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+Project Gutenberg's The Firefly Of France, by Marion Polk Angellotti
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Firefly Of France
+
+Author: Marion Polk Angellotti
+
+Release Date: April 11, 2006 [EBook #3676]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FIREFLY OF FRANCE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dagny; John Bickers
+
+
+
+
+
+THE FIREFLY OF FRANCE
+
+by Marion Polk Angellotti
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+THE MEMORY OF
+
+THE HEROIC GUYNEMER
+
+"THE ACE OF THE ACES"
+
+
+     PREPARER'S NOTE
+
+     This text was prepared from a 1918 edition,
+     published by The Century Co., New York.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE FIREFLY OF FRANCE
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS
+
+The restaurant of the Hotel St. Ives seems, as I look back on it, an odd
+spot to have served as stage wings for a melodrama, pure and simple. Yet
+a melodrama did begin there. No other word fits the case. The inns
+of the Middle Ages, which, I believe, reeked with trap-doors and
+cutthroats, pistols and poisoned daggers, offered nothing weirder than
+my experience, with its first scene set beneath this roof. The food
+there is superperfect, every luxury surrounds you, millionaires and
+traveling princes are your fellow-guests. Still, sooner than pass
+another night there, I would sleep airily in Central Park, and if I had
+a friend seeking New York quarters, I would guide him toward some other
+place.
+
+It was pure chance that sent me to the St. Ives for the night before my
+steamer sailed. Closing the doors of my apartment the previous week and
+bidding good-bye to the servants who maintained me there in bachelor
+state and comfort, I had accompanied my friend Dick Forrest on a
+farewell yacht cruise from which I returned to find the first two hotels
+of my seeking packed from cellar to roof. But the third had a free room,
+and I took it without the ghost of a presentiment. What would or would
+not have happened if I had not taken it is a thing I like to speculate
+on.
+
+To begin with, I should in due course have joined an ambulance section
+somewhere in France. I should not have gone hobbling on crutches for a
+painful three months or more. I should not have in my possession
+four shell fragments, carefully extracted by a French surgeon from my
+fortunately hard head. Nor should I have lived through the dreadful
+moment when that British officer at Gibraltar held up those papers,
+neatly folded and sealed and bound with bright, inappropriately cheerful
+red tape, and with an icy eye demanded an explanation beyond human power
+to afford.
+
+All this would have been spared me. But, on the other hand, I could not
+now look back to that dinner on the Turin-Paris _rapide_. I should never
+have seen that little, ruined French village, with guns booming in the
+distance and the nearer sound of water running through tall reeds and
+over green stones and between great mossy trees. Indeed, my life would
+now be, comparatively speaking, a cheerless desert, because I should
+never have met the most beautiful--Well, all clouds have silver linings;
+some have golden ones with rainbow edges. No; I am not sorry I stopped
+at the St. Ives; not in the least!
+
+At any rate, there I was at eight o'clock of a Wednesday evening in a
+restaurant full of the usual lights and buzz and glitter, among women
+in soft-hued gowns, and men in their hideous substitute for the
+same. Across the table sat my one-time guardian, dear old Peter
+Dunstan,--Dunny to me since the night when I first came to him, a very
+tearful, lonesome, small boy whose loneliness went away forever with his
+welcoming hug,--just arrived from home in Washington to eat a farewell
+dinner with me and to impress upon me for the hundredth time that I had
+better not go.
+
+"It's a wild-goose chase," he snapped, attacking his entree savagely.
+Heaven knows it was to prove so, even wilder than his dreams could
+paint; but if there were geese in it, myself included, there was also to
+be a swan.
+
+"You don't really mean that, Dunny," I said firmly, continuing my
+dinner. It was a good dinner; we had consulted over each item from
+cocktails to liqueurs, and we are both distinctly fussy about food.
+
+"I do mean it!" insisted my guardian. Dunny has the biggest heart in the
+world, with a cayenne layer over it, and this layer is always thickest
+when I am bound for distant parts. "I mean every word of it, I tell
+you, Dev." Dev, like Dunny, is a misnomer; my name is Devereux--Devereux
+Bayne. "Don't you risk your bones enough with the confounded games you
+play? What's the use of hunting shells and shrapnel like a hero in a
+movie reel? We're not in this war yet, though we soon will be, praise
+the Lord! And till we are, I believe in neutrality--upon my soul I do."
+
+"Here's news, then!" I exclaimed. "I never heard of it before. Well,
+your new life begins too late, Dunny. You brought me up the other way.
+The modern system, you know, makes the parent or guardian responsible
+for the child. So thank yourself for my unneutral nature and for the war
+medals I'm going to win!"
+
+Muttering something about impertinence, he veered to another tack.
+
+"If you must do it," he croaked, "why sail for Naples instead of for
+Bordeaux? The Mediterranean is full of those pirate fellows. You
+read the papers--the headlines anyway; you know it as well as I. It's
+suicide, no less! Those Huns sank the _San Pietro_ last week. I say,
+young man, are you listening? Do you hear what I'm telling you?"
+
+It was true that my gaze had wandered near the close of his harangue.
+I like to look at my guardian; the fine old chap, with his height and
+straightness, his bright blue eyes and proud silver head, is a sight for
+sore eyes, as they say. But just then I had glimpsed something that was
+even better worth seeing. I am not impressionable, but I must confess
+that I was impressed by this girl.
+
+She sat far down the room from me. Only her back was visible and a
+somewhat blurred side-view reflected in the mirror on the wall. Even so
+much was, however, more than welcome, including as it did a smooth white
+neck, a small shell-like ear, and a mass of warm, crinkly, red-brown
+hair. She wore a rose-colored gown, I noticed, cut low, with a string of
+pearls; and her sole escort was a staid, elderly, precise being, rather
+of the trusted family-lawyer type.
+
+"I haven't missed a word, Dunny," I assured my vis-a-vis. "I was just
+wondering if Huns and pirates had quite a neutral sound. You know I have
+to go via Rome to spend a week with Jack Herriott. He has been pestering
+me for a good two years--ever since he's been secretary there."
+
+Grumbling unintelligible things, my guardian sampled his Chablis; and I,
+crumbling bread, lazily wishing I could get a front view of the girl in
+rose-color, filled the pause by rambling on.
+
+"Duty calls me," I declared. "You see, I was born in France. Shabby
+treatment on my parents' part I've always thought it; if they had
+hurried home before the event I might have been President and declared
+war here instead of hunting one across the seas. In that case, Dunny,
+I should have heeded your plea and stayed; but since I'm ineligible for
+chief executive, why linger on this side?"
+
+He scowled blackly.
+
+"I'll tell you what it is, my boy," he accused, with lifted forefinger.
+"You like to pose--that's what is the matter with you! You like to act
+stolid, matter-of-fact, correct; you want to sit in your ambulance and
+smoke cigarettes indifferently and raise your eyebrows superciliously
+when shrapnel bursts round. And it's all very well now; it looks
+picturesque; it looks good form, very. But how old are you, eh, Dev?
+Twenty-eight is it? Twenty-nine?"
+
+"You should know--none better--that I am thirty," I responded. "Haven't
+you remembered each anniversary since I was five, beginning with a
+hobby-horse and working up through knives and rifles and ponies to the
+latest thing in cars?"
+
+Dunny lowered his accusing finger and tapped it on the cloth.
+
+"Thirty," he repeated fatefully. "All right, Dev. Strong and fit as an
+ox, and a crack polo-player and a fair shot and boxer and not bad with
+boats and cars and horses and pretty well off, too. So when you look
+bored, it's picturesque; but wait! Wait ten years, till you take on
+flesh, and the doctor puts you on diet, and you stop hunting chances to
+kill yourself, but play golf like me. Then, my boy, when you look stolid
+you won't be romantic. You'll be stodgy, my boy. That's what you'll be!"
+
+Of all words in the dictionary there is surely none worse than this one.
+The suggestions of stodginess are appalling, including, even at best,
+hints of overweight, general uninterestingness, and a disposition to sit
+at home in smoking-jacket and slippers after one's evening meal. As my
+guardian suggested, my first youth was over. I held up both my hands in
+token that I asked for grace.
+
+"_Kamerad_!" I begged pathetically. "Come, Dunny, let's be sociable.
+After all, you know, it's my last evening; and if you call me such
+names, you will be sorry when I am gone. By the way, speaking of
+Huns--it was you, the neutral, who mentioned them,--does it strike you
+there are quite a few of them on the staff of this hotel? I hope they
+won't poison me. Look at the head waiter, look at half the waiters
+round, and see that blond-haired, blue-eyed menial. Do you think he saw
+his first daylight in these United States?"
+
+The menial in question was a uniformed bellboy winding in and out among
+tables and paging some elusive guest. As he approached, his chant grew
+plainer.
+
+"Mr. Bayne," he was droning. "Room four hundred and three."
+
+I raised a hand in summons, and he paused beside my seat.
+
+"Telephone call for you, sir," he informed me.
+
+With a word to my guardian, I pushed my chair back and crossed the room.
+But at the door I found my path barred by the _maitre d'hotel_, who, at
+the sight of my progress, had sprung forward, like an arrow from a bow.
+
+"Excuse me, sir. You're not leaving, are you?" The man was actually
+breathing hard. Deferential as his bearing was, I saw no cause for the
+inquiry, and with some amusement and more annoyance, I wondered if he
+suspected me of slipping out to evade my bill.
+
+"No," I said, staring him up and down; "I'm not!" I passed down the hall
+to the entrance of the telephone booths. Glancing back, I could see
+him still standing there gazing after me; his face, I thought, wore a
+relieved expression as he saw whither I was bound.
+
+The queer incident left my mind as I secluded myself, got my connection,
+and heard across the wire the indignant accents of Dick Forrest, my
+former college chum. Upon leaving his yacht that morning, I had promised
+him a certain power of attorney--Dick is a lawyer and is called a
+good one, though I can never quite credit it--and he now demanded in
+unjudicial heat why it had not been sent round.
+
+"Good heavens, man," I cut in remorsefully, "I forgot it! The thing
+is in my room now. Where are you? That's all right. You'll have it by
+messenger within ten minutes." Hastily rehooking the receiver, I bolted
+from my booth.
+
+In the restaurant door against a background of paneled walls the _maitre
+d'hotel_ still stood, as if watching for my return. I sprang into an
+elevator just about to start its ascent, and saw his mouth fall open and
+his feet bring him several quick steps forward.
+
+"The man is crazy," I told myself with conviction as I shot up four
+stories in as many seconds and was deposited in my hall.
+
+There was no one at the desk where the floor clerk usually kept vigil,
+gossiping affably with such employees as passed. The place seemed
+deserted; no doubt all the guests were downstairs. Treading lightly on
+the thick carpet, I went down the hall to Room four hundred and three,
+and found the door ajar and a light visible inside.
+
+My bed, I supposed, was being turned down. I swung the door open, and
+halted in my tracks. With his back to me, bent over a wide-open trunk
+that I had left locked, was a man.
+
+Stepping inside, I closed the door quietly, meanwhile scrutinizing my
+unconscious visitor from head to foot. He wore no hotel insignia--was
+neither porter, waiter, nor valet.
+
+"Well, how about it? Anything there suit you?" I inquired affably, with
+my back against the door.
+
+Exclaiming gutturally, he whisked about and faced me where I stood quite
+prepared for a rough-and-tumble. Instead of a typical housebreaker of
+fiction, I saw a pale, rabbit-like, decent-appearing little soul. He
+was neatly dressed; he seemed unarmed save for a great ring of assorted
+keys; and his manner was as propitiatory and mild-eyed as that of any
+mouse. There must be some mistake. He was some sober mechanic, not a
+robber. But on the other hand, he looked ready to faint with fright.
+
+"_Mein Gott_!" he murmured in a sort of fishlike gasp.
+
+This illuminating remark was my first clue.
+
+"Ah! _Mein Herr_ is German?" I inquired, not stirring from my place.
+
+The demand wrought an instant change in him--he drew himself up, perhaps
+to five feet five.
+
+"Vat you got against the Germans?" he asked me, almost with menace. It
+was the voice of a fanatic intoning "Die Wacht am Rhein"--of a zealot
+speaking for the whole embattled _Vaterland_.
+
+The situation was becoming farcical.
+
+"Nothing in the world, I assure you," I replied. "They are a simple,
+kindly people. They are musical. They have given the world Schiller,
+Goethe, the famous _Kultur_, and a new conception of the possibilities
+of war. But I think they should have kept out of Belgium, and I feel the
+same way about my room--and don't you try to pull a pistol or I may feel
+more strongly still."
+
+"I ain't got no pistol, _nein_," declared my visitor, sulkily. His
+resentment had already left him; he had shrunk back to five feet three.
+
+"Well, I have, but I'll worry along without it," I remarked, with
+a glance at the nearest bag. As targets, I don't regard my
+fellow-creatures with great enthusiasm and, moreover, I could easily
+have made two of this mousy champion of a warlike race. Illogically,
+I was feeling that to bully him was sheer brutality. Besides this, my
+dinner was not being improved by the delay.
+
+"Look here," I said amiably, "I can't see that you've taken anything.
+Speak up lively now; I'll give you just one chance. If you care to tell
+me how you got through a locked door and what you were after, I'll let
+you go. I'm off to the firing line, and it may bring me luck!"
+
+Hope glimmered in his eyes. In broken English, with a childlike
+ingenuousness of demeanor, he informed me that he was a first-class
+locksmith--first-glass he called it--who had been sent by the management
+to open a reluctant trunk. He had entered my room, I was led to infer,
+by a mistake.
+
+"I go now, _ja_?" he concluded, as postscript to the likely tale.
+
+"The devil you do! Do you take me for an utter fool?" I asked, excusably
+nettled, and stepping to the telephone, I took the receiver from its
+hook.
+
+"Give me the manager's office, please," I requested, watching my
+visitor. "Is this the manager? This is Mr. Bayne speaking, Room four
+hundred and three. I've found a man investigating my trunk--a foreigner,
+a German." An exclamation from the manager, and from the listening
+telephone-girl a shriek! "Yes; I have him. Yes; of course I can hold
+him. Send up your house detective and be quick! My dinner is spoiling--"
+
+The receiver dropped from my hand and clattered against the wall. The
+little German, suddenly galvanized, had leaped away from the trunk, not
+toward me and the door beyond me, but toward the electric switch. His
+fingers found and turned it, plunging the room into the darkness of the
+grave. Taken unaware, I barred his path to the hall, only to hear him
+fling up the window across the room. Against the faint square of light
+thus revealed, I saw him hang poised a moment. Then with a desperate
+noise, a moan of mixed resolve and terror, he disappeared.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+DEUTSCHLAND UBER ALLES
+
+Standing there staring after him, I felt like a murderer of the deepest
+dye. It is one thing to hand over to the police their natural prey, a
+thief taken red-handed, but quite another, and a much more harrowing
+one, to have him slip through your fingers, precipitate himself into
+mid-air, and drop four stories to the pavement, scattering his brains
+far and wide. There was not a vestige of hope for the poor wretch.
+
+Unnerved, I groped to the window and peered downward for his remains.
+My first glance proved my regrets to be superfluous. Beneath my window,
+which, owing to the crowded condition of the hotel, opened on a side
+street, a fire-escape descended jaggedly; and upon it, just out of arm's
+reach, my recent guest clung and wobbled, struggling with an attack of
+natural vertigo before proceeding toward the earth.
+
+By this time my rage was such that I would have followed that little
+thief almost anywhere. It was not the dizziness of the yawning void that
+stayed me. I should have climbed the Matterhorn with all cheerfulness to
+catch him at the top. But sundry visions of the figure I would cut, the
+crowd that might gather, and the probable ragging in the morning papers,
+were too much for me, and I sorrowfully admitted that the game was not
+worth the price.
+
+The little man's nerves, meanwhile, seemed to be steadying. Feeling
+each step, he began cautiously to work his way down. To my wrath he
+even looked up at me and indulged in a grimace--but his triumph was
+ill-timed, for at that very instant I beheld, strolling along the street
+below, humming and swinging his night-stick, as leisurely, complacent,
+and stalwart a representative of the law as one could wish to see.
+
+"Hi, there! Officer!" I shouted lustily. My hail, if not my words,
+reached him; he glanced up, saw the figure on the ladder, and was seized
+instantaneously with the spirit of the chase.
+
+Yelling something reassuring, the gist of which escaped me, he
+constituted himself a reception committee of one and started for the
+ladder's foot. But our doughty Teuton was a resourceful person. Roused
+to the urgency of his plight, he looked wildly up at me, down at the
+officer, and, hastily pushing up the nearest window, hoisted himself
+across its sill, and again took refuge in the St. Ives Hotel.
+
+With a bellow of rage, the policeman dashed toward the porte-cochere,
+while I ducked back into the room, rapidly revolving my chances of
+cutting off the man's retreat below. If the system of numbering was the
+same on every floor, my thief must, of course, emerge from Room 303. But
+this similarity was problematical, and to invade apartments at random,
+disturbing women at their opera toilets and maybe even waking babies,
+was too desperate a shift to try.
+
+It reminded me to wait with what patience I could summon for the house
+detective. And where was he, by the way? I had turned in my alarm a good
+five minutes before.
+
+In an unenviable humor I stumbled across the room, tripping and barking
+my shins over various malignant hassocks, tables, and chairs. Finding
+the switch at last, I flooded the room with light, and saw myself in the
+mirror, with tie and coat askew.
+
+"Now," I muttered, straightening them viciously, "we'll see what he
+took away." But the trunk seemed undisturbed when I examined it, and my
+various bags and suitcases were securely locked. I had found Forrest's
+power of attorney and was storing it in my pocket when voices rose
+outside.
+
+A group of four was approaching, comprised of a spruce, dress-coated
+manager; a short thick-set, broad-faced man who was doubtless the
+long-overdue detective; a professional-appearing gentleman with a
+black bag, obviously the house-physician; and the policeman that I had
+summoned from his stroll below. The latter, in an excited brogue, was
+recounting his late vision of the thief, "hangin' between hivin and
+earth, no less," while the detective scornfully accused him of having
+been asleep or jingled, on the ground of my late telephone to the effect
+that I was holding the man.
+
+The manager, as was natural, took the initiative, bustling past me into
+my room and peering eagerly around.
+
+"I needn't say, Mr. Bayne," he orated fluently, "how sorry I am that
+this has happened--especially beneath our roof. It is our first case,
+I assure you, of anything so regrettable. If it gets into the papers it
+won't do us any good. Now the important thing is to take the fellow
+out by the rear without courting notice. Why, where is he?" he asked
+hopefully. "Surely he isn't gone?"
+
+"Sure, and didn't I tell ye? 'Tis without eyes ye think me!" The
+policeman was resentful, and so, to tell the truth, was I. The whole
+maddening affair seemed bent on turning to farce at every angle; the
+doctor, as a final straw, had just offered _sotto voce_ to mix me a
+soothing draft!
+
+"Gone! Of course he's gone, man!" I exclaimed with some natural temper.
+"Did you expect him to sit here waiting all this time? What on earth
+have you been doing--reading the papers--playing bridge? A dozen thieves
+could have escaped since I telephoned downstairs!"
+
+"But you said," he murmured, apparently dazed, "that you could hold
+him." A tactless remark, which failed to assuage my wrath!
+
+"So I could," I responded savagely. "But I didn't expect him to turn
+into a conjuring trick, which is what he did. He went out that window
+head foremost, down the ladder, and into the room below. Let's be after
+him--though we stand as much chance of catching him as we do of finding
+the King of England!" and I turned toward the doorway, where the
+manager, the doctor and the detective were massed.
+
+The manager put his hand upon my arm. I looked down at it with raised
+eyebrows, and he took it away.
+
+"Excuse me, sir," he said, adopting a manner of appeal, "but if you'll
+reflect for a moment you'll see how it is, I know. People don't care for
+houses where burglars fly in and out of windows; it makes them nervous;
+you wouldn't believe how easily a hotel can get a bad name and lose its
+clientele. Besides, from what you tell me, the fellow must be well away
+by this time. You'd do me a favor--a big one--by dropping the matter
+here."
+
+"Well, I won't!" I snapped indignantly. "I'll see it through--or start
+something still livelier. Are you coming down with me to investigate
+the room beneath us or do you want me to ring up police headquarters and
+find out why?"
+
+In the hall the policeman looked at me across the intervening heads
+and dropped one slow, approving eyelid. "If the gintleman says so--" he
+remarked in heavy tones fraught with meaning, and fixed a cold,
+blue, appraising gaze on the detective, who thereupon yielded with
+unexpectedly good grace.
+
+"Aw, what's eating you?" was his amiable demand. "Sure, we was going
+right down there anyhow--soon's we found out how the land lay up here."
+
+The five of us took the elevator to the lower floor. An unfriendly
+atmosphere surrounded me. I was held a hotel wrecker without reason. We
+found the corridor empty, the floor desk abandoned--a state of things
+rather strikingly the duplicate of that reigning overhead--and in due
+course paused before Room 303, where the manager, figuratively speaking,
+washed his hands of the affair.
+
+"Here is the room, Mr. Bayne, for which you ask." If I would persist in
+my nefarious course, added his tone.
+
+The detective, obeying the hypnotic eye of the policeman, knocked. There
+was silence. The bluecoat, my one ally, was crouching for a spring. Then
+light steps crossed the room, and the door was opened. There stood a
+girl,--a most attractive girl, the girl that I had seen downstairs.
+Straight and slender, spiritedly gracious in bearing, with gray eyes
+questioning us from beneath lashes of crinkly black, she was a radiant
+figure as she stood facing us, with a coat of bright-blue velvet thrown
+over her rosy gown.
+
+"Beg pardon, miss," said the policeman, brightly, "this gintleman's been
+robbed."
+
+As her eyebrows went up a fraction, I could have murdered him, for how
+else could she read his statement save that I took her for the thief?
+
+"I am very sorry," I explained, bowing formally, "to disturb you. We
+are hunting a thief who took French leave by my fire-escape. I must have
+been mistaken--I thought that he dodged in again by this window. You
+have not seen or heard anything of him, of course?"
+
+"No, I haven't. But then, I just this instant came up from dinner,"
+she replied. Her low, contralto tones, quite impersonal, were yet
+delightful; I could have stood there talking burglars with her till
+dawn. "Do you wish to come in and make sure that he is not in hiding?"
+With a half smile for which I didn't blame her, she moved a step aside.
+
+"Certainly not!" I said firmly, ignoring a nudge from the policeman.
+"He left before you came--there was ample time. It is not of the least
+consequence, anyhow. Again I beg your pardon." As she inclined her head,
+I bowed, and closed the door.
+
+"I trust Mr. Bayne, that you are satisfied at last." This was the St.
+Ives manager, and I did not like his tone.
+
+"I am satisfied of several things," I retorted sharply, "but before I
+share them with you, will you kindly tell me your name?"
+
+"My name is Ritter," he said with dignity. "I confess I fail to see what
+bearing--"
+
+"Call it curiosity," I interrupted. "Doctor, favor me with yours."
+
+The doctor peered at me over his glasses, hesitated, and then revealed
+his patronym. It was Swanburger, he informed me.
+
+"But, my dear sir, what on earth--"
+
+"Merely," said I, with conviction, "that this isn't an Allies' night. It
+is _Deutschland uber Alles_; the stars are fighting for the Teuton race.
+Now, let's hear how you were christened," I added, turning to the house
+detective, who looked even less sunny than before if that could be.
+
+"See here, whatcher giving us?" snarled that somewhat unpolished worthy.
+"My name's Zeitfeld; but I was born in this country, don't you forget
+it, same as you."
+
+"A great American personality," I remarked dreamily, "has declared that
+in the hyphenate lies the chief menace to the United States. And
+what's your name?" I asked the representative of law and order. "Is it
+Schmidt?"
+
+"No, sir," he responded, grinning; "it's O'Reilly, sorr."
+
+"Thank heaven for that! You've saved my reason," I assured him as I
+leaned against the wall and scanned the Germanic hordes.
+
+"Mr. Ritter," said I, addressing that gentleman coldly, "when I am next
+in New York I don't think I shall stop with you. The atmosphere here is
+too hectic; you answer calls for help too slowly--calls, at least, in
+which a guest indiscreetly tells you that he has caught a German thief.
+It looks extremely queer, gentlemen. And there are some other points as
+well--"
+
+But there I paused. I lacked the necessary conviction. After all I was
+the average citizen, with the average incredulity of the far-fetched,
+the melodramatic, the absurd. To connect the head waiter's panic at my
+departure with the episode in my room, to declare that the floor clerks
+had been called from their posts for a set purpose, and the halls
+deliberately cleared for the thief, were flights of fancy that were
+beyond me. The more fool I!
+
+By the time I saw the last of the adventure I began that night--it was
+all written in the nth power, and introduced in more or less important
+roles the most charming girl in the world, the most spectacular hero of
+France, the cleverest secret-service agent in the pay of the fatherland,
+and I sometimes ruefully suspected, the biggest imbecile of the United
+States in the person of myself--I knew better than to call any idea
+impossible simply because it might sound wild. But at the moment my
+education was in its initial stages, and turning with a shrug from three
+scowling faces, I led my friendly bluecoat a little aside.
+
+"I've no more time to-night to spend thief-catching, Officer," I told
+him. I had just recalled my dinner, now utterly ruined, and Dunny,
+probably at this instant cracking walnuts as fiercely as if each one
+were the kaiser's head. "But I'm an amateur in these affairs, and you
+are a master. Before I go, as man to man, what the dickens do you make
+of this?"
+
+Flattered, he looked profound.
+
+"I'm thinking, sorr," he gave judgment, "ye had the rights of it. Seein'
+as how th' thafe is German, ye'll not set eyes on him more--for divil
+a wan here but's of that counthry, and they stick together something
+fierce!"
+
+"Well," I admitted, "our thoughts run parallel. Here is something to
+drink confusion to them all. And, O'Reilly, I am glad I'm going to sail
+to-morrow. I'd rather live on a sea full of submarines than in this
+hotel, wouldn't you?"
+
+Touching his forehead, he assented, and wished me good-night and a
+good journey; part of his hope went unfulfilled, by the way. That ocean
+voyage of mine was to take rank, in part at least, as a first-class
+nightmare. The Central powers could scarcely have improved on it by
+torpedoing us in mid-ocean or by speeding us upon our trip with a cargo
+of clock-work bombs.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+ON THE RE D'ITALIA
+
+The sailing of the _Re d'Italia_ was scheduled for 3 P.M. promptly, but
+being well acquainted with the ways of steamers at most times, above all
+in these piping times of war, it was not until an hour later than I left
+the St. Ives, where the manager, by the way, did not appear to bid me
+farewell.
+
+The thermometer had been falling, and the day was crisp and snappy, with
+a light powdering of snow underfoot and a blue tang and sparkle in the
+air. Dunny accompanied me in the taxicab, but was less talkative than
+usual. Indeed, he spoke only two or three times between the hotel and
+the pier.
+
+"I say, Dev," was his first contribution to the conversation,
+"d' you remember it was at a dock that you and I first met? It was
+night, blacker than Tophet, and raining, and you came ashore wet as a
+rag. You were the lonesomest, chilliest, most forlorn little tike I ever
+saw; but, by the eternal, you were trying not to cry!"
+
+"Lonesome? I rather think so!" I echoed with conviction. "Wynne and his
+wife brought me over; he played poker all the way, and she read novels
+in her berth. And I heard every one say that I was an orphan, and it was
+very, very sad. Well, I was never lonely after that, Dunny." My hand met
+his half-way.
+
+The next time that he broke silence was upon the ferry, when he urged on
+me a fat wallet stuffed with plutocratic-looking notes.
+
+"In case anything should happen," ran his muttered explanation. I have
+never needed Dunny's money,--his affection is another matter,--but he
+can spare it, and this time I took it because I saw he wanted me to.
+
+As we approached the Jersey City piers, he seemed to shrink and grow
+tired, to take on a good ten years beyond his hale and hearty age. With
+every glance I stole at him a lump in my throat grew bigger, and in the
+end, bending forward, I laid a hand on his knee.
+
+"Look here, Dunny," I demanded, not looking at him, "do you mean half
+of what you were saying last evening--or the hundredth part? After all,
+there'll be a chance to fight here before we're many months older. If
+you just say the word, old fellow, I'll be with you to-night--and hang
+the trip!"
+
+But Dunny, though he wrung my hand gratefully and choked and glared out
+of the window, would hear of no such arrangement, repudiated it, indeed,
+with scorn.
+
+"No, my boy," he declared. "I don't say it for a minute. I like your
+going. I wouldn't give a tinker's dam for you, whatever that is, if you
+didn't want to do something for those fellows over there. I won't even
+say to be careful, for you can't if you do your duty--only, don't you be
+too all-fired foolhardy, even for war medals, Dev."
+
+"Oh, I was born to be hanged, not shot," I assured him, almost
+prophetically. "I'll take care of myself, and I'll write you now and
+then--"
+
+"No, you won't!" he snorted, with a skepticism amply justified by the
+past. "And if you did, I shouldn't answer; I hate letters, always did.
+But you cable me once a fortnight to let me know you're living--and send
+an extra cable if you want anything on earth!"
+
+The taxi, which had been crawling, came to a final halt, and a hungry
+horde, falling on my impedimenta, lowered them from the driver's seat.
+
+"No, I'll not come on board, Dev," said my guardian. "I--I couldn't
+stand it. Good-by, my dear boy."
+
+We clasped hands again; then I felt his arm resting on my shoulder, and
+flung both of mine about him in an old-time, boyish hug.
+
+"_Au revoir_, Dunny. Back next year," I shouted cheerily as the driver
+threw in his clutch and the car glided on its way.
+
+Preceded by various porters, I threaded my way at a snail's pace through
+the dense crowd of waiting passengers, swarthy-faced sons of Italy,
+apparently bound for the steerage. The great gray bulk of the _Re
+d'Italia_ loomed before me, floating proudly at her stern the green,
+white, and red flag blazoned with the Savoyard shield.
+
+"Wave while they let you," I apostrophized it, saluting. "When we get
+outside the three-mile limit and stop courting notice, you'll not fly
+long."
+
+At the gang-plank I was halted, and I produced my passport and exhibited
+the _vise_ of his excellency, the Italian consul-general in New York.
+I strolled aboard, was assigned to Cabin D, and informed by my steward
+that there were in all but five first-class passengers, a piece of news
+that left me calm. Stodgy I may be,--it was odd how that term of Dunny's
+rankled,--but I confess that I find chance traveling acquaintances
+boring and avoid them when I can. Unlike most of my countrymen, I
+suppose I am not gregarious, though I dine and week-end punctiliously,
+send flowers and leave cards at decorous intervals, and know people all
+the way from New York to Tokio.
+
+My carefully limited baggage looked lonely in my cabin; I missed the
+paraphernalia with which one usually begins a trip. Also, as I rummaged
+through two bags to find the cap I wanted, I longed for Peters, my
+faithful man, who could be backed to produce any desired thing at a
+moment's notice. When bound for Flanders or the Vosges, however, one
+must be a Spartan. I found what I sought at last and went on deck.
+
+The scene, though cheerful, was not lacking in wartime features: A
+row of life-boats hung invitingly ready; a gun, highly dramatic in
+appearance, was mounted astern, with every air of meaning business
+should the kaiser meddle with us en route. Down below, the Italians,
+talking, gesticulating, showing their white teeth in flashing, boyish
+smiles, were being herded docilely on board, while at intervals one or
+another of the few promenade-deck passengers appeared.
+
+The first of these, a shrewd-faced, nervous little man, borrowed an
+unneeded match of me and remarked that it was cold weather for spring.
+The next, a good-looking young foreigner,--a reservist, I surmised,
+recalled to the Italian colors in this hour of his country's
+need,--rather harrowed my feelings by coming on board with a family
+party, gray-haired father, anxious mother, slim bride-like wife, and two
+brothers or cousins, all making pathetic pretense at good cheer. Soon
+after came a third man, dark, quiet, watchful-looking, and personable
+enough, although his shoes were a little too gleamingly polished, his
+watch and chain a little too luminously golden, the color scheme of his
+hose and tie selected with almost too much care.
+
+"This," I reflected resignedly, "is going to be a ghastly trip. By Jove,
+here comes another! Now where have I seen her before?"
+
+The new arrival, as indicated by the pronoun, was a woman; though why
+one should tempt Providence by traveling on this route at this juncture,
+I found it hard to guess. Standing with her back to me, enveloped in a
+coat of sealskin with a broad collar of darker fur, well gloved, smartly
+shod, crowned by a fur hat with a gold cockade, she made a delightful
+picture as she rummaged in a bag which reposed upon a steamer-chair, and
+which, thus opened, revealed a profusion of gold mountings, bottles and
+brushes, hand-chased and initialed in an opulent way.
+
+There was a haunting familiarity about her. She teased my memory as
+I strolled up the deck. Then, snapping the bag shut, she turned and
+straightened, and I recognized the girl to whose door my thief-chase had
+led me at the St. Ives.
+
+It seemed rather a coincidence my meeting her again.
+
+"I shouldn't mind talking to you on this trip," I reflected, mollified.
+"The mischief of it is you'll notice me about as much as you notice the
+ship's stokers. You're not the sort to scrape acquaintance, or else I
+miss my shot!"
+
+I did not miss it. So much was instantly proved. As I passed her, on the
+mere chance that she might elect to acknowledge our encounter, I let
+my gaze impersonally meet hers. She started slightly. Evidently she
+remembered. But she turned toward the nearest door without a bow.
+
+The dark, too-well-groomed man was emerging as she advanced. Instead
+of moving back, he blocked her path, looking--was it appraisingly,
+expectantly?--into her eyes. There was a pause while she waited rather
+haughtily for passage; then he effaced himself, and she disappeared.
+
+Striking a match viciously, I lit a cigarette and strolled forward.
+Either the fellow had fancied that he knew her or he had behaved in
+a confoundedly impertinent way. The latter hypothesis seemed, on the
+whole, the more likely, and I felt a lively desire to drop him over the
+rail.
+
+"But I don't know what a girl of your looks expects, I'm sure," I
+grumbled, "setting off on your travels with no chaperon and no companion
+and no maid! Where are your father and mother? Where are your brothers?
+Where's the old friend of the family who dined with you last night? If
+chaps who have no right to walk the same earth with you get insolent,
+who is going to teach them their place, and who is going to take care of
+you if a U-boat pops out of the sea? Oh, well, never mind. It isn't any
+of my business. But just the same if you need my services, I think I'll
+tackle the job."
+
+Time was passing; night had fallen. Consulting my watch, I found that it
+was seven o'clock. I had been aboard more than two hours. An afternoon
+sailing, quotha! At this rate we would be lucky if we got off by dawn.
+
+The dinner gong, a welcome diversion, summoned us below to lights and
+warmth. At one table the young Italian entertained his relatives, and at
+another the captain, a short, swart-faced, taciturn being, had grouped
+his officers and various officials of the steamship company at a
+farewell feast. The little sharp-faced passenger was throned elsewhere
+in lonely splendor, but when I selected a fourth table, he jumped up,
+crossed over and installed himself as my vis-a-vis. Passing me the salt,
+which I did not require, he supplied with it some personal data of which
+I felt no greater need. His name was McGuntrie, he announced; he was
+sales agent for the famous Phillipson Rifles and was being dispatched to
+secure a gigantic contract on the other side.
+
+"And if inside six months you don't see three hundred thousand Italian
+soldiers carrying Phillipson's best," he informed me, "I'll take a back
+seat and let young Jim Furman, who thinks I'm a has-been and he's the
+one white hope, begin to draw my pay. You can't beat those rifles. When
+the boys get to carrying them, old Francis Joseph's ghost'll weep. Pity,
+ain't it, we didn't get on board by noon?" he digressed sociably. "I
+could've found something to do ashore the four hours I've been twiddling
+my thumbs here, and I guess you could too. Hardest, though, on our
+friends the newspaper boys. Did you know they were out there waiting to
+take a flashlight film? Fact. They do it nowadays every time a big liner
+leaves. Then if we sink, all they have to do is run it, with 'Doomed
+Ship Leaving New York Harbor' underneath."
+
+To his shocked surprise I laughed at the information. My appetite
+was unimpaired as I pursued my meal. Trains in which others ride may
+telescope and steamers may take one's acquaintances to watery graves,
+but to normal people the chance of any catastrophe overtaking them
+personally must always seem gratifyingly far-fetched and vague.
+
+"Think it's funny, do you?" my new friend reproached me. "Well, I don't;
+and neither did the folks who had cabins taken and who threw them up
+last week when they heard how the _San Pietro_ went down on this same
+route. We're five plumb idiots--that's what we are--five crazy lunatics!
+I'd never have come a step, not with wild horses dragging me if it
+hadn't been for Jim Furman being pretty near popeyed, looking for a
+chance to cut me out and sail. We've got fifteen hundred reservists
+downstairs, and a cargo of contraband. What do you know about that as a
+prize for a submarine?"
+
+"Well," I said vaingloriously. "I can swim."
+
+My eyes were wandering, for the girl in the fur coat had entered, with
+the dark, watchful-eyed man--was it pure coincidence?--close behind. The
+steward ushered her to a table; the man followed at her heels. I dare
+say I glared. I know my muscles stiffened. The fellow was going to speak
+to her. What in blazes did he mean by stalking her in this way?
+
+"Excuse me," he was saying, "but haven't we met before?"
+
+The girl straightened into rigidness, looking him over. Her manner was
+haughty, her ruddy head poised stiffly, as she answered in a cold tone:
+
+"No."
+
+He was watching her keenly.
+
+"My name's John Van Blarcom," he persisted.
+
+Again she gave him that sweeping glance.
+
+"You are mistaken," she said indifferently. "I have not seen you
+before."
+
+He nodded curtly.
+
+"My mistake," he admitted. "I thought I knew you," and turning from her,
+he sat down at the one table still unoccupied.
+
+"So his name's Van Blarcom," whispered my ubiquitous neighbor. "And the
+Italian chap over there is Pietro Ricci. The steward told me so. And the
+captain's name is Cecchi; get it? And I know your name, too, Mr. Bayne,"
+he added with a grin. "The steward didn't know what was taking you over,
+but I guess I've got your number all right. Say, ain't you a flying man
+or else one of the American-Ambulance boys?"
+
+I mustered the feeble parry that I had stopped being a boy of any sort
+some time ago. Then lest he wring from me my age, birthplace, and the
+amount of my income tax, I made an end of my meal.
+
+On deck again I wondered at my irritation, my sense of restlessness.
+The little salesman was not responsible, though he had fretted me like
+a buzzing fly. It was rather that I had taken an intense dislike to the
+man calling himself Van Blarcom; that the girl, despite her haughtiness,
+had somehow given me an impression of uneasiness--of fear almost--as she
+saw him approach and heard him speak; and above all, that I should
+have liked to flay alive the person or persons who had let her sail
+unaccompanied for a zone which at this moment was the danger point of
+the seas.
+
+My matter-of-fact, conservatively ordered life had been given a crazy
+twist at the St. Ives. As an aftermath of that episode I was
+probably scenting mysteries where there were none. Nevertheless, I
+wondered--though I called myself a fool for it--if any more queer
+things would happen before this ship on which we five bold voyagers were
+confined should reach the other side.
+
+They did.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+"EXTRA"
+
+Toward nine o'clock to my relief it became obvious that the _Re
+d'Italia_ was really going to sail at last. The first and second
+whistles, sounding raucously, sent the company officials and the family
+of the young officer of reserves ashore. The plank was lowered; between
+the ship and the looming pier a thread of black water appeared and grew;
+a flash and an explosion indicated that the possibly doomed liner had
+been filmed according to schedule. "_Evviva l'Italia_!" yelled the
+returning braves in the steerage--a very decent set of fellows, it
+struck me, to leave so cheerfully their vocations of teamster, waiter,
+fruit vender, and the like, and go, unforced, to wear the gray-green
+coats of Italy, the short feathers of the mountain climbers, the
+bersagliere's bunch of plumes, and to stand against their hereditary
+foes the Austrians, up in the snowy Alps.
+
+The details of departure were an old tale to me. As we swung farther and
+farther out, I turned to a newspaper, a twentieth extra probably, which
+I had heard a newsboy crying along the dock a little earlier, and had
+bribed a steward to secure. Moon and stars were lacking to-night, but
+the deck lights were good reading-lamps. Moving up the rail to one of
+them, I investigated the world's affairs.
+
+From the first sheet the usual staring headlines leaped at me. There
+were the inevitable peace rumor, the double denial, the eternal bulletin
+of a trench taken here, a hill recaptured there. A sensational rumor was
+exploited to the effect that Franz von Blenheim, one of the star secret
+agents of the German Empire, was at present incognito at Washington,
+having spent the past month in putting his finger in the Mexican
+pie much to our disadvantage. On the last column of the page was the
+photograph of a distinguished-looking young man in uniform, with an
+announcement that promised some interest, I thought.
+
+"War Scandal Bursts in France," "Scion of Oldest Noblesse Implicated,"
+"Duke Mysteriously Missing," I read in the diminishing degrees of
+the scare-head type. Then came the picture, with a mien attractively
+debonair, a pleasantly smiling mouth, and a sympathetic pair of eyes,
+and in due course, the tale. I clutched at the flapping ends of the
+paper and read on:
+
+
+Of all the scandals to which the present war has given birth, none
+has stirred France more profoundly than that implicating
+Jean-Herve-Marie-Olivier, Count of Druyes, Marquis of Beuil and
+Santenay, and Duke of Raincy-la-Tour. This young nobleman, head of a
+family that has played its part in French history since the days of the
+Northmen and the crusaders, bears in his veins the bluest blood of the
+old regime, and numbers among his ancestors no fewer than seven marshals
+and five constables of France.
+
+A noted figure not only by his birth, his wealth, and his various
+historic chateaux, but also by his sporting proclivities, his daring
+automobile racing, his marvelous fencing, and his spectacular hunting
+trips, the Duke of Raincy-la-Tour has long been in addition an amateur
+aviator of considerable fame, and it was to the French Flying Corps that
+he was attached when hostilities began. Here he distinguished himself
+from the first by his coolness, his extraordinary resource, and his
+utter contempt for danger, and became one of the idols of the French
+army and a proverb for success and audacity, besides attaining to
+the rank of lieutenant, gaining, after his famous night flight across
+Mulhausen for bomb-dropping purposes, the affectionate sobriquet of the
+Firefly of France, and winning in rapid succession the military Medal,
+the ribbon of the Legion of Honor, and the Cross of War with palms.
+
+According to rumor, the duke was lately intrusted with a mission of
+exceptional peril, involving a flight into hostile territory and the
+capture of certain photographs of defenses much needed for the plans
+of the supreme command. With his wonted brilliancy, he is said to have
+accomplished the errand and to have returned in safety as far as the
+French lines. Here, however, we enter the realm of conjecture. The duke
+has disappeared; the plans he bore have never reached the generalissimo;
+and rumor persistently declares that at some point upon his return
+journey he was intercepted by German agents and induced by bribes or
+coercion to deliver up his spoils. By one version he was later captured
+and summarily executed by the French; while his friends, denying this,
+pin their hopes to his death at the hands of the enemy, as offering the
+best outcome of the unsavory event.
+
+The family of the Duke of Raincy-la-Tour has been noted in the past for
+its pronouncedly Royalist tendencies, the attitude of his father and
+grandfather toward the republic having been hostile in the extreme.
+It is believed that this fact may have its significance in the present
+episode. The occurrence is of special interest to the United States in
+view of the recent (Continued on Page Three)
+
+
+Before proceeding, I glanced at the pictured face. The Duke of
+Raincy-la-tour looked back at me with cool, clear eyes, smiling half
+aloofly, a little scornfully, as in the presence of danger the true
+Frenchman is apt to smile.
+
+"I don't think, Jean-Herve-Marie-Olivier," I reflected, "that you ever
+talked to the Germans except with bombs. They probably got you, poor
+chap, and you're lying buried somewhere while the gossips make a holiday
+of the fact that you don't come home. Confound 'current rumors' anyhow,
+and yellow papers too!"
+
+"I beg your pardon," said a low contralto voice.
+
+The girl in the fur coat was standing at my shoulder. I turned, lifting
+my cap, wondering what under heaven she could want. I was not much
+pleased to tell the truth; a goddess shouldn't step from her pedestal
+to chat with strangers. Then suddenly I recognized a distinct oddness in
+her air.
+
+"Would you lend me your paper," she was asking, "for just a moment? I
+haven't seen one since morning; the evening editions were not out when I
+came on board."
+
+Her manner was proud, spirited, gracious; she even smiled; but she was
+frightened. I could read it in her slight pallor, in the quickening of
+her breath.
+
+My extra! What was there in the day's news that could upset her? I was
+nonplussed, but of course I at once extended the sheet.
+
+"Certainly!" I replied politely. "Pray keep it." Lifting my cap a second
+time, I turned to go.
+
+Her fingers touched my arm.
+
+"Wait! Please wait!" she was urging. There was a half-imperious,
+half-appealing note in her hushed voice.
+
+I stared.
+
+"I'm afraid," I said blankly, "that I don't quite--"
+
+"Some one may suspect. Some one may come," urged this most astonishing
+young woman. "Don't you see that--that I'm trusting you to help me?
+Won't you stay?"
+
+Wondering if I by any chance looked as stunned as I felt, I bowed
+formally, faced about, and waited, both arms on the rail. My ideas as
+to my companion had been revolutionized in sixty seconds. I had believed
+her a girl with whom I might have grown up, a girl whose brother and
+cousins I had probably known at college, a girl that I might have met
+at a friend's dinner or at the opera or on a country-club porch if I had
+had my luck with me. Now what was I to think her--an escaped lunatic or
+something more accountable and therefore worse? If I detest anything,
+it is the unconventional, the stagy, the mysterious. Setting my teeth,
+I resolved to wait until she concluded her researches; after that,
+politely but firmly, I would depart.
+
+And then, beside me, the paper rustled. I heard a little gasp, a tiny
+low-drawn sigh. Stealing a glance down, I saw the girl's face shining
+whitely in the deck light. Her black lashes fringed her cheeks as her
+head bent backward; her eyes were as dark as the water we were slipping
+through. I had no idea of speaking, and yet I did speak.
+
+"I am afraid," I heard myself saying, "that you have had bad news."
+
+She was struggling for self-control, but her voice wavered.
+
+"Yes," she agreed; "I am afraid I have."
+
+"If there is anything I can do--" I was correct, but reluctant. How I
+would bless her if she would go away!
+
+But obviously she did not intend to. Quite the contrary!
+
+"There is something," she was murmuring, "that would help me very much."
+
+There, I had done it! I was an ass of the common or garden variety, who
+first resolved to keep out of a queer business and then, because a girl
+looked bothered, plunged into it up to my ears. I succeeded in hiding my
+feelings, in looking wooden.
+
+"Please tell me," I responded, "what it is."
+
+"But--I can't explain it." Her gloved hands tightened on the railing.
+"And if I ask without explaining, it will seem so--so strange."
+
+"Doubtless," I reflected grimly. But I had to see the thing through now.
+"That doesn't matter at all," I assured her civilly through clenched
+teeth.
+
+She came closer--so close that her fur coat brushed me, and her breath
+touched my cheek; her eyes, like gray stars now that they were less
+anxious, went to my head a little, I suppose. Oh, yes, she was lovely.
+Of course that was a factor. If she had been past her first youth and
+skimpy as to hair, and dowdy, I don't pretend that I should ever have
+mixed myself up in the preposterous coil.
+
+"This paper," she whispered, holding out the sheet, "has something in
+it. It is not about me; it is not even true. But if it stays aboard
+the ship,--if some one sees it, it may make trouble. Oh, you see how it
+sounds; I knew you would think me mad!"
+
+"Not in the least." What an absurd rigmarole she was uttering! Yet such
+was the spell of her eyes, her voice, her nearness that I merely felt
+like saying, "Tell me some more."
+
+"I can't destroy it myself," she went on anxiously. "He--they--mustn't
+see me do anything that might lead them to--to guess. But no one will
+think of you, nobody will be watching you; so by and by will you weight
+the paper with something heavy and drop it across the rail?"
+
+My head was whirling, but a graven image might have envied me my
+impassivity. I bowed. "I shall be delighted," I announced banally, "to
+do as you say."
+
+Her face flushed to a warm wild-rose tint as she heard me promise it,
+and her red lips, parting, took on a tremulous smile.
+
+"Thank you," she murmured in frank gratitude. "I thought--I knew you
+would help me!" Then she was gone.
+
+My trance broken I woke to hear myself softly swearing. I consigned
+myself to my proper home, an asylum; I wished the girl at Timbuktu,
+Kamchatka, Land's End--anywhere except on this ship. As I had told the
+agent of the Phillipson Rifles, I am no boy. One can scarcely knock
+about the world for thirty years without gaining some of its wisdom; and
+of all the appropriate truisms I spared myself not one.
+
+Resentfully I reminded myself that mysteries were suspicious, that
+honest people seldom had need of secrecy, that idiots who, like me,
+consented to act blindfold would probably repent their blindness
+in sackcloth and ashes before long. But what use were these sage
+reflections? I had given my word to her. I was in for the consequences,
+however unpleasant they proved.
+
+Without further mental parley I went down to my cabin, where I routed
+out from among my traps a bronze paper-weight as heavy as lead. Wrapping
+the mysterious sheet about it, I brought the package back on deck. There
+was not a soul in sight; it was a propitious hour.
+
+To right and to left the coast lights were slipping past, making golden
+paths on the black water as our tug pulled us out to sea. The reservists
+down below were singing "_Va fuori, o stranier_!" I dropped my package
+overboard, watched it vanish, and turned to behold the sphinx-like
+Van Blarcom, sprung up as if by magic, regarding me placidly from the
+shelter of the smoking-room door.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+MR. VAN BLARCOM. U. S. A.
+
+For a trip that had begun with such rich promise of the unusual, my
+voyage on the _Re d'Italia_ proved a gratifying anticlimax during its
+first few days. The weather was bad. We plowed forward monotonously,
+flagless, running between dark-gray water and a lowering, leaden sky.
+Screws throbbed, timbers creaked, and dishes crashed as the Gulf Stream
+took us, and great waves reared themselves round us like myriads of
+threatening Alps.
+
+After that first night the girl kept discreetly to her stateroom. I was
+relieved; but I thought of her a good deal. I had little else to do.
+Pacing a drunken deck and smoking, I wove unsatisfactory theories,
+asking myself what was her need of secrecy, what the item she wanted
+hidden, what the errand that had made her sail on the vessel a week
+after the spectacular torpedoing of a sister-ship? Did she know this Van
+Blarcom or did she merely dread any notice? And above all, who was the
+man and had he been watching when I tossed that wretched extra across
+the rail?
+
+I saw something of him, of course, as time went on. Naturally we four
+bold spirits, the ubiquitous McGuntrie, Van Blarcom, the young reservist
+Pietro Ricci,--a very good sort of fellow,--and I were herded together
+beyond escape. Also, a foursome at bridge seemed divinely indicated by
+our number, and to avert a sheer paralysis of ennui we formed the habit
+of winning each other's money at that game.
+
+As we played I studied Van Blarcom, but without results. It was
+ruffling; I should have absorbed in so much intercourse a fairly
+definite impression of his personality, profession, and social grade.
+But he was baffling; reticent, but self-assured, authoritative even,
+and, in a quiet way, watchful. He smoked a good cigar, mixed a good
+drink, seemed used to travel, but produced a coarse-grained effect,
+made grammatical errors, and on the whole was a person from whom, once
+ashore, I should flee.
+
+At six o'clock on the seventh night out our voyage entered its second
+lap; all the electric lights were simultaneously extinguished as we
+entered the danger zone. We made a sketchy toilet by means of tapers,
+groped like wandering ghosts down a dim corridor, and dined by the faint
+rays of candles thrust into bottles and placed at intervals along
+the festive board. I went on deck afterward to find the ship plunging
+through blackness on forced draft, with port-holes shrouded and with
+not even a riding-light. If not in Davy Jones's locker by that time, we
+should reach Gibraltar the next evening; afterward we should head for
+Naples, a two days' trip.
+
+The following morning found our stormy weather over. The sea through
+which we were speeding had a magic color, the dark, rich, Mediterranean
+blue. Ascending late, I saw gulls flying round us and seaweed drifting
+by, and Mr. McGuntrie in a state of nerves, with a life belt about him,
+walking wildly to and fro.
+
+"Well, Mr. Bayne," he greeted me, "never again for mine! If I ever
+see the end of this trip,--if you call it a trip; I call it merry
+hades,--believe me, I'll sell something hereafter that I can sell on
+land. I'm a crackerjack of a salesman, if I do say it myself. Once I got
+started talking I could get a man down below to buy a hot toddy and a
+set of flannels--and I wish I'd gone down there and done it before I
+ever saw this boat."
+
+Unmoved, I leaned on the railing and watched the blue swells break.
+McGuntrie took a turn or two. In the ship's library he had discovered a
+manual entitled "How to Swim," and he was now attempting between laments
+to memorize its salient points.
+
+"The first essay is best made in water of not less than fifty degrees
+Fahrenheit, and not more than four feet in depth," he gabbled, and
+then broke off to gaze at the sea about us, chilly in temperature, and
+countless fathoms deep. "Oh, what's the use? What the blue blazes does
+it matter?" he cried hysterically. "I tell you that U-boat that sank the
+_San Pietro_ is laying for us. In about an hour you'll see a periscope
+bob up out there. Then we'll send out an S.O.S., and the next thing you
+know we'll sink with all on board."
+
+We had as yet escaped this doom when toward six o'clock we approached
+Gibraltar, running beneath a crimson sunset and between misty purple
+shores. On one hand lay Africa, on the other the Moorish country,
+both shrouded in a soft haze and edged with snowy foam. Down below
+the soldiers of Italy were singing. A merchantman of belligerent
+nationality, our ship proudly flew its flag again. Indeed, had it failed
+to do so, the British patrol-boats would long since have known the
+reason why.
+
+It was growing dark when I turned to find Van Blarcom at my elbow.
+
+"I didn't see you," I commented rather shortly. I don't like people to
+creep up beside me like cats.
+
+"No," he responded. "I've been waiting quite a while. I didn't want to
+disturb you, but the fact is I'd like a word with you, Mr. Bayne."
+
+I eyed him with curiosity. He was inscrutable, this quiet, alert,
+efficient-looking man. Take, for instance, his present manner, half
+self-assured, half respectfully apologetic--what grade in life did it
+fit?
+
+"Well, here I am," I said briefly as I struck a match.
+
+"I've thought it over a good bit," he went on, apparently in
+self-justification. "I don't know how you will take it, but I'll chance
+it just the same. If I don't give you a hint, you don't get a square
+deal. That's my attitude. Did you ever hear of Franz von Blenheim, Mr.
+Bayne?"
+
+"Eh?" The question seemed distinctly irrelevant--and yet where had I
+heard that name, not very long ago?
+
+"The German secret-service agent. The best in the world, they say." A
+sort of reluctant admiration showed in Van Blarcom's face. "There
+isn't any one that can get him; he does what he wants, goes where he
+likes--the United States, England, France, Russia--and always gets away
+safe. You'd think he was a conjurer to read what he does sometimes.
+A whole country will be looking for him, and he takes some one else's
+passport, puts on a disguise, and good-by--he's gone! That's Franz
+von Blenheim. No; that's just an outline of him. And on pretty good
+authority, he's in Washington now."
+
+Mr. Van Blarcom, I reflected, was surely coming out of his shell; this
+was quite a monologue with which he was favoring me. It was dark now;
+our lights were flaring. Being in a friendly port's shelter, we burned
+electricity to-night.
+
+"You seem to know a whole lot about this fellow," I remarked idly in the
+pause.
+
+"Yes, I do." He smiled a trifle grimly. "In fact, I once came near
+getting him; it would have made my fortune, too. But he slipped through
+my fingers at the last minute, and if I ever--You see, I'm in the
+secret-service myself, Mr. Bayne."
+
+I turned to stare at him.
+
+"The United States service?" I asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+I nodded. All that had puzzled me was fairly clear in this new light.
+Not at all the type of the star agents, those marvelous beings who
+figure so romantically in fiction and on the boards, he was yet, I
+fancied, a good example of the ruck of his profession, those who did
+the every-day detective work which in such a business must be done.
+But--Franz von Blenheim? What was my association with the name? Then I
+recalled that in the extra I had read as we left harbor there had been
+some account of the man's activities in Mexico.
+
+"What I wanted to say was this," Van Blarcom continued in his usual
+manner--the manner that I now recognized to be a subtler form of the
+policeman's, respectful to those he held for law-abiding, alert and
+watchful to detect gentry of any other kind. "This line we're traveling
+on now is one the spies use quite a bit. They used to go to London
+straight or else to Bordeaux and Paris; but the English and French got
+a pretty strict watch going, and now it's easier for them to slip into
+France through Italy, by Modane. They sail for Naples mostly, do you
+see? And--you won't repeat this?--it's fairly sure that when Franz
+von Blenheim sends his government a report of what he's done in Mexico
+against us, he'll send it by an agent who travels on this line and lands
+in Italy and then slips into Germany by way of Switzerland."
+
+We were drifting slowly into the harbor of Gibraltar, the rock looming
+over us through the blackness, a gigantic mountain, a mass of tiered and
+serried lights. Search-lights, too, shot out like swords, focused on us,
+and swept us as we crept forward between dimly visible, anchored
+craft. The throbbing of our engines ceased. A launch chugged toward us,
+bringing the officers of the port. I watched, pleased with the scene,
+and rather taken with my companion's discourse. It was not unlike a dime
+novel of my youth.
+
+"Do you mean you've been sent on this line to watch for one of
+Blenheim's agents?" I inquired.
+
+"No. I'm sent for some work on the other side--and I'm not telling you
+what it is, either," he rejoined. "What I meant was that a man has to
+be careful, traveling on these ships. They watch close. They have to.
+Haven't you noticed that whenever two or three of us get to talking, a
+steward comes snooping round? Well, I suppose you wouldn't, it not being
+your business; but I have. We're watched all the time; and if we're
+wise, we'll mind our step. Take you, for instance. You're a good
+American, eh? And yet some spy might fool you with a cute story and get
+your help and maybe play you for a sucker on the other side. I saw that
+happen once. It was a nice young chap, and a pretty girl fooled him--got
+him into a peck of trouble. What you want to remember is that good spies
+never seem like spies."
+
+If I looked as I felt just then, the search-light that swept me must
+have startled him. I could feel my face flushing, my hands clenching as
+I caught his drift. I swung round.
+
+"What's this about?" I demanded sharply. But I knew.
+
+"Well," said the secret-service man discreetly, "I saw something pretty
+funny the first night out, Mr. Bayne. It was safe enough with me; I can
+tell a gentleman from a spy; but if an officer had seen it, the thing
+wouldn't have been a joke. Suppose we put it this way. There's a person
+on board I think I know. I haven't got the goods, I'll own, but I
+don't often make mistakes. My advice to you, sir, is to steer clear of
+strangers. And if I were you, I--"
+
+"That'll do, thanks!" I cut him short. "I can take care of myself. I
+don't say your motives are bad,--you may think this is a favor,--but I
+call it a confounded piece of meddling, and I'll trouble you to let it
+end."
+
+He looked hurt and indignant.
+
+"Now, look here," he remonstrated, "what have I done but give you a
+friendly hint not to get in bad? But maybe I was too vague about it; you
+just listen to a few facts. I'll tell you who that young lady is and who
+her people are and what she wants on the other side--"
+
+"No, you won't!" I declared. My voice sounded savage. I was recalling
+how she had begged the extra of me, and how it had contained a full
+account of Franz von Blenheim, the kaiser's man. "The young lady's name
+and affairs are no concern of mine. If you know anything you can keep it
+to yourself."
+
+As we glared at each other like two hostile catamounts, a steward
+relieved the tension by running toward us down the deck.
+
+"_Signori, un momento, per piacere_!" he called as he came. The British
+officers were on board, he forthwith informed us, and were demanding,
+in accordance with the martial law now reigning at Gibraltar, a sight of
+each passenger and his passport before the ship should proceed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THUMBSCREWS
+
+The salon of conversation, as the mirrored, gilded, and highly varnished
+apartment was grandiloquently termed, had been the very spot chosen for
+our presumably not very terrible ordeal. Things were well under way.
+At the desk in the corner one officer was jotting down notes as to the
+clearance papers and the cargo; while at a table in the foreground sat
+his comrade, in a lieutenant's uniform, with the captain of the _Re
+d'Italia_ at his right, swart-faced and silent, and the list of the
+passengers lying before the pair.
+
+As I entered a few moments behind Van Blarcom, I perceived that the
+interrogation had already run a partial course. Pietro Ricci, the
+reservist, had, no doubt, emerged with flying colors and now stood
+against the wall beside the doughty agent of the Phillipson Rifles, who
+had apparently satisfied his inquisitor, too. Near the door a group of
+stewards had clustered to watch with interest; and as I stood waiting,
+the girl in furs came in.
+
+I put myself a hypothetical query.
+
+"If a girl," I thought, "materializes from the void, asks an
+incriminating favor, and vanishes, does that put one on bowing terms
+with her when one meets her again?" Evidently it did, for she smiled
+brightly and graciously and bent her ruddy head. But she was pale, I
+noticed critically; there was apprehension in her eyes. Wasn't it odd
+that the prospect of a few simple questions from an officer should
+disconcert her when she had possessed the courage, or the foolhardiness,
+to sail on this line at this time?
+
+Really I could not deny that all I had seen of her was most suspicious.
+For aught I knew, the secret-service man might be absolutely right. I
+had treated him outrageously. I owed him an apology, doubtless. But
+I still felt furious with him, and when she looked anxiously at those
+officers, I felt furious with them too.
+
+Van Blarcom, his brief questioning ended, was turning from the table. As
+he passed, I made a point of smiling companionably at the girl.
+
+"Now for the rack, the cord, and the thumbscrews," I murmured to her,
+making way.
+
+The lieutenant was a tall, lean, muscular young man with a shrewd tanned
+face in which his eyes showed oddly blue, and he half rose, civilly
+enough, as the girl advanced.
+
+"Please sit down," he said with a strong English accent. "I'll have to
+see your passport if you will be so good." She took it from the bag she
+carried, and he glanced at it perfunctorily.
+
+"Your name is Esme Falconer?"
+
+"Yes," she replied.
+
+It was the name of the little Stuart princess, the daughter of Charles
+the First, whose quaint, coiffed, blue-gowned portrait hangs in a dark,
+gloomy gallery at Rome. I was subconsciously aware that I liked it
+despite its strangeness, the while I wondered more actively if that
+Paul Pry of a Van Blarcom had imparted to the ship's authorities the
+suspicions he had shared with me.
+
+"You are an American, Miss Falconer? You were born in the States?
+You are going to Italy--and then home again?" The questions came in a
+reassuringly mechanical fashion; the man was doing his duty, nothing
+more.
+
+"I may go also to France." Her voice was steady, but I saw that she had
+clenched her hands beneath the table.
+
+I glanced at Van Blarcom, to find him listening intently, his neck
+thrust forward, his eyes almost protruding in his eagerness not to miss
+a word. But there was to be nothing more.
+
+"That is satisfactory, Miss Falconer," announced the Englishman; with a
+little sigh of relief, she stood back against the wall.
+
+"If you please," said the officer to me in another tone.
+
+As I came forward, his eyes ran over me from head to foot. So
+did Captain Cecchi's; but I hardly noticed; these uniforms, these
+formalities, these war precautions, were like a dash of comic opera. I
+was not taking them seriously in the least. The Britisher gestured me
+toward a seat, but it seemed superfluous for so brief an interview, and
+I remained standing with my hands resting on a chair.
+
+"I'll have your passport!" There was something curt in his manner. "Ah!
+And your name is--?"
+
+"My name is Devereux Bayne."
+
+"How old are you?"
+
+"Thirty."
+
+"Where do you live?"
+
+"In New York and Washington." If he could be laconic, so could I.
+
+"You were born in America?"
+
+"No. I was born in Paris." By this time questions and answers were like
+the pop of rifle-shots.
+
+"That was a long way from home. Lucky you chose the country of one of
+our Allies." Was this sarcasm or would-be humor? It had an unpleasant
+ring.
+
+"Glad you like it," I responded, with a cold stare, "but I didn't pick
+it."
+
+"Well, if you weren't born in the States, are you an American citizen?"
+he imperturbably pursued.
+
+"If you'll consult my passport, you'll see that I am."
+
+"Did either your father or your mother have any German blood?"
+
+I could hear a slight rustle back of me among the passengers, none of
+whom, it was plain, had been subjected to such cross-questioning. I was
+growing restive, but I couldn't tell him it was not his business; of
+course it was.
+
+"No; they didn't," I briefly replied.
+
+"About your destination now." He was making notes of all my answers.
+"You are going to Italy, and then--"
+
+"To France."
+
+"Roundabout trip, rather. The Bordeaux route is safer just now and
+quicker, too. Why not have gone that way? And how long are you planning
+to stop over on this side?"
+
+"It depends upon circumstances." What on earth ailed the fellow? He was
+as annoying as a mosquito or a gnat.
+
+"I beg your pardon, but your plans seem rather at loose ends, don't
+they? What are you crossing for?"
+
+"To drive an ambulance!" I answered as curtly as the words could be
+said.
+
+I saw his face soften and humanize at the information. For once I had
+made a satisfactory response, it seemed. But on the heels of my answer
+there rose the voice of Mr. McGuntrie, sensational, accusing, pitched
+almost at a shriek.
+
+"Look here, lieutenant," he was crying, "don't you let that fellow fool
+you. I asked him the first night out if he was an ambulance boy, and
+he denied it to me, up and down. I thought all along he was too smart,
+hooting like he did at submarines. Guess he knew one would pick him up
+all right if the rest of us did sink."
+
+"How about that, Mr. Bayne?" asked the Englishman, his uncordial self
+once more.
+
+It was maddening. One would have thought them all in league to prove me
+an atrocious criminal.
+
+"Simply this," I replied with the iciness of restrained fury, "that this
+gentleman has been the steamer's pest ever since the night we sailed. If
+I had answered his questions, every one, down to the ship's cat, would
+have shared his knowledge within the hour. I did not deny anything; I
+simply did not assent. You are an officer in authority; I am answering
+you, though I protest strongly at your manner; but I don't tell my
+affairs to prying strangers because we are cooped up on the same boat."
+
+"H'm. If I were you I would keep my temper." He regarded me
+thoughtfully, and then with rapier-like rapidity shot two questions
+at my head. "I say, Mr. Bayne, you're positive about your parents not
+having German blood, are you? And you are quite sure you were born in
+Paris, not in--well, Prussia, suppose we say?"
+
+"What the--" I opportunely remembered the presence of Miss Esme
+Falconer. "What do you mean?" I substituted less sulphurously, but with
+a glare.
+
+He bent forward, tapping his forefinger against the desk, and his eyes
+were like gimlets boring into mine.
+
+"I mean," he enlightened me, his voice very hard of a sudden, "that a
+German agent is due to sail on this line, about this time, with certain
+papers, and that from one or two indications I'm not at all sure you are
+not the man."
+
+With sudden perspicacity, I realized that he took me for an emissary of
+the great Blenheim. Exasperation overwhelmed me; would these farcical
+complications never cease?
+
+"Good heavens, man," I exclaimed with conviction, "you are crazy! Look
+at me! Use your common-sense! What on earth is there about me to suggest
+a spy?"
+
+"In a good spy there never is anything suggestive."
+
+By Jove, that was the very thing the secret-service man had said!
+
+"You admit you were born abroad. You claim to be bound for France, but
+you sail for Italy. And you are rather a soldier's type, tall, well
+set-up, good military carriage. You'd make quite a showing in a field
+uniform, I should say."
+
+"In a fiddlestick!" I snapped, weary of the situation. "So would you--so
+would our friend the Italian reservist there. I'm an average American,
+free, white, and twenty-one, with strong pro-Ally sympathies and a
+passport in perfect shape. This is all nonsense, but of course there
+is something back of it. What has been your real reason for deviling me
+ever since I entered this room?"
+
+The lieutenant was studying my face.
+
+"Mr. Bayne," he said slowly, "do you care to tell me the nature of the
+package you threw across the rail the first night out?"
+
+I heard a gasp from the group behind me, a squeal of joy from
+McGuntrie, a quick, low-drawn breath that surely came from the girl.
+Preternaturally cool, I thought rapidly.
+
+"What's that you say? Package?" I repeated, trying to gain time.
+
+"Yes, package!" said the Englishman, sharply. "And we'll dispense with
+pretense, please. These are war-times, and from common prudence the
+Allies keep an eye on all passengers who choose to sail instead of
+staying at home as we prefer they should. Captain Cecchi here reports
+to me that one of his stewards saw you drop a small weighted object
+overboard. He has asked me to interrogate you, instead of doing it
+himself, so that you may have the chance to defend yourself in English,
+which he doesn't speak."
+
+"_E vero_. It ees the truth," confirmed the captain of the _Re
+d'Italia_--the one remark, by the way, that he ever addressed to me.
+
+"Well?" It was the Englishman's cold voice. "We are waiting, Mr. Bayne!
+What was this object you were so anxious to dispose of? A message from
+some confederate, too compromising to keep?"
+
+Heretofore I had carefully avoided looking at Miss Falconer, but at this
+point, turning my head a trifle, I gave her a casual glance. Her eyes
+had blackened as they had done that night on the deck; her face had
+paled, and her breath was coming fast. But as I looked, her gaze fell,
+and her lashes wavered; and I knew that whatever came she did not mean
+to speak.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE TIGHTENING WEB
+
+I did not, of course, want her to. I was no "Injun giver," and having
+once pledged my word to help her, I was prepared to keep it till all was
+blue or any other final shade. Still, it was not to be denied that
+my position looked incriminating. She might be as honest as the
+daylight,--I believed she was; I had to or else abandon her,--but she
+had managed to plunge me into a confounded mess.
+
+Naturally I was exasperated at the net results of my piece of gallantry.
+I didn't care to be suspected; I wasn't anxious to have to lie. All
+the same, a plausible explanation, offered without delay, appeared
+essential. I should have wanted as much myself had I been guarding
+Gibraltar port.
+
+"Well, Mr. Bayne?"
+
+"Well!" I retorted coolly. "I was just wondering if I should answer.
+This is an infernal outrage, you know. You don't really think I'm a spy.
+What you are doing is to give me a third degree on general principles.
+If you'll excuse my saying so I think you ought to have more sense!"
+
+"Oh, of course we ought to take you on trust," he agreed sardonically.
+"But we can't I'm afraid. The fact is, we have had an experience or two
+to shake our faith. The last time this steamer stopped here we caught a
+pair of spies who didn't look the part any more than you do; and since
+then we have rather stopped taking appearances as guarantees."
+
+"All right, then," I responded. "I'll stretch a point since it is
+war-time. I give you my word that I threw overboard a small bronze
+paper-weight that was cluttering up my traps. There was nothing
+surreptitious about it; the whole steamer might have seen me. Do you
+care to take the responsibility of having me shot for that?"
+
+"And I want to say, sir, that the gentleman is giving it to you
+straight." An unexpected voice addressed the lieutenant at my back. "I
+was standing at the door behind him that night, though he didn't know
+it, and I can take my oath that what he says is gospel truth."
+
+My unlooked-for champion was Mr. John Van Blarcom. I stared at him, at
+a loss to know why, on the heels of our row on deck and my rejection of
+his friendly warning, he should perjure himself for me in so obliging
+a fashion. He had, I was aware, been too far off that night to know
+whether I had thrown away a paper-weight or a sand-bag. Moreover,
+the object had been swathed beyond recognition in the extra that
+was primarily responsible for all this fuss. "He is sorry for me,"
+I decided. "He thinks the girl has made a fool of me." Instead of
+experiencing gratitude, I felt more galled and wrathful than before.
+
+"Is that so? How close were you?" the lieutenant asked alertly. "About
+ten feet? You are quite sure? Well--it's all right, I suppose, then," he
+admitted in a very grudging tone.
+
+"No, it isn't," I declared tartly. I was by no means satisfied with
+so half-hearted a vindication; nor did I care to owe my immunity to
+a patronizing lie on Mr. Van Blarcom's part. "You have accused me of
+spying. Do you think I'll let it go at that? I insist that you have my
+baggage brought up here and that you search it and search me."
+
+The face of the Englishman really relaxed for once.
+
+"That's a good idea. And it's what any honest man would want, Mr.
+Bayne," he approved. "Since you demand it--certainly, we'll do it," and
+he glanced at the captain, who promptly ordered two stewards to fetch my
+traps from below.
+
+Things move rapidly on shipboard. My traveling impedimenta appeared in
+the salon almost before I could have uttered the potent name of Jack
+Robinson, had I cared to try. With cold aloofness I offered my keys,
+and the head steward knelt to officiate, while the crowd gaped and the
+second English officer abandoned his corner and his papers, standing
+forth to watch with the lieutenant and the captain, thus forming an
+intent and highly interested committee of three.
+
+The investigation began, very thorough, slightly harrowing. I had not
+realized the embarrassing detail of such a search. An extended store
+of collars suitable for different occasions; neat and glossy piles
+of shirts, both dress and plain; black silk hose mountain high, and
+neckties as numerous as the sea sands. Noting the rapt attention that
+McGuntrie in particular gave to these disclosures, I felt that to
+deserve so inhuman a punishment my crime must have been black indeed.
+Shoes on their trees; articles of silk underwear; brushes, combs,
+gloves, cards, boxes of cigarettes, an extra flask; some light
+literature. And so on and so on, ad nauseam, till I grew dully
+apathetic, and roused only to praise Allah when we left the boxes for
+the trunk.
+
+Hardened by this time, I brazenly endured the exhibition of my pajamas,
+not turning a hair when they were held up and shaken out before the
+attentive crowd. In a similar spirit I bore the examination of my coats
+and trousers, the rummaging of my vests, the investigation of my hats.
+"Courage!" I told myself. "Nothing in the world is endless." Indeed, the
+last garment was now being lifted, revealing nothing beneath it save a
+leather wallet carefully tied.
+
+"Just look through that, will you?" I requested with chilling sarcasm.
+"Otherwise you may get to thinking later that I had a note for the
+kaiser there. In point of fact, those are simply some letters of
+introduction that I am taking to--" I broke off abruptly. "Good Lord
+deliver us!" I blankly exclaimed. "What's that?"
+
+The lieutenant, complying with my request, had unbound the wallet and
+was flirting out its contents in fan-like fashion like a hand of cards.
+I saw the imposing army of letters presented me by Dunny, who knows
+everybody, headed by one to his old friend, the American ambassador to
+France. So far, so good. But beneath them, with a sickening sense of
+being in a bad dream, I beheld a thin sheaf of papers, neatly folded,
+bound with red tape and sealed with bright red wax,--an object which, to
+my certain knowledge, had no more business among my belongings than
+the knives and plates that the conjurer snatches from the surrounding
+atmosphere, or the hen which he evolves, clucking, from an erstwhile
+empty sleeve.
+
+Standing there with the impersonal calm of utter helplessness, I watched
+the Britisher break the seal and unfold the sheets. They were thin and
+they were many and they were covered with closely jotted hieroglyphics,
+row upon row. But the sphinx-like quality of the contents afforded me
+no gleam of hope. If they had proclaimed as much in the plainest English
+printing, I could have been no surer that they were the papers of Franz
+von Blenheim; nor, as I learned a good while afterward, was I mistaken
+in the belief.
+
+I was vaguely aware that the spectators were being ordered from the
+salon. Captain Cecchi's eyes were dark stilettos; the gaze of the
+Englishman was like a narrow flash of blue steel. He was going to say
+something. I waited apathetically. Then the words came, falling like
+icicles in the deadness of the hush.
+
+"If you wish, sir," he stated, "to explain why you are traveling with
+cipher papers, Captain Cecchi and I will hear what you have to say."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+WHAT A THIEF CAN DO
+
+In sheer desperation I achieved a ghastly levity of demeanor.
+
+"Please don't shoot me yet," I managed to request. "And if I sit down
+and think for a moment, don't take it for a confession. Any innocent man
+would be shocked dumb temporarily if his traps gave up such loot."
+
+I sat down in dizzy fashion, my judges watching me. Through my mind, in
+a mad phantasmagoria, danced the series of events that had begun in the
+St. Ives restaurant and was ending so dramatically in the salon of this
+ship. Or perhaps the end had not yet arrived, I thought ironically. By
+a slight effort of imagination I could conjure up a scene of the sort
+rendered familiar by countless movie dramas--a lowering fortress wall,
+myself standing against it, scornfully waving away a bandage, and drawn
+up before me a highly efficient firing-squad.
+
+To all intents and purposes I was a spy, caught red-handed; but with due
+respect for circumstantial evidence, I did not mean to remain one long.
+That part of it was too absurd. There must be a dozen ways out of it.
+Come! The fact that so strange an experience had befallen me in a New
+York hotel on the eve of my sailing could not be pure coincidence. There
+lay the clue to the mystery. Let me work it out.
+
+And then, as my wits began groping, comprehension came to me--a sudden
+comprehension that left me stunned and dazed: The open trunk, the thief,
+the descent by the fire-escape, the girl's calm denial, turning us from
+the suspected floor. Yes, the girl! Heavens, what a blind dolt I had
+been! No wonder that Van Blarcom had felt moved to say a helping word
+for me, as for a congenital idiot not responsible for his acts!
+
+"When you are ready--" the lieutenant was remarking. I pulled myself
+together as hastily as I could.
+
+"First," I began, with all the resolution I could muster, "I want to
+say that I am as much at a loss as you are about this thing. I never set
+eyes upon those papers until this evening. Why, man alive, I insisted
+on the search! I asked you to examine the wallet! Do you think I did all
+that to establish my own guilt?"
+
+"We'll keep to the point, please." His very politeness was ill omened.
+"The papers were in your baggage. Can you explain how they came there?"
+
+"I am going to try," I answered coolly. "To begin with, I can vouch for
+it that they were not there two weeks ago when my man packed the trunk.
+That I can swear to, for I glanced through the letters before handing
+him the wallet; and when he had finished packing I locked the trunk and
+went yachting for five days."
+
+"And your luggage? Did it go with you?" queried the Englishman.
+
+"No; it didn't. It remained in the baggage-room of my apartment house;
+but when I landed and found hotel quarters, I had it sent to me at the
+St. Ives."
+
+"So you stayed there!" He was eyeing me with ever-growing disfavor.
+"You didn't know, of course, that it was a nest of agents, a sort of
+rendezvous for hyphenates, and that the last spy we caught on this line
+had made it his headquarters in New York?"
+
+"I did not," I replied stiffly. "But I can believe the worst of it.
+Now, here's what befell me there." I recounted my adventure briefly,
+beginning with the summons from restaurant to telephone.
+
+It was strange how, as I talked, each detail fell into its place, how
+each little circumstance, formerly so mystifying, grew clear. The alarm
+of the _maitre d'hotel_ over my sudden departure, his relief when I
+entered the booths, his corresponding horror when, emerging, I took
+the elevator for my room, puzzled me no longer. The deserted halls, the
+flight of the little German intruder, the determined lack of interest of
+the hotel management, were merely links in the chain.
+
+I told a straight, unvarnished story with one exception. When I came
+to the point I couldn't bring in Miss Esme Falconer's name. I said
+non-committally that a lady had occupied the room where the thief took
+refuge; and I left it to be inferred that I had never seen her before or
+since.
+
+The lieutenant heard my tale out with impassivity. "Is that all, Mr.
+Bayne?" he asked shortly, as I paused.
+
+"Yes," I lied doggedly. "And if you want more, I call you insatiable.
+I've told you enough to satisfy any man's appetite for the abnormal,
+haven't I?"
+
+"Your defense, then," he summed it up, "is that under the protection of
+a German management a German agent entered your room, opened your trunk,
+concealed these papers in it, and repacked it. You believe that, eh?"
+
+It sounded wild enough, I acknowledged gloomily as I sat staring at the
+carpet with my elbows on my knees.
+
+"You've been a pretty fool, a pretty fool, a pretty fool!" the refrain
+sang itself unceasingly in my ears. I was disgusted with the episode,
+more disgusted yet with my own role. Why was I lying, why making myself
+by my present silence as well as by my former density the flagrant
+confederate of a clever spy?
+
+I shrugged my shoulders.
+
+"Oh, what's the use?" I muttered. "No, of course I don't believe it, and
+you won't either if you are sane. It is too ridiculous. I might as
+well suggest that if the thief hadn't been gone when they arrived, the
+manager and the detective would have shanghaied me, or the house doctor
+drugged me with a hypodermic till the fellow could get away. Let's end
+all this! I'm ready to go ashore if you want to take me. In your place
+I know I should laugh at such a story; and I think that on general
+principles I should order the man who told it shot."
+
+"Not necessarily, Mr. Bayne," was the cool response of the Englishman.
+"The trouble with you neutrals is that you laugh too much at German
+spies. We warn you sometimes, and then you grin and say that it's
+hysteria. But by and by you'll change your minds, as we did, and know
+the German secret service for what it is--the most competent thing, the
+most widely spread, and pretty much the most dangerous, that the world
+has to fight to-day."
+
+"You don't mean," I inquired blankly, "that you believe me?"
+
+It looks odd enough as I set it down. Ordinarily I expect my word to be
+accepted; but then, as a general thing I don't suddenly discover that I
+have been chaperoning a set of German code-dispatches across the seas.
+
+"I mean," he corrected with truly British phlegm, "that I can't say
+positively your story is untrue. Here's the case: Some one--probably
+Franz von Blenheim--wants to send these papers home by way of Italy
+and Switzerland. Your hotel manager tells him you are going to sail for
+Naples; you are an American on your way to help the Allies; it's ten to
+one that nobody will suspect you and that your baggage will go through
+untouched. What does he do? He has the papers slipped into your wallet.
+Then he sends a cable to some friend in Naples about a sick aunt, or
+candles, or soap. And the friend translates the cable by a private code
+and reads that you are coming and that he is to shadow you and learn
+where you are stopping and loot your trunk the first night you spend
+ashore!"
+
+"I don't grasp," I commented dazedly; "why they should weave such
+circles. Why not let one of their own agents bring over the papers?"
+
+The lieutenant smiled a faint, cold, wintry smile.
+
+"Spies," he informed me, "always think they are watched, and generally
+they're not wrong in thinking so. If they can send their documents by an
+innocent person, they had better. For my part, I call it a very clever
+scheme."
+
+"I believe I am dreaming," I muttered. "Somebody ought to pinch me.
+You found those infernal things nestling among my coats and hose and
+trousers--and you don't think I put them there?"
+
+"I didn't say that," he denied as unresponsively as a brazen Vishnu. "I
+simply say that I wouldn't care to order you shot as things stand now.
+But you'll remember that I have only your word that all this happened or
+that you are really an American or even that this passport is yours and
+that your name is--ah--Devereux Bayne. We'll have to know quite a bit
+more before we call this thing settled. How are you going to satisfy his
+Majesty the King?"
+
+I plucked up spirit.
+
+"Well," I suggested, "how will this suit you? I'll go down to my
+stateroom and stop there until we land in Italy; and, if you like, just
+to be on the safe side with such a desperado as I am, you can put a
+guard outside my door. But first, you'll send a sheaf of marconigrams
+for me in both directions. You're welcome to read them, of course,
+before they go. Then when we get to Naples, my friend, Mr. Herriott,
+will meet the steamer. He is second secretary at the United States
+embassy, and his identification will be sufficient, I suppose. Anyhow,
+if it isn't, I dare say the ambassador will say a word for me. I have
+known him for years, though not so well."
+
+"That would be quite sufficient as to identification." He stressed the
+last word significantly, and I thanked heaven for Dunny and the forces
+which I knew that rather important old personage could set to work.
+
+"Also," I continued coolly, "there will be various cablegrams from
+United States officials awaiting us, which will convince you, I hope,
+that I am not likely to be a spy. There will be a statement from the
+friend who dined with me at the St. Ives. There will be the declaration
+of the policeman who saw the German climb down the fire-escape and
+bolt into the room beneath." "And hang the expense!" I added inwardly,
+computing cable rates, but assuming a lordly indifference to them which
+only a multimillionaire could really feel.
+
+The Englishman and the captain consulted a moment. Then the former
+spoke:
+
+"That will be satisfactory, sir, to Captain Cecchi and to me. Write out
+your cables, if you please. They shall be sent. And I say, Mr. Bayne,--I
+hope you drive that ambulance. I'm not stationed here to be a partizan,
+but you've stood up to us like a man."
+
+An hour later as I finished my solitary dinner, the electric lights
+flickered and died, and the engines began their throb. Under cover of
+the darkness we were slipping out of Gibraltar. I leaned my arms on the
+table and scanned the remains of my feast by the light of my one sad
+candle, not thinking of what I saw, or of the various calls for help I
+had been dispatching, or of the sailor grimly mounting guard outside my
+door. I was remembering a girl, a girl with ruddy hair and a wild-rose
+flush and great, gray, starry eyes, a girl that by all the rules of the
+game I should have handed over to those who represented the countries
+she was duping, a girl that I had found I had to shield when I came face
+to face with the issue.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE BLACK BUTTERFLIES
+
+The Turin-Paris express--the most direct, the Italians call it--was
+too popular by half to suit the taste of morose beings who wished for
+solitude. With great trouble and pains I had ferreted out a single
+vacant compartment; but as four o'clock sounded and the whistle blew for
+departure, a belated traveler joined me--worse still, an acquaintance
+who could not be quite ignored.
+
+The unwelcome intruder was Mr. John Van Blarcom, my late fellow-voyager,
+and he accepted the encounter with a better grace than I.
+
+"Why, hello!" he greeted me cheerfully. "Going through to France? Glad
+to see you--but you're about the last man that I was looking for. I got
+the idea somehow you were planning to stop a while in Rome."
+
+I returned his nod with a curtness I was at no pains to dissemble. Then
+I reproached myself, for it was undeniable that on the _Re d'Italia_ he
+had more than once stood my friend. He had offered me a timely warning,
+which I had flouted; he had obligingly confirmed my statement in my
+grueling third degree. Yet despite this, or because of it, I didn't like
+him; nor did I like his patronizing, complacent manner, which seemed
+fairly to shriek at me, "I told you so!"
+
+"Changed my plans," I acknowledged with a lack of cordiality that failed
+to ruffle him. He had hung up his overcoat and installed himself facing
+me, and was now making preparations for lighting a fat cigar.
+
+"Well," he commented, with a chuckle of raillery, after this operation,
+"the last time I saw you you were in a pretty tight corner, eh? You
+can't say it was my fault, either; I'd have put you wise if you'd
+listened. But you weren't taking any--you knew better than I did--and
+you strafed me, as the Dutchies say, to the kaiser's taste."
+
+"Good advice seldom gets much thanks, I believe," was my grumpy comment,
+which he unexpectedly chose to accept as an apology and with a large,
+fine, generous gesture to blow away.
+
+"That's all right," he declared. "I'm not holding it against you. We've
+all got to learn. Next time you won't be so easy caught, I guess. It
+makes a man do some thinking when he gets a dose like you did; and those
+chaps at Gibraltar certainly gave you a rough deal!"
+
+"On the contrary," I differed shortly,--I wasn't hunting
+sympathy,--"considering all the circumstances, I think they were
+extremely fair."
+
+"Not to shoot you on sight? Well, maybe." He was grinning. "But I guess
+you weren't hunting for a chance to spend two days cooped up in a cabin
+that measured six feet by five."
+
+"It had advantages. One of them was solitude," I responded dryly. "And
+it was less unpleasant than being relegated to a six-by-three grave. See
+here, I don't enjoy this subject! Suppose we drop it. The fact is, I've
+never understood why you came to my rescue on that occasion, you didn't
+owe me any civility, you know, and you had to--well--we'll say draw on
+your imagination when you claimed you saw what I threw overboard that
+night."
+
+"Sure, I lied like a trooper," he admitted placidly. "Glad to do it. You
+didn't break any bones when you strafed me, and anyhow, I felt sorry for
+you. It always goes against me to see a fellow being played!"
+
+Thanks to my determined coolness, the conversation lapsed. I buried
+myself in the Paris "Herald," but found I could not read. Simmering with
+wrath, I lived again the ill-starred voyage his words recalled to
+me, breathed the close smothering air of the cabin that had held me
+prisoner, tasted the knowledge that I was watched like any thief. An
+armed sailor had stood outside my door by day and by night; and a dozen
+times I had longed to fling open that frail partition, seize the man by
+the collar, and hurl him far away.
+
+Glancing out at the landscape, I saw that Turin lay back of us and that
+our track was winding through dark chestnut forests toward the heights.
+Confound Van Blarcom's reminiscences and the thoughts they had set
+stirring! In ambush behind my paper I gloomily relived the past.
+
+Our ship, following sealed instructions, had changed her course at
+Gibraltar, conveying us by way of the Spanish coast to Genoa instead of
+Naples. From my port-hole I had gazed glumly on blue skies and bright,
+blue waters, purple hills, and white-walled cities, and fishing boats
+with patched, gaudy sails and dark-complexioned crews. Then Genoa rose
+from the sea, tier after tier of pink and green and orange houses and
+shimmering groves of olive trees; and I was summoned to the salon, to
+face the captain of the port, the chief of the police of the city, and
+their bedizened suites.
+
+Surrounded by plumes and swords and gold lace, I maintained my innocence
+and heard Jack Herriott, on his opportune arrival, pour forth in weird,
+but fluent, Italian an account of me that must have surrounded me in the
+eyes of all present with a golden halo, and that firmly established
+me in their minds as the probable next President of the United
+States. Thanks to these exaggerations and to various confirmatory
+cablegrams--Dunny had plainly set the wires humming on receiving my
+S.O.S.,--I found myself a free man, at price of putting my signature
+to a statement of it all. I shook the hand of the ever non-committal
+Captain Cecchi, and left the ship. And an hour after good old Jack was
+gazing at me in wrath unconcealed as I informed him that I was in the
+mood for neither gadding, nor social intercourse, and had made up my
+mind to proceed immediately to duty at the Front.
+
+"You've been seasick; that's what ails you," he said, diagnosing my
+condition. "Oh, I don't expect you to admit it--no man ever did that.
+But you wait and see how you feel when we've had a few meals at the
+Grand Hotel in Rome!"
+
+This culinary bait leaving me cold, he lost his temper, expressed a hope
+that the Germans would blow my ambulance to smithereens, and assured me
+that the next time I brought the Huns' papers across the ocean I might
+extricate myself without his assistance from what might ensue. However,
+though he has a bark, Jack possesses no bite worth mentioning. He even
+saw me off when I left by the north-bound train.
+
+Leaning moodily forward, I looked again from the window and wished I
+might hurry the creaking, grinding revolution of the wheels. We were
+climbing higher and higher among the mountains. The chestnuts, growing
+scanter, were replaced by dark firs and pines. Streams came winding down
+like icy crystal threads; the little rivers we crossed looked blue and
+glacial; pale-pink roses and mountain flowers showed themselves as we
+approached the peaks. A polite official, entering, examined our papers;
+and with snow surrounding us and cold clear air blowing in at the
+window, we left Bardonnecchia, the last of the frontier towns.
+
+I was speeding toward France; but where was the girl of the _Re
+d'Italia_? To what dubious rendezvous, what haunt of spies, had she
+hurried, once ashore? The thought of her stung my vanity almost beyond
+endurance. She had pleaded with me that night, swayed against me
+trustingly, appealed to me as to a chivalrous gentleman and, having
+competently pulled the wool over my eyes, had laughed at me in her
+sleeve.
+
+I had held myself a canny fellow, not an easy prey to adventurers;
+a fairly decent one, too, who didn't lie to a king's officer or help
+treasonable plots. Yet had I not done just those things by my silence
+on the steamer? And for what reason? Upon my soul I didn't know, unless
+because she had gray eyes.
+
+"Hang it all!" I exclaimed, flinging my unlucky paper into a corner, and
+becoming aware too late that Van Blarcom was observing me with a grin.
+
+"I've got the black butterflies, as the French say," I explained
+savagely. "This mountain travel is maddening; one might as well be a
+snail."
+
+"Sure, a slow train's tiresome," agreed Van Blarcom. "Specially if
+you're not feeling overpleased with life anyway," he added, with a
+knowing smile.
+
+An angry answer rose to my lips, but the Mont Cenis tunnel opportunely
+enveloped us, and in the dark half-hour transit that followed I regained
+my self-control. It was not worth while, I decided, to quarrel with the
+fellow, to break his head or to give him the chance of breaking mine.
+After all, I thought low-spiritedly, what right had I to look down on
+him? We were pot and kettle, indistinguishably black. It was true that
+he had perjured himself upon the liner; but so, in spirit if not in
+words, had I!
+
+Thus reflecting, I saw the train emerge from the tunnel, felt it jar
+to a standstill in the station of Modane, and, in obedience to staccato
+French outcries on the platform, alighted in the frontier town. Followed
+by Van Blarcom and preceded by our porters, I strolled in leisurely
+fashion towards the customs shed. The air was clear, chilly,
+invigorating; snowy peaks were thick and near. And the scene was
+picturesque, dotted as it was with mounted bayonets and blue territorial
+uniforms--reminders that boundary lines were no longer jests and that
+strangers might not enter France unchallenged in time of war.
+
+Van Blarcom's elbow at this juncture nudged me sharply.
+
+"Say, Mr. Bayne," he was whispering, "look over there, will you? What do
+you know about that?"
+
+I looked indifferently. Then blank dismay took possession of me. Across
+the shed, just visible between rows of trunks piled mountain high, stood
+Miss Esme Falconer, as usual only too well worth seeing from fur hat to
+modish shoe.
+
+"Ain't that the limit," commented the grinning Van Blarcom; "us three
+turning up again, all together like this? Well, I guess she won't have
+to call a policeman to stop you talking to her. You know enough this
+time to steer pretty clear of her. Isn't that so?"
+
+But I had wheeled upon him; the coincidence was too striking!
+
+"Look here!" I demanded, "are you following that young lady? Is that
+your business on this side?"
+
+"No!" he denied disgustedly, retreating a step. "Never saw her from the
+time we docked till this minute; never wanted to see her! Anyhow, what's
+the glare for? Suppose I was?"
+
+"It's rather strange, you'll admit." I was regarding him fixedly. "You
+seemed to have a good deal of information about her on the ship. Yet
+when that affair occurred at Gibraltar, you were as dumb as an oyster.
+Why didn't you tell the captain and the English officers the things you
+knew?"
+
+"Well, I had my reasons," he replied defiantly. "And at that, I don't
+see as you've got anything on me, Mr. Bayne. You're no fool. You put
+two and two together quick enough to know darned well who planted those
+papers in your baggage; so if you thought it needed telling, why didn't
+you tell it yourself?"
+
+"I don't know who put them there," I denied hastily, "except that he was
+a pale little runt of a German, pretending to be a thief, who will wish
+he had died young if I ever see him again."
+
+An inspector had just passed my traps through with bored indifference.
+I turned a huffy back on Van Blarcom and went to stand in line before
+a door which harbored, I was told, a special commission for the
+examination of passports and the admission of travelers into France.
+
+Reaching the inner room in due course, I saluted three uniformed men
+who sat round an unimposing wooden table, exhibited the _vise_ that Jack
+Herriott had secured for me at Genoa, and was welcomed to the land. Then
+I stepped forth on the platform, retrieved my porter and my baggage, and
+placed myself near the door to wait until the girl should come.
+
+I must have been a grim sort of sentinel as I stood there watching. I
+knew what I had to do, but I detested it with all my heart. There was
+one thing to be said for this Miss Falconer--she had courage. She was
+pressing on to French soil without lingering a day in Italy, though
+she must be aware that by so swift a move she was risking suspicion,
+discovery, death.
+
+As moment after moment dragged past, I grew uneasy. Would she come out
+at all? Could she win past those trained, keen-eyed men? The more I
+thought of it, the more desperate seemed the game she was playing. This
+little Alpine town, high among the peaks, surrounded by pines and snow,
+had been a setting for tragedies since the war began. These territorials
+with their muskets were not mere supers, either. But no! She was
+emerging; she was starting toward the _rapide_. There, no doubt, a
+reserved compartment was awaiting her, and once inside its shelter, she
+would not appear again.
+
+I drew a deep breath in which resolve and distaste were mingled. She had
+crossed the frontier, but she was not in Paris yet. I couldn't shirk the
+thing twice, knowing as I did her charm, her beauty, her air of proud,
+spirited graciousness--all the tools that equipped her. I couldn't, if
+I was ever again to hold my head before a Frenchman, let her pass on, so
+daring and dangerous and resourceful, to do her work in France.
+
+As she approached, I stepped in front of her, lifting my hat.
+
+"This is a great surprise, Miss Falconer," said I.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+DINNER FOR TWO
+
+I was prepared for fear, for distress, for pleading as I confronted
+Miss Falconer; the one thing I hadn't expected was that she should
+seem pleased at the meeting, but she did. She flushed a little, smiled
+brightly, and held out her gloved hand to me.
+
+"Why, Mr. Bayne! I am so glad!" she exclaimed in frankly cordial tones.
+
+The crass coolness of her tactics, with its implied rating of my
+intelligence, was the very bracer I needed for a most unpleasant task. I
+accepted her hand, bowed over it formally, and released it. Then I spoke
+with the most impersonal courtesy in the world.
+
+"And I," I declared coolly, "am delighted, I assure you. It is great
+luck meeting you like this; and I will not let you slip away. I suppose
+that when we board the train they will serve us a meal of some sort.
+Won't you give me the pleasure of having you for my guest?"
+
+The brightness had left her face as she sensed my attitude. She drew
+back, regarding me in a rebuffed, bewildered way.
+
+"Thank you, no. I am not hungry."
+
+By Jove, but she was an actress! I should have sworn I had hurt her if I
+hadn't known the truth.
+
+"Don't say that!" I protested. "Of course it is unconventional to dine
+with a stranger; but then so is almost everything that is happening to
+you and me. Think of those lord high executioners in there round the
+table. See this platform with its guards and bayonets and guns. And then
+remember our odd experiences on the _Re d'Italia_. Won't you risk one
+more informality and come and dine?"
+
+She hesitated a moment, watching me steadily; then, with proud
+reluctance, she walked beside me toward the train.
+
+"You helped me once," she said, her eyes averted now, "and I haven't
+forgotten. I don't understand at all,--but I shall do as you say."
+
+The passengers were being herded aboard by eager, bustling officials.
+I saw my baggage and the girl's installed, disposed of the porters, and
+guided my companion to the _wagon_ restaurant. The horn was sounding as
+we entered, and at six-thirty promptly, just as I put Miss Falconer in
+her chair, we pulled out of the snowy station of Modane.
+
+As I studied the menu, the girl sat with lowered lashes, all things
+about her, from her darkened eyes and high head to her pallor,
+proclaiming her feeling of offense, her sense of hurt. She knew her
+game, I admitted, and she had first-class weapons. Though she could not
+weaken my resolution, she made my beginning hard.
+
+"We are going to have a discouraging meal," I gossiped
+procrastinatingly. "But, since we are in France, it will be a little
+less horrible than the usual dining-car. The wine is probably hopeless;
+I suggest Evian or Vichy. These radishes look promising. Will you have
+some?"
+
+"No. I am not hungry," she repeated briefly. "Won't you please tell me
+what you have to say?"
+
+Though I didn't in the least want them, I ate a few of the radishes just
+to show that I was not abashed by her haughty, reproachful air. Other
+passengers were strolling in. Here was Mr. John Van Blarcom, who, at the
+sight of Miss Falconer and myself to all appearances cozily established
+for a tete-a-tete meal, stopped in his tracks and fastened on me the
+hard, appraising scrutiny that a policeman might turn on a hitherto
+respectable acquaintance discovered in converse with some notorious
+crook. For an instant he seemed disposed to buttonhole me and
+remonstrate. Then he shrugged his stocky shoulders, the gesture
+indicating that one can't save a fool from his folly, and established
+himself at a near-by table, from which coign of vantage he kept us under
+steady watch.
+
+Given such an audience, my outward mien must be impeccable.
+
+"There is something," I admitted cautiously, "that I want to say to you.
+But I wish you would eat something first. People are watching us," I
+added beneath my breath as the soup appeared.
+
+She took a sip under protest, and then replaced her spoon and sat with
+fingers twisting her gloves and eyes fixed smolderingly on mine. I
+shifted furtively in my seat. This was a charming experience. I was
+being, from my point of view, almost quixotically generous; yet with one
+glance she could make me feel like a bully and a brute.
+
+"I am sure," I stumbled, fumbling desperately with my serviette, "that
+you came over without realizing what war conditions are. Strangers
+aren't wanted just now. Travel is dangerous for women. You may think me
+all kinds of a presumptuous idiot,--I shan't blame you,--but I am going
+to urge you most strongly to go home."
+
+Whatever she had looked for, obviously it was not that.
+
+"Mr. Bayne," she exclaimed, regarding me wonderingly, "what do you
+mean?"
+
+"Just this, Miss Falconer," I answered with almost Teutonic
+ruthlessness. Confound it! I couldn't sit here forever bullying her;
+sheer desperation lent me strength. "The _Espagne_ sails from Bordeaux
+on Saturday, I see by the Herald, and if I were you, I should most
+certainly be on board. In fact, if you lose the chance, I am sure you'll
+regret it later. The French police authorities are--er--very inquisitive
+about foreigners; and if you stop in France in these anxious times, I
+think it likely that they may--well--"
+
+She drew a quick, hard breath as I trailed off into silence. Her eyes,
+darkened, horrified, were gazing full into mine.
+
+"You wouldn't tell them about me! You couldn't be so cruel!" The words
+came almost fiercely, yet with a sound like a stifled sob.
+
+By its sheer preposterousness the speech left me dumb a moment, and then
+gave me back the self-possession I had been clutching at throughout
+the meal. For the first time since entering I sat erect and squared my
+shoulders. I even confronted her with a rather glittering smile.
+
+"I am very sorry," I said, with a cool stare, "if I appear so; but I am
+consideration itself compared with the people you would meet in Paris,
+say. That's the very point I'm making--that you can't travel now
+in comfort. I'm simply trying to spare you future contretemps, Miss
+Falconer; such as I had on the _Re d'Italia_, you may recall."
+
+She leaned impulsively across the table.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Bayne, I knew it! You are angry about that wretched extra, and
+you have a right to be. Of course you thought it cowardly of me--yes,
+and ungrateful--to stand there without a word and let those officers
+question you. Mr. Bayne, if the worst had come to the worst, I should
+have spoken, I should, indeed; but I had to wait. I had to give myself
+every chance. It meant so much, so much! You had nothing to hide
+from them. You were certain to win through. And then, you seemed so
+undisturbed, so unruffled, so able to take care of yourself; I knew you
+were not afraid. It was different with me. If they began to suspect, if
+they learned who I was, I could never have entered France. This route
+through Italy was my one hope! I am so sorry. But still--"
+
+Hitherto she had been appealing; but now she defied frankly. That tint
+of hers, like nothing but a wild rose, drove away her pallor; her gray
+eyes flamed.
+
+"But still," she flashed at me, "you won't inform on me just for that?
+I asked you to help me; you were free to refuse--and you agreed! Because
+it inconvenienced you a little, are you going to turn police agent?" Her
+red lips twisted proudly, scornfully. "I don't believe it, Mr. Bayne!"
+
+I laughed shortly. She was indeed an artist.
+
+"I wasn't thinking of that particular episode--" I began.
+
+"But you did resent it. I saw it when you first joined me. And I was
+so glad to see you--to have the chance of thanking you!" she broke in,
+smoldering still.
+
+"No, I didn't resent it. I didn't even blame you. If I blamed any one,
+Miss Falconer, it would certainly be myself. I've concluded I ought
+not to go about without a keeper. My gullibility must have amused you
+tremendously." I laughed.
+
+"I never thought you gullible," she denied, suddenly wistful. "I thought
+you very generous and very chivalrous, Mr. Bayne."
+
+This was carrying mockery too far.
+
+"I am afraid," I said meaningly, "that the authorities at Gibraltar
+would take a less flattering view. For instance, if those Englishmen
+learned that I had refrained from telling them of our meeting at the St.
+Ives, I should hear from them, I fancy."
+
+Again her eyes were widening. What attractive eyes she had!
+
+"The St. Ives?" she repeated wonderingly. "Why should that interest
+them? What do you mean?" Then, suddenly, she bent forward, propped
+her elbows on the table, and amazed me with a slow, astonished,
+comprehending smile. "I see!" she murmured, studying me intently. "You
+thought that I screened the man who hid those papers, that I crossed the
+ocean on--similar business, perhaps even that on this side I was to take
+the documents from your trunk?"
+
+"Naturally," I rejoined stiffly. "And I congratulate you. It was a
+brilliant piece of work; though, as its victim, I fail to see it in the
+rosiest light."
+
+"I understand," she went on, still smiling faintly. "You thought I
+was--well--Look over yonder."
+
+Her glance, seeking the opposite wall unostentatiously, directed my
+attention to a black-lettered, conspicuously posted sign:
+
+
+BE SILENT!
+
+BE MISTRUSTFUL!
+
+THE EARS OF THE ENEMY ARE LISTENING!
+
+
+Thus it shouted its warning, like the thousands of its kind that are
+scattered about the trains, the boats, the railroad stations, and all
+the public places of France.
+
+"You thought I was the ears of the enemy, didn't you?" the girl was
+asking. "You thought I was a German agent. I might have guessed! Well,
+in that case it was kind of you not to hand me over to the Modane
+gendarmes. I ought to thank you. But I wasn't so suspicious when they
+searched your trunk and found the papers--I simply felt that they must
+be crazy to think you could be a spy."
+
+I achieved a shrug of my shoulders, a polite air of incredulity; but, to
+tell the truth, I was a little less skeptical than I appeared. There was
+something in her manner that by no means suggested pretense. And she
+had said a true word about the occurrences on the _Re d'Italia_. If
+appearances meant facts, I myself had been proved guilty up to the hilt.
+
+"Mr. Bayne," she was saying soberly, "I should like you to believe
+me--please! I am an American, and I have had cause lately to hate the
+Germans; all my bonds are with our own country and with France. There is
+some one very dear to me to whom this war has worked a cruel injustice.
+I have come to try to help that person; and for certain reasons--I can't
+explain them--I had to come in secret or not at all. But I have done
+nothing wrong, nothing dishonorable. And so"--again her eyes challenged
+me--"I shall not sail from Bordeaux on the _Espagne_ on Saturday; and
+you shall choose for yourself whether you will speak of me to the French
+police."
+
+It was not much of an argument, regarded dispassionately; yet it shook
+me. With sudden craftiness I resolved to trap her if I could.
+
+"I ought to tell them on the mere chance that they would send you home,"
+I grumbled irritably. "You have no business here, you know, helping
+people and being suspected and pursued and outrageously annoyed by
+fools like me. Yes, and by other fools--and worse," I added with feigned
+sulphurousness, indicated Van Blarcom. "Miss Falconer, would you mind
+glancing at the third man on the right--the dark man who is staring at
+us--and telling me whether or not you ever saw him before you sailed?"
+
+"I am sure I never did," she declared, knitting puzzled brows; "and yet
+on the _Re d'Italia_ he insisted that we had met. It frightened me a
+little. I wondered whether or not he suspected something. And every time
+I see him he watches me in that same way."
+
+I was thawing, despite myself.
+
+"There's one other thing," I ventured, "if you won't think me too
+impertinent: Did you ever hear of a man named Franz von Blenheim?"
+
+"No," she said blankly; "I never did. Who is he?"
+
+No birds out of that covert! If this was acting it was marvelous; there
+had not been the slightest flicker of confusion in her face.
+
+"Oh, he isn't anybody of importance--just a man," I evaded. "Look here,
+Miss Falconer, you'll have to forgive me if you can. You shall stay in
+Paris, and I'll be as silent as the grave concerning you; but I'd like
+to do more than that. Won't you let me come and call? Really, you
+know, I'm not such a duffer as you have cause to think me. After we got
+acquainted you might be willing to trust me with this business, whatever
+it is. And then, if it's not too desperate, I have friends who could be
+of help to you." Such was the sop I threw to conscience, the bargain
+I struck between sober reason and the instinct that made me trust her
+against all odds. My theories must have been moonshine. Everything was
+all right, probably. But for the sake of prudence I ought to keep track
+of her. Besides, I wanted to.
+
+Gratitude and consternation, a most becoming mixture, were in her eyes.
+She drew back a little.
+
+"Oh, thank you, but that's impossible," she said uncertainly. "I have
+friends, too; but they can't help me. Nobody can."
+
+"Well," I admitted sadly, "I know the rudiments of manners. I can
+recognize a conge, but consider me a persistent boor. Come, Miss
+Falconer, why mayn't I call? Because we are strangers? If that's it, you
+can assure yourself at the embassy that I am perfectly respectable; and
+you see I don't eat with my knife or tuck my napkin under my chin or
+spill my soup."
+
+Again that warm flush.
+
+"Mr. Bayne!" she exclaimed indignantly. "Did I need an introduction to
+speak to you on the ship, to ask unreasonable favors of you, to make
+people think you a spy? If you are going to imagine such absurd things,
+I shall have to--"
+
+"To consent? I hoped you might see it that way."
+
+"Of course," she pondered aloud, "I may find good news waiting. If I do,
+it will change everything. I could see you once, at least, and let you
+know. I really owe you that, I think, when you've been so kind to me."
+
+"Yes," I agreed bitterly, with a pang of conscience, "I've been very
+kind--particularly to-night!"
+
+"Well, perhaps to-night you were just a little difficult." She was
+smiling, but I didn't mind; I rather liked her mockery now. "Still, even
+when you thought the worst of me, Mr. Bayne, you kept my secret. And--do
+you really wish to come to see me?"
+
+"I most emphatically do."
+
+She drew a card from her beaded bag, rummaged vainly for a pencil, ended
+by accepting mine, and scribbled a brief address.
+
+"Then," she commanded, handing me the bit of pasteboard, "come to this
+number at noon to-morrow and ask for me. And now, since I'm not to go to
+prison, Mr. Bayne, I believe I am hungry. This is war bread, I suppose;
+but it tastes delicious. And isn't the saltless butter nice?"
+
+"And here are the chicken and the salad arriving!" I exclaimed
+hopefully. "And there never was a French cook yet, however unspeakable
+otherwise, who failed at those."
+
+What had come to pass I could not have told; but we were eating
+celestial viands, and my black butterflies having fled away, a swarm of
+their gorgeous-tinted kindred were fluttering radiantly over Miss Esme
+Falconer's plate and mine.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+IN THE RUE ST.-DOMINIQUE
+
+Arriving in Paris at the highly inconvenient hour of 8 A.M., our
+_rapide_ deposited its breakfastless and grumpy passengers on the
+platform of the Gare de Lyon, washed its hands of us with the final
+formality of collecting our tickets, and turned us forth into a gray,
+foggy morning to seek the food and shelter adapted to our purses
+and tastes. Every one, of course, emerged from seclusion only at the
+ultimate moment; and, far from holding any lengthy conversation with
+Miss Falconer, I was lucky to stumble upon her in the vestibule, help
+her descend, find a taxi for her at the exit, and see her smile back at
+me where I stood hatless as she drove away.
+
+While I waited for my own cab I found myself beside Mr. John Van
+Blarcom, who eyed me with mingled hostility and pity, as if I were
+a cross between a lunatic and a thief. I returned his stare coolly;
+indeed, I found it braced me. Left to myself, I had experienced a
+creeping doubt as to the girl's activities and my own intelligence; but
+as soon as this fellow glared at me, all my confidence returned.
+
+"Well, Mr. Bayne," he remarked sardonically, breaking the silence, "I
+suppose you're worrying for fear I'll give you another piece of good
+advice. Don't you fret! From now on you can hang yourself any way you
+want to. I'd as soon talk to a man in a padded cell and a strait-jacket.
+Only don't blame me when the gendarmes come for you next week."
+
+"Oh, go to the devil!" I retorted curtly. It was a relief; I had
+been wanting to say it ever since we had first met. His jaw shot out
+menacingly, and for an instant he squared off from me with the look of
+the professional boxer; but, rather to my disappointment, he thought
+better of it and turned a contemptuous back.
+
+Upon leaving Genoa I had reserved a room at the Ritz by telegraph. I
+drove there now, and refreshed myself with a bath and breakfast, casting
+about me meanwhile for some mode of occupying the hours till noon. There
+were various tasks, I knew, that should have claimed me; a visit to the
+police to secure a _carte de sejour_, the presentation of my credentials
+as an ambulance-driver, a polite notification to friends that I had
+arrived. These things should have been my duty and pleasure, but somehow
+they were uninviting. Nothing appealed to me, I realized with sudden
+enlightenment, except a certain appointment that I had already made.
+
+I went out, to find that the fog was lifting and spring was in the air.
+Since my dinner the previous night I had felt an odd exhilaration, a
+pleasure quickened by the staccato sparkle of the French tongue against
+my ears, the pale-blue uniforms, and gay French faces glimpsed as the
+train had stopped at various lighted stations. Saluting Napoleon's
+statue, I strolled up the rue de la Paix, took a table on a cafe
+pavement, and, ordering a glass of something fizzy for the form of it,
+sat content and happy, watching the whole gigantic pageant of Paris in
+war-time defile before my eyes.
+
+The Cook's tourists and their like, bane of the past, had disappeared;
+but all nationalities that the world holds seemed to be about. At the
+next table two Russian officers, with high cheek-bones and wide-set
+eyes, were drinking, chatting together in their purring, unintelligible
+tongue. Beyond them a party of Englishmen in khaki, cool-mannered, clear
+of gaze, were talking in low tones of the spring offensive. The uniforms
+of France swarmed round me in all their variety, and close at hand a
+general, gorgeous in red and blue and gold, sat with his hand resting
+affectionately on the knee of a lad in the horizon blue of a simple
+poilu, who was so like him that I guessed them at a glance for father
+and son.
+
+A cab drew up before me, and a Belgian officer with crutches was helped
+out by the cafe starter, who himself limped slightly and wore two medals
+on his breast. First one troop and then another defiled across the Place
+l'Opera: a company of infantry with bayonets mounted, a picturesque
+regiment of Moroccans, turbaned, of magnificently impassive bearing,
+sitting their horses like images of bronze. Men of the Flying Corps,
+in dark blue with wings on their sleeves, strolled past me; and once,
+roused by exclamations and pointing fingers, I looked up to see a
+monoplane, light and graceful as a darting bird, skimming above our
+heads.
+
+Even the faces had a different look, the voices a different ring. It was
+another country from that of the days of peace. Superb and dauntless,
+tried by the most searing of fires and not found wanting, France was
+standing girt with her shining armor, barring the invader from her
+cities, her villages, her homes.
+
+Deep in my heart--too deep to be talked of often--there had lain always
+a tenderness for this heroic France. "A man's other country," some wise
+person had christened it; and so it was for me, since by a chance I had
+been born here, and since here my father and then my mother had died. I
+was glad I had run the gauntlet and had reached Paris to do my part in
+a mighty work. An ambulance drove heavily past me, and with a thrill I
+wondered how soon I should bend over such a steering wheel, within sound
+of the great guns.
+
+Leaving the cafe at last, I beckoned a taxi and settled myself on its
+cushions for a drive. Each new vista that greeted me was enchanting. The
+pavements, the river, the buildings, the stately bridges,--all held the
+same soft, silvery tint of pale French gray. In the Place de la Concorde
+the fountains played as always, but--heart-warming change--the Strasburg
+statue, symbol of the lost Lorraine and Alsace, no longer drooped under
+wreaths of mourning, but sat crowned and garlanded with triumphant
+flowers.
+
+Like diminishing flies, the same eternal swarm of cabs and motors filled
+the long vista of the Champs-Elysees between the green branches of the
+chestnut trees. At the end loomed the Arc de Triomphe, beneath which the
+hordes of the kaiser, in their first madness of conquest, had sworn
+to march. Farther on, in the Bois, along the shady paths and about the
+lakes, the French still walked in safety, because on the frontier their
+soldiers had cried to the Teutons the famous watchword, "You do not
+pass!" Noon was approaching, and at the Porte Maillot I consulted Miss
+Falconer's card.
+
+"Number 630, rue St.-Dominique," I bade the driver, the address falling
+comfortably on my ears. I knew the neighborhood. Deep in the Faubourg
+St.-Germain, it was a stronghold of the old noblesse, suggesting eminent
+respectability, ancient and honorable customs, and family connections of
+a highly desirable kind. It would be a point in Miss Falconer's favor
+if I found her conventionally established--a decided point. Along most
+lines I was in the dark concerning her, but to one dictum I dared
+to hold: no girl of twenty-two or thereabouts, more than ordinarily
+attractive, ought to be traveling unchaperoned about this wicked world.
+
+I felt very cheerful, very contented, as my taxi bore me into old Paris.
+The ancient streets, had a decided lure and charm. Now we passed a
+quaint church, now a dim and winding alley, now a house with mansard
+windows or a portal of carved stone. On all sides were buildings that in
+the old days had been the _hotels_ of famous gentry, this one sheltering
+a Montmorency, that one a Clisson or Soubise. It was just the setting
+for a romance by Dumas. And, with a chuckle, I felt myself in sudden
+sympathy with that writer's heroes, none of whom had, it seemed to me,
+been enmeshed in a mystery more baffling or involved than mine.
+
+"They've got nothing on my affair," I decided, "with their masks and
+poisoned drinks and swords. For a fellow who leads a cut-and-dried
+existence generally, I've been having quite a lively time. And now, to
+cap the climax, I'm going to call on a girl about whom I know just one
+thing--her name. By Jove, it's exactly like a story! I've got the data.
+If I had any gray matter I could probably work out the facts.
+
+"Take the St. Ives business. It's plain enough that some one wished
+those papers on me, intending to unwish them in short order once we got
+across. The logical suspect, judging by appearances, was Miss Falconer.
+The little German went out through her room; she was the one person
+I saw both at the hotel and on the _Re d'Italia_; and she acted in a
+suspicious manner that first night aboard the ship. But she says she
+didn't do it, and probably she didn't; it seemed infernally odd, all
+along, for her to be a spy.
+
+"Still, if she is innocent, who can be responsible? And if that affair
+didn't bring her over here, what the dickens did? Something mysterious,
+something dangerous, something that the French police wouldn't
+appreciate, but that her conscience sanctions--that is all she deigns to
+say. And why on earth did she ask me to destroy that extra? I thought
+it was because she was Franz von Blenheim's agent and the paper had
+an account of him that might have served as a clue to her. She says,
+though, that she never heard of him. And I may be all kinds of a fool,
+but it sounded straight.
+
+"Then, there's Van Blarcom, hang him! He seemed to take a fancy to
+me. He warned me about the girl, but he kept a still tongue to Captain
+Cecchi and the rest. He lied deliberately, for no earthly reason, to
+shield me in that interrogation; yet when those papers materialized in
+my trunk, though he must have thought just what I thought as to Miss
+Falconer's share in it, he didn't breathe a word. He claimed that he had
+met her. She said she had never seen him. And then--rather strong for a
+coincidence--we all three met again on the express. What is he doing
+on this side? Shadowing her? Nonsense? And yet he seemed almighty keen
+about her--Oh, hang it! I'm no Sherlock Holmes!"
+
+The taxi pausing at this juncture, I willingly abandoned my attempt at
+sleuthing and got out in the highest spirits compatible with a strictly
+correct mien. I dismissed my driver. If asked to remain to _dejeuner_, I
+should certainly do so. Then, with feelings of natural interest, I gazed
+at the house before which I stood.
+
+In the outward seeming, at least, it was all that the most fastidious
+could have required; a gem of Renaissance architecture in its turrets,
+its quaint, scrolled windows, and the carving of its stone facade.
+Age and romance breathed from every inch of it. For not less than four
+hundred years it had watched the changing life of Paris; and even to
+a lay person like myself a glance proclaimed it one of those ancestral
+_hotels_, the pride of noble French families, about which many romantic
+stories cling.
+
+At another time it would have charmed me hugely, but to-day, as I stood
+gazing, somehow, my spirits fell. Was it the almost sepulchral silence
+of the place, the careful drawing of every shutter, the fact that the
+grilled gateway leading to the court of honor was locked? I did not
+know; I don't know yet; but I had an odd, eerie feeling. It seemed like
+a place of waiting, of watching, and of gloom.
+
+This was unreasonable; it was even down-right ridiculous. I began to
+think that late events were throwing me off my base. "It's a house like
+any other, and a jolly fine old one!" I assured myself, approaching the
+grilled entrance and producing one of my cards.
+
+An entirely modern electric button was installed there, beneath a now
+merely ornamental knocker in grotesque gargoyle form. I pressed it,
+peering through the iron latticework at the stately court. The answer
+was prompt. Down the steps of the hotel came a white-headed majordomo,
+gorgeously arrayed, and so pictorial that he might have been a family
+retainer stepping from the pages of an old tale.
+
+There was something queer about him, I thought, as he crossed the
+courtyard; just as there was about the house, I appended doggedly, with
+growing belief. His air was tremulous, his step slow, his gaze far-off
+and anxious.
+
+"For Miss Falconer, who waits for me," I announced in French, offering
+him my card through the grille.
+
+He bowed to me with the deference of a Latin, the grand manner of an
+ambassador; but he made no motion to let me in.
+
+"Mademoiselle," he replied, "sends all her excuses, all her regrets to
+monsieur, but she leaves Paris within the hour and, therefore may not
+receive."
+
+I had feared it for a good sixty seconds. None the less, it was a blow
+to me. My suspicions, never more than half laid, promptly raised their
+heads again.
+
+"Have the kindness," I requested, with a calm air of command that I had
+known to prove hypnotic, "to convey my card to mademoiselle, and to say
+that I beg of her, before her departure, one little instant of speech."
+
+But the old fellow's faded blue eyes were gazing past me, hopelessly
+sad, supremely mournful. What the deuce ailed him? I wondered angrily.
+The thing was almost weird. Of a sudden, with irritation, yet with
+dread, too, I felt myself on the threshold of a house of tragedy. The
+man might, from the look of him, have been watching some loved young
+master's bier.
+
+"Mademoiselle regrets greatly," he intoned, "but she may not receive.
+Mademoiselle sends this letter to monsieur that he may understand." He
+passed me, through the locked grille, a slender missive; then he saluted
+me once more and, still staring before him with that fixed, uncanny
+look, withdrew.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE GRAY CAR
+
+I was divided between exasperation and pity. The old fellow was in a
+bad way; I felt sorry for him. Dunny had an ancient butler, a household
+institution, who had presided over our destinies since my childhood and
+would, I fancied, look something like this if he should hear that I was
+dead. But in heaven's name, what was wrong here, and was nothing in the
+world clear and aboveboard any longer? On the chance that the letter
+might enlighten me I tore open the envelope and read with mixed feelings
+the following note:
+
+
+DEAR Mr. BAYNE:
+
+The news that I found waiting for me was not good, as I had hoped. It
+was bad, very bad--as bad as news can be. I must leave Paris at once,
+and I can see no one, talk to no one, before I go. Please believe that
+I am sorry, and that I shall never forget the kindness you showed me on
+the ship.
+
+Sincerely yours,
+
+ESME FALCONER.
+
+
+That was all. Well, the episode was ended--ended, moreover, with a good
+deal of cavalierness. She had treated me like a meddlesome, pertinacious
+idiot who had insisted on calling and had to be taught his place. This
+was a Christian country where the formalities of life prevailed; I could
+not--unless escorted and countenanced by gendarmes--seize upon a club
+and batter down that grille.
+
+I was resentful, wrathful, in the very deuce of a humor. Black gloom
+settled over me. I admitted that Van Blarcom had been right. I recalled
+the girl's vague explanations as we sat over our dinner; her denials,
+unbolstered save by my willingness to accept them; all the chain of
+incriminating circumstances that I had pondered over in the cab. Her
+charm and the mystery that enveloped her had thrilled and stirred me;
+she had seen it. To gain a few hours' leeway she had once again duped
+me; and this hotel, with its deceptive air of family and respectability,
+was a blind, a rendezvous, another such setting for intrigue as the St.
+Ives.
+
+Her work might be already accomplished. Perhaps she had left Paris. I
+told myself with some savageness that I did not know and did not care.
+From the first my presence in this luridly adventurous galley had been
+incongruous; I would get back with all despatch to the Ritz and the
+orderly world it typified.
+
+I had gone perhaps twenty feet when a grating noise attracted me.
+Glancing back across my shoulder, I saw that the old majordomo was
+unlocking and setting wide the gate. The hum of a self-starter reached
+me faintly, and a moment later there rolled slowly forth a dark-blue
+touring-car of luxurious aspect, driven by a chauffeur whose coat and
+cap and goggles gave him rather the appearance of a leather brownie, and
+bearing in the tonneau Miss Falconer, elaborately coated and veiled.
+
+She was turning to the right, not the left; she would not pass me. I
+stood transfixed, watching from my post against the wall. As the car
+crept by the old majordomo, he saluted, and she spoke to him, bending
+forward for a moment to rest her fingers on his sleeve.
+
+"Be of courage, Marcel, my friend! All will be well if _le bon Dieu_
+wills it," I heard her say. Then to the chauffeur she added: "_En avant,
+Georges! Vite, a_ Bleau!" The motor snorted as the car gained speed, and
+they were gone.
+
+The ancient Marcel, reentering, locked the grille behind him. I was left
+alone, more astounded than before. The girl's kind speech to the old
+servant, her gentle tones, her womanly gesture, had been bewildering.
+Despite all the accusing features her case offered, I should have said
+just then, as I watched Miss Esme Falconer, that she was nothing more or
+less than a superlatively nice girl.
+
+"Honk! Honk! Honk!"
+
+I swung round, startled. A moment earlier the length and breadth of the
+street had stretched before me, empty; yet now I saw, sprung apparently
+out of nowhere, a long, lean, gray car, low-built like a racer, carrying
+four masked and goggled men. Steadily gaining speed as it came, it bore
+down upon me and, after grazing me with its running-board and nearly
+deafening me with the powerful blast of its horn, flew on down the
+street and vanished in Miss Falconer's wake.
+
+Trying to clarify my emotions, I stared after this Juggernaut. Was
+it merely the sudden appearance of the thing, its look, so lean and
+snake-like and somber-colored, and the muffled air of its occupants that
+had struck me as sinister when it went flashing by? I wasn't sure, but I
+had formed the impression that these men were following Miss Falconer. A
+patently foolish idea! And yet, and yet--
+
+My experiences at the St. Ives and on the _Re d'Italia_ had contributed
+to my education. I could no longer deny that melodrama, however
+unwelcome, did sometimes intrude itself into the most unlikely lives.
+The girl was bound somewhere on a secret purpose. Could these four men
+be her accomplices? Were they going too?
+
+"_A_ Bleau!"
+
+Those had been her words to the chauffeur; for Bleau, then, she was
+bound. But where did such a place exist? I had never heard of it;
+and yet I possessed, I flattered myself, through the medium of
+motor-touring, a fairly comprehensive knowledge of the map of France.
+
+The affair was becoming a veritable nightmare. It seemed incredible that
+a few minutes earlier I had resolved to wash my hands of it all. If the
+girl had a disloyal mission, it was my plain duty to intercept her.
+I could not denounce her to the police. I didn't analyze the why and
+wherefore of my inability to take this step; I simply knew and accepted
+it. If I interfered with what she was doing, I must interfere quietly,
+alone.
+
+Ordinarily I have as much imagination as a turnip, but now I indulged
+in a sudden and surprising flight of fancy. Might it be, I found myself
+wondering, that the men in the gray care were not Miss Falconer's
+accomplices, but her pursuers? In that case, high as was her courage,
+keen as were her wits,--I found myself thinking of them with a sort of
+pride,--she was laboring under a handicap of which she could not dream.
+
+Again, where had that long, lean, pursuing streak sprung from? Could it
+have lurked somewhere in the neighborhood, spying on the hotel that Miss
+Falconer had just left, waiting for her to emerge? I was aware of my
+absurdity, but I couldn't put an end to it; with each instant that went
+by my uneasiness seemed to grow. So I yielded, not without qualms as
+to whether the quarter would take me for a gibbering idiot. Grimly and
+doggedly I stalked the length of the rue St.-Dominique, and the stately
+houses on both sides seemed to scorn me, their shutters to eye me
+pityingly, as I peered to right and left for the possible cache of the
+car.
+
+And within four hundred feet I found it. Against all reason and
+probability, there it was. At my left there opened unostentatiously one
+of those short, dark, neglected blind alleys so common in the older part
+of Paris, with the houses meeting over it and forming an arched roof.
+Running back twenty feet or so, it ended in a blank wall of stone; and,
+amid the dust and debris that covered its rough paving, I distinctly
+made out the tracks of tires, with between them, freshly spilt, a tiny,
+gleaming pool of oil.
+
+At this psychological moment a taxicab came meandering up the street. It
+was unoccupied, but its red flag was turned down. The driver shook his
+head vigorously as I signaled him.
+
+"I go to my _dejeuner_, Monsieur!" he explained.
+
+"On the contrary," said I fiercely, "you go to the tourist bureau
+of Monsieur Cook in the Place de l'Opera, at the greatest speed the
+_sergents de ville_ allow!"
+
+I must have mesmerized him, for he took me there obediently, casting
+hunted glances back at me from time to time when the traffic momentarily
+halted us, as if fearing to find that I was leveling a pistol at his
+head.
+
+It being noon, the office of the tourist bureau was almost deserted,
+a single, bored-looking, young French clerk keeping vigil behind
+the travelers' counter. With the sociable instinct of his nation he
+brightened up at my appearance.
+
+"I want," I announced, "to ask about trains to Bleau."
+
+For a moment he looked blank; then he smiled in understanding.
+
+"Monsieur is without doubt an artist," he declared.
+
+I was not, decidedly; but the words had been an affirmation and not a
+question. It seemed clear that for some cryptic reason I ought to have
+been an artist. Accordingly, I thought it best to bow.
+
+He seemed childishly pleased with his acumen.
+
+"Monsieur will understand," he explained, "that before the war we sold
+tickets to many artists, who, like monsieur, desired to paint the old
+mill on the stream near Bleau. It has appeared at the Salon many times,
+that mill! Also, we have furnished tickets to archaeologists who desired
+to see the ruins of the antique chapel, a veritable gem! But monsieur
+has not an archaeologist's aspect. Therefore, monsieur is an artist."
+
+"Perfectly," I agreed.
+
+"As to the trains," he continued contentedly, "there is but one a day.
+It departs at two and a half hours, upon the Le Moreau route. Monsieur
+will be wise to secure, before leaving Paris, a safe-conduct from the
+_prefecture_; for the village is, as one might say, on the edge of the
+zone of war. With such a permit monsieur will find his visit charming;
+regrettable incidents will not occur; undesirable conjectures about
+monsieur's identity will not be roused. I should strongly advise that
+monsieur provide himself with such a credential, though it is not,
+perhaps, absolutely _de rigueur_."
+
+Back in my room at the Ritz, I consulted my watch. It was a quarter of
+two; certainly time had marched apace. Should I, like a sensible man,
+descend to the restaurant and enjoy a sample of the justly famous
+cuisine of the hotel? Or should I throw all reason overboard and post
+off on--what was it Dunny had called my mission--a wild-goose chase?
+
+I glanced at myself in the mirror and shook a disapproving head. "You're
+no knight-errant," I told my impassive image. "You're too correct, too
+indifferent-looking altogether. Better not get beyond your depth!" I
+decided for luncheon, followed by a leisurely knotting of the threads
+of my Parisian acquaintance. Then, as if some malign hypnotist had
+projected it before me, I saw again a vision of that flashing, lean,
+gray car.
+
+"I'm hanged if I don't have a shot at this thing!"
+
+The words seemed to pop out of my mouth entirely of their own accord.
+By no conscious agency of my own, I found myself madly hurling collars,
+handkerchiefs, toilet articles, whatever I seemed likeliest to need in a
+brief journey, into a bag. Lastly I realized that I was standing, hat
+in hand, overcoat across my arm, considering my revolver, and wondering
+whether taking it with me would be too stagy and absurd.
+
+"No more so than all the rest of it," I decided, shrugging. Dropping the
+thing into my pocket, I made for the _ascenseur_.
+
+"I shan't be back to-night," I informed the hall porter woodenly. "Or
+perhaps to-morrow night. But, of course, I'm keeping my room."
+
+With his wish for a charming trip to speed me, I left the Ritz, and
+luckily no vision was vouchsafed me of the condition in which I should
+return: Two crutches, a bandaged head, an utterly disreputable aspect;
+my bedraggled state equaled--and this I would maintain with swords and
+pistols if necessary--that of any poilu of them all.
+
+As I drove toward the station, various headlines stared at me from the
+kiosks. "Franz von Blenheim Rumored on Way to France," ran one of them.
+Hang Franz. I had had enough of him to last the rest of my life. "Duke
+of Raincy-la-Tour Still Missing," proclaimed another. I knew something
+about him, too; but what? Ah, to be sure, he was the Firefly of France,
+the hero of the Flying Corps, the young nobleman of whose suspected
+treason I had read in that extra on the ship. In that damned extra, I
+amended, with natural feeling. For it was like Rome; everything seemed
+to lead its way.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+AT THE THREE KINGS
+
+"What's the best hotel in the place?" I inquired somewhat dubiously. The
+man in the blouse, who had performed the three functions of opening my
+compartment-door, carrying my bag to the gate, and relieving me of my
+ticket, achieved a thoroughly Gallic shrug.
+
+"Monsieur," said he, "what shall I tell you? The best hotel, the worst
+hotel--these are one. There is only the Hotel des Trois Rois in the town
+of Bleau. Let monsieur proceed by the street of the Three Kings and he
+will reach it. Formerly there was an omnibus, but now the horses are
+taken. And if they remained, who could drive them with all the men at
+the war?"
+
+Carrying my bag and feeling none too amiable, I set off along the
+indicated route. In Paris, rushing from the rue St.-Dominique to Cook's
+office, from that office to the hotel, from the hotel to the _gare_, I
+had been a sort of whirling dervish with no time for sober thought.
+My trip of four hours on a slow, stuffy, crowded train had, however,
+afforded me ample leisure; and I had spent the time in grimly envisaging
+the possibilities that, I decided, were most likely to befall.
+
+First and foremost disagreeable; that the men in the gray automobile
+were helping Miss Falconer in some nefarious business. In this case, it
+would be up to me to fight the gentlemen single-handed, rescue the girl,
+and escort her back to Paris, all without scandal. Easier said than
+done!
+
+Second possibility: that Miss falconer, pausing at Bleau only en route,
+might already have departed, and that I would be left with my journey
+for my pains.
+
+Third: that the gray car had no connection with her; that she had some
+entirely blameless errand. I hoped so, I was sure. If this proved true,
+I was bound to stand branded as a meddling, officious idiot, one who, in
+defiance of the most elementary social rules, persisted in trailing her
+against her will. Vastly pleasant, indeed!
+
+Fuming, I shifted my bag from one hand to the other and walked faster.
+Night was falling, but it was not yet really dark, and I formed a
+clear enough notion of the village as I traversed it. It was one of the
+hundreds of its kind which make an artists' paradise of France. Entirely
+unmodernized, it was the more picturesque for that. If I tripped
+sometimes on the roughly paved street I could console myself with the
+knowledge that these cobbles, like the odd, jutting houses rising on
+both sides of them, were at least three hundred years old. Green woods,
+clear against a background of rosy sunset, ran up to the very borders of
+the town. I passed a little, gray old church. I crossed a quaint bridge
+built over a winding stream lined with dwellings and broken by mossy
+washing-stones. It was all very peaceful, very simple, and very rustic.
+Without second sight I could not possibly have visioned the grim little
+drama for which it was to serve as setting.
+
+A blue sign with gilded letters beckoned me, and I paused to read it.
+The Touring Club of France recommended to the passing stranger the Hotel
+of the Three Kings. Here I was, then. From the street a dark, arched,
+stone passage of distinctly _moyen-age_ flavor led me into a courtyard
+paved with great square cobbles, round the four sides of which were
+built the walls of the inn. Winding, somewhat crazy-looking, stone
+staircases ran up to the galleries from which the bedroom doors
+informally opened; vines, as yet leafless, wreathed the gray walls and
+framed the shuttered windows; before me I glimpsed a kitchen with a
+magnificent oaken ceiling and a medieval fireplace in which a fire
+roared redly; and at my right yawned what had doubtless been a stable
+once upon a time, but with the advent of the motor, had become a
+primitive garage.
+
+I took the liberty of peering inside. Eureka! There, resting comfortably
+from its day's labors, stood a dark-blue automobile. If this was not the
+motor that had brought Miss Falconer from the rue St.-Dominique, it was
+its twin.
+
+"You'll notice it's alone, though," I told myself. "Where's the gray
+car?"
+
+My mood was grumpy in the extreme. The inn was charming, but I knew from
+sad experience that no place combines all attractions, and that a spot
+so picturesque as this would probably lack running water and electric
+light.
+
+"_Bonsoir, Monsieur!_"
+
+A buxom, smiling, bare-armed woman had emerged from the kitchen door.
+She was plainly the hostess. I set down my bag and removed my hat.
+
+"Madame," I responded, "I wish you a good evening. I desire a room for
+the night in the Hotel of the Three Kings."
+
+"To accommodate monsieur," she assured me warmly, "will be a pleasure.
+Monsieur is an artist without doubt?"
+
+I wanted to say "_Et tu, Brute!_" but I didn't. When one came to think
+of it, I had no very good reason to advance for having appeared at
+Bleau. It wasn't the sort of place into which one would drop from
+the skies by pure chance, either. I was lucky to find a ready-made
+explanation.
+
+"But assuredly," said I.
+
+She disappeared into the kitchen, returned immediately with a candle,
+and led me up the stone staircase on the left of the courtyard, talking
+volubly all the while.
+
+"We have had many artists here," she declared; "many friends of
+monsieur, doubtless. Since monsieur is of that fine profession, his
+room will be but four francs daily; his dinner, three francs; his little
+breakfast, a franc alone."
+
+"Madame," I responded, "it is plain that the high cost of living, which
+terrorizes my country, does not exist at Bleau."
+
+Equally plain, I thought pessimistically, was the explanation. My
+saddest forebodings were realized; if the name of the hotel meant
+anything and three kings ever tarried here, that conjunction of
+sovereigns had put up with housing of a distinctly primitive sort. My
+room was clean, I acknowledged thankfully, but that was all I could say
+for it. I eyed the bowl and pitcher gloomily, the hard-looking bed, the
+tiny square of carpeting in the center of the stone floor.
+
+"Your house, Madame," I suggested craftily, with a view to
+reconnoissance, "is, of course, full?"
+
+She heaved a sigh.
+
+"It is war-time, Monsieur," she lamented. "None travel now. Yet why
+should I mourn, since I make enough to keep me till the war is ended
+and my man comes home? There are those who eat here daily at the noon
+hour--the cure, the mayor, the mayor's secretary, sometimes the notary
+of the town, as well. And to-night I have two guests, monsieur and the
+young lady--the nurse who goes to the hospital at Carrefonds with the
+great new remedy for burns and scars. _Au revoir, Monsieur_. In one
+little moment I will send the hot water, and in half an hour monsieur
+shall dine."
+
+I closed the door behind her and flung down my bag, fuming. So Miss
+Falconer was a nurse, carrying a panacea to the wounded, doubtless a
+specimen of the sensational new remedy just recognized by the medical
+authorities, of which the one newspaper I had glanced through in Paris
+had been full. The masquerade was too preposterous to gain an instant's
+credence. It gave me, as the French say, furiously to think; it resolved
+all doubts.
+
+I felt inexplicably angry, then preternaturally cool and competent. For
+the first time since the Modane episode I was my clear-sighted self.
+I had been trying futilely to blindfold my eyes, to explain the
+inexplicable, to be unaware of the obvious. Now with a sort of grim
+relief I looked the facts in the face.
+
+My hot water appearing, I made a sketchy toilet, and then descended to
+the courtyard where I lounged and smoked. My state of mind was peculiar.
+As I struck a match I noticed with a queer pride that my hand was
+steady. With a cold, almost sardonic clarity, I thought of Miss
+Falconer. First a prosperous tourist, next a dweller in an aristocratic
+French mansion, then a nurse. She equaled, I told myself, certain
+heroines of our Sunday supplements, queens of the smugglers, moving
+spirits of the diamond ring.
+
+Upstairs in the right-hand gallery a door opened. A light footstep
+sounded on the winding stairs. The critical moment was upon me; she was
+coming. I threw away my cigarette and advanced.
+
+She was playing her part, I saw, with due regard for detail. Now that
+her furs were off she stood forth in the white costume, the flowing
+head-dress, the red cross--all the panoply of the _infirmiere_. She
+came half-way down the stairs before perceiving me; then, with a low
+exclamation, grasping the balustrade, she stood still.
+
+I didn't even pretend surprise. What was the use of it?
+
+"Good-evening, Miss Falconer," was all I said.
+
+It seemed a long time before she answered. Rigid, uncompromising, she
+faced me; and I read storm signals in the deep flush of her cheeks, the
+gray flash of her eyes, the stiffness of her white-draped head.
+
+"Oh, Lord!" I groaned to myself in cold compassion, "she means to bluff
+it! Can't she see that the game's played out?"
+
+"This is very strange, Mr. Bayne," she was saying idly. "I understood
+that you were to drive an ambulance at the Front."
+
+How young, how lovely, how glowing she looked as she stood there in her
+snowy dress. I found myself wondering impersonally what had led her to
+these devious paths.
+
+"So I am," I responded with accentuated coolness. "My time is valuable;
+it was a sacrifice to come to Bleau; but I had no choice. What's wrong,
+Miss Falconer? You don't object to my presence surely? If you go on
+freezing me like this, I shall think there's something about my turning
+up here that worries you--upon my soul I shall!"
+
+She should by rights have been trembling, but her eyes blazed at me
+disdainfully. I felt almost like a caitiff, whatever that may be.
+
+"It doesn't worry me," she denied, with the same crisp iciness, "but it
+does surprise me. Will you tell me, please, what you are doing here?"
+
+Should I return, "And you?" in a voice of obvious meaning? Should I take
+a leaf from the book of my hostess and say: "I'm a bit of an artist.
+I've sketched all over Europe, and I've come to have a go at the old
+mill that so many fellows try?" Such a claim would just match the
+assumption of her costume. But no.
+
+"The fact is," I said serenely, "I came straight from the rue
+St. Dominique to keep the appointment you forgot."
+
+The announcement, it was plain, exasperated her, for slightly, but
+undeniably, she stamped one arched, slender, attractively shod foot.
+
+"Mr. Bayne," she demanded, "are you a secret-service agent?"
+
+"Good heavens!" I exclaimed, startled. "No!"
+
+"Then I'm sorry. That would have been a better reason for following me
+than--than the only one there is," she swept on stormily. "You knew I
+didn't wish to see any one at present. I said so in the note I left. Yet
+you spied on me and you tracked me deliberately, when I had trusted
+you with my address. It's outrageous of you. You ought to be ashamed of
+doing it, Mr. Bayne."
+
+A stunned realization burst on me of the line that she was taking, the
+position into which, willy-nilly, she was crowding me. I had trailed her
+here, she assumed, to thrust my company on her; and, upon the surface,
+I had to own that my behavior really had that air. If I had followed her
+with equal brazenness along Fifth Avenue, I should have had a chance to
+explain my conduct to the first police officer who noticed it, later
+to an indignant magistrate. But, heavens and earth! She knew why I had
+come. And knowing, how did she dare defy me? I retained just sufficient
+presence of mind to stare back impassively and to mumble with feeble
+sarcasm:
+
+"I'm very sorry you think so."
+
+She came down a step.
+
+"Are you?" she asked imperiously. "Then--will you prove it? Will you go
+back to Paris by to-night's train?"
+
+I had recovered myself.
+
+"There isn't any train to-night," I protested, civil, but adamant.
+"And--I'm sorry, but if there was I wouldn't take it--not until I've
+accomplished what I came to do!"
+
+The girl seemed to concentrate all the world's disdain in the look that
+measured me, running from my head to my unoffending feet, from my feet
+back to my head.
+
+"Most men would go, Mr. Bayne," she flung at me, her red lips scornful.
+"But then, most men wouldn't have come, of course. And all you will
+accomplish is to make me dine up here in this--this wretched, stuffy
+room." Before I could lift a hand in protest, she had turned, mounted
+the stairs again, and vanished. The door--shall I own it?--slammed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE PLOT THICKENS
+
+Presently, summoned by the hostess, I went to my lonely meal in a mood
+that nobody on earth had cause to envy me. One thing was certain: Should
+it ever be disclosed that Miss Esme Falconer was not a spy, I should
+lack courage to go on living. Remembering the coolly brazen line I had
+taken and the assumptions she had drawn from it, I could think of no
+desert wide enough to hide my confusion, no pit sufficiently deep to
+shelter my utterly crestfallen head.
+
+In any case, I had not managed my attack at all triumphantly. From the
+first skirmish the adversary had retired with all the honors on her
+side. Carrying the matter with a high hand, she had dazed me into brief
+inaction, and then, as I gave signs of rally, had retreated in what
+to say the least was a highly strategic way. Well, let her go for the
+moment! She could scarcely escape me. I would see the thing through, I
+told myself with growing stubbornness; but I didn't feel that the doing
+of a civic duty was what it is cracked up to be. Not at all!
+
+I felt the need of a cocktail with a kick to it. But I did not get one.
+However, the cabbage soup was eatable, if primitive; and, in fact, no
+part of the dinner could be called distinctly bad.
+
+Having finished my coffee, I went outside feeling more cheerful. It was
+dark now. A lantern swinging from the entrance cast flickering darts
+of light about the courtyard, the rough paving-stones, the odd old
+galleries and stairs. Upstairs a candle shone through the window of Miss
+Falconer's room. In the kitchen by the great chimney place I could see a
+leather-clad chauffeur eating, the same fellow that had driven the blue
+car from the rue St.-Dominique; and while I watched, madame emerged,
+bearing the girl's dinner tray, which with much groaning and panting she
+carried up the winding stairs.
+
+It was foolish of Miss Falconer, I thought, to insist on this comedy.
+She might better have dined with me, heard what I had to say, and
+yielded with a good grace. However, let her have her dinner in peace
+and solitude, I resolved magnanimously. The moon had come out, the stars
+too; I would take a stroll and mature my plans.
+
+Lighting a cigarette, I lounged into the street and addressed myself
+forthwith to an unhurried tour of Bleau. I was gone perhaps an hour, not
+a very lengthy interval, but one in which a variety of things can occur,
+as I was to learn. My walk led me outside the village, down a water path
+between trees, and even to the famous mill, which was charming. Had I
+been of the fraternity of artists, as I had claimed, I should have
+asked no better fate than to come there with canvas and brushes and
+immortalize the quiet beauty of the scene.
+
+A rustic bridge invited me, and I stood and smoked upon it, listening
+to the ripple of the half-golden, half-shadowy water, watching the
+revolutions of the green old wheel. I had laid out my plan of action. On
+my return to the inn I would insist on an interview with Miss Falconer,
+and would tell her that either she must return with me to Paris or that
+the police of Bleau--I supposed it had police--must take a hand.
+
+My metamorphosis into a hero of adventure, racing about the country,
+visiting places I had never heard of, coolly assuming the control
+of international spy plots, brutally determining to kidnap women if
+necessary, was astounding to say the least. That dinner in the St. Ives
+restaurant rose before me, and I heard again Dunny's charge that I
+was growing stodgy with advancing years. Suppose he should see me
+now, involved in these insane developments? He might call me various
+unflattering things, but not stodgy--not with truth. I chuckled
+half-heartedly, my last chuckle, by the by, for a long time. Unknown to
+me and unsuspected, the darker, more deadly side of the adventure was
+steadily drawing near.
+
+When I entered the courtyard of the Three Kings, the door of the garage
+stood open, and the first object my eyes met within it was the pursuing
+gray car. I stared at the thing, transfixed. In the march of events I
+had forgotten it. I was still gaping at it when madame came hurrying
+forth.
+
+"I have been watching," she informed me, "for monsieur's return. Friends
+of his arrived here soon after he left the house."
+
+"The deuce they did!" I thought, dumb-founded. I judged prudence
+advisable.
+
+"They have names, these friends?" I inquired warily.
+
+"Without doubt, Monsieur," she agreed, "but they did not offer them; and
+who am I to ask questions of the officers of France? They are bound on a
+mission, plainly. In time of war those so engaged talk little. They have
+eaten, and they have gone to their rooms, off the gallery to the
+west. And the fourth of their party--he alone wears no uniform; he is
+doubtless of monsieur's land--asked of me a description of my guests,
+and exclaimed in great delight, saying that monsieur was his old friend,
+whom he had hoped to find here and with whom he must have speech the
+very moment that monsieur should return. I know no more."
+
+It was enough.
+
+"He's mistaken," I said shortly. For the moment I really thought that
+this must be the case.
+
+Her broad, good-natured face was all astonishment.
+
+"But, Monsieur," she burst forth, "he even told me, this gentleman, that
+such might be monsieur's reply! And in that event he commanded me to beg
+monsieur to walk upstairs, since he had a thing of importance to reveal
+to monsieur--one best said behind closed doors!"
+
+I stared at her, my head humming like a top. Then, scrutinizingly,
+I looked about the court. The light in Miss Falconer's room had been
+extinguished. Did that have some significance? Was she lying perdue
+because these people had come? In the rooms opening from the west
+gallery above the street entrance I could see moving shadows. The gray
+car had arrived, and it bore three officers of France for passengers.
+What could this mean?
+
+Of course, whoever had left the message had mistaken me for a
+confederate. I could not know any of the new arrivals; it was equally
+impossible that they could know me. None the less, with a slight,
+unaccustomed thrill of excitement, I resolved to accept the invitation
+as if in absolute good faith. It was a first-class chance to get inside
+those rooms, to use my eyes, to sound this affair a little, to learn
+whether these men were the girl's pursuers. As army officers they could
+scarcely be her accomplices. Would they forestall me by arresting her,
+by taking her back to Paris? It was astonishing how distasteful I found
+the idea of that.
+
+I told madame that I thought I knew, now, who the gentlemen were. I
+climbed the west staircase with determination and knocked on the door of
+the first room that had a light. A voice from within, vaguely familiar,
+bade me enter, I did so immediately and closed the door.
+
+Through an inner entrance I saw three men grouped about a table in
+the next room, all smoking cigarettes, all clad in horizon blue. They
+glanced up at me for a moment, and then, politely, they looked away. But
+a fourth man, who had stood beside them, came striding out to meet me,
+and I confronted Mr. John Van Blarcom face to face.
+
+Officers fresh from the trenches have told me that one can lose through
+sheer accustomedness all horror at the grim sights of warfare, all
+consciousness of ear-splitting noises, all interest in gas and shrapnel
+and bursting shells. In the same way one can lose all capacity for
+astonishment, I suppose. I don't think I manifested much surprise at
+this unexpected meeting; and I heard myself remarking quite coolly that
+there had been a mistake, that I had been told downstairs that a friend
+of mine was here.
+
+"That's right, Mr. Bayne," cut in Van Blarcom shortly. "I've been a
+friend of yours clear through, and I'm acting as one now. Just a minute,
+sir, please!"
+
+He had shut the door between ourselves and the officers, and now he
+was drawing the shutters close. Coming back into the room, he seated
+himself, and motioned me toward a chair, which I didn't take. His
+authoritative manner was, I must say, not unimpressive. And he knew
+how to arrange a rather crude stage-setting; the room, with all air and
+sound excluded, seemed tense and breathless; the one dim candle on the
+table lent a certain solemnity to the scene.
+
+"Look here, Mr. Bayne," he began bluffly, "last time you spoke to me
+you told me to--Well, we'll let bygones by bygones; I guess you remember
+what you said. You don't like me, and I'm not wasting any love on you;
+as far as you're personally concerned, I'd just as soon see you hang!
+But I've got to think of the United States. I'm in the service, and it
+doesn't do her any good to have her citizens get in bad with France."
+
+Standing there, gazing at him with an air of bored inquiry, behind my
+mask of indifference I racked my brain. What did he want of me? What
+did he want of Miss Falconer? What was he doing in this military galley?
+Hopeless queries, without the key to the puzzle!
+
+"Well?" I said.
+
+"I don't ask you," he went on crisply, "what you're doing here--"
+
+"You had better not!" I snapped. "What tomfoolery is this? Do you think
+you are a police officer heckling a crook? And why should you ask me
+such a question any more than I should ask you?"
+
+He grinned meaningly.
+
+"Well," he commented, "there might be reasons. I'm here on business,
+with papers in order, and three French officers to answer for me; but
+you're a kind of a funny person to make a bee-line for a place like
+Bleau. An inn like this doesn't seem your style, somehow. I'd say the
+Ritz was more your type. And while we're at it, did you go to the Paris
+_Prefecture_ this morning, like all foreigners are told to, and show
+your passport, and get your police card? Have you got it with you? If
+you have you stepped pretty lively, considering you left Paris by three
+o'clock."
+
+"If any one in authority asks me that," I said, "I'll answer him. I
+certainly don't propose to answer you." My arms were folded; I looked
+haughtily indifferent; but it was pure bluff. The only paper I had with
+me was my passport. What the dickens could I do if he turned nasty along
+such lines.
+
+"As I was saying," he resumed, unruffled, "I'm not asking you why you're
+here--because I know. I've got to hand it to you that you're a dead-game
+sport. Most men's hair would have turned white at Gibraltar after the
+fuss you had. And here you are again--in the ring for all you're worth!"
+
+"I suppose you mean something," I said wearily, "but it's too subtle and
+cryptic. Please use words of one syllable."
+
+He nodded tolerantly. Leaning back, thumbs in his waistcoat-pockets,
+swelling visibly, he was an offensive picture of self-satisfaction and
+content.
+
+"You can't get away with it, Mr. Bayne," he declared impressively.
+"You've taken on too much; I'm giving it to you straight. You can do a
+lot with money and good clothes, and being born a gentleman and acting
+like one, and having friends to help you; but you can't buck the French
+Government and the French army and the French police. In a little affair
+of this sort you wouldn't have a leg to stand on. Even your ambassador
+would turn you down cold. He wouldn't dare do anything else. This is the
+last call for dinner in the dining-car, for you. Last time I wanted
+to tell you the facts of the case you wouldn't listen. Will you listen
+now?"
+
+I considered.
+
+"Yes," I said, "I'll listen. Go ahead!"
+
+He foundered for a moment, and then plunged in boldly.
+
+"About this young lady who's brought you and me to Bleau. Oh, you
+needn't lift your eyebrows, much as to say, 'What young lady?' You know
+she's here, and I know it; and she knows I've come and has put her light
+out and is shaking in her shoes over there. I can swear to that. Well, I
+want to tell you I never started out to get her; I just stumbled across
+her on the steamer by a fluke. But I kept my eyes open and I saw a
+lot of things; and when I got to Paris to-day I told them at the
+_Prefecture_. You can see what they thought of the business by my being
+here. I wasn't keen to come. I've got my own work to do. But they
+want me to identify her; and they've sent three officers with me--not
+policemen, you'll notice, because this is an army matter, and before we
+make an end of it we'll be in the army zone."
+
+I don't know just what he saw in my eyes; but it seemed to bother him.
+He fidgeted a little; as he approached the crucial point, his gaze
+evaded mine.
+
+"Now, then, we'll come down to brass tacks, Mr. Bayne," said he. "I
+don't know what kind of story the girl told you; but I know it wasn't
+the truth or you wouldn't be here. That's sure. She's a German agent;
+she's come to get the Germans some papers that they want about as bad as
+anything under heaven. There's one man who tried the job already. He
+got killed for his pains; but he hid the papers before he died, and she
+knows where; and she's on her way to get them and carry the business
+through. I don't say she hasn't plenty of courage. Why, she's gone up
+against the whole of France; but I guess you're not very anxious to be
+mixed up in this underhand, spying sort of matter, eh?"
+
+My hands were doubling themselves with automatic vigor. I
+wanted--consumedly--to knock the fellow down. However, I controlled
+myself.
+
+"What's your offer?" I asked.
+
+"It's this." He was obviously relieved, positively swelling in his
+tolerant, good-humored patronage. "I said once before I was sorry for
+you, and that still goes; we won't be hard on you if we have got the
+whip-hand, Mr. Bayne. You just stay in your room to-morrow until she's
+gone and we're gone, and you needn't be afraid your name will ever
+figure in this thing. I've made it all right with my friends in the next
+room. They know a pretty girl can fool a man sometimes, and they've got
+a soft spot for Americans, like all the Frenchies here. Take it from me,
+you'd better draw out quietly, instead of being arrested, tried, shot,
+or imprisoned maybe--or being sent home with an unproved charge hanging
+over you, and having all your friends fight shy of you as a suspected
+pro-German. Isn't that so?"
+
+"You certainly," I agreed, "draw a most uninviting picture. I'll have to
+consider this, Mr. Van Blarcom, if you'll give me time?"
+
+"Sure!" with his hearty response. "Take as long as you like to think it
+over; I know how you'll decide. You don't belong in a thing like
+this anyhow; you never did. It's bound to end in a nasty mess for all
+concerned. There's a train goes to Paris to-morrow morning at eleven.
+You just take it, sir, and forget this business, and you'll thank me all
+your life."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+GEORGES THE CHAUFFEUR
+
+Upon descending to the courtyard, I took a seat on a bench beneath a
+vine-covered trellis. To stop here for a time, smoking, would seem a
+natural proceeding, and while I held such a post of recognizance nothing
+overt could transpire in the environs without my taking note of the
+fact. Enough had developed already, though, heaven was witness! I lit a
+cigarette and prepared for a resume.
+
+Like a sleuth noting salient points, I glanced round the rectangular
+court. At my right, off the gallery, was Miss Falconer's room shrouded
+in darkness; at the left, up another flight of stairs, my own uninviting
+domain. The quarters of Van Blarcom and his uniformed friends opened
+from the gallery above the street passage, facing the main portion of
+the inn which sheltered the kitchen and _salle a manger_. Such was the
+simple, homely stage-setting. What of the play?
+
+Bleau, I now felt tolerably sure, was merely a mile-stone on the route
+of Miss Falconer. Next morning, at sunrise probably, she would resume
+her journey for parts unknown. Would they arrest her before she left
+the inn or merely follow her? The latter, doubtless, since they asserted
+that she was on her way to get the papers that they wanted for France.
+
+Upstairs in the room where Van Blarcom and I had held our conference
+the shutters had been reopened. There was just one light to be seen, a
+glowing point, which was obviously the tip of a cigar. If I was keeping
+vigil below, from above he returned the compliment; nor did he mean
+that I should hold any secret colloquy with the girl that night. I
+swore softly, but earnestly. Considering his rather decent attitude,
+his efforts from the very first to enlighten me as to the dangers I was
+running, it was odd that my detestation of the man was so thoroughly
+ingrained and so profound.
+
+The mystery of the gray car had been solved with a vengeance. Instead of
+being freighted with accomplices, as I had at first thought possible,
+it had carried the representatives of justice, in the persons of three
+officers and my secret-service friend. A queer conjunction, that; but
+then, my ignorance of French methods was abysmal. Perhaps this was the
+usual mode of doing things in time of war.
+
+Van Blarcom's explanation, though it made me furious, had brought
+conviction. There was a certain grim appositeness about it all. The
+night in New York, the events of the steamer, the unsatisfactory
+character of the girl's actions, all fitted neatly into the plan; and
+the mere personnel of the pursuing party was sufficient assurance, for
+French officers, as I well knew, were neither liars nor fools. Neither,
+I patriotically assumed, were the men of my country's secret-service,
+however humble their part as cogs in that great machinery, or however
+distasteful Mr. Van Blarcom, personally, might be to me. And finally, I
+could not deny that women, clever, well-born, and beautiful, had served
+as spies a thousand times in the world's history, urged to it by some
+sense of duty, some tie of blood.
+
+Yes, that was it, I told myself in sudden pity, recalling how Miss
+Falconer had stood on the steps in her nurse's costume, straight and
+slender, her gray eyes full of fire, her face glowing like a rose.
+Perhaps she was of the enemy's country. Perhaps those she loved,
+those who made up her life, had set her feet in this path that she
+was treading. If she was a spy,--Lord! How the mere word hurt one!--it
+wasn't for ignoble motives; it wasn't for pay.
+
+I came impulsively to the conclusion that there was just one course
+for my taking: to see her and to beg, bully, or wheedle from her the
+unvarnished truth. Then, if it was as I feared, she should go back to
+Paris if I had to carry her; she should accompany me to Bordeaux, and on
+the first steamer she should sail from France. Yes; and the army should
+have its papers, for she should tell me where they were hidden. Her work
+should end; but these men upstairs should not track her and trap her and
+drag her off to prison, perhaps to death.
+
+There was danger in the plan, even if I should accomplish it. I should
+get myself into trouble, dark and deep. Well, if I had to languish
+behind bars for a while I could survive it. But she might not. As I
+thought of this I knew that I had made up my mind irrevocably.
+
+It was a problem, nevertheless, to arrange an interview, with Van
+Blarcom sitting at his window, watching me like a lynx. I couldn't go
+up the stairs and batter on her door till she opened it; apart from the
+reception she would give me it would simply amount to making a present
+of my intentions to the men across the way. Yet who knew how long they
+would keep up their surveillance? Till I retired, probably! "I'd give
+something to choke you and be done with it!" was the benediction I
+wafted toward the sentinel above.
+
+I was owning myself at my wit's end when a ray of hope was vouchsafed
+me. The kitchen door opened and let out a leather-clad figure which
+strode across the courtyard, lantern in hand, and let itself into the
+garage. Despite the dimness, I recognized Miss Falconer's chauffeur, the
+man she had addressed as Georges when they left the rue St. Dominique.
+The very link I needed, provided I could get into communication with him
+in some unostentatious way.
+
+I rose, stretched myself lazily, and began to pace the court. Perhaps
+a dozen times I crossed and recrossed it, each turn taking me past the
+garage and affording me a brief glance within. The chauffeur, coat flung
+aside, sleeves rolled up, was hard at work overhauling his engine, with
+an obvious view to efficiency upon the morrow. Up at the window I could
+see the glowing cigar-tip move now to this side, now to that. Not for an
+instant was Van Blarcom allowing me to escape from sight.
+
+After taking one more turn I halted, yawned audibly for the sentry's
+benefit, and seated myself once more, this time on a bench by the
+door of the garage. Van Blarcom's cigar became stationary again. The
+chauffeur, who had satisfied himself as to the engine and was now
+passing critical fingers over the gashes in the tires, looked up at me
+casually and then resumed his work. Kneeling there, his tools about him,
+he was plainly visible in the light of the smoky lantern. He was a
+young man, twenty-three or-four perhaps, strongly built and obviously
+of French-peasant stock, with honest blue eyes and a face not unduly
+intelligent, but thoroughly frank and open in the cast. The actors in my
+drama, I had to own, were puzzling. This lad looked no more fitted than
+Miss Falconer for a treacherous role.
+
+How theatrical it all was! And yet it had its zest. I confess I
+experienced a certain thrill, entirely new to me, as I bent forward with
+my arms on my knees and my head lowered to hide my face.
+
+"_Attention, Georges!_" I muttered beneath my breath.
+
+The chauffeur started, knocking a tool from the running-board beside
+him. His eyes, half-startled, half-fierce, fixed themselves on me; his
+hand went toward his pocket in a most significant way. In a minute
+he would be shooting me, I reflected grimly. And upstairs the very
+stillness of Van Blarcom shrieked suspicion; he could not have helped
+hearing the clatter that the falling tool had made.
+
+"Don't be a fool," I muttered, low, but sharply. "I know where you and
+mademoiselle come from; I know she is upstairs now; if I wished you any
+harm I could have had the mayor and the gendarmes here an hour ago! Keep
+your head--we are being watched. Have a good look at me first if you
+feel you want to. Then take your hand off that revolver and pretend to
+go to work."
+
+Throwing my head back, I began blowing clouds of smoke, wondering every
+instant whether a bullet would whiz through my brain. I could feel
+Georges' gaze upon me; I knew it was a critical moment. But as his kind
+are quick, shrewd judges of caste and character, I had my hopes.
+
+They were justified; for presently I heard him draw a breath of relief.
+His hand came out of his pocket.
+
+"Pardon, Monsieur," he whispered, and began a vigorous pretense of
+polishing the car.
+
+Again I leaned forward to hide the fact that my lips were moving.
+
+"When you speak to me, keep your head bent as I do."
+
+"Monsieur, yes."
+
+"Now listen. Men of the French army are here, with powers from the
+police. They accuse mademoiselle of serious things, of acts of treason,
+of being on her way to secure papers for the foes of France. They are
+watching. To-morrow, if she departs, they mean to follow and to arrest
+her when they have gained proof of what she is hunting."
+
+"_Mon Dieu, Monsieur!_ What shall I do?"
+
+There was appeal in his voice. Convinced of my good faith, he was
+quite simply shifting the business to my shoulders--the French peasant
+trusting the man he ranked as of his master's class. And oddly enough
+I found myself responding as if to a trusted person. I smoked a little,
+wondering whether Van Blarcom could catch the faint mutter of our
+voices. Then I gave my orders in the same muffled tones:
+
+"You will tell the servants that you wish to sleep here to-night, to
+watch the car. You will stay here very quietly until it is nearly dawn.
+Then you will creep to mademoiselle's door and whisper what I have told
+you and say that I beg her to meet me before those others have awakened
+at five o'clock in--"
+
+Pondering a rendezvous, I hesitated. The room where I had dined, with
+its stone floor, its beamed ceiling, and dark panels, came first to
+my mind. I fancied, though, that some outdoor spot might be safer. I
+remembered opportunely that a passage led past this room, and that at
+its end I had glimpsed a little garden behind the inn.
+
+"In the garden," I finished, and risked one straight look at him. "I can
+trust you, Georges?"
+
+The young man's throat seemed to close.
+
+"_Monsieur le duc_ was my foster-brother, _Monsieur_," he whispered. "I
+would die for him."
+
+Who the deuce _monsieur le duc_ might be I did not tarry to discover.
+I had done all I could; the future was on the knees of the gods. Having
+smoked one more cigarette for the sake of verisimilitude, I rose,
+stretched myself ostentatiously, and crossed the courtyard to the
+stairs, where madame was descending. She had, she informed me, been
+preparing my bed.
+
+"And I wish monsieur good repose," she ended volubly. "Hitherto, no
+Zeppelins have come to Bleau to disturb our dreams. Though, alas, who
+knows what they will do, now that we have lost our most gallant hero?
+Monsieur has heard of the Firefly of France, he who is missing?"
+
+That name again! Odd how it seemed to pursue me.
+
+"I believe I shall meet that fellow sometime if he's living," I
+reflected as I climbed the stairs.
+
+In my room, my candle lighted, I resigned myself to a ghastly night. I
+don't like discomfort, though I can put up with it when I must. The
+bed looked as hard as nails; the bowl made cleanliness a duty, not a
+pleasure. And to think that I might have been sleeping in comfort at the
+Ritz!
+
+Tossing from side to side, pounding a cast-iron pillow, I dozed through
+uneasy intervals, and woke with groans and starts. I could not rid
+myself of the sense of something ominous hanging over me. The gray car
+ramped through my dreams; so did Van Blarcom; and between sleeping
+and waking, I pictured my coming interview with the girl, her probable
+terror, the force and menaces I should have to use, our hurried flight.
+
+At length I fell into a heavy, exhausted slumber, from which, toward
+morning I fancied, I sat up suddenly with the dazed impression of some
+sound echoing in my ears. Springing out of bed, I groped my way to the
+window. The galleries lay peaceful and empty in the moonlight, and down
+in the courtyard there was not the slightest sign of life.
+
+I went back to bed in a state of jangled nerves. Again I dozed, and
+a dim light was creeping through the window when I woke. I looked out
+again.
+
+"Hello!" I muttered, for though the hotel seemed wrapped in slumber, the
+door of the garage now stood ajar. Was it possible that Miss Falconer
+had stolen a march on me, that the automobile could have left the
+premises without my being roused? It was only four o'clock, but all wish
+for sleep had left me. I decided to investigate without any more ado.
+
+I made the best toilet that cold water and a cracked mirror permitted,
+longing the while for a bath, for a breakfast tray, for a hundred
+civilized things. Taking my hat and coat, I went quietly down the
+staircase. The garage door beckoned me, and all unprepared, I walked
+into the tragedy of the affair.
+
+In the dim place there were signs of a desperate struggle. The rugs and
+cushions of Miss Falconer's automobile were scattered far and wide. The
+gray car had vanished; and in the center of the floor was Georges,
+the chauffeur, lying on his back with arms extended, staring up at the
+ceiling with wide, unseeing blue eyes.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+"I MUST GO ON"
+
+Kneeling by the young man's side, I felt for his pulse; but the moment
+that my fingers touched his cold wrist I knew the truth. There flashed
+into my mind queerly, as things do at grim moments, an often-heard
+expression about rigor mortis setting in. With this poor fellow it had
+not started, but he was dead for all that. The most skilful surgeon in
+Europe could not have helped him now.
+
+I never doubted that it was murder. The confusion of the garage was
+proof of it; and the instrument, once I looked about me, was not far
+to seek. Divided between rage, horror, and pity, I saw a sort of sharp
+stiletto suitable for use as a penknife or letter opener, which, after
+doing its work, had been cast upon the floor.
+
+I remained on my knees beside the lad, smitten with a keen remorse.
+I knew no good of him; I had even suspected him; but he had an honest
+face. Why had I not kept watch all night? The instructions I had given,
+the plan I had thought so clever, might be responsible for the killing;
+it must have been some echo of the struggle that had roused me when I
+had wakened and glanced out and gone placidly back to sleep.
+
+Had Van Blarcom caught our whispered colloquy, or surmised it? Helped
+by his precious colleagues, he must have taken Georges unprepared,
+throttled him to prevent his shouting, and ended his frantic struggles
+with one swift, ruthless blow. But why? What sort of soldiers could
+these be who wore the uniform of a brave, chivalrous country and yet did
+murder? What sort of mission were they bound upon that for no visible
+gain or motive they risked desperate work like this?
+
+And the girl upstairs? The thought was like a knife thrust; it brought
+me to my feet, my heart pounding, my forehead cold and wet. I told
+myself that she must be safe, that wholesale killing could not be
+the aim of these wretches, that the gray automobile was not what our
+one-cent sheets in their tales of gunmen like to call a "murder car."
+But what did I know about it? I was in a funk, a funk of the bluest
+variety. In that one age-long moment I learned what sheer fright meant.
+
+Without knowing how I got there, I found myself in the gallery. The
+doors that lined it were rickety and worm-eaten; I stared weakly at
+them. A mere twist of practised fingers, and they could be forced open
+by any one who cared to try. I thought I heard a faint breathing inside
+the girl's room, but I was not sure; I was too rattled. Very guardedly
+I knocked and got no answer. Then, in utter panic, I knocked louder, at
+risk of disturbing the whole house.
+
+"Georges, _c'est vous_?" It was the drowsiest of murmurs, but few things
+have been so welcome to me in all my life.
+
+"Yes, Mademoiselle." Though my knees were wobbling under me I summoned
+presence of mind to impersonate the poor huddled mass of flesh in the
+garage.
+
+"_Attendez donc!_"
+
+I could hear her stirring; she believed I had come with some summons,
+with some news. Well, it was imperative that I should see her. I waited
+obediently until the door swung open and revealed her in a loose robe
+of blue, with her hair in a ruddy mass about her shoulders and the sleep
+still lingering in her eyes.
+
+"Mr. Bayne!"
+
+Such was my relief at finding my fears uncalled for that I could
+have danced a breakdown on that crazy gallery, snapping my fingers in
+castanet fashion above my head. I had forgotten entirely the strained
+terms of our parting; but she remembered. A bright wave of scarlet ran
+over her face, her neck, her forehead. She gasped, clutched her robe
+about her, would have shut the door if I had not foreseen the strategic
+movement and inserted a foot in the diminishing crack, just in time.
+
+"I beg your pardon," I began hastily. "I am really extremely sorry. But
+something has occurred that forces me to speak to you."
+
+"There can be nothing that forces you to come here--nothing!" Her lips
+were trembling; her voice wavered; the apparent shamelessness of my
+behavior was driving her to the verge of tears. "Is there no place where
+I am safe from you? Mr. Bayne, how can you? I shan't listen to a single
+word while you keep your foot in the door!"
+
+"And I can't take it away until you listen," I protested. "It is
+perfectly obvious that if I did, you would shut me out. But you can see
+for yourself that I'm not trying to force an entrance--and I wish that
+you would speak lower; if we waken anybody, there will be the mischief
+to pay."
+
+My voice, I suppose, had an impatient note that was reassuring, or
+perhaps I looked encouragingly respectable, viewed at closer range.
+At any rate, she spoke less angrily, though she still stood erect and
+haughty.
+
+"Well, what is it?" she asked, barring the opening with one slender arm.
+
+"May I ask if you have had a message from me, Miss Falconer?"
+
+"A message? Certainly not!" There was renewed suspicion in her voice.
+
+"H'm." Then they had intercepted the man before he reached her. "I'm
+going to ask you to dress as quickly and quietly as possible and come
+downstairs. Don't stop in the court, and don't go near the garage, I beg
+of you. Just walk on past the _salle a manger_ to the garden, and wait
+for me."
+
+I expected exclamations, questions, indignant protests, anything but the
+sudden white calm that fell on her at my request.
+
+"You mean," she whispered, "that something dreadful has happened. Is it
+about the--the men who came last night?"
+
+"Yes. But please don't worry," I urged with false heartiness. "I'll
+explain when you come down." To cut the discussion short, I turned to
+go.
+
+Once her door had closed, however, I halted at the staircase, retraced
+my steps, and, without hesitation, circled the gallery to the rooms of
+Mr. John Van Blarcom and his friends. I had had enough of uncertainties;
+henceforth I meant to deal with facts. It was barely possible that I
+was unjustly anathematizing these gentlemen, that, while they were
+peacefully sleeping, thieves had broken in below.
+
+Two knocks, the first rather tentative, the second brisker, netting no
+response, I deliberately tried the knob and felt the door promptly yield
+to me; then, with equal deliberation, I dropped my hand into my pocket
+where my revolver lay. If some one sprang at me and tried to crack my
+head or stab me,--stabbing was popular hereabouts,--I was in a state of
+armed preparedness. But when I stepped inside I found an empty room, a
+bed in which no one had slept.
+
+Grown brazen, I strode across to the inner door and opened it. More
+emptiness greeted me; the four men had plainly taken French leave in
+their gray car. It was strange that the hum of their departure had
+not roused me; they must, before starting the motor, have pushed their
+automobile from the courtyard and out of ear-shot down the street.
+
+For a moment I stood in the deserted room, reflecting swiftly. The
+situation was desperate; in another hour the inn would be stirring, and
+Miss Falconer, I felt sure, could not afford to be found here when that
+came to pass. Murder investigations are searching things. All strangers
+beneath this roof would be interrogated narrowly. If any one had a
+secret,--and she certainly had several,--the chances were heavy that it
+would be dragged to light.
+
+For some reason this prospect was unspeakably frightful to me. Under its
+spur I hatched the craziest scheme that man ever thought of, and took
+steps which, as I look back at them, seem almost beyond belief. I must
+get Miss Falconer off for Paris, I determined. And since it was possible
+that the villagers would see us leaving, she must appear to go, as she
+had come, with her chauffeur.
+
+I descended, forthwith, to the garage where the murdered man was lying,
+shook out and folded the rugs that had been scattered in the struggle,
+picked up the cushions, and replaced them in the car. Then, borrowing a
+ruse from the enemy, I set the door wide open, and, puffing and panting,
+pushed the blue automobile into the courtyard, through the passage, and
+a considerable distance down the street.
+
+What comes next, I ask no one to credit. Retrospectively, I myself have
+doubted it. It lives in my memory as a grisly nightmare rather than as
+a fact. To be brief, I returned to the scene of the crime, shut out
+any possible audience by closing the door, and disrobed hastily. Then
+I removed the leather costume of the victim, donned it, laced on his
+boots, which by good fortune were loose instead of tight, and, picking
+up his visored cap from the floor where it had fallen, stood forth to
+all seeming as genuine a member of the proletariate as ever wore goggles
+and held a wheel.
+
+By this time my teeth were clenched as if in the throes of lockjaw. Had
+I paused to think for a single instant, all my nerve would have oozed
+away. But I had no time to spend on thought; I had to work on, to save
+Miss Falconer. The whole ghoulish business would be futile if the
+inn servants found the body. The mere flight of all the guests would
+certainly stir suspicion; let the murder transpire as well, and at once
+we should be pursued.
+
+The garage, from the looks of it, was not often put to service. A dusty
+spot, festooned with cobwebs, it cried to the skies for brooms and mops.
+In the background, apparently undisturbed since the days of the First
+Empire, a great pile of straw mixed with junk of various kinds lay
+against the wall; and most reluctantly, my every fiber shrieking
+protest, I saw what use I might make of this debris--if I could.
+
+"Go for it!" I told myself inexorably, but miserably. "It's not a
+question of liking it, you know. You've got to do it." Grimly I wrapped
+my discarded clothes about the poor chap's body, dragged it to the
+straw, and covered it from head to foot. By this action, I surmised, I
+was rendering myself a probable accessory and a certain suspect; but the
+one thing I really cared about was my last glimpse of that patient face.
+
+"Sorry, old man," was all the apology I could muster. "And if I ever get
+a chance at the people who did it, you can count on me!"
+
+With a sigh of complete exhaustion, I rose and looked about. All signs
+of the crime had been obliterated from the garage. "I must be crazy!" I
+thought, as the enormity of the thing rushed on me. "I wonder why I did
+it? And I wonder whether I can forget it some day--maybe after twenty
+years?"
+
+As I opened the door to the garden the dim light was growing clearer. I
+was late; the girl, coated and hatted, ready for flitting, was already
+at the rendezvous. At sight of me in my leather togs she started
+backward; then, resolutely controlled, she drew herself up and faced me
+silently, her hands clutching at her furs, her lips a little apart.
+
+"Won't you sit down?" I began lamely, indicating an iron bench. It was
+all so different from the interview I had planned last night! "I want to
+speak to you about your chauffeur, Miss Falconer. This morning I found
+him hurt--very badly hurt--"
+
+She drove straight through my pretense.
+
+"Not dead? Oh, Mr. Bayne, not dead?"
+
+"Yes," I said gently. "He had been dead some time. I would have liked
+to take my chances with him; but I came too late. No, please!" She had
+moved forward, and I was barring her passage. "You mustn't go. You can't
+help him, and you wouldn't like the sight."
+
+How black her eyes were in her white face!
+
+"I don't understand," she faltered. "You mean that he was murdered? But
+who would have killed Georges?"
+
+"The men who came last night--if you can call them men. At least,
+appearances point that way," I said.
+
+"The men in the gray car?" She swayed a little. "But why?"
+
+"I'm afraid I can't tell you that." My tone was grim; there were so many
+things about this matter that I couldn't tell.
+
+Her eyes flashed for an instant.
+
+"But how cowardly, how cruel! He never hurt anyone; he was just like a
+good watchdog, the truest, most faithful soul! If they killed him they
+did it for some deliberate purpose. And when I think that I brought him
+here--oh, oh, Mr. Bayne--"
+
+"Yes," I broke in hastily; "I should like to see them boil in oil or fry
+on gridirons or something of the sort, myself. But this is very serious;
+we must keep calm, Miss Falconer. And I know you are going to help me.
+You have such splendid self-control."
+
+Though there were sobs in her throat, she pressed her hands to her lips
+and stifled them. Only her pallor and her wet lashes showed the horror
+and grief she felt. I wanted desperately to comfort her, but there
+was no time for it; and besides, who ever heard of a leather-coated
+comforter in a kitchen garden at 5 A.M.?
+
+"What I wanted to speak about," I went on rapidly, "was our plans. This
+may prove a rather nasty mess, I'm sorry to say. The French police, you
+know, are--well, they're capable and very thorough; and since you are
+here at the scene of a murder in an _infirmiere's_ costume, they will
+never rest till they have seen your papers, learned your errand, asked
+you a hundred things. Unless your replies are absolutely satisfactory,
+the whole business will be--er--awkward for you. That is why I put on
+these togs. Yes, I know it is ghastly," I owned as she shuddered. "And
+that is why I want to beg you, very seriously indeed, to let me drive
+you back to Paris and put you under your friends' protection. After
+that, of course, I'll return here to see the thing through and give my
+testimony about it all."
+
+It was not going to be so simple, the course I had outlined airily. When
+I visioned myself explaining to a French _commissaire_ why I had come to
+Bleau at all; why I had set up a false claim to be an artist,--for that
+circumstance was sure to leak out and look darkly incriminating,--and
+what had inspired me to take a murdered man's clothes and conceal his
+body, I can't pretend that I felt much zest. Still, if the police and
+the girl came together, worse would follow, I was certain; and it seemed
+like a real catastrophe when she slowly shook her head.
+
+"I can't," she murmured. "Oh, it's kind of you, and I'm sorry; but I
+can't go back to Paris--not yet, Mr. Bayne. You won't understand, of
+course, but I left there to--to accomplish something. And since poor
+Georges can't help me now, I must go on--alone."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+I BURN MY BRIDGES
+
+If I live to be a hundred, and it is not improbable since I am healthy,
+I shall never forget that little garden at the inn at Bleau. It was a
+vegetable garden too, which is not in itself romantic. I recall vaguely
+that there were beds all about us, which in due course would doubtless
+sprout into rows of pale green objects--peas and artichokes, or beans
+and cabbages maybe; I don't know, I am sure. But then, there was the
+stream running just outside the wall of masonry; there was the sky,
+flushing with that faint, very delicate, very lovely pink that an early
+spring morning brings in France; there was the quaint building, wrapped
+up in slumber, beside us; and in the air a silent, fragrant dimness, the
+promise of the dawn.
+
+And then there was the girl. I suppose that was the main thing. Not that
+I felt sentimental. I should have scouted the notion. If I meant to fall
+in love,--which, I should have said, I had no idea of doing,--I would
+certainly not begin the process in this unheard-of spot. No; it was
+simply that the whole business of caring for Miss Esme Falconer had
+suddenly devolved upon my shoulders; and that instead of my feeling
+bored, or annoyed, or exasperated at the prospect, my spirits rose
+inexplicably to face the need.
+
+Here, if ever, was the time for the questions I had planned last
+evening. But I didn't ask them; I knew I should never ask them. In those
+few long unforgetable moments when I stood in the gallery and wondered
+whether she were living, my point of view had altered. I was through
+with suspecting her; I was prepared to laugh at evidence, however
+damning. As for the men in the gray car and their detailed accusations,
+I didn't give--well, a loud outcry in the infernal regions for them. I
+knew the standards of the land they served, and I had seen their work
+this morning. If they were French officers, I would do France a service
+by going after them with a gun.
+
+The girl had sunk down on the ancient bench beside me. Her eyes, wide
+and distressed, yet resolute, went to my heart. Not a figure, I thought
+again, for this atmosphere of intrigue and secrecy and danger. Rather a
+girl, beautiful, brilliant, spirited, to be shielded from every jostle
+of existence; the sort of girl whom men hold it a test of manhood to
+protect from even the most passing discomfiture!
+
+But time was moving apace. We must settle on something in short order. I
+spoke in the most matter-of-fact tones that I could summon, not, heaven
+knows, out of a feeling of levity concerning what had happened, but to
+try to lighten the grim business a degree or so and keep us sane.
+
+"I think, Miss Falconer," I began, standing before her, "that we
+have got to thrash this matter out at last. You think I've behaved
+unspeakably, trailing you everywhere, and I don't deny I have, according
+to your point of view. But the fact is, I didn't follow you to annoy
+you; I'm a half-way decent fellow. You have simply got to trust me until
+I've seen you through this tangle. After that, if you like you need
+never look at me again."
+
+Her troubled eyes rested on me, half bewildered.
+
+"Why, I'd forgotten all that," she murmured. "I do trust you, Mr. Bayne.
+Of course I must have misunderstood you to some way last evening, and
+I'm afraid I was disagreeable."
+
+"Naturally. You had to be. Now, if that's all right and I'm forgiven,
+may I ask a question? About those men who arrived last night and
+apparently killed your chauffeur--can you guess who they are?"
+
+"Yes," she faltered, looking down at the pebbled walk. "They must have
+been sent by the Government or the army or the police. If the French
+knew what I was doing, they wouldn't understand my motives. I've been
+afraid from the first that they would learn."
+
+Another of my precious theories was going up in smoke. Not seeing why a
+set of bonafide officers should gratuitously murder a chauffeur, I had
+been wondering whether the quartet might not be impostors, tricked out
+in uniforms to which they had no claim. Still, of course, I couldn't
+judge. If she would only confide in me! I was fairly aching to help her;
+yet how could I, in this blindfold way?
+
+"I don't wish to be impertinent," I ventured at length, meekly, "and I
+give you my word I'm not trying to find out anything you don't want
+me to. Only, assuming I've got some sense,--in case you care to be so
+amiable,--I'd like to put it at your service. Do you think you could
+give me just a vague outline of your plans?"
+
+She looked at me in a piteous, uncertain manner. I braced myself for
+a "No." Then, suddenly, she seemed to decide to trust me--in sheer
+desperate loneliness, I dare say.
+
+"I am going," she whispered, "to a village in the war zone--where there
+is a chateau. There are things in it--some papers; at least I believe
+there are. It is just a chance, just a forlorn hope; but it means
+all the world to certain people. I have to act in secret till I have
+succeeded, and then every one in France, every one on earth may know all
+that I have done!"
+
+If I had not burned my bridges, this announcement might have worried me;
+it was too vague, and what little I grasped tallied startlingly with Van
+Blarcom's rigmarole. However, having bowed allegiance, I didn't blink an
+eyelid.
+
+"Yes," I said encouragingly. "Is it very far?"
+
+Her eyes went past me anxiously, watching the inn and its blank windows,
+as she fumbled in her coat and brought forth a motor map.
+
+"Take it," she breathed, thrusting it toward me. "Look at it. Do you
+see? The route in red!"
+
+As I realized the astounding thing I choked down an exclamation. There,
+beneath my finger, lay the village of Bleau, a tiny dot; and from it,
+straight into the war zone, the traced line ran through Le Moreau and
+Croix-le-Valois and St. Remilly; ran to--what was the name? I spelled it
+out: P-r-e-z-e-l-a-y.
+
+Though it was early in the game to be a wet blanket, I found myself
+gasping.
+
+"But," I protested weakly, "you can't do that! It's in the war
+country; it's forbidden territory. One has to have safe-conducts,
+_laissez-passers_, all sorts of documents to get into that part of
+France."
+
+"I didn't come unprepared," she answered stubbornly. "Before I started
+I knew just what I should need. I can get as far as the hospital at
+Carrefonds; and Carrefonds is beyond Prezelay, ten miles nearer to the
+Front!"
+
+"But--" The monosyllable was distinctly tactless.
+
+She straightened, challenging me with brave, defiant eyes.
+
+"I know," she flashed. "You mean it looks suspicious. Well, it does;
+and if I told you everything, it would look more suspicious still. You
+shouldn't have followed me; when they learn that we both spent the night
+here they will think you are my--my accomplice. The best advice I can
+give you, Mr. Bayne, is to go away."
+
+"Perhaps we had better," I agreed stolidly. I had deserved the outburst.
+"Shall we be off at once, before the servants come downstairs?"
+
+She drew back, her eyes widening.
+
+"We?" she repeated.
+
+"Naturally!" I replied, with some temper. "I _must_ have disgusted
+you last night. What sort of a miserable, spineless, cowardly, caddish
+travesty of a man do you take me for, to think I would let you go
+alone?"
+
+"Please don't joke," she urged. "It simply isn't possible. You would get
+into trouble with the French Government, and--"
+
+"Do you know," I grinned, "it is rather exhilarating to snap one's
+fingers at governments? Just see what success I made of it with Great
+Britain and Italy, on the ship!"
+
+"You don't realize what you are laughing at," she pleaded. "It is
+dangerous."
+
+"I won't disgrace you. I seldom tremble visibly, Miss Falconer, though I
+often shake inside."
+
+Her great gray eyes were glowing mistily.
+
+"Mr. Bayne, this is splendid of you. I--I shall go on more bravely
+because you have been so kind. But I won't let you make such a sacrifice
+or mix in a thing that others may think disloyal, treacherous. You know
+how it looks. Why, on the steamer and on the way up to France and even
+last evening--you see I've guessed now why you followed me--you didn't
+trust me yourself."
+
+"I know it," I confessed humbly. "I can't believe I was such an idiot.
+Somebody ought to perform a surgical operation on my brain. I apologize;
+I'm down in the dust; I feel like groveling. Won't you forgive me? I
+promise you won't have to do it twice."
+
+This time it was she who said: "But--" and paused uncertainly. I could
+see she was wavering, and I massed my horse, foot, and dragoons for the
+attack.
+
+"You'll please consider me," I proclaimed firmly, "to be a tyrant. I
+am so much bigger than you are that you can't possibly drive me off. I
+don't mean to interfere or to ask questions, or to bother you. But I vow
+I'm coming with you if I cling to the running-board!"
+
+Her lashes fluttered as she racked her brains for new protests.
+
+"The car is a French make," she urged,--"which you couldn't drive--"
+
+"I can drive any car with four wheels!" I exclaimed vaingloriously.
+"It's kismet, Miss Falconer; it's the hand of Providence, no less. Now,
+we'll leave these notes in the _salle a manger_ to pay for our lodging,
+which would have been dear at twopence, and be off, if you please, for
+Prezelay."
+
+She had yielded. We were standing side by side in the silence of the
+morning, the dimness fading round us, the air taking a golden tinge.
+My surroundings were plebeian; my costume was comic; yet I felt oddly
+uplifted.
+
+"Jolly old garden, isn't it?" said I.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+IN THE HIGH GEAR
+
+To pass straight from a humdrum, comfortable, conventionally ordered
+life into a career of insane adventure is a step that is radical; but it
+can be exhilarating, and I proved the fact that day. To dwell on present
+danger was to forget the past hour in the garage, which I had to forget
+or begin gibbering. Once committed to the adventure and away from the
+scene of the murder, I found a positive relief in facing the madness of
+the affair.
+
+While the girl sat silent and listless, blotted against the cushions,
+rousing from her thoughts only to indicate the turns of the road, I had
+time for cogitation; and I began to feel like a man who has drunk freely
+of champagne. Hitherto I had been a law-abiding citizen. Now I had
+kicked over the traces. Like the distinguished fraternity that includes
+Raffles and Arsene Lupin, I should be "wanted" by the police, those
+good-natured, deferential beings so given to saluting and grinning,
+with whom, save for occasional episodes not unconnected with the speed
+laws,--Dunny says libelously that my progress in an automobile resembles
+a fabulous monster with a flying car for the head, a cloud of smoke and
+gasoline for the body, and a cohort of incensed motor-cycle men for the
+tail,--I had lived on the most cordial terms.
+
+I was not certain whether they would accuse me of murder or espionage.
+There were pegs enough, undeniably, on which to hang either charge.
+Myself, I rather inclined to the latter; the case was so clear, so
+detailed! My rush from Paris to Bleau,--in order, no doubt, that I
+might at an unostentatious spot join forces with my confederate, Miss
+Falconer, whom I had been meeting at intervals ever since we left New
+York in company,--my behavior there, and the fashion in which we were
+vanishing should suffice to doom me as a spy.
+
+When the French began tracing my movements, when they joined my present
+activities to the fact that only by the skin of my teeth had I escaped a
+charge of bringing German papers into Italy, there would be the devil
+to pay. I acknowledged it; then--really, this brand-new, unfounded,
+cast-iron trust of mine in Miss Falconer was changing me beyond
+recognition--I recalled the old recipe for the preparation of Welsh
+rabbit, and light-heartedly challenged the authorities to "catch me
+first." I had a disguise; if I bore any superior earmarks my leather
+coat obliterated them; and I could drive; even Dario Resta could not
+have sniffed at my technic. Better still, my French, learned even before
+my English, would not betray me. As nurse and as _mecanicien_, we stood
+a fair chance in our masquerade.
+
+I might have to pay my shot, but I was enjoying it. This was a good
+world through which we were speeding; life was in the high gear to-day.
+The car purred beneath us like a splendid, harnessed tiger; the spring
+air was fresh and fragrant, the country charming, with here a forest,
+there a valley, farther off the tiled, colored roofs of some little
+town. Our road, like a white ribbon, wound itself out endlessly between
+stone walls or brown fields. In my content I forgot food and such
+prosaic details till I noticed that the girl looked pale.
+
+"I say," I exclaimed remorsefully: "we've been omitting rolls and
+coffee! I'm going to get you some at the first town we pass."
+
+"We are coming to a town now, to Le Moreau." She was looking anxious.
+
+"Yes? I'm afraid I don't place it exactly. Ought I to?"
+
+"It is the first town in the war zone. And--and our road passes through
+it."
+
+"Oh!" I was enlightened. "Then they will probably ask to see our papers
+at the _octroi_?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The car was eating up the smooth white road; I could see the little
+_octroi_ building at the town boundary-line, and a group of gendarmes in
+readiness close by. It was a critical moment. Miss Falconer, I
+recalled, had said she could get through to Carrefonds; but glittering
+generalities were not likely to convince these sentries; one needed
+safe-conducts, passes, identity cards, and such concrete aids. She
+couldn't give a reasonable account of herself, I felt quite certain; and
+even if she did, how was she to account for me?
+
+As I brought the car to a standstill, my conscience clamored, and my
+costume seemed to shriek incongruity from every seam. In this dilemma
+I trusted to sheer blind luck--a rather thrilling business. As a
+gray-headed sergeant stepped forward to welcome us, I looked him
+unfalteringly in the eye, though I wondered if he would not say:
+
+"Monsieur, kindly remove that childish travesty with which you are
+trying to impose on justice. We know all about you. Your name is
+Devereux Bayne. You are a German agent and intriguer; you have smuggled
+papers; you have murdered a man and concealed his body. Unless you can
+give a satisfactory explanation of all your actions since leaving New
+York, your last hour has arrived!"
+
+What he really said was:
+
+"Mademoiselle's papers?" He spoke quite amiably, a catlike pretense, no
+doubt.
+
+Miss Falconer was no longer looking anxious. Her hands were steady; she
+was even smiling as she produced two neat little packets that, on being
+unfolded, proved to have all the air of permits, _laissez-passers_, and
+police cards. Two nondescript photographs, which might have represented
+almost any one, adorned them, and of these our sergeant made a
+perfunctory survey.
+
+"Mademoiselle's name," he recited in a high singsong, "is Marie Le
+Clair. She is a nurse, on her way to the hospital at Carrefonds. And
+this is Jacques Carton, who is her chauffeur?"
+
+A singularly stupid person, on the whole, he must have thought me,
+hardly fit to be trusted with so superb a car. My mouth, I fancy, was
+wide open; I can't swear that I wasn't pop-eyed. This last development
+had complete addled me. Marie Le Clair! Jacques Carton! Who were they?
+
+"I wish," I remarked into the air as we drove on, "that some one would
+pinch me--hard."
+
+She smiled faintly. Now it was over, she looked a little tremulous.
+
+"Oh, no," she answered, "we were not dreaming. Poor Georges! I wish we
+were!"
+
+Such was the incredible beginning of our adventure. And as it began,
+so it continued. We breakfasted at Le Moreau. Miss Falconer ate in the
+dining-room of the small hotel; I sought the kitchen and, warmed by our
+late success, I did not shrink from playing my role. Then we resumed our
+journey, and though we showed our papers twenty times at least as the
+control grew stricter, they were never challenged. I rubbed my eyes
+sometimes. Surely I should wake up presently! We couldn't be here in
+the forbidden region, in the war zone, plunging deeper every instant, in
+peril of our lives.
+
+Yet the proof was thick about us. In the towns we passed we saw troops
+alight from the trains and enter them; we saw farewells and reunions,
+the latter sometimes tearful, but the former invariably brave. We saw
+_depots_ where trucks and ambulances and commissary carts were filled,
+and canteens and soup kitchens where soldiers were being fed. At
+Croix-le-Valois we saw the air turn black with the smoke of the munition
+factories that were working day and night. At St. Remilly above the
+towers of the old chateau we saw the Red Cross flying, and on the
+terraces the reclining figures of wounded men. It seemed impossible that
+sight-seers and pleasure-seekers had thronged along this road so lately.
+The signs of the Touring Club of France, posted at intervals, were
+survivals of an era that was now utterly gone.
+
+With the coming of afternoon, the country grew still more beautiful.
+Orchards were thick about us, though the trees were leafless now. The
+little thatched cottages had odd fungi sprouting from their roofs like
+rosy mushrooms; the trees and streams had a silvery shimmer, like a
+Corot fairy-land.
+
+Then, set like sign-posts of desolation in this loveliness, came the
+ravaged villages. We were on the soil where in the first month of the
+war the Germans had trod as conquerors, and where, step by step, the
+French had driven them back. We passed Cormizy, burnt to the ground
+to celebrate its taking; Le Remy, where the heroic mayor had died,
+transfixed by twenty bayonets; Bar-Villers, a group of ruined houses
+about a mourning, shattered church. It was the region where the Hun
+triumph had spoken aloud, unbridled. Miss Falconer sat white and silent
+as we drove through it; my hands tightened on the wheel.
+
+We had lunched at Tolbiac, late and abominably. Then, leaving the
+highway, we had taken a country road. Two punctures befell us; once
+our carburetor betrayed the trust we placed in it. By the time these
+deficiencies were remedied I had collected dust and grease enough to
+look my part.
+
+It had been, by and large, a singularly speechless day, which my
+spasmodic efforts at entertainment had failed to cheer. The girl tried
+to respond, but her eyes were strained, eager, shadowed; her answers
+came at random. My talk, I suppose, teased her ears like the troublesome
+buzzing of a fly.
+
+"She is thinking," I decided at last, "about those papers. Lord, if she
+doesn't find them she is going to take it hard!"
+
+I left her in peace after that and drove the faster. Luck was with us!
+At the end of our journey everything would be all right.
+
+As evening settled down on us the road grew increasingly lonely. Woods
+of oak-trees were about us, their trunks mossy, their branches lacing;
+on our left was a narrow river thick with rushes and smooth green
+stones. So rutty was the earth that our wheels sank into it and our
+engine labored. There was a charming sylvan look about the scenery; we
+seemed to be alone in the universe: I could not recall when we had last
+seen a peasant or passed a hut.
+
+Suddenly I realized that there was a sound in the distance, not
+continuous, but steadily recurrent, a faint booming, I thought.
+
+"What's that noise off yonder?" I asked, with one ear cocked toward the
+east.
+
+Miss Falconer roused herself.
+
+"It is the cannonading," she answered. "We have come a long way, Mr.
+Bayne. In two hours--in less than that--we could drive to the Front. And
+see!"
+
+The dark was coming fast; a crimson sunset was reddening the river. A
+little below us on the opposite bank, I saw what had been a village once
+upon a time. But some agency of destruction had done its work there;
+blackened spaces and heaped stones and the shells of dwellings rose tier
+on tier among trees that seemed trying to hide them; only on the crest
+of the bank, overlooking the wreck like a gloomy sentinel, one building
+loomed intact, a dark, scarred, frowning castle with medieval walls and
+towers. I stared at the scene of desolation.
+
+"The Germans again!" I said.
+
+"Yes," the girl assented, gazing across the water. "They came here at
+the beginning of the war. They burned the houses and the huts and the
+little church with the image of the Virgin and the tomb of the old
+constable--all Prezelay except the chateau; and they only left that
+standing to give their officers a home."
+
+With an automatic action of feet and fingers, I stopped the car. Here
+was the town that she had shown me on the map that morning when we sat
+like a pair of whispering conspirators in the garden of the Three Kings.
+The obstacles which had seemed so great had melted away before us. This
+ruined village, this heap of stones cross the river, was our goal, the
+key to our mystery, the last scene of our drama--Prezelay.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+THE CASTLE AT PREZELAY
+
+In the midst of my triumph, which was as intense as if I myself, instead
+of pure luck, had engineered our journey, I became aware of a tiny qualm
+as I sat gazing across the stream. Perhaps the gathering night affected
+me, or the air, which was growing chilly, or the remnants of the
+village, which were cheerless, to say the least. But that castle,
+perched so darkly on its crag, with a strip of blood-red sky framing it,
+was at the heart of my feeling. If it had been a nice, worldly-looking,
+well-kept chateau, with poplared walks and a formal garden, I should
+have welcomed it with open arms; but it wasn't, decidedly! It was the
+threatening age-blackened sort of place that inevitably suggests Fulc of
+Anjou, strongholds on the Loire, marauding barons, and the good old days
+with their concomitants of rapine and robbery and death.
+
+It was picturesque, but it was intensely gloomy; the proper spot for a
+catastrophe rather than a happy denouement. I was not impressionable,
+of course; but now that I thought of it, our jaunt had been going with
+a smoothness almost ominous. Could one expect such clock-like regularity
+to run forever without a break?
+
+Take the utter disappearance of the gray car, for instance. That had
+seemed to me reassuring; but was it? Those four men had cared enough
+about Miss Falconer's movements to involve themselves in a murder. Why,
+then, should they have given up the chase in so mysterious a way?
+
+And the girl herself! When I looked at her I felt horribly worried. She
+was shivering through her furs; yet it was not with the cold, I felt
+quite sure. With her hands clasped, she sat staring at that confounded
+castle with a look of actual hunger. She cared too much about this
+thing; she couldn't stand a great deal more.
+
+Well, she wouldn't have to, I concluded, my brief misgivings fading. We
+were out of the woods; another hour would see the business closed. As
+for the men in the car, they were victims of their guilty consciences,
+were no doubt in full flight or hiding somewhere in terror of the law.
+
+At any rate, there was no point in my sitting here like a graven image;
+so I roused myself and wrapped the rugs closer about the girl.
+
+"I'm to drive to the chateau?" I inquired with recovered cheerfulness. I
+had to repeat the words before they broke her trance.
+
+"Yes," she answered. Suddenly, impulsively, she turned toward me,
+her face almost feverish, her eyes astonishingly large and bright. "I
+haven't told you much," she acknowledged tremulously; "but you won't
+think that I don't trust you. It is only that I couldn't talk of it and
+keep my courage; and I must keep it a little longer--until we know the
+truth."
+
+"That's quite all right, Miss Falconer." I was switching on the lamps.
+Then I extinguished them; their clear acetylene glare seemed almost
+weirdly out of place. "We can muddle along without any lights. Not
+much traffic here," I muttered. I had a feeling, anyhow, that
+unostentatiousness of approach might not be bad.
+
+There was intense silence about us; not even a breeze was stirring. A
+thin crescent moon was out, silvering the river and the trees. The road
+was atrocious; on one dark stretch the car, rocking into a rut, jolted
+us viciously and brought my teeth together on the tip of my tongue.
+
+"Sorry," I gasped, between humiliation and pain.
+
+With the silence and the dimness, we were like ghosts, the car like a
+phantom. An old stone bridge seemed to beckon us, and we crossed to the
+other side. There, at Miss Falconer's gesture, I drew the automobile
+off the road at the edge of the town, halted it beneath some trees, and
+helped her to alight. We started up the hill together without a word.
+
+Two ghosts! More and more, as we climbed through the wreck and
+desolation, that was what we seemed. The road was choked with stones
+between which the grass was sprouting; there was nothing left of the
+little church save a single pointed shaft. We climbed rapidly, the girl
+always gazing up at the castle with that same feverish eagerness. She
+had forgotten, I think, that I was there.
+
+At last we were coming to the hilltop and the chateau. Rather
+breathless, I studied its looming walls, its turrets, its three round
+towers. It looked dark and inexplicably menacing, but I had recovered my
+form and could defy it. When we halted at a great iron-studded oak gate
+and Miss Falconer pulled the bell-rope, I was astonished. It had not
+occurred to me that the castle would be more inhabited than the town.
+
+Nor was it, apparently; for no one answered its summons, though I could
+hear the bell jingling faintly somewhere within. Miss Falconer rang a
+second time, then a third; her face shone white in the moonlight; she
+was growing anxious.
+
+"Did you think," I ventured finally, "that there was some one here?"
+
+"Yes; Marie-Jeanne," she answered, listening intently. Then she roused
+herself. "I mean the _gardienne_. She never left, not even when the
+Germans came. They made her cook for them; she said she had been born in
+the keeper's lodge, and her grandfather before her, and that she would
+rather die at Prezelay than go to any other place. But of course she
+may have walked down the river for the evening. Her son's wife is at
+Santierre, two miles off. She may be there."
+
+"That's it," I agreed hastily, the more hastily because I doubted.
+"She's sitting over a fire, toasting her toes, and gossiping and having
+a cup of tea, or whatever people like that use for an equivalent in
+these parts." I suppressed the unwelcome thought that a woman living
+here alone ran a first-rate chance of getting her throat cut by
+strolling vagrants. "Shall we have to wait until she comes back?" I
+asked. "Then let's sit down. I choose this stone!"
+
+On my last word, however, something surprising happened. Miss Falconer,
+in her impatience, put a hand on the bolt of the gate, shook it, and
+raised it, and, lo and behold! the oak frame swung open. Before I quite
+realized the situation, we were inside, in a square courtyard, with
+the _gardienne's_ lodge at the right of us, impenetrably barred and
+shuttered, and before us the portal of the castle, surmounted with
+quaint stone carvings of men in armor riding prancing steeds. The court,
+as revealed by the moonlight, was intact, but neglected. Weeds were
+sprouting between the square blocks of stone that paved it, and in the
+center a wide circular space, charred and blackened, showed where the
+German sentries had built their fires. It was not cheerful, nor was it
+homey. I scarcely blamed Marie-Jeanne for flitting. The faint sound of
+the cannonading had begun again in the distance, but otherwise the place
+was as silent as a tomb.
+
+"It seems strange!" Miss Falconer murmured, looking about in puzzled
+fashion. "Why in the world should she have left the gate open in this
+careless way? Of course there is nothing here for thieves; the Germans
+saw to that; but still, as keeper--Oh, well, it doesn't matter. It saves
+us from waiting till she comes home."
+
+As I followed her toward the castle entrance, she opened the bag she
+carried, and produced a candle, which I hastened to take and light. I
+nearly said, "The latest thing in the housebreaking line, madame, is
+electric torches, not tapers;" but I decided not to. After all, perhaps
+we were housebreakers. How could I tell?
+
+Hot candle wax splashed my fingers and scorched them, but I scarcely
+noticed. My sense of high-gear adventure had reached its zenith now.
+There was something thrilling, something stimulating in this stealthy
+night entrance into a deserted castle. It was an experience, at all
+events; there was no _concierge_ to stump before one through dim
+passages and up winding staircases; no flood of dates and names and
+anecdotes poured inexorably into one's bored ears to insure a _douceur_
+when the tour of the chateau should be done.
+
+The door--faithless Marie-Jeanne!--opened as readily as the outer gate.
+We were entering. I glimpsed in a dim vista a superb Gothic hall of
+magnificent architecture and most imposing proportions, arched and
+carved and stretching off with apparent endlessness into the gloom.
+Holding up my light, I scanned the place with growing interest. It had
+not been demolished, but neither had it been spared. The furniture
+was gone, save for a few scattered chairs and a table; the walls were
+defaced with cartoons and scrawled inscriptions; the floor was
+stained, and littered with empty bottles and broken plates. From the
+chimney-place--a medieval-art jewel topped with carved and colored
+enamels--pieces had been hacked away by some deliberately destructive
+hand. I glanced at Miss Falconer, whose eyes had been following mine.
+
+"They tore down the tapestries," she said beneath her breath. "They
+slashed the old portraits with their swords and broke the windows
+and took away the statues and candlesticks and plate. They cut up the
+furniture and had it used for fire-wood; and the German captain and his
+officers had a feast here and drank to the fall of Paris and ordered
+their soldiers to burn the village to the ground. Oh, I don't like
+the place any more; too much has happened. And--and I don't like
+Marie-Jeanne's not being here, Mr. Bayne. I feel as if there were
+something wrong about it. I believe I am a little--just a little
+afraid!"
+
+"Come, now, you don't expect me to believe that, do you?" I countered
+promptly. "Because I won't. Why, it's your pluck that has kept me up
+all day. Just the same, on general principles, I'll take a look round
+if you'll allow me. Here's a chair, and if you will rest a minute, I'll
+guarantee to find out."
+
+The chair I mentioned was standing near the chimney, and as I spoke I
+walked over to it and started to spin it round. It resisted me heavily;
+I bent over it, lifting my candle. Then I uttered an exclamation, stood
+petrified, and stared.
+
+In the chair, concealed from us until now by the high carved back
+of wood, was something which at first looked like a huddled mass of
+garments, but which on closer scrutiny resolved itself into a woman in
+a striped dress, an apron, and a pair of heavy shoes. There was a cut
+on her cheek, a bruise on her forehead. Locks of graying hair straggled
+from beneath her disarranged white cap, and she glared at me from a
+lean, sallow face with a pair of terrified eyes.
+
+She must be dead, I thought. No living woman could sit so still and
+stare so wildly. The scene in the inn garage rushed back upon me, and
+I must say that my blood turned cold. But she was alive, I saw now; she
+was certainly breathing. And an instant later I realized why she stayed
+so immobile; she was bound hand and foot to the chair she sat in, and
+a colored handkerchief, her own doubtless, had been twisted across her
+mouth to form a gag.
+
+"I think," I head myself saying, "that we have been maligning
+Marie-Jeanne."
+
+A choked, frightened cry from Miss Falconer made me wheel about sharply,
+to find her staring not a me, but at the further wall. Prepared now for
+anything under heaven, I followed her gaze. Above us, circling the whole
+hall, there ran a gallery from which at a distance of some fifteen feet
+from where we stood a wide stone staircase descended; and half-way down
+this, as motionless as statues, as indistinct as shadows, I saw four men
+in the uniform of officers of France.
+
+For an uncanny moment I wondered whether they were specters. For a
+stupid one, I thought they might be people whom the girl had come here
+to meet. Still, if they were, she wouldn't be looking at them in this
+paralyzed fashion. I could not see them plainly,--but they must be the
+men from Bleau.
+
+"Well, Mr. Bayne," the foremost was asking, "did you think we had
+deserted you? Not a bit of it! We came on ahead and rang up the old
+woman there and commandeered her keys. We've been killing time here for
+a good half hour, waiting for you. You must have had tire trouble. And
+you don't seem very pleased to see us now that you've come--eh, what?"
+
+At Bleau the previous night, I was recalling dazedly, there had been
+only three men wearing the horizon blue. Who was this fourth figure, who
+knew my name and spoke such colloquial English? I raised my candle as
+high as possible and scanned him. Then I stood transfixed.
+
+"Van Blarcom!" I gasped. "And in a uniform, by all that's holy!"
+
+He grinned.
+
+"No. You haven't got that quite right," he told me. "What's the use
+keeping up the game now that we're here, all friends together? My name
+isn't Van Blarcom. It's Franz von Blenheim, Mr. Bayne."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+INTRODUCING HERR FRANZ VON BLENHEIM
+
+The words of Franz von Blenheim seemed to fill the hall and reecho
+from the walls and arches, deafening me, leaving me stunned as if by
+an earthquake or by a flash of lightning from clear skies. Yet I never
+though of doubting them. Comatose as my state was, slowly as my brain
+was working, I recognized vaguely how many features of the mystery, both
+past and present, these words explained.
+
+It was odd, but never once had it occurred to me that Van Blarcom might
+be a German. He himself, I began to realize, had taken care of that.
+With considerable acumen he had filled every one of our brief interviews
+with vigorous denunciations of somebody else, dark hints as to intrigues
+that surrounded me and might enmesh me, and solemn warnings and prudent
+counsels, which had brilliantly served his turn. He had kept me so busy
+suspecting Miss Falconer--at the thought I could have beaten my head
+against the wall in token of my abject shame--that my doubts had
+never glanced in his direction; a most humiliating confession, since I
+couldn't deny, reviewing the past in this new light, that circumstances
+had afforded me every opportunity to guess the truth.
+
+There was no time, however, for dwelling on my deficiencies. The next
+half hour would be an uncommonly lively one, I felt quite sure. I might
+call the thing bizarre, fantastic; I might dub it an extravaganza; the
+fact remained that I was shut up in this lonely spot with four entirely
+able-bodied Germans and must match wits with them over some affair
+that apparently was of international consequence; for if it had been
+a twopenny business, Herr von Blenheim, the star agent of the kaiser,
+would never have thought it worth his pains.
+
+With all my fighting spirit rising to meet the odds against us, I cast a
+speculative eye over the Teutons, who had now dissolved their group.
+Van Blarcom himself--Blenheim, rather--descended in a leisurely fashion
+while one of his friends, remaining on the staircase, fixed me with a
+look of intentness almost ominous and the other two placed themselves
+as if casually before the door. They were stalwart, well set-up men,
+I acknowledged as I surveyed them. Though not bad at what our French
+friends call _la boxe_, I was outnumbered. It was obviously a case of
+strategy--but of what sort?
+
+A much defaced table, flanked with a few battered chairs, stood near me,
+and with a premonition that I should want two hands presently, I set my
+candle there. Then I drew a chair forward and turned to the girl with
+outward coolness.
+
+"Please sit down, Miss Falconer," I invited. I wanted time.
+
+She inclined her head and obeyed me very quietly. She was not afraid; I
+saw it with a rush of pride. As she sat erect, her head thrown back,
+on gloved hand resting on the table, she was a picture of spirit and
+steadiness and courage. If I had needed strength I should have found it
+in the fact that her eyes, oddly darkened as always when her errand was
+threatened did not rest on our captors, but turned toward me.
+
+"We'll all sit down," Franz von Blenheim agreed most amiably. It
+evidently amused him to retain the late Mr. Van Blarcom's dialect and
+air. "We can fix this business up in no time; so why not be sociable?"
+He strolled to a chair and sank into it and motioned me to do the same.
+
+"Thanks," I returned, not complying. "If you don't mind, I'd like first
+to untie that woman. I confess to a queer sort of prejudice against
+seeing women bound and gagged. In fact I feel so strongly on the subject
+that it might spoil our whole conference for me." I took a step toward
+the shadowy figure of Marie-Jeanne.
+
+Blenheim did not move, but his eyes seemed to narrow and darken.
+
+"Just leave her alone for the present. She is too fond of
+shrieking--might interrupt our argument," he declared. "And see
+here, Mr. Bayne," he added, warned by my manner, "I want to call your
+attention to the gentleman on the stairs, my friend Schwartzmann. He's
+a crack shot, none better, and he has got you covered. Hadn't you better
+sit down and have a friendly chat?"
+
+Though the stairs were dim, I could see something glittering in the hand
+of the person mentioned, who was impersonating for the evening a dashing
+young captain of the general staff. My fingers strayed toward my pocket
+and my own revolver. Then I pried them away, temporarily, and took a
+provisional seat.
+
+"That's sensible," Franz von Blenheim approved me blandly. "Now, Miss
+Falconer, you know what I'm here for, isn't that so? Just hand me those
+papers and you'll be as free as air. I'll take myself off; you'll never
+see me again probably. That's a fair bargain, isn't it? What do you
+say?"
+
+I was sitting close to the girl, so close that her soft furs brushed
+me and I could feel the flutter of her breath against my cheek. At
+Blenheim's proposition I glanced at her. She was measuring him steadily.
+Then she looked at me, and her eyes seemed to hold some message that I
+could not read.
+
+"Perhaps, Miss Falconer," I interposed, "you have not quite grasped the
+situation." I was sparring for time; she wanted to convey something to
+me, I was sure. "It is rather complicated. This gentleman has turned
+out to be a well-known agent of the kaiser. He was traveling on the _Re
+d'Italia_, I gather, on a forged passport, and had helped himself to my
+baggage as the most convenient way of smuggling some papers to the other
+side."
+
+He grinned assentingly.
+
+"You owe me one for that," he owned. "You see, it was my second trip
+on that line, and I thought they might have me spotted; I had a lot of
+things to carry home,--reports, information, confidential letters, and I
+concluded they would be safer with a nice, innocent young man like you.
+It didn't work, as things went. It was just a little too clever. But if
+you hadn't mixed yourself up with this young lady, and tossed packages
+overboard for her under the noses of the stewards, and got yourself
+suspected and your baggage searched, I should have turned the trick!"
+
+His share in the tangled episode on board the steamer was unfolding. I
+understood now why he had sprung to my rescue in the salon when I was
+accused. Naturally he had not wanted my traps searched, considering what
+was in them.
+
+"As you say, you were a little too clever," I agreed.
+
+His eyes glinted viciously.
+
+"Well, it's no use crying over spilt milk," he retorted; "and besides,
+the papers you are going to hand me to-night will even up the score. It
+was a piece of luck, my running across Miss Falconer on the liner. Of
+course the minute I heard her name I knew what she was crossing for."
+The dickens he did! "All I had to do was to follow her, and by the time
+we reached Bleau I had guessed enough to come ahead of her. But I'll
+admit, Mr. Bayne, now it's all over, it made me nervous to have you
+popping up at every turn! I began to think that you suspected me--that
+you were trailing me. If you had, you know, I shouldn't have stood a
+chance on earth. You could have said a word to the first gendarme you
+met and had me laid by the heels and ended it. That was why I kept
+warning you off. But I needn't have worried. You drank in everything I
+told you as innocent as a babe!"
+
+If he wanted revenge for my last remark, he had it. I looked at the
+girl beside me, so watchfully composed and fearless, then at the
+fixed, terrified glare of the motionless Marie-Jeanne. With a little
+rudimentary intelligence on my part this situation would have been
+spared us.
+
+"Yes," I acknowledged bitterly; "I did."
+
+"Except for that," he grinned, "it went like clockwork. There wasn't
+even enough danger in the thing to give it spice. Do you know, there
+isn't a capital in Europe where I can't get disguises, money, passports
+within twelve hours if I want them. Oh, you have a bit to learn about
+us, you people on the other side! I've crossed the ocean four
+times since the war started; I've been in London, Rome, Paris,
+Petrograd--pretty much everywhere. I'm getting homesick, though. The
+_laissez-passer_ I've picked up, or forged, no matter which, takes
+me straight through to the Front; and I've got friends even in the
+trenches. Before the Frenchies know it I'll be across no-man's-land and
+inside the German lines!"
+
+For a moment, as I listened, I was dangerously near admiring him. He was
+certainly exaggerating; but it couldn't all be brag. The life of this
+spy of the first water, of international fame, must be rather marvelous;
+to defy one's enemies with success, to journey calmly through their
+capitals, to stroll undetected among their agents of justice--were not
+things any fool could do. He carried his life in his hand, this Franz
+von Blenheim. He had courage; he even had genius along his special
+lines. His impersonation on the liner, shrewd, slangy, coarse-grained,
+patronizing, had been a triumph. Then, suddenly, I remembered a murdered
+boy beside whom I had knelt that morning, and my brief flicker of homage
+died.
+
+"You think I can't do it, eh?" He had misinterpreted my expression.
+"Well, let me tell you I did just a year ago and got over without a
+scratch. To get across no-man's-land you have to play dead, as you
+Yankees put it; you lie flat on the ground and pull yourself forward a
+foot at a time and keep your eye on the search-lights so that when they
+come your way you can drop on your face and lie like a corpse until
+they move on. It's not pleasant, of course; but in this game we take our
+chances. And now I think I'll be claiming my winnings if you please."
+
+I straightened in my chair, recognizing a crisis. With his last phrase
+he had shed the bearing of Mr. John Van Blarcom, and from the disguise
+all in an instant there emerged the Prussian, insolent, overbearing,
+fixing us with a look of challenge, and addressing us with crisp
+command. No; the kaiser's agent was not a figure of romance or of
+adventure. He was a force as able, as ruthless, as cruel as the land he
+served.
+
+"Miss Falconer," he demanded briefly, "where are those papers? I am not
+to be played with, I assure you. If you think I am, just recall this
+morning, and your chauffeur. We didn't kill him for the pleasure of it;
+he had his chance as you have. But when we went for our car he was there
+in the garage, sleeping; he seemed to think we had designs on him, and
+tried to rouse the inn."
+
+"Do you call that an excuse for a murder?" I exclaimed. "You
+cold-blooded villain!"
+
+"I don't make excuses." His voice was hard and arrogant. "I am calling
+the matter to your notice as a kind warning, Mr. Bayne. You said a
+little while ago that to see a woman gagged and bound distressed you.
+Well, unless I have those papers within five minutes, you will see
+something worse than that!"
+
+At the moment what I saw was red. There was something beating in my
+throat, choking me; I knew neither myself nor the primitive impulses I
+felt.
+
+"If you lay a finger on Miss Falconer," I heard myself saying slowly, "I
+swear I'll kill you."
+
+Then through the crimson mist that enveloped me I saw Blenheim laugh.
+
+"Come, Mr. Bayne," he taunted me, "remember our friend Schwartzmann.
+This is your business, Miss Falconer, I take it. What are you going to
+do?"
+
+The girl flung her head back, and her eyes blazed as she answered him.
+
+"You can torture me," she said scornfully. "You can kill me. But I will
+never give you the papers; you may be sure of that."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+IN THE DARK
+
+I thought of a number of things in the ensuing thirty seconds, but they
+all narrowed down swiftly to a mere thankfulness that I had been born.
+Suppose I hadn't; or suppose I had not happened to stop at the St. Ives
+Hotel and sail on the _Re d'Italia_; or that I had remained in Rome with
+Jack Herriott instead of hurrying on to Paris; or had let my quest of
+the girl end in the rue St.-Dominique instead of trailing her to Bleau.
+If one of these links had been omitted, the chain of circumstance would
+have been broken, and Miss Falconer would have sat here confronting
+these four men alone.
+
+It was extremely hard for me to believe that the scene was genuine.
+The dark hall, the one wavering, flickering candle lighting only the
+immediate area of our conference, the bound woman in the chair, the
+watchful attitude of our captors. Mr. Schwartzmann's ready weapon--all
+were the sort of thing that does not happen to people in our prosaic day
+and age. It was like an old-time romantic drama; I felt inadequate,
+cast for the hero. I might have been Francois Villon, or some such
+Sothern-like incarnation, for all the civilized resources that I could
+summon. There were no bells here to be rung for servants, no telephones
+to be utilized, no police station round the corner from which to
+commandeer prompt aid.
+
+The most alarming feature of the affair, however, was the manner of
+Franz von Blenheim, which was not so much melodramatic as businesslike
+and hard. At Miss Falconer's defiance he looked her up and down quite
+coolly. Then, turning in his seat, he began giving orders to his men.
+
+"Schwartzmann," ran the first of these, "I want you to watch this
+gentleman. He will probably make some movement presently; if he does,
+you are to fire, and not to miss. And you"--he turned to the men by the
+door--"pile some wood in the chimney-place and light it. There are some
+sticks over yonder,--but if you don't find enough, break up a chair.
+Then when you get a good blaze, heat me one of the fire-irons. Heat it
+red-hot. And be quick! We are wasting time!"
+
+The color was leaving the girl's cheeks, but she sat even straighter,
+prouder. As for me, for one instant I experienced a blessed relief.
+I had been right; it was all impossible. One didn't talk seriously of
+red-hot irons.
+
+"You must think you are King John," I laughed. "But you're overplaying.
+Don't worry, Miss Falconer; he won't touch you. There are things that
+men don't do."
+
+He looked at me, not angrily, not in resentment, but in pure contempt;
+and I remembered. There were people, hundreds of them, in the burning
+villages of Belgium, in the ravaged lands of northern France, who had
+once felt the same assurance that certain things couldn't be done and
+had learned that they could. I glanced at the men who were piling wood
+on the hearth, at their sullen blue eyes, their air of rather stupid
+arrogance. I had walked, it seemed, into a nightmare; but then, so had
+the world.
+
+"This isn't a tea party, Mr. Bayne," said Franz von Blenheim. "It is
+war. Those papers belong to my government and they are going back. I
+shall stop at nothing, nothing on earth, to get them; so if you have any
+influence with this young lady, you had better use it now."
+
+"I am not afraid." The girl's voice was unshaken, bless her. "I said you
+could kill me--and I meant it. But I will not tell."
+
+"And I will not kill you, Miss Falconer." The German's tones were level,
+and his eyes, as they dwelt steadily on her, were as hard and cold as
+steel. "I don't want you dead; I want you living, with a tongue and
+using it; and you will use it. You talk bravely, but you have no
+conception--how should you have?--of physical pain. When that iron is
+red-hot, if you have not spoken, I shall hold it to your arm and press
+it--"
+
+"Damn you!" The cry was wrenched out of me. "Not while I am here!"
+
+"You will be here, Mr. Bayne, just so long as it suits me." A sort of
+cold ferocity was growing in Blenheim's tones. "And you have yourself
+to thank for your position, let me remind you; you would thrust yourself
+in. I don't know what you are doing in the business--a ridiculous
+mountebank in a leather cap and coat! It's a way you Yankees have,
+meddling in things that don't concern you. You seem to think that you
+have special rights under Providence, that you own everything in the
+universe, even to the high seas. Well, we'll settle with your country
+for its munitions and its notes and its driveling talk about atrocities
+a little later, when we have finished up the Allies. And I'll deal with
+you to-night if you dare to lift a hand."
+
+There seemed only one answer possible, and my muscles were stiffening
+for it when suddenly Miss Falconer's handkerchief, a mere wisp of linen
+which she had been clenching between her fingers, dropped to the floor.
+With a purely automatic movement, I bent to recover it for her; she
+leaned down to receive it. Her pale face and lovely dilated eyes were
+close to me for a fleeting second, and though her lips did not move, I
+seemed to catch the merest breath, the faintest gossamer whisper that
+said:
+
+"The stairs!"
+
+Blenheim's gaze, full of suspicion, was upon us as we straightened, but
+he could not possibly have heard anything; I had barely heard myself. I
+racked my brains. The stairs! But the man Schwartzmann was guarding them
+with his revolver. I couldn't imagine what she meant; and then suddenly
+I knew.
+
+Throughout the entire scene, whenever I had glanced at her, I had
+noticed the steady way in which her look met mine and then turned aside.
+It had seemed almost like a signal or a message she was trying to give
+me. And which way had her eyes always gone? Why, down the hall!
+
+I looked in that direction and felt my heart leap up exultantly. Perhaps
+twenty feet from us, just where the radius of the candle-light merged
+off into the darkness, I glimpsed what seemed the merest ghost of a
+circular stone staircase, carved and sculptured cunningly, like lacy
+foam. Up into the dusk it wound, to the gallery, and to a door. Behold
+our objective! I wasted no precious time in pondering the whys and the
+wherefores. At any rate, once inside with the bolts shot we could count
+on a breathing-space.
+
+I cast a final glance at Blenheim where he lolled across the table, and
+at the shadowy menacing figure of the armed sentinel on the stairs. The
+men at the hearth had piled their wood and were bending forward to light
+it.
+
+"Be ready, please!" I said to the girl, aloud.
+
+As I spoke I bent forward, seized the table by its legs, and raised
+it, and concentrated all the wrath, resentment and detestation that
+had boiled in me for half an hour into the force with which I dashed it
+forward against Blenheim's face. He grunted profoundly as it struck
+him. Toppling over with a crash, he rolled upon the floor. The candle,
+falling, extinguished itself promptly, and we were left standing in a
+hall as black as ink.
+
+Simultaneously with the blow I had struck there came a spit of flame
+from the staircase, a sharp crack, and as I ducked hastily a bullet
+spurted past me, within three inches of my head. Miss Falconer was
+beside me. Together we retreated, while a second shot, which this time
+went wide, struck the wall beyond us and proved that Schwartzmann,
+though handicapped, was not giving up the fight.
+
+So far things had gone better than I had dared to think was possible.
+Now, however, they took a sudden and most unwelcome turn. One of the men
+by the chimney-place must have wasted no time in leaping for me; for
+at this instant, quite without warning, he catapulted on me through the
+darkness with the force of a battering-ram.
+
+The table, which I still held clutched with a view to emergencies, broke
+the force of his onslaught. He reeled, stumbled, and collapsed on his
+knees. However, he was lacking neither in Teutonic efficiency nor in
+resource. Putting out a prompt hand, he seized my ankle and jerked my
+foot from under me; the table dropped from my grasp with a splintering
+uproar, and I fell.
+
+Before I could recover myself my enemy had rolled on top of me, and I
+felt his fingers at my throat as he clamored in German for a light. He
+was a heavy man; his bulk was paralyzing; but I stiffened every muscle.
+With a mighty heave I turned half over, rose on my elbow, and delivered
+a blow at what, I fondly hoped, might prove the point of his chin.
+
+Dark as it was, I had made no miscalculation. He dropped on me once
+again, but this time as an inert mass. Burrowing out from under him, I
+sprang to my feet aglow with triumph--and found myself in the clutch
+of the second gentleman from the chimney-place, who apparently had come
+hotfoot to his comrade's aid.
+
+I was fairly caught. His arms went round me like steel girders,
+pinioning mine to my sides before I knew what he was about. In sheer
+desperation I summoned all the strength I possessed and a little more.
+Ah! I had wrenched my right arm loose; now we should see! I raised it
+and managed, despite the close quarters at which we were contending, to
+plant a series of crashing blows on my adversary's face.
+
+The fellow, I must say, bore up pluckily beneath the punishment. He hung
+on. There would be a light in a moment, he was doubtless thinking, and
+when once that came to pass, it would be all over with me. But at my
+fifth blow he wavered groggily, and at my sixth, endurance failed him.
+He groaned softly. Then his grasp relaxed, and he collapsed quietly on
+the floor.
+
+Throughout the swift march of these events we had heard nothing of Herr
+von Blenheim, a fact from which I deduced with thankfulness that he was
+temporarily stunned. Unluckily, he now recovered. As I stood victorious,
+but breathless, my cap lost in the scuffle and my coat torn, I heard him
+stirring, and an instant later he pulled himself to his feet and flashed
+on an electric torch.
+
+By its weird beam I saw that Miss Falconer was close beside me. Good
+heavens! Why, I though in anguish, wasn't she already upstairs? But I
+knew only too well; she wouldn't desert her champion. It was probably
+too late now. Blenheim, much congested as to countenance, seemed on the
+point of springing; his battered aids were struggling up in menacing,
+if unsteady, fashion; and Mr. Schwartzmann, at length provided with the
+light he wanted, was aiming at me with ominous deliberation from his
+coign of vantage above.
+
+However, we were at the circular staircase. Again I caught up the table
+and held it before us as a shield while we climbed upward, side by side.
+In the distance my friend Schwartzmann was hopefully potting at us. A
+bullet, with a sharp ping, embedded itself in the thick wood in harmless
+fashion; another struck the shaft beside me, splintering its stone.
+We were at the last turn--but our pursuers were climbing also. I bent
+forward and let them have the table, hurling it with all possible force.
+
+As it catapulted down upon them it knocked Blenheim off his balance,
+and he in his unforeseen descent swept the others from their feet. A
+swearing, groaning mass, a conglomeration of helplessly waving arms and
+legs, they rolled downward. Victory! I was about to join Miss Falconer
+in the doorway when there came a final flash from the opposite
+staircase, and I felt a stinging sensation across my forehead and a
+spurt of blood into my eyes.
+
+The pain of the slight wound promptly altered my intentions. Instead
+of leaving the gallery, I sprang forward to the balustrade. Whipping my
+revolver out at last, I aimed deliberately and fired; whereupon I had
+the pleasure of seeing Mr. Schwartzmann rock, struggle, apparently
+regain his equilibrium, and then suddenly crumple up and pitch headlong
+down the stairs.
+
+Below, Blenheim and his friend were extricating themselves from that
+blessed table. I passed through the door and thrust it shut and shot the
+bolts. We were safe for the present. I could not see Miss Falconer, nor
+did she speak to me; but her hand groped for my arm and rested there,
+and I covered it with one of mine.
+
+Then, as we stood contentedly drawing breath, we heard steps mounting
+the staircase. Some one struck a vicious blow against the heavy door.
+Blenheim's voice, hoarse and muffled, reached us through the panels.
+
+"Can you hear me there?" it asked.
+
+If tones could kill! I summoned breath enough to answer with cheerful
+coolness.
+
+"Every syllable," I responded. "What did you wish to say?"
+
+"Just this." He was panting, either with exhaustion or fury, and there
+were slow, labored pauses between his words. "I will give you half an
+hour, exactly, to come out--with the papers. After that we will break
+the door down. And then you can say your prayers."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE GUEST OF PREZELAY
+
+The sanctuary into which we had stumbled was as black as Erebus save for
+one dimly grayish patch, which, I surmised, meant a window. When those
+heavy feet had clumped down the staircase, silence enveloped us again,
+beatific silence. Instantly I banished the late Mr. Van Blarcom from my
+consciousness. With a good stout door between us what importance had his
+threats?
+
+The truth was that my blood was singing through my veins and my spirits
+were soaring. I would gladly have stood there forever, triumphant in the
+dark, with Miss Falconer's soft, warm fingers trembling a little, but
+lying in contented, almost cosy, fashion under mine. Had there ever been
+such a girl, at once so sweet and so daring? To think how she had waited
+for me all through that battle below!
+
+A little breathless murmur came to me through the darkness.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Bayne! You were so wonderful! How am I ever going to thank
+you?" was what it said.
+
+"You needn't. Let me thank you for letting me in on it!" I exulted
+happily. "I give you my word, I haven't enjoyed anything so much in
+years. It was all a hallucination, of course; but it was jolly while it
+lasted. I was only worried every instant for fear the hall and the men
+would vanish, like an Arabian Nights' palace or the Great Horn Spoon or
+Aladdin's jinn!"
+
+Very gently she withdrew her fingers, and my mood toppled ludicrously.
+Why had I been rejoicing? We were in the deuce of a mess! So far I had
+simply won a half hour's respite to be followed by the deluge; for if
+Blenheim had been ruthless before, what were his probable intentions
+now?
+
+"We have lost our candle in the fracas," I muttered lamely.
+
+"It doesn't matter. I have another," she answered in a soft, unsteady
+voice.
+
+As she coaxed the light into being, I made a rapid survey. We were in a
+room of gray stone, of no great size and quite bare of furnishing, save
+for a few stone benches built into alcoves in the wall. The bareness
+of the scene emphasized our lack of resources. As a sole ray of hope, I
+perceived a possible line of retreat if things should grow too warm for
+us, a door facing the one by which we had come in.
+
+With all the excitement, I had forgotten Mr. Schwartzmann's bullet,
+which, I have no doubt, had left me a gory spectacle. At any rate,
+I frightened Miss Falconer when the candle-light revealed me. In
+an instant she was bending over me, forcing me gently down upon a
+particularly cold, hard bench.
+
+"They shot you!" she was exclaiming. Her voice was low, but it held an
+astonishing protective fierceness. "They--they dared to hurt you! Oh,
+why didn't you tell me? Is it very bad?"
+
+"No! no!" I protested, dabbing futilely at my forehead. "It isn't of
+the least importance. I assure you it is only a scratch. In fact," I
+groaned, "nobody could hurt my head; it is too solid. It must be ivory.
+If I had had a vestige of intelligence, an iota of it, the palest
+glimmer, I should have known from the beginning exactly who these
+fellows were!"
+
+She was sitting beside me now, bending forward, all consoling eagerness.
+
+"That is ridiculous!" she declared. "How could you guess?"
+
+"Easily enough," I murmured. "I had all the clues at Gibraltar. Why,
+yesterday, on my way to your house in the rue St.-Dominique, I went over
+the whole case in the taxi, and still I didn't see. I let the fellow
+confide in me on the ship and warn me on the train and give me a final
+solemn ultimatum at the inn last night and come on here to frighten you
+and threaten you--when just a word to the police would have settled
+him forever. By George, I can't believe it! I should take a prize at an
+idiot show."
+
+She laughed unsteadily.
+
+"I don't see that," she answered. "Why should you have suspected him
+when even the authorities didn't guess? You are not a detective. You are
+a--a very brave, generous gentleman, who trusted a girl against all the
+evidence and helped her and protected her and risked your life for
+hers. Isn't that enough? And about their frightening me downstairs--they
+didn't. You see, Mr. Bayne--you were there."
+
+A wisp of red-brown hair had come loose across her forehead. Her face,
+flushed and royally grateful, was smiling into mine. Till that moment I
+had never dreamed that eyes could be so dazzling. I thrust my hands deep
+into my pockets; I felt they were safer so.
+
+"What is it?" she faltered, a little startled, as I rose.
+
+"Nothing--now," I replied firmly. "I'll tell you later, to-morrow maybe,
+when we have seen this thing through. And in the meantime, whatever
+happens, I don't want you to give a thought to it. The German doesn't
+live who can get the better of me--not after what you have said."
+
+The situation suddenly presented itself in rosy colors. I saw how strong
+the door was, what a lot of breaking it would take. And if they did
+force a way in, then I could try some sharp-shooting. But Miss Falconer
+was getting up slowly.
+
+"Now the papers, Mr. Bayne," said she.
+
+To be sure, the papers! I had temporarily forgotten them.
+
+"They can't be here," I said blankly, gazing about the room.
+
+"No, not here. In there." She motioned toward the inner door. "This
+is the old suite of the lords of Prezelay. We are in the room of the
+guards, where the armed retainers used to lie all night before the fire,
+watching. Then comes the antechamber and then the room of the squires
+and then the bedchamber of the lord." Her voice had fallen now as if she
+thought that the walls were listening. "In the lord's room there is a
+secret hiding-place behind a panel; and if the papers are at Prezelay,
+they will be there."
+
+I took the candle from her, turned to the door, and opened it.
+
+"I hope they are," I said. "Let us go and see."
+
+The antechamber, the room of the squires, the bedchamber of the lord.
+Such terms were fascinating; they called up before me a whole picture
+of feudal life. Thanks to the attentions of the Germans, the rooms were
+mere empty shells, however, though they must have been rather splendid
+when decked out with furniture and portraits and tapestries before the
+war.
+
+Our steps echoed on the stone as we traversed the antechamber, a quaint
+round place, lined with bull's-eye windows and presided over by the
+statues of four armed men. Another door gave us entrance to the quarter
+of the squires. We started across it, but in the center of the floor I
+stopped. In all the other rooms of the castle dust had lain thick, but
+there was none here. Elsewhere the windows had been closed and the air
+heavy and musty, but here the soft night breeze was drifting in. On
+a table, in odd conjunction, stood the remains of a meal, a roll of
+bandages, and a half-burned candle; and finally, against the wall lay a
+bed of a sort, a mattress piled with tumbled sheets.
+
+Were these Marie-Jeanne's quarters? I did not know, but I doubted. I
+turned to the girl.
+
+"Miss Falconer," I said, attempting naturalness, "will you go back to
+the guard-room and wait there a few minutes, please? I think--that is,
+it seems just possible that some one is hiding in yonder. I'd prefer to
+investigate alone if you don't mind."
+
+I broke off, suddenly aware of the look she was casting round her. It
+did not mean fear; it could mean nothing but an incredulous, dawning
+hope. These signs of occupancy suggested to her something so wonderful,
+so desirable that she simply dared not credit them; she was dreading
+that they might slip through her fingers and fade away! I made a valiant
+effort at understanding.
+
+"Perhaps," I said, "you're expecting some one. Did you think that a--a
+friend of yours might have arrived here before we came?" She did not
+glance at me, but she bent her head, assenting. All her attention was
+focused raptly on that bed beside the wall.
+
+"Yes," she whispered; "a long time before us. A month ago at least." Her
+eyes had begun to shine. "Oh, I don't dare to believe it; I've hardly
+dared to hope for it. But if it is true, I am going to be happier than I
+ever thought I could be again."
+
+She made a swift movement toward the door, but I forestalled her.
+Whatever that room held, I must have a look at it before she went. I
+flung the door open, blocked her passage, and stopped in my tracks, for
+the best of reasons. A young man was sitting on a battered oak chest
+beneath a window, facing me, and in his right hand, propped on his
+knees, there glittered a revolver that was pointed straight at my heart.
+
+I stood petrified, measuring him. He was lightly built and slender. He
+had a manner as glittering as his weapon, and a pair of remarkably cool
+and clear gray eyes. His picturesqueness seemed wasted on mere flesh
+and blood it was so perfect. Coatless, but wearing a shirt of the finest
+linen, he looked like some old French duelist and ought, I felt, to be
+gazing at me, rapier in hand, from a gilt-framed canvas on the wall.
+
+In the brief pause before he spoke I gathered some further data. He was
+a sick man and he had recently been wounded; at present he was keeping
+up by sheer courage, not by strength. His lips were pressed in a
+straight line, his eyes were shadowed, and his pallor was ghastly.
+Finally, he was wearing his left arm in a sling across his breast.
+
+"Monsieur," he now enunciated clearly, "will raise both hands and keep
+them lifted. Monsieur sees, doubtless, that I am in no state for a
+wrestling-match. For that very reason he must take all pains not to
+forget himself--for should he stir, however slightly, I grieve to say
+that I must shoot."
+
+The casualness of his tones made Blenheim's menaces seem childish and
+futile. I had not the slightest doubt that he would keep his word. Yet,
+without any reason whatever, I liked him and I had no fear of him; I did
+not feel for a single instant that Miss Falconer was in danger; she was
+as safe with him, I knew instinctively, as she was with me.
+
+I opened my lips to parley, but found myself interrupted. A cry came
+from behind me, a low, utterly rapturous cry. I was thrust aside, and
+saw the girl spring past me. An instant later she was by the stranger,
+kneeling, with her arms about him and her bright head against his cheek.
+
+"Jean! Dear Jean!" she was crying between tears and laughter. "We
+thought you were dead! We thought you were never coming back to
+Raincy-la-Tour!"
+
+It seemed to me that some one had struck my head a stunning blow. For an
+interval I stood dazed; then, painfully, my brain stirred. Things went
+dancing across it like sharp, stabbing little flames, guesses, memories,
+scraps of talk I had heard, items I had read; but they were scattered,
+without cohesion; like will-o'-the-wisps, they could not be seized.
+
+There was a young man, a noble of France, who had been a hero. I had
+read of him in a certain extra, as my steamer left New York. He
+had disappeared. Certain papers had vanished with him. He had been
+suspected, because it was known that the Germans wanted those special
+documents. All the world, I thought dully, seemed to be hunting papers;
+the French, the Germans, Miss Falconer, and I.
+
+Once more I looked at the man on the chest. He had dropped his pistol
+and was clasping the girl to him, soothing her, stroking her hair. My
+brain began to work more rapidly. The little flashes of light seemed to
+run together, to crystallize into a whole. I knew.
+
+Jean-Herve-Marie-Olivier, the Duke of Raincy-la-Tour, the Firefly of
+France.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+THE FIREFLY OF FRANCE
+
+He was very weak indeed; it seemed a miracle that, at the sounds below,
+he had found strength to drag himself from his bed and crawl inch by
+inch to the room of the secret panel to mount guard there; and no sooner
+had he soothed Miss Falconer than he collapsed in a sort of swoon. We
+laid him on the chest, and I fetched a pillow for his head and stripped
+off my coat and spread it over him. I took out my pocket-flask, too, and
+forced a few drops between his teeth. In short I tried to play the game.
+
+When his eyes opened, however, my endurance had reached its limits.
+With a muttered excuse,--not that I flattered myself they wanted me to
+stay!--I left them and stumbled into the room of the squires, taking
+refuge in the grateful dark. I don't know how long I sat there, elbows
+on knees, hands propping my head; but it was a ghastly vigil. In this
+round, unlike the battle in the hall, I had not been victor. Instead, I
+had taken the count.
+
+I knew now, of course, that I was in love with Esme Falconer. Judging
+from the violence of the sensation, I must have loved her for quite a
+while. Probably it had begun that night in the St. Ives restaurant; for
+when before had I watched any girl with such special, ecstatic, almost
+proprietary rapture? Yes, that was why, ever since, I had been cutting
+such crazy capers. From first to last they were the natural thing, the
+prerogative of a man in my state of mind or heart.
+
+Many threads of the affair still remained to be unraveled. I didn't know
+what the duke was doing here, what he had been about for a month past,
+how the girl, far off in America, had guessed his whereabouts and his
+need; nor did I care. His mere existence was enough--that and Esme's
+love for him. All my interest in my Chinese puzzle had come to a
+wretched end.
+
+"Confound him!" I thought savagely. "We could have spared him perfectly.
+What business has he turning up at the eleventh hour? He didn't cross
+the ocean with her. He didn't suspect her unforgivably. He didn't help
+her, and disguise himself as a chauffeur for her, and wing Schwartzmann,
+and bruise up the other chaps and send them rolling in a heap. This is
+my adventure. He must have had a hundred. Why couldn't he stick to his
+high-flying and dazzling and let me alone?"
+
+The murmur of voices drifted from the lord's bedchamber. I could guess
+what they had to say to each other, Miss Falconer and her duke. The
+Firefly of France! Even I, a benighted foreigner, knew the things that
+title stood for: heroism, in a land where every soldier was a hero;
+praise and medals and glory; thirty conquered aeroplanes--a record over
+which his ancestors, those old marshals and constables lying effigied on
+their tombs of marble with their feet resting on carved lions, must nod
+their heads with pride.
+
+"Mr. Bayne!"
+
+It was Miss Falconer's voice. I rose reluctantly and obeyed the summons.
+The Firefly was sitting propped on the chest, white, but steadier, while
+Esme still knelt beside him, holding his hand in hers.
+
+"I have been telling Jean, Mr. Bayne, how you have helped us." The
+radiance of her face, the lilt of her voice, stabbed me with a jealous
+pang. I wanted to see her happy, Heaven knew, but not quite in this
+manner. "And he wants to thank you for all that you have done."
+
+The Duke of Raincy-la-Tour spoke to me in English that was correct, but
+quaintly formal, of a decided charm.
+
+"Monsieur," he said, "I offer you my gratitude. And if you will
+touch the hand of one concerning whom, I fear, very evil things are
+believed--"
+
+I forced a smile and a hearty pressure.
+
+"I'll risk it," I assured him. "The chain of evidence against you seemed
+far-fetched to say the least. They pointed out accusingly that your
+father and your grandfather had been royalists, and that therefore--"
+
+He made a gesture.
+
+"May their souls find repose! Monsieur, it is true that they were.
+But if they lived to-day, my father and grandfather, they would not be
+traitors. They would wear, like me, the uniform of France."
+
+He smiled, and I knew once for all that I could never hate him; that
+mere envy and a shame of it were the worst that I could feel. Everything
+about him won me, his simplicity, his fine pride, his clearness of eye
+and voice, his look of a swift, polished sword blade. I had never seen
+a man like him. The Duchess of Raincy-la-Tour would be a lucky woman; so
+much was plain.
+
+I found a seat on the window ledge, the girl remained kneeling by him,
+and he told us his story, always in that quaint, formal speech. As
+it went on it absorbed me. I even forgot those clasped hands for an
+occasional instant. In every detail, in every quiet sentence, there
+was some note that brought before me the Firefly's achievements, the
+marauding airships he had climbed into the air to meet, the foes he had
+swooped from the blue to conquer, his darts into the land of his enemies
+where there was a price upon his head.
+
+The story had to do with a night when he had left the French lines
+behind him. His commander had been quite frank. The mission meant his
+probable death. He was to wear a German uniform; to land inside the
+lines of the kaiser, to conceal his plane, if luck favored him, among
+the trees in the grounds of the old chateau of Ranceville; to get what
+knowledge and sketch what plans he could of defenses against which the
+French attacks had hitherto broken vainly, and to bring them home.
+
+All had gone well at first. His gallant little plane had winged its way
+into the unknown like a darting swallow; he had landed safely; and after
+he had walked for hours with the Germans about him and death beside him,
+he had gained his spoils. It was as he rose for the return flight that
+the alarm was given. He got away; but he had five hostile aircraft after
+him. Could he hope to elude them and to land safely at the French lines?
+
+It was in that hour, while the night lingered and the stars still shone
+and the cannon of the two armies challenged each other steadily, that
+the Firefly of France fought his greatest battle in the air. Since his
+whole aim was escape, it was bloodless; he had to trust to skill and
+cunning; he dared manoeuvers that appalled others, dropped plummet-like,
+looped dizzily, soared to the sheerest heights. He had been wounded. The
+framework of his plane was damaged. Still he gained on his foes and won
+through to the lines of France.
+
+"But I might not land there," he explained. "The Germans followed. A
+mist had closed about us, hiding us from my friends below. I heard
+only my propeller; and that, by now, sounded faint to me, for I was
+weakening; one shot had hit my shoulder and another had wounded my left
+arm."
+
+The girl swayed closer against him, watching him with eyes of worship.
+Well, I didn't wonder, though it cut me to the heart. Even a
+fairy prince could have been no worthier of her than this
+Jean-Herve-Marie-Olivier; of that at least, I told myself dourly, I must
+be glad.
+
+"As I raced on," said the duke, "there came a certain thought to me.
+We had traveled far; we were in the country near Prezelay, my cousin's
+house. The village, I knew, was ruined, but the chateau stood; and if
+I could reach it, old Marie-Jeanne would help me. You comprehend, my
+weakness was growing. I knew I had little more time."
+
+The shrouding mist had aided him to lose those pursuing vultures. The
+last of them fell off, baffled,--or afraid to go deeper into France. Now
+he emerged again into the clear air and the starlight. The land beneath
+him was a scudding blur, with a dark-green mass in its center, the
+forest of La Fay.
+
+And then, suddenly, he knew he must land if he were not to lose
+consciousness and hurtle down blindly; and with set teeth and sweat
+beading his forehead, he began the descent. At the end his strength
+failed him. The plane crashed among the trees. "But Saint Denis, who
+helps all Frenchmen, helped me,"--he smiled--"and I was thrown clear."
+
+From that thicket where his machine lay hidden it was a mile to
+Prezelay. He dragged himself over this distance, sometimes on his hands
+and knees. Soon after dawn Marie-Jeanne, answering a discordant ringing,
+found a man lying outside the gate and babbling deliriously, her
+master's cousin, in a blood-soaked uniform, holding out a bundle of
+papers, and begging her by the soul of her mother to put them in the
+castle's secret hiding-place.
+
+She did it. Then she coaxed the wounded man to the rooms opening from
+the gallery and tended him day and night through the weeks of fever that
+ensued. From his ravings she learned that he was in danger and feared
+pursuers; and with the peasant's instinct for caution, she had not dared
+to send for help.
+
+"It was yesterday," the duke told us, "that my mind came back. I knew
+then what must be thought of me, what must be said of me, all over
+France." He was leaning on the wall now, exhausted and white, but
+dauntless. "No matter for that--I have the papers. You recall the
+hiding-place?"
+
+He smiled as he asked the question, and Miss Falconer smiled back at
+him. Getting to her feet, she ran her fingers across the oak panel over
+his head, where for centuries a huntsman had been riding across a forest
+glade and blowing his horn. The bundle of his hunting-knife protruded
+just a little; and as the girl pressed it, the panel glided silently
+open, revealing a space, square and dark and cobwebby.
+
+Something was lying there, a thin, wafer-like packet of papers, the
+papers for which the Firefly of France had shed his blood. She held them
+up in triumph. But the duke was still smiling faintly. He thrust one
+hand into his shirt and drew out a duplicate package, which he raised
+for us to see.
+
+"Behold!" he said. "They are copies. All that I sketched that night near
+Ranceville, all that I wrote--I did not once, but twice. These I carried
+openly, to be found if I were captured. But those you hold went hidden
+in the sole of my boot, which was hollowed for them, so that if I were
+taken and then escaped, they might go too!"
+
+I had read of such devices, I remembered vaguely. There was a story of a
+young French captain who had tried the trick in Champagne and succeeded
+with it, a rather famous exploit. Then I thought of something else. I
+got up slowly.
+
+"You have two sets of papers?" I repeated.
+
+"As you see, Monsieur."
+
+"Then I'll take one of them," said I.
+
+Miss Falconer was looking at me in a puzzled fashion. As for the duke,
+his brows drew together; his figure straightened; the cool glint grew in
+his eyes.
+
+"Monsieur," he stated somewhat icily, "such things as these are not
+souvenirs. When they leave my possession they will go to the supreme
+command."
+
+"Certainly," I agreed, unruffled. "That will do admirably for the first
+package; but about the second--no doubt Miss Falconer told you that
+we have German guests downstairs? Perhaps she forgot to mention the
+leader's name, though. It is Franz von Blenheim. And I don't care to
+have him break down the door and burst in on us, on her specially; I
+would rather, all things considered, interview him in the hall."
+
+The Firefly's face had altered at the name of the secret agent; he
+was now regarding me with intentness, but without a frown. As for Miss
+Falconer, the trouble in her eyes was growing. I should have to be
+careful. Accordingly I summoned a debonair manner as I went on.
+
+"If you'll allow me," I said, "I will take the papers down to him. He
+won't know that they are copies; he will snatch at them, glad of the
+chance. And since he is in a hurry, he probably won't stop to parley. He
+will simply be off at top speed, and leave us safe.
+
+"Of course, that is the one unpleasant feature of the affair, his
+going." At this point I glanced in a casual manner at the Duke of
+Raincy-la-Tour. "It seems a pity to let him walk off scot-free, to plan
+more trouble for France; but that is past praying for. I could hardly
+hope to stop him, except by a miracle. If there is one, I'll be on
+hand."
+
+Would the duke guess the hope with which I was going downstairs, I
+wondered. I thought he did, for his eyes flashed slightly, and he
+stirred a little on the chest.
+
+"Such a miracle, Monsieur," he remarked, "would serve France greatly. As
+a good son of the Church, I will pray for it with all my heart!"
+
+"I hope to come back," I went on, "and rejoin you. But if I shouldn't
+for any reason,"--with careful vagueness,--"you must stay here,
+barricaded, till they are gone. Then Miss Falconer can drive her car
+to the nearest town and bring back help for you. You see, it will be
+entirely simple, either way."
+
+The girl, very white now, took a swift step toward me.
+
+"Simple?" she cried. "They will kill you! They hate you, Mr. Bayne, and
+they are four to one. You mustn't go."
+
+But the duke's hand was on her arm.
+
+"My dear," he said, "he has reason. This friend of yours, I perceive,
+is a gallant gentleman. Believe me, if I had strength to stand, he would
+not go alone."
+
+He held out the papers to me, and I took them. Then we clasped hands,
+the Firefly and I.
+
+"_Bonne chance, Monsieur_," he bade me with the pressure.
+
+"Good luck and good-bye," I answered. "Miss Falconer, will you come to
+the door?"
+
+She took up the candle and came forward to light me, and we went in
+silence through the room of the squires and through the ante-chamber and
+into the room of the guards. She walked close beside me; her eyes shone
+wet; her lips trembled. There were things I would have given the world
+to say, but I suppressed them. To the very end, I had resolved, I would
+play fair. We were at the outer door.
+
+"Good-by, Miss Falconer," I said, halting. "You mustn't worry;
+everything is going to turn out splendidly, I am sure. Only, now that we
+have the papers, it ends our little adventure, doesn't it? So before
+I go I want to thank you for our day together. It has been wonderful.
+There never was another like it. I shall always be thankful for it, no
+matter what I have to pay."
+
+I stopped abruptly, realizing that this was not cricket. To make up,
+I put out my hand quite coolly; but she grasped it in both of hers and
+held it in a soft, warm clasp.
+
+"I shall never forget," she whispered. "Come back to us, Mr. Bayne!"
+
+For a moment I looked at her in the light of the candle, at her lovely
+face, at the ruddy hair framing it, at the tears heavy on her lashes.
+Then I drew the bolt and went out and heard her fasten the door.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+THE OBUS
+
+I stood in the gallery for an instant, indulging in a reconnoissance.
+The hall was now illuminated by an electric torch and three guttering
+candles; at the foot of the staircase lay the table which had done such
+yeoman's service, split in two. As for the besiegers, they were
+gathered near the chimney-place in a worse-for-wear group, one nursing
+a nosebleed; another feeling gingerly of a loose tooth; Blenheim himself
+frankly raging, and decorated with a broad cut across his forehead and
+a cheek that was rapidly taking on assorted shades of blue, green, and
+black; and the redoubtable Mr. Schwartzmann, worst off of all, lying in
+a heap, groaning at intervals, but apparently quite unaware of what was
+going on.
+
+My abrupt sally seemed transfixing. I might have been Medusa. I had a
+welcome minute in which to contemplate the victims of my prowess and
+to exult unchristianly in their scars. Then the tableau dissolved, the
+three men sprang up, and I took action. As I emerged I had drawn out a
+handkerchief and I now proceeded to raise and wave it.
+
+"Well, Herr von Blenheim, I have come to parley with you," I announced,
+"white flag and all."
+
+He tried to look as if he had expected me, though it was obvious that he
+hadn't. To give verisimilitude to the pretense, he even pulled out his
+watch.
+
+"I thought you would. You had just two minutes' grace," he commented,
+watching me narrowly. "Suppose you come down. You have brought the
+papers, I hope--for your own sake?"
+
+"Oh, yes!" I assured him with all possible blandness. "I have brought
+them. What else was there to do? You had us in the palm of your hand.
+That door is old and worm-eaten; you could have crumpled it up like
+paper. When we thought the situation over we saw its hopelessness at
+once; so here I am."
+
+"That is sensible," he agreed curtly, though I could see that he was
+puzzled. Casting a baffled glance beyond me, he scanned the gallery
+door. It by no means merited my description, being heavy, solid, almost
+immovable in aspect. "Well, let's have the papers!" he said, with
+suspicion in his tone.
+
+I descended in a deliberate manner, casting alert eyes about me, for,
+to use an expressive idiom, I was not doing this for my health. On the
+contrary I had two very definite purposes; the first, which I could
+probably compass, was to save Miss Falconer from further intercourse
+with Blenheim and to conceal the presence of the wounded, helpless
+Firefly from his enemies; the second, surprisingly modest, was to
+make the four Germans prisoners and hand them over in triumph to the
+gendarmes of the nearest town, Santierre.
+
+I was perfectly aware of the absurdity of this ambition. I lacked
+the ghost of an idea of how to set about the thing. But the general
+craziness of events had unhinged me. I was forming the habit of trusting
+to pure luck and _vogue la galere_! I can't swear that I hadn't visions
+of conquering all my adversaries in some miraculous single-handed
+fashion, disarming them, and, as a final sweet touch of revenge, tying
+them up in chairs, to keep Marie-Jeanne company and meditate on the
+turns of fate.
+
+"Here they are," I said, obligingly offering the package. "We found
+them nestling behind a panel--old family hiding place, you know. I can't
+vouch for their contents, not being an expert, but Miss Falconer was
+satisfied. How about it, now you look at them? Do they seem all right?"
+
+Not paying the slightest attention to my conversational efforts,
+Blenheim had snatched the papers, torn them hungrily open, and run them
+through. He was bristling with suspicion; but he evidently knew his
+business. It did not take him long to conclude that he really had his
+spoils.
+
+Folding them up carefully, he thrust them into his coat and stored them,
+displaying, however, less triumph than I had thought he would. The truth
+was that he looked preoccupied, and I wondered why. For the first time
+in all the hair-trigger situations that I had seen him face I sensed a
+strain in him.
+
+"So much for that. Now, Mr. Bayne, what do you think we mean to do to
+you?" he asked.
+
+"I don't know, I am sure," I answered rather absently; I was weighing
+the relative merits of jiu-jitsu and my five remaining revolver-shots.
+"Is there anything sufficiently lingering? Let me suggest boiling oil;
+or I understand that roasting over a slow fire is considered tasty.
+Either of those methods would appeal to you, wouldn't it?"
+
+"I don't deny it!" Blenheim answered in a tone that was convincing. "You
+haven't endeared yourself to us, my friend, in the last hour. But we
+can't spare you yet; our plans for the evening are lively ones and they
+include you. I told you, didn't I, that we were going to no man's-land
+via the trenches, when we finished this affair?"
+
+"You told me many interesting things. I've forgotten some of the
+details." I was aware of a thrill of excitement. The man was worried; so
+much was sure.
+
+"You will recall them presently, or if you don't, I'll refresh your
+memory. The fact is, Mr. Bayne, you have put a pretty spoke in our
+wheel. It stands this way: our papers are made out for a party of four
+officers, and you have eliminated Schwartzmann. Don't you owe us some
+amends for that? You like disguises, I gather from your costume. What
+do you say to putting on a new one, a pale-blue uniform, and seeing us
+through the lines?"
+
+He looked, while uttering this wild pleasantry, about as humorous as
+King Attila. Could he possibly be in earnest? After all, perhaps he was!
+War rules were cast-iron things; if his pass called for four men,
+four he must have or rouse suspicion; and it was certain that Herr
+Schwartzmann would do no gadding to-night or for many nights to come.
+That shot of mine from the gallery had upset Blenheim's plans very
+neatly. I stared at him, fascinated.
+
+"Well?" said he. "Do you understand?"
+
+"I understand," I exclaimed indignantly, "that this is too much! It is,
+really. I was getting hardened; I could stand a mere impossibility or
+two and not blink; but this! It is beyond the bounds. I shall begin to
+see green snakes presently or writhing sea-serpents--"
+
+"No," Blenheim cut me short savagely, "you are underestimating. Unless
+you oblige us what you will see is the hereafter, Mr. Bayne!"
+
+Yes, he meant it. His very fierceness, eloquent of frazzled nerves,
+was proof conclusive. With another thrill, triumphant this time, I
+recognized my chance. His campaign, instead of going according to
+specifications, had been interfered with; his position was dangerous;
+he had no time to lose; for all he knew, at any point along the road
+his masquerade might have been suspected, the authorities notified,
+vengeance put on his track. In desperation he meant to risk my
+denouncing him, use me till he reached the Front trenches and his
+friends there, and then, no doubt, get rid of me. What he couldn't
+guess was that I would have turned the earth upside down to make this
+opportunity that he was offering me on a silver tray.
+
+"Oh, I'll oblige you," I assured him with what must have seemed insane
+cheerfulness. "I'll oblige you, Her von Blenheim, with all the pleasure
+in the world. If you really want me, that is. If my presence won't make
+you nervous. Aren't you afraid, for instance, that I might be tempted
+to share my knowledge of your name and your profession with the first
+French soldiers we meet?"
+
+"As to that, we will take our chances." Blenheim's face was adamant,
+though my suggestion had produced a not entirely enlivening effect on
+his two friends. "You see, Mr. Bayne, in this business the risks will
+be mostly yours. There will be no flights of stairs to dart up and no
+tables to over turn and no candles to extinguish; you will sit in the
+tonneau with a man beside you, a very watchful man, and a pistol against
+your side. You don't want to die, do you? I thought not, since you
+surrendered those papers. Well, then, you'll be wise not to say a word
+or stir a muscle. And now we are in a hurry. Will you make your toilet,
+please?"
+
+It was the bizarre curtain scene of what I had called an extravaganza.
+Blenheim's confederates, taking no special pains for gentleness,
+stripped off the outer garments of the prostrate Schwartzmann, who
+moaned and groaned throughout the process, though he never opened his
+eyes. Blenheim urged haste upon us; he was getting more fidgety every
+instant; he bit his lip, drummed with his fingers, kept an ear cocked,
+as if expecting to hear pursuers at the door. Still, he neglected no
+precautions. He demanded my revolver. I surrendered it amiably, and
+then doffed my chauffeur's outfit and took, from a social standpoint, a
+gratifying step upward, donning one by one the insignia of France.
+
+The fit was not perfect by any means. Schwartzmann was a giant, a
+mountain. My feet swished aloud groggily in his burnished putties; his
+garments hung round me in ample, rather than graceful, folds. However,
+the loose cape of horizon blue resembled charity in covering defects.
+As a dummy, sitting motionless in the rear of the automobile, my captors
+felt that I would pass.
+
+By this time I was enchanted with the plans I was concocting. I might
+look like an opera-bouffe hero,--no doubt I did,--but my hour would
+come. Meanwhile events were marching. My transformation being complete,
+Blenheim gave a curt order in German, the candles were blown out, and
+lighted only by the torch, we turned toward the door. There was an
+inarticulate cry from Schwartzmann, just conscious enough, poor beggar,
+to grasp the fact of his abandonment in the strategic retreat his
+friends were beating. Then we were out in the courtyard, beneath the
+stars.
+
+Down the hill, sheltered behind the stones of a ruined house, the gray
+car was waiting, and Blenheim climbed into the driver's seat, meanwhile
+giving brief directions. There was no noise, no flurry; the affair, I
+must say, went with an efficiency in keeping with the proudest Prussian
+traditions. I was installed in the tonneau, and I was hardly seated
+before the motor hummed into life, and we jolted into the moonlit road.
+
+For perhaps the hundredth time I asked myself if I was dreaming; if this
+person in a French disguise, speeding through the night with a blue-clad
+German beside him,--a German suffering, by the way, from a headache,
+the last stages of a nosebleed, and a pronounced dislike for me as the
+agency responsible for his ailments,--was really Devereux Bayne. But the
+air was cold on my face; a revolver pressed my side; I saw three set,
+hard profiles. It was not a dream; it was a dash for safety. And it was
+engineered by anxious, desperate men.
+
+Blenheim, hunched over the steering wheel, had settled to his business.
+Certainly his nerve was going; the mania for escape had caught him;
+he took startling chances on his curves and turns. Still, he knew the
+country, it seemed. We drove on, fast and furiously, by lanes, by
+mere paths set among thickets, by narrow brushwood roads. Sometimes
+we skirted the river, which shone silver in the moonlight, lined with
+rushes. Again, we could see nothing but a roof of trees overhead.
+
+We emerged into a wider road, and I became award of various noises; a
+booming, clear and regular; the sound of voices; the rumbling of
+many wheels. We must be nearing the Front; we were rejoining the main
+highroad. My guess was proved correct at the next turning, where a
+sentry barred our path.
+
+The sight of his honest French face was like a tonic to me. In some
+welcome way it seemed to hearten me for my task. The pistol of my friend
+in the tonneau bored through his cape into my side; I sat very quiet. If
+I did this four, five, perhaps six times, they might think me cowed
+and relax their vigilance. Their suspicions would be lulled by my
+tractability and their contempt. Then my hour would strike.
+
+Satisfied with the safe-conducts, the sentry gestured us forward, and
+his figure slipped out of my vision as the gray car purred on. The man
+beside me chuckled.
+
+"Behold this Yankee! He is as good as gold, my captain. He sits like a
+mouse," he announced in his own tongue.
+
+"He'll be wise," Blenheim announced, "to go on doing so." The threat was
+in English for my benefit and came from between his teeth.
+
+In front of us the noise was growing. With our next turn we entered the
+highroad, taking our place in a long rumbling line of ambulances and
+supply-carts and laboring camions, or trucks. We glimpsed faces,
+heard voices all about us. The change from solitude to this unbroken
+procession was bewildering. But we did not long remain a part of it; we
+turned again into narrower lanes.
+
+The control was growing stricter. Four separate times we were halted,
+and always I sat hunched in my corner as impassive as a stone. The
+more deeply we penetrated toward the Front, the more uneasy grew my
+companions. Each time that a sentry halted us they waited in more
+anxiety for his verdict. The man beside me, it was true, still menaced
+me with his pistol point; but the gesture had grown perfunctory. He did
+not think I would attempt anything. He believed now that I was afraid.
+
+Our road crossed a hilltop, and I saw beneath us a valley, streaked at
+intervals with blinding signal-flashes of red and green. In my ears the
+thunder of the guns was growing steadily. When we were stopped again,
+the sentry warned us. The road we were traveling, he said, had been
+intermittently under fire for two days.
+
+It looked, indeed, as if devils had used it for a playground; the trees
+were mere blackened stumps; the fields on each side stretched burnt and
+bare. And then came the climax: something passed us,--high above our
+heads, I fancy, though its frightful winds seemed brushing us,--a ghost
+of the night, an aerial demon, a shrieking thing that made the man
+beside me cringe and shudder. It was new to me, but I could not mistake
+it. It was what the French call an _obus_, a word that in some subtle
+manner seems more menacing and dreadful than our own term of shell.
+
+As we sped on I leaned against the cushions, outwardly quiet. Inwardly,
+I was gathering myself together for my attempt. I had not thought I
+would first approach the Front this way; but it was a good way, I had
+a good object. At the next stop, whatever it was, I meant to make the
+venture. I did not doubt I should succeed in it. But I could not hope to
+keep my life.
+
+Another _obus_ hurtled over us and shrieked away into the distance; and
+again the man beside me flinched, but I did not. I was thinking, with
+odd lucidity, of many things, among them Dunny and his old house
+in Washington, into which I should never again let myself with my
+latch-key, sure of a welcome at any hour of the day or night. My
+guardian's gray head rose before me. My heart tightened. The finest,
+straightest old chap who ever took a forlorn little tike in out of the
+wet, and petted him, and frolicked with him, and filled his stocking all
+the year round, and made his holidays things of rapture, and taught him
+how to ride and shoot and fish and swim and cut his losses and do pretty
+much everything that makes life worth living--that was Dunny.
+
+"This will be a hard jolt for the old chap," I thought, "but he'll say
+that I played the game."
+
+And Esme Falconer, my own brave, lovely Esme! "She has come down the
+staircase now," I told myself. "She has untied Marie-Jeanne. She has
+gone out and started the car." What would she think of my disappearance?
+Well, she wouldn't misjudge me, I felt sure; and neither would
+Jean-Herve-Marie-Olivier. He would know that I was acting as, in my
+place, he would have acted, that I didn't mean to let Franz von Blenheim
+defy France and go off untouched.
+
+The whole world seemed mysteriously to have narrowed to one girl, Esme.
+How I had lived before I saw her; how, having seen her, I could ever
+have lived without her,--I didn't know. But the sound of grinding
+brakes roused me. We were slowing up in obedience to a signal from
+a canvas-covered, half-demolished shelter filled with men in blue
+uniforms; we were coming to a standstill. Blenheim leaned out, and for a
+moment I saw his face in the beam of light from the sentry's lantern. It
+looked thin and set. He was giving beneath the strain.
+
+"Behold my comrade!" He thrust our papers into the hands of the sentry.
+"And make haste, for the love of heaven! We are waited for _la-bas_."
+
+I cast a quick glance at my body-guard, whose anxious eyes were on the
+sentinel. His pistol still lay against my side, but his thoughts were
+far away. It was the moment. With the rapidity of lightning I
+knocked his arm up, caught his wrist, and clung to it, calling out
+simultaneously in a voice of crisp command.
+
+"My friends," I cried in French, "I order you to arrest these persons!
+They are agents of the kaiser! They are German spies!"
+
+The pistol, clutched between us, exploded harmlessly into the air.
+I head shouts, saw men running toward us. Then I caught sight of
+Blenheim's face, dark and oddly contorted; he had turned and was
+leveling his revolver at me, resting one knee on the driver's seat as he
+took deliberate aim.
+
+"I say," I cried again, struggling for the weapon, "that this is Franz
+von Blenheim, that these are men of the kaiser, spying, in disguise--"
+
+It seemed to me that some one caught Blenheim's arm from behind just as
+he fired; but I was not certain. For suddenly that same whistling shriek
+sounded over us, nearer this time, more ominous; the earth seemed
+to rock and then to end in a mighty shock and cataclysm. Blackness
+enveloped me, and I dropped into a bottomless pit.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+AT RAINCY-LA-TOUR
+
+When I opened my eyes it was with a peculiarly reluctant feeling, for
+my eyelids were so heavy that they seemed to weigh a ton. My head was
+unspeakably groggy, and I had quite lost my memory. I couldn't,
+if suddenly interrogated, have replied with one intelligent bit of
+information about myself, not even with my name.
+
+Flat on my back I was lying, gazing up at what, surprisingly, seemed to
+be a ceiling festooned with garlands of roses and painted with ladies
+and cavaliers, idling about a stretch of greensward, decidedly in
+the Watteau style. Where was I? What had happened to make me feel so
+helpless? It reminded me of an episode of my childhood, a day when my
+pony had fallen and rolled upon me, and I had been carried home with two
+crushed ribs and a broken arm.
+
+Coming out at that time from the influence of the ether, I had found
+Dunny at my bedside. If only he were here now! I looked round. Why,
+there he was, sitting in a brocaded chair by the window, his dear old
+silver head thrown back, dozing beyond a doubt.
+
+To see him gave me a warm, comforted, homelike feeling. Nor did it
+surprise me, but my surroundings did. The room, a veritable Louis Quinze
+jewel in its paneling, carving, and gilding, might have come direct
+from Versailles by parcel post; my bed was garlanded and curtained in
+rose-color. Where I had gone to sleep last night I couldn't remember;
+but it hadn't, I was obstinately sure, been here.
+
+What ailed me, anyhow? I began a series of cautious experiments,
+designed to discover the trouble. My arms were weak and of a strange,
+flabby limpness, but they moved. So did my left leg; but when I came to
+the right one I was baffled. It wouldn't stir; it was heavily encased in
+something. Good heavens! now I knew! It was in a plaster cast.
+
+The shock of the discovery taught me something further, namely, that my
+head was liable to excruciating little throbs of pain. I raised a hand
+to it. My forehead was swathed in bandages, like a turbaned Turk's.
+Oh, to be sure, in the castle at Prezelay, as we were retreating up the
+staircase, Schwartzmann had fired at me; but, then, hadn't that been a
+pin prick, the merest scratch?
+
+The name Prezelay served as a key to solve the puzzle. The whole
+fantastic, incredible chain of happenings came back to me in a rush;
+the gray car, the inn, the murder, the night in the castle,
+Jean-Herve-Marie-Olivier.
+
+"Dunny!" I heard myself quavering in a voice utterly unlike my own.
+
+The figure in the chair started up and hurried toward me, and then
+Dunny's hands were holding my hands, his eyes looking into mine.
+
+"There, Dev, there! Take it easy," the familiar voice was soothing me.
+"Hold on to me, my boy, You are safe now. You're all right!"
+
+My safety, however, seemed of small importance for the time being.
+
+"Dunny," I implored, "listen! You have got to find out for me about a
+girl. How am I to tell you, though? If I start the story, you'll think
+I'm raving."
+
+"I know all about it, Dev," my guardian reassured me. "I've seen Miss
+Falconer. She's absolutely safe."
+
+If that were so, I could relax, and I did with fervent thankfulness. Not
+for long, however; my brain had begun to work.
+
+"See here! I want to know who has been playing football with me," was my
+next demand, which Dunny answered obligingly, if with a slightly dubious
+face.
+
+"That French doctor, nice young chap, said you weren't to talk," he
+muttered, "but if I were in your place I'd want to know a few things
+myself. It was this way, Dev. A fragment of a shell struck you--"
+
+"A fragment!" I raised weak eyebrows. "I know better. Twenty shells at
+least, and whole!"
+
+"--and didn't strike your Teuton friends," he charged on, suddenly
+purple of visage. "It was a true German shell, my boy, the devil looking
+after his own. The man in the seat with you was cut up a bit; the other
+two were thrown clear of the motor. If you hadn't already given the
+alarm, they would probably have got off scot-free. As it was, the French
+held a drumhead court martial a little later, and all three of the
+fellows--well, you can fill in the rest."
+
+I was silent for a minute while a picture rose before me: a dank, gray
+dawn; a firing-squad, and Franz von Blenheim's dark, grim face. No
+doubt he had died bravely; but I could not pity him; I had too clear a
+recollection of the hall at Prezelay.
+
+"As for you," Dunny was continuing, "you seem to have puzzled
+them finely. There you were in a French uniform, at your last gasp
+apparently, and with an American passport, that you seem to have clung
+to through thick and thin, inside your coat. They took a chance on you,
+though, because you had made them a present of the Franz von
+Blenheim; and by the next day, thanks to Miss Falconer and the Duke of
+Raincy-la-Tour, you were being looked for all over France.
+
+"So that's how it stands. You're at Raincy-la-Tour now, at the duke's
+chateau. The place has been a hospital ever since the war began. Only
+you're not with the other wounded. You are--well--a rather special
+patient in the pavilion across the lake; and you're by way of being a
+hero. The day I landed, the first paper I saw shrieked at me how you had
+tracked the kaiser's star agent and outwitted him and handed him over to
+justice."
+
+"The deuce it did!" I exclaimed. "You must have been puffed up with
+pride."
+
+My guardian's jaw set itself rigidly. "I was too busy," was his grim
+answer. "You see, the end of the statement said there was no hope that
+you could survive. And when I got here I found you with fever, delirium,
+one leg shot up, four bits of shell in your head, a fine case of brain
+concussion. That was nearly three weeks ago, and it seems more like
+three years!"
+
+An idea, at this point, made me fix a searching gaze on him.
+
+"By the way," I asked accusingly, "how did you happen to arrive so
+opportunely on this side? It seemed as natural as possible to find
+you settled here waiting for my eyes to open; but on second thoughts I
+suppose you didn't fly?"
+
+He looked extraordinarily embarrassed.
+
+"Why," he growled at length, "I had business. I got a cablegram soon
+after you left New York. The thing was confoundedly inconvenient, but I
+had no choice about it."
+
+"Dunny," I said weakly, but sternly, "you didn't bring me up to tell
+whoppers, not bare-faced ones like that, anyhow, that wouldn't deceive
+the veriest child. What earthly business could you have over here in
+war-time? Own up, now, and take your medicine like a man."
+
+His guilty air was sufficient answer.
+
+"Well, Dev," he acknowledged, "it was your cable. That Gibraltar mess
+was a nasty one, and I didn't like its looks. I'm getting old, and
+you're all I've got; so I took a passport and caught the _Rochambeau_.
+Not, of course, that I doubted your ability to take care of yourself, my
+boy--"
+
+"Didn't you? You might have," I admitted with some ruefulness, "if
+you had known I was bucking both the Allied governments and the picked
+talent of the Central powers. It was too much. I was riding for a fall,
+and I got it. But I don't mind saying, Dunny, I'm infernally glad you
+came."
+
+He wiped his eyes.
+
+"Well, you go to sleep now," he counseled gruffly. "You've got to get
+well in a hurry; there's work for you to do! All sorts of things have
+been happening since that _obus_ knocked you out. Just a week ago, for
+instance, the President went before Congress and--"
+
+"What's that you say? Not war?"
+
+"Yes, war, young man! We're in it at last, up to our necks; in it with
+men and ships and munitions and foodstuffs and everything else we
+have to help with, praise the Lord! You'll fight beneath the Stars and
+Stripes, instead of under the Tricolor. I say, Dev, that's positively
+the last word I'll utter. You've got to rest!"
+
+In a weak, quavering fashion, but with sincere enthusiasm, I tried to
+celebrate by singing a few bars of the "Star-Spangled Banner" and a
+little of the "Marseillaise." Dunny was right, however; the conversation
+had exhausted me. In the midst of my patriotic demonstration I fell
+asleep.
+
+My convalescence was a marvel, I learned from young Dr. Raimbault, the
+surgeon from the chateau who came to see me every day. According to
+him, I was a patient in a hundred, in a thousand; he never wearied
+of admiring my constitution, which he described by the various French
+equivalents of "as hard as nails." Not a set-back attended the course of
+my recovery. First, I sat propped up in bed; then I attained the dignity
+of an arm-chair; later, slowly and painfully, I began to drag myself
+about the room. But the day on which my physician's rapture burst all
+bounds was the great one when I crawled from the pavilion, gained a
+bench beneath the trees, and sat enthroned, glaring at my crutches. They
+were detestable implements; I longed to smash them. And they would, the
+doctor airily informed me, be my portion for three months.
+
+To feel grumpy in such surroundings was certainly black ingratitude.
+It was an idyllic place. My pavilion was a sort of Trianon, a Marie
+Antoinette bower, all flowers and gold. Fresh green woods grew about
+it; a lake stretched before it; swans dotted the water where trees
+were mirrored, and there were marble steps and balustrades. Across this
+glittering expanse rose Raincy-la-Tour, proud and stately, with its
+formal gardens and its fountains and its Versailles-like front. In
+the afternoons I could see the wounded soldiers walking there or being
+pushed to and fro in wheel-chairs; legless and armless, some of them;
+wreckage of the mighty battle-fields; timely reminders, poor heroic
+fellows, that there were people in the world a great deal worse off than
+I.
+
+Yet, instead of being thankful, I was profoundly wretched. I moped and
+sulked; I fell each day into a deeper, more consistent gloom. I tried
+grimly to regain my strength, with a view to seeking other quarters.
+While I stayed here I was the guest of the Firefly of France; and though
+I admired him,--I should have been a cad, a quitter, a poor loser,
+everything I had ever held anathema in days gone by, not to do
+so,--still I couldn't feel toward him as a man should feel toward his
+host; not in the least!
+
+On three separate occasions Dunny motored up to Paris, bringing back
+as the fruits of his first excursion my baggage from the Ritz. I was
+clothed again, in my right mind; except for my swathed head, I looked
+highly civilized. The day when I had raced hither and yon, and fought an
+unbelievable battle in a dark hall, and insanely masqueraded first in
+a leather coat, then in a pale-blue uniform, seemed dim and far-off
+indeed.
+
+"It was a nice hashish dream," I told my mirrored image. "But it wasn't
+real, my lad, for a moment; such things don't happen to folks like you.
+You're not the romantic type; you don't look like some one in an
+old picture; you haven't brought down thirty German aeroplanes or
+thereabouts, and won every war medal the French can give and the name of
+Ace. No; you look like a--a correct bulldog; and winning an occasional
+polo cup is about your limit. Even if it hadn't been settled before you
+met her, you wouldn't have stood a chance."
+
+There were times when I prayed never to see Esme Falconer again. There
+were other times when I knew I would drag myself round the world--yes,
+on my crutches!--if at the end of the journey I could see her for an
+instant, a long way off. I could see that my despondency was driving
+Dunny to distraction. He evolved the theory that I was going into a
+decline.
+
+Then came the afternoon that made history. I was sitting at my window.
+The trees seemed specially green, the sky specially blue, the lake
+specially bright. I was feeling stronger and was glumly planning a move
+to Paris when I saw an automobile speed up the poplared walk toward
+Raincy-la-Tour.
+
+Rip-snorting and chugging, the thing executed a curve before the
+chateau, and then, hugging the side of the lake, advanced, obviously
+toward my humble abode. My heart seemed to turn a somersault. I should
+have known that car if I had met it in Bagdad. It was a long blue motor,
+polished to the last notch, deeply cushioned, luxurious, poignantly
+familiar, the car, in short, that I had pursued to Bleau, and that
+later, in flat defiance of President Poincare or the Generalissimo
+of France, or whoever makes army rules and regulations, I had guided
+through the war zone to the castle of Prezelay.
+
+As the chauffeur halted it near the pavilion, it disgorged three
+occupants, one of who, a young officer, slender of form and gracefully
+alert of movement, wore the dark-blue uniform of the French Flying
+Corps. I knew him only too well. It was Jean-Herve-Marie-Olivier.
+But the glance I gave him was most cursory; my attention was focused
+hungrily on the two ladies in the tonneau. They had risen and were
+divesting themselves in leisurely fashion of a most complicated
+arrangement of motor coats and veils.
+
+From these swathing disguises there first emerged, as if from a
+chrysalis, a black-clad, distinguished-looking young woman whom I had
+never seen before. However, it was the second figure, the one in the
+rosy veils and the tan mantle, that was exciting me. Off came her
+wrappings, and I saw a girl in a white gown and a flowered hat--the
+loveliest girl on earth.
+
+I did not stand on the order of my going. I rocked perilously, and
+my crutches made a furious clatter, but I was outside in a truly
+infinitesimal space of time. Yes; there they were, chatting with Dunny,
+who had hurried to meet them. And at sight of me the Firefly of France
+ran forward with hands extended, greeting me as if I were his oldest
+friend, his brother, his dearest comrade in arms.
+
+I took his hands and I pressed them with what show of warmth I could
+summon. It was as peasant as a bit of torture, but it had to be gone
+through. Then I stared past him toward the ladies, who were coming up
+with Dunny; and except for that girl in white, I saw nothing in all the
+world.
+
+"Monsieur," the duke was saying, "I pay you my first visit. Only my
+weakness has prevented me from sooner welcoming to Raincy-la-Tour so
+honored a guest."
+
+He turned to the lady who stood beside Miss Falconer, a slender,
+dark-eyed, gracious young woman wearing a simple black gown and a black
+hat and a string of pearls.
+
+"Here is another," said the Firefly, "who has come to welcome you. Oh,
+yes, Monsieur, you must know, and you must count henceforth as your
+friends in any need, even to the death, all those who bear the name of
+Raincy-la-Tour. Permit that I present you to my wife, who is of your
+country."
+
+"Jean's wife is my sister, Mr. Bayne," Miss Falconer said.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+AN UNEXPECTED VISIT
+
+I don't know what they thought of me, probably that I was crazy. For a
+good minute, a long sixty seconds, I simply stood and stared. The duke's
+blue uniform, his wife's black-gowned figure, and the white, radiant
+blur that was Miss Falconer revolved about me in spinning, starry
+circles. I gasped, put out a hand, fortunately encountered Dunny's
+shoulder, and, leaning heavily on that perplexed person, at last got
+back my intelligence and my breath.
+
+"Won't you shake hands with me, Mr. Bayne?" smiled the Duchess of
+Raincy-la-Tour.
+
+I was virtually sane again.
+
+"I do hope," I said, "that you will forgive me. Not that I see the
+slightest reason why you should, I am sure. Life is too short to wipe
+out such a bad impression. I know how you'll remember me all your days;
+as an idiot with a head done up in layers of toweling, wobbling on two
+crutches and gaping at you like a fish."
+
+But the duchess was still holding my hand in both of hers and smiling
+up at me from a pair of great, dark, tender eyes, the loveliest pair
+of eyes in the world, bar one. No, bar none, to be quite fair. The
+Firefly's wife, most people would have said, was more beautiful than her
+sister; but then, beauty is what pleases you, as some wise man remarked
+long ago.
+
+"I don't believe, Mr. Bayne," she was saying gently, "that I shall
+ever remember you in any unpleasant way. You see, I know about those
+bandages, and I know why you need those crutches. Even if you were vain,
+you wouldn't mind the things I think of you--not at all."
+
+I lack any clear recollection of the quarter of an hour that followed.
+I know that we talked and laughed and were very friendly and very
+cheerful, and that Dunny's eyes, as they studied me, began to hold
+a gleam of intelligence, as if he were guessing something about the
+reasons for my former black despondency. I recall that the duke's hand
+was on my shoulder, and that--odd how one's attitude can change!--I
+liked to feel it. We were going to be great friends, tremendous pals, I
+suspected. And every time I looked at the duchess she seemed lovelier,
+more gracious; she was the very wife I would have chosen for such a
+corking chap.
+
+This, however, was by the way. None of it really mattered. While I paid
+compliments and supplied details as to my convalescence and answered
+Dunny's chaffing, I saw only one member of the party, the girl in white.
+She was rather silent; she gave me only fugitive glances. But she wasn't
+engaged, at least not to the Firefly. Hurrah!
+
+What an agonizing, heart-rending, utterly unnecessary experience I had
+endured, now that I thought of it! I had jumped to conclusions with the
+agility of a kangaroo. He had kissed her; she had allowed it. Did that
+prove that he was her fiance? He might have been anything--her cousin
+or an old friend of her childhood, or her sister's husband's nephew. But
+brother-in-law was best of all, not too remote or yet too close. In that
+relationship, I decided, he was ideal.
+
+By this time I was wondering how long we were to stand here exchanging
+ideas and persiflage, an animated group of five. The duke and duchess
+were charming, but I had had enough of them; I could have spared
+even good old Dunny; what I wanted, and wanted frantically, was a
+tete-a-tete; just Esme Falconer and myself. When I saw two automobiles,
+packed imposingly with uniformed figures, speed up the drive to the
+chateau, hope stirred in me. With suppressed joy,--I trust it was
+suppressed,--I heard the duke exclaim that this was General Le Cazeau,
+due to visit the hospital with his staff and greet the wounded and
+bestow on certain lucky beings the reward of their valor in the shape of
+medals of war. Obviously, it would have been inexcusable for the master
+and mistress of Raincy-la-Tour to ignore a visitor so distinguished. I
+made no protest whatever as they turned to go.
+
+"But, Miss Falconer," I implored fervently, "you won't desert me, will
+you? Pity a poor _blesse_ that no general cares two straws to see!"
+
+She smiled, an omen that encouraged me to send Dunny a look of meaning;
+but my guardian, bless him, had grasped the situation; he was already
+gone.
+
+Down by the water among the trees there was a marble bench, and with
+one accord we turned our steps that way. I emphasized my game leg
+shamelessly; I positively flourished my crutches. My battle scars, I
+guessed from the girl's kind eyes, appealed to her compassion, and as
+soon as I suspected this I thanked my stars for that German shell.
+
+"Isn't there anything," she said as we sat down, "that you want to ask
+me? I think I should be curious if I were you. After all we have done
+together there isn't much beyond my name that you know of me, and you
+knew that in Jersey City the night the _Re d'Italia_ sailed."
+
+I shook my head.
+
+"There is just one thing I wanted to know," I answered cryptically, "and
+I learned that when your brother-in-law presented me to his wife. Still,
+there is nothing on earth you can tell me that I shan't be glad to
+listen to. Say the multiplication table if you like, or recite cook-book
+recipes. Anything--if you'll only stay!"
+
+Little golden flickers of sunshine came stealing through the branches,
+dancing, as the girl talked, on her gown and in her hair. I looked more
+than I listened. I had been starved for a sight of her. And my eyes must
+have told my thoughts; for a flush crept into her cheeks, and her lashes
+fluttered, and she looked not at me, but across the swan-dotted lake
+toward the towers of Raincy-la-Tour.
+
+After all there was little that I had not guessed already; but each
+detail held its magic, because it was she who spoke. If she had said "I
+like oranges and lemons," the statement would have held me spellbound.
+I sat raptly gazing while she told me of herself and her sister Enid;
+of their life, after the death of their parents, with an aunt whose home
+was in Pittsburgh, of their travels; and of a winter at Nice, four years
+ago, when the blue of the skies and seas and the whiteness of the sands
+and the green of the palms had all seemed created to frame the meeting
+and the love affair of Enid Falconer and the young nobleman who was now
+known to the world as the Firefly of France.
+
+Their marriage had proved an ideal one, as happy as it was brilliant.
+Esme, thereafter had spent half her time in Europe with her sister, half
+in America with her aunt, who was growing old. Then had come the war. At
+first it had covered the duke with laurels. But a certain dark day had
+brought a cable from the duchess, telling of his disappearance and the
+suspicion that surrounded it; and Esme, despite her aunt's entreaties,
+had promptly taken passage on the next ship that sailed.
+
+"I had meant to go within a month, as a Red Cross nurse," she told me.
+"I had my passport, and I had taken a course. Well, I came on to New
+York and spent the night there. Aunt Alice telegraphed to her lawyer,
+the dearest, primmest old fellow, and he dined with me, protesting all
+the time against my sailing. I saw you in the St. Ives restaurant. Did
+you see us?"
+
+"Let me think." I pretended to rack my brains. "I believe I do recall
+something, in a hazy sort of way. You had on a rose-colored gown that
+was distinctly wonderful, and when we tracked the German to the door of
+your room, you were wearing an evening coat, bright blue. But the main
+thing was your hair!" Here I became lyric. "An oak-leaf in the sunlight,
+Miss Falconer! Threads of gold!"
+
+But she ignored me, very properly, and shifted the scene from hotel
+to steamer, where Franz von Blenheim, in the guise of Van Blarcom, had
+given her a fright. As she exhibited her passport at the gang-plank, he
+had read her name across her shoulder; then he had claimed acquaintance
+with her, a claim that she knew was false.
+
+"And he wasn't impertinent. That was the worst of it," she faltered. "He
+did it--well--accusingly. I had known all along that any one who knew of
+Jean's marriage would recognize my name. And Jean was suspected, and
+the French are strict; if they were warned, they would not let me enter
+France; they would think I had come spying. I was afraid. Then, after
+dinner, I went on deck and found you standing by the railing reading
+that paper with its staring headlines about Jean."
+
+"Of course!" I exclaimed. At last I fathomed that puzzling episode.
+"You thought the paper might speak of the duke's marriage, that it might
+mention your sister's name. In that case, if it stayed on board, it
+might be seen by the captain or by an officer, and they would guess who
+you were and warn the authorities when we got to shore."
+
+"Yes. That was why I borrowed it. And I was right, I discovered; just at
+the end the account said that Jean had married an American, a Miss Enid
+Falconer, four years ago. Then I asked you to throw it overboard, Mr.
+Bayne; and you were wonderful. You must have thought I was mad, but you
+didn't flutter an eyelid or even smile. I have never forgotten--and I've
+never forgiven myself either. When I think of how the steward saw
+you and told the captain, and of how they searched your baggage that
+dreadful day--"
+
+"It didn't matter a brass farden!" I hastened to assure her, for she had
+paused and was gazing at me, large-eyed and pale. "Don't think of that
+any more. Suppose we skip to Paris! Blenheim followed you there, hoping
+he was on the scent of the vanished papers; and when you arrived at the
+rue St.-Dominique, there was still no news of the duke."
+
+"No news," she mourned; "not a word. And Enid was ill and hopeless;
+from the very first she had felt sure that Jean was dead. But I wouldn't
+admit it. I said we must try to find him. All the way over in the
+steamer I had been making a sort of plan.
+
+"You see, one of the papers had described how the French had found
+Jean's airship lying in the forest of La Fay, as if he had abandoned it
+from choice. That was considered proof of his treason; but of course I
+knew that it wasn't. I remembered that the Marquis of Prezelay, Jean's
+cousin, had a castle on the forest outskirts; I had been to visit it
+with Jean and Enid. I wondered if he might be there.
+
+"The more I thought of it, the likelier it seemed. If he had been
+wounded and had wanted to hide his papers, he would have remembered the
+castle and the secret panel in the wall. Even if he were--dead, which I
+wouldn't believe, it would clear his name if I found the proof of it. So
+I told Enid I would go to Prezelay."
+
+I was resting my arms on my knees and groaning softly.
+
+"Oh, Lord, oh, Lord!" I murmured, wishing I could stop my ears. When I
+thought of that brave venture of the girl's and its perils and what
+had nearly come of it I found myself shuddering; and yet I was growing
+prouder of her with every word.
+
+"What comes next," she confessed, "is terrible. I can hardly believe
+it. As I look back, it seems to me that we were all a little mad. To get
+through the war zone to Prezelay I had to have certain papers; and I got
+them from an American girl, an old friend of Enid's and of mine, Marie
+Le Clair. The morning I arrived in Paris she came to say good-bye to
+Enid. She was acting as a Red Cross nurse, and they were sending her to
+the hospital at Carrefonds to take the first consignment of the great
+new remedy for burns and scars. Carrefonds is very near Prezelay. It all
+came to me in a moment. I told her how matters stood and how Enid was
+dying little by little, just for lack of any sure knowledge. She gave me
+the papers she had for herself and her chauffeur, Jacques Carton, and I
+used them for myself and for Georges, Jean's foster-brother, who was
+at home from the Front on leave and was staying in his old room at the
+house."
+
+"Great Caesar's ghost!" I sputtered. "You didn't--you don't mean to say
+that--Why, good heavens, didn't you know--?"
+
+Then I petered off into silence; words were too weak for my emotions.
+She had seen the risk of course, and so had the girl who had helped her;
+but with the incredible bravery of women, they had acted with open eyes.
+
+"Yes," she faltered; "I told you I felt mad, looking back at it. But
+Marie is safe now; Jean has worked for her, and his relatives and
+friends have helped, and the minister of war. It was the only way. Under
+my own name I could never have got leave to enter the war zone while
+Jean was missing and suspected--What is the matter, Mr. Bayne?" For once
+more I had groaned aloud.
+
+"Simply," I cried stormily, "that I can't bear thinking of it! The idea
+of your taking risks, of your daring the police and the Germans--you who
+oughtn't to know what the word danger means! I tell you I can't stand
+it. Wasn't there some man to do it for you? Well, it's over now; and in
+the future--See here, Miss Falconer, I can't wait any longer. There is
+something I've got to say."
+
+But I was not to say it yet, for, behold! just as my tongue was
+loosened, I became aware of a most distinguished galaxy approaching us
+round the lake. All save one of its members--Dunny, to be exact--were in
+uniform; and the personage in the lead, walking between my guardian and
+the duke of Raincy-la-Tour, was truly dazzling, being arrayed in a blue
+coat and spectacularly red trousers and wearing as a finishing touch a
+red cap freely braided with gold. Miss Falconer had risen.
+
+"Why," she exclaimed, "it is General Le Cazeau!"
+
+"Then confound General Le Cazeau!" was my inhospitably cry.
+
+He was, I saw when he drew close, a person of stately dignity, as
+indeed the hero who had saved Merlancourt and broken that last furious,
+desperate, senseless onslaught of the Boches ought by rights to be.
+Perhaps his splendor made me nervous. At any rate, my conscience smote
+me. I remembered with sudden panic all my manifold transgressions,
+beginning with the hour when I had chucked reason overboard and had
+deliberately concealed a murdered man's body beneath a heap of straw.
+
+"I believe," I gasped, "that this is an informal court martial. Nobody
+could do the things I have done and be allowed to live. Still, I don't
+see why they cured me if they were going to hang or shoot me."
+
+I struggled up with the help of my crutches and stood waiting my doom.
+
+The group had paused before us, and presentations followed, throughout
+which the master of ceremonies was the Firefly of France. Then the
+gray-headed general fixed me with a keen, stern gaze rather like an
+eagle's.
+
+"Your affair, Monsieur, has been of an irregularity," he said.
+
+As with kaleidoscopic swiftness the details of my "affair" passed
+through my memory, it was only by an effort that I restrained an
+indecorous shout. He was correct. I could call to mind no single feature
+that had been "regular," from the thief who was not a thief and had
+flown out of my window like a conjurer, to the fight in Prezelay castle
+where I had vanquished four husky Germans, mostly by the aid of a wooden
+table, of all implements on earth.
+
+"It is too true, _Monsieur le General_," I assented promptly. My
+humility seemed to soften him; he relaxed; he even approached a smile.
+
+"Of an irregularity," he repeated. "But also it was of a gallantry. With
+a boldness and a resource and a scorn for danger that, permit me to say,
+mark your compatriots, you have unmasked and handed over to us one of
+our most dangerous foes. For such service as you have rendered France is
+never ungrateful. And, moreover, there have been friends to plead your
+cause and to plead it well."
+
+As he ended he cast a glance at the Duke of Raincy-la-Tour and one at
+Dunny, whereupon I was enlightened as to the purpose of my guardian's
+three trips to Paris the preceding week. I believe I have said before
+that Dunny knows every one, everywhere; in fact, I have always felt that
+should circumstances conspire to make me temporarily adopt a life of
+crime, he could manage to pull such wires as would reinstate me in the
+public eye. But the general was stepping close to me.
+
+"Monsieur," he was saying, "we are now allies, my country and the great
+nation of which you are a son. Very soon your troops are coming. You
+will fight on our soil, beneath your own banner. But your first blood
+was shed for France, your first wounds borne for her, Monsieur; and in
+gratitude she offers you this medal of her brave."
+
+He was pinning something to my coat, a bronze-colored, cross-shaped
+something, a decoration that swung proudly from a ribbon of red and
+green. I knew it well; I had seen it on the breasts of generals,
+captains, simple poilus, all the picked flower of the French nation.
+With a thrill I looked down upon it. It was the Cross of War.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+A THUNDERBOLT OF WAR
+
+The great moment had arrived. General Le Cazeau and his staff were
+on their way back to Paris. The duke and duchess were at the chateau
+talking with the _blesses_; for the second time Dunny had tactfully
+disappeared. The approach of evening had spurred my faltering courage.
+As the first rosiness of sunset touched the skies beyond Raincy-la-Tour
+and lay across the water, I sat at the side of the only girl in the
+world and poured out my plea.
+
+"It isn't fair, you know," I mourned. "I've only a few minutes. I
+shouldn't wonder if we heard your car honking for you in half an
+hour. To make a girl like you look at a man like me would take days of
+eloquence, and, besides, who would think of marrying any one with his
+head bound up Turkish fashion as mine is now?"
+
+She laughed, and at the silvery sound of it I plucked up a hint of
+courage; for surely, I thought, she wasn't cruel enough to make game
+of me as she turned me down. Still, I couldn't really hope. She was too
+wonderful, and my courtship had been too inadequate. Despondent, arms on
+my knees, I harped upon the same string.
+
+"I've never had a chance to show you," I lamented, "that I am civilized;
+that I know how to take care of you and put cushions behind you and
+slide footstools under your feet, and--er--all that. We've been too busy
+eluding Germans and racing through forbidden zones and rescuing papers
+from behind secret panels, for me to wait on you. Good heavens! To think
+how I've done my duty by a hundred girls I shouldn't know from Eve if
+they happened along this moment! And I've never even sent you a box of
+_marrons glaces_ or flowers."
+
+She shot a fleeting glance at me.
+
+"No," she agreed, "you haven't! If you don't mind my saying so, I
+think they would have been out of place. At Bleau, for instance, and at
+Prezelay I hadn't much time for eating bonbons; but after all you did me
+one or two more practical services, Mr. Bayne."
+
+"Nothing," I maintained, my gloom unabated, "that amounted to a row of
+pins. Though I might have shone, I'll admit; I can see that, looking
+back. The opportunity was there, but the man was lacking. I might have
+been a real movie hero, cool, resourceful, dependable, clear-sighted, a
+tower of strength; and what I did was to muddle things up hopelessly
+and waste time in suspecting you and seize every opportunity of trusting
+people who positively spread their guilt before my eyes."
+
+"I don't know." She was looking at the lake, not at me, and she was
+smiling. "There were one or two little matters that have slipped your
+mind, perhaps. Take the very first night we met, when you tracked your
+thief to my room and wouldn't let the hotel people come in to search it.
+Don't you think, on the whole, that you were rather kind?"
+
+"I couldn't have driven them in," I declared stubbornly, "with a
+pitchfork. I couldn't have persuaded them to make a search if I had
+prayed them on my bended knees. Their one idea was to help the fellow
+in what the best criminal circles call a getaway; and when I think how I
+must have been wool-gathering, not to guess--"
+
+"Well, even so,"--Miss Falconer was still smiling--"weren't you very
+nice on the steamer? About the extra, I mean. And at Gibraltar, too,
+when they asked you what you had thrown overboard--do you remember how
+you kept silent and never even glanced my way?"
+
+"No," I groaned, "I don't; but I remember our trip to Paris. I remember
+marching you into the wagon-restaurant like a hand-cuffed criminal, and
+sitting you down at a table, and bullying you like a Russian czar. I
+gave you three days to leave France. Have you forgotten? I haven't. The
+one thing I omitted--and I don't see how I missed it--was to call the
+gendarmes there at Modane and denounce you to them. It's more than kind
+of you to glide over my imbecilities; I appreciate it. But when I
+think of that evening I want a nice, deep, dark dungeon, somewhere
+underground, to hide."
+
+"I think," she murmured consolingly, "that you made amends to me later."
+Her face was averted, but I could see a distracting dimple in her
+cheek. "You mustn't forget that I haven't been perfect, either. When
+you followed me to Bleau, and I came down the stairs and saw you, I
+misunderstood the situation entirely and was as unpleasant as I could
+be."
+
+"Naturally," I acquiesced with dark meaning. "How could you have
+understood it? How could any human being have fathomed the mental
+processes that sent me there? I only wonder that instead of giving
+me what-for, you didn't murder me. Any United States jury would have
+acquitted you with the highest praise."
+
+She turned upon me, flushed and spirited.
+
+"Mr. Bayne, you are incorrigible! Why will you insist on belittling
+everything that you have done? I suppose you will claim next that you
+didn't risk imprisonment or death every minute of a whole day, just to
+help me, and that at Prezelay you didn't fight like a--a--yes, like a
+paladin!--to save me from being tortured by Herr von Blenheim and his
+men!"
+
+I started up and then sank back.
+
+"As a special favor," I begged her, "would you mind not mentioning that
+last phase of the affair? When you do, I go berserker; I'm a crazy
+man, seeing red; I'm honestly not responsible. It was when our friend
+Blenheim developed those plans of his that I swore in my soul I'd get
+him; and I thank the Lord that I did and that he'll never trouble you or
+any other woman again.
+
+"Still, Miss Falconer, what does all that amount to? Any man would have
+helped you, wouldn't he? A nice sort of fellow I should have been to
+do any less! Whereas for a girl like you I ought to have accomplished
+miracles. I ought to have made the sun stop moving, or got you the stars
+to play with, or whisked the moon out of the skies."
+
+She was laughing again.
+
+"Dear me!" she exclaimed. "What fervor! Can this be my Mr. Bayne, the
+Mr. Bayne of our adventure, who never turned a hair no matter what mad
+things happened, and who was always so correct and conventional and so
+immaculately dressed, and so--"
+
+"Stodgy! Say it!" I cried with utter recklessness. "I know I was; Dunny
+told me so that evening at the St. Ives. Have as many cracks at me as
+you like. I was getting fat; I was beginning to think that the most
+important thing in the universe was dinner. Well, I'm not stodgy any
+longer, Esme Falconer; you've reformed me. But of all the men in all the
+ages who were ever desperately, consumedly, imbecilely in love--"
+
+In the distance two figures were strolling toward the blue car, the duke
+and the duchess. When they reached it, the Firefly cast a glance in our
+direction and sounded a warning, most unwelcome honk upon the horn. They
+were going, stony-hearted creatures that they were! They were taking
+Esme back to Paris. At the thought I abandoned my last pretense at
+self-command.
+
+"Esme, dearest," I implored, "do you think you could put up with
+me? Could you marry me when I've done my part over here--or even
+sooner--right away? A dozen better men may love you, but mine is a
+special brand of love--unique, incomparable! Are you going to have
+me--or shall I jump into the lake?"
+
+The sunset light was in her hair and in the gray, starry eyes she turned
+to me--those eyes that, because their lashes were so long and crinkled
+so maddeningly, were only half revealed. Her lips curved in a fleeting
+smile.
+
+"Oh, you dear, blind, silly man! Do you think any girl could help loving
+you--after all that has happened to you and me?" she whispered.
+
+Then I caught her to me; and despite my crutches and my bandaged head
+and that atrocious horn in the distance honking the signal for our
+parting, I was the happiest being in France--or in the world.
+
+"I knew all along it was a dream, and it is! Such things don't really
+happen. No such luck!" I cried.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Firefly Of France, by Marion Polk Angellotti
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