The Firefly of France Part 8

"You've been a pretty fool, a pretty fool, a pretty fool!" the refrain sang itself unceasingly in my ears. I was disgusted with the episode, more disgusted yet with my own role. Why was I lying, why making myself by my present silence as well as by my former density the flagrant confederate of a clever spy?

I shrugged my shoulders.

"Oh, what's the use?" I muttered. "No, of course I don't believe it, and you won't either if you are sane. It is too ridiculous. I might as well suggest that if the thief hadn't been gone when they arrived, the manager and the detective would have shanghaied me, or the house doctor drugged me with a hypodermic till the fellow could get away. Let's end all this! I'm ready to go ash.o.r.e if you want to take me. In your place I know I should laugh at such a story; and I think that on general principles I should order the man who told it shot."

"Not necessarily, Mr. Bayne," was the cool response of the Englishman.

"The trouble with you neutrals is that you laugh too much at German spies. We warn you sometimes, and then you grin and say that it's hysteria. But by and by you'll change your minds, as we did, and know the German secret service for what it is--the most competent thing, the most widely spread, and pretty much the most dangerous, that the world has to fight to-day."

"You don't mean," I inquired blankly, "that you believe me?"

It looks odd enough as I set it down. Ordinarily I expect my word to be accepted; but then, as a general thing I don't suddenly discover that I have been chaperoning a set of German code-dispatches across the seas.

"I mean," he corrected with truly British phlegm, "that I can't say positively your story is untrue. Here's the case: Some one--probably Franz von Blenheim--wants to send these papers home by way of Italy and Switzerland. Your hotel manager tells him you are going to sail for Naples; you are an American on your way to help the Allies; it's ten to one that n.o.body will suspect you and that your baggage will go through untouched. What does he do? He has the papers slipped into your wallet.

Then he sends a cable to some friend in Naples about a sick aunt, or candles, or soap. And the friend translates the cable by a private code and reads that you are coming and that he is to shadow you and learn where you are stopping and loot your trunk the first night you spend ash.o.r.e!"

"I don't grasp," I commented dazedly; "why they should weave such circles. Why not let one of their own agents bring over the papers?"

The lieutenant smiled a faint, cold, wintry smile.

"Spies," he informed me, "always think they are watched, and generally they're not wrong in thinking so. If they can send their doc.u.ments by an innocent person, they had better. For my part, I call it a very clever scheme."

"I believe I am dreaming," I muttered. "Somebody ought to pinch me.

You found those infernal things nestling among my coats and hose and trousers--and you don't think I put them there?"

"I didn't say that," he denied as unresponsively as a brazen Vishnu. "I simply say that I wouldn't care to order you shot as things stand now.

But you'll remember that I have only your word that all this happened or that you are really an American or even that this pa.s.sport is yours and that your name is--ah--Devereux Bayne. We'll have to know quite a bit more before we call this thing settled. How are you going to satisfy his Majesty the King?"

I plucked up spirit.

"Well," I suggested, "how will this suit you? I'll go down to my stateroom and stop there until we land in Italy; and, if you like, just to be on the safe side with such a desperado as I am, you can put a guard outside my door. But first, you'll send a sheaf of marconigrams for me in both directions. You're welcome to read them, of course, before they go. Then when we get to Naples, my friend, Mr. Herriott, will meet the steamer. He is second secretary at the United States emba.s.sy, and his identification will be sufficient, I suppose. Anyhow, if it isn't, I dare say the amba.s.sador will say a word for me. I have known him for years, though not so well."

"That would be quite sufficient as to identification." He stressed the last word significantly, and I thanked heaven for Dunny and the forces which I knew that rather important old personage could set to work.

"Also," I continued coolly, "there will be various cablegrams from United States officials awaiting us, which will convince you, I hope, that I am not likely to be a spy. There will be a statement from the friend who dined with me at the St. Ives. There will be the declaration of the policeman who saw the German climb down the fire-escape and bolt into the room beneath." "And hang the expense!" I added inwardly, computing cable rates, but a.s.suming a lordly indifference to them which only a multimillionaire could really feel.

The Englishman and the captain consulted a moment. Then the former spoke:

"That will be satisfactory, sir, to Captain Cecchi and to me. Write out your cables, if you please. They shall be sent. And I say, Mr. Bayne,--I hope you drive that ambulance. I'm not stationed here to be a partizan, but you've stood up to us like a man."

An hour later as I finished my solitary dinner, the electric lights flickered and died, and the engines began their throb. Under cover of the darkness we were slipping out of Gibraltar. I leaned my arms on the table and scanned the remains of my feast by the light of my one sad candle, not thinking of what I saw, or of the various calls for help I had been dispatching, or of the sailor grimly mounting guard outside my door. I was remembering a girl, a girl with ruddy hair and a wild-rose flush and great, gray, starry eyes, a girl that by all the rules of the game I should have handed over to those who represented the countries she was duping, a girl that I had found I had to shield when I came face to face with the issue.

CHAPTER IX

THE BLACK b.u.t.tERFLIES

The Turin-Paris express--the most direct, the Italians call it--was too popular by half to suit the taste of morose beings who wished for solitude. With great trouble and pains I had ferreted out a single vacant compartment; but as four o'clock sounded and the whistle blew for departure, a belated traveler joined me--worse still, an acquaintance who could not be quite ignored.

The unwelcome intruder was Mr. John Van Blarcom, my late fellow-voyager, and he accepted the encounter with a better grace than I.

"Why, h.e.l.lo!" he greeted me cheerfully. "Going through to France? Glad to see you--but you're about the last man that I was looking for. I got the idea somehow you were planning to stop a while in Rome."

I returned his nod with a curtness I was at no pains to dissemble. Then I reproached myself, for it was undeniable that on the _Re d'Italia_ he had more than once stood my friend. He had offered me a timely warning, which I had flouted; he had obligingly confirmed my statement in my grueling third degree. Yet despite this, or because of it, I didn't like him; nor did I like his patronizing, complacent manner, which seemed fairly to shriek at me, "I told you so!"

"Changed my plans," I acknowledged with a lack of cordiality that failed to ruffle him. He had hung up his overcoat and installed himself facing me, and was now making preparations for lighting a fat cigar.

"Well," he commented, with a chuckle of raillery, after this operation, "the last time I saw you you were in a pretty tight corner, eh? You can't say it was my fault, either; I'd have put you wise if you'd listened. But you weren't taking any--you knew better than I did--and you strafed me, as the Dutchies say, to the kaiser's taste."

"Good advice seldom gets much thanks, I believe," was my grumpy comment, which he unexpectedly chose to accept as an apology and with a large, fine, generous gesture to blow away.

"That's all right," he declared. "I'm not holding it against you. We've all got to learn. Next time you won't be so easy caught, I guess. It makes a man do some thinking when he gets a dose like you did; and those chaps at Gibraltar certainly gave you a rough deal!"

"On the contrary," I differed shortly,--I wasn't hunting sympathy,--"considering all the circ.u.mstances, I think they were extremely fair."

"Not to shoot you on sight? Well, maybe." He was grinning. "But I guess you weren't hunting for a chance to spend two days cooped up in a cabin that measured six feet by five."

"It had advantages. One of them was solitude," I responded dryly. "And it was less unpleasant than being relegated to a six-by-three grave. See here, I don't enjoy this subject! Suppose we drop it. The fact is, I've never understood why you came to my rescue on that occasion, you didn't owe me any civility, you know, and you had to--well--we'll say draw on your imagination when you claimed you saw what I threw overboard that night."

"Sure, I lied like a trooper," he admitted placidly. "Glad to do it. You didn't break any bones when you strafed me, and anyhow, I felt sorry for you. It always goes against me to see a fellow being played!"

Thanks to my determined coolness, the conversation lapsed. I buried myself in the Paris "Herald," but found I could not read. Simmering with wrath, I lived again the ill-starred voyage his words recalled to me, breathed the close smothering air of the cabin that had held me prisoner, tasted the knowledge that I was watched like any thief. An armed sailor had stood outside my door by day and by night; and a dozen times I had longed to fling open that frail part.i.tion, seize the man by the collar, and hurl him far away.

Glancing out at the landscape, I saw that Turin lay back of us and that our track was winding through dark chestnut forests toward the heights.

Confound Van Blarcom's reminiscences and the thoughts they had set stirring! In ambush behind my paper I gloomily relived the past.

Our ship, following sealed instructions, had changed her course at Gibraltar, conveying us by way of the Spanish coast to Genoa instead of Naples. From my port-hole I had gazed glumly on blue skies and bright, blue waters, purple hills, and white-walled cities, and fishing boats with patched, gaudy sails and dark-complexioned crews. Then Genoa rose from the sea, tier after tier of pink and green and orange houses and shimmering groves of olive trees; and I was summoned to the salon, to face the captain of the port, the chief of the police of the city, and their bedizened suites.

Surrounded by plumes and swords and gold lace, I maintained my innocence and heard Jack Herriott, on his opportune arrival, pour forth in weird, but fluent, Italian an account of me that must have surrounded me in the eyes of all present with a golden halo, and that firmly established me in their minds as the probable next President of the United States. Thanks to these exaggerations and to various confirmatory cablegrams--Dunny had plainly set the wires humming on receiving my S.O.S.,--I found myself a free man, at price of putting my signature to a statement of it all. I shook the hand of the ever non-committal Captain Cecchi, and left the ship. And an hour after good old Jack was gazing at me in wrath unconcealed as I informed him that I was in the mood for neither gadding, nor social intercourse, and had made up my mind to proceed immediately to duty at the Front.

"You've been seasick; that's what ails you," he said, diagnosing my condition. "Oh, I don't expect you to admit it--no man ever did that.

But you wait and see how you feel when we've had a few meals at the Grand Hotel in Rome!"

This culinary bait leaving me cold, he lost his temper, expressed a hope that the Germans would blow my ambulance to smithereens, and a.s.sured me that the next time I brought the Huns' papers across the ocean I might extricate myself without his a.s.sistance from what might ensue. However, though he has a bark, Jack possesses no bite worth mentioning. He even saw me off when I left by the north-bound train.

Leaning moodily forward, I looked again from the window and wished I might hurry the creaking, grinding revolution of the wheels. We were climbing higher and higher among the mountains. The chestnuts, growing scanter, were replaced by dark firs and pines. Streams came winding down like icy crystal threads; the little rivers we crossed looked blue and glacial; pale-pink roses and mountain flowers showed themselves as we approached the peaks. A polite official, entering, examined our papers; and with snow surrounding us and cold clear air blowing in at the window, we left Bardonnecchia, the last of the frontier towns.

I was speeding toward France; but where was the girl of the _Re d'Italia_? To what dubious rendezvous, what haunt of spies, had she hurried, once ash.o.r.e? The thought of her stung my vanity almost beyond endurance. She had pleaded with me that night, swayed against me trustingly, appealed to me as to a chivalrous gentleman and, having competently pulled the wool over my eyes, had laughed at me in her sleeve.

I had held myself a canny fellow, not an easy prey to adventurers; a fairly decent one, too, who didn't lie to a king's officer or help treasonable plots. Yet had I not done just those things by my silence on the steamer? And for what reason? Upon my soul I didn't know, unless because she had gray eyes.

"Hang it all!" I exclaimed, flinging my unlucky paper into a corner, and becoming aware too late that Van Blarcom was observing me with a grin.

"I've got the black b.u.t.terflies, as the French say," I explained savagely. "This mountain travel is maddening; one might as well be a snail."

"Sure, a slow train's tiresome," agreed Van Blarcom. "Specially if you're not feeling overpleased with life anyway," he added, with a knowing smile.

An angry answer rose to my lips, but the Mont Cenis tunnel opportunely enveloped us, and in the dark half-hour transit that followed I regained my self-control. It was not worth while, I decided, to quarrel with the fellow, to break his head or to give him the chance of breaking mine.

After all, I thought low-spiritedly, what right had I to look down on him? We were pot and kettle, indistinguishably black. It was true that he had perjured himself upon the liner; but so, in spirit if not in words, had I!