The Last Shot Part 59

"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 pa.s.sed 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 b.u.t.ton 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 br.i.m.m.i.n.g 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 l.u.s.trous 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.

"I'm not afraid with you between me and the dungeons," she said. "I'll hold my ground. Don't think me altogether a craven."

"Very well," was all that he could say. "I came to see the dungeons, and I'll see them!"

After the lantern flame grew fainter and finally disappeared around a bend, Marta emitted a peculiar, squeaky little laugh. It sounded to her as if her own ghost--the ghost of her former self--were laughing in satire. There was a devilish, mischievous joy in battling to outwit Bouchard more than in her deceit of Westerling. Satire, yes--needle-pointed, acid-tipped! Melodrama done in burlesque, too. In the name of the n.o.ble art of war, a bit of fooling about ghosts in a tunnel might influence the fate of armies that were the last word in modern equipment. And men played at killing with a grand front of martial dignity, when such a little thing could turn the balance of slaughter! The ghosts in the dungeons seemed about as real as anything, except the childishness of adult humanity in organized ma.s.s. She laughed again, this time very softly, as she moved away from the panel door a few steps farther along the wall toward the entrance and again leaned back for support.

She had to wait a half-hour before she saw a yellow flame reappear and heard the dully echoing steps of Bouchard approaching. That tiny push-b.u.t.ton on the panel, of the color of stone, was in the shadow of her figure against the lantern's rays, which gave a glazed and haunted effect to Bouchard's eyes, rolling as he studied the walls and ceiling and floor of the tunnel in final baffled and desperate inquiry.

"Did you see anything? Did you go into all the dungeons?" Marta called to him.

Bouchard did not answer. Perhaps he was too full of disgust for words.

Marta, however, had plenty of words in her impatience for knowledge.

"If there were you must have caught them with a quick strangle-hold. Or, did you see one and not dare to go on? Tell me! tell me!" she insisted when he stopped before her, his expression a strange mixture of defiance and dissatisfaction while he was searching the wall around her figure.

Before his eye had any inclination to look as far away from her as the b.u.t.ton she stepped free of the wall and laid her hand on Bouchard's arm.

"I can't wait! I've nearly perished of suspense!" she cried. "I'm just dying to know what you found. Please tell me!"

Meanwhile, she was looking into his eyes, which were eagerly devouring the spot that her figure had hidden. He saw nothing but bare stone.

Marta slipped her hand behind her and began brushing her back.

"My gown must be a sight!" she exclaimed. "But I do believe you saw a ghost and that he struck you speechless!"

"No!" exploded Bouchard. "No, I saw nothing!"

"Nothing!" she repeated. She half turned to go. He pa.s.sed by her with the lantern, while she kept to the side of the wall which held the b.u.t.ton, covering it with her shadow successfully. "Nothing! No bones, no skulls--not even any anklets fastened by chains to the clammy, wet stones?"

"Yes, just an ordinary set of Middle Age dungeons and some staples in the walls!" he grumbled.

This was no news to her as, with Minna for company, she had explored all the underground pa.s.sages.

"Wonderful! I suppose a little courage will always lay ghosts!" She even found it difficult to conceal a note of triumph in her tone, for the b.u.t.ton was now well behind them. "It's all right, Minna; there aren't any ghosts!" she called as they entered the sitting-room. And Minna, in the kitchen, covered her mouth lest she should scream for joy.

"Thank you!" said Bouchard grudgingly as Marta saw him to the door.

"On the contrary, thank you! It was such fun--if I hadn't been so scared," replied Marta, and their gaze held each other fast in a challenge, hers beaming good nature and his saturnine in its rebuff and a hound-like tenacity of purpose, saying plainly that his suspicions were not yet laid.

When Bouchard returned to his desk he guessed the contents of the note awaiting him, but he took a long time to read its stereotyped expressions in transferring him to perfunctory duty well to the rear of the army. Then he pulled himself together and, leaden-hearted, settled down to arrange routine details for his departure, while the rest of the staff was immersed in the activity of the preparations for the attack on Engadir. He knew that he could not sleep if he lay down. So he spent the night at work. In the morning his successor, a young man whom he himself had chosen and trained, Colonel Bellini, appeared, and the fallen man received the rising man with forced official courtesy.

"In my own defence and for your aid," he said, "I show you a copy of what I have just written to General Westerling."

A brief note it was, in farewell, beginning with conventional thanks for Westerling's confidence in the past.

"I am punished for being right," it concluded. "It is my belief that Miss Galland sends news to the enemy and that she draws it from you without your consciousness of the fact. I tell you honestly. Do what you will with me."

It took more courage than any act of his life for the loyal Bouchard to dare such candor to a superior. Seeing the patchy, yellow, bloodless face drawn in stiff lines and the abysmal stare of the deep-set eyes in their bony recesses, Bellini was swept with a wave of sympathy.

"Thank you, Bouchard. You've been very fine!" said Bellini as he grasped Bouchard's hand, which was icy cold.

"My duty--my duty, in the hope that we shall kill two Browns for every Gray who has fallen--that we shall yet see them starved and besieged and crying for mercy in their capital," replied Bouchard. He saluted with a dismal, urgent formality and stalked out of the room with the tread of the ghost of Hamlet's father.

The strange impression that this farewell left with Bellini still lingered when, a few moments later, Westerling summoned him. Not alone the diffidence of a new member of the staff going into the Presence accounted for the stir in his temples, as he waited till some papers were signed before he had Westerling's attention. Then Westerling picked up Bouchard's note and shook his head sadly.

"Poor Bouchard! You can see for yourself," and he handed the note to Bellini. "I should have realized earlier that it was a case for the doctor and not for reprimand. Mad! Poor Bouchard! He hadn't the ability or the resiliency of mind for his task, as I hope you have, colonel."

"I hope so, sir," replied Bellini.