The Firefly Of France

M >> Marion Polk Angellotti >> The Firefly Of France


Here, if ever, was the time for the questions I had planned last
evening. But I didn't ask them; I knew I should never ask them. In those
few long unforgetable moments when I stood in the gallery and wondered
whether she were living, my point of view had altered. I was through
with suspecting her; I was prepared to laugh at evidence, however
damning. As for the men in the gray car and their detailed accusations,
I didn't give--well, a loud outcry in the infernal regions for them. I
knew the standards of the land they served, and I had seen their work
this morning. If they were French officers, I would do France a service
by going after them with a gun.

The girl had sunk down on the ancient bench beside me. Her eyes, wide
and distressed, yet resolute, went to my heart. Not a figure, I thought
again, for this atmosphere of intrigue and secrecy and danger. Rather a
girl, beautiful, brilliant, spirited, to be shielded from every jostle
of existence; the sort of girl whom men hold it a test of manhood to
protect from even the most passing discomfiture!

But time was moving apace. We must settle on something in short order. I
spoke in the most matter-of-fact tones that I could summon, not, heaven
knows, out of a feeling of levity concerning what had happened, but to
try to lighten the grim business a degree or so and keep us sane.

"I think, Miss Falconer," I began, standing before her, "that we
have got to thrash this matter out at last. You think I've behaved
unspeakably, trailing you everywhere, and I don't deny I have, according
to your point of view. But the fact is, I didn't follow you to annoy
you; I'm a half-way decent fellow. You have simply got to trust me until
I've seen you through this tangle. After that, if you like you need
never look at me again."

Her troubled eyes rested on me, half bewildered.

"Why, I'd forgotten all that," she murmured. "I do trust you, Mr. Bayne.
Of course I must have misunderstood you to some way last evening, and
I'm afraid I was disagreeable."

"Naturally. You had to be. Now, if that's all right and I'm forgiven,
may I ask a question? About those men who arrived last night and
apparently killed your chauffeur--can you guess who they are?"

"Yes," she faltered, looking down at the pebbled walk. "They must have
been sent by the Government or the army or the police. If the French
knew what I was doing, they wouldn't understand my motives. I've been
afraid from the first that they would learn."

Another of my precious theories was going up in smoke. Not seeing why a
set of bonafide officers should gratuitously murder a chauffeur, I had
been wondering whether the quartet might not be impostors, tricked out
in uniforms to which they had no claim. Still, of course, I couldn't
judge. If she would only confide in me! I was fairly aching to help her;
yet how could I, in this blindfold way?

"I don't wish to be impertinent," I ventured at length, meekly, "and I
give you my word I'm not trying to find out anything you don't want
me to. Only, assuming I've got some sense,--in case you care to be so
amiable,--I'd like to put it at your service. Do you think you could
give me just a vague outline of your plans?"

She looked at me in a piteous, uncertain manner. I braced myself for
a "No." Then, suddenly, she seemed to decide to trust me--in sheer
desperate loneliness, I dare say.

"I am going," she whispered, "to a village in the war zone--where there
is a chateau. There are things in it--some papers; at least I believe
there are. It is just a chance, just a forlorn hope; but it means
all the world to certain people. I have to act in secret till I have
succeeded, and then every one in France, every one on earth may know all
that I have done!"

If I had not burned my bridges, this announcement might have worried me;
it was too vague, and what little I grasped tallied startlingly with Van
Blarcom's rigmarole. However, having bowed allegiance, I didn't blink an
eyelid.

"Yes," I said encouragingly. "Is it very far?"

Her eyes went past me anxiously, watching the inn and its blank windows,
as she fumbled in her coat and brought forth a motor map.

"Take it," she breathed, thrusting it toward me. "Look at it. Do you
see? The route in red!"

As I realized the astounding thing I choked down an exclamation. There,
beneath my finger, lay the village of Bleau, a tiny dot; and from it,
straight into the war zone, the traced line ran through Le Moreau and
Croix-le-Valois and St. Remilly; ran to--what was the name? I spelled it
out: P-r-e-z-e-l-a-y.

Though it was early in the game to be a wet blanket, I found myself
gasping.

"But," I protested weakly, "you can't do that! It's in the war
country; it's forbidden territory. One has to have safe-conducts,
_laissez-passers_, all sorts of documents to get into that part of
France."

"I didn't come unprepared," she answered stubbornly. "Before I started
I knew just what I should need. I can get as far as the hospital at
Carrefonds; and Carrefonds is beyond Prezelay, ten miles nearer to the
Front!"

"But--" The monosyllable was distinctly tactless.

She straightened, challenging me with brave, defiant eyes.

"I know," she flashed. "You mean it looks suspicious. Well, it does;
and if I told you everything, it would look more suspicious still. You
shouldn't have followed me; when they learn that we both spent the night
here they will think you are my--my accomplice. The best advice I can
give you, Mr. Bayne, is to go away."

"Perhaps we had better," I agreed stolidly. I had deserved the outburst.
"Shall we be off at once, before the servants come downstairs?"

She drew back, her eyes widening.

"We?" she repeated.

"Naturally!" I replied, with some temper. "I _must_ have disgusted
you last night. What sort of a miserable, spineless, cowardly, caddish
travesty of a man do you take me for, to think I would let you go
alone?"

"Please don't joke," she urged. "It simply isn't possible. You would get
into trouble with the French Government, and--"

"Do you know," I grinned, "it is rather exhilarating to snap one's
fingers at governments? Just see what success I made of it with Great
Britain and Italy, on the ship!"

"You don't realize what you are laughing at," she pleaded. "It is
dangerous."

"I won't disgrace you. I seldom tremble visibly, Miss Falconer, though I
often shake inside."

Her great gray eyes were glowing mistily.

"Mr. Bayne, this is splendid of you. I--I shall go on more bravely
because you have been so kind. But I won't let you make such a sacrifice
or mix in a thing that others may think disloyal, treacherous. You know
how it looks. Why, on the steamer and on the way up to France and even
last evening--you see I've guessed now why you followed me--you didn't
trust me yourself."

"I know it," I confessed humbly. "I can't believe I was such an idiot.
Somebody ought to perform a surgical operation on my brain. I apologize;
I'm down in the dust; I feel like groveling. Won't you forgive me? I
promise you won't have to do it twice."

This time it was she who said: "But--" and paused uncertainly. I could
see she was wavering, and I massed my horse, foot, and dragoons for the
attack.

"You'll please consider me," I proclaimed firmly, "to be a tyrant. I
am so much bigger than you are that you can't possibly drive me off. I
don't mean to interfere or to ask questions, or to bother you. But I vow
I'm coming with you if I cling to the running-board!"

Her lashes fluttered as she racked her brains for new protests.

"The car is a French make," she urged,--"which you couldn't drive--"

"I can drive any car with four wheels!" I exclaimed vaingloriously.
"It's kismet, Miss Falconer; it's the hand of Providence, no less. Now,
we'll leave these notes in the _salle a manger_ to pay for our lodging,
which would have been dear at twopence, and be off, if you please, for
Prezelay."

She had yielded. We were standing side by side in the silence of the
morning, the dimness fading round us, the air taking a golden tinge.
My surroundings were plebeian; my costume was comic; yet I felt oddly
uplifted.

"Jolly old garden, isn't it?" said I.



CHAPTER XVIII

IN THE HIGH GEAR

To pass straight from a humdrum, comfortable, conventionally ordered
life into a career of insane adventure is a step that is radical; but it
can be exhilarating, and I proved the fact that day. To dwell on present
danger was to forget the past hour in the garage, which I had to forget
or begin gibbering. Once committed to the adventure and away from the
scene of the murder, I found a positive relief in facing the madness of
the affair.

While the girl sat silent and listless, blotted against the cushions,
rousing from her thoughts only to indicate the turns of the road, I had
time for cogitation; and I began to feel like a man who has drunk freely
of champagne. Hitherto I had been a law-abiding citizen. Now I had
kicked over the traces. Like the distinguished fraternity that includes
Raffles and Arsene Lupin, I should be "wanted" by the police, those
good-natured, deferential beings so given to saluting and grinning,
with whom, save for occasional episodes not unconnected with the speed
laws,--Dunny says libelously that my progress in an automobile resembles
a fabulous monster with a flying car for the head, a cloud of smoke and
gasoline for the body, and a cohort of incensed motor-cycle men for the
tail,--I had lived on the most cordial terms.

I was not certain whether they would accuse me of murder or espionage.
There were pegs enough, undeniably, on which to hang either charge.
Myself, I rather inclined to the latter; the case was so clear, so
detailed! My rush from Paris to Bleau,--in order, no doubt, that I
might at an unostentatious spot join forces with my confederate, Miss
Falconer, whom I had been meeting at intervals ever since we left New
York in company,--my behavior there, and the fashion in which we were
vanishing should suffice to doom me as a spy.

When the French began tracing my movements, when they joined my present
activities to the fact that only by the skin of my teeth had I escaped a
charge of bringing German papers into Italy, there would be the devil
to pay. I acknowledged it; then--really, this brand-new, unfounded,
cast-iron trust of mine in Miss Falconer was changing me beyond
recognition--I recalled the old recipe for the preparation of Welsh
rabbit, and light-heartedly challenged the authorities to "catch me
first." I had a disguise; if I bore any superior earmarks my leather
coat obliterated them; and I could drive; even Dario Resta could not
have sniffed at my technic. Better still, my French, learned even before
my English, would not betray me. As nurse and as _mecanicien_, we stood
a fair chance in our masquerade.

I might have to pay my shot, but I was enjoying it. This was a good
world through which we were speeding; life was in the high gear to-day.
The car purred beneath us like a splendid, harnessed tiger; the spring
air was fresh and fragrant, the country charming, with here a forest,
there a valley, farther off the tiled, colored roofs of some little
town. Our road, like a white ribbon, wound itself out endlessly between
stone walls or brown fields. In my content I forgot food and such
prosaic details till I noticed that the girl looked pale.

"I say," I exclaimed remorsefully: "we've been omitting rolls and
coffee! I'm going to get you some at the first town we pass."

"We are coming to a town now, to Le Moreau." She was looking anxious.

"Yes? I'm afraid I don't place it exactly. Ought I to?"

"It is the first town in the war zone. And--and our road passes through
it."

"Oh!" I was enlightened. "Then they will probably ask to see our papers
at the _octroi_?"

"Yes."

The car was eating up the smooth white road; I could see the little
_octroi_ building at the town boundary-line, and a group of gendarmes in
readiness close by. It was a critical moment. Miss Falconer, I
recalled, had said she could get through to Carrefonds; but glittering
generalities were not likely to convince these sentries; one needed
safe-conducts, passes, identity cards, and such concrete aids. She
couldn't give a reasonable account of herself, I felt quite certain; and
even if she did, how was she to account for me?

As I brought the car to a standstill, my conscience clamored, and my
costume seemed to shriek incongruity from every seam. In this dilemma
I trusted to sheer blind luck--a rather thrilling business. As a
gray-headed sergeant stepped forward to welcome us, I looked him
unfalteringly in the eye, though I wondered if he would not say:

"Monsieur, kindly remove that childish travesty with which you are
trying to impose on justice. We know all about you. Your name is
Devereux Bayne. You are a German agent and intriguer; you have smuggled
papers; you have murdered a man and concealed his body. Unless you can
give a satisfactory explanation of all your actions since leaving New
York, your last hour has arrived!"

What he really said was:

"Mademoiselle's papers?" He spoke quite amiably, a catlike pretense, no
doubt.

Miss Falconer was no longer looking anxious. Her hands were steady; she
was even smiling as she produced two neat little packets that, on being
unfolded, proved to have all the air of permits, _laissez-passers_, and
police cards. Two nondescript photographs, which might have represented
almost any one, adorned them, and of these our sergeant made a
perfunctory survey.

"Mademoiselle's name," he recited in a high singsong, "is Marie Le
Clair. She is a nurse, on her way to the hospital at Carrefonds. And
this is Jacques Carton, who is her chauffeur?"

A singularly stupid person, on the whole, he must have thought me,
hardly fit to be trusted with so superb a car. My mouth, I fancy, was
wide open; I can't swear that I wasn't pop-eyed. This last development
had complete addled me. Marie Le Clair! Jacques Carton! Who were they?

"I wish," I remarked into the air as we drove on, "that some one would
pinch me--hard."

She smiled faintly. Now it was over, she looked a little tremulous.

"Oh, no," she answered, "we were not dreaming. Poor Georges! I wish we
were!"

Such was the incredible beginning of our adventure. And as it began,
so it continued. We breakfasted at Le Moreau. Miss Falconer ate in the
dining-room of the small hotel; I sought the kitchen and, warmed by our
late success, I did not shrink from playing my role. Then we resumed our
journey, and though we showed our papers twenty times at least as the
control grew stricter, they were never challenged. I rubbed my eyes
sometimes. Surely I should wake up presently! We couldn't be here in
the forbidden region, in the war zone, plunging deeper every instant, in
peril of our lives.

Yet the proof was thick about us. In the towns we passed we saw troops
alight from the trains and enter them; we saw farewells and reunions,
the latter sometimes tearful, but the former invariably brave. We saw
_depots_ where trucks and ambulances and commissary carts were filled,
and canteens and soup kitchens where soldiers were being fed. At
Croix-le-Valois we saw the air turn black with the smoke of the munition
factories that were working day and night. At St. Remilly above the
towers of the old chateau we saw the Red Cross flying, and on the
terraces the reclining figures of wounded men. It seemed impossible that
sight-seers and pleasure-seekers had thronged along this road so lately.
The signs of the Touring Club of France, posted at intervals, were
survivals of an era that was now utterly gone.

With the coming of afternoon, the country grew still more beautiful.
Orchards were thick about us, though the trees were leafless now. The
little thatched cottages had odd fungi sprouting from their roofs like
rosy mushrooms; the trees and streams had a silvery shimmer, like a
Corot fairy-land.

Then, set like sign-posts of desolation in this loveliness, came the
ravaged villages. We were on the soil where in the first month of the
war the Germans had trod as conquerors, and where, step by step, the
French had driven them back. We passed Cormizy, burnt to the ground
to celebrate its taking; Le Remy, where the heroic mayor had died,
transfixed by twenty bayonets; Bar-Villers, a group of ruined houses
about a mourning, shattered church. It was the region where the Hun
triumph had spoken aloud, unbridled. Miss Falconer sat white and silent
as we drove through it; my hands tightened on the wheel.

We had lunched at Tolbiac, late and abominably. Then, leaving the
highway, we had taken a country road. Two punctures befell us; once
our carburetor betrayed the trust we placed in it. By the time these
deficiencies were remedied I had collected dust and grease enough to
look my part.

It had been, by and large, a singularly speechless day, which my
spasmodic efforts at entertainment had failed to cheer. The girl tried
to respond, but her eyes were strained, eager, shadowed; her answers
came at random. My talk, I suppose, teased her ears like the troublesome
buzzing of a fly.

"She is thinking," I decided at last, "about those papers. Lord, if she
doesn't find them she is going to take it hard!"

I left her in peace after that and drove the faster. Luck was with us!
At the end of our journey everything would be all right.

As evening settled down on us the road grew increasingly lonely. Woods
of oak-trees were about us, their trunks mossy, their branches lacing;
on our left was a narrow river thick with rushes and smooth green
stones. So rutty was the earth that our wheels sank into it and our
engine labored. There was a charming sylvan look about the scenery; we
seemed to be alone in the universe: I could not recall when we had last
seen a peasant or passed a hut.

Suddenly I realized that there was a sound in the distance, not
continuous, but steadily recurrent, a faint booming, I thought.

"What's that noise off yonder?" I asked, with one ear cocked toward the
east.

Miss Falconer roused herself.

"It is the cannonading," she answered. "We have come a long way, Mr.
Bayne. In two hours--in less than that--we could drive to the Front. And
see!"

The dark was coming fast; a crimson sunset was reddening the river. A
little below us on the opposite bank, I saw what had been a village once
upon a time. But some agency of destruction had done its work there;
blackened spaces and heaped stones and the shells of dwellings rose tier
on tier among trees that seemed trying to hide them; only on the crest
of the bank, overlooking the wreck like a gloomy sentinel, one building
loomed intact, a dark, scarred, frowning castle with medieval walls and
towers. I stared at the scene of desolation.

"The Germans again!" I said.

"Yes," the girl assented, gazing across the water. "They came here at
the beginning of the war. They burned the houses and the huts and the
little church with the image of the Virgin and the tomb of the old
constable--all Prezelay except the chateau; and they only left that
standing to give their officers a home."

With an automatic action of feet and fingers, I stopped the car. Here
was the town that she had shown me on the map that morning when we sat
like a pair of whispering conspirators in the garden of the Three Kings.
The obstacles which had seemed so great had melted away before us. This
ruined village, this heap of stones cross the river, was our goal, the
key to our mystery, the last scene of our drama--Prezelay.



CHAPTER XIX

THE CASTLE AT PREZELAY

In the midst of my triumph, which was as intense as if I myself, instead
of pure luck, had engineered our journey, I became aware of a tiny qualm
as I sat gazing across the stream. Perhaps the gathering night affected
me, or the air, which was growing chilly, or the remnants of the
village, which were cheerless, to say the least. But that castle,
perched so darkly on its crag, with a strip of blood-red sky framing it,
was at the heart of my feeling. If it had been a nice, worldly-looking,
well-kept chateau, with poplared walks and a formal garden, I should
have welcomed it with open arms; but it wasn't, decidedly! It was the
threatening age-blackened sort of place that inevitably suggests Fulc of
Anjou, strongholds on the Loire, marauding barons, and the good old days
with their concomitants of rapine and robbery and death.

It was picturesque, but it was intensely gloomy; the proper spot for a
catastrophe rather than a happy denouement. I was not impressionable,
of course; but now that I thought of it, our jaunt had been going with
a smoothness almost ominous. Could one expect such clock-like regularity
to run forever without a break?

Take the utter disappearance of the gray car, for instance. That had
seemed to me reassuring; but was it? Those four men had cared enough
about Miss Falconer's movements to involve themselves in a murder. Why,
then, should they have given up the chase in so mysterious a way?

And the girl herself! When I looked at her I felt horribly worried. She
was shivering through her furs; yet it was not with the cold, I felt
quite sure. With her hands clasped, she sat staring at that confounded
castle with a look of actual hunger. She cared too much about this
thing; she couldn't stand a great deal more.

Well, she wouldn't have to, I concluded, my brief misgivings fading. We
were out of the woods; another hour would see the business closed. As
for the men in the car, they were victims of their guilty consciences,
were no doubt in full flight or hiding somewhere in terror of the law.

At any rate, there was no point in my sitting here like a graven image;
so I roused myself and wrapped the rugs closer about the girl.

"I'm to drive to the chateau?" I inquired with recovered cheerfulness. I
had to repeat the words before they broke her trance.

"Yes," she answered. Suddenly, impulsively, she turned toward me,
her face almost feverish, her eyes astonishingly large and bright. "I
haven't told you much," she acknowledged tremulously; "but you won't
think that I don't trust you. It is only that I couldn't talk of it and
keep my courage; and I must keep it a little longer--until we know the
truth."

"That's quite all right, Miss Falconer." I was switching on the lamps.
Then I extinguished them; their clear acetylene glare seemed almost
weirdly out of place. "We can muddle along without any lights. Not
much traffic here," I muttered. I had a feeling, anyhow, that
unostentatiousness of approach might not be bad.

There was intense silence about us; not even a breeze was stirring. A
thin crescent moon was out, silvering the river and the trees. The road
was atrocious; on one dark stretch the car, rocking into a rut, jolted
us viciously and brought my teeth together on the tip of my tongue.

"Sorry," I gasped, between humiliation and pain.

With the silence and the dimness, we were like ghosts, the car like a
phantom. An old stone bridge seemed to beckon us, and we crossed to the
other side. There, at Miss Falconer's gesture, I drew the automobile
off the road at the edge of the town, halted it beneath some trees, and
helped her to alight. We started up the hill together without a word.

Two ghosts! More and more, as we climbed through the wreck and
desolation, that was what we seemed. The road was choked with stones
between which the grass was sprouting; there was nothing left of the
little church save a single pointed shaft. We climbed rapidly, the girl
always gazing up at the castle with that same feverish eagerness. She
had forgotten, I think, that I was there.

At last we were coming to the hilltop and the chateau. Rather
breathless, I studied its looming walls, its turrets, its three round
towers. It looked dark and inexplicably menacing, but I had recovered my
form and could defy it. When we halted at a great iron-studded oak gate
and Miss Falconer pulled the bell-rope, I was astonished. It had not
occurred to me that the castle would be more inhabited than the town.

Nor was it, apparently; for no one answered its summons, though I could
hear the bell jingling faintly somewhere within. Miss Falconer rang a
second time, then a third; her face shone white in the moonlight; she
was growing anxious.

"Did you think," I ventured finally, "that there was some one here?"

"Yes; Marie-Jeanne," she answered, listening intently. Then she roused
herself. "I mean the _gardienne_. She never left, not even when the
Germans came. They made her cook for them; she said she had been born in
the keeper's lodge, and her grandfather before her, and that she would
rather die at Prezelay than go to any other place. But of course she
may have walked down the river for the evening. Her son's wife is at
Santierre, two miles off. She may be there."

"That's it," I agreed hastily, the more hastily because I doubted.
"She's sitting over a fire, toasting her toes, and gossiping and having
a cup of tea, or whatever people like that use for an equivalent in
these parts." I suppressed the unwelcome thought that a woman living
here alone ran a first-rate chance of getting her throat cut by
strolling vagrants. "Shall we have to wait until she comes back?" I
asked. "Then let's sit down. I choose this stone!"