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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of In Secret, by Robert W. Chambers
+
+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: In Secret
+
+Author: Robert W. Chambers
+
+Posting Date: September 10, 2012 [EBook #5748]
+Release Date: May, 2004
+First Posted: August 23, 2002
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN SECRET ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Moynihan, Charles Franks and the
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+IN SECRET
+
+by
+
+ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
+
+AUTHOR OF "THE COMMON LAW," "THE RECKONING," "LORRAINE," ETC.
+
+NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+
+
+DEDICATION
+
+
+
+
+
+
+    A grateful nation's thanks are due
+    To Arethusa and to you---
+    To her who dauntless at your side
+    Pneumonia and Flue defied
+    With phials of formaldehyde!
+
+II
+
+    Chief of Police were you, by gosh!
+    Gol ding it! how you bumped the Boche!
+    Handed 'em one with club and gun
+    Until the Hun was on the run:
+    And that's the way the war was won.
+
+III
+
+    Easthampton's pride! My homage take
+    For Fairest Philadelphia's sake.
+    Retire in company with Bill;
+    Rest by the Racquet's window sill
+    And, undisturbed, consume your pill.
+
+ENVOI
+
+    When Cousin Feenix started west
+    And landed east, he did his best;
+    And so I've done my prettiest
+    To make this rhyme long overdue;
+    For Arethusa and for you.
+
+R. W. C.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+IN SECRET
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+CUP AND LIP
+
+
+
+
+
+The case in question concerned a letter in a yellow envelope, which
+was dumped along with other incoming mail upon one of the many long
+tables where hundreds of women and scores of men sat opening and
+reading thousands of letters for the Bureau of P. C.--whatever that
+may mean.
+
+In due course of routine a girl picked up and slit open the yellow
+envelope, studied the enclosed letter for a few moments, returned it
+to its envelope, wrote a few words on a slip of paper, attached the
+slip to the yellow envelope, and passed it along to the D. A.
+C.--whoever he or she may be.
+
+The D. A. C., in course of time, opened this letter for the second
+time, inspected it, returned it to the envelope, added a memorandum,
+and sent it on up to the A. C.--whatever A. C. may signify.
+
+Seated at his desk, the A. C. perused the memoranda, glanced over
+the letter and the attached memoranda, added his terse comment to
+the other slips, pinned them to the envelope, and routed it through
+certain channels which ultimately carried the letter into a room
+where six silent and preoccupied people sat busy at six separate
+tables.
+
+Fate had taken charge of that yellow envelope from the moment it was
+mailed in Mexico; Chance now laid it on a yellow oak table before a
+yellow-haired girl; Destiny squinted over her shoulder as she drew
+the letter from its triply violated envelope and spread it out on
+the table before her.
+
+A rich, warm flush mounted to her cheeks as she examined the
+document. Her chance to distinguish herself had arrived at last. She
+divined it instantly. She did not doubt it. She was a remarkable
+girl.
+
+The room remained very still. The five other cipher experts of the
+P. I. Service were huddled over their tables, pencil in hand,
+absorbed in their several ungodly complications and laborious
+calculations. But they possessed no Rosetta Stone to aid them in
+deciphering hieroglyphics; toad-like, they carried the precious
+stone in their heads, M. D.!
+
+No indiscreet sound interrupted their mental gymnastics, save only
+the stealthy scrape of a pen, the subdued rustle of writing paper,
+the flutter of a code-book's leaves thumbed furtively.
+
+The yellow-haired girl presently rose from her chair, carrying in
+her hand the yellow letter and its yellow envelope with yellow slips
+attached; and this harmonious combination of colour passed
+noiselessly into a smaller adjoining office, where a solemn young
+man sat biting an unlighted cigar and gazing with preternatural
+sagacity at nothing at all.
+
+Possibly his pretty affianced was the object of his deep revery--he
+had her photograph in his desk--perhaps official cogitation as D.
+C. of the E. C. D.--if you understand what I mean?--may have been
+responsible for his owlish abstraction.
+
+Because he did not notice the advent of the yellow haired girl until
+she said in her soft, attractive voice:
+
+"May I interrupt you a moment, Mr. Vaux?"
+
+Then he glanced up.
+
+"Surely, surely," he said. "Hum--hum!--please be seated, Miss Erith!
+Hum! Surely!"
+
+She laid the sheets of the letter and the yellow envelope upon the
+desk before him and seated herself in a chair at his elbow. She was
+VERY pretty. But engaged men never notice such details.
+
+"I'm afraid we are in trouble," she remarked.
+
+He read placidly the various memoranda written on the yellow slips
+of paper, scrutinised! the cancelled stamps, postmarks,
+superscription. But when his gaze fell upon the body of the letter
+his complacent expression altered to one of disgust!
+
+"What's this, Miss Erith?"
+
+"Code-cipher, I'm afraid."
+
+"The deuce!"
+
+Miss Erith smiled. She was one of those girls who always look as
+though they had not been long out of a bathtub. She had hazel eyes,
+a winsome smile, and hair like warm gold. Her figure was youthfully
+straight and supple--But that would not interest an engaged man.
+
+The D. C. glanced at her inquiringly.
+
+"Surely, surely," he muttered, "hum--hum!--" and tried to fix his
+mind on the letter.
+
+In fact, she was one of those girls who unintentionally and
+innocently render masculine minds uneasy through some delicate,
+indefinable attraction which defies analysis.
+
+"Surely," murmured the D. C., "surely! Hum--hum!"
+
+A subtle freshness like the breath of spring in a young orchard
+seemed to linger about her. She was exquisitely fashioned to trouble
+men, but she didn't wish to do such a--
+
+Vaux, who was in love with another girl, took another uneasy look at
+her, sideways, then picked up his unlighted cigar and browsed upon
+it.
+
+"Yes," he said nervously, "this is one of those accursed
+code-ciphers. They always route them through to me. Why don't they
+notify the five--"
+
+"Are you going to turn THIS over to the Postal Inspection Service?"
+
+"What do you think about it, Miss Erith? You see it's one of those
+hopeless arbitrary ciphers for which there is no earthly solution
+except by discovering and securing the code book and working it out
+that way."7
+
+She said calmly, but with heightened colour:
+
+"A copy of that book is, presumably, in possession of the man to
+whom this letter is addressed."
+
+"Surely--surely. Hum--hum! What's his name, Miss Erith?"--glancing
+down at the yellow envelope. "Oh, yes--Herman Lauffer--hum!"
+
+He opened a big book containing the names of enemy aliens and
+perused it, frowinng. The name of Herman Lauffer was not listed. He
+consulted other volumes containing supplementary lists of suspects
+and undesirables--lists furnished daily by certain services
+unnecessary to mention.
+
+"Here he is!" exclaimed Vaux; "--Herman Lauffer, picture-framer and
+gilder! That's his number on Madison Avenue!"--pointing to the
+type-written paragraph. "You see he's probably already under
+surveillance-one of the several services is doubtless keeping tabs
+on him. I think I'd better call up the--"
+
+"Please!--Mr. Vaux!" she pleaded.
+
+He had already touched the telephone receiver to unhook it. Miss
+Erith looked at him appealingly; her eyes were very, very hazel.
+
+"Couldn't we handle it?" she asked.
+
+"WE?"
+
+"You and I!"
+
+"But that's not our affair, Miss Erith--"
+
+"Make it so! Oh, please do. Won't you?"
+
+Vaux's arm fell to the desk top. He sat thinking for a few minutes.
+Then he picked up a pencil in an absent-minded manner and began to
+trace little circles, squares, and crosses on his pad, stringing
+them along line after line as though at hazard and apparently
+thinking of anything except what he was doing.
+
+The paper on which he seemed to be so idly employed lay on his desk
+directly under Miss Erith's eyes; and after a while the girl began
+to laugh softly to herself.
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Vaux," she said. "This is the opportunity I have
+longed for."
+
+Vaux looked up at her as though he did not understand. But the girl
+laid one finger on the lines of circles, squares, dashes and
+crosses, and, still laughing, read them off, translating what he had
+written:
+
+"You are a very clever girl. I've decided to turn this case over to
+you. After all, your business is to decipher cipher, and you can't
+do it without the book."
+
+They both laughed.
+
+"I don't see how you ever solved that," he said, delighted to tease
+her.
+
+"How insulting!--when you know it is one of the oldest and most
+familiar of codes--the 1-2-3 and _a-b-c_ combination!"
+
+"Rather rude of you to read it over my shoulder, Miss Erith. It
+isn't done--"
+
+"You meant to see if I could! You know you did!"
+
+"Did I?"
+
+"Of course! That old 'Seal of Solomon' cipher is perfectly
+transparent."
+
+"Really? But how about THIS!"--touching the sheets of the Lauffer
+letter--"how are you going to read this sequence of Arabic
+numerals?"
+
+"I haven't the slightest idea," said the girl, candidly.
+
+"But you request the job of trying to find the key?" he suggested
+ironically.
+
+"There is no key. You know it."
+
+"I mean the code book."
+
+"I would like to try to find it."
+
+"How are you going to go about it?"
+
+"I don't know yet."
+
+Vaux smiled. "All right; go ahead, my dear Miss Erith. You're
+officially detailed for this delightful job. Do it your own way, but
+do it--"
+
+"Thank you so much!"
+
+"--In twenty-four hours," he added grimly. "Otherwise I'll turn it
+over to the P.I."
+
+"Oh! That IS brutal of you!"
+
+"Sorry. But if you can't get the code-book in twenty-four hours I'll
+have to call in the Service that can."
+
+The girl bit her lip and held out her hand for the letter.
+
+"I can't let it go out of my office," he remarked. "You know that,
+Miss Erith."
+
+"I merely wish to copy it," she said reproachfully. Her eyes were
+hazel.
+
+"I ought not to let you take a copy out of this office," he
+muttered.
+
+"But you will, won't you?"
+
+"All right. Use that machine over there. Hum--hum!"
+
+For twenty minutes the girl was busy typing before the copy was
+finally ready. Then, comparing it and finding her copy accurate, she
+returned the original to Mr. Vaux, and rose with that disturbing
+grace peculiar to her every movement.
+
+"Where may I telephone you when you're not here?" she inquired
+diffidently, resting one slim, white hand on his desk.
+
+"At the Racquet Club. Are you going out?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What! You abandon me without my permission?"
+
+She nodded with one of those winsome smiles which incline young men
+to revery. Then she turned and walked toward the cloak room.
+
+The D. C. was deeply in love with somebody else, yet he found it
+hard to concentrate his mind for a while, and he chewed his
+unlighted cigar into a pulp. Alas! Men are that way. Not sometimes.
+Always.
+
+Finally he shoved aside the pile of letters which he had been trying
+to read, unhooked the telephone receiver, called a number, got it,
+and inquired for a gentleman named Cassidy.
+
+To the voice that answered he gave the name, business and address of
+Herman Lauffer, and added a request that undue liberties be taken
+with any out going letters mailed and presumably composed and
+written by Mr. Lauffer's own fair hand.
+
+"Much obliged, Mr. Vaux," cooed Cassidy, in a voice so suave that
+Vaux noticed its unusual blandness and asked if that particular
+Service already had "anything on Lauffer."
+
+"Not soon but yet!" replied Mr. Cassidy facetiously, "thanks
+ENTIRELY to your kind tip, Mr. Vaux."
+
+And Vaux, suspicious of such urbane pleasantries, rang off and
+resumed his mutilated cigar.
+
+"Now, what the devil does Cassidy know about Herman Lauffer," he
+mused, "and why the devil hasn't his Bureau informed us?" After long
+pondering he found no answer. Besides, he kept thinking at moments
+about Miss Erith, which confused him and diverted his mind from the
+business on hand.
+
+So, in his perplexity, he switched on the electric foot-warmer,
+spread his fur overcoat over his knees, uncorked a small bottle and
+swallowed a precautionary formaldehyde tablet, unlocked a drawer of
+his desk, fished out a photograph, and gazed intently upon it.
+
+It was the photograph of his Philadelphia affianced. Her first name
+was Arethusa. To him there was a nameless fragrance about her name.
+And sweetly, subtly, gradually the lovely phantasm of Miss Evelyn
+Erith faded, vanished into the thin and frigid atmosphere of his
+office.
+
+That was his antidote to Miss Erith--the intent inspection of his
+fiancee's very beautiful features as inadequately reproduced by an
+expensive and fashionable Philadelphia photographer.
+
+It did the business for Miss Erith every time.
+
+The evening was becoming one of the coldest ever recorded in New
+York. The thermometer had dropped to 8 degrees below zero and was
+still falling. Fifth Avenue glittered, sheathed in frost; traffic
+police on post stamped and swung their arms to keep from freezing;
+dry snow underfoot squeaked when trodden on; crossings were greasy
+with glare ice.
+
+It was, also, one of those meatless, wheatless, heatless nights when
+the privation which had hitherto amused New York suddenly became an
+ugly menace. There was no coal to be had and only green wood. The
+poor quietly died, as usual; the well-to-do ventured a hod and a
+stick or two in open grates, or sat huddled under rugs over oil or
+electric stoves; or migrated to comfortable hotels. And bachelors
+took to their clubs. That is where Clifford Vaux went from his
+chilly bachelor lodgings. He fled in a taxi, buried cheek-deep in
+his fur collar, hating all cold, all coal companies, and all
+Kaisers.
+
+In the Racquet Club he found many friends similarly
+self-dispossessed, similarly obsessed by discomfort and hatred. But
+there seemed to be some steam heat there, and several open fires;
+and when the wheatless, meatless meal was ended and the usual
+coteries drifted to their usual corners, Mr. Vaux found himself
+seated at a table with a glass of something or other at his elbow,
+which steamed slightly and had a long spoon in it; and he presently
+heard himself saying to three other gentlemen: "Four hearts."
+
+His voice sounded agreeably in his own ears; the gentle glow of a
+lignum-vitae wood fire smote his attenuated shins; he balanced his
+cards in one hand, a long cigar in the other, exhaled a satisfactory
+whiff of aromatic smoke, and smiled comfortably upon the table.
+
+"Four hearts," he repeated affably. "Does anybody--"
+
+The voice of Doom interrupted him:
+
+"Mr. Vaux, sir--"
+
+The young man turned in his easy-chair and beheld behind him a club
+servant, all over silver buttons.
+
+"The telephone, Mr. Vaux," continued that sepulchral voice.
+
+"All right," said the young man. "Bill, will you take my cards?"--he
+laid his hand, face down, rose and left the pleasant warmth of the
+card-room with a premonitory shiver.
+
+"Well?" he inquired, without cordiality, picking up the receiver.
+
+"Mr. Vaux?" came a distinct voice which he did not recognise.
+
+"Yes," he snapped, "who is it?"
+
+"Miss Erith."
+
+"Oh--er--surely--surely! GOOD-evening, Miss Erith!"
+
+"Good-evening, Mr. Vaux. Are you, by any happy chance, quite free
+this evening?"
+
+"Well--I'm rather busy--unless it is important--hum--hum!--in line
+of duty, you know--"
+
+"You may judge. I'm going to try to secure that code-book to-night."
+
+"Oh! Have you called in the--"
+
+"No!"
+
+"Haven't you communicated with--"
+
+"No!"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because there's too much confusion already--too much petty
+jealousy and working at cross-purposes. I have been thinking over
+the entire problem. You yourself know how many people have escaped
+through jealous or over-zealous officers making premature arrests.
+We have six different secret-service agencies, each independent of
+the other and each responsible to its own independent chief, all
+operating for the Government in New York City. You know what these
+agencies are--the United States Secret Service, the Department of
+Justice Bureau of Investigation, the Army Intelligence Service,
+Naval Intelligence Service, Neutrality Squads of the Customs, and
+the Postal Inspection. Then there's the State Service and the police
+and several other services. And there is no proper co-ordination, no
+single head for all these agencies. The result is a ghastly
+confusion and shameful inefficiency.
+
+"This affair which I am investigating is a delicate one, as you
+know. Any blundering might lose us the key to what may be a very
+dangerous conspiracy. So I prefer to operate entirely within the
+jurisdiction of our own Service--"
+
+"What you propose to do is OUTSIDE of our province!" he interrupted.
+
+"I'm not so sure. Are you?"
+
+"Well--hum--hum!--what is it you propose to do to-night?"
+
+"I should like to consult my Chief of Division."
+
+"Meaning me?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"When?"
+
+"Now!"
+
+"Where are you just now, Miss Erith?"
+
+"At home. Could you come to me?"
+
+Vaux shivered again.
+
+"Where d-do you live?" he asked, with chattering teeth.
+
+She gave him the number of a private house on 83d Street just off
+Madison Avenue. And as he listened he began to shiver all over in
+the anticipated service of his country.
+
+"Very well," he said, "I'll take a taxi. But this has Valley Forge
+stung to death, you know."
+
+She said:
+
+"I took the liberty of sending my car to the Racquet Club for you.
+It should be there now. There's a foot-warmer in it."
+
+"Thank you so much," he replied with a burst of shivers. "I'll
+b-b-be right up."
+
+As he left the telephone the doorman informed him that an automobile
+was waiting for him.
+
+So, swearing under his frosty breath, he went to the cloak-room, got
+into his fur coat, walked back to the card-room and gazed wrathfully
+upon the festivities.
+
+"What did my hand do, Bill?" he inquired glumly, when at last the
+scorer picked up his pad and the dealer politely shoved the pack
+toward his neighbour for cutting.
+
+"You ruined me with your four silly hearts," replied the man who had
+taken his cards. "Did you think you were playing coon-can?"
+
+"Sorry, Bill. Sit in for me, there's a good chap. I'm not likely to
+be back to-night--hang it!"
+
+Perfunctory regrets were offered by the others, already engrossed in
+their new hands; Vaux glanced unhappily at the tall, steaming glass,
+which had been untouched when he left, but which was now merely half
+full. Then, with another lingering look at the cheerful fire, he
+sighed, buttoned his fur coat, placed his hat firmly upon his
+carefully parted hair, and walked out to perish bravely for his
+native land.
+
+On the sidewalk a raccoon-furred chauffeur stepped up with all the
+abandon of a Kadiak bear:
+
+"Mr. Vaux, sir?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Miss Erith's car."
+
+"Thanks," grunted Vaux, climbing into the pretty coupe and cuddling
+his shanks under a big mink robe, where, presently, he discovered a
+foot-warmer, and embraced it vigorously between his patent-leather
+shoes.
+
+It had now become the coldest night on record in New York City.
+Fortunately he didn't know that; he merely sat there and hated Fate.
+
+Up the street and into Fifth Avenue glided the car and sped
+northward through the cold, silvery lustre of the arc-lights hanging
+like globes of moonlit ice from their frozen stalks of bronze.
+
+The noble avenue was almost deserted; nobody cared to face such
+terrible cold. Few motors were abroad, few omnibuses, and scarcely a
+wayfarer. Every sound rang metallic in the black and bitter air; the
+windows of the coupe clouded from his breath; the panels creaked.
+
+At the Plaza he peered fearfully out upon the deserted Circle, where
+the bronze lady of the fountain, who is supposed to represent
+Plenty, loomed high in the electric glow, with her magic basket
+piled high with icicles.
+
+"Yes, plenty of ice," sneered Vaux. "I wish she'd bring us a hod or
+two of coal."
+
+The wintry landscape of the Park discouraged him profoundly.
+
+"A man's an ass to linger anywhere north of the equator," he
+grumbled. "Dickybirds have more sense." And again he thought of the
+wood fire in the club and the partly empty but steaming glass, and
+the aroma it had wafted toward him; and the temperature it must have
+imparted to "Bill."
+
+He was immersed in arctic gloom when at length the car stopped. A
+butler admitted him to a brown-stone house, the steps of which had
+been thoughtfully strewn with furnace cinders.
+
+"Miss Erith?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Announce Mr. Vaux, partly frozen."
+
+"The library, if you please, sir," murmured the butler, taking hat
+and coat.
+
+So Vaux went up stairs with the liveliness of a crippled spider, and
+Miss Erith came from a glowing fireside to welcome him, giving him a
+firm and slender hand.
+
+"You ARE cold," she said. "I'm so sorry to have disturbed you this
+evening."
+
+He said:
+
+"Hum--hum--very kind--m'sure--hum--hum!"
+
+There were two deep armchairs before the blaze; Miss Erith took one,
+Vaux collapsed upon the other.
+
+She was disturbingly pretty in her evening gown. There were
+cigarettes on a little table at his elbow, and he lighted one at her
+suggestion and puffed feebly.
+
+"Which?" she inquired smilingly.
+
+He understood: "Irish, please."
+
+"Hot?"
+
+"Thank you, yes,"
+
+When the butler had brought it, the young man began to regret the
+Racquet Club less violently.
+
+"It's horribly cold out," he said. "There's scarcely a soul on the
+streets."
+
+She nodded brightly:
+
+"It's a wonderful night for what we have to do. And I don't mind the
+cold very much."
+
+"Are you proposing to go OUT?" he asked, alarmed.
+
+"Why, yes. You don't mind, do you?"
+
+"Am _I_ to go, too?"
+
+"Certainly. You gave me only twenty-four hours, and I can't do it
+alone in that time."
+
+He said nothing, but his thoughts concentrated upon a single
+unprintable word.
+
+"What have you done with the original Lauffer letter, Mr. Vaux?" she
+inquired rather nervously.
+
+"The usual. No invisible ink had been used; nothing microscopic.
+There was nothing on the letter or envelope, either, except what we
+saw."
+
+The girl nodded. On a large table behind her chair lay a portfolio.
+She turned, drew it toward her, and lifted it into her lap.
+
+"What have you discovered?" he inquired politely, basking in the
+grateful warmth of the fire.
+
+"Nothing. The cipher is, as I feared, purely arbitrary. It's
+exasperating, isn't it?"
+
+He nodded, toasting his shins.
+
+"You see," she continued, opening the portfolio, "here is my copy of
+this wretched cipher letter. I have transferred it to one sheet.
+It's nothing but a string of Arabic numbers interspersed with
+meaningless words. These numbers most probably represent, in the
+order in which they are written, first the number of the page of
+some book, then the line on which the word is to be found--say, the
+tenth line from the top, or maybe from the bottom--and then the
+position of the word--second from the left or perhaps from the
+right."
+
+"It's utterly impossible to solve that unless you have the book," he
+remarked; "therefore, why speculate, Miss Erith?"
+
+"I'm going to try to find the book."
+
+"How?"
+
+"By breaking into the shop of Herman Lauffer."
+
+"House-breaking? Robbery?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Vaux smiled incredulously:
+
+"Granted that you get into Lauffer's shop without being arrested,
+what then?"
+
+"I shall have this cipher with me. There are not likely to be many
+books in the shop of a gilder and maker of picture frames. I shall,
+by referring to this letter, search what books I find there for a
+single coherent sentence. When I discover such a sentence I shall
+know that I have the right book."
+
+The young man smoked reflectively and gazed into the burning coals.
+
+"So you propose to break into his shop to-night and steal the book?"
+
+"There seems to be nothing else to do, Mr. Vaux."
+
+"Of course," he remarked sarcastically, "we could turn this matter
+over to the proper authorities--"
+
+"I WON'T! PLEASE don't!"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because I have concluded that it IS part of our work. And I've
+begun already. I went to see Lauffer. I took a photograph to be
+framed."
+
+"What does he look like?"
+
+"A mink--an otter--one of those sharp-muzzled little animals!--Two
+tiny eyes, rather close together, a long nose that wrinkles when he
+talks, as though he were sniffing at you; a ragged, black moustache,
+like the furry muzzle-bristles of some wild thing--that is a sketch
+of Herman Lauffer."
+
+"A pretty man," commented Vaux, much amused.
+
+"He's little and fat of abdomen, but he looks powerful."
+
+"Prettier and prettier!"
+
+They both laughed. A pleasant steam arose from the tall glass at his
+elbow.
+
+"Well," she said, "I have to change my gown--"
+
+"Good Lord! Are we going now?" he remonstrated.
+
+"Yes. I don't believe there will be a soul on the streets."
+
+"But I don't wish to go at all," he explained. "I'm very happy here,
+discussing things."
+
+"I know it. But you wouldn't let me go all alone, would you, Mr.
+Vaux?"
+
+"I don't want you to go anywhere."
+
+"But I'm GOING!"
+
+"Here's where I perish," groaned Vaux, rising as the girl passed him
+with her pretty, humorous smile, moving lithely, swiftly as some
+graceful wild thing passing confidently through its own domain.
+
+Vaux gazed meditatively upon the coals, glass in one hand, cigarette
+in the other. Patriotism is a tough career.
+
+"This is worse than inhuman," he thought. "If I go out on such an
+errand to-night I sure am doing my bitter bit. ... Probably some
+policeman will shoot me--unless I freeze to death. This is a vastly
+unpleasant affair.... Vastly!"
+
+He was still caressing the fire with his regard when Miss Erith came
+back.
+
+She wore a fur coat buttoned to the throat, a fur toque, fur gloves.
+As he rose she naively displayed a jimmy and two flashlights.
+
+"I see," he said, "very nice, very handy! But we don't need these to
+convict us."
+
+She laughed and handed him the instruments; and he pocketed them and
+followed her downstairs.
+
+Her car was waiting, engine running; she spoke to the Kadiak
+chauffeur, got in, and Vaux followed.
+
+"You know," he said, pulling the mink robe over her and himself,
+"you're behaving very badly to your superior officer."
+
+"I'm so excited, so interested! I hope I'm not lacking in deference
+to my honoured Chief of Division. Am I, Mr. Vaux?"
+
+"You certainly hustle me around some! This is a crazy thing we're
+doing."
+
+"Oh, I'm sorry!"
+
+"You're an autocrat. You're a lady-Nero! Tell me, Miss Erith, were
+you ever afraid of anything on earth?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Lightning and caterpillars."
+
+"Those are probably the only really dangerous things I never
+feared," he said. "You seem to be young and human and feminine. Are
+you?"
+
+"Oh, very."
+
+"Then why aren't you afraid of being shot for a burglar, and why do
+you go so gaily about grand larceny?"
+
+The girl's light laughter was friendly and fearless.
+
+"Do you live alone?" he inquired after a moment's silence.
+
+"Yes. My parents are not living."
+
+"You are rather an unusual girl, Miss Erith."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Well, girls of your sort are seldom as much in earnest about their
+war work as you seem to be," he remarked with gentle irony.
+
+"How about the nurses and drivers in France?"
+
+"Oh, of course. I mean nice girls, like yourself, who do near-war
+work here in New York--"
+
+"You ARE brutal!" she exclaimed. "I am mad to go to France! It is a
+sacrifice--a renunciation for me to remain in New York. I understand
+nursing and I know how to drive a car; but I have stayed here
+because my knowledge of ciphers seemed to fit me for this work."
+
+"I was teasing you," he said gently.
+
+"I know it. But there is SO much truth in what you say about
+near-war work. I hate that sort of woman.... Why do you laugh?"
+
+"Because you're just a child. But you are full of ability and
+possibility, Miss Erith."
+
+"I wish my ability might land me in France!"
+
+"Surely, surely," he murmured.
+
+"Do you think it will, Mr. Vaux?"
+
+"Maybe it will," he said, not believing it. He added: "I think,
+however, your undoubted ability is going to land us both in jail."
+
+At which pessimistic prognosis they both began to laugh. She was
+very lovely when she laughed.
+
+"I hope they'll give us the same cell," she said. "Don't you?"
+
+"Surely," he replied gaily.
+
+Once he remembered the photograph of Arethusa in his desk at
+headquarters, and thought that perhaps he might need it before the
+evening was over.
+
+"Surely, surely," he muttered to himself, "hum--hum!"
+
+Her coupe stopped in Fifty-sixth Street near Madison Avenue.
+
+"The car will wait here," remarked the girl, as Vaux helped her to
+descend. "Lauffer's shop is just around the corner." She took his
+arm to steady herself on the icy sidewalk. He liked it.
+
+In the bitter darkness there was not a soul to be seen on the
+street; no tramcars were approaching on Madison Avenue, although far
+up on the crest of Lenox Hill the receding lights of one were just
+vanishing.
+
+"Do you see any policemen?" she asked in a low voice.
+
+"Not one. They're all frozen to death, I suppose, as we will be in a
+few minutes."
+
+They turned into Madison Avenue past the Hotel Essex. There was not
+a soul to be seen. Even the silver-laced porter had retired from the
+freezing vestibule. A few moments later Miss Erith paused before a
+shop on the ground floor of an old-fashioned brownstone residence
+which had been altered for business.
+
+Over the shop-window was a sign: "H. Lauffer, Frames and Gilding."
+The curtains of the shop-windows were lowered. No light burned
+inside.
+
+Over Lauffer's shop was the empty show-window of another shop--on
+the second floor--the sort of place that milliners and tea-shop
+keepers delight in--but inside the blank show-window was pasted the
+sign "To Let."
+
+Above this shop were three floors, evidently apartments. The windows
+were not lighted.
+
+"Lauffer lives on the fourth floor," said Miss Erith. "Will you
+please give me the jimmy, Vaux?"
+
+He fished it out of his overcoat pocket and looked uneasily up and
+down the deserted avenue while the girl stepped calmly into the open
+entryway. There were two doors, a glass one opening on the stairs
+leading to the upper floors, and the shop door on the left.
+
+She stooped over for a rapid survey, then with incredible swiftness
+jimmied the shop door.
+
+The noise of the illegal operations awoke the icy and silent avenue
+with a loud, splitting crash! The door swung gently inward.
+
+"Quick!" she said. And he followed her guiltily inside.
+
+The shop was quite warm. A stove in the rear room still emitted heat
+and a dull red light. On the stove was a pot of glue, or some other
+substance used by gilders and frame makers. Steam curled languidly
+from it; also a smell not quite as languid.
+
+Vaux handed her an electric torch, then flashed his own. The next
+moment she found a push button and switched on the lights in the
+shop. Then they extinguished their torches.
+
+Stacks of frames in raw wood, frames in "compo," samples gilded and
+in natural finish littered the untidy place. A few process
+"mezzotints" hung on the walls. There was a counter on which lay
+twine, shears and wrapping paper, and a copy of the most recent
+telephone directory. It was the only book in sight, and Miss Erith
+opened it and spread her copy of the cipher-letter beside it. Then
+she began to turn the pages according to the numbers written in her
+copy of the cipher letter.
+
+Meanwhile, Vaux was prowling. There were no books in the rear room;
+of this he was presently assured. He came back into the front shop
+and began to rummage. A few trade catalogues rewarded him and he
+solemnly laid them on the counter.
+
+"The telephone directory is NOT the key," said Miss Erith, pushing
+it aside. A few moments were sufficient to convince them that the
+key did not lie within any of the trade catalogues either.
+
+"Have you searched very carefully?" she asked.
+
+"There's not another book in the bally shop."
+
+"Well, then, Lauffer must have it in his apartment upstairs."
+
+"Which apartment is it?"
+
+"The fourth floor. His name is under a bell on a brass plate in the
+entry. I noticed it when I came in." She turned off the electric
+light; they went to the door, reconnoitred cautiously, saw nobody on
+the avenue. However, a tramcar was passing, and they waited; then
+Vaux flashed his torch on the bell-plate.
+
+Under the bell marked "Fourth Floor" was engraved Herman Lauffer's
+name.
+
+"You know," remonstrated Vaux, "we have no warrant for this sort of
+thing, and it means serious trouble if we're caught."
+
+"I know it. But what other way is there?" she inquired naively. "You
+allowed me only twenty-four hours, and I WON'T back out!"
+
+"What procedure do you propose now?" he asked, grimly amused, and
+beginning to feel rather reckless himself, and enjoying the feeling.
+"What do you wish to do?" he repeated. "I'm game."
+
+"I have an automatic pistol," she remarked seriously, tapping her
+fur-coat pocket, "--and a pair of handcuffs--the sort that open and
+lock when you strike a man on the wrist with them. You know the
+kind?"
+
+"Surely. You mean to commit assault and robbery in the first degree
+upon the body of the aforesaid Herman?"
+
+"I-is that it?" she faltered.
+
+"It is."
+
+She hesitated:
+
+"That is rather dreadful, isn't it?"
+
+"Somewhat. It involves almost anything short of life imprisonment.
+But _I_ don't mind."
+
+"We couldn't get a search-warrant, could we?"
+
+"We have found nothing, so far, in that cipher letter to encourage
+us in applying for any such warrant," he said cruelly.
+
+"Wouldn't the excuse that Lauffer is an enemy alien and not
+registered aid us in securing a warrant?" she insisted.
+
+"He is not an alien. I investigated that after you left this
+afternoon. His parents were German but he was born in Chicago.
+However, he is a Hun, all right--I don't doubt that.... What do you
+propose to do now?"
+
+She looked at him appealingly:
+
+"Won't you allow me more than twenty-four hours?"
+
+"I'm sorry."
+
+"Why won't you?"
+
+"Because I can't dawdle over this affair."
+
+The girl smiled at him in her attractive, resolute way:
+
+"Unless we find that book we can't decipher this letter. The letter
+comes from Mexico,--from that German-infested Republic. It is
+written to a man of German parentage and it is written in cipher.
+The names of Luxburg, Caillaux, Bolo, Bernstorff are still fresh in
+our minds. Every day brings us word of some new attempt at sabotage
+in the United States. Isn't there ANY way, Mr. Vaux, for us to
+secure the key to this cipher letter?"
+
+"Not unless we go up and knock this man Lauffer on the head. Do you
+want to try it?"
+
+"Couldn't we knock rather gently on his head?"
+
+Vaux stifled a laugh. The girl was so pretty, the risk so
+tremendous, the entire proceeding so utterly outrageous that a
+delightful sense of exhilaration possessed him.
+
+"Where's that gun?" he said.
+
+She drew it out and handed it to him.
+
+"Is it loaded?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Where are the handcuffs?"
+
+She fished out the nickel-plated bracelets and he pocketed his
+torch. A pleasant thrill passed through the rather ethereal anatomy
+of Mr. Vaux.
+
+"All right," he said briskly. "Here's hoping for adjoining cells!"
+
+To jimmy the glass door was the swiftly cautious work of a moment or
+two. Then the dark stairs rose in front of them and Vaux took the
+lead. It was as cold as the pole in there, but Vaux's blood was
+racing now. And alas! the photograph of Arethusa was in his desk at
+the office!
+
+On the third floor he flashed his torch through an empty corridor
+and played it smartly over every closed door. On the fourth floor he
+took his torch in his left hand, his pistol in his right.
+
+"The door to the apartment is open!" she whispered.
+
+It was. A lamp on a table inside was still burning. They had a
+glimpse of a cheap carpet on the floor, cheap and gaudy furniture.
+Vaux extinguished and pocketed his torch, then, pistol lifted, he
+stepped noiselessly into the front room.
+
+It seemed to be a sort of sitting-room, and was in disorder;
+cushions from a lounge lay about the floor; several books were
+scattered near them; an upholstered chair had been ripped open and
+disembowelled, and its excelsior stuffing strewn broadcast.
+
+"This place looks as though it had been robbed!" whispered Vaux.
+"What the deuce do you suppose has happened?"
+
+They moved cautiously to the connecting-door of the room in the
+rear. The lamplight partly illuminated it, revealing it as a
+bedroom.
+
+Bedclothes trailed to the floor, which also was littered with dingy
+masculine apparel flung about at random. Pockets of trousers and of
+coats had been turned inside out, in what apparently had been a
+hasty and frantic search.
+
+The remainder of the room was in disorder, too; underwear had been
+pulled from dresser and bureau; the built-in wardrobe doors swung
+ajar and the clothing lay scattered about, every pocket turned
+inside out.
+
+"For heaven's sake," muttered Vaux, "what do you suppose this
+means?"
+
+"Look!" she whispered, clutching his arm and pointing to the
+fireplace at their feet.
+
+On the white-tiled hearth in front of the unlighted gas-logs lay the
+stump of a cigar.
+
+From it curled a thin thread of smoke.
+
+They stared at the smoking stub on the hearth, gazed fearfully
+around the dimly lighted bedroom, and peered into the dark
+dining-room beyond.
+
+Suddenly Miss Erith's hand tightened on his sleeve.
+
+"Hark!" she motioned.
+
+He heard it, too--a scuffling noise of heavy feet behind a closed
+door somewhere beyond the darkened dining-room.
+
+"There's somebody in the kitchenette!" she whispered.
+
+Vaux produced his pistol; they stole forward into the dining-room;
+halted by the table.
+
+"Flash that door," he said in a low voice.
+
+Her electric torch played over the closed kitchen door for an
+instant, then, at a whispered word from him, she shut it off and the
+dining-room was plunged again into darkness.
+
+And then, before Vaux or Miss Erith had concluded what next was to
+be done, the kitchen door opened; and, against the dangling lighted
+bulb within, loomed a burly figure wearing hat and overcoat and a
+big bass voice rumbled through the apartment:
+
+"All right, all right, keep your shirt on and I'll get your coat and
+vest for you--"
+
+Then Miss Erith flashed her torch full in the man's face, blinding
+him. And Vaux covered him with levelled pistol.
+
+Even then the man made a swift motion toward his pocket, but at
+Vaux's briskly cheerful warning he checked himself and sullenly and
+very slowly raised both empty hands.
+
+"All right, all right," he grumbled. "It's on me this time. Go on;
+what's the idea?"
+
+"W-well, upon my word!" stammered Vaux, "it's Cassidy!"
+
+"F'r the love o' God," growled Cassidy, "is that YOU, Mr. Vaux!" He
+lowered his arms sheepishly, reached out and switched on the ceiling
+light over the dining-room table. "Well, f'r--" he began; and,
+seeing Miss Erith, subsided.
+
+"What are you doing here?" demanded Vaux, disgusted with this
+glaring example of interference from another service.
+
+"What am I doing?" repeated Cassidy with a sarcastic glance at Miss
+Erith. "Faith, I'm pinching a German gentleman we've been watching
+these three months and more. Is that what you're up to, too?"
+
+"Herman Lauffer?"
+
+"That's the lad, sir. He's in the kitchen yonder, dressing f'r to
+take a little walk. I gotta get his coat and vest. And what are you
+doing here, sir?"
+
+"How did YOU get in?" asked Miss Erith, flushed with chagrin and
+disappointment.
+
+"With keys, ma'am."
+
+"Oh, Lord!" said Vaux, "we jimmied the door. What do you think of
+that, Cassidy?"
+
+"Did you so?" grinned Cassidy, now secure in his triumphant priority
+and inclined to become friendly.
+
+"I never dreamed that your division was watching Lauffer," continued
+Vaux, still red with vexation. "It's a wonder we didn't spoil the
+whole affair between us."
+
+"It is that!" agreed Cassidy with a wider grin. "And you can take it
+from me, Mr. Vaux, we never knew that the Postal Inspection was on
+to this fellow at all at all until you called me to stop outgoing
+letters."
+
+"What have you on him?" inquired Vaux.
+
+Cassidy laughed:
+
+"Oh, listen then! Would you believe this fellow was tryin' the old
+diagonal trick? Sure it was easy; I saw him mail a letter this
+afternoon and I got it. I'd been waiting three months for him to do
+something like that. But he's a fox--he is that, Mr. Vaux! Do you
+want to see the letter? I have it on me--"
+
+He fished it out of his inside pocket and spread it on the dining
+table under the light.
+
+"You know the game," he remarked, laying a thick forefinger on the
+diagonal line bisecting the page. "All I had to do was to test the
+letter by drawing that line across it from corner to corner. Read
+the words that the line cuts through. Can you beat it?"
+
+Vaux and Miss Erith bent over the letter, read the apparently
+innocent message it contained, then read the words through which the
+diagonal line had been drawn.
+
+Then Cassidy triumphantly read aloud the secret and treacherous
+information which the letter contained:
+
+"SEVEN UNITED STATES TRANSPORTS TO-DAY NEW YORK (BY THE) NORTHERN
+ROUTE. INFORM OUR U-BOATS. URGENCY REQUIRES INSTANT MEASURES. TEN
+MORE ARE TO SAIL FROM HERE NEXT WEEK."
+
+"The dirty Boche!" added Cassidy. "Dugan has left for Mexico to look
+up this brother of his and I'm lookin' up this snake, so I guess
+there's no harm done so far."
+
+"New York.
+
+"January 3rd. 1916.
+
+"My dear Brother:
+
+"For seven long weeks I have awaited a letter from you. The
+United-States mails from Mexico seem to be interrupted. Imagine my
+transports of joy when at last I hear from you today. You and I,
+dear brother, are the only ones left of our family--you in Vera
+Cruz. I in New-York--you in a hot Southern climate, I in a Northern,
+amid snow and ice, where the tardy sun does not route me from my bed
+till late in the morning.
+
+"However, I inform you with pleasure that I am well. I rejoice that
+our good health is mutual. After all, the dear old U. S. suits me.
+Of course railroads or boats could carry me to a warm climate, in
+case urgency required it. But I am quite well now, and my health
+requires merely prudence. However, if I am again ill at any instant,
+I shall leave for Florida, where all tho proper measures can be
+taken to combat my rheumatism,
+
+"Ten days ago I was in bed, and unable to do more than move my left
+arm. But the doctors are confident that my malady is not going to
+return. If it does threaten to return I shall sail for Jacksonville
+at once, and from there go to Miami, and not return here until the
+warm and balmy weather of next spring has lasted at least a week.
+Affectionataly your brother.
+
+"Herman."
+
+He pocketed the letter and went into the bedroom to get a coat and
+vest for the prisoner. Miss Erith looked at Vaux.
+
+"Cassidy seems to know nothing about the code-cipher," she
+whispered. "I think he rummaged on general principles, not in search
+of any code-book."
+
+She looked around the dining-room. The doors of the yellow oak
+sideboard were open, but no book was there among the plated knives
+and forks and the cheap dishes.
+
+Cassidy came back with the garments he had been looking for--an
+overcoat, coat and vest--and he carried them into the kitchenette,
+whither presently Vaux followed him.
+
+Cassidy had just unlocked the handcuffs from the powerful wrists of
+a dark, stocky, sullen man who stood in his shirt-sleeves near a
+small deal table.
+
+"Lauffer?" inquired Vaux, dryly.
+
+"It sure is, ain't it, Herman?" replied Cassidy facetiously. "Now,
+then, me Dutch bucko, climb into your jeans, if YOU please--there's
+a good little Boche!"
+
+Vaux gazed curiously at the spy, who returned his inspection coolly
+enough while he wrinkled his nose at him, and his beady eyes roamed
+over him.
+
+When the prisoner had buttoned his vest and coat, Cassidy snapped on
+the bracelets again, whistling cheerily under his breath.
+
+As they started to leave the kitchenette, Vaux, who brought up the
+rear, caught sight of a large, thick book lying on the pantry shelf.
+It was labelled "Perfect Cook-Book," but he picked it up, shoved it
+into his overcoat pocket en passant, and followed Cassidy and his
+prisoner into the dining-room.
+
+Here Cassidy turned humorously to him and to Miss Erith.
+
+"I've cleaned up the place," he remarked, "but you're welcome to
+stay here and rummage if you want to. I'm sending one of our men
+back to take possession as soon as I lock up this bird."
+
+"All right. Good luck," nodded Vaux.
+
+Cassidy tipped his derby to Miss Erith, bestowed a friendly grin on
+Vaux.
+
+"Come along, old sport!" he said genially to Lauffer; and he walked
+away with his handcuffed prisoner, whistling "Garryowen."
+
+"Wait!" motioned Vaux to Miss Erith. He went to the stairs, listened
+to the progress of agent and prey, heard the street-door clash, then
+hastened back to the lighted dining-room, pulling the "Perfect
+Cook-Book" from his pocket.
+
+"I found that in the kitchenette," he remarked, laying it before her
+on the table. "Maybe that's the key?"
+
+"A cook-book!" She smiled, opened it. "Why--why, it's a
+DICTIONARY!" she exclaimed excitedly.
+
+"A dictionary!"
+
+"Yes! Look! Stormonth's English Dictionary!"
+
+"By ginger!" he said. "I believe it's the code-book! Where is your
+cipher letter, Miss Erith!"
+
+The girl produced it with hands that trembled a trifle, spread it
+out under the light. Then she drew from her pocket a little pad and
+a pencil.
+
+"Quick," she said, "look for page 17!"
+
+"Yes, I have it!"
+
+"First column!"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Now try the twentieth word from the top!"
+
+He counted downward very carefully.
+
+"It is the word 'anagraph,'" he said; and she wrote it down.
+
+"Also, we had better try the twentieth word counting from the bottom
+of the page up," she said. "It might possibly be that."
+
+"The twentieth word, counting from the bottom of the column upward,
+is the word 'an,'" he said. She wrote it.
+
+"Now," she continued, "try page 15, second column, third word from
+TOP!"
+
+"'Ambrosia' is the word."
+
+"Try the third word from the BOTTOM."
+
+"'American.'"
+
+She pointed to the four words which she had written. Counting from
+the TOP of the page downward the first two words were "Anagraph
+ambrosia." But counting from the BOTTOM upward the two words formed
+the phrase: "AN AMERICAN."
+
+"Try page 730, first column, seventh word from the bottom," she
+said, controlling her excitement with an effort.
+
+"The word is 'who.'"
+
+"Page 212, second column, first word!"
+
+"'For.'"
+
+"Page 507, first column, seventh word!"
+
+"'Reasons.'"
+
+"We have the key!" she exclaimed. "Look at what I've written!--'An
+American who for reasons!' And here, in the cipher letter, it goes
+on--'of the most'--Do you see?"
+
+"It certainly looks like the key," he said. "But we'd better try
+another word or two."
+
+"Try page 717, first column, ninth word."
+
+"The word is 'vital.'"
+
+"Page 274, second column, second word."
+
+"'Importance!'"
+
+"It is the key! Here is what I have written: 'An American who for
+reasons, of the most vital importance!' Quick. We don't want a
+Secret Service man to find us here, Mr. Vaux! He'd object to our
+removing this book from Lauffer's apartment. Put it into your pocket
+and run!" And the pretty Miss Erith turned and took to her heels
+with Vaux after her.
+
+Through the disordered apartment and down the stairs they sped, out
+into the icy darkness and around the corner, where her car stood,
+engine running, and a blanket over the hood.
+
+As soon as the chauffeur espied them he whisked off the blanket;
+Miss Erith said: "Home!" and jumped in, and Vaux followed.
+
+Deep under the fur robe they burrowed, shivering more from sheer
+excitement than from cold, and the car flew across to Fifth Avenue
+and then northward along deserted sidewalks and a wintry park, where
+naked trees and shrubs stood stark as iron in the lustre of the
+white electric lamps.
+
+"That time the Secret Service made a mess of it," he said with a
+nervous laugh. "Did you notice Cassidy's grin of triumph?"
+
+"Poor Cassidy," she said.
+
+"I don't know. He butted in."
+
+"All the services are working at cross-purposes. It's a pity."
+
+"Well, Cassidy got his man. That's practically all he came for.
+Evidently he never heard of a code-book in connection with Lauffer's
+activities. That diagonal cipher caught him."
+
+"What luck," she murmured, "that you noticed that cook-book in the
+pantry! And what common sense you displayed in smuggling it!"
+
+"I didn't suppose it was THE book; I just took a chance."
+
+"To take a chance is the best way to make good, isn't it?" she said,
+laughing. "Oh, I am so thrilled, Mr. Vaux! I shall sit up all night
+over my darling cipher and my fascinating code-book-dictionary."
+
+"Will you be down in the morning?" he inquired.
+
+"Of course. Then to-morrow evening, if you will come to my house, I
+shall expect to show you the entire letter neatly deciphered."
+
+"Fine!" he exclaimed as the car stopped before her door.
+
+She insisted on sending him home in her car, and he was very
+grateful; so when he had seen her safely inside her house with the
+cook-book-dictionary clasped in her arms and a most enchanting smile
+on her pretty face, he made his adieux, descended the steps, and her
+car whirled him swiftly homeward through the arctic night.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE SLIP
+
+
+
+
+
+When Clifford Vaux arrived at a certain huge building now mostly
+devoted to Government work connected with the war, he found upon his
+desk a dictionary camouflaged to represent a cook-book; and also
+Miss Erith's complete report. And he lost no time in opening and
+reading the latter document:
+
+"CLIFFORD VAUX, ESQ.,
+
+"D. C. of the E. C. D.,
+
+"P. I. Service. (Confidential)
+
+"Sir:
+
+"I home the honour to report that the matter with which you have
+entrusted me is now entirely cleared up.
+
+"This short preliminary memorandum is merely to refresh your memory
+concerning the particular case herewith submitted in detail.
+
+"In re Herman Laufer:
+
+"The code-book, as you recollect, is Stormonth's English Dictionary,
+XIII Edition, published by Wm. Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh and
+London, MDCCCXCVI. This book I herewith return to you.
+
+"The entire cipher is, as we guessed, arbitrary and stupidly
+capricious. Phonetic spelling is indulged in occasionally--I should
+almost say humorously--were it not a Teuton mind which evolved the
+phonetic combinations which represent proper names not found in that
+dictionary--names like Holzminden and New York, for example.
+
+"As for the symbols and numbers, they are not at all obscure.
+Reference to the dictionary makes the cipher perfectly clear.
+
+"In Stormonth's Dictionary you will notice that each page has two
+columns; each column a varying number of paragraphs; some of the
+paragraphs contain more than one word to be defined.
+
+"In the cipher letter the first number of any of the groups of
+figures which are connected by dashes (--) and separated by vertical
+(|) represents the page in Stormonth's Dictionary on which the word
+is to be found.
+
+"The second number represents the column (1 or 2) in which the word
+is to be found.
+
+"The third number indicates the position of the word, counting from
+the bottom of the page upward, in the proper column.
+
+"Roman numerals which sometimes follow, enclosed in a circle, give
+the position of the word in the paragraph, if it does not, as usual,
+begin the paragraph.
+
+"The phonetic spelling of Holzminden is marked by an asterisk when
+first employed. Afterward only the asterisk (*) is used, instead of
+the cumbersome phonetic symbol.
+
+"Minus and plus signs are namely used to subtract or to add letters
+or to connect syllables. Reference to the code-book makes all this
+clear enough.
+
+"In the description of the escaped prisoner, Roman numerals give his
+age; Roman and Arabic his height in feet and inches.
+
+"Arabic numerals enclosed in circles represent capital letters as
+they occur in the middle of a page in the dictionary--as S, for
+example, is printed in the middle of the page; and all words
+beginning with S follow in proper sequence.
+
+"With the code-book at your elbow the cipher will prove to be
+perfectly simple. Without the code it is impossible for any human
+being to solve such a cipher, as you very well know.
+
+"I herewith append the cipher letter, the method of translation, and
+the complete message.
+
+"Respectfully,
+
+"EVELYN ERITH: E. C. D."
+
+Complete Translation of Cipher Letter with Parenthetical Suggestions
+by Miss Erith.
+
+To
+
+B 60-02,
+
+An American, who for reasons of the most vital importance has been
+held as an English (civilian?) civic prisoner in the mixed civilian
+(concentration) camp at Holzminden, has escaped. It is now feared
+that he has made his way safely to New York. (Memo: Please note the
+very ingenious use of phonetics to spell out New York. E. E.)
+
+(His) name (is) Kay McKay and he has been known as Kay McKay of
+Isla--a Scotch title--he having inherited from his grandfather (a)
+property in Scotland called Isla, which is but a poor domain
+(consisting of the river) Isla and the adjoining moors and a large
+white-washed manor (house) in very poor repair.
+
+After his escape from Holzminden it was at first believed that McKay
+had been drowned in (the River) Weser. Later it was ascertained that
+he sailed for an American port via a Scandinavian liner sometime
+(in) October.
+
+(This is his) description: Age 32; height 5 feet 8 1/2 inches; eyes
+brown; hair brown; nose straight; mouth regular; face oval; teeth
+white and even--no dental work; small light-brown moustache; no
+superficial identification marks.
+
+The bones in his left foot were broken many years ago, but have been
+properly set. Except for an hour or so every two or three months, he
+suffers no lameness.
+
+He speaks German without accent; French with an English accent.
+
+Until incarcerated (in Holzminden camp) he had never been
+intemperate. There, however, through orders from Berlin, he was
+tempted and encouraged in the use of intoxicants--other drink,
+indeed, being excluded from his allowance--so that after the second
+year he had become more or less addicted (to the use of alcohol).
+
+Unhappily, however, this policy, which had been so diligently and so
+thoroughly pursued in order to make him talkative and to surprise
+secrets from him when intoxicated (failed to produce the so properly
+expected results and) only succeeded in making of the young man a
+hopeless drunkard.
+
+Sterner measures had been decided on, and, in fact, had already been
+applied, when the prisoner escaped by tunnelling.
+
+Now, it is most necessary to discover this McKay (man's whereabouts
+and to have him destroyed by our agents in New York). Only his death
+can restore to the (Imperial German) Government its perfect sense of
+security and its certainty of (ultimate) victory.
+
+The necessity (for his destruction) lies in the unfortunate and
+terrifying fact that he is cognisant of the Great Secret! He should
+have been executed at Holzminden within an hour (of his
+incarceration).
+
+This was the urgent advice of Von Tirpitz. But unfortunately High
+Command intervened with the expectation (of securing from the
+prisoner) further information (concerning others who, like himself,
+might possibly have become possessed in some measure of a clue to
+the Great Secret)? E. E.
+
+The result is bad. (That the prisoner has escaped without betraying
+a single word of information useful to us.) E. E.
+
+Therefore, find him and have him silenced without delay. The
+security of the Fatherland depends on this (man's immediate death).
+
+M 17. (Evidently the writer of the letter) E. E.
+
+For a long time Vaux sat studying cipher and translation. And at
+last he murmured:
+
+"Surely, surely. Fine--very fine.... Excellent work. But--WHAT is
+the Great Secret?"
+
+There was only one man in America who knew.
+
+And he had landed that morning from the Scandinavian steamer, Peer
+Gynt, and, at that very moment, was standing by the bar of the Hotel
+Astor, just sober enough to keep from telling everything he knew to
+the bartenders, and just drunk enough to talk too much in a place
+where the enemy always listens.
+
+He said to the indifferent bartender who had just served him:
+
+"'F you knew what I know 'bout Germany, you'd be won'ful man! I'M
+won'ful man. I know something! Going tell, too. Going see 'thorities
+this afternoon. Going tell 'em great secret!... Grea' milt'ry
+secret! Tell 'em all 'bout it! Grea' secresh! Nobody knows
+grea'-sekresh 'cep m'self! Whaddya thinka that? Gimme l'il
+Hollanschnapps n'water onna side!"
+
+Hours later he was, apparently, no drunker--as though he could not
+manage to get beyond a certain stage of intoxication, no matter how
+recklessly he drank.
+
+"'Nother Hollenschnapps," he said hazily. "Goin' see 'thorities
+'bout grea' sekresh! Tell 'em all 'bout it. Anybody try stop me,
+knockem down. Thassa way.... N-n-nockem out!--stan' no nonsense! Ge'
+me?"
+
+Later he sauntered off on slightly unsteady legs to promenade
+himself in the lobby and Peacock Alley.
+
+Three men left the barroom when he left. They continued to keep him
+in view.
+
+Although he became no drunker, he grew politer after every
+drink--also whiter in the face--and the bluish, bruised look
+deepened under his eyes.
+
+But he was a Chesterfield in manners; he did not stare at any of the
+lively young persons in Peacock Alley, who seemed inclined to look
+pleasantly at him; he made room for them to pass, hat in hand.
+
+Several times he went to the telephone desk and courteously
+requested various numbers; and always one of the three men who had
+been keeping him in view stepped into the adjoining booth, but did
+not use the instrument.
+
+Several times he strolled through the crowded lobby to the desk and
+inquired whether there were any messages or visitors for Mr. Kay
+McKay; and the quiet, penetrating glances of the clerks on duty
+immediately discovered his state of intoxication but nothing else,
+except his extreme politeness and the tense whiteness of his face.
+
+Two of the three men who were keeping him in view tried, at various
+moments, to scrape acquaintance with him in the lobby, and at the
+bar; and without any success.
+
+The last man, who had again stepped into an adjoining booth while
+McKay was telephoning, succeeded, by inquiring for McKay at the desk
+and waiting there while he was being paged.
+
+The card on which this third man of the trio had written bore the
+name Stanley Brown; and when McKay hailed the page and perused the
+written name of his visitor he walked carefully back to the
+lobby--not too fast, because he seemed to realise that his legs, at
+that time, would not take kindly to speed.
+
+In the lobby the third man approached him:
+
+"Mr. McKay?"
+
+"Mr. Brown?"
+
+"A. I. O. agent," said Brown in a low voice. "You telephoned to
+Major Biddle, I believe."
+
+McKay inspected him with profound gravity:
+
+"How do," he said. "Ve' gla', m'sure. Ve' kind 'f'you come way up
+here see me. But I gotta see Major Biddle."
+
+"I understand. Major Biddle has asked me to meet you and bring you
+to him."
+
+"Oh. Ve' kind, 'm'sure. Gotta see Major. Confidential. Can' tell
+anybody 'cep Major."
+
+"The Major will meet us at the Pizza, this evening," explained
+Brown. "Meanwhile, if you will do me the honour of dining with
+me--"
+
+"Ve' kind. Pleasure, 'm'sure. Have li'l drink, Mr. Brown?"
+
+"Not here," murmured Brown. "I'm not in uniform, but I'm known."
+
+"Quite so. Unnerstan' perfec'ly. Won'do. No."
+
+"Had you thought of dressing for dinner?" inquired Mr. Brown
+carelessly.
+
+McKay nodded, went over to the desk and got his key. But when he
+returned to Brown he only laughed and shoved the key into his
+pocket.
+
+"Forgot," he explained. "Just came over. Haven't any clothes. Got
+these in Christiania. Ellis Island style. 'S'all I've got. Good
+overcoat though." He fumbled at his fur coat as he stood there,
+slightly swaying.
+
+"We'll get a drink where I'm not known," said Brown. "I'll find a
+taxi."
+
+"Ve' kind," murmured McKay, following him unsteadily to the swinging
+doors that opened on Long Acre, now so dimly lighted that it was
+scarcely recognisable.
+
+An icy blast greeted them from the darkness, refreshing McKay for a
+moment; but in the freezing taxi he sank back as though weary,
+pulling his beaver coat around him and closing his battered eyes.
+
+"Had a hard time," he muttered. "Feel done in. ... Prisoner. .. .
+Gottaway. . . . Three months making Dutch border.... Hell. Tell
+Major all 'bout it. Great secret."
+
+"What secret is that?" asked Brown, peering at him intently through
+the dim light, where he swayed in the corner with every jolt of the
+taxi.
+
+"Sorry, m'dear fellow. Mussn' ask me that. Gotta tell Major n'no one
+else."
+
+"But I am the Major's confidential--"
+
+"Sorry. You'll 'scuse me, 'm'sure. Can't talk Misser Brow!--'gret
+'ceedingly 'cessity reticence. Unnerstan'?"
+
+The taxi stopped before a vaguely lighted saloon on Fifty-ninth
+Street east of Fifth Avenue. McKay opened his eyes, looked around
+him in the bitter darkness, stumbled out into the snow on Brown's
+arm.
+
+"A quiet, cosy little cafe," said Brown, "where I don't mind joining
+you in something hot before dinner."
+
+"Thasso? Fine! Hot Scotch we' good 'n'cold day. We'll havva l'il
+drink keep us warm 'n'snug."
+
+A few respectable-looking men were drinking beer in the cafe as they
+entered a little room beyond, where a waiter came to them and took
+Brown's orders.
+
+Hours later McKay seemed to be no more intoxicated than he had been;
+no more loquacious or indiscreet. He had added nothing to what he
+had already disclosed, boasted no more volubly about the "great
+secret," as he called it.
+
+Now and then he recollected himself and inquired for the "Major,"
+but a drink always sidetracked him.
+
+It was evident, too, that Brown was becoming uneasy and impatient to
+the verge of exasperation, and that he was finally coming to the
+conclusion that he could do nothing with the man McKay as far as
+pumping was concerned.
+
+Twice, on pretexts, he left McKay alone in the small room and went
+into the cafe, where his two companions of the Hotel Astor were
+seated at a table, discussing sardine sandwiches and dark brew.
+
+"I can't get a damned thing out of him," he said in a low voice.
+"Who the hell he is and where he comes from is past me. Had I better
+fix him and take his key?"
+
+"Yess," nodded one of the other men, "it iss perhaps better that we
+search now his luggage in his room."
+
+"I guess that's all we can hope for from this guy. Say! He's a clam.
+And he may be only a jazzer at that."
+
+"He comes on the Peer Gynt this morning. We shall not forget that
+alretty, nor how he iss calling at those telephones all afternoon."
+
+"He may be a nosey newspaper man--just a fresh souse," said Brown.
+"All the same I think I'll fix him and we'll go see what he's got in
+his room."
+
+The two men rose, paid their reckoning, and went out; Brown returned
+to the small room, where McKay sat at the table with his curly brown
+head buried in his arms.
+
+He did not look up immediately when Brown returned--time for the
+latter to dose the steaming tumbler at the man's elbow, and slip the
+little bottle back into his pocket.
+
+Then, thinking McKay might be asleep, he nudged him, and the young
+man lifted his marred and dissipated visage and extended one hand
+for his glass.
+
+They both drank.
+
+"Wheresa Major?" inquired McKay. "Gotta see him rightaway. Great
+secreksh--"
+
+"Take a nap. You're tired."
+
+"Yess'm all in," muttered the other. "Had a hard
+time--prisoner--three--three months hiding--" His head fell on his
+arms again.
+
+Brown rose from his chair, bent over him, remained poised above his
+shoulder for a few moments. Then he coolly took the key from McKay's
+overcoat pocket and very deftly continued the search, in spite of
+the drowsy restlessness of the other.
+
+But there were no papers, no keys, only a cheque-book and a wallet
+packed with new banknotes and some foreign gold and silver. Brown
+merely read the name written in the new cheque-book but did not take
+it or the money.
+
+Then, his business with McKay being finished, he went out, paid the
+reckoning, tipped the waiter generously, and said:
+
+"My friend wants to sleep for half an hour. Let him alone until I
+come back for him."
+
+Brown had been gone only a few moments when McKay lifted his head
+from his arms with a jerk, looked around him blindly, got to his
+feet and appeared in the cafe doorway, swaying on unsteady legs.
+
+"Gotta see the Major!" he said thickly. "'M'not qui' well. Gotta--"
+
+The waiter attempted to quiet him, but McKay continued on toward the
+door, muttering that he had to find the Major and that he was not
+feeling well.
+
+They let him go out into the freezing darkness. Between the saloon
+and the Plaza Circle he fell twice on the ice, but contrived to find
+his feet again and lurch on through the deserted street and square.
+
+The black cold that held the city in its iron grip had driven men
+and vehicles from the streets. On Fifth Avenue scarcely a moving
+light was to be seen; under the fuel-conservation order, club, hotel
+and private mansion were unlighted at that hour. The vast marble
+mass of the Plaza Hotel loomed enormous against the sky; the New
+Netherlands, the Savoy, the Metropolitan Club, the great Vanderbilt
+mansion, were darkened. Only a few ice-dimmed lamps clustered around
+the Plaza fountain, where the bronze goddess, with her basket of
+ice, made a graceful and shadowy figure under the stars.
+
+The young man was feeling very ill now. His fur overcoat had become
+unbuttoned and the bitter wind that blew across the Park seemed to
+benumb his body and fetter his limbs so that he could barely keep
+his feet.
+
+He had managed to cross Fifth Avenue, somehow; but now he stumbled
+against the stone balustrade which surrounds the fountain, and he
+rested there, striving to keep his feet.
+
+Blindness, then deafness possessed him. Stupefied, instinct still
+aided him automatically in his customary habit of fighting; he
+strove to beat back the mounting waves of lethargy; half-conscious,
+he still fought for consciousness.
+
+After a while his hat fell off. He was on his knees now, huddled
+under his overcoat, his left shoulder resting against the
+balustrade. Twice one arm moved as though seeking something. It was
+the mind's last protest against the betrayal of the body. Then the
+body became still, although the soul still lingered within it.
+
+But now it had become a question of minutes--not many minutes.
+Fate had knocked him out; Destiny was counting him out--had nearly
+finished counting. Then Chance stepped into the squared circle of
+Life. And Kay McKay was in a very bad way indeed when a coupe,
+speeding northward through the bitter night, suddenly veered
+westward, ran in to the curb, and stopped; and Miss Erith's
+chauffeur turned in his seat at the wheel to peer back through the
+glass at his mistress, whose signal he had just obeyed.
+
+Then he scrambled out of his seat and came around to the door, just
+as Miss Erith opened it and hurriedly descended.
+
+"Wayland," she said, "there's somebody over there on the sidewalk.
+Can't you see?--there by the marble railing?--by the fountain!
+Whoever it is will freeze to death. Please go over and see what is
+the matter."
+
+The heavily-furred chauffeur ran across the snowy oval. Miss Erith
+saw him lean over the shadowy, prostrate figure, shake it; then she
+hurried over too, and saw a man, crouching, fallen forward on his
+face beside the snowy balustrade.
+
+Down on her knees in the snow beside him dropped Miss Erith, calling
+on Wayland to light a match.
+
+"Is he dead, Miss?"
+
+"No. Listen to him breathe! He's ill. Can't you hear the dreadful
+sounds he makes? Try to lift him, if you can. He's freezing here!"
+
+"I'm thinkin' he's just drunk an' snorin,' Miss."
+
+"What of it? He's freezing, too. Carry him to the carl"
+
+Wayland leaned down, put both big arms under the shoulders of the
+unconscious man, and dragged him, upright, holding him by main
+strength.
+
+"He's drunk, all right, Miss," the chauffeur remarked with a sniff
+of disgust.
+
+That he had been drinking was evident enough to Miss Erith now. She
+picked up his hat; a straggling yellow light from the ice-bound
+lamps fell on McKay's battered features.
+
+"Get him into the car," she said, "he'll die out here in this cold."
+
+The big chauffeur half-carried, half-dragged the inanimate man to
+the car and lifted him in. Miss Erith followed.
+
+"The Samaritan Hospital--that's the nearest," she said hastily.
+"Drive as fast as you can, Wayland."
+
+McKay had slid to the floor of the coupe; Miss Erith turned on the
+ceiling light, drew the fur robe around him, and lifted his head to
+her knees, holding it there supported between her gloved hands.
+
+The light fell full on his bruised visage, on the crisp brown hair
+dusted with snow, which lay so lightly on his temples, making him
+seem very frail and boyish in his deathly pallor.
+
+His breathing grew heavier, more laboured; the coupe reeked with the
+stench of alcohol; and Miss Erith, feeling almost faint, opened the
+window a little way, then wrapped the young man's head in the skirt
+of her fur coat and covered his icy hands with her own.
+
+The ambulance entrance to the Samaritan Hospital was dimly
+illuminated. Wayland, turning in from Park Avenue, sounded his horn,
+then scrambled down from the box as an orderly and a watchman
+appeared under the vaulted doorway. And in a few moments the
+emergency case had passed out of Miss Erith's jurisdiction.
+
+But as her car turned homeward, upon her youthful mind was stamped
+the image of a pale, bruised face--of a boyish head reversed upon
+her knees--of crisp, light-brown hair dusted with particles of
+snow.
+
+Within the girl's breast something deep was stirring--something
+unfamiliar--not pain--not pity--yet resembling both, perhaps. She
+had no other standard of comparison.
+
+After she reached home she called up the Samaritan Hospital for
+information, and learned that the man was suffering from the effects
+of alcohol and chloral--the latter probably an overdose
+self-administered--because he had not been robbed. Miss Erith also
+learned that there were five hundred dollars in new United States
+banknotes in his pockets, some English sovereigns, a number of Dutch
+and Danish silver pieces, and a new cheque-book on the Schuyler
+National Bank, in which was written what might be his name.
+
+"Will he live?" inquired Miss Erith, solicitous, as are people
+concerning the fate of anything they have helped to rescue.
+
+"He seems to be in no danger," came the answer. "Are you interested
+in the patient, Miss Erith?"
+
+"No--that is--yes. Yes, I am interested."
+
+"Shall we communicate with you in case any unfavourable symptoms
+appear?"
+
+"Please do!"
+
+"Are you a relative or friend?"
+
+"N-no. I am very slightly interested--in his recovery. Nothing
+more."
+
+"Very well. But we do not find his name in any directory. We have
+attempted to communicate with his family, but nobody of that name
+claims him. You say you are personally interested in the young man?"
+
+"Oh, no," said Miss Erith, "except that I hope he is not going to
+die.... He seems so--young--f-friendless--"
+
+"Then you have no personal knowledge of the patient?"
+
+"None whatever.... What did you say his name is?"
+
+"McKay."
+
+For a moment the name sounded oddly familiar but meaningless in her
+ears. Then, with a thrill of sudden recollection, she asked again
+for the man's name.
+
+"The name written in his cheque-book is McKay."
+
+"McKay!" she repeated incredulously. "What else?"
+
+"Kay."
+
+"WHAT!!"
+
+"That is the name in the cheque-book--Kay McKay."
+
+Dumb, astounded, she could not utter a word.
+
+"Do you know anything about him, Miss Erith?" inquired the distant
+voice.
+
+"Yes--yes!... I don't know whether I do.... I have heard the--that
+name--a similar name--" Her mind was in a tumult now. Could such a
+thing happen? It was utterly impossible!
+
+The voice on the wire continued:
+
+"The police have been here but they are not interested in the case,
+as no robbery occurred. The young man is still unconscious,
+suffering from the chloral. If you are interested, Miss Erith, would
+you kindly call at the hospital to-morrow?"
+
+"Yes.... Did you say that there was FOREIGN money in his pockets?"
+
+"Dutch and Danish silver and English gold."
+
+"Thank you.... I shall call to-morrow. Don't let him leave before I
+arrive."
+
+"What?"
+
+"I wish to see him. Please do not permit him to leave before I get
+there. It--it is very important--vital--in case he is the man--the
+Kay McKay in question."
+
+"Very well. Good-night."
+
+Miss Erith sank back in her armchair, shivering even in the warm
+glow from the hearth.
+
+"Such things can NOT happen!" she said aloud. "Such things do not
+happen in life!"
+
+And she told herself that even in stories no author would dare--not
+even the veriest amateur scribbler--would presume to affront
+intelligent readers by introducing such a coincidence as this
+appeared to be.
+
+"Such things do NOT happen!" repeated Miss Erith firmly.
+
+Such things, however, DO occur.
+
+Was it possible that the Great Secret, of which the Lauffer cipher
+letter spoke, was locked within the breast of this young fellow who
+now lay unconscious in the Samaritan Hospital?
+
+Was this actually the escaped prisoner? Was this the man who,
+according to instructions in the cipher, was to be marked for death
+at the hands of the German Government's secret agents in America?
+
+And, if this truly were the same man, was he safe, at least for the
+present, now that the cipher letter had been intercepted before it
+had reached Herman Lauffer?
+
+Hour after hour, lying deep in her armchair before the fire, Miss
+Erith crouched a prey to excited conjectures, not one of which could
+be answered until the man in the Samaritan Hospital had recovered
+consciousness.
+
+Suppose he never recovered consciousness. Suppose he should die--
+
+At the thought Miss Erith sprang from her chair and picked up the
+telephone.
+
+With fast-beating heart she waited for the connection. Finally she
+got it and asked the question.
+
+"The man is dying," came the calm answer. A pause, then: "I
+understand the patient has just died."
+
+Miss Erith strove to speak but her voice died in her throat.
+Trembling from head to foot, she placed the telephone on the table,
+turned uncertainly, fell into the armchair, huddled there, and
+covered her face with both hands.
+
+For it was proving worse--a little worse than the loss of the Great
+Secret--worse than the mere disappointment in losing it--worse even
+than a natural sorrow in the defeat of an effort to save life.
+
+For in all her own life Miss Erith had never until that evening
+experienced the slightest emotion when looking into the face of any
+man.
+
+But from the moment when her brown eyes fell upon the pallid,
+dissipated, marred young face turned upward on her knees in the
+car--in that instant she had known for the first time a new and
+indefinable emotion--vague in her mind, vaguer in her heart--yet
+delicately apparent.
+
+But what this unfamiliar emotion might be, so faint, so vague, she
+had made no effort to analyse.... It had been there; she had
+experienced it; that was all she knew.
+
+It was almost morning before she rose, stiff with cold, and moved
+slowly toward her bedroom.
+
+Among the whitening ashes on her hearth only a single coal remained
+alive.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+TO A FINISH
+
+
+
+
+
+The hospital called her on the telephone about eight o'clock in the
+morning:
+
+"Miss Evelyn Erith, please?"
+
+"Yes," she said in a tired voice, "who is it?"
+
+"Is this Miss Erith?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"This is the Superintendent's office, Samaritan, Hospital, Miss
+Dalton speaking."
+
+The girl's heart contracted with a pang of sheer pain. She closed
+her eyes and waited. The voice came over the wire again:
+
+"A wreath of Easter lilies with your card came early--this morning.
+I'm very sure there is a mistake--"
+
+"No," she whispered, "the flowers are for a patient who died in the
+hospital last night--a young man whom I brought there in my car--Kay
+McKay."
+
+"I was afraid so--"
+
+"What!"
+
+"McKay isn't dead! It's another patient. I was sure somebody here
+had made a mistake."
+
+Miss Erith swayed slightly, steadied herself with a desperate effort
+to comprehend what the voice was telling her.
+
+"There was a mistake made last night," continued Miss Dalton.
+"Another patient died--a similar case. When I came on duty a few
+moments ago I learned what had occurred. The young man in whom you
+are interested is conscious this morning. Would you care to see him
+before he is discharged?"
+
+Miss Erith said, unsteadily, that she would.
+
+She had recovered her self-command but her knees remained weak and
+her lips tremulous, and she rested her forehead on both hands which
+had fallen, tightly clasped, on the table in front of her. After a
+few moments she felt better and she rang up her D. C., Mr. Vaux, and
+explained that she expected to be late at the office. After that she
+got the garage on the wire, ordered her car, and stood by the window
+watching the heavily falling snow until her butler announced the
+car's arrival.
+
+The shock of the message informing her that this man was still alive
+now rapidly absorbed itself in her reviving excitement at the
+prospect of an approaching interview with him. Her car ran
+cautiously along Park Avenue through the driving snow, but the
+distance was not far and in a few minutes the great red quadrangle
+of the Samaritan Hospital loomed up on her right. And even before
+she was ready, before she quite had time to compose her mind in
+preparation for the questions she had begun to formulate, she was
+ushered into a private room by a nurse on duty who detained her a
+moment at the door:
+
+"The patient is ready to be discharged," she whispered, "but we have
+detained him at your request. We are so sorry about the mistake."
+
+"Is he quite conscious?"
+
+"Entirely. He's somewhat shaken, that is all. Otherwise he shows no
+ill effects."
+
+"Does he know how he came here?"
+
+"Oh, yes. He questioned us this morning and we told him the
+circumstances."
+
+"Does he know I have arrived?"
+
+"Yes, I told him."
+
+"He did not object to seeing me?" inquired Miss Erith. A slight
+colour dyed her face.
+
+"No, he made no objection. In fact, he seemed interested. He expects
+you. You may go in."
+
+Miss Erith stepped into the room. Perhaps the patient had heard the
+low murmur of voices in the corridor, for he lay on his side in bed
+gazing attentively toward the door. Miss Erith walked straight to
+the bedside; he looked up at her in silence.
+
+"I am so glad that you are better," she said with an effort made
+doubly difficult in the consciousness of the bright blush on her
+cheeks. Without moving he replied in what must have once been an
+agreeable voice: "Thank you. I suppose you are Miss Erith."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then--I am very grateful for what you have done."
+
+"It was so fortunate--"
+
+"Would you be seated if you please?"
+
+She took the chair beside his bed.
+
+"It was nice of you," he said, almost sullenly. "Few women of your
+sort would bother with a drunken man."
+
+They both flushed. She said calmly: "It is women of my sort who DO
+exactly that kind of thing."
+
+He gave her a dark and sulky look: "Not often," he retorted: "there
+are few of your sort from Samaria."
+
+There was a silence, then he went on in a hard voice:
+
+"I'd been drinking a lot... as usual.... But it isn't an excuse when
+I say that my beastly condition was not due to a drunken stupor. It
+just didn't happen to be that time."
+
+She shivered slightly. "It happened to be due to chloral," he added,
+reddening painfully again. "I merely wished you to know."
+
+"Yes, they told me," she murmured.
+
+After another silence, during which he had been watching her
+askance, he said: "Did you think I had taken that chloral
+voluntarily?"
+
+She made no reply. She sat very still, conscious of vague pain
+somewhere in her breast, acquiescent in the consciousness, dumb, and
+now incurious concerning further details of this man's tragedy.
+
+"Sometimes," he said, "the poor devil who, in chloral, seeks
+a-refuge from intolerable pain becomes an addict to the drug.... I
+do not happen to be an addict. I want you to understand that."
+
+The painful colour came and went in the girl's face; he was now
+watching her intently.
+
+"As a matter of fact, but probably of no interest to you," he
+continued, "I did not voluntarily take that chloral. It was
+administered to me without my knowledge--when I was more or less
+stupid with liquor.... It is what is known as knockout drops, and is
+employed by crooks to stupefy men who are more or less intoxicated
+so that they may be easily robbed."
+
+He spoke now so calmly and impersonally that the girl had turned to
+look at him again as she listened. And now she said: "Were you
+robbed?"
+
+"They took my hotel key: nothing else."
+
+"Was that a serious matter, Mr. McKay?"
+
+He studied her with narrowing brown eyes.
+
+"Oh, no," he said. "I had nothing of value in my room at the Astor
+except a few necessaries in a steamer-trunk.... Thank you so much
+for all your kindness to me, Miss Erith," he added, as though
+relieving her of the initiative in terminating the interview.
+
+As he spoke he caught her eye and divined somehow that she did not
+mean to go just yet. Instantly he was on his guard, lying there with
+partly closed lids, awaiting events, though not yet really
+suspicious. But at her next question he rose abruptly, supported on
+one elbow, his whole frame tense and alert under the bed-coverings
+as though gathered for a spring.
+
+"What did you say?" he demanded.
+
+"I asked you how long ago you escaped from Holzminden camp?"
+repeated the girl, very pale.
+
+"Who told you I had ever been there?--wherever that is!"
+
+"You were there as a prisoner, were you not, Mr. McKay?"
+
+"Where is that place?"
+
+"In Germany on the River Weser. You were detained there under
+pretence of being an Englishman before we declared war on Germany.
+After we declared war they held you as a matter of course."
+
+There was an ugly look in his eyes, now: "You seem to know a great
+deal about a drunkard you picked up in the snow near the Plaza
+fountain last night."
+
+"Please don't speak so bitterly."
+
+Quite unconsciously her gloved hand crept up on her fur coat until
+it rested over her heart, pressing slightly against her breast.
+Neither spoke for a few moments. Then:
+
+"I do know something about you, Mr. McKay," she said. "Among other
+things I know that--that if you have become--become intemperate--it
+is not your fault.... That was vile of them-unutterably wicked-to do
+what they did to you--"
+
+"Who are you?" he burst out. "Where have you learned-heard such
+things? Did I babble all this?"
+
+"You did not utter a sound!"
+
+"Then--in God's name--"
+
+"Oh, yes, yes!" she murmured, "in God's name. That is why you and I
+are here together--in God's name and by His grace. Do you know He
+wrought a miracle for you and me--here in New York, in these last
+hours of this dreadful year that is dying very fast now?
+
+"Do you know what that miracle is? Yes, it's partly the fact that
+you did not die last night out there on the street. Thirteen degrees
+below zero! ... And you did not die.... And the other part of the
+miracle is that I of all people in the world should have found
+you!... That is our miracle."
+
+Somehow he divined that the girl did not mean the mere saving of his
+life had been part of this miracle. But she had meant that, too,
+without realising she meant it.
+
+"Who are you?" he asked very quietly.
+
+"I'll tell you: I am Evelyn Erith, a volunteer in the C. E. D.
+Service of the United States."
+
+He drew a deep breath, sank down on his elbow, and rested his head
+on the pillow.
+
+"Still I don't see how you know," he said. "I mean--the beastly
+details--"
+
+"I'll tell you some time. I read the history of your case in an
+intercepted cipher letter. Before the German agent here had received
+and decoded it he was arrested by an agent of another Service. If
+there is anything more to be learned from him it will be extracted.
+
+"But of all men on earth you are the one man I wanted to find. There
+is the miracle: I found you! Even now I can scarcely force myself to
+believe it is really you."
+
+The faintest flicker touched his eyes.
+
+"What did you want of me?" he inquired.
+
+"Help."
+
+"Help? From such a man as I? What sort of help do you expect from a
+drunkard?"
+
+"Every sort. All you can give. All you can give."
+
+He looked at her wearily; his face had become pallid again; the dark
+hollows of dissipation showed like bruises.
+
+"I don't understand," he said. "I'm no good, you know that. I'm done
+in, finished. I couldn't help you with your work if I wanted to.
+There's nothing left of me. I am not to be depended on."
+
+And suddenly, in his eyes of a boy, his self-hatred was revealed to
+her in one savage gleam.
+
+"No good," he muttered feverishly, "not to be trusted--no will-power
+left.... It was in me, I suppose, to become the drunkard I am--"
+
+"You are NOT!" cried the girl fiercely. "Don't say it!"
+
+"Why not? I am!"
+
+"You can fight your way free!" His laugh frightened her.
+
+"Fight? I've done that. They tried to pump me that way, too--tried
+to break me--break my brain to pieces--by stopping my liquor.... I
+suppose they thought I might really go insane, as they gave it back
+after a while--after a few centuries in hell--and tried to make me
+talk by other methods--
+
+"Don't, please." She turned her head swiftly, unable to control her
+quivering face.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I can't bear it."
+
+"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to shock you."
+
+"I know." She sat for a while with head averted; and presently
+spoke, sitting so:
+
+"We'll fight it, anyway," she said.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"If you'll let me--"
+
+After a silence she turned and looked at him. He stammered, very
+red:
+
+"I don't quite know why you speak to me so."
+
+She herself was not entirely clear on that point, either. After all,
+her business with this man was to use him in the service of her
+Government."
+
+"What is THE GREAT SECRET?" she asked calmly.
+
+After a long while he said, lying there very still: "So you have
+even heard about that."
+
+"I have heard about it; that is all."
+
+"Do you know what it is?"
+
+"All I know about it is that there is such a thing--something known
+to certain Germans, and by them spoken of as THE GREAT SECRET. I
+imagine, of course, that it is some vital military secret which they
+desire to guard."
+
+"Is that all you know about it?"
+
+"No, not all." She looked at him gravely out of very clear, honest
+eyes:
+
+"I know, also, that the Berlin Government has ordered its agents to
+discover your whereabouts, and to'silence' you."
+
+He gazed at her quite blandly for a moment, then, to her amazement,
+he laughed--such a clear, untroubled, boyish laugh that her
+constrained expression softened in sympathy.
+
+"Do you think that Berlin doesn't mean it?" she asked, brightening a
+little.
+
+"Mean it? Oh, I'm jolly sure Berlin means it!"
+
+"Then why--"
+
+"Why do I laugh?"
+
+"Well--yes. Why do you? It does not strike me as very humorous."
+
+At that he laughed again--laughed so whole-heartedly, so
+delightfully, that the winning smile curved her own lips once more.
+
+"Would you tell me why you laugh?" she inquired.
+
+"I don't know. It seems so funny--those Huns, those Boches, already
+smeared from hair to feet with blood--pausing in their wholesale
+butchery to devise a plan to murder ME!"
+
+His face altered; he raised himself on one elbow:
+
+"The swine have turned all Europe into a bloody wallow. They're
+belly-deep in it--Kaiser and knecht! But that's only part of it.
+They're destroying souls by millions!... Mine is already damned."
+
+Miss Erith sprang to her feet: "I tell you not to say such a thing!"
+she cried, exasperated. "You're as young as I am! Besides, souls are
+not slain by murder. If they perish it's suicide, ALWAYS!"
+
+She began to pace the white room nervously, flinging open her fur
+coat as she turned and came straight back to his bed again. Standing
+there and looking down at him she said:
+
+"We've got to fight it out. The country needs you. It's your bit and
+you've got to do it. There's a cure for alcoholism--Dr. Langford's
+cure. Are you afraid because you think it may hurt?"
+
+He lay looking up at her with hell's own glimmer in his eyes again:
+
+"You don't know what you're talking about," he said. "You talk of
+cures, and I tell you that I'm half dead for a drink right now! And
+I'm going to get up and dress and get it!"
+
+The expression of his features and his voice and words appalled her,
+left her dumb for an instant. Then she said breathlessly:
+
+"You won't do that!"
+
+"Yes I will."
+
+"No."
+
+"Why not?" he demanded excitedly.
+
+"You owe me something."
+
+"What I said was conventional. I'm NOT grateful to you for saving
+the sort of life mine is!"
+
+"I was not thinking of your life."
+
+After a moment he said more quietly: "I know what you mean.... Yes,
+I am grateful. Our Government ought to know."
+
+"Then tell me, now."
+
+"You know," he said brutally, "I have only your word that you are
+what you say you are."
+
+She reddened but replied calmly: "That is true. Let me show you my
+credentials."
+
+From her muff she drew a packet, opened it, and laid the contents on
+the bedspread under his eyes. Then she walked to the window and
+stood there with her back turned looking out at the falling snow.
+
+After a few minutes he called her. She went back to the bedside,
+replaced the packet in her muff, and stood waiting in silence.
+
+He lay looking up at her very quietly and his bruised young features
+had lost their hard, sullen expression.
+
+"I'd better tell you all I know," he said, "because there is really
+no hope of curing me... you don't understand... my will-power is
+gone. The trouble is with my mind itself. I don't want to be
+cured.... I WANT what's killing me. I want it now, always, all the
+time. So before anything happens to me I'd better tell you what I
+know so that our Government can make the proper investigation.
+Because what I shall tell you is partly a surmise. I leave it to you
+to judge--to our Government."
+
+She drew from her muff a little pad and a pencil and seated herself
+on the chair beside him.
+
+"I'll speak slowly," he began, but she shook her head, saying that
+she was an expert stenographer. So he went on:
+
+"You know my name--Kay McKay. I was born here and educated at Yale.
+But my father was Scotch and he died in Scotland. My mother had been
+dead many years. They lived on a property called Isla which belonged
+to my grandfather. After my father's death my grandfather allowed me
+an income, and when I had graduated from Yale I continued here
+taking various post-graduate courses. Finally I went to Cornell and
+studied agriculture, game breeding and forestry--desiring some day
+to have a place of my own.
+
+"In 1914 I went to Germany to study their system of forestry. In
+July of that year I went to Switzerland and roamed about in the
+vagabond way I like--once liked." His visage altered and he cast a
+side glance at the girl beside him, but her eyes were fixed on her
+pad.
+
+He drew a deep breath, like a sigh:
+
+"In that corner of Switzerland which is thrust westward between
+Germany and France there are a lot of hills and mountains which were
+unfamiliar to me. The flora resembled that of the Vosges--so did the
+bird and insect life except on the higher mountains.
+
+"There is a mountain called Mount Terrible. I camped on it. There
+was some snow. You know what happens sometimes in summer on the
+higher peaks. Well, it happened to me--the whole snow field slid
+when I was part way across it--and I thought it was all off--never
+dreamed a man could live through that sort of thing--with the sheer
+gneiss ledges below!
+
+"It was not a big avalanche--not the terrific thundering
+sort--rather an easy slipping, I fancy--but it was a devilish thing
+to lie aboard, and, of course, if there had been precipices where I
+slid--" He shrugged.
+
+The girl looked up from her shorthand manuscript; he seemed to be
+dreamily living over in his mind those moments on Mount Terrible.
+Presently he smiled slightly:
+
+"I was horribly scared--smothered, choked, half-senseless.... Part
+of the snow and a lot of trees and boulders went over the edge of
+something with a roar like Niagara.... I don't know how long
+afterward it was when I came to my senses.
+
+"I was in a very narrow, rocky valley, up to my neck in soft snow,
+and the sun beating on my face. ... So I crawled out... I wasn't
+hurt; I was merely lost.
+
+"It took me a long while to place myself geographically. But
+finally, by map and compass, I concluded that I was in some one of
+the innumerable narrow valleys on the northern side of Mount
+Terrible. Basle seemed to be the nearest proper objective, judging
+from my map.... Can you form a mental picture of that particular
+corner of Europe, Miss Erith?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, the German frontier did not seem to be very far northward--at
+least that was my idea. But there was no telling; the place where I
+landed was a savage and shaggy wilderness of firs and rocks without
+any sign of habitation or of roads.
+
+"The things that had been strapped on my back naturally remained
+with me--map, binoculars, compass, botanising paraphernalia, rations
+for two days--that sort of thing. So I was not worried. I prowled
+about, experienced agreeable shivers by looking up at the mountain
+which had dumped me down into this valley, and finally, after
+eating, I started northeast by compass.
+
+"It was a rough scramble. After I had been hiking along for several
+hours I realised that I was on a shelf high above another valley,
+and after a long while I came out where I could look down over miles
+of country. My map indicated that what I beheld must be some part of
+Alsace. Well, I lay flat on a vast shelf of rock and began to use my
+field-glasses."
+
+He was silent so long that Miss Erith finally looked up
+questioningly. McKay's face had become white and stern, and in his
+fixed gaze there was something dreadful.
+
+"Please," she faltered, "go on."
+
+He looked at her absently; the colour came back to his face; he
+shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Oh, yes. What was I saying? Yes--about that vast ledge up there
+under the mountains... I stayed there three days. Partly because I
+couldn't find any way down. There seemed to be none.
+
+"But I was not bored. Oh, no. Just anxious concerning my situation.
+Otherwise I had plenty to look at."
+
+She waited, pencil poised.
+
+"Plenty to look at," he repeated absently. "Plenty of Huns to gaze
+at. Huns? They were like ants below me, there. They swarmed under
+the mountain ledge as far as I could see--thousands of busy
+Boches--busy as ants. There were narrow-gauge railways, too,
+apparently running right into the mountain; and a deep broad cleft,
+deep as another valley, and all crawling with Huns.
+
+"A tunnel? Nobody alive ever dreamed of such a gigantic tunnel, if
+it was one!... Well, I was up there three days. It was the first of
+August--thereabouts--and I'd been afield for weeks. And, of course,
+I'd heard nothing of war--never dreamed of it.
+
+"If I had, perhaps what those thousands of Huns were doing along the
+mountain wall might have been plainer to me.
+
+"As it was, I couldn't guess. There was no blasting--none that I
+could hear. But trains were running and some gigantic enterprise was
+being accomplished--some enterprise that apparently demanded speed
+and privacy--for not one civilian was to be seen, not one dwelling.
+But there were endless mazes of fortifications; and I saw guns being
+moved everywhere.
+
+"Well, I was becoming hungry up on that fir-clad battlement. I
+didn't know how to get down into the valley. It began to look as
+though I'd have to turn back; and that seemed a rather awful
+prospect.
+
+"Anyway, what happened, eventually, was this: I started east through
+the forest along that pathless tableland, and on the afternoon of
+the next day, tired out and almost starved, I stepped across the
+Swiss boundary line--a wide, rocky, cleared space crossing a
+mountain flank like a giant's road.
+
+"No guards were visible anywhere, no sentry-boxes, but, as I stood
+hesitating in the middle of the frontier--and just why I hesitated I
+don't know--I saw half a dozen jagers of a German mounted regiment
+ride up on the German side of the boundary.
+
+"For a second the idea occurred to me that they had ridden parallel
+to the ledge to intercept me; but the idea seemed absurd, granted
+even that they had seen me upon the ledge from below, which I never
+dreamed they had. So when they made me friendly gestures to come
+across the frontier I returned their cheery 'Gruss Gott!' and
+plodded thankfully across. ... And their leader, leaning from his
+saddle to take my offered hand, suddenly struck me in the face, and
+at the same moment a trooper behind me hit me on the head with the
+butt of a pistol."
+
+The girl's flying pencil faltered; she lifted her brown eyes,
+waiting.
+
+"That's about all," he said--"as far as facts are concerned.... They
+treated me rather badly.... I faced their firing-squads half-a-dozen
+times. After that bluff wouldn't work they interned me as an English
+civilian at Holzminden.... They hid me when, at last, an inspection
+took place. No chance for me to communicate with our Ambassador or
+with any of the Commission."
+
+He turned to her in his boyish, frank way: "But do you know, Miss
+Erith, it took me quite a while to analyse the affair and to figure
+out why they arrested me, lied about me, and treated me so
+hellishly.
+
+"You see, I was kept in solitary confinement and never had a chance
+to speak to any of the other civilians interned there at Holzminden.
+There was no way of suspecting why all this was happening to me
+except by the attitude of the Huns themselves and their endless
+questions and threats and cruelties. They were cruel. They hurt me a
+lot."
+
+Miss Erith's eyes suddenly dimmed as she watched him, and she
+hastily bent her head over the pad.
+
+"Well," he went on, "the rest, as I say, is pure surmise. This is my
+conclusion: I think that for the last forty years the Huns have been
+busy with an astounding military enterprise. Of course, since 1870,
+the Boche has expected war, and has been feverishly preparing for
+it. All the world now knows what they have done--not everything that
+they have done, however.
+
+"My conclusion is this: that, when Mount Terrible shrugged me off
+its northern flank, the snow slide carried me to an almost
+inaccessible spot of which even the Swiss hunters knew nothing. Or,
+if they did, they considered it impossible to reach from their own
+territory.
+
+"From Germany it could be reached, but it was Swiss territory. At
+any rate I think I am the only civilian who has been there, and who
+has viewed from there this enormous work in which the Huns are
+engaged.
+
+"And I belive that this mysterious, overwhelmingly enormous work is
+nothing less than the piercing--not of a mountain or a group of
+mountains--but of that entire part of Switzerland which lies between
+Germany and France.
+
+"I believe that a vast military road, deep, deep, under the earth,
+is being carried by an enormous tunnel from far back on the German
+side of the frontier, under Mount Terrible, under all the mountains,
+hills, valleys, forests, rivers--under Switzerland, in fact--into
+French territory.
+
+"I believe it has been building since 1871. I believe it is nearly
+finished, and that it will, on French territory, give egress to a
+Hun army debouching from Alsace, under Switzerland, into France
+behind the French lines. That part of the Franco-Swiss frontier is
+unguarded, unfortified, uninhabited. From there a Hun army can
+strike the French trenches from the rear--strike Toul, Nancy,
+Belfort, Verdun--why, the road is open to Paris that way--open to
+Calais, to England!"
+
+"This is frightful!" cried the girl. "If such a dreadful--"
+
+"Wait! I told you that it is merely a surmise. I don't know. I
+guess. Why I guess it I have told you.... They were savage with
+me--those Huns.... They got nothing out of me. I lied steadily, even
+when drunk. No, they got nothing out of me. I denied I had seen
+anything. I denied--and truly enough--that anybody had accompanied
+me. No, they wrenched nothing out of me--not by starving me, not by
+water torture, not by their firing-squads, not by blows, not even by
+making of me the drunkard I am."
+
+The pencil fell from Miss Erith's hand and the hand caught McKay's,
+held it, crushed it.
+
+"You're only a boy," she murmured. "I'm not much more than a girl.
+We've both got years ahead of us--the best of our lives."
+
+"YOU have."
+
+"You also! Oh, don't, don't look at me that way. I'll help you.
+We've got work to do, you and I. Don't you see? Don't you
+understand? Work to do for our Government! Work to do for America!"
+
+"It's too late for me to--"
+
+"No. You've got to live. You've got to find yourself again. This
+depends on you. Don't you see it does? Don't you see that you have
+got to go back there and PROVE what you merely suspect?"
+
+"I simply can't."
+
+"You shall! I'll make this right with you! I'll stick to you! I'll
+fight to give you back your will-power--your mind. We'll do this
+together, for our country. I'll give up everything else to make this
+fight."
+
+He began to tremble.
+
+"I--if I could--"
+
+"I tell you that you shall! We must do our bit, you and I!"
+
+"You don't know--you don't know!" he cried in a bitter voice, then
+fell trembling again with the sweat of agony on his face.
+
+"No, I don't know," she whispered, clutching his hand to steady him.
+"But I shall learn."
+
+"You'll learn that a drunkard is a dirty beast!" he cried. "Do you
+know what I'd do if anybody tried to keep me from drink?
+ANYBODY!--even you!"
+
+"No, I don't know." She shook her head sorrowfully: "A mindless man
+becomes a demon, I suppose. ... Would you--injure me?"
+
+He was shaking all over now, and presently he sat up in bed and
+covered his head with one desperate hand.
+
+"You poor boy!" she whispered.
+
+"Keep away from me," he muttered, "I've told you all I know. I'm no
+further use.... Keep clear of me.... I'm sorry--to be--what I am."
+
+"When I leave what are you going to do?" she asked gently.
+
+"Do? I'll dress and go to the nearest bar."
+
+"Do you need it so much already?"
+
+He nodded his bowed head covered by the hand that gripped his hair:
+"Yes, I need it--badly."
+
+She rose, loosened his clutch on her slender hand, picked up her
+muff:
+
+"I'll be waiting for you downstairs," she said simply.
+
+His face expressed sullen defiance as he passed through the
+waiting-room. Yet he seemed a little taken aback as well as relieved
+when Miss Erith did not appear among the considerable number of
+people waiting there for discharged patients. He walked on,
+buttoning his fur coat with shaky fingers, passed the doorway and
+stepped out into the falling snow. At the same moment a chauffeur
+buried in coon-skins moved forward touching his cap:
+
+"Miss Erith's car is here, sir; Miss Erith expects you."
+
+McKay hesitated, scowling now in his perplexity; passed his
+quivering hand slowly across his face, then turned, and looked at
+the waiting car drawn up at the gutter. Behind the frosty window
+Miss Erith gave him a friendly smile. He walked over to the curb,
+the chauffeur opened the door, and McKay took off his hat.
+
+"Don't ask me," he said in a low voice that trembled slightly like a
+sick man's.
+
+"I DO ask you."
+
+"You know what's the matter with me, Miss Erith," he insisted in the
+same low, unsteady voice.
+
+"Please," she said: and laid one small gloved hand lightly on his
+arm.
+
+So he entered the car; the chauffeur drew the robe over them, and
+stood awaiting orders.
+
+"Home," said Miss Erith faintly.
+
+If McKay was astonished he did not betray it. Neither said anything
+more for a while. The man rested an elbow on the sill, his troubled,
+haggard face on his hand; the girl kept her gaze steadily in front
+of her with a partly resolute, partly scared expression. The car
+went up Park Avenue and then turned westward.
+
+When it stopped the girl said: "You will give me a few moments in my
+library with you, won't you?"
+
+The visage he turned to her was one of physical anguish. They sat
+confronting each other in silence for an instant; then he rose with
+a visible effort and descended, and she followed.
+
+"Be at the garage at two, Wayland," she said, and ascended the snowy
+stoop beside McKay.
+
+The butler admitted them. "Luncheon for two," she said, and mounted
+the stairs without pausing.
+
+McKay remained in the hall until he had been separated from hat and
+coat; then he slowly ascended the stairway. She was waiting on the
+landing and she took him directly into the library where a wood fire
+was burning.
+
+"Just a moment," she said, "to make myself as--as persuasive as I
+can."
+
+"You are perfectly equipped, Miss Erith--"
+
+"Oh, no, I must do better than I have done. This is the great moment
+of our careers, Mr. McKay." Her smile, brightly forced, left his
+grim features unresponsive. The undertone in her voice warned him of
+her determination to have her way.
+
+He took an involuntary step toward the door like a caged thing that
+sees a loophole, halted as she barred his way, turned his marred
+young visage and glared at her. There was something terrible in his
+intent gaze--a pale flare flickering in his eyes like the uncanny
+light in the orbs of a cornered beast.
+
+"You'll wait, won't you?" she asked, secretly frightened now.
+
+After a long interval, "Yes," his lips motioned.
+
+"Thank you. Because it is the supreme moment of our lives. It
+involves life or death.... Be patient with me. Will you?"
+
+"But you must be brief," he muttered restlessly. "You know what I
+need. I am sick, I tell you!"
+
+So she went away--not to arrange her beauty more convincingly, but
+to fling coat and hat to her maid and drop down on the chair by her
+desk and take up the telephone:
+
+"Dr. Langford's Hospital?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Miss Erith wishes to speak to Dr. Langford. ... Is that you,
+Doctor?... Oh, yes, I'm perfectly well.... Tell me, how soon can you
+cure a man of--of dipsomania?... Of course.... It was a stupid
+question. But I'm so worried and unhappy... Yes.... Yes, it's a man
+I know.... It wasn't his fault, poor fellow. If I can only get him
+to you and persuade him to tell you the history of his case... I
+don't know whether he'll go. I'm doing my best. He's here in my
+library.... Oh, no, he isn't intoxicated now, but he was yesterday.
+And oh, Doctor! He is so shaky and he seems so ill--I mean in mind
+and spirit more than in body.... Yes, he says he needs something....
+What?... Give him some whisky if he wants it?... Do you mean a
+highball?... How many?... Oh... Yes... Yes, I understand ... I'll do
+my very best.... Thank you. ... At three o'clock?... Thank you so
+much, Doctor Langford. Good-bye!"
+
+She hung up the receiver, took a look at herself in the
+dressing-glass, and saw reflected there a yellow-haired hazel-eyed
+girl who looked a trifle scared. But she forced a smile, made a
+hasty toilette and rang for the butler, gave her orders, and then
+walked leisurely into the library. McKay lifted his tragic face from
+his hands where he stood before the fire, his elbows resting on the
+mantel.
+
+"Come," she said in her pretty, resolute way, "you and I are
+perfectly human. Let's face this thing together and find out what
+really is in it."
+
+She took one armchair, he the other, and she noticed that all his
+frame was quivering now--his hands always in restless, groping
+movement, as though with palsy. A moment later the butler came with
+a decanter, ice, mineral water and a tall glass. There was also a
+box of cigars on the silver tray.
+
+"You'll fix your own highball," she said carelessly, nodding
+dismissal to the butler. But she looked only once at McKay, then
+turned away--pretence of picking up her knitting--so terrible it was
+to her to see in his eyes the very glimmer of hell itself as he
+poured out what he "needed."
+
+Minute after minute she sat there by the fire knitting tranquilly,
+scarcely ever even lifting her calm young eyes to the man. Twice
+again he poured out what he "needed" for himself before the agony in
+his sickened brain and body became endurable--before the tortured
+nerves had been sufficiently drugged once more and the indescribable
+torment had subsided. He looked at her once or twice where she sat
+knitting and apparently quite oblivious to what he had been about,
+but his glance was no longer furtive; he unconsciously squared his
+shoulders, and his head straightened up.
+
+Without lifting her eyes she said: "I thought we'd talk over our
+plans when you feel better."
+
+He glanced sideways at the decanter: "I am all right," he said.
+
+She had not yet lifted her eyes; she continued to knit while
+speaking:
+
+"First of all," she said, "I shall place your testimony and my
+report in the hands of my superior, Mr. Vaux. Does that meet with
+your approval?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+She knitted in silence a few moments. He kept his eyes on her.
+Presently--and still without looking up--she said: "Are you within
+the draft age?"
+
+"No. I am thirty-two."
+
+"Will you volunteer?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Would you tell me why?"
+
+"Yes, I'll tell you why. I shall not volunteer because of my
+habits."
+
+"You mean your temporary infirmity," she said calmly. But her cheeks
+reddened and she bent lower over her work. A dull colour stained his
+face, too, but he merely shrugged his comment.
+
+She said in a low voice: "I want you to volunteer with me for
+overseas service in the Army Intelligence Department.... You and I,
+together.... To prove what you have surmised concerning the German
+operations beyond Mount Terrible.... And first I want you to go with
+me to Dr. Langford's hospital .... I want you to go this afternoon
+with me. ... And face the situation. And see it through. And come
+out cured." She lifted her head and looked at him. "Will you?" And
+in his altering gaze she saw the flicker of half-senseless anger
+intensified suddenly to a flare of hatred.
+
+"Don't ask anything like that of me," he said. She had grown quite
+white.
+
+"I do ask it.... Will you?"
+
+"If I wanted to I couldn't, and I don't want to. I prefer this hell
+to the other."
+
+"Won't you make a fight for it?"
+
+"No!" he said brutally.
+
+The girl bent her head again over her knitting. But her white
+fingers remained idle. After a long while, staring at her intently,
+he saw her lip quiver.
+
+"Don't do that!" he broke out harshly. "What the devil do you care?"
+
+Then she lifted her tragic white face. And he had his answer.
+
+"My God!" he faltered, springing to his feet. "What's the matter
+with you? Why do you care? You can't care! What is it to you that a
+drunken beast slinks back into hell again? Do you think you are
+Samaritan enough to follow him and try to drag him out by the
+ears?... A man whose very brain is already cracking with it all--a
+burnt-out thing with neither mind nor manhood left--"
+
+She got to her feet, trembling and deathly white.
+
+"I can't let you go," she whispered.
+
+Exasperation almost strangled him and set afire his unhinged brain.
+
+"For Christ's sake!" he cried. "What do you care?"
+
+"I--I care," she stammered--"for Christ's sake ... And yours!"
+
+Things went dark before her eyes.... She opened them after a while
+on the sofa where he had carried her. He was standing looking down
+at her. ... After a long while the ghost of a smile touched her
+lips. In his haunted gaze there was no response. But he said in an
+altered, unfamiliar voice: "I'll go if you say so. I'll do all
+that's in me to do. ... Will you be there--for the first day or
+two?"
+
+"Yes.... All day long.... Every day if you want me. Do you?"
+
+"Yes.... But God knows what I may do to you.... There'll be somebody
+to--watch me--won't there?... I don't know what may happen to you
+or to myself.... I'm in a bad way, Miss Erith... I'm in a very bad
+way."
+
+"I know," she murmured.
+
+He said with an almost childish directness: "Do men always live
+through such cures?... I don't see how I can live through it."
+
+She rose from the sofa and stood beside him, feeling still dizzy,
+still tremulous and lacking strength.
+
+"Let us win through," she said, not looking at him. "I think you
+will suffer more than I shall. A little more.... Because I had
+rather feel pain than give it--rather suffer than look on suffering....
+It will be very hard for us both, I fear."
+
+Her butler announced luncheon.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+WRECKAGE
+
+
+
+
+
+The man had been desperately ill in soul and mind and body. And now
+in some curious manner the ocean seemed to be making him physically
+better but spiritually worse. Something, too, in the horizonwide
+waste of waters was having a sinister effect on his brain. The grey
+daylight of early May, bitter as December--the utter desolation, the
+mounting and raucous menace of the sea, were meddling with normal
+convalescence.
+
+Dull animosity awoke in a battered mind not yet readjusted to the
+living world. What had these people done to him anyway? The sullen
+resentment which invaded him groped stealthily for a vent.
+
+Was THIS, then, their cursed cure?--this foggy nightmare through
+which he moved like a shade in the realm of phantoms? Little by
+little what had happened to him was becoming an obsession, as he
+began to remember in detail. Now he brooded on it and looked askance
+at the girl who was primarily responsible--conscious in a confused
+sort of way that he was a blackguard for his ingratitude.
+
+But his mind had been badly knocked about, and its limping machinery
+creaked.
+
+"That meddling woman," he thought, knowing all the time what he owed
+her, remembering her courage, her unselfishness, her loveliness.
+"Curse her!" he muttered, amid the shadows confusing his wounded
+mind.
+
+Then a meaningless anger grew with him: She had him, now! he was
+trapped and caged. A girl who drags something floundering out of
+hell is entitled to the thing if she wants it. He admitted that to
+himself.
+
+But how about that "cure"?
+
+Was THIS it--this terrible blankness--this misty unreality of
+things? Surcease from craving--yes. But what to take its place--what
+to fill in, occupy mind and body? What sop to his restless soul?
+What had this young iconoclast offered him after her infernal era of
+destruction? A distorted world, a cloudy mind, the body-substance of
+a ghost? And for the magic world she had destroyed she offered him a
+void to live in--Curse her!
+
+There were no lights showing aboard the transport; all ports
+remained screened. Arrows, painted on the decks in luminous paint,
+pointed out the way. Below decks, a blue globe here and there
+emitted a feeble glimmer, marking corridors which pierced a
+depthless darkness.
+
+No noise was permitted on board, no smoking, no other lights in
+cabin or saloon. There was scarcely a sound to be heard on the ship,
+save the throbbing of her engines, the long, splintering crash of
+heavy seas, and the dull creak of her steel vertebrae tortured by a
+million rivets.
+
+As for the accursed ocean, that to McKay was the enemy paramount
+which had awakened him to the stinging vagueness of things out of
+his stupid acquiescence in convalescence.
+
+He hated the sea. It was becoming a crawling horror to him in its
+every protean phase, whether flecked with ghastly lights in storms
+or haunted by pallid shapes in colour--always, always it remained
+repugnant to him under its eternal curse of endless motion.
+
+He loathed it: he detested the livid skies by day against which
+tossing waves showed black: he hated every wave at night and their
+ceaseless unseen motion. McKay had been "cured." McKay was very,
+very ill.
+
+There came to him, at intervals, a girl who stole through the
+obscurity of the pitching corridors guiding him from one faint blue
+light to the next--a girl who groped out the way with him at night
+to the deck by following the painted arrows under foot. Also
+sometimes she sat at his bedside through the unreal flight of time,
+her hand clasped over his. He knew that he had been brutal to her
+during his "cure."
+
+He was still rough with her at moments of intense mental
+pressure--somehow; realised it--made efforts toward
+self-command--toward reason again, mental control; sometimes felt
+that he was on the way to acquiring mental mastery.
+
+But traces of injury to the mind still remained--sensitive
+places--and there were swift seconds of agony--of blind anger, of
+crafty, unbalanced watching to do harm. Yet for all that he knew he
+was convalescent--that alcohol was no longer a necessity to him;
+that whatever he did had now become a choice for him; that he had
+the power and the authority and the will, and was capable, once
+more, of choosing between depravity and decency. But what had been
+taken out of his life seemed to leave a dreadful silence in his
+brain. And, at moments, this silence became dissonant with the
+clamour of unreason.
+
+On one of his worst days when his crippled soul was loneliest the
+icy seas became terrific. Cruisers and destroyers of the escort
+remained invisible, and none of the convoyed transports were to be
+seen. The watery, lowering daylight faded: the unseen sun set: the
+brief day ended. And the wind went down with the sun. But through
+the thick darkness the turbulent wind appeared to grow luminous with
+tossing wraiths; and all the world seemed to dissolve into a
+nebulous, hell-driven thing, unreal, dreadful, unendurable!
+
+"Mr. McKay!"
+
+He had already got into his wool dressing-robe and felt shoes, and
+he sat now very still on the edge of his berth, listening stealthily
+with the cunning of distorted purpose.
+
+Her tiny room was just across the corridor. She seemed to be
+eternally sleepless, always on the alert night and day, ready to
+interfere with him.
+
+Finally he ventured to rise and move cautiously to his door, and he
+made not the slightest sound in opening it, but her door opened
+instantly, and she stood there confronting him, an ulster buttoned
+over her nightdress.
+
+"What is the matter?" she said gently.
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Are you having a bad night?"
+
+"I'm all right. I wish you wouldn't constitute yourself my nurse,
+servant, mentor, guardian, keeper, and personal factotum!" Sudden
+rage left him inarticulate, and he shot an ugly look at her. "Can't
+you let me alone?" he snarled.
+
+"You poor boy," she said under her breath.
+
+"Don't talk like that! Damnation! I--I can't stand much more--I
+can't stand it, I tell you!"
+
+"Yes, you can, and you will. And I don't mind what you say to me."
+His malignant expression altered.
+
+"Do you know," he said, in a cool and evil voice, "that I may stop
+SAYING things and take to DOING them?"
+
+"Would you hurt me physically? Are you really as sick as that?"
+
+"Not yet.... How do I know?" Suddenly he felt tired and leaned
+against the doorway, covering his dulling eyes with his right
+forearm. But his hand was now clenched convulsively.
+
+"Could you lie down? I'll talk to you," she whispered. "I'll see you
+through."
+
+"I can't--endure--this tension," he muttered. "For God's sake let me
+go!"
+
+"Where?"
+
+"You know."
+
+"Yes.... But it won't do. We must carry on, you and I."
+
+"If you--knew--"
+
+"I do know! When these crises come try to fix your mind on what you
+have become."
+
+"Yes.... A hell of a soldier. Do you really believe that my country
+needs a thing like me?" She stood looking at him in silence--knowing
+that he was in a torment of some terrible sort. His eyes were still
+covered by his arm. On his boyish brow the blonde-brown hair had
+become damp.
+
+She went across and passed her arm through his. His hand rested,
+fell to his side, but he suffered her to guide him through the
+corridors toward a far bluish spark that seemed as distant as Venus,
+the star.
+
+They walked very slowly for a while on deck, encountering now and
+then the shadowy forms of officers and crew. The personnel of the
+several hospital units in transit were long ago in bed below.
+
+Once he said: "You know, Miss Erith, it is not _I_ who behaves like
+a scoundrel to you."
+
+"I know," she said with a dauntless smile.
+
+"Because," he went on, searching painfully for thought as well as
+words, "I'm not really a brute--was not always a blackguard--"
+
+"Do you suppose for one moment that I blame a man who has been
+irresponsible through no fault of his, and who has made the fight
+and has won back to sanity?"
+
+"I--am not yet--well!"
+
+"I understand."
+
+They paused beside the port rail for a few moments.
+
+"I suppose you know," he muttered, "that I have thought--at
+times--of ending things--down there. ... You seem to know most
+things. Did you suspect that?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Don't you ever sleep?"
+
+"I wake easily."
+
+"I know you do. I can't stir in bed but I hear you move, too.... I
+should think you'd hate and loathe me--for all I've done--for all
+I've cost you."
+
+"Nurses don't loathe their patients," she said lightly.
+
+"I should think they'd want to kill them."
+
+"Oh, Mr. McKay! On the contrary they--they grow to like
+them--exceedingly."
+
+"You dare not say that about yourself and me."
+
+Miss Erith shrugged her pretty shoulders: "I don't have to say
+anything, do I?"
+
+He made no reply. After a long silence she said casually: "The sea
+is calmer, I think. There's something resembling faint moonlight up
+among those flying clouds."
+
+He lifted his tragic face and gazed up at the storm-wrack speeding
+overhead. And there through the hurrying vapours behind flying rags
+of cloud, a pallid lustre betrayed the smothered moon.
+
+There was just enough light, now, to reveal the forward gun under
+its jacket, and the shadowy gun-crew around it where the ship's bow
+like a vast black, plough ripped the sea asunder in two deep,
+foaming furrows.
+
+"I wish I knew where we are at this moment," mused the girl. She
+counted the days on her fingertips: "We may be off Bordeaux.... It's
+been a long time, hasn't it?"
+
+To him it had been a century of dread endured through half-awakened
+consciousness of the latest inferno within him.
+
+"It's been very long," he said, sighing.
+
+A few minutes later they caught a glimpse of a strangled moon
+overhead--a livid corpse of a moon, tarnished and battered almost
+out of recognition.
+
+"Clearing weather," she said cheerfully, adding: "To-morrow we may
+be in the danger zone.... Did you ever see a submarine?"
+
+"Yes. Did you?"
+
+"There were some up the Hudson. I saw them last summer while
+motoring along Riverside Drive."
+
+The spectral form of an officer appeared at her elbow, said
+something in a low voice, and walked aft.
+
+She said: "Well, then, I think we'd better dress. ... Do you feel
+better?"
+
+He said that he did, but his sombre gaze into darkness belied him.
+So again she slipped her arm through his and he suffered himself to
+be led away along the path of shinning arrows under foot.
+
+At his door she said cheerfully: "No more undressing for bed, you
+know. No more luxury of night-clothes. You heard the orders about
+lifebelts?"
+
+"Yes," he replied listlessly.
+
+"Very well. I'll be waiting for you."
+
+She lingered a moment more watching him in his brooding revery where
+he stood leaning against the doorway. And after a while he raised
+his haunted eyes to hers.
+
+"I can't keep on," he breathed.
+
+"Yes you can!"
+
+"No.... The world is slipping away--under foot. It's going on
+without me--in spite of me."
+
+"It's you that are slipping, if anything is. Be fair to the world at
+least--even if you mean to betray it--and me."
+
+"I don't want to betray anybody--anything." He had begun to tremble
+when he stood leaning against his door. "I--don't know--what to do."
+
+"Stand by the world. Stand by me. And, through me, stand by your own
+self."
+
+The young fellow's forehead was wet with the vague horror of
+something. He made an effort to speak, to straighten up; gave her a
+dreadful look of appeal which turned into a snarl.
+
+He whispered between writhing lips: "Can't you let me alone? Can't I
+end it if I can't stand it--without your blocking me every
+time--every time I stir a finger--"
+
+"McKay! Wait! Don't touch me!--don't do that!"
+
+But he had her in a sudden grip now--was looking right and left for
+a place to hurl her out of the way.
+
+"I've stood enough, by God!" he muttered between his teeth. "Now I'm
+through--"
+
+"Please listen. You're out of your mind," she said breathlessly, not
+struggling to free herself, but striving to twist both her arms
+around one of his.
+
+"You hurt me," she whimpered. "Don't be brutal to me!"
+
+"I've got to get you out of my way." He tried to fling her across
+the corridor into her own cabin, but she had fastened herself to
+him.
+
+"Don't!" she panted. "Don't do anything to yourself--"
+
+"Let go of me! Unclasp your arms!"
+
+But she clung the more desperately and wound her limbs around his,
+almost tripping him.
+
+"I WON'T give you up!" she gasped.
+
+"What do you care?" he retorted hoarsely, striving to tear himself
+loose. "I want to get some rest--somewhere!"
+
+"You're hurting! You're breaking my arm! Kay! Kay! what are you
+doing to me?" she wailed.
+
+Something--perhaps the sound of his own name falling from her lips
+for the first time--checked his mounting frenzy. She could feel
+every muscle in his body become rigidly inert.
+
+"Kay!" she whispered, fastening herself to him convulsively. For a
+full minute she sustained his half-insane stare, then it altered,
+and her own eyes slowly closed, though her head remained upright on
+the rigid marble of her neck.
+
+The crisis had been reached: the tide of frenzy was turning, had
+turned, was already ebbing. She felt it, was conscious that he also
+had become aware of it. Then his grasp slackened, grew lax,
+loosened, and almost spent. She ventured to unwind her limbs from
+his, to relax her stiffened fingers, unclasp her arms.
+
+It was over. She could scarcely stand, felt blindly for support,
+rested so, and slowly unclosed her eyes.
+
+"I've had to fight very hard for you," she whispered. "But I think
+I've won."
+
+He answered with difficulty.
+
+"Yes--if you want the dog you fought for."
+
+"It isn't what _I_ want, Kay."
+
+"All right, I guess I can face it through--after this.... But I
+don't know why you did it."
+
+"I do."
+
+"Do you? Don't you know I'm not a man, but a beast? And there are
+half a hundred million real men to replace me--to do what you and
+the country expect of real men."
+
+"What may be expected of them I expect of you. Kay, I've made a good
+fight for you, haven't I?"
+
+He turned his quenched eyes on her. "From gutter to hospital, from
+hospital to sanitarium, from sanitarium to ship," he said in a
+colourless voice. "Yes, it was--a--good--fight."
+
+"What a Calvary!" she murmured, looking at him out of clear,
+sorrowful eyes. "And on your knees, poor boy!"
+
+"You ought to know. You have made every station with me--on your
+tender bleeding knees of a girl!" He choked, turned his head
+swiftly; and she caught his hand. The break had come.
+
+"Oh, Kay! Kay!" she said, quivering all over, "I have done my bit
+and you are cured! You know it, don't you? Look at me, turn your
+head." She laid her slim hand flat against his tense cheek but could
+not turn his face. But she did not care; the palm of her hand was
+wet. The break had come. She drew a deep, uneven breath, let go his
+hand.
+
+"Now," she said, "we can understand each other at last--our minds
+are rational; and whether in accord or conflict they are at least in
+contact; and mine isn't clashing with something disordered and
+foreign which it can't interpret, can't approach."
+
+He said, not turning toward her: "You are kind to put it that
+way.... I think self-control has returned--will-power--all that....
+I won't-betray you--Miss Erith."
+
+"YOU never would, Mr. McKay. But I--I've been in terror of what has
+been masquerading as you."
+
+"I know.... But whatever you think of such a--a man--I'll do my
+bit, now. I'll carry on--until the end."
+
+"I will too! I promise you."
+
+He turned his head at that and a mirthless laugh touched his wet
+eyes and drawn visage:
+
+"As though you had to promise anybody that you'd stick! You! You
+beautiful, magnificent young thing--you superb kid--"
+
+Her surprise and the swift blaze of colour in her face silenced him.
+
+After a moment, the painful red still staining his face, he muttered
+something about dressing.
+
+He watched her turn and enter her room; saw that she had closed her
+door-something she had not dared do heretofore; then he went into
+his own room and threw himself down on the bunk, shaking in every
+nerve.
+
+For a long while, preoccupied with the obsession for
+self-destruction, he lay there face downward, exhausted, trying to
+fight off the swimming sense of horror that was creeping over him
+again..... Little by little it mounted like a tide from hell.... He
+struggled to his feet with the unuttered cry of a dreamer tearing
+his throat. An odd sense of fear seized him and he dressed and
+adjusted his clumsy life-suit. For the ship was in the danger zone,
+now, and orders had been given, and dawn was not far off. Perhaps it
+was already day! he could not tell in his dim cabin.
+
+And after he was completely accoutred for the hazard of the
+Hun-cursed seas he turned and looked down at his bunk with the odd
+idea that his body still lay there--that it was a thing apart from
+himself--something inert, unyielding, corpse-like, sprawling there
+in a stupor--something visible, tangible, taking actual proportion
+and shape there under his very eyes.
+
+He turned his back with a shudder and went on deck. To his surprise
+the blue lights were extinguished, and corridor and saloon were all
+rosy with early sunlight.
+
+Blue sky, blue sea, silver spindrift flying and clouds of silvery
+gulls--a glimmer of Heaven from the depths of the pit--a glimpse of
+life through a crack in the casket--and land close on the starboard
+bow! Sheer cliffs, with the bonny green grass atop all furrowed by
+the wind--and the yellow-flowered broom and the shimmering whinns
+blowing.
+
+"Why, it's Scotland," he said aloud, "it's Glenark Cliffs and the
+Head of Strathlone--my people's fine place in the Old World--where
+we took root--and--O my God! Yankee that I am, it looks like home!"
+
+The cape of a white fleece cloak fluttered in his face, and he
+turned and saw Miss Erith at his elbow.
+
+Yellow-haired, a slender, charming thing in her white wind-blown
+coat, she stood leaning on the spray-wet rail close to his shoulder.
+
+And with him it was suddenly as though he had known her for
+years--as though he had always been aware of her beauty and her
+loveliness--as though his eyes had always framed her--his heart had
+always wished for her, and she had always been the sole and
+exquisite tenant of his mind.
+
+"I had no idea that we were off Scotland," he said--"off Strathlone
+Head--and so close in. Why, I can see the cliff-flowers!"
+
+She laid one hand lightly on his arm, listening; high and heavenly
+sweet above the rushing noises of the sea they heard the singing of
+shoreward sky-larks above the grey cliff of Glenark.
+
+He began to tremble. "That nightmare through which I've struggled,"
+he began, but she interrupted:
+
+"It is quite ended, Kay. You are awake. It is day and the world's
+before you." At that he caught her slim hand in both of his:
+
+"Eve! Eve! You've brought me through death's shadow! You gave me
+back my mind!"
+
+She let her hand rest between his. At first he could not make out
+what her slightly moving lips uttered, and bending nearer he heard
+her murmur: "Beside the still waters." The sea had become as calm as
+a pond.
+
+And now the transport was losing headway, scarcely moving at all.
+Forward and aft the gun-crews, no longer alert, lounged lazily in
+the sunshine watching a boat being loaded and swung outward from the
+davits.
+
+"Is somebody going ashore?" asked McKay.
+
+"We are," said the girl.
+
+"Just you and I, Eve?"
+
+"Just you and I."
+
+Then he saw their luggage piled in the lifeboat.'
+
+"This is wonderful," he said. "I have a house a few miles inland
+from Strathlone Head."
+
+"Will you take me there, Kay?"
+
+Such a sense of delight possessed him that he could not speak.
+
+"That's where we must go to make our plans," she said. "I didn't
+tell you in those dark hours we have lived together, because our
+minds were so far apart--and I was fighting so hard to hold you."
+
+"Have you forgiven me--you wonderful girl?"
+
+His voice shook so that he could scarcely control it. Miss Erith
+laughed.
+
+"You adorable boy!" she said. "Stand still while I unlace your
+life-belt. You can't travel in this."
+
+He felt her soft fingers at his throat and turned his face upward.
+All the blue air seemed glittering with the sun-tipped wings of
+gulls. The skylark's song, piercingly sweet, seemed to penetrate his
+soul. And, as his life-suit fell about him, so seemed to fall the
+heavy weight of dread like a shroud, dropping at his feet. And he
+stepped clear--took his first free step toward her--as though
+between them there were no questions, no barriers, nothing but this
+living, magic light--which bathed them both.
+
+There seemed to be no need of speech, either, only the sense of
+heavenly contact as though the girl were melting into him,
+dissolving in his arms.
+
+"Kay!"
+
+Her voice sounded as from an infinite distance. There came a
+smothered thudding like the soft sound of guns at sea; and then her
+voice again, and a greyness as if a swift cloud had passed across
+the sun.
+
+"Kay!"
+
+A sharp, cold wind began to blow through the strange and sudden
+darkness. He heard her voice calling his name--felt his numbed body
+shaken, lifted his head from his arms and sat upright on his bunk in
+the dim chill of his cabin.
+
+Miss Erith stood beside his bed, wearing her life-suit.
+
+"Kay! Are you awake?'
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then put on your life-suit. Our destroyers are firing at something.
+Quick, please, I'll help you!"
+
+Dazed, shaken, still mazed by the magic of his dream, not yet clear
+of its beauty and its passion, he stumbled to his feet in the
+obscurity. And he felt her chilled hand aiding him.
+
+"Eve--I--thought--"
+
+"What?"
+
+"I thought your name--was Eve--" he stammered. "I've
+been--dreaming."
+
+Then was a silence as he fumbled stupidly with his clothing and
+life-suit. The sounds of the guns, rapid, distinct, echoed through
+the unsteady obscurity.
+
+She helped him as a nurse helps a convalescent, her swift, cold
+little fingers moving lightly and unerringly. And at last he was
+equipped, and his mind had cleared darkly of the golden vision of
+love and spring.
+
+Icy seas, monstrous and menacing, went smashing past the sealed and
+blinded port; but there was no wind and the thudding of the guns
+came distinctly to their ears.
+
+A shape in uniform loomed at the cabin door for an instant and a
+calm, unhurried voice summoned them.
+
+Corridors were full of dark figures. The main saloon was thronged as
+they climbed the companion-way. There appeared to be no panic, no
+haste, no confusion. Voices were moderately low, the tone casually
+conversational.
+
+Miss Erith's arm remained linked in McKay's where they stood
+together amid the crowd.
+
+"U-boats, I fancy," she said.
+
+"Probably."
+
+After a moment: "What were you dreaming about, Mr. McKay?" she asked
+lightly. In the dull bluish dusk of the saloon his boyish face grew
+hot.
+
+"What was it you called me?" she insisted. "Was it Eve?"
+
+At that his cheeks burnt crimson.
+
+"What do you mean?" he muttered.
+
+"Didn't you call me Eve?"
+
+"I--when a man is dreaming--asleep--"
+
+"My name is Evelyn, you know. Nobody ever called me Eve....
+Yet--it's odd, isn't it, Mr. McKay? I've always wished that somebody
+would call me Eve.... But perhaps you were not dreaming of me?"
+
+"I--was."
+
+"Really. How interesting!" He remained silent.
+
+"And did you call me Eve--in that dream?... That is curious, isn't
+it, after what I've just told you?... So I've had my wish--in a
+dream." She laughed a little. "In a dream--YOUR dream," she
+repeated. "We must have been good friends in your dream--that you
+called me Eve."
+
+But the faint thrill of the dream was in him again, and it troubled
+him and made him shy, and he found no word to utter--no defence to
+her low-voiced banter.
+
+Then, not far away on the port quarter, a deck-gun spoke with a
+sharper explosion, and intense stillness reigned in the saloon.
+
+"If there's any necessity," he whispered, "you recollect your boat,
+don't you?"
+
+"Yes.... I don't want to go--without you." He said, in a pleasant
+firm voice which was new to her: "I know what you mean. But you are
+not to worry. I am absolutely well."
+
+The girl turned toward him, the echoes of the guns filling her ears,
+and strove to read his face in the ghastly, dreary light.
+
+"I'm really cured, Miss Erith," he said. "If there's any emergency
+I'll fight to live. Do you believe me?"
+
+"If you tell me so."
+
+"I tell you so."
+
+The girl drew a deep, unsteady breath, and her arm tightened a
+trifle within his.
+
+"I am--so glad," she said in a voice that sounded suddenly tired.
+
+There came an ear-splitting detonation from the after-deck,
+silencing every murmur.
+
+"Something is shelling us," whispered McKay. "When orders come, go
+instantly to your boat and your station."
+
+"I don't want to go alone."
+
+"The nurses of the unit to which you--"
+
+The crash of a shell drowned his voice. Then came a deathly silence,
+then the sound of the deck-guns in action once more.
+
+Miss Erith was leaning rather heavily on his arm. He bent it,
+drawing her closer.
+
+"I don't want to leave you," she said again.
+
+"I told you--"
+
+"It isn't that.... Don't you understand that I have become--your
+friend?"
+
+"Such a brute as I am?"
+
+"I like you."
+
+In the silence he could hear his heart drumming between the
+detonations of the deck-guns. He said: "It's because you are you. No
+other woman on earth but would have loathed me... beastly rotter
+that I was--"
+
+"Oh-h, don't," she breathed.... "I don't know--we may be very close
+to death.... I want to live. I'd like to. But I don't really mind
+death. ... But I can't bear to have things end for you just as
+you've begun to live again--"
+
+Crash! Something was badly smashed on deck that time, for the brazen
+jar of falling wreckage seemed continuous.
+
+Through the metallic echo she heard her voice:
+
+"Kay! I'm afraid--a little."
+
+"I think it's all right so far. Listen, there go our guns again.
+It's quite all right, Eve dear."
+
+"I didn't know I was so cowardly. But of course I'll never show it
+when the time comes."
+
+"Of course you won't. Don't worry. Shells make a lot of noise when
+they explode on deck. All that tinpan effect we heard was probably a
+ventilator collapsing--perhaps a smokestack."
+
+After a silence punctured by the flat bang of the deck-guns:
+
+"You ARE cured, aren't you, Kay?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+She repeated in a curiously exultant voice: "You ARE cured. All of a
+sudden--after that black crisis, too, you wake up, well!"
+
+"You woke me."
+
+"Of course, I did--with those guns frightening me!"
+
+"You woke me, Eve," he repeated coolly, "and my dream had already
+cured me. I am perfectly well. We'll get out of this mess shortly,
+you and I. And--and then--" He paused so long that she looked up at
+him in the bluish dusk:
+
+"And what then?" she asked.
+
+He did not answer. She said: "Tell me, Kay."
+
+But as his lips unclosed to speak a terrific shock shook the
+saloon--a shock that seemed to come from the depths of the ship,
+tilt up the cabin floor, and send everybody reeling about.
+
+Through the momentary confusion in the bluish obscurity the cool
+voice of an officer sounded unalarmed, giving orders. There was no
+panic. The hospital units formed and started for the deck. A young
+officer passing near exchanged a calm word with McKay, and passed on
+speaking pleasantly to the women who were now moving forward.
+
+McKay said to Miss Erith: "It seems that we've been torpedoed. We'll
+go on deck together. You know your boat and station?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I'll see you safely there. You're not afraid any more, are you?"
+
+"No."
+
+He gave a short dry laugh. "What a rotten deal," he said. "My dream
+was--different.... There is your boat--THAT one!... I'll say good
+luck. I'm assigned to a station on the port side. ... Good luck....
+And thank you, Eve."
+
+"Don't go--"
+
+"Yes, I must.. We'll find each other--ashore--or somewhere."
+
+"Kay! The port boats can't be launched--"
+
+"Take your place! you're next, Eve."... Her hand, which had clung to
+his, he suddenly twisted up, and touched the convulsively tightening
+fingers with his lips.
+
+"Good luck, dear," he said gaily. And watched her go and take her
+place. Then he lifted his cap, as she turned and looked for him, and
+sauntered off to where his boat and station should have been had not
+the U-boat shells annihilated boat and rail and deck.
+
+"What a devil of a mess!" he said to a petty officer near him. A
+young doctor smoking a cigarette surveyed his own life-suit and the
+clumsy apparel of his neighbours with unfeigned curiosity!
+
+"How long do these things keep one afloat?" he inquired.
+
+"Long enough to freeze solid," replied an ambulance driver.
+
+"Did we get the Hun?" asked McKay of the petty officer.
+
+"Naw," he replied in disgust, "but the destroyers ought to nail him.
+Look out, sir--you'll go sliding down that slippery toboggan!"
+
+"How long'll she float?" asked the young ambulance driver.
+
+"This ship? SHE'S all right," remarked the petty officer absently.
+
+She went down, nose first. Those in the starboard boats saw her
+stand on end for full five minutes, screws spinning, before a
+muffled detonation blew the bowels out of her and sucked her down
+like a plunging arrow.
+
+Destroyers and launches from some of the cruisers were busy amid the
+wreckage where here, on a spar, some stunned form clung like a
+limpet, and there, a-bob in the curling seas, a swimmer in his
+life-suit tossed under the wintry sky.
+
+There were men on rafts, too, and several clinging to hatches; there
+was not much loss of life, considering.
+
+Toward midday a sea-plane which had been releasing depth-bombs and
+hovering eagerly above the wide iridescent and spreading stain,
+sheered shoreward and shot along the coast.
+
+There was a dead man afloat in a cave, rocking there rather
+peacefully in his life-suit--or at least they supposed him to be
+dead.
+
+But on a chance they signalled the discovery to a distant trawler,
+then soared upward for a general coup de l'oeil, turned there aloft
+like a seahawk for a while, sheering in widening spirals, and
+finally, high in the grey sky, set a steady course for parts
+unknown.
+
+Meanwhile a boat from the trawler fished out McKay, wrapped him in
+red-hot blankets, pried open his blue lips, and tried to fill him
+full of boiling rum. Then he came to life. But those honest
+fishermen knew he had gone stark mad because he struck at the
+pannikin of steaming rum and cursed them vigorously for their
+kindness. And only a madman could so conduct himself toward a
+pannikin of steaming rum. They understood that perfectly. And,
+understanding it, they piled more hot blankets upon the struggling
+form of Kay McKay and roped him to his bunk.
+
+Toward evening, becoming not only coherent but frightfully emphatic,
+they released McKay.
+
+"What's this damn place?" he shouted.
+
+"Strathlone Firth," they said.
+
+"That's my country!" he raged. "I want to go ashore!"
+
+They were quite ready to be rid of the cracked Yankee, and told him
+so.
+
+"And the boats? How about them?" he demanded.
+
+"All in the Firth, sir."
+
+"Any women lost?"
+
+"None, sir."
+
+At that, struggling into his clothes, he began to shed gold
+sovereigns from his ripped money-belt all over the cabin.
+Weatherbeaten fingers groped to restore the money to him. But it was
+quite evident that the young man was mad. He wouldn't take it. And
+in his crazy way he seemed very happy, telling them what fine lads
+they were and that not only Scotland but the world ought to be proud
+of them, and that he was about to begin to live the most wonderful
+life that any man had ever lived as soon as he got ashore.
+
+"Because," he explained, as he swung off and dropped into the small
+boat alongside, "I've taken a look into hell and I've had a glimpse
+of heaven, but the earth has got them both stung to death, and I
+like it and I'm going to settle down on it and live awhile. You
+don't get me, do you?" They did not.
+
+"It doesn't matter. You're a fine lot of lads. Good luck!"
+
+And so they were rid of their Yankee lunatic.
+
+On the Firth Quay and along the docks all the inhabitants of Glenark
+and Strathlone were gathered to watch the boats come in with living,
+with dead, or merely the news of the seafight off the grey head of
+Strathlone.
+
+At the foot of the slippery waterstairs, green with slime, McKay,
+grasping the worn rail, lifted his head and looked up into the faces
+of the waiting crowd. And saw the face of her he was looking for
+among them.
+
+He went up slowly. She pushed through the throng, descended the
+steps, and placed one arm around him.
+
+"Thanks, Eve," he said cheerfully. "Are you all right?"
+
+"All right, Kay. Are you hurt?"
+
+"No.... I know this place. There's an inn ... if you'll give me your
+arm--it's just across the street."
+
+They went very leisurely, her arm under his--and his face, suddenly
+colourless, half-resting against her shoulder.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+ISLA WATER
+
+
+
+
+
+Earlier in the evening there had been a young moon on Isla Water.
+Under it spectres of the mist floated in the pale lustre; a painted
+moorhen steered through ghostly pools leaving fan-shaped wakes of
+crinkled silver behind her; heavy fish splashed, swirling again to
+drown the ephemera.
+
+But there was no moonlight now; not a star; only fog on Isla Water,
+smothering ripples and long still reaches, bank and upland, wall and
+house.
+
+The last light had gone out in the stable; the windows of Isla were
+darkened; there was a faint scent of heather in the night; a fainter
+taint of peat smoke. The world had grown very still by Isla Water.
+
+Toward midnight a dog-otter, swimming leisurely by the Bridge of
+Isla, suddenly dived and sped away under water; and a stoat,
+prowling in the garden, also took fright and scurried through the
+wicket. Then in the dead of night the iron bell hanging inside the
+court began to clang. McKay heard it first in his restless sleep.
+Finally the clangour broke his sombre dream and he awoke and sat up
+in bed, listening.
+
+Neither of the two servants answered the alarm. He swung out of bed
+and into slippers and dressing-gown and picked up a service pistol.
+As he entered the stone corridor he heard Miss Erith's door creak on
+its ancient hinges.
+
+"Did the bell wake you?" he asked in a low voice.
+
+"Yes. What is it?"
+
+"I haven't any idea."
+
+She opened her door a little wider. Her yellow hair covered her
+shoulders like a mantilla. "Who could it be at this hour?" she
+repeated uneasily.
+
+McKay peered at the phosphorescent dial of his wrist-watch:
+
+"I don't know," he repeated. "I can't imagine who would come here at
+this hour."
+
+"Don't strike a light!" she whispered.
+
+"No, I think I won't." He continued on down the stone stairs, and
+Miss Erith ran to the rail and looked over.
+
+"Are you armed?" she called through the darkness.
+
+"Yes."
+
+He went on toward the rear of the silent house and through the
+servants' hall, then around by the kitchen garden, then felt his way
+along a hedge to a hutchlike lodge where a fixed iron bell hung
+quivering under the slow blows of the clapper.
+
+"What the devil's the matter?" demanded McKay in a calm voice.
+
+The bell still hummed with the melancholy vibrations, but the
+clapper now hung motionless. Through the brooding rumour of metallic
+sound came a voice out of the mist:
+
+"The hours of life are numbered. Is it true?"
+
+"It is," said McKay coolly; "and the hairs of our head are numbered
+too!"
+
+"So teach us to number our days," rejoined the voice from the fog,
+"that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom."
+
+"The days of our years are three-score years and ten," said McKay.
+"Have you a name?"
+
+"A number."
+
+"And what number will that be?"
+
+"Sixty-seven. And yours?"
+
+"You should know that, too."
+
+"It's the reverse; seventy-six."
+
+"It is that," said McKay. "Come in."
+
+He made his way to the foggy gate, drew bolt and chain from the left
+wicket. A young man stepped through.
+
+"Losh, mon," he remarked with a Yankee accent, "it's a fearful nicht
+to be abroad."
+
+"Come on in," said McKay, re-locking the wicket. "This way; follow
+me."
+
+They went by the kitchen garden and servants' hall, and so through
+to the staircase hall, where McKay struck a match and Sixty-seven
+instantly blew it out.
+
+"Better not," he said. "There are vermin about."
+
+McKay stood silent, probably surprised. Then he called softly in the
+darkness:
+
+"Seventy-seven!"
+
+"Je suis la!" came her voice from the stairs.
+
+"It's all right," he said, "it's one of our men. No use sittin' up
+if you're sleepy." He listened but did not hear Miss Erith stir.
+
+"Better return to bed," he said again, and guided Sixty-seven into
+the room on the left.
+
+For a few moments he prowled around; a glass tinkled against a
+decanter. When he returned to the shadow-shape seated motionless by
+the casement window he carried only one glass.
+
+"Don't you?" inquired Sixty-seven. "And you a Scot!"
+
+"I'm a Yankee; and I'm through."
+
+"With the stuff?"
+
+"Absolutely."
+
+"Oh, very well. But a Yankee laird--tiens c'est assez drole!" He
+smacked his lips over the smoky draught, set the half-empty glass on
+the deep sill. Then he began breezily:
+
+"Well, Seventy-six, what's all this I hear about your misfortunes?"
+
+"What do you hear?" inquired McKay guilelessly.
+
+The other man laughed.
+
+"I hear that you and Seventy-seven have entered the Service; that
+you are detailed to Switzerland and for a certain object unknown to
+myself; that your transport was torpedoed a week ago off the Head of
+Strathlone, that you wired London from this house of yours called
+Isla, and that you and Seventy-seven went to London last week to
+replenish the wardrobe you had lost."
+
+"Is that all you heard?"
+
+"It is."
+
+"Well, what more do you wish to hear?"
+
+"I want to know whether anything has happened to worry you. And I'll
+tell you why. There was a Hun caught near Banff! Can you beat it?
+The beggar wore kilts!--and the McKay tartan--and, by jinks, if his
+gillie wasn't rigged in shepherd's plaid!--and him with his Yankee
+passport and his gillie with a bag of ready-made rods. Yellow trout,
+is it? Sea-trout, is it! Ho, me bucko, says I when I lamped what he
+did with his first trout o' the burn this side the park--by Godfrey!
+thinks I to myself, you're no white man at all!--you're Boche. And
+it was so, McKay."
+
+"Seventy-six," corrected McKay gently.
+
+"That's better. It should become a habit."
+
+"Excuse me, Seventy-six; I'm Scotch-Irish way back. You're straight
+Scotch--somewhere back. We Yankees don't use rods and flies and net
+and gaff as these Scotch people use 'em. But we're white,
+Seventy-six, and we use 'em RIGHT in our own fashion." He moistened
+his throat, shoved aside the glass:
+
+"But this kilted Boche! Oh, la-la! What he did with his rod and
+flies and his fish and himself! AND his gillie! Sure YOU'RE not
+white at all, thinks I. And at that I go after them."
+
+"You got them?"
+
+"Certainly--at the inn--gobbling a trout, blaue gesotten--having
+gone into the kitchen to show a decent Scotch lassie how to concoct
+the Hunnish dish. I nailed them then and there--took the chance that
+the swine weren't right. And won out."
+
+"Good! But what has it to do with me?" asked McKay.
+
+"Well, I'll be telling you. I took the Boche to London and I've come
+all the way back to tell you this, Seventy-six; the Huns are on to
+you and what you're up to. That Boche laird called himself Stanley
+Brown, but his name is--or was--Schwartz. His gillie proved to be a
+Swede."
+
+"Have they been executed?"
+
+"You bet. Tower style! We got another chum of theirs, too, who set
+up a holler like he saw a pan of hogwash. We're holding him. And
+what we've learned is this: The Huns made a special set at your
+transport in order to get YOU and Seventy-seven!
+
+"Now they know you are here and their orders are to get you before
+you reach France. The hog that hollered put us next. He's a
+Milwaukee Boche; name Zimmerman. He's so scared that he tells all he
+knows and a lot that he doesn't. That's the trouble with a Milwaukee
+Boche. Anyway, London sent me back to find you and warn you. Keep
+your eye skinned. And when you're ready for France wire Edinburgh.
+You know where. There'll be a car and an escort for you and
+Seventy-seven."
+
+McKay laughed: "You know," he said, "there's no chance of trouble
+here. Glenark is too small a village--"
+
+"Didn't I land a brace of Boches at Banff?"
+
+"That's true. Well, anyway, I'll be off, I expect, in a day or so."
+He rose; "and now I'll show you a bed--"
+
+"No; I've a dog-cart tied out yonder and a chaser lying at Glenark.
+By Godfrey, I'm not finished with these Boche-jocks yet!"
+
+"You're going?"
+
+"You bet. I've a date to keep with a suspicious character--on a
+trawler. Can you beat it? These vermin creep in everywhere. Yes, by
+Godfrey! They crawl aboard ship in sight of Strathlone Head! Here's
+hoping it may be a yard-arm jig he'll dance!"
+
+He emptied his glass, refused more. McKay took him to the wicket and
+let him loose.
+
+"Well, over the top, old scout!" said Sixty-seven cheerily,
+exchanging a quick handclasp with McKay. And so the fog took him.
+
+A week later they found his dead horse and wrecked dog-cart five
+miles this side of Glenark Burn, lying in a gully entirely concealed
+by whinn and broom. It was the noise the flies made that attracted
+attention. As for the man himself, he floated casually into the
+Firth one sunny day with five bullets in him and his throat cut very
+horridly.
+
+But, before that, other things happened on Isla Water--long before
+anybody missed No. 67. Besides, the horse and dog-cart had been
+hired for a week; and nobody was anxious except the captain of the
+trawler, held under mysterious orders to await the coming of a man
+who never came.
+
+So McKay went back through the fog to his quaint, whitewashed
+inheritance--this legacy from a Scotch grandfather to a Yankee
+grandson--and when he came into the dark waist of the house he
+called up very gently: "Are you awake, Miss Yellow-hair?"
+
+"Yes. Is all well?"
+
+"All's well," he said, mounting the stairs.
+
+"Then--good night to you Kay of Isla!" she said.
+
+"Don't you want to hear--"
+
+"To-morrow, please."
+
+"But--"
+
+"As long as you say that all is well I refuse to lose any more
+sleep!"
+
+"Are you sleepy, Yellow-hair?"
+
+"I am."
+
+"Aren't you going to sit up and chat for a few--"
+
+"I am not!"
+
+"Have you no curiosity?" he demanded, laughingly.
+
+"Not a bit. You say everything is all right. Then it is all
+right--when Kay of Isla says so! Good night!"
+
+What she had said seemed to thrill him with a novel and delicious
+sense of responsibility. He heard her door close; he stood there in
+the stone corridor a moment before entering his room, experiencing
+an odd, indefinite pleasure in the words this girl had
+uttered--words which seemed to reinstate him among his kind, words
+which no woman would utter except to a man in whom she believed.
+
+And yet this girl knew him--knew what he had been--had seen him in
+the depths--had looked upon the wreck of him.
+
+Out of those depths she had dragged what remained of him--not for
+his own sake perhaps--not for his beaux-yeux--but to save him for
+the service which his country demanded of him.
+
+She had fought for him--endured, struggled spiritually, mentally,
+bodily to wrench him out of the coma where drink had left him with a
+stunned brain and crippled will.
+
+And now, believing in her work, trusting, confident, she had just
+said to him that what he told her was sufficient security for her.
+And on his word that all was well she had calmly composed herself
+for sleep as though all the dead chieftains of Isla stood on guard
+with naked claymores! Nothing in all his life had ever so thrilled
+him as this girl's confidence.
+
+And, as he entered his room, he knew that within him the accursed
+thing that had been, lay dead forever.
+
+He was standing in the walled garden switching a limber trout-rod
+when Miss Erith came upon him next morning,--a tall straight young
+man in his kilts, supple and elegant as the lancewood rod he was
+testing.
+
+Conscious of a presence behind him he turned, came toward her in the
+sunlight, the sun crisping his short hair. And in his pleasant level
+eyes the girl saw what had happened--what she had wrought--that
+this young man had come into his own again--into his right mind and
+his manhood--and that he had resumed his place among his fellow men
+and peers.
+
+He greeted her seriously, almost formally; and the girl, excited and
+a little upset by the sudden realisation of his victory and hers,
+laughed when he called her "Miss Erith."
+
+"You called me Yellow-hair last night," she said. "I called you Kay.
+Don't you want it so?"
+
+"Yes," he said reddening, understanding that it was her final
+recognition of a man who had definitely "come back."
+
+Miss Erith was very lovely as she stood there in the garden whither
+breakfast was fetched immediately and laid out on a sturdy green
+garden-table--porridge, coffee, scones, jam, and an egg.
+
+Chipping the latter she let her golden-hazel eyes rest at moments
+upon the young fellow seated opposite. At other moments, sipping her
+coffee or buttering a scone, she glanced about her at the new grass
+starred with daisies, at the daffodils, the slim young
+fruit-trees,--and up at the old white facade of the ancient abode of
+the Lairds of Isla.
+
+"Why the white flag up there, Kay?" she inquired, glancing aloft.
+
+He laughed, but flushed a little. "Yankee that I am," he admitted,
+"I seem to be Scot enough to observe the prejudices and folk-ways of
+my forebears."
+
+"Is it your clan flag?"
+
+"Bratach Bhan Chlaun Aoidh," he said smilingly. "The White Banner of
+the McKays."
+
+"Good! And what may that be--that bunch of weed you wear in your
+button-hole?" Again the young fellow laughed: "Seasgan or Cuilc--in
+Gaelic--just reed-grass, Miss Yellow-hair."
+
+"Your clan badge?"
+
+"I believe so."
+
+"You're a good Yankee, Kay. You couldn't be a good Yankee if you
+treated Scotch custom with contempt.... This jam is delicious. And
+oh, such scones!"
+
+"When we go to Edinburgh we'll tea on Princess Street," he remarked.
+"It's there you'll fall for the Scotch cakes, Yellow-hair."
+
+"I've already fallen for everything Scotch," she remarked demurely.
+
+"Ah, wait! This Scotland is no strange land to good Americans. It's
+a bonnie, sweet, clean bit of earth made by God out of the same
+batch he used for our own world of the West. Oh, Yellow-hair, I mind
+the first day I ever saw Scotland. 'Twas across Princess
+Street--across acres of Madonna lilies in that lovely foreland
+behind which the Rock lifted skyward with Edinburgh Castle atop made
+out of grey silver slag! It was a brave sight, Yellow-hair. I never
+loved America more than at that moment when, in my heart, I married
+her to Scotland."
+
+"Kay, you're a poet!" she exclaimed.
+
+"We all are here, Yellow-hair. There's naught else in Scotland," he
+said laughing.
+
+The man was absolutely transformed, utterly different. She had never
+imagined that a "cure" meant the revelation of this unsuspected
+personality--this alternation of pleasant gravity and boyish charm.
+
+Something of what preoccupied her he perhaps suspected, for the
+colour came into his handsome lean features again and he picked up
+his rod, rising as she rose.
+
+"Are there no instructions yet?" she inquired.
+
+As he stood there threading the silk line through the guides he told
+her about the visit of No. 67.
+
+"I fancy instructions will come before long," he remarked, casting a
+leaderless line out across the grass. After a moment he glanced
+rather gravely at her where she stood with hands linked behind her,
+watching the graceful loops which his line was making in the air.
+
+"You're not worried, are you, Yellow-hair?"
+
+"About the Boche?"
+
+"I meant that."
+
+"No, Kay, I'm not uneasy."
+
+And when the girl had said it she knew that she had meant a little
+more; she had meant that she felt secure with this particular man
+beside her.
+
+It was a strange sort of peace that was invading her--an odd courage
+quite unfamiliar--an effortless pluck that had suddenly become the
+most natural thing in the world to this girl, who, until then, had
+clutched her courage desperately in both hands, commended her soul
+to God, her body to her country's service.
+
+Frightened, she had set out to do this service, knowing perfectly
+what sort of fate awaited her if she fell among the Boche.
+
+Frightened but resolute she faced the consequences with this
+companion about whom she knew nothing; in whom she had divined a
+trace of that true metal which had been so dreadfully tarnished and
+transmuted.
+
+And now, here in this ancient garden--here in the sun of earliest
+summer, she had beheld a transfiguration. And still under the spell
+of it, still thrilled by wonder, she had so utterly believed in it,
+so ardently accepted it, that she scarcely understood what this
+transfiguration had also wrought in her. She only felt that she was
+no longer captain of their fate; that he was now; and she resigned
+her invisible insignia of rank with an unconscious little sigh that
+left her pretty lips softly parted.
+
+At that instant he chanced to look up at her. She was the most
+beautiful thing he had ever seen in the world. And she had looked at
+him out of those golden eyes when he had been less than a mere brute
+beast.... That was very hard to know and remember .... But it was
+the price he had to pay--that this fresh, sweet, clean young thing
+had seen him as he once had been, and that he never could forget
+what she had looked upon.
+
+"Kay!"
+
+"Yes, Lady Yellow-hair."
+
+"What are you going to do with that rod?"
+
+"Whip Isla for a yellow trout for you."
+
+"Isla?"
+
+"Not our Loch, but the quick water yonder."
+
+"You know," she said, "to a Yankee girl those moors appear
+rather--rather lonely."
+
+"Forbidding?"
+
+"No; beautiful in their way. But I am in awe of Glenark moors."
+
+He smiled, lingering still to loop on a gossamer leader and a cast
+of tiny flies.
+
+"Have you--" she began, and smiled nervously.
+
+"A gun?" he inquired coolly. "Yes, I have two strapped up under both
+arms. But you must come too, Yellow-hair."
+
+"You don't think it best to leave me alone even in your own house?"
+
+"No, I don't think it best."
+
+"I wanted to go with you anyway," she said, picking up a soft hat
+and pulling it over her golden head.
+
+On the way across Isla bridge and out along the sheep-path they
+chatted unconcernedly. A faint aromatic odour made the girl aware of
+broom and whinn and heath.
+
+As they sauntered on along the edge of Isla Water the lapwings rose
+into flight ahead. Once or twice the feathery whirr of brown grouse
+startled her. And once, on the edge of cultivated land, a partridge
+burst from the heather at her very feet--a "Frenchman" with his red
+legs and gay feathers brilliant in the sun.
+
+Sun and shadow and white cloud, heath and moor and hedge and
+broad-tilled field alternated as they passed together along the edge
+of Isla Water and over the road to Isla--the enchanting
+river--interested in each other's conversation and in the loveliness
+of the sunny world about them.
+
+High in the blue sky plover called en passant; larks too were on the
+wing, and throstles and charming feathered things that hid in
+hedgerows and permitted glimpses of piquant heads and twitching
+painted tails.
+
+"It is adorable, this country!" Miss Erith confessed. "It steals
+into your very bones; doesn't it?"
+
+"And the bones still remain Yankee bones," he rejoined. "There's the
+miracle, Yellow-hair."
+
+"Entirely. You know what I think? The more we love the more loyal we
+become to our own. I'm really quite serious. Take yourself for
+example, Kay. You are most ornamental in your kilts and
+heather-spats, and you are a better Yankee for it. Aren't you?"
+
+"Oh yes, a hopeless Yankee. But that drop of Scotch blood is singing
+tunes to-day, Yellow-hair."
+
+"Let it sing--God bless it!"
+
+He turned, his youthful face reflecting the slight emotion in her
+gay voice. Then with a grave smile he set his face straight in front
+of him and walked on beside her, the dark green pleats of the McKay
+tartan whipping his bared knees. Clan Morhguinn had no handsomer
+son; America no son more loyal.
+
+A dragon-fly glittered before them for an instant. Far across the
+rolling country they caught the faint, silvery flash of Isla
+hurrying to the sea.
+
+Evelyn Erith stood in the sunny breeze of Isla, her yellow hair
+dishevelled by the wind, her skirt's edge wet with the spray of
+waterfalls. The wild rose colour was in her cheeks and the tint of
+crimson roses on her lips and the glory of the Soleil d'or glimmered
+on her loosened hair. A confused sense that the passing hour was the
+happiest in her life possessed her: she looked down at the brace of
+wet yellow trout on the bog-moss at her feet; she gazed out across
+the crinkled pool where the Yankee Laird of Isla waded, casting a
+big tinselled fly for the accidental but inevitable sea-trout always
+encountered in Isla during the season--always surprising and
+exciting the angler with emotion forever new.
+
+Over his shoulder he was saying to her: "Sea-trout and grilse don't
+belong to Isla, but they come occasionally, Lady Yellow-hair."
+
+"Like you and I, Kay--we don't belong here but we come."
+
+"Where the McKay is, the Key of the World lies hidden in his
+sporran," he laughed back at her over his shoulder where the clan
+plaid fluttered above the cairngorm.
+
+"Oh, the modesty of this young man! Wherever he takes off his cap he
+is at home!" she cried.
+
+He only laughed, and she saw the slim line curl, glisten, loop and
+unroll in the long back cast, re-loop, and straighten out over Isla
+like a silver spider's floating strand. Then silver leaped to meet
+silver as the "Doctor" touched water; one keen scream of the reel
+cut the sunny silence; the rod bent like a bow, staggered in his
+hand, swept to the surface in a deeper bow, quivered under the
+tremendous rush of the great fish.
+
+Miss Erith watched the battle from an angle not that of an angler.
+Her hazel eyes followed McKay where he manoeuvred in midstream with
+rod and gaff--happily aware of the grace in every unconscious
+movement of his handsome lean body--the steady, keen poise of head
+and shoulders, the deft and powerful play of his clean-cut, brown
+hands.
+
+It came into her mind that he'd look like that on the firing-line
+some day when his Government was ready to release him from his
+obscure and terrible mission--the Government that was sending him
+where such men as he usually perish unobserved, unhonoured,
+repudiated even by those who send them to accomplish what only the
+most brave and unselfish dare undertake.
+
+A little cloud cast a momentary shadow across Isla. The sea-trout
+died then, a quivering limber, metallic shape glittering on the
+ripples.
+
+In the intense stillness from far across the noon-day world she
+heard the bells of Banff--a far, sweet reiteration stealing inland
+on the wind. She had never been so happy in her life.
+
+Swinging back across the moor together, he with slanting rod and
+weighted creel, she with her wind-blown yellow hair and a bunch of
+reed at her belt in his honour, both seemed to understand that they
+had had their hour, and that the hour was ending--almost ended now.
+
+They had remained rather silent. Perhaps grave thoughts of what lay
+before them beyond the bright moor's edge--beyond the far blue
+horizon--preoccupied their minds. And each seemed to feel that their
+play-day was finished--seemed already to feel physically the
+approach of that increasing darkness shrouding the East--that
+hellish mist toward which they both were headed--the twilight of the
+Hun.
+
+Nothing stained the sky above them; a snowy cloud or two drifted up
+there,--a flight of lapwings now and then--a lone curlew. The long,
+squat white-washed house with its walled garden reflected in Isla
+Water glimmered before them in the hollow of the rolling hills.
+
+McKay was softly and thoughtfully whistling the "Lament for
+Donald"--the lament of CLAN AOIDH--his clan.
+
+"That's rather depressing, Kay--what you're whistling," said Evelyn
+Erith.
+
+He glanced up from his abstraction, nodded, and strode on humming
+the "Over There" of that good bard George of Broadway.
+
+After a moment the girl said: "There seem to be some people by Isla
+Water."
+
+His quick glance appraised the distant group, their summer tourist
+automobile drawn up on the bank of Isla Water near the Bridge, the
+hampers on the grass.
+
+"Trespassers," he said with a shrug. "But it's a pretty spot by Isla
+Bridge and we never drive them away."
+
+She looked at them again as they crossed the very old bridge of
+stone. Down by the water's edge stood their machine. Beside it on
+the grass were picnicking three people--a very good-looking girl, a
+very common-looking stout young man in flashy outing clothes, and a
+thin man of forty, well-dressed and of better appearance.
+
+The short, stout, flashy young man was eating sandwiches with one
+hand while with the other he held a fishing-rod out over the water.
+
+McKay noticed this bit of impudence with a shrug. "That won't do,"
+he murmured; and pausing at the parapet of the bridge he said
+pleasantly: "I'm sorry to disturb you, but fishing isn't permitted
+in Isla Water."
+
+At that the flashy young man jumped up with unexpected nimbleness--a
+powerful frame on two very vulgar but powerful legs.
+
+"Say, sport," he called out, "if this is your fish-pond we're ready
+to pay what's right. What's the damage for a dozen fish?"
+
+"Americans--awful ones," whispered Miss Erith.
+
+McKay rested his folded arms on the parapet and regarded the advance
+of the flashy man up the grassy slope below.
+
+"I don't rent fishing privileges," he said amiably.
+
+"That's all right. Name your price. No millionaire guy I ever heard
+of ever had enough money," returned the flashy man jocosely.
+
+McKay, amused, shook his head. "Sorry," he said, "but I couldn't
+permit you to fish."
+
+"Aw, come on, old scout! We heard you was American same as us.
+That's my sister down there and her feller. My name's Jim
+Macniff--some Scotch somewhere. That there feller is Harry Skelton.
+Horses is our business--Spitalfields Mews--here's my card--"
+pulling it out--"I'll come up on the bridge--"
+
+"Never mind. What are you in Scotland for anyway?" inquired McKay.
+
+"The Angus Dhu stables at Inverness--auction next Wednesday. Horses
+is our line, so we made it a holiday--"
+
+"A holiday in the Banff country?"
+
+"Sure, I ain't never seen it before. Is that your house?"
+
+McKay nodded and turned away, weary of the man and his vulgarity.
+"Very well, picnic and fish if you like," he said; and fell into
+step beside Miss Erith.
+
+They entered the house through the door in the garden. Later, when
+Miss Erith came back from her toilet, but still wearing her outing
+skirt, McKay turned from the long window where he had been standing
+and watching the picnickers across Isla Bridge. The flashy man had a
+banjo now and was strumming it and leering at the girl.
+
+"What people to encounter in this corner of Paradise," she said
+laughingly. And, as he did not smile: "You don't suppose there's
+anything queer about them, do you, Kay?" At that he smiled: "Oh, no,
+nothing of that sort, Yellow-hair. Only--it's rather odd. But bagmen
+and their kind do come into the northland--why, Heaven knows--but
+one sees them playing about."
+
+"Of course those people are merely very ordinary Americans--nothing
+worse," she said, seating herself at the table.
+
+"What could be worse?" he returned lightly.
+
+"Boche."
+
+They were seated sideways to the window and opposite each other,
+commanding a clear view of Isla Water and the shore where the
+picnickers sprawled apparently enjoying the semi-comatose pleasure
+of repletion.
+
+"That other man--the thin one--has not exactly a prepossessing
+countenance," she remarked.
+
+"They can't travel without papers," he said.
+
+For a little while luncheon progressed in silence. Presently Miss
+Erith reverted to the picnickers: "The young woman has a foreign
+face. Have you noticed?"
+
+"She's rather dark. Rather handsome, too. And she appears rather
+nice."
+
+"Women of that class always appear superior to men of the same
+class," observed Miss Erith. "I suppose really they are not superior
+to the male of the species."
+
+"I've always thought they were," he said.
+
+"Men might think so."
+
+He smiled: "Quite right, Yellow-hair; woman only is competent to
+size up woman. The trouble is that no man really believes this."
+
+"Don't you?"
+
+"I don't know. Tell me, what shall we do after luncheon?"
+
+"Oh, the moors--please, Kay!"
+
+"What!" he exclaimed laughingly; "you're already a victim to Glenark
+moors!"
+
+"Kay, I adore them! ... Are you tired? ... Our time is short-our day
+of sunshine. I want to drink in all of it I can ... before we--"
+
+"Certainly. Shall we walk to Strathnaver, Lady Yellow-hair?"
+
+"If it please my lord."
+
+"Now?"
+
+"In the cool of the afternoon. Don't you want to be lazy with me in
+your quaint old garden for an hour or two?"
+
+"I'll send out two steamer-chairs, Yellow-hair."
+
+When they lay there in the shadow of a lawn umbrella, chair beside
+chair, the view across Isla Water was unpolluted by the picnickers,
+their hamper, and their car.
+
+"Stole away, the beggars," drawled McKay lighting a cigarette.
+"Where the devil they got a permit for petrol is beyond me."
+
+The girl lay with deep golden eyes dreaming under her long dark
+lashes. Sunlight crinkled Isla Water; a merle came and sang to her
+in a pear-tree until, in its bubbling melody, she seemed to hear the
+liquid laughter of Isla rippling to the sea.
+
+"Kay?"
+
+"Yes, Yellow-hair." Their voices were vague and dreamy.
+
+"Tell me something."
+
+"I'll tell you something. When a McKay of Isla is near his end he is
+always warned."
+
+"How?"
+
+"A cold hand touches his hand in the dark."
+
+"Kay!"
+
+"It's so. It's called'the Cold Hand of Isla.' We are all doomed to
+feel it."
+
+"Absurd!"
+
+"Not at all. That's a pretty story; isn't it? Now what more shall I
+tell you?"
+
+"Anything you like, Kay. I'm in paradise--or would be if only
+somebody would tell me stories till I fall asleep."
+
+"Stories about what?"
+
+"About YOU, Kay."
+
+"I'll not talk about myself."
+
+"Please!"
+
+But he shook his head without smiling: "You know all there is," he
+said--"and much that is--unspeakable."
+
+"Kay!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Never, never speak that way again!"
+
+He remained silent.
+
+"Because," she continued in her low, pretty voice, "it is not true.
+I know about you only what I somehow seemed to divine the very
+moment I first laid eyes on you. Something within me seemed to say
+to me, 'This is a boy who also is a real man!' ... And it was true,
+Kay."
+
+"You thought that when you knelt in the snow and looked down at that
+beastly drunken--"
+
+"Yes! Don't use such words! You looked like a big schoolboy,
+asleep-that is what you resembled. But I knew you to be a real man."
+
+"You are merciful, but I know what you went through," he said
+morosely.
+
+She paid no attention: "I liked you instantly. I thought to myself,
+'Now when he wakes he'll be what he looks like.' And you are!"
+
+He stirred in his chair, sideways, and glanced at her.
+
+"You know what I think about you, don't you?"
+
+"No." She shouldn't have let their words drift thus far and she knew
+it. Also at this point she should have diverted the conversation.
+But she remained silent, aware of an indefinite pleasure in the
+vague excitement which had quickened her pulse a little.
+
+"Well, I shan't tell you," he said quietly.
+
+"Why not?" And at that her heart added a beat or two.
+
+"Because, even if I were different, you wouldn't wish me to."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because you and I are doomed to a rather intimate comradeship--a
+companionship far beyond conventions, Yellow-hair. That is what is
+ahead of us. And you will have enough to weary you without having
+another item to add to it."
+
+"What item?" At that she became very silent and badly scared. What
+demon was prompting her to such provocation? Her own effrontery
+amazed and frightened her, but her words seemed to speak themselves
+independently of her own volition.
+
+"Yellow-hair," he said, "I think you have guessed all I might have
+dared say to you were I not on eternal probation."
+
+"Probation?"
+
+"Before a bitterly strict judge."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Myself, Yellow-hair."
+
+"Oh, Kay! You ARE a boy--nothing more than a boy--"
+
+"Are you in love with me?"
+
+"No," she said, astonished. "I don't think so. What an amazing thing
+to say to a girl!"
+
+"I thought I'd scare you," he remarked grimly.
+
+"You didn't. I--I was scarcely prepared--such a nonsensical thing to
+say! Why--why I might as well ask you if you are in--in--"
+
+"In love with you? You wish to know, Yellow-hair?"
+
+"No, I don't," she replied hastily. "This is--stupid. I don't
+understand how we came to discuss such--such--" But she did know and
+she bit her lip and gazed across Isla Water in silent exasperation.
+
+What mischief was this that hid in the Scottish sunshine, whispering
+in every heather-scented breeze--laughing at her from every little
+wave on Isla Water?--counselling her to this new and delicate
+audacity, imbuing her with a secret gaiety of heart, and her very
+soul fluttering with a delicious laughter--an odd, perverse,
+illogical laughter, alternately tremulous and triumphant!
+
+Was she in love, then, with this man? She remembered his unconscious
+head on her knees in the limousine, and the snow clinging to his
+bright hair--
+
+She remembered the telephone, and the call to the hospital--and the
+message. ... And the white night and bitter dawn. ... Love? No, not
+as she supposed it to be; merely the solicitude and friendship of a
+woman who once found something hurt by the war and who fought to
+protect what was hers by right of discovery. That was not love. ...
+Perhaps there may have been a touch of the maternal passion about
+her feeling for this man. ... Nothing else--nothing more than that,
+and the eternal indefinable charity for all boys which is inherent
+in all womanhood--the consciousness of the enchantment that a boy
+has for all women. ... Nothing more. ... Except that--perhaps she
+had wondered whether he liked her--as much as she liked him.... Or
+if, possibly, in his regard for her there were some slight depths
+between shallows--a gratitude that is a trifle warmer than the
+conventional virtue--
+
+When at length she ventured to turn her head and look at him he
+seemed to be asleep, lying there in the transformed shadow of the
+lawn umbrella.
+
+Something about the motionless relaxation of this man annoyed her.
+"Kay?"
+
+He turned his head squarely toward her, and 'o her exasperation she
+blushed.
+
+"Did I wake you? I'm sorry," she said coldly.
+
+"You didn't. I was awake."
+
+"Oh! I meant to say that I think I'll stroll out. Don't come if you
+feel lazy."
+
+He swung himself up to a sitting posture.
+
+"I'm quite ready," he said. ... "You'll always find me ready,
+Yellow-hair--always waiting."
+
+"Waiting? For what?"
+
+"For your commands."
+
+"You very nice boy!" she said gaily, springing to her feet. Then,
+the subtle demon of the sunlight prompting her: "You know, Kay, you
+don't ever have to wait. Because I'm always ready to listen to any
+pro--any suggestions--from you."
+
+The man looked into the girl's eyes:
+
+"You would care to hear what I might have to tell you?"
+
+"I always care to hear what you say. Whatever you say interests me."
+
+"Would it interest you to know I am--in love?"
+
+"Yes. ... With wh--whom are--" But her breath failed her.
+
+"With you. ... You knew it, Yellow-hair. ... Does it interest you to
+know it?"
+
+"Yes." But the exhilaration of the moment was interfering with her
+breath again and she only stood there with the flushed and audacious
+little smile stamped on her lips forcing her eyes to meet his
+curious, troubled, intent gaze.
+
+"You did know it?" he repeated.
+
+"No."
+
+"You suspected it."
+
+"I wanted to know what you--thought about me, Kay."
+
+"You know now."
+
+"Yes ... but it doesn't seem real. ... And I haven't anything to say
+to you. I'm sorry--"
+
+"I understand, Yellow-hair."
+
+"--Except-thank you. And-and I am interested. ... You're such a boy....
+I like you so much, Kay.... And I AM interested in what you
+said to me."
+
+"That means a lot for you to say, doesn't it?"
+
+"I don't know. ... It's partly what we have been through together, I
+suppose; partly this lovely country, and the sun. Something is
+enchanting me. ... And you are very nice to look at, Kay." His smile
+was grave, a little detached and weary.
+
+"I did not suppose you could ever really care for such a man as I
+am," he remarked without the slightest bitterness or appeal in his
+voice. "But I'm glad you let me tell you how it is with me. ... It
+always was that way, Yellow-hair, from the first moment you came
+into the hospital. I fell in love then."
+
+"Oh, you couldn't have--"
+
+"Nevertheless, and after all I said and did to the contrary. ... I
+don't think any woman remains entirely displeased when a man tells
+her he is in love with her. If he does love her he ought to tell
+her, I think. It always means that much tribute to her power. ...
+And none is indifferent to power, Yellow-hair."
+
+"No. ... I am not indifferent. I like what you said to me. It seems
+unreal, though--but enchanting--part of this day's enchantment. ...
+Shall we start, Kay?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+They went out together through the garden door into the open moor,
+swinging along in rhythmic stride, side by side, smiling faintly as
+dreamers smile when something imperceptible to the waking world
+invades their vision.
+
+Again the brown grouse whirred from the whinns; again the subtle
+fragrance of the moor sweetened her throat with its clean aroma;
+again the haunting complaint of the lapwings came across acres of
+bog and furze; and, high in the afternoon sky, an invisible curlew
+sadly and monotonously repeated its name through the vast blue vault
+of space.
+
+On the edge of evening with all the west ablaze they came out once
+more on Isla Water and looked across the glimmering flood at the old
+house in the hollow, every distant window-pane a-glitter.
+
+Like that immemorial and dragon-guarded jewel of the East the sun,
+cradled in flaky gold, hung a hand's breadth above the horizon, and
+all the world had turned to a hazy plum-bloom tint threaded with
+pale fire.
+
+On Isla Water the yellow trout had not yet begun to jump; evening
+still lingered beyond the world's curved ruin; but the wild duck
+were coming in from the sea in twos and threes and sheering down
+into distant reaches of Isla Water.
+
+Then, into the divine stillness of the universe came the unspeakable
+twang of a banjo; and a fat voice, slightly hoarse:
+
+   "Rocks on the mountain,
+    Fishes in the sea,
+    A red-headed girl
+    Raised hell with me.
+    She come from Chicago, R.F.D.
+    An' she ain't done a thing to a guy like me!"
+
+The business was so grotesquely outrageous, so utterly and
+disgustingly hopeless in its surprise and untimelines, that McKay's
+sharp laugh rang out under the sky.
+
+There they were, the same trespassers of the morning, squatted on
+the heather at the base of Isla Craig--a vast heap of rocks--their
+machine drawn up in the tall green brakes beside the road.
+
+The flashy, fat man, Macniff, had the banjo. The girl sat between
+him and the thin man, Skelton.
+
+"Ah, there, old scout!" called out Macniff, flourishing one hand
+toward McKay. "Lovely evening, ain't it? Won't you and the wife join
+us?"
+
+There was absolutely nothing to reply to such an invitation. Miss
+Erith continued to gaze out steadily across Isla Water; McKay,
+deeply sensitive to the ludicrous, smiled under the grotesque
+provocation, his eyes mischievously fixed on Miss Erith. After a
+long while: "They've spoiled it," she said lightly. "Shall we go on,
+Kay? I can't endure that banjo."
+
+They walked on, McKay grinning. The picnickers were getting up from
+the crushed heather; Macniff with his banjo came toward them on his
+incredibly thick legs, blocking their path.
+
+"Say, sport," he began, "won't you and the lady join us?" But McKay
+cut him short:
+
+"Do you know you are impudent?" he said very quietly. "Step out of
+the way there."
+
+"The hell you say!" and McKay's patience ended at the same instant.
+And something happened very quickly, for the man only staggered
+under the smashing blow and the other man's arm flew up and his
+pistol blazed in the gathering dusk, shattering the cairngorm on
+McKay's shoulder. The young woman fired from where she sat on the
+grass and the soft hat was jerked from Miss Erith's head. At the
+same moment McKay clutched her arm and jerked her violently behind a
+jutting elbow of Isla Rock. When she recovered her balance she saw
+he held two pistols.
+
+"Boche?" she gasped incredulously.
+
+"Yes. Keep your head down. Crouch among the ferns behind me!"
+
+There was a ruddy streak of fire from the pistol in his right hand;
+shots answered, the bullets smacking the rock or whining above it.
+
+"Yellow-hair?"
+
+"Yes, Kay."
+
+"You are not scared, are you?"
+
+"Yes; but I'm all right."
+
+He said with quiet bitterness: "It's too late to say what a fool I
+am. Their camouflage took me in; that's all--"
+
+He fired again; a rattling volley came storming among the rocks.
+
+"We're all right here," he said tersely. But in his heart he was
+terrified, for he had only the cartridges in his clips.
+
+Presently he motioned her to bend over very low. Then, taking her
+hand, he guided her along an ascending gulley, knee-deep in fern and
+brake and brier, to a sort of little rocky pulpit.
+
+The lake lay behind them, lapping the pulpit's base. There was a man
+in a boat out there. McKay fired at him and he plied both oars and
+fled out of range.
+
+"Lie down," he whispered to Miss Erith. The girl mutely obeyed.
+
+Now, crouched up there in the deepening dusk, his pistol extended,
+resting on the rock in front of him, his keen eyes searched
+restlessly; his ears were strained for the minutest stirring on the
+moor in front of him; and his embittered mind was at work
+alternately cursing his own stupidity and searching for some chance
+for this young girl whom his own incredible carelessness had
+probably done to death.
+
+Presently, between him and Isla Water, a shadow moved. He fired; and
+around them the darkness spat flame from a dozen different angles.
+
+"Damnation!" he whispered to himself, realising now what the sunlit
+moors had hidden--a dozen men all bent on murder.
+
+Once a voice hailed him from the thick darkness promising immunity
+if he surrendered. He hesitated. Who but he should know the Boche?
+Still he answered back: "If you let this woman go you can do what
+you like to me!" And knew while he was saying it that it was
+useless--that there was no truth, no honour in the Boche, only
+infamy and murder. A hoarse voice promised what he asked; but Miss
+Erith caught McKay's arm.
+
+"No!"
+
+"If I dared believe them--"
+
+"No, Kay!"
+
+He shrugged: "I'd be very glad to pay the price--only they can't be
+trusted. They can't be trusted, Yellow-hair."
+
+Somebody shouted from the impenetrable shadows:
+
+"Come out of that now, McKay! If you don't we'll go in and cut her
+throat before we do for you!"
+
+He remained silent, quite motionless, watching the darkness.
+
+Suddenly his pistol flashed redly, rapidly; a heavy, soft bulk went
+tumbling down the rocks; another reeled there, silhouetted against
+Isla Water, then lurched forward, striking the earth with his face.
+And now from every angle slanting lines of blood-red fire streaked
+the night; Isla Craig rang and echoed with pelting lead.
+
+"Next!" called out McKay with his ugly careless laugh. "Two down. No
+use to set 'em up again! Let dead wood lie. It's the law!"
+
+"Can they hear the shooting at the house?" whispered Miss Erith.
+
+"Too far. A shot on the moors carries only a little way."
+
+"Could they see the pistol flashes, Kay?"
+
+"They'd take them for fireflies or witch lights dancing on the
+bogs."
+
+After a long and immobile silence he dropped to his knees, remained
+so listening, then crept across the Pulpit's ferny floor. Of a
+sudden he sprang up and fired full into a man's face; and struck the
+distorted visage with doubled fist, hurling it below, crashing down
+through the bracken.
+
+After a stunned interval Miss Erith saw him wiping that hand on the
+herbage.
+
+"Kay?"
+
+"Yes, Yellow-hair."
+
+"Can you see your wrist-watch?"
+
+"Yes. It's after midnight."
+
+The girl prayed silently for dawn. The man, grim, alert, awaited
+events, clutching his partly emptied pistols. He had not yet told
+her that they were partly empty. He did not know whether to tell
+her. After a while he made up his mind.
+
+"Yellow-hair?"
+
+"Yes, dear Kay."
+
+His lips went dry; he found difficulty in speaking: "I've--I've
+undone you. I've bitten the hand that saved me, your slim white
+hand, I'm afraid. I'm afraid I've destroyed you, Yellow-hair."
+
+"How, Kay?"
+
+"My pistols are half empty. ... Unless dawn comes quick--"
+
+Again one of his pistols flashed its crimson streak across the
+blackness and a man began scrambling and thrashing and screaming
+down there in the whinns. For a little while Miss Erith crouched
+beside McKay in silence. Then he felt her light touch on his arm:
+
+"I've been thinking.",
+
+"Aye. So have I."
+
+"Is there a chance to drop into the lake?"
+
+He had not thought so. He had figured it out in every possible way.
+But there seemed little chance to swim that icy water--none at
+all--with that man in the boat yonder, and detection always imminent
+if they left the Pulpit. McKay shook his head slightly:
+
+"He'd row us down and gralloch us like swimming deer."
+
+"But if one goes alone?"
+
+"Oh, Yellow-hair! Yellow-hair! If you only could!"
+
+"I can."
+
+"Swim it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"It's cold water. Few can swim Isla Water. It's a long swim from
+Isla Craig to the house."
+
+"I can do it, I think."
+
+After a terrible silence he said: "Yes, best try it, Yellow-hair....
+I had meant to keep the last cartridge for you..."
+
+"Dear Kay," she breathed close to his cheek.
+
+Presently he was obliged to fire again, but remained uncertain as to
+his luck in the raging storm of lead that followed.
+
+"I guess you better go, Yellow-hair," he whispered. "My guns are
+about all in."
+
+"Try to hold them off. I'll come back. Of course you understand I'm
+not going for myself, Kay, I'm going for ammunition."
+
+"What!"
+
+"What did you suppose?" she asked curtly.
+
+At that he blazed up: "If you can win through Isla Water you stay on
+the other side and telephone Glenark! Do you hear? I'm all right.
+It's--it's none of your business how I end this--"
+
+"Kay?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Turn your back. I'm undressing."
+
+He heard her stripping, kneeling in the ferns behind him,--heard the
+rip of delicate fabric and the rustle of silk-lined garments
+falling.
+
+Presently she said: "Can I be noticed if I slip down through the
+bushes to the water?"
+
+"O God," he whispered, "be careful, Yellow-hair. ... No, the man in
+the boat is keeping his distance. He'll never see you. Don't splash
+when you take the water. Swim like an otter, under, until you're
+well out. ... You're young and sturdy, slim as you are. You'll get
+through if the chill of Isla doesn't paralyse you. But you've got to
+do it, Yellow-hair; you've GOT to do it."
+
+"Yes. Hold them off, Kay. I'll be back. Hold them off, dear Kay.
+Will you?"
+
+"I'll try, Yellow-hair.... Good luck! Don't try to come back!"
+
+"Good luck," she whispered close to his ear; and, for a second he
+felt her slim young hands on his shoulders--lightly--the very ghost
+of contact. That was all. He waited a hundred years. Then another.
+Then, his weapons levelled, listening, he cast a quick glance
+backward. At the foot of the Pulpit a dark ripple lapped the rock.
+Nothing there now; nothing in Isla Water save far in the stars'
+lustre the shadowy boat lying motionless.
+
+Toward dawn they tried to rush the Pulpit. He used a heavy fragment
+of rock on the first man up, and as his quarry went smashing
+earthward, a fierce whine burst from the others: "Shot out! All
+together now!" But his pistol spoke again and they recoiled,
+growling, disheartened, cursing the false hope that had re-nerved
+them.
+
+It was his last shot, however. He had a heavy clasp-knife such as
+salmon-anglers carry. He laid his empty pistols on the rocky ledge.
+Very patiently he felt for frost-loosened masses of rock, detached
+them one by one and noiselessly piled them along the ledge.
+
+"It's odd," he thought to himself: "I'm going to be killed and I
+don't care. If Isla got HER, then I'll see her very soon now, God
+willing. But if she wins out--why it is going to be longer waiting....
+And I've put my mark on the Boche--not as often as I wished--but
+I've marked some of them for what they've done to me--and to the
+world--"
+
+A sound caught his ear. He waited, listening. Had it been a fighting
+chance in Isla Water he'd have taken it. But the man in the
+boat!--and to have one's throat cut--like a deer! No! He'd kill all
+he could first; he'd die fighting, not fleeing.
+
+He looked at his wrist-watch. Miss Erith had been gone two hours.
+That meant that her slender body lay deep, deep in icy Isla.
+
+Now, listening intently, he heard the bracken stirring and something
+scraping the gorse below. They were coming; they were among the
+rocks! He straightened up and hurled a great slab of rock down
+through darkness; heard them scrambling upward still; seized slab
+after slab and smashed them downward at the flashes as the red flare
+of their pistols lit up his figure against the sky.
+
+Then, as he hurled the last slab and clutched his short, broad
+knife, a gasping breath fell on his cheek and a wet and icy little
+hand thrust a box of clips into his. And there and then The McKay
+almost died, for it was as if the "Cold Hand of Isla" had touched
+him. And he stared ahead to see his own wraith.
+
+"Quick!" she panted. "We can hold them, Kay!"
+
+"Yellow-hair! By God! You bet we can!" he cried with a terrible
+burst of laughter; and ripped the clips from the box and snapped
+them in with lightning speed.
+
+Then his pistols vomited vermilion, clearing the rock of vermin; and
+when two fresh clips were snapped in, the man stood on the Pulpit's
+edge, mad for blood, his fierce young eyes searching the blackness
+about him.
+
+"You dirty rats!" he cried, "come back! Are you leaving your dead in
+the bracken then?"
+
+There were distant sounds on the moor; nothing stirred nearer.
+
+"Are you coming back?" he shouted, "or must I go after you?"
+
+Suddenly in the night their motor roared. At the same moment, far
+across the lake, he saw the headlights of other motors glide over
+Isla Bridge like low-flying stars.
+
+"Yellow-hair!"
+
+There was no sound behind him. He turned.
+
+The fainting girl lay amid her drenched yellow hair in the ferns,
+partly covered by the clothing which she had drawn over her with her
+last conscious effort.
+
+It is a long way across Isla Water. And twice across is longer. And
+"The Cold Hand of Isla" summons the chief of Clan Morhguinn when his
+time has come to look upon his own wraith face to face. But The Cold
+Hand of Isla had touched this girl in vain--MOLADH MAIRI!!
+
+"Yellow-hair! Yellow-hair!" he whispered. The roar of rushing motors
+from Glenark filled his ears. He picked up one of her little hands
+and chafed it. Then she opened her golden eyes, looked up at him,
+and a flood of rose dyed her body from brow to ankle.
+
+"It--it is a long way across Isla Water," she stammered. "I'm very
+tired--Kay!"
+
+"You below there!" shouted McKay. "Are there constables among you?"
+
+"Aye, sir!" came the loud response amid the roar of running engines.
+
+"Then there'll be whiskey and blankets, I'm thinkin'!" cried McKay.
+
+"Aye, blankets for the dead if there be any!"
+
+"Kick 'em into the whinns and bring what ye bring for the living!"
+said McKay in a loud, joyous voice. "And if you've petrol and speed
+take the Banff road and be on your way, for the Boche are crawling
+to cover, and it's fine running the night! Get on there, ye Glenark
+beagles! And leave a car behind for me and mine!"
+
+A constable, shining his lantern, came clumping up the Pulpit. McKay
+snatched the heavy blankets and with one mighty movement swept the
+girl into them.
+
+Half-conscious she coughed and gasped at the whiskey, then lay very
+still as McKay lifted her in his arms and strode out under the
+paling stars of Isla.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+MOUNT TERRIBLE
+
+
+
+
+
+Toward the last of May a handsome young man wearing a smile and the
+uniform of an American Intelligence Officer arrived at Delle, a
+French village on the Franco-Swiss frontier.
+
+His credentials being satisfactory he was directed by the Major of
+Alpinists commanding the place to a small stucco house on the main
+street.
+
+Here he inquired for a gentleman named Number Seventy. The
+gentleman's other name was John Recklow, and he received the
+Intelligence Officer, locked the door, and seated himself behind his
+desk with his back to the sunlit window, and one drawer of his desk
+partly open.
+
+Credentials being requested, and the request complied with
+accompanied by a dazzling smile, there ensued a silent interval of
+some length during which the young man wearing the uniform of an
+American Intelligence Officer was not at all certain whether Recklow
+was examining him or the papers of identification.
+
+After a while Recklow nodded: "You came through from Toul, Captain?"
+
+"From Toul, sir," with the quick smile revealing dazzling teeth.
+
+"Matters progress?"
+
+"It is quiet there."
+
+"So I understand," nodded Recklow. "There's blood on your uniform."
+
+"A scratch--a spill from my motor-cycle."
+
+Recklow eyed the cut on the officer's handsome face. One of the
+young officer's hands was bandaged, too.
+
+"You've been in action, Captain."
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"You wear German shoes."
+
+The officer's brilliant smile wrinkled his good-looking features:
+"There was some little loot: I'm wearing my share."
+
+Recklow nodded and let his cold eyes rest on the identification
+papers.
+
+Then, slowly, and without a word, he passed them back over the desk.
+
+The Intelligence Officer stuffed them carelessly into his
+side-pocket.
+
+"I thought I'd come over instead of wiring or 'phoning. Our people
+have not come through yet, have they?"
+
+"Which people, sir?"
+
+"McKay and Miss Erith."
+
+"No, not yet."
+
+The officer mused for a moment, then: "They wired me from Paris
+yesterday, so they're all right so far. You'll see to it personally
+that they get through the Swiss wire, won't you?"
+
+"Through or over, sir."
+
+The Intelligence Officer displayed his mirthful teeth:
+
+"Thanks. I'm also sending three of my own people through the wire.
+They'll have their papers in order--here are the duplicates I
+issued; they'll have their photographs on the originals."
+
+He fished out a batch of papers and laid them on Recklow's desk.
+
+"Who are these people?" demanded Recklow.
+
+"Mine, sir."
+
+"Oh."
+
+There fell a silence; but Recklow did not examine the papers; he
+merely pocketed them.
+
+"I think that's all," said the Intelligence Officer. "You know my
+name--Captain Herts. In case you wish to communicate just wire my
+department at Toul. They'll forward anything if I'm away on duty."
+
+He saluted: Recklow followed him to the door, saw him mount his
+motor-cycle--a battered American machine--stood there watching until
+he was out of sight.
+
+Hour after hour that afternoon Recklow sat in his quiet little house
+in Delle poring over the duplicate papers.
+
+About five o'clock he called up Toul by telephone and got the proper
+department.
+
+"Yes," came the answer, "Captain Herts went to you this morning on a
+confidential matter.... No, we don't know when he will return to
+Toul."
+
+Recklow hung up, walked slowly out into his little garden and,
+seating himself on a green bench, took out the three packets of
+duplicate papers left him by Captain Herts. Then he produced a
+jeweller's glass and screwed it into his right eye.
+
+Several days later three people--two men and a young woman--arrived
+at Delle, were conveyed under military escort to the little house of
+Mr. Recklow, remained closeted with him until verification of their
+credentials in duplicate had been accomplished, then they took their
+departure and, that evening, they put up at the Inn.
+
+But by the next morning they had disappeared, presumably over the
+Swiss wire--that being their destination as revealed in their
+papers. But the English touring-car which brought them still
+remained in the Inn garage. Recklow spent hours examining it.
+
+Also the arrival and the departure of these three people was
+telephoned to Toul by Recklow, but Captain Herts still remained
+absent from Toul on duty and his department knew nothing about the
+details of the highly specialised and confidential business of
+Captain Herts.
+
+So John Recklow went back to his garden and waited, and smoked a
+short, dirty clay pipe, and played with his family of cats.
+
+Once or twice he went down at night to the French wire. All the
+sentries were friends of his.
+
+"Anybody been through?" he inquired.
+
+The answer was always the same: Nobody had been through as far as
+the patrol knew.
+
+"Where the hell," muttered Recklow, "did those three guys go?"
+
+A nightingale sang as he sauntered homeward. Possibly, being a
+French nightingale, she was trying to tell him that there were three
+people lying very still in the thicket near her.
+
+But men are stupid and nightingales are too busy to bother about
+trifles when there is courting to be done and nests to be planned
+and all the anticipated excitement of the coming new moon to
+preoccupy a love-distracted bird.
+
+On a warm, sunny day early in June, toward three o'clock in the
+afternoon, a peloton of French cavalry en vidette from Delle stopped
+a rather rickety touring-car several kilometres west of the Swiss
+frontier and examined the sheaf of papers offered for their
+inspection by the young man who drove the car.
+
+A yellow-haired girl seated beside him leaned back in her place
+indifferently to relax her limbs.
+
+From the time she and the young man had left Glenark in Scotland
+their progress had been a series of similar interruptions.
+Everywhere on every road soldiers, constables, military policemen,
+and gentlemen in mufti had displayed, with varying degrees of
+civility, a persistent curiosity to inspect such papers as they
+carried.
+
+On the Channel transport it was the same; the same from Dieppe to
+Paris; from Paris to Belfort; and now, here within a pebble's toss
+of the Swiss frontier, military curiosity concerning their papers
+apparently remained unquenched.
+
+The sous-officier of dragoon-lancers sat his splendid horse and
+gravely inspected the papers, one by one. Behind him a handful of
+troopers lolled in their saddles, their lances advanced, their
+horses swishing their tails at the murderous, green-eyed bremsers
+which, like other bloodthirsty Teutonic vermin, had their origin in
+Germany, and raided both French and Swiss frontiers to the cruel
+discomfort of horses and cattle.
+
+Meanwhile the blond, perplexed boy who was examining the papers of
+the two motorists, scratched his curly head and rubbed his deeply
+sunburned nose with a sunburned fist, a visible prey to indecision.
+Finally, at his slight gesture, his troopers trotted out and formed
+around the touring-car.
+
+The boyish sous-officier looked pleasantly at the occupants of the
+car: "Have the complaisance to follow me--rather slowly if you
+please," he said; wheeled his horse, and trotted eastward toward the
+roofs of a little hamlet visible among the trees of the green and
+rolling countryside.
+
+The young man threw in his clutch and advanced slowly, the cavalry
+trotting on either side with lances in stirrup-boots and slanting
+backward from the arm-loops.
+
+There was a barrier beyond and some Alpine infantry on guard; and to
+the left, a paved street and houses. Half-way down this silent
+little street they halted: the sous-officier dismounted and opened
+the door of the tonneau, politely assisting the girl to alight. Her
+companion followed her, and the sous-officier conducted them into a
+stucco house, the worn limestone step of which gave directly on the
+grass-grown sidewalk.
+
+"If your papers are in order, as they appear to be," said the
+youthful sous-officier, "you are expected in Delle. And if it is you
+indeed whom we expect, then you will know how to answer properly the
+questions of a gentleman in the adjoining room who is perhaps
+expecting you." And the young sous-officier opened a door, bowed
+them into the room beyond, and closed the door behind them. As they
+entered this room a civilian of fifty, ruddy, powerfully but trimly
+built, and wearing his white hair clipped close, rose from a swivel
+chair behind a desk littered with maps and papers.
+
+"Good-afternoon," he said in English. "Be seated if you please. And
+if you will kindly let me have your papers--thank you."
+
+When the young man and the girl were seated, their suave and ruddy
+host dropped back onto his swivel chair. For a long while he sat
+there absently caressing his trim, white moustache, studying their
+papers with unhurried and minute thoroughness.
+
+Presently he lifted his cold, greyish eyes but not his head, like a
+man looking up over eyeglasses:
+
+"You are this Kay McKay described here?" he inquired pleasantly. But
+in his very clear, very cold greyish eyes there was something
+suggesting the terrifying fixity of a tiger's.
+
+"I am the person described," said the young man quietly.
+
+"And you," turning only his eyes on the young girl, "are Miss Evelyn
+Erith?"
+
+"I am."
+
+"These, obviously, are your photographs?"
+
+McKay smiled: "Obviously."
+
+"Certainly. And all these other documents appear to be in order"--he
+laid them carelessly on his desk--"IF," he added, "Delle is your
+ultimate destination and terminal."
+
+"We go farther," said McKay in a low voice.
+
+"Not unless you have something further to offer me in the way of
+credentials," said the ruddy, white-haired Mr. Recklow, smiling his
+terrifying smile.
+
+"I might mention a number," began McKay in a voice still lower, "if
+you are interested in the science of numbers!"
+
+"Really. And what number do you think might interest me?"
+
+"Seventy-six--for example."
+
+"Oh," said the other; "in that case I shall mention the very
+interesting number, Seventy. And you, Miss Erith?" turning to the
+yellow-haired girl. "Have you any number to suggest that might
+interest me?"
+
+"Seventy-seven," she said composedly. Recklow nodded:
+
+"Do you happen to believe, either of you, that, at birth, the hours
+of our lives are already irrevocably numbered?"
+
+Miss Erith said: "So teach us to number our days that we may apply
+our hearts unto wisdom."
+
+Recklow got up, made them a bow, and reseated himself. He touched a
+handbell; the blond sous-officier entered.
+
+"Everything is in order; take care of the car; carry the luggage to
+the two rooms above," said Recklow.
+
+To McKay and Miss Erith he added: "My name is John Recklow. If you
+want to rest before you wash up, your rooms are ready. You'll find
+me here or in the garden behind the house."
+
+Toward sunset they found Recklow in the little garden, seated alone
+there on a bench looking up at the eastward mountains with the
+piercing, detached stare of a bird of prey. When they had seated
+themselves on the faded-green bench on either side of him he said,
+still gazing toward the mountains: "It's April up there. Dress
+warmly."
+
+"Which is Mount Terrible?" inquired Miss Erith.
+
+"Those are the lower ridges. The summit is not visible from where we
+sit," replied Recklow. And, to McKay: "There's some snow there
+still, I hear."
+
+McKay's upward-turned face was a grim study. Beyond those limestone
+shouldering heights his terrible Calvary had begun--a progress that
+had ended in the wreckage of mind and soul had it not been for
+Chance and Evelyn Erith. After Mount Terrible, with its grim "Great
+Secret," had come the horrors of the prison camp at Holzminden and
+its nameless atrocities, his escape to New York, the Hun cipher
+orders to "silence him," his miraculous rescue and redemption by the
+girl at his side--and now their dual mission to probe the mystery of
+Mount Terrible.
+
+"McKay," said Recklow, "I don't know what the particular mission may
+be that brings you and Miss Erith to the Franco-Swiss frontier. I
+have been merely instructed to carry out your orders whenever you
+are in touch with me. And I am ready to do so."
+
+"How much do you know about us?" asked McKay, turning to him an
+altered face almost marred by hard features which once had been only
+careworn and stern.
+
+"I know you escaped from the Holzminden prison-camp in Germany; that
+you were inhumanly treated there by the Boche; that you entered the
+United States Intelligence Service; and that, whatever may be your
+business here, I am to help further it at your request." He looked
+at the girl: "As concerning Miss Erith, I know only that she is in
+the same Government service as yourself and that I am to afford her
+any aid she requests."
+
+McKay said, slowly: "My orders are to trust you implicitly. On one
+subject only am I to remain silent--I am not to confide to anybody
+the particular object which brings us here."
+
+Recklow nodded: "I understood as much. Also I have been instructed
+that the Boches are determined to discover your whereabouts and do
+you in before your mission is accomplished. You, probably, are aware
+of that, McKay?"
+
+"Yes, I am."
+
+"By the way--you know a Captain Herts?"
+
+"Not personally."
+
+"You've been in communication with him?"
+
+"Yes, for some time."
+
+"Did you wire him from Paris last Thursday?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Where did you wire him?"
+
+"At his apartment at Toul."
+
+"All right. He was here on Friday.... Somehow I feel uneasy.... He
+has a way of smiling too brilliantly.... I suppose, after these
+experiences I'll remain a suspicious grouch all my life--but his
+papers were in order... I don't know just why I don't care for that
+type of man.... You're bound for somewhere or other via Mount
+Terrible, I understand?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"This Captain Herts sent three of his own people over the Swiss wire
+the other evening. Did you know about it?"
+
+McKay looked worried: "I'm sorry," he said. "Captain Herts proposed
+some such assistance but I declined. It wasn't necessary. Two on
+such a job are plenty; half-a-dozen endanger it."
+
+Recklow shrugged: "I can't judge, not knowing details. Tell me, if
+you don't mind; have you been bothered at all so far by Boche
+agents?"
+
+"Yes," nodded Evelyn Erith.
+
+"You've already had some serious trouble?"
+
+McKay said: "Our ship was torpedoed off Strathlone Head. In Scotland
+a dozen camouflaged Boches caught me napping in spite of being
+warned. It was very humiliating, Recklow."
+
+"You can't trust a soul on this frontier either," returned Recklow
+with emphasis. "You cannot trust the Swiss on this border. Over
+ninety per cent. of them are German-Swiss, speak German exclusively
+along the Alsatian border. They are, I think, loyal Swiss, but their
+origin, propinquity, customs and all their affiliations incline them
+toward Germany rather than toward France.
+
+"I believe, in the event of a Hun deluge, the Swiss on this border,
+and in the cantons adjoining, would defend their passes to the last
+man. They really are first of all good Swiss. But," he shrugged,
+"don't trust their friendship for America or for France; that's
+all."
+
+Miss Erith nodded. McKay said: "How about the frontier? I understand
+both borders are wired now as well as patrolled. Are the wires
+electrically charged?"
+
+"No. There was some talk of doing it on both sides, but the French
+haven't and I don't think the Swiss ever intended to. You can get
+over almost anywhere with a short ladder or by digging under." He
+smiled: "In fact," he said, "I took the liberty of having a sapling
+ladder made for you in case you mean to cross to-night."
+
+"Many thanks. Yes; we cross to-night."
+
+"You go by the summit path past the Crucifix on the peak?"
+
+"No, by the neck of woods under the peak."
+
+"That might be wiser.... One never knows. ... I'm not quite at
+ease--Suppose I go as far as the Crucifix with you--"
+
+"Thanks, no. I know the mountain and the neck of woods around the
+summit. I shall travel no path to-night."
+
+There was a silence: Miss Erith's lovely face was turned tranquilly
+toward the flank of Mount Terrible. Both men looked sideways at her
+as though thinking the same thing.
+
+Finally Recklow said: "In the event of trouble--you understand--it
+means merely detention and internment while you are on Swiss
+territory. But--if you leave it and go north--" He did not say any
+more.
+
+McKay's sombre eyes rested on his in grim comprehension of all that
+Recklow had left unsaid. Swift and savage as would be the fate of a
+man caught within German frontiers on any such business as he was
+now engaged in, the fate of a woman would be unspeakable.
+
+If Miss Erith noticed or understood the silence between these two
+men she gave no sign of comprehension.
+
+Soft, lovely lights lay across the mountains; higher rocks were
+still ruddy in the rays of the declining sun.
+
+"Do the Boche planes ever come over?" asked McKay.
+
+"They did in 1914. But the Swiss stopped it."
+
+"Our planes--do they violate the frontier at all?"
+
+"They never have, so far. Tell me, McKay, how about your maps?"
+
+"Rather inaccurate--excepting one. I drew that myself from memory,
+and I believe it is fairly correct."
+
+Recklow unfolded a little map, marked a spot on it with his pencil
+and passed it to McKay.
+
+"It's for you," he said. "The sapling ladder lies under the filbert
+bushes in the gulley where I have marked the boundary. Wait till the
+patrol passes. Then you have ten minutes. I'll come later and get
+the ladder if the patrol does not discover it."
+
+A cat and her kittens came into the garden and Evelyn Erith seated
+herself on the grass to play with them, an attention gratefully
+appreciated by that feline family.
+
+The men watched her with sober faces. Perhaps both were susceptible
+to her beauty, but there was also about this young American girl in
+all the freshness of her unmarred youth something that touched them
+deeply under the circumstances.
+
+For this clean, wholesome girl was enlisted in a service the dangers
+of which were peculiarly horrible to her because of the bestial
+barbarity of the Boche. From the Hun--if ever she fell into their
+hands--the greatest mercy to be hoped for was a swift death unless
+she could forestall it with a swifter one from her own pistol
+carried for that particular purpose.
+
+The death of youth is always shocking, yet that is an essential part
+of war. But this was no war within the meaning accepted by
+civilisation--this crusade of light against darkness, of cleanliness
+against corruption, this battle of normal minds against the
+diseased, perverted, and filthy ferocity of a people not merely
+reverted to honest barbarism, but also mentally mutilated, and now
+morally imbecile and utterly incompetent to understand the basic
+truths of that civilisation from which they had relapsed, and from
+which, God willing, they are to be ultimately and definitely kicked
+out forever.
+
+The old mother cat lay on the grass blinking pleasantly at the
+setting sun; the kittens frisked and played with the grass-stem in
+Evelyn Erith's fingers, or chased their own ratty little tails in a
+perfect orgy of feline excitement.
+
+Long bluish shadows spread delicate traceries on wall and grass; the
+sweet, persistent whistle of a blackbird intensified the calm of
+evening. It was hard to associate any thought of violence and of
+devastation with the blessed sunset calm and the clean fragrance of
+this land of misty mountains and quiet pasture so innocently aloof
+from the strife and passion of a dusty, noisy and struggling world.
+
+Yet the red borders of that accursed land, the bloody altars of
+which were served by the priests of Baal, lay but a few scant
+kilometres to the north and east. And their stealthy emissaries were
+over the border and creeping like vermin among the uncontaminated
+fields of France.
+
+"Even here," Recklow was saying, in a voice made low and cautious
+from habit, "the dirty Boche prowl among us under protean aspects.
+One can never tell, never trust anybody--what with one thing and
+another and the Alsatian border so close--and those
+German-Swiss--always to be suspected and often impossible to
+distinguish--with their pig-eyes and bushy flat-backed heads--from
+the genuine Boche. ... Would Miss Erith like to have our little
+dinner served out here in the garden?"
+
+Miss Erith was delightfully sure she would.
+
+It was long after sunset, though still light, when the simple little
+meal ended; but they lingered over their coffee and cordial,
+exchanging ideas concerning preparations for their departure, which
+was now close at hand.
+
+The lilac bloom faded from mountain and woodland; already meadow and
+pasture lay veiled under the thickening dusk. The last day-bird had
+piped its sleepy "lights out"; bats were flying high. When the moon
+rose the first nightingale acclaimed the pallid lustre that fell in
+silver pools on walk and wall; and every flower sent forth its
+scented greeting.
+
+Kay McKay and Evelyn Erith had been gone for nearly an hour; but
+Recklow still sat there at the little green table, an unlighted
+cigarette in his muscular fingers, his head slightly bent as though
+listening.
+
+Once he rose as though on some impulse, went into the house, took a
+roll of fine wire, a small cowbell, a heavy pair of wire clippers
+and a pocket torch from his desk and pocketed them. A pair of
+automatic handcuffs he also took, and a dozen clips to fit the brace
+of pistols strapped under his armpits.
+
+Then he returned to the garden; and for a long while he sat there,
+unstirring, just where the wall's shadow lay clean-cut across the
+grass, listening to the distant tinkle of cattle-bells on the unseen
+slope of Mount Terrible.
+
+No shots had come from the patrol along the Franco-Swiss frontier;
+there was no sound save the ecstatic tumult of the nightingale drunk
+with moonlight, and, at intervals, the faint sound of a cowbell from
+those dark and distant pastures.
+
+To this silent, listening man it seemed certain that his two guests
+had now safely crossed the boundary at the spot he had marked for
+McKay on the detail map. Yet he remained profoundly uneasy.
+
+He waited a few moments longer; heard nothing to alarm him; and then
+he left the garden, going out by way of the house, and turned to
+lock the front door behind him.
+
+At that instant his telephone bell rang and he re-entered the house
+with a sudden premonition--an odd, unreasonable, but dreadful sort
+of certainty concerning what he was about to hear. Picking up the
+instrument he was thinking all the time: "It has to do with that
+damned Intelligence Officer! There was something wrong with him!"
+
+There was.
+
+Clearly over the wire from Toul came the information: "Captain
+Herts's naked body was discovered an hour ago in a thicket beside
+the Delle highway. He has been dead two weeks. Therefore the man you
+saw in Delle was impersonating him. Probably also he was Captain
+Herts's murderer and was wearing his uniform, carrying his papers,
+and riding his motor-cycle. Do your best to get him!"
+
+Recklow, deadly cold and calm, asked a few questions. Then he hung
+up the instrument, turned and went out, locking the door behind him.
+
+A few people were in the quiet street; here an Alpine soldier
+strolling with his sweetheart, there an old cure on his way to his
+little stone chapel, yonder a peasant in blouse and sabots plodding
+doggedly along about some detail of belated work that never ends for
+such as he. A few lanterns set in iron cages projected over ancient
+doorways, lighting the street but dimly where it lay partly in deep
+shadow, partly illuminated by the silvery radiance of the moon.
+
+Recklow turned into an alley smelling of stables, traversed it, and
+came out behind into a bushy pasture with a cleared space beyond.
+The place was rather misty now in the moonlight from the vapours of
+a cold little brook which ran foaming and clattering through it
+between banks thickset with fern.
+
+And now Recklow moved very swiftly but quietly, down through the
+misty, ferny valley to the filbert and hazel thicket just beyond;
+and went in among the bushes, treading cautiously upon the moist
+black mould.
+
+There glimmered the French wires--merely a wide mesh and an ordinary
+barbed barrier overhead; but the fence was deeply ditched on the
+Swiss side. A man could climb over it; and Recklow started to do so;
+and came face to face in the moonlight with the French patrol. The
+recognition was mutual and noiseless:
+
+"You passed my two people over?" whispered Recklow.
+
+"An hour ago, mon Capitaine."
+
+"You've seen nobody else?"
+
+"Nobody."
+
+"Heard nothing?"
+
+"Not a sound. They must have gone over the Swiss wire without
+interference, mon Capitaine."
+
+"You sometimes talk across with the Swiss sentinels?"
+
+"Oh, yes, if I'm in that humour. You know, mon Capitaine, that
+they're like the Boche, only tame."
+
+"Not all."
+
+"No, not all. But in a wolf-pack who can excuse sheepdogs? A Boche
+is always a Boche."
+
+"All the same, when the Swiss sentry passes, speak to him and hold
+him while I get my ladder."
+
+"At your orders, Captain."
+
+"Listen. I am going over. When I return I shall leave with you a
+reel of wire and a cowbell. You comprehend? I do not wish anybody
+else to cross the French wire to-night."
+
+"C'est bien, mon Capitaine."
+
+Recklow went down into the bushy gulley. A few moments later the
+careless Swiss patrol came clumping along, rifle slung, pipe glowing
+and humming a tune as he passed. Presently the French sentry hailed
+him across the wire and the Swiss promptly halted for a bit of
+gossip concerning the pretty girls of Delle.
+
+But, to Recklow's grim surprise, and before he could emerge from the
+bushes, no sooner were the two sentries engaged in lively gossip
+than three dark figures crept out on hands and knees from the long
+grass at the very base of the Swiss wire and were up the ladder
+which McKay had left and over it like monkeys before he could have
+prevented it even if he had dared.
+
+Each in turn, reaching the top of the wire, set foot on the wooden
+post and leaped off into darkness--each except the last, who
+remained poised, then twisted around as though caught by the top
+barbed strand.
+
+And Recklow saw the figure was a woman's, and that her short skirt
+had become entangled in the wire.
+
+In an instant he was after her; she saw him, strove desperately to
+free herself, tore her skirt loose, and jumped. And Recklow jumped
+after her, landing among the wet ferns on his feet and seizing her
+as she tried to rise from where she had fallen.
+
+She struggled and fought him in silence, but his iron clutch was on
+her and he dragged her by main force through the woods parallel with
+the Swiss wire until, breathless, powerless, impotent, she gave up
+the battle and suffered him to force her along until they were far
+beyond earshot of the patrol and of her two companions as well, in
+case they should return to the wire to look for her.
+
+For ten minutes, holding her by the arm, he pushed forward up the
+wooded slope. Then, when it was safe to do so, he halted, jerked her
+around to face him, and flashed his pocket torch. And he saw a
+handsome, perspiring, sullen girl, staring at him out of dark eyes
+dilated by terror or by fury--he was not quite sure which.
+
+She wore the costume of a peasant of the canton bordering the wire;
+and she looked like that type of German-Swiss--handsome, sensual,
+bad-tempered, but not stupid.
+
+"Well," he said in French, "you can explain yourself now,
+mademoiselle. Allons! Who and what are you? Dites!"
+
+"What are you? A robber?" she gasped, jerking her arm free.
+
+"If you thought so why didn't you call for help?"
+
+"And be shot at? Do you take me for a fool? What are you--a Douanier
+then? A smuggler?"
+
+"You answer ME!" he retorted. "What were you doing--crossing the
+wire at night?"
+
+"Can't a girl keep a rendezvous without the custom-agents treating
+her so barbarously?" she panted, one hand flat on her tumultuous
+bosom.
+
+"Oh, that was it, was it?"
+
+"I do not deny it."
+
+"Who is your lover--on the French side?"
+
+"And if he happens to be an Alpinist?"--she shrugged, still
+breathing fast and irregularly, picking up the torn edge of her wool
+skirt and fingering the rent.
+
+"Really. An Alpinist? A rendezvous in Delle, eh? And who were your
+two friends?"
+
+"Boys from my canton."
+
+"Is that so?"
+
+Her breast still rose and fell unevenly; she turned her pretty,
+insolent eyes on him:
+
+"After all, what business is it of yours? Who are you, anyway? If
+you are French you can do nothing. If you are Swiss take me to the
+nearest poste."
+
+"Who were those two men?" repeated Recklow.
+
+"Ask them."
+
+"No; I think I'll take you back to France."
+
+The girl became silent at that but her attitude defied him. Even
+when he snapped an automatic handcuff over one wrist she smiled
+incredulously.
+
+But the jeering expression on her dark, handsome features altered
+when they approached the Swiss wire. And when Recklow produced a
+pair of heavy wire-cutters all defiance died out in her face.
+
+"Make a sound and I'll simply shoot you," he whispered.
+
+"W-what is it you want with me?" she asked in a ghost of a voice.
+
+"The truth."
+
+"I told it."
+
+"You did not. You are German."
+
+"Believe what you like, but I am on neutral territory. Let me go."
+
+"You ARE German! For God's sake admit it or we'll be too late!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Admit it, I say. Do you want those two Americans to get away?"
+
+"What--Americans?" stammered the girl. "I d-don't know what you
+mean--"
+
+Recklow laughed under his breath, unlocked the handcuffs.
+
+"Echt Deutsch," he whispered in German--"and ZERO-TWO-SIX. A good
+hint to you!"
+
+"Waidman's Heil!" said the girl faintly. "O God! what a fright you
+gave me.... There's a man at Delle--we were warned--Seventy is his
+number, Recklow--a devil Yankee--"
+
+"A swine! a fathead, sleeping all day in his garden, too drunk to
+open despatches!" sneered Recklow.
+
+"We were warned against him," she insisted. Recklow laughed his
+contempt of Recklow and spat upon the dead leaves.
+
+"Stupid one, what then is closest to the Yankee heart? I was sent
+here to buy this terrible devil Yankee, Recklow. That is how one
+deals with Yankees. With dollars."
+
+"Is that why you are here?"
+
+"And to watch for McKay and the young woman with him!"
+
+"The Erith woman!"
+
+"That is her barbarous name, I believe. What is your number?"
+
+"Four-two-four. Oh, what a fright you gave me. What is your name?"
+
+"That is against regulations."
+
+"I know. What is it, all the same.... Mine is Helsa Kampf."
+
+"Mine is Johann Wolkcer."
+
+"Wolkcer? Is it Polish?"
+
+"God knows where we Germans had our origin. ... Who are your
+companions, Fraulein?"
+
+"An Irish-American. Jim Macniff, and a British revolutionist, Harry
+Skelton. Others await us on Mount Terrible--Germans in Swiss
+uniforms."
+
+"You'd better keep an eye on Macniff and Skelton," grumbled Recklow.
+
+"No; they're to be trusted. We nearly caught McKay and the Erith
+girl in Scotland; they killed four of our people and hurt two
+others.... Listen, comrade Wolkcer, if a trodden path ascends Mount
+Terrible, as Skelton pretended, you and I had better look for it.
+Can you find your way back to where we crossed the wire? The dry bed
+of the torrent was to have guided us."
+
+"I know a quicker way," said Recklow. "Come on."
+
+The girl took his hand confidingly and walked beside him, holding
+one arm before her face to shield her eyes from branches in the
+darkness.
+
+They had gone, perhaps, a dozen paces when a man stepped from behind
+a great beech-tree, peered after them, then turned and hurried down
+the slope to where the Swiss wire stretched glistening under the
+stars. He ran along this wire until he came to the dry bed of a
+torrent.
+
+Up this he stumbled under the forest patches of alternate moonlight
+and shadow until he came to a hard path crossing it on a masonry
+viaduct.
+
+"Harry!" he called in a husky, quavering voice, choking for breath.
+"Cripes, Harry--where in hell are you?"
+
+"Here, you blighter! What's the bully row? Where's Helsa--"
+
+"With Recklow!"
+
+"What!!"
+
+"Double-crossed us!" he whispered; "I seen her! I was huntin' along
+the fence when I come on them, thick as thieves. She's crossed us;
+she's hollered! Oh, Cripes, Harry, Helsa has went an' squealed!"
+
+"HELSA!"
+
+"Yes, Helsa--I wouldn't 'a' believed it! But I seen 'em. I seen 'em
+whispering. I seen her take his hand an' lead him up through the
+trees. She's squealed on us! She's bringing Recklow--"
+
+"Recklow! Are you sure?"
+
+"I got closte to 'em. There was enough moonlight to spot him by. I
+know the cut of him, don't I? That wuz him all right." He wiped his
+face on his sleeve. "Now what are we goin' to do?" he demanded
+brokenly. "Where do we get off, Harry?"
+
+Skelton appeared dazed:
+
+"The slut," he kept repeating without particular emphasis, "the
+little slut! I thought she'd fallen for me. I thought she was my
+girl. And now to do that! And now to go for to do us in like that--"
+
+"Well, we're all right, ain't we?" quavered Macniff. "We make our
+getaway all right, don't we? Don't we?"
+
+"I can't understand--"
+
+"Say, listen, Harry. To blazes with Helsa! She's hollered and that
+ends her. But can we make our getaway? And how about them Germans
+waitin' for us by that there crucifix on top of this mountain? Where
+do they get off? Does this guy, Recklow, get them?"
+
+"He can't get six men alone."
+
+"Well, can't he sic the Swiss onto 'em?"
+
+A terrible doubt arose in Skelton's mind: "Recklow wouldn't come
+here alone. He's got his men in these woods! That damn woman fixed
+all this. It's a plant! She's framed us! What do I care about the
+Germans on the mountain! To hell with them. I'm going!"
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Into Alsace. Where do you think?"
+
+"You gotta cross the mountain, then--or go back into France."
+
+But neither man dared do that now. There was only one way out, and
+that lay over Mount Terrible--either directly past the black
+crucifix towering from its limestone cairn on the windy peak, or
+just below through a narrow belt of woods.
+
+"It ain't so bad," muttered Macniff. "If the Germans up there catch
+McKay and the girl they'll kill 'em and clear out."
+
+"Yes, but they don't know that the Americans have crossed the wire.
+The neck of woods is open!"
+
+"McKay may go over the peak."
+
+"McKay knows this mountain," grumbled Skelton. "He's a fox, too. You
+don't think he'd travel an open path, do you? And how can we catch
+him now? We were to have warned the Germans that the two had crossed
+the wire and then our only chance was to string out across that neck
+of woods between the peak and the cliffs. That's the way McKay will
+travel, not on a path in full moonlight. Aw--I'm sick--what with
+Helsa doing that to me--I can't get over it!"
+
+Macniff started nervously and began to run along the path, upward:
+
+"Beat it, Harry," he called back over his shoulder; "it's the only
+way out o' this now."
+
+"God," whimpered Skelton, "if I ever get my hooks on Helsa!" His
+voice ended in a snivel but his features were white and ferocious as
+he started running to overtake Macniff.
+
+Recklow, breathing easily, his iron frame insensible to any fatigue
+from the swift climb, halted finally at the base of the abrupt slope
+which marked the beginning of the last ascent to the summit.
+
+The girl, Helsa, speechless from exertion, came reeling up among the
+rocks and leaned gasping against a pine.
+
+"Now," said Recklow, "you can wait here for your two friends. We've
+come by a short cut and they won't be here for more than half an
+hour. What's the matter? Are you ill?" for the girl, overcome by the
+speed of the ascent, had dropped to the ground at the foot of the
+tree and sat there, her head resting against the trunk. Her eyes
+were closed and she was breathing convulsively.
+
+"Are you ill?" he repeated, bending over her.
+
+She heard him, opened her eyes, then shook her head faintly.
+
+"All right. You're a brave girl. You'll get your breath in a few
+minutes. There's no hurry. You can take your time. Your friends will
+be along in half an hour or so. Wait here for them. I am going on to
+warn the Germans by the Crucifix that the two Americans are across
+the Swiss wire."
+
+The girl, still speechless, wiped the blinding sweat from her eyes
+and tried to clear the dishevelled hair from her face. Then, with a
+great effort she found her voice:
+
+"But the--Americans--will pass--first!" she gasped. "I can't--stay
+here alone."
+
+"If they do pass, what of it? They can't see you. Let them pass. We
+hold the summit and the neck of the woods. Tell that to Macniff and
+Skelton when they come; that's what I want you here for. I want to
+cut off the Yankees' retreat. Do you understand?"
+
+"I--understand," she breathed.
+
+"You'll carry out my orders?"
+
+She nodded, strove to straighten up, then with both hands on her
+breast she sank back utterly exhausted. Recklow looked at her a
+moment in grim silence, then turned and walked away.
+
+After a few steps he crossed his arms with a quick, peculiar
+movement and drew from under his armpits the pair of automatic
+pistols.
+
+Like all "forested" forests, the woods on that flank of Mount
+Terrible were regular and open--big trees with no underbrush and a
+smooth carpet of needles and leaves under foot. And Recklow now
+walked on very fast in the dim light until he came to a thinning
+among the trees where just ahead of him, stars shimmered level in
+the vast sky-gulf above Alsace.
+
+Here was the precipice; here the narrow, wooded neck--the only way
+across the mountain except by the peak path and the Crucifix.
+
+Now Recklow took from his pockets his spool of very fine wire,
+attached it low down to a slim young pine, carried it across to the
+edge of the cliff, and attached the other end to a sapling on the
+edge of the ledge. On this wire he hung his cowbell and hooked the
+little clapper inside.
+
+Then, squatting down on the pine needles, he sat motionless as one
+of the forest shadows, a pistol in either hand, and his cold grey
+eyes ablaze.
+
+So silvery the pools of light from the planets, so depthless the
+shadows, that the forest around him seemed but a vast mosaic in
+mother-of-pearl and ebony.
+
+There was no sound, no murmur of cattle-bells from mountain pastures
+now, nothing stirring through the magic aisles where the matched
+columns of beech and pine towered in the perfect symmetry of all
+planted forests.
+
+He had not been there very long; the luminous dial of his
+wrist-watch told him that--when, although he had heard no sound on
+the soft carpet of pine needles, something suddenly hit the wire and
+the cowbell tinkled in the darkness.
+
+Recklow was on his feet in an instant and running south along the
+wire. It might have been a deer crossing to the eastern slope; it
+might have been the enemy; he could not tell; he could see nothing
+stirring. And there seemed to be nothing for him to do but to take
+his chances.
+
+"McKay!" he called in a low voice.
+
+Then, amid the checkered pools of light and shade among the trees a
+shadow moved.
+
+"McKay! It's Number Seventy. If it's you, call out your number,
+because I've got you over my sights and I shoot straight!"
+
+"Seventy-six and Seventy-seven!" came McKay's cautious voice. "Good
+heavens, Recklow, why have you come up here?"
+
+"Don't touch the wire again," Recklow warned him. "Drop flat both of
+you, and crawl under! Crawl toward my voice!"
+
+As he spoke he came toward them; and they rose from their knees
+among the shadows, pistols drawn.
+
+"There's been some dirty business," said Recklow briefly. "Three
+enemy spies went over the Swiss wire about an hour after you left
+Delle. There are half a dozen Boches on the peak by the Crucifix.
+And that's why I'm here, if you want to know."
+
+There was a silence. Recklow looked hard at McKay, then at Evelyn
+Erith, who was standing quietly beside him.
+
+"Can we get through this neck of woods?" asked McKay calmly.
+
+"We can hold our own here against a regiment," said Recklow. "No
+Swiss patrol is likely to cross the summit before daybreak. So if
+our cowbell jingles again to-night after I have once called halt!--let
+the Boche have it." To Evelyn he said: "Better step back here
+behind this ledge." And, when McKay had followed, he told them
+exactly what had happened. "I'm afraid it's not going to be very
+easy going for you," he added.
+
+With the alarming knowledge that they had to do once more with their
+uncanny enemies of Isla Water, McKay and Evelyn Erith looked at each
+other rather grimly. Recklow produced his clay pipe, inspected it,
+but did not venture to light it.
+
+"I wonder," he said carelessly, "what that she-Boche is doing over
+yonder by the summit path.... Her name is Helsa.... She's not bad
+looking," he added in a musing voice--"that young she-Boche. ... I
+wonder what she's up to now? Her people ought to be along pretty
+soon if they've travelled by the summit path from Delle."
+
+They had indeed travelled by the summit path--not ON it, but
+parallel to it through woods, over rocks, made fearful by what they
+believed to be the treachery of the girl, Helsa.
+
+For this reason they dared not take the trodden way, dreading
+ambush. Yet they had to cross the peak; they dared not remain in a
+forest where they believed Recklow was hunting them with many men
+and their renegade comrade, Helsa, to guide them.
+
+As they toiled upward, Macniff heard Skelton fiercely muttering
+sometimes, sometimes whining curses on this girl who had betrayed
+them both--who had betrayed him in particular. Over and over again
+he repeated his dreary litany: "No, by God, I didn't think she'd do
+it to me. All I want is to get my hooks on her; that's all I
+want--just that."
+
+Toward dawn they had reached the base of the cone where the last
+rocky slope slanted high above them.
+
+"Cripes," panted Macniff, "I can't make that over them rocks! I
+gotta take it by the path. Wot's the matter, Harry? Wot y' lookin'
+at?" he added, following Skelton's fascinated stare. Then: "Well,
+f'r Christ's sake!"
+
+The girl, Helsa, was coming toward them through the trees.
+
+"Where have you been?" she demanded. "Have you seen the Americans?
+I've been waiting here beside the path. They haven't passed. I met
+one of our agents in the woods--there was a misunderstanding at
+first--"
+
+She stopped, stepped nearer, peered into Skelton's shadowy face:
+"Harry! What's the matter? Wh-why do you look at me that way--what
+are you doing! Let go of me--"
+
+But Skelton had seized her by one arm and Macniff had her by the
+other.
+
+"Are you crazy?" she demanded, struggling between them.
+
+Skelton spoke first, but she scarcely recognised the voice for his:
+"Who was that man you were talking to down by the Swiss wire?"
+
+"I've told you. He's one of us. His name is Wolkcer--"
+
+"What!"
+
+"Wolkcer! That is his name--"
+
+"Spell it backward!" barked Skelton. "We know what you have done to
+us! You have sold us to Recklow! That's what you done!"
+
+"W-what!" stammered the girl. But Skelton, inarticulate with rage,
+began striking her and jerking her about as though he were trying to
+tear her to pieces. Only when the girl reeled sideways, limp and
+deathly white under his fury, did he find his voice, or the hoarse
+unhuman rags of it:
+
+"Damn you!" he gasped, "you'll sell me out, will you? I'll show you!
+I'll fix you, you dirty slut--"
+
+Suddenly he started up the path to the summit dragging the
+half-conscious girl. Macniff ran along on the other side to help.
+
+"Wot y' goin' to do with her, Harry?" he panted. "I ain't got no
+stomach for scraggin' her. I ain't for no knifin'. W'y don't you
+shove her off the top?"
+
+But Skelton strode on, half-dragging the girl, and muttering that
+she had sold him and that he knew how to "fix" a girl who
+double-crossed him.
+
+And now the gaunt, black Crucifix came into view, stark against the
+paling eastern sky with its life-sized piteous figure hanging there
+under the crown of thorns.
+
+Macniff looked up at the carved wooden image, then, at a word from
+Skelton, dropped the girl's limp arm.
+
+The girl opened her eyes and stood swaying there, dazed.
+
+Skelton began to laugh in an unearthly way: "Where the hell are you
+Germans?" he called out. "Come out of your holes, damn you. Here's
+one of your own kind who's sold us all out to the Yankees!"
+
+Twice the girl tried to speak but Skelton shook the voice out of her
+quivering lips as a shadowy figure rose from the scrubby growth
+behind the Crucifix. Then another rose, another, and many others
+looming against the sky.
+
+Macniff had begun to speak in German as they drew around him.
+Presently Skelton broke in furiously:
+
+"All right, then! That's the case. She sold us. She sold ME! But
+she's German. And it's your business. But if you Germans will listen
+to me you'll shove her against that pile of rocks and shoot her."
+
+The girl had begun to cry now: "It's a lie! It's a lie!" she sobbed.
+"If it was Recklow who talked to me I didn't know it. I thought he
+was one of us, Harry! Don't go away! For God's sake, don't leave me
+with those men--"
+
+Macniff sneered as he slouched by her: "They're Germans, ain't they?
+Wot are you squealin' for?"
+
+"Harry! Harry!" she wailed--for her own countrymen had her now, held
+her fast, thrust a dozen pig-eyed scowling visages close to hers,
+muttering, making animal sounds at her.
+
+Once she screamed. But Skelton seated himself on a rock, his back
+toward her, his head buried in his hands.
+
+To his dull, throbbing ears came now only the heavy trample of boots
+among the rocks, guttural noises, a wrenching sound, then the
+clatter of rolling stones.
+
+Macniff, squatting beside him, muttered uneasily, speculating upon
+what was being done behind him. But with German justice upon a
+German he had no desire to interfere, and he had no stomach to
+witness it, either.
+
+"Why don't they shoot her and be done?" he murmured huskily. And,
+later: "I can't make out what they're doing. Can you, Harry?"
+
+But Skelton neither answered nor stirred. After a while he rose, not
+looking around, and strode off down the eastern slope, his hands
+pressed convulsively over his ears. Macniff slouched after him,
+listening for the end.
+
+They had gone a mile, perhaps, when Skelton's agonised voice burst
+its barriers: "I couldn't--I couldn't stand it--to hear the shots!"
+
+"I ain't heard no shots," remarked Macniff.
+
+There had been no shots fired....
+
+And now in the ghastly light of dawn the Germans on Mount Terrible
+continued methodically the course of German justice.
+
+Two of them, burly, huge-fisted, wrenched the Christ from the
+weather-beaten Crucifix which they had uprooted from the summit of
+its ancient cairn of rocks, and pulled out the rusty spike-like
+nails.
+
+The girl was already half dead when they laid her on the Crucifix
+and nailed her there. After they had raised the cross and set it on
+the summit she opened her eyes.
+
+Several of the Germans laughed, and one of them threw pebbles at her
+until she died.
+
+Just before sunrise they went down to explore the neck of woods, but
+found nobody. The Americans had been gone for a long time. So they
+went back to the cross where the dead girl hung naked against the
+sky and wrote on a bit of paper:
+
+"Here hangs an enemy of Germany."
+
+And, the Swiss patrol being nearly due, they scattered, moving off
+singly, through the forest toward the frontier of the great German
+Empire.
+
+A little later the east turned gold and the first sunbeam touched
+the Crucifix on Mount Terrible.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE FORBIDDEN FOREST
+
+
+
+
+
+When the news of a Hun atrocity committed on Swiss territory was
+flashed to Berne, the Federal Assembly instantly suppressed it and
+went into secret session. Followed another session, in camera, of
+the Federal Council, whose seven members sat all night long
+envisaging war with haggard faces. And something worse than war when
+they remembered the Forbidden Forest and the phantom Canton of Les
+Errues.
+
+For war between the Swiss Republic and the Hun seemed very, very
+near during that ten days in Berne, and neither the National Council
+nor the Council of the States in joint and in separate consultation
+could see anything except a dreadful repetition of that eruption of
+barbarians which had overwhelmed the land in 400 A. D. till every
+pass and valley vomited German savages. And even more than that they
+feared the terrible reckoning with the nation and with civilisation
+when war laid naked the heart-breaking secret of the Forbidden
+Forest of Les Errues.
+
+No! War could not be. A catastrophe more vital than war threatened
+Switzerland--the world--wide revelation of a secret which, exposed,
+would throw all civilisation into righteous fury and the Swiss
+Republic itself into revolution.
+
+And this sinister, hidden thing which must deter Switzerland from
+declaring war against the Boche was a part of the Great Secret: and
+a man and a woman in the Secret Service of the United States, lying
+hidden among the forests below the white shoulder of Mount Thusis,
+were beginning to guess more about that secret than either of them
+had dared to imagine.
+
+There where they lay together side by side among Alpine roses in
+full bloom--there on the crag's edge, watching the Swiss soldiery
+below combing the flanks of Mount Terrible for the perpetrators of
+that hellish murder at the shrine, these two people could see the
+Via Mala which had been the Via Crucis--the tragic Golgotha for
+that poor girl Helsa Kampf.
+
+They could almost see the gaunt, black cross itself from which the
+brutish Boches had kicked the carved and weather-beaten figure of
+Christ in order to nail to the massive cross the living hands and
+feet of that half-senseless girl whom they supposed had betrayed
+them.
+
+The man lying there on the edge of the chasm was Kay McKay; the girl
+stretched on her stomach beside him was Evelyn Erith.
+
+All that day they watched the Swiss soldiers searching Mount
+Terrible; saw a red fox steal from the lower thickets and bolt
+between the legs of the beaters who swung their rifle-butts at the
+streak of ruddy fur; saw little mountain birds scatter into flight,
+so closely and minutely the soldiers searched; saw even a big
+auerhahn burst into thunderous flight from the ferns to a pine and
+from the pine out across the terrific depths of space below the
+white shoulder of Thusis. At night the Swiss camp-fires glimmered on
+the rocks of Mount Terrible while, fireless, McKay and Miss Erith
+lay in their blankets under heaps of dead leaves on the knees of
+Thusis, cold as the moon that silvered their forest beds.
+
+But it was the last of the soldiery on Mount Terrible; for dawn
+revealed their dead fire and a summit untenanted save by the stark
+and phantom crucifix looming through rising mists.
+
+Evelyn Erith still slept; McKay fed the three carrier-pigeons,
+washed himself at the snow-rill in the woods, then went over to the
+crag's gritty edge under which for three days now the ghoulish
+clamour of a lammergeier had seldom ceased. And now, as McKay peered
+down, two stein-adlers came flapping to the shelf on which hung
+something that seemed to flutter at times like a shred of cloth
+stirred by the abyss winds.
+
+The lammergeier, huge and horrible with scarlet eyes ablaze, came
+out on the shelf of rock and yelped at the great rock-eagles; but,
+if something indeed lay dead there, possibly it was enough for
+all--or perhaps the vulture-like bird was too heavily gorged to
+offer battle. McKay saw the rock-eagles alight heavily on the shelf,
+then, squealing defiance, hulk forward, undeterred by the hobgoblin
+tumult of the lammergeier.
+
+McKay leaned over the gulf as far as he dared. He could get down to
+the shelf; he was now convinced of that. Only fear of being seen by
+the soldiers on Mount Terrible had hitherto prevented him.
+
+Rope and steel-shod stick aided him. Sapling and shrub stood loyally
+as his allies. The rock-eagles heard him coming and launched
+themselves overboard into the depthless sea of air; the lammergeier,
+a huge, foul mass of distended feathers, glared at him out of
+blazing scarlet eyes; and all around was his vomit and casting in a
+mass of bloody human bones and shreds of clothing.
+
+And it was in that nauseating place of peril, confronting the grisly
+thing that might have hurled him outward into space with one
+wing-blow had it not been clogged with human flesh and incapable,
+that McKay reached for the remnants of the dead Hun's clothing and,
+facing the feathered horror, searched for evidence and information.
+
+Never had he been so afraid; never had he so loathed a living
+creature as this unclean and spectral thing that sat gibbering and
+voiding filth at him--the ghastly symbol of the Hunnish empire
+itself befouling the clean-picked bones of the planet it was
+dismembering.
+
+He had his pistol but dared not fire, not knowing what ears across
+the gorge might hear the shot, not knowing either whether the
+death-agonies of the enormous thing might hurl him a thousand feet
+to annihilation.
+
+So he took what he found in the rags of clothing and climbed back as
+slowly and stealthily as he had come.
+
+And found Miss Erith cross-legged on the dead leaves braiding her
+yellow hair in the first sun-rays.
+
+Tethered by long cords attached to anklets over one leg the three
+pigeons walked busily around under the trees gorging themselves on
+last year's mast.
+
+That afternoon they dared light a fire and made soup from the beef
+tablets in their packs--the first warm food they had tasted in a
+week.
+
+A declining sun painted the crags in raw splendour; valleys were
+already dusky; a vast stretch of misty glory beyond the world of
+mountains to the north was Alsace; southward there was no end to the
+myriad snowy summits, cloud-like, piled along the horizon. The brief
+meal ended.
+
+McKay set a pannikin of water to boil and returned to his
+yellow-haired comrade. Like some slim Swiss youth--some boy
+mountaineer--and clothed like one, Miss Erith sat at the foot of a
+tree in the ruddy sunlight studying once more the papers which McKay
+had discovered that morning among the bloody debris on the shelf of
+rock.
+
+As he came up he knew he had never seen anything as pretty in his
+life, but he did not say so. Any hint of sentiment that might have
+budded had been left behind when they crossed the Swiss wire beyond
+Delle. An enforced intimacy such as theirs tended to sober them
+both; and if at times it preoccupied them, that was an added reason
+not only to ignore it but also to conceal any effort it might entail
+to take amiably but indifferently a situation foreseen, deliberately
+embraced, yet scarcely entirely discounted.
+
+The girl was so pretty in her youth's clothing; her delicate ankles
+and white knees bare between the conventional thigh-length of green
+embossed leather breeches, rough green stockings, and fleece-lined
+hob-nailed shoes. And over the boy's shirt the mountaineer's frieze
+jacket!--with staghorn buttons. And the rough wool cuff fell on the
+hands of a duchess!--pistols at either hip, and a murderous
+Bavarian knife in front.
+
+Glancing up at him where he stood under the red pine beside her:
+"I'll do the dishes presently," she said.
+
+"I'll do them," he remarked, his eyes involuntarily seeking her
+hands.
+
+A pink flush grew on her weather-tanned face--or perhaps it was the
+reddening sunlight stealing through some velvet piny space in the
+forest barrier. If it was a slight blush in recognition of his
+admiration she wondered at her capacity for blushing. However, Marie
+Antoinette coloured from temple to throat on the scaffold. But the
+girl knew that the poor Queen's fate was an enviable one compared to
+what awaited her if she fell into the hands of the Hun.
+
+McKay seated himself near her. The sunny silence of the mountains
+was intense. Over a mass of alpine wild flowers hanging heavy and
+fragrant between rocky clefts two very large and intensely white
+butterflies fought a fairy battle for the favours of a third--a
+dainty, bewildering creature, clinging to an unopened bud, its snowy
+wings a-quiver.
+
+The girl's golden eyes noted the pretty courtship, and her side
+glance rested on the little bride to be with an odd, indefinite
+curiosity, partly interrogative, partly disdainful.
+
+It seemed odd to the girl that in this Alpine solitude life should
+be encountered at all. And as for life's emotions, the frail,
+frivolous, ephemeral fury of these white-winged ghosts of daylight,
+embattled and all tremulous with passion, seemed exquisitely amazing
+to her here between the chaste and icy immobility of white-veiled
+peaks and the terrific twilight of the world's depths below.
+
+McKay, studying the papers, glanced up at Miss Erith. A bar of rosy
+sunset light slanted almost level between them.
+
+"There seems to be," he said slowly, "only one explanation for what
+you and I read here. The Boche has had his filthy fist on the throat
+of Switzerland for fifty years."
+
+"And what is 'Les Errues' to which these documents continually
+refer?" asked the girl.
+
+"Les Errues is the twenty-seventh canton of Switzerland. It is the
+strip of forest and crag which includes all the northeastern region
+below Mount Terrible. It is a canton, a secret canton unrepresented
+in the Federal Assembly--a region without human population--a secret
+slice of Swiss wilderness OWNED BY GERMANY!"
+
+"Kay, do you believe that?"
+
+"I am sure of it now. It is that wilderness into which I stumbled.
+It overlooks the terrain in Alsace where for fifty years the Hun has
+been busy day and night with his sinister, occult operations. Its
+entrance, if there be any save by the way of avalanches--the way I
+entered--must be guarded by the Huns; its only exit into Hunland.
+That is Les Errues. That is the region which masks the Great Secret
+of the Hun."
+
+He dropped the papers and, clasping his knees in his arms, sat
+staring out into the infernal blaze of sunset.
+
+"The world," he said slowly, "pays little attention to that
+agglomeration of cantons called Switzerland. The few among us who
+know anything about its government might recollect that there are
+twenty-six cantons--the list begins, Aargau, Appenzell,
+Ausser-Rhoden, Inner-Rhoden--you may remember--and ends with Valais,
+Vaud, Zug, and Zurich. And Les Errues is the twenty-seventh canton!"
+
+"Yes," said the girl in a low voice, "the evidence lies at your
+feet."
+
+"Surely, surely," he muttered, his fixed gaze lost on the crimson
+celestial conflagration. She said, thinking aloud, and her clear
+eyes on him:
+
+"Then, of the Great Secret, we have learned this much anyway--that
+there exists in Switzerland a secret canton called Les Errues; that
+it is practically Hun territory; that it masks what they call their
+Great Secret; that their ownership or domination of Les Errues is
+probably a price paid secretly by the Swiss government for its
+national freedom and that this arrangement is absolutely unknown to
+anybody in the world outside of the Imperial Hun government and the
+few Swiss who have inherited, politically, a terrible knowledge of
+this bargain dating back, probably, from 1870."
+
+"That is the situation we are confronting," admitted McKay calmly.
+
+She said with perfect simplicity: "Of course we must go into Les
+Errues."
+
+"Of course, comrade. How?"
+
+He had no plan--could have none. She knew it. Her question was
+merely meant to convey to him a subtle confirmation of her loyalty
+and courage. She scarcely expected to escape a dreadful fate on this
+quest--did not quite see how either of them could really hope to
+come out alive. But that they could discover the Great Secret of the
+Hun, and convey to the world by means of their pigeons some details
+of the discovery, she felt reasonably certain. She had much faith in
+the arrangements they had made to do this.
+
+"One thing worries me a lot," remarked McKay pleasantly.
+
+"Food supply?"
+
+He nodded.
+
+She said: "Now that the Boche have left Mount Terrible--except that
+wretched creature whose bones lie on the shelf below--we might
+venture to kill whatever game we can find."
+
+"I'm going to," he said. "The Swiss troops have cleared out. I've
+got to risk it. Of course, down there in Les Errues, some Hun
+guarding some secret chamois trail into the forbidden wilderness may
+hear our shots."
+
+"We shall have to take that chance," she remarked.
+
+He said in the low, quiet voice which always thrilled her a little:
+"You poor child--you are hungry."
+
+"So are you, Kay."
+
+"Hungry? These rations act like cocktails: I could barbecue a
+roebuck and finish him with you at one sitting!"
+
+"Monsieur et Madame Gargantua," she mocked him with her enchanting
+laughter. Then, wistful: "Kay, did you see that very fat and saucy
+auerhahn which the Swiss soldiers scared out of the pines down
+there?"
+
+"I did," said McKay. "My mouth watered."
+
+"He was quite as big as a wild turkey," sighed the girl.
+
+"They're devils to get," said McKay, "and with only a pistol--well,
+anyway we'll try to-night. Did you mark that bird?"
+
+"Mark him?"
+
+"Yes; mark him down?"
+
+She shook her pretty head.
+
+"Well, I did," grinned McKay. "It's habit with a man who shoots.
+Besides, seeing him was like a bit of Scotland--their auerhahn is
+kin to the black-cock and capercailzie. So I marked him to the
+skirt of Thusis, yonder--in line with that needle across the gulf
+and, through it, to that bunch of pinkish-stemmed pines--there
+where the brook falls into silver dust above that gorge. He'll lie
+there. Just before daybreak he'll mount to the top of one of those
+pines. We'll hear his yelping. That's our only chance at him."
+
+"Could you ever hit him in the dark of dawn, Kay?"
+
+"With a pistol? And him atop a pine? No, not under ordinary
+conditions. But I'm hungry, dear Yellow-hair, and that is not all:
+you are hungry--" He looked at her so intently that the colour
+tinted her face and the faint little thrill again possessed her.
+
+Her glance stole involuntarily toward the white butterflies. One had
+disappeared. The two others, drunk with their courtship, clung to a
+scented blossom.
+
+Gravely Miss Erith lifted her young eyes to the eternal peaks--to
+Thusis, icy, immaculate, chastely veiled before the stealthy advent
+of the night.
+
+Oddly, yet without fear, death seemed to her very near. And love,
+also--both in the air, both abroad and stirring, yet neither now of
+vital consequence. Only service meant anything now to this young man
+so near her--to herself. And after that--after
+accomplishment--love?--death?--either might come to them then. And
+find them ready, perhaps.
+
+The awful, witch-like screaming of the lammergeier saluted the
+falling darkness where he squatted, a huge huddle of unclean plumage
+amid the debris of decay and death.
+
+"I don't believe I could have faced that," murmured the girl. "You
+have more courage than I have, Kay."
+
+"No! I was scared stiff. A bird like that could break a man's arm
+with a wing-blow.... That--that thing he'd been feeding on--it must
+have been a Boche of high military rank to carry these papers."
+
+"You could not find out?"
+
+"There were only the rags of his mufti there and these papers inside
+them. Nothing to identify him personally--not a tag, not a shred of
+anything. Unless the geier bolted it--"
+
+She turned aside in disgust at the thought.
+
+"When do you suppose he happened to fall to his death there, Kay?"
+
+"In the darkness when the Huns scattered after the crucifixion.
+Perhaps the horror of it came suddenly upon him--God knows what
+happened when he stepped outward into depthless space and went
+crashing down to hell."
+
+They had stayed their hunger on the rations. It was bitter cold in
+the leafy lap of Thusis, but they feared to light a fire that night.
+
+McKay fed and covered the pigeons in their light wicker box which
+was carried strapped to his mountain pack.
+
+Evelyn Erith fell asleep in her blanket under the dead leaves piled
+over her by McKay. After awhile he slept too; but before dawn he
+awoke, took a flash-light and his pistol and started down the slope
+for the wood's edge.
+
+Her sweet, sleepy voice halted him: "Kay dear?"
+
+"Yes, Yellow-hair."
+
+"May I go?"
+
+"Don't you want to sleep?"
+
+"No."
+
+She sat up under a tumbling shower of silvery dead leaves, shook out
+her hair, gathered it and twisted it around her brow like a turban.
+
+Then, flashing her own torch, she sprang to her feet and ran lightly
+down to where the snow brook whirled in mossy pools below.
+
+When she came back he took her cold smooth little hand fresh from
+icy ablutions: "We must beat it," he said; "that auerhahn won't stay
+long in his pine-tree after dawn. Extinguish your torch."
+
+She obeyed and her warning fingers clasped his more closely as
+together they descended the path of light traced out before them by
+his electric torch.
+
+Down, down, down they went under hard-wood and evergreen, across
+little fissures full of fern, skirting great slabs of rock, making
+detours where tangles checked progress.
+
+Through tree-tops the sky glittered--one vast sheet of stars; and in
+the forest was a pale lustre born of this celestial splendour--a
+pallid dimness like that unreal day which reigns in the regions of
+the dead.
+
+"We might meet the shade of Helen here," said the girl, "or of
+Eurydice. This is a realm of spirits. ... We may be one with them
+very soon--you and I. Do you suppose we shall wander here among
+these trees as long as time lasts?"
+
+"It's all right if we're together, Yellow-hair."
+
+There was no accent from his fingers clasped in hers; none in hers
+either.
+
+"I hope we'll be together, then," she said.
+
+"Will you search for me, Yellow-hair?"
+
+"Yes. Will you, Kay?"
+
+"Always."
+
+"And I--always--until I find you or you find me." ... Presently she
+laughed gaily under her breath: "A solemn bargain, isn't it?"
+
+"More solemn than marriage."
+
+"Yes," said the girl faintly.
+
+Something went crashing off into the woods as they reached the
+hogback which linked them with the group of pines whither the big
+game-bird had pitched into cover. Perhaps it was a roe deer; McKay
+flashed the direction in vain.
+
+"If it were a Boche?" she whispered.
+
+"No; it sounded like a four-legged beast. There are chamois and roe
+deer and big mountain hares along these heights."
+
+They went on until the hog-back of sheer rock loomed straight ahead,
+and beyond, against a paling sky, the clump of high pines toward
+which they were bound.
+
+McKay extinguished his torch and pocketed it.
+
+"The sun will lead us back, Yellow-hair," he whispered. "Now hold
+very tightly to my hand, for it's a slippery and narrow way we tread
+together."
+
+The rocks were glassy. But there were bushes and mosses; and
+presently wild grass and soil on the other side.
+
+All around them, now, the tall pines loomed, faintly harmonious in
+the rising morning breeze which, in fair weather, always blows DOWN
+from the upper peaks into the valleys. Into the shadows they passed
+together a little way; then halted. The girl rested one shoulder
+against a great pine, leaning there and facing him where he also
+rested, listening.
+
+There reigned in the woods that intense stillness which precedes
+dawn--an almost painful tension resembling apprehension. Always the
+first faint bird-note breaks it; then silence ends like a deep sigh
+exhaling and death seems very far away.
+
+Now above them the stars had grown very dim; and presently some
+faded out.
+
+And after a little while a small mountain bird twittered sleepily.
+Then unseen by them, the east glimmered like a sheet of tarnished
+silver. And out over the dark world of mountains, high above the
+solitude, rang the uncanny cry of an auerhahn.
+
+Again the big, unseen bird saluted the coming day. McKay stole
+forward drawing his pistol and the girl followed.
+
+The weird outcry of the auerhahn guided them, sounding from
+somewhere above among the black crests of the pines, nearer at hand,
+now, clearer, closer, more weird, until McKay halted peering upward,
+his pistol poised.
+
+As yet the crests of the pines were merely soft blots above. Yet as
+they stood straining their eyes upward, striving to discover the
+location of the great bird by its clamour, vaguely the branches
+began to take shape against the greying sky.
+
+Clearer, more distinct they grew until feathery masses of
+pine-needles stood clustered against the sky like the wondrous
+rendering in a Japanese print. And all the while, at intervals, the
+auerhahn's ghostly shrieking made a sinister tumult in the woods.
+
+Suddenly they saw him. Miss Erith touched McKay and pointed
+cautiously. There, on a partly naked tree-top, was a huge, crouching
+mass--an enormous bird, pumping its head at every uttered cry and
+spreading a big fan-like tail and beating the air with stiff-curved
+drooping wings.
+
+McKay whispered: "I'll try to shoot straight because you're hungry,
+Yellow-hair"; and all the while his pistol-arm slanted higher and
+higner. For a second, it remained motionless; then a red streak
+split the darkness and the pistol-shot crashed in her ears.
+
+There came another sound, too--a thunderous flapping and thrashing
+in the tree-top, the furious battering, falling tumult of broken
+branches and blindly beating wings, drumming convulsively in
+descent. Then came a thud; a feathery tattoo on the ground; silence
+in the woods.
+
+"And so you shall not go hungry, Yellow-hair," said McKay with his
+nice smile.
+
+They had done a good deal by the middle of the afternoon; they had
+broiled the big bird, dined luxuriously, had stored the remainder in
+their packs which they were preparing to carry with them into the
+forbidden forest of Les Errues.
+
+There was only one way and that lay over the white shoulder of
+Thusis--a cul-de-sac, according to all guide-books, and terminating
+in a rest-hut near a cave glistening with icy stalagmites called
+Thusis's Hair.
+
+Beyond this there was nothing--no path, no progress possible--only a
+depthless gulf unabridged and the world of mountains beyond.
+
+There was no way; yet, the time before, McKay had passed over the
+white shoulder of Thusis and had penetrated the forbidden land--had
+slid into it sideways, somewhere from Thusis's shoulder, on a
+fragment of tiny avalanche. So there was a way!
+
+"I don't know how it happened, Yellow-hair," he was explaining as he
+adjusted and buckled her pack for her, "and whether I slid north or
+east I never exactly knew. But if there's a path into Les Errues
+except through the Hun wire, it must lie somewhere below Thusis.
+Because, unless such a path exists, except for that guarded strip
+lying between the Boche wire and the Swiss, only a winged thing
+could reach Les Errues across these mountains."
+
+The girl said coolly: "Could you perhaps lower me into it?"
+
+A slight flush stained his cheek-bones: "That would be my role, not
+yours. But there isn't rope enough in the Alps to reach Les Errues."
+
+He was strapping the pigeon-cage to his pack as he spoke. Now he
+hoisted and adjusted it, and stood looking across at the mountains
+for a moment. Miss Erith's gaze followed him.
+
+Thusis wore a delicate camouflage of mist. And there were other bad
+signs to corroborate her virgin warning: distant mountains had
+turned dark blue and seemed pasted in silhouettes against the
+silvery blue sky. Also the winds had become prophetic, blowing out
+of the valleys and UP the slopes.
+
+All that morning McKay's thermometer had been rising and his
+barometer had fallen steadily; haze had thickened on the mountains;
+and, it being the season for the Fohn to blow, McKay had expected
+that characteristic warm gale from the south to bring the violent
+rain which always is to be expected at that season.
+
+But the Fohn did not materialise; in the walnut and chestnut forest
+around them not a leaf stirred; and gradually the mountains cleared,
+became inartistically distinct, and turned a beautiful but
+disturbing dark-blue colour. And Thusis wore her vestal veil in the
+full sun of noon.
+
+"You know, Yellow-hair," he said, "all these signs are as plain as
+printed notices. There's bad weather coming. The wind was south; now
+it's west. I'll bet the mountain cattle are leaving the upper
+pastures."
+
+He adjusted his binoculars; south of Mount Terrible on another
+height there were alms; and he could see the cattle descending.
+
+He saw something else, too, in the sky and level with his levelled
+lenses--something like a bird steering toward him through the
+whitish blue sky.
+
+Still keeping it in his field of vision he spoke quietly: "There's
+an airplane headed this way. Step under cover, please."
+
+The girl moved up under the trees beside him and unslung her
+glasses. Presently she also picked up the oncomer.
+
+"Boche, Kay?"
+
+"I don't know. A monoplane. A Boche chaser, I think. Yes.... Do you
+see the cross? What insolence! What characteristic contempt for a
+weaker people! Look at his signal! Do you see? Look at those
+smoke-balls and ribbons! See him soaring there like a condor looking
+for a way among these precipices."
+
+The Hun hung low above them in mid-air, slowly wheeling over the
+gulf. Perhaps it was his shadow or the roar of his engines that
+routed out the lammergeier, for the unclean bird took the air on
+enormous pinions, beating his way upward till he towered yelping
+above the Boche, and their combined clamour came distinctly to the
+two watchers below.
+
+Suddenly the Boche fired at the other winged thing; the enraged and
+bewildered bird sheered away in flight and the Hun followed.
+
+"That's why he shot," said McKay. "He's got a pilot, now."
+
+Eagle and plane swept by almost level with the forest where they
+stood staining with their shadows the white shoulder of Thusis.
+
+Down into the gorge the great geier twisted; after him sped the
+airplane, banking steeply in full chase. Both disappeared where the
+flawless elbow of Thusis turns. Then, all alone, up out of the gulf
+soared the plane.
+
+"The Hun has discovered a landing-place in Les Errues," said McKay.
+"Watch him."
+
+"There's another Hun somewhere along the shoulder of Thusis," said
+McKay. "They're exchanging signals. See how the plane circles like a
+patient hawk. He's waiting for something. What's he waiting for, I
+wonder?"
+
+For ten minutes the airplane circled leisurely over Thusis. Then
+whatever the aviator was waiting for evidently happened, for he shut
+off his engine; came down in graceful spirals; straightened out;
+glided through the canyon and reappeared no more to the watchers in
+the forest of Thusis.
+
+"Now," remarked McKay coolly, "we know where we ought to go. Are you
+ready, Yellow-hair?"
+
+They had been walking for ten minutes when Miss Erith spoke in an
+ordinary tone of voice: "Kay? Do you think we're likely to come out
+of this?"
+
+"No," he said, not looking at her.
+
+"But we'll get our information, you think?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The girl fell a few paces behind him and looked up at the pigeons
+where they sat in their light lattice cage crowning his pack.
+
+"Please do your bit, little birds," she murmured to herself.
+
+And, with a smile at them and a nod of confidence, she stepped
+forward again and fell into the rhythm of his stride.
+
+Very far away to the west they heard thunder stirring behind Mount
+Terrible.
+
+It was late in the afternoon when he halted near the eastern edges
+of Thusis's Forest.
+
+"Yellow-hair," he said very quietly, "I've led you into a trap, I'm
+afraid. Look back. We've been followed!"
+
+She turned. Through the trees, against an inky sky veined with
+lightning, three men came out upon the further edge of the hog-back
+which they had traversed a few minutes before, and seated themselves
+there In the shelter of the crag. All three carried shotguns.
+
+"Yellow-hair?"
+
+"Yes, Kay."
+
+"You understand what that means?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Slip off your pack."
+
+She disengaged her supple shoulders from the load and he also
+slipped off his pack and leaned it against a tree.
+
+"Now," he said, "you have two pistols and plenty of ammunition. I
+want you to hold that hog-back. Not a man must cross."
+
+However, the three men betrayed no inclination to cross. They sat
+huddled in a row sheltered from the oncoming storm by a great ledge
+of rock. But they held their shotguns poised and ready for action.
+
+The girl crept toward a big walnut tree and, lying flat on her
+stomach behind it, drew both pistols and looked around at McKay. She
+was smiling.
+
+His heart was in his throat as he nodded approval. He turned and
+went rapidly eastward. Two minutes later he came running back,
+exchanged a signal of caution with Miss Erith, and looked intently
+at the three men under the ledge. It was now raining.
+
+He drew from his breast a little book and on the thin glazed paper
+of one leaf he wrote, with water-proof ink, the place and date.
+And began his message:
+
+"United States Army Int. Dept No. 76 and No. 77 are trapped on the
+northwest edge of the wood of Les Errues which lies under the elbow
+of Mount Thusis. From this plateau we had hoped to overlook that
+section of the Hun frontier in which is taking place that occult
+operation known as 'The Great Secret,' and which we suspect is a
+gigantic engineering project begun fifty years ago for the purpose
+of piercing Swiss territory with an enormous tunnel under Mount
+Terrible, giving the Hun armies a road into France BEHIND the French
+battle-line and BEHIND Verdun.
+
+"Unfortunately we are now trapped and our retreat is cut off. It is
+unlikely that we shall be able to verify our suspicions concerning
+the Great Secret. But we shall not be taken alive.
+
+"We have, however, already discovered certain elements intimately
+connected with the Great Secret.
+
+"No. 1. Papers taken from a dead enemy show that the region called
+Les Errues has been ceded to the Hun in a secret pact as the price
+that Switzerland pays for immunity from the Boche invasion.
+
+"2nd. The Swiss people are ignorant of this.
+
+"3rd. The Boche guards all approaches to Les Errues. Except by way
+of the Boche frontier there appears to be only one entrance to Les
+Errues. We have just discovered it. The path is as follows: From
+Delle over the Swiss wire to the Crucifix on Mount Terrible; from
+there east-by-north along the chestnut woods to the shoulder of
+Mount Thusis. From thence, north over hog-backs 1, 2, and 3 to the
+Forest of Thusis where we are now trapped.
+
+"Northeast of the forest lies a level, treeless table-land half a
+mile in diameter called The Garden of Thusis. A BOCHE AIRPLANE
+LANDED THERE ABOUT THREE HOURS AGO.
+
+"To reach the Forbidden Forest the aviators, leaving their machine
+in the Garden of Thusis, walked southwest into the woods where we
+now are. These woods end in a vast gulf to the north which separates
+them from the Forbidden Forest of Les Errues.
+
+"BUT A CABLE CROSSES!
+
+"That is the way they went; a tiny car holding two is swung under
+this cable and the passengers pull themselves to and fro across the
+enormous chasm.
+
+"At the west end of this cable is a hut; in the hut is the
+machinery--a drum which can be manipulated so that the cable can be
+loosened and permitted to sag.
+
+"The reason for dropping the cable is analogous to the reason for
+using drawbridges over navigable streams; there is only one
+landing-place for airplanes in this entire region and that is the
+level, grassy plateau northeast of Thusis Woods. It is so entirely
+ringed with snow-peaks that there is only one way to approach it for
+a landing, and that is through the canyon edging Thusis Woods. Now
+the wire cable blocks this canyon. An approaching airplane therefore
+hangs aloft and signals to the cable-guards, who lower the cable
+until it sags sufficiently to free the aerial passage-way between
+the cliffs. Then the aviator planes down, sweeps through the canyon,
+and alights on the plateau called Thusis's Garden. But now he must
+return; the cable must be lifted and stretched taut; and he must
+embark across the gulf in the little car which runs on grooved
+wheels to Les Errues.
+
+"This is all we are likely to learn. Our retreat is cut off. Two
+cable-guards are in front of us; in front of them the chasm; and
+across the chasm lies Les Errues whither the aviator has gone and
+where, I do not doubt, are plenty more of his kind.
+
+"This, and two carbons, I shall endeavour to send by pigeon. In
+extremity we shall destroy all our papers and identification cards
+and get what Huns we can, RESERVING FOR OUR OWN USES one cartridge
+apiece.
+
+"(Signed) Nos. 76 AND 77."
+
+It was raining furiously, but the heavy foliage of chestnut and
+walnut had kept his paper dry. Now in the storm-gloom of the woods
+lit up by the infernal glare of lightning he detached the long
+scroll of thin paper covered by microscopical writing and, taking
+off the rubber bands which confined one of the homing pigeons,
+attached the paper cylinder securely.
+
+Then he crawled over with his bird and, lying flat alongside of Miss
+Erith, told her what he had discovered and what he had done about
+it. The roar of the rain almost obliterated his voice and he had to
+place his lips close to her ear.
+
+For a long while they lay there waiting for the rain to slacken
+before he launched the bird. The men across the hog-back never
+stirred. Nobody approached from the rear. At last, behind Mount
+Terrible, the tall edges of the rain veil came sweeping out in
+ragged majesty. Vapours were ascending in its wake; a distant peak
+grew visible, and suddenly brightened, struck at the summit by a
+shaft of sunshine.
+
+"Now!" breathed McKay. The homing pigeon, released, walked nervously
+out over the wet leaves on the forest floor, and, at a slight motion
+from the girl, rose into flight. Then, as it appeared above the
+trees, there came the cracking report of a shotgun, and they saw the
+bird collapse in mid-air and sheer downward across the hog-back. But
+it did not land there; the marksman had not calculated on those
+erratic gales from the chasm; and the dead pigeon went whirling down
+into the viewless gulf amid flying vapours mounting from unseen
+depths.
+
+Miss Erith and McKay lay very still. The Hunnish marksman across the
+hog-back remained erect for a few moments like a man at the traps
+awaiting another bird. After awhile he coolly seated himself again
+under the dripping ledge.
+
+"The swine!" said McKay calmly. He added: "Don't let them cross."
+And he rose and walked swiftly back toward the northern edge of the
+forest.
+
+From behind a tree he could see two Hun cable-guards, made alert by
+the shot, standing outside their hut where the cable-machinery was
+housed.
+
+Evidently the echoes of that shot, racketing and rebounding from
+rock and ravine, had misled them, for they had their backs turned
+and were gazing eastward, rifles pointed.
+
+Without time for thought or hesitation, McKay ran out toward them
+across the deep, wet moss. One of them heard him too late and
+McKay's impact hurled him into the gulf. Then McKay turned and
+sprang on the other, and for a minute it was a fight of tigers there
+on the cable platform until the battered visage of the Boche split
+with a scream and a crashing blow from McKay's pistol-butt drove him
+over the platform's splintered edge.
+
+And now, panting, bloody, dishevelled, he strained his ears,
+listening for a shot from the hog-back. The woods were very silent
+in their new bath of sunshine. A little Alpine bird was singing; no
+other sound broke the silence save the mellow, dripping noise from a
+million rain-drenched leaves.
+
+McKay cast a rapid, uneasy glance across the chasm. Then he went
+into the cable hut.
+
+There were six rifles there in a rack, six wooden bunks, and
+clothing on pegs--not military uniforms but the garments of Swiss
+mountaineers.
+
+Like the three men across the hog-back, and the two whom he had so
+swiftly slain, the Hun cable-patrol evidently fought shy of the
+Boche uniform here on the edge of the Forbidden Forest.
+
+Two of the cable-guard lay smashed to a pulp thousands of feet
+below. Where was the remainder of the patrol? Were the men with the
+shotguns part of it?
+
+McKay stood alone in the silent hut, still breathless from his
+struggle, striving to think what was now best to do.
+
+And, as he stood there, through the front window of the hut he saw
+an aviator and another man come down from the crest of Thusis to the
+chasm's edge, jump into the car which swung under the cable, and
+begin to pull themselves across toward the hut where he was
+standing.
+
+The hut screened his retreat to the wood's edge. From there he saw
+the aviator and his companion land on the platform; heard them
+shouting for the dead who never would answer from their Alpine
+deeps; saw the airman at last go away toward the plateau where he
+had left his machine; heard the clanking of machinery in the hut;
+saw the steel cable begin to sag into the canyon; AND REALISED THAT
+THE AVIATOR WAS GOING BACK OVER FRANCE TO THE BOCHE TRENCHES FROM
+WHENCE HE HAD ARRIVED.
+
+In a flash it came to McKay what he should try to do--what he MUST
+do for his country, for the life of the young girl, his comrade, for
+his own life: The watchers at the hog-back must never signal to that
+airman news of his presence in the Forbidden Forest!
+
+The clanking of the cog-wheels made his steps inaudible to the man
+who was manipulating the machinery in the hut as he entered and shot
+him dead. It was rather sickening, for the fellow pitched forward
+into the machinery and one arm became entangled there.
+
+But McKay, white of cheek and lip and fighting off a deathly nausea,
+checked the machinery and kicked the carrion clear. Then he set the
+drum and threw on the lever which reversed the cog-wheels. Slowly
+the sagging cable began to tighten up once more.
+
+He had been standing there for half an hour or more in an agony of
+suspense, listening for any shot from the forest behind him,
+straining eyes and ears for any sign of the airplane.
+
+And suddenly he heard it coming--a resonant rumour through the
+canyon, nearer, louder, swelling to a roar as the monoplane dashed
+into view and struck the cable with a terrific crash.
+
+For a second, like a giant wasp suddenly entangled in a spider's
+strand, it whirled around the cable with a deafening roar of
+propellers; then a sheet of fire enveloped it; both wings broke off
+and fell; other fragments dropped blazing; and then the thing itself
+let go and shot headlong into awful depths!
+
+Above it the taut cable vibrated and sang weirdly in the silence of
+the chasm.
+
+The girl was still lying flat under the walnut-tree when McKay came
+back.
+
+Without speaking he knelt, levelled his pistol and fired across at
+the man beyond the hog-back.
+
+Instantly her pistol flashed, too; one of the men fell and tried to
+get up in a blind sort of way, and his comrades caught him by the
+arms and dragged him back behind the ledge.
+
+"All right!" shouted one of the men from his cover, "we've plently
+of time to deal with you Yankee swine! Stay there and rot!"
+
+"That was Skelton's voice," whispered Miss Erith with an involuntary
+shudder.
+
+"They'll never attempt that hog-back under our pistols now," said
+McKay coolly. "Come, Yellow-hair; we're going forward."
+
+"How?" she asked, bewildered.
+
+"By cable, little comrade," he said, with a shaky gaiety that
+betrayed the tension of his nerves. "So pack up and route-step once
+more!"
+
+He turned and looked at her and his face twitched:
+
+"You wonderful girl," he said, "you beautiful, wonderful girl! We'll
+live to fly our pigeons yet, Yellow-hair, under the very snout of
+the whole Hun empire!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE LATE SIR W. BLINT
+
+
+
+
+
+That two spies, a man and a woman, had penetrated the forest of Les
+Errues was known in Berlin on the 13th. Within an hour the entire
+machinery of the German Empire had been set in motion to entrap and
+annihilate these two people.
+
+The formula distributed to all operators in the Intelligence
+Department throughout Hundom, and wherever Boche spies had filtered
+into civilised lands, was this:
+
+"Two enemy secret agents have succeeded in penetrating the forest of
+Les Errues. One is a man, the other a woman.
+
+"Both are Americans. The man is that civilian prisoner, Kay McKay,
+who escaped from Holzminden, and of whom an exact description is
+available.
+
+"The woman is Evelyn Erith. Exact information concerning her is also
+available.
+
+"The situation is one of extremest delicacy and peril. Exposure of
+the secret understanding with a certain neutral Power which permits
+us certain temporary rights within an integral portion of its
+territory would be disastrous, and would undoubtedly result in an
+immediate invasion of this neutral (sic) country by the enemy as
+well as by our own forces.
+
+"This must not happen. Yet it is vitally imperative that these two
+enemy agents should be discovered, seized, and destroyed.
+
+"Their presence in the forest of Les Errues is the most serious
+menace to the Fatherland that has yet confronted it.
+
+"Upon the apprehension and destruction of these two spies depends
+the safety of Germany and her allies.
+
+"The war can not be won, a victorious German peace can not be
+imposed upon our enemies, unless these two enemy agents are found
+and their bodies absolutely destroyed upon the spot along with every
+particle of personal property discovered upon their persons.
+
+"More than that: the war will be lost, and with it the Fatherland,
+unless these two spies are seized and destroyed.
+
+"The Great Secret of Germany is in danger.
+
+"To possess themselves of it--for already they suspect its
+nature--and to expose it not only to the United States Government
+but to the entire world, is the mission of these two enemy agents.
+
+"If they succeed it would mean the end of the German Empire.
+
+"If our understanding with a certain neutral Power be made public,
+that also would spell disaster for Germany.
+
+"The situation hangs by a hair, the fate of the world is suspended
+above the forest of Les Errues."
+
+On the 14th the process of infiltration began. But the Hun invasion
+of Les Errues was not to be conducted in force, there must be no
+commotion there, no stirring, no sound, only a silent, stealthy,
+death-hunt in that shadowy forest--a methodical, patient, thorough
+preparation to do murder; a swift, noiseless execution.
+
+Also, on the 14th, the northern sky beyond the Swiss wire swarmed
+with Hun airplanes patrolling the border.
+
+Not that the Great Secret could be discovered from the air; that
+danger had been foreseen fifty years ago, and half a century's
+camouflage screened the results of steady, calculating relentless
+diligence.
+
+But French or British planes might learn of the presence of these
+enemy agents in the dark forest of Les Errues, and might hang like
+hawks above it exchanging signals with them.
+
+Therefore the northern sky swarmed with Boche aircraft--cautiously
+patrolling beyond the Swiss border, and only prepared to risk its
+violation if Allied planes first set them an example.
+
+But for a week nothing moved in the heavens above Les Errues except
+an eagle. And that appeared every day, sheering the blue void above
+the forest, hovering majestically in circles hour after hour and
+then, at last, toward sundown, setting its sublime course westward,
+straight into the blinding disk of the declining sun.
+
+The Hun airmen patrolling the border noticed the eagle. After a
+while, as no Allied plane appeared, time lagged with the Boche, and
+he came to look for this lone eagle which arrived always at the same
+hour in the sky above Les Errues, soared there hour after hour, then
+departed, flapping slowly westward until lost in the flames of
+sunset.
+
+"As though," remarked one Boche pilot, "the bird were a phoenix
+which at the close of every day renews its life from its own ashes
+in the flames."
+
+Another airman said: "It is not a Lammergeier, is it?"
+
+"It is a Stein-Adler," said a third.
+
+But after a silence a fourth airman spoke, seated before the hangar
+and studying a wild flower, the petals of which he had been
+examining with the peculiar interest of a nature-student:
+
+"For ten days I have had nothing more important to watch than that
+eagle which appears regularly every day above the forest of Les
+Errues. And I have concluded that the bird is neither a Lammergeier
+nor a Stein-Adler."
+
+"Surely," said one young Hun, "it is a German eagle."
+
+"It must be," laughed another, "because it is so methodical and
+exact. Those are German traits."
+
+The nature-student contemplated the wild blossom which he was now
+idly twirling between his fingers by its stem.
+
+"It perplexes me," he mused aloud.
+
+The others looked at him; one said: "What perplexes you, Von
+Dresslin?"
+
+"That bird."
+
+"The eagle?"
+
+"The eagle which comes every day to circle above Les Errues. I, an
+amateur of ornithology am, perhaps, with all modesty, permitted to
+call myself?"
+
+"Certainly," said several airmen at once.
+
+Another added: "We all know you to be a naturalist."
+
+"Pardon--a student only, gentlemen. Which is why, perhaps, I am both
+interested and perplexed by this eagle we see every day."
+
+"It is a rare species?"
+
+"It is not a familiar one to the Alps."
+
+"This bird, then, is not a German eagle in your opinion, Von
+Dresslin?"
+
+"What is it? Asiatic? African? Chinese?" asked another.
+
+Von Dresslin's eyebrows became knitted.
+
+"That eagle which we all see every day in the sky above Les Errues,"
+he said slowly, "has a snow-white crest and tail."
+
+Several airmen nodded; one said: "I have noticed that, too, watching
+the bird through my binoculars."
+
+"I know," continued Von Dresslin slowly, "of only one species of
+eagle which resembles the bird we all see every day... It inhabits
+North America," he added thoughtfully.
+
+There was a silence, then a very young airman inquired whether Von
+Dresslin knew of any authentic reports of an American eagle being
+seen in Europe.
+
+"Authentic? That is somewhat difficult to answer," replied Von
+Dresslin, with the true caution of a real naturalist. "But I venture
+to tell you that, once before--nearly a year ago now--I saw an eagle
+in this same region which had a white crest and tail and was
+otherwise a shining bronze in colour."
+
+"Where did you see such a bird?"
+
+"High in the air over Mount Terrible." A deep and significant
+silence fell over the little company. If Count von Dresslin had seen
+such an eagle over the Swiss peak called Mount Terrible, and had
+been near enough to notice the bird's colour, every man there knew
+what had been the occasion.
+
+For only once had that particular region of Switzerland been
+violated by their aircraft during the war. It had happened a year
+ago when Von Dresslin, patrolling the north Swiss border, had
+discovered a British flyer planing low over Swiss territory in the
+air-region between Mount Terrible and the forest of Les Errues.
+
+Instantly the Hun, too, crossed the line: and the air-battle was
+joined above the forest.
+
+Higher, higher, ever higher mounted the two fighting planes until
+the earth had fallen away two miles below them.
+
+Then, out of the icy void of the upper air-space, now roaring with
+their engines' clamour, the British plane shot earthward, down,
+down, rushing to destruction like a shooting-star, and crashed in
+the forest of Les Errues.
+
+And where it had been, there in mid-air, hung an eagle with a crest
+as white as the snow on the shining peaks below.
+
+"He seemed suddenly to be there instead of the British plane," said
+Von Dresslin. "I saw him distinctly--might have shot him with my
+pistol as he sheered by me, his yellow eyes aflame, balanced on
+broad wings. So near he swept that his bright fierce eyes flashed
+level with mine, and for an instant I thought he meant to attack me.
+
+"But he swept past in a single magnificent curve, screaming, then
+banked swiftly and plunged straight downward in the very path of the
+British plane."
+
+Nobody spoke. Von Dresslin twirled his flower and looked at it in an
+absent-minded way.
+
+"From that glimpse, a year ago, I believe I had seen a species of
+eagle the proper habitat of which is North America," he said.
+
+An airman remarked grimly: "The Yankees are migrating to Europe.
+Perhaps their eagles are coming too."
+
+"To pick our bones," added another.
+
+And another man said laughingly to Von Dresslin:
+
+"Fritz, did you see in that downfall of the British enemy, and the
+dramatic appearance of a Yankee eagle in his place, anything
+significant?"
+
+"By gad," cried another airman, "we had John Bull by his fat throat,
+and were choking him to death. And now--the Americans!"
+
+"If I dared cross the border and shoot that Yankee eagle to-morrow,"
+began another airman; but they all knew it wouldn't do.
+
+One said: "Do you suppose, Von Dresslin, that the bird we see is the
+one you saw a year ago?"
+
+"It is possible."
+
+"An American white-headed eagle?"
+
+"I feel quite sure of it."
+
+"Their national bird," said the same airman who had expressed a
+desire to shoot it.
+
+"How could an American eagle get here?" inquired another man.
+
+"By way of Asia, probably."
+
+"By gad! A long flight!"
+
+Dresslin nodded: "An omen, perhaps, that we may also have to face
+the Yankee on our Eastern front."
+
+"The swine!" growled several.
+
+Von Dresslin assented absently to the epithet. But his thoughts were
+busy elsewhere, his mind preoccupied by a theory which, Hunlike, he,
+for the last ten days, had been slowly, doggedly, methodically
+developing.
+
+It was this: Assuming that the bird really was an American eagle,
+the problem presented itself very clearly--from where had it come?
+This answered itself; it came from America, its habitat.
+
+Which answer, of course, suggested a second problem; HOW did it
+arrive?
+
+Several theories presented themselves:
+
+1st. The eagle might have reached Asia from Alaska and so made its
+way westward as far as the Alps of Switzerland.
+
+2nd. It may have escaped from some public European zoological
+collection.
+
+3rd. It may have been owned privately and, on account of the
+scarcity of food in Europe, liberated by its owner.
+
+4th. It MIGHT have been owned by the Englishman whose plane Von
+Dresslin had destroyed.
+
+And now Von Dresslin was patiently, diligently developing this
+theory:
+
+If it had been owned by the unknown Englishman whose plane had
+crashed a year ago in Les Errues forest, then the bird was
+undoubtedly his mascot, carried with him in his flights, doubtless a
+tame eagle.
+
+Probably when the plane fell the bird took wing, which accounted for
+its sudden appearance in mid-air.
+
+Probably, also, it had been taught to follow its master; and,
+indeed, had followed in one superb plunge earthward in the wake of a
+dead man in a stricken plane.
+
+But--WAS this the same bird?
+
+For argument, suppose it was. Then why did it still hang over Les
+Errues? Affection for a dead master? Only a dog could possibly show
+such devotion, such constancy. And besides, birds are incapable of
+affection. They only know where to go for kind treatment and
+security. And tamed birds, even those species domesticated for
+centuries, know only one impulse that draws them toward any human
+protector--the desire for food.
+
+Could this eagle remember for a whole year that the man who lay dead
+somewhere in the dusky wilderness of Les Errues had once been kind
+to him and had fed him? And was that why the great bird still
+haunted the air-heights above the forest? Possibly.
+
+Or was it not more logical to believe that here, suddenly cast upon
+its own resources, and compelled to employ instincts hitherto
+uncultivated or forgotten, to satisfy its hunger, this solitary
+American eagle had found the hunting good? Probably. And, knowing no
+other region, had remained there, and for the first time, or at
+least after a long interval of captivity and dependence on man, it
+had discovered what liberty was and with liberty the necessity to
+struggle for existence.
+
+An airman, watching Dresslin's thoughtful features, said:
+
+"You never found out who that Englishman was, did you?
+
+"No."
+
+"Did our agents search Les Errues?"
+
+"I suppose so. But I have never heard anything further about that
+affair," he shrugged; "and I don't believe we ever will until after
+the war, and until--"
+
+"Until Switzerland belongs to us," said an airman with a light
+laugh.
+
+Others, listening, looked at one another significantly, smiling the
+patient, confident and brooding smile of the Hun.
+
+Knaus unwittingly wrote his character and his epitaph:
+
+"Ich kann warten."
+
+The forest of Les Errues was deathly still. Hunters and hunted both
+were as silent as the wild things that belonged there in those dim
+woods--as cautious, as stealthy.
+
+A dim greenish twilight veiled their movements, the damp carpet of
+moss dulled sounds.
+
+Yet the hunted knew that they were hunted, realised that pursuit and
+search were inevitable; and the hunters, no doubt, guessed that
+their quarry was alert.
+
+Now on the tenth day since their entrance into Les Errues those two
+Americans who were being hunted came to a little wooded valley
+through which a swift stream dashed amid rock and fern, flinging
+spray over every green leaf that bordered it, filling its clear
+pools with necklaces of floating bubbles.
+
+McKay slipped his pack from his shoulders and set it against a tree.
+One of the two carrier pigeons in their cage woke up and ruffled.
+Looking closely at the other he discovered it was dead. His heart
+sank, but he laid the stiff, dead bird behind a tree and said
+nothing to his companion.
+
+Evelyn Erith now let go of her own pack and, flinging herself on the
+moss, set her lips to the surface of a brimming pool.
+
+"Careful of this Alpine water!" McKay warned her. But the girl
+satisfied her thirst before she rose to her knees and looked around
+at him.
+
+"Are you tired, Yellow-hair?" he asked.
+
+"Yes.... Are you, Kay?"
+
+He shook his head and cast a glance around him.
+
+It was beautiful, this little woodland vale with its stream dashing
+through and its slopes forested with beech and birch--splendid great
+trees with foliage golden green in the sun.
+
+But it was not the beauty of the scene that preoccupied these two.
+Always, when ready to halt, their choice of any resting-place
+depended upon several things more important than beauty.
+
+For one matter the place must afford concealment, and also a water
+supply. Moreover it must be situated so as to be capable of defence.
+Also there must be an egress offering a secure line of retreat.
+
+So McKay began to roam about the place, prowling along the slopes
+and following the stream. Apparently the topography satisfied him;
+for after a little while he came back to where Miss Erith was lying
+on the moss, one arm resting across her eyes.
+
+"You ARE tired," he said.
+
+She removed her arm and looked up at him out of those wonderful
+golden eyes.
+
+"Is it all right for us to remain here, Kay?"
+
+"Yes. You can see for yourself. Anybody coming into this valley must
+be visible on that ridge to the south. And there's an exit. This
+brook dashes through it--two vast granite gates that will let us
+through into the outer forest, where they might as well hunt for two
+pins as for us."
+
+The girl smiled; her eyes closed. "I'm glad we can rest," she
+murmured. So McKay went about his duties.
+
+First he removed his pack and hers a hundred yards down stream,
+through the granite gateway, and placed them just beyond.
+
+Then he came back for Miss Erith. Scarcely awakened as he lifted
+her, she placed one arm around his neck with the sleepy
+unconsciousness of a tired child. They had long been on such terms;
+there was no escaping them in the intimacy of their common isolation
+and common danger.
+
+He laid her on the moss, well screened by the granite barrier, and
+beyond range of the brook's rainbow spray. She was already asleep
+again.
+
+He took off both her shoes, unwound the spiral puttees and gave her
+bruised little feet a chance to breathe.
+
+He made camp, tested the wind and found it safe to build a fire, set
+water to simmer, and unpacked the tinned rations. Then he made the
+two beds side by side, laying down blankets and smoothing away the
+twigs underneath.
+
+The surviving carrier pigeon was hungry. He fed it, lifted it still
+banded from its place, cleaned the cage and set it to dry in a patch
+of sunshine.
+
+The four automatic pistols he loaded and laid on a shelf in the
+granite barricade; set ammunition and flashlight beside them.
+
+Then he went to his pack and got his papers and material, and
+unrolled the map upon which he had been at work since he and Evelyn
+Erith had entered the enemy's zone of operations.
+
+From time to time as he worked, drawing or making notes, he glanced
+at the sleeping girl beside him.
+
+Never but once had the word "love" been mentioned between these two.
+
+For a long while, now--almost from the very beginning--he had known
+that he was in love with this girl; but, after that one day in the
+garden, he also knew that there was scarcely the remotest chance
+that he should live to tell her so again, or that she could survive
+to hear him.
+
+For when they had entered the enemy's zone below Mount Terrible they
+both realised that there was almost no chance of their returning.
+
+He had lighted his pipe; and now he sat working away at his
+drawings, making a map of his route as best he could without
+instruments, and noting with rapid pencil all matters of interest
+for those upon whose orders he and this girl beside him had
+penetrated the forbidden forest of Les Errues. This for the slim
+chance of getting back alive. But he had long believed that, if his
+pigeons failed him at the crisis, no report would ever be delivered
+to those who sent him here, either concerning his discoveries or his
+fate and the fate of the girl who lay asleep beside him.
+
+An hour later she awoke. He was still bent over his map, and she
+presently extended one arm and let her hand rest on his knee.
+
+"Do you feel better, Yellow-hair?"
+
+"Yes. Thank you for removing my shoes."
+
+"I suppose you are hungry," he remarked.
+
+"Yes. Are you?"
+
+He smiled: "As usual. I wish to heaven I could run across a
+roebuck." They both craved something to satisfy the hunger made keen
+by the Alpine air, and which no concentrated rations could satisfy.
+McKay seldom ventured to kill any game--merely an auerhahn, a hare
+or two, a red squirrel--and sometimes he had caught trout in the
+mountain brooks with his bare hands--the method called "tickling"
+and only too familiar to Old-World poachers.
+
+"Roebuck," she repeated trying not to speak wistfully.
+
+He nodded: "One crossed the stream below. I saw the tracks in the
+moss, which was still stirring where the foot had pressed."
+
+"Dare you risk a shot in Les Errues, Kay?"
+
+"I don't think I'd hesitate."
+
+After a silence: "Why don't you rest? You must be dead tired," she
+said. And he felt a slight pressure of her fingers drawing him.
+
+So he laid aside his work, dropped upon his blanket, and turned on
+his left side, looking at her.
+
+"You have not yet seen any sign of the place from which you once
+looked out across the frontier and saw thousands and thousands of
+people as busy as a swarm of ants--have you, Kay?"
+
+"I remember this stream and these woods. I can't seem to recollect
+how far or in which direction I turned after passing this granite
+gorge."
+
+"Did you go far?"
+
+"I can't recollect," he said. "I'd give my right arm if I could."
+His worn and anxious visage touched her.
+
+"Don't fret, Kay, dear," she said soothingly. "We'll find it. We'll
+find out what the Hun is doing. We'll discover what this Great
+Secret really is. And our pigeons shall tell it to the world."
+
+And, as always, she smiled cheerfully, confidently. He had never
+heard her whine, had never seen her falter save from sheer physical
+weariness.
+
+"We'll win through, Yellow-hair," he said, looking steadily into her
+clear brown-gold eyes.
+
+"Of course. You are so wonderful, Kay."
+
+"That is the most wonderful thing in the world, Evelyn--to hear you
+tell me such a thing!"
+
+"Don't you know I think so?"
+
+"I can't believe it--after what you know of me--"
+
+"Kay!"
+
+"I'm sorry--but a scar is a scar--"
+
+"There is no scar! Do you hear me! No scar, no stain! Don't you
+suppose a woman can judge? And I have my own opinion of you,
+Kay--and it is a perfectly good opinion and suits me."
+
+She smiled, closed her eyes as though closing the discussion, opened
+them and smiled again at him.
+
+And now, as always, he wondered how this fair young girl could find
+courage to smile in the very presence of the most dreadful death any
+living woman could suffer--death from the Hun.
+
+He lay looking at her and she at him, for a while.
+
+In the silence, a dry stick snapped and McKay was on his feet as
+though it had been the crack of a pistol.
+
+Presently he stooped, and she lifted her pretty head and rested one
+ear close to his lips:
+
+"It's that roebuck, I think, down stream." Then something happened;
+her ear touched his mouth--or his lips, forming some word, came into
+contact with her--so that it was as though he had kissed her and she
+had responded.
+
+Both recoiled; her face was bright with mounting colour and he
+seemed scared. Yet both knew it was not a caress; but she feared he
+thought she had invited one, and he feared she believed he had
+offered one.
+
+He went about his affair with the theoretical roebuck in silence,
+picking up one of his pistols, loosening his knife in its sheath;
+then, without the usual smile or gesture for her, he started off
+noiselessly over the moss.
+
+And the girl, supporting herself on one arm, her fingers buried in
+the moss, looked after him while her flushed face cooled.
+
+McKay moved down stream with pistol lifted, scanning the hard-wood
+ridges on either hand. For even the reddest of roe deer, in the
+woods, seem to be amazingly invisible unless they move.
+
+The stream dashed through shadow and sun-spot, splashing a sparkling
+way straight into the wilderness of Les Errues; and along its
+fern-fringed banks strode McKay with swift, light steps. His eyes,
+now sharpened by the fight for life--which life had begun to be
+revealed to him in all its protean aspects, searched the dappled,
+demi-light ahead, fiercely seeking to pierce any disguise that
+protective colouration might afford his quarry.
+
+Silver, russet, green and gold, and with the myriad fulvous nuances
+that the forest undertones lend to its ensembles, these were the
+patterned tints that met his eye on every side in the subdued
+gradations of woodland light.
+
+But nothing out of key, nothing either in tone, colour, or shape,
+betrayed the discreet and searched for discord in the vague and
+lovely harmony;--no spiked head tossed in sudden fright; no
+chestnut flank turned too redly in the dim ensemble, no delicate
+feet in motion disturbed the solemn immobility of tree-trunk and
+rock. Only the fern fronds quivered where spray rained across them;
+and the only sounds that stirred were the crystalline clash of icy
+rapids and the high whisper of the leaves in Les Errues.
+
+And, as he stood motionless, every sense and instinct on edge, his
+eyes encountered something out of key with this lovely, sombre
+masterpiece of God. Instantly a still shock responded to the
+mechanical signal sent to his eyes; the engine of the brain was
+racing; he stood as immobile as a tree.
+
+Yes, there on the left something was amiss,--something indistinct
+in the dusk of heavy foliage--something, the shape of which was not
+in harmony with the suave design about him woven of its Creator.
+After a long while he walked slowly toward it.
+
+There was much more of it than he had seen. Its consequences, too,
+were visible above him where broken branches hung still tufted with
+bronze leaves which no new buds would ever push from their dead
+clasp of the sapless stems. And all around him yearling seedlings
+had pushed up through the charred wreckage. Even where fire had
+tried to obtain a foothold, and had been withstood by barriers of
+green and living sap, in burnt spaces where bits of twisted metal
+lay, tender shoots had pushed out in that eternal promise of
+resurrection which becomes a fable only upon a printed page.
+
+McKay's business was with the dead. The weather-faded husk lay there
+amid dry leaves promising some day to harmonise with the scheme of
+things.
+
+Mice had cleaned the bony cage under the uniform of a British
+aviator. Mice gnaw the shed antlers of deer. And other bones.
+
+The pockets were full of papers. McKay read some of them. Afterward
+he took from the bones of the hand two rings, a wrist-watch, a
+whistle which still hung by a short chain and a round object
+attached to a metal ring like a sleigh-bell.
+
+There was a hollow just beyond, made once in time of flood by some
+ancient mountain torrent long dry, and no longer to be feared.
+
+The human wreckage barely held together, but it was light; and McKay
+covered it with a foot of deep green moss, and made a cairn above it
+out of glacial stones from the watercourse. And on the huge beech
+that tented it he cut a cross with his trench-knife, making the
+incision deep, so that it glimmered like ivory against the silvery
+bark of the great tree. Under this sacred symbol he carved:
+
+"SIR W. BLINT, BART."
+
+Below this he cut a deep, white oblong in the bark, and with a coal
+from the burned airplane he wrote:
+
+"THIS IS THE BEGINNING, NOT THE END. THIS ENGLISHMAN STILL CARRIES
+ON!"
+
+He stood at salute for a full minute. Then turned, dropped to his
+knees, and began another thorough search among the debris and dead
+leaves.
+
+"Hello, Yellow-hair!"
+
+She had been watching his approach from where she was seated
+balanced on the stream's edge, with both legs in the water to the
+knees.
+
+He came up and dropped down beside her on the moss.
+
+"A dead airman in Les Errues," he said quietly, "a Britisher. I put
+away what remained of him. The Huns may dig him up: some animals do
+such things."
+
+"Where did you find him, Kay?" she asked quietly.
+
+"A quarter of a mile down-stream. He lay on the west slope. He had
+fallen clear, but there was not much left of his machine."
+
+"How long has he lain there in this forest?"
+
+"A year--to judge. Also the last entry in his diary bears this out.
+They got him through the head, and his belt gave way or was not
+fastened.--Anyway he came down stone dead and quite clear of his
+machine. His name was Blint--Sir W. Blint, Bart.... Lie back on the
+moss and let your bruised feet hang in the pool.... Here--this
+way--rest that yellow head of yours against my knees. ... Are you
+snug?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Hold out your hands. These were his trinkets."
+
+The girl cupped her hands to receive the rings, watch, the gold
+whistle in its little gem-set chains, and the sleigh-bell on its
+bracelet.
+
+She examined them one by one in silence while McKay ran through the
+pages of the notebook--discoloured pages all warped and stained in
+their leather binding but written in pencil with print-like
+distinction.
+
+"Sir W. Blint," murmured McKay, still busy with the notebook. "Can't
+find what W. stood for."
+
+"That's all there is--just his name and military rank as an aviator:
+I left the disk where it hung."
+
+The girl placed the trinkets on the moss beside her and looked up
+into McKay's face.
+
+Both knew they were thinking of the same thing. They wore no disks.
+Would anybody do for them what McKay had done for the late Sir W.
+Blint?
+
+McKay bent a little closer over her and looked down into her face.
+That any living creature should touch this woman in death seemed to
+him almost more terrible than her dying. It was terror of that which
+sometimes haunted him; no other form of fear.
+
+What she read in his eyes is not clear--was not quite clear to her,
+perhaps. She said under her breath:
+
+"You must not fear for me, Kay.... Nothing can really touch me now."
+
+He did not understand what she meant by this immunity--gathering
+some vague idea that she had spoken in the spiritual sense. And he
+was only partly right. For when a girl is beginning to give her soul
+to a man, the process is not wholly spiritual.
+
+As he looked down at her in silence he saw her gaze shift and her
+eyes fix themselves on something above the tree-tops overhead.
+
+"There's that eagle again," she said, "wheeling up there in the
+blue."
+
+He looked up; then he turned his sun-dazzled eyes on the pages of
+the little notebook which he held open in both hands.
+
+"It's amusing reading," he said. "The late Sir W. Blint seems to
+have been something of a naturalist. Wherever he was stationed the
+lives of the birds, animals, insects and plants interested him. ...
+Everywhere one comes across his pencilled queries and comments
+concerning such things; here he discovers a moth unfamiliar to him,
+there a bird he does not recognise. He was a quaint chap--"
+
+McKay's voice ceased but his eyes still followed the pencilled lines
+of the late Sir W. Blint. And Evelyn Erith, resting her yellow head
+against his knees, looked up at him.
+
+"For example," resumed McKay, and read aloud from the diary:
+
+"Five days' leave. Blighty. All top hole at home. Walked with
+Constance in the park.
+
+Pair of thrushes in the spinney. Rookery full. Usual butterflies in
+unusual numbers. Toward twilight several sphinx moths visited the
+privet. No net at hand so did not identify any. Pheasants in bad
+shape. Nobody to keep them down. Must arrange drives while I'm away.
+
+Late at night a barn owl in the chapel belfrey. Saw him and heard
+him. Constance nervous; omens and that sort, I fancy; but no funk.
+Rotten deal for her."
+
+"Who was Constance?" asked Miss Erith.
+
+"Evidently his wife.... I wish we could get those trinkets to her."
+His glance shifted back to the pencilled page and presently he read
+on, aloud:
+
+France again. Headquarters. Same rumour that Fritz has something up
+his sleeve. Conference. Letter from Constance. Wrote her also.
+
+10th inst.:
+
+Conference. Interesting theory even if slightly incredible. Wrote
+Constance.
+
+12th inst.:
+
+Another conference. Sir D. Haig. Back to hangar. A nightingale
+singing, clear and untroubled above the unceasing thunder of the
+cannonade. Very pretty moth, incognito, came and sat on my sleeve.
+One of the Noctuidae, I fancy, but don't know generic or specific
+names. About eleven o'clock Sir D. Haig. Unexpected honour. Sir D.
+serene and cheerful. Showed him about. He was much amused at my
+eagle. Explained how I had found him as an eaglet some twenty years
+ago in America and how he sticks to me like a tame jackdaw.
+
+Told Sir D. that I had been taking him in my air flights everywhere
+and that he adored it, sitting quite solemnly out of harm's way and,
+if taking to the air for a bit of exercise, always keeping my plane
+in view and following it to earth.
+
+Showed Sir D. H. all Manitou's tricks. The old chap did me proud.
+This was the programme:
+
+I.--'Will you cheer for king and country, Manitou?'
+
+Manitou (yelping)--'Houp--gloup--houp!'
+
+I.--'Suppose you were a Hun eagle, Manitou--just a vulgar Boche
+buzzard?'
+
+Manitou (hanging his head)--'Houp--gloup--houp!'
+
+I.-'But you're not! You're a Yankee eagle! Now give three cheers for
+Uncle Sam!'
+
+Manitou (head erect)--'Houp--gloup--houp!'
+
+Sir D. convulsed. Ordered a trench-rat for Manitou as usual. While
+he was discussing it I told Sir D. H. how I could always send
+Manitou home merely by attaching to his ankle a big whistling-bell
+of silver.
+
+Explained that Manitou hated it and that I had taught him to fly
+home when I attached it by arranging that nobody except my wife
+should ever relieve him of the bell.
+
+It took about two years to teach him where to go for relief.
+
+Sir D, much amused--reluctant to leave. Wrote to Connie later. Bed.
+
+13th inst.:
+
+Summoned by Sir D. H. Conference. Most interesting. Packed up. Of at
+5 P. M., taking my eagle, Manitou. Wrote Constance.
+
+14th inst.:
+
+Paris. Yankees everywhere. Very ft. Have noticed no brag so far.
+Wrote Constance.
+
+20th inst.:
+
+Paris. Yanks, Yanks, Yanks. And 'thanks' rimes. I said so to one of
+'em. 'No,' said he, 'Tanks' is the proper rime--British Tanks!' Neat
+and modest. Wrote Connie.
+
+21st inst.:
+
+Manitou and I are off. Most interesting quest I ever engaged in.
+Wrote to my wife.
+
+Delle. Manitou and I both very fit. Machine in waiting. Took the air
+for a look about. Manitou left me a mile up. Evidently likes the
+Alps. Soared over Mount Terrible whither I dared not venture--yet!
+Saw no Huns. Back by sundown. Manitou dropped in to dinner--like a
+thunderbolt from the zenith. Astonishment of Blue Devils on guard.
+Much curiosity. Manitou a hero. All see in him an omen of American
+victory. Wrote Connie.
+
+30th inst.:
+
+Shall try 'it' very soon now.
+
+If it's true--God help the Swiss! If not--profound apologies I
+suppose. Anyway its got to be cleared up. Manitou enamoured of
+mountains. Poor devil, it's in his blood I suppose. Takes the air,
+now, quite independent of me, but I fancy he gets uneasy if I delay,
+for he comes and circles over the hangar until my machine takes the
+air. And if it doesn't he comes down to find out why, mad and
+yelping at me like an irritated goblin.
+
+I saw an Alpine butterfly to-day--one of those Parnassians all white
+with wings veined a greenish black. Couldn't catch him. Wrote to
+Connie. Bed.
+
+31st inst.:
+
+In an hour. All ready. It's hard to believe that the Hun has so
+terrorised the Swiss Government as to force it into such an
+outrageous concession. Nous verrons.
+
+A perfect day. Everything arranged. Calm and confident. Think much
+of Constance but no nerves. Early this morning Manitou, who had been
+persistently hulking at my heels and squealing invitations to take
+wing with him, became impatient and went up.
+
+I saw him in time and whistled him down; and I told the old chap
+very plainly that he could come up with me when I was ready or not
+at all.
+
+He understood and sat on the table sulking, and cocking his silver
+head at me while I talked to him. That's one thing about Manitou.
+Except for a wild Canada goose I never before saw a bird who seemed
+to have the slightest trace of brain. I know, of course, it's not
+affection that causes him to trail me, answer his whistle, and obey
+when he doesn't wish to obey. It's training and habit. But I like to
+pretend that the old chap is a little fond of me.
+
+I'm of in a few minutes. Manitou is aboard. Glorious visibility. Now
+for Fritz and his occult designs--if there are any.
+
+A little note to Connie--I scarcely know why. Not a nerve. Most
+happy. Noticed a small butterfly quite unfamiliar to me. No time now
+to investigate.
+
+Engines! Manitou yelling with excitement. Symptoms of taking wing,
+but whistle checks insubordination.... All ready. Wish Connie were
+here.
+
+McKay closed the little book, strapped and buckled the cover.
+
+"Exit Sir W. Blint," he said, not flippantly. "I think I should like
+to have known that man."
+
+The girl, lying there with the golden water swirling around her
+knees and her golden head on the moss, looked up through the foliage
+in silence.
+
+The eagle was soaring lower over the forest now. After a little
+while she reached out and let her fingers touch McKay's hand where
+it rested on the moss:
+
+"Kay?"
+
+"Yes, Yellow-hair."
+
+"It isn't possible, of course.... But are there any eagles in Europe
+that have white heads and tails?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I know.... I wish you'd look up at that eagle. He is not very
+high."
+
+McKay lifted his head. After a moment he rose to his feet, still
+looking intently skyward. The eagle was sailing very low now.
+
+"THAT'S AN AMERICAN EAGLE!"
+
+The words shot out of McKay's lips. The girl sat upright,
+electrified.
+
+And now the sun struck full across the great bird as he sheered the
+tree-tops above. HEAD AND TAIL WERE A DAZZLING WHITE.
+
+"Could--could it be that dead man's eagle?" said the girl. "Oh,
+could it be Manitou? COULD it, Kay?"
+
+McKay looked at her, and his eye fell on the gold whistle hanging
+from her wrist on its jewelled chain.
+
+"If it is," he said, "he might notice that whistle. Try it!"
+
+She nodded excitedly, set the whistle to her lips and blew a clear,
+silvery, penetrating blast upward.
+
+"Kay! Look!" she gasped.
+
+For the response had been instant. Down through the tree-tops
+sheered the huge bird, the air shrilling through his pinions, and
+struck the solid ground and set his yellow claws in it, grasping the
+soil of the Old World with mighty talons. Then he turned his superb
+head and looked fearlessly upon his two compatriots.
+
+"Manitou! Manitou!" whispered the girl. And crept toward him on her
+knees, nearer, nearer, until her slim outstretched hand rested on
+his silver crest.
+
+"Good God!" said McKay in the low tones of reverence.
+
+McKay had drawn a duplicate of his route-map on thin glazed paper.
+
+Evelyn Erith had finished a duplicate copy of his notes and reports.
+
+Of these and the trinkets of the late Sir W. Blint they made two
+flat packets, leaving one of them unsealed to receive the brief
+letter which McKay had begun:
+
+"Dear Lady Blint--
+
+It is not necessary to ask the wife of Sir W. Blint to have courage.
+
+He died as he had lived--a fine and fearless British sportsman.
+
+His death was painless. He lies in the forest of Les Errues. I
+enclose a map for you.
+
+I and my comrade, Evelyn Erith, dare believe that his eagle,
+Manitou, has not forgotten the air-path to England and to you. With
+God's guidance he will carry this letter to you. And with it certain
+objects belonging to your husband. And also certain papers which I
+beg you will have safely delivered to the American Ambassador.
+
+If, madam, we come out of this business alive, my comrade and I will
+do ourselves the honour of waiting on you if, as we suppose, you
+would care to hear from us how we discovered the body of the late
+Sir W. Blint.
+
+Madam, accept homage and deep respect from two Americans who are,
+before long, rather likely to join your gallant husband in the great
+adventure."
+
+"Yellow-hair?"
+
+She came, signed the letter. Then McKay signed it, and it was
+enclosed in one of the packets.
+
+Then McKay took the dead carrier pigeon from the cage and tossed it
+on the moss. And Manitou planted his terrible talons on the inert
+mass of feathers and tore it to shreds.
+
+Evelyn attached the anklet and whistling bell; then she unwound a
+yard of surgeon's plaster, and kneeling, spread the eagle's enormous
+pinions, hold-ing them horizontal while McKay placed the two
+packets and bound them in place under the out-stretched wings.
+
+The big bird had bolted the pigeon. At first he submitted with sulky
+grace, not liking what was happening, but offering no violence.
+
+And even now, as they backed away from him, he stood in dignified
+submission, patiently striving to adjust his closed wings to these
+annoying though light burdens which seemed to have no place among
+his bronze feathers.
+
+Presently, irritated, the bird partially unclosed one wing as though
+to probe with his beak for the seat of his discomfort. At the same
+time he moved his foot, and the bell rattled on his anklet.
+
+Instantly his aspect changed; stooping he inspected the bell, struck
+it lightly with his beak as though in recognition.
+
+WAS it the hated whistling bell? Again the curved beak touched it.
+And recognition was complete.
+
+Mad all through, disgust, indecision, gave rapid place to nervous
+alarm. Every quill rose in wrath; the snowy crest stood upright; the
+yellow eyes flashed fire.
+
+Then, suddenly, the eagle sprang into the air, yelping fierce
+protest against such treatment: the shrilling of the bell swept like
+a thin gale through the forest, keener, louder, as the enraged bird
+climbed the air, mounting, mounting into the dazzling blue above
+until the motionless watchers in the woods below saw him wheel.
+
+Which way would he turn? 'Round and round swept the eagle in wider
+and more splendid circles; in tensest suspense the two below watched
+motionless.
+
+Then the tension broke; and a dry sob escaped the girl.
+
+For the eagle had set his lofty course at last. Westward he bore
+through pathless voids uncharted save by God alone--who has set His
+signs to mark those high blue lanes, lest the birds--His lesser
+children--should lose their way betwixt earth and moon.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE BLINDER TRAIL
+
+
+
+
+
+There was no escape that way. From the northern and eastern edges of
+the forest sheer cliffs fell away into bluish depths where forests
+looked like lawns and the low uplands of the Alsatian border
+resembled hillocks made by tunnelling moles. And yet it was from
+somewhere not far away that a man once had been, carried safely into
+Alsace on a sudden snowslide. That man now lay among the trees on
+the crag's edge looking down into the terrific chasm below. He and
+the girl who crouched in the thicket of alpine roses behind him
+seemed a part of the light-flecked forest--so inconspicuous were
+they among dead leaves and trees in their ragged and weather-faded
+clothing.
+
+They were lean from physical effort and from limited nourishment.
+The skin on their faces and hands, once sanguine and deeply burnt by
+Alpine wind and sun and snow glare, now had become almost
+colourless, so subtly the alchemy of the open operates on those
+whose only bed is last year's leaves and whose only shelter is the
+sky. Even the girl's yellow hair had lost its sunny brilliancy, so
+that now it seemed merely a misty part of the lovely, subdued
+harmony of the woods.
+
+The man, still searching the depths below with straining, patient
+gaze, said across his shoulder:
+
+"It was here somewhere--near here, Yellow-hair, that I went over,
+and found what I found.... But it's not difficult to guess what you
+and I should find if we try to go over now."
+
+"Death?" she motioned with serene lips.
+
+He had turned to look at her, and he read her lips.
+
+"And yet," he said, "we must manage to get down there, somehow or
+other, alive."
+
+She nodded. Both knew that, once down there, they could not expect
+to come out alive. That was tacitly understood. All that could be
+hoped was that they might reach those bluish depths alive, live long
+enough to learn what they had come to learn, release the pigeon with
+its message, then meet destiny in whatever guise it confronted them.
+
+For Fate was not far off. Fate already watched them--herself unseen.
+She had caught sight of them amid the dusk of the ancient trees--was
+following them, stealthily, murderously, through the dim aisles of
+this haunted forest of Les Errues.
+
+These two were the hunted ones, and their hunters were in the
+forest--nearer now than ever because the woodland was narrowing
+toward the east.
+
+Also, for the first time since they had entered the Forbidden
+Forest, scarcely noticeable paths appeared flattening the carpet of
+dead leaves--not trails made by game--but ways trodden at long
+intervals by man--trails unused perhaps for months--then rendered
+vaguely visible once more by the unseen, unheard feet of lightly
+treading foes.
+
+Here for the first time they had come upon the startling spoor of
+man--of men and enemies--men who were hunting them to slay them, and
+who now, in these eastern woods, no longer cared for the concealment
+that might lull to a sense of false security the human quarry that
+they pursued.
+
+And yet the Hun-pack hunting them though the forbidden forest of Les
+Errues had, in their new indifference to their quarry's alarm, and
+in the ferocity of their growing boldness, offered the two fugitives
+a new hope and a new reason for courage:--the grim courage of those
+who are about to die, and who know it, and still carry on.
+
+For this is what the Huns had done--not daring to use signals
+visible to the Swiss patrols on nearer mountain flanks.
+
+Nailed to a tree beside the scarcely visible trail of flattened
+leaves--a trail more imagined and feared than actually visible--was
+a sheet of white paper. And on it was written in the tongue of the
+Hun,--and in that same barbarous script also--a message, the free
+translation of which was as follows:
+
+"WARNING!"
+
+The three Americans recently sent into Les Errues by the Military
+Intelligence Department of the United States Army now fighting in
+France are still at large somewhere in this forest. Two of them are
+operating together, the well-known escaped prisoner, Kay McKay, and
+the woman secret-agent, Evelyn Erith. The third American, Alexander
+Gray, has been wounded in the left hand by one of our riflemen, but
+managed to escape, and is now believed to be attempting to find and
+join the agents McKay and Erith.
+
+This must be prevented. All German agents now operating in Les
+Errues are formally instructed to track down and destroy without
+traces these three spies whenever and wherever encountered according
+to plan. It is expressly forbidden to attempt to take any one or all
+of these spies alive. No prisoners! No traces! Germans, do your
+duty! The Fatherland is in peril!
+
+(Signed) "HOCHSTIM."
+
+McKay wriggled cautiously backward from the chasm's granite edge and
+crawled into the thicket of alpine roses where Evelyn Erith lay.
+
+"No way out, Kay?" she asked under her breath.
+
+"No way THAT way, Yellow-hair."
+
+"Then?"
+
+"I don't--know," he said slowly.
+
+"You mean that we ought to turn back."
+
+"Yes, we ought to. The forest is narrowing very dangerously for us.
+It runs to a point five miles farther east, overlooking impassable
+gulfs.... We should be in a cul-de-sac, Yellow-hair."
+
+"I know."
+
+He mused for a few moments, cool, clear-eyed, apparently quite
+undisturbed by their present peril and intent only on the mission
+which had brought them here, and how to execute it before their
+unseen trackers executed them.
+
+"To turn now, and attempt to go back along this precipice, is to
+face every probability of meeting the men we have so far managed to
+avoid," he said aloud in his pleasant voice, but as though
+presenting the facts to himself alone.
+
+"Of course we shall account for some of the Huns; but that does not
+help us to win through.... Even an exchange of shots would no doubt
+be disastrous to our plans. We MUST keep away from them....
+Otherwise we could never hope to creep into the valley alive,...
+Tell me, Yellow-hair, have you thought of anything new?"
+
+The girl shook her head.
+
+"No, Kay.... Except that chance of running across this new man of
+whom we never had heard before the stupid Boche advertised his
+presence in Les Errues."
+
+"Alexander Gray," nodded McKay, taking from his pocket the paper
+which the Huns had nailed to the great pine, and unfolding it again.
+
+The girl rested her chin on his shoulder to reread it--an apparent
+familiarity which he did not misunderstand. The dog that believes in
+you does it--from perplexity sometimes, sometimes from loneliness.
+Or, even when afraid--not fearing with the baser emotion of the
+poltroon, but afraid with that brave fear which is a wisdom too, and
+which feeds and brightens the steady flame of courage.
+
+"Alexander Gray," repeated McKay. "I never supposed that we would
+send another man in here--at least not until something had been
+heard concerning our success or failure.... I had understood that
+such a policy was not advisable. You know yourself, Yellow-hair,
+that the fewer people we have here the better the chance. And it was
+so decided before we left New York.... And--I wonder what occurred
+to alter our policy."
+
+"Perhaps the Boches have spread reports of our capture by Swiss
+authorities," she said simply.
+
+"That might be. Yes, and the Hun newspapers might even have printed
+it. I can see their scare-heads: 'Gross Violation of Neutral Soil!
+
+"'Switzerland invaded by the Yankees! Their treacherous and impudent
+spies caught in the Alps!'--that sort of thing. Yes, it might be
+that... and yet--"
+
+"You think the Boche would not call attention to such an attempt
+even to trap others of our agents for the mere pleasure of murdering
+them?"
+
+"That's what I think, Eve."
+
+He called her "Eve" only when circumstances had become gravely
+threatening. At other times it was usually "Yellow-hair!"
+
+"Then you believe that this man, Gray, has been sent into Les Errues
+to aid us to carry on independently the operation in which we have
+so far failed?"
+
+"I begin to think so." The girl's golden eyes became lost in
+retrospection.
+
+"And yet," she ventured after a few moments' thought, "he must have
+come into Les Errues learning that we also had entered it; and
+apparently he has made no effort to find us."
+
+"We can't know that, Eve."
+
+"He must be a woodsman," she argued, "and also he must suppose that
+we are more or less familiar with American woodcraft, and fairly
+well versed in its signs. Yet--he has left no sign that we could
+understand where a Hun could not."
+
+"Because we have discovered no sign we can not be certain that this
+man Gray has made none for us to read," said McKay.
+
+"No.... And yet he has left nothing that we have discovered--no
+blaze; no moss or leaf, no stone or cairn--not a broken twig, not a
+peeled stick, and no trail!"
+
+"How do we know that the traces of a trail marked by flattened
+leaves might not be his trail? Once, on that little sheet of sand
+left by rain in the torrent's wake, you found the imprint of a
+hobnailed shoe such as the Hun hunters wear," she reminded him. "And
+there we first saw the flattened trail of last year's leaves--if
+indeed it be truly a trail."
+
+"But, Eve dear, never have we discovered in any dead and flattened
+leaf the imprint of hobnails,--let alone the imprint of a human
+foot."
+
+"Suppose, whoever made that path, had pulled over his shoes a heavy
+woolen sock." He nodded.
+
+"I feel, somehow, that the Hun flattened out those leaves," she went
+on. "I am sure that had an American made the trail he would also
+have contrived to let us know--given us some indication of his
+identity."
+
+The girl's low voice suddenly failed and her hand clutched McKay's
+shoulder.
+
+They lay among the alpine roses like two stones, never stirring, the
+dappled sunlight falling over them as harmoniously and with no more
+and no less accent than it spotted tree-trunk and rock and moss
+around them.
+
+And, as they lay there, motionless, her head resting on his thigh, a
+man came out of the dimmer woods into the white sunshine that
+flooded the verge of the granite chasm.
+
+The man was very much weather-beaten; his tweeds were torn; he
+carried a rifle in his right hand. And his left was bound in bloody
+rags. But what instantly arrested McKay's attention was the pack
+strapped to his back and supported by a "tump-line."
+
+Never before had McKay seen such a pack carried in such a manner
+excepting only in American forests.
+
+The man stood facing the sun. His visage was burnt brick colour, a
+hue which seemed to accentuate the intense blue of his eyes and make
+his light-coloured hair seem almost white.
+
+He appeared to be a man of thirty, superbly built, with a light,
+springy step, despite his ragged and weary appearance.
+
+McKay's eyes were fastened desperately upon him, upon the strap of
+the Indian basket which crossed his sun-scorched forehead, upon his
+crystal-blue eyes of a hunter, upon his wounded left hand, upon the
+sinewy red fist that grasped a rifle, the make of which McKay should
+have known, and did know. For it was a Winchester 45-70--no chance
+for mistaking that typical American weapon. And McKay fell
+a-trembling in every limb.
+
+Presently the man cautiously turned, scanned his back trail with
+that slow-stirrng wariness of a woodsman who never moves abruptly or
+without good reason; then he went back a little way, making no sound
+on the forest floor.
+
+AND MCKAY SAW THAT HE WORE KNEE MOCCASINS.
+
+At the same time Evelyn Erith drew her little length noiselessly
+along his, and he felt her mouth warm against his ear:
+
+"Gray?" He nodded.
+
+"I think so, too. His left hand is injured. He wears American
+moccasins. But in God's name be careful, Kay. It may be a trap."
+
+He nodded almost imperceptibly, keeping his eyes on the figure which
+now stood within the shade of the trees in an attitude which might
+suggest listening, or perhaps merely a posture of alert repose.
+
+Evelyn's mouth still rested against his ear and her light breath
+fell warmly on him. Then presently her lips moved again:
+
+"Kay! He LOOKS safe."
+
+McKay turned his head with infinite caution and she inclined hers to
+his lips:
+
+"I think it is Gray. But we've got to be certain, Eve." She nodded.
+
+"He does look right," whispered McKay. "No Boche cradles a rifle in
+the hollow of his left arm so naturally. It is HABIT, because he
+does it in spite of a crippled left hand."
+
+She nodded again.
+
+"Also," whispered McKay, "everything else about him is
+convincing--the pack, tump-line, moccasins, Winchester: and his
+manner of moving.... I know deer-stalkers in Scotland and in the
+Alps. I know the hunters of ibex and chamois, of roe-deer and red
+stag, of auerhahn and eagle. This man is DIFFERENT. He moves and
+behaves like our own woodsmen--like one of our own hunters."
+
+She asked with dumb lips touching his ear: "Shall we chance it?"
+
+"No. It must be a certainty."
+
+"Yes. We must not offer him a chance."
+
+"Not a ghost of a chance to do us harm," nodded McKay. "Listen
+attentively, Eve; when he moves on, rise when I do; take the pigeon
+and the little sack because I want both hands free. Do you
+understand, dear?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Because I shall have to kill him if the faintest hint of suspicion
+arises in my mind. It's got to be that way, Eve."
+
+"Yes, I know."
+
+"Not for our own safety, but for what our safety involves," he
+added.
+
+She inclined her head in acquiescence.
+
+Very slowly and with infinite caution McKay drew from their holsters
+beneath his armpits two automatic pistols.
+
+"Help me, Eve," he whispered.
+
+So she aided him where he lay beside her to slip the pack straps
+over his shoulders. Then she drew toward her the little osier cage
+in which their only remaining carrier-pigeon rested secured by
+elastic bands, grasped the smaller sack with the other hand, and
+waited.
+
+They had waited an hour and more; and the figure of the stranger had
+moved only once--shifted merely to adjust itself against a
+supporting tree-trunk and slip the tump-line.
+
+But now the man was stirring again, cautiously resuming the
+forehead-straps.
+
+Ready, now, to proceed in whichever direction he might believe lay
+his destination, the strange man took the rifle into the hollow of
+his left arm once more, remained absolutely motionless for five full
+minutes, then, stirring stealthily, his moccasins making no sound,
+he moved into the forest in a half-crouching attitude.
+
+And after him went McKay with Evelyn Erith at his elbow, his
+sinister pistols poised, his eyes fixed on the figure which passed
+like a shadow through the dim forest light ahead.
+
+Toward mid-afternoon their opportunity approached; for here was the
+first water they had encountered--and the afternoon had become
+burning hot--and their own throats were cracking with that fierce
+thirst of high places where, even in the summer air, there is that
+thirst-provoking hint of ice and snow.
+
+For a moment, however, McKay feared that the man meant to go on,
+leaving the thin, icy rivulet untasted among its rocks and mosses;
+for he crossed the course of the little stream at right angles,
+leaping lithely from one rock to the next and travelling upstream on
+the farther bank.
+
+Then suddenly he stopped stock-still and looked back along his
+trail--nearly blind save for a few patches of flattened dead leaves
+which his moccasined tread had patted smooth in the shadier
+stretches where moisture lingered undried by the searching rays of
+the sun.
+
+For a few moments the unknown man searched his own back-trail,
+standing as motionless as the trunk of a lichened beech-tree. Then,
+very slowly, he knelt on the dead leaves, let go his pack, and,
+keeping his rifle in his right hand, stretched out his sinewy length
+above the pool on the edge of which he had halted.
+
+Twice, before drinking, he lifted his head to sweep the woods around
+him, his parched lips still dry. Then, with the abruptness--not of
+man but of some wild thing--he plunged his sweating face into the
+pool.
+
+And McKay covered him where he lay, and spoke in a voice which
+stiffened the drinking man to a statue prone on its face:
+
+"I've got you right! Don't lift your head! You'll understand me if
+you're American!"
+
+The man lay as though dead. McKay came nearer; Evelyn Erith was at
+his elbow.
+
+"Take his rifle, Eve."
+
+The girl walked over and coolly picked up the Winchester.
+
+"Now cover him!" continued McKay. "Find a good rest for your gun and
+keep him covered, Eve."
+
+She laid the rifle level across a low branch, drew the stock snug
+and laid her cheek to it and her steady finger on the trigger.
+
+"When I say'squeeze,' let him have it! Do you understand, Eve?"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+Then, with one pistol poised for a drop shot, McKay stepped forward
+and jerked open the man's pack. And the man neither stirred nor
+spoke. For a few minutes McKay remained busy with the pack, turning
+out packets of concentrated rations of American manufacture, bits of
+personal apparel, a meagre company outfit, spare ammunition--the
+dozen-odd essentials to be always found in an American hunter's
+pack.
+
+Then McKay spoke again:
+
+"Eve, keep him covered. Shoot when I say shoot."
+
+"Right," she replied calmly. And to the recumbent and unstirring
+figure McKay gave a brief order:
+
+"Get up! Hands up!"
+
+The man rose as though made of steel springs and lifted both hands.
+
+Water still ran from his chin and lips and sweating cheeks. But
+McKay, resting the muzzle of his pistol against the man's abdomen,
+looked into a face that twitched with laughter.
+
+"You think it's funny?" he snarled, but the blessed relief that
+surged through him made his voice a trifle unsteady.
+
+"Yes," said the man, "it hits me that way."
+
+"Something else may hit you," growled McKay, ready to embrace him
+with sheer joy.
+
+"Not unless you're a Boche," retorted the man coolly. "But I guess
+you're Kay McKay--"
+
+"Don't get so damned familiar with names!"
+
+"That's right, too. I'll just call you Seventy-Six, and this young
+lady Seventy-Seven.... And I'm Two Hundred and Thirty."
+
+"What else?"
+
+"My name?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"It isn't expected--"
+
+"It is in this case," snapped McKay, wondering at himself for such
+ultra precaution.
+
+"Oh, if you insist then, I'm Gray.... Alec Gray of the States United
+Army Intelligence Serv--"
+
+"All right.... Gad!... It's all right, Gray!"
+
+He took the man's lifted right hand, jerked it down and crushed it
+in a convulsive grasp: "It's good to see you.... We're in a
+hole--deadlocked--no way out but back!" he laughed nervously. "Have
+you any dope for us?"
+
+Gray's blue eyes travelled smilingly toward Evelyn and rested on the
+muzzle of the Winchester. And McKay laughed almost tremulously:
+
+"All clear, Yellow-hair! This IS Gray--God be thanked!"
+
+The girl, pale and quiet and smiling, lowered the rifle and came
+forward offering her hand.
+
+"It's pleasant to see YOU," she said quite steadily. "We were afraid
+of a Boche trick."
+
+"So I notice," said Gray, intensely amused.
+
+Then the weather-tanned faces of all three sobered.
+
+"This is no place to talk things over," said Gray shortly.
+
+"Do you know a better place?"
+
+"Yes. If you'll follow me."
+
+He went to his pack, put it swiftly in order, hoisted it, resumed
+the tump-line, and looked around at Evelyn for his rifle.
+
+But she had already slung it across her own shoulders and she
+pointed at his wounded hand and its blood-black bandage and motioned
+him forward.
+
+The sun hung on the shoulder of a snow-capped alp when at last these
+three had had their brief understanding concerning one another's
+identity, credentials, and future policy.
+
+Gray's lair, in a bushy hollow between two immense jutting cakes of
+granite, lay on the very brink of the chasm. And there they sat,
+cross-legged in the warmth of the declining sun in gravest
+conference concerning the future.
+
+"Recklow insisted that I come," repeated Gray. "I was in the 208th
+Pioneers--in a sawmilll near La Roche Rouge--Vosges--when I got my
+orders."
+
+"And Recklow thinks we're caught and killed?"
+
+"So does everybody in the Intelligence. The Mulhausen paper had it
+that the Swiss caught you violating the frontier, which meant to
+Recklow that the Boche had done you in."
+
+"I see," nodded McKay.
+
+"So he picked me."
+
+"And you say you guided in Maine?"
+
+"Yes, when I was younger. After I was on my own I kept store at
+South Carry, Maine, and ran the guides there."
+
+"I noticed all the ear-marks," nodded McKay.
+
+Gray smiled: "I guess they're there all right if a man knows 'em
+when he sees 'em."
+
+"Were you badly shot up?"
+
+"Not so bad. They shoot a pea-rifle, single shot all over silver and
+swallowtail stock--"
+
+"I know," smiled McKay.
+
+"Well, you know them. It drills nasty with a soft bullet, cleaner
+with a chilled one. My left hand's a wreck but I sha'n't lose it."
+
+"I had better dress it before night," said Evelyn.
+
+"I dressed it at noon. I won't disturb it again to-day," said Gray,
+thanking her with his eloquent blue eyes.
+
+McKay said: "So you found the place where I once slid off?"
+
+"It's plain enough, windfall and general wreckage mark it."
+
+"You say it's a dozen miles west of here?"
+
+"About."
+
+"That's odd," said McKay thoughtfully. "I had believed I recognised
+this ravine. But these deep gulfs all look more or less alike. And I
+saw it only once and then under hair-raising circumstances."
+
+Gray smiled, but Evelyn did not. McKay said:
+
+"So that's where they winged you, was it?"
+
+"Yes. I was about to negotiate the slide--you remember the V-shaped
+slate cleft?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, I was just starting into that when the rifle cracked and I
+jumped for a tree with a broken wing and a bad scare."
+
+"You saw the man?"
+
+"I did later. He came over to look for dead game, and I ached to let
+him go; but it was too risky with Les Errues swarming alive with
+Boches, and me with the stomach-sickness of a shot-up man. Figure it
+out, McKay, for yourself."
+
+"Of course, you did the wise thing and the right one."
+
+"I think so. I travelled until I fainted." He turned and glanced
+around. "Strangely enough I saw black right here!--fell into this
+hole by accident, and have made it my home since then."
+
+"It was a Godsend," said the girl.
+
+"It was, Miss Erith," said Gray, resting his eloquent eyes on her.
+
+"And you say," continued McKay, "that the Boche are sitting up day
+and night over that slide?"
+
+"Day and night. The swine seem to know it's the only way out. I go
+every day, every night. Always the way is blocked; always I discover
+one or more of their riflemen there in ambush while the rest of the
+pack are ranging Les Errues."
+
+"And yet," said McKay, "we've got to go that way, sooner or later."
+
+There was a silence: then Gray nodded.
+
+"Yes," he said, "but it is a question of waiting."
+
+"There is a moon to-night," observed Evelyn Erith.
+
+McKay lifted his head and looked at her gravely: Gray's blue eyes
+flashed his admiration of a young girl who quietly proposed to face
+an unknown precipice at night by moonlight under the rifles of
+ambushed men.
+
+"After all," said McKay slowly, "is there ANY other way?"
+
+In the silence which ensued Evelyn Erith, who had been lying between
+them on her stomach, her chin propped up on both hands, suddenly
+raised herself on one arm to a sitting posture.
+
+Instantly Gray shrank back, white as a sheet, lifting his mutilated
+hand in its stiffened and bloody rags; and the girl gasped out her
+agonised apology:
+
+"Oh--CAN you forgive me! It was unspeakable of me!"
+
+"It--it's all right," said Gray, the colour coming back to his face;
+but the girl in her excitement of self-reproach and contrition
+begged to be allowed to dress the mutilated hand which her own
+careless movement had almost crushed.
+
+"Oh, Kay-I set my hand on his wounded fingers and rested my full
+weight! Oughtn't he to let us dress it again at once?"
+
+But Gray's pluck was adamant, and he forced a laugh, dismissing the
+matter with another glance at Evelyn out of clear blue eyes that
+said a little more than that no harm had been done--said, in one
+frank and deep-flashing look, more than the girl perhaps cared to
+understand.
+
+The sun slipped behind the rocky flank of a great alp; a burst of
+rosy glory spread fan-wise to the zenith.
+
+Against it, tall and straight and powerful, Gray rose and walking
+slowly to the cliff's edge, looked down into the valley mist now
+rolling like a vast sea of cloud below them.
+
+And, as he stood there, Evelyn's hand grasped McKay's arm:
+
+"If he touches his rifle, shoot! Quick, Kay!"
+
+McKay's right hand fell into his side-pocket--where one of his
+automatics lay. He levelled it as he grasped it, hidden within the
+side-pocket of his coat.
+
+"HIS HAND IS NOT WOUNDED," breathed the girl. "If he touches his
+rifle he is a Hun!"
+
+McKay's head nodded almost imperceptibly. Gray's back was still
+turned, but one hand was extended, carelessly reaching for the rifle
+that stood leaning against the cake of granite.
+
+"Don't touch it!" said McKay in a low but distinct voice: and the
+words galvanised the extended arm and it shot out, grasping the
+rifle, as the man himself dropped out of sight behind the rock.
+
+A terrible stillness fell upon the place; there was not a sound, not
+a movement.
+
+Suddenly the girl pointed at a shadow that moved between the
+rocks--and the crash of McKay's pistol deafened them.
+
+Then, against the dazzling glory of the west a dark shape staggered
+up, clutching a wavering rifle, reeling there against the rosy glare
+an instant; and the girl turned her sick eyes aside as McKay's
+pistol spoke again.
+
+Like a shadow cast by hell the black form swayed, quivered, sank
+away outward into the blinding light that shone across the world.
+
+Presently a tinkling sound came up from the fog-shrouded depths--the
+falling rifle striking ledge after ledge until the receding sound
+grew fainter and more distant, and finally was heard no more.
+
+But that was the only sound they heard; for the man himself lay
+still on the chasm's brink, propped from the depths by a tuft of
+alpine roses in full bloom, his blue eyes wide open, a blue hole
+just between them, and his bandaged hand freed from its camouflage,
+lying palm upward and quite uninjured on the grass!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE GREATER LOVE
+
+
+
+
+
+As the blinding lens of the sun glittered level and its first rays
+poured over tree and rock, a man in the faded field-uniform of a
+Swiss officer of mountain artillery came out on the misty ledge
+across the chasm.
+
+"You over there!" he shouted in English. "Here is a Swiss officer to
+speak with you! Show yourselves!"
+
+Again, after waiting a few moments, he shouted: "Show yourselves or
+answer. It is a matter of life or death for you both!"
+
+There was no reply to the invitation, no sound from the forest, no
+movement visible. Thin threads of vapour began to ascend from the
+tremendous depths of the precipice, steaming upward out of
+mist-choked gorges where, under thick strata of fog, night still lay
+dark over unseen Alpine valleys below.
+
+The Swiss officer advanced to the cliff's edge and looked down upon
+a blank sea of cloud. Presently he turned east and walked cautiously
+along the rim of the chasm for a hundred yards. Here the gulf
+narrowed so that the cleft between the jutting crags was scarcely a
+hundred feet in width. And here he halted once more and called
+across in a resonant, penetrating voice:
+
+"Attention, you, over there in the Forest of Les Errues! You had
+better wake up and listen! Here is a Swiss officer come to speak
+with you. Show yourselves or answer!"
+
+There came no sound from within the illuminated edges of the woods.
+
+But outside, upon the chasm's sparkling edge, lay a dead man stark
+and transfigured and stiff as gold in the sun.
+
+And already the first jewelled death-flies zig-zagged over him,
+lacing the early sunshine with ominous green lightning.
+
+They who had killed this man might not be there behind the sunlit
+foliage of the forest's edge; but the Swiss officer, after waiting a
+few moments, called again, loudly. Then he called a third time more
+loudly still, because into his nostrils had stolen the faint taint
+of dry wood smoke. And he stood there in silhouette against the
+rising sun listening, certain, at last, of the hidden presence of
+those he sought.
+
+Now there came no sound, no stirring behind the forest's sunny edge;
+but just inside it, in the lee of a huge rock, a young girl in
+ragged boy's clothing, uncoiled her slender length from her blanket
+and straightened out flat on her stomach. Her yellow hair made a
+spot like a patch of sunlight on the dead leaves. Her clear golden
+eyes were as brilliant as a lizard's.
+
+From his blanket at her side a man, gaunt and ragged and deeply
+bitten by sun and wind, was pulling an automatic pistol from its
+holster. The girl set her lips to his ear:
+
+"Don't trust him, for God's sake, Kay," she breathed.
+
+He nodded, felt forward with cautious handgroping toward a damp
+patch of moss, and drew himself thither, making no sound among the
+dry leaves.
+
+"Watch the woods behind us, Yellow-hair," he whispered.
+
+The girl fumbled in her tattered pocket and produced a pistol. Then
+she sat up cross-legged on her blanket, rested one elbow across her
+knee, and, cocking the poised weapon, swept the southern woods with
+calm, bright eyes.
+
+Now the man in Swiss uniform called once more across the chasm:
+"Attention, Americans I I know you are there; I smell your fire.
+Also, what you have done is plain enough for me to see--that thing
+lying over there on the edge of the rocks with corpse-flies already
+whirling over it! And you had better answer me, Kay McKay!"
+
+Then the man in the forest who now was lying flat behind a
+birch-tree, answered calmly:
+
+"You, in your Swiss uniform of artillery, over there, what do you
+want of me?"
+
+"So you are there!" cried the Swiss, striving to pierce the foliage
+with eager eyes. "It is you, is it not, Kay McKay?"
+
+"I've answered, have I not?"
+
+"Are you indeed then that same Kay McKay of the Intelligence
+Service, United States Army?"
+
+"You appear to think so. I am Kay McKay; that is answer enough for
+you."
+
+"Your comrade is with you--Evelyn Erith?"
+
+"None of your business," returned McKay, coolly.
+
+"Very well; let it be so then. But that dead man there--why did you
+kill your American comrade?"
+
+"He was a camouflaged Boche," said McKay contemptously. "And I am
+very sure that you're another--you there, in your foolish Swiss
+uniform. So say what you have to say and clear out!"
+
+The officer came close to the edge of the chasm: "I can not expect
+you to believe me," he said, "and yet I really am what I appear to
+be, an officer of Swiss Mountain Artillery. If you think I am
+something else why do you not shoot me?"
+
+McKay was silent. "Nobody would know," said the other. "You can kill
+me very easily. I should fall into the ravine--down through that
+lake of cloud below. Nobody would ever find me. Why don't you
+shoot?"
+
+"I'll shoot when I see fit," retorted McKay in a sombre voice.
+Presently he added in tones that rang a little yet trembled
+too--perhaps from physical reasons--"What do you want of a hunted
+man like me?"
+
+"I want you to leave Swiss territory!"
+
+"Leave!" McKay's laugh was unpleasant. "You know damned well I can't
+leave with Les Errues woods crawling alive with Huns."
+
+"Will you leave the canton of Les Ernies, McKay, if I show you a
+safe route out?"
+
+And, as the other made no reply: "You have no right to be here on
+neutral territory," he added, "and my Government desires you to
+leave at once!"
+
+"I have as much right here as the Huns have," said McKay in his
+pleasant voice.
+
+"Exactly. And these Germans have no right here either!"
+
+"That also is true," rejoined McKay gently, "so why has your
+Government permitted the Hun to occupy the Canton of Les Errues? Oh,
+don't deny it," he added wearily as the Swiss began to repudiate the
+accusation; "you've made Les Errues a No-Man's Land, and it's free
+hunting now! If you're sick of your bargain, send in your mountain
+troops and turn out the Huns."
+
+"And if I also send an escort and a free conduct for you and your
+comrade?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You will not be harmed, not even interned. We set you across our
+wire at Delle. Do you accept?"
+
+"No."
+
+"With every guarantee--"
+
+"You've made this forest a part of the world's battle-field.... No,
+I shall not leave Les Errues!"
+
+"Listen to reason, you insane American! You can not escape those who
+are closing in on you--those who are filtering the forest for
+you--who are gradually driving you out into the eastern edges of Les
+Errues! And what then, when at last you are driven like wild game by
+a line of beaters to the brink of the eastern cliffs? There is no
+water there. You will die of thirst. There is no food. What is there
+left for you to do with your back to the final precipice?"
+
+McKay laughed a hard, unpleasant laugh: "I certainly shall not tell
+you what I mean to do," he said. "If this is all you have to say to
+me you may go!"
+
+There ensued a silence. The Swiss began to pace the opposite cliff,
+his hands behind him. Finally he halted abruptly and looked across
+the chasm.
+
+"Why did you come into Les Errues?" he demanded.
+
+"Ask your terrified authorities. Perhaps they'll tell you--if their
+teeth stop chattering long enough--that I came here to find out
+what the Boche are doing on neutral territory."
+
+"Do you mean to say that you believe in that absurd rumour about
+some secret and gigantic undertaking by the Germans which is
+supposed to be visible from the plateau below us?"
+
+And, as McKay made no reply: "That is a silly fabrication. If your
+Government, suspicious of the neutrality of mine, sent you here on
+any such errand, it was a ridiculous thing to do. Do you hear me,
+McKay?"
+
+"I hear you."
+
+"Well, then! And let me add also that it is a physical impossibility
+for any man to reach the plateau below us from the forest of Les
+Errues!"
+
+"That," said McKay, coldly, "is a lie!"
+
+"What! You offer a Swiss officer such an injury--"
+
+"Yes; and I may add an insulting bullet to the injury in another
+minute. You've lied to me. I have already done what you say is an
+impossibility. I have reached the plateau below Les Errues by way of
+this forest. And I'm going there again, Swiss or no Swiss, Hun or no
+Hun! And if the Boche do drive me out of this forest into the east,
+where you say there is no water to be found among the brush and
+bowlders, and where, at last, you say I shall stand with my back to
+the last sheer precipice, then tell your observation post on the
+white shoulder of Thusis to turn their telescopes on me!"
+
+"In God's name, for what purpose?"
+
+"To take a lesson in how to die from the man your nation has
+betrayed!" drawled McKay.
+
+Then, lying flat, he levelled his pistol, supporting it across the
+palm of his left hand.
+
+"Yellow-hair?"' he said in a guarded voice, not turning.
+
+"Yes, Kay."
+
+"Slip the pack over your shoulders. Take the pigeon and the rifle.
+Be quick, dear."
+
+"It is done," she said softly.
+
+"Now get up and make no noise. Two men are lying in the scrub behind
+that fellow across the chasm. I am afraid they have grenades.... Are
+you ready, Yellow-hair?"
+
+"Ready, dear."
+
+"Go eastward, swiftly, two hundred yards parallel with the
+precipice. Make no sound, Yellow-hair."
+
+The girl cast a pallid, heart-breaking look at him, but he lay there
+without turning his head, his steady pistol levelled across the
+chasm. Then, bending a trifle forward, she stole eastward through
+the forest dusk, the pigeon in its wicker cage in one hand, and on
+her back the pack.
+
+And all the while, across the gulf out of which golden vapours
+curled more thickly as the sun's burning searchlight spread out
+across the world, the man in Swiss uniform stood on the chasm's
+edge, as though awaiting some further word or movement from McKay.
+
+And, after awhile, the word came, clear, startling, snapped out
+across the void:
+
+"Unsling that haversack! Don't touch the flap! Take it off, quick!"
+
+The Swiss seemed astounded. "Quick!" repeated McKay harshly, "or I
+fire."
+
+"What!" burst out the man, "you offer violence to a Swiss officer on
+duty within Swiss territory?"
+
+"I tell you I'll kill you where you stand if you don't take off that
+haversack!"
+
+Suddenly from the scrubby thicket behind the Swiss a man's left arm
+shot up at an angle of forty degrees, and the right arm described an
+arc against the sun. Something round and black parted from it, lost
+against the glare of sunrise.
+
+Then in the woods behind McKay something fell heavily, the solid
+thud obliterated in the shattering roar which followed.
+
+The man in Swiss uniform tore at the flap of his haversack, and he
+must have jerked loose the plug of a grenade in his desperate haste,
+for as McKay's bullet crashed through his face, the contents of his
+sack exploded with a deafening crash.
+
+At the same instant two more bombs fell among the trees behind
+McKay, exploding instantly. Smoke and the thick golden steam from
+the ravine blotted from his sight the crag opposite. And now,
+bending double, McKay ran eastward while behind him the golden dusk
+of the woods roared and flamed with exploding grenades.
+
+Evelyn Erith stood motionless and deathly white, awaiting him.
+
+"Are you all right, Kay?"
+
+"All right, Yellow-hair."
+
+He went up to her, shifting his pistol to the other hand, and as he
+laid his right arm about her shoulders the blaze in his eyes almost
+dazzled her.
+
+"We trust no living thing on earth, you and I, Yellow-hair.... I
+believed that man for awhile. But I tell you whatever is living
+within this forest is our enemy--and if any man comes in the shape
+of my dearest friend I shall kill him before he speaks!"
+
+The man was shaking now; the girl caught his right hand and drew it
+close around her body--that once warm and slender body now become so
+chill and thin under the ragged clothing of a boy.
+
+"Drop your face on my shoulder," she said.
+
+His wasted cheek seemed feverish, burning against her breast.
+
+"Steady, Kay," she whispered.
+
+"Right!... What got me was the thought of you--there when the
+grenades fell.... They blew a black pit where your blanket lay!"
+
+He lifted his head and she smiled into the fever-bright eyes set so
+deeply now in his ravaged visage. There were words on her lips,
+trembling to be uttered. But she dared not believe they would add to
+his strength if spoken. He loved her. She had long known that--had
+long understood that loving her had not hardened his capacity for
+the dogged duty which lay before him.
+
+To win out was a task sufficiently desperate; to win out and bring
+her through alive was the double task that was slowly, visibly
+killing this man whose burning, sunken eyes gazed into hers. She
+dared not triple that task; the cry in her heart died unuttered,
+lest he ever waver in duty to his country when in some vital crisis
+that sacred duty clashed with the obligations that fettered him to a
+girl who had confessed she loved him.
+
+No; the strength that he might derive from such a knowledge was not
+that deathless energy and clear thinking necessary to blind, stern,
+unswerving devotion to the motherland. Love of woman, and her love
+given, could only make the burden of decision triply heavy for this
+man who stood staring at space beside her here in the forest
+twilight where shreds of the night mist floated like ghosts and a
+lost sunspot glowed and waned and glowed on last year's leaves.
+
+The girl pressed her waist with his arm, straightened her shoulders
+and stood erect; and with a quick gesture cleared her brow of its
+cloudy golden hair.
+
+"Now," she said coolly, "we carry on, you and I, Kay, to the honour
+and glory of the land that trusts us in her hour of need... Are you
+are right again?"
+
+"All right, Yellow-hair," he said pleasantly.
+
+On the third day the drive had forced them from the hilly western
+woods, eastward and inexorably toward that level belt of shaggy
+forest, scrub growth, and arid, bowlder-strewn table-land where
+there was probably no water, nothing living to kill for food, and
+only the terrific ravines beyond where cliffs fell downward to the
+dim green world lying somewhere below under its blanket of Alpine
+mist.
+
+On the fourth day, still crowded outward and toward the ragged edge
+of the mountain world, they found, for the first time, no water to
+fill their bottles. Realising their plight, McKay turned desperately
+westward, facing pursuit, ranging the now narrow forest in hopes of
+an opportunity to break through the closing line of beaters.
+
+But it proved to be a deadline that he and his half-starved comrade
+faced; shadowy figures, half seen, sometimes merely heard and
+divined, flitted everywhere through the open woods beyond them. And
+at night a necklace of fires--hundreds of them--barred the west to
+them, curving outward like the blade of a flaming scimitar.
+
+On the fifth day McKay, lying in his blanket beside the girl, told
+her that if they found no water that day they must let their
+carrier-pigeon go.
+
+The girl sat up in her torn blanket and met his gaze very calmly.
+What he had just said to her meant the beginning of the end. She
+understood perfectly. But her voice was sweet and undisturbed as she
+answered him, and they quietly discussed the chances of discovering
+water in some sunken hole among the outer ledges and bowlders
+whither they were being slowly and hopelessly forced.
+
+Noon found them still searching for some pocket of stale rain-water;
+but once only did they discover the slightest trace of moisture--a
+crust of slime in a rocky basin, and from it a blind lizard was
+slowly creeping--a heavy, lustreless, crippled thing that toiled
+aimlessly and painfully up the rock, only to slide back into the
+slime again, leaving a trail of iridescent moisture where its
+sagging belly dragged.
+
+In a grove of saplings there were a few ferns; and here McKay dug
+with his trench knife; but the soil proved to be very shallow;
+everywhere rock lay close to the surface; there was no water there
+under the black mould.
+
+To and fro they roamed, doggedly seeking for some sign of water. And
+the woods seemed damp, too; and there were long reaches of dewy
+ferns. But wherever McKay dug, his knife soon touched the solid rock
+below. And they wandered on.
+
+In the afternoon, resting in the shade, he noticed her lips were
+bleeding--and turned away, sharply, unable to endure her torture.
+She seemed to understand his abrupt movement, for she leaned
+slightly against him where he sat amid the ferns with his back to a
+tree--as a dog leans when his master is troubled.
+
+"I think," she said with an effort, "we should release our pigeon
+now. It seems to be very weak."
+
+He nodded.
+
+The bird appeared languid; hunger and thirst were now telling fast
+on the little feathered messenger.
+
+Evelyn shook out the last dusty traces of corn; McKay removed the
+bands. But the bird merely pecked at the food once or twice and then
+settled down with beak gaping and the film stealing over its eyes.
+
+McKay wrote on tissue the date and time of day; and a word more to
+say that they had, now, scarcely any chance. He added, however, that
+others ought to try because there was no longer any doubt in his
+mind that the Boche were still occupied with some gigantic work
+along the Swiss border in the neighbourhood of Mount Terrible; and
+that the Swiss Government, if not abetting, at least was cognizant
+of the Hun activities.
+
+This message he rolled into a quill, fastened it, took the bird, and
+tossed it westward into the air.
+
+The pigeon beat the morning breeze feebly for a moment, then
+fluttered down to the top of a rock.
+
+For five minutes that seemed five years they looked at the bird,
+which had settled down in the sun, its bright eyes alternately
+dimmed by the film or slowly clearing.
+
+Then, as they watched, the pigeon stood up and stretched its neck
+skyward, peering hither and thither at the blue vault above. And
+suddenly it rose, painfully, higher, higher, seeming to acquire
+strength in the upper air levels. The sun flashed on its wings as it
+wheeled; then the distant bird swept westward into a long straight
+course, flying steadily until it vanished like a mote in mid-air.
+
+McKay did not trust himself to speak. Presently he slipped his pack
+over both shoulders and took the rifle from where it lay against a
+rock. The girl, too, had picked up the empty wicker cage, but
+recollected herself and let it fall on the dead leaves.
+
+Neither she nor McKay had spoken. The latter stood staring down at
+the patch of ferns into which the cage had rolled. And it was some
+time before his dulled eyes noticed that there was grass growing
+there, too--swale grass, which he had not before seen in this arid
+eastern region.
+
+When finally he realised what it might signify he stood staring; a
+vague throb of hope stirred the thin blood in his sunken cheeks. But
+he dared not say that he hoped; he merely turned northward in
+silence and moved into the swale grass. And his slim comrade
+followed.
+
+Half an hour later he waited for the girl to come up along side of
+him. "Yellow-hair," he said, "this is swale or marsh-grass we are
+following. And little wild creatures have made a runway through
+it... as though there were--a drinking-place--somewhere--"
+
+He forced himself to look up at her--at her dry, blood-blackened
+lips:
+
+"Lean on me," he whispered, and threw his arm around her.
+
+And so, slowly, together, they came through the swale to a living
+spring.
+
+A dead roe-deer lay there--stiffened into an indescribable attitude
+of agony where it had fallen writhing in the swale; and its terrible
+convulsions had torn up and flattened the grass and ferns around it.
+
+And, as they gazed at this pitiable dead thing, something else
+stirred on the edge of the pool--a dark, slim bird, that strove to
+move at the water's edge, struggled feebly, then fell over and lay a
+crumpled mound of feathers.
+
+"Oh God!" whispered the girl, "there are dead birds lying everywhere
+at the water's edge! And little furry creatures--dead--all dead at
+the water's edge!"
+
+There was a flicker of brown wings: a bird alighted at the pool,
+peered fearlessly right and left, drank, bent its head to drink
+again, fell forward twitching and lay there beating the grass with
+feeble wings.
+
+After a moment only one wing quivered. Then the little bird lay
+still.
+
+Perhaps an ancient and tragic instinct possessed these two--for as a
+wild thing, mortally hurt, wanders away through solitude to find a
+spot in which to die, so these two moved slowly away together into
+the twilight of the trees, unconscious, perhaps, what they were
+seeking, but driven into aimless motion toward that appointed place.
+
+And somehow it is given to the stricken to recognise the ghostly
+spot when they draw near it and their appointed hour approaches.
+
+There was a fallen tree--not long fallen--which in its earthward
+crash had hit another smaller tree, partly uprooting the latter so
+that it leaned at a perilous angle over a dry gully below.
+
+Here dead leaves had drifted deep. And here these two came, and
+crept in among the withered branches and lay down among the fallen
+leaves. For a long while they lay motionless. Then she moved, turned
+over, and slipped into his arms.
+
+Whether she slept or whether her lethargy was unconsciousness due to
+privation he could not tell. Her parted lips were blackened, her
+mouth and tongue swollen.
+
+He held her for awhile, conscious that a creeping stupor threatened
+his senses--making no effort to save his mind from the ominous
+shadows that crept toward him like live things moving slowly, always
+a little nearer. Then pain passed through him like a piercing thread
+of fire, and he struggled upright, and saw her head slide down
+across his knees. And he realised that there were things for him to
+do yet--arrangements to make before the crawling shadows covered
+his body and stained his mind with the darkness of eternal night.
+
+And first, while she still lay across his knees, he filled his
+pistol. Because she must die quickly if the Hun came. For when the
+Hun comes death is woman's only sanctuary.
+
+So he prepared a swift salvation for her. And, if the Hun came or
+did not come, still this last refuge must be secured for her before
+the creeping shadows caught him and the light in his mind died out.
+
+With his loaded pistol lifted he sat a moment, staring into the
+woods out of bloodshot eyes; then he summoned all his strength and
+rose, letting his unconscious comrade slip from his knees to the bed
+of dead leaves.
+
+Now with his knife he tried the rocky forest floor again, feeling
+blindly for water. He tried slashing saplings for a drop of sap.
+
+The great tree that had fallen had broken off a foot above ground.
+The other tree slanted above a dry gully at such an angle that it
+seemed as though a touch would push it over, yet its foliage was
+still green and unwilted although the mesh of roots and earth were
+all exposed.
+
+He noted this in a dull way, thinking always of water. And
+presently, scarcely knowing what he was doing, he placed both arms
+against the leaning trunk and began to push. And felt the leaning
+tree sway slowly earthward.
+
+Then into the pain and confusion of his clouding mind something
+flashed with a dazzling streak of light--the flare-up of dying
+memory; and he hurled himself against the leaning tree. And it
+slowly sank, lying level and uprooted.
+
+And in the black bed of the roots lay darkling a little pool of
+water.
+
+The girl's eyes unclosed on his. Her face and lips were dripping
+under the sopping, icy sponge of green moss with which he was
+bathing her and washing out her mouth and tongue.
+
+Into her throat he squeezed the water, drop by drop only.
+
+It was late in the afternoon before he dared let her drink.
+
+During the night she slept an hour or two, awoke to ask for water,
+then slept again, only to awake to the craving that he always
+satisfied.
+
+Before sunrise he took his pack, took both her shoes from her feet,
+tore some rags from the lining of her skirt and from his own coat,
+and leaving her asleep, went out into the grey dusk of morning.
+
+When he again came to the poisoned spring he unslung his pack and,
+holding it by both straps, dragged it through marsh grass and fern,
+out through the fringe of saplings, out through low scrub and brake
+and over moss and lichens to the edge of the precipice beyond.
+
+And here on a scrubby bush he left fragments of their garments
+entangled; and with his hobnailed heels he broke crumbling edges of
+rock and smashed the moss and stunted growth and tore a path among
+the Alpine roses which clothed the chasm's treacherous edge, so that
+it might seem as though a heavy object had plunged down into the
+gulf below.
+
+Such bowlders as he could stir from their beds and roll over he
+dislodged and pushed out, listening to them as they crashed
+downward, tearing the cliff's grassy face until, striking some lower
+shelf, they bounded out into space.
+
+Now in this bruised path he stamped the imprints of her two rough
+shoes in moss and soil, and drove his own iron-shod feet wherever
+lichen or earth would retain the imprint.
+
+All the footprints pointed one way and ended at the chasm's edge.
+And there, also, he left the wicker cage; and one of his pistols,
+too--the last and most desperate effort to deceive--for, near it, he
+flung the cartridge belt with its ammunition intact--on the chance
+that the Hun would believe the visible signs, because only a dying
+man would abandon such things.
+
+For they must believe the evidence he had prepared for them--this
+crazed trail of two poisoned human creatures--driven by agony and
+madness to their own destruction.
+
+And now, slinging on his pack, he made his way, walking backward, to
+the poisoned spring.
+
+It was scarcely light, yet through the first ghostly grey of
+daybreak a few birds came; and he killed four with bits of rock
+before the little things could drink the sparkling, crystalline
+death that lay there silvered by the dawn.
+
+She was still asleep when he came once more to the bed of leaves
+between the fallen trees. And she had not awakened when he covered
+his dry fire and brought to her the broth made from the birds.
+
+There was, in his pack, a little food left. When he awakened her she
+smiled and strove to rise, but he took her head on his knees and fed
+her, holding the pannikin to her lips. And after he too had eaten he
+went to look into the hollow where the tree had stood; and found it
+brimming with water.
+
+So he filled his bottles; then, with hands and knife, working
+cautiously and noiselessly he began to enlarge the basin, drawing
+out stones, scooping out silt and fibre.
+
+All the morning he worked at his basin, which, fed by some
+deep-seated and living spring, now overflowed and trickled down into
+the dry gully below.
+
+By noon he had a pool as large and deep as a bathtub; and he came
+and sat down beside her under the fallen mass of branches where she
+lay watching the water bubble up and clear itself of the clouded
+silt.
+
+"You are very wonderful, Kay," she sighed, but her bruised lips
+smiled at him and her scarred hand crept toward him and lay in his.
+Seated so, he told her what he had done in the grey of morning while
+she slept.
+
+And, even as he was speaking, a far voice cried through the
+woods--distant, sinister as the harsh scream of a hawk that has made
+its kill.
+
+Then another voice shouted, hoarse with triumph; others answered,
+near and far; the forest was full of the heavy, ominous sounds. For
+the Huns were gathering in eastward from the wooded western hills,
+and their sustained clamour filled the air like the unclean racket
+of vultures sighting abomination and eager to feed.
+
+McKay laid his loaded pistol beside him.
+
+"Dear Yellow-hair," he whispered.
+
+She smiled up at him. "If they think we died there on the edge of
+the precipice, then you and I should live.... If they doubt it they
+will come back through these woods.... And it isn't likely that we
+shall live very long."
+
+"I know," she said. And laid her other hand in his--a gesture of
+utter trust so exquisite that, for a moment, tears blinded him, and
+all the forest wavered grotesquely before his desperately fixed
+gaze. And presently, within the field of his vision, something
+moved--a man going westward among the trees his rifle slung over his
+shoulder. And there were others, too, plodding stolidly back toward
+the western forests of Les Errues--forms half-seen between trees,
+none near, and only two who passed within hearing, the trample of
+their heavy feet loud among the fallen leaves, their guttural voices
+distinct. And, as they swung westward, rifles slung, pipes alight,
+and with the air of surly hunters homeward bound after a successful
+kill, the hunted, lying close under their roof of branches, heard
+them boasting of their work and of the death their quarry had
+died--of their agony at the spring which drove them to that death in
+the depths of the awful gulf beyond.
+
+"And that," shouted one, stifling with laughter, "I should like to
+have seen. It is all I have to regret of this jagd-that I did not
+see the wilde die!"
+
+The other Hun was less cheerful: "But what a pity to leave that
+roe-deer lying there. Such good meat poisoned! Schade, immer
+schade!--to leave good meat like that in the forest of Les Errues!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+VIA MALA
+
+
+
+
+
+
+The girl sat bolt upright on her bed of dead leaves, still confused
+by sleep, her ears ringing with the loud, hard voice which had
+awakened her to consciousness of pain and hunger once again.
+
+Not ten feet from her, between where she lay under the branches of a
+fallen tree, and the edge of the precipice beyond, full in the
+morning sunlight stood two men in the dress of Swiss mountaineers.
+
+One of them was reading aloud from a notebook in a slow, decisive,
+metallic voice; the other, swinging two dirty flags, signalled the
+message out across the world of mountains as it was read to him in
+that nasty, nasal Berlin dialect of a Prussian junker.
+
+"In the Staubbach valley no traces of the bodies have been
+discovered," continued the tall, square-shouldered reader in his
+deliberate voice; "It is absolutely necessary that the bodies of
+these two American secret agents, Kay McKay and Evelyn Erith, be
+discovered, and all their papers, personal property, and the
+clothing and accoutrements belonging to them be destroyed without
+the slightest trace remaining.
+
+"It is ordered also that, when discovered, their bodies be burned
+and the ashes reduced to powder and sown broadcast through the
+forest."
+
+The voice stopped; the signaller whipped his dirty tattered flags in
+the sunlight for a few moments more, then ceased and stood stiffly
+at attention, his sun-dazzled gaze fixed on a far mountain slope
+where something glittered--perhaps a bit of mica, perhaps the mirror
+of a helio.
+
+Presently, in the same disagreeable, distinct, nasal, and measured
+voice, the speaker resumed the message:
+
+"Until last evening it has been taken for granted that the American
+Intelligence Officer, McKay, and his companion, Miss Erith, made
+insane through suffering after having drunk at a spring the water of
+which we had prepared for them according to plan, had either jumped
+or fallen from the eastward cliffs of Les Errues into the gulf
+through which flows the Staubbach.
+
+"But, up to last night, my men, who descended by the Via Mala, have
+been unable to find the bodies of these two Americans, although
+there is, on the cliffs above, every evidence that they plunged down
+there to the valley of the brook below, which is now being searched.
+
+"If, therefore, my men fail to discover these bodies, the alarming
+presumption is forced upon us that these two Americans have once
+more tricked us; and that they may still be hiding in the Forbidden
+Forest of Les Errues.
+
+"In that event proper and drastic measures will be taken, the
+air-squadron on the northern frontier co-operating."
+
+The voice ceased: the flags whistled and snapped in the wind for a
+little while longer, then the signaller came to stiffest attention.
+
+"Tell them we descend by the Via Mala," added the nasal voice.
+
+The flags swung sharply into motion for a few moments more; then the
+Prussian officer pocketed his notebook; the signaller furled his
+flags; and, as they turned and strode westward along the border of
+the forest, the girl rose to her knees on her bed of leaves and
+peered after them.
+
+What to do she scarcely knew. Her comrade, McKay, had been gone
+since dawn in quest of something to keep their souls and bodies en
+liaison--mountain hare, a squirrel perhaps, perhaps a songbird or
+two, or a pocketful of coral mushrooms--anything to keep them alive
+on that heart-breaking trail of duty at the end of which sat old man
+Death awaiting them, wearing a spiked helmet.
+
+And what to do in this emergency, and in the absence of McKay,
+perplexed and frightened her; for her comrade's strict injunction
+was to remain hidden until his return; and yet one of these men now
+moving westward there along the forest's sunny edges had spoken of a
+way out and had called it the Via Mala. And that is what McKay had
+been looking for--a way out of the Forbidden Forest of Les Errues to
+the table-land below, where, through a cleft still more profound,
+rushed the black Staubbach under an endless mist of icy spray.
+
+She must make up her mind quickly; the two men were drawing away
+from her--almost out of sight now.
+
+On her ragged knees among the leaves she groped for his coat where
+he had flung it, for the weather had turned oppressive in the forest
+of Les Errues-and fumbling, she found his notebook and pencil, and
+tore out a leaf:
+
+"Kay dear, two Prussians in Swiss mountain dress have been
+signalling across the knees of Thusis that our bodies have not been
+discovered in the ravine. They have started for the ravine by a way
+evidently known to them and which they speak of as the Via Mala. You
+told me to stay here, but I dare not let this last chance go to
+discover what we have been looking for--a path to the plateau below.
+I take my pistol and your trench-knife and I will try to leave signs
+for you to follow. They have started west along the cliffs and they
+are now nearly out of sight, so I must hurry. Yellow-hair."
+
+This bit of paper she left on her bed of leaves and pinned it to the
+ground with a twig. Then she rose painfully, drew in her belt and
+laced her tattered shoes, and, taking the trench-knife and pistol,
+limped out among the trees.
+
+The girl was half naked in her rags; her shirt scarcely hung to her
+shoulders, and she fastened the stag-horn buttons on her jacket. Her
+breeches, which left both knees bare, were of leather and held out
+pretty well, but the heavy wool stockings gaped, and, had it not
+been for the hob-nails, the soles must have fallen from her hunter's
+shoes.
+
+At first she moved painfully and stiffly, but as she hurried,
+limping forward over the forest moss, limbs and body grew more
+supple and she felt less pain.
+
+And now, not far beyond, and still full in the morning sunshine,
+marched the men she was following. The presumed officer strode on
+ahead, a high-shouldered frame of iron in his hunter's garb; the
+signaller with furled flags tucked under his arm clumped stolidly at
+his heels with the peculiar peasant gait which comes from following
+uneven furrows in the wake of a plow.
+
+For ten minutes, perhaps, the two men continued on, then halted
+before a great mass of debris, uprooted trees, long dead, the vast,
+mangled roots and tops of which sprawled in every direction between
+masses of rock, bowlders, and an indescribable confusion of brush
+and upheaved earth.
+
+Nearer and nearer crept the girl, until, lying flat behind a
+beech-tree, she rested within earshot--so close, indeed, that she
+could smell the cigarette which the officer had lighted--smell,
+even, the rank stench of the sulphur match.
+
+Meanwhile the signaller had laid aside his flags and while the
+officer looked on he picked up a heavy sapling from among the fallen
+trees. Using this as a lever he rolled aside a tree-trunk, then
+another, and finally a bowlder.
+
+"That will do," remarked the officer. "Take your flags and go
+ahead."
+
+Then Evelyn Erith, rising cautiously to her scarred knees, saw the
+signaller gather up his flags and step into what apparently was the
+bed of the bowlder on the edge of the windfall. But it was deeper
+than that, for he descended to his knees, to his waist, his
+shoulders; and then his head disappeared into some hole which she
+could not see.
+
+Now the officer who had remained, calmly smoking his cigarette,
+flung the remains of it over the cliff, turned, surveyed the forest
+behind him with minute deliberation, then stepped into the
+excavation down which the signaller had disappeared.
+
+Some instinct kept the girl motionless after the man's head had
+vanished; minute after minute passed, and Evelyn Erith never
+stirred. And suddenly the officer's head and shoulders popped up
+from the hole and he peered back at the forest like an alarmed
+marmot. And the girl saw his hands resting on the edge of the hole;
+and the hands grasped two pistols.
+
+Presently, apparently reassured and convinced that nobody was
+attempting to follow him, he slowly sank out of sight once more.
+
+The girl waited; and while waiting she cut a long white sliver from
+the beech-tree and carved an arrow pointing toward the heap of
+debris. Then, with the keen tip of her trench-knife she scratched on
+the silvery bark:
+
+"An underground way in the windfall. I have followed them.
+Yellow-hair."
+
+She crept stealthily out into the sunshine through the vast abatis
+of the fallen trees and came to the edge of the hole. Looking down
+fearfully she realised at once that this was the dry, rocky stairs
+of some subterranean watercourse through which, in springtime, great
+fields of melting snow poured in torrents down the face of the
+precipice below.
+
+There were no loose stones to be seen; the rocky escalier had been
+swept clean unnumbered ages since; but the rocks were fearfully
+slippery, shining with a vitreous polish where the torrents of many
+thousand years had worn them smooth.
+
+And this was what they called the Via Mala!--this unsuspected and
+secret underground way that led, God knew how, into the terrific
+depths below.
+
+There was another Via Mala: she had seen it from Mount Terrible; but
+it was a mountain path trodden not infrequently. This Via Mala,
+however, wormed its way downward into shadows. Where it led and by
+what perilous ways she could only imagine. And were these men
+perhaps, lying in ambush for her somewhere below--on the chance that
+they might have been seen and followed?
+
+What would they do to her--shoot her? Push her outward from some
+rocky shelf into the misty gulf below? Or would they spring on her
+and take her alive? At the thought she chilled, knowing what a woman
+might expect from the Hun.
+
+She threw a last look upward where they say God dwells somewhere
+behind the veil of blinding blue; then she stepped downward into the
+shadows.
+
+For a rod or two she could walk upright as long as she could retain
+her insecure footing on the glassy, uneven floor of rock; and a
+vague demi-light reigned there making objects distinct enough for
+her to see the stalactites and stalagmites like discoloured teeth in
+a chevaux-de-frise.
+
+Between these gaping fangs she crept, listening, striving to set her
+feet on the rocks without making any noise. But that seemed to be
+impossible and the rocky tunnel echoed under her footsteps,
+slipping, sliding, hob-nails scraping in desperate efforts not to
+fall.
+
+Again and again she halted, listening fearfully, one hand crushed
+against her drumming heart; but she had heard no sound ahead; the
+men she followed must be some distance in advance; and she stole
+forward again, afraid, desperately crushing out the thoughts--that
+crowded and surged in her brain--the terrible living swarm of fears
+that clamoured to her of the fate of white women if captured by the
+things men called Boche and Hun.
+
+And now she was obliged to stoop as the roof of the tunnel dipped
+lower and she could scarcely see in the increasing darkness, clearly
+enough to avoid the stalactites.
+
+However, from far ahead came a glimmer; and even when she was
+obliged to drop to her knees and creep forward, she could still make
+out the patch of light, and the Via Mala again became visible with
+its vitreous polished floor and its stalactites and water-blunted
+stalagmites always threatening to trip her and transfix her.
+
+Now, very far ahead, something moved and partly obscured the distant
+glimmer; and she saw, at a great distance, the two men she followed,
+moving in silhouette across the light. When they had disappeared she
+ventured to move on again. And her knees were bleeding when she
+crept out along a heavy shelf of rock set like a balcony on the
+sheer face of the cliff.
+
+Tufts of alpine roses grew on it, and slippery lichens, and a few
+seedlings which next spring's torrent would wash away into the
+still, misty depths below.
+
+But this shelf of rock was not all. The Via Mala could not end on
+the chasm's brink.
+
+Cautiously she dragged herself out along the shadow of the cliff,
+listening, peering among the clefts now all abloom with alpen rosen;
+and saw nothing--no way forward; no steep path, hewn by man or by
+nature, along the face of that stupendous battlement of rock.
+
+She lay listening. But if there was a river roaring somewhere
+through the gorge it was too far below her for her to hear it.
+
+Nothing stirred there; the distant bluish parapets of rock across
+the ravine lay in full sunshine, but nothing moved there, neither
+man nor beast nor bird; and the tremendous loneliness of it all
+began to frighten her anew.
+
+Yet she must go on; they had gone on; there was some hidden way.
+Where? Then, all in a moment, what she had noticed before, and had
+taken for a shadow cast by a slab of projecting rock, took the shape
+of a cleft in the facade of the precipice itself--an opening that
+led straight into the cliff.
+
+When she dragged herself up to it she saw it had been made by man.
+The ancient scars of drills still marked it. Masses of rock had been
+blasted from it; but that must have been years ago because a deep
+growth of moss and lichen covered the scars and the tough stems of
+crag-shrubs masked every crack.
+
+Here, too, bloomed the livid, over-rated edelweiss, dear to the
+maudlin and sentimental side of an otherwise wolfish race, its
+rather ghastly flowers starring the rocks.
+
+As at the entrance to a tomb the girl stood straining her frightened
+eyes to pierce the darkness; then, feeling her way with outstretched
+pistol-hand, she entered.
+
+The man-fashioned way was smooth. Or Hun or Swiss, whoever had
+wrought this Via Mala out of the eternal rock, had wrought
+accurately and well. The grade was not steep; the corridor descended
+by easy degrees, twisting abruptly to turn again on itself, but
+always leading downward in thick darkness.
+
+No doubt that those accustomed to travel the Via Mala always carried
+lights; the air was clean and dry and any lighted torch could have
+lived in such an atmosphere. But Evelyn Erith carried no lights--had
+thought of none in the haste of setting out.
+
+Years seemed to her to pass in the dreadful darkness of that descent
+as she felt her way downward, guided by the touch of her feet and
+the contact of her hand along the unseen wall.
+
+Again and again she stopped to rest and to check the rush of
+sheerest terror that threatened at moments her consciousness.
+
+There was no sound in the Via Mala. The thick darkness was like a
+fabric clogging her movements, swathing her, brushing across her so
+that she seemed actually to feel the horrible obscurity as some
+concrete thing impeding her and resting upon her with an increasing
+weight that bent her slender figure.
+
+There was something grey ahead.... There was light--a sickly
+pin-point. It seemed to spread but grow duller. A pallid patch
+widened, became lighter again. And from an infinite distance there
+came a deadened roaring--the hollow menace of water rushing through
+depths unseen.
+
+She stood within the shadow zone inside the tunnel and looked out
+upon the gorge where, level with the huge bowlders all around her,
+an alpine river raged and dashed against cliff and stone, flinging
+tons of spray into the air until the whole gorge was a driving sea
+of mist. Here was the floor of the canon; here was the way they had
+searched for. Her task was done. And now, on bleeding little feet,
+she must retrace her steps; the Via Mala must become the Via
+Dolorosa, and she must turn and ascend that Calvary to the dreadful
+crest.
+
+She was very weak. Privation had sapped the young virility that had
+held out so long. She had not eaten for a long while--did not,
+indeed, crave food any longer. But her thirst raged, and she knelt
+at a little pool within the cavern walls and bent her bleeding mouth
+to the icy fillet of water. She drank little, rinsed her mouth and
+face and dried her lips on her sleeve. And, kneeling so, closed her
+eyes in utter exhaustion for a moment.
+
+And when she opened them she found herself looking up at two men.
+
+Before she could move one of the men kicked her pistol out of her
+nerveless hand, caught her by the shoulder and dragged the
+trench-knife from her convulsive grasp. Then he said in English:
+
+"Get up." And the other, the signalman, struck her across her back
+with the furled flags so that she lost her balance and fell forward
+on her face. They got her to her feet and pushed her out among the
+bowlders, through the storming spray, and across the floor of the
+ravine into the sunlight of a mossy place all set with trees. And
+she saw butterflies flitting there through green branches flecked
+with sunshine.
+
+The officer seated himself on a fallen tree and crossed his heavy
+feet on a carpet of wild flowers. She stood erect, the signaller
+holding her right arm above the elbow.
+
+After the officer had leisurely lighted a cigarette he asked her who
+she was. She made no answer.
+
+"You are the Erith woman, are you not?" he demanded.
+
+She was silent.
+
+"You Yankee slut," he added, nodding to himself and staring up into
+her bloodless face.
+
+Her eyes wandered; she looked at, but scarcely saw the lovely
+wildflowers under foot, the butterflies flashing their burnished
+wings among the sunbeams.
+
+"Drop her arm." The signaller let go and stood at attention.
+
+"Take her knife and pistol and your flags and go across the stream
+to the hut."
+
+The signaller saluted, gathered the articles mentioned, and went
+away in that clumping, rocking gait of the land peasant of Hundom.
+
+"Now," said the officer, "strip off your coat!"
+
+She turned scarlet, but he sprang to his feet and tore her coat from
+her. She fought off every touch; several times he struck her--once
+so sharply that the blood gushed from her mouth and nose; but still
+she fought him; and when he had completed his search of her person,
+he was furious, streaked with sweat and all smeared with her blood.
+
+"Damned cat of a Yankee!" he panted, "stand there where you are or
+I'll blow your face off!"
+
+But as he emptied the pockets of her coat she seized it and put it
+on, sobbing out her wrath and contempt of him and his threats as she
+covered her nearly naked body with the belted jacket and buttoned it
+to her throat.
+
+He glanced at the papers she had carried, at the few poor articles
+that had fallen from her pockets, tossed them on the ground beside
+the log and resumed his seat and cigarette.
+
+"Where's McKay?"
+
+No answer.
+
+"So you tricked us, eh?" he sneered. "You didn't get your rat-poison
+at the spring after all. The Yankees are foxes after all!" He
+laughed his loud, nasal, nickering laugh--"Foxes are foxes but men
+are men. Do you understand that, you damned vixen?"
+
+"Will you let me kill myself?" she asked in a low but steady voice.
+
+He seemed surprised, then realising why she had asked that mercy,
+showed all his teeth and smirked at her out of narrow-slitted eyes.
+
+"Where is McKay?" he repeated.
+
+She remained mute.
+
+"Will you tell me where he is to be found?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"Will you tell me if I let you go?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Will you tell me if I give you back your trench-knife?"
+
+The white agony in her face interested and amused him and he waited
+her reply with curiosity.
+
+"No!" she whispered.
+
+"Will you tell me where McKay is to be found if I promise to shoot
+you before--"
+
+"No!" she burst out with a strangling sob.
+
+He lighted another cigarette and, for a while, considered her
+musingly as he sat smoking. After a while he said: "You are rather
+dirty--all over blood. But you ought to be pretty after you're
+washed." Then he laughed.
+
+The girl swayed where she stood, fighting to retain consciousness.
+
+"How did you discover the Via Mala?" he inquired with blunt
+curiosity.
+
+"You showed it to me!"
+
+"You slut!" he said between his teeth. Then, still brutishly
+curious: "How did you know that spring had been poisoned? By those
+dead birds and animals, I suppose.... And that's what I told
+everybody, too. The wild things are bound to come and drink. But you
+and your running-mate are foxes. You made us believe you had gone
+over the cliff. Yes, even I believed it. It was well done--a true
+Yankee trick. All the same, foxes are only foxes after all. And here
+you are."
+
+He got up; she shrank back, and he began to laugh at her.
+
+"Foxes are only foxes, my pretty, dirty one!--but men are men, and a
+Prussian is a super-man. You had forgotten that, hadn't you, little
+Yankee?"
+
+He came nearer. She sprang aside and past him and ran for the river;
+but he caught her at the edge of a black pool that whirled and flung
+sticky chunks of foam over the bowlders. For a while they fought
+there in silence, then he said, breathing heavily, "A fox can't
+drown. Didn't you know that, little fool?"
+
+Her strength was ebbing. He forced her back to the glade and stood
+there holding her, his inflamed face a sneering, leering mask for
+the hot hell that her nearness and resistance had awakened in him.
+Suddenly, still holding her, he jerked his head aside and stared
+behind him. Then he pushed her violently from him, clutched at his
+holster, and started to run. And a pistol cracked and he pitched
+forward across the log upon which he had sat, and lay so, dripping
+dark blood, and fouling the wild-flowers with the flow.
+
+"Kay!" she said in a weak voice.
+
+McKay, his pack strapped to his back, his blood-shot eyes brilliant
+in his haggard visage, ran forward and bent over the thing. Then he
+shot him again, behind the ear.
+
+The rage of the river drowned the sound of the shots; the man in the
+hut across the stream did not come to the door. But McKay caught
+sight of the shack; his fierce eyes questioned the girl, and she
+nodded.
+
+He crossed the stream, leaping from bowlder to bowlder, and she saw
+him run up to the door of the hut, level his weapon, then enter. She
+could not hear the shots; she waited, half-dead, until he came out
+again, reloading his pistol.
+
+She struggled desperately to retain her senses--to fight off the
+deadly faintness that assailed her. She could scarcely see him as he
+came swiftly toward her--she put out her arms blindly, felt his
+fierce clasp envelop her, passed so into blessed unconsciousness.
+
+A drop or two of almost scalding broth aroused her. He held her in
+his arms and fed her--not much--and then let her stretch out on the
+sun-hot moss again.
+
+Before sunset he awakened her again, and he fed her--more this time.
+
+Afterward she lay on the moss with her golden-brown eyes partly
+open. And he had constructed a sponge of clean, velvety moss, and
+with this he washed her swollen mouth and bruised cheek, and her
+eyes and throat and hands and feet.
+
+After the sun went down she slept again: and he stretched out beside
+her, one arm under her head and about her neck.
+
+Moonlight pierced the foliage, silvering everything and inlaying the
+earth with the delicate tracery of branch and leaf.
+
+Moonlight still silvered her face when she awoke. After a while the
+shadow slipped from his face, too.
+
+"Kay?" she whispered.
+
+"Yes, Yellow-hair."
+
+And, after a little while she turned her face to his and her lips
+rested on his.
+
+Lying so, unstirring, she fell asleep once more.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE GREAT SECRET
+
+
+
+
+
+All that morning American infantry had been passing through Delle
+over the Belfort road. The sun of noon saw no end to them.
+
+The endless column of shadows, keeping pace with them, lengthened
+with the afternoon along their lengthening line.
+
+Now and then John Recklow opened the heavy wooden door in his garden
+wall and watched them until duty called him to his telephone or to
+his room where maps and papers littered the long table. But he
+always returned to the door in the garden wall when duty permitted
+and leaned at ease there, smoking his pipe, keen-eyed, impassive,
+gazing on the unbroken line of young men--men of his own race,
+sun-scorched, dusty, swinging along the Belfort road, their right
+elbows brushing Switzerland, their high sun-reddened pillar of dust
+drifting almost into Germany, and their heavy tread thundering
+through that artery of France like the prophetic pulse of victory.
+
+A rich September sunset light streamed over them; like a moving
+shaft of divine fire the ruddy dust marched with them upon their
+right hand; legions of avenging shadows led them forward where, for
+nearly half a century beyond the barriers of purple hills, naked and
+shackled, the martyr-daughters of the Motherland stood
+waiting--Alsace and Lorraine.
+
+"We are on our way!" laughed the Yankee bugles.
+
+The Fortress of Metz growled "Nein!"
+
+Recklow went back to his telephone. For a long while he remained
+there very busy with Belfort and Verdun. When again he returned to
+the green door in his garden wall, the Yankee infantry had passed;
+and of their passing there remained no trace save for the
+smouldering pillar of fire towering now higher than the eastern
+horizon and leagthened to a wall that ran away into the north as far
+as the eye could see.
+
+His cats had come out into the garden for "the cats' hour"--that
+mysterious compromise between day and evening when all things feline
+awake and stretch and wander or sit motionless, alert, listening to
+occult things. And in the enchantment of that lovely liaison which
+links day and night--when the gold and rose soften to mauve as the
+first star is born--John Recklow raised his quiet eyes and saw two
+dead souls come into his garden by the little door in the wall.
+
+"Is it you, Kay McKay?" he said at last.
+
+But the shock of the encounter still fettered him so that he walked
+very slowly to the woman who was now moving toward him across the
+grass.
+
+"Evelyn Erith," he said, taking her thin hands in his own, which
+were trembling now.
+
+"It's a year," he complained unsteadily.
+
+"More than a year," said McKay in his dead voice.
+
+With his left hand, then, John Recklow took McKay's gaunt hand, and
+stood so, mute, looking at him and at the girl beside him.
+
+"God!" he said blankly. Then, with no emphasis: "It's rather more
+than a year!... They sent me two fire-charred skulls--the head of a
+man and the head of a woman.... That was a year ago.... After your
+pigeon arrived... I found the scorched skulls wrapped in a Swiss
+newspaper-lying inside the garden wall--over there on the grass!...
+And the swine had written your names on the skulls...."
+
+Into Evelyn Erith's eyes there came a vague light--the spectre of a
+smile. And as Recklow looked at her he remembered the living glory
+she had once been; and wrath blazed wildly within him. "What have
+they done to you?" he asked in an unsteady voice. But McKay laid his
+hand on Recklow's arm:
+
+"Nothing. It is what they have not done--fed her. That's all she
+needs--and sleep."
+
+Recklow gazed heavily upon her. But if the young fail rapidly, they
+also respond quickly.
+
+"Come into the house,"
+
+Perhaps it was the hot broth with wine in it that brought a slight
+colour back into her ghastly face--the face once so youthfully
+lovely but now as delicate as the mask of death itself.
+
+Candles twinkled on the little table where the girl now lay back
+listlessly in the depths of an armchair, her chin sunk on her
+breast.
+
+Recklow sat opposite her, writing on a pad in shorthand. McKay,
+resting his ragged elbows on the cloth, his haggard face between
+both hands, went on talking in a colourless, mechanical voice which
+an iron will alone flogged into speech:
+
+"Killed two of them and took their clothes and papers," he continued
+monotonously; "that was last August--near the end of the month....
+The Boche had tens of thousands working there. AND EVERY ONE OF THEM
+WAS INSANE."
+
+"What!"
+
+"Yes, that is the way they were operating--the only way they dared
+operate. I think all that enormous work has been done by the insane
+during the last forty years. You see, the Boche have nothing to
+dread from the insane. Anyway the majority of them died in harness.
+Those who became useless--intractable or crippled--were merely
+returned to the asylums from which they had been drafted. And the
+Hun government saw to it that nobody should have access to them.
+
+"Besides, who would believe a crazy man or woman if they babbled
+about the Great Secret?"
+
+He covered his visage with his bony hands and rested so for a few
+moments, then, forcing himself again:
+
+"The Hun for forty years has drafted the insane from every asylum in
+the Empire to do this gigantic work for him. Men, women, even
+children, chained, guarded, have done the physical work.... The
+Pyramids were builded so, they say.... And in this manner is being
+finished that colossal engineering work which is never spoken of
+among the Huns except when necessary, and which is known among them
+as The Great Secret.... Recklow, it was conceived as a vast
+engineering project forty-eight years ago--in 1870 during the
+Franco-Prussian war. It was begun that same year.... And it is
+practically finished. Except for one obstacle."
+
+Recklow's lifted eyes stared at him over his pad.
+
+"It is virtually finished," repeated McKay in his toneless,
+unaccented voice which carried such terrible conviction to the other
+man. "Forty-eight years ago the Hun planned a huge underground
+highway carrying four lines of railroad tracks. It was to begin east
+of the Rhine in the neighbourhood of Zell, slant into the bowels of
+the earth, pass deep under the Rhine, deep under the Swiss frontier,
+deep, deep under Mount Terrible and under the French frontier, and
+emerge in France BEHIND Belfort, Toul, Nancy, and Verdun."
+
+Recklow laid his pad on the table and looked intently at McKay. The
+latter said in his ghost of a voice: "You are beginning to suspect
+my sanity." He turned with an effort and fixed his hollow eyes on
+Evelyn Erith.
+
+"We are sane," he said. "But I don't blame you, Recklow. We have
+lived among the mad for more than a year--among thousands and
+thousands and thousands of them--of men and women and even children
+in whose minds the light of reason had died out.... Thirty thousand
+dying minds in which only a dreadful twilight reigned!... I don't
+know how we endured it--and retained our reason.... Do you,
+Yellow-hair?"
+
+The girl did not reply. He spoke to her again, then fell silent. For
+the girl slept, her delicate, deathly face dropped forward on her
+breast.
+
+Presently McKay turned to Recklow once more; and Recklow picked up
+his pad with a slight shudder.
+
+"Forty-eight years," repeated McKay--"and the work of the Hun is
+nearly done--a wide highway under the earth's surface flanked by
+four lines of rails--broad-gauge tracks--everything now working, all
+rolling-stock and electric engines moving smoothly and swiftly....
+Two tracks carry troops; two carry ammunition and munitions. A
+highway a hundred feet wide runs between.
+
+"Ten miles from the Rhine, under the earth, there is a Hun city,
+with a garrison of sixty thousand men!... There are other cities
+along the line--"
+
+"Deep down!"
+
+"Deep under the earth."
+
+"There must be shafts!" said Recklow hoarsely.
+
+"None."
+
+"No shafts to the surface?"
+
+"Not one."
+
+"No pipe? No communication with the outer air?"
+
+Then McKay's sunken eyes glittered and he stiffened up, and his
+wasted features seemed to shrink until the parting of his lips
+showed his teeth. It was a dreadful laughter--his manner, now, of
+expressing mirth.
+
+"Recklow," he said, "in 1914 that vast enterprise was scheduled to
+be finished according to plan. With the declaration of war in August
+the Hun was to have blasted his way to the surface of French soil
+behind the barrier forts! He was prepared to do it in half an hour's
+time.
+
+"Do you understand? Do you see how it was planned? For forty-eight
+years the Hun had been preparing to seize France and crush Europe.
+
+"When the Hun was ready he murdered the Austrian archduke--the most
+convenient solution of the problem for the Hun Kaiser, who presented
+himself with the pretext for war by getting rid of the only Austrian
+with whom he couldn't do business."
+
+Again McKay laughed, silently, showing his discoloured teeth.
+
+"So the archduke died according to plan; and there was
+war--according to plan. And then, Recklow, GOD'S HAND MOVED!--very
+slightly--indolently--scarcely stirring at all.... A drop of icy
+water percolated the limestone on Mount Terrible; other drops
+followed; linked by these drops a thin stream crept downward in the
+earth along the limestone fissures, washing away glacial sands that
+had lodged there since time began."... He leaned forward and his
+brilliant, sunken eyes peered into Recklow's:
+
+"Since 1914," he said, "the Staubbach has fallen into the bowels of
+the earth and the Hun has been fighting it miles under the earth's
+surface.
+
+"They can't operate from the glacier on the white Shoulder of
+Thusis; whenever they calk it and plug it and stop it with tons of
+reinforced waterproof concrete--whenever on the surface of the world
+they dam it and turn it into new channels, it evades them. And in a
+new place its icy water bursts through--as though every stratum in
+the Alps dipped toward their underground tunnel to carry the water
+from the Glacier of Thusis into it!"
+
+He clenched his wasted hands and struck the table without a sound:
+
+"God blocks them, damn them!" he said in his ghost of a voice. "God
+bars the Boche! They shall not pass!"
+
+He leaned nearer, twisting his clenched fingers together: "We saw
+them, Recklow. We saw the Staubbach fighting for right of way; we
+saw the Hun fighting the Staubbach--Darkness battling with
+Light!--the Hun against the Most High!--miles under the earth's
+crust, Recklow.... Do you believe in God?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Yes.... We saw Him at work--that young girl asleep there, and
+I--month after month we watched Him check and dismay the modern
+Pharaoh--we watched Him countermine the Nibelungen and mock their
+filthy Gott! And Recklow, we laughed, sometimes, where laughter
+among clouded minds means nothing--nothing even to the Hun--nor
+causes suspicion nor brings punishment other than the accustomed
+kick and blow which the Hun reserves for all who are helpless."...
+He bowed his head in his hands. "All who are weak and stricken," he
+whispered to himself.
+
+Recklow said: "Did they harm--HER?" And,
+
+McKay looked up at that, baring his teeth in a swift snarl:
+
+"No--you see her clipped hair--and the thin body.... In her blouse
+she passed for a boy, unquestioned, unnoticed. There were thousands
+of us, you see.... Some of the insane women were badly treated--all
+of the younger ones.... But she and I were together.... And I had my
+pistol in reserve--for the crisis!--always in reserve--always ready
+for her." Recklow nodded. McKay went on:
+
+"We fought the Staubbach in shifts.... And all through those months
+of autumn and winter there was no chance for us to get away. It is
+not cold under ground.... It was like a dark, thick dream. We tried
+to realise that war was going on, over our heads, up above us
+somewhere in daylight--where there was sun and where stars were....
+It was like a thick dream, Recklow. The stars seemed very far...."
+
+"You had passed as inmates of some German asylum?"
+
+"We had killed two landwehr on the Staubbach. That was a year ago
+last August--" He looked at the sleeping girl beside him: "My
+little comrade and I undressed the swine and took their uniforms....
+After a long while--privations had made us both light-headed I
+think--we saw a camp of the insane in the woods--a fresh relay from
+Mulhaus. We talked with their guards--being in Landwehr uniform it
+was easy. The insane were clothed like miners. Late that night we
+exchanged clothes with two poor, demented creatures who retained
+sufficient reason, however, to realise that our uniforms meant
+freedom.... They crept away into the forest. We remained.... And
+marched at dawn--straight into the jaws of the Great Secret!"
+
+Recklow had remained at the telephone until dawn. And now Belfort
+was through with him and Verdun understood, and Paris had relayed to
+Headquarters and Headquarters had instructed John Recklow.
+
+Before Recklow went to bed he parted his curtain and looked out at
+the misty dawn.
+
+In the silvery dusk a cock-pheasant was crowing somewhere on a
+wheat-field's edge. A barnyard chanticleer replied. Clear and
+truculent rang out the challenge of the Gallic cock in the dawn,
+warning his wild neighbour to keep to the wilds. So the French
+trumpets challenge the shrill, barbaric fanfares of the Hun, warning
+him back into the dull and shadowy wilderness from whence he
+ventured.
+
+Recklow was awake, dressed, and had breakfasted by eight o'clock.
+
+McKay, in his little chamber on the right, still slept. Evelyn
+Erith, in the tiny room on the left, slept deeply.
+
+So Recklow went out into his garden, opened the wooden door in the
+wall, seated himself, lighted his pipe, and watched the Belfort
+road.
+
+About ten o'clock two American electricians came buzzing up on
+motor-cycles. Recklow got up and went to the door in the wall as
+they dismounted. After a short, whispered consultation they guided
+their machines into the garden, through a paved alley to a tiled
+shed. Then they went on duty, one taking the telephone in Recklow's
+private office, the other busying himself with the clutter of maps
+and papers. And Recklow went back to the door in the wall. About
+eleven an American motor ambulance drove up. A nurse carrying her
+luggage got out, and Recklow met her.
+
+After another whispered consultation he picked up the nurse's
+luggage, led her into the house, and showed her all over it.
+
+"I don't know," he said, "whether they are too badly done in to
+travel as far as Belfort. There'll be a Yankee regimental doctor
+here to-day or to-morrow. He'll know. So let 'em sleep. And you
+can give them the once-over when they wake, and then get busy in the
+kitchen."
+
+The girl laughed and nodded.
+
+"Be good to them," added Recklow. "They'll get crosses and legions
+enough but they've got to be well to enjoy them. So keep them in bed
+until the doctor comes. There are bathrobes and things in my room."
+
+"I understand, sir."
+
+"Right," said Recklow briefly. Then he went to his room, changed his
+clothes to knickerbockers, his shoes for heavier ones, picked up a
+rifle, a pair of field-glasses and a gas-mask, slung a satchel
+containing three days' rations over his powerful shoulders, and went
+out into the street.
+
+Six Alpinists awaited him. They were peculiarly accoutred, every
+soldier carrying, beside rifle, haversack and blanket, a flat tank
+strapped on his back like a knapsack.
+
+Their sergeant saluted; he and Recklow exchanged a few words in
+whispers. Then Recklow strode away down the Belfort road. And the
+oddly accoutred Alpinists followed him, their steel-shod soles
+ringing on the pavement.
+
+Where the Swiss wire bars the frontier no sentinels paced that noon.
+This was odd. Stranger still, a gap had been cut in the wire.
+
+And into this gap strode Recklow, and behind him trotted the nimble
+blue-devils, single file; and they and their leader took the
+ascending path which leads to the Calvary on Mount Terrible.
+
+Standing that same afternoon on the rocks of that grim Calvary, with
+the weatherbeaten figure of Christ towering on the black cross above
+them, Recklow and his men gazed out across the tumbled mountains to
+where the White Shoulder of Thusis gleamed in the sun.
+
+Through their glasses they could sweep the glacier to its terminal
+moraine. That was not very far away, and the "dust" from the
+Staubbach could be distinguished drifting out of the green ravine
+like a windy cloud of steam.
+
+"Allons," said Recklow briefly.
+
+They slept that night in their blankets so close to the Staubbach
+that its wet, silvery dust powdered them, at times, like snow.
+
+At dawn they were afield, running everywhere over the rocks,
+searching hollows, probing chasms, creeping into ravines, and always
+following the torrent which dashed whitely through its limestone
+canon.
+
+Perhaps the Alpine eagles saw them. But no Swiss patrol disturbed
+them. Perhaps there was fear somewhere in the Alpine
+Confederation--fear in high places.
+
+Also it is possible that the bellowing bluster of the guns at Metz
+may have allayed that fear in high places; and that terror of the
+Hun was already becoming less deathly among the cantons of a race
+which had trembled under Boche blackmail for a hundred years.
+However, for whatever reason it might have been, no Swiss patrols
+bothered the blue devils and Mr. Recklow.
+
+And they continued to swarm over the Alpine landscape at their own
+convenience; on the Calvary of Mount Terrible they erected a dwarf
+wireless station; a hundred men came from Delle with
+radio-impedimenta; six American airmen arrived; American planes circled
+over the northern border, driving off the squadrilla of Count von
+Dresslin.
+
+And on the second night Recklow's men built fires and camped
+carelessly beside the brilliant warmth, while "mountain mutton"
+frizzled on pointed sticks and every blue-devil smacked his lips.
+
+On the early morning of the third day Recklow discovered what he had
+been looking for. And an Alpinist signalled an airplane over Mount
+Terrible from the White Shoulder of Thusis. Two hours later a full
+battalion of Alpinists crossed Mount Terrible by the Neck of Woods
+and exchanged flag signals with Recklow's men. They had with them a
+great number of cylinders, coils of wire, and other curious-looking
+paraphernalia.
+
+When they came up to the ravine where Recklow and his men were
+grouped they immediately became very busy with their cylinders,
+wires, hose-pipes, and other instruments.
+
+It had been a beautiful ravine where Recklow now stood--was still as
+pretty and picturesque as a dry water-course can be with the
+bowlders bleaching in the sun and green things beginning to grow in
+what had been the bed of a rushing stream. For, just above this
+ravine, the water ended: the Staubbach poured its full, icy volume
+directly downward into the bowels of the earth with a hollow,
+thundering sound; the bed of the stream was bone-dry beyond. And now
+the blue-devils were unreeling wire and plumbing this chasm into
+which the Staubbach thundered. On the end of the wire was an
+electric bulb, lighted. Recklow watched the wire unreeling, foot
+after foot, rod after rod, plumbing the dark burrow of the Boche
+deep down under the earth.
+
+And, when they were ready, guided by the wire, they lowered the
+curious hose-pipe, down, down, ever down, attaching reel after reel
+to the lengthening tube until Recklow checked them and turned to
+watch the men who stood feeding the wire into the roaring chasm.
+
+Suddenly, as he watched, the flowing wire stopped, swayed violently
+sideways, then was jerked out of the men's hands.
+
+"The Boche bites!" they shouted. Their officer, reading the measured
+wire, turned to Recklow and gave him the depth; the hose-pipe ran
+out sixty yards; then Recklow checked it and put on his gasmask as
+the whistle signal rang out along the mountain.
+
+Now, everywhere, masked figures swarmed over the place; cylinders
+were laid, hose attached, other batteries of cylinders were ranged
+in line and connections laid ready for instant adjustment.
+
+Recklow raised his right arm, then struck it downward violently. The
+gas from the first cylinder went whistling into the hose.
+
+At the same time an unmasked figure on the cliff above began talking
+by American radiophone with three planes half a mile in the air
+above him. He spoke naturally, easily, into a transmitter to which
+no wires were attached.
+
+He was still talking when Recklow arrived at his side from the
+ravine below, tore off his gas-mask, and put on a peculiar helmet.
+Then, taking the transmitter into his right hand: "Do you get them?"
+he demanded of his companion, an American lieutenant.
+
+"No trouble, sir. No need to raise one's voice. They hear quite
+perfectly, and one hears them, sir."
+
+Then Recklow spoke to the three airplanes circling like hawks in the
+sky overhead; and one by one the observers in each machine replied
+in English, their voices easily audible.
+
+"I want Zell watched from the air," said Recklow. "The Boche have an
+underground tunnel beginning near Zell, continuing under Mount
+Terrible to the French frontier.
+
+"I want the Zell end of the tunnel kept under observation.
+
+"Send our planes in from Belfort, Toul, Nancy, and Verdun.
+
+"And keep me informed whether railroad trains, camions, or cavalry
+come out. And whether indeed any living thing emerges from the end
+of the tunnel near Zell.
+
+"Because we are gassing the tunnel from this ravine. And I think
+we've got the dirty vermin wholesale!"
+
+At sundown a plane appeared overhead and talked to Recklow:
+
+"One railroad train came out. But it was manned by dead men, I
+think, because it crashed into the rear masonry of the station and
+was smashed."
+
+"Nothing else, living or dead, came out?"
+
+"Nothing, sir. There is wild excitement at Zell. Troops at the
+tunnel's mouth wear gas-masks. We bombed them and raked them. The
+Boche planes took the air but two crashed and the rest turned east."
+
+"You saw no living creature escape from the Zell end of the tunnel?"
+
+"Not a soul, sir."
+
+Recklow turned to the group of officers around him:
+
+"I guess they're done for," he said. "That fumigation cleaned out
+the vermin. But keep the tunnel pumped full of gas.... Au revoir,
+messieurs!"
+
+On his way back across Mount Terrible he encountered a relay of
+Alpinists bringing fresh gas. tanks; and he laughed and saluted
+their officers. "This poor old world needs a de-lousing," he said.
+"Foch will attend to it up here on top of the world. See that you
+gentlemen, purge her interior!"
+
+The nurse opened the door and looked into the garden. Then she
+closed the door, gently, and went back into the house.
+
+For she had seen a slim girl with short yellow hair curling all over
+her head, and that head was resting on a young man's shoulder.
+
+It seemed unnecessary, too, because there were two steamer chairs
+under the rose arbor, side by side, and pillows sufficient for each.
+
+And why a slim young girl should prefer to pillow her curly, yellow
+head upon the shoulder of a rather gaunt young man--the shoulder,
+presumably, being bony and uncomfortable--she alone could explain
+perhaps.
+
+The young man did not appear to be inconvenienced. He caressed her
+hair while he spoke:
+
+"From here to Belfort," he was saying in his musing, agreeable
+voice, "and from Belfort to Paris; and from Paris to London, and
+from London to Strathlone Head, and from Strathlone Head to Glenark
+Cliffs, and from Glenark Cliffs to Isla Water, and from Isla
+Water--to our home! Our home, Yellow-hair," he repeated. "What do you
+think of that?"
+
+"I think you have forgotten the parson's house on the way. You are
+immoral, Kay."
+
+"Can't a Yank sky-pilot in Paris--"
+
+"Darling, I must have some clothing!"
+
+"Can't you get things in Paris?"
+
+"Yes, if you'll wait and not become impatient for Isla. And I warn
+you, Kay, I simply won't marry you until I have some decent gowns
+and underwear."
+
+"You don't care for me as much as I do for you," he murmured in lazy
+happiness.
+
+"I care for you more. I've cared for you longer, too."
+
+"How long, Yellow-hair?"
+
+"Ever--ever since your head lay on my knees in my car a year ago
+last winter! You know it, too," she added. "You are a spoiled young
+man. I shall not tell you again how much I care for you!"
+
+"Say 'love',' Yellow-hair," he coaxed.
+
+"No!"
+
+"Don't you?"
+
+"Don't I what?"
+
+"Love me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then won't you say it?"
+
+She laughed contentedly. Then her warm head moved a little on his
+shoulder; he looked down; lightly their lips joined.
+
+"Kay--my dear--dear Kay," she whispered.
+
+"There's somebody opening the garden door," she said under her
+breath, and sat bolt upright.
+
+McKay also sat up on his steamer chair.
+
+"Oh!" he cried gaily, "hello, Recklow! Where on earth have you been
+for three days?"
+
+Recklow came into the rose arbour. The blossoms were gone from the
+vines but it was a fragrant, golden place into which the September
+sun filtered. He lifted Miss Erith's hand and kissed it gravely.
+"How are you?" he inquired.
+
+"Perfectly well, and ready for Paris!" she said smilingly.
+
+Recklow shook hands with McKay.
+
+"You'll want a furlough, too," he remarked. "I'll fix it. How do you
+feel, McKay?"
+
+"All right. Has anything come out of our report on the Great
+Secret?"
+
+Recklow seated himself and they listened in strained silence to his
+careful report. Once Evelyn caught her breath and Recklow paused and
+turned to look at her.
+
+"There were thousands and thousands of insane down there under the
+earth," she said pitifully.
+
+"Yes," he nodded.
+
+"Did--did they all die?"
+
+"Are the insane not better dead, Miss Erith?" he asked calmly....
+And continued his recital.
+
+That evening there was a full moon over the garden. Recklow lingered
+with them after dinner for a while, discussing the beginning of the
+end of all things Hunnish. For Foch was striking at last; Pershing
+was moving; Haig, Gouraud, Petain, all were marching toward the
+field of Armageddon. They conversed for a while, the men smoking.
+Then Recklow went away across the dewy grass, followed by two frisky
+and factious cats.
+
+But when McKay took Miss Erith's head into his arms the girl's eyes
+were wet.
+
+"The way they died down there--I can't help it, Kay," she faltered.
+"Oh, Kay, Kay, you must love me enough to make me forget--forget--"
+
+And she clasped his neck tightly in both her arms.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of In Secret, by Robert W. Chambers
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of In Secret, by Robert W. Chambers
+#2 in our series by Robert W. Chambers
+
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+**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
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+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+
+Title: In Secret
+
+Author: Robert W. Chambers
+
+Release Date: May, 2004 [EBook #5748]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on August 23, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN SECRET ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Moynihan, Charles Franks
+and the Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+IN SECRET
+
+by
+
+ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
+
+AUTHOR OF "THE COMMON LAW," "THE RECKONING," "LORRAINE," ETC.
+
+NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+
+
+DEDICATION
+
+
+
+
+
+
+    A grateful nation's thanks are due
+    To Arethusa and to you---
+    To her who dauntless at your side
+    Pneumonia and Flue defied
+    With phials of formaldehyde!
+
+II
+
+    Chief of Police were you, by gosh!
+    Gol ding it! how you bumped the Boche!
+    Handed 'em one with club and gun
+    Until the Hun was on the run:
+    And that's the way the war was won.
+
+III
+
+    Easthampton's pride! My homage take
+    For Fairest Philadelphia's sake.
+    Retire in company with Bill;
+    Rest by the Racquet's window sill
+    And, undisturbed, consume your pill.
+
+ENVOI
+
+    When Cousin Feenix started west
+    And landed east, he did his best;
+    And so I've done my prettiest
+    To make this rhyme long overdue;
+    For Arethusa and for you.
+
+R. W. C.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+IN SECRET
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+CUP AND LIP
+
+
+
+
+
+The case in question concerned a letter in a yellow envelope, which
+was dumped along with other incoming mail upon one of the many long
+tables where hundreds of women and scores of men sat opening and
+reading thousands of letters for the Bureau of P. C.--whatever that
+may mean.
+
+In due course of routine a girl picked up and slit open the yellow
+envelope, studied the enclosed letter for a few moments, returned it
+to its envelope, wrote a few words on a slip of paper, attached the
+slip to the yellow envelope, and passed it along to the D. A.
+C.--whoever he or she may be.
+
+The D. A. C., in course of time, opened this letter for the second
+time, inspected it, returned it to the envelope, added a memorandum,
+and sent it on up to the A. C.--whatever A. C. may signify.
+
+Seated at his desk, the A. C. perused the memoranda, glanced over
+the letter and the attached memoranda, added his terse comment to
+the other slips, pinned them to the envelope, and routed it through
+certain channels which ultimately carried the letter into a room
+where six silent and preoccupied people sat busy at six separate
+tables.
+
+Fate had taken charge of that yellow envelope from the moment it was
+mailed in Mexico; Chance now laid it on a yellow oak table before a
+yellow-haired girl; Destiny squinted over her shoulder as she drew
+the letter from its triply violated envelope and spread it out on
+the table before her.
+
+A rich, warm flush mounted to her cheeks as she examined the
+document. Her chance to distinguish herself had arrived at last. She
+divined it instantly. She did not doubt it. She was a remarkable
+girl.
+
+The room remained very still. The five other cipher experts of the
+P. I. Service were huddled over their tables, pencil in hand,
+absorbed in their several ungodly complications and laborious
+calculations. But they possessed no Rosetta Stone to aid them in
+deciphering hieroglyphics; toad-like, they carried the precious
+stone in their heads, M. D.!
+
+No indiscreet sound interrupted their mental gymnastics, save only
+the stealthy scrape of a pen, the subdued rustle of writing paper,
+the flutter of a code-book's leaves thumbed furtively.
+
+The yellow-haired girl presently rose from her chair, carrying in
+her hand the yellow letter and its yellow envelope with yellow slips
+attached; and this harmonious combination of colour passed
+noiselessly into a smaller adjoining office, where a solemn young
+man sat biting an unlighted cigar and gazing with preternatural
+sagacity at nothing at all.
+
+Possibly his pretty affianced was the object of his deep revery--he
+had her photograph in his desk--perhaps official cogitation as D.
+C. of the E. C. D.--if you understand what I mean?--may have been
+responsible for his owlish abstraction.
+
+Because he did not notice the advent of the yellow haired girl until
+she said in her soft, attractive voice:
+
+"May I interrupt you a moment, Mr. Vaux?"
+
+Then he glanced up.
+
+"Surely, surely," he said. "Hum--hum!--please be seated, Miss Erith!
+Hum! Surely!"
+
+She laid the sheets of the letter and the yellow envelope upon the
+desk before him and seated herself in a chair at his elbow. She was
+VERY pretty. But engaged men never notice such details.
+
+"I'm afraid we are in trouble," she remarked.
+
+He read placidly the various memoranda written on the yellow slips
+of paper, scrutinised! the cancelled stamps, postmarks,
+superscription. But when his gaze fell upon the body of the letter
+his complacent expression altered to one of disgust!
+
+"What's this, Miss Erith?"
+
+"Code-cipher, I'm afraid."
+
+"The deuce!"
+
+Miss Erith smiled. She was one of those girls who always look as
+though they had not been long out of a bathtub. She had hazel eyes,
+a winsome smile, and hair like warm gold. Her figure was youthfully
+straight and supple--But that would not interest an engaged man.
+
+The D. C. glanced at her inquiringly.
+
+"Surely, surely," he muttered, "hum--hum!--" and tried to fix his
+mind on the letter.
+
+In fact, she was one of those girls who unintentionally and
+innocently render masculine minds uneasy through some delicate,
+indefinable attraction which defies analysis.
+
+"Surely," murmured the D. C., "surely! Hum--hum!"
+
+A subtle freshness like the breath of spring in a young orchard
+seemed to linger about her. She was exquisitely fashioned to trouble
+men, but she didn't wish to do such a--
+
+Vaux, who was in love with another girl, took another uneasy look at
+her, sideways, then picked up his unlighted cigar and browsed upon
+it.
+
+"Yes," he said nervously, "this is one of those accursed
+code-ciphers. They always route them through to me. Why don't they
+notify the five--"
+
+"Are you going to turn THIS over to the Postal Inspection Service?"
+
+"What do you think about it, Miss Erith? You see it's one of those
+hopeless arbitrary ciphers for which there is no earthly solution
+except by discovering and securing the code book and working it out
+that way."7
+
+She said calmly, but with heightened colour:
+
+"A copy of that book is, presumably, in possession of the man to
+whom this letter is addressed."
+
+"Surely--surely. Hum--hum! What's his name, Miss Erith?"--glancing
+down at the yellow envelope. "Oh, yes--Herman Lauffer--hum!"
+
+He opened a big book containing the names of enemy aliens and
+perused it, frowinng. The name of Herman Lauffer was not listed. He
+consulted other volumes containing supplementary lists of suspects
+and undesirables--lists furnished daily by certain services
+unnecessary to mention.
+
+"Here he is!" exclaimed Vaux; "--Herman Lauffer, picture-framer and
+gilder! That's his number on Madison Avenue!"--pointing to the
+type-written paragraph. "You see he's probably already under
+surveillance-one of the several services is doubtless keeping tabs
+on him. I think I'd better call up the--"
+
+"Please!--Mr. Vaux!" she pleaded.
+
+He had already touched the telephone receiver to unhook it. Miss
+Erith looked at him appealingly; her eyes were very, very hazel.
+
+"Couldn't we handle it?" she asked.
+
+"WE?"
+
+"You and I!"
+
+"But that's not our affair, Miss Erith--"
+
+"Make it so! Oh, please do. Won't you?"
+
+Vaux's arm fell to the desk top. He sat thinking for a few minutes.
+Then he picked up a pencil in an absent-minded manner and began to
+trace little circles, squares, and crosses on his pad, stringing
+them along line after line as though at hazard and apparently
+thinking of anything except what he was doing.
+
+The paper on which he seemed to be so idly employed lay on his desk
+directly under Miss Erith's eyes; and after a while the girl began
+to laugh softly to herself.
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Vaux," she said. "This is the opportunity I have
+longed for."
+
+Vaux looked up at her as though he did not understand. But the girl
+laid one finger on the lines of circles, squares, dashes and
+crosses, and, still laughing, read them off, translating what he had
+written:
+
+"You are a very clever girl. I've decided to turn this case over to
+you. After all, your business is to decipher cipher, and you can't
+do it without the book."
+
+They both laughed.
+
+"I don't see how you ever solved that," he said, delighted to tease
+her.
+
+"How insulting!--when you know it is one of the oldest and most
+familiar of codes--the 1-2-3 and _a-b-c_ combination!"
+
+"Rather rude of you to read it over my shoulder, Miss Erith. It
+isn't done--"
+
+"You meant to see if I could! You know you did!"
+
+"Did I?"
+
+"Of course! That old 'Seal of Solomon' cipher is perfectly
+transparent."
+
+"Really? But how about THIS!"--touching the sheets of the Lauffer
+letter--"how are you going to read this sequence of Arabic
+numerals?"
+
+"I haven't the slightest idea," said the girl, candidly.
+
+"But you request the job of trying to find the key?" he suggested
+ironically.
+
+"There is no key. You know it."
+
+"I mean the code book."
+
+"I would like to try to find it."
+
+"How are you going to go about it?"
+
+"I don't know yet."
+
+Vaux smiled. "All right; go ahead, my dear Miss Erith. You're
+officially detailed for this delightful job. Do it your own way, but
+do it--"
+
+"Thank you so much!"
+
+"--In twenty-four hours," he added grimly. "Otherwise I'll turn it
+over to the P.I."
+
+"Oh! That IS brutal of you!"
+
+"Sorry. But if you can't get the code-book in twenty-four hours I'll
+have to call in the Service that can."
+
+The girl bit her lip and held out her hand for the letter.
+
+"I can't let it go out of my office," he remarked. "You know that,
+Miss Erith."
+
+"I merely wish to copy it," she said reproachfully. Her eyes were
+hazel.
+
+"I ought not to let you take a copy out of this office," he
+muttered.
+
+"But you will, won't you?"
+
+"All right. Use that machine over there. Hum--hum!"
+
+For twenty minutes the girl was busy typing before the copy was
+finally ready. Then, comparing it and finding her copy accurate, she
+returned the original to Mr. Vaux, and rose with that disturbing
+grace peculiar to her every movement.
+
+"Where may I telephone you when you're not here?" she inquired
+diffidently, resting one slim, white hand on his desk.
+
+"At the Racquet Club. Are you going out?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What! You abandon me without my permission?"
+
+She nodded with one of those winsome smiles which incline young men
+to revery. Then she turned and walked toward the cloak room.
+
+The D. C. was deeply in love with somebody else, yet he found it
+hard to concentrate his mind for a while, and he chewed his
+unlighted cigar into a pulp. Alas! Men are that way. Not sometimes.
+Always.
+
+Finally he shoved aside the pile of letters which he had been trying
+to read, unhooked the telephone receiver, called a number, got it,
+and inquired for a gentleman named Cassidy.
+
+To the voice that answered he gave the name, business and address of
+Herman Lauffer, and added a request that undue liberties be taken
+with any out going letters mailed and presumably composed and
+written by Mr. Lauffer's own fair hand.
+
+"Much obliged, Mr. Vaux," cooed Cassidy, in a voice so suave that
+Vaux noticed its unusual blandness and asked if that particular
+Service already had "anything on Lauffer."
+
+"Not soon but yet!" replied Mr. Cassidy facetiously, "thanks
+ENTIRELY to your kind tip, Mr. Vaux."
+
+And Vaux, suspicious of such urbane pleasantries, rang off and
+resumed his mutilated cigar.
+
+"Now, what the devil does Cassidy know about Herman Lauffer," he
+mused, "and why the devil hasn't his Bureau informed us?" After long
+pondering he found no answer. Besides, he kept thinking at moments
+about Miss Erith, which confused him and diverted his mind from the
+business on hand.
+
+So, in his perplexity, he switched on the electric foot-warmer,
+spread his fur overcoat over his knees, uncorked a small bottle and
+swallowed a precautionary formaldehyde tablet, unlocked a drawer of
+his desk, fished out a photograph, and gazed intently upon it.
+
+It was the photograph of his Philadelphia affianced. Her first name
+was Arethusa. To him there was a nameless fragrance about her name.
+And sweetly, subtly, gradually the lovely phantasm of Miss Evelyn
+Erith faded, vanished into the thin and frigid atmosphere of his
+office.
+
+That was his antidote to Miss Erith--the intent inspection of his
+fiancee's very beautiful features as inadequately reproduced by an
+expensive and fashionable Philadelphia photographer.
+
+It did the business for Miss Erith every time.
+
+The evening was becoming one of the coldest ever recorded in New
+York. The thermometer had dropped to 8 degrees below zero and was
+still falling. Fifth Avenue glittered, sheathed in frost; traffic
+police on post stamped and swung their arms to keep from freezing;
+dry snow underfoot squeaked when trodden on; crossings were greasy
+with glare ice.
+
+It was, also, one of those meatless, wheatless, heatless nights when
+the privation which had hitherto amused New York suddenly became an
+ugly menace. There was no coal to be had and only green wood. The
+poor quietly died, as usual; the well-to-do ventured a hod and a
+stick or two in open grates, or sat huddled under rugs over oil or
+electric stoves; or migrated to comfortable hotels. And bachelors
+took to their clubs. That is where Clifford Vaux went from his
+chilly bachelor lodgings. He fled in a taxi, buried cheek-deep in
+his fur collar, hating all cold, all coal companies, and all
+Kaisers.
+
+In the Racquet Club he found many friends similarly
+self-dispossessed, similarly obsessed by discomfort and hatred. But
+there seemed to be some steam heat there, and several open fires;
+and when the wheatless, meatless meal was ended and the usual
+coteries drifted to their usual corners, Mr. Vaux found himself
+seated at a table with a glass of something or other at his elbow,
+which steamed slightly and had a long spoon in it; and he presently
+heard himself saying to three other gentlemen: "Four hearts."
+
+His voice sounded agreeably in his own ears; the gentle glow of a
+lignum-vitae wood fire smote his attenuated shins; he balanced his
+cards in one hand, a long cigar in the other, exhaled a satisfactory
+whiff of aromatic smoke, and smiled comfortably upon the table.
+
+"Four hearts," he repeated affably. "Does anybody--"
+
+The voice of Doom interrupted him:
+
+"Mr. Vaux, sir--"
+
+The young man turned in his easy-chair and beheld behind him a club
+servant, all over silver buttons.
+
+"The telephone, Mr. Vaux," continued that sepulchral voice.
+
+"All right," said the young man. "Bill, will you take my cards?"--he
+laid his hand, face down, rose and left the pleasant warmth of the
+card-room with a premonitory shiver.
+
+"Well?" he inquired, without cordiality, picking up the receiver.
+
+"Mr. Vaux?" came a distinct voice which he did not recognise.
+
+"Yes," he snapped, "who is it?"
+
+"Miss Erith."
+
+"Oh--er--surely--surely! GOOD-evening, Miss Erith!"
+
+"Good-evening, Mr. Vaux. Are you, by any happy chance, quite free
+this evening?"
+
+"Well--I'm rather busy--unless it is important--hum--hum!--in line
+of duty, you know--"
+
+"You may judge. I'm going to try to secure that code-book to-night."
+
+"Oh! Have you called in the--"
+
+"No!"
+
+"Haven't you communicated with--"
+
+"No!"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because there's too much confusion already--too much petty
+jealousy and working at cross-purposes. I have been thinking over
+the entire problem. You yourself know how many people have escaped
+through jealous or over-zealous officers making premature arrests.
+We have six different secret-service agencies, each independent of
+the other and each responsible to its own independent chief, all
+operating for the Government in New York City. You know what these
+agencies are--the United States Secret Service, the Department of
+Justice Bureau of Investigation, the Army Intelligence Service,
+Naval Intelligence Service, Neutrality Squads of the Customs, and
+the Postal Inspection. Then there's the State Service and the police
+and several other services. And there is no proper co-ordination, no
+single head for all these agencies. The result is a ghastly
+confusion and shameful inefficiency.
+
+"This affair which I am investigating is a delicate one, as you
+know. Any blundering might lose us the key to what may be a very
+dangerous conspiracy. So I prefer to operate entirely within the
+jurisdiction of our own Service--"
+
+"What you propose to do is OUTSIDE of our province!" he interrupted.
+
+"I'm not so sure. Are you?"
+
+"Well--hum--hum!--what is it you propose to do to-night?"
+
+"I should like to consult my Chief of Division."
+
+"Meaning me?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"When?"
+
+"Now!"
+
+"Where are you just now, Miss Erith?"
+
+"At home. Could you come to me?"
+
+Vaux shivered again.
+
+"Where d-do you live?" he asked, with chattering teeth.
+
+She gave him the number of a private house on 83d Street just off
+Madison Avenue. And as he listened he began to shiver all over in
+the anticipated service of his country.
+
+"Very well," he said, "I'll take a taxi. But this has Valley Forge
+stung to death, you know."
+
+She said:
+
+"I took the liberty of sending my car to the Racquet Club for you.
+It should be there now. There's a foot-warmer in it."
+
+"Thank you so much," he replied with a burst of shivers. "I'll
+b-b-be right up."
+
+As he left the telephone the doorman informed him that an automobile
+was waiting for him.
+
+So, swearing under his frosty breath, he went to the cloak-room, got
+into his fur coat, walked back to the card-room and gazed wrathfully
+upon the festivities.
+
+"What did my hand do, Bill?" he inquired glumly, when at last the
+scorer picked up his pad and the dealer politely shoved the pack
+toward his neighbour for cutting.
+
+"You ruined me with your four silly hearts," replied the man who had
+taken his cards. "Did you think you were playing coon-can?"
+
+"Sorry, Bill. Sit in for me, there's a good chap. I'm not likely to
+be back to-night--hang it!"
+
+Perfunctory regrets were offered by the others, already engrossed in
+their new hands; Vaux glanced unhappily at the tall, steaming glass,
+which had been untouched when he left, but which was now merely half
+full. Then, with another lingering look at the cheerful fire, he
+sighed, buttoned his fur coat, placed his hat firmly upon his
+carefully parted hair, and walked out to perish bravely for his
+native land.
+
+On the sidewalk a raccoon-furred chauffeur stepped up with all the
+abandon of a Kadiak bear:
+
+"Mr. Vaux, sir?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Miss Erith's car."
+
+"Thanks," grunted Vaux, climbing into the pretty coupe and cuddling
+his shanks under a big mink robe, where, presently, he discovered a
+foot-warmer, and embraced it vigorously between his patent-leather
+shoes.
+
+It had now become the coldest night on record in New York City.
+Fortunately he didn't know that; he merely sat there and hated Fate.
+
+Up the street and into Fifth Avenue glided the car and sped
+northward through the cold, silvery lustre of the arc-lights hanging
+like globes of moonlit ice from their frozen stalks of bronze.
+
+The noble avenue was almost deserted; nobody cared to face such
+terrible cold. Few motors were abroad, few omnibuses, and scarcely a
+wayfarer. Every sound rang metallic in the black and bitter air; the
+windows of the coupe clouded from his breath; the panels creaked.
+
+At the Plaza he peered fearfully out upon the deserted Circle, where
+the bronze lady of the fountain, who is supposed to represent
+Plenty, loomed high in the electric glow, with her magic basket
+piled high with icicles.
+
+"Yes, plenty of ice," sneered Vaux. "I wish she'd bring us a hod or
+two of coal."
+
+The wintry landscape of the Park discouraged him profoundly.
+
+"A man's an ass to linger anywhere north of the equator," he
+grumbled. "Dickybirds have more sense." And again he thought of the
+wood fire in the club and the partly empty but steaming glass, and
+the aroma it had wafted toward him; and the temperature it must have
+imparted to "Bill."
+
+He was immersed in arctic gloom when at length the car stopped. A
+butler admitted him to a brown-stone house, the steps of which had
+been thoughtfully strewn with furnace cinders.
+
+"Miss Erith?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Announce Mr. Vaux, partly frozen."
+
+"The library, if you please, sir," murmured the butler, taking hat
+and coat.
+
+So Vaux went up stairs with the liveliness of a crippled spider, and
+Miss Erith came from a glowing fireside to welcome him, giving him a
+firm and slender hand.
+
+"You ARE cold," she said. "I'm so sorry to have disturbed you this
+evening."
+
+He said:
+
+"Hum--hum--very kind--m'sure--hum--hum!"
+
+There were two deep armchairs before the blaze; Miss Erith took one,
+Vaux collapsed upon the other.
+
+She was disturbingly pretty in her evening gown. There were
+cigarettes on a little table at his elbow, and he lighted one at her
+suggestion and puffed feebly.
+
+"Which?" she inquired smilingly.
+
+He understood: "Irish, please."
+
+"Hot?"
+
+"Thank you, yes,"
+
+When the butler had brought it, the young man began to regret the
+Racquet Club less violently.
+
+"It's horribly cold out," he said. "There's scarcely a soul on the
+streets."
+
+She nodded brightly:
+
+"It's a wonderful night for what we have to do. And I don't mind the
+cold very much."
+
+"Are you proposing to go OUT?" he asked, alarmed.
+
+"Why, yes. You don't mind, do you?"
+
+"Am _I_ to go, too?"
+
+"Certainly. You gave me only twenty-four hours, and I can't do it
+alone in that time."
+
+He said nothing, but his thoughts concentrated upon a single
+unprintable word.
+
+"What have you done with the original Lauffer letter, Mr. Vaux?" she
+inquired rather nervously.
+
+"The usual. No invisible ink had been used; nothing microscopic.
+There was nothing on the letter or envelope, either, except what we
+saw."
+
+The girl nodded. On a large table behind her chair lay a portfolio.
+She turned, drew it toward her, and lifted it into her lap.
+
+"What have you discovered?" he inquired politely, basking in the
+grateful warmth of the fire.
+
+"Nothing. The cipher is, as I feared, purely arbitrary. It's
+exasperating, isn't it?"
+
+He nodded, toasting his shins.
+
+"You see," she continued, opening the portfolio, "here is my copy of
+this wretched cipher letter. I have transferred it to one sheet.
+It's nothing but a string of Arabic numbers interspersed with
+meaningless words. These numbers most probably represent, in the
+order in which they are written, first the number of the page of
+some book, then the line on which the word is to be found--say, the
+tenth line from the top, or maybe from the bottom--and then the
+position of the word--second from the left or perhaps from the
+right."
+
+"It's utterly impossible to solve that unless you have the book," he
+remarked; "therefore, why speculate, Miss Erith?"
+
+"I'm going to try to find the book."
+
+"How?"
+
+"By breaking into the shop of Herman Lauffer."
+
+"House-breaking? Robbery?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Vaux smiled incredulously:
+
+"Granted that you get into Lauffer's shop without being arrested,
+what then?"
+
+"I shall have this cipher with me. There are not likely to be many
+books in the shop of a gilder and maker of picture frames. I shall,
+by referring to this letter, search what books I find there for a
+single coherent sentence. When I discover such a sentence I shall
+know that I have the right book."
+
+The young man smoked reflectively and gazed into the burning coals.
+
+"So you propose to break into his shop to-night and steal the book?"
+
+"There seems to be nothing else to do, Mr. Vaux."
+
+"Of course," he remarked sarcastically, "we could turn this matter
+over to the proper authorities--"
+
+"I WON'T! PLEASE don't!"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because I have concluded that it IS part of our work. And I've
+begun already. I went to see Lauffer. I took a photograph to be
+framed."
+
+"What does he look like?"
+
+"A mink--an otter--one of those sharp-muzzled little animals!--Two
+tiny eyes, rather close together, a long nose that wrinkles when he
+talks, as though he were sniffing at you; a ragged, black moustache,
+like the furry muzzle-bristles of some wild thing--that is a sketch
+of Herman Lauffer."
+
+"A pretty man," commented Vaux, much amused.
+
+"He's little and fat of abdomen, but he looks powerful."
+
+"Prettier and prettier!"
+
+They both laughed. A pleasant steam arose from the tall glass at his
+elbow.
+
+"Well," she said, "I have to change my gown--"
+
+"Good Lord! Are we going now?" he remonstrated.
+
+"Yes. I don't believe there will be a soul on the streets."
+
+"But I don't wish to go at all," he explained. "I'm very happy here,
+discussing things."
+
+"I know it. But you wouldn't let me go all alone, would you, Mr.
+Vaux?"
+
+"I don't want you to go anywhere."
+
+"But I'm GOING!"
+
+"Here's where I perish," groaned Vaux, rising as the girl passed him
+with her pretty, humorous smile, moving lithely, swiftly as some
+graceful wild thing passing confidently through its own domain.
+
+Vaux gazed meditatively upon the coals, glass in one hand, cigarette
+in the other. Patriotism is a tough career.
+
+"This is worse than inhuman," he thought. "If I go out on such an
+errand to-night I sure am doing my bitter bit. ... Probably some
+policeman will shoot me--unless I freeze to death. This is a vastly
+unpleasant affair.... Vastly!"
+
+He was still caressing the fire with his regard when Miss Erith came
+back.
+
+She wore a fur coat buttoned to the throat, a fur toque, fur gloves.
+As he rose she naively displayed a jimmy and two flashlights.
+
+"I see," he said, "very nice, very handy! But we don't need these to
+convict us."
+
+She laughed and handed him the instruments; and he pocketed them and
+followed her downstairs.
+
+Her car was waiting, engine running; she spoke to the Kadiak
+chauffeur, got in, and Vaux followed.
+
+"You know," he said, pulling the mink robe over her and himself,
+"you're behaving very badly to your superior officer."
+
+"I'm so excited, so interested! I hope I'm not lacking in deference
+to my honoured Chief of Division. Am I, Mr. Vaux?"
+
+"You certainly hustle me around some! This is a crazy thing we're
+doing."
+
+"Oh, I'm sorry!"
+
+"You're an autocrat. You're a lady-Nero! Tell me, Miss Erith, were
+you ever afraid of anything on earth?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Lightning and caterpillars."
+
+"Those are probably the only really dangerous things I never
+feared," he said. "You seem to be young and human and feminine. Are
+you?"
+
+"Oh, very."
+
+"Then why aren't you afraid of being shot for a burglar, and why do
+you go so gaily about grand larceny?"
+
+The girl's light laughter was friendly and fearless.
+
+"Do you live alone?" he inquired after a moment's silence.
+
+"Yes. My parents are not living."
+
+"You are rather an unusual girl, Miss Erith."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Well, girls of your sort are seldom as much in earnest about their
+war work as you seem to be," he remarked with gentle irony.
+
+"How about the nurses and drivers in France?"
+
+"Oh, of course. I mean nice girls, like yourself, who do near-war
+work here in New York--"
+
+"You ARE brutal!" she exclaimed. "I am mad to go to France! It is a
+sacrifice--a renunciation for me to remain in New York. I understand
+nursing and I know how to drive a car; but I have stayed here
+because my knowledge of ciphers seemed to fit me for this work."
+
+"I was teasing you," he said gently.
+
+"I know it. But there is SO much truth in what you say about
+near-war work. I hate that sort of woman.... Why do you laugh?"
+
+"Because you're just a child. But you are full of ability and
+possibility, Miss Erith."
+
+"I wish my ability might land me in France!"
+
+"Surely, surely," he murmured.
+
+"Do you think it will, Mr. Vaux?"
+
+"Maybe it will," he said, not believing it. He added: "I think,
+however, your undoubted ability is going to land us both in jail."
+
+At which pessimistic prognosis they both began to laugh. She was
+very lovely when she laughed.
+
+"I hope they'll give us the same cell," she said. "Don't you?"
+
+"Surely," he replied gaily.
+
+Once he remembered the photograph of Arethusa in his desk at
+headquarters, and thought that perhaps he might need it before the
+evening was over.
+
+"Surely, surely," he muttered to himself, "hum--hum!"
+
+Her coupe stopped in Fifty-sixth Street near Madison Avenue.
+
+"The car will wait here," remarked the girl, as Vaux helped her to
+descend. "Lauffer's shop is just around the corner." She took his
+arm to steady herself on the icy sidewalk. He liked it.
+
+In the bitter darkness there was not a soul to be seen on the
+street; no tramcars were approaching on Madison Avenue, although far
+up on the crest of Lenox Hill the receding lights of one were just
+vanishing.
+
+"Do you see any policemen?" she asked in a low voice.
+
+"Not one. They're all frozen to death, I suppose, as we will be in a
+few minutes."
+
+They turned into Madison Avenue past the Hotel Essex. There was not
+a soul to be seen. Even the silver-laced porter had retired from the
+freezing vestibule. A few moments later Miss Erith paused before a
+shop on the ground floor of an old-fashioned brownstone residence
+which had been altered for business.
+
+Over the shop-window was a sign: "H. Lauffer, Frames and Gilding."
+The curtains of the shop-windows were lowered. No light burned
+inside.
+
+Over Lauffer's shop was the empty show-window of another shop--on
+the second floor--the sort of place that milliners and tea-shop
+keepers delight in--but inside the blank show-window was pasted the
+sign "To Let."
+
+Above this shop were three floors, evidently apartments. The windows
+were not lighted.
+
+"Lauffer lives on the fourth floor," said Miss Erith. "Will you
+please give me the jimmy, Vaux?"
+
+He fished it out of his overcoat pocket and looked uneasily up and
+down the deserted avenue while the girl stepped calmly into the open
+entryway. There were two doors, a glass one opening on the stairs
+leading to the upper floors, and the shop door on the left.
+
+She stooped over for a rapid survey, then with incredible swiftness
+jimmied the shop door.
+
+The noise of the illegal operations awoke the icy and silent avenue
+with a loud, splitting crash! The door swung gently inward.
+
+"Quick!" she said. And he followed her guiltily inside.
+
+The shop was quite warm. A stove in the rear room still emitted heat
+and a dull red light. On the stove was a pot of glue, or some other
+substance used by gilders and frame makers. Steam curled languidly
+from it; also a smell not quite as languid.
+
+Vaux handed her an electric torch, then flashed his own. The next
+moment she found a push button and switched on the lights in the
+shop. Then they extinguished their torches.
+
+Stacks of frames in raw wood, frames in "compo," samples gilded and
+in natural finish littered the untidy place. A few process
+"mezzotints" hung on the walls. There was a counter on which lay
+twine, shears and wrapping paper, and a copy of the most recent
+telephone directory. It was the only book in sight, and Miss Erith
+opened it and spread her copy of the cipher-letter beside it. Then
+she began to turn the pages according to the numbers written in her
+copy of the cipher letter.
+
+Meanwhile, Vaux was prowling. There were no books in the rear room;
+of this he was presently assured. He came back into the front shop
+and began to rummage. A few trade catalogues rewarded him and he
+solemnly laid them on the counter.
+
+"The telephone directory is NOT the key," said Miss Erith, pushing
+it aside. A few moments were sufficient to convince them that the
+key did not lie within any of the trade catalogues either.
+
+"Have you searched very carefully?" she asked.
+
+"There's not another book in the bally shop."
+
+"Well, then, Lauffer must have it in his apartment upstairs."
+
+"Which apartment is it?"
+
+"The fourth floor. His name is under a bell on a brass plate in the
+entry. I noticed it when I came in." She turned off the electric
+light; they went to the door, reconnoitred cautiously, saw nobody on
+the avenue. However, a tramcar was passing, and they waited; then
+Vaux flashed his torch on the bell-plate.
+
+Under the bell marked "Fourth Floor" was engraved Herman Lauffer's
+name.
+
+"You know," remonstrated Vaux, "we have no warrant for this sort of
+thing, and it means serious trouble if we're caught."
+
+"I know it. But what other way is there?" she inquired naively. "You
+allowed me only twenty-four hours, and I WON'T back out!"
+
+"What procedure do you propose now?" he asked, grimly amused, and
+beginning to feel rather reckless himself, and enjoying the feeling.
+"What do you wish to do?" he repeated. "I'm game."
+
+"I have an automatic pistol," she remarked seriously, tapping her
+fur-coat pocket, "--and a pair of handcuffs--the sort that open and
+lock when you strike a man on the wrist with them. You know the
+kind?"
+
+"Surely. You mean to commit assault and robbery in the first degree
+upon the body of the aforesaid Herman?"
+
+"I-is that it?" she faltered.
+
+"It is."
+
+She hesitated:
+
+"That is rather dreadful, isn't it?"
+
+"Somewhat. It involves almost anything short of life imprisonment.
+But _I_ don't mind."
+
+"We couldn't get a search-warrant, could we?"
+
+"We have found nothing, so far, in that cipher letter to encourage
+us in applying for any such warrant," he said cruelly.
+
+"Wouldn't the excuse that Lauffer is an enemy alien and not
+registered aid us in securing a warrant?" she insisted.
+
+"He is not an alien. I investigated that after you left this
+afternoon. His parents were German but he was born in Chicago.
+However, he is a Hun, all right--I don't doubt that.... What do you
+propose to do now?"
+
+She looked at him appealingly:
+
+"Won't you allow me more than twenty-four hours?"
+
+"I'm sorry."
+
+"Why won't you?"
+
+"Because I can't dawdle over this affair."
+
+The girl smiled at him in her attractive, resolute way:
+
+"Unless we find that book we can't decipher this letter. The letter
+comes from Mexico,--from that German-infested Republic. It is
+written to a man of German parentage and it is written in cipher.
+The names of Luxburg, Caillaux, Bolo, Bernstorff are still fresh in
+our minds. Every day brings us word of some new attempt at sabotage
+in the United States. Isn't there ANY way, Mr. Vaux, for us to
+secure the key to this cipher letter?"
+
+"Not unless we go up and knock this man Lauffer on the head. Do you
+want to try it?"
+
+"Couldn't we knock rather gently on his head?"
+
+Vaux stifled a laugh. The girl was so pretty, the risk so
+tremendous, the entire proceeding so utterly outrageous that a
+delightful sense of exhilaration possessed him.
+
+"Where's that gun?" he said.
+
+She drew it out and handed it to him.
+
+"Is it loaded?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Where are the handcuffs?"
+
+She fished out the nickel-plated bracelets and he pocketed his
+torch. A pleasant thrill passed through the rather ethereal anatomy
+of Mr. Vaux.
+
+"All right," he said briskly. "Here's hoping for adjoining cells!"
+
+To jimmy the glass door was the swiftly cautious work of a moment or
+two. Then the dark stairs rose in front of them and Vaux took the
+lead. It was as cold as the pole in there, but Vaux's blood was
+racing now. And alas! the photograph of Arethusa was in his desk at
+the office!
+
+On the third floor he flashed his torch through an empty corridor
+and played it smartly over every closed door. On the fourth floor he
+took his torch in his left hand, his pistol in his right.
+
+"The door to the apartment is open!" she whispered.
+
+It was. A lamp on a table inside was still burning. They had a
+glimpse of a cheap carpet on the floor, cheap and gaudy furniture.
+Vaux extinguished and pocketed his torch, then, pistol lifted, he
+stepped noiselessly into the front room.
+
+It seemed to be a sort of sitting-room, and was in disorder;
+cushions from a lounge lay about the floor; several books were
+scattered near them; an upholstered chair had been ripped open and
+disembowelled, and its excelsior stuffing strewn broadcast.
+
+"This place looks as though it had been robbed!" whispered Vaux.
+"What the deuce do you suppose has happened?"
+
+They moved cautiously to the connecting-door of the room in the
+rear. The lamplight partly illuminated it, revealing it as a
+bedroom.
+
+Bedclothes trailed to the floor, which also was littered with dingy
+masculine apparel flung about at random. Pockets of trousers and of
+coats had been turned inside out, in what apparently had been a
+hasty and frantic search.
+
+The remainder of the room was in disorder, too; underwear had been
+pulled from dresser and bureau; the built-in wardrobe doors swung
+ajar and the clothing lay scattered about, every pocket turned
+inside out.
+
+"For heaven's sake," muttered Vaux, "what do you suppose this
+means?"
+
+"Look!" she whispered, clutching his arm and pointing to the
+fireplace at their feet.
+
+On the white-tiled hearth in front of the unlighted gas-logs lay the
+stump of a cigar.
+
+From it curled a thin thread of smoke.
+
+They stared at the smoking stub on the hearth, gazed fearfully
+around the dimly lighted bedroom, and peered into the dark
+dining-room beyond.
+
+Suddenly Miss Erith's hand tightened on his sleeve.
+
+"Hark!" she motioned.
+
+He heard it, too--a scuffling noise of heavy feet behind a closed
+door somewhere beyond the darkened dining-room.
+
+"There's somebody in the kitchenette!" she whispered.
+
+Vaux produced his pistol; they stole forward into the dining-room;
+halted by the table.
+
+"Flash that door," he said in a low voice.
+
+Her electric torch played over the closed kitchen door for an
+instant, then, at a whispered word from him, she shut it off and the
+dining-room was plunged again into darkness.
+
+And then, before Vaux or Miss Erith had concluded what next was to
+be done, the kitchen door opened; and, against the dangling lighted
+bulb within, loomed a burly figure wearing hat and overcoat and a
+big bass voice rumbled through the apartment:
+
+"All right, all right, keep your shirt on and I'll get your coat and
+vest for you--"
+
+Then Miss Erith flashed her torch full in the man's face, blinding
+him. And Vaux covered him with levelled pistol.
+
+Even then the man made a swift motion toward his pocket, but at
+Vaux's briskly cheerful warning he checked himself and sullenly and
+very slowly raised both empty hands.
+
+"All right, all right," he grumbled. "It's on me this time. Go on;
+what's the idea?"
+
+"W-well, upon my word!" stammered Vaux, "it's Cassidy!"
+
+"F'r the love o' God," growled Cassidy, "is that YOU, Mr. Vaux!" He
+lowered his arms sheepishly, reached out and switched on the ceiling
+light over the dining-room table. "Well, f'r--" he began; and,
+seeing Miss Erith, subsided.
+
+"What are you doing here?" demanded Vaux, disgusted with this
+glaring example of interference from another service.
+
+"What am I doing?" repeated Cassidy with a sarcastic glance at Miss
+Erith. "Faith, I'm pinching a German gentleman we've been watching
+these three months and more. Is that what you're up to, too?"
+
+"Herman Lauffer?"
+
+"That's the lad, sir. He's in the kitchen yonder, dressing f'r to
+take a little walk. I gotta get his coat and vest. And what are you
+doing here, sir?"
+
+"How did YOU get in?" asked Miss Erith, flushed with chagrin and
+disappointment.
+
+"With keys, ma'am."
+
+"Oh, Lord!" said Vaux, "we jimmied the door. What do you think of
+that, Cassidy?"
+
+"Did you so?" grinned Cassidy, now secure in his triumphant priority
+and inclined to become friendly.
+
+"I never dreamed that your division was watching Lauffer," continued
+Vaux, still red with vexation. "It's a wonder we didn't spoil the
+whole affair between us."
+
+"It is that!" agreed Cassidy with a wider grin. "And you can take it
+from me, Mr. Vaux, we never knew that the Postal Inspection was on
+to this fellow at all at all until you called me to stop outgoing
+letters."
+
+"What have you on him?" inquired Vaux.
+
+Cassidy laughed:
+
+"Oh, listen then! Would you believe this fellow was tryin' the old
+diagonal trick? Sure it was easy; I saw him mail a letter this
+afternoon and I got it. I'd been waiting three months for him to do
+something like that. But he's a fox--he is that, Mr. Vaux! Do you
+want to see the letter? I have it on me--"
+
+He fished it out of his inside pocket and spread it on the dining
+table under the light.
+
+"You know the game," he remarked, laying a thick forefinger on the
+diagonal line bisecting the page. "All I had to do was to test the
+letter by drawing that line across it from corner to corner. Read
+the words that the line cuts through. Can you beat it?"
+
+Vaux and Miss Erith bent over the letter, read the apparently
+innocent message it contained, then read the words through which the
+diagonal line had been drawn.
+
+Then Cassidy triumphantly read aloud the secret and treacherous
+information which the letter contained:
+
+"SEVEN UNITED STATES TRANSPORTS TO-DAY NEW YORK (BY THE) NORTHERN
+ROUTE. INFORM OUR U-BOATS. URGENCY REQUIRES INSTANT MEASURES. TEN
+MORE ARE TO SAIL FROM HERE NEXT WEEK."
+
+"The dirty Boche!" added Cassidy. "Dugan has left for Mexico to look
+up this brother of his and I'm lookin' up this snake, so I guess
+there's no harm done so far."
+
+"New York.
+
+"January 3rd. 1916.
+
+"My dear Brother:
+
+"For seven long weeks I have awaited a letter from you. The
+United-States mails from Mexico seem to be interrupted. Imagine my
+transports of joy when at last I hear from you today. You and I,
+dear brother, are the only ones left of our family--you in Vera
+Cruz. I in New-York--you in a hot Southern climate, I in a Northern,
+amid snow and ice, where the tardy sun does not route me from my bed
+till late in the morning.
+
+"However, I inform you with pleasure that I am well. I rejoice that
+our good health is mutual. After all, the dear old U. S. suits me.
+Of course railroads or boats could carry me to a warm climate, in
+case urgency required it. But I am quite well now, and my health
+requires merely prudence. However, if I am again ill at any instant,
+I shall leave for Florida, where all tho proper measures can be
+taken to combat my rheumatism,
+
+"Ten days ago I was in bed, and unable to do more than move my left
+arm. But th« doctors are confident that my malady is not going to
+return. If it does threaten to return I shall sail for Jacksonville
+at once, and from there go to Miami, and not return here until the
+warm and balmy weather of next spring has lasted at least a week.
+Affectionataly your brother.
+
+"Herman."
+
+He pocketed the letter and went into the bedroom to get a coat and
+vest for the prisoner. Miss Erith looked at Vaux.
+
+"Cassidy seems to know nothing about the code-cipher," she
+whispered. "I think he rummaged on general principles, not in search
+of any code-book."
+
+She looked around the dining-room. The doors of the yellow oak
+sideboard were open, but no book was there among the plated knives
+and forks and the cheap dishes.
+
+Cassidy came back with the garments he had been looking for--an
+overcoat, coat and vest--and he carried them into the kitchenette,
+whither presently Vaux followed him.
+
+Cassidy had just unlocked the handcuffs from the powerful wrists of
+a dark, stocky, sullen man who stood in his shirt-sleeves near a
+small deal table.
+
+"Lauffer?" inquired Vaux, dryly.
+
+"It sure is, ain't it, Herman?" replied Cassidy facetiously. "Now,
+then, me Dutch bucko, climb into your jeans, if YOU please--there's
+a good little Boche!"
+
+Vaux gazed curiously at the spy, who returned his inspection coolly
+enough while he wrinkled his nose at him, and his beady eyes roamed
+over him.
+
+When the prisoner had buttoned his vest and coat, Cassidy snapped on
+the bracelets again, whistling cheerily under his breath.
+
+As they started to leave the kitchenette, Vaux, who brought up the
+rear, caught sight of a large, thick book lying on the pantry shelf.
+It was labelled "Perfect Cook-Book," but he picked it up, shoved it
+into his overcoat pocket en passant, and followed Cassidy and his
+prisoner into the dining-room.
+
+Here Cassidy turned humorously to him and to Miss Erith.
+
+"I've cleaned up the place," he remarked, "but you're welcome to
+stay here and rummage if you want to. I'm sending one of our men
+back to take possession as soon as I lock up this bird."
+
+"All right. Good luck," nodded Vaux.
+
+Cassidy tipped his derby to Miss Erith, bestowed a friendly grin on
+Vaux.
+
+"Come along, old sport!" he said genially to Lauffer; and he walked
+away with his handcuffed prisoner, whistling "Garryowen."
+
+"Wait!" motioned Vaux to Miss Erith. He went to the stairs, listened
+to the progress of agent and prey, heard the street-door clash, then
+hastened back to the lighted dining-room, pulling the "Perfect
+Cook-Book" from his pocket.
+
+"I found that in the kitchenette," he remarked, laying it before her
+on the table. "Maybe that's the key?"
+
+"A cook-book!" She smiled, opened it. "Why--why, it's a
+DICTIONARY!" she exclaimed excitedly.
+
+"A dictionary!"
+
+"Yes! Look! Stormonth's English Dictionary!"
+
+"By ginger!" he said. "I believe it's the code-book! Where is your
+cipher letter, Miss Erith!"
+
+The girl produced it with hands that trembled a trifle, spread it
+out under the light. Then she drew from her pocket a little pad and
+a pencil.
+
+"Quick," she said, "look for page 17!"
+
+"Yes, I have it!"
+
+"First column!"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Now try the twentieth word from the top!"
+
+He counted downward very carefully.
+
+"It is the word 'anagraph,'" he said; and she wrote it down.
+
+"Also, we had better try the twentieth word counting from the bottom
+of the page up," she said. "It might possibly be that."
+
+"The twentieth word, counting from the bottom of the column upward,
+is the word 'an,'" he said. She wrote it.
+
+"Now," she continued, "try page 15, second column, third word from
+TOP!"
+
+"'Ambrosia' is the word."
+
+"Try the third word from the BOTTOM."
+
+"'American.'"
+
+She pointed to the four words which she had written. Counting from
+the TOP of the page downward the first two words were "Anagraph
+ambrosia." But counting from the BOTTOM upward the two words formed
+the phrase: "AN AMERICAN."
+
+"Try page 730, first column, seventh word from the bottom," she
+said, controlling her excitement with an effort.
+
+"The word is 'who.'"
+
+"Page 212, second column, first word!"
+
+"'For.'"
+
+"Page 507, first column, seventh word!"
+
+"'Reasons.'"
+
+"We have the key!" she exclaimed. "Look at what I've written!--'An
+American who for reasons!' And here, in the cipher letter, it goes
+on--'of the most'--Do you see?"
+
+"It certainly looks like the key," he said. "But we'd better try
+another word or two."
+
+"Try page 717, first column, ninth word."
+
+"The word is 'vital.'"
+
+"Page 274, second column, second word."
+
+"'Importance!'"
+
+"It is the key! Here is what I have written: 'An American who for
+reasons, of the most vital importance!' Quick. We don't want a
+Secret Service man to find us here, Mr. Vaux! He'd object to our
+removing this book from Lauffer's apartment. Put it into your pocket
+and run!" And the pretty Miss Erith turned and took to her heels
+with Vaux after her.
+
+Through the disordered apartment and down the stairs they sped, out
+into the icy darkness and around the corner, where her car stood,
+engine running, and a blanket over the hood.
+
+As soon as the chauffeur espied them he whisked off the blanket;
+Miss Erith said: "Home!" and jumped in, and Vaux followed.
+
+Deep under the fur robe they burrowed, shivering more from sheer
+excitement than from cold, and the car flew across to Fifth Avenue
+and then northward along deserted sidewalks and a wintry park, where
+naked trees and shrubs stood stark as iron in the lustre of the
+white electric lamps.
+
+"That time the Secret Service made a mess of it," he said with a
+nervous laugh. "Did you notice Cassidy's grin of triumph?"
+
+"Poor Cassidy," she said.
+
+"I don't know. He butted in."
+
+"All the services are working at cross-purposes. It's a pity."
+
+"Well, Cassidy got his man. That's practically all he came for.
+Evidently he never heard of a code-book in connection with Lauffer's
+activities. That diagonal cipher caught him."
+
+"What luck," she murmured, "that you noticed that cook-book in the
+pantry! And what common sense you displayed in smuggling it!"
+
+"I didn't suppose it was THE book; I just took a chance."
+
+"To take a chance is the best way to make good, isn't it?" she said,
+laughing. "Oh, I am so thrilled, Mr. Vaux! I shall sit up all night
+over my darling cipher and my fascinating code-book-dictionary."
+
+"Will you be down in the morning?" he inquired.
+
+"Of course. Then to-morrow evening, if you will come to my house, I
+shall expect to show you the entire letter neatly deciphered."
+
+"Fine!" he exclaimed as the car stopped before her door.
+
+She insisted on sending him home in her car, and he was very
+grateful; so when he had seen her safely inside her house with the
+cook-book-dictionary clasped in her arms and a most enchanting smile
+on her pretty face, he made his adieux, descended the steps, and her
+car whirled him swiftly homeward through the arctic night.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE SLIP
+
+
+
+
+
+When Clifford Vaux arrived at a certain huge building now mostly
+devoted to Government work connected with the war, he found upon his
+desk a dictionary camouflaged to represent a cook-book; and also
+Miss Erith's complete report. And he lost no time in opening and
+reading the latter document:
+
+"CLIFFORD VAUX, ESQ.,
+
+"D. C. of the E. C. D.,
+
+"P. I. Service. (Confidential)
+
+"Sir:
+
+"I home the honour to report that the matter with which you have
+entrusted me is now entirely cleared up.
+
+"This short preliminary memorandum is merely to refresh your memory
+concerning the particular case herewith submitted in detail.
+
+"In re Herman Laufer:
+
+"The code-book, as you recollect, is Stormonth's English Dictionary,
+XIII Edition, published by Wm. Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh and
+London, MDCCCXCVI. This book I herewith return to you.
+
+"The entire cipher is, as we guessed, arbitrary and stupidly
+capricious. Phonetic spelling is indulged in occasionally--I should
+almost say humorously--were it not a Teuton mind which evolved the
+phonetic combinations which represent proper names not found in that
+dictionary--names like Holzminden and New York, for example.
+
+"As for the symbols and numbers, they are not at all obscure.
+Reference to the dictionary makes the cipher perfectly clear.
+
+"In Stormonth's Dictionary you will notice that each page has two
+columns; each column a varying number of paragraphs; some of the
+paragraphs contain more than one word to be defined.
+
+"In the cipher letter the first number of any of the groups of
+figures which are connected by dashes (--) and separated by vertical
+(|) represents the page in Stormonth's Dictionary on which the word
+is to be found.
+
+"The second number represents the column (1 or 2) in which the word
+is to be found.
+
+"The third number indicates the position of the word, counting from
+the bottom of the page upward, in the proper column.
+
+"Roman numerals which sometimes follow, enclosed in a circle, give
+the position of the word in the paragraph, if it does not, as usual,
+begin the paragraph.
+
+"The phonetic spelling of Holzminden is marked by an asterisk when
+first employed. Afterward only the asterisk (*) is used, instead of
+the cumbersome phonetic symbol.
+
+"Minus and plus signs are namely used to subtract or to add letters
+or to connect syllables. Reference to the code-book makes all this
+clear enough.
+
+"In the description of the escaped prisoner, Roman numerals give his
+age; Roman and Arabic his height in feet and inches.
+
+"Arabic numerals enclosed in circles represent capital letters as
+they occur in the middle of a page in the dictionary--as S, for
+example, is printed in the middle of the page; and all words
+beginning with S follow in proper sequence.
+
+"With the code-book at your elbow the cipher will prove to be
+perfectly simple. Without the code it is impossible for any human
+being to solve such a cipher, as you very well know.
+
+"I herewith append the cipher letter, the method of translation, and
+the complete message.
+
+"Respectfully,
+
+"EVELYN ERITH: E. C. D."
+
+Complete Translation of Cipher Letter with Parenthetical Suggestions
+by Miss Erith.
+
+To
+
+B 60-02,
+
+An American, who for reasons of the most vital importance has been
+held as an English (civilian?) civic prisoner in the mixed civilian
+(concentration) camp at Holzminden, has escaped. It is now feared
+that he has made his way safely to New York. (Memo: Please note the
+very ingenious use of phonetics to spell out New York. E. E.)
+
+(His) name (is) Kay McKay and he has been known as Kay McKay of
+Isla--a Scotch title--he having inherited from his grandfather (a)
+property in Scotland called Isla, which is but a poor domain
+(consisting of the river) Isla and the adjoining moors and a large
+white-washed manor (house) in very poor repair.
+
+After his escape from Holzminden it was at first believed that McKay
+had been drowned in (the River) Weser. Later it was ascertained that
+he sailed for an American port via a Scandinavian liner sometime
+(in) October.
+
+(This is his) description: Age 32; height 5 feet 8 l/2 inches; eyes
+brown; hair brown; nose straight; mouth regular; face oval; teeth
+white and even--no dental work; small light-brown moustache; no
+superficial identification marks.
+
+The bones in his left foot were broken many years ago, but have been
+properly set. Except for an hour or so every two or three months, he
+suffers no lameness.
+
+He speaks German without accent; French with an English accent.
+
+Until incarcerated (in Holzminden camp) he had never been
+intemperate. There, however, through orders from Berlin, he was
+tempted and encouraged in the use of intoxicants--other drink,
+indeed, being excluded from his allowance--so that after the second
+year he had become more or less addicted (to the use of alcohol).
+
+Unhappily, however, this policy, which had been so diligently and so
+thoroughly pursued in order to make him talkative and to surprise
+secrets from him when intoxicated (failed to produce the so properly
+expected results and) only succeeded in making of the young man a
+hopeless drunkard.
+
+Sterner measures had been decided on, and, in fact, had already been
+applied, when the prisoner escaped by tunnelling.
+
+Now, it is most necessary to discover this McKay (man's whereabouts
+and to have him destroyed by our agents in New York). Only his death
+can restore to the (Imperial German) Government its perfect sense of
+security and its certainty of (ultimate) victory.
+
+The necessity (for his destruction) lies in the unfortunate and
+terrifying fact that he is cognisant of the Great Secret! He should
+have been executed at Holzminden within an hour (of his
+incarceration).
+
+This was the urgent advice of Von Tirpitz. But unfortunately High
+Command intervened with the expectation (of securing from the
+prisoner) further information (concerning others who, like himself,
+might possibly have become possessed in some measure of a clue to
+the Great Secret)? E. E.
+
+The result is bad. (That the prisoner has escaped without betraying
+a single word of information useful to us.) E. E.
+
+Therefore, find him and have him silenced without delay. The
+security of the Fatherland depends on this (man's immediate death).
+
+M 17. (Evidently the writer of the letter) E. E.
+
+For a long time Vaux sat studying cipher and translation. And at
+last he murmured:
+
+"Surely, surely. Fine--very fine.... Excellent work. But--WHAT is
+the Great Secret?"
+
+There was only one man in America who knew.
+
+And he had landed that morning from the Scandinavian steamer, Peer
+Gynt, and, at that very moment, was standing by the bar of the Hotel
+Astor, just sober enough to keep from telling everything he knew to
+the bartenders, and just drunk enough to talk too much in a place
+where the enemy always listens.
+
+He said to the indifferent bartender who had just served him:
+
+"'F you knew what I know 'bout Germany, you'd be won'ful man! I'M
+won'ful man. I know something! Going tell, too. Going see 'thorities
+this afternoon. Going tell 'em great secret!... Grea' milt'ry
+secret! Tell 'em all 'bout it! Grea' secresh! Nobody knows
+grea'-sekresh 'cep m'self! Whaddya thinka that? Gimme l'il
+Hollanschnapps n'water onna side!"
+
+Hours later he was, apparently, no drunker--as though he could not
+manage to get beyond a certain stage of intoxication, no matter how
+recklessly he drank.
+
+"'Nother Hollenschnapps," he said hazily. "Goin' see 'thorities
+'bout grea' sekresh! Tell 'em all 'bout it. Anybody try stop me,
+knockem down. Thassa way.... N-n-nockem out!--stan' no nonsense! Ge'
+me?"
+
+Later he sauntered off on slightly unsteady legs to promenade
+himself in the lobby and Peacock Alley.
+
+Three men left the barroom when he left. They continued to keep him
+in view.
+
+Although he became no drunker, he grew politer after every
+drink--also whiter in the face--and the bluish, bruised look
+deepened under his eyes.
+
+But he was a Chesterfield in manners; he did not stare at any of the
+lively young persons in Peacock Alley, who seemed inclined to look
+pleasantly at him; he made room for them to pass, hat in hand.
+
+Several times he went to the telephone desk and courteously
+requested various numbers; and always one of the three men who had
+been keeping him in view stepped into the adjoining booth, but did
+not use the instrument.
+
+Several times he strolled through the crowded lobby to the desk and
+inquired whether there were any messages or visitors for Mr. Kay
+McKay; and the quiet, penetrating glances of the clerks on duty
+immediately discovered his state of intoxication but nothing else,
+except his extreme politeness and the tense whiteness of his face.
+
+Two of the three men who were keeping him in view tried, at various
+moments, to scrape acquaintance with him in the lobby, and at the
+bar; and without any success.
+
+The last man, who had again stepped into an adjoining booth while
+McKay was telephoning, succeeded, by inquiring for McKay at the desk
+and waiting there while he was being paged.
+
+The card on which this third man of the trio had written bore the
+name Stanley Brown; and when McKay hailed the page and perused the
+written name of his visitor he walked carefully back to the
+lobby--not too fast, because he seemed to realise that his legs, at
+that time, would not take kindly to speed.
+
+In the lobby the third man approached him:
+
+"Mr. McKay?"
+
+"Mr. Brown?"
+
+"A. I. O. agent," said Brown in a low voice. "You telephoned to
+Major Biddle, I believe."
+
+McKay inspected him with profound gravity:
+
+"How do," he said. "Ve' gla', m'sure. Ve' kind 'f'you come way up
+here see me. But I gotta see Major Biddle."
+
+"I understand. Major Biddle has asked me to meet you and bring you
+to him."
+
+"Oh. Ve' kind, 'm'sure. Gotta see Major. Confidential. Can' tell
+anybody 'cep Major."
+
+"The Major will meet us at the Pizza, this evening," explained
+Brown. "Meanwhile, if you will do me the honour of dining with
+me--"
+
+"Ve' kind. Pleasure, 'm'sure. Have li'l drink, Mr. Brown?"
+
+"Not here," murmured Brown. "I'm not in uniform, but I'm known."
+
+"Quite so. Unnerstan' perfec'ly. Won'do. No."
+
+"Had you thought of dressing for dinner?" inquired Mr. Brown
+carelessly.
+
+McKay nodded, went over to the desk and got his key. But when he
+returned to Brown he only laughed and shoved the key into his
+pocket.
+
+"Forgot," he explained. "Just came over. Haven't any clothes. Got
+these in Christiania. Ellis Island style. 'S'all I've got. Good
+overcoat though." He fumbled at his fur coat as he stood there,
+slightly swaying.
+
+"We'll get a drink where I'm not known," said Brown. "I'll find a
+taxi."
+
+"Ve' kind," murmured McKay, following him unsteadily to the swinging
+doors that opened on Long Acre, now so dimly lighted that it was
+scarcely recognisable.
+
+An icy blast greeted them from the darkness, refreshing McKay for a
+moment; but in the freezing taxi he sank back as though weary,
+pulling his beaver coat around him and closing his battered eyes.
+
+"Had a hard time," he muttered. "Feel done in. ... Prisoner. .. .
+Gottaway. . . . Three months making Dutch border.... Hell. Tell
+Major all 'bout it. Great secret."
+
+"What secret is that?" asked Brown, peering at him intently through
+the dim light, where he swayed in the corner with every jolt of the
+taxi.
+
+"Sorry, m'dear fellow. Mussn' ask me that. Gotta tell Major n'no one
+else."
+
+"But I am the Major's confidential--"
+
+"Sorry. You'll 'scuse me, 'm'sure. Can't talk Misser Brow!--'gret
+'ceedingly 'cessity reticence. Unnerstan'?"
+
+The taxi stopped before a vaguely lighted saloon on Fifty-ninth
+Street east of Fifth Avenue. McKay opened his eyes, looked around
+him in the bitter darkness, stumbled out into the snow on Brown's
+arm.
+
+"A quiet, cosy little cafe," said Brown, "where I don't mind joining
+you in something hot before dinner."
+
+"Thasso? Fine! Hot Scotch we' good 'n'cold day. We'll havva l'il
+drink keep us warm 'n'snug."
+
+A few respectable-looking men were drinking beer in the cafe as they
+entered a little room beyond, where a waiter came to them and took
+Brown's orders.
+
+Hours later McKay seemed to be no more intoxicated than he had been;
+no more loquacious or indiscreet. He had added nothing to what he
+had already disclosed, boasted no more volubly about the "great
+secret," as he called it.
+
+Now and then he recollected himself and inquired for the "Major,"
+but a drink always sidetracked him.
+
+It was evident, too, that Brown was becoming uneasy and impatient to
+the verge of exasperation, and that he was finally coming to the
+conclusion that he could do nothing with the man McKay as far as
+pumping was concerned.
+
+Twice, on pretexts, he left McKay alone in the small room and went
+into the cafe, where his two companions of the Hotel Astor were
+seated at a table, discussing sardine sandwiches and dark brew.
+
+"I can't get a damned thing out of him," he said in a low voice.
+"Who the hell he is and where he comes from is past me. Had I better
+fix him and take his key?"
+
+"Yess," nodded one of the other men, "it iss perhaps better that we
+search now his luggage in his room."
+
+"I guess that's all we can hope for from this guy. Say! He's a clam.
+And he may be only a jazzer at that."
+
+"He comes on the Peer Gynt this morning. We shall not forget that
+alretty, nor how he iss calling at those telephones all afternoon."
+
+"He may be a nosey newspaper man--just a fresh souse," said Brown.
+"All the same I think I'll fix him and we'll go see what he's got in
+his room."
+
+The two men rose, paid their reckoning, and went out; Brown returned
+to the small room, where McKay sat at the table with his curly brown
+head buried in his arms.
+
+He did not look up immediately when Brown returned--time for the
+latter to dose the steaming tumbler at the man's elbow, and slip the
+little bottle back into his pocket.
+
+Then, thinking McKay might be asleep, he nudged him, and the young
+man lifted his marred and dissipated visage and extended one hand
+for his glass.
+
+They both drank.
+
+"Wheresa Major?" inquired McKay. "Gotta see him rightaway. Great
+secreksh--"
+
+"Take a nap. You're tired."
+
+"Yess'm all in," muttered the other. "Had a hard
+time--prisoner--three--three months hiding--" His head fell on his
+arms again.
+
+Brown rose from his chair, bent over him, remained poised above his
+shoulder for a few moments. Then he coolly took the key from McKay's
+overcoat pocket and very deftly continued the search, in spite of
+the drowsy restlessness of the other.
+
+But there were no papers, no keys, only a cheque-book and a wallet
+packed with new banknotes and some foreign gold and silver. Brown
+merely read the name written in the new cheque-book but did not take
+it or the money.
+
+Then, his business with McKay being finished, he went out, paid the
+reckoning, tipped the waiter generously, and said:
+
+"My friend wants to sleep for half an hour. Let him alone until I
+come back for him."
+
+Brown had been gone only a few moments when McKay lifted his head
+from his arms with a jerk, looked around him blindly, got to his
+feet and appeared in the cafe doorway, swaying on unsteady legs.
+
+"Gotta see the Major!" he said thickly. "'M'not qui' well. Gotta--"
+
+The waiter attempted to quiet him, but McKay continued on toward the
+door, muttering that he had to find the Major and that he was not
+feeling well.
+
+They let him go out into the freezing darkness. Between the saloon
+and the Plaza Circle he fell twice on the ice, but contrived to find
+his feet again and lurch on through the deserted street and square.
+
+The black cold that held the city in its iron grip had driven men
+and vehicles from the streets. On Fifth Avenue scarcely a moving
+light was to be seen; under the fuel-conservation order, club, hotel
+and private mansion were unlighted at that hour. The vast marble
+mass of the Plaza Hotel loomed enormous against the sky; the New
+Netherlands, the Savoy, the Metropolitan Club, the great Vanderbilt
+mansion, were darkened. Only a few ice-dimmed lamps clustered around
+the Plaza fountain, where the bronze goddess, with her basket of
+ice, made a graceful and shadowy figure under the stars.
+
+The young man was feeling very ill now. His fur overcoat had become
+unbuttoned and the bitter wind that blew across the Park seemed to
+benumb his body and fetter his limbs so that he could barely keep
+his feet.
+
+He had managed to cross Fifth Avenue, somehow; but now he stumbled
+against the stone balustrade which surrounds the fountain, and he
+rested there, striving to keep his feet.
+
+Blindness, then deafness possessed him. Stupefied, instinct still
+aided him automatically in his customary habit of fighting; he
+strove to beat back the mounting waves of lethargy; half-conscious,
+he still fought for consciousness.
+
+After a while his hat fell off. He was on his knees now, huddled
+under his overcoat, his left shoulder resting against the
+balustrade. Twice one arm moved as though seeking something. It was
+the mind's last protest against the betrayal of the body. Then the
+body became still, although the soul still lingered within it.
+
+But now it had become a question of minutes--not many minutes.
+Fate had knocked him out; Destiny was counting him out--had nearly
+finished counting. Then Chance stepped into the squared circle of
+Life. And Kay McKay was in a very bad way indeed when a coupe,
+speeding northward through the bitter night, suddenly veered
+westward, ran in to the curb, and stopped; and Miss Erith's
+chauffeur turned in his seat at the wheel to peer back through the
+glass at his mistress, whose signal he had just obeyed.
+
+Then he scrambled out of his seat and came around to the door, just
+as Miss Erith opened it and hurriedly descended.
+
+"Wayland," she said, "there's somebody over there on the sidewalk.
+Can't you see?--there by the marble railing?--by the fountain!
+Whoever it is will freeze to death. Please go over and see what is
+the matter."
+
+The heavily-furred chauffeur ran across the snowy oval. Miss Erith
+saw him lean over the shadowy, prostrate figure, shake it; then she
+hurried over too, and saw a man, crouching, fallen forward on his
+face beside the snowy balustrade.
+
+Down on her knees in the snow beside him dropped Miss Erith, calling
+on Wayland to light a match.
+
+"Is he dead, Miss?"
+
+"No. Listen to him breathe! He's ill. Can't you hear the dreadful
+sounds he makes? Try to lift him, if you can. He's freezing here!"
+
+"I'm thinkin' he's just drunk an' snorin,' Miss."
+
+"What of it? He's freezing, too. Carry him to the carl"
+
+Wayland leaned down, put both big arms under the shoulders of the
+unconscious man, and dragged him, upright, holding him by main
+strength.
+
+"He's drunk, all right, Miss," the chauffeur remarked with a sniff
+of disgust.
+
+That he had been drinking was evident enough to Miss Erith now. She
+picked up his hat; a straggling yellow light from the ice-bound
+lamps fell on McKay's battered features.
+
+"Get him into the car," she said, "he'll die out here in this cold."
+
+The big chauffeur half-carried, half-dragged the inanimate man to
+the car and lifted him in. Miss Erith followed.
+
+"The Samaritan Hospital--that's the nearest," she said hastily.
+"Drive as fast as you can, Wayland."
+
+McKay had slid to the floor of the coupe; Miss Erith turned on the
+ceiling light, drew the fur robe around him, and lifted his head to
+her knees, holding it there supported between her gloved hands.
+
+The light fell full on his bruised visage, on the crisp brown hair
+dusted with snow, which lay so lightly on his temples, making him
+seem very frail and boyish in his deathly pallor.
+
+His breathing grew heavier, more laboured; the coupe reeked with the
+stench of alcohol; and Miss Erith, feeling almost faint, opened the
+window a little way, then wrapped the young man's head in the skirt
+of her fur coat and covered his icy hands with her own.
+
+The ambulance entrance to the Samaritan Hospital was dimly
+illuminated. Wayland, turning in from Park Avenue, sounded his horn,
+then scrambled down from the box as an orderly and a watchman
+appeared under the vaulted doorway. And in a few moments the
+emergency case had passed out of Miss Erith's jurisdiction.
+
+But as her car turned homeward, upon her youthful mind was stamped
+the image of a pale, bruised face--of a boyish head reversed upon
+her knees--of crisp, light-brown hair dusted with particles of
+snow.
+
+Within the girl's breast something deep was stirring--something
+unfamiliar--not pain--not pity--yet resembling both, perhaps. She
+had no other standard of comparison.
+
+After she reached home she called up the Samaritan Hospital for
+information, and learned that the man was suffering from the effects
+of alcohol and chloral--the latter probably an overdose
+self-administered--because he had not been robbed. Miss Erith also
+learned that there were five hundred dollars in new United States
+banknotes in his pockets, some English sovereigns, a number of Dutch
+and Danish silver pieces, and a new cheque-book on the Schuyler
+National Bank, in which was written what might be his name.
+
+"Will he live?" inquired Miss Erith, solicitous, as are people
+concerning the fate of anything they have helped to rescue.
+
+"He seems to be in no danger," came the answer. "Are you interested
+in the patient, Miss Erith?"
+
+"No--that is--yes. Yes, I am interested."
+
+"Shall we communicate with you in case any unfavourable symptoms
+appear?"
+
+"Please do!"
+
+"Are you a relative or friend?"
+
+"N-no. I am very slightly interested--in his recovery. Nothing
+more."
+
+"Very well. But we do not find his name in any directory. We have
+attempted to communicate with his family, but nobody of that name
+claims him. You say you are personally interested in the young man?"
+
+"Oh, no," said Miss Erith, "except that I hope he is not going to
+die.... He seems so--young--f-friendless--"
+
+"Then you have no personal knowledge of the patient?"
+
+"None whatever.... What did you say his name is?"
+
+"McKay."
+
+For a moment the name sounded oddly familiar but meaningless in her
+ears. Then, with a thrill of sudden recollection, she asked again
+for the man's name.
+
+"The name written in his cheque-book is McKay."
+
+"McKay!" she repeated incredulously. "What else?"
+
+"Kay."
+
+"WHAT!!"
+
+"That is the name in the cheque-book--Kay McKay."
+
+Dumb, astounded, she could not utter a word.
+
+"Do you know anything about him, Miss Erith?" inquired the distant
+voice.
+
+"Yes--yes!... I don't know whether I do.... I have heard the--that
+name--a similar name--" Her mind was in a tumult now. Could such a
+thing happen? It was utterly impossible!
+
+The voice on the wire continued:
+
+"The police have been here but they are not interested in the case,
+as no robbery occurred. The young man is still unconscious,
+suffering from the chloral. If you are interested, Miss Erith, would
+you kindly call at the hospital to-morrow?"
+
+"Yes.... Did you say that there was FOREIGN money in his pockets?"
+
+"Dutch and Danish silver and English gold."
+
+"Thank you.... I shall call to-morrow. Don't let him leave before I
+arrive."
+
+"What?"
+
+"I wish to see him. Please do not permit him to leave before I get
+there. It--it is very important--vital--in case he is the man--the
+Kay McKay in question."
+
+"Very well. Good-night."
+
+Miss Erith sank back in her armchair, shivering even in the warm
+glow from the hearth.
+
+"Such things can NOT happen!" she said aloud. "Such things do not
+happen in life!"
+
+And she told herself that even in stories no author would dare--not
+even the veriest amateur scribbler--would presume to affront
+intelligent readers by introducing such a coincidence as this
+appeared to be.
+
+"Such things do NOT happen!" repeated Miss Erith firmly.
+
+Such things, however, DO occur.
+
+Was it possible that the Great Secret, of which the Lauffer cipher
+letter spoke, was locked within the breast of this young fellow who
+now lay unconscious in the Samaritan Hospital?
+
+Was this actually the escaped prisoner? Was this the man who,
+according to instructions in the cipher, was to be marked for death
+at the hands of the German Government's secret agents in America?
+
+And, if this truly were the same man, was he safe, at least for the
+present, now that the cipher letter had been intercepted before it
+had reached Herman Lauffer?
+
+Hour after hour, lying deep in her armchair before the fire, Miss
+Erith crouched a prey to excited conjectures, not one of which could
+be answered until the man in the Samaritan Hospital had recovered
+consciousness.
+
+Suppose he never recovered consciousness. Suppose he should die--
+
+At the thought Miss Erith sprang from her chair and picked up the
+telephone.
+
+With fast-beating heart she waited for the connection. Finally she
+got it and asked the question.
+
+"The man is dying," came the calm answer. A pause, then: "I
+understand the patient has just died."
+
+Miss Erith strove to speak but her voice died in her throat.
+Trembling from head to foot, she placed the telephone on the table,
+turned uncertainly, fell into the armchair, huddled there, and
+covered her face with both hands.
+
+For it was proving worse--a little worse than the loss of the Great
+Secret--worse than the mere disappointment in losing it--worse even
+than a natural sorrow in the defeat of an effort to save life.
+
+For in all her own life Miss Erith had never until that evening
+experienced the slightest emotion when looking into the face of any
+man.
+
+But from the moment when her brown eyes fell upon the pallid,
+dissipated, marred young face turned upward on her knees in the
+car--in that instant she had known for the first time a new and
+indefinable emotion--vague in her mind, vaguer in her heart--yet
+delicately apparent.
+
+But what this unfamiliar emotion might be, so faint, so vague, she
+had made no effort to analyse.... It had been there; she had
+experienced it; that was all she knew.
+
+It was almost morning before she rose, stiff with cold, and moved
+slowly toward her bedroom.
+
+Among the whitening ashes on her hearth only a single coal remained
+alive.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+TO A FINISH
+
+
+
+
+
+The hospital called her on the telephone about eight o'clock in the
+morning:
+
+"Miss Evelyn Erith, please?"
+
+"Yes," she said in a tired voice, "who is it?"
+
+"Is this Miss Erith?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"This is the Superintendent's office, Samaritan, Hospital, Miss
+Dalton speaking."
+
+The girl's heart contracted with a pang of sheer pain. She closed
+her eyes and waited. The voice came over the wire again:
+
+"A wreath of Easter lilies with your card came early--this morning.
+I'm very sure there is a mistake--"
+
+"No," she whispered, "the flowers are for a patient who died in the
+hospital last night--a young man whom I brought there in my car--Kay
+McKay."
+
+"I was afraid so--"
+
+"What!"
+
+"McKay isn't dead! It's another patient. I was sure somebody here
+had made a mistake."
+
+Miss Erith swayed slightly, steadied herself with a desperate effort
+to comprehend what the voice was telling her.
+
+"There was a mistake made last night," continued Miss Dalton.
+"Another patient died--a similar case. When I came on duty a few
+moments ago I learned what had occurred. The young man in whom you
+are interested is conscious this morning. Would you care to see him
+before he is discharged?"
+
+Miss Erith said, unsteadily, that she would.
+
+She had recovered her self-command but her knees remained weak and
+her lips tremulous, and she rested her forehead on both hands which
+had fallen, tightly clasped, on the table in front of her. After a
+few moments she felt better and she rang up her D. C., Mr. Vaux, and
+explained that she expected to be late at the office. After that she
+got the garage on the wire, ordered her car, and stood by the window
+watching the heavily falling snow until her butler announced the
+car's arrival.
+
+The shock of the message informing her that this man was still alive
+now rapidly absorbed itself in her reviving excitement at the
+prospect of an approaching interview with him. Her car ran
+cautiously along Park Avenue through the driving snow, but the
+distance was not far and in a few minutes the great red quadrangle
+of the Samaritan Hospital loomed up on her right. And even before
+she was ready, before she quite had time to compose her mind in
+preparation for the questions she had begun to formulate, she was
+ushered into a private room by a nurse on duty who detained her a
+moment at the door:
+
+"The patient is ready to be discharged," she whispered, "but we have
+detained him at your request. We are so sorry about the mistake."
+
+"Is he quite conscious?"
+
+"Entirely. He's somewhat shaken, that is all. Otherwise he shows no
+ill effects."
+
+"Does he know how he came here?"
+
+"Oh, yes. He questioned us this morning and we told him the
+circumstances."
+
+"Does he know I have arrived?"
+
+"Yes, I told him."
+
+"He did not object to seeing me?" inquired Miss Erith. A slight
+colour dyed her face.
+
+"No, he made no objection. In fact, he seemed interested. He expects
+you. You may go in."
+
+Miss Erith stepped into the room. Perhaps the patient had heard the
+low murmur of voices in the corridor, for he lay on his side in bed
+gazing attentively toward the door. Miss Erith walked straight to
+the bedside; he looked up at her in silence.
+
+"I am so glad that you are better," she said with an effort made
+doubly difficult in the consciousness of the bright blush on her
+cheeks. Without moving he replied in what must have once been an
+agreeable voice: "Thank you. I suppose you are Miss Erith."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then--I am very grateful for what you have done."
+
+"It was so fortunate--"
+
+"Would you be seated if you please?"
+
+She took the chair beside his bed.
+
+"It was nice of you," he said, almost sullenly. "Few women of your
+sort would bother with a drunken man."
+
+They both flushed. She said calmly: "It is women of my sort who DO
+exactly that kind of thing."
+
+He gave her a dark and sulky look: "Not often," he retorted: "there
+are few of your sort from Samaria."
+
+There was a silence, then he went on in a hard voice:
+
+"I'd been drinking a lot... as usual.... But it isn't an excuse when
+I say that my beastly condition was not due to a drunken stupor. It
+just didn't happen to be that time."
+
+She shivered slightly. "It happened to be due to chloral," he added,
+reddening painfully again. "I merely wished you to know."
+
+"Yes, they told me," she murmured.
+
+After another silence, during which he had been watching her
+askance, he said: "Did you think I had taken that chloral
+voluntarily?"
+
+She made no reply. She sat very still, conscious of vague pain
+somewhere in her breast, acquiescent in the consciousness, dumb, and
+now incurious concerning further details of this man's tragedy.
+
+"Sometimes," he said, "the poor devil who, in chloral, seeks
+a-refuge from intolerable pain becomes an addict to the drug.... I
+do not happen to be an addict. I want you to understand that."
+
+The painful colour came and went in the girl's face; he was now
+watching her intently.
+
+"As a matter of fact, but probably of no interest to you," he
+continued, "I did not voluntarily take that chloral. It was
+administered to me without my knowledge--when I was more or less
+stupid with liquor.... It is what is known as knockout drops, and is
+employed by crooks to stupefy men who are more or less intoxicated
+so that they may be easily robbed."
+
+He spoke now so calmly and impersonally that the girl had turned to
+look at him again as she listened. And now she said: "Were you
+robbed?"
+
+"They took my hotel key: nothing else."
+
+"Was that a serious matter, Mr. McKay?"
+
+He studied her with narrowing brown eyes.
+
+"Oh, no," he said. "I had nothing of value in my room at the Astor
+except a few necessaries in a steamer-trunk.... Thank you so much
+for all your kindness to me, Miss Erith," he added, as though
+relieving her of the initiative in terminating the interview.
+
+As he spoke he caught her eye and divined somehow that she did not
+mean to go just yet. Instantly he was on his guard, lying there with
+partly closed lids, awaiting events, though not yet really
+suspicious. But at her next question he rose abruptly, supported on
+one elbow, his whole frame tense and alert under the bed-coverings
+as though gathered for a spring.
+
+"What did you say?" he demanded.
+
+"I asked you how long ago you escaped from Holzminden camp?"
+repeated the girl, very pale.
+
+"Who told you I had ever been there?--wherever that is!"
+
+"You were there as a prisoner, were you not, Mr. McKay?"
+
+"Where is that place?"
+
+"In Germany on the River Weser. You were detained there under
+pretence of being an Englishman before we declared war on Germany.
+After we declared war they held you as a matter of course."
+
+There was an ugly look in his eyes, now: "You seem to know a great
+deal about a drunkard you picked up in the snow near the Plaza
+fountain last night."
+
+"Please don't speak so bitterly."
+
+Quite unconsciously her gloved hand crept up on her fur coat until
+it rested over her heart, pressing slightly against her breast.
+Neither spoke for a few moments. Then:
+
+"I do know something about you, Mr. McKay," she said. "Among other
+things I know that--that if you have become--become intemperate--it
+is not your fault.... That was vile of them-unutterably wicked-to do
+what they did to you--"
+
+"Who are you?" he burst out. "Where have you learned-heard such
+things? Did I babble all this?"
+
+"You did not utter a sound!"
+
+"Then--in God's name--"
+
+"Oh, yes, yes!" she murmured, "in God's name. That is why you and I
+are here together--in God's name and by His grace. Do you know He
+wrought a miracle for you and me--here in New York, in these last
+hours of this dreadful year that is dying very fast now?
+
+"Do you know what that miracle is? Yes, it's partly the fact that
+you did not die last night out there on the street. Thirteen degrees
+below zero! ... And you did not die.... And the other part of the
+miracle is that I of all people in the world should have found
+you!... That is our miracle."
+
+Somehow he divined that the girl did not mean the mere saving of his
+life had been part of this miracle. But she had meant that, too,
+without realising she meant it.
+
+"Who are you?" he asked very quietly.
+
+"I'll tell you: I am Evelyn Erith, a volunteer in the C. E. D.
+Service of the United States."
+
+He drew a deep breath, sank down on his elbow, and rested his head
+on the pillow.
+
+"Still I don't see how you know," he said. "I mean--the beastly
+details--"
+
+"I'll tell you some time. I read the history of your case in an
+intercepted cipher letter. Before the German agent here had received
+and decoded it he was arrested by an agent of another Service. If
+there is anything more to be learned from him it will be extracted.
+
+"But of all men on earth you are the one man I wanted to find. There
+is the miracle: I found you! Even now I can scarcely force myself to
+believe it is really you."
+
+The faintest flicker touched his eyes.
+
+"What did you want of me?" he inquired.
+
+"Help."
+
+"Help? From such a man as I? What sort of help do you expect from a
+drunkard?"
+
+"Every sort. All you can give. All you can give."
+
+He looked at her wearily; his face had become pallid again; the dark
+hollows of dissipation showed like bruises.
+
+"I don't understand," he said. "I'm no good, you know that. I'm done
+in, finished. I couldn't help you with your work if I wanted to.
+There's nothing left of me. I am not to be depended on."
+
+And suddenly, in his eyes of a boy, his self-hatred was revealed to
+her in one savage gleam.
+
+"No good," he muttered feverishly, "not to be trusted--no will-power
+left.... It was in me, I suppose, to become the drunkard I am--"
+
+"You are NOT!" cried the girl fiercely. "Don't say it!"
+
+"Why not? I am!"
+
+"You can fight your way free!" His laugh frightened her.
+
+"Fight? I've done that. They tried to pump me that way, too--tried
+to break me--break my brain to pieces--by stopping my liquor.... I
+suppose they thought I might really go insane, as they gave it back
+after a while--after a few centuries in hell--and tried to make me
+talk by other methods--
+
+"Don't, please." She turned her head swiftly, unable to control her
+quivering face.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I can't bear it."
+
+"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to shock you."
+
+"I know." She sat for a while with head averted; and presently
+spoke, sitting so:
+
+"We'll fight it, anyway," she said.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"If you'll let me--"
+
+After a silence she turned and looked at him. He .stammered, very
+red:
+
+"I don't quite know why you speak to me so."
+
+She herself was not entirely clear on that point, either. After all,
+her business with this man was to use him in the service of her
+Government."
+
+"What is THE GREAT SECRET?" she asked calmly.
+
+After a long while he said, lying there very still: "So you have
+even heard about that."
+
+"I have heard about it; that is all."
+
+"Do you know what it is?"
+
+"All I know about it is that there is such a thing--something known
+to certain Germans, and by them spoken of as THE GREAT SECRET. I
+imagine, of course, that it is some vital military secret which they
+desire to guard."
+
+"Is that all you know about it?"
+
+"No, not all." She looked at him gravely out of very clear, honest
+eyes:
+
+"I know, also, that the Berlin Government has ordered its agents to
+discover your whereabouts, and to'silence' you."
+
+He gazed at her quite blandly for a moment, then, to her amazement,
+he laughed--such a clear, untroubled, boyish laugh that her
+constrained expression softened in sympathy.
+
+"Do you think that Berlin doesn't mean it?" she asked, brightening a
+little.
+
+"Mean it? Oh, I'm jolly sure Berlin means it!"
+
+"Then why--"
+
+"Why do I laugh?"
+
+"Well--yes. Why do you? It does not strike me as very humorous."
+
+At that he laughed again--laughed so whole-heartedly, so
+delightfully, that the winning smile curved her own lips once more.
+
+"Would you tell me why you laugh?" she inquired.
+
+"I don't know. It seems so funny--those Huns, those Boches, already
+smeared from hair to feet with blood--pausing in their wholesale
+butchery to devise a plan to murder ME!"
+
+His face altered; he raised himself on one elbow:
+
+"The swine have turned all Europe into a bloody wallow. They're
+belly-deep in it--Kaiser and knecht! But that's only part of it.
+They're destroying souls by millions!... Mine is already damned."
+
+Miss Erith sprang to her feet: "I tell you not to say such a thing!"
+she cried, exasperated. "You're as young as I am! Besides, souls are
+not slain by murder. If they perish it's suicide, ALWAYS!"
+
+She began to pace the white room nervously, flinging open her fur
+coat as she turned and came straight back to his bed again. Standing
+there and looking down at him she said:
+
+"We've got to fight it out. The country needs you. It's your bit and
+you've got to do it. There's a cure for alcoholism--Dr. Langford's
+cure. Are you afraid because you think it may hurt?"
+
+He lay looking up at her with hell's own glimmer in his eyes again:
+
+"You don't know what you're talking about," he said. "You talk of
+cures, and I tell you that I'm half dead for a drink right now! And
+I'm going to get up and dress and get it!"
+
+The expression of his features and his voice and words appalled her,
+left her dumb for an instant. Then she said breathlessly:
+
+"You won't do that!"
+
+"Yes I will."
+
+"No."
+
+"Why not?" he demanded excitedly.
+
+"You owe me something."
+
+"What I said was conventional. I'm NOT grateful to you for saving
+the sort of life mine is!"
+
+"I was not thinking of your life."
+
+After a moment he said more quietly: "I know what you mean.... Yes,
+I am grateful. Our Government ought to know."
+
+"Then tell me, now."
+
+"You know," he said brutally, "I have only your word that you are
+what you say you are."
+
+She reddened but replied calmly: "That is true. Let me show you my
+credentials."
+
+From her muff she drew a packet, opened it, and laid the contents on
+the bedspread under his eyes. Then she walked to the window and
+stood there with her back turned looking out at the falling snow.
+
+After a few minutes he called her. She went back to the bedside,
+replaced the packet in her muff, and stood waiting in silence.
+
+He lay looking up at her very quietly and his bruised young features
+had lost their hard, sullen expression.
+
+"I'd better tell you all I know," he said, "because there is really
+no hope of curing me... you don't understand... my will-power is
+gone. The trouble is with my mind itself. I don't want to be
+cured.... I WANT what's killing me. I want it now, always, all the
+time. So before anything happens to me I'd better tell you what I
+know so that our Government can make the proper investigation.
+Because what I shall tell you is partly a surmise. I leave it to you
+to judge--to our Government."
+
+She drew from her muff a little pad and a pencil and seated herself
+on the chair beside him.
+
+"I'll speak slowly," he began, but she shook her head, saying that
+she was an expert stenographer. So he went on:
+
+"You know my name--Kay McKay. I was born here and educated at Yale.
+But my father was Scotch and he died in Scotland. My mother had been
+dead many years. They lived on a property called Isla which belonged
+to my grandfather. After my father's death my grandfather allowed me
+an income, and when I had graduated from Yale I continued here
+taking various post-graduate courses. Finally I went to Cornell and
+studied agriculture, game breeding and forestry--desiring some day
+to have a place of my own.
+
+"In 1914 I went to Germany to study their system of forestry. In
+July of that year I went to Switzerland and roamed about in the
+vagabond way I like--once liked." His visage altered and he cast a
+side glance at the girl beside him, but her eyes were fixed on her
+pad.
+
+He drew a deep breath, like a sigh:
+
+"In that corner of Switzerland which is thrust westward between
+Germany and France there are a lot of hills and mountains which were
+unfamiliar to me. The flora resembled that of the Vosges--so did the
+bird and insect life except on the higher mountains.
+
+"There is a mountain called Mount Terrible. I camped on it. There
+was some snow. You know what happens sometimes in summer on the
+higher peaks. Well, it happened to me--the whole snow field slid
+when I was part way across it--and I thought it was all off--never
+dreamed a man could live through that sort of thing--with the sheer
+gneiss ledges below!
+
+"It was not a big avalanche--not the terrific thundering
+sort--rather an easy slipping, I fancy--but it was a devilish thing
+to lie aboard, and, of course, if there had been precipices where I
+slid--" He shrugged.
+
+The girl looked up from her shorthand manuscript; he seemed to be
+dreamily living over in his mind those moments on Mount Terrible.
+Presently he smiled slightly:
+
+"I was horribly scared--smothered, choked, half-senseless.... Part
+of the snow and a lot of trees and boulders went over the edge of
+something with a roar like Niagara.... I don't know how long
+afterward it was when I came to my senses.
+
+"I was in a very narrow, rocky valley, up to my neck in soft snow,
+and the sun beating on my face. ... So I crawled out... I wasn't
+hurt; I was merely lost.
+
+"It took me a long while to place myself geographically. But
+finally, by map and compass, I concluded that I was in some one of
+the innumerable narrow valleys on the northern side of Mount
+Terrible. Basle seemed to be the nearest proper objective, judging
+from my map.... Can you form a mental picture of that particular
+corner of Europe, Miss Erith?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, the German frontier did not seem to be very far northward--at
+least that was my idea. But there was no telling; the place where I
+landed was a savage and shaggy wilderness of firs and rocks without
+any sign of habitation or of roads.
+
+"The things that had been strapped on my back naturally remained
+with me--map, binoculars, compass, botanising paraphernalia, rations
+for two days--that sort of thing. So I was not worried. I prowled
+about, experienced agreeable shivers by looking up at the mountain
+which had dumped me down into this valley, and finally, after
+eating, I started northeast by compass.
+
+"It was a rough scramble. After I had been hiking along for several
+hours I realised that I was on a shelf high above another valley,
+and after a long while I came out where I could look down over miles
+of country. My map indicated that what I beheld must be some part of
+Alsace. Well, I lay flat on a vast shelf of rock and began to use my
+field-glasses."
+
+He was silent so long that Miss Erith finally looked up
+questioningly. McKay's face had become white and stern, and in his
+fixed gaze there was something dreadful.
+
+"Please," she faltered, "go on."
+
+He looked at her absently; the colour came back to his face; he
+shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Oh, yes. What was I saying? Yes--about that vast ledge up there
+under the mountains... I stayed there three days. Partly because I
+couldn't find any way down. There seemed to be none.
+
+"But I was not bored. Oh, no. Just anxious concerning my situation.
+Otherwise I had plenty to look at."
+
+She waited, pencil poised.
+
+"Plenty to look at," he repeated absently. "Plenty of Huns to gaze
+at. Huns? They were like ants below me, there. They swarmed under
+the mountain ledge as far as I could see--thousands of busy
+Boches--busy as ants. There were narrow-gauge railways, too,
+apparently running right into the mountain; and a deep broad cleft,
+deep as another valley, and all crawling with Huns.
+
+"A tunnel? Nobody alive ever dreamed of such a gigantic tunnel, if
+it was one!... Well, I was up there three days. It was the first of
+August--thereabouts--and I'd been afield for weeks. And, of course,
+I'd heard nothing of war--never dreamed of it.
+
+"If I had, perhaps what those thousands of Huns were doing along the
+mountain wall might have been plainer to me.
+
+"As it was, I couldn't guess. There was no blasting--none that I
+could hear. But trains were running and some gigantic enterprise was
+being accomplished--some enterprise that apparently demanded speed
+and privacy--for not one civilian was to be seen, not one dwelling.
+But there were endless mazes of fortifications; and I saw guns being
+moved everywhere.
+
+"Well, I was becoming hungry up on that fir-clad battlement. I
+didn't know how to get down into the valley. It began to look as
+though I'd have to turn back; and that seemed a rather awful
+prospect.
+
+"Anyway, what happened, eventually, was this: I started east through
+the forest along that pathless tableland, and on the afternoon of
+the next day, tired out and almost starved, I stepped across the
+Swiss boundary line--a wide, rocky, cleared space crossing a
+mountain flank like a giant's road.
+
+"No guards were visible anywhere, no sentry-boxes, but, as I stood
+hesitating in the middle of the frontier--and just why I hesitated I
+don't know--I saw half a dozen jagers of a German mounted regiment
+ride up on the German side of the boundary.
+
+"For a second the idea occurred to me that they had ridden parallel
+to the ledge to intercept me; but the idea seemed absurd, granted
+even that they had seen me upon the ledge from below, which I never
+dreamed they had. So when they made me friendly gestures to come
+across the frontier I returned their cheery 'Gruss Gott!' and
+plodded thankfully across. ... And their leader, leaning from his
+saddle to take my offered hand, suddenly struck me in the face, and
+at the same moment a trooper behind me hit me on the head with the
+butt of a pistol."
+
+The girl's flying pencil faltered; she lifted her brown eyes,
+waiting.
+
+"That's about all," he said--"as far as facts are concerned.... They
+treated me rather badly.... I faced their firing-squads half-a-dozen
+times. After that bluff wouldn't work they interned me as an English
+civilian at Holzminden.... They hid me when, at last, an inspection
+took place. No chance for me to communicate with our Ambassador or
+with any of the Commission."
+
+He turned to her in his boyish, frank way: "But do you know, Miss
+Erith, it took me quite a while to analyse the affair and to figure
+out why they arrested me, lied about me, and treated me so
+hellishly.
+
+"You see, I was kept in solitary confinement and never had a chance
+to speak to any of the other civilians interned there at Holzminden.
+There was no way of suspecting why all this was happening to me
+except by the attitude of the Huns themselves and their endless
+questions and threats and cruelties. They were cruel. They hurt me a
+lot."
+
+Miss Erith's eyes suddenly dimmed as she watched him, and she
+hastily bent her head over the pad.
+
+"Well," he went on, "the rest, as I say, is pure surmise. This is my
+conclusion: I think that for the last forty years the Huns have been
+busy with an astounding military enterprise. Of course, since 1870,
+the Boche has expected war, and has been feverishly preparing for
+it. All the world now knows what they have done--not everything that
+they have done, however.
+
+"My conclusion is this: that, when Mount Terrible shrugged me off
+its northern flank, the snow slide carried me to an almost
+inaccessible spot of which even the Swiss hunters knew nothing. Or,
+if they did, they considered it impossible to reach from their own
+territory.
+
+"From Germany it could be reached, but it was Swiss territory. At
+any rate I think I am the only civilian who has been there, and who
+has viewed from there this enormous work in which the Huns are
+engaged.
+
+"And I belive that this mysterious, overwhelmingly enormous work is
+nothing less than the piercing--not of a mountain or a group of
+mountains--but of that entire part of Switzerland which lies between
+Germany and France.
+
+"I believe that a vast military road, deep, deep, under the earth,
+is being carried by an enormous tunnel from far back on the German
+side of the frontier, under Mount Terrible, under all the mountains,
+hills, valleys, forests, rivers--under Switzerland, in fact--into
+French territory.
+
+"I believe it has been building since 1871. I believe it is nearly
+finished, and that it will, on French territory, give egress to a
+Hun army debouching from Alsace, under Switzerland, into France
+behind the French lines. That part of the Franco-Swiss frontier is
+unguarded, unfortified, uninhabited. From there a Hun army can
+strike the French trenches from the rear--strike Toul, Nancy,
+Belfort, Verdun--why, the road is open to Paris that way--open to
+Calais, to England!"
+
+"This is frightful!" cried the girl. "If such a dreadful--"
+
+"Wait! I told you that it is merely a surmise. I don't know. I
+guess. Why I guess it I have told you.... They were savage with
+me--those Huns.... They got nothing out of me. I lied steadily, even
+when drunk. No, they got nothing out of me. I denied I had seen
+anything. I denied--and truly enough--that anybody had accompanied
+me. No, they wrenched nothing out of me--not by starving me, not by
+water torture, not by their firing-squads, not by blows, not even by
+making of me the drunkard I am."
+
+The pencil fell from Miss Erith's hand and the hand caught McKay's,
+held it, crushed it.
+
+"You're only a boy," she murmured. "I'm not much more than a girl.
+We've both got years ahead of us--the best of our lives."
+
+"YOU have."
+
+"You also! Oh, don't, don't look at me that way. I'll help you.
+We've got work to do, you and I. Don't you see? Don't you
+understand? Work to do for our Government! Work to do for America!"
+
+"It's too late for me to--"
+
+"No. You've got to live. You've got to find yourself again. This
+depends on you. Don't you see it does? Don't you see that you have
+got to go back there and PROVE what you merely suspect?"
+
+"I simply can't."
+
+"You shall! I'll make this right with you! I'll stick to you! I'll
+fight to give you back your will-power--your mind. We'll do this
+together, for our country. I'll give up everything else to make this
+fight."
+
+He began to tremble.
+
+"I--if I could--"
+
+"I tell you that you shall! We must do our bit, you and I!"
+
+"You don't know--you don't know!" he cried in a bitter voice, then
+fell trembling again with the sweat of agony on his face.
+
+"No, I don't know," she whispered, clutching his hand to steady him.
+"But I shall learn."
+
+"You'll learn that a drunkard is a dirty beast!" he cried. "Do you
+know what I'd do if anybody tried to keep me from drink?
+ANYBODY!--even you!"
+
+"No, I don't know." She shook her head sorrowfully: "A mindless man
+becomes a demon, I suppose. ... Would you--injure me?"
+
+He was shaking all over now, and presently he sat up in bed and
+covered his head with one desperate hand.
+
+"You poor boy!" she whispered.
+
+"Keep away from me," he muttered, "I've told you all I know. I'm no
+further use.... Keep clear of me.... I'm sorry--to be--what I am."
+
+"When I leave what are you going to do?" she asked gently.
+
+"Do? I'll dress and go to the nearest bar."
+
+"Do you need it so much already?"
+
+He nodded his bowed head covered by the hand that gripped his hair:
+"Yes, I need it--badly."
+
+She rose, loosened his clutch on her slender hand, picked up her
+muff:
+
+"I'll be waiting for you downstairs," she said simply.
+
+His face expressed sullen defiance as he passed through the
+waiting-room. Yet he seemed a little taken aback as well as relieved
+when Miss Erith did not appear among the considerable number of
+people waiting there for discharged patients. He walked on,
+buttoning his fur coat with shaky fingers, passed the doorway and
+stepped out into the falling snow. At the same moment a chauffeur
+buried in coon-skins moved forward touching his cap:
+
+"Miss Erith's car is here, sir; Miss Erith expects you."
+
+McKay hesitated, scowling now in his perplexity; passed his
+quivering hand slowly across his face, then turned, and looked at
+the waiting car drawn up at the gutter. Behind the frosty window
+Miss Erith gave him a friendly smile. He walked over to the curb,
+the chauffeur opened the door, and McKay took off his hat.
+
+"Don't ask me," he said in a low voice that trembled slightly like a
+sick man's.
+
+"I DO ask you."
+
+"You know what's the matter with me, Miss Erith," he insisted in the
+same low, unsteady voice.
+
+"Please," she said: and laid one small gloved hand lightly on his
+arm.
+
+So he entered the car; the chauffeur drew the robe over them, and
+stood awaiting orders.
+
+"Home," said Miss Erith faintly.
+
+If McKay was astonished he did not betray it. Neither said anything
+more for a while. The man rested an elbow on the sill, his troubled,
+haggard face on his hand; the girl kept her gaze steadily in front
+of her with a partly resolute, partly scared expression. The car
+went up Park Avenue and then turned westward.
+
+When it stopped the girl said: "You will give me a few moments in my
+library with you, won't you?"
+
+The visage he turned to her was one of physical anguish. They sat
+confronting each other in silence for an instant; then he rose with
+a visible effort and descended, and she followed.
+
+"Be at the garage at two, Wayland," she said, and ascended the snowy
+stoop beside McKay.
+
+The butler admitted them. "Luncheon for two," she said, and mounted
+the stairs without pausing.
+
+McKay remained in the hall until he had been separated from hat and
+coat; then he slowly ascended the stairway. She was waiting on the
+landing and she took him directly into the library where a wood fire
+was burning.
+
+"Just a moment," she said, "to make myself as--as persuasive as I
+can."
+
+"You are perfectly equipped, Miss Erith--"
+
+"Oh, no, I must do better than I have done. This is the great moment
+of our careers, Mr. McKay." Her smile, brightly forced, left his
+grim features unresponsive. The undertone in her voice warned him of
+her determination to have her way.
+
+He took an involuntary step toward the door like a caged thing that
+sees a loophole, halted as she barred his way, turned his marred
+young visage and glared at her. There was something terrible in his
+intent gaze--a pale flare flickering in his eyes like the uncanny
+light in the orbs of a cornered beast.
+
+"You'll wait, won't you?" she asked, secretly frightened now.
+
+After a long interval, "Yes," his lips motioned.
+
+"Thank you. Because it is the supreme moment of our lives. It
+involves life or death.... Be patient with me. Will you?"
+
+"But you must be brief," he muttered restlessly. "You know what I
+need. I am sick, I tell you!"
+
+So she went away--not to arrange her beauty more convincingly, but
+to fling coat and hat to her maid and drop down on the chair by her
+desk and take up the telephone:
+
+"Dr. Langford's Hospital?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Miss Erith wishes to speak to Dr. Langford. ... Is that you,
+Doctor?... Oh, yes, I'm perfectly well.... Tell me, how soon can you
+cure a man of--of dipsomania?... Of course.... It was a stupid
+question. But I'm so worried and unhappy... Yes.... Yes, it's a man
+I know.... It wasn't his fault, poor fellow. If I can only get him
+to you and persuade him to tell you the history of his case... I
+don't know whether he'll go. I'm doing my best. He's here in my
+library.... Oh, no, he isn't intoxicated now, but he was yesterday.
+And oh, Doctor! He is so shaky and he seems so ill--I mean in mind
+and spirit more than in body.... Yes, he says he needs something....
+What?... Give him some whisky if he wants it?... Do you mean a
+highball?... How many?... Oh... Yes... Yes, I understand ... I'll do
+my very best.... Thank you. ... At three o'clock?... Thank you so
+much, Doctor Langford. Good-bye!"
+
+She hung up the receiver, took a look at herself in the
+dressing-glass, and saw reflected there a yellow-haired hazel-eyed
+girl who looked a trifle scared. But she forced a smile, made a
+hasty toilette and rang for the butler, gave her orders, and then
+walked leisurely into the library. McKay lifted his tragic face from
+his hands where he stood before the fire, his elbows resting on the
+mantel.
+
+"Come," she said in her pretty, resolute way, "you and I are
+perfectly human. Let's face this thing together and find out what
+really is in it."
+
+She took one armchair, he the other, and she noticed that all his
+frame was quivering now--his hands always in restless, groping
+movement, as though with palsy. A moment later the butler came with
+a decanter, ice, mineral water and a tall glass. There was also a
+box of cigars on the silver tray.
+
+"You'll fix your own highball," she said carelessly, nodding
+dismissal to the butler. But she looked only once at McKay, then
+turned away--pretence of picking up her knitting--so terrible it was
+to her to see in his eyes the very glimmer of hell itself as he
+poured out what he "needed."
+
+Minute after minute she sat there by the fire knitting tranquilly,
+scarcely ever even lifting her calm young eyes to the man. Twice
+again he poured out what he "needed" for himself before the agony in
+his sickened brain and body became endurable--before the tortured
+nerves had been sufficiently drugged once more and the indescribable
+torment had subsided. He looked at her once or twice where she sat
+knitting and apparently quite oblivious to what he had been about,
+but his glance was no longer furtive; he unconsciously squared his
+shoulders, and his head straightened up.
+
+Without lifting her eyes she said: "I thought we'd talk over our
+plans when you feel better."
+
+He glanced sideways at the decanter: "I am all right," he said.
+
+She had not yet lifted her eyes; she continued to knit while
+speaking:
+
+"First of all," she said, "I shall place your testimony and my
+report in the hands of my superior, Mr. Vaux. Does that meet with
+your approval?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+She knitted in silence a few moments. He kept his eyes on her.
+Presently--and still without looking up--she said: "Are you within
+the draft age?"
+
+"No. I am thirty-two."
+
+"Will you volunteer?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Would you tell me why?"
+
+"Yes, I'll tell you why. I shall not volunteer because of my
+habits."
+
+"You mean your temporary infirmity," she said calmly. But her cheeks
+reddened and she bent lower over her work. A dull colour stained his
+face, too, but he merely shrugged his comment.
+
+She said in a low voice: "I want you to volunteer with me for
+overseas service in the Army Intelligence Department.... You and I,
+together.... To prove what you have surmised concerning the German
+operations beyond Mount Terrible.... And first I want you to go with
+me to Dr. Langford's hospital .... I want you to go this afternoon
+with me. ... And face the situation. And see it through. And come
+out cured." She lifted her head and looked at him. "Will you?" And
+in his altering gaze she saw the flicker of half-senseless anger
+intensified suddenly to a flare of hatred.
+
+"Don't ask anything like that of me," he said. She had grown quite
+white.
+
+"I do ask it.... Will you?"
+
+"If I wanted to I couldn't, and I don't want to. I prefer this hell
+to the other."
+
+"Won't you make a fight for it?"
+
+"No!" he said brutally.
+
+The girl bent her head again over her knitting. But her white
+fingers remained idle. After a long while, staring at her intently,
+he saw her lip quiver.
+
+"Don't do that!" he broke out harshly. "What the devil do you care?"
+
+Then she lifted her tragic white face. And he had his answer.
+
+"My God!" he faltered, springing to his feet. "What's the matter
+with you? Why do you care? You can't care! What is it to you that a
+drunken beast slinks back into hell again? Do you think you are
+Samaritan enough to follow him and try to drag him out by the
+ears?... A man whose very brain is already cracking with it all--a
+burnt-out thing with neither mind nor manhood left--"
+
+She got to her feet, trembling and deathly white.
+
+"I can't let you go," she whispered.
+
+Exasperation almost strangled him and set afire his unhinged brain.
+
+"For Christ's sake!" he cried. "What do you care?"
+
+"I--I care," she stammered--"for Christ's sake ... And yours!"
+
+Things went dark before her eyes.... She opened them after a while
+on the sofa where he had carried her. He was standing looking down
+at her. ... After a long while the ghost of a smile touched her
+lips. In his haunted gaze there was no response. But he said in an
+altered, unfamiliar voice: "I'll go if you say so. I'll do all
+that's in me to do. ... Will you be there--for the first day or
+two?"
+
+"Yes.... All day long.... Every day if you want me. Do you?"
+
+"Yes.... But God knows what I may do to you.... There'll be somebody
+to--watch me--won't there?... I don't know what may happen to you
+or to myself.... I'm in a bad way, Miss Erith... I'm in a very bad
+way."
+
+"I know," she murmured.
+
+He said with an almost childish directness: "Do men always live
+through such cures?... I don't see how I can live through it."
+
+She rose from the sofa and stood beside him, feeling still dizzy,
+still tremulous and lacking strength.
+
+"Let us win through," she said, not looking at him. "I think you
+will suffer more than I shall. A little more.... Because I had
+rather feel pain than give it--rather suffer than look on suffering....
+It will be very hard for us both, I fear."
+
+Her butler announced luncheon.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+WRECKAGE
+
+
+
+
+
+The man had been desperately ill in soul and mind and body. And now
+in some curious manner the ocean seemed to be making him physically
+better but spiritually worse. Something, too, in the horizonwide
+waste of waters was having a sinister effect on his brain. The grey
+daylight of early May, bitter as December--the utter desolation, the
+mounting and raucous menace of the sea, were meddling with normal
+convalescence.
+
+Dull animosity awoke in a battered mind not yet readjusted to the
+living world. What had these people done to him anyway? The sullen
+resentment which invaded him groped stealthily for a vent.
+
+Was THIS, then, their cursed cure?--this foggy nightmare through
+which he moved like a shade in the realm of phantoms? Little by
+little what had happened to him was becoming an obsession, as he
+began to remember in detail. Now he brooded on it and looked askance
+at the girl who was primarily responsible--conscious in a confused
+sort of way that he was a blackguard for his ingratitude.
+
+But his mind had been badly knocked about, and its limping machinery
+creaked.
+
+"That meddling woman," he thought, knowing all the time what he owed
+her, remembering her courage, her unselfishness, her loveliness.
+"Curse her!" he muttered, amid the shadows confusing his wounded
+mind.
+
+Then a meaningless anger grew with him: She had him, now! he was
+trapped and caged. A girl who drags something floundering out of
+hell is entitled to the thing if she wants it. He admitted that to
+himself.
+
+But how about that "cure"?
+
+Was THIS it--this terrible blankness--this misty unreality of
+things? Surcease from craving--yes. But what to take its place--what
+to fill in, occupy mind and body? What sop to his restless soul?
+What had this young iconoclast offered him after her infernal era of
+destruction? A distorted world, a cloudy mind, the body-substance of
+a ghost? And for the magic world she had destroyed she offered him a
+void to live in--Curse her!
+
+There were no lights showing aboard the transport; all ports
+remained screened. Arrows, painted on the decks in luminous paint,
+pointed out the way. Below decks, a blue globe here and there
+emitted a feeble glimmer, marking corridors which pierced a
+depthless darkness.
+
+No noise was permitted on board, no smoking, no other lights in
+cabin or saloon. There was scarcely a sound to be heard on the ship,
+save the throbbing of her engines, the long, splintering crash of
+heavy seas, and the dull creak of her steel vertebrae tortured by a
+million rivets.
+
+As for the accursed ocean, that to McKay was the enemy paramount
+which had awakened him to the stinging vagueness of things out of
+his stupid acquiescence in convalescence.
+
+He hated the sea. It was becoming a crawling horror to him in its
+every protean phase, whether flecked with ghastly lights in storms
+or haunted by pallid shapes in colour--always, always it remained
+repugnant to him under its eternal curse of endless motion.
+
+He loathed it: he detested the livid skies by day against which
+tossing waves showed black: he hated every wave at night and their
+ceaseless unseen motion. McKay had been "cured." McKay was very,
+very ill.
+
+There came to him, at intervals, a girl who stole through the
+obscurity of the pitching corridors guiding him from one faint blue
+light to the next--a girl who groped out the way with him at night
+to the deck by following the painted arrows under foot. Also
+sometimes she sat at his bedside through the unreal flight of time,
+her hand clasped over his. He knew that he had been brutal to her
+during his "cure."
+
+He was still rough with her at moments of intense mental
+pressure--somehow; realised it--made efforts toward
+self-command--toward reason again, mental control; sometimes felt
+that he was on the way to acquiring mental mastery.
+
+But traces of injury to the mind still remained--sensitive
+places--and there were swift seconds of agony--of blind anger, of
+crafty, unbalanced watching to do harm. Yet for all that he knew he
+was convalescent--that alcohol was no longer a necessity to him;
+that whatever he did had now become a choice for him; that he had
+the power and the authority and the will, and was capable, once
+more, of choosing between depravity and decency. But what had been
+taken out of his life seemed to leave a dreadful silence in his
+brain. And, at moments, this silence became dissonant with the
+clamour of unreason.
+
+On one of his worst days when his crippled soul was loneliest the
+icy seas became terrific. Cruisers and destroyers of the escort
+remained invisible, and none of the convoyed transports were to be
+seen. The watery, lowering daylight faded: the unseen sun set: the
+brief day ended. And the wind went down with the sun. But through
+the thick darkness the turbulent wind appeared to grow luminous with
+tossing wraiths; and all the world seemed to dissolve into a
+nebulous, hell-driven thing, unreal, dreadful, unendurable!
+
+"Mr. McKay!"
+
+He had already got into his wool dressing-robe and felt shoes, and
+he sat now very still on the edge of his berth, listening stealthily
+with the cunning of distorted purpose.
+
+Her tiny room was just across the corridor. She seemed to be
+eternally sleepless, always on the alert night and day, ready to
+interfere with him.
+
+Finally he ventured to rise and move cautiously to his door, and he
+made not the slightest sound in opening it, but her door opened
+instantly, and she stood there confronting him, an ulster buttoned
+over her nightdress.
+
+"What is the matter?" she said gently.
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Are you having a bad night?"
+
+"I'm all right. I wish you wouldn't constitute yourself my nurse,
+servant, mentor, guardian, keeper, and personal factotum!" Sudden
+rage left him inarticulate, and he shot an ugly look at her. "Can't
+you let me alone?" he snarled.
+
+"You poor boy," she said under her breath.
+
+"Don't talk like that! Damnation! I--I can't stand much more--I
+can't stand it, I tell you!"
+
+"Yes, you can, and you will. And I don't mind what you say to me."
+His malignant expression altered.
+
+"Do you know," he said, in a cool and evil voice, "that I may stop
+SAYING things and take to DOING them?"
+
+"Would you hurt me physically? Are you really as sick as that?"
+
+"Not yet.... How do I know?" Suddenly he felt tired and leaned
+against the doorway, covering his dulling eyes with his right
+forearm. But his hand was now clenched convulsively.
+
+"Could you lie down? I'll talk to you," she whispered. "I'll see you
+through."
+
+"I can't--endure--this tension," he muttered. "For God's sake let me
+go!"
+
+"Where?"
+
+"You know."
+
+"Yes.... But it won't do. We must carry on, you and I."
+
+"If you--knew--"
+
+"I do know! When these crises come try to fix your mind on what you
+have become."
+
+"Yes.... A hell of a soldier. Do you really believe that my country
+needs a thing like me?" She stood looking at him in silence--knowing
+that he was in a torment of some terrible sort. His eyes were still
+covered by his arm. On his boyish brow the blonde-brown hair had
+become damp.
+
+She went across and passed her arm through his. His hand rested,
+fell to his side, but he suffered her to guide him through the
+corridors toward a far bluish spark that seemed as distant as Venus,
+the star.
+
+They walked very slowly for a while on deck, encountering now and
+then the shadowy forms of officers and crew. The personnel of the
+several hospital units in transit were long ago in bed below.
+
+Once he said: "You know, Miss Erith, it is not _I_ who behaves like
+a scoundrel to you."
+
+"I know," she said with a dauntless smile.
+
+"Because," he went on, searching painfully for thought as well as
+words, "I'm not really a brute--was not always a blackguard--"
+
+"Do you suppose for one moment that I blame a man who has been
+irresponsible through no fault of his, and who has made the fight
+and has won back to sanity?"
+
+"I--am not yet--well!"
+
+"I understand."
+
+They paused beside the port rail for a few moments.
+
+"I suppose you know," he muttered, "that I have thought--at
+times--of ending things--down there. ... You seem to know most
+things. Did you suspect that?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Don't you ever sleep?"
+
+"I wake easily."
+
+"I know you do. I can't stir in bed but I hear you move, too.... I
+should think you'd hate and loathe me--for all I've done--for all
+I've cost you."
+
+"Nurses don't loathe their patients," she said lightly.
+
+"I should think they'd want to kill them."
+
+"Oh, Mr. McKay! On the contrary they--they grow to like
+them--exceedingly."
+
+"You dare not say that about yourself and me."
+
+Miss Erith shrugged her pretty shoulders: "I don't have to say
+anything, do I?"
+
+He made no reply. After a long silence she said casually: "The sea
+is calmer, I think. There's something resembling faint moonlight up
+among those flying clouds."
+
+He lifted his tragic face and gazed up at the storm-wrack speeding
+overhead. And there through the hurrying vapours behind flying rags
+of cloud, a pallid lustre betrayed the smothered moon.
+
+There was just enough light, now, to reveal the forward gun under
+its jacket, and the shadowy gun-crew around it where the ship's bow
+like a vast black, plough ripped the sea asunder in two deep,
+foaming furrows.
+
+"I wish I knew where we are at this moment," mused the girl. She
+counted the days on her fingertips: "We may be off Bordeaux.... It's
+been a long time, hasn't it?"
+
+To him it had been a century of dread endured through half-awakened
+consciousness of the latest inferno within him.
+
+"It's been very long," he said, sighing.
+
+A few minutes later they caught a glimpse of a strangled moon
+overhead--a livid corpse of a moon, tarnished and battered almost
+out of recognition.
+
+"Clearing weather," she said cheerfully, adding: "To-morrow we may
+be in the danger zone.... Did you ever see a submarine?"
+
+"Yes. Did you?"
+
+"There were some up the Hudson. I saw them last summer while
+motoring along Riverside Drive."
+
+The spectral form of an officer appeared at her elbow, said
+something in a low voice, and walked aft.
+
+She said: "Well, then, I think we'd better dress. ... Do you feel
+better?"
+
+He said that he did, but his sombre gaze into darkness belied him.
+So again she slipped her arm through his and he suffered himself to
+be led away along the path of shinning arrows under foot.
+
+At his door she said cheerfully: "No more undressing for bed, you
+know. No more luxury of night-clothes. You heard the orders about
+lifebelts?"
+
+"Yes," he replied listlessly.
+
+"Very well. I'll be waiting for you."
+
+She lingered a moment more watching him in his brooding revery where
+he stood leaning against the doorway. And after a while he raised
+his haunted eyes to hers.
+
+"I can't keep on," he breathed.
+
+"Yes you can!"
+
+"No.... The world is slipping away--under foot. It's going on
+without me--in spite of me."
+
+"It's you that are slipping, if anything is. Be fair to the world at
+least--even if you mean to betray it--and me."
+
+"I don't want to betray anybody--anything." He had begun to tremble
+when he stood leaning against his door. "I--don't know--what to do."
+
+"Stand by the world. Stand by me. And, through me, stand by your own
+self."
+
+The young fellow's forehead was wet with the vague horror of
+something. He made an effort to speak, to straighten up; gave her a
+dreadful look of appeal which turned into a snarl.
+
+He whispered between writhing lips: "Can't you let me alone? Can't I
+end it if I can't stand it--without your blocking me every
+time--every time I stir a finger--"
+
+"McKay! Wait! Don't touch me!--don't do that!"
+
+But he had her in a sudden grip now--was looking right and left for
+a place to hurl her out of the way.
+
+"I've stood enough, by God!" he muttered between his teeth. "Now I'm
+through--"
+
+"Please listen. You're out of your mind," she said breathlessly, not
+struggling to free herself, but striving to twist both her arms
+around one of his.
+
+"You hurt me," she whimpered. "Don't be brutal to me!"
+
+"I've got to get you out of my way." He tried to fling her across
+the corridor into her own cabin, but she had fastened herself to
+him.
+
+"Don't!" she panted. "Don't do anything to yourself--"
+
+"Let go of me! Unclasp your arms!"
+
+But she clung the more desperately and wound her limbs around his,
+almost tripping him.
+
+"I WON'T give you up!" she gasped.
+
+"What do you care?" he retorted hoarsely, striving to tear himself
+loose. "I want to get some rest--somewhere!"
+
+"You're hurting! You're breaking my arm! Kay! Kay! what are you
+doing to me?" she wailed.
+
+Something--perhaps the sound of his own name falling from her lips
+for the first time--checked his mounting frenzy. She could feel
+every muscle in his body become rigidly inert.
+
+"Kay!" she whispered, fastening herself to him convulsively. For a
+full minute she sustained his half-insane stare, then it altered,
+and her own eyes slowly closed, though her head remained upright on
+the rigid marble of her neck.
+
+The crisis had been reached: the tide of frenzy was turning, had
+turned, was already ebbing. She felt it, was conscious that he also
+had become aware of it. Then his grasp slackened, grew lax,
+loosened, and almost spent. She ventured to unwind her limbs from
+his, to relax her stiffened fingers, unclasp her arms.
+
+It was over. She could scarcely stand, felt blindly for support,
+rested so, and slowly unclosed her eyes.
+
+"I've had to fight very hard for you," she whispered. "But I think
+I've won."
+
+He answered with difficulty.
+
+"Yes--if you want the dog you fought for."
+
+"It isn't what _I_ want, Kay."
+
+"All right, I guess I can face it through--after this.... But I
+don't know why you did it."
+
+"I do."
+
+"Do you? Don't you know I'm not a man, but a beast? And there are
+half a hundred million real men to replace me--to do what you and
+the country expect of real men."
+
+"What may be expected of them I expect of you. Kay, I've made a good
+fight for you, haven't I?"
+
+He turned his quenched eyes on her. "From gutter to hospital, from
+hospital to sanitarium, from sanitarium to ship," he said in a
+colourless voice. "Yes, it was--a--good--fight."
+
+"What a Calvary!" she murmured, looking at him out of clear,
+sorrowful eyes. "And on your knees, poor boy!"
+
+"You ought to know. You have made every station with me--on your
+tender bleeding knees of a girl!" He choked, turned his head
+swiftly; and she caught his hand. The break had come.
+
+"Oh, Kay! Kay!" she said, quivering all over, "I have done my bit
+and you are cured! You know it, don't you? Look at me, turn your
+head." She laid her slim hand flat against his tense cheek but could
+not turn his face. But she did not care; the palm of her hand was
+wet. The break had come. She drew a deep, uneven breath, let go his
+hand.
+
+"Now," she said, "we can understand each other at last--our minds
+are rational; and whether in accord or conflict they are at least in
+contact; and mine isn't clashing with something disordered and
+foreign which it can't interpret, can't approach."
+
+He said, not turning toward her: "You are kind to put it that
+way.... I think self-control has returned--will-power--all that....
+I won't-betray you--Miss Erith."
+
+"YOU never would, Mr. McKay. But I--I've been in terror of what has
+been masquerading as you."
+
+"I know.... But whatever you think of such a--a man--I'll do my
+bit, now. I'll carry on--until the end."
+
+"I will too! I promise you."
+
+He turned his head at that and a mirthless laugh touched his wet
+eyes and drawn visage:
+
+"As though you had to promise anybody that you'd stick! You! You
+beautiful, magnificent young thing--you superb kid--"
+
+Her surprise and the swift blaze of colour in her face silenced him.
+
+After a moment, the painful red still staining his face, he muttered
+something about dressing.
+
+He watched her turn and enter her room; saw that she had closed her
+door-something she had not dared do heretofore; then he went into
+his own room and threw himself down on the bunk, shaking in every
+nerve.
+
+For a long while, preoccupied with the obsession for
+self-destruction, he lay there face downward, exhausted, trying to
+fight off the swimming sense of horror that was creeping over him
+again..... Little by little it mounted like a tide from hell.... He
+struggled to his feet with the unuttered cry of a dreamer tearing
+his throat. An odd sense of fear seized him and he dressed and
+adjusted his clumsy life-suit. For the ship was in the danger zone,
+now, and orders had been given, and dawn was not far off. Perhaps it
+was already day! he could not tell in his dim cabin.
+
+And after he was completely accoutred for the hazard of the
+Hun-cursed seas he turned and looked down at his bunk with the odd
+idea that his body still lay there--that it was a thing apart from
+himself--something inert, unyielding, corpse-like, sprawling there
+in a stupor--something visible, tangible, taking actual proportion
+and shape there under his very eyes.
+
+He turned his back with a shudder and went on deck. To his surprise
+the blue lights were extinguished, and corridor and saloon were all
+rosy with early sunlight.
+
+Blue sky, blue sea, silver spindrift flying and clouds of silvery
+gulls--a glimmer of Heaven from the depths of the pit--a glimpse of
+life through a crack in the casket--and land close on the starboard
+bow! Sheer cliffs, with the bonny green grass atop all furrowed by
+the wind--and the yellow-flowered broom and the shimmering whinns
+blowing.
+
+"Why, it's Scotland," he said aloud, "it's Glenark Cliffs and the
+Head of Strathlone--my people's fine place in the Old World--where
+we took root--and--O my God! Yankee that I am, it looks like home!"
+
+The cape of a white fleece cloak fluttered in his face, and he
+turned and saw Miss Erith at his elbow.
+
+Yellow-haired, a slender, charming thing in her white wind-blown
+coat, she stood leaning on the spray-wet rail close to his shoulder.
+
+And with him it was suddenly as though he had known her for
+years--as though he had always been aware of her beauty and her
+loveliness--as though his eyes had always framed her--his heart had
+always wished for her, and she had always been the sole and
+exquisite tenant of his mind.
+
+"I had no idea that we were off Scotland," he said--"off Strathlone
+Head--and so close in. Why, I can see the cliff-flowers!"
+
+She laid one hand lightly on his arm, listening; high and heavenly
+sweet above the rushing noises of the sea they heard the singing of
+shoreward sky-larks above the grey cliff of Glenark.
+
+He began to tremble. "That nightmare through which I've struggled,"
+he began, but she interrupted:
+
+"It is quite ended, Kay. You are awake. It is day and the world's
+before you." At that he caught her slim hand in both of his:
+
+"Eve! Eve! You've brought me through death's shadow! You gave me
+back my mind!"
+
+She let her hand rest between his. At first he could not make out
+what her slightly moving lips uttered, and bending nearer he heard
+her murmur: "Beside the still waters." The sea had become as calm as
+a pond.
+
+And now the transport was losing headway, scarcely moving at all.
+Forward and aft the gun-crews, no longer alert, lounged lazily in
+the sunshine watching a boat being loaded and swung outward from the
+davits.
+
+"Is somebody going ashore?" asked McKay.
+
+"We are," said the girl.
+
+"Just you and I, Eve?"
+
+"Just you and I."
+
+Then he saw their luggage piled in the lifeboat.'
+
+"This is wonderful," he said. "I have a house a few miles inland
+from Strathlone Head."
+
+"Will you take me there, Kay?"
+
+Such a sense of delight possessed him that he could not speak.
+
+"That's where we must go to make our plans," she said. "I didn't
+tell you in those dark hours we have lived together, because our
+minds were so far apart--and I was fighting so hard to hold you."
+
+"Have you forgiven me--you wonderful girl?"
+
+His voice shook so that he could scarcely control it. Miss Erith
+laughed.
+
+"You adorable boy!" she said. "Stand still while I unlace your
+life-belt. You can't travel in this."
+
+He felt her soft fingers at his throat and turned his face upward.
+All the blue air seemed glittering with the sun-tipped wings of
+gulls. The skylark's song, piercingly sweet, seemed to penetrate his
+soul. And, as his life-suit fell about him, so seemed to fall the
+heavy weight of dread like a shroud, dropping at his feet. And he
+stepped clear--took his first free step toward her--as though
+between them there were no questions, no barriers, nothing but this
+living, magic light--which bathed them both.
+
+There seemed to be no need of speech, either, only the sense of
+heavenly contact as though the girl were melting into him,
+dissolving in his arms.
+
+"Kay!"
+
+Her voice sounded as from an infinite distance. There came a
+smothered thudding like the soft sound of guns at sea; and then her
+voice again, and a greyness as if a swift cloud had passed across
+the sun.
+
+"Kay!"
+
+A sharp, cold wind began to blow through the strange and sudden
+darkness. He heard her voice calling his name--felt his numbed body
+shaken, lifted his head from his arms and sat upright on his bunk in
+the dim chill of his cabin.
+
+Miss Erith stood beside his bed, wearing her life-suit.
+
+"Kay! Are you awake?'
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then put on your life-suit. Our destroyers are firing at something.
+Quick, please, I'll help you!"
+
+Dazed, shaken, still mazed by the magic of his dream, not yet clear
+of its beauty and its passion, he stumbled to his feet in the
+obscurity. And he felt her chilled hand aiding him.
+
+"Eve--I--thought--"
+
+"What?"
+
+"I thought your name--was Eve--" he stammered. "I've
+been--dreaming."
+
+Then was a silence as he fumbled stupidly with his clothing and
+life-suit. The sounds of the guns, rapid, distinct, echoed through
+the unsteady obscurity.
+
+She helped him as a nurse helps a convalescent, her swift, cold
+little fingers moving lightly and unerringly. And at last he was
+equipped, and his mind had cleared darkly of the golden vision of
+love and spring.
+
+Icy seas, monstrous and menacing, went smashing past the sealed and
+blinded port; but there was no wind and the thudding of the guns
+came distinctly to their ears.
+
+A shape in uniform loomed at the cabin door for an instant and a
+calm, unhurried voice summoned them.
+
+Corridors were full of dark figures. The main saloon was thronged as
+they climbed the companion-way. There appeared to be no panic, no
+haste, no confusion. Voices were moderately low, the tone casually
+conversational.
+
+Miss Erith's arm remained linked in McKay's where they stood
+together amid the crowd.
+
+"U-boats, I fancy," she said.
+
+"Probably."
+
+After a moment: "What were you dreaming about, Mr. McKay?" she asked
+lightly. In the dull bluish dusk of the saloon his boyish face grew
+hot.
+
+"What was it you called me?" she insisted. "Was it Eve?"
+
+At that his cheeks burnt crimson.
+
+"What do you mean?" he muttered.
+
+"Didn't you call me Eve?"
+
+"I--when a man is dreaming--asleep--"
+
+"My name is Evelyn, you know. Nobody ever called me Eve....
+Yet--it's odd, isn't it, Mr. McKay? I've always wished that somebody
+would call me Eve.... But perhaps you were not dreaming of me?"
+
+"I--was."
+
+"Really. How interesting!" He remained silent.
+
+"And did you call me Eve--in that dream?... That is curious, isn't
+it, after what I've just told you?... So I've had my wish--in a
+dream." She laughed a little. "In a dream--YOUR dream," she
+repeated. "We must have been good friends in your dream--that you
+called me Eve."
+
+But the faint thrill of the dream was in him again, and it troubled
+him and made him shy, and he found no word to utter--no defence to
+her low-voiced banter.
+
+Then, not far away on the port quarter, a deck-gun spoke with a
+sharper explosion, and intense stillness reigned in the saloon.
+
+"If there's any necessity," he whispered, "you recollect your boat,
+don't you?"
+
+"Yes.... I don't want to go--without you." He said, in a pleasant
+firm voice which was new to her: "I know what you mean. But you are
+not to worry. I am absolutely well."
+
+The girl turned toward him, the echoes of the guns filling her ears,
+and strove to read his face in the ghastly, dreary light.
+
+"I'm really cured, Miss Erith," he said. "If there's any emergency
+I'll fight to live. Do you believe me?"
+
+"If you tell me so."
+
+"I tell you so."
+
+The girl drew a deep, unsteady breath, and her arm tightened a
+trifle within his.
+
+"I am--so glad," she said in a voice that sounded suddenly tired.
+
+There came an ear-splitting detonation from the after-deck,
+silencing every murmur.
+
+"Something is shelling us," whispered McKay. "When orders come, go
+instantly to your boat and your station."
+
+"I don't want to go alone."
+
+"The nurses of the unit to which you--"
+
+The crash of a shell drowned his voice. Then came a deathly silence,
+then the sound of the deck-guns in action once more.
+
+Miss Erith was leaning rather heavily on his arm. He bent it,
+drawing her closer.
+
+"I don't want to leave you," she said again.
+
+"I told you--"
+
+"It isn't that.... Don't you understand that I have become--your
+friend?"
+
+"Such a brute as I am?"
+
+"I like you."
+
+In the silence he could hear his heart drumming between the
+detonations of the deck-guns. He said: "It's because you are you. No
+other woman on earth but would have loathed me... beastly rotter
+that I was--"
+
+"Oh-h, don't," she breathed.... "I don't know--we may be very close
+to death.... I want to live. I'd like to. But I don't really mind
+death. ... But I can't bear to have things end for you just as
+you've begun to live again--"
+
+Crash! Something was badly smashed on deck that time, for the brazen
+jar of falling wreckage seemed continuous.
+
+Through the metallic echo she heard her voice:
+
+"Kay! I'm afraid--a little."
+
+"I think it's all right so far. Listen, there go our guns again.
+It's quite all right, Eve dear."
+
+"I didn't know I was so cowardly. But of course I'll never show it
+when the time comes."
+
+"Of course you won't. Don't worry. Shells make a lot of noise when
+they explode on deck. All that tinpan effect we heard was probably a
+ventilator collapsing--perhaps a smokestack."
+
+After a silence punctured by the flat bang of the deck-guns:
+
+"You ARE cured, aren't you, Kay?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+She repeated in a curiously exultant voice: "You ARE cured. All of a
+sudden--after that black crisis, too, you wake up, well!"
+
+"You woke me."
+
+"Of course, I did--with those guns frightening me!"
+
+"You woke me, Eve," he repeated coolly, "and my dream had already
+cured me. I am perfectly well. We'll get out of this mess shortly,
+you and I. And--and then--"He paused so long that she looked up at
+him in the bluish dusk:
+
+"And what then?" she asked.
+
+He did not answer. She said: "Tell me, Kay."
+
+But as his lips unclosed to speak a terrific shock shook the
+saloon--a shock that seemed to come from the depths of the ship,
+tilt up the cabin floor, and send everybody reeling about.
+
+Through the momentary confusion in the bluish obscurity the cool
+voice of an officer sounded unalarmed, giving orders. There was no
+panic. The hospital units formed and started for the deck. A young
+officer passing near exchanged a calm word with McKay, and passed on
+speaking pleasantly to the women who were now moving forward.
+
+McKay said to Miss Erith: "It seems that we've been torpedoed. We'll
+go on deck together. You know your boat and station?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I'll see you safely there. You're not afraid any more, are you?"
+
+"No."
+
+He gave a short dry laugh. "What a rotten deal," he said. "My dream
+was--different.... There is your boat--THAT one!... I'll say good
+luck. I'm assigned to a station on the port side. ... Good luck....
+And thank you, Eve."
+
+"Don't go--"
+
+"Yes, I must.. We'll find each other--ashore--or somewhere."
+
+"Kay! The port boats can't be launched--"
+
+"Take your place! you're next, Eve."... Her hand, which had clung to
+his, he suddenly twisted up, and touched the convulsively tightening
+fingers with his lips.
+
+"Good luck, dear," he said gaily. And watched her go and take her
+place. Then he lifted his cap, as she turned and looked for him, and
+sauntered off to where his boat and station should have been had not
+the U-boat shells annihilated boat and rail and deck.
+
+"What a devil of a mess!" he said to a petty officer near him. A
+young doctor smoking a cigarette surveyed his own life-suit and the
+clumsy apparel of his neighbours with unfeigned curiosity!
+
+"How long do these things keep one afloat?" he inquired.
+
+"Long enough to freeze solid," replied an ambulance driver.
+
+"Did we get the Hun?" asked McKay of the petty officer.
+
+"Naw," he replied in disgust, "but the destroyers ought to nail him.
+Look out, sir--you'll go sliding down that slippery toboggan!"
+
+"How long'll she float?" asked the young ambulance driver.
+
+"This ship? SHE'S all right," remarked the petty officer absently.
+
+She went down, nose first. Those in the starboard boats saw her
+stand on end for full five minutes, screws spinning, before a
+muffled detonation blew the bowels out of her and sucked her down
+like a plunging arrow.
+
+Destroyers and launches from some of the cruisers were busy amid the
+wreckage where here, on a spar, some stunned form clung like a
+limpet, and there, a-bob in the curling seas, a swimmer in his
+life-suit tossed under the wintry sky.
+
+There were men on rafts, too, and several clinging to hatches; there
+was not much loss of life, considering.
+
+Toward midday a sea-plane which had been releasing depth-bombs and
+hovering eagerly above the wide iridescent and spreading stain,
+sheered shoreward and shot along the coast.
+
+There was a dead man afloat in a cave, rocking there rather
+peacefully in his life-suit--or at least they supposed him to be
+dead.
+
+But on a chance they signalled the discovery to a distant trawler,
+then soared upward for a general coup de l'oeil, turned there aloft
+like a seahawk for a while, sheering in widening spirals, and
+finally, high in the grey sky, set a steady course for parts
+unknown.
+
+Meanwhile a boat from the trawler fished out McKay, wrapped him in
+red-hot blankets, pried open his blue lips, and tried to fill him
+full of boiling rum. Then he came to life. But those honest
+fishermen knew he had gone stark mad because he struck at the
+pannikin of steaming rum and cursed them vigorously for their
+kindness. And only a madman could so conduct himself toward a
+pannikin of steaming rum. They understood that perfectly. And,
+understanding it, they piled more hot blankets upon the struggling
+form of Kay McKay and roped him to his bunk.
+
+Toward evening, becoming not only coherent but frightfully emphatic,
+they released McKay.
+
+"What's this damn place?" he shouted.
+
+"Strathlone Firth," they said.
+
+"That's my country!" he raged. "I want to go ashore!"
+
+They were quite ready to be rid of the cracked Yankee, and told him
+so.
+
+"And the boats? How about them?" he demanded.
+
+"All in the Firth, sir."
+
+"Any women lost?"
+
+"None, sir."
+
+At that, struggling into his clothes, he began to shed gold
+sovereigns from his ripped money-belt all over the cabin.
+Weatherbeaten fingers groped to restore the money to him. But it was
+quite evident that the young man was mad. He wouldn't take it. And
+in his crazy way he seemed very happy, telling them what fine lads
+they were and that not only Scotland but the world ought to be proud
+of them, and that he was about to begin to live the most wonderful
+life that any man had ever lived as soon as he got ashore.
+
+"Because," he explained, as he swung off and dropped into the small
+boat alongside, "I've taken a look into hell and I've had a glimpse
+of heaven, but the earth has got them both stung to death, and I
+like it and I'm going to settle down on it and live awhile. You
+don't get me, do you?" They did not.
+
+"It doesn't matter. You're a fine lot of lads. Good luck!"
+
+And so they were rid of their Yankee lunatic.
+
+On the Firth Quay and along the docks all the inhabitants of Glenark
+and Strathlone were gathered to watch the boats come in with living,
+with dead, or merely the news of the seafight off the grey head of
+Strathlone.
+
+At the foot of the slippery waterstairs, green with slime, McKay,
+grasping the worn rail, lifted his head and looked up into the faces
+of the waiting crowd. And saw the face of her he was looking for
+among them.
+
+He went up slowly. She pushed through the throng, descended the
+steps, and placed one arm around him.
+
+"Thanks, Eve," he said cheerfully. "Are you all right?"
+
+"All right, Kay. Are you hurt?"
+
+"No.... I know this place. There's an inn ... if you'll give me your
+arm--it's just across the street."
+
+They went very leisurely, her arm under his--and his face, suddenly
+colourless, half-resting against her shoulder.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+ISLA WATER
+
+
+
+
+
+Earlier in the evening there had been a young moon on Isla Water.
+Under it spectres of the mist floated in the pale lustre; a painted
+moorhen steered through ghostly pools leaving fan-shaped wakes of
+crinkled silver behind her; heavy fish splashed, swirling again to
+drown the ephemera.
+
+But there was no moonlight now; not a star; only fog on Isla Water,
+smothering ripples and long still reaches, bank and upland, wall and
+house.
+
+The last light had gone out in the stable; the windows of Isla were
+darkened; there was a faint scent of heather in the night; a fainter
+taint of peat smoke. The world had grown very still by Isla Water.
+
+Toward midnight a dog-otter, swimming leisurely by the Bridge of
+Isla, suddenly dived and sped away under water; and a stoat,
+prowling in the garden, also took fright and scurried through the
+wicket. Then in the dead of night the iron bell hanging inside the
+court began to clang. McKay heard it first in his restless sleep.
+Finally the clangour broke his sombre dream and he awoke and sat up
+in bed, listening.
+
+Neither of the two servants answered the alarm. He swung out of bed
+and into slippers and dressing-gown and picked up a service pistol.
+As he entered the stone corridor he heard Miss Erith's door creak on
+its ancient hinges.
+
+"Did the bell wake you?" he asked in a low voice.
+
+"Yes. What is it?"
+
+"I haven't any idea."
+
+She opened her door a little wider. Her yellow hair covered her
+shoulders like a mantilla. "Who could it be at this hour?" she
+repeated uneasily.
+
+McKay peered at the phosphorescent dial of his wrist-watch:
+
+"I don't know," he repeated. "I can't imagine who would come here at
+this hour."
+
+"Don't strike a light!" she whispered.
+
+"No, I think I won't." He continued on down the stone stairs, and
+Miss Erith ran to the rail and looked over.
+
+"Are you armed?" she called through the darkness.
+
+"Yes."
+
+He went on toward the rear of the silent house and through the
+servants' hall, then around by the kitchen garden, then felt his way
+along a hedge to a hutchlike lodge where a fixed iron bell hung
+quivering under the slow blows of the clapper.
+
+"What the devil's the matter?" demanded McKay in a calm voice.
+
+The bell still hummed with the melancholy vibrations, but the
+clapper now hung motionless. Through the brooding rumour of metallic
+sound came a voice out of the mist:
+
+"The hours of life are numbered. Is it true?"
+
+"It is," said McKay coolly; "and the hairs of our head are numbered
+too!"
+
+"So teach us to number our days," rejoined the voice from the fog,
+"that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom."
+
+"The days of our years are three-score years and ten," said McKay.
+"Have you a name?"
+
+"A number."
+
+"And what number will that be?"
+
+"Sixty-seven. And yours?"
+
+"You should know that, too."
+
+"It's the reverse; seventy-six."
+
+"It is that," said McKay. "Come in."
+
+He made his way to the foggy gate, drew bolt and chain from the left
+wicket. A young man stepped through.
+
+"Losh, mon," he remarked with a Yankee accent, "it's a fearful nicht
+to be abroad."
+
+"Come on in," said McKay, re-locking the wicket. "This way; follow
+me."
+
+They went by the kitchen garden and servants' hall, and so through
+to the staircase hall, where McKay struck a match and Sixty-seven
+instantly blew it out.
+
+"Better not," he said. "There are vermin about."
+
+McKay stood silent, probably surprised. Then he called softly in the
+darkness:
+
+"Seventy-seven!"
+
+"Je suis la!" came her voice from the stairs.
+
+"It's all right," he said, "it's one of our men. No use sittin' up
+if you're sleepy." He listened but did not hear Miss Erith stir.
+
+"Better return to bed," he said again, and guided Sixty-seven into
+the room on the left.
+
+For a few moments he prowled around; a glass tinkled against a
+decanter. When he returned to the shadow-shape seated motionless by
+the casement window he carried only one glass.
+
+"Don't you?" inquired Sixty-seven. "And you a Scot!"
+
+"I'm a Yankee; and I'm through."
+
+"With the stuff?"
+
+"Absolutely."
+
+"Oh, very well. But a Yankee laird--tiens c'est assez drole!" He
+smacked his lips over the smoky draught, set the half-empty glass on
+the deep sill. Then he began breezily:
+
+"Well, Seventy-six, what's all this I hear about your misfortunes?"
+
+"What do you hear?" inquired McKay guilelessly.
+
+The other man laughed.
+
+"I hear that you and Seventy-seven have entered the Service; that
+you are detailed to Switzerland and for a certain object unknown to
+myself; that your transport was torpedoed a week ago off the Head of
+Strathlone, that you wired London from this house of yours called
+Isla, and that you and Seventy-seven went to London last week to
+replenish the wardrobe you had lost."
+
+"Is that all you heard?"
+
+"It is."
+
+"Well, what more do you wish to hear?"
+
+"I want to know whether anything has happened to worry you. And I'll
+tell you why. There was a Hun caught near Banff! Can you beat it?
+The beggar wore kilts!--and the McKay tartan--and, by jinks, if his
+gillie wasn't rigged in shepherd's plaid!--and him with his Yankee
+passport and his gillie with a bag of ready-made rods. Yellow trout,
+is it? Sea-trout, is it! Ho, me bucko, says I when I lamped what he
+did with his first trout o' the burn this side the park--by Godfrey!
+thinks I to myself, you're no white man at all!--you're Boche. And
+it was so, McKay."
+
+"Seventy-six," corrected McKay gently.
+
+"That's better. It should become a habit."
+
+"Excuse me, Seventy-six; I'm Scotch-Irish way back. You're straight
+Scotch--somewhere back. We Yankees don't use rods and flies and net
+and gaff as these Scotch people use 'em. But we're white,
+Seventy-six, and we use 'em RIGHT in our own fashion." He moistened
+his throat, shoved aside the glass:
+
+"But this kilted Boche! Oh, la-la! What he did with his rod and
+flies and his fish and himself! AND his gillie! Sure YOU'RE not
+white at all, thinks I. And at that I go after them."
+
+"You got them?"
+
+"Certainly--at the inn--gobbling a trout, blaue gesotten--having
+gone into the kitchen to show a decent Scotch lassie how to concoct
+the Hunnish dish. I nailed them then and there--took the chance that
+the swine weren't right. And won out."
+
+"Good! But what has it to do with me?" asked McKay.
+
+"Well, I'll be telling you. I took the Boche to London and I've come
+all the way back to tell you this, Seventy-six; the Huns are on to
+you and what you're up to. That Boche laird called himself Stanley
+Brown, but his name is--or was--Schwartz. His gillie proved to be a
+Swede."
+
+"Have they been executed?"
+
+"You bet. Tower style! We got another chum of theirs, too, who set
+up a holler like he saw a pan of hogwash. We're holding him. And
+what we've learned is this: The Huns made a special set at your
+transport in order to get YOU and Seventy-seven!
+
+"Now they know you are here and their orders are to get you before
+you reach France. The hog that hollered put us next. He's a
+Milwaukee Boche; name Zimmerman. He's so scared that he tells all he
+knows and a lot that he doesn't. That's the trouble with a Milwaukee
+Boche. Anyway, London sent me back to find you and warn you. Keep
+your eye skinned. And when you're ready for France wire Edinburgh.
+You know where. There'll be a car and an escort for you and
+Seventy-seven."
+
+McKay laughed: "You know," he said, "there's no chance of trouble
+here. Glenark is too small a village--"
+
+"Didn't I land a brace of Boches at Banff?"
+
+"That's true. Well, anyway, I'll be off, I expect, in a day or so."
+He rose; "and now I'll show you a bed--"
+
+"No; I've a dog-cart tied out yonder and a chaser lying at Glenark.
+By Godfrey, I'm not finished with these Boche-jocks yet!"
+
+"You're going?"
+
+"You bet. I've a date to keep with a suspicious character--on a
+trawler. Can you beat it? These vermin creep in everywhere. Yes, by
+Godfrey! They crawl aboard ship in sight of Strathlone Head! Here's
+hoping it may be a yard-arm jig he'll dance!"
+
+He emptied his glass, refused more. McKay took him to the wicket and
+let him loose.
+
+"Well, over the top, old scout!" said Sixty-seven cheerily,
+exchanging a quick handclasp with McKay. And so the fog took him.
+
+A week later they found his dead horse and wrecked dog-cart five
+miles this side of Glenark Burn, lying in a gully entirely concealed
+by whinn and broom. It was the noise the flies made that attracted
+attention. As for the man himself, he floated casually into the
+Firth one sunny day with five bullets in him and his throat cut very
+horridly.
+
+But, before that, other things happened on Isla Water--long before
+anybody missed No. 67. Besides, the horse and dog-cart had been
+hired for a week; and nobody was anxious except the captain of the
+trawler, held under mysterious orders to await the coming of a man
+who never came.
+
+So McKay went back through the fog to his quaint, whitewashed
+inheritance--this legacy from a Scotch grandfather to a Yankee
+grandson--and when he came into the dark waist of the house he
+called up very gently: "Are you awake, Miss Yellow-hair?"
+
+"Yes. Is all well?"
+
+"All's well," he said, mounting the stairs.
+
+"Then--good night to you Kay of Isla!" she said.
+
+"Don't you want to hear--"
+
+"To-morrow, please."
+
+"But--"
+
+"As long as you say that all is well I refuse to lose any more
+sleep!"
+
+"Are you sleepy, Yellow-hair?"
+
+"I am."
+
+"Aren't you going to sit up and chat for a few--"
+
+"I am not!"
+
+"Have you no curiosity?" he demanded, laughingly.
+
+"Not a bit. You say everything is all right. Then it is all
+right--when Kay of Isla says so! Good night!"
+
+What she had said seemed to thrill him with a novel and delicious
+sense of responsibility. He heard her door close; he stood there in
+the stone corridor a moment before entering his room, experiencing
+an odd, indefinite pleasure in the words this girl had
+uttered--words which seemed to reinstate him among his kind, words
+which no woman would utter except to a man in whom she believed.
+
+And yet this girl knew him--knew what he had been--had seen him in
+the depths--had looked upon the wreck of him.
+
+Out of those depths she had dragged what remained of him--not for
+his own sake perhaps--not for his beaux-yeux--but to save him for
+the service which his country demanded of him.
+
+She had fought for him--endured, struggled spiritually, mentally,
+bodily to wrench him out of the coma where drink had left him with a
+stunned brain and crippled will.
+
+And now, believing in her work, trusting, confident, she had just
+said to him that what he told her was sufficient security for her.
+And on his word that all was well she had calmly composed herself
+for sleep as though all the dead chieftains of Isla stood on guard
+with naked claymores! Nothing in all his life had ever so thrilled
+him as this girl's confidence.
+
+And, as he entered his room, he knew that within him the accursed
+thing that had been, lay dead forever.
+
+He was standing in the walled garden switching a limber trout-rod
+when Miss Erith came upon him next morning,--a tall straight young
+man in his kilts, supple and elegant as the lancewood rod he was
+testing.
+
+Conscious of a presence behind him he turned, came toward her in the
+sunlight, the sun crisping his short hair. And in his pleasant level
+eyes the girl saw what had happened--what she had wrought--that
+this young man had come into his own again--into his right mind and
+his manhood--and that he had resumed his place among his fellow men
+and peers.
+
+He greeted her seriously, almost formally; and the girl, excited and
+a little upset by the sudden realisation of his victory and hers,
+laughed when he called her "Miss Erith."
+
+"You called me Yellow-hair last night," she said. "I called you Kay.
+Don't you want it so?"
+
+"Yes," he said reddening, understanding that it was her final
+recognition of a man who had definitely "come back."
+
+Miss Erith was very lovely as she stood there in the garden whither
+breakfast was fetched immediately and laid out on a sturdy green
+garden-table--porridge, coffee, scones, jam, and an egg.
+
+Chipping the latter she let her golden-hazel eyes rest at moments
+upon the young fellow seated opposite. At other moments, sipping her
+coffee or buttering a scone, she glanced about her at the new grass
+starred with daisies, at the daffodils, the slim young
+fruit-trees,--and up at the old white facade of the ancient abode of
+the Lairds of Isla.
+
+"Why the white flag up there, Kay?" she inquired, glancing aloft.
+
+He laughed, but flushed a little. "Yankee that I am," he admitted,
+"I seem to be Scot enough to observe the prejudices and folk-ways of
+my forebears."
+
+"Is it your clan flag?"
+
+"Bratach Bhan Chlaun Aoidh," he said smilingly. "The White Banner of
+the McKays."
+
+"Good! And what may that be--that bunch of weed you wear in your
+button-hole?" Again the young fellow laughed: "Seasgan or Cuilc--in
+Gaelic--just reed-grass, Miss Yellow-hair."
+
+"Your clan badge?"
+
+"I believe so."
+
+"You're a good Yankee, Kay. You couldn't be a good Yankee if you
+treated Scotch custom with contempt.... This jam is delicious. And
+oh, such scones!"
+
+"When we go to Edinburgh we'll tea on Princess Street," he remarked.
+"It's there you'll fall for the Scotch cakes, Yellow-hair."
+
+"I've already fallen for everything Scotch," she remarked demurely.
+
+"Ah, wait! This Scotland is no strange land to good Americans. It's
+a bonnie, sweet, clean bit of earth made by God out of the same
+batch he used for our own world of the West. Oh, Yellow-hair, I mind
+the first day I ever saw Scotland. 'Twas across Princess
+Street--across acres of Madonna lilies in that lovely foreland
+behind which the Rock lifted skyward with Edinburgh Castle atop made
+out of grey silver slag! It was a brave sight, Yellow-hair. I never
+loved America more than at that moment when, in my heart, I married
+her to Scotland."
+
+"Kay, you're a poet!" she exclaimed.
+
+"We all are here, Yellow-hair. There's naught else in Scotland," he
+said laughing.
+
+The man was absolutely transformed, utterly different. She had never
+imagined that a "cure" meant the revelation of this unsuspected
+personality--this alternation of pleasant gravity and boyish charm.
+
+Something of what preoccupied her he perhaps suspected, for the
+colour came into his handsome lean features again and he picked up
+his rod, rising as she rose.
+
+"Are there no instructions yet?" she inquired.
+
+As he stood there threading the silk line through the guides he told
+her about the visit of No. 67.
+
+"I fancy instructions will come before long," he remarked, casting a
+leaderless line out across the grass. After a moment he glanced
+rather gravely at her where she stood with hands linked behind her,
+watching the graceful loops which his line was making in the air.
+
+"You're not worried, are you, Yellow-hair?"
+
+"About the Boche?"
+
+"I meant that."
+
+"No, Kay, I'm not uneasy."
+
+And when the girl had said it she knew that she had meant a little
+more; she had meant that she felt secure with this particular man
+beside her.
+
+It was a strange sort of peace that was invading her--an odd courage
+quite unfamiliar--an effortless pluck that had suddenly become the
+most natural thing in the world to this girl, who, until then, had
+clutched her courage desperately in both hands, commended her soul
+to God, her body to her country's service.
+
+Frightened, she had set out to do this service, knowing perfectly
+what sort of fate awaited her if she fell among the Boche.
+
+Frightened but resolute she faced the consequences with this
+companion about whom she knew nothing; in whom she had divined a
+trace of that true metal which had been so dreadfully tarnished and
+transmuted.
+
+And now, here in this ancient garden--here in the sun of earliest
+summer, she had beheld a transfiguration. And still under the spell
+of it, still thrilled by wonder, she had so utterly believed in it,
+so ardently accepted it, that she scarcely understood what this
+transfiguration had also wrought in her. She only felt that she was
+no longer captain of their fate; that he was now; and she resigned
+her invisible insignia of rank with an unconscious little sigh that
+left her pretty lips softly parted.
+
+At that instant he chanced to look up at her. She was the most
+beautiful thing he had ever seen in the world. And she had looked at
+him out of those golden eyes when he had been less than a mere brute
+beast.... That was very hard to know and remember .... But it was
+the price he had to pay--that this fresh, sweet, clean young thing
+had seen him as he once had been, and that he never could forget
+what she had looked upon.
+
+"Kay!"
+
+"Yes, Lady Yellow-hair."
+
+"What are you going to do with that rod?"
+
+"Whip Isla for a yellow trout for you."
+
+"Isla?"
+
+"Not our Loch, but the quick water yonder."
+
+"You know," she said, "to a Yankee girl those moors appear
+rather--rather lonely."
+
+"Forbidding?"
+
+"No; beautiful in their way. But I am in awe of Glenark moors."
+
+He smiled, lingering still to loop on a gossamer leader and a cast
+of tiny flies.
+
+"Have you--" she began, and smiled nervously.
+
+"A gun?" he inquired coolly. "Yes, I have two strapped up under both
+arms. But you must come too, Yellow-hair."
+
+"You don't think it best to leave me alone even in your own house?"
+
+"No, I don't think it best."
+
+"I wanted to go with you anyway," she said, picking up a soft hat
+and pulling it over her golden head.
+
+On the way across Isla bridge and out along the sheep-path they
+chatted unconcernedly. A faint aromatic odour made the girl aware of
+broom and whinn and heath.
+
+As they sauntered on along the edge of Isla Water the lapwings rose
+into flight ahead. Once or twice the feathery whirr of brown grouse
+startled her. And once, on the edge of cultivated land, a partridge
+burst from the heather at her very feet--a "Frenchman" with his red
+legs and gay feathers brilliant in the sun.
+
+Sun and shadow and white cloud, heath and moor and hedge and
+broad-tilled field alternated as they passed together along the edge
+of Isla Water and over the road to Isla--the enchanting
+river--interested in each other's conversation and in the loveliness
+of the sunny world about them.
+
+High in the blue sky plover called en passant; larks too were on the
+wing, and throstles and charming feathered things that hid in
+hedgerows and permitted glimpses of piquant heads and twitching
+painted tails.
+
+"It is adorable, this country!" Miss Erith confessed. "It steals
+into your very bones; doesn't it?"
+
+"And the bones still remain Yankee bones," he rejoined. "There's the
+miracle, Yellow-hair."
+
+"Entirely. You know what I think? The more we love the more loyal we
+become to our own. I'm really quite serious. Take yourself for
+example, Kay. You are most ornamental in your kilts and
+heather-spats, and you are a better Yankee for it. Aren't you?"
+
+"Oh yes, a hopeless Yankee. But that drop of Scotch blood is singing
+tunes to-day, Yellow-hair."
+
+"Let it sing--God bless it!"
+
+He turned, his youthful face reflecting the slight emotion in her
+gay voice. Then with a grave smile he set his face straight in front
+of him and walked on beside her, the dark green pleats of the McKay
+tartan whipping his bared knees. Clan Morhguinn had no handsomer
+son; America no son more loyal.
+
+A dragon-fly glittered before them for an instant. Far across the
+rolling country they caught the faint, silvery flash of Isla
+hurrying to the sea.
+
+Evelyn Erith stood in the sunny breeze of Isla, her yellow hair
+dishevelled by the wind, her skirt's edge wet with the spray of
+waterfalls. The wild rose colour was in her cheeks and the tint of
+crimson roses on her lips and the glory of the Soleil d'or glimmered
+on her loosened hair. A confused sense that the passing hour was the
+happiest in her life possessed her: she looked down at the brace of
+wet yellow trout on the bog-moss at her feet; she gazed out across
+the crinkled pool where the Yankee Laird of Isla waded, casting a
+big tinselled fly for the accidental but inevitable sea-trout always
+encountered in Isla during the season--always surprising and
+exciting the angler with emotion forever new.
+
+Over his shoulder he was saying to her: "Sea-trout and grilse don't
+belong to Isla, but they come occasionally, Lady Yellow-hair."
+
+"Like you and I, Kay--we don't belong here but we come."
+
+"Where the McKay is, the Key of the World lies hidden in his
+sporran," he laughed back at her over his shoulder where the clan
+plaid fluttered above the cairngorm.
+
+"Oh, the modesty of this young man! Wherever he takes off his cap he
+is at home!" she cried.
+
+He only laughed, and she saw the slim line curl, glisten, loop and
+unroll in the long back cast, re-loop, and straighten out over Isla
+like a silver spider's floating strand. Then silver leaped to meet
+silver as the "Doctor" touched water; one keen scream of the reel
+cut the sunny silence; the rod bent like a bow, staggered in his
+hand, swept to the surface in a deeper bow, quivered under the
+tremendous rush of the great fish.
+
+Miss Erith watched the battle from an angle not that of an angler.
+Her hazel eyes followed McKay where he manoeuvred in midstream with
+rod and gaff--happily aware of the grace in every unconscious
+movement of his handsome lean body--the steady, keen poise of head
+and shoulders, the deft and powerful play of his clean-cut, brown
+hands.
+
+It came into her mind that he'd look like that on the firing-line
+some day when his Government was ready to release him from his
+obscure and terrible mission--the Government that was sending him
+where such men as he usually perish unobserved, unhonoured,
+repudiated even by those who send them to accomplish what only the
+most brave and unselfish dare undertake.
+
+A little cloud cast a momentary shadow across Isla. The sea-trout
+died then, a quivering limber, metallic shape glittering on the
+ripples.
+
+In the intense stillness from far across the noon-day world she
+heard the bells of Banff--a far, sweet reiteration stealing inland
+on the wind. She had never been so happy in her life.
+
+Swinging back across the moor together, he with slanting rod and
+weighted creel, she with her wind-blown yellow hair and a bunch of
+reed at her belt in his honour, both seemed to understand that they
+had had their hour, and that the hour was ending--almost ended now.
+
+They had remained rather silent. Perhaps grave thoughts of what lay
+before them beyond the bright moor's edge--beyond the far blue
+horizon--preoccupied their minds. And each seemed to feel that their
+play-day was finished--seemed already to feel physically the
+approach of that increasing darkness shrouding the East--that
+hellish mist toward which they both were headed--the twilight of the
+Hun.
+
+Nothing stained the sky above them; a snowy cloud or two drifted up
+there,--a flight of lapwings now and then--a lone curlew. The long,
+squat white-washed house with its walled garden reflected in Isla
+Water glimmered before them in the hollow of the rolling hills.
+
+McKay was softly and thoughtfully whistling the "Lament for
+Donald"--the lament of CLAN AOIDH--his clan.
+
+"That's rather depressing, Kay--what you're whistling," said Evelyn
+Erith.
+
+He glanced up from his abstraction, nodded, and strode on humming
+the "Over There" of that good bard George of Broadway.
+
+After a moment the girl said: "There seem to be some people by Isla
+Water."
+
+His quick glance appraised the distant group, their summer tourist
+automobile drawn up on the bank of Isla Water near the Bridge, the
+hampers on the grass.
+
+"Trespassers," he said with a shrug. "But it's a pretty spot by Isla
+Bridge and we never drive them away."
+
+She looked at them again as they crossed the very old bridge of
+stone. Down by the water's edge stood their machine. Beside it on
+the grass were picnicking three people--a very good-looking girl, a
+very common-looking stout young man in flashy outing clothes, and a
+thin man of forty, well-dressed and of better appearance.
+
+The short, stout, flashy young man was eating sandwiches with one
+hand while with the other he held a fishing-rod out over the water.
+
+McKay noticed this bit of impudence with a shrug. "That won't do,"
+he murmured; and pausing at the parapet of the bridge he said
+pleasantly: "I'm sorry to disturb you, but fishing isn't permitted
+in Isla Water."
+
+At that the flashy young man jumped up with unexpected nimbleness--a
+powerful frame on two very vulgar but powerful legs.
+
+"Say, sport," he called out, "if this is your fish-pond we're ready
+to pay what's right. What's the damage for a dozen fish?"
+
+"Americans--awful ones," whispered Miss Erith.
+
+McKay rested his folded arms on the parapet and regarded the advance
+of the flashy man up the grassy slope below.
+
+"I don't rent fishing privileges," he said amiably.
+
+"That's all right. Name your price. No millionaire guy I ever heard
+of ever had enough money," returned the flashy man jocosely.
+
+McKay, amused, shook his head. "Sorry," he said, "but I couldn't
+permit you to fish."
+
+"Aw, come on, old scout! We heard you was American same as us.
+That's my sister down there and her feller. My name's Jim
+Macniff--some Scotch somewhere. That there feller is Harry Skelton.
+Horses is our business--Spitalfields Mews--here's my card--"
+pulling it out--"I'll come up on the bridge--"
+
+"Never mind. What are you in Scotland for anyway?" inquired McKay.
+
+"The Angus Dhu stables at Inverness--auction next Wednesday. Horses
+is our line, so we made it a holiday--"
+
+"A holiday in the Banff country?"
+
+"Sure, I ain't never seen it before. Is that your house?"
+
+McKay nodded and turned away, weary of the man and his vulgarity.
+"Very well, picnic and fish if you like," he said; and fell into
+step beside Miss Erith.
+
+They entered the house through the door in the garden. Later, when
+Miss Erith came back from her toilet, but still wearing her outing
+skirt, McKay turned from the long window where he had been standing
+and watching the picnickers across Isla Bridge. The flashy man had a
+banjo now and was strumming it and leering at the girl.
+
+"What people to encounter in this corner of Paradise," she said
+laughingly. And, as he did not smile: "You don't suppose there's
+anything queer about them, do you, Kay?" At that he smiled: "Oh, no,
+nothing of that sort, Yellow-hair. Only--it's rather odd. But bagmen
+and their kind do come into the northland--why, Heaven knows--but
+one sees them playing about."
+
+"Of course those people are merely very ordinary Americans--nothing
+worse," she said, seating herself at the table.
+
+"What could be worse?" he returned lightly.
+
+"Boche."
+
+They were seated sideways to the window and opposite each other,
+commanding a clear view of Isla Water and the shore where the
+picnickers sprawled apparently enjoying the semi-comatose pleasure
+of repletion.
+
+"That other man--the thin one--has not exactly a prepossessing
+countenance," she remarked.
+
+"They can't travel without papers," he said.
+
+For a little while luncheon progressed in silence. Presently Miss
+Erith reverted to the picnickers: "The young woman has a foreign
+face. Have you noticed?"
+
+"She's rather dark. Rather handsome, too. And she appears rather
+nice."
+
+"Women of that class always appear superior to men of the same
+class," observed Miss Erith. "I suppose really they are not superior
+to the male of the species."
+
+"I've always thought they were," he said.
+
+"Men might think so."
+
+He smiled: "Quite right, Yellow-hair; woman only is competent to
+size up woman. The trouble is that no man really believes this."
+
+"Don't you?"
+
+"I don't know. Tell me, what shall we do after luncheon?"
+
+"Oh, the moors--please, Kay!"
+
+"What!" he exclaimed laughingly; "you're already a victim to Glenark
+moors!"
+
+"Kay, I adore them! ... Are you tired? ... Our time is short-our day
+of sunshine. I want to drink in all of it I can ... before we--"
+
+"Certainly. Shall we walk to Strathnaver, Lady Yellow-hair?"
+
+"If it please my lord."
+
+"Now?"
+
+"In the cool of the afternoon. Don't you want to be lazy with me in
+your quaint old garden for an hour or two?"
+
+"I'll send out two steamer-chairs, Yellow-hair."
+
+When they lay there in the shadow of a lawn umbrella, chair beside
+chair, the view across Isla Water was unpolluted by the picnickers,
+their hamper, and their car.
+
+"Stole away, the beggars," drawled McKay lighting a cigarette.
+"Where the devil they got a permit for petrol is beyond me."
+
+The girl lay with deep golden eyes dreaming under her long dark
+lashes. Sunlight crinkled Isla Water; a merle came and sang to her
+in a pear-tree until, in its bubbling melody, she seemed to hear the
+liquid laughter of Isla rippling to the sea.
+
+"Kay?"
+
+"Yes, Yellow-hair." Their voices were vague and dreamy.
+
+"Tell me something."
+
+"I'll tell you something. When a McKay of Isla is near his end he is
+always warned."
+
+"How?"
+
+"A cold hand touches his hand in the dark."
+
+"Kay!"
+
+"It's so. It's called'the Cold Hand of Isla.' We are all doomed to
+feel it."
+
+"Absurd!"
+
+"Not at all. That's a pretty story; isn't it? Now what more shall I
+tell you?"
+
+"Anything you like, Kay. I'm in paradise--or would be if only
+somebody would tell me stories till I fall asleep."
+
+"Stories about what?"
+
+"About YOU, Kay."
+
+"I'll not talk about myself."
+
+"Please!"
+
+But he shook his head without smiling: "You know all there is," he
+said--"and much that is--unspeakable."
+
+"Kay!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Never, never speak that way again!"
+
+He remained silent.
+
+"Because," she continued in her low, pretty voice, "it is not true.
+I know about you only what I somehow seemed to divine the very
+moment I first laid eyes on you. Something within me seemed to say
+to me, 'This is a boy who also is a real man!' ... And it was true,
+Kay."
+
+"You thought that when you knelt in the snow and looked down at that
+beastly drunken--"
+
+"Yes! Don't use such words! You looked like a big schoolboy,
+asleep-that is what you resembled. But I knew you to be a real man."
+
+"You are merciful, but I know what you went through," he said
+morosely.
+
+She paid no attention: "I liked you instantly. I thought to myself,
+'Now when he wakes he'll be what he looks like.' And you are!"
+
+He stirred in his chair, sideways, and glanced at her.
+
+"You know what I think about you, don't you?"
+
+"No." She shouldn't have let their words drift thus far and she knew
+it. Also at this point she should have diverted the conversation.
+But she remained silent, aware of an indefinite pleasure in the
+vague excitement which had quickened her pulse a little.
+
+"Well, I shan't tell you," he said quietly.
+
+"Why not?" And at that her heart added a beat or two.
+
+"Because, even if I were different, you wouldn't wish me to."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because you and I are doomed to a rather intimate comradeship--a
+companionship far beyond conventions, Yellow-hair. That is what is
+ahead of us. And you will have enough to weary you without having
+another item to add to it."
+
+"What item?" At that she became very silent and badly scared. What
+demon was prompting her to such provocation? Her own effrontery
+amazed and frightened her, but her words seemed to speak themselves
+independently of her own volition.
+
+"Yellow-hair," he said, "I think you have guessed all I might have
+dared say to you were I not on eternal probation."
+
+"Probation?"
+
+"Before a bitterly strict judge."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Myself, Yellow-hair."
+
+"Oh, Kay! You ARE a boy--nothing more than a boy--"
+
+"Are you in love with me?"
+
+"No," she said, astonished. "I don't think so. What an amazing thing
+to say to a girl!"
+
+"I thought I'd scare you," he remarked grimly.
+
+"You didn't. I--I was scarcely prepared--such a nonsensical thing to
+say! Why--why I might as well ask you if you are in--in--"
+
+"In love with you? You wish to know, Yellow-hair?"
+
+"No, I don't," she replied hastily. "This is--stupid. I don't
+understand how we came to discuss such--such--" But she did know and
+she bit her lip and gazed across Isla Water in silent exasperation.
+
+What mischief was this that hid in the Scottish sunshine, whispering
+in every heather-scented breeze--laughing at her from every little
+wave on Isla Water?--counselling her to this new and delicate
+audacity, imbuing her with a secret gaiety of heart, and her very
+soul fluttering with a delicious laughter--an odd, perverse,
+illogical laughter, alternately tremulous and triumphant!
+
+Was she in love, then, with this man? She remembered his unconscious
+head on her knees in the limousine, and the snow clinging to his
+bright hair--
+
+She remembered the telephone, and the call to the hospital--and the
+message. ... And the white night and bitter dawn. ... Love? No, not
+as she supposed it to be; merely the solicitude and friendship of a
+woman who once found something hurt by the war and who fought to
+protect what was hers by right of discovery. That was not love. ...
+Perhaps there may have been a touch of the maternal passion about
+her feeling for this man. ... Nothing else--nothing more than that,
+and the eternal indefinable charity for all boys which is inherent
+in all womanhood--the consciousness of the enchantment that a boy
+has for all women. ... Nothing more. ... Except that--perhaps she
+had wondered whether he liked her--as much as she liked him.... Or
+if, possibly, in his regard for her there were some slight depths
+between shallows--a gratitude that is a trifle warmer than the
+conventional virtue--
+
+When at length she ventured to turn her head and look at him he
+seemed to be asleep, lying there in the transformed shadow of the
+lawn umbrella.
+
+Something about the motionless relaxation of this man annoyed her.
+"Kay?"
+
+He turned his head squarely toward her, and 'o her exasperation she
+blushed.
+
+"Did I wake you? I'm sorry," she said coldly.
+
+"You didn't. I was awake."
+
+"Oh! I meant to say that I think I'll stroll out. Don't come if you
+feel lazy."
+
+He swung himself up to a sitting posture.
+
+"I'm quite ready," he said. ... "You'll always find me ready,
+Yellow-hair--always waiting."
+
+"Waiting? For what?"
+
+"For your commands."
+
+"You very nice boy!" she said gaily, springing to her feet. Then,
+the subtle demon of the sunlight prompting her: "You know, Kay, you
+don't ever have to wait. Because I'm always ready to listen to any
+pro--any suggestions--from you."
+
+The man looked into the girl's eyes:
+
+"You would care to hear what I might have to tell you?"
+
+"I always care to hear what you say. Whatever you say interests me."
+
+"Would it interest you to know I am--in love?"
+
+"Yes. ... With wh--whom are--" But her breath failed her.
+
+"With you. ... You knew it, Yellow-hair. ... Does it interest you to
+know it?"
+
+"Yes." But the exhilaration of the moment was interfering with her
+breath again and she only stood there with the flushed and audacious
+little smile stamped on her lips forcing her eyes to meet his
+curious, troubled, intent gaze.
+
+"You did know it?" he repeated.
+
+"No."
+
+"You suspected it."
+
+"I wanted to know what you--thought about me, Kay."
+
+"You know now."
+
+"Yes ... but it doesn't seem real. ... And I haven't anything to say
+to you. I'm sorry--"
+
+"I understand, Yellow-hair."
+
+"--Except-thank you. And-and I am interested. ... You're such a boy....
+I like you so much, Kay.... And I AM interested in what you
+said to me."
+
+"That means a lot for you to say, doesn't it?"
+
+"I don't know. ... It's partly what we have been through together, I
+suppose; partly this lovely country, and the sun. Something is
+enchanting me. ... And you are very nice to look at, Kay." His smile
+was grave, a little detached and weary.
+
+"I did not suppose you could ever really care for such a man as I
+am," he remarked without the slightest bitterness or appeal in his
+voice. "But I'm glad you let me tell you how it is with me. ... It
+always was that way, Yellow-hair, from the first moment you came
+into the hospital. I fell in love then."
+
+"Oh, you couldn't have--"
+
+"Nevertheless, and after all I said and did to the contrary. ... I
+don't think any woman remains entirely displeased when a man tells
+her he is in love with her. If he does love her he ought to tell
+her, I think. It always means that much tribute to her power. ...
+And none is indifferent to power, Yellow-hair."
+
+"No. ... I am not indifferent. I like what you said to me. It seems
+unreal, though--but enchanting--part of this day's enchantment. ...
+Shall we start, Kay?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+They went out together through the garden door into the open moor,
+swinging along in rhythmic stride, side by side, smiling faintly as
+dreamers smile when something imperceptible to the waking world
+invades their vision.
+
+Again the brown grouse whirred from the whinns; again the subtle
+fragrance of the moor sweetened her throat with its clean aroma;
+again the haunting complaint of the lapwings came across acres of
+bog and furze; and, high in the afternoon sky, an invisible curlew
+sadly and monotonously repeated its name through the vast blue vault
+of space.
+
+On the edge of evening with all the west ablaze they came out once
+more on Isla Water and looked across the glimmering flood at the old
+house in the hollow, every distant window-pane a-glitter.
+
+Like that immemorial and dragon-guarded jewel of the East the sun,
+cradled in flaky gold, hung a hand's breadth above the horizon, and
+all the world had turned to a hazy plum-bloom tint threaded with
+pale fire.
+
+On Isla Water the yellow trout had not yet begun to jump; evening
+still lingered beyond the world's curved ruin; but the wild duck
+were coming in from the sea in twos and threes and sheering down
+into distant reaches of Isla Water.
+
+Then, into the divine stillness of the universe came the unspeakable
+twang of a banjo; and a fat voice, slightly hoarse:
+
+   "Rocks on the mountain,
+    Fishes in the sea,
+    A red-headed girl
+    Raised hell with me.
+    She come from Chicago, R.F.D.
+    An' she ain't done a thing to a guy like me!"
+
+The business was so grotesquely outrageous, so utterly and
+disgustingly hopeless in its surprise and untimelines, that McKay's
+sharp laugh rang out under the sky.
+
+There they were, the same trespassers of the morning, squatted on
+the heather at the base of Isla Craig--a vast heap of rocks--their
+machine drawn up in the tall green brakes beside the road.
+
+The flashy, fat man, Macniff, had the banjo. The girl sat between
+him and the thin man, Skelton.
+
+"Ah, there, old scout!" called out Macniff, flourishing one hand
+toward McKay. "Lovely evening, ain't it? Won't you and the wife join
+us?"
+
+There was absolutely nothing to reply to such an invitation. Miss
+Erith continued to gaze out steadily across Isla Water; McKay,
+deeply sensitive to the ludicrous, smiled under the grotesque
+provocation, his eyes mischievously fixed on Miss Erith. After a
+long while: "They've spoiled it," she said lightly. "Shall we go on,
+Kay? I can't endure that banjo."
+
+They walked on, McKay grinning. The picnickers were getting up from
+the crushed heather; Macniff with his banjo came toward them on his
+incredibly thick legs, blocking their path.
+
+"Say, sport," he began, "won't you and the lady join us?" But McKay
+cut him short:
+
+"Do you know you are impudent?" he said very quietly. "Step out of
+the way there."
+
+"The hell you say!" and McKay's patience ended at the same instant.
+And something happened very quickly, for the man only staggered
+under the smashing blow and the other man's arm flew up and his
+pistol blazed in the gathering dusk, shattering the cairngorm on
+McKay's shoulder. The young woman fired from where she sat on the
+grass and the soft hat was jerked from Miss Erith's head. At the
+same moment McKay clutched her arm and jerked her violently behind a
+jutting elbow of Isla Rock. When she recovered her balance she saw
+he held two pistols.
+
+"Boche?" she gasped incredulously.
+
+"Yes. Keep your head down. Crouch among the ferns behind me!"
+
+There was a ruddy streak of fire from the pistol in his right hand;
+shots answered, the bullets smacking the rock or whining above it.
+
+"Yellow-hair?"
+
+"Yes, Kay."
+
+"You are not scared, are you?"
+
+"Yes; but I'm all right."
+
+He said with quiet bitterness: "It's too late to say what a fool I
+am. Their camouflage took me in; that's all--"
+
+He fired again; a rattling volley came storming among the rocks.
+
+"We're all right here," he said tersely. But in his heart he was
+terrified, for he had only the cartridges in his clips.
+
+Presently he motioned her to bend over very low. Then, taking her
+hand, he guided her along an ascending gulley, knee-deep in fern and
+brake and brier, to a sort of little rocky pulpit.
+
+The lake lay behind them, lapping the pulpit's base. There was a man
+in a boat out there. McKay fired at him and he plied both oars and
+fled out of range.
+
+"Lie down," he whispered to Miss Erith. The girl mutely obeyed.
+
+Now, crouched up there in the deepening dusk, his pistol extended,
+resting on the rock in front of him, his keen eyes searched
+restlessly; his ears were strained for the minutest stirring on the
+moor in front of him; and his embittered mind was at work
+alternately cursing his own stupidity and searching for some chance
+for this young girl whom his own incredible carelessness had
+probably done to death.
+
+Presently, between him and Isla Water, a shadow moved. He fired; and
+around them the darkness spat flame from a dozen different angles.
+
+"Damnation!" he whispered to himself, realising now what the sunlit
+moors had hidden--a dozen men all bent on murder.
+
+Once a voice hailed him from the thick darkness promising immunity
+if he surrendered. He hesitated. Who but he should know the Boche?
+Still he answered back: "If you let this woman go you can do what
+you like to me!" And knew while he was saying it that it was
+useless--that there was no truth, no honour in the Boche, only
+infamy and murder. A hoarse voice promised what he asked; but Miss
+Erith caught McKay's arm.
+
+"No!"
+
+"If I dared believe them--"
+
+"No, Kay!"
+
+He shrugged: "I'd be very glad to pay the price--only they can't be
+trusted. They can't be trusted, Yellow-hair."
+
+Somebody shouted from the impenetrable shadows:
+
+"Come out of that now, McKay! If you don't we'll go in and cut her
+throat before we do for you!"
+
+He remained silent, quite motionless, watching the darkness.
+
+Suddenly his pistol flashed redly, rapidly; a heavy, soft bulk went
+tumbling down the rocks; another reeled there, silhouetted against
+Isla Water, then lurched forward, striking the earth with his face.
+And now from every angle slanting lines of blood-red fire streaked
+the night; Isla Craig rang and echoed with pelting lead.
+
+"Next!" called out McKay with his ugly careless laugh. "Two down. No
+use to set 'em up again! Let dead wood lie. It's the law!"
+
+"Can they hear the shooting at the house?" whispered Miss Erith.
+
+"Too far. A shot on the moors carries only a little way."
+
+"Could they see the pistol flashes, Kay?"
+
+"They'd take them for fireflies or witch lights dancing on the
+bogs."
+
+After a long and immobile silence he dropped to his knees, remained
+so listening, then crept across the Pulpit's ferny floor. Of a
+sudden he sprang up and fired full into a man's face; and struck the
+distorted visage with doubled fist, hurling it below, crashing down
+through the bracken.
+
+After a stunned interval Miss Erith saw him wiping that hand on the
+herbage.
+
+"Kay?"
+
+"Yes, Yellow-hair."
+
+"Can you see your wrist-watch?"
+
+"Yes. It's after midnight."
+
+The girl prayed silently for dawn. The man, grim, alert, awaited
+events, clutching his partly emptied pistols. He had not yet told
+her that they were partly empty. He did not know whether to tell
+her. After a while he made up his mind.
+
+"Yellow-hair?"
+
+"Yes, dear Kay."
+
+His lips went dry; he found difficulty in speaking: "I've--I've
+undone you. I've bitten the hand that saved me, your slim white
+hand, I'm afraid. I'm afraid I've destroyed you, Yellow-hair."
+
+"How, Kay?"
+
+"My pistols are half empty. ... Unless dawn comes quick--"
+
+Again one of his pistols flashed its crimson streak across the
+blackness and a man began scrambling and thrashing and screaming
+down there in the whinns. For a little while Miss Erith crouched
+beside McKay in silence. Then he felt her light touch on his arm:
+
+"I've been thinking.",
+
+"Aye. So have I."
+
+"Is there a chance to drop into the lake?"
+
+He had not thought so. He had figured it out in every possible way.
+But there seemed little chance to swim that icy water--none at
+all--with that man in the boat yonder, and detection always imminent
+if they left the Pulpit. McKay shook his head slightly:
+
+"He'd row us down and gralloch us like swimming deer."
+
+"But if one goes alone?"
+
+"Oh, Yellow-hair! Yellow-hair! If you only could!"
+
+"I can."
+
+"Swim it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"It's cold water. Few can swim Isla Water. It's a long swim from
+Isla Craig to the house."
+
+"I can do it, I think."
+
+After a terrible silence he said: "Yes, best try it, Yellow-hair....
+I had meant to keep the last cartridge for you..."
+
+"Dear Kay," she breathed close to his cheek.
+
+Presently he was obliged to fire again, but remained uncertain as to
+his luck in the raging storm of lead that followed.
+
+"I guess you better go, Yellow-hair," he whispered. "My guns are
+about all in."
+
+"Try to hold them off. I'll come back. Of course you understand I'm
+not going for myself, Kay, I'm going for ammunition."
+
+"What!"
+
+"What did you suppose?" she asked curtly.
+
+At that he blazed up: "If you can win through Isla Water you stay on
+the other side and telephone Glenark! Do you hear? I'm all right.
+It's--it's none of your business how I end this--"
+
+"Kay?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Turn your back. I'm undressing."
+
+He heard her stripping, kneeling in the ferns behind him,--heard the
+rip of delicate fabric and the rustle of silk-lined garments
+falling.
+
+Presently she said: "Can I be noticed if I slip down through the
+bushes to the water?"
+
+"O God," he whispered, "be careful, Yellow-hair. ... No, the man in
+the boat is keeping his distance. He'll never see you. Don't splash
+when you take the water. Swim like an otter, under, until you're
+well out. ... You're young and sturdy, slim as you are. You'll get
+through if the chill of Isla doesn't paralyse you. But you've got to
+do it, Yellow-hair; you've GOT to do it."
+
+"Yes. Hold them off, Kay. I'll be back. Hold them off, dear Kay.
+Will you?"
+
+"I'll try, Yellow-hair.... Good luck! Don't try to come back!"
+
+"Good luck," she whispered close to his ear; and, for a second he
+felt her slim young hands on his shoulders--lightly--the very ghost
+of contact. That was all. He waited a hundred years. Then another.
+Then, his weapons levelled, listening, he cast a quick glance
+backward. At the foot of the Pulpit a dark ripple lapped the rock.
+Nothing there now; nothing in Isla Water save far in the stars'
+lustre the shadowy boat lying motionless.
+
+Toward dawn they tried to rush the Pulpit. He used a heavy fragment
+of rock on the first man up, and as his quarry went smashing
+earthward, a fierce whine burst from the others: "Shot out! All
+together now!" But his pistol spoke again and they recoiled,
+growling, disheartened, cursing the false hope that had re-nerved
+them.
+
+It was his last shot, however. He had a heavy clasp-knife such as
+salmon-anglers carry. He laid his empty pistols on the rocky ledge.
+Very patiently he felt for frost-loosened masses of rock, detached
+them one by one and noiselessly piled them along the ledge.
+
+"It's odd," he thought to himself: "I'm going to be killed and I
+don't care. If Isla got HER, then I'll see her very soon now, God
+willing. But if she wins out--why it is going to be longer waiting....
+And I've put my mark on the Boche--not as often as I wished--but
+I've marked some of them for what they've done to me--and to the
+world--"
+
+A sound caught his ear. He waited, listening. Had it been a fighting
+chance in Isla Water he'd have taken it. But the man in the
+boat!--and to have one's throat cut--like a deer! No! He'd kill all
+he could first; he'd die fighting, not fleeing.
+
+He looked at his wrist-watch. Miss Erith had been gone two hours.
+That meant that her slender body lay deep, deep in icy Isla.
+
+Now, listening intently, he heard the bracken stirring and something
+scraping the gorse below. They were coming; they were among the
+rocks! He straightened up and hurled a great slab of rock down
+through darkness; heard them scrambling upward still; seized slab
+after slab and smashed them downward at the flashes as the red flare
+of their pistols lit up his figure against the sky.
+
+Then, as he hurled the last slab and clutched his short, broad
+knife, a gasping breath fell on his cheek and a wet and icy little
+hand thrust a box of clips into his. And there and then The McKay
+almost died, for it was as if the "Cold Hand of Isla" had touched
+him. And he stared ahead to see his own wraith.
+
+"Quick!" she panted. "We can hold them, Kay!"
+
+"Yellow-hair! By God! You bet we can!" he cried with a terrible
+burst of laughter; and ripped the clips from the box and snapped
+them in with lightning speed.
+
+Then his pistols vomited vermilion, clearing the rock of vermin; and
+when two fresh clips were snapped in, the man stood on the Pulpit's
+edge, mad for blood, his fierce young eyes searching the blackness
+about him.
+
+"You dirty rats!" he cried, "come back! Are you leaving your dead in
+the bracken then?"
+
+There were distant sounds on the moor; nothing stirred nearer.
+
+"Are you coming back?" he shouted, "or must I go after you?"
+
+Suddenly in the night their motor roared. At the same moment, far
+across the lake, he saw the headlights of other motors glide over
+Isla Bridge like low-flying stars.
+
+"Yellow-hair!"
+
+There was no sound behind him. He turned.
+
+The fainting girl lay amid her drenched yellow hair in the ferns,
+partly covered by the clothing which she had drawn over her with her
+last conscious effort.
+
+It is a long way across Isla Water. And twice across is longer. And
+"The Cold Hand of Isla" summons the chief of Clan Morhguinn when his
+time has come to look upon his own wraith face to face. But The Cold
+Hand of Isla had touched this girl in vain--MOLADH MAIRI!!
+
+"Yellow-hair! Yellow-hair!" he whispered. The roar of rushing motors
+from Glenark filled his ears. He picked up one of her little hands
+and chafed it. Then she opened her golden eyes, looked up at him,
+and a flood of rose dyed her body from brow to ankle.
+
+"It--it is a long way across Isla Water," she stammered. "I'm very
+tired--Kay!"
+
+"You below there!" shouted McKay. "Are there constables among you?"
+
+"Aye, sir!" came the loud response amid the roar of running engines.
+
+"Then there'll be whiskey and blankets, I'm thinkin'!" cried McKay.
+
+"Aye, blankets for the dead if there be any!"
+
+"Kick 'em into the whinns and bring what ye bring for the living!"
+said McKay in a loud, joyous voice. "And if you've petrol and speed
+take the Banff road and be on your way, for the Boche are crawling
+to cover, and it's fine running the night! Get on there, ye Glenark
+beagles! And leave a car behind for me and mine!"
+
+A constable, shining his lantern, came clumping up the Pulpit. McKay
+snatched the heavy blankets and with one mighty movement swept the
+girl into them.
+
+Half-conscious she coughed and gasped at the whiskey, then lay very
+still as McKay lifted her in his arms and strode out under the
+paling stars of Isla.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+MOUNT TERRIBLE
+
+
+
+
+
+Toward the last of May a handsome young man wearing a smile and the
+uniform of an American Intelligence Officer arrived at Delle, a
+French village on the Franco-Swiss frontier.
+
+His credentials being satisfactory he was directed by the Major of
+Alpinists commanding the place to a small stucco house on the main
+street.
+
+Here he inquired for a gentleman named Number Seventy. The
+gentleman's other name was John Recklow, and he received the
+Intelligence Officer, locked the door, and seated himself behind his
+desk with his back to the sunlit window, and one drawer of his desk
+partly open.
+
+Credentials being requested, and the request complied with
+accompanied by a dazzling smile, there ensued a silent interval of
+some length during which the young man wearing the uniform of an
+American Intelligence Officer was not at all certain whether Recklow
+was examining him or the papers of identification.
+
+After a while Recklow nodded: "You came through from Toul, Captain?"
+
+"From Toul, sir," with the quick smile revealing dazzling teeth.
+
+"Matters progress?"
+
+"It is quiet there."
+
+"So I understand," nodded Recklow. "There's blood on your uniform."
+
+"A scratch--a spill from my motor-cycle."
+
+Recklow eyed the cut on the officer's handsome face. One of the
+young officer's hands was bandaged, too.
+
+"You've been in action, Captain."
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"You wear German shoes."
+
+The officer's brilliant smile wrinkled his good-looking features:
+"There was some little loot: I'm wearing my share."
+
+Recklow nodded and let his cold eyes rest on the identification
+papers.
+
+Then, slowly, and without a word, he passed them back over the desk.
+
+The Intelligence Officer stuffed them carelessly into his
+side-pocket.
+
+"I thought I'd come over instead of wiring or 'phoning. Our people
+have not come through yet, have they?"
+
+"Which people, sir?"
+
+"McKay and Miss Erith."
+
+"No, not yet."
+
+The officer mused for a moment, then: "They wired me from Paris
+yesterday, so they're all right so far. You'll see to it personally
+that they get through the Swiss wire, won't you?"
+
+"Through or over, sir."
+
+The Intelligence Officer displayed his mirthful teeth:
+
+"Thanks. I'm also sending three of my own people through the wire.
+They'll have their papers in order--here are the duplicates I
+issued; they'll have their photographs on the originals."
+
+He fished out a batch of papers and laid them on Recklow's desk.
+
+"Who are these people?" demanded Recklow.
+
+"Mine, sir."
+
+"Oh."
+
+There fell a silence; but Recklow did not examine the papers; he
+merely pocketed them.
+
+"I think that's all," said the Intelligence Officer. "You know my
+name--Captain Herts. In case you wish to communicate just wire my
+department at Toul. They'll forward anything if I'm away on duty."
+
+He saluted: Recklow followed him to the door, saw him mount his
+motor-cycle--a battered American machine--stood there watching until
+he was out of sight.
+
+Hour after hour that afternoon Recklow sat in his quiet little house
+in Delle poring over the duplicate papers.
+
+About five o'clock he called up Toul by telephone and got the proper
+department.
+
+"Yes," came the answer, "Captain Herts went to you this morning on a
+confidential matter.... No, we don't know when he will return to
+Toul."
+
+Recklow hung up, walked slowly out into his little garden and,
+seating himself on a green bench, took out the three packets of
+duplicate papers left him by Captain Herts. Then he produced a
+jeweller's glass and screwed it into his right eye.
+
+Several days later three people--two men and a young woman--arrived
+at Delle, were conveyed under military escort to the little house of
+Mr. Recklow, remained closeted with him until verification of their
+credentials in duplicate had been accomplished, then they took their
+departure and, that evening, they put up at the Inn.
+
+But by the next morning they had disappeared, presumably over the
+Swiss wire--that being their destination as revealed in their
+papers. But the English touring-car which brought them still
+remained in the Inn garage. Recklow spent hours examining it.
+
+Also the arrival and the departure of these three people was
+telephoned to Toul by Recklow, but Captain Herts still remained
+absent from Toul on duty and his department knew nothing about the
+details of the highly specialised and confidential business of
+Captain Herts.
+
+So John Recklow went back to his garden and waited, and smoked a
+short, dirty clay pipe, and played with his family of cats.
+
+Once or twice he went down at night to the French wire. All the
+sentries were friends of his.
+
+"Anybody been through?" he inquired.
+
+The answer was always the same: Nobody had been through as far as
+the patrol knew.
+
+"Where the hell," muttered Recklow, "did those three guys go?"
+
+A nightingale sang as he sauntered homeward. Possibly, being a
+French nightingale, she was trying to tell him that there were three
+people lying very still in the thicket near her.
+
+But men are stupid and nightingales are too busy to bother about
+trifles when there is courting to be done and nests to be planned
+and all the anticipated excitement of the coming new moon to
+preoccupy a love-distracted bird.
+
+On a warm, sunny day early in June, toward three o'clock in the
+afternoon, a peloton of French cavalry en vidette from Delle stopped
+a rather rickety touring-car several kilometres west of the Swiss
+frontier and examined the sheaf of papers offered for their
+inspection by the young man who drove the car.
+
+A yellow-haired girl seated beside him leaned back in her place
+indifferently to relax her limbs.
+
+From the time she and the young man had left Glenark in Scotland
+their progress had been a series of similar interruptions.
+Everywhere on every road soldiers, constables, military policemen,
+and gentlemen in mufti had displayed, with varying degrees of
+civility, a persistent curiosity to inspect such papers as they
+carried.
+
+On the Channel transport it was the same; the same from Dieppe to
+Paris; from Paris to Belfort; and now, here within a pebble's toss
+of the Swiss frontier, military curiosity concerning their papers
+apparently remained unquenched.
+
+The sous-officier of dragoon-lancers sat his splendid horse and
+gravely inspected the papers, one by one. Behind him a handful of
+troopers lolled in their saddles, their lances advanced, their
+horses swishing their tails at the murderous, green-eyed bremsers
+which, like other bloodthirsty Teutonic vermin, had their origin in
+Germany, and raided both French and Swiss frontiers to the cruel
+discomfort of horses and cattle.
+
+Meanwhile the blond, perplexed boy who was examining the papers of
+the two motorists, scratched his curly head and rubbed his deeply
+sunburned nose with a sunburned fist, a visible prey to indecision.
+Finally, at his slight gesture, his troopers trotted out and formed
+around the touring-car.
+
+The boyish sous-officier looked pleasantly at the occupants of the
+car: "Have the complaisance to follow me--rather slowly if you
+please," he said; wheeled his horse, and trotted eastward toward the
+roofs of a little hamlet visible among the trees of the green and
+rolling countryside.
+
+The young man threw in his clutch and advanced slowly, the cavalry
+trotting on either side with lances in stirrup-boots and slanting
+backward from the arm-loops.
+
+There was a barrier beyond and some Alpine infantry on guard; and to
+the left, a paved street and houses. Half-way down this silent
+little street they halted: the sous-officier dismounted and opened
+the door of the tonneau, politely assisting the girl to alight. Her
+companion followed her, and the sous-officier conducted them into a
+stucco house, the worn limestone step of which gave directly on the
+grass-grown sidewalk.
+
+"If your papers are in order, as they appear to be," said the
+youthful sous-officier, "you are expected in Delle. And if it is you
+indeed whom we expect, then you will know how to answer properly the
+questions of a gentleman in the adjoining room who is perhaps
+expecting you." And the young sous-officier opened a door, bowed
+them into the room beyond, and closed the door behind them. As they
+entered this room a civilian of fifty, ruddy, powerfully but trimly
+built, and wearing his white hair clipped close, rose from a swivel
+chair behind a desk littered with maps and papers.
+
+"Good-afternoon," he said in English. "Be seated if you please. And
+if you will kindly let me have your papers--thank you."
+
+When the young man and the girl were seated, their suave and ruddy
+host dropped back onto his swivel chair. For a long while he sat
+there absently caressing his trim, white moustache, studying their
+papers with unhurried and minute thoroughness.
+
+Presently he lifted his cold, greyish eyes but not his head, like a
+man looking up over eyeglasses:
+
+"You are this Kay McKay described here?" he inquired pleasantly. But
+in his very clear, very cold greyish eyes there was something
+suggesting the terrifying fixity of a tiger's.
+
+"I am the person described," said the young man quietly.
+
+"And you," turning only his eyes on the young girl, "are Miss Evelyn
+Erith?"
+
+"I am."
+
+"These, obviously, are your photographs?"
+
+McKay smiled: "Obviously."
+
+"Certainly. And all these other documents appear to be in order"--he
+laid them carelessly on his desk--"IF," he added, "Delle is your
+ultimate destination and terminal."
+
+"We go farther," said McKay in a low voice.
+
+"Not unless you have something further to offer me in the way of
+credentials," said the ruddy, white-haired Mr. Recklow, smiling his
+terrifying smile.
+
+"I might mention a number," began McKay in a voice still lower, "if
+you are interested in the science of numbers!"
+
+"Really. And what number do you think might interest me?"
+
+"Seventy-six--for example."
+
+"Oh," said the other; "in that case I shall mention the very
+interesting number, Seventy. And you, Miss Erith?" turning to the
+yellow-haired girl. "Have you any number to suggest that might
+interest me?"
+
+"Seventy-seven," she said composedly. Recklow nodded:
+
+"Do you happen to believe, either of you, that, at birth, the hours
+of our lives are already irrevocably numbered?"
+
+Miss Erith said: "So teach us to number our days that we may apply
+our hearts unto wisdom."
+
+Recklow got up, made them a bow, and reseated himself. He touched a
+handbell; the blond sous-officier entered.
+
+"Everything is in order; take care of the car; carry the luggage to
+the two rooms above," said Recklow.
+
+To McKay and Miss Erith he added: "My name is John Recklow. If you
+want to rest before you wash up, your rooms are ready. You'll find
+me here or in the garden behind the house."
+
+Toward sunset they found Recklow in the little garden, seated alone
+there on a bench looking up at the eastward mountains with the
+piercing, detached stare of a bird of prey. When they had seated
+themselves on the faded-green bench on either side of him he said,
+still gazing toward the mountains: "It's April up there. Dress
+warmly."
+
+"Which is Mount Terrible?" inquired Miss Erith.
+
+"Those are the lower ridges. The summit is not visible from where we
+sit," replied Recklow. And, to McKay: "There's some snow there
+still, I hear."
+
+McKay's upward-turned face was a grim study. Beyond those limestone
+shouldering heights his terrible Calvary had begun--a progress that
+had ended in the wreckage of mind and soul had it not been for
+Chance and Evelyn Erith. After Mount Terrible, with its grim "Great
+Secret," had come the horrors of the prison camp at Holzminden and
+its nameless atrocities, his escape to New York, the Hun cipher
+orders to "silence him," his miraculous rescue and redemption by the
+girl at his side--and now their dual mission to probe the mystery of
+Mount Terrible.
+
+"McKay," said Recklow, "I don't know what the particular mission may
+be that brings you and Miss Erith to the Franco-Swiss frontier. I
+have been merely instructed to carry out your orders whenever you
+are in touch with me. And I am ready to do so."
+
+"How much do you know about us?" asked McKay, turning to him an
+altered face almost marred by hard features which once had been only
+careworn and stern.
+
+"I know you escaped from the Holzminden prison-camp in Germany; that
+you were inhumanly treated there by the Boche; that you entered the
+United States Intelligence Service; and that, whatever may be your
+business here, I am to help further it at your request." He looked
+at the girl: "As concerning Miss Erith, I know only that she is in
+the same Government service as yourself and that I am to afford her
+any aid she requests."
+
+McKay said, slowly: "My orders are to trust you implicitly. On one
+subject only am I to remain silent--I am not to confide to anybody
+the particular object which brings us here."
+
+Recklow nodded: "I understood as much. Also I have been instructed
+that the Boches are determined to discover your whereabouts and do
+you in before your mission is accomplished. You, probably, are aware
+of that, McKay?"
+
+"Yes, I am."
+
+"By the way--you know a Captain Herts?"
+
+"Not personally."
+
+"You've been in communication with him?"
+
+"Yes, for some time."
+
+"Did you wire him from Paris last Thursday?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Where did you wire him?"
+
+"At his apartment at Toul."
+
+"All right. He was here on Friday.... Somehow I feel uneasy.... He
+has a way of smiling too brilliantly.... I suppose, after these
+experiences I'll remain a suspicious grouch all my life--but his
+papers were in order... I don't know just why I don't care for that
+type of man.... You're bound for somewhere or other via Mount
+Terrible, I understand?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"This Captain Herts sent three of his own people over the Swiss wire
+the other evening. Did you know about it?"
+
+McKay looked worried: "I'm sorry," he said. "Captain Herts proposed
+some such assistance but I declined. It wasn't necessary. Two on
+such a job are plenty; half-a-dozen endanger it."
+
+Recklow shrugged: "I can't judge, not knowing details. Tell me, if
+you don't mind; have you been bothered at all so far by Boche
+agents?"
+
+"Yes," nodded Evelyn Erith.
+
+"You've already had some serious trouble?"
+
+McKay said: "Our ship was torpedoed off Strathlone Head. In Scotland
+a dozen camouflaged Boches caught me napping in spite of being
+warned. It was very humiliating, Recklow."
+
+"You can't trust a soul on this frontier either," returned Recklow
+with emphasis. "You cannot trust the Swiss on this border. Over
+ninety per cent. of them are German-Swiss, speak German exclusively
+along the Alsatian border. They are, I think, loyal Swiss, but their
+origin, propinquity, customs and all their affiliations incline them
+toward Germany rather than toward France.
+
+"I believe, in the event of a Hun deluge, the Swiss on this border,
+and in the cantons adjoining, would defend their passes to the last
+man. They really are first of all good Swiss. But," he shrugged,
+"don't trust their friendship for America or for France; that's
+all."
+
+Miss Erith nodded. McKay said: "How about the frontier? I understand
+both borders are wired now as well as patrolled. Are the wires
+electrically charged?"
+
+"No. There was some talk of doing it on both sides, but the French
+haven't and I don't think the Swiss ever intended to. You can get
+over almost anywhere with a short ladder or by digging under." He
+smiled: "In fact," he said, "I took the liberty of having a sapling
+ladder made for you in case you mean to cross to-night."
+
+"Many thanks. Yes; we cross to-night."
+
+"You go by the summit path past the Crucifix on the peak?"
+
+"No, by the neck of woods under the peak."
+
+"That might be wiser.... One never knows. ... I'm not quite at
+ease--Suppose I go as far as the Crucifix with you--"
+
+"Thanks, no. I know the mountain and the neck of woods around the
+summit. I shall travel no path to-night."
+
+There was a silence: Miss Erith's lovely face was turned tranquilly
+toward the flank of Mount Terrible. Both men looked sideways at her
+as though thinking the same thing.
+
+Finally Recklow said: "In the event of trouble--you understand--it
+means merely detention and internment while you are on Swiss
+territory. But--if you leave it and go north--" He did not say any
+more.
+
+McKay's sombre eyes rested on his in grim comprehension of all that
+Recklow had left unsaid. Swift and savage as would be the fate of a
+man caught within German frontiers on any such business as he was
+now engaged in, the fate of a woman would be unspeakable.
+
+If Miss Erith noticed or understood the silence between these two
+men she gave no sign of comprehension.
+
+Soft, lovely lights lay across the mountains; higher rocks were
+still ruddy in the rays of the declining sun.
+
+"Do the Boche planes ever come over?" asked McKay.
+
+"They did in 1914. But the Swiss stopped it."
+
+"Our planes--do they violate the frontier at all?"
+
+"They never have, so far. Tell me, McKay, how about your maps?"
+
+"Rather inaccurate--excepting one. I drew that myself from memory,
+and I believe it is fairly correct."
+
+Recklow unfolded a little map, marked a spot on it with his pencil
+and passed it to McKay.
+
+"It's for you," he said. "The sapling ladder lies under the filbert
+bushes in the gulley where I have marked the boundary. Wait till the
+patrol passes. Then you have ten minutes. I'll come later and get
+the ladder if the patrol does not discover it."
+
+A cat and her kittens came into the garden and Evelyn Erith seated
+herself on the grass to play with them, an attention gratefully
+appreciated by that feline family.
+
+The men watched her with sober faces. Perhaps both were susceptible
+to her beauty, but there was also about this young American girl in
+all the freshness of her unmarred youth something that touched them
+deeply under the circumstances.
+
+For this clean, wholesome girl was enlisted in a service the dangers
+of which were peculiarly horrible to her because of the bestial
+barbarity of the Boche. From the Hun--if ever she fell into their
+hands--the greatest mercy to be hoped for was a swift death unless
+she could forestall it with a swifter one from her own pistol
+carried for that particular purpose.
+
+The death of youth is always shocking, yet that is an essential part
+of war. But this was no war within the meaning accepted by
+civilisation--this crusade of light against darkness, of cleanliness
+against corruption, this battle of normal minds against the
+diseased, perverted, and filthy ferocity of a people not merely
+reverted to honest barbarism, but also mentally mutilated, and now
+morally imbecile and utterly incompetent to understand the basic
+truths of that civilisation from which they had relapsed, and from
+which, God willing, they are to be ultimately and definitely kicked
+out forever.
+
+The old mother cat lay on the grass blinking pleasantly at the
+setting sun; the kittens frisked and played with the grass-stem in
+Evelyn Erith's fingers, or chased their own ratty little tails in a
+perfect orgy of feline excitement.
+
+Long bluish shadows spread delicate traceries on wall and grass; the
+sweet, persistent whistle of a blackbird intensified the calm of
+evening. It was hard to associate any thought of violence and of
+devastation with the blessed sunset calm and the clean fragrance of
+this land of misty mountains and quiet pasture so innocently aloof
+from the strife and passion of a dusty, noisy and struggling world.
+
+Yet the red borders of that accursed land, the bloody altars of
+which were served by the priests of Baal, lay but a few scant
+kilometres to the north and east. And their stealthy emissaries were
+over the border and creeping like vermin among the uncontaminated
+fields of France.
+
+"Even here," Recklow was saying, in a voice made low and cautious
+from habit, "the dirty Boche prowl among us under protean aspects.
+One can never tell, never trust anybody--what with one thing and
+another and the Alsatian border so close--and those
+German-Swiss--always to be suspected and often impossible to
+distinguish--with their pig-eyes and bushy flat-backed heads--from
+the genuine Boche. ... Would Miss Erith like to have our little
+dinner served out here in the garden?"
+
+Miss Erith was delightfully sure she would.
+
+It was long after sunset, though still light, when the simple little
+meal ended; but they lingered over their coffee and cordial,
+exchanging ideas concerning preparations for their departure, which
+was now close at hand.
+
+The lilac bloom faded from mountain and woodland; already meadow and
+pasture lay veiled under the thickening dusk. The last day-bird had
+piped its sleepy "lights out"; bats were flying high. When the moon
+rose the first nightingale acclaimed the pallid lustre that fell in
+silver pools on walk and wall; and every flower sent forth its
+scented greeting.
+
+Kay McKay and Evelyn Erith had been gone for nearly an hour; but
+Recklow still sat there at the little green table, an unlighted
+cigarette in his muscular fingers, his head slightly bent as though
+listening.
+
+Once he rose as though on some impulse, went into the house, took a
+roll of fine wire, a small cowbell, a heavy pair of wire clippers
+and a pocket torch from his desk and pocketed them. A pair of
+automatic handcuffs he also took, and a dozen clips to fit the brace
+of pistols strapped under his armpits.
+
+Then he returned to the garden; and for a long while he sat there,
+unstirring, just where the wall's shadow lay clean-cut across the
+grass, listening to the distant tinkle of cattle-bells on the unseen
+slope of Mount Terrible.
+
+No shots had come from the patrol along the Franco-Swiss frontier;
+there was no sound save the ecstatic tumult of the nightingale drunk
+with moonlight, and, at intervals, the faint sound of a cowbell from
+those dark and distant pastures.
+
+To this silent, listening man it seemed certain that his two guests
+had now safely crossed the boundary at the spot he had marked for
+McKay on the detail map. Yet he remained profoundly uneasy.
+
+He waited a few moments longer; heard nothing to alarm him; and then
+he left the garden, going out by way of the house, and turned to
+lock the front door behind him.
+
+At that instant his telephone bell rang and he re-entered the house
+with a sudden premonition--an odd, unreasonable, but dreadful sort
+of certainty concerning what he was about to hear. Picking up the
+instrument he was thinking all the time: "It has to do with that
+damned Intelligence Officer! There was something wrong with him!"
+
+There was.
+
+Clearly over the wire from Toul came the information: "Captain
+Herts's naked body was discovered an hour ago in a thicket beside
+the Delle highway. He has been dead two weeks. Therefore the man you
+saw in Delle was impersonating him. Probably also he was Captain
+Herts's murderer and was wearing his uniform, carrying his papers,
+and riding his motor-cycle. Do your best to get him!"
+
+Recklow, deadly cold and calm, asked a few questions. Then he hung
+up the instrument, turned and went out, locking the door behind him.
+
+A few people were in the quiet street; here an Alpine soldier
+strolling with his sweetheart, there an old cure on his way to his
+little stone chapel, yonder a peasant in blouse and sabots plodding
+doggedly along about some detail of belated work that never ends for
+such as he. A few lanterns set in iron cages projected over ancient
+doorways, lighting the street but dimly where it lay partly in deep
+shadow, partly illuminated by the silvery radiance of the moon.
+
+Recklow turned into an alley smelling of stables, traversed it, and
+came out behind into a bushy pasture with a cleared space beyond.
+The place was rather misty now in the moonlight from the vapours of
+a cold little brook which ran foaming and clattering through it
+between banks thickset with fern.
+
+And now Recklow moved very swiftly but quietly, down through the
+misty, ferny valley to the filbert and hazel thicket just beyond;
+and went in among the bushes, treading cautiously upon the moist
+black mould.
+
+There glimmered the French wires--merely a wide mesh and an ordinary
+barbed barrier overhead; but the fence was deeply ditched on the
+Swiss side. A man could climb over it; and Recklow started to do so;
+and came face to face in the moonlight with the French patrol. The
+recognition was mutual and noiseless:
+
+"You passed my two people over?" whispered Recklow.
+
+"An hour ago, mon Capitaine."
+
+"You've seen nobody else?"
+
+"Nobody."
+
+"Heard nothing?"
+
+"Not a sound. They must have gone over the Swiss wire without
+interference, mon Capitaine."
+
+"You sometimes talk across with the Swiss sentinels?"
+
+"Oh, yes, if I'm in that humour. You know, mon Capitaine, that
+they're like the Boche, only tame."
+
+"Not all."
+
+"No, not all. But in a wolf-pack who can excuse sheepdogs? A Boche
+is always a Boche."
+
+"All the same, when the Swiss sentry passes, speak to him and hold
+him while I get my ladder."
+
+"At your orders, Captain."
+
+"Listen. I am going over. When I return I shall leave with you a
+reel of wire and a cowbell. You comprehend? I do not wish anybody
+else to cross the French wire to-night."
+
+"C'est bien, mon Capitaine."
+
+Recklow went down into the bushy gulley. A few moments later the
+careless Swiss patrol came clumping along, rifle slung, pipe glowing
+and humming a tune as he passed. Presently the French sentry hailed
+him across the wire and the Swiss promptly halted for a bit of
+gossip concerning the pretty girls of Delle.
+
+But, to Recklow's grim surprise, and before he could emerge from the
+bushes, no sooner were the two sentries engaged in lively gossip
+than three dark figures crept out on hands and knees from the long
+grass at the very base of the Swiss wire and were up the ladder
+which McKay had left and over it like monkeys before he could have
+prevented it even if he had dared.
+
+Each in turn, reaching the top of the wire, set foot on the wooden
+post and leaped off into darkness--each except the last, who
+remained poised, then twisted around as though caught by the top
+barbed strand.
+
+And Recklow saw the figure was a woman's, and that her short skirt
+had become entangled in the wire.
+
+In an instant he was after her; she saw him, strove desperately to
+free herself, tore her skirt loose, and jumped. And Recklow jumped
+after her, landing among the wet ferns on his feet and seizing her
+as she tried to rise from where she had fallen.
+
+She struggled and fought him in silence, but his iron clutch was on
+her and he dragged her by main force through the woods parallel with
+the Swiss wire until, breathless, powerless, impotent, she gave up
+the battle and suffered him to force her along until they were far
+beyond earshot of the patrol and of her two companions as well, in
+case they should return to the wire to look for her.
+
+For ten minutes, holding her by the arm, he pushed forward up the
+wooded slope. Then, when it was safe to do so, he halted, jerked her
+around to face him, and flashed his pocket torch. And he saw a
+handsome, perspiring, sullen girl, staring at him out of dark eyes
+dilated by terror or by fury--he was not quite sure which.
+
+She wore the costume of a peasant of the canton bordering the wire;
+and she looked like that type of German-Swiss--handsome, sensual,
+bad-tempered, but not stupid.
+
+"Well," he said in French, "you can explain yourself now,
+mademoiselle. Allons! Who and what are you? Dites!"
+
+"What are you? A robber?" she gasped, jerking her arm free.
+
+"If you thought so why didn't you call for help?"
+
+"And be shot at? Do you take me for a fool? What are you--a Douanier
+then? A smuggler?"
+
+"You answer ME!" he retorted. "What were you doing--crossing the
+wire at night?"
+
+"Can't a girl keep a rendezvous without the custom-agents treating
+her so barbarously?" she panted, one hand flat on her tumultuous
+bosom.
+
+"Oh, that was it, was it?"
+
+"I do not deny it."
+
+"Who is your lover--on the French side?"
+
+"And if he happens to be an Alpinist?"--she shrugged, still
+breathing fast and irregularly, picking up the torn edge of her wool
+skirt and fingering the rent.
+
+"Really. An Alpinist? A rendezvous in Delle, eh? And who were your
+two friends?"
+
+"Boys from my canton."
+
+"Is that so?"
+
+Her breast still rose and fell unevenly; she turned her pretty,
+insolent eyes on him:
+
+"After all, what business is it of yours? Who are you, anyway? If
+you are French you can do nothing. If you are Swiss take me to the
+nearest poste."
+
+"Who were those two men?" repeated Recklow.
+
+"Ask them."
+
+"No; I think I'll take you back to France."
+
+The girl became silent at that but her attitude defied him. Even
+when he snapped an automatic handcuff over one wrist she smiled
+incredulously.
+
+But the jeering expression on her dark, handsome features altered
+when they approached the Swiss wire. And when Recklow produced a
+pair of heavy wire-cutters all defiance died out in her face.
+
+"Make a sound and I'll simply shoot you," he whispered.
+
+"W-what is it you want with me?" she asked in a ghost of a voice.
+
+"The truth."
+
+"I told it."
+
+"You did not. You are German."
+
+"Believe what you like, but I am on neutral territory. Let me go."
+
+"You ARE German! For God's sake admit it or we'll be too late!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Admit it, I say. Do you want those two Americans to get away?"
+
+"What--Americans?" stammered the girl. "I d-don't know what you
+mean--"
+
+Recklow laughed under his breath, unlocked the handcuffs.
+
+"Echt Deutsch," he whispered in German--"and ZERO-TWO-SIX. A good
+hint to you!"
+
+"Waidman's Heil!" said the girl faintly. "O God! what a fright you
+gave me.... There's a man at Delle--we were warned--Seventy is his
+number, Recklow--a devil Yankee--"
+
+"A swine! a fathead, sleeping all day in his garden, too drunk to
+open despatches!" sneered Recklow.
+
+"We were warned against him," she insisted. Recklow laughed his
+contempt of Recklow and spat upon the dead leaves.
+
+"Stupid one, what then is closest to the Yankee heart? I was sent
+here to buy this terrible devil Yankee, Recklow. That is how one
+deals with Yankees. With dollars."
+
+"Is that why you are here?"
+
+"And to watch for McKay and the young woman with him!"
+
+"The Erith woman!"
+
+"That is her barbarous name, I believe. What is your number?"
+
+"Four-two-four. Oh, what a fright you gave me. What is your name?"
+
+"That is against regulations."
+
+"I know. What is it, all the same.... Mine is Helsa Kampf."
+
+"Mine is Johann Wolkcer."
+
+"Wolkcer? Is it Polish?"
+
+"God knows where we Germans had our origin. ... Who are your
+companions, Fraulein?"
+
+"An Irish-American. Jim Macniff, and a British revolutionist, Harry
+Skelton. Others await us on Mount Terrible--Germans in Swiss
+uniforms."
+
+"You'd better keep an eye on Macniff and Skelton," grumbled Recklow.
+
+"No; they're to be trusted. We nearly caught McKay and the Erith
+girl in Scotland; they killed four of our people and hurt two
+others.... Listen, comrade Wolkcer, if a trodden path ascends Mount
+Terrible, as Skelton pretended, you and I had better look for it.
+Can you find your way back to where we crossed the wire? The dry bed
+of the torrent was to have guided us."
+
+"I know a quicker way," said Recklow. "Come on."
+
+The girl took his hand confidingly and walked beside him, holding
+one arm before her face to shield her eyes from branches in the
+darkness.
+
+They had gone, perhaps, a dozen paces when a man stepped from behind
+a great beech-tree, peered after them, then turned and hurried down
+the slope to where the Swiss wire stretched glistening under the
+stars. He ran along this wire until he came to the dry bed of a
+torrent.
+
+Up this he stumbled under the forest patches of alternate moonlight
+and shadow until he came to a hard path crossing it on a masonry
+viaduct.
+
+"Harry!" he called in a husky, quavering voice, choking for breath.
+"Cripes, Harry--where in hell are you?"
+
+"Here, you blighter! What's the bully row? Where's Helsa--"
+
+"With Recklow!"
+
+"What!!"
+
+"Double-crossed us!" he whispered; "I seen her! I was huntin' along
+the fence when I come on them, thick as thieves. She's crossed us;
+she's hollered! Oh, Cripes, Harry, Helsa has went an' squealed!"
+
+"HELSA!"
+
+"Yes, Helsa--I wouldn't 'a' believed it! But I seen 'em. I seen 'em
+whispering. I seen her take his hand an' lead him up through the
+trees. She's squealed on us! She's bringing Recklow--"
+
+"Recklow! Are you sure?"
+
+"I got closte to 'em. There was enough moonlight to spot him by. I
+know the cut of him, don't I? That wuz him all right." He wiped his
+face on his sleeve. "Now what are we goin' to do?" he demanded
+brokenly. "Where do we get off, Harry?"
+
+Skelton appeared dazed:
+
+"The slut," he kept repeating without particular emphasis, "the
+little slut! I thought she'd fallen for me. I thought she was my
+girl. And now to do that! And now to go for to do us in like that--"
+
+"Well, we're all right, ain't we?" quavered Macniff. "We make our
+getaway all right, don't we? Don't we?"
+
+"I can't understand--"
+
+"Say, listen, Harry. To blazes with Helsa! She's hollered and that
+ends her. But can we make our getaway? And how about them Germans
+waitin' for us by that there crucifix on top of this mountain? Where
+do they get off? Does this guy, Recklow, get them?"
+
+"He can't get six men alone."
+
+"Well, can't he sic the Swiss onto 'em?"
+
+A terrible doubt arose in Skelton's mind: "Recklow wouldn't come
+here alone. He's got his men in these woods! That damn woman fixed
+all this. It's a plant! She's framed us! What do I care about the
+Germans on the mountain! To hell with them. I'm going!"
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Into Alsace. Where do you think?"
+
+"You gotta cross the mountain, then--or go back into France."
+
+But neither man dared do that now. There was only one way out, and
+that lay over Mount Terrible--either directly past the black
+crucifix towering from its limestone cairn on the windy peak, or
+just below through a narrow belt of woods.
+
+"It ain't so bad," muttered Macniff. "If the Germans up there catch
+McKay and the girl they'll kill 'em and clear out."
+
+"Yes, but they don't know that the Americans have crossed the wire.
+The neck of woods is open!"
+
+"McKay may go over the peak."
+
+"McKay knows this mountain," grumbled Skelton. "He's a fox, too. You
+don't think he'd travel an open path, do you? And how can we catch
+him now? We were to have warned the Germans that the two had crossed
+the wire and then our only chance was to string out across that neck
+of woods between the peak and the cliffs. That's the way McKay will
+travel, not on a path in full moonlight. Aw--I'm sick--what with
+Helsa doing that to me--I can't get over it!"
+
+Macniff started nervously and began to run along the path, upward:
+
+"Beat it, Harry," he called back over his shoulder; "it's the only
+way out o' this now."
+
+"God," whimpered Skelton, "if I ever get my hooks on Helsa!" His
+voice ended in a snivel but his features were white and ferocious as
+he started running to overtake Macniff.
+
+Recklow, breathing easily, his iron frame insensible to any fatigue
+from the swift climb, halted finally at the base of the abrupt slope
+which marked the beginning of the last ascent to the summit.
+
+The girl, Helsa, speechless from exertion, came reeling up among the
+rocks and leaned gasping against a pine.
+
+"Now," said Recklow, "you can wait here for your two friends. We've
+come by a short cut and they won't be here for more than half an
+hour. What's the matter? Are you ill?" for the girl, overcome by the
+speed of the ascent, had dropped to the ground at the foot of the
+tree and sat there, her head resting against the trunk. Her eyes
+were closed and she was breathing convulsively.
+
+"Are you ill?" he repeated, bending over her.
+
+She heard him, opened her eyes, then shook her head faintly.
+
+"All right. You're a brave girl. You'll get your breath in a few
+minutes. There's no hurry. You can take your time. Your friends will
+be along in half an hour or so. Wait here for them. I am going on to
+warn the Germans by the Crucifix that the two Americans are across
+the Swiss wire."
+
+The girl, still speechless, wiped the blinding sweat from her eyes
+and tried to clear the dishevelled hair from her face. Then, with a
+great effort she found her voice:
+
+"But the--Americans--will pass--first!" she gasped. "I can't--stay
+here alone."
+
+"If they do pass, what of it? They can't see you. Let them pass. We
+hold the summit and the neck of the woods. Tell that to Macniff and
+Skelton when they come; that's what I want you here for. I want to
+cut off the Yankees' retreat. Do you understand?"
+
+"I--understand," she breathed.
+
+"You'll carry out my orders?"
+
+She nodded, strove to straighten up, then with both hands on her
+breast she sank back utterly exhausted. Recklow looked at her a
+moment in grim silence, then turned and walked away.
+
+After a few steps he crossed his arms with a quick, peculiar
+movement and drew from under his armpits the pair of automatic
+pistols.
+
+Like all "forested" forests, the woods on that flank of Mount
+Terrible were regular and open--big trees with no underbrush and a
+smooth carpet of needles and leaves under foot. And Recklow now
+walked on very fast in the dim light until he came to a thinning
+among the trees where just ahead of him, stars shimmered level in
+the vast sky-gulf above Alsace.
+
+Here was the precipice; here the narrow, wooded neck--the only way
+across the mountain except by the peak path and the Crucifix.
+
+Now Recklow took from his pockets his spool of very fine wire,
+attached it low down to a slim young pine, carried it across to the
+edge of the cliff, and attached the other end to a sapling on the
+edge of the ledge. On this wire he hung his cowbell and hooked the
+little clapper inside.
+
+Then, squatting down on the pine needles, he sat motionless as one
+of the forest shadows, a pistol in either hand, and his cold grey
+eyes ablaze.
+
+So silvery the pools of light from the planets, so depthless the
+shadows, that the forest around him seemed but a vast mosaic in
+mother-of-pearl and ebony.
+
+There was no sound, no murmur of cattle-bells from mountain pastures
+now, nothing stirring through the magic aisles where the matched
+columns of beech and pine towered in the perfect symmetry of all
+planted forests.
+
+He had not been there very long; the luminous dial of his
+wrist-watch told him that--when, although he had heard no sound on
+the soft carpet of pine needles, something suddenly hit the wire and
+the cowbell tinkled in the darkness.
+
+Recklow was on his feet in an instant and running south along the
+wire. It might have been a deer crossing to the eastern slope; it
+might have been the enemy; he could not tell; he could see nothing
+stirring. And there seemed to be nothing for him to do but to take
+his chances.
+
+"McKay!" he called in a low voice.
+
+Then, amid the checkered pools of light and shade among the trees a
+shadow moved.
+
+"McKay! It's Number Seventy. If it's you, call out your number,
+because I've got you over my sights and I shoot straight!"
+
+"Seventy-six and Seventy-seven!" came McKay's cautious voice. "Good
+heavens, Recklow, why have you come up here?"
+
+"Don't touch the wire again," Recklow warned him. "Drop flat both of
+you, and crawl under! Crawl toward my voice!"
+
+As he spoke he came toward them; and they rose from their knees
+among the shadows, pistols drawn.
+
+"There's been some dirty business," said Recklow briefly. "Three
+enemy spies went over the Swiss wire about an hour after you left
+Delle. There are half a dozen Boches on the peak by the Crucifix.
+And that's why I'm here, if you want to know."
+
+There was a silence. Recklow looked hard at McKay, then at Evelyn
+Erith, who was standing quietly beside him.
+
+"Can we get through this neck of woods?" asked McKay calmly.
+
+"We can hold our own here against a regiment," said Recklow. "No
+Swiss patrol is likely to cross the summit before daybreak. So if
+our cowbell jingles again to-night after I have once called halt!
+--let the Boche have it." To Evelyn he said: "Better step back here
+behind this ledge." And, when McKay had followed, he told them
+exactly what had happened. "I'm afraid it's not going to be very
+easy going for you," he added.
+
+With the alarming knowledge that they had to do once more with their
+uncanny enemies of Isla Water, McKay and Evelyn Erith looked at each
+other rather grimly. Recklow produced his clay pipe, inspected it,
+but did not venture to light it.
+
+"I wonder," he said carelessly, "what that she-Boche is doing over
+yonder by the summit path.... Her name is Helsa.... She's not bad
+looking," he added in a musing voice--"that young she-Boche. ... I
+wonder what she's up to now? Her people ought to be along pretty
+soon if they've travelled by the summit path from Delle."
+
+They had indeed travelled by the summit path--not ON it, but
+parallel to it through woods, over rocks, made fearful by what they
+believed to be the treachery of the girl, Helsa.
+
+For this reason they dared not take the trodden way, dreading
+ambush. Yet they had to cross the peak; they dared not remain in a
+forest where they believed Recklow was hunting them with many men
+and their renegade comrade, Helsa, to guide them.
+
+As they toiled upward, Macniff heard Skelton fiercely muttering
+sometimes, sometimes whining curses on this girl who had betrayed
+them both--who had betrayed him in particular. Over and over again
+he repeated his dreary litany: "No, by God, I didn't think she'd do
+it to me. All I want is to get my hooks on her; that's all I
+want--just that."
+
+Toward dawn they had reached the base of the cone where the last
+rocky slope slanted high above them.
+
+"Cripes," panted Macniff, "I can't make that over them rocks! I
+gotta take it by the path. Wot's the matter, Harry? Wot y' lookin'
+at?" he added, following Skelton's fascinated stare. Then: "Well,
+f'r Christ's sake!"
+
+The girl, Helsa, was coming toward them through the trees.
+
+"Where have you been?" she demanded. "Have you seen the Americans?
+I've been waiting here beside the path. They haven't passed. I met
+one of our agents in the woods--there was a misunderstanding at
+first--"
+
+She stopped, stepped nearer, peered into Skelton's shadowy face:
+"Harry! What's the matter? Wh-why do you look at me that way--what
+are you doing! Let go of me--"
+
+But Skelton had seized her by one arm and Macniff had her by the
+other.
+
+"Are you crazy?" she demanded, struggling between them.
+
+Skelton spoke first, but she scarcely recognised the voice for his:
+"Who was that man you were talking to down by the Swiss wire?"
+
+"I've told you. He's one of us. His name is Wolkcer--"
+
+"What!"
+
+"Wolkcer! That is his name--"
+
+"Spell it backward!" barked Skelton. "We know what you have done to
+us! You have sold us to Recklow! That's what you done!"
+
+"W-what!" stammered the girl. But Skelton, inarticulate with rage,
+began striking her and jerking her about as though he were trying to
+tear her to pieces. Only when the girl reeled sideways, limp and
+deathly white under his fury, did he find his voice, or the hoarse
+unhuman rags of it:
+
+"Damn you!" he gasped, "you'll sell me out, will you? I'll show you!
+I'll fix you, you dirty slut--"
+
+Suddenly he started up the path to the summit dragging the
+half-conscious girl. Macniff ran along on the other side to help.
+
+"Wot y' goin' to do with her, Harry?" he panted. "I ain't got no
+stomach for scraggin' her. I ain't for no knifin'. W'y don't you
+shove her off the top?"
+
+But Skelton strode on, half-dragging the girl, and muttering that
+she had sold him and that he knew how to "fix" a girl who
+double-crossed him.
+
+And now the gaunt, black Crucifix came into view, stark against the
+paling eastern sky with its life-sized piteous figure hanging there
+under the crown of thorns.
+
+Macniff looked up at the carved wooden image, then, at a word from
+Skelton, dropped the girl's limp arm.
+
+The girl opened her eyes and stood swaying there, dazed.
+
+Skelton began to laugh in an unearthly way: "Where the hell are you
+Germans?" he called out. "Come out of your holes, damn you. Here's
+one of your own kind who's sold us all out to the Yankees!"
+
+Twice the girl tried to speak but Skelton shook the voice out of her
+quivering lips as a shadowy figure rose from the scrubby growth
+behind the Crucifix. Then another rose, another, and many others
+looming against the sky.
+
+Macniff had begun to speak in German as they drew around him.
+Presently Skelton broke in furiously:
+
+"All right, then! That's the case. She sold us. She sold ME! But
+she's German. And it's your business. But if you Germans will listen
+to me you'll shove her against that pile of rocks and shoot her."
+
+The girl had begun to cry now: "It's a lie! It's a lie!" she sobbed.
+"If it was Recklow who talked to me I didn't know it. I thought he
+was one of us, Harry! Don't go away! For God's sake, don't leave me
+with those men--"
+
+Macniff sneered as he slouched by her: "They're Germans, ain't they?
+Wot are you squealin' for?"
+
+"Harry! Harry!" she wailed--for her own countrymen had her now, held
+her fast, thrust a dozen pig-eyed scowling visages close to hers,
+muttering, making animal sounds at her.
+
+Once she screamed. But Skelton seated himself on a rock, his back
+toward her, his head buried in his hands.
+
+To his dull, throbbing ears came now only the heavy trample of boots
+among the rocks, guttural noises, a wrenching sound, then the
+clatter of rolling stones.
+
+Macniff, squatting beside him, muttered uneasily, speculating upon
+what was being done behind him. But with German justice upon a
+German he had no desire to interfere, and he had no stomach to
+witness it, either.
+
+"Why don't they shoot her and be done?" he murmured huskily. And,
+later: "I can't make out what they're doing. Can you, Harry?"
+
+But Skelton neither answered nor stirred. After a while he rose, not
+looking around, and strode off down the eastern slope, his hands
+pressed convulsively over his ears. Macniff slouched after him,
+listening for the end.
+
+They had gone a mile, perhaps, when Skelton's agonised voice burst
+its barriers: "I couldn't--I couldn't stand it--to hear the shots!"
+
+"I ain't heard no shots," remarked Macniff.
+
+There had been no shots fired....
+
+And now in the ghastly light of dawn the Germans on Mount Terrible
+continued methodically the course of German justice.
+
+Two of them, burly, huge-fisted, wrenched the Christ from the
+weather-beaten Crucifix which they had uprooted from the summit of
+its ancient cairn of rocks, and pulled out the rusty spike-like
+nails.
+
+The girl was already half dead when they laid her on the Crucifix
+and nailed her there. After they had raised the cross and set it on
+the summit she opened her eyes.
+
+Several of the Germans laughed, and one of them threw pebbles at her
+until she died.
+
+Just before sunrise they went down to explore the neck of woods, but
+found nobody. The Americans had been gone for a long time. So they
+went back to the cross where the dead girl hung naked against the
+sky and wrote on a bit of paper:
+
+"Here hangs an enemy of Germany."
+
+And, the Swiss patrol being nearly due, they scattered, moving off
+singly, through the forest toward the frontier of the great German
+Empire.
+
+A little later the east turned gold and the first sunbeam touched
+the Crucifix on Mount Terrible.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE FORBIDDEN FOREST
+
+
+
+
+
+When the news of a Hun atrocity committed on Swiss territory was
+flashed to Berne, the Federal Assembly instantly suppressed it and
+went into secret session. Followed another session, in camera, of
+the Federal Council, whose seven members sat all night long
+envisaging war with haggard faces. And something worse than war when
+they remembered the Forbidden Forest and the phantom Canton of Les
+Errues.
+
+For war between the Swiss Republic and the Hun seemed very, very
+near during that ten days in Berne, and neither the National Council
+nor the Council of the States in joint and in separate consultation
+could see anything except a dreadful repetition of that eruption of
+barbarians which had overwhelmed the land in 400 A. D. till every
+pass and valley vomited German savages. And even more than that they
+feared the terrible reckoning with the nation and with civilisation
+when war laid naked the heart-breaking secret of the Forbidden
+Forest of Les Errues.
+
+No! War could not be. A catastrophe more vital than war threatened
+Switzerland--the world--wide revelation of a secret which, exposed,
+would throw all civilisation into righteous fury and the Swiss
+Republic itself into revolution.
+
+And this sinister, hidden thing which must deter Switzerland from
+declaring war against the Boche was a part of the Great Secret: and
+a man and a woman in the Secret Service of the United States, lying
+hidden among the forests below the white shoulder of Mount Thusis,
+were beginning to guess more about that secret than either of them
+had dared to imagine.
+
+There where they lay together side by side among Alpine roses in
+full bloom--there on the crag's edge, watching the Swiss soldiery
+below combing the flanks of Mount Terrible for the perpetrators of
+that hellish murder at the shrine, these two people could see the
+Via Mala which had been the Via Crucis--the tragic Golgotha for
+that poor girl Helsa Kampf.
+
+They could almost see the gaunt, black cross itself from which the
+brutish Boches had kicked the carved and weather-beaten figure of
+Christ in order to nail to the massive cross the living hands and
+feet of that half-senseless girl whom they supposed had betrayed
+them.
+
+The man lying there on the edge of the chasm was Kay McKay; the girl
+stretched on her stomach beside him was Evelyn Erith.
+
+All that day they watched the Swiss soldiers searching Mount
+Terrible; saw a red fox steal from the lower thickets and bolt
+between the legs of the beaters who swung their rifle-butts at the
+streak of ruddy fur; saw little mountain birds scatter into flight,
+so closely and minutely the soldiers searched; saw even a big
+auerhahn burst into thunderous flight from the ferns to a pine and
+from the pine out across the terrific depths of space below the
+white shoulder of Thusis. At night the Swiss camp-fires glimmered on
+the rocks of Mount Terrible while, fireless, McKay and Miss Erith
+lay in their blankets under heaps of dead leaves on the knees of
+Thusis, cold as the moon that silvered their forest beds.
+
+But it was the last of the soldiery on Mount Terrible; for dawn
+revealed their dead fire and a summit untenanted save by the stark
+and phantom crucifix looming through rising mists.
+
+Evelyn Erith still slept; McKay fed the three carrier-pigeons,
+washed himself at the snow-rill in the woods, then went over to the
+crag's gritty edge under which for three days now the ghoulish
+clamour of a lammergeier had seldom ceased. And now, as McKay peered
+down, two stein-adlers came flapping to the shelf on which hung
+something that seemed to flutter at times like a shred of cloth
+stirred by the abyss winds.
+
+The lammergeier, huge and horrible with scarlet eyes ablaze, came
+out on the shelf of rock and yelped at the great rock-eagles; but,
+if something indeed lay dead there, possibly it was enough for
+all--or perhaps the vulture-like bird was too heavily gorged to
+offer battle. McKay saw the rock-eagles alight heavily on the shelf,
+then, squealing defiance, hulk forward, undeterred by the hobgoblin
+tumult of the lammergeier.
+
+McKay leaned over the gulf as far as he dared. He could get down to
+the shelf; he was now convinced of that. Only fear of being seen by
+the soldiers on Mount Terrible had hitherto prevented him.
+
+Rope and steel-shod stick aided him. Sapling and shrub stood loyally
+as his allies. The rock-eagles heard him coming and launched
+themselves overboard into the depthless sea of air; the lammergeier,
+a huge, foul mass of distended feathers, glared at him out of
+blazing scarlet eyes; and all around was his vomit and casting in a
+mass of bloody human bones and shreds of clothing.
+
+And it was in that nauseating place of peril, confronting the grisly
+thing that might have hurled him outward into space with one
+wing-blow had it not been clogged with human flesh and incapable,
+that McKay reached for the remnants of the dead Hun's clothing and,
+facing the feathered horror, searched for evidence and information.
+
+Never had he been so afraid; never had he so loathed a living
+creature as this unclean and spectral thing that sat gibbering and
+voiding filth at him--the ghastly symbol of the Hunnish empire
+itself befouling the clean-picked bones of the planet it was
+dismembering.
+
+He had his pistol but dared not fire, not knowing what ears across
+the gorge might hear the shot, not knowing either whether the
+death-agonies of the enormous thing might hurl him a thousand feet
+to annihilation.
+
+So he took what he found in the rags of clothing and climbed back as
+slowly and stealthily as he had come.
+
+And found Miss Erith cross-legged on the dead leaves braiding her
+yellow hair in the first sun-rays.
+
+Tethered by long cords attached to anklets over one leg the three
+pigeons walked busily around under the trees gorging themselves on
+last year's mast.
+
+That afternoon they dared light a fire and made soup from the beef
+tablets in their packs--the first warm food they had tasted in a
+week.
+
+A declining sun painted the crags in raw splendour; valleys were
+already dusky; a vast stretch of misty glory beyond the world of
+mountains to the north was Alsace; southward there was no end to the
+myriad snowy summits, cloud-like, piled along the horizon. The brief
+meal ended.
+
+McKay set a pannikin of water to boil and returned to his
+yellow-haired comrade. Like some slim Swiss youth--some boy
+mountaineer--and clothed like one, Miss Erith sat at the foot of a
+tree in the ruddy sunlight studying once more the papers which McKay
+had discovered that morning among the bloody debris on the shelf of
+rock.
+
+As he came up he knew he had never seen anything as pretty in his
+life, but he did not say so. Any hint of sentiment that might have
+budded had been left behind when they crossed the Swiss wire beyond
+Delle. An enforced intimacy such as theirs tended to sober them
+both; and if at times it preoccupied them, that was an added reason
+not only to ignore it but also to conceal any effort it might entail
+to take amiably but indifferently a situation foreseen, deliberately
+embraced, yet scarcely entirely discounted.
+
+The girl was so pretty in her youth's clothing; her delicate ankles
+and white knees bare between the conventional thigh-length of green
+embossed leather breeches, rough green stockings, and fleece-lined
+hob-nailed shoes. And over the boy's shirt the mountaineer's frieze
+jacket!--with staghorn buttons. And the rough wool cuff fell on the
+hands of a duchess!--pistols at either hip, and a murderous
+Bavarian knife in front.
+
+Glancing up at him where he stood under the red pine beside her:
+"I'll do the dishes presently," she said.
+
+"I'll do them," he remarked, his eyes involuntarily seeking her
+hands.
+
+A pink flush grew on her weather-tanned face--or perhaps it was the
+reddening sunlight stealing through some velvet piny space in the
+forest barrier. If it was a slight blush in recognition of his
+admiration she wondered at her capacity for blushing. However, Marie
+Antoinette coloured from temple to throat on the scaffold. But the
+girl knew that the poor Queen's fate was an enviable one compared to
+what awaited her if she fell into the hands of the Hun.
+
+McKay seated himself near her. The sunny silence of the mountains
+was intense. Over a mass of alpine wild flowers hanging heavy and
+fragrant between rocky clefts two very large and intensely white
+butterflies fought a fairy battle for the favours of a third--a
+dainty, bewildering creature, clinging to an unopened bud, its snowy
+wings a-quiver.
+
+The girl's golden eyes noted the pretty courtship, and her side
+glance rested on the little bride to be with an odd, indefinite
+curiosity, partly interrogative, partly disdainful.
+
+It seemed odd to the girl that in this Alpine solitude life should
+be encountered at all. And as for life's emotions, the frail,
+frivolous, ephemeral fury of these white-winged ghosts of daylight,
+embattled and all tremulous with passion, seemed exquisitely amazing
+to her here between the chaste and icy immobility of white-veiled
+peaks and the terrific twilight of the world's depths below.
+
+McKay, studying the papers, glanced up at Miss Erith. A bar of rosy
+sunset light slanted almost level between them.
+
+"There seems to be," he said slowly, "only one explanation for what
+you and I read here. The Boche has had his filthy fist on the throat
+of Switzerland for fifty years."
+
+"And what is 'Les Errues' to which these documents continually
+refer?" asked the girl.
+
+"Les Errues is the twenty-seventh canton of Switzerland. It is the
+strip of forest and crag which includes all the northeastern region
+below Mount Terrible. It is a canton, a secret canton unrepresented
+in the Federal Assembly--a region without human population--a secret
+slice of Swiss wilderness OWNED BY GERMANY!"
+
+"Kay, do you believe that?"
+
+"I am sure of it now. It is that wilderness into which I stumbled.
+It overlooks the terrain in Alsace where for fifty years the Hun has
+been busy day and night with his sinister, occult operations. Its
+entrance, if there be any save by the way of avalanches--the way I
+entered--must be guarded by the Huns; its only exit into Hunland.
+That is Les Errues. That is the region which masks the Great Secret
+of the Hun."
+
+He dropped the papers and, clasping his knees in his arms, sat
+staring out into the infernal blaze of sunset.
+
+"The world," he said slowly, "pays little attention to that
+agglomeration of cantons called Switzerland. The few among us who
+know anything about its government might recollect that there are
+twenty-six cantons--the list begins, Aargau, Appenzell,
+Ausser-Rhoden, Inner-Rhoden--you may remember--and ends with Valais,
+Vaud, Zug, and Zurich. And Les Errues is the twenty-seventh canton!"
+
+"Yes," said the girl in a low voice, "the evidence lies at your
+feet."
+
+"Surely, surely," he muttered, his fixed gaze lost on the crimson
+celestial conflagration. She said, thinking aloud, and her clear
+eyes on him:
+
+"Then, of the Great Secret, we have learned this much anyway--that
+there exists in Switzerland a secret canton called Les Errues; that
+it is practically Hun territory; that it masks what they call their
+Great Secret; that their ownership or domination of Les Errues is
+probably a price paid secretly by the Swiss government for its
+national freedom and that this arrangement is absolutely unknown to
+anybody in the world outside of the Imperial Hun government and the
+few Swiss who have inherited, politically, a terrible knowledge of
+this bargain dating back, probably, from 1870."
+
+"That is the situation we are confronting," admitted McKay calmly.
+
+She said with perfect simplicity: "Of course we must go into Les
+Errues."
+
+"Of course, comrade. How?"
+
+He had no plan--could have none. She knew it. Her question was
+merely meant to convey to him a subtle confirmation of her loyalty
+and courage. She scarcely expected to escape a dreadful fate on this
+quest--did not quite see how either of them could really hope to
+come out alive. But that they could discover the Great Secret of the
+Hun, and convey to the world by means of their pigeons some details
+of the discovery, she felt reasonably certain. She had much faith in
+the arrangements they had made to do this.
+
+"One thing worries me a lot," remarked McKay pleasantly.
+
+"Food supply?"
+
+He nodded.
+
+She said: "Now that the Boche have left Mount Terrible--except that
+wretched creature whose bones lie on the shelf below--we might
+venture to kill whatever game we can find."
+
+"I'm going to," he said. "The Swiss troops have cleared out. I've
+got to risk it. Of course, down there in Les Errues, some Hun
+guarding some secret chamois trail into the forbidden wilderness may
+hear our shots."
+
+"We shall have to take that chance," she remarked.
+
+He said in the low, quiet voice which always thrilled her a little:
+"You poor child--you are hungry."
+
+"So are you, Kay."
+
+"Hungry? These rations act like cocktails: I could barbecue a
+roebuck and finish him with you at one sitting!"
+
+"Monsieur et Madame Gargantua," she mocked him with her enchanting
+laughter. Then, wistful: "Kay, did you see that very fat and saucy
+auerhahn which the Swiss soldiers scared out of the pines down
+there?"
+
+"I did," said McKay. "My mouth watered."
+
+"He was quite as big as a wild turkey," sighed the girl.
+
+"They're devils to get," said McKay, "and with only a pistol--well,
+anyway we'll try to-night. Did you mark that bird?"
+
+"Mark him?"
+
+"Yes; mark him down?"
+
+She shook her pretty head.
+
+"Well, I did," grinned McKay. "It's habit with a man who shoots.
+Besides, seeing him was like a bit of Scotland--their auerhahn is
+kin to the black-cock and capercailzie. So I marked him to the
+skirt of Thusis, yonder--in line with that needle across the gulf
+and, through it, to that bunch of pinkish-stemmed pines--there
+where the brook falls into silver dust above that gorge. He'll lie
+there. Just before daybreak he'll mount to the top of one of those
+pines. We'll hear his yelping. That's our only chance at him."
+
+"Could you ever hit him in the dark of dawn, Kay?"
+
+"With a pistol? And him atop a pine? No, not under ordinary
+conditions. But I'm hungry, dear Yellow-hair, and that is not all:
+you are hungry--" He looked at her so intently that the colour
+tinted her face and the faint little thrill again possessed her.
+
+Her glance stole involuntarily toward the white butterflies. One had
+disappeared. The two others, drunk with their courtship, clung to a
+scented blossom.
+
+Gravely Miss Erith lifted her young eyes to the eternal peaks--to
+Thusis, icy, immaculate, chastely veiled before the stealthy advent
+of the night.
+
+Oddly, yet without fear, death seemed to her very near. And love,
+also--both in the air, both abroad and stirring, yet neither now of
+vital consequence. Only service meant anything now to this young man
+so near her--to herself. And after that--after
+accomplishment--love?--death?--either might come to them then. And
+find them ready, perhaps.
+
+The awful, witch-like screaming of the lammergeier saluted the
+falling darkness where he squatted, a huge huddle of unclean plumage
+amid the debris of decay and death.
+
+"I don't believe I could have faced that," murmured the girl. "You
+have more courage than I have, Kay."
+
+"No! I was scared stiff. A bird like that could break a man's arm
+with a wing-blow.... That--that thing he'd been feeding on--it must
+have been a Boche of high military rank to carry these papers."
+
+"You could not find out?"
+
+"There were only the rags of his mufti there and these papers inside
+them. Nothing to identify him personally--not a tag, not a shred of
+anything. Unless the geier bolted it--"
+
+She turned aside in disgust at the thought.
+
+"When do you suppose he happened to fall to his death there, Kay?"
+
+"In the darkness when the Huns scattered after the crucifixion.
+Perhaps the horror of it came suddenly upon him--God knows what
+happened when he stepped outward into depthless space and went
+crashing down to hell."
+
+They had stayed their hunger on the rations. It was bitter cold in
+the leafy lap of Thusis, but they feared to light a fire that night.
+
+McKay fed and covered the pigeons in their light wicker box which
+was carried strapped to his mountain pack.
+
+Evelyn Erith fell asleep in her blanket under the dead leaves piled
+over her by McKay. After awhile he slept too; but before dawn he
+awoke, took a flash-light and his pistol and started down the slope
+for the wood's edge.
+
+Her sweet, sleepy voice halted him: "Kay dear?"
+
+"Yes, Yellow-hair."
+
+"May I go?"
+
+"Don't you want to sleep?"
+
+"No."
+
+She sat up under a tumbling shower of silvery dead leaves, shook out
+her hair, gathered it and twisted it around her brow like a turban.
+
+Then, flashing her own torch, she sprang to her feet and ran lightly
+down to where the snow brook whirled in mossy pools below.
+
+When she came back he took her cold smooth little hand fresh from
+icy ablutions: "We must beat it," he said; "that auerhahn won't stay
+long in his pine-tree after dawn. Extinguish your torch."
+
+She obeyed and her warning fingers clasped his more closely as
+together they descended the path of light traced out before them by
+his electric torch.
+
+Down, down, down they went under hard-wood and evergreen, across
+little fissures full of fern, skirting great slabs of rock, making
+detours where tangles checked progress.
+
+Through tree-tops the sky glittered--one vast sheet of stars; and in
+the forest was a pale lustre born of this celestial splendour--a
+pallid dimness like that unreal day which reigns in the regions of
+the dead.
+
+"We might meet the shade of Helen here," said the girl, "or of
+Eurydice. This is a realm of spirits. ... We may be one with them
+very soon--you and I. Do you suppose we shall wander here among
+these trees as long as time lasts?"
+
+"It's all right if we're together, Yellow-hair."
+
+There was no accent from his fingers clasped in hers; none in hers
+either.
+
+"I hope we'll be together, then," she said.
+
+"Will you search for me, Yellow-hair?"
+
+"Yes. Will you, Kay?"
+
+"Always."
+
+"And I--always--until I find you or you find me." ... Presently she
+laughed gaily under her breath: "A solemn bargain, isn't it?"
+
+"More solemn than marriage."
+
+"Yes," said the girl faintly.
+
+Something went crashing off into the woods as they reached the
+hogback which linked them with the group of pines whither the big
+game-bird had pitched into cover. Perhaps it was a roe deer; McKay
+flashed the direction in vain.
+
+"If it were a Boche?" she whispered.
+
+"No; it sounded like a four-legged beast. There are chamois and roe
+deer and big mountain hares along these heights."
+
+They went on until the hog-back of sheer rock loomed straight ahead,
+and beyond, against a paling sky, the clump of high pines toward
+which they were bound.
+
+McKay extinguished his torch and pocketed it.
+
+"The sun will lead us back, Yellow-hair," he whispered. "Now hold
+very tightly to my hand, for it's a slippery and narrow way we tread
+together."
+
+The rocks were glassy. But there were bushes and mosses; and
+presently wild grass and soil on the other side.
+
+All around them, now, the tall pines loomed, faintly harmonious in
+the rising morning breeze which, in fair weather, always blows DOWN
+from the upper peaks into the valleys. Into the shadows they passed
+together a little way; then halted. The girl rested one shoulder
+against a great pine, leaning there and facing him where he also
+rested, listening.
+
+There reigned in the woods that intense stillness which precedes
+dawn--an almost painful tension resembling apprehension. Always the
+first faint bird-note breaks it; then silence ends like a deep sigh
+exhaling and death seems very far away.
+
+Now above them the stars had grown very dim; and presently some
+faded out.
+
+And after a little while a small mountain bird twittered sleepily.
+Then unseen by them, the east glimmered like a sheet of tarnished
+silver. And out over the dark world of mountains, high above the
+solitude, rang the uncanny cry of an auerhahn.
+
+Again the big, unseen bird saluted the coming day. McKay stole
+forward drawing his pistol and the girl followed.
+
+The weird outcry of the auerhahn guided them, sounding from
+somewhere above among the black crests of the pines, nearer at hand,
+now, clearer, closer, more weird, until McKay halted peering upward,
+his pistol poised.
+
+As yet the crests of the pines were merely soft blots above. Yet as
+they stood straining their eyes upward, striving to discover the
+location of the great bird by its clamour, vaguely the branches
+began to take shape against the greying sky.
+
+Clearer, more distinct they grew until feathery masses of
+pine-needles stood clustered against the sky like the wondrous
+rendering in a Japanese print. And all the while, at intervals, the
+auerhahn's ghostly shrieking made a sinister tumult in the woods.
+
+Suddenly they saw him. Miss Erith touched McKay and pointed
+cautiously. There, on a partly naked tree-top, was a huge, crouching
+mass--an enormous bird, pumping its head at every uttered cry and
+spreading a big fan-like tail and beating the air with stiff-curved
+drooping wings.
+
+McKay whispered: "I'll try to shoot straight because you're hungry,
+Yellow-hair"; and all the while his pistol-arm slanted higher and
+higner. For a second, it remained motionless; then a red streak
+split the darkness and the pistol-shot crashed in her ears.
+
+There came another sound, too--a thunderous flapping and thrashing
+in the tree-top, the furious battering, falling tumult of broken
+branches and blindly beating wings, drumming convulsively in
+descent. Then came a thud; a feathery tattoo on the ground; silence
+in the woods.
+
+"And so you shall not go hungry, Yellow-hair," said McKay with his
+nice smile.
+
+They had done a good deal by the middle of the afternoon; they had
+broiled the big bird, dined luxuriously, had stored the remainder in
+their packs which they were preparing to carry with them into the
+forbidden forest of Les Errues.
+
+There was only one way and that lay over the white shoulder of
+Thusis--a cul-de-sac, according to all guide-books, and terminating
+in a rest-hut near a cave glistening with icy stalagmites called
+Thusis's Hair.
+
+Beyond this there was nothing--no path, no progress possible--only a
+depthless gulf unabridged and the world of mountains beyond.
+
+There was no way; yet, the time before, McKay had passed over the
+white shoulder of Thusis and had penetrated the forbidden land--had
+slid into it sideways, somewhere from Thusis's shoulder, on a
+fragment of tiny avalanche. So there was a way!
+
+"I don't know how it happened, Yellow-hair," he was explaining as he
+adjusted and buckled her pack for her, "and whether I slid north or
+east I never exactly knew. But if there's a path into Les Errues
+except through the Hun wire, it must lie somewhere below Thusis.
+Because, unless such a path exists, except for that guarded strip
+lying between the Boche wire and the Swiss, only a winged thing
+could reach Les Errues across these mountains."
+
+The girl said coolly: "Could you perhaps lower me into it?"
+
+A slight flush stained his cheek-bones: "That would be my role, not
+yours. But there isn't rope enough in the Alps to reach Les Errues."
+
+He was strapping the pigeon-cage to his pack as he spoke. Now he
+hoisted and adjusted it, and stood looking across at the mountains
+for a moment. Miss Erith's gaze followed him.
+
+Thusis wore a delicate camouflage of mist. And there were other bad
+signs to corroborate her virgin warning: distant mountains had
+turned dark blue and seemed pasted in silhouettes against the
+silvery blue sky. Also the winds had become prophetic, blowing out
+of the valleys and UP the slopes.
+
+All that morning McKay's thermometer had been rising and his
+barometer had fallen steadily; haze had thickened on the mountains;
+and, it being the season for the Fohn to blow, McKay had expected
+that characteristic warm gale from the south to bring the violent
+rain which always is to be expected at that season.
+
+But the Fohn did not materialise; in the walnut and chestnut forest
+around them not a leaf stirred; and gradually the mountains cleared,
+became inartistically distinct, and turned a beautiful but
+disturbing dark-blue colour. And Thusis wore her vestal veil in the
+full sun of noon.
+
+"You know, Yellow-hair," he said, "all these signs are as plain as
+printed notices. There's bad weather coming. The wind was south; now
+it's west. I'll bet the mountain cattle are leaving the upper
+pastures."
+
+He adjusted his binoculars; south of Mount Terrible on another
+height there were alms; and he could see the cattle descending.
+
+He saw something else, too, in the sky and level with his levelled
+lenses--something like a bird steering toward him through the
+whitish blue sky.
+
+Still keeping it in his field of vision he spoke quietly: "There's
+an airplane headed this way. Step under cover, please."
+
+The girl moved up under the trees beside him and unslung her
+glasses. Presently she also picked up the oncomer.
+
+"Boche, Kay?"
+
+"I don't know. A monoplane. A Boche chaser, I think. Yes.... Do you
+see the cross? What insolence! What characteristic contempt for a
+weaker people! Look at his signal! Do you see? Look at those
+smoke-balls and ribbons! See him soaring there like a condor looking
+for a way among these precipices."
+
+The Hun hung low above them in mid-air, slowly wheeling over the
+gulf. Perhaps it was his shadow or the roar of his engines that
+routed out the lammergeier, for the unclean bird took the air on
+enormous pinions, beating his way upward till he towered yelping
+above the Boche, and their combined clamour came distinctly to the
+two watchers below.
+
+Suddenly the Boche fired at the other winged thing; the enraged and
+bewildered bird sheered away in flight and the Hun followed.
+
+"That's why he shot," said McKay. "He's got a pilot, now."
+
+Eagle and plane swept by almost level with the forest where they
+stood staining with their shadows the white shoulder of Thusis.
+
+Down into the gorge the great geier twisted; after him sped the
+airplane, banking steeply in full chase. Both disappeared where the
+flawless elbow of Thusis turns. Then, all alone, up out of the gulf
+soared the plane.
+
+"The Hun has discovered a landing-place in Les Errues," said McKay.
+"Watch him."
+
+"There's another Hun somewhere along the shoulder of Thusis," said
+McKay. "They're exchanging signals. See how the plane circles like a
+patient hawk. He's waiting for something. What's he waiting for, I
+wonder?"
+
+For ten minutes the airplane circled leisurely over Thusis. Then
+whatever the aviator was waiting for evidently happened, for he shut
+off his engine; came down in graceful spirals; straightened out;
+glided through the canyon and reappeared no more to the watchers in
+the forest of Thusis.
+
+"Now," remarked McKay coolly, "we know where we ought to go. Are you
+ready, Yellow-hair?"
+
+They had been walking for ten minutes when Miss Erith spoke in an
+ordinary tone of voice: "Kay? Do you think we're likely to come out
+of this?"
+
+"No," he said, not looking at her.
+
+"But we'll get our information, you think?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The girl fell a few paces behind him and looked up at the pigeons
+where they sat in their light lattice cage crowning his pack.
+
+"Please do your bit, little birds," she murmured to herself.
+
+And, with a smile at them and a nod of confidence, she stepped
+forward again and fell into the rhythm of his stride.
+
+Very far away to the west they heard thunder stirring behind Mount
+Terrible.
+
+It was late in the afternoon when he halted near the eastern edges
+of Thusis's Forest.
+
+"Yellow-hair," he said very quietly, "I've led you into a trap, I'm
+afraid. Look back. We've been followed!"
+
+She turned. Through the trees, against an inky sky veined with
+lightning, three men came out upon the further edge of the hog-back
+which they had traversed a few minutes before, and seated themselves
+there In the shelter of the crag. All three carried shotguns.
+
+"Yellow-hair?"
+
+"Yes, Kay."
+
+"You understand what that means?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Slip off your pack."
+
+She disengaged her supple shoulders from the load and he also
+slipped off his pack and leaned it against a tree.
+
+"Now," he said, "you have two pistols and plenty of ammunition. I
+want you to hold that hog-back. Not a man must cross."
+
+However, the three men betrayed no inclination to cross. They sat
+huddled in a row sheltered from the oncoming storm by a great ledge
+of rock. But they held their shotguns poised and ready for action.
+
+The girl crept toward a big walnut tree and, lying flat on her
+stomach behind it, drew both pistols and looked around at McKay. She
+was smiling.
+
+His heart was in his throat as he nodded approval. He turned and
+went rapidly eastward. Two minutes later he came running back,
+exchanged a signal of caution with Miss Erith, and looked intently
+at the three men under the ledge. It was now raining.
+
+He drew from his breast a little book and on the thin glazed paper
+of one leaf he wrote, with water-proof ink, the place and date.
+And began his message:
+
+"United States Army Int. Dept No. 76 and No. 77 are trapped on the
+northwest edge of the wood of Les Errues which lies under the elbow
+of Mount Thusis. From this plateau we had hoped to overlook that
+section of the Hun frontier in which is taking place that occult
+operation known as 'The Great Secret,' and which we suspect is a
+gigantic engineering project begun fifty years ago for the purpose
+of piercing Swiss territory with an enormous tunnel under Mount
+Terrible, giving the Hun armies a road into France BEHIND the French
+battle-line and BEHIND Verdun.
+
+"Unfortunately we are now trapped and our retreat is cut off. It is
+unlikely that we shall be able to verify our suspicions concerning
+the Great Secret. But we shall not be taken alive.
+
+"We have, however, already discovered certain elements intimately
+connected with the Great Secret.
+
+"No. 1. Papers taken from a dead enemy show that the region called
+Les Errues has been ceded to the Hun in a secret pact as the price
+that Switzerland pays for immunity from the Boche invasion.
+
+"2nd. The Swiss people are ignorant of this.
+
+"3rd. The Boche guards all approaches to Les Errues. Except by way
+of the Boche frontier there appears to be only one entrance to Les
+Errues. We have just discovered it. The path is as follows: From
+Delle over the Swiss wire to the Crucifix on Mount Terrible; from
+there east-by-north along the chestnut woods to the shoulder of
+Mount Thusis. From thence, north over hog-backs 1, 2, and 3 to the
+Forest of Thusis where we are now trapped.
+
+"Northeast of the forest lies a level, treeless table-land half a
+mile in diameter called The Garden of Thusis. A BOCHE AIRPLANE
+LANDED THERE ABOUT THREE HOURS AGO.
+
+"To reach the Forbidden Forest the aviators, leaving their machine
+in the Garden of Thusis, walked southwest into the woods where we
+now are. These woods end in a vast gulf to the north which separates
+them from the Forbidden Forest of Les Errues.
+
+"BUT A CABLE CROSSES!
+
+"That is the way they went; a tiny car holding two is swung under
+this cable and the passengers pull themselves to and fro across the
+enormous chasm.
+
+"At the west end of this cable is a hut; in the hut is the
+machinery--a drum which can be manipulated so that the cable can be
+loosened and permitted to sag.
+
+"The reason for dropping the cable is analogous to the reason for
+using drawbridges over navigable streams; there is only one
+landing-place for airplanes in this entire region and that is the
+level, grassy plateau northeast of Thusis Woods. It is so entirely
+ringed with snow-peaks that there is only one way to approach it for
+a landing, and that is through the canyon edging Thusis Woods. Now
+the wire cable blocks this canyon. An approaching airplane therefore
+hangs aloft and signals to the cable-guards, who lower the cable
+until it sags sufficiently to free the aerial passage-way between
+the cliffs. Then the aviator planes down, sweeps through the canyon,
+and alights on the plateau called Thusis's Garden. But now he must
+return; the cable must be lifted and stretched taut; and he must
+embark across the gulf in the little car which runs on grooved
+wheels to Les Errues.
+
+"This is all we are likely to learn. Our retreat is cut off. Two
+cable-guards are in front of us; in front of them the chasm; and
+across the chasm lies Les Errues whither the aviator has gone and
+where, I do not doubt, are plenty more of his kind.
+
+"This, and two carbons, I shall endeavour to send by pigeon. In
+extremity we shall destroy all our papers and identification cards
+and get what Huns we can, RESERVING FOR OUR OWN USES one cartridge
+apiece.
+
+"(Signed) Nos. 76 AND 77."
+
+It was raining furiously, but the heavy foliage of chestnut and
+walnut had kept his paper dry. Now in the storm-gloom of the woods
+lit up by the infernal glare of lightning he detached the long
+scroll of thin paper covered by microscopical writing and, taking
+off the rubber bands which confined one of the homing pigeons,
+attached the paper cylinder securely.
+
+Then he crawled over with his bird and, lying flat alongside of Miss
+Erith, told her what he had discovered and what he had done about
+it. The roar of the rain almost obliterated his voice and he had to
+place his lips close to her ear.
+
+For a long while they lay there waiting for the rain to slacken
+before he launched the bird. The men across the hog-back never
+stirred. Nobody approached from the rear. At last, behind Mount
+Terrible, the tall edges of the rain veil came sweeping out in
+ragged majesty. Vapours were ascending in its wake; a distant peak
+grew visible, and suddenly brightened, struck at the summit by a
+shaft of sunshine.
+
+"Now!" breathed McKay. The homing pigeon, released, walked nervously
+out over the wet leaves on the forest floor, and, at a slight motion
+from the girl, rose into flight. Then, as it appeared above the
+trees, there came the cracking report of a shotgun, and they saw the
+bird collapse in mid-air and sheer downward across the hog-back. But
+it did not land there; the marksman had not calculated on those
+erratic gales from the chasm; and the dead pigeon went whirling down
+into the viewless gulf amid flying vapours mounting from unseen
+depths.
+
+Miss Erith and McKay lay very still. The Hunnish marksman across the
+hog-back remained erect for a few moments like a man at the traps
+awaiting another bird. After awhile he coolly seated himself again
+under the dripping ledge.
+
+"The swine!" said McKay calmly. He added: "Don't let them cross."
+And he rose and walked swiftly back toward the northern edge of the
+forest.
+
+From behind a tree he could see two Hun cable-guards, made alert by
+the shot, standing outside their hut where the cable-machinery was
+housed.
+
+Evidently the echoes of that shot, racketing and rebounding from
+rock and ravine, had misled them, for they had their backs turned
+and were gazing eastward, rifles pointed.
+
+Without time for thought or hesitation, McKay ran out toward them
+across the deep, wet moss. One of them heard him too late and
+McKay's impact hurled him into the gulf. Then McKay turned and
+sprang on the other, and for a minute it was a fight of tigers there
+on the cable platform until the battered visage of the Boche split
+with a scream and a crashing blow from McKay's pistol-butt drove him
+over the platform's splintered edge.
+
+And now, panting, bloody, dishevelled, he strained his ears,
+listening for a shot from the hog-back. The woods were very silent
+in their new bath of sunshine. A little Alpine bird was singing; no
+other sound broke the silence save the mellow, dripping noise from a
+million rain-drenched leaves.
+
+McKay cast a rapid, uneasy glance across the chasm. Then he went
+into the cable hut.
+
+There were six rifles there in a rack, six wooden bunks, and
+clothing on pegs--not military uniforms but the garments of Swiss
+mountaineers.
+
+Like the three men across the hog-back, and the two whom he had so
+swiftly slain, the Hun cable-patrol evidently fought shy of the
+Boche uniform here on the edge of the Forbidden Forest.
+
+Two of the cable-guard lay smashed to a pulp thousands of feet
+below. Where was the remainder of the patrol? Were the men with the
+shotguns part of it?
+
+McKay stood alone in the silent hut, still breathless from his
+struggle, striving to think what was now best to do.
+
+And, as he stood there, through the front window of the hut he saw
+an aviator and another man come down from the crest of Thusis to the
+chasm's edge, jump into the car which swung under the cable, and
+begin to pull themselves across toward the hut where he was
+standing.
+
+The hut screened his retreat to the wood's edge. From there he saw
+the aviator and his companion land on the platform; heard them
+shouting for the dead who never would answer from their Alpine
+deeps; saw the airman at last go away toward the plateau where he
+had left his machine; heard the clanking of machinery in the hut;
+saw the steel cable begin to sag into the canyon; AND REALISED THAT
+THE AVIATOR WAS GOING BACK OVER FRANCE TO THE BOCHE TRENCHES FROM
+WHENCE HE HAD ARRIVED.
+
+In a flash it came to McKay what he should try to do--what he MUST
+do for his country, for the life of the young girl, his comrade, for
+his own life: The watchers at the hog-back must never signal to that
+airman news of his presence in the Forbidden Forest!
+
+The clanking of the cog-wheels made his steps inaudible to the man
+who was manipulating the machinery in the hut as he entered and shot
+him dead. It was rather sickening, for the fellow pitched forward
+into the machinery and one arm became entangled there.
+
+But McKay, white of cheek and lip and fighting off a deathly nausea,
+checked the machinery and kicked the carrion clear. Then he set the
+drum and threw on the lever which reversed the cog-wheels. Slowly
+the sagging cable began to tighten up once more.
+
+He had been standing there for half an hour or more in an agony of
+suspense, listening for any shot from the forest behind him,
+straining eyes and ears for any sign of the airplane.
+
+And suddenly he heard it coming--a resonant rumour through the
+canyon, nearer, louder, swelling to a roar as the monoplane dashed
+into view and struck the cable with a terrific crash.
+
+For a second, like a giant wasp suddenly entangled in a spider's
+strand, it whirled around the cable with a deafening roar of
+propellers; then a sheet of fire enveloped it; both wings broke off
+and fell; other fragments dropped blazing; and then the thing itself
+let go and shot headlong into awful depths!
+
+Above it the taut cable vibrated and sang weirdly in the silence of
+the chasm.
+
+The girl was still lying flat under the walnut-tree when McKay came
+back.
+
+Without speaking he knelt, levelled his pistol and fired across at
+the man beyond the hog-back.
+
+Instantly her pistol flashed, too; one of the men fell and tried to
+get up in a blind sort of way, and his comrades caught him by the
+arms and dragged him back behind the ledge.
+
+"All right!" shouted one of the men from his cover, "we've plently
+of time to deal with you Yankee swine! Stay there and rot!"
+
+"That was Skelton's voice," whispered Miss Erith with an involuntary
+shudder.
+
+"They'll never attempt that hog-back under our pistols now," said
+McKay coolly. "Come, Yellow-hair; we're going forward."
+
+"How?" she asked, bewildered.
+
+"By cable, little comrade," he said, with a shaky gaiety that
+betrayed the tension of his nerves. "So pack up and route-step once
+more!"
+
+He turned and looked at her and his face twitched:
+
+"You wonderful girl," he said, "you beautiful, wonderful girl! We'll
+live to fly our pigeons yet, Yellow-hair, under the very snout of
+the whole Hun empire!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE LATE SIR W. BLINT
+
+
+
+
+
+That two spies, a man and a woman, had penetrated the forest of Les
+Errues was known in Berlin on the 13th. Within an hour the entire
+machinery of the German Empire had been set in motion to entrap and
+annihilate these two people.
+
+The formula distributed to all operators in the Intelligence
+Department throughout Hundom, and wherever Boche spies had filtered
+into civilised lands, was this:
+
+"Two enemy secret agents have succeeded in penetrating the forest of
+Les Errues. One is a man, the other a woman.
+
+"Both are Americans. The man is that civilian prisoner, Kay McKay,
+who escaped from Holzminden, and of whom an exact description is
+available.
+
+"The woman is Evelyn Erith. Exact information concerning her is also
+available.
+
+"The situation is one of extremest delicacy and peril. Exposure of
+the secret understanding with a certain neutral Power which permits
+us certain temporary rights within an integral portion of its
+territory would be disastrous, and would undoubtedly result in an
+immediate invasion of this neutral (sic) country by the enemy as
+well as by our own forces.
+
+"This must not happen. Yet it is vitally imperative that these two
+enemy agents should be discovered, seized, and destroyed.
+
+"Their presence in the forest of Les Errues is the most serious
+menace to the Fatherland that has yet confronted it.
+
+"Upon the apprehension and destruction of these two spies depends
+the safety of Germany and her allies.
+
+"The war can not be won, a victorious German peace can not be
+imposed upon our enemies, unless these two enemy agents are found
+and their bodies absolutely destroyed upon the spot along with every
+particle of personal property discovered upon their persons.
+
+"More than that: the war will be lost, and with it the Fatherland,
+unless these two spies are seized and destroyed.
+
+"The Great Secret of Germany is in danger.
+
+"To possess themselves of it--for already they suspect its
+nature--and to expose it not only to the United States Government
+but to the entire world, is the mission of these two enemy agents.
+
+"If they succeed it would mean the end of the German Empire.
+
+"If our understanding with a certain neutral Power be made public,
+that also would spell disaster for Germany.
+
+"The situation hangs by a hair, the fate of the world is suspended
+above the forest of Les Errues."
+
+On the 14th the process of infiltration began. But the Hun invasion
+of Les Errues was not to be conducted in force, there must be no
+commotion there, no stirring, no sound, only a silent, stealthy,
+death-hunt in that shadowy forest--a methodical, patient, thorough
+preparation to do murder; a swift, noiseless execution.
+
+Also, on the 14th, the northern sky beyond the Swiss wire swarmed
+with Hun airplanes patrolling the border.
+
+Not that the Great Secret could be discovered from the air; that
+danger had been foreseen fifty years ago, and half a century's
+camouflage screened the results of steady, calculating relentless
+diligence.
+
+But French or British planes might learn of the presence of these
+enemy agents in the dark forest of Les Errues, and might hang like
+hawks above it exchanging signals with them.
+
+Therefore the northern sky swarmed with Boche aircraft--cautiously
+patrolling beyond the Swiss border, and only prepared to risk its
+violation if Allied planes first set them an example.
+
+But for a week nothing moved in the heavens above Les Errues except
+an eagle. And that appeared every day, sheering the blue void above
+the forest, hovering majestically in circles hour after hour and
+then, at last, toward sundown, setting its sublime course westward,
+straight into the blinding disk of the declining sun.
+
+The Hun airmen patrolling the border noticed the eagle. After a
+while, as no Allied plane appeared, time lagged with the Boche, and
+he came to look for this lone eagle which arrived always at the same
+hour in the sky above Les Errues, soared there hour after hour, then
+departed, flapping slowly westward until lost in the flames of
+sunset.
+
+"As though," remarked one Boche pilot, "the bird were a phoenix
+which at the close of every day renews its life from its own ashes
+in the flames."
+
+Another airman said: "It is not a Lammergeier, is it?"
+
+"It is a Stein-Adler," said a third.
+
+But after a silence a fourth airman spoke, seated before the hangar
+and studying a wild flower, the petals of which he had been
+examining with the peculiar interest of a nature-student:
+
+"For ten days I have had nothing more important to watch than that
+eagle which appears regularly every day above the forest of Les
+Errues. And I have concluded that the bird is neither a Lammergeier
+nor a Stein-Adler."
+
+"Surely," said one young Hun, "it is a German eagle."
+
+"It must be," laughed another, "because it is so methodical and
+exact. Those are German traits."
+
+The nature-student contemplated the wild blossom which he was now
+idly twirling between his fingers by its stem.
+
+"It perplexes me," he mused aloud.
+
+The others looked at him; one said: "What perplexes you, Von
+Dresslin?"
+
+"That bird."
+
+"The eagle?"
+
+"The eagle which comes every day to circle above Les Errues. I, an
+amateur of ornithology am, perhaps, with all modesty, permitted to
+call myself?"
+
+"Certainly," said several airmen at once.
+
+Another added: "We all know you to be a naturalist."
+
+"Pardon--a student only, gentlemen. Which is why, perhaps, I am both
+interested and perplexed by this eagle we see every day."
+
+"It is a rare species?"
+
+"It is not a familiar one to the Alps."
+
+"This bird, then, is not a German eagle in your opinion, Von
+Dresslin?"
+
+"What is it? Asiatic? African? Chinese?" asked another.
+
+Von Dresslin's eyebrows became knitted.
+
+"That eagle which we all see every day in the sky above Les Errues,"
+he said slowly, "has a snow-white crest and tail."
+
+Several airmen nodded; one said: "I have noticed that, too, watching
+the bird through my binoculars."
+
+"I know," continued Von Dresslin slowly, "of only one species of
+eagle which resembles the bird we all see every day... It inhabits
+North America," he added thoughtfully.
+
+There was a silence, then a very young airman inquired whether Von
+Dresslin knew of any authentic reports of an American eagle being
+seen in Europe.
+
+"Authentic? That is somewhat difficult to answer," replied Von
+Dresslin, with the true caution of a real naturalist. "But I venture
+to tell you that, once before--nearly a year ago now--I saw an eagle
+in this same region which had a white crest and tail and was
+otherwise a shining bronze in colour."
+
+"Where did you see such a bird?"
+
+"High in the air over Mount Terrible." A deep and significant
+silence fell over the little company. If Count von Dresslin had seen
+such an eagle over the Swiss peak called Mount Terrible, and had
+been near enough to notice the bird's colour, every man there knew
+what had been the occasion.
+
+For only once had that particular region of Switzerland been
+violated by their aircraft during the war. It had happened a year
+ago when Von Dresslin, patrolling the north Swiss border, had
+discovered a British flyer planing low over Swiss territory in the
+air-region between Mount Terrible and the forest of Les Errues.
+
+Instantly the Hun, too, crossed the line: and the air-battle was
+joined above the forest.
+
+Higher, higher, ever higher mounted the two fighting planes until
+the earth had fallen away two miles below them.
+
+Then, out of the icy void of the upper air-space, now roaring with
+their engines' clamour, the British plane shot earthward, down,
+down, rushing to destruction like a shooting-star, and crashed in
+the forest of Les Errues.
+
+And where it had been, there in mid-air, hung an eagle with a crest
+as white as the snow on the shining peaks below.
+
+"He seemed suddenly to be there instead of the British plane," said
+Von Dresslin. "I saw him distinctly--might have shot him with my
+pistol as he sheered by me, his yellow eyes aflame, balanced on
+broad wings. So near he swept that his bright fierce eyes flashed
+level with mine, and for an instant I thought he meant to attack me.
+
+"But he swept past in a single magnificent curve, screaming, then
+banked swiftly and plunged straight downward in the very path of the
+British plane."
+
+Nobody spoke. Von Dresslin twirled his flower and looked at it in an
+absent-minded way.
+
+"From that glimpse, a year ago, I believe I had seen a species of
+eagle the proper habitat of which is North America," he said.
+
+An airman remarked grimly: "The Yankees are migrating to Europe.
+Perhaps their eagles are coming too."
+
+"To pick our bones," added another.
+
+And another man said laughingly to Von Dresslin:
+
+"Fritz, did you see in that downfall of the British enemy, and the
+dramatic appearance of a Yankee eagle in his place, anything
+significant?"
+
+"By gad," cried another airman, "we had John Bull by his fat throat,
+and were choking him to death. And now--the Americans!"
+
+"If I dared cross the border and shoot that Yankee eagle to-morrow,"
+began another airman; but they all knew it wouldn't do.
+
+One said: "Do you suppose, Von Dresslin, that the bird we see is the
+one you saw a year ago?"
+
+"It is possible."
+
+"An American white-headed eagle?"
+
+"I feel quite sure of it."
+
+"Their national bird," said the same airman who had expressed a
+desire to shoot it.
+
+"How could an American eagle get here?" inquired another man.
+
+"By way of Asia, probably."
+
+"By gad! A long flight!"
+
+Dresslin nodded: "An omen, perhaps, that we may also have to face
+the Yankee on our Eastern front."
+
+"The swine!" growled several.
+
+Von Dresslin assented absently to the epithet. But his thoughts were
+busy elsewhere, his mind preoccupied by a theory which, Hunlike, he,
+for the last ten days, had been slowly, doggedly, methodically
+developing.
+
+It was this: Assuming that the bird really was an American eagle,
+the problem presented itself very clearly--from where had it come?
+This answered itself; it came from America, its habitat.
+
+Which answer, of course, suggested a second problem; HOW did it
+arrive?
+
+Several theories presented themselves:
+
+1st. The eagle might have reached Asia from Alaska and so made its
+way westward as far as the Alps of Switzerland.
+
+2nd. It may have escaped from some public European zoological
+collection.
+
+3rd. It may have been owned privately and, on account of the
+scarcity of food in Europe, liberated by its owner.
+
+4th. It MIGHT have been owned by the Englishman whose plane Von
+Dresslin had destroyed.
+
+And now Von Dresslin was patiently, diligently developing this
+theory:
+
+If it had been owned by the unknown Englishman whose plane had
+crashed a year ago in Les Errues forest, then the bird was
+undoubtedly his mascot, carried with him in his flights, doubtless a
+tame eagle.
+
+Probably when the plane fell the bird took wing, which accounted for
+its sudden appearance in mid-air.
+
+Probably, also, it had been taught to follow its master; and,
+indeed, had followed in one superb plunge earthward in the wake of a
+dead man in a stricken plane.
+
+But--WAS this the same bird?
+
+For argument, suppose it was. Then why did it still hang over Les
+Errues? Affection for a dead master? Only a dog could possibly show
+such devotion, such constancy. And besides, birds are incapable of
+affection. They only know where to go for kind treatment and
+security. And tamed birds, even those species domesticated for
+centuries, know only one impulse that draws them toward any human
+protector--the desire for food.
+
+Could this eagle remember for a whole year that the man who lay dead
+somewhere in the dusky wilderness of Les Errues had once been kind
+to him and had fed him? And was that why the great bird still
+haunted the air-heights above the forest? Possibly.
+
+Or was it not more logical to believe that here, suddenly cast upon
+its own resources, and compelled to employ instincts hitherto
+uncultivated or forgotten, to satisfy its hunger, this solitary
+American eagle had found the hunting good? Probably. And, knowing no
+other region, had remained there, and for the first time, or at
+least after a long interval of captivity and dependence on man, it
+had discovered what liberty was and with liberty the necessity to
+struggle for existence.
+
+An airman, watching Dresslin's thoughtful features, said:
+
+"You never found out who that Englishman was, did you?
+
+"No."
+
+"Did our agents search Les Errues?"
+
+"I suppose so. But I have never heard anything further about that
+affair," he shrugged; "and I don't believe we ever will until after
+the war, and until--"
+
+"Until Switzerland belongs to us," said an airman with a light
+laugh.
+
+Others, listening, looked at one another significantly, smiling the
+patient, confident and brooding smile of the Hun.
+
+Knaus unwittingly wrote his character and his epitaph:
+
+"Ich kann warten."
+
+The forest of Les Errues was deathly still. Hunters and hunted both
+were as silent as the wild things that belonged there in those dim
+woods--as cautious, as stealthy.
+
+A dim greenish twilight veiled their movements, the damp carpet of
+moss dulled sounds.
+
+Yet the hunted knew that they were hunted, realised that pursuit and
+search were inevitable; and the hunters, no doubt, guessed that
+their quarry was alert.
+
+Now on the tenth day since their entrance into Les Errues those two
+Americans who were being hunted came to a little wooded valley
+through which a swift stream dashed amid rock and fern, flinging
+spray over every green leaf that bordered it, filling its clear
+pools with necklaces of floating bubbles.
+
+McKay slipped his pack from his shoulders and set it against a tree.
+One of the two carrier pigeons in their cage woke up and ruffled.
+Looking closely at the other he discovered it was dead. His heart
+sank, but he laid the stiff, dead bird behind a tree and said
+nothing to his companion.
+
+Evelyn Erith now let go of her own pack and, flinging herself on the
+moss, set her lips to the surface of a brimming pool.
+
+"Careful of this Alpine water!" McKay warned her. But the girl
+satisfied her thirst before she rose to her knees and looked around
+at him.
+
+"Are you tired, Yellow-hair?" he asked.
+
+"Yes.... Are you, Kay?"
+
+He shook his head and cast a glance around him.
+
+It was beautiful, this little woodland vale with its stream dashing
+through and its slopes forested with beech and birch--splendid great
+trees with foliage golden green in the sun.
+
+But it was not the beauty of the scene that preoccupied these two.
+Always, when ready to halt, their choice of any resting-place
+depended upon several things more important than beauty.
+
+For one matter the place must afford concealment, and also a water
+supply. Moreover it must be situated so as to be capable of defence.
+Also there must be an egress offering a secure line of retreat.
+
+So McKay began to roam about the place, prowling along the slopes
+and following the stream. Apparently the topography satisfied him;
+for after a little while he came back to where Miss Erith was lying
+on the moss, one arm resting across her eyes.
+
+"You ARE tired," he said.
+
+She removed her arm and looked up at him out of those wonderful
+golden eyes.
+
+"Is it all right for us to remain here, Kay?"
+
+"Yes. You can see for yourself. Anybody coming into this valley must
+be visible on that ridge to the south. And there's an exit. This
+brook dashes through it--two vast granite gates that will let us
+through into the outer forest, where they might as well hunt for two
+pins as for us."
+
+The girl smiled; her eyes closed. "I'm glad we can rest," she
+murmured. So McKay went about his duties.
+
+First he removed his pack and hers a hundred yards down stream,
+through the granite gateway, and placed them just beyond.
+
+Then he came back for Miss Erith. Scarcely awakened as he lifted
+her, she placed one arm around his neck with the sleepy
+unconsciousness of a tired child. They had long been on such terms;
+there was no escaping them in the intimacy of their common isolation
+and common danger.
+
+He laid her on the moss, well screened by the granite barrier, and
+beyond range of the brook's rainbow spray. She was already asleep
+again.
+
+He took off both her shoes, unwound the spiral puttees and gave her
+bruised little feet a chance to breathe.
+
+He made camp, tested the wind and found it safe to build a fire, set
+water to simmer, and unpacked the tinned rations. Then he made the
+two beds side by side, laying down blankets and smoothing away the
+twigs underneath.
+
+The surviving carrier pigeon was hungry. He fed it, lifted it still
+banded from its place, cleaned the cage and set it to dry in a patch
+of sunshine.
+
+The four automatic pistols he loaded and laid on a shelf in the
+granite barricade; set ammunition and flashlight beside them.
+
+Then he went to his pack and got his papers and material, and
+unrolled the map upon which he had been at work since he and Evelyn
+Erith had entered the enemy's zone of operations.
+
+From time to time as he worked, drawing or making notes, he glanced
+at the sleeping girl beside him.
+
+Never but once had the word "love" been mentioned between these two.
+
+For a long while, now--almost from the very beginning--he had known
+that he was in love with this girl; but, after that one day in the
+garden, he also knew that there was scarcely the remotest chance
+that he should live to tell her so again, or that she could survive
+to hear him.
+
+For when they had entered the enemy's zone below Mount Terrible they
+both realised that there was almost no chance of their returning.
+
+He had lighted his pipe; and now he sat working away at his
+drawings, making a map of his route as best he could without
+instruments, and noting with rapid pencil all matters of interest
+for those upon whose orders he and this girl beside him had
+penetrated the forbidden forest of Les Errues. This for the slim
+chance of getting back alive. But he had long believed that, if his
+pigeons failed him at the crisis, no report would ever be delivered
+to those who sent him here, either concerning his discoveries or his
+fate and the fate of the girl who lay asleep beside him.
+
+An hour later she awoke. He was still bent over his map, and she
+presently extended one arm and let her hand rest on his knee.
+
+"Do you feel better, Yellow-hair?"
+
+"Yes. Thank you for removing my shoes."
+
+"I suppose you are hungry," he remarked.
+
+"Yes. Are you?"
+
+He smiled: "As usual. I wish to heaven I could run across a
+roebuck." They both craved something to satisfy the hunger made keen
+by the Alpine air, and which no concentrated rations could satisfy.
+McKay seldom ventured to kill any game--merely an auerhahn, a hare
+or two, a red squirrel--and sometimes he had caught trout in the
+mountain brooks with his bare hands--the method called "tickling"
+and only too familiar to Old-World poachers.
+
+"Roebuck," she repeated trying not to speak wistfully.
+
+He nodded: "One crossed the stream below. I saw the tracks in the
+moss, which was still stirring where the foot had pressed."
+
+"Dare you risk a shot in Les Errues, Kay?"
+
+"I don't think I'd hesitate."
+
+After a silence: "Why don't you rest? You must be dead tired," she
+said. And he felt a slight pressure of her fingers drawing him.
+
+So he laid aside his work, dropped upon his blanket, and turned on
+his left side, looking at her.
+
+"You have not yet seen any sign of the place from which you once
+looked out across the frontier and saw thousands and thousands of
+people as busy as a swarm of ants--have you, Kay?"
+
+"I remember this stream and these woods. I can't seem to recollect
+how far or in which direction I turned after passing this granite
+gorge."
+
+"Did you go far?"
+
+"I can't recollect," he said. "I'd give my right arm if I could."
+His worn and anxious visage touched her.
+
+"Don't fret, Kay, dear," she said soothingly. "We'll find it. We'll
+find out what the Hun is doing. We'll discover what this Great
+Secret really is. And our pigeons shall tell it to the world."
+
+And, as always, she smiled cheerfully, confidently. He had never
+heard her whine, had never seen her falter save from sheer physical
+weariness.
+
+"We'll win through, Yellow-hair," he said, looking steadily into her
+clear brown-gold eyes.
+
+"Of course. You are so wonderful, Kay."
+
+"That is the most wonderful thing in the world, Evelyn--to hear you
+tell me such a thing!"
+
+"Don't you know I think so?"
+
+"I can't believe it--after what you know of me--"
+
+"Kay!"
+
+"I'm sorry--but a scar is a scar--"
+
+"There is no scar! Do you hear me! No scar, no stain! Don't you
+suppose a woman can judge? And I have my own opinion of you,
+Kay--and it is a perfectly good opinion and suits me."
+
+She smiled, closed her eyes as though closing the discussion, opened
+them and smiled again at him.
+
+And now, as always, he wondered how this fair young girl could find
+courage to smile in the very presence of the most dreadful death any
+living woman could suffer--death from the Hun.
+
+He lay looking at her and she at him, for a while.
+
+In the silence, a dry stick snapped and McKay was on his feet as
+though it had been the crack of a pistol.
+
+Presently he stooped, and she lifted her pretty head and rested one
+ear close to his lips:
+
+"It's that roebuck, I think, down stream." Then something happened;
+her ear touched his mouth--or his lips, forming some word, came into
+contact with her--so that it was as though he had kissed her and she
+had responded.
+
+Both recoiled; her face was bright with mounting colour and he
+seemed scared. Yet both knew it was not a caress; but she feared he
+thought she had invited one, and he feared she believed he had
+offered one.
+
+He went about his affair with the theoretical roebuck in silence,
+picking up one of his pistols, loosening his knife in its sheath;
+then, without the usual smile or gesture for her, he started off
+noiselessly over the moss.
+
+And the girl, supporting herself on one arm, her fingers buried in
+the moss, looked after him while her flushed face cooled.
+
+McKay moved down stream with pistol lifted, scanning the hard-wood
+ridges on either hand. For even the reddest of roe deer, in the
+woods, seem to be amazingly invisible unless they move.
+
+The stream dashed through shadow and sun-spot, splashing a sparkling
+way straight into the wilderness of Les Errues; and along its
+fern-fringed banks strode McKay with swift, light steps. His eyes,
+now sharpened by the fight for life--which life had begun to be
+revealed to him in all its protean aspects, searched the dappled,
+demi-light ahead, fiercely seeking to pierce any disguise that
+protective colouration might afford his quarry.
+
+Silver, russet, green and gold, and with the myriad fulvous nuances
+that the, forest undertones lend to its ensembles, these were the
+patterned tints that met his eye on every side in the subdued
+gradations of woodland light.
+
+But nothing out of key, nothing either in tone, colour, or shape,
+betrayed the discreet and searched for discord in the vague and
+lovely harmony;--no spiked head tossed in sudden fright; no
+chestnut flank turned too redly in the dim ensemble, no delicate
+feet in motion disturbed the solemn immobility of tree-trunk and
+rock. Only the fern fronds quivered where spray rained across them;
+and the only sounds that stirred were the crystalline clash of icy
+rapids and the high whisper of the leaves in Les Errues.
+
+And, as he stood motionless, every sense and instinct on edge, his
+eyes encountered something out of key with this lovely, sombre
+masterpiece of God. Instantly a still shock responded to the
+mechanical signal sent to his eyes; the engine of the brain was
+racing; he stood as immobile as a tree.
+
+Yes, there on the left something was amiss,--something indistinct
+in the dusk of heavy foliage--something, the shape of which was not
+in harmony with the suave design about him woven of its Creator.
+After a long while he walked slowly toward it.
+
+There was much more of it than he had seen. Its consequences, too,
+were visible above him where broken branches hung still tufted with
+bronze leaves which no new buds would ever push from their dead
+clasp of the sapless stems. And all around him yearling seedlings
+had pushed up through the charred wreckage. Even where fire had
+tried to obtain a foothold, and had been withstood by barriers of
+green and living sap, in burnt spaces where bits of twisted metal
+lay, tender shoots had pushed out in that eternal promise of
+resurrection which becomes a fable only upon a printed page.
+
+McKay's business was with the dead. The weather-faded husk lay there
+amid dry leaves promising some day to harmonise with the scheme of
+things.
+
+Mice had cleaned the bony cage under the uniform of a British
+aviator. Mice gnaw the shed antlers of deer. And other bones.
+
+The pockets were full of papers. McKay read some of them. Afterward
+he took from the bones of the hand two rings, a wrist-watch, a
+whistle which still hung by a short chain and a round object
+attached to a metal ring like a sleigh-bell.
+
+There was a hollow just beyond, made once in time of flood by some
+ancient mountain torrent long dry, and no longer to be feared.
+
+The human wreckage barely held together, but it was light; and McKay
+covered it with a foot of deep green moss, and made a cairn above it
+out of glacial stones from the watercourse. And on the huge beech
+that tented it he cut a cross with his trench-knife, making the
+incision deep, so that it glimmered like ivory against the silvery
+bark of the great tree. Under this sacred symbol he carved:
+
+"SIR W. BLINT, BART."
+
+Below this he cut a deep, white oblong in the bark, and with a coal
+from the burned airplane he wrote:
+
+"THIS IS THE BEGINNING, NOT THE END. THIS ENGLISHMAN STILL CARRIES
+ON!"
+
+He stood at salute for a full minute. Then turned, dropped to his
+knees, and began another thorough search among the debris and dead
+leaves.
+
+"Hello, Yellow-hair!"
+
+She had been watching his approach from where she was seated
+balanced on the stream's edge, with both legs in the water to the
+knees.
+
+He came up and dropped down beside her on the moss.
+
+"A dead airman in Les Errues," he said quietly, "a Britisher. I put
+away what remained of him. The Huns may dig him up: some animals do
+such things."
+
+"Where did you find him, Kay?" she asked quietly.
+
+"A quarter of a mile down-stream. He lay on the west slope. He had
+fallen clear, but there was not much left of his machine."
+
+"How long has he lain there in this forest?"
+
+"A year--to judge. Also the last entry in his diary bears this out.
+They got him through the head, and his belt gave way or was not
+fastened.--Anyway he came down stone dead and quite clear of his
+machine. His name was Blint--Sir W. Blint, Bart.... Lie back on the
+moss and let your bruised feet hang in the pool.... Here--this way
+--rest that yellow head of yours against my knees. ... Are you
+snug?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Hold out your hands. These were his trinkets."
+
+The girl cupped her hands to receive the rings, watch, the gold
+whistle in its little gem-set chains, and the sleigh-bell on its
+bracelet.
+
+She examined them one by one in silence while McKay ran through the
+pages of the notebook--discoloured pages all warped and stained in
+their leather binding but written in pencil with print-like
+distinction.
+
+"Sir W. Blint," murmured McKay, still busy with the notebook. "Can't
+find what W. stood for."
+
+"That's all there is--just his name and military rank as an aviator:
+I left the disk where it hung."
+
+The girl placed the trinkets on the moss beside her and looked up
+into McKay's face.
+
+Both knew they were thinking of the same thing. They wore no disks.
+Would anybody do for them what McKay had done for the late Sir W.
+Blint?
+
+McKay bent a little closer over her and looked down into her face.
+That any living creature should touch this woman in death seemed to
+him almost more terrible than her dying. It was terror of that which
+sometimes haunted him; no other form of fear.
+
+What she read in his eyes is not clear--was not quite clear to her,
+perhaps. She said under her breath:
+
+"You must not fear for me, Kay.... Nothing can really touch me now."
+
+He did not understand what she meant by this immunity--gathering
+some vague idea that she had spoken in the spiritual sense. And he
+was only partly right. For when a girl is beginning to give her soul
+to a man, the process is not wholly spiritual.
+
+As he looked down at her in silence he saw her gaze shift and her
+eyes fix themselves on something above the tree-tops overhead.
+
+"There's that eagle again," she said, "wheeling up there in the
+blue."
+
+He looked up; then he turned his sun-dazzled eyes on the pages of
+the little notebook which he held open in both hands.
+
+"It's amusing reading," he said. "The late Sir W. Blint seems to
+have been something of a naturalist. Wherever he was stationed the
+lives of the birds, animals, insects and plants interested him. ...
+Everywhere one comes across his pencilled queries and comments
+concerning such things; here he discovers a moth unfamiliar to him,
+there a bird he does not recognise. He was a quaint chap--"
+
+McKay's voice ceased but his eyes still followed the pencilled lines
+of the late Sir W. Blint. And Evelyn Erith, resting her yellow head
+against his knees, looked up at him.
+
+"For example," resumed McKay, and read aloud from the diary:
+
+"Five days' leave. Blighty. All top hole at home. Walked with
+Constance in the park.
+
+Pair of thrushes in the spinney. Rookery full. Usual butterflies in
+unusual numbers. Toward twilight several sphinx moths visited the
+privet. No net at hand so did not identify any. Pheasants in bad
+shape. Nobody to keep them down. Must arrange drives while I'm away.
+
+Late at night a barn owl in the chapel belfrey. Saw him and heard
+him. Constance nervous; omens and that sort, I fancy; but no funk.
+Rotten deal for her."
+
+"Who was Constance?" asked Miss Erith.
+
+"Evidently his wife.... I wish we could get those trinkets to her."
+His glance shifted back to the pencilled page and presently he read
+on, aloud:
+
+France again. Headquarters. Same rumour that Fritz has something up
+his sleeve. Conference. Letter from Constance. Wrote her also.
+
+10th inst.:
+
+Conference. Interesting theory even if slightly incredible. Wrote
+Constance.
+
+12th inst.:
+
+Another conference. Sir D. Haig. Back to hangar. A nightingale
+singing, clear and untroubled above the unceasing thunder of the
+cannonade. Very pretty moth, incognito, came and sat on my sleeve.
+One of the Noctuidae, I fancy, but don't know generic or specific
+names. About eleven o'clock Sir D. Haig. Unexpected honour. Sir D.
+serene and cheerful. Showed him about. He was much amused at my
+eagle. Explained how I had found him as an eaglet some twenty years
+ago in America and how he sticks to me like a tame jackdaw.
+
+Told Sir D. that I had been taking him in my air flights everywhere
+and that he adored it, sitting quite solemnly out of harm's way and,
+if taking to the air for a bit of exercise, always keeping my plane
+in view and following it to earth.
+
+Showed Sir D. H. all Manitou's tricks. The old chap did me proud.
+This was the programme:
+
+I.--'Will you cheer for king and country, Manitou?'
+
+Manitou (yelping)--'Houp--gloup--houp!'
+
+I.--'Suppose you were a Hun eagle, Manitou--just a vulgar Boche
+buzzard?'
+
+Manitou (hanging his head)--'Houp--gloup--houp!'
+
+I.-'But you're not! You're a Yankee eagle! Now give three cheers for
+Uncle Sam!'
+
+Manitou (head erect)--'Houp--gloup--houp!'
+
+Sir D. convulsed. Ordered a trench-rat for Manitou as usual. While
+he was discussing it I told Sir D. H. how I could always send
+Manitou home merely by attaching to his ankle a big whistling-bell
+of silver.
+
+Explained that Manitou hated it and that I had taught him to fly
+home when I attached it by arranging that nobody except my wife
+should ever relieve him of the bell.
+
+It took about two years to teach him where to go for relief.
+
+Sir D, much amused--reluctant to leave. Wrote to Connie later. Bed.
+
+13th inst.:
+
+Summoned by Sir D. H. Conference. Most interesting. Packed up. Of at
+5 P. M., taking my eagle, Manitou. Wrote Constance.
+
+14th inst.:
+
+Paris. Yankees everywhere. Very ft. Have noticed no brag so far.
+Wrote Constance.
+
+20th inst.:
+
+Paris. Yanks, Yanks, Yanks. And 'thanks' rimes. I said so to one of
+'em. 'No,' said he, 'Tanks' is the proper rime--British Tanks!' Neat
+and modest. Wrote Connie.
+
+21st inst.:
+
+Manitou and I are off. Most interesting quest I ever engaged in.
+Wrote to my wife.
+
+Delle. Manitou and I both very fit. Machine in waiting. Took the air
+for a look about. Manitou left me a mile up. Evidently likes the
+Alps. Soared over Mount Terrible whither I dared not venture--yet!
+Saw no Huns. Back by sundown. Manitou dropped in to dinner--like a
+thunderbolt from the zenith. Astonishment of Blue Devils on guard.
+Much curiosity. Manitou a hero. All see in him an omen of American
+victory. Wrote Connie.
+
+30th inst.:
+
+Shall try 'it' very soon now.
+
+If it's true--God help the Swiss! If not--profound apologies I
+suppose. Anyway its got to be cleared up. Manitou enamoured of
+mountains. Poor devil, it's in his blood I suppose. Takes the air,
+now, quite independent of me, but I fancy he gets uneasy if I delay,
+for he comes and circles over the hangar until my machine takes the
+air. And if it doesn't he comes down to find out why, mad and
+yelping at me like an irritated goblin.
+
+I saw an Alpine butterfly to-day--one of those Parnassians all white
+with wings veined a greenish black. Couldn't catch him. Wrote to
+Connie. Bed.
+
+31st inst.:
+
+In an hour. All ready. It's hard to believe that the Hun has so
+terrorised the Swiss Government as to force it into such an
+outrageous concession. Nous verrons.
+
+A perfect day. Everything arranged. Calm and confident. Think much
+of Constance but no nerves. Early this morning Manitou, who had been
+persistently hulking at my heels and squealing invitations to take
+wing with him, became impatient and went up.
+
+I saw him in time and whistled him down; and I told the old chap
+very plainly that he could come up with me when I was ready or not
+at all.
+
+He understood and sat on the table sulking, and cocking his silver
+head at me while I talked to him. That's one thing about Manitou.
+Except for a wild Canada goose I never before saw a bird who seemed
+to have the slightest trace of brain. I know, of course, it's not
+affection that causes him to trail me, answer his whistle, and obey
+when he doesn't wish to obey. It's training and habit. But I like to
+pretend that the old chap is a little fond of me.
+
+I'm of in a few minutes. Manitou is aboard. Glorious visibility. Now
+for Fritz and his occult designs--if there are any.
+
+A little note to Connie--I scarcely know why. Not a nerve. Most
+happy. Noticed a small butterfly quite unfamiliar to me. No time now
+to investigate.
+
+Engines! Manitou yelling with excitement. Symptoms of taking wing,
+but whistle checks insubordination.... All ready. Wish Connie were
+here.
+
+McKay closed the little book, strapped and buckled the cover.
+
+"Exit Sir W. Blint," he said, not flippantly. "I think I should like
+to have known that man."
+
+The girl, lying there with the golden water swirling around her
+knees and her golden head on the moss, looked up through the foliage
+in silence.
+
+The eagle was soaring lower over the forest now. After a little
+while she reached out and let her fingers touch McKay's hand where
+it rested on the moss:
+
+"Kay?"
+
+"Yes, Yellow-hair."
+
+"It isn't possible, of course.... But are there any eagles in Europe
+that have white heads and tails?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I know.... I wish you'd look up at that eagle. He is not very
+high."
+
+McKay lifted his head. After a moment he rose to his feet, still
+looking intently skyward. The eagle was sailing very low now.
+
+"THAT'S AN AMERICAN EAGLE!"
+
+The words shot out of McKay's lips. The girl sat upright,
+electrified.
+
+And now the sun struck full across the great bird as he sheered the
+tree-tops above. HEAD AND TAIL WERE A DAZZLING WHITE.
+
+"Could--could it be that dead man's eagle?" said the girl. "Oh,
+could it be Manitou? COULD it, Kay?"
+
+McKay looked at her, and his eye fell on the gold whistle hanging
+from her wrist on its jewelled chain.
+
+"If it is," he said, "he might notice that whistle. Try it!"
+
+She nodded excitedly, set the whistle to her lips and blew a clear,
+silvery, penetrating blast upward.
+
+"Kay! Look!" she gasped.
+
+For the response had been instant. Down through the tree-tops
+sheered the huge bird, the air shrilling through his pinions, and
+struck the solid ground and set his yellow claws in it, grasping the
+soil of the Old World with mighty talons. Then he turned his superb
+head and looked fearlessly upon his two compatriots.
+
+"Manitou! Manitou!" whispered the girl. And crept toward him on her
+knees, nearer, nearer, until her slim outstretched hand rested on
+his silver crest.
+
+"Good God!" said McKay in the low tones of reverence.
+
+McKay had drawn a duplicate of his route-map on thin glazed paper.
+
+Evelyn Erith had finished a duplicate copy of his notes and reports.
+
+Of these and the trinkets of the late Sir W. Blint they made two
+flat packets, leaving one of them unsealed to receive the brief
+letter which McKay had begun:
+
+"Dear Lady Blint--
+
+It is not necessary to ask the wife of Sir W. Blint to have courage.
+
+He died as he had lived--a fine and fearless British sportsman.
+
+His death was painless. He lies in the forest of Les Errues. I
+enclose a map for you.
+
+I and my comrade, Evelyn Erith, dare believe that his eagle,
+Manitou, has not forgotten the air-path to England and to you. With
+God's guidance he will carry this letter to you. And with it certain
+objects belonging to your husband. And also certain papers which I
+beg you will have safely delivered to the American Ambassador.
+
+If, madam, we come out of this business alive, my comrade and I will
+do ourselves the honour of waiting on you if, as we suppose, you
+would care to hear from us how we discovered the body of the late
+Sir W. Blint.
+
+Madam, accept homage and deep respect from two Americans who are,
+before long, rather likely to join your gallant husband in the great
+adventure"
+
+"Yellow-hair?"
+
+She came, signed the letter. Then McKay signed it, and it was
+enclosed in one of the packets.
+
+Then McKay took the dead carrier pigeon from the cage and tossed it
+on the moss. And Manitou planted his terrible talons on the inert
+mass of feathers and tore it to shreds.
+
+Evelyn attached the anklet and whistling bell; then she unwound a
+yard of surgeon's plaster, and kneeling, spread the eagle's enormous
+pinions, hold-ing them horizontal while McKay placed the two
+packets and bound them in place under the out-stretched wings.
+
+The big bird had bolted the pigeon. At first he submitted with sulky
+grace, not liking what was happening, but offering no violence.
+
+And even now, as they backed away from him, he stood in dignified
+submission, patiently striving to adjust his closed wings to these
+annoying though light burdens which seemed to have no place among
+his bronze feathers.
+
+Presently, irritated, the bird partially unclosed one wing as though
+to probe with his beak for the seat of his discomfort. At the same
+time he moved his foot, and the bell rattled on his anklet.
+
+Instantly his aspect changed; stooping he inspected the bell, struck
+it lightly with his beak as though in recognition.
+
+WAS it the hated whistling bell? Again the curved beak touched it.
+And recognition was complete.
+
+Mad all through, disgust, indecision, gave rapid place to nervous
+alarm. Every quill rose in wrath; the snowy crest stood upright; the
+yellow eyes flashed fire.
+
+Then, suddenly, the eagle sprang into the air, yelping fierce
+protest against such treatment: the shrilling of the bell swept like
+a thin gale through the forest, keener, louder, as the enraged bird
+climbed the air, mounting, mounting into the dazzling blue above
+until the motionless watchers in the woods below saw him wheel.
+
+Which way would he turn? 'Round and round swept the eagle in wider
+and more splendid circles; in tensest suspense the two below watched
+motionless.
+
+Then the tension broke; and a dry sob escaped the girl.
+
+For the eagle had set his lofty course at last. Westward he bore
+through pathless voids uncharted save by God alone--who has set His
+signs to mark those high blue lanes, lest the birds--His lesser
+children--should lose their way betwixt earth and moon.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE BLINDER TRAIL
+
+
+
+
+
+There was no escape that way. From the northern and eastern edges of
+the forest sheer cliffs fell away into bluish depths where forests
+looked like lawns and the low uplands of the Alsatian border
+resembled hillocks made by tunnelling moles. And yet it was from
+somewhere not far away that a man once had been, carried safely into
+Alsace on a sudden snowslide. That man now lay among the trees on
+the crag's edge looking down into the terrific chasm below. He and
+the girl who crouched in the thicket of alpine roses behind him
+seemed a part of the light-flecked forest--so inconspicuous were
+they among dead leaves and trees in their ragged and weather-faded
+clothing.
+
+They were lean from physical effort and from limited nourishment.
+The skin on their faces and hands, once sanguine and deeply burnt by
+Alpine wind and sun and snow glare, now had become almost
+colourless, so subtly the alchemy of the open operates on those
+whose only bed is last year's leaves and whose only shelter is the
+sky. Even the girl's yellow hair had lost its sunny brilliancy, so
+that now it seemed merely a misty part of the lovely, subdued
+harmony of the woods.
+
+The man, still searching the depths below with straining, patient
+gaze, said across his shoulder:
+
+"It was here somewhere--near here, Yellow-hair, that I went over,
+and found what I found.... But it's not difficult to guess what you
+and I should find if we try to go over now."
+
+"Death?" she motioned with serene lips.
+
+He had turned to look at her, and he read her lips.
+
+"And yet," he said, "we must manage to get down there, somehow or
+other, alive."
+
+She nodded. Both knew that, once down there, they could not expect
+to come out alive. That was tacitly understood. All that could be
+hoped was that they might reach those bluish depths alive, live long
+enough to learn what they had come to learn, release the pigeon with
+its message, then meet destiny in whatever guise it confronted them.
+
+For Fate was not far off. Fate already watched them--herself unseen.
+She had caught sight of them amid the dusk of the ancient trees--was
+following them, stealthily, murderously, through the dim aisles of
+this haunted forest of Les Errues.
+
+These two were the hunted ones, and their hunters were in the
+forest--nearer now than ever because the woodland was narrowing
+toward the east.
+
+Also, for the first time since they had entered the Forbidden
+Forest, scarcely noticeable paths appeared flattening the carpet of
+dead leaves--not trails made by game--but ways trodden at long
+intervals by man--trails unused perhaps for months--then rendered
+vaguely visible once more by the unseen, unheard feet of lightly
+treading foes.
+
+Here for the first time they had come upon the startling spoor of
+man--of men and enemies--men who were hunting them to slay them, and
+who now, in these eastern woods, no longer cared for the concealment
+that might lull to a sense of false security the human quarry that
+they pursued.
+
+And yet the Hun-pack hunting them though the forbidden forest of Les
+Errues had, in their new indifference to their quarry's alarm, and
+in the ferocity of their growing boldness, offered the two fugitives
+a new hope and a new reason for courage:--the grim courage of those
+who are about to die, and who know it, and still carry on.
+
+For this is what the Huns had done--not daring to use signals
+visible to the Swiss patrols on nearer mountain flanks.
+
+Nailed to a tree beside the scarcely visible trail of flattened
+leaves--a trail more imagined and feared than actually visible--was
+a sheet of white paper. And on it was written in the tongue of the
+Hun,--and in that same barbarous script also--a message, the free
+translation of which was as follows:
+
+"WARNING!"
+
+The three Americans recently sent into Les Errues by the Military
+Intelligence Department of the United States Army now fighting in
+France are still at large somewhere in this forest. Two of them are
+operating together, the well-known escaped prisoner, Kay McKay, and
+the woman secret-agent, Evelyn Erith. The third American, Alexander
+Gray, has been wounded in the left hand by one of our riflemen, but
+managed to escape, and is now believed to be attempting to find and
+join the agents McKay and Erith.
+
+This must be prevented. All German agents now operating in Les
+Errues are formally instructed to track down and destroy without
+traces these three spies whenever and wherever encountered according
+to plan. It is expressly forbidden to attempt to take any one or all
+of these spies alive. No prisoners! No traces! Germans, do your
+duty! The Fatherland is in peril!
+
+(Signed) "HOCHSTIM."
+
+McKay wriggled cautiously backward from the chasm's granite edge and
+crawled into the thicket of alpine roses where Evelyn Erith lay.
+
+"No way out, Kay?" she asked under her breath.
+
+"No way THAT way, Yellow-hair."
+
+"Then?"
+
+"I don't--know," he said slowly.
+
+"You mean that we ought to turn back."
+
+"Yes, we ought to. The forest is narrowing very dangerously for us.
+It runs to a point five miles farther east, overlooking impassable
+gulfs.... We should be in a cul-de-sac, Yellow-hair."
+
+"I know."
+
+He mused for a few moments, cool, clear-eyed, apparently quite
+undisturbed by their present peril and intent only on the mission
+which had brought them here, and how to execute it before their
+unseen trackers executed them.
+
+"To turn now, and attempt to go back along this precipice, is to
+face every probability of meeting the men we have so far managed to
+avoid," he said aloud in his pleasant voice, but as though
+presenting the facts to himself alone.
+
+"Of course we shall account for some of the Huns; but that does not
+help us to win through.... Even an exchange of shots would no doubt
+be disastrous to our plans. We MUST keep away from them....
+Otherwise we could never hope to creep into the valley alive,...
+Tell me, Yellow-hair, have you thought of anything new?"
+
+The girl shook her head.
+
+"No, Kay.... Except that chance of running across this new man of
+whom we never had heard before the stupid Boche advertised his
+presence in Les Errues."
+
+"Alexander Gray," nodded McKay, taking from his pocket the paper
+which the Huns had nailed to the great pine, and unfolding it again.
+
+The girl rested her chin on his shoulder to reread it--an apparent
+familiarity which he did not misunderstand. The dog that believes in
+you does it--from perplexity sometimes, sometimes from loneliness.
+Or, even when afraid--not fearing with the baser emotion of the
+poltroon, but afraid with that brave fear which is a wisdom too, and
+which feeds and brightens the steady flame of courage.
+
+"Alexander Gray," repeated McKay. "I never supposed that we would
+send another man in here--at least not until something had been
+heard concerning our success or failure.... I had understood that
+such a policy was not advisable. You know yourself, Yellow-hair,
+that the fewer people we have here the better the chance. And it was
+so decided before we left New York.... And--I wonder what occurred
+to alter our policy."
+
+"Perhaps the Boches have spread reports of our capture by Swiss
+authorities," she said simply.
+
+"That might be. Yes, and the Hun newspapers might even have printed
+it. I can see their scare-heads: 'Gross Violation of Neutral Soil!
+
+"'Switzerland invaded by the Yankees! Their treacherous and impudent
+spies caught in the Alps!'--that sort of thing. Yes, it might be
+that... and yet--"
+
+"You think the Boche would not call attention to such an attempt
+even to trap others of our agents for the mere pleasure of murdering
+them?"
+
+"That's what I think, Eve."
+
+He called her "Eve" only when circumstances had become gravely
+threatening. At other times it was usually "Yellow-hair!"
+
+"Then you believe that this man, Gray, has been sent into Les Errues
+to aid us to carry on independently the operation in which we have
+so far failed?"
+
+"I begin to think so." The girl's golden eyes became lost in
+retrospection.
+
+"And yet," she ventured after a few moments' thought, "he must have
+come into Les Errues learning that we also had entered it; and
+apparently he has made no effort to find us."
+
+"We can't know that, Eve."
+
+"He must be a woodsman," she argued, "and also he must suppose that
+we are more or less familiar with American woodcraft, and fairly
+well versed in its signs. Yet--he has left no sign that we could
+understand where a Hun could not."
+
+"Because we have discovered no sign we can not be certain that this
+man Gray has made none for us to read," said McKay.
+
+"No.... And yet he has left nothing that we have discovered--no
+blaze; no moss or leaf, no stone or cairn--not a broken twig, not a
+peeled stick, and no trail!"
+
+"How do we know that the traces of a trail marked by flattened
+leaves might not be his trail? Once, on that little sheet of sand
+left by rain in the torrent's wake, you found the imprint of a
+hobnailed shoe such as the Hun hunters wear," she reminded him. "And
+there we first saw the flattened trail of last year's leaves--if
+indeed it be truly a trail."
+
+"But, Eve dear, never have we discovered in any dead and flattened
+leaf the imprint of hobnails,--let alone the imprint of a human
+foot."
+
+"Suppose, whoever made that path, had pulled over his shoes a heavy
+woolen sock." He nodded.
+
+"I feel, somehow, that the Hun flattened out those leaves," she went
+on. "I am sure that had an American made the trail he would also
+have contrived to let us know--given us some indication of his
+identity."
+
+The girl's low voice suddenly failed and her hand clutched McKay's
+shoulder.
+
+They lay among the alpine roses like two stones, never stirring, the
+dappled sunlight falling over them as harmoniously and with no more
+and no less accent than it spotted tree-trunk and rock and moss
+around them.
+
+And, as they lay there, motionless, her head resting on his thigh, a
+man came out of the dimmer woods into the white sunshine that
+flooded the verge of the granite chasm.
+
+The man was very much weather-beaten; his tweeds were torn; he
+carried a rifle in his right hand. And his left was bound in bloody
+rags. But what instantly arrested McKay's attention was the pack
+strapped to his back and supported by a "tump-line."
+
+Never before had McKay seen such a pack carried in such a manner
+excepting only in American forests.
+
+The man stood facing the sun. His visage was burnt brick colour, a
+hue which seemed to accentuate the intense blue of his eyes and make
+his light-coloured hair seem almost white.
+
+He appeared to be a man of thirty, superbly built, with a light,
+springy step, despite his ragged and weary appearance.
+
+McKay's eyes were fastened desperately upon him, upon the strap of
+the Indian basket which crossed his sun-scorched forehead, upon his
+crystal-blue eyes of a hunter, upon his wounded left hand, upon the
+sinewy red fist that grasped a rifle, the make of which McKay should
+have known, and did know. For it was a Winchester 45-70--no chance
+for mistaking that typical American weapon. And McKay fell
+a-trembling in every limb.
+
+Presently the man cautiously turned, scanned his back trail with
+that slow-stirrng wariness of a woodsman who never moves abruptly or
+without good reason; then he went back a little way, making no sound
+on the forest floor.
+
+AND MCKAY SAW THAT HE WORE KNEE MOCCASINS.
+
+At the same time Evelyn Erith drew her little length noiselessly
+along his, and he felt her mouth warm against his ear:
+
+"Gray?" He nodded.
+
+"I think so, too. His left hand is injured. He wears American
+moccasins. But in God's name be careful, Kay. It may be a trap."
+
+He nodded almost imperceptibly, keeping his eyes on the figure which
+now stood within the shade of the trees in an attitude which might
+suggest listening, or perhaps merely a posture of alert repose.
+
+Evelyn's mouth still rested against his ear and her light breath
+fell warmly on him. Then presently her lips moved again:
+
+"Kay! He LOOKS safe."
+
+McKay turned his head with infinite caution and she inclined hers to
+his lips:
+
+"I think it is Gray. But we've got to be certain, Eve." She nodded.
+
+"He does look right," whispered McKay. "No Boche cradles a rifle in
+the hollow of his left arm so naturally. It is HABIT, because he
+does it in spite of a crippled left hand."
+
+She nodded again.
+
+"Also," whispered McKay, "everything else about him is
+convincing--the pack, tump-line, moccasins, Winchester: and his
+manner of moving.... I know deer-stalkers in Scotland and in the
+Alps. I know the hunters of ibex and chamois, of roe-deer and red
+stag, of auerhahn and eagle. This man is DIFFERENT. He moves and
+behaves like our own woodsmen--like one of our own hunters."
+
+She asked with dumb lips touching his ear: "Shall we chance it?"
+
+"No. It must be a certainty."
+
+"Yes. We must not offer him a chance."
+
+"Not a ghost of a chance to do us harm," nodded McKay. "Listen
+attentively, Eve; when he moves on, rise when I do; take the pigeon
+and the little sack because I want both hands free. Do you
+understand, dear?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Because I shall have to kill him if the faintest hint of suspicion
+arises in my mind. It's got to be that way, Eve."
+
+"Yes, I know."
+
+"Not for our own safety, but for what our safety involves," he
+added.
+
+She inclined her head in acquiescence.
+
+Very slowly and with infinite caution McKay drew from their holsters
+beneath his armpits two automatic pistols.
+
+"Help me, Eve," he whispered.
+
+So she aided him where he lay beside her to slip the pack straps
+over his shoulders. Then she drew toward her the little osier cage
+in which their only remaining carrier-pigeon rested secured by
+elastic bands, grasped the smaller sack with the other hand, and
+waited.
+
+They had waited an hour and more; and the figure of the stranger had
+moved only once--shifted merely to adjust itself against a
+supporting tree-trunk and slip the tump-line.
+
+But now the man was stirring again, cautiously resuming the
+forehead-straps.
+
+Ready, now, to proceed in whichever direction he might believe lay
+his destination, the strange man took the rifle into the hollow of
+his left arm once more, remained absolutely motionless for five full
+minutes, then, stirring stealthily, his moccasins making no sound,
+he moved into the forest in a half-crouching attitude.
+
+And after him went McKay with Evelyn Erith at his elbow, his
+sinister pistols poised, his eyes fixed on the figure which passed
+like a shadow through the dim forest light ahead.
+
+Toward mid-afternoon their opportunity approached; for here was the
+first water they had encountered--and the afternoon had become
+burning hot--and their own throats were cracking with that fierce
+thirst of high places where, even in the summer air, there is that
+thirst-provoking hint of ice and snow.
+
+For a moment, however, McKay feared that the man meant to go on,
+leaving the thin, icy rivulet untasted among its rocks and mosses;
+for he crossed the course of the little stream at right angles,
+leaping lithely from one rock to the next and travelling upstream on
+the farther bank.
+
+Then suddenly he stopped stock-still and looked back along his
+trail--nearly blind save for a few patches of flattened dead leaves
+which his moccasined tread had patted smooth in the shadier
+stretches where moisture lingered undried by the searching rays of
+the sun.
+
+For a few moments the unknown man searched his own back-trail,
+standing as motionless as the trunk of a lichened beech-tree. Then,
+very slowly, he knelt on the dead leaves, let go his pack, and,
+keeping his rifle in his right hand, stretched out his sinewy length
+above the pool on the edge of which he had halted.
+
+Twice, before drinking, he lifted his head to sweep the woods around
+him, his parched lips still dry. Then, with the abruptness--not of
+man but of some wild thing--he plunged his sweating face into the
+pool.
+
+And McKay covered him where he lay, and spoke in a voice which
+stiffened the drinking man to a statue prone on its face:
+
+"I've got you right! Don't lift your head! You'll understand me if
+you're American!"
+
+The man lay as though dead. McKay came nearer; Evelyn Erith was at
+his elbow.
+
+"Take his rifle, Eve."
+
+The girl walked over and coolly picked up the Winchester.
+
+"Now cover him!" continued McKay. "Find a good rest for your gun and
+keep him covered, Eve."
+
+She laid the rifle level across a low branch, drew the stock snug
+and laid her cheek to it and her steady finger on the trigger.
+
+"When I say'squeeze,' let him have it! Do you understand, Eve?"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+Then, with one pistol poised for a drop shot, McKay stepped forward
+and jerked open the man's pack. And the man neither stirred nor
+spoke. For a few minutes McKay remained busy with the pack, turning
+out packets of concentrated rations of American manufacture, bits of
+personal apparel, a meagre company outfit, spare ammunition--the
+dozen-odd essentials to be always found in an American hunter's
+pack.
+
+Then McKay spoke again:
+
+"Eve, keep him covered. Shoot when I say shoot."
+
+"Right," she replied calmly. And to the recumbent and unstirring
+figure McKay gave a brief order:
+
+"Get up! Hands up!"
+
+The man rose as though made of steel springs and lifted both hands.
+
+Water still ran from his chin and lips and sweating cheeks. But
+McKay, resting the muzzle of his pistol against the man's abdomen,
+looked into a face that twitched with laughter.
+
+"You think it's funny?" he snarled, but the blessed relief that
+surged through him made his voice a trifle unsteady.
+
+"Yes," said the man, "it hits me that way."
+
+"Something else may hit you," growled McKay, ready to embrace him
+with sheer joy.
+
+"Not unless you're a Boche," retorted the man coolly. "But I guess
+you're Kay McKay--"
+
+"Don't get so damned familiar with names!"
+
+"That's right, too. I'll just call you Seventy-Six, and this young
+lady Seventy-Seven.... And I'm Two Hundred and Thirty."
+
+"What else?"
+
+"My name?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"It isn't expected--"
+
+"It is in this case," snapped McKay, wondering at himself for such
+ultra precaution.
+
+"Oh, if you insist then, I'm Gray.... Alec Gray of the States United
+Army Intelligence Serv___"
+
+"All right.... Gad!... It's all right, Gray!"
+
+He took the man's lifted right hand, jerked it down and crushed it
+in a convulsive grasp: "It's good to see you.... We're in a
+hole--deadlocked--no way out but back!" he laughed nervously. "Have
+you any dope for us?"
+
+Gray's blue eyes travelled smilingly toward Evelyn and rested on the
+muzzle of the Winchester. And McKay laughed almost tremulously:
+
+"All clear, Yellow-hair! This IS Gray--God be thanked!"
+
+The girl, pale and quiet and smiling, lowered the rifle and came
+forward offering her hand.
+
+"It's pleasant to see YOU," she said quite steadily. "We were afraid
+of a Boche trick."
+
+"So I notice," said Gray, intensely amused.
+
+Then the weather-tanned faces of all three sobered.
+
+"This is no place to talk things over," said Gray shortly.
+
+"Do you know a better place?"
+
+"Yes. If you'll follow me."
+
+He went to his pack, put it swiftly in order, hoisted it, resumed
+the tump-line, and looked around at Evelyn for his rifle.
+
+But she had already slung it across her own shoulders and she
+pointed at his wounded hand and its blood-black bandage and motioned
+him forward.
+
+The sun hung on the shoulder of a snow-capped alp when at last these
+three had had their brief understanding concerning one another's
+identity, credentials, and future policy.
+
+Gray's lair, in a bushy hollow between two immense jutting cakes of
+granite, lay on the very brink of the chasm. And there they sat,
+cross-legged in the warmth of the declining sun in gravest
+conference concerning the future.
+
+"Recklow insisted that I come," repeated Gray. "I was in the 208th
+Pioneers--in a sawmilll near La Roche Rouge--Vosges--when I got my
+orders."
+
+"And Recklow thinks we're caught and killed?"
+
+"So does everybody in the Intelligence. The Mulhausen paper had it
+that the Swiss caught you violating the frontier, which meant to
+Recklow that the Boche had done you in."
+
+"I see," nodded McKay.
+
+"So he picked me."
+
+"And you say you guided in Maine?"
+
+"Yes, when I was younger. After I was on my own I kept store at
+South Carry, Maine, and ran the guides there."
+
+"I noticed all the ear-marks," nodded McKay.
+
+Gray smiled: "I guess they're there all right if a man knows 'em
+when he sees 'em."
+
+"Were you badly shot up?"
+
+"Not so bad. They shoot a pea-rifle, single shot all over silver and
+swallowtail stock--"
+
+"I know," smiled McKay.
+
+"Well, you know them. It drills nasty with a soft bullet, cleaner
+with a chilled one. My left hand's a wreck but I sha'n't lose it."
+
+"I had better dress it before night," said Evelyn.
+
+"I dressed it at noon. I won't disturb it again to-day," said Gray,
+thanking her with his eloquent blue eyes.
+
+McKay said: "So you found the place where I once slid off?"
+
+"It's plain enough, windfall and general wreckage mark it."
+
+"You say it's a dozen miles west of here?"
+
+"About."
+
+"That's odd," said McKay thoughtfully. "I had believed I recognised
+this ravine. But these deep gulfs all look more or less alike. And I
+saw it only once and then under hair-raising circumstances."
+
+Gray smiled, but Evelyn did not. McKay said:
+
+"So that's where they winged you, was it?"
+
+"Yes. I was about to negotiate the slide--you remember the V-shaped
+slate cleft?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, I was just starting into that when the rifle cracked and I
+jumped for a tree with a broken wing and a bad scare."
+
+"You saw the man?"
+
+"I did later. He came over to look for dead game, and I ached to let
+him go; but it was too risky with Les Errues swarming alive with
+Boches, and me with the stomach-sickness of a shot-up man. Figure it
+out, McKay, for yourself."
+
+"Of course, you did the wise thing and the right one."
+
+"I think so. I travelled until I fainted." He turned and glanced
+around. "Strangely enough I saw black right here!--fell into this
+hole by accident, and have made it my home since then."
+
+"It was a Godsend," said the girl.
+
+"It was, Miss Erith," said Gray, resting his eloquent eyes on her.
+
+"And you say," continued McKay, "that the Boche are sitting up day
+and night over that slide?"
+
+"Day and night. The swine seem to know it's the only way out. I go
+every day, every night. Always the way is blocked; always I discover
+one or more of their riflemen there in ambush while the rest of the
+pack are ranging Les Errues."
+
+"And yet," said McKay, "we've got to go that way, sooner or later."
+
+There was a silence: then Gray nodded.
+
+"Yes," he said, "but it is a question of waiting."
+
+"There is a moon to-night," observed Evelyn Erith.
+
+McKay lifted his head and looked at her gravely: Gray's blue eyes
+flashed his admiration of a young girl who quietly proposed to face
+an unknown precipice at night by moonlight under the rifles of
+ambushed men.
+
+"After all," said McKay slowly, "is there ANY other way?"
+
+In the silence which ensued Evelyn Erith, who had been lying between
+them on her stomach, her chin propped up on both hands, suddenly
+raised herself on one arm to a sitting posture.
+
+Instantly Gray shrank back, white as a sheet, lifting his mutilated
+hand in its stiffened and bloody rags; and the girl gasped out her
+agonised apology:
+
+"Oh--CAN you forgive me! It was unspeakable of me!"
+
+"It--it's all right," said Gray, the colour coming back to his face;
+but the girl in her excitement of self-reproach and contrition
+begged to be allowed to dress the mutilated hand which her own
+careless movement had almost crushed.
+
+"Oh, Kay-I set my hand on his wounded fingers and rested my full
+weight! Oughtn't he to let us dress it again at once?"
+
+But Gray's pluck was adamant, and he forced a laugh, dismissing the
+matter with another glance at Evelyn out of clear blue eyes that
+said a little more than that no harm had been done--said, in one
+frank and deep-flashing look, more than the girl perhaps cared to
+understand.
+
+The sun slipped behind the rocky flank of a great alp; a burst of
+rosy glory spread fan-wise to the zenith.
+
+Against it, tall and straight and powerful, Gray rose and walking
+slowly to the cliff's edge, looked down into the valley mist now
+rolling like a vast sea of cloud below them.
+
+And, as he stood there, Evelyn's hand grasped McKay's arm:
+
+"If he touches his rifle, shoot! Quick, Kay!"
+
+McKay's right hand fell into his side-pocket--where one of his
+automatics lay. He levelled it as he grasped it, hidden within the
+side-pocket of his coat.
+
+"HIS HAND IS NOT WOUNDED," breathed the girl. "If he touches his
+rifle he is a Hun!"
+
+McKay's head nodded almost imperceptibly. Gray's back was still
+turned, but one hand was extended, carelessly reaching for the rifle
+that stood leaning against the cake of granite.
+
+"Don't touch it!" said McKay in a low but distinct voice: and the
+words galvanised the extended arm and it shot out, grasping the
+rifle, as the man himself dropped out of sight behind the rock.
+
+A terrible stillness fell upon the place; there was not a sound, not
+a movement.
+
+Suddenly the girl pointed at a shadow that moved between the
+rocks--and the crash of McKay's pistol deafened them.
+
+Then, against the dazzling glory of the west a dark shape staggered
+up, clutching a wavering rifle, reeling there against the rosy glare
+an instant; and the girl turned her sick eyes aside as McKay's
+pistol spoke again.
+
+Like a shadow cast by hell the black form swayed, quivered, sank
+away outward into the blinding light that shone across the world.
+
+Presently a tinkling sound came up from the fog-shrouded depths--the
+falling rifle striking ledge after ledge until the receding sound
+grew fainter and more distant, and finally was heard no more.
+
+But that was the only sound they heard; for the man himself lay
+still on the chasm's brink, propped from the depths by a tuft of
+alpine roses in full bloom, his blue eyes wide open, a blue hole
+just between them, and his bandaged hand freed from its camouflage,
+lying palm upward and quite uninjured on the grass!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE GREATER LOVE
+
+
+
+
+
+As the blinding lens of the sun glittered level and its first rays
+poured over tree and rock, a man in the faded field-uniform of a
+Swiss officer of mountain artillery came out on the misty ledge
+across the chasm.
+
+"You over there!" he shouted in English. "Here is a Swiss officer to
+speak with you! Show yourselves!"
+
+Again, after waiting a few moments, he shouted: "Show yourselves or
+answer. It is a matter of life or death for you both!"
+
+There was no reply to the invitation, no sound from the forest, no
+movement visible. Thin threads of vapour began to ascend from the
+tremendous depths of the precipice, steaming upward out of
+mist-choked gorges where, under thick strata of fog, night still lay
+dark over unseen Alpine valleys below.
+
+The Swiss officer advanced to the cliff's edge and looked down upon
+a blank sea of cloud. Presently he turned east and walked cautiously
+along the rim of the chasm for a hundred yards. Here the gulf
+narrowed so that the cleft between the jutting crags was scarcely a
+hundred feet in width. And here he halted once more and called
+across in a resonant, penetrating voice:
+
+"Attention, you, over there in the Forest of Les Errues! You had
+better wake up and listen! Here is a Swiss officer come to speak
+with you. Show yourselves or answer!"
+
+There came no sound from within the illuminated edges of the woods.
+
+But outside, upon the chasm's sparkling edge, lay a dead man stark
+and transfigured and stiff as gold in the sun.
+
+And already the first jewelled death-flies zig-zagged over him,
+lacing the early sunshine with ominous green lightning.
+
+They who had killed this man might not be there behind the sunlit
+foliage of the forest's edge; but the Swiss officer, after waiting a
+few moments, called again, loudly. Then he called a third time more
+loudly still, because into his nostrils had stolen the faint taint
+of dry wood smoke. And he stood there in silhouette against the
+rising sun listening, certain, at last, of the hidden presence of
+those he sought.
+
+Now there came no sound, no stirring behind the forest's sunny edge;
+but just inside it, in the lee of a huge rock, a young girl in
+ragged boy's clothing, uncoiled her slender length from her blanket
+and straightened out flat on her stomach. Her yellow hair made a
+spot like a patch of sunlight on the dead leaves. Her clear golden
+eyes were as brilliant as a lizard's.
+
+From his blanket at her side a man, gaunt and ragged and deeply
+bitten by sun and wind, was pulling an automatic pistol from its
+holster. The girl set her lips to his ear:
+
+"Don't trust him, for God's sake, Kay," she breathed.
+
+He nodded, felt forward with cautious handgroping toward a damp
+patch of moss, and drew himself thither, making no sound among the
+dry leaves.
+
+"Watch the woods behind us, Yellow-hair," he whispered.
+
+The girl fumbled in her tattered pocket and produced a pistol. Then
+she sat up cross-legged on her blanket, rested one elbow across her
+knee, and, cocking the poised weapon, swept the southern woods with
+calm, bright eyes.
+
+Now the man in Swiss uniform called once more across the chasm:
+"Attention, Americans I I know you are there; I smell your fire.
+Also, what you have done is plain enough for me to see--that thing
+lying over there on the edge of the rocks with corpse-flies already
+whirling over it! And you had better answer me, Kay McKay!"
+
+Then the man in the forest who now was lying flat behind a
+birch-tree, answered calmly:
+
+"You, in your Swiss uniform of artillery, over there, what do you
+want of me?"
+
+"So you are there!" cried the Swiss, striving to pierce the foliage
+with eager eyes. "It is you, is it not, Kay McKay?"
+
+"I've answered, have I not?"
+
+"Are you indeed then that same Kay McKay of the Intelligence
+Service, United States Army?"
+
+"You appear to think so. I am Kay McKay; that is answer enough for
+you."
+
+"Your comrade is with you--Evelyn Erith?"
+
+"None of your business," returned McKay, coolly.
+
+"Very well; let it be so then. But that dead man there--why did you
+kill your American comrade?"
+
+"He was a camouflaged Boche," said McKay contemptously. "And I am
+very sure that you're another--you there, in your foolish Swiss
+uniform. So say what you have to say and clear out!"
+
+The officer came close to the edge of the chasm: "I can not expect
+you to believe me," he said, "and yet I really am what I appear to
+be, an officer of Swiss Mountain Artillery. If you think I am
+something else why do you not shoot me?"
+
+McKay was silent. "Nobody would know," said the other. "You can kill
+me very easily. I should fall into the ravine--down through that
+lake of cloud below. Nobody would ever find me. Why don't you
+shoot?"
+
+"I'll shoot when I see fit," retorted McKay in a sombre voice.
+Presently he added in tones that rang a little yet trembled
+too--perhaps from physical reasons--"What do you want of a hunted
+man like me?"
+
+"I want you to leave Swiss territory!"
+
+"Leave!" McKay's laugh was unpleasant. "You know damned well I can't
+leave with Les Errues woods crawling alive with Huns."
+
+"Will you leave the canton of Les Ernies, McKay, if I show you a
+safe route out?"
+
+And, as the other made no reply: "You have no right to be here on
+neutral territory," he added, "and my Government desires you to
+leave at once!"
+
+"I have as much right here as the Huns have," said McKay in his
+pleasant voice.
+
+"Exactly. And these Germans have no right here either!"
+
+"That also is true," rejoined McKay gently, "so why has your
+Government permitted the Hun to occupy the Canton of Les Errues? Oh,
+don't deny it," he added wearily as the Swiss began to repudiate the
+accusation; "you've made Les Errues a No-Man's Land, and it's free
+hunting now! If you're sick of your bargain, send in your mountain
+troops and turn out the Huns."
+
+"And if I also send an escort and a free conduct for you and your
+comrade?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You will not be harmed, not even interned. We set you across our
+wire at Delle. Do you accept?"
+
+"No."
+
+"With every guarantee--"
+
+"You've made this forest a part of the world's battle-field.... No,
+I shall not leave Les Errues!"
+
+"Listen to reason, you insane American! You can not escape those who
+are closing in on you--those who are filtering the forest for
+you--who are gradually driving you out into the eastern edges of Les
+Errues! And what then, when at last you are driven like wild game by
+a line of beaters to the brink of the eastern cliffs? There is no
+water there. You will die of thirst. There is no food. What is there
+left for you to do with your back to the final precipice?"
+
+McKay laughed a hard, unpleasant laugh: "I certainly shall not tell
+you what I mean to do," he said. "If this is all you have to say to
+me you may go!"
+
+There ensued a silence. The Swiss began to pace the opposite cliff,
+his hands behind him. Finally he halted abruptly and looked across
+the chasm.
+
+"Why did you come into Les Errues?" he demanded.
+
+"Ask your terrified authorities. Perhaps they'll tell you--if their
+teeth stop chattering long enough--that I came here to find out
+what the Boche are doing on neutral territory."
+
+"Do you mean to say that you believe in that absurd rumour about
+some secret and gigantic undertaking by the Germans which is
+supposed to be visible from the plateau below us?"
+
+And, as McKay made no reply: "That is a silly fabrication. If your
+Government, suspicious of the neutrality of mine, sent you here on
+any such errand, it was a ridiculous thing to do. Do you hear me,
+McKay?"
+
+"I hear you."
+
+"Well, then! And let me add also that it is a physical impossibility
+for any man to reach the plateau below us from the forest of Les
+Errues!"
+
+"That," said McKay, coldly, "is a lie!"
+
+"What! You offer a Swiss officer such an injury--"
+
+"Yes; and I may add an insulting bullet to the injury in another
+minute. You've lied to me. I have already done what you say is an
+impossibility. I have reached the plateau below Les Errues by way of
+this forest. And I'm going there again, Swiss or no Swiss, Hun or no
+Hun! And if the Boche do drive me out of this forest into the east,
+where you say there is no water to be found among the brush and
+bowlders, and where, at last, you say I shall stand with my back to
+the last sheer precipice, then tell your observation post on the
+white shoulder of Thusis to turn their telescopes on me!"
+
+"In God's name, for what purpose?"
+
+"To take a lesson in how to die from the man your nation has
+betrayed!" drawled McKay.
+
+Then, lying flat, he levelled his pistol, supporting it across the
+palm of his left hand.
+
+"Yellow-hair?"' he said in a guarded voice, not turning.
+
+"Yes, Kay."
+
+"Slip the pack over your shoulders. Take the pigeon and the rifle.
+Be quick, dear."
+
+"It is done," she said softly.
+
+"Now get up and make no noise. Two men are lying in the scrub behind
+that fellow across the chasm. I am afraid they have grenades.... Are
+you ready, Yellow-hair?"
+
+"Ready, dear."
+
+"Go eastward, swiftly, two hundred yards parallel with the
+precipice. Make no sound, Yellow-hair."
+
+The girl cast a pallid, heart-breaking look at him, but he lay there
+without turning his head, his steady pistol levelled across the
+chasm. Then, bending a trifle forward, she stole eastward through
+the forest dusk, the pigeon in its wicker cage in one hand, and on
+her back the pack.
+
+And all the while, across the gulf out of which golden vapours
+curled more thickly as the sun's burning searchlight spread out
+across the world, the man in Swiss uniform stood on the chasm's
+edge, as though awaiting some further word or movement from McKay.
+
+And, after awhile, the word came, clear, startling, snapped out
+across the void:
+
+"Unsling that haversack! Don't touch the flap! Take it off, quick!"
+
+The Swiss seemed astounded. "Quick!" repeated McKay harshly, "or I
+fire."
+
+"What!" burst out the man, "you offer violence to a Swiss officer on
+duty within Swiss territory?"
+
+"I tell you I'll kill you where you stand if you don't take off that
+haversack!"
+
+Suddenly from the scrubby thicket behind the Swiss a man's left arm
+shot up at an angle of forty degrees, and the right arm described an
+arc against the sun. Something round and black parted from it, lost
+against the glare of sunrise.
+
+Then in the woods behind McKay something fell heavily, the solid
+thud obliterated in the shattering roar which followed.
+
+The man in Swiss uniform tore at the flap of his haversack, and he
+must have jerked loose the plug of a grenade in his desperate haste,
+for as McKay's bullet crashed through his face, the contents of his
+sack exploded with a deafening crash.
+
+At the same instant two more bombs fell among the trees behind
+McKay, exploding instantly. Smoke and the thick golden steam from
+the ravine blotted from his sight the crag opposite. And now,
+bending double, McKay ran eastward while behind him the golden dusk
+of the woods roared and flamed with exploding grenades.
+
+Evelyn Erith stood motionless and deathly white, awaiting him.
+
+"Are you all right, Kay?"
+
+"All right, Yellow-hair."
+
+He went up to her, shifting his pistol to the other hand, and as he
+laid his right arm about her shoulders the blaze in his eyes almost
+dazzled her.
+
+"We trust no living thing on earth, you and I, Yellow-hair.... I
+believed that man for awhile. But I tell you whatever is living
+within this forest is our enemy--and if any man comes in the shape
+of my dearest friend I shall kill him before he speaks!"
+
+The man was shaking now; the girl caught his right hand and drew it
+close around her body--that once warm and slender body now become so
+chill and thin under the ragged clothing of a boy.
+
+"Drop your face on my shoulder," she said.
+
+His wasted cheek seemed feverish, burning against her breast.
+
+"Steady, Kay," she whispered.
+
+"Right!... What got me was the thought of you--there when the
+grenades fell.... They blew a black pit where your blanket lay!"
+
+He lifted his head and she smiled into the fever-bright eyes set so
+deeply now in his ravaged visage. There were words on her lips,
+trembling to be uttered. But she dared not believe they would add to
+his strength if spoken. He loved her. She had long known that--had
+long understood that loving her had not hardened his capacity for
+the dogged duty which lay before him.
+
+To win out was a task sufficiently desperate; to win out and bring
+her through alive was the double task that was slowly, visibly
+killing this man whose burning, sunken eyes gazed into hers. She
+dared not triple that task; the cry in her heart died unuttered,
+lest he ever waver in duty to his country when in some vital crisis
+that sacred duty clashed with the obligations that fettered him to a
+girl who had confessed she loved him.
+
+No; the strength that he might derive from such a knowledge was not
+that deathless energy and clear thinking necessary to blind, stern,
+unswerving devotion to the motherland. Love of woman, and her love
+given, could only make the burden of decision triply heavy for this
+man who stood staring at space beside her here in the forest
+twilight where shreds of the night mist floated like ghosts and a
+lost sunspot glowed and waned and glowed on last year's leaves.
+
+The girl pressed her waist with his arm, straightened her shoulders
+and stood erect; and with a quick gesture cleared her brow of its
+cloudy golden hair.
+
+"Now," she said coolly, "we carry on, you and I, Kay, to the honour
+and glory of the land that trusts us in her hour of need... Are you
+are right again?"
+
+"All right, Yellow-hair," he said pleasantly.
+
+On the third day the drive had forced them from the hilly western
+woods, eastward and inexorably toward that level belt of shaggy
+forest, scrub growth, and arid, bowlder-strewn table-land where
+there was probably no water, nothing living to kill for food, and
+only the terrific ravines beyond where cliffs fell downward to the
+dim green world lying somewhere below under its blanket of Alpine
+mist.
+
+On the fourth day, still crowded outward and toward the ragged edge
+of the mountain world, they found, for the first time, no water to
+fill their bottles. Realising their plight, McKay turned desperately
+westward, facing pursuit, ranging the now narrow forest in hopes of
+an opportunity to break through the closing line of beaters.
+
+But it proved to be a deadline that he and his half-starved comrade
+faced; shadowy figures, half seen, sometimes merely heard and
+divined, flitted everywhere through the open woods beyond them. And
+at night a necklace of fires--hundreds of them--barred the west to
+them, curving outward like the blade of a flaming scimitar.
+
+On the fifth day McKay, lying in his blanket beside the girl, told
+her that if they found no water that day they must let their
+carrier-pigeon go.
+
+The girl sat up in her torn blanket and met his gaze very calmly.
+What he had just said to her meant the beginning of the end. She
+understood perfectly. But her voice was sweet and undisturbed as she
+answered him, and they quietly discussed the chances of discovering
+water in some sunken hole among the outer ledges and bowlders
+whither they were being slowly and hopelessly forced.
+
+Noon found them still searching for some pocket of stale rain-water;
+but once only did they discover the slightest trace of moisture--a
+crust of slime in a rocky basin, and from it a blind lizard was
+slowly creeping--a heavy, lustreless, crippled thing that toiled
+aimlessly and painfully up the rock, only to slide back into the
+slime again, leaving a trail of iridescent moisture where its
+sagging belly dragged.
+
+In a grove of saplings there were a few ferns; and here McKay dug
+with his trench knife; but the soil proved to be very shallow;
+everywhere rock lay close to the surface; there was no water there
+under the black mould.
+
+To and fro they roamed, doggedly seeking for some sign of water. And
+the woods seemed damp, too; and there were long reaches of dewy
+ferns. But wherever McKay dug, his knife soon touched the solid rock
+below. And they wandered on.
+
+In the afternoon, resting in the shade, he noticed her lips were
+bleeding--and turned away, sharply, unable to endure her torture.
+She seemed to understand his abrupt movement, for she leaned
+slightly against him where he sat amid the ferns with his back to a
+tree--as a dog leans when his master is troubled.
+
+"I think," she said with an effort, "we should release our pigeon
+now. It seems to be very weak."
+
+He nodded.
+
+The bird appeared languid; hunger and thirst were now telling fast
+on the little feathered messenger.
+
+Evelyn shook out the last dusty traces of corn; McKay removed the
+bands. But the bird merely pecked at the food once or twice and then
+settled down with beak gaping and the film stealing over its eyes.
+
+McKay wrote on tissue the date and time of day; and a word more to
+say that they had, now, scarcely any chance. He added, however, that
+others ought to try because there was no longer any doubt in his
+mind that the Boche were still occupied with some gigantic work
+along the Swiss border in the neighbourhood of Mount Terrible; and
+that the Swiss Government, if not abetting, at least was cognizant
+of the Hun activities.
+
+This message he rolled into a quill, fastened it, took the bird, and
+tossed it westward into the air.
+
+The pigeon beat the morning breeze feebly for a moment, then
+fluttered down to the top of a rock.
+
+For five minutes that seemed five years they looked at the bird,
+which had settled down in the sun, its bright eyes alternately
+dimmed by the film or slowly clearing.
+
+Then, as they watched, the pigeon stood up and stretched its neck
+skyward, peering hither and thither at the blue vault above. And
+suddenly it rose, painfully, higher, higher, seeming to acquire
+strength in the upper air levels. The sun flashed on its wings as it
+wheeled; then the distant bird swept westward into a long straight
+course, flying steadily until it vanished like a mote in mid-air.
+
+McKay did not trust himself to speak. Presently he slipped his pack
+over both shoulders and took the rifle from where it lay against a
+rock. The girl, too, had picked up the empty wicker cage, but
+recollected herself and let it fall on the dead leaves.
+
+Neither she nor McKay had spoken. The latter stood staring down at
+the patch of ferns into which the cage had rolled. And it was some
+time before his dulled eyes noticed that there was grass growing
+there, too--swale grass, which he had not before seen in this arid
+eastern region.
+
+When finally he realised what it might signify he stood staring; a
+vague throb of hope stirred the thin blood in his sunken cheeks. But
+he dared not say that he hoped; he merely turned northward in
+silence and moved into the swale grass. And his slim comrade
+followed.
+
+Half an hour later he waited for the girl to come up along side of
+him. "Yellow-hair," he said, "this is swale or marsh-grass we are
+following. And little wild creatures have made a runway through
+it... as though there were--a drinking-place--somewhere--"
+
+He forced himself to look up at her--at her dry, blood-blackened
+lips:
+
+"Lean on me," he whispered, and threw his arm around her.
+
+And so, slowly, together, they came through the swale to a living
+spring.
+
+A dead roe-deer lay there--stiffened into an indescribable attitude
+of agony where it had fallen writhing in the swale; and its terrible
+convulsions had torn up and flattened the grass and ferns around it.
+
+And, as they gazed at this pitiable dead thing, something else
+stirred on the edge of the pool--a dark, slim bird, that strove to
+move at the water's edge, struggled feebly, then fell over and lay a
+crumpled mound of feathers.
+
+"Oh God!" whispered the girl, "there are dead birds lying everywhere
+at the water's edge! And little furry creatures--dead--all dead at
+the water's edge!"
+
+There was a flicker of brown wings: a bird alighted at the pool,
+peered fearlessly right and left, drank, bent its head to drink
+again, fell forward twitching and lay there beating the grass with
+feeble wings.
+
+After a moment only one wing quivered. Then the little bird lay
+still.
+
+Perhaps an ancient and tragic instinct possessed these two--for as a
+wild thing, mortally hurt, wanders away through solitude to find a
+spot in which to die, so these two moved slowly away together into
+the twilight of the trees, unconscious, perhaps, what they were
+seeking, but driven into aimless motion toward that appointed place.
+
+And somehow it is given to the stricken to recognise the ghostly
+spot when they draw near it and their appointed hour approaches.
+
+There was a fallen tree--not long fallen--which in its earthward
+crash had hit another smaller tree, partly uprooting the latter so
+that it leaned at a perilous angle over a dry gully below.
+
+Here dead leaves had drifted deep. And here these two came, and
+crept in among the withered branches and lay down among the fallen
+leaves. For a long while they lay motionless. Then she moved, turned
+over, and slipped into his arms.
+
+Whether she slept or whether her lethargy was unconsciousness due to
+privation he could not tell. Her parted lips were blackened, her
+mouth and tongue swollen.
+
+He held her for awhile, conscious that a creeping stupor threatened
+his senses--making no effort to save his mind from the ominous
+shadows that crept toward him like live things moving slowly, always
+a little nearer. Then pain passed through him like a piercing thread
+of fire, and he struggled upright, and saw her head slide down
+across his knees. And he realised that there were things for him to
+do yet--arrangements to make before the crawling shadows covered
+his body and stained his mind with the darkness of eternal night.
+
+And first, while she still lay across his knees, he filled his
+pistol. Because she must die quickly if the Hun came. For when the
+Hun comes death is woman's only sanctuary.
+
+So he prepared a swift salvation for her. And, if the Hun came or
+did not come, still this last refuge must be secured for her before
+the creeping shadows caught him and the light in his mind died out.
+
+With his loaded pistol lifted he sat a moment, staring into the
+woods out of bloodshot eyes; then he summoned all his strength and
+rose, letting his unconscious comrade slip from his knees to the bed
+of dead leaves.
+
+Now with his knife he tried the rocky forest floor again, feeling
+blindly for water. He tried slashing saplings for a drop of sap.
+
+The great tree that had fallen had broken off a foot above ground.
+The other tree slanted above a dry gully at such an angle that it
+seemed as though a touch would push it over, yet its foliage was
+still green and unwilted although the mesh of roots and earth were
+all exposed.
+
+He noted this in a dull way, thinking always of water. And
+presently, scarcely knowing what he was doing, he placed both arms
+against the leaning trunk and began to push. And felt the leaning
+tree sway slowly earthward.
+
+Then into the pain and confusion of his clouding mind something
+flashed with a dazzling streak of light--the flare-up of dying
+memory; and he hurled himself against the leaning tree. And it
+slowly sank, lying level and uprooted.
+
+And in the black bed of the roots lay darkling a little pool of
+water.
+
+The girl's eyes unclosed on his. Her face and lips were dripping
+under the sopping, icy sponge of green moss with which he was
+bathing her and washing out her mouth and tongue.
+
+Into her throat he squeezed the water, drop by drop only.
+
+It was late in the afternoon before he dared let her drink.
+
+During the night she slept an hour or two, awoke to ask for water,
+then slept again, only to awake to the craving that he always
+satisfied.
+
+Before sunrise he took his pack, took both her shoes from her feet,
+tore some rags from the lining of her skirt and from his own coat,
+and leaving her asleep, went out into the grey dusk of morning.
+
+When he again came to the poisoned spring he unslung his pack and,
+holding it by both straps, dragged it through marsh grass and fern,
+out through the fringe of saplings, out through low scrub and brake
+and over moss and lichens to the edge of the precipice beyond.
+
+And here on a scrubby bush he left fragments of their garments
+entangled; and with his hobnailed heels he broke crumbling edges of
+rock and smashed the moss and stunted growth and tore a path among
+the Alpine roses which clothed the chasm's treacherous edge, so that
+it might seem as though a heavy object had plunged down into the
+gulf below.
+
+Such bowlders as he could stir from their beds and roll over he
+dislodged and pushed out, listening to them as they crashed
+downward, tearing the cliff's grassy face until, striking some lower
+shelf, they bounded out into space.
+
+Now in this bruised path he stamped the imprints of her two rough
+shoes in moss and soil, and drove his own iron-shod feet wherever
+lichen or earth would retain the imprint.
+
+All the footprints pointed one way and ended at the chasm's edge.
+And there, also, he left the wicker cage; and one of his pistols,
+too--the last and most desperate effort to deceive--for, near it, he
+flung the cartridge belt with its ammunition intact--on the chance
+that the Hun would believe the visible signs, because only a dying
+man would abandon such things.
+
+For they must believe the evidence he had prepared for them--this
+crazed trail of two poisoned human creatures--driven by agony and
+madness to their own destruction.
+
+And now, slinging on his pack, he made his way, walking backward, to
+the poisoned spring.
+
+It was scarcely light, yet through the first ghostly grey of
+daybreak a few birds came; and he killed four with bits of rock
+before the little things could drink the sparkling, crystalline
+death that lay there silvered by the dawn.
+
+She was still asleep when he came once more to the bed of leaves
+between the fallen trees. And she had not awakened when he covered
+his dry fire and brought to her the broth made from the birds.
+
+There was, in his pack, a little food left. When he awakened her she
+smiled and strove to rise, but he took her head on his knees and fed
+her, holding the pannikin to her lips. And after he too had eaten he
+went to look into the hollow where the tree had stood; and found it
+brimming with water.
+
+So he filled his bottles; then, with hands and knife, working
+cautiously and noiselessly he began to enlarge the basin, drawing
+out stones, scooping out silt and fibre.
+
+All the morning he worked at his basin, which, fed by some
+deep-seated and living spring, now overflowed and trickled down into
+the dry gully below.
+
+By noon he had a pool as large and deep as a bathtub; and he came
+and sat down beside her under the fallen mass of branches where she
+lay watching the water bubble up and clear itself of the clouded
+silt.
+
+"You are very wonderful, Kay," she sighed, but her bruised lips
+smiled at him and her scarred hand crept toward him and lay in his.
+Seated so, he told her what he had done in the grey of morning while
+she slept.
+
+And, even as he was speaking, a far voice cried through the
+woods--distant, sinister as the harsh scream of a hawk that has made
+its kill.
+
+Then another voice shouted, hoarse with triumph; others answered,
+near and far; the forest was full of the heavy, ominous sounds. For
+the Huns were gathering in eastward from the wooded western hills,
+and their sustained clamour filled the air like the unclean racket
+of vultures sighting abomination and eager to feed.
+
+McKay laid his loaded pistol beside him.
+
+"Dear Yellow-hair," he whispered.
+
+She smiled up at him. "If they think we died there on the edge of
+the precipice, then you and I should live.... If they doubt it they
+will come back through these woods.... And it isn't likely that we
+shall live very long."
+
+"I know," she said. And laid her other hand in his--a gesture of
+utter trust so exquisite that, for a moment, tears blinded him, and
+all the forest wavered grotesquely before his desperately fixed
+gaze. And presently, within the field of his vision, something
+moved--a man going westward among the trees his rifle slung over his
+shoulder. And there were others, too, plodding stolidly back toward
+the western forests of Les Errues--forms half-seen between trees,
+none near, and only two who passed within hearing, the trample of
+their heavy feet loud among the fallen leaves, their guttural voices
+distinct. And, as they swung westward, rifles slung, pipes alight,
+and with the air of surly hunters homeward bound after a successful
+kill, the hunted, lying close under their roof of branches, heard
+them boasting of their work and of the death their quarry had
+died--of their agony at the spring which drove them to that death in
+the depths of the awful gulf beyond.
+
+"And that," shouted one, stifling with laughter, "I should like to
+have seen. It is all I have to regret of this jagd-that I did not
+see the wilde die!"
+
+The other Hun was less cheerful: "But what a pity to leave that
+roe-deer lying there. Such good meat poisoned! Schade, immer
+schade!--to leave good meat like that in the forest of Les Errues!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+VIA MALA
+
+
+
+
+
+
+The girl sat bolt upright on her bed of dead leaves, still confused
+by sleep, her ears ringing with the loud, hard voice which had
+awakened her to consciousness of pain and hunger once again.
+
+Not ten feet from her, between where she lay under the branches of a
+fallen tree, and the edge of the precipice beyond, full in the
+morning sunlight stood two men in the dress of Swiss mountaineers.
+
+One of them was reading aloud from a notebook in a slow, decisive,
+metallic voice; the other, swinging two dirty flags, signalled the
+message out across the world of mountains as it was read to him in
+that nasty, nasal Berlin dialect of a Prussian junker.
+
+"In the Staubbach valley no traces of the bodies have been
+discovered," continued the tall, square-shouldered reader in his
+deliberate voice; "It is absolutely necessary that the bodies of
+these two American secret agents, Kay McKay and Evelyn Erith, be
+discovered, and all their papers, personal property, and the
+clothing and accoutrements belonging to them be destroyed without
+the slightest trace remaining.
+
+"It is ordered also that, when discovered, their bodies be burned
+and the ashes reduced to powder and sown broadcast through the
+forest."
+
+The voice stopped; the signaller whipped his dirty tattered flags in
+the sunlight for a few moments more, then ceased and stood stiffly
+at attention, his sun-dazzled gaze fixed on a far mountain slope
+where something glittered--perhaps a bit of mica, perhaps the mirror
+of a helio.
+
+Presently, in the same disagreeable, distinct, nasal, and measured
+voice, the speaker resumed the message:
+
+"Until last evening it has been taken for granted that the American
+Intelligence Officer, McKay, and his companion, Miss Erith, made
+insane through suffering after having drunk at a spring the water of
+which we had prepared for them according to plan, had either jumped
+or fallen from the eastward cliffs of Les Errues into the gulf
+through which flows the Staubbach.
+
+"But, up to last night, my men, who descended by the Via Mala, have
+been unable to find the bodies of these two Americans, although
+there is, on the cliffs above, every evidence that they plunged down
+there to the valley of the brook below, which is now being searched.
+
+"If, therefore, my men fail to discover these bodies, the alarming
+presumption is forced upon us that these two Americans have once
+more tricked us; and that they may still be hiding in the Forbidden
+Forest of Les Errues.
+
+"In that event proper and drastic measures will be taken, the
+air-squadron on the northern frontier co-operating."
+
+The voice ceased: the flags whistled and snapped in the wind for a
+little while longer, then the signaller came to stiffest attention.
+
+"Tell them we descend by the Via Mala," added the nasal voice.
+
+The flags swung sharply into motion for a few moments more; then the
+Prussian officer pocketed his notebook; the signaller furled his
+flags; and, as they turned and strode westward along the border of
+the forest, the girl rose to her knees on her bed of leaves and
+peered after them.
+
+What to do she scarcely knew. Her comrade, McKay, had been gone
+since dawn in quest of something to keep their souls and bodies en
+liaison--mountain hare, a squirrel perhaps, perhaps a songbird or
+two, or a pocketful of coral mushrooms--anything to keep them alive
+on that heart-breaking trail of duty at the end of which sat old man
+Death awaiting them, wearing a spiked helmet.
+
+And what to do in this emergency, and in the absence of McKay,
+perplexed and frightened her; for her comrade's strict injunction
+was to remain hidden until his return; and yet one of these men now
+moving westward there along the forest's sunny edges had spoken of a
+way out and had called it the Via Mala. And that is what McKay had
+been looking for--a way out of the Forbidden Forest of Les Errues to
+the table-land below, where, through a cleft still more profound,
+rushed the black Staubbach under an endless mist of icy spray.
+
+She must make up her mind quickly; the two men were drawing away
+from her--almost out of sight now.
+
+On her ragged knees among the leaves she groped for his coat where
+he had flung it, for the weather had turned oppressive in the forest
+of Les Errues-and fumbling, she found his notebook and pencil, and
+tore out a leaf:
+
+"Kay dear, two Prussians in Swiss mountain dress have been
+signalling across the knees of Thusis that our bodies have not been
+discovered in the ravine. They have started for the ravine by a way
+evidently known to them and which they speak of as the Via Mala. You
+told me to stay here, but I dare not let this last chance go to
+discover what we have been looking for--a path to the plateau below.
+I take my pistol and your trench-knife and I will try to leave signs
+for you to follow. They have started west along the cliffs and they
+are now nearly out of sight, so I must hurry. Yellow-hair."
+
+This bit of paper she left on her bed of leaves and pinned it to the
+ground with a twig. Then she rose painfully, drew in her belt and
+laced her tattered shoes, and, taking the trench-knife and pistol,
+limped out among the trees.
+
+The girl was half naked in her rags; her shirt scarcely hung to her
+shoulders, and she fastened the stag-horn buttons on her jacket. Her
+breeches, which left both knees bare, were of leather and held out
+pretty well, but the heavy wool stockings gaped, and, had it not
+been for the hob-nails, the soles must have fallen from her hunter's
+shoes.
+
+At first she moved painfully and stiffly, but as she hurried,
+limping forward over the forest moss, limbs and body grew more
+supple and she felt less pain.
+
+And now, not far beyond, and still full in the morning sunshine,
+marched the men she was following. The presumed officer strode on
+ahead, a high-shouldered frame of iron in his hunter's garb; the
+signaller with furled flags tucked under his arm clumped stolidly at
+his heels with the peculiar peasant gait which comes from following
+uneven furrows in the wake of a plow.
+
+For ten minutes, perhaps, the two men continued on, then halted
+before a great mass of debris, uprooted trees, long dead, the vast,
+mangled roots and tops of which sprawled in every direction between
+masses of rock, bowlders, and an indescribable confusion of brush
+and upheaved earth.
+
+Nearer and nearer crept the girl, until, lying flat behind a
+beech-tree, she rested within earshot--so close, indeed, that she
+could smell the cigarette which the officer had lighted--smell,
+even, the rank stench of the sulphur match.
+
+Meanwhile the signaller had laid aside his flags and while the
+officer looked on he picked up a heavy sapling from among the fallen
+trees. Using this as a lever he rolled aside a tree-trunk, then
+another, and finally a bowlder.
+
+"That will do," remarked the officer. "Take your flags and go
+ahead."
+
+Then Evelyn Erith, rising cautiously to her scarred knees, saw the
+signaller gather up his flags and step into what apparently was the
+bed of the bowlder on the edge of the windfall. But it was deeper
+than that, for he descended to his knees, to his waist, his
+shoulders; and then his head disappeared into some hole which she
+could not see.
+
+Now the officer who had remained, calmly smoking his cigarette,
+flung the remains of it over the cliff, turned, surveyed the forest
+behind him with minute deliberation, then stepped into the
+excavation down which the signaller had disappeared.
+
+Some instinct kept the girl motionless after the man's head had
+vanished; minute after minute passed, and Evelyn Erith never
+stirred. And suddenly the officer's head and shoulders popped up
+from the hole and he peered back at the forest like an alarmed
+marmot. And the girl saw his hands resting on the edge of the hole;
+and the hands grasped two pistols.
+
+Presently, apparently reassured and convinced that nobody was
+attempting to follow him, he slowly sank out of sight once more.
+
+The girl waited; and while waiting she cut a long white sliver from
+the beech-tree and carved an arrow pointing toward the heap of
+debris. Then, with the keen tip of her trench-knife she scratched on
+the silvery bark:
+
+"An underground way in the windfall. I have followed them.
+Yellow-hair."
+
+She crept stealthily out into the sunshine through the vast abatis
+of the fallen trees and came to the edge of the hole. Looking down
+fearfully she realised at once that this was the dry, rocky stairs
+of some subterranean watercourse through which, in springtime, great
+fields of melting snow poured in torrents down the face of the
+precipice below.
+
+There were no loose stones to be seen; the rocky escalier had been
+swept clean unnumbered ages since; but the rocks were fearfully
+slippery, shining with a vitreous polish where the torrents of many
+thousand years had worn them smooth.
+
+And this was what they called the Via Mala!--this unsuspected and
+secret underground way that led, God knew how, into the terrific
+depths below.
+
+There was another Via Mala: she had seen it from Mount Terrible; but
+it was a mountain path trodden not infrequently. This Via Mala,
+however, wormed its way downward into shadows. Where it led and by
+what perilous ways she could only imagine. And were these men
+perhaps, lying in ambush for her somewhere below--on the chance that
+they might have been seen and followed?
+
+What would they do to her--shoot her? Push her outward from some
+rocky shelf into the misty gulf below? Or would they spring on her
+and take her alive? At the thought she chilled, knowing what a woman
+might expect from the Hun.
+
+She threw a last look upward where they say God dwells somewhere
+behind the veil of blinding blue; then she stepped downward into the
+shadows.
+
+For a rod or two she could walk upright as long as she could retain
+her insecure footing on the glassy, uneven floor of rock; and a
+vague demi-light reigned there making objects distinct enough for
+her to see the stalactites and stalagmites like discoloured teeth in
+a chevaux-de-frise.
+
+Between these gaping fangs she crept, listening, striving to set her
+feet on the rocks without making any noise. But that seemed to be
+impossible and the rocky tunnel echoed under her footsteps,
+slipping, sliding, hob-nails scraping in desperate efforts not to
+fall.
+
+Again and again she halted, listening fearfully, one hand crushed
+against her drumming heart; but she had heard no sound ahead; the
+men she followed must be some distance in advance; and she stole
+forward again, afraid, desperately crushing out the thoughts--that
+crowded and surged in her brain--the terrible living swarm of fears
+that clamoured to her of the fate of white women if captured by the
+things men called Boche and Hun.
+
+And now she was obliged to stoop as the roof of the tunnel dipped
+lower and she could scarcely see in the increasing darkness, clearly
+enough to avoid the stalactites.
+
+However, from far ahead came a glimmer; and even when she was
+obliged to drop to her knees and creep forward, she could still make
+out the patch of light, and the Via Mala again became visible with
+its vitreous polished floor and its stalactites and water-blunted
+stalagmites always threatening to trip her and transfix her.
+
+Now, very far ahead, something moved and partly obscured the distant
+glimmer; and she saw, at a great distance, the two men she followed,
+moving in silhouette across the light. When they had disappeared she
+ventured to move on again. And her knees were bleeding when she
+crept out along a heavy shelf of rock set like a balcony on the
+sheer face of the cliff.
+
+Tufts of alpine roses grew on it, and slippery lichens, and a few
+seedlings which next spring's torrent would wash away into the
+still, misty depths below.
+
+But this shelf of rock was not all. The Via Mala could not end on
+the chasm's brink.
+
+Cautiously she dragged herself out along the shadow of the cliff,
+listening, peering among the clefts now all abloom with alpen rosen;
+and saw nothing--no way forward; no steep path, hewn by man or by
+nature, along the face of that stupendous battlement of rock.
+
+She lay listening. But if there was a river roaring somewhere
+through the gorge it was too far below her for her to hear it.
+
+Nothing stirred there; the distant bluish parapets of rock across
+the ravine lay in full sunshine, but nothing moved there, neither
+man nor beast nor bird; and the tremendous loneliness of it all
+began to frighten her anew.
+
+Yet she must go on; they had gone on; there was some hidden way.
+Where? Then, all in a moment, what she had noticed before, and had
+taken for a shadow cast by a slab of projecting rock, took the shape
+of a cleft in the facade of the precipice itself--an opening that
+led straight into the cliff.
+
+When she dragged herself up to it she saw it had been made by man.
+The ancient scars of drills still marked it. Masses of rock had been
+blasted from it; but that must have been years ago because a deep
+growth of moss and lichen covered the scars and the tough stems of
+crag-shrubs masked every crack.
+
+Here, too, bloomed the livid, over-rated edelweiss, dear to the
+maudlin and sentimental side of an otherwise wolfish race, its
+rather ghastly flowers starring the rocks.
+
+As at the entrance to a tomb the girl stood straining her frightened
+eyes to pierce the darkness; then, feeling her way with outstretched
+pistol-hand, she entered.
+
+The man-fashioned way was smooth. Or Hun or Swiss, whoever had
+wrought this Via Mala out of the eternal rock, had wrought
+accurately and well. The grade was not steep; the corridor descended
+by easy degrees, twisting abruptly to turn again on itself, but
+always leading downward in thick darkness.
+
+No doubt that those accustomed to travel the Via Mala always carried
+lights; the air was clean and dry and any lighted torch could have
+lived in such an atmosphere. But Evelyn Erith carried no lights
+--had thought of none in the haste of setting out.
+
+Years seemed to her to pass in the dreadful darkness of that descent
+as she felt her way downward, guided by the touch of her feet and
+the contact of her hand along the unseen wall.
+
+Again and again she stopped to rest and to check the rush of
+sheerest terror that threatened at moments her consciousness.
+
+There was no sound in the Via Mala. The thick darkness was like a
+fabric clogging her movements, swathing her, brushing across her so
+that she seemed actually to feel the horrible obscurity as some
+concrete thing impeding her and resting upon her with an increasing
+weight that bent her slender figure.
+
+There was something grey ahead.... There was light--a sickly
+pin-point. It seemed to spread but grow duller. A pallid patch
+widened, became lighter again. And from an infinite distance there
+came a deadened roaring--the hollow menace of water rushing through
+depths unseen.
+
+She stood within the shadow zone inside the tunnel and looked out
+upon the gorge where, level with the huge bowlders all around her,
+an alpine river raged and dashed against cliff and stone, flinging
+tons of spray into the air until the whole gorge was a driving sea
+of mist. Here was the floor of the canon; here was the way they had
+searched for. Her task was done. And now, on bleeding little feet,
+she must retrace her steps; the Via Mala must become the Via
+Dolorosa, and she must turn and ascend that Calvary to the dreadful
+crest.
+
+She was very weak. Privation had sapped the young virility that had
+held out so long. She had not eaten for a long while--did not,
+indeed, crave food any longer. But her thirst raged, and she knelt
+at a little pool within the cavern walls and bent her bleeding mouth
+to the icy fillet of water. She drank little, rinsed her mouth and
+face and dried her lips on her sleeve. And, kneeling so, closed her
+eyes in utter exhaustion for a moment.
+
+And when she opened them she found herself looking up at two men.
+
+Before she could move one of the men kicked her pistol out of her
+nerveless hand, caught her by the shoulder and dragged the
+trench-knife from her convulsive grasp. Then he said in English:
+
+"Get up." And the other, the signalman, struck her across her back
+with the furled flags so that she lost her balance and fell forward
+on her face. They got her to her feet and pushed her out among the
+bowlders, through the storming spray, and across the floor of the
+ravine into the sunlight of a mossy place all set with trees. And
+she saw butterflies flitting there through green branches flecked
+with sunshine.
+
+The officer seated himself on a fallen tree and crossed his heavy
+feet on a carpet of wild flowers. She stood erect, the signaller
+holding her right arm above the elbow.
+
+After the officer had leisurely lighted a cigarette he asked her who
+she was. She made no answer.
+
+"You are the Erith woman, are you not?" he demanded.
+
+She was silent.
+
+"You Yankee slut," he added, nodding to himself and staring up into
+her bloodless face.
+
+Her eyes wandered; she looked at, but scarcely saw the lovely
+wildflowers under foot, the butterflies flashing their burnished
+wings among the sunbeams.
+
+"Drop her arm." The signaller let go and stood at attention.
+
+"Take her knife and pistol and your flags and go across the stream
+to the hut."
+
+The signaller saluted, gathered the articles mentioned, and went
+away in that clumping, rocking gait of the land peasant of Hundom.
+
+"Now," said the officer, "strip off your coat!"
+
+She turned scarlet, but he sprang to his feet and tore her coat from
+her. She fought off every touch; several times he struck her--once
+so sharply that the blood gushed from her mouth and nose; but still
+she fought him; and when he had completed his search of her person,
+he was furious, streaked with sweat and all smeared with her blood.
+
+"Damned cat of a Yankee!" he panted, "stand there where you are or
+I'll blow your face off!"
+
+But as he emptied the pockets of her coat she seized it and put it
+on, sobbing out her wrath and contempt of him and his threats as she
+covered her nearly naked body with the belted jacket and buttoned it
+to her throat.
+
+He glanced at the papers she had carried, at the few poor articles
+that had fallen from her pockets, tossed them on the ground beside
+the log and resumed his seat and cigarette.
+
+"Where's McKay?"
+
+No answer.
+
+"So you tricked us, eh?" he sneered. "You didn't get your rat-poison
+at the spring after all. The Yankees are foxes after all!" He
+laughed his loud, nasal, nickering laugh--"Foxes are foxes but men
+are men. Do you understand that, you damned vixen?"
+
+"Will you let me kill myself?" she asked in a low but steady voice.
+
+He seemed surprised, then realising why she had asked that mercy,
+showed all his teeth and smirked at her out of narrow-slitted eyes.
+
+"Where is McKay?" he repeated.
+
+She remained mute.
+
+"Will you tell me where he is to be found?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"Will you tell me if I let you go?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Will you tell me if I give you back your trench-knife?"
+
+The white agony in her face interested and amused him and he waited
+her reply with curiosity.
+
+"No!" she whispered.
+
+"Will you tell me where McKay is to be found if I promise to shoot
+you before--"
+
+"No!" she burst out with a strangling sob.
+
+He lighted another cigarette and, for a while, considered her
+musingly as he sat smoking. After a while he said: "You are rather
+dirty--all over blood. But you ought to be pretty after you're
+washed." Then he laughed.
+
+The girl swayed where she stood, fighting to retain consciousness.
+
+"How did you discover the Via Mala?" he inquired with blunt
+curiosity.
+
+"You showed it to me!"
+
+"You slut!" he said between his teeth. Then, still brutishly
+curious: "How did you know that spring had been poisoned? By those
+dead birds and animals, I suppose.... And that's what I told
+everybody, too. The wild things are bound to come and drink. But you
+and your running-mate are foxes. You made us believe you had gone
+over the cliff. Yes, even I believed it. It was well done--a true
+Yankee trick. All the same, foxes are only foxes after all. And here
+you are."
+
+He got up; she shrank back, and he began to laugh at her.
+
+"Foxes are only foxes, my pretty, dirty one!--but men are men, and a
+Prussian is a super-man. You had forgotten that, hadn't you, little
+Yankee?"
+
+He came nearer. She sprang aside and past him and ran for the river;
+but he caught her at the edge of a black pool that whirled and flung
+sticky chunks of foam over the bowlders. For a while they fought
+there in silence, then he said, breathing heavily, "A fox can't
+drown. Didn't you know that, little fool?"
+
+Her strength was ebbing. He forced her back to the glade and stood
+there holding her, his inflamed face a sneering, leering mask for
+the hot hell that her nearness and resistance had awakened in him.
+Suddenly, still holding her, he jerked his head aside and stared
+behind him. Then he pushed her violently from him, clutched at his
+holster, and started to run. And a pistol cracked and he pitched
+forward across the log upon which he had sat, and lay so, dripping
+dark blood, and fouling the wild-flowers with the flow.
+
+"Kay!" she said in a weak voice.
+
+McKay, his pack strapped to his back, his blood-shot eyes brilliant
+in his haggard visage, ran forward and bent over the thing. Then he
+shot him again, behind the ear.
+
+The rage of the river drowned the sound of the shots; the man in the
+hut across the stream did not come to the door. But McKay caught
+sight of the shack; his fierce eyes questioned the girl, and she
+nodded.
+
+He crossed the stream, leaping from bowlder to bowlder, and she saw
+him run up to the door of the hut, level his weapon, then enter. She
+could not hear the shots; she waited, half-dead, until he came out
+again, reloading his pistol.
+
+She struggled desperately to retain her senses--to fight off the
+deadly faintness that assailed her. She could scarcely see him as he
+came swiftly toward her--she put out her arms blindly, felt his
+fierce clasp envelop her, passed so into blessed unconsciousness.
+
+A drop or two of almost scalding broth aroused her. He held her in
+his arms and fed her--not much--and then let her stretch out on the
+sun-hot moss again.
+
+Before sunset he awakened her again, and he fed her--more this time.
+
+Afterward she lay on the moss with her golden-brown eyes partly
+open. And he had constructed a sponge of clean, velvety moss, and
+with this he washed her swollen mouth and bruised cheek, and her
+eyes and throat and hands and feet.
+
+After the sun went down she slept again: and he stretched out beside
+her, one arm under her head and about her neck.
+
+Moonlight pierced the foliage, silvering everything and inlaying the
+earth with the delicate tracery of branch and leaf.
+
+Moonlight still silvered her face when she awoke. After a while the
+shadow slipped from his face, too.
+
+"Kay?" she whispered.
+
+"Yes, Yellow-hair."
+
+And, after a little while she turned her face to his and her lips
+rested on his.
+
+Lying so, unstirring, she fell asleep once more.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE GREAT SECRET
+
+
+
+
+
+All that morning American infantry had been passing through Delle
+over the Belfort road. The sun of noon saw no end to them.
+
+The endless column of shadows, keeping pace with them, lengthened
+with the afternoon along their lengthening line.
+
+Now and then John Recklow opened the heavy wooden door in his garden
+wall and watched them until duty called him to his telephone or to
+his room where maps and papers littered the long table. But he
+always returned to the door in the garden wall when duty permitted
+and leaned at ease there, smoking his pipe, keen-eyed, impassive,
+gazing on the unbroken line of young men--men of his own race,
+sun-scorched, dusty, swinging along the Belfort road, their right
+elbows brushing Switzerland, their high sun-reddened pillar of dust
+drifting almost into Germany, and their heavy tread thundering
+through that artery of France like the prophetic pulse of victory.
+
+A rich September sunset light streamed over them; like a moving
+shaft of divine fire the ruddy dust marched with them upon their
+right hand; legions of avenging shadows led them forward where, for
+nearly half a century beyond the barriers of purple hills, naked and
+shackled, the martyr-daughters of the Motherland stood
+waiting--Alsace and Lorraine.
+
+"We are on our way!" laughed the Yankee bugles.
+
+The Fortress of Metz growled "Nein!"
+
+Recklow went back to his telephone. For a long while he remained
+there very busy with Belfort and Verdun. When again he returned to
+the green door in his garden wall, the Yankee infantry had passed;
+and of their passing there remained no trace save for the
+smouldering pillar of fire towering now higher than the eastern
+horizon and leagthened to a wall that ran away into the north as far
+as the eye could see.
+
+His cats had come out into the garden for "the cats' hour"--that
+mysterious compromise between day and evening when all things feline
+awake and stretch and wander or sit motionless, alert, listening to
+occult things. And in the enchantment of that lovely liaison which
+links day and night--when the gold and rose soften to mauve as the
+first star is born--John Recklow raised his quiet eyes and saw two
+dead souls come into his garden by the little door in the wall.
+
+"Is it you, Kay McKay?" he said at last.
+
+But the shock of the encounter still fettered him so that he walked
+very slowly to the woman who was now moving toward him across the
+grass.
+
+"Evelyn Erith," he said, taking her thin hands in his own, which
+were trembling now.
+
+"It's a year," he complained unsteadily.
+
+"More than a year," said McKay in his dead voice.
+
+With his left hand, then, John Recklow took McKay's gaunt hand, and
+stood so, mute, looking at him and at the girl beside him.
+
+"God!" he said blankly. Then, with no emphasis: "It's rather more
+than a year!... They sent me two fire-charred skulls--the head of a
+man and the head of a woman.... That was a year ago.... After your
+pigeon arrived... I found the scorched skulls wrapped in a Swiss
+newspaper-lying inside the garden wall--over there on the grass!...
+And the swine had written your names on the skulls...."
+
+Into Evelyn Erith's eyes there came a vague light--the spectre of a
+smile. And as Recklow looked at her he remembered the living glory
+she had once been; and wrath blazed wildly within him. "What have
+they done to you?" he asked in an unsteady voice. But McKay laid his
+hand on Recklow's arm:
+
+"Nothing. It is what they have not done--fed her. That's all she
+needs--and sleep."
+
+Recklow gazed heavily upon her. But if the young fail rapidly, they
+also respond quickly.
+
+"Come into the house,"
+
+Perhaps it was the hot broth with wine in it that brought a slight
+colour back into her ghastly face--the face once so youthfully
+lovely but now as delicate as the mask of death itself.
+
+Candles twinkled on the little table where the girl now lay back
+listlessly in the depths of an armchair, her chin sunk on her
+breast.
+
+Recklow sat opposite her, writing on a pad in shorthand. McKay,
+resting his ragged elbows on the cloth, his haggard face between
+both hands, went on talking in a colourless, mechanical voice which
+an iron will alone flogged into speech:
+
+"Killed two of them and took their clothes and papers," he continued
+monotonously; "that was last August--near the end of the month....
+The Boche had tens of thousands working there. AND EVERY ONE OF THEM
+WAS INSANE."
+
+"What!"
+
+"Yes, that is the way they were operating--the only way they dared
+operate. I think all that enormous work has been done by the insane
+during the last forty years. You see, the Boche have nothing to
+dread from the insane. Anyway the majority of them died in harness.
+Those who became useless--intractable or crippled--were merely
+returned to the asylums from which they had been drafted. And the
+Hun government saw to it that nobody should have access to them.
+
+"Besides, who would believe a crazy man or woman if they babbled
+about the Great Secret?"
+
+He covered his visage with his bony hands and rested so for a few
+moments, then, forcing himself again:
+
+"The Hun for forty years has drafted the insane from every asylum in
+the Empire to do this gigantic work for him. Men, women, even
+children, chained, guarded, have done the physical work.... The
+Pyramids were builded so, they say.... And in this manner is being
+finished that colossal engineering work which is never spoken of
+among the Huns except when necessary, and which is known among them
+as The Great Secret.... Recklow, it was conceived as a vast
+engineering project forty-eight years ago--in 1870 during the
+Franco-Prussian war. It was begun that same year.... And it is
+practically finished. Except for one obstacle."
+
+Recklow's lifted eyes stared at him over his pad.
+
+"It is virtually finished," repeated McKay in his toneless,
+unaccented voice which carried such terrible conviction to the other
+man. "Forty-eight years ago the Hun planned a huge underground
+highway carrying four lines of railroad tracks. It was to begin east
+of the Rhine in the neighbourhood of Zell, slant into the bowels of
+the earth, pass deep under the Rhine, deep under the Swiss frontier,
+deep, deep under Mount Terrible and under the French frontier, and
+emerge in France BEHIND Belfort, Toul, Nancy, and Verdun."
+
+Recklow laid his pad on the table and looked intently at McKay. The
+latter said in his ghost of a voice: "You are beginning to suspect
+my sanity." He turned with an effort and fixed his hollow eyes on
+Evelyn Erith.
+
+"We are sane," he said. "But I don't blame you, Recklow. We have
+lived among the mad for more than a year--among thousands and
+thousands and thousands of them--of men and women and even children
+in whose minds the light of reason had died out.... Thirty thousand
+dying minds in which only a dreadful twilight reigned!... I don't
+know how we endured it--and retained our reason.... Do you,
+Yellow-hair?"
+
+The girl did not reply. He spoke to her again, then fell silent. For
+the girl slept, her delicate, deathly face dropped forward on her
+breast.
+
+Presently McKay turned to Recklow once more; and Recklow picked up
+his pad with a slight shudder.
+
+"Forty-eight years," repeated McKay--"and the work of the Hun is
+nearly done--a wide highway under the earth's surface flanked by
+four lines of rails--broad-gauge tracks--everything now working, all
+rolling-stock and electric engines moving smoothly and swiftly....
+Two tracks carry troops; two carry ammunition and munitions. A
+highway a hundred feet wide runs between.
+
+"Ten miles from the Rhine, under the earth, there is a Hun city,
+with a garrison of sixty thousand men!... There are other cities
+along the line--"
+
+"Deep down!"
+
+"Deep under the earth."
+
+"There must be shafts!" said Recklow hoarsely.
+
+"None."
+
+"No shafts to the surface?"
+
+"Not one."
+
+"No pipe? No communication with the outer air?"
+
+Then McKay's sunken eyes glittered and he stiffened up, and his
+wasted features seemed to shrink until the parting of his lips
+showed his teeth. It was a dreadful laughter--his manner, now, of
+expressing mirth.
+
+"Recklow," he said, "in 1914 that vast enterprise was scheduled to
+be finished according to plan. With the declaration of war in August
+the Hun was to have blasted his way to the surface of French soil
+behind the barrier forts! He was prepared to do it in half an hour's
+time.
+
+"Do you understand? Do you see how it was planned? For forty-eight
+years the Hun had been preparing to seize France and crush Europe.
+
+"When the Hun was ready he murdered the Austrian archduke--the most
+convenient solution of the problem for the Hun Kaiser, who presented
+himself with the pretext for war by getting rid of the only Austrian
+with whom he couldn't do business."
+
+Again McKay laughed, silently, showing his discoloured teeth.
+
+"So the archduke died according to plan; and there was
+war--according to plan. And then, Recklow, GOD'S HAND MOVED!--very
+slightly--indolently--scarcely stirring at all.... A drop of icy
+water percolated the limestone on Mount Terrible; other drops
+followed; linked by these drops a thin stream crept downward in the
+earth along the limestone fissures, washing away glacial sands that
+had lodged there since time began."... He leaned forward and his
+brilliant, sunken eyes peered into Recklow's:
+
+"Since 1914," he said, "the Staubbach has fallen into the bowels of
+the earth and the Hun has been fighting it miles under the earth's
+surface.
+
+"They can't operate from the glacier on the white Shoulder of
+Thusis; whenever they calk it and plug it and stop it with tons of
+reinforced waterproof concrete--whenever on the surface of the world
+they dam it and turn it into new channels, it evades them. And in a
+new place its icy water bursts through--as though every stratum in
+the Alps dipped toward their underground tunnel to carry the water
+from the Glacier of Thusis into it!"
+
+He clenched his wasted hands and struck the table without a sound:
+
+"God blocks them, damn them!" he said in his ghost of a voice. "God
+bars the Boche! They shall not pass!"
+
+He leaned nearer, twisting his clenched fingers together: "We saw
+them, Recklow. We saw the Staubbach fighting for right of way; we
+saw the Hun fighting the Staubbach--Darkness battling with
+Light!--the Hun against the Most High!--miles under the earth's
+crust, Recklow.... Do you believe in God?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Yes.... We saw Him at work--that young girl asleep there, and
+I--month after month we watched Him check and dismay the modern
+Pharaoh--we watched Him countermine the Nibelungen and mock their
+filthy Gott! And Recklow, we laughed, sometimes, where laughter
+among clouded minds means nothing--nothing even to the Hun--nor
+causes suspicion nor brings punishment other than the accustomed
+kick and blow which the Hun reserves for all who are helpless."...
+He bowed his head in his hands. "All who are weak and stricken," he
+whispered to himself.
+
+Recklow said: "Did they harm--HER?" And,
+
+McKay looked up at that, baring his teeth in a swift snarl:
+
+"No--you see her clipped hair--and the thin body.... In her blouse
+she passed for a boy, unquestioned, unnoticed. There were thousands
+of us, you see.... Some of the insane women were badly treated--all
+of the younger ones.... But she and I were together.... And I had my
+pistol in reserve--for the crisis!--always in reserve--always ready
+for her." Recklow nodded. McKay went on:
+
+"We fought the Staubbach in shifts.... And all through those months
+of autumn and winter there was no chance for us to get away. It is
+not cold under ground.... It was like a dark, thick dream. We tried
+to realise that war was going on, over our heads, up above us
+somewhere in daylight--where there was sun and where stars were....
+It was like a thick dream, Recklow. The stars seemed very far...."
+
+"You had passed as inmates of some German asylum?"
+
+"We had killed two landwehr on the Staubbach. That was a year ago
+last August--" He looked at the sleeping girl beside him: "My
+little comrade and I undressed the swine and took their uniforms....
+After a long while--privations had made us both light-headed I
+think--we saw a camp of the insane in the woods--a fresh relay from
+Mulhaus. We talked with their guards--being in Landwehr uniform it
+was easy. The insane were clothed like miners. Late that night we
+exchanged clothes with two poor, demented creatures who retained
+sufficient reason, however, to realise that our uniforms meant
+freedom.... They crept away into the forest. We remained.... And
+marched at dawn--straight into the jaws of the Great Secret!"
+
+Recklow had remained at the telephone until dawn. And now Belfort
+was through with him and Verdun understood, and Paris had relayed to
+Headquarters and Headquarters had instructed John Recklow.
+
+Before Recklow went to bed he parted his curtain and looked out at
+the misty dawn.
+
+In the silvery dusk a cock-pheasant was crowing somewhere on a
+wheat-field's edge. A barnyard chanticleer replied. Clear and
+truculent rang out the challenge of the Gallic cock in the dawn,
+warning his wild neighbour to keep to the wilds. So the French
+trumpets challenge the shrill, barbaric fanfares of the Hun, warning
+him back into the dull and shadowy wilderness from whence he
+ventured.
+
+Recklow was awake, dressed, and had breakfasted by eight o'clock.
+
+McKay, in his little chamber on the right, still slept. Evelyn
+Erith, in the tiny room on the left, slept deeply.
+
+So Recklow went out into his garden, opened the wooden door in the
+wall, seated himself, lighted his pipe, and watched the Belfort
+road.
+
+About ten o'clock two American electricians came buzzing up on
+motor-cycles. Recklow got up and went to the door in the wall as
+they dismounted. After a short, whispered consultation they guided
+their machines into the garden, through a paved alley to a tiled
+shed. Then they went on duty, one taking the telephone in Recklow's
+private office, the other busying himself with the clutter of maps
+and papers. And Recklow went back to the door in the wall. About
+eleven an American motor ambulance drove up. A nurse carrying her
+luggage got out, and Recklow met her.
+
+After another whispered consultation he picked up the nurse's
+luggage, led her into the house, and showed her all over it.
+
+"I don't know," he said, "whether they are too badly done in to
+travel as far as Belfort. There'll be a Yankee regimental doctor
+here to-day or to-morrow. He'll know. So let 'em sleep. And you
+can give them the once-over when they wake, and then get busy in the
+kitchen."
+
+The girl laughed and nodded.
+
+"Be good to them," added Recklow. "They'll get crosses and legions
+enough but they've got to be well to enjoy them. So keep them in bed
+until the doctor comes. There are bathrobes and things in my room."
+
+"I understand, sir."
+
+"Right," said Recklow briefly. Then he went to his room, changed his
+clothes to knickerbockers, his shoes for heavier ones, picked up a
+rifle, a pair of field-glasses and a gas-mask, slung a satchel
+containing three days' rations over his powerful shoulders, and went
+out into the street.
+
+Six Alpinists awaited him. They were peculiarly accoutred, every
+soldier carrying, beside rifle, haversack and blanket, a flat tank
+strapped on his back like a knapsack.
+
+Their sergeant saluted; he and Recklow exchanged a few words in
+whispers. Then Recklow strode away down the Belfort road. And the
+oddly accoutred Alpinists followed him, their steel-shod soles
+ringing on the pavement.
+
+Where the Swiss wire bars the frontier no sentinels paced that noon.
+This was odd. Stranger still, a gap had been cut in the wire.
+
+And into this gap strode Recklow, and behind him trotted the nimble
+blue-devils, single file; and they and their leader took the
+ascending path which leads to the Calvary on Mount Terrible.
+
+Standing that same afternoon on the rocks of that grim Calvary, with
+the weatherbeaten figure of Christ towering on the black cross above
+them, Recklow and his men gazed out across the tumbled mountains to
+where the White Shoulder of Thusis gleamed in the sun.
+
+Through their glasses they could sweep the glacier to its terminal
+moraine. That was not very far away, and the "dust" from the
+Staubbach could be distinguished drifting out of the green ravine
+like a windy cloud of steam.
+
+"Allons," said Recklow briefly.
+
+They slept that night in their blankets so close to the Staubbach
+that its wet, silvery dust powdered them, at times, like snow.
+
+At dawn they were afield, running everywhere over the rocks,
+searching hollows, probing chasms, creeping into ravines, and always
+following the torrent which dashed whitely through its limestone
+canon.
+
+Perhaps the Alpine eagles saw them. But no Swiss patrol disturbed
+them. Perhaps there was fear somewhere in the Alpine
+Confederation--fear in high places.
+
+Also it is possible that the bellowing bluster of the guns at Metz
+may have allayed that fear in high places; and that terror of the
+Hun was already becoming less deathly among the cantons of a race
+which had trembled under Boche blackmail for a hundred years.
+However, for whatever reason it might have been, no Swiss patrols
+bothered the blue devils and Mr. Recklow.
+
+And they continued to swarm over the Alpine landscape at their own
+convenience; on the Calvary of Mount Terrible they erected a dwarf
+wireless station; a hundred men came from Delle with radio-
+impedimenta; six American airmen arrived; American planes circled
+over the northern border, driving off the squadrilla of Count von
+Dresslin.
+
+And on the second night Recklow's men built fires and camped
+carelessly beside the brilliant warmth, while "mountain mutton"
+frizzled on pointed sticks and every blue-devil smacked his lips.
+
+On the early morning of the third day Recklow discovered what he had
+been looking for. And an Alpinist signalled an airplane over Mount
+Terrible from the White Shoulder of Thusis. Two hours later a full
+battalion of Alpinists crossed Mount Terrible by the Neck of Woods
+and exchanged flag signals with Recklow's men. They had with them a
+great number of cylinders, coils of wire, and other curious-looking
+paraphernalia.
+
+When they came up to the ravine where Recklow and his men were
+grouped they immediately became very busy with their cylinders,
+wires, hose-pipes, and other instruments.
+
+It had been a beautiful ravine where Recklow now stood--was still as
+pretty and picturesque as a dry water-course can be with the
+bowlders bleaching in the sun and green things beginning to grow in
+what had been the bed of a rushing stream. For, just above this
+ravine, the water ended: the Staubbach poured its full, icy volume
+directly downward into the bowels of the earth with a hollow,
+thundering sound; the bed of the stream was bone-dry beyond. And now
+the blue-devils were unreeling wire and plumbing this chasm into
+which the Staubbach thundered. On the end of the wire was an
+electric bulb, lighted. Recklow watched the wire unreeling, foot
+after foot, rod after rod, plumbing the dark burrow of the Boche
+deep down under the earth.
+
+And, when they were ready, guided by the wire, they lowered the
+curious hose-pipe, down, down, ever down, attaching reel after reel
+to the lengthening tube until Recklow checked them and turned to
+watch the men who stood feeding the wire into the roaring chasm.
+
+Suddenly, as he watched, the flowing wire stopped, swayed violently
+sideways, then was jerked out of the men's hands.
+
+"The Boche bites!" they shouted. Their officer, reading the measured
+wire, turned to Recklow and gave him the depth; the hose-pipe ran
+out sixty yards; then Recklow checked it and put on his gasmask as
+the whistle signal rang out along the mountain.
+
+Now, everywhere, masked figures swarmed over the place; cylinders
+were laid, hose attached, other batteries of cylinders were ranged
+in line and connections laid ready for instant adjustment.
+
+Recklow raised his right arm, then struck it downward violently. The
+gas from the first cylinder went whistling into the hose.
+
+At the same time an unmasked figure on the cliff above began talking
+by American radiophone with three planes half a mile in the air
+above him. He spoke naturally, easily, into a transmitter to which
+no wires were attached.
+
+He was still talking when Recklow arrived at his side from the
+ravine below, tore off his gas-mask, and put on a peculiar helmet.
+Then, taking the transmitter into his right hand: "Do you get them?"
+he demanded of his companion, an American lieutenant.
+
+"No trouble, sir. No need to raise one's voice. They hear quite
+perfectly, and one hears them, sir."
+
+Then Recklow spoke to the three airplanes circling like hawks in the
+sky overhead; and one by one the observers in each machine replied
+in English, their voices easily audible.
+
+"I want Zell watched from the air," said Recklow. "The Boche have an
+underground tunnel beginning near Zell, continuing under Mount
+Terrible to the French frontier.
+
+"I want the Zell end of the tunnel kept under observation.
+
+"Send our planes in from Belfort, Toul, Nancy, and Verdun.
+
+"And keep me informed whether railroad trains, camions, or cavalry
+come out. And whether indeed any living thing emerges from the end
+of the tunnel near Zell.
+
+"Because we are gassing the tunnel from this ravine. And I think
+we've got the dirty vermin wholesale!"
+
+At sundown a plane appeared overhead and talked to Recklow:
+
+"One railroad train came out. But it was manned by dead men, I
+think, because it crashed into the rear masonry of the station and
+was smashed."
+
+"Nothing else, living or dead, came out?"
+
+"Nothing, sir. There is wild excitement at Zell. Troops at the
+tunnel's mouth wear gas-masks. We bombed them and raked them. The
+Boche planes took the air but two crashed and the rest turned east."
+
+"You saw no living creature escape from the Zell end of the tunnel?"
+
+"Not a soul, sir."
+
+Recklow turned to the group of officers around him:
+
+"I guess they're done for," he said. "That fumigation cleaned out
+the vermin. But keep the tunnel pumped full of gas.... Au revoir,
+messieurs!"
+
+On his way back across Mount Terrible he encountered a relay of
+Alpinists bringing fresh gas. tanks; and he laughed and saluted
+their officers. "This poor old world needs a de-lousing," he said.
+"Foch will attend to it up here on top of the world. See that you
+gentlemen, purge her interior!"
+
+The nurse opened the door and looked into the garden. Then she
+closed the door, gently, and went back into the house.
+
+For she had seen a slim girl with short yellow hair curling all over
+her head, and that head was resting on a young man's shoulder.
+
+It seemed unnecessary, too, because there were two steamer chairs
+under the rose arbor, side by side, and pillows sufficient for each.
+
+And why a slim young girl should prefer to pillow her curly, yellow
+head upon the shoulder of a rather gaunt young man--the shoulder,
+presumably, being bony and uncomfortable--she alone could explain
+perhaps.
+
+The young man did not appear to be inconvenienced. He caressed her
+hair while he spoke:
+
+"From here to Belfort," he was saying in his musing, agreeable
+voice, "and from Belfort to Paris; and from Paris to London, and
+from London to Strathlone Head, and from Strathlone Head to Glenark
+Cliffs, and from Glenark Cliffs to Isla Water, and from Isla
+Water--to our home! Our home, Yellow-hair," he repeated. "What do you
+think of that?"
+
+"I think you have forgotten the parson's house on the way. You are
+immoral, Kay."
+
+"Can't a Yank sky-pilot in Paris--"
+
+"Darling, I must have some clothing!"
+
+"Can't you get things in Paris?"
+
+"Yes, if you'll wait and not become impatient for Isla. And I warn
+you, Kay, I simply won't marry you until I have some decent gowns
+and underwear."
+
+"You don't care for me as much as I do for you," he murmured in lazy
+happiness.
+
+"I care for you more. I've cared for you longer, too."
+
+"How long, Yellow-hair?"
+
+"Ever--ever since your head lay on my knees in my car a year ago
+last winter! You know it, too," she added. "You are a spoiled young
+man. I shall not tell you again how much I care for you!"
+
+"Say 'love',' Yellow-hair," he coaxed.
+
+"No!"
+
+"Don't you?"
+
+"Don't I what?"
+
+"Love me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then won't you say it?"
+
+She laughed contentedly. Then her warm head moved a little on his
+shoulder; he looked down; lightly their lips joined.
+
+"Kay--my dear--dear Kay," she whispered.
+
+"There's somebody opening the garden door," she said under her
+breath, and sat bolt upright.
+
+McKay also sat up on his steamer chair.
+
+"Oh!" he cried gaily, "hello, Recklow! Where on earth have you been
+for three days?"
+
+Recklow came into the rose arbour. The blossoms were gone from the
+vines but it was a fragrant, golden place into which the September
+sun filtered. He lifted Miss Erith's hand and kissed it gravely.
+"How are you?" he inquired.
+
+"Perfectly well, and ready for Paris!" she said smilingly.
+
+Recklow shook hands with McKay.
+
+"You'll want a furlough, too," he remarked. "I'll fix it. How do you
+feel, McKay?"
+
+"All right. Has anything come out of our report on the Great
+Secret?"
+
+Recklow seated himself and they listened in strained silence to his
+careful report. Once Evelyn caught her breath and Recklow paused and
+turned to look at her.
+
+"There were thousands and thousands of insane down there under the
+earth," she said pitifully.
+
+"Yes," he nodded.
+
+"Did--did they all die?"
+
+"Are the insane not better dead, Miss Erith?" he asked calmly....
+And continued his recital.
+
+That evening there was a full moon over the garden. Recklow lingered
+with them after dinner for a while, discussing the beginning of the
+end of all things Hunnish. For Foch was striking at last; Pershing
+was moving; Haig, Gouraud, Petain, all were marching toward the
+field of Armageddon. They conversed for a while, the men smoking.
+Then Recklow went away across the dewy grass, followed by two frisky
+and factious cats.
+
+But when McKay took Miss Erith's head into his arms the girl's eyes
+were wet.
+
+"The way they died down there--I can't help it, Kay," she faltered.
+"Oh, Kay, Kay, you must love me enough to make me forget--forget--"
+
+And she clasped his neck tightly in both her arms.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of In Secret, by Robert W. Chambers
+
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