With trembling hands I tied up the bag again, rolled it in a newspaper, and stuffed it into my pocket. For I remembered a day near Peronne when a Boche plane had come over in the night and had dropped little bags like this. Happily they were all collected, and the men who found them were wise and took them off to the nearest laboratory. They proved to be full of anthrax germs…
I remembered how Eaucourt Sainte-Anne stood at the junction of a dozen roads where all day long troops passed to and from the lines. From such a vantage ground an enemy could wreck the health of an army…
I remembered the woman I had seen in the courtyard of this house in the foggy dusk, and I knew now why she had worn a gas-mask.
This discovery gave me a horrid shock. I was brought down with a crash from my high sentiment to something earthly and devilish. I was fairly well used to Boche filthiness, but this seemed too grim a piece of the utterly damnable. I wanted to have Ivery by the throat and force the stuff into his body, and watch him decay slowly into the horror he had contrived for honest men.
‘Let’s get out of this infernal place,’ I said.
But Mary was not listening. She had picked up one of the newspapers and was gloating over it. I looked and saw that it was open at an advertisement of Weissmann’s ‘Deep-breathing’ system.
‘Oh, look, Dick,’ she cried breathlessly.
The column of type had little dots made by a red pencil below certain words.
‘It’s it,’ she whispered, ‘it’s the cipher – I’m almost sure it’s the cipher!’
‘Well, he’d be likely to know it if anyone did.’
‘But don’t you see it’s the cipher which Chelius uses – the man in Switzerland? Oh, I can’t explain now, for it’s very long, but I think – I think – I have found out what we have all been wanting. Chelius…’
‘Whisht!’ I said. ‘What’s that?’
There was a queer sound from the out-of-doors as if a sudden wind had risen in the still night.
‘It’s only a car on the main road,’ said Mary.
‘How did you get in?’ I asked.
‘By the broken window in the next room. I cycled out here one morning, and walked round the place and found the broken catch.’
‘Perhaps it is left open on purpose. That may be the way M. Bommaerts visits his country home… Let’s get off, Mary, for this place has a curse on it. It deserves fire from heaven.’
I slipped the contents of the attaché case into my pockets. ‘I’m going to drive you back,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a car out there.’
‘Then you must take my bicycle and my servant too. He’s an old friend of yours – one Andrew Amos.’
‘Now how on earth did Andrew get over here?’
‘He’s one of us,’ said Mary, laughing at my surprise. ‘A most useful member of our party, at present disguised as an infirmier in Lady Manorwater’s Hospital at Douvecourt. He is learning French, and…’
‘Hush!’ I whispered. ‘There’s someone in the next room.’
I swept her behind a stack of furniture, with my eyes glued on a crack of light below the door. The handle turned and the shadows raced before a big electric lamp of the kind they have in stables. I could not see the bearer, but I guessed it was the old woman.
There was a man behind her. A brisk step sounded on the parquet, and a figure brushed past her. It wore the horizon-blue of a French officer, very smart, with those French riding-boots that show the shape of the leg, and a handsome fur-lined pelisse. I would have called him a young man, not more than thirty-five. The face was brown and clean-shaven, the eyes bright and masterful… Yet he did not deceive me. I had not boasted idly to Sir Walter when I said that there was one man alive who could never again be mistaken by me.
I had my hand on my pistol, as I motioned Mary farther back into the shadows. For a second I was about to shoot. I had a perfect mark and could have put a bullet through his brain with utter certitude. I think if I had been alone I might have fired. Perhaps not. Anyhow now I could not do it. It seemed like potting at a sitting rabbit. I was obliged, though he was my worst enemy, to give him a chance, while all the while my sober senses kept calling me a fool.
I stepped into the light.
‘Hullo, Mr Ivery,’ I said. ‘This is an odd place to meet again!’
In his amazement he fell back a step, while his hungry eyes took in my face. There was no mistake about the recognition. I saw something I had seen once before in him, and that was fear. Out went the light and he sprang for the door.
I fired in the dark, but the shot must have been too high. In the same instant I heard him slip on the smooth parquet and the tinkle of glass as the broken window swung open. Hastily I reflected that his car must be at the moat end of the terrace, and that therefore to reach it he must pass outside this very room. Seizing the damaged escritoire, I used it as a ram, and charged the window nearest me. The panes and shutters went with a crash, for I had driven the thing out of its rotten frame. The next second I was on the moonlit snow.
I got a shot at him as he went over the terrace, and again I went wide. I never was at my best with a pistol. Still I reckoned I had got him, for the car which was waiting below must come back by the moat to reach the highroad. But I had forgotten the great closed park gates. Somehow or other they must have been opened, for as soon as the car started it headed straight for the grand avenue. I tried a couple of long-range shots after it, and one must have damaged either Ivery or his chauffeur, for there came back a cry of pain.
I turned in deep chagrin to find Mary beside me. She was bubbling with laughter.
‘Were you ever a cinema actor, Dick? The last two minutes have been a really high-class performance. “Featuring Mary Lamington.” How does the jargon go?’
‘I could have got him when he first entered,’ I said ruefully.
‘I know,’ she said in a graver tone. ‘Only of course you couldn’t… Besides, Mr Blenkiron doesn’t want it – yet.’
She put her hand on my arm. ‘Don’t worry about it. It wasn’t written it should happen that way. It would have been too easy. We have a long road to travel yet before we clip the wings of the Wild Birds.’
‘Look,’ I cried. ‘The fire from heaven!’
Red tongues of flame were shooting up from the out-buildings at the farther end, the place where I had first seen the woman. Some agreed plan must have been acted on, and Ivery was destroying all traces of his infamous yellow powder. Even now the concierge with her odds and ends of belongings would be slipping out to some refuge in the village.
In the still dry night the flames rose, for the place must have been made ready for a rapid burning. As I hurried Mary round the moat I could see that part of the main building had caught fire. The hamlet was awakened, and before we reached the corner of the highroad sleepy British soldiers were hurrying towards the scene, and the Town Major was mustering the fire brigade. I knew that Ivery had laid his plans well, and that they hadn’t a chance – that long before dawn the Château of Eaucourt Sainte-Anne would be a heap of ashes and that in a day or two the lawyers of the aged Marquise at Biarritz would be wrangling with the insurance company.
At the corner stood Amos beside two bicycles, solid as a graven image. He recognized me with a gap-toothed grin.
‘It’s a cauld night, General, but the home fires keep burnin’. I havena seen such a cheery lowe since Dickson’s mill at Gawly.’
We packed, bicycles and all, into my car with Amos wedged in the narrow seat beside Hamilton. Recognizing a fellow countryman, he gave thanks for the lift in the broadest Doric. ‘For,’ said he, ‘I’m not what you would call a practised hand wi’ a velocipede, and my feet are dinnled wi’ standin’ in the snaw.’
As for me, the miles to Douvecourt passed as in a blissful moment of time. I wrapped Mary in a fur rug, and after that we did not speak a word. I had come suddenly into a great possession and was dazed with the joy of it.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Mr Blenkiron Discourses on Love a
nd War
Three days later I got my orders to report at Paris for special service. They came none too soon, for I chafed at each hour’s delay. Every thought in my head was directed to the game which we were playing against Ivery. He was the big enemy, compared to whom the ordinary Boche in the trenches was innocent and friendly. I had almost lost interest in my division, for I knew that for me the real battle-front was not in Picardy, and that my job was not so easy as holding a length of line. Also I longed to be at the same work as Mary.
I remember waking up in billets the morning after the night at the Château with the feeling that I had become extraordinarily rich. I felt very humble, too, and very kindly towards all the world – even to the Boche, though I can’t say I had ever hated him very wildly. You find hate more among journalists and politicians at home than among fighting men. I wanted to be quiet and alone to think, and since that was impossible I went about my work in a happy abstraction. I tried not to look ahead, but only to live in the present, for I knew that a war was on, and that there was desperate and dangerous business before me, and that my hopes hung on a slender thread. Yet for all that I had sometimes to let my fancies go free, and revel in delicious dreams.
But there was one thought that always brought me back to hard ground, and that was Ivery. I do not think I hated anybody in the world but him. It was his relation to Mary that stung me. He had the insolence with all his toad-like past to make love to that clean and radiant girl. I felt that he and I stood as mortal antagonists, and the thought pleased me, for it helped me to put some honest detestation into my job. Also I was going to win. Twice I had failed, but the third time I should succeed. It had been like ranging shots for a gun – first short, second over, and I vowed that the third should be dead on the mark.
I was summoned to G.H.Q., where I had half an hour’s talk with the greatest British commander. I can see yet his patient, kindly face and that steady eye which no vicissitude of fortune could perturb. He took the biggest view, for he was statesman as well as soldier, and knew that the whole world was one battle-field and every man and woman among the combatant nations was in the battle-line. So contradictory is human nature, that talk made me wish for a moment to stay where I was. I wanted to go on serving under that man. I realized suddenly how much I loved my work, and when I got back to my quarters that night and saw my men swinging in from a route march I could have howled like a dog at leaving them. Though I say it who shouldn’t, there wasn’t a better division in the Army.
One morning a few days later I picked up Mary in Amiens. I always liked the place, for after the dirt of the Somme it was a comfort to go there for a bath and a square meal, and it had the noblest church that the hand of man ever built for God. It was a clear morning when we started from the boulevard beside the railway station; and the air smelt of washed streets and fresh coffee, and women were going marketing and the little trams ran clanking by, just as in any other city far from the sound of guns. There was very little khaki or horizon-blue about, and I remember thinking how completely Amiens had got out of the war-zone. Two months later it was a different story.
To the end I shall count that day as one of the happiest in my life. Spring was in the air, though the trees and fields had still their winter colouring. A thousand good fresh scents came out of the earth, and the larks were busy over the new furrows. I remember that we ran up a little glen, where a stream spread into pools among sallows, and the roadside trees were heavy with mistletoe. On the tableland beyond the Somme valley the sun shone like April. At Beauvais we lunched badly in an inn – badly as to food, but there was an excellent Burgundy at two francs a bottle. Then we slipped down through little flat-chested townships to the Seine, and in the late afternoon passed through St Germains forest. The wide green spaces among the trees set my fancy dwelling on that divine English countryside where Mary and I would one day make our home. She had been in high spirits all the journey, but when I spoke of the Cotswolds her face grew grave.
‘Don’t let us speak of it, Dick,’ she said. ‘It’s too happy a thing and I feel as if it would wither if we touched it. I don’t let myself think of peace and home, for it makes me too homesick… I think we shall get there some day, you and I… but it’s a long road to the Delectable Mountains, and Faithful, you know, has to die first… There is a price to be paid.’
The words sobered me.
‘Who is our Faithful?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know. But he was the best of the Pilgrims.’
Then, as if a veil had lifted, her mood changed, and when we came through the suburbs of Paris and swung down the Champs Élysées she was in a holiday humour. The lights were twinkling in the blue January dusk, and the warm breath of the city came to greet us. I knew little of the place, for I had visited it once only on a four days’ Paris leave, but it had seemed to me then the most habitable of cities, and now, coming from the battle-field with Mary by my side, it was like the happy ending of a dream.
I left her at her cousin’s house near the Rue St Honoré, and deposited myself, according to instructions, at the Hôtel Louis Quinze. There I wallowed in a hot bath, and got into the civilian clothes which had been sent on from London. They made me feel that I had taken leave of my division for good and all this time.
Blenkiron had a private room, where we were to dine; and a more wonderful litter of books and cigar boxes I have never seen, for he hadn’t a notion of tidiness. I could hear him grunting at his toilet in the adjacent bedroom, and I noticed that the table was laid for three. I went downstairs to get a paper, and on the way ran into Launcelot Wake.
He was no longer a private in a Labour Battalion. Evening clothes showed beneath his overcoat.
‘Hullo, Wake, are you in this push too?’
‘I suppose so,’ he said, and his manner was not cordial. ‘Anyhow I was ordered down here. My business is to do as I am told.’
‘Coming to dine?’ I asked.
‘No. I’m dining with some friends at the Crillon.’
Then he looked me in the face, and his eyes were not as I first remembered them. ‘I hear I’ve to congratulate you, Hannay,’ and he held out a limp hand.
I never felt more antagonism in a human being.
‘You don’t like it?’ I said, for I guessed what he meant.
‘How on earth can I like it?’ he cried angrily. ‘Good Lord, man, you’ll murder her soul. You an ordinary, stupid, successful fellow and she – she’s the most precious thing God ever made. You can never understand a fraction of her preciousness, but you’ll clip her wings all right. She can never fly now…’
He poured out this hysterical stuff to me at the foot of the staircase within hearing of an elderly French widow with a poodle. I had no impulse to be angry, for I was far too happy.
‘Don’t, Wake,’ I said. ‘We’re all too close together to quarrel. I’m not fit to black Mary’s shoes. You can’t put me too low or her too high. But I’ve at least the sense to know it. You couldn’t want me to be humbler than I felt.’
He shrugged his shoulders, as he went out to the street. ‘Your infernal magnanimity would break any man’s temper…’
I went upstairs to find Blenkiron, washed and shaven, admiring a pair of bright patent-leather shoes.
‘Why, Dick, I’ve been wearying bad to see you. I was nervous you would be blown to glory, for I’ve been reading awful things about your battles in the noospapers. The war correspondents worry me so I can’t take breakfast.’
He mixed cocktails and clinked his glass on mine. ‘Here’s to the young lady. I was trying to write her a pretty little sonnet, but the darned rhymes wouldn’t fit. I’ve gotten a heap of things to say to you when we’ve finished dinner.’
Mary came in, her cheeks bright from the weather, and Blenkiron promptly fell abashed. But she had a way to meet his shyness, for, when he began an embarrassed speech of good wishes, she put her arms round his neck and kissed him. Oddly enough, that set him completely at his ease.
I
t was pleasant to eat off linen and china again, pleasant to see old Blenkiron’s benignant face and the way he tucked into his food, but it was delicious for me to sit at a meal with Mary across the table. It made me feel that she was really mine, and not a pixie that would vanish at a word. To Blenkiron she bore herself like an affectionate but mischievous daughter, while the desperately refined manners that afflicted him whenever women were concerned mellowed into something like his everyday self. They did most of the talking, and I remember he fetched from some mysterious hiding-place a great box of chocolates, which you could no longer buy in Paris, and the two ate them like spoiled children. I didn’t want to talk, for it was pure happiness for me to look on. I loved to watch her, when the servants had gone, with her elbows on the table like a schoolboy, her crisp gold hair a little rumpled, cracking walnuts with gusto, like some child who has been allowed down from the nursery for dessert and means to make the most of it.
With his first cigar Blenkiron got to business.
‘You want to know about the staff-work we’ve been busy on at home. Well, it’s finished now, thanks to you, Dick. We weren’t getting on very fast till you took to peroosing the press on your sick-bed and dropped us that hint about the “Deep-breathing” ads.’
‘Then there was something in it?’ I asked.
‘There was black hell in it. There wasn’t any Gussiter, but there was a mighty fine little syndicate of crooks with old man Gresson at the back of them. First thing, I started out to get the cipher. It took some looking for, but there’s no cipher on earth can’t be got hold of somehow if you know it’s there, and in this case we were helped a lot by the return messages in the German papers… It was bad stuff when we read it, and explained the darned leakages in important noos we’ve been up against. At first I figured to keep the thing going and turn Gussiter into a corporation with John S. Blenkiron as president. But it wouldn’t do, for at the first hint of tampering with their communications the whole bunch got skeery and sent out SOS signals. So we tenderly plucked the flowers.’