On leaving the constabulary Octavie Delacourt, not wholly satisfied
that she had set the administrative machinery sufficiently in motion,
asked herself what more she could do. All at once she thought of the
post-mistress she knew at Mainneville, a village some three miles off.
Excellent idea! A post-mistress had both the telegraph and telephone
at her disposal, and she knew that this official, at any rate, would
not laugh at her. Pulling herself together once more, she set off at a
brisk walk--almost a run--in the direction of Mainneville.
There, as she had foreseen, she met with the most sympathetic of
receptions. Mme. B----, the post-mistress, lost not a moment in
telephoning to M. Armand Bernard, the Prefect of the Eure, who
immediately passed on the news to his colleagues of the adjoining
departments. Within half an hour not a prefect, not a commissary
of police, not a _gendarme_ with a radius of a hundred miles was
uninformed. The Germans in the Forêt de Lyons and their accomplices
were entrapped, as it were, within the meshes of a net.
Octavie Delacourt went to sleep that night content indeed. But she
little knew what a service she had rendered to France--nothing less,
in fact, than the saving of the Western Railway line, on which Paris
depended at that time for its supplies and the transport of troops.
The facts relating to the capture of the Huns in the Forêt de Lyons,
and those working in conjunction with them, were briefly recorded at
the time, but, overshadowed by the greater events of those early days
of the war, their true significance was lost sight of. A Prussian
captain, a non-commissioned officer, and eleven engineers were
arrested at Oissel, thanks to the good marksmanship of Sergeant Leroy,
of the G.V.C. Service, who punctured with rifle-bullets the tyres
of the motor-cars in which they were fleeing. One of the cars bore
the plate and number of the prefect of police of Aix-la-Chapelle.
In a motor-lorry which formed part of the convoy was half a ton of
explosives.
In the course of his examination the German officer declared that he
had crossed the departments of the Somme and the Oise without being
troubled, and that he had come into the Eure with the intention of
blowing up the Oissel bridge, or, failing this, that of Manoir. He
added that "but for a cursed countrywoman" whom one of his men had
caught in the forest, and whom he ought to have "suppressed," he would
certainly have succeeded.
This happened about three o'clock in the afternoon. Less than an hour
later it was discovered that the capture had not been made without
bloodshed. Between the "Molière" quarry and the excavation where the
blond Hun had appeared to Octavie Delacourt three bodies were found
stretched on the ground--those of the luckless Quartermaster Crosnier
and his _gendarmes_, who had been shot almost point-blank when calling
on the automobilists to surrender.
Octavie Delacourt's presence of mind, bravery, and persistence were
recognized by the French Government. But the service she rendered was
infinitely greater than either the praise or the monetary reward--one
hundred francs!--which she received for having been instrumental in
preventing the perpetration of an act which might have resulted in
grave disaster to the capital of France.