The Snare Part 15

The other's keen eyes flickered. For a moment his face lost its a.s.surance, and it was Samoval's turn to smile. But the major made a sharp recovery. He slowly shook his iron-grey head.

"You have no right to a.s.sume an impa.s.sable barrier. That is an inadmissible hypothesis. There is no such thing as a line of fortifications impa.s.sable to the French."

"You will pardon me, Major, but it is yourself have no right to your own a.s.sumptions. Again you overlook something. I will grant that technically what you say is true. No fortifications can be built that cannot be destroyed--given adequate power, with which it is yet to prove that Ma.s.sena not knowing what may await him, will be equipped.

"But let us for a moment take so much for granted, and now consider this: fortifications are unquestionably building in the region of Torres Vedras, and Wellington guards the secret so jealously that not even the British--either here or in England--are aware of their nature. That is why the Cabinet in London takes for granted an embarkation in September.

Wellington has not even taken his Government into his confidence. That is the sort of man he is. Now these fortifications have been building since last October. Best part of eight months have already gone in their construction. It may be another two or three months before the French army reaches them. I do not say that the French cannot pa.s.s them, given time. But how long will it take the French to pull down what it will have taken ten or eleven months to construct? And if they are unable to draw sustenance from a desolate, wasted country, what time will they have at their disposal? It will be with them a matter of life or death. Having come so far they must reach Lisbon or perish; and if the fortifications can delay them by a single month, then, granted that all Lord Wellington's other dispositions have been duly carried out, perish they must. It remains, Monsieur le Major, for you to determine whether, with all their energy, with all their genius and all their valour, the French can--in an ill-nourished condition--destroy in a few weeks the considered labour of nearly a year."

The major was aghast. He had changed colour, and through his eyes, wide and staring, his stupefaction glared forth at them.

Minas uttered a dry cough under cover of his hand, and screwed up his eyegla.s.s to regard the major more attentively. "You do not appear to have considered all that," he said.

"But, my dear Marquis," was the half-indignant answer, "why was I not told all this to begin with? You represented yourself as but indifferently informed, Monsieur de Samoval. Whereas--"

"So I am, my dear Major, as far as information goes. If I did not use these arguments before, it was because it seemed to me an impertinence to offer what, after all, are no more than the conclusions of my own constructive and deductive reasoning to one so well versed in strategy as yourself."

The major was silenced for a moment. "I congratulate you, Count," he said. "Monsieur le Marechal shall have your views without delay. Tell me," he begged. "You say these fortifications lie in the region of Torres Vedras. Can you be more precise?"

"I think so. But again I warn you that I can tell you only what I infer.

I judge they will run from the sea, somewhere near the mouth of the Zizandre, in a semicircle to the Tagus, somewhere to the south of Santarem. I know that they do not reach as far north as San, because the roads there are open, whereas all roads to the south, where I am a.s.suming that the fortifications lie, are closed and closely guarded."

"Why do you suggest a semicircle?"

"Because that is the formation of the hills, and presumably the line of heights would be followed."

"Yes," the major approved slowly. "And the distance, then, would be some thirty or forty miles?"

"Fully."

The major's face relaxed its gravity. He even smiled. "You will agree, Count, that in a line of that extent a uniform strength is out of the question. It must perforce present many weak, many vulnerable, places."

"Oh, undoubtedly."

"Plans of these lines must be in existence."

"Again undoubtedly. Sir Terence O'Moy will have plans in his possession showing their projected extent. Colonel Fletcher, who is in charge of the construction, is in constant communication with the adjutant, himself an engineer; and--as I partly imagine, partly infer from odd phrases that I have overheard--especially entrusted by Lord Wellington with the supervision of the works."

"Two things, then, are necessary," said the major promptly. "The first is, that the devastation of the country should be r.e.t.a.r.ded, and as far as possible hindered altogether."

"That," said Minas, "you may safely leave to myself and Souza's other friends, the northern n.o.blemen who have no intention of becoming the victims of British disinclination to pitched battles."

"The second--and this is more difficult--is that we should obtain by hook or by crook a plan of the fortifications." And he looked directly at Samoval.

The Count nodded slowly, but his face expressed doubt.

"I am quite alive to the necessity. I always have been. But--"

"To a man of your resource and intelligence--an intelligence of which you have just given such very signal proof--the matter should be possible." He paused a moment. Then: "If I understand you correctly, Monsieur de Samoval, your fortunes have suffered deeply, and you are almost ruined by this policy of Wellington's. You are offered the opportunity of making a magnificent recovery. The Emperor is the most generous paymaster in the world, and he is beyond measure impatient at the manner in which the campaign in the Peninsula is dragging on. He has spoken of it as an ulcer that is draining the Empire of its resources.

For the man who could render him the service of disclosing the weak spot in this armour, the Achilles heel of the British, there would be a reward beyond all your possible dreams. Obtain the plans, then, and--"

He checked abruptly. The door had opened, and in a Venetian mirror facing him upon the wall the major caught the reflection of a British uniform, the stiff gold collar surmounted by a bronzed hawk face with which he was acquainted.

"I beg your pardon, gentlemen," said the officer in Portuguese, "I was looking for--"

His voice became indistinct, so that they never knew who it was that he had been seeking when he intruded upon their privacy. The door had closed again and the reflection had vanished from the mirror. But there were beads of perspiration on the major's brow.

"It is fortunate," he muttered breathlessly, "that my back was towards him. I would as soon meet the devil face to face. I didn't dream he was in Lisbon."

"Who is he?" asked Minas.

"Colonel Grant, the British Intelligence officer. Phew! Name of a Name!

What an escape!" The major mopped his brow with a silk handkerchief.

"Beware of him, Monsieur de Samoval."

He rose. He was obviously shaken by the meeting.

"If one of you will kindly make quite sure that he is not about I think that I had better go. If we should meet everything might be ruined."

Then with a change of manner he stayed Samoval, who was already on his way to the door. "We understand each other, then?" he questioned them.

"I have my papers, and at dawn I leave Lisbon. I shall report your conclusions to the Prince, and in antic.i.p.ation I may already offer you the expression of his profoundest grat.i.tude. Meanwhile, you know what is to do. Opposition to the policy, and the plans of the fortifications--above all the plans."

He shook hands with them, and having waited until Samoval a.s.sured him that the corridor outside was clear, he took his departure, and was soon afterwards driving home, congratulating himself upon his most fortunate escape from the hawk eye of Colquhoun Grant.

But when in the dead of that night he was awakened to find a British sergeant with a halbert and six redcoats with fixed bayonets surrounding his bed it occurred to him belatedly that what one man can see in a mirror is also visible to another, and that Marshal Ma.s.sena, Prince of Esslingen, waiting for information beyond Ciudad Rodrigo, would never enjoy the advantages of a report of Count Samoval's masterly constructive and deductive reasoning.

CHAPTER IX. THE GENERAL ORDER

Sir Terence sat alone in his s.p.a.cious, severely furnished private room in the official quarters at Monsanto. On the broad carved writing-table before him there was a ma.s.s of doc.u.ments relating to the clothing and accoutrement of the forces, to leaves of absence, to staff appointments; there were returns from the various divisions of the sick and wounded in hospital, from which a complete list was to be prepared for the Secretary of State for War at home; there were plans of the lines at Torres Vedras just received, indicating the progress of the works at various points; and there were doc.u.ments and communications of all kinds concerned with the adjutant-general's multifarious and arduous duties, including an urgent letter from Colonel Fletcher suggesting that the Commander-in-Chief should take an early opportunity of inspecting in person the inner lines of fortification.

Sir Terence, however, sat back in his chair, his work neglected, his eyes dreamily gazing through the open window, but seeing nothing of the sun-drenched landscape beyond, a heavy frown darkening his bronzed and rugged face. His mind was very far from his official duties and the ma.s.s of reminders before him--this Augean stable of arrears. He was lost in thought of his wife and Tremayne.

Five days had elapsed since the ball at Count Redondo's, where Sir Terence had surprised the pair together in the garden and his suspicions had been fired by the compromising att.i.tude in which he had discovered them. Tremayne's frank, easy bearing, so una.s.sociable with guilt, had, as we know, gone far, to rea.s.sure him, and had even shamed him, so that he had trampled his suspicions underfoot. But other things had happened since to revive his bitter doubts. Daily, constantly, had he been coming upon Tremayne and Lady O'Moy alone together in intimate, confidential talk which was ever silenced on his approach. The two had taken to wandering by themselves in the gardens at all hours, a thing that had never been so before, and O'Moy detected, or imagined that he detected, a closer intimacy between them, a greater warmth towards the captain on the part of her ladyship.

Thus matters had reached a pa.s.s in which peace of mind was impossible to him. It was not merely what he saw, it was his knowledge of what was; it was his ever-present consciousness of his own age and his wife's youth; it was the memory of his ante-nuptial jealousy of Tremayne which had been awakened by the gossip of those days--a gossip that p.r.o.nounced Tremayne Una Butler's poor suitor, too poor either to declare himself or to be accepted if he did. The old wound which that gossip had dealt him then was reopened now. He thought of Tremayne's manifest concern for Una; he remembered how in that very room some six weeks ago, when Butler's escapade had first been heard of, it was from avowed concern for Una that Tremayne had urged him to befriend and rescue his rascally brother-in-law. He remembered, too, with increasing bitterness that it was Una herself had induced him to appoint Tremayne to his staff.

There were moments when the conviction of Tremayne's honesty, the thought of Tremayne's unswerving friendship for himself, would surge up to combat and abate the fires of his devastating jealousy.

But evidence would kindle those fires anew until they flamed up to scorch his soul with shame and anger. He had been a fool in that he had married a woman of half his years; a fool in that he had suffered her former lover to be thrown into close a.s.sociation with her.

Thus he a.s.sured himself. But he would abide by his folly, and so must she. And he would see to it that whatever fruits that folly yielded, dishonour should not be one of them. Through all his darkening rage there beat the light of reason. To avert, he bethought him, was better than to avenge. Nor were such stains to be wiped out by vengeance. A cuckold remains a cuckold though he take the life of the man who has reduced him to that ignominy.

Tremayne must go before the evil transcended reparation. Let him return to his regiment and do his work of sapping and mining elsewhere than in O'Moy's household.

Eased by that resolve he rose, a tall, martial figure, youth and energy in every line of it for all his six and forty years. Awhile he paced the room in thought. Then, suddenly, with hands clenched behind his back, he checked by the window, checked on a horrible question that had flashed upon his tortured mind. What if already the evil should be irreparable?

What proof had he that it was not so?