CHAPTER XXIV
THE OBUS
I stood in the gallery for an instant, indulging in a reconnoissance.The hall was now illuminated by an electric torch and three gutteringcandles; at the foot of the staircase lay the table which had done suchyeoman's service, split in two. As for the besiegers, they weregathered near the chimney-place in a worse-for-wear group, one nursinga nosebleed; another feeling gingerly of a loose tooth; Blenheim himselffrankly raging, and decorated with a broad cut across his forehead anda cheek that was rapidly taking on assorted shades of blue, green, andblack; and the redoubtable Mr. Schwartzmann, worst off of all, lying ina heap, groaning at intervals, but apparently quite unaware of what wasgoing on.
My abrupt sally seemed transfixing. I might have been Medusa. I had awelcome minute in which to contemplate the victims of my prowess andto exult unchristianly in their scars. Then the tableau dissolved, thethree men sprang up, and I took action. As I emerged I had drawn out ahandkerchief and I now proceeded to raise and wave it.
"Well, Herr von Blenheim, I have come to parley with you," I announced,"white flag and all."
He tried to look as if he had expected me, though it was obvious that hehadn't. To give verisimilitude to the pretense, he even pulled out hiswatch.
"I thought you would. You had just two minutes' grace," he commented,watching me narrowly. "Suppose you come down. You have brought thepapers, I hope--for your own sake?"
"Oh, yes!" I assured him with all possible blandness. "I have broughtthem. What else was there to do? You had us in the palm of your hand.That door is old and worm-eaten; you could have crumpled it up likepaper. When we thought the situation over we saw its hopelessness atonce; so here I am."
"That is sensible," he agreed curtly, though I could see that he waspuzzled. Casting a baffled glance beyond me, he scanned the gallerydoor. It by no means merited my description, being heavy, solid, almostimmovable in aspect. "Well, let's have the papers!" he said, withsuspicion in his tone.
I descended in a deliberate manner, casting alert eyes about me, for,to use an expressive idiom, I was not doing this for my health. On thecontrary I had two very definite purposes; the first, which I couldprobably compass, was to save Miss Falconer from further intercoursewith Blenheim and to conceal the presence of the wounded, helplessFirefly from his enemies; the second, surprisingly modest, was tomake the four Germans prisoners and hand them over in triumph to thegendarmes of the nearest town, Santierre.
I was perfectly aware of the absurdity of this ambition. I lackedthe ghost of an idea of how to set about the thing. But the generalcraziness of events had unhinged me. I was forming the habit of trustingto pure luck and _vogue la galere_! I can't swear that I hadn't visionsof conquering all my adversaries in some miraculous single-handedfashion, disarming them, and, as a final sweet touch of revenge, tyingthem up in chairs, to keep Marie-Jeanne company and meditate on theturns of fate.
"Here they are," I said, obligingly offering the package. "We foundthem nestling behind a panel--old family hiding place, you know. I can'tvouch for their contents, not being an expert, but Miss Falconer wassatisfied. How about it, now you look at them? Do they seem all right?"
Not paying the slightest attention to my conversational efforts,Blenheim had snatched the papers, torn them hungrily open, and run themthrough. He was bristling with suspicion; but he evidently knew hisbusiness. It did not take him long to conclude that he really had hisspoils.
Folding them up carefully, he thrust them into his coat and stored them,displaying, however, less triumph than I had thought he would. The truthwas that he looked preoccupied, and I wondered why. For the first timein all the hair-trigger situations that I had seen him face I sensed astrain in him.
"So much for that. Now, Mr. Bayne, what do you think we mean to do toyou?" he asked.
"I don't know, I am sure," I answered rather absently; I was weighingthe relative merits of jiu-jitsu and my five remaining revolver-shots."Is there anything sufficiently lingering? Let me suggest boiling oil;or I understand that roasting over a slow fire is considered tasty.Either of those methods would appeal to you, wouldn't it?"
"I don't deny it!" Blenheim answered in a tone that was convincing. "Youhaven't endeared yourself to us, my friend, in the last hour. But wecan't spare you yet; our plans for the evening are lively ones and theyinclude you. I told you, didn't I, that we were going to no man's-landvia the trenches, when we finished this affair?"
"You told me many interesting things. I've forgotten some of thedetails." I was aware of a thrill of excitement. The man was worried; somuch was sure.
"You will recall them presently, or if you don't, I'll refresh yourmemory. The fact is, Mr. Bayne, you have put a pretty spoke in ourwheel. It stands this way: our papers are made out for a party of fourofficers, and you have eliminated Schwartzmann. Don't you owe us someamends for that? You like disguises, I gather from your costume. Whatdo you say to putting on a new one, a pale-blue uniform, and seeing usthrough the lines?"
He looked, while uttering this wild pleasantry, about as humorous asKing Attila. Could he possibly be in earnest? After all, perhaps he was!War rules were cast-iron things; if his pass called for four men,four he must have or rouse suspicion; and it was certain that HerrSchwartzmann would do no gadding to-night or for many nights to come.That shot of mine from the gallery had upset Blenheim's plans veryneatly. I stared at him, fascinated.
"Well?" said he. "Do you understand?"
"I understand," I exclaimed indignantly, "that this is too much! It is,really. I was getting hardened; I could stand a mere impossibility ortwo and not blink; but this! It is beyond the bounds. I shall begin tosee green snakes presently or writhing sea-serpents--"
"No," Blenheim cut me short savagely, "you are underestimating. Unlessyou oblige us what you will see is the hereafter, Mr. Bayne!"
Yes, he meant it. His very fierceness, eloquent of frazzled nerves,was proof conclusive. With another thrill, triumphant this time, Irecognized my chance. His campaign, instead of going according tospecifications, had been interfered with; his position was dangerous;he had no time to lose; for all he knew, at any point along the roadhis masquerade might have been suspected, the authorities notified,vengeance put on his track. In desperation he meant to risk mydenouncing him, use me till he reached the Front trenches and hisfriends there, and then, no doubt, get rid of me. What he couldn'tguess was that I would have turned the earth upside down to make thisopportunity that he was offering me on a silver tray.
"Oh, I'll oblige you," I assured him with what must have seemed insanecheerfulness. "I'll oblige you, Her von Blenheim, with all the pleasurein the world. If you really want me, that is. If my presence won't makeyou nervous. Aren't you afraid, for instance, that I might be temptedto share my knowledge of your name and your profession with the firstFrench soldiers we meet?"
"As to that, we will take our chances." Blenheim's face was adamant,though my suggestion had produced a not entirely enlivening effect onhis two friends. "You see, Mr. Bayne, in this business the risks willbe mostly yours. There will be no flights of stairs to dart up and notables to over turn and no candles to extinguish; you will sit in thetonneau with a man beside you, a very watchful man, and a pistol againstyour side. You don't want to die, do you? I thought not, since yousurrendered those papers. Well, then, you'll be wise not to say a wordor stir a muscle. And now we are in a hurry. Will you make your toilet,please?"
It was the bizarre curtain scene of what I had called an extravaganza.Blenheim's confederates, taking no special pains for gentleness,stripped off the outer garments of the prostrate Schwartzmann, whomoaned and groaned throughout the process, though he never opened hiseyes. Blenheim urged haste upon us; he was getting more fidgety everyinstant; he bit his lip, drummed with his fingers, kept an ear cocked,as if expecting to hear pursuers at the door. Still, he neglected noprecautions. He demanded my revolver. I surrendered it amiably, andthen doffed my chauffeur's outfit and took, from a social standpoint, agratifying
step upward, donning one by one the insignia of France.
The fit was not perfect by any means. Schwartzmann was a giant, amountain. My feet swished aloud groggily in his burnished putties; hisgarments hung round me in ample, rather than graceful, folds. However,the loose cape of horizon blue resembled charity in covering defects.As a dummy, sitting motionless in the rear of the automobile, my captorsfelt that I would pass.
By this time I was enchanted with the plans I was concocting. I mightlook like an opera-bouffe hero,--no doubt I did,--but my hour wouldcome. Meanwhile events were marching. My transformation being complete,Blenheim gave a curt order in German, the candles were blown out, andlighted only by the torch, we turned toward the door. There was aninarticulate cry from Schwartzmann, just conscious enough, poor beggar,to grasp the fact of his abandonment in the strategic retreat hisfriends were beating. Then we were out in the courtyard, beneath thestars.
Down the hill, sheltered behind the stones of a ruined house, the graycar was waiting, and Blenheim climbed into the driver's seat, meanwhilegiving brief directions. There was no noise, no flurry; the affair, Imust say, went with an efficiency in keeping with the proudest Prussiantraditions. I was installed in the tonneau, and I was hardly seatedbefore the motor hummed into life, and we jolted into the moonlit road.
For perhaps the hundredth time I asked myself if I was dreaming; if thisperson in a French disguise, speeding through the night with a blue-cladGerman beside him,--a German suffering, by the way, from a headache,the last stages of a nosebleed, and a pronounced dislike for me as theagency responsible for his ailments,--was really Devereux Bayne. But theair was cold on my face; a revolver pressed my side; I saw three set,hard profiles. It was not a dream; it was a dash for safety. And it wasengineered by anxious, desperate men.
Blenheim, hunched over the steering wheel, had settled to his business.Certainly his nerve was going; the mania for escape had caught him;he took startling chances on his curves and turns. Still, he knew thecountry, it seemed. We drove on, fast and furiously, by lanes, bymere paths set among thickets, by narrow brushwood roads. Sometimeswe skirted the river, which shone silver in the moonlight, lined withrushes. Again, we could see nothing but a roof of trees overhead.
We emerged into a wider road, and I became award of various noises; abooming, clear and regular; the sound of voices; the rumbling ofmany wheels. We must be nearing the Front; we were rejoining the mainhighroad. My guess was proved correct at the next turning, where asentry barred our path.
The sight of his honest French face was like a tonic to me. In somewelcome way it seemed to hearten me for my task. The pistol of my friendin the tonneau bored through his cape into my side; I sat very quiet. IfI did this four, five, perhaps six times, they might think me cowedand relax their vigilance. Their suspicions would be lulled by mytractability and their contempt. Then my hour would strike.
Satisfied with the safe-conducts, the sentry gestured us forward, andhis figure slipped out of my vision as the gray car purred on. The manbeside me chuckled.
"Behold this Yankee! He is as good as gold, my captain. He sits like amouse," he announced in his own tongue.
"He'll be wise," Blenheim announced, "to go on doing so." The threat wasin English for my benefit and came from between his teeth.
In front of us the noise was growing. With our next turn we entered thehighroad, taking our place in a long rumbling line of ambulances andsupply-carts and laboring camions, or trucks. We glimpsed faces,heard voices all about us. The change from solitude to this unbrokenprocession was bewildering. But we did not long remain a part of it; weturned again into narrower lanes.
The control was growing stricter. Four separate times we were halted,and always I sat hunched in my corner as impassive as a stone. Themore deeply we penetrated toward the Front, the more uneasy grew mycompanions. Each time that a sentry halted us they waited in moreanxiety for his verdict. The man beside me, it was true, still menacedme with his pistol point; but the gesture had grown perfunctory. He didnot think I would attempt anything. He believed now that I was afraid.
Our road crossed a hilltop, and I saw beneath us a valley, streaked atintervals with blinding signal-flashes of red and green. In my ears thethunder of the guns was growing steadily. When we were stopped again,the sentry warned us. The road we were traveling, he said, had beenintermittently under fire for two days.
It looked, indeed, as if devils had used it for a playground; the treeswere mere blackened stumps; the fields on each side stretched burnt andbare. And then came the climax: something passed us,--high above ourheads, I fancy, though its frightful winds seemed brushing us,--a ghostof the night, an aerial demon, a shrieking thing that made the manbeside me cringe and shudder. It was new to me, but I could not mistakeit. It was what the French call an _obus_, a word that in some subtlemanner seems more menacing and dreadful than our own term of shell.
As we sped on I leaned against the cushions, outwardly quiet. Inwardly,I was gathering myself together for my attempt. I had not thought Iwould first approach the Front this way; but it was a good way, I hada good object. At the next stop, whatever it was, I meant to make theventure. I did not doubt I should succeed in it. But I could not hope tokeep my life.
Another _obus_ hurtled over us and shrieked away into the distance; andagain the man beside me flinched, but I did not. I was thinking, withodd lucidity, of many things, among them Dunny and his old housein Washington, into which I should never again let myself with mylatch-key, sure of a welcome at any hour of the day or night. Myguardian's gray head rose before me. My heart tightened. The finest,straightest old chap who ever took a forlorn little tike in out of thewet, and petted him, and frolicked with him, and filled his stocking allthe year round, and made his holidays things of rapture, and taught himhow to ride and shoot and fish and swim and cut his losses and do prettymuch everything that makes life worth living--that was Dunny.
"This will be a hard jolt for the old chap," I thought, "but he'll saythat I played the game."
And Esme Falconer, my own brave, lovely Esme! "She has come down thestaircase now," I told myself. "She has untied Marie-Jeanne. She hasgone out and started the car." What would she think of my disappearance?Well, she wouldn't misjudge me, I felt sure; and neither wouldJean-Herve-Marie-Olivier. He would know that I was acting as, in myplace, he would have acted, that I didn't mean to let Franz von Blenheimdefy France and go off untouched.
The whole world seemed mysteriously to have narrowed to one girl, Esme.How I had lived before I saw her; how, having seen her, I could everhave lived without her,--I didn't know. But the sound of grindingbrakes roused me. We were slowing up in obedience to a signal froma canvas-covered, half-demolished shelter filled with men in blueuniforms; we were coming to a standstill. Blenheim leaned out, and for amoment I saw his face in the beam of light from the sentry's lantern. Itlooked thin and set. He was giving beneath the strain.
"Behold my comrade!" He thrust our papers into the hands of the sentry."And make haste, for the love of heaven! We are waited for _la-bas_."
I cast a quick glance at my body-guard, whose anxious eyes were on thesentinel. His pistol still lay against my side, but his thoughts werefar away. It was the moment. With the rapidity of lightning Iknocked his arm up, caught his wrist, and clung to it, calling outsimultaneously in a voice of crisp command.
"My friends," I cried in French, "I order you to arrest these persons!They are agents of the kaiser! They are German spies!"
The pistol, clutched between us, exploded harmlessly into the air.I head shouts, saw men running toward us. Then I caught sight ofBlenheim's face, dark and oddly contorted; he had turned and wasleveling his revolver at me, resting one knee on the driver's seat as hetook deliberate aim.
"I say," I cried again, struggling for the weapon, "that this is Franzvon Blenheim, that these are men of the kaiser, spying, in disguise--"
It seemed to me that some one caught Blenheim's arm from behind just ashe fired; but I was not certain. For sudd
enly that same whistling shrieksounded over us, nearer this time, more ominous; the earth seemedto rock and then to end in a mighty shock and cataclysm. Blacknessenveloped me, and I dropped into a bottomless pit.
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