CHAPTER VIII

TREHAYNE'S LETTER

I took the letter from Dawson and glanced through it. The first sheet

and the last had been written very recently--just before the boy had

left his quarters for the last time to go on board the _Malplaquet_;

the remainder had been set down at various times; and the whole had

been connected up, put together, and paged after the completion of the

last sheet. Trehayne wrote a pretty hand, firm and clear, the writing

of an artist who was also a trained engineer. There was no trace in

the script of nervousness or of hesitation. He had carried out his

Orders, he saw clearly that the path which he had trod was leading him

to the end of his journey, but he made no complaint. He was a Latin,

and to the last possessed that loftiness of spirit wedded to sombre

fatalism which is the heritage of the Latins. He was at war with his

kindred of Italy and France, and with the English among whom he had

been brought up, and whom he loved. He was their enemy by accident of

birth, but though he might and did love his foes better than his

German friends of Austria and Prussia, yet he had taken the oath of

faithful service, and kept it to the end. I could understand why

Dawson--that strange human bloodhound, in whom the ruthless will

continually struggled with and kept under the very tender heart--would

allow no one to slander Trehayne.

Cary was watching me eagerly, waiting for me to read the letter.

Dawson's head was resting on one hand, and his face was turned away,

so that I could not see it. He could not wholly conceal his emotion,

but he would not let us see more of it than he could help. He did not

move once during my reading.

* * * * *

_To Chief Inspector William Dawson, C.I.D._

SIR,

Will you be surprised, my friend, when you read this that I have left

for you, to learn that I, your right-hand man in the unending spy

hunt, I whom you have called your bright jewel of a pupil, Petty

Officer John Trehayne, R.N.V.R., am at this moment upon the books of

the Austrian Navy as a sub-lieutenant, seconded for Secret Service?

Have you ever been surprised by anything? I don't know. You have said

often in my hearing that you suspect every one. Have you suspected me?

Sometimes when I have caught that sidelong squint of yours, that

studied accidental glance which sees so much, I have felt almost sure

that you were far from satisfied that Trehayne was the man he gave

himself out to be. I have been useful to you. I have eaten your salt,

and have served you as faithfully as was consistent with the supreme

Orders by which I direct my action. With you I have run down and

captured German agents, wretched lumps of dirt, whom I loathe as much

as you do. Those who have sworn fidelity to this fair country of

England, and have accepted of her citizenship--things which I have

never done--and then in fancied security have spied upon their adopted

Mother, I loathe and spit upon. I have taken the police oath of

obedience to my superiors, and I have kept it, but I have never sworn

allegiance to His Majesty your King, whom I pray that God may preserve

though I am his enemy. To your blunt English mind, untrained in logic,

my sentiments and actions may lack consistency. But no. Those agents

whom we have run down, you and I, were traitors--traitors to England.

Of all traitors for whom Hell is hungry the German-born traitor is the

most devilish. I would not have you think, my friend, that I am at one

with them. Never while I have been in your pay and service have I had

any communication direct or indirect with any of the naturalised-

British Prussian scum, who have betrayed your noble generosity. I have

taken my Orders from Vienna, I have communicated always direct with

Vienna. I am an Austrian naval officer. I am no traitor to England.

* * * * *

I spring from an old Italian family which has long been settled in

Trieste. For many generations we have served in the Austrian Navy.

With modern Italy, with the Italy above all which has thrown the Holy

Father into captivity and stripped the Holy See of the dominions

bestowed upon it by God, we have no part or lot. Yet when I have met

Italian officers, and those too of France, as I have frequently done

during my cruises afloat, I have felt with them a harmony of spirit

which I have never experienced in association with German-Austrians

and with Prussians. I do not wish to speak evil of our Allies, the

Prussians, but to one of my blood they are the most detestable people

whom God ever had the ill-judgment to create.

* * * * *

I was born in Trieste, and lived there with my parents until I was

eight years old. In our private life we always spoke Italian or

French, German was our official language. I know that language well,

of course, but it is not my mother tongue. Italian or French, and

afterwards English--I speak and write all three equally well; which of

the three I shall use when I come to die and one reverts to the speech

of the nursery and schoolroom, I cannot say; it will depend upon whom

those are that stand about my deathbed.

When I was eight years old, my father, Captain ---- (no, I will not

tell you my name; it is not Trehayne though somewhat similar in

sound), was appointed Austrian Consul at Plymouth, and we all moved to

that great Devonshire seaport. I was young enough to absorb the rich

English atmosphere, nowhere so rich as in that county which is the

home and breeding-ground of your most splendid Navy. I was born again,

a young Elizabethan Englishman. My story to you of my origin was true

in one particular--I really was educated at Blundell's School at

Tiverton. Whenever--and it has happened more than once--I have met as

Trehayne old schoolfellows of Blundell's they have accepted without

comment or inquiry my tale that I had become an Englishman, and had

anglicised my name. Among the peoples which exist on earth to-day, you

English are the most nobly generous and unsuspicious. The Prussians

laugh at you; I, an Austrian-Italian, love and respect you.

* * * * *

When I was sixteen, after I had spent eight years in Devon, and four

of those years at an English public school, I was in speech and almost

in the inner fibres of my mind an Englishman. Your naval authorities

at Plymouth and Devonport, as serenely trustful and heedless of

espionage as the mass of your kindly people, allowed my father--whom I

often accompanied--to see the dockyards, the engine shops, the

training schools, and the barracks. They knew that he was an Austrian

naval officer, and they took him to their hearts as a brother, of the

common universal brotherhood of the sea. I think that your Navy holds

those of a foreign naval service as more nearly of kin to themselves

than civilians of their own blood. The bond of a common profession is

more close than the bond of a common nationality. I do not doubt that

my father sent much information to our Embassy in London--it was what

he was employed to do--but I am sure that he did not basely betray the

wonderful confidence of his hosts. Our countries were at peace. My

father is no Prussian; he is a chivalrous gentleman. I am sure that he

did not send more than his English naval friends were content at the

time that he should send. For in those years your newspapers and your

books upon the Royal Navy of England concealed little from the world.

I have visited Dartmouth; I have dined in the Naval College there with

bright sailor boys of my own age. It was then my one dream, had I

remained in England, to have become an Englishman, and to have myself

served in your Navy. It was a vain dream, but I knew no better. Fate

and my birth made me afterwards your enemy. I would have fought you

gladly face to face on land or sea, but never, never, would I have

stabbed the meanest of Englishmen in the back.

When I was sixteen years old I left England with my parents and

returned to Triest. I was a good mathematician with a keen taste for

mechanics. I spent two years in the naval engineering shops at Pola,

and I was gazetted as a sub-lieutenant in the engineering branch of

the Austrian Navy. My next two years were spent afloat. Although I did

not know it, I had already been marked out by my superiors for the

Secret Service. My perfect acquaintance with English, my education at

Blundell's, my knowledge of your thoughts and your queer ways, and

twists of mind, had equipped me conspicuously for Secret Service work

in your midst.

As a youth of twenty, in the first flush of manhood, I was seconded

for service here, and I returned to England. That was five years ago.

* * * * *

[I paused, for my throat was dry, and looked up. Cary was leaning

forward intent upon every word. Dawson's face was still turned away;

he had not moved. It seemed to me that to our party of three had been

added a fourth, the spirit of Trehayne, and that he anxiously waited

there yonder in the shadows for the deliverance of our judgment. Had

he, an English public school boy, played the game according to the

immemorial English rules? I went on.]

* * * * *

It was extraordinarily easy for me to obtain employment in the heart

of your naval mysteries. Few questions were asked; you admitted me as

one of yourselves. I took the broad open path of full acceptance of

your conditions. I first obtained employment in a marine engineering

shop at Southampton, joined a trade union, attended Socialist

meetings--I, a member of one of the oldest families in Trieste. Though

a Catholic, I bent my knee in the English Church, and this was not

difficult, for I had always attended service in the chapel at

Blundell's. To you, my friend, I can say this, for you are of some

strange sect which consigns to the lowest Hell both Catholics and

Anglicans alike. Your Heaven will be a small place. From Southampton I

went to the torpedo training-ship _Vernon_. Again I had no difficulty.

I was a workman of skill and intelligence. I was there for more than

two years, learning all your secrets, and storing them in my mind for

the benefit of my own Service at home.

It was at Portsmouth that there came to me the great temptation of my

life, for I fell in love, not as you colder people do, but as a

Latin of the warm South. She was an English girl of good, if

undistinguished, family. Though in my hours of duty I belonged to that

you call the 'working classes,' I was well off, and lived in private

the life of my own class. I had double the pay of my rank, an

allowance from my father, and my wages, which were not small. There

were many English families in Portsmouth and Southsea who were

graciously pleased to recognise that John Trehayne, trade unionist,

and weekly wage-earning workman, was a gentleman by birth and

breeding. In any foreign port I should have been under police

supervision as a person eminently to be suspected; in Portsmouth I was

accepted without question for what I gave myself out to be--a

gentleman who wished to learn his business from the bottom upwards. I

will say nothing of the lady of my heart except that I loved her

passionately, and should have married her--aye, and become an

Englishman in fact, casting off my own, country--if War had not blown

my ignoble plans to shatters. There was nothing ignoble in my love,

for she was a queen among women, but in myself for permitting the hot

blood of youth to blind my eyes to the duty claimed of me by my

country. When war became imminent, I was not recalled, as I had hoped

to be, since I wished to fight afloat as became my rank and family. I

was ordered to take such steps as most effectively aided me to observe

the English plans and preparations, and to report when possible to

Vienna. In other words, I was ordered to act in your midst as a

special intelligence officer--what you would call a Spy. It was an

honourable and dangerous service which I had no choice but to accept.

My dreams of love had gone to wreck. I could have deceived the woman

whom I loved, for she would have trusted me and believed any story of

me that I had chosen to tell. But could I, an officer, a gentleman by

birth and I hope by practice, a secret enemy of England and a spy upon

her in the hour of her sorest trial, could I remain the lover of an

English girl without telling her fully and frankly exactly what I was?

Could I have committed this frightful treason to love and remained

other than an object of scorn and loathing to honest men? I could not.

In soul and heart she was mine; I was her man, and she was my woman.

With her there were no reserves in love. She was mine, yet I fled from

her with never a word, even of good-bye. I made my plans, obtained

certificates of my proficiency in the _Vernon_, kissed my dear love

quietly, almost coldly, without a trace of the passion that I felt,

and fled. It was the one thing left me to do. My friend, that was two

years ago. She knows not whether I am alive or am dead; I know not

whether she is alive or is dead. Yet during every hour of the long

days, and during every hour of the still longer nights, she has been

with me. I have done my duty, but I do not think that I wish to live

very much longer. If death comes to me quickly--and to those in my

present trade it comes quickly--will you, my friend, of your bountiful

kindness write to [here followed a name and address] and repeat

exactly what I now say. Do not tell what I was or how I died, but just

write, "He loved you to the last." There is a portrait in a locket

round my neck and a ring on my finger. Send her those, my good friend,

and she will know that your words are true.

* * * * *

I fled as far from Portsmouth, where my dear love dwelt, as I could

go; I fled to Greenock, that dreadful sodden corner of earth where the

rain never ceases to fall, and the sun never shines. At Greenock one

measures the rainfall not by inches, but by yards. Sometimes, not

often, a pale orb struggles through the clouds and glimmers faintly

upon the grimy town--some poor relation of the sun, maybe, but not the

godlike creature himself. For six months, in this cold desolate spot,

among a people strangely unlike the English of Devon, though they are

of kindred race, I laboured for six months in the Torpedo Factory. I

lived meanly in one room, for my Austrian pay and allowance had

stopped when War cut the channels of communication. I could, had I

chosen, have drawn money from German agencies in London, but I scorned

to hold truck with them. They were traitors to the England which

trusted and protected them, and of which they were citizens. I lived

upon my wages and preserved jealously all that I had saved during my

years of comparative affluence at Portsmouth. It was duty which made

me a Spy, not gold.

One day I was called into the office of the Superintendent, and it was

hinted to me, diplomatically, not unskilfully, that I was desired to

take service with the English secret police. I feigned reluctance,

made difficulties, professed diffidence, until pressure was put upon

me, and I was forced to accept a position which I could never by any

scheming have achieved. Those whom the gods seek to destroy, they

first drive mad--you are a very trustful unsuspicious folk, all except

you to whom I write. But even you did not, I am sure, suspect me at

the beginning. I was sent to Scotland Yard in London to be trained in

my new duties. You saw me there, and claimed me for your staff, and I

came to this centre of shipbuilding and worked here with you. I was

clothed in the uniform of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve.

There are two matters closely affecting my personal honour which will

seem of small moment to you--you who display always a sublime

patriotic scorn of every moral scruple; but to me they are great. I am

of the old chivalry of Italy, and I have been taught at school in

England always to play the game. Though I wore the uniform of the

R.N.V.R., it was as a disguise and cloak of my police office; I was

never attested. I have never, never, never sworn allegiance to

England. I have always kept troth with my own country; I have never

broken troth with England. Had the English naval oath been proffered

to me, I should have refused it at any hazard to my personal safety.

My honour is unstained.

You have paid me for my work, I have taken your pay, but I have not

spent it upon myself. Every penny of it for the last twelve months

will be found at my quarters. I have lived upon what I saved at

Portsmouth--lived sometimes very scantily. My funds are running low.

What I shall do when they are exhausted I cannot tell. Perhaps, who

knows, they will last my time. As for the rest, that packet of

Treasury Notes which has been my police pay, unexpended, will you take

it, my friend, and pay it to the fund for assisting the English

sailors interned in Holland? I should feel happier if they would

accept it, for I have, as you will presently learn, taken some of

their names in vain. I have not broken any oath, and I have not used

your pay; my honour is unstained.

* * * * *

[Again I paused and glanced at Dawson. He had not even winced--at

least not visibly--when Trehayne had held him free from every moral

scruple. He must, I think, have read the letter many times before he

had handed it to me. Cary looked troubled and uneasy. To him a spy had

been just a spy--he had never envisaged in his simple honest mind such

a super-spy as Trehayne. I went on.]

* * * * *

Now nothing was hidden from me; I had within my hands all the secrets

of England's Navy. My one difficulty--and it was not so great a one as

you may think--was communication with my country. Never for one moment

did it fail. Years before it had been thought out and prepared. I

varied my methods. At Portsmouth, during the early weeks of the War, I

had employed one means, at Greenock another, here yet another. The

basis of all was the same. It was much more difficult for me to

receive orders from my official superiors in Austria, but even those

came through once or twice. Never, during the whole of the past year,

have I failed to send every detail of the warships building and

completed here, of the ships damaged and repaired, of the movements of

the Fleets in so far as I could learn them. My country and her Allies

have seen the English at work here as clearly as if this river had

been within their own borders. John Trehayne has been their Eye--an

unsleeping, ever-watching Eye. Shall I tell you how I got my

information through? It was very simple, and was done under your own

keen nose. One of the R.N.V.R. who went with your Mr. Churchill to

Antwerp, and was interned in Holland, was a friend of mine at

Greenock, well known to me, I wrote to him constantly, though he never

received and was never meant to receive my letters. They were all

addressed to the care of a house in Haarlem where lived one of our

Austrian agents who was placed under my orders. All letters addressed

by me to my friend were received by him and forwarded post haste to

Vienna. Do you grasp the simplicity and subtlety of the device? My

friend was on the lists of those interned in Holland, no one here knew

where he lodged, the address used by me was as probable as any other;

what more natural and commendable than that I should write to cheer

him up a bit in exile, and that I should send him books and

illustrated magazines? If it had been noticed by the postal

authorities in Holland that my friend did not live at the address

which I used, it would have been supposed that I had made a mistake,

and no suspicion would have been attracted to me. But how did my

letters, books, and magazines containing information, the most secret

and urgent, pass through the censorship unchecked? That again was

simple. My letters were those which a friend in freedom in England

would write to his friend who was a captive in Holland. They were

personal, sympathetic, no more. The books and magazines were just

those which such a man as my friend would desire to have to lighten

the burden of idleness. Between the lines of my letters, and on the

white margins of the books and papers, I wrote the vital information

which my country desired to have, and I desired to give. The ink which

I used for this purpose left no trace and could not be made visible by

any one who had not its complementary secret. It is the special ink of

the Austrian Secret Service; you do not know it, your Censors do not

know it, your chemists might experiment for months and years and not

discover it. I used it always, and you never read what I wrote. Now

you will understand why I wish the small stock of money, my police

pay, which I could not myself have used without dishonour, to go to

the interned sailors in Holland. I feel that I owe to my friend some

little reparation for the crooked use to which I have put his name.

There is little more to tell. Three weeks ago I received by post from

London a copy of _Punch_. It had been despatched to me unordered, from

the office of the paper in an office wrapper. You know that English

papers may not now be sent abroad to neutral countries except direct

from the publishing offices of the newspapers themselves. It is a

precaution of the censorship, childish and laughable, for what is

easier than to imitate official wrappers? I guessed at once, when I

saw this unordered copy of _Punch_, that the wrapper was a faked one,

and that it had come to me bearing orders from my superiors. I applied

my chemical tests to the margins of the pages and upon the

advertisement of a brand of whisky appeared the orders which I had

expected. I read what was written, and I have not suffered greater

pain--no, not upon that day when I fled from Portsmouth without a

word of good-bye to the woman who possessed my heart. For I learned

then that my country, the proud, clean-fighting Austria, had given up

its soul into the keeping of the filthy Prussian assassins. I was

directed to damage or delay every warship upon which I worked, to

employ any means, to blow up unsuspecting English seamen--not in the

hot blood of battle, but secretly as an assassin. A step in rank was

promised for every battleship destroyed. Had these foul Orders

admitted of no loophole through which my honour might with difficulty

wriggle, I should have taken the only course possible to me. I should

have instantly resigned my commission in the Austrian Navy, and taken

my own life. But it happened that I had an alternative. I was ordered

to damage or delay warships. I would not treacherously slay the

English sailors among whom I worked, but I would, if I could, delay

the ships. My experience taught me that the simplest and most

effective way was to cut the electric wires, and I decided to do it

whenever opportunity offered. I could not do this for long. I was

certain to be discovered. You are not a man who fails before a

definite problem in detection. But before I was discovered I could do

something to carry out my Orders.

I cut the gun-wires of the _Antinous_. It was easy. I was the last to

leave of the shore party. Then you sent me on board the _Antigone_.

She was closely watched, the task was very difficult, and dangerous; I

was within the fraction of a second of discovery, but I took one chop

of my big shears. The job was ill done, but I could do no better.

You warned me fairly, that if injury came to the _Malplaquet_, while

under my charge, that I should be dismissed. She was my last chance as

she was your own. But what to me were risks? I had lost my love, and

my country had dishonoured herself in my eyes. I was nameless,

loveless, countryless. All had gone, and life might go too.

* * * * *

I am completing this letter before going on board the _Malplaquet_ and

placing it where you will readily find it. I know you, my friend, more

intimately than you know yourself. I am certain that even now you are

in the ship, that you are preparing snares into which I shall in all

probability fall. Your snares are well set. If I fail, it will be

through you; if I am caught, it will be through you. But be sure of

this--if we meet in the _Malplaquet_, the fowler and the bird, it will

be for the last time. You may catch me, but you will not take me. For

a long time past I have provided against just such an outcome as this.

Upon my uniform tunics, upon my overalls, I have fixed buttons,

hollowed out, each of which contains enough of cyanide of potassium to

kill three men. If I were court-martialled and shot, there would be no

disgrace to me, an officer on secret service, but a whisper of it

might steal to Portsmouth and give deep pain to one there. No one will

learn of the petty officer of R.N.V.R. who died far away in the north.

The locket with the portrait is round my neck, the ring is upon my

finger. Both are ready waiting for you who will do what I ask and will

keep my secret from her.

I have the honour to be, sir,

Your obedient servant,

JOHN TREHAYNE.

* * * * *

I folded up the papers and returned them to Dawson, who carefully

placed them in his pocket. In the shadows the spirit of Trehayne still

seemed to be waiting. I thought for a few minutes, and then rose to my

feet. "He was an officer on secret service," said I slowly. "An enemy,

but a gallant and generous enemy. In love and in war he played the

game, Requiescat in pace."

"Amen," said Cary.

Dawson rose and gripped our hands. "I have the locket and the ring,

and I will write as he wished. It is the least that I can do."

They buried Trehayne with naval honours as an enemy officer who had

died among us. England does not war with the dead. Though he had

fallen by his own hand, the Roman Church did not withhold from an

erring son the beautiful consolation of her ritual. Cary and I openly

attended the funeral. Dawson was officially in bed, suffering from his

much-desired attack of influenza. But in the firing party of Red

Marines, whose volleys rang through the wintry air over the body of

Trehayne, I espied one whom I was glad to see present.

PART II

_MADAME GILBERT_

CHAPTER IX

THE WOMAN AND THE MAN

If one believed Dawson's own accounts of his exploits--I can conceive

no greater exercise in folly--one would conclude that he never failed,

that he always held the strings by which his puppets were constrained

to dance, and that he could pluck them from their games and shut them

within his black box whenever he grew wearied of their fruitless

sport. He trumpets his successes, but he never speaks of his

failures--he buries them so deeply that he forgets them himself. He

veils his plans, movements, and personal appearance in a fog of

mystery. None, not even his closest associates, know what he would be

at until a job is completely finished, and finished successfully. Thus

when he succeeds, his own small world is deeply impressed--even

nauseated--by the compelling spectacle of a Dawson triumphant; when he

fails, very few know or hear of the failure. He loves the jealousy of

his equals and inferiors even more than the admiration of his

superiors. Thoroughly to enjoy life he must be surrounded by both in

the amplest measure.

What I now have to tell is the story of a failure--a failure due to

his refusal ever to allow his right hand to know what his left hand

sought to do. He never told me himself one word concerning this story.

I obtained the details partly from Captain Rust, partly from Dawson's

Deputy, but chiefly from the lady who filled the star rôle. Dawson

himself foolishly introduced me to her nearly two years later; he did

not anticipate that we should become friendly, confidential, that we

should discuss him and his little ways over cups of tea, made the

sweeter by the clandestine nature of our frequent meetings. He had not

allowed for the fascinations of the lady--fascinations so alluring

that even I, a middle-aged Father of a Family and Justice of the

Peace, was instantly reduced by them to the softest moral pulp; and he

had not allowed for the Puckish glee with which I welcomed the tale,

rolled it round in my wicked fancy, and bent its ramifications into an

orderly narrative.

* * * * *

I very vividly remember my first meeting with the lady. She came one

day, a fortnight after I had returned from Cary's flat to my neglected

duties, heralded by a short note from Dawson. "I shall be greatly

obliged if you will give Madame Gilbert all assistance in your power.

She is one of my team." That was all, but my curiosity was piqued. I

had heard much of Dawson's team of feminine assistants--rudely called

by rivals his "harem"--and I was eager to meet one of them. I ordered

Madame Gilbert to be admitted to my presence. She came, I saw, she

conquered. When I assert that in two minutes she had plucked me from

my chair of dignity, flung me upon the Turkey carpet, and jumped upon

me with her daintily shod feet, I do not exaggerate.

She was not very young--I put her at two or three years over thirty.

She was, or gave herself out to be, a widow. She was a female

detective; I was a modest gentleman of rigid English respectability,

not without some matrimonial experience in the ways of Woman. There

was nothing in the purpose of her visit to have caused her to come

upon me as a Venus, fully armed, and to have forced me to an abject

surrender. From the feathers of her black picture hat to the tips of

her black velvety shoes she was French-clad, the French of Paris, and

wore her clothes like a Frenchwoman. She was dressed--_bien habillée,

bien gantée, bien coiffée_. Her hair was red copper, her skin--the

"glad neck" of her dress showed a lot of it--had the colour and bloom,

the cream and roses, of Devon. Her eyes were very large and of a deep

violet All these charms of dress and face and colour I could have

gallantly withstood, but the voice of her settled my business at once.

Its rich, full tone, its soft, appealing inflection, the pretty

foreign accent with which she then chose to speak English--I can hear

them now. I have always been sensitive to beautiful voices, and Madame

Gilbert's voice is beyond comparison the most beautiful voice in the

wide world.

Madame Gilbert made one or two small requests to which I gave an

immediate assent, and then she asked me to do something within my

power but much against my uncontrolled will. "Madame," said I

shamelessly, "as you are strong be merciful; let me off as lightly as

you can." She laughed, and eyed me with interest. My defeat had been

with her, of course, a certainty, but perhaps it took place more

rapidly than she had expected. "I have not asked for much," said she.

"It is not what you have asked that I fear, but what you may ask

before I get you out of my room," said I.

She laughed again and let me down very gently. I did not tell her more

than three secrets which I was pledged never to reveal. "That's all,"

said Madame Gilbert. "Thank Heaven," said I.

On the following afternoon, about four o'clock, Madame Gilbert called

again upon me. When her card was brought in I trembled, and for a

moment had in mind to deny myself to her. But I thrust away the

cowardly thought. Be brave, said I to myself, advance boldly, attack

the terrible delightful siren, say "no" to her once, and you will be

saved! She entered, and though my knees shuddered as I rose to greet

her, my mien was bold and warlike. She warmly squeezed my hand, and I

returned the attention with _empressement_. For a few minutes we

exchanged polite compliments, and then she sprung upon me in her

tender confident tones, a request so preposterous that my rapidly

flitting courage was stimulated to return. Be brave, I murmured to

myself, attack boldly, say "No," and you will be saved for ever.

"I deeply regret, madame," said I coldly, "that it is not possible for

me to accede to your wishes." It was done, and I breathed more freely

though the sweat broke out on my forehead.

Her eyes opened upon me with the pained surprised look of a deeply

disappointed child. "Oh, Mr. Copplestone," she moaned, "and I thought

that you were my friend."

I clutched tightly at the arms of my faithful chair and held to my

programme of heroic boldness.

"You shouldn't have asked me such a question. You really

shouldn't--you know you shouldn't."

Her eyelids flickered, and the violet pools which they uncovered

glittered with a moisture which was not of tears, and she laughed,

laughed, and continued to laugh with the deepest enjoyment.

"I wanted to see how much you would stand," said she at last.

From that moment her spell over me was broken, and we became friends.

I admired her as much as ever, but she was no longer the all-devouring

siren. I could say "no" to her as easily as to the most dowdy and

unbeautiful of female axe-grinders.

"Will you permit me to offer you a cup of tea so as to wash from your

mouth the unpleasant taste of my brutal refusal?"

"I will," said Madame Gilbert graciously.

We issued from my office and betook ourselves to a pleasant shop where

we could drink tea and nibble cakes, and talk without being overheard.

Madame Gilbert, I observed, had a healthy appetite.

We talked of ourselves and exchanged delicious confidences. "You have

asked me many questions," I said. "May I ask one of you? What are you?

You are not English, and you are not, I think, French."

"Shall I also learn a lesson from you in unkindness and say 'No'?" she

inquired. "But it would be cruel, for you have really been quite nice

to me. I will reveal the secret of my birth." She put up one hand and

began to tick off the countries which had been privileged to play a

part in her origin and education. "My father was a Swede--one; my

mother was an Irishwoman--two. I was born at Cork in Ireland, but

remember nothing about it, for my father died when I was three years

old, and my Irish mother removed instantly to Paris--three. By the

way, I have observed that the Irish and the Scotch always run away

from their own countries at the first possible opportunity. Why is

this?"

"It is much pleasanter," I remarked sententiously "to sentimentalise

over the fringes of the United Kingdom from a safe distance, than to

live in them."

"Oh! Let me see, I had got as far as Paris. When I was old enough I

went to a convent school there. I speak French rather better than I do

the Irish-English which my mother taught me."

"You speak English most charmingly. There is about it now a delicate

suggestion, no more, of Ireland. When you first came to me your accent

was distinctly foreign, French or Italian. I am afraid that you are a

wicked woman, a deceiver, and that the fascinating accent was put on

for my subduing. It was a very pretty accent."

"I have found it most effective," said she brazenly.

"When I was eighteen I was married--to an Italian (Guilberti)--four. I

should have become a Catholic, my husband's faith, but for my mother's

Protestant-Irish prejudices. She was of the Irish Church, my husband

of the Roman, so I compromised. I joined the Church of England, the

High Branch."

"Your religion is almost as complicated as your nationality."

"Yes, isn't it?" said she. Her hand was still uplifted; she had paused

at the fourth finger. "We lived in Italy and in France. Two years ago

my husband died, and shortly after the war began my mother died. I had

a little money, I was known to the Embassy in Paris as one who could

pass indifferently as English, or French, or Italian. I wanted to

strike a blow for all my countries, and I was recommended to Mr.

Dawson for"--she looked round carefully, bent her head close to mine,

and whispered--"the Secret Service. So I came for the first time that

I remember to England--five."

"But what are you?" I asked, with knitted brows; "I am not an

international lawyer."

"Mr. Dawson says"--I found that she has a childlike confidence in the

redoubtable Dawson--"that by birth I am a British subject. My Swedish

father doesn't count, as I never adopted Sweden when I came of age. My

domicile before marriage was France, but by marriage I became an

Italian. It is no matter; I am of the Entente, and I do my bit. It is

not a bad bit sometimes."

That was the first of many agreeable tea-drinkings which Madame

Gilbert and I took together.

Madame Gilbert believes herself to be, as she puts it, a woman of

"surprising virtue," and I am by no means sure that she is not right.

For the doing of her bit has led her into situations from which

nothing but the coolest of hearts and the quickest of wits could have

brought her out untarnished. She has played her part gallantly,

serenely, in the service of the Alliance; I should be a poor creature

if I judged her by British provincial standards. Among other stories

she told me the tale which I will repeat to the reader. Here and there

were gaps which I have sought diligently to fill up until the whole

has been made complete. Madame Gilbert told to me the most intimate

details without a blush, and if in my telling I startle the blood to

the cheek of the very oldest of readers, the fault will rest with me.

* * * * *

"I have a notion, Madame Gilbert, which I should like you to follow

up," said Dawson. He was at that time (the Spring of 1915) in his

office in London--he had not yet been despatched on his spacious

pilgrimage to the northern shipyards--and Madame Gilbert sat opposite

to him in an attitude deliberately provocative. She sat back in a

comfortable chair facing the light, her legs were crossed, and she

displayed a great deal more of beautifully rounded calf and perfectly

fitting silk stockings than is usual even in the best society.

Although she did not look at Dawson, she was fully conscious of the

frowning glare which he threw at the audacious leg.

"Please give me your attention--if you can. I have been out at the

Front lately, at General Headquarters, to advise upon the means of

stopping the flow of information from our lines to the enemy. All the

obvious channels have been stopped--the telephones hidden in French

cellars, the signals given by the hands of clocks, the German spies

dressed in uniforms stripped from our dead, and so on. Lots of them,

all obvious and simple. One can deal with that sort of thing by a

careful system of unremitting watchfulness. We must have caught up

with most of the arrangements made by the Germans before the war, but

they still get much more information than is good for them to have,

and for us to lose. I am convinced--and G.H.Q. agrees--that there are

many officers, especially in the French and Belgian armies, who were

planted there years before the war for the precise purpose to which

they are now put. Even in our own Army, which is expanding so rapidly,

the same thing is possible, even probable. An infantry officer spy can

do little--he knows nothing of the Staff plans, and cannot get into

communication with the enemy at all readily, without arousing

suspicion. I went into the whole thing at the Front, and I put my

finger, as I always do, upon the danger spot--the Flying Corps. Those

who fly constantly over our own and the enemy's lines have complete

information as to distribution and movements, and, if they choose, can

drop dummy bombs containing news for the enemy to pick up. A French,

Belgian, or English aeroplane 'observer' in the enemy's secret service

could convey information to him at pleasure and without the

possibility of detection. I don't suspect our own Flying Corps, except

on the general principle of suspecting everybody and everything, but I

do that of the French and the Belgians. France and Belgium were salted

through and through by the Germans in anticipation of war. There in

the Flying Corps we have a very grave danger which--But I see that you

are not attending, madame," he broke off angrily.

Her eyes withdrew from the offending leg for an instant, and flashed

at Dawson with a penetrative power which even he felt.

"Shall I repeat what you have said, word for word?" asked Madame

Gilbert coldly.

"I am not now dealing with facts, but with conjecture;" went on

Dawson, after begging her pardon. "I have nothing to go upon, but the

Germans have far more of imagination and ingenuity than we always

credit to them. They must see that with the great advance in the

Flying Corps of the Allied armies, and the opportunities which flying

men have for collecting and conveying information, one flying spy

would be worth a hundred spies on foot. For them to perceive is to

act. I therefore conclude positively that they have agents in the

flying squadrons of France and Belgium, and possibly even in our own.

So I told the C. in C., and he agreed with me. He was good enough to

say that he would never have thought of this had I not suggested it to

him. Soldiers are not detectives, madame, and very few detectives are

William Dawsons. If the War Office knew its business, every Assistant

Provost-Marshal would be, not a soldier, but a man from the Yard, and

I should be the P.M. in Chief on the Headquarters Staff. I should wear

a general's uniform and hat."

"You would look sweet," said Madame politely.

Dawson, the ex-private of Red Marines, swelled out his chest and felt

himself to be a Major-General at the least.

"They will do their best to follow up my idea at the Front, and I

shall start a campaign here. For I become more and more convinced that

the head centre of the German secret service is here in London. Paris,

even before the war, was too watchful, and now is as hot as Hell.

London reeked with spies, and though we locked up the worst of them

when war broke out, lots still remain. If you only knew how many we

laid by the heels and keep shut up without any trial, or nonsense of

that sort, you would be surprised. It is only since the Defence of the

Realm Act was passed that England has become a free country. We keep a

drag-net going continually, we have hundreds of agents in all

suspected quarters, but this wilderness of bricks and mortar is too

big even for us. Once an enemy agent has got himself into an English

or Allied uniform, he is horribly difficult to run down. That is where

you, and those like you, come in. Are you sure, my dear madame, that

you can pass without detection as a Frenchwoman or a French-Belgian?"

Madame Gilbert put up her left hand, and began to tick off her

qualifications. "My father was a Swede, my mother was Irish, I was

educated in France from the age of three to eighteen, I married an

Italian. Brussels I know almost as well as dear Paris. I can be

Parisienne or Bruxelloise--whichever you wish, Mr. Dawson."

"Good," said Dawson. "What I want of you is this. Whenever here in

London you see a French or Belgian officer wearing the badges of the

Flying Corps, mark him down. Make his acquaintance somehow; you will

know how. Entertain him, fascinate him, let him entertain you; fool

him as you would fool me if I let you; worm out his secrets, if he has

any. If you get upon a promising track, go strong; let the man make

love to you--he will, whoever he is, if you give him half a

chance--intoxicate him with those confounded eyes of yours. If you can

find only one who is in the enemy's service, you will be fully repaid

for all your trouble."

"It is a largish contract," murmured Madame thoughtfully.

"There are not so very many flying officers," said Dawson, "and they

are all young. You will work through them pretty quickly. Most of them

will be the genuine article upon whom you need not waste much time.

But the others, those whom I suspect, you must grab hold of and never

let go, whatever happens."

"I hope," said Madame primly, "that you do not expect me to do

anything--improper."

Dawson stared at her in wonder. Her big eyes, shining with the lovely

innocence of childhood, met his without a flicker. "Bless my immortal

soul," he muttered, "she is getting at me again." Then aloud, and

gravely--"My assistants are always expected to conduct themselves with

the strictest propriety."

Madame laughed softly. "I have known many men in my time, Mr. Dawson,

but I have never enjoyed any man so much as I do you."

"I appear to have rather a roaming commission," Madame Gilbert went

on, after a thoughtful pause. "Can you not give me any guidance?"

"Not at present. I am testing an idea, that is all. You must be guided

by your own wit and judgment, in which I have the utmost confidence.

Don't waste your time or fascinations on the wrong people. Find out if

among the French or Belgian flying officers, who from time to time

visit London, there are any whose connections and movements will repay

close watching here and at the Front. Sift them out. When you get upon

a track which seems promising, follow it up, and do not be--what shall

I say?--do not be too squeamish. Money is no object. Behind us is the

whole British Treasury, and you can have whatever you want. Will you

take on the contract, madame?"

"I will do my best," she replied soberly, "and I will not be--too

squeamish. I can look after myself, my friend."

In another room of the great building upon the Thames Embankment sat

Deputy Chief Inspector Henri Froissart, a French detective officer who

had been "lent" to the English service. Opposite him was sitting a

young handsome man in the uniform of a captain in the British Army.

Froissart was frowning and speaking in savage disrespect of Dawson,

his immediate chief. "This English Dawson, with whom it is my

misfortune to work, is of all men the most impossible. He is clever,

as the Devil, but secretive--my faith! He tells me nothing. He lives

in disguise of body and mind. There are twenty men in his face, his

figure, and his dress. He comes to me as a police officer, a doctor, a

soldier, a priest, even as an old hag who cleans the stairs. He

deceives me continually, and laughs, laughs. He is a reproach and an

insult. I have it in my mind to score off him; what do you say, mon

ami?"

Froissart spoke in French, and the English officer replied in the same

language. "With pleasure, in the way of business. I have been placed

at your orders, not at old man Dawson's. Go ahead, what is the game?"

Froissart nodded approval. "I think that you can pass as a French

officer or a French-speaking Belgian. Is it not so?"

"You should be able to certify that better than I can myself," replied

the officer modestly. "As a boy I was brought up at Dinard in

Normandy. I served two years in the French Army as a volunteer, a

gunner. Then I went to St. Cyr, but England, the home of my father,

claimed me, and I was given a commission in the Artillery. That was

two years ago. I volunteered for the Flying Corps, served in it at the

outbreak of war, but was invalided after that confounded accident

which spoilt my nerve. I fell two hundred feet into the sea, and

passed thirty hours in the bitter water before a destroyer picked me

up. Thirty hours, my friend. My nerve went, and I was besides crippled

by rheumatism of the heart. Then I was for a few weeks liaison officer

on the Yser at the point where the English and Belgian lines met. The

wet, the cold, were too great for me, and again I was invalided. I was

a temporary captain without a job until you met me and asked for me to

be attached to you for secret service. Yes, M. Froissart, I can pass

as a French or a Belgian officer. It needs but the uniform."

"Good," cried Froissart. "You are English of the English, and French

of the French. You have served under the Tricolor and under the Union

Jack. You are an embodiment of L'Entente Cordiale. You almost

reconcile me to that detestable Dawson, but not quite. He is of the

provincial English, what you call a Nonconformist--bah! He is clever,

but bourgeois. He grates upon me; for I, his subordinate in this

service, am _aristocrat_, a Count of _l'ancien régime, catholique,

presque royaliste_. His blood is that of muddy peasants, yet he is my

chief! Peste, I spit upon the sacred name of Dawson!"

"You don't seem to be a very loyal subordinate," observed the officer,

smiling.

"Me, not loyal!" cried Froissart astonished. "I surely am of all men

most loyal to l'Entente. Have I not proved my loyalty? I have left my

beautiful France and come here to this foggy London to aid this

flat-footed _homme de bout_, Dawson, in his researches. Yet he tells

me nothing. He disguises himself before me, and laughs, laughs, when I

fail to recognize his filthy, obscene countenance. But I am loyal, of

a true loyalty unapproachable."

"I believe you, though you have a queer way of showing it. What is now

the game that you want to play off on the old man as a proof of your

unapproachable loyalty?"

"He is clever, my faith, clever as the Devil. He discerns the German

plans before they are made. He has their agents within a wire net

which closes whenever he wishes. He has swept London clean of the foul

brood which festered here before the war. I have great, limitless

confidence in this Dawson whom I detest, but to whom I am of all his

assistants the most loyal. He now suspects that contained within the

Flying Corps of us, the Belgians, and the English are observers in the

pay of Germany. It is an idea most splendid. For if it is true, what

greater opportunity could be given to any spies! To fly over our

lines, to learn of everything, and then to convey the news to the

enemy by way of the air! If he had told me of this most perspicuous of

theories, I would have aided him with all the wealth of my genius. But

no, he tells to me nothing. He comes and goes, he spins his web like a

great fat female spider, but he tells me nothing. It is my belief that

he despises me because I am French, _aristocrat_, and _catholique_.

But I will show him; I will, as you call it, score most bitterly off

him; I will do in my way successfully what he vainly seeks to do in

his way. _Conspuez_ Dawson!"

"This is quite like the old times of the Dreyfus case," said the

Englishman.

"Dreyfus! But I will speak not of that. It is buried. We French are

one people now, one and indivisible. Though of traitors, the villain

Dreyfus was of the most horrible. Let us speak of _cet homme très

sale_, Dawson. I do not know his plans. They will be shrewd, but

without imagination, without flair. He will watch, with his eyes of a

cat, the French and Belgian flying officers who come to London, but he

will not discover their secrets. For he does not understand, this cold

English Dawson, that secrets which endanger the neck are told only to

women."

"Yet I have heard that he has a team of women--his harem, as it is

called. I have never seen one of them."

"Bah! Englishwomen, of the large feet and the so protruding teeth! Who

would tell of his precious secrets to them!"

"Oh, come, M. Froissart. We have as many pretty women in London as you

have in Paris."

"It is possible, my friend. All things, the most improbable, are

possible. But they conceal themselves most assiduously. I have not

seen them, these so pretty Englishwomen."

"Well, well. You are a bit out of date as regards our women. But I

don't want to argue. What is the game?"

Froissart leaned forward and spoke solemnly, forcibly.

"If the man Dawson is right, and there are German spies in the French

and Belgian flying services, they will come to London to get their

orders. And they will get them from women, depend upon it, my friend.

From women who are of French education, who appear to be French, yet

who are the deadly, the most dangerous, enemies of France. Let Dawson

watch the men themselves; but watch you such women as I

indicate--women who appear to be French and yet are not French. I will

speak to the Chief, not to Dawson, but to the Great Chief of us all.

You shall be dressed in the tenue of a French flying officer; you

shall avoid French or Belgian officers who might ask questions the

most embarrassing. You shall make the acquaintance of women who appear

to be French, yet who are not French. Grip on to these, my friend,

entertain them, make yourself of the most fascinating and agreeable,

give to them attentions and love of the warmest. And when after two or

three glasses of champagne you repose at ease with your arm about

their waists, get you at their secrets. You are young, handsome, and

your eye is bold. I give you a pleasant task--the deception of

deceiving women. In my younger days what joy would I not have taken in

it."

Captain Rust became very gloomy during this speech for, though French

in education, he was by instinct an Englishman.

"I don't like the business at all. It sounds mean and grubby, ugh! Not

quite what one would ask of a gentleman."

Froissart was genuinely surprised. "What do you say, not for a

gentleman? Am I not a gentleman, I, who speak, a Froissart, a Count of

_l'ancien régime_, a Royalist almost? I offer you a task which

combines business and pleasure in the most delicious of proportions.

And you call my offer mean and grubby, _méprisable et crotté_! I do

not ask you to consort with those of the _demi-monde._ The women who

are of most danger to our countries are not _courtisanes_; they are of

the _monde_, fashionable. They meet officers in society; they humour

and flatter them; they display a melting softness of sympathy and

interest. I do not ask you, my friend, to endanger your English

virtue."

The tone of wondering contempt with which he ended brought a smile to

Rust's lips.

"I am not so very virtuous, monsieur. But I am English, and I try,

vainly perhaps, to be a gentleman. It seems to me a dirty business to

make up to women in order to wheedle out their secrets."

"We have to do worse than that in defence of our country. We have to

plot and counterplot, to lie and deceive. But we do these things, and

you must do them too, if you would be of the Secret Service. Content

yourself. Think always that it is for _la belle France_ or for _le bel

Angleterre_, for _la grande Alliance_. You have qualifications

unusual; you are young, handsome, and French in manner and speech. You

are a soldier; it is for me to command, and for you to obey. Besides,

think you; if success comes to us, picture to yourself the desolation

of Dawson!"

"Desolating Dawson is more your fun than mine. I have no grudge to

work off on the old man. Since you command, I will obey. I will do my

best, but, to be quite frank, I do not like the job."

"But you will do it. I think that you English, slow to move, do best

those things which you like least. You despise the Secret Service,

what you call dirty spying, yet you do it to admiration--with a

courage and _sang froid_ most wonderful. You hate to begin a war, and

yet when you fight you are, of all people, the most unwilling to stop.

When we French and the Russians yonder have supped of this war to the

dregs, you English will just have begun to find your appetites. Stop?

you will cry. Make peace? Be content? Why, we have just got our second

wind! It will be the same with you, my friend. You begin reluctantly,

but when the chase becomes hot, you will be on fire with zest. You

will not trouble then that _vous vous faites crottés_."

"I will do my best; I cannot say more than that."

CHAPTER X

A PROGRESSIVE FRIENDSHIP

Neither Madame Gilbert nor Captain Rust are very communicative

concerning their adventures, until they begin to speak of that day

when first they met one another in the courtyard of the Savoy Hotel.

They both then become voluble. I rather gather--though I did not

cross-examine them at all closely--that they had been a good deal

bored. Their instructions were so very vague, and the best method of

carrying them out so far from clear to their ingenious minds, that

they wandered aimlessly about the resorts most affected by officers on

leave, spent much money, made a good many pleasant acquaintances, but

progressed not at all in their researches. Madame did not meet with

any French or Belgian flying officers who seemed likely to be German

agents, and Captain Rust failed to discover a siren who appeared to be

French and yet was not French, and who aroused any plausible suspicion

that she dwelt in the central web of German intrigue. Madame began to

think that for once the impeccable Dawson had despatched her upon a

wild goose chase, and Rust became convinced that Froissart's vivid

longing to score off the detested Dawson had misled him in the

selection of the means to bring about this much-desired consummation.

They told me little of these wanderings, but when I asked for details

of their first meeting, the one with the other, and their subsequent

rather startling proceedings, they broke into eager speech. It was not

until my keen and curious eye began to penetrate the delicate

mysteries surrounding their surprising week-end visit to Brighton that

Rust again became tongue-tied. He reprehensibly slurred over the most

entertaining details. Madame Gilbert, on the other hand, revealed

everything with that plain-spoken frankness which, in any other woman,

would appear to be brazen. Madame is thirty-two; Captain Rust no more

than twenty-six. He is a modest young man in spite of his French

training; she, I am afraid, is a hussy. But I would not have her other

than she is.

Madame Gilbert was taking tea alone in the courtyard of the Savoy. She

occupied one place at a table laid for four. It was a fine afternoon

in late spring, motors and taxis ran in and out unceasingly, the

open-air restaurant began to fill up, but none ventured to approach

any one of three empty places at Madame's table. She was, as usual,

perfectly dressed--though she assures me that her clothes cost next to

nothing. "It is the wearing of them, my friend, not the cost which

counts." I fancy that her unshakable temper and her gay humour, like

her beauty, are really based, as she says, upon her complete freedom

from ailments. She loves life, and this, perhaps, is why life loves

her.

Madame Gilbert, though to the unobservant eye intent upon her tea and

cakes, saw every one who came and went. Many officers were in the

restaurant, but one only attracted her special notice. He was a young

handsome man in the field-service kit of the French Army, and upon his

sleeves and cap were the wings of the Flying Corps. This young man was

looking for a table, but could not find one that was empty. She waited

until he paused not far from her, and then, sweeping her eyes slowly

over the crowded tables, brought them to rest upon his face. He was

quite an attractive-looking young man. There was an appeal in his dark

eyes as they met hers; he was imploring her of her gracious kindness

to permit him to occupy one of her superfluous seats, and she

telegraphed to him an encouraging reply. The French officer

approached, saluted, and bowed: "Is it permitted, madame, to

inconvenience you?" he asked humbly. "The tables are very full, or I

would not venture to intrude." He spoke in careful, accurate English,

and with an accent markedly French.

"Please favour me by sitting down at once," replied Madame. "I feel

myself to be very selfish with my four places and one small person."

She spoke in careful, accurate English, and with an accent markedly

French.

"Ah!" he exclaimed, seating himself opposite to her, and breaking into

French. "Madame is of my country, is it not so?"

"But certainly," said Madame in the same language, which was to her a

second mother-tongue. "I am of Paris. If you had not been French I

should not have dared to hint to you that a place at this table might

be taken."

For a few minutes they talked together in the ceremonious style for

which the French language is the perfect medium, and then dropped into

more easy friendly speech. Madame, when she likes the look of a man,

becomes intimate at the shortest notice, and Rust, like every man born

of woman, succumbed helplessly, instantly, to the wiles of Madame.

Though she had finished tea, she urged Rust not to be hurried; there

was plenty of time, and one did not often have the happiness to meet a

French officer in this dreary London. She enveloped him in her meshes

of kindliness, and he responded by thinking to himself that she was

the loveliest, most friendly creature whom he had ever met. Madame

knows a great deal more of military details than most male civilians,

but when she talked to Captain Rust at the Savoy, her ignorance of the

Flying Corps was absolute. She asked questions, quite intelligent

questions, and he bubbled over with eagerness to answer them. Poor

Rust; I can picture the humbling scene. He made an ass of himself, of

course, but not a greater ass than I always make of myself--and I am

not far from double his age--whenever Madame gets to work upon me.

Within ten minutes she had wheedled out of him an account of his

accident. "I was out on patrol duty," he explained, "spotting for

submarines between the Straits and Zeebrugge. When the weather is fine

we can see deep down into the water, a hundred feet or so, and quite

easily make out a submerged U boat. I was testing a new plane fitted

with a 90 h.p. R.A.F. engine--" He paused and quickly glanced at her,

for he realised his blunder the instant the slip had been made. Madame

was all eager attention--what did she know of the marques of aeroplane

engines!--"It was a day of rotten luck for me. I spotted nothing, and

late in the afternoon my engine began to overheat and miss fire. I did

my utmost to struggle towards Do----, Dunkirk, but the beastly thing

gave out altogether, and down I dropped into the sea. I had an

ordinary land plane without floats, and was obliged to cut myself

clear and keep up as best I could with my air belt. It was a weary

time, waiting to be picked up, all that night and all the next day;

the cold of the water struck right through me, and I was senseless,

like a dead man, when at last, thirty hours afterwards, one of our

destroyers found me floating there, picked me up, and carried me into

Dover. I was in hospital for six weeks, crippled with rheumatic fever,

and my heart went wrong. It is much better now, and I hope soon to get

back to flying again. I am still on sick leave."

"Poor heart," sighed Madame, and smiled to herself.... "He looked at

me," she explained long afterwards, "as if there was still life in his

poor strained heart. It was a real kindness to give it some gentle

exercise."

"And when you are well you will again fly for France?" she inquired.

"Ah, yes. I yearn for the day when the obdurate doctors will permit me

to fly again--for France.... And you, madame, who are so kind to a

poor crippled soldier, is it permitted to ask--"

"I am, alas, a widow." She paused, and though demurely looking at her

empty tea cup, saw his eyes light up. ["The silly boy was pleased that

I was a widow," she explained. "As if that mattered."] "My poor

husband fell for France--at Le Grand Couronné. That was eight months

ago, and I am still inconsolable. I love to meet the brother officers

of my dear lost husband. He was killed by a shell, close beside his

general, and I do not even know where he was buried." She delicately

wiped her eyes, and Rust murmured broken words of the deepest

sympathy. Yet he was not sorry to hear that his new friend was a

widow. It must have been a most pathetic scene.

Madame recovered from her sudden rush of grief--brought on by thoughts

of that unknown grave upon Le Grand Couronné!--and began to pull on

her gloves. "And you, my friend?" she asked gently.

"No one lives who will grieve for me," he replied sadly.

"You are young, my friend, and your heart will--recover itself. I am

old, made old by illness and sorrow." She was a picture of glowing

health! "May I ask the name by which I may remember you?"

He was clean bowled, for he, foolishly, had not prepared a plausible

name. "I am called," stammered he, "Captain Rouille." It was the best

that he could do on the instant--the translation of his uncommon

English name into French.

"A strange name," she murmured, "though the sound of it is beautiful.

Rouille! It signifies, for the moment, the decay of hopes, a mould of

rust obscuring ambition. But in a little while the steel of your

courage will shine bright once more. I am Madame Gilbert; my husband

was of the Territorial Army--a Captain also." She had thought to have

made him a Colonel on General Castelnau's staff, but refrained from so

risky a flight of imagination. An obscure Captain of Territorials

might well be called Guilbert, and pass unidentified.

As they pressed hands at parting, Rust hesitated. "May one hope,

madame, to meet you again. Your kindness has been great, and I feel

that I have made a new friend."

"And I also," sighed Madame. "I often come here to drink the English

tea. It is a pleasing custom of London."

"To-morrow?" he inquired anxiously. "It is possible," replied Madame,

very graciously.

* * * * *

"Well," said I, when Madame had told me of this meeting, "I hope that

you had the grace to feel ashamed of yourself. To deceive an invalided

flying officer with your tale of the Captain of Territorials, blown up

by a shell beside his general upon Le Grand Couronné. It was

abominable."

"It was the unknown grave which fetched him," said Madame cheerfully.

"Worse and worse. Why could you not have told him the truth?"

"Because, my stupid friend, the Captain Rouille interested me, and I

was on duty. What was a captain in the French Flying Corps doing with

an aeroplane driven by a 90 h.p. Royal Aircraft Factory engine

(R.A.F.)? Why should he speak of 'our' destroyers, referring to those

of the British, when he ought to have said the 'English' destroyers as

a French officer would have done? Why again should he hesitate over

his name, and then give so impossible a one as Rouille? No, I had

discerned plainly that M. le Capitaine Rouille, whatever he might be,

was not the man he pretended that he was. He spoke French perfectly,

but he was not in the French flying service. He was English. I

recollected my instructions from the great Dawson--to stick to any one

who excited my suspicions, to let him make love to me if need be, and

to discover his secrets. I am, my friend, a martyr to duty. Besides,

le Capitaine Rouille was a handsome young man, very attractive. I was

not grieved at the thought that he might pursue me with his

attentions."

"Why," I asked in turn of Rust, "did you begin by telling lies to the

charming Madame Gilbert?"

"I was in French uniform," said he, "and I had to play my part."

"And a nice mess you made of it," said I rudely.

"I am afraid that I did. That slip about the R.A.F. engine was

unpardonable. But then how was I to know that the dear woman knew as

much about aeroplanes as I did myself? She was like Desdemona at the

feet of Othello, and, of course, I lost my head. You are as crazy

about her as I am, with less excuse. Besides, I was on duty. Before

Madame had spoken to me for five minutes, I was certain that she was

not French. She spoke perfectly, but there was a little accent, a

delightful accent, that told me she was Irish. That soupçon of a

brogue which gives so delicate a spice to her English appears also in

her French. My mother was an Irish woman, though I have never lived in

Ireland. You know that all the Irish, especially those of America or

of France, are watched most carefully by the police. Many of them hate

the English, and spy upon us. When, therefore, I perceived that

Madame, though she appeared to be French was by birth Irish, I

recollected my instructions from Froissart. It was my duty to stick to

her, to study her. If necessary to make love to her. It did not seem

wholly disagreeable to me," he added dryly, "to make love to Madame

Gilbert."

"I forgive you," said I, "though, from what I learn, you somewhat

exceeded your instructions."

* * * * *

If I were not a most serious writer, this veracious history of Madame

Gilbert and Captain Rust would tend to degenerate into comedy,

possibly to reach the depths of farce. But, to one of my grave bent of

mind, wasted deception, wasted energies, and, above all, wasted

national money, excite rather to tears than to laughter. What a

spectacle was this which I place before the reader! Here were two

trusted members of the English Secret Service pitting against one

another those treasures of intelligence, wit, and sensibility which

they were employed--and paid--to exercise in the defence of their

countries. It may be conceded that one of them was more or less

honest. Rust, I am convinced, had persuaded himself--he has no marked

ability or attractions of any kind that I can discern--that his duty

impelled him to watch Madame with exceeding closeness of attention.

That his strong inclinations marched with his duty may be allowed him

as a privilege; the plea of duty was not, I believe, merely an excuse.

But what can one say in defence of Madame, one who has stored within

her little copper-covered head enough brains to furnish a brigade,

say, of the Women's Emergency Corps? She had perceived that Rust was

an English officer masquerading as a Frenchman, yet she could not have

thought that he was a German spy. Why did she not ask him point blank

what he was doing in that galley. She has never supplied me with a

credible explanation, She pleads, with obvious insincerity, the

instructions of Dawson, which in the most reprehensible way granted to

her the vaguest of roving commissions. She parades her duty before me

in the most tattered of rags.

Upon the following afternoon, when Madame Gilbert drove up to the

Savoy in a taxi-cab at half-past four, a young man, in the uniform of

a French officer, opened the door and handed her out. It was, of

course, Captain Rust, who had waited palpitating upon the curb for

some three-quarters of an hour. He led her to a small table which he

had reserved for another charming duet of tea, cakes, and

conversation.

At this second meeting, Madame bent herself to the deft

cross-examination of Rust "Had the Captain Rouille joined St. Cyr as a

cadet officer, or had he served in the ranks of the French Army?" He

had served in the ranks, and broke into details of his training and

garrison service which convinced her that he really had served. She

became thoughtful. Rust, eager to show off his accomplishments,

explained that he had been recommended for a commission and had joined

St. Cyr. More details followed, all of a verisimilitude wholly

convincing. Madame, who knew France and the French Army up and down,

became more thoughtful and more puzzled. It was plain that Rust had

really served in the ranks of the Army, and had been at St. Cyr. Yet

he was an Englishman and an officer of the English Flying Corps! She

asked further questions, innocent, flattering questions, seeking to

discover what had happened to him after his course at St. Cyr. He did

his best, but he was of inconsiderable agility of mind and deficient

in imagination. He had been, he said, with Maunoury's Sixth Army,

which, emerging from Paris in red taxis, had fallen upon the exposed

right wing of von Kluck. His description was accurate enough, but the

lavish details of former narratives were lacking. He had been

_officier de liaison_ on the Aisne; again the little intimate touches

were lacking. He had joined the flying corps, but omitted to explain

how he had learned to fly. It had been at Farnborough, but he could

hardly admit this, and was, unhappily, quite ignorant of the French

flying grounds.

Madame's quick mind began to see daylight. "How came it, my friend,

that you were flying upon the coast when you suffered that accident,

so terrible, and paralysed that poor brave heart of yours?" Madame

asked the question in the most natural, sympathetic way. It was a

facer for Rust, who regretted that he had been so communicative at

that first meeting "I was lent to the Naval Wing," he explained, and

avoided to particularise. By this time Madame had sorted out his

service. She was quite sure that he had not been with Maunoury or upon

the Aisne, but that in some manner, as yet not clear, he had left St.

Cyr to pass into the English Army.

When in his turn Rust sought diffidently to penetrate the mystery

surrounding Madame Gilbert, she overflowed with untruthful

particulars. She resembles her master Dawson in this--it is unwise to

believe one word which she wishes you to believe. Of her early life in

Paris she spoke with emotion. She was the beloved only child of a

French doctor--ah, the most learned and pious of men! He died early

smitten by disease contracted during his gratuitous practice amongst

the friendless poor. A most noble parent! Her mother, too, a saint and

angel, had gone aloft shortly after seeing her daughter, Madame,

happily married to a maker of calorifères (anthracite stoves). "I am

unworthy of those so noble parents," wailed Madame in broken tones. It

was not until they were about to separate that Madame Gilbert herself

threw him a bone of truth designed to test his appetite for curiosity.

"I must fly," exclaimed she; "I am a woman _très occupée_. I work, oh,

so very hard, for my belle France and to avenge the death of my

glorious husband." The blown-up stove maker did not seem to Rust to be

a figure of glory, yet he forced himself again to express the deepest

sympathy. "Yes," went on Madame, "I would avenge him. I work,"--she

glanced round cautiously, and then whispered--"I work for the

_gouvernement anglais_. I am an _agent de police_."

"Were you not rather rash," I asked of Madame Gilbert, "to give

yourself away so completely? He might not have been so thorough an ass

as you thought."

"My friend," said Madame calmly, "I had taken tea with him twice, and

had satisfied myself that he was not, what you call, very bright. A

dear fellow, handsome, a gentleman of the English pattern, but not

bright. If I had not helped him to get a move on, I might have lunched

with him, had tea, dined with him, attended theatres, traversed in

motors your pleasant countryside, flirted, until I had become a very

old woman, and there would have been nothing to show for all my

exertions. I remembered the instructions of Mr. Dawson, I recalled to

myself my duty, I was compelled to discover who and what was this

Capitaine Rouille, and I could only succeed by forcing him to reveal

himself--to give himself away. When I said that I was an agent of the

English police, he did not believe me; but he was curious--he watched

me. I gave him much to watch and to imagine that he had discovered.

Then one began to get forward."

* * * * *

I am ignorant of the diplomatic pourparlers which led up to the

week-end trip to Brighton, that remarkable trip which ended

_l'affaire_ Rust. It must have been planned by Madame; it bears the

unmistakable imprint of her impish wit; it was, too, a bold

development of her designs for the effective speeding up of Rust. He

would have dallied all through the summer, looking feebly for an

opportunity to ravish a despatch-case which always accompanied Madame

and which had become the inseparable and ostentatious "gooseberry" at

their meetings. Madame declared that it was stuffed with papers the

most secret. "The English Government would be desolated if they passed

for one moment out of my hands." This despatch-case played parts quite

human. It was perpetually provocative of Rust's curiosity, and a

reminder that the agreeable pastime of making love to Madame was not

an end in itself, but a means whereby he might discharge his official

duties. It was, moreover, a visible sign that Madame was a woman,

_très occupée_, and a self-styled _agent de police_; it rested always

silent at her side as a protector of innocence. Rust becomes uneasy

when that case is mentioned, but Madame bubbles over at the thoughts

of her _petite chère portefeuille, cette idée de génie_. She brags of

her genius, of her notion _si lumineuse_, of her _guet-apens si

adorable._

While Madame must have planned the Brighton trip, she contrived that

the suggestion should come timidly, deprecatingly, from Rust. She

would have scorned so crude an advance, one, too, falling so far short

of her high standard of womanly virtue, as a direct hint that she was

willing to pass three days in a seaside hotel with a young man! _Mais,

non. Ce serait une bêtise incroyable_! I can imagine her hints,

increasing in strength as she beat against the obtuse heaviness of

Rust's intellect. But I cannot imagine how any one, least of all the

brilliant Froissart, should have conceived that lumpish soldier to be

capable of the finesse needful for the Secret Service. He has since

been returned empty, and I do not wonder at it.

Madame must have lamented the stuffiness of London during the bright

days of early June, and painted, in her enthusiastic French fashion, a

picture of southern England and the glittering Channel. "_Ma foi, mon

ami_, what would I not give for one hour of peace and rest, away from

this swarming hive of men and women? It is as yet too cold to swim in

that sea which washes the shores of my beautiful France--and bears the

so gallant English soldiers to her help--but I would love to sit upon

the sands and gaze, gaze across the waters towards my poor bleeding

land. But, alas, I am a woman _très occupée_." After a great deal of

this sort of thing, Rust was spurred up to suggest that he also was

weary, and that nothing could be more delightful than to sit beside

Madame upon those sands and to bewail with her the woes of their

common country. The idiot did not reflect that a woman of Madame's

taste in dress does not usually mess up her Paris frocks with nasty

sea sand. Madame sighed. It was a charming picture, but, alas, quite

impossible. Rust still further spurred by Madame--"Le Capitaine

Rouille is not very bright"--at last broke into a proposal delivered

with many hesitations and many apologies. Why should not they travel

to Brighton on the Friday evening and draw solace for their weary

souls from a Saturday, Sunday, and possibly Monday, at Brighton?

Madame became a frozen statue of offended womanhood! What, _mon Dieu_,

had she done that he should conceive her to be a light woman? She, the

never-to-be-comforted widow of the incomparably gallant hero of

anthracite stoves and le Grand Couronné. She had been too

unsuspicious, too trustful; their pleasant acquaintance must end upon

the instant; the too-gross insult which he had put upon her could

never be pardoned. Rust was borne away and overwhelmed in the flow of

her sad reproaches. Abjectly he grovelled: He regard the ineffable

Madame Guilbert as a light woman! Perish the thought! He, to whom she

had been an angel of kindness and discretion! He cast a slur upon the

shining brightness of her reputation! Rust had never in his life been

so eloquent. Madame listened with satisfaction. She might in time,

after long years, forgive him, but not yet. The insult, however

unintended, was too fresh and her heart was desolated! She scorched

and scarified Rust during two whole days, for their meetings continued

unbroken, and at last, as an undeserved concession and as evidence of

her soft forgiving heart, she consented to go to Brighton on the

Friday. "We must regard closely _les convenances_. You men, so rash

and so stupid, you do not understand how infinitely precious to us

poor women is the spotless bloom of our reputation." Rust protested

that the bloom upon the unplucked peach was not, in his eyes, more

stainless than the reputation of Madame. How she must have grinned! He

made plans, rude, coarse plans, for the shielding of the so precious

reputation of dear Madame Guilbert, but she gently put them aside. "In

my hands," she declared grandly, "le Capitaine Guilbert has left his

honour, and I will guard it with my life. Alas, what is my life when

my heart is buried in that lonely grave upon le Grand Couronné in

which I pray rests his much-blown-up body. I myself will devise the

means by which I can grant you a mark of my condescending forgiveness

and preserve _sans reproche_ the honour of a Guilbert."

I confess that I have drawn upon my imagination for most of this

touching scene, but, knowing Madame as I do, I am sure that I have

given the hang of it.

CHAPTER XI

AT BRIGHTON

Madame Gilbert and Captain Rust travelled to Brighton on the Friday

evening in the Pullman train. They occupied different carriages. Their

hotel, one of those facing the sea which washed the far-off shores of

their beloved, bleeding France, had been selected by Madame--"I desire

a hotel, my friend, not a _caravanserai_!" Madame arrived ten minutes

before Rust, and had disappeared within her own _appartement_ when his

cab drove up to the doors. Rust then booked his room, one upon the

second floor. He took that which was offered, and did not observe that

Madame's room was also _au seconde_. But he did notice--he could not

help it--that the imposing lady in charge of the hotel office was

French. "Ah, monsieur le capitaine," said she, beaming caresses upon

him, "with what joy do I perceive the _tenue de campagne_ of my own

Army. I will gladly grant to you one of the rooms of the very best and

at the price of the lowest. The patron, he also is French, and would

be furious if I did not give the most cordial welcome to an _officier

français_." Rust thanked the lady of the bureau, and heartily approved

Madame's choice of an hotel.

"One moment, if you please," said I to Madame, who supplied me with

these details. "I perceive that both the rooms, yours and Rust's, were

upon the second floor. Is it in this way, you shameless woman, that

you preserved from reproach the honour of the late imaginary stove

man?"

Madame sighed, and turned upon me the look which, in my mind, I have

labelled "Innocence unjustly traduced." One of these days, with German

thoroughness, I shall prepare a numbered and annotated catalogue of

Madame Gilbert's looks and tones. Though it cannot teach her sex

anything which the youngest member does not already know, it will be

full of valuable instruction and warning for the innocent male.

"Am I responsible," wailed Madame, "for the allotment of rooms by

_hôteliers_?"

"Most certainly," I said severely. "I do not know your methods. It is

not given to man to penetrate the unfathomable duplicity of woman. But

I am convinced that had you wished it, you would have been placed _an

premier_, and Rust consigned to the uttermost cock-loft in the roof."

Madame and Rust dined that first evening at separate tables, but

discovered in one another old friends when they accidentally met

afterwards in the lounge.... "What happiness, can it indeed be le

Capitaine Rouille, the friend closer than a brother of my poor slain

husband?" ... "Madame Guilbert! Can it be you whom I meet thus

unexpectedly? You whom I have not seen since that dreadful

never-to-be-forgotten day upon which I broke to you the news, the

terrible news--" Rust's voice failed; even Madame, who thinks little

of his ability, admits that he performed on this occasion to

admiration. The rencontre was a most affecting one, conducted in

voluble French in the full blaze of publicity in a crowded hotel

lounge. The English audience was impressed and honestly sympathetic;

our insular reserve has been melted in the fires of war. "It is a

French lady, poor thing, who has lost her husband," they whispered,

the one to another, "and that handsome fellow in ordinary

evening-dress is her man's brother officer, who was with him at the

last, and who brought the sad news to her. How sweet she looks, and

how tenderly sympathetic he is!" The eyes of the men had already been

drawn to Madame's royal beauty and those of the women to her dress, a

masterpiece of Paquin. Now that she had met Rust the men were

sorrowful, regretting a vanished opportunity of making her

acquaintance, and the women were relieved. She was too formidable a

rival to be at large, alone and unattended, but now she would be

monopolised naturally and properly by her good-looking compatriot. So

when Madame and Rust slipped away to a corner of the lounge, kindly

eyes followed them, and the voices of the censorious had no excuse to

be raised. "You are a wonder, madame," whispered Rust. "And you, my

friend, did not so badly," replied Madame in frank approval.

They separated early that evening, for Madame, who knew not what it

was to feel really tired, shammed fatigue as a reason for retiring

betimes. To her came Marie, a little dark French _femme de chambre_ of

the second floor, imploring to be allowed to assist at the night

toilet of a desolate widow of France. While Marie brushed out the

long, rich, copper hair the two chattered unceasingly of France and

the Army of steel-hearted poilus which held the frontiers of

civilisation away yonder in Picardy, Artois, Champagne, and the

Vosges. Marie herself had a man out there of whose welfare she had

heard nothing since the war began. She had received no letters, and

the French publish no casualty lists. "_Mon cher petit homme est mort,

madame. C'est certain, mais j'espère toujours_." There are many, many

Frenchwomen to whom the death of their loved ones is certain, though

they hope always. "I felt rather a pig talking fibs to the poor girl,"

confessed Madame.

Madame Gilbert had made her plans with thoughtful care, and proposed

to carry them out with hardihood. She had determined to work so

adroitly on the Saturday upon the curiosity and "poor strained heart"

of Rust that he would be speeded up to run big risks. He did not know

that, however judiciously frail her conduct might be, she was a very

dragon of virtue in defence of her honour. "I gave my heart," said she

to me quite seriously, "to the Signor Guilberti, one far, far

different from _le mari imaginaire_ of le Grand Couronné. Until, if

ever, I give my heart again no man shall possess me. I play, I kiss, I

philander--as you call it--but what are these trifles? _Des

bagatelles, rien de tout_!" He did not realise her serene indifference

to the small change of love and her respect for its true gold. But I

do not think that Rust, when Madame consented to be his companion at

Brighton, seriously misjudged her motives. He did not know, of course,

or in the last degree suspect that she designed his capture as a

professional victim.

Again and again she had told him that she was an agent of the English

police, and again and again, as she intended, he had disbelieved her.

She was so incomparably his intellectual superior that she could make

him believe or disbelieve precisely as she chose. She made him think

that she had come to Brighton for companionship, and as a proof of her

kindly forgiveness of a grave indiscretion. He believed; for never was

Rust, even Rust, so idiotic as to suppose that she had succumbed

before his charms and had come to throw herself into his arms.

But for the machinations of Madame the visit would, I am sure, have

passed without incident. Rust would not have lost his turnip of a

head. He would, out of loyalty to his orders from Froissart, have

tried to grab the despatch-case and ravish its secrets. But he would

not have done what he did, at the risk of compromising the bloom of

her so precious reputation, if she had not deliberately worked him up

to do it. Therefore, while I acquit Rust of evil intention, my

reproofs, my grave reproofs--at which she laughs and snaps her

fingers--are reserved for that unscrupulous Madame.

At breakfast Madame Gilbert and Captain Rust found that a private

table, a table of the best in a bay window facing the sea, had been

reserved for them by orders of the patron. The news of their pitiful

rencontre in the lounge had sped to his ears; he had wept copiously

before his sympathetic staff, and declared that the bereaved widow and

the so gallant captain should lack for nothing in his hotel. "If it

were not that I feared to offend their delicacy I would refrain from

presenting to them _l'addition._ Make, I pray you, _mademoiselle du

bureau_, their charges of the lowest." He was a most noble patron.

The path of the wicked was thus made smooth. By the English guests, by

the entire staff, it was considered inevitable, indeed highly

becoming, that Madame and Rust should devote themselves wholly to one

another. Had they embraced in public, and wept many times a day upon

one another's necks, the staff--half of which was French--would have

deemed the exhibition most seemly and fitting, and the English, though

embarrassed, would not have been censorious. By so much has war

brought to us an understanding of the simple honest hearts of our

closest Allies. In ceasing to be insular we are ceasing to worship our

wooden conventional gods.

Madame, who, as I have before remarked, says the most frightful things

in her soft, musical voice, regarding one the while with frank, steady

eyes, commented thus upon the attitude of _le patron_ and his

assistants towards them. "They wrapped us about so thoroughly in their

tender sympathy that nothing which we had chosen to do in mutual

consolation could have shocked them."

I do not propose to weary the reader by detailing at length the

progress of Madame's Saturday campaign. Her methods of offence will,

by now, have become clear. To the "suffocating gas" of her smiles, and

the "liquid fire" of her eyes she had added the devastating

"Tank"--her despatch-case. She worked its mysteries unceasingly. When

it was not under her own hand it reposed--during meal times, for

example--in the steel safe of _le patron_. All except one paper, of

the most thrilling importance, which never left her person. This

small, unobtrusive paper, upon which, according to Madame, the

destinies of nations depended, was hidden always--happy paper--in the

bosom of her corset.

Did she not, inquired Rust, greatly daring, find it rather hard and

scratchy? To him its resting-place seemed too delicate a spot to be

used as a general store. Madame frowned at the allusion to so intimate

a topic, and Rust, terrified, implored her pardon, which was

graciously vouchsafed.

"You should not, _mon ami_, speak to me as if I were that which you

once thought me--a light woman." She reduced him nearly to tears, and

then, in kindly consolation, permitted him to hold her hand. Both as a

pretended French officer, and as an English agent of the Secret

Service, Rust was the most derisory of frauds.

During the day the pair of plotters were inseparable, and Madame

played continually with unfailing deftness upon the two strings of

Rust's poor heart and of his intense curiosity, which she clearly

perceived though she did not know it to be professional. When the

heart swelled with stimulated emotion, and Rust began to show

inconvenient fondness, Madame would frown reproof and lead the

despatch-box into action. Very often she would carry her hand to that

pleasant spot where nestled the paper of so great international

importance, and she would speak of it and of the terrible

responsibilities which rested upon her as a secret _agent de police_.

"When I carry a document such as this," she would say, "one _pour

faire les Boches se créver_, it never leaves my bosom all the day and

rests under my pillow by night. Under my pillow, _mon ami_." She dwelt

upon that pillow, and raised in the mind of Rust a charming vision of

a white lace-edged surface upon which was spread out a lovely disorder

of red copper hair. She so worked upon him that his emotions and his

duties became inextricably mixed. Somehow he must secure that paper

and solve the baffling problem of the wonderful widow who appeared to

be French, and yet was not French. His brain by itself could not have

conceived of a means, but Madame assisted to stimulate its imagination

as she had done the beating of his heart. "It was wrong of you, _mon

ami_" she said, in gentle reproof, "to select a room upon the same

floor as mine, it was a proceeding bold and not a little indelicate,

which might have compromised my precious reputation had I not been

secure in the honour of my poor lost Captain Guilbert." Rust protested

that he had left the choice of rooms entirely to the lady of the

bureau, but Madame's smile showed that she was wholly sceptical. "I

speak frankly to you," said she, "so that there may be no longer in

your mind any thought that I am a woman of light conduct. I have come

here, driven by your sad pleadings, to give you of my companionship,

and my heart would be desolated if I thought that you still misjudged

me." The beautiful voice shook, and I do not doubt that the violet

eyes, glistening with pumped-up tears, were raised to Rust's face. I,

her friend, know that she can feel deeply, and I can distinguish that

which she simulates from that which moves her, but the poor creature

Rust was in her hands the most helpless and deluded of victims.