Mr. Standfast
sitting here this afternoon and he may be coming back.”
I solved the problem by turning up the escritoire and putting my knee
through the cupboard door. Out of it tumbled a little dark-green
attache case.
“This is getting solemn,” said Mary. “Is it locked?”
It was, but I took my knife and cut the lock out and spilled the
contents on the table. There were some papers, a newspaper or two, and
a small bag tied with black cord. The last I opened, while Mary looked
over my shoulder. It contained a fine yellowish powder.
“Stand back,” I said harshly. “For God’s sake, stand back and don’t
breathe.”
With trembling hands I tied up the bag again, rolled it in a newspaper,
and stuffed it into my pocket. For I remembered a day near Peronne when
a Boche plane had come over in the night and had dropped little bags
like this. Happily they were all collected, and the men who found them
were wise and took them off to the nearest laboratory. They proved to
be full of anthrax germs....
I remembered how Eaucourt Sainte-Anne stood at the junction of a dozen
roads where all day long troops passed to and from the lines. From such
a vantage ground an enemy could wreck the health of an army....
I remembered the woman I had seen in the courtyard of this house in the
foggy dusk, and I knew now why she had worn a gas-mask.
This discovery gave me a horrid shock. I was brought down with a crash
from my high sentiment to something earthly and devilish. I was fairly
well used to Boche filthiness, but this seemed too grim a piece of the
utterly damnable. I wanted to have Ivery by the throat and force the
stuff into his body, and watch him decay slowly into the horror he had
contrived for honest men.
“Let’s get out of this infernal place,” I said.
But Mary was not listening. She had picked up one of the newspapers and
was gloating over it. I looked and saw that it was open at an
advertisement of Weissmann’s “Deep-breathing” system.
“Oh, look, Dick,” she cried breathlessly.
The column of type had little dots made by a red pencil below certain
words.
“It’s it,” she whispered, “it’s the cipher—I’m almost sure it’s the
cipher!”
“Well, he’d be likely to know it if anyone did.”
“But don’t you see it’s the cipher which Chelius uses—the man in
Switzerland? Oh, I can’t explain now, for it’s very long, but I think—I
think—I have found out what we have all been wanting. Chelius....”
“Whisht!” I said. “What’s that?”
There was a queer sound from the out-of-doors as if a sudden wind had
risen in the still night.
“It’s only a car on the main road,” said Mary.
“How did you get in?” I asked.
“By the broken window in the next room. I cycled out here one morning,
and walked round the place and found the broken catch.”
“Perhaps it is left open on purpose. That may be the way M. Bommaerts
visits his country home.... Let’s get off, Mary, for this place has a
curse on it. It deserves fire from heaven.”
I slipped the contents of the attache case into my pockets. “I’m going
to drive you back,” I said. “I’ve got a car out there.”
“Then you must take my bicycle and my servant too. He’s an old friend
of yours—one Andrew Amos.”
“Now how on earth did Andrew get over here?”
“He’s one of us,” said Mary, laughing at my surprise. “A most useful
member of our party, at present disguised as an _infirmier_ in Lady
Manorwater’s Hospital at Douvecourt. He is learning French, and....”
“Hush!” I whispered. “There’s someone in the next room.”
I swept her behind a stack of furniture, with my eyes glued on a crack
of light below the door. The handle turned and the shadows raced before
a big electric lamp of the kind they have in stables. I could not see
the bearer, but I guessed it was the old woman.
There was a man behind her. A brisk step sounded on the parquet, and a
figure brushed past her. It wore the horizon-blue of a French officer,
very smart, with those French riding-boots that show the shape of the
leg, and a handsome fur-lined pelisse. I would have called him a young
man, not more than thirty-five. The face was brown and clean-shaven,
the eyes bright and masterful.... Yet he did not deceive me. I had not
boasted idly to Sir Walter when I said that there was one man alive who
could never again be mistaken by me.
I had my hand on my pistol, as I motioned Mary farther back into the
shadows. For a second I was about to shoot. I had a perfect mark and
could have put a bullet through his brain with utter certitude. I think
if I had been alone I might have fired. Perhaps not. Anyhow now I could
not do it. It seemed like potting at a sitting rabbit. I was obliged,
though he was my worst enemy, to give him a chance, while all the while
my sober senses kept calling me a fool.
I stepped into the light.
“Hullo, Mr Ivery,” I said. “This is an odd place to meet again!”
In his amazement he fell back a step, while his hungry eyes took in my
face. There was no mistake about the recognition. I saw something I had
seen once before in him, and that was fear. Out went the light and he
sprang for the door.
I fired in the dark, but the shot must have been too high. In the same
instant I heard him slip on the smooth parquet and the tinkle of glass
as the broken window swung open. Hastily I reflected that his car must
be at the moat end of the terrace, and that therefore to reach it he
must pass outside this very room. Seizing the damaged escritoire, I
used it as a ram, and charged the window nearest me. The panes and
shutters went with a crash, for I had driven the thing out of its
rotten frame. The next second I was on the moonlit snow.
I got a shot at him as he went over the terrace, and again I went wide.
I never was at my best with a pistol. Still I reckoned I had got him,
for the car which was waiting below must come back by the moat to reach
the highroad. But I had forgotten the great closed park gates. Somehow
or other they must have been opened, for as soon as the car started it
headed straight for the grand avenue. I tried a couple of long-range
shots after it, and one must have damaged either Ivery or his
chauffeur, for there came back a cry of pain.
I turned in deep chagrin to find Mary beside me. She was bubbling with
laughter.
“Were you ever a cinema actor, Dick? The last two minutes have been a
really high-class performance. ‘Featuring Mary Lamington.’ How does the
jargon go?”
“I could have got him when he first entered,” I said ruefully.
“I know,” she said in a graver tone. “Only of course you couldn’t....
Besides, Mr Blenkiron doesn’t want it—yet.”
She put her hand on my arm. “Don’t worry about it. It wasn’t written it
should happen that way. It would have been too easy. We have a long
road to travel yet before we clip the wings of the Wild Birds.”
“Look,” I cried. “The fire from heaven!”
Red tongues of flame were shooting up from the out-buildings at the
farther end, the place where I had first seen the woman. Some agreed
plan must have been acted on, and Ivery was destroying all traces of
his infamous yellow powder. Even now the _concierge_ with her odds and
ends of belongings would be slipping out to some refuge in the village.
In the still dry night the flames rose, for the place must have been
made ready for a rapid burning. As I hurried Mary round the moat I
could see that part of the main building had caught fire. The hamlet
was awakened, and before we reached the corner of the highroad sleepy
British soldiers were hurrying towards the scene, and the Town Major
was mustering the fire brigade. I knew that Ivery had laid his plans
well, and that they hadn’t a chance—that long before dawn the Château
of Eaucourt Sainte-Anne would be a heap of ashes and that in a day or
two the lawyers of the aged Marquise at Biarritz would be wrangling
with the insurance company.
At the corner stood Amos beside two bicycles, solid as a graven image.
He recognised me with a gap-toothed grin.
“It’s a cauld night, General, but the home fires keep burnin’. I havena
seen such a cheery lowe since Dickson’s mill at Gawly.”
We packed, bicycles and all, into my car with Amos wedged in the narrow
seat beside Hamilton. Recognizing a fellow countryman, he gave thanks
for the lift in the broadest Doric. “For,” said he, “I’m not what you
would call a practised hand wi’ a velocipede, and my feet are dinnled
wi’ standin’ in the snaw.”
As for me, the miles to Douvecourt passed as in a blissful moment of
time. I wrapped Mary in a fur rug, and after that we did not speak a
word. I had come suddenly into a great possession and was dazed with
the joy of it.
CHAPTER XIV
Mr Blenkiron Discourses on Love and War
Three days later I got my orders to report at Paris for special
service. They came none too soon, for I chafed at each hour’s delay.
Every thought in my head was directed to the game which we were playing
against Ivery. He was the big enemy, compared to whom the ordinary
Boche in the trenches was innocent and friendly. I had almost lost
interest in my division, for I knew that for me the real battle-front
was not in Picardy, and that my job was not so easy as holding a length
of line. Also I longed to be at the same work as Mary.
I remember waking up in billets the morning after the night at the
Château with the feeling that I had become extraordinarily rich. I felt
very humble, too, and very kindly towards all the world—even to the
Boche, though I can’t say I had ever hated him very wildly. You find
hate more among journalists and politicians at home than among fighting
men. I wanted to be quiet and alone to think, and since that was
impossible I went about my work in a happy abstraction. I tried not to
look ahead, but only to live in the present, remembering that a war was
on, and that there was desperate and dangerous business before me, and
that my hopes hung on a slender thread. Yet for all that I had
sometimes to let my fancies go free, and revel in delicious dreams.
But there was one thought that always brought me back to hard ground,
and that was Ivery. I do not think I hated anybody in the world but
him. It was his relation to Mary that stung me. He had the insolence
with all his toad-like past to make love to that clean and radiant
girl. I felt that he and I stood as mortal antagonists, and the thought
pleased me, for it helped me to put some honest detestation into my
job. Also I was going to win. Twice I had failed, but the third time I
should succeed. It had been like ranging shots for a gun—first short,
second over, and I vowed that the third should be dead on the mark.
I was summoned to G.H.Q., where I had half an hour’s talk with the
greatest British commander. I can see yet his patient, kindly face and
that steady eye which no vicissitude of fortune could perturb. He took
the biggest view, for he was statesman as well as soldier, and knew
that the whole world was one battle-field and every man and woman among
the combatant nations was in the battle-line. So contradictory is human
nature, that talk made me wish for a moment to stay where I was. I
wanted to go on serving under that man. I realised suddenly how much I
loved my work, and when I got back to my quarters that night and saw my
men swinging in from a route march I could have howled like a dog at
leaving them. Though I say it who shouldn’t, there wasn’t a better
division in the Army.
One morning a few days later I picked up Mary in Amiens. I always liked
the place, for after the dirt of the Somme it was a comfort to go there
for a bath and a square meal, and it had the noblest church that the
hand of man ever built for God. It was a clear morning when we started
from the boulevard beside the railway station; and the air smelt of
washed streets and fresh coffee, and women were going marketing and the