The Woman of Mystery Part 21

"_Twelve mid-day._

"It is very difficult for me to write to you, Paul.

The sentry on duty opens the door and watches my every movement. They did not search me, so I was able to keep the leaves of my diary; and I write to you hurriedly, by sc.r.a.ps at a time, in a dark corner.

"My diary! Shall you find it, Paul? Will you know all that has happened and what has become of me? If only they don't take it from me! . . .

"They have brought me bread and water! I am still separated from Rosalie and Jerome. They have not given them anything to eat.

"_Two o'clock._

"Rosalie has managed to get rid of her gag. She is now speaking to me in an undertone through the wall. She heard what the men who are guarding us said and she tells me that Prince Conrad left last night for Corvigny; that the French are approaching and that the soldiers here are very uneasy. Are they going to defend themselves, or will they fall back towards the frontier? . . . It was Major Hermann who prevented our escape. Rosalie says that we are done for. . . .

"_Half-past two._

"Rosalie and I had to stop speaking. I have just asked her what she meant, why we should be done for. She maintains that Major Hermann is a devil:

"'Yes, devil,' she repeated. 'And, as he has special reasons for acting against you. . . .'

"'What reasons, Rosalie?'

"'I will explain later. But you may be sure that if Prince Conrad does not come back from Corvigny in time to save us, Major Hermann will seize the opportunity to have all three of us shot. . . .'"

Paul positively roared with rage when he saw the dreadful word set down in his poor elisabeth's hand. It was on one of the last pages. After that there were only a few sentences written at random, across the paper, obviously in the dark, sentences that seemed breathless as the voice of one dying:

"The tocsin! . . . The wind carries the sound from Corvigny. . . . What can it mean? . . . The French troops? . . . Paul, Paul, perhaps you are with them!

"Two soldiers came in, laughing:

"'Lady's _kaput_! . . . All three _kaput_! . . . Major Hermann said so: they're _kaput_!'

"I am alone again. . . . We are going to die. . . .

But Rosalie wants to talk to me and daren't. . . .

"_Five o'clock._

"The French artillery. . . . Sh.e.l.ls bursting round the chateau. . . . Oh, if one of them could hit me! . . .

I hear Rosalie's voice. . . . What has she to tell me?

What secret has she discovered?

"Oh, horror! Oh, the vile truth! Rosalie has spoken.

Dear G.o.d, I beseech Thee, give me time to write. . . .

Paul, you could never imagine. . . . You must be told before I die. . . . Paul. . . ."

The rest of the page was torn out; and the following pages, to the end of the month, were blank. Had elisabeth had the time and the strength to write down what Rosalie had revealed to her?

This was a question which Paul did not even ask himself. What cared he for those revelations and the darkness that once again and for good shrouded the truth which he could no longer hope to discover? What cared he for vengeance or Prince Conrad or Major Hermann or all those savages who tortured and slew women? elisabeth was dead. She had, so to speak, died before his eyes. Nothing outside that fact was worth a thought or an effort. Faint and stupefied by a sudden fit of cowardice, his eyes still fixed on the diary in which his poor wife had jotted down the phases of the most cruel martyrdom imaginable, he felt an immense longing for death and oblivion steal slowly over him. elisabeth was calling to him. Why go on fighting? Why not join her?

Then some one tapped him on the shoulder. A hand seized the revolver which he was holding; and Bernard said:

"Drop that, Paul. If you think that a soldier has the right to kill himself at the present time, I will leave you free to do so when you have heard what I have to say."

Paul made no protest. The temptation to die had come to him, but almost without his knowing it; and, though he would perhaps have yielded to it, in a moment of madness, he was still in the state of mind in which a man soon recovers his consciousness.

"Speak," he said.

"It will not take long. Three minutes will give me time to explain.

Listen to me. I see, from the writing, that you have found a diary kept by elisabeth. Does it confirm what you knew?"

"Yes."

"When elisabeth wrote it, was she threatened with death as well as Jerome and Rosalie?"

"Yes."

"And all three were shot on the day when you and I arrived at Corvigny, that is to say, on Wednesday, the sixteenth?"

"Yes."

"It was between five and six in the afternoon, on the day before the Thursday when we arrived here, at the Chateau d'Ornequin?"

"Yes, but why these questions?"

"Why? Look at this, Paul. I took from you and I hold in my hand the splinter of sh.e.l.l which you removed from the wall of the lodge at the exact spot where elisabeth was shot. Here it is. There was a lock of hair still sticking to it."

"Well?"

"Well, I had a talk just now with an adjutant of artillery, who was pa.s.sing by the chateau; and the result of our conversation and of his inspection was that the splinter does not belong to a sh.e.l.l fired from a 75-centimeter gun, but to a sh.e.l.l fired from a 155-centimeter gun, a Rimailho."

"I don't understand."

"You don't understand, because you don't know or because you have forgotten what my adjutant reminded me of. On the Corvigny day, Wednesday the sixteenth, the batteries which opened fire and dropped a few sh.e.l.ls on the chateau at the moment when the execution was taking place were all batteries of seventy-fives; and our one-five-five Rimailhos did not fire until the next day, Thursday, while we were marching against the chateau. Therefore, as elisabeth was shot and buried at about 6 o'clock on the Wednesday evening, it is physically impossible for a splinter of a sh.e.l.l fired from a Rimailho to have taken off a lock of her hair, because the Rimailhos were not fired until the Thursday morning."

"Then you mean to say. . . ." murmured Paul, in a husky voice.

"I mean to say, how can we doubt that the Rimailho splinter was picked up from the ground on the Thursday morning and deliberately driven into the wall among some locks of hair cut off on the evening before?"

"But you're crazy, Bernard! What object can there have been in that?"

Bernard gave a smile:

"Well, of course, the object of making people think that elisabeth had been shot when she hadn't."

Paul rushed at him and shook him: