The Yellow Dove Part 2

CHAPTER XIII
THE UNWILLING GUEST

AFTER the light of dawn went out upon the cliffs of Rhuda Mor, Doris Mather hung for a long while upon the brink of an abyss, below her darkness, above her light. She strove upward, but in the dim moments of half-consciousness was aware of a force restraining her and a recurrence of the odor in which the darkness had first come. She had a sense of motion and of jolting, the feeling of arms about her, a descent, the sound of water and the rocking of a boat. Brief glimpses she had of sunlight, which revealed outlines dimly, like the glow of summer lightning upon familiar objects, making them curiously unfamiliar. John Rizzio’s face persisted in these visions, a fantastic Rizzio, much larger than the man she knew, deferential and punctilious as ever, and strangely grave. A stout man with a swarthy face in a cap and brass buttons, just above her, darkly outlined against white clouds which seemed to be whirling rapidly past him. Dully she found herself wondering where the clouds were going so rapidly and why they didn’t come back. . . . Later, darkness and peace, where there were no visions and the sky no longer whirled . . . a steady vibration which soothed her, and she blissfully slept.

When she awoke the visions were gone, and as her senses returned she started up, but her head swam and she sank back again. As she had risen a woman ​emerged from the shadows of the room and came forward. And then slowly, as full consciousness returned, the girl realized that she was on an ocean-going vessel in a cabin or stateroom very beautifully appointed. She started up in her bed and looked out of the port-hole to see the amber crests of waves leaping rapidly past. Then she heard the woman’s voice speaking.

“You are feeling better?”

Doris turned and looked at her, a woman of middle age, with a kindly face, dressed in white linen.

“What yacht is this?” she asked.

“The Sylph, miss—Mr. Rizzio’s,” she replied.

Doris thought for a moment. The last thing her waking consciousness remembered were the cliffs of Rhuda Mor.

“How did I come here?” she asked again.

The woman shook her head. “I don’t know, miss.”

Her manner was kind and most respectful but her tone was decisive. She was obeying instructions.

“Is Mr. Rizzio aboard?” Doris asked again.

“Yes, miss. And he asked me to tell you that when you felt sufficiently recovered he would be glad to wait upon you in the saloon.”

“Oh, I understand.”

When Doris rose and put her feet to the swaying deck, nausea overcame her. But the woman, who was prepared for this emergency, offered a glass filled with cloudy liquid.

“Drink this,” she said. “It will make you feel better.”

Doris looked into the woman’s face, and recognizing the aromatic odor, took the draught.

The nausea passed after a moment and she managed to get up and make her way to the bathroom. As ​she bathed her face, memory returned, full memory of the events of the previous night, the scene upon the cliffs, with Cyril, the destroyer, Rizzio, Stryker, Rudha Mor, the Yellow Dove and then unconsciousness. Chloroform! There were vestiges of it upon her clothing still. They had drugged her. When she took off her shirtwaist something fell to the floor. A paper. She picked it up and looked at it. It was Rizzio’s note to her at Kilmorack House asking her to come to Ben-a-Chielt—so that he might make her prisoner! She remembered now that she had thrust it into her waist when she went out. She folded the letter carefully and put it in her stays. After the other indignity she had suffered, it seemed strange that they had not searched her, too. She would keep the letter. Perhaps later she would find use for it.

John Rizzio! It was difficult for her mind to associate him with the villainy of abduction. And yet, as her brain grew clearer, she became quite sure that there was no other answer to the problem. Indeed, from the replies of the stewardess she knew that John Rizzio had chosen that she should know it was to be a problem no longer. The Sylph, that was his yacht. She had been on the boat before, two years ago, during the races in the Solent. Abduction! He had dared! She was not frightened yet. Fury at his temerity blinded her to all sense of danger. A phrase of Cyril’s came back to her, illuminating the chaos of her thoughts. “You know too much—too much for your own good—or mine.” Cyril’s cigarette papers! She was the only one beside Cyril who had read their contents! Rizzio had carried her off, had brought her to the Sylph, which was out of sight of land, speeding for—Germany! What was he going to do with her?

​Fury passed and weakness followed. She did not know what time of day it was, but she was aware that it had been long since she had eaten. In the cabin she found a tray set with food and coffee which the stewardess insisted upon serving her. She sank into an armchair, refusing to eat, but the woman persisted and the odor of the coffee was tempting. It was luncheon, she found, and remembered that she had had no appetite for dinner at Lady Heathcote’s and that it must be quite twenty-four hours since she had broken bread. The coffee gave her courage, and in spite of herself she found that she was eating heartily with a genuine relish. She was a good sailor and the nausea, which she now knew was the effect of the drug, had passed. The stewardess stood beside her and to the other questions Doris put to her answered politely, but volunteered nothing further than she had already told. In spite of the woman’s care and attention the girl could not get rid of the idea that the stewardess had been sent as a guardian as well as a maid. She was a prisoner of John Rizzio, of Germany, whither he was bringing her as fast as the yacht could take them.

Finding at last that her attempts to extract information from her stolid servitress were fruitless, and feeling strengthened by the food she had taken, she got up and told the woman that she was going on deck, asking that Mr. Rizzio be informed that she would see him. As she emerged upon deck the crisp wintry air sent the color slowly into her pallid cheeks. The yacht was bowling along with the wind and sea quartering and the foam-crests leaped alongside, sending an occasional spurt of spray into the air, where the wind caught it and blew it across the decks in a ​feathery mist of rainbows. The sunlight glinted on polished wood and brasswork and at the stern caught in the cross of St. George where the flag of England flapped in the breeze. The flag of England sheltering John Rizzio! She scanned the horizon anxiously. Perhaps an English cruiser or destroyer might come to whom she might be able to tell the real character of the owner of the vessel. But there was no vessel in sight. A sailor passed her and touched his cap. The deference encouraged her. It reminded her that this was the same deck upon which she had stood when John Rizzio was suing for her hand, an honorable host when she had been an honored guest. A loud crackling came to her ears from the wireless room. He was there, already in communication with his employers in Germany. Even now, with Cyril’s words still ringing in her ears, she found it difficult to believe that John Rizzio was England’s enemy; and the price of his treachery a picture, “The Descent from the Cross”! What a mockery that a man who would stoop to such dishonor could make its price a picture which typified the conquest of sublime virtue even over death!

The wind was searching and the maid brought a heavy coat with brass buttons from below and put it on her with the word that Mr. Rizzio had sent it and would come to her in a few moments. She sat in a deckchair in the lee of the deckhouse, her lips firmly compressed, trying to think what his ulterior purpose might be, planning a defense which might make her invulnerable, an attack which might search his intentions and discover the true relation that was to exist between them.

He came toward her from forward, muffled in a ​greatcoat, and carrying a rug. He took off his cap with an air of deference, which answered at once some of her questions. She rose and faced him, her color high.

“What are you going to do with me?” she asked, trying to keep her lips from trembling.

He smiled and pulled at his mustache.

“First, I hope you’ll give me a chance to explain.”

“What?” she cried hotly. “What can you explain? Don’t you suppose I know what you are? A German spy, a traitor to England, and worse than that—a woman-baiter and a coward, Mr. Rizzio.”

He bent his head.

“I make no defense,” he said, “except necessity.” And then gravely indicating the chair from which she had risen. “Won’t you sit down? The voyage may be long.”

But she still stood.

“I am a prisoner, not a guest.”

“Then I command you to sit,” he said with a laugh. “Won’t you?”

A sound of exasperation came from her throat and she obeyed him, her gaze on the sea, while with some ostentation he covered her with a rug.

“What are you going to do with me in Germany?” she repeated dully.

He sank into the chair beside her. “As I have often told you, you are a woman of rare intelligence. In reply I can only say that, unfortunately, I do not know.”

“A coward who is also a—a liar,” she said bitterly.

“A coward is usually a liar, but a liar isn’t always a coward. I am a liar, Doris, if you will, but a courageous one.”

​“My name is Mather,” she said distinctly.

He shrugged and turned his gaze on the sea.

“You hate me, of course. We are enemies. I am sorry. I warned you that you were entangled in an affair that was leading you into dangerous paths. I would have saved you, if I could, but you had learned too much.”

“And so you had me chloroformed. It was a pity that you didn’t complete your work.”

“I merely did what was required of me. Through a most unfortunate combination of circumstances you came into possession of a secret known to but one person in England; and you are the only person with English sympathies who knows my exact political status——”

“A spy!” contemptuously.

“What you will—a spy if you like—but a strong friend of Germany who resents an attempt by a nation jealous of her growing commercial supremacy to wipe her out of existence. I have lived in England long, and I have known many of the men who have made her what she is, but never in all those years has England ever given me one token of the high nobility she preaches. I have passed for many years as an Englishman. I am not English. I am cosmopolitan and to a cosmopolitan, residence is but an accident.”

“Pray spare me the details of your treachery.”

He laughed easily.

“I’m afraid you’re at my mercy. I shall try to be lenient. You are an American, I am an Italian. To call me a traitor to England because I happen to have a liking for Germany would be much like my calling you a traitor to Germany because you happen to have a liking for England.”

​“I have never eaten the bread and salt of Germany, or wormed my way into the hearts of its people.”

“I’m sure you flatter me. The people of my set in London are agreeable, but——”

Doris had straightened in the act of rising.

“I did not come on deck to discuss your ideals or Germany’s. I hope that you will excuse——”

“You will not listen?”

“No. I care nothing for your political views. I am your prisoner. I want to know without further words the worst that I am to expect from you.”

“You have been upon the Sylph before. What was proper for you then is proper for you now. You are quite safe in my hands. I shall try to make you comfortable. Does that answer your question?”

“And after——”

“You are to be delivered to the head of the Secret Service Department of the German Empire.”

The girl paled and sank back into her chair.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because you are in possession of information that he wants.”

“What information? It isn’t true. I know nothing.”

“I am sorry,” he apologized again. “The cigarette papers. You read them.”

“No—no.”

“You forget that you have already admitted that. You have also read the second message which was to take the place of the first.”

“You are dreaming. A second message? I know nothing of a second message.”

“Pardon me, if I remind you of it. You would have burned it in the drawing-room at Kilmorack ​House if Mr. Hammersley hadn’t taken it from your hand.”

She stared at him bewildered at his astounding omniscience, his devilish ingenuity. It frightened her, his cleverness and his pursuit of her. It seemed that she had never had a chance to get away from him. And yet his manner was so carefully studied, his attitude toward her so coldly impersonal that as a man once a lover she no longer feared him. If love of her had ever been in his heart, a greater passion had burned it out. She was grateful for this and prepared to measure her woman’s wit to his, thinking of Cyril. What would Cyril have her do?

“You mean that you will let them—the Germans—question me?”

“If they wish to do so.”

“But how will it benefit them, if the papers are already in their possession?”

“You will forgive me if I find it possible to doubt.”

She turned away from him and studied the lines of foam that streamed across the green troughs of the sea.

“I suppose that conversation between us two is superfluous. You distrust me and I——”

“I think perhaps,” he said gravely, “that it would be pleasanter for both of us not to hear your sentiments toward me. Since the night of Lady Heathcote’s dinner in London you ceased to be Miss Doris Mather and became merely an official document. It is my duty to preserve it and deliver it safely.”

“I hope you may succeed. Otherwise the American Ambassador in Berlin may——”

“Unfortunately,” he went on quietly, “the American Ambassador cannot be informed.”

​She laughed with a greater confidence than she felt.

“You surely can’t believe that my absence from England will pass unnoticed. Do you think that my father—that Lady Heathcote——”

She paused bewildered.

“They will merely know that you rode late at night to Ben-a-Chielt and that your horse was found riderless on the moor.”

She buried her face in her hands and a sob broke from her throat. It was true. They would think her dead. For the first time she really was able to think of things in their true aspect.

“It’s cruel,” she gasped. “How could you!”

He was too wise to touch her or even by his manner to show too deep a sympathy.

“I am sorry,” he said coolly, “awfully sorry. As you know, I would have had things different. You may still doubt me when I say that what I have done is the hardest task that I ever undertook in my life. But that is true. You were the only person in England who jeopardized my existence there. I had to take you away. I regret the necessity of having to use force. I shall do what I can here upon the Sylph to counteract the unpleasant impression of my brutality. I am not a bully and a woman-baiter. I am a spoke in the wheel of destiny which you had clogged. By all the rules of the game you should have died. Reasons which I need not mention made your death at my hands an impossibility. So I merely removed you to a place of safety. No harm shall come to you, I pledge my honor.”

“Thanks,” she said dully, struggling up, her face away from him. And then dauntlessly, “Small a thing as it is, I must be content with that.” She had risen ​and turned, “And now, if you don’t mind, I will go below. I would prefer to be alone. If, as you protest, you would do me kindness, you will not ask to see me.”

He bowed.

“I have given instructions that you shall be allowed to do as you please. Mrs. Madden will furnish you with all that you require both I think of linen and toilet articles. I shall not try to see you again until we land.”

She bowed her head and went down. Rizzio watched her until she disappeared and then walked over to the rail and peered out over the sea. It had taken some self-command to go through this interview as he had planned it, and in conquering himself he had succeeded in establishing a relation between them which made his presence at least bearable to her. The impersonal tone which he had used through the interview was the one most calculated to put her at her ease with him and the perfect frankness of his confession had made her understand at once that sentimentally at least she had nothing to fear from him. John Rizzio was wise in the ways of women and the particular woman now thrown upon his mercy, even though she was the one woman in the world he had thought the most desirable, was to be treated with the delicate consideration due to her unfortunate dependence upon him. A flash of sentiment, a breath of revelation of his ultimate purposes toward her, and the woman would be lost to him. Her misfortunes if anything had made her more desirable than ever, especially since he had been the cause of them. For one mad moment, he had thought this morning of turning the Sylph toward the waters of the South Atlantic, forgetting the quarrels of the nations in which he had become involved, and of seek​ing a new world where he could begin again, trusting to time and opportunity and his own patience and tact to bring a sentimental victory out of what had already been defeat. A mad moment but a tempting one. But the time was not yet. He must be patient. With Hammersley gone——

He straightened and slowly strolled forward to the wireless room. Toward evening he was given confirmation of the wisdom of his course, for as he was pacing the deck aft she came up from below and joined him. She was looking rather white, but she smiled at him brightly and matched her steps to his.

“I was lonely below,” she said. “You don’t mind?”

He had never thought her lovelier. Her face, if anything, had always needed just those shadows of pain to make it perfect.

“I hadn’t hoped for such a kindness. You are feeling better?”

“Yes, thanks. And since we must meet I am willing to try to be friendly.”

“I’m sure you’ll find that I’ll meet you more than halfway,” he said politely.

They talked far into the evening and at her request they dined together in the saloon. He was reserved but not cautious, and when the evening was over remembered hazily that she had succeeded in learning something from him of General von Stromberg, the head of the German Secret Service Department, of the aviation field at Windenberg and of the frequent flights of the Yellow Dove since the beginning of the winter.

The next morning passed quietly. Doris did not appear until noon. But just before luncheon a smudge of smoke appeared upon the horizon, which rapidly grew larger, and in a little while she made out the lines ​of a war vessel steaming in a direction which would intercept the yacht. The Sylph did not slow down until a solid shot from a gun in the forecastle of the destroyer went ricochetting across her bows, when the engine was stopped and John Rizzio made slowly aft to where she stood . “Miss Mather,” he said briefly, “I must ask you to go below to your cabin at once.”

A glance at his face showed that her protests would have been useless and she went below to her own stateroom, the door of which was locked upon her. Through the heavy glass of her port-hole she saw the vessel approach until within hailing distance when a boat dropped from her side into which a boat’s crew and an officer clambered and rowed alongside. The vessel bore no flag, but the girl clearly heard the hail of the boarding officer and realized that the destroyer was an English vessel. Her hopes rose. Perhaps even now the Englishman would find something irregular in the yacht’s papers and would take charge, conveying her back to England. She waited for a long time and then heard the clatter of oars and saw the boat push off from the side of the yacht, while the officer, young, slender and windburned, stood up in the stern sheets of his boat.

“All right,” she heard him say, “sorry to have troubled you. Pleasant voyage. Good-by.”

Never had English sounded so good to her. But it was with a sigh of despair that she saw the boat reach the side of the war vessel and felt the steadily increasing rhythm of the engines of the yacht as she drove once more upon her way.

When the two vessels were at a distance from each other the key turned in the lock of the door and in ​reply to a knock, she found John Rizzio himself, standing hat in hand in the gangway.

“I seem to be in a continual state of apology. But of course you realize the necessity for my action.”

“I am in your power,” she said helplessly.

“I hope you will believe that I shall not abuse it.”

She shrugged her shoulders and followed him to luncheon, managing to preserve at table a cheerfulness which she was far from feeling. Throughout the morning she had been thinking hard. And the only course that was open to her if her courage did not fail was the one that she was following. If she was to be able in any way to help Cyril, she must try to learn what she could, accept the situation with good grace and perhaps by some turn of good fortune find a way to disarm John Rizzio and profit by an inadvertence or mistake. But as the second day wore on she found her task increasingly difficult. At luncheon Mr. Rizzio was more reserved and during the afternoon as they approached waters in which German warships were more likely to be found he spent much time in the wireless room, where a repetition of the crackling noises advised her that he was again in communication with the land of her enemies.

After dinner, at which Rizzio had been very quiet, he requested politely that she go at once to her cabin, which she did to hear the sound of the key again turned in the lock of her door. Despair came over her and at last she cried herself to sleep, awakening during the night at the glare of a searchlight which pierced her window port. She got up and looked out to see a dark bulk looming alongside, the flashing of lanterns, and heard the sound of voices speaking German. At last all was quiet again, and the steady ​hammer of the vessel’s propeller told her that the Sylph was again on her way.

She must have slept again, for the silver of dawn was already modifying the gloom of her cabin when there was a knock upon her door and she rose. The stewardess fully dressed was outside.

“Mr. Rizzio asks me to request you to please dress at once, as breakfast will be served in half an hour.”

She obeyed blindly aware that there was no motion to the deck of her cabin and that the Sylph was now riding on an even keel. She verified her guess at the nearness of their destination by a glance through the port-hole, which showed her that the vessel had reached the quieter waters of a bay or river in which she slipped smoothly onward. There were vessels at anchor, large and small, and beyond them she made out the lines of a shore, upon which at intervals buildings loomed.

Mrs. Madden, the stewardess, would not talk and it was not until she reached the breakfast table that Doris learned where they were.

“We shall reach Bremen shortly,” said Rizzio. “I do not know how you feel about the matter, but I would suggest that it would save you much trouble and anxiety to trust yourself entirely into my hands.”

“I know of nothing else,” she said quietly. “What are you going to do?”

“I shall confer with certain officials when we reach the city, which will be in a few moments. After that we will take the seven o’clock train for Windenberg.”

 

CHAPTER XIV
VON STROMBERG CATECHISES

TO the girl the way from Bremen to Windenberg seemed interminable. She shared with John Rizzio a private compartment in the train. He was still ceremoniously polite and inclined to conversation, but now, thoroughly realizing the danger which faced her as well as Cyril, Doris had decided upon a policy of silence. She would wait until she learned what they required of her and then perhaps some instinct or inspiration would direct her. Of one thing she was certain, that nothing could make her speak if she did not think it wise to do so.

When Rizzio commented upon the beauty of the passing landscape she assented with a smile and then returned to her own thoughts. Cyril, she knew, would be at Windenberg, for it was to Windenberg that the Yellow Dove had made its flights. She had succeeded in eliciting that much information from her captor the other night at dinner when he was attempting by frankness and hospitality to minimize the brutality of his actions. She had many reasons to believe that he had already regretted that frankness for at every subsequent attempt of hers to get more information about von Stromberg, John Rizzio had turned the subject adroitly or had remained obstinately silent.

She tried to put together the scraps of information she possessed in order to understand just what Cyril’s ​position at Windenberg might be. He had answered the summons of the secret messenger willingly and at once. That much was in his favor. If they had suspected him before, this immediate obedience must have disarmed them. In the mind of General von Stromberg there could be no possible reason why Cyril should put himself at his mercy. General von Stromberg could not know as she knew that Cyril had another mission to perform. She looked up quickly to find John Rizzio’s dark eyes gazing at her. He frightened her at that moment, for it almost seemed from the expression of his face that he had succeeded in reading her thoughts—and in the light of his previous omniscience even that psychic feat seemed within the realm of possibility. But he merely smiled at her and looked out of the window.

That mission of Cyril’s! What was it? The obtaining of some information necessary to England? Some military secret such as the machinery of ordnance or the chemical mixture of explosive shells? Or was it something more personal, more sinister and dreadful—the death of some high official—perhaps the Emperor himself? She shuddered and shut her eyes, her mind painting unimaginable horrors. Not murder—even for Cyril she could not connive at that. But she must be prepared to do something for him, to help him, if she could by false testimony or if necessary, no matter what they did to her, by silence. If they suspected Cyril, of course he would be kept in ignorance of her arrival. Of all these things and others she thought with ever-growing doubt and timidity. And all the while in the back of her head was the idea of her possible appeal to the American Ambassador at Berlin.

​But if she had any hopes that an opportunity would be given her to use the post, or even to be free from surveillance, their arrival at Windenberg speedily diminished them. For upon the platform of the small station a German officer met them and conducted them at once to a closed carriage which started off through the village immediately. The officer and Mr. Rizzio exchanged a few commonplaces which politely included her, but as to the real meaning of her visit and their possible intentions—nothing. So she sank back in her seat and looked out through a small window at the forest into which the road almost immediately passed, reaching their destination in apparent calmness, the high tension of her nerves resolutely schooled to obedience.

A farmhouse in the midst of meadows surrounded by forests, with a broad hospitable door in which they entered, seeing no one. The German officer who directed them showed her the way to a room upstairs and when she was in the room locked the door. She was in the dark, for the shutters of the windows were closed. Her first impulse at reaching a haven of privacy even though a prison was to seek the line of least resistance and give her nerves the relaxation they needed in tears. But she fought the weakness down, going to the windows and peering out through a crack in the shutters. When she tried to open them, she discovered that they were locked or nailed from the outside. She had been a prisoner she knew, upon the yacht, but the firmness with which the hard wood and iron resisted her efforts gave her for the first time the grim reality of her predicament. A prisoner in the heart of a German forest with no way to turn for help! Where was Cyril? Perhaps after all, her sur​mises had been incorrect. They had sent him away to Berlin. Or perhaps he had gone back in freedom to England. Grave fears assailed her as to Rizzio and his intentions. Once a friend, but after that an unsuccessful lover! What did she know of him or of these people into whose hands he was committing her? Germans! She was ready to believe anything of them after Belgium—the worst! Had Rizzio’s story about bringing her to the head of the Secret Service of Germany been a mere invention to serve other ends? He had told her at Kilmorack House that he would never give her up. Was this what he had meant? A blind terror seized her which seemed for the moment to deaden all her faculties for analysis. The room, though chill, seemed to stifle her, its walls and ceiling to be closing in to crush her. She stumbled to the bed upon which she fell and lay for a long while exhausted and at last the blessing of tears came to her and then, sleep.

How long Doris slept she did not know, but she realized that it could not have been long, for strange ugly figures came into her dreams and strange ugly events followed each other with lightning swiftness. But a knock upon the door brought her back to the terrors of her predicament and she answered it, wondering what was to happen. It was a tall man in the Jäger uniform bearing a tray of food—some toast, eggs and a cup of chocolate. He entered with a smile and a polite greeting in German, putting the tray upon the table and then forcing open the shutters a little so that a narrow bar of sunlight came into the room and lay upon the bright drugget upon the floor. By its light she examined the man. He was tall, grizzled at the temples and walked with a slight limp. He smiled ​at her again and she could not refrain from answering the smile in kind.

“I hope the Fräulein will enjoy her lunch,” he said. “The toast especially, for I have made it myself. I trust that the Fräulein prefers dry toast.”

“Thanks, anything will do. I am not hungry.”

“I am sorry,” said the Forester, bowing and then continuing in a lower tone: “The Fräulein will not forget that the toast is excellent and that I made it myself.”

She examined him curiously, wondering whether he were not perhaps a little demented. But at the door he bowed and disappeared and she heard the key turn in the lock. He was apparently not too demented to forget that she was a prisoner.

She was not hungry but she knew that she must eat something to keep up her strength for any ordeal that was in store for her, so she drew a chair to the table and sat, pouring out the chocolate in the cup and helping herself to the eggs.

All the while she thought of the strange behavior of her servitor. Why did he lay such stress upon the excellence of the dry toast? And why because it was dry? She raised a piece of it with her fingers and examined it, lifted the second piece, when a gasp of surprise escaped her. Above the third piece of toast, folded neatly, was a thin strip of paper. She glanced toward the door and window and then getting up from the table and going to a spot where observation of her actions was impossible, opened the slip of paper. It was in Cyril’s hand.

Don’t be frightened [she read]. You are to be questioned. Follow these instructions. I made copy of message in Heathcote library night of dinner ​while waiting for you to get wraps. I hid it in right sash of motor. Copy and original of message the same. You and I are enemies. Therefore ignore me. Rizzio acted for Scotland Yard. As to the rest tell truth exactly and no harm can come to me. I will find means later to communicate. Burn this immediately.

Her heart beating high, she read the paper through twice to familiarize herself with the instructions which she perfectly understood. Then she found a matchbox on the candlestick, put the paper in the hearth and burned it. After that she sat at the table and ate. It was there that Captain von Winden found her some moments later when he came to request her presence in the room on the ground floor.

•⁠•⁠•⁠•⁠•

During the time that Doris slept, in the living-room downstairs General von Stromberg sat with John Rizzio. A peaceful winter landscape looked in at the windows, the sun slanted in a yellow rhomboid upon the floor, a cheerful fire was burning upon the hearth and General von Stromberg, his left hand tapping gently upon the back of his right, was gravely listening to John Rizzio’s story. All of the pieces of the little game were upon the board. He was now about to move them skillfully from one square to another until only one piece remained, and that one piece, the victor in all such games, was—himself.

“And what was his manner,” went on von Stromberg, “when you showed your credentials?”

“He was surprised—very much surprised—and I think alarmed.”

“And what arguments did you use to make him give the packet up?”

​“I threatened him with serious consequences.”

“Which meant me,” said von Stromberg grimly.

“Yes, Excellenz. But he refused without other grounds than his own judgment.”

“And then——”

“Excellenz, Fräulein Mather came in. She heard something from behind the curtain—but she gave no sign.”

“Oh! She is clever?”

“Exceptionally so. I have brought her here of my own volition and she will speak if properly approached, but I hope Excellenz will be pleased to make the interview as easy for her as possible. If any harm should come to her——”

“It is not the practice of my department to do hurt to women,” said the General quickly. Then he laughed. “I suspect, Herr Rizzio, that you have a tenderness in that quarter.”

“It is true. I hope, therefore, that you will be patient with her.”

Von Stromberg waved his hand impatiently.

“And what happened then?”

“Hammersley and Miss Mather went out. I remained in the smoking-room and then telephoned to Maxwell to send his men at once. They came. I met them outside the house before Hammersley emerged and gave them my instructions to follow Hammersley’s machine and get the papers.”

The older man started forward, his long acquisitive nose eagerly scenting a clue.

“And how long was it after they left the smoking-room for the machine?”

Rizzio pulled at his mustache a moment thoughtfully.

​“I could not say exactly,” he said after a time. “A matter of half an hour perhaps.”

“Did you know what Herr Hammersley was doing in the meanwhile?”

“No. I could not say. I telephoned first and then went out. The guests were all in the drawing-room.”

“Did you go up to the library?”

Rizzio showed surprise. “No, Excellenz.”

“Are you sure that Herr Hammersley was in the drawing-room with the others when you went out?”

“Yes, Excellenz. I am sure of it. There was no reason for him to be anywhere else.”

“There was no chance of his going upstairs to the library for ten—fifteen minutes—without your seeing him?”

Rizzio straightened and pulled at his mustache. “Excellenz, I think I understand the object of your questions. It is not possible that Herr Hammersley could have made a copy of the papers at Lady Heathcote’s house.”

Von Stromberg paused a moment, then he asked:

“How long after you left the door of the house before he came out with the lady?”

“Scarcely more than ten minutes.”

The General’s fingers tapped more rapidly.

“Oh,” he growled, “I see.” And then, “Tell me how the matter was arranged that Captain Byfield should deliver those papers.”

“Maxwell managed it through a cipher. The War Office had grown suspicious and all the usual channels were closed. Byfield was frightened and refused to deliver further messages. So Maxwell hit upon the scheme of the cigarette papers to be delivered to Hammersley. I could not receive them from Byfield be​cause of your instructions not to let my interests be known to anyone in England but Maxwell—you thought the time was not ripe for me to play my coup.”

“Yes,” said von Stromberg dryly, “but the time is ripe now and you are not there to play it.”

“But this affair was of such importance——”

“Yes, yes,” the general broke in quickly, “go on.”

“It was the day of an anniversary always celebrated for me by Lady Heathcote, whose house, as you know, is one of the most exclusive in England and above suspicion. I invited the guests and Maxwell communicated with Hammersley, arranging the manner of the exchange which was accomplished. My demand upon Hammersley was made in accordance with your orders. It was a test of his loyalty. He failed.”

“Do you think he had an opportunity to glance at the papers, I mean between the time he received them and the time of your demand of him?”

“Yes. He studied them for a moment behind the curtains of an alcove in the drawing-room. I was watching. I saw his shadow as he bent over to the light of the lamp.”

“By that you mean he had a hope that they might be spurious?”

“Yes, Excellenz. When it was discovered that there was a leak, false orders were issued to test the different departments of the War Office.”

“H—m. And then, Maxwell’s men followed him, and when he was on the point of capture he turned the papers over to the lady, who escaped through the hedge?”

“As I have said before, Excellenz, the lady is clever. She read the papers, but her loyalty to Hammersley ​kept her silent, though at that time she suspected that he was a German agent.”

“I see,” said von Stromberg, manifesting a sudden activity with his fingers. “The lady is interested in Herr Hammersley?”

“Yes, Excellenz.”

“More interested in him, perhaps, than she is in you?”

Rizzio bowed in silence.

“Gut,” said von Stromberg rising. “That perhaps makes matters more amusing for us—perhaps a little more amusing for Herr Hammersley.”

He paced the floor with long strides while Rizzio watched him until he stopped before the fire and spoke again.

“Herr Rizzio, you have told me about the events in Scotland when, as you say, Hammersley, acting as an Englishman, warned the lady against you as an agent of Germany. What I would like very much to know is why, when you were sure he was acting for England, you did not have him killed at once.”

“I tried, Excellenz, but he was too well prepared for me. My men shot at him on the road and wounded him slightly—but on the cliffs at Ben-a-Chielt he had a confederate who killed one of my men. The other, as I have related, fell over the cliffs.”

“But you”—put in the officer harshly—“what were you doing all the while?”

“I shot at him and missed.”

“That was unfortunate—from our point of view. It is not the custom of agents of my department to miss—at anything, Herr Rizzio. But since Hammersley is here, the damage, if damage there is, can be repaired. What did you do after that?”

​“I had reason to suspect that Hammersley was the cause of the arrest of Captain Byfield. I had also reason to suspect that he had informed, or would inform, the War Office as to my connection with Germany. Accordingly I had made arrangements to have my boat within easy reaching distance of Ben-a-Chielt. With the help of two other men who had been set to watch the roads in case of surprises I kept watch on Hammersley. Miss Mather we lost in the darkness of the moor. This was unfortunate, as I had planned to take her, too. But we followed Hammersley on horses to Rudha Mor to be sure that he would obey your summons and fortune aided us, for Doris Mather had followed him, too, and we managed to take her without difficulty—and brought her aboard the yacht. Hammersley’s departure for Germany, of course, relieved me of all responsibility on his behalf.”

Von Stromberg paused before the fireplace, his brows puckering.

“On the whole, Herr Rizzio, you have done well. I shall not complain. But if your story is true, I should like you to tell me two things. The first is, why should Herr Hammersley return to Germany to face certain death at my hands?”

Rizzio shrugged his fine shoulders.

“Excellenz, I do not know. I did not think he would come when I sent you my request to summon him. The knowledge he possessed was dangerous to me and I had made every possible plan to kill him at Rudha Mor. Nothing that could have happened surprised me more than when I saw him fly out in obedience to your message. It has puzzled me. I do not know why he came unless it was to learn something in Germany and return to England.”

​Von Stromberg gave a dry chuckle.

“The supposition does not flatter his intelligence or mine. Aside from the difficulties of his position at present, if he were seeking information as to the plans of the Empire, he would have about as much chance of getting away from here alive as you would have, Herr Rizzio, in the same circumstances.”

The old man towered to his full height and brought his huge fist down with a crash upon the table which startled Rizzio, who fingered his mustache, his face a shade paler.

“I am glad, Excellenz,” he said with a laugh, “that I am not in Hammersley’s shoes.”

Disregarding Rizzio’s comment, the old man paced the floor again, storming.

“The other question that I would like to ask you is, what has become of Herr Maxwell?”

Rizzio started up, now in genuine concern.

“Have you not heard from him, Excellenz?”

“No,” roared the other. “Why haven’t I? You should know.”

“I do not know. I saw him the day I left London for Scotland. He was fully informed of all that had happened. Could it be that——”

Rizzio paused with a deep frown.

“Where is he? Why has he not reported? Could anything have happened to him? What were you thinking?”

“That Hammersley perhaps—but that could hardly be—since he always moved under cover——”

“Du lieber Jesu! Speak out! Will you?”

“I thought that Hammersley might have been the cause of his arrest.”

“Oh, you think that? Why?”

​“Because it was Hammersley who told the War Office of Byfield——”

“What proof have you of that?”

“No one knew of Byfield’s connection with us but Hammersley, Maxwell and myself.”

“Those were my orders. How do I know that they were obeyed?”

“One doesn’t disobey orders, Excellenz, with one’s head in a noose.”

“H—m. There are many necks in nooses at Windenberg. And one of the nooses will be tightened.”

He had stopped before Rizzio and was scowling at him with eyes that shot malevolence. Rizzio knew something of von Stromberg’s methods and was sure that he was merely trying to intimidate him, to reduce him to a consistency which would reveal hidden weaknesses in texture; yet, knowing this, Rizzio felt most uncomfortable. He twirled his mustache and looked out of the window, but his glance came back to von Stromberg’s eyes, which never wavered or changed in intensity, as though under the influence of some strange hypnotic attraction.

“You know, of course,” the old man’s harsh voice snapped at him, “what Herr Hammersley accuses you of?”

“I can imagine, Excellenz.”

“He says that you have been acting for the English Government.”

Rizzio started up in alarm.

“You do not for a moment believe——”

“Don’t get excited. I believe nothing—which I do not wish to believe. But he tells a very pretty story, Herr Rizzio.”

“He would,” said Rizzio easily. “I will do him the ​credit of saying that he is skillful. But a lie will discover itself in the end.”

“Exactly. I am glad you agree with me. What I now propose to do is to set the lie in motion. The easiest way to provoke a liar is to put him upon the defensive. You and Hammersley shall debate the matter. I shall be the judge of the debate. We shall see what we shall see.”

He strode to the table and was about to touch the bell when Rizzio broke in.

“One moment, Excellenz. I should like to know on what he bases his accusation.”

“Humph! Not weakening, Rizzio?”

“Hardly, Excellenz,” the other smiled. “It will not be difficult for me to verify my statements if Hammersley will only talk.”

“You need not fear. He will talk.”

“What I wanted to know, Excellenz, was the nature of the information received in the yellow packet. Would you permit——?”

“Not yet, Herr Rizzio, not yet. The contents of the message will come in time. For the present there is quite enough to occupy Herr Hammersley’s mind—and yours.”

Rizzio shrugged. “As you please. I would like to know, however, before you summon him, whether his accusation is based on my attempt upon his life.”

Von Stromberg chuckled. “Is not that enough to prejudice a man—if he were honest?”

“Yes, if he were honest,” said Rizzio. “Did he have any authority for his belief?”

“Yes, Herr Rizzio,” said the General, fixing Rizzio with his stare. “He told me that Maxwell had learned it from Byfield.”

​“Byfield!” Rizzio started forward quickly. “Hammersley is a fool. Have I not told Excellenz that Byfield knew nothing whatever of my connection with the affair?”

Von Stromberg stretched his long arms impatiently.

“Herr Maxwell, unfortunately, is silent. Captain Byfield is in a position where the only questions that can be put to him will be those at the Gates of Heaven by his Maker.”

He gave the bell on the table a resounding blow and grinned mischievously at Rizzio.

“You say that Herr Hammersley is a fool. He asserts that you are one. I shall now smoke a cigar and decide for myself which of you is correct.”

And, as the soldier entered, “Tell Herr Hammersley that I wish to see him here at once.”

“I can only say, Excellenz,” said Rizzio, when the man went out, “that I am willing to abide by your verdict.”

“Even though it should be unfavorable to yourself?” growled von Stromberg.

“That, Excellenz, is quite impossible.”

“I have known stranger things to happen. The worst aspect of your case is that Herr Hammersley is here. There was no need for him to come. You yourself admit that. He had only to stay in England to devote his talents to a more congenial occupation.” Von Stromberg puffed on his cigar and leaned across the table. “Can you tell me why Herr Hammersley came to Germany? Answer me correctly, Rizzio, and I will give you every masterpiece in Belgium.”

Rizzio frowned into the fire.

“I cannot say,” he replied. “I have admitted that he has puzzled me. I can only think of one thing. ​Hammersley is a type of man who under the guise of inefficiency does all things well. He is a sportsman. He would do such a thing for the love of adventure, because the danger, the excitement, appealed to him—because it was the ‘sporting thing.’”

“A reason, Rizzio,” muttered von Stromberg, “but not the real reason.”

Rizzio started and a smile broke at the corners of his lips.

“Oh! You realize, then, that there is something else—something——?” He paused.

“I realize nothing,” growled the General. “Realization, Rizzio, is the one banality of existence! Uncertainty is the only thing worth while. When one is certain of anything it ceases to be interesting. That is why Herr Hammersley, whom you call a fool in one breath and a genius in the next, excites my profound attention. Come, I think you will agree with me that he is worth it.”

“I do not like Hammersley, Excellenz.”

“Natürlich! But that need not prevent your interest in him, even though your interest is largely in his death.”

The phrase was significant, delivered significantly, and in spite of himself Rizzio felt the gaze of the General piercing his veneer.

“I could feel no happiness in such a misfortune,” he said gravely, “notwithstanding my dislike of him.”

A knock at the door interrupted further conversation and, at a command from the General, Hammersley entered.

CHAPTER XV
THE INQUISITION

IF General von Stromberg had counted upon playing a trump card in producing Rizzio at this interview, Herr Hammersley’s demeanor must have disappointed him. For he entered the room with cheerful composure, noted Rizzio, stared at him in sudden seriousness, and then turned to von Stromberg with the air of a man briskly intent.

“You wanted to see me, Excellenz?” he asked quietly.

He had evinced a mild surprise at Rizzio’s presence, but no discomposure. If anything, his manner now had a kind of sober eagerness as at the imminence of an issue in which a necessary if painful duty must be performed.

General von Stromberg from his armchair regarded him through a cloud of tobacco smoke.

“Yes, Herr Hammersley,” said von Stromberg. “As you will observe, Herr Rizzio has just arrived from England. He followed you almost immediately upon his yacht. It is most fortunate that he is here, for there are several matters which we can discuss in privacy together.”

“I am at your service, Excellenz,” said Hammersley. “If there are any facts which I can add to my report I shall be glad.”

His idiom was Hanoverian. Rizzio, quite cool, faced him, upright, with folded arms.

“To begin with, meine Herren, we will sit. To stand ​is the attitude of discomposure. One thinks more calmly sitting down. You have my permission. So—Now we will proceed. I will outline in the briefest words the situation. Herr Hammersley, an agent of the Secret Service Department of the Imperial Government, is intrusted with the receipt and delivery of certain secret messages. He receives them, but is requested by Herr Rizzio, also an agent of the Secret Service Department of the Imperial Government, on authority of indubitable credentials, to relinquish the message to Herr Rizzio. It is not necessary to state the reasons of the Imperial Secret Service Department in desiring the transfer of this message. It is sufficient that Herr Hammersley refused to obey the orders. He has given explanations which, on their face, seem adequate. Upon the side of Herr Rizzio it may be said that, failing in his object, he came to a certain conclusion most unflattering to the loyalty of Herr Hammersley. We will now proceed in orderly fashion to hear the cause of Herr Hammersley’s refusal and the subsequent acts of Herr Rizzio which have created so great a misunderstanding. Herr Hammersley, bitte, you will tell us the facts as you have related them.”

“I learned from Herr Maxwell that Herr Rizzio was playing a double game. Captain Byfield had furnished him with full proofs of it, one of which was a letter he had seen from Herr Rizzio to a military officer high in the councils of the War Office. This was an additional reason, Excellenz, why Herr Maxwell arranged with Captain Byfield that the cigarette papers should be delivered to me.”

Rizzio leaned quickly forward, his face dark with passion. “Excellenz,” he began, “that could not possi​bly be true. The real reason for the delivery of the message to Herr Hammersley Excellenz well knows. And Herr Maxwell would hardly send men to follow Herr Hammersley at my request if he disbelieved in my loyalty.”

“Quite so. He would not and did not,” said Hammersley. “The men were not Herr Maxwell’s. They were men of Scotland Yard. It is quite obvious by the way they bungled matters.”

The General smiled delightedly. It was the sort of joke he liked. “That is one point in your favor, Hammersley.”

Rizzio shrugged.

“Excellenz well knows,” he said, “why those men were sent. They had instructions to get the papers for Maxwell.”

“That is strange,” said Hammersley. “If Maxwell had asked me personally for the papers, I should have given them to him. Maxwell would have known better than to intrust those papers to a third person. It is not likely that I should have given them up to any man, even if Maxwell had sent him.”

“It is unfortunate that Herr Maxwell is not here to——”

“One moment, Herr Rizzio,” broke in the General. Then to Hammersley, “What was the nature of the letter which you say was sent by Herr Rizzio to a high official of the War Office?”

“It was a statement in regard to the case of Carl Hüber, who, as you know, was shot last week in the Tower of London.”

“Ach!” Von Stromberg frowned. “We are killing our evidence too fast, mein herr, a little too fast for convenience. Bitte, we will kill no more German agents ​in the Tower until they have had an opportunity to testify.”

Hammersley smiled.

“Unfortunately, Excellenz, I have no means of restoring him to life,” he said. “He was an excellent man, and leaves, I believe, a wife and six children.”

Von Stromberg tapped his fingers slowly.

“We will go on, if you please, with the discussion of the general facts. You claim that Herr Maxwell, distrusting Rizzio, arranged that the papers should be handed from Captain Byfield to you. I have told you that Maxwell had orders from me to put you to this test?”

“Pardon, Excellenz. I did not know that at the time. I only know that Herr Maxwell chose to disregard your orders to him and Rizzio, instructing me not to deliver the papers to Rizzio under any circumstances.”

“When did Herr Maxwell make the discovery of Herr Rizzio’s—er—treachery?”

“It was the evening of Lady Heathcote’s dinner. Captain Byfield had learned the truth that afternoon.”

“One moment!” Rizzio rose, his face pale with anger. “It is easy to manufacture evidence of this kind, where both of the witnesses mentioned are beyond reach. I will not even deny the truth of their charges. They are too absurd. If I was acting for England, will Herr Hammersley tell me why the agents of Scotland Yard, whom he says I sent for, did not surround the house at Ashwater Park and boldly demand the papers from Miss Mather, in the name of the Government and the law?”

“The reasons are obvious,” replied Hammersley. “I will give Herr Rizzio the credit for that much delicacy. ​If his men had found the papers at Ashwater Park, Fräulein Mather, whom Herr Rizzio esteems most highly and who was quite innocent, would have eventually been imprisoned by the Government as a spy. At his orders the house was therefore secretly searched by night, I am happy to say, unsuccessfully. Herr Rizzio will surely not deny the kindness of his motives upon that occasion?”

“Excellenz will take that reply for what it is worth. Scotland Yard has never permitted sentimental considerations to interfere with the performance of its duties.”

Hammersley went on stolidly: “I cannot conceive of any agents of Germany attempting to kill me. This my pursuers did at Saltham Rocks and again in the person of Rizzio himself on the cliffs at Beaufort Head—even, Excellenz”—Hammersley leaned forward, smiling blandly—“even after he knew that I had met Captain Stammer and conveyed my acceptance of Excellenz’s invitation to return to Germany.”

“I was not sure that he would go.”

“If not for any other reasons, Excellenz, the pursuit of the agents of Scotland Yard would have been sufficient. Fortunately, however, I had intended going as the bearer of the Byfield message. And I carried it. You can’t deny that.”

“He brought a message, Excellenz,” put in Rizzio quickly. “But what message? There were two messages. One prepared by Captain Byfield—the other prepared by Hammersley.”

“I do not deny that. When I discovered that I was likely to have an interesting evening I made a copy of the papers in a package of Riz-la-Croix which I had in my——”

​Rizzio broke in quickly. “That copy was made not at Lady Heathcote’s that night, but at the War Office or elsewhere the following day. It was prepared for the emergency of capture and, escaping that, for delivery to General von Stromberg.”

“General von Stromberg has been told about those papers. I have told him where and when I made the copy.”

“And where was that?” asked Rizzio keenly.

“In the library at Lady Heathcote’s while you were telephoning to Scotland Yard.”

Rizzio struggled for control, and then with dignity to von Stromberg, “I was telephoning to Herr Maxwell, Excellenz.” He turned to Hammersley with a confident smile. “Assuming for the moment that what you say about copying the papers is true, what did you do with the copy?”

“I took it out to the motor, where I slipped it down the window sash,” Hammersley laughed. “Surely, Rizzio, the tall man from Scotland Yard must have told you that when I escaped I shouted to him that he had not searched the motor.”

General von Stromberg broke in suddenly.

“Why did you say that?”

Hammersley shrugged. “I had injured their motor, and I knew that I should escape. The bravado of triumph, Excellenz. I was rather happy, for, as a fact, they had given me an uncomfortable evening.”

Rizzio leaned across the table.

“Excellenz, it was to draw attention from the girl, who had the original message and who had concealed herself in a tree.”

General von Stromberg took a small object from his pocket and weighed it lightly in the fingers of one ​hand. It was the package of Riz-la-Croix. As Hammersley was about to speak, he held up the other hand in demand for silence.

“We are not getting very far, meine Herren,” he said. “Both of you tell excellent stories of your adventures worthy of the best traditions of the Secret Service Department. If, as Herr Rizzio alleges, Herr Hammersley has substituted other papers for the original ones burned by Miss Doris Mather, Herr Hammersley will be shot. If, as Herr Hammersley alleges, Herr Rizzio was in communication with Scotland Yard, the officers of which attempted the life of Herr Hammersley while he bore dispatches for me, Herr Rizzio will be shot. It is a very delicate matter, meine Herren, one which will require much thought, since the one man who could settle the question is in an English prison.”

Hammersley started a pace forward. “Oh, then he is taken!”

Rizzio glanced quickly at Hammersley.

“Excellenz, the same person who caused the arrest of Captain Byfield gave Maxwell to the police.”

Von Stromberg’s gaze followed Rizzio’s to Hammersley.

“And you, Herr Hammersley. What do you suggest?”

“If the report is true, Excellenz, I quite agree with Herr Rizzio,” he said easily.

Von Stromberg showed his teeth in a wolfish smile.

“And each of you contends that it was the other, nicht wahr?”

Hammersley merely nodded, but Rizzio was by this time in a state which made self-control an impossibility. “Excellenz,” he cried hotly, “is it conceivable ​that I should have come to Germany if I had been guilty of the crime of which this man accuses me? I have served Germany against——”

“You forget, Herr Rizzio,” said the General blandly, “that Herr Hammersley has also come to Germany.”

“And while he is here Germany is in danger. He is a spy of England, Excellenz.”

Hammersley only laughed.

“If I had been a spy of England, Excellenz, I surely had many chances to serve England’s cause. Why should I have even met Captain Stammer at Beaufort Cove? It would have been quite easy to have informed the artillery officer at Innerwick and blown his destroyer out of the water while she lay at anchor? Herr Rizzio forgets that honesty is always provided with proof. In reply to this accusation, I would ask Herr Rizzio how he managed to pass through the cordon of British destroyers which guard the coast?”

Rizzio hesitated and von Stromberg spoke.

“That is a fair question. Answer.”

“I had English papers as well as German. I came away before the War Office had time to act upon Herr Hammersley’s information as to my services to Germany.”

Hammersley shrugged. “I make no reply.”

Von Stromberg frowned at the opposite wall, snapping the papers of the package in his fingers impatiently.

“An impasse! I suspected as much. We will now resort to other means. The only possible solution of this case, barring the unpleasant alternative of shooting both of you gentlemen in the garden this afternoon lies in the nature of the dispatches themselves and in the production of a material witness.”

​He brought his broad palm down on the bell upon the table and said to Captain von Winden, who answered it:

“You will bring Fräulein Doris Mather down to this room at once.” As Captain von Winden went out, the eyes of both men were turned to Hammersley. He started in surprise, and leaned forward toward von Stromberg, slowly turning with a frown to Rizzio.

“Doris—Miss Mather—here!” he muttered. “She came—with—with Herr Rizzio?”

Von Stromberg nodded.

“Herr Rizzio persuaded her to come with him.”

“Persuaded! It is impossible.” He rose and took a pace toward Rizzio. “What could have been his object? I do not understand. It will be very cruel for her to—to see me—since she knows that I am an enemy of England, Excellenz. She it was who read the papers and burned them. If Herr Rizzio supposes that Fräulein Mather’s evidence will——” He paused, his brow knitting in thought.

“Her evidence is important,” said von Stromberg. “Under the circumstances you should be glad to have such an enemy to testify against you. Sit down, Herr Hammersley. I regret that the necessities of the case require this witness.”

Hammersley sat and, frowning at the wall opposite, folded his arms. “I am at your orders, Excellenz. I need not remind you that she will tell the truth.”

“That,” said von Stromberg, with a wide wave of the hand, “is precisely what we are here for.”

There was a silence, grim and amusing on von Stromberg’s part, self-restrained on Rizzio’s. Hammersley still sat staring at the wall, thoughtful and ​apparently in no great enjoyment of the prospect.

When the door opened and Doris Mather entered the three men rose. Her face was pale and lines of care were at her eyes and lips, but there was no denying the proud poise of her head, the firmness of her mouth and the steady look from her eyes as her glance passed Rizzio and Hammersley and sought the figure of the man in uniform. She measured him with a look that neglected nothing, her gaze finally meeting the dark shadow under the gray thatch of brows where his small eyes gleamed at her. The General bowed, clicked his heels together and brought forward a chair, which he indicated with a polite gesture.

“I offer apologies, Fräulein, for the unfortunate situation in which Destiny has placed you,” he said in excellent English. “Will you be seated?”

The girl sat and faced him, her gaze still fixed upon his face. It was as though she meant to ignore the presence of the other two men. General von Stromberg stared at her for a moment in silence, and then, finding that his frown was only met by a look of calm inquiry, smiled at her instead.

“You know, of course, Fräulein, the situation with which you are confronted. Herr Rizzio has brought you to Germany to shed what light you can upon the mystery of these cigarette papers. Herr Hammersley says that Herr Rizzio has been acting as an agent of the English Government while professedly in the service of Germany. Herr Rizzio says that Herr Hammersley is an English spy. Your position is a difficult one, but circumstances have woven you into a piece of international politics. Your testimony is of the utmost importance—to one—perhaps both of these gentlemen.”

​“I—I will do what I can to enlighten you,” she said haltingly. “What do you wish to know?”

General von Stromberg beamed on her.

“Ach, I am glad you take the sensible view of things.” He waved the package of cigarette papers in his fingers. “You have seen this object before?”

“Yes, I think so. Will you let me look at it?”

The General moved his chair closer and put the papers in her fingers. She opened the papers and finding the message, scanned it closely, reading the writing with deliberateness and then looking up into von Stromberg’s face.

“You have seen this before?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“At Lady Heathcote’s house in Scotland.”

“How did it come into your hands?”

“I found it on the floor of Mr. Hammersley’s room.”

“The night Herr Rizzio entered it, thinking it was yours?”

“Yes. That was the time.”

“You are quite sure?”

“Quite.”

“How did you identify it?”

“By certain peculiar characteristics of the handwriting, with which I am familiar.”

“Mr. Hammersley’s, is it not?”

“Yes.”

“And how did this package of papers go out of your possession?”

“Mr.—Mr. Hammersley took them from me.”

“By force?”

She raised her chin proudly and looked at her questioner and then lowered her eyes, replying quietly:

​“Yes.”

“There was another package of cigarette papers of the same make as these?”

“There was.”

“You read them?”

“I did.”

“Was this before or after you found the second package—these which I now have in my hand?”

“Before.”

“How long before?”

“It was the night of Lady Heathcote’s dinner in London—the night Mr. Hammersley took me home in the machine.”

“The night you were followed by men in another machine?”

“Yes.”

“You escaped to Ashwater Park with the package of papers which Herr Hammersley had given you and, after hiding in a tree, in the privacy of your room read these papers?”

“I did.”

“Were the contents of the papers you read at Ashwater Park the same as those you hold in your hand?”

“As nearly as I can remember, they were, exactly.”

“Word for word?”

“I cannot say that. There were certain names and certain figures that I remember very clearly as being exactly the same. I—I——” she hesitated. “There were reasons why, in the state of mind that I was in, what I saw remained impressed upon my memory.”

Hammersley throughout had sat immovable. But Rizzio, who had shown signs of anxiety, now interrupted.

“Excellenz, I beg——”

​Von Stromberg silenced him with a gesture.

“If you will be pleased to continue, Fräulein. Do you remember the numerals?”

“Some of them.”

“And the towns and dates?”

“Some of them.”

“And are they, the ones that you remember, identical in both packets?”

“As far as I can remember.”

Von Stromberg took the packet from her hands and turned it over in his fingers.

“There is nothing about this packet, no distinguishing mark that would make it different from the other, the one that was burned?”

“None, except the handwriting.”

“H-m.” General von Stromberg put the packet into an inside pocket and buttoned his coat carefully.

“So far—so good. You are an intelligent witness, Fräulein.”

“Thank you.” If the words of her questioner contained an ulterior suggestion, the girl gave every indication of being oblivious to it, listening with a grave calmness to his next question.

“When you escaped into the tree, were you in a position to hear what went on in the road?”

“I was.”

“The men in the road searched Herr Hammersley?”

“They did.”

“And at last he escaped?”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember hearing him shout anything as his motor moved away?”

“Yes.”

“What was it?”

​“That they hadn’t searched the machine or words to that effect.”

Von Stromberg glanced at Rizzio, who was leaning forward in his chair, eager to speak.

“Well, Herr Rizzio?” he asked.

“That was a diversion—intended to give Miss Mather more time in which to escape. The second package was not in the motor. At that time there was no second package.”

Doris Mather’s voice was raised just a trifle, but for the moment it dominated.

“There was. Mr. Hammersley put it into the window sash, when he was in danger of capture.”

“Then why didn’t he put them both there?”

“I suppose because he wanted to be sure that one of them would reach its destination.”

Von Stromberg grunted. “I see. But why did you help Mr. Hammersley to save those papers when you knew that they were dangerous to England?”

“I didn’t know what they were. I did what he asked me to do because—because——”

She faltered.

Von Stromberg waved his hand.

“Oh, very well. It does not matter. Who did you think was pursuing Mr. Hammersley?”

“Agents of Mr. Rizzio.”

“Why did you think that?”

“Because I heard part of what happened between Mr. Rizzio and Mr. Hammersley in the smoking-room at Lady Heathcote’s and I knew that Mr. Rizzio had threatened Mr. Hammersley.”

“Did you think the men who followed you in the other machine were German agents?”

Doris answered quickly.

​“Oh, no. I was sure that they were men of Scotland Yard.”

“Are you sure now?”

“Oh, yes. Subsequent events have proved it to me conclusively.”

“Oh! What events?”

“The things that Mr. Rizzio did and what he wrote.”

“He wrote—to you?”

“Yes.”

Rizzio was swallowing uneasily, his face pale, his hands trembling.

“Excellenz, I can explain at another time.”

Von Stromberg regarded him coolly.

“I will hear you at another time. For the present, Fräulein Mather will speak. What did Mr. Rizzio write to you that led you to think that Mr. Rizzio was in communication with Scotland Yard?”

“This letter, Excellenz.” She put her fingers into her waist and handed a crumpled paper to the General. Rizzio had risen again and would have interposed but von Stromberg waved him aside.

“You will all keep silence until questioned,” he said abruptly, and then smoothing the letter upon his knee, read it with great care and deliberateness. Rizzio made an effort at composure but only succeeded in bringing out a handkerchief and wiping his brows. Hammersley watched von Stromberg intently. He was not aware of the contents of this letter but the attitude of the girl was distinctly reassuring. Von Stromberg’s brow puckered disagreeably and his long nose neared the paper while his eyes peered at the sheet as though his fiery gaze would burn into it.

He read the paper through twice and then brought his hand down upon the table with a crash while his ​voice thundered at Rizzio, toward whom he extended the note.

“It is signed with your initials. Did you write this?”

Rizzio bent and examined the letter.

“Excellenz, I did, but it was with the object of bringing Miss Mather to——”

“Silence! Perhaps you do not recall its terms. I will refresh your memory.”

“Excellenz, if I had not written that letter Miss Mather would not have——”

“Be quiet. Sit down. Please listen. ‘I am telling you this,’” he read, “‘to warn you that my generosity to Hammersley is not actuated by any love of a man who has spoiled my dearest ambition, but by the continued esteem with which I still regard yourself. I do not love him; and my own wish, my duty, my own honor, my loyalty to England all acclaim that he should be delivered at once to those in authority. And yet I have refrained—for you, Doris. But I have learned that H—— is in communication with G—— and that Crenshaw of Scotland Yard is on the alert. I may not be able to save him.’”

Von Stromberg paused and laid the letter upon the table. “I could read more,” he said, “but that is enough. When did you receive this letter, Fräulein?”

“The day after Mr. Hammersley was shot——”

“And, acting upon it, you went to Ben-a-Chielt to try to persuade him from the cause of Germany.”

“Yes,” she said clearly.

“You failed?”

“I did.”

“H—m.” The General paused and turned to Rizzio.

“What have you to say?”

​“Merely, Excellenz, that I thought Miss Mather knew too much for Germany’s good and I chose this means of getting her to Ben-a-Chielt.”

“Where she could witness a secret meeting between two officers of my department? Bah! Herr Rizzio, your story leaks like a sieve. It is full of holes.” He touched the bell at his elbow and von Winden appeared. “You will convey Herr Rizzio to the room on the third floor. Put a guard over him.”

Rizzio started to his feet, his face ghastly, while beads of moisture stood out upon his forehead.

“You will not give me a chance to explain?” he protested huskily.

“You will be given a hearing tomorrow.”

“But, Excellenz——”

“Take him away!”

As the door closed behind the two men, General von Stromberg came forward and took Hammersley by the hand.

“I am glad, mein Herr, that there is no longer any suspicion upon you. I have always liked you, Herr Hammersley, and you have done the Vaterland excellent service. I am sorry that this investigation was necessary, but in times like these I am not in a position to take chances.”

“I understand, Excellenz. But it hasn’t discommoded me in the least.”

Von Stromberg laughed.

“I can readily believe it. You are always as cool as a morning in May. As for Fräulein Mather,” and he turned ceremoniously to Doris and bowed deeply, “it has all been a mistake. If the efforts of a councilor of the Empire in undoing the wrong done you, by sending you with every comfort and dispatch to ​England, are any sign of regret, you shall be safely on the way tomorrow. But I am sure that in your heart you are glad to have had the opportunity to clear Herr Hammersley of an unjust suspicion.”

“Yes,” she murmured, turning away toward the window.

“But you still wish that the part of Herr Hammersley which is English had been the greater part of him instead of the lesser, nicht wahr?”

She bowed her head but did not reply.

“Perhaps it would be better if I left you two alone together. There is doubtless much that you would say which would be only interesting to yourselves.”

And then he went out, closing the door behind him.

CHAPTER XVI
THE GENERAL PLAYS TO WIN

WHEN General von Stromberg went out of the room Doris turned toward Cyril, her happiness in her eyes where he could read it if he wished. But instead of coming to her he made a warning gesture and then walked slowly around the room, peering out of the windows and listening at the doors until satisfied that they were unobserved. Then he beckoned her to a spot out of the line of vision of the door into the adjoining room. She obeyed it wonderingly while he caught her in his arms and kissed her passionately.

“Thank God,” he whispered, “you understood.”

“Oh, Cyril,” she gasped, “if anything had happened to you——”

“We must be careful,” he went on, whispering hastily. “My success hangs by a hair. Tonight—the thing that I came for will be within my reach. I must have it.”

“There will be danger?”

“I hope not. But you must not trust his promises to send you away. You must get away from here tonight before eleven. I will help you. Before then I must see you alone. It is not safe to talk here.”

He pressed her hand hurriedly and moved slowly across the room close to the wall and door, which he examined as he passed.

“But, Cyril——”

​A warning finger stopped her.

“There is no use in your trying to persuade me, old girl,” he said, his voice raised to a tone which seemed louder than necessary. “I am only doing my duty as I see it. But whatever happens I can at least remember that you told the truth.”

What did he mean? She couldn’t understand. She followed him with her gaze. The fingers of one hand were tracing the flowers of the wallpaper upon one side of the room, and as she looked he glanced out of the window and then got quickly upon a chair and peered into an aperture in the cornice.

“I am not sorry for Rizzio,” he said again, dusting off the chair and replacing it. “He only gets what he deserved. What did he do to you? How did he find you?”

A glance at his face showed her that he expected her to reply.

“I was lost on the moor,” she faltered. “I followed you to Rudha Mor and saw you leave in the Yellow Dove. When I turned to go back, a cloth was thrown over my head. They chloroformed me——”

He muttered an imprecation. “And on the yacht——”

“I—I had nothing to complain of. He did everything he could for my comfort.”

She watched him again moving around the room. At the chimney he paused and, reaching swiftly upward, lifted the clock and then put it into its place again, the expression in his face still strained and anxious.

“I am not sorry for him,” he said again. Suddenly he came to her saying in such a low whisper that she could hardly hear him,

​“I’m not satisfied. There’s something dangerous in von Stromberg’s sudden kindness. Act, Doris. We are overheard.” And then in louder tones, “If anything had happened to you——”

She glanced around her timidly, her initiative suddenly at a loss.

“N-nothing happened to me,” she repeated bewildered.

“I would have made another death for him—a man’s death at least.”

“It is terrible,” she managed to say, “and I will have been the cause of it.”

He came closer and took her by the hand, speaking distinctly.

“And do you regret that it is Rizzio instead of me?”

“No, no,” she stammered. Her accents of horror were genuine, but it seemed more horrible that she should be making a farce of her genuine emotions. Yet Cyril’s eyes impelled her. “It is terrible. I can’t believe——”

“General von Stromberg is not a man to make idle threats. I am glad that I am not in Rizzio’s shoes.”

She saw him pause, his mouth open, gazing upward at the lithograph of Emperor William. To Doris the picture merely typified power, ambition, intolerance of any ideals but those of military glory. But it was not at the portrait that Cyril was looking. He was examining the frame, which was swung a little to one side, revealing a patch of unfaded wallpaper. He looked down into the fireplace thoughtfully and while the girl wondered what he was going to do next, he whirled suddenly and moved quickly toward the door into the hall, which he opened swiftly straight into the face ​of Captain Wentz, who managed to step back only in time to avoid it.

But the officer was equal to the occasion.

“I was seeking General von Stromberg,” he said coolly.

“He isn’t here,” Doris heard Cyril say quietly. And then, “I wanted a glass of water. Fräulein Mather is feeling ill.”

“Ah! I will have it brought at once.” As he disappeared in the passage to the kitchen, Cyril closed the door and came in three strides to the fireplace, reached up and raised the picture from the wall, peering under it, and touched the surface of the wallpaper with the tips of his fingers. Then with great care he put the picture back in its place and bent over Doris close to her ear, whispering: “They suspect. Everything we have said has been overheard. A microphone! I knew it was here somewhere.”

The pallor of her face when the man from the kitchen brought the water was almost convincing proof of the truth of Hammersley’s statement. She did look ill, for terror of the situation that confronted them had driven the blood back to her heart. A moment ago the room had seemed so friendly, and now every object in it was a menace. And above the mantel the Emperor of Germany with his upturned mustaches glared down at her austerely, eloquent of the relentless forces that held them in their thrall. Behind her she heard Cyril whispering with the man who had brought the water and realized that it was the tall soldier with the lame leg who had brought her toast and eggs upstairs.

“Danke sehr, Lindberg,” Cyril said aloud. “She is tired from the journey.”

​“Perhaps, Herr Hammersley, a little fresh air will help. A stroll in the kitchen garden.”

Doris got up in sudden relief as she understood.

“Yes,” she said. “Perhaps I will feel better in the air.”

Cyril led the way to the door and together they went out. They heard sounds of heavy footsteps in the hallway above but did not pause, making their way along the path which led around the house. Cyril did not turn toward her, but she heard him speaking.

“They will call us back. Do not be frightened. If von Stromberg questions again, answer to the best of your ability. I will find a means of reaching your room tonight. In the meanwhile keep up your courage.”

She did not reply for she heard steps behind her, and turning, found Captain Wentz, who bowed, taking off his cap.

“General von Stromberg requests me to ask,” he said in very good English, “if Miss Mather will not give him the pleasure of joining him in a cup of chocolate.”

“He is very kind,” she said slowly with a glance at Cyril. “Of course—I shall be very glad.”

The officer replaced his cap and, turning to Hammersley, spoke in German.

“His Excellenz also requests that Herr Hammersley will remain within call.”

Hammersley bowed.

“Tell his Excellenz with my compliments that with his permission I will smoke my pipe here in the kitchen garden.”

Doris followed the officer into the room they had just left and von Stromberg joined her almost immediately.

“Ach, gnädiges Fräulein,” he said with his blandest ​manner, “you will forgive me for calling you back from your contemplation of the beauties of this lovely afternoon, but there are certain questions, merely trifling ones, which have to do with the fate of Herr Rizzio which I neglected to ask you. You will not begrudge an old man the privilege of a few words over a cup of chocolate?”

She smiled at him bravely, as a woman can do, even in a last extremity, and told him that she was flattered by this mark of his condescension.

A wave of the hand and Wentz disappeared, while Lindberg, the lame man, entered with the chocolate. The General had the tray put upon the table before her and asked her to serve it, standing erect and watching her with open admiration. Doris was frightened, for she had already seen the power that this old man possessed. But with an effort she found her composure and made up her mind that if she was alarmed von Stromberg at least should not be aware of it. The safest defense against such a man was audacity.

“You were feeling ill,” he said, suavely sympathetic. “The long morning in the train and the strain of your ordeal. It is but natural. A little cup of chocolate and a biscuit should revive you wonderfully. Nicht wahr?” His English, though excellent, had a slight German accent and his tone the quality of a lullaby.

“It is very good,” said Doris. “I have often heard it said that nowhere in the world is chocolate so excellent as in Germany.”

“I trust that you may find it so. There are many things beside chocolate that are excellent in Germany, Fräulein Mather.”

“I am sure that must be true,” she said politely, touching the cup to her lips.

​“Then why do you dislike us so much?” he asked with a smile.

“It is not your people that I dislike so much, General von Stromberg. Many of the most charming people I have ever known have been Germans. It is not what you are, but what you want to be, that I dislike; not your habits or your tastes, but your intolerance of any civilization which happens to differ from yours.”

She paused, a little frightened at her temerity, but von Stromberg still smiled.

“Go on,” he chuckled, “you speak very prettily.”

“I am an American, General von Stromberg, from the United States, where people are accustomed to speak what they feel, without fear of lèse majesté. If the President of the United States did something that I didn’t like I would write him a letter.”

“And would he answer it?” he purred.

“If he had time, yes. If anyone wrote such a letter to your Emperor, he would be boiled in oil.”

Von Stromberg roared with delight. “Boiled in oil!” he repeated.

“Yes—or perhaps some more exquisite cruelty that your ingenious people have devised,” she said coolly. “To prosaic minds like mine, Excellenz, you Germans are the wonders of the age. You are both godlike and Saturnian; a nation of military fanatics, a nation of silly sentimentalists; a nation trained to scientific brutality, which shares the sorrows of the dying rose. Which is it that you want us to think you, the god or the satyr?”

“We know that we are the god,” he said, showing his teeth, “but we want you to think us the satyr.”

“You have succeeded, Excellenz,” she replied calmly. ​“It is very pleasant to be sitting here drinking chocolate with a Geheimrath—a councilor of the Empire—but you’ll pardon me if I say that the peculiarly social pleasure of the occasion is somewhat marred by the fact that if the whim happened to strike you you could have me strung up by the thumbs.”

“You think that I am cruel? Ach, no, Fräulein. You are mistaken,” in his blandest tones. “I have a daughter in East Prussia of just your age. For that reason I would like to have you think of me a little as the sentimentalist rather than as the—the brute—as you have been pleased to suggest. I am not cruel and I shall prove it to you.”

“In America, Excellenz, we do not make war upon women.”

“Nor do I make war upon you,” he put in quickly. “I did not bring you to Germany, Fräulein. Herr Rizzio acted upon his own responsibility. Even yet, if he is an English agent, I cannot understand his purpose in bringing such an incriminating document.”

He smiled as he spoke, but she felt the question and its threat. For a moment the directness of his attack bewildered her and so she sipped her chocolate to gain a moment of time.

“General von Stromberg,” she said at last, as the idea came to her, “I am told that you have one of the keenest intellects in the Empire of Germany. I feel much like a child before you, who should see matters much more clearly than I. There were two reasons why he brought me, one of which bears upon our personal relations, the other upon his relation to England. I knew that he possessed your confidence, otherwise he would not have been in possession of a document which empowered Mr. Hammersley to give up the ​secret message of Captain Byfield. I knew too much. If I had told my friends in England what I knew, his utility to England would have been gone.”

“Why? It seems to me that having my confidence would have made his utility to England the greater.”

“He would have been suspected of double dealing, would he not?”

“As a friend of England you would have let him be suspected?” he asked quietly. “Given evidence against a man whom you knew to be acting in England’s interests?”

“There were other—other—interests,” she faltered, “more important to me than England’s—Mr. Hammersley’s. You have a daughter, Excellenz. Perhaps you would try to think of me as you would think of her in a similar situation. When I read those papers at Ashwater Park I knew that the man to whom I was promised and of whom I had always thought as an Englishman was acting as a secret agent—a spy of Germany. He was pursued by agents of the English War Office. I knew that if his connection with Germany were discovered he would be shot. I was frightened. I did not know what to do. John Rizzio followed me to Scotland and tried to get the papers. I refused to give them to him. And then when—when Mr. Hammersley came I burned them. There was nothing left for me to do—for England—for him. If there were no papers there could be no evidence against him.”

She paused to get her breath, aware that her companion was listening intently, and fearfully afraid that she was saying too much.

“And then—?” he asked.

“And then,” she went on more slowly, “I found the ​other papers. When I wouldn’t give them to him, Mr. Hammersley took them away from me. We quarreled, Excellenz, and I gave him up.”

“And after that—”

“After that came Mr. Rizzio’s note asking me to go to Ben-a-Chielt and see the meeting between Cyr—between Mr. Hammersley and your messenger in the last hope that I could make Mr. Hammersley give up his plans to deliver the message to you. As you know I failed. It was there—after that—that Mr. Rizzio, who had overheard our conversation, tried to kill Mr. Hammersley, knowing that he had resolved to deliver the message.” She got up and paced the floor. “Oh, it is so clear, what Rizzio was, that I wonder that it should be necessary for me to tell it to you.”

“Yes, I see. And the other—the personal reasons you mentioned.”

She hesitated. “It is difficult to speak of them—but I will tell you. Mr. Rizzio has forfeited all right to my loyalty. He offered to marry me. I refused him. He told me he would never give me up. In Scotland he threatened Cyril—Mr. Hammersley’s life. I know now what he meant.”

“Yes, but in his letter to you he does not threaten. He urges that he is doing what he can to save Hammersley!”

“I did not believe him. I was right. Events have proved it. He would have been glad to see Mr. Hammersley out of the way.” She covered her face with her hands and sank into her chair again. “Oh,” she whispered, “it is horrible—horrible. And it is I who must be the instrument of justice.”

Von Stromberg waited for a moment, tapping one ​finger of his left hand very slowly upon the back of his right.

“Try to compose yourself, liebes Fräulein,” he urged calmly, and, as she looked up at him: “You say he wanted to be rid of Herr Hammersley. Can you tell me then, why his men did not shoot him when they had him prisoner at Ashwater Park gates?”

“I do not know. Perhaps they would have done so if he hadn’t escaped.”

Von Stromberg paused again, and then, gently:

“You love Herr Hammersley a great deal, Fräulein?”

She bent her gaze upon him appealingly.

“Would I now be here, Excellenz?” she asked.

Von Stromberg bent his head and then got up and slowly paced the length of the room. When he returned there was another note in his voice. It was still quiet but the legato note had gone, and it was ice-cold.

“You do well to tell your story through the medium of sentiment which you well understand, rather than through the medium of logic, which you do not understand, which no woman understands.”

At his change of tone she glanced up. He was leering at her unpleasantly.

“I do not know what you mean,” she murmured.

“You are very clever, Fräulein, but your story has a great many holes in it—little holes which might grow into big ones, if one were disposed to enlarge them. There are several things which are not at all clear to me. Of course it must be as apparent to you as it is to me that if Herr Rizzio was an English agent, by remaining in England he had nothing to fear from you or anyone else. His object, too, in bringing you ​

"The truth, and he becomes an honorable prisoner of war. Silence, and he is shot tomorrow. Speak."

​to Germany is clear. As you say, you knew too much, not about his connection with the English War Office, which, of course, would not matter in the least, but about Herr Rizzio’s connection with me, which would have mattered a great deal.”

He tapped his long forefinger upon his breast significantly and leaned forward ominously across the table. He dominated, hypnotized her. She closed her eyes, trembling violently.

“Do you mean that you do not believe? His letter, Excellenz—surely you believe that to be genuine?”

“Bait, Fräulein—that is all. Excellent bait. You swallowed it. Herr Hammersley very cleverly prepared himself against surprise. Only the fortunate accident of your losing yourself upon the moor saved Herr Rizzio from failure.”

“Oh, you are all wrong. You are willfully making me suffer. I have told the truth.”

Von Stromberg straightened and drew from his pocket a military telegraph form which he smoothed out gently with his long, bony fingers.

“Unfortunately for Herr Hammersley I have just received a message from another agent in London—in whom I have implicit faith. You read German a little. Would you care to see it?”

He laid it upon the table before her eyes and she looked, her eyes distended with terror of she knew now what.

Hammersley caused arrest of Byfield. Has informed on Rizzio and myself. Am in hiding in Kent. Will reach Germany by usual methods.

Maxwell.

Doris sat immovable, petrified with horror. Von Stromberg’s voice crackled harshly at her ear. ​“Well? And what have you to say?”

“It is a lie!” she managed to stammer. “He lies—lies, I tell you!”

“Ach! If I could believe you! Why should he lie? Unlike the case of Rizzio, Herr Hammersley has not robbed Herr Maxwell of a bride.”

“There is a mistake——”

“I fear not.”

“But why should Mr. Hammersley have come? He would have been safe in England——”

“He himself says to the contrary——”

She was breaking fast and he sought further to involve her.

“He did not have to come. Why should he have come?” she asked wildly, rising to her feet and laying her hands upon his arm. “Answer me that, Excellenz.”

For reply he turned away from her abruptly and walked the length of the room to an end window, where he stood for a moment looking out.

“Come, Fräulein, and I will show you something.”

She approached him blindly and followed his gaze around the corner of the building. Upon a tree stump in the kitchen garden, looking out across the fields toward the wooded hills sat Hammersley, calmly smoking.

“Half of his blood is English, half Prussian, Fräulein, but it is the English in him that dominates. Is there anything that is Prussian about him? Tell me. From the crown of his head to the sole of his foot—his pipe, his bent shoulders, his careless air—he is English, all English. He knows that at this moment I am weighing his fate in the balance and yet he smokes his short wooden pipe. If he has Prussian blood it is a pity, for Germany needs all the Prussian ​blood that flows red in the veins of men.” He paused and then abruptly, “But the Prussian blood must be sacrificed with the English——”

She fell back from him, deathly white, groping for a chair to support her.

“You mean——” she whispered.

“That I can take no chances. He will be shot tomorrow.”

“O God! He is loyal to Germany. I swear it.” Her utterance was choked. Her breath came with difficulty. The room darkened suddenly and she seemed about to swoon. She dropped to her knees beside the armchair, clinging to it, trying to speak, but no words would come. She was aware of his hawk-like face bending over her as though in the act of striking its prey and she heard his voice at her ear.

“There is one chance to save him.”

She reached his hand and clung to it.

“A chance—what—”

“Tell me the truth,” he said sternly.

“I—I have told you the truth. He is innocent.”

He loosened her fingers and stood away.

“Quatsch!” he muttered, leaning forward. “The truth, girl!”

“I—I——”

She fell against the chair and clung to it for support.

“The truth, and he becomes an honorable prisoner of war. Silence, and he is shot tomorrow. Speak.”

“He is——” The words choked her. “He is——”

“Bah!” he growled, moving toward the table. “You have already convicted him!”

She struggled to her feet and followed him. He was about to touch the bell when she caught his arm.

​“Wait!” she whispered. “What guarantee have I that he will not be injured?”

He shrugged and laughed. “I need give no guarantee now, Fräulein. This is not a court of law! I am the judge of what constitutes proof. You have testified.”

He shook her off and sounded the bell, which was immediately answered by Udo von Winden.

“You will conduct Fräulein Mather to her room upstairs. Lock the door and bring me the key. Then tell Herr Hammersley that I am waiting to see him.”

CHAPTER XVII
LINDBERG

WHEN Hammersley entered the house with von Winden he was immediately aware that a crisis had come in his affairs, for in the hall leading to the living-room stood Captain Wentz and two soldiers, and when he was shown into von Stromberg’s presence, the Councilor stood with his back to the hearth, his long legs wide apart, his hands behind his back and the expression of his long, bony face was not pleasant to see. He smiled and frowned at the same time—a smile which possessed so few of the ingredients of humor that the tangled brows even seemed less ominous. Doris was nowhere to be seen. Hammersley made no sign of his prescience of trouble. He put his pipe in the pocket of his leather jacket, strolled forward into the room and stood at attention. “Search him!” snapped von Stromberg. And when von Winden had finished, “Leave us,” he said to the officer, “and keep within call, I shall need you presently.” He waited until the door was closed and then turned to Hammersley somberly.

“Your jig is danced, Herr Hammersley, Fräulein Mather has confessed.”

“Confessed what, Excellenz?” questioned Hammersley calmly.

“She has told the truth.”

“Of course, that was to be expected of her.”

“Bah!” roared the General. “There’s no need of ​more of that. She told me that you were an English spy.”

Hammersley started forward, the only expression on his face one of complete incredulity. “Fräulein Mather told you that? Impossible!”

“Do you mean to say that you don’t believe me?”

Hammersley managed a smile.

“It would hardly be good ethics for me to say that. I simply repeat that it is impossible.”

“Why?” Von Stromberg sneered.

“Because it is morally impossible for her to tell an untruth.”

“Ach, so. But it is physically impossible for her to keep from not doing so.” He leaned forward, grinning craftily. “In the small games of life, in the things which amount to nothing, women lie with a careless skill that is amazing, but in a game of life and death, their little tricks are negligible. Pouf! Herr Hammersley, did you expect to match mere falsehood and such a tissue of flimsy evidence against a man of my experience? It was a desperate game from the beginning—one which could have had only one end. You have been clever—very, very clever. In time, perhaps, under proper guidance and with the necessary political opinions, you could have succeeded in becoming a very useful helper of the Universe, through the medium of the Secret Service Department of the German Empire. But such cleverness is superficial and quickly burns out in the hotter fire of genius. I would like you to know—”

“One moment, Excellenz,” put in Hammersley coolly. “Am I to understand from your attitude that you believe I am false to the Vaterland?”

Von Stromberg laughed.

​“You still insist on acting out the part?”

Hammersley did not answer the question. Instead he asked, “Will you be good enough to tell me upon what new evidence you base your present position?”

The Councilor strode to the table and thrust the telegraphic message he had shown to the girl under Hammersley’s nose.

“This,” he growled. “I will read it to you. ‘Hammersley caused arrest of Byfield. Has informed on Rizzio and myself——’ It’s signed ‘Maxwell.’ What do you think of my evidence?” He grinned, “Convincing, nicht wahr?”

Hammersley looked up into von Stromberg’s face with a smile.

“Not even in code, Excellenz? It is a pity you did not write it in English. But under the circumstances you can’t expect me to take any interest in such a trick.”

“Not you, Herr Hammersley,” he chuckled. “It is not necessary that you should believe in it. In fact there are reasons why you shouldn’t believe in it, the most important reason being that Herr Maxwell is dead.”

“Dead!”

“Obviously. You condemned him and he was put in prison. If he is not dead it is through no fault of yours.”

Hammersley smiled. “You cannot get me to acquiesce in such strange statements.”

“I do not ask you to acquiesce. I could not expect to catch Herr Hammersley by a trick. But Miss Mather was less difficult.”

Hammersley’s jaws set. “I understand. But do you mean to say that I can be incriminated by a con​fession made under the stress of a terror artificially produced?”

“That is a clever turn of phrase, Herr Hammersley, worthy of the high regard with which I hold your abilities. In reply I can only say that in time of war my deductions in all matters connected with my department are final. You are an English spy, Herr Hammersley, and you are quite aware of the penalty.”

Hammersley raised his head and folded his arms. “Quite,” he replied, “if you choose to take that action. I can only say that the time will come when you will regret it.”

“I must take that chance, for there will be no trial.”

Hammersley shrugged his shoulders and turned aside. His face was white and the muscles at his jaws worked for a moment, but otherwise he gave no sign of emotion. General von Stromberg had gone back to his favorite pose by the mantel and Hammersley again heard his voice.

“It seems a pity, Herr Hammersley, that after all it should be you instead of Herr Rizzio who is the culprit. You are a type of young man very much to my liking, and the position of the young lady is unpleasant in the extreme. She has served her purpose here and I shall, of course, take immediate steps to have her returned to her own people.”

“Thanks,” said Hammersley dryly.

“But the thing that has interested me in your case from the first,” he continued with a return of his mastodonic playfulness, “and indeed still continues to interest me, is why you should choose to return to Germany when you knew that you were under suspicion. Surely you did not come here to pick cowslips in March? Come now, I could have you shot this after​noon if I chose. Tell me the truth and I will promise to postpone the affair until tomorrow.”

Hammersley studied the pattern in the rug thoughtfully for a moment, and at last he straightened and shrugged again.

“I don’t suppose there is any use playing the game further. Since I am to go, it doesn’t matter if I tell you. I have planned for some time to be able to get plans of the recent additions to the fortifications of Strassburg.”

“Ach, so. Strassburg! And what, may I ask, were to be your means of procuring them?”

“That, of course, since my utility has ceased, cannot possibly be of interest to you.”

Von Stromberg studied him narrowly for a long moment and then wagged his head sagely. It was an unnecessary suspicion that he had cherished. This had been a case with interesting aspects, but after all it was not much out of the usual way. An English spy betrayed by the simplest of tricks upon the credulity and affection of a woman. He thought that Hammersley had been after bigger game. Plans, fortifications—the same objects, the same methods. Von Stromberg had tried to puzzle out in the mazes of his wonderful brain the possible chance that this man could have had of learning of the whereabouts of Herr Gottschalk’s memoranda and of the momentous decision which had been reached in the Wilhelmstrasse with regard to them. He studied Hammersley closely, with something approaching regret that the contest between them could not have been waged at greater length and for higher stakes. He felt a genuine human sorrow at this moment over the impending fate of this handsome young man who was only doing his duty for the fatu​ous English. It was too bad. But there was much else to do. Tomorrow his mission in this part of the Empire would be ended and the Wilhelmstrasse was calling. He touched the bell upon the table and Captain Wentz entered.

“Herr Hammersley is to be taken to the room on the third floor. Tonight you will see that he is securely bound and a guard set over him, within the room. You will place another guard outside below his window. If he tries to escape, shoot him.”

Wentz spoke to the man in the hall and Hammersley, between them, was led to the foot of the steps, and followed his captors to the upper story. He knew, in view of the instructions that he had overheard, that any effort to escape would be fruitless. He sat on the edge of the bed submitting calmly while his feet and hands were bound under the direction of Captain Wentz; after which the officers went out, leaving a man to guard him, and locked the door. Hammersley rolled over on the bed and lay for a long while staring at the wall. The day was fading into dusk. Five o’clock, it might be, Hammersley guessed. Six hours or less remained to him in which to act. Six hours in which he must lie helpless while the one chance of intercepting the messenger from Berlin came and passed. He lay perfectly still as he had fallen, but his spirit writhed in agony.

Doris was in a room near him, likewise a prisoner, aware of the fate in store for him and able to do nothing but wait as he would wait until the shots were fired below there in the garden, which would be the end of all things for him. He found that he was thinking little of himself. It was Doris and what she must be suffering that occupied the moments of his thoughts ​which were not given to the remote chances of escape.

His bonds were tightly drawn—a rope tied with German thoroughness. He moved his hands behind him and tried to gain a little room for his present ease. If he was to be shot tomorrow morning it would have seemed indeed a small charity to have permitted him to pass his last night in some degree of comfort. Could it be that, after all, von Stromberg suspected the real object of his return? That hardly seemed possible; for his informant in Berlin, a woman close to those in high authority, had made every move with the utmost discretion and his own relations to Lindberg could not possibly be suspected.

Lindberg! Hammersley turned and looked at his guard who was standing motionless by the window, gazing out at the fading landscape. Lindberg was his one, his last desperate hope. Udo von Winden, his cousin—It was too much to hope that Udo would be of service to him. He had caught a glimpse of Udo’s face in the hallway downstairs when von Stromberg’s orders were given. He had gone pale and stared at him in pity and horror as Hammersley had gone up the stairs, but Hammersley knew that the ties of kinship, the memories of their boyhood together, were nothing beside the iron will and indomitable authority of the great man who had condemned him. Udo would suffer when Hammersley died, for there had been a time when the two had been much to each other, but he would do his duty, however painful, as a small unit of the relentless machine which Hammersley had had the temerity to oppose. What else could be expected?

A word, a sign, the slightest aid to such a prisoner, and he would be as guilty as his cousin. Hammersley knew that he did Udo no injustice in supposing that ​any help from such a source was out of the question. If Udo had been caught in England as Hammersley was caught in Germany, Hammersley knew that he could do nothing to save him.

But Lindberg! Here the case was different. It was Lindberg whose life Hammersley had saved three years ago in this very forest, when the Forester had stumbled and fallen in the path of an angry boar who would have gored him to death, if Hammersley had not shot the beast. Lindberg the Forester it was, who, in his hours off duty, had been Hammersley’s chosen companion in many a hunt up through the rocky gorges of these very mountains, every stick and stone of which he knew as he knew his own rugged face in the mirror. It was Lindberg who had been so useful in keeping him informed of the exact state of affairs at Blaufelden. It was Lindberg who had learned of the microphone that von Stromberg had installed and it was Lindberg who had listened at the receiver upstairs in von Stromberg’s room to the conversation when the Councilor had told Captain Wentz the nature of the documents from Berlin and the hour of their arrival.

Already Lindberg had repaid a hundredfold the debt of Hammersley’s service and it was quite possible, now that Hammersley’s actual mission had been discovered, that he would take to cover, his mind clear in the thought that he had done all that could be expected of him. But there was a warm affection between the two, born of many a long day in the open and many a night by the campfire where the old man had taught him the Foresters’ secrets of the trees, the birds in their branches and of the many four-legged things that scurried beneath them. They had often talked, too, of many other things, and Hammersley had ​learned that Lindberg’s politics were those that one learns under the open sky—the eternal peace of Nature, before which war and men, its armed instruments, were a blasphemy.

Perhaps Lindberg would find a way. But what way? How? Udo von Winden, too, was aware of the woodcraft fellowship, for often he had made their duet a trio. Hammersley knew that Udo von Winden as yet suspected nothing of the services Lindberg had rendered him and he wondered whether in this pass the ties of kinship would be strong enough to keep him silent as to the possible capabilities of the old Forester for mischief in Hammersley’s behalf.

Hammersley hoped. He clung to the thought of Lindberg’s fidelity and affection as a dying man clings to the hope of Heaven. He tried to analyze the old man’s capacities for sympathy and courage. To help a man in his position seemed to require larger stores of both of these qualities than human clay was molded for. Lindberg did not fear death, he knew, but the death he courted was the kind of death Hammersley had saved him from, a good death in a fair game with a noble enemy, not the kind of death that awaited Hammersley, a cold, machine-made death against a kitchen wall. And he must know as Hammersley knew that this was what would follow.

The dusk faded into dark and the soldier lit a candle. Hammersley turned his head and examined him attentively. His face was unfamiliar at Blaufelden, one of the men probably sent down at von Stromberg’s orders from the upper district to be useful in just this emergency. Von Stromberg would make no mistakes, of course. He never did make mistakes. He had enough men about him to cope with the situation safely. He ​would leave no opportunity for his plans to miscarry. Any opportunity, should there be one, must be created. Hammersley managed to wriggle into a sitting posture on the bed and spoke to his captor in German.

“You wouldn’t mind my having a smoke, would you?” he asked.

The man looked at him, debating the matter.

“Just get into the side pocket of my jacket and fish out my pipe and tobacco, mein junger. I need a smoke badly. And so would you if you were going to be shot in the morning.”

“Ach, wohl. I see no harm in that, mein Herr. You cannot smoke yourself away.”

He came over, brought out Hammersley’s short pipe, filled it from the pouch and stuck it between his lips. Then he got out a match and lighted it while Hammersley puffed.

“Ah!” said Hammersley contentedly. “You are a good fellow. Tomorrow morning I will give you my blessing.”

The man paced stolidly up and down beside the bed.

“I am sorry for you, mein Herr. But it is life. It is all decided for us beforehand. We are here a moment and then we are gone.”

Hammersley smiled.

“A fatalist! Then perhaps you can tell me if there is any chance of my escape.”

He was stopped abruptly.

“I can tell you that there is not,” he said severely.

“I would have said as much. But it was a pardonable curiosity, nicht wahr?”

“Pardonable, ja wohl,” the man replied, “but most unseemly under the circumstances.”

“You have a deep sense of your responsibilities.”

​“Ja. I obey my orders, that is all. I do not care what others do.”

“Therefore you will shoot me tomorrow.”

“Perhaps,” he shrugged. “I am but an instrument of Providence.” He waved his hand. “But I talk too much, and so do you. It is not seemly in a soldier and a prisoner.”

Hammersley laughed. “You have a fine sense of the fitness of things.”

“Ja. It was so written.”

He relapsed into silence and in spite of efforts on Hammersley’s part refused to speak further. It was only after Hammersley badgered him for his unsociability that he spoke with some asperity.

“I will trouble you to be quiet. When I am relieved, my successor may let you speak and laugh as much as you please. But it is unnatural in a man at the point of death. It would be better if you were saying your prayers.”

“I am sure that you are right. But I still have a few hours. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind telling me the hour at which you are to be relieved—the hour when we are both of us to be relieved?”

The man gazed at him uncomprehendingly.

“After supper.” He finished indifferently, “Eight o’clock, perhaps.”

Hammersley was silent. Two hours or more to wait before a change of guards, and then only a chance that Lindberg would be able to do something. Even then if he managed to get loose, there was left little more than an hour in which to reach the road by which the machine would come from Berlin, and even then what should he do without Doris? His case was desperate. Only a miracle it seemed could make a success ​of what had been a pitiful failure; only an act of Providence could save him from the discreditable end that awaited him.

He drew up his knees and studied the knots at his ankles. His guardian was the one who had tied them.

“You tie a good square knot, my friend. You were once a sailor?”

But nothing would induce the soldier to talk.

As the supper hour approached, Hammersley could hear the rattle of pans and dishes downstairs and noticed the odor of coffee. They would not starve him, of course. In a little while someone would come with food. After a while, which seemed interminable, the noise of the rattling dishes ceased and there was a sound at the door into the hall as the key turned in the lock and Captain Wentz entered. His sturdy back had never seemed so ugly nor so welcome, for the silence and the inaction were getting on Hammersley’s nerves. The officer came over to the bed and gravely examined the knots of the rope that bound the prisoner. Then, satisfied with the results of his inspection, he straightened and glanced around the room.

“Gut,” he muttered. And then to the soldier: “You will go down and tell Lindberg to bring Herr Hammersley’s supper. I will stay here in the meanwhile. You will then relieve the man at the door of his Excellenz.”

The man saluted and departed. They still trusted Lindberg. Then Udo had suspected nothing, or if he had suspected, had kept his thoughts to himself. Hammersley lay back on the pillow preparing a stolid indifference for Lindberg’s entrance. And when the meal was brought, Wentz untied his hands and stood over him with an automatic while he ate.

​“Your weapon makes a poor relish, Herr Hauptmann,” said Hammersley with a laugh.

“I greatly regret its necessity,” replied Wentz with his machine-made politeness.

Hammersley ventured nothing further, eating silently, and with a surprising appetite, for good Lindberg’s face in the background had given him new courage. When the meal was done, he asked for his pipe again and Wentz ordered the Forester to fill it. Hammersley inhaled the smoke and exhaled a sigh.

“So far as I am concerned, Herr Hauptmann,” he said with a smile, “when this pipe is finished you may kill me at once.”

He extended his wrists behind him in silence while Captain Wentz took half a dozen turns of the rope and made it fast. Hammersley sat up in bed puffing at his pipe and wondering whether some miracle might not be induced that would kill Wentz. But he was quickly disillusioned, for when Lindberg took the dishes and moved toward the door, he heard Wentz’s crisp orders:

“You will send Max Senf to take the first night watch upon the prisoner. He is awaiting my orders in the guard room. Schnell.”

Without even a glance at the prisoner Lindberg saluted and went out and Hammersley’s spirits fell. Help from Lindberg was impossible. Von Stromberg was taking every precaution. There was no way out of it. Hammersley was doomed. But while Wentz was in the room he kept a cheerful countenance, though for the first time in his life that he could remember his pipe was acrid. He saw the new guard enter and heard the last orders of the officer.

“You will watch until one o’clock when your relief ​will be sent. The prisoner is to be allowed no privileges. Under no circumstances are his hands to be untied. If he wants water, you will give it to him with your own hands. Verstehen sie?”

The man stood erect and saluted. “Zu befehl, Herr Hauptmann,” he said.

Hammersley saw the door close and heard the key turn in the lock while Senf came forward into the room and stood by the foot of the bed. Hammersley studied him closely: a tall, loosely jointed man in his early thirties with the heavy brows and high cheekbones of the East Prussian, the face of a Slav, almost, with something of the thoughtful intensity of the South German mystic. His eyes were large, his nose thin and his face was bearded, but the lines of his mouth had a sensitive curve, belied by the big bony hands and broad shoulders. A sentimentalist, perhaps!

Hammersley determined to try him, for a plan had been forming in his mind. He had noticed with a glance which had included everything in the room when he entered, a Bible upon the mantelshelf, and in a tone which had in it a solemn sense of the doom which awaited him in the morning, he addressed his guardian quietly:

“Senf, you have a kind face. There is a small favor that you may do me.”

“If it does not conflict with my orders.”

“Not at all. Tomorrow morning I am to be shot. All I ask is that you will allow me to read for a while the Bible upon the chimneypiece.”

“Ach! I see no harm in that.”

He went over and got the book, opening the pages and looking through them.

“It is little enough for a dying man to ask,” he said.

​“Danke,” said Hammersley quietly, his face solemn but his mind working rapidly. “It is but right to make one’s peace with the world at a time like this.”

“I am sorry, mein Herr,” said the man mournfully. “It is not good for a man to die in the first flush of youth.”

“If it could only have been in the open, Senf, a soldier’s death, but this—Ach, wohl—we can only go once. It doesn’t matter.” He gave a deep sigh and asked his guardian to light his pipe again and open the Book at the Psalms of David.

“I cannot turn the pages, my friend. It is a pity. But propped upon one elbow I can see quite well if you will but put the candle here upon the bed.”

The man did as requested and Hammersley thanked him.

“You are a kind fellow. It is bread upon the waters. You will find it after many days.”

“It is nothing. I would expect as much from another.”

“Now, if you will permit, I would prefer the solitude of my thoughts.”

The soldier turned slowly away and Hammersley bent his gaze upon the open page, but he did not read. He was thinking, planning, watching the movements of Max Senf. Eight o’clock was long past. It must be nearly nine. But two hours remained before the arrival of the messenger from Berlin. His guardian paced slowly up and down the room between the door and window, and Hammersley felt, if he did not see, his deep bovine gaze fixed upon him from time to time. Eight or ten times the man took the length of the room and then with a deep sigh he sank into the chair at the ​foot of the bed. Hammersley did not move his head, which remained bent forward over the book, but from the tail of his eye he noted that the tall footboard of the old-fashioned bed partially concealed him. Propped up as he was he could see the man’s head as far down as the tip of his nose, but all of his head was in shadow. Arguing from this, everything upon the bed below the line of the flame of the candle was invisible to him. But a quick glance showed Hammersley that the man was not looking at him. His dark eyes were peering straight before him at the opposite wall and his mind was wrapped in some gloomy vision.

The plan he had in mind required subtlety. He marked the shadows upon the ceiling and moved up in the bed so that his own shadow would be thrown behind the line of sight of his guardian. Then he paused again, his eyes fixed on the pages, waiting for Senf to look at him again. He heard the man move in his chair, which creaked as he settled more comfortably into it. And when Hammersley looked again, only his eyes were visible, their gaze fixed darkly ahead of him.

Hammersley now puffed a volume of smoke from his pipe and slowly wriggled his left arm forward under him, so that he could see the knot that tied his wrists. It was a large knot, but vulnerable. He puffed more smoke, meanwhile watching the top of the head of Senf. As it did not move, he lay over half upon his back, and, taking care not to disturb the book, slowly advanced his arms behind him toward the blaze of the candle. The knot of the rope caught and blazed, but the candle sputtered, and he quickly withdrew his hands, sending a volume of smoke from his pipe to neutralize the odor. Senf sniffed the air curiously.

​“Something is burning,” Hammersley heard him mutter.

“My pipe,” he explained carefully. “It is a vile tobacco. But it will go out of the crack at the window.”

“Will you not try mine, Herr Hammersley? Perhaps it is better.”

“No, thanks. Nothing much matters to a dead man.”

His guardian settled back in his chair, and Hammersley repeated his maneuver more daringly, his own pipe seething like a furnace.

“You are a furious smoker, Herr Hammersley,” said Senf again.

“It is the way one smokes, mein Junger, when one smokes for the last time,” he replied.

But the fellow got up, sniffing and walking around the room.

“It is a most curious tobacco,” he muttered.

Hammersley’s wrists pained him where his bonds had cut, but he kept his gaze upon the page of the book, and Senf sat in his chair again. A strong pull of his arms and Hammersley felt the tension relax. His bonds came looser and after a few more efforts his wrists were free. His heart was jumping and he feared a stray glance of the watcher might see the throbbing of the blood at his temples, but he clasped his hands behind him and waited, slipping the sundered rope beneath a fold of the blanket.

Two—three minutes passed and Senf did not move. The untying of his feet might prove a difficult matter, but he made the venture, working slowly and patiently, his gaze on Senf’s head. Then, as the knot yielded a little to his prying fingers, his gaze quickly concen​trated on it. In his efforts he must have made a sound or a suspicious movement of the shoulders, for when he looked up he saw the head of Max Senf projecting above the tailboard of the bed, his large eyes protruding with amazement. They gazed at each other for a tense fraction of a second and then sprang upright. Hammersley threw his feet out upon the floor and leaped for the man, catching him around the waist so that he could not draw a weapon. His legs were useless and the only chance he had, a desperate one at best, was to drag the man to the floor by sheer weight and there perhaps throttle him. Senf beat with his heavy fists on Hammersley’s head and shoulders, and finally forced him backwards upon the floor, falling with him, but Hammersley still clung with frantic grip which the man could not shake off. But at last he managed to get his fingers around Hammersley’s throat and tried to force his head back.

Hammersley gasped for breath, but still struggled gamely, though he realized that he had played his last card. Things got dark, and dimly he saw the door of the room open and someone enter. Wentz, of course. His game was up.

Senf was panting heavily. “He burnt the rope,” Hammersley heard him say. “Come and help me. He has a grip of iron.”

The figure from the door moved quickly around the squirming figures, and Hammersley saw the reflection of the candle on something bright. A knife. He heard a blow, and the mass of struggling flesh above him suddenly collapsed and smothered him with its weight. With an effort he struggled free and rolled aside, looking up into the grim face of Lindberg.

​“Sh—” the man whispered. “I had to do it. There was no other way. I’ve been waiting outside.”

Hammersley tried to speak, but his throat closed, and while he struggled for his breath, he saw Lindberg go to the door and stand, his ear to the keyhole, listening. In a moment he came back.

“Ganz gut! They have heard nothing.”

“Are you sure?” Hammersley managed to gasp, as Lindberg cut the rope that bound his ankles.

“Yes. He was so sure of himself that he did not shout.”

He helped the prisoner to his feet and they clasped hands.

“Good Lindberg! My friend! I had given up.”

“I have waited until the beer was served. It is well. And now——” He looked around the room quickly. “You shall go.”

Hammersley had a sudden thought.

“Captain von Winden sent you?”

“No. He knows nothing. But he has not spoken. It is now after nine o’clock. By half past nine you must go.”

“Ja doch! But you——!”

“I shall remain.”

“No, no; I will not consent to that.”

“Yes, I have thought out a plan.”

“But they will suspect. They will shoot you.”

“No, they will not. Have I not told you that I have thought out a plan?”

“I will listen to it.”

Lindberg meanwhile had been unstrapping his pistol holster and put it on a chair.

Hammersley glanced over his shoulder at the door. “But they may come again,” he whispered.

​“I think not. There is little time to lose. We will have to take the chance.”

“But if they return and find me free it will only cause your death and do me no good.”

“Herr Hammersley, you should know by this time that I do not waste words. Have I not told you that I have made a plan? Listen. This is my story for Herr Hauptmann Wentz. I happen to be in the hallway without, carrying a pitcher of water to the room of Miss Mather—the pitcher is outside on the table—when I hear the sounds of a commotion in this room. Fearing that the prisoner has by some miracle gotten free, I unlock the door with my pass-key and enter. You have burned your bonds and killed Senf. You spring on me and make me a prisoner——” He paused.

“And you——” Hammersley broke in. “You will be left here? No, I won’t leave you—not to that fate. I will not go unless you go with me. We will contrive a way to get out of the country.”

“Ach, nein! Will you not listen? Have I not told you that I have thought of everything? I have communicated with the lady. She is ready to go with you. Her room has a dormer window around the corner of the building, and there is a ledge along the roof. You will go to her. The distance to the roof of the kitchen is thirty feet. It will require four sheets, yours and hers. They are new ones and if well twisted will hold. If you get away safely you can reach the cave in the Thorwald. No one will ever find you there——”

“Yes, Lindberg—but you—what will you say to them?”

“It is no time to waste words. Even now the lady ​is waiting for you. Come, you must get ready at once.”

He walked to the bed and quickly stripped off the blankets, twisting the sheets and tying them together. Then he took his pistol belt and fastened it around Hammersley’s waist, slipping a handful of loose cartridges into the side pocket of his leather jacket.

Hammersley, bewildered by the devotion of his old friend and tossed between alternatives of duty, stood helplessly. At the moment when he needed resolution most he was supine. But the minutes were passing. The thought of his mission suddenly brought him to life, and his face grew hard, his eyes brilliant with purpose.

“Come, Lindberg. You must go with me.”

“No,” the man insisted. “My plan is the best.”

“No. You must come with me.”

“I have made other plans, Herr Hammersley,” he whispered gently. “You will go alone. I will give you a reason.” And before Hammersley could know what he meant to do, he drew his hunting-knife from its sheath in Hammersley’s belt and plunged it into his own shoulder.

Hammersley could scarcely restrain a cry, but Lindberg smiled at him and plucking the weapon out, put it in Hammersley’s outstretched hand.

“It is nothing,” he said. “It will bleed a little. The more it bleeds the better my case with Excellenz. They will be here in three hours, if not before. Now bind and gag me—quick. There is no time to lose.”

He lay flat upon the floor and as in a dream Hammersley obeyed him, tying his arms and legs. When he had finished, Hammersley bent over the man and touched his hand gently.

​“Good-by, old friend. Whatever happens I will not forget. God bless you.”

There was a bright, keen look in the small gray eyes upturned to his.

That was all Hammersley could see of the swathed head, but it gave him a new idea of self-sacrifice.

CHAPTER XVIII
SUCCESS

HAMMERSLEY'S first act was to take off his shoes and slip one into each pocket of his jacket. They were soled with rubber, but even that he feared would make a sound. Then he put the box of matches in his pocket and blew out the candle, overturning it on the floor. The shutters of the window were closed, and if they were opened carefully the man in the garden below might not notice any change in the appearance of the window. Hammersley buttoned his jacket and, carefully pushing back the shutter, peered out. Fortunately the night had fallen darkly, and overhead black clouds were lowering, and while he hesitated, searching the paths below for the figure of the guard, there was a patter of rain upon the roof. The gods were propitious.

At last he made out a dark bulk moving to and fro along the garden path toward the toolhouse. Hammersley watched, waiting until the man’s back was turned, when he opened the shutter wider and threw the rope of sheets out upon the ledge. Closing the shutter again, he came toward the house. So far so good, for the whiteness of the sheets would have been plainly visible had the guard been looking. The next stage of his escape was more difficult, and he let the fellow go and come twice along his path as he timed his new move. He tried the shutter carefully to see that it did not creak and measured with his eye the distance ​to the living-room chimney, which he must reach, during the twenty paces the soldier would take toward the toolhouse. A wind was blowing in the treetops and somewhere below him a young oak was rustling its last year’s leaves. The shutter fortunately opened in the direction in which he must go, so he sat upon the window-sill, doubled up, and when the time came, without looking again at the guard, moved quickly, slipping out noiselessly, closing the shutter behind him and, gathering up the sheet as he went, crept like a cat on a wall along the narrow ledge. It creaked with his weight, and some small object that his foot had touched grated along the roof and fell to the ground below. A tiny sound at best, but magnified in Hammersley’s ears a hundred times. He had reached the wide chimney and waited above it, listening for the footsteps of the man below.

There was no sound. The man had stopped walking. Hammersley did not dare look out from his hiding-place, but he knew that in that moment his fate was hanging in a balance. Just then a heavier gust of wind than usual dislodged a broken branch from a tree nearby, which fell to the ground. Still the man below did not move and Hammersley blessed his wisdom in closing the shutter, for he knew that the guard must be peering upward, searching for a sign of anything unusual in its appearance.

Hammersley held his breath, straining his ears for the sound that would tell him that he had not failed. In a while, which seemed interminable, it began again, the slow crunch of gravel under a heavy foot—ceased, and began again, as though uncertainly, so he waited until the sounds were regular as before, then advancing his head cautiously, he waited for the proper time, ​and keeping the chimney between himself and the garden, ran straight up the roof to the gable and crouched quickly upon the other side. He was more fortunate this time for the roof gave forth no sound.

Once beyond the protection of the gables he could for the moment disregard the danger of the guard, for his orders had been to watch but one window, and Hammersley knew enough of the German character to be sure that the soldier below would not leave that side of the house. As he slid carefully down the roof upon the other side, he saw that there were two dormers, and for a moment could not think which of them let into the room in which Doris was imprisoned. He reached the ledge and paused. The shutters of both windows were closed. Lindberg had told him this, but he swore mildly to himself because he hadn’t paid closer attention to the Forester’s instructions, for while one of the rooms was Doris’s, the other he knew was to be occupied by John Rizzio. It was while he hesitated that he heard a whisper at his left, and crawling along the ledge, in a moment had reached the window.

“Is it you, Cyril?” he heard.

“Yes,” he whispered. “Let me in.”

Lindberg had opened the shutter in the afternoon, but it was still stubborn, and when Cyril put his strength to Doris’s, it creaked abominably. It was not really a loud noise, but to the sensitive ears of the fugitives it seemed as if discovery must be inevitable. At last they managed to open it wide enough to admit Cyril’s long legs and his body speedily followed. Inside the room they stood, their hands clasped, fearful of discovery, listening for sounds without or within which would tell them of the approach of the dreaded Wentz. Nothing but the sighing of the wind in the ​treetops and the patter of the rain. As hope returned, Hammersley questioned quickly:

“You are ready to go?”

“Yes,” she replied eagerly.

“The sheets?”

“Here. I have prepared.”

It was dark and he could not see, but he followed the sheet to its end with his hand and found that it was fastened to the bedpost. How she had managed to move the heavy bed across the room he did not know, and it was unnecessary to question, for there it was. He reassured himself as to the knot that she had made and then fastened his own sheets to the other end.

“Do you think you can manage it alone? It will not hold us both.”

“Try me,” she whispered bravely.

“The rope will reach almost to the kitchen roof.”

“Yes, it is just below. I could see the edge of it through the shutter this afternoon.”

He caught her in his arms and their lips met.

“I will go first. Then when the tension relaxes, you follow.”

She pressed his hand as he slid his feet out of the window and paused crouching on the ledge listening. Then he waved his hand and slowly went down. He knew that the angle of the building quite hid him from the garden path, and he slid down the improvised rope as quickly as he could until his feet dangled in space. He looked below him, but in the darkness the distance was uncertain. Had Lindberg miscalculated? Or had Doris used too much of the sheet at the upper end? He let himself down until his hands groped the end of the sheet while he felt for a landing with his toes. ​He touched nothing, and still swayed and spun in the air like an apple on a string at All Hallowe’en, a fine mark for an automatic from any of the windows that stared blankly at him from the second story. There was nothing for it but to drop, stretching his toes down to meet the impact. Fortunately it was not far, but he lost his balance and toppled sideways, catching himself upon an arm and knee. Here again the wind saved him from discovery, but he drew his weapon and kept a look on the corner of the garden, meanwhile watching for Doris.

She came at once, slowly but fearlessly, and in a moment he had her safely in his arms, drawing her back near the bulk of the building to crouch and wait and listen again. They did not dare to speak, but Hammersley’s blood was surging madly with hope. If they had not been discovered now, the chances were that some time would elapse, enough at least to enable the fugitives to get a good start of their pursuers. But the dangling sheet warned Hammersley that they must move quickly. He peered over the edge of the roof. A light was burning in the kitchen, but whether the room was occupied or not, he could not tell. He did not dare risk a sprained ankle by jumping, but found that by lowering himself he could easily reach the fuel box that stood near the kitchen door. In a moment they were on the ground and moving along in the shelter of the hedge toward the hangar.

Hammersley exulted. It was something to have brought Doris away, but it was something more to have circumvented von Stromberg. The bundled figure of Lindberg, lying up there bleeding in the dark, shot a pain through his heart, but in action, moving toward ​the goal of his hopes, even Lindberg was put behind him. He had no fear for the wound in Lindberg’s shoulder. The old man was as tough as a pine knot and would survive the loss of blood. It was Lindberg’s ordeal with von Stromberg that bothered him.

When they reached the shelter of the woods the tension relaxed.

“We’re going to get off, Doris,” he said joyously. “I know every stick of these woods, and they can never find us. But I’m afraid the strain has been too much for you. How are you feeling?”

“Never better,” she said bravely. “Which way now?” Hammersley had paused a moment to slip on his shoes, and as he got to his feet,

“Follow me,” he said. “If I go too fast for you, let me know.”

He cut into the woods and presently struck a path which led to the left, and for a while they followed this rapidly. Thanks to a fine physique and a vigorous life out-of-doors, the girl was in good condition, and though breathing hard upon the slopes, made no murmur. Hammersley knew that he had little time to spare, and Doris followed blindly, asking no questions. She was aware from what Cyril had said in the afternoon that his objective in coming to Germany was now within reach, and she could only judge of its importance to England by the desperate chances he had taken. When it was time that she should know he would tell her. She judged that Cyril knew that she had been tricked into betraying him, and she made up her mind that, whatever happened now, she would stay with him until the end. She owed him that.

After a while, when they had been moving for per​haps twenty minutes, they reached an opening in the trees where she could see gray patches of sky through the branches overhead, and her feet emerging from the dry leaves and moss felt a firmer contact.

“The Schöndorf road,” he said. “We can follow it side by side. Are you tired?”

“No.”

They went on more rapidly, while Hammersley explained:

“The documents I came to Germany for are to be brought along this road tonight in an automobile. The hour they are due to reach Blaufelden is eleven, and if I know anything of the infallibility of the German secret messenger, they will be here on time. It is now after ten. I have an hour or less to make my preparations.”

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“Get them. First, I’m going to take you to a spot where you will be as safe as if you were at home in Ashwater Park.”

“No,” she said firmly, “I’m going with you.”

“But that’s impossible. I don’t know what may happen. My plans are of the vaguest——”

“I will share them. No, you sha’n’t refuse me. I will follow you. I can help. I must. I would die in those roads alone. Don’t you understand?”

“But if I fail and they take you, you will be as guilty as I. It’s an act of war, Doris.”

“Then all the more reason why I should be committed to it. They made war on me.”

“But there will be danger. I can’t let you take the risk.”

“I don’t know how you are going to stop me,” she said defiantly.

​He paused, then stopped and caught her by the elbows, peering down into her eyes. Then he laughed.

“Mated!” he cried. “This is the greatest moment of my life.”

“And mine,” her voice answered him.

Her lips met his in a quick caress, like those the wives of the Spartans gave when they sent their men to battle.

He caught her hand in his and they moved forward more quickly. Along this path Death was riding toward them, but they strode eagerly to meet it, to defy it, to defeat it. Cyril planned rapidly, casting anxious glances along the road behind them. Every foot they traveled took them further from pursuers, if pursuers there were. Every foot they traveled took them nearer the advancing messenger. So that the farther they went the longer would be the while before they were overtaken, but the shorter the time for preparation to stop the automobile. Murder was not in Hammersley’s line. They passed many places, difficult spots in the road where the machine must almost stop and go into low gear to climb declivities, places where projecting rocks jutted rough faces up to the very ruts of the road. It would not be difficult to kill with an automatic at a distance of two paces, but Hammersley could not play the game that way. He was a spy, if the laws of war called him so, but he would not, even in this extremity, use the spy’s weapons. If the other man fought, it would be different. The desperate nature of the undertaking was beginning to come to him. Two men, perhaps three or even four! And yet he must win. He must. Slowly but surely a plan was forming and he made up his mind to put it into practice.

​“Not tired yet?” he asked.

“No. I could go on forever.”

“Then listen. We are nearing the Thorwald. It is just beyond here, less than half a mile away.”

“The Thorwald?”

“It’s a favorite place of mine, known only to Lindberg and Udo, a cave high up in the rocks, safe as a church, unless Udo happens to hunt for us there.”

“And will he?”

“I hope not. At the foot of the crags this road runs. We must get there first. Can you run?”

“I’ll try.”

He gave her his hand again, and they settled into a jog trot. She was breathing fast in a moment, but she was game and did not falter, though her lungs seemed to be bursting. But as they neared the spot, Cyril slowed down to a walk again.

“At the foot of the glen there’s a dry bed of a stream full of rocks. There used to be a bridge here, but it was washed away. It’s an awkward spot, even for a good motor. I’m going to make it worse.”

He left her, dashing on ahead, while she followed, and when she reached the stream she saw him dragging one of the bridge timbers across the road. She wanted to help, but he told her to watch, until he got another and then another timber into place. And in another moment it was evident that the barricade was formidable enough to deter any machine from crossing. And there was no way to go around, for upon one side rose the crags and upon the other the gully fell away into a dark pit filled with rocks and tangled branches.

There was nothing for it now but to wait. And yet it seemed a desperate thing to do. Weary and ​blown as Doris was, it would have seemed better to have gone on and on—anything to put distance between Cyril and the death that surely awaited them back there. It seemed impossible that so long a time as this could have elapsed before the tell-tale rope of sheets should have been discovered. Already she was sure that Wentz and his men must be on the way in a machine or on horses, perhaps which would cover the distance they had traveled in less than a quarter of the time. She thought that she heard the sound of a machine in the distance and the voices of men. She pleaded with him to go on, but he only smiled at her.

“You must do what I say, Doris,” he said, and then paused, listening. “They’re coming,” he whispered.

She had heard the sound of a machine. “From which direction?” she gasped.

“There,” and he pointed across the gully.

“They’ll be here in a moment. Listen to me! Walk quickly to your right, across the road to that large stone. Stop!” She obeyed wonderingly. “Now cross the road again, using those rocks as stepping stones.” She did it, bewildered, pausing on a ledge of rocks that formed a part of the crag. “Now follow the line of the rocks into the bushes. Fifty feet from the road, hidden among the shrubbery, you’ll find a cleft in the rocks. Climb it and you’ll come out here,” and he pointed upward just above the road. “Wait for me there. I’ll come in a moment.”

And as she hesitated, he caught her by the elbows and shoved her along the ledge backwards. “Go! Do you hear? I’ll have no refusal.”

There was no denying the accent of command in his voice or the quick flash of his eye. Never until von ​Stromberg had badgered her today had a man spoken to her in this tone before. But she loved him for it, rejoiced in his strength—the primitive instinct of woman to obey.

When she had gone, Hammersley quickly crossed the stream and took a position behind a thick bush, listening to the exhaust of the approaching machine, but listening and looking, too, in the opposite direction for sounds of his pursuers. A searchlight made fantastic shapes among the leaves and long shadows suddenly shot out along the road.

Hammersley had drawn his automatic from his pocket and was fingering it coolly. He put his fingers over his eyes, so that the light would not mar his familiarity with the darkness. He did not know how many men opposed him and did not seem to care. The main thing now was to keep his eye undimmed and his hand steady. The machine came, slowed down and stopped while a guttural exclamation came from the driver. The searchlight focused downward into the rocks of the gully. Screening his eyes from its light with a hand, Hammersley peered out at the occupants of the car. There were two men—better than three, but not so good as one. The man at the wheel rose and got down just beside him, moving forward to remove the obstacles.

Hammersley wasted no time. He leveled his automatic at the broad back of the driver and his voice rang sharply in German:

“I have come here for the dispatches intended for Herr General von Stromberg. You will give them to me at once.”

The man who was just bending over toward the timber straightened quickly and turned, reaching for his ​holster, but the man in the seat of the car, who wore a military cap, was quicker, for there was a report, and a bullet sang close to Hammersley’s ear.

A stream of fire came from Hammersley’s automatic; three shots in quick succession, and the man in the car pitched forward in his seat and slid to the floor. And by the time the other man had drawn his pistol, Hammersley had leaped behind a tree and came out of some bushes beyond. The chauffeur fired, but not in Hammersley’s direction. The continuous glare of the light in their eyes had made their vision in the darkness uncertain.

“Do you surrender?” shouted Hammersley.

The German’s reply was to fire at him again and miss. He still stood in the reflection of the headlight, a bulky silhouette, which made too fair a mark, while Hammersley stood in the shadows of the bushes. Hammersley pitied him.

“Surrender!” he repeated.

The man was not a coward and rushed blindly toward the voice, shooting again, too close for comfort.

“Well, then——” Hammersley said, and fired again.

The man stumbled to his knees and then fell prone, his fingers clutching among the leaves. The whole incident had taken less than a minute, and a deathly silence seemed to fall, following the reverberations of the shots. Hammersley stood tensely, listening and peering along the road toward Blaufelden. There was a glow of light at a distance and he could now hear the sound of another machine. Von Stromberg had learned of his escape and with a perfect intuition was coming here directly and fast. The sound of the shots had been heard. There was no time to lose. Ham​mersley bent over the man on the ground and searched his pockets rapidly. Gloves, matches, a spark plug, tobacco, but no papers. The chauffeur, of course. By main strength he lifted the dead weight of the man in the car and carried him down into the glare of the searchlight. It was a dangerous thing to do, for the lights of the machine from Blaufelden were already swinging through the treetrunks. But he worked quickly and skillfully, tearing open the officer’s gray overcoat and searching his pockets. In the inside pocket of his uniform he found them, a bulky package, and other papers. He read the superscription quickly, “Sein Excellenz General Graf von Stromberg.” Then sprang aside out of the glare of the lights at the very moment when the other machine came swinging rapidly around the turn in the road.

“The papers are safe?” roared a voice which Hammersley recognized.

“Ja,” Hammersley replied in a rough tone. “A man tried to stop me and I shot him.”

“Ganz gut!”

“He is here,” shouted Hammersley again.

All the while he had been moving out of the glare of the searchlights, and as the men from the other car tumbled out and came forward, he turned into the darkness, and abandoning all caution, took to his heels and ran at top speed in the opposite direction.

Behind him he heard shouts as his trick was discovered, but he knew that in the matter of speed he had nothing to fear afoot from any German at Windenberg. The thing that bothered him now was a way to hide the marks of his footsteps, for in places the mud was soft and he knew that in the morning light they would follow him; so he picked his way ​carefully, running at top speed for a mile at least, to lead the pursuit away from the Thorwald and then at the banks of a small stream paused a moment and listened. He had eluded them. Then without hesitation, though puffing fearfully from his exertions, he stepped down into the cold waters of the stream and waded up it, avoiding the ledges and making sure that he left no mark behind him. As he climbed higher up the mountain, he could see in the distance the glow of the lights of the machines and when he reached a mossy bank which would not betray him, he clambered out of the water and turned, doubling like a fox, upon his trail, turning back in the general direction from which he had come.

Doris worried him. He could imagine her crouching there two hundred feet in the air just above the two machines, half dead with fear of capture and terror for him. Had she seen what had happened and understood it? Would she have the kind of silent endurance to crouch there and wait? He hurried on into the maze of rocks and deep woods, finding at last a deer trail that he knew. There were but two means of ingress to the cave of the Thorwald, one by the secret path in the bushes up the rocks which Doris had taken, the other from the upper side which he was now rapidly approaching.

He ran along the deer trail, reloading his automatic as he went, his eyes peering ahead for familiar landmarks, cutting in at last to the left at a great rock around which the deer trail led. He now proceeded with great caution. Far below him he could see the reflections of the lights of the two cars and heard the voices of men. He went down a way toward the wall of rocks, clambering over huge bowlders, haul​ing himself here and there by the aid of tree limbs, reaching at last the dry bed of the old stream which down in the road had been of such assistance to him.

Now the wall of rock rose sheer before him. He stole cautiously along its face, feeling with his hands and peering upward. In a moment he found what he was looking for, a small projecting ledge which he mounted, and followed to his right for a way, then mounting again by easy stages to a fissure wider than his body which he entered and followed quickly. It led downward it seemed into the bowels of the crag, but came out suddenly into an open space, a kind of amphitheater, with a ridge of rock upon one side, and upon the other what appeared to be a solid wall. He crossed this space quickly and peered over.

Below him the crag jutted out over the road and upon it somewhere was Doris. He strained his gaze downward but could not see her. What if they had found her footsteps and followed? No, that was hardly possible, for the ridge of rock began immediately at the road, and thanks to his precautions, she would leave no footprints.

Slowly he descended, choosing his footing with quick deliberation, for the slightest sound, the dislodging of a twig or a sliver of crumbled stone and the crag of the Thorwald would become in a moment a hornet’s nest. Fortunately the back of the rock screened him from the road, and unless von Stromberg had sent men into the woods to left and right, there was no chance of discovery. At last he reached the level and a dark shadow rose at his very feet and silently clasped his hand. He took her in his arms for a moment in devout thankfulness. If the true moment of their mating had been back there in the road while danger ​threatened them before and behind, this place of security was the beginning of its consummation. He did not speak and only motioned her to sit while he crouched beside her, waiting.

Below in the road he heard the rasping voice of His Excellenz, speaking in no gentle tones to the wounded chauffeur of the messenger’s machine, asking question after question which were answered feebly enough. After a while the men who had followed Hammersley returned and made their reports—the dull boom of the voice of Wentz and the harsh crackle of von Stromberg’s in rage and mortification.

“He got away, Excellenz,” said Wentz. “For a moment only I saw him, and followed fast as I could, but my legs are too short.”

“Bah! You are an imbecile, Herr Hauptmann. And the other men, are not their legs longer?”

“Yes, but Herr Hammersley has the legs of a deer. They are following, but it is like hunting for a grain of barley in a coal scuttle. He may have taken to the woods anywhere.”

“Ja—but the Fräulein. She could not have run as fast as he!”

“It is my opinion,” said Wentz with some temerity, “that they had a rendezvous somewhere beyond. He has known these mountains since his boyhood.”

“Esel! But she hasn’t, and how should she find it in the dark?”

“Perhaps, the matter being so important, he would have deserted her.”

“Quatsch! Find me the girl and I will find you Hammersley.”

Hammersley felt Doris’s clasp tighten on his own.

“She cannot have gotten far away. Search for her, ​schafskopf. Search the woods and rocks until morning. Take the other machine and follow his footsteps until you see them no more. Then follow his trail in the woods. Take the two Försters with you. I will go back to Blaufelden to send for more men and question the guards who permitted his escape. Go!”

The fugitives sat silently listening to the sounds below them, heard the orders to put the wounded man and the dead messenger into the machine and presently the commotion of departure as the machines were backed away from the gully, turned, in available spots, and then departed in opposite directions, General von Stromberg’s at full speed, the other slowly, while Captain Wentz walked on before, his shoulders bent, trying to follow the signs of Hammersley’s rubber soles in the road. But it had begun to rain steadily again and Hammersley was thankful, for it would not be long before all marks of his footsteps would be erased.

CHAPTER XIX
THE CAVE ON THE THORWALD

SAFE?" he heard her whisper.

“Yes, for the present.”

“You have what you came for?”

“I think so.”

“And what shall we do now?”

“Sleep. You’re dead beat. Come.”

He rose and helped her to her feet, then after another pause, turned toward the wall of rocks behind them.

“Do you think you can make it? It’s a difficult climb.”

“Yes. I’ve that much left in me. You lead the way and I’ll follow.” Her teeth were chattering.

As he touched her sleeve he found it soaked with moisture.

“Poor child. You’re nearly frozen.” He had not been conscious of the occasional spatter of rain, for his leather jacket had kept him dry. “But I’ll have you warm and snug before you can say knife.”

And when she questioned, “A fire——” he replied, “Isn’t that what one uses to get warm with?”

“But here—tonight——?”

“Oh, don’t bother. You’ll see.”

They were climbing up the face of the slippery rocks, Hammersley pausing from time to time to let her rest, pulling her from above when he reached the ​ledges, and at last they came out into the amphitheater of bowlders from which he had descended.

She was almost too weary for comment and followed blindly as he led her to the wall of the rock where he seemed to disappear in its very face. She followed him inside a dark opening and when they were well within he relinquished her hand and struck a match. A brief glimpse she had of a small chamber in the cliff not twenty feet square when the match went out. He struck another and shading it with his hand went forward. She saw him find what he was looking for and in a moment a candle, after faintly sputtering for a moment, sent forth a steady glow of light.

“Sit here on this stool. I’ll have you right in a jiffy.”

She obeyed him and looked around her. At one side was a bed of pine needles, at another a small table and in the middle of the rocky floor the gray embers of what had been a fire.

“A bit roughish, but not so bad?”

She nodded while he busied himself in building the fire. There were dry leaves, twigs and logs in the corner, and soon a blaze was leaping cheerfully upward. And while she wondered at the signs of occupancy he answered her thought.

“It’s Lindberg’s. He comes here often. It was here that he and I always slept when we went on hunting trips. You see there’s a natural chimney overhead in the rocks where the bally smoke goes out. They might observe the smoke by day, but at night we’re quite safe. I’ve been all around the place when the fire was goin’ and there isn’t a sign of it outside.”

He helped her put her coat off and made her com​fortable close to the fire, after which he quickly took the package of papers out of his pocket and examined them. The single papers were military orders of no importance to one Lieutenant Orstmann, obviously the dead messenger. Hammersley put them aside, breaking the seal of the heavy envelope and examining its contents carefully. First a letter of instructions to His Excellency von Stromberg, signed in the bold hand of the Emperor of Germany himself. He showed her the signature and explained its contents and all thought of weariness went from her mind.

“It is—it’s what you came for?”

“Yes,” he replied, smiling grimly. “I’ve got it.”

“Is it—it isn’t so important that you can’t tell me?” she asked timidly.

He laughed, put his arm around her and held her for a moment tenderly. She had endured where a man might have flinched, and yet at this moment she was all woman—timid, weary unto death, but still curious. It was the master impulse.

“No,” he smiled. “You’ve jolly well earned the right to know. I’ll tell you.”

He was so big, so strong, so certain of himself that she wondered how, for a moment even, she could have thought him other than he was. With a sudden impulse of pride and tenderness, she rose, put her arms around his neck and bending his head down to hers kissed him upon the lips. He caught her to him and held her in his arms.

“O Cyril,” she murmured, “that I could ever have failed in my belief in you, that I could ever have thought that you were false! Why didn’t you tell me the truth? I would have kept your secret.”

“It was impossible, dear. It was too big a thing ​and I was sworn to silence. But since you found out——”

“Did you think me curious—” she asked naïvely, “because I read the cigarette papers?”

“Curious!” he laughed. “Well rather! The mistake I made was in tellin’ you not to read them. If I——”

“Don’t laugh at me,” she whispered. “I can’t stand that. The only retribution for what I did this afternoon is a blow. If you struck me, Cyril, I should not care.”

“But I won’t, you know, old girl. But I’m going to kiss you again if you don’t mind.”

And he did, while a shadow darkened her eyes. “It seems terrible to be happy, even in our moment of security, with the shadow of death hanging so closely over us. I know you had to kill him, Cyril, but——” She paused.

“It was either that or he would have killed me. As it was, it was too jolly close a thing for comfort. I gave the other man his chance, but he wouldn’t take it. Lucky he didn’t, for I might have missed the papers.”

She clung to him more closely.

“And if you had been killed?” she whispered. “I saw it all. At first I thought you had fallen. O Cyril, the agony of it! And then you came out from behind the tree and I knew that you were unharmed. I had seen a man die, as I had, there upon the rocks at Ben-a-Chielt, but when the other one came at you I wanted you to kill him. I wanted it. I prayed that you would. It was murder—in my heart. I can’t understand how I have changed. And I’ve always thought death such a fearsome thing!”

She hid her face in his shoulder and clung to him, ​trembling. She had passed through danger valiantly, carelessly even, but now that for the moment danger had passed, woman-like, she yielded to the reaction. He kissed her gently.

“Sh—child. Don’t let it work on you. No bally use. We’re safe now.”

“Yes—safe for the present. That ought to be enough for me. But if anything had happened to you—!” She shuddered.

“But it didn’t——”

“Oh, I’m thankful,” she whispered. “Thankful for that—and for you—the trouble I’ve passed through—the pain of my thoughts of you—I’m thankful for those too, because without them I never should have known you—the real you, Cyril. I sometimes think that life deals too easily with most of us to bring out the best that’s in us. I never would have known you in England, Cyril, doing the things you always did.”

He smiled at her.

“I’m the same chap, though. Can’t tell what a fellow will do when he has to.”

“But you didn’t have to. You might have gone to France and sat in a trench. Instead of that you did what was harder—let them distrust you—hold you in contempt—keeping silent and cheerful, while you were doing such splendid things for England.” She paused while she caressed him and said in a proud whisper, “The Honorable Cyril!”

“Honorable!” he smiled. “You’d hardly get von Stromberg to think that.”

“That terrible old man!” she went on clinging to him. “I can see his vulture face now. He would have shot you—tomorrow!”

“But we fooled him—what? Poor Lindberg!”

​She questioned him and he told her of the devotion of his old friend.

“And what will von Stromberg do to Lindberg?” she asked anxiously.

“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “Nothin’ perhaps, unless Udo tells.” He paused and looked into the fire. “Wish I knew about Udo,” he said thoughtfully. “We were very good pals last year.”

“But he wouldn’t see you shot!”

“He couldn’t do anythin’. I am betrayin’ his country.”

“But not your country, Cyril,” she said.

“No, thank God. Not mine. I love Germany—the Germany of my mother—and the men like Lindberg. But the Germany of von Stromberg—that’s not Germany to me.”

“Do you think we will get away?”

“Yes,” he said quickly.

She read the anxiety in his voice and knew that he was thinking of her, and in that moment a new idea of her duty came to her.

“You mean,” she said quickly, “that you could get away if it wasn’t for me. O Cyril, I know. Don’t try to deceive me. You could disguise yourself and get away to the Swiss border. It would not be difficult for you. I am a weight around your neck which may destroy you.”

“Hush, child.”

“No. I am not too stupid to see that. You ought to be going now.” She clung to his arms and looked up into his face as her duty came more clearly to her, while her voice trembled with earnestness. “I want you to go, Cyril. Your life is valuable to England. They are on a false scent down there. You could get ​away in the darkness and by morning you can be miles away. I’m not afraid. Tomorrow I can go and give myself up. I am only a girl—an American. They will not dare to harm me. Don’t smile. I am in deadly earnest. You must go, Cyril—now—now——”

But he only patted her gently.

“You think that I am a child,” she went on, “that I cannot be trusted to get along alone. Haven’t I proved it to you that I am not afraid? Look at me, Cyril. I am only a little tired now but tomorrow I will go to von Stromberg and say, ‘Here I am—now what can you do to me?’ He may threaten and bluster and rage, but that will not frighten me—when you are safe. What can he reply? What could he do? My nation is not at war with his. He would not dare! O Cyril, say that you’ll go—say that you’ll go——”

She looked up into his face and saw that its expression had not changed. He was still smiling at her softly while she felt the touch of his fingers gently petting her.

“Oh—you won’t go—you won’t!” she cried, and then without further warning burst into a passion of tears.

“Don’t, Doris, for God’s sake,” he whispered. “Don’t break now. I need all your courage and your strength. You’ve been so brave—so strong. Keep up your spirits, there’s a dear. We’ll pull through, don’t you worry.”

“They’ll take you—if you stay here.”

“No. They won’t find us. I’m not afraid of that, and there are water and biscuits here. We’ll take things easy for a while and then slip off. Do you think I could go and leave you in the lurch? Pretty sort of a Johnny I’d be to do a thing like that! Not for twenty Englands, Doris,” he whispered, kissing ​her tenderly. “Not for twenty Englands, I wouldn’t.” His touch soothed her and she grew more quiet.

“Of—of course you w-wouldn’t,” she murmured. “But I w-wish you would.”

Her hands met around his neck and he raised her chin and kissed her on the mouth. It was a kiss of plighted troth, of tenderness, faith and the exalted passion that comes with tears.

“Mated?” he whispered.

“Yes—yes,” she murmured faintly.

They did not move for a long moment when Doris slowly disengaged her arms from around his neck and moved slightly away. Her hair had fallen and hung in golden disorder about her shoulders. She put up her arm, trying to catch the escaping pins, and then she smiled at him, dimpling adorably.

“Come,” he said gently. “You must get to bed. Your coat is nearly dry, but I’ll cover you with my jacket. You must sleep, too. No shammin’, you know. Can’t tell what may happen tomorrow.”

“I’ll try,” she murmured obediently, while he led her to the couch of boughs and made her lie on it. But as he knelt beside her, covering her with his jacket, she caught his hands and would not relinquish them. He raised hers to his lips and kissed them again and again: small, muscular hands they were, but now very brown and dirty. “Are you comfortable? Sorry I haven’t a tub.”

She was silent a moment and then straightened and asked him:

“You promised to tell me about the papers. Won’t you?”

He laughed.

“Not now. It must be nearly morning.”

​“Yes, now. I’m not tired now. I will sleep afterwards. I like to hear your voice, Cyril. Perhaps it will soothe me to sleep.”

“Are you sure?” he asked doubtfully—and she nodded.

He saw that she was still nervous and wakeful and sank beside her couch, taking her hand in his.

“It is really quite interestin’,” he began slowly. “Three years ago, at the invitation of the Emperor of Germany, when Europe was at peace and there was no cloud upon the horizon bigger than a chap’s hand, there met in a shootin’ lodge near Schöndorf, not ten miles from here, six men. It was a secret conference, arranged by the Emperor of Germany through His Excellency Graf von Stromberg. The six men were His Highness Prince von Waldheim, at one time Germany’s ambassador to France; Admiral von Frankenhausen, head and front of the Imperial German Navy; General von Sandersdorf, the brains of the German General Staff; His Excellency Moritz von Komarom, minister of war of the Austrian Empire; Viscount Melborne, English Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs; and Harlow-Gorden, of the British Admiralty.”

She was listening avidly, wide-eyed, the array of well-known names telling her as nothing else could have done the importance of the conference.

“This meetin’ was a secret,” he went on. “These men all traveled incognito, without servants, and were met by an agent of General von Stromberg at Schöndorf and conducted in automobiles to the huntin’ lodge I have spoken of. These men remained there for two days and two nights and then went home. But while they were there they were makin’ new history for ​Europe.” He paused to fill his pipe but her curiosity could not be restrained.

“And what were they doing there, Cyril? I can’t understand.”

Hammersley got up and held his pipe to the candle, for matches were scarce, and then, with maddening calmness, sat beside her again.

“That secret meetin’ of these chaps had to do with nothin’ less than the ruin of France——”

“France!” she cried. “England had nothing against France and now she is her ally.”

“Three years ago the political conditions were different,” he answered. “Those representatives of England came and sat with representatives of Germany and Austria while they plotted the destruction of France.”

“But how do you know this, Cyril? I can’t understand.”

“No more do I, but it’s a fact. Let me go on. At the table in the lodge where this conference was held, Viscount Melborne made notes of what was goin’ on, includin’ the combinations of land and naval forces that could be made against France and Russia, and the plans to break the Russian Federation in the Balkans. When the meetin’ was over all the scraps of paper these chaps had scribbled on were destroyed by fire before the eyes of the men who had made ’em, except those of Viscount Melborne, who put ’em in his pocket, and with them a pencil copy of this secret treaty in his own handwriting. The original copy of the treaty was entrusted to Harlow-Gorden, who put it in his dispatch-box. It was not until the next day when the Englishmen, in the train on the way to Paris, discovered that Viscount Melborne’s private papers ​were missin’. Jolly fine mess—what? They got off at the next stop, went back to Schöndorf and looked for the papers, but neither there nor at the lodge was there hair or hide of ’em. So they went back to England hopin’ that by some fortunate accident the papers had been destroyed.”

“And these—” asked the girl, “are they?”

He nodded. “To make the story short, I found out where they had gone. My flights to Germany have been made for this purpose. Don’t you see? The papers came into the hands of the Emperor of Germany and he was plannin’ to have ’em sent to the President of the French Republic—England’s ally. It wouldn’t do, you know, to have such papers at such a time fall into the hands of France. Hardly a credit to English diplomacy. What? Might even result in a new entente.”

“But where were the papers in the meanwhile?” she asked.

“That is what took me so bally long to find out. After many hunts away from Windenberg at night, I traced ’em to a Socialist by the name of Gottschalk at Schöndorf, who had received ’em from a pensioner of the Imperial Forest Service, one of the attendants at the huntin’ lodge where the conference was held. Whether he found ’em or stole ’em I don’t know, but I frightened him and he confessed. I was on the very point of stealing ’em from Gottschalk when I found out that he had been writin’ to the Wilhelmstrasse, and when I tried to get ’em they were gone. If I’d got ’em then, you would not be here, Doris, and I——”

“But how did you learn what the Wilhelmstrasse proposed to do with them?”

“Oh, that was quite clear. The English Foreign ​Office has been badly frightened and has used every effort with its secret agents in Berlin to get that information. It reached London the other day. And just before I left Scotland I knew the job was to be given to General von Stromberg. The rest was Kismet—the fortune of war—a jolly good piece of luck! Lindberg overheard through the microphone von Stromberg givin’ instructions to Wentz—so that His Excellency’s own weapons were turned against him. I was goin’ to waylay Wentz on the way to France, but circumstances prevented——”

“It was I, Cyril,” she broke in pleadingly. “I didn’t know. I betrayed you.”

“A trick,” he laughed, “invented in the Rameses family—but still useful.”

“He frightened me,” she stammered. “I believed the message signed ‘Maxwell’ genuine.”

“Not Maxwell,” he said gravely, “for Maxwell—a sore spot since the war began in the side of the War Office—Maxwell is dead.”

“You——?” she exclaimed fearfully.

“Yes,” he replied. “I told and they caught him. I couldn’t do so before. It’s war, Doris. It is a fair game. I ask no favors—nor do I give any.”

She was silent a moment looking into the fire.

“Yes, I understand—a terrible game with odds against——” And then, after a pause, “You say that we will get away. Won’t you tell me your plan?”

He rose with a confident laugh.

“Yes, I have a plan, but I’m not going to tell it now. You are going to sleep.”

She laughed wearily and sat up.

“And you? Where will you sleep?”

“By the fire. I’ve got some thinkin’ to do. I’m not ​sleepy. I had eight hours last night. I’m going to watch.”

He bent over her and gently made her lie down. “I will talk to you no more. You must go to sleep.”

She sighed and stretched herself out while he covered her with his coat. Then he put a fresh log on the fire and sat beside her again. In a moment he heard her voice.

“I hope you don’t mind my telling you, Cyril, that I love you a great deal.”

“Not in the least,” he whispered. “I wouldn’t mind listenin’ while you said it all night. But——”

“There. You’re going to insist on my sleeping again!”

“Won’t you?”

“I don’t seem to feel as if I could ever sleep again. You’re so cool, so calm, Cyril. How can you be?”

“No bally use gettin’ excited. Here we are snug as two bugs in a rug. We’ll slip through them some way.”

“But where will we go?”

He smiled.

“I have a notion of goin’ to England.” His kind of quiet humor always put her on her mettle.

“To England—?” She started up.

“There won’t be much chance of your doin’ anythin’ tomorrow if you don’t get your sleep,” he insisted gently. “Do what I ask, Doris. Sleep you must.”

“I’ll try. Good night, Cyril.”

“Good night.” He kissed her on the forehead and drew his jacket over her again, then sat beside her, her hand in his, watching. Gradually her nerves grew quiet and weariness mastered her. He waited until ​her breathing indicated sleep, when he carefully relinquished her hand and moved to the fire, where he carefully studied the papers by the light of his candle, after which he slipped them into the pocket of his trousers and moved softly across the cave into a corner, where he opened the lid of a tin box and examined its contents, taking out a fresh candle to replace the other one, which was on the point of expiring.

Then he filled his pipe with great deliberateness and, returning to the stool by the fire, crossed his knees and bent forward, gazing into the blaze, his brows tangled in deep thought. He had succeeded in getting what he came for. So far, the secret of the meeting in the shooting lodge was safe. But for how long? By this time a description of the two of them had, of course, been telegraphed to every village and military station in Germany. That wouldn’t do at all. Alone it might be managed, with a German officer’s uniform and Herr Lieutenant Orstmann’s military orders, but with Doris—it wasn’t to be thought of.

The other alternative appealed to him more strongly. He had matched his wits against von Stromberg’s so far and had won, and success made him hopeful. Where carefulness failed, audacity sometimes succeeded. The more he thought of his plan, the deeper became his conviction that it was the only one possible under the circumstances. There was continued danger for the papers and he deliberated for a long while upon the wisdom of destroying them at once, finally rejecting that idea except as a last alternative. His word that he had destroyed them would perhaps be sufficient to ease the minds of the gentlemen at the Foreign Office, but there were certain memoranda about the promises of Germany to England ​signed with the initials of Prince von Waldheim which should at all costs be saved. But aside from this consideration, Hammersley, having carried his affairs thus far successfully, had a pride in finishing it as he had planned. It could be done—he would do it.

He got up and put another log on the fire and then stretched himself out at full length upon the rocks, gazing into the flame. In the corner where the bed was he heard the steady breathing of the girl. What a trump she was—What a tr——

He nodded and then dozed. Troubled visions flitted across his mind. Once he thought he heard the sound of a footstep on the rocks and started up. It was broad daylight. He listened for a while and then slowly sank back and slept again. How long he did not know, for something awakened him and he sat up, reaching instinctively for the holster lying at his side, to look straight into the muzzle of an automatic, behind which was the handsome blond head of Udo von Winden.

CHAPTER XX
THE FIGHT IN THE CAVERN

UDO loomed against the light and the uniform he wore seemed to give the projecting weapon a new significance. He was not Udo, the kinsman and companion who had so often shared this refuge with Hammersley in the hunting days. He was Germany. Hammersley could never remember the time when the muzzle of a weapon had seemed so large. It was much better to sit without moving, and Udo’s quick instructions were not wasted.

“Don’t move, Cyril,” he said coolly in German. “Up with your hands! So. Now get up, leaving your belt where it is, and sit on the stool yonder. Quickly! I will shoot—to kill.”

Hammersley read in his expression a determination to put the threat into practice and, watching narrowly, silently obeyed. Von Winden, still covering him carefully, picked up the belt and transferred Lindberg’s pistol to his own holster. He was a dead shot with any firearm, as Hammersley knew, and his own chances at three paces even in a rush were small. It was decidedly a case for discretion.

“I suppose there’s nothing to be said,” Hammersley muttered. “You outguessed me, Udo.” And then, to gain a moment of time, “I thought that your memory might be quite good enough to forget the Thorwald.” Von Winden frowned down the barrel of the automatic.

“It is too much to expect even from me,” he said ​crisply. “I am your kinsman but I am first of all—a German. And not even for you will I be a traitor.”

“Natürlich!” smiled Cyril.

Udo von Winden’s look was grave, his voice sober, and the muzzle of his automatic did not waver.

“I have already had a bad memory, my cousin. This afternoon I forgot that Lindberg, who served your meals, was a good friend of yours and mine and that he might be counted on to help you out of your difficulties. I also forgot that there was such a place as the Cave of the Thorwald until I learned from Excellenz last night, the price Germany was to pay for my indifference. If you had failed to capture the documents of His Majesty, I might have remained silent. As you took them, there remained nothing but to act. I came here, for I knew it would be the one place where I should find you.” Hammersley bent his head. “I understand.” And then quickly, “Would you mind telling me if you have spoken—if you have told what Lindberg—?”

“No,” von Winden broke in, “I have told nothing. Lindberg is safe. I have come here alone——”

Hammersley gave a gasp of relief and leaned forward, peering into the fire.

“I came for one purpose, Cyril,” Udo went on quietly. “I have no personal desire for your death, but I would kill you as you sit rather than see Germany suffer the loss of the documents in your possession. I came for them and I intend that you shall give them to me.”

Hammersley looked up into his cousin’s face and their eyes met. Von Winden’s tone was cool and his manner as calm as on the days last year when they were hunting together, but Hammersley knew that ​when Udo von Winden was most calm he was also most dangerous. So he slowly reached into the pocket of his trousers and handed his cousin the papers he had taken from the German messenger.

“Danke,” said Udo, backing to the light of the entrance of the cave to examine them. “You are sure they are all here?”

“My word on it, Udo,” said Hammersley frankly. He watched his cousin examine the documents and heard him give an exclamation of satisfaction, but Hammersley saw that his eyes neglected no detail of the cavern and was aware that the muzzle of the weapon in Udo’s hand still bore directly upon him. In the shadows Hammersley saw the face of Doris, who was sitting up, pallid and dark-eyed as though awakened from one nightmare into another. As Udo saw her the muzzle of his weapon wavered and went out of alignment, but Hammersley did not move or even appear to notice the girl.

There was a note of embarrassment in the German’s officer’s voice as he spoke again.

“I am sorry, my cousin, that your father’s blood called you to be false to Germany. You had been suspected by Excellenz, but I would have sworn that he was mistaken. You owe me nothing, of course, but——”

“It’s war, Udo,” said Hammersley quietly. “You will remember that I did not seek duty in the Imperial Secret Service. It was the Herr General who thought it valuable to use our kinship for his own purposes.”

Udo shrugged. “Yes, I know,” he said quietly. “You have done your duty—but you must now be aware of the fact that you can ask no favors of me.”

​“I don’t. I am in your power. Shoot me if you like.” Udo smiled.

“I can hardly be expected to do that. I do not love you now, my cousin. I cannot love anyone who is false to my country, but I cannot forget that once, not a year ago, we were brothers. No, I cannot shoot you, Cyril, though perhaps that would be a better death than that other—yonder.”

Hammersley shrugged. “It is the fortune of war. From your point of view I deserve it. I can only thank you again, for myself and for Miss Mather, for your generosity.”

A sound from the girl and Udo acknowledged her presence by a bow.

“Under other circumstances,” he said with stiff politeness, “I should be glad to extend the hospitalities of Winden Schloss. But, of course, as Miss Mather can see, my mother and sisters are away and I——”

“Of course, Graf von Winden, it is understood,” she said haltingly in German.

“I can do nothing, Fräulein. I am powerless—at the orders of General von Stromberg, who arranges the coming and the going of all at Windenberg.”

“The coming, Udo,” said Hammersley dryly. “Not the going.”

“I am sorry, I have done what I could. You have done well to give me the papers. I shall now go back to Blaufelden and return them to Excellenz.”

Hammersley started up.

“You mean that you will leave us here?”

“Natürlich. I do not wish to see you killed against the kitchen wall. It is not the death for the blood of von Eppingen. Even if you are shot while escaping ​it would be better.” He shrugged. “My position is this. You can do Germany no further harm. I shall tell a likely story. I have the papers—they are what I came for. If you had not given them to me I would have killed you, but now I shall go away alone as I came.”

“Good old Udo!” said Hammersley impulsively, taking a pace toward him, his hand outstretched.

But von Winden’s automatic came quickly into line and Hammersley halted.

“One moment, my cousin,” said von Winden coolly. “I am quite willing to accept your expressions of gratitude from a distance. I may not wish to see you killed by others, and I would regret the necessity of killing you myself. I shall consider you my prisoner until I go. After that”—and he shrugged expressively—“you can go where you like.”

Hammersley folded his arms and frowned.

“Where I like!” he muttered. “With every village in Hesse-Nassau on the lookout for me.” There was a pause, after which von Winden spoke with quiet earnestness. “Unfortunately I may not help you further. Since there is food, to wait here is safer. Alone, traveling by night, a man might reach Basel safely. As for the Fräulein, if she will return to Blaufelden and give herself up, imprisonment for a time is perhaps the worst that she need fear.”

Doris had risen, the white light from the door of the cavern searching her face pitilessly.

“It is what I would do,” she said haltingly. “What I have pleaded with him to let me do. Cyril,” she implored in English, “you must let me.”

“I will think about it,” he muttered. “You are sure that no harm will come to her?” The muzzle of ​the automatic had wavered out of line again and Hammersley was carefully measuring with his eye the distance that separated him from his cousin.

“The bark of Excellenz is much worse than his bite. He will bluster and storm. But eventually he will return Miss Mather to her own people.”

Hammersley was shaking his head in indecision.

“I am not so sure that I agree with you about the bite of Excellenz. I shall think of what I will do. I’m sure of one thing, Udo,” he said with sincerity, “that I am deeply grateful for what you have done. The war has made us enemies, and you have now prevented the success of my great venture. But I bear you no illwill. The debt is still mine on account of your silence, back there—a debt made deeper by the presence of Fräulein Mather.” He paused to give his words effect. “I had not told you, Udo, for at Windenberg one has no time to think of the gentler things of life. But just before the war broke out Fräulein Mather had promised me to become my wife.”

Hammersley watched von Winden as he turned toward Doris with a smile, bowing deeply, his sense of the situation lost for a second in the obligations of civility, as he murmured a phrase of congratulations. “I am much honored by your confidences,” he said formally, “and I deeply regret——”

He got no further, for Hammersley had sprung in suddenly toward him, risking Udo’s shot, which was fired quickly, without aim.

A furious struggle followed. Hammersley caught at von Winden’s wrist and his weight bore him back against the rock, while both of them fought for the possession of the weapon. The German officer was smaller than his cousin but his wrists were good and ​he was quicker than Hammersley. They bore only friendship for each other but the incentive of each was greater even than hatred could have been. They struggled in silence, the thought of the possession of the papers uppermost in the minds of both. The struggle was not that of kinsman against kinsman, but of England against Germany. Realizing the desperateness of Hammersley’s attack and the purpose of it, von Winden knew that a victory for Hammersley meant the loss of the papers and so he was bent on killing his cousin if he could, Hammersley on preventing him from doing so. They swayed from side to side, breathing hard, while Doris crouched against the side of the cavern, dumb with terror. Twice she saw the weapon in the German officer’s hand point downward toward Cyril’s back and then, before it could be used, saw Cyril’s arm quickly push it upward. She knew that she was in danger, but she did not know what to do. At one moment von Winden seemed to have the advantage and in another Cyril. Udo’s back was against the wall and one of Cyril’s arms was around him, while their legs were intertwined as each tried to get the other off his balance. Suddenly with an effort Hammersley managed to wrench the pistol from von Winden’s hand and he tossed it into the corner of the cavern.

Von Winden had every ethical right to kill Hammersley if he could, but after what his cousin had done for him, Hammersley could not kill Udo. That was impossible. He must succeed without that. This generosity nearly proved fatal to him for the German managed to reach Hammersley’s automatic in his own holster and had almost disengaged it when Hammersley caught his hand again, and the struggle was re​newed. But Doris, whose senses and initiative had slowly returned to her, now crept around the walls of the cave and when von Winden’s outstretched hand came within her reach she seized his forearm in both of her hands and clung to it desperately, keeping the muzzle pointed away from Cyril. She was swayed to and fro with the struggling men, who finally toppled sideways and fell to the floor, dragging her with them, but von Winden’s grasp of the weapon, never quite secure, was loosened and, as they dropped, it went flying under the table.

The fight was soon out of the German, for Hammersley’s weight had fallen on him heavily, and in a moment the officer was flat on his back and Hammersley was sitting on him. Doris, who had meanwhile picked up the pistol, now heard Hammersley gasping jerkily.

“Quick, Doris—something to tie with—your stay-strings!”

She understood and disappeared outside the cavern, returning presently with the bonds, helping Cyril while he made the wrists and ankles of von Winden fast.

“I might have killed you—but I didn’t,” Hammersley was gasping. “You saw that, Udo, didn’t you?”

“You needn’t make apologies. I would have killed you. I tried to. It’s too bad—too bad,” he panted.

“I’m sorry,” Hammersley repeated. “Those papers—they’re England’s, Udo. They’re my property. I’ve got to take them.”

And without further words he put his hand inside the breast of the officer’s coat and took the papers out.

“I wish it were anybody but you,” he said.

“I don’t think you can get away with them.”

“I’m going to try.”

​“I’ll prevent you if I can.”

“How?”

“I’ll show you.” And with the remnants of his breath he shouted lustily for help. Hammersley threw him back, none too gently, and clapped a handkerchief in his mouth, while he directed Doris to tear her under-skirt and make bandages for a gag. They worked quickly and in a moment the German officer was silent and helpless. Then for a long moment Hammersley sat by the prostrate man, slowly recovering his breath. Doris, ash-gray with fear, crouched beside him, obedient to his look and action. At last with a laugh he got up.

“Close thing, that!” he said. “My word! He nearly got me.” And then with a look at the prostrate man, “Poor old Udo!”

In a moment, with a word to Doris, he went outside the cave and listened intently. He peered cautiously over the ridge of rocks. The road was deserted. The sound of the shot, while it had seemed deafening, would have been muffled at the entrance of the cavern and could not have been heard from a distance. And when Hammersley returned, he reassured Doris as to the immediate danger of discovery.

“There is no hurry, Doris. I must think,” he said, filling his pipe. He stood upright for a while, puffing rapidly, peering down at the captive, his expression struggling between a frown and a smile. Herr Graf Udo von Winden looked so very much like a mummy! The eyes of his cousin, the only visible part of his face, followed Hammersley intently.

“I could have done for you, Udo,” Hammersley repeated. “I want to be sure that you understand that.”

Von Winden’s head moved ever so slightly. Doris ​had sunk upon the stool, her face buried in her hands.

“Oh, it’s cruel!” she murmured. “Let him go, Cyril.”

“Hardly,” said Hammersley coolly. “He’d raise a rumpus. Wouldn’t you, Udo?”

The officer’s head did not move.

“You see?” said Hammersley. “But I’m going to make him as comfortable as possible.” And taking him by the armpits he dragged his cousin over to the corner and laid him gently on the bed of balsam, and then stood beside the bed looking down at him thoughtfully, addressing him impersonally in English, as though thinking aloud.

“What’s to become of you, when we go, old chap—that’s what’s bothering me now.”

The German’s shoulders moved slightly.

“Oh, that’s all very well, but I can’t leave you up here to rot, my cousin. No one knows the way to the Crag of the Thorwald. You might be here a thousand years if Lindberg shouldn’t come.”

Von Winden made no sign. It was obvious that he had no further intention of helping in the solution of the difficulty.

“Let me stay here with him, Cyril,” Doris was pleading again. “It can do me no harm, and when you are well on your way, I will release him and go back to Blaufelden.”

“I can’t take that chance. You’re going with me.”

“Where?”

“To England.”

“But how?”

“Leave that to me. At present we must have breakfast. Do you know it’s almost ten o’clock?”

Bewildered, she watched him go to the large tin ​box in the corner of the cavern, from which he brought forth some dry salt biscuit and several pieces of chocolate.

“It isn’t much, but it’s the best I can do. There’s tea, too, but I don’t dare light the fire.”

She ate, slowly at first, for the food seemed to choke her, but she recalled the fact that except for two pieces of toast and the chocolate of von Stromberg she had eaten nothing since yesterday morning. Cyril, who never seemed at a loss for anything, produced a metal pitcher and going outside the cave for a moment returned with it full of water.

“Lindberg’s,” he said in reply to her question. “His food, too. Good old Lindberg.”

He frowned and then went over to the prisoner.

“You needn’t tell me if you don’t care to, Udo, but I’d like to know how Lindberg is. Will you answer me?”

Von Winden nodded.

“He is able to be about?”

He nodded again.

“Did His Excellency suspect?”

He shook his head.

“Thank God. Then Lindberg is at liberty?”

Udo replied in the affirmative.

Hammersley gave a gasp of relief.

“That is well. I need not worry. He will come and release you.”

Von Winden only frowned.

“Listen, Udo,” went on Hammersley quickly, “Fräulein Mather and I are going down from here, leaving you alone. It can’t be helped. You’ve stumbled up here and you’ve got to take your chance. In time you may wear the strings through against a ​rock. If you don’t return to Blaufelden by tomorrow, Lindberg will find you.”

“But suppose anything happened to Lindberg,” Doris was whispering. “Ah, Cyril, it would be terrible to leave him here. I should dream of it every night of my life.”

Udo’s eyes smiled at her.

“There is little danger. Graf von Winden is not a man to be so easily beaten. He will get away by tonight. But in the meanwhile we will have gone far enough to be out of his reach.”

“Where are we going?”

“To England, child—in the Yellow Dove,” he laughed.

Doris started away from him, her eyes suddenly brilliant with excitement, and the prisoner, who had lain without movement, showed sudden signs of activity, his eyes frowning and his head wagging in anxiety.

“He wants to speak,” said Doris.

Hammersley bent over his cousin.

“Will you promise not to shout?”

Von Winden nodded quickly. So Hammersley untied the bandages that held the handkerchief in the prisoner’s mouth and helped him to a sitting posture.

“You must not go,” he stammered quickly in German. “It is impossible. You will fail. I warn you.”

“Why do you think so?”

“The machines are guarded, and the spark-plugs of your Taube have been removed and hidden.”

“H’m,” said Hammersley thoughtfully. “Excellenz neglects nothing.”

“You would go to your death.”

“Perhaps. Thanks for the warning,” said Hammersley bluntly. “I’m going just the same.”

​Von Winden looked at him in amazement. “You do not believe me?” he asked. “It is the truth, I tell you.”

“I shall find a way.”

“But there is no way. You think that I am trying to persuade you to escape by the mountains so that you may be captured with the papers?”

“Yes. I could not escape that way now. You know it.”

“Perhaps not, but what you plan is insane.”

“Fortune favors the fool. I’ve made up my mind.”

“Then you deserve to be shot,” said Udo. “In the forest at least you would have a chance—Ach—!” He gave a guttural exclamation and then: “Bind me and leave me then—quickly. It’s good-by.”

“Good-by, Udo,” said Hammersley with a smile. “We’ll meet again, when Hesse-Nassau is an English province.”

“Bah, Cyril,” said von Winden. “I have always said that you were a fool.”

Hammersley replaced the gag and bound it into place with great care, smiling the while. Then he removed the belt which contained his cousin’s supply of cartridges and fastened it around his own body above Lindberg’s, loading the two weapons with care and placing them in their holsters.

Doris watched these preparations anxiously, but Hammersley made her eat her fill of chocolate and biscuits and when they had finished, he went to the corner of the cavern and brought forth a large and heavy parcel which he put on the table and opened. Doris saw that Captain von Winden was straightening on the couch trying to see what it contained. Hammersley did not even glance in his direction. He seemed ​to know by instinct that Udo’s curiosity had gotten the better of his dignity. He opened the package deliberately and spread the contents out upon the table.

“Spare parts of the Taube, Udo. I’ve had them here for weeks. I’ll let you have a peep at ’em if you like. A socket-wrench, spark-plugs, bolts, nuts and wire—by Jove—we might have used that on Udo.”

“You are afraid that what he says is true,” whispered Doris anxiously. “Von Stromberg is prepared for you.”

“I wonder,” he said.

CHAPTER XXI
HARE AND HOUNDS

FOR two hours or more, Hammersley and the girl, taking turn and turn, watched the road and forest from the amphitheater of rocks. The road in times of peace was a short route from Windenberg to Schöndorf and popular with the market-folk. But the restrictions put upon visits to Blaufelden had resulted in the diversion of traffic from the south slope of the mountains to the longer road in the valley upon the other side. The few who appeared were men in uniform. From his lofty perch Hammersley espied Captain Wentz as he hurried by with several men in an automobile. Just beyond the crag the automobile was stopped and the men dismounted and went on afoot. Clearly they meant to continue the search abroad. Hammersley chuckled.

“Hare and hounds!” he muttered to himself. “The more men to the eastward, the fewer to the west. By Jove!”

The expletive was not unusual with Hammersley but the manner of its utterance gave it importance. He crossed the level quickly and peered again at the vanishing figures of the men. A new idea had been born. Hare and hounds! A game he had played at Eton—a game as old as sport, as old as hunting! And for such a prize!

He hurried into the cave, glancing hurriedly at his watch. It was noon. Doris sat upon the stool near ​Udo von Winden. Hammersley went over to their captive and examined his bonds and then gave the girl a few hasty instructions.

“I am going down below to be gone two—perhaps three hours.”

A quick intake of the breath escaped her but she caught her under lip in her teeth and said nothing.

“Don’t worry,” he went on cheerfully, “I’m coming back. I’ll promise you that. I’ve got a plan,” he whispered, “a new plan, a noble plan, a plan that will make our game an easy one. It will be harder for you than for me, Doris, because you’ve only got to sit and wait and try to be patient.”

While he was talking he had taken off the belts that contained the two pistols, fastening one around Doris. Then he took off his leather jacket and put it on the table, fastening the other belt containing Udo’s cartridges and automatic over his gray sweater. She watched him timidly.

“But suppose Graf von Winden should get his arms free,” she protested. “I cannot shoot him, Cyril—I cannot—not that——”

“He won’t trouble you. I’ll arrange that.” He took from his coat pocket the documents captured from the Emperor’s messenger and held them up so that Udo von Winden could see them.

“I must leave you for a while, Udo. Awfully sorry, but it’s most urgent.” He laughed. “You won’t mind, will you? Or try to make things difficult?”

He turned quickly and while both the girl and the prisoner wondered what he was about to do, he went to the tin box in the corner, brought out a new candle, lighted it and held the papers so that the prisoner could see them.

​“Do you observe what I am doing, Udo? Miss Mather will sit here upon the opposite side of the cave. If you attempt to get up from your bed, she will burn the papers. Simple, isn’t it? Also quite effective. She doesn’t want to shoot you, Udo—nor do I. And of course if the papers were burned, it wouldn’t hurt England a great deal. As long as the papers are in Germany, my capture may throw them into German hands, nicht wahr?”

Udo von Winden’s head moved slightly from left to right.

With an auf wiedersehen thrown over his shoulder at Udo, Hammersley went outside the cave, where Doris followed him. She was on the point of tears, but she succeeded in a smile.

“Don’t worry, Doris, old girl. Just going down for a stroll about.”

“But why, Cyril?”

“Goin’ to throw ’em off the scent,” he whispered.

“But they’re already off the scent.”

For answer he kissed her gently and bade her keep up her courage. Then he gave her the papers, saw her inside the cave again and in a moment was gone.

The more Hammersley thought of his plan the better it seemed to him. The day was still young. In three hours he could do much. He crossed the amphitheater of rocks and followed the rocky gorge by which he had entered last night and when he emerged upon the farther side, paused and watched for a while to be sure that Wentz and his men were not in sight and then descended the face of the rocks skillfully and in a moment was creeping on all fours through the underbrush up the side of the mountain. It was steep here and rugged, but in a while he reached the old ​deer trail over which he had passed when he had doubled on his pursuers last night. But instead of following it, he halted a moment to listen and then crossed into the undergrowth which at this point was so thick that at twenty paces even he was not visible. He slipped among the treetrunks and evergreens, moving rapidly, making a wide circle up the mountainside almost to its top, descending then by easy stages, until he had covered four miles at least when he bore slowly down toward the Schöndorf road.

Hare and hounds! An exciting game even in the old days when it meant athletic honors, but now, with the alternatives of death as the penalty of capture and a great triumph as the reward of escape, it made his blood run madly. A good game—a fair game, with success as the reward of intelligence.

He planned carefully. He must be sure to come down into the open at a spot beyond where Wentz and his men were searching. He knew the country well. There was a village on the hillside, half a mile below. It was midway between Schöndorf and the farm house at Blaufelden. The families of some of the foresters lived there and there was telephonic connection both with the farm and Windenberg. All of the men of Mittelwald who were not in the Forest Service were off at the front and the chances were that unless Wentz and his men were there, Hammersley would see only women and children. But he knew that von Stromberg had neglected nothing that would give an inkling of his whereabouts and his presence would be at once reported and the chase begin. He was in excellent condition, trained a little too fine perhaps for an Englishman, but fit. He had done little running since leaving the University, and though he had lost some of his old ​speed, he could rely upon the thought of his danger and Doris’s to provide the incentive for extraordinary effort.

Mittelwald lay in a clearing similar to that at Blaufelden, and its farms, if farms they could be called, clambered up the hillside and straggled over beyond the road where they were merged into the undergrowth of young oaks. The Schöndorf road, curving this way and that, passed between the houses, which were set at irregular intervals, like the strips on the tail of a kite. He went on through the underbrush, coming out into the open upon the road at the point where it entered the woods upon the Schöndorf side. Then he settled his automatic loosely in its sheath, and went forward boldly. His eye had marked the line of the telephone wire and followed it to the gable of one of the largest houses in the village. It was to this house that he made his way. A young woman was working in the garden and he approached her quietly and politely, but with an air of a man not to be trifled with, asked for food. He was aware that he was unshorn, covered with mud, and that his face was streaked with dirt and perspiration, but he knew that his appearance alone could not have accounted for the sudden blanching of the woman’s face and the air of alarm with which she regarded him. She straightened and fell back two or three paces toward the house, unable to speak a word in reply. So he repeated his request, while her mouth gaped at him and her eyes grew rounder. At last she managed to stammer,

“Food! You are hungry?”

“Yes. Potato bread—anything, but quickly. I will go with you to the house.” And he indicated the way.

​She stumbled on before him, her head jerking anxiously this way and that over her shoulder as though she feared at any moment to receive a blow or a shot in the back. But he followed her indoors and noted with satisfaction that she appeared after all to be a woman of some intelligence. A thing that pleased him further was the telephone instrument in the corner.

“Milk, if you please, and quickly. I will take the bread with me.” And while she timorously brought them out, “Who lives here?”

“F-Förster Habermehl.”

“Where is he?” peremptorily.

“At Windenberg.”

“Oh! There are no men here?”

“No.”

“That is well, then.” He drank a glass of milk greedily and tore off a piece of the loaf. “You are a good girl. Heaven will reward you.” He made his way to the door, looking out cautiously, and then turned and put his hand in his pocket, bringing out a piece of money. “See,” he laughed, “I have concluded to reward you myself. Cash. Much better than hopes, nicht wahr?”

She fetched a timorous smile and bobbed shyly.

“You will do me a favor,” he said in a whisper as he went out of the door, “if you will tell no one of my visit.”

And with that, chuckling to himself, went down the road again in the direction of Schöndorf, watching the turn in the road below the village for a glimpse of Wentz and his men. Before he reached the edge of the open country he paused and listened. From the house that he had visited came the faint tinkle of a bell. Frau Habermehl had lost no time. She had notified ​the master of the hounds who was clamoring for the scent.

Hammersley walked around the turn in the road, which hid him from the house, and then went into the bushes where he sat on a fallen log, peeping through the leaves toward the further side of the clearing, where General von Stromberg’s men must appear. He did not know how long he would have to wait. Half an hour, perhaps longer. If he knew anything of von Stromberg, they would come in every sort of available vehicle, from a high-powered machine to a donkey cart, picking up the misguided Wentz and his men upon the way to follow this new scent. It was difficult to sit still and wait. Hammersley wanted a smoke awfully, but he chewed a twig instead, for he needed to keep his wind in good condition and had purposely left his pipe at the Thorwald. He did not want to get too far away from Doris. By the way he intended to return he was now at least six miles from the cavern and with the mile or so he must go toward Schöndorf before he turned, a good eight miles of rough going lay between himself and safety.

Under other circumstances, he would have greatly enjoyed the chance for a rest. With a cooler wind from the northeast the weather had cleared and the period of higher temperatures through which they had passed seemed to be drawing to a close. In spite of the doubts that hung about his plan, he couldn’t help saying to himself that he felt jolly fit.

Twenty minutes—twenty-five. He got up and stretched his long limbs luxuriously. The hare was ready. It was time they cast forward the hounds. A peep through the bushes showed him Frau Habermehl standing near her home watching the road to Winden​berg. So he came out of his place of concealment and stood in the open again until he was sure that she saw him, when he turned and went slowly toward Schöndorf. He had planned his moment nicely for before he was out of sight of the clearing, an automobile came into view—paused a moment before Frau Habermehl and then came on rapidly.

Hammersley waited until they had “viewed” him and then cut into the woods to his left, slipping from tree to tree not fifty yards in the cover when the machine came to a stop and the men jumped down and came after him. He did not know who was in command and did not care, but just to show them that he was the man they were after, he risked a shot with his automatic and then sped along rapidly, working up the mountainside, following in a general way the direction of Schöndorf. He heard them plunging after him in full cry and the sound of their footsteps made him move at a rare pace. He knew well this piece of woods, and in a moment came to a path which curved to the right, leading straight up the mountain. When he reached it he paused to look over his shoulder. It was difficult to see the green uniforms, but there was a flash of light from a patch of fir trees and a twig just above his head fell across his path. His curiosity was satisfied. He shut his mouth and, breathing through his nostrils, went off with a burst of speed which put him around a turn in the path before any of the green uniforms had come into sight. He had them coming now, two—three men—one little one and two big ones. He caught a glimpse of them in a moment when the path came into a glade of rocks and barrens. There was his danger. A chance shot might get him when they emerged, before he found the cover again. But ​leaping from rock to rock he managed to reach the path upon the other side, and their shots went wild.

When he reached cover he halted a moment for a breath, firing a shot in the direction of the advancing men, who promptly dropped to cover. And when they came on again, he had gained a clear lead of a hundred yards or more.

He had foreseen his greatest danger—of being caught in thick underbrush and surrounded—so he kept to the main path, only leaving it for a smaller and more tortuous one, when the other turned down the mountain toward the road again. Since the exchange of shots his pursuers had become more cautious and when they reached the fork of the paths they stopped, sweating in their heavy coats and cursing lustily, while they debated upon the question as to which path he had taken. The hounds were at fault. From a point above, he could see them quite clearly and one of them was the Fatalist who had been his jailor last evening. Just to discover whether he was sincere in his philosophy, Hammersley sent a bullet skipping above his head. He ducked and Hammersley laughed.

“Silly ass!” he muttered. “Fatalist! Fatality if I’d aimed at him!”

And he was off again, for other men had joined the leaders and the scent was hot. He carried them fast, up to the bald top of the mountain where the going was faster, and down in the valley to the right. They had gained nothing on him and Hammersley with his second wind was breathing more easily, but it was almost time to double. Here was as good a place as another for the pack of them to spend the afternoon and he made up his mind to lose them without further ado. There was only one runner in the lot and he was the Fatalist, ​though how he had ever happened to learn to run in the Imperial Navy, Hammersley had not the time or inclination to decide. If his philosophy limped, his legs at least were strong and he came on rapidly leaping like a young buck toward the opening over the crest of the knob into which Hammersley had disappeared. A short way down was a spur of rock, the beginnings of a ridge which cut out into the hills, the watershed of two rills which leaped from rock to rock to the valleys below. Hammersley chose the right-hand valley for the going was better, and went down it at top speed for a quarter of a mile or more, pausing where the path led into the underbrush and pines until the Fatalist should view him when he disappeared, and then turning into the thicket circled quickly to the left, and taking advantage of every cover, slowly and carefully climbed the ridge to a place of vantage where he crouched and waited, to have the satisfaction a moment later of seeing his ex-jailor, weapon in hand, go plunging down the path past his place of concealment.

Hammersley listened a moment to the sounds of crashing feet in front of him and behind, and then, creeping slowly and making what speed he could, crossed the ridge and in a while was out of sight and hearing of them. He feared little in crossing the other valley, for his pursuers were strung out in a line, each in sight of the other, and would follow the leader like a flock of sheep. But there was little time to waste and the greatest test of Hammersley’s endurance and Doris’s was to come. For two, perhaps three hours, these men would search for him, and more would come. The Fatalist would bear the brunt of their failure, but in the meanwhile Hammersley must reach the cave in ​the Thorwald and take Doris to Blaufelden. The first part of the return run must be done at top speed to save time which would be needed later. So when he crossed the second valley in safety and had reached the mountaintop, Hammersley abandoned all caution, risking the chance of meeting Wentz and his men, and with a sharp lookout ahead of him went as fast as he could along the ridge, finding at last the trail by which he had come earlier in the day, down which he ran with a long stride which covered the four miles in less than half an hour. He reached the upper passage to the cave in safety and in a moment was safe behind the projecting bowlders of the amphitheater. He was breathing heavily, and the sweat was pouring from him. Doris was watching for him.

“They’re following you? They’re coming?” she asked nervously.

He quieted her and led her inside the cave, where he dropped for a moment of rest upon the stool. Doris watched him anxiously. In a moment he was laughing.

“Oh, I led ’em a rippin’ run straight for Schöndorf,” he gasped. “They’re pattin’ me out—six miles from here—on the top of the Schmalzberg. Lord!” he grinned, “but that was a breather.”

She brought him the pitcher of water but he only rinsed his mouth.

“How are you feelin’? Fit?”

She nodded.

“Right-o. Come along. We’re off.”

He went over to the prisoner and examined his bonds carefully.

“Poor old Udo!” he muttered in German. “I’ve got to go. You might worry through those strings. It’s the only way, because I’m not leaving any matches.” ​He leaned over and patted his cousin on the shoulder. “Good-by, Udo,” he said. “We’ll meet again, some day, as friends, my cousin—as friends.”

Von Winden’s eyes met Hammersley’s and then he lowered his head upon the balsam boughs.

There was no time for amenities. Hammersley slipped on his leather jacket and cap, fastening his belt outside, reloaded his automatic, filled the pockets of Doris’s coat with biscuit and chocolate, then made a bundle of the tools and spare parts, which he selected carefully, and in a moment he and Doris were outside on the ridge, peering over toward the road below. All was quiet, and they descended carefully to the projecting rock, pausing there to listen again. The machine of Wentz, which had been left near the crag, had gone on toward Mittelwald. Hammersley smiled. The plan had worked. It was working. They must succeed.

Down in the bushes at the foot of the crag by the road they paused again, listening, and then Hammersley went forward, peering out, up and down the road. Silence. Solitude. Leading the way, with the hand of the girl in his, he quickly crossed and plunged into the undergrowth silently until they had reached a distance which would defy detection from the road. Then Hammersley bore to the right and went on rapidly.

Doris’s heart was beating high with excitement and hope. The Yellow Dove! Could they reach the hangar safely, and when there could they tune up undetected? The success of the venture seemed impossible for there must still be men on guard at Blaufelden—someone! But as they went on through the wood, she found some of the contagion of Cyril’s audacity. He ​seemed tireless. When they reached a trail which led in the desired direction, without speaking to her, he set forward into a steady jog trot which put them well upon their way. He turned around from time to time and watched her, and when he saw that she was nearly blown he slowed down to a walk and explained his plan.

“Jolly flyin’ weather this. Once we’re in the air they can’t stop us, Doris. She’s armored around the cockpit and engines, and they haven’t anything heavier than a rifle at Blaufelden. We’ll go up the Rhine to the sea, flyin’ high. Then cut to the left along the coast, as far as the French line, and then go in to Ypres and from there to General French’s headquarters. You can easily tell by the lines of trenches. I want you to listen carefully. I’ve got two seats and double control. The arrangement is just the same as on your Nieuport, only she answers her control much more slowly. The wheel is on a universal joint; the gas, on your wheel, the spark to your left, the magneto, a button in front of you. She starts by compressed air.”

“But the exhaust, Cyril,” she gasped, “before we go—it’s only a few hundred yards from the shed to the house!”

“We’re going to risk that. With luck we’ll be movin’ in three minutes, and then——” He paused grimly.

“And then——?”

“I’d like to see a dozen stop us.”

He had such perfect assurance that all doubt left her. Indeed, to Doris, he seemed endowed with some hidden fount of initiative and inspiration, and she was willing to believe anything he told her. They went on rapidly, while he answered all her questions and gave ​her final instructions, until at last they reached a path, the same, he told her, by which they had come from the farm last night. They started up a frightened deer, which fled away from them, but they didn’t pause until the path cut sharply to the right and through the bushes they could see the buildings of Blaufelden. There they stopped and Hammersley went forward to investigate.

In the direction of the farmhouse was no sign of animation except the thread of smoke that rose from the kitchen chimney. The back of the hangar was just in front of them, a bare wall of wood, a hundred and fifty feet long. The opening was upon the other side, to the west, a huge canvas flap, toggled at the bottom to rings in the sill. Hammersley came back and whispered to Doris to follow him. Until the starting of the engine, this was the most hazardous part of the proceeding, for, if they were seen from the house, there would be no time for Hammersley to put the engines in order. He led her south to a point in the woods where the storehouse hid them from the main buildings, when, crouching low to avoid possible detection from the Windenberg road, they covered the fifty yards to the storehouse and waited again, completely hidden from all points except the forest behind them, while Cyril looked around the edge of the building, and then beckoned to her to follow. In a moment they had slipped between the end of the canvas flap and the door, and were within the dusky interior of the shed.

Before them stretched the wide expanse of the Yellow Dove, a huge biplane with a spread, as nearly as Doris could figure it, of a hundred and twenty feet from tip to tip. She stood before it in wonder and awe, admiring its fine lines and sturdy appearance. A ​dragon-fly her Nieuport was beside this great eagle of the air. The other machine, an Etrich monoplane, which was used by Udo von Winden, seemed lost in the shadows of the larger wings. Doris stood quite still, as Cyril had directed, while he moved off noiselessly in the dim light. She saw him slipping from one spot to another, quickly examining this and that, and at last saw him climb up into the machine with his kit of tools. She came nearer as he whispered down to her:

“They’ve taken out some plugs. I’ll have ’em in shortly.” And then: “Go around the lower plane and tell me if the guys are all taut.”

She did as he asked, while she heard him above working over the engines.

“How long will it take?” she whispered.

“I can’t tell—twenty minutes, perhaps. The petrol tanks are empty, too.”

“I want to help.”

“Are the wires all fast?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Then bring me the hose from the petrol tank. It’s there beside you in the corner. You can run it in while I’m workin’.”

She did as she was bid, climbing up with a feeling of exultation into the tall machine beside him.

“The reserve tank first—” he whispered. “Up here between the planes. Here’s a wrench. The opening is on the top.”

They worked side by side, noiselessly and efficiently, Hammersley fitting the missing spark-plugs and connecting a new coil wire which had been removed. He looked over the machine carefully, but could find nothing else missing, or even needing adjustment, for he ​had taken care yesterday morning, as was his custom, to go over the engine with his own hands. The impairment of the engine was of no serious consequence, and intended only to delay. Von Stromberg had not counted on such a chance for readjustment as this, or upon Hammersley’s reserve supply of necessary material. And unless they had done something else that he could not discover—but what? While he worked Hammersley tried to think, casting between times anxious glances at the gears, the propellers and the control wires. The reserve tank of petrol was filled and the hose was steadily pouring the stuff into the one under the forward cockpit, which was full by the time the plugs and wires were all adjusted.

“That will be enough, Doris,” he whispered. “We only need to get to the English lines. There’s no time for more.”

She saw him try the wheel, watching the connecting gear keenly, and, when he ordered it, she climbed down into the rear seat. He gave her a leather coat, gloves and helmet, and buckled her into her seat. Then, in a state of nervous tension, they waited. She saw Cyril climb down, coolly wiping his hands with a piece of waste, restore the hose to its place, and then peer out from a slit in the canvas door. Then he bent over, and running quickly along the flap from side to side, one after another quickly unfastened the toggles which held it in place.

“We’ve got to chance it now,” he whispered up to her. “If she doesn’t work—God help us——”

“But the canvas——”

“The machine will——”

He stopped abruptly, for Doris’s eyes were staring in panic at something behind him. Hammersley whirled ​quickly toward the slit in the canvas, his automatic in his hand. There, not four paces away, blinking into the dusk, stood the tall figure of His Excellency, General Graf von Stromberg.

CHAPTER XXII
FROM THE HEIGHTS

HAMMERSLEY had him covered, and the General made no move to defend himself. He bent his head and folded his arms, peering into Hammersley’s eyes like a short-sighted man trying to adjust his vision to an unaccustomed task. But his frown relaxed almost immediately and his lips separated, showing a gleam of teeth.

“My compliments, Herr Hammersley,” he said. “You have done well. It pleases me to meet at last——”

“Move your right hand again the fraction of an inch and I will shoot, Excellenz,” said Hammersley, in the sharp, quick accents of a resolute man.

Von Stromberg only smiled more broadly. But he did not move. He had seen enough of Herr Hammersley to respect his sincerity.

“I have staked my professional reputation upon your presence elsewhere, Herr Hammersley. Instinct, perhaps, led me here. I do not know what else. But I came alone. I am not armed.”

Hammersley was in no mood for trifling and time was flying. Better to shoot the man and be done with it, but he couldn’t, somehow. Instead he searched him quickly for weapons.

“You’re too late, Excellenz. I am sorry, but I have no time for conversation.”

“You will at least let me pay you the compliment of ​saying that the Prussian blood in you has made you the most brilliant Englishman I have ever met.”

“I have no time to match phrases with you——”

“Ach, but you match what is much more important—a genius for dissimulation. Yesterday you disappointed me, Herr Hammersley, with your talk of plans—of fortifications—of Strassburg. I had been hoping that you were playing a deeper game, something that would relieve the flat monotony of my routine. You were to save me from utter boredom. It is true. I had hoped that. I was disappointed when I thought that you were like the others. Disappointed! I should have known——”

“And now that I have the papers—what are you going to do about it?” asked Hammersley with a touch of bravado.

Von Stromberg shrugged.

“I confess that I am so rapt in admiration of your genius that I am at a loss—I must yield to the inevitable. But I am happy in the knowledge that only a person of the skill of Herr Hammersley could have succeeded in outwitting the head of the Secret Service Department of the Empire.”

“Enough of this!” Hammersley broke in. “I should kill you, General von Stromberg, but I won’t if you obey me promptly. Stand aside—over there—against the wall. If you move, I’ll shoot. I’m going out of here.”

Von Stromberg did as he was bidden, and his long strides and erect carriage had lost none of their dignity. When he reached the wall he turned with a smile. Then he said suavely:

“I fear, Herr Hammersley, that you will not go forth as rapidly as you like.”

​Hammersley only laughed at him.

“We’ll see about that.” He took a stride to the canvas curtain and had a quick look outside. And then to the girl: “Crank her, Doris! The compressed air—the button to the left beside the wheel!”

There was a long pause when Doris reached forward in her seat. A pause filled with meanings for Hammersley, in which his fate and hers, was hanging in the balance. Von Stromberg seemed to read his thoughts, and the wolfish smile spread again over his face.

“It is just possible,” he said blandly, “that someone may have been tinkering with the machinery.”

There was another long silence—a moment of agony for Hammersley.

“Yes, I have,” roared Hammersley exultantly.

For just then there was a violent explosion, deafening in the enclosed space, like the roar of a giant cracker would have been—another—and then more rapidly another, followed by a number of concussions, like a pack of giant crackers catching intermittently and then in quick succession.

General von Stromberg’s smile faded—then vanished in a look of inefficacy and dismay. He was senile. Hammersley’s grin derided him. Speech was impossible, but the muzzle of the automatic was as eloquent as before. One more explosion or six, for that matter, would add little to the din. Von Stromberg’s life hung by a hair at that moment and he knew it. Still covering His Excellency, who was now glancing at the slit in the curtain beside him, Hammersley climbed up to the seat in front of Doris in the cockpit of the machine. And just as he was putting a leg over, His Excellency took a quick glance upward, which had in it a world of expression—and bolted.

​Hammersley’s shot must have missed. He looked around at Doris and laughed, and she saw the light of triumph that rode in his eyes. The exhaust was roaring steadily now, but with one hand on the wheel and in the other his automatic, Hammersley sat motionless, watching the slits in the canvas for the men that he knew must come in a moment. At a gesture of his, Doris sank low in the cockpit, her hands on the wheel, watching, too, and ready to do her share as Cyril had directed. One—two minutes passed—she seemed to be counting the seconds. The body of the machine was trembling as though with the excitement of the moment and the explosions had blended into one continuous roar. Cyril threw the clutch in and the note lowered as the propellers began to whirr. The huge fabric jumped forward, gathering momentum as it went, until by the time it reached the canvas curtain in front of it, it was going as fast as a man would run. The weight of the heavy flap retarded it for a moment, but it went steadily on, and the canvas was pushed outward—then rose—it seemed to Doris like the curtain on a melodrama. Men were running up, shooting as they ran. They clutched at the toggles and swung off their feet, falling in a heap upon the ground. She saw a man, the only one not in uniform, take hold of the lower plane and try to stop the momentum. It was John Rizzio. She saw his face for a second, dark, handsome, smiling. Cyril rose in his seat and their weapons streamed fire. Rizzio moved backward with the machine, still clinging to the lower plane, and then disappeared, passing under it, just where the blades of the right-hand propeller were.

A slight shock and a shapeless mass went rolling over and over until it brought up motionless against ​the jamb of the door. Two other men, Foresters, warned by Rizzio’s fate, sprang aside with horror in their eyes. Doris sank lower in her seat, her cheeks bloodless, grasping her wheel with icy hands, filled with horror. Cyril had sunk down in his seat, clutching at the side of the cockpit, his weapon falling from his fingers. With an effort she steadied her hold on the wheel. The canvas curtain had passed over their heads. They were in the open. To the right, coming from the Windenberg road, a machine filled with men was dashing across the field before them at a diagonal which would intercept them. She heard shots near at hand. Cyril did not move. She had a glimpse of General von Stromberg, who had snatched a pistol from the hand of the nearest soldier and fired.

They were moving fast. But the automobile in the field before them seemed to be moving faster—Captain Wentz and four men! She saw Cyril’s hand rise in front of her, pointing to the left to avoid them, but Wentz came on. The Yellow Dove was still running on its wheels. She saw the danger. Wentz was aiming at a collision. She pulled her wheel toward her instinctively and the Yellow Dove rose, skimming the ground. She felt it lifting, slowly, now rapidly. The automobile seemed about to strike them. Another jerk on the wheel and the skids of the Yellow Dove just grazed the wind-shield of the machine, and a soldier leaped into the air, trying to catch a hold, missed and tumbled to the ground. In the car men were shouting like demons, and a volley of pistol bullets pierced the planes. She felt them strike the armored body, but she sank lower, clutching her wheel.

Clear? They must be. A second of agonized suspense and she saw Cyril turn his head and look down ​behind them. His face was white but his eye flashed triumph. His lips moved, but she heard nothing. Safe? They must be. The Yellow Dove, mounting easily, had cleared the trees at the border of the farm and before the eyes of the girl stretched only undulating surfaces of gray and green.

In front of her Cyril lay back in his seat. His hands clutched the sides of the cockpit. O God! She had not been sure before what his sudden lassitude had meant. He had been hit! John Rizzio! He turned around and smiled at her and one hand, stretched before him, pointed up and to the right. Her throat closed and her heart seemed to stop its beating and the Dove for a moment swung and tossed like a drunken thing, but with an effort she inclined her wheel and met it. Cyril again raised his fingers and pointed upwards. Higher! She tipped the wheel further toward her. His gesture was like an appeal to Heaven—a symbol of his faith in her and in the God of both. She set her lips and obeyed. Broken and helpless—perhaps dying, he was putting his faith in her. She must not fail him now.

She kept her gaze before her over Cyril’s head, trying to gain strength for what she had to do, thinking that she was in England—at Ashwater Park—and that the wheel she held was that of her own little Nieuport. There seemed to be little difference between them, except that the Yellow Dove was easier to manage. It responded to the slightest touch, and had a magnificent steadiness that reassured Doris as to her ability to do the thing that was required of her.

The mountains had fallen below them and the horizon had widened until it blurred into the haze of the distance. She looked down on what seemed to her a ​plain of purple velvet touched with lighter patches of orange and violet. Before her the sun was setting blood red in a sea of amber. She mounted above it into the clear empyrean of azure, higher—higher yet. She felt the exhilaration of large spaces, the joy of conquest over all material things. Death even did not dismay her—Cyril’s—her own. She seemed to have crossed at a bound, from the realm of substance into that of immateriality. Her soul already sang in accord with the angels. They were mated. She and Cyril—mated! And even Death should not separate them.

Dusk fell slowly below them, like a black giant striding across the face of the earth, but all was still bright and clear about her. The red ball of the sun would not set. She was going upward—upward into the realm of continuous and perfect day. Below her a thread of silk, thrown carelessly upon a purple carpet. The Rhine! She saw Cyril’s hand come up and move feebly to the right. She turned slowly and followed its direction. The Rhine—she remembered Cyril’s words back there in the woods. She must follow the Rhine to the sea and then turn to the westward along the coast. She would do it. She must.

Cyril was hurt—but perhaps not badly. His gestures reassured her. He moved his hand in a level line in front of him and she understood. They had mounted high enough. The barograph showed four thousand feet. She brought the wheel up to normal and held it there. The wind burned her cheeks and she knew from the changes in the river below her that the speed of the Yellow Dove was terrific—ninety miles—a hundred—a hundred and twenty—an hour—perhaps much more—she did not know. The speed got into her ​blood. Faster, faster, was the song her pulses sung. She was a part of the Yellow Dove now, and it was a part of herself. Its wings were her wings and its instinct was in her own fingertips.

Night fell slowly, a luminous night full of stars. She seemed to be hanging among them—to be one of them—watching the earth pass under her. Two of them gleamed like St. Elmo’s lights at the tips of the planes. The sky was clear and bright, of a deep bluish purple, like the skies she remembered high up on the plains of the great West in her own country. The air was bitter cold upon her face and she blessed Cyril’s foresight for the helmet, gloves and old leather jacket that he had put on her in the hangar. In front of her Cyril leaned slightly to one side and his right hand touched a button, throwing an electric light in a hood in front of the wheel upon the face of the compass and barograph. She glanced at them quickly—four thousand feet—the direction north-northwest. She longed to speak to him and shouted his name. But in the roar of the engines she could not hear her own voice.

He still sat up, the fingers of his right hand moving from time to time as he gave her the direction. She thanked God for that—he was alive—he would live until they reached Ypres. He must live. He must. She set her teeth upon the words and willed it, praying at last aloud with lips that screamed yet made no sound.

Below her moved the lights of a city. She did not know what it was. Cologne, perhaps. She had passed it yesterday morning in the train with John Rizzio. Yesterday! It seemed a year ago. Cologne—then Dusseldorf. The river was not difficult to follow. She ​lost it once and then moving at a lower altitude she found it quickly. But the old terror was gripping her now. Cyril! His fingers no longer moved directing her. He had sunk lower in his seat and his head had fallen back upon one side, his face upturned to the stars. Was he——?

She put the thought from her. It was impossible. She had prayed. Not that. . . . He had only fainted from pain, from sickness. Not dead—she would not—could not believe it. She longed to reach forward—to let him feel her hand upon his neck—that he might know her pity and her pain. It almost seemed better that death should come to them both now than that he should die and not know the comforting touch of her hand. She leaned forward and one hand left the wheel, but she lost her touch of the air and the planes tipped drunkenly, threatening the destruction she courted.

The madness passed—and with its passing came a calm, ice-cold. She was no longer a sentient being. She was merely an instinct with wings, flying as the eagle flies straight for its goal. She kept her glance on the compass and followed the river. North-northwest. The silver thread had become a ribbon now, reflecting the starlight. She passed over other towns. She could see their lights, but her gaze was fixed most often on the distant horizon, where after a while she would find the sea.

A yellowish light, painting the under side of the plane above her head, bewildered her. She could not understand. It was like a reflection of a candle inside a tent. Low as it was, it blinded her eyes, accustomed to the soft light of the stars. There was a crash nearby, in the very air beside her it seemed, a blind​ing flash of light, and the Yellow Dove toppled sideways. Instinctively she caught it, turning as she went and rose higher—higher—as a bird flies at the sound of a shot below. She knew now what it meant—a searchlight! They were firing at her with the high-angle guns. She had come fast, but the wire from Windenberg had been faster. She put the light behind her and long arms of light still groped for her, but she rose still higher, five—six thousand feet her barograph told her. Below, to her right, a small thing, shaped like a dragon-fly, was spitting fire—to her left another, but she sank lower in her seat laughing at them. Something of Cyril’s joyous bravado possessed her. She defied them, rising far above them—higher—seven thousand feet—eight, until she could see them no more.

North-northwest! She found her course again and flew on into the night. She had lost the river, but that did not matter now. She knew that after a time—an hour or more—she must come to the sea. And when all signs of danger were gone she went down again where she could more plainly see the earth. The moon had come up and bathed the scene below with its soft light, and far ahead of her she saw irregular streaks of pale gray against long lines of purplish black. The sea? She had lost all idea of time and distance. How far the sea was from Windenberg she did not know, and if she had known it, the passage of time was a blank to her—a continuous roar, the music of the spheres which took no thought of time or space. The flight had lasted but a minute—and an eternity.

To her left the gray streaks were nearer—west by north her compass said, and she steered for them. Soon she made out distinctly contours of large masses ​of gray against the black—water and land. The air was milder and she sniffed the salt. She went down to three thousand feet to get her bearings, ever watchful for the dragon-flies and ready to soar again at the first flash of a searchlight. She had already learned to avoid the planes where the lights were grouped—the colonies of glow-worms that here meant danger.

Had she crossed the Belgian line? She had been to Antwerp, to Brussels, and tried to remember what they had looked like on the map. There was water near Antwerp—she remembered that, inland bodies of water which led to the sea. Now she could see beyond the bodies of inland water to a wide expanse of gray beyond the dark—uninterrupted gray—the ocean! She bore to her left until her course was due west. A searchlight flashed upon her for a second and was gone. By the way the contours were changing she knew that her speed was terrific. And slowly but more and more certainly as she neared the sea, a problem presented itself—her goal! Where was it, and how to find it in the dark? Cyril had said that they must land back of Ypres. But where was Ypres? Beyond Ostend and inland—thirty—forty miles. She knew that much from the war maps that she had pored over with her father. But how to find it?

She was over the sea now. The Yellow Dove felt a new breeze and the wheel tugged under her hand, but the machine lifted at the touch and wheeled like a gull to speed down the coast. Ostend! The Kursaal! If she could get a sight of it! It was dangerous, but she must go lower—three—two hundred feet from the sea, where she might make out familiar profiles against the sky.

The waves rose to meet her, reflecting the starlight, ​and just below her to the left the surf rolled in lines of white upon the beach. Dunes, dunes interminably, with here and there a collection of huts. A dark shape moved in the water ahead of her, another—— Warships? Destroyers. She wheeled out to sea and flew above them, but before they had time even to get their searchlights ranged upon her, the danger was past. She would win now. The Yellow Dove was invincible.

A dark irregular mass ahead of her rose above the monotony of dunes, buildings, and a bulk she seemed to recognize—a round dome iridescent like a soap bubble in the moonlight. The Kursaal! Ostend! She was nearing her destination—the end of the German lines. Friends were near—Belgians, French, and English. Twenty—thirty miles beyond Ostend and then inland somewhere back of Ypres she would find the English. The English lines were thirty or forty miles long, she remembered. It should not be difficult to find them. She must be sure to go far enough—but not too far—not to where the French army joined the British forces. Cyril’s papers must go to the English, to General French himself. He had said so.

She had no way of judging distance except by the passage of the minutes. At the speed she was flying she must turn inland in fifteen minutes. She had no watch and she tried counting the seconds. She had counted sixty—four times—when a battery hidden among the dunes along the shore opened fire on her. She was half a mile from shore, flying low, but the flash of light startled her and the shell burst beyond. She rose quickly, moving further out to sea, frightened, but still self-possessed. It would not do to fail now with the goal in sight.

The compass gave her course southwest by west. ​She counted again, guessing at the time she had lost, and then, making a wide spiral out to sea and rising to three thousand feet, she drove the Yellow Dove inland. Searchlights were turned on her and shots fired, but she went higher, trying to make out if she could the lines of the opposing armies. Red and yellow lights were displayed below to her left, and far to her right were tiny clusters of lights, but there seemed to be no order in their arrangement—no lines that she could distinguish even at this height. Her keen eyes, now inured to the darkness, made out a monoplane against the starlight ahead of her—but she swerved to the right, the greater power of the Yellow Dove enabling her to rise and elude it. She flew for what seemed ten or fifteen minutes, going steadily to the south and west, when she drove for a spot where there were no lights and then shut off the throttle and dove.

She knew that this was perhaps the greatest moment of her great adventure. A landing place in the dark in a country she did not know, where a church steeple, a telegraph wire, the limb of a tree, would bring her and her precious freight to disaster. With the sudden shutting off of the power, a silence that bewildered her, a silence broken only by the whirr of the wind against the planes. Her ears ached from the change of pressure in her swift descent. She eased her wheel back gently, trying to make out objects below. Dark patches—woods—to be avoided, the roof of a house—another—lights here and there, small, obscure, which she had not seen. She avoided them all, planing down in a spiral toward what seemed to be unobstructed space.

She breathed a prayer as the earth came up to meet her. Death——? Whatever came—Cyril, too. . . . ​She stared straight before her, feeling out the wind pressure on the planes, gliding as near the horizontal as she dared. An open field! Thank God! A gentle shock and the springs responded. The Yellow Dove rebounded slightly and ran along the ground smoothly upon its wheels—then stopped. She tried to get up, but could not. Her hands seemed fastened to the wheel. She heard the sound of men’s voices shouting and saw lights, but she could not seem to make a sound. She was shivering violently, also laughing a little, but she had no sense of being cold. She seemed very weak somehow, and very helpless. And then, just as the lights grew brighter—they went out.

CHAPTER XXIII
HEADQUARTERS

AWOMAN!" she heard a man’s voice say at her ear. She was lying upon the ground, and strange faces were bending over her. “Well, I’m damned!”

English!

“And the other?” she heard again. “Dead as a ’errin’!”

Doris sat up, staring at them wildly.

“Wait! There’s a flutter ’ere yet.” She heard the other man say. “Come, Bill. Let’s have ’im over to the ’ouse.”

Doris managed to find a whisper. “A surgeon—for him,” she said to the man supporting her. “He will not die. He is only wounded.”

It was her obsession. It would not leave her.

She saw them carrying Cyril toward the house, and when they wanted to take her, too, she said that she would walk. Though deathly weak, she managed to reach the house where they had carried Cyril. They gave her a drink of something and she revived.

It was a Red Cross station, they told her, and the doctor would be here in a moment. But in the meanwhile first aid was administered, and at her place at his bedside she saw Cyril struggling faintly back to life.

“He will not die,” she repeated quietly when the surgeon had examined him gravely.

“I hope not—but he’s bled a good deal. We’ll see.”

​They cut away his coat and wanted to send her away, but she pleaded to remain and in a moment she heard Cyril’s voice whispering hoarsely—“Papers—coat pocket—Sir John French.”

“All right,” said the surgeon cheerfully. “We’ll see to that.”

“Doris.”

“Here, Cyril.”

“Rippin’ fine—of you—no mistake—old girl——”

His whisper trailed off into silence and at the surgeon’s orders they led her away from his cot, but she would not leave the room until she got the papers out of the pocket of his jacket. An orderly led her to a young officer with his arm in a sling who sat at a table in another part of the building. He listened to her story attentively and read the documents carefully, his lips as he read emitting a thin whistle. He glanced at his watch and for a moment left the room.

“It is arranged. You shall go,” he said when he came back. “A machine will be here in a moment.” He paused, examining her doubtfully. She was spattered with grease and oil, but the pallor of her face beneath its grime showed that her strength was near its end. “Wouldn’t you trust those dispatches to me? It’s ten miles to headquarters and rough.”

“No—no, I will go. I promised.”

But he ordered some hot coffee and bread, and thus fortified, when the motor came around she was driven upon her way. The young officer sat beside her, eagerly listening, while she gave him a brief outline of their adventures.

“Amazin’!” he said from time to time. “Most amazin’!”

And then as she went on, he said quietly:

​“You’re goin’ on your nerve, I think. Better save your strength until we get to headquarters. It isn’t far now.”

She tried to keep silent, but it seemed as though she must go on talking. That seemed to give her strength to complete her task, for when she sank back in her seat and tried to relax she only grew weak thinking of Cyril lying back there, hovering between life and death. And then she heard herself saying aloud, “He will not die. He has gone through too much to die now.”

The man beside her glanced down at her and smiled gently.

“No, he isn’t going to die. Bullets don’t kill nowadays—unless they kill at once.”

“Yes—yes,” she assented. “That’s it. If he had been going to die, he would have been dead now, wouldn’t he?”

She laid her hand eagerly on the young officer’s arm and he put his hand over hers.

“Palmerston is the best surgeon along this part of the line. He’ll pull him through. Don’t you worry.”

“I won’t—I’ll try not to—you’re awfully kind. Would you mind telling me your name?”

“Jackson. Second Leinster Dragoons. And yours?”

“Mather—Doris Mather. I—I don’t want to forget your name. You’ve been very good to understand everything so perfectly.”

“Oh, it’s nothing. There are reasons—I’m on Headquarters Staff, you know.”

That was one reason. But another one was that there was a girl at home just as much worried over his wound as Miss Mather was over Hammersley’s.

They passed from the rough roads between gates into a smoother one which was bordered with poplars. ​At the end in front of her she saw lights and reached a doorway, where an orderly opened the door of the machine and saluted her companion. Their arrival, it seemed, was expected. Captain Jackson took her by the arm and led her indoors, for her courage or her nerves seemed to be failing her again, down a quiet hall into a room where an officer with a gray mustache sat before a lighted lamp at a table covered with papers. She recognized him at once from the many portraits that had appeared in the weekly papers. He spoke to her and she tried to reply, but she could not. She seemed only to have strength enough to thrust the papers forward into his hand, when her knees gave way under her and she sank in a heap upon the floor.

Gentle hands lifted her and laid her upon a couch in the corner of the room. She tried to get up, but could not. She heard the voices of the officers in the room as from a great distance, and then a woman came and two men carried her upstairs and put her to bed. She realized that she was talking incoherently of Cyril, of the Yellow Dove. They gave her something to drink and her nerves grew mysteriously quiet. She seemed to be sailing smoothly through the air—higher, higher—Cyril’s fingers were pointing upward. She was tipping the wheel toward her—ever toward her, and they rose higher. They had reached the region of continuous and perfect day. Cyril turned his head and looked at her, and then he smiled.

•⁠•⁠•⁠•⁠•

It was broad daylight when she awoke, for the sunshine was streaming in at the window. A woman sat near her, knitting. She was an old woman of many wrinkles, kindly wrinkles which seemed to vie with one another to express placidity. As Doris rose in her ​bed the old woman rose, too, and came forward briskly, speaking in French.

“Ah, Mademoiselle is awake. Bon. She is feeling better?”

“Yes, better—but a little tired.” And then, as she realized where she was, “Could you tell me——? General French—could I see him?”

“All is well, mademoiselle. Monsieur le General—he is not here now. But he will be back after a while. He will see you, then, but first it is proper that you have breakfast and a bath. Mademoiselle needs a bath—I think.”

Doris glanced at her hand, which lay upon the white coverlid. It was black. “Yes, I will bathe. But first will you tell me——?”

The old woman smiled as she interrupted, “I was to tell you that Monsieur yonder is better. That is what Mademoiselle wished to know, is it not?”

Doris sank back upon her pillow in a silence which gave the full measure of her joy. Cyril would recover. She had been sure of it. She had told them last night. God was good.

The news gave her strength, and the coffee and eggs that were brought revived her rapidly. Her nerves still trembled in memory of what they had passed through, but when she was bathed and dressed in clean linen garments, much too large for her, a surgeon brought her medicine, and what was better than medicine, news that Cyril was conscious and was asking for her.

But they would not let her go to him. Tomorrow perhaps. Meanwhile the doctor would be glad to take a message. Doris colored gently. The message that she would have liked to send was not to be transmitted by this means.

​“Tell him,” she said at last quietly, “that I am well—and that I will see him when I have permission to do so.”

The officer smiled, gave some directions to the old woman and went out.

It was not until late in the afternoon, when dressed in her own garments, which had been carefully cleansed and brushed by her nurse, that she was admitted to the office of the Field Marshal. She was shown into his room and he greeted her with unmistakable cordiality, offering her the chair next his own and congratulating her warmly upon the success of her achievement and Cyril’s.

“You know,” he asked quietly, “the contents of these documents?”

“Yes. Their importance made it necessary that I should.”

“Then of course you realize the necessity for the utmost secrecy?”

“I do.”

The General smiled at her and brought forward a copy of a recent issue of the London Times.

“Did you know that for the past three days England has actually stopped criticizing me to talk about you?”

“About me?” she asked.

“Yes, read,” he said smiling, and she took the paper from him, skimming the headings of a news item he pointed out to her:

MISS MATHER STILL MISSING.

MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE STILL UNACCOUNTED FOR.

LADY HEATHCOTE TELLS STRANGE STORY.

JOHN RIZZIO, THE FAMOUS COLLECTOR, A GERMAN SPY.

​

And then in the news item below:

Allison Mather, of Ashwater Park, believing that his daughter is still alive, today offered a reward of five thousand pounds to anyone——

She stopped reading and put the paper down.

“Poor Daddy!” she whispered. “O Sir John, will you let him know——?”

“I have already done so, child. He knows that you are safe.” And then with a laugh, “The five thousand pounds—I think are mine. I need a new hospital corps.”

“Oh, he’ll give it, I’m sure.”

“You promise?”

“Yes.”

He took her hand and rose in the act of dismissal. “We have supper at six. I hope you will be able to join us.”

“But, General——” She paused at the door.

He smiled at her softly.

“If all goes well—you shall see him tomorrow.”

She colored prettily. Everyone seemed to know, but she didn’t care. The world, in spite of its terrors, was a garden of roses to Doris.

•⁠•⁠•⁠•⁠•

She did not see Cyril the next day or the one following. His temperature had risen, and while the danger of a relapse was not acute, they thought it safer that she be kept away. She had worried, fearing the worst, but the frankness of the head surgeon reassured her. The bullet had drilled through him, just scraping the lung. He would recover. But why take a chance of complication when all was going well? There was no ​reply to that, so Doris waited at headquarters, thankful and trying to be patient, sending two penciled scrawls which were delivered to the wounded man.

It was not until three days later that she received word that she would be permitted to see him. His cot had been carried into a small room at the front of the building, and she entered it timidly, the nurse, with a smile and a glance at her watch, both of which were eloquent, withdrawing. He was propped up on pillows, and though pale from the loss of blood, greeted her with his old careless smile. She sank into the chair by the side of the bed and caught his hand to her lips.

“O Cyril,” she murmured. “Cyril, I’m so glad. But I knew you wouldn’t die—you couldn’t after getting safely through everything else.”

“Die! Well, hardly. I’m right as rain. Jolly close shootin’ that of Rizzio’s, though. Pity he had to go—that way.”

She hid her face in her hands.

“Don’t! Let’s forget him.” And then, “Have you suffered much?”

“No. The bally thing burns a bit now and then—but the worst of it is, they won’t let a chap smoke.”

She laughed and he caught her hand closer.

“How did you do it, Doris? How did you?” he questioned.

“I had to, Cyril,” she said. “It wasn’t anything—except knowing where to come down. That bothered me. I guessed at Ypres. The rest was luck.”

“More than luck, old girl. Just courage and intelligence. I felt myself failin’, up there, but I saw you knew your way about and then I—I seemed to go to sleep. Silly of me, wasn’t it?”

​“Silly! You fainted, Cyril.”

“Rotten time to faint.”

“You might have died up there. Once I thought you had died. Oh, that dreadful moment! I wanted to go, too—with you. I was a little mad, I think. I wanted to take you in my arms and go with you—down—down. My hands even left the wheel. The Yellow Dove toppled—but I caught her.”

“Poor child!”

“After that I seemed to grow all cold with reason and skill. I forgot you. I looked beyond, over your poor head. I had to succeed, Cyril—that was all.”

His hand pressed hers tenderly.

“You’re the only girl in the world who could do it. I’m glad—proud——” He broke off. “My word, Doris! There’s no use tryin’ to tell you what I think of you. I’m no good at that sort of thing.”

“I understand. You’re just—yourself. That’s enough for me.”

“You were a trump up there in the Thorwald—to stay with poor old Udo, but I had to go. It was the only way. I never thought we’d make it.”

“But we did.”

“You did. It was the Dove, Doris—the good old Dove. Isn’t she a ripper?”

“I never had a fear—once she rose. How did you happen——”

He laughed.

“It was to be a surprise. I’d been workin’ on her for a year—tryin’ her out on the moors. Nobody knew—until the war came—and then I told Udo, who told von Stromberg. I tried a flight to Windenberg and made it comfortably. Awf’ly easy thing. I stayed at ​Windenberg in October, flyin’ over the English lines, droppin’ bombs.”

“That was where you were——!”

“But I never hit anythin’. Wouldn’t do, you know. Then when I came back I told the War Office. They sent me for the papers. You know the rest.”

“O Cyril, I’m so glad it’s all over. You’ll go to England now and rest.”

“For a while.” And then, “Will you marry me, Doris? Soon?”

“Yes,” she said softly. “Whenever you want me.”

“Here? Now?”

“But, Cyril——”

“There’s a parson chap about here somewhere. I saw him browsin’ in here the other day.”

“Isn’t it a little——”

“Say you will, there’s a dear.”

“Yes, if you wish it. But——”

“What?”

“Clothes.”

“Nonsense. You’re jolly handsome in those togs—handsome no end,” he repeated. “Marry me tomorrow, Doris. There’s a dear.”

She leaned her face down upon his hand.

“We’re already married, Cyril. Up there I felt it. Even death couldn’t have separated us.”

“Thank God! Kiss me, Doris.” She obeyed.

“I’ll see Jackson,” he whispered. “He’ll manage it. Resourceful chap, Jackson. He’ll get us a chaplain like pullin’ a rabbit out of a hat.”

She laughed.

“I don’t suppose I’d ever have known you, Cyril, over there in England. You always did wonderful things carelessly, Cyril.”

​“But not this wonderful thing——” and he kissed her.

“It is a wonderful thing,” she whispered. “So wonderful that I wonder if it can be true.”

“I’ll prove it to you——”

But she had straightened and kissed his hand.

“No more now—I mustn’t stay. I hear them in the hall.”

“Tomorrow?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Jackson?”

“Yes.”

The nurse knocked discreetly and entered. “Five minutes. I’m sorry.”

“So am I,” said Hammersley, with a sigh.

•⁠•⁠•⁠•⁠•

Three weeks later they stood side by side at the rail of the Channel boat on the way to Ashwater Park for the parental blessing. The shores of France were already purple in the distance. They had looked upon Death with eyes that did not fear, but the sight of it together had made the bond of their fealty and tenderness the stronger. There was a sadness in his look and she knew instinctively of what he was thinking.

“Germany, Cyril,” she said aloud. “I love it because a part of it is you. But I love England more, because it is you.”

Hammersley watched the receding shores beyond the vessel’s wake, her hand in his.

“They’re followin’ false gods, Doris. Gods of steel and brass——!”

“They must fall, Cyril.”

“They will.” And then, “But you can’t help admirin’ the beggars! Poor old Udo!”

​“I think about him, Cyril. Do you think he got away?”

“Well, rather! I cut his bonds with a huntin’ knife before we went down.”

She looked up into his face in amazement. “You dared do that?” He laughed.

“You wouldn’t have let him be more generous than me.”

“And he let us go?”

“He didn’t think we could go. He left things to Destiny.”

“Good old Udo!” she repeated. And then dreamily, “Destiny! You were not meant to die, Cyril.”

“Not yet.” He said slowly: “But I must go back—over there, Doris.”

She shivered a little and drew closer to him.

“Yes, I know,” she said. “But you’ve earned——”

“I couldn’t ever earn what I’ve got,” he broke in quickly.

“Nor I——”

“I’m not much of a chap at pretty speeches and all that sort of thing, but you’re a rare one, you know, the rummiest sort of a rare one—the kind a chap dreams about but never gets—and yet I’ve got you— Oh, hang it all, Doris,” he broke off helplessly. “You know——”

She smiled at him and slipped her arm through his.

“Yes, I know,” she said.

“Good old Doris,” he muttered. “Silly ass, aren’t I?”

But she wouldn’t admit that.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article  Metasyntactic variable, which is released under the  Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.