At the Sign of the Sword: A Story of Love and War in Belgium

“I am too old,” he murmured bitterly.

“Not that,” she responded, shaking her well-poised head. “Age matters nothing when a woman really loves.”

“You love that man Edmond Valentin,” he snapped, almost savagely.

She nodded in the affirmative, but no word escaped her lips.

Arnaud Rigaux set his teeth, and his fingers clenched themselves into his palms. But only for a second, and she, with her eyes cast down upon the carpet, did not detect the fire of hatred which shone, for a second, in his crafty, narrow-set eyes.

Next second his manner entirely changed. He was one of those men whose cunning enables them to conceal their feelings so cleverly that, while they smile and hold out the hand of friendship, murder lurks within their heart. This attribute is, alas! one of the elements of success in business in our modern days, and is a habit cultivated by the man whom the world admires as “keen and smart.”

“But, my darling?” he exclaimed, in a voice broken by an emotion which was so cleverly feigned that it deceived even her woman’s sharp observance, “you do not know how very deeply I love you,” he declared, bending to her, and again trying to take her hand, which, however, she again snatched away and placed behind her. “All these years I have watched you grow up, and I have longed and longed for the day when I might beg of you to become my wife. Think of what our marriage would mean to you – to your father, the Baron, and to myself. He and I, united, could rule the whole finances of the nation; we could dictate terms to the Chamber, and we should be the greatest power in Belgium – next to his Majesty himself. Surely your position as my wife would be preferable to that of the wife of a poor struggling lawyer, however estimable he may be.”

She sat listening without interrupting him. She had heard this man’s praises sung daily by her father for so long that at last they now fell upon deaf ears. She listened quite coldly to his outpourings, yet, at the moment, she despised him in her innermost heart.

What Edmond had declared was the bare, naked truth. Arnaud Rigaux was only seeking to gain further personal riches and aggrandisement by doing her the honour of offering her his hand in marriage.

Her anger arose within her as his words fell upon her ears. She had not been blind to his stealthy unscrupulousness, for she remembered how, on one occasion, she had overheard her father upbraid him for participating in some shady financial transaction with some electric tramways in Italy, the details of which she, as a woman, had been unable to follow. But her father’s bitter words of reproach had been, to her, all-sufficient. The Baron had told him, openly and plainly, that he had swindled the Italian company, and she had always remembered his outspoken words.

The man seated before her suddenly rose, and unable to take her hand because she was holding it behind her, placed his sensuous grasp upon her shoulder, and bent in an attempt to kiss her.

She turned her head swiftly from his foetid breath. It was nauseous. It caused her a fierce revulsion of feeling.

She sprang up, her eyes aflame in an instant.

“M’sieur Rigaux! This is intolerable!” she protested, drawing herself up in proud defiance. “I wish you to remember who I am, and further, I wish you to go to my father and tell him, that no matter what may happen, no matter what pressure he may place upon me, no matter if I die unmarried, I will never become the wife of Arnaud Rigaux. You hear!”

He drew back at this obstinate rebuff – he whose money bought women’s smiles from end to aid of Europe.

In a second he became apologetic.

“But, Mademoiselle, I – ”

“Please leave this room,” she ordered, very firmly. “If not, I shall ring for the servants. Go!” and she pointed determinedly to the door. “Go! Describe this scene to my father, and tell him from me, once and for all, that I love Edmond Valentin, and that I intend to marry him.”

The man’s loose lips hardened. He murmured something which the girl could not catch, but she saw in his eyes, for the first time, the light of a fierce and terrible hatred, as he bowed stiffly, and, turning on his heel, took his congé, and with a fierce imprecation upon his lips strode out of the pretty, artistic room, wherein she stood, an imperious and defiant figure, in the centre of the carpet.

Chapter Four.

The Man from Cologne

Two hours later Arnaud Rigaux entered his small, well-furnished den in the big house on the broad Boulevard de Waterloo, close to the medieval Porte de Hal, that medieval castle-like structure, now the fine Musée d’Armes, known to every traveller in Brussds.

Scarcely had he crossed the threshold when his man, a white-haired, ultra respectable-looking valet, ushered in a rather stout, middle-aged man of military bearing, with fair hair and blue-grey eyes. He was wearing a cap and a motor dust-coat.

“Ah! my dear Guillaume! I must apologise,” Rigaux said. “I had no idea you had been waiting for me.”

“Your servant was unaware where you were. We telephoned to a dozen places. I arrived from Cologne just after nine o’clock.”

Rigaux glanced at the closed door rather apprehensively, and then in a low voice asked:

“What does it all mean?”

“War,” replied the other in a whisper. “The Emperor is in Cologne in secret. I had audience with him at three o’clock, and he sent me to you. I have to return at once. I was to tell you that his Majesty wishes for your final report.”

For a moment the financier’s narrow eyes grew serious, and his lips quivered.

“The reply from England has not yet been received,” his visitor went on, speaking in excellent French, though he was undoubtedly German. “But whatever it may be, the result will be the same. Eight Army Corps are moving upon the Luxembourg frontier. They will soon be in Belgium. What a surprise our big howitzers will be for the forts of Namur and Liège – eh?”

And he laughed lightly, chuckling to himself. Captain Wilhelm von Silberfeld, of the famous Death’s Head Hussars, was a trusted messenger of the Kaiser, a man who had performed many a secret mission for his Imperial Master. He was attached to the General Staff in Berlin, and for hours he had sat in the fast two-seated motor-car, travelling swiftly over the hundred and sixty miles or so of long, straight white roads which led from Cologne to the Belgian capital.

“In four days we shall be in Belgium,” the German officer whispered. “The Emperor, as you know, decided upon war three months ago, and ever since we have been steadily and carefully making the final preparations. What is the opinion here?”

“The Cabinet meets to-night. The Government do not, even now, believe that Germany really intends to defy Europe, and I, of course, have endeavoured still to lull them to sleep,” responded the financier. “But I have not been idle these past three days. My reports are all prepared. The last was written at seven o’clock this evening.”

And crossing to a big, heavy book-case, which occupied the whole of one side of the room, he opened one of the glass doors. Then, pulling forward a section of the books which swung round upon a pivot, there was disclosed the green-painted door of a safe, securely built into the wall. This he opened with a key upon his chain, and from a drawer took out a large envelope filled with papers, which he handed to his visitor.

“All are here?” asked the other.

“Yes. According to instructions I received by courier yesterday, I have prepared the list of names of influential persons in Liège and Louvain – the banks, and what cash I believe them to hold. How are you proceeding in Antwerp?”

“Antwerp is practically a German city. We have, outside the city, six concrete platforms ready for our big howitzers. They were put down two years ago by German residents in their gardens – for the English game of tennis,” and he laughed. “Besides, we have three secret wireless installations of wide range communicating with Nauen, as we also have here in Brussels. Is your wireless here in working order?”

“S-s-sh, my friend?” Rigaux said warningly. “I will send Michel out on a pretext, and you shall see. He is loyal, but I trust no man. I never let him know too much.”

Then he rang, and his man, white-haired and humble, appeared.

“Michel, go down to the Grand Hotel at once and ask for Monsieur Legrand. Tell him I wish to see him. If he will kindly come up here in a taxi.”

“Bien, m’sieur!” and the grave-faced servant bowed and withdrew.

A few moments later Arnaud Rigaux took from a drawer in his library table an electric torch and led the way up the great wide staircase, through his own bedroom, past a door into a smaller dressing-room, in which was a huge mahogany wardrobe. The door of this he opened, and pushing the back outwards through a line of coats hanging there, a dark opening was revealed. Into this both men passed, finding themselves upon a wooden flight of dusty stairs, up which they ascended for two floors, until they arrived in a long, low attic, beneath the sloping roof of which were suspended, upon porcelain insulators, many thin, black-enamelled wires.

“Come! You shall hear for yourself,” Rigaux exclaimed; and passing along to the gable-end of the main wall of the house, he paused before two tables, upon which were set out a most complete set of wireless instruments.

To the uninitiated eye those two tables were filled with a most complicated assortment of weird electrical apparatus connected by india-rubber covered wires. To the expert, however, all was quite clear. On the one table stood a receiving-set of the latest pattern, while upon the other was what is technically known as “a five kilowatt set,” which would transmit wireless messages as far as Nauen, the great wireless station near Potsdam, and, indeed, over a radius of nearly a thousand miles. It was a Marconi set, not Telefunken.

Arnaud Rigaux seated himself upon a stool before the receiving-table, while overhead, insulated from the rafters of the roof, were a hundred bare copper wires strung across and across. His example was followed by Captain von Silberfeld, both clamping the double head-telephones over their ears, listening.

Next instant both heard the buzzing ticks of wireless, so weird and uncanny to those uninitiated.

“Da-de, Da-de-da. Da-de, Da-de-da.”

It was a call. Then followed the code-letters, “B.B.N.” with “B.Y.B.”

“Hush!” Rigaux exclaimed, glancing at the book at his elbow. “The British Admiralty station at Cleethorpes are calling the battleship London.”

The big wireless code-book – a book which could be bought in Berne for five francs – lay open before him. There was a quick response in the ’phones.

“The London is off the west coast of Ireland,” he remarked, bending with interest. “There’s the reply. Here is ‘London.’”

He touched the “tuner,” one of the round ebonite handles upon a long mahogany box, and next moment a little “click” of quite a different note was heard in the head ’phones.

“Listen?” Rigaux exclaimed, and then for a moment he was again all attention. “Marseilles is speaking to one of your North German Lloyd liners on her way from Alexandria.” Then he paused. “Are you satisfied that I am leaving to your army a complete set, quite in working order – eh?”

“Entirely. Why, it is splendid,” declared the captain, who, though he had no expert knowledge of wireless, had seen quite enough to convince him that the secret installation was practically perfect. “This,” he added, “will surely be of great use to us before many weeks are over. It is splendid!”

“Let us descend,” Rigaux said. “Michel may now be back. This part of the house is, of course, unknown to my servants.”

When they were again back in the financier’s snug little business-room, wherein he received visitors privately, he asked earnestly:

“Tell me, Count, is all complete?”

“Everything. We shall advance to-morrow, or next day. We have mobilised secretly, though Europe is in entire ignorance. First Belgium is to be occupied – then we shall cross to England. Paris is only a secondary affair. London is our chief goal. We shall crush for ever the arrogant English with our Zeppelins and our submarines. Oh! what an unpleasant surprise they will have?” and he laughed.

“But you will not conquer Belgium – eh?”

“Not if she offers no defence. If she does, then I tell you – in confidence – the Kaiser means to sweep this country with fire and sword; we shall wipe villages and towns completely out of existence, so as to strike terror and horror into the heart of Europe. War is war, you know.”

“Do you advise me to leave Brussels?”

“Well, not yet – wait and see. Your safety is assured. You already have your safe-conduct, have you not?”

“That has already been arranged.”

“His Majesty told me to give you his Imperial assurance. The final draft in your favour on the Dresdner Bank has been passed, and you will receive it in due course, paid into your bank in London,” replied the German officer.

“But what do you advise me to do, my friend? Remember, I may yet be discovered as having assisted you. And it will be awkward – very awkward?”

“Remain here for a time, and then go back to the coast. You can, as a patriotic Belgian, always cross from Ostend to England as a wealthy refugee – when the time arrives. And that will not be very long, I assure you,” he added, with a grim smile. “The brave Belgians have to-day ended their career. Our big howitzers will come along. Pouf! and Belgium is no more. In a few days we shall be at the mouth of the Scheldt, and at Ostend – in front of Dover. Besides, our grand fleet of Zeppelins are ready in their secret sheds. Later, when Belgium is devastated, they will glide forth for the conquest of our dear, sleepy friends, the British – whom God preserve. Meanwhile, we have a very satisfactory army of secret agents over yonder making ready to undermine any poor, puny defence that they – with all their vaunted might of Empire – can possibly put up.”

Both men laughed heartily as they stood there together, conversing in low tones.

“The intention, then, is first to destroy Belgium?” asked Rigaux, suddenly growing serious.

“Yes. To seize this country, notwithstanding any defence which may be offered. The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg we shall only march through. But the General Staff know that, in Belgium, there may be a desperate resistance, if Britain – the broken reed – is to be relied upon. Hence we shall smash her – and Britain afterwards.”

“But is Great Britain, with her splendid navy, really a broken reed?” queried the financier very seriously.

“Personally, I do not at all agree. I only tell you the declaration of our General Staff.”

“Britain has a very mysterious way of asserting her own superiority,” said the banker, shaking his head dubiously. “France is still, as she has ever been, a nation of great emotions. But Great Britain, with her enormous Colonial possessions, her deep-seated loyalty, and her huge wealth, is a tremendous power – a power which I believe the Kaiser has never yet estimated at its true value.”

“Bah! my dear Arnaud. We, in Berlin, know all that is in progress. Surely you must know, you must feel, the irresistible power of our militarism – of our great and formidable war-machine. Germany is the greatest nation at war that the world has ever seen, and – ”

“And England still rules the seas,” interrupted the financier in a hard voice.

“The seas! Bah!” declared his dusty, travel-worn visitor. “We shall first win on land; then our grand fleet will face those overbearing British. We shall, like the Dutch, place a broom upon the mast-head of the flag-ship of Grand Admiral von Tirpitz, and sweep the British clean off the seas.”

“You are optimistical – to say the least.”

“I am, my dear Arnaud,” he admitted, “because I, as one of the General Staff, know what has been arranged, and what is intended. I know the great surprises we have in store for Europe – those great guns, which will smash and pulverise to dust the strongest fortresses which man can devise, and aircraft which will hurl down five tons of high explosive at a time,” he added, with an exultant laugh. “But, I had almost forgotten. Have you had any report from our friend Van Meenen, in Ostend?”

“It came yesterday, and is included in the papers you have there. Our friends in Liège have been warned, I suppose?”

“They have been warned to-day. Doctor Wilberz, brave Belgian, of course, has a secret wireless in his house, while sixty of our trusty agents are living there, quite unsuspected.”

“Wilberz was here in Brussels a month ago, and told me what he was doing. Truly the ring of forts will stand a very poor chance when you make the attack.”

“Belgium will never dare to resist, we feel sure,” declared Captain von Silberfeld. “In a month the Crown Prince will enter Paris. But I must get away at once. I have to be back in Cologne with the dawn. The Staff are awaiting your reports with eagerness, especially those upon the financial position.”

“I have supplied every detail,” responded the banker. “The position is not good, and even my friend the Baron de Neuville cannot, I happen to know, come to the rescue at the present moment.”

“Good,” exclaimed the Captain, dropping into German. “Adieu!” he said, placing the bulky envelope beneath his cotton dust-coat. “What excitement there is in the streets – eh?”

The banker laughed grimly.

“It will increase very soon, I suppose,” he said.

“Yes,” whispered the other, as they descended to the front entrance together, where the long, powerful, low-built car stood with its glaring headlights, in charge of a smart chauffeur, who saluted in military fashion. “Adieu, my dear Arnaud. I must hasten,” he whispered, “for to-morrow’s dawn will bring to us ‘The Day’!”

And with a triumphant wave of his hand he mounted beside the driver, and a moment later the car moved swiftly and silently down the hill on its long journey to the German frontier, carrying with it the final secret report of the many made through the last ten years by the traitor Arnaud Rigaux to the Prussian General Staff.

The man who had sold his country for German gold stood for a few seconds watching the car disappear into the night, and then, as the roar of the crowd making a demonstration before the French Consulate farther up the Boulevard fell upon his ears, he turned, and with a bitter laugh of triumph, went within and closed the great oaken door.

A silence fell. No one was near. Suddenly, a few moments later, the dark figure of a man, who had evidently been watching the departure of the car, as he stood back in the deep shadow of the trees in the centre of the boulevard, emerged, crossed the road, and hurried down the hill in the direction the car had taken.

Chapter Five.

Bursting of the Storm

A great, long, old-fashioned room with a rather low ceiling, across which ran black oaken-beams, around were lancet windows, high and narrow, with ancient leaded panes and green glass, the walls panelled with rare but faded tapestries, the carpet dull and also faded, and the heavy furniture genuinely Flemish of the sixteenth century.

On a long, padded seat in the recess of the central window, the depth of which showed the great strength of the walls, Aimée de Neuville sat, her white pointed chin resting upon her hand, gazing away over a marvellous panorama of winding river and wooded slopes, the deep beautiful valley of the Meuse, which lay far below that high-up château, once the fortress of the robber-knights of Hauteroche.

The splendid old Château de Sévérac, standing as it did half-way between quaint old-world Dinant, the resent of British tourists, and the French frontier at Givet, commanded a wide sweep of the beautiful valley with the blue, misty high-lands towards Luxembourg. The great place with its ponderous three-foot-thick walls, its round towers with slated roofs, and its deep, cavernous dungeons with inscribed stones, dated from the twelfth century, a fine feudal castle, which had played a leading part in the history of the Meuse valley – indeed, in the history of Europe. Built high upon its steep limestone cliff, around which the river swept suddenly in a semicircle, it had, in the days of its builders, been a fortress impregnable. Its private chapel bore the arms of the Knights-Templars, and in that very room, where the pale-faced young girl sat, the Emperor Charles V had sat, after the capture of Metz in 1552. A place full of historic memories, for the very walls spoke mutely of those turbulent times, when that valley was the chief theatre of all the fierce wars in Western Europe.

But the Knights of Hauteroche had defended it always from the attack of their bitterest foes, until, in 1772, it had passed from their hands, and having fallen to ruin, had, in the last days of the nineteenth century, been acquired by the rich Baron de Neuville, who was reputed to have spent half a million sterling upon its restoration, and a similar sum in furnishing it just as it had been in the sixteenth century.

Few such splendid strongholds existed in Europe. For years the Baron’s agents had travelled up and down the Continent with open commissions to purchase antique furniture, tapestry, and armour of the period, with the result that the castle was now unique. Inside its courtyard one was at once back in the days of the Emperor Charles V, the illusion being complete, even to the great kitchen of the robber-knights, where, upon the huge spit, an ox could be turned and roasted whole, so that the retainers – the bowmen of the forest – could be regaled and rewarded after their doughty exploits.

From every corner of the world, tourists – many of them loud-speaking Americans with their red-bound Baedekers – craved of the Baron’s major-domo, a vinegar-faced Frenchman, permission to pass through the splendid apartments, and when “the family” were not in residence, permission was generally accorded, for – as with all financiers, from Twickenham to Timbuctoo – the Baron, in secret, liked to be talked about. Indeed, the late King Leopold, who had on several occasions stretched his long legs in that room wherein Aimée now sat, had declared that the view from the window up the river to be one of the finest in all Europe.

Looking up the peaceful valley, where the Meuse wound far below in the August sunshine, there lay on the right bank grey rugged rocks descending sheer into the water green and deep, making a sudden bend; while on the left lay green pastures and spreading woodlands, with range upon range of hills away to the blue haze of the frontier of France. Beside the river, the road followed like a white ribbon along its bank, and upon it the dusty old post-diligence, with its four weedy horses and its jingling bells, was travelling, just as it had travelled for two centuries past. Truly that reach of the Meuse was the most rural, peaceful, and picturesque spot in all the Ardennes, and little wonder was it, indeed, that the Baron de Neuville, when the great ruined castle had been offered for sale, had immediately purchased it, and renovated it to its present perfect state.

“I can’t think why father should have made us come here just in these troublous times,” the girl exclaimed petulantly to her mother, a grave, white-haired, well-preserved lady in black, who, seated at the farther end of the room, was busy with her fancy needlework. And then the girl beat an impatient tattoo upon one of the small leaded window-panes with the tips of her slim white fingers.

“Your father thinks it is more pleasant for us here than in Brussels just now, with all the silly excitement in progress, my dear,” the Baroness replied. “I have just had a telegram. He will be here to-night.”

“Does he give any further news of the situation?”

“None.”

“But when we left in the car yesterday, it was believed that we might be at war at any moment,” the girl said.

Her mother, a calm-faced, rather stout woman, and typically Belgian, sighed deeply.

“What will happen we cannot tell, my girl.”

“But if the Germans come, what shall we do?” queried Aimée, for she was thinking of Edmond, from whom she had had a hastily scribbled letter that morning. He had rejoined his regiment as sous-officier, and he said they expected to leave that day for the frontier.

“Do?” echoed the Baroness. “Why, nothing. They will simply march along the valley down yonder, and we shall be quite safe up here. The Germans are, after all, men of culture. They are gentlemen.”