“My Dear Lad—Yours to hand, and this leaves your mother and self in good health. We were glad to hear that the box arrived all right and that your mates think well of Yorkshire cakes. You may learn a lot of useful things at school, but you will not often meet with abetter cook than your mother. She is sore upset just now about a mishap we have had on the farm. I turned out nearly all my shorthorns to graze on the low pastures. The ground was a bit damp, and a strange cow broke in at night to join them. I don’t rightly know what to blame, but next day they showed signs of rinderpest. I sent for the vet, and they had to be slaughtered—all but one two-year-old bull, Bainesse Boy IV., and Mr. Pickering’s cow, which were not with them in the meadow. It is a great loss, but I don’t repine, now that you are provided for, and it is not quite like starting all over again, as I have my land and my Cleveland bays, and I am in no debt. In such matters I turn to the Lord for consolation. I have just read this verse to Martha: ‘I have been young, and now am old; yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.’ If you are minded to look it up, you will find it in the Thirty-seventh Psalm.“I don’t want to pretend that the blow has not been a hard one, but, God willing, there will be a hamper for you at Christmas, if Colonel Grant is too busy to bring you North. Your mother joins in much love.“Your affect.,”John Bolland.”“P. S.—Maybe you will not have forgotten that Mrs. Saumarez said the land needed draining. She was a clever woman in some ways.”
“My Dear Lad—Yours to hand, and this leaves your mother and self in good health. We were glad to hear that the box arrived all right and that your mates think well of Yorkshire cakes. You may learn a lot of useful things at school, but you will not often meet with abetter cook than your mother. She is sore upset just now about a mishap we have had on the farm. I turned out nearly all my shorthorns to graze on the low pastures. The ground was a bit damp, and a strange cow broke in at night to join them. I don’t rightly know what to blame, but next day they showed signs of rinderpest. I sent for the vet, and they had to be slaughtered—all but one two-year-old bull, Bainesse Boy IV., and Mr. Pickering’s cow, which were not with them in the meadow. It is a great loss, but I don’t repine, now that you are provided for, and it is not quite like starting all over again, as I have my land and my Cleveland bays, and I am in no debt. In such matters I turn to the Lord for consolation. I have just read this verse to Martha: ‘I have been young, and now am old; yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.’ If you are minded to look it up, you will find it in the Thirty-seventh Psalm.
“I don’t want to pretend that the blow has not been a hard one, but, God willing, there will be a hamper for you at Christmas, if Colonel Grant is too busy to bring you North. Your mother joins in much love.
“Your affect.,”John Bolland.”
“P. S.—Maybe you will not have forgotten that Mrs. Saumarez said the land needed draining. She was a clever woman in some ways.”
The boy’s eyes filled with tears. He understood only too well the far-reaching misfortune which had befallen the farmer. The total value of the herd was £5,000, and he remembered that experts valued the young surviving bull at £300 as a yearling. In all, twenty-three animals had been slaughtered by the law’s decree, and the compensation payable to Bolland would not cover a twentieth part of the actual loss.
Martin not only wrote a letter of warm sympathy tohis adopted parents but sent Bolland’s letter to his father, with an added commentary of his own. Colonel Grant obtained short leave and traveled to Elmsdale next day. It took some trouble to bring John round to his point of view, but the argument that the farm should be restocked in Martin’s interests prevailed, and negotiations were opened with prominent breeders elsewhere which resulted in the purchase of a notable bull and eight heifers, for which Bolland and the colonel each found half the money. The farmer would listen to no other arrangement, though he promised that if he experienced any tightness for money he would not hesitate to apply for further help.
The need never made itself felt. The first animal to produce successful progeny was George Pickering’s cow! No man in the North Riding was more pleased than John that day. Throughout the whole of his life the only person who ever brought a charge of unfair dealing against him was Pickering. The memory rankled, and its sting was none the less bitter because of a secret dread that he had perhaps been guilty of a piece of sharp practice. Now his character was cleared.
Pattison, his old crony, asked him, by way of a joke, how much “he’d tak’ for t’ cauf.”
John blazed into unexpected anger.
“At what figger de you reckon yer own good neäm, Mr. Pattison?”
“I don’t knoä as I’d care te sell it at onny price, Mr. Bollan’.”
“Then ye’ll think as I do aboot yon cauf. Neyther it nor any other of its dam’s produce will ivver leave my farm if I can help it.”
This record of a Yorkshire village—a true chronicle of life among the canny folk who dwell on the “moor edge”—might well be left at the point it reached when one of its chief characters saw before him the smooth and sunlit road of a notable career.
But history, though romantic, is not writ as romance, and the story of Elmsdale is fact, not fiction. After eight years of somnolence the village awoke again. It was roused from sleep by the tumult of a world at war; mayhap the present generation shall pass away before the hamlet relapses into its humdrum ways.
Martin was twenty-two when his father and he journeyed north to attend the annual sale of the Elmsdale herd, which was fixed for the two opening days of July, 1914. Each year Colonel Grant brought his son to the village for six weeks prior to the twelfth of August; this year there was a well-founded rumor in the little community that the colonel meant to buy The Elms.
The announcement of Bolland’s sale brought foreign agents from abroad and well-known stock-raisers from all parts of the Kingdom. No less than forty animals entered the auction ring. One bull, Bainesse Boy IV., realized £800. Bainesse Boy IV. held a species of levee in a special stall. He had grown into a wonder. On atable, over which Sergeant Benson mounted guard, were displayed five championship cups he had carried off, while fifteen cards, arranged in horseshoe pattern on the wall, each bore the magic words, “First Prize,” awarded at Islington, Birmingham, the Royal, and wherever else in Britain shorthorns and their admirers most do congregate.
The village hummed with life; around the sale ring gathered a multitude of men arrayed in Melton cloth and leather leggings, whose general appearance betokened the wisdom of Dr. Johnson’s sarcastic dictum: “Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat.”
Martha and a cohort of maids boiled hams by the dozen and baked cakes in fabulous quantities. John graced the occasion by donning a new suit and new boots, in which the crooked giant was singularly ill at ease.
Mrs. Pickering drove over from Nottonby—Kitty was married two years before to a well-to-do farmer at Northallerton—and someone rallied her on “bein’ ower good-lookin’ te remain a widow all her days.”
She laughed pleasantly.
“I’m far too busy at Wetherby to think of adding a husband to my cares,” she said; but those who knew her best could have told that she had refused at least two excellent offers of matrimony and meant to remain Mrs. Pickering during the rest of her days.
At the close of the second day’s sale, when the crowd was thinned by the departure of a fleet of cars and a local train at five o’clock, the White House was thronged by its habitués, who came to make a meal of the “high tea.”
Colonel Grant and John had just concluded an amicable wrangle whereby it was decided that they should jointly provide the considerable sum needed to acquire The Elms and some adjoining land. The house and grounds were to be remodeled and the property would be deeded to Martin forthwith.
The young gentleman himself, as tall as his father now, and wearing riding breeches and boots, was standing at the front door, turning impatient eyes from a smart cob, held by a groom, to the bend in the road where it curved beyond the “Black Lion.”
A smartly-dressed young lady passed, and although Martin lifted his hat with a ready smile his glance wandered from her along the road again. Evelyn Atkinson wondered who it was that thus distracted his attention.
A few yards farther on, Elsie Herbert, mounted on a steady old hunter, passed at a sharp trot. Evelyn’s pretty face frowned slightly.
“Ifsheis home again, of course, he has eyes for nobody else,” she said to herself.
And, indeed, it was true. Elsie had been to Dresden for two years. She had returned to Elmsdale the previous day, and a scribbled note told Martin to look for her after tea.
The two set off together through the village, bound for the moor. Many a critical look followed them.
“Eh, but they’re a bonny pair,” cried Mrs. Summersgill, who became stouter each year. “Martin allus framed to be a fine man, but I nivver thowt yon gawky lass o’ t’ vicar’s ’ud grow into a beauty.”
“This moor air is wonderful. Look at the effectit has on you, Mrs. Summersgill,” said Colonel Grant with a twinkle in his eye.
“Oh, go on wi’ ye, Colonel, pokin’ fun at a poor owd body like me. But I deän’t ho’d wi’ skinny ’uns. Martha, what’s become o’ Mrs. Saumarez an’ that flighty gell o’ hers. What did they call her—Angel? My word!—a nice angel—not that she wasn’t as thin as a sperrit.”
“Miss Walker told me, last Christmas twel’month, they were i’ France,” said Martha.
“France? Ay, maist like; it’s a God-forsaken place, I’ll be boun’.”
“Nay,” interposed Bolland, “that’s an unchristian description of onny counthry, ma’am. Ye’ll find t’ Lord ivverywhere i’ t’ wide wulld, if ye seek Him. There’s bin times when He might easy be i’ France, for He seemed, iv His wisdom, to be far away frae Elmsdale.”
Mrs. Summersgill snorted contempt for all “furriners,” but Martha created a diversion.
“Goodness me!” she cried, “yer cup’s empty. I nivver did see sike a woman. Ye talk an’ eat nowt.”
Martin, now in his third year at Oxford, was somewhat mystified by the change brought about in Elsie by two years of “languages and music” passed in the most attractive of German cities. Though not flippant, her manner nonplussed him. She was distinctly “smart,” both in speech and style. She treated a young gentleman who had already taken his degree and was reading for honors in history with an easy nonchalance that was highly disconcerting. The last time they parted they had kissed each other, she with tears, and he with a lumpin his throat. Now he dared no more offer a cousinly, or brotherly, or any other sort of salute in which kissing was essential, than if she were a royal princess.
“You’ve altered, old girl,” he said by way of a conversational opening when their horses were content to walk, after a sharp canter along a moorland track.
“I should hope so, indeed,” came the airy retort. “Surely, you didn’t expect to find the Elmsdale label on me after two years ofkultur?”
“Whatever the label, the vintage looks good,” he said.
“You mean that as a compliment,” she laughed. “And, now that I look at you carefully, I see signs of improvement. Of course, the Oxford swank is an abomination, but you’ll lose it in time. Father told me last night that you were going in for the law and politics. Is that correct?”
Martin, masterful as ever, was not minded to endure such supercilious treatment at Elsie’s hands. He had looked forward to this meeting with a longing that had almost interfered with his work; it was more than irritating to find his divinity modeling her behavior on the lines of the Girton “set” at the University.
They had reached a point of the high moor which overlooked Thor ghyll. Martin pulled up his cob and dismounted.
“Let’s give the nags a breather here,” he said. “Shall I help you?”
“No, thanks.”
Elsie was out of the saddle promptly. She rode astride. In a well-fitting habit, with divided skirt and patent-leather boots, she looked wonderfully alluring,but her air of aloofness was carried almost to the verge of indifference.
She showed some surprise when Martin took her horse’s reins and threw them over his left arm.
“Are you going to lecture me?” she said, arching her eyebrows. “It would be just like a fledgling B. A., who is doubtless a member of the Officers’ Training Corps, to tell me that my German riding-master taught me to sit too stiffly.”
“He did,” said Martin, meeting the sarcastic blue eyes without flinching. “But a few days with the York and Ainsty and Lord Middleton’s pack will put that right. You’ll come a purler at your first stone wall if you ride with such long stirrup leathers. However, I want you to jump another variety of obstacle to-day. You asked me just now, Elsie, if I was going in for the law. Yes. But I’m going in for you first. You know I love you, dear. You know I have been your very humble but loyal knight ever since I won your recognition down there in the valley, when I was only a farmer’s son and you were a girl of a higher social order. I have never forgotten that you didn’t seem to heed class distinctions then, Elsie, and it hurts now to have you treat me with coldness.”
Elsie, trying valiantly to appear partly indignant and even more amused at this direct attack, failed most lamentably. First she flushed; then she paled.
She faced Martin’s gaze confidently enough at the outset, but her eyes dropped and her lips quivered when she heard the words which no woman can hear without a thrill. Still, she made a brave attempt to rally her forces.
“I didn’t—quite mean—what you say,” she faltered, which was a schoolgirl form of protest for one who had achieved distinction in a course of English literature.
Martin took her by the shoulders. The two horses nosed each other. They, perforce, were dumb, but their wise eye’s seemed to exchange the caustic comment: “What fools these mortals be! Why don’t they hug, and settle the business?”
“I must know what you do mean,” said Martin, almost fiercely. “I love you, Elsie. Will you marry me?”
She lifted her face. The blue eyes were dim with tears, but the adorable mouth trembled in a smile.
“Yes, dear,” she murmured. “But what did you expect? Did you—think I would—throw my arms around you—in the village street?”
After that Martin had no reason to accuse Elsie of being either stiff or cold. When the vicar heard the news that night—for Martin and the colonel dined at the Vicarage—he stormed into mock dissent.
“God bless my soul,” he cried, “my little girl has been away two whole years, and you come and steal her away from me before she has been home twenty-four hours!”
Then he produced a handkerchief and yielded, apparently, to a violent attack of hay fever. Yet it was a joyous company which gathered around the dinner table, for Elsie herself, casting off the veneer of Dresden, drove posthaste to summon the Bollands to the feast.
John was specially deputed by Colonel Grant to make a significant announcement.
“We’re all main pleased you two hev sattled mattersso soon,” he said, peering alternately at Martin’s attentive face and Elsie’s blushing one. “Yer father an’ me hev bowt The Elms, an’ a tidy bit o’ land besides, so ye’ll hev a stake i’ t’ county if ivver ye’re minded te run for Parlyment. The Miss Walkers (John pronounced the name “Wahker”) are goin’ te live in a small hoos i’ Nottonby. They’ve gotten a fine lot o’ Spanish mahogany an’ owd oak which they’re willin’ te sell by vallyation; so the pair of ye can gan there i’ t’ mornin’ an’ pick an’ choose what ye want.”
Elsie looked at her father, but neither could utter a word. Martha Bolland put an arm around the girl’s neck.
“Lord luv’ ye, honey!” she said brokenly, “it’ll be just like crossin’ the road. May I be spared te see you happy and comfortable in yer new home, for you’ll surely be one of the finest ladies i’ Yorkshire.”
No shadow darkened their joy in that cheerful hour. Even next day, when a grim specter flitted through Elmsdale, the ominous vision evoked only a passing notice. Colonel Grant and the vicar, each an expert in old furniture, accompanied the young people to The Elms and examined its antique dressers, sideboards, tables, and the rest. Many of the bedroom chests were of solid mahogany. The Misses Walker had cleared the drawers of the lumber of years, so that the prospective purchasers could note the interior finish.
Miss Emmy, not so tactful as her elder sister, brought in a name which the others present wished to forget.
“Mrs. Saumarez used this room as a dressing-room,” she said, “and while turning out rubbish from a set of drawers I came across this.”
She displayed a small red-covered folding road-map, such as cyclists and motorists use. Martin thought he recognized it.
“I believe that is the very map lost by Fritz Bauer, Mrs. Saumarez’s chauffeur,” he said.
“Probably, sir. He made a rare row with Miss Angèle about it. I was half afraid he meant to shake her. No one knew what had become of it, but either Miss Angèle or her mother must have hidden it. Why, I can’t guess.”
Elsie helped to smooth over an awkward incident. She took the map and began to open it.
“It couldn’t have been such an important matter,” she said. Then she shook apart the folded sheet, and they all saw that it bore a number of entries and signs in faded ink, black and red. The written words were in German, and Elsie scanned a few lines hurriedly. She looked puzzled, even a trifle perturbed, but recovered her smiling self-possession instantly.
“The poor man, being a foreigner, jotted down some notes for his guidance,” she said. “May I have it?”
“With pleasure, miss,” said the old lady.
It was not until the party had returned to the vicarage that Elsie explained her request. She spread the map on a table, and her smooth forehead wrinkled in doubt.
“This is serious,” she said. “I have lived in Germany long enough to understand that one cannot mix with German girls in the intimacy of school and at their homes without knowing that an attack on England is simply an obsession of their menfolk, and even of the women. They regard it as a certainty in the nearfuture, pretending that if they don’t strike first England will crush them.”
“I wish to Heaven she would!” broke in Colonel Grant emphatically. “In existing conditions this country resembles an unarmed policeman waiting for a burglar to fire at him out of the darkness.”
Mr. Herbert, man of peace that he was, might have voiced a mild disclaimer, had not Elsie stayed him.
“Listen, father,” she said seriously. “Here is proof positive. That chauffeur was a military spy. See what is written across the top of the map: ‘Gutes Wasser; Futter in Fülle; Überfluss von Vieh, Schafen und Pferden. Einzelheiten auf genauen Ortlichkeiten angegeben.’ That means ‘Good water; abundance of fodder; plenty of cattle, sheep, and horses. Details given on exact localities.’ And, just look at the details! Could a child fail to interpret their meaning?”
Elsie’s simile was not far-fetched, yet gray-headed statesmen, though they may have both known and understood, refused to believe. That little road-map, on a scale of one mile to an inch, contained all the information needed by the staff of an invading army.
The moor bore the legend:
“Platz für Lager, leicht verschanzt; beherrscht Hauptstrassen von Whitby und Pickering nach York. Rote Kreise kennzeichnen reichlichen Wasservorrat für Kavallerie und Artillerie.” (Site for camp, easily entrenched. Commands main roads from Whitby and Pickering to York. Red circles show ample water supply for cavalry and artillery.)
“Platz für Lager, leicht verschanzt; beherrscht Hauptstrassen von Whitby und Pickering nach York. Rote Kreise kennzeichnen reichlichen Wasservorrat für Kavallerie und Artillerie.” (Site for camp, easily entrenched. Commands main roads from Whitby and Pickering to York. Red circles show ample water supply for cavalry and artillery.)
Every road bore its classification for the use of troops, showing the width, quality of surface, and gradients.Each bridge was described as “stone” or “iron.” Even cross-country trails were indicated when fordable streams rendered such passage not too difficult.
The little group gazed spellbound at the extraordinarily accurate synopsis of the facilities offered by the placid country of Yorkshire for the devilish purposes of war. Martin, in particular, devoured the entries relating to the moor. On Metcalf’s farm he saw: “Six hundred sheep here,” and at the Broad Ings, “Four hundred sheep, three horses, four cows.” Well he knew who had given the spy those facts. His glowing eyes wandered to the village. A long entry distinguished the White House, and though he knew a good deal of German he was beaten by the opening technical word.
“What is that, Elsie?” he said, and even his father wondered at the hot anger in his utterance.
The girl read:
“Stammbaum Vieh hier; drei Stiere, achtzehn Kühe und Färsen, nicht zum Schlachten, sehr wertvoll. Neben bei sechs Stuten, besten Types zur Zucht.”
“Stammbaum Vieh hier; drei Stiere, achtzehn Kühe und Färsen, nicht zum Schlachten, sehr wertvoll. Neben bei sechs Stuten, besten Types zur Zucht.”
Then she translated:
“Pedigree cattle here; three bulls, eighteen cows and heifers, not to be slaughtered; very valuable. Also six brood mares of best type for stud.”
“Pedigree cattle here; three bulls, eighteen cows and heifers, not to be slaughtered; very valuable. Also six brood mares of best type for stud.”
“The infernal scoundrel!” blazed out Martin. “So the Bolland stock must be taken to the Fatherland, and not eaten or drafted into service! And to think that I gave him nearly all that information!”
“You, Martin?” cried Elsie.
“Yes. He pumped me dry. I even showed him the site of every pond on the moor.”
“Don’t blame the man,” put in Colonel Grant. “Iknew him as a Prussian officer at the first glance. But he was simply doing his duty. Blame our criminal carelessness. We cannot stop foreigners from prowling about the country, but we can and should make it impossible for any enemy to utilize such data as are contained in this map.”
“But, consider,” put in the perturbed vicar. “This evil work was done eight years ago, and what has all the talk of German preparation come to? Isn’t it the bombast of militarism gone mad?”
“It comes to this,” said the colonel. “We are just eight years nearer war. I am convinced that the break must occur before 1916—and for two reasons: Germany’s financial state is dangerous, and in 1916 Russia will have completed on her western frontier certain strategic lines which will expedite mobilization. Germany won’t wait till her prospective foes are ready. France knows it. That is why she has adopted the three years’ service scheme.”
“Then why won’t you let me join the army, dad?” demanded Martin bluntly.
Colonel Grant spread his hands with the weary gesture of a man who would willingly shirk a vital decision.
“In peace the army is a poor career,” he said. “The law and politics offer you a wider field. But not you only—every young man in the country should be trained to arms. As matters stand, we have neither the men nor the rifles. Our artillery, excellent of its type, is about sufficient for an army corps, and we have a fortnight’s supply of ammunition. I am not an alarmist. We have enough regiments to repel a raid, supposing the enemy’s transports dodged the fleet; but Heaven help us if wedream of sending an expeditionary force to France or Egypt, or any single one of a score of vulnerable points outside the British Isles!”
“Beckett-Smythe retained one of those German chauffeurs in his service for a whole year,” said the vicar, on whom a new light had dawned with the discovery of the telltale map.
“Are there many of the brood in the district now?” inquired the colonel.
“I fancy not.”
“There is no need, they have done their work,” said Elsie. “Last winter I met a young officer in Dresden, and he told me he had taken a walking tour through this part of Yorkshire during the summer. He knew Elmsdale quite well. He remembered the vicarage, The Elms, and the White House. Yet he said he was here only a day!”
“Fritz Bauer’s maps are the best of guides,” commented Colonel Grant bitterly.
The vicar was literally awe-stricken. He stooped over the map.
“Is this sort of thing going on all over the country?” he gasped.
“More or less. Naturally, the east coast has been the chief hunting ground, as that must provide the terrain of any attack. Of course, so long as the political sky remains fairly clear, as it is at this moment, there is always a chance that humanity will escape Armageddon for another generation. The world is growing more rational and its interests are becoming ever more identical. Even the Junkers are feeling the pressure of public opinion, and the great masses of the people demandpeace. That is why I want Martin to learn the power of voice and pen rather than of the sword. I have been a soldier all my life, and I hate war!”
The man who had so often faced death in his country’s cause spoke with real feeling. He longed to make war impossible by making victory impossible for an aggressor. He claimed no rights for Britain that he would deny Germany or any other country in the comity of nations.
Suddenly he took the map off the table and folded it.
“I’ll send this curio to Whitehall,” he said with a smile. “It will form part of a queer collection. Now, let’s talk of something else.... Martin, after the valuer has inspected that furniture, you might see to it that the whole lot is stored in the east bedrooms. The architect will not disturb that part of the house.”
“Oh, when can we look at the plans?” chimed in Elsie.
These four people, who in their way fairly represented the forty millions of Great Britain, discussed the spy’s map in the drawing-room of Elmsdale vicarage on July 6th, 1914. On the sixth of August, exactly one month later, two German army corps, with full artillery and commissariat trains, were loaded into transports and brought to the mouth of the Elbe. They hoped to avoid the British fleet, and their objective was the Yorkshire coast between Whitby and Filey. Once ashore, they meant entrenching a camp on the Elmsdale moor. Obviously, they did not dream of conquering England by one daring foray. Their purpose was to keep the small army of Britain fully occupied until France was humbled to the dust. They would lose the whole hundred thousand men. But what of that? German soldiers areregarded as cannon fodder by their rulers, and the price in human lives would not be too costly if it retained British troops at home.
It was an audacious scheme, and audacity is the first principle of successful war. Its very spine and marrow was the knowledge of the North and East Ridings gained in time of peace by the officers who would lead the invading host. That it failed was due to England’s sailors, the men who broke Napoleon, and were destined, by God’s good grace, to break the robber empire of Germany.
Elmsdale at war is very like Elmsdale in peace. At least, that was Martin’s first impression when he and General Grant motored to the village from York on a day in September, 1915. Father and son had passed unscathed through the hellfire of Loos, General Grant in command of a brigade, and Martin a captain in a Kitchener battalion. They were in England on leave now, the middle-aged general for five days, and the youthful captain for ten, and the purpose of this joint home-coming was Martin’s marriage.
When it became evident that the world struggle would last years rather than months, General Grant and the vicar put their heads together, metaphorically speaking, since the connecting link was the field post-office, and arranged a war wedding. Why should the young people wait? they argued. Every consideration pointed the other way. With Martin wedded to Elsie, legal formalities as to Bolland’s and the general’s estate could be completed, and if Heaven blessed the union with children the continuity of two old families would be assured.
So, to Martin’s intense surprise, he was called to the telephone one Saturday morning in the trenches and told that he had better hand over his company to the senior subaltern as speedily as might be, since his ten days’ leave began on the Monday, such being the amiabledevice by which commanding officers permit juniors to reach Blighty before an all-too-brief respite from the business of killing Germans begins officially.
He met his father at Boulogne, and there learnt that which he had only suspected hitherto: he and Elsie were booked for an immediate honeymoon on a Scottish moor—at Cairn-corrie, to be exact. By chance the two travelers ran into Frank Beckett-Smythe, a gunner lieutenant in London, and he undertook to rush north that night to act as “best man.” Father and son caught a train early on Sunday and hired a car at York, Elmsdale having no railway facilities on the day of rest.
They arrived in time to attend the evening service at the parish church, to which,mirabile dictu, John and Martha Bolland accompanied them. The war has broken down many barriers, but few things have crumbled to ruin more speedily than the walls of prejudice and sectarian futilities which separated the many phases of religious thought in Britain.
The church, with its small graveyard, stood in the center of the village, and the Grants had to wring scores of friendly hands before they and the others walked to the vicarage for supper. Martin and Elsie contrived to extricate themselves from the crowd slightly in advance of the older people. They felt absurdly shy. They were wandering in dreamland.
Early next morning Martin strolled into the village. He wanted to stir the sluggish current of enlistment, for England was then making a final effort to maintain her army on a voluntary basis. Elmsdale was so unchanged outwardly that he marveled. He hardly realized that it could not well be otherwise. He hadseen so many French hamlets torn by war that the snug content of this sheltered nook in rural Yorkshire was almost uncanny by contrast. The very familiarity of the scene formed its strangest element. Its sights, its sounds, its homely voices, were novel to the senses of one whose normal surroundings were the abominations of war. Here were trim houses and well-filled stockyards, smiling orchards and cattle grazing in green pastures. Everywhere was peace. He was the only man in uniform, until Sergeant Benson appeared in the doorway of a cottage and saluted. The village had its own liveries—the corduroys of the carpenter, redolent of oil and turpentine, the tied-up trouser legs of the laborer, the blacksmith’s leather apron, ragged and burnt, a true Vulcan’s robe, the shoemaker’s, shiny with the stropping of knives and seamed with cobbler’s wax. The panoply of Mars looked singularly out of place in this Sleepy Hollow.
But, by degrees, he began to miss things. There were no young men in the fields. All the horses had gone, save the yearlings and those too old for the hard work of artillery and transport. He questioned Benson and found that little Elmsdale had not escaped the levy laid on the rest of Europe. Jim Bates was in the Yorkshire Regiment. Tommy Beadlam’s white head was resting forever in a destroyed trench at Ypres. Tom Chandler had fallen at Gallipoli. Evelyn Atkinson was a nurse, and her two sisters were “in munitions” at Leeds. Yes, there were some shirkers, but not many. For the most part, they were hidden in the moorland farms. “T’ captain” would remember Georgie Jackson? Well, he was one of the stand-backs—wouldn’tgo till he was fetched. The village girls made his life a misery, so he “hired” at the Broad Ings, miles away in the depths of the moor. One night about a month ago one of those “d—d Zeppelines” dropped a bomb on the heather, which caught fire. A second, following a murder trail to Newcastle, saw the resultant blaze and dropped twelve bombs. A third, believing that real damage was being done, flung out its whole cargo of twenty-nine bombs.
“So, now, sir,” grinned Benson, “there’s a fine lot o’ pot-holes i’ t’ moor. Georgie was badly scairt. He saw the three Zepps, an’ t’ bombs fell all over t’ farm. Next mornin’ he f’und three sheep banged te bits. An’ what d’ye think? He went straight te Whitby an’ ’listed. He hez a bunch o’ singed wool in his pocket, an’ sweers he’ll mak’ some Jarman eat it.”
So Martin only recruited a wife that day, and evidently secured a sensible one, for Elsie, taking thought, on hearing certain vivid descriptions of trench life on the Sunday evening, vetoed the wedding trip to Scotland, and persuaded her husband to “go the limit” in London, where plenty of society and a round of theaters acted as a wholesome tonic after the monotony of high-explosive existence in a dugout.
In February, 1917, Martin was “in billets” at Armentières. He had been promoted to the staff, and had fairly earned this coveted recognition by a series of daring excursions into “No Man’s Land” every night for a week, which enabled him to plan an attack on the German lines at Chapelle d’Armentières. Never thinking of any personal gain, he drew up a memorandum,which he submitted to his colonel. The latter sent the document to Divisional Headquarters; the scheme was approved. Fritz was pushed forcibly half a mile nearer Lille, and “Captain Reginald Ingram Grant” was informed, in the dry language of theGazette, that in future he would wear a red band around his field service cap and little red tabs on the shoulders of his tunic.
That was a great day for him, but his elation was as nothing compared with the joy of Elmsdale when theMessengerreprinted the announcement. Elsie, of course, imagined that her husband was now comparatively safe for the rest of the war, and he has never undeceived her. As a matter of fact, his first real “job” was to carry out a fresh series of observations at a point south of Armentières along the road to Arras. This might involve another six days of lurking in dugouts at the front and six nights of crawling through and under German barbed wire.
His companion was a sapper sergeant named Mason. They suspected that the German position was heavily mined in anticipation of an attack at that very point, and it was part of their business at the outset to ascertain whether or not this was the case.
The enemy’s lines were about one hundred and fifty yards away, and all observers agree that the chief difficulty experienced in the pitch-black darkness of a cloudy, moonless night is to estimate the distance covered. Crawling over shell-torn ground, slow work at the best, is rendered slower by the frequent waits necessary while rockets flare overhead and Verrey lights describe brilliant parabolas in unexpected directions.Martin, up to every trick and dodge of the “listening post,” surveyed the field of operations through a periscope, and noticed that one of the ditches which mark boundaries in northern France ran almost in a straight line from the British trenches to the German, and had at one time been reinforced by posts and rails. The fence was destroyed, but many of the posts remained, some intact, others mere jagged stumps. He estimated that the nineteenth was not more than a couple of yards from the enemy’s wire, and knew of old that it was in just such an irregular hollow he might expect to find a weak place in the entanglement.
Mason agreed with him.
“We can save a lot of time by following that trail, sir,” he said. “There’s only one drawback——”
“That Fritz may have hit on the same scheme,” laughed Martin. “Possible; but we must chance it.”
Mason and he were old associates. They had perfected a code of signals, by touch, that enabled them to work in absolute silence. Thus, a slight hold meant “Halt”; a slight push, “Advance”; a slight pull, “Retire.” Each carried a trench knife and a revolver, the latter for use as a last resource only. They were not going out for fighting but for observation. If enemy patrols were encountered, they must be avoided. Germans are not phlegmatic, but, on the contrary, highly nervous. Continuous raids by British bombing parties had put sentries “on the jump,” and the least noise which was not explained by a whispered password attracted a heavy spray of machine-gun fire. Especially was this the case during the hour before dawn. By hurrying out immediately after darkness set in, the twocounted on nearing the German front-line trench at a time when reliefs were being posted and fatigue parties were plodding to the “dump” for the next day’s rations.
“What time will you be back?” inquired the subaltern in charge of the platoon holding that part of the British trench. It was his duty to warn sentries to be on the lookout for the return of scouting parties.
Martin glanced at the luminous watch on his wrist. It was then seven o’clock, and the night promised to be dark and quiet. The evening “strafe” had just ended, and the German guns would reopen fire on the trenches about five in the morning. During the intervening hours the artillery would indulge in groups of long shots, hoping to catch the commissariat or a regiment marching on thepavéin column of fours.
“About twelve,” said Martin.
“Well, so long, sir! I’ll have some coffee ready.”
“So long!” And Martin led the way up a trench ladder.
No man wishes another “Good luck!” in these enterprises. By a curious inversion of meaning, “Good luck!” implies a ninety per cent chance of getting killed!
The two advanced rapidly for the first hundred yards. Then they separated, each crawling out into the open for about twenty yards to right and left. Snuggling into a convenient shell hole, they would listen intently, with an ear to the ground, their object being to detect the rhythmic beat of a pick, if a mining party was busy. Each remained exactly ten minutes. Then they met and compared notes, always by signal. If necessary,they would visit a suspected locality together and endeavor to locate the line of the tunnel.
It was essential that the British side of “No Man’s Land” should not be too quiet. Every few minutes a rocket or a Verrey light would soar over that torn Golgotha. But there was method in the seeming madness. The first and second glare would illuminate an area well removed from Martin’s territory. The third might be right over him or Mason, but they were then so well hidden that the sharpest eye could not discern their presence.
By nine o’clock they had covered more than a hundred yards of the enemy’s front, skirting his trip-wire throughout the whole distance. They had heard no fewer than six mining parties. Each had advanced some thirty yards. In effect, if the German trench was to be taken at all, the attack must be made next day, and the artillery preparation should commence at dawn. Instead of returning to the subaltern’s dugout at midnight, Martin wanted to reach the telephone not later than ten, and hurry back to headquarters. The staff would have another sleepless night, but a British battalion would not be blown up while its successive “waves” were crossing “No Man’s Land.”
Mason and he crept like lizards to the sunk fence. All they needed now was a close scrutiny of the German parapet in that section. It was a likely site for a machine-gun emplacement and, in that case, would receive special attention from a battery of 4.7’s.
They reached the ditch shortly before a rocket was due overhead. Making assurance doubly sure, they flattened against the outer slope of a shell hole, took offtheir caps, and each sought a tuft of grass through which to peer.
Simultaneously, by two short taps, both conveyed a warning. They had heard a slight rustling directly in front. A Verrey light, and not a rocket, flamed through the darkness. Its brilliancy was intense. But the Verrey light has a peculiar property: far more effective than the rocket when it reveals troops in motion, it is rendered practically useless if men remain still. Working parties and scouts counteract its vivid beams by absolute rigidity. The uplifted pick or hammer, the advanced foot, the raised arm, must be kept in statuesque repose, and the reward is complete safety. A rocket, on the other hand, though not half so deadly in exposing an attack, demands that every man within its periphery shall endeavor forthwith to blend with the earth, or he will surely be seen and shot at.
The two Britons, looking through stalks of withered herbage, found themselves gazing into the eyes of a couple of Germans crouching on the level barely six feet away. It seemed literally impossible that the enemy observers should not see them. But strange things happen in war. The Germans were scanning all the visible ground; the Englishmen happened to be on the alert for a recognized danger in that identical spot. So the one party, watching space, saw nothing; the other, prepared for a specific discovery, made it. What was more, when the light failed, the Germans were assured of comparative safety, while their opponents had measured the extent of an instant peril and got ready to face it.
They knew, too, that the Germans must be killed orcaptured. One was a major, the other a noncommissioned officer, and men of such rank were seldom deputed by the enemy to roam at large through the strip of debated land which British endeavor, drawn by its sporting uncertainties, had rendered most unhealthy for human “game” of the Hun species.
A dark night in that part of French Flanders becomes palpably black during a few seconds after a flare. The Englishmen squatted back on their heels. Neither drew his revolver, but each right hand clutched a trench knife, a peculiarly murderous-looking implement with an oval handle, and shaped like a corkscrew, except that the screw is replaced by a short, flat, dagger-pointed blade. No signal was needed. Each knew exactly what to do. The accident of position allotted the major to Martin.
The Germans came on stealthily. They had noted the shell-hole, and sat on its crumbling edge, meaning to slide down and creep out on the other side. Martin’s left hand gripped a stout boot by the ankle. In the fifth of a second he had a heavy body twisted violently and flung face down in the loose earth at the bottom of the hole. A knee was planted in the small of the prisoner’s back, the point of the knife was under his right ear, and Martin was saying, in quite understandable German:
“If you move or speak, I’ll cut your throat!”
The words have a brutal sound, but it does not pay to be squeamish on such occasions, and the German language adapts itself naturally to phrases of the kind.
Sergeant Mason had to solve his own problem by a different method. The quarry chanced to be leaningforward at the moment a vicious tug accelerated his progress. As a result, he fell on top of the hunter, and there was nothing for it but the knife. A ghastly squeal was barely stifled by the Englishman’s hand over the victim’s mouth. At thirty yards, or thereabouts, and coming from a deep hole, the noise might have been a grunt. Nevertheless, it reached the German trench.
“Wer da?” hissed a voice, and Martin heard the click of a machine-gun as it swung on its tripod.
He did not fear the gun, which only meant a period of waiting while its bullets cracked overhead. What he did dread was a search party, as German majors are valuable birds, and must be safeguarded. The situation called for the desperate measure he took. The point of the knife entered his captive’s neck, and he whispered:
“Tell your men they must keep quiet, or you die now!”
He allowed the almost choking man to raise his head. The German knew that his life was forfeit if he did not obey the order. A certain gurgling, ever growing weaker, showed that his companion would soon be a corpse.
“Shut up, sheep’s head!” he growled.
It sufficed. That is the way German majors talk to their inferiors.
The engineer sergeant wriggled nearer.
“Couldn’t help it, sir,” he breathed. “I had to give him one!”
“Go through him for papers and bring me his belt.”
Within a minute the officer’s hands were fastened behind his back. Then he was permitted to rise and,after being duly warned, told to accompany Mason. Martin followed, and the three began the return journey. A German rocket bothered them once, but the German was quick as they to fall flat. Evidently he was not minded to offer a target for marksmen on either side.
Soon Mason was sent forward to warn the sentries. Quarter of an hour after the episode in the shell hole Martin, having come from the telephone, was examining his prisoner by the light of an electric torch in a dugout.
“What is your name?” he inquired.
“Freiherr Georg von Struben, major of artillery,” was the somewhat grandiloquent answer.
“Do you speak English?”
“Nod mooch.”
Some long dormant chord of memory vibrated in Martin’s brain. He held the torch closer. Von Struben was a tall, well-built Prussian. He smiled, meaning probably to make the best of a bad business. His face was soiled with clay and perspiration. A streak of blood had run from a slight cut over an eyebrow. But the white scar of an old saber wound, the outcome of a duelling bout in some universityburschenschaft, creased down its center when he smiled. Then Martin knew.
“Fritz Bauer!” he cried.
The German started, though he recovered his self-control promptly.
“You haf nod unterstant,” he said. “I dell you my nem——”
“That’s all right, Fritz,” laughed Martin. “You spoke good English when you were in Elmsdale. Youcould fool me then into giving you valuable information for your precious scheme of invading England. Now it’s my turn! Have you forgotten Martin Bolland?”
Blank incredulity yielded to evident fear in the other man’s eyes. With obvious effort, he stiffened.
“I was acting under orders, Captain Bolland,” he said.
“Not Bolland, but Grant,” laughed Martin. “I, too, have changed my name, but for a more honorable reason.”
The words seemed to irritate von Struben.
“I did noding dishonorable,” he protested. “I was dere by command. If it wasn’t for your d—d fleet, I would have lodged once more in de Elms eighdeen monds ago.”
“I know,” said Martin. “We found your map, the map which Angèle stole because you wouldn’t take her in the car the day we went on the moor.”
In all likelihood the prisoner’s nerves were on edge. He had gone through a good deal since being hauled into the shell hole, and was by no means prepared for this display of intimate knowledge of his past career by the youthful looking Briton who had manhandled him so effectually. Be that as it may, he was so disconcerted by the mere allusion to Angèle that a fantastic notion gripped Martin. He pursued it at once.
“We English are not quite such idiots as you like to imagine us, major,” he went on, and so ready was his speech that the pause was hardly perceptible. “Mrs. Saumarez—or, describing her by her other name, the Baroness von Edelstein—was a far more dangerous person than you. It took time to run her to earth—youknow what that means? when a fox is chased to a burrow by hounds—but our Intelligence Department sized her up correctly at last.”
Now this was nothing more than the wildest guessing, a product of many a long talk with Elsie, the vicar, and General Grant during the early days of the war. But von Struben was manifestly so ill at ease that he had to cover his discomfiture under a frown.
“I have not seen de lady for ten years,” he said.
This disclaimer was needless. He had been wiser to have cursed Angèle for purloining his map.
“Perhaps not. She avoided Berlin. But you have heard of her.”
Again was the former spy guilty of stupidity. He set his lips like a steel trap. Doubtful what to say, he said nothing.
Martin nodded to Sergeant Mason.
“Just go through the major’s pockets,” he said. “You know what we want.”
Mason’s knowledge was precise. He left the prisoner his money, watch, pipe, and handkerchief. The remainder of his belongings were made up into a bundle. Highly valuable treasure-trove was contained therein, the major having in his possession a detailed list of all arms in the Fifty-seventh Brandenburg Division and a sketch of the trench system which it occupied. A glance showed Martin that the Fifty-seventh Division lay directly in front.
He turned to the subaltern whose dugout he was using and who had witnessed the foregoing scene in silence.
“Can you send a corporal’s guard to D.H.Q. in charge of the prisoner?” he asked.
“Certainly,” said the other. “By the way, come outside and have a cigarette.”
Cigarettes are not lighted in front-line communication trenches after nightfall—not by officers, at any rate—nor do second lieutenants address staff captains so flippantly. Martin read something more into the invitation than appeared on the surface. He was right.
“About this Mrs. Saumarez you spoke of just now,” said the subaltern when they were beyond the closed door of the dugout. “Is she the widow of one of our fellows, a Hussar colonel?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know she is living in Paris?”
“Well, I heard some few years since that she was residing there.”
“She’s there now. She runs a sort of hostel for youngsters on short leave. She’s supposed to charge a small fee, but doesn’t. And there’s drinks galore for all comers. She’s extraordinarily popular, of course, but I—er—well, one hates saying it. Still, you made me sit up and take notice when you mentioned the Intelligence Department. Mrs. Saumarez has a wonderful acquaintance with the British front. She tells you things—don’t you know—and one is led on to talk—sort of reciprocity, eh?”
Martin drew a deep breath. He almost dreaded putting the inevitable question.
“Is her daughter with her—a girl of twenty-one, named Angèle?”
“No. Never heard Mrs. Saumarez so much as mention her.”
“Thanks. We’ve done a good night’s work, I fancy.And—this for yourself only—there may be a scrap to-morrow afternoon.”
“Fine! I want to stretch my legs. Been in this bally hole nine days. Well, here’s your corporal. Good-night, sir.”
“Good-night!”
And Martin trudged through the mud with Sergeant Mason behind von Struben and the escort.
Sixty hours elapsed before Martin was able to unwrap the puttees from off his stiff legs and cut the laces of boots so caked with mud that he was too weary to untie them. In that time, as the official report put it, “enemy trenches extending from Rue du Bois to Houplines, over a front of nearly three miles, were occupied to an average depth of one thousand yards, and our troops are now consolidating the new territory.”
A bald announcement, indeed! Martin was one of the few who knew what it really meant. He had helped to organize the victory; he could sum up its costs. But this record is not a history of the war, nor even of one young soldier’s share in it. Martin himself has developed a literary style noteworthy for its simple directness. Some day, if he survives, he may tell his own story.
When the last of twelve hundred prisoners had been mustered in the Grande Place of Armentières, when the attacking battalions had been relieved and the reserve artillery was shelling Fritz’s hastily formed gun positions, when the last ambulance wagon of the “special” division had sped over thepavéto the base hospital at Bailleul, Martin thought he was free to go to bed.
As a matter of fact, he was not. Utterly spent, he had thrown himself on a cot and had slept the sleep ofcomplete exhaustion for half an hour, when a brigade major discovered that “Captain Grant” was at liberty, and detailed him for an immediate inquiry. The facts were set forth on Army Form 122: “On the night of the 10th inst. a barrel of rum, delivered at Brigade Dump No. 35, was stolen or mislaid. It was last seen in trench 77. For investigation and report to D.A.Q.M.G. 50th Div.” That barrel of rum will never be seen again, though it was destined to roll through reams of variously numbered army forms during many a week.
But it did not disturb Martin’s slumbers. A brigadier general happened to hear his name given to an orderly.
“Who’s that?” he inquired sharply. “Grant, did you say?”
“Yes, sir,” answered the brigade major.
“Don’t be such a Heaven-condemned idiot!” said the general, or, rather, he used words to that effect. “Grant was all through that push. Find some other fellow.”
Brigade majors are necessarily inhuman. It is nothing to them what a man may have done—they think only of the next job. They are steeled alike to pity and reproach. This one was no exception among the tribe. He merely thumbed a list and said to the orderly:
“Give that chit to Mr. Fortescue.”
So a subaltern began the chase. He smelt the rum through a whole company of Gordons, but the barrel lies hid a fathom deep in the mud of Flanders.
That same afternoon Martin woke up, refreshed in mind and body. He secured a hot bath, “dolled up” in clean clothes, and strolled out to buy some socks from “Madame,” the famous Frenchwoman who has kept hershop open in Armentières throughout three years of shell fire.
A Yorkshire battalion was “standing at ease” in the street while their officers and color sergeants engaged in a wrangle about billets. The regiment had taken part in the “push” and bore the outward and visible signs of that inward grace which had carried them beyond the third line German trench. A lance corporal was playing “Tipperary” on a mouth-organ.
Someone shouted: “Give us ‘Home Fires,’ Jim”—and “Jim” ran a preliminary flourish before Martin recognized the musician.
“Why, if it isn’t Jim Bates!” he cried, advancing with outstretched hand.
The lance corporal drew himself up and saluted. His brown skin reddened as he shook hands, for it is not every day that a staff captain greets one of the rank and file in such democratic fashion.
“I’m main glad te see you, sir,” he said. “I read of your promotion in t’Messenger, an’ we boys of t’ owd spot were real pleased. We were, an’ all.”
“You’re keeping fit, I see,” and Martin’s eye fell to apickelhaubetied to the sling of Bates’s rifle.
“Pretty well, sir,” grinned Bates. “I nearly had a relapse yesterday when that mine went up. Did ye hear of it?”
“If you mean the one they touched off at L’Epinette Farm, I saw it,” said Martin. “I was at the crossroads at the moment.”
“Well, fancy that, sir! I couldn’t ha’ bin twenty yards from you.”
“Queer things happen in war. Do you rememberMrs. Saumarez’s German chauffeur, a man named Fritz Bauer?”
“Quite well, sir.”
“We caught him in ‘No Man’s Land’ three nights ago. He is a major now.”
Jim was so astonished that his mouth opened, just as it would have done ten years earlier.
“By gum!” he cried. “That takes it! An’ it’s hardly a month since I saw Miss Angèle in Amiens.”
Martin’s pulse quickened. The mouth-organ in Bates’s hand brought him back at a bound to the night when he had forbidden Jim to play for Angèle’s dancing. And with that memory came another thought. Mrs. Saumarez in Paris—her daughter in Amiens—why this devotion to such nerve centers of the war?
“Are you sure?” he said. “You would hardly recognize her. She is ten years older—a woman, not a child.”
Bates laughed. He dropped his voice.
“She was always a bit owd-fashioned, sir. I’m not mistakken. It kem about this way. It was her, right enough. Our colonel’s shover fell sick, so I took on the car for a week. One day I was waitin’ outside the Hotel dew Nord at Amiens when a French Red Cross auto drove up, an’ out stepped Miss Angèle. I twigged her at once. I’d know them eyes of hers anywheres. She hopped into the hotel, walkin’ like a ballet-dancer. Hooiver, I goes up to her shover an’ sez: ‘Pardonnay moy, but ain’t that Mees Angèle Saumarez?’ He talked a lot—these Frenchies always do—but I med out he didn’t understand. So I parlay-vooed some more, and soon I got the hang of things. She’s married now,an’ I have her new name an’ address in my kit-bag. But I remember ’em, all right. I can’t pronounce ’em, but I can spell ’em.”
And Lance Corporal Bates spelled: “La Comtesse Barthélemi de Saint-Ivoy, 2 bis, Impasse Fautet, Rue Blanche, Paris.”
“It looks funny,” went on Jim anxiously, “but it’s just as her shover wrote it.”
Martin affected to treat this information lightly.
“I’m exceedingly glad I came across you,” he said. “How would you like to be a sergeant, Jim?”
Bates grinned widely.
“It’s a lot more work, but it does mean better grub, sir,” he confided.
“Very well. Don’t mention it to anyone, and I’ll see what can be done. It shouldn’t be difficult, since you’ve earned the first stripe already.”
Martin found his brigadier at the mess. A few minutes’ conversation with the great man led him to a greater in the person of the divisional general. Yet a few more minutes of earnest talk, and he was in a car, bound for General Grant’s headquarters, which he reached late that night. It was long after midnight when the two retired, and the son’s face was almost as worn and care-lined as the father’s ere the discussion ended.
Few problems have been so baffling and none more dangerous to the Allied armies in France than the German spy system. It was so perfect before the war, every possible combination of circumstances had been foreseen and provided against so fully, that the most thorough hunting out and ruthless punishment of enemyagents has failed to crush the organization. The snake has been scotched, but not killed. Its venom is still potent. Every officer on the staff and many senior regimental officers have been astounded time and again by the completeness and up-to-date nature of the information possessed by the Germans. Surprise attacks planned with the utmost secrecy have found enemy trenches held by packed reserves and swarming with additional machine-guns. Newly established ammunition dépôts, carefully screened, have been bombed next day by aeroplanes and subjected to high-angle fire. Troop movements by rail over long distances have become known, and their effect discounted. Flanders, in particular, is a plague-spot of espionage which has cost Britain an untold sacrifice of life and an almost immeasurable waste of effort.
Small wonder, then, that Martin’s forehead should be seamed with foreboding. If his suspicions, which his father shared, were justified, the French Intelligence Department would quickly determine the truth, and no power on earth could save Angèle and her mother from a firing party. France knows her peril and stamps it out unflinchingly. Of late, too, the British authorities adopt the same rigorous measures. The spy, man or woman, is shown no mercy.
And now the whirligig of events had placed in Martin’s hands the question of life or death for Mrs. Saumarez and Angèle. It was a loathsome burden. He rebelled against it. During the long run to Paris his very soul writhed at the thought that fate was making him their executioner. He tried to steel his resolution by dwelling on the mischief they might have caused bythinking rather of the gallant comrades laid forever in the soil of France because of their murderous duplicity than of the woman who was once his friend, of the girl whose kisses had once thrilled him to the core. Worst of all, both General Grant and he himself felt some measure of responsibility for their failure to institute a searching inquiry as to Mrs. Saumarez’s whereabouts when war broke out.
But he was distraught and miserable. He had a notion—a well-founded one, as it transpired—that an approving general had recommended him for the Military Cross; but from all appearance he might have expected a letter from the War Office announcing his dismissal from the service.
At last, after a struggle which left him so broken that at a cordon near Paris he was detained several minutes while asous-officierwho did not like his looks communicated with a superior potentate, he made up his mind. Whate’er befell, he would give Angèle and her mother one chance. If they decided to take it, well and good. If not, they must face the cold-eyed inquisition of the Quai d’Orsay.
Luckily, as matters turned out, he elected to call on Mrs. Saumarez first. For one thing, her house in the Rue Henri was not far from a hotel on the Champs Elysées where he was known to the management; for another, he wished to run no risk of being outwitted by Angèle. If she and her mother were guilty of the ineffable infamy of betraying both the country of their nationality and that which sheltered them they must be trapped so effectually as to leave no room for doubt.
He was also fortunate in the fact that his soldier chauffeur, when given the choice, decided to wait and drive him to the Rue Henri. The man was candid as to his own plans for the evening.
“When I put the car up I’ll have a hot bath and go to bed, sir,” he said. “I’ve not had five hours’ sleep straight on end during the past three weeks, an’ I know wot’ll happen if I start hittin’ it up around these bullyvards. Me for the feathers at nine o’clock! So, if you don’t mind, sir——”
Martin knew what the man meant. He wanted to be kept busy. One hour of enforced liberty implied the risk of meeting some hilarious comrades. Even in Paris, strict as the police regulations may be, Britons from the front are able to sit up late, and the parties are seldom “dry.”
So officer and man removed some of the marks of a long journey, ate a good meal, and about eight o’clock arrived at Mrs. Saumarez’s house. Life might be convivial enough inside, but the place looked deserted, almost forbidding, externally.
Indeed, Martin hesitated before pressing an electric bell and consulted a notebook to verify the street and number given him by the subaltern on the night von Struben was captured. But he had not erred. His memory never failed. There could be no doubt but that his special gift in this direction had been responsible for a rapid promotion, since military training, on the mental side, depends largely on a letter-perfect accuracy of recollection.
When he rang, however, the door opened at once. A bareheaded man in civilian attire, but looking mostunlike a domestic, held aside a pair of heavy curtains which shut out the least ray of light from the hall.
“Entrez, monsieur,” he said in reply to Martin, after a sharp glance at the car and its driver.
Martin heard a latch click behind him. He passed on, to find himself before a sergeant of police seated at a table. Three policemen stood near.
“Your name and rank, monsieur?” said this official.
Martin, though surprised, almost startled, by these preliminaries, answered promptly. The sergeant nodded to one of his aides.
“Take this gentleman upstairs,” he said.
“Is there any mistake?” inquired Martin. “I have come here to visit Mrs. Saumarez.”
“No mistake,” said the sergeant. “Follow that man, monsieur.”
Assured now that some dramatic and wholly unexpected development had taken place, Martin tried to gather his wits as he mounted to the first floor. There, in a shuttered drawing-room, he confronted a shrewd-looking man in mufti, to whom his guide handed a written slip sent by the sergeant. Evidently, this was an official of some importance.
“Shall I speak English, Captain Grant?” he said, thrusting aside a pile of documents and clearing a space on the table at which he was busy.
“Well,” said Martin, smiling, “I imagine that your English is better than my French.”
He sat on a chair indicated by the Frenchman. He put no questions. He guessed he was in the presence of a tragedy.
“Is Mrs. Saumarez a friend of yours?” began the stranger.
“Yes, in a sense.”
“Have you seen her recently?”
“Not for ten years.”
Obviously, this answer was disconcerting. It was evident, too, that Martin’s name was not on a typed list which the other man had scanned with a quick eye. Martin determined to clear up an involved situation.
“I take it that you are connected with the police department?” he said. “Well, I have come from the British front at Armentières to inquire into the uses to which this house has been put. A number of British officers have been entertained here. Our people want to know why.”
He left it at that for the time being, but the Frenchman’s manner became perceptibly more friendly.