The Woman of Mystery Part 14

"Who is he?" he cried. "How can we find out? How can we get at him and torture him and kill him?"

"Question a prisoner," said Bernard.

The captain considered it wiser to advance no farther and ordered the company to fall back, so as to remain in touch with the remainder of the regiment. Paul was told off specially to occupy the chateau with his section and to take the prisoners there.

He lost no time in questioning two or three non-commissioned officers and some of the soldiers, as they went. But he could obtain nothing but a ma.s.s of conflicting particulars from them, for they had arrived from Corvigny the day before and had only spent the night at the chateau.

They did not even know the name of the officer in the flowing gray cloak for whom so many of them had sacrificed their lives. He was called the major; and that was all.

"But still," Paul insisted, "he was your actual commanding officer?"

"No. The leader of the rearguard detachment to which we belong is an Oberleutnant who was wounded by the exploding of the mines, when we ran away. We wanted to take him with us, but the major objected, leveling his revolver at us, telling us to march in front of him and threatening to shoot the first man who left him in the lurch. And just now, while we were fighting, he stood ten paces behind us and kept threatening us with his revolver to compel us to defend him. He shot three of us, as a matter of fact."

"He was reckoning on the a.s.sistance of the car, wasn't he?"

"Yes; and also on reinforcements which were to save us all, so he said.

But only the car came; and it just saved him."

"The Oberleutnant would know his name, of course. Is he badly wounded?"

"He's got a broken leg. We made him comfortable in a lodge in the park."

"The lodge against which your people put to death . . . those civilians?"

"Yes."

They were nearing the lodge, a sort of little orangery into which the plants were taken in winter. Rosalie and Jerome's bodies had been removed. But the sinister chain was still hanging on the wall, fastened to the three iron rings; and Paul once more beheld, with a shudder of dread, the marks left by the bullet and the little splinter of bomb-sh.e.l.l that kept elisabeth's hair embedded in the plaster.

A French bomb-sh.e.l.l! An added horror to the atrocity of the murder!

It was therefore Paul who, on the day before, by capturing the armored motor-car and effecting his daring raid on Corvigny, thus opening the road to the French troops, had brought about the events that ended in his wife's being murdered! The enemy had revenged himself for his retreat by shooting the inhabitants of the chateau! elisabeth fastened to the wall by a chain had been riddled with bullets. And, by a hideous irony, her corpse had received in addition the splinters of the first sh.e.l.ls which the French guns had fired before night-fall, from the top of the hills near Corvigny.

Paul pulled out the fragments of sh.e.l.l and removed the golden strands, which he put away religiously. He and Bernard then entered the lodge, where the Red Cross men had established a temporary ambulance. They found the Oberleutnant lying on a truss of straw, well looked after and able to answer questions.

One point at once became quite clear, which was that the German troops which had garrisoned the Chateau d'Ornequin had, so to speak, never been in touch at all with those which, the day before, had retreated from Corvigny and the adjoining forts. The garrison had been evacuated immediately upon the arrival of the fighting troops, as though to avoid any indiscretion on the subject of what had happened during the occupation of the chateau.

"At that moment," said the Oberleutnant, who belonged to the fighting force, not to the garrison, "it was seven o'clock in the evening. Your seventy-fives had already got the range of the chateau; and we found no one there but a number of generals and other officers of superior rank.

Their baggage-wagons were leaving and their motors were ready to leave.

I was ordered to hold out as long as I could to blow up the chateau. The major had made all the arrangements beforehand."

"What was the major's name?"

"I don't know. He was walking about with a young officer whom even the generals addressed with respect. This same officer called me over to him and charged me to obey the major 'as I would the emperor.'"

"And who was the young officer?"

"Prince Conrad."

"A son of the Kaiser's?"

"Yes. He left the chateau yesterday, late in the day."

"And did the major spend the night here?"

"I suppose so; at any rate, he was there this morning. We fired the mines and left . . . a bit late, for I was wounded near this lodge . . .

near the wall. . . ."

Paul mastered his emotion and said:

"You mean, the wall against which your people shot three French civilians, don't you?"

"Yes."

"When were they shot?"

"About six o'clock in the afternoon, I believe, before we arrived from Corvigny."

"Who ordered them to be shot?"

"The major."

Paul felt the perspiration trickling from the top of his head down his neck and forehead. It was as he thought: elisabeth had been shot by the orders of that nameless and more than mysterious individual whose face was the very image of the face of Hermine d'Andeville, elisabeth's mother!

He went on, in a trembling voice:

"So there were three people shot? You're quite sure?"

"Yes, the people of the chateau. They had been guilty of treachery."

"A man and two women?"

"Yes."

"But there were only two bodies fastened to the wall of the lodge."

"Yes, only two. The major had the lady of the house buried by Prince Conrad's orders."

"Where?"

"He didn't tell me."

"But why was she shot?"

"I understand that she had got hold of some very important secrets."

"They could have taken her away and kept her as a prisoner."

"Certainly, but Prince Conrad was tired of her."

Paul gave a start: