Complete weird tales of.., p.206
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 206
“The lights of Strasbourg,” whispered the Countess, as I sat up, rubbing my hot eyes.
I looked for Buckhurst; his place was empty.
“Mr. Buckhurst left us at the railroad crossing,” she said.
“Left us!”
“Yes! He boarded a train loaded with wounded.... He had business to transact in Colmar before he presented himself to the authorities in Paris.... And we are to go by way of Avricourt.”
So Buckhurst had already begun to execute his programme. But the abrupt, infernal precision of the man jarred me unpleasantly.
In the dark I felt cautiously for my diamonds; they were safe in my left hip-pocket.
* * *
The wind had died out, and a fine rain began to filter down through a mist which lay over the flat plain as we entered the suburbs of Strasbourg.
Again and again we were halted by sentinels, then permitted to proceed in the darkness, along deserted avenues lighted by gas-jets burning in tall bronze lamp-posts through a halo of iridescent fog.
We passed deserted suburban villas, blank stretches of stucco walls enclosing gardens, patches of cabbages, thickets of hop-poles to which the drenched vines clung fantastically, and scores of abandoned houses, shutters locked, blinds drawn.
High to the east the ramparts of the city loomed, set at regular distances with electric lights; from the invisible citadel rockets were rising, spraying the fog with jewelled flakes, crumbling to golden powder in the starless void above.
Presently our carriage stopped before a tremendous mass of masonry pierced by an iron, arched gate, through which double files of farm-wagons were rolling, escorted by customs guards and marines.
“No room! no room!” shouted the soldiers. “This is the Porte de Pierre. Go to the Porte de Saverne!”
So we passed on beneath the bastions, skirting the ramparts to the Porte de Saverne, where, after a harangue, the gate guards admitted us, and we entered Strasbourg in the midst of a crush of vehicles. At the railroad station hundreds of cars choked the tracks; loaded freight trains stalled in the confusion, trains piled with ammunition and provisions, trains crowded with horses and cattle and sheep, filling the air with melancholy plaints; locomotives backing and whistling, locomotives blowing off deafening blasts of steam; gongs sounding, bells ringing, station-masters’ trumpets blowing; and, above all, the immense clamor of human voices.
The Countess and our Alsatian driver helped me to the platform, I looked around with dread at the throng, being too weak to battle for a foothold; but the brave Alsatian elbowed a path for me, and the Countess warded off the plunging human cattle, and at length I found myself beside the cars where line-soldiers stood guard at every ten paces and gendarmes stalked about, shoving the frantic people into double files.
“Last train for Paris!” bawled an official in gilt and blue; and to the anxious question of the Countess he shook his head, saying, “There is no room, madame; it is utterly impossible — pardon, I cannot discuss anything now; the Prussians are signalled at Ostwald, and their shells may fall here at any moment.”
“If that is so,” I said, “this lady cannot stay here!”
“I can’t help that!” he shouted, starting off down the platform.
I caught the sleeve of a captain of gendarmerie who was running to enter a first-class compartment.
“Eh — what do you want, monsieur?” he snapped, in surprise. Then, as I made him a sign, he regarded me with amazement. I had given the distress signal of the secret police.
“Try to make room for this lady in your compartment,” I said.
“Willingly, monsieur. Hasten, madame; the train is already moving!” and he tore open the compartment door and swung the Countess to the car platform.
I suppose she thought I was to follow, for when the officer slammed the compartment door she stepped to the window and tried to open it.
“Quick!” she cried to the guard, who had just locked the door; “help that officer in! He is wounded — can’t you see he is wounded?”
The train was gliding along the asphalt platform; I hobbled beside the locked compartment, where she stood at the window.
“Will you unlock that door?” said the Countess to the guard. “I wish to leave the train!”
The cars were rolling a little faster than I could move along.
The Countess leaned from the open window; through the driving rain her face in the lamp-light was pitifully white. I made a last effort and caught up with her car.
“A safe journey, madame,” I stammered, catching at the hand she held out and brushing the shabby-gloved fingers with my lips.
“SISTERS OF CHARITY WERE GIVING FIRST AID”
“I shall never forgive this wanton self-sacrifice,” she said, unsteadily. Then the car rolled silently past me, swifter, swifter, and her white face faded from my sight. Yet still I stood there, bareheaded, in the rain, while the twin red lamps on the rear car grew smaller and smaller, until they, too, were shut out in the closing curtains of the fog.
As I turned away into the lighted station a hospital train from the north glided into the yard and stopped. Soldiers immediately started carrying out the wounded and placing them in rows on mattresses ranged along the walls of the passenger depot; sisters of charity, hovering over the mutilated creatures, were already giving first aid to the injured; policemen kept the crowd from trampling the dead and dying; gendarmes began to clear the platforms, calling out sharply, “No more trains to-night! Move on! This platform is for government officials only!”
Through the scrambling mob a file of wounded tottered, escorted by police; women were forced back and pushed out into the street, only to be again menaced by galloping military ambulances arriving, accompanied by hussars. The confusion grew into a tumult; men struggled and elbowed for a passage to the platforms, women sobbed and cried; through the uproar the treble wail of terrified children broke out.
Jostled, shoved, pulled this way and that, I felt that I was destined to go down under the people’s feet, and I don’t know what would have become of me had not a violent push sent me against the door of the telegraph office. The door gave way, and I fell on my knees, staggered to my feet, and crept out once more to the platform.
The station-master passed, a haggard gentleman in rumpled uniform and gilt cap; and as he left the office by the outer door the heavy explosion of a rampart cannon shook the station. 134
“Can you get me to Paris?” I asked.
“Quick, then,” he muttered; “this way — lean on me, monsieur! I am trying to send another train out — but Heaven alone knows! Quick, this way!”
The glare of a locomotive’s headlight dazzled me; I made towards it, clinging to the arm of the station-master; the ground under my feet rocked with the shock of the siege-guns. Suddenly a shell fell and burst in the yard outside; there was a cry, a rush of trainmen, a gendarme shouting; then the piercing alarm notes of locomotives, squealing like terrified leviathans.
The train drawn up along the platform gave a jerk and immediately moved out towards the open country, compartment doors swinging wide, trainmen and guards running alongside, followed by a mob of frenzied passengers, who leaped into empty compartments, flinging satchels and rugs to the four winds. Crash! A shell fell through the sloping roof of the platform and blew up. Through the white cloud and brilliant glare I saw a porter, wheeling boxes and trunks, fall, buried under an avalanche of baggage, and a sister of charity throw up her arms as though to shield her face from the fragments.
A car, doors swinging wide, glided past me; I caught the rail and fell forward into a compartment. The cushions of the seats were afire, and a policeman was hammering out the sparks with naked fists.
I was too weak to aid him. Presently he hurled the last burning cushion from the open door and leaped out into the train-yard, where red and green lamps glowed and the brilliant flare of bursting shells lighted the fog. By this time the train was moving swiftly; the car windows shook with the thunder from the ramparts under which we were passing; then came inky darkness — a tunnel — then a rush of mist and wind from the open door as we swept out into the country.
Passengers clinging to the platforms now made their way into the compartment where I lay almost senseless, and soon the little place was crowded, and somebody slammed the door.
Then the flying locomotive, far ahead, shrieked, and the train leaped, rushing forward into the unknown. Blackness, stupefying blackness, outside; inside, unseen, the huddled passengers, breathing heavily with sudden stifled sobs, or the choked, indrawn breath of terror; but not a word, not a quaver of human voices; peril strangled speech as our black train flew onward through the night.
* * *
VIII
A MAN TO LET
THE TRAIN WHICH bore me out of the arc of the Prussian fire at Strasbourg passed in between the fortifications of Paris the next morning about eleven o’clock. Ten minutes later I was in a closed cab on my way to the headquarters of the Imperial Military Police, temporarily housed in the Luxembourg Palace.
The day was magnificent; sunshine flooded the boulevards, and a few chestnut-trees in the squares had already begun to blossom for the second time in the season; there seemed to be no prophecy of autumn in sky or sunlight.
The city, as I saw it from the open window of my cab, appeared to be in a perfectly normal condition. There were, perhaps, a few more national-guard soldiers on the streets, a few more brightly colored posters, notices, and placards on the dead walls, but the life of the city itself had not changed at all; the usual crowds filled the boulevards, the usual street cries sounded, the same middle-aged gentlemen sat in front of the cafés reading the same daily papers, the same waiters served them the same drinks; rows of cabs were drawn up where cabs are always to be found, and the same policemen dawdled in gossip with the same flower-girls. I caught the scent of early winter violets in the fresh Parisian breeze.
Was this the city that Buckhurst looked upon as already doomed? 137
On the marble bridge gardeners were closing up the morning flower-market; blue-bloused men with jointed hose sprinkled the asphalt in front of the Palais de Justice; students strolled under the trees from the School of Medicine to the Sorbonne; the Luxembourg fountain tossed its sparkling sheets of spray among the lotus.
All this I saw, yet a sinister foreboding oppressed me, and I could not shake it off even in this bright city where September was promising only a new lease of summer and the white spikes of chestnut blossoms hummed with eager bees.
Physically I felt well enough; the cramped sleep in the dark compartment, far from exhausting me, had not only rested me, but had also brought me an appetite which I meant to satisfy as soon as might be. As for my back, it was simply uncomfortable, but all effects of the shock had disappeared — unless this heavy mental depression was due to it.
My cab was now entering the Palace of the Luxembourg by the great arch facing the Rue de Tournon; the line sentinels halted us; I left the cab, crossed the parade in front of the guard-house, turned to the right, and climbed the stairs straight to my own quarters, which were in the west wing of the palace, and consisted of a bedroom, a working cabinet, and a dressing-room.
But I did not enter my door or even glance at it; I continued straight on, down the corridor to a door, on the ground-glass panes of which was printed in red lettering:
HEADQUARTERS
IMPERIAL MILITARY POLICE
SAFE DEPOSIT
138
The sentinel interrogated me for form’s sake, although he knew me; I entered, passed rapidly along the face of the steel cage behind which some officers sat on high stools, writing, and presented myself at the guichet marked, “Foreign Division.”
There was no military clerk in attendance there, and, to my surprise, the guichet was closed.
However, a very elegant officer strolled up to the guichet as I laid my bag of diamonds on the glass shelf, languidly unlocked the steel window-gate, and picked up the bag of jewels.
The officer was Mornac, the Emperor’s alter ego, or âme damnée, who had taken over the entire department the very day I left Paris for the frontier. Officially, I could not recognize him until I presented myself to Colonel Jarras with my report; so I saluted his uniform, standing at attention in my filthy clothes, awaiting the usual question and receipt.
“Name and number?” inquired Mornac, indolently.
I gave both.
“You desire to declare?”
I enumerated the diamonds, and designated them as those lately stolen from the crucifix of Louis XI.
Mornac handed me a printed certificate of deposit, opened a compartment in the safe, and tossed in the bag without sealing it. And, as I stood waiting, he lighted a scented cigarette, glanced over at me, puffed once or twice, and finally dismissed me with a discourteous nod.
I went, because he was Mornac; I thought that I was entitled to a bureau receipt, but could scarcely demand one from the chief of the entire department who had taken over the bureau solely in order to reform it, root and branch. Doubtless his curt dismissal of me without the customary receipt and his failure to seal the bag were two of his reforms. 139
I limped off past the glittering steel cage, thankful that the jewels were safe, turned into the corridor, and hastened back to my own rooms.
To tear off my rags, bathe, shave, and dress in a light suit of civilian clothes took me longer than usual, for I was a trifle lame.
Bath and clean clothes ought to have cheered me; but the contrary was the case, and I sat down to a breakfast brought by a palace servant, and ate it gloomily, thinking of Buckhurst, and the Countess, and of Morsbronn, and of the muddy dead lying under the rifle smoke below my turret window.
I thought, too, of that astonishing conspiracy which had formed under the very shadow of the imperial throne, and through which already the crucifix and diamonds of Louis XI. had been so nearly lost to France.
Who besides Buckhurst was involved? How far had Colonel Jarras gone in the investigation during my absence? How close to the imperial throne had the conspiracy burrowed?
Pondering, I slowly retraced my steps through the bedroom and dressing-room, and out into the tiled hallway, where, at the end of the dim corridor, the door of Colonel Jarras’s bureau stood partly open.
Jarras was sitting at his desk as I entered, and he gave me a leaden-eyed stare as I closed the door behind me and stood at attention.
For a moment he said nothing, but presently he partly turned his ponderous body towards me and motioned me to a chair.
As I sat down I glanced around and saw my old comrade, Speed, sitting in a dark corner, chewing a cigarette and watching me in alert silence.
“You are present to report?” suggested Colonel Jarras, heavily.
I bowed, glancing across at Speed, who shrugged his shoulders and looked at the floor with an ominous smile.
Mystified, I began my report, but was immediately stopped by Jarras with a peevish gesture: “All right, all right; keep all that for the Chief of Department. Your report doesn’t concern me.”
“Doesn’t concern you!” I repeated; “are you not chief of this bureau, Colonel Jarras?”
“No,” snapped Jarras; “and there’s no bureau now — at least no bureau for the Foreign Division.”
Speed leaned forward and said: “Scarlett, my friend, the Foreign Division of the Imperial Military Police is not in favor just now. It appears the Foreign Division is suspected.”
“Suspected? Of what?”
“Treason, I suppose,” said Speed, serenely.
I felt my face begin to burn, but the astonishing news left me speechless.
“I said,” observed Speed, “that the Foreign Division is suspected; that is not exactly the case; it is not suspected, simply because it has been abolished.”
“Who the devil did that?” I asked, savagely.
“Mornac.”
Mornac! The Emperor’s shadow! Then truly enough it was all up with the Foreign Division. But the shame of it! — the disgrace of as faithful a body of police, mercenaries though they were, as ever worked for any cause, good or bad.
“So it’s the old whine of treason again, is it?” I said, while the blood beat in my temples. “Oh, very well, doubtless Monsieur Mornac knows his business. Are we transferred, Speed, or just kicked out into the street?”
“Kicked out,” replied Speed, rubbing his slim, bony hands together.
“And you, sir?” I asked, turning to Jarras, who sat with his fat, round head buried in his shoulders, staring at the discolored blotter on his desk.
The old Corsican straightened as though stung: “Since when, monsieur, have subordinates assumed the right to question their superiors?”
I asked his pardon in a low voice, although I was no longer his subordinate. He had been a good and loyal chief to us all; the least I could do now was to show him respect in his bitter humiliation.
I think he felt our attitude and that it comforted him, but all he said was: “It is a heavy blow. The Emperor knows best.”
As we sat there in silence, a soldier came to summon Colonel Jarras, and he went away, leaning on his ivory-headed cane, head bowed over the string of medals on his breast.
When he had gone, Speed came over and shut the door, then shook hands with me.
“He’s gone to see Mornac; it will be our turn next. Look out for Mornac, or he’ll catch you tripping in your report. Did you find Buckhurst?”
“Look here,” I said, angrily, “how can Mornac catch me tripping? I’m not under his orders.”
“You are until you’re discharged. You see, they’ve taken it into their heads, since the crucifix robbery, to suspect everybody and anybody short of the Emperor. Mornac came smelling around here the day you left. He’s at the bottom of all this — a nice business to cast suspicion on our division because we’re foreigners. Gad, he looks like a pickpocket himself — he’s got the oblique trick of the eyes and the restless finger movement.”
