Rupert-George bent his head to the keyhole. “There’s no one there now.”
“She’s gone to call Prince Waldemar,” Gill said, between her teeth.
“Probably. One has always heard that German women are so practical,” Rupert-George remarked cheerfully, as he came feeling his way back to Carina. “Well, that leaves nothing for us but the secret entry—hope it is secret, by the way.”
“It is,” Carina told him. “It had not been used for ages till Dick and I discovered it, and then we kept the secret carefully, or we should have been forbidden to go in. I’ll open it; come quickly! they may be back at any moment.”
“One minute—I’m sorry for the sacrilege, but we must account for our disappearance.”
He snatched up his spiked German helmet from a chair and dashed it through a window, shattering the glass. The window was a modern addition, large and ugly, set flat in the wall, intended to supply the light which the low-browed Norman windows, with their wonderful old glass, kept out almost as effectually as the solid wall did.
In less than a minute Rupert-George had dislodged two panes, letting in a wild gust of shrieking wind, but thank Heaven! no light. The night was what ancient writers would have called “pitmirk.”
“Now for the secret entry.”
Carina was fumbling with it. The pivot might have seemed impossible to find there in the dimness, for of course Cartaret dared not use his torch; but hunted Jacobites, robbers, and other exciting personages who happened to exercise the fancy of a small girl and boy playing in the secret passages—when they could escape from grown-up guardians—had needed to find the pivot very rapidly sometimes, if they were to escape detection; and Carina had not forgotten.
The three went down the worn steps together; Gill first (Carina made her), then the Grand-Duchess, and last, Rupert-George, who swung the great stone back behind him. The three listened for a moment, but there was no sound from the chapel.
Rupert-George gave his electric torch to Gillian and his left hand to Carina, and they hurried silently down the steps and as far as the narrow rock passage where Gillian had been so surprised to meet Cartaret a few hours back. Here they stopped, and Carina, who had been absolutely silent all through the danger, gave a little gasp.
“Yes, we’re all right here, for the present,” Cartaret answered the unspoken words, “but we have to think of getting on. …”
“Not yet,” Carina said quickly. “Tell me of my dear Dick, and of your own wound, Rupert, and …”
Gill again thought it well to retreat, and wandered away further down the passage, beyond the place where she had first met Rupert-George. She was afraid to go far, but she went out of hearing, and stood waiting for what seemed to her a long, long time. Probably it was really about ten minutes before she heard footsteps and Cartaret’s torch flashed out.
“Gillian!” he called, and Gill stumbled back towards him, feeling ridiculously shy.
“Does—she want me?”
Rupert-George was rather flushed; he looked excited and unlike his usual easy-going self. But his eyes laughed in quite the old way, as he answered:
“Well, she was beginning to wonder anxiously where your tact had conducted you. But you might wait just a moment before going back to her. I want to say something to you.”
The laughter had gone out of his eyes now; he was quite grave.
“You see, we have to get out of Chardille to-night—somehow—and that’s going to be—well, not easy. But as it happened the men in the guardroom were discussing ways and means of getting out of the town at night, and grumbling at the fact that, while a private risks heavy punishment, an officer can get a special pass for one or more, on application to your old friend the Baron von Traume, of all people. Now I don’t see any better way of smuggling the three of us out of the city than that. I thought so at the time, only it’s a little rushed now! So I want you to go back to Carina and persuade her to stay here quietly, and be quite happy about me, you know, after you’ve put me up to the geography of the Baron’s abode. See?”
Several different ideas had been rushing through Gill’s mind while he was talking; when he had finished, the one that stayed uppermost was:
“Let me go and try and get hold of one of those pass things, and you stay with the Grand-Duchess, please!”
“Certainly not!”
“You had really better let me,” Gill urged. “It’s frightfully difficult to describe just how things are, and if you could explain just what you want—I know it’s mean to be a spy when you’ve eaten a person’s bread and butter, but I can’t help that; besides, they did only want Berta to know English because of conquering us—and I do know the outside staircase and the door into the Baron’s upstairs study and all that, and you don’t.”
“Do me out a plan. I think I’ve got a pencil on me.”
“It wouldn’t be the same thing—you can make a much better spy when you know the house from inside. …”
“I dare say; but you’re not going,” Rupert-George assured her firmly. “Come along to Carina; I hear her calling, so it’s no use trying to slip off quietly without bothering her.”
Carina was indeed coming towards them, guided by their voices and the light, and Captain Cartaret turned and explained his plan to her, speaking of it with easy cheerfulness as a comparatively simple proceeding.
Carina agreed with Gill to a certain extent, it was plain. Not that she would hear of allowing the girl to go alone, but she thought that, if the Baron’s papers must be rifled, Gillian was far more likely to be able to get at them undetected. She was unwilling to let either risk so much; but Gill fancied that she realised a good deal more than Rupert-George wished her to realise of the frightful difficulty in getting out of the town without being captured, and she finally agreed that they should go together. She was not afraid to be left alone, she said, and they must go at once, before she had time to think of all that they were braving for her sake.
Gillian wondered whether the man who loved her would consent to leave her. He stood very still, listening to her; then suddenly flung back his shoulders.
“Very well, we’ll go. I’ll leave you my torch, though.”
“No, you must take that with you; you will need it, you and my brave Gillian,” Carina said, with her little air of command. “Do you think that I am afraid of the dark? I am afraid of nothing now I have you, Rupert. Only, come back to me.”
The two put their heads together over Dick’s plan of the passages and grotto, and Carina advised passing on through those wonderful underground chambers until they reached the passage leading up to the ruined watch-tower on the hill. The tower had stood originally to guard that end of the city’s boundaries, but it had long since fallen into decay, while the city had climbed past it up the hill in all directions. It was now only a relic of old days, in the midst of new aspiring roads and houses, whose owners believed in air, and stood almost lost among them, with a high iron railing around it to prevent children from walking off with its historic stones to build dolls’-houses.
“Of course it is a long way from the Baron’s house,” Carina said, “but it has the great advantage that no one would possibly suspect it of any connection with the palace. Only,”—she laughed a little in spite of the gravity of the situation—“I can’t think how Gill will negotiate those railings.”
And it was with the echo of that brave attempt at a laugh in their ears that Gill and Captain Cartaret left Carina alone in the darkness and started on their quest.
Cartaret hurried Gill along another passage running at right angles to the first; from this they emerged into a place that brought an exclamation of delight from Gillian, in spite of everything.
The great rock-room, seeming to stretch away interminably, was hung with long graceful stalactites—ghostly white in the distance, but near at hand, where they were caught by the glow of Cartaret’s torch, of a delicate transparent pink. The stalactites in many cases bore a strong resemblance to human figures
; it needed but little exercise of the imagination, Gill thought, to see them as hovering angels, waiting with sheathed wings till their protection should be needed. The fancy made her feel wonderfully happier about Carina, and brought back to her mind the beautiful words of the old carillon.
They passed through three of those stupendous chambers; Rupert-George often stopping to hold the torch above his head and get his bearings. It was a place where it would be decidedly easy to lose one’s way and wander about hunting for it for days, Gill thought.
At last they turned into a passage that sloped upwards. “This looks like ours,” Cartaret observed cheerfully. “Your friend Dick draws a first-rate plan: I’ll say that for him.”
“Are we coming back the same way?” Gillian asked.
Cartaret laughed. “I don’t know yet. We’ve got a bit of a job before us, you know—sorry to have to mention that.”
“Oh, it’s all right,” Gill told him. “I’m frightfully glad to get the chance of doing anything for … her.”
“I know you are,” Captain Cartaret said, looking round at her with his delightful smile. “And you can’t imagine what a comfort that was to me when I was feeling desperately anxious about Carina. If it weren’t for knowing what you feel about her, do you think I would have let any girl risk what you’re risking to-night?”
Gill felt almost as proud as though she had been awarded a medal. They said nothing more, for an increasing freshness in the atmosphere made them guess that they were approaching the end of the underground part of their adventurous journey, and that in consequence far the most dangerous part was to come.
“I’m going in front,” Cartaret whispered. “Don’t move up any further till I whistle.” And he disappeared, leaving Gill to a solitude which seemed horribly long, and would have seemed even longer if it had not been for the thought of Carina and her courage over a far greater loneliness.
The whistle came at last, and Gill felt her way till one of her groping hands came in contact with that of Rupert-George, and she was pulled up three or four rough steps, and found herself in what had once been the ground-floor of the old tower, but was now a place open to the blustrous night air.
At least that was what she guessed by the stones that seemed to be about, and by the fact that her shoulder came in contact with a rough wall.
“Stand still; I’m going to slip the old trap-door back and put a few loose stones upon it, as though it had never been moved,” Cartaret whispered. “I daren’t show a light, so don’t move or you’ll hurt yourself. We may thank our lucky star that it’s a night when precious few will be about in the streets. Fasten your coat, and tie this scarf over your head. I found it in the orderly’s pocket. It’s not a night for a girl to be out. Listen to the rain!”
The rain was indeed coming down in torrents; the tower still gave a little shelter from it, but Gill could hear the suck and gurgle outside, as it swept down the brimming gutters, and, through it all, the crash of a falling chimney somewhere near. Rupert-George was right; it was not altogether a pleasant night to be out, particularly when you were wearing only bronze evening slippers on your feet; but there had been a very hopeful ring in his voice which made Gill realise that in the badness of the weather lay their best safety.
The trap-door was replaced and Rupert-George guided Gill carefully out of the old tower into a steep street. There was not a light to be seen anywhere; everyone was in bed.
Battling against wind and rain they made their slow way towards the Rue St. Denise; Cartaret walking just in front of Gill, with the lightness of a cat, and with his head a little forward, listening.
They were passing the cathedral, when he stopped abruptly. “What is it?” Gill jerked, only just saving herself from colliding with him.
“Troop-horses! Cover. Cathedral?”
“Soldiers quartered there,” Gill said, and, as she said it, she had an inspiration, and not too soon, for the soldiers were bearing straight down the street, and they were carrying lanterns.
Whispering was no use on such a night. She shouted the words into his ear, as he bent towards her.
“A narrow passage close here to the right … leads into the Rue des Carillons. Jean Werpen would shelter us.”
Rupert-George wheeled sharply, so soon as he took in the sense of the words. It was too dark to see the opening to the passage, but they struck it exactly, more by good luck than anything else, and Gill knocked softly at the familiar door in the Rue des Carillons.
It was opened almost immediately by old Jean Werpen; they are the happy people who sleep sound. The old man expressed no surprise at the sight of his visitors, but put out his knotted old hand and drew Gill in out of the storm. He heard their danger in silence too; only he knelt to gather together the few smouldering ashes left upon the hearth and drew close the high-backed chair, which had owned but three legs since that first day of the German occupation, that Gill might dry her wet feet. He waked Marie too, who came with her pretty hair in two long plaits, full of pity for Gill’s plight. She brought her dry coarse stockings, of her own knitting, and strong shoes, as soon as the dying away into distance of the horses’ hoofs had convinced the rather anxious listeners that there was no immediate danger of a search in the Rue des Carillons.
“And the neck and arms of Mademoiselle are bare under her coat, and so cold,” she cried. “Would Mademoiselle prefer a dress of mine?”
Gill jumped at the idea. A white evening dress was hardly a suitable garment for the work on which she was engaged; still less would it be suitable to-morrow morning, when she hoped to have left Chardille far behind her.
Captain Cartaret, who had been standing at the curtained window, listening, it seemed, to the sounds both without and within, turned round.
“I wonder whether Monsieur Werpen could accommodate me as well with a change of clothes, and burn this little lot I’m wearing,” he suggested. “It’s a German Red Cross orderly that these beggars will have been told to keep a bright look for; but I know it is a good deal to ask.”
“The holiday clothes of Bèrnard remain in the great press, as when he wore them last,” Werpen said. “The English Monsieur is welcome to them, and there is an inner room where he can effect the change.”
“I’m enormously grateful to you,” Rupert-George said gratefully, and was forthwith conducted to the room where little Toté slept.
Marie came back to Gill, so soon as she had taken out Bèrnard’s carefully kept holiday clothes.
“He ever kept them here,” she told the English girl, “for to Bèrnard it was as a festival whenever my Tienette would go out with him, and he would wear his best, as though the Church had made it a feast.”
Her nimble fingers quickly pulled Gill out of her limp, splashed evening frock, and garbed her, not as Gill had expected, in one of the dresses Marie had worn in service, but in the pretty peasant dress in which she had first seen Tienette: short, full skirt, white blouse, white apron embroidered in pale blue, and all.
“Don’t! You won’t be able to bear to see me in Tienette’s things,” Gill cried, but there was only a sad little smile on the face which had been always merry when first Gill knew it.
“I think that to-night the clothes of Bèrnard and my Tienette do their part to serve against the German murderers, and that, Mamzelle, is very well indeed.”
Gill said no more; indeed she could not, for Rupert-George was knocking for admittance at the inner door, and coming into the kitchen, looking so entirely unlike himself in Bèrnard’s quaint green holiday clothes, with the short baggy knickerbockers and embroidered coat, that she would hardly have known him.
There was no more time wasted. To Gill’s relief Cartaret appeared to know by instinct that nothing could be offered to the Werpens but grateful thanks.
What the quick-witted Marie might have guessed about their business she did not know, only, as Gill kissed her, she whispered very low:
“For us, we shall never forget you, Mamzelle, and may the good G
od have you in His keeping!”
Jean Werpen said nothing but “You are welcome!” But Gill knew that he meant those words from his heart. As she and Rupert-George passed out into the street again, the clock struck one. As a minute later they turned down the narrow passage in the darkness they heard the order, given sharp at the great door of the Cathedral, to turn out another squad to help search the town for an English spy disguised as a Red Cross orderly.
“I’m distinctly obliged to your friends, Gillian,” whispered Rupert-George.
They reached the house in the Rue St. Denise without adventure, by dint of taking a detour whenever they seemed likely to fall in with any soldiers, and Gill led the way into the narrow passage that lay between the two houses.
She had just felt for the bottom of the staircase when Cartaret whispered sharply: “Look out! There’s someone coming down the street.”
“You can’t see the top of the staircase from the street,” Gill said, with sudden vivid recollection of that first never-to-be-forgotten night, and she sped up the iron staircase like a lamp-lighter, without further words.
She reached the long window, with Rupert-George only just behind her, but, as she might have expected, the window was fast shut, and the bolt was inside.
Rupert-George took that matter quite calmly, however. “What’s the bolt? One of those wooden things you just slip over? Oh, that’s nothing.”
He had his knife open in a second, and, leaning round Gill, he passed the blade in at the side of the window. A moment later and he had forced up the wooden fastening. At the same instant there was a sound of horses’ hoofs at the Baron’s door far below—a jangling of spurs, as men dismounted in haste, and an imperative knocking.
“Looks as though our friend the Baron were going to enjoy almost a surfeit of callers to-night,” Rupert-George murmured under his breath, as he scrambled through the window and helped Gill down, closing it carefully behind her. “Now lead on; this is a ‘Cook’s personally conducted tour,’ as you know the way and I don’t; but we’ll leave our respective boots in this retired spot by the window, if you don’t mind.”
Wanted, an English Girl Page 25