Very beautiful she looked lying there in her thin frock that left her white arms and shoulders bare, her pale form standing out sharply against the dark background of the sofa and the dull silk hangings of the walls; and for a moment or two I really thought she was a vision that would presently fade. Bursting thus suddenly from the noisy war into the calm presence of this sleeping girl made everything seem unreal, and how long I stood there gazing stupidly at her I do not know. But I dragged my eyes away at last and turned towards the German officer who, I realized, might prove dangerous.
I crossed the room very quietly towards him, and he made no movement of any kind; and when I drew near to him I saw by his attitude that he was either badly wounded or dead. His forehead rested upon the top of the piano, and his hands, which had slipped from the keyboard, hung limply at his sides. From his shoulder-straps I judged him to be of high rank, a colonel or a general—I am a little shaky on German rank marks. I propped him back in his chair and lifted his head—and then I had the greatest shock of my life.
The face of that German officer was the face of old G. B., whom I had seen only the day before on my way back from Headquarters. I was absolutely sure. G. B. and I had been together in the old battalion for nearly two years, and I knew his face as well as I knew that of my own father; and if confirmation were needed, there was the scar on his cheek that he had carried ever since that unlucky show on the Somme in ’16.
He was dead. There was a little blood on his tight-fitting tunic in the centre of the chest, and a small neat slit such as is made by a bayonet. I stood looking down at the hunched figure and the lolling head whilst my brain whirled. A long official-looking envelope protruded from one of the side-pockets. I drew it out rather gingerly and read what was written on it. It was addressed to General von Wahnheim, Headquarters 91st Division.
I had forgotten the girl on the sofa till my eye caught the pale gleam of her dress. She was very beautiful, and her face had a look of high birth and breeding. She lay there sleeping as peacefully as though she were in her own boudoir a thousand miles from the war. I was feeling not a little jumpy, and I am afraid I shook her rather roughly by the arm; but her hand slid limply away from mine, and she did not stir. And then I realized that she too was dead.
There was no mark of any wound on her body that I could see, and she lay there calm and unruffled with closed eyes as though she had died in her sleep. But people do not die peacefully in their sleep in war, and this serene, beautiful girl scared me more than any of the most gruesome corpses I had seen. She did not look dead, and to my strained imagination she appeared to be watching me through her closed lids.
And old G. B. huddled over the piano with his back to me, he too seemed to be watching silently. The words he used the last time I had seen him, when I had told him what the battalion was doing, occurred to me: “By gad, I wish I were with you!”
I tried to think, but my mind was in a state of chaos. And then one or two loud explosions close outside warned me that Fritz was turning his guns upon the château. And I could hear the voices of my men laughing and calling to one another. I must do something.
I was still trying to think, though to no purpose. I stood foolishly in the middle of the room, while my eyes wandered over the furniture, the carpet, the large map pinned on the wall, and returned constantly to the huddled form at the piano and the serene figure in the sofa. A small table lay overturned at my feet, and automatically I righted it and picked up the objects that had fallen from it. My brain was numbed by the sight of the German General who looked like old G. B.—who was G. B., and yet could not be.
There came another shell-clap from the direction of the garden, louder than the others, and stones and dirt came flying through the windows. The next one landed on the house somewhere at the back. Things were getting lively. And then one brought down a chimney with a most unholy crash. Great chunks of ornamental plaster fell from the ceiling, and the room shook like a motor-bus; the dead General swayed, toppled from his chair, and collapsed with a heavy thud upon the floor.
At that I turned and bolted from the house.
IV
Young Stevenson and some of his men were moving across the lawn, and above the château a cloud of red dust bellied out as another shell landed with a vicious shriek and peppered the garden with fragments of tile. I shouted to Stevenson to keep his men clear of the château, and he answered me with a salute and passed on.
I then discovered that I was holding a photographic film in my hand. I must have picked it off the carpet with the other odds and ends when I righted the table. It was a small film, V.P.K. size, and I held it up to the light. And then I had another surprise. It was a film I knew well—or rather the positive, for I had not seen the negative before. It was a photograph of G. B. sitting outside a café in a French village. It had appeared on the picture-page of a newspaper early in ’16, and its appearance had brought upon us a heavy strafe from divisional headquarters, cameras of course being forbidden. But we had never found out who took the photograph or who sent it to the paper.
“Getting a bit lively, sir,” said a voice at my elbow; and I discovered my servant sitting behind a bank stolidly watching old Fritz knocking chunks off the château. Bits of it were flying all over the garden.
“Too damn lively!” I replied. “Let’s get a move on.”
CHAPTER II
I
We got going again soon after that. The shelling ceased altogether, and the rifle and machine-gun fire dwindled. We pushed on again in vanguard formation. But I did my part of the business mechanically, for I was trying to put some reason into what I had seen in that château that was now only a heap of debris behind me. That room bristled with baffling questions. How could a dead German General be G. B.? … Was G. B. at G.H.Q. or was he lying dead beneath the ruins of that château? … Who had killed him? … Who was that woman on the sofa? … Why was she there, and in evening dress? … How had she died? These and a dozen other questions clamoured for an answer; but I had no answer to give.
I wrenched my mind off the subject at last, for I had to attend to what was passing around me and conduct my little part of the war to the best of my ability. Crossroads were still gaily blowing up ahead, and many of the isolated farms had a pole flying a bed-sheet lashed to the chimney to show us that the place was unoccupied by the enemy.
I particularly remember a village street of some dozen houses on either side and a garish jerry-built mairie in the middle. When I rode into it, some of my advance section were still there. Dodd, very dirty, muddy, and sweaty, with his tin hat cocked over one eye and a garland of chrysanthemums hanging down over his gas-helmet, was politely listening to an emotional speech made by a little fat Frenchman on the steps of the mairie. The little man had the tricolour sash of his office round his waist, and at the end of his speech he stood on tiptoe and saluted Dodd on both cheeks, much to the delight of the grinning men. The other villagers followed the example of their mayor, and every man found himself in the arms of a Frenchman or Frenchwoman. I noticed that those who had the women were the last to break away.
When my flushed and breathless subaltern had extricated himself from the embrace of his ally, he saw me and saluted.
“What are you supposed to be?” I asked.
“Queen of the May, sir,” he replied with a grin.
“Well, you look like a damn fool!” was my comment.
“I know,” he answered; “but I’m afraid the local corporation would resent the removal of their decorations.”
“If you go on like this, you will look like a hearse by the time we reach Berlin,” I told him.
That was but one incident among many.
At dusk we ran into more opposition, heavy machine-gun fire and shelling—more than we could tackle alone. Our report to the General brought back orders for us to retire to Andigny-Deux-Eglises. We went back independently by platoons when relieved, and as I rode through the gathering gloom I had leisure to puzzle again over the
mystery of what I had seen in the château. I put away the thoughts and questions that rushed at me from all sides, and tried to think the thing out logically. Putting aside for the moment many incomprehensible things, there were two alternatives, both obvious and both extremely unlikely: G. B. was either a British spy in the German Army or a German spy in the British Army.
The first alternative seemed plausible on the face of it, but it would not bear examination. The dead man in the château was a General—the C.O. had supplemented my shaky knowledge of German rank marks—and surely no intelligence officer of ours could have reached that rank in the German Army. Such a man would indeed be a super-spy; and even if such a remarkable man existed, It was certain that he would not be allowed to waste his time as a humble subaltern and captain in our army for the greater part of the war. From ’14 to the latter part of ’16 he had been with me in the battalion, and to my certain knowledge he had done no secret-service work during that period. He had been in hospital for the greater part of ’17; Harding, our old Medical Officer, patched him up in his C.C.S. and my sister Helen had seen him in hospital at Le Touquet. Therefore his spy work—if spy he was—could not have begun before the end of ’17; and this was the latter part of ’18. A man does not rise to be a General in the German Army in a year. The idea was ridiculous.
The other alternative, namely, that G. B. was a German spy in the British Army, distasteful though it was, had to be considered. In ordinary circumstances I should not have entertained it for a moment, but the circumstances were not ordinary; and I was bound to confess that there were fewer objections to this alternative than to the other.
G. B. had lived in Germany before the war and spoke the language fluently. But he was absolutely English in his outlook and ways, and I felt that no Englishman—certainly no Englishman of G. B.’s type—could play such a dirty game. On the other hand, the difficulties of rank were not so great in this case, for supposing him to have been in the German Army before the war, and in their secret service, the position of General was not an impossible one for him to have attained. But old G. B. a spy! It was preposterous.
Both alternatives, then, seemed to be ruled out; and, even had either of them been satisfactory, the riddle would still have been far from being solved. How was one to explain the fact that on one day he had been seen in British uniform with a member of our staff, and on the next day had been found dead within the enemy’s lines in a German uniform? And the girl on the sofa, who was she? Beautiful girls in evening frocks do not lie dead on sofas in shelled châteaux. How had she met her death? What was she to G. B., and he to her? And that photograph, that missing negative that had caused such a stir in the company in the old days on the Somme! To find it there with G. B. and the girl in those circumstances! What was one to make of it all? The more I tried to puzzle it out, the more inexplicable the mystery became.
II
Advance Guard Headquarters had allotted us billets close to the little railway-station. The cavalry squadron had been allotted a farmhouse standing by itself just beyond the station, and Killick, the squadron commander, decided to risk staying there because he had good standings for his horses.
Night had come, and there was no light in the village except the intermittent lightning-like flash of gunfire and the red lamp outside Headquarters that revealed the sentry at the door by the gleam on bayonet and steel helmet. I saw my men installed in their billets and in the dim candle-light taking bully-beef stew from their mess tins. Then I returned to our mess in the little front room of a cottage in the same street.
An old piano stood in a corner of the room, and Pagan was seated at it playing what he assured me was “Chu Chin Chow,” though the air was almost unrecognizable since one note in every four was a dud. The billet had been occupied by the enemy not many hours previously, and he had left us two or three periodicals. I picked up one dated the 22nd of March. It was a dog-eared, illustrated paper, and although my knowledge of German was limited to Verboten and Sturm-truppen, the pictures were self-explanatory. There was one of the War Lord inspecting troops on the Western Front, another of a Berlin beauty dressed in hospital kit, and a third of a number of our Tommies in a prisoner-of-war camp.
I turned over the pages idly; for I was more interested in the question of how soon the mess corporal would have some grub ready than in the pictures. But suddenly I turned over a page and saw something that drove food, fatigue, and everything else out of my head. I am not superstitious; but at that moment I felt that I was caught up by some unseen agency. I found myself looking at the face of the beautiful girl I had left dead on the sofa in the Château Péronelle a few hours previously. The thing did not present itself to me in the light of a coincidence; it seemed to me that that paper had been placed there purposely. Some invisible but all-powerful influence was behind it all, arranging apparent trivialities and incidents according to a definite plan.
It was a full-page, head-and-shoulders portrait, and a very good one. In some respects the face seemed more beautiful than the original, though in others it fell far short of it. The portrait had vitality and animation, which had been lacking in the face I had seen only in death. But the wonderful colouring could not have been visualized from the photograph alone. Having seen both, however, I was able to combine the two and form some idea of what she must have looked like in the living flesh. It was a disturbing picture for a man’s peace of mind that my brain conjured up.
Beneath the portrait was some letterpress. My ignorance of German, however, prevented me from reading the whole of it, but the name at least was clear: the Duchess of Wittelsberg-Strelitz, and from the word Wien which followed it I assumed that she was an Austrian.
Pagan was still thumping on the broken piano some tune which it was impossible to recognize, and I sat and stared and stared at that portrait…
Subconsciously I had been aware of one or two shells sailing over at intervals, but there came suddenly the most appalling crash I think I have ever heard. The two candles that were stuck to the table went out, as also did the acetylene lamp. Such glass as remained in the windows tinkled to the floor, plaster fell from the ceiling, and by the lightning-like glare which for a moment or two illuminated the room I saw that the door leading to the little hall was split from top to bottom.
The first great explosion was followed by a continuous rumble of smaller ones, and the sky outside was a kaleidoscope dancing between jet-black and brilliant light as though a dozen thunderstorms were in progress.
“Angels and ministers of grace defend us! Jerry is putting up an outsize in strafes,” exclaimed the voice of Pagan. “Didn’t think he had the guns up to do it.”
I saw his face every half-second flickering like the very early movies.
Dodd struck a match and relighted the acetylene lamp, which was blown out again immediately by concussion.
“Big stuff anyway,” he remarked.
There was a general movement towards the door leading to the street. Before I followed the others, however, I tore out the photograph and put it in my pocket.
Outside it was now nearly as light as day. A most infernal racket was going on in the direction of the little station, and the air was filled with buzzing noises in different keys, varying from the high-pitched hum of a mosquito to the deep vibrant note of a ship’s shrouds singing in a gale. None of the individual sounds lasted more than a second or two, and all terminated in a sharp smack on the road or the walls round about.
“It’s those ber-ludy trucks in the station!” cried Dodd. He drew in his head quickly, for each of those sharp smacks was made by a jagged piece of metal striking the ground.
“Oh ay, I don’t want to die…” he sang.
“You won’t—worse luck!” Pagan told him. “When beggars die, there are no comets seen. Meanwhile—try a light again.”
We got the lamp going, although the candles still went out as fast as we lighted them.
Pagan unrolled his oilskin tobacco-pouch and began slowly to fill
his pipe. “Reminds one of Tannhäuser at Covent Garden,” he murmured with a reminiscent air. “Tannhäuser with storm effects.”
“Poor ber-ludy Lancers!” exclaimed Dodd. “They were not more than a hundred yards from those trucks.”
Pagan rolled up his tobacco-pouch and returned it to his pocket. “You may take it from me, they are a good deal more than that now,” he grinned. “How about a fatigue party to sweep up the remains?”
We had another look outside, but it would have been madness to have attempted to approach the station, and we returned to the room.
A few moments later the door was pushed open, and Fanshawe, one of the squadron subalterns, came in.
“Dark and stormy night upon the Caucasus, darlings,” he cried cheerfully. “Chunks of iron and what-not have been playing ‘Home, sweet Home’ on my battle-bowler all the way up your ruddy street. For God’s sake give a fellow a drink.”
He took off his tin hat, disclosing his fair, crumpled hair. As usual he looked immaculate, in spite of the mud on his polished riding-boots. He was one of those fellows who if he fell into a French midden would come out looking as though he had just had a hot bath. He dabbed his nose with a large silk handkerchief.
“Where is the squadron?” I asked.
“Watering down at the stream,” he replied with a grin.
“The devil looks after his own,” was Pagan’s comment.
Fanshawe removed the handkerchief from his face and disclosed some blood on his nose. “Charles, sweetheart,” he said to Pagan, “find me a nice dirty cobweb, will you? As I was passing up the local Bond Street a large obus blew out a window and dropped a lot of glass on my nose, and the damned thing won’t stop bleeding.”
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