CHAPTER XVIII
IN THE HIGH GEAR
To pass straight from a humdrum, comfortable, conventionally orderedlife into a career of insane adventure is a step that is radical; but itcan be exhilarating, and I proved the fact that day. To dwell on presentdanger was to forget the past hour in the garage, which I had to forgetor begin gibbering. Once committed to the adventure and away from thescene of the murder, I found a positive relief in facing the madness ofthe affair.
While the girl sat silent and listless, blotted against the cushions,rousing from her thoughts only to indicate the turns of the road, I hadtime for cogitation; and I began to feel like a man who has drunk freelyof champagne. Hitherto I had been a law-abiding citizen. Now I hadkicked over the traces. Like the distinguished fraternity that includesRaffles and Arsene Lupin, I should be "wanted" by the police, thosegood-natured, deferential beings so given to saluting and grinning,with whom, save for occasional episodes not unconnected with the speedlaws,--Dunny says libelously that my progress in an automobile resemblesa fabulous monster with a flying car for the head, a cloud of smoke andgasoline for the body, and a cohort of incensed motor-cycle men for thetail,--I had lived on the most cordial terms.
I was not certain whether they would accuse me of murder or espionage.There were pegs enough, undeniably, on which to hang either charge.Myself, I rather inclined to the latter; the case was so clear, sodetailed! My rush from Paris to Bleau,--in order, no doubt, that Imight at an unostentatious spot join forces with my confederate, MissFalconer, whom I had been meeting at intervals ever since we left NewYork in company,--my behavior there, and the fashion in which we werevanishing should suffice to doom me as a spy.
When the French began tracing my movements, when they joined my presentactivities to the fact that only by the skin of my teeth had I escaped acharge of bringing German papers into Italy, there would be the devilto pay. I acknowledged it; then--really, this brand-new, unfounded,cast-iron trust of mine in Miss Falconer was changing me beyondrecognition--I recalled the old recipe for the preparation of Welshrabbit, and light-heartedly challenged the authorities to "catch mefirst." I had a disguise; if I bore any superior earmarks my leathercoat obliterated them; and I could drive; even Dario Resta could nothave sniffed at my technic. Better still, my French, learned even beforemy English, would not betray me. As nurse and as _mecanicien_, we stooda fair chance in our masquerade.
I might have to pay my shot, but I was enjoying it. This was a goodworld through which we were speeding; life was in the high gear to-day.The car purred beneath us like a splendid, harnessed tiger; the springair was fresh and fragrant, the country charming, with here a forest,there a valley, farther off the tiled, colored roofs of some littletown. Our road, like a white ribbon, wound itself out endlessly betweenstone walls or brown fields. In my content I forgot food and suchprosaic details till I noticed that the girl looked pale.
"I say," I exclaimed remorsefully: "we've been omitting rolls andcoffee! I'm going to get you some at the first town we pass."
"We are coming to a town now, to Le Moreau." She was looking anxious.
"Yes? I'm afraid I don't place it exactly. Ought I to?"
"It is the first town in the war zone. And--and our road passes throughit."
"Oh!" I was enlightened. "Then they will probably ask to see our papersat the _octroi_?"
"Yes."
The car was eating up the smooth white road; I could see the little_octroi_ building at the town boundary-line, and a group of gendarmes inreadiness close by. It was a critical moment. Miss Falconer, Irecalled, had said she could get through to Carrefonds; but glitteringgeneralities were not likely to convince these sentries; one neededsafe-conducts, passes, identity cards, and such concrete aids. Shecouldn't give a reasonable account of herself, I felt quite certain; andeven if she did, how was she to account for me?
As I brought the car to a standstill, my conscience clamored, and mycostume seemed to shriek incongruity from every seam. In this dilemmaI trusted to sheer blind luck--a rather thrilling business. As agray-headed sergeant stepped forward to welcome us, I looked himunfalteringly in the eye, though I wondered if he would not say:
"Monsieur, kindly remove that childish travesty with which you aretrying to impose on justice. We know all about you. Your name isDevereux Bayne. You are a German agent and intriguer; you have smuggledpapers; you have murdered a man and concealed his body. Unless you cangive a satisfactory explanation of all your actions since leaving NewYork, your last hour has arrived!"
What he really said was:
"Mademoiselle's papers?" He spoke quite amiably, a catlike pretense, nodoubt.
Miss Falconer was no longer looking anxious. Her hands were steady; shewas even smiling as she produced two neat little packets that, on beingunfolded, proved to have all the air of permits, _laissez-passers_, andpolice cards. Two nondescript photographs, which might have representedalmost any one, adorned them, and of these our sergeant made aperfunctory survey.
"Mademoiselle's name," he recited in a high singsong, "is Marie LeClair. She is a nurse, on her way to the hospital at Carrefonds. Andthis is Jacques Carton, who is her chauffeur?"
A singularly stupid person, on the whole, he must have thought me,hardly fit to be trusted with so superb a car. My mouth, I fancy, waswide open; I can't swear that I wasn't pop-eyed. This last developmenthad complete addled me. Marie Le Clair! Jacques Carton! Who were they?
"I wish," I remarked into the air as we drove on, "that some one wouldpinch me--hard."
She smiled faintly. Now it was over, she looked a little tremulous.
"Oh, no," she answered, "we were not dreaming. Poor Georges! I wish wewere!"
Such was the incredible beginning of our adventure. And as it began,so it continued. We breakfasted at Le Moreau. Miss Falconer ate in thedining-room of the small hotel; I sought the kitchen and, warmed by ourlate success, I did not shrink from playing my role. Then we resumed ourjourney, and though we showed our papers twenty times at least as thecontrol grew stricter, they were never challenged. I rubbed my eyessometimes. Surely I should wake up presently! We couldn't be here inthe forbidden region, in the war zone, plunging deeper every instant, inperil of our lives.
Yet the proof was thick about us. In the towns we passed we saw troopsalight from the trains and enter them; we saw farewells and reunions,the latter sometimes tearful, but the former invariably brave. We saw_depots_ where trucks and ambulances and commissary carts were filled,and canteens and soup kitchens where soldiers were being fed. AtCroix-le-Valois we saw the air turn black with the smoke of the munitionfactories that were working day and night. At St. Remilly above thetowers of the old chateau we saw the Red Cross flying, and on theterraces the reclining figures of wounded men. It seemed impossible thatsight-seers and pleasure-seekers had thronged along this road so lately.The signs of the Touring Club of France, posted at intervals, weresurvivals of an era that was now utterly gone.
With the coming of afternoon, the country grew still more beautiful.Orchards were thick about us, though the trees were leafless now. Thelittle thatched cottages had odd fungi sprouting from their roofs likerosy mushrooms; the trees and streams had a silvery shimmer, like aCorot fairy-land.
Then, set like sign-posts of desolation in this loveliness, came theravaged villages. We were on the soil where in the first month of thewar the Germans had trod as conquerors, and where, step by step, theFrench had driven them back. We passed Cormizy, burnt to the groundto celebrate its taking; Le Remy, where the heroic mayor had died,transfixed by twenty bayonets; Bar-Villers, a group of ruined housesabout a mourning, shattered church. It was the region where the Huntriumph had spoken aloud, unbridled. Miss Falconer sat white and silentas we drove through it; my hands tightened on the wheel.
We had lunched at Tolbiac, late and abominably. Then, leaving thehighway, we had taken a country road. Two punctures befell us; onceour carburetor betrayed the trust we placed in it. By the time thesedeficiencies were remedied I had col
lected dust and grease enough tolook my part.
It had been, by and large, a singularly speechless day, which myspasmodic efforts at entertainment had failed to cheer. The girl triedto respond, but her eyes were strained, eager, shadowed; her answerscame at random. My talk, I suppose, teased her ears like the troublesomebuzzing of a fly.
"She is thinking," I decided at last, "about those papers. Lord, if shedoesn't find them she is going to take it hard!"
I left her in peace after that and drove the faster. Luck was with us!At the end of our journey everything would be all right.
As evening settled down on us the road grew increasingly lonely. Woodsof oak-trees were about us, their trunks mossy, their branches lacing;on our left was a narrow river thick with rushes and smooth greenstones. So rutty was the earth that our wheels sank into it and ourengine labored. There was a charming sylvan look about the scenery; weseemed to be alone in the universe: I could not recall when we had lastseen a peasant or passed a hut.
Suddenly I realized that there was a sound in the distance, notcontinuous, but steadily recurrent, a faint booming, I thought.
"What's that noise off yonder?" I asked, with one ear cocked toward theeast.
Miss Falconer roused herself.
"It is the cannonading," she answered. "We have come a long way, Mr.Bayne. In two hours--in less than that--we could drive to the Front. Andsee!"
The dark was coming fast; a crimson sunset was reddening the river. Alittle below us on the opposite bank, I saw what had been a village onceupon a time. But some agency of destruction had done its work there;blackened spaces and heaped stones and the shells of dwellings rose tieron tier among trees that seemed trying to hide them; only on the crestof the bank, overlooking the wreck like a gloomy sentinel, one buildingloomed intact, a dark, scarred, frowning castle with medieval walls andtowers. I stared at the scene of desolation.
"The Germans again!" I said.
"Yes," the girl assented, gazing across the water. "They came here atthe beginning of the war. They burned the houses and the huts and thelittle church with the image of the Virgin and the tomb of the oldconstable--all Prezelay except the chateau; and they only left thatstanding to give their officers a home."
With an automatic action of feet and fingers, I stopped the car. Herewas the town that she had shown me on the map that morning when we satlike a pair of whispering conspirators in the garden of the Three Kings.The obstacles which had seemed so great had melted away before us. Thisruined village, this heap of stones cross the river, was our goal, thekey to our mystery, the last scene of our drama--Prezelay.
The Firefly of France Page 18