With Joffre at Verdun: A Story of the Western Front

"And you?" demanded Henri.

"Yes, you?" asked Jules inquisitively.

"Oh, I? Well, I'll stay here for a time, and then I'll fare for myself. Supposing we have a race to the Dutch frontier? I shouldn't wonder if I got there as soon as you do, for I'm strong and big, and, you see, I can walk during the night, and, well – all's fair in love and war – there's many a hen-roost that I can rob on my journey."

Spoken flippantly enough, there was yet steady determination in the words of Stuart. He meant everything he said, and most generously gave up his prospects, at least of companionship, for the sake of those companions. More than that, he probably gave up all chances of making good his escape from Germany, for the task of marching to the Dutch frontier was no light one. Henri looked at him swiftly, and then across at Jules, who coughed uncomfortably enough, half-opened his mouth as if to speak, and then remained silent. At last Henri managed to address Stuart.

"You're rotting!" he said sharply.

"On the contrary, never more serious in all my life."

"Then you're – "

"Say it," said Stuart sweetly. "A fool, you were going to say, I think."

"No. Shake hands," Henri demanded, stretching out one of his own. "It's good to have a chum such as you are, Stuart, good to know that amongst France's allies there is such a fellow. From all accounts the British have stuck well by the French, as the French have stuck by the British. We haven't had much news through, but from what one's heard it appears that the British, retreating from Mons on the left of the French armies, did France an enormous and inestimable service – saved, indeed, our left flank from being crumpled up and driven in on the centre, helped to save Paris, and finally helped to defeat von Kluck's army. It wasn't only by pluck and endurance that British officers and soldiers did that; it was by a considerable display of self-sacrifice. What's this but a self-sacrificing plan on your part? And you think that we are going to agree? – that Jules and I will accept the proposal, and leave you here alone to face all the difficulties of escaping from Germany – you, who besides being big, as we have already said, hardly know a word of the language? Fool wasn't the word that I was going to use, Stuart, it was something stronger. Shake hands again. Jules and I refuse to leave the place unless you come with us."

There was silence for a while, and then the three set to work again to discuss plans for leaving the factory. It seemed, indeed, that Henri had made quite a find in the manager's office, and that he had already selected a dress for Jules which would suit that young gentleman splendidly; and at length it was decided that Stuart should be dressed in a suit of good material – such as might be worn by a dependant – and that he should accompany the party as if he were a male nurse looking after the aged Henri. That night, indeed, having raided the manager's office again, and relieved him of things essential to their journey, the three set off from the place, and about eleven o'clock on the following day were to be observed on an adjacent railway station. An old gentleman, who peered through round goggles, who stumbled as he walked, and whose shoulders and head were bent and wobbling, traversed the platform on the arm of a girl of fascinating appearance; while in the rear came a huge, ugly fellow, with reddish hair and brilliant complexion, on whose head was thrust a hat which overhung and darkened his features, and who carried a bag – none other than the one in which the manager of the sugar factory had been wont to carry his possessions.

A train came in, and the three embarked upon it. The whistle sounded shrilly, smoke issued from the engine, and in a trice they were off on another stage of their adventurous journey.

CHAPTER VI

Changing their Direction

"Crikey! What a do! What a performance! Who'd have thought it?" gasped the huge Stuart, flinging himself back on the seat in the compartment and staring out of the window as the train moved away from the station. "Henri, you're a wizard, a conjuror, a most mysterious and clever individual. 'Pon my word, I looked at you as you boarded the train, and if I'd been a German official, one of these thick-headed, beer-drinking tubs of fellows, always on the look-out for aliens and enemies, I'd have failed to spot you."

"Magnificent!" ventured Jules, rubbing his hands and moving his limbs in a most unladylike fashion, in such masculine manner, in fact, that the cautious Henri, ever on the look-out for something which might attract the attention of enemies swarming about them, immediately pounced upon him.

"That's not right," he said; "no girl would sit like that, Jules, and you know it. Indeed, who should know it better than you, who, up to the outbreak of this war, were a regular lady's man? You've studied the fair sex, my boy, and now's the time to take advantage of that study."

Stuart guffawed. The whole adventure was so droll, so full of little incidents which tickled his mirth and which prompted laughter, that it was as much as he could do to keep his big, healthy features steady. And, seeing that they were in a compartment by themselves, why not make merry? For during the last two hours their actions had had to be serious enough in all conscience, and, indeed, the big Englishman spoke only the truth when he said that Henri had behaved like a perfect wizard. Stumbling down the platform, that ridiculously small Homberg hat only partially covering thin wisps of white hair – artificially whitened, let us explain, with the aid of some chalk – upon a head which if it were not bald, looked as if it ought to be so, Henri had acted the role of a feeble, querulous, short-sighted, and somewhat arrogant old gentleman to the life. He had snarled at his daughter – or his wife, whichever Jules was supposed to be, and, from the obvious youth of the young lady, probably she was the former. He had snapped at the big, beefy attendant who came behind him, and, reaching the train and making an effort to clamber aboard it – a none too easy performance on Continental railways – he had stumbled even more, had contrived to get into a position half-within and half-without the carriage, and had there stuck firmly, become jammed, as it were, a position which roused the wrath of the old gentleman still higher, which set him snarling at his lady companion, and caused him to throw a fiery imprecation at his attendant. It caused the officious station-master to hasten forward, and then, at the sight of this arrogant and somewhat important old gentleman, to bow obsequiously and assist his entrance to the carriage. Yes, altogether it was a splendid addition to their adventures.

"It's enough to make a cat laugh," said Stuart. "But here we are; and well now, I'm just wondering what our friend – sorry, your friend, Henri! – the manager of the sugar factory, will be saying just about this moment? Of course he'll learn that someone has entered his quarters."

Learn it, indeed! At that very moment the portly individual in question was in the centre of his bedroom, surveying the contents of a box which had been sadly depleted. He was rubbing the grizzly locks beside one ear, pondering deeply, staring through big goggles at the box, and trying to understand what had happened.

"But no," he said aloud; "I have not taken the things. Then who? And see this – my best suit of clothes has gone, my hat, and the goggles I placed on this chest last evening."

He made a movement towards the bell, and then dashed back, and once more came to an abrupt halt, pausing with feet far apart, with eyes peering into the distance, with wrinkled forehead, and with one hand still rubbing his grizzly locks.

"But, a thousand thunders! Then what does this mean?" he demanded, so loudly that a clerk dashed in from the adjacent office and asked what had happened. "Happened, indeed! Then see here, my Fritz, this box of clothing has been pilfered. My clothes are gone – my best suit of clothes – my hat, and what more I cannot say. Who, then, can have paid my quarters a visit?"

It puzzled the clerk also. For a while the two discussed the question in the most animated and Teutonic manner. Then a brilliant idea seized upon the brain of the clerk – an idea which sent a hot flush from the top of his head to the soles of his somewhat flat feet.

"That party of soldiers who came here a little time ago," he cried; "those prisoners who broke out of Ruhleben – who else, mein Herr Winterborgen – who else can have wanted such clothing, such disguises? Listen, there were three of them; now say what clothing you are missing."

When a further investigation was made of the losses which the portly manager had sustained, the incriminating fact was discovered that, besides his best suit of clothes and Homberg hat, a woman's dress and a man's had been purloined. That sent the manager flying to the telephone, and in due course of time set the police officials at the nearest police station bustling. Within half an hour a car dashed up to the gates of the sugar factory, and the most important and imposing of individuals commenced an official investigation on the spot. This investigation, sternly carried out, weighed every point so very closely, and went with so much minuteness into every little incident, that it set the unfortunate manager perspiring, and, indeed, after a while, made him begin to wonder whether he himself were a party to the theft which he had suffered, or a party to assisting the fugitives. The important official, if he did not actually accuse the manager of having aided the prisoners supposed to have purloined the articles of clothing, inferred it certainly, glared at the unhappy man, browbeat him in regular Germanic manner, and made him regret deeply that he had ever called for police assistance.

"You'll be ready to report personally at the police station," he was told. "Now I'll return and set a search in progress. Without doubt the three men who broke out of Ruhleben have paid you a visit; for we know already that they went to a farm farther back along the road and obtained supplies of food. Since then we have lost all sight of them, and it may very well be that they have been in hiding; and that may mean," he added severely, as he stood above the unhappy manager and glared down at him, "that someone has been providing a refuge for them, some unpatriotic and treacherous individual, who, if discovered, will certainly be shot in the morning – be shot in the cold, early morning," he added in unpleasant tones which did not fail to have their effect on the man he was addressing. "Yes, Herr Winterborgen, this is an important matter – so important, indeed, that for your own sake you will see that you attend promptly when called for."

It was with a gasp of relief that the manager saw the car driven away at furious speed, while he stood staring out of the window, mopping his forehead with a handkerchief. His thoughts were still in a whirl, and even then he could not shake from his mind the more than half belief that in some unconscious way he had indeed, unwittingly and unwillingly – for he was as good a patriot as anyone – aided the runaways. In such a dilemma, feeling vexed and sore at his own loss, and indignant at the cross-examination he had just suffered, it was but natural that he should work himself up into a terrible passion, and should turn the vials of his wrath upon the police inspector who had treated him so brusquely. Yet in time, when his anger had died down, he, like every other patriot in Germany, put his own personal disadvantage aside for the sake of his beloved Fatherland. He sighed deeply, and resumed his work with the pious wish that, if he had suffered, his suffering might lead to the discovery and capture of the men who had treated him so shamefully.

It is hardly necessary to narrate what followed after that interview with the police inspector. How the car took him swiftly back to the station, how the telephone was jingled, and how every possible official within reasonable distance was informed of what had happened. The station-master at the station where Henri and his friends had boarded the train presently received a call.

"Yes, here, Inspector," he answered, politely enough, over the telephone. "You are there and you want me – well I am here, what then? Prisoners escaped from Ruhleben? Ah, yes, yes! I remember, the rascals escaped perhaps a week ago, and have not been heard of since. Have I seen them here? Pooh! If I had, you know as well as I do that I would have apprehended them. What's that you say? They have been to the station? You ask if I have seen three suspicious people – a man, perhaps an old man, in a dark-blue, well-cut suit, wearing a Homberg hat and goggles, a girl, and a man of whose appearance you have no knowledge? Come now, that's a conundrum! I have seen many such people."

He began to get rather angry at the cross-examination of the police inspector – an examination, let us add, far less severe than that inflicted upon the manager of the sugar factory, but he listened awhile.

"You may have seen many such people," he heard over the telephone, "but all together, Herr Station-master – three all together – an oldish man, not big, perhaps bald, with goggles; a girl, and another man of uncertain appearance. Think now; not a very great number of people travel on the railway nowadays unless they are soldiers; think, have you not had such passengers?"

The station-master did think, think violently one may say, for it was well to be on the best terms possible with the police. A station-master might be a most important individual, very important indeed in his own estimation, but an inspector of the police in Germany was an important individual both in his own estimation, which was undoubted, and also in that of the public.

"Hold on one little moment; three people such as you describe – one an oldish man, a girl, and a third, a man with no description – have I seen such people getting on a train together? Why, wait!"

The scene as the aged and snappy old gentleman clambered aboard the train that morning suddenly occurred to the station-master, only to be put aside in an instant; for it seemed impossible that he could have been an impostor. The girl, too, looked so natural, so feminine, so absolutely genuine, and yet —

"Wait though, was it a girl?" the station-master asked himself, for it flashed across his stolid brain that the movements of the lady in question had not been, after all, entirely feminine. Now that he thought about the matter he remembered that at the moment when the three were boarding the train the lady had shown a most extraordinary degree of agility. She had clambered like a cat aboard the carriage, and had given a heave to the old gentlemen which disclosed a degree of strength somewhat peculiar in a woman. Yes, he was sure of it now, of course the thing was strange – it was not a woman, he felt sure.

"Hold!" he shouted down the telephone. "I have them!"

"You have them!" came the excited answer. "You have taken the three? You have got those prisoners?"

"No, no, no! I did not say I had taken them. I have got to the bottom of the mystery. Those three you mention boarded a train here this morning, a train going westward."

It was the turn of the inspector to shout down the telephone, to shout a peremptory order, to inform the station-master that he was coming immediately; and there followed at the station a close questioning of the station-master, followed by frantic telegrams and telephone messages which were sent down the line in pursuit of the train on which Jules and Henri and Stuart were travelling.

"Now we have them securely, thanks to my promptness and energy," said the police inspector, as he adjusted his glasses and pocketed his notebook – yes, pocketed his notebook, for that familiar object, part and parcel of every constable in Great Britain, is likewise an important part of the equipment of German policemen. It was with a flourish that the man pushed it into the short tail of his tunic, then he hitched his belt a trifle tighter, expanded his manly chest, and set his helmet at just the slightest rakish angle. He was a "dog" indeed, this police Inspector, wonderfully pleased with himself, bursting with self-importance, and as arrogant as they make them.

"You will see," he coughed, turning upon the station-master; "we shall have them, thanks to the telegrams I have sent. And then, my friend, what will they think of us at the central station? Of me, and this brilliant capture?"

"You!" exclaimed the station-master, somewhat taken aback; "of you, Inspector! But wait a moment. It is true that you have sent those telegrams off, and that, thanks to them, the runaways may be captured, but I – "

"May be captured?" thundered the inspector; "as if indeed they were not already in the hands of my subordinates. But proceed."

"I was about to add, to suggest, may I say? that, after all, in carrying out your duties you have been largely assisted by my promptness in remembering that three such persons as you described had actually boarded a train at this station. Consider for a little while: your description was, after all, not too elaborate – a little vague, absolutely deficient in the case of one of the fugitives. Is it not due in some small measure to my acumen that you are on the track of these people? Come now, Inspector, be fair. If there is honour to be won, apportion it out, and do not forget the assistance you have received from others."

It was curious that, at that very moment, there should arrive at the station, brought there in the police officer's car, which he had sent to the sugar factory for that purpose, the manager whose office Henri had so lately entered. The poor fellow was shaking with trepidation, with fear of what was to happen; and if his thoughts had been vague before, and not a little muddled, if terror of the law had somewhat disconcerted him, and upset his equilibrium during and after his cross-examination, terror of the future had made him now little more than a babbling idiot – an object, indeed, for the contemptuous glances of the police inspector and for his gibes and sallies.

"So," he said, standing over the portly figure of the little man, as he came from the motor-car and stumbled down the platform, "so, you have obeyed, Herr Winterborgen, you are here to identify the three whose return in captivity we are waiting. That is good, and certainly you will be able to tell us that they are the individuals."

The manager held his hands up, expostulating weakly. There were tears in his eyes, tears of fear, of rage, and of anguish.

"But, identify them," he cried, almost shrieked indeed, "identify the three who purloined garments from my office? But no, it is impossible; for hear me, Inspector, I never saw those individuals; not once, to my knowledge, have I ever set eyes on them."

But if he expected pity or leniency, he might just as well have appealed to the wooden pillar which supported the roof of the platform. The huge police inspector was adamant, inflexible, unmoved, and surveyed the trembling figure of his victim with cold eyes which glinted cruelly. Very slowly, he slid one broad hand back into the short tail of his tunic, extricated his notebook with a flourish, and, opening it and producing a pencil, called upon the station-master to bear witness to the words uttered.

"Mark the words of this Herr Winterborgen," he said. "'Not to my knowledge,' he states, has he seen these three individuals; and yet, mark this again, he was able to describe their appearance fully, to describe the clothes they wore, their sex, and their possible destination."

By then the eyes of the manager were almost starting out of his head, and he was gaping and gasping with amazement at the story to which he listened. Never before, indeed, had he imagined that anyone – let alone a police inspector, a pillar of the law – could have invented such a story, could have produced such a lying fabrication. The words stunned his ears, and he felt more than ever that he was hopelessly involved in circumstances which would end in nothing less than his utter downfall. Nor did the hour which passed ere the train came to the station relieve him of his fears or make him any the happier. For even if the fugitives were captured – and it seemed more than likely that they would be brought to the station in the train then approaching – their coming could result in nothing but further embarrassment, for he would be expected to identify them definitely, and if he did that he well knew that difficulties would become greater.

"Ha! At last it is signalled, this train," said the police inspector, "and we shall soon know whether our friends have made this capture."

"Wait, though," the station-master cautioned him, coming from his office at that moment; "this is a special and does not stop, but behind it, only a few minutes intervening, there is another train, the ordinary train, which stopped at the station down the line to which your telegrams were forwarded, and where the fugitives will have been surrounded. Stand back there!"

The three of them – the station-master, the police inspector, and the trembling manager of the sugar factory – stood on the platform and watched the train as it ran through the station at moderate speed; and then, thinking nothing more of it, waited for that other one, the smoke from the engine of which was already visible in the distance. Nor need we describe how the inspector – determined upon a capture, confident, indeed, that his telegrams had produced that result, and already bursting with triumph and rehearsing the terrible things that he would do to his captives – pounced upon the train, ran from carriage to carriage, and eagerly interrogated the officials. Imagine his rage, his mortification, his disappointment, when he was informed that no such people as the three whose description he had sent could be found upon the train going westward.

"Not search the train completely!" shouted an official whom he had questioned, and who, being of sufficient rank himself and of equal importance with the inspector, was not to be easily frightened. "How then? Is a police inspector the only individual capable of searching for spies and discovering them? Is everyone on the line a fool, then, unless he be a policeman? You'll tell us soon that we don't know our own business; as if, indeed, it were possible to miss three such people as you described, or even one of them, particularly when one knows that there were few passengers on the train in question."

It was of no use shouting back at the man; it was of no use engaging in a wordy quarrel with him; and of little service to take note of the covert smiles of the station-master and the sidelong winks he directed at the manager of the sugar factory – a manager now wonderfully transformed – the worthy Herr Winterborgen, who was even smiling. Slowly, little by little, arrogance oozed out of every pore of that perspiring police inspector, and presently he took himself off to his car and drove furiously away, wishing that he had never had this case to investigate, and that, wherever the escaping prisoners were, someone would shoot them.

Meanwhile, let us glance into one of the carriages of that train – that special which had bustled through the station while the inspector was waiting. In one of the compartments sat an aged man, with a Homberg hat of ridiculously small size pressed down over his temples, upon which wisps of hair shone whitely in the sunlight – a man who looked through big goggles at the scenery as it flashed by, and whose lips were hidden behind a drooping moustache of iron-grey colour. Beside him sat a girl, well-grown – masculine one would have almost said – with laughing features, a girl who had spread herself out in the carriage, and, lying back against the cushions, had placed her two feet on the opposite seat, a most inelegant, unladylike, yet possibly comfortable position. And beside them sat a big, bony, healthy individual, whose face was shaded by a broad hat, yet not sufficiently shaded to hide the wide grins which crossed it and denoted the utmost merriment. He was rubbing his two big, strong hands together, laughing, chuckling, and gazing every moment out of the window.

"My hat! My uncle! Crikey!" he exclaimed; "but that has really done it! And what luck we have had, too. To think that we should have been in a compartment which drew up near the signal station where that message about us was shouted by the man in charge. I declare again that you're a regular wizard, Henri, for how else could you have arranged for the train to halt just in that position, and where, thanks again to your knowledge of German, it allowed you at once to hear and understand what was shouted. Let's have the words again."