The Playground of Satan Part 32

"As for those two Cossacks," he retorted. The Prussian muttered something inaudible and turned on his heel.

Ian followed them down to the church. It stood a little aloof from the village, nearest the house, yet almost half-way between the two. It had not suffered from the day's bombardment any more than the house. The scene of horror where the Russian sh.e.l.ls had done their work was beyond description. Though by now fairly hardened to the abominations of war, the things Ian saw and heard through the twilight of that summer evening made him very sick. The surviving Germans were too busy looking for the signaler to worry about the wounded who howled, groaned and shouted with pain. It was a pandemonium of anguish. One man, mutilated beyond all semblance of G.o.d's image, implored him to end his misery ... as Ian stood there hesitating a trooper shot him.

"He was my good friend," he explained, and burst into tears. But he soon controlled himself and a few minutes later Ian saw him carrying out von Senborn's orders, apparently unmoved by his ordeal. Indeed, again he could not help admiring these brutes when it came to the pure fighting part of their work. It was in the intervals and with the unarmed that they were so cowardly, such bullies. Once it was a question of fight they bungled nothing and left nothing to chance.

Perhaps their pa.s.sion for perfection in detail made them doubly furious at the trick a handful of Russians who had found some ammunition played on them that evening. Von Senborn was determined to solve the mystery.

"We must not blow the tower to bits," Ian heard him say to the haggard subaltern. "We must do the work in such a way that we make a rift in the tower and can explore it ourselves." Then, aloud to his men: "Now, you are going to avenge your dead comrades."

They were willing enough, but found they must go to fetch some explosives which they had stored near the house. It took them some few minutes to get there. The time seemed very long to Ian, listening to and watching that human charnel house near by. He wanted to get home, away from it all. Yet some mysterious force kept him there. Later, he thanked G.o.d for it....

Once more, Russian wit was to forestall Teutonic thoroughness. Before the men told off to the stores got back a sh.e.l.l whizzed past, struck the tower at a tangent. Ian was thrown to the ground and half buried. It took him some time to get clear. Sore, dazed, yet alive and with, apparently, no bones broken, he managed to regain his feet. Then he sat down, for his legs were like cotton wool.

The moon was rising now and lit up a hundred details of the desolation around. He could see von Senborn, sitting down, holding his head and swearing. Several dead bodies were near that had not been there before.

Other men were perched on what seemed a hillock, born out of nothing since that sh.e.l.l burst. They were very excited, and he languidly wondered what they found to be excited about, when he felt so indifferent. He heard them quite plainly, without wanting to.

"It's a captain," said one.

"And an engineer," put in another.

"No--a sapper. Look at his collar."

"Look at this," cried somebody else, and the tone of his voice made Ian look, too. He was holding up a Russian drinking bottle.

"And food--look--a loaf of black bread. _Gott in Himmel_, he was a tough one."

Von Senborn stopped swearing and asked Ian if he was alive.

"Yes," he answered.

"Then go and see what they've got there. I can't move till I've had something," he groaned loudly.

"Can't I help you?"

"Only that." And he lay back, yelling for the surgeon.

Ian went up to what he had supposed was a hillock and found it to be a heap of stones and debris--the remains of the church tower. Only the top part had fallen; the rest loomed up, jagged and broken.

Several of the Germans squatted round a body, so limp that every bone of it must have been smashed.

"A Russian, sir," said the man who held the water-bottle. "He fell with the tower."

They rifled the dead man's pockets, turning over his broken body with as scant care as if it had been a lump of beef. They contained little; an old man's photograph; one of a girl with a broad face and small eyes, and a slip of paper. Nothing more.

Von Senborn joined them, staggering but alert. He took the slip of paper and glanced at it by the light of an electric torch. Then he handed it to the haggard subaltern.

"Russian. Read it."

The boy took the slip and pored over it for some minutes, either because the torch burnt dull or because he had not much knowledge of the language. They had left the body, which lay in shadow. Ian looked at that young, tired face without recognizing in it any of the sappers who were in Ruvno during the Russian retreat. Later on, he heard from a peasant that the Russians, when last in Ruvno, kept everybody away from the church and that at night they made noises, as with picks and spades.

"Go on," urged von Senborn impatiently. "I thought you spoke Russian like a native."

"It is hastily written," explained the other. "And therefore indistinct. But I think I have the meaning now."

"Well, for h.e.l.l's sake let me have it, too."

"You cannot take me alive," he read in his hard North German. "I have chosen how I shall die. When I have written this I mean to signal to my friends to sh.e.l.l the tower, before your men come back to mine it. And we, too, shall return, driving you to the very streets of Berlin. And Europe's wrongs shall be avenged. We Russians are slow; but neither stupid nor discouraged, as you pretend." He stopped and looked up.

"That all?" asked von Senborn.

"All." He returned the paper to his superior.

"_Ja, ja,_" said a voice. "I see it now. He had himself bricked up in that tower, to signal and cover the retreat. He was no coward."

n.o.body spoke. The incident had impressed them all. The man who gets himself bricked up with enough food to last till he is found out, is a hero. Von Senborn, having his head seen to by a surgeon, talked it over. Ian kept in the shadow, not wanting to be seen. Dazed though he felt from the last sh.e.l.l, he knew that this discovery would spring back upon him and his dear ones.

"How did he signal?" the surgeon asked.

"G.o.d knows."

"That Polish Count knew of this," murmured the haggard lieutenant, little thinking Ian was within earshot.

"Yes," said von Senborn savagely. "I'll swear to that. But I'll be even with him. Be quick, Surgeon, there's work to do yet."

"Serve him right to shoot him after all," put in the surgeon. Von Senborn laughed angrily.

"Shooting's too good." He lowered his voice. Strain his ears as he might, Ian only caught two words. But they were enough. He waited to hear no more.

He ran as fast as sore legs would carry him up to the house. Outside, not a soul. All the women and children, besides several men, were in the cellars.

"Get out at once," he shouted. "Run as hard as you can, along the Warsaw road."

"What is the matter?" asked the Countess.

"A Russian bricked up in the church tower. They are coming to blow us up, shutting you in first. Run as far from the house as possible."

When he saw them on their way he left them, then ran for an ax and made for the sacristy. There was no guard now, all the Germans being down by the church and village. He soon had the door in, to find Father Constantine walking up and down, saying his prayers. Ian hastily said what had happened and urged him to join the others on the Warsaw road.

But the old man was in no hurry.

"They may not do it," he said. "I expect they'll go to sleep and wake up in a better mood."

"If you don't go I'll carry you," cried the squire angrily. "And that will prevent me warning the people hanging about."

Then he dragged his chaplain from the room. But the priest insisted on taking a little malachite crucifix which hung over the cupboard. It was the only thing they saved out of all Ruvno's beautiful things.

Then Ian warned as many of the peasants as he could find, though the sh.e.l.ling had already frightened most of them out of the village and on to the road. Baranski, whom he met, helped him.

Terrible was the confusion and alarm that followed, the calling of mothers to children, the cries of frightened babies, the curses of old men. Every second of that awful night was burnt in Ian's brain; he did not forget it whilst he lived. In quite a short time the Warsaw road was filled with panic-stricken peasants. Some of them had s.n.a.t.c.hed up a table, a chair, a kettle or a pillow. Those who had any left panted along with a sack of potatoes or buckwheat. A few were fortunate enough to possess a horse. He tried to get a couple of his--farm horses were all he had left--but the Germans were around the yard before he could get back. So quick were they that he had not time to take a thing for the women. The peasants, being nearer the road, were more fortunate in this way. Even as Ian left the village he could see soldiers hovering round the house, evidently shutting the doors, lest their victims escape! A wounded Prussian cursed him and Baranski as they hustled some children on to the highway.