CHAPTER IV
"EXTRA"
Toward nine o'clock to my relief it became obvious that the _Red'Italia_ was really going to sail at last. The first and secondwhistles, sounding raucously, sent the company officials and the familyof the young officer of reserves ashore. The plank was lowered; betweenthe ship and the looming pier a thread of black water appeared and grew;a flash and an explosion indicated that the possibly doomed liner hadbeen filmed according to schedule. "_Evviva l'Italia_!" yelled thereturning braves in the steerage--a very decent set of fellows, itstruck me, to leave so cheerfully their vocations of teamster, waiter,fruit vender, and the like, and go, unforced, to wear the gray-greencoats of Italy, the short feathers of the mountain climbers, thebersagliere's bunch of plumes, and to stand against their hereditaryfoes the Austrians, up in the snowy Alps.
The details of departure were an old tale to me. As we swung farther andfarther out, I turned to a newspaper, a twentieth extra probably, whichI had heard a newsboy crying along the dock a little earlier, and hadbribed a steward to secure. Moon and stars were lacking to-night, butthe deck lights were good reading-lamps. Moving up the rail to one ofthem, I investigated the world's affairs.
From the first sheet the usual staring headlines leaped at me. Therewere the inevitable peace rumor, the double denial, the eternal bulletinof a trench taken here, a hill recaptured there. A sensational rumor wasexploited to the effect that Franz von Blenheim, one of the star secretagents of the German Empire, was at present incognito at Washington,having spent the past month in putting his finger in the Mexicanpie much to our disadvantage. On the last column of the page was thephotograph of a distinguished-looking young man in uniform, with anannouncement that promised some interest, I thought.
"War Scandal Bursts in France," "Scion of Oldest Noblesse Implicated,""Duke Mysteriously Missing," I read in the diminishing degrees ofthe scare-head type. Then came the picture, with a mien attractivelydebonair, a pleasantly smiling mouth, and a sympathetic pair of eyes,and in due course, the tale. I clutched at the flapping ends of thepaper and read on:
Of all the scandals to which the present war has given birth, nonehas stirred France more profoundly than that implicatingJean-Herve-Marie-Olivier, Count of Druyes, Marquis of Beuil andSantenay, and Duke of Raincy-la-Tour. This young nobleman, head of afamily that has played its part in French history since the days of theNorthmen and the crusaders, bears in his veins the bluest blood of theold regime, and numbers among his ancestors no fewer than seven marshalsand five constables of France.
A noted figure not only by his birth, his wealth, and his varioushistoric chateaux, but also by his sporting proclivities, his daringautomobile racing, his marvelous fencing, and his spectacular huntingtrips, the Duke of Raincy-la-Tour has long been in addition an amateuraviator of considerable fame, and it was to the French Flying Corps thathe was attached when hostilities began. Here he distinguished himselffrom the first by his coolness, his extraordinary resource, and hisutter contempt for danger, and became one of the idols of the Frencharmy and a proverb for success and audacity, besides attaining tothe rank of lieutenant, gaining, after his famous night flight acrossMulhausen for bomb-dropping purposes, the affectionate sobriquet of theFirefly of France, and winning in rapid succession the military Medal,the ribbon of the Legion of Honor, and the Cross of War with palms.
According to rumor, the duke was lately intrusted with a mission ofexceptional peril, involving a flight into hostile territory and thecapture of certain photographs of defenses much needed for the plansof the supreme command. With his wonted brilliancy, he is said to haveaccomplished the errand and to have returned in safety as far as theFrench lines. Here, however, we enter the realm of conjecture. The dukehas disappeared; the plans he bore have never reached the generalissimo;and rumor persistently declares that at some point upon his returnjourney he was intercepted by German agents and induced by bribes orcoercion to deliver up his spoils. By one version he was later capturedand summarily executed by the French; while his friends, denying this,pin their hopes to his death at the hands of the enemy, as offering thebest outcome of the unsavory event.
The family of the Duke of Raincy-la-Tour has been noted in the past forits pronouncedly Royalist tendencies, the attitude of his father andgrandfather toward the republic having been hostile in the extreme.It is believed that this fact may have its significance in the presentepisode. The occurrence is of special interest to the United States inview of the recent (Continued on Page Three)
Before proceeding, I glanced at the pictured face. The Duke ofRaincy-la-tour looked back at me with cool, clear eyes, smiling halfaloofly, a little scornfully, as in the presence of danger the trueFrenchman is apt to smile.
"I don't think, Jean-Herve-Marie-Olivier," I reflected, "that you evertalked to the Germans except with bombs. They probably got you, poorchap, and you're lying buried somewhere while the gossips make a holidayof the fact that you don't come home. Confound 'current rumors' anyhow,and yellow papers too!"
"I beg your pardon," said a low contralto voice.
The girl in the fur coat was standing at my shoulder. I turned, liftingmy cap, wondering what under heaven she could want. I was not muchpleased to tell the truth; a goddess shouldn't step from her pedestalto chat with strangers. Then suddenly I recognized a distinct oddness inher air.
"Would you lend me your paper," she was asking, "for just a moment? Ihaven't seen one since morning; the evening editions were not out when Icame on board."
Her manner was proud, spirited, gracious; she even smiled; but she wasfrightened. I could read it in her slight pallor, in the quickening ofher breath.
My extra! What was there in the day's news that could upset her? I wasnonplussed, but of course I at once extended the sheet.
"Certainly!" I replied politely. "Pray keep it." Lifting my cap a secondtime, I turned to go.
Her fingers touched my arm.
"Wait! Please wait!" she was urging. There was a half-imperious,half-appealing note in her hushed voice.
I stared.
"I'm afraid," I said blankly, "that I don't quite--"
"Some one may suspect. Some one may come," urged this most astonishingyoung woman. "Don't you see that--that I'm trusting you to help me?Won't you stay?"
Wondering if I by any chance looked as stunned as I felt, I bowedformally, faced about, and waited, both arms on the rail. My ideas asto my companion had been revolutionized in sixty seconds. I had believedher a girl with whom I might have grown up, a girl whose brother andcousins I had probably known at college, a girl that I might have metat a friend's dinner or at the opera or on a country-club porch if I hadhad my luck with me. Now what was I to think her--an escaped lunatic orsomething more accountable and therefore worse? If I detest anything,it is the unconventional, the stagy, the mysterious. Setting my teeth,I resolved to wait until she concluded her researches; after that,politely but firmly, I would depart.
And then, beside me, the paper rustled. I heard a little gasp, a tinylow-drawn sigh. Stealing a glance down, I saw the girl's face shiningwhitely in the deck light. Her black lashes fringed her cheeks as herhead bent backward; her eyes were as dark as the water we were slippingthrough. I had no idea of speaking, and yet I did speak.
"I am afraid," I heard myself saying, "that you have had bad news."
She was struggling for self-control, but her voice wavered.
"Yes," she agreed; "I am afraid I have."
"If there is anything I can do--" I was correct, but reluctant. How Iwould bless her if she would go away!
But obviously she did not intend to. Quite the contrary!
"There is something," she was murmuring, "that would help me very much."
There, I had done it! I was an ass of the common or garden variety, whofirst resolved to keep out of a queer business and then, because a girllooked bothered, plunged into it up to my ears. I succeeded in hiding myfeelings, in looking wooden.
"Please tell me," I responded, "what it is."<
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"But--I can't explain it." Her gloved hands tightened on the railing."And if I ask without explaining, it will seem so--so strange."
"Doubtless," I reflected grimly. But I had to see the thing through now."That doesn't matter at all," I assured her civilly through clenchedteeth.
She came closer--so close that her fur coat brushed me, and her breathtouched my cheek; her eyes, like gray stars now that they were lessanxious, went to my head a little, I suppose. Oh, yes, she was lovely.Of course that was a factor. If she had been past her first youth andskimpy as to hair, and dowdy, I don't pretend that I should ever havemixed myself up in the preposterous coil.
"This paper," she whispered, holding out the sheet, "has something init. It is not about me; it is not even true. But if it stays aboardthe ship,--if some one sees it, it may make trouble. Oh, you see how itsounds; I knew you would think me mad!"
"Not in the least." What an absurd rigmarole she was uttering! Yet suchwas the spell of her eyes, her voice, her nearness that I merely feltlike saying, "Tell me some more."
"I can't destroy it myself," she went on anxiously. "He--they--mustn'tsee me do anything that might lead them to--to guess. But no one willthink of you, nobody will be watching you; so by and by will you weightthe paper with something heavy and drop it across the rail?"
My head was whirling, but a graven image might have envied me myimpassivity. I bowed. "I shall be delighted," I announced banally, "todo as you say."
Her face flushed to a warm wild-rose tint as she heard me promise it,and her red lips, parting, took on a tremulous smile.
"Thank you," she murmured in frank gratitude. "I thought--I knew youwould help me!" Then she was gone.
My trance broken I woke to hear myself softly swearing. I consignedmyself to my proper home, an asylum; I wished the girl at Timbuktu,Kamchatka, Land's End--anywhere except on this ship. As I had told theagent of the Phillipson Rifles, I am no boy. One can scarcely knockabout the world for thirty years without gaining some of its wisdom; andof all the appropriate truisms I spared myself not one.
Resentfully I reminded myself that mysteries were suspicious, thathonest people seldom had need of secrecy, that idiots who, like me,consented to act blindfold would probably repent their blindnessin sackcloth and ashes before long. But what use were these sagereflections? I had given my word to her. I was in for the consequences,however unpleasant they proved.
Without further mental parley I went down to my cabin, where I routedout from among my traps a bronze paper-weight as heavy as lead. Wrappingthe mysterious sheet about it, I brought the package back on deck. Therewas not a soul in sight; it was a propitious hour.
To right and to left the coast lights were slipping past, making goldenpaths on the black water as our tug pulled us out to sea. The reservistsdown below were singing "_Va fuori, o stranier_!" I dropped my packageoverboard, watched it vanish, and turned to behold the sphinx-likeVan Blarcom, sprung up as if by magic, regarding me placidly from theshelter of the smoking-room door.
The Firefly of France Page 4