UNDER ARREST
An hour later a Prussian sergeant and two privates marched into the
grounds. The sergeant mounted the steps and having rung the bell
proceeded to hammer on the door. Phil answered the call, and was not
long in realising that he was under arrest. The sergeant could not say
why, such details not being in his orbit of duty. His orders were to
bring one young man from the chateau to headquarters. The only thing
for Phil was to take the situation philosophically.
"I never did like melodrama," he said, as he stood by the steps under
the guard of the two privates, while the sergeant was searching his
room for incriminating evidence.
"Don't!" pleaded the girls together. "Don't joke about it!"
"And answer all their questions politely," added Helen. "If we don't
hear anything by to-night we'll come to headquarters or get the cure to
go there."
"I'll be as polite as pie," said Phil. "And don't you be too serious
about it," he added warningly, in turn. "When I show my papers to some
one in authority I'll be all right."
"It was I who got you into this!" Helen exclaimed, beset by a new
thought. "If I hadn't stayed----"
Perhaps a better "if" would have referred to Henriette's beauty.
"Nonsense! It's all a mistake!" said Phil.
"Plot complete!" he added, as the sergeant appeared with the letters
and papers that he had found in Phil's room carefully tied up and
announced, with barrack-room gruffness that it was time to march.
Phil could only smile over his shoulder as he was faced about under the
escort of the two privates. From Helen he had an encouraging smile in
response; from Henriette a look of fright and appeal. Inwardly he was
boiling. It was the first time that he or any Sanford for many
generations had known the loss of liberty for five minutes. This
callous old sergeant, these two men with fixed bayonets walking on
either side of Phil, had no business in France. They were invaders.
On through the village street beside the gorge of transport he was
conducted, then down the long avenue of trees to Count de la Grange's
chateau. There he was halted and every scrap of paper in his pockets
removed. He stood for a time, while officers and messengers passed up
and down the steps, before he was taken indoors.
At the end of the long hall, its ceiling cracked and yellow from the
neglect of impoverished nobility, its walls hung with family portraits,
sat General Rousseau under guard, his aquiline nose and finely-moulded
chin in bold relief. As Phil was directed along the hall, the sound of
his steps on the marble flooring drew the General's attention. The
glances of the two met. Phil was about to speak, when his impulse was
stayed by the fact that he was looking at a profile which seemed
oblivious of his presence.
"He is in trouble and does not want to recognise me lest he get me in
trouble," Phil thought, "or I might get him into deeper trouble."
The General sat stiffly erect, a space between his coat back and the
chair back, something distinguished and calm in his manner, with a
smiling turn to his lips which completed an air of quiet triumph
unaffected by his surroundings. Directly an officer came out from one
of the rooms and motioned to the General to enter the open door in
front of him. Phil was then moved up to the seat thus vacated, whence
he could look into the salon, with its long French windows open on the
garden. Before a table sat a German general of fifty-five or so, his
bullet head close-cropped and his profile as set as if it were carved
out of stone. On the wall at his back was a large map with blue pencil
markings. In front of him stood old Rousseau, head up, his lips still
having the turn of a faint smile.
Division Commander von Stein was reading from a paper, which stated
that the General had given information to the enemy by means of carrier
pigeons.
"What have you to say?" demanded von Stein.
"That I am not a lawyer; but, speaking as a soldier," replied General
Rousseau in an even voice, "I am happy to say that my last pigeon went
before you could intercept it."
"As a soldier you knew what to report," said von Stein rather affably.
"It was clever of you and you must have sent some valuable information."
If he could learn the nature of the information it might enable him to
counteract some of its results; but General Rousseau's smile broadened
a little at this obvious bait of flattery.
"I'm even a good enough soldier not to tell you that," he replied.
"Perhaps your soldiers are learning this moment," he added proudly.
"As you have confessed----" von Stein rapped out in irritation.
"Yes," replied the General calmly, almost sweetly.
"You know the penalty?"
"Yes. I expected it. I found a way to serve France and I am ready."
Without waiting on further instructions, closing the interview himself
with a certain disdainful impatience, he saluted and turned toward his
guard. The full light through the large windows limned his fine,
aristocratic profile and his gaunt, tall form. He was victorious in
that moment and a gentleman; and the man in the chair, conscious of
some quality in the Frenchman lacking in himself but admiring as
soldier to soldier, exclaimed, "It is war!" and rose to his feet,
saluting the man whom he had condemned, in turn.
Phil had the call to disregard his own position and rush to General
Rousseau's side in his tribute of admiration. It seemed horrible at
first thought to see that gallant veteran go to his death without a
friendly word. But two girls were waiting at the chateau for Phil's
return. He imagined that the General preferred to be alone. Nothing
could equal the knowledge of his deed for France in comforting him.
Still disdainful of the Prussian, lips still turned in a smile, he was
marched out into the grounds--which is the full explanation of why
Madame Ribot had only the Count for an escort to Paris.
Since an old man had been caught releasing pigeons which carried
information to the French as to the location of three divisions of
German troops and might cost the Germans five thousand men, von Stein
was taking a hand in the espionage problem himself. Phil was summoned
and, standing on the same spot where General Rousseau had stood, he saw
all his letters and his diary lying on the Commander's table. Two
officers were standing on either side of him. One of them went out
after the Commander had signed some papers, and through the open door
Phil had a glimpse through other open doors of rooms with walls hung
with maps and of telegraph instruments and officers writing and
conferring. Here was the inner circle of a division command directing
all the action of guns and men which he had seen from the terrace at
Mervaux, with office routine in a secluded chateau; while von Stein,
the man with the responsibility of decisions, sat aloof in the salon.
The remaining officer, a major, evidently had something to do with
Phil's case. Phil recalled Helen's advice: Answer all their questions
politely. This he would do; and, with the example of General Rousseau
as an inspiration, he waited for the first move. Von Stein looked up
slowly, raising his bushy eyebrows to see what sort of dirt this was in
front of him, and then regarded Phil with a sweeping glance of
ferocity. It was the very thing to give Phil smiling confidence.
"Old Frightfulness is going to try to scare me!" he thought.
Having been both in Germany and in the Southwest, he recognised that
the tactics of a master hand in the world's greatest military machine
might be humanly the same as those of a bandit leader across the Rio
Grande.
"So you are the spy!" von Stein growled.
"Not at all, sir!" Phil replied.
"Be careful! You are on oath."
"So I understand."
"Are you English?" demanded von Stein, with an access of roaring
emphasis.
From the frequency of this question and its venom Phil gathered that
the English could not be popular in German military circles.
"No, American."
"Prove it!"
"As you have all my papers there, may I suggest that you have the
proof?"
Von Stein mumbled an ejaculation through his moustache, while the
corrugations between the bushy brows and the grey line of
closely-clipped hair twitched.
"What are you in Europe for?"
"To see Europe--and I'm seeing more of it than I bargained for,"
answered Phil.
"Do not joke! War is war! What do you mean, you a foreigner, an
American, you say, by being here when our army came?"
"Your army came so fast that I could not get away from it," said Phil
drily, as he might on a hot day in cactus land.
"Hur-r-r!" or something like it, escaped through von Stein's moustache
and he wiggled his lips in a way that might have meant an effort to
control a grin. "Why are you in that chateau?"
Phil explained quite clearly, even telling how Helen had remained
behind and he had returned to look after her and to find that it was
impossible to get away before the army came.
"What is your business in America?"
Phil told this, too.
"As you say; but how can we tell that what you say is true?"
"As obviously neither my own statement nor appearance counts, by
investigation of my references at home through my government, if my
papers and letters are not sufficient."
"Hur-r-r!" again mumbled von Stein. Then he broke out with fearful
frightfulness: "Don't you know that we can have you shot as a spy?" he
thundered.
As Phil had previously remarked, he had never liked melodrama. It had
quite gone out of fashion at home, except in motion pictures of the
Southwest as shown in New York and of New York as shown in the
Southwest.
"Considering the number of your soldiers, not to mention the number of
your guns and that I am unarmed, I should venture, with all respect, to
say that that is a safe statement," said Phil, and he was smiling
pleasantly.
"Hur-r-r!" again through the moustache; but in von Stein's grey eyes
appeared an irresistible twinkle and this time he actually grinned. He
was not without a sense of humour. He read the _Fliegende Blatter_
every week.
"It agrees with my examination of his papers," put in the Major,
indicating the exhibit on the table. "One of these letters is from his
employer, a big man on the other side," he added; and Phil, who knew
German better than French, understood the remark.
The General took three or four minutes to run his eye over the letters
and the diary, grumbling the while, and finally snorting with disgust
as he picked them up and handed them to Phil.
"Who brought these charges?" he demanded of the Major. Up to that time
he had read only the presentment of the case and the object of his
questions had been to trip the accused.
"Lieutenant von Eichborn, sir."
Now Phil saw what Prussian rage was like; the rage against
inefficiency, against disobedience and waste of time.
"Fool! Puppy dog! Pampered jackanapes!" he roared. "Tell that
worthless nephew of mine to come here! I'll deal with him for the last
time!"
"He is out, sir. He went to see about a billet for himself," said the
Major very officially, but in his eyes was a satisfied gleam as the
General literally choked with rage against not only all the un-Prussian
crimes already mentioned, but worse.
"Out! A personal aide out without my permission in time of war!
Billeting away from this chateau! If there are no beds, let him sleep
on the floor at my door ready for my call! Out--when we are fighting a
battle!"
"Possibly you will find him at Mervaux," Phil could not help saying,
"engaged in persecuting my cousin--which accounts for my impatience at
being here under false charges."
"Take care, sir!" said von Stein, turning his ferocity on Phil. "You
are a civilian making accusations against a Prussian officer and
gentleman!"
"A suggestion only. Am I acquitted? I am in haste to return."
Von Stein lowered his brows, with a searching look at Phil.
"Of course you think we are Huns," he said. "The English have told you
so. Huns!" The very word irritated him, yet he seemed to like to
repeat it. "Huns! We bring order wherever we go. We are fighting in
our defence in a war that was forced upon us!"
There, Phil let his Southwestern sense of humour eclipse discretion.
"Yes, the English and the French secretly prepared against you! They
made thousands of new guns and marched into Belgium and invaded
Germany!" he said.
The Commander's eyes blazed. He stammered, Phil thought that he had
done for himself; and then that old professional soldier grinned.
"Huns, are we? You go back to your chateau and stay there. Not a
thing on the premises will be harmed. You will be as safe as you are
at home. Everybody is. If you are not, let me know. And tell your
friends in America that we are not Huns."
For after the orgy of Belgium orders had come from the Most High which
had America in mind. Even the Most High realised the moral force of
the hundred million people across the water. Even the Most High had
found that there was a thing called world public opinion.
"Stood up to it, that young man!" muttered von Stein after Phil had
gone. Having been used to ordering inferiors about all his life, he
had had a diversion. "Now!" as another officer came into the room with
a report.
He was the cool man of judgment and precision as he went to the map,
drew some lines with his pencil, and gave some orders. After this
officer had departed he was alone in the big room. Leaders out on the
battle line had been told what to do and they must do it on his
responsibility. He could give no further orders till he knew the
result. Opening the door to the adjoining room he asked:
"How long will it take to run to the chateau of Mervaux?"
"Five minutes, sir!"
"Good! I'll be back in a quarter of an hour and I am to be found there
or on the road."
He strode out to the powerful motor-car that was always in waiting for
him.