The Woman of Mystery Part 25

"Getting killed by a sh.e.l.l."

"Nonsense!"

"There's his body at your feet."

Karl merely shrugged his shoulders and said:

"The fool!"

"Yes, he never knew how to look after himself," added the major, completing the funeral oration. "Take his pocketbook from him, Karl. He used to carry it in an inside pocket of his woolen waistcoat."

The spy stooped and, presently, said:

"It's not there, _Excellenz_."

"Then he put it somewhere else. Look in the other pockets."

Karl did so and said:

"It's not there either."

"What! This is beyond me! Rosenthal never parted with his pocketbook. He used to keep it to sleep with; he would have kept it to die with."

"Look for yourself, _Excellenz_."

"But then . . . ?"

"Some one must have been here recently and taken the pocketbook."

"Who? Frenchmen?"

The spy rose to his feet, was silent for a moment and then, going up to the major, said in a deliberate voice:

"Not Frenchmen, _Excellenz_, but a Frenchman."

"What do you mean?"

"_Excellenz_, Delroze started on a reconnaissance not long ago with his brother-in-law, Bernard d'Andeville. I could not get to know in which direction, but I know now. He came this way. He must have explored the ruins of the lighthouse and, seeing some dead lying about, turned out their pockets."

"That's a bad business," growled the major. "Are you sure?"

"Certain. He must have been here an hour ago at most. Perhaps," added Karl, with a laugh, "perhaps he's here still, hiding in some hole.

Both of them cast a look around them, but mechanically; and the movement denoted no serious fear on their part. Then the major continued, pensively:

"After all, that bundle of letters received by our agents, letters without names or addresses to them, doesn't matter so much. But the photograph is more important."

"I should think so, _Excellenz_! Why, here's a photograph taken in 1902; and we've been looking for it, therefore, for the last twelve years. I manage, after untold efforts, to discover it among the papers which Comte Stephane d'Andeville left behind at the outbreak of war. And this photograph, which you wanted to take back from the Comte d'Andeville, to whom you had been careless enough to give it, is now in the hands of Paul Delroze, M. d'Andeville's son-in-law, elisabeth d'Andeville's husband and your mortal enemy!"

"Well, I know all that," cried the major, who was obviously annoyed.

"You needn't rub it in!"

"_Excellenz_, one must always look facts in the face. What has been your constant object with regard to Paul Delroze? To conceal from him the truth as to your ident.i.ty and therefore to turn his attention, his enquiries, his hatred, towards Major Hermann. That's so, is it not? You went to the length of multiplying the number of daggers engraved with the letters H, E, R, M and even of signing 'Major Hermann' on the panel where the famous portrait hung. In fact, you took every precaution, so that, when you think fit to kill off Major Hermann, Paul Delroze will believe his enemy to be dead and will cease to think of you. And now what happens? Why, in that photograph he possesses the most certain proof of the connection between Major Hermann and the famous portrait which he saw on the evening of his marriage, that is to say, between the present and the past."

"True; but this photograph, found on the body of some dead soldier, would have no importance in his eyes unless he knew where it came from, for instance, if he could see his father-in-law."

"His father-in-law is fighting with the British army within eight miles of Paul Delroze."

"Do they know it?"

"No, but an accident may bring them together. Moreover, Bernard and his father correspond; and Bernard must have told his father what happened at the Chateau d'Ornequin, at least in so far as Paul Delroze was able to piece the incidents together."

"Well, what does that matter, so long as they know nothing of the other events? And that's the main thing. They could discover all our secrets through elisabeth and find out who I am. But they won't look for her, because they believe her to be dead."

"Are you sure of that, _Excellenz_?"

"What's that?"

The two accomplices were standing close together, looking into each other's eyes, the major uneasy and irritated, the spy cunning.

"Speak," said the major. "What do you want to say?"

"Just this, _Excellenz_, that just now I was able to put my hand on Delroze's kit-bag. Not for long: two seconds, that's all; but long enough to see two things. . . ."

"Hurry up, can't you?"

"First, the loose leaves of that ma.n.u.script of which you took care to burn the more important papers, but of which, unfortunately, you mislaid a considerable part."

"His wife's diary?"

"Yes."

The major burst into an oath:

"May I be d.a.m.ned for everlasting! One should burn everything in those cases. Oh, if I hadn't indulged that foolish curiosity! . . . And next?"

"Oh, hardly anything, _Excellenz_! A bit of a sh.e.l.l, yes, a little bit of a sh.e.l.l; but I must say that it looked to me very like the splinter which you ordered me to drive into the wall of the lodge, after sticking some of elisabeth's hair to it. What do you think of that, _Excellenz_?"

The major stamped his foot with anger and let fly a new string of oaths and anathemas at the head of Paul Delroze.

"What do you think of that?" repeated the spy.

"You are right," cried the major. "His wife's diary will have given that cursed Frenchman a glimpse of the truth; and that piece of sh.e.l.l in his possession is a proof to him that his wife is perhaps still alive, which is the one thing I wanted to avoid. We shall never get rid of him now!"

His rage seemed to increase. "Oh, Karl, he makes me sick and tired! He and his street-boy of a brother-in-law, what a pair of sw.a.n.kers! By G.o.d, I did think that you had rid me of them the night when we came back to their room at the chateau and found their names written on the wall! And you can understand that they won't let things rest, now that they know the girl isn't dead! They will look for her. They will find her. And, as she knows all our secrets . . . ! You ought to have made away with her, Karl!"

"And the prince?" chuckled the spy.