Part 25

"_Allah Kerim_--do you say? _El Hamdu Lillah!_ Do you take yourself for the _muezzin_ of all jackals, then, howling blasphemies from some _minaret_ in the hills? Do you understand what they'd do to you in the _Hirka-i-Sherif Jamesi_? Because you are _nothing_; do you hear?--nothing but an Eurasian assassin! And Moslem and Christian alike know where _you_ belong among the lost pariahs of Stamboul!"

The girl was utterly transfigured. Whatever of the Orient was in her, now blazed white hot.

"What have I done to you, Ferez? What have I ever done to you that you, even from my childhood, come always stepping noiselessly at my skirt's edge?--always padding behind me at my heels, silent, sinister, whimpering with bared teeth for the courage to bite which God denies you!"

The man stood almost motionless, moistening his dry lips with his tongue, but his eyes moved continually, stealing uneasy glances around him and upward, where, on the main terrace above them, the heads of the throng passed and repassed.

"Nihla," he said, "for all thees scorn and abuse of me, you know, in the false heart of you, why it ees so if I have seek you."

"You dealer in lies! You would have sold me to d'Eblis! You thought you _had_ sold me! You were paid for it, too!"

"An' still!" He looked at her furtively.

"What do you mean? You conspired with d'Eblis to ruin me, soul and body! You involved me in your treacherous propaganda in Paris. Through you I am an exile. If I go back to my own country, I shall go to a shameful death. You have blackened my honour in my country's eyes. But that was not enough. No! You thought me sufficiently broken, degraded, terrified to listen to any proposition from you. You sent your agents to me with offers of money if I would betray my country. Finding I would not, you whined and threatened. Then, like the Eurasian dog you are, you tried to bargain. You were eager to offer me anything if I would keep quiet and not interfere----"

"Nihla!"

"What?" she said, contemptuously.

"In spite of thees--of all you say--I have love you!"

"Liar!" she retorted wrathfully. "Do you dare say that to me, whom you have already tried to murder?"

"I say it. Yas. Eef it has not been so then you were dead long time."

"You--you are trying to tell me that you spared me!" she demanded scornfully.

"It ees so. Alexandre--d'Eblis, you know?--long time since he would have safety for us all--thees way. Non! Je ne pourrais pas vouz tuer, moi! It ees not in my heart, Nihla.... Because I have love you long time--ver' long time."

"Because you have _feared_ me long time, ver' long time!" she mocked him. "That is why, Ferez--because you are afraid; because you are only a jackal. And jackals never kill. No!"

"You say thees-a to me, Nihla?"

"Yes, I say it. You're a coward! And I'll tell you something more. I am going to make a complete statement to the French Government. I shall relate everything I know about d'Eblis, Bolo Effendi, a certain bureaucrat, an Italian politician, a Swiss banker, old Von-der-Goltz Pasha, Heimholz, Von-der-Hohe Pasha, and you, my Ferez--and you, also!

"Do you know what France will do to d'Eblis and his scoundrel friends? Do you guess what these duped Americans will do to Bolo Effendi? And to you? And to Von Papen and Boy-ed and Von Igel--yes, and to Bernstorff and his whole murderous herd of Germans? And can you imagine what my own doubly duped Government will surely, surely do, some day, to you, Ferez?"

She laughed, but her dark eyes fairly glittered:

"_My_ martyrdom is ending, God be thanked! And then I shall be free to serve where my heart is ... in Alsace!... Alsace!--forever French!"

In the white light she saw the sweat break out on the man's forehead--saw him grope for his handkerchief--and draw out a knife instead--never taking his eyes off her.

She turned to run; but he had already blocked the way to the stone steps; and now he came creeping toward her, white as a cadaver, distracted from sheer terror, and rubbing the knife flat against his thigh.

"So you shall do thees--a filth to me--eh, Nihla?" he whispered with blanched lips. "It ees on me, your frien', you spring to keel me, eh, my leopardess? Ver' well. But firs' I teach you somethings you don' know!--thees-a way, my Nihla!"

He came toward her stealthily, moving more swiftly as she put the stone basin of the pool between them and cast an agonised glance up at the distant terrace.

"Jim!" she cried frantically. "Jim! Help me, Jim!"

The gay din of the music above drowned her cry; she fled as Ferez darted toward her, but again he doubled and sprang back to bar the stone steps, and she halted, white and breathless, yet poised for instant flight.

Again and again she called out desperately for aid; the noise of the orchestra smothered her cry. And if, indeed, anybody from the terrace above chanced to glance down, it is likely that they supposed these two were skylarking merrymakers at some irresponsible game of catch-who-can.

Suddenly Thessalie remembered the lower level, where the automobiles were parked, and from which Ferez had first appeared. She could escape that way. There were the steps, not very far behind her. The next instant she turned and ran like a deer.

And after her sped Ferez, his broad, thin-bladed knife pressed flat against the crimson sash across his breast, his dead-white visage distorted with that blind, convulsive fear which makes murderers out of cowards.

XXVIII

GREEN JACKETS

Thoroughly worried by this time over the sudden disappearance of Thessalie Dunois, and unable to discover her anywhere on the terrace or in the house, Westmore, Barres and Dulcie Soane had followed the winding main drive as far as the level, where their car was waiting among scores of other cars.

But Thessalie was not there; the chauffeur had not seen her.

"Where in the world could she have gone?" faltered Dulcie. "She was standing up there on the terrace with us, a moment ago; then, the very next second, she had vanished utterly."

Westmore, grim and pallid, walked back along the drive; Dulcie followed with Barres. As they overtook Westmore, he cast one more glance back at the ranks of waiting cars, then stared up at the terraced hill above them, over which the artificial moon hung above the lindens, glowing with pallid, lambent fires.

There was a vague whitish object on one of the grassy slopes--something in motion up there--something that was running erratically but swiftly--as though in pursuit--or _pursued_!

"My God! What's that, Garry!" he burst out. "That thing up there on the hillside!"

He sprang for the steps, Barres after him, taking the ascent at incredible speed, up, up, then out along a shrub-set grassy slope.

"Thessa!" shouted Westmore. "Thessa!"

But the girl was flat on her back on the grass now, fighting sturdily for life--twisting, striking, baffling the whining, panting thing that knelt on her, holding her and trying to drive a knife deep into the lithe young body which always slipped and writhed out of his trembling clutch.

Again and again he tore himself free from her grasp; again and again his armed hand sought to strike, but she always managed to seize and drag it aside with the terrible strength of one dying. And at last, with a last crazed, superhuman effort, she wrested the knife from his unnerved fist, tore it out of his spent fingers.

It fell somewhere near her on the grass; he strove to reach it and pick it up, but already her dauntless resistance began to exhaust him, and he groped for the knife in vain, trying to pin her down with one hand while, with desperate little fists, she rained blows on his bloodless face that dazed him.

But there was still another way--a much better way, in fact. And, as the idea came to him, he ripped the red-silk sash from his breast and, in spite of her struggles, managed to pass it around her bare neck.

"Now!" he panted. "I keep my word at last. C'est fini, ma petite Nihla."

"Jim! Help me!" she gasped, as Ferez pulled savagely at the silk noose, tightened it with all his strength, knotted it. And in that same second he heard Westmore crashing through the shrubbery, close to him.

Instantly he rose to his knees on the grass; bounded to his feet, leaped over the low shrubs, and was off down the slope--gone like a swift hawk's shadow on the hillside. Barres was after him.

* * * * *

The soul of Thessalie Dunois was very near to its escape, now, brightening, glistening within its unconscious chrysalis, stretching its glorious limbs and wings; preparing to arise from its spectral tenement and soar aloft to its myriad sisters, where they swarmed glittering in the zenith.

Had it not been for the knife lying beside her on the grass--the blade very bright in the starlight--truly the youthful soul of Thessalie had been sped.

At the edge of the Gerhardts' pine woods, Barres, at fault, baffled, furious, out of breath and glaring around him in the dark, sullenly gave up the hopeless chase, turned in his tracks, and came back. Thessalie, lying in Dulcie's arms, unclosed her eyes and looked up at him.

"Are you all right?" he asked, kneeling and bending over her.

"Yes ... Jim came."

Westmore's voice was shaky.

"We worked her arms--Dulcie and I--started respiration. She was nearly gone. That beast strangled her----"

"I lost him in those woods below. Who was he?"

"Ferez Bey!"

Thessalie sighed, closed her eyes.

"She's about all in," whispered Westmore. And, to Dulcie: "Let me take her. I'll carry her to the car."

At that Thessalie opened her eyes again and the old, faintly humorous smile glimmered out at him as he stooped and lifted her from the grass.

"Can I really trust myself to your arms, Jim?" she murmured.

"You'd better get used to 'em," he retorted. "You'll never get away from them again--I can tell you that right now!"

"Oh.... In that case, I hope they'll be--comfortable--your arms."

"Do you think they will be, Thessa?"

"Perhaps." She gazed into his eyes very seriously from where she lay cradled in his powerful arms.

"I'm tired, Jim.... So sore and bruised.... When he was choking me I tried to think of you--believing it was the end--my last conscious thought----"

"My darling!----"

"I'm so tired," she breathed, "so lonely.... I shall be--contented--in your arms.... Always----" She turned her head and rested her cheek against his breast with a deep sigh.

* * * * *

He held her in his arms in the car all the way to Foreland Farms. Dulcie, however, had possessed herself of Thessalie's left hand, and when she stroked it and pressed it to her lips the girl's tightening fingers responded, and she always smiled.

"I'm just tired and sore," she explained languidly. "Ferez battered me about so dreadfully!... It was so mortifying. I despised him all the time. It made me furious to be handled by such a contemptible and cowardly creature."

"It's a matter for the police, now," remarked Barres gloomily.

"Oh, Garry!" she exclaimed. "What a very horrid ending to the moonlit way we took together so long ago!--the lovely silvery path of Pierrot!"

"The story of Pierrot is a tragedy, Thessa! We have been luckier on our moonlit way."

"Than Pierrot and Pierrette?"

"Yes. Death always saunters along the path of the moon, watching for those who take it.... You are very fortunate, Pierrette."

"Yes," she murmured, "I am fortunate.... Am I not, Jim?" she added, looking up wistfully into his shadowy face above her.

"I don't know about that," he said, "but there'll be no more moonlight business for you unless I'm with you. And under those circumstances," he added, "I'll knock the block off Old Man Death if he tries to flirt with you!"

"How brutal! Garry, do you hear his language to me?"

"I hear," said Barres, laughing. "Your young man is a very matter of fact young man, Thessa, and I fancy he means what he says."

She looked up at Westmore; her lips barely moved:

"Do you--dear?"

"You bet I do," he whispered. "I'll pull this planet to pieces looking for you if you ever again steal away to a rendezvous with Old Man Death."

* * * * *

When the car arrived at Foreland Farms, Thessalie felt able to proceed to her room upon her own legs, and with Dulcie's arm around her.

Westmore bade her good-night, kissing her hand--awkwardly--not being convincing in any role requiring attitudes.

He wanted to take her into his arms, but seemed to know enough not to do it. Probably she divined his irresolute state of mind, for she extended her hand in a pretty manner quite unmistakable. And the romantic education of James H. Westmore began.

Barres lingered at the door after Westmore departed, obeying a whispered aside from Dulcie. She came out in a few moments, carefully closing the bedroom door, and stood so, one hand behind her still resting on the knob.

"Thessa is crying. It's only the natural relaxation from that horrible tension. I shall sleep with her to-night."

"Is there anything----"

"Oh, no. She will be all right.... Garry, are they--are they--in _love_?"

"It rather looks that way, doesn't it?" he said, smiling.

She gazed at him questioningly, almost fearfully.

"Do _you_ believe that Thessa is in love with Mr. Westmore?" she whispered.

"Yes, I do. Don't you?"

"I didn't know.... I thought so. But----"

"But what?"

"I didn't--didn't know--what you would think of it.... I was afraid it might--might make you--unhappy."

"Why?"

"Don't you _care_ if Thessa loves somebody else?" she asked breathlessly.

"Did you think I did, Dulcie?"

"Yes."

"Well, I don't."

There was a strained silence; then the girl smiled at him in a confused manner, drew a swift, sudden breath, and, as he stepped forward to detain her, turned sharply away, pressing her forearm across her eyes.

"Dulcie! Did you understand me?" he said in a low, unsteady voice.

She was already trying to open the door, but he dropped his right hand over her fingers where they were fumbling with the knob, and felt them trembling. At the same moment, the sound of Thessalie's smothered and convulsive sobbing came to him; and Dulcie's nervous hand slipped from his.

"Dulcie!" he pleaded. "Will you come back to me if I wait?"

She had stopped; her back was still toward him, but she nodded slightly, then moved on toward the bed, where Thessalie lay all huddled up, her face buried in the tumbled pillows.

Barres noiselessly closed the door.

He had already started along the corridor toward his own room, when the low sound of voices in the staircase hall just below arrested his attention--his sister's voice and Westmore's. And he retraced his steps and went down to where they stood together by the library door.

Lee wore a nurse's dress and apron, such as a kennel-mistress affects, and her strong, capable hands were full of bottles labelled "Grover's Specific"--the same being dog medicine of various sorts.

"Mother is over at the kennels, Garry," she said. "She and I are going to sit up with those desperately sick pups. If we can pull them through to-night they'll probably get well, eventually, unless paralysis sets in. I was just telling Jim that a very attractive young Frenchman was here only a few minutes before you arrived. His name is Renoux. And he left this letter for you--fish it out of my apron pocket, there's a dear----"

Her brother drew out the letter; his sister said:

"Mr. Renoux went away in a car with two other men. He asked me to say to you that there was no time to lose--whatever he meant by that! Now, I must hurry away!" She turned and sped through the hall and out through the swinging screen door on the north porch. Garry had already opened the note from Renoux, glanced over it; then he read it aloud to Westmore:

"MY DEAR COMRADE:

"The fat's in the fire! Your agents took Tauscher in charge to-day. Max Freund and Franz Lehr have just been arrested by your excellent Postal authorities. Warrants are out for Sendelbeck, Johann Klein, and Louis Hochstein. I think the latter are making for Mexico, but your Secret Service people are close on their heels.

"Recall for von Papen and Boy-ed is certain to be demanded by your Government. Mine will look after Bolo Effendi and d'Eblis and their international gang of spies and crooks. Ferez Bey, however, still eludes us. He is somewhere in this vicinity, but of course, even when we locate him again, we can't touch him. All we can do is to point him out to your Government agents, who will then keep him in sight.

"So far so good. But now I am forced to ask a very great favour of you, and, if I may, of your friend, Mr. Westmore. It is this: Skeel, contrary to what was expected of him, did not go to the place which is being watched. Nor have any of his men appeared at that rendezvous where there lies the very swift and well-armed launch, _Togue Rouge_, which we had every reason to suppose was to be their craft in this outrageous affair.

"As a matter of fact, this launch is Tauscher's. But it, and the pretended rendezvous, are what you call a plant. Skeel never intended to assemble his men there; never intended to use that particular launch. Tauscher merely planted it. Your men and the Canadian agents, unfortunately, are covering that vicinity and are still watching for Skeel, who has a very different plan in his crazy head.

"Now, this is Skeel's plan, and this is the situation, learned by me from papers discovered on Tauscher:

"The explosives bought and sent there by Tauscher himself are on a big, fast power-boat which is lying at anchor in a little cove called Saibling Bay. The boat flies the Quebec Yacht Club ensign, and a private pennant to which it has no right.

"Two of Skeel's gang are already aboard--a man named Con McDermott and another, Kelly Walsh. Skeel joins the others at a hamlet near the Lake shore, known as Three Ponds. The tavern is a notorious and disreputable old brick hotel--what you call a speak-easy. That is their rendezvous.

"Well, then, I have wired to your people, to Canada, to Washington. But Three Ponds is not a very long drive from here, if one ignores speed limits. Yes? Could you help us maintain a close surveillance over that damned tavern to-night? Is it too much to ask?

"And if you and Mr. Westmore are graciously inclined to aid us, would you be so kind as to come armed? Because, mon ami, unless your Government people arrive in time, I shall certainly try to keep Skeel and his gang from boarding that boat.

"Au revoir, donc! I am off with Jacques Alost and Emile Souchez for that charming summer resort, the Three Ponds Tavern, where, from the neighbouring roadside woods, I shall hope to flag your automobile by sunrise and welcome you and your amiable friend, Mr. Westmore, as our brothers in arms.

"RENOUX, your comrade and, friend."

There was a silence. Then Westmore looked at his watch.

"We ought to hustle," he remarked. "I'll get on some knickers and stick a couple of guns in my pocket. You'd better telephone to the garage."

As they hastened up the stairs together, Barres said: "Have I time for a word with Dulcie?"

"That's up to you. I'm not going to say anything to Thessa. I wouldn't care to miss this affair. If we arrived too late and they had already dynamited the Welland Canal, we'd never forgive ourselves."

Barres ran for his room.

* * * * *

They were dressed, armed and driving out of the Foreland Farms gates inside of ten minutes. Barres had the wheel; Westmore sat beside him shoving new clips into two automatics and dividing the remaining boxes of ammunition.

"The crazy devils," he said to Barres, raising his voice to make himself heard. "Blow up the Canal, will they! What's the matter with these Irishmen! The rest are not like 'em. Look at the Flanders fighting, Garry! Look at the magnificent record of the Irish regiments! Why don't our Irish play the game?"

"It's their blind hatred of England," shouted Barres, in his ear. "They're monomaniacs. They can't see anything else--can't see what they're doing to civilisation--cutting the very throat of Liberty every time they jab at England. What's the use? You can't talk to them. They're lunatics. But when they start things over here they've got to be put into straitjackets."

"They _are_ lunatics," repeated Westmore. "If they weren't, they wouldn't risk the wholesale murder of women and children. That is a purely German peculiarity; it's what the normal boche delights in. But the Irish are white men. And it's only when they're crazy they'd try a thing like this."

After a long silence:

"How fast, Garry?"

"Around fifty."

"How far is it?"

"About twenty-five miles further."

The car rushed on through the night under the brilliant July stars and over a perfect road. In the hollows, where spring brooks ran under stone bridges, a slight, chilling mist hung, but otherwise the night was clear and warm.

Woods, fields, farms, streamed by in the darkness; the car tore on in the wake of its glaring, golden headlights, where clouds of little winged creatures of the night whirled and eddied like flecks of tinsel.

Rarely they encountered other cars, for the hour was late, and there were no lights in the farm houses which they passed along the road.

They spoke seldom now, their terrific speed and the roaring wind discouraging conversation. But the night air, which they whipped into a steadily flowing gale, was still soft and fragrant and warm; and with every mile their exhilaration increased.

Now the eastern horizon, which had already paled to a leaden tone, was becoming pallid; and few stars were visible except directly overhead.

Barres slowed down to twenty miles. Long double barriers of dense and misty woodland flanked the road on either hand, with few cultivated fields between and very rarely a ramshackle barn.

Acres of alder swamp spread away on either hand, set with swale and pool and tussock. And across the flat desolation the east was all a saffron glow now, and the fish-crows were flying in twos and threes above the bog holes.

"There's a man in the road ahead," said Westmore.

"I see him."

The man threw up one arm in signal, then made a sweeping gesture indicating that they should turn to the left. The man was Renoux.

"A cart-track and a pair of bars," said Westmore. "Their car has been in there, too. You can see the tire marks."

Renoux sprang onto the running board without a word.

Barres steered his car very gingerly in through the bars and along the edge of the woods where, presently, the swampy cart-track turned to the right among the trees.

"All right!" said Renoux briskly, dropping to the ground. He shook hands with the two new arrivals, passed one arm under each of theirs, and led them forward along a wet, ferny road toward a hardwood ridge.

Here Souchez and Alost, who lay full length on the dead leaves, got up, to welcome the reinforcements, and to point out the disreputable old brick building which stood close to the further edge of the woods, rear end toward them, and fronting on a rutty crossroad beyond.

"Are we in time?" inquired Barres in a low voice.

"Plenty," said Renoux with a shrug. "They've been making a night of it in there. They're at it yet. Listen!"

Even at that distance the sound of revelry was audible--shouts, laughter, cheering, boisterous singing.

"Skeel is there," remarked Renoux, "and I fancy he's an anxious man. They ought to have been out of that house before dawn to escape observation, but I imagine Skeel has an unruly gang to deal with in those reckless Irishmen."

Barres and Westmore peered out through the fringe of trees across the somewhat desolate landscape beyond.

There were no houses to be seen. Here and there on the bogs were stakes of swale-hay and a gaunt tree or two.