Surgeon-Major Thomson awoke about twelve hours later with a start. He
had been sleeping so heavily that he was at first unable to remember his
whereabouts. His mind moved sluggishly across the brief panorama of
his hurried journey--the special train from Victoria to Folkestone;
the destroyer which had brought him and a few other soldiers across the
Channel, black with darkness, at a pace which made even the promenade
deck impossible; the landing at Boulogne, a hive of industry
notwithstanding the darkness; the clanking of waggons, the shrieking
of locomotives, the jostling of crowds, the occasional flashing of an
electric torch. And then the ride in the great automobile through the
misty night. He rubbed his eyes and looked around him. A grey morning
was breaking. The car had come to a standstill before a white gate,
in front of which was stationed a British soldier, with drawn bayonet.
Surgeon-Major Thomson pulled himself together and answered the
challenge.
“A friend,” he answered,--“Surgeon-Major Thomson, on his Majesty’s
service.”
He leaned from the car for a moment and held out something in the hollow
of his hand. The man saluted and drew back. The car went along a rough
road which led across a great stretch of pastureland. On the ridge of
the hills on his right, little groups of men were at work unlimbering
guns. Once or twice, with a queer, screeching sound, a shell, like a
little puff of white smoke, passed high over the car and fell somewhere
in the grey valley below. In the distance he could see the movements of
a body of troops through the trees, soldiers on the way to relieve their
comrades in the trenches. As the morning broke, the trenches themselves
came into view--long, zig-zag lines, silent, and with no sign of the
men who crawled about inside like ants. He passed a great brewery
transformed into a canteen, from which a line of waggons, going and
returning, were passing all the time backwards and forwards into the
valley. Every now and then through the stillness came the sharp crack
of a rifle from the snipers lying hidden in the little stretches of
woodland and marshland away on the right. A motor-omnibus, with its
advertisement signs still displayed but a great red cross floating above
it, came rocking down the road on its way to the field hospital in the
distance. As yet, however, the business of fighting seemed scarcely to
have commenced.
They passed several small houses and farms, in front of each of
which was stationed a sentry. Once, from the hills behind, a great
white-winged aeroplane glided over his head on its way to make a
reconnaissance. Queerest sight of all, here and there were peasants at
work in the fields. One old man leaned upon his spade and watched as the
car passed. Not a dozen yards from him was a great hole in the ground
where a shell had burst, and a little further away a barn in ruins. The
car was forced to stop here to let a cavalcade of ammunition waggons
pass by. Surgeon-Major Thomson leaned from his seat and spoke to the old
man.
“You are not afraid of the German shells, then?” he asked.
“Monsieur,” the old man answered, “one must live or die--it does not
matter which. For the rest, if one is to live, one must eat. Therefore
I work. Four sons I have and a nephew away yonder,” he added, waving his
hand southwards. “That is why I dig alone. Why do you not send us more
soldiers, Monsieur l’Anglais?”
“Wait but a little time longer,” Thomson answered cheerfully.
The old man looked sadly at his ruined barn.
“It is always ‘wait,’” he muttered, “and one grows old and tired.
Bonjour, monsieur!”
The car passed on again and suddenly dropped into a little protected
valley. They came to a standstill before a tiny chateau, in front of
which stretched what might once have been an ornamental garden, but
which was now torn to pieces by gun carriages, convoy waggons, and every
description of vehicle. From the top of the house stretched many wires.
A sentry stood at the iron gates and passed Major Thomson after a
perfunctory challenge. An office with mud-stained boots and wind-tossed
hair, who looked as though he had been out all night, stood on the steps
of the house and welcomed Thomson.
“Hullo, Major,” he called out, “just across, eh?”
“This moment,” Thomson assented. “Anything fresh?”
“Nothing to speak of,” the other replied. “We’ve just had a message in
that the French have been giving them a knock. We’ve had a quiet time
the last two days. They’re bringing up some more Bavarians, we think.”
“Do you think I could have a few words with the General?” Major Thomson
asked.
“Come in and have some coffee. Yes, he’ll see you, of course. He is in
his own room with two of the flying men, just for the moment. I’ll let
you know when you can go in.”
They passed into an apartment which had once been the dining-room of the
chateau, and in which a long table was laid. One or two staff officers
greeted Thomson, and the man who had brought him in attended to his
wants.
“The General had his breakfast an hour ago,” the latter observed. “We’re
pretty well forward here and we have to keep on the qui vive. We got
some shells yesterday dropped within a quarter of a mile of us. I think
we’re going to try and give them a push back on the left flank. I’ll go
in and see about you, Thomson.”
“Good fellow! You might tell them to give my chauffeur something. The
destroyer that brought me over is waiting at Boulogne, and I want to be
in London to-night.”
One of the officers from the other side of the table, smiled queerly.
“London! My God!” he muttered. “There is still a London, I suppose?
Savoy and Carlton going still? Pall Mall where it was?”
“And very much as it was,” Thomson assured him. “London’s wonderfully
unchanged. You been out long?”
“September the second,” was the cheerful reply. “I keep on getting
promised a week but I can’t bring it off.”
“He’s such a nut with the telephones,” the man by his side explained,
helping himself to marmalade. “The General positively can’t spare him.”
“Oh, chuck it!” the other exclaimed in disgust. “What about you?--the
only man with an eye to a Heaven-ordained gun position, as old Wattles
declared one day. We’re all living wonders, Major,” he went on, turning
to Thomson, “but if I don’t get a Sole Colbert and a grill at the Savoy,
and a front seat at the Alhambra, before many weeks have passed, I shall
get stale--that’s what’ll happen to me.”
“Hope you’ll have your hair cut before you go back,” a man from the
other end of the table remarked. “Your own mother wouldn’t know you like
that--much less your sweetheart.”
The young man fingered his locks reflectively.
“Chap who was going to cut it for me got shot yesterday,” he grumbled.
“Anything doing as you came over the ridge, Major?”
Thomson shook his head.
“One aeroplane and a few shells.”
“That would be Johnny Oates going out in his Bleriot,” some one
remarked. “He’ll be back here before long with a report.”
The officer who had met Thomson in the garden, re-entered the room.
“General says he’ll see you at once,” he announced.
Thomson followed his guide into a small back room. An officer was seated
before a desk, writing, another was shouting down a telephone, and a
third was making some measurements upon a large Ordnance map nailed upon
one of the walls. The General was standing with his back to the fire and
a pipe in his mouth. He nodded cheerily to Thomson.
“When did you leave London?” he asked.
“Nine o’clock last evening, sir,” Thomson replied. “Rather a record
trip. We had a special down and a destroyer over.”
“And I’m going to tell you what you want to know,” the General continued
glancing at a document in his hand. “Well, close the door, Harewood. Out
with it?”
“It’s about Captain Granet of Harrison’s staff,” Thomson began.
The General frowned and knocked the ashes from his pipe.
“Well,” he asked, “what is it?”
“We’ve reasons of our own for wishing to know exactly what you meant by
asking the War Office not to send him back again,” Thomson continued.
The General hesitated.
“Well, what are they?”
“They are a little intangible, sir,” Thomson confessed, “but exceedingly
important. Without any direct evidence, I have come to the conclusion
that Captain Granet is a mysterious person and needs watching. As usual,
we are in trouble with the civil authorities, and, to be frank with you,
I am trying to strengthen my case.”
The General shrugged his shoulders.
“Very well,” he decided, “under the circumstances you have the right to
know what my message meant. We sent Granet back because of a suspicion
which may be altogether unjustifiable. The suspicion was there, however,
and it was sufficiently strong for me to make up my mind that I should
prefer not to have him back again. Now you shall know the facts very
briefly. Granet was taken prisoner twice. No one saw him taken--as
a matter of fact, both of the affairs were night attacks. He
seemed suddenly to disappear--got too far ahead of his men, was his
explanation. All I can say is that he was luckier than most of them.
Anything wandering about loose in a British uniform--but there, I won’t
go on with that. He came back each time with information as to what
he had seen. Each time we planned an attack on the strength of that
information. Each time that information proved to be misleading and our
attack failed, costing us heavy losses. Of course, dispositions might
have been changed since his observations were made, but there the fact
remains. Further,” the General continued, filling his pipe slowly and
pressing in the tobacco, “on the second occasion we had four hundred men
thrown forward into the village of Ossray. They were moved in the pitch
darkness, and silently. It was impossible for any word of their presence
in Ossray to have been known to the Germans. Yet the night of Granet’s
capture the village was shelled, and those who escaped were cut off and
made prisoners. Follow me, Major?”
“Yes, sir!” Thomson acquiesced.
“Those are just the facts,” the General concluded. “Now on the other
hand, Granet has handled his men well, shown great personal bravery, and
has all the appearance of a keen soldier. I hate to do him a wrong
even in my thoughts but there were others besides myself to whom these
coincidences seemed amazing. We simply decided that they’d better give
Granet a billet at home. That’s the reason of my message.”
“I am very much obliged to you, sir,” Thomson said slowly. “You have
given me exactly the information which we desire.”
The General was called away for a moment to give some instructions to
the young officer who was sitting in a distant corner of the room with
a telephone band around his head. He signed to Thomson, however, to
remain.
“Now that I have gratified your curiosity,” he said, when he returned,
“perhaps you will gratify mine? Will you tell me just how you over in
England have come to have suspicions of this man?”
“That,” Thomson explained, “is almost a personal matter with me. Three
months ago I spent the night with the Third Army Corps up by Niemen. I
was there on other business, as you may imagine, but there was some hot
fighting and I went out to help. I was attending to some of our fellows
and got very near to the German lines. I became separated from the
others a little and was groping about when I heard voices talking German
within a few feet of me. I couldn’t hear what they said but I could just
distinguish two figures. One of them made off towards the German lines.
The other, after standing still for a moment, came in my direction. I
took out my revolver, and to tell you the truth I very nearly fired on
sight, for it would have been an exceedingly awkward matter for me
to have been taken prisoner just then. Just as my finger was on the
trigger, I became conscious that the man who was approaching was humming
‘Tipperary.’ I flashed my light on his face and saw at once that he was
a British officer. He addressed me quickly in German. I answered him in
English. I fancied for a moment that he seemed annoyed. ‘We’d better get
out of this,’ he whispered. ‘We’re within a hundred yards of the German
trenches and they are bringing searchlights up.’ ‘Who were you talking
to just now?’ I asked, as we stole along. ‘No one at all,’ he answered.
I didn’t take the thing seriously for the moment, although it seemed to
me queer. Afterwards I regretted, however, that I hadn’t set myself to
discover the meaning of what was apparently a deliberate lie. The next
time I met Granet was at a luncheon party at the Ritz, a few days ago. I
recognised his face at once, although I had only seen it by the flash of
my electric lamp. From that moment I have had my suspicions.”
The General nodded. He was looking a little grave.
“It’s a hateful thing to believe,” he said, “that any one wearing his
Majesty’s uniform could ever play such a dastardly part. However, on the
whole I am rather glad that I passed in that request to the War Office.
Anything more we can do for you, Major?”
Thomson took the hint and departed. A few minutes later he was in his
car and on his way back to Boulogne.