Douglas could not have recovered, in any case. He was as one stunned. How did this boy know of the death of his wife? Well, that might be understood; but how did he know his most secret fear, the fact that since the crime his demons had lost their courage? He shook the feeling off, and turned again to gloat over the death of Balloch.
“Who was that?” asked Bowling.
“The Grand Panjandrum himself, with the little round button on top! That’s Douglas!”
“The Black Lodge man?”
“Ex-man.”
“I see daylight. Balloch was condemned, you know, for a crime done twenty years ago. Douglas must have known about it and betrayed him.”
“That’s the regular thing.”
“How does he come to be a colonel in the French Army?”
“Don’t know. He was close in with one or two ministers; Becasseux, I think, in particular. There’s a lot of politics in Occultism, as you know.”
“I’ll think that over. I might ask the minister this morning. But I tell you it’s no time for trifles. Ever since all the mobilisation plans were scrapped by the failure of Liege and Namur to hold out, distraction has reigned supreme, no casual mistress, but a wife, and procuress to the Lords of Hell at that!”
“Do not quote Tennyson, even mixed, under the shadow of the Lion de Belfort! As to trifles, there are none in war. Ask the Germans if you don’t believe me.”
A little later, after the Rotonde Cafe in the Boulevard Montparnasse had refreshed them with its admirable coffee, and those brioches which remind one of boyhood’s earliest kisses, they walked down to the Place de la Concorde, and parted.
Cyril went on to the Opera, to his tailor in the Rue de la Paix. His mind was full of meditations upon the details of the great idea that had come to him, the divination of the enemy’s objective. His suggestion had made Lord Antony laugh. He himself had never felt less like laughing; he was on fire with creative genius – and terrified lest his work should fall upon barren soil. Well he knew how hard it is to get Power to listen to Reason!
At the corner of the Place de I’Opera he lifted his eyes to assure himself of a free crossing.
The mind of Abdul Bey was in turmoil. His first night upon the yacht had been mere wallowing in debauch; but he woke with a clear head, acutely alive to the complexity of his situation. He was personally triumphant; there was nothing in his private affairs to worry him. But in charge, as he was, of the Turkish Secret Service in Paris, he knew the political situation well enough. He knew that Turkey would throw in her lot with Germany, sooner or later; and he was doubtful as to the wisdom of returning to France. On the other hand, duty called him with clarion voice; and he wanted to have as many fingers as possible in the pie. After much consideration, he thought he would land at Barcelona, and get through with his American passport – for he had papers from most nations – as a distracted millionaire. His companions – both American citizens – would aid the illusion. Supposing that there was already trouble or suspicion, this subterfuge would serve; once in Paris, he could find out how the land lay, and act accordingly.
He gave orders to the captain to make for Catalonia. The voyage was uneventful, save for the brief visit of a cruiser which discovered nothing contraband; in fact, Abdul and Lisa remained drunk the whole time. Only, just off the Spanish coast, a capful of wind once again interfered with Lisa’s enjoyment of the honeymoon. It had another consequence, more serious. No sooner had they landed at Barcelona, than Lisa became suddenly and terribly ill. After a week, the doctors decided upon a radical remedy-operation. The next day a girl child entered the world, very much alive, despite the irregularity of her entrance. No ordinary child, either. She was a beautifully made baby, with deep blue eyes; and she was born with four teeth, and with hair six inches long, so fair as to be silvery white. Like a tattoo-mark, just over the heart, was a faint blue crescent.
Lisa recovered rapidly from her illness, but not too quickly for the amorous Turk; though he was surprised and annoyed to find that she had recovered her early grace and activity. The fat had gone from her in the three weeks of illness; and when she began to be able to move about, and drive in the city, she looked once more almost as she did on the night when Cyril first saw her, a gay, buxom, vigorous woman. The change cooled Abdul’s ardour, and her own feelings altered with it. Her lover’s sloppiness began to disgust her. As to the child, it was a source of irritation to both of them. Cremers, again, was hardly a boon companion; she would have depressed a hypochondriac going to the funeral of a beloved uncle who had left him nothing. Before Lisa had been out of bed three days, a crisis arose; she felt instinctively that Paris would be “no fun”, and wanted to go to America. Abdul felt that he must lose no time in getting to Paris. Cremers, for some reason, had changed her mind about reporting to Douglas; she was homesick for West 186th Street, so she said. The explosion came at lunch, the Spanish nurse having failed to muffle the baby with due adequacy.
“Oh hell!” said Abdul Bey.
“God knows, I don’t want the little beast!” said its proud mother.
“Look’e here!” remarked Cremers. “I do want it. Sure some baby!”
“Oh hell!” repeated Abdul Bey.
“Look’e here! You gimme the rocks, an’ I’ll take her across the pond. There’s ships. Gimme three thousand bucks and expenses, and three thousand every year, and I’ll fix it. You folks get off and paint Paree pink. Is it a go?”
Abdul Bey brightened immediately. Only one thought chilled him. “What about Douglas?” he said.
‘I’ll ’tend to that.” “It’s a good scheme,” muttered Lisa.
“Let’s get away tonight; I’m sick of this hole.” She caressed the Turk warmly.
But Paris was no longer the Paris of her dreams, no longer the Paris of idleness and luxury “where good Americans go when they die”; it was a Paris of war, of stern discipline, of patriotic enthusiasm, nothing less than a nightmare for the compatriots of the lady who didn’t raise her boy to be a soldier. She blamed Abdul, who shrugged his shoulders, and reminded her that she was lucky to get dinner at all, that the Germans were likely to be in the city in a week or so. She taunted him; he let loose his ancestral feelings about women, those which lie deep-buried in all of us who are at least not utterly degenerate in soul, however loose morality may have corrupted us upon the surface. She rose in the automobile, just as they crossed the Place de I’Opera, and broke her parasol over his head; then turned her nails loose on his eyes. He fisted her in the abdomen, and she collapsed into the seat of the car with a scream. It was this that diverted the attention of Cyril Grey from his contemplation of the designs of Germany.
The boy made a leap, and had Abdul by the throat in a moment, dragging him out of the car, and proceeding to administer summary castigation with his boot. But the police interfered; three men rode up with drawn sabres, and put an end to the affair. They arrested all parties, and Cyril Grey only escaped by the exhibition of that paper which had won him such respect months earlier on the shambles of Moret railway station.
“I have to go to my tailor: service of the minister,” he remarked with a cynical smile; and was dismissed with the profoundest respect.
“After all, it was no business of mine,” he muttered as he wriggled into his new tunic, to the immense admiration of the tailor, a class whose appreciation of manly beauty depends so largely upon the price of the suit. “ ‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. The trouble comes when you can’t lose ’em. Poor old Lisa! Poor old Abdul! Well, as I said, it’s none of my business. My business is to divine the thoughts of the enemy, and – oh Lord! how long? – to get the powers that be to understand that I am right. Considering that they needed eight million marching men to persuade them that Bloody Bill meant war, I fear that my task may be no sinecure.”
He went to the barracks, where a military automobile was waiting fo
r him, and told the chauffeur, with bitter wit, to go out to meet General Cripps. As to Lisa and the Turk, it was twenty-four hours before they were set at liberty. The sight of Cyril, his prompt intervention in her defence, relit the flames of her half crazy passion. She rushed over to the studio to see him; it was shut up, and the concierge could give her no news. She drove wildly to the Profess-House in Montmartre. There they told her that he had gone to join the British army. Various excited enquiries in official quarters led her at last to Lord Antony Bowling. He was genuinely sympathetic: he had liked the girl at first sight; but he could hold out no hopes of arranging for her to see him.
“There’s only one way for you to get to the front,” said he. “Join the Red Cross. My sister’s here forming a section. I’ll give you a note to her, if you like.”
Lisa jumped at the suggestion. She saw, more vividly than if it were actual, the obvious result. Cyril would be desperately wounded, leading the last victorious charge of the dragoons against the walls of Berlin; she would interestingly nurse him back to life, probably by means of transfusion of blood; then, raised to the peerage, Marshal Earl Grey of Cologne (where he had swum the Rhine, and, tearing the keys of the city from the trembling hands of the astonished burgomaster, had flung them back across the river to his hesitating comrades) would lead her, with the Victoria Cross in gold and diamonds on his manly bosom, to the altar at St. Margaret’s, Westminster.
It was worth while learning magick to become clairvoyant like this! She dashed off, still at top speed, to enroll herself with Lady Marcia Bowling.
She gave no further thought to Abdul. He would never have attracted her, had she not perceived a difficulty in getting him.
As to that gentleman himself, if grief tore at his heart strings, he showed it that night in an unusual way. It may have been but simulation of philosophical fortitude; there is no need to enquire. His actions are of more interest: they consisted of picking up a cocotte on the Boulevard des Italiens, and taking her to dinner at the Café de Paris. At the conclusion of a meal which would have certainly been prescribed as a grief-cure to any but a dyspeptic, the maitre d’hotel approached their table, and tendered, with a bow, an envelope. Abdul opened it – it was a summons from Douglas to appear immediately in his presence at the apartment in the Faubourg St. Germain.
The Turk had no choice but to comply. He excused himself to his fair guest, at the cost of a hundred-franc note, and drove immediately to the rendezvous.
Douglas received him with extreme heartiness.
“A thousand congratulations, dear young man, upon your brilliant victory! You have succeeded where older and more learned men failed badly. I called you here tonight to tell you that you are now eligible for a place in the Fourteen, the Ghaagaael, for a seat is vacant since this morning.”
“They executed Balloch?”
Douglas nodded with a gloating smile.
“But why did you not save him, master?”
“Save him! It was I that destroyed him when he tried to betray me. Candidates take notice!”
Abdul protested his loyalty and devotion.
“The supreme test,” continued Douglas, “cannot conveniently be imposed in time of war. There is too much to do just now. But – as a preliminary – how do you stand with Germany?”
Abdul shrank back, startled out of his presence of mind.
“Germany!” he stammered at last. “Why, Colonel,” (he emphasised the title) “I know nothing. I have no instructions from my Government.” He met the eye of his master, and read its chill contempt. “l – er – er-”
“Dare you play with me?”
The young man protested that no such thought had crossed his mind.
“In that case,” pursued the sorcerer, “you won’t know what that means.”
Douglas took from his pocket a fifty-franc note. The Turk caught it up, his eyes grown momentarily wider with surprise.
“Examine it!” said Douglas, coldly.
The Turkish agent held it to the light. In the figures numbering the note were two small pinpricks.
“Allah!” he cried. “Then you are – ”
“I am. You may as well know that my colleague in the Lodge, ‘A. B.’, is going to stir up trouble for the British in India. Her influence with certain classes of Hindus is very great. For your part, you may try discreetly to tamper with the Mussulman section of the French troops, the Africans. But be careful – there is more important work to your hand, no less than the destruction of the French armies in the field. Now let us see what you can do. I am going to send you to my little garden hermitage, where I occasionally appear in the character of a great ascetic; there is an old lady there, devoted to me. Have your best man there to play Yogi. In the garden – here’s the plan – is the terminal of a wire. There’s another in that house where you got baptised and married – remember? Thence there’s a cable up Seine to another cottage where that old Belgian mystic lives – the friend of Maeterlinck! Ha! ha! He’s really von Walder, a Dresdener. And he is in charge of another cable – underground three hundred miles, thanks to Becasseux, who helped us with the road squads, to a place which by now is firmly in the hands of the Crown Prince. So all you have to do is to tell your man to sit and pretend to meditate – and tap. I shall send you plenty of information from the front. You will know my agents by a nick filed in a trouser-button. Each message will have a number, so that you will know if any go astray. All clear?”
“Admirable. I need not say how proud I am to find that we are on the same side. I was very frightened of that uniform!”
“L’hobit ne fait pas le moine,” replied Douglas gaily. “And now, sir, let us spend the night discussing our plans in detail – and some very excellent whisky which I happen to have by me.”
The spies pursued their double task, with pitiless energy, till morning was well broken. Later in the day Douglas left for Soissons. He was attached to the French army as chief of a corps of signallers – thanks, once again, to the good offices of Becasseux. His plans were perfect: they had been cut and dried for over fifteen years.
Chapter XXIII
OF THE ARRIVAL OF A CHINESE GOD UPON THE FIELD OF BATTLE;
OF HIS SUCCESS WITH HIS SUPERIORS AND OF A SIGHT WHICH HE SAW UPON THE ROAD TO PARIS. ALSO OF THAT WHICH THEREBY CAME UNTO HIM, AND OF THE END OF ALL THOSE THINGS WHOSE EVENT BEGAT A CERTAIN BEGINNING
UNMATCHED in history is the Retreat of the British Army from Mons. It was caught unprepared; it had to fight three weeks before it was ready; it was outnumbered three to one by a triumphant enemy; it was not co-ordinated with the French armies, and they failed to support it at critical moments; yet it fought that aweful dogged fight from house to house, and field to field, through league on league of Northern France. The line was forced to lengthen constantly as the retreat continued; it was attenuated by that and by its losses to beyond any human breaking-point; but luckily for England, her soldiers are made of such metal that the thinner the wire is drawn the tougher it becomes.
However, there is a point at which “open order” is like the word “decolletée” used to describe a smart American woman’s dinner dress; and General Cripps was feeling it at the moment when his new Intelligence Officer presented himself. It was about six o’clock at night; Cripps and his staff were bivouacked in the mairie of a small village. They were contemplating a further retreat that night.
“Sit down, Captain Grey,” said the chief kindly. “Join us at dinner – just as soon as we can get these orders out – listen and you’ll pick up the outlines – we’ll talk after dinner – on the road.”
Cyril took a chair. To his delight, an aide-de-camp, Lord Juventius Mellor, an exquisite young dandy with a languid lisp, who, in time of peace, had been pupil and private secretary of Simon Iff, came to greet him.
“Ju, dear boy, help me out. I’ve got to tell Cripps something, and he’ll think I’m mad. I
t’s bluff, too; but it’s true for all that – and it’s the one chance in the world.”
“Right O!”
“Are we retreating again?”
“All through the night. There’s not a dog’s chance to save Paris, and the line stretches every hour.”
“Don’t worry about Paris – it’s as safe as Bordeaux. Safer, because the Government is at Bordeaux!”
“My poor friend, wouldn’t you be better in a home?”
The British Army had no illusions about its situation. It was a thin, drab line of heroes, very thin and very drab, but there was no doubt about the heroism, and no uncertainty about what would happen to it if the Germans possessed a leader with initiative. So far the hostile legions had moved according to the rules, with all due scientific precaution. A leader of temperament and intuition might have rushed that tenuous line. Still, science was as sure as it was as slow – and the whole army knew it. They prepared to die as expensively as possible, with simplicity of manhood. They had not yet heard that Press and Pulpit had made them the laughing-stock of the world by the invention of the ridiculous story of the “Angels of Mons”. Lord Juventius Mellor was something of a hero-worshipper. From Simon Iff he would have taken any statement with absolute respect, and Grey’s remark had been somewhat of the Simon Iff brand. It was, therefore, almost as much an impertinence as it was an absurdity. Paris was as certain to fall as the sun to set. It was in rotten bad taste to joke about it.
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