Complete works of a e w.., p.799
Complete Works of a E W Mason, page 799
“Do you see that last sentence? ‘We shall do what we like in neutral countries.’ No man ever spoke the mind of his nation better than Peiffer did that night in a squalid café in Melilla.”
Slingsby looked out over the harbour to where the sun was setting on the sierras. He would have given an arm to be sure of what Peiffer had set on foot behind those hills.
“I wonder,” he said uneasily, and from that day he began to sleep badly.
Then came another and a most disquieting phase of the affair. Peiffer began to write letters to Slingsby. He was not comfortable. He was not being treated as an officer should be. He had no amusements, and his food was too plain. Moreover, there were Germans and Austrians up in the camp who turned up their noses at him because their birth was better than his.
“You see what these letters mean?” said Slingsby. “Peiffer wants to be sent away from the Rock.”
“You are reading your own ideas into them,” I replied.
But Slingsby was right. Each letter under its simple and foolish excuses was a prayer for translation to a less dangerous place. For as the days passed and no answer was vouchsafed, the prayer became a real cry of fear.
“I claim to be sent to England without any delay. I must be sent,” he wrote frankly and frantically.
Slingsby set his teeth with a grim satisfaction.
“No, my friend, you shall stay while the danger lasts. If it’s a year, if you are alone in the camp, still you shall stay. The horrors you have planned you shall share with every man, woman and child in the town.”
We were in this horrible and strange predicament. The whole colony was menaced, and from the Lines to Europa Point only two men knew of the peril. Of those two, one, in an office down by the harbour, ceaselessly and vainly, with a dreadful anxiety, asked “When?” The other, the prisoner, knew the very hour and minute of the catastrophe, and waited for it with the sinking fear of a criminal awaiting the fixed moment of his execution.
Thus another week passed.
Slingsby became a thing of broken nerves. If you shut the door noisily he cursed; if you came in noiselessly he cursed yet louder, and one evening he reached the stage when the sunset gun made him jump.
“That’s enough,” I said sternly. “To-day is Saturday. To-morrow we borrow the car” — there is only one worth talking about on the Rock— “and we drive out.”
“I can’t do it,” he cried.
I continued:
“We will lunch somewhere by the road, and we will go on to the country house of the Claytons, who will give us tea. Then in the afternoon we will return.”
Slingsby hesitated. It is curious to remember on how small a matter so much depended. I believe he would have refused, but at that moment the sunset gun went off and he jumped out of his chair.
“Yes, I am fairly rocky,” he admitted. “I will take a day off.”
I borrowed the car, and we set off and lunched according to our programme. It was perhaps half an hour afterwards when we were going slowly over a remarkably bad road. A powerful car, driven at a furious pace, rushed round a corner towards us, swayed, lurched, and swept past us with a couple of inches to spare, whilst a young man seated at the wheel shouted a greeting and waved his hand.
“Who the dickens was that?” I asked.
“I know,” replied Slingsby. “It’s Morano. He’s a count, and will be a marquis and no end of a swell if he doesn’t get killed motoring. Which, after all, seems likely.”
I thought no more of the man until his name cropped up whilst we were sitting at tea on the Claytons’ veranda.
“We passed Morano,” said Slingsby. And Mrs. Clayton said with some pride — she was a pretty, kindly woman, but she rather affected the Spanish nobility:
“He lunched with us to-day. You know he is staying in Gibraltar.”
“Yes, I know that,” said Slingsby. “For I met him a little time ago. He wanted to know if there was a good Government launch for sale.”
Mrs. Clayton raised her eyebrows in surprise.
“A launch? Surely you are wrong. He is devoting himself to aviation.”
“Is he?” said Slingsby, and a curious look flickered for a moment over his face.
We left the house half an hour afterwards, and as soon as we were out of sight of it Slingsby opened his hand. He was holding a visiting card.
“I stole this off the hall table,” he said. “Mrs. Clayton will never forgive me. Just look at it.”
His face had become extraordinarily grave. The card was Morano’s, and it was engraved after the Spanish custom. In Spain, when a woman marries she does not lose her name. She may be in appearance more subject to her husband than the women of other countries, though you will find many good judges to tell you that women rule Spain. In any case her name is not lost in that of her husband; the children will bear it as well as their father’s, and will have it printed on their cards. Thus, Mr. Jones will call on you, but on the card he leaves he will be styled:
Mr. Jones and Robinson,
if Robinson happens to be his mother’s name, and if you are scrupulous in your etiquette you will so address him.
Now, on the card which Slingsby had stolen, the Count Morano was described:
MORANO Y GOLTZ
“I see,” I replied. “Morano had a German mother.”
I was interested. There might be nothing in it, of course. A noble of Spain might have a German mother and still not intrigue for the Germans against the owners of Gibraltar. But no sane man would take a bet about it.
“The point is,” said Slingsby, “I am pretty sure that is not the card which he sent in to me when he came to ask about a launch. We will go straight to the office and make sure.”
By the time we got there we were both somewhat excited, and we searched feverishly in the drawers of Slingsby’s writing-table.
“I shouldn’t be such an ass as to throw it away,” he said, turning over his letters. “No! Here it is!” and a sharp exclamation burst from his lips.
“Look!”
He laid the card he had stolen side by side with the card which he had just found, and between the two there was a difference — to both of us a veritable world of difference. For from the second card the “y Goltz,” the evidence that Morano was half-German, had disappeared.
“And it’s not engraved,” said Slingsby, bending down over the table. “It’s just printed — printed in order to mislead us.”
Slingsby sat down in his chair. A great hope was bringing the life back to his tired face, but he would not give the reins to his hope.
“Let us go slow,” he said, warned by the experience of a hundred disappointments. “Let us see how it works out. Morano comes to Gibraltar and makes a prolonged stay in a hotel. Not being a fool, he is aware that I know who is in Gibraltar and who is not. Therefore he visits me with a plausible excuse for being in Gibraltar. But he takes the precaution to have this card specially printed. Why, if he is playing straight? He pretends he wants a launch, but he is really devoting himself to aviation. Is it possible that the Count Morano, not forgetting Goltz, knows exactly how the good Peiffer spent the six hours we can’t account for, and what his little plan is?”
I sprang up. It did seem that Slingsby was getting at last to the heart of Peiffer’s secret.
“We will now take steps,” said Slingsby, and telegrams began to fly over the wires. In three days’ time the answers trickled in.
An agent of Morano’s had bought a German aeroplane in Lisbon. A German aviator was actually at the hotel there. Slingsby struck the table with his fist.
“What a fool I am!” he cried. “Give me a newspaper.”
I handed him one of that morning’s date. Slingsby turned it feverishly over, searching down the columns of the provincial news until he came to the heading “Portugal.”
“Here it is!” he cried, and he read aloud. “‘The great feature of the Festival week this year will be, of course, the aviation race from Villa Real to Seville. Amongst those who have entered machines is the Count Morano y Goltz.’”
He leaned back and lit a cigarette.
“We have got it! Morano’s machine, driven by the German aviator, rises from the aerodrome at Villa Real in Portugal with the others, heads for Seville, drops behind, turns and makes a bee-line for the Rock, Peiffer having already arranged with Morano for signals to be made where bombs should be dropped. When is the race to be?”
I took the newspaper.
“Ten days from now.”
“Good!”
Once more the telegrams began to fly. A week later Slingsby told me the result.
“Owing to unforeseen difficulties, the Festival committee at Villa Real has reorganised its arrangements, and there will be no aviation race. Oh, they’ll do what they like in neutral countries, will they? But Peiffer shan’t know,” he added, with a grin. “Peiffer shall eat of his own frightfulness.”
THE EBONY BOX
“NO, NO,” SAID Colonel von Altrock, abruptly. “It is not always true.”
The conversation died away at once, and everyone about that dinner table in the Rue St. Florentin looked at him expectantly. He played nervously with the stem of his wineglass for a few moments, as though the complete silence distressed him. Then he resumed with a more diffident air:
“War no doubt inspires noble actions and brings out great qualities in men from whom you expected nothing. But there is another side to it which becomes apparent, not at once, but after a few months of campaigning. Your nerves get over-strained, fatigue and danger tell their tale. You lose your manners, sometimes you degenerate into a brute. I happen to know. Thirty years have passed since the siege of Paris, yet even to-day there is no part of my life which I regret so much as the hours between eleven and twelve o’clock of Christmas night in the year ‘Seventy. I will tell you about it if you like, although the story may make us late for the opera.”
The opera to be played that evening was “Faust,” which most had heard, and the rest could hear when they would. On the other hand Colonel von Altrock was habitually a silent man. The offer which he made now he was not likely to repeat. It was due, as his companions understood, to the accident that this night was the first which he had spent in Paris since the days of the great siege.
“It will not matter if we are a little late,” said his hostess, the Baroness Hammerstein, and her guests agreed with her.
“It is permitted to smoke?” asked the Colonel. For a moment the flame of a match lit up and exaggerated the hollows and the lines upon his lean, rugged face. Then, drawing his chair to the table, he told his story.
I was a lieutenant of the fifth company of the second battalion of the 103rd Regiment, which belonged to the 23rd Infantry Division. It is as well to be exact. That division was part of the 12th Army Corps under the Crown Prince of Saxony, and in the month of December formed the south-eastern segment of our circle about Paris. On Christmas night I happened to be on duty at a forepost in advance of Noisy-le-Grand. The centrigrade thermometer was down to twelve degrees below zero, and our little wooden hut with the sloping roof, which served us at once as kitchen, mess-room, and dormitory, seemed to us all a comfortable shelter. Outside its door the country glimmered away into darkness, a white silent plain of snow. Inside, the camp-bedsteads were neatly ranged along the wall where the roof was lowest. A long table covered with a white cloth — for we were luxurious on Christmas night — occupied the middle of the floor. A huge fire blazed up the chimney, chairs of any style, from a Louis Quatorze fauteuil borrowed from the salon of a château to the wooden bench of a farm-house, were placed about the table, and in a corner stood a fine big barrel of Bavarian beer which had arrived that morning as a Christmas present from my mother at Leipzig. We were none of us anxious to turn out into the bitter cold, I can tell you. But we were not colonels in those days, and while the Hauptmann was proposing my mother’s health the door was thrust open and an orderly muffled up to the eyes stood on the threshold at the salute.
“The Herr Oberst wishes to see the Herr Lieutenant von Altrock,” said he, and before I had time even to grumble he turned on his heels and marched away.
I took down my great-coat, drew the cape over my head, and went out of the hut. There was no wind, nor was the snow falling, but the cold was terrible, and to me who had come straight from the noise of my companions the night seemed unnaturally still. I plodded away through the darkness. Behind me in the hut the Hauptmann struck up a song, and the words came to me quite clearly and very plaintively across the snow:
Ich hatte einen Kamaraden
Einen besseren findest du nicht.
I wondered whether in the morning, like that comrade, I should be a man to be mentioned in the past tense. For more than once a sentinel had been found frozen dead at his post, and I foresaw a long night’s work before me. My Colonel had acquired a habit of choosing me for special services, and indeed to his kindness in this respect I owed my commission. For you must understand that I was a student at Heidelberg when the newsboys came running down the streets one evening in July with the telegram that M. Benedetti had left Ems. I joined the army as a volunteer, and I fought in the ranks at Gravelotte. However, I felt no gratitude to my Colonel that Christmas night as I tramped up the slope of Noisy-le-Grand to the château where he had his quarters.
I found him sitting at a little table drawn close to the fire in a bare, dimly-lighted room. A lamp stood on the table, and he was peering at a crumpled scrap of paper and smoothing out its creases. So engrossed was he, indeed, in his scrutiny that it was some minutes before he raised his head and saw me waiting for his commands.
“Lieutenant von Altrock,” he said, “you must ride to Raincy.”
Raincy was only five miles distant, as the crow flies. Yes, but the French had made a sortie on the 21st, they had pushed back our lines, and they now held Ville Evrart and Maison Blanche between Raincy and Noisy-le-Grand. I should have to make a circuit; my five miles became ten. I did not like the prospect at all. I liked it still less when the Colonel added:
“You must be careful. More than one German soldier has of late been killed upon that road. There are francs-tireurs about, and you must reach Raincy.”
It was a verbal message which he gave me, and I was to deliver it in person to the commandant of the battery at Raincy. It bore its fruit upon the 27th, when the cross-fire from Raincy and Noisy-le-Grand destroyed the new French fort upon Mount Avron in a snowstorm.
“There is a horse ready for you at the stables,” said the Colonel, and with a nod he turned again to his scrap of paper. I saluted and walked to the door. As my hand was on the knob he called me back.
“What do you make of it?” he asked, holding the paper out to me. “It was picked out of the Marne in a sealed wine-bottle.”
I took the paper, and saw that a single sentence was written upon it in a round and laborious hand with the words mis-spelt. The meaning of the sentence seemed simple enough. It was apparently a message from a M. Bonnet to his son in the Mobiles at Paris, and it stated that the big black sow had had a litter of fifteen.
“What do you make of it?” repeated the Colonel.
“Why, that M. Bonnet’s black sow has farrowed fifteen,” said I.
I handed the paper back. The Colonel looked at it again, shrugged his shoulders, and laughed.
“Well, after all, perhaps it does mean no more than that,” said he.
But for the Colonel’s suspicions I should not have given another thought to that mis-spelt scrawl. M. Bonnet was probably some little farmer engrossed in his pigs and cows, who thought that no message could be more consoling to his son locked up in Paris than this great news about the black sow. The Colonel’s anxiety, however, fixed it for awhile in my mind.
The wildest rumours were flying about our camp at that time, as I think will always happen when you have a large body of men living under a great strain of cold and privation and peril. They perplexed the seasoned officers and they were readily swallowed by the youngsters, of whom I was one. Now, this scrap of paper happened to fit in with the rumour which most of all exercised our imaginations.
It was known that in spite of all our precautions news was continually leaking into Paris which we did not think it good for the Parisians to have. What we did think good for them — information, for instance, of the defeat of the Army of the Loire — we ourselves sent in without delay. But we ascertained from our prisoners that Paris was enlightened with extraordinary rapidity upon other matters which we wished to keep to ourselves. On that very Christmas Day they already knew that General Faidherbe, at Pont Noyelles, had repulsed a portion of our first army under General Manteuffel. How did they know? We were not satisfied that pigeons and balloons completely explained the mystery. No, we believed that the news passed somewhere through our lines on the south-east of Paris. There was supposed to exist a regular system like the underground road in the Southern States of America during the slavery days. There the escaped slave was quickly and secretly passed on from appointed house to appointed house, until he reached freedom. Here it was news in cipher which was passed on and on to a house close to our lines, whence, as occasion served, it was carried into Paris.
That was the rumour. There may have been truth in it, or it may have been entirely false. But, at all events, it had just the necessary element of fancy to appeal to the imagination of a very young man, and as I walked to the stables and mounted the horse which the Colonel had lent me, I kept wondering whether this message, so simple in appearance, had travelled along that underground road and was covering its last stage between the undiscovered château and Paris in the sealed wine-bottle. I tried to make out what the black sow stood for in the cipher, and whose identity was concealed under the pseudonym of M. Bonnet. So I rode down the slope of Noisy-le-Grand.
But at the bottom of the slope these speculations passed entirely from my mind. In front, hidden away in the darkness, lay the dangers of Ville Evrart and Maison Blanche. German soldiers had ridden along this path and had not returned; the francs-tireurs were abroad. Yet I must reach Raincy. Moreover, in my own mind, I was equally convinced that I must return. I saw the little beds against the wall of the hut under the sloping roof. I rode warily, determined to sleep in one of them that night, determined to keep my life if it could be kept. I believe I should have pistolled my dearest friend without a tinge of remorse had he tried to delay me for a second. Three months of campaigning, in a word, had told their tale.
