In Secret Part 36

At that instant his telephone bell rang and he re-entered the house with a sudden premonition--an odd, unreasonable, but dreadful sort of certainty concerning what he was about to hear. Picking up the instrument he was thinking all the time: "It has to do with that d.a.m.ned Intelligence Officer! There was something wrong with him!"

There was.

Clearly over the wire from Toul came the information: "Captain Herts's naked body was discovered an hour ago in a thicket beside the Delle highway. He has been dead two weeks. Therefore the man you saw in Delle was impersonating him. Probably also he was Captain Herts's murderer and was wearing his uniform, carrying his papers, and riding his motor-cycle. Do your best to get him!"

Recklow, deadly cold and calm, asked a few questions. Then he hung up the instrument, turned and went out, locking the door behind him.

A few people were in the quiet street; here an Alpine soldier strolling with his sweetheart, there an old cure on his way to his little stone chapel, yonder a peasant in blouse and sabots plodding doggedly along about some detail of belated work that never ends for such as he. A few lanterns set in iron cages projected over ancient doorways, lighting the street but dimly where it lay partly in deep shadow, partly illuminated by the silvery radiance of the moon.

Recklow turned into an alley smelling of stables, traversed it, and came out behind into a bushy pasture with a cleared s.p.a.ce beyond.

The place was rather misty now in the moonlight from the vapours of a cold little brook which ran foaming and clattering through it between banks thickset with fern.

And now Recklow moved very swiftly but quietly, down through the misty, ferny valley to the filbert and hazel thicket just beyond; and went in among the bushes, treading cautiously upon the moist black mould.

There glimmered the French wires--merely a wide mesh and an ordinary barbed barrier overhead; but the fence was deeply ditched on the Swiss side. A man could climb over it; and Recklow started to do so; and came face to face in the moonlight with the French patrol. The recognition was mutual and noiseless:

"You pa.s.sed my two people over?" whispered Recklow.

"An hour ago, mon Capitaine."

"You've seen n.o.body else?"

"n.o.body."

"Heard nothing?"

"Not a sound. They must have gone over the Swiss wire without interference, mon Capitaine."

"You sometimes talk across with the Swiss sentinels?"

"Oh, yes, if I'm in that humour. You know, mon Capitaine, that they're like the Boche, only tame."

"Not all."

"No, not all. But in a wolf-pack who can excuse sheepdogs? A Boche is always a Boche."

"All the same, when the Swiss sentry pa.s.ses, speak to him and hold him while I get my ladder."

"At your orders, Captain."

"Listen. I am going over. When I return I shall leave with you a reel of wire and a cowbell. You comprehend? I do not wish anybody else to cross the French wire to-night."

"C'est bien, mon Capitaine."

Recklow went down into the bushy gulley. A few moments later the careless Swiss patrol came clumping along, rifle slung, pipe glowing and humming a tune as he pa.s.sed. Presently the French sentry hailed him across the wire and the Swiss promptly halted for a bit of gossip concerning the pretty girls of Delle.

But, to Recklow's grim surprise, and before he could emerge from the bushes, no sooner were the two sentries engaged in lively gossip than three dark figures crept out on hands and knees from the long gra.s.s at the very base of the Swiss wire and were up the ladder which McKay had left and over it like monkeys before he could have prevented it even if he had dared.

Each in turn, reaching the top of the wire, set foot on the wooden post and leaped off into darkness--each except the last, who remained poised, then twisted around as though caught by the top barbed strand.

And Recklow saw the figure was a woman's, and that her short skirt had become entangled in the wire.

In an instant he was after her; she saw him, strove desperately to free herself, tore her skirt loose, and jumped. And Recklow jumped after her, landing among the wet ferns on his feet and seizing her as she tried to rise from where she had fallen.

She struggled and fought him in silence, but his iron clutch was on her and he dragged her by main force through the woods parallel with the Swiss wire until, breathless, powerless, impotent, she gave up the battle and suffered him to force her along until they were far beyond earshot of the patrol and of her two companions as well, in case they should return to the wire to look for her.

For ten minutes, holding her by the arm, he pushed forward up the wooded slope. Then, when it was safe to do so, he halted, jerked her around to face him, and flashed his pocket torch. And he saw a handsome, perspiring, sullen girl, staring at him out of dark eyes dilated by terror or by fury--he was not quite sure which.

She wore the costume of a peasant of the canton bordering the wire; and she looked like that type of German-Swiss--handsome, sensual, bad-tempered, but not stupid.

"Well," he said in French, "you can explain yourself now, mademoiselle. Allons! Who and what are you? Dites!"

"What are you? A robber?" she gasped, jerking her arm free.

"If you thought so why didn't you call for help?"

"And be shot at? Do you take me for a fool? What are you--a Douanier then? A smuggler?"

"You answer ME!" he retorted. "What were you doing--crossing the wire at night?"

"Can't a girl keep a rendezvous without the custom-agents treating her so barbarously?" she panted, one hand flat on her tumultuous bosom.

"Oh, that was it, was it?"

"I do not deny it."

"Who is your lover--on the French side?"

"And if he happens to be an Alpinist?"--she shrugged, still breathing fast and irregularly, picking up the torn edge of her wool skirt and fingering the rent.

"Really. An Alpinist? A rendezvous in Delle, eh? And who were your two friends?"

"Boys from my canton."

"Is that so?"

Her breast still rose and fell unevenly; she turned her pretty, insolent eyes on him:

"After all, what business is it of yours? Who are you, anyway? If you are French you can do nothing. If you are Swiss take me to the nearest poste."

"Who were those two men?" repeated Recklow.

"Ask them."

"No; I think I'll take you back to France."

The girl became silent at that but her att.i.tude defied him. Even when he snapped an automatic handcuff over one wrist she smiled incredulously.

But the jeering expression on her dark, handsome features altered when they approached the Swiss wire. And when Recklow produced a pair of heavy wire-cutters all defiance died out in her face.