A MASTERPIECE OF KULTUR
On the morning of Sunday, the tenth of January, Lieutenant Delroze and
Sergeant d'Andeville stepped on to the platform at Corvigny, went to
call on the commandant of the town and then took a carriage in which
they drove to the Château d'Ornequin.
"All the same," said Bernard, stretching out his legs in the fly, "I
never thought that things would turn out as they have done when I was
hit by a splinter of shrapnel between the Yser and the ferryman's house.
What a hot corner it was just then! Believe me or believe me not, Paul,
if our reinforcements hadn't come up, we should have been done for in
another five minutes. We were jolly lucky!"
"We were indeed," said Paul. "I felt that next day, when I woke up in a
French ambulance!"
"What I can't get over, though," Bernard continued, "is the way that
blackguard of a Major Hermann made off. So you took him prisoner? And
then you saw him unfasten his bonds and escape? The cheek of the rascal!
You may be sure he got away safe and sound!"
Paul muttered:
"I haven't a doubt of it; and I don't doubt either that he means to
carry out his threats against Élisabeth."
"Bosh! We have forty-eight hours before us, as he gave his pal Karl the
tenth of January as the date of his arrival and he won't act until two
days later."
"And suppose he acts to-day?" said Paul, in a husky voice.
Notwithstanding his anguish, however, the drive did not seem long to
him. He was at last approaching--and this time really--the object from
which each day of the last four months had removed him to a greater
distance. Ornequin was on the frontier; and Èbrecourt was but a few
minutes from the frontier. He refused to think of the obstacles which
would intervene before he could reach Èbrecourt, discover his wife's
retreat and save her. He was alive. Élisabeth was alive. No obstacles
existed between him and her.
The Château d'Ornequin, or rather what remained of it--for even the
ruins of the château had been subjected to a fresh bombardment in
November--was serving as a cantonment for territorial troops, whose
first line of trenches skirted the frontier. There was not much fighting
on this side, because, for tactical reasons, it was not to the enemy's
advantage to push too far forward. The defenses were of equal strength;
and a very active watch was kept on either side.
These were the particulars which Paul obtained from the territorial
lieutenant with whom he lunched.
"My dear fellow," concluded the officer, after Paul had told him the
object of his journey, "I am altogether at your service; but, if it's a
question of getting from Ornequin to Èbrecourt, you can make up your
mind that you won't do it."
"I shall do it all right."
"It'll have to be through the air then," said the officer, with a laugh.
"No."
"Or underground."
"Perhaps."
"There you're wrong. We wanted ourselves to do some sapping and mining.
It was no use. We're on a deposit of rock in which it's impossible to
dig."
It was Paul's turn to smile:
"My dear chap, if you'll just be kind enough to lend me for one hour
four strong men armed with picks and shovels, I shall be at Èbrecourt
to-night."
"I say! Four men to dig a six-mile tunnel through the rock in an hour!"
"That's ample. Also, you must promise absolute secrecy both as to the
means employed and the rather curious discoveries to which they are
bound to lead. I shall make a report to the general commanding in chief;
but no one else is to know."
"Very well, I'll select my four fellows for you myself. Where am I to
bring them to you?"
"On the terrace, near the donjon."
This terrace commands the Liseron from a height of some hundred and
fifty feet and, in consequence of a loop in the river, is exactly
opposite Corvigny, whose steeple and the neighboring hills are seen in
the distance. Of the castle-keep nothing remains but its enormous base,
which is continued by the foundation-walls, mingled with natural rocks,
which support the terrace. A garden extends its clumps of laurels and
spindle-trees to the parapet.
It was here that Paul went. Time after time he strode up and down the
esplanade, leaning over the river and inspecting the blocks that had
fallen from the keep under the mantle of ivy.
"Now then," said the lieutenant, on arriving with his men. "Is this your
starting-point? I warn you we are standing with our backs to the
frontier."
"Pooh!" replied Paul, in the same jesting tone. "All roads lead to
Berlin!"
He pointed to a circle which he had marked out with stakes, and set the
men to work:
"Go ahead, my lads."
They began to throw up, within a circle of three yards in circumference,
a soil consisting of vegetable mold in which, in twenty minutes' time,
they had dug a hole five feet deep. Here they came upon a layer of
stones cemented together; and their work now became much more difficult,
for the cement was of incredible hardness and they were only to break it
up by inserting their picks into the cracks. Paul followed the
operations with anxious attention.
After an hour, he told them to stop. He himself went down into the hole
and then went on digging, but slowly and as though examining the effect
of every blow that he struck.
"That's it!" he said, drawing himself up.
"What?" asked Bernard.
"The ground on which we are standing is only a floor of the big
buildings that used to adjoin the old keep, buildings which were razed
to the ground centuries ago and on the top of which this garden was laid
out."
"Well?"
"Well, in clearing away the soil, I have broken through the ceiling of
one of the old rooms. Look."
He took a stone, placed it right in the center of the narrower opening
which he himself had made and let it drop. The stone disappeared. A dull
sound followed almost immediately.
"All that need now be done is for the men to widen the entrance. In the
meantime, we will go and fetch a ladder and lights: as much light as
possible."
"We have pine torches," said the officer.
"That will do capitally."
Paul was right. When the ladder was let down and he had descended with
the lieutenant and Bernard, they saw a very large hall, whose vaults
were supported by massive pillars which divided it, like a church of
irregular design, into two main naves, with narrower and lower
side-aisles.
But Paul at once called his companions' attention to the floor of those
two naves:
"A concrete flooring, do you see? . . . And, look there, as I expected,
two rails running along one of the upper galleries! . . . And here are
two more rails in the other gallery! . . ."
"But what does it all mean?" exclaimed Bernard and the lieutenant.
"It means simply this," said Paul, "that we have before us what is
evidently the explanation of the great mystery surrounding the capture
of Corvigny and its two forts."
"How?"
"Corvigny and its two forts were demolished in a few minutes, weren't
they? Where did those gunshots come from, considering that Corvigny is
fifteen miles from the frontier and that not one of the enemy's guns had
crossed the frontier? They came from here, from this underground
fortress."
"Impossible."
"Here are the rails on which they moved the two gigantic pieces which
were responsible for the bombardment."
"I say! You can't bombard from the bottom of a cavern! Where are the
embrasures?"
"The rails will take us there. Show a good light, Bernard. Look, here's
a platform mounted on a pivot. It's a good size, eh? And here's the
other platform."
"But the embrasures?"
"In front of you, Bernard."
"That's a wall."
"It's the wall which, together with the rock of the hill, supports the
terrace above the Liseron, opposite Corvigny. And two circular breaches
were made in the wall and afterwards closed up again. You can see the
traces of the closing quite plainly."
Bernard and the lieutenant could not get over their astonishment:
"Why, it's an enormous work!" said the officer.
"Absolutely colossal!" replied Paul. "But don't be too much surprised,
my dear fellow. It was begun sixteen or seventeen years ago, to my own
knowledge. Besides, as I told you, part of the work was already done,
because we are in the lower rooms of the old Ornequin buildings; and,
having found them, all they had to do was to arrange them according to
the object which they had in view. There is something much more
astounding, though!"
"What is that?"
"The tunnel which they had to build in order to bring their two pieces
here."
"A tunnel?"
"Well, of course! How do you expect they got here? Let's follow the
rails, in the other direction, and we'll soon come to the tunnel."
As he anticipated, the two sets of rails joined a little way back and
they saw the yawning entrance to a tunnel about nine feet wide and the
same height. It dipped under ground, sloping very gently. The walls were
of brick. No damp oozed through the walls; and the ground itself was
perfectly dry.
"Èbrecourt branch-line," said Paul, laughing. "Seven miles in the shade.
And that is how the stronghold of Corvigny was bagged. First, a few
thousand men passed through, who killed off the little Ornequin garrison
and the posts on the frontier and then went on to the town. At the same
time, the two huge guns were brought up, mounted and trained upon sites
located beforehand. When these had done their business, they were
removed and the holes stopped up. All this didn't take two hours."
"But to achieve those two decisive hours the Kaiser worked for seventeen
years, bless him!" said Bernard. "Well, let's make a start."
"Would you like my men to go with you?" suggested the lieutenant.
"No, thank you. It's better that my brother-in-law and I should go by
ourselves. If we find, however, that the enemy has destroyed his tunnel,
we will come back and ask for help. But it will astonish me if he has.
Apart from the fact that he has taken every precaution lest the
existence of the tunnel should be discovered, he is likely to have kept
it intact in case he himself might want to use it again."
And so, at three o'clock in the afternoon, the two brothers-in-law
started on their walk down the imperial tunnel, as Bernard called it.
They were well armed, supplied with provisions and ammunition and
resolved to pursue the adventure to the end.
In a few minutes, that is to say, two hundred yards farther on, the
light of their pocket-lantern showed them the steps of a staircase on
their right.
"First turning," remarked Paul. "I take it there must be at least three
of them."
"Where does the staircase lead to?"
"To the château, obviously. And, if you want to know to what part, I
say, to the room with the portrait. There's no doubt that this is the
way by which Major Hermann entered the château on the evening of the day
when we attacked it. He had his accomplice Karl with him. Seeing our
names written on the wall, they stabbed the two men sleeping in the
room, Private Gériflour and his comrade."
Bernard d'Andeville stopped short:
"Look here, Paul, you've been bewildering me all day. You're acting with
the most extraordinary insight, going straight to the right place at
which to dig, describing all that happened as if you had been there,
knowing everything and foreseeing everything. I never suspected you of
that particular gift. Have you been studying Sherlock Holmes?"
"Not even Arsène Lupin," said Paul, moving on again. "But I've been ill
and I have thought things over. Certain passages in Élisabeth's diary,
in which she spoke of her perplexing discoveries, gave me the first
hint. I began by asking myself why the Germans had taken such pains to
create a desert all around the château. And in this way, putting two and
two together, drawing inference after inference, examining the past and
the present, remembering my meeting with the German Emperor and a
number of things which are all linked together, I ended by coming to the
conclusion that there was bound to be a secret communication between the
German and the French sides of the frontier, terminating at the exact
place from which it was possible to fire on Corvigny. It seemed to me
that, _a priori_, this place must be the terrace; and I became quite
sure of it when, just now, I saw on the terrace a dead tree, overgrown
with ivy, near which Élisabeth thought that she heard sounds coming from
underground. From that moment, I had nothing to do but get to work."
"And your object is . . . ?" asked Bernard.
"I have only one object: to deliver Élisabeth."
"Your plan?"
"I haven't one. Everything will depend on circumstances; but I am
convinced that I am on the right track."
In fact all his surmises were proving to be correct. In ten minutes they
reached a space where another tunnel, also supplied with rails, branched
off to the right.
"Second turning," said Paul. "Corvigny Road. It was down here that the
Germans marched to the town and took our troops by surprise before they
even had time to assemble; it was down here that the peasant-woman went
who accosted you in the evening. The outlet must be at some distance
from the town, perhaps in a farm belonging to the supposed
peasant-woman."
"And the third turning?" said Bernard.
"Here it is."
"Another staircase?"
"Yes; and I have no doubt that it leads to the chapel. We may safely
presume that, on the day when my father was murdered, the Emperor had
come to examine the works which he had ordered and which were being
executed under the supervision of the woman who accompanied him. The
chapel, which at that time was not inside the walls of the park, is
evidently one of the exits from the secret network of roads of which we
are following the main thoroughfare."
Paul saw two more of these ramifications, which, judging from their
position and direction, must issue near the frontier, thus completing a
marvelous system of espionage and invasion.
"It's wonderful," said Bernard. "It's admirable. If this isn't Kultur, I
should like to know what is. One can see that these people have the true
sense of war. The idea of digging for twenty years at a tunnel intended
for the possible bombardment of a tiny fortress would never have
occurred to a Frenchman. It needs a degree of civilization to which we
can't lay claim. Did you ever know such beggars!"
His enthusiasm increased still further when he observed that the roof of
the tunnel was supplied with ventilating-shafts. But at last Paul
enjoined him to keep silent or to speak in a whisper:
"You can imagine that, as they thought fit to preserve their lines of
communication, they must have done something to make them unserviceable
to the French. Èbrecourt is not far off. Perhaps there are
listening-posts, sentries posted at the right places. These people leave
nothing to chance."
One thing that lent weight to Paul's remark was the presence, between
the rails, of those cast-iron slabs which covered the chambers of mines
laid in advance, so that they could be exploded by electricity. The
first was numbered five, the second four; and so on. Paul and Bernard
avoided them carefully; and this delayed their progress, for they no
longer dared switch on their lamps except at brief intervals.
At about seven o'clock they heard or rather they seemed to hear confused
sounds of life and movement on the ground overhead. They felt deeply
moved. The soil above them was German soil; and the echo brought the
sounds of German life.
"It's curious, you know, that the tunnel isn't better watched and that
we have been able to come so far without accident."
"We'll give them a bad mark for that," said Bernard. "Kultur has made a
slip."
Meanwhile a brisker draught blew along the walls. The outside air
entered in cool gusts; and they suddenly saw a distant light through the
darkness. It was stationary. Everything around it seemed still, as
though it were one of those fixed signals which are put up near a
railway.
When they came closer, they perceived that it was the light of an
electric arc-lamp, that it was burning inside a shed standing at the
exit of the tunnel and its rays were cast upon great white cliffs and
upon little mounds of sand and pebbles.
Paul whispered:
"Those are quarries. By placing the entrance to their tunnel there, they
were able to continue their works in time of peace without attracting
attention. You may be sure that those so-called quarries were worked
very discreetly, in a compound to which the workmen were confined."
"What Kultur!" Bernard repeated.
He felt Paul's hand grip his arm. Something had passed in front of the
light, like a shadow rising and falling immediately after.
With infinite caution they crawled up to the shed and raised themselves
until their eyes were on a level with the windows. Inside were half a
dozen soldiers, all lying down, or rather sprawling one across the
other, among empty bottles, dirty plates, greasy paper wrappers and
remnants of broken victuals. They were the men told off to guard the
tunnel; and they were dead-drunk.
"More Kultur," said Bernard.
"We're in luck," said Paul, "and I now understand why the watch is so
ill-kept: this is Sunday."
There was a telegraph-apparatus on a table and a telephone on the wall;
and Paul saw under a glass case a switch-board with five brass handles,
which evidently corresponded by electric wires with the five
mine-chambers in the tunnel.
When they passed on, Bernard and Paul continued to follow the rails
along the bed of a narrow channel, hollowed out of the rock, which led
them to an open space bright with many lights. A whole village lay
before them, consisting of barracks inhabited by soldiers whom they saw
moving to and fro. They went outside it. They then noticed the sound of
a motor-car and the blinding rays of two head-lights; and, after
climbing a fence and passing through a shrubbery, they saw a large villa
lit up from top to bottom.
The car stopped in front of the doorstep, where some footmen were
standing, as well as a guard of soldiers. Two officers and a lady
wrapped in furs alighted. When the car turned, the lights revealed a
large garden, contained within very high walls.
"It is just as I thought," said Paul. "This forms the counterpart of the
Château d'Ornequin. At either end there are strong walls which allow
work to be done unobserved by prying eyes. The terminus is in the open
air here, instead of underground, as it is down there; but at least the
quarries, the work-yards, the barracks, the garrison, the villa
belonging to the staff, the garden, the stables, all this military
organization is surrounded by walls and no doubt guarded on the outside
by sentries. That explains why one is able to move about so freely
inside."
At that moment, a second motor-car set down three officers and then
joined the other in the coach-house.
"There's a dinner-party on," said Bernard.
They resolved to approach as near as they could, under cover of the
thick clumps of shrubs planted along the carriage-drive which surrounded
the house.
They waited for some time; and then, from the sound of voices and
laughter that came from the ground-floor, at the back, they concluded
that this must be the scene of the banquet and that the guests were
sitting down to dinner. There were bursts of song, shouts of applause.
Outside, nothing stirred. The garden was deserted.
"The place seems quiet," said Paul. "I shall ask you to give me a leg up
and to keep hidden yourself."
"You want to climb to the ledge of one of the windows? What about the
shutters?"
"I don't expect they're very close. You can see the light shining
through the middle."
"Well, but why are you doing it? There is no reason to bother about this
house more than any other."
"Yes, there is. You yourself told me that one of the wounded prisoners
said Prince Conrad had taken up his quarters in a villa outside
Èbrecourt. Now this one, standing in the middle of a sort of entrenched
camp and at the entrance to the tunnel, seems to me marked out. . . ."
"Not to mention this really princely dinner-party," said Bernard,
laughing. "You're right. Up you go."
They crossed the walk. With Bernard's assistance, Paul was easily able
to grip the ledge above the basement floor and to hoist himself to the
stone balcony.
"That's it," he said. "Go back to where we were and whistle in case of
danger."
After bestriding the balustrade, he carefully loosened one of the
shutters by passing first his fingers and then his hand through the
intervening space; and he succeeded in unfastening the bolt. The
curtains, being crossed inside, enabled him to move about unseen; but
they were open at the top, leaving an inverted triangle through which he
could see by climbing on to the balustrade.
He did so and then bent forward and looked.
The sight that met his eyes was such and gave him so horrible a blow
that his legs began to shake beneath him. . . .