H. E. R. M.
Paul's first feeling was an immense need of revenge, then and there, at
all costs, a need outweighing any sense of horror or despair. He gazed
around him, as though all the wounded men who lay dying in the park were
guilty of the monstrous crime:
"The cowards!" he snarled. "The murderers!"
"Are you sure," stammered Bernard, "are you sure it's Élisabeth's hair?"
"Why, of course I am. They've shot her as they shot the two others. I
know them both: it's the keeper and his wife. Oh, the blackguards!
. . ."
He raised the butt of his rifle over a German dragging himself in the
grass and was about to strike him, when the Colonel came up to him:
"Hullo, Delroze, what are you doing? Where's your company?"
"Oh, sir, if you only knew! . . ."
He rushed up to his colonel. He looked like a madman and brandished his
rifle as he spoke:
"They've killed her, sir, yes, they've shot my wife. . . . Look, against
the wall there, with the two people who were in her service. . . .
They've shot her. . . . She was twenty years old, sir. . . . Oh, we
must kill them all like dogs!"
But Bernard was dragging him away:
"Don't let us waste time, Paul; we can take our revenge on those who are
still fighting. . . . I hear firing over there. Some of them are
surrounded, I expect."
Paul hardly knew what he was doing. He started running again, drunk with
rage and grief.
Ten minutes later, he had rejoined his company and was crossing the open
space where his father had been stabbed. The chapel was in front of him.
Farther on, instead of the little door that used to be in the wall, a
great breach had been made, to admit the convoys of wagons for
provisioning the castle. Eight hundred yards beyond it, a violent
rifle-fire crackled over the fields, at the crossing of the road and the
highway.
A few dozen retreating Germans were trying to force their way through
the hussars who had come by the high road. They were attacked from
behind by Paul's company, but succeeded in taking shelter in a square
patch of trees and copsewood, where they defended themselves with fierce
energy, retiring step by step and dropping one after the other.
"Why don't they surrender?" muttered Paul, who was firing continually
and who was gradually being calmed by the heat of the fray. "You would
think they were trying to gain time."
"Look over there!" said Bernard, in a husky voice.
Under the trees, a motor-car had just come from the frontier, crammed
with German soldiers. Was it bringing reinforcements? No, the motor
turned almost in its own length; and between it and the last of the
combatants stood an officer in a long gray cloak, who, revolver in hand,
exhorted them to persevere in their resistance, while he himself
effected his retreat towards the car sent to his rescue.
"Look, Paul," Bernard repeated, "look!"
Paul was dumfounded. That officer to whom Bernard was calling his
attention was . . . but no, it could not be. And yet . . .
"What do you mean to suggest, Bernard?" he asked.
"It's the same face," muttered Bernard, "the same face as yesterday, you
know, Paul: the face of the woman who asked me those questions about
you, Paul."
And Paul on his side recognized beyond the possibility of a doubt the
mysterious individual who had tried to kill him at the little door
leading out of the park, the creature who presented such an
unconceivable resemblance to his father's murderess, to the woman of the
portrait, to Hermine d'Andeville, Élisabeth's mother and Bernard's.
Bernard raised his rifle to fire.
"No, don't do that!" cried Paul, terrified at the movement.
"Why not?"
"Let's try and take him alive."
He darted forward in a mad rush of hatred, but the officer had run to
the car. The German soldiers held out their hands and hoisted him into
their midst. Paul shot the one who was seated at the wheel. The officer
caught hold of it just as the car was about to strike a tree, changed
the direction and, skilfully guiding the car past the intervening
obstacles, drove it behind a bend in the ground and from there towards
the frontier. He was saved.
As soon as he was beyond the range of the bullets, the German soldiers
who were still fighting surrendered.
Paul was trembling with impotent fury. To him this individual
represented every imaginable form of evil; and, from the first to the
last minute of that long series of tragedies, murders, attempts at
spying and assassination, treacheries and deliberate shootings, all
conceived with the same object and the same spirit, that one figure
stood out as the very genius of crime.
Nothing short of the creature's death would have appeased Paul's hatred.
It was he, the monster, Paul never entertained a doubt of it, who had
ordered Élisabeth to be shot. Élisabeth shot! Oh, the shame of it! Oh,
infernal vision that tormented him! . . .
"Who is he?" he cried. "How can we find out? How can we get at him and
torture him and kill him?"
"Question a prisoner," said Bernard.
The captain considered it wiser to advance no farther and ordered the
company to fall back, so as to remain in touch with the remainder of the
regiment. Paul was told off specially to occupy the château with his
section and to take the prisoners there.
He lost no time in questioning two or three non-commissioned officers
and some of the soldiers, as they went. But he could obtain nothing but
a mass of conflicting particulars from them, for they had arrived from
Corvigny the day before and had only spent the night at the château.
They did not even know the name of the officer in the flowing gray cloak
for whom so many of them had sacrificed their lives. He was called the
major; and that was all.
"But still," Paul insisted, "he was your actual commanding officer?"
"No. The leader of the rearguard detachment to which we belong is an
Oberleutnant who was wounded by the exploding of the mines, when we ran
away. We wanted to take him with us, but the major objected, leveling
his revolver at us, telling us to march in front of him and threatening
to shoot the first man who left him in the lurch. And just now, while we
were fighting, he stood ten paces behind us and kept threatening us with
his revolver to compel us to defend him. He shot three of us, as a
matter of fact."
"He was reckoning on the assistance of the car, wasn't he?"
"Yes; and also on reinforcements which were to save us all, so he said.
But only the car came; and it just saved him."
"The Oberleutnant would know his name, of course. Is he badly wounded?"
"He's got a broken leg. We made him comfortable in a lodge in the park."
"The lodge against which your people put to death . . . those
civilians?"
"Yes."
They were nearing the lodge, a sort of little orangery into which the
plants were taken in winter. Rosalie and Jérôme's bodies had been
removed. But the sinister chain was still hanging on the wall, fastened
to the three iron rings; and Paul once more beheld, with a shudder of
dread, the marks left by the bullet and the little splinter of
bomb-shell that kept Élisabeth's hair embedded in the plaster.
A French bomb-shell! An added horror to the atrocity of the murder!
It was therefore Paul who, on the day before, by capturing the armored
motor-car and effecting his daring raid on Corvigny, thus opening the
road to the French troops, had brought about the events that ended in
his wife's being murdered! The enemy had revenged himself for his
retreat by shooting the inhabitants of the château! Élisabeth fastened
to the wall by a chain had been riddled with bullets. And, by a hideous
irony, her corpse had received in addition the splinters of the first
shells which the French guns had fired before night-fall, from the top
of the hills near Corvigny.
Paul pulled out the fragments of shell and removed the golden strands,
which he put away religiously. He and Bernard then entered the lodge,
where the Red Cross men had established a temporary ambulance. They
found the Oberleutnant lying on a truss of straw, well looked after and
able to answer questions.
One point at once became quite clear, which was that the German troops
which had garrisoned the Château d'Ornequin had, so to speak, never been
in touch at all with those which, the day before, had retreated from
Corvigny and the adjoining forts. The garrison had been evacuated
immediately upon the arrival of the fighting troops, as though to avoid
any indiscretion on the subject of what had happened during the
occupation of the château.
"At that moment," said the Oberleutnant, who belonged to the fighting
force, not to the garrison, "it was seven o'clock in the evening. Your
seventy-fives had already got the range of the château; and we found no
one there but a number of generals and other officers of superior rank.
Their baggage-wagons were leaving and their motors were ready to leave.
I was ordered to hold out as long as I could to blow up the château. The
major had made all the arrangements beforehand."
"What was the major's name?"
"I don't know. He was walking about with a young officer whom even the
generals addressed with respect. This same officer called me over to him
and charged me to obey the major 'as I would the emperor.'"
"And who was the young officer?"
"Prince Conrad."
"A son of the Kaiser's?"
"Yes. He left the château yesterday, late in the day."
"And did the major spend the night here?"
"I suppose so; at any rate, he was there this morning. We fired the
mines and left . . . a bit late, for I was wounded near this lodge . . .
near the wall. . . ."
Paul mastered his emotion and said:
"You mean, the wall against which your people shot three French
civilians, don't you?"
"Yes."
"When were they shot?"
"About six o'clock in the afternoon, I believe, before we arrived from
Corvigny."
"Who ordered them to be shot?"
"The major."
Paul felt the perspiration trickling from the top of his head down his
neck and forehead. It was as he thought: Élisabeth had been shot by the
orders of that nameless and more than mysterious individual whose face
was the very image of the face of Hermine d'Andeville, Élisabeth's
mother!
He went on, in a trembling voice:
"So there were three people shot? You're quite sure?"
"Yes, the people of the château. They had been guilty of treachery."
"A man and two women?"
"Yes."
"But there were only two bodies fastened to the wall of the lodge."
"Yes, only two. The major had the lady of the house buried by Prince
Conrad's orders."
"Where?"
"He didn't tell me."
"But why was she shot?"
"I understand that she had got hold of some very important secrets."
"They could have taken her away and kept her as a prisoner."
"Certainly, but Prince Conrad was tired of her."
Paul gave a start:
"What's that you say?"
The officer resumed, with a smile that might mean anything:
"Well, damn it all, everybody knows Prince Conrad! He's the Don Juan of
the family. He'd been staying at the château for some weeks and had time
to make an impression, had he not? . . . And then . . . and then to get
tired. . . . Besides, the major maintained that the woman and her two
servants had tried to poison the prince. So you see . . ."
He did not finish his sentence. Paul was bending over him and, with a
face distorted with rage, took him by the throat and shouted:
"Another word, you dog, and I'll throttle the life out of you! Ah, you
can thank your stars that you're wounded! . . . If you weren't . . . if
you weren't . . . !"
And Bernard, beside himself with rage, joined in:
"Yes, you can think yourself lucky. As for your Prince Conrad, he's a
swine, let me tell you . . . and I mean to tell _him_ so to his face.
. . . He's a swine like all his beastly family and like the whole lot of
you! . . ."
They left the Oberleutnant utterly dazed and unable to understand a word
of this sudden outburst. But, once outside, Paul had a fit of despair.
His nerves relaxed. All his anger and all his hatred were changed into
infinite depression. He could hardly contain his tears.
"Come, Paul," exclaimed Bernard, "surely you don't believe a word
. . . ?"
"No, no, and again no! But I can guess what happened. That drunken brute
of a prince must have tried to make eyes at Élisabeth and to take
advantage of his position. Just think! A woman, alone and defenseless:
that was a conquest worth making! What tortures the poor darling must
have undergone, what humiliations! . . . A daily struggle, with threats
and brutalities. . . . And, at the last moment, death, to punish her for
her resistance. . . ."
"We shall avenge her, Paul," said Bernard, in a low voice.
"We shall; but shall I ever forget that it was on my account, through my
fault, that she stayed here? I will explain what I mean later on; and
you will understand how hard and unjust I have been. . . . And yet
. . ."
He stood gloomily thinking. He was haunted by the image of the major and
he repeated:
"And yet . . . and yet . . . there are things that seem so strange.
. . ."
* * * * *
All that afternoon, French troops kept streaming in through the valley
of the Liseron and the village of Ornequin in order to resist any
counter-attack by the enemy. Paul's section was resting; and he and
Bernard took advantage of this to make a minute search in the park and
among the ruins of the château. But there was no clue to reveal to them
where Élisabeth's body lay hidden.
At five o'clock, they gave Rosalie and Jérôme a decent burial. Two
crosses were set up on a little mound strewn with flowers. An army
chaplain came and said the prayers for the dead. And Paul was moved to
tears when he knelt on the grave of those two faithful servants whose
devotion had been their undoing.
Then also Paul promised to avenge. And his longing for vengeance evoked
in his mind, with almost painful intensity, the hated image of the
major, that image which had now become inseparable from his
recollections of the Comtesse d'Andeville.
He led Bernard away from the grave and asked:
"Are you sure that you were not mistaken in connecting the major and the
supposed peasant-woman who questioned you at Corvigny?"
"Absolutely."
"Then come with me. I told you of a woman's portrait. We will go and
look at it and you shall tell me what impression it makes upon you."
Paul had noticed that that part of the castle which contained Hermine
d'Andeville's bedroom and boudoir had not been entirely demolished by
the explosion of either the mines or shells. It was possible that the
boudoir was still in its former condition.
The staircase had been destroyed; and they had to clamber up the
shattered masonry in order to reach the first floor. Traces of the
corridor were visible here and there. All the doors were gone; and the
rooms presented an appearance of pitiful chaos.
"It's here," said Paul, pointing to an open place between two pieces of
wall that remained standing as by a miracle.
It was indeed Hermine d'Andeville's boudoir, shattered and dilapidated,
cracked from top to bottom and filled with plaster and rubbish, but
quite recognizable and containing all the furniture which Paul had
noticed on the evening of his marriage. The window-shutters darkened the
room partly, but there was enough light for Paul to see the whereabouts
of the wall opposite. And he at once exclaimed:
"The portrait has been taken away!"
It was a great disappointment to him and, at the same time, a proof of
the great importance which his enemy attached to the portrait, which
could only have been removed because it constituted an overwhelming
piece of evidence.
"I assure you," said Bernard, "that this does not affect my opinion in
the least. There was no need to verify my conviction about the major and
that peasant-woman at Corvigny. Whose portrait was it?"
"I told you, a woman."
"What woman? Was it a picture which my father hung there, one of the
pictures of his collection?"
"That was it," said Paul, welcoming the opportunity of throwing his
brother-in-law off the scent.
Opening one of the shutters, he saw a mark on the wall of the
rectangular space which the picture used to occupy; and he was able to
perceive, from certain details, that the removal had been effected in a
hurry. For instance, the gilt scroll had dropped from the frame and was
lying on the floor. Paul picked it up stealthily so that Bernard should
not see the inscription engraved upon it.
But, while he was examining the panel more attentively after Bernard had
unfastened the other shutter, he gave an exclamation.
"What's the matter?" asked Bernard.
"There . . . look . . . that signature on the wall . . . where the
picture was: a signature and a date."
It was written in pencil; two lines across the white plaster, at a man's
height. The date, "Wednesday evening, 16 September, 1914," followed by
the signature: "Major Hermann."
Major Hermann! Even before Paul was aware of it, his eyes had seized
upon a detail in which all the significance of those two lines of
writing was concentrated; and, while Bernard came forward to look in his
turn, he muttered, in boundless surprise:
"Hermann! . . . Hermine! . . ."
The two words were almost alike. Hermine began with the same letters as
the Christian or surname which the major had written, after his rank, on
the wall. Major Hermann! The Comtesse Hermine! H, E, R, M: The four
letters on the dagger with which Paul had nearly been killed! H, E, R,
M: the four letters on the dagger of the spy whom he had captured in the
church-steeple!
Bernard said:
"It looks to me like a woman's writing. But, if so. . . ." And he
continued thoughtfully, "If so . . . what conclusion are we to draw?
Either the peasant-woman and Major Hermann are one and the same person,
which means that the peasant-woman is a man or that the major is not, or
else we are dealing with two distinct persons, a woman and a man. I
believe that is how it is, in spite of the uncanny resemblance between
that man and that woman. For, after all, how can we suppose that the
same person can have written this signature yesterday evening, passed
through the French lines and spoken to me at Corvigny disguised as a
peasant-woman . . . and then be able to return here, disguised as a
German major, blow up the house, take to flight and, after killing some
of his own soldiers, make his escape in a motor-car?"
Paul, absorbed by his thoughts, did not answer. Presently he went into
the adjoining room, which separated the boudoir from the set of rooms
which his wife had occupied. Of these nothing remained except debris.
But the room in between had not suffered so very much; and it was very
easy to see, by the wash-hand-stand and the condition of the bed, that
it was used as a bedroom and that some one had slept in it the night
before.
On the table Paul found some German newspapers and a French one, dated
10 September, in which the _communiqué_ telling of the great victory of
the Marne was struck out with two great dashes in red pencil and
annotated with the word "Lies!" followed by the initial H.
"We're in Major Hermann's room right enough," said Paul to Bernard.
"And Major Hermann," Bernard declared, "burnt some compromising papers
last night. Look at that heap of ashes in the fire-place." He stooped
and picked up a few envelopes, a few half-burnt sheets of paper
containing consecutive words, nothing but incoherent sentences. On
turning his eyes to the bed, however, he saw under the bolster a parcel
of clothes hidden or perhaps forgotten in the hurry of departure. He
pulled them out and at once cried: "I say, just look at this!"
"At what?" asked Paul, who was searching another part of the room.
"These clothes, look, peasant clothes, the clothes I saw on the woman at
Corvigny. There's no mistaking them: they are the same brown color and
the same sort of serge stuff. And then here's the black-lace scarf which
I told you about. . . ."
"What's that?" exclaimed Paul, running up to him.
"Here, see for yourself, it's a scarf of sorts and not one of the
newest, either. How worn and torn it is! And the brooch I described to
you is still in it. Do you see?"
Paul had noticed the brooch at once with the greatest horror. What a
terrible significance it lent to the discovery of the clothes in the
room occupied by Major Hermann, the room next to Hermine d'Andeville's
boudoir! The cameo was carved with a swan with its wings outspread and
was set in a gold snake with ruby eyes. Paul had known that cameo since
his early boyhood, from seeing it in the dress of the woman who killed
his father, and he knew it also because he had seen it again, with every
smallest detail reproduced, in the Comtesse Hermine's portrait. And now
he was finding the actual brooch, stuck in the black-lace scarf among
the Corvigny peasant-woman's clothes and left behind in Major Hermann's
room!
"This completes the evidence," said Bernard. "The fact that the clothes
are here proves that the woman who asked me about you came back here
last night; but what is the connection between her and that officer who
is her living likeness? Is the person who questioned me about you the
same as the individual who ordered Élisabeth to be shot two hours
earlier? And who are these people? What band of murderers and spies have
we run up against?"
"They are simply Germans," was Paul's reply. "To them spying and
murdering are natural and permissible forms of warfare . . . in a war,
mark you, which they began and are carrying on in the midst of a
perfectly peaceful period. I have told you so before, Bernard: we have
been the victims of war for nearly twenty years. My father's murder
opened the tragedy. And to-day we are mourning our poor Élisabeth. And
that is not the end of it."
"Still," said Bernard, "he has taken to flight."
"We shall see him again, be sure of that. If he doesn't come back, I
will go and find him. And, when that day comes. . . ."
There were two easy-chairs in the room. Paul and Bernard resolved to
spend the night there and, without further delay, wrote their names on
the wall of the passage. Then Paul went back to his men, in order to see
that they were comfortably settled in the barns and out-houses that
remained standing. Here the soldier who served as his orderly, a decent
Auvergnat called Gériflour, told him that he had dug out two pairs of
sheets and a couple of clean mattresses from a little house next to the
guard-room and that the beds were ready. Paul accepted the offer for
Bernard and himself. It was arranged that Gériflour and one of his
companions should go to the château and sleep in the two easy-chairs.
The night passed without any alarm. It was a feverish and sleepless
night for Paul, who was haunted by the thought of Élisabeth. In the
morning he fell into a heavy slumber, disturbed by nightmares. The
reveille woke him with a start. Bernard was waiting for him.
The roll was called in the courtyard of the château. Paul noticed that
his orderly, Gériflour, and the other man were missing.
"They must be asleep," he said to Bernard. "Let's go and shake them
awake."
They went back, through the ruins, to the first floor and along the
demolished bedroom. In the room which Major Hermann had occupied they
found Private Gériflour, huddled on the bed, covered with blood, dead.
His friend was lying back in one of the chairs, also dead. There was no
disorder, no trace of a struggle around the bodies. The two soldiers
must have been killed in their sleep.
Paul at once saw the weapon with which they had been murdered. It was a
dagger with the letters H, E, R, M. on the handle.