Chapter 27

"Whittling them down! What a ghastly expression!" she gasped. "You are as bad as Westerling and I am worse than either of you! I--I announced the four hundred thousand as if they were a score--a score in a game in our favor. I am helping, Lanny? All my sacrifice isn't for nothing?" she asked for the hundredth time.

"Immeasurably. You have saved us many lives!" he replied.

"And cost them many?" she asked.

"Yes, Marta, no doubt," he admitted; "but no more than they would have lost in the end. It is only the mounting up of their casualties that can end the war. Thus the lesson must be taught."

"And I can be of most help when the attack on the main defence is begun?"

"Yes."

"And when Westerling finds that my information is false about Engadir--then--"

She had never put the question to him in this way before. What would Westerling do if he found her out?

"My God, Marta!" he exclaimed. "If I'd had any sense I would have thought of that in the beginning and torn out the 'phone! I've been mad, mad with the one thought of the nation--inhuman in my greedy patriotism. I will not let you go any further!"

It was a new thing for her to be rallying him; yet this she did as the strange effect of his protest on the abnormal sensibilities that her acting had developed.

"Thinking of me--little me!" she called back. "Of one person's comfort when hundreds of thousands of other women are in terror; when the destiny of millions is at stake! Lanny, you are in a blue funk!" and she was laughing forcedly and hectically. "I'm going on--going on like one in a trance who can't stop if he would. It's all right, Lanny. I undertook the task myself. I must see it through!"

After she had hung up the receiver her buoyancy vanished. She leaned against the wall of the tunnel weakly. Yes, what if she were found out? She was thinking of the possibility seriously for the first time. Yet, for only a moment did she dwell upon it before she dismissed it in sudden reaction.

"No matter what they do to me or what becomes of me!" she thought. "I'm a lost soul, anyway. The thing is to serve as long as I can--and then I don't care!"

XXXVII

THUMBS DOWN FOR BOUCHARD

Haggard and at bay, Bouchard faced the circle of frowns around the polished expanse of that precious heirloom, the dining-room table of the Gallands. The dreaded reckoning of the apprehensions which kept him restlessly awake at night had come at the next staff council after the fall of the Twin Boulder Redoubt. With the last approach to the main line of defence cleared, one chapter of the war was finished. But the officers did not manifest the elation that the occasion called for, which is not saying that they were discouraged. They had no doubt that eventually the Grays would dictate peace in the Browns' capital. Exactly stated, their mood was one of repressed professional irritation. Not until the third attempt was Twin Boulder Redoubt taken. As far as results were concerned, the nicely planned first assault might have been a stroke of strategy by the Browns to drive the Grays into an impassable fire zone.

"The trouble is we are not informed!" exclaimed Turcas, opening his thin lips even less than usual, but twisting them in a significant manner as he gave his words a rasping emphasis. The others hastened to follow his lead with equal candor.

"Exactly. We have no reports of their artillery strength, which we had greatly underestimated," said the chief of artillery.

"Our maps of their forts could not be less correct if revealed to us for purposes of deceit. Again and again we have thought that we had them surprised, only to be surprised ourselves. In short, they know what we are doing and we don't know what they are doing!" said the tactical expert.

There the chief of the aerostatic division took the defensive.

"They certainly don't learn our plans with their planes and dirigibles!" he declared energetically.

"Hardly, when we never see them over our lines."

"The Browns are acting on the defensive in the air as well as on the earth!"

"But our own planes and dirigibles bring little news," said Turcas. "I mean, those that return," he added pungently.

"And few do return. My men are not wanting in courage!" replied the chief aerostatic officer. "Immediately we get over the Brown lines the Browns, who keep cruising to and fro, are on us like hawks. They risk anything to bring us down. When we descend low we strike the fire of their high-angle guns, which are distributed the length of the frontier. I believe both their aerial fleet and their high-angle artillery were greatly underestimated. Finally, I cannot reduce my force too much in scouting or they might rake the offensive."

"Another case of not being informed!" concluded Turcas, returning grimly to his point.

He looked at Bouchard, and every one began looking at Bouchard. If the Gray tacticians had been outplayed by their opponents, if their losses for the ground gained exceeded calculations, then it was good to have a scapegoat for their professional mistakes. Bouchard was Westerling's choice for chief of intelligence. His blind loyalty was pleasing to his superior, who, hitherto, had promptly silenced any suggestion of criticism by repeating that the defensive always appeared to the offensive to be better informed than itself. But this time Westerling let the conversation run on without a word of excuse for his favorite.

Each fresh reproach from the staff, whose opinion was the only god he knew, was a dagger thrust to Bouchard. At night he had lain awake worrying about the leak; by day he had sought to trace it, only to find every clew leading back to the staff. Now he was as confused in his shame as a sensitive schoolboy. Vaguely, in his distress, he heard Westerling asking a question, while he saw all those eyes staring at him.

"What information have we about Engadir?"

"I believe it to be strongly fortified!" stammered Bouchard.

"You believe! You have no information?" pursued Westerling.

"No, sir," replied Bouchard. "Nothing--nothing new!"

"We do seem to get little information," said Westerling, looking hard and long at Bouchard in silence--the combined silence of the whole staff.

This public reproof could have but one meaning. He should soon receive a note which would thank him politely for his services, in the stereotyped phrases always used for the purpose, before announcing his transfer to a less responsible post.

"Very little, sir!" Bouchard replied doggedly.

"There is that we had from one of our aviators whose machine came down in a smash just as he got over our infantry positions on his return," said the chief aerostatic officer. "He was in a dying condition when we picked him up, and, as he was speaking with the last breaths in his body, naturally his account of what he had seen was somewhat incoherent. It would be of use, however, if we had plans of the forts that would enable us to check off his report intelligently."

"Yet, what evidence have we that Partow or Lanstron has done more than to make a fortunate guess or show military insight?" Westerling asked. "There is the case of my own belief that Bordir was weak, which proved correct."

"Last night we got a written telegraphic staff message from the body of a dead officer of the Browns found in the Twin Boulder Redoubt," said the vice-chief, "which showed that in an hour after our plans were transmitted to our own troops for the first attack they were known to the enemy."

"That looks like a leak!" exclaimed Westerling, "a leak, Bouchard, do you hear?" He was frowning and his lips were drawn and his cheeks mottled with red in a way not pleasant to see.

Stiffening in his chair, a flash of desperation in his eye, Bouchard's bony, long hand gripped the table edge. Every one felt that a sensation was coming.

"Yes, I have known that there was a leak!" he said with hoarse, painful deliberation. "I have sent out every possible tracer. I have followed up every sort of clew I have transferred a dozen men. I have left nothing undone!"

"With no result?" persisted Westerling impatiently

"Yes, always the same result: That the leak is here in this house--here in the grand headquarters of the army under our very noses. I know it is not the telegraphers or the clerks. It is a member of the staff!"

"Have you gone out of your head?" demanded Westerling. "What staff-officer? How does he get the information to the enemy? Name the persons you suspect here and now! Explain, if you want to be considered sane!"

Here was the blackest accusation that could be made against an officer! The chosen men of the staff, tested through many grades before they reached the inner circle of cabinet secrecy, lost the composure of a council. All were leaning forward toward Bouchard breathless for his answer.

"There are three women on the grounds," said Bouchard. "I have been against their staying from the first. I----."

He got no further. His words were drowned by the outburst of one of the younger members of the staff, who had either to laugh or choke at the picture of this deep-eyed, spectral sort of man, known as a woman-hater, in his revelation of the farcical source of his suspicions.

"Why not include Clarissa Eileen?" some one asked, Starting a chorus of satirical exclamations.

"How do they get through the line?"

"Yes, past a wall of bayonets?"

"When not even a soldier in uniform is allowed to move away from his command without a pass?"

"By wireless?"

"Perhaps by telepathy!"

"Unless," said the chief of the aerostatic division, grinning, "Bouchard lends them the use of our own wires through the capital and around by the neutral countries across the Brown frontier!"

"But the correct plans and location of their forts and the numbers of their heavy guns and of their planes and dirigibles--your failure to have this information is not the result of any leak from our staff since the war began," said Turcas in his dry, penetrating voice, clearing the air of the smoke of scattered explosions.

All were staring at Bouchard again. What answer had he to this? He was in the box, the evidence stated by the prosecutor. Let him speak!

He was fairly beside himself in a paroxysm of rage and struck at the air with his clenched fist.

"---- ---- Lanstron!" he cried.

"There's no purpose in that. He can't hear you!" said Turcas, dryly as ever.

"He might, through the leak," said the chief aerostatic officer, who considered that many of his gallant subordinates had lost their lives through Bouchard's inefficiency. "Perhaps Clarissa Eileen has already telepathically wigwagged it to him."

To lose your temper at a staff council is most unbecoming. Turcas would have kept his if hit in the back by a fool automobilist. Westerling had now recovered his. He was again the superman in command.

"It is for you and not for us to locate the leak; yes, for you!" he said. "That is all on the subject for the present," he added in a tone of mixed pity and contempt, which left Bouchard freed from the stare of his colleagues and in the miserable company of his humiliation.

All on the subject for the present! When it was taken up again his successor would be in charge. He, the indefatigable, the over-intense, with his mediæval partisan fervor, who loathed in secret machines like Turcas, was the first man of the staff to go for incompetency.

"And Engadir is the key-point," Westerling was saying.

"Yes," agreed Turcas.

"So we concentrate to break through there," Westerling continued, "while we engage the whole line fiercely enough to make the enemy uncertain where the crucial attack is to be made."

"But, general, if there is any place that is naturally strong, that--" Turcas began.

"The one place where they are confident that we won't attack!" Westerling interrupted. He resented the staff's professional respect for Turcas. After a silence and a survey of the faces around, he added with sententious effect: "And I was right about Bordir!"

To this argument there could be no answer. The one stroke of generalship by the Grays, who, otherwise, had succeeded alone through repeated mass attacks, had been Westerling's hypothesis that had gained Bordir in a single assault.

"Engadir it is, then!" said Turcas with the loyalty of the subordinate who makes a superior's conviction his own, the better to carry it out.

Hazily, Bouchard had heard the talk, while he was looking at Westerling and seeing him, not at the head of the council table, but in the arbor in eager appeal to Marta.

"I shall find out! I shall find out!" was drumming in his temples when the council rose; and, without a word or a backward glance, he was the first to leave the room.

XXXVIII

HUNTING GHOSTS

In his search for the medium of the leak to the enemy Bouchard had studied every detail of the Galland premises and also of the ruins of the castle, with the exception of one feature mentioned in the regular staff records, prepared before the war, in the course of their minute description of the architecture of buildings which were accessible to the spies of the Grays. The tunnel to the dungeons could be reached only through the private quarters of the Gallands.

When he came out onto the veranda from the staff council a glimpse of Mrs. Galland walking in the garden told him that one of the guardians who stood between him and the satisfaction of his desperate curiosity was absent. He started for the tower and found the door open and the sitting-room empty. In his impatience he had one foot across the threshold before a prompting sense of respect for form made him pause. After all, this was a private residence. There being no bell, he rapped, and was glad that it was Minna and not Marta who appeared. He watched her intently for the effect of his abrupt announcement as he exclaimed:

"I want to go into the tunnel under the castle!"

There was no mistaking her shock and alarm. Her lips remained parted in a letter O as a sweep of breath escaped. Yet, in the very process of recovering her scattered faculties, her feminine quickness noted a triumphant gleam in his eye. She knew that her manner had given conviction to his suspicions. She knew that she alone stood between him and his finding Marta talking to Brown headquarters. As she was in a state of astonishment, why, astonishment was her cue. She appeared positively speechless from it except for the emission of another horrified gasp. Time! time! She must hold him until Marta left the telephone.

"What an idea! That musty, horrible, damp tunnel!" she exclaimed, shuddering. "I never think of it without thinking of ghosts!"

"I am looking for ghosts," replied Bouchard with saturnine emphasis.

"Oh, don't say that!" cried Minna distractedly. "Sometimes at night I hear their chains clanking and their groans and cries for water," she continued, playing the superstitious and stupid maid servant. "That is, I think I do. Miss Galland says I don't."

"Does she go into the tunnel?" asked Bouchard.

"Yes, she's been in to show me that there were no ghosts," replied Minna. "But not the whole way--not into the dungeons. I believe she got frightened herself, though she wouldn't admit it. I know there are ghosts! She needn't tell me! Don't you believe there are?" she asked solemnly, with dropped jaw.

"I'm going to find out!" he said, taking a step forward.

But Minna, just inside the doorway, did not move to allow him to enter.

"Oh, I'm so glad!" she exclaimed. "Then we'll know the truth. But no!" and she turned wild with protest. "No, no! I know there are! It's dangerous, sir! You'd never come out alive! Unseen hands would seize you and draw you down and strangle you--those terrible spirits of the dark ages!"

Her hands uplifted, fingers stretched apart in terror, lace white with fear, Minna's distress was real--very real, indeed!--while she listened impatiently for Marta's step in the adjoining room.

"Good heavens!" exclaimed Bouchard in disgust. "I didn't know such superstition existed in this day."

"I didn't, sir, until the groans and the clanking of the chains kept me awake," replied Minna.

"Have you a lantern?" asked Bouchard in exasperation.

"A lantern?" repeated Minna blankly. Time! time! She must gain time!

"Yes, you gawk, a lantern!"

"Certainly; you'll need one," said Minna--"a big one! Go and fetch a big army one--and some soldiers to fight the ghosts. But what are soldiers against ghosts? Oh, sir, I don't like to think of you going at all. Please, sir, don't, for the sake of your life!"

There Bouchard frowned heavily and his hawk eyes flashed in command and decision.

"Enough of this farce! A lamp, a candle will do. Come, get me one immediately!"

Just as she was at her wits' end and it seemed as if there were nothing left to do but to scream and fall in a faint in front of Bouchard, her ear caught the welcome sound which told her that Marta had returned from the tunnel.

"Yes, sir. Won't you come in, sir? Of course, sir," she said, standing aside. "Won't you be seated, sir?"

"Good day, Colonel Bouchard!" called Marta, appearing in the doorway.

"He wants to go into the dungeons to see the ghosts!" Minna exclaimed in a return of horror before Bouchard had time to say a word, while she screwed up the side of her face away from him suggestively to Marta. "Those terrible ghosts! I'm afraid for him. Like a man, he may go right into the dungeons, even if you didn't dare to, Miss Galland."

"I wish he would!" Marta joined in eagerly. "That might cure you of your silly imaginings, Minna. She actually thinks, Colonel Bouchard, that she hears them groan and moan and even shriek. Didn't you say they shrieked as well as groaned and moaned once about 3 A.M.?" she asked jocularly.

"A ghost must be hard put to it when he shrieks," observed Bouchard, glaring from one to the other.

"It's all very well for you to make fun of me because you have the advantage of an education," said Minna to Marta, "but you yourself--you--"

"Yes, I did hear what sounded like moaning voices," admitted Marta rather sheepishly. "But of course it was imagination. Now we have a man with nerve enough to go into the dungeons, we'll lay this ridiculous psychological bugaboo at once; that is, if you have the nerve!" She arched her brows in challenging scrutiny of Bouchard, while her eyes twinkled at the prospect of adventure. "I thought I had, myself, but before I got to the dungeons the clammy air wilted it and I was rubbing my eyes to keep from seeing all kinds of apparitions."

She puzzled Bouchard, she was so facile, so ready, so many-sided. But the more she puzzled him the stronger became his conviction of her guilt. He guessed that all this talk was only a prelude to some trick to keep him out of the tunnel. Poor at speech at best, slightly fussed by her candid good humor and teasing, he hesitated as to his next remark. He was going to be short with her in stating that he would go into the tunnel immediately, when she took the words out of his mouth.

"This way, please. I'm all impatience. I only wish that you had suggested it before."

As they passed out of the room Minna leaned against the wall, exhausted and wonder-struck.

"Miss Galland is beyond me!" she thought. "Does she think those hawk eyes will miss that little button of the panel door?"

"We'll need a lantern," said Marta as she took up the one she had been using from a corner of the tool room; while Bouchard, slowly turning his head like some automaton, was examining every detail of floor and wall, spades, hoes, and weeders, for a hidden significance. The lantern was still hot, and Marta's finger smarted with a burn, but she did not twitch. She was so keyed up that she felt capable of walking over red-hot coals, while she joked about ghosts. "There!" she exclaimed, after the lantern was lighted. "This is going to be great sport. Ghost hunting--think of that! We might have made a ghost party Too bad we didn't think of it in time. Yes, it's a pity to be so exclusive about it. Even now we might send for General Westerling and some of the other staff-officers."

She paused and looked at Bouchard questioningly, perhaps challengingly; at least, he thought challengingly. He had half a mind to concur. Could anything be better than to have Westerling present if suspicions proved correct? But no. She wanted Westerling and that was the best reason why he should not be present. Yet there was no sign of chicane in the brimming fun of her eyes that went with the suggestion. Bouchard's search for the proper words of dissent left him rather confused and at a disadvantage. With sympathetic quickness she seemed to guess his thoughts, and in a way that he found all the more exasperating.

"No, no! We're too impatient! We can't wait, can we?" she exclaimed. "Let's go. Let's get the ghosts single-handed, you and I. If we win we'll demand a specially large bronze cross to be struck for us."

"Yes," he agreed with an affectation of humor that made him feel ludicrous. He always felt ludicrous when he tried to be humorous.

"Come on!" said Marta, going to the stairway.

He extended his hand to take the lantern with an "If you please!"

"No. When we approach the enemy I'll let you lead," she replied, refusing the offer. "I'll be only too glad then; but these stairs are very tricky if you don't know them. Keep watch!" she warned him as she started to descend, picking her way slowly.

Once in the tunnel she held the lantern a little back of her in her right hand, which threw a shadow to the left on the side of the panel door. She was walking very fast, too fast to please Bouchard. In the swinging rays he could not fly-speck the surroundings with the care that he desired. Yet how could he ask her to slacken her pace? This she did of her own accord before they had gone far.

"Isn't it damp and deathlike? Think of it!" she exclaimed. "No ray of sunlight has been in here since the tunnel was dug--no, not even then; for probably it was dug after the castle was built. Think of the stories these walls could tell after the silence of centuries! Think of the prisoners driven along at the point of the halberd to slow death in the dungeons! You feel their spirits in the cold, clammy air." Her elocution was excellent, as her voice sank to an awed whisper, impressing even Bouchard with a certain uncanniness. Her steps became slow, as with effort, while he was not missing a square inch of the top, bottom, or sides of the tunnel. "But I'll not--I'll not this time, when I have a soldier with me. For once I'll go to the end!" she cried with forced courage, suddenly starting forward at a half run that sent the lantern's rays lurching and dancing in a way that confused the hawk eyes. Then her burst of strength seemed to give out in collapse and she dropped against the wall for support, her back covering the panel door.

"I can't! I'm just foolishly, weakly feminine!" she whispered brokenly. "According to reason there aren't any ghosts, I know. But it gets on my nerves too much-my imaginings!" She held out the lantern with a trembling hand. "I will wait here. You go on in!" she begged. "Please do and show me what a fool I am! Show that it is all a woman's hysteria--for we are all hysterical, aren't we? Go into every dungeon, please!"

She did seem on the verge of hysteria, quivering as die was from head to foot. But Bouchard, holding the lantern and staring at her, his eyes unearthly lustrous in the yellow rays, hesitated to agree to the request because it was hers. Marta was not so near hysteria that she did not divine his thought.

"Has it got on your nerves, too?" she inquired. "Are you, too, afraid?"

"No, I'm not afraid!" replied Bouchard irritably. "But aren't you afraid to be left alone in the dark? I'll take you back to the sitting-room and you can wait there," he added with a show of gallantry, which she improved on with a flattering if scared smile.