The Woman of Mystery

CHAPTER XII

MAJOR HERMANN

Resisting the surge of hatred that might have driven him to perform an immediate act of vengeance, Paul at once laid his hand on Bernard's arm to compel him to prudence. But he himself was filled with rage at the sight of that demon. The man who represented in his eyes every one of the crimes committed against his father and his wife, that man was there, in front of his revolver, and Paul must not budge! Nay more, circumstances had taken such a shape that, to a certainty, the man would go away in a few minutes, to commit other crimes, and there was no possibility of calling him to account.

"Good, Karl," said the major, in German, addressing the so-called Belgian. "Good. You have been punctual. Well, what news is there?"

"First of all, Excellenz," replied Karl, who seemed to treat the major with that deference mingled with familiarity which men show to a superior who is also their accomplice, "by your leave."

He took off his blue tunic and put on that of one of the dead Germans. Then, giving the military salute:

"That's better. You see, I'm a good German, Excellenz. I don't stick at any job. But this uniform chokes me.

"Well, Excellenz, it's too dangerous a trade, plied in this way. A peasant's smock is all very well; but a soldier's tunic won't do. Those beggars know no fear; I am obliged to follow them; and I run the risk of being killed by a German bullet."

"What about the two brothers-in-law?"

"I fired at them three times from behind and three times I missed them. Couldn't be helped: they've got the devil's luck; and I should only end by getting caught. So, as you say, I'm deserting; and I sent the youngster who runs between me and Rosenthal to make an appointment with you."

"Rosenthal sent your note on to me at headquarters."

"But there was also a photograph, the one you know of, and a bundle of letters from your agents in France. I didn't want to have those proofs found on me if I was discovered."

"Rosenthal was to have brought them to me himself. Unfortunately, he made a blunder."

"What was that, Excellenz?"

"Getting killed by a shell."

"Nonsense!"

"There's his body at your feet."

Karl merely shrugged his shoulders and said:

"The fool!"

"Yes, he never knew how to look after himself," added the major, completing the funeral oration. "Take his pocketbook from him, Karl. He used to carry it in an inside pocket of his woolen waistcoat."

The spy stooped and, presently, said:

"It's not there, Excellenz."

"Then he put it somewhere else. Look in the other pockets."

Karl did so and said:

"It's not there either."

"What! This is beyond me! Rosenthal never parted with his pocketbook. He used to keep it to sleep with; he would have kept it to die with."

"Look for yourself, Excellenz."

"But then.. ?"

"Some one must have been here recently and taken the pocketbook."

"Who? Frenchmen?"

The spy rose to his feet, was silent for a moment and then, going up to the major, said in a deliberate voice:

"Not Frenchmen, Excellenz, but a Frenchman."

"What do you mean?"

"Excellenz, Delroze started on a reconnaissance not long ago with his brother-in-law, Bernard d'Andeville. I could not get to know in which direction, but I know now. He came this way. He must have explored the ruins of the lighthouse and, seeing some dead lying about, turned out their pockets."

"That's a bad business," growled the major. "Are you sure?"

"Certain. He must have been here an hour ago at most. Perhaps," added Karl, with a laugh, "perhaps he's here still, hiding in some hole.."

Both of them cast a look around them, but mechanically; and the movement denoted no serious fear on their part. Then the major continued, pensively:

"After all, that bundle of letters received by our agents, letters without names or addresses to them, doesn't matter so much. But the photograph is more important."

"I should think so, Excellenz! Why, here's a photograph taken in 1902; and we've been looking for it, therefore, for the last twelve years. I manage, after untold efforts, to discover it among the papers which Comte Stéphane d'Andeville left behind at the outbreak of war. And this photograph, which you wanted to take back from the Comte d'Andeville, to whom you had been careless enough to give it, is now in the hands of Paul Delroze, M. d'Andeville's son-in-law, Élisabeth d'Andeville's husband and your mortal enemy!"

"Well, I know all that," cried the major, who was obviously annoyed. "You needn't rub it in!"

"Excellenz, one must always look facts in the face. What has been your constant object with regard to Paul Delroze? To conceal from him the truth as to your identity and therefore to turn his attention, his enquiries, his hatred, towards Major Hermann. That's so, is it not? You went to the length of multiplying the number of daggers engraved with the letters H, E, R, M and even of signing 'Major Hermann' on the panel where the famous portrait hung. In fact, you took every precaution, so that, when you think fit to kill off Major Hermann, Paul Delroze will believe his enemy to be dead and will cease to think of you. And now what happens? Why, in that photograph he possesses the most certain proof of the connection between Major Hermann and the famous portrait which he saw on the evening of his marriage, that is to say, between the present and the past."

"True; but this photograph, found on the body of some dead soldier, would have no importance in his eyes unless he knew where it came from, for instance, if he could see his father-in-law."

"His father-in-law is fighting with the British army within eight miles of Paul Delroze."

"Do they know it?"

"No, but an accident may bring them together. Moreover, Bernard and his father correspond; and Bernard must have told his father what happened at the Château d'Ornequin, at least in so far as Paul Delroze was able to piece the incidents together."

"Well, what does that matter, so long as they know nothing of the other events? And that's the main thing. They could discover all our secrets through Élisabeth and find out who I am. But they won't look for her, because they believe her to be dead."

"Are you sure of that, Excellenz?"

"What's that?"

The two accomplices were standing close together, looking into each other's eyes, the major uneasy and irritated, the spy cunning.

"Speak," said the major. "What do you want to say?"

"Just this, Excellenz, that just now I was able to put my hand on Delroze's kit-bag. Not for long: two seconds, that's all; but long enough to see two things.."

"Hurry up, can't you?"

"First, the loose leaves of that manuscript of which you took care to burn the more important papers, but of which, unfortunately, you mislaid a considerable part."

"His wife's diary?"

"Yes."

The major burst into an oath:

"May I be damned for everlasting! One should burn everything in those cases. Oh, if I hadn't indulged that foolish curiosity!.. And next?"

"Oh, hardly anything, Excellenz! A bit of a shell, yes, a little bit of a shell; but I must say that it looked to me very like the splinter which you ordered me to drive into the wall of the lodge, after sticking some of Élisabeth's hair to it. What do you think of that, Excellenz?"

The major stamped his foot with anger and let fly a new string of oaths and anathemas at the head of Paul Delroze.

"What do you think of that?" repeated the spy.

"You are right," cried the major. "His wife's diary will have given that cursed Frenchman a glimpse of the truth; and that piece of shell in his possession is a proof to him that his wife is perhaps still alive, which is the one thing I wanted to avoid. We shall never get rid of him now!" His rage seemed to increase. "Oh, Karl, he makes me sick and tired! He and his street-boy of a brother-in-law, what a pair of swankers! By God, I did think that you had rid me of them the night when we came back to their room at the château and found their names written on the wall! And you can understand that they won't let things rest, now that they know the girl isn't dead! They will look for her. They will find her. And, as she knows all our secrets..! You ought to have made away with her, Karl!"

"And the prince?" chuckled the spy.

"Conrad is an ass! The whole of that family will bring us ill-luck and first of all to him who was fool enough to fall in love with that hussy. You ought to have made away with her at once, Karl – I told you – and not to have waited for the prince's return."

Standing full in the light as he was, Major Hermann displayed the most appalling highwayman's face imaginable, appalling not because of the deformity of the features or any particular ugliness, but because of the most repulsive and savage expression, in which Paul once more recognized, carried to the very limits of paroxysm, the expression of the Comtesse Hermine, as revealed in her picture and the photograph. At the thought of the crime which had failed, Major Hermann seemed to suffer a thousand deaths, as though the murder had been a condition of his own life. He ground his teeth. He rolled his bloodshot eyes.

In a distraught voice, clutching the shoulder of his accomplice with his fingers, he shouted, this time in French:

"Karl, it is beginning to look as though we couldn't touch them, as though some miracle protected them against us. You've missed them three times lately. At the Château d'Ornequin you killed two others in their stead. I also missed him the other day at the little gate in the park. And it was in the same park, near the same chapel – you remember – sixteen years ago, when he was only a child, that you drove your knife into him… Well, you started your blundering on that day."

The spy gave an insolent, cynical laugh:

"What did you expect, Excellenz? I was on the threshold of my career and I had not your experience. Here were a father and a little boy whom we had never set eyes on ten minutes before and who had done nothing to us except annoy the Kaiser. My hand shook, I confess. You, on the other hand: ah, you made neat work of the father, you did! One little touch of your little hand and the trick was done!"

This time it was Paul who, slowly and carefully, slipped the barrel of his revolver into one of the breaches. He could no longer doubt, after Karl's revelations, that the major had killed his father. It was that creature whom he had seen, dagger in hand, on that tragic evening, that creature and none other! And the creature's accomplice of to-day was the accomplice of the earlier occasion, the satellite who had tried to kill Paul while his father was dying.

Bernard, seeing what Paul did, whispered in his ear:

"So you have made up your mind? We're to shoot him down?"

"Wait till I give the signal," answered Paul. "But don't you fire at him, aim at the spy."

In spite of everything, he was thinking of the inexplicable mystery of the bonds connecting Major Hermann with Bernard d'Andeville and his sister Élisabeth and he could not allow Bernard to be the one to carry out the act of justice. He himself hesitated, as one hesitates before performing an action of which one does not realize the full scope. Who was that scoundrel? What identity was Paul to ascribe to him? To-day, Major Hermann and chief of the German secret service; yesterday, Prince Conrad's boon companion, all-powerful at the Château d'Ornequin, disguising himself as a peasant-woman and prowling through Corvigny; long before that, an assassin, the Emperor's accomplice.. and the lady of Ornequin: which of all these personalities, which were but different aspects of one and the same being, was the real one?

Paul looked at the major in bewilderment, as he had looked at the photograph and, in the locked room, at the portrait of Hermine d'Andeville. Hermann, Hermine! In his mind the two names became merged into one. And he noticed the daintiness of the hands, white and small as a woman's hands. The tapering fingers were decked with rings set with precious stones. The booted feet, too, were delicately formed. The colorless face showed not a trace of hair. But all this effeminate appearance was belied by the grating sound of a hoarse voice, by heaviness of gait and movement and by a sort of barbarous strength.

The major put his hands before his face and reflected for a few minutes. Karl watched him with a certain air of pity and seemed to be asking himself whether his master was not beginning to feel some kind of remorse at the thought of the crimes which he had committed. But the major threw off his torpor and, in a hardly audible voice, quivering with nothing but hatred, said:

"On their heads be it, Karl! On their heads be it for trying to get in our path! I put away the father and I did well. One day it will be the son's turn. And now.. now we have the girl to see to."

"Shall I take charge of that, Excellenz?"

"No, I have a use for you here and I must stay here myself. Things are going very badly. But I shall go down there early in January. I shall be at Èbrecourt on the morning of the tenth of January. The business must be finished forty-eight hours after. And it shall be finished, that I swear to you."

He was again silent while the spy laughed loudly. Paul had stooped, so as to bring his eyes to the level of his revolver. It would be criminal to hesitate now. To kill the major no longer meant revenging himself and slaying his father's murderer: it meant preventing a further crime and saving Élisabeth. He had to act, whatever the consequences of his act might be. He made up his mind.

"Are you ready?" he whispered to Bernard.

"Yes. I am waiting for you to give the signal."

He took aim coldly, waiting for the propitious moment, and was about to pull the trigger, when Karl said, in German: "I say, Excellenz, do you know what's being prepared for the ferryman's house?"

"What?"

"An attack, just that. A hundred volunteers from the African companies are on their way through the marshes now. The assault will be delivered at dawn. You have only just time to let them know at headquarters and to find out what precautions they intend to take."

The major simply said:

"They are taken."

"What's that you say, Excellenz?"

"I say, that they are taken. I had word from another quarter; and, as they attach great value to the ferryman's house, I telephoned to the officer in command of the post that we would send him three hundred men at five o'clock in the morning. The African volunteers will be caught in a trap. Not one of them will come back alive."

The major gave a little laugh of satisfaction and turned up the collar of his cloak as he added:

"Besides, to make doubly sure, I shall go and spend the night there.. especially as I am beginning to wonder whether the officer commanding the post did not chance to send some men here with instructions to take the papers off Rosenthal, whom he knew to be dead."

"But."

"That'll do. Have Rosenthal seen to and let's be off."

"Am I to go with you, Excellenz?"

"No, there's no need. One of the boats will take me up the canal. The house is not forty minutes from here."

In answer to the spy's call, three soldiers came down and hoisted the dead man's body to the trap-door overhead. Karl and the major both remained where they were, at the foot of the ladder, while Karl turned the light of the lantern, which he had taken down from the wall, towards the trap-door.

Bernard whispered:

"Shall we fire now?"

"No," said Paul.

"But."

"I forbid you."

When the operation was over, the major said to Karl:

"Give me a good light and see that the ladder doesn't slip."

He went up and disappeared from sight.

"All right," he said. "Hurry."

The spy climbed the ladder in his turn. Their footsteps were heard overhead. The steps moved in the direction of the canal and there was not a sound.

"What on earth came over you?" cried Bernard. "We shall never have another chance like that. The two ruffians would have dropped at the first shot."

"And we after them," said Paul. "There were twelve of them up there. We should have been doomed."

"But Élisabeth would have been saved, Paul! Upon my word, I don't understand you. Fancy having two monsters like that at our mercy and letting them go! The man who murdered your father and who is torturing Élisabeth was there; and you think of ourselves!"

"Bernard," said Paul Delroze, "you didn't understand what they said at the end, in German. The enemy has been warned of the attack and of our plans against the ferryman's house. In a little while, the hundred volunteers who are stealing up through the marsh will be the victims of an ambush laid for them. We've got to save them first. We have no right to sacrifice our lives before performing that duty. And I am sure that you agree with me."

"Yes," said Bernard. "But all the same it was a grand opportunity."

"We shall have another and perhaps soon," said Paul, thinking of the ferryman's house to which Major Hermann was now on his way.

"Well, what do you propose to do?"

"I shall join the detachment of volunteers. If the lieutenant in command is of my opinion, he will not wait until seven to deliver the assault, but attack at once. And I shall be of the party."

"And I?"

"Go back to the colonel. Explain the position to him and tell him that the ferryman's house will be captured this morning and that we shall hold it until reinforcements come up."

They parted with no more words and Paul plunged resolutely into the marshes.

The task which he was undertaking did not meet with the obstacles he expected. After forty minutes of rather difficult progress, he heard the murmur of voices, gave the password and told the men to take him to the lieutenant.

Paul's explanations at once convinced that officer: the job must either be abandoned or hurried on at once.

The column went ahead. At three o'clock, guided by a peasant who knew a path where the men sank no deeper than their knees, they succeeded in reaching the neighborhood of the house unperceived. Then, when the alarm had been given by a sentry, the attack began.

This attack, one of the finest feats of arms in the war, is too well known to need a detailed description here. It was extremely violent. The enemy, who was on his guard, made an equally vigorous defense. There was a tangle of barbed wire to be forced and many pitfalls to be overcome. A furious hand-to-hand fight took place first outside and then inside the house; and, by the time that the French had gained the victory after killing or taking prisoner the eighty-three Germans who defended it, they themselves had suffered losses which reduced their effective force by half.

Paul was the first to leap into the trenches, the line of which ran beside the house on the left and was extended in a semicircle as far as the Yser. He had an idea: before the attack succeeded and before it was even certain that it would succeed, he wanted to cut off all retreat on the part of the fugitives.

Driven back at first, he made for the bank, followed by three volunteers, stepped into the water, went up the canal and thus came to the other side of the house, where, as he expected, he found a bridge of boats.

At that moment, he saw a figure disappearing in the darkness.

"Stay here," he said to his men, "and let no one pass."

He himself jumped out of the water, crossed the bridge and began to run.

A searchlight was thrown on the canal bank and he again perceived the figure, thirty yards in front of him.

A minute later, he shouted:

"Halt, or I fire!"

And, as the man continued to run, he fired, but aimed so as not to hit him.

The fugitive stopped and fired his revolver four times, while Paul, stooping down, flung himself between his legs and brought him to the ground.

The enemy, seeing that he was mastered, offered no resistance. Paul rolled his cloak round him and took him by the throat. With the hand that remained free, he threw the light of his pocket-lamp full on the other's face.

His instinct had not deceived him: the man he held by the throat was Major Hermann.

CHAPTER XIII

THE FERRYMAN'S HOUSE

Paul Delroze did not speak a word. Pushing his prisoner in front of him, after tying the major's wrists behind his back, he returned to the bridge of boats in the darkness illumined by brief flashes of light.

The fighting continued. But a certain number of the enemy tried to run away; and, when the volunteers who guarded the bridge received them with a volley of fire, the Germans thought that they had been cut off; and this diversion hastened their defeat.

When Paul arrived, the combat was over. But the enemy was bound, sooner or later, to deliver a counter-attack, supported by the reinforcements that had been promised to the commandant; and the defense was prepared forthwith.

The ferryman's house, which had been strongly fortified by the Germans and surrounded with trenches, consisted of a ground floor and an upper story of three rooms, now knocked into one. At the back of this large room, however, was a recess with a sloping roof, reached by three steps, which at one time had done duty as a servant's attic. Paul, who was entrusted with the arrangement of this upper floor, brought his prisoner here. He laid him on the floor, bound him with a cord and fastened him to a beam; and, while doing so, he was seized with such a paroxysm of hatred that he took him by the throat as though to strangle him.

He mastered himself, however. After all, there was no hurry. Before killing the man or handing him over to the soldiers to be shot against the wall, why deny himself the supreme satisfaction of having an explanation with him?

When the lieutenant entered, Paul said, so as to be heard by all and especially by the major:

"I recommend that scoundrel to your care, lieutenant. It's Major Hermann, one of the chief spies in the German army. I have the proofs on me. Remember that, in case anything happens to me. And, if we should have to retreat.."

The lieutenant smiled:

"There's no question of that. We shall not retreat, for the very good reason that I would rather blow up the shanty first. And Major Hermann, therefore, would be blown up with us. So make your mind easy."

The two officers discussed the defensive measures to be adopted; and the men quickly got to work.

First of all, the bridge of boats was unmade, trenches dug along the canal and the machine-guns turned to face the other way. Paul, on his first floor, had the sandbags moved from the one side of the house to the other and the less solid-looking portions of the wall shored up with beams.

At half-past five, under the rays of the German flashlights, several shells fell round about. One of them struck the house. The big guns began to sweep the towpath.

A few minutes before daybreak, a detachment of cyclists arrived by this path, with Bernard d'Andeville at their head. He explained that two companies and a section of sappers in advance of a complete battalion had started, but their progress was hampered by the enemy's shells and they were obliged to skirt the marshes, under the cover of the dyke supporting the towpath. This had slowed their march; and it would be an hour before they could arrive.