Chapter VIII: Part 8

"Alas!" I murmured through my tears. "Stay with us. Don't go back. Think of what may happen to you there!"

I heard her voice and it was almost a hiss.

"Child, child, I thought that after knowing me so well you would have learned a little of what hate can mean. Boose has come back. Have you really forgotten the fireplace in the armoury, the letters from the Congo, the whole treacherous mystery? Do you really think that just at the moment when I am about to unravel the secret of the crime I shall let the criminal go?"

My tears fell uncontrolled. Then suddenly a sensation of extreme relief exalted my despair, as for one second I felt the touch of her lips upon my forehead....

I started up with a terrible cry. Like one possessed I began to run after her down the road till I stumbled and fell full length in the ditch.

When I picked myself up, breathless and desperate, the car was nothing but a tiny grey speck in the east.

* * * * * *

Thanks to the horse which one of Lieutenant de Coigny's dragoons had given up to me I reached Audun-le-Roman about seven o'clock. There a car was immediately requisitioned, and I was taken to Nancy.

I had expected that mobilization would already have been ordered in France. But nothing had been done, and my mind became obsessed by the memory of the tremendous preparations I had witnessed that night, preparations which removed any lingering doubt.

We went straight to the Prefecture, and I was taken before the Prefect. I told him as fully as possible everything I had seen and heard. He listened to me with the closest attention, taking notes. When I left him he was already telephoning to Paris the information I had given him.

I wandered about in the streets of Nancy, as my train was not leaving until twelve midday.

Too harassed and excited to rest, I went into a café in the Place Stanislas. When I put my hand in my pocket to pay I drew out the note-case which Aurora had put there. I had never felt so well off as at that moment when money, once the most coveted of possessions, seemed to have lost all value for me.

I walked in a main street and stopped, all unconsciously, at a shop. I went in and bought the clothes you see me in now. I was so stupefied that I didn't even notice that for field service the blue tunic had taken the place of the old black tunic with red collar.

At midday the train started for Paris. For the first time I saw all those places that the retreat has engraved on our minds: Dormans, with its bridge that we crossed on September 2nd in the added gloom of the anniversary of Sedan; the lovely Jaulgonne road down which we chased the enemy; Château-Thierry on the Marne, with its ruined castle perched up on high, where we slept in a bed for the first time.

It was twenty minutes past five when the train drew up in Château-Thierry station. There I learned the news of the general mobilization. The wall of fire and steel which separated me from my beloved sovereign of Lautenburg had at last been raised.

The atmosphere was heavy and thunderous when I got out at the Gare de l'Est, but the great city of Paris was calm. Oh, Paris, once I had feared so much for you when this terrible moment should come; your excitability, your fits of passion, your very ardour, which might be treason's opportunity. And now the hour had come and not even assassination had shaken your quiet resolution, the assassination of the man who had boasted that he could start or stop revolution at his will.

My mobilization orders had disappeared in the fire at the castle of Lautenburg, but that didn't worry me much. I knew them by heart and decided to leave next morning to rejoin the 18th Infantry at Pau.

I put on my uniform in a hotel bedroom and then, walking through the Rue Lafayette, I made for the centre of the city.

People were much more excited than noisy. There were a good many soldiers about, already officers like myself, but all of them had on their arms mothers or wives who looked into their eyes with an indescribable expression of pride and tenderness. But I was lonely and alone on that tragic evening, even more lonely in that city than on the night when I had left it.

I hadn't as yet any notion whither I was wending my way. But I began to have some inkling when I had reached the Rue Royale with its brilliantly lit terraces swarming with people. As I passed Weber's I thought of Clotilde. "It's August. She hasn't got her white fox now. She must be wearing a light silk blouse...." Then memories of the girl filled me with loathing.

A pall of shadow was beginning to settle on the trees of the Champs-Elysées under the darkening sky. I turned to the right and chose the little alleys which remind you of a watering-place with their trees and casinos. Cars stopped with a jerk before well-lit restaurants. Commissionaires opened their doors.

I had reached the Avenue Gabriel, a dark tunnel of foliage. I walked up it slowly. A feeling of unutterable anguish invaded my whole being. Soon I saw lights in a restaurant window. On the door of that restaurant I read the word "Laurent."

I sat down opposite that door, on the bench I knew I should find there. My fingers groped over the rough surface of the back, striking here and there the round, flat heads of the big nails.

At last they stopped. They had found what they wanted. I leaned down and had no difficulty, though it was now quite dark, in deciphering the three marks, those three letters "A. A. E." which the little Tumene princess had once carved there.

EPILOGUE

"My story is told," said Vignerte.

He lapsed into silence and I respected his feelings. Then, little by little, we both felt our thoughts wandering from the tragedy he had just conjured up and concentrate on that other drama that was about to be unfolded before our eyes.

It was a quarter to six. It was not yet light, though we felt that day was at hand. The four runners, one for each section, had silently come up behind.

Six o'clock!... The hour fixed for the attack. A minute passed, a minute that seemed an eternity. Then the distant sound of a whistle reached our ears. The 22nd were leaving their trenches.

There was about three hundred yards between their trenches and the horn of the wood which our comrades were to clear. To cross a space of three hundred yards, mainly on your stomach, requires a good quarter of an hour.

The night was cold, but light clouds, already turning to burnished gold in the grey eastern sky, promised a fine day. You can't imagine what a tragic moment those minutes of breathless expectation are. And yet none of those who have come back from the dreadful experience ever regret having known it.

Suddenly a sharp shot rang out at the bottom of the valley. Then two, three.... A German post had given the alarm, but too late, judging by the time that had elapsed. Our men must have been on them.

Then to our right volleys crashed out, like a sheet of metal being ripped in two. It was the 23rd Company, whose orders were to maintain a steady fire on the Germans opposite with a view to holding them down and preventing them from helping their comrades in distress.

Now the whole hostile line replied with nervous bursts which augured well for us. Their shooting was bad and their bullets flew high above our heads. Now and then a snapped twig fell beside us, like a leaf fluttering to earth. Any one who has done any fighting in wooded country knows what I mean.

The din had lasted about five minutes when, on our right, an enormous flame shot up into the sky, illuminating all the heights opposite, and then dying out in a shower of debris. At the same moment there was the deafening roar of a terrific explosion.

"That's what we wanted," I murmured to Vignerte. "There was a mine there, and they've fired it."

On our own bit of front the firing had begun again with redoubled vigour. Then there was a sudden silence. A rocket went up from our lines.

That rocket told our artillery that the 22nd had just got safely back to its trenches and that its turn had now arrived. The barrage opened immediately.

We could now hear the invisible monsters coming from behind, describing their deadly curves above our heads. That roar gets louder and louder and yet seems so slow, so terribly slow, that you can never explain how it is you cannot see one of these birds that make such a tremendous noise.

And then comes the end of the journey in the enemy's trenches, the blue and red flame, the earth and debris flying heavenwards in a sulphur column, the ear-splitting crash of the explosion.

Vignerte and I watched the effects of the bombardment through our glasses.

All at once I heard some one calling me.

It was the runner between us and battalion headquarters. He came up, out of breath with running.

"Sir! Sir!"

"What is it?"

"The Commandant wants you at once at his headquarters."

"I'm off," I said to Vignerte. "What news have you at your end?" I asked the man. "Do you know if the raid of the 22nd succeeded?"

"Splendidly, sir. They only lost two men. They have blown up a mine, destroyed the trench and brought back nearly forty prisoners. Very good work, sir. But please come quickly. The Commandant is in a hurry."

I started at a run. There was a very decent communication trench leading to battalion headquarters, situated some few hundred yards back. There was only one place, a kind of open slope, which offered no cover. I crossed it without quickening my pace, for at that moment the German lines were silent under our bombardment, and I ran no risk.

The Commandant was standing at the door of his dug-out.

"Oh, there you are. I'm sorry to have made you run. But it is all owing to the success of the 22nd."

"What can I do, sir?"

"Look here. You're an expert in German, while I have hardly touched the beastly language since I left Saint-Cyr. We have here a prisoner of rank. I've had a shot at questioning him, but can't get a word out of him. Yet he could give us some mighty useful information. He's a major in the Engineers, and it was he who was organizing the sap we've just played Old Harry with. Coste got him, and he'll certainly get his captaincy for it."

"A senior officer who can't speak French! That's an extraordinary thing!" I said. "You know many of them pretend not to speak it."

"I do know, otherwise I shouldn't have sent for you. He won't be able to pretend he doesn't understand the excellent German in which you'll address him. There is the fellow."

I went into my Commanding Officer's dug-out, where I found the German major, guarded by the two men of the 22nd who had brought him across from the German lines. They were so proud of their achievement that they couldn't help giving me the following piece of information:

"He shot poor Labourdette with his revolver. But with Lieutenant Coste's help we got him at last."

He was a man about forty, with cold blue eyes and hard but intelligent features. He hardly replied to the salute I gave him as I entered.

I put several questions to him, but without success.

"Monsieur," he said at length, in the very best French, "as I told you, what is the good of these questions? I shall only tell you things that don't matter, such as my name, which does not interest you. As for military information, I am an officer. So are you. If you were in my place, you'd say nothing, wouldn't you? Let me do the same."

He lapsed into his obstinate, scornful silence.

"We sha'n't get anything out of him," I said to my chief. "Hadn't he anything on him, any papers, when he was taken?"

"Nothing at all," replied the Commandant helplessly.

"Didn't you find _anything_?" I said to the men.

"Nothing but this, sir," one of them replied, taking a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket.

"Let me see it," I said.

The fragment he handed me was written in pencil and half illegible. It was the draft of a letter. I had an electric shock the minute I began to read.

The prisoner watched me with a sly look.

I stepped up to him, beside myself.

"I know your name, _now_, sir!" I said.

"That is very remarkable," he replied insolently, "for the paper you have in your possession is not signed, and you are not a wizard."

"You wretch!" I burst out. "Your name is Ulrich von Boose, and you are the murderer of the Grand Duke Rudolph of Lautenburg-Detmold."

His face turned deadly pale. His hands contracted convulsively. But he had enough presence of mind to say to my chief in a quivering voice:

"I protest against this treatment, sir! Please be good enough to stop your lieutenant from insulting an enemy prisoner. It's infamous!"

"Oh, don't you bother me!" shouted my chief. "But really, lieutenant, what's all this about? What's in that paper?"

I had the greatest difficulty in controlling my feelings.

"Excuse me sir," I murmured. "I don't feel able to explain myself.... But would you be kind enough to send for Lieutenant Vignerte at once! He knows all about this man, and can tell you everything."

"All right," grumbled my chief. "What a business!"

He gave the order.

At the sound of Vignerte's name the German had turned even paler. There was rage and hatred in the look he gave me. If the two soldiers had not held him tight he would certainly have flung himself upon me and tried to snatch away the paper I was about to re-read with rather more composure.

Once more, for the last time, I tell you this: I have seen too much of your methods with others not to know what your intentions are as regards myself. I agreed to go to the war. But the war is dragging on. Every day I run the risk of never returning at all. No doubt that is exactly what you want: after the Grand Duke, after the Grand Duchess, my turn, I suppose! And then there'll be nothing to trouble your sleep.... I am not such a fool as that. If, within fifteen days, I am not withdrawn from the front and appointed to a staff post, with the rank to which I think my services have entitled me, I can promise you _this_--a _detailed_ description of the whole affair will be _published_ by friends of mine, in a large number of neutral or enemy papers, addressed to all those whose enlightenment you have most reason to fear. And I can assure you that it will be all the more credible because the documents will contain a specimen of a handwriting which you know well.

The last sentence was in a totally different handwriting from that of the rest of the letter. The latter was fine and spidery, the other big and bold. I had been able to examine them both earlier in the night. One was the handwriting of the letters written from the Cameroons by the Grand Duke Rudolph, the other that of the sketch-map I had found in the "Mittheilungen."

Everything was clear now, horribly clear. "Vignerte's going to know at last!" I thought, in a transport of joy.

Then suddenly an icy sweat broke out from my temples. What price was he going to pay for that knowledge! Fool that I was, I had forgotten that she, too....

"He mustn't! He mustn't!..." I muttered.

Too late.

"There's Vignerte," said my chief, gazing out from the door of his dug-out.

It was all over. The fatal step had been taken.

Day dawned, suffusing the earth with pink and blue tints. A thrush sang on a shattered tree.

I soon saw Vignerte in the ravine below. He was coming up slowly. I could see his tall, elegant form and, little by little, distinguish his dark, clean-cut features.

"O God!" I cried.

"Come, sir," said my chief, "have you gone mad?"

And now Vignerte was only a hundred yards away. I saw him stride out as he got to that open slope which still separated him from the Commanding Officer's dug-out.

Then, from the clear depths of infinite distance a horrible sound came out of nothing, and swelled to a great shriek. In the pallid sky an invisible mass was approaching with the noise of a train entering a station. The shriek grew louder and louder and we realized that the hellish journey was to end on us.

We saw the men skip into their holes like so many frogs.

Surprised in the very middle of the bare slope, Vignerte had stopped. Should he go on, or go back? We felt his fatal hesitation.

The shriek was now a roar of thunder.

"Vignerte!" I screamed frantically. "Lie down! For God's sake, lie down!"

I saw him for one second more. He had not moved. Drawn to his full height, and facing the approaching storm with a gentle smile of acquiescence and ecstasy, he was gazing in rapt attention towards the dawn.

Then came the crash.

A shower of stones and steel fragments fell on the roof of the dug-out into which my chief had hastily pulled me at the last moment. When the dreadful rain had ceased, we looked out, our eyes starting from our heads with horror.

At the edge of the slope an enormous black crater now yawned with some pathetic red and blue fragments on the far side.

Thus died Lieutenant Vignerte on October 31st, 1914, for love of the Grand Duchess Aurora of Lautenburg-Detmold.

THE END