The Lost Naval Papers Part 11

"You don't seem to be a very loyal subordinate," observed the officer, smiling.

"Me, not loyal!" cried Froissart astonished. "I surely am of all men most loyal to l'Entente. Have I not proved my loyalty? I have left my beautiful France and come here to this foggy London to aid this flat-footed _homme de bout_, Dawson, in his researches. Yet he tells me nothing. He disguises himself before me, and laughs, laughs, when I fail to recognize his filthy, obscene countenance. But I am loyal, of a true loyalty unapproachable."

"I believe you, though you have a queer way of showing it. What is now the game that you want to play off on the old man as a proof of your unapproachable loyalty?"

"He is clever, my faith, clever as the Devil. He discerns the German plans before they are made. He has their agents within a wire net which closes whenever he wishes. He has swept London clean of the foul brood which festered here before the war. I have great, limitless confidence in this Dawson whom I detest, but to whom I am of all his a.s.sistants the most loyal. He now suspects that contained within the Flying Corps of us, the Belgians, and the English are observers in the pay of Germany. It is an idea most splendid. For if it is true, what greater opportunity could be given to any spies! To fly over our lines, to learn of everything, and then to convey the news to the enemy by way of the air! If he had told me of this most perspicuous of theories, I would have aided him with all the wealth of my genius. But no, he tells to me nothing. He comes and goes, he spins his web like a great fat female spider, but he tells me nothing. It is my belief that he despises me because I am French, _aristocrat_, and _catholique_.

But I will show him; I will, as you call it, score most bitterly off him; I will do in my way successfully what he vainly seeks to do in his way. _Conspuez_ Dawson!"

"This is quite like the old times of the Dreyfus case," said the Englishman.

"Dreyfus! But I will speak not of that. It is buried. We French are one people now, one and indivisible. Though of traitors, the villain Dreyfus was of the most horrible. Let us speak of _cet homme tres sale_, Dawson. I do not know his plans. They will be shrewd, but without imagination, without flair. He will watch, with his eyes of a cat, the French and Belgian flying officers who come to London, but he will not discover their secrets. For he does not understand, this cold English Dawson, that secrets which endanger the neck are told only to women."

"Yet I have heard that he has a team of women--his harem, as it is called. I have never seen one of them."

"Bah! Englishwomen, of the large feet and the so protruding teeth! Who would tell of his precious secrets to them!"

"Oh, come, M. Froissart. We have as many pretty women in London as you have in Paris."

"It is possible, my friend. All things, the most improbable, are possible. But they conceal themselves most a.s.siduously. I have not seen them, these so pretty Englishwomen."

"Well, well. You are a bit out of date as regards our women. But I don't want to argue. What is the game?"

Froissart leaned forward and spoke solemnly, forcibly.

"If the man Dawson is right, and there are German spies in the French and Belgian flying services, they will come to London to get their orders. And they will get them from women, depend upon it, my friend.

From women who are of French education, who appear to be French, yet who are the deadly, the most dangerous, enemies of France. Let Dawson watch the men themselves; but watch you such women as I indicate--women who appear to be French and yet are not French. I will speak to the Chief, not to Dawson, but to the Great Chief of us all.

You shall be dressed in the tenue of a French flying officer; you shall avoid French or Belgian officers who might ask questions the most embarra.s.sing. You shall make the acquaintance of women who appear to be French, yet who are not French. Grip on to these, my friend, entertain them, make yourself of the most fascinating and agreeable, give to them attentions and love of the warmest. And when after two or three gla.s.ses of champagne you repose at ease with your arm about their waists, get you at their secrets. You are young, handsome, and your eye is bold. I give you a pleasant task--the deception of deceiving women. In my younger days what joy would I not have taken in it."

Captain Rust became very gloomy during this speech for, though French in education, he was by instinct an Englishman.

"I don't like the business at all. It sounds mean and grubby, ugh! Not quite what one would ask of a gentleman."

Froissart was genuinely surprised. "What do you say, not for a gentleman? Am I not a gentleman, I, who speak, a Froissart, a Count of _l'ancien regime_, a Royalist almost? I offer you a task which combines business and pleasure in the most delicious of proportions.

And you call my offer mean and grubby, _meprisable et crotte_! I do not ask you to consort with those of the _demi-monde._ The women who are of most danger to our countries are not _courtisanes_; they are of the _monde_, fashionable. They meet officers in society; they humour and flatter them; they display a melting softness of sympathy and interest. I do not ask you, my friend, to endanger your English virtue."

The tone of wondering contempt with which he ended brought a smile to Rust's lips.

"I am not so very virtuous, monsieur. But I am English, and I try, vainly perhaps, to be a gentleman. It seems to me a dirty business to make up to women in order to wheedle out their secrets."

"We have to do worse than that in defence of our country. We have to plot and counterplot, to lie and deceive. But we do these things, and you must do them too, if you would be of the Secret Service. Content yourself. Think always that it is for _la belle France_ or for _le bel Angleterre_, for _la grande Alliance_. You have qualifications unusual; you are young, handsome, and French in manner and speech. You are a soldier; it is for me to command, and for you to obey. Besides, think you; if success comes to us, picture to yourself the desolation of Dawson!"

"Desolating Dawson is more your fun than mine. I have no grudge to work off on the old man. Since you command, I will obey. I will do my best, but, to be quite frank, I do not like the job."

"But you will do it. I think that you English, slow to move, do best those things which you like least. You despise the Secret Service, what you call dirty spying, yet you do it to admiration--with a courage and _sang froid_ most wonderful. You hate to begin a war, and yet when you fight you are, of all people, the most unwilling to stop.

When we French and the Russians yonder have supped of this war to the dregs, you English will just have begun to find your appet.i.tes. Stop?

you will cry. Make peace? Be content? Why, we have just got our second wind! It will be the same with you, my friend. You begin reluctantly, but when the chase becomes hot, you will be on fire with zest. You will not trouble then that _vous vous faites crottes_."

"I will do my best; I cannot say more than that."

CHAPTER X

A PROGRESSIVE FRIENDSHIP

Neither Madame Gilbert nor Captain Rust are very communicative concerning their adventures, until they begin to speak of that day when first they met one another in the courtyard of the Savoy Hotel.

They both then become voluble. I rather gather--though I did not cross-examine them at all closely--that they had been a good deal bored. Their instructions were so very vague, and the best method of carrying them out so far from clear to their ingenious minds, that they wandered aimlessly about the resorts most affected by officers on leave, spent much money, made a good many pleasant acquaintances, but progressed not at all in their researches. Madame did not meet with any French or Belgian flying officers who seemed likely to be German agents, and Captain Rust failed to discover a siren who appeared to be French and yet was not French, and who aroused any plausible suspicion that she dwelt in the central web of German intrigue. Madame began to think that for once the impeccable Dawson had despatched her upon a wild goose chase, and Rust became convinced that Froissart's vivid longing to score off the detested Dawson had misled him in the selection of the means to bring about this much-desired consummation.

They told me little of these wanderings, but when I asked for details of their first meeting, the one with the other, and their subsequent rather startling proceedings, they broke into eager speech. It was not until my keen and curious eye began to penetrate the delicate mysteries surrounding their surprising week-end visit to Brighton that Rust again became tongue-tied. He reprehensibly slurred over the most entertaining details. Madame Gilbert, on the other hand, revealed everything with that plain-spoken frankness which, in any other woman, would appear to be brazen. Madame is thirty-two; Captain Rust no more than twenty-six. He is a modest young man in spite of his French training; she, I am afraid, is a hussy. But I would not have her other than she is.

Madame Gilbert was taking tea alone in the courtyard of the Savoy. She occupied one place at a table laid for four. It was a fine afternoon in late spring, motors and taxis ran in and out unceasingly, the open-air restaurant began to fill up, but none ventured to approach any one of three empty places at Madame's table. She was, as usual, perfectly dressed--though she a.s.sures me that her clothes cost next to nothing. "It is the wearing of them, my friend, not the cost which counts." I fancy that her unshakable temper and her gay humour, like her beauty, are really based, as she says, upon her complete freedom from ailments. She loves life, and this, perhaps, is why life loves her.

Madame Gilbert, though to the un.o.bservant eye intent upon her tea and cakes, saw every one who came and went. Many officers were in the restaurant, but one only attracted her special notice. He was a young handsome man in the field-service kit of the French Army, and upon his sleeves and cap were the wings of the Flying Corps. This young man was looking for a table, but could not find one that was empty. She waited until he paused not far from her, and then, sweeping her eyes slowly over the crowded tables, brought them to rest upon his face. He was quite an attractive-looking young man. There was an appeal in his dark eyes as they met hers; he was imploring her of her gracious kindness to permit him to occupy one of her superfluous seats, and she telegraphed to him an encouraging reply. The French officer approached, saluted, and bowed: "Is it permitted, madame, to inconvenience you?" he asked humbly. "The tables are very full, or I would not venture to intrude." He spoke in careful, accurate English, and with an accent markedly French.

"Please favour me by sitting down at once," replied Madame. "I feel myself to be very selfish with my four places and one small person."

She spoke in careful, accurate English, and with an accent markedly French.

"Ah!" he exclaimed, seating himself opposite to her, and breaking into French. "Madame is of my country, is it not so?"

"But certainly," said Madame in the same language, which was to her a second mother-tongue. "I am of Paris. If you had not been French I should not have dared to hint to you that a place at this table might be taken."

For a few minutes they talked together in the ceremonious style for which the French language is the perfect medium, and then dropped into more easy friendly speech. Madame, when she likes the look of a man, becomes intimate at the shortest notice, and Rust, like every man born of woman, succ.u.mbed helplessly, instantly, to the wiles of Madame.

Though she had finished tea, she urged Rust not to be hurried; there was plenty of time, and one did not often have the happiness to meet a French officer in this dreary London. She enveloped him in her meshes of kindliness, and he responded by thinking to himself that she was the loveliest, most friendly creature whom he had ever met. Madame knows a great deal more of military details than most male civilians, but when she talked to Captain Rust at the Savoy, her ignorance of the Flying Corps was absolute. She asked questions, quite intelligent questions, and he bubbled over with eagerness to answer them. Poor Rust; I can picture the humbling scene. He made an a.s.s of himself, of course, but not a greater a.s.s than I always make of myself--and I am not far from double his age--whenever Madame gets to work upon me.

Within ten minutes she had wheedled out of him an account of his accident. "I was out on patrol duty," he explained, "spotting for submarines between the Straits and Zeebrugge. When the weather is fine we can see deep down into the water, a hundred feet or so, and quite easily make out a submerged U boat. I was testing a new plane fitted with a 90 h.p. R.A.F. engine--" He paused and quickly glanced at her, for he realised his blunder the instant the slip had been made. Madame was all eager attention--what did she know of the marques of aeroplane engines!--"It was a day of rotten luck for me. I spotted nothing, and late in the afternoon my engine began to overheat and miss fire. I did my utmost to struggle towards Do----, Dunkirk, but the beastly thing gave out altogether, and down I dropped into the sea. I had an ordinary land plane without floats, and was obliged to cut myself clear and keep up as best I could with my air belt. It was a weary time, waiting to be picked up, all that night and all the next day; the cold of the water struck right through me, and I was senseless, like a dead man, when at last, thirty hours afterwards, one of our destroyers found me floating there, picked me up, and carried me into Dover. I was in hospital for six weeks, crippled with rheumatic fever, and my heart went wrong. It is much better now, and I hope soon to get back to flying again. I am still on sick leave."

"Poor heart," sighed Madame, and smiled to herself.... "He looked at me," she explained long afterwards, "as if there was still life in his poor strained heart. It was a real kindness to give it some gentle exercise."

"And when you are well you will again fly for France?" she inquired.

"Ah, yes. I yearn for the day when the obdurate doctors will permit me to fly again--for France.... And you, madame, who are so kind to a poor crippled soldier, is it permitted to ask--"

"I am, alas, a widow." She paused, and though demurely looking at her empty tea cup, saw his eyes light up. ["The silly boy was pleased that I was a widow," she explained. "As if that mattered."] "My poor husband fell for France--at Le Grand Couronne. That was eight months ago, and I am still inconsolable. I love to meet the brother officers of my dear lost husband. He was killed by a sh.e.l.l, close beside his general, and I do not even know where he was buried." She delicately wiped her eyes, and Rust murmured broken words of the deepest sympathy. Yet he was not sorry to hear that his new friend was a widow. It must have been a most pathetic scene.

Madame recovered from her sudden rush of grief--brought on by thoughts of that unknown grave upon Le Grand Couronne!--and began to pull on her gloves. "And you, my friend?" she asked gently.

"No one lives who will grieve for me," he replied sadly.

"You are young, my friend, and your heart will--recover itself. I am old, made old by illness and sorrow." She was a picture of glowing health! "May I ask the name by which I may remember you?"

He was clean bowled, for he, foolishly, had not prepared a plausible name. "I am called," stammered he, "Captain Rouille." It was the best that he could do on the instant--the translation of his uncommon English name into French.

"A strange name," she murmured, "though the sound of it is beautiful.

Rouille! It signifies, for the moment, the decay of hopes, a mould of rust obscuring ambition. But in a little while the steel of your courage will shine bright once more. I am Madame Gilbert; my husband was of the Territorial Army--a Captain also." She had thought to have made him a Colonel on General Castelnau's staff, but refrained from so risky a flight of imagination. An obscure Captain of Territorials might well be called Guilbert, and pa.s.s unidentified.

As they pressed hands at parting, Rust hesitated. "May one hope, madame, to meet you again. Your kindness has been great, and I feel that I have made a new friend."

"And I also," sighed Madame. "I often come here to drink the English tea. It is a pleasing custom of London."