THE PROBLEM OF THE RED CRAWL
It was half-past two o'clock in the morning of July 25, when the
constable on duty at the head of Clarges Street, Piccadilly, was
startled to see a red limousine swing into that quiet thoroughfare from
the Curzon Street end, come to an abrupt halt, and a man who had every
appearance of a sailor alight therefrom, fish a key from his pocket, and
admit himself to a certain house. This house for more than a year had
been known to be occupied only by one Captain Burbage, a retired seaman
of advanced years, his elderly housekeeper, a deaf and dumb
maid-of-all-work, and a snub-nosed, ginger-haired young chap of about
nineteen--as pure a specimen of the genus Cockney as you could pick up
anywhere from Bow Church to the Guildhall--who acted as a sort of body
servant to the aged captain, and was known by the expressive name of
"Dollops."
"Don't like the goings-on at that house at all," commented the policeman
in a sort of growl. "All sorts of parties coming and going at all hours
of the night. Reported it more than once, I have; and yet Superintendent
Narkom says there's nothing in it and it needn't be watched. I wonder
why?"
He wouldn't have wondered any longer could he have looked into the hall
of the house at that moment; for the man who had just entered had no
sooner closed the lower door than one above flashed open, a stream of
light gushed down the stairs, and a calm, well-modulated voice said
serenely: "Come right up, Mr. Narkom. I knew it would be you before your
motor turned the corner. I'd know the purr of your machine among a
thousand."
"Fancy that!" said Narkom, as he removed the hot wig and beard he wore,
and went up the stairs two at a time. "My dear Cleek, what an abnormal
animal you are! Had you"--entering the room where his now famous ally
(divested of the disguise which served for the rôle of "Captain
Burbage") stood leaning against the mantelpiece and calmly smoking a
cigarette--"had you by any chance a fox among your forbears?"
"Oh, no. The night is very still, the back window is open, and there's a
trifling irregularity in the operations of your detonator: that's all.
But tell me, you've got something else for me; something important
enough to bring you racing here at top speed in the middle of the night,
so to speak?"
"Yes. An amazing something. It's a letter. It arrived at headquarters by
the nine o'clock post to-night--or, rather, it's last night now. Merton,
of course, forwarded it to my home; but I was away--did not return until
after one, or I should have been here sooner. It's not an affair for
'the Yard' this time, Cleek; and I tell you frankly I do not like it."
"Why?"
"Well, it's from Paris. If you were to accept it, you--well, you know
what dangers Paris would have for you above all men. There's that
she-devil you broke with, that woman Margot. You know what she swore,
what she wrote back when you sent her that letter telling her that you
were done with her and her lot, and warning her never to set foot on
English soil again? If you were to run foul of her; if she were ever to
get any hint to your real identity----"
"She can't. She knows no more of my real history than you do; no more
than I actually know of hers. Our knowledge of each other began when we
started to 'pal' together; it ended when we split, eighteen months ago.
But about this letter? What is it? Why do you say that you don't like
it?"
"Well, to begin with, I'm afraid it is some trap of hers to decoy you
over there, get you into some unknown place----"
"There are no 'unknown places' in Paris so far as I am concerned. I know
every hole and corner of it, from the sewers on. I know it as well as I
know London, as well as I know Berlin--New York--Vienna--Edinburgh--Rome.
You couldn't lose me or trap me in any one of them. Is that the letter
in your hand? Good--then read it, please."
Narkom, obeying the request, read:
"TO THE SUPERINTENDENT OF POLICE, SCOTLAND YARD,
"DISTINGUISHED MONSIEUR:
"Of your grace and pity, I implore you to listen to the prayer
of an unhappy man whose honour, whose reason, whose very life
are in deadly peril, not alone of 'The Red Crawl,' but of
things he may not even name, dare not commit to writing, lest
this letter should go astray. It shall happen, monsieur, that
the whole world shall hear with amazement of that most
marvellous 'Cleek'--that great reader of riddles and unmasker
of evildoers who, in the past year, has made the police
department of England the envy of all nations; and it shall
happen also that I who dare not appeal to the police of France
appeal to the mercy, the humanity, of this great man, as it is
my only hope. Monsieur, you have his ear, you have his
confidence, you have the means at your command. Ah! ask him,
pray him, implore him for the love of God, and the sake of a
fellow-man, to come alone to the top floor of the house number
7 of the Rue Toison d'Or, Paris, at nine hours of the night of
Friday, the 26th inst., to enter into the darkness and say but
the one word 'Cleek' as a signal it is he, and I may come
forward and throw myself upon his mercy. Oh, save me, Monsieur
Cleek--save me! save me!
"There, that's the lot, and there's no signature," said Narkom, laying
down the letter. "What do you make of it, Cleek?"
"A very real, a very moving thing, Mr. Narkom. The cry of a human heart
in deep distress; the agonized appeal of a man so wrought up by the
horrors of his position that he forgets to offer a temptation in the way
of reward, and speaks of outlandish things as though they must be
understood of all. As witness his allusion to something which he calls
'The Red Crawl,' without attempting to explain the meaningless phrase.
Whatever it is, it is so real to him that it seems as if everybody must
understand."
"You think, then, that the thing is genuine?"
"So genuine that I shall answer its call, Mr. Narkom, and be alone in
the dark on the top floor of No. 7, Rue Toison d'Or to-morrow night as
surely as the clock strikes nine."
And that was how the few persons who happened to be in the quiet upper
reaches of the Rue Bienfaisance at half-past eight o'clock the next
evening came to see a fat, fussy, red-faced Englishman in a gray
frock-coat, white spats, and a shining topper, followed by a liveried
servant with a hat-box in one hand and a portmanteau in the other, so
conspicuous, the pair of them, that they couldn't have any desire to
conceal themselves, cross over the square before the Church of St.
Augustine, fare forth into the darker side passages, and move in the
direction of the street of the Golden Fleece.
They were, of course, Cleek and his devoted henchman Dollops--a youth he
had picked up out of the streets of London and given a home, and whose
especial virtues were a dog-like devotion to his employer, a facility
for eating without ever seeming to get filled, and fighting without ever
seeming to get tired.
"Lumme, guv'ner," whispered he, as they turned at last into the utter
darkness and desertion of the narrow Rue Toison d'Or, "if this is wot
yer calls Gay Paree, this precious black slit between two rows of
houses, I'll take a slice of the Old Kent Road with thanks. Not even so
much as a winkle-stall in sight, and me that empty my shirt-bosom's
a-chafing my blessed shoulder-blades!"
"You'll see plenty of life before the game's over, I warrant you,
Dollops. Now, then, my lad, here's a safe spot. Sit down on the hat-box
and wait. That's No. 7, that empty house with the open door, just across
the way. Keep your eye on it. I don't know how long I'll be, but if
anybody comes out before I do, mind you don't let him get away."
"No fear!" said Dollops sententiously. "I'll be after him as if he was a
ham sandwich, sir. Look out for my patent 'Tickle Tootsies' when you
come out, guv'ner. I'll sneak over and put 'em round the door as soon as
you've gone in." For Dollops, who was of an inventive turn of mind, had
an especial "man-trap" of his own, which consisted of heavy brown paper,
cut into squares, and thickly smeared over with a viscid, varnish-like
substance that adhered to the feet of anybody incautiously stepping upon
it, and so interfered with flight that it was an absolute necessity to
stop and tear the papers away before running with any sort of ease and
swiftness was possible. More than once this novel method of hampering
for a brief period the movement of a fugitive had stood him and his
master in good stead, and Dollops, who was rather proud of his
achievement, never travelled without a full supply of ready-cut papers
and a big collapsible tube of the viscid, ropy, varnish-like glue.
Meantime Cleek, having left the boy sitting on the hat-box in the
darkness, crossed the narrow street to the open doorway of No. 7, and,
without hesitation, stepped in. The place was as black as a pocket, and
had that peculiar smell which belongs to houses that have long stood
vacant. The house, nevertheless, was a respectable one, and, like all
the others, fronted on another street. The dark Toison d'Or was merely a
back passage used principally by the tradespeople for the delivery of
supplies. Feeling his way to the first of the three flights of stairs
which led upward into the stillness and gloom above, Cleek mounted
steadily until he found himself at length in a sort of attic--quite
windowless, and lit only by a skylight through which shone the
ineffectual light of the stars. It was the top at last. Bracing his back
against the wall, so that nobody could get behind him, and holding
himself ready for any emergency, he called out in a clear, calm voice:
"Cleek!"
Almost simultaneously there was a sharp metallic "snick," an electric
bulb hanging from the ceiling flamed out luminously, a cupboard door
flashed open, a voice cried out in joyous, perfect English: "Thank God
for a man!" And, switching round with a cry of amazement, he found
himself looking into the face and eyes of a woman.
And of all women in the world--Ailsa Lorne!
He sucked in his breath and his heart began to hammer.
"Miss Lorne!" he exclaimed, so carried out of himself that he scarcely
knew what he did. "Good heavens above!--Miss Lorne!"
"Oh!" she ejaculated, with a little startled cry, looking up, but
finding no trace of features that she knew in the round, red face of the
fat gray man before her. "You know me, then? How can you? But I forget!
You are English; you are that great and mysterious man Cleek; and
he--ah, he must surely know everything!"
"I know you, at least," he replied, shaking with mingled embarrassment
and delight at the knowledge that at last he was permitted to speak to
her, to have her speak to him. "I have seen you often in London; and to
find you here, like this? It fairly takes away my breath."
"The explanation is very simple, Mr. Cleek. I suppose you know that my
uncle, Sir Horace Wyvern, married again last spring? The new Lady Wyvern
soon let me know that I was a superfluous person in the household. I
left it, of course. Sir Horace would have pensioned me off if I had let
him. I couldn't bring myself to eat the bread of charity, however, and
when a former schoolmate offered me a post as her companion, I
gratefully accepted it. So for the past three months I have been living
here in Paris with Athalie and her father, the Baron de Carjorac."
"Baron de Carjorac? Do you mean the French Minister of the Interior, the
President of the Board of National Defences, Miss Lorne, that
enthusiastic old patriot, that rabid old spitfire whose one dream is the
wresting back of Alsace-Lorraine, the driving of the hated Germans into
the sea? Do you mean that ripping old firebrand?"
"Yes. But you'd not call him that if you could see the wreck, the broken
and despairing wreck, that six weeks of the Château Larouge, six weeks
of that horrible 'Red Crawl' have made of him."
"'The Red Crawl'? Good heavens! then that letter, that appeal for
help----"
"Came from him!" she finished excitedly. "It was he who was to have met
you here to-night, Mr. Cleek. This house is one he owns; he thought he
might with safety risk coming here, but--he can't! he can't! He knows
now that there is danger for him everywhere; that his every step is
tracked; that the snare which is about him has been about him,
unsuspected, for almost a year; that he dare not, absolutely dare not,
appeal to the French police, and that if it were known he had appealed
to you, he would be a dead man inside of twenty-four hours, and not only
dead, but--disgraced. Oh, Mr. Cleek," she stretched out two shaking
hands and laid them on his arm, lifted a white, imploring face to his,
"save him! save that dear broken old man! Ah, think! think! They are our
friends, our dear country's friends, these French people. Their welfare
is our welfare, ours is theirs! Oh, help him, save him, Mr. Cleek--for
his own sake--for mine--for France! Save him, and win my gratitude
forever!"
"That is a temptation that would carry me to the ends of the earth, Miss
Lorne. Tell me what the work is, and I will carry it through. What is
this incomprehensible thing of which both you and Baron de Carjorac have
spoken, this thing you allude to as 'The Red Crawl'?"
She gave a little shuddering cry and fell back a step, covering her face
with both hands.
"Oh!" she said, with a shiver of repulsion. "It is horrible--it is
necromancy beyond belief! Why, oh, why were we ever driven to that
horrible Château Larouge? Why could not fate have spared the Villa de
Carjorac? It could not have happened then!"
"Villa de Carjorac? That was the name of the baron's residence, I
believe. I remember reading in the newspapers some five or six weeks ago
that it was destroyed by fire, which originated--nobody knew how--in the
apartments of the late baroness in the very dead of the night. I thought
at the time it read suspiciously like the work of an incendiary,
although nobody hinted at such a thing. The Château Larouge I also have
a distinct memory of, as an old historic property in the neighbourhood
of St. Cloud. Speaking from past experience, I know that, although it is
in such a state of decay, and supposed to be uninhabitable, it has, in
fact, often been occupied at a period when the police and the public
believed it to be quite empty. Gentlemen of the Apache persuasion have
frequently made it a place of retreat. There is also an underground
passage, executed by those same individuals, which connects with the
Paris sewers. That, too, the police are unaware of. What can the ruined
Château Larouge possibly have to do with the affairs of the Baron de
Carjorac, Miss Lorne, that you connect them like this?"
"They have everything to do with them. The Château is no longer a ruin,
however. It was purchased, rebuilt, refitted by the Comtesse Susanne de
la Tour, Mr. Cleek, and she and her brother live there. So do we,
Athalie, Baron de Carjorac, and I. So, also, does the creature--the
thing--the abominable horror known as 'The Red Crawl.'"
"My dear Miss Lorne, what are you saying?"
"The truth, nothing but the truth!" she answered hysterically. "Oh, let
me begin at the beginning. You'll never understand unless I do. I'll
tell you in as few words as possible, as quickly as I can. It all began
last winter, when Athalie and her father were at Monte Carlo. There they
met Madame la Comtesse de la Tour and her brother, Monsieur Gaston
Merode. The baron has position but he has not wealth, Mr. Cleek. Athalie
is ambitious. She loves luxury, riches, a life of fashion, all the
things that boundless money can give; and when Monsieur Merode--who is
young, handsome, and said to be fabulously wealthy--showed a distinct
preference for her over all the other marriageable girls he met, she was
flattered out of her silly wits. Before they left Monte Carlo for Paris
everybody could see that he had only to ask her hand, to have it
bestowed upon him. For although the baron never has cared for the man,
Athalie rules him, and her every caprice is humoured.
"But, for all he was so ardent a lover, Monsieur Merode was slow in
coming to the important point. Perhaps his plans were not matured. At
any rate, he did not propose to Athalie at Monte Carlo; and, although he
and his sister returned to Paris at the same time as the baron and his
daughter, he still deferred the proposal."
"Has he not made it yet?"
"Yes, Mr. Cleek. He made it six weeks ago, to be exact, two nights
before the Villa de Carjorac was fired."
"You think it was fired, then?"
"I do now, although I had no suspicion of it at the time. Athalie
received her proposal on the Saturday, the baron gave his consent on the
Sunday, and on Monday night the villa was mysteriously burnt, leaving
all three of us without an immediate refuge. In the meantime, Madame la
Comtesse had purchased the ruin of the Château Larouge, and during the
period of her brother's deferred proposal was engaged in fitting it up
as an abode for herself and him. On the very day it was finished,
Monsieur Merode asked for Athalie's hand."
"Oho!" said Cleek, with a strong rising inflection. "I think I begin to
smell the toasting of the cheese. Of course, when the villa was burnt
out, Madame la Comtesse insisted that, as the fiancée of her brother,
Mademoiselle de Carjorac must make her home at the Château until the
necessary repairs could be completed; and, of course, the baron had to
go with her?"
"Yes," admitted Ailsa. "The baron accepted--Athalie would not have
allowed him to decline had he wished to--so we all three went there and
have been residing there ever since. On the night after our arrival an
alarming, a horrifying, thing occurred. It was while we were at dinner
that the conversation turned upon the supernatural, upon houses and
places that were reputed to be haunted, and then Madame la Comtesse made
a remarkable statement. She laughingly asserted that she had just
learned that, in purchasing the Château Larouge, she had also become the
possessor of a sort of family ghost. She said that she had only just
heard, from an outside source, that there was a horrible legend
connected with the place; in short, that for centuries it had been
reputed to be under a sort of spell of evil and to be cursed by a
dreadful visitant known as 'The Red Crawl'--a hideous and loathsome
creature. It was neither spider nor octopus, but horribly resembled both
and was supposed to 'appear' at intervals in the middle of the night
and, like the fabled giants of fairy tales, carry off 'lovely maidens
and devour them.'"
"Who is responsible for that ridiculous assertion, I wonder? I think I
may say that I know as much about the Château Larouge and its history as
anybody, Miss Lorne, but I never heard of this supposed 'legend' before
in all my life."
"So the baron, too, declared, laughing as derisively as any of us over
the story, although it is well known that he has a natural antipathy to
all crawling things, an abhorrence inherited from his mother, and has
been known to run like a frightened child from the appearance of a mere
garden spider."
"Oho!" said Cleek again. "I see! I see! The toasted cheese smells
stronger, and there's a distinct suggestion of the Rhine about it this
time. There's something decidedly German about that fabulous 'monster'
and that haunted Château, Miss Lorne. They are clever and careful
schemers, those German Johnnies. Of course, this amazing 'Red Crawl' was
proved to have an absolute foundation in fact, and equally, of course,
it 'appeared' to the Baron de Carjorac?"
"Yes--that very night. After we had all gone to bed, the house was
roused by his screams. Everybody rushed to his chamber, only to find him
lying on the floor in a state of collapse. The thing had been in his
room, he said. He had seen it, it had even touched him--a horrible,
hideous red reptile, with squirming tentacles, a huge, glowing body, and
eyes like flame. It had crept upon him out of the darkness, he knew not
from where. It had seized him, resisted all his wild efforts to tear
loose from it, and when he finally sank, overcome and fainting, upon the
floor, his last conscious recollection was of the loathsome thing
settling down upon his breast and running its squirming 'feelers' up and
down his body."
"Of course! Of course! That was part of the game. It was after
something. Something of the utmost importance to German interests.
That's why the Château Larouge was refitted, why the Villa de Carjorac
was burnt down, and why this Monsieur Gaston Merode became engaged to
Mademoiselle Athalie."
"Oh, how could you know that, Mr. Cleek? Nobody ever suspected. The
baron never confessed to any living soul until he did so to me, to-day,
and then only because he had to tell somebody, in order that the
appointment with you might be kept. How, then, could you guess?"
"By putting two and two together, Miss Lorne, and discovering that they
do not make five. The inference is very clear: Baron de Carjorac is
President of the Board of National Defences; Germany, in spite of its
public assurances to the contrary, is known by those who are 'on the
inside' to harbour a very determined intention of making a secret
attack, an unwarned invasion, upon England. France is the key to the
situation. If, without the warning that must come through the delay of
picking a quarrel and entering into an open war with the Republic, the
German army can swoop down in the night, cross the frontier, and gain
immediate possession of the ports of France, in five hours' time it can
be across the English Channel, and its hordes pouring down upon a
sleeping people. To carry out this programme, the first step would, of
course, be to secure knowledge of the number, location, manner of the
secret defences of France, the plans of fortification, the maps of the
'danger zone,' the documentary evidence of her strongest and weakest
points. And who so likely to be the guardian of these as the Baron de
Carjorac? That is how I know that 'The Red Crawl' was after something of
vital importance to German interests, Miss Lorne. That he got it, I know
from the fact that the baron, while hinting at disgrace and speaking of
peril to his own life, dared not confide in the French authorities and
ask the assistance of the French police. Moreover, if 'The Red Crawl'
had failed to secure anything, the baron, with his congenital loathing
of all crawling things, would have left the Château Larouge
immediately."
"Oh, to think that you guessed it so easily, and it was all such a
puzzle to me. I could not think, Mr. Cleek, why he did remain; why he
would not be persuaded to go, although every night was adding to the
horror of the thing and it seemed clear to me that he was going mad. Of
course, Madame la Comtesse and her brother tried to reason him out of
what he declared, tried to make him believe that it was all fancy, that
he did not really see the fearful thing; it was equally in vain that I
myself tried to persuade him to leave the place before his reason became
unsettled. Last night"--she paused, shuddered, put both hands over her
face, and drew in a deep breath--"last night, I, too, saw 'The Red
Crawl,' Mr. Cleek--I, too! I, too!"
"You, Miss Lorne?"
"Yes. I made up my mind that I would--that, if it existed, I would have
absolute proof of it. The countess and her brother had scoffed so
frequently, had promised the baron so often that they would set a
servant on guard in the corridor to watch, and then had said so often to
poor, foolish, easily persuaded Athalie that it was useless doing
anything so silly, as it was absolutely certain that her father only
imagined the thing, that I determined to take the step myself, unknown
to any of them. After everybody had gone to bed, I threw on a loose,
dark gown, crept into the corridor, and hid in a niche from which I
could see the door of the baron's room. I waited until after
midnight--long after--and then--and then----"
"Calm yourself, Miss Lorne. Then the thing appeared, I suppose?"
"Yes; but not before something equally terrible had happened. I saw the
door of the countess's room open; I saw the countess herself come out,
accompanied by the man who up till then I had believed, like everybody
else, was her brother."
"And who is not her brother, after all?"
"No, he is not. Theirs is a closer tie. I saw her kiss him. I saw her go
with him to an angle of the corridor, lift a rug, and raise a trap in
the floor."
"Hullo! Hullo!" ejaculated Cleek. "Then she, too, knows of the passage
which leads to the sewers. Clearly, then, this Countess de la Tour is
not what she seems, when she knows secrets that are known only to the
followers of---- Well, never mind. Go on, Miss Lorne, go on. You saw her
lift that trap; and what then?"
"Then there came up out of it the most loathsome-looking creature I have
ever seen: a huge, crawling, red shape that was like a blood-red spider,
with the eyes, the hooked beak, and the writhing tentacles of an
octopus. It made no sound, but it seemed to know her, to understand her,
for when she waved her hand toward the open door of her own room,
obeying that gesture, it dragged its huge bulk over the threshold, and
passed from sight. Then the man she called her brother kissed her again,
and as he descended into the darkness below the trap I heard her say
quite distinctly: 'Tell Marise that I will come as soon as I can; but
not to delay the revel. If I am compelled to forego it to-night, there
shall be a wilder one to-morrow, when Clodoche arrives.'"
"Clodoche? By Jupiter!" Cleek almost jumped as he spoke. "Now I know the
'lay'! No; don't ask me anything yet. Go on with the story, please. What
then, Miss Lorne, what then?"
"Then the man below said something which I could not hear and she
answered in these words: 'No, no; there is no danger. I will guard it
safely, and it shall go into no hands but Clodoche's. He and Count von
Hetzler will be there about midnight to-morrow to complete the deal and
pay over the money. Clodoche will want the fragment, of course, to show
to the count as a proof that it is the right one, as "an earnest" of
what the remainder is worth. And you must bring me that "remainder"
without fail, Gaston--you hear me?--without fail! I shall be there, at
the rendezvous, awaiting you, and the thing must be in our hands when
Von Hetzler comes. The work must be finished to-morrow night, even if
you and Serpice have to throw all caution to the winds and throttle the
old fool.' Then, as if answering a further question, she laughingly
added: 'Oh, get that fear out of your head. I'm not a bat, to be caught
napping. I'll give it to no one but Clodoche, and not even to him until
he gives the secret sign.' And then, Mr. Cleek, as she closed the trap I
heard the man call back to her 'Good-night' and give her a name I had
not heard before. We had always supposed that she had been christened
'Suzanne,' but as that man left he called her----"
"I know before you tell me--'Margot'!" interjected Cleek. "I guessed the
identity of this 'Countess de la Tour' from the moment you spoke of
Clodoche and that secret trap. Her knowledge of those two betrayed her
to me. Clodoche is a renegade Alsatian, a spy in the pay of the German
Government, and an old habitué of 'The Inn of the Twisted Arm,' where
the Queen of the Apaches and her pals hold their frequent revels. I can
guess the remainder of your story now. You carried this news to the
Baron de Carjorac, and he, breaking down, confessed to you that he had
lost something."
"Yes, yes--a dreadful 'something,' Mr. Cleek: the horrible thing that
has been making life an agony to him ever since. On the night when that
abominable 'Red Crawl' first overcame him there was upon his person a
most important document. It was a rough draft of the maps of
fortification and the plan of the secret defences of France, the
identical document from which was afterward transcribed the parchment
now deposited in the secret archives of the Republic. When Baron de
Carjorac recovered his senses after his horrifying experience----"
"That document was gone?"
"Part of it, Mr. Cleek, thank God, only a part! If it had been the
parchment itself, no such merciful thing could possibly have happened.
But the paper was old, much folding and handling had worn the creases
through, and when, in his haste, the secret robber grabbed it, whilst
that loathsome creature held the old man down, it parted directly down
the middle, and he got only a vertical section of each of its many
pages."
"Victoria! 'And the fool hath said in his heart There is no God,'"
quoted Cleek. "So, then, the hirelings of the enemy have only got half
what they are after; and, as no single sentence can be complete upon a
paper torn like that, nothing can be made of it until the other half is
secured, and our German friends are still 'up a gum-tree.' I know now
why the baron stayed on at the Château Larouge and why 'The Red Crawl'
is preparing to pay him another visit to-night: He hoped, poor chap, to
find a clue to the whereabouts of the fragment he had lost; and that
thing is after the fragment he still retains. Well, it will be a long,
long day before either of those two fragments falls into German hands."
"Oh, Mr. Cleek, you think you can get the stolen paper back? You believe
you can outwit those dreadful people and save the Baron de Carjorac's
honour and his life?"
"Miss Lorne"--he took her hand in his and lifted it to his lips--"Miss
Lorne, I thank you for giving me the chance! If you will do what I ask
you, be where I ask you in two hours' time, so surely as we two stand
here this minute, I will put back the German calendar by ten years at
least. They drink 'To the day,' those German Johnnies, but by to-morrow
morning the English hand you are holding will have given them reason to
groan over the night!"
II
It was half-past eleven o'clock. Madame la Comtesse, answering a reputed
call to the bedside of a dying friend, had departed early, and was not
to be expected back, she said, until to-morrow noon. The servants--given
permission by the gentleman known in the house as Monsieur Gaston
Merode, and who had graciously provided a huge char-à-banc for the
purpose--had gone in a body to a fair over in the neighbourhood of
Sevres, and darkness and stillness filled the long, broad corridor of
the Château Larouge. Of a sudden, however, a mere thread of sound
wavered through the silence, and from the direction of Miss Lorne's room
a figure in black, with feet muffled in thick woollen stockings, padded
to an angle of the passage, lifted a trap carefully hidden beneath a
huge tiger-skin rug, and almost immediately Cleek's head rose up out of
the gap.
"Thank God you managed to do it. I was horribly afraid you would not,"
said Ailsa in a palpitating whisper.
"You need not have been," he answered. "I know a dozen places besides
'The Inn of the Twisted Arm' from which one can get into the sewers.
I've screwed a bolt and socket on the inner side of this trap in case
of an emergency, and I've carried a few things into the passage for
'afterward.' I suppose that fellow Merode, as he calls himself, is in
his room, waiting?"
"Yes; and, although he pretends to be alone to-night, he has other men
with him, hideous, ruffianly looking creatures, whom I saw him admit
after the servants had gone. The countess has left the house and gone I
don't know where."
"I do, then. Make certain that she's at 'The Twisted Arm,' waiting,
first, for the coming of Clodoche, and, second, for the arrival of this
precious 'Merode' with the remaining half of the document. I've sent
Dollops there to carry out his part of the programme, and when once I
get the password Margot requires before she will hand over the paper,
the game will be in my hands entirely. They are desperate to-night, Miss
Lorne, and will stop at nothing--not even murder. There! the rug's
replaced. Quick! lead me to the baron's room, there's not a minute to
waste."
She took his hand and led him tiptoe through the darkness, and in
another moment he was in the Baron de Carjorac's presence.
"Oh, monsieur, God forever bless you!" exclaimed the broken old man,
throwing himself on his knees before Cleek.
"Out with the light--out with the light!" exclaimed he, ducking down
suddenly. "Were you mad to keep it burning till I came, with that,"
pointing to a huge bay window opening upon a balcony, "uncurtained and
the grounds, no doubt, alive with spies?"
Miss Lorne sprang to the table where the baron's reading-lamp stood,
jerked the cord of the extinguisher, and darkness enveloped the room,
darkness tempered only by the faint gleams of the moon streaming over
the balcony and through the panes of the uncurtained window.
Cleek, on his knees beside the kneeling baron, whipped a tiny electric
torch from his pocket and, shielding its flare with his scooped hands,
flashed it upon the old man's face.
"Simple as rolling off a log--exactly like your pictures," he commented.
"I'll 'do' you as easily as I 'do' Clodoche and I could 'do' him in the
dark from memory. Quick," snicking off the light of the electric torch
and rising to his feet, "into your dressing-room, baron. I want that
suit of clothes; I want that ribbon, that cross--and I want them at
once. You're a bit thicker set than me, but I've got my Clodoche rig on
underneath this, and it will fill out your coat admirably and make us as
like as two peas. Give me five minutes, Miss Lorne, and I promise you a
surprise."
He flashed out of sight with the baron as he ceased speaking; and Ailsa,
creeping to the window and peering cautiously out, was startled
presently by a voice at her elbow saying, in a tone of extreme
agitation, "Oh, mademoiselle, I fear, even yet I fear, that this Anglais
monsieur attempts too moch, and that the papier he is gone forever."
"Oh, no, baron, no!" she said soothingly, as she laid a solicitous hand
upon his arm. "Do believe in him; do have faith in him. Ah, if you only
knew----"
"Thanks. I reckon I shall pass muster!" interposed Cleek's voice; and it
was only then she realized. "You'll find the baron in the other room,
Miss Lorne, looking a little grotesque in that gray suit of mine. In
with you, quickly; go with him through the other door, and get below
before those fellows begin to stir. Get out of the house as quietly and
as expeditiously as you can. With God's help, I'll meet you at the Hotel
Louvre in the morning, and put the missing fragment in the baron's
hands."
"And may God give you that help!" she answered fervently, as she moved
toward the dressing-room door. "Ah, what a man! What a man!"
Then in a twinkling she was gone, and Cleek stood alone in the silent
room. Giving her and the baron time to get clear of the other one, he
went in on tiptoe, locked the door through which they had passed, put
the key in his pocket, and returned. Going to the door which led from
the main room into the corridor, he took the key from the lock of that,
too, replacing it upon the outer side, and leaving the door itself
slightly ajar.
"Now then for you, Mr. 'The Red Crawl,'" he said, as he walked to the
baron's table, and, sinking down into a deep chair beside it, leaned
back with his eyes closed as if in sleep, the faint light of the moon
half-revealing his face. "I want that password, and I'll get it, if I
have to choke it out of your devil's throat! And she said that she would
be grateful to me all the rest of her life! Only 'grateful,' I wonder?
Is nothing else possible? What a good, good thing a real woman is!"
* * * * *
How long was it that he had been reclining there waiting before his
strained ears caught the sound of something like the rustling of silk
shivering through the stillness, and he knew that at last it was coming?
It might have been ten minutes, it might have been twenty--he had no
means of determining--when he caught that first movement, and, peering
through the slit of a partly opened eye, saw the appalling thing drag
its huge bulk along the balcony and, with tentacles writhing, slide over
the low sill of the window, and settle down in a glowing red heap upon
the floor. Fake though he knew it to be, Cleek could not repress a swift
rush and prickle of "goose-flesh" at sight of it.
For a few seconds it lay dormant; then one red feeler shot out, then
another, and another, and it began to edge its way across the carpet to
the chair. Cleek lay still and waited, his heavy breathing sounding
regularly, his head thrown back, his limp hands lying loosely, palms
upward. Nearer and nearer crept the loathsome, red, glowing thing.
It crawled to his feet, and still he was quiet; it slid first one
tentacle and then another over his knees and up toward his breast, and
still he made no movement; then, as it rose until its hideous beaked
countenance was close to his own, his hands flashed upward and clamped
together like a vise--clamped on a palpitating human throat. In the
twinkling of an eye the tentacles were wrapped about him, and he and
"The Red Crawl" were rolling over and over on the floor and battling
together.
"Serpice, you low-bred hound, I know you!" he whispered, as they
struggled. "You can't utter a cry. You shan't utter a cry to bring help.
I'll throttle you, you beastly renegade, that's willing to sell his own
country--throttle you, do you hear?--before you shall bring any of your
mates to the rescue. Oh, you've not got a weak old man to fight with
this time! Do you know me? It's the 'Cracksman,' the 'Cracksman' who
went over to the police. If you doubt it, now that we're in the
moonlight, look up and see my face. Oho! you recognize me, I see. Well,
you will die looking at me, you dog, if you deny me what I'm after. I'll
loosen my grip enough for you to whisper, and no more. Now what's the
password that Clodoche must give to Margot to-night at 'The Twisted
Arm'? Tell me what it is; if you want your life, tell me what it is?"
"I'll see you dead first!" came in a whisper from beneath the hideous
mask. Then, as Cleek's fingers clamped tight again, and the battle began
anew, one long, thin arm shot out from amongst the writhing tentacles,
one clutching hand gripped the leg of the table and, with a wrench and a
twist, brought it crashing to the floor with a sound that a deaf man
might have heard.
And in an instant there was pandemonium.
A door flew open, and, clashing heavily against the wall, sent an echo
reeling along the corridor; then came a clatter of rustling feet, a
voice cried out excitedly: "Come on! come on! He's had to kill the old
fool to get it!" and Cleek had just time to tear loose from the shape
with which he was battling, and dodge out of the way when the man Merode
lurched into the room, with half a dozen Apaches tumbling in at his
heels.
"Serpice!" he cried, rushing forward, as he saw the gasping red shape
upon the floor; "Serpice! Mon Dieu! what is it?"
"The Cracksman!" he gulped. "Cleek!--the Cracksman who went against us!
Catch him! stop him!"
"The Cracksman!" howled out Merode, twisting round in the darkness and
reaching blindly for the haft of his dirk. "Nom de Dieu! Where?"
And almost before the last word was uttered a fist like a sledge-hammer
shot out, caught him full in the face, and he went down with a whole
smithy of sparks flashing and hissing before his eyes.
"There!" answered Cleek, as he bowled him over. "Gentlemen of the
sewers, my compliments. You'll make no short cut to 'The Twisted Arm'
to-night!"
Then, like something shot from a catapult, he sprang to the door,
whisked through it, banged it behind him, turned the key, and went
racing down the corridor like a hare.
"It must be sheer luck now!" he panted, as he reached the angle and,
kicking aside the rug, pulled up the trap. "They'll have that door down
in a brace of shakes, and be after me like a pack of ravening wolves.
The race is to the swift this time, gentlemen, and you'll have to take a
long way round if you mean to head me off."
Then he passed down into the darkness, closed the trap-door after him,
shot into its socket the bolt he had screwed there, flashed up the
light of his electric torch, and, _without_ the password, turned toward
the sewers, and ran, and ran, and ran!
III
It lacked but a minute of the stroke of twelve, and the revels at "The
Twisted Arm"--wild at all times, but wilder to-night than ever--were at
their noisiest and most exciting pitch. And why not? It was not often
that Margot could spend a whole night with her rapscallion crew, and she
had been here since early evening and was to remain here until the dawn
broke gray over the housetops and the murmurs of the workaday world
awoke anew in the streets of the populous city. It was not often that
each man and each abandoned woman present knew to a certainty that he or
she would go home through the mists of the gray morning with a fistful
of gold that had been won without labour or the taking of any personal
risk; and to-night the half of four hundred thousand francs was to be
divided among them.
No wonder they had made a carnival of it, and tricked themselves out in
gala attire; no wonder they had brought a paste tiara and crowned
Margot. Margot, was in flaming red to-night, and looked a devil's
daughter indeed, with her fire-like sequins and her red ankles twinkling
as she threw herself into the thick of the dance and kicked, and
whirled, and flung her bare arms about to the lilt of the music and the
fluting of her own happy laughter.
"Per Baccho! The devil's in her to-night!" grinned old Marise, the
innkeeper, from her place behind the bar, where the lid of the
sewer-trap opened. "She has not been like it since the Cracksman broke
with her, Toinette. But that was before your time, ma fille. Mother of
the heavens! but there was a man for you! There was a king that was
worthy of such a queen. Name of disaster! that she could not hold him,
that the curse of virtue sapped such a splendid tree, and that she could
take up with another after him!"
"Why not?" cried Toinette, as she tossed down the last half of her
absinthe and twitched her flower-crowned head. "A kingdom must have a
king, ma mere; and Dieu! but he is handsome, this Monsieur Gaston
Merode! And if he carries out his part of the work to-night he will be
worthy of the homage of all."
"'If' he carries it out--'if'!" exclaimed Marise, with a lurch of the
shoulders and a flirt of her pudgy hand. "Soul of me! that's where the
difference lies. Had it been the Cracksman, there would have been no
'if'. It were done as surely as he attempted it. Name of misfortune! I
had gone into a nunnery had I lost such a man. But she----"
The voice of Margot shrilled out and cut into her words.
"Absinthe, Marise, absinthe for them all and set the score down to me!"
she cried. "Drink up, my bonny boys; drink up, my loyal maids.
Drink--drink till your skins will hold no more. No one pays to-night but
me!"
They broke into a cheer, and bearing down in a body upon Marise, threw
her into a fever of haste to serve them.
"To Margot!" they shouted, catching up the glasses and lifting them
high. "Vive la Reine des Apache! Vive la compagnie! To Margot! to
Margot!"
She swept them a merry bow, threw them a laughing salute, and drank the
toast with them.
"Messieurs, my love--mesdames et mademoiselles, my admiration," she
cried, with a ripple of joy-mad laughter. "To the success of the
Apaches, to the glory of four hundred thousand francs, and to the quick
arrival of Serpice and Gaston." Then, her upward glance catching sight
of the musicians sipping their absinthe in the little gallery above,
she flung her empty glass against the wall behind them, and shook with
laughter as they started in alarm and spilled the green poison when they
dodged aside. "Another dance, you dawdlers!" she cried. "Does Marise pay
you to sit there like mourners? Strike up, you mummies, or you pay
yourselves for what you drink to-night. Soul of desires!"--as the
musicians grabbed up their instruments, and a leaping, lilting,
quick-beating air went rollicking out over the hubbub--"a quadrille, you
angels of inspiration! Partners, gentlemen! Partners, ladies! A
quadrille! A quadrille!"
They set up a many-throated cheer, flocked out with her upon the floor,
and in one instant feet were flying, skirts were whirling, laughter and
jest mingling with waving arms and kicking toes, and the whole place was
in one mad riot of delirious joy.
And in the midst of this there rolled up suddenly a voice crying, as
from the bowels of the earth, "Hola! Hola! La! la! loi!" the cry of the
Apache to his kind.
"Mother of delights! It is one of us, and it comes from the sewer
passage!" shrilled out Marise, as the dancers halted and Margot ran,
with fleet steps, toward the bar. "Listen! listen! They come to you,
Margot--Serpice and Gaston. The work is done."
"And before even Clodoche or Von Hetzler have arrived!" she replied
excitedly. "Give them light, give them welcome. Be quick!"
Marise ducked down, loosened the fastenings of the trap-door, flung it
back, and, leaning over the gap with a light in her hand, called down
into the darkness, "Hola! Hola! La! la! loi! Come on, comrades, come
on!"
The caller obeyed instantly. A hand reached up and gripped the edge of
the flooring, and out of the darkness into the light emerged the figure
of a man in a leather cap and the blue blouse of a mechanic. He was a
pale, fox-faced, fox-eyed fellow, with lank, fair hair, a brush of
ragged yellow beard, and the look and air of the sneak and spy indelibly
branded upon him.
It was Cleek.
"Clodoche!" exclaimed Marise, falling back in surprise.
"Clodoche!" echoed Margot. "Clodoche--and from the sewers?"
"Yes--why not?" he answered, his tongue thick-burred with the accent of
Alsace, his shifting eyes flashing toward the huge window behind the
bar, where, in the moonlight, the narrow passage leading down to the
door of "The Twisted Arm" gaped evilly between double rows of scowling,
thief-sheltering houses. "Name of the fiend! Is this the welcome you
give the bringer of fortune, Margot?"
"But from the sewer?" she repeated. "It is incomprehensible, cher ami.
You were to pilot Von Hetzler over from the Café Dupin to the square
beyond there"--pointing to the window--"to leave him waiting a moment
while you came on to see if it were safe for him to enter; and now you
come from the sewer, from the opposite direction entirely!"
"Mother of misfortunes! You had done the same yourself--you, Lantier;
you, Clopin; you Cadarousse; any of you, had you been in my boots," he
made answer. "I stole a leaf from your own book, earlier in the evening.
Garrotted a fellow with jewels on him, in the Rue Noir, near the Market
Place, and nearly got into 'the stone bottle' for doing it. He was a
decoy, set there by the police for some of you fellows, and there was a
sergeant de ville after me like a whirlwind. I was not fool enough to
turn the chase in this direction, so I doubled and twisted until it was
safe to dive into the tavern of Fouchard, and lay in hiding there.
Fouchard let his son carry a message to the count for me, and will guide
him to the square. When it grew near the time to come, Fouchard let me
down into the sewer passage from there. Get on with your dance, silence
is always suspicious. An absinthe, Marise! Have Gaston and Serpice
arrived yet with the rest of the document, Margot la reine?"
"Not yet," she answered. "But one may expect them at any minute."
"Where is the fragment we already possess?"
"Here," tapping her bodice and laughing, "tenderly shielded, mon ami;
and why not? Who would not mother a thing that is to bring one four
hundred thousand francs?"
"Let me see it? It must be shown to the count, remember. He will take no
risks, come not one step beyond the square, until he is certain that it
is the paper his Government requires. Let me have it. Let me take it to
him--quick!"
She waved aside airily the hand he stretched toward her, and danced into
the thick of the resumed quadrille.
"Ah, non! non! non!" she laughed, as he came after her. "The conditions
were of your own making, cher ami; we break no rules even among
ourselves."
"Soul of a fool! But if the count comes to the square--he is due there
now, mignonne--and I am not there to show him the thing---- Margot, for
the love of God, let me have the paper!"
"Let me have the sign, the password!"
Cleek snapped at a desperate chance because there was nothing else to
do, because he knew that at any moment now the end might come.
"'When the purse will not open, slit it!'" he hazarded,
desperately--choosing, on the off-chance of its correctness, the
password of the Apache.
"It is not the right one! It is by no means the right one!" she made
reply, backing away from him suddenly, her absinthe-brightened eyes
deriding him, her absinthe-sharpened laughter mocking him. "Your
thoughts are in the Bois, cher ami. What is the password of the
brotherhood to the cause of Germany, stupid? It is not right, non! non!
It is not right!"
The cause of Germany! At the words the truth rushed like a flash of
inspiration across Cleek's mind. The cause of Germany! what a dolt he
was not to have thought of that before! There was but one phrase ever
used for that among the Kaiser's people, and that phrase----
"'To the day!'" he said, with a burst of sudden laughter. "My wits are
in the moon to-night, la reine. 'To the day,' of course--'To the day'!"
And even before she replied to him, he knew that he had guessed aright.
"Bravo!" she said, with a little hiccough, for the absinthe, of which
she had imbibed so freely to-night, was beginning to take hold of her.
"A pretty conspirator to forget how to open the door he himself locked!
It is well I know thee; it is well it was our word in the beginning, or
I had been suspicious, silly! Wait but a moment"--putting her hand to
her breast and beginning to unfasten her bodice--"wait but a moment,
Monsieur Twitching-Fingers, and the thing shall be in your hand."
The strain, the relief, were all too great for even such nerves as
Cleek's, and if he had not laughed aloud, he knew that he must have
cheered.
"Oho! you grin because one's fingers blunder with eagerness," hiccoughed
Margot, thinking his laughter was for the trouble she had in getting the
fastenings of her bodice undone. "Peste, monsieur! may not a lady well
be modestly careful when---- Name of the devil! what's that?"
It was the note of a whistle shrilling down the narrow passage
without--the passage where Dollops, in Apache garb, had been set on
watch; and, hearing it, Cleek clamped his jaws together and breathed
hard. A single whistle, short and sharp, such as this, was the signal
agreed upon that the real Clodoche was coming, and that he and Count
von Hetzler had already appeared in the square beyond.
"Soul of a sloth! will not that hurry you, la reine?" he said excitedly,
in reply to Margot's startled question. "It is the signal Fouchard's son
was to give when he and Von Hetzler arrived at the place where I am to
meet them. Give me the paper quick! Tear the fastenings, if they will
not come undone else. One cannot keep a Von Hetzler waiting like a
lackey for a scrap of ribbon and a bit of lace."
"Pardieu! they have kept better men than he waiting many an hour before
this," she made reply. "But you shall have the thing in a twinkling now.
There! but one more knot, and then it is in your hands."
And, had the fates not decreed otherwise, so, indeed, it would have
been. But then, just then, when another second would have brought the
paper into view, another moment seen it shut tight in the grip of his
itching fingers, disaster came and blotted out his hopes!
Without hint or warning, without sign or sound to lessen the shock of
it, the trap-door behind the bar flew up and backward with a crash that
sent Marise and her assistants darting away from it in shrieking alarm;
a babel of excited voices sounded, rushing feet scuffled and flashed
along the shaking floor, and Merode and his followers tumbled
helter-skelter into the room.
Cleek, counting on the bolt which kept them from entering the passage
from the corridor of the Château Larouge and thus forcing them to take a
long, roundabout journey to "The Twisted Arm," had not counted on their
shortening that journey by entering the passage from Fouchard's tavern,
doing, in fact, the very thing which he had declared to Margot he
himself had done. And lo! here they were, howling and crowding about
him, dirks in their hands and devils in their eyes and hearts--and the
paper not his yet!
A clamour rose as they poured in; the dancers ceased to dance; the music
ceased to play; and Margot, shutting a tight clutch on the loosened part
of her half-unfastened bodice, swung away from Cleek's side, and flew in
a panic to Merode.
"Gaston!" she cried, knowing from his wild look and the string of oaths
and curses his followers were blurting out that something had gone
amiss. "Gaston, mon coeur! Name of disaster! what is wrong?"
"Everything is wrong!" he flung back excitedly. "That devil, that
renegade, that fury, Cleek, the Cracksman, is here. He came to the
rescue out of the very skies and all but killed Serpice!"
"Cleek!" Fifty shrill voices joined Margot's in that screaming cry;
fifty more dirks flashed into view. "Cleek in France? Cleek? Where is
he? Which way did he go? Where's the narker--where--where?"
"Here, if anywhere!"
"Here?"
"Yes, unless you've been fooled, and let him get away! He knows about
the paper, and is after it, Margot; and if any one has come up from the
sewers within the past twenty minutes----"
They knew instantly and a roar of excited voices yelled out: "Clodoche!
Clodoche! Clodoche!" as, snarling and howling like a pack of wolves,
they bore down with a rush on the blue-bloused figure that was creeping
toward the door.
But as they sprang it sprang also! It was neck or nothing now. Cleek
realized it, and, throwing himself headlong over the bar, clutched
frantically at the lever which he knew controlled the flow of gas,
jammed it down with all his strength, shut off the light, and, grabbing
up a chair, sent it crashing through the window.
The crowd surged on toward the wrecked bar with a yell, surged from all
directions, and then abruptly stopped. For the sudden darkness within
had made more prominent the moonlighted passage without; and there,
scuttling away in alarm from this sudden uproar and the outward flying
of that hurled chair, a figure which but a moment before had come
skulking to the window could now be seen.
"There he goes--there! there!" shrilled out a chorus of excited voices,
as the yellow-bearded, blue-bloused figure came into view. "After him!
Catch him! Knife him!"
In an instant they were at the door, tumbling out into the darkness,
pouring up the passage in hot pursuit. And it was at that moment the
balance changed again. Those who were in the front rank of the pursuers
were in time to see a lithe, thin figure, dressed as one of their own
kind, spring up in the path of that other figure, jump on it, grip it,
clap a huge square of sticky brown paper over the howling mouth of it,
and bear it, struggling and kicking, to the ground.
In another second they, too, were upon it, swarming over it like rats,
digging and hacking at it with their dirks. And so they were still
hacking at it--although it had long since ceased to move or to make any
sound--when Merode came up and called them to a halt.
"Drag it inside; let Margot have a thrust at it. It is her right. Pull
off the dog's disguise, and bring me the plucky one that captured him.
He shall have absinthe enough to swim in, the little king! Off with it
all, Lanchere. First, the plaster, that's right. Now, the wig and beard,
and after that---- What's that you say? The beard is real? The hair is
real? They will not come off? Name of the devil! what are you saying?"
"The truth, mon roi--the truth! Mother of disasters! It is not the
Cracksman--it is the real Clodoche we have killed!"
For one moment a sort of panic held them, swayed them, and befogged
their brains; then of a sudden Merode howled out "Get back! Get back!
The fellow's in there still!" and led a blind race down the passage to
the bar where they had seen Cleek last. It was still in darkness; but an
eager hand, gripping the lever, turned on the gas again and matches
everywhere were lifted to the jets.
And when the light flamed out and the room was again ablaze they knew
that they might as well hope to call back yesterday as dream of finding
Cleek again. For there on the floor, her limp hands turned palms upward,
a chloroformed cloth folded over her mouth and nose, lay the figure of
Margot, her bodice torn wide open and the paper forever gone!
* * * * *
It was five minutes later when the Count von Hetzler, crouching back in
the shadow of the square and waiting for the return of Clodoche, heard a
dull, whirring sound that was unmistakably the purr of a motor throb
through the stillness, and, leaning forward, saw a limousine whirl up
out of the darkness, cut across the square, and like a flash dash off
westward. Yet in the brief instant it took to go past the place where he
waited there was time for him to catch the sharp click of a lowered
window, see the clear outlines of a man's face looking out, and to hear
a voice from within the vehicle speak.
"Herr Count," it said in clear, incisive tones. "A positively infallible
recipe for the invasion of England: Wait until the Channel freezes and
then skate over. Good-night!"