Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  Her brother drew out the letter; his sister said:

  “Mr. Renoux went away in a car with two other men. He asked me to say to you that there was no time to lose — whatever he meant by that! Now, I must hurry away!” She turned and sped through the hall and out through the swinging screen door on the north porch. Garry had already opened the note from Renoux, glanced over it; then he read it aloud to Westmore:

  “MY DEAR COMRADE:

  “The fat’s in the fire! Your agents took Tauscher in charge to-day. Max Freund and Franz Lehr have just been arrested by your excellent Postal authorities. Warrants are out for Sendelbeck, Johann Klein, and Louis Hochstein. I think the latter are making for Mexico, but your Secret Service people are close on their heels.

  “Recall for von Papen and Boy-ed is certain to be demanded by your Government. Mine will look after Bolo Effendi and d’Eblis and their international gang of spies and crooks. Ferez Bey, however, still eludes us. He is somewhere in this vicinity, but of course, even when we locate him again, we can’t touch him. All we can do is to point him out to your Government agents, who will then keep him in sight.

  “So far so good. But now I am forced to ask a very great favour of you, and, if I may, of your friend, Mr. Westmore. It is this: Skeel, contrary to what was expected of him, did not go to the place which is being watched. Nor have any of his men appeared at that rendezvous where there lies the very swift and well-armed launch, Togue Rouge, which we had every reason to suppose was to be their craft in this outrageous affair.

  “As a matter of fact, this launch is Tauscher’s. But it, and the pretended rendezvous, are what you call a plant. Skeel never intended to assemble his men there; never intended to use that particular launch. Tauscher merely planted it. Your men and the Canadian agents, unfortunately, are covering that vicinity and are still watching for Skeel, who has a very different plan in his crazy head.

  “Now, this is Skeel’s plan, and this is the situation, learned by me from papers discovered on Tauscher:

  “The explosives bought and sent there by Tauscher himself are on a big, fast power-boat which is lying at anchor in a little cove called Saibling Bay. The boat flies the Quebec Yacht Club ensign, and a private pennant to which it has no right.

  “Two of Skeel’s gang are already aboard — a man named Con McDermott and another, Kelly Walsh. Skeel joins the others at a hamlet near the Lake shore, known as Three Ponds. The tavern is a notorious and disreputable old brick hotel — what you call a speak-easy. That is their rendezvous.

  “Well, then, I have wired to your people, to Canada, to Washington. But Three Ponds is not a very long drive from here, if one ignores speed limits. Yes? Could you help us maintain a close surveillance over that damned tavern to-night? Is it too much to ask?

  “And if you and Mr. Westmore are graciously inclined to aid us, would you be so kind as to come armed? Because, mon ami, unless your Government people arrive in time, I shall certainly try to keep Skeel and his gang from boarding that boat.

  “Au revoir, donc! I am off with Jacques Alost and Emile Souchez for that charming summer resort, the Three Ponds Tavern, where, from the neighbouring roadside woods, I shall hope to flag your automobile by sunrise and welcome you and your amiable friend, Mr. Westmore, as our brothers in arms.

  “RENOUX, your comrade and, friend.”

  There was a silence. Then Westmore looked at his watch.

  “We ought to hustle,” he remarked. “I’ll get on some knickers and stick a couple of guns in my pocket. You’d better telephone to the garage.”

  As they hastened up the stairs together, Barres said: “Have I time for a word with Dulcie?”

  “That’s up to you. I’m not going to say anything to Thessa. I wouldn’t care to miss this affair. If we arrived too late and they had already dynamited the Welland Canal, we’d never forgive ourselves.”

  Barres ran for his room.

  * * * * *

  They were dressed, armed and driving out of the Foreland Farms gates inside of ten minutes. Barres had the wheel; Westmore sat beside him shoving new clips into two automatics and dividing the remaining boxes of ammunition.

  “The crazy devils,” he said to Barres, raising his voice to make himself heard. “Blow up the Canal, will they! What’s the matter with these Irishmen! The rest are not like ‘em. Look at the Flanders fighting, Garry! Look at the magnificent record of the Irish regiments! Why don’t our Irish play the game?”

  “It’s their blind hatred of England,” shouted Barres, in his ear. “They’re monomaniacs. They can’t see anything else — can’t see what they’re doing to civilisation — cutting the very throat of Liberty every time they jab at England. What’s the use? You can’t talk to them. They’re lunatics. But when they start things over here they’ve got to be put into straitjackets.”

  “They are lunatics,” repeated Westmore. “If they weren’t, they wouldn’t risk the wholesale murder of women and children. That is a purely German peculiarity; it’s what the normal boche delights in. But the Irish are white men. And it’s only when they’re crazy they’d try a thing like this.”

  After a long silence:

  “How fast, Garry?”

  “Around fifty.”

  “How far is it?”

  “About twenty-five miles further.”

  The car rushed on through the night under the brilliant July stars and over a perfect road. In the hollows, where spring brooks ran under stone bridges, a slight, chilling mist hung, but otherwise the night was clear and warm.

  Woods, fields, farms, streamed by in the darkness; the car tore on in the wake of its glaring, golden headlights, where clouds of little winged creatures of the night whirled and eddied like flecks of tinsel.

  Rarely they encountered other cars, for the hour was late, and there were no lights in the farm houses which they passed along the road.

  They spoke seldom now, their terrific speed and the roaring wind discouraging conversation. But the night air, which they whipped into a steadily flowing gale, was still soft and fragrant and warm; and with every mile their exhilaration increased.

  Now the eastern horizon, which had already paled to a leaden tone, was becoming pallid; and few stars were visible except directly overhead.

  Barres slowed down to twenty miles. Long double barriers of dense and misty woodland flanked the road on either hand, with few cultivated fields between and very rarely a ramshackle barn.

  Acres of alder swamp spread away on either hand, set with swale and pool and tussock. And across the flat desolation the east was all a saffron glow now, and the fish-crows were flying in twos and threes above the bog holes.

  “There’s a man in the road ahead,” said Westmore.

  “I see him.”

  The man threw up one arm in signal, then made a sweeping gesture indicating that they should turn to the left. The man was Renoux.

  “A cart-track and a pair of bars,” said Westmore. “Their car has been in there, too. You can see the tire marks.”

  Renoux sprang onto the running board without a word.

  Barres steered his car very gingerly in through the bars and along the edge of the woods where, presently, the swampy cart-track turned to the right among the trees.

  “All right!” said Renoux briskly, dropping to the ground. He shook hands with the two new arrivals, passed one arm under each of theirs, and led them forward along a wet, ferny road toward a hardwood ridge.

  Here Souchez and Alost, who lay full length on the dead leaves, got up, to welcome the reinforcements, and to point out the disreputable old brick building which stood close to the further edge of the woods, rear end toward them, and fronting on a rutty crossroad beyond.

  “Are we in time?” inquired Barres in a low voice.

  “Plenty,” said Renoux with a shrug. “They’ve been making a night of it in there. They’re at it yet. Listen!”

  Even at that distance the sound of revelry was audible — shouts, laughter, cheering, boisterous si
nging.

  “Skeel is there,” remarked Renoux, “and I fancy he’s an anxious man. They ought to have been out of that house before dawn to escape observation, but I imagine Skeel has an unruly gang to deal with in those reckless Irishmen.”

  Barres and Westmore peered out through the fringe of trees across the somewhat desolate landscape beyond.

  There were no houses to be seen. Here and there on the bogs were stakes of swale-hay and a gaunt tree or two.

  “That brick hotel,” said Renoux, “is one of those places outside town limits, where law is defied and license straddles the line. It’s run by McDermott, one of the two men aboard the power-boat.”

  “Where is their boat?” inquired Westmore.

  Renoux turned and pointed to the southwest.

  “Over there in a cove — about a mile south of us. If they leave the tavern we can get to the boat first and block their road.”

  “We’ll be between two fires then,” observed Barres, “from the boat’s deck and from Skeel’s gang.”

  Renoux nodded coolly:

  “Two on the boat and five in the hotel make seven. We are five.”

  “Then we can hold them,” said Westmore.

  “That’s all I want,” rejoined Renoux briskly. “I just want to check them and hold them until your Government can send its agents here. I know I have no business to do this — probably I’ll get into trouble. But I can’t sit still and twirl my thumbs while people blow up a canal belonging to an ally of France, can I?”

  “Hark!” motioned Barres. “They’re singing! Poor devils. They’re like Cree Indians singing their death song.”

  “I suppose,” said Westmore sombrely, “that deep in each man’s heart there remains a glimmer of hope that he, at least, may come out of it.”

  Renoux shrugged:

  “Perhaps. But they are brave, these Irish — brave enough without a skinful of whiskey. And with it they are entirely reckless. No sane man can foretell what they will attempt.” He turned to include Alost and Souchez: “I think there can be only one plan of action for us, gentlemen. We should string out here along the edges of the woods. When they leave the tavern we should run for the landing and get into the shack that stands there — a rickety sort of boat-house on piles,” he explained to Westmore and Barres. “There is the path through the woods.” He pointed to the left, where a trodden way bisected the wood-road. “It runs straight to the landing,” he added.

  Alost, at a sign from him, started off westward through the woods. Souchez followed. Renoux leaned back against a big walnut tree and signified that he would remain there.

  So Barres and Westmore moved forward to the right, very cautiously, circling the rear of the old brick hotel where a line of ruined horse-sheds and a rickety barn screened them from view of the hotel’s south windows.

  So close to the tavern did they pass that they could hear the noisy singing very distinctly and see through the open windows the movement of shadowy figures under the paling light of a ceiling lamp.

  Westmore ventured nearer in hopes of getting a better view from the horse-sheds; and Barres crept after him through the rank growth of swale and weeds.

  “Look at them!” whispered Westmore. “They’re in a sort of uniform, aren’t they?”

  “They’ve got on green jackets and stable-caps! Do you see that stack of rifles in the corner of the tap-room?”

  “There’s Skeel!” muttered Westmore, “the man in the long cloak sitting by the fireplace with his face buried in his hands!”

  “He looks utterly done in,” whispered Barres. “Probably he can’t manage that gang and he begins to realise it. Hark! You can hear every word of that thing they’re singing.”

  Every word, indeed, was a yell or a shout, and distinct enough at that. They were roaring out “Green Jackets”:

  “Oh, Irish maids love none but those Who wear the jackets green!”

  — all lolling and carousing around a slopping wet table — all save Murtagh Skeel, who, seated near the empty fireplace with his white face buried between his fingers, never stirred from his attitude of stony immobility.

  “There’s Soane!” whispered Barres, “that man who just got up!”

  It was Soane, his cap cocked aslant on his curly head, his green jacket unbuttoned, a tumbler aloft in his unsteady clutch.

  “Whurroo!” he yelled. “Gu ma slan a chi mi! — fear a’ Bhata!” And he laid a reckless hand on Skeel’s cloaked shoulder. But the latter never stirred; and Soane, winking at the company, flourished his tumbler aloft and broke into “The Risin’ o’ the Moon”:

  “Oh, then tell me, Shawn O’Ferrall, Phwere the gatherin’ is to be! In th’ ould shpot be the river; — Sure it’s known to you an’ me!”

  And the others began to shout the words:

  “Death to every foe and traitor! Forward! Strike the marchin’ tune, And hurrah, me lads, for freedom! ’Tis the risin’ of the moon!

  “At the risin’ of the moon, At the risin’ of the moon, And a thousand blades are flashin’ At the risin’ of the moon!”

  “Here’s to Murtagh Skeel!” roared Soane, “An gille dubh ciardubh! Whurroo!”

  Skeel lifted his haggard visage, slowly looked around, got up from his stool.

  “In God’s name,” he said hoarsely, “if you’re not utterly shameless, take your rifles and follow me. Look at the sun! Have you lads gone stark mad? What will McDermott think? What will Kelly Walsh say? It’s too late to weigh anchor now; but it isn’t too late to go aboard and sober up, and wait for dark.

  “If you’ve a rag of patriotism left you’ll quit your drinking and come with me!”

  “Ah, sure, then, Captain dear,” cried Soane, “is there anny harrm in a bite an’ a sup f’r dyin’ lads befoor they go whizzin’ up to glory?”

  “I tell you we should be aboard! Now!”

  Another said:

  “Aw, the cap’s right. To hell with the booze. Come on, youse!” And he began to button his green jacket. Another got up on unsteady legs:

  “Sure,” he said, “there do be time f’r to up anchor an’ shquare away for Point Dalhousie. Phwat’s interferin’, I dunno.”

  “A Canadian cruiser,” said Skeel with dry bitterness. “Get aboard, anyway. We’ll have to wait for dark.”

  There was a reluctant shuffle of feet, a careless adjusting of green jackets and caps, a reaching for rifles.

  “Come on,” whispered Barres, “we’ve got to get to the landing before they do.”

  They turned and moved off swiftly among the trees. Renoux saw them coming, understood, turned and hurried southward to warn Alost and Souchez. Barres and Westmore caught glimpses of them ahead, striding along the trodden path under the trees, and ran to overtake them.

  “They’re going aboard,” said Barres to Renoux. “But they will probably wait till dark before starting.”

  “They will unless they’re stark mad,” said Renoux, hurrying out to the southern borders of the wood. But no sooner had he arrived on the edge of the open swale country than he uttered an exclamation of rage and disgust, and threw up his hands helplessly.

  It was perfectly plain to the others what was happening — and what now could not be prevented.

  There lay the big, swift power boat, still at anchor; there stood the ramshackle wharf and boat-house. But already a boat had put off from the larger craft and was being rowed parallel with the shore toward the mouth of a marshy creek.

  Two men were rowing; a third steered.

  But what had suddenly upset Renoux was the sight of a line of green jackets threading the marsh to the north, led by Skeel, who was already exchanging handkerchief signals with the men in the boat.

  Renoux glanced at his prey escaping by an avenue of which he had no previous knowledge. It was death to go out into the open with pistols and face the fire of half a dozen rifles. No man there had any delusions concerning that.

  Souchez had field-glasses slung around his neck. Renoux took them, gazed at the
receding boat, set his teeth hard.

  “Ferez!” he growled.

  “What!” exclaimed Westmore, turning a violent red.

  “The man steering is Ferez Bey.” Renoux handed the binoculars to Westmore with a shrug.

  Barres, bending double, had gone out into the swale. A thicket of cat-tails screened him and he advanced very carefully, keeping his eyes on the green-jacketed men whose heads, shoulders and rifles were visible above the swampy growth beyond.

  Suddenly Renoux, who was watching him in bitter silence, saw him turn and beckon violently.

  “Quick!” he said in a low, eager voice. “He may have found a ditch to shelter us!”

  Renoux was correct in his surmise: Barres stood with drawn pistol, awaiting them in a muddy ditch which ran through the reeds diagonally across the marsh. It was shin-deep in water.

  “We could make a pretty good stand in a ditch like this, couldn’t we?” he demanded excitedly.

  “You bet we can!” replied Renoux, jumping down beside him, followed by Westmore, Alost and Souchez in turn.

  Barres, leading, ran down the ditch as fast as he could, spattering himself and the others with mud and water at every step.

  “Here!” panted Renoux, clambering nimbly out of the ditch and peering ahead through the reeds. Then he suddenly stood upright:

  “Halt!” he shouted. “It’s all up with you, Skeel! Keep away from that boat, or I order my men to fire!”

  There was a dead silence for a moment; then Skeel’s voice:

  “Better not bother us, my good man. We know our business and you’d better learn yours.”

  “Skeel,” retorted Renoux, “my business is other people’s business, sometimes. It’s yours just now. I warn you to keep away from that boat!” He turned and hailed the boat in the next breath: “Boat ahoy! Keep off or we open fire!”