table. It struck the surface with a clank and as he pulled the cloth
away a regular flood of gold pieces covered the papers where the General
had been writing.
"Part of the story, sir," said Beany. And then talking together, or
taking turns, as the spirit moved them, the boys pieced out the account
of their adventures. The part that Beany kept harking back to was the
presence of the prisoners in the big room. He described carefully and
accurately the appearance of the young soldier and told as well as he
could about the limp, unconscious girl who had been carried out into the
dark garden. Beany shuddered as he spoke.
"I am sure the girl was dead, sir. She laid there for hours, I guess,
and she never moved at all, never batted an eyelash. And she was
white.... I never saw anybody so white. It was as though all her blood
had been drained out of her."
"Was she wounded?" asked the General.
"She must have been, sir," answered Beany. "I saw blood, just a little
of it running down her wrist under her sleeve. She had nice clothes on,
and I had a hunch all the time that I ought to know who she was; but I
couldn't tell. Wish we knew what they did with them. When it comes
light, General, I can show you just where the door is. I am sure I know
where it opens."
"It is light now," said the General, pointing to the window. Every one
looked. Sure enough, the whole sky was a mass of pale gold and pink and
greenish blue, as lovely and soft and joyous as though the distant
rumble of the big guns was not shaking the casement as they spoke. It
was light; morning had come.
The General ordered coffee and rolls and insisted on both boys eating
something. They were tired and heavy eyed but excited at the thought of
unraveling perhaps a little more of the mystery of the past night.
When at last the General dismissed them with a few terse orders, they
sped ahead of their escort through the silent garden, fearless and
curious and unconscious of the careful marksmen who followed, protecting
each foot of their advance.
Beany had spoken the truth. With the sureness of a young hound he took
his way through a wilderness of stones and bricks and beams and plaster
through the tangled, torn old garden, and round to a spot marked by what
seemed to be a clump of dense bushes like low growing lilacs.
Approaching this, Beany parted the branches and peered in. Then he drew
back with a cry of horror.
"Look!" he whispered.
It was indeed the ambush set over the outside entrance to the dungeons.
Down in the depths of the hole that yawned under the encircling bushes
something was tumbled in a pitiful, distorted heap. Eagerly a half dozen
men leaped down and with careful hands straightened out the two forms
lying in the bloody ooze. One after the other they were lifted to the
surface.
The man was quite dead but the girl still lived, though breathing
feebly.
Placing her on an improvised stretcher, a couple of the men hurried away
with her to the hospital while a couple more knelt beside the dead boy
and searched carefully through his torn and blood-stained clothing for
papers, letters--anything that could be used as clues to his identity.
There was not a scrap left to guide them. The young officer's pockets
had been turned inside out. Even the hems in his tunic and breeches had
been slit and the soles had been torn from his shoes. If there had been
papers of any sort secreted about him, they were gone--carried away by
the ruthless hands that had slain him.
Leaving a guard beside the body, the others leaped boldly into the
shallow pit and lifted the heavy bar which held the massive nail-studded
oaken door. It opened inward, and Beany led the way through the passage
into the chamber where he had sat bound, gagged and waiting for the
relentless hands of the clock to reach the moment of his doom. He
showed the device, and then, lighting the stubs of candles, they went
into the inner room. The dungeons were dark as midnight, even in the
clear morning light.
A careful search was made of the rooms. They stamped on the floors,
rapped on the walls with pistol butts, ripped up the silken covers and
the thick mattresses, but found nothing. The men finally stopped their
search, and gathered in a group around the massive table. Beany,
sitting on the edge of the table, jounced up and down and thought that
he had never seen a piece of furniture quite so solid. He took out a
penknife and tried to whittle the edge but the keen blade scarcely made
an impression on the ironwood seasoned for ages. Porky, watching his
brother, listened to the conversation.
"Somewhere down here there is a hiding place for papers or money, or
perhaps both," said one of the officers, a keen-faced, thoughtful man,
studying the room as he could see it in the flickering light of the two
candles which, now burned down to the merest stubs, afforded a dim,
uncertain light.
"We have given it a pretty thorough combing over," said another officer,
frowning.
"I can't help it," stubbornly answered the other. "It is in just such
places as this where valuable secrets are often hidden."
"What about the dynamite?" demanded some one else. "It does not seem as
though they would hide anything of any value to themselves in a spot
that they were willing to blow up."
"A bomb that size would not have wrecked this room. Did you notice the
thickness of the walls?"
The talk went on while Beany whittled and pried away industriously at
the table edge. He found a crack in the wood and pried his knife blade
into that. The blade entered in a tantalizing manner, slipped smoothly
along, then struck metal. Beany pushed. Porky, who was watching, came
closer and peered down the crack. Beany pushed harder, pushed as hard
as he could, and suddenly felt himself flung off the table as the big
top flew up and hurled him aside.
Powerful springs had opened the two heavy slabs of oak that formed the
table. Two pieces now stood open like a pair of doors and within lay a
long, flat box which completely filled the space. The box was of iron,
heavily barred and padlocked. Four soldiers pried it from its place and,
escorted by the whole party, it was carried to General Pershing, still
working at his desk.
Once more the boys had unearthed a mystery.
*CHAPTER VIII*
*THE CELLAR'S SECRET*
Porky and Beany were too tired to care what happened next and, taking
quick advantage of a brief smile and nod of dismissal from the General,
they made their way to their quarters and soon were as sound asleep as
though they were lying on the softest down. They slept and slept,
losing all track of time, and by the General's orders were undisturbed.
When they finally woke, really wide awake, they found that a whole day
and a night had passed since the early dawn when they had staggered off
to bed.
They woke at the same instant, as was their habit, and sitting bolt
upright, stared unblinkingly at the young officer sitting at the window
writing.
"Morning, Lieutenant," said Porky, rubbing his eyes.
"What's the time, sir?" said Beany, looking curiously at his wrist
watch.
"Yours stopped too?" asked Porky. "Mine has. Funny!"
"Not so very funny," said Lieutenant Parker, closing his writing tablet.
"You have been asleep since yesterday morning, and I imagine the watches
ran down."
"Yesterday morning!" gasped Porky. "Why didn't some one call us?"
"General's orders," said the Lieutenant. He laughed, "Gee, I wish he
would order me to bed for a week. You can bet I would go!"
"Well, it makes me mad to sleep like this," said Porky in irritation.
"What all have we missed, anyhow?"
"Nothing much," said the Lieutenant. "The biggest drive of the war is
on and to-morrow General Pershing with his staff will make the trip
along the front line trenches. I hope he counts me in on that."
"You liked to be in the trenches, didn't you?" asked Porky, stooping to
lace his puttees.
"You are right I did," said Lieutenant Parker, wrinkling his smooth
young forehead. "I came over to fight, and it was just my luck to get
this measly scratch on my head, and blamed if they didn't put me here in
this office doing paper work!"
"Well, you got to give your skull time to get well, haven't you?" asked
Beany. "It was cracked, wasn't it?"
"No, just a piece scooped out of it," said the Lieutenant in a bored
tone.
The boys grinned. Lieutenant Parker was one of the best friends they
had, and they had learned that nothing teased him like being quizzed
about the deep, palpitating scar that creased his dark head, the truth
being that he had received the wound in an encounter that had won him
the coveted French war cross with the palms. Porky and Beany considered
modesty in others little less than a sin. They were always so thirsty
for tales of blood and glory that they could not see why any one should
hesitate to tell every possible detail of any adventure. It happened,
strangely enough, that they did not apply the same rule to their own
conduct. To get details out of the Potter twins was, as their own
father said, like drawing nails out of a green oak board, accompanied by
screeches of protest. The boys had had the Lieutenant's story, however,
and they harked back to the news of the day.
"I am going on that hike," said Porky, standing up and stamping himself
comfortably into his clothes.
"So'm I," said his brother, likewise stamping.
"Try for something else, kid," said the Lieutenant. "You can't get in
on this. It is strictly staff."
"Watch me!" said young Porky, the cocksure. He hurried to the door and
disappeared, while Beany, a trifle slower in his dressing, roared, "Wait
for me!"
A muttered response of some sort was the only satisfaction given.
Beany grinned. "He is always so sudden!" he complained, addressing the
Lieutenant.
"Might as well stay here until he comes back. I never like to butt in on
Porky's talky-talks. He most generally knows what he wants to say, and
he don't need any help in getting it out of his system. I certainly
hope we can go with the General. You are always yelling about that old
silver plate you have on your topknot. Look at us: seems like we just
can't get into a trench. Honest Injun, I'm so sick of this old
chateau--"
"I never did see such a pair!" said Lieutenant Parker. "Didn't you have
enough of an adventure the other night to last you two or three days?"
He was going on, when Porky burst into the room. He threw up his hat.
"Better, much better than I ever hoped," he crowed.
"Hand it out!" demanded Beany anxiously.
"Why, I was going to give the General a great line of talk, and I didn't
have a chance to do a thing but salute. He was talking to a French
officer and the minute he went out, the General just said, 'All right
to-day, young man?' I said, 'Yes, sir,' and he said, 'No time to talk!
Report in the courtyard to-morrow morning five-thirty, field equipment,
for special duty with my staff.'
"I saluted again and turned to come out, and the General said, 'Potter,
this is in the way of a reward for that little affair in the dungeons,'
and I said, 'Thank you, sir, but the pleasure was all ours, sir,' and he
said, 'No, not quite all; because some of the papers you unearthed _WILL
HELP TO TURN THE TIDE_.' How's that, old Beans, _will help to turn the
tide_. Gosh! you did it with your little penknife, didn't you?"
"Well, never mind that," said Beany, wriggling. "Don't you know anything
about this trip to-morrow?"
"Nary word," said Porky, "but why should we worry? Main fact is clear,
we are going to be among those present."
The boys spent a restless day getting their traveling equipment in order
and taking it apart again to put it together in some way they fancied
would make an eighth of an inch difference in some of its dimensions.
They strutted a little perhaps. It was truly a wonderful thing to go
with General Pershing on a trip of that sort. They marveled at their
good luck.
That good luck had hinged entirely on their ability to keep their own
counsel. That desire some have to tell all they know, a lot that they
guess, and a few things that they fear, did not exist in the Potter
twins. They could keep a secret without being told to, and that's some
test. Whatever they overheard was safe. When they saw things that were
not intended for their eyes, they ignored them, or made an effort to
forget all about them. This high sense of what was honorable and right
was noticed immediately by the General as well as by others whom they
met daily.
So they spent the long day patting each other on the back, and wondering
at their great good fortune.
They kept closely to the rooms frequented by the officers. As Porky
pointed out to his brother, there was one old lady at least who was not
wasting any love on them, and they didn't want to give her a chance to
turn a key on them and spoil all their fun. They had at least gained a
little caution, but how very little the trip was going to show.
It was barely five next morning when Porky and Beany, like two shadows,
slipped from their quarters and went silently down to the courtyard.
Several automobiles stood ready, heavily guarded, and a couple of
mechanics were busily tightening nuts and testing various parts of the
machinery. No one spoke. The boys crossed the open space, and in
accordance with an agreement made previously, sat down back to back on a
ledge of the broken fountain. They were taking no risks of surprise or
attack from the rear. Silently the minutes passed. The steady tramp of
the sentries and the grating of metal on metal as the mechanics worked
quietly on the cars made so little sound that distant noises were loud
and acute.
The guns of the enemy had been silent for twelve hours. Even Porky and
Beany sensed something big and terrible in the air.
"Want to bet something!" asked Porky, poking his brother with a backhand
jab in the ribs.
He never found out whether Beany was game to bet or not for the door of
the chateau opened and a group of officers came out. General Pershing
led the group. The boys leaped to salute, the sentries stopped and
presented arms. Even the mechanics straightened to their feet. There
was perfect quiet, however, and five minutes later they started away
full speed in the darkness. On and on they went, passing first through
a country which showed very little of the effects of war. It was a sort
of spur that had escaped the enemy's assaults in the beginning of the
struggle, and which, since the arrival of millions of Americans, had
been lying too far behind the lines to suffer.
The sun rose: it was day. They stopped in the shelter of a dense grove
and breakfasted on the provisions put up for them by the cooks back at
headquarters. While they ate the drivers of the cars watched the clear
morning skies for airplanes. The sandwiches and coffee, boiling hot in
big thermos bottles, tasted good to the hungry boys, although they were
eaten in silence, and in silence the journey was continued. Now they
commenced to see signs of the frightful struggle. First great shell
craters, then trees uprooted or hacked down, and village after village
lying a mere mass of wreckage. There were worse things too; sad
reminders that made the boys turn pale with horror.
The stop for dinner was made the occasion of a careful examination of
all the parts of the cars, as any accident in the next few miles might
be most dangerous and disastrous. One of the aides announced to the
several groups of officers that a start would not be made under two
hours so the boys wandered about, looking at the ruined landscape and
picking up here and there sad little mementoes of friend and foe.
Buttons, scraps of jewelry, mostly cheap rings that girls might have
worn and given to their departing sweethearts. There were dozens of
crushed and stained pictures too, so many that the boys did not bother
to pick them up after the first dozen or so. Pinned to one picture of a
chubby child was a little sock. Across the back of the picture was
written, "A year old to-day. My son. Wish I could see him."
"Gosh," said Beany, "I sure do hope he didn't get his! Perhaps this
just fell out of his pocket."
"Why didn't he sign it?" demanded the practical Porky.
"Well, I suppose he didn't have a hunch we would want his address," said
Beany. "I'm going to keep this and send it back home to one of the
papers. They will be glad to copy the picture of the fat little geezer,
and p'raps it will get back to his folks."
The boys wandered on. Coming from a country rich in magnificent old
maples and elms, the ruin, so cowardly and so ruthless, of the great
trees seemed one of the most terrible aspects of the war. Not only were
they torn by shells, but mile after mile stood dead and dying from the
effects of the gas attacks of the enemy. The gas seemed to be as fatal
to the trees as it was to human beings. Not only had the leaves curled
up and fallen, but the trunks themselves were blackened and dead
looking. It was like a country in a nightmare, everything in the way of
buildings flat on the ground, literally not one stone left on another.
The dead and dying trees, leafless and twisted, let the sunshine down
upon it all with scarce a shadow.
The boys reached the site of what had evidently once been a fine farm.
It was a total ruin. They went clambering over the loose heaped-up
stones of what had once been a fine old dwelling, and sat down for a
moment on a flat block that had made the broad and generous doorstep.
"Gee, this must have been an old place," said Porky. "See the way the
edge of this stone is worn--and it is granite at that."
"Look at the size of it, too," said Beany.
They sat studying the stone when a faint feeble wail was heard. They
looked at each other, startled.
"Aw, gee, there's a kitten shut up some place," said Beany, jumping up.
"Let's find it."
"Sure we will," said Porky, "but we can't take it along. I don't
suppose General Pershing would want to add a cat to his traveling
party."
"It sounded most dead," said Porky. "Kitty, kitty! Here, kitty," he
called in his most persuasive, voice.
Another little cry answered him and gave them the direction. "It's the
cellar," said both boys together, and with one accord they seized a
couple of stout timbers and commenced to pry away part of the wreckage
in what seemed the likeliest entrance to the pitch black: hollow under
the bent and broken floor timbers, on which still rested masses of
stone.
Suddenly, in response to their efforts, a huge stone, mate to the one
they had been sitting on, tipped sidewise and slowly slid down into the
darkness, followed by a shaft of light.
There was a sharp cry from below, and the boys looked at each other, a
sort of horror on each face.
"That's no kitten!" gasped Beany.
For answer Porky slid feet first in the wake of the big stone, landed on
it, and stepped off into a gloomy chamber now feebly lighted from above.
In a moment his eyes were accustomed to the dim light, and he stepped
aside, making way for Beany, who came helter-skeltering down behind him.
What they saw was a room that had been used as a store-room for the
farmhouse. By some trick of fate the falling walls, while they had made
a tight prison of it, had spared the most of the shelves of provisions,
and rows of preserves and tins of fruit still stood safely in their
places.
A thin, emaciated figure lay in the corner on a pile of dirt over which
a cloak had been spread. The sunken eyes fixed themselves on the two
boys, but there was no recognition in their glassy depths. What looked
like two little piles of rags were huddled close, and as the boys came
nearer, the dying woman, for it was a woman and she was close to death,
clutched them convulsively. The bundles stirred, and a couple of small
heads were raised. Two children, tousled and covered with dirt, lifted
frightened eyes and clung frantically to the prostrate figure.
Porky crossed swiftly and dropped on his knees by the dying woman. Very
gently he slipped an arm under her heavy head and lifted her a little on
his strong young arm.
"Get a move on!" he flung at Beany, and that young man scrambled up the
pile of debris where the big stone had fallen and instantly disappeared.
Porky, left alone with the woman and the two terrified children, who
tried frantically to burrow out of sight under the mother's nerveless
arm, could think of nothing better to do than clasp the woman closely to
him in an effort to give her some of his own heat and vitality. She
seemed already stone cold.
Almost at once Beany returned with some of the officers. They came down
and with tender hands lifted the sufferer out of the chilly dampness of
the cellar, and laid her on a pile of coats and cushions. Some one
carefully fed her a few drops of the hot coffee still left in the
thermos bottles. It was very evident, however, that her moments were
numbered.
One of the French officers in the party knelt beside her. Softly,
tenderly, pityingly, he spoke to her in her native tongue.
The weary eyes opened, and rested on his face.
*CHAPTER IX*
*A VEXING PROBLEM*
The boys, who had attained a good working knowledge of the French
language, listened breathlessly. The gentle questions of the officer
were easy to follow, but without pressing too close to the sad group
they were unable to hear the whispered, broken replies of the woman.
That the story was a sad one, one of the uncounted tragedies of the
invasion of a cruel and heartless enemy, they could easily guess by the
break in the French officer's voice and the unashamed and manly tears
that filled his eyes. Slowly, painfully she told her story, the two
tiny children clutching her closely the while. Fainter and fainter grew
the feeble voice. Porky and Beany knew instinctively that they were
standing in the presence of death; not the glorious and gallant passing
that the soldier finds on the battlefield, but the coming of release
from a long and undeserved agony. As the little group watched, one
bloodless hand reached up and drew the thin shawl away from her breast.
There was a wound there; a cruel death wound that she had stanched as
best she could and had covered from the eyes of the two babies. As
though her story was all ended, the pitiful eyes fixed themselves on the
face of the officer who held her. Rapidly he made the sign of the
cross, then with his hand held high, he spoke to the dying woman. It
was enough. A smile of peace lighted the worn face, one long look she
bent on the two children, and turning her head as if for protection
toward the blue tunic against which she rested, she closed her eyes,
sighed, and was still.
Reverently laying down his burden, the officer rose to his feet. And
while the group stood with bared heads, he told the story as he had just
heard it.
The dead woman's name was Marie Duval. For two hundred years her people
had lived in simple ease and comfort on the well tilled farm.
In rapid, thrilling sentences, he sketched the story of their happy,
blameless lives, through Marie's innocent childhood, her girlhood, and
up to the time of her meeting with young Pierre Duval. Pierre had a good
farm of his own down the valley, and there they lived in simple
happiness and prosperity. Three children were born, the two little
creatures crouching before them and one a little older, now dead.
When the war broke out, Pierre put on his uniform and went away. For a
while, like other heroic women, she tilled the little farm until one
night when a small scouting party of Huns swept down, burning and
destroying all that lay in their path. She escaped with her children
under cover of the darkness and made her way back to her father's house.
For a long time they escaped the tide of war, and lived on and on from
day to day, the old, old father and mother and the young mother waiting
for news from Pierre. It came at last.... He was dead.
"Then," said the French officer, "then her heart seemed to die too, but
she knew that she must live for the sake of the little ones. Already
she could see that the agony and terror of it all was killing the aged
parents. Four sons were fighting, and one by one they followed Pierre
to death.
"Nearer and nearer came the German lines until one awful day a horde of
heartless warriors swept over them.
"Sirs, you know the rest," said the French officer, his fine face
twitching with emotion. "It is the same old story, the old man
ruthlessly tortured and killed, his old wife kept alive just long enough
to see him die. The oldest grandchild was with her. He too was
tortured while his mother, hidden and imprisoned in a portion of the
cellar under the smoking ruins of the farmhouse, heard his childish
screams of agony.