Complete weird tales of.., p.105
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 105
The street outside was ruddy with the glare of burning houses; the shells streamed high overhead toward the Panthéon now, falling beyond the rue Serpente, some in the boulevard Saint Michel, some on the Sorbonne, many on the Val-de-Grâce and a few even in the river. The fire of the Prussian guns shifted capriciously; now the Montparnasse quarter was covered with projectiles, now the Luxembourg, now the Latin quarter. But always the shells streamed thickest toward the hospitals, the barracks, the churches, palaces and great public buildings.
As the shells ceased falling in the rue Serpente, the people crept from the cellars, the soldiers of the Garde Mobile slunk off, and a company of firemen came up on a run, dragging their hand machine. Bands of skulking vagrants prowled through the street, half bold, half timid, peering into doorways, hanging about shell-wrecked houses, shoving, prying, insulting women.
One of these ruffians entered the hallway where Hildé stood, and started to ascend the stairs, but, evidently considering the shabby house not worth his attention, turned and stood hesitatingly in the full glare of a burning house.
“Mademoiselle Hildé,” whispered Red Riding Hood, “Look! Look!” At the same moment the vagabond saw Hildé, and shrank back against the wall.
It was the Mouse.
Hildé sprang to the shaky stairs and seized the Mouse by his ragged sleeve. That startled young ruffian suffered himself to be dragged up the stairs and into the little apartment, now brightly illuminated by the flames from the burning house on the corner. Yolette and Red Riding Hood followed.
“Now,” muttered Hildé, breathless, “tell me where he is? What have you done with him?” She stood before the Mouse, with flashing eyes and little fists clenched, repeating harshly, “You swore to me that you would be with him, that you would keep him from harm! You slunk out of the house with that promise to me — and I let you go — I promised to say nothing to the others. What have you done with him?”
“He’s been shot,” gasped the Mouse, “he was — —”
“Shot!” whispered Hildé.
“He isn’t dead,” growled the Mouse. “I came to find Monsieur Bourke, but when I went to the rue d’Ypres you all had decamped. Then,” he continued, with a cringing gesture, “I started to look — and quite by accident, mademoiselle, I met some friends — but I was not stealing!” he whined, glancing furtively around, “no, indeed, I stole nothing as the others did, — you will tell Monsieur Bourke that! You will tell Monsieur Bourke I was not pillaging houses.”
“Where is Monsieur Harewood?” interrupted Hildé.
“I was going to tell you,” said the Mouse, submissively. “I was going to tell mademoiselle that Monsieur Harewood is in the casemates of the Nanterre fort — very sick since they cut the bullet out. And it is quite true I was not pillaging. God is my witness. I have never stolen a pin.”
He looked obliquely at Yolette, snivelled a little, hitched his tattered trousers and sniffed.
Twice Hildé strove to speak, but her colourless lips scarcely moved. Yolette put one arm around her and turned to the Mouse.
“What message have you for Monsieur Bourke?” she asked. “Did Monsieur Harewood not send a message?”
“Yes,” said the Mouse. “He wants to see him. It was not until last night that those sacré Prussians gave me a chance to leave the fort. We have been there since Le Bourget, when Monsieur was shot as he left the church.”
He did not add that he had half carried, half dragged Harewood across the Mollette under a frenzied fusilade from the Prussian pickets. He was a coward as cowards go; his very ferocity proved it. Yet he had instinctively clung to Harewood, when a bullet through the leg knocked him sprawling; he had hauled him out of the Prussian fire much as a panther hauls its young from a common danger, with no reason in the world that human minds could fathom, totally unconscious that he deserved credit. The Mouse had received Harewood’s thanks with ennui, if not suspicion, and now it never occurred to him to say that he had saved Harewood’s life, although, like most criminals, he was a keen appreciator of the dramatic. No — what occupied the meagre brain of the Mouse was the fear that Bourke might return and learn from Hildé and Yolette that he, the Mouse, had been looting.
He looked sideways at Yolette, who was leading Hildé to the bedroom. He listened stupidly to the paroxysms of grief when Hildé flung herself on the bed. That was all very confusing, but what would Bourke say? He looked down at his blackened hands, at the bludgeon still gripped in one bleeding fist, evidences of his share in the riotous night’s work.
“Mince! je me sauve!” he blurted out, and at the same moment he saw Red Riding Hood staring at him from the sofa.
“What are you making eyes at — hein!” he demanded sullenly. “Perhaps you are going to say I was pillaging houses!”
The child, seized with a fit of shivering, cowered against the wall, drawing her feet in under her nightdress.
The Mouse regarded her fiercely, twirling his bludgeon between his blackened fingers. Then, apparently satisfied that she was too terrified to understand, he pulled his cap over his sightless eye, put the bludgeon into his pocket, and started toward the door. Before he went out he hesitated. The sight of the frightened child seemed to exercise a certain fascination for him. He looked back, frowning, just to see whether it would frighten her a little more. It did; but, strangely, enough, her fear gave him no gratification.
“Voyons, petite, do I scare you?” he asked, curiously.
“Yes,” whispered the child. A curious sensation, an unaccustomed thrill, something that had never before come over him, sent the blood tingling in the Mouse’s large ears. He peered at the child narrowly.
“Don’t look like that,” he said, “for I ain’t going to hurt you.”
The child was silent.
“You’re cold,” said the Mouse, awkwardly. “Go to bed.”
“I’m afraid,” she whispered.
“Of me?” asked the Mouse, with a strange sinking of the heart.
“Yes; and the shells.”
“I’ll knock the head off any pig of a Prussian who harms you,” said the Mouse, waving his club. “You never mind the shells, they won’t hurt you. Now are you afraid of me, little one?”
“No,” sighed the child. A glow of pleasure suffused the Mouse’s ears again. Then he felt ashamed, then he looked at the child, then he wondered why he should take pleasure in telling the little thing not to be afraid. For a while they contemplated each other in silence; finally the child said: “When you were in the rue d’Ypres, I used to make you split wood. Do you remember?”
“Yes,” said the Mouse, much gratified.
“And you were afraid of the lion,” pursued Red Riding Hood.
“Dame,” muttered the Mouse, “I am afraid yet.”
The child laughed — such a sad, thin little laugh. The Mouse, to please her, made an awful grimace and winked with his sightless eye.
“Will you stay with us now?” asked the child.
The innocent question completely upset the Mouse; the idea that he was wanted anywhere, the sensation of protecting anything, was so new, so utterly astonishing, that even his habitual suspicion was carried away in the overwhelming novelty of the proposition.
Red Riding Hood rose from the sofa, went to the bed and climbed in, then turned gravely to the Mouse.
“Don’t let anything harm us,” she said. “Good-night.”
For a long time the Mouse stood and stared at the pale little face on the pillow. There were blue circles under the closed eyes; the clustering black hair cast shadows over the hollow temples. The exhaustion from hunger, fatigue and fright brought sleep to tired lids. Even when Yolette and Hildé came in the child did not wake.
“I am going to stay,” said the Mouse sullenly; “if the shells come the little girl will be frightened.”
As he spoke he furtively felt for some purloined silver forks that filled one pocket, found them still there, glanced maliciously at Yolette, and coughed gently.
“Where is the Nanterre fort?” asked Hildé, faintly.
The Mouse explained in a weird whisper, apparently much relieved that nobody offered to examine his pockets.
“Is he all alone?” said Hildé.
“Parbleu! There’s not much society in the casemates,” observed the Mouse— “no, nor many surgeons to spare. I’m going back to him to-morrow.” He said it indifferently; he might have added that he was going at the risk of his life, but risks were too common at that time to occupy the attention of even such a coward as the Mouse. Wherever he went there were shells and bullets and bayonets now, and it mattered little whether they were French or Prussian.
He boldly rattled the silver forks in his pocket, leered, pulled his cap lower, for the reflection of the flames annoyed him, and said:
“A la guerre comme, à la guerre, mesdames.”
At the same moment hurried steps sounded on the landing. Yolette opened the door and Bourke entered.
When he saw Yolette and Hildé, he could not speak at first.
“Don’t, don’t,” sobbed Yolette; “we are all safe — all of us. It was you that I feared for. O, if you knew! if you knew!”
“I was in the rue d’Ypres,” stammered Bourke. “The shells rained on the ramparts, and I ran to the Prince Murat barracks. I never dreamed they were shelling this part of the city until somebody said the Luxembourg had been struck. Then I came. Yolette, look at me! Good God, what a fool I was!”
She clung around his neck, smiling and weeping, telling him she would never again let him go away. Hildé was silent. The Mouse fidgetted by the door. The child slept.
Then Hildé spoke of Harewood, of his message sent by the Mouse. Yolette cried out that she could not let Cecil go away again, and Bourke, devoured by anxiety, questioned the Mouse until that young bandit’s mind was a hopeless chaos.
“You can’t ask him to go, Hildé,” implored her sister. “O, how can you ask Cecil to go to the forts, when you know what they are doing out there. I can’t let him go — I cannot!”
“If Jim is not in danger, I can go out with the next escort,” said Bourke gravely. “If he is, then I must go at once.”
The Mouse was vague; he didn’t know what might happen since they cut out the bullet. His habitual distrust of doctors, of science in all its branches, made it plain to Bourke that there was nothing accurate to be learned from him.
The Mouse lingered a minute or two, watching the sleeping child in the bed. Bourke told him he might go, and he went, as a dismissed dog goes, apologetically, half resentful, half conciliatory, clutching the forks in his pocket with dirty fingers. Hildé turned and went into her room, closing the door behind her.
“I must sleep with the child,” said Yolette; “she wakes in the night and trembles so I almost fear she may die of fright. Cecil, is there any danger now from the shells?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I will lie down in the kitchen. If they bombard the quarter again we must go to the cellar. To-morrow I am going to take you and Hildé and Red Riding Hood to the American Minister. And, my darling, before we go, you must marry me.”
“Marry — now!” faltered Yolette.
“Otherwise the American Minister cannot protect you. If you are my wife, he is bound to do so. I can’t stand this sort of thing; the city has gone distracted; nobody is safe outside an embassy. The Prussians must respect our flag, dear, and anarchists and kindred ruffians dare not enter the Legation. Shall I tell you what has happened in the rue d’Ypres? A gang of communists, cutthroats and thieves have broken open our house and are carousing in the cellar with our red wine. Stauffer, Mortier and Buckhurst are there, and they will do us mischief if they have a chance.”
He drew her head down to his shoulder.
“Will you marry me to-morrow, Yolette?” he asked, “so that I can leave you safe at the Legation and go to my friend?”
“Yes,” she whispered, then threw both arms about him in a passion of tenderness and fear.
CHAPTER XXVII.
AN UNDERGROUND AFFAIR.
WHEN THE MOUSE left the rue Serpente, the bombardment had shifted to the southern forts, and the southeast secteurs of the fortifications were covered with exploding shells. As he slunk across the city he could hear the fracas of the distant bombardment, and he gave the danger zone wide berth. His mind was preoccupied by two problems, how to conceal his silver forks and how to get back to the Nanterre fort.
The second problem could wait till morning, the first needed serious study. He already possessed one burrow. It was in the cellar of the house in the rue d’Ypres. For, while doing menial service for Bourke and Harewood, he had managed to abstract booty from neighbouring windows — a spoon here, a silk handkerchief there — nothing much, but still a modest little heap of plunder, which he had concealed in the cellar of the house on the ramparts. Therefore, his first instinct led him back to the rue d’Ypres, where, if the cachette in the cellar remained undisturbed, he could further avail himself of it by depositing the forks with the rest of the loot.
“Thrift,” muttered the Mouse, “cannot be too early acquired. Sapristi! One must live — in this world of bandits!”
As he crossed the boulevard Montparnasse he saw that the railroad station was on fire. For a moment he hesitated — there might be fine pickings yonder — but prudence prevailed, and he shambled on, scanning the passers-by with crafty face half averted, bludgeon swinging, cap over one eye, the incarnation of communism militant. Affrighted citizens gave him room, turned and looked after him as though in him they saw the symbol of all that was secret and dreadful in the city — the embodied shape of anarchy — the ominous prophet of revolution.
He passed on, swaggering when prudent, cringing when the sentries of the guard, pacing the devastated streets, halted to look after him, lanterns raised. At such moments he cursed them as loud as he dared; sometimes, when far enough away, he would insult them with gestures and epithets, gratifying to his vanity because of the slight risk such amusement entailed. He rattled the forks in his pocket as he walked; once or twice he broke into song — a doggerel verse or two of some sentimental faubourg ditty that attracted him, because, like criminals of his type, he adored sentiment — in song. He thought of Harewood lying in the casemates of the Nanterre fort. Would he live or die? His wound had turned so bad that the surgeons began to look at him in that musing way that even the dying understand.
The Mouse scratched his ear; dead or alive he must find his way back to Harewood; for the necessity that he felt for Harewood’s company left him restless as a lost cur.
He thought often of Red Riding Hood. She was so small and thin and so afraid of him that he wondered why he thought of her at all. In his burrow he had buried an infant’s silver cup. This he decided to present to Red Riding Hood when he could do so without fear of aspersions on his honesty. He chuckled as he thought how it would please the child — she would look at him with those big eyes — she would perhaps smile — Nom de Dieu — what a droll young one! And so he came to the house on the ramparts in the rue d’Ypres.
The cellar of the house was reached from the garden through a flight of stone steps. The heavy slab that closed the manhole had no padlock.
The Mouse, on his hands and knees, groped about in the dark, stumbling among dead weeds and broken cucumber frames, puffing and cursing, until, without any warning, he almost fell into the manhole itself. Startled, alert, he crouched breathless by the slab on the grass. Somebody had removed it; somebody, then, was in the cellar!
Stealthily he crawled into the manhole, and descended the first three steps. His worn shoes made no noise; he crept three steps further.
At the end of the cellar, in the full light of a lantern on the floor, sat three men. Two of them wore the uniforms of officers of the carbiniers; the third was in civilian dress. Their voices were indistinct, but their features were not, and the Mouse fairly bristled as he recognised them. They were Stauffer, Mortier and Buckhurst.
The first thought of the Mouse was instinctively personal. They had come to rob him of his plunder! It was that, rather than curiosity, that led him to creep toward them, nearer, nearer, wriggle behind a barrel, and crawl so close that, with outstretched arm, he could have stabbed Mortier — if Mortier had been alone.
Buckhurst, pale-faced, calm, bent his colourless eyes on Mortier, and spoke in the passionless voice that always struck a chill to the Mouse’s marrow:
“Monsieur Mortier, you misunderstand me. I am not in this city for my health, nor am I here to preach the Commune. There is but one thing I am looking for — money — and I don’t care how I get it or where I get it. Prussian thalers or French francs, it’s all one to me.”
Mortier raised his hideous head and fixed his little green eyes on the bloodless face before him.
“One minute,” said Buckhurst, “then I’ve finished. Not to waste words, the situation is this: Captain Stauffer has arranged to open the Nanterre fort to the Prussians; I have agreed to run a tunnel from this cellar, under the street, to the bastion where the Prophet is — I think it’s bastion No. 73. Powder exploded in the tunnel opens a breach in the ramparts, directly behind the Nanterre fort. Do you comprehend?”
He paused a moment, then added: “For this we divide 500,000 thalers.”
Stauffer began to speak eagerly, his weak face lighting up as he proceeded.
“It was Speyer’s plan; he had it in view before war was declared last July. He and I lodged in this house and planned it all out — even to excavating the tunnel to bastion No. 73 — damn the man who knocked him on the head. But we can do it alone — all we want of you is to help with the tunnel. It will be worth your while — really it will!”
Mortier’s eyes seemed to grow incandescent; the great veins swelled out on his bald dome-shaped head, his throat, under the red flannel rags, moved convulsively.
As he spoke he rose. Buckhurst, with the easy grace of a panther, rose, too. Stauffer lumbered to his feet and began to speak again, but Mortier silenced him and turned on Buckhurst like a wild beast.
