Resisting the surge of hatred that might have driven him to perform an immediate act of vengeance, Paul at once laid his hand on Bernard's arm to compel him to prudence. But he himself was filled with rage at the sight of that demon. The man who represented in his eyes every one of the crimes committed against his father and his wife, that man was there, in front of his revolver, and Paul must not budge! Nay more, circumstances had taken such a shape that, to a certainty, the man would go away in a few minutes, to commit other crimes, and there was no possibility of calling him to account.
"Good, Karl," said the major, in German, addressing the so-called Belgian. "Good. You have been punctual. Well, what news is there?"
"First of all,Excellenz," replied Karl, who seemed to treat the major with that deference mingled with familiarity which men show to a superior who is also their accomplice, "by your leave."
He took off his blue tunic and put on that of one of the dead Germans. Then, giving the military salute:
"That's better. You see, I'm a good German,Excellenz. I don't stick at any job. But this uniform chokes me.
"Well,Excellenz, it's too dangerous a trade, plied in this way. A peasant's smock is all very well; but a soldier's tunic won't do. Those beggars know no fear; I am obliged to follow them; and I run the risk of being killed by a German bullet."
"What about the two brothers-in-law?"
"I fired at them three times from behind and three times I missed them. Couldn't be helped: they've got the devil's luck; and I should only end by getting caught. So, as you say, I'm deserting; and I sent the youngster who runs between me and Rosenthal to make an appointment with you."
"Rosenthal sent your note on to me at headquarters."
"But there was also a photograph, the one you know of, and a bundle of letters from your agents in France. I didn't want to have those proofs found on me if I was discovered."
"Rosenthal was to have brought them to me himself. Unfortunately, he made a blunder."
"What was that,Excellenz?"
"Getting killed by a shell."
"Nonsense!"
"There's his body at your feet."
Karl merely shrugged his shoulders and said:
"The fool!"
"Yes, he never knew how to look after himself," added the major, completing the funeral oration."Take his pocketbook from him, Karl. He used to carry it in an inside pocket of his woolen waistcoat."
The spy stooped and, presently, said:
"It's not there,Excellenz."
"Then he put it somewhere else. Look in the other pockets."
Karl did so and said:
"It's not there either."
"What! This is beyond me! Rosenthal never parted with his pocketbook. He used to keep it to sleep with; he would have kept it to die with."
"Look for yourself,Excellenz."
"But then . . . ?"
"Some one must have been here recently and taken the pocketbook."
"Who? Frenchmen?"
The spy rose to his feet, was silent for a moment and then, going up to the major, said in a deliberate voice:
"Not Frenchmen,Excellenz, but a Frenchman."
"What do you mean?"
"Excellenz, Delroze started on a reconnaissance not long ago with his brother-in-law, Bernard d'Andeville. I could not get to know in which direction, but I know now. He came this way. He must have explored the ruins of the lighthouse and, seeing some dead lying about, turned out their pockets."
"That's a bad business," growled the major. "Are you sure?"
"Certain. He must have been here an hour ago at most. Perhaps," added Karl, with a laugh, "perhaps he's here still, hiding in some hole. . . ."
Both of them cast a look around them, but mechanically; and the movement denoted no serious fear on their part. Then the major continued, pensively:
"After all, that bundle of letters received by our agents, letters without names or addresses to them, doesn't matter so much. But the photograph is more important."
"I should think so,Excellenz! Why, here's a photograph taken in 1902; and we've been looking for it, therefore, for the last twelve years. I manage, after untold efforts, to discover it among the papers which Comte Stéphane d'Andeville left behind at the outbreak of war. And this photograph, which you wanted to take back from the Comte d'Andeville, to whom you had been careless enough to give it, is now in the hands of Paul Delroze, M. d'Andeville's son-in-law, Élisabeth d'Andeville's husband and your mortal enemy!"
"Well, I know all that," cried the major, who was obviously annoyed. "You needn't rub it in!"
"Excellenz, one must always look facts in the face. What has been your constant object with regard to Paul Delroze? To conceal from him the truth as to your identity and therefore to turn his attention, his enquiries, his hatred, towards Major Hermann. That's so, is it not? You went to the length ofmultiplying the number of daggers engraved with the letters H, E, R, M and even of signing 'Major Hermann' on the panel where the famous portrait hung. In fact, you took every precaution, so that, when you think fit to kill off Major Hermann, Paul Delroze will believe his enemy to be dead and will cease to think of you. And now what happens? Why, in that photograph he possesses the most certain proof of the connection between Major Hermann and the famous portrait which he saw on the evening of his marriage, that is to say, between the present and the past."
"True; but this photograph, found on the body of some dead soldier, would have no importance in his eyes unless he knew where it came from, for instance, if he could see his father-in-law."
"His father-in-law is fighting with the British army within eight miles of Paul Delroze."
"Do they know it?"
"No, but an accident may bring them together. Moreover, Bernard and his father correspond; and Bernard must have told his father what happened at the Château d'Ornequin, at least in so far as Paul Delroze was able to piece the incidents together."
"Well, what does that matter, so long as they know nothing of the other events? And that's the main thing. They could discover all our secrets through Élisabeth and find out who I am. But they won't look for her, because they believe her to be dead."
"Are you sure of that,Excellenz?"
"What's that?"
The two accomplices were standing close together, looking into each other's eyes, the major uneasy and irritated, the spy cunning.
"Speak," said the major. "What do you want to say?"
"Just this,Excellenz, that just now I was able to put my hand on Delroze's kit-bag. Not for long: two seconds, that's all; but long enough to see two things. . . ."
"Hurry up, can't you?"
"First, the loose leaves of that manuscript of which you took care to burn the more important papers, but of which, unfortunately, you mislaid a considerable part."
"His wife's diary?"
"Yes."
The major burst into an oath:
"May I be damned for everlasting! One should burn everything in those cases. Oh, if I hadn't indulged that foolish curiosity! . . . And next?"
"Oh, hardly anything,Excellenz! A bit of a shell, yes, a little bit of a shell; but I must say that it looked to me very like the splinter which you ordered me to drive into the wall of the lodge, after sticking some of Élisabeth's hair to it. What do you think of that,Excellenz?"
The major stamped his foot with anger and letfly a new string of oaths and anathemas at the head of Paul Delroze.
"What do you think of that?" repeated the spy.
"You are right," cried the major. "His wife's diary will have given that cursed Frenchman a glimpse of the truth; and that piece of shell in his possession is a proof to him that his wife is perhaps still alive, which is the one thing I wanted to avoid. We shall never get rid of him now!" His rage seemed to increase. "Oh, Karl, he makes me sick and tired! He and his street-boy of a brother-in-law, what a pair of swankers! By God, I did think that you had rid me of them the night when we came back to their room at the château and found their names written on the wall! And you can understand that they won't let things rest, now that they know the girl isn't dead! They will look for her. They will find her. And, as she knows all our secrets . . . ! You ought to have made away with her, Karl!"
"And the prince?" chuckled the spy.
"Conrad is an ass! The whole of that family will bring us ill-luck and first of all to him who was fool enough to fall in love with that hussy. You ought to have made away with her at once, Karl—I told you—and not to have waited for the prince's return."
Standing full in the light as he was, Major Hermann displayed the most appalling highwayman's face imaginable, appalling not because of the deformity of the features or any particular ugliness, but because of the most repulsive and savage expression, in which Paul once more recognized, carried to the very limits of paroxysm, the expression of the Comtesse Hermine, as revealed in her picture and the photograph. At the thought of the crime which had failed, Major Hermann seemed to suffer a thousand deaths, as though the murder had been a condition of his own life. He ground his teeth. He rolled his bloodshot eyes.
In a distraught voice, clutching the shoulder of his accomplice with his fingers, he shouted, this time in French:
"Karl, it is beginning to look as though we couldn't touch them, as though some miracle protected them against us. You've missed them three times lately. At the Château d'Ornequin you killed two others in their stead. I also missed him the other day at the little gate in the park. And it was in the same park, near the same chapel—you remember—sixteen years ago, when he was only a child, that you drove your knife into him. . . . Well, you started your blundering on that day."
The spy gave an insolent, cynical laugh:
"What did you expect,Excellenz? I was on the threshold of my career and I had not your experience. Here were a father and a little boy whom we had never set eyes on ten minutes before and who had done nothing to us except annoy the Kaiser. My hand shook, I confess. You, on the other hand:ah, you made neat work of the father, you did! One little touch of your little hand and the trick was done!"
This time it was Paul who, slowly and carefully, slipped the barrel of his revolver into one of the breaches. He could no longer doubt, after Karl's revelations, that the major had killed his father. It was that creature whom he had seen, dagger in hand, on that tragic evening, that creature and none other! And the creature's accomplice of to-day was the accomplice of the earlier occasion, the satellite who had tried to kill Paul while his father was dying.
Bernard, seeing what Paul did, whispered in his ear:
"So you have made up your mind? We're to shoot him down?"
"Wait till I give the signal," answered Paul. "But don't you fire at him, aim at the spy."
In spite of everything, he was thinking of the inexplicable mystery of the bonds connecting Major Hermann with Bernard d'Andeville and his sister Élisabeth and he could not allow Bernard to be the one to carry out the act of justice. He himself hesitated, as one hesitates before performing an action of which one does not realize the full scope. Who was that scoundrel? What identity was Paul to ascribe to him? To-day, Major Hermann and chief of the German secret service; yesterday, Prince Conrad's boon companion, all-powerful at the Château d'Ornequin, disguising himself as a peasant-woman and prowling through Corvigny; long before that, an assassin, the Emperor's accomplice . . . and the lady of Ornequin: which of all these personalities, which were but different aspects of one and the same being, was the real one?
Paul looked at the major in bewilderment, as he had looked at the photograph and, in the locked room, at the portrait of Hermine d'Andeville. Hermann, Hermine! In his mind the two names became merged into one. And he noticed the daintiness of the hands, white and small as a woman's hands. The tapering fingers were decked with rings set with precious stones. The booted feet, too, were delicately formed. The colorless face showed not a trace of hair. But all this effeminate appearance was belied by the grating sound of a hoarse voice, by heaviness of gait and movement and by a sort of barbarous strength.
The major put his hands before his face and reflected for a few minutes. Karl watched him with a certain air of pity and seemed to be asking himself whether his master was not beginning to feel some kind of remorse at the thought of the crimes which he had committed. But the major threw off his torpor and, in a hardly audible voice, quivering with nothing but hatred, said:
"On their heads be it, Karl! On their heads be it for trying to get in our path! I put away the father and I did well. One day it will be the son's turn.And now . . . now we have the girl to see to."
"Shall I take charge of that,Excellenz?"
"No, I have a use for you here and I must stay here myself. Things are going very badly. But I shall go down there early in January. I shall be at Èbrecourt on the morning of the tenth of January. The business must be finished forty-eight hours after. And it shall be finished, that I swear to you."
He was again silent while the spy laughed loudly. Paul had stooped, so as to bring his eyes to the level of his revolver. It would be criminal to hesitate now. To kill the major no longer meant revenging himself and slaying his father's murderer: it meant preventing a further crime and saving Élisabeth. He had to act, whatever the consequences of his act might be. He made up his mind.
"Are you ready?" he whispered to Bernard.
"Yes. I am waiting for you to give the signal."
He took aim coldly, waiting for the propitious moment, and was about to pull the trigger, when Karl said, in German: "I say,Excellenz, do you know what's being prepared for the ferryman's house?"
"What?"
"An attack, just that. A hundred volunteers from the African companies are on their way through the marshes now. The assault will be delivered at dawn. You have only just time to let them know at headquarters and to find out what precautions they intend to take."
The major simply said:
"They are taken."
"What's that you say,Excellenz?"
"I say, that they are taken. I had word from another quarter; and, as they attach great value to the ferryman's house, I telephoned to the officer in command of the post that we would send him three hundred men at five o'clock in the morning. The African volunteers will be caught in a trap. Not one of them will come back alive."
The major gave a little laugh of satisfaction and turned up the collar of his cloak as he added:
"Besides, to make doubly sure, I shall go and spend the night there . . . especially as I am beginning to wonder whether the officer commanding the post did not chance to send some men here with instructions to take the papers off Rosenthal, whom he knew to be dead."
"But . . ."
"That'll do. Have Rosenthal seen to and let's be off."
"Am I to go with you,Excellenz?"
"No, there's no need. One of the boats will take me up the canal. The house is not forty minutes from here."
In answer to the spy's call, three soldiers came down and hoisted the dead man's body to the trap-door overhead. Karl and the major both remained where they were, at the foot of the ladder, while Karl turned the light of the lantern, which he had taken down from the wall, towards the trap-door.
Bernard whispered:
"Shall we fire now?"
"No," said Paul.
"But . . ."
"I forbid you."
When the operation was over, the major said to Karl:
"Give me a good light and see that the ladder doesn't slip."
He went up and disappeared from sight.
"All right," he said. "Hurry."
The spy climbed the ladder in his turn. Their footsteps were heard overhead. The steps moved in the direction of the canal and there was not a sound.
"What on earth came over you?" cried Bernard. "We shall never have another chance like that. The two ruffians would have dropped at the first shot."
"And we after them," said Paul. "There were twelve of them up there. We should have been doomed."
"But Élisabeth would have been saved, Paul! Upon my word, I don't understand you. Fancy having two monsters like that at our mercy and letting them go! The man who murdered your father and who is torturing Élisabeth was there; and you think of ourselves!"
"Bernard," said Paul Delroze, "you didn't understand what they said at the end, in German. The enemy has been warned of the attack and of ourplans against the ferryman's house. In a little while, the hundred volunteers who are stealing up through the marsh will be the victims of an ambush laid for them. We've got to save them first. We have no right to sacrifice our lives before performing that duty. And I am sure that you agree with me."
"Yes," said Bernard. "But all the same it was a grand opportunity."
"We shall have another and perhaps soon," said Paul, thinking of the ferryman's house to which Major Hermann was now on his way.
"Well, what do you propose to do?"
"I shall join the detachment of volunteers. If the lieutenant in command is of my opinion, he will not wait until seven to deliver the assault, but attack at once. And I shall be of the party."
"And I?"
"Go back to the colonel. Explain the position to him and tell him that the ferryman's house will be captured this morning and that we shall hold it until reinforcements come up."
They parted with no more words and Paul plunged resolutely into the marshes.
The task which he was undertaking did not meet with the obstacles he expected. After forty minutes of rather difficult progress, he heard the murmur of voices, gave the password and told the men to take him to the lieutenant.
Paul's explanations at once convinced that officer: the job must either be abandoned or hurried on at once.
The column went ahead. At three o'clock, guided by a peasant who knew a path where the men sank no deeper than their knees, they succeeded in reaching the neighborhood of the house unperceived. Then, when the alarm had been given by a sentry, the attack began.
This attack, one of the finest feats of arms in the war, is too well known to need a detailed description here. It was extremely violent. The enemy, who was on his guard, made an equally vigorous defense. There was a tangle of barbed wire to be forced and many pitfalls to be overcome. A furious hand-to-hand fight took place first outside and then inside the house; and, by the time that the French had gained the victory after killing or taking prisoner the eighty-three Germans who defended it, they themselves had suffered losses which reduced their effective force by half.
Paul was the first to leap into the trenches, the line of which ran beside the house on the left and was extended in a semicircle as far as the Yser. He had an idea: before the attack succeeded and before it was even certain that it would succeed, he wanted to cut off all retreat on the part of the fugitives.
Driven back at first, he made for the bank, followed by three volunteers, stepped into the water, went up the canal and thus came to the other sideof the house, where, as he expected, he found a bridge of boats.
At that moment, he saw a figure disappearing in the darkness.
"Stay here," he said to his men, "and let no one pass."
He himself jumped out of the water, crossed the bridge and began to run.
A searchlight was thrown on the canal bank and he again perceived the figure, thirty yards in front of him.
A minute later, he shouted:
"Halt, or I fire!"
And, as the man continued to run, he fired, but aimed so as not to hit him.
The fugitive stopped and fired his revolver four times, while Paul, stooping down, flung himself between his legs and brought him to the ground.
The enemy, seeing that he was mastered, offered no resistance. Paul rolled his cloak round him and took him by the throat. With the hand that remained free, he threw the light of his pocket-lamp full on the other's face.
His instinct had not deceived him: the man he held by the throat was Major Hermann.
Paul Delroze did not speak a word. Pushing his prisoner in front of him, after tying the major's wrists behind his back, he returned to the bridge of boats in the darkness illumined by brief flashes of light.
The fighting continued. But a certain number of the enemy tried to run away; and, when the volunteers who guarded the bridge received them with a volley of fire, the Germans thought that they had been cut off; and this diversion hastened their defeat.
When Paul arrived, the combat was over. But the enemy was bound, sooner or later, to deliver a counter-attack, supported by the reinforcements that had been promised to the commandant; and the defense was prepared forthwith.
The ferryman's house, which had been strongly fortified by the Germans and surrounded with trenches, consisted of a ground floor and an upper story of three rooms, now knocked into one. At the back of this large room, however, was a recess with a sloping roof, reached by three steps, which at onetime had done duty as a servant's attic. Paul, who was entrusted with the arrangement of this upper floor, brought his prisoner here. He laid him on the floor, bound him with a cord and fastened him to a beam; and, while doing so, he was seized with such a paroxysm of hatred that he took him by the throat as though to strangle him.
He mastered himself, however. After all, there was no hurry. Before killing the man or handing him over to the soldiers to be shot against the wall, why deny himself the supreme satisfaction of having an explanation with him?
When the lieutenant entered, Paul said, so as to be heard by all and especially by the major:
"I recommend that scoundrel to your care, lieutenant. It's Major Hermann, one of the chief spies in the German army. I have the proofs on me. Remember that, in case anything happens to me. And, if we should have to retreat. . . ."
The lieutenant smiled:
"There's no question of that. We shall not retreat, for the very good reason that I would rather blow up the shanty first. And Major Hermann, therefore, would be blown up with us. So make your mind easy."
The two officers discussed the defensive measures to be adopted; and the men quickly got to work.
First of all, the bridge of boats was unmade, trenches dug along the canal and the machine-gunsturned to face the other way. Paul, on his first floor, had the sandbags moved from the one side of the house to the other and the less solid-looking portions of the wall shored up with beams.
At half-past five, under the rays of the German flashlights, several shells fell round about. One of them struck the house. The big guns began to sweep the towpath.
A few minutes before daybreak, a detachment of cyclists arrived by this path, with Bernard d'Andeville at their head. He explained that two companies and a section of sappers in advance of a complete battalion had started, but their progress was hampered by the enemy's shells and they were obliged to skirt the marshes, under the cover of the dyke supporting the towpath. This had slowed their march; and it would be an hour before they could arrive.
"An hour," said the lieutenant. "It will be stiff work. Still, we can do it. So . . ."
While he was giving new orders and placing the cyclists at their posts, Paul came up; and he was just going to tell Bernard of Major Hermann's capture, when his brother-in-law announced his news:
"I say, Paul, dad's with me!"
Paul gave a start:
"Your father is here? Your father came with you?"
"Just so; and in the most natural manner. You must know that he had been looking for an opportunity for some time. By the way, he has been promoted to interpreter lieutenant. . . ."
Paul was no longer listening. He merely said to himself:
"M. d'Andeville is here. . . . M. d'Andeville, the Comtesse Hermine's husband. He must know, surely. Is she alive or dead? Or has he been the dupe of a scheming woman to the end and does he still bear a loving recollection of one who has vanished from his life? But no, that's incredible, because there is that photograph, taken four years later and sent to him: sent to him from Berlin! So he knows; and then . . . ?"
Paul was greatly perplexed. The revelations made by Karl the spy had suddenly revealed M. d'Andeville in a startling light. And now circumstances were bringing M. d'Andeville into Paul's presence, at the very time when Major Hermann had been captured.
Paul turned towards the attic. The major was lying motionless, with his face against the wall.
"Your father has remained outside?" Paul asked his brother-in-law.
"Yes, he took the bicycle of a man who was riding near us and who was slightly wounded. Papa is seeing to him."
"Go and fetch him; and, if the lieutenant doesn't object . . ."
He was interrupted by the bursting of a shrapnel shell the bullets of which riddled the sandbags heaped up in the front of them. The day was breaking.They could see an enemy column looming out of the darkness a mile away at most.
"Ready there!" shouted the lieutenant from below. "Don't fire a shot till I give the order. No one to show himself!"
It was not until a quarter of an hour later and then only for four or five minutes that Paul and M. d'Andeville were able to exchange a few words. Their conversation, moreover, was so greatly hurried that Paul had no time to decide what attitude he should take up in the presence of Élisabeth's father. The tragedy of the past, the part which the Comtesse Hermine's husband played in that tragedy: all this was mingled in his mind with the defense of the block-house. And, in spite of their great liking for each other, their greeting was somewhat absent and distracted.
Paul was ordering a small window to be stopped with a mattress. Bernard was posted at the other end of the room.
M. d'Andeville said to Paul:
"You're sure of holding out, aren't you?"
"Absolutely, as we've got to."
"Yes, you've got to. I was with the division yesterday, with the English general to whom I am attached as interpreter, when the attack was decided on. The position seems to be of essential importance; and it is indispensable that we should stick to it. I saw that this gave me an opportunity of seeing you, Paul, as I knew that your regiment wasto be here. So I asked leave to accompany the contingent that had been ordered to. . . ."
There was a fresh interruption. A shell came through the roof and shattered the wall on the side opposite to the canal.
"Any one hurt?"
"No, sir."
M. d'Andeville went on:
"The strangest part of it was finding Bernard at your colonel's last night. You can imagine how glad I was to join the cyclists. It was my only chance of seeing something of my boy and of shaking you by the hand. . . . And then I had no news of my poor Élisabeth; and Bernard told me. . . ."
"Ah," said Paul quickly, "has Bernard told you all that happened at the château?"
"At least, as much as he knew; but there are a good many things that are difficult to understand; and Bernard says that you have more precise details. For instance, why did Élisabeth stay at the château?"
"Because she wanted to," said Paul. "I was not told of her decision until later, by letter."
"I know. But why didn't you take her with you, Paul?"
"When I left Ornequin, I made all the necessary arrangements for her to go."
"Good. But you ought not to have left Ornequin without her. All the trouble is due to that."
M. d'Andeville had been speaking with a certainacerbity, and, as Paul did not answer, he asked again:
"Why didn't you take Élisabeth away? Bernard said that there was something very serious, that you spoke of exceptional circumstances. Perhaps you won't mind explaining."
Paul seemed to suspect a latent hostility in M. d'Andeville; and this irritated him all the more on the part of a man whose conduct now appeared to him so perplexing:
"Do you think," he said, "that this is quite the moment?"
"Yes, yes, yes. We may be separated any minute. . . ."
Paul did not allow him to finish. He turned abruptly towards his father-in-law and exclaimed:
"You are right, sir! It's a horrible idea. It would be terrible if I were not able to reply to your questions or you to mine. Élisabeth's fate perhaps depends on the few words which we are about to speak. For we must know the truth between us. A single word may bring it to light; and there is no time to be lost. We must speak out now. . . . Whatever happens."
His excitement surprised M. d'Andeville, who asked:
"Wouldn't it be as well to call Bernard over?"
"No, no," said Paul, "on no account! It's a thing that he mustn't know about, because it concerns. . . ."
"Because it concerns whom?" asked M. d'Andeville, who was more and more astonished.
A man standing near them was hit by a bullet and fell. Paul rushed to his assistance; but the man had been shot through the forehead and was dead. Two more bullets entered through an opening which was wider than it need be; and Paul ordered it to be partly closed up.
M. d'Andeville, who had been helping him, pursued the conversation:
"You were saying that Bernard must not hear because it concerns. . . ."
"His mother," Paul replied.
"His mother? What do you mean? His mother? It concerns my wife? I don't understand. . . ."
Through the loopholes in the wall they could see three enemy columns advancing, above the flooded fields, moving forward on narrow causeways which converged towards the canal opposite the ferryman's house.
"We shall fire when they are two hundred yards from the canal," said the lieutenant commanding the volunteers, who had come to inspect the defenses. "If only their guns don't knock the shanty about too much!"
"Where are our reinforcements?" asked Paul.
"They'll be here in thirty or forty minutes. Meantime the seventy-fives are doing good work."
The shells were flying through space in both directions, some falling in the midst of the German columns, others around the blockhouse. Paul ran to every side, encouraging and directing the men. From time to time he went to the attic and looked at Major Hermann, who lay perfectly still. Then Paul returned to his post.
He did not for a second cease to think of the duty incumbent on him as an officer and a combatant, nor for a second of what he had to say to M. d'Andeville. But these two mingled obsessions deprived him of all lucidity of mind! and he did not know how to come to an explanation with his father-in-law or how to unravel the tangled position. M. d'Andeville asked his question several times. He did not reply.
The lieutenant's voice was raised:
"Attention! . . . Present! . . . Fire! . . ."
The command was repeated four times over. The nearest enemy column, decimated by the bullets, seemed to waver. But the others came up with it; and it formed up again.
Two German shells burst against the house. The roof was carried away bodily, several feet of the frontage were demolished and three men killed.
After the storm, a calm. But Paul had so clear a sense of the danger which threatened them all that he was unable to contain himself any longer. Suddenly making up his mind, addressing M. d'Andeville without further preamble, he said:
"One word in particular. . . . I must know. . . . Are you quite sure that the Comtesse d'Andeville is dead?" And without waiting for the reply, he wenton: "Yes, you think my question mad. It seems so to you because you do not know. But I am not mad; and I ask you to answer my question as you would do if I had the time to state the reasons that justify me in asking it. Is the Comtesse Hermine dead?"
M. d'Andeville, restraining his feelings and consenting to adopt the hypothesis which Paul seemed to insist on, said:
"Is there any reason that allows you to presume that my wife is still alive?"
"There are very serious reasons, I might say, incontestable reasons."
M. d'Andeville shrugged his shoulders and said, in a firm voice:
"My wife died in my arms. My lips touched her icy hands, felt that chill of death which is so horrible in those we love. I myself dressed her, as she had asked, in her wedding gown; and I was there when they nailed down the coffin. Anything else?"
Paul listened to him and thought to himself:
"Has he spoken the truth? Yes, he has; and still how can I admit . . . ?"
Speaking more imperiously, M. d'Andeville repeated:
"Anything else?"
"Yes," said Paul, "one more question. There was a portrait in the Comtesse d'Andeville's boudoir: was that her portrait?"
"Certainly, her full length portrait."
"Showing her with a black lace scarf over her shoulders?"
"Yes, the kind of scarf she liked wearing."
"And the scarf was fastened in front by a cameo set in a gold snake?"
"Yes, it was an old cameo which belonged to my mother and which my wife always wore."
Paul yielded to thoughtless impulse. M. d'Andeville's assertions seemed to him so many admissions; and, trembling with rage, he rapped out:
"Monsieur, you have not forgotten, have you, that my father was murdered? We often spoke of it, you and I. He was your friend. Well, the woman who murdered him and whom I saw, the woman whose image has stamped itself on my brain wore a black lace scarf round her shoulders and a cameo set in a gold snake. And I found this woman's portrait in your wife's room. Yes, I saw her portrait on my wedding evening. Do you understand now? Do you understand or don't you?"
It was a tragic moment between the two men. M. d'Andeville stood trembling, with his hands clutching his rifle.
"Why is he trembling?" Paul asked himself; and his suspicions increased until they became an actual accusation. "Is it a feeling of protest or his rage at being unmasked that makes him shake like that? And am I to look upon him as his wife's accomplice? For, after all. . . ."
He felt a fierce grip twisting his arm. M. d'Andeville, gray in the face, blurted out:
"How dare you? How dare you suggest that my wife murdered your father? Why, you must be drunk! My wife, a saint in the sight of God and man! And you dare! Oh, I don't know what keeps me from smashing your face in!"
Paul released himself roughly. The two men, shaking with a rage which was increased by the din of the firing and the madness of their quarrel, were on the verge of coming to blows while the shells and bullets whistled all around them.
Then a new strip of wall fell to pieces. Paul gave his orders and, at the same time, thought of Major Hermann lying in his corner, to whom he could have brought M. d'Andeville like a criminal who is confronted with his accomplice. But why then did he not do so?
Suddenly remembering the photograph of the Comtesse Hermine which he had found on Rosenthal's body, he took it from his pocket and thrust it in front of M. d'Andeville's eyes:
"And this?" he shouted. "Do you know what this is? . . . There's a date on it, 1902, and you pretend that the Comtesse Hermine is dead! . . . Answer me, can't you? A photograph taken in Berlin and sent to you by your wife four years after her death!"
M. d'Andeville staggered. It was as though all his rage had evaporated and was changing into infinite stupefaction. Paul brandished before his facethe overwhelming proof constituted by that bit of cardboard. And he heard M. d'Andeville mutter:
"Who can have stolen it from me? It was among my papers in Paris. . . . Why didn't I tear it up? . . ." Then he added, in a very low whisper, "Oh, Hermine, Hermine, my adored one!"
Surely it was an avowal? But, if so, what was the meaning of an avowal expressed in those terms and with that declaration of love for a woman laden with crime and infamy?
The lieutenant shouted from the ground floor:
"Everybody into the trenches, except ten men. Delroze, keep the best shots and order independent firing."
The volunteers, headed by Bernard, hurried downstairs. The enemy was approaching the canal, in spite of the losses which he had sustained. In fact, on the right and left, knots of pioneers, constantly renewed, were already striving with might and main to collect the boats stranded on the bank. The lieutenant in command of the volunteers formed his men into a first line of defense against the imminent assault, while the sharpshooters in the house had orders to kill without ceasing under the storm of shells.
One by one, five of these marksmen fell.
Paul and M. d'Andeville were here, there and everywhere, while consulting one another as to the commands to be given and the things to be done. There was not the least chance, in view of their great inferiority in numbers, that they would beable to resist. But there was some hope of their holding out until the arrival of the reinforcements, which would ensure the possession of the blockhouse.
The French artillery, finding it impossible to secure an effective aim amid the confusion of the combatants, had ceased fire, whereas the German guns were still bombarding the house; and shells were bursting at every moment.
Yet another man was wounded. He was carried into the attic and laid beside Major Hermann, where he died almost immediately.
Outside, there was fighting on and even in the water of the canal, in the boats and around them. There were hand-to-hand contests amid general uproar, yells of execration and pain, cries of terror and shouts of victory. The confusion was so great that Paul and M. d'Andeville found it difficult to take aim.
Paul said to his father-in-law:
"I'm afraid we may be done for before assistance arrives. I am bound therefore to warn you that the lieutenant has made his arrangements to blow up the house. As you are here by accident, without any authorization that gives you the quality or duties of a combatant. . . ."
"I am here as a Frenchman," said M. d'Andeville, "and I shall stay on to the end."
"Then perhaps we shall have time to finish what we have to say, sir. Listen to me. I will be as brief as I can. But if you should see the least glimmer of light, please do not hesitate to interrupt me."
He fully understood that there was a gulf of darkness between them and that, whether guilty or not, whether his wife's accomplice or her dupe, M. d'Andeville must know things which he, Paul, did not know and that these things could only be made plain by an adequate recital of what had happened.
He therefore began to speak. He spoke calmly and deliberately, while M. d'Andeville listened in silence. And they never ceased firing, quietly loading, aiming and reloading, as though they were at practise. All around and above them death pursued its implacable work.
Paul had hardly described his arrival at Ornequin with Élisabeth, their entrance into the locked room and his dismay at the sight of the portrait, when an enormous shell exploded over their heads, spattering them with shrapnel bullets.
The four volunteers were hit. Paul also fell, wounded in the neck; and, though he suffered no pain, he felt that all his ideas were gradually fading into a mist without his being able to retain them. He made an effort, however, and by some miracle of will was still able to exercise a remnant of energy that allowed him to keep his hold on certain reflections and impressions. Thus he saw his father-in-law kneeling beside him and succeeded in saying to him:
"Élisabeth's diary. . . . You'll find it in my kit-bag in camp . . . with a few pages written by myself . . . which will explain. . . . But first you must . . . Look, that German officer over there, bound up . . . he's a spy. . . . Keep an eye on him. . . . Kill him. . . . If not, on the tenth of January . . . but you will kill him, won't you?"
Paul could speak no more. Besides, he saw that M. d'Andeville was not kneeling down to listen to him or help him, but that, himself shot, with his face bathed in blood, he was bending double and finally fell in a huddled heap, uttering moans that grew fainter and fainter.
A great calm now descended on the big room, while the rifles crackled outside. The German guns were no longer firing. The enemy's counter-attack must be meeting with success; and Paul, incapable of moving, lay awaiting the terrible explosion foretold by the lieutenant.
He pronounced Élisabeth's name time after time. He reflected that no danger threatened her now, because Major Hermann was also about to die. Besides, her brother Bernard would know how to defend her. But after a while this sort of tranquillity disappeared, changed into uneasiness and then into restless anxiety, giving way to a feeling of which every second that passed increased the torture. He could not tell whether he was haunted by a nightmare, by some morbid hallucination. It all happened on the side of the attic to which he had dragged Major Hermann. A soldier's dead body was lying between them. And it seemed, to his horror, as if the major had cut his bonds and were rising to his feet and looking around him.
Paul exerted all his strength to open his eyes and keep them open. But an ever thicker shadow veiled them; and through this shadow he perceived, as one sees a confused sight in the darkness, the major taking off his cloak, stooping over the body, removing its blue coat and buttoning it on himself. Then he put the dead man's cap on his head, fastened his scarf round his neck, took the soldier's rifle, bayonet and cartridges and, thus transfigured, stepped down the three wooden stairs.
It was a terrible vision. Paul would have been glad to doubt his eyes, to believe in some phantom image born of his fever and delirium. But everything confirmed the reality of what he saw; and it meant to him the most infernal suffering. The major was making his escape!
Paul was too weak to contemplate the position in all its bearings. Was the major thinking of killing him and of killing M. d'Andeville? Did the major know that they were there, both of them wounded, within reach of his hand? Paul never asked himself these questions. One idea alone obsessed his failing mind. Major Hermann was escaping. Thanks to his uniform, he would mingle with the volunteers!By the aid of some signal, he would get back to the Germans! And he would be free! And he would resume his work of persecution, his deadly work, against Élisabeth!
Oh, if the explosion had only taken place! If the ferryman's house could but be blown up and the major with it! . . .
Paul still clung to this hope in his half-conscious condition. Meanwhile his reason was wavering. His thoughts became more and more confused. And he swiftly sank into that darkness in which one neither sees nor hears. . . .
Three weeks later the general commanding in chief stepped from his motor car in front of an old château in the Bourbonnais, now transformed into a military hospital. The officer in charge was waiting for him at the door.
"Does Second Lieutenant Delroze know that I am coming to see him?"
"Yes, sir."
"Take me to his room."
Paul Delroze was sitting up. His neck was bandaged; but his features were calm and showed no traces of fatigue. Much moved by the presence of the great chief whose energy and coolness had saved France, he rose to the salute. But the general gave him his hand and exclaimed, in a kind and affectionate voice:
"Sit down, Lieutenant Delroze. . . . I say lieutenant, for you were promoted yesterday. No, no thanks. By Jove, we are still your debtors! So you're up and about?"
"Why, yes, sir. The wound wasn't much."
"So much the better. I'm satisfied with all my officers; but, for all that, we don't find fellows like you by the dozen. Your colonel has sent in a special report about you which sets forth such an array of acts of incomparable bravery that I have half a mind to break my own rule and to make the report public."
"No, please don't, sir."
"You are right, Delroze. It is the first attribute of heroism that it likes to remain anonymous; and it is France alone that must have all the glory for the time being. So I shall be content for the present to mention you once more in the orders of the day and to hand you the cross for which you were already recommended."
"I don't know how to thank you, sir."
"In addition, my dear fellow, if there's the least thing you want, I insist that you should give me this opportunity of doing it for you."
Paul nodded his head and smiled. All this cordial kindness and attentiveness were putting him at his ease.
"But suppose I want too much, sir?"
"Go ahead."
"Very well, sir, I accept. And what I ask is this: first of all, a fortnight's sick leave, counting fromSaturday, the ninth of January, the day on which I shall be leaving the hospital."
"That's not a favor, that's a right."
"I know, sir. But I must have the right to spend my leave where I please."
"Very well."
"And more than that: I must have in my pocket a permit written in your own hand, sir, which will give me every latitude to move about as I wish in the French lines and to call for any assistance that can be of use to me."
The general looked at Paul for a moment, and said:
"That's a serious request you're making, Delroze."
"Yes, sir, I know it is. But the thing I want to undertake is serious too."
"All right, I agree. Anything more?"
"Yes, sir, Sergeant Bernard d'Andeville, my brother-in-law, took part as I did in the action at the ferryman's house. He was wounded like myself and brought to the same hospital, from which he will probably be discharged at the same time. I should like him to have the same leave and to receive permission to accompany me."
"I agree. Anything more?"
"Bernard's father, Comte Stéphane d'Andeville, second lieutenant interpreter attached to the British army, was also wounded on that day by my side. I have learnt that his wound, though serious, is notlikely to prove fatal and that he has been moved to an English hospital, I don't know which. I would ask you to send for him as soon as he is well and to keep him on your staff until I come to you and report on the task which I have taken in hand."
"Very well. Is that all?"
"Very nearly, sir. It only remains for me to thank you for your kindness by asking you to give me a list of twenty French prisoners, now in Germany, in whom you take a special interest. Those twenty prisoners will be free in a fortnight from now at most."
"Eh? What's that?"
For all his coolness, the general seemed a little taken aback. He echoed:
"Free in a fortnight from now! Twenty prisoners!"
"I give you my promise, sir."
"Don't talk nonsense."
"It shall be as I say."
"Whatever the prisoners' rank? Whatever their social position?"
"Yes, sir."
"And by regular means, means that can be avowed?"
"By means to which there can be no possible objection."
The general looked at Paul again with the eye of a leader who is in the habit of judging men and reckoning them at their true value. He knew thatthe man before him was not a boaster, but a man of action and a man of his word, who went straight ahead and kept his promises. He replied:
"Very well, Delroze, you shall have your list to-morrow."
On the morning of Sunday, the tenth of January, Lieutenant Delroze and Sergeant d'Andeville stepped on to the platform at Corvigny, went to call on the commandant of the town and then took a carriage in which they drove to the Château d'Ornequin.
"All the same," said Bernard, stretching out his legs in the fly, "I never thought that things would turn out as they have done when I was hit by a splinter of shrapnel between the Yser and the ferryman's house. What a hot corner it was just then! Believe me or believe me not, Paul, if our reinforcements hadn't come up, we should have been done for in another five minutes. We were jolly lucky!"
"We were indeed," said Paul. "I felt that next day, when I woke up in a French ambulance!"
"What I can't get over, though," Bernard continued, "is the way that blackguard of a Major Hermann made off. So you took him prisoner? And then you saw him unfasten his bonds and escape? The cheek of the rascal! You may be sure he got away safe and sound!"
Paul muttered:
"I haven't a doubt of it; and I don't doubt eitherthat he means to carry out his threats against Élisabeth."
"Bosh! We have forty-eight hours before us, as he gave his pal Karl the tenth of January as the date of his arrival and he won't act until two days later."
"And suppose he acts to-day?" said Paul, in a husky voice.
Notwithstanding his anguish, however, the drive did not seem long to him. He was at last approaching—and this time really—the object from which each day of the last four months had removed him to a greater distance. Ornequin was on the frontier; and Èbrecourt was but a few minutes from the frontier. He refused to think of the obstacles which would intervene before he could reach Èbrecourt, discover his wife's retreat and save her. He was alive. Élisabeth was alive. No obstacles existed between him and her.
The Château d'Ornequin, or rather what remained of it—for even the ruins of the château had been subjected to a fresh bombardment in November—was serving as a cantonment for territorial troops, whose first line of trenches skirted the frontier. There was not much fighting on this side, because, for tactical reasons, it was not to the enemy's advantage to push too far forward. The defenses were of equal strength; and a very active watch was kept on either side.
These were the particulars which Paul obtainedfrom the territorial lieutenant with whom he lunched.
"My dear fellow," concluded the officer, after Paul had told him the object of his journey, "I am altogether at your service; but, if it's a question of getting from Ornequin to Èbrecourt, you can make up your mind that you won't do it."
"I shall do it all right."
"It'll have to be through the air then," said the officer, with a laugh.
"No."
"Or underground."
"Perhaps."
"There you're wrong. We wanted ourselves to do some sapping and mining. It was no use. We're on a deposit of rock in which it's impossible to dig."
It was Paul's turn to smile:
"My dear chap, if you'll just be kind enough to lend me for one hour four strong men armed with picks and shovels, I shall be at Èbrecourt to-night."
"I say! Four men to dig a six-mile tunnel through the rock in an hour!"
"That's ample. Also, you must promise absolute secrecy both as to the means employed and the rather curious discoveries to which they are bound to lead. I shall make a report to the general commanding in chief; but no one else is to know."
"Very well, I'll select my four fellows for you myself. Where am I to bring them to you?"
"On the terrace, near the donjon."
This terrace commands the Liseron from a heightof some hundred and fifty feet and, in consequence of a loop in the river, is exactly opposite Corvigny, whose steeple and the neighboring hills are seen in the distance. Of the castle-keep nothing remains but its enormous base, which is continued by the foundation-walls, mingled with natural rocks, which support the terrace. A garden extends its clumps of laurels and spindle-trees to the parapet.
It was here that Paul went. Time after time he strode up and down the esplanade, leaning over the river and inspecting the blocks that had fallen from the keep under the mantle of ivy.
"Now then," said the lieutenant, on arriving with his men. "Is this your starting-point? I warn you we are standing with our backs to the frontier."
"Pooh!" replied Paul, in the same jesting tone. "All roads lead to Berlin!"
He pointed to a circle which he had marked out with stakes, and set the men to work:
"Go ahead, my lads."
They began to throw up, within a circle of three yards in circumference, a soil consisting of vegetable mold in which, in twenty minutes' time, they had dug a hole five feet deep. Here they came upon a layer of stones cemented together; and their work now became much more difficult, for the cement was of incredible hardness and they were only to break it up by inserting their picks into the cracks. Paul followed the operations with anxious attention.
After an hour, he told them to stop. He himselfwent down into the hole and then went on digging, but slowly and as though examining the effect of every blow that he struck.
"That's it!" he said, drawing himself up.
"What?" asked Bernard.
"The ground on which we are standing is only a floor of the big buildings that used to adjoin the old keep, buildings which were razed to the ground centuries ago and on the top of which this garden was laid out."
"Well?"
"Well, in clearing away the soil, I have broken through the ceiling of one of the old rooms. Look."
He took a stone, placed it right in the center of the narrower opening which he himself had made and let it drop. The stone disappeared. A dull sound followed almost immediately.
"All that need now be done is for the men to widen the entrance. In the meantime, we will go and fetch a ladder and lights: as much light as possible."
"We have pine torches," said the officer.
"That will do capitally."
Paul was right. When the ladder was let down and he had descended with the lieutenant and Bernard, they saw a very large hall, whose vaults were supported by massive pillars which divided it, like a church of irregular design, into two main naves, with narrower and lower side-aisles.
But Paul at once called his companions' attention to the floor of those two naves:
"A concrete flooring, do you see? . . . And, look there, as I expected, two rails running along one of the upper galleries! . . . And here are two more rails in the other gallery! . . ."
"But what does it all mean?" exclaimed Bernard and the lieutenant.
"It means simply this," said Paul, "that we have before us what is evidently the explanation of the great mystery surrounding the capture of Corvigny and its two forts."
"How?"
"Corvigny and its two forts were demolished in a few minutes, weren't they? Where did those gunshots come from, considering that Corvigny is fifteen miles from the frontier and that not one of the enemy's guns had crossed the frontier? They came from here, from this underground fortress."
"Impossible."
"Here are the rails on which they moved the two gigantic pieces which were responsible for the bombardment."
"I say! You can't bombard from the bottom of a cavern! Where are the embrasures?"
"The rails will take us there. Show a good light, Bernard. Look, here's a platform mounted on a pivot. It's a good size, eh? And here's the other platform."
"But the embrasures?"
"In front of you, Bernard."
"That's a wall."
"It's the wall which, together with the rock of the hill, supports the terrace above the Liseron, opposite Corvigny. And two circular breaches were made in the wall and afterwards closed up again. You can see the traces of the closing quite plainly."
Bernard and the lieutenant could not get over their astonishment:
"Why, it's an enormous work!" said the officer.
"Absolutely colossal!" replied Paul. "But don't be too much surprised, my dear fellow. It was begun sixteen or seventeen years ago, to my own knowledge. Besides, as I told you, part of the work was already done, because we are in the lower rooms of the old Ornequin buildings; and, having found them, all they had to do was to arrange them according to the object which they had in view. There is something much more astounding, though!"
"What is that?"
"The tunnel which they had to build in order to bring their two pieces here."
"A tunnel?"
"Well, of course! How do you expect they got here? Let's follow the rails, in the other direction, and we'll soon come to the tunnel."
As he anticipated, the two sets of rails joined a little way back and they saw the yawning entrance to a tunnel about nine feet wide and the same height. It dipped under ground, sloping very gently. The walls were of brick. No damp oozed through the walls; and the ground itself was perfectly dry.
"Èbrecourt branch-line," said Paul, laughing. "Seven miles in the shade. And that is how the stronghold of Corvigny was bagged. First, a few thousand men passed through, who killed off the little Ornequin garrison and the posts on the frontier and then went on to the town. At the same time, the two huge guns were brought up, mounted and trained upon sites located beforehand. When these had done their business, they were removed and the holes stopped up. All this didn't take two hours."
"But to achieve those two decisive hours the Kaiser worked for seventeen years, bless him!" said Bernard. "Well, let's make a start."
"Would you like my men to go with you?" suggested the lieutenant.
"No, thank you. It's better that my brother-in-law and I should go by ourselves. If we find, however, that the enemy has destroyed his tunnel, we will come back and ask for help. But it will astonish me if he has. Apart from the fact that he has taken every precaution lest the existence of the tunnel should be discovered, he is likely to have kept it intact in case he himself might want to use it again."
And so, at three o'clock in the afternoon, the two brothers-in-law started on their walk down the imperial tunnel, as Bernard called it. They were well armed, supplied with provisions and ammunition and resolved to pursue the adventure to the end.
In a few minutes, that is to say, two hundred yards farther on, the light of their pocket-lanternshowed them the steps of a staircase on their right.
"First turning," remarked Paul. "I take it there must be at least three of them."
"Where does the staircase lead to?"
"To the château, obviously. And, if you want to know to what part, I say, to the room with the portrait. There's no doubt that this is the way by which Major Hermann entered the château on the evening of the day when we attacked it. He had his accomplice Karl with him. Seeing our names written on the wall, they stabbed the two men sleeping in the room, Private Gériflour and his comrade."
Bernard d'Andeville stopped short:
"Look here, Paul, you've been bewildering me all day. You're acting with the most extraordinary insight, going straight to the right place at which to dig, describing all that happened as if you had been there, knowing everything and foreseeing everything. I never suspected you of that particular gift. Have you been studying Sherlock Holmes?"
"Not even Arsène Lupin," said Paul, moving on again. "But I've been ill and I have thought things over. Certain passages in Élisabeth's diary, in which she spoke of her perplexing discoveries, gave me the first hint. I began by asking myself why the Germans had taken such pains to create a desert all around the château. And in this way, putting two and two together, drawing inference after inference, examining the past and the present, remembering my meeting with the German Emperor and anumber of things which are all linked together, I ended by coming to the conclusion that there was bound to be a secret communication between the German and the French sides of the frontier, terminating at the exact place from which it was possible to fire on Corvigny. It seemed to me that,a priori, this place must be the terrace; and I became quite sure of it when, just now, I saw on the terrace a dead tree, overgrown with ivy, near which Élisabeth thought that she heard sounds coming from underground. From that moment, I had nothing to do but get to work."
"And your object is . . . ?" asked Bernard.
"I have only one object: to deliver Élisabeth."