A rule of the Boy Scouts is every day to do some one a good turn. Not
because the copybooks tell you it deserves another, but in spite of
that pleasing possibility. If you are a true scout, until you have
performed your act of kindness your day is dark. You are as unhappy as
is the grown-up who has begun his day without shaving or reading the
New York Sun. But as soon as you have proved yourself you may, with a
clear conscience, look the world in the face and untie the knot in your
kerchief.
Jimmie Reeder untied the accusing knot in his scarf at just ten minutes
past eight on a hot August morning after he had given one dime to his
sister Sadie. With that she could either witness the first-run films
at the Palace, or by dividing her fortune patronize two of the nickel
shows on Lenox Avenue. The choice Jimmie left to her. He was setting
out for the annual encampment of the Boy Scouts at Hunter's Island, and
in the excitement of that adventure even the movies ceased to thrill.
But Sadie also could be unselfish. With a heroism of a camp-fire
maiden she made a gesture which might have been interpreted to mean she
was returning the money.
"I can't, Jimmie!" she gasped. "I can't take it off you. You saved
it, and you ought to get the fun of it."
"I haven't saved it yet," said Jimmie. "I'm going to cut it out of the
railroad fare. I'm going to get off at City Island instead of at
Pelham Manor and walk the difference. That's ten cents cheaper."
Sadie exclaimed with admiration:
"An' you carryin' that heavy grip!"
"Aw, that's nothin'," said the man of the family.
"Good-by, mother. So long, Sadie."
To ward off further expressions of gratitude he hurriedly advised Sadie
to take in "The Curse of Cain" rather than "The Mohawk's Last Stand,"
and fled down the front steps.
He wore his khaki uniform. On his shoulders was his knapsack, from his
hands swung his suit-case, and between his heavy stockings and his
"shorts" his kneecaps, unkissed by the sun, as yet unscathed by
blackberry vines, showed as white and fragile as the wrists of a girl.
As he moved toward the "L" station at the corner, Sadie and his mother
waved to him; in the street, boys too small to be scouts hailed him
enviously; even the policeman glancing over the newspapers on the
news-stand nodded approval.
"You a scout, Jimmie?" he asked.
"No," retorted Jimmie, for was not he also in uniform? "I'm Santa Claus
out filling Christmas stockings."
The patrolman also possessed a ready wit.
"Then get yourself a pair," he advised. "If a dog was to see your
legs--"
Jimmie escaped the insult by fleeing up the steps of the Elevated.
An hour later, with his valise in one hand and staff in the other, he
was tramping up the Boston Post Road and breathing heavily. The day was
cruelly hot. Before his eyes, over an interminable stretch of asphalt,
the heat waves danced and flickered. Already the knapsack on his
shoulders pressed upon him like an Old Man of the Sea; the linen in the
valise had turned to pig iron, his pipe-stem legs were wabbling, his
eyes smarted with salt sweat, and the fingers supporting the valise
belonged to some other boy, and were giving that boy much pain. But as
the motor-cars flashed past with raucous warnings, or, that those who
rode might better see the boy with bare knees, passed at "half speed,"
Jimmie stiffened his shoulders and stepped jauntily forward. Even when
the joy-riders mocked with "Oh, you scout!" he smiled at them. He was
willing to admit to those who rode that the laugh was on the one who
walked. And he regretted--oh, so bitterly--having left the train. He
was indignant that for his "one good turn a day" he had not selected
one less strenuous--that, for instance, he had not assisted a
frightened old lady through the traffic. To refuse the dime she might
have offered, as all true scouts refuse all tips, would have been
easier than to earn it by walking five miles, with the sun at
ninety-nine degrees, and carrying excess baggage. Twenty times James
shifted the valise to the other hand, twenty times he let it drop and
sat upon it.
And then, as again he took up his burden, the good Samaritan drew near.
He drew near in a low gray racing-car at the rate of forty miles an
hour, and within a hundred feet of Jimmie suddenly stopped and backed
toward him. The good Samaritan was a young man with white hair. He
wore a suit of blue, a golf cap; the hands that held the wheel were
disguised in large yellow gloves. He brought the car to a halt and
surveyed the dripping figure in the road with tired and uncurious eyes.
"You a Boy Scout?" he asked.
With alacrity for the twenty-first time Jimmie dropped the valise,
forced his cramped fingers into straight lines, and saluted.
The young man in the car nodded toward the seat beside him.
"Get in," he commanded.
When James sat panting happily at his elbow the old young man, to
Jimmie's disappointment, did not continue to shatter the speed limit.
Instead, he seemed inclined for conversation, and the car, growling
indignantly, crawled.
"I never saw a Boy Scout before," announced the old young man. "Tell me
about it. First, tell me what you do when you're not scouting."
Jimmie explained volubly. When not in uniform he was an office boy,
and from peddlers and beggars guarded the gates of Carroll and
Hastings, stock-brokers. He spoke the names of his employers with awe.
It was a firm distinguished, conservative, and long established. The
white-haired young man seemed to nod in assent.
"Do you know them?" demanded Jimmie suspiciously. "Are you a customer
of ours?"
"I know them," said the young man. "They are customers of mine."
Jimmie wondered in what way Carroll and Hastings were customers of the
white-haired young man. Judging him by his outer garments, Jimmie
guessed he was a Fifth Avenue tailor; he might be even a haberdasher.
Jimmie continued. He lived, he explained, with his mother at One
Hundred and Forty-sixth Street; Sadie, his sister, attended the public
school; he helped support them both, and he now was about to enjoy a
well-earned vacation camping out on Hunter's Island, where he would
cook his own meals, and, if the mosquitoes permitted, sleep in a tent.
"And you like that?" demanded the young man. "You call that fun?"
"Sure!" protested Jimmie. "Don't you go camping out?"
"I go camping out," said the good Samaritan, "whenever I leave New
York."
Jimmie had not for three years lived in Wall Street not to understand
that the young man spoke in metaphor.
"You don't look," objected the young man critically, "as though you
were built for the strenuous life."
Jimmie glanced guiltily at his white knees.
"You ought ter see me two weeks from now," he protested. "I get all
sunburnt and hard--hard as anything!"
The young man was incredulous.
"You were near getting sunstruck when I picked you up," he laughed.
"If you're going to Hunter's Island, why didn't you go to Pelham Manor?"
"That's right!" assented Jimmie eagerly. "But I wanted to save the ten
cents so's to send Sadie to the movies. So I walked."
The young man looked his embarrassment.
"I beg your pardon," he murmured.
But Jimmie did not hear him. From the back of the car he was dragging
excitedly at the hated suit-case.
"Stop!" he commanded. "I got ter get out. I got ter walk."
The young man showed his surprise.
"Walk!" he exclaimed. "What is it--a bet?"
Jimmie dropped the valise and followed it into the roadway. It took
some time to explain to the young man. First, he had to be told about
the scout law and the one good turn a day, and that it must involve
some personal sacrifice. And, as Jimmie pointed out, changing from a
slow suburban train to a racing-car could not be listed as a sacrifice.
He had not earned the money, Jimmie argued; he had only avoided paying
it to the railroad. If he did not walk he would be obtaining the
gratitude of Sadie by a falsehood. Therefore, he must walk.
"Not at all," protested the young man. "You've got it wrong. What
good will it do your sister to have you sunstruck? I think you are
sunstruck. You're crazy with the heat. You get in here, and we'll
talk it over as we go along."
Hastily Jimmie backed away. "I'd rather walk," he said.
The young man shifted his legs irritably.
"Then how'll this suit you?" he called. "We'll declare that first 'one
good turn' a failure and start afresh. Do me a good turn."
Jimmie halted in his tracks and looked back suspiciously.
"I'm going to Hunter's Island Inn," called the young man, "and I've
lost my way. You get in here and guide me. That'll be doing me a good
turn."
On either side of the road, blotting out the landscape, giant hands
picked out in electric-light bulbs pointed the way to Hunter's Island
Inn. Jimmie grinned and nodded toward them.
"Much obliged," he called. "I got ter walk." Turning his back upon
temptation, he waddled forward into the flickering heat waves.
The young man did not attempt to pursue. At the side of the road,
under the shade of a giant elm, he had brought the car to a halt and
with his arms crossed upon the wheel sat motionless, following with
frowning eyes the retreating figure of Jimmie. But the narrow-chested
and knock-kneed boy staggering over the sun-baked asphalt no longer
concerned him. It was not Jimmie, but the code preached by Jimmie, and
not only preached but before his eyes put into practice, that
interested him. The young man with white hair had been running away
from temptation. At forty miles an hour he had been running away from
the temptation to do a fellow mortal "a good turn." That morning, to
the appeal of a drowning Caesar to "Help me, Cassius, or I sink," he
had answered: "Sink!" That answer he had no wish to reconsider. That
he might not reconsider he had sought to escape. It was his experience
that a sixty-horse-power racing-machine is a jealous mistress. For
retrospective, sentimental, or philanthropic thoughts she grants no
leave of absence. But he had not escaped. Jimmie had halted him,
tripped him by the heels, and set him again to thinking. Within the
half-hour that followed those who rolled past saw at the side of the
road a car with her engine running, and leaning upon the wheel, as
unconscious of his surroundings as though he sat at his own fireplace,
a young man who frowned and stared at nothing. The half-hour passed
and the young man swung his car back toward the city. But at the first
road-house that showed a blue-and-white telephone sign he left it, and
into the iron box at the end of the bar dropped a nickel. He wished to
communicate with Mr. Carroll, of Carroll and Hastings; and when he
learned Mr. Carroll had just issued orders that he must not be
disturbed, the young man gave his name.
The effect upon the barkeeper was instantaneous. With the aggrieved
air of one who feels he is the victim of a jest he laughed scornfully.
"What are you putting over?" he demanded.
The young man smiled reassuringly. He had begun to speak and, though
apparently engaged with the beer-glass he was polishing, the barkeeper
listened.
Down in Wall Street the senior member of Carroll and Hastings also
listened. He was alone in the most private of all his private offices,
and when interrupted had been engaged in what, of all undertakings, is
the most momentous. On the desk before him lay letters to his lawyer,
to the coroner, to his wife; and hidden by a mass of papers, but within
reach of his hand, was an automatic pistol. The promise it offered of
swift release had made the writing of the letters simple, had given him
a feeling of complete detachment, had released him, at least in
thought, from all responsibilities. And when at his elbow the
telephone coughed discreetly, it was as though some one had called him
from a world from which already he had made his exit.
Mechanically, through mere habit, he lifted the receiver.
The voice over the telephone came in brisk, staccato sentences.
"That letter I sent this morning? Forget it. Tear it up. I've been
thinking and I'm going to take a chance. I've decided to back you
boys, and I know you'll make good. I'm speaking from a road-house in
the Bronx; going straight from here to the bank. So you can begin to
draw against us within an hour. And--hello!--will three millions see
you through?"
From Wall Street there came no answer, but from the hands of the
barkeeper a glass crashed to the floor.
The young man regarded the barkeeper with puzzled eyes.
"He doesn't answer," he exclaimed. "He must have hung up."
"He must have fainted!" said the barkeeper.
The white-haired one pushed a bill across the counter. "To pay for
breakage," he said, and disappeared down Pelham Parkway.
Throughout the day, with the bill, for evidence, pasted against the
mirror, the barkeeper told and retold the wondrous tale.
"He stood just where you're standing now," he related, "blowing in
million-dollar bills like you'd blow suds off a beer. If I'd knowed it
was him, I'd have hit him once and hid him in the cellar for the
reward. Who'd I think he was? I thought he was a wire-tapper, working
a con game!"
Mr. Carroll had not "hung up," but when in the Bronx the beer-glass
crashed, in Wall Street the receiver had slipped from the hand of the
man who held it, and the man himself had fallen forward. His desk hit
him in the face and woke him--woke him to the wonderful fact that he
still lived; that at forty he had been born again; that before him
stretched many more years in which, as the young man with the white
hair had pointed out, he still could make good.
The afternoon was far advanced when the staff of Carroll and Hastings
were allowed to depart, and, even late as was the hour, two of them
were asked to remain. Into the most private of the private offices
Carroll invited Gaskell, the head clerk; in the main office Hastings
had asked young Thorne, the bond clerk, to be seated.
Until the senior partner has finished with Gaskell young Thorne must
remain seated.
"Gaskell," said Mr. Carroll, "if we had listened to you, if we'd run
this place as it was when father was alive, this never would have
happened. It hasn't happened, but we've had our lesson. And after
this we're going slow and going straight. And we don't need you to
tell us how to do that. We want you to go away--on a month's vacation.
When I thought we were going under I planned to send the children on a
sea voyage with the governess--so they wouldn't see the newspapers.
But now that I can look them in the eye again, I need them, I can't let
them go. So, if you'd like to take your wife on an ocean trip to Nova
Scotia and Quebec, here are the cabins I reserved for the kids. They
call it the royal suite--whatever that is--and the trip lasts a month.
The boat sails to-morrow morning. Don't sleep too late or you may miss
her."
The head clerk was secreting the tickets in the inside pocket of his
waistcoat. His fingers trembled, and when he laughed his voice
trembled.
"Miss the boat!" the head clerk exclaimed. "If she gets away from
Millie and me she's got to start now. We'll go on board to-night!"
A half-hour later Millie was on her knees packing a trunk, and her
husband was telephoning to the drug-store for a sponge-bag and a cure
for seasickness.
Owing to the joy in her heart and to the fact that she was on her
knees, Millie was alternately weeping into the trunk-tray and offering
up incoherent prayers of thanksgiving. Suddenly she sank back upon the
floor.
"John!" she cried, "doesn't it seem sinful to sail away in a 'royal
suite' and leave this beautiful flat empty?"
Over the telephone John was having trouble with the drug clerk.
"No!" he explained, "I'm not seasick now. The medicine I want is to be
taken later. I know I'm speaking from the Pavonia; but the Pavonia
isn't a ship; it's an apartment-house."
He turned to Millie. "We can't be in two places at the same time," he
suggested.
"But, think," insisted Millie, "of all the poor people stifling
to-night in this heat, trying to sleep on the roofs and fire-escapes;
and our flat so cool and big and pretty--and no one in it."
John nodded his head proudly.
"I know it's big," he said, "but it isn't big enough to hold all the
people who are sleeping to-night on the roofs and in the parks."
"I was thinking of your brother--and Grace," said Millie. "They've
been married only two weeks now, and they're in a stuffy hall bedroom
and eating with all the other boarders. Think what our flat would mean
to them; to be by themselves, with eight rooms and their own kitchen
and bath, and our new refrigerator and the gramophone! It would be
heaven! It would be a real honeymoon!"
Abandoning the drug clerk, John lifted Millie in his arms and kissed
her, for, next to his wife, nearest his heart was the younger brother.
The younger brother and Grace were sitting on the stoop of the
boarding-house. On the upper steps, in their shirt-sleeves, were the
other boarders; so the bride and bridegroom spoke in whispers. The air
of the cross street was stale and stagnant; from it rose exhalations of
rotting fruit, the gases of an open subway, the smoke of passing
taxicabs. But between the street and the hall bedroom, with its odors
of a gas-stove and a kitchen, the choice was difficult.
"We've got to cool off somehow," the young husband was saying, "or you
won't sleep. Shall we treat ourselves to ice-cream sodas or a trip on
the Weehawken ferry-boat?"
"The ferry-boat!" begged the girl, "where we can get away from all
these people."
A taxicab with a trunk in front whirled into the street, kicked itself
to a stop, and the head clerk and Millie spilled out upon the pavement.
They talked so fast, and the younger brother and Grace talked so fast,
that the boarders, although they listened intently, could make nothing
of it.
They distinguished only the concluding sentences:
"Why don't you drive down to the wharf with us," they heard the elder
brother ask, "and see our royal suite?"
But the younger brother laughed him to scorn.
"What's your royal suite," he mocked, "to our royal palace?"
An hour later, had the boarders listened outside the flat of the head
clerk, they would have heard issuing from his bathroom the cooling
murmur of running water and from his gramophone the jubilant notes of
"Alexander's Rag-time Band."
When in his private office Carroll was making a present of the royal
suite to the head clerk, in the main office Hastings, the junior
partner, was addressing "Champ" Thorne, the bond clerk. He addressed
him familiarly and affectionately as "Champ." This was due partly to
the fact that twenty-six years before Thorne had been christened
Champneys and to the coincidence that he had captained the football
eleven of one of the Big Three to the championship.
"Champ," said Mr. Hastings, "last month, when you asked me to raise
your salary, the reason I didn't do it was not because you didn't
deserve it, but because I believed if we gave you a raise you'd
immediately get married."
The shoulders of the ex-football captain rose aggressively; he snorted
with indignation.
"And why should I not get married?" he demanded. "You're a fine one to
talk! You're the most offensively happy married man I ever met."
"Perhaps I know I am happy better than you do," reproved the junior
partner; "but I know also that it takes money to support a wife."
"You raise me to a hundred a week," urged Champ, "and I'll make it
support a wife whether it supports me or not."
"A month ago," continued Hastings, "we could have promised you a
hundred, but we didn't know how long we could pay it. We didn't want
you to rush off and marry some fine girl--"
"Some fine girl!" muttered Mr. Thorne. "The finest girl!"
"The finer the girl," Hastings pointed out, "the harder it would have
been for you if we had failed and you had lost your job."
The eyes of the young man opened with sympathy and concern.
"Is it as bad as that?" he murmured.
Hastings sighed happily.
"It was," he said, "but this morning the Young Man of Wall Street did
us a good turn--saved us--saved our creditors, saved our homes, saved
our honor. We're going to start fresh and pay our debts, and we agreed
the first debt we paid would be the small one we owe you. You've
brought us more than we've given, and if you'll stay with us we're
going to 'see' your fifty and raise it a hundred. What do you say?"
Young Mr. Thorne leaped to his feet. What he said was: "Where'n hell's
my hat?"
But by the time he had found the hat and the door he mended his manners.
"I say, 'Thank you a thousand times,"' he shouted over his shoulder.
"Excuse me, but I've got to go. I've got to break the news to--"
He did not explain to whom he was going to break the news; but Hastings
must have guessed, for again he sighed happily and then, a little
hysterically laughed aloud. Several months had passed since he had
laughed aloud.
In his anxiety to break the news Champ Thorne almost broke his neck.
In his excitement he could not remember whether the red flash meant the
elevator was going down or coming up, and sooner than wait to find out
he started to race down eighteen flights of stairs when fortunately the
elevator-door swung open.
"You get five dollars," he announced to the elevator man, "if you drop
to the street without a stop. Beat the speed limit! Act like the
building is on fire and you're trying to save me before the roof falls."
Senator Barnes and his entire family, which was his daughter Barbara,
were at the Ritz-Carlton. They were in town in August because there
was a meeting of the directors of the Brazil and Cuyaba Rubber Company,
of which company Senator Barnes was president. It was a secret
meeting. Those directors who were keeping cool at the edge of the
ocean had been summoned by telegraph; those who were steaming across
the ocean, by wireless.
Up from the equator had drifted the threat of a scandal, sickening,
grim, terrible. As yet it burned beneath the surface, giving out only
an odor, but an odor as rank as burning rubber itself. At any moment
it might break into flame. For the directors, was it the better wisdom
to let the scandal smoulder, and take a chance, or to be the first to
give the alarm, the first to lead the way to the horror and stamp it
out?
It was to decide this that, in the heat of August, the directors and
the president had foregathered.
Champ Thorne knew nothing of this; he knew only that by a miracle
Barbara Barnes was in town; that at last he was in a position to ask
her to marry him; that she would certainly say she would. That was all
he cared to know.
A year before he had issued his declaration of independence. Before he
could marry, he told her, he must be able to support a wife on what he
earned, without her having to accept money from her father, and until
he received "a minimum wage" of five thousand dollars they must wait.
"What is the matter with my father's money?" Barbara had demanded.
Thorne had evaded the direct question.
"There is too much of it," he said.
"Do you object to the way he makes it?" insisted Barbara. "Because
rubber is most useful. You put it in golf balls and auto tires and
galoshes. There is nothing so perfectly respectable as galoshes. And
what is there 'tainted' about a raincoat?"
Thorne shook his head unhappily.
"It's not the finished product to which I refer," he stammered; "it's
the way they get the raw material."
"They get it out of trees," said Barbara. Then she exclaimed with
enlightenment--"Oh!" she cried, "you are thinking of the Congo. There
it is terrible! That is slavery. But there are no slaves on the
Amazon. The natives are free and the work is easy. They just tap the
trees the way the farmers gather sugar in Vermont. Father has told me
about it often."
Thorne had made no comment. He could abuse a friend, if the friend
were among those present, but denouncing any one he disliked as
heartily as he disliked Senator Barnes was a public service he
preferred to leave to others. And he knew besides that if the father
she loved and the man she loved distrusted each other, Barbara would
not rest until she learned the reason why.
One day, in a newspaper, Barbara read of the Puju Mayo atrocities, of
the Indian slaves in the jungles and backwaters of the Amazon, who are
offered up as sacrifices to "red rubber." She carried the paper to her
father. What it said, her father told her, was untrue, and if it were
true it was the first he had heard of it.
Senator Barnes loved the good things of life, but the thing he loved
most was his daughter; the thing he valued the highest was her good
opinion. So when for the first time she looked at him in doubt, he
assured her he at once would order an investigation.
"But, of course," he added, "it will be many months before our agents
can report. On the Amazon news travels very slowly."
In the eyes of his daughter the doubt still lingered.
"I am afraid," she said, "that that is true."
That was six months before the directors of the Brazil and Cuyaba
Rubber Company were summoned to meet their president at his rooms in
the Ritz-Carlton. They were due to arrive in half an hour, and while
Senator Barnes awaited their coming Barbara came to him. In her eyes
was a light that helped to tell the great news. It gave him a sharp,
jealous pang. He wanted at once to play a part in her happiness, to
make her grateful to him, not alone to this stranger who was taking her
away. So fearful was he that she would shut him out of her life that
had she asked for half his kingdom he would have parted with it.
"And besides giving my consent," said the rubber king, "for which no
one seems to have asked, what can I give my little girl to make her
remember her old father? Some diamonds to put on her head, or pearls to
hang around her neck, or does she want a vacant lot on Fifth Avenue?"
The lovely hands of Barbara rested upon his shoulders; her lovely face
was raised to his; her lovely eyes were appealing, and a little
frightened.
"What would one of those things cost?" asked Barbara.
The question was eminently practical. It came within the scope of the
senator's understanding. After all, he was not to be cast into outer
darkness. His smile was complacent. He answered airily:
"Anything you like," he said; "a million dollars?"
The fingers closed upon his shoulders. The eyes, still frightened,
still searched his in appeal.
"Then, for my wedding-present," said the girl, "I want you to take that
million dollars and send an expedition to the Amazon. And I will
choose the men. Men unafraid; men not afraid of fever or sudden death;
not afraid to tell the truth--even to you. And all the world will
know. And they--I mean you--will set those people free!"
Senator Barnes received the directors with an embarrassment which he
concealed under a manner of just indignation.
"My mind is made up," he told them. "Existing conditions cannot
continue. And to that end, at my own expense, I am sending an
expedition across South America. It will investigate, punish, and
establish reforms. I suggest, on account of this damned heat, we do
now adjourn."
That night, over on Long Island, Carroll told his wife all, or nearly
all. He did not tell her about the automatic pistol. And together on
tiptoe they crept to the nursery and looked down at their sleeping
children. When she rose from her knees the mother said: "But how can I
thank him?"
By "him" she meant the Young Man of Wall Street.
"You never can thank him," said Carroll; "that's the worst of it."
But after a long silence the mother said: "I will send him a photograph
of the children. Do you think he will understand?"
Down at Seabright, Hastings and his wife walked in the sunken garden.
The moon was so bright that the roses still held their color.
"I would like to thank him," said the young wife. She meant the Young
Man of Wall Street. "But for him we would have lost this."
Her eyes caressed the garden, the fruit-trees, the house with wide,
hospitable verandas. "To-morrow I will send him some of these roses,"
said the young wife. "Will he understand that they mean our home?"
At a scandalously late hour, in a scandalous spirit of independence,
Champ Thorne and Barbara were driving around Central Park in a taxicab.
"How strangely the Lord moves, his wonders to perform," misquoted
Barbara. "Had not the Young Man of Wall Street saved Mr. Hastings, Mr.
Hastings could not have raised your salary; you would not have asked me
to marry you, and had you not asked me to marry you, father would not
have given me a wedding-present, and--"
"And," said Champ, taking up the tale, "thousands of slaves would still
be buried in the jungles, hidden away from their wives and children and
the light of the sun and their fellow men. They still would be dying
of fever, starvation, tortures."
He took her hand in both of his and held her finger-tips against his
lips.
"And they will never know," he whispered, "when their freedom comes,
that they owe it all to you."
On Hunter's Island, Jimmie Reeder and his bunkie, Sam Sturges, each on
his canvas cot, tossed and twisted. The heat, the moonlight, and the
mosquitoes would not let them even think of sleep.
"That was bully," said Jimmie, "what you did to-day about saving that
dog. If it hadn't been for you he'd ha' drownded."
"He would not!" said Sammy with punctilious regard for the truth; "it
wasn't deep enough."
"Well, the scout-master ought to know," argued Jimmie; "he said it was
the best 'one good turn' of the day!"
Modestly Sam shifted the lime-light so that it fell upon his bunkie.
"I'll bet," he declared loyally, "your 'one good turn' was a better
one!"
Jimmie yawned, and then laughed scornfully.
"Me!" he scoffed. "I didn't do nothing. I sent my sister to the
movies."
"SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE"
Marie Gessler, known as Marie Chaumontel, Jeanne d'Avrechy, the
Countess d'Aurillac, was German. Her father, who served through the
Franco-Prussian War, was a German spy. It was from her mother she
learned to speak French sufficiently well to satisfy even an
Academician and, among Parisians, to pass as one. Both her parents
were dead. Before they departed, knowing they could leave their
daughter nothing save their debts, they had had her trained as a nurse.
But when they were gone, Marie in the Berlin hospitals played politics,
intrigued, indiscriminately misused the appealing, violet eyes. There
was a scandal; several scandals. At the age of twenty-five she was
dismissed from the Municipal Hospital, and as now-save for the violet
eyes--she was without resources, as a compagnon de voyage with a German
doctor she travelled to Monte Carlo. There she abandoned the doctor
for Henri Ravignac, a captain in the French Aviation Corps, who, when
his leave ended, escorted her to Paris.
The duties of Captain Ravignac kept him in barracks near the aviation
field, but Marie he established in his apartments on the Boulevard
Haussmann. One day he brought from the barracks a roll of blue-prints,
and as he was locking them in a drawer, said: "The Germans would pay
through the nose for those!" The remark was indiscreet, but then Marie
had told him she was French, and any one would have believed her.
The next morning the same spirit of adventure that had exiled her from
the Berlin hospitals carried her with the blue-prints to the German
embassy. There, greatly shocked, they first wrote down her name and
address, and then, indignant at her proposition, ordered her out. But
the day following a strange young German who was not at all indignant,
but, on the contrary, quite charming, called upon Marie. For the
blue-prints he offered her a very large sum, and that same hour with
them and Marie departed for Berlin. Marie did not need the money. Nor
did the argument that she was serving her country greatly impress her.
It was rather that she loved intrigue. And so she became a spy.
Henri Ravignac, the man she had robbed of the blue-prints, was tried by
court-martial. The charge was treason, but Charles Ravignac, his
younger brother, promised to prove that the guilty one was the girl,
and to that end obtained leave of absence and spent much time and
money. At the trial he was able to show the record of Marie in Berlin
and Monte Carlo; that she was the daughter of a German secret agent;
that on the afternoon the prints disappeared Marie, with an agent of
the German embassy, had left Paris for Berlin. In consequence of this
the charge of selling military secrets was altered to one of "gross
neglect," and Henri Ravignac was sentenced to two years in the military
prison at Tours. But he was of an ancient and noble family, and when
they came to take him from his cell in the Cherche-Midi, he was dead.
Charles, his brother, disappeared. It was said he also had killed
himself; that he had been appointed a military attache in South
America; that to revenge his brother he had entered the secret service;
but whatever became of him no one knew. All that was certain was that,
thanks to the act of Marie Gessler, on the rolls of the French army the
ancient and noble name of Ravignac no longer appeared.
In her chosen profession Marie Gessler found nothing discreditable. Of
herself her opinion was not high, and her opinion of men was lower.
For her smiles she had watched several sacrifice honor, duty, loyalty;
and she held them and their kind in contempt. To lie, to cajole, to
rob men of secrets they thought important, and of secrets the
importance of which they did not even guess, was to her merely an
intricate and exciting game.
She played it very well. So well that in the service her advance was
rapid. On important missions she was sent to Russia, through the
Balkans; even to the United States. There, with credentials as an army
nurse, she inspected our military hospitals and unobtrusively asked
many innocent questions.
When she begged to be allowed to work in her beloved Paris, "they" told
her when war came "they" intended to plant her inside that city, and
that, until then, the less Paris knew of her the better.
But just before the great war broke, to report on which way Italy might
jump, she was sent to Rome, and it was not until September she was
recalled. The telegram informed her that her Aunt Elizabeth was ill,
and that at once she must return to Berlin. This, she learned from the
code book wrapped under the cover of her thermos bottle, meant that she
was to report to the general commanding the German forces at Soissons.
From Italy she passed through Switzerland, and, after leaving Basle, on
military trains was rushed north to Luxemburg, and then west to Laon.
She was accompanied by her companion, Bertha, an elderly and
respectable, even distinguished-looking female. In the secret service
her number was 528. Their passes from the war office described them as
nurses of the German Red Cross. Only the Intelligence Department knew
their real mission. With her, also, as her chauffeur, was a young
Italian soldier of fortune, Paul Anfossi. He had served in the Belgian
Congo, in the French Foreign Legion in Algiers, and spoke all the
European languages. In Rome, where as a wireless operator he was
serving a commercial company, in selling Marie copies of messages he
had memorized, Marie had found him useful, and when war came she
obtained for him, from the Wilhelmstrasse, the number 292. From Laon,
in one of the automobiles of the General Staff, the three spies were
driven first to Soissons, and then along the road to Meaux and Paris,
to the village of Neufchelles. They arrived at midnight, and in a
chateau of one of the Champagne princes, found the colonel commanding
the Intelligence Bureau. He accepted their credentials, destroyed
them, and replaced them with a laissez-passer signed by the mayor of
Laon. That dignitary, the colonel explained, to citizens of Laon
fleeing to Paris and the coast had issued many passes. But as now
between Laon and Paris there were three German armies, the refugees had
been turned back and their passes confiscated.
"From among them," said the officer, "we have selected one for you. It
is issued to the wife of Count d'Aurillac, a captain of reserves, and
her aunt, Madame Benet. It asks for those ladies and their chauffeur,
Briand, a safe-conduct through the French military lines. If it gets
you into Paris you will destroy it and assume another name. The Count
d'Aurillac is now with his regiment in that city. If he learned of the
presence there of his wife, he would seek her, and that would not be
good for you. So, if you reach Paris, you will become a Belgian
refugee. You are high-born and rich. Your chateau has been destroyed.
But you have money. You will give liberally to the Red Cross. You
will volunteer to nurse in the hospitals. With your sad story of ill
treatment by us, with your high birth, and your knowledge of nursing,
which you acquired, of course, only as an amateur, you should not find
it difficult to join the Ladies of France, or the American Ambulance.
What you learn from the wounded English and French officers and the
French doctors you will send us through the usual channels."
"When do I start?" asked the woman.
"For a few days," explained the officer, "you remain in this chateau.
You will keep us informed of what is going forward after we withdraw."
"Withdraw?" It was more of an exclamation than a question. Marie was
too well trained to ask questions.
"We are taking up a new position," said the officer, "on the Aisne."
The woman, incredulous, stared.
"And we do not enter Paris?"
"You do," returned the officer. "That is all that concerns you. We
will join you later--in the spring. Meanwhile, for the winter we
intrench ourselves along the Aisne. In a chimney of this chateau we
have set up a wireless outfit. We are leaving it intact. The chauffeur
Briand--who, you must explain to the French, you brought with you from
Laon, and who has been long in your service--will transmit whatever you
discover. We wish especially to know of any movement toward our left.
If they attack in front from Soissons, we are prepared; but of any
attempt to cross the Oise and take us in flank you must warn us."
The officer rose and hung upon himself his field-glasses, map-cases,
and side-arms.
"We leave you now," he said. "When the French arrive you will tell
them your reason for halting at this chateau was that the owner,
Monsieur Iverney, and his family are friends of your husband. You
found us here, and we detained you. And so long as you can use the
wireless, make excuses to remain. If they offer to send you on to
Paris, tell them your aunt is too ill to travel."
"But they will find the wireless," said the woman. "They are sure to
use the towers for observation, and they will find it."
"In that case," said the officer, "you will suggest to them that we
fled in such haste we had no time to dismantle it. Of course, you had
no knowledge that it existed, or, as a loyal French woman, you would
have at once told them." To emphasize his next words the officer
pointed at her: "Under no circumstances," he continued, "must you be
suspected. If they should take Briand in the act, should they have
even the least doubt concerning him, you must repudiate him entirely.
If necessary, to keep your own skirts clear, it would be your duty
yourself to denounce him as a spy."
"Your first orders," said the woman, "were to tell them Briand had been
long in my service; that I brought him from my home in Laon."
"He might be in your service for years," returned the colonel, "and you
not know he was a German agent."
"If to save myself I inform upon him," said Marie, "of course you know
you will lose him."
The officer shrugged his shoulders. "A wireless operator," he
retorted, "we can replace. But for you, and for the service you are to
render in Paris, we have no substitute. You must not be found out.
You are invaluable."
The spy inclined her head. "I thank you," she said.
The officer sputtered indignantly.
"It is not a compliment," he exclaimed; "it is an order. You must not
be found out!"
Withdrawn some two hundred yards from the Paris road, the chateau stood
upon a wooded hill. Except directly in front, trees of great height
surrounded it. The tips of their branches brushed the windows;
interlacing, they continued until they overhung the wall of the estate.
Where it ran with the road the wall gave way to a lofty gate and iron
fence, through which those passing could see a stretch of noble turf,
as wide as a polo-field, borders of flowers disappearing under the
shadows of the trees; and the chateau itself, with its terrace, its
many windows, its high-pitched, sloping roof, broken by towers and
turrets.
Through the remainder of the night there came from the road to those in
the chateau the roar and rumbling of the army in retreat. It moved
without panic, disorder, or haste, but unceasingly. Not for an instant
was there a breathing-spell. And when the sun rose, the three
spies--the two women and the chauffeur--who in the great chateau were
now alone, could see as well as hear the gray column of steel rolling
past below them.
The spies knew that the gray column had reached Claye, had stood within
fifteen miles of Paris, and then upon Paris had turned its back. They
knew also that the reverberations from the direction of Meaux, that
each moment grew more loud and savage, were the French "seventy-fives"
whipping the gray column forward. Of what they felt the Germans did
not speak. In silence they looked at each other, and in the eyes of
Marie was bitterness and resolve.
Toward noon Marie met Anfossi in the great drawing-room that stretched
the length of the terrace and from the windows of which, through the
park gates, they could see the Paris road.
"This, that is passing now," said Marie, "is the last of our
rear-guard. Go to your tower," she ordered, "and send word that except
for stragglers and the wounded our column has just passed through
Neufchelles, and that any moment we expect the French." She raised her
hand impressively. "From now," she warned, "we speak French, we think
French, we are French!"
Anfossi, or Briand, as now he called himself, addressed her in that
language. His tone was bitter. "Pardon my lese-majesty," he said,
"but this chief of your Intelligence Department is a dummer Mensch. He
is throwing away a valuable life."
Marie exclaimed in dismay. She placed her hand upon his arm, and the
violet eyes filled with concern.
"Not yours!" she protested.
"Absolutely!" returned the Italian. "I can send nothing by this
knapsack wireless that they will not learn from others; from airmen,
Uhlans, the peasants in the fields. And certainly I will be caught.
Dead I am dead, but alive and in Paris the opportunities are unending.
From the French Legion Etranger I have my honorable discharge. I am an
expert wireless operator and in their Signal Corps I can easily find a
place. Imagine me, then, on the Eiffel Tower. From the air I snatch
news from all of France, from the Channel, the North Sea. You and I
could work together, as in Rome. But here, between the lines, with a
pass from a village sous-prefet, it is ridiculous. I am not afraid to
die. But to die because some one else is stupid, that is hard."
Marie clasped his hand in both of hers.
"You must not speak of death," she cried; "you know I must carry out my
orders, that I must force you to take this risk. And you know that
thought of harm to you tortures me!"
Quickly the young man disengaged his hand. The woman exclaimed with
anger.
"Why do you doubt me?" she cried.
Briand protested vehemently.
"I do not doubt you."
"My affection, then?" In a whisper that carried with it the feeling of
a caress Marie added softly: "My love?"
The young man protested miserably. "You make it very hard,
mademoiselle," he cried. "You are my superior officer, I am your
servant. Who am I that I should share with others--"
The woman interrupted eagerly.
"Ah, you are jealous!" she cried. "Is that why you are so cruel? But
when I tell you I love you, and only you, can you not feel it is the
truth?"
The young man frowned unhappily.
"My duty, mademoiselle!" he stammered.
With an exclamation of anger Marie left him. As the door slammed
behind her, the young man drew a deep breath. On his face was the
expression of ineffable relief.
In the hall Marie met her elderly companion, Bertha, now her aunt,
Madame Benet.
"I heard you quarrelling," Bertha protested. "It is most indiscreet.
It is not in the part of the Countess d'Aurillac that she makes love to
her chauffeur."
Marie laughed noiselessly and drew her farther down the hall. "He is
imbecile!" she exclaimed. "He will kill me with his solemn face and
his conceit. I make love to him--yes--that he may work the more
willingly. But he will have none of it. He is jealous of the others."
Madame Benet frowned.
"He resents the others," she corrected. "I do not blame him. He is a
gentleman!"
"And the others," demanded Marie; "were they not of the most noble
families of Rome?"
"I am old and I am ugly," said Bertha, "but to me Anfossi is always as
considerate as he is to you who are so beautiful."
"An Italian gentleman," returned Marie, "does not serve in Belgian
Congo unless it is--the choice of that or the marble quarries."
"I do not know what his past may be," sighed Madame Benet, "nor do I
ask. He is only a number, as you and I are only numbers. And I beg you
to let us work in harmony. At such a time your love-affairs threaten
our safety. You must wait."
Marie laughed insolently. "With the Du Barry," she protested, "I can
boast that I wait for no man."
"No," replied the older woman; "you pursue him!"
Marie would have answered sharply, but on the instant her interest was
diverted. For one week, by day and night, she had lived in a world
peopled only by German soldiers. Beside her in the railroad carriage,
on the station platforms, at the windows of the trains that passed the
one in which she rode, at the grade crossings, on the bridges, in the
roads that paralleled the tracks, choking the streets of the villages
and spread over the fields of grain, she had seen only the gray-green
uniforms. Even her professional eye no longer distinguished regiment
from regiment, dragoon from grenadier, Uhlan from Hussar or Landsturm.
Stripes, insignia, numerals, badges of rank, had lost their meaning.
Those who wore them no longer were individuals. They were not even
human. During the three last days the automobile, like a motor-boat
fighting the tide, had crept through a gray-green river of men,
stained, as though from the banks, by mud and yellow clay. And for
hours, while the car was blocked, and in fury the engine raced and
purred, the gray-green river had rolled past her, slowly but as
inevitably as lava down the slope of a volcano, bearing on its surface
faces with staring eyes, thousands and thousands of eyes, some fierce
and bloodshot, others filled with weariness, homesickness, pain. At
night she still saw them: the white faces under the sweat and dust, the
eyes dumb, inarticulate, asking the answer. She had been suffocated by
German soldiers, by the mass of them, engulfed and smothered; she had
stifled in a land inhabited only by gray-green ghosts.
And suddenly, as though a miracle had been wrought, she saw upon the
lawn, riding toward her, a man in scarlet, blue, and silver. One man
riding alone.
Approaching with confidence, but alert; his reins fallen, his hands
nursing his carbine, his eyes searched the shadows of the trees, the
empty windows, even the sun-swept sky. His was the new face at the
door, the new step on the floor. And the spy knew had she beheld an
army corps it would have been no more significant, no more menacing,
than the solitary chasseur a cheval scouting in advance of the enemy.
"We are saved!" exclaimed Marie, with irony. "Go quickly," she
commanded, "to the bedroom on the second floor that opens upon the
staircase, so that you can see all who pass. You are too ill to
travel. They must find you in bed."
"And you?" said Bertha.
"I," cried Marie rapturously, "hasten to welcome our preserver!"
The preserver was a peasant lad. Under the white dust his cheeks were
burned a brown-red, his eyes, honest and blue, through much staring at
the skies and at horizon lines, were puckered and encircled with tiny
wrinkles. Responsibility had made him older than his years, and in
speech brief. With the beautiful lady who with tears of joy ran to
greet him, and who in an ecstasy of happiness pressed her cheek against
the nose of his horse, he was unimpressed. He returned to her her
papers and gravely echoed her answers to his questions. "This
chateau," he repeated, "was occupied by their General Staff; they have
left no wounded here; you saw the last of them pass a half-hour since."
He gathered up his reins.
Marie shrieked in alarm. "You will not leave us?" she cried.
For the first time the young man permitted himself to smile. "Others
arrive soon," he said.
He touched his shako, wheeled his horse in the direction from which he
had come, and a minute later Marie heard the hoofs echoing through the
empty village.
When they came, the others were more sympathetic. Even in times of war
a beautiful woman is still a beautiful woman. And the staff officers
who moved into the quarters so lately occupied by the enemy found in
the presence of the Countess d'Aurillac nothing to distress them. In
the absence of her dear friend, Madame Iverney, the chatelaine of the
chateau, she acted as their hostess. Her chauffeur showed the company
cooks the way to the kitchen, the larder, and the charcoal-box. She,
herself, in the hands of General Andre placed the keys of the famous
wine-cellar, and to the surgeon, that the wounded might be freshly
bandaged, intrusted those of the linen-closet. After the indignities
she had suffered while "detained" by les Boches, her delight and relief
at again finding herself under the protection of her own people would
have touched a heart of stone. And the hearts of the staff were not of
stone. It was with regret they gave the countess permission to
continue on her way. At this she exclaimed with gratitude. She
assured them, were her aunt able to travel, she would immediately
depart.
"In Paris she will be more comfortable than here," said the kind
surgeon. He was a reservist, and in times of peace a fashionable
physician and as much at his ease in a boudoir as in a field hospital.
"Perhaps if I saw Madam Benet?"
At the suggestion the countess was overjoyed. But they found Madame
Benet in a state of complete collapse. The conduct of the Germans had
brought about a nervous breakdown.
"Though the bridges are destroyed at Meaux," urged the surgeon, "even
with a detour, you can be in Paris in four hours. I think it is worth
the effort."
But the mere thought of the journey threw Madame Benet into hysterics.
She asked only to rest, she begged for an opiate to make her sleep.
She begged also that they would leave the door open, so that when she
dreamed she was still in the hands of the Germans, and woke in terror,
the sound of the dear French voices and the sight of the beloved French
uniforms might reassure her. She played her part well. Concerning her
Marie felt not the least anxiety. But toward Briand, the chauffeur,
the new arrivals were less easily satisfied.
The general sent his adjutant for the countess. When the adjutant had
closed the door General Andre began abruptly:
"The chauffeur Briand," he asked, "you know him; you can vouch for him?"
"But, certainly!" protested Marie. "He is an Italian."
As though with sudden enlightenment, Marie laughed. It was as if now
in the suspicion of the officer she saw a certain reasonableness.
"Briand was so long in the Foreign Legion in Algiers," she explained,
"where my husband found him, that we have come to think of him as
French. As much French as ourselves, I assure you."
The general and his adjutant were regarding each other questioningly.
"Perhaps I should tell the countess," began the general, "that we have
learned--"
The signal from the adjutant was so slight, so swift, that Marie barely
intercepted it.
The lips of the general shut together like the leaves of a book. To
show the interview was at an end, he reached for a pen.
"I thank you," he said.
"Of course," prompted the adjutant, "Madame d'Aurillac understands the
man must not know we inquired concerning him."
General Andre frowned at Marie.
"Certainly not!" he commanded. "The honest fellow must not know that
even for a moment he was doubted."
Marie raised the violet eyes reprovingly.
"I trust," she said with reproach, "I too well understand the feelings
of a French soldier to let him know his loyalty is questioned."
With a murmur of appreciation the officers bowed and with a gesture of
gracious pardon Marie left them.
Outside in the hall, with none but orderlies to observe, like a cloak
the graciousness fell from her. She was drawn two ways. In her work
Anfossi was valuable. But Anfossi suspected was less than of no value;
he became a menace, a death-warrant.
General Andre had said, "We have learned--" and the adjutant had halted
him. What had he learned? To know that, Marie would have given much.
Still, one important fact comforted her. Anfossi alone was suspected.
Had there been concerning herself the slightest doubt, they certainly
would not have allowed her to guess her companion was under
surveillance; they would not have asked one who was herself suspected
to vouch for the innocence of a fellow conspirator. Marie found the
course to follow difficult. With Anfossi under suspicion his usefulness
was for the moment at an end; and to accept the chance offered her to
continue on to Paris seemed most wise. On the other hand, if,
concerning Anfossi, she had succeeded in allaying their doubts, the
results most to be desired could be attained only by remaining where
they were.
Their position inside the lines was of the greatest strategic value.
The rooms of the servants were under the roof, and that Briand should
sleep in one of them was natural. That to reach or leave his room he
should constantly be ascending or descending the stairs also was
natural. The field-wireless outfit, or, as he had disdainfully
described it, the "knapsack" wireless, was situated not in the bedroom
he had selected for himself, but in one adjoining. At other times this
was occupied by the maid of Madame Iverney. To summon her maid Madame
Iverney, from her apartment on the second floor, had but to press a
button. And it was in the apartment of Madame Iverney, and on the bed
of that lady, that Madame Benet now reclined. When through the open
door she saw an officer or soldier mount the stairs, she pressed the
button that rang a bell in the room of the maid. In this way, long
before whoever was ascending the stairs could reach the top floor,
warning of his approach came to Anfossi. It gave him time to replace
the dustboard over the fireplace in which the wireless was concealed
and to escape into his own bedroom. The arrangement was ideal. And
already information picked up in the halls below by Marie had been
conveyed to Anfossi to relay in a French cipher to the German General
Staff at Rheims.
Marie made an alert and charming hostess. To all who saw her it was
evident that her mind was intent only upon the comfort of her guests.
Throughout the day many came and went, but each she made welcome; to
each as he departed she called "bonne chance."
Efficient, tireless, tactful, she was everywhere: in the dining-room,
in the kitchen, in the bedrooms, for the wounded finding mattresses to
spread in the gorgeous salons of the Champagne prince; for the
soldier-chauffeurs carrying wine into the courtyard, where the
automobiles panted and growled, and the arriving and departing shrieked
for right of way. At all times an alluring person, now the one woman in
a tumult of men, her smart frock covered by an apron, her head and arms
bare, undismayed by the sight of the wounded or by the distant rumble
of the guns, the Countess d'Aurillac was an inspiring and beautiful
picture. The eyes of the officers, young and old, informed her of that
fact, one of which already she was well aware. By the morning of the
next day she was accepted as the owner of the chateau.
And though continually she reminded the staff she was present only as
the friend of her schoolmate, Madame Iverney, they deferred to her as
to a hostess. Many of them she already saluted by name, and to those
who with messages were constantly motoring to and from the front at
Soissons she was particularly kind. Overnight the legend of her charm,
of her devotion to the soldiers of all ranks, had spread from Soissons
to Meaux, and from Meaux to Paris. It was noon of that day when from
the window of the second story Marie saw an armored automobile sweep
into the courtyard. It was driven by an officer, young and appallingly
good-looking, and, as was obvious by the way he spun his car, one who
held in contempt both the law of gravity and death. That he was some
one of importance seemed evident. Before he could alight the adjutant
had raced to meet him. With her eye for detail Marie observed that the
young officer, instead of imparting information, received it. He must,
she guessed, have just arrived from Paris, and his brother officer
either was telling him the news or giving him his orders. Whichever it
might be, in what was told him the new arrival was greatly interested.
One instant in indignation his gauntleted fist beat upon the
steering-wheel, the next he smiled with pleasure. To interpret this
pantomime was difficult; and, the better to inform herself, Marie
descended the stairs.
As she reached the lower hall the two officers entered. To the spy the
man last to arrive was always the one of greatest importance; and Marie
assured herself that through her friend, the adjutant, to meet with
this one would prove easy.
But the chauffeur-commander of the armored car made it most difficult.
At sight of Marie, much to her alarm, as though greeting a dear friend,
he snatched his kepi from his head and sprang toward her.
"The major," he cried, "told me you were here, that you are Madame
d'Aurillac." His eyes spoke his admiration. In delight he beamed upon
her. "I might have known it!" he murmured. With the confidence of one
who is sure he brings good news, he laughed happily. "And I," he
cried, "am 'Pierrot'!"
Who the devil "Pierrot" might be the spy could not guess. She knew
only that she wished by a German shell "Pierrot" and his car had been
blown to tiny fragments. Was it a trap, she asked herself, or was the
handsome youth really some one the Countess d'Aurillac should know.
But, as from his introducing himself it was evident he could not know
that lady very well, Marie took courage and smiled.
"Which 'Pierrot'?" she parried.
"Pierre Thierry!" cried the youth.
To the relief of Marie he turned upon the adjutant and to him explained
who Pierre Thierry might be.
"Paul d'Aurillac," he said, "is my dearest friend. When he married
this charming lady I was stationed in Algiers, and but for the war I
might never have met her."
To Marie, with his hand on his heart in a most charming manner, he
bowed. His admiration he made no effort to conceal.
"And so," he said, "I know why there is war!"
The adjutant smiled indulgently, and departed on his duties, leaving
them alone. The handsome eyes of Captain Thierry were raised to the
violet eyes of Marie. They appraised her boldly and as boldly
expressed their approval.
In burlesque the young man exclaimed indignantly: "Paul deceived me!"
he cried. "He told me he had married the most beautiful woman in Laon.
He has married the most beautiful woman in France!"
To Marie this was not impertinence, but gallantry.
This was a language she understood, and this was the type of man,
because he was the least difficult to manage, she held most in contempt.
"But about you Paul did not deceive me," she retorted. In apparent
confusion her eyes refused to meet his. "He told me 'Pierrot' was a
most dangerous man!"
She continued hurriedly. With wifely solicitude she asked concerning
Paul. She explained that for a week she had been a prisoner in the
chateau, and, since the mobilization, of her husband save that he was
with his regiment in Paris she had heard nothing. Captain Thierry was
able to give her later news. Only the day previous, on the boulevards,
he had met Count d'Aurillac. He was at the Grand Hotel, and as Thierry
was at once motoring back to Paris he would give Paul news of their
meeting. He hoped he might tell him that soon his wife also would be
in Paris. Marie explained that only the illness of her aunt prevented
her from that same day joining her husband. Her manner became serious.
"And what other news have you?" she asked. "Here on the firing-line we
know less of what is going forward than you in Paris."
So Pierre Thierry told her all he knew. They were preparing despatches
he was at once to carry back to the General Staff, and, for the moment,
his time was his own. How could he better employ it than in talking of
the war with a patriotic and charming French woman?
In consequence Marie acquired a mass of facts, gossip, and guesses.
From these she mentally selected such information as, to her employers
across the Aisne, would be of vital interest.
And to rid herself of Thierry and on the fourth floor seek Anfossi was
now her only wish. But, in attempting this, by the return of the
adjutant she was delayed. To Thierry the adjutant gave a sealed
envelope.
"Thirty-one, Boulevard des Invalides," he said. With a smile he turned
to Marie. "And you will accompany him!"
"I!" exclaimed Marie. She was sick with sudden terror.
But the tolerant smile of the adjutant reassured her.
"The count, your husband," he explained, "has learned of your detention
here by the enemy, and he has besieged the General Staff to have you
convoyed safely to Paris." The adjutant glanced at a field telegram he
held open in his hand. "He asks," he continued, "that you be permitted
to return in the car of his friend, Captain Thierry, and that on
arriving you join him at the Grand Hotel."
Thierry exclaimed with delight.
"But how charming!" he cried. "To-night you must both dine with me at
La Rue's." He saluted his superior officer. "Some petrol, sir," he
said. "And I am ready." To Marie he added: "The car will be at the
steps in five minutes." He turned and left them.
The thoughts of Marie, snatching at an excuse for delay, raced madly.
The danger of meeting the Count d'Aurillac, her supposed husband, did
not alarm her. The Grand Hotel has many exits, and, even before they
reached it, for leaving the car she could invent an excuse that the
gallant Thierry would not suspect. But what now concerned her was how,
before she was whisked away to Paris, she could convey to Anfossi the
information she had gathered from Thierry. First, of a woman overcome
with delight at being reunited with her husband she gave an excellent
imitation; then she exclaimed in distress: "But my aunt, Madame Benet!"
she cried. "I cannot leave her!"
"The Sisters of St. Francis," said the adjutant, "arrive within an hour
to nurse the wounded. They will care also for your aunt."
Marie concealed her chagrin. "Then I will at once prepare to go," she
said.
The adjutant handed her a slip of paper. "Your laissez-passer to
Paris," he said. "You leave in five minutes, madame!"
As temporary hostess of the chateau Marie was free to visit any part of
it, and as she passed her door a signal from Madame Benet told her that
Anfossi was on the fourth floor, that he was at work, and that the
coast was clear. Softly, in the felt slippers she always wore, as she
explained, in order not to disturb the wounded, she mounted the
staircase. In her hand she carried the housekeeper's keys, and as an
excuse it was her plan to return with an armful of linen for the
arriving Sisters. But Marie never reached the top of the stairs. When
her eyes rose to the level of the fourth floor she came to a sudden
halt. At what she saw terror gripped her, bound her hand and foot, and
turned her blood to ice.
At her post for an instant Madame Benet had slept, and an officer of
the staff, led by curiosity, chance, or suspicion, had, unobserved and
unannounced, mounted to the fourth floor. When Marie saw him he was in
front of the room that held the wireless. His back was toward her, but
she saw that he was holding the door to the room ajar, that his eye was
pressed to the opening, and that through it he had pushed the muzzle of
his automatic. What would be the fate of Anfossi Marie knew. Nor did
she for an instant consider it. Her thoughts were of her own safety;
that she might live.
Not that she might still serve the Wilhelmstrasse, the Kaiser, or the
Fatherland; but that she might live. In a moment Anfossi would be
denounced, the chateau would ring with the alarm, and, though she knew
Anfossi would not betray her, by others she might be accused. To avert
suspicion from herself she saw only one way open. She must be the
first to denounce Anfossi.
Like a deer, she leaped down the marble stairs and, in a panic she had
no need to assume, burst into the presence of the staff.
"Gentlemen!" she gasped, "my servant--the chauffeur--Briand is a spy!
There is a German wireless in the chateau. He is using it! I have seen
him." With exclamations, the officers rose to their feet. General
Andre alone remained seated. General Andre was a veteran of many
Colonial wars: Cochin-China, Algiers, Morocco. The great war, when it
came, found him on duty in the Intelligence Department. His aquiline
nose, bristling white eyebrows, and flashing, restless eyes gave him
his nickname of l'Aigle.
In amazement, the flashing eyes were now turned upon Marie. He glared
at her as though he thought she suddenly had flown mad.
"A German wireless!" he protested. "It is impossible!"
"I was on the fourth floor," panted Marie, "collecting linen for the
Sisters. In the room next to the linen-closet I heard a strange
buzzing sound. I opened the door softly. I saw Briand with his back
to me seated by an instrument. There were receivers clamped to his
ears! My God! The disgrace! The disgrace to my husband and to me, who
vouched for him to you!" Apparently in an agony of remorse, the
fingers of the woman laced and interlaced. "I cannot forgive myself!"
The officers moved toward the door, but General Andre halted them.
Still in a tone of incredulity, he demanded: "When did you see this?"
Marie knew the question was coming, knew she must explain how she saw
Briand, and yet did not see the staff officer who, with his prisoner,
might now at any instant appear. She must make it plain she had
discovered the spy and left the upper part of the house before the
officer had visited it. When that was she could not know, but the
chance was that he had preceded her by only a few minutes.
"When did you see this?" repeated the general.
"But just now," cried Marie; "not ten minutes since."
"Why did you not come to me at once?"
"I was afraid," replied Marie. "If I moved I was afraid he might hear
me, and he, knowing I would expose him, would kill me-and so escape
you!" There was an eager whisper of approval. For silence, General
Andre slapped his hand upon the table.
"Then," continued Marie, "I understood with the receivers on his ears
he could not have heard me open the door, nor could he hear me leave,
and I ran to my aunt. The thought that we had harbored such an animal
sickened me, and I was weak enough to feel faint. But only for an
instant. Then I came here." She moved swiftly to the door. "Let me
show you the room," she begged; "you can take him in the act." Her
eyes, wild with the excitement of the chase, swept the circle. "Will
you come?" she begged.
Unconscious of the crisis he interrupted, the orderly on duty opened
the door.
"Captain Thierry's compliments," he recited mechanically, "and is he to
delay longer for Madame d'Aurillac?"
With a sharp gesture General Andre waved Marie toward the door. Without
rising, he inclined his head. "Adieu, madame," he said. "We act at
once upon your information. I thank you!"
As she crossed from the hall to the terrace, the ears of the spy were
assaulted by a sudden tumult of voices. They were raised in threats
and curses. Looking back, she saw Anfossi descending the stairs. His
hands were held above his head; behind him, with his automatic, the
staff officer she had surprised on the fourth floor was driving him
forward. Above the clinched fists of the soldiers that ran to meet
him, the eyes of Anfossi were turned toward her. His face was
expressionless. His eyes neither accused nor reproached. And with the
joy of one who has looked upon and then escaped the guillotine, Marie
ran down the steps to the waiting automobile. With a pretty cry of
pleasure she leaped into the seat beside Thierry. Gayly she threw out
her arms. "To Paris!" she commanded. The handsome eyes of Thierry,
eloquent with admiration, looked back into hers. He stooped, threw in
the clutch, and the great gray car, with the machine gun and its crew
of privates guarding the rear, plunged through the park.
"To Paris!" echoed Thierry.
In the order in which Marie had last seen them, Anfossi and the staff
officer entered the room of General Andre, and upon the soldiers in the
hall the door was shut. The face of the staff officer was grave, but
his voice could not conceal his elation.
"My general," he reported, "I found this man in the act of giving
information to the enemy. There is a wireless-"
General Andre rose slowly. He looked neither at the officer nor at his
prisoner. With frowning eyes he stared down at the maps upon his table.
"I know," he interrupted. "Some one has already told me." He paused,
and then, as though recalling his manners, but still without raising
his eyes, he added: "You have done well, sir."
In silence the officers of the staff stood motionless. With surprise
they noted that, as yet, neither in anger nor curiosity had General
Andre glanced at the prisoner. But of the presence of the general the
spy was most acutely conscious. He stood erect, his arms still raised,
but his body strained forward, and on the averted eyes of the general
his own were fixed.
In an agony of supplication they asked a question.
At last, as though against his wish, toward the spy the general turned
his head, and their eyes met. And still General Andre was silent.
Then the arms of the spy, like those of a runner who has finished his
race and breasts the tape exhausted, fell to his sides. In a voice low
and vibrant he spoke his question.
"It has been so long, sir," he pleaded. "May I not come home?"
General Andre turned to the astonished group surrounding him. His
voice was hushed like that of one who speaks across an open grave.
"Gentlemen," he began, "my children," he added. "A German spy, a
woman, involved in a scandal your brother in arms, Henri Ravignac. His
honor, he thought, was concerned, and without honor he refused to live.
To prove him guiltless his younger brother Charles asked leave to seek
out the woman who had betrayed Henri, and by us was detailed on secret
service. He gave up home, family, friends. He lived in exile, in
poverty, at all times in danger of a swift and ignoble death. In the
War Office we know him as one who has given to his country services she
cannot hope to reward. For she cannot return to him the years he has
lost. She cannot return to him his brother. But she can and will
clear the name of Henri Ravignac, and upon his brother Charles bestow
promotion and honors."
The general turned and embraced the spy. "My children," he said,
"welcome your brother. He has come home."
Before the car had reached the fortifications, Marie Gessler had
arranged her plan of escape. She had departed from the chateau without
even a hand-bag, and she would say that before the shops closed she
must make purchases.
Le Printemps lay in their way, and she asked that, when they reached
it, for a moment she might alight. Captain Thierry readily gave
permission.
From the department store it would be most easy to disappear, and in
anticipation Marie smiled covertly. Nor was the picture of Captain
Thierry impatiently waiting outside unamusing.
But before Le Printemps was approached, the car turned sharply down a
narrow street. On one side, along its entire length, ran a high gray
wall, grim and forbidding. In it was a green gate studded with iron
bolts. Before this the automobile drew suddenly to a halt. The crew of
the armored car tumbled off the rear seat, and one of them beat upon
the green gate. Marie felt a hand of ice clutch at her throat. But
she controlled herself.
"And what is this?" she cried gayly.
At her side Captain Thierry was smiling down at her, but his smile was
hateful.
"It is the prison of St. Lazare," he said. "It is not becoming," he
added sternly, "that the name of the Countess d'Aurillac should be made
common as the Paris road!"
Fighting for her life, Marie thrust herself against him; her arm that
throughout the journey had rested on the back of the driving-seat
caressed his shoulders; her lips and the violet eyes were close to his.
"Why should you care?" she whispered fiercely. "You have me! Let the
Count d'Aurillac look after the honor of his wife himself."
The charming Thierry laughed at her mockingly.
"He means to," he said. "I am the Count d'Aurillac!"