Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “For heaven’s sake — —”

  “Is it understood? Give me your word, Keed!”

  “Sure! — —”

  “Allons! Assez!” she whispered excitedly. “Make prisoner any man you see there! — any man! You understand?”

  “You bet!”

  “Any man!” she repeated slowly, “even if he wears the same uniform you wear.”

  There was a silence. Then:

  “By God!” said Glenn under his breath.

  “You suspect?”

  “Yes. And if it is one of our German-American muleteers, we’ll lynch him!” he whispered in a white rage.

  But Maryette shook her head.

  “No,” she said in a dull, even voice, “let the gendarmerie take him in charge. Spy or suspect, he must have his chance. That is the law in France.”

  “You don’t give rats a chance, do you?”

  “I give everything its chance,” she said simply. “And so does my country.”

  She drew the automatic pistol from her holster, examined it, raised her eyes gravely to the American beside her:

  “This is terrible for me,” she added, in a low but steady voice. “If it were not for my country—” She made a grave gesture, turned, and went slowly out through the arched stone passage into the main street of the town. A few minutes later the angelus sounded sweetly over the woods and meadows of Sainte Lesse.

  At ten, as the last stroke of the hour ended, there came a charming, intimate little murmur of awakening bells; it grew sweeter, clearer, filling the starry sky, growing, exquisitely increasing in limpid, transparent volume, sweeping through the high, dim belfry like a great wind from Paradise carrying Heaven’s own music out over the darkened earth.

  All Sainte Lesse came to its doorways to listen to the playing of their beloved Carillonnette; the bell-music ebbed and swelled under the stars; the ancient Flemish masterpiece, written by some carillonneur whose bones had long been dust, became magnificently vital again under the enchanted hands of the little mistress of the bells.

  In fifteen minutes the carillon ended; a slight pause followed, then the quarter hour struck.

  With the last stroke of the bell, the girl drew off her wooden gloves, laid them on the keyboard, turned slowly in her seat, listening. A slight sound coming from the spiral staircase of stone set her heart beating violently. Had the suspected man violated his word? She drew the automatic pistol from her holster, rose, and stole up to the stone platform overhead, where, rising tier on tier into the darkness, the great carillon of Sainte Lesse loomed overhead.

  She listened uneasily. Had the man lied? It seemed to her as though her hammering heart must burst from her bosom with the terrible suspense of the moment.

  Suddenly a shadowy form appeared at the head of the stairs, reaching the platform at one bound. And her heart seemed to stop as she realized that this man had arrived too early for her friends to be of any use to her. He had lied to her. And now she must take him unaided, or kill him there in the starlight under the looming bells.

  “Maryette!” he called. She did not stir.

  “Maryette!” he whispered. “Where are you, little sweetheart? Forgive me, I could not wait any longer. I adore you — —”

  All at once he discovered her standing motionless in the shadow of the great bell Bayard — sprang toward her, eager, ardent, triumphant.

  “Maryette,” he whispered, “I love you! I shall teach you what a lover is — —”

  Suddenly he caught a glimpse of her face; the terrible expression in her eyes checked him.

  “What has happened?” he asked, bewildered. And then he caught sight of the pistol in her hand.

  “What’s that for?” he demanded harshly. “Are you afraid to love me? Do you think I’m the kind of lover to stop for a thing like that — —”

  She said, in a low, distinct voice:

  “Don’t move! Put up both hands instantly!”

  “What!” he snapped out, like the crack of a lash.

  “I know who you are. You’re a Boche and no Yankee! Turn your back and raise your arms!”

  For a moment they looked at each other.

  “I think,” she said, steadily, “you had better explain your gas cylinders and balloons to the gendarmes at the Poste.”

  “No,” he said, “I’ll explain them to you, now! — —”

  “If you touch your pistol, I fire! — —”

  But already he had whipped out his pistol; and she fired instantly, smashing his right hand to pulp.

  “You damned hell-cat!” he screamed, stretching out his shattered hand in an agony of impotent fury. Blood rained from it on the stone flags. Suddenly he started toward her.

  “Don’t stir!” she whispered. “Turn your back and raise both arms!”

  His face became ghastly.

  “Let me go, in God’s name!” he burst out in a strangled voice. “Don’t send me before a firing squad! Listen to me, little comrade — I surrender myself to your mercy — —”

  “Then keep away from me! Keep your distance!” she cried, retreating. He followed, fawning:

  “Listen! We were such good comrades — —”

  “Don’t come any nearer to me!” she called out sharply; but he still shuffled toward her, whimpering, drenched in blood, both hands uplifted.

  “Kamerad!” he whined, “Kamerad—” and suddenly launched a kick at her.

  She just avoided it, springing behind the bell Bayard; and he rushed at her and struck with both uplifted arms, showering her with blood, but not quite reaching her.

  In the darkness among the beams and the deep shadows of the bells she could hear him hunting for her, breathing heavily and making ferocious, inarticulate noises, as she swung herself up onto the first beam above and continued to crawl upward.

  “Where are you, little fool?” he cried at length. “I have business with you before I cut your throat — that smooth, white throat of yours that I kissed down there by the lavoir!” There was no sound from her.

  He went back toward the stairs and began hunting about in the starlight for his pistol; but there was no parapet on the bell platform, and he probably concluded that it had fallen over the edge of the tower into the street.

  Supporting his wounded hand, he stood glaring blankly about him, and his bloodshot eyes presently fell on the door to the stairs. But he must have realized that flight would be useless for him if he left this girl alive in her bell-tower, ready to alarm the town the moment he ran for the stairs.

  With his left hand he fumbled under his tunic and disengaged a heavy trench knife from its sheath. The loss of blood was making his legs a trifle unsteady, but he pulled himself together and moved stealthily under the shadows of beam and bell until he came to the spot he selected. And there he lay down, the hilt of the knife in his left hand, the blade concealed by his opened tunic.

  His heavy groans at last had their effect on the girl, who had climbed high up into the darkness, creeping from beam to beam and mounting from one tier of bells to another.

  Standing on the lowest beam, she cautiously looked out through an oubliette and saw him lying on his back near the sheer edge of the roof.

  Evidently he, also, could see her head silhouetted against the stars, for he called up to her in a plaintive voice that he was bleeding to death and unable to move.

  After a few moments, opening his eyes again, he saw her standing on the roof beside him, looking down at him. And he whispered his appeal in the name of Christ. And in His name the little bell-mistress responded.

  When she had used the blue kerchief at her neck for a tourniquet and had checked the hemorrhage, he was still patiently awaiting a better opportunity to employ his knife. It would not do to bungle the affair. And he thought he knew how it could be properly done — if he could get her head in the crook of his muscular elbow.

  “Lift me, dear ministering angel,” he whispered weakly.

  She stooped impulsively, hesitated, then, suddenly terrifi
ed at the blazing ferocity in his eyes, she shrank back at the same instant that his broad knife flashed in her very face.

  He was on his feet at a bound, and, as she raised her voice in a startled cry for help, he plunged heavily at her, but slipped and fell in his own blood. Then the clattering jingle of spurred boots on the stone stairs below caught his ear. He was trapped, and he realized it. He slowly got to his feet.

  As Smith and Glenn appeared, springing out of the low-arched door, the muleteer Braun turned and faced them.

  There was a silence, then Glenn said, bitterly:

  “It’s you, is it, you dirty Dutchman!”

  “Hands up!” said Smith quietly. “Come on, now; it’s a case of ‘Kamerad’ for yours.”

  Braun did not move to comply with the demand. Gradually it dawned on them that the man was game.

  “Maryette!” he called; “where are you?”

  Smith said curiously:

  “What do you want with her, Braun?”

  “I want to speak to her.”

  “Come over here, Maryette,” said Glenn sullenly.

  The girl crept out of the shadows. Her face was ghastly.

  Braun looked at her with pallid scorn:

  “You little, ignorant fool,” he said, “I’d have made you a better lover than you’ll ever have now!”

  He shrugged his square shoulders in contempt, turned without a glance at Smith and Glenn, and stepped outward into space. And as he fell there between sky and earth, hurtling downward under the stars, Glenn’s pistol flashed twice, killing his quarry in midair while falling.

  “Can you beat it?” he demanded hoarsely, turning on Smith. “Ain’t that me all over! — soft-hearted enough to do that skunk a kindness thataway!”

  But his youthful voice was shaking, and he stared at the edge of the abyss, listening to the far tumult now arising from the street below.

  “Did you shoot?” he inquired, controlling his nervous voice with an effort.

  “Naw,” said Smith disgustedly. “... Now, Maryette, put one arm around my neck, and me and the Kid will take you down them stairs, because you look tired — kind o’ peeked and fussed, what with all this funny business going on — —”

  “Oh, Steek! Steek!” she sobbed. “Oh, mon ami, Steek!”

  She began to cry bitterly. Smith picked her up in his arms.

  “What you need is sleep,” he said very gently.

  But she shook her head: she had business to transact on her knees that night — business with the Mother of God that would take all night long — and many, many other sleepless nights; and many candles.

  She put her left arm around Smith’s neck and hid her tear-wet face on his shoulder. And, as he bore her out of the high tower and descended the unlighted, interminable stairs of stone, he heard her weeping against his breast and softly asking intercession in behalf of a dead young man who had tried to be to her a “Kamerad” — as he understood it — including the entire gamut, from amorous beast to fiend.

  There was a single candle lighted in the bar of the White Doe. On the “zinc,” side by side, like birds on a rail, sat the two muleteers. In each big, sunburnt fist was an empty glass; their spurred feet dangled; they leaned forward where they sat, hunched up over their knees, heads slightly turned, as though intently listening. A haze of cigarette smoke dimmed the candle flame.

  The drone of an aëroplane high in the midnight sky came to them at intervals. At last the sound died away under the far stars.

  By the smoky candle flame Kid Glenn unfolded and once more read the letter that kept them there:

  — I ought to get to Sainte Lesse somewhere around midnight. Don’t say a word to Maryette.

  Jack.

  Sticky Smith, reading over his shoulder, slowly rolled another cigarette.

  “When Jack comes,” he drawled, “it’s a-goin’ to he’p a lot. That Maryette girl’s plumb done in.”

  “Sure she’s done in,” nodded Kid Glenn. “Wouldn’t it do in anybody to shoot up a young man an’ then see him step off the top of a skyscraper?”

  Smith admitted that he himself had felt “kind er squeamish.” He added: “Gawd, how he spread when he hit them flags! You didn’t look at him, did you, Kid?”

  “Naw. Say, d’ya think Maryette has gone to bed?”

  “I dunno. When we left her up there in her room, I turned and took a peek to see she was comfy, but she was down onto both knees before that china virgin on the niche over her bed.”

  “She oughter be in bed. You gotta sleep off a thing like that, or you feel punk next day,” remarked Glenn, meditatively twirling the last drops of eau-de-vie around in his tumbler. Then he swallowed them and smacked his lips. “She’ll come around all O. K. when she sees Jack,” he added.

  “Goin’ to let him wake her up?”

  “Can you see us stoppin’ him? He’d kick the pants off us — —”

  “Sh-h-h!” motioned Smith; “there’s a automobile! By gum! It’s stopped! — —”

  The two muleteers set their glasses on the bar, slid to the floor, and marched, clanking, into the covered way that led to the street. Smith undid the bolts. A young man stood outside in the starlight.

  “Well, Jack Burley, you old son of a gun!” drawled Glenn. “Gawd! You look fit for a dead one!”

  “We ain’t told her!” whispered Smith. “She an’ us done in a Fritz this evening, an’ it sorter turned Maryette’s stomach — —”

  “Not that she ain’t well,” explained Glenn hastily; “only a girl feels different. Stick an’ me, we just took a few drinks, but Maryette, soon as she got home, she just flopped down on her knees and asked that china virgin of hers to go easy on that there Fritz — —”

  They had conducted Burley to the bar; both their arms were draped around his shoulders; both talked to him at the same time.

  “This here Fritz,” began Glenn — but Burley freed himself from their embrace.

  “Where’s Maryette?” he demanded.

  Smith jerked a silent thumb toward the ceiling.

  “In bed?”

  “Or prayin’.”

  Burley flushed, hesitated.

  “G’wan up, anyway,” said Glenn. “I reckon it’ll do her a heap o’ good to lamp you, you old son of a gun!”

  Burley turned, went up the short flight of stairs to her closed door. There was candle-light shining through the transom. He knocked with a trembling hand. There was no answer. He knocked again; heard her uncertain step; stepped back as her door opened.

  The girl, a drooping figure in her night robe, stood listlessly on the threshold. Which of the muleteers it was who had come to her door she did not notice. She said:

  “I am very tired. Death is a dreadful thing. I can’t put it from my mind. I am trying to pray — —”

  She lifted her weary eyes and found herself looking into the face of her own lover. She turned very white, lovely eyes dilated.

  “Is — is it thou, Djack?”

  “C’est moi, ma ploo belle!”

  She melted into his tightening arms with a faint cry. Very high overhead, under the lustrous stars, an aëroplane droned its uncharted way across a blood-soaked world.

  THE MOONLIT WAY

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE: CLAIRE-DE-LUNE

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  CHAPTER VII

  CHAPTER VIII

  CHAPTER IX

  CHAPTER X

  CHAPTER XI

  CHAPTER XII

  CHAPTER XIII

  CHAPTER XIV

  CHAPTER XV

  CHAPTER XVI

  CHAPTER XVII

  CHAPTER XVIII

  CHAPTER XIX

  CHAPTER XX

  CHAPTER XXI

  CHAPTER XXII

  CHAPTER XXIII

  CHAPTER XXIV

  CHAPTER XXV

  CHAPTER XXVI

/>   CHAPTER XXVII

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  CHAPTER XXIX

  TO MY FRIEND

  FRANK HITCHCOCK

  PROLOGUE: CLAIRE-DE-LUNE

  There was a big moon over the Bosphorus; the limpid waters off Seraglio Point glimmered; the Golden Horn was like a sheet of beaten silver inset with topaz and ruby where lanterns on rusting Turkish warships dyed the tarnished argent of the flood. Except for these, and the fixed lights on the foreign guard-ships and on a big American steam yacht, only a pale and nebulous shoreward glow betrayed the monster city.

  Over Pera the full moon’s lustre fell, silvering palace, villa, sea and coast; its rays glimmered on bridge and wharf, bastion, tower arsenal, and minarette, transforming those big, sprawling, ramshackle blotches of architecture called Constantinople into that shadowy, magnificent enchantment of the East, which all believe in, but which exists only in a poet’s heart and mind.

  Night veiled the squalour of Balat, and its filth, its meanness, its flimsy sham. Moonlight made of Galata a marvel, ennobling every bastard dome, every starved façade, every unlovely and attenuated minarette, and invested with added charm each really lovely ruin, each tower, palace, mosque, garden wall and balcony, and every crenelated battlement, where the bronze bulk of ancient cannon slanted, outlined in silver under the Prophet’s moon.

  Tiny moving lights twinkled on the Galata Bridge; pale points of radiance dotted Scutari; but the group of amazing cities called Constantinople lay almost blotted out under the moon.

  Darker at night than any capital in the world, its huge, solid and ancient shapes bulking gigantic in the night, its noble ruins cloaked, its cheap filth hidden, its flimsy Coney Island aspect transfigured and the stylographic-pen architecture of a hundred minarettes softened into slender elegance, Constantinople lay dreaming its immemorial dreams under the black shadow of the Prussian eagle.

  * * * * *

  The German Embassy was lighted up like a Pera café; the drawing-rooms crowded with a brilliant throng where sashes, orders, epaulettes and sabre-tache glittered, and jewels blazed and aigrettes waved under the crystal chandeliers, accenting and isolating sombre civilian evening dress, which seemed mournful, rusty, and out of the picture, even when plastered over with jewelled stars.