Books: In Secret

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Without time for thought or hesitation, McKay ran out toward them
across the deep, wet moss. One of them heard him too late and
McKay's impact hurled him into the gulf. Then McKay turned and
sprang on the other, and for a minute it was a fight of tigers there
on the cable platform until the battered visage of the Boche split
with a scream and a crashing blow from McKay's pistol-butt drove him
over the platform's splintered edge.

And now, panting, bloody, dishevelled, he strained his ears,
listening for a shot from the hog-back. The woods were very silent
in their new bath of sunshine. A little Alpine bird was singing; no
other sound broke the silence save the mellow, dripping noise from a
million rain-drenched leaves.

McKay cast a rapid, uneasy glance across the chasm. Then he went
into the cable hut.

There were six rifles there in a rack, six wooden bunks, and
clothing on pegs--not military uniforms but the garments of Swiss
mountaineers.

Like the three men across the hog-back, and the two whom he had so
swiftly slain, the Hun cable-patrol evidently fought shy of the
Boche uniform here on the edge of the Forbidden Forest.

Two of the cable-guard lay smashed to a pulp thousands of feet
below. Where was the remainder of the patrol? Were the men with the
shotguns part of it?

McKay stood alone in the silent hut, still breathless from his
struggle, striving to think what was now best to do.

And, as he stood there, through the front window of the hut he saw
an aviator and another man come down from the crest of Thusis to the
chasm's edge, jump into the car which swung under the cable, and
begin to pull themselves across toward the hut where he was
standing.

The hut screened his retreat to the wood's edge. From there he saw
the aviator and his companion land on the platform; heard them
shouting for the dead who never would answer from their Alpine
deeps; saw the airman at last go away toward the plateau where he
had left his machine; heard the clanking of machinery in the hut;
saw the steel cable begin to sag into the canyon; AND REALISED THAT
THE AVIATOR WAS GOING BACK OVER FRANCE TO THE BOCHE TRENCHES FROM
WHENCE HE HAD ARRIVED.

In a flash it came to McKay what he should try to do--what he MUST
do for his country, for the life of the young girl, his comrade, for
his own life: The watchers at the hog-back must never signal to that
airman news of his presence in the Forbidden Forest!

The clanking of the cog-wheels made his steps inaudible to the man
who was manipulating the machinery in the hut as he entered and shot
him dead. It was rather sickening, for the fellow pitched forward
into the machinery and one arm became entangled there.

But McKay, white of cheek and lip and fighting off a deathly nausea,
checked the machinery and kicked the carrion clear. Then he set the
drum and threw on the lever which reversed the cog-wheels. Slowly
the sagging cable began to tighten up once more.

He had been standing there for half an hour or more in an agony of
suspense, listening for any shot from the forest behind him,
straining eyes and ears for any sign of the airplane.

And suddenly he heard it coming--a resonant rumour through the
canyon, nearer, louder, swelling to a roar as the monoplane dashed
into view and struck the cable with a terrific crash.

For a second, like a giant wasp suddenly entangled in a spider's
strand, it whirled around the cable with a deafening roar of
propellers; then a sheet of fire enveloped it; both wings broke off
and fell; other fragments dropped blazing; and then the thing itself
let go and shot headlong into awful depths!

Above it the taut cable vibrated and sang weirdly in the silence of
the chasm.

The girl was still lying flat under the walnut-tree when McKay came
back.

Without speaking he knelt, levelled his pistol and fired across at
the man beyond the hog-back.

Instantly her pistol flashed, too; one of the men fell and tried to
get up in a blind sort of way, and his comrades caught him by the
arms and dragged him back behind the ledge.

"All right!" shouted one of the men from his cover, "we've plently
of time to deal with you Yankee swine! Stay there and rot!"

"That was Skelton's voice," whispered Miss Erith with an involuntary
shudder.

"They'll never attempt that hog-back under our pistols now," said
McKay coolly. "Come, Yellow-hair; we're going forward."

"How?" she asked, bewildered.

"By cable, little comrade," he said, with a shaky gaiety that
betrayed the tension of his nerves. "So pack up and route-step once
more!"

He turned and looked at her and his face twitched:

"You wonderful girl," he said, "you beautiful, wonderful girl! We'll
live to fly our pigeons yet, Yellow-hair, under the very snout of
the whole Hun empire!"

CHAPTER VIII

THE LATE SIR W. BLINT

That two spies, a man and a woman, had penetrated the forest of Les
Errues was known in Berlin on the 13th. Within an hour the entire
machinery of the German Empire had been set in motion to entrap and
annihilate these two people.

The formula distributed to all operators in the Intelligence
Department throughout Hundom, and wherever Boche spies had filtered
into civilised lands, was this:

"Two enemy secret agents have succeeded in penetrating the forest of
Les Errues. One is a man, the other a woman.

"Both are Americans. The man is that civilian prisoner, Kay McKay,
who escaped from Holzminden, and of whom an exact description is
available.

"The woman is Evelyn Erith. Exact information concerning her is also
available.

"The situation is one of extremest delicacy and peril. Exposure of
the secret understanding with a certain neutral Power which permits
us certain temporary rights within an integral portion of its
territory would be disastrous, and would undoubtedly result in an
immediate invasion of this neutral (sic) country by the enemy as
well as by our own forces.

"This must not happen. Yet it is vitally imperative that these two
enemy agents should be discovered, seized, and destroyed.

"Their presence in the forest of Les Errues is the most serious
menace to the Fatherland that has yet confronted it.

"Upon the apprehension and destruction of these two spies depends
the safety of Germany and her allies.

"The war can not be won, a victorious German peace can not be
imposed upon our enemies, unless these two enemy agents are found
and their bodies absolutely destroyed upon the spot along with every
particle of personal property discovered upon their persons.

"More than that: the war will be lost, and with it the Fatherland,
unless these two spies are seized and destroyed.

"The Great Secret of Germany is in danger.

"To possess themselves of it--for already they suspect its
nature--and to expose it not only to the United States Government
but to the entire world, is the mission of these two enemy agents.

"If they succeed it would mean the end of the German Empire.

"If our understanding with a certain neutral Power be made public,
that also would spell disaster for Germany.

"The situation hangs by a hair, the fate of the world is suspended
above the forest of Les Errues."

On the 14th the process of infiltration began. But the Hun invasion
of Les Errues was not to be conducted in force, there must be no
commotion there, no stirring, no sound, only a silent, stealthy,
death-hunt in that shadowy forest--a methodical, patient, thorough
preparation to do murder; a swift, noiseless execution.

Also, on the 14th, the northern sky beyond the Swiss wire swarmed
with Hun airplanes patrolling the border.

Not that the Great Secret could be discovered from the air; that
danger had been foreseen fifty years ago, and half a century's
camouflage screened the results of steady, calculating relentless
diligence.

But French or British planes might learn of the presence of these
enemy agents in the dark forest of Les Errues, and might hang like
hawks above it exchanging signals with them.

Therefore the northern sky swarmed with Boche aircraft--cautiously
patrolling beyond the Swiss border, and only prepared to risk its
violation if Allied planes first set them an example.

But for a week nothing moved in the heavens above Les Errues except
an eagle. And that appeared every day, sheering the blue void above
the forest, hovering majestically in circles hour after hour and
then, at last, toward sundown, setting its sublime course westward,
straight into the blinding disk of the declining sun.

The Hun airmen patrolling the border noticed the eagle. After a
while, as no Allied plane appeared, time lagged with the Boche, and
he came to look for this lone eagle which arrived always at the same
hour in the sky above Les Errues, soared there hour after hour, then
departed, flapping slowly westward until lost in the flames of
sunset.

"As though," remarked one Boche pilot, "the bird were a phoenix
which at the close of every day renews its life from its own ashes
in the flames."

Another airman said: "It is not a Lammergeier, is it?"

"It is a Stein-Adler," said a third.

But after a silence a fourth airman spoke, seated before the hangar
and studying a wild flower, the petals of which he had been
examining with the peculiar interest of a nature-student:

"For ten days I have had nothing more important to watch than that
eagle which appears regularly every day above the forest of Les
Errues. And I have concluded that the bird is neither a Lammergeier
nor a Stein-Adler."

"Surely," said one young Hun, "it is a German eagle."

"It must be," laughed another, "because it is so methodical and
exact. Those are German traits."

The nature-student contemplated the wild blossom which he was now
idly twirling between his fingers by its stem.

"It perplexes me," he mused aloud.

The others looked at him; one said: "What perplexes you, Von
Dresslin?"

"That bird."

"The eagle?"

"The eagle which comes every day to circle above Les Errues. I, an
amateur of ornithology am, perhaps, with all modesty, permitted to
call myself?"

"Certainly," said several airmen at once.

Another added: "We all know you to be a naturalist."

"Pardon--a student only, gentlemen. Which is why, perhaps, I am both
interested and perplexed by this eagle we see every day."

"It is a rare species?"

"It is not a familiar one to the Alps."

"This bird, then, is not a German eagle in your opinion, Von
Dresslin?"

"What is it? Asiatic? African? Chinese?" asked another.

Von Dresslin's eyebrows became knitted.

"That eagle which we all see every day in the sky above Les Errues,"
he said slowly, "has a snow-white crest and tail."

Several airmen nodded; one said: "I have noticed that, too, watching
the bird through my binoculars."

"I know," continued Von Dresslin slowly, "of only one species of
eagle which resembles the bird we all see every day... It inhabits
North America," he added thoughtfully.

There was a silence, then a very young airman inquired whether Von
Dresslin knew of any authentic reports of an American eagle being
seen in Europe.

"Authentic? That is somewhat difficult to answer," replied Von
Dresslin, with the true caution of a real naturalist. "But I venture
to tell you that, once before--nearly a year ago now--I saw an eagle
in this same region which had a white crest and tail and was
otherwise a shining bronze in colour."

"Where did you see such a bird?"

"High in the air over Mount Terrible." A deep and significant
silence fell over the little company. If Count von Dresslin had seen
such an eagle over the Swiss peak called Mount Terrible, and had
been near enough to notice the bird's colour, every man there knew
what had been the occasion.

For only once had that particular region of Switzerland been
violated by their aircraft during the war. It had happened a year
ago when Von Dresslin, patrolling the north Swiss border, had
discovered a British flyer planing low over Swiss territory in the
air-region between Mount Terrible and the forest of Les Errues.

Instantly the Hun, too, crossed the line: and the air-battle was
joined above the forest.

Higher, higher, ever higher mounted the two fighting planes until
the earth had fallen away two miles below them.

Then, out of the icy void of the upper air-space, now roaring with
their engines' clamour, the British plane shot earthward, down,
down, rushing to destruction like a shooting-star, and crashed in
the forest of Les Errues.

And where it had been, there in mid-air, hung an eagle with a crest
as white as the snow on the shining peaks below.

"He seemed suddenly to be there instead of the British plane," said
Von Dresslin. "I saw him distinctly--might have shot him with my
pistol as he sheered by me, his yellow eyes aflame, balanced on
broad wings. So near he swept that his bright fierce eyes flashed
level with mine, and for an instant I thought he meant to attack me.

"But he swept past in a single magnificent curve, screaming, then
banked swiftly and plunged straight downward in the very path of the
British plane."

Nobody spoke. Von Dresslin twirled his flower and looked at it in an
absent-minded way.

"From that glimpse, a year ago, I believe I had seen a species of
eagle the proper habitat of which is North America," he said.

An airman remarked grimly: "The Yankees are migrating to Europe.
Perhaps their eagles are coming too."

"To pick our bones," added another.

And another man said laughingly to Von Dresslin:

"Fritz, did you see in that downfall of the British enemy, and the
dramatic appearance of a Yankee eagle in his place, anything
significant?"

"By gad," cried another airman, "we had John Bull by his fat throat,
and were choking him to death. And now--the Americans!"

"If I dared cross the border and shoot that Yankee eagle to-morrow,"
began another airman; but they all knew it wouldn't do.

One said: "Do you suppose, Von Dresslin, that the bird we see is the
one you saw a year ago?"

"It is possible."

"An American white-headed eagle?"

"I feel quite sure of it."

"Their national bird," said the same airman who had expressed a
desire to shoot it.

"How could an American eagle get here?" inquired another man.

"By way of Asia, probably."

"By gad! A long flight!"

Dresslin nodded: "An omen, perhaps, that we may also have to face
the Yankee on our Eastern front."

"The swine!" growled several.

Von Dresslin assented absently to the epithet. But his thoughts were
busy elsewhere, his mind preoccupied by a theory which, Hunlike, he,
for the last ten days, had been slowly, doggedly, methodically
developing.

It was this: Assuming that the bird really was an American eagle,
the problem presented itself very clearly--from where had it come?
This answered itself; it came from America, its habitat.

Which answer, of course, suggested a second problem; HOW did it
arrive?

Several theories presented themselves:

1st. The eagle might have reached Asia from Alaska and so made its
way westward as far as the Alps of Switzerland.

2nd. It may have escaped from some public European zoological
collection.

3rd. It may have been owned privately and, on account of the
scarcity of food in Europe, liberated by its owner.

4th. It MIGHT have been owned by the Englishman whose plane Von
Dresslin had destroyed.

And now Von Dresslin was patiently, diligently developing this
theory:

If it had been owned by the unknown Englishman whose plane had
crashed a year ago in Les Errues forest, then the bird was
undoubtedly his mascot, carried with him in his flights, doubtless a
tame eagle.

Probably when the plane fell the bird took wing, which accounted for
its sudden appearance in mid-air.

Probably, also, it had been taught to follow its master; and,
indeed, had followed in one superb plunge earthward in the wake of a
dead man in a stricken plane.

But--WAS this the same bird?

For argument, suppose it was. Then why did it still hang over Les
Errues? Affection for a dead master? Only a dog could possibly show
such devotion, such constancy. And besides, birds are incapable of
affection. They only know where to go for kind treatment and
security. And tamed birds, even those species domesticated for
centuries, know only one impulse that draws them toward any human
protector--the desire for food.

Could this eagle remember for a whole year that the man who lay dead
somewhere in the dusky wilderness of Les Errues had once been kind
to him and had fed him? And was that why the great bird still
haunted the air-heights above the forest? Possibly.

Or was it not more logical to believe that here, suddenly cast upon
its own resources, and compelled to employ instincts hitherto
uncultivated or forgotten, to satisfy its hunger, this solitary
American eagle had found the hunting good? Probably. And, knowing no
other region, had remained there, and for the first time, or at
least after a long interval of captivity and dependence on man, it
had discovered what liberty was and with liberty the necessity to
struggle for existence.

An airman, watching Dresslin's thoughtful features, said:

"You never found out who that Englishman was, did you?

"No."

"Did our agents search Les Errues?"

"I suppose so. But I have never heard anything further about that
affair," he shrugged; "and I don't believe we ever will until after
the war, and until--"

"Until Switzerland belongs to us," said an airman with a light
laugh.

Others, listening, looked at one another significantly, smiling the
patient, confident and brooding smile of the Hun.

Knaus unwittingly wrote his character and his epitaph:

"Ich kann warten."

The forest of Les Errues was deathly still. Hunters and hunted both
were as silent as the wild things that belonged there in those dim
woods--as cautious, as stealthy.

A dim greenish twilight veiled their movements, the damp carpet of
moss dulled sounds.

Yet the hunted knew that they were hunted, realised that pursuit and
search were inevitable; and the hunters, no doubt, guessed that
their quarry was alert.

Now on the tenth day since their entrance into Les Errues those two
Americans who were being hunted came to a little wooded valley
through which a swift stream dashed amid rock and fern, flinging
spray over every green leaf that bordered it, filling its clear
pools with necklaces of floating bubbles.

McKay slipped his pack from his shoulders and set it against a tree.
One of the two carrier pigeons in their cage woke up and ruffled.
Looking closely at the other he discovered it was dead. His heart
sank, but he laid the stiff, dead bird behind a tree and said
nothing to his companion.

Evelyn Erith now let go of her own pack and, flinging herself on the
moss, set her lips to the surface of a brimming pool.

"Careful of this Alpine water!" McKay warned her. But the girl
satisfied her thirst before she rose to her knees and looked around
at him.

"Are you tired, Yellow-hair?" he asked.

"Yes.... Are you, Kay?"

He shook his head and cast a glance around him.

It was beautiful, this little woodland vale with its stream dashing
through and its slopes forested with beech and birch--splendid great
trees with foliage golden green in the sun.

But it was not the beauty of the scene that preoccupied these two.
Always, when ready to halt, their choice of any resting-place
depended upon several things more important than beauty.

For one matter the place must afford concealment, and also a water
supply. Moreover it must be situated so as to be capable of defence.
Also there must be an egress offering a secure line of retreat.

So McKay began to roam about the place, prowling along the slopes
and following the stream. Apparently the topography satisfied him;
for after a little while he came back to where Miss Erith was lying
on the moss, one arm resting across her eyes.

"You ARE tired," he said.

She removed her arm and looked up at him out of those wonderful
golden eyes.

"Is it all right for us to remain here, Kay?"

"Yes. You can see for yourself. Anybody coming into this valley must
be visible on that ridge to the south. And there's an exit. This
brook dashes through it--two vast granite gates that will let us
through into the outer forest, where they might as well hunt for two
pins as for us."

The girl smiled; her eyes closed. "I'm glad we can rest," she
murmured. So McKay went about his duties.

First he removed his pack and hers a hundred yards down stream,
through the granite gateway, and placed them just beyond.

Then he came back for Miss Erith. Scarcely awakened as he lifted
her, she placed one arm around his neck with the sleepy
unconsciousness of a tired child. They had long been on such terms;
there was no escaping them in the intimacy of their common isolation
and common danger.

He laid her on the moss, well screened by the granite barrier, and
beyond range of the brook's rainbow spray. She was already asleep
again.

He took off both her shoes, unwound the spiral puttees and gave her
bruised little feet a chance to breathe.

He made camp, tested the wind and found it safe to build a fire, set
water to simmer, and unpacked the tinned rations. Then he made the
two beds side by side, laying down blankets and smoothing away the
twigs underneath.

The surviving carrier pigeon was hungry. He fed it, lifted it still
banded from its place, cleaned the cage and set it to dry in a patch
of sunshine.

The four automatic pistols he loaded and laid on a shelf in the
granite barricade; set ammunition and flashlight beside them.

Then he went to his pack and got his papers and material, and
unrolled the map upon which he had been at work since he and Evelyn
Erith had entered the enemy's zone of operations.

From time to time as he worked, drawing or making notes, he glanced
at the sleeping girl beside him.

Never but once had the word "love" been mentioned between these two.

For a long while, now--almost from the very beginning--he had known
that he was in love with this girl; but, after that one day in the
garden, he also knew that there was scarcely the remotest chance
that he should live to tell her so again, or that she could survive
to hear him.

For when they had entered the enemy's zone below Mount Terrible they
both realised that there was almost no chance of their returning.

He had lighted his pipe; and now he sat working away at his
drawings, making a map of his route as best he could without
instruments, and noting with rapid pencil all matters of interest
for those upon whose orders he and this girl beside him had
penetrated the forbidden forest of Les Errues. This for the slim
chance of getting back alive. But he had long believed that, if his
pigeons failed him at the crisis, no report would ever be delivered
to those who sent him here, either concerning his discoveries or his
fate and the fate of the girl who lay asleep beside him.

An hour later she awoke. He was still bent over his map, and she
presently extended one arm and let her hand rest on his knee.

"Do you feel better, Yellow-hair?"

"Yes. Thank you for removing my shoes."

"I suppose you are hungry," he remarked.

"Yes. Are you?"

He smiled: "As usual. I wish to heaven I could run across a
roebuck." They both craved something to satisfy the hunger made keen
by the Alpine air, and which no concentrated rations could satisfy.
McKay seldom ventured to kill any game--merely an auerhahn, a hare
or two, a red squirrel--and sometimes he had caught trout in the
mountain brooks with his bare hands--the method called "tickling"
and only too familiar to Old-World poachers.

"Roebuck," she repeated trying not to speak wistfully.

He nodded: "One crossed the stream below. I saw the tracks in the
moss, which was still stirring where the foot had pressed."

"Dare you risk a shot in Les Errues, Kay?"

"I don't think I'd hesitate."

After a silence: "Why don't you rest? You must be dead tired," she
said. And he felt a slight pressure of her fingers drawing him.

So he laid aside his work, dropped upon his blanket, and turned on
his left side, looking at her.

"You have not yet seen any sign of the place from which you once
looked out across the frontier and saw thousands and thousands of
people as busy as a swarm of ants--have you, Kay?"

"I remember this stream and these woods. I can't seem to recollect
how far or in which direction I turned after passing this granite
gorge."

"Did you go far?"

"I can't recollect," he said. "I'd give my right arm if I could."
His worn and anxious visage touched her.

"Don't fret, Kay, dear," she said soothingly. "We'll find it. We'll
find out what the Hun is doing. We'll discover what this Great
Secret really is. And our pigeons shall tell it to the world."

And, as always, she smiled cheerfully, confidently. He had never
heard her whine, had never seen her falter save from sheer physical
weariness.

"We'll win through, Yellow-hair," he said, looking steadily into her
clear brown-gold eyes.

"Of course. You are so wonderful, Kay."

"That is the most wonderful thing in the world, Evelyn--to hear you
tell me such a thing!"

"Don't you know I think so?"

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