In Secret

Hour after hour, lying deep in her armchair before the fire, Miss Erith crouched a prey to excited conjectures, not one of which could be answered until the man in the Samaritan Hospital had recovered consciousness.

Suppose he never recovered consciousness. Suppose he should die—

At the thought Miss Erith sprang from her chair and picked up the telephone.

With fast-beating heart she waited for the connection. Finally she got it and asked the question.

"The man is dying," came the calm answer. A pause, then: "I understand the patient has just died."

Miss Erith strove to speak but her voice died in her throat. Trembling from head to foot, she placed the telephone on the table, turned uncertainly, fell into the armchair, huddled there, and covered her face with both hands.

For it was proving worse—a little worse than the loss of the Great Secret—worse than the mere disappointment in losing it—worse even than a natural sorrow in the defeat of an effort to save life.

For in all her own life Miss Erith had never until that evening experienced the slightest emotion when looking into the face of any man.

But from the moment when her brown eyes fell upon the pallid, dissipated, marred young face turned upward on her knees in the car—in that instant she had known for the first time a new and indefinable emotion—vague in her mind, vaguer in her heart—yet delicately apparent.

But what this unfamiliar emotion might be, so faint, so vague, she had made no effort to analyse…. It had been there; she had experienced it; that was all she knew.

It was almost morning before she rose, stiff with cold, and moved slowly toward her bedroom.

Among the whitening ashes on her hearth only a single coal remained alive.

CHAPTER III

TO A FINISH

The hospital called her on the telephone about eight o'clock in the morning:

"Miss Evelyn Erith, please?"

"Yes," she said in a tired voice, "who is it?"

"Is this Miss Erith?"

"Yes."

"This is the Superintendent's office, Samaritan, Hospital, Miss Dalton speaking."

The girl's heart contracted with a pang of sheer pain. She closed her eyes and waited. The voice came over the wire again:

"A wreath of Easter lilies with your card came early—this morning.

I'm very sure there is a mistake—"

"No," she whispered, "the flowers are for a patient who died in the hospital last night—a young man whom I brought there in my car—Kay McKay."

"I was afraid so—"

"What!"

"McKay isn't dead! It's another patient. I was sure somebody here had made a mistake."

Miss Erith swayed slightly, steadied herself with a desperate effort to comprehend what the voice was telling her.

"There was a mistake made last night," continued Miss Dalton. "Another patient died—a similar case. When I came on duty a few moments ago I learned what had occurred. The young man in whom you are interested is conscious this morning. Would you care to see him before he is discharged?"

Miss Erith said, unsteadily, that she would.

She had recovered her self-command but her knees remained weak and her lips tremulous, and she rested her forehead on both hands which had fallen, tightly clasped, on the table in front of her. After a few moments she felt better and she rang up her D. C., Mr. Vaux, and explained that she expected to be late at the office. After that she got the garage on the wire, ordered her car, and stood by the window watching the heavily falling snow until her butler announced the car's arrival.

The shock of the message informing her that this man was still alive now rapidly absorbed itself in her reviving excitement at the prospect of an approaching interview with him. Her car ran cautiously along Park Avenue through the driving snow, but the distance was not far and in a few minutes the great red quadrangle of the Samaritan Hospital loomed up on her right. And even before she was ready, before she quite had time to compose her mind in preparation for the questions she had begun to formulate, she was ushered into a private room by a nurse on duty who detained her a moment at the door:

"The patient is ready to be discharged," she whispered, "but we have detained him at your request. We are so sorry about the mistake."

"Is he quite conscious?"

"Entirely. He's somewhat shaken, that is all. Otherwise he shows no ill effects."

"Does he know how he came here?"

"Oh, yes. He questioned us this morning and we told him the circumstances."

"Does he know I have arrived?"

"Yes, I told him."

"He did not object to seeing me?" inquired Miss Erith. A slight colour dyed her face.

"No, he made no objection. In fact, he seemed interested. He expects you. You may go in."

Miss Erith stepped into the room. Perhaps the patient had heard the low murmur of voices in the corridor, for he lay on his side in bed gazing attentively toward the door. Miss Erith walked straight to the bedside; he looked up at her in silence.

"I am so glad that you are better," she said with an effort made doubly difficult in the consciousness of the bright blush on her cheeks. Without moving he replied in what must have once been an agreeable voice: "Thank you. I suppose you are Miss Erith."

"Yes."

"Then—I am very grateful for what you have done."

"It was so fortunate—"

"Would you be seated if you please?"

She took the chair beside his bed.

"It was nice of you," he said, almost sullenly. "Few women of your sort would bother with a drunken man."

They both flushed. She said calmly: "It is women of my sort who DO exactly that kind of thing."

He gave her a dark and sulky look: "Not often," he retorted: "there are few of your sort from Samaria."

There was a silence, then he went on in a hard voice:

"I'd been drinking a lot… as usual…. But it isn't an excuse when I say that my beastly condition was not due to a drunken stupor. It just didn't happen to be that time."

She shivered slightly. "It happened to be due to chloral," he added, reddening painfully again. "I merely wished you to know."

"Yes, they told me," she murmured.

After another silence, during which he had been watching her askance, he said: "Did you think I had taken that chloral voluntarily?"

She made no reply. She sat very still, conscious of vague pain somewhere in her breast, acquiescent in the consciousness, dumb, and now incurious concerning further details of this man's tragedy.

"Sometimes," he said, "the poor devil who, in chloral, seeks a-refuge from intolerable pain becomes an addict to the drug…. I do not happen to be an addict. I want you to understand that."

The painful colour came and went in the girl's face; he was now watching her intently.

"As a matter of fact, but probably of no interest to you," he continued, "I did not voluntarily take that chloral. It was administered to me without my knowledge—when I was more or less stupid with liquor…. It is what is known as knockout drops, and is employed by crooks to stupefy men who are more or less intoxicated so that they may be easily robbed."

He spoke now so calmly and impersonally that the girl had turned to look at him again as she listened. And now she said: "Were you robbed?"

"They took my hotel key: nothing else."

"Was that a serious matter, Mr. McKay?"

He studied her with narrowing brown eyes.

"Oh, no," he said. "I had nothing of value in my room at the Astor except a few necessaries in a steamer-trunk…. Thank you so much for all your kindness to me, Miss Erith," he added, as though relieving her of the initiative in terminating the interview.

As he spoke he caught her eye and divined somehow that she did not mean to go just yet. Instantly he was on his guard, lying there with partly closed lids, awaiting events, though not yet really suspicious. But at her next question he rose abruptly, supported on one elbow, his whole frame tense and alert under the bed-coverings as though gathered for a spring.

"What did you say?" he demanded.

"I asked you how long ago you escaped from Holzminden camp?" repeated the girl, very pale.

"Who told you I had ever been there?—wherever that is!"

"You were there as a prisoner, were you not, Mr. McKay?"

"Where is that place?"

"In Germany on the River Weser. You were detained there under pretence of being an Englishman before we declared war on Germany. After we declared war they held you as a matter of course."

There was an ugly look in his eyes, now: "You seem to know a great deal about a drunkard you picked up in the snow near the Plaza fountain last night."

"Please don't speak so bitterly."

Quite unconsciously her gloved hand crept up on her fur coat until it rested over her heart, pressing slightly against her breast. Neither spoke for a few moments. Then:

"I do know something about you, Mr. McKay," she said. "Among other things I know that—that if you have become—become intemperate—it is not your fault…. That was vile of them-unutterably wicked-to do what they did to you—"

"Who are you?" he burst out. "Where have you learned-heard such things? Did I babble all this?"

"You did not utter a sound!"

"Then—in God's name—"

"Oh, yes, yes!" she murmured, "in God's name. That is why you and I are here together—in God's name and by His grace. Do you know He wrought a miracle for you and me—here in New York, in these last hours of this dreadful year that is dying very fast now?

"Do you know what that miracle is? Yes, it's partly the fact that you did not die last night out there on the street. Thirteen degrees below zero! … And you did not die…. And the other part of the miracle is that I of all people in the world should have found you!… That is our miracle."

Somehow he divined that the girl did not mean the mere saving of his life had been part of this miracle. But she had meant that, too, without realising she meant it.

"Who are you?" he asked very quietly.

"I'll tell you: I am Evelyn Erith, a volunteer in the C. E. D. Service of the United States."

He drew a deep breath, sank down on his elbow, and rested his head on the pillow.

"Still I don't see how you know," he said. "I mean—the beastly details—"

"I'll tell you some time. I read the history of your case in an intercepted cipher letter. Before the German agent here had received and decoded it he was arrested by an agent of another Service. If there is anything more to be learned from him it will be extracted.

"But of all men on earth you are the one man I wanted to find. There is the miracle: I found you! Even now I can scarcely force myself to believe it is really you."

The faintest flicker touched his eyes.

"What did you want of me?" he inquired.

"Help."

"Help? From such a man as I? What sort of help do you expect from a drunkard?"

"Every sort. All you can give. All you can give."

He looked at her wearily; his face had become pallid again; the dark hollows of dissipation showed like bruises.

"I don't understand," he said. "I'm no good, you know that. I'm done in, finished. I couldn't help you with your work if I wanted to. There's nothing left of me. I am not to be depended on."

And suddenly, in his eyes of a boy, his self-hatred was revealed to her in one savage gleam.

"No good," he muttered feverishly, "not to be trusted—no will-power left…. It was in me, I suppose, to become the drunkard I am—"

"You are NOT!" cried the girl fiercely. "Don't say it!"

"Why not? I am!"

"You can fight your way free!" His laugh frightened her.

"Fight? I've done that. They tried to pump me that way, too—tried to break me—break my brain to pieces—by stopping my liquor…. I suppose they thought I might really go insane, as they gave it back after a while—after a few centuries in hell—and tried to make me talk by other methods—

"Don't, please." She turned her head swiftly, unable to control her quivering face.

"Why not?"

"I can't bear it."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to shock you."

"I know." She sat for a while with head averted; and presently spoke, sitting so:

"We'll fight it, anyway," she said.

"What do you mean?"

"If you'll let me—"

After a silence she turned and looked at him. He stammered, very red:

"I don't quite know why you speak to me so."

She herself was not entirely clear on that point, either. After all, her business with this man was to use him in the service of her Government."

"What is THE GREAT SECRET?" she asked calmly.

After a long while he said, lying there very still: "So you have even heard about that."

"I have heard about it; that is all."

"Do you know what it is?"

"All I know about it is that there is such a thing—something known to certain Germans, and by them spoken of as THE GREAT SECRET. I imagine, of course, that it is some vital military secret which they desire to guard."

"Is that all you know about it?"

"No, not all." She looked at him gravely out of very clear, honest eyes:

"I know, also, that the Berlin Government has ordered its agents to discover your whereabouts, and to'silence' you."

He gazed at her quite blandly for a moment, then, to her amazement, he laughed—such a clear, untroubled, boyish laugh that her constrained expression softened in sympathy.

"Do you think that Berlin doesn't mean it?" she asked, brightening a little.

"Mean it? Oh, I'm jolly sure Berlin means it!"

"Then why—"

"Why do I laugh?"

"Well—yes. Why do you? It does not strike me as very humorous."

At that he laughed again—laughed so whole-heartedly, so delightfully, that the winning smile curved her own lips once more.

"Would you tell me why you laugh?" she inquired.

"I don't know. It seems so funny—those Huns, those Boches, already smeared from hair to feet with blood—pausing in their wholesale butchery to devise a plan to murder ME!"

His face altered; he raised himself on one elbow:

"The swine have turned all Europe into a bloody wallow. They're belly-deep in it—Kaiser and knecht! But that's only part of it. They're destroying souls by millions!… Mine is already damned."

Miss Erith sprang to her feet: "I tell you not to say such a thing!" she cried, exasperated. "You're as young as I am! Besides, souls are not slain by murder. If they perish it's suicide, ALWAYS!"

She began to pace the white room nervously, flinging open her fur coat as she turned and came straight back to his bed again. Standing there and looking down at him she said:

"We've got to fight it out. The country needs you. It's your bit and you've got to do it. There's a cure for alcoholism—Dr. Langford's cure. Are you afraid because you think it may hurt?"

He lay looking up at her with hell's own glimmer in his eyes again:

"You don't know what you're talking about," he said. "You talk of cures, and I tell you that I'm half dead for a drink right now! And I'm going to get up and dress and get it!"

The expression of his features and his voice and words appalled her, left her dumb for an instant. Then she said breathlessly:

"You won't do that!"

"Yes I will."

"No."

"Why not?" he demanded excitedly.

"You owe me something."

"What I said was conventional. I'm NOT grateful to you for saving the sort of life mine is!"

"I was not thinking of your life."

After a moment he said more quietly: "I know what you mean…. Yes, I am grateful. Our Government ought to know."

"Then tell me, now."

"You know," he said brutally, "I have only your word that you are what you say you are."

She reddened but replied calmly: "That is true. Let me show you my credentials."

From her muff she drew a packet, opened it, and laid the contents on the bedspread under his eyes. Then she walked to the window and stood there with her back turned looking out at the falling snow.

After a few minutes he called her. She went back to the bedside, replaced the packet in her muff, and stood waiting in silence.

He lay looking up at her very quietly and his bruised young features had lost their hard, sullen expression.

"I'd better tell you all I know," he said, "because there is really no hope of curing me… you don't understand… my will-power is gone. The trouble is with my mind itself. I don't want to be cured…. I WANT what's killing me. I want it now, always, all the time. So before anything happens to me I'd better tell you what I know so that our Government can make the proper investigation. Because what I shall tell you is partly a surmise. I leave it to you to judge—to our Government."

She drew from her muff a little pad and a pencil and seated herself on the chair beside him.

"I'll speak slowly," he began, but she shook her head, saying that she was an expert stenographer. So he went on:

"You know my name—Kay McKay. I was born here and educated at Yale. But my father was Scotch and he died in Scotland. My mother had been dead many years. They lived on a property called Isla which belonged to my grandfather. After my father's death my grandfather allowed me an income, and when I had graduated from Yale I continued here taking various post-graduate courses. Finally I went to Cornell and studied agriculture, game breeding and forestry—desiring some day to have a place of my own.

"In 1914 I went to Germany to study their system of forestry. In July of that year I went to Switzerland and roamed about in the vagabond way I like—once liked." His visage altered and he cast a side glance at the girl beside him, but her eyes were fixed on her pad.

He drew a deep breath, like a sigh:

"In that corner of Switzerland which is thrust westward between Germany and France there are a lot of hills and mountains which were unfamiliar to me. The flora resembled that of the Vosges—so did the bird and insect life except on the higher mountains.

"There is a mountain called Mount Terrible. I camped on it. There was some snow. You know what happens sometimes in summer on the higher peaks. Well, it happened to me—the whole snow field slid when I was part way across it—and I thought it was all off—never dreamed a man could live through that sort of thing—with the sheer gneiss ledges below!

"It was not a big avalanche—not the terrific thundering sort—rather an easy slipping, I fancy—but it was a devilish thing to lie aboard, and, of course, if there had been precipices where I slid—" He shrugged.

The girl looked up from her shorthand manuscript; he seemed to be dreamily living over in his mind those moments on Mount Terrible. Presently he smiled slightly:

"I was horribly scared—smothered, choked, half-senseless…. Part of the snow and a lot of trees and boulders went over the edge of something with a roar like Niagara…. I don't know how long afterward it was when I came to my senses.

"I was in a very narrow, rocky valley, up to my neck in soft snow, and the sun beating on my face. … So I crawled out… I wasn't hurt; I was merely lost.

"It took me a long while to place myself geographically. But finally, by map and compass, I concluded that I was in some one of the innumerable narrow valleys on the northern side of Mount Terrible. Basle seemed to be the nearest proper objective, judging from my map…. Can you form a mental picture of that particular corner of Europe, Miss Erith?"

"No."

"Well, the German frontier did not seem to be very far northward—at least that was my idea. But there was no telling; the place where I landed was a savage and shaggy wilderness of firs and rocks without any sign of habitation or of roads.

"The things that had been strapped on my back naturally remained with me—map, binoculars, compass, botanising paraphernalia, rations for two days—that sort of thing. So I was not worried. I prowled about, experienced agreeable shivers by looking up at the mountain which had dumped me down into this valley, and finally, after eating, I started northeast by compass.

"It was a rough scramble. After I had been hiking along for several hours I realised that I was on a shelf high above another valley, and after a long while I came out where I could look down over miles of country. My map indicated that what I beheld must be some part of Alsace. Well, I lay flat on a vast shelf of rock and began to use my field-glasses."

He was silent so long that Miss Erith finally looked up questioningly. McKay's face had become white and stern, and in his fixed gaze there was something dreadful.

"Please," she faltered, "go on."

He looked at her absently; the colour came back to his face; he shrugged his shoulders.

"Oh, yes. What was I saying? Yes—about that vast ledge up there under the mountains… I stayed there three days. Partly because I couldn't find any way down. There seemed to be none.

"But I was not bored. Oh, no. Just anxious concerning my situation. Otherwise I had plenty to look at."

She waited, pencil poised.

"Plenty to look at," he repeated absently. "Plenty of Huns to gaze at. Huns? They were like ants below me, there. They swarmed under the mountain ledge as far as I could see—thousands of busy Boches—busy as ants. There were narrow-gauge railways, too, apparently running right into the mountain; and a deep broad cleft, deep as another valley, and all crawling with Huns.

"A tunnel? Nobody alive ever dreamed of such a gigantic tunnel, if it was one!… Well, I was up there three days. It was the first of August—thereabouts—and I'd been afield for weeks. And, of course, I'd heard nothing of war—never dreamed of it.

"If I had, perhaps what those thousands of Huns were doing along the mountain wall might have been plainer to me.

"As it was, I couldn't guess. There was no blasting—none that I could hear. But trains were running and some gigantic enterprise was being accomplished—some enterprise that apparently demanded speed and privacy—for not one civilian was to be seen, not one dwelling. But there were endless mazes of fortifications; and I saw guns being moved everywhere.

"Well, I was becoming hungry up on that fir-clad battlement. I didn't know how to get down into the valley. It began to look as though I'd have to turn back; and that seemed a rather awful prospect.

"Anyway, what happened, eventually, was this: I started east through the forest along that pathless tableland, and on the afternoon of the next day, tired out and almost starved, I stepped across the Swiss boundary line—a wide, rocky, cleared space crossing a mountain flank like a giant's road.

"No guards were visible anywhere, no sentry-boxes, but, as I stood hesitating in the middle of the frontier—and just why I hesitated I don't know—I saw half a dozen jagers of a German mounted regiment ride up on the German side of the boundary.

"For a second the idea occurred to me that they had ridden parallel to the ledge to intercept me; but the idea seemed absurd, granted even that they had seen me upon the ledge from below, which I never dreamed they had. So when they made me friendly gestures to come across the frontier I returned their cheery 'Gruss Gott!' and plodded thankfully across. … And their leader, leaning from his saddle to take my offered hand, suddenly struck me in the face, and at the same moment a trooper behind me hit me on the head with the butt of a pistol."

The girl's flying pencil faltered; she lifted her brown eyes, waiting.

"That's about all," he said—"as far as facts are concerned…. They treated me rather badly…. I faced their firing-squads half-a-dozen times. After that bluff wouldn't work they interned me as an English civilian at Holzminden…. They hid me when, at last, an inspection took place. No chance for me to communicate with our Ambassador or with any of the Commission."

He turned to her in his boyish, frank way: "But do you know, Miss Erith, it took me quite a while to analyse the affair and to figure out why they arrested me, lied about me, and treated me so hellishly.

"You see, I was kept in solitary confinement and never had a chance to speak to any of the other civilians interned there at Holzminden. There was no way of suspecting why all this was happening to me except by the attitude of the Huns themselves and their endless questions and threats and cruelties. They were cruel. They hurt me a lot."

Miss Erith's eyes suddenly dimmed as she watched him, and she hastily bent her head over the pad.

"Well," he went on, "the rest, as I say, is pure surmise. This is my conclusion: I think that for the last forty years the Huns have been busy with an astounding military enterprise. Of course, since 1870, the Boche has expected war, and has been feverishly preparing for it. All the world now knows what they have done—not everything that they have done, however.