak!" exclaimed Westerling, "a leak, Bouchard, do you hear?" He was frowning and his lips were drawn and his cheeks mottled with red in a way not pleasant to see.
Stiffening in his chair, a flash of desperation in his eye, Bouchard's bony, long hand gripped the table edge. Every one felt that a sensation was coming.
"Yes, I have known that there was a leak!" he said with hoarse, painful deliberation. "I have sent out every possible tracer. I have followed up every sort of clew I have transferred a dozen men. I have left nothing undone!"
"With no result?" persisted Westerling impatiently
"Yes, always the same result: That the leak is here in this house—here in the grand headquarters of the army under our very noses. I know it is not the telegraphers or the clerks. It is a member of the staff!"
"Have you gone out of your head?" demanded Westerling. "What staff-officer? How does he get the information to the enemy? Name the persons you suspect here and now! Explain, if you want to be considered sane!"
Here was the blackest accusation that could be made against an officer! The chosen men of the staff, tested through many grades before they reached the inner circle of cabinet secrecy, lost the composure of a council. All were leaning forward toward Bouchard breathless for his answer.
"There are three women on the grounds," said Bouchard. "I have been against their staying from the first. I——."
He got no further. His words were drowned by the outburst of one of the younger members of the staff, who had either to laugh or choke at the picture of this deep-eyed, spectral sort of man, known as a woman-hater, in his revelation of the farcical source of his suspicions.
"Why not include Clarissa Eileen?" some one asked, Starting a chorus of satirical exclamations.
"How do they get through the line?"
"Yes, past a wall of bayonets?"
"When not even a soldier in uniform is allowed to move away from his command without a pass?"
"By wireless?"
"Perhaps by telepathy!"
"Unless," said the chief of the aerostatic division, grinning, "Bouchard lends them the use of our own wires through the capital and around by the neutral countries across the Brown frontier!"
"But the correct plans and location of their forts and the numbers of their heavy guns and of their planes and dirigibles—your failure to have this information is not the result of any leak from our staff since the war began," said Turcas in his dry, penetrating voice, clearing the air of the smoke of scattered explosions.
All were staring at Bouchard again. What answer had he to this? He was in the box, the evidence stated by the prosecutor. Let him speak!
He was fairly beside himself in a paroxysm of rage and struck at the air with his clenched fist.
"—— —— Lanstron!" he cried.
"There's no purpose in that. He can't hear you!" said Turcas, dryly as ever.
"He might, through the leak," said the chief aerostatic officer, who considered that many of his gallant subordinates had lost their lives through Bouchard's inefficiency. "Perhaps Clarissa Eileen has already telepathically wigwagged it to him."
To lose your temper at a staff council is most unbecoming. Turcas would have kept his if hit in the back by a fool automobilist. Westerling had now recovered his. He was again the superman in command.
"It is for you and not for us to locate the leak; yes, for you!" he said. "That is all on the subject for the present," he added in a tone of mixed pity and contempt, which left Bouchard freed from the stare of his colleagues and in the miserable company of his humiliation.
All on the subject for the present! When it was taken up again his successor would be in charge. He, the indefatigable, the over-intense, with his mediæval partisan fervor, who loathed in secret machines like Turcas, was the first man of the staff to go for incompetency.
"And Engadir is the key-point," Westerling was saying.
"Yes," agreed Turcas.
"So we concentrate to break through there," Westerling continued, "while we engage the whole line fiercely enough to make the enemy uncertain where the crucial attack is to be made."
"But, general, if there is any place that is naturally strong, that—" Turcas began.
"The one place where they are confident that we won't attack!" Westerling interrupted. He resented the staff's professional respect for Turcas. After a silence and a survey of the faces around, he added with sententious effect: "And I was right about Bordir!"
To this argument there could be no answer. The one stroke of generalship by the Grays, who, otherwise, had succeeded alone through repeated mass attacks, had been Westerling's hypothesis that had gained Bordir in a single assault.
"Engadir it is, then!" said Turcas with the loyalty of the subordinate who makes a superior's conviction his own, the better to carry it out.
Hazily, Bouchard had heard the talk, while he was looking at Westerling and seeing him, not at the head of the council table, but in the arbor in eager appeal to Marta.
"I shall find out! I shall find out!" was drumming in his temples when the council rose; and, without a word or a backward glance, he was the first to leave the room.
In his search for the medium of the leak to the enemy Bouchard had studied every detail of the Galland premises and also of the ruins of the castle, with the exception of one feature mentioned in the regular staff records, prepared before the war, in the course of their minute description of the architecture of buildings which were accessible to the spies of the Grays. The tunnel to the dungeons could be reached only through the private quarters of the Gallands.
When he came out onto the veranda from the staff council a glimpse of Mrs. Galland walking in the garden told him that one of the guardians who stood between him and the satisfaction of his desperate curiosity was absent. He started for the tower and found the door open and the sitting-room empty. In his impatience he had one foot across the threshold before a prompting sense of respect for form made him pause. After all, this was a private residence. There being no bell, he rapped, and was glad that it was Minna and not Marta who appeared. He watched her intently for the effect of his abrupt announcement as he exclaimed:
"I want to go into the tunnel under the castle!"
There was no mistaking her shock and alarm. Her lips remained parted in a letter O as a sweep of breath escaped. Yet, in the very process of recovering her scattered faculties, her feminine quickness noted a triumphant gleam in his eye. She knew that her manner had given conviction to his suspicions. She knew that she alone stood between him and his finding Marta talking to Brown headquarters. As she was in a state of astonishment, why, astonishment was her cue. She appeared positively speechless from it except for the emission of another horrified gasp. Time! time! She must hold him until Marta left the telephone.
"What an idea! That musty, horrible, damp tunnel!" she exclaimed, shuddering. "I never think of it without thinking of ghosts!"
"I am looking for ghosts," replied Bouchard with saturnine emphasis.
"Oh, don't say that!" cried Minna distractedly. "Sometimes at night I hear their chains clanking and their groans and cries for water," she continued, playing the superstitious and stupid maid servant. "That is, I think I do. Miss Galland says I don't."
"Does she go into the tunnel?" asked Bouchard.
"Yes, she's been in to show me that there were no ghosts," replied Minna. "But not the whole way—not into the dungeons. I believe she got frightened herself, though she wouldn't admit it. I know there are ghosts! She needn't tell me! Don't you believe there are?" she asked solemnly, with dropped jaw.
"I'm going to find out!" he said, taking a step forward.
But Minna, just inside the doorway, did not move to allow him to enter.
"Oh, I'm so glad!" she exclaimed. "Then we'll know the truth. But no!" and she turned wild with protest. "No, no! I know there are! It's dangerous, sir! You'd never come out alive! Unseen hands would seize you and draw you down and strangle you—those terrible spirits of the dark ages!"
Her hands uplifted, fingers stretched apart in terror, lace white with fear, Minna's distress was real—very real, indeed!—while she listened impatiently for Marta's step in the adjoining room.
"Good heavens!" exclaimed Bouchard in disgust. "I didn't know such superstition existed in this day."
"I didn't, sir, until the groans and the clanking of the chains kept me awake," replied Minna.
"Have you a lantern?" asked Bouchard in exasperation.
"A lantern?" repeated Minna blankly. Time! time! She must gain time!
"Yes, you gawk, a lantern!"
"Certainly; you'll need one," said Minna—"a big one! Go and fetch a big army one—and some soldiers to fight the ghosts. But what are soldiers against ghosts? Oh, sir, I don't like to think of you going at all. Please, sir, don't, for the sake of your life!"
There Bouchard frowned heavily and his hawk eyes flashed in command and decision.
"Enough of this farce! A lamp, a candle will do. Come, get me one immediately!"
Just as she was at her wits' end and it seemed as if there were nothing left to do but to scream and fall in a faint in front of Bouchard, her ear caught the welcome sound which told her that Marta had returned from the tunnel.
"Yes, sir. Won't you come in, sir? Of course, sir," she said, standing aside. "Won't you be seated, sir?"
"Good day, Colonel Bouchard!" called Marta, appearing in the doorway.
"He wants to go into the dungeons to see the ghosts!" Minna exclaimed in a return of horror before Bouchard had time to say a word, while she screwed up the side of her face away from him suggestively to Marta. "Those terrible ghosts! I'm afraid for him. Like a man, he may go right into the dungeons, even if you didn't dare to, Miss Galland."
"I wish he would!" Marta joined in eagerly. "That might cure you of your silly imaginings, Minna. She actually thinks, Colonel Bouchard, that she hears them groan and moan and even shriek. Didn't you say they shrieked as well as groaned and moaned once about 3 A.M.?" she asked jocularly.
"A ghost must be hard put to it when he shrieks," observed Bouchard, glaring from one to the other.
"It's all very well for you to make fun of me because you have the advantage of an education," said Minna to Marta, "but you yourself—you—"
"Yes, I did hear what sounded like moaning voices," admitted Marta rather sheepishly. "But of course it was imagination. Now we have a man with nerve enough to go into the dungeons, we'll lay this ridiculous psychological bugaboo at once; that is, if you have the nerve!" She arched her brows in challenging scrutiny of Bouchard, while her eyes twinkled at the prospect of adventure. "I thought I had, myself, but before I got to the dungeons the clammy air wilted it and I was rubbing my eyes to keep from seeing all kinds of apparitions."
She puzzled Bouchard, she was so facile, so ready, so many-sided. But the more she puzzled him the stronger became his conviction of her guilt. He guessed that all this talk was only a prelude to some trick to keep him out of the tunnel. Poor at speech at best, slightly fussed by her candid good humor and teasing, he hesitated as to his next remark. He was going to be short with her in stating that he would go into the tunnel immediately, when she took the words out of his mouth.
"This way, please. I'm all impatience. I only wish that you had suggested it before."
As they passed out of the room Minna leaned against the wall, exhausted and wonder-struck.
"Miss Galland is beyond me!" she thought. "Does she think those hawk eyes will miss that little button of the panel door?"
"We'll need a lantern," said Marta as she took up the one she had been using from a corner of the tool room; while Bouchard, slowly turning his head like some automaton, was examining every detail of floor and wall, spades, hoes, and weeders, for a hidden significance. The lantern was still hot, and Marta's finger smarted with a burn, but she did not twitch. She was so keyed up that she felt capable of walking over red-hot coals, while she joked about ghosts. "There!" she exclaimed, after the lantern was lighted. "This is going to be great sport. Ghost hunting—think of that! We might have made a ghost party Too bad we didn't think of it in time. Yes, it's a pity to be so exclusive about it. Even now we might send for General Westerling and some of the other staff-officers."
She paused and looked at Bouchard questioningly, perhaps challengingly; at least, he thought challengingly. He had half a mind to concur. Could anything be better than to have Westerling present if suspicions proved correct? But no. She wanted Westerling and that was the best reason why he should not be present. Yet there was no sign of chicane in the brimming fun of her eyes that went with the suggestion. Bouchard's search for the proper words of dissent left him rather confused and at a disadvantage. With sympathetic quickness she seemed to guess his thoughts, and in a way that he found all the more exasperating.
"No, no! We're too impatient! We can't wait, can we?" she exclaimed. "Let's go. Let's get the ghosts single-handed, you and I. If we win we'll demand a specially large bronze cross to be struck for us."
"Yes," he agreed with an affectation of humor that made him feel ludicrous. He always felt ludicrous when he tried to be humorous.
"Come on!" said Marta, going to the stairway.
He extended his hand to take the lantern with an "If you please!"
"No. When we approach the enemy I'll let you lead," she replied, refusing the offer. "I'll be only too glad then; but these stairs are very tricky if you don't know them. Keep watch!" she warned him as she started to descend, picking her way slowly.
Once in the tunnel she held the lantern a little back of her in her right hand, which threw a shadow to the left on the side of the panel door. She was walking very fast, too fast to please Bouchard. In the swinging rays he could not fly-speck the surroundings with the care that he desired. Yet how could he ask her to slacken her pace? This she did of her own accord before they had gone far.
"Isn't it damp and deathlike? Think of it!" she exclaimed. "No ray of sunlight has been in here since the tunnel was dug—no, not even then; for probably it was dug after the castle was built. Think of the stories these walls could tell after the silence of centuries! Think of the prisoners driven along at the point of the halberd to slow death in the dungeons! You feel their spirits in the cold, clammy air." Her elocution was excellent, as her voice sank to an awed whisper, impressing even Bouchard with a certain uncanniness. Her steps became slow, as with effort, while he was not missing a square inch of the top, bottom, or sides of the tunnel. "But I'll not—I'll not this time, when I have a soldier with me. For once I'll go to the end!" she cried with forced courage, suddenly starting forward at a half run that sent the lantern's rays lurching and dancing in a way that confused the hawk eyes. Then her burst of strength seemed to give out in collapse and she dropped against the wall for support, her back covering the panel door.
"I can't! I'm just foolishly, weakly feminine!" she whispered brokenly. "According to reason there aren't any ghosts, I know. But it gets on my nerves too much-my imaginings!" She held out the lantern with a trembling hand. "I will wait here. You go on in!" she begged. "Please do and show me what a fool I am! Show that it is all a woman's hysteria—for we are all hysterical, aren't we? Go into every dungeon, please!"
She did seem on the verge of hysteria, quivering as die was from head to foot. But Bouchard, holding the lantern and staring at her, his eyes unearthly lustrous in the yellow rays, hesitated to agree to the request because it was hers. Marta was not so near hysteria that she did not divine his thought.
"Has it got on your nerves, too?" she inquired. "Are you, too, afraid?"
"No, I'm not afraid!" replied Bouchard irritably. "But aren't you afraid to be left alone in the dark? I'll take you back to the sitting-room and you can wait there," he added with a show of gallantry, which she improved on with a flattering if scared smile.
"I'm not afraid with you between me and the dungeons," she said. "I'll hold my ground. Don't think me altogether a craven."
"Very well," was all that he could say. "I came to see the dungeons, and I'll see them!"
After the lantern flame grew fainter and finally disappeared around a bend, Marta emitted a peculiar, squeaky little laugh. It sounded to her as if her own ghost—the ghost of her former self—were laughing in satire. There was a devilish, mischievous joy in battling to outwit Bouchard more than in her deceit of Westerling. Satire, yes—needle-pointed, acid-tipped! Melodrama done in burlesque, too. In the name of the noble art of war, a bit of fooling about ghosts in a tunnel might influence the fate of armies that were the last word in modern equipment. And men played at killing with a grand front of martial dignity, when such a little thing could turn the balance of slaughter! The ghosts in the dungeons seemed about as real as anything, except the childishness of adult humanity in organized mass. She laughed again, this time very softly, as she moved away from the panel door a few steps farther along the wall toward the entrance and again leaned back for support.
She had to wait a half-hour before she saw a yellow flame reappear and heard the dully echoing steps of Bouchard approaching. That tiny push-button on the panel, of the color of stone, was in the shadow of her figure against the lantern's rays, which gave a glazed and haunted effect to Bouchard's eyes, rolling as he studied the walls and ceiling and floor of the tunnel in final baffled and desperate inquiry.
"Did you see anything? Did you go into all the dungeons?" Marta called to him.
Bouchard did not answer. Perhaps he was too full of disgust for words. Marta, however, had plenty of words in her impatience for knowledge.
"If there were you must have caught them with a quick strangle-hold. Or, did you see one and not dare to go on? Tell me! tell me!" she insisted when he stopped before her, his expression a strange mixture of defiance and dissatisfaction while he was searching the wall around her figure. Before his eye had any inclination to look as far away from her as the button she stepped free of the wall and laid her hand on Bouchard's arm. "I can't wait! I've nearly perished of suspense!" she cried. "I'm just dying to know what you found. Please tell me!"
Meanwhile, she was looking into his eyes, which were eagerly devouring the spot that her figure had hidden. He saw nothing but bare stone. Marta slipped her hand behind her and began brushing her back.
"My gown must be a sight!" she exclaimed. "But I do believe you saw a ghost and that he struck you speechless!"
"No!" exploded Bouchard. "No, I saw nothing!"
"Nothing!" she repeated. She half turned to go. He passed by her with the lantern, while she kept to the side of the wall which held the button, covering it with her shadow successfully. "Nothing! No bones, no skulls—not even any anklets fastened by chains to the clammy, wet stones?"
"Yes, just an ordinary set of Middle Age dungeons and some staples in the walls!" he grumbled.
This was no news to her as, with Minna for company, she had explored all the underground passages.
"Wonderful! I suppose a little courage will always lay ghosts!" She even found it difficult to conceal a note of triumph in her tone, for the button was now well behind them. "It's all right, Minna; there aren't any ghosts!" she called as they entered the sitting-room. And Minna, in the kitchen, covered her mouth lest she should scream for joy.
"Thank you!" said Bouchard grudgingly as Marta saw him to the door.
"On the contrary, thank you! It was such fun—if I hadn't been so scared," replied Marta, and their gaze held each other fast in a challenge, hers beaming good nature and his saturnine in its rebuff and a hound-like tenacity of purpose, saying plainly that his suspicions were not yet laid.
When Bouchard returned to his desk he guessed the contents of the note awaiting him, but he took a long time to read its stereotyped expressions in transferring him to perfunctory duty well to the rear of the army. Then he pulled himself together and, leaden-hearted, settled down to arrange routine details for his departure, while the rest of the staff was immersed in the activity of the preparations for the attack on Engadir. He knew that he could not sleep if he lay down. So he spent the night at work. In the morning his successor, a young man whom he himself had chosen and trained, Colonel Bellini, appeared, and the fallen man received the rising man with forced official courtesy.
"In my own defence and for your aid," he said, "I show you a copy of what I have just written to General Westerling."
A brief note it was, in farewell, beginning with conventional thanks for Westerling's confidence in the past.
"I am punished for being right," it concluded. "It is my belief that Miss Galland sends news to the enemy and that she draws it from you without your consciousness of the fact. I tell you honestly. Do what you will with me."
It took more courage than any act of his life for the loyal Bouchard to dare such candor to a superior. Seeing the patchy, yellow, bloodless face drawn in stiff lines and the abysmal stare of the deep-set eyes in their bony recesses, Bellini was swept with a wave of sympathy.
"Thank you, Bouchard. You've been very fine!" said Bellini as he grasped Bouchard's hand, which was icy cold.
"My duty—my duty, in the hope that we shall kill two Browns for every Gray who has fallen—that we shall yet see them starved and besieged and crying for mercy in their capital," replied Bouchard. He saluted with a dismal, urgent formality and stalked out of the room with the tread of the ghost of Hamlet's father.
The strange impression that this farewell left with Bellini still lingered when, a few moments later, Westerling summoned him. Not alone the diffidence of a new member of the staff going into the Presence accounted for the stir in his temples, as he waited till some papers were signed before he had Westerling's attention. Then Westerling picked up Bouchard's note and shook his head sadly.
"Poor Bouchard! You can see for yourself," and he handed the note to Bellini. "I should have realized earlier that it was a case for the doctor and not for reprimand. Mad! Poor Bouchard! He hadn't the ability or the resiliency of mind for his task, as I hope you have, colonel."
"I hope so, sir," replied Bellini.
"I've no doubt you have," said Westerling. "You are my choice!"
That day and the next Westerling had no time fix strolling in the garden. His only exercise was a few periods of pacing on the veranda. Turcas, as tirelessly industrious as ever, developed an increasingly quiet insistence to leave the responsibility of decisions about everything of importance to a chief who was becoming increasingly arbitrary. The attack on Engadir being the jewel of Westerling's own planning, he was disinclined to risk success by delegating authority, which also meant sharing the glory of victory.
Bouchard's note, though officially dismissed as a matter of pathology, would not accept dismissal privately. In flashes of distinctness it recurred to him between reports of the progress of preparations and directions as to dispositions. At dusk of the second day, when all the guns and troops had their places for the final movement under cover of darkness and he rose from his desk, the thing that had edged its way into a crowded mind took possession of the premises that strategy and tactics had vacated. It passed under the same analysis as his work. His overweening pride, so sensitive to the suspicion of a conviction that he had been fooled, put his relations with Marta in logical review.
He had fallen in love in the midst of war. This fact was something that his egoism must resent. Any woman who had struck such a response in him as she had must have great depths. Had she depths that he had not fathomed? He recalled her sudden change of attitude toward war, her conversion to the cause of the Grays, and her charm in this as in all their relations.
Was it conceivable that the change was not due to a personal feeling for him? Was her charm a charm with a purpose? Had he, the chief of staff, been beguiled into making a woman his confidant in military secrets? Just what had he told her? He could not recollect anything definite and recollection was the more difficult because he could not call to mind a single pertinent military question that she had ever asked him. Such information as he might have imparted had been incidental to their talks.
He had enveloped her in glamour; his most preciously trained mental qualities lapsed in her presence. It was time that she was regarded impersonally, as a woman, by the critical eye of the chief of staff. A cool and intense impatience possessed him to study her in the light Of his new scepticism, when, turning the path of the first terrace, he saw her watching the sunset over the crest of the range.
She was standing quite still, a slim, soft shadow between him and the light, which gilded her figure and quarter profile. Did she expect him? he wondered. Was she posing at that instant for his benefit? And the answer, could he have searched her secret brain, was, Yes—yes, if the conscious and the subconscious mind are to be considered as one responsible intelligence. He usually came at that hour. But he had not come last night. They had not met since Bouchard's ghost hunt.
There was no firing near by; only desultory artillery practice in the distance. She heard the familiar crunch of five against three on the gravel. She knew that he had stopped at the turn of the path, and she was certain that he was looking at her! But she did not make the slightest movement. The golden light continued to caress her profile. Then, crunch, crunch, rather slowly, the five against three drew nearer. The delay had been welcome; it had been to her a moment's respite to get her breath before entering the lists. When she turned, her face in the shadow, the glow of the sunset seemed to remain in her eyes, otherwise without expression, yet able to detect something unusual under externals as they exchanged commonplaces of greeting.
"Well, there's a change in our official family. We have lost Bouchard—transferred to another post!" said Westerling.
Marta noted that, though he gave the news a casual turn, his scrutiny sharpened.
"Is that so? I can't say that my mother and I shall be sorry," she remarked. "He was always glaring at us as if he wished us out of his sight. Indeed, if he had his way, I think he would have made us prisoners of war. Wasn't he a woman-hater?" she concluded, half in irritation, half in amusement.
"He had that reputation," said Westerling. "What do you think led to his departure?" he continued.
"I confess I cannot guess!" said Marta, with a look at the sunset glow as if she resented the loss of a minute of it.
"There has been a leak of information to the Browns!" he announced.
"There has! And he was intelligence officer, wasn't he?" she asked, turning to Westerling, her curiosity apparently roused as a matter of courtesy to his own interest in the subject.
"Who do you think he accused? Why,you," he added, with a peculiar laugh.
She noted the peculiarity of the laugh discriminatingly.
"Oh!" Her eyes opened wide in wonder—only wonder, at first. Then, as comprehension took the place of wonder, they grew sympathetic. "That explains!" she exclaimed. "His hateful glances were those of delusion. He was going mad, you mean?"
"Yes," said Westerling, "that—that would explain it!"
"I have been told that when people go mad they always ascribe every injury done to them to the person who happens to have excited their dislike," she mused.
"Which seems to have been the case here," Westerling assented. He did not know what else to say.
"It was the strain of war, wasn't it?" Marta proceeded thoughtfully. "I notice that all the staff-officers are showing it; that is," she added on second thought, quite literally, as she regarded him for an instant of silence, "all except you. You remain the same, calm and decisive." There she looked away with a flutter of her lashes, as if she were shamed at having allowed herself to be caught in open admiration of him. "Look! The last effulgence of rose!" she went on hurriedly about the sunset. "Why shouldn't we think of the sky as heaven, as Nirvana? What better immortality than to be absorbed into that?"
"None!" he agreed, but he was looking at her rather than at the sky. His pride was recovering its natural confidence in the infallibility of his judgment of human beings. He was seeing his suspicions as ridiculous enough to convict him of a brain as disordered as Bouchard's.
Marta was thinking that she had been skating on very thin ice and that she must go on skating till she broke through. There was an exhilaration about it that she could not resist: the exhilaration of risk and the control of her faculties, prompted by a purpose hypnotically compelling. Both were silent, she watching the sky, he in anticipation and suspense. The rose went violet and the shadows over the range deepened.
"The guns and the troops wait. With darkness the music begins!" he said slowly, with a sort of stern fervor.
"The music—the music! He calls it music!" ran through Marta's mind mockingly, but she did not open her lips.
"According to my plan—and your plan!" he added.
"My plan—my plan!" she thought. Her plan that was to send men into a shambles!
"They wait, ready, every detail arranged," he continued proudly.
The violet melted into an inky blue; silence, vast, heavy, prevailed—silence where the millions lay on their arms. Even the guns in the distance had ceased their echoing rumble. He felt the power of her presence and of the moment. It was she who had given the information that had enabled him to confound the scepticism of the staff by the easy taking of Bordir. Through her he might repeat Bordir in a larger way at Engadir, proving his theories of frontal attack. His courage of initiative would shine out against the background of his staff's scepticism as a light to the world's imagination. The first great man in forty years; the genius of the new system of tactics to meet the demands of a new age as Napoleon had met those of his, Grant of his, and Von Moltke of his! Engadir taken, and his place on Valhalla would be secure.
The very silence with its taut expectancy was of his planning. Alone with her he waited for the thunders of his planning that were to break it. The sky merged into the shadows of the landscape that spread and thickened into blackness. Out of the drawn curtains of night broke an ugly flash and farther up the slope spread the explosive circle of light of a bursting shell.
"The signal!" he exclaimed.
Right and left the blasts spread along the Gray lines and right and left, on the instant, the Browns sent their blasts in reply. Countless tongues of flame seemed to burst from countless craters, and the range to rock in a torment of crashes. In the intervening space between the ugly, savage gusts from the Gray gun mouths, which sent their shells from the midst of exploding Brown shells, swept the beams of the Brown search-lights, their rays lost like sunlight in the vortex of an open furnace door.
"Splendid! splendid!" exclaimed Westerling, in a sweep of emotion at the sight that had been born of his command. "Five thousand guns on our side alone! The world has never seen the equal of this!"
"Five thousand guns!" Marta was thinking. What wouldn't their cost have bought in books, in gardens, and in playgrounds! Every shot the price of a year's schooling for a child!
"You see, we are pounding them along the whole frontier quite impartially, so they shall not know where we are going to press home the attack!" he continued.
"But they do know! I've told them!" shot the burning arrow of mockery through Marta's brain.
"Their search-lights are watching for the infantry—and we shall press the infantry forward, too," he added; "everywhere we make a show of fight!"
Then it occurred vividly to her, as a sudden discovery in the midst of the blinding display, that this was not a kind of chaos like that of the beginning of the world, not nature's own elemental debauch, but men firing guns and men waiting for the charge under that spray of death-dealing missiles.
"Splendid! splendid!" he repeated.
Marta looked away from the range to his face, very distinct in the garish illumination. It was the face of a maestro of war seeing all his rehearsals and all his labors come true in symphonic gratification to the eye and ear; the face of a man of trained mind, the product of civilization, with the elation of a party leader on the floor of a parliament in a crisis.
"Soon, now!" said Westerling, and looked at his watch.
Shortly, in the direction of Engadir, to the rear of the steady flashes broke forth line after line of flashes as the long-range batteries, which so far had been silent, joined their mightier voices to the chorus, making a continuous leaping burst of explosions over the Brown positions, which were the real object of the attack.
"The moment I've lived for!" exclaimed Westerling. "Our infantry is starting up the apron of Engadir! We held back the fire of the heavy guns concentrated for the purpose of supporting the men with an outburst. Three hundred heavy guns pouring in their shells on a space of two acres! We're tearing their redoubts to pieces! They can't see to fire! They can't live under it! They're in the crater of a volcano! When our infantry is on the edge of the wreckage the guns cease. Our infantry crowd in—crowd into the house that Partow built. He'll find that numbers count; that the power of modern gun-fire will open the way for infantry in masses to take and hold vital tactical positions! And—no—no, their fire in reply is not as strong as I expected."
"Because they are letting you in! It will be strong enough in due season!" thought Marta in the uncontrollable triumph of antagonism. Five against three was in his tone and in every line of his features.
"It's hard for a soldier to leave a sight like this, but the real news will be awaiting me at my desk," he concluded, adding, as he turned away: "It's fireworks worth seeing, and if you remain here I will return to tell you the results."
She had no thought of going. That arc of dreadful lightnings held her with ghastly fascination. Suddenly all the guns ceased. Faintly in the distance she heard a tumult of human voices in the high notes of a savage cheer; the rattling din of rifles; the purring of automatics; and then, except for the firefly flashes of scattered shots around Engadir, silence and darkness. But she knew that chaos would soon be loosed again—chaos and murder, which were the product of her own chicanery. The Grays would find themselves in the trap of Partow's and Lanny's planning.
Turning her back to the range for the moment, she saw the twinkle of the lights of the town and the threads of light of the wagon-trains and the sweep of the lights of the railroad trains on the plain; while in the foreground every window of the house was ablaze, like some factory on a busy night shift. She could hear the click of the telegraph instruments already reporting the details of the action as cheerfully as Brobdingnagian crickets in their peaceful surroundings. Then out of the shadows Westerling reappeared.
"The apron of Engadir is ours!" he called. "Thanks to you!" he added with pointed emphasis. Back in the house he had received congratulations with a nod, as if success were a matter of course. Before her, exultation unbent stiffness, and he was hoarsely triumphant and eager. "It's plain sailing now," he went on. "A break in the main line! We have only to drive home the wedge, and then—and then!" he concluded.
She felt him close, his breath on her cheek.
"Peace!" she hastened to say, drawing back instinctively.
And then! The irony of the words in the light of her knowledge was pointed by a terrific renewal of the thunders and the flashes far up on the range, and she could not resist rejoicing in her heart.
"That's the Browns!" exclaimed Westerling in surprise.
The volume of fire increased. With the rest of the frontier in darkness, the Engadir section was an isolated blaze. In its light she saw his features, without alarm but hardening in dogged intensity.
"They've awakened to what they have lost! They have been rushing up reserves and are making a counter-attack. We must hold what we have gained, no matter what the cost!"
His last sentence was spoken over his shoulder as he started for the house.
Thus more fire called for more fire; more murder for more murder, she thought. Her mind was projected into the thick of the battle. She saw a panic of Grays caught in their triumph; of wounded men writhing and crawling over their dead comrades, their position shown to the marksmen by a search-light's glare. The dead grew thicker; their glassy eyes were staring at her in reproach. She heard the hoarse and straining voices of the Browns in their "God with us!" through the din of automatics. Men snuggled for cover amidst torn flesh and red-tinged mud in the trenches, and other men trampled them in fiendish risk of life to take more lives.
Without changing her position, hardly turning her head, she watched until the firing began to lessen rapidly. Then she breathed, "Engadir must be ours again!" and realized that she was weak and faint. Suspense had sapped her strength. She sought a seat in the arbor, where the nervous force of other thoughts revived her. What would Westerling say when he found that her information had led his men into a trap—when staff scepticism was proven right and he a false prophet?
From the house came the confused sound of voices in puzzling chorus. It was not a cheer. It had the quality of a rapid fire of jubilant exclamation as a piece of news was passed from lip to lip. Then she heard that step which she knew so well. Sensitive ears noted that it touched the gravel with unusual energy and quickness, which she thought must be due to vexation over the repulse. She rose to face him, summoning back the spirit of the actress.
"This is better yet! I came to tell you that the counter-attack failed!" he said as he saw her appear from the shelter of the arbor.
She wondered if she were going to fall. But the post of the trellis was within reach. She caught hold of it to steady herself. Failed! All her acting had served only to make such a trap for the Browns as Lanny had planned for the Grays! She was grateful for the darkness that hid her face, which was incapable of any expression now but blank despair. Westerling's figure loomed very large to her as she regained her self-possession—large, dominant, unconquerable in the suggestion of five against three. And felicitations were due! She drew away from the post, swaying and trembling, nerves and body not yet under command of mind. She could not force her tongue to so false a sentiment as congratulation.
"The killing—it must have been terrible!" her mind at last made her exclaim to cover her tardiness of response to his mood.
"You thought of that—as you should—as I do!" he said.
He took her hands in his, pulsing warm with the flowing red of his strength. She let them remain lifelessly, as if she had not the will to take them away, the instinct of her part again dominant. To him this was another victory, and it was discovery—the discovery of melting weakness in her for the first time, which magnified his sense of masculine power. He tightened his grip slightly and she shuddered.
"You are tired!" he said, and it hurt her that he could be so considerate.
"The killing—to end that! It's that I want!" she breathed miserably.
"And the end is near!" he said. "Yes, now, thanks to you!"
Thanks to her! And she must listen and submit to his touch!
"The engineers and material were ready to go in," he continued. "Before morning, as I had planned, we shall be so well fortified in the position that nothing can budge us. This success so strengthens my power with the staff and the premier that I need not wait on Fabian tactics. I am supreme. I shall make the most of the demoralization of this blow to the enemy. I shall not wait on slow approaches in the hope of saving life. To-morrow I shall attack and keep on attacking till all the main line is ours."
"Now you are playing your real part, the conqueror!" she thought gladly. "Your kind of peace is the ruin of another people; the peace of a helpless enemy. That is better"—better for her conscience. Unwittingly, she allowed her hands to remain in his. In the paralysis of despair she was unconscious that she had hands. She felt that she could endure anything to retrieve the error into which she had been the means of leading the Browns. And the killing—it would not stop, she knew. No, the Browns would not yield until they were decimated.
"We have the numbers to spare. Numbers shall press home—home to terms in their capital!" Westerling's voice grew husky as he proceeded, harsh as orders to soldiers who hesitated in face of fire. "After that—after that"—the tone changed from harshness to desire, which was still the desire of possession—"the fruits of peace, a triumph that I want you to share!" He was drawing her toward him with an impulse of the force of this desire, when she broke free with an abrupt, struggling pull.
"Not that! Not that! Your work is not yet done!" she cried.
He made a move as if to persist, then fell back with a gesture of understanding.
"Right! Hold me to it!" he exclaimed resolutely. "Hold me to the bargain! So a woman worth while should hold a man worth while."
"Yes!" she managed to say, and turned to go in a sudden impetus of energy. His egoism might ascribe her precipitancy to a fear of succumbing to the tenderness which he thought that she felt for him, when her one wish was to be free of him; her one rallying and tempestuous purpose of the moment to reach the telephone.
Mrs. Galland and Minna saw her ghostlike as she passed through the living-room, their startled questions unheeded. Could it be true that she had betrayed every decent attribute of a woman in vain? Why had the counter-attack failed? Because Westerling had been too strong, too clever, for old Partow? Because God was still with the heaviest battalions? Half running, half stumbling, the light of the lantern bobbing and trembling weirdly, she hastened through the tunnel. Usually the time from taking the receiver down till Lanny replied was only a half minute. Now she waited what seemed many minutes without response. Had the connection been broken? To make sure that her impatience was not tricking her she began to count off the seconds. Then she heard Lanstron's voice, broken and hoarse:
"Marta, Marta, he is dead! Partow is dead!"
Recovering himself, Lanstron told the story of Partow's going, which was in keeping with his life and his prayers. As the doctor put it, the light of his mind, turned on full voltage to the last, went out without a flicker. Through the day he had attended to the dispositions for receiving the Grays' attack, enlivening routine as usual with flashes of humor and reflection ranging beyond the details in hand. An hour or so before dark he had reached across the table and laid his big, soft palm on the back of Lanstron's hand. He was thinking aloud, a habit of his, in Lanstron's company, when an idea requiring gestation came to him.
"My boy, it is not fatal if we lose the apron of Engadir. The defences behind it are very strong."
"No, not fatal," Lanstron agreed. "But it's very important."
"And Westerling will think it fatal. Yes, I understand his character. Yes—yes; and if our counter-attack should fail, then Miss Galland's position would be secure. Hm-m-m—those whom the gods would destroy—hm-m-m. Westerling will be convinced that repeated, overwhelming attacks will gain our main line. Instead of using engineering approaches, he will throw his battalions, masses upon masses, against our works until his strength is spent. It would be baiting the bull. A risk—a risk—but, my boy, I am going to—"
Partow's head, which was bent in thought, dropped with a jerk. A convulsion shook him and he fell forward onto the map, his brave old heart in its last flutter, and Lanstron was alone in the silent room with the dead and his responsibility.
"The order that I knew he was about to speak, Marta, I gave for him," Lanstron concluded. "It seemed to me an inspiration—his last inspiration—to make the counter-attack a feint."
"And you're acting chief of staff, Lanny? You against Westerling?"
"Yes."