The Last Shot Part 58

"But the correct plans and location of their forts and the numbers of their heavy guns and of their planes and dirigibles--your failure to have this information is not the result of any leak from our staff since the war began," said Turcas in his dry, penetrating voice, clearing the air of the smoke of scattered explosions.

All were staring at Bouchard again. What answer had he to this? He was in the box, the evidence stated by the prosecutor. Let him speak!

He was fairly beside himself in a paroxysm of rage and struck at the air with his clenched fist.

"---- ---- Lanstron!" he cried.

"There's no purpose in that. He can't hear you!" said Turcas, dryly as ever.

"He might, through the leak," said the chief aerostatic officer, who considered that many of his gallant subordinates had lost their lives through Bouchard's inefficiency. "Perhaps Clarissa Eileen has already telepathically wigwagged it to him."

To lose your temper at a staff council is most unbecoming. Turcas would have kept his if hit in the back by a fool automobilist. Westerling had now recovered his. He was again the superman in command.

"It is for you and not for us to locate the leak; yes, for you!" he said. "That is all on the subject for the present," he added in a tone of mixed pity and contempt, which left Bouchard freed from the stare of his colleagues and in the miserable company of his humiliation.

All on the subject for the present! When it was taken up again his successor would be in charge. He, the indefatigable, the over-intense, with his mediaeval partisan fervor, who loathed in secret machines like Turcas, was the first man of the staff to go for incompetency.

"And Engadir is the key-point," Westerling was saying.

"Yes," agreed Turcas.

"So we concentrate to break through there," Westerling continued, "while we engage the whole line fiercely enough to make the enemy uncertain where the crucial attack is to be made."

"But, general, if there is any place that is naturally strong, that--"

Turcas began.

"The one place where they are confident that we won't attack!"

Westerling interrupted. He resented the staff's professional respect for Turcas. After a silence and a survey of the faces around, he added with sententious effect: "And I was right about Bordir!"

To this argument there could be no answer. The one stroke of generals.h.i.+p by the Grays, who, otherwise, had succeeded alone through repeated ma.s.s attacks, had been Westerling's hypothesis that had gained Bordir in a single a.s.sault.

"Engadir it is, then!" said Turcas with the loyalty of the subordinate who makes a superior's conviction his own, the better to carry it out.

Hazily, Bouchard had heard the talk, while he was looking at Westerling and seeing him, not at the head of the council table, but in the arbor in eager appeal to Marta.

"I shall find out! I shall find out!" was drumming in his temples when the council rose; and, without a word or a backward glance, he was the first to leave the room.

x.x.xVIII

HUNTING GHOSTS

In his search for the medium of the leak to the enemy Bouchard had studied every detail of the Galland premises and also of the ruins of the castle, with the exception of one feature mentioned in the regular staff records, prepared before the war, in the course of their minute description of the architecture of buildings which were accessible to the spies of the Grays. The tunnel to the dungeons could be reached only through the private quarters of the Gallands.

When he came out onto the veranda from the staff council a glimpse of Mrs. Galland walking in the garden told him that one of the guardians who stood between him and the satisfaction of his desperate curiosity was absent. He started for the tower and found the door open and the sitting-room empty. In his impatience he had one foot across the threshold before a prompting sense of respect for form made him pause.

After all, this was a private residence. There being no bell, he rapped, and was glad that it was Minna and not Marta who appeared. He watched her intently for the effect of his abrupt announcement as he exclaimed:

"I want to go into the tunnel under the castle!"

There was no mistaking her shock and alarm. Her lips remained parted in a letter O as a sweep of breath escaped. Yet, in the very process of recovering her scattered faculties, her feminine quickness noted a triumphant gleam in his eye. She knew that her manner had given conviction to his suspicions. She knew that she alone stood between him and his finding Marta talking to Brown headquarters. As she was in a state of astonishment, why, astonishment was her cue. She appeared positively speechless from it except for the emission of another horrified gasp. Time! time! She must hold him until Marta left the telephone.

"What an idea! That musty, horrible, damp tunnel!" she exclaimed, shuddering. "I never think of it without thinking of ghosts!"

"I am looking for ghosts," replied Bouchard with saturnine emphasis.

"Oh, don't say that!" cried Minna distractedly. "Sometimes at night I hear their chains clanking and their groans and cries for water," she continued, playing the superst.i.tious and stupid maid servant. "That is, I think I do. Miss Galland says I don't."

"Does she go into the tunnel?" asked Bouchard.

"Yes, she's been in to show me that there were no ghosts," replied Minna. "But not the whole way--not into the dungeons. I believe she got frightened herself, though she wouldn't admit it. I know there are ghosts! She needn't tell me! Don't you believe there are?" she asked solemnly, with dropped jaw.

"I'm going to find out!" he said, taking a step forward.

But Minna, just inside the doorway, did not move to allow him to enter.

"Oh, I'm so glad!" she exclaimed. "Then we'll know the truth. But no!"

and she turned wild with protest. "No, no! I know there are! It's dangerous, sir! You'd never come out alive! Unseen hands would seize you and draw you down and strangle you--those terrible spirits of the dark ages!"

Her hands uplifted, fingers stretched apart in terror, lace white with fear, Minna's distress was real--very real, indeed!--while she listened impatiently for Marta's step in the adjoining room.

"Good heavens!" exclaimed Bouchard in disgust. "I didn't know such superst.i.tion existed in this day."

"I didn't, sir, until the groans and the clanking of the chains kept me awake," replied Minna.

"Have you a lantern?" asked Bouchard in exasperation.

"A lantern?" repeated Minna blankly. Time! time! She must gain time!

"Yes, you gawk, a lantern!"

"Certainly; you'll need one," said Minna--"a big one! Go and fetch a big army one--and some soldiers to fight the ghosts. But what are soldiers against ghosts? Oh, sir, I don't like to think of you going at all.

Please, sir, don't, for the sake of your life!"

There Bouchard frowned heavily and his hawk eyes flashed in command and decision.

"Enough of this farce! A lamp, a candle will do. Come, get me one immediately!"

Just as she was at her wits' end and it seemed as if there were nothing left to do but to scream and fall in a faint in front of Bouchard, her ear caught the welcome sound which told her that Marta had returned from the tunnel.

"Yes, sir. Won't you come in, sir? Of course, sir," she said, standing aside. "Won't you be seated, sir?"

"Good day, Colonel Bouchard!" called Marta, appearing in the doorway.

"He wants to go into the dungeons to see the ghosts!" Minna exclaimed in a return of horror before Bouchard had time to say a word, while she screwed up the side of her face away from him suggestively to Marta.

"Those terrible ghosts! I'm afraid for him. Like a man, he may go right into the dungeons, even if you didn't dare to, Miss Galland."