Books: In Secret

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Meanwhile the blond, perplexed boy who was examining the papers of
the two motorists, scratched his curly head and rubbed his deeply
sunburned nose with a sunburned fist, a visible prey to indecision.
Finally, at his slight gesture, his troopers trotted out and formed
around the touring-car.

The boyish sous-officier looked pleasantly at the occupants of the
car: "Have the complaisance to follow me--rather slowly if you
please," he said; wheeled his horse, and trotted eastward toward the
roofs of a little hamlet visible among the trees of the green and
rolling countryside.

The young man threw in his clutch and advanced slowly, the cavalry
trotting on either side with lances in stirrup-boots and slanting
backward from the arm-loops.

There was a barrier beyond and some Alpine infantry on guard; and to
the left, a paved street and houses. Half-way down this silent
little street they halted: the sous-officier dismounted and opened
the door of the tonneau, politely assisting the girl to alight. Her
companion followed her, and the sous-officier conducted them into a
stucco house, the worn limestone step of which gave directly on the
grass-grown sidewalk.

"If your papers are in order, as they appear to be," said the
youthful sous-officier, "you are expected in Delle. And if it is you
indeed whom we expect, then you will know how to answer properly the
questions of a gentleman in the adjoining room who is perhaps
expecting you." And the young sous-officier opened a door, bowed
them into the room beyond, and closed the door behind them. As they
entered this room a civilian of fifty, ruddy, powerfully but trimly
built, and wearing his white hair clipped close, rose from a swivel
chair behind a desk littered with maps and papers.

"Good-afternoon," he said in English. "Be seated if you please. And
if you will kindly let me have your papers--thank you."

When the young man and the girl were seated, their suave and ruddy
host dropped back onto his swivel chair. For a long while he sat
there absently caressing his trim, white moustache, studying their
papers with unhurried and minute thoroughness.

Presently he lifted his cold, greyish eyes but not his head, like a
man looking up over eyeglasses:

"You are this Kay McKay described here?" he inquired pleasantly. But
in his very clear, very cold greyish eyes there was something
suggesting the terrifying fixity of a tiger's.

"I am the person described," said the young man quietly.

"And you," turning only his eyes on the young girl, "are Miss Evelyn
Erith?"

"I am."

"These, obviously, are your photographs?"

McKay smiled: "Obviously."

"Certainly. And all these other documents appear to be in order"--he
laid them carelessly on his desk--"IF," he added, "Delle is your
ultimate destination and terminal."

"We go farther," said McKay in a low voice.

"Not unless you have something further to offer me in the way of
credentials," said the ruddy, white-haired Mr. Recklow, smiling his
terrifying smile.

"I might mention a number," began McKay in a voice still lower, "if
you are interested in the science of numbers!"

"Really. And what number do you think might interest me?"

"Seventy-six--for example."

"Oh," said the other; "in that case I shall mention the very
interesting number, Seventy. And you, Miss Erith?" turning to the
yellow-haired girl. "Have you any number to suggest that might
interest me?"

"Seventy-seven," she said composedly. Recklow nodded:

"Do you happen to believe, either of you, that, at birth, the hours
of our lives are already irrevocably numbered?"

Miss Erith said: "So teach us to number our days that we may apply
our hearts unto wisdom."

Recklow got up, made them a bow, and reseated himself. He touched a
handbell; the blond sous-officier entered.

"Everything is in order; take care of the car; carry the luggage to
the two rooms above," said Recklow.

To McKay and Miss Erith he added: "My name is John Recklow. If you
want to rest before you wash up, your rooms are ready. You'll find
me here or in the garden behind the house."

Toward sunset they found Recklow in the little garden, seated alone
there on a bench looking up at the eastward mountains with the
piercing, detached stare of a bird of prey. When they had seated
themselves on the faded-green bench on either side of him he said,
still gazing toward the mountains: "It's April up there. Dress
warmly."

"Which is Mount Terrible?" inquired Miss Erith.

"Those are the lower ridges. The summit is not visible from where we
sit," replied Recklow. And, to McKay: "There's some snow there
still, I hear."

McKay's upward-turned face was a grim study. Beyond those limestone
shouldering heights his terrible Calvary had begun--a progress that
had ended in the wreckage of mind and soul had it not been for
Chance and Evelyn Erith. After Mount Terrible, with its grim "Great
Secret," had come the horrors of the prison camp at Holzminden and
its nameless atrocities, his escape to New York, the Hun cipher
orders to "silence him," his miraculous rescue and redemption by the
girl at his side--and now their dual mission to probe the mystery of
Mount Terrible.

"McKay," said Recklow, "I don't know what the particular mission may
be that brings you and Miss Erith to the Franco-Swiss frontier. I
have been merely instructed to carry out your orders whenever you
are in touch with me. And I am ready to do so."

"How much do you know about us?" asked McKay, turning to him an
altered face almost marred by hard features which once had been only
careworn and stern.

"I know you escaped from the Holzminden prison-camp in Germany; that
you were inhumanly treated there by the Boche; that you entered the
United States Intelligence Service; and that, whatever may be your
business here, I am to help further it at your request." He looked
at the girl: "As concerning Miss Erith, I know only that she is in
the same Government service as yourself and that I am to afford her
any aid she requests."

McKay said, slowly: "My orders are to trust you implicitly. On one
subject only am I to remain silent--I am not to confide to anybody
the particular object which brings us here."

Recklow nodded: "I understood as much. Also I have been instructed
that the Boches are determined to discover your whereabouts and do
you in before your mission is accomplished. You, probably, are aware
of that, McKay?"

"Yes, I am."

"By the way--you know a Captain Herts?"

"Not personally."

"You've been in communication with him?"

"Yes, for some time."

"Did you wire him from Paris last Thursday?"

"Yes."

"Where did you wire him?"

"At his apartment at Toul."

"All right. He was here on Friday.... Somehow I feel uneasy.... He
has a way of smiling too brilliantly.... I suppose, after these
experiences I'll remain a suspicious grouch all my life--but his
papers were in order... I don't know just why I don't care for that
type of man.... You're bound for somewhere or other via Mount
Terrible, I understand?"

"Yes."

"This Captain Herts sent three of his own people over the Swiss wire
the other evening. Did you know about it?"

McKay looked worried: "I'm sorry," he said. "Captain Herts proposed
some such assistance but I declined. It wasn't necessary. Two on
such a job are plenty; half-a-dozen endanger it."

Recklow shrugged: "I can't judge, not knowing details. Tell me, if
you don't mind; have you been bothered at all so far by Boche
agents?"

"Yes," nodded Evelyn Erith.

"You've already had some serious trouble?"

McKay said: "Our ship was torpedoed off Strathlone Head. In Scotland
a dozen camouflaged Boches caught me napping in spite of being
warned. It was very humiliating, Recklow."

"You can't trust a soul on this frontier either," returned Recklow
with emphasis. "You cannot trust the Swiss on this border. Over
ninety per cent. of them are German-Swiss, speak German exclusively
along the Alsatian border. They are, I think, loyal Swiss, but their
origin, propinquity, customs and all their affiliations incline them
toward Germany rather than toward France.

"I believe, in the event of a Hun deluge, the Swiss on this border,
and in the cantons adjoining, would defend their passes to the last
man. They really are first of all good Swiss. But," he shrugged,
"don't trust their friendship for America or for France; that's
all."

Miss Erith nodded. McKay said: "How about the frontier? I understand
both borders are wired now as well as patrolled. Are the wires
electrically charged?"

"No. There was some talk of doing it on both sides, but the French
haven't and I don't think the Swiss ever intended to. You can get
over almost anywhere with a short ladder or by digging under." He
smiled: "In fact," he said, "I took the liberty of having a sapling
ladder made for you in case you mean to cross to-night."

"Many thanks. Yes; we cross to-night."

"You go by the summit path past the Crucifix on the peak?"

"No, by the neck of woods under the peak."

"That might be wiser.... One never knows. ... I'm not quite at
ease--Suppose I go as far as the Crucifix with you--"

"Thanks, no. I know the mountain and the neck of woods around the
summit. I shall travel no path to-night."

There was a silence: Miss Erith's lovely face was turned tranquilly
toward the flank of Mount Terrible. Both men looked sideways at her
as though thinking the same thing.

Finally Recklow said: "In the event of trouble--you understand--it
means merely detention and internment while you are on Swiss
territory. But--if you leave it and go north--" He did not say any
more.

McKay's sombre eyes rested on his in grim comprehension of all that
Recklow had left unsaid. Swift and savage as would be the fate of a
man caught within German frontiers on any such business as he was
now engaged in, the fate of a woman would be unspeakable.

If Miss Erith noticed or understood the silence between these two
men she gave no sign of comprehension.

Soft, lovely lights lay across the mountains; higher rocks were
still ruddy in the rays of the declining sun.

"Do the Boche planes ever come over?" asked McKay.

"They did in 1914. But the Swiss stopped it."

"Our planes--do they violate the frontier at all?"

"They never have, so far. Tell me, McKay, how about your maps?"

"Rather inaccurate--excepting one. I drew that myself from memory,
and I believe it is fairly correct."

Recklow unfolded a little map, marked a spot on it with his pencil
and passed it to McKay.

"It's for you," he said. "The sapling ladder lies under the filbert
bushes in the gulley where I have marked the boundary. Wait till the
patrol passes. Then you have ten minutes. I'll come later and get
the ladder if the patrol does not discover it."

A cat and her kittens came into the garden and Evelyn Erith seated
herself on the grass to play with them, an attention gratefully
appreciated by that feline family.

The men watched her with sober faces. Perhaps both were susceptible
to her beauty, but there was also about this young American girl in
all the freshness of her unmarred youth something that touched them
deeply under the circumstances.

For this clean, wholesome girl was enlisted in a service the dangers
of which were peculiarly horrible to her because of the bestial
barbarity of the Boche. From the Hun--if ever she fell into their
hands--the greatest mercy to be hoped for was a swift death unless
she could forestall it with a swifter one from her own pistol
carried for that particular purpose.

The death of youth is always shocking, yet that is an essential part
of war. But this was no war within the meaning accepted by
civilisation--this crusade of light against darkness, of cleanliness
against corruption, this battle of normal minds against the
diseased, perverted, and filthy ferocity of a people not merely
reverted to honest barbarism, but also mentally mutilated, and now
morally imbecile and utterly incompetent to understand the basic
truths of that civilisation from which they had relapsed, and from
which, God willing, they are to be ultimately and definitely kicked
out forever.

The old mother cat lay on the grass blinking pleasantly at the
setting sun; the kittens frisked and played with the grass-stem in
Evelyn Erith's fingers, or chased their own ratty little tails in a
perfect orgy of feline excitement.

Long bluish shadows spread delicate traceries on wall and grass; the
sweet, persistent whistle of a blackbird intensified the calm of
evening. It was hard to associate any thought of violence and of
devastation with the blessed sunset calm and the clean fragrance of
this land of misty mountains and quiet pasture so innocently aloof
from the strife and passion of a dusty, noisy and struggling world.

Yet the red borders of that accursed land, the bloody altars of
which were served by the priests of Baal, lay but a few scant
kilometres to the north and east. And their stealthy emissaries were
over the border and creeping like vermin among the uncontaminated
fields of France.

"Even here," Recklow was saying, in a voice made low and cautious
from habit, "the dirty Boche prowl among us under protean aspects.
One can never tell, never trust anybody--what with one thing and
another and the Alsatian border so close--and those
German-Swiss--always to be suspected and often impossible to
distinguish--with their pig-eyes and bushy flat-backed heads--from
the genuine Boche. ... Would Miss Erith like to have our little
dinner served out here in the garden?"

Miss Erith was delightfully sure she would.

It was long after sunset, though still light, when the simple little
meal ended; but they lingered over their coffee and cordial,
exchanging ideas concerning preparations for their departure, which
was now close at hand.

The lilac bloom faded from mountain and woodland; already meadow and
pasture lay veiled under the thickening dusk. The last day-bird had
piped its sleepy "lights out"; bats were flying high. When the moon
rose the first nightingale acclaimed the pallid lustre that fell in
silver pools on walk and wall; and every flower sent forth its
scented greeting.

Kay McKay and Evelyn Erith had been gone for nearly an hour; but
Recklow still sat there at the little green table, an unlighted
cigarette in his muscular fingers, his head slightly bent as though
listening.

Once he rose as though on some impulse, went into the house, took a
roll of fine wire, a small cowbell, a heavy pair of wire clippers
and a pocket torch from his desk and pocketed them. A pair of
automatic handcuffs he also took, and a dozen clips to fit the brace
of pistols strapped under his armpits.

Then he returned to the garden; and for a long while he sat there,
unstirring, just where the wall's shadow lay clean-cut across the
grass, listening to the distant tinkle of cattle-bells on the unseen
slope of Mount Terrible.

No shots had come from the patrol along the Franco-Swiss frontier;
there was no sound save the ecstatic tumult of the nightingale drunk
with moonlight, and, at intervals, the faint sound of a cowbell from
those dark and distant pastures.

To this silent, listening man it seemed certain that his two guests
had now safely crossed the boundary at the spot he had marked for
McKay on the detail map. Yet he remained profoundly uneasy.

He waited a few moments longer; heard nothing to alarm him; and then
he left the garden, going out by way of the house, and turned to
lock the front door behind him.

At that instant his telephone bell rang and he re-entered the house
with a sudden premonition--an odd, unreasonable, but dreadful sort
of certainty concerning what he was about to hear. Picking up the
instrument he was thinking all the time: "It has to do with that
damned Intelligence Officer! There was something wrong with him!"

There was.

Clearly over the wire from Toul came the information: "Captain
Herts's naked body was discovered an hour ago in a thicket beside
the Delle highway. He has been dead two weeks. Therefore the man you
saw in Delle was impersonating him. Probably also he was Captain
Herts's murderer and was wearing his uniform, carrying his papers,
and riding his motor-cycle. Do your best to get him!"

Recklow, deadly cold and calm, asked a few questions. Then he hung
up the instrument, turned and went out, locking the door behind him.

A few people were in the quiet street; here an Alpine soldier
strolling with his sweetheart, there an old cure on his way to his
little stone chapel, yonder a peasant in blouse and sabots plodding
doggedly along about some detail of belated work that never ends for
such as he. A few lanterns set in iron cages projected over ancient
doorways, lighting the street but dimly where it lay partly in deep
shadow, partly illuminated by the silvery radiance of the moon.

Recklow turned into an alley smelling of stables, traversed it, and
came out behind into a bushy pasture with a cleared space beyond.
The place was rather misty now in the moonlight from the vapours of
a cold little brook which ran foaming and clattering through it
between banks thickset with fern.

And now Recklow moved very swiftly but quietly, down through the
misty, ferny valley to the filbert and hazel thicket just beyond;
and went in among the bushes, treading cautiously upon the moist
black mould.

There glimmered the French wires--merely a wide mesh and an ordinary
barbed barrier overhead; but the fence was deeply ditched on the
Swiss side. A man could climb over it; and Recklow started to do so;
and came face to face in the moonlight with the French patrol. The
recognition was mutual and noiseless:

"You passed my two people over?" whispered Recklow.

"An hour ago, mon Capitaine."

"You've seen nobody else?"

"Nobody."

"Heard nothing?"

"Not a sound. They must have gone over the Swiss wire without
interference, mon Capitaine."

"You sometimes talk across with the Swiss sentinels?"

"Oh, yes, if I'm in that humour. You know, mon Capitaine, that
they're like the Boche, only tame."

"Not all."

"No, not all. But in a wolf-pack who can excuse sheepdogs? A Boche
is always a Boche."

"All the same, when the Swiss sentry passes, speak to him and hold
him while I get my ladder."

"At your orders, Captain."

"Listen. I am going over. When I return I shall leave with you a
reel of wire and a cowbell. You comprehend? I do not wish anybody
else to cross the French wire to-night."

"C'est bien, mon Capitaine."

Recklow went down into the bushy gulley. A few moments later the
careless Swiss patrol came clumping along, rifle slung, pipe glowing
and humming a tune as he passed. Presently the French sentry hailed
him across the wire and the Swiss promptly halted for a bit of
gossip concerning the pretty girls of Delle.

But, to Recklow's grim surprise, and before he could emerge from the
bushes, no sooner were the two sentries engaged in lively gossip
than three dark figures crept out on hands and knees from the long
grass at the very base of the Swiss wire and were up the ladder
which McKay had left and over it like monkeys before he could have
prevented it even if he had dared.

Each in turn, reaching the top of the wire, set foot on the wooden
post and leaped off into darkness--each except the last, who
remained poised, then twisted around as though caught by the top
barbed strand.

And Recklow saw the figure was a woman's, and that her short skirt
had become entangled in the wire.

In an instant he was after her; she saw him, strove desperately to
free herself, tore her skirt loose, and jumped. And Recklow jumped
after her, landing among the wet ferns on his feet and seizing her
as she tried to rise from where she had fallen.

She struggled and fought him in silence, but his iron clutch was on
her and he dragged her by main force through the woods parallel with
the Swiss wire until, breathless, powerless, impotent, she gave up
the battle and suffered him to force her along until they were far
beyond earshot of the patrol and of her two companions as well, in
case they should return to the wire to look for her.

For ten minutes, holding her by the arm, he pushed forward up the
wooded slope. Then, when it was safe to do so, he halted, jerked her
around to face him, and flashed his pocket torch. And he saw a
handsome, perspiring, sullen girl, staring at him out of dark eyes
dilated by terror or by fury--he was not quite sure which.

She wore the costume of a peasant of the canton bordering the wire;
and she looked like that type of German-Swiss--handsome, sensual,
bad-tempered, but not stupid.

"Well," he said in French, "you can explain yourself now,
mademoiselle. Allons! Who and what are you? Dites!"

"What are you? A robber?" she gasped, jerking her arm free.

"If you thought so why didn't you call for help?"

"And be shot at? Do you take me for a fool? What are you--a Douanier
then? A smuggler?"

"You answer ME!" he retorted. "What were you doing--crossing the
wire at night?"

"Can't a girl keep a rendezvous without the custom-agents treating
her so barbarously?" she panted, one hand flat on her tumultuous
bosom.

"Oh, that was it, was it?"

"I do not deny it."

"Who is your lover--on the French side?"

"And if he happens to be an Alpinist?"--she shrugged, still
breathing fast and irregularly, picking up the torn edge of her wool
skirt and fingering the rent.

"Really. An Alpinist? A rendezvous in Delle, eh? And who were your
two friends?"

"Boys from my canton."

"Is that so?"

Her breast still rose and fell unevenly; she turned her pretty,
insolent eyes on him:

"After all, what business is it of yours? Who are you, anyway? If
you are French you can do nothing. If you are Swiss take me to the
nearest poste."

"Who were those two men?" repeated Recklow.

"Ask them."

"No; I think I'll take you back to France."

The girl became silent at that but her attitude defied him. Even
when he snapped an automatic handcuff over one wrist she smiled
incredulously.

But the jeering expression on her dark, handsome features altered
when they approached the Swiss wire. And when Recklow produced a
pair of heavy wire-cutters all defiance died out in her face.

"Make a sound and I'll simply shoot you," he whispered.

"W-what is it you want with me?" she asked in a ghost of a voice.

"The truth."

"I told it."

"You did not. You are German."

"Believe what you like, but I am on neutral territory. Let me go."

"You ARE German! For God's sake admit it or we'll be too late!"

"What?"

"Admit it, I say. Do you want those two Americans to get away?"

"What--Americans?" stammered the girl. "I d-don't know what you
mean--"

Recklow laughed under his breath, unlocked the handcuffs.

"Echt Deutsch," he whispered in German--"and ZERO-TWO-SIX. A good
hint to you!"

"Waidman's Heil!" said the girl faintly. "O God! what a fright you
gave me.... There's a man at Delle--we were warned--Seventy is his
number, Recklow--a devil Yankee--"

"A swine! a fathead, sleeping all day in his garden, too drunk to
open despatches!" sneered Recklow.

"We were warned against him," she insisted. Recklow laughed his
contempt of Recklow and spat upon the dead leaves.

"Stupid one, what then is closest to the Yankee heart? I was sent
here to buy this terrible devil Yankee, Recklow. That is how one
deals with Yankees. With dollars."

"Is that why you are here?"

"And to watch for McKay and the young woman with him!"

"The Erith woman!"

"That is her barbarous name, I believe. What is your number?"

"Four-two-four. Oh, what a fright you gave me. What is your name?"

"That is against regulations."

"I know. What is it, all the same.... Mine is Helsa Kampf."

"Mine is Johann Wolkcer."

"Wolkcer? Is it Polish?"

"God knows where we Germans had our origin. ... Who are your
companions, Fraulein?"

"An Irish-American. Jim Macniff, and a British revolutionist, Harry
Skelton. Others await us on Mount Terrible--Germans in Swiss
uniforms."

"You'd better keep an eye on Macniff and Skelton," grumbled Recklow.

"No; they're to be trusted. We nearly caught McKay and the Erith
girl in Scotland; they killed four of our people and hurt two
others.... Listen, comrade Wolkcer, if a trodden path ascends Mount
Terrible, as Skelton pretended, you and I had better look for it.
Can you find your way back to where we crossed the wire? The dry bed
of the torrent was to have guided us."

"I know a quicker way," said Recklow. "Come on."

The girl took his hand confidingly and walked beside him, holding
one arm before her face to shield her eyes from branches in the
darkness.

They had gone, perhaps, a dozen paces when a man stepped from behind
a great beech-tree, peered after them, then turned and hurried down
the slope to where the Swiss wire stretched glistening under the
stars. He ran along this wire until he came to the dry bed of a
torrent.

Up this he stumbled under the forest patches of alternate moonlight
and shadow until he came to a hard path crossing it on a masonry
viaduct.

"Harry!" he called in a husky, quavering voice, choking for breath.
"Cripes, Harry--where in hell are you?"

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