The Girl Philippa
a few days more.... Which means only one thing."
"What does it mean?"
"War."
Warner smiled incredulously.
"Anyway, there will be one compensation for the general smash if you
remain here," he said gayly.
"You're very good to take it that way.... You and I--and to hell with
the Deluge!" But his face sobered while the jest was spoken; he leaned
rather wearily on the iron table and rested his forehead in one hand.
"I wish I knew what has happened to Reginald Gray," he repeated.
"What is it that worries you about your friend Gray?"
"His cap was picked up on the highway five miles southeast of Sais."
"How could you know that?"
"I have just learned it by telephone, through a certain source of
information."
"Did you learn anything more?"
"_There was a little blood on the road._"
Warner remained silent.
"Also," continued Halkett thoughtfully, "a motor cycle had skidded up
the bank.... But no signs of a serious accident could be
discovered--merely the ragged swathe cut through soft earth and rank
vegetation.... If Gray met with an accident, he must have mended his
machine, remounted, and continued his course--wherever he was
going--unless somebody picked up him and his wheel and took them
away.... I can't understand this affair. It bothers me."
"The chances are that your friend Gray had a rather bad spill,"
suggested Warner, "and no doubt you'll hear from him, or about him,
before morning."
"I ought to, certainly." He filled and lighted his pipe; Warner rose
and began to pace the garden path rather nervously. Presently he came
back to where the Englishman sat brooding over his pipe and nursing
Ariadne.
"Halkett," he said abruptly, "you remember that girl Philippa in the
Cafe Biribi?"
The Englishman looked up inquiringly.
"Well, she is here."
"At the inn?"
"Yes. I met her down in the big river meadow this afternoon, and she
calmly informed me that she had left home for good."
"Run away?"
"Run away. Taken the key of the fields. Beat it for keeps. How does
that strike you?"
"Any particular reason?" inquired Halkett indifferently.
"Why, yes. The child has been used by the secret police to spy on
people in the Cafe Biribi."
Halkett's eyes opened at that.
Warner went on:
"That old rascal, Wildresse, it seems, is nothing but a paid informer.
He forced this girl Philippa to engage in the same filthy business. She
even admitted that old Wildresse had set her on _me_! No doubt he had
decided to watch you himself. And do you know what I think?"
Halkett was very wide-awake now. He said:
"I believe I do know what you are thinking. And I believe you are
pretty nearly right."
"That the assault on you was merely a local matter instigated by
Wildresse?"
"It wouldn't surprise me."
"I think it was, too. Some of his thugs did it. He had made up his
mind about you. But somebody must have tipped him off to watch you."
"Probably."
"I am sure of it. The three German-appearing men who tried to pick a
quarrel with you over the Archduke's murder were not the men who tried
to frisk you for your papers. They were 'provocative agents' in the pay
of a foreign government--hired opportunists who were expected to pick
something of value out of any confusion attending a general row fomented
by themselves."
"Who told you that?"
"Philippa."
Halkett, now thoroughly interested, looked keenly at Warner through the
thin haze of his pipe.
"These three agents," continued Warner, "were certainly in close
communication with the men who have been following you. And at least
one of those men was seated at the table directly behind you when
Wildresse's thugs tried to frisk you for documents. So you see that
Wildresse, prodded by the French secret police, and these provocative
agents, prodded by the people who are following you, who, in turn, are
spurred by the German Government, were all playing at cross purposes,
but with you as a common objective. A fine nest of intrigue I led you
into when I took you to the Cabaret de Biribi! I'm terribly sorry,
Halkett. But I believe that some good has come out of that mess--a
fragment of a letter, written in German, which Philippa gave me in the
meadow this afternoon.
"She found it under the wrecked table behind you. Nobody has seen it
except myself and Philippa; and the child cannot read much German. But,
studying it and seeing your name in the letter, she was clever enough to
bring it to me. Here it is." He laid it on the table under the
Englishman's eyes.
While Halkett remained absorbed in his translation, Warner paced the
garden, deeply occupied with his own uneasy cogitations. After a little
while Halkett spoke to him in an altered voice, and he turned and came
swiftly back to the arbor.
The Englishman, looking up, said gravely:
"Concerning myself, there seems to remain now nothing worth concealing
from you.... Perhaps you had better know the truth. I happen to be an
officer temporarily serving with the Intelligence Department; I had just
been assigned to duty in New York when the Harkness shell was stolen.
The general alarm went out. Gray, a brother officer, and I chanced to
stumble on evidence which sent us aboard an Antwerp steamer. Our birds
were aboard. We pulled every string available, and, passing over the
details of the affair, he and I managed to recover the drawings,
specifications, and formula which had been stolen. Some of these papers
are in that envelope.
"Every German agent in Europe knows we have them. My Government, for
some reason or other, instructs me to remain here for the present. As
Gray and I are known, doubtless somebody will appear and take the
drawings out of our hands, because the chances are that I'd be murdered
before I reached Calais. That is the situation, Warner."
"Has Gray any of the drawings?"
"He has."
"I understand."
"And that is why I am worrying about Gray. They'd not hesitate to kill
him if they thought there was a chance that he had any of the papers."
Warner said:
"They couldn't have killed him. A crime on the public highway cannot
remain undiscovered very long."
Halkett sat thoughtfully stroking Ariadne. Presently he looked up with
a slight smile.
"Well, what are you going to do with the girl Philippa?" he inquired.
"Now, what do you think of a situation like this?" demanded Warner, half
laughing, half vexed. "I told her to go home. She positively refuses.
You can't blame the child. The dirty business there has disgusted her.
This seems to be a final revolt. But--what would _you_ do if a young
girl wished herself on _you_?"
"I haven't the faintest idea," said Halkett, intensely amused.
Warner reddened.
"I haven't either," he said. "All I can think of is to use her as a
model--give her a small salary until she finds something to do."
"Are you going to use her for a model?"
"I suppose so, until somebody comes after her to take her back."
"Suppose nobody comes?" suggested Halkett mischievously.
"Well, I'm not going to adopt her, that's certain," insisted the other.
"Poor little thing!" he added. "--Her instincts seem to be decent. Who
could blame a young girl for sickening of such a life and cutting away
on her own hook? That's a rotten joint, that Cabaret de Biribi. And as
for that old villain, Wildresse, it wouldn't surprise me at all if he
were playing the dirty game from both ends--German and French.
Informers are often traitors."
"Very frequently."
"Spies also have that reputation, I believe--except in romantic
fiction," said Warner.
"They usually deserve it," returned Halkett. "Generally speaking, they
are a scum recruited from low pubs and brothels. Rarely does any
reputable person enter that profession except in line of military duty
or in time of war.
"Servants, waiters, chauffeurs, those are the most respectable classes
of secret agents. But the demi-monde and their hangers-on furnish the
majority of those popularly supposed to represent people of position who
play the role of international spy. They are a rummy lot, Warner.
"It is very, very seldom in Occidental drawing-rooms that such practices
prevail. A woman of position very rarely becomes a paid agent of that
sort. Diplomats and attaches who are pumped and victimized are usually
the dupes of socially disreputable people. Society in England and in
Western Europe rarely entertains such a favorite of fiction as a paid
Government spy; nor are such people very often recruited from its ranks.
East of the Danube it is different."
They sat for a while smoking, Halkett lavishing endearments upon Ariadne
who never failed to respond, Warner musing on what Halkett had said and
wondering exactly what duties the Military Intelligence Department of
any Government might include.
No doubt, like the Government, it employs spies, and, like the
Government, never admits the fact.
For among all outcasts so vitally necessary to autocracy and militarism,
the spy is the most pitiable: in time of peace no authority admits
employing him; in time of war, his fate, if taken, is as certain as that
his own Government will disown him. Eternally repudiated, whether of
respectable or disreputable antecedents, honest or otherwise, patriotic
or mercenary, the world has only one opinion to express concerning
spies, although it often cackles over their adventures and snivels over
their fate.
Perhaps Halkett was musing on these things, for presently he took his
pipe from his mouth and said:
"To my knowledge, we British never employ spies in America. Your
Government, I know, never employs them anywhere in time of peace. All
other Governments do. Europe swarms with them. If I were in Germany
today, I'd be considered a spy. They'd follow me about and lock me up
on the first excuse--or without any excuse at all. And if we chanced to
be at war with Germany, and I were caught, they'd certainly shoot me
because I have recovered stolen property."
"They'd execute you because you are not in uniform?"
"Certainly. I'd not stand a ghost of a chance. So I shall be rather
glad that I'm in France when war comes."
"You are so certain it is coming?"
"Absolutely, my dear fellow. Probably it will be declared tomorrow."
"I cannot believe it, Halkett."
"I can scarcely believe it myself. But--I know it is coming. And it is
coming from the north."
"Through _Belgium_?"
"Exactly."
"And the treaty?"
"I have already told you how Germany regards such agreements. She'll
kill that treaty with just as much emotion as she'd experience in
assassinating a fly. It's a rotten outlook, Warner. The eleventh hour
has passed."
They smoked for a while in silence, then:
"Where is your little protegee?" asked Halkett, making an effort to
shake off his depression.
"Linette is making her comfortable. When Madame Arlon returns from
Nancy I shall tell her to look out for the child. She's in her room,
unpacking, I suppose."
"Did she even bring her boxes?" asked the Englishman, greatly amused.
"Yes, she did. And I don't know what on earth she intends to do for a
living when I go back to Paris. I'm sorry for her, but she can't expect
me to travel about France with her----"
He checked himself abruptly; Halkett also looked up.
The girl Philippa had entered the further end of the garden.
She came slowly forward through the rosy evening light, straight and
slim in her girlish gown of white, unrelieved except by a touch or two
of black, and by the coppery splendor of her hair.
She halted in the path a little way from the arbor, evidently aware that
somebody was within.
"Are you there, Monsieur Warner?" she asked in her sweet, childish
voice.
He got up with a glance of resignation at Halkett, and went to meet her.