“Lehr has probably gone to see Skeel at the Hotel Astor,” he concluded. “We’re going to have our chance, I think.”
Then, turning to Barres:
“We’ve decided to take a sport-chance to-night. We have most reliable information that this man Lehr, who now owns Grogan’s, will carry here upon his person papers of importance to my Government — and to yours, too, Barres.
“The man from whom he shall procure these papers is an Irish gentleman named Murtagh Skeel, just arrived from Buffalo and stopping overnight at the Hotel Astor.
“Lehr, we were informed, was to go personally and get those papers.... Do you really wish to help us?”
“Certainly.”
“Very well. I expect we shall have what you call a mix-up. You will please, therefore, walk into Grogan’s — not by the family entrance, but by the swinging doors on Lexington Avenue. Kindly refresh yourself there with some Munich beer; also eat a sandwich at my expense, if you care to. Then you will give yourself the pains to inquire the way to the wash-room. And there you will possess your soul in amiable patience until you shall hear me speak your name in a very quiet, polite tone.”
Barres, recognising the familiar mock seriousness of student days in Paris, began to smile. Renoux frowned and continued his instructions:
“When you hear me politely pronounce your name, mon vieux, then you shall precipitate yourself valiantly to the aid of Monsieur Souchez and myself — and perhaps Monsieur Alost — and help us to hold, gag and search the somewhat violent German animal whom we corner inside the family entrance of Herr Grogan!”
Barres had difficulty in restraining his laughter. Renoux was very serious, with the delightful mock gravity of a witty and perfectly fearless Frenchman.
“Lehr?” inquired Barres, still laughing.
“That is the animal under discussion. There will be a taxicab awaiting us — —” He turned to Souchez: “Dis, donc, Emile, faut employer ton coup du Pêre François pour nous assurer de cet animal là.”
“B’en sure,” nodded Souchez, fishing furtively in the side pocket of his coat and displaying the corner of a red silk handkerchief. He stuffed it into his pocket again; Renoux smiled carelessly at Barres.
“Mon vieux,” he said, “I hope it will be like a good fight in the Quarter — what with all those Irish in there. You desire to get your head broken?”
“You bet I do, Renoux!”
“Bien! So now, if you are quite ready?” he suggested. “Merci, monsieur, et à bientôt!” He bowed profoundly.
Barres, still laughing, walked to Lexington Avenue, crossed northward, and entered the swinging doors of Grogan’s, perfectly enchanted to have his finger in the pie at last, and aching for an old-fashioned Latin Quarter row, the pleasures of which he had not known for several too respectable years.
CHAPTER XX
GROGAN’S
The material attraction of Grogan’s was principally German beer; the æsthetic appeal of the place was also characteristically Teutonic and consisted of peculiarly offensive decorations, including much red cherry, much imitation stained glass, many sprawling brass fixtures, and many electric lights. Only former inmates of the Fatherland could have conceived and executed the embellishments of Grogan’s.
There was a palatial bar, behind which fat, white-jacketed Teutons served slopping steins of beer upon a perforated brass surface. There was a centre table, piled with those barbarous messes known to the undiscriminating Hun as “delicatessen” — raw fish, sour fish, smoked fish, flabby portions of defunct pig in various guises — all naturally nauseating to the white man’s olfactories and palate, and all equally relished by the beer-swilling boche.
A bartender with Pekinese and apoplectic eyes and the scorbutic facial symptoms of a Strassburg liver, took the order from Barres and set before him a frosty glass of Pilsner, incidentally drenching the bar at the same time with swipes, which he thriftily scraped through the perforated brass strainer into a slop-bucket underneath.
Being a stranger there, Barres was furtively scrutinised at first, but there seemed to be nothing particularly suspicious about a young man who stopped in for a glass of Pilsner on a July night, and nobody paid him any further attention.
Besides, two United States Secret Service men had just gone out, followed, as usual, by one Johnny Klein; and the Germans at the tables at the bar, and behind the bar were still sneeringly commenting on the episode — now a familiar one and of nightly occurrence.
So only very casual attention was paid to Barres and his Pilsner and his rye-bread and sardine sandwich, which he took over to a vacant table to desiccate and discuss at his leisure.
People came and went; conversation in Hunnish gutturals became general; soiled evening newspapers were read, raw fish seized in fat red fingers and suckingly masticated; also, skat and pinochle were resumed with unwiped hands, and there was loud slapping of cards on polished table tops, and many porcine noises.
Barres finished his Pilsner, side-stepped the sandwich, rose, asked a bartender for the wash-room, and leisurely followed the direction given.
There was nobody in there. He had, for company, a mouse, a soiled towel on a roller, and the remains of some unattractive soap. He lighted a cigarette, surveyed himself in the looking glass, cast a friendly glance at the mouse, and stood waiting, flexing his biceps muscles with a smile of anticipated pleasure in renewing the use of them after such a very long period wasted in the peaceful pursuit of art.
For he was still a boy at heart. All creative minds retain something of those care-free, irresponsible years as long as the creative talent lasts. As it fails, worldly caution creeps in like a thief in the night, to steal the spontaneous pleasures of the past and leave in their places only the old galoshes of prudence and the finger-prints of dull routine.
Barres stood by the open door of the wash-room, listening. The corridor which passed it led on into another corridor running at right angles. This was the Family Entrance.
Now, as he waited there, he heard the street door open, and instantly the deadened shock of a rush and struggle.
As he started toward the Family Entrance, straining his ears for the expected summons, a man in flight turned the corner into his corridor so abruptly that he had him by the throat even before he recognised in him the man with the thick eye-glasses who had hit him between the eyes with a pistol — the “Watcher” of Dragon Court!
With a swift sigh of gratitude to Chance, Barres folded the fleeing Watcher to his bosom and began the business he had to transact with him — an account too long overdue.
The Watcher fought like a wildcat, but in silence — fought madly, using both fists, feet, baring his teeth, too, with frantic attempts to use them. But Barres gave him no opportunity to kick, bite, or to pull out any weapon; he battered the Watcher right and left, swinging on him like lightning, and his blows drummed on him like the tattoo of fists on a punching bag until one stinging crack sent the Watcher’s head snapping back with a jerk, and a terrific jolt knocked him as clean and as flat as a dead carp.
There were papers in his coat, also a knuckle-duster, a big clasp-knife, and an automatic pistol. And Barres took them all, stuffed them into his own pockets, and, dragging his still dormant but twitching victim by the collar, as a cat proudly lugs a heavy rat, he started for the Family Entrance, where Donnybrook had now broken loose.
But the silence of the terrific struggle in that narrow entry, the absence of all yelling, was significant. No Irish whoops, no Teutonic din of combat shattered the stillness of that dim corridor — only the deadened sounds of blows and shuffling of frantic feet. It was very evident that nobody involved desired to be interrupted by the police, or call attention to the location of the battle field.
Renoux, Souchez, and a third companion were in intimate and desperate conflict with half a dozen other men — dim, furious figures fighting there under the flickering gas jet from which the dirty globe had been knocked into fragments.
Into t
his dusty maelstrom of waving arms and legs went Barres — first dropping his now inert prey — and began to hit out enthusiastically right and left, at the nearest hostile countenance visible.
His was a flank attack and totally unexpected by the attackees; and the diversion gave Renoux time to seize a muscular, struggling opponent, hold him squirming while Souchez passed his handkerchief over his throat and the third man turned his pockets inside out.
Then Renoux called breathlessly to Barres:
“All right, mon vieux! Face to the rear front! March!”
For a moment they stiffened to face a battering rush from the stairs. Suddenly a pistol spoke, and an Irish voice burst out:
“Whist, ye domm fool! G’wan wid yer fishtin’ an’ can th’ goon-play!”
There came a splintering crash as the rickety banisters gave way and several Teutonic and Hibernian warriors fell in a furious heap, blocking the entry with an unpremeditated obstacle.
Instantly Souchez, Barres and the other man backed out into the street, followed nimbly by Renoux and his plunder.
Already a typical Third Avenue crowd was gathering, though the ominous glimmer of a policeman’s buttons had not yet caught the lamplight from the street corner.
Then the door of Grogan’s burst open and an embattled Irishman appeared. But at first glance the hopelessness of the situation presented itself to him; a taxi loaded with French and American franc-tireurs was already honking triumphantly away westward; an excited and rapidly increasing throng pressed around the Family Entrance; also, the distant glitter of a policeman’s shield and buttons now extinguished all hope of pursuit.
Soane glared at the crowd out of enraged and blood-shot eyes:
“G’wan home, ye bunch of bums!” he said thickly, and slammed the door to the Family Entrance of Grogan’s notorious café.
At 42d Street and Madison Avenue the taxi stopped and Souchez and Alost got out and went rapidly across the street toward the Grand Central depot. Then the taxi proceeded west, north again, then once more west.
Renoux, busy with a bleeding nose, remarked carelessly that Souchez and Alost were taking a train and were in a hurry, and that he himself was going back to the Astor.
“You do not mind coming with me, Barres?” he added. “In my rooms we can have a bite and a glass together, and then we can brush up. That was a nice little fight, was it not, mon ami?”
“Fine,” said Barres with satisfaction.
“Quite like the old and happy days,” mused Renoux, surveying wilted collar and rumpled tie of his comrade. “You came off well; you have merely a bruised cheek.” His eyes began to sparkle and he laughed: “Do you remember that May evening when your very quarrelsome atelier barricaded the Café de la Source and forbade us to enter — and my atelier marched down the Boul’ Mich’ with its Kazoo band playing our atelier march, determined to take your café by assault? Oh, my! What a delightful fight that was!”
“Your crazy comrades stuffed me into the fountain among the goldfish. I thought I’d drown,” said Barres, laughing.
“I know, but your atelier gained a great victory that night, and you came over to Müller’s with your Kazoo band playing the Fireman’s March, and you carried away our palms and bay-trees in their green tubs, and you threw them over the Pont-au-Change into the Seine! — —”
They were laughing like a pair of schoolboys now, quite convulsed and holding to each other.
“Do you remember,” gasped Barres, “that girl who danced the Carmagnole on the Quay?”
“Yvonne Tête-de-Linotte!”
“And the British giant from Julien’s, who threw everybody out of the Café Montparnasse and invited the Quarter in to a free banquet?”
“McNeil!”
“What ever became of that pretty girl, Doucette de Valmy?”
“Oh, it was she who cheered on your atelier to the assault on Müllers! — —”
Laughter stifled them.
“What crazy creatures we all were,” said Renoux, staunching the last crimson drops oozing from his nose. Then, more soberly: “We French have a grimmer affair over there than the joyous rows of the Latin Quarter. I’m sorry now that we didn’t throw every waiter in Müller’s after the bay-trees. There would have been so many fewer spies to betray France.”
The taxi stopped at the 44th Street entrance to the Astor. They descended, Renoux leading, walked through the corridor to Peacock Alley, turned to the right through the bar, then to the left into the lobby, and thence to the elevator.
In Renoux’s rooms they turned on the electric light, locked the door, closed the transom, then spread their plunder out on a table.
To Renoux’s disgust his own loot consisted of sealed envelopes full of clippings from German newspapers published in Chicago, Milwaukee, and New York.
“That animal, Lehr,” he said with a wry face, “has certainly played us a filthy turn. These clippings amount to nothing — —” His eyes fell on the packet of papers which Barres was now opening, and he leaned over his shoulder to look.
“Thank God!” he said, “here they are! Where on earth did you find these papers, Barres? They’re the documents we were after! They ought to have been in Lehr’s pockets!”
“He must have passed them to the fellow who bumped into me near the wash-room,” said Barres, enchanted at his luck. “What a fortunate chance that you sent me around there!”
Renoux, delighted, stood under the electric light unfolding document after document, and nodding his handsome, mischievous head with satisfaction.
“What luck, Barres! What did you do to the fellow?”
“Thumped him to sleep and turned out his pockets. Are these really what you want?”
“I should say so! This is precisely what we are looking for!”
“Do you mind if I read them, too?”
“No, I don’t. Why should I? You’re my loyal comrade and you understand discretion.... What do you think of this!” displaying a typewritten document marked “Copy,” enclosing a sheaf of maps.
It contained plans of all the East River and Harlem bridges, a tracing showing the course of the new aqueduct and the Ashokan Dam, drawings of the Navy Yard, a map of Iona Island, and a plan of the Welland Canal.
The document was brief:
“Included in report by K17 to Diplomatic Agent controlling Section 7-4-11-B. Recommended that detail plan of DuPont works be made without delay.
“SKEEL.”
Followed several sheets in cipher, evidently some intricate variation of those which are always ultimately solved by experts.
But the documents that were now unfolded by Captain Renoux proved readable and intensely interesting.
These were the papers which Renoux read and which Barres read over his shoulder:
“(Copy)
Berlin Military Telegraph Office Telegram
Berlin. Political Division of the General Staff Nr. Pol. 6431.
(SECRET)
8, Moltkestrasse, Berlin, NW, 40. March 20, 1916.
“FEREZ BEY, N. Y.
“Referring to your correspondence and conversations with Colonel Skeel, I most urgently request that the necessary funds be raised through the New York banker, Adolf Gerhardt; also that Bernstorff be immediately informed through Boy-Ed, so that plans of Head General Staff of Army on campaign may not be delayed.
“Begin instantly enlist and train men, secure and arm power-boat assemble equipment and explosives, Welland Canal Exp’d’n. War Office No. 159-16, Secret U. K.: — T, 3, P.”
* * * * *
“Foreign Office, Berlin,
“Dec. 28, 1914.
“DEAR SIR ROGER: — I have the honour to acknowledge receipt of your letter of the 23d inst., in which you submitted to his Imperial Majesty’s Government a proposal for the formation of an Irish brigade which would be pledged to fight only for the cause of Irish nationalism, and which is to be composed of any Irish prisoners of war willing to join such a regiment.
“In reply I h
ave the honour to inform you that his Imperial Majesty’s Government agrees to your proposal and also to the conditions under which it might be possible to train an Irish brigade. These conditions are set out in the declaration enclosed in your letter of the 13th inst., and are given at foot. I have the honour to be, dear Roger, your obedient servant,
“(Signed) ZIMMERMAN,
“Under Secretary of State for the Foreign Office.
* * * * *
“TO HIS HONOUR, SIR ROGER CASEMENT, “Eden Hotel, Kurfürstendamm, Berlin.”
“(SECRET)
“COLONEL MURTAGH SKEEL, “Flying Division, Irish Expeditionary Corps, “New York.
“For your information I enclose Zimmerman’s letter to Sir Roger, and also the text of Articles 6 and 7, being part of our first agreement with Sir Roger Casement.
“You will note particularly the Article numbered 7.
“This paragraph, unfortunately, still postpones your suggested attempt to seize on the high seas a British or neutral steamer loaded with arms and munitions, and make a landing from her on the Irish Coast.
“But, in the meantime, is it not possible for you to seize one of the large ore steamers on the Great Lakes, transfer to her sufficient explosives, take her into the Welland Canal and blow up the locks?
“No more valuable service could be performed by Irishmen; no deadlier blow delivered at England.
“I am, my dear Skeel, your sincere friend and comrade,
“(Signed) VON PAPEN.
“P. S. — Herewith appended are Articles 6 and 7 included in the Casement convention:
“(SECRET)
“Text of Articles 6 and 7 of the convention concluded between Sir Roger Casement and the German Government:
“6. The German Imperial Government undertakes ‘under certain circumstances’ to lend the Irish Brigade adequate military support, and to send it to Ireland abundantly supplied with arms and ammunition, in order that once there it may equip any Irish who would like to join it in making an attempt to re-establish Ireland’s national liberty by force of arms.
“The ‘special circumstances’ stipulated above are as follows:
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 880