by Mark Hodder
“I will be as brief and clear as I can, Mr. Blake,” she said, in a low, sweet voice. “It is not a very easy story to tell. I have been married for seven years, and up to a comparatively recent period there was no prospect of our having any children. Meanwhile, as I had a small fortune in my own right, my husband had made a will that was to a large extent in favour of his brother, who is in modest circumstances. It was the proper thing for him to do, and I fully approved of it.
“Two months ago I had a child—a little boy,” she continued to explain. “My husband was delighted, and he at once announced his intention of making a new will, and bequeathing the bulk of his estate to his male heir. He wrote to his solicitor, directing him to draw one up, and giving him full instructions. I got him to write without delay, as I knew him to be a careless and thoughtless man where business interests were concerned. But, unfortunately, that new will was not signed. It must have been forgotten by my husband, who went abroad in a hurry, at short notice, soon after war was declared against Germany, and when his little son was only four or five days old.”
Mrs. Chumleigh paused again, and her features twitched painfully, as if at the memory of her parting from the gallant soldier who had obeyed the call of duty.
“Though I was worried by my husband’s neglect,” she went on, “I did not then attach any great importance to it. My only income was nearly two thousand a year, and I managed to leave it all to my child. But an unexpected disaster happened. My fortune proved to have been badly invested. I learned recently, within the last week, that owing to the failure of several companies, I had lost three-fourths of my money, beyond all hope of recovery. It was a hard blow to me, naturally, because of the existing state of affairs. I did not know what to do at first. I consulted my friends, and on the advice of one of them I went to the War Office to-day, and had an interview with Sir Francis Leeson, who suggested that I should—”
“I was anxious to be of assistance,” Sir Francis broke in, addressing the detective. “I did not see my way clear, however, to take any official action in the matter. So I have brought the lady to you, and I trust that you will go to the front on her behalf, find her husband, and have him put his name to the unsigned will in the presence of witnesses.”
“That step is hardly necessary,” said Blake. “I presume that the will in favour of the brother has been destroyed, and therefore, even should the new will remain unsigned, the greater part of Colonel Chumleigh’s estate would, in the event of his death, pass by law to his wife and child.”
“But the former will still exists,” replied Sir Francis.
“Yes, that is the trouble,” declared Mrs. Chumleigh. “The signed will is in the hands of the solicitor, Mr. Levenham, of Gray’s Inn. And he has firmly refused to destroy it, since he had no instructions to do so.”
“Ah, I see!” murmured the detective. “That puts a different complexion on the matter.”
“It means everything,” Mrs Chumleigh told him. “If my husband were to be killed before he had signed the new will, his brother would inherit most of the property, and my child have only seven or eight hundred a year instead of as many in thousands.”
“Yes, I understand that. It is very unfortunate.”
“It must not be. My husband intended otherwise. You can imagine how worried I am, how it preys on my mind.”
“It is a case for you, Blake,” said Sir Francis. “There is no reason why you should not take it. The War Office will give you every facility for getting to the front, and for going where you like. And it will not be difficult for you to find Colonel Chumleigh. He is with his regiment, and he has distinguished himself in several actions.”
“He might make a new will out there, and send it home,” the detective suggested.
“Yes, if he was aware of the situation. But it would be much easier for you to find him than it would be for a letter of instructions to reach him.”
“I daresay you are right, Leeson.”
There was silence for a few seconds, while Sexton Blake stared into vacancy. He was not keen on leaving London, where he had work to do.
Seeing that he was in doubt, Mrs. Chumleigh leaned towards him with outstretched arms.
“Please, please, Mr. Blake,” she begged earnestly. “It will be such a kindness to me. And you will be doing a great service to my child. It is for his sake, for the sake of the little one who may be poor instead of rich when he grows up, that I implore you to find my husband, and have him put his name to the unsigned will. Oh, don’t refuse. Surely you won’t. Go at once, else it may be too late. It is with dread, with a sickening fear in my heart, that I pick up the newspaper each morning, and read the casualty-list. My dear Arthur is in the fighting-line, and he is so brave, so impetuous, that he must have risked his life again and again. You know what peril he is in, how gallantly the British officers have been leading their men into battle, under the terrible fire of the German guns. I may hear at any day that—that he has been—”
Mrs. Chumleigh’s voice faltered and choked. She was overcome by emotion, and the tears that now streamed down her cheeks, the look of anguish on her lovely face, so deeply stirred Sexton Blake’s sympathy, that he felt as if he could go to the end of the world for her. He rose and stepped over to her, and gently rested his hand on her quivering shoulder.
“Don’t cry,” he said. “It hurts me. I will do what you wish, and I will do it gladly.”
“Oh, thank you!” was the fervent reply. “Thank you so much! How good you are!”
The pressure of two ruby lips on his fingers, and a smile that flashed through tears, like sunshine on an April shower, more than rewarded the detective for the sacrifice he had consented to make.
“I thought you would go,” said Sir Francis Leeson, with a twinkle in his eye. “Beauty in distress always appealed to you, Blake. And now to discuss the details,” he added. “They can soon be settled between us. No time should be wasted, as you are aware.”
Sexton Blake was to meet Mrs. Chumleigh at eleven o’clock on the following morning at the solicitor’s office in Gray’s Inn, and take possession of the unsigned will. He was to proceed from there to the War Office, and receive from Sir Francis Leeson such official documents as he would require for freedom of movement at the front. He was then to start on his journey by the first boat or cruiser that should be available. All this having been arranged, Sir Francis and Mrs. Chumleigh took their departure. And when Blake had heard the lower door swing behind them, he dropped into his big chair, and filled and lit a pipe, and fell into a reverie. Visions grew amidst the blue reek of smoke that drifted around him. He was thinking of Tinker with mingled feelings.
“I may run across the lad out there,” he reflected. “I hope I shall. Where ever he may be, whatever he may be doing, I am very sure that he is serving his country as well and nobly as any man in the field. I can’t forget his behaviour of a month or two ago, when we were both under fire.”
PART TWO
THE FIRST CHAPTER
Lorry v. Uhlans.
TAP! TAP! TAP!
Three men in khaki, one armed with a sword and a revolver, and the others with rifles, were standing by the big motor-lorry in the glare from the sun that was shining in the cloudless, blue sky of France. Two of the men were privates, Smith and Carter by name, and the third was a young officer, scarcely more than twenty years of age, with a handsome, boyish face that had acquired a measure of dignity during the past week or so.
When at home, off duty, Tommie Drake had been a typical nut, a bit of a swanker—a frequenter of West End restaurants, and a lounger in the bay-windows of a Piccadilly club. But Lieutenant Drake, of the Army Transport Corps, on active service, was a vastly different person. He had the right stuff in him, as the future was to prove. And it already had been, and was to be, the same with hundreds of other officers who had never before had any experience of actual fighting.
Tap! tap! tap!
There had been a procession of eight of the motor-lor
ries, all of them commandeered in London by the Government. They had been brought by boat to Havre, and up the Seine to Rouen, whence they had set forth on the previous evening, bound for the far front with supplies for the British Expeditionary Force. This morning something had gone wrong with one of them on a lonely road, and the others had gone ahead. On the disabled vehicle the inscription “Salmon’s Brewery, Pimlico,” was painted in large letters. The young officer glanced at it, and sighed. He passed a hand across his dry lips.
“Makes me feel thirsty and homesick every time I read it,” he murmured. “I wouldn’t mind so much if it was ‘Whiteley’s’ or ‘Peter Robinson,’ or something of that sort. But a brewery! That’s the limit.”
For an hour the tapping had been going on at intervals. It now ceased, and a few seconds later there crawled from beneath the lorry a flushed and perspiring youth with several tools in his hand, and grease and dust on his uniform—and on his face as well. It is doubtful if Sexton Blake could have recognised him.
“It is all right, sir,” he said, as he rose to his feet. “I’ve fixed things.”
“Are you sure you have?” asked Lieutenant Drake.
“Yes, sir, I am,” replied Tinker, otherwise known as Private Jack Rokeby. “I saw at first what was wrong, and knew I could repair it. It was only a matter of time.”
“By Jove, you are a clever chap! Where did you pick it up?”
“From my guv’nor, sir, he taught me to be handy at all sorts of things.”
“You were lucky to have such a guv’nor. He is still living, I hope?”
“Yes, sir, he is alive.”
“What is he, Rokeby?”
“He—he is a—”
The lad paused, loth to give a truthful answer to the question.
A wave of colour had tinged his cheeks, but it was not observed by Lieutenant Drake, who had on a sudden impulse taken a map from his pocket. He glanced at it, and tapped it with his finger.
“Here is where we are, at this spot,” he said, the subject of Tinker’s guv’nor already forgotten. “My instructions are clear, and we should get to the front by evening. And now to be off. We mustn’t lose any more time.”
The young officer mounted to the seat, and Tinker climbed up beside him and grasped the wheel, while the two other privates settled themselves comfortably at the back, on the tarpaulin that was stretched over the supplies. The motor-lorry throbbed and rattled, and moved ahead with increasing speed.
“A jolly fine day, isn’t it?” murmured Lieutenant Drake. “What a pity there should be a war!”
Tinker did not reply. There had gripped him again, as had more than once been the case since his departure from Paddington several weeks ago, a feeling of homesickness. As he steered the big vehicle, sending it along the smooth, white road, mental pictures rose before his eyes—Sexton Blake sitting with bowed head in his favourite chair at Baker Street, Pedro stretched on the rug by the fireplace, and Mrs. Bardell fretting and fussing in the kitchen.
“I shouldn’t have run away like that,” thought the lad, with a lump in his throat. “It must be awfully rough for the guv’nor.”
But vain were his regrets. What had been done could not be undone. He was a sworn soldier, pledged by solemn oath to serve his King and country, and not if he had wished could he have gone back to the master he had deserted. As for the deception he had been guilty of, that also caused him some qualms now and again. Worthy though his motive had been, it was unpleasant to remember that he had attained it by fraud, and to feel that an unforeseen mischance might lead to his exposure.
His spirits rose presently, and he took an interest in his surroundings. For hour after hour, swiftly and steadily, the lorry rumbled on through the fair, wooded land of France. In villages and at wayside cottages, people rushed to their doors and cheered the British uniforms. For many miles there was little or nothing to suggest the great war, since the enemy had not advanced into this region. Only the uncut corn and the absence of rustic labourers from the fields hinted at the black shadow which had killed industry and torn fathers and sons from their homes.
Towards the close of the day, however, as the sun was dipping to the horizon, ominous signs were to be observed. Here were the charred ruins of a farmhouse, and there the ashes of a hayrick; here a dead horse, and there the body of a peasant who had been shot. In a deserted village that was passed two more peasants lay dead.
“This must be the work of Uhlans,” said Tinker.
“Yes, no doubt,” the young officer assented. “Small parties of them have ranged round from the German lines.”
“They’re a cruel lot, sir, them ‘Oolans,” remarked Private Smith, who, like the lad, had been to the front before. “They don’t spare anybody or anything.”
Another ruined farmhouse was seen, and yet another. From beyond the range of hills on the left, miles distant, floated a dull, booming sound.
“That’s artillery-fire,” said Tinker, in a puzzled tone.
“It is, and no mistake,” declared Private Carter. “But it strikes me we shouldn’t be hearing it from that direction.”
Lieutenant Drake looked uneasy. He produced his map again, and when he had studied it for a few moments, and gazed about him, an expression of dismay crept over his face.
“By Jove, we’ve done it!” he said. “We have blundered somehow or other.”
“I hope not, sir,” Tinker replied.
“Yes, I am sure we have. We are going wrong. We must have been bearing towards a flank of the enemy’s lines. It was my fault, Rokeby. I told you where and when to turn.”
“Can you put me right, sir?”
“Not at once, I am afraid. We must wait until we get to a signpost. That will give me my bearings, with the aid of the map, and I shall then be able to—”
The clatter of hoofs swelling above the noise of the vehicle stifled the sentence on the young officer’s lips. All glanced back, and beheld with consternation a troop of cavalry, to the number of a score, who had just emerged by a cross-road from a wooded ravine. Their gleaming helmets and lances, and their bluish-grey uniforms, left no doubt as to what they were.
“‘Oolans!” exclaimed Private Smith. “By ginger, that’s what they are!”
“Yes, a patrol of them,” said Lieutenant Drake, as calmly as if he had been speaking to a body of Territorials, “and only a quarter of a mile behind us. We must give them the slip, Rokeby, and save our transport stuff. Keep straight ahead.”
“Right you are, sir,” Tinker answered. “I don’t think we need worry about them. We are sure to shake them off, unless we have a breakdown.”
He increased the speed of the lorry, and for a couple of miles it gained very slowly on the pursuing Uhlans, in spite of their strenuous efforts. Then a rugged, undulating stretch of road was encountered, and, as the heavy vehicle could not travel like a motor-car, and the horses of the German troopers were comparatively fresh, it was now their turn to gain. They thundered on and on, drawing nearer and nearer, until they were less than an eighth of a mile in the rear.
“This is getting a bit too thick, sir,” said Tinker, as he looked over his shoulder. “They are overhauling us.”
“Can’t we go any faster?” asked the young officer.
“No, sir, not on such rough ground.”
“Well, Rokeby, I’ll be hanged if we surrender. We’ll put up a fight, though we haven’t a chance against such odds.”
As the intervening space dwindled the race grew more exciting. The Uhlans began to fire their revolvers, and while bullets whistled dangerously close to Lieutenant Drake and his companions, and trees and hedges flew by in a dizzy blur, Smith and Carter discharged their rifles, taking steady aim at the enemy. A trooper reeled and fell. Two more saddles were emptied, and now there were three riderless steeds galloping amongst the others.
“We are nearly through with this stretch, sir,” said Tinker. “I’ll show you in a minute how we can go.”
A little farther on the rugge
d road lost itself in a main highway that was broad and smooth, and here the lad increased the speed of the lorry to such an extent that the pursuers at once lost ground. For a mile the big vehicle thundered recklessly along, gradually gaining; and it had left the Uhlans a good half mile behind when a screaming, hissing sound was heard, and a shell dropped fifty yards ahead, in a field to the left. There was a tremendous explosion. A luckless cow was wiped out of existence, blown to bits, and a crater was torn in the ground.
“There is a battery yonder!” cried the young officer, pointing to a wreath of grey vapour on the crest of a hill that was a couple of miles away.
“They’ve as good as got our range, sir,” said Private Smith. “They must have discovered us through glasses.”
He was right. The German gunners had the range, and they were aware that it was a unit of a British transport-column they were firing at. The situation was extremely critical, but Lieutenant Drake and his companions pretended to make light of the danger, though they expected to be blown up at any minute.
The Uhlans were still holding doggedly to the chase. For another mile the motor-lorry dashed on, while shells burst on both sides of it, in front, and at the rear, sprinkling the occupants with dust. An abandoned village, partly in ruins, slid by in a blur. Beyond it was a stone bridge spanning a river that was two or three hundred yards in width, and on the farther side of the stream the continuation of the road wound amongst wooded hills.
“We’ll be safe if we can get over there, sir,” declared Tinker. “I’ll let her rip,” he added, as he increased the speed a little.
The vehicle slid out on the bridge, and ran half-way across. Then a shell dropped close in front of it, and the explosion that followed demolished a whole arch of the structure, leaving a yawning chasm. There was the crash of falling masonry, and a shower of metal splinters. Tinker was grazed by a fragment, which skimmed over his shoulder and hit Private Smith, who was instantly killed.
