The Girl Philippa
common sailor, or in the gorgeous raiment of a ship's officer. The two
Germans never noticed them as they walked in the dark by their wild
lone.
And always while one of the young men watched on deck, the other
ransacked the stateroom and luggage of the gentlemen from Germany--but
ransacked in vain.
As the _Zeeduyne_ steamed into the Scheldt, several thousand miles away,
in the city of Washington, the French Ambassador telegraphed in cipher
to his Government that the secret plans and formula for the Harkness
shell, which had been acquired by England from the United States
Government, had been stolen on the eve of delivery to the British
Ambassador; that French secret agents were to inspect the arrival of all
Dutch, Belgian, and German steamers; that all agents in the French
service resident or stationed near the north or northeastern frontier of
France were to watch the arrival of all strangers from Holland or
Belgium, and, if possible, follow and observe any individual who might
be likely to have been involved in such a robbery.
Immediately, from the Military Intelligence Department in Paris orders
were telegraphed and letters sent to thousands of individuals of every
description and station in life, to be on the alert.
Among others who received such letters was a denationalized individual
named Wildresse, who kept a cabaret in the little town of Ausone.
The cabaret was called the Cafe de Biribi. Wildresse insisted that the
name had been his own choice. But it was at the request of the
Government that his cabaret bore the ominous title as an ever-present
reminder to Wildresse that his personal liberty and the liberty of his
worthless son and heir depended on his good behavior and his alacrity in
furnishing the French Government with whatever information it demanded.
The letter sent to Monsieur Wildresse read as follows:
MONSIEUR:
Undescribed individuals carrying important document stolen from the
United States Government may appear in your vicinity.
Observe diligently, but with discretion, the arrival of any strangers at
your cafe. If suspicions warrant, lay a complaint before local police
authorities. Use every caution. The fugitives probably are German, but
may be American. Inform the girl Philippa of what is required. And
remember that Biribi is preferable to Noumea.
When Wildresse received this letter he went into the bedroom of the girl
Philippa, who was standing before her looking glass busily rouging her
cheeks and painting her lips. She wore no corset, her immature figure
requiring none.
"If they come our way, Philippa," growled Wildresse, "play the baby--do
you hear? Eyes wide and artless, virginal candor alternating with
indifference. In other words, be yourself."
"That is not difficult," said the girl Philippa, powdering her nose.
"When I lose my innocence then it will mean real acting."
Wildresse glared at her out of his little black eyes.
"_When_ you lose it, eh?" he repeated. "Well, when you do, I'll break
your neck. Do you understand that?"
The girl continued to powder her nose.
"Who would marry me?" she remarked indifferently. "Also, now it is too
late for me to become a religieuse like--"
"You'll carry on the business!" he growled. "That's what you'll do--with
Jacques, when the Sbirs de Biribi let him loose. As for marrying, you
can think it over when you are thirty. You'll have a dot by that time,
if the damned Government lets me alone. And a woman with a dot need not
worry about marriage."
The girl was now busy with her beautiful chestnut hair; Wildresse's
pock-marked features softened.
"_Allons_," he said in his harsh voice, "lilies grow prettiest on
dunghills. Also, you are like me--serious, not silly. I have no fears.
Besides, you are where I have my eye on you."
"If I am what I am it is because I prefer it, not on account of your
eye," she said listlessly.
"Is that so!" he roared. "All the same, continue to prefer virtue and
good conduct, and I'll continue to use my two eyes, nom de Dieu! And if
any strangers who look like Germans come into the cafe--any strangers at
all, no matter what they look like--keep your eyes on them, do you
hear?"
"I hear," said the girl Philippa.
The web of fate had settled over her at last.
About that time the steamer _Zeeduyne_ was docking at Antwerp.
Two hours later two German gentlemen in a hurry registered at the Hotel
St. Antoine in the Place Verte, and were informed that they were
expected immediately in room 23.
A page conducted them to the corridor and indicated the room; they
thanked him and sent him back for their luggage which he had, it seemed,
neglected to bring from the lobby.
Then both German gentlemen went to the door of room 23, knocked, and
were admitted; and the door was rather violently closed and locked.
The next instant there came a crash, a heavy fall, dull sounds of feet
scuffling behind the locked door, a series of jarring, creaking noises,
then silence.
A chambermaid came into the corridor to listen, but the silence was
profound, and presently she went away.
When the boy came back with the hand luggage and knocked at 23, Halkett
opened the door a little way and, tipping the lad with a five-franc
piece, bade him leave the luggage outside the door for the present.
Later, Gray cautiously opened the door and drew in the luggage.
Ten minutes later both young men came leisurely out of the room, locking
the door on the outside. They each carried hand luggage. Halkett
lighted a cigarette.
At the desk Gray requested that the gentlemen in No. 23 should not be
disturbed that night, as they were lying down and in need of repose.
Which was true.
Then both young men departed in a cab. At the railroad station,
however, an unusually generous stranger offered Gray a motor cycle for
nothing. So he strapped his bag to it, nodded a smiling adieu to
Halkett, and departed.
Halkett bought a ticket to Maastricht, Holland, which he had no idea of
using, and presently came out of the station and walked eastward rather
rapidly. A man who also had bought a ticket for Maastricht rose from
his seat in the waiting room and walked stealthily after him, making a
signal to another man.
This second man immediately stepped into a station telephone booth and
called up room 23 at the Hotel St. Antoine, where two German gentlemen,
badly battered, were now conferring with a third German gentleman who
had paid no attention to instructions from the hotel office but had gone
to room 23, knocked until out of patience, and had then summoned the
_maitre d'hotel_, who unlocked the door with a master-key.
Which operation revealed two Teutons flat on their backs, very carefully
tied up with rope and artistically gagged.
This unbattered gentleman now conversed over the telephone with the man
at the railroad station.
A few moments later he and the two battered ones left the hotel hastily
in a taxicab, joined the man at the railroad station, and drove rapidly
eastward.
And before forty-eight hours had elapsed, each one of these four men
operating in pairs, had attempted to kill the young man named Halkett.
Twice he got away. The third time two of them succeeded in locating him
in the little town of Diekirch, a town which Halkett was becoming more
and more anxious to leave, as he finally began to realize what a
hornet's nest he and his friend Gray had succeeded in stirring up.
And all the while the invisible net of destiny in which he now found
himself entangled was every minute enmeshing in its widening spread new
people whose fate was to be linked with his, and who had never even
heard of him. Among them was the girl Philippa.
*PROLOGUE*
A narrow-gauge railroad track runs through the woods from Diekirch,
connecting the two main lines; and on the deserted wooden platform
beside this track stood Halkett, his suitcase in one hand, the other
hand in his side pocket, awaiting the shuttle train with an impatience
born of deepest anxiety.
The young man's anxiety was presently justified, for, as he sauntered to
and fro, uneasily scanning the track and the unbroken woods around him,
always keeping his right hand in his coat pocket, two men crept out from
behind separate trees in the forest directly behind the platform, and he
turned around only in time to obtain a foreshortened and disquieting
view of the muzzle of a revolver.
"Hands up--" began the man behind the weapon; but as he was in the very
act of saying it, a jet of ammonia entered his mouth through the second
button of Halkett's waistcoat, and he reeled backward off the platform,
his revolver exploding toward the sky, and fell into the grass, jerking
and kicking about like an unhealthy cat in a spasm.
Already Halkett and the other man had clinched; the former raining blows
on the latter's Teutonic countenance, which proceeding so dazed,
diverted, and bewildered him that he could not seem to find the revolver
bulging in his side pocket.
It was an automatic, and Halkett finally got hold of it and hurled it
into the woods.
Then he continued the terrible beating which he was administering.
"Get out!" he said in German to the battered man, still battering him.
"Get out, or I'll kill you!"
He hit him another cracking blow, turned and wrested the other pistol
from the writhing man on the grass, whirled around, and went at the
battered one again.
"I've had enough of this!" he breathed, heavily. "I tell you I'll kill
you if you bother me again! I could do it now--but it's too much like
murder if you're not in uniform!"
The man on the grass had managed to evade suffocation; he got up now and
staggered off toward the woods, and Halkett drove his companion after
him at the point of his own revolver.
"Keep clear of me!" he said. "If you do any more telephoning or
telegraphing it will end in murder. I've had just about enough, and if
any more of your friends continue to push this matter after I enter
France, just as surely as I warn you now, I'll defend my own life by
taking theirs. You can telephone that to them if you want to!"
As he stood on the edge of the wooden platform, revolver lifted, facing
the woods where his two assailants had already disappeared, the toy-like
whistle of an approaching train broke the hot, July stillness.
Before it stopped, he hurled the remaining revolver into the woods
across the track, then, as the train drew up and a guard descended to
open a compartment door for him, he cast a last keen glance at the
forest behind him.
Nothing stirred there, not even a leaf.
But before the train had been under way five minutes a bullet shattered
the glass of the window beside which he had been seated; and he spent
the remainder of the journey flat on his back smoking cigarettes and
wondering whether he was going to win through to the French frontier, to
Paris, to Calais, to London, or whether they'd get him at last and, what
was of infinitely greater importance, a long, thin envelope which he
carried stitched inside his undershirt.
That was really what mattered, not what might become of a stray
Englishman. He knew it; he realized it without any illusion whatever.
It was the contents of this envelope that mattered, not his life.
Yet, so far, he had managed to avoid taking life in defense of his
envelope. In fact, he traveled unarmed. Now, if matters continued
during his journey through France as they had begun and continued while
he was crossing Holland and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, he would be
obliged to take life or lose his own.
And yet, if he did kill somebody, that meant arrest and investigation by
the police of France. And such an investigation might be fatal to the