Complete weird tales of.., p.864
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 864
“You poor child!”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“Therefore,” she said, “I am leaving. Now do you understand?”
He sat looking at her, wondering uneasily at her intelligence and her ability to express herself. Here was a maturity of mind unexpected in this girl. So far it had not visibly altered the youth of her, nor impaired her sweetness and honesty.
In spite of the appalling surroundings amid which she had matured, her mind and heart still remained young.
Biting a tasselled grass stem reflectively, she sat thinking for a few moments, then she reverted to the subject of Wildresse and his son.
“I am convinced that it is all blague,” she repeated, “ — this threat of Noumea. Unless Jacques misbehaves very seriously in Biribi, nobody can send him to La Nouvelle. Besides, if his father chooses to oblige the Government, what does it matter about me? No; I have had enough of degradation. An hour on the river with you was enough to settle it.”
“But what do you intend to do, Philippa?” he inquired.
She looked up at him with her winning smile:
“I came to ask you that. Please tell me what I am to do.”
“You must not ask me — —”
“Of course. You are the first man who ever pleased me. You please me more and more. Why should I not come to you in my perplexity and say, ‘What am I to do, my friend?’”
He reddened at that; found nothing to answer. The sudden and grotesque responsibility which this young girl was so lightly placing upon his shoulders might have amused if it had not disconcerted him. But it did not disconcert her.
“What am I to do, Mr. Warner?” she repeated with a smile of perfect confidence.
“Why, I don’t know, Philippa. What can you do down here at Saïs?”
“Tell me!” she insisted with undisturbed serenity.
“You couldn’t very well remain here. You will have to go back to Ausone and consider this matter more seriously — —”
“Ah, ça — non! I shall not go back!”
“What do you propose to do?”
She bit her grass stem:
“I don’t know. I have my trunk in the punt — —”
“What!”
“Certainly, I brought my effects! I have some money — not very much. I shall go to the inn and remain there until you have decided what it is best for me to do.”
The situation began to strike him as sufficiently ludicrous — the tragic mask is always on the verge of a grin — but he did not feel like smiling.
For a few minutes he occupied himself with collecting, strapping, and slinging his kit; and when he was ready to go, he looked down at the girl Philippa, where she was seated watching him out of her trustful grey eyes.
“I can employ you as a model,” he said, “until Monsieur Wildresse sends for you. What do you think of the idea?”
“‘I can employ you as a model,’ he said”
“As a — a model, Monsieur?” she stammered.
“Yes. You could pose for me, if you like.”
A delicate scarlet flush slowly mounted to her hair.
Perplexed, he watched her.
“Don’t you like the idea?” And suddenly he divined what was troubling her. “Not that sort of model,” he said, amused. “You shall wear your clothes, Philippa.”
“Oh.... Yes, I should like it, I think.”
“It’s about the only excuse which would enable you to remain at the inn until you have come to some conclusion regarding your future,” he explained.
“A painter may always have his models? It is expected, is it not?”
“Oh, yes, that is always understood. But nobody would understand your coming to live at the Golden Peach merely because you and I happened to be good friends,” he added laughingly.
“I understand,” she said in a grave voice. “I am to be your model, not your friend.”
He nodded carelessly, looking away from her. After a moment, he lighted a cigarette. It relieved him considerably to recollect that the Harem had gone to Ausone.
“Now,” he said, “if you are ready to walk back to the inn with me, I’ll explain you to Madame Arlon, the patronne.”
“And my punt?” she inquired, rising from the grass.
“Oh, Lord! I forgot.”
“My trunk is in it.”
“Where is your punt?”
She pointed across the meadow to where the river sparkled:
“It is my own punt; the Lys. I took nothing from Monsieur Wildresse that did not belong to me. It will be agreeable for us to have a punt here, will it not?”
“Very,” he said uneasily.
They turned eastward across the blossoming meadow, over which already the swallows were soaring in their late afternoon flight. A vanneau or two rose from moist spots, protesting, and flapping away on greenish-bronze wings; a bécassine went off like a badly-balanced arrow, and his flat, raucous, “squack! squack!” rang through the sunny silence. Higher, higher his twisting flight carried him toward the sky, where he dwindled to a speck and vanished; but out of the intense blue zenith his distant cry still rang long after he had disappeared from the range of human vision.
CHAPTER XI
WHEN WARNER AND the girl Philippa arrived at the Golden Peach, they found that Madame Arlon, profiting by the prospective temporary absence of the Harem, had gone to visit relatives near Nancy for a day or two. But Linette smilingly took charge of Philippa and her luggage.
Warner, entering the southern end of the walled garden, discovered Halkett at the other extremity, still seated under the latticed arbor. A letter lay spread upon the table beside his elbow. Over this letter, with pencil and paper, he pored as though he were working out a problem in hieroglyphics.
But when Warner appeared, the Englishman leisurely folded and pocketed the papers on which he had been working, nodded pleasantly, and handed to Warner a copy of the Petit Journal d’Ausone.
“It came after you left,” he said. “There’s nothing really new in it — Germany’s ultimatum to Russia, that’s about all.... I am feeling rather anxious about a friend of mine, Reginald Gray. He was to have arrived here last night or early this morning on his motor cycle. No word has come from him personally, and it is now nearly night again.”
Warner seated himself, glanced over the inky little provincial newspaper, then laid it aside. There was in its columns nothing definite concerning the threatened rupture of the peace of Europe.
“Halkett,” he said almost solemnly, “this crime with which they say our civilization is menaced can never be consummated. There will be no World War, because the world dares not acquiesce in such an outrage. The eleventh hour has struck, I know; but salvation exists only because there is a twelfth hour on the dial; otherwise the preordained end of everything would be hell.”
Halkett smiled slightly.
“I’ve just had another letter,” he said. “I’m likely to remain here for a few days more.... Which means only one thing.”
“What does it mean?”
“War.”
Warner smiled incredulously.
“Anyway, there will be one compensation for the general smash if you remain here,” he said gayly.
“You’re very good to take it that way.... You and I — and to hell with the Deluge!” But his face sobered while the jest was spoken; he leaned rather wearily on the iron table and rested his forehead in one hand. “I wish I knew what has happened to Reginald Gray,” he repeated.
“What is it that worries you about your friend Gray?”
“His cap was picked up on the highway five miles southeast of Saïs.”
“How could you know that?”
“I have just learned it by telephone, through a certain source of information.”
“Did you learn anything more?”
“There was a little blood on the road.”
Warner remained silent.
“Also,” continued Halkett thoughtfully, “a motor cycle had skidded up the bank.... But no signs of a serious accident could be discovered — merely the ragged swathe cut through soft earth and rank vegetation.... If Gray met with an accident, he must have mended his machine, remounted, and continued his course — wherever he was going — unless somebody picked up him and his wheel and took them away.... I can’t understand this affair. It bothers me.”
“The chances are that your friend Gray had a rather bad spill,” suggested Warner, “and no doubt you’ll hear from him, or about him, before morning.”
“I ought to, certainly.” He filled and lighted his pipe; Warner rose and began to pace the garden path rather nervously. Presently he came back to where the Englishman sat brooding over his pipe and nursing Ariadne.
“Halkett,” he said abruptly, “you remember that girl Philippa in the Café Biribi?”
The Englishman looked up inquiringly.
“Well, she is here.”
“At the inn?”
“Yes. I met her down in the big river meadow this afternoon, and she calmly informed me that she had left home for good.”
“Run away?”
“Run away. Taken the key of the fields. Beat it for keeps. How does that strike you?”
“Any particular reason?” inquired Halkett indifferently.
“Why, yes. The child has been used by the secret police to spy on people in the Café Biribi.”
Halkett’s eyes opened at that.
Warner went on:
“That old rascal, Wildresse, it seems, is nothing but a paid informer. He forced this girl Philippa to engage in the same filthy business. She even admitted that old Wildresse had set her on me! No doubt he had decided to watch you himself. And do you know what I think?”
Halkett was very wide-awake now. He said:
“I believe I do know what you are thinking. And I believe you are pretty nearly right.”
“That the assault on you was merely a local matter instigated by Wildresse?”
“It wouldn’t surprise me.”
“I think it was, too. Some of his thugs did it. He had made up his mind about you. But somebody must have tipped him off to watch you.”
“Probably.”
“I am sure of it. The three German-appearing men who tried to pick a quarrel with you over the Archduke’s murder were not the men who tried to frisk you for your papers. They were ‘provocative agents’ in the pay of a foreign government — hired opportunists who were expected to pick something of value out of any confusion attending a general row fomented by themselves.”
“Who told you that?”
“Philippa.”
Halkett, now thoroughly interested, looked keenly at Warner through the thin haze of his pipe.
“These three agents,” continued Warner, “were certainly in close communication with the men who have been following you. And at least one of those men was seated at the table directly behind you when Wildresse’s thugs tried to frisk you for documents. So you see that Wildresse, prodded by the French secret police, and these provocative agents, prodded by the people who are following you, who, in turn, are spurred by the German Government, were all playing at cross purposes, but with you as a common objective. A fine nest of intrigue I led you into when I took you to the Cabaret de Biribi! I’m terribly sorry, Halkett. But I believe that some good has come out of that mess — a fragment of a letter, written in German, which Philippa gave me in the meadow this afternoon.
“She found it under the wrecked table behind you. Nobody has seen it except myself and Philippa; and the child cannot read much German. But, studying it and seeing your name in the letter, she was clever enough to bring it to me. Here it is.” He laid it on the table under the Englishman’s eyes.
While Halkett remained absorbed in his translation, Warner paced the garden, deeply occupied with his own uneasy cogitations. After a little while Halkett spoke to him in an altered voice, and he turned and came swiftly back to the arbor.
The Englishman, looking up, said gravely:
“Concerning myself, there seems to remain now nothing worth concealing from you.... Perhaps you had better know the truth. I happen to be an officer temporarily serving with the Intelligence Department; I had just been assigned to duty in New York when the Harkness shell was stolen. The general alarm went out. Gray, a brother officer, and I chanced to stumble on evidence which sent us aboard an Antwerp steamer. Our birds were aboard. We pulled every string available, and, passing over the details of the affair, he and I managed to recover the drawings, specifications, and formula which had been stolen. Some of these papers are in that envelope.
“Every German agent in Europe knows we have them. My Government, for some reason or other, instructs me to remain here for the present. As Gray and I are known, doubtless somebody will appear and take the drawings out of our hands, because the chances are that I’d be murdered before I reached Calais. That is the situation, Warner.”
“Has Gray any of the drawings?”
“He has.”
“I understand.”
“And that is why I am worrying about Gray. They’d not hesitate to kill him if they thought there was a chance that he had any of the papers.”
Warner said:
“They couldn’t have killed him. A crime on the public highway cannot remain undiscovered very long.”
Halkett sat thoughtfully stroking Ariadne. Presently he looked up with a slight smile.
“Well, what are you going to do with the girl Philippa?” he inquired.
“Now, what do you think of a situation like this?” demanded Warner, half laughing, half vexed. “I told her to go home. She positively refuses. You can’t blame the child. The dirty business there has disgusted her. This seems to be a final revolt. But — what would you do if a young girl wished herself on you?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” said Halkett, intensely amused.
Warner reddened.
“I haven’t either,” he said. “All I can think of is to use her as a model — give her a small salary until she finds something to do.”
“Are you going to use her for a model?”
“I suppose so, until somebody comes after her to take her back.”
“Suppose nobody comes?” suggested Halkett mischievously.
“Well, I’m not going to adopt her, that’s certain,” insisted the other. “Poor little thing!” he added. “ — Her instincts seem to be decent. Who could blame a young girl for sickening of such a life and cutting away on her own hook? That’s a rotten joint, that Cabaret de Biribi. And as for that old villain, Wildresse, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if he were playing the dirty game from both ends — German and French. Informers are often traitors.”
“Very frequently.”
“Spies also have that reputation, I believe — except in romantic fiction,” said Warner.
“They usually deserve it,” returned Halkett. “Generally speaking, they are a scum recruited from low pubs and brothels. Rarely does any reputable person enter that profession except in line of military duty or in time of war.
“Servants, waiters, chauffeurs, those are the most respectable classes of secret agents. But the demi-monde and their hangers-on furnish the majority of those popularly supposed to represent people of position who play the rôle of international spy. They are a rummy lot, Warner.
“It is very, very seldom in Occidental drawing-rooms that such practices prevail. A woman of position very rarely becomes a paid agent of that sort. Diplomats and attachés who are pumped and victimized are usually the dupes of socially disreputable people. Society in England and in Western Europe rarely entertains such a favorite of fiction as a paid Government spy; nor are such people very often recruited from its ranks. East of the Danube it is different.”
They sat for a while smoking, Halkett lavishing endearments upon Ariadne who never failed to respond, Warner musing on what Halkett had said and wondering exactly what duties the Military Intelligence Department of any Government might include.
No doubt, like the Government, it employs spies, and, like the Government, never admits the fact.
For among all outcasts so vitally necessary to autocracy and militarism, the spy is the most pitiable: in time of peace no authority admits employing him; in time of war, his fate, if taken, is as certain as that his own Government will disown him. Eternally repudiated, whether of respectable or disreputable antecedents, honest or otherwise, patriotic or mercenary, the world has only one opinion to express concerning spies, although it often cackles over their adventures and snivels over their fate.
Perhaps Halkett was musing on these things, for presently he took his pipe from his mouth and said:
“To my knowledge, we British never employ spies in America. Your Government, I know, never employs them anywhere in time of peace. All other Governments do. Europe swarms with them. If I were in Germany today, I’d be considered a spy. They’d follow me about and lock me up on the first excuse — or without any excuse at all. And if we chanced to be at war with Germany, and I were caught, they’d certainly shoot me because I have recovered stolen property.”
“They’d execute you because you are not in uniform?”
“Certainly. I’d not stand a ghost of a chance. So I shall be rather glad that I’m in France when war comes.”
“You are so certain it is coming?”
“Absolutely, my dear fellow. Probably it will be declared tomorrow.”
“I cannot believe it, Halkett.”
“I can scarcely believe it myself. But — I know it is coming. And it is coming from the north.”
“Through Belgium?”
“Exactly.”
“And the treaty?”
“I have already told you how Germany regards such agreements. She’ll kill that treaty with just as much emotion as she’d experience in assassinating a fly. It’s a rotten outlook, Warner. The eleventh hour has passed.”
They smoked for a while in silence, then:
“Where is your little protégée?” asked Halkett, making an effort to shake off his depression.
