Books: In Secret

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She remembered the telephone, and the call to the hospital--and the
message. ... And the white night and bitter dawn. ... Love? No, not
as she supposed it to be; merely the solicitude and friendship of a
woman who once found something hurt by the war and who fought to
protect what was hers by right of discovery. That was not love. ...
Perhaps there may have been a touch of the maternal passion about
her feeling for this man. ... Nothing else--nothing more than that,
and the eternal indefinable charity for all boys which is inherent
in all womanhood--the consciousness of the enchantment that a boy
has for all women. ... Nothing more. ... Except that--perhaps she
had wondered whether he liked her--as much as she liked him.... Or
if, possibly, in his regard for her there were some slight depths
between shallows--a gratitude that is a trifle warmer than the
conventional virtue--

When at length she ventured to turn her head and look at him he
seemed to be asleep, lying there in the transformed shadow of the
lawn umbrella.

Something about the motionless relaxation of this man annoyed her.
"Kay?"

He turned his head squarely toward her, and 'o her exasperation she
blushed.

"Did I wake you? I'm sorry," she said coldly.

"You didn't. I was awake."

"Oh! I meant to say that I think I'll stroll out. Don't come if you
feel lazy."

He swung himself up to a sitting posture.

"I'm quite ready," he said. ... "You'll always find me ready,
Yellow-hair--always waiting."

"Waiting? For what?"

"For your commands."

"You very nice boy!" she said gaily, springing to her feet. Then,
the subtle demon of the sunlight prompting her: "You know, Kay, you
don't ever have to wait. Because I'm always ready to listen to any
pro--any suggestions--from you."

The man looked into the girl's eyes:

"You would care to hear what I might have to tell you?"

"I always care to hear what you say. Whatever you say interests me."

"Would it interest you to know I am--in love?"

"Yes. ... With wh--whom are--" But her breath failed her.

"With you. ... You knew it, Yellow-hair. ... Does it interest you to
know it?"

"Yes." But the exhilaration of the moment was interfering with her
breath again and she only stood there with the flushed and audacious
little smile stamped on her lips forcing her eyes to meet his
curious, troubled, intent gaze.

"You did know it?" he repeated.

"No."

"You suspected it."

"I wanted to know what you--thought about me, Kay."

"You know now."

"Yes ... but it doesn't seem real. ... And I haven't anything to say
to you. I'm sorry--"

"I understand, Yellow-hair."

"--Except-thank you. And-and I am interested. ... You're such a boy....
I like you so much, Kay.... And I AM interested in what you
said to me."

"That means a lot for you to say, doesn't it?"

"I don't know. ... It's partly what we have been through together, I
suppose; partly this lovely country, and the sun. Something is
enchanting me. ... And you are very nice to look at, Kay." His smile
was grave, a little detached and weary.

"I did not suppose you could ever really care for such a man as I
am," he remarked without the slightest bitterness or appeal in his
voice. "But I'm glad you let me tell you how it is with me. ... It
always was that way, Yellow-hair, from the first moment you came
into the hospital. I fell in love then."

"Oh, you couldn't have--"

"Nevertheless, and after all I said and did to the contrary. ... I
don't think any woman remains entirely displeased when a man tells
her he is in love with her. If he does love her he ought to tell
her, I think. It always means that much tribute to her power. ...
And none is indifferent to power, Yellow-hair."

"No. ... I am not indifferent. I like what you said to me. It seems
unreal, though--but enchanting--part of this day's enchantment. ...
Shall we start, Kay?"

"Certainly."

They went out together through the garden door into the open moor,
swinging along in rhythmic stride, side by side, smiling faintly as
dreamers smile when something imperceptible to the waking world
invades their vision.

Again the brown grouse whirred from the whinns; again the subtle
fragrance of the moor sweetened her throat with its clean aroma;
again the haunting complaint of the lapwings came across acres of
bog and furze; and, high in the afternoon sky, an invisible curlew
sadly and monotonously repeated its name through the vast blue vault
of space.

On the edge of evening with all the west ablaze they came out once
more on Isla Water and looked across the glimmering flood at the old
house in the hollow, every distant window-pane a-glitter.

Like that immemorial and dragon-guarded jewel of the East the sun,
cradled in flaky gold, hung a hand's breadth above the horizon, and
all the world had turned to a hazy plum-bloom tint threaded with
pale fire.

On Isla Water the yellow trout had not yet begun to jump; evening
still lingered beyond the world's curved ruin; but the wild duck
were coming in from the sea in twos and threes and sheering down
into distant reaches of Isla Water.

Then, into the divine stillness of the universe came the unspeakable
twang of a banjo; and a fat voice, slightly hoarse:

"Rocks on the mountain,
Fishes in the sea,
A red-headed girl
Raised hell with me.
She come from Chicago, R.F.D.
An' she ain't done a thing to a guy like me!"

The business was so grotesquely outrageous, so utterly and
disgustingly hopeless in its surprise and untimelines, that McKay's
sharp laugh rang out under the sky.

There they were, the same trespassers of the morning, squatted on
the heather at the base of Isla Craig--a vast heap of rocks--their
machine drawn up in the tall green brakes beside the road.

The flashy, fat man, Macniff, had the banjo. The girl sat between
him and the thin man, Skelton.

"Ah, there, old scout!" called out Macniff, flourishing one hand
toward McKay. "Lovely evening, ain't it? Won't you and the wife join
us?"

There was absolutely nothing to reply to such an invitation. Miss
Erith continued to gaze out steadily across Isla Water; McKay,
deeply sensitive to the ludicrous, smiled under the grotesque
provocation, his eyes mischievously fixed on Miss Erith. After a
long while: "They've spoiled it," she said lightly. "Shall we go on,
Kay? I can't endure that banjo."

They walked on, McKay grinning. The picnickers were getting up from
the crushed heather; Macniff with his banjo came toward them on his
incredibly thick legs, blocking their path.

"Say, sport," he began, "won't you and the lady join us?" But McKay
cut him short:

"Do you know you are impudent?" he said very quietly. "Step out of
the way there."

"The hell you say!" and McKay's patience ended at the same instant.
And something happened very quickly, for the man only staggered
under the smashing blow and the other man's arm flew up and his
pistol blazed in the gathering dusk, shattering the cairngorm on
McKay's shoulder. The young woman fired from where she sat on the
grass and the soft hat was jerked from Miss Erith's head. At the
same moment McKay clutched her arm and jerked her violently behind a
jutting elbow of Isla Rock. When she recovered her balance she saw
he held two pistols.

"Boche?" she gasped incredulously.

"Yes. Keep your head down. Crouch among the ferns behind me!"

There was a ruddy streak of fire from the pistol in his right hand;
shots answered, the bullets smacking the rock or whining above it.

"Yellow-hair?"

"Yes, Kay."

"You are not scared, are you?"

"Yes; but I'm all right."

He said with quiet bitterness: "It's too late to say what a fool I
am. Their camouflage took me in; that's all--"

He fired again; a rattling volley came storming among the rocks.

"We're all right here," he said tersely. But in his heart he was
terrified, for he had only the cartridges in his clips.

Presently he motioned her to bend over very low. Then, taking her
hand, he guided her along an ascending gulley, knee-deep in fern and
brake and brier, to a sort of little rocky pulpit.

The lake lay behind them, lapping the pulpit's base. There was a man
in a boat out there. McKay fired at him and he plied both oars and
fled out of range.

"Lie down," he whispered to Miss Erith. The girl mutely obeyed.

Now, crouched up there in the deepening dusk, his pistol extended,
resting on the rock in front of him, his keen eyes searched
restlessly; his ears were strained for the minutest stirring on the
moor in front of him; and his embittered mind was at work
alternately cursing his own stupidity and searching for some chance
for this young girl whom his own incredible carelessness had
probably done to death.

Presently, between him and Isla Water, a shadow moved. He fired; and
around them the darkness spat flame from a dozen different angles.

"Damnation!" he whispered to himself, realising now what the sunlit
moors had hidden--a dozen men all bent on murder.

Once a voice hailed him from the thick darkness promising immunity
if he surrendered. He hesitated. Who but he should know the Boche?
Still he answered back: "If you let this woman go you can do what
you like to me!" And knew while he was saying it that it was
useless--that there was no truth, no honour in the Boche, only
infamy and murder. A hoarse voice promised what he asked; but Miss
Erith caught McKay's arm.

"No!"

"If I dared believe them--"

"No, Kay!"

He shrugged: "I'd be very glad to pay the price--only they can't be
trusted. They can't be trusted, Yellow-hair."

Somebody shouted from the impenetrable shadows:

"Come out of that now, McKay! If you don't we'll go in and cut her
throat before we do for you!"

He remained silent, quite motionless, watching the darkness.

Suddenly his pistol flashed redly, rapidly; a heavy, soft bulk went
tumbling down the rocks; another reeled there, silhouetted against
Isla Water, then lurched forward, striking the earth with his face.
And now from every angle slanting lines of blood-red fire streaked
the night; Isla Craig rang and echoed with pelting lead.

"Next!" called out McKay with his ugly careless laugh. "Two down. No
use to set 'em up again! Let dead wood lie. It's the law!"

"Can they hear the shooting at the house?" whispered Miss Erith.

"Too far. A shot on the moors carries only a little way."

"Could they see the pistol flashes, Kay?"

"They'd take them for fireflies or witch lights dancing on the
bogs."

After a long and immobile silence he dropped to his knees, remained
so listening, then crept across the Pulpit's ferny floor. Of a
sudden he sprang up and fired full into a man's face; and struck the
distorted visage with doubled fist, hurling it below, crashing down
through the bracken.

After a stunned interval Miss Erith saw him wiping that hand on the
herbage.

"Kay?"

"Yes, Yellow-hair."

"Can you see your wrist-watch?"

"Yes. It's after midnight."

The girl prayed silently for dawn. The man, grim, alert, awaited
events, clutching his partly emptied pistols. He had not yet told
her that they were partly empty. He did not know whether to tell
her. After a while he made up his mind.

"Yellow-hair?"

"Yes, dear Kay."

His lips went dry; he found difficulty in speaking: "I've--I've
undone you. I've bitten the hand that saved me, your slim white
hand, I'm afraid. I'm afraid I've destroyed you, Yellow-hair."

"How, Kay?"

"My pistols are half empty. ... Unless dawn comes quick--"

Again one of his pistols flashed its crimson streak across the
blackness and a man began scrambling and thrashing and screaming
down there in the whinns. For a little while Miss Erith crouched
beside McKay in silence. Then he felt her light touch on his arm:

"I've been thinking.",

"Aye. So have I."

"Is there a chance to drop into the lake?"

He had not thought so. He had figured it out in every possible way.
But there seemed little chance to swim that icy water--none at
all--with that man in the boat yonder, and detection always imminent
if they left the Pulpit. McKay shook his head slightly:

"He'd row us down and gralloch us like swimming deer."

"But if one goes alone?"

"Oh, Yellow-hair! Yellow-hair! If you only could!"

"I can."

"Swim it?"

"Yes."

"It's cold water. Few can swim Isla Water. It's a long swim from
Isla Craig to the house."

"I can do it, I think."

After a terrible silence he said: "Yes, best try it, Yellow-hair....
I had meant to keep the last cartridge for you..."

"Dear Kay," she breathed close to his cheek.

Presently he was obliged to fire again, but remained uncertain as to
his luck in the raging storm of lead that followed.

"I guess you better go, Yellow-hair," he whispered. "My guns are
about all in."

"Try to hold them off. I'll come back. Of course you understand I'm
not going for myself, Kay, I'm going for ammunition."

"What!"

"What did you suppose?" she asked curtly.

At that he blazed up: "If you can win through Isla Water you stay on
the other side and telephone Glenark! Do you hear? I'm all right.
It's--it's none of your business how I end this--"

"Kay?"

"What?"

"Turn your back. I'm undressing."

He heard her stripping, kneeling in the ferns behind him,--heard the
rip of delicate fabric and the rustle of silk-lined garments
falling.

Presently she said: "Can I be noticed if I slip down through the
bushes to the water?"

"O God," he whispered, "be careful, Yellow-hair. ... No, the man in
the boat is keeping his distance. He'll never see you. Don't splash
when you take the water. Swim like an otter, under, until you're
well out. ... You're young and sturdy, slim as you are. You'll get
through if the chill of Isla doesn't paralyse you. But you've got to
do it, Yellow-hair; you've GOT to do it."

"Yes. Hold them off, Kay. I'll be back. Hold them off, dear Kay.
Will you?"

"I'll try, Yellow-hair.... Good luck! Don't try to come back!"

"Good luck," she whispered close to his ear; and, for a second he
felt her slim young hands on his shoulders--lightly--the very ghost
of contact. That was all. He waited a hundred years. Then another.
Then, his weapons levelled, listening, he cast a quick glance
backward. At the foot of the Pulpit a dark ripple lapped the rock.
Nothing there now; nothing in Isla Water save far in the stars'
lustre the shadowy boat lying motionless.

Toward dawn they tried to rush the Pulpit. He used a heavy fragment
of rock on the first man up, and as his quarry went smashing
earthward, a fierce whine burst from the others: "Shot out! All
together now!" But his pistol spoke again and they recoiled,
growling, disheartened, cursing the false hope that had re-nerved
them.

It was his last shot, however. He had a heavy clasp-knife such as
salmon-anglers carry. He laid his empty pistols on the rocky ledge.
Very patiently he felt for frost-loosened masses of rock, detached
them one by one and noiselessly piled them along the ledge.

"It's odd," he thought to himself: "I'm going to be killed and I
don't care. If Isla got HER, then I'll see her very soon now, God
willing. But if she wins out--why it is going to be longer waiting....
And I've put my mark on the Boche--not as often as I wished--but
I've marked some of them for what they've done to me--and to the
world--"

A sound caught his ear. He waited, listening. Had it been a fighting
chance in Isla Water he'd have taken it. But the man in the
boat!--and to have one's throat cut--like a deer! No! He'd kill all
he could first; he'd die fighting, not fleeing.

He looked at his wrist-watch. Miss Erith had been gone two hours.
That meant that her slender body lay deep, deep in icy Isla.

Now, listening intently, he heard the bracken stirring and something
scraping the gorse below. They were coming; they were among the
rocks! He straightened up and hurled a great slab of rock down
through darkness; heard them scrambling upward still; seized slab
after slab and smashed them downward at the flashes as the red flare
of their pistols lit up his figure against the sky.

Then, as he hurled the last slab and clutched his short, broad
knife, a gasping breath fell on his cheek and a wet and icy little
hand thrust a box of clips into his. And there and then The McKay
almost died, for it was as if the "Cold Hand of Isla" had touched
him. And he stared ahead to see his own wraith.

"Quick!" she panted. "We can hold them, Kay!"

"Yellow-hair! By God! You bet we can!" he cried with a terrible
burst of laughter; and ripped the clips from the box and snapped
them in with lightning speed.

Then his pistols vomited vermilion, clearing the rock of vermin; and
when two fresh clips were snapped in, the man stood on the Pulpit's
edge, mad for blood, his fierce young eyes searching the blackness
about him.

"You dirty rats!" he cried, "come back! Are you leaving your dead in
the bracken then?"

There were distant sounds on the moor; nothing stirred nearer.

"Are you coming back?" he shouted, "or must I go after you?"

Suddenly in the night their motor roared. At the same moment, far
across the lake, he saw the headlights of other motors glide over
Isla Bridge like low-flying stars.

"Yellow-hair!"

There was no sound behind him. He turned.

The fainting girl lay amid her drenched yellow hair in the ferns,
partly covered by the clothing which she had drawn over her with her
last conscious effort.

It is a long way across Isla Water. And twice across is longer. And
"The Cold Hand of Isla" summons the chief of Clan Morhguinn when his
time has come to look upon his own wraith face to face. But The Cold
Hand of Isla had touched this girl in vain--MOLADH MAIRI!!

"Yellow-hair! Yellow-hair!" he whispered. The roar of rushing motors
from Glenark filled his ears. He picked up one of her little hands
and chafed it. Then she opened her golden eyes, looked up at him,
and a flood of rose dyed her body from brow to ankle.

"It--it is a long way across Isla Water," she stammered. "I'm very
tired--Kay!"

"You below there!" shouted McKay. "Are there constables among you?"

"Aye, sir!" came the loud response amid the roar of running engines.

"Then there'll be whiskey and blankets, I'm thinkin'!" cried McKay.

"Aye, blankets for the dead if there be any!"

"Kick 'em into the whinns and bring what ye bring for the living!"
said McKay in a loud, joyous voice. "And if you've petrol and speed
take the Banff road and be on your way, for the Boche are crawling
to cover, and it's fine running the night! Get on there, ye Glenark
beagles! And leave a car behind for me and mine!"

A constable, shining his lantern, came clumping up the Pulpit. McKay
snatched the heavy blankets and with one mighty movement swept the
girl into them.

Half-conscious she coughed and gasped at the whiskey, then lay very
still as McKay lifted her in his arms and strode out under the
paling stars of Isla.

CHAPTER VI

MOUNT TERRIBLE

Toward the last of May a handsome young man wearing a smile and the
uniform of an American Intelligence Officer arrived at Delle, a
French village on the Franco-Swiss frontier.

His credentials being satisfactory he was directed by the Major of
Alpinists commanding the place to a small stucco house on the main
street.

Here he inquired for a gentleman named Number Seventy. The
gentleman's other name was John Recklow, and he received the
Intelligence Officer, locked the door, and seated himself behind his
desk with his back to the sunlit window, and one drawer of his desk
partly open.

Credentials being requested, and the request complied with
accompanied by a dazzling smile, there ensued a silent interval of
some length during which the young man wearing the uniform of an
American Intelligence Officer was not at all certain whether Recklow
was examining him or the papers of identification.

After a while Recklow nodded: "You came through from Toul, Captain?"

"From Toul, sir," with the quick smile revealing dazzling teeth.

"Matters progress?"

"It is quiet there."

"So I understand," nodded Recklow. "There's blood on your uniform."

"A scratch--a spill from my motor-cycle."

Recklow eyed the cut on the officer's handsome face. One of the
young officer's hands was bandaged, too.

"You've been in action, Captain."

"No, sir."

"You wear German shoes."

The officer's brilliant smile wrinkled his good-looking features:
"There was some little loot: I'm wearing my share."

Recklow nodded and let his cold eyes rest on the identification
papers.

Then, slowly, and without a word, he passed them back over the desk.

The Intelligence Officer stuffed them carelessly into his
side-pocket.

"I thought I'd come over instead of wiring or 'phoning. Our people
have not come through yet, have they?"

"Which people, sir?"

"McKay and Miss Erith."

"No, not yet."

The officer mused for a moment, then: "They wired me from Paris
yesterday, so they're all right so far. You'll see to it personally
that they get through the Swiss wire, won't you?"

"Through or over, sir."

The Intelligence Officer displayed his mirthful teeth:

"Thanks. I'm also sending three of my own people through the wire.
They'll have their papers in order--here are the duplicates I
issued; they'll have their photographs on the originals."

He fished out a batch of papers and laid them on Recklow's desk.

"Who are these people?" demanded Recklow.

"Mine, sir."

"Oh."

There fell a silence; but Recklow did not examine the papers; he
merely pocketed them.

"I think that's all," said the Intelligence Officer. "You know my
name--Captain Herts. In case you wish to communicate just wire my
department at Toul. They'll forward anything if I'm away on duty."

He saluted: Recklow followed him to the door, saw him mount his
motor-cycle--a battered American machine--stood there watching until
he was out of sight.

Hour after hour that afternoon Recklow sat in his quiet little house
in Delle poring over the duplicate papers.

About five o'clock he called up Toul by telephone and got the proper
department.

"Yes," came the answer, "Captain Herts went to you this morning on a
confidential matter.... No, we don't know when he will return to
Toul."

Recklow hung up, walked slowly out into his little garden and,
seating himself on a green bench, took out the three packets of
duplicate papers left him by Captain Herts. Then he produced a
jeweller's glass and screwed it into his right eye.

Several days later three people--two men and a young woman--arrived
at Delle, were conveyed under military escort to the little house of
Mr. Recklow, remained closeted with him until verification of their
credentials in duplicate had been accomplished, then they took their
departure and, that evening, they put up at the Inn.

But by the next morning they had disappeared, presumably over the
Swiss wire--that being their destination as revealed in their
papers. But the English touring-car which brought them still
remained in the Inn garage. Recklow spent hours examining it.

Also the arrival and the departure of these three people was
telephoned to Toul by Recklow, but Captain Herts still remained
absent from Toul on duty and his department knew nothing about the
details of the highly specialised and confidential business of
Captain Herts.

So John Recklow went back to his garden and waited, and smoked a
short, dirty clay pipe, and played with his family of cats.

Once or twice he went down at night to the French wire. All the
sentries were friends of his.

"Anybody been through?" he inquired.

The answer was always the same: Nobody had been through as far as
the patrol knew.

"Where the hell," muttered Recklow, "did those three guys go?"

A nightingale sang as he sauntered homeward. Possibly, being a
French nightingale, she was trying to tell him that there were three
people lying very still in the thicket near her.

But men are stupid and nightingales are too busy to bother about
trifles when there is courting to be done and nests to be planned
and all the anticipated excitement of the coming new moon to
preoccupy a love-distracted bird.

On a warm, sunny day early in June, toward three o'clock in the
afternoon, a peloton of French cavalry en vidette from Delle stopped
a rather rickety touring-car several kilometres west of the Swiss
frontier and examined the sheaf of papers offered for their
inspection by the young man who drove the car.

A yellow-haired girl seated beside him leaned back in her place
indifferently to relax her limbs.

From the time she and the young man had left Glenark in Scotland
their progress had been a series of similar interruptions.
Everywhere on every road soldiers, constables, military policemen,
and gentlemen in mufti had displayed, with varying degrees of
civility, a persistent curiosity to inspect such papers as they
carried.

On the Channel transport it was the same; the same from Dieppe to
Paris; from Paris to Belfort; and now, here within a pebble's toss
of the Swiss frontier, military curiosity concerning their papers
apparently remained unquenched.

The sous-officier of dragoon-lancers sat his splendid horse and
gravely inspected the papers, one by one. Behind him a handful of
troopers lolled in their saddles, their lances advanced, their
horses swishing their tails at the murderous, green-eyed bremsers
which, like other bloodthirsty Teutonic vermin, had their origin in
Germany, and raided both French and Swiss frontiers to the cruel
discomfort of horses and cattle.

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