it lacked a half-hour of midnight when old grigou hobbled out of his doorway and looked up into the clear, star-studded night. there was no other house in sight, only the shell-torn fields to the east, and to the west the dark, wooded hill frowning upon the poor, isolated abode. even talois was over the hill and mademoiselle jeanne was afraid to go there because there were dead men to be seen along the lone path through the woods and swaggering, leering prussians in the village. one dead man in particular she was afraid of because he sat up against a tree near the path and was always grinning at her.
but the person whom she feared the most of all was monsieur le capitaine. she did not know much about monsieur le capitaine excepting that he had come from far-off america to help the fatherland. and the chief way in which he helped the fatherland seemed to be by sprawling in their little house and eating their food and ordering them about. she wondered why anyone should have come all the way from america to help the fatherland.
he was very efficient and very mysterious, was monsieur le capitaine. sometimes he came in “ze flying machine,” sometimes on his feet. once a small dirigible had landed in the shell-torn field and taken him away. he used often to go to rheims and be gone for a week or more. once jeanne had flared up and denounced him and his friends for wrecking rheims cathedral and he had told her that this was nothing; that in america the people made a practice of destroying the cathedrals of the indians. he told her that england was to blame for everything and that she ought to be glad that some brave men from america were helping poor, lonely, downtrodden germany to thrash england. he told her that in america the national pastime was hanging black men and that all the lamp-posts in new york had black men hanging from them. jeanne had shuddered at that.
whatever in the world monsieur le capitaine was about, he was very much engrossed in it.
neither jeanne nor her poor old father had ever dared to ask him why he found their remote home so desirable. perhaps that was the reason—its remoteness. about all that jeanne really knew was that monsieur le capitaine knew all about “ze ships, when zey will go,” and that he had something to do with a balloon with two black crosses on it. she had always inferred that these two black crosses were a mark of special honor or distinction. chiefly she wished, for her poor old father’s sake, that he would not drink their precious wine. if he would only let the wine alone, he could have ten black crosses for all she cared....
so you will readily appreciate the feelings with which jeanne heard her father calling to her from outside the house.
“jeanne! jeanne! monsieur le capitaine est retourne!”
jeanne emerged with a look of inquiring disappointment upon her troubled face and sure enough, there was the whir, whir, whir, whir overhead and a dark object circling against the darker background of sky.
“what matter, papa,” she said resignedly in french; “for sometime he must come. so, maybe, he will soon go. so? we shall think of his going, never of his coming. so, papa?”
her father put his arm about her. “this is my brave little daughter,” he said. “but come, he will wish wine.”
the girl did not stir, however, but remained there with her father’s arm about her, wistfully following the dark object with her eyes. now it went far away and disappeared, now came back again. now it came very low, now ascended. now it was directly overhead, then of a sudden it was coming straight toward them, silently and very low, as if it must be another machine altogether....
out of it climbed tom slade of the flying corps, and shaking down his heavy garments as he walked he approached the two, his goggles up on his forehead like a prosy old schoolmaster.
“i zink it ees ze capitaine,” said the girl uncertainly.
“i ain’t even a lieutenant,” said tom slade. “is this mr. grigou?”
upon the old man’s acknowledgement he presented his trinket of a credential, that talisman which has won food and shelter for many a sore beset fugitive, in the humble, devastated homes of northern france—a button from the uniform of a french soldier in the old franco-prussian war. no compromising note of introduction, bringing possible peril to its holder, could have been so instrumental as this little memento, speaking the language of hallowed sentiment. your uncle samuel knows the value of these little buttons.
i must not linger upon slade’s personal intercourse with these people. i believe that the information service knew something of conditions there and knew that “monsieur le capitaine” was temporarily absent. it would seem to explain the very explicit instructions for slade’s prompt return. i fancy i can detect another hand in this whole business and i think that slade was merely the active figure in the enterprise. in any case, it was pretty close work, as they say. i am certain that m. grigou did not expect slade. the ways of the information service are dark and mysterious....
slade was welcomed by this sturdy old frenchman and his daughter and partook of a late supper with them, the while he spoke of his errand. he had made no attempt, of course, to hide his plane and jeanne said that he appeared not the least disconcerted at the possibility of the captain’s returning unexpectedly, which, however, she thought unlikely. they knew he had gone to berlin and he had said he would not return for a couple of weeks or more.
yet for all that, and making full allowance for the possibility of the information service knowing of this mysterious person’s whereabouts and the duration of his absence, there is something very striking to me in slade’s sitting there, his airplane outside, chatting with these people with apparently no more concern than if he had looked in for a social call. perhaps he was safer than he knew.
“but he does not have ze—caire,” said jeanne, throwing out her hands with a fine suggestion of recklessness. “you see? so. he say if one man come, why he should caire! oi, la, la, i say to him!”
a very singular thing occurred that night.
naturally enough, they fell to speaking of the absent captain and in the course of their conversation jeanne asked slade if it were true that negroes were hanging from all the lamp posts of new york and if it were true that the american people were really for germany, but that president wilson sided with england and so made them fight against the fatherland.
slade told her that these were all lies and that he would like to come face to face with the man, whether german or german-american, who uttered such nonsense.
“he say ziss is all—how you say—nonsense,” jeanne told me. “he will not be mad, because ziss is nonsense. so. i tell him all zese sings—only he laugh. lies—nonsense—and he laugh.”
apparently he had rallied her for believing all this extravagant stuff from the curious german mind. “he tell me i am so much at ease—ziss is why i believe.” i suppose he told her that she was easy. he told her also that he would bring her some elephants and tigers from the neighboring woods next day and so the talk passed off in pleasant banter.
what, then, was the surprise of both jeanne and her father when, on showing their visitor to the little room upstairs which he was to occupy, he strode over to the old chest of drawers which stood in a corner and taking up a photograph of a man in a sumptuous german uniform, demanded to know if that was the captain.
“i tell him yess,” said the girl, “and how he make me take ze picture. ziss i do not like to have, but i am so afraid, i must take eet. so i put it here—you see? maybe he ask.”
slade, according to her, took the picture, looked at it with an expression of rage, tore it into pieces and threw it on the floor. “so he talk low, too, and say mooch—vere rude,” she said.
to put the whole thing in a few plain words, he was evidently siezed with ungovernable rage, declared he would kill the man upon sight for a lying, sneaking wretch and hoped that he might meet him there and have done with it. the girl was greatly surprised and very much frightened, and her father also when she translated slade’s talk for him. her imperfect english was not always clear to me, but i gathered that slade’s outburst was such as to shock her and it presented him in a new light to me. no doubt, these poor people had been thoroughly cowed by the germans and feared the consequence of any harm which might befall their arrogant tyrant of the two black crosses.
“he’ll have a black cross over his grave if i ever see him!” slade had muttered when he heard of this evident badge of honor.
“even when we leave him,” jeanne told me, “he sit on ze side of ze bed and look—so hard and his mouth—big—eet ees shut like ziss.” and she compressed her pretty lips with a very feeble look of grim and murderous wrath. thus they left him, a stranger in the enemy country, with perils all about him, for the little rest which he might get before his dangerous business of the morrow.
now this episode struck me as being very peculiar. in the first place, i have it from archer that slade was of an imperturbable, stolid nature, and not given to fits of temper. also, on hearing of the captain downstairs he had laughed at the girl for believing the stories the german had told her, and treated the mysterious tyrant’s talk like the trash it was. why, then, should he have flown into such a fury when he saw the picture?
i thought a good deal about it after i left old grigou’s cottage and the explanation that i hit on was this: that slade rather liked the girl and was angry to think of her having this german’s picture. then i thought of what archer had said about slade’s not having any use for “girrls.” well, at least, i thought, slade was rather erratic. perhaps it was only a trifling matter, but it puzzled me and it puzzles me still.
no matter.
there is a little oasis of scouting and woodcraft in this bloody desert of war which will show you tom slade in a familiar light—as you used to know him at your beloved temple camp. and when you think of your dead comrade of the good old days i am sure you will wish to think of him as he trod the forest depths next day in quest of the iron murderer that lay concealed there.
i mean to recount this to you now.
