Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “Yes.”

  “This Captain Herts sent three of his own people over the Swiss wire the other evening. Did you know about it?”

  McKay looked worried: “I’m sorry,” he said. “Captain Herts proposed some such assistance but I declined. It wasn’t necessary. Two on such a job are plenty; half-a-dozen endanger it.”

  Recklow shrugged: “I can’t judge, not knowing details. Tell me, if you don’t mind; have you been bothered at all so far by Boche agents?”

  “Yes,” nodded Evelyn Erith.

  “You’ve already had some serious trouble?”

  McKay said: “Our ship was torpedoed off Strathlone Head. In Scotland a dozen camouflaged Boches caught me napping in spite of being warned. It was very humiliating, Recklow.”

  “You can’t trust a soul on this frontier either,” returned Recklow with emphasis. “You cannot trust the Swiss on this border. Over ninety per cent. of them are German-Swiss, speak German exclusively along the Alsatian border. They are, I think, loyal Swiss, but their origin, propinquity, customs and all their affiliations incline them toward Germany rather than toward France.

  “I believe, in the event of a Hun deluge, the Swiss on this border, and in the cantons adjoining, would defend their passes to the last man. They really are first of all good Swiss. But,” he shrugged, “don’t trust their friendship for America or for France; that’s all.”

  Miss Erith nodded. McKay said: “How about the frontier? I understand both borders are wired now as well as patrolled. Are the wires electrically charged?”

  “No. There was some talk of doing it on both sides, but the French haven’t and I don’t think the Swiss ever intended to. You can get over almost anywhere with a short ladder or by digging under.” He smiled: “In fact,” he said, “I took the liberty of having a sapling ladder made for you in case you mean to cross to-night.”

  “Many thanks. Yes; we cross to-night.”

  “You go by the summit path past the Crucifix on the peak?”

  “No, by the neck of woods under the peak.”

  “That might be wiser…. One never knows. … I’m not quite at ease — Suppose I go as far as the Crucifix with you—”

  “Thanks, no. I know the mountain and the neck of woods around the summit. I shall travel no path to-night.”

  There was a silence: Miss Erith’s lovely face was turned tranquilly toward the flank of Mount Terrible. Both men looked sideways at her as though thinking the same thing.

  Finally Recklow said: “In the event of trouble — you understand — it means merely detention and internment while you are on Swiss territory. But — if you leave it and go north—” He did not say any more.

  McKay’s sombre eyes rested on his in grim comprehension of all that Recklow had left unsaid. Swift and savage as would be the fate of a man caught within German frontiers on any such business as he was now engaged in, the fate of a woman would be unspeakable.

  If Miss Erith noticed or understood the silence between these two men she gave no sign of comprehension.

  Soft, lovely lights lay across the mountains; higher rocks were still ruddy in the rays of the declining sun.

  “Do the Boche planes ever come over?” asked McKay.

  “They did in 1914. But the Swiss stopped it.”

  “Our planes — do they violate the frontier at all?”

  “They never have, so far. Tell me, McKay, how about your maps?”

  “Rather inaccurate — excepting one. I drew that myself from memory, and I believe it is fairly correct.”

  Recklow unfolded a little map, marked a spot on it with his pencil and passed it to McKay.

  “It’s for you,” he said. “The sapling ladder lies under the filbert bushes in the gulley where I have marked the boundary. Wait till the patrol passes. Then you have ten minutes. I’ll come later and get the ladder if the patrol does not discover it.”

  A cat and her kittens came into the garden and Evelyn Erith seated herself on the grass to play with them, an attention gratefully appreciated by that feline family.

  The men watched her with sober faces. Perhaps both were susceptible to her beauty, but there was also about this young American girl in all the freshness of her unmarred youth something that touched them deeply under the circumstances.

  For this clean, wholesome girl was enlisted in a service the dangers of which were peculiarly horrible to her because of the bestial barbarity of the Boche. From the Hun — if ever she fell into their hands — the greatest mercy to be hoped for was a swift death unless she could forestall it with a swifter one from her own pistol carried for that particular purpose.

  The death of youth is always shocking, yet that is an essential part of war. But this was no war within the meaning accepted by civilisation — this crusade of light against darkness, of cleanliness against corruption, this battle of normal minds against the diseased, perverted, and filthy ferocity of a people not merely reverted to honest barbarism, but also mentally mutilated, and now morally imbecile and utterly incompetent to understand the basic truths of that civilisation from which they had relapsed, and from which, God willing, they are to be ultimately and definitely kicked out forever.

  The old mother cat lay on the grass blinking pleasantly at the setting sun; the kittens frisked and played with the grass-stem in Evelyn Erith’s fingers, or chased their own ratty little tails in a perfect orgy of feline excitement.

  Long bluish shadows spread delicate traceries on wall and grass; the sweet, persistent whistle of a blackbird intensified the calm of evening. It was hard to associate any thought of violence and of devastation with the blessed sunset calm and the clean fragrance of this land of misty mountains and quiet pasture so innocently aloof from the strife and passion of a dusty, noisy and struggling world.

  Yet the red borders of that accursed land, the bloody altars of which were served by the priests of Baal, lay but a few scant kilometres to the north and east. And their stealthy emissaries were over the border and creeping like vermin among the uncontaminated fields of France.

  “Even here,” Recklow was saying, in a voice made low and cautious from habit, “the dirty Boche prowl among us under protean aspects. One can never tell, never trust anybody — what with one thing and another and the Alsatian border so close — and those German-Swiss — always to be suspected and often impossible to distinguish — with their pig-eyes and bushy flat-backed heads — from the genuine Boche. … Would Miss Erith like to have our little dinner served out here in the garden?”

  Miss Erith was delightfully sure she would.

  It was long after sunset, though still light, when the simple little meal ended; but they lingered over their coffee and cordial, exchanging ideas concerning preparations for their departure, which was now close at hand.

  The lilac bloom faded from mountain and woodland; already meadow and pasture lay veiled under the thickening dusk. The last day-bird had piped its sleepy “lights out”; bats were flying high. When the moon rose the first nightingale acclaimed the pallid lustre that fell in silver pools on walk and wall; and every flower sent forth its scented greeting.

  Kay McKay and Evelyn Erith had been gone for nearly an hour; but Recklow still sat there at the little green table, an unlighted cigarette in his muscular fingers, his head slightly bent as though listening.

  Once he rose as though on some impulse, went into the house, took a roll of fine wire, a small cowbell, a heavy pair of wire clippers and a pocket torch from his desk and pocketed them. A pair of automatic handcuffs he also took, and a dozen clips to fit the brace of pistols strapped under his armpits.

  Then he returned to the garden; and for a long while he sat there, unstirring, just where the wall’s shadow lay clean-cut across the grass, listening to the distant tinkle of cattle-bells on the unseen slope of Mount Terrible.

  No shots had come from the patrol along the Franco-Swiss frontier; there was no sound save the ecstatic tumult of the nightingale drunk with moonlight, and, at intervals,
the faint sound of a cowbell from those dark and distant pastures.

  To this silent, listening man it seemed certain that his two guests had now safely crossed the boundary at the spot he had marked for McKay on the detail map. Yet he remained profoundly uneasy.

  He waited a few moments longer; heard nothing to alarm him; and then he left the garden, going out by way of the house, and turned to lock the front door behind him.

  At that instant his telephone bell rang and he re-entered the house with a sudden premonition — an odd, unreasonable, but dreadful sort of certainty concerning what he was about to hear. Picking up the instrument he was thinking all the time: “It has to do with that damned Intelligence Officer! There was something wrong with him!”

  There was.

  Clearly over the wire from Toul came the information: “Captain Herts’s naked body was discovered an hour ago in a thicket beside the Delle highway. He has been dead two weeks. Therefore the man you saw in Delle was impersonating him. Probably also he was Captain Herts’s murderer and was wearing his uniform, carrying his papers, and riding his motor-cycle. Do your best to get him!”

  Recklow, deadly cold and calm, asked a few questions. Then he hung up the instrument, turned and went out, locking the door behind him.

  A few people were in the quiet street; here an Alpine soldier strolling with his sweetheart, there an old cure on his way to his little stone chapel, yonder a peasant in blouse and sabots plodding doggedly along about some detail of belated work that never ends for such as he. A few lanterns set in iron cages projected over ancient doorways, lighting the street but dimly where it lay partly in deep shadow, partly illuminated by the silvery radiance of the moon.

  Recklow turned into an alley smelling of stables, traversed it, and came out behind into a bushy pasture with a cleared space beyond. The place was rather misty now in the moonlight from the vapours of a cold little brook which ran foaming and clattering through it between banks thickset with fern.

  And now Recklow moved very swiftly but quietly, down through the misty, ferny valley to the filbert and hazel thicket just beyond; and went in among the bushes, treading cautiously upon the moist black mould.

  There glimmered the French wires — merely a wide mesh and an ordinary barbed barrier overhead; but the fence was deeply ditched on the Swiss side. A man could climb over it; and Recklow started to do so; and came face to face in the moonlight with the French patrol. The recognition was mutual and noiseless:

  “You passed my two people over?” whispered Recklow.

  “An hour ago, mon Capitaine.”

  “You’ve seen nobody else?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Heard nothing?”

  “Not a sound. They must have gone over the Swiss wire without interference, mon Capitaine.”

  “You sometimes talk across with the Swiss sentinels?”

  “Oh, yes, if I’m in that humour. You know, mon Capitaine, that they’re like the Boche, only tame.”

  “Not all.”

  “No, not all. But in a wolf-pack who can excuse sheepdogs? A Boche is always a Boche.”

  “All the same, when the Swiss sentry passes, speak to him and hold him while I get my ladder.”

  “At your orders, Captain.”

  “Listen. I am going over. When I return I shall leave with you a reel of wire and a cowbell. You comprehend? I do not wish anybody else to cross the French wire to-night.”

  “C’est bien, mon Capitaine.”

  Recklow went down into the bushy gulley. A few moments later the careless Swiss patrol came clumping along, rifle slung, pipe glowing and humming a tune as he passed. Presently the French sentry hailed him across the wire and the Swiss promptly halted for a bit of gossip concerning the pretty girls of Delle.

  But, to Recklow’s grim surprise, and before he could emerge from the bushes, no sooner were the two sentries engaged in lively gossip than three dark figures crept out on hands and knees from the long grass at the very base of the Swiss wire and were up the ladder which McKay had left and over it like monkeys before he could have prevented it even if he had dared.

  Each in turn, reaching the top of the wire, set foot on the wooden post and leaped off into darkness — each except the last, who remained poised, then twisted around as though caught by the top barbed strand.

  And Recklow saw the figure was a woman’s, and that her short skirt had become entangled in the wire.

  In an instant he was after her; she saw him, strove desperately to free herself, tore her skirt loose, and jumped. And Recklow jumped after her, landing among the wet ferns on his feet and seizing her as she tried to rise from where she had fallen.

  She struggled and fought him in silence, but his iron clutch was on her and he dragged her by main force through the woods parallel with the Swiss wire until, breathless, powerless, impotent, she gave up the battle and suffered him to force her along until they were far beyond earshot of the patrol and of her two companions as well, in case they should return to the wire to look for her.

  For ten minutes, holding her by the arm, he pushed forward up the wooded slope. Then, when it was safe to do so, he halted, jerked her around to face him, and flashed his pocket torch. And he saw a handsome, perspiring, sullen girl, staring at him out of dark eyes dilated by terror or by fury — he was not quite sure which.

  She wore the costume of a peasant of the canton bordering the wire; and she looked like that type of German-Swiss — handsome, sensual, bad-tempered, but not stupid.

  “Well,” he said in French, “you can explain yourself now, mademoiselle. Allons! Who and what are you? Dites!”

  “What are you? A robber?” she gasped, jerking her arm free.

  “If you thought so why didn’t you call for help?”

  “And be shot at? Do you take me for a fool? What are you — a Douanier then? A smuggler?”

  “You answer ME!” he retorted. “What were you doing — crossing the wire at night?”

  “Can’t a girl keep a rendezvous without the custom-agents treating her so barbarously?” she panted, one hand flat on her tumultuous bosom.

  “Oh, that was it, was it?”

  “I do not deny it.”

  “Who is your lover — on the French side?”

  “And if he happens to be an Alpinist?” — she shrugged, still breathing fast and irregularly, picking up the torn edge of her wool skirt and fingering the rent.

  “Really. An Alpinist? A rendezvous in Delle, eh? And who were your two friends?”

  “Boys from my canton.”

  “Is that so?”

  Her breast still rose and fell unevenly; she turned her pretty, insolent eyes on him:

  “After all, what business is it of yours? Who are you, anyway? If you are French you can do nothing. If you are Swiss take me to the nearest poste.”

  “Who were those two men?” repeated Recklow.

  “Ask them.”

  “No; I think I’ll take you back to France.”

  The girl became silent at that but her attitude defied him. Even when he snapped an automatic handcuff over one wrist she smiled incredulously.

  But the jeering expression on her dark, handsome features altered when they approached the Swiss wire. And when Recklow produced a pair of heavy wire-cutters all defiance died out in her face.

  “Make a sound and I’ll simply shoot you,” he whispered.

  “W-what is it you want with me?” she asked in a ghost of a voice.

  “The truth.”

  “I told it.”

  “You did not. You are German.”

  “Believe what you like, but I am on neutral territory. Let me go.”

  “You ARE German! For God’s sake admit it or we’ll be too late!”

  “What?”

  “Admit it, I say. Do you want those two Americans to get away?”

  “What — Americans?” stammered the girl. “I d-don’t know what you mean—”

  Recklow laughed under his breath, unlocked the han
dcuffs.

  “Echt Deutsch,” he whispered in German— “and ZERO-TWO-SIX. A good hint to you!”

  “Waidman’s Heil!” said the girl faintly. “O God! what a fright you gave me…. There’s a man at Delle — we were warned — Seventy is his number, Recklow — a devil Yankee—”

  “A swine! a fathead, sleeping all day in his garden, too drunk to open despatches!” sneered Recklow.

  “We were warned against him,” she insisted. Recklow laughed his contempt of Recklow and spat upon the dead leaves.

  “Stupid one, what then is closest to the Yankee heart? I was sent here to buy this terrible devil Yankee, Recklow. That is how one deals with Yankees. With dollars.”

  “Is that why you are here?”

  “And to watch for McKay and the young woman with him!”

  “The Erith woman!”

  “That is her barbarous name, I believe. What is your number?”

  “Four-two-four. Oh, what a fright you gave me. What is your name?”

  “That is against regulations.”

  “I know. What is it, all the same…. Mine is Helsa Kampf.”

  “Mine is Johann Wolkcer.”

  “Wolkcer? Is it Polish?”

  “God knows where we Germans had our origin. … Who are your companions, Fraulein?”

  “An Irish-American. Jim Macniff, and a British revolutionist, Harry Skelton. Others await us on Mount Terrible — Germans in Swiss uniforms.”

  “You’d better keep an eye on Macniff and Skelton,” grumbled Recklow.

  “No; they’re to be trusted. We nearly caught McKay and the Erith girl in Scotland; they killed four of our people and hurt two others…. Listen, comrade Wolkcer, if a trodden path ascends Mount Terrible, as Skelton pretended, you and I had better look for it. Can you find your way back to where we crossed the wire? The dry bed of the torrent was to have guided us.”

  “I know a quicker way,” said Recklow. “Come on.”