“Is he one of them?”
“He surely is. He went west on the same train that brought Skeel here. And now I’ll tell you what has been done and why I’m here.
“We haven’t located the power-boat on the lake. But the Canadians are watching for it and your agents are following these Irishmen. When the crew assembles they are to be arrested and their power-boat and explosives seized.
“I and my men have no official standing here, of course — would not be tolerated in any co-operation, officially. But we have a certain understanding with certain authorities.”
Barres nodded.
“You see? Very well. Then, with delicacy and discretion, we keep in touch with Mr. Skeel.... And with other people.... You see?... He is abed in the large house of Mr. Gerhardt over yonder at Northbrook.... Under surveillance.... He moves? We move — very discreetly. You see?”
“Certainly.”
“Very well, then. But I am obliged to tell you, also, that the hunting is not done entirely by our side. No! In turn, I and my men, and also your agents, are being hunted by German agents.... It is that which annoys and hampers us, because these German agents continually dog us and give the alarm to these Irishmen. You see?”
“Who are the German agents? Do you know?”
“Very well indeed. Bernstorff is the head; Von Papen and Boy-ed come next. Under them serve certain so-called ‘Diplomatic Agents of Class No. 1’ — Adolf Gerhardt is one of them; his partners, Otto Klein and Joseph Schwartzmeyer are two others.
“They, in turn, have under them diplomatic agents of the second class — men such as Ferez Bey, Franz Lehr, called K17. You see? Then, lower still in the scale, come the spies who actually investigate under orders; men like Dave Sendelbeck, Johnny Klein, Louis Hochstein, Max Freund. And, then, lowest of all in rank are the rank and file — the secret ‘shock-troops’ who carry out desperate enterprises under some leader. Among the Germans these are the men who sneak about setting fires, lighting the fuses of bombs, scuttling ships, defacing Government placards, poisoning Red Cross bandages to be sent to the Allies — that sort. But among them are no battalions of Death. Non pas! And, for that, you see, they use these Irish. You understand now?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Well, then! I trust you absolutely, Barres. And so I came over to ask you — and your clever friends, Mademoiselle Dunois, Miss Soane, Mr. Westmore, to keep their eyes on this man Skeel to-morrow afternoon and also to-morrow evening. Because they will be guests at the Gerhardts’. Is it not so?”
“Yes.”
“Well, your Government’s agents will be there. They will also be in the neighbourhood, watching roads and railway stations. I have one man in service with the Gerhardts — their head chauffeur. If anything happens — if Skeel tries to slip away — if you miss him — I would be very grateful if you and your friends notify the head chauffeur, Menard.”
“We’ll try to do it.”
“That’s all I want. Just get word to Menard that Skeel seems to be missing. That will be sufficient. Will you say this to your friends?”
“Yes, I will, Renoux. I’ll be glad to. I’ll be particularly happy to offer to Miss Dunois this proof of your confidence in her integrity.”
Renoux looked very grave.
“For me,” he said, “Miss Dunois is what she pretends to be. I have so informed my Government at home and its representatives at Washington.”
“Have you heard anything yet?”
“Yes, a telegram in cipher from Washington late this afternoon.”
“Favourable to her?”
“Yes. Our Ambassador is taking up immediately the clues Miss Dunois furnished me last night. Also, he has cabled at length to my home Government. At this hour, no doubt, d’Eblis, Bolo, probably an ex-minister or two, are being watched. And in this country your Government is now in possession of facts which must suggest a very close surveillance of the activities of Ferez Bey.”
“Where is he?”
Renoux shook his head:
“He was in New York. But he gave us the slip. An eel!” he added, rising. “Oh, we shall pick up his slimy traces again in time. But it is mortifying.... Well, thank you, mon ami. I must go.” And he started toward the hall.
“Have you a car anywhere?” asked Barres.
“Yes, up the road a bit.” He glanced through the sidelight of the front door, carelessly. “A couple of men out yonder dodging about. Have you noticed them, Barres?”
“No! Where?”
“They’re out there in the shadow of your wall. I imagined that I’d be followed.” He smiled and opened the front door.
“Wait!” whispered Barres. “You are not going out there alone, are you?”
“Certainly. There’s no danger.”
“Well, I don’t like it, Renoux. I’ll walk as far as your car — —”
“Don’t trouble! I have no personal apprehension — —”
“All the same,” muttered the other, continuing on down the front steps beside his comrade.
Renoux shrugged good-humouredly his disapproval of such precaution, but made no further protest. Nobody was visible anywhere on the grounds. The big iron gates were still locked, but the wicket was open. Through this they stepped out onto the macadam.
A little farther along stood a touring car with two men in it.
“You see?” began Renoux — when his words were cut by the crack of a pistol, and the red tail-light of the car crashed into splinters and went dark.
“Well, by God!” remarked Renoux calmly, looking at the woods across the road and leisurely producing an automatic pistol.
Then, from deeper in the thicket, two bright flames stabbed the darkness and the crash of the shots re-echoed among the trees.
Both men in the touring car instantly turned loose their pistols; Renoux said, in a voice at once perplexed and amused:
“Go home, Barres. I don’t want people to know you are out here.... I’ll see you again soon.”
“Isn’t there anything — —”
“Nothing. Please — you would oblige me by keeping clear of this if you really desire to help me.”
There were no more shots. Renoux stepped leisurely into the tonneau.
“Well, what the devil do you gentlemen make of this?” Barres heard him say in his cool, humorous voice. “It really looks as though the boches were getting nervous.”
The car started. Barres could see Renoux and another man sitting with pistols levelled as the car glided along the fringe of woods. But there were no more shots on either side, and, after the car had disappeared, Barres turned and retraced his way.
Then, as he entered his own gate by the side wicket, and turned to lock it with his own key, an electric torch flashed in his face, blinding him.
“Let him have it!” muttered somebody behind the dazzling light.
“That’s not one of them!” said another voice distinctly. “Look out what you’re doing! Douse your glim!”
Instantly the fierce glare faded to a cinder. Barres heard running feet on the macadam, the crash of shrubbery opposite. But he could see nobody; and presently the footsteps in the woods were no longer audible.
There seemed to be nothing for him to do in the matter. He lingered by the wicket for a while, peering into the night, listening. He saw nothing; heard nothing more that night.
CHAPTER XXVI
‘BE-N EIRINN I!
Barres senior rose with the sun. Also with determination, which took the form of a note slipped under his wife’s door as he was leaving the house:
“DARLING:
“I lost last night’s fishing and I’m hanged if I lose it to-night! So don’t ask me to fritter away a perfectly good evening at the Gerhardt’s party, because the sun is up; I’m off to the woods; and I shall remain there until the last trout breaks.
“Tell the little Soane girl that I left a rod for her in the work-room, if she cares to join me at the second lake. Garry can bring her over and leave her if he d
oesn’t wish to fish. Don’t send a man over with a lot of food and shawls. I’ve a creel full of provisions, and I am sufficiently clad, and I hate to be disturbed and I am never grateful to people who try to be good to me. However, I love you very dearly.
“Your husband,
“REGINALD BARRES.”
At half past seven trays were sent to Mrs. Barres and to Lee; and at eight-thirty they were in the saddle and their horses fetlock deep in morning dew.
Dulcie, sipping her chocolate in bed, marked their departure with sleepy eyes. For the emotions of the night before had told on her, and when a maid came to remove the tray she settled down among her pillows again, blinking unresponsively at the invitation of the sun, which cast over her a fairy net of gold.
Thessalie, in negligée, came in later and sat down on the edge of her bed.
“You sleepy little thing,” she said, “the men have breakfasted and are waiting for us on the tennis court.”
“I don’t know how to play,” said Dulcie. “I don’t know how to do anything.”
“You soon will, if you get up, you sweet little lazy-bones!”
“Do you think I’ll ever learn to play tennis and golf and to ride?” inquired Dulcie. “You know how to do everything so well, Thessa.”
“Dear child, it’s all locked up in you — the ability to do everything — be anything! The only difference between us is that I had the chance to try.”
“But I can’t even stand on my head,” said Dulcie wistfully.
“Did you ever try?”
“N-no.”
“It’s easy. Do you want to see me do it?”
“Oh, please, Thessa!”
So Thessalie, calmly smiling, rose, cast herself lightly upon her hands, straightened her lithe figure leisurely, until, amid a cataract of tumbling silk and chiffon, her rose silk slippers pointed toward the ceiling. Then, always with graceful deliberation, she brought her feet to the floor, forming an arc with her body; held it a moment, and slowly rose upright, her flushed face half-buried in her loosened hair.
Dulcie, in raptures, climbed out of bed and insisted on immediate instruction. Down on the tennis court, Garry and Westmore heard their peals of laughter and came across the lawn under the window to remonstrate.
“Aren’t you ever going to get dressed!” called up Westmore. “If you’re going to play doubles with us you’d better get busy, because it’s going to be a hot day!”
So Thessalie went away to dress and Dulcie tiptoed into her bath, which the maid had already drawn.
But it was an hour before they appeared on the lawn, cool and fresh in their white skirts and shoes, and found Westmore and Barres, red and drenched, hammering each other across the net in their second furious set.
So Dulcie took her first lesson under Garry’s auspices; and she took to it naturally, her instinct being sound, but her technique as charmingly awkward as a young bird’s in its first essay at flying.
To see her all in white, with sleeves tucked up, throat bare, and the sun brilliant on her ruddy, rippling hair, produced a curious impression on Barres. As far as the East is from the West, so far was this Dulcie of the tennis court separated from the wistful, shabby child behind the desk at Dragon Court.
Could they possibly be the same — this lithe, fresh, laughing girl, with white feet flashing and snowy skirts awhirl? — and the pale, grey-eyed slip of a thing that had come one day to his threshold with a faltering request for admittance to that wonderland wherein dwelt only such as he?
Now, those grey eyes had turned violet, tinged with the beauty of the open sky; the loosened hair had become a net entangling the very sunlight; and the frail body, now but one smooth, soft symmetry, seemed fairly lustrous with the shining soul it masked within it.
* * * * *
She came over to the net, breathless, laughing, to shake hands with her victorious opponents.
“I’m so sorry, Garry,” she said, turning penitently to him, “but I need such a lot of help in the world before I’m worth anything to anybody.”
“You’re all right as you are. You always have been all right,” he said in a low voice. “You never were worth less than you are worth now; you’ll never be worth more than you are worth to me at this moment.”
They were walking slowly across the lawn toward the northern veranda. She halted a moment on the grass and cast a questioning glance at him:
“Doesn’t it please you to have me learn things?”
“You always please me.”
“I’m so glad.... I try.... But don’t you think you’d like me better if I were not so ignorant?”
He looked at her absently, shook his head:
“No ... I couldn’t like you better.... I couldn’t care more — for any girl — than I care for you.... Did you suspect that, Dulcie?”
“No.”
“Well, it’s true.”
They moved slowly forward across the grass — he distrait, his handsome head lowered, swinging his tennis-bat as he walked; she very still and lithe and slender, moving beside him with lowered eyes fixed on their mingled shadows on the grass.
“When are you to see Mr. Skeel?” he asked abruptly.
“This afternoon.... He asked if he might hope to find me alone.... I didn’t know exactly what to say. So I told him about the rose arbour.... He said he would pay his respects to your mother and sister and then ask their permission to see me there alone.”
They came to the veranda; Dulcie seated herself on the steps and he remained standing on the grass in front of her.
“Remember,” he said quietly, “that I can never care less for you than I do at this moment.... Don’t forget what I say, Dulcie.”
She looked up at him, happy, wondering, even perhaps a little apprehensive in her uncertainty as to his meaning.
He did not seem to care to enlighten her further. His mood changed, too, even as she looked at him, and she saw the troubled gravity fade and the old gaiety glimmering in his eyes:
“I’ve a mind to put you on a horse, Sweetness, and see what happens,” he remarked.
“Oh, Garry! I don’t want to tumble off before you!”
“Before whom had you rather land on that red head of yours?” he inquired. “I’d be more sympathetic than many.”
“I’d rather have Thessa watch me break my neck. Do you mind? It’s horrid to be so sensitive, I suppose. But, Garry, I couldn’t bear to have you see me so shamefully awkward and demoralised.”
“Fancy your being awkward! Well, all right — —”
He looked across the lawn, where Thessalie and Westmore sat together, just outside the tennis court, under a brilliant lawn umbrella.
Oddly enough, the spectacle caused him no subtle pang, although their heads were pretty close together and their mutual absorption in whatever they were saying appeared evident enough.
“Let ’em chatter,” he said after an instant’s hesitation. “Thessa or my sister can ride with you this afternoon when it’s cooler. I suppose you’ll take to the saddle as though born there.”
“Oh, I hope so!”
“Sure thing. All Irish girls — of your quality — take to it.”
“My — quality?”
“Yours.... It’s merely happened so,” he added irrelevantly, “ — but the contrary couldn’t have mattered ... as long as you are you! Nothing else matters one way or another. You are you: that answers all questions, fulfils all requirements — —”
“I don’t quite understand what you say, Garry!”
“Don’t you, Sweetness? Don’t you understand why you’ve always been exactly what you appear like at this moment?”
She looked at him with her lovely, uncertain smile:
“I’ve always been myself, I suppose. You are teasing me dreadfully!”
He laughed in a nervous, excited way, not like himself:
“You bet you have always been yourself, Sweetness! — in spite of everything you’ve always been yourself. I am very slow in discove
ring it. But I think I realise it now.”
“Please,” she remonstrated, “you are laughing at me and I don’t know why. I think you’ve been talking nonsense and expecting me to pretend to understand.... If you don’t stop laughing at me I shall retire to my room and — and — —”
“What, Sweetness?” he demanded, still laughing.
“Change to a cooler gown,” she said, humorously vexed at her own inability to threaten or punish him for his gaiety at her expense.
“All right; I’ll change too, and we’ll meet in the music-room!”
She considered him askance:
“Will you be more respectful to me, Garry?”
“Respectful? I don’t know.”
“Very well, then, I’m not coming back.”
But when he entered the music-room half an hour later, Dulcie was seated demurely before the piano, and when he came and stood behind her she dropped her head straight back and looked up at him.
“I had a wonderful icy bath,” she said, “and I’m ready for anything. Are you?”
“Almost,” he said, looking down at her.
She straightened up, gazed silently at the piano for a few moments; sounded a few chords. Then her fingers wandered uncertainly, as though groping for something that eluded them — something that they delicately sought to interpret. But apparently she did not discover it; and her search among the keys ended in a soft chord like a sigh. Only her lips could have spoken more plainly.
At that moment Westmore and Thessalie came in breezily and remained to gossip a few minutes before bathing and changing.
“Play something jolly!” said Westmore. “One of those gay Irish things, you know, like ‘The Honourable Michael Dunn,’ or ‘Finnigan’s Wake,’ or — —”
“I don’t know any,” said Dulcie, smiling. “There’s a song called ‘Asthore.’ My mother wrote it — —”
“Can you sing it?”
The girl ran her fingers over the keys musingly:
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 887