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In Secret

by Robert W. Chambers · English · Gutenberg #5748 · 444,531 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: In Secret

Author: Robert W. Chambers


        
Release date: May 1, 2004 [eBook #5748]
                Most recently updated: September 9, 2012

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5748

Credits: Produced by David Moynihan, Charles Franks and the Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN SECRET ***




Produced by David Moynihan, Charles Franks and the
Distributed Proofreading Team.











IN SECRET

by

ROBERT W. CHAMBERS

AUTHOR OF "THE COMMON LAW," "THE RECKONING," "LORRAINE," ETC.

NEW YORK






DEDICATION






    A grateful nation's thanks are due
    To Arethusa and to you---
    To her who dauntless at your side
    Pneumonia and Flue defied
    With phials of formaldehyde!

II

    Chief of Police were you, by gosh!
    Gol ding it! how you bumped the Boche!
    Handed 'em one with club and gun
    Until the Hun was on the run:
    And that's the way the war was won.

III

    Easthampton's pride! My homage take
    For Fairest Philadelphia's sake.
    Retire in company with Bill;
    Rest by the Racquet's window sill
    And, undisturbed, consume your pill.

ENVOI

    When Cousin Feenix started west
    And landed east, he did his best;
    And so I've done my prettiest
    To make this rhyme long overdue;
    For Arethusa and for you.

R. W. C.






IN SECRET

CHAPTER I

CUP AND LIP





The case in question concerned a letter in a yellow envelope, which
was dumped along with other incoming mail upon one of the many long
tables where hundreds of women and scores of men sat opening and
reading thousands of letters for the Bureau of P. C.--whatever that
may mean.

In due course of routine a girl picked up and slit open the yellow
envelope, studied the enclosed letter for a few moments, returned it
to its envelope, wrote a few words on a slip of paper, attached the
slip to the yellow envelope, and passed it along to the D. A.
C.--whoever he or she may be.

The D. A. C., in course of time, opened this letter for the second
time, inspected it, returned it to the envelope, added a memorandum,
and sent it on up to the A. C.--whatever A. C. may signify.

Seated at his desk, the A. C. perused the memoranda, glanced over
the letter and the attached memoranda, added his terse comment to
the other slips, pinned them to the envelope, and routed it through
certain channels which ultimately carried the letter into a room
where six silent and preoccupied people sat busy at six separate
tables.

Fate had taken charge of that yellow envelope from the moment it was
mailed in Mexico; Chance now laid it on a yellow oak table before a
yellow-haired girl; Destiny squinted over her shoulder as she drew
the letter from its triply violated envelope and spread it out on
the table before her.

A rich, warm flush mounted to her cheeks as she examined the
document. Her chance to distinguish herself had arrived at last. She
divined it instantly. She did not doubt it. She was a remarkable
girl.

The room remained very still. The five other cipher experts of the
P. I. Service were huddled over their tables, pencil in hand,
absorbed in their several ungodly complications and laborious
calculations. But they possessed no Rosetta Stone to aid them in
deciphering hieroglyphics; toad-like, they carried the precious
stone in their heads, M. D.!

No indiscreet sound interrupted their mental gymnastics, save only
the stealthy scrape of a pen, the subdued rustle of writing paper,
the flutter of a code-book's leaves thumbed furtively.

The yellow-haired girl presently rose from her chair, carrying in
her hand the yellow letter and its yellow envelope with yellow slips
attached; and this harmonious combination of colour passed
noiselessly into a smaller adjoining office, where a solemn young
man sat biting an unlighted cigar and gazing with preternatural
sagacity at nothing at all.

Possibly his pretty affianced was the object of his deep revery--he
had her photograph in his desk--perhaps official cogitation as D.
C. of the E. C. D.--if you understand what I mean?--may have been
responsible for his owlish abstraction.

Because he did not notice the advent of the yellow haired girl until
she said in her soft, attractive voice:

"May I interrupt you a moment, Mr. Vaux?"

Then he glanced up.

"Surely, surely," he said. "Hum--hum!--please be seated, Miss Erith!
Hum! Surely!"

She laid the sheets of the letter and the yellow envelope upon the
desk before him and seated herself in a chair at his elbow. She was
VERY pretty. But engaged men never notice such details.

"I'm afraid we are in trouble," she remarked.

He read placidly the various memoranda written on the yellow slips
of paper, scrutinised! the cancelled stamps, postmarks,
superscription. But when his gaze fell upon the body of the letter
his complacent expression altered to one of disgust!

"What's this, Miss Erith?"

"Code-cipher, I'm afraid."

"The deuce!"

Miss Erith smiled. She was one of those girls who always look as
though they had not been long out of a bathtub. She had hazel eyes,
a winsome smile, and hair like warm gold. Her figure was youthfully
straight and supple--But that would not interest an engaged man.

The D. C. glanced at her inquiringly.

"Surely, surely," he muttered, "hum--hum!--" and tried to fix his
mind on the letter.

In fact, she was one of those girls who unintentionally and
innocently render masculine minds uneasy through some delicate,
indefinable attraction which defies analysis.

"Surely," murmured the D. C., "surely! Hum--hum!"

A subtle freshness like the breath of spring in a young orchard
seemed to linger about her. She was exquisitely fashioned to trouble
men, but she didn't wish to do such a--

Vaux, who was in love with another girl, took another uneasy look at
her, sideways, then picked up his unlighted cigar and browsed upon
it.

"Yes," he said nervously, "this is one of those accursed
code-ciphers. They always route them through to me. Why don't they
notify the five--"

"Are you going to turn THIS over to the Postal Inspection Service?"

"What do you think about it, Miss Erith? You see it's one of those
hopeless arbitrary ciphers for which there is no earthly solution
except by discovering and securing the code book and working it out
that way."7

She said calmly, but with heightened colour:

"A copy of that book is, presumably, in possession of the man to
whom this letter is addressed."

"Surely--surely. Hum--hum! What's his name, Miss Erith?"--glancing
down at the yellow envelope. "Oh, yes--Herman Lauffer--hum!"

He opened a big book containing the names of enemy aliens and
perused it, frowinng. The name of Herman Lauffer was not listed. He
consulted other volumes containing supplementary lists of suspects
and undesirables--lists furnished daily by certain services
unnecessary to mention.

"Here he is!" exclaimed Vaux; "--Herman Lauffer, picture-framer and
gilder! That's his number on Madison Avenue!"--pointing to the
type-written paragraph. "You see he's probably already under
surveillance-one of the several services is doubtless keeping tabs
on him. I think I'd better call up the--"

"Please!--Mr. Vaux!" she pleaded.

He had already touched the telephone receiver to unhook it. Miss
Erith looked at him appealingly; her eyes were very, very hazel.

"Couldn't we handle it?" she asked.

"WE?"

"You and I!"

"But that's not our affair, Miss Erith--"

"Make it so! Oh, please do. Won't you?"

Vaux's arm fell to the desk top. He sat thinking for a few minutes.
Then he picked up a pencil in an absent-minded manner and began to
trace little circles, squares, and crosses on his pad, stringing
them along line after line as though at hazard and apparently
thinking of anything except what he was doing.

The paper on which he seemed to be so idly employed lay on his desk
directly under Miss Erith's eyes; and after a while the girl began
to laugh softly to herself.

"Thank you, Mr. Vaux," she said. "This is the opportunity I have
longed for."

Vaux looked up at her as though he did not understand. But the girl
laid one finger on the lines of circles, squares, dashes and
crosses, and, still laughing, read them off, translating what he had
written:

"You are a very clever girl. I've decided to turn this case over to
you. After all, your business is to decipher cipher, and you can't
do it without the book."

They both laughed.

"I don't see how you ever solved that," he said, delighted to tease
her.

"How insulting!--when you know it is one of the oldest and most
familiar of codes--the 1-2-3 and _a-b-c_ combination!"

"Rather rude of you to read it over my shoulder, Miss Erith. It
isn't done--"

"You meant to see if I could! You know you did!"

"Did I?"

"Of course! That old 'Seal of Solomon' cipher is perfectly
transparent."

"Really? But how about THIS!"--touching the sheets of the Lauffer
letter--"how are you going to read this sequence of Arabic
numerals?"

"I haven't the slightest idea," said the girl, candidly.

"But you request the job of trying to find the key?" he suggested
ironically.

"There is no key. You know it."

"I mean the code book."

"I would like to try to find it."

"How are you going to go about it?"

"I don't know yet."

Vaux smiled. "All right; go ahead, my dear Miss Erith. You're
officially detailed for this delightful job. Do it your own way, but
do it--"

"Thank you so much!"

"--In twenty-four hours," he added grimly. "Otherwise I'll turn it
over to the P.I."

"Oh! That IS brutal of you!"

"Sorry. But if you can't get the code-book in twenty-four hours I'll
have to call in the Service that can."

The girl bit her lip and held out her hand for the letter.

"I can't let it go out of my office," he remarked. "You know that,
Miss Erith."

"I merely wish to copy it," she said reproachfully. Her eyes were
hazel.

"I ought not to let you take a copy out of this office," he
muttered.

"But you will, won't you?"

"All right. Use that machine over there. Hum--hum!"

For twenty minutes the girl was busy typing before the copy was
finally ready. Then, comparing it and finding her copy accurate, she
returned the original to Mr. Vaux, and rose with that disturbing
grace peculiar to her every movement.

"Where may I telephone you when you're not here?" she inquired
diffidently, resting one slim, white hand on his desk.

"At the Racquet Club. Are you going out?"

"Yes."

"What! You abandon me without my permission?"

She nodded with one of those winsome smiles which incline young men
to revery. Then she turned and walked toward the cloak room.

The D. C. was deeply in love with somebody else, yet he found it
hard to concentrate his mind for a while, and he chewed his
unlighted cigar into a pulp. Alas! Men are that way. Not sometimes.
Always.

Finally he shoved aside the pile of letters which he had been trying
to read, unhooked the telephone receiver, called a number, got it,
and inquired for a gentleman named Cassidy.

To the voice that answered he gave the name, business and address of
Herman Lauffer, and added a request that undue liberties be taken
with any out going letters mailed and presumably composed and
written by Mr. Lauffer's own fair hand.

"Much obliged, Mr. Vaux," cooed Cassidy, in a voice so suave that
Vaux noticed its unusual blandness and asked if that particular
Service already had "anything on Lauffer."

"Not soon but yet!" replied Mr. Cassidy facetiously, "thanks
ENTIRELY to your kind tip, Mr. Vaux."

And Vaux, suspicious of such urbane pleasantries, rang off and
resumed his mutilated cigar.

"Now, what the devil does Cassidy know about Herman Lauffer," he
mused, "and why the devil hasn't his Bureau informed us?" After long
pondering he found no answer. Besides, he kept thinking at moments
about Miss Erith, which confused him and diverted his mind from the
business on hand.

So, in his perplexity, he switched on the electric foot-warmer,
spread his fur overcoat over his knees, uncorked a small bottle and
swallowed a precautionary formaldehyde tablet, unlocked a drawer of
his desk, fished out a photograph, and gazed intently upon it.

It was the photograph of his Philadelphia affianced. Her first name
was Arethusa. To him there was a nameless fragrance about her name.
And sweetly, subtly, gradually the lovely phantasm of Miss Evelyn
Erith faded, vanished into the thin and frigid atmosphere of his
office.

That was his antidote to Miss Erith--the intent inspection of his
fiancee's very beautiful features as inadequately reproduced by an
expensive and fashionable Philadelphia photographer.

It did the business for Miss Erith every time.

The evening was becoming one of the coldest ever recorded in New
York. The thermometer had dropped to 8 degrees below zero and was
still falling. Fifth Avenue glittered, sheathed in frost; traffic
police on post stamped and swung their arms to keep from freezing;
dry snow underfoot squeaked when trodden on; crossings were greasy
with glare ice.

It was, also, one of those meatless, wheatless, heatless nights when
the privation which had hitherto amused New York suddenly became an
ugly menace. There was no coal to be had and only green wood. The
poor quietly died, as usual; the well-to-do ventured a hod and a
stick or two in open grates, or sat huddled under rugs over oil or
electric stoves; or migrated to comfortable hotels. And bachelors
took to their clubs. That is where Clifford Vaux went from his
chilly bachelor lodgings. He fled in a taxi, buried cheek-deep in
his fur collar, hating all cold, all coal companies, and all
Kaisers.

In the Racquet Club he found many friends similarly
self-dispossessed, similarly obsessed by discomfort and hatred. But
there seemed to be some steam heat there, and several open fires;
and when the wheatless, meatless meal was ended and the usual
coteries drifted to their usual corners, Mr. Vaux found himself
seated at a table with a glass of something or other at his elbow,
which steamed slightly and had a long spoon in it; and he presently
heard himself saying to three other gentlemen: "Four hearts."

His voice sounded agreeably in his own ears; the gentle glow of a
lignum-vitae wood fire smote his attenuated shins; he balanced his
cards in one hand, a long cigar in the other, exhaled a satisfactory
whiff of aromatic smoke, and smiled comfortably upon the table.

"Four hearts," he repeated affably. "Does anybody--"

The voice of Doom interrupted him:

"Mr. Vaux, sir--"

The young man turned in his easy-chair and beheld behind him a club
servant, all over silver buttons.

"The telephone, Mr. Vaux," continued that sepulchral voice.

"All right," said the young man. "Bill, will you take my cards?"--he
laid his hand, face down, rose and left the pleasant warmth of the
card-room with a premonitory shiver.

"Well?" he inquired, without cordiality, picking up the receiver.

"Mr. Vaux?" came a distinct voice which he did not recognise.

"Yes," he snapped, "who is it?"

"Miss Erith."

"Oh--er--surely--surely! GOOD-evening, Miss Erith!"

"Good-evening, Mr. Vaux. Are you, by any happy chance, quite free
this evening?"

"Well--I'm rather busy--unless it is important--hum--hum!--in line
of duty, you know--"

"You may judge. I'm going to try to secure that code-book to-night."

"Oh! Have you called in the--"

"No!"

"Haven't you communicated with--"

"No!"

"Why not?"

"Because there's too much confusion already--too much petty
jealousy and working at cross-purposes. I have been thinking over
the entire problem. You yourself know how many people have escaped
through jealous or over-zealous officers making premature arrests.
We have six different secret-service agencies, each independent of
the other and each responsible to its own independent chief, all
operating for the Government in New York City. You know what these
agencies are--the United States Secret Service, the Department of
Justice Bureau of Investigation, the Army Intelligence Service,
Naval Intelligence Service, Neutrality Squads of the Customs, and
the Postal Inspection. Then there's the State Service and the police
and several other services. And there is no proper co-ordination, no
single head for all these agencies. The result is a ghastly
confusion and shameful inefficiency.

"This affair which I am investigating is a delicate one, as you
know. Any blundering might lose us the key to what may be a very
dangerous conspiracy. So I prefer to operate entirely within the
jurisdiction of our own Service--"

"What you propose to do is OUTSIDE of our province!" he interrupted.

"I'm not so sure. Are you?"

"Well--hum--hum!--what is it you propose to do to-night?"

"I should like to consult my Chief of Division."

"Meaning me?"

"Of course."

"When?"

"Now!"

"Where are you just now, Miss Erith?"

"At home. Could you come to me?"

Vaux shivered again.

"Where d-do you live?" he asked, with chattering teeth.

She gave him the number of a private house on 83d Street just off
Madison Avenue. And as he listened he began to shiver all over in
the anticipated service of his country.

"Very well," he said, "I'll take a taxi. But this has Valley Forge
stung to death, you know."

She said:

"I took the liberty of sending my car to the Racquet Club for you.
It should be there now. There's a foot-warmer in it."

"Thank you so much," he replied with a burst of shivers. "I'll
b-b-be right up."

As he left the telephone the doorman informed him that an automobile
was waiting for him.

So, swearing under his frosty breath, he went to the cloak-room, got
into his fur coat, walked back to the card-room and gazed wrathfully
upon the festivities.

"What did my hand do, Bill?" he inquired glumly, when at last the
scorer picked up his pad and the dealer politely shoved the pack
toward his neighbour for cutting.

"You ruined me with your four silly hearts," replied the man who had
taken his cards. "Did you think you were playing coon-can?"

"Sorry, Bill. Sit in for me, there's a good chap. I'm not likely to
be back to-night--hang it!"

Perfunctory regrets were offered by the others, already engrossed in
their new hands; Vaux glanced unhappily at the tall, steaming glass,
which had been untouched when he left, but which was now merely half
full. Then, with another lingering look at the cheerful fire, he
sighed, buttoned his fur coat, placed his hat firmly upon his
carefully parted hair, and walked out to perish bravely for his
native land.

On the sidewalk a raccoon-furred chauffeur stepped up with all the
abandon of a Kadiak bear:

"Mr. Vaux, sir?"

"Yes."

"Miss Erith's car."

"Thanks," grunted Vaux, climbing into the pretty coupe and cuddling
his shanks under a big mink robe, where, presently, he discovered a
foot-warmer, and embraced it vigorously between his patent-leather
shoes.

It had now become the coldest night on record in New York City.
Fortunately he didn't know that; he merely sat there and hated Fate.

Up the street and into Fifth Avenue glided the car and sped
northward through the cold, silvery lustre of the arc-lights hanging
like globes of moonlit ice from their frozen stalks of bronze.

The noble avenue was almost deserted; nobody cared to face such
terrible cold. Few motors were abroad, few omnibuses, and scarcely a
wayfarer. Every sound rang metallic in the black and bitter air; the
windows of the coupe clouded from his breath; the panels creaked.

At the Plaza he peered fearfully out upon the deserted Circle, where
the bronze lady of the fountain, who is supposed to represent
Plenty, loomed high in the electric glow, with her magic basket
piled high with icicles.

"Yes, plenty of ice," sneered Vaux. "I wish she'd bring us a hod or
two of coal."

The wintry landscape of the Park discouraged him profoundly.

"A man's an ass to linger anywhere north of the equator," he
grumbled. "Dickybirds have more sense." And again he thought of the
wood fire in the club and the partly empty but steaming glass, and
the aroma it had wafted toward him; and the temperature it must have
imparted to "Bill."

He was immersed in arctic gloom when at length the car stopped. A
butler admitted him to a brown-stone house, the steps of which had
been thoughtfully strewn with furnace cinders.

"Miss Erith?"

"Yes, sir."

"Announce Mr. Vaux, partly frozen."

"The library, if you please, sir," murmured the butler, taking hat
and coat.

So Vaux went up stairs with the liveliness of a crippled spider, and
Miss Erith came from a glowing fireside to welcome him, giving him a
firm and slender hand.

"You ARE cold," she said. "I'm so sorry to have disturbed you this
evening."

He said:

"Hum--hum--very kind--m'sure--hum--hum!"

There were two deep armchairs before the blaze; Miss Erith took one,
Vaux collapsed upon the other.

She was disturbingly pretty in her evening gown. There were
cigarettes on a little table at his elbow, and he lighted one at her
suggestion and puffed feebly.

"Which?" she inquired smilingly.

He understood: "Irish, please."

"Hot?"

"Thank you, yes,"

When the butler had brought it, the young man began to regret the
Racquet Club less violently.

"It's horribly cold out," he said. "There's scarcely a soul on the
streets."

She nodded brightly:

"It's a wonderful night for what we have to do. And I don't mind the
cold very much."

"Are you proposing to go OUT?" he asked, alarmed.

"Why, yes. You don't mind, do you?"

"Am _I_ to go, too?"

"Certainly. You gave me only twenty-four hours, and I can't do it
alone in that time."

He said nothing, but his thoughts concentrated upon a single
unprintable word.

"What have you done with the original Lauffer letter, Mr. Vaux?" she
inquired rather nervously.

"The usual. No invisible ink had been used; nothing microscopic.
There was nothing on the letter or envelope, either, except what we
saw."

The girl nodded. On a large table behind her chair lay a portfolio.
She turned, drew it toward her, and lifted it into her lap.

"What have you discovered?" he inquired politely, basking in the
grateful warmth of the fire.

"Nothing. The cipher is, as I feared, purely arbitrary. It's
exasperating, isn't it?"

He nodded, toasting his shins.

"You see," she continued, opening the portfolio, "here is my copy of
this wretched cipher letter. I have transferred it to one sheet.
It's nothing but a string of Arabic numbers interspersed with
meaningless words. These numbers most probably represent, in the
order in which they are written, first the number of the page of
some book, then the line on which the word is to be found--say, the
tenth line from the top, or maybe from the bottom--and then the
position of the word--second from the left or perhaps from the
right."

"It's utterly impossible to solve that unless you have the book," he
remarked; "therefore, why speculate, Miss Erith?"

"I'm going to try to find the book."

"How?"

"By breaking into the shop of Herman Lauffer."

"House-breaking? Robbery?"

"Yes."

Vaux smiled incredulously:

"Granted that you get into Lauffer's shop without being arrested,
what then?"

"I shall have this cipher with me. There are not likely to be many
books in the shop of a gilder and maker of picture frames. I shall,
by referring to this letter, search what books I find there for a
single coherent sentence. When I discover such a sentence I shall
know that I have the right book."

The young man smoked reflectively and gazed into the burning coals.

"So you propose to break into his shop to-night and steal the book?"

"There seems to be nothing else to do, Mr. Vaux."

"Of course," he remarked sarcastically, "we could turn this matter
over to the proper authorities--"

"I WON'T! PLEASE don't!"

"Why not?"

"Because I have concluded that it IS part of our work. And I've
begun already. I went to see Lauffer. I took a photograph to be
framed."

"What does he look like?"

"A mink--an otter--one of those sharp-muzzled little animals!--Two
tiny eyes, rather close together, a long nose that wrinkles when he
talks, as though he were sniffing at you; a ragged, black moustache,
like the furry muzzle-bristles of some wild thing--that is a sketch
of Herman Lauffer."

"A pretty man," commented Vaux, much amused.

"He's little and fat of abdomen, but he looks powerful."

"Prettier and prettier!"

They both laughed. A pleasant steam arose from the tall glass at his
elbow.

"Well," she said, "I have to change my gown--"

"Good Lord! Are we going now?" he remonstrated.

"Yes. I don't believe there will be a soul on the streets."

"But I don't wish to go at all," he explained. "I'm very happy here,
discussing things."

"I know it. But you wouldn't let me go all alone, would you, Mr.
Vaux?"

"I don't want you to go anywhere."

"But I'm GOING!"

"Here's where I perish," groaned Vaux, rising as the girl passed him
with her pretty, humorous smile, moving lithely, swiftly as some
graceful wild thing passing confidently through its own domain.

Vaux gazed meditatively upon the coals, glass in one hand, cigarette
in the other. Patriotism is a tough career.

"This is worse than inhuman," he thought. "If I go out on such an
errand to-night I sure am doing my bitter bit. ... Probably some
policeman will shoot me--unless I freeze to death. This is a vastly
unpleasant affair.... Vastly!"

He was still caressing the fire with his regard when Miss Erith came
back.

She wore a fur coat buttoned to the throat, a fur toque, fur gloves.
As he rose she naively displayed a jimmy and two flashlights.

"I see," he said, "very nice, very handy! But we don't need these to
convict us."

She laughed and handed him the instruments; and he pocketed them and
followed her downstairs.

Her car was waiting, engine running; she spoke to the Kadiak
chauffeur, got in, and Vaux followed.

"You know," he said, pulling the mink robe over her and himself,
"you're behaving very badly to your superior officer."

"I'm so excited, so interested! I hope I'm not lacking in deference
to my honoured Chief of Division. Am I, Mr. Vaux?"

"You certainly hustle me around some! This is a crazy thing we're
doing."

"Oh, I'm sorry!"

"You're an autocrat. You're a lady-Nero! Tell me, Miss Erith, were
you ever afraid of anything on earth?"

"Yes."

"What?"

"Lightning and caterpillars."

"Those are probably the only really dangerous things I never
feared," he said. "You seem to be young and human and feminine. Are
you?"

"Oh, very."

"Then why aren't you afraid of being shot for a burglar, and why do
you go so gaily about grand larceny?"

The girl's light laughter was friendly and fearless.

"Do you live alone?" he inquired after a moment's silence.

"Yes. My parents are not living."

"You are rather an unusual girl, Miss Erith."

"Why?"

"Well, girls of your sort are seldom as much in earnest about their
war work as you seem to be," he remarked with gentle irony.

"How about the nurses and drivers in France?"

"Oh, of course. I mean nice girls, like yourself, who do near-war
work here in New York--"

"You ARE brutal!" she exclaimed. "I am mad to go to France! It is a
sacrifice--a renunciation for me to remain in New York. I understand
nursing and I know how to drive a car; but I have stayed here
because my knowledge of ciphers seemed to fit me for this work."

"I was teasing you," he said gently.

"I know it. But there is SO much truth in what you say about
near-war work. I hate that sort of woman.... Why do you laugh?"

"Because you're just a child. But you are full of ability and
possibility, Miss Erith."

"I wish my ability might land me in France!"

"Surely, surely," he murmured.

"Do you think it will, Mr. Vaux?"

"Maybe it will," he said, not believing it. He added: "I think,
however, your undoubted ability is going to land us both in jail."

At which pessimistic prognosis they both began to laugh. She was
very lovely when she laughed.

"I hope they'll give us the same cell," she said. "Don't you?"

"Surely," he replied gaily.

Once he remembered the photograph of Arethusa in his desk at
headquarters, and thought that perhaps he might need it before the
evening was over.

"Surely, surely," he muttered to himself, "hum--hum!"

Her coupe stopped in Fifty-sixth Street near Madison Avenue.

"The car will wait here," remarked the girl, as Vaux helped her to
descend. "Lauffer's shop is just around the corner." She took his
arm to steady herself on the icy sidewalk. He liked it.

In the bitter darkness there was not a soul to be seen on the
street; no tramcars were approaching on Madison Avenue, although far
up on the crest of Lenox Hill the receding lights of one were just
vanishing.

"Do you see any policemen?" she asked in a low voice.

"Not one. They're all frozen to death, I suppose, as we will be in a
few minutes."

They turned into Madison Avenue past the Hotel Essex. There was not
a soul to be seen. Even the silver-laced porter had retired from the
freezing vestibule. A few moments later Miss Erith paused before a
shop on the ground floor of an old-fashioned brownstone residence
which had been altered for business.

Over the shop-window was a sign: "H. Lauffer, Frames and Gilding."
The curtains of the shop-windows were lowered. No light burned
inside.

Over Lauffer's shop was the empty show-window of another shop--on
the second floor--the sort of place that milliners and tea-shop
keepers delight in--but inside the blank show-window was pasted the
sign "To Let."

Above this shop were three floors, evidently apartments. The windows
were not lighted.

"Lauffer lives on the fourth floor," said Miss Erith. "Will you
please give me the jimmy, Vaux?"

He fished it out of his overcoat pocket and looked uneasily up and
down the deserted avenue while the girl stepped calmly into the open
entryway. There were two doors, a glass one opening on the stairs
leading to the upper floors, and the shop door on the left.

She stooped over for a rapid survey, then with incredible swiftness
jimmied the shop door.

The noise of the illegal operations awoke the icy and silent avenue
with a loud, splitting crash! The door swung gently inward.

"Quick!" she said. And he followed her guiltily inside.

The shop was quite warm. A stove in the rear room still emitted heat
and a dull red light. On the stove was a pot of glue, or some other
substance used by gilders and frame makers. Steam curled languidly
from it; also a smell not quite as languid.

Vaux handed her an electric torch, then flashed his own. The next
moment she found a push button and switched on the lights in the
shop. Then they extinguished their torches.

Stacks of frames in raw wood, frames in "compo," samples gilded and
in natural finish littered the untidy place. A few process
"mezzotints" hung on the walls. There was a counter on which lay
twine, shears and wrapping paper, and a copy of the most recent
telephone directory. It was the only book in sight, and Miss Erith
opened it and spread her copy of the cipher-letter beside it. Then
she began to turn the pages according to the numbers written in her
copy of the cipher letter.

Meanwhile, Vaux was prowling. There were no books in the rear room;
of this he was presently assured. He came back into the front shop
and began to rummage. A few trade catalogues rewarded him and he
solemnly laid them on the counter.

"The telephone directory is NOT the key," said Miss Erith, pushing
it aside. A few moments were sufficient to convince them that the
key did not lie within any of the trade catalogues either.

"Have you searched very carefully?" she asked.

"There's not another book in the bally shop."

"Well, then, Lauffer must have it in his apartment upstairs."

"Which apartment is it?"

"The fourth floor. His name is under a bell on a brass plate in the
entry. I noticed it when I came in." She turned off the electric
light; they went to the door, reconnoitred cautiously, saw nobody on
the avenue. However, a tramcar was passing, and they waited; then
Vaux flashed his torch on the bell-plate.

Under the bell marked "Fourth Floor" was engraved Herman Lauffer's
name.

"You know," remonstrated Vaux, "we have no warrant for this sort of
thing, and it means serious trouble if we're caught."

"I know it. But what other way is there?" she inquired naively. "You
allowed me only twenty-four hours, and I WON'T back out!"

"What procedure do you propose now?" he asked, grimly amused, and
beginning to feel rather reckless himself, and enjoying the feeling.
"What do you wish to do?" he repeated. "I'm game."

"I have an automatic pistol," she remarked seriously, tapping her
fur-coat pocket, "--and a pair of handcuffs--the sort that open and
lock when you strike a man on the wrist with them. You know the
kind?"

"Surely. You mean to commit assault and robbery in the first degree
upon the body of the aforesaid Herman?"

"I-is that it?" she faltered.

"It is."

She hesitated:

"That is rather dreadful, isn't it?"

"Somewhat. It involves almost anything short of life imprisonment.
But _I_ don't mind."

"We couldn't get a search-warrant, could we?"

"We have found nothing, so far, in that cipher letter to encourage
us in applying for any such warrant," he said cruelly.

"Wouldn't the excuse that Lauffer is an enemy alien and not
registered aid us in securing a warrant?" she insisted.

"He is not an alien. I investigated that after you left this
afternoon. His parents were German but he was born in Chicago.
However, he is a Hun, all right--I don't doubt that.... What do you
propose to do now?"

She looked at him appealingly:

"Won't you allow me more than twenty-four hours?"

"I'm sorry."

"Why won't you?"

"Because I can't dawdle over this affair."

The girl smiled at him in her attractive, resolute way:

"Unless we find that book we can't decipher this letter. The letter
comes from Mexico,--from that German-infested Republic. It is
written to a man of German parentage and it is written in cipher.
The names of Luxburg, Caillaux, Bolo, Bernstorff are still fresh in
our minds. Every day brings us word of some new attempt at sabotage
in the United States. Isn't there ANY way, Mr. Vaux, for us to
secure the key to this cipher letter?"

"Not unless we go up and knock this man Lauffer on the head. Do you
want to try it?"

"Couldn't we knock rather gently on his head?"

Vaux stifled a laugh. The girl was so pretty, the risk so
tremendous, the entire proceeding so utterly outrageous that a
delightful sense of exhilaration possessed him.

"Where's that gun?" he said.

She drew it out and handed it to him.

"Is it loaded?"

"Yes."

"Where are the handcuffs?"

She fished out the nickel-plated bracelets and he pocketed his
torch. A pleasant thrill passed through the rather ethereal anatomy
of Mr. Vaux.

"All right," he said briskly. "Here's hoping for adjoining cells!"

To jimmy the glass door was the swiftly cautious work of a moment or
two. Then the dark stairs rose in front of them and Vaux took the
lead. It was as cold as the pole in there, but Vaux's blood was
racing now. And alas! the photograph of Arethusa was in his desk at
the office!

On the third floor he flashed his torch through an empty corridor
and played it smartly over every closed door. On the fourth floor he
took his torch in his left hand, his pistol in his right.

"The door to the apartment is open!" she whispered.

It was. A lamp on a table inside was still burning. They had a
glimpse of a cheap carpet on the floor, cheap and gaudy furniture.
Vaux extinguished and pocketed his torch, then, pistol lifted, he
stepped noiselessly into the front room.

It seemed to be a sort of sitting-room, and was in disorder;
cushions from a lounge lay about the floor; several books were
scattered near them; an upholstered chair had been ripped open and
disembowelled, and its excelsior stuffing strewn broadcast.

"This place looks as though it had been robbed!" whispered Vaux.
"What the deuce do you suppose has happened?"

They moved cautiously to the connecting-door of the room in the
rear. The lamplight partly illuminated it, revealing it as a
bedroom.

Bedclothes trailed to the floor, which also was littered with dingy
masculine apparel flung about at random. Pockets of trousers and of
coats had been turned inside out, in what apparently had been a
hasty and frantic search.

The remainder of the room was in disorder, too; underwear had been
pulled from dresser and bureau; the built-in wardrobe doors swung
ajar and the clothing lay scattered about, every pocket turned
inside out.

"For heaven's sake," muttered Vaux, "what do you suppose this
means?"

"Look!" she whispered, clutching his arm and pointing to the
fireplace at their feet.

On the white-tiled hearth in front of the unlighted gas-logs lay the
stump of a cigar.

From it curled a thin thread of smoke.

They stared at the smoking stub on the hearth, gazed fearfully
around the dimly lighted bedroom, and peered into the dark
dining-room beyond.

Suddenly Miss Erith's hand tightened on his sleeve.

"Hark!" she motioned.

He heard it, too--a scuffling noise of heavy feet behind a closed
door somewhere beyond the darkened dining-room.

"There's somebody in the kitchenette!" she whispered.

Vaux produced his pistol; they stole forward into the dining-room;
halted by the table.

"Flash that door," he said in a low voice.

Her electric torch played over the closed kitchen door for an
instant, then, at a whispered word from him, she shut it off and the
dining-room was plunged again into darkness.

And then, before Vaux or Miss Erith had concluded what next was to
be done, the kitchen door opened; and, against the dangling lighted
bulb within, loomed a burly figure wearing hat and overcoat and a
big bass voice rumbled through the apartment:

"All right, all right, keep your shirt on and I'll get your coat and
vest for you--"

Then Miss Erith flashed her torch full in the man's face, blinding
him. And Vaux covered him with levelled pistol.

Even then the man made a swift motion toward his pocket, but at
Vaux's briskly cheerful warning he checked himself and sullenly and
very slowly raised both empty hands.

"All right, all right," he grumbled. "It's on me this time. Go on;
what's the idea?"

"W-well, upon my word!" stammered Vaux, "it's Cassidy!"

"F'r the love o' God," growled Cassidy, "is that YOU, Mr. Vaux!" He
lowered his arms sheepishly, reached out and switched on the ceiling
light over the dining-room table. "Well, f'r--" he began; and,
seeing Miss Erith, subsided.

"What are you doing here?" demanded Vaux, disgusted with this
glaring example of interference from another service.

"What am I doing?" repeated Cassidy with a sarcastic glance at Miss
Erith. "Faith, I'm pinching a German gentleman we've been watching
these three months and more. Is that what you're up to, too?"

"Herman Lauffer?"

"That's the lad, sir. He's in the kitchen yonder, dressing f'r to
take a little walk. I gotta get his coat and vest. And what are you
doing here, sir?"

"How did YOU get in?" asked Miss Erith, flushed with chagrin and
disappointment.

"With keys, ma'am."

"Oh, Lord!" said Vaux, "we jimmied the door. What do you think of
that, Cassidy?"

"Did you so?" grinned Cassidy, now secure in his triumphant priority
and inclined to become friendly.

"I never dreamed that your division was watching Lauffer," continued
Vaux, still red with vexation. "It's a wonder we didn't spoil the
whole affair between us."

"It is that!" agreed Cassidy with a wider grin. "And you can take it
from me, Mr. Vaux, we never knew that the Postal Inspection was on
to this fellow at all at all until you called me to stop outgoing
letters."

"What have you on him?" inquired Vaux.

Cassidy laughed:

"Oh, listen then! Would you believe this fellow was tryin' the old
diagonal trick? Sure it was easy; I saw him mail a letter this
afternoon and I got it. I'd been waiting three months for him to do
something like that. But he's a fox--he is that, Mr. Vaux! Do you
want to see the letter? I have it on me--"

He fished it out of his inside pocket and spread it on the dining
table under the light.

"You know the game," he remarked, laying a thick forefinger on the
diagonal line bisecting the page. "All I had to do was to test the
letter by drawing that line across it from corner to corner. Read
the words that the line cuts through. Can you beat it?"

Vaux and Miss Erith bent over the letter, read the apparently
innocent message it contained, then read the words through which the
diagonal line had been drawn.

Then Cassidy triumphantly read aloud the secret and treacherous
information which the letter contained:

"SEVEN UNITED STATES TRANSPORTS TO-DAY NEW YORK (BY THE) NORTHERN
ROUTE. INFORM OUR U-BOATS. URGENCY REQUIRES INSTANT MEASURES. TEN
MORE ARE TO SAIL FROM HERE NEXT WEEK."

"The dirty Boche!" added Cassidy. "Dugan has left for Mexico to look
up this brother of his and I'm lookin' up this snake, so I guess
there's no harm done so far."

"New York.

"January 3rd. 1916.

"My dear Brother:

"For seven long weeks I have awaited a letter from you. The
United-States mails from Mexico seem to be interrupted. Imagine my
transports of joy when at last I hear from you today. You and I,
dear brother, are the only ones left of our family--you in Vera
Cruz. I in New-York--you in a hot Southern climate, I in a Northern,
amid snow and ice, where the tardy sun does not route me from my bed
till late in the morning.

"However, I inform you with pleasure that I am well. I rejoice that
our good health is mutual. After all, the dear old U. S. suits me.
Of course railroads or boats could carry me to a warm climate, in
case urgency required it. But I am quite well now, and my health
requires merely prudence. However, if I am again ill at any instant,
I shall leave for Florida, where all tho proper measures can be
taken to combat my rheumatism,

"Ten days ago I was in bed, and unable to do more than move my left
arm. But the doctors are confident that my malady is not going to
return. If it does threaten to return I shall sail for Jacksonville
at once, and from there go to Miami, and not return here until the
warm and balmy weather of next spring has lasted at least a week.
Affectionataly your brother.

"Herman."

He pocketed the letter and went into the bedroom to get a coat and
vest for the prisoner. Miss Erith looked at Vaux.

"Cassidy seems to know nothing about the code-cipher," she
whispered. "I think he rummaged on general principles, not in search
of any code-book."

She looked around the dining-room. The doors of the yellow oak
sideboard were open, but no book was there among the plated knives
and forks and the cheap dishes.

Cassidy came back with the garments he had been looking for--an
overcoat, coat and vest--and he carried them into the kitchenette,
whither presently Vaux followed him.

Cassidy had just unlocked the handcuffs from the powerful wrists of
a dark, stocky, sullen man who stood in his shirt-sleeves near a
small deal table.

"Lauffer?" inquired Vaux, dryly.

"It sure is, ain't it, Herman?" replied Cassidy facetiously. "Now,
then, me Dutch bucko, climb into your jeans, if YOU please--there's
a good little Boche!"

Vaux gazed curiously at the spy, who returned his inspection coolly
enough while he wrinkled his nose at him, and his beady eyes roamed
over him.

When the prisoner had buttoned his vest and coat, Cassidy snapped on
the bracelets again, whistling cheerily under his breath.

As they started to leave the kitchenette, Vaux, who brought up the
rear, caught sight of a large, thick book lying on the pantry shelf.
It was labelled "Perfect Cook-Book," but he picked it up, shoved it
into his overcoat pocket en passant, and followed Cassidy and his
prisoner into the dining-room.

Here Cassidy turned humorously to him and to Miss Erith.

"I've cleaned up the place," he remarked, "but you're welcome to
stay here and rummage if you want to. I'm sending one of our men
back to take possession as soon as I lock up this bird."

"All right. Good luck," nodded Vaux.

Cassidy tipped his derby to Miss Erith, bestowed a friendly grin on
Vaux.

"Come along, old sport!" he said genially to Lauffer; and he walked
away with his handcuffed prisoner, whistling "Garryowen."

"Wait!" motioned Vaux to Miss Erith. He went to the stairs, listened
to the progress of agent and prey, heard the street-door clash, then
hastened back to the lighted dining-room, pulling the "Perfect
Cook-Book" from his pocket.

"I found that in the kitchenette," he remarked, laying it before her
on the table. "Maybe that's the key?"

"A cook-book!" She smiled, opened it. "Why--why, it's a
DICTIONARY!" she exclaimed excitedly.

"A dictionary!"

"Yes! Look! Stormonth's English Dictionary!"

"By ginger!" he said. "I believe it's the code-book! Where is your
cipher letter, Miss Erith!"

The girl produced it with hands that trembled a trifle, spread it
out under the light. Then she drew from her pocket a little pad and
a pencil.

"Quick," she said, "look for page 17!"

"Yes, I have it!"

"First column!"

"Yes."

"Now try the twentieth word from the top!"

He counted downward very carefully.

"It is the word 'anagraph,'" he said; and she wrote it down.

"Also, we had better try the twentieth word counting from the bottom
of the page up," she said. "It might possibly be that."

"The twentieth word, counting from the bottom of the column upward,
is the word 'an,'" he said. She wrote it.

"Now," she continued, "try page 15, second column, third word from
TOP!"

"'Ambrosia' is the word."

"Try the third word from the BOTTOM."

"'American.'"

She pointed to the four words which she had written. Counting from
the TOP of the page downward the first two words were "Anagraph
ambrosia." But counting from the BOTTOM upward the two words formed
the phrase: "AN AMERICAN."

"Try page 730, first column, seventh word from the bottom," she
said, controlling her excitement with an effort.

"The word is 'who.'"

"Page 212, second column, first word!"

"'For.'"

"Page 507, first column, seventh word!"

"'Reasons.'"

"We have the key!" she exclaimed. "Look at what I've written!--'An
American who for reasons!' And here, in the cipher letter, it goes
on--'of the most'--Do you see?"

"It certainly looks like the key," he said. "But we'd better try
another word or two."

"Try page 717, first column, ninth word."

"The word is 'vital.'"

"Page 274, second column, second word."

"'Importance!'"

"It is the key! Here is what I have written: 'An American who for
reasons, of the most vital importance!' Quick. We don't want a
Secret Service man to find us here, Mr. Vaux! He'd object to our
removing this book from Lauffer's apartment. Put it into your pocket
and run!" And the pretty Miss Erith turned and took to her heels
with Vaux after her.

Through the disordered apartment and down the stairs they sped, out
into the icy darkness and around the corner, where her car stood,
engine running, and a blanket over the hood.

As soon as the chauffeur espied them he whisked off the blanket;
Miss Erith said: "Home!" and jumped in, and Vaux followed.

Deep under the fur robe they burrowed, shivering more from sheer
excitement than from cold, and the car flew across to Fifth Avenue
and then northward along deserted sidewalks and a wintry park, where
naked trees and shrubs stood stark as iron in the lustre of the
white electric lamps.

"That time the Secret Service made a mess of it," he said with a
nervous laugh. "Did you notice Cassidy's grin of triumph?"

"Poor Cassidy," she said.

"I don't know. He butted in."

"All the services are working at cross-purposes. It's a pity."

"Well, Cassidy got his man. That's practically all he came for.
Evidently he never heard of a code-book in connection with Lauffer's
activities. That diagonal cipher caught him."

"What luck," she murmured, "that you noticed that cook-book in the
pantry! And what common sense you displayed in smuggling it!"

"I didn't suppose it was THE book; I just took a chance."

"To take a chance is the best way to make good, isn't it?" she said,
laughing. "Oh, I am so thrilled, Mr. Vaux! I shall sit up all night
over my darling cipher and my fascinating code-book-dictionary."

"Will you be down in the morning?" he inquired.

"Of course. Then to-morrow evening, if you will come to my house, I
shall expect to show you the entire letter neatly deciphered."

"Fine!" he exclaimed as the car stopped before her door.

She insisted on sending him home in her car, and he was very
grateful; so when he had seen her safely inside her house with the
cook-book-dictionary clasped in her arms and a most enchanting smile
on her pretty face, he made his adieux, descended the steps, and her
car whirled him swiftly homeward through the arctic night.






CHAPTER II

THE SLIP





When Clifford Vaux arrived at a certain huge building now mostly
devoted to Government work connected with the war, he found upon his
desk a dictionary camouflaged to represent a cook-book; and also
Miss Erith's complete report. And he lost no time in opening and
reading the latter document:

"CLIFFORD VAUX, ESQ.,

"D. C. of the E. C. D.,

"P. I. Service. (Confidential)

"Sir:

"I home the honour to report that the matter with which you have
entrusted me is now entirely cleared up.

"This short preliminary memorandum is merely to refresh your memory
concerning the particular case herewith submitted in detail.

"In re Herman Laufer:

"The code-book, as you recollect, is Stormonth's English Dictionary,
XIII Edition, published by Wm. Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh and
London, MDCCCXCVI. This book I herewith return to you.

"The entire cipher is, as we guessed, arbitrary and stupidly
capricious. Phonetic spelling is indulged in occasionally--I should
almost say humorously--were it not a Teuton mind which evolved the
phonetic combinations which represent proper names not found in that
dictionary--names like Holzminden and New York, for example.

"As for the symbols and numbers, they are not at all obscure.
Reference to the dictionary makes the cipher perfectly clear.

"In Stormonth's Dictionary you will notice that each page has two
columns; each column a varying number of paragraphs; some of the
paragraphs contain more than one word to be defined.

"In the cipher letter the first number of any of the groups of
figures which are connected by dashes (--) and separated by vertical
(|) represents the page in Stormonth's Dictionary on which the word
is to be found.

"The second number represents the column (1 or 2) in which the word
is to be found.

"The third number indicates the position of the word, counting from
the bottom of the page upward, in the proper column.

"Roman numerals which sometimes follow, enclosed in a circle, give
the position of the word in the paragraph, if it does not, as usual,
begin the paragraph.

"The phonetic spelling of Holzminden is marked by an asterisk when
first employed. Afterward only the asterisk (*) is used, instead of
the cumbersome phonetic symbol.

"Minus and plus signs are namely used to subtract or to add letters
or to connect syllables. Reference to the code-book makes all this
clear enough.

"In the description of the escaped prisoner, Roman numerals give his
age; Roman and Arabic his height in feet and inches.

"Arabic numerals enclosed in circles represent capital letters as
they occur in the middle of a page in the dictionary--as S, for
example, is printed in the middle of the page; and all words
beginning with S follow in proper sequence.

"With the code-book at your elbow the cipher will prove to be
perfectly simple. Without the code it is impossible for any human
being to solve such a cipher, as you very well know.

"I herewith append the cipher letter, the method of translation, and
the complete message.

"Respectfully,

"EVELYN ERITH: E. C. D."

Complete Translation of Cipher Letter with Parenthetical Suggestions
by Miss Erith.

To

B 60-02,

An American, who for reasons of the most vital importance has been
held as an English (civilian?) civic prisoner in the mixed civilian
(concentration) camp at Holzminden, has escaped. It is now feared
that he has made his way safely to New York. (Memo: Please note the
very ingenious use of phonetics to spell out New York. E. E.)

(His) name (is) Kay McKay and he has been known as Kay McKay of
Isla--a Scotch title--he having inherited from his grandfather (a)
property in Scotland called Isla, which is but a poor domain
(consisting of the river) Isla and the adjoining moors and a large
white-washed manor (house) in very poor repair.

After his escape from Holzminden it was at first believed that McKay
had been drowned in (the River) Weser. Later it was ascertained that
he sailed for an American port via a Scandinavian liner sometime
(in) October.

(This is his) description: Age 32; height 5 feet 8 1/2 inches; eyes
brown; hair brown; nose straight; mouth regular; face oval; teeth
white and even--no dental work; small light-brown moustache; no
superficial identification marks.

The bones in his left foot were broken many years ago, but have been
properly set. Except for an hour or so every two or three months, he
suffers no lameness.

He speaks German without accent; French with an English accent.

Until incarcerated (in Holzminden camp) he had never been
intemperate. There, however, through orders from Berlin, he was
tempted and encouraged in the use of intoxicants--other drink,
indeed, being excluded from his allowance--so that after the second
year he had become more or less addicted (to the use of alcohol).

Unhappily, however, this policy, which had been so diligently and so
thoroughly pursued in order to make him talkative and to surprise
secrets from him when intoxicated (failed to produce the so properly
expected results and) only succeeded in making of the young man a
hopeless drunkard.

Sterner measures had been decided on, and, in fact, had already been
applied, when the prisoner escaped by tunnelling.

Now, it is most necessary to discover this McKay (man's whereabouts
and to have him destroyed by our agents in New York). Only his death
can restore to the (Imperial German) Government its perfect sense of
security and its certainty of (ultimate) victory.

The necessity (for his destruction) lies in the unfortunate and
terrifying fact that he is cognisant of the Great Secret! He should
have been executed at Holzminden within an hour (of his
incarceration).

This was the urgent advice of Von Tirpitz. But unfortunately High
Command intervened with the expectation (of securing from the
prisoner) further information (concerning others who, like himself,
might possibly have become possessed in some measure of a clue to
the Great Secret)? E. E.

The result is bad. (That the prisoner has escaped without betraying
a single word of information useful to us.) E. E.

Therefore, find him and have him silenced without delay. The
security of the Fatherland depends on this (man's immediate death).

M 17. (Evidently the writer of the letter) E. E.

For a long time Vaux sat studying cipher and translation. And at
last he murmured:

"Surely, surely. Fine--very fine.... Excellent work. But--WHAT is
the Great Secret?"

There was only one man in America who knew.

And he had landed that morning from the Scandinavian steamer, Peer
Gynt, and, at that very moment, was standing by the bar of the Hotel
Astor, just sober enough to keep from telling everything he knew to
the bartenders, and just drunk enough to talk too much in a place
where the enemy always listens.

He said to the indifferent bartender who had just served him:

"'F you knew what I know 'bout Germany, you'd be won'ful man! I'M
won'ful man. I know something! Going tell, too. Going see 'thorities
this afternoon. Going tell 'em great secret!... Grea' milt'ry
secret! Tell 'em all 'bout it! Grea' secresh! Nobody knows
grea'-sekresh 'cep m'self! Whaddya thinka that? Gimme l'il
Hollanschnapps n'water onna side!"

Hours later he was, apparently, no drunker--as though he could not
manage to get beyond a certain stage of intoxication, no matter how
recklessly he drank.

"'Nother Hollenschnapps," he said hazily. "Goin' see 'thorities
'bout grea' sekresh! Tell 'em all 'bout it. Anybody try stop me,
knockem down. Thassa way.... N-n-nockem out!--stan' no nonsense! Ge'
me?"

Later he sauntered off on slightly unsteady legs to promenade
himself in the lobby and Peacock Alley.

Three men left the barroom when he left. They continued to keep him
in view.

Although he became no drunker, he grew politer after every
drink--also whiter in the face--and the bluish, bruised look
deepened under his eyes.

But he was a Chesterfield in manners; he did not stare at any of the
lively young persons in Peacock Alley, who seemed inclined to look
pleasantly at him; he made room for them to pass, hat in hand.

Several times he went to the telephone desk and courteously
requested various numbers; and always one of the three men who had
been keeping him in view stepped into the adjoining booth, but did
not use the instrument.

Several times he strolled through the crowded lobby to the desk and
inquired whether there were any messages or visitors for Mr. Kay
McKay; and the quiet, penetrating glances of the clerks on duty
immediately discovered his state of intoxication but nothing else,
except his extreme politeness and the tense whiteness of his face.

Two of the three men who were keeping him in view tried, at various
moments, to scrape acquaintance with him in the lobby, and at the
bar; and without any success.

The last man, who had again stepped into an adjoining booth while
McKay was telephoning, succeeded, by inquiring for McKay at the desk
and waiting there while he was being paged.

The card on which this third man of the trio had written bore the
name Stanley Brown; and when McKay hailed the page and perused the
written name of his visitor he walked carefully back to the
lobby--not too fast, because he seemed to realise that his legs, at
that time, would not take kindly to speed.

In the lobby the third man approached him:

"Mr. McKay?"

"Mr. Brown?"

"A. I. O. agent," said Brown in a low voice. "You telephoned to
Major Biddle, I believe."

McKay inspected him with profound gravity:

"How do," he said. "Ve' gla', m'sure. Ve' kind 'f'you come way up
here see me. But I gotta see Major Biddle."

"I understand. Major Biddle has asked me to meet you and bring you
to him."

"Oh. Ve' kind, 'm'sure. Gotta see Major. Confidential. Can' tell
anybody 'cep Major."

"The Major will meet us at the Pizza, this evening," explained
Brown. "Meanwhile, if you will do me the honour of dining with
me--"

"Ve' kind. Pleasure, 'm'sure. Have li'l drink, Mr. Brown?"

"Not here," murmured Brown. "I'm not in uniform, but I'm known."

"Quite so. Unnerstan' perfec'ly. Won'do. No."

"Had you thought of dressing for dinner?" inquired Mr. Brown
carelessly.

McKay nodded, went over to the desk and got his key. But when he
returned to Brown he only laughed and shoved the key into his
pocket.

"Forgot," he explained. "Just came over. Haven't any clothes. Got
these in Christiania. Ellis Island style. 'S'all I've got. Good
overcoat though." He fumbled at his fur coat as he stood there,
slightly swaying.

"We'll get a drink where I'm not known," said Brown. "I'll find a
taxi."

"Ve' kind," murmured McKay, following him unsteadily to the swinging
doors that opened on Long Acre, now so dimly lighted that it was
scarcely recognisable.

An icy blast greeted them from the darkness, refreshing McKay for a
moment; but in the freezing taxi he sank back as though weary,
pulling his beaver coat around him and closing his battered eyes.

"Had a hard time," he muttered. "Feel done in. ... Prisoner. .. .
Gottaway. . . . Three months making Dutch border.... Hell. Tell
Major all 'bout it. Great secret."

"What secret is that?" asked Brown, peering at him intently through
the dim light, where he swayed in the corner with every jolt of the
taxi.

"Sorry, m'dear fellow. Mussn' ask me that. Gotta tell Major n'no one
else."

"But I am the Major's confidential--"

"Sorry. You'll 'scuse me, 'm'sure. Can't talk Misser Brow!--'gret
'ceedingly 'cessity reticence. Unnerstan'?"

The taxi stopped before a vaguely lighted saloon on Fifty-ninth
Street east of Fifth Avenue. McKay opened his eyes, looked around
him in the bitter darkness, stumbled out into the snow on Brown's
arm.

"A quiet, cosy little cafe," said Brown, "where I don't mind joining
you in something hot before dinner."

"Thasso? Fine! Hot Scotch we' good 'n'cold day. We'll havva l'il
drink keep us warm 'n'snug."

A few respectable-looking men were drinking beer in the cafe as they
entered a little room beyond, where a waiter came to them and took
Brown's orders.

Hours later McKay seemed to be no more intoxicated than he had been;
no more loquacious or indiscreet. He had added nothing to what he
had already disclosed, boasted no more volubly about the "great
secret," as he called it.

Now and then he recollected himself and inquired for the "Major,"
but a drink always sidetracked him.

It was evident, too, that Brown was becoming uneasy and impatient to
the verge of exasperation, and that he was finally coming to the
conclusion that he could do nothing with the man McKay as far as
pumping was concerned.

Twice, on pretexts, he left McKay alone in the small room and went
into the cafe, where his two companions of the Hotel Astor were
seated at a table, discussing sardine sandwiches and dark brew.

"I can't get a damned thing out of him," he said in a low voice.
"Who the hell he is and where he comes from is past me. Had I better
fix him and take his key?"

"Yess," nodded one of the other men, "it iss perhaps better that we
search now his luggage in his room."

"I guess that's all we can hope for from this guy. Say! He's a clam.
And he may be only a jazzer at that."

"He comes on the Peer Gynt this morning. We shall not forget that
alretty, nor how he iss calling at those telephones all afternoon."

"He may be a nosey newspaper man--just a fresh souse," said Brown.
"All the same I think I'll fix him and we'll go see what he's got in
his room."

The two men rose, paid their reckoning, and went out; Brown returned
to the small room, where McKay sat at the table with his curly brown
head buried in his arms.

He did not look up immediately when Brown returned--time for the
latter to dose the steaming tumbler at the man's elbow, and slip the
little bottle back into his pocket.

Then, thinking McKay might be asleep, he nudged him, and the young
man lifted his marred and dissipated visage and extended one hand
for his glass.

They both drank.

"Wheresa Major?" inquired McKay. "Gotta see him rightaway. Great
secreksh--"

"Take a nap. You're tired."

"Yess'm all in," muttered the other. "Had a hard
time--prisoner--three--three months hiding--" His head fell on his
arms again.

Brown rose from his chair, bent over him, remained poised above his
shoulder for a few moments. Then he coolly took the key from McKay's
overcoat pocket and very deftly continued the search, in spite of
the drowsy restlessness of the other.

But there were no papers, no keys, only a cheque-book and a wallet
packed with new banknotes and some foreign gold and silver. Brown
merely read the name written in the new cheque-book but did not take
it or the money.

Then, his business with McKay being finished, he went out, paid the
reckoning, tipped the waiter generously, and said:

"My friend wants to sleep for half an hour. Let him alone until I
come back for him."

Brown had been gone only a few moments when McKay lifted his head
from his arms with a jerk, looked around him blindly, got to his
feet and appeared in the cafe doorway, swaying on unsteady legs.

"Gotta see the Major!" he said thickly. "'M'not qui' well. Gotta--"

The waiter attempted to quiet him, but McKay continued on toward the
door, muttering that he had to find the Major and that he was not
feeling well.

They let him go out into the freezing darkness. Between the saloon
and the Plaza Circle he fell twice on the ice, but contrived to find
his feet again and lurch on through the deserted street and square.

The black cold that held the city in its iron grip had driven men
and vehicles from the streets. On Fifth Avenue scarcely a moving
light was to be seen; under the fuel-conservation order, club, hotel
and private mansion were unlighted at that hour. The vast marble
mass of the Plaza Hotel loomed enormous against the sky; the New
Netherlands, the Savoy, the Metropolitan Club, the great Vanderbilt
mansion, were darkened. Only a few ice-dimmed lamps clustered around
the Plaza fountain, where the bronze goddess, with her basket of
ice, made a graceful and shadowy figure under the stars.

The young man was feeling very ill now. His fur overcoat had become
unbuttoned and the bitter wind that blew across the Park seemed to
benumb his body and fetter his limbs so that he could barely keep
his feet.

He had managed to cross Fifth Avenue, somehow; but now he stumbled
against the stone balustrade which surrounds the fountain, and he
rested there, striving to keep his feet.

Blindness, then deafness possessed him. Stupefied, instinct still
aided him automatically in his customary habit of fighting; he
strove to beat back the mounting waves of lethargy; half-conscious,
he still fought for consciousness.

After a while his hat fell off. He was on his knees now, huddled
under his overcoat, his left shoulder resting against the
balustrade. Twice one arm moved as though seeking something. It was
the mind's last protest against the betrayal of the body. Then the
body became still, although the soul still lingered within it.

But now it had become a question of minutes--not many minutes.
Fate had knocked him out; Destiny was counting him out--had nearly
finished counting. Then Chance stepped into the squared circle of
Life. And Kay McKay was in a very bad way indeed when a coupe,
speeding northward through the bitter night, suddenly veered
westward, ran in to the curb, and stopped; and Miss Erith's
chauffeur turned in his seat at the wheel to peer back through the
glass at his mistress, whose signal he had just obeyed.

Then he scrambled out of his seat and came around to the door, just
as Miss Erith opened it and hurriedly descended.

"Wayland," she said, "there's somebody over there on the sidewalk.
Can't you see?--there by the marble railing?--by the fountain!
Whoever it is will freeze to death. Please go over and see what is
the matter."

The heavily-furred chauffeur ran across the snowy oval. Miss Erith
saw him lean over the shadowy, prostrate figure, shake it; then she
hurried over too, and saw a man, crouching, fallen forward on his
face beside the snowy balustrade.

Down on her knees in the snow beside him dropped Miss Erith, calling
on Wayland to light a match.

"Is he dead, Miss?"

"No. Listen to him breathe! He's ill. Can't you hear the dreadful
sounds he makes? Try to lift him, if you can. He's freezing here!"

"I'm thinkin' he's just drunk an' snorin,' Miss."

"What of it? He's freezing, too. Carry him to the carl"

Wayland leaned down, put both big arms under the shoulders of the
unconscious man, and dragged him, upright, holding him by main
strength.

"He's drunk, all right, Miss," the chauffeur remarked with a sniff
of disgust.

That he had been drinking was evident enough to Miss Erith now. She
picked up his hat; a straggling yellow light from the ice-bound
lamps fell on McKay's battered features.

"Get him into the car," she said, "he'll die out here in this cold."

The big chauffeur half-carried, half-dragged the inanimate man to
the car and lifted him in. Miss Erith followed.

"The Samaritan Hospital--that's the nearest," she said hastily.
"Drive as fast as you can, Wayland."

McKay had slid to the floor of the coupe; Miss Erith turned on the
ceiling light, drew the fur robe around him, and lifted his head to
her knees, holding it there supported between her gloved hands.

The light fell full on his bruised visage, on the crisp brown hair
dusted with snow, which lay so lightly on his temples, making him
seem very frail and boyish in his deathly pallor.

His breathing grew heavier, more laboured; the coupe reeked with the
stench of alcohol; and Miss Erith, feeling almost faint, opened the
window a little way, then wrapped the young man's head in the skirt
of her fur coat and covered his icy hands with her own.

The ambulance entrance to the Samaritan Hospital was dimly
illuminated. Wayland, turning in from Park Avenue, sounded his horn,
then scrambled down from the box as an orderly and a watchman
appeared under the vaulted doorway. And in a few moments the
emergency case had passed out of Miss Erith's jurisdiction.

But as her car turned homeward, upon her youthful mind was stamped
the image of a pale, bruised face--of a boyish head reversed upon
her knees--of crisp, light-brown hair dusted with particles of
snow.

Within the girl's breast something deep was stirring--something
unfamiliar--not pain--not pity--yet resembling both, perhaps. She
had no other standard of comparison.

After she reached home she called up the Samaritan Hospital for
information, and learned that the man was suffering from the effects
of alcohol and chloral--the latter probably an overdose
self-administered--because he had not been robbed. Miss Erith also
learned that there were five hundred dollars in new United States
banknotes in his pockets, some English sovereigns, a number of Dutch
and Danish silver pieces, and a new cheque-book on the Schuyler
National Bank, in which was written what might be his name.

"Will he live?" inquired Miss Erith, solicitous, as are people
concerning the fate of anything they have helped to rescue.

"He seems to be in no danger," came the answer. "Are you interested
in the patient, Miss Erith?"

"No--that is--yes. Yes, I am interested."

"Shall we communicate with you in case any unfavourable symptoms
appear?"

"Please do!"

"Are you a relative or friend?"

"N-no. I am very slightly interested--in his recovery. Nothing
more."

"Very well. But we do not find his name in any directory. We have
attempted to communicate with his family, but nobody of that name
claims him. You say you are personally interested in the young man?"

"Oh, no," said Miss Erith, "except that I hope he is not going to
die.... He seems so--young--f-friendless--"

"Then you have no personal knowledge of the patient?"

"None whatever.... What did you say his name is?"

"McKay."

For a moment the name sounded oddly familiar but meaningless in her
ears. Then, with a thrill of sudden recollection, she asked again
for the man's name.

"The name written in his cheque-book is McKay."

"McKay!" she repeated incredulously. "What else?"

"Kay."

"WHAT!!"

"That is the name in the cheque-book--Kay McKay."

Dumb, astounded, she could not utter a word.

"Do you know anything about him, Miss Erith?" inquired the distant
voice.

"Yes--yes!... I don't know whether I do.... I have heard the--that
name--a similar name--" Her mind was in a tumult now. Could such a
thing happen? It was utterly impossible!

The voice on the wire continued:

"The police have been here but they are not interested in the case,
as no robbery occurred. The young man is still unconscious,
suffering from the chloral. If you are interested, Miss Erith, would
you kindly call at the hospital to-morrow?"

"Yes.... Did you say that there was FOREIGN money in his pockets?"

"Dutch and Danish silver and English gold."

"Thank you.... I shall call to-morrow. Don't let him leave before I
arrive."

"What?"

"I wish to see him. Please do not permit him to leave before I get
there. It--it is very important--vital--in case he is the man--the
Kay McKay in question."

"Very well. Good-night."

Miss Erith sank back in her armchair, shivering even in the warm
glow from the hearth.

"Such things can NOT happen!" she said aloud. "Such things do not
happen in life!"

And she told herself that even in stories no author would dare--not
even the veriest amateur scribbler--would presume to affront
intelligent readers by introducing such a coincidence as this
appeared to be.

"Such things do NOT happen!" repeated Miss Erith firmly.

Such things, however, DO occur.

Was it possible that the Great Secret, of which the Lauffer cipher
letter spoke, was locked within the breast of this young fellow who
now lay unconscious in the Samaritan Hospital?

Was this actually the escaped prisoner? Was this the man who,
according to instructions in the cipher, was to be marked for death
at the hands of the German Government's secret agents in America?

And, if this truly were the same man, was he safe, at least for the
present, now that the cipher letter had been intercepted before it
had reached Herman Lauffer?

Hour after hour, lying deep in her armchair before the fire, Miss
Erith crouched a prey to excited conjectures, not one of which could
be answered until the man in the Samaritan Hospital had recovered
consciousness.

Suppose he never recovered consciousness. Suppose he should die--

At the thought Miss Erith sprang from her chair and picked up the
telephone.

With fast-beating heart she waited for the connection. Finally she
got it and asked the question.

"The man is dying," came the calm answer. A pause, then: "I
understand the patient has just died."

Miss Erith strove to speak but her voice died in her throat.
Trembling from head to foot, she placed the telephone on the table,
turned uncertainly, fell into the armchair, huddled there, and
covered her face with both hands.

For it was proving worse--a little worse than the loss of the Great
Secret--worse than the mere disappointment in losing it--worse even
than a natural sorrow in the defeat of an effort to save life.

For in all her own life Miss Erith had never until that evening
experienced the slightest emotion when looking into the face of any
man.

But from the moment when her brown eyes fell upon the pallid,
dissipated, marred young face turned upward on her knees in the
car--in that instant she had known for the first time a new and
indefinable emotion--vague in her mind, vaguer in her heart--yet
delicately apparent.

But what this unfamiliar emotion might be, so faint, so vague, she
had made no effort to analyse.... It had been there; she had
experienced it; that was all she knew.

It was almost morning before she rose, stiff with cold, and moved
slowly toward her bedroom.

Among the whitening ashes on her hearth only a single coal remained
alive.






CHAPTER III

TO A FINISH





The hospital called her on the telephone about eight o'clock in the
morning:

"Miss Evelyn Erith, please?"

"Yes," she said in a tired voice, "who is it?"

"Is this Miss Erith?"

"Yes."

"This is the Superintendent's office, Samaritan, Hospital, Miss
Dalton speaking."

The girl's heart contracted with a pang of sheer pain. She closed
her eyes and waited. The voice came over the wire again:

"A wreath of Easter lilies with your card came early--this morning.
I'm very sure there is a mistake--"

"No," she whispered, "the flowers are for a patient who died in the
hospital last night--a young man whom I brought there in my car--Kay
McKay."

"I was afraid so--"

"What!"

"McKay isn't dead! It's another patient. I was sure somebody here
had made a mistake."

Miss Erith swayed slightly, steadied herself with a desperate effort
to comprehend what the voice was telling her.

"There was a mistake made last night," continued Miss Dalton.
"Another patient died--a similar case. When I came on duty a few
moments ago I learned what had occurred. The young man in whom you
are interested is conscious this morning. Would you care to see him
before he is discharged?"

Miss Erith said, unsteadily, that she would.

She had recovered her self-command but her knees remained weak and
her lips tremulous, and she rested her forehead on both hands which
had fallen, tightly clasped, on the table in front of her. After a
few moments she felt better and she rang up her D. C., Mr. Vaux, and
explained that she expected to be late at the office. After that she
got the garage on the wire, ordered her car, and stood by the window
watching the heavily falling snow until her butler announced the
car's arrival.

The shock of the message informing her that this man was still alive
now rapidly absorbed itself in her reviving excitement at the
prospect of an approaching interview with him. Her car ran
cautiously along Park Avenue through the driving snow, but the
distance was not far and in a few minutes the great red quadrangle
of the Samaritan Hospital loomed up on her right. And even before
she was ready, before she quite had time to compose her mind in
preparation for the questions she had begun to formulate, she was
ushered into a private room by a nurse on duty who detained her a
moment at the door:

"The patient is ready to be discharged," she whispered, "but we have
detained him at your request. We are so sorry about the mistake."

"Is he quite conscious?"

"Entirely. He's somewhat shaken, that is all. Otherwise he shows no
ill effects."

"Does he know how he came here?"

"Oh, yes. He questioned us this morning and we told him the
circumstances."

"Does he know I have arrived?"

"Yes, I told him."

"He did not object to seeing me?" inquired Miss Erith. A slight
colour dyed her face.

"No, he made no objection. In fact, he seemed interested. He expects
you. You may go in."

Miss Erith stepped into the room. Perhaps the patient had heard the
low murmur of voices in the corridor, for he lay on his side in bed
gazing attentively toward the door. Miss Erith walked straight to
the bedside; he looked up at her in silence.

"I am so glad that you are better," she said with an effort made
doubly difficult in the consciousness of the bright blush on her
cheeks. Without moving he replied in what must have once been an
agreeable voice: "Thank you. I suppose you are Miss Erith."

"Yes."

"Then--I am very grateful for what you have done."

"It was so fortunate--"

"Would you be seated if you please?"

She took the chair beside his bed.

"It was nice of you," he said, almost sullenly. "Few women of your
sort would bother with a drunken man."

They both flushed. She said calmly: "It is women of my sort who DO
exactly that kind of thing."

He gave her a dark and sulky look: "Not often," he retorted: "there
are few of your sort from Samaria."

There was a silence, then he went on in a hard voice:

"I'd been drinking a lot... as usual.... But it isn't an excuse when
I say that my beastly condition was not due to a drunken stupor. It
just didn't happen to be that time."

She shivered slightly. "It happened to be due to chloral," he added,
reddening painfully again. "I merely wished you to know."

"Yes, they told me," she murmured.

After another silence, during which he had been watching her
askance, he said: "Did you think I had taken that chloral
voluntarily?"

She made no reply. She sat very still, conscious of vague pain
somewhere in her breast, acquiescent in the consciousness, dumb, and
now incurious concerning further details of this man's tragedy.

"Sometimes," he said, "the poor devil who, in chloral, seeks
a-refuge from intolerable pain becomes an addict to the drug.... I
do not happen to be an addict. I want you to understand that."

The painful colour came and went in the girl's face; he was now
watching her intently.

"As a matter of fact, but probably of no interest to you," he
continued, "I did not voluntarily take that chloral. It was
administered to me without my knowledge--when I was more or less
stupid with liquor.... It is what is known as knockout drops, and is
employed by crooks to stupefy men who are more or less intoxicated
so that they may be easily robbed."

He spoke now so calmly and impersonally that the girl had turned to
look at him again as she listened. And now she said: "Were you
robbed?"

"They took my hotel key: nothing else."

"Was that a serious matter, Mr. McKay?"

He studied her with narrowing brown eyes.

"Oh, no," he said. "I had nothing of value in my room at the Astor
except a few necessaries in a steamer-trunk.... Thank you so much
for all your kindness to me, Miss Erith," he added, as though
relieving her of the initiative in terminating the interview.

As he spoke he caught her eye and divined somehow that she did not
mean to go just yet. Instantly he was on his guard, lying there with
partly closed lids, awaiting events, though not yet really
suspicious. But at her next question he rose abruptly, supported on
one elbow, his whole frame tense and alert under the bed-coverings
as though gathered for a spring.

"What did you say?" he demanded.

"I asked you how long ago you escaped from Holzminden camp?"
repeated the girl, very pale.

"Who told you I had ever been there?--wherever that is!"

"You were there as a prisoner, were you not, Mr. McKay?"

"Where is that place?"

"In Germany on the River Weser. You were detained there under
pretence of being an Englishman before we declared war on Germany.
After we declared war they held you as a matter of course."

There was an ugly look in his eyes, now: "You seem to know a great
deal about a drunkard you picked up in the snow near the Plaza
fountain last night."

"Please don't speak so bitterly."

Quite unconsciously her gloved hand crept up on her fur coat until
it rested over her heart, pressing slightly against her breast.
Neither spoke for a few moments. Then:

"I do know something about you, Mr. McKay," she said. "Among other
things I know that--that if you have become--become intemperate--it
is not your fault.... That was vile of them-unutterably wicked-to do
what they did to you--"

"Who are you?" he burst out. "Where have you learned-heard such
things? Did I babble all this?"

"You did not utter a sound!"

"Then--in God's name--"

"Oh, yes, yes!" she murmured, "in God's name. That is why you and I
are here together--in God's name and by His grace. Do you know He
wrought a miracle for you and me--here in New York, in these last
hours of this dreadful year that is dying very fast now?

"Do you know what that miracle is? Yes, it's partly the fact that
you did not die last night out there on the street. Thirteen degrees
below zero! ... And you did not die.... And the other part of the
miracle is that I of all people in the world should have found
you!... That is our miracle."

Somehow he divined that the girl did not mean the mere saving of his
life had been part of this miracle. But she had meant that, too,
without realising she meant it.

"Who are you?" he asked very quietly.

"I'll tell you: I am Evelyn Erith, a volunteer in the C. E. D.
Service of the United States."

He drew a deep breath, sank down on his elbow, and rested his head
on the pillow.

"Still I don't see how you know," he said. "I mean--the beastly
details--"

"I'll tell you some time. I read the history of your case in an
intercepted cipher letter. Before the German agent here had received
and decoded it he was arrested by an agent of another Service. If
there is anything more to be learned from him it will be extracted.

"But of all men on earth you are the one man I wanted to find. There
is the miracle: I found you! Even now I can scarcely force myself to
believe it is really you."

The faintest flicker touched his eyes.

"What did you want of me?" he inquired.

"Help."

"Help? From such a man as I? What sort of help do you expect from a
drunkard?"

"Every sort. All you can give. All you can give."

He looked at her wearily; his face had become pallid again; the dark
hollows of dissipation showed like bruises.

"I don't understand," he said. "I'm no good, you know that. I'm done
in, finished. I couldn't help you with your work if I wanted to.
There's nothing left of me. I am not to be depended on."

And suddenly, in his eyes of a boy, his self-hatred was revealed to
her in one savage gleam.

"No good," he muttered feverishly, "not to be trusted--no will-power
left.... It was in me, I suppose, to become the drunkard I am--"

"You are NOT!" cried the girl fiercely. "Don't say it!"

"Why not? I am!"

"You can fight your way free!" His laugh frightened her.

"Fight? I've done that. They tried to pump me that way, too--tried
to break me--break my brain to pieces--by stopping my liquor.... I
suppose they thought I might really go insane, as they gave it back
after a while--after a few centuries in hell--and tried to make me
talk by other methods--

"Don't, please." She turned her head swiftly, unable to control her
quivering face.

"Why not?"

"I can't bear it."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to shock you."

"I know." She sat for a while with head averted; and presently
spoke, sitting so:

"We'll fight it, anyway," she said.

"What do you mean?"

"If you'll let me--"

After a silence she turned and looked at him. He stammered, very
red:

"I don't quite know why you speak to me so."

She herself was not entirely clear on that point, either. After all,
her business with this man was to use him in the service of her
Government."

"What is THE GREAT SECRET?" she asked calmly.

After a long while he said, lying there very still: "So you have
even heard about that."

"I have heard about it; that is all."

"Do you know what it is?"

"All I know about it is that there is such a thing--something known
to certain Germans, and by them spoken of as THE GREAT SECRET. I
imagine, of course, that it is some vital military secret which they
desire to guard."

"Is that all you know about it?"

"No, not all." She looked at him gravely out of very clear, honest
eyes:

"I know, also, that the Berlin Government has ordered its agents to
discover your whereabouts, and to'silence' you."

He gazed at her quite blandly for a moment, then, to her amazement,
he laughed--such a clear, untroubled, boyish laugh that her
constrained expression softened in sympathy.

"Do you think that Berlin doesn't mean it?" she asked, brightening a
little.

"Mean it? Oh, I'm jolly sure Berlin means it!"

"Then why--"

"Why do I laugh?"

"Well--yes. Why do you? It does not strike me as very humorous."

At that he laughed again--laughed so whole-heartedly, so
delightfully, that the winning smile curved her own lips once more.

"Would you tell me why you laugh?" she inquired.

"I don't know. It seems so funny--those Huns, those Boches, already
smeared from hair to feet with blood--pausing in their wholesale
butchery to devise a plan to murder ME!"

His face altered; he raised himself on one elbow:

"The swine have turned all Europe into a bloody wallow. They're
belly-deep in it--Kaiser and knecht! But that's only part of it.
They're destroying souls by millions!... Mine is already damned."

Miss Erith sprang to her feet: "I tell you not to say such a thing!"
she cried, exasperated. "You're as young as I am! Besides, souls are
not slain by murder. If they perish it's suicide, ALWAYS!"

She began to pace the white room nervously, flinging open her fur
coat as she turned and came straight back to his bed again. Standing
there and looking down at him she said:

"We've got to fight it out. The country needs you. It's your bit and
you've got to do it. There's a cure for alcoholism--Dr. Langford's
cure. Are you afraid because you think it may hurt?"

He lay looking up at her with hell's own glimmer in his eyes again:

"You don't know what you're talking about," he said. "You talk of
cures, and I tell you that I'm half dead for a drink right now! And
I'm going to get up and dress and get it!"

The expression of his features and his voice and words appalled her,
left her dumb for an instant. Then she said breathlessly:

"You won't do that!"

"Yes I will."

"No."

"Why not?" he demanded excitedly.

"You owe me something."

"What I said was conventional. I'm NOT grateful to you for saving
the sort of life mine is!"

"I was not thinking of your life."

After a moment he said more quietly: "I know what you mean.... Yes,
I am grateful. Our Government ought to know."

"Then tell me, now."

"You know," he said brutally, "I have only your word that you are
what you say you are."

She reddened but replied calmly: "That is true. Let me show you my
credentials."

From her muff she drew a packet, opened it, and laid the contents on
the bedspread under his eyes. Then she walked to the window and
stood there with her back turned looking out at the falling snow.

After a few minutes he called her. She went back to the bedside,
replaced the packet in her muff, and stood waiting in silence.

He lay looking up at her very quietly and his bruised young features
had lost their hard, sullen expression.

"I'd better tell you all I know," he said, "because there is really
no hope of curing me... you don't understand... my will-power is
gone. The trouble is with my mind itself. I don't want to be
cured.... I WANT what's killing me. I want it now, always, all the
time. So before anything happens to me I'd better tell you what I
know so that our Government can make the proper investigation.
Because what I shall tell you is partly a surmise. I leave it to you
to judge--to our Government."

She drew from her muff a little pad and a pencil and seated herself
on the chair beside him.

"I'll speak slowly," he began, but she shook her head, saying that
she was an expert stenographer. So he went on:

"You know my name--Kay McKay. I was born here and educated at Yale.
But my father was Scotch and he died in Scotland. My mother had been
dead many years. They lived on a property called Isla which belonged
to my grandfather. After my father's death my grandfather allowed me
an income, and when I had graduated from Yale I continued here
taking various post-graduate courses. Finally I went to Cornell and
studied agriculture, game breeding and forestry--desiring some day
to have a place of my own.

"In 1914 I went to Germany to study their system of forestry. In
July of that year I went to Switzerland and roamed about in the
vagabond way I like--once liked." His visage altered and he cast a
side glance at the girl beside him, but her eyes were fixed on her
pad.

He drew a deep breath, like a sigh:

"In that corner of Switzerland which is thrust westward between
Germany and France there are a lot of hills and mountains which were
unfamiliar to me. The flora resembled that of the Vosges--so did the
bird and insect life except on the higher mountains.

"There is a mountain called Mount Terrible. I camped on it. There
was some snow. You know what happens sometimes in summer on the
higher peaks. Well, it happened to me--the whole snow field slid
when I was part way across it--and I thought it was all off--never
dreamed a man could live through that sort of thing--with the sheer
gneiss ledges below!

"It was not a big avalanche--not the terrific thundering
sort--rather an easy slipping, I fancy--but it was a devilish thing
to lie aboard, and, of course, if there had been precipices where I
slid--" He shrugged.

The girl looked up from her shorthand manuscript; he seemed to be
dreamily living over in his mind those moments on Mount Terrible.
Presently he smiled slightly:

"I was horribly scared--smothered, choked, half-senseless.... Part
of the snow and a lot of trees and boulders went over the edge of
something with a roar like Niagara.... I don't know how long
afterward it was when I came to my senses.

"I was in a very narrow, rocky valley, up to my neck in soft snow,
and the sun beating on my face. ... So I crawled out... I wasn't
hurt; I was merely lost.

"It took me a long while to place myself geographically. But
finally, by map and compass, I concluded that I was in some one of
the innumerable narrow valleys on the northern side of Mount
Terrible. Basle seemed to be the nearest proper objective, judging
from my map.... Can you form a mental picture of that particular
corner of Europe, Miss Erith?"

"No."

"Well, the German frontier did not seem to be very far northward--at
least that was my idea. But there was no telling; the place where I
landed was a savage and shaggy wilderness of firs and rocks without
any sign of habitation or of roads.

"The things that had been strapped on my back naturally remained
with me--map, binoculars, compass, botanising paraphernalia, rations
for two days--that sort of thing. So I was not worried. I prowled
about, experienced agreeable shivers by looking up at the mountain
which had dumped me down into this valley, and finally, after
eating, I started northeast by compass.

"It was a rough scramble. After I had been hiking along for several
hours I realised that I was on a shelf high above another valley,
and after a long while I came out where I could look down over miles
of country. My map indicated that what I beheld must be some part of
Alsace. Well, I lay flat on a vast shelf of rock and began to use my
field-glasses."

He was silent so long that Miss Erith finally looked up
questioningly. McKay's face had become white and stern, and in his
fixed gaze there was something dreadful.

"Please," she faltered, "go on."

He looked at her absently; the colour came back to his face; he
shrugged his shoulders.

"Oh, yes. What was I saying? Yes--about that vast ledge up there
under the mountains... I stayed there three days. Partly because I
couldn't find any way down. There seemed to be none.

"But I was not bored. Oh, no. Just anxious concerning my situation.
Otherwise I had plenty to look at."

She waited, pencil poised.

"Plenty to look at," he repeated absently. "Plenty of Huns to gaze
at. Huns? They were like ants below me, there. They swarmed under
the mountain ledge as far as I could see--thousands of busy
Boches--busy as ants. There were narrow-gauge railways, too,
apparently running right into the mountain; and a deep broad cleft,
deep as another valley, and all crawling with Huns.

"A tunnel? Nobody alive ever dreamed of such a gigantic tunnel, if
it was one!... Well, I was up there three days. It was the first of
August--thereabouts--and I'd been afield for weeks. And, of course,
I'd heard nothing of war--never dreamed of it.

"If I had, perhaps what those thousands of Huns were doing along the
mountain wall might have been plainer to me.

"As it was, I couldn't guess. There was no blasting--none that I
could hear. But trains were running and some gigantic enterprise was
being accomplished--some enterprise that apparently demanded speed
and privacy--for not one civilian was to be seen, not one dwelling.
But there were endless mazes of fortifications; and I saw guns being
moved everywhere.

"Well, I was becoming hungry up on that fir-clad battlement. I
didn't know how to get down into the valley. It began to look as
though I'd have to turn back; and that seemed a rather awful
prospect.

"Anyway, what happened, eventually, was this: I started east through
the forest along that pathless tableland, and on the afternoon of
the next day, tired out and almost starved, I stepped across the
Swiss boundary line--a wide, rocky, cleared space crossing a
mountain flank like a giant's road.

"No guards were visible anywhere, no sentry-boxes, but, as I stood
hesitating in the middle of the frontier--and just why I hesitated I
don't know--I saw half a dozen jagers of a German mounted regiment
ride up on the German side of the boundary.

"For a second the idea occurred to me that they had ridden parallel
to the ledge to intercept me; but the idea seemed absurd, granted
even that they had seen me upon the ledge from below, which I never
dreamed they had. So when they made me friendly gestures to come
across the frontier I returned their cheery 'Gruss Gott!' and
plodded thankfully across. ... And their leader, leaning from his
saddle to take my offered hand, suddenly struck me in the face, and
at the same moment a trooper behind me hit me on the head with the
butt of a pistol."

The girl's flying pencil faltered; she lifted her brown eyes,
waiting.

"That's about all," he said--"as far as facts are concerned.... They
treated me rather badly.... I faced their firing-squads half-a-dozen
times. After that bluff wouldn't work they interned me as an English
civilian at Holzminden.... They hid me when, at last, an inspection
took place. No chance for me to communicate with our Ambassador or
with any of the Commission."

He turned to her in his boyish, frank way: "But do you know, Miss
Erith, it took me quite a while to analyse the affair and to figure
out why they arrested me, lied about me, and treated me so
hellishly.

"You see, I was kept in solitary confinement and never had a chance
to speak to any of the other civilians interned there at Holzminden.
There was no way of suspecting why all this was happening to me
except by the attitude of the Huns themselves and their endless
questions and threats and cruelties. They were cruel. They hurt me a
lot."

Miss Erith's eyes suddenly dimmed as she watched him, and she
hastily bent her head over the pad.

"Well," he went on, "the rest, as I say, is pure surmise. This is my
conclusion: I think that for the last forty years the Huns have been
busy with an astounding military enterprise. Of course, since 1870,
the Boche has expected war, and has been feverishly preparing for
it. All the world now knows what they have done--not everything that
they have done, however.

"My conclusion is this: that, when Mount Terrible shrugged me off
its northern flank, the snow slide carried me to an almost
inaccessible spot of which even the Swiss hunters knew nothing. Or,
if they did, they considered it impossible to reach from their own
territory.

"From Germany it could be reached, but it was Swiss territory. At
any rate I think I am the only civilian who has been there, and who
has viewed from there this enormous work in which the Huns are
engaged.

"And I belive that this mysterious, overwhelmingly enormous work is
nothing less than the piercing--not of a mountain or a group of
mountains--but of that entire part of Switzerland which lies between
Germany and France.

"I believe that a vast military road, deep, deep, under the earth,
is being carried by an enormous tunnel from far back on the German
side of the frontier, under Mount Terrible, under all the mountains,
hills, valleys, forests, rivers--under Switzerland, in fact--into
French territory.

"I believe it has been building since 1871. I believe it is nearly
finished, and that it will, on French territory, give egress to a
Hun army debouching from Alsace, under Switzerland, into France
behind the French lines. That part of the Franco-Swiss frontier is
unguarded, unfortified, uninhabited. From there a Hun army can
strike the French trenches from the rear--strike Toul, Nancy,
Belfort, Verdun--why, the road is open to Paris that way--open to
Calais, to England!"

"This is frightful!" cried the girl. "If such a dreadful--"

"Wait! I told you that it is merely a surmise. I don't know. I
guess. Why I guess it I have told you.... They were savage with
me--those Huns.... They got nothing out of me. I lied steadily, even
when drunk. No, they got nothing out of me. I denied I had seen
anything. I denied--and truly enough--that anybody had accompanied
me. No, they wrenched nothing out of me--not by starving me, not by
water torture, not by their firing-squads, not by blows, not even by
making of me the drunkard I am."

The pencil fell from Miss Erith's hand and the hand caught McKay's,
held it, crushed it.

"You're only a boy," she murmured. "I'm not much more than a girl.
We've both got years ahead of us--the best of our lives."

"YOU have."

"You also! Oh, don't, don't look at me that way. I'll help you.
We've got work to do, you and I. Don't you see? Don't you
understand? Work to do for our Government! Work to do for America!"

"It's too late for me to--"

"No. You've got to live. You've got to find yourself again. This
depends on you. Don't you see it does? Don't you see that you have
got to go back there and PROVE what you merely suspect?"

"I simply can't."

"You shall! I'll make this right with you! I'll stick to you! I'll
fight to give you back your will-power--your mind. We'll do this
together, for our country. I'll give up everything else to make this
fight."

He began to tremble.

"I--if I could--"

"I tell you that you shall! We must do our bit, you and I!"

"You don't know--you don't know!" he cried in a bitter voice, then
fell trembling again with the sweat of agony on his face.

"No, I don't know," she whispered, clutching his hand to steady him.
"But I shall learn."

"You'll learn that a drunkard is a dirty beast!" he cried. "Do you
know what I'd do if anybody tried to keep me from drink?
ANYBODY!--even you!"

"No, I don't know." She shook her head sorrowfully: "A mindless man
becomes a demon, I suppose. ... Would you--injure me?"

He was shaking all over now, and presently he sat up in bed and
covered his head with one desperate hand.

"You poor boy!" she whispered.

"Keep away from me," he muttered, "I've told you all I know. I'm no
further use.... Keep clear of me.... I'm sorry--to be--what I am."

"When I leave what are you going to do?" she asked gently.

"Do? I'll dress and go to the nearest bar."

"Do you need it so much already?"

He nodded his bowed head covered by the hand that gripped his hair:
"Yes, I need it--badly."

She rose, loosened his clutch on her slender hand, picked up her
muff:

"I'll be waiting for you downstairs," she said simply.

His face expressed sullen defiance as he passed through the
waiting-room. Yet he seemed a little taken aback as well as relieved
when Miss Erith did not appear among the considerable number of
people waiting there for discharged patients. He walked on,
buttoning his fur coat with shaky fingers, passed the doorway and
stepped out into the falling snow. At the same moment a chauffeur
buried in coon-skins moved forward touching his cap:

"Miss Erith's car is here, sir; Miss Erith expects you."

McKay hesitated, scowling now in his perplexity; passed his
quivering hand slowly across his face, then turned, and looked at
the waiting car drawn up at the gutter. Behind the frosty window
Miss Erith gave him a friendly smile. He walked over to the curb,
the chauffeur opened the door, and McKay took off his hat.

"Don't ask me," he said in a low voice that trembled slightly like a
sick man's.

"I DO ask you."

"You know what's the matter with me, Miss Erith," he insisted in the
same low, unsteady voice.

"Please," she said: and laid one small gloved hand lightly on his
arm.

So he entered the car; the chauffeur drew the robe over them, and
stood awaiting orders.

"Home," said Miss Erith faintly.

If McKay was astonished he did not betray it. Neither said anything
more for a while. The man rested an elbow on the sill, his troubled,
haggard face on his hand; the girl kept her gaze steadily in front
of her with a partly resolute, partly scared expression. The car
went up Park Avenue and then turned westward.

When it stopped the girl said: "You will give me a few moments in my
library with you, won't you?"

The visage he turned to her was one of physical anguish. They sat
confronting each other in silence for an instant; then he rose with
a visible effort and descended, and she followed.

"Be at the garage at two, Wayland," she said, and ascended the snowy
stoop beside McKay.

The butler admitted them. "Luncheon for two," she said, and mounted
the stairs without pausing.

McKay remained in the hall until he had been separated from hat and
coat; then he slowly ascended the stairway. She was waiting on the
landing and she took him directly into the library where a wood fire
was burning.

"Just a moment," she said, "to make myself as--as persuasive as I
can."

"You are perfectly equipped, Miss Erith--"

"Oh, no, I must do better than I have done. This is the great moment
of our careers, Mr. McKay." Her smile, brightly forced, left his
grim features unresponsive. The undertone in her voice warned him of
her determination to have her way.

He took an involuntary step toward the door like a caged thing that
sees a loophole, halted as she barred his way, turned his marred
young visage and glared at her. There was something terrible in his
intent gaze--a pale flare flickering in his eyes like the uncanny
light in the orbs of a cornered beast.

"You'll wait, won't you?" she asked, secretly frightened now.

After a long interval, "Yes," his lips motioned.

"Thank you. Because it is the supreme moment of our lives. It
involves life or death.... Be patient with me. Will you?"

"But you must be brief," he muttered restlessly. "You know what I
need. I am sick, I tell you!"

So she went away--not to arrange her beauty more convincingly, but
to fling coat and hat to her maid and drop down on the chair by her
desk and take up the telephone:

"Dr. Langford's Hospital?"

"Yes."

"Miss Erith wishes to speak to Dr. Langford. ... Is that you,
Doctor?... Oh, yes, I'm perfectly well.... Tell me, how soon can you
cure a man of--of dipsomania?... Of course.... It was a stupid
question. But I'm so worried and unhappy... Yes.... Yes, it's a man
I know.... It wasn't his fault, poor fellow. If I can only get him
to you and persuade him to tell you the history of his case... I
don't know whether he'll go. I'm doing my best. He's here in my
library.... Oh, no, he isn't intoxicated now, but he was yesterday.
And oh, Doctor! He is so shaky and he seems so ill--I mean in mind
and spirit more than in body.... Yes, he says he needs something....
What?... Give him some whisky if he wants it?... Do you mean a
highball?... How many?... Oh... Yes... Yes, I understand ... I'll do
my very best.... Thank you. ... At three o'clock?... Thank you so
much, Doctor Langford. Good-bye!"

She hung up the receiver, took a look at herself in the
dressing-glass, and saw reflected there a yellow-haired hazel-eyed
girl who looked a trifle scared. But she forced a smile, made a
hasty toilette and rang for the butler, gave her orders, and then
walked leisurely into the library. McKay lifted his tragic face from
his hands where he stood before the fire, his elbows resting on the
mantel.

"Come," she said in her pretty, resolute way, "you and I are
perfectly human. Let's face this thing together and find out what
really is in it."

She took one armchair, he the other, and she noticed that all his
frame was quivering now--his hands always in restless, groping
movement, as though with palsy. A moment later the butler came with
a decanter, ice, mineral water and a tall glass. There was also a
box of cigars on the silver tray.

"You'll fix your own highball," she said carelessly, nodding
dismissal to the butler. But she looked only once at McKay, then
turned away--pretence of picking up her knitting--so terrible it was
to her to see in his eyes the very glimmer of hell itself as he
poured out what he "needed."

Minute after minute she sat there by the fire knitting tranquilly,
scarcely ever even lifting her calm young eyes to the man. Twice
again he poured out what he "needed" for himself before the agony in
his sickened brain and body became endurable--before the tortured
nerves had been sufficiently drugged once more and the indescribable
torment had subsided. He looked at her once or twice where she sat
knitting and apparently quite oblivious to what he had been about,
but his glance was no longer furtive; he unconsciously squared his
shoulders, and his head straightened up.

Without lifting her eyes she said: "I thought we'd talk over our
plans when you feel better."

He glanced sideways at the decanter: "I am all right," he said.

She had not yet lifted her eyes; she continued to knit while
speaking:

"First of all," she said, "I shall place your testimony and my
report in the hands of my superior, Mr. Vaux. Does that meet with
your approval?"

"Yes."

She knitted in silence a few moments. He kept his eyes on her.
Presently--and still without looking up--she said: "Are you within
the draft age?"

"No. I am thirty-two."

"Will you volunteer?"

"No."

"Would you tell me why?"

"Yes, I'll tell you why. I shall not volunteer because of my
habits."

"You mean your temporary infirmity," she said calmly. But her cheeks
reddened and she bent lower over her work. A dull colour stained his
face, too, but he merely shrugged his comment.

She said in a low voice: "I want you to volunteer with me for
overseas service in the Army Intelligence Department.... You and I,
together.... To prove what you have surmised concerning the German
operations beyond Mount Terrible.... And first I want you to go with
me to Dr. Langford's hospital .... I want you to go this afternoon
with me. ... And face the situation. And see it through. And come
out cured." She lifted her head and looked at him. "Will you?" And
in his altering gaze she saw the flicker of half-senseless anger
intensified suddenly to a flare of hatred.

"Don't ask anything like that of me," he said. She had grown quite
white.

"I do ask it.... Will you?"

"If I wanted to I couldn't, and I don't want to. I prefer this hell
to the other."

"Won't you make a fight for it?"

"No!" he said brutally.

The girl bent her head again over her knitting. But her white
fingers remained idle. After a long while, staring at her intently,
he saw her lip quiver.

"Don't do that!" he broke out harshly. "What the devil do you care?"

Then she lifted her tragic white face. And he had his answer.

"My God!" he faltered, springing to his feet. "What's the matter
with you? Why do you care? You can't care! What is it to you that a
drunken beast slinks back into hell again? Do you think you are
Samaritan enough to follow him and try to drag him out by the
ears?... A man whose very brain is already cracking with it all--a
burnt-out thing with neither mind nor manhood left--"

She got to her feet, trembling and deathly white.

"I can't let you go," she whispered.

Exasperation almost strangled him and set afire his unhinged brain.

"For Christ's sake!" he cried. "What do you care?"

"I--I care," she stammered--"for Christ's sake ... And yours!"

Things went dark before her eyes.... She opened them after a while
on the sofa where he had carried her. He was standing looking down
at her. ... After a long while the ghost of a smile touched her
lips. In his haunted gaze there was no response. But he said in an
altered, unfamiliar voice: "I'll go if you say so. I'll do all
that's in me to do. ... Will you be there--for the first day or
two?"

"Yes.... All day long.... Every day if you want me. Do you?"

"Yes.... But God knows what I may do to you.... There'll be somebody
to--watch me--won't there?... I don't know what may happen to you
or to myself.... I'm in a bad way, Miss Erith... I'm in a very bad
way."

"I know," she murmured.

He said with an almost childish directness: "Do men always live
through such cures?... I don't see how I can live through it."

She rose from the sofa and stood beside him, feeling still dizzy,
still tremulous and lacking strength.

"Let us win through," she said, not looking at him. "I think you
will suffer more than I shall. A little more.... Because I had
rather feel pain than give it--rather suffer than look on suffering....
It will be very hard for us both, I fear."

Her butler announced luncheon.






CHAPTER IV

WRECKAGE





The man had been desperately ill in soul and mind and body. And now
in some curious manner the ocean seemed to be making him physically
better but spiritually worse. Something, too, in the horizonwide
waste of waters was having a sinister effect on his brain. The grey
daylight of early May, bitter as December--the utter desolation, the
mounting and raucous menace of the sea, were meddling with normal
convalescence.

Dull animosity awoke in a battered mind not yet readjusted to the
living world. What had these people done to him anyway? The sullen
resentment which invaded him groped stealthily for a vent.

Was THIS, then, their cursed cure?--this foggy nightmare through
which he moved like a shade in the realm of phantoms? Little by
little what had happened to him was becoming an obsession, as he
began to remember in detail. Now he brooded on it and looked askance
at the girl who was primarily responsible--conscious in a confused
sort of way that he was a blackguard for his ingratitude.

But his mind had been badly knocked about, and its limping machinery
creaked.

"That meddling woman," he thought, knowing all the time what he owed
her, remembering her courage, her unselfishness, her loveliness.
"Curse her!" he muttered, amid the shadows confusing his wounded
mind.

Then a meaningless anger grew with him: She had him, now! he was
trapped and caged. A girl who drags something floundering out of
hell is entitled to the thing if she wants it. He admitted that to
himself.

But how about that "cure"?

Was THIS it--this terrible blankness--this misty unreality of
things? Surcease from craving--yes. But what to take its place--what
to fill in, occupy mind and body? What sop to his restless soul?
What had this young iconoclast offered him after her infernal era of
destruction? A distorted world, a cloudy mind, the body-substance of
a ghost? And for the magic world she had destroyed she offered him a
void to live in--Curse her!

There were no lights showing aboard the transport; all ports
remained screened. Arrows, painted on the decks in luminous paint,
pointed out the way. Below decks, a blue globe here and there
emitted a feeble glimmer, marking corridors which pierced a
depthless darkness.

No noise was permitted on board, no smoking, no other lights in
cabin or saloon. There was scarcely a sound to be heard on the ship,
save the throbbing of her engines, the long, splintering crash of
heavy seas, and the dull creak of her steel vertebrae tortured by a
million rivets.

As for the accursed ocean, that to McKay was the enemy paramount
which had awakened him to the stinging vagueness of things out of
his stupid acquiescence in convalescence.

He hated the sea. It was becoming a crawling horror to him in its
every protean phase, whether flecked with ghastly lights in storms
or haunted by pallid shapes in colour--always, always it remained
repugnant to him under its eternal curse of endless motion.

He loathed it: he detested the livid skies by day against which
tossing waves showed black: he hated every wave at night and their
ceaseless unseen motion. McKay had been "cured." McKay was very,
very ill.

There came to him, at intervals, a girl who stole through the
obscurity of the pitching corridors guiding him from one faint blue
light to the next--a girl who groped out the way with him at night
to the deck by following the painted arrows under foot. Also
sometimes she sat at his bedside through the unreal flight of time,
her hand clasped over his. He knew that he had been brutal to her
during his "cure."

He was still rough with her at moments of intense mental
pressure--somehow; realised it--made efforts toward
self-command--toward reason again, mental control; sometimes felt
that he was on the way to acquiring mental mastery.

But traces of injury to the mind still remained--sensitive
places--and there were swift seconds of agony--of blind anger, of
crafty, unbalanced watching to do harm. Yet for all that he knew he
was convalescent--that alcohol was no longer a necessity to him;
that whatever he did had now become a choice for him; that he had
the power and the authority and the will, and was capable, once
more, of choosing between depravity and decency. But what had been
taken out of his life seemed to leave a dreadful silence in his
brain. And, at moments, this silence became dissonant with the
clamour of unreason.

On one of his worst days when his crippled soul was loneliest the
icy seas became terrific. Cruisers and destroyers of the escort
remained invisible, and none of the convoyed transports were to be
seen. The watery, lowering daylight faded: the unseen sun set: the
brief day ended. And the wind went down with the sun. But through
the thick darkness the turbulent wind appeared to grow luminous with
tossing wraiths; and all the world seemed to dissolve into a
nebulous, hell-driven thing, unreal, dreadful, unendurable!

"Mr. McKay!"

He had already got into his wool dressing-robe and felt shoes, and
he sat now very still on the edge of his berth, listening stealthily
with the cunning of distorted purpose.

Her tiny room was just across the corridor. She seemed to be
eternally sleepless, always on the alert night and day, ready to
interfere with him.

Finally he ventured to rise and move cautiously to his door, and he
made not the slightest sound in opening it, but her door opened
instantly, and she stood there confronting him, an ulster buttoned
over her nightdress.

"What is the matter?" she said gently.

"Nothing."

"Are you having a bad night?"

"I'm all right. I wish you wouldn't constitute yourself my nurse,
servant, mentor, guardian, keeper, and personal factotum!" Sudden
rage left him inarticulate, and he shot an ugly look at her. "Can't
you let me alone?" he snarled.

"You poor boy," she said under her breath.

"Don't talk like that! Damnation! I--I can't stand much more--I
can't stand it, I tell you!"

"Yes, you can, and you will. And I don't mind what you say to me."
His malignant expression altered.

"Do you know," he said, in a cool and evil voice, "that I may stop
SAYING things and take to DOING them?"

"Would you hurt me physically? Are you really as sick as that?"

"Not yet.... How do I know?" Suddenly he felt tired and leaned
against the doorway, covering his dulling eyes with his right
forearm. But his hand was now clenched convulsively.

"Could you lie down? I'll talk to you," she whispered. "I'll see you
through."

"I can't--endure--this tension," he muttered. "For God's sake let me
go!"

"Where?"

"You know."

"Yes.... But it won't do. We must carry on, you and I."

"If you--knew--"

"I do know! When these crises come try to fix your mind on what you
have become."

"Yes.... A hell of a soldier. Do you really believe that my country
needs a thing like me?" She stood looking at him in silence--knowing
that he was in a torment of some terrible sort. His eyes were still
covered by his arm. On his boyish brow the blonde-brown hair had
become damp.

She went across and passed her arm through his. His hand rested,
fell to his side, but he suffered her to guide him through the
corridors toward a far bluish spark that seemed as distant as Venus,
the star.

They walked very slowly for a while on deck, encountering now and
then the shadowy forms of officers and crew. The personnel of the
several hospital units in transit were long ago in bed below.

Once he said: "You know, Miss Erith, it is not _I_ who behaves like
a scoundrel to you."

"I know," she said with a dauntless smile.

"Because," he went on, searching painfully for thought as well as
words, "I'm not really a brute--was not always a blackguard--"

"Do you suppose for one moment that I blame a man who has been
irresponsible through no fault of his, and who has made the fight
and has won back to sanity?"

"I--am not yet--well!"

"I understand."

They paused beside the port rail for a few moments.

"I suppose you know," he muttered, "that I have thought--at
times--of ending things--down there. ... You seem to know most
things. Did you suspect that?"

"Yes."

"Don't you ever sleep?"

"I wake easily."

"I know you do. I can't stir in bed but I hear you move, too.... I
should think you'd hate and loathe me--for all I've done--for all
I've cost you."

"Nurses don't loathe their patients," she said lightly.

"I should think they'd want to kill them."

"Oh, Mr. McKay! On the contrary they--they grow to like
them--exceedingly."

"You dare not say that about yourself and me."

Miss Erith shrugged her pretty shoulders: "I don't have to say
anything, do I?"

He made no reply. After a long silence she said casually: "The sea
is calmer, I think. There's something resembling faint moonlight up
among those flying clouds."

He lifted his tragic face and gazed up at the storm-wrack speeding
overhead. And there through the hurrying vapours behind flying rags
of cloud, a pallid lustre betrayed the smothered moon.

There was just enough light, now, to reveal the forward gun under
its jacket, and the shadowy gun-crew around it where the ship's bow
like a vast black, plough ripped the sea asunder in two deep,
foaming furrows.

"I wish I knew where we are at this moment," mused the girl. She
counted the days on her fingertips: "We may be off Bordeaux.... It's
been a long time, hasn't it?"

To him it had been a century of dread endured through half-awakened
consciousness of the latest inferno within him.

"It's been very long," he said, sighing.

A few minutes later they caught a glimpse of a strangled moon
overhead--a livid corpse of a moon, tarnished and battered almost
out of recognition.

"Clearing weather," she said cheerfully, adding: "To-morrow we may
be in the danger zone.... Did you ever see a submarine?"

"Yes. Did you?"

"There were some up the Hudson. I saw them last summer while
motoring along Riverside Drive."

The spectral form of an officer appeared at her elbow, said
something in a low voice, and walked aft.

She said: "Well, then, I think we'd better dress. ... Do you feel
better?"

He said that he did, but his sombre gaze into darkness belied him.
So again she slipped her arm through his and he suffered himself to
be led away along the path of shinning arrows under foot.

At his door she said cheerfully: "No more undressing for bed, you
know. No more luxury of night-clothes. You heard the orders about
lifebelts?"

"Yes," he replied listlessly.

"Very well. I'll be waiting for you."

She lingered a moment more watching him in his brooding revery where
he stood leaning against the doorway. And after a while he raised
his haunted eyes to hers.

"I can't keep on," he breathed.

"Yes you can!"

"No.... The world is slipping away--under foot. It's going on
without me--in spite of me."

"It's you that are slipping, if anything is. Be fair to the world at
least--even if you mean to betray it--and me."

"I don't want to betray anybody--anything." He had begun to tremble
when he stood leaning against his door. "I--don't know--what to do."

"Stand by the world. Stand by me. And, through me, stand by your own
self."

The young fellow's forehead was wet with the vague horror of
something. He made an effort to speak, to straighten up; gave her a
dreadful look of appeal which turned into a snarl.

He whispered between writhing lips: "Can't you let me alone? Can't I
end it if I can't stand it--without your blocking me every
time--every time I stir a finger--"

"McKay! Wait! Don't touch me!--don't do that!"

But he had her in a sudden grip now--was looking right and left for
a place to hurl her out of the way.

"I've stood enough, by God!" he muttered between his teeth. "Now I'm
through--"

"Please listen. You're out of your mind," she said breathlessly, not
struggling to free herself, but striving to twist both her arms
around one of his.

"You hurt me," she whimpered. "Don't be brutal to me!"

"I've got to get you out of my way." He tried to fling her across
the corridor into her own cabin, but she had fastened herself to
him.

"Don't!" she panted. "Don't do anything to yourself--"

"Let go of me! Unclasp your arms!"

But she clung the more desperately and wound her limbs around his,
almost tripping him.

"I WON'T give you up!" she gasped.

"What do you care?" he retorted hoarsely, striving to tear himself
loose. "I want to get some rest--somewhere!"

"You're hurting! You're breaking my arm! Kay! Kay! what are you
doing to me?" she wailed.

Something--perhaps the sound of his own name falling from her lips
for the first time--checked his mounting frenzy. She could feel
every muscle in his body become rigidly inert.

"Kay!" she whispered, fastening herself to him convulsively. For a
full minute she sustained his half-insane stare, then it altered,
and her own eyes slowly closed, though her head remained upright on
the rigid marble of her neck.

The crisis had been reached: the tide of frenzy was turning, had
turned, was already ebbing. She felt it, was conscious that he also
had become aware of it. Then his grasp slackened, grew lax,
loosened, and almost spent. She ventured to unwind her limbs from
his, to relax her stiffened fingers, unclasp her arms.

It was over. She could scarcely stand, felt blindly for support,
rested so, and slowly unclosed her eyes.

"I've had to fight very hard for you," she whispered. "But I think
I've won."

He answered with difficulty.

"Yes--if you want the dog you fought for."

"It isn't what _I_ want, Kay."

"All right, I guess I can face it through--after this.... But I
don't know why you did it."

"I do."

"Do you? Don't you know I'm not a man, but a beast? And there are
half a hundred million real men to replace me--to do what you and
the country expect of real men."

"What may be expected of them I expect of you. Kay, I've made a good
fight for you, haven't I?"

He turned his quenched eyes on her. "From gutter to hospital, from
hospital to sanitarium, from sanitarium to ship," he said in a
colourless voice. "Yes, it was--a--good--fight."

"What a Calvary!" she murmured, looking at him out of clear,
sorrowful eyes. "And on your knees, poor boy!"

"You ought to know. You have made every station with me--on your
tender bleeding knees of a girl!" He choked, turned his head
swiftly; and she caught his hand. The break had come.

"Oh, Kay! Kay!" she said, quivering all over, "I have done my bit
and you are cured! You know it, don't you? Look at me, turn your
head." She laid her slim hand flat against his tense cheek but could
not turn his face. But she did not care; the palm of her hand was
wet. The break had come. She drew a deep, uneven breath, let go his
hand.

"Now," she said, "we can understand each other at last--our minds
are rational; and whether in accord or conflict they are at least in
contact; and mine isn't clashing with something disordered and
foreign which it can't interpret, can't approach."

He said, not turning toward her: "You are kind to put it that
way.... I think self-control has returned--will-power--all that....
I won't-betray you--Miss Erith."

"YOU never would, Mr. McKay. But I--I've been in terror of what has
been masquerading as you."

"I know.... But whatever you think of such a--a man--I'll do my
bit, now. I'll carry on--until the end."

"I will too! I promise you."

He turned his head at that and a mirthless laugh touched his wet
eyes and drawn visage:

"As though you had to promise anybody that you'd stick! You! You
beautiful, magnificent young thing--you superb kid--"

Her surprise and the swift blaze of colour in her face silenced him.

After a moment, the painful red still staining his face, he muttered
something about dressing.

He watched her turn and enter her room; saw that she had closed her
door-something she had not dared do heretofore; then he went into
his own room and threw himself down on the bunk, shaking in every
nerve.

For a long while, preoccupied with the obsession for
self-destruction, he lay there face downward, exhausted, trying to
fight off the swimming sense of horror that was creeping over him
again..... Little by little it mounted like a tide from hell.... He
struggled to his feet with the unuttered cry of a dreamer tearing
his throat. An odd sense of fear seized him and he dressed and
adjusted his clumsy life-suit. For the ship was in the danger zone,
now, and orders had been given, and dawn was not far off. Perhaps it
was already day! he could not tell in his dim cabin.

And after he was completely accoutred for the hazard of the
Hun-cursed seas he turned and looked down at his bunk with the odd
idea that his body still lay there--that it was a thing apart from
himself--something inert, unyielding, corpse-like, sprawling there
in a stupor--something visible, tangible, taking actual proportion
and shape there under his very eyes.

He turned his back with a shudder and went on deck. To his surprise
the blue lights were extinguished, and corridor and saloon were all
rosy with early sunlight.

Blue sky, blue sea, silver spindrift flying and clouds of silvery
gulls--a glimmer of Heaven from the depths of the pit--a glimpse of
life through a crack in the casket--and land close on the starboard
bow! Sheer cliffs, with the bonny green grass atop all furrowed by
the wind--and the yellow-flowered broom and the shimmering whinns
blowing.

"Why, it's Scotland," he said aloud, "it's Glenark Cliffs and the
Head of Strathlone--my people's fine place in the Old World--where
we took root--and--O my God! Yankee that I am, it looks like home!"

The cape of a white fleece cloak fluttered in his face, and he
turned and saw Miss Erith at his elbow.

Yellow-haired, a slender, charming thing in her white wind-blown
coat, she stood leaning on the spray-wet rail close to his shoulder.

And with him it was suddenly as though he had known her for
years--as though he had always been aware of her beauty and her
loveliness--as though his eyes had always framed her--his heart had
always wished for her, and she had always been the sole and
exquisite tenant of his mind.

"I had no idea that we were off Scotland," he said--"off Strathlone
Head--and so close in. Why, I can see the cliff-flowers!"

She laid one hand lightly on his arm, listening; high and heavenly
sweet above the rushing noises of the sea they heard the singing of
shoreward sky-larks above the grey cliff of Glenark.

He began to tremble. "That nightmare through which I've struggled,"
he began, but she interrupted:

"It is quite ended, Kay. You are awake. It is day and the world's
before you." At that he caught her slim hand in both of his:

"Eve! Eve! You've brought me through death's shadow! You gave me
back my mind!"

She let her hand rest between his. At first he could not make out
what her slightly moving lips uttered, and bending nearer he heard
her murmur: "Beside the still waters." The sea had become as calm as
a pond.

And now the transport was losing headway, scarcely moving at all.
Forward and aft the gun-crews, no longer alert, lounged lazily in
the sunshine watching a boat being loaded and swung outward from the
davits.

"Is somebody going ashore?" asked McKay.

"We are," said the girl.

"Just you and I, Eve?"

"Just you and I."

Then he saw their luggage piled in the lifeboat.'

"This is wonderful," he said. "I have a house a few miles inland
from Strathlone Head."

"Will you take me there, Kay?"

Such a sense of delight possessed him that he could not speak.

"That's where we must go to make our plans," she said. "I didn't
tell you in those dark hours we have lived together, because our
minds were so far apart--and I was fighting so hard to hold you."

"Have you forgiven me--you wonderful girl?"

His voice shook so that he could scarcely control it. Miss Erith
laughed.

"You adorable boy!" she said. "Stand still while I unlace your
life-belt. You can't travel in this."

He felt her soft fingers at his throat and turned his face upward.
All the blue air seemed glittering with the sun-tipped wings of
gulls. The skylark's song, piercingly sweet, seemed to penetrate his
soul. And, as his life-suit fell about him, so seemed to fall the
heavy weight of dread like a shroud, dropping at his feet. And he
stepped clear--took his first free step toward her--as though
between them there were no questions, no barriers, nothing but this
living, magic light--which bathed them both.

There seemed to be no need of speech, either, only the sense of
heavenly contact as though the girl were melting into him,
dissolving in his arms.

"Kay!"

Her voice sounded as from an infinite distance. There came a
smothered thudding like the soft sound of guns at sea; and then her
voice again, and a greyness as if a swift cloud had passed across
the sun.

"Kay!"

A sharp, cold wind began to blow through the strange and sudden
darkness. He heard her voice calling his name--felt his numbed body
shaken, lifted his head from his arms and sat upright on his bunk in
the dim chill of his cabin.

Miss Erith stood beside his bed, wearing her life-suit.

"Kay! Are you awake?'

"Yes."

"Then put on your life-suit. Our destroyers are firing at something.
Quick, please, I'll help you!"

Dazed, shaken, still mazed by the magic of his dream, not yet clear
of its beauty and its passion, he stumbled to his feet in the
obscurity. And he felt her chilled hand aiding him.

"Eve--I--thought--"

"What?"

"I thought your name--was Eve--" he stammered. "I've
been--dreaming."

Then was a silence as he fumbled stupidly with his clothing and
life-suit. The sounds of the guns, rapid, distinct, echoed through
the unsteady obscurity.

She helped him as a nurse helps a convalescent, her swift, cold
little fingers moving lightly and unerringly. And at last he was
equipped, and his mind had cleared darkly of the golden vision of
love and spring.

Icy seas, monstrous and menacing, went smashing past the sealed and
blinded port; but there was no wind and the thudding of the guns
came distinctly to their ears.

A shape in uniform loomed at the cabin door for an instant and a
calm, unhurried voice summoned them.

Corridors were full of dark figures. The main saloon was thronged as
they climbed the companion-way. There appeared to be no panic, no
haste, no confusion. Voices were moderately low, the tone casually
conversational.

Miss Erith's arm remained linked in McKay's where they stood
together amid the crowd.

"U-boats, I fancy," she said.

"Probably."

After a moment: "What were you dreaming about, Mr. McKay?" she asked
lightly. In the dull bluish dusk of the saloon his boyish face grew
hot.

"What was it you called me?" she insisted. "Was it Eve?"

At that his cheeks burnt crimson.

"What do you mean?" he muttered.

"Didn't you call me Eve?"

"I--when a man is dreaming--asleep--"

"My name is Evelyn, you know. Nobody ever called me Eve....
Yet--it's odd, isn't it, Mr. McKay? I've always wished that somebody
would call me Eve.... But perhaps you were not dreaming of me?"

"I--was."

"Really. How interesting!" He remained silent.

"And did you call me Eve--in that dream?... That is curious, isn't
it, after what I've just told you?... So I've had my wish--in a
dream." She laughed a little. "In a dream--YOUR dream," she
repeated. "We must have been good friends in your dream--that you
called me Eve."

But the faint thrill of the dream was in him again, and it troubled
him and made him shy, and he found no word to utter--no defence to
her low-voiced banter.

Then, not far away on the port quarter, a deck-gun spoke with a
sharper explosion, and intense stillness reigned in the saloon.

"If there's any necessity," he whispered, "you recollect your boat,
don't you?"

"Yes.... I don't want to go--without you." He said, in a pleasant
firm voice which was new to her: "I know what you mean. But you are
not to worry. I am absolutely well."

The girl turned toward him, the echoes of the guns filling her ears,
and strove to read his face in the ghastly, dreary light.

"I'm really cured, Miss Erith," he said. "If there's any emergency
I'll fight to live. Do you believe me?"

"If you tell me so."

"I tell you so."

The girl drew a deep, unsteady breath, and her arm tightened a
trifle within his.

"I am--so glad," she said in a voice that sounded suddenly tired.

There came an ear-splitting detonation from the after-deck,
silencing every murmur.

"Something is shelling us," whispered McKay. "When orders come, go
instantly to your boat and your station."

"I don't want to go alone."

"The nurses of the unit to which you--"

The crash of a shell drowned his voice. Then came a deathly silence,
then the sound of the deck-guns in action once more.

Miss Erith was leaning rather heavily on his arm. He bent it,
drawing her closer.

"I don't want to leave you," she said again.

"I told you--"

"It isn't that.... Don't you understand that I have become--your
friend?"

"Such a brute as I am?"

"I like you."

In the silence he could hear his heart drumming between the
detonations of the deck-guns. He said: "It's because you are you. No
other woman on earth but would have loathed me... beastly rotter
that I was--"

"Oh-h, don't," she breathed.... "I don't know--we may be very close
to death.... I want to live. I'd like to. But I don't really mind
death. ... But I can't bear to have things end for you just as
you've begun to live again--"

Crash! Something was badly smashed on deck that time, for the brazen
jar of falling wreckage seemed continuous.

Through the metallic echo she heard her voice:

"Kay! I'm afraid--a little."

"I think it's all right so far. Listen, there go our guns again.
It's quite all right, Eve dear."

"I didn't know I was so cowardly. But of course I'll never show it
when the time comes."

"Of course you won't. Don't worry. Shells make a lot of noise when
they explode on deck. All that tinpan effect we heard was probably a
ventilator collapsing--perhaps a smokestack."

After a silence punctured by the flat bang of the deck-guns:

"You ARE cured, aren't you, Kay?"

"Yes."

She repeated in a curiously exultant voice: "You ARE cured. All of a
sudden--after that black crisis, too, you wake up, well!"

"You woke me."

"Of course, I did--with those guns frightening me!"

"You woke me, Eve," he repeated coolly, "and my dream had already
cured me. I am perfectly well. We'll get out of this mess shortly,
you and I. And--and then--" He paused so long that she looked up at
him in the bluish dusk:

"And what then?" she asked.

He did not answer. She said: "Tell me, Kay."

But as his lips unclosed to speak a terrific shock shook the
saloon--a shock that seemed to come from the depths of the ship,
tilt up the cabin floor, and send everybody reeling about.

Through the momentary confusion in the bluish obscurity the cool
voice of an officer sounded unalarmed, giving orders. There was no
panic. The hospital units formed and started for the deck. A young
officer passing near exchanged a calm word with McKay, and passed on
speaking pleasantly to the women who were now moving forward.

McKay said to Miss Erith: "It seems that we've been torpedoed. We'll
go on deck together. You know your boat and station?"

"Yes."

"I'll see you safely there. You're not afraid any more, are you?"

"No."

He gave a short dry laugh. "What a rotten deal," he said. "My dream
was--different.... There is your boat--THAT one!... I'll say good
luck. I'm assigned to a station on the port side. ... Good luck....
And thank you, Eve."

"Don't go--"

"Yes, I must.. We'll find each other--ashore--or somewhere."

"Kay! The port boats can't be launched--"

"Take your place! you're next, Eve."... Her hand, which had clung to
his, he suddenly twisted up, and touched the convulsively tightening
fingers with his lips.

"Good luck, dear," he said gaily. And watched her go and take her
place. Then he lifted his cap, as she turned and looked for him, and
sauntered off to where his boat and station should have been had not
the U-boat shells annihilated boat and rail and deck.

"What a devil of a mess!" he said to a petty officer near him. A
young doctor smoking a cigarette surveyed his own life-suit and the
clumsy apparel of his neighbours with unfeigned curiosity!

"How long do these things keep one afloat?" he inquired.

"Long enough to freeze solid," replied an ambulance driver.

"Did we get the Hun?" asked McKay of the petty officer.

"Naw," he replied in disgust, "but the destroyers ought to nail him.
Look out, sir--you'll go sliding down that slippery toboggan!"

"How long'll she float?" asked the young ambulance driver.

"This ship? SHE'S all right," remarked the petty officer absently.

She went down, nose first. Those in the starboard boats saw her
stand on end for full five minutes, screws spinning, before a
muffled detonation blew the bowels out of her and sucked her down
like a plunging arrow.

Destroyers and launches from some of the cruisers were busy amid the
wreckage where here, on a spar, some stunned form clung like a
limpet, and there, a-bob in the curling seas, a swimmer in his
life-suit tossed under the wintry sky.

There were men on rafts, too, and several clinging to hatches; there
was not much loss of life, considering.

Toward midday a sea-plane which had been releasing depth-bombs and
hovering eagerly above the wide iridescent and spreading stain,
sheered shoreward and shot along the coast.

There was a dead man afloat in a cave, rocking there rather
peacefully in his life-suit--or at least they supposed him to be
dead.

But on a chance they signalled the discovery to a distant trawler,
then soared upward for a general coup de l'oeil, turned there aloft
like a seahawk for a while, sheering in widening spirals, and
finally, high in the grey sky, set a steady course for parts
unknown.

Meanwhile a boat from the trawler fished out McKay, wrapped him in
red-hot blankets, pried open his blue lips, and tried to fill him
full of boiling rum. Then he came to life. But those honest
fishermen knew he had gone stark mad because he struck at the
pannikin of steaming rum and cursed them vigorously for their
kindness. And only a madman could so conduct himself toward a
pannikin of steaming rum. They understood that perfectly. And,
understanding it, they piled more hot blankets upon the struggling
form of Kay McKay and roped him to his bunk.

Toward evening, becoming not only coherent but frightfully emphatic,
they released McKay.

"What's this damn place?" he shouted.

"Strathlone Firth," they said.

"That's my country!" he raged. "I want to go ashore!"

They were quite ready to be rid of the cracked Yankee, and told him
so.

"And the boats? How about them?" he demanded.

"All in the Firth, sir."

"Any women lost?"

"None, sir."

At that, struggling into his clothes, he began to shed gold
sovereigns from his ripped money-belt all over the cabin.
Weatherbeaten fingers groped to restore the money to him. But it was
quite evident that the young man was mad. He wouldn't take it. And
in his crazy way he seemed very happy, telling them what fine lads
they were and that not only Scotland but the world ought to be proud
of them, and that he was about to begin to live the most wonderful
life that any man had ever lived as soon as he got ashore.

"Because," he explained, as he swung off and dropped into the small
boat alongside, "I've taken a look into hell and I've had a glimpse
of heaven, but the earth has got them both stung to death, and I
like it and I'm going to settle down on it and live awhile. You
don't get me, do you?" They did not.

"It doesn't matter. You're a fine lot of lads. Good luck!"

And so they were rid of their Yankee lunatic.

On the Firth Quay and along the docks all the inhabitants of Glenark
and Strathlone were gathered to watch the boats come in with living,
with dead, or merely the news of the seafight off the grey head of
Strathlone.

At the foot of the slippery waterstairs, green with slime, McKay,
grasping the worn rail, lifted his head and looked up into the faces
of the waiting crowd. And saw the face of her he was looking for
among them.

He went up slowly. She pushed through the throng, descended the
steps, and placed one arm around him.

"Thanks, Eve," he said cheerfully. "Are you all right?"

"All right, Kay. Are you hurt?"

"No.... I know this place. There's an inn ... if you'll give me your
arm--it's just across the street."

They went very leisurely, her arm under his--and his face, suddenly
colourless, half-resting against her shoulder.






CHAPTER V

ISLA WATER





Earlier in the evening there had been a young moon on Isla Water.
Under it spectres of the mist floated in the pale lustre; a painted
moorhen steered through ghostly pools leaving fan-shaped wakes of
crinkled silver behind her; heavy fish splashed, swirling again to
drown the ephemera.

But there was no moonlight now; not a star; only fog on Isla Water,
smothering ripples and long still reaches, bank and upland, wall and
house.

The last light had gone out in the stable; the windows of Isla were
darkened; there was a faint scent of heather in the night; a fainter
taint of peat smoke. The world had grown very still by Isla Water.

Toward midnight a dog-otter, swimming leisurely by the Bridge of
Isla, suddenly dived and sped away under water; and a stoat,
prowling in the garden, also took fright and scurried through the
wicket. Then in the dead of night the iron bell hanging inside the
court began to clang. McKay heard it first in his restless sleep.
Finally the clangour broke his sombre dream and he awoke and sat up
in bed, listening.

Neither of the two servants answered the alarm. He swung out of bed
and into slippers and dressing-gown and picked up a service pistol.
As he entered the stone corridor he heard Miss Erith's door creak on
its ancient hinges.

"Did the bell wake you?" he asked in a low voice.

"Yes. What is it?"

"I haven't any idea."

She opened her door a little wider. Her yellow hair covered her
shoulders like a mantilla. "Who could it be at this hour?" she
repeated uneasily.

McKay peered at the phosphorescent dial of his wrist-watch:

"I don't know," he repeated. "I can't imagine who would come here at
this hour."

"Don't strike a light!" she whispered.

"No, I think I won't." He continued on down the stone stairs, and
Miss Erith ran to the rail and looked over.

"Are you armed?" she called through the darkness.

"Yes."

He went on toward the rear of the silent house and through the
servants' hall, then around by the kitchen garden, then felt his way
along a hedge to a hutchlike lodge where a fixed iron bell hung
quivering under the slow blows of the clapper.

"What the devil's the matter?" demanded McKay in a calm voice.

The bell still hummed with the melancholy vibrations, but the
clapper now hung motionless. Through the brooding rumour of metallic
sound came a voice out of the mist:

"The hours of life are numbered. Is it true?"

"It is," said McKay coolly; "and the hairs of our head are numbered
too!"

"So teach us to number our days," rejoined the voice from the fog,
"that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom."

"The days of our years are three-score years and ten," said McKay.
"Have you a name?"

"A number."

"And what number will that be?"

"Sixty-seven. And yours?"

"You should know that, too."

"It's the reverse; seventy-six."

"It is that," said McKay. "Come in."

He made his way to the foggy gate, drew bolt and chain from the left
wicket. A young man stepped through.

"Losh, mon," he remarked with a Yankee accent, "it's a fearful nicht
to be abroad."

"Come on in," said McKay, re-locking the wicket. "This way; follow
me."

They went by the kitchen garden and servants' hall, and so through
to the staircase hall, where McKay struck a match and Sixty-seven
instantly blew it out.

"Better not," he said. "There are vermin about."

McKay stood silent, probably surprised. Then he called softly in the
darkness:

"Seventy-seven!"

"Je suis la!" came her voice from the stairs.

"It's all right," he said, "it's one of our men. No use sittin' up
if you're sleepy." He listened but did not hear Miss Erith stir.

"Better return to bed," he said again, and guided Sixty-seven into
the room on the left.

For a few moments he prowled around; a glass tinkled against a
decanter. When he returned to the shadow-shape seated motionless by
the casement window he carried only one glass.

"Don't you?" inquired Sixty-seven. "And you a Scot!"

"I'm a Yankee; and I'm through."

"With the stuff?"

"Absolutely."

"Oh, very well. But a Yankee laird--tiens c'est assez drole!" He
smacked his lips over the smoky draught, set the half-empty glass on
the deep sill. Then he began breezily:

"Well, Seventy-six, what's all this I hear about your misfortunes?"

"What do you hear?" inquired McKay guilelessly.

The other man laughed.

"I hear that you and Seventy-seven have entered the Service; that
you are detailed to Switzerland and for a certain object unknown to
myself; that your transport was torpedoed a week ago off the Head of
Strathlone, that you wired London from this house of yours called
Isla, and that you and Seventy-seven went to London last week to
replenish the wardrobe you had lost."

"Is that all you heard?"

"It is."

"Well, what more do you wish to hear?"

"I want to know whether anything has happened to worry you. And I'll
tell you why. There was a Hun caught near Banff! Can you beat it?
The beggar wore kilts!--and the McKay tartan--and, by jinks, if his
gillie wasn't rigged in shepherd's plaid!--and him with his Yankee
passport and his gillie with a bag of ready-made rods. Yellow trout,
is it? Sea-trout, is it! Ho, me bucko, says I when I lamped what he
did with his first trout o' the burn this side the park--by Godfrey!
thinks I to myself, you're no white man at all!--you're Boche. And
it was so, McKay."

"Seventy-six," corrected McKay gently.

"That's better. It should become a habit."

"Excuse me, Seventy-six; I'm Scotch-Irish way back. You're straight
Scotch--somewhere back. We Yankees don't use rods and flies and net
and gaff as these Scotch people use 'em. But we're white,
Seventy-six, and we use 'em RIGHT in our own fashion." He moistened
his throat, shoved aside the glass:

"But this kilted Boche! Oh, la-la! What he did with his rod and
flies and his fish and himself! AND his gillie! Sure YOU'RE not
white at all, thinks I. And at that I go after them."

"You got them?"

"Certainly--at the inn--gobbling a trout, blaue gesotten--having
gone into the kitchen to show a decent Scotch lassie how to concoct
the Hunnish dish. I nailed them then and there--took the chance that
the swine weren't right. And won out."

"Good! But what has it to do with me?" asked McKay.

"Well, I'll be telling you. I took the Boche to London and I've come
all the way back to tell you this, Seventy-six; the Huns are on to
you and what you're up to. That Boche laird called himself Stanley
Brown, but his name is--or was--Schwartz. His gillie proved to be a
Swede."

"Have they been executed?"

"You bet. Tower style! We got another chum of theirs, too, who set
up a holler like he saw a pan of hogwash. We're holding him. And
what we've learned is this: The Huns made a special set at your
transport in order to get YOU and Seventy-seven!

"Now they know you are here and their orders are to get you before
you reach France. The hog that hollered put us next. He's a
Milwaukee Boche; name Zimmerman. He's so scared that he tells all he
knows and a lot that he doesn't. That's the trouble with a Milwaukee
Boche. Anyway, London sent me back to find you and warn you. Keep
your eye skinned. And when you're ready for France wire Edinburgh.
You know where. There'll be a car and an escort for you and
Seventy-seven."

McKay laughed: "You know," he said, "there's no chance of trouble
here. Glenark is too small a village--"

"Didn't I land a brace of Boches at Banff?"

"That's true. Well, anyway, I'll be off, I expect, in a day or so."
He rose; "and now I'll show you a bed--"

"No; I've a dog-cart tied out yonder and a chaser lying at Glenark.
By Godfrey, I'm not finished with these Boche-jocks yet!"

"You're going?"

"You bet. I've a date to keep with a suspicious character--on a
trawler. Can you beat it? These vermin creep in everywhere. Yes, by
Godfrey! They crawl aboard ship in sight of Strathlone Head! Here's
hoping it may be a yard-arm jig he'll dance!"

He emptied his glass, refused more. McKay took him to the wicket and
let him loose.

"Well, over the top, old scout!" said Sixty-seven cheerily,
exchanging a quick handclasp with McKay. And so the fog took him.

A week later they found his dead horse and wrecked dog-cart five
miles this side of Glenark Burn, lying in a gully entirely concealed
by whinn and broom. It was the noise the flies made that attracted
attention. As for the man himself, he floated casually into the
Firth one sunny day with five bullets in him and his throat cut very
horridly.

But, before that, other things happened on Isla Water--long before
anybody missed No. 67. Besides, the horse and dog-cart had been
hired for a week; and nobody was anxious except the captain of the
trawler, held under mysterious orders to await the coming of a man
who never came.

So McKay went back through the fog to his quaint, whitewashed
inheritance--this legacy from a Scotch grandfather to a Yankee
grandson--and when he came into the dark waist of the house he
called up very gently: "Are you awake, Miss Yellow-hair?"

"Yes. Is all well?"

"All's well," he said, mounting the stairs.

"Then--good night to you Kay of Isla!" she said.

"Don't you want to hear--"

"To-morrow, please."

"But--"

"As long as you say that all is well I refuse to lose any more
sleep!"

"Are you sleepy, Yellow-hair?"

"I am."

"Aren't you going to sit up and chat for a few--"

"I am not!"

"Have you no curiosity?" he demanded, laughingly.

"Not a bit. You say everything is all right. Then it is all
right--when Kay of Isla says so! Good night!"

What she had said seemed to thrill him with a novel and delicious
sense of responsibility. He heard her door close; he stood there in
the stone corridor a moment before entering his room, experiencing
an odd, indefinite pleasure in the words this girl had
uttered--words which seemed to reinstate him among his kind, words
which no woman would utter except to a man in whom she believed.

And yet this girl knew him--knew what he had been--had seen him in
the depths--had looked upon the wreck of him.

Out of those depths she had dragged what remained of him--not for
his own sake perhaps--not for his beaux-yeux--but to save him for
the service which his country demanded of him.

She had fought for him--endured, struggled spiritually, mentally,
bodily to wrench him out of the coma where drink had left him with a
stunned brain and crippled will.

And now, believing in her work, trusting, confident, she had just
said to him that what he told her was sufficient security for her.
And on his word that all was well she had calmly composed herself
for sleep as though all the dead chieftains of Isla stood on guard
with naked claymores! Nothing in all his life had ever so thrilled
him as this girl's confidence.

And, as he entered his room, he knew that within him the accursed
thing that had been, lay dead forever.

He was standing in the walled garden switching a limber trout-rod
when Miss Erith came upon him next morning,--a tall straight young
man in his kilts, supple and elegant as the lancewood rod he was
testing.

Conscious of a presence behind him he turned, came toward her in the
sunlight, the sun crisping his short hair. And in his pleasant level
eyes the girl saw what had happened--what she had wrought--that
this young man had come into his own again--into his right mind and
his manhood--and that he had resumed his place among his fellow men
and peers.

He greeted her seriously, almost formally; and the girl, excited and
a little upset by the sudden realisation of his victory and hers,
laughed when he called her "Miss Erith."

"You called me Yellow-hair last night," she said. "I called you Kay.
Don't you want it so?"

"Yes," he said reddening, understanding that it was her final
recognition of a man who had definitely "come back."

Miss Erith was very lovely as she stood there in the garden whither
breakfast was fetched immediately and laid out on a sturdy green
garden-table--porridge, coffee, scones, jam, and an egg.

Chipping the latter she let her golden-hazel eyes rest at moments
upon the young fellow seated opposite. At other moments, sipping her
coffee or buttering a scone, she glanced about her at the new grass
starred with daisies, at the daffodils, the slim young
fruit-trees,--and up at the old white facade of the ancient abode of
the Lairds of Isla.

"Why the white flag up there, Kay?" she inquired, glancing aloft.

He laughed, but flushed a little. "Yankee that I am," he admitted,
"I seem to be Scot enough to observe the prejudices and folk-ways of
my forebears."

"Is it your clan flag?"

"Bratach Bhan Chlaun Aoidh," he said smilingly. "The White Banner of
the McKays."

"Good! And what may that be--that bunch of weed you wear in your
button-hole?" Again the young fellow laughed: "Seasgan or Cuilc--in
Gaelic--just reed-grass, Miss Yellow-hair."

"Your clan badge?"

"I believe so."

"You're a good Yankee, Kay. You couldn't be a good Yankee if you
treated Scotch custom with contempt.... This jam is delicious. And
oh, such scones!"

"When we go to Edinburgh we'll tea on Princess Street," he remarked.
"It's there you'll fall for the Scotch cakes, Yellow-hair."

"I've already fallen for everything Scotch," she remarked demurely.

"Ah, wait! This Scotland is no strange land to good Americans. It's
a bonnie, sweet, clean bit of earth made by God out of the same
batch he used for our own world of the West. Oh, Yellow-hair, I mind
the first day I ever saw Scotland. 'Twas across Princess
Street--across acres of Madonna lilies in that lovely foreland
behind which the Rock lifted skyward with Edinburgh Castle atop made
out of grey silver slag! It was a brave sight, Yellow-hair. I never
loved America more than at that moment when, in my heart, I married
her to Scotland."

"Kay, you're a poet!" she exclaimed.

"We all are here, Yellow-hair. There's naught else in Scotland," he
said laughing.

The man was absolutely transformed, utterly different. She had never
imagined that a "cure" meant the revelation of this unsuspected
personality--this alternation of pleasant gravity and boyish charm.

Something of what preoccupied her he perhaps suspected, for the
colour came into his handsome lean features again and he picked up
his rod, rising as she rose.

"Are there no instructions yet?" she inquired.

As he stood there threading the silk line through the guides he told
her about the visit of No. 67.

"I fancy instructions will come before long," he remarked, casting a
leaderless line out across the grass. After a moment he glanced
rather gravely at her where she stood with hands linked behind her,
watching the graceful loops which his line was making in the air.

"You're not worried, are you, Yellow-hair?"

"About the Boche?"

"I meant that."

"No, Kay, I'm not uneasy."

And when the girl had said it she knew that she had meant a little
more; she had meant that she felt secure with this particular man
beside her.

It was a strange sort of peace that was invading her--an odd courage
quite unfamiliar--an effortless pluck that had suddenly become the
most natural thing in the world to this girl, who, until then, had
clutched her courage desperately in both hands, commended her soul
to God, her body to her country's service.

Frightened, she had set out to do this service, knowing perfectly
what sort of fate awaited her if she fell among the Boche.

Frightened but resolute she faced the consequences with this
companion about whom she knew nothing; in whom she had divined a
trace of that true metal which had been so dreadfully tarnished and
transmuted.

And now, here in this ancient garden--here in the sun of earliest
summer, she had beheld a transfiguration. And still under the spell
of it, still thrilled by wonder, she had so utterly believed in it,
so ardently accepted it, that she scarcely understood what this
transfiguration had also wrought in her. She only felt that she was
no longer captain of their fate; that he was now; and she resigned
her invisible insignia of rank with an unconscious little sigh that
left her pretty lips softly parted.

At that instant he chanced to look up at her. She was the most
beautiful thing he had ever seen in the world. And she had looked at
him out of those golden eyes when he had been less than a mere brute
beast.... That was very hard to know and remember .... But it was
the price he had to pay--that this fresh, sweet, clean young thing
had seen him as he once had been, and that he never could forget
what she had looked upon.

"Kay!"

"Yes, Lady Yellow-hair."

"What are you going to do with that rod?"

"Whip Isla for a yellow trout for you."

"Isla?"

"Not our Loch, but the quick water yonder."

"You know," she said, "to a Yankee girl those moors appear
rather--rather lonely."

"Forbidding?"

"No; beautiful in their way. But I am in awe of Glenark moors."

He smiled, lingering still to loop on a gossamer leader and a cast
of tiny flies.

"Have you--" she began, and smiled nervously.

"A gun?" he inquired coolly. "Yes, I have two strapped up under both
arms. But you must come too, Yellow-hair."

"You don't think it best to leave me alone even in your own house?"

"No, I don't think it best."

"I wanted to go with you anyway," she said, picking up a soft hat
and pulling it over her golden head.

On the way across Isla bridge and out along the sheep-path they
chatted unconcernedly. A faint aromatic odour made the girl aware of
broom and whinn and heath.

As they sauntered on along the edge of Isla Water the lapwings rose
into flight ahead. Once or twice the feathery whirr of brown grouse
startled her. And once, on the edge of cultivated land, a partridge
burst from the heather at her very feet--a "Frenchman" with his red
legs and gay feathers brilliant in the sun.

Sun and shadow and white cloud, heath and moor and hedge and
broad-tilled field alternated as they passed together along the edge
of Isla Water and over the road to Isla--the enchanting
river--interested in each other's conversation and in the loveliness
of the sunny world about them.

High in the blue sky plover called en passant; larks too were on the
wing, and throstles and charming feathered things that hid in
hedgerows and permitted glimpses of piquant heads and twitching
painted tails.

"It is adorable, this country!" Miss Erith confessed. "It steals
into your very bones; doesn't it?"

"And the bones still remain Yankee bones," he rejoined. "There's the
miracle, Yellow-hair."

"Entirely. You know what I think? The more we love the more loyal we
become to our own. I'm really quite serious. Take yourself for
example, Kay. You are most ornamental in your kilts and
heather-spats, and you are a better Yankee for it. Aren't you?"

"Oh yes, a hopeless Yankee. But that drop of Scotch blood is singing
tunes to-day, Yellow-hair."

"Let it sing--God bless it!"

He turned, his youthful face reflecting the slight emotion in her
gay voice. Then with a grave smile he set his face straight in front
of him and walked on beside her, the dark green pleats of the McKay
tartan whipping his bared knees. Clan Morhguinn had no handsomer
son; America no son more loyal.

A dragon-fly glittered before them for an instant. Far across the
rolling country they caught the faint, silvery flash of Isla
hurrying to the sea.

Evelyn Erith stood in the sunny breeze of Isla, her yellow hair
dishevelled by the wind, her skirt's edge wet with the spray of
waterfalls. The wild rose colour was in her cheeks and the tint of
crimson roses on her lips and the glory of the Soleil d'or glimmered
on her loosened hair. A confused sense that the passing hour was the
happiest in her life possessed her: she looked down at the brace of
wet yellow trout on the bog-moss at her feet; she gazed out across
the crinkled pool where the Yankee Laird of Isla waded, casting a
big tinselled fly for the accidental but inevitable sea-trout always
encountered in Isla during the season--always surprising and
exciting the angler with emotion forever new.

Over his shoulder he was saying to her: "Sea-trout and grilse don't
belong to Isla, but they come occasionally, Lady Yellow-hair."

"Like you and I, Kay--we don't belong here but we come."

"Where the McKay is, the Key of the World lies hidden in his
sporran," he laughed back at her over his shoulder where the clan
plaid fluttered above the cairngorm.

"Oh, the modesty of this young man! Wherever he takes off his cap he
is at home!" she cried.

He only laughed, and she saw the slim line curl, glisten, loop and
unroll in the long back cast, re-loop, and straighten out over Isla
like a silver spider's floating strand. Then silver leaped to meet
silver as the "Doctor" touched water; one keen scream of the reel
cut the sunny silence; the rod bent like a bow, staggered in his
hand, swept to the surface in a deeper bow, quivered under the
tremendous rush of the great fish.

Miss Erith watched the battle from an angle not that of an angler.
Her hazel eyes followed McKay where he manoeuvred in midstream with
rod and gaff--happily aware of the grace in every unconscious
movement of his handsome lean body--the steady, keen poise of head
and shoulders, the deft and powerful play of his clean-cut, brown
hands.

It came into her mind that he'd look like that on the firing-line
some day when his Government was ready to release him from his
obscure and terrible mission--the Government that was sending him
where such men as he usually perish unobserved, unhonoured,
repudiated even by those who send them to accomplish what only the
most brave and unselfish dare undertake.

A little cloud cast a momentary shadow across Isla. The sea-trout
died then, a quivering limber, metallic shape glittering on the
ripples.

In the intense stillness from far across the noon-day world she
heard the bells of Banff--a far, sweet reiteration stealing inland
on the wind. She had never been so happy in her life.

Swinging back across the moor together, he with slanting rod and
weighted creel, she with her wind-blown yellow hair and a bunch of
reed at her belt in his honour, both seemed to understand that they
had had their hour, and that the hour was ending--almost ended now.

They had remained rather silent. Perhaps grave thoughts of what lay
before them beyond the bright moor's edge--beyond the far blue
horizon--preoccupied their minds. And each seemed to feel that their
play-day was finished--seemed already to feel physically the
approach of that increasing darkness shrouding the East--that
hellish mist toward which they both were headed--the twilight of the
Hun.

Nothing stained the sky above them; a snowy cloud or two drifted up
there,--a flight of lapwings now and then--a lone curlew. The long,
squat white-washed house with its walled garden reflected in Isla
Water glimmered before them in the hollow of the rolling hills.

McKay was softly and thoughtfully whistling the "Lament for
Donald"--the lament of CLAN AOIDH--his clan.

"That's rather depressing, Kay--what you're whistling," said Evelyn
Erith.

He glanced up from his abstraction, nodded, and strode on humming
the "Over There" of that good bard George of Broadway.

After a moment the girl said: "There seem to be some people by Isla
Water."

His quick glance appraised the distant group, their summer tourist
automobile drawn up on the bank of Isla Water near the Bridge, the
hampers on the grass.

"Trespassers," he said with a shrug. "But it's a pretty spot by Isla
Bridge and we never drive them away."

She looked at them again as they crossed the very old bridge of
stone. Down by the water's edge stood their machine. Beside it on
the grass were picnicking three people--a very good-looking girl, a
very common-looking stout young man in flashy outing clothes, and a
thin man of forty, well-dressed and of better appearance.

The short, stout, flashy young man was eating sandwiches with one
hand while with the other he held a fishing-rod out over the water.

McKay noticed this bit of impudence with a shrug. "That won't do,"
he murmured; and pausing at the parapet of the bridge he said
pleasantly: "I'm sorry to disturb you, but fishing isn't permitted
in Isla Water."

At that the flashy young man jumped up with unexpected nimbleness--a
powerful frame on two very vulgar but powerful legs.

"Say, sport," he called out, "if this is your fish-pond we're ready
to pay what's right. What's the damage for a dozen fish?"

"Americans--awful ones," whispered Miss Erith.

McKay rested his folded arms on the parapet and regarded the advance
of the flashy man up the grassy slope below.

"I don't rent fishing privileges," he said amiably.

"That's all right. Name your price. No millionaire guy I ever heard
of ever had enough money," returned the flashy man jocosely.

McKay, amused, shook his head. "Sorry," he said, "but I couldn't
permit you to fish."

"Aw, come on, old scout! We heard you was American same as us.
That's my sister down there and her feller. My name's Jim
Macniff--some Scotch somewhere. That there feller is Harry Skelton.
Horses is our business--Spitalfields Mews--here's my card--"
pulling it out--"I'll come up on the bridge--"

"Never mind. What are you in Scotland for anyway?" inquired McKay.

"The Angus Dhu stables at Inverness--auction next Wednesday. Horses
is our line, so we made it a holiday--"

"A holiday in the Banff country?"

"Sure, I ain't never seen it before. Is that your house?"

McKay nodded and turned away, weary of the man and his vulgarity.
"Very well, picnic and fish if you like," he said; and fell into
step beside Miss Erith.

They entered the house through the door in the garden. Later, when
Miss Erith came back from her toilet, but still wearing her outing
skirt, McKay turned from the long window where he had been standing
and watching the picnickers across Isla Bridge. The flashy man had a
banjo now and was strumming it and leering at the girl.

"What people to encounter in this corner of Paradise," she said
laughingly. And, as he did not smile: "You don't suppose there's
anything queer about them, do you, Kay?" At that he smiled: "Oh, no,
nothing of that sort, Yellow-hair. Only--it's rather odd. But bagmen
and their kind do come into the northland--why, Heaven knows--but
one sees them playing about."

"Of course those people are merely very ordinary Americans--nothing
worse," she said, seating herself at the table.

"What could be worse?" he returned lightly.

"Boche."

They were seated sideways to the window and opposite each other,
commanding a clear view of Isla Water and the shore where the
picnickers sprawled apparently enjoying the semi-comatose pleasure
of repletion.

"That other man--the thin one--has not exactly a prepossessing
countenance," she remarked.

"They can't travel without papers," he said.

For a little while luncheon progressed in silence. Presently Miss
Erith reverted to the picnickers: "The young woman has a foreign
face. Have you noticed?"

"She's rather dark. Rather handsome, too. And she appears rather
nice."

"Women of that class always appear superior to men of the same
class," observed Miss Erith. "I suppose really they are not superior
to the male of the species."

"I've always thought they were," he said.

"Men might think so."

He smiled: "Quite right, Yellow-hair; woman only is competent to
size up woman. The trouble is that no man really believes this."

"Don't you?"

"I don't know. Tell me, what shall we do after luncheon?"

"Oh, the moors--please, Kay!"

"What!" he exclaimed laughingly; "you're already a victim to Glenark
moors!"

"Kay, I adore them! ... Are you tired? ... Our time is short-our day
of sunshine. I want to drink in all of it I can ... before we--"

"Certainly. Shall we walk to Strathnaver, Lady Yellow-hair?"

"If it please my lord."

"Now?"

"In the cool of the afternoon. Don't you want to be lazy with me in
your quaint old garden for an hour or two?"

"I'll send out two steamer-chairs, Yellow-hair."

When they lay there in the shadow of a lawn umbrella, chair beside
chair, the view across Isla Water was unpolluted by the picnickers,
their hamper, and their car.

"Stole away, the beggars," drawled McKay lighting a cigarette.
"Where the devil they got a permit for petrol is beyond me."

The girl lay with deep golden eyes dreaming under her long dark
lashes. Sunlight crinkled Isla Water; a merle came and sang to her
in a pear-tree until, in its bubbling melody, she seemed to hear the
liquid laughter of Isla rippling to the sea.

"Kay?"

"Yes, Yellow-hair." Their voices were vague and dreamy.

"Tell me something."

"I'll tell you something. When a McKay of Isla is near his end he is
always warned."

"How?"

"A cold hand touches his hand in the dark."

"Kay!"

"It's so. It's called'the Cold Hand of Isla.' We are all doomed to
feel it."

"Absurd!"

"Not at all. That's a pretty story; isn't it? Now what more shall I
tell you?"

"Anything you like, Kay. I'm in paradise--or would be if only
somebody would tell me stories till I fall asleep."

"Stories about what?"

"About YOU, Kay."

"I'll not talk about myself."

"Please!"

But he shook his head without smiling: "You know all there is," he
said--"and much that is--unspeakable."

"Kay!"

"What?"

"Never, never speak that way again!"

He remained silent.

"Because," she continued in her low, pretty voice, "it is not true.
I know about you only what I somehow seemed to divine the very
moment I first laid eyes on you. Something within me seemed to say
to me, 'This is a boy who also is a real man!' ... And it was true,
Kay."

"You thought that when you knelt in the snow and looked down at that
beastly drunken--"

"Yes! Don't use such words! You looked like a big schoolboy,
asleep-that is what you resembled. But I knew you to be a real man."

"You are merciful, but I know what you went through," he said
morosely.

She paid no attention: "I liked you instantly. I thought to myself,
'Now when he wakes he'll be what he looks like.' And you are!"

He stirred in his chair, sideways, and glanced at her.

"You know what I think about you, don't you?"

"No." She shouldn't have let their words drift thus far and she knew
it. Also at this point she should have diverted the conversation.
But she remained silent, aware of an indefinite pleasure in the
vague excitement which had quickened her pulse a little.

"Well, I shan't tell you," he said quietly.

"Why not?" And at that her heart added a beat or two.

"Because, even if I were different, you wouldn't wish me to."

"Why?"

"Because you and I are doomed to a rather intimate comradeship--a
companionship far beyond conventions, Yellow-hair. That is what is
ahead of us. And you will have enough to weary you without having
another item to add to it."

"What item?" At that she became very silent and badly scared. What
demon was prompting her to such provocation? Her own effrontery
amazed and frightened her, but her words seemed to speak themselves
independently of her own volition.

"Yellow-hair," he said, "I think you have guessed all I might have
dared say to you were I not on eternal probation."

"Probation?"

"Before a bitterly strict judge."

"Who?"

"Myself, Yellow-hair."

"Oh, Kay! You ARE a boy--nothing more than a boy--"

"Are you in love with me?"

"No," she said, astonished. "I don't think so. What an amazing thing
to say to a girl!"

"I thought I'd scare you," he remarked grimly.

"You didn't. I--I was scarcely prepared--such a nonsensical thing to
say! Why--why I might as well ask you if you are in--in--"

"In love with you? You wish to know, Yellow-hair?"

"No, I don't," she replied hastily. "This is--stupid. I don't
understand how we came to discuss such--such--" But she did know and
she bit her lip and gazed across Isla Water in silent exasperation.

What mischief was this that hid in the Scottish sunshine, whispering
in every heather-scented breeze--laughing at her from every little
wave on Isla Water?--counselling her to this new and delicate
audacity, imbuing her with a secret gaiety of heart, and her very
soul fluttering with a delicious laughter--an odd, perverse,
illogical laughter, alternately tremulous and triumphant!

Was she in love, then, with this man? She remembered his unconscious
head on her knees in the limousine, and the snow clinging to his
bright hair--

She remembered the telephone, and the call to the hospital--and the
message. ... And the white night and bitter dawn. ... Love? No, not
as she supposed it to be; merely the solicitude and friendship of a
woman who once found something hurt by the war and who fought to
protect what was hers by right of discovery. That was not love. ...
Perhaps there may have been a touch of the maternal passion about
her feeling for this man. ... Nothing else--nothing more than that,
and the eternal indefinable charity for all boys which is inherent
in all womanhood--the consciousness of the enchantment that a boy
has for all women. ... Nothing more. ... Except that--perhaps she
had wondered whether he liked her--as much as she liked him.... Or
if, possibly, in his regard for her there were some slight depths
between shallows--a gratitude that is a trifle warmer than the
conventional virtue--

When at length she ventured to turn her head and look at him he
seemed to be asleep, lying there in the transformed shadow of the
lawn umbrella.

Something about the motionless relaxation of this man annoyed her.
"Kay?"

He turned his head squarely toward her, and 'o her exasperation she
blushed.

"Did I wake you? I'm sorry," she said coldly.

"You didn't. I was awake."

"Oh! I meant to say that I think I'll stroll out. Don't come if you
feel lazy."

He swung himself up to a sitting posture.

"I'm quite ready," he said. ... "You'll always find me ready,
Yellow-hair--always waiting."

"Waiting? For what?"

"For your commands."

"You very nice boy!" she said gaily, springing to her feet. Then,
the subtle demon of the sunlight prompting her: "You know, Kay, you
don't ever have to wait. Because I'm always ready to listen to any
pro--any suggestions--from you."

The man looked into the girl's eyes:

"You would care to hear what I might have to tell you?"

"I always care to hear what you say. Whatever you say interests me."

"Would it interest you to know I am--in love?"

"Yes. ... With wh--whom are--" But her breath failed her.

"With you. ... You knew it, Yellow-hair. ... Does it interest you to
know it?"

"Yes." But the exhilaration of the moment was interfering with her
breath again and she only stood there with the flushed and audacious
little smile stamped on her lips forcing her eyes to meet his
curious, troubled, intent gaze.

"You did know it?" he repeated.

"No."

"You suspected it."

"I wanted to know what you--thought about me, Kay."

"You know now."

"Yes ... but it doesn't seem real. ... And I haven't anything to say
to you. I'm sorry--"

"I understand, Yellow-hair."

"--Except-thank you. And-and I am interested. ... You're such a boy....
I like you so much, Kay.... And I AM interested in what you
said to me."

"That means a lot for you to say, doesn't it?"

"I don't know. ... It's partly what we have been through together, I
suppose; partly this lovely country, and the sun. Something is
enchanting me. ... And you are very nice to look at, Kay." His smile
was grave, a little detached and weary.

"I did not suppose you could ever really care for such a man as I
am," he remarked without the slightest bitterness or appeal in his
voice. "But I'm glad you let me tell you how it is with me. ... It
always was that way, Yellow-hair, from the first moment you came
into the hospital. I fell in love then."

"Oh, you couldn't have--"

"Nevertheless, and after all I said and did to the contrary. ... I
don't think any woman remains entirely displeased when a man tells
her he is in love with her. If he does love her he ought to tell
her, I think. It always means that much tribute to her power. ...
And none is indifferent to power, Yellow-hair."

"No. ... I am not indifferent. I like what you said to me. It seems
unreal, though--but enchanting--part of this day's enchantment. ...
Shall we start, Kay?"

"Certainly."

They went out together through the garden door into the open moor,
swinging along in rhythmic stride, side by side, smiling faintly as
dreamers smile when something imperceptible to the waking world
invades their vision.

Again the brown grouse whirred from the whinns; again the subtle
fragrance of the moor sweetened her throat with its clean aroma;
again the haunting complaint of the lapwings came across acres of
bog and furze; and, high in the afternoon sky, an invisible curlew
sadly and monotonously repeated its name through the vast blue vault
of space.

On the edge of evening with all the west ablaze they came out once
more on Isla Water and looked across the glimmering flood at the old
house in the hollow, every distant window-pane a-glitter.

Like that immemorial and dragon-guarded jewel of the East the sun,
cradled in flaky gold, hung a hand's breadth above the horizon, and
all the world had turned to a hazy plum-bloom tint threaded with
pale fire.

On Isla Water the yellow trout had not yet begun to jump; evening
still lingered beyond the world's curved ruin; but the wild duck
were coming in from the sea in twos and threes and sheering down
into distant reaches of Isla Water.

Then, into the divine stillness of the universe came the unspeakable
twang of a banjo; and a fat voice, slightly hoarse:

   "Rocks on the mountain,
    Fishes in the sea,
    A red-headed girl
    Raised hell with me.
    She come from Chicago, R.F.D.
    An' she ain't done a thing to a guy like me!"

The business was so grotesquely outrageous, so utterly and
disgustingly hopeless in its surprise and untimelines, that McKay's
sharp laugh rang out under the sky.

There they were, the same trespassers of the morning, squatted on
the heather at the base of Isla Craig--a vast heap of rocks--their
machine drawn up in the tall green brakes beside the road.

The flashy, fat man, Macniff, had the banjo. The girl sat between
him and the thin man, Skelton.

"Ah, there, old scout!" called out Macniff, flourishing one hand
toward McKay. "Lovely evening, ain't it? Won't you and the wife join
us?"

There was absolutely nothing to reply to such an invitation. Miss
Erith continued to gaze out steadily across Isla Water; McKay,
deeply sensitive to the ludicrous, smiled under the grotesque
provocation, his eyes mischievously fixed on Miss Erith. After a
long while: "They've spoiled it," she said lightly. "Shall we go on,
Kay? I can't endure that banjo."

They walked on, McKay grinning. The picnickers were getting up from
the crushed heather; Macniff with his banjo came toward them on his
incredibly thick legs, blocking their path.

"Say, sport," he began, "won't you and the lady join us?" But McKay
cut him short:

"Do you know you are impudent?" he said very quietly. "Step out of
the way there."

"The hell you say!" and McKay's patience ended at the same instant.
And something happened very quickly, for the man only staggered
under the smashing blow and the other man's arm flew up and his
pistol blazed in the gathering dusk, shattering the cairngorm on
McKay's shoulder. The young woman fired from where she sat on the
grass and the soft hat was jerked from Miss Erith's head. At the
same moment McKay clutched her arm and jerked her violently behind a
jutting elbow of Isla Rock. When she recovered her balance she saw
he held two pistols.

"Boche?" she gasped incredulously.

"Yes. Keep your head down. Crouch among the ferns behind me!"

There was a ruddy streak of fire from the pistol in his right hand;
shots answered, the bullets smacking the rock or whining above it.

"Yellow-hair?"

"Yes, Kay."

"You are not scared, are you?"

"Yes; but I'm all right."

He said with quiet bitterness: "It's too late to say what a fool I
am. Their camouflage took me in; that's all--"

He fired again; a rattling volley came storming among the rocks.

"We're all right here," he said tersely. But in his heart he was
terrified, for he had only the cartridges in his clips.

Presently he motioned her to bend over very low. Then, taking her
hand, he guided her along an ascending gulley, knee-deep in fern and
brake and brier, to a sort of little rocky pulpit.

The lake lay behind them, lapping the pulpit's base. There was a man
in a boat out there. McKay fired at him and he plied both oars and
fled out of range.

"Lie down," he whispered to Miss Erith. The girl mutely obeyed.

Now, crouched up there in the deepening dusk, his pistol extended,
resting on the rock in front of him, his keen eyes searched
restlessly; his ears were strained for the minutest stirring on the
moor in front of him; and his embittered mind was at work
alternately cursing his own stupidity and searching for some chance
for this young girl whom his own incredible carelessness had
probably done to death.

Presently, between him and Isla Water, a shadow moved. He fired; and
around them the darkness spat flame from a dozen different angles.

"Damnation!" he whispered to himself, realising now what the sunlit
moors had hidden--a dozen men all bent on murder.

Once a voice hailed him from the thick darkness promising immunity
if he surrendered. He hesitated. Who but he should know the Boche?
Still he answered back: "If you let this woman go you can do what
you like to me!" And knew while he was saying it that it was
useless--that there was no truth, no honour in the Boche, only
infamy and murder. A hoarse voice promised what he asked; but Miss
Erith caught McKay's arm.

"No!"

"If I dared believe them--"

"No, Kay!"

He shrugged: "I'd be very glad to pay the price--only they can't be
trusted. They can't be trusted, Yellow-hair."

Somebody shouted from the impenetrable shadows:

"Come out of that now, McKay! If you don't we'll go in and cut her
throat before we do for you!"

He remained silent, quite motionless, watching the darkness.

Suddenly his pistol flashed redly, rapidly; a heavy, soft bulk went
tumbling down the rocks; another reeled there, silhouetted against
Isla Water, then lurched forward, striking the earth with his face.
And now from every angle slanting lines of blood-red fire streaked
the night; Isla Craig rang and echoed with pelting lead.

"Next!" called out McKay with his ugly careless laugh. "Two down. No
use to set 'em up again! Let dead wood lie. It's the law!"

"Can they hear the shooting at the house?" whispered Miss Erith.

"Too far. A shot on the moors carries only a little way."

"Could they see the pistol flashes, Kay?"

"They'd take them for fireflies or witch lights dancing on the
bogs."

After a long and immobile silence he dropped to his knees, remained
so listening, then crept across the Pulpit's ferny floor. Of a
sudden he sprang up and fired full into a man's face; and struck the
distorted visage with doubled fist, hurling it below, crashing down
through the bracken.

After a stunned interval Miss Erith saw him wiping that hand on the
herbage.

"Kay?"

"Yes, Yellow-hair."

"Can you see your wrist-watch?"

"Yes. It's after midnight."

The girl prayed silently for dawn. The man, grim, alert, awaited
events, clutching his partly emptied pistols. He had not yet told
her that they were partly empty. He did not know whether to tell
her. After a while he made up his mind.

"Yellow-hair?"

"Yes, dear Kay."

His lips went dry; he found difficulty in speaking: "I've--I've
undone you. I've bitten the hand that saved me, your slim white
hand, I'm afraid. I'm afraid I've destroyed you, Yellow-hair."

"How, Kay?"

"My pistols are half empty. ... Unless dawn comes quick--"

Again one of his pistols flashed its crimson streak across the
blackness and a man began scrambling and thrashing and screaming
down there in the whinns. For a little while Miss Erith crouched
beside McKay in silence. Then he felt her light touch on his arm:

"I've been thinking.",

"Aye. So have I."

"Is there a chance to drop into the lake?"

He had not thought so. He had figured it out in every possible way.
But there seemed little chance to swim that icy water--none at
all--with that man in the boat yonder, and detection always imminent
if they left the Pulpit. McKay shook his head slightly:

"He'd row us down and gralloch us like swimming deer."

"But if one goes alone?"

"Oh, Yellow-hair! Yellow-hair! If you only could!"

"I can."

"Swim it?"

"Yes."

"It's cold water. Few can swim Isla Water. It's a long swim from
Isla Craig to the house."

"I can do it, I think."

After a terrible silence he said: "Yes, best try it, Yellow-hair....
I had meant to keep the last cartridge for you..."

"Dear Kay," she breathed close to his cheek.

Presently he was obliged to fire again, but remained uncertain as to
his luck in the raging storm of lead that followed.

"I guess you better go, Yellow-hair," he whispered. "My guns are
about all in."

"Try to hold them off. I'll come back. Of course you understand I'm
not going for myself, Kay, I'm going for ammunition."

"What!"

"What did you suppose?" she asked curtly.

At that he blazed up: "If you can win through Isla Water you stay on
the other side and telephone Glenark! Do you hear? I'm all right.
It's--it's none of your business how I end this--"

"Kay?"

"What?"

"Turn your back. I'm undressing."

He heard her stripping, kneeling in the ferns behind him,--heard the
rip of delicate fabric and the rustle of silk-lined garments
falling.

Presently she said: "Can I be noticed if I slip down through the
bushes to the water?"

"O God," he whispered, "be careful, Yellow-hair. ... No, the man in
the boat is keeping his distance. He'll never see you. Don't splash
when you take the water. Swim like an otter, under, until you're
well out. ... You're young and sturdy, slim as you are. You'll get
through if the chill of Isla doesn't paralyse you. But you've got to
do it, Yellow-hair; you've GOT to do it."

"Yes. Hold them off, Kay. I'll be back. Hold them off, dear Kay.
Will you?"

"I'll try, Yellow-hair.... Good luck! Don't try to come back!"

"Good luck," she whispered close to his ear; and, for a second he
felt her slim young hands on his shoulders--lightly--the very ghost
of contact. That was all. He waited a hundred years. Then another.
Then, his weapons levelled, listening, he cast a quick glance
backward. At the foot of the Pulpit a dark ripple lapped the rock.
Nothing there now; nothing in Isla Water save far in the stars'
lustre the shadowy boat lying motionless.

Toward dawn they tried to rush the Pulpit. He used a heavy fragment
of rock on the first man up, and as his quarry went smashing
earthward, a fierce whine burst from the others: "Shot out! All
together now!" But his pistol spoke again and they recoiled,
growling, disheartened, cursing the false hope that had re-nerved
them.

It was his last shot, however. He had a heavy clasp-knife such as
salmon-anglers carry. He laid his empty pistols on the rocky ledge.
Very patiently he felt for frost-loosened masses of rock, detached
them one by one and noiselessly piled them along the ledge.

"It's odd," he thought to himself: "I'm going to be killed and I
don't care. If Isla got HER, then I'll see her very soon now, God
willing. But if she wins out--why it is going to be longer waiting....
And I've put my mark on the Boche--not as often as I wished--but
I've marked some of them for what they've done to me--and to the
world--"

A sound caught his ear. He waited, listening. Had it been a fighting
chance in Isla Water he'd have taken it. But the man in the
boat!--and to have one's throat cut--like a deer! No! He'd kill all
he could first; he'd die fighting, not fleeing.

He looked at his wrist-watch. Miss Erith had been gone two hours.
That meant that her slender body lay deep, deep in icy Isla.

Now, listening intently, he heard the bracken stirring and something
scraping the gorse below. They were coming; they were among the
rocks! He straightened up and hurled a great slab of rock down
through darkness; heard them scrambling upward still; seized slab
after slab and smashed them downward at the flashes as the red flare
of their pistols lit up his figure against the sky.

Then, as he hurled the last slab and clutched his short, broad
knife, a gasping breath fell on his cheek and a wet and icy little
hand thrust a box of clips into his. And there and then The McKay
almost died, for it was as if the "Cold Hand of Isla" had touched
him. And he stared ahead to see his own wraith.

"Quick!" she panted. "We can hold them, Kay!"

"Yellow-hair! By God! You bet we can!" he cried with a terrible
burst of laughter; and ripped the clips from the box and snapped
them in with lightning speed.

Then his pistols vomited vermilion, clearing the rock of vermin; and
when two fresh clips were snapped in, the man stood on the Pulpit's
edge, mad for blood, his fierce young eyes searching the blackness
about him.

"You dirty rats!" he cried, "come back! Are you leaving your dead in
the bracken then?"

There were distant sounds on the moor; nothing stirred nearer.

"Are you coming back?" he shouted, "or must I go after you?"

Suddenly in the night their motor roared. At the same moment, far
across the lake, he saw the headlights of other motors glide over
Isla Bridge like low-flying stars.

"Yellow-hair!"

There was no sound behind him. He turned.

The fainting girl lay amid her drenched yellow hair in the ferns,
partly covered by the clothing which she had drawn over her with her
last conscious effort.

It is a long way across Isla Water. And twice across is longer. And
"The Cold Hand of Isla" summons the chief of Clan Morhguinn when his
time has come to look upon his own wraith face to face. But The Cold
Hand of Isla had touched this girl in vain--MOLADH MAIRI!!

"Yellow-hair! Yellow-hair!" he whispered. The roar of rushing motors
from Glenark filled his ears. He picked up one of her little hands
and chafed it. Then she opened her golden eyes, looked up at him,
and a flood of rose dyed her body from brow to ankle.

"It--it is a long way across Isla Water," she stammered. "I'm very
tired--Kay!"

"You below there!" shouted McKay. "Are there constables among you?"

"Aye, sir!" came the loud response amid the roar of running engines.

"Then there'll be whiskey and blankets, I'm thinkin'!" cried McKay.

"Aye, blankets for the dead if there be any!"

"Kick 'em into the whinns and bring what ye bring for the living!"
said McKay in a loud, joyous voice. "And if you've petrol and speed
take the Banff road and be on your way, for the Boche are crawling
to cover, and it's fine running the night! Get on there, ye Glenark
beagles! And leave a car behind for me and mine!"

A constable, shining his lantern, came clumping up the Pulpit. McKay
snatched the heavy blankets and with one mighty movement swept the
girl into them.

Half-conscious she coughed and gasped at the whiskey, then lay very
still as McKay lifted her in his arms and strode out under the
paling stars of Isla.






CHAPTER VI

MOUNT TERRIBLE





Toward the last of May a handsome young man wearing a smile and the
uniform of an American Intelligence Officer arrived at Delle, a
French village on the Franco-Swiss frontier.

His credentials being satisfactory he was directed by the Major of
Alpinists commanding the place to a small stucco house on the main
street.

Here he inquired for a gentleman named Number Seventy. The
gentleman's other name was John Recklow, and he received the
Intelligence Officer, locked the door, and seated himself behind his
desk with his back to the sunlit window, and one drawer of his desk
partly open.

Credentials being requested, and the request complied with
accompanied by a dazzling smile, there ensued a silent interval of
some length during which the young man wearing the uniform of an
American Intelligence Officer was not at all certain whether Recklow
was examining him or the papers of identification.

After a while Recklow nodded: "You came through from Toul, Captain?"

"From Toul, sir," with the quick smile revealing dazzling teeth.

"Matters progress?"

"It is quiet there."

"So I understand," nodded Recklow. "There's blood on your uniform."

"A scratch--a spill from my motor-cycle."

Recklow eyed the cut on the officer's handsome face. One of the
young officer's hands was bandaged, too.

"You've been in action, Captain."

"No, sir."

"You wear German shoes."

The officer's brilliant smile wrinkled his good-looking features:
"There was some little loot: I'm wearing my share."

Recklow nodded and let his cold eyes rest on the identification
papers.

Then, slowly, and without a word, he passed them back over the desk.

The Intelligence Officer stuffed them carelessly into his
side-pocket.

"I thought I'd come over instead of wiring or 'phoning. Our people
have not come through yet, have they?"

"Which people, sir?"

"McKay and Miss Erith."

"No, not yet."

The officer mused for a moment, then: "They wired me from Paris
yesterday, so they're all right so far. You'll see to it personally
that they get through the Swiss wire, won't you?"

"Through or over, sir."

The Intelligence Officer displayed his mirthful teeth:

"Thanks. I'm also sending three of my own people through the wire.
They'll have their papers in order--here are the duplicates I
issued; they'll have their photographs on the originals."

He fished out a batch of papers and laid them on Recklow's desk.

"Who are these people?" demanded Recklow.

"Mine, sir."

"Oh."

There fell a silence; but Recklow did not examine the papers; he
merely pocketed them.

"I think that's all," said the Intelligence Officer. "You know my
name--Captain Herts. In case you wish to communicate just wire my
department at Toul. They'll forward anything if I'm away on duty."

He saluted: Recklow followed him to the door, saw him mount his
motor-cycle--a battered American machine--stood there watching until
he was out of sight.

Hour after hour that afternoon Recklow sat in his quiet little house
in Delle poring over the duplicate papers.

About five o'clock he called up Toul by telephone and got the proper
department.

"Yes," came the answer, "Captain Herts went to you this morning on a
confidential matter.... No, we don't know when he will return to
Toul."

Recklow hung up, walked slowly out into his little garden and,
seating himself on a green bench, took out the three packets of
duplicate papers left him by Captain Herts. Then he produced a
jeweller's glass and screwed it into his right eye.

Several days later three people--two men and a young woman--arrived
at Delle, were conveyed under military escort to the little house of
Mr. Recklow, remained closeted with him until verification of their
credentials in duplicate had been accomplished, then they took their
departure and, that evening, they put up at the Inn.

But by the next morning they had disappeared, presumably over the
Swiss wire--that being their destination as revealed in their
papers. But the English touring-car which brought them still
remained in the Inn garage. Recklow spent hours examining it.

Also the arrival and the departure of these three people was
telephoned to Toul by Recklow, but Captain Herts still remained
absent from Toul on duty and his department knew nothing about the
details of the highly specialised and confidential business of
Captain Herts.

So John Recklow went back to his garden and waited, and smoked a
short, dirty clay pipe, and played with his family of cats.

Once or twice he went down at night to the French wire. All the
sentries were friends of his.

"Anybody been through?" he inquired.

Th

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