"How in the world did you come to be here?" he asked, not yet releasing the eager, warm little hands so frankly clasped between both of his.
Philippa laughed with sheerest happiness:
"Figurez-vous, Monsieur. I have been punting since early morning; and when I found myself so near to Sais I was ready to drop with heat and fatigue: 'Mais, n'importe! Allons!' I said to myself. 'Courage, little one! Very soon you shall see Mr. Warner painting a noble picture by the river!' Et puis----" She tightened her clasp on his hands with an adorable laugh, "Nous voici enfin ensemble--tous les deux--vous et moi! Et je suis bien content et bien fatiguee."
"But, Philippa--how in the world do you propose to get back to Ausone tonight?"
She shrugged, looked up as though protesting to the very skies:
"I have this instant arrived, and his first inquiry is concerning my departure! That is not a very friendly welcome."
"Philippa, I am glad to see you----"
"It is time you said so----"
"I thought you understood----"
The girl laughed:
"I understand how glad I am to see you!" She looked about her in the sunshine, and touched a tall blossom of queen's lace with outstretched fingers.
"How heavenly beautiful is this world of God!" she said with that charming lack of self-consciousness which the skies of France seem to germinate even in aliens. "I am very glad to see you," she repeated abruptly, "and I am awaiting the expression of your sentiments."
"Of course I am glad to see you, Philippa----"
"That makes me quite happy." She smiled on him and then looked curiously at his painting kit. "If you will choose your picture," she added, "I shall sit beside you and watch you at your painting. It will be agreeable. We can converse."
So he chose a ferny spot at the wood's edge, pitched his field easel and camp stool, and opened his color box; and Philippa seated herself cross-legged on the short grass beside him, gathering both slim ankles into her hands.
While he was fussing with his canvas, she sang to herself blithely, radiantly contented, rocking herself to and fro to the rhythm of her song:
"'Hussar en vedette,
What do you see?
The sun has set
And a voice is calling me
Across the Recollette,
Where the scented rushes fret
In the May wind's breath--
Et garde a vous, Hussar!
'Tis the voice of Death!
'Hussar en vedette,
What do you see?
The moon has set
And a white shape beckons me
Across the Recollette,
Where the scented rushes fret
In the night wind's breath--
Et garde a vous, Hussar!
'Tis the shape of Death!'"
Singing away with the serene unconsciousness of a bird, rocking her lithe young body, and watching his every movement out of wide grey eyes, Philippa assisted at the artistic preparations with great content, missing nothing.
"To squeeze color from tubes must be amusing," she remarked. "I like to squeeze out tooth paste."
"I am very sure," said Warner, "that you accomplish more charming results with your tooth paste than I do with my colors."
The girl laughed, showing her snowy teeth:
"Do you find them pretty, Monsieur?"
"Quite perfect, and therefore in keeping with the remainder of you, Philippa."
"He really seems to mean it," she said, addressing a grasshopper which had alighted on her knee. And to Warner: "Is my face sufficiently scrubbed to suit you?"
He glanced down at her:
"You have kept your word, haven't you?"
"Ma foi! My word is my word.... Listen; I came to Sais to see you; and partly because I have something to show you. It concerns your friend, I think."
"Mr. Halkett?"
"Yes. After the fight in our cabaret there was much excitement, but when you had disappeared, and before the agents de police and the gendarmes arrived, I found on the floor under the overturned table a portfolio. In that portfolio was part of an unfinished letter. It is written in German. I could not read it; but, studying it, I recognized Mr. Halkett's name written several times. So I said nothing to anybody, but I have brought it. Here it is."
She drew from her bosom a small leather pocketbook.
"Before you examine it," she continued, "I ought to tell you what really happened at the cabaret. Those men who attacked Mr. Halkett were in the employment of Monsieur Wildresse."
"What!" exclaimed Warner.
"It is true. I was furious when I noticed them creeping up behind him. I realized instantly what they meant to do, and I cried out--too late. You ought to be told about this. Therefore, I came here to tell you.
"And I desire to tell you more. The three men who were seated across the hall, and who attempted to pick a quarrel with Mr. Halkett, were 'provocative agents'--Germans.
"The patron knew them and interfered. Besides, he had his own ideas and his own ends to serve just then.
"But I saw those three German agents whisper to a fourth--a stranger. And that man came and seated himself with three other men directly behind Mr. Halkett, where he stood while you were talking to me----"
"Philippa," he interrupted with blunt impatience, "I don't understand all this that you are saying to me. Give me that letter if it concerns Mr. Halkett."
The girl colored painfully.
"Please don't speak rudely to me," she said. "I am trying to behave honestly----"
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to speak roughly. Please continue."
"Yes; it is better you should know what happened before you read this letter. Well, then, the men who attacked Mr. Halkett naturally got away; the patron attended to that. Naturally, also, he desired to have people believe that the German agents were responsible for the fight, and they were, therefore, detained by Monsieur Wildresse and were asked for an explanation. Then they declared that Mr. Halkett was a British spy, and that they were Belgian police agents with full authority to arrest him in France. Which was a lie, of course, but it served its purpose by increasing the tumult."
"Did they say that they were Belgians?"
"Yes. I heard them. They lied. There was much confusion and shouting--everybody crowding around and disputing. The three Germans pushed their way toward the door; nobody knew whether or not to stop them." She shrugged. "They were gone before people could make up their minds. And, as usual, the police came in too late. Now you know all there is to tell about what happened after you left the cabaret."
Warner laid aside his brushes, looked curiously at the portfolio which she held out to him, hesitated, then opened it and drew out three pages of a letter in German, but written in English script. Evidently it was an unfinished fragment of a letter. He translated it rather freely and without any great difficulty:
--were followed from New York by this man, Halkett, and a companion of his named Gray. Disembarking at Antwerp and going immediately to room No. 23 in the Hotel St. Antoine, according to instructions, we walked directly into a trap, prepared for us, no doubt, by a wireless message sent from the steamer by the individual, Halkett. Schmidt was knocked flat on his back and lay unconscious; me they hurled violently on the bed; my face was covered with a pillow, my legs and arms held as in a vise, while they ripped my clothing from me and then literally tore it to shreds in their search for the papers I carried.
In the lining of my vest they found the information and drawings which we had been at such pains and danger to secure from the Yankee War Department. And now the Yankee Government will find out who has been robbing it.
Unless we can overtake these individuals, Halkett and Gray, the loss to us must be irreparable, as we dared not study the plans and formula on board ship, nor even venture to trust in the security of our stateroom, believing that British agents might be on board and watching. God knows they were.
I regret deeply that we did not suspect Halkett and Gray.
Also, the ship's officers, crew, stewards, wireless operator--all evidently were our enemies and in willing collusion with these two Englishmen.
Gray, on his motor cycle, left Antwerp for Brussels. We shall watch him and prevent his meeting Halkett in France. We fear they have divided the papers between them.
Our orders are to use our own discretion. Therefore, I repeat that Gray shall not live to meet Halkett.
As for Halkett, he undoubtedly has some of the papers on his person. We missed him in Holland by accident; we unfortunately failed in the city of Luxembourg, because he was too crafty to cross the viaduct, but slept that night in a water mill under the walls in the lower city.
We traced him to Diekirch, but missed him again, twice, although Schmidt, who was posted further along on the narrow-gauge line, fired at him as a last resort. For, as you point out, it is better that France should come into possession of the Harkness shell than that the British Admiralty should control it. The very existence of our fleet is now at stake. France is slow to accept foreign inventions; but England is quick as lightning.
So, if necessary, we shall take extreme measures in regard to Halkett and Gray, and stand the chances that we may secure their papers and get back to Berlin before the French police interfere.
And if we fail to get away, well, at least England shall not profit by the Harkness shell.
Meier and Hoffman are following Gray; we are now leaving for Ausone, and hope to find Halkett somewhere in that vicinity.
I am writing this with difficulty, as the road is not what it ought to be, and the wind is disconcerting. Esser is acting as chauffeur----
And there the letter ended.
*CHAPTER X*
Philippa was plaiting grass stems when he finished his examination of the letter. And while she deftly braided boutons d'or among the green blades, she continued under her breath the song of the Vidette, casting an occasional side glance upward at him, where he sat on his camp stool studying the written fragments.
At length, seeing that he had finished, she tossed aside the flowering rope of grass, set her elbows on her knees, her rounded chin on her hands, and regarded him inquiringly, as though, for the moment, she had done with childish things.
"It is a letter which urgently concerns Mr. Halkett," he nodded coolly. "Shall I give it to him?"
"Please."
He pocketed the portfolio, hesitated, glanced at his watch, then, with an absent-minded air, began to pack up his painting kit. As he unhooked his toile he looked around at her.
"Philippa," he said, "if you are going to punt back to Ausone, isn't it nearly time you started?"
"Aren't you going to paint any more?" she asked, smiling.
"No. I think I had better find Mr. Halkett and show him this letter."
"But--I have come all the way from Ausone to pay you a visit!" explained the girl in hurt surprise. "Didn't you want to see me?"
"Certainly I want to see you," he replied smilingly. "But to punt up stream to Ausone this afternoon is going to take you quite a long while----"
"As for that," she remarked, "it need not concern us. I am not going back to Ausone."
"Not going back!"
"Listen, please. Monsieur Wildresse and I have had a disagreement----"
"Nonsense!"
"No, a serious disagreement. I am not going back to Ausone. Shall I tell you all about it?"
"Yes, but listen to me, Philippa. You can't run away from your home merely because you have had a disagreement with your Patron and guardian."
"Shall I tell you why we disagreed?"
"If you choose. But that doesn't justify you in running away from your home."
The girl shook her head:
"You don't yet understand. In our cafe the French Government compels us to spy on certain strangers and to report whatever we can discover. Always it disgusted me to do such a thing. Now I shall not be obliged to do it any more, because I am never going back to the Cabaret de Biribi."
"Do you mean to say that you and Monsieur Wildresse are in the secret service of your Government?" he asked, astonished.
"That is too dignified an explanation. I have been an informer since I was seventeen."
"A--a paid informer?"
"I don't know whether the Government pays Monsieur Wildresse."
"But he doesn't do such things for the pleasure of doing them."
"Pleasure? It is an abominable profession! It is unclean."
"Then why do you do it?" he demanded, amazed.
"I am not perfectly sure why. I know that the Patron is afraid of the Government. That, I suppose, is why we have been obliged to take orders from them."
"Afraid? Why?"
"It's partly on Jacques' account--his son's. If we do what they ask of us they say that they won't send him to New Caledonia. But I believe it is all blague." She looked up at Warner out of her troubled grey eyes. "Espionage--that has been my metier since I was taken out of school--to listen in the cabaret, to learn to keep my eyes open, to relate to the Patron whatever I saw or heard concerning any client the Government desired him to watch.... Do you think that is a very pleasant life for a young girl?"
His face became expressionless.
"Not very," he said. "Go on."
She said thoughtfully:
"It is a horrible profession, Mr. Warner. Why should I continue it? Are there no police? Why should I, Philippa Wildresse, do their dirty work? Can you explain? Alors, I have asked myself that many, many times. Today, at last, I have answered my own question: I shall never again play the spy for anybody! C'est fini! Voila!"
Warner remained silent.
"Why, it is revolting!" she exclaimed. "Figurez-vous, Monsieur! I was even signaled to spy upon you! Can you conceive such a thing?"
"On me?" he repeated, bewildered and angry.
"Certainly. That is why I danced with you. I am permitted to dance only with clients under observation."
Her unflattering candor sent a flush to his face. His latent vanity had been rather rudely surprised.
"Afterward," she continued, "I knew you could not be the man they wanted----"
"What man did they want?"
"Somebody who had stolen documents in America, I believe. But I was sure that you were honest."
"Why?"
Philippa lifted her grey eyes:
"Because you were honest with me."
"How, honest?"
"You did not make love to me. Dishonest men always regard women as a pastime. To make advances is the first thing I expect from them. I am never disappointed. All men are more or less dishonest--excepting you."
"This is a sorry school you have been brought up in," he said grimly.
"Do you mean that I have had my schooling by observing life?"
"Yes--a life in a cabaret full of rastaoqueres and cocottes--a rather limited and sordid outlook, Philippa. The world lies outside."
"Still--it is life. Even a cocotte is part of life."
"So is disease. But it isn't all there is in life."
"Nor is life in a cabaret all corruption. A cabaret is merely the world in miniature; all types pass in and out; they come and go as souls are born and go: the door opens and closes; one sees a new face, one loses it. It is much like birth and death."
She made an unconsciously graceful gesture toward the white clouds overhead.
"A cabaret," she went on seriously, "is a republic governed by the patron, audited by the caissiere, policed by waiters. Everybody goes there--even you, Monsieur. All languages are spoken there, all questions discussed, all theories aired, all passions ventilated. Every trait of human nature is to be observed there; the germ of every comedy; the motive of every tragedy.... Yet, as you say, it is a saddening school.... Wisdom is too early acquired there. One learns too quickly and too completely in such a school. Such an education means precocity. It foreshadows the early death of youth, Monsieur.... If I remain there, all that is still young in me will die, now, very quickly."
"You poor child!"
She shrugged her shoulders.
"Therefore," she said, "I am leaving. Now do you understand?"
He sat looking at her, wondering uneasily at her intelligence and her ability to express herself. Here was a maturity of mind unexpected in this girl. So far it had not visibly altered the youth of her, nor impaired her sweetness and honesty.
In spite of the appalling surroundings amid which she had matured, her mind and heart still remained young.
Biting a tasselled grass stem reflectively, she sat thinking for a few moments, then she reverted to the subject of Wildresse and his son.
"I am convinced that it is all blague," she repeated, "--this threat of Noumea. Unless Jacques misbehaves very seriously in Biribi, nobody can send him to La Nouvelle. Besides, if his father chooses to oblige the Government, what does it matter about me? No; I have had enough of degradation. An hour on the river with you was enough to settle it."
"But what do you intend to do, Philippa?" he inquired.
She looked up at him with her winning smile:
"I came to ask you that. Please tell me what I am to do."
"You must not ask me----"
"Of course. You are the first man who ever pleased me. You please me more and more. Why should I not come to you in my perplexity and say, 'What am I to do, my friend?'"
He reddened at that; found nothing to answer. The sudden and grotesque responsibility which this young girl was so lightly placing upon his shoulders might have amused if it had not disconcerted him. But it did not disconcert her.
"What am I to do, Mr. Warner?" she repeated with a smile of perfect confidence.
"Why, I don't know, Philippa. What can you do down here at Sais?"
"Tell me!" she insisted with undisturbed serenity.
"You couldn't very well remain here. You will have to go back to Ausone and consider this matter more seriously----"
"Ah, ca--non! I shall not go back!"
"What do you propose to do?"
She bit her grass stem:
"I don't know. I have my trunk in the punt----"
"What!"
"Certainly, I brought my effects! I have some money--not very much. I shall go to the inn and remain there until you have decided what it is best for me to do."
The situation began to strike him as sufficiently ludicrous--the tragic mask is always on the verge of a grin--but he did not feel like smiling.
For a few minutes he occupied himself with collecting, strapping, and slinging his kit; and when he was ready to go, he looked down at the girl Philippa, where she was seated watching him out of her trustful grey eyes.
"I can employ you as a model," he said, "until Monsieur Wildresse sends for you. What do you think of the idea?"
"As a--a model, Monsieur?" she stammered.
"Yes. You could pose for me, if you like."
A delicate scarlet flush slowly mounted to her hair.
Perplexed, he watched her.
"Don't you like the idea?" And suddenly he divined what was troubling her. "Not that sort of model," he said, amused. "You shall wear your clothes, Philippa."
"Oh.... Yes, I should like it, I think."
"It's about the only excuse which would enable you to remain at the inn until you have come to some conclusion regarding your future," he explained.
"A painter may always have his models? It is expected, is it not?"
"Oh, yes, that is always understood. But nobody would understand your coming to live at the Golden Peach merely because you and I happened to be good friends," he added laughingly.
"I understand," she said in a grave voice. "I am to be your model, not your friend."
He nodded carelessly, looking away from her. After a moment, he lighted a cigarette. It relieved him considerably to recollect that the Harem had gone to Ausone.
"Now," he said, "if you are ready to walk back to the inn with me, I'll explain you to Madame Arlon, the patronne."
"And my punt?" she inquired, rising from the grass.
"Oh, Lord! I forgot."
"My trunk is in it."
"Where is your punt?"
She pointed across the meadow to where the river sparkled:
"It is my own punt; the Lys. I took nothing from Monsieur Wildresse that did not belong to me. It will be agreeable for us to have a punt here, will it not?"
"Very," he said uneasily.
They turned eastward across the blossoming meadow, over which already the swallows were soaring in their late afternoon flight. A vanneau or two rose from moist spots, protesting, and flapping away on greenish-bronze wings; a becassine went off like a badly-balanced arrow, and his flat, raucous, "squack! squack!" rang through the sunny silence. Higher, higher his twisting flight carried him toward the sky, where he dwindled to a speck and vanished; but out of the intense blue zenith his distant cry still rang long after he had disappeared from the range of human vision.
*CHAPTER XI*
When Warner and the girl Philippa arrived at the Golden Peach, they found that Madame Arlon, profiting by the prospective temporary absence of the Harem, had gone to visit relatives near Nancy for a day or two. But Linette smilingly took charge of Philippa and her luggage.
Warner, entering the southern end of the walled garden, discovered Halkett at the other extremity, still seated under the latticed arbor. A letter lay spread upon the table beside his elbow. Over this letter, with pencil and paper, he pored as though he were working out a problem in hieroglyphics.
But when Warner appeared, the Englishman leisurely folded and pocketed the papers on which he had been working, nodded pleasantly, and handed to Warner a copy of the Petit Journal d'Ausone.
"It came after you left," he said. "There's nothing really new in it--Germany's ultimatum to Russia, that's about all.... I am feeling rather anxious about a friend of mine, Reginald Gray. He was to have arrived here last night or early this morning on his motor cycle. No word has come from him personally, and it is now nearly night again."
Warner seated himself, glanced over the inky little provincial newspaper, then laid it aside. There was in its columns nothing definite concerning the threatened rupture of the peace of Europe.
"Halkett," he said almost solemnly, "this crime with which they say our civilization is menaced can never be consummated. There will be no World War, because the world dares not acquiesce in such an outrage. The eleventh hour has struck, I know; but salvation exists only because there is a twelfth hour on the dial; otherwise the preordained end of everything would be hell."
Halkett smiled slightly.
"I've just had another letter," he said. "I'm likely to remain here for a few days more.... Which means only one thing."
"What does it mean?"
"War."
Warner smiled incredulously.
"Anyway, there will be one compensation for the general smash if you remain here," he said gayly.
"You're very good to take it that way.... You and I--and to hell with the Deluge!" But his face sobered while the jest was spoken; he leaned rather wearily on the iron table and rested his forehead in one hand. "I wish I knew what has happened to Reginald Gray," he repeated.
"What is it that worries you about your friend Gray?"
"His cap was picked up on the highway five miles southeast of Sais."
"How could you know that?"
"I have just learned it by telephone, through a certain source of information."
"Did you learn anything more?"
"There was a little blood on the road."
Warner remained silent.
"Also," continued Halkett thoughtfully, "a motor cycle had skidded up the bank.... But no signs of a serious accident could be discovered--merely the ragged swathe cut through soft earth and rank vegetation.... If Gray met with an accident, he must have mended his machine, remounted, and continued his course--wherever he was going--unless somebody picked up him and his wheel and took them away.... I can't understand this affair. It bothers me."
"The chances are that your friend Gray had a rather bad spill," suggested Warner, "and no doubt you'll hear from him, or about him, before morning."
"I ought to, certainly." He filled and lighted his pipe; Warner rose and began to pace the garden path rather nervously. Presently he came back to where the Englishman sat brooding over his pipe and nursing Ariadne.
"Halkett," he said abruptly, "you remember that girl Philippa in the Cafe Biribi?"
The Englishman looked up inquiringly.
"Well, she is here."
"At the inn?"
"Yes. I met her down in the big river meadow this afternoon, and she calmly informed me that she had left home for good."
"Run away?"
"Run away. Taken the key of the fields. Beat it for keeps. How does that strike you?"
"Why, yes. The child has been used by the secret police to spy on people in the Cafe Biribi."
Halkett's eyes opened at that.
Warner went on:
"That old rascal, Wildresse, it seems, is nothing but a paid informer. He forced this girl Philippa to engage in the same filthy business. She even admitted that old Wildresse had set her on me! No doubt he had decided to watch you himself. And do you know what I think?"
Halkett was very wide-awake now. He said:
"I believe I do know what you are thinking. And I believe you are pretty nearly right."
"That the assault on you was merely a local matter instigated by Wildresse?"
"It wouldn't surprise me."
"I think it was, too. Some of his thugs did it. He had made up his mind about you. But somebody must have tipped him off to watch you."
"Probably."
"I am sure of it. The three German-appearing men who tried to pick a quarrel with you over the Archduke's murder were not the men who tried to frisk you for your papers. They were 'provocative agents' in the pay of a foreign government--hired opportunists who were expected to pick something of value out of any confusion attending a general row fomented by themselves."
"Who told you that?"
"Philippa."
Halkett, now thoroughly interested, looked keenly at Warner through the thin haze of his pipe.
"These three agents," continued Warner, "were certainly in close communication with the men who have been following you. And at least one of those men was seated at the table directly behind you when Wildresse's thugs tried to frisk you for documents. So you see that Wildresse, prodded by the French secret police, and these provocative agents, prodded by the people who are following you, who, in turn, are spurred by the German Government, were all playing at cross purposes, but with you as a common objective. A fine nest of intrigue I led you into when I took you to the Cabaret de Biribi! I'm terribly sorry, Halkett. But I believe that some good has come out of that mess--a fragment of a letter, written in German, which Philippa gave me in the meadow this afternoon.
"She found it under the wrecked table behind you. Nobody has seen it except myself and Philippa; and the child cannot read much German. But, studying it and seeing your name in the letter, she was clever enough to bring it to me. Here it is." He laid it on the table under the Englishman's eyes.
While Halkett remained absorbed in his translation, Warner paced the garden, deeply occupied with his own uneasy cogitations. After a little while Halkett spoke to him in an altered voice, and he turned and came swiftly back to the arbor.
The Englishman, looking up, said gravely:
"Concerning myself, there seems to remain now nothing worth concealing from you.... Perhaps you had better know the truth. I happen to be an officer temporarily serving with the Intelligence Department; I had just been assigned to duty in New York when the Harkness shell was stolen. The general alarm went out. Gray, a brother officer, and I chanced to stumble on evidence which sent us aboard an Antwerp steamer. Our birds were aboard. We pulled every string available, and, passing over the details of the affair, he and I managed to recover the drawings, specifications, and formula which had been stolen. Some of these papers are in that envelope.
"Every German agent in Europe knows we have them. My Government, for some reason or other, instructs me to remain here for the present. As Gray and I are known, doubtless somebody will appear and take the drawings out of our hands, because the chances are that I'd be murdered before I reached Calais. That is the situation, Warner."
"Has Gray any of the drawings?"
"He has."
"I understand."
"And that is why I am worrying about Gray. They'd not hesitate to kill him if they thought there was a chance that he had any of the papers."
Warner said:
"They couldn't have killed him. A crime on the public highway cannot remain undiscovered very long."
Halkett sat thoughtfully stroking Ariadne. Presently he looked up with a slight smile.
"Well, what are you going to do with the girl Philippa?" he inquired.
"Now, what do you think of a situation like this?" demanded Warner, half laughing, half vexed. "I told her to go home. She positively refuses. You can't blame the child. The dirty business there has disgusted her. This seems to be a final revolt. But--what would you do if a young girl wished herself on you?"
"I haven't the faintest idea," said Halkett, intensely amused.
Warner reddened.
"I haven't either," he said. "All I can think of is to use her as a model--give her a small salary until she finds something to do."
"Are you going to use her for a model?"
"I suppose so, until somebody comes after her to take her back."
"Well, I'm not going to adopt her, that's certain," insisted the other. "Poor little thing!" he added. "--Her instincts seem to be decent. Who could blame a young girl for sickening of such a life and cutting away on her own hook? That's a rotten joint, that Cabaret de Biribi. And as for that old villain, Wildresse, it wouldn't surprise me at all if he were playing the dirty game from both ends--German and French. Informers are often traitors."
"Very frequently."
"Spies also have that reputation, I believe--except in romantic fiction," said Warner.
"They usually deserve it," returned Halkett. "Generally speaking, they are a scum recruited from low pubs and brothels. Rarely does any reputable person enter that profession except in line of military duty or in time of war.
"Servants, waiters, chauffeurs, those are the most respectable classes of secret agents. But the demi-monde and their hangers-on furnish the majority of those popularly supposed to represent people of position who play the role of international spy. They are a rummy lot, Warner.
"It is very, very seldom in Occidental drawing-rooms that such practices prevail. A woman of position very rarely becomes a paid agent of that sort. Diplomats and attaches who are pumped and victimized are usually the dupes of socially disreputable people. Society in England and in Western Europe rarely entertains such a favorite of fiction as a paid Government spy; nor are such people very often recruited from its ranks. East of the Danube it is different."
They sat for a while smoking, Halkett lavishing endearments upon Ariadne who never failed to respond, Warner musing on what Halkett had said and wondering exactly what duties the Military Intelligence Department of any Government might include.
No doubt, like the Government, it employs spies, and, like the Government, never admits the fact.
For among all outcasts so vitally necessary to autocracy and militarism, the spy is the most pitiable: in time of peace no authority admits employing him; in time of war, his fate, if taken, is as certain as that his own Government will disown him. Eternally repudiated, whether of respectable or disreputable antecedents, honest or otherwise, patriotic or mercenary, the world has only one opinion to express concerning spies, although it often cackles over their adventures and snivels over their fate.
Perhaps Halkett was musing on these things, for presently he took his pipe from his mouth and said:
"To my knowledge, we British never employ spies in America. Your Government, I know, never employs them anywhere in time of peace. All other Governments do. Europe swarms with them. If I were in Germany today, I'd be considered a spy. They'd follow me about and lock me up on the first excuse--or without any excuse at all. And if we chanced to be at war with Germany, and I were caught, they'd certainly shoot me because I have recovered stolen property."
"They'd execute you because you are not in uniform?"
"Certainly. I'd not stand a ghost of a chance. So I shall be rather glad that I'm in France when war comes."
"You are so certain it is coming?"
"Absolutely, my dear fellow. Probably it will be declared tomorrow."
"I cannot believe it, Halkett."
"I can scarcely believe it myself. But--I know it is coming. And it is coming from the north."
"Through Belgium?"
"Exactly."
"And the treaty?"
"I have already told you how Germany regards such agreements. She'll kill that treaty with just as much emotion as she'd experience in assassinating a fly. It's a rotten outlook, Warner. The eleventh hour has passed."
They smoked for a while in silence, then:
"Where is your little protegee?" asked Halkett, making an effort to shake off his depression.
"Linette is making her comfortable. When Madame Arlon returns from Nancy I shall tell her to look out for the child. She's in her room, unpacking, I suppose."
"Did she even bring her boxes?" asked the Englishman, greatly amused.
"Yes, she did. And I don't know what on earth she intends to do for a living when I go back to Paris. I'm sorry for her, but she can't expect me to travel about France with her----"
He checked himself abruptly; Halkett also looked up.
The girl Philippa had entered the further end of the garden.
She came slowly forward through the rosy evening light, straight and slim in her girlish gown of white, unrelieved except by a touch or two of black, and by the coppery splendor of her hair.
She halted in the path a little way from the arbor, evidently aware that somebody was within.
"Are you there, Monsieur Warner?" she asked in her sweet, childish voice.
He got up with a glance of resignation at Halkett, and went to meet her. Halkett, from the arbor, noticed the expression of her face when Warner appeared, and he continued to observe the girl with curious attention.
She had instinctively laid her hands in Warner's, detaining him naively, and looking up into his face with an honesty too transparent to mistake.
"I miss you very much," she said, "even for a few minutes. I hastened my toilet to rejoin you."
"That is very sweet of you, Philippa----" He didn't know what else to say; felt the embarrassment warm on his face--chagrin, shyness, something of both, perhaps--and a rather helpless feeling that he was acquiescing in an understanding which already was making him very uneasy.
"Come in to the arbor," he said. "Mr. Halkett is there."
She slipped her arm through his. Halkett saw both their faces as they approached, and, watching Warner for a moment, he felt inclined to laugh. But in this young girl's eyes there was something that checked his amusement. A man does not laugh at the happy and serious eyes of childhood.
So he rose and paid his respects to Philippa with pleasant formality; she seated herself between the two men.
The last pink rays of the sun fell across the little iron table, flooding the garden with an enchanted light: already the evening perfume of clove pinks had become exquisitely apparent; a belated bumblebee blundered out of the reseda and, rising high in the calm air, steered his bullet flight into the west. Ariadne, on the table, stretched herself, yawned, and looked about her, now thoroughly awake for the rest of the night.
"Minette!" murmured Philippa, caressing her and laying her cheek against the soft fur.
"You are sunburned," remarked Halkett.
"And badly freckled, Monsieur----" She looked mischievously at Warner, laughed at their secret agreement concerning cosmetics, then turned again to Halkett:
"You have heard, I suppose, of the happy understanding between Mr. Warner and me?"
"I think so," said Halkett, subduing an inclination to laugh.
"The future, for me, is entirely secure," continued Philippa happily. "I am permitted to assist Mr. Warner in his art. It is a very wonderful future, Mr. Halkett, destined for me without doubt by God." She added, half to herself: "And a lifetime on my knees would be too short a time to thank Him in."
Both men became silent and constrained, Warner feeling more helpless than ever in the face of such tranquil confidence; Halkett remembering what Warner had once said about the soul of Philippa--but still pleasantly and gently inclined to skepticism concerning this fille de cabaret.
Philippa, leaning forward on the table between them, joined her slender hands and looked at Warner.
"It is pleasant to be accepted as a friend by such men as you are," she said thoughtfully.... "I have met other gentlemen of your station in life, now and then. But their attitude toward me has been different from yours.... I once supposed that, in a cabaret, all men resembled each other where women were concerned. I have been very happily mistaken."
Warner said:
"A man scarcely expects to see more than one sort of woman in a cabaret."
"Yet, you were not astonished to see me, were you?"
"Yes," he said, "I was astonished."
"You did not seem to be."
Warner glanced at Halkett:
"Do you remember what I once said about Philippa's soul?"
The Englishman smiled at Philippa:
"As soon as Mr. Warner saw you he said to me that your soul was as clean as a flame.... I was slower to understand you."
The girl turned swiftly to Warner:
"What a heavenly thing for a man to say about a woman! And my lips painted scarlet--and I a caissiere de cabaret----" Her voice broke childishly; she sprang to her feet and stood looking through the starting tears at the last level rays of the sun.
Standing so, unstirring till the tears dried, she presently turned and resumed her chair; and, after a few moments' silence, she dropped her elbows on the table again and clasped her hands under her chin.
She said, not looking at either of the men:
"I have thought of becoming a nun. But it is too late. Cloisters make awkward inquiries and search records; no Sisterhood of any order I ever heard of would admit to a novitiate any girl who has served five years where I have served.... And so--until I saw you--I did not know what was to become of me----"
She lifted her grey eyes to Warner. They were starry with recent tears. Her chin rested on her clasped hands, her enchanted gaze on him.
Halkett was first to move and make an effort:
"Yes, it was perhaps time to cut away," he muttered. "Anything we can do--very glad, I'm sure."
"Certainly," said Warner. "There are a lot of agreeable young women in my class who will be interested to know you when they return from Ausone day after tomorrow----"
Philippa turned swiftly toward him:
"I do not wish any woman to know what I have been! You wouldn't tell them, would you?"
"No, of course not--if you feel that way," he said. "Only I--it occurred to me--some protection--some countenance--understanding--from other women----"
"I desire none. I want only your friendship."
"But how am I going to explain you----"
"You are a painter. I am your model. Is not that sufficient explanation?"
"Yes--if you desire to be so regarded--permanently----"
"I do. My privacy will then remain my own. I permit nobody to invade it--excepting you."
"Very well, if you feel that way.... Only, you are--attractive, Philippa--and I am rather afraid you might not be understood----"
She shrugged her shoulders:
"For five years I have not been understood. Do you know that men have even thrown dice for me, so certain were they that they understood me? I am accustomed to it. But I am not accustomed to women--I mean to your kind. I distrust them; possibly I am afraid of them. Anyway, their interest in me would be unwelcome. It is your friendship I want. Nothing else matters."
"You are wrong, Philippa. Other things do matter. No woman can go it alone, disdainful of other women's opinions."
"I have always been alone."
Warner said patiently:
"I should not do anything without first consulting you."
"I feel very sure that you would not." She smiled at him trustfully, her cheek on her linked fingers; then her gaze grew absent. The last sun ray lingered on her hair, turning it to fiery bronze. Under it her grey eyes gazed absently into the future, filled now, for her, with iridescent castles and peopled with vaguely splendid images--magic scenes that young and lonely hearts evoke out of the very emptiness of their isolation.
And in the center of the phantom pageant always appeared Warner, her friend, endowed with all the mystery and omniscience with which a young girl's heart invests the man who first awakens it to irregularity--who first interferes with the long monotony of its virgin rhythm.
Halkett, a little keener of the two--a little more sensitive, if more reticent--said pleasantly:
"Perhaps you might prefer to dine out here with us, Philippa. The Ha--the class, I mean--banquets and carouses in the dining-room, when it is here."
"Of course I wish to dine with you! I said so to Linette before I came out here. It is all arranged."
Halkett laughed. At the same moment, Linette came out with the tray.
A bright afterglow still lingered in the zenith when their leisurely dinner had ended; and in the garden the mellow light was beginning to make objects exquisitely indistinct.
Halkett, smoking in silence, was evidently thinking about his friend Gray, for, when Linette came to remove the cloth and coffee cups, and to say that some gentlemen on motor cycles were at the garden gate inquiring for Mr. Halkett, the young Englishman rose with a quick sigh of relief and walked swiftly to the heavy, green door under the arch in the garden wall.
As he laid his hand on the latch, he turned toward Warner:
"I'll bring Gray in directly," he called back; and opened the door and stepped out into the dusk.
At the same instant Warner rose to his feet, listening; then he ran for the green door. As he reached it, the heavy little door burst open; Halkett sprang inside, slid the big iron bolt into place, turned and warned the American aside with upflung hand.
"Keep Philippa out of range of the door!" he called across the garden, drawing his automatic at the same time and springing backward. "Don't stand in a line with that green door----"
A volley of pistol shots cut him short.
*CHAPTER XII*
The green door in the garden wall had been perforated by a dozen bullets from outside before the first heavy crash came, almost shaking it from its hinges.
Warner had already whipped out his own automatic; Halkett pushed him aside across a flower bed.
"Keep out of this!" he said. "It's my affair----"
"I'm damned if it is!" retorted Warner. "I'll settle that question once for all!" And he leveled his automatic and sent a stream of lead through the green door in the wall.
No more blows fell on it, but all over it, from top to bottom, white splinters flew while bullets poured through it from outside.
"You are wrong to involve yourself," insisted Halkett, raising his voice to dominate the racket of the automatics. "They want only me."
"So do I, Halkett. And I've got you and mean to keep you. Blood is the thicker, you know."
Philippa came from the arbor, carrying the badly frightened cat with difficulty.
"Is it really war?" she asked calmly, while Ariadne alternately cowered and struggled.
"Just a little private war," said Halkett. "And you had better go into the house at once----"
"You and I should go, also," added Warner, "if there are more than two men out there."
"I saw at least half a dozen beyond the wall. You are quite right, Warner; we couldn't hope to hold this garden. But I dislike to go into a strange house and invite assault on other people's property--just to save my own hide----"
"Keep out of range!" interrupted Warner sharply, taking him by the arm and following Philippa around the garden toward the rear of the house.
The back door was iron, armed with thick steel bolts; the neighborhood of the quarry rendering such defenses advisable. Warner shot all three bolts, then passed rapidly through the kitchen to the front door and secured it, while Halkett went to the telephone. The nearest gendarmes were at Ausone.
Linette, the chambermaid and waitress, and Magda, the cook, had followed Halkett and Philippa from the pantry through the kitchen to the front hallway. They had heard the noisy fusillade in the garden. Curiosity seemed to be their ruling emotion, but even that was under control.
"Is it the Prussians, Messieurs?" asked Linette calmly. "Has the war really begun?" Her face, and Magda's too, seemed a trifle colorless in the failing evening light, but her voice was steady.
"Magda," said Warner, "the men outside our garden who fired at Mr. Halkett are certainly Germans. He and I mean to keep them out of this house if they attempt to enter it. So you and Linette had better go very quietly to the cellar and remain there, because there may be some more firing----"
"I? The cellar! When Prussians are outside!" exclaimed Magda. "Ma foi! I think Linette and I can be of better use than hiding in the cellar. Linette! Set water to boil in both kettles! I have my dishes to wash. The Prussians had better not interfere with me when I have dishes to wash!"
"Keep away from the windows," added Warner to Linette. "There are iron bars on all the lower windows, aren't there?"
"Yes, Monsieur Warner. If the front door holds, they cannot get in."
Halkett, at the telephone, called back through the dim hallway to Warner:
"Somebody has cut the telephone wire. I can't do anything with the instrument!"
Philippa, still clasping Ariadne, had betrayed no sign of fear or excitement.
"If somebody would tell me what to do," she began--but Warner quickly drew her into the office of the inn, which was really the inner cafe and bar.
"Stay here," he said. "Those men outside might open fire on us at any moment. Don't go near a window. Do you promise?"
The girl seated herself obediently and began to stroke the cat, her eyes serenely fixed on Warner.
Halkett had gone to the floor above to lurk by one of the windows giving on the garden. When Warner came up with a box of cartridge clips, the Englishman, filling his pockets, remarked quietly:
"They're over the wall already, and dodging about among the fruit trees--four of them. There were two others. Perhaps you had better keep an eye on the front door, if you really insist on being mixed up with this mess I'm in."
"Do you suppose those fellows will be silly enough to attack the house?" asked the American incredulously.
Halkett nodded:
"They are desperate, you see. I can understand why. They know that war is likely to be declared within the next few hours. If they don't get me now they won't stand much chance later. That's why I'm prepared for anything on their part."
Warner walked swiftly back toward the front, cutting the cords of the latticed window blinds in every room, so that they fell full length.
"No lights in the house!" he called down over the banisters; "and keep away from the windows, everybody! Philippa, do you hear me?"
"I understand; I shall tell them to light no candles," came the untroubled voice of Philippa.
"Are you all right down there?"
"Yes, I am. But the cat is still quite frightened, poor darling."
In spite of his anxiety, Warner laughed as he reloaded.
Outdoors there still remained sufficient light to see by. Flat against the wall, pistol in hand, he cautiously reconnoitered the dusky roadway in front of the house, then, leaning further out, he ventured to look down between lattice and sill at the doorstep below. A mound of dry hay had been piled against the door.
"Get out of there!" he shouted, catching a glimpse of two shadowy figures skulking toward the doorway arch.
His reply was a red flash which split the dusk, another, and another; the window glass above him flew into splinters under the shower of bullets; the persiennes jerked and danced.
But the men who stood pouring bullets in his direction had been obliged to drop double armfuls of faggots. One of these men, still firing as he ran, took cover behind a poplar tree across the road; the other man flattened himself against the wall of the house, so far under the door arch that no shot could reach him from an upper window unless the marksman exposed himself.
Standing so, he lighted a chemical match and tossed it, flaring, on the heap of hay piled high against the door; and almost at the same instant a boilerful of hot water splashed through the bars of the lower window beside him, scalding and soaking him; and he bounded out into the road with a yell of astonishment and pain.
The hay, instantly on fire, sent a cloud of white thick smoke billowing along the facade of the house, then burst into flame; but Linette and Magda dashed water on it from the lower windows, and the red blaze leaped and died.
Then, from the rear of the house, the dry rattle of Halkett's automatic broke out, and the pattering racket of pistol shots redoubled when other automatics crackled from the garden. Thick as hailstones pelting a tin roof the bullets clanged on the iron rear door, filling the house with deafening dissonance.
Halkett, peering out through his lattice into the dusk, ceased firing. A few moments longer the door reechoed the bullets' impact; then all sound ceased, the silence still vibrating metallic undertones.
Prowling from window to window, Warner, pistol lifted, peered warily from the shelter of the lowered lattice blinds.
One man still crouched behind the poplar tree; the other, he thought, was lying in the long grass of the roadside ditch.
"Are you all right, Halkett?" he called back through the stinging fumes of the smokeless powder which filled the hallway.
"Quite fit, thanks. How is it with you?"
"Still gayly on the job. I didn't hit anybody. I didn't try to."
"Nor I. Did you ever see such obstinacy and determination? Very German, isn't it?"
"Perfectly.... They're keeping rather too quiet to suit me. What do you suppose they're up to?"
But neither he nor the Englishman could discover any movement or hear any sound around the house. And it had now become too dark to see anything very clearly.
Philippa appeared mounting the stairs, looking for Ariadne who had scrambled out of her arms during the fusillade.
Warner nodded to her from where he was standing guard. She came up quietly behind him, stood for a moment with both hands around his left arm--a silent figure in the dusk, friendly as a well-bred dog, and as winningly unconscious of self. Her cheek, resting lightly against her hands, where they clasped his arm, pressed a trifle closer before she went away.
And while he stood there, perplexedly conscious of this youthful affection, and listening to every slightest sound, suddenly he heard her voice, startled, calling out to him from a bedroom on the east side of the house.
As he entered the room, running, a man outside on a garden ladder kicked in the window panes, drew back his heavy foot, sent it crashing again through the wooden frame, and lurched forward across the sill, only to be held there, fighting, in the grasp of Philippa.
Behind them another man on the ladder was already struggling to fling his leg over the sill; the head and shoulders of a third appeared just behind him, menacing with uplifted pistol any interference.
Already Philippa had been dragged headlong half-way through the shattered window, and the man whom she had seized was endeavoring to fling her down in the flower bed below, when Warner, leaping forward, hit him heavily in the face and caught the girl's shoulders, jerking her back into the room as her assailant's grasp on her waist relaxed.
The man with the pistol had not been able to use it; he staggered, his weapon fell, and he clung with both hands to the rungs as Philippa's assaulter went tumbling down the ladder, carrying with him the man directly behind him. And the next moment Warner had upset the ladder, sprung back, and pulled Philippa with him down on the floor.
A hurricane of bullets swept through the shattered window above them; Halkett, from his latticed vantage, was firing, too.
The girl lay panting beside him, silent, her head across his arm.
"Are you hurt?" he whispered.
"Are you?"
"No; answer me!" he repeated impatiently.
"He was--very rough. I don't think I am hurt," she breathed.
"You plucky little thing!"
She pressed her cheek against his arm.
"Are you contented with me?" she whispered.
The shots had ceased. After a long interval of quiet, Warner ventured to creep to the window and look through a corner of the ragged lattice blind. Little by little he raised himself to his knees, peered out and finally over.
The ladder lay there just below in the garden path; the men were gone. And, even as he looked, the staccato noise of departing motor cycles broke out like a startling volley of rifle fire in the night.
For an hour he stood on guard there, with the girl Philippa crouching beside him on the floor. From time to time he called cautiously:
"All well here!"
And the Englishman from the front windows always answered:
"All well here!"
Finally:
"Halkett!" he called. "I believe they've cut away for good!"
Halkett presently appeared in the hallway, coming from the front of the house, as Philippa rose to her knees and stood up, a trifle dazed.
"Warner," he whispered, "a dozen horsemen have just ridden up in front of our house. They look like French gendarmes to me, but it's so dark outside that I am not quite certain. Will you take a look at them?"
Warner ran to the front and gazed out. The road below was filled with mounted gendarmes, their white aiguillettes plainly visible in the dark.
Two had already descended from their horses, and while one held an electric torch the other was busily nailing a big placard to the front door of the inn. His hammer strokes rang out sharply in the darkness.
It took only a moment for him to complete his business; the electric torch shifted, flashed upward, was extinguished.
"Mount!" came the quick order from the shadowy peloton of horsemen; up on their high saddles popped the two troopers; there came a trample of hoofs, the dull clank of sabres, and away they galloped into the darkness.
Warner turned slowly, looked hard at Halkett, who merely nodded in reply to the silent question.
Philippa slipped downstairs in front of them and began to unlatch the door, as Linette and Magda appeared from the kitchen carrying lighted candles.
Then, when the front door had swung open, the little group gathered in front of it and read on the placard, by flickering candlelight, the decree of the Government of Republican France.
It was the order for general mobilization.
The nation was already at war.
*CHAPTER XIII*
A pale streak of daybreak along the eastern hills, a blackbird piping, then that intense stillness which heralds the sun.
In mid-heaven the last star-drops melted, washed out in the grey silver of the sky; a light breeze sighed through the trees, and, sighing, died.
Then, above earth, a sudden misty glory of gold and rose; and through it, as through a veil, the sword-edge of the celestial scimitar curved up, glittering.
Thus dawned the year of war on Sais.
But the awakening world of summer did not seem to comprehend; the yellow-haired lad who drove his cows to pasture halted to read the placard on the door of the inn, then, whistling his dog to heel, ran forward after his slowly moving herd.
The miller of Sais drove by on his way to the mill, drew rein to read the placard, looked up at the bullet-shattered window above, then jogged on, his furrowed features unaltered, his aged eyes fixed on his horse's ears.
One or two washerwomen on the way to the meadow pool stood gracefully regarding the poster, flat baskets of clothes balanced on their heads; then moved on through the golden sunrise, still graceful, unhurried, exchanging leisurely comments on life and death as they walked.
In the kitchen of the Golden Peach, Magda was astir, and presently Linette appeared, very sleepy. As they went about the routine business to which they had been bred, they too exchanged tranquil views concerning emperors and kings and the mortality of all flesh. Also they took counsel together regarding the return of Madame Arlon, the ultimate necessity of summoning a glazier from Ausone, the damage done in the garden by the ladder.
The door of Philippa's bedroom remained closed; Warner's door also. But Halkett, his hands in his pockets, was out at sunrise, pacing the road in front of the inn, sometimes looking up at the shot-riddled windows, or at the placard on the front door, or along the road at the telephone wires which appeared to be intact as far as he could see.
But somewhere they had been cut, and communication still remained interrupted.
Deeply worried over the non-appearance of Gray, the cutting of the telephone wires now became a matter of serious concern to him. He scarcely knew how to act in his sudden isolation, and, though his instructions held him at Sais until further orders, the decree for general mobilization would have started him off for Paris except for one thing. That was the continued absence of Gray and the possibility that something alarming had happened to him.
He could not take his envelope and start for England until he had met Gray or some authorized messenger from Gray. He had not explained this to Warner.
But the truth was that what plans he carried were useless without the interlocking plans carried by Gray. All the eggs had not been trusted to a single basket. And, vice versa, the information carried by Gray was of no practical account until supplemented by the contents of the long, thin envelope.
