Rolling down and rolling down, eighty thousand battle-eager men, an endless thick river, gray-green as the mighty Rhine rolling down to the sea. And on them blazed the terrible bright sun that burns in the month of the Lion. The terrible bright sun that on thousand after thousand of them tomorrow would burn no more.
Hurrah!
“Goodbye, Dorothea, Wilhelmina, Marie!”
“Hurrah for the ladies of Paris!”
“Hoch! Hoch! Hoch!”
“The General!”
Hurrah!
“Rifle—salute!”
Hurrah!
Bayonets gleaming in the sun, thick and straight as a forest of bright spears. The legions are passing by. The legions salute you, Caesar!
Morituri, te salutemus.
“The General!”
Hurrah!
“Band, Hail to Thee in the Victorious Wreath!”
Now the music swells—
Heil dir im Siegerkranz,
Herrscher des Volkes ganz! . . .
Lifting their helmets on their rifles high in the air, they rolled by, singing.
Von Schmee watched them with sparkling eyes. His belly rose and sank with his proud breathing. His hand was clicking to his helmet.
We, who are about to die, salute you, Caesar!
Rolling down and rolling down, to where Keith Cothaven, the Prettiest Lady, lay waiting with forty thousand of his Yeomen and his kilted Scots in the trap of Laraine Wood.
The Invincibles!
“Ach, mine liddle Alys!” said Von Schmee. “Vhy are you crying, sweed’hard?”
“I am crying,” said Vrow Alys Dervanter, “to see so many handsome young men that soon will die. I cannot help the tears within mine eyes.”
Chapter VIII
Here’s Your Damned Spy, Soldiers
About the hour of sunset, Vrow Alys Dervanter—the ambassador from the Low Countries, as the soldiers called her, who must have their little joke—wandered out for her daily after-supper stroll, through the quiet, sunlight-dappled deer parks, and around the borders of the shallow carp pond and skirting the deep cedar wood, and finally even so far as the meadowlands, where the last of the summer grass had just been cut to hay that day.
The purpose of her ambulation was to get exercise for her own shapely self and to afford amusement in chasing field mice to her dwarf black poodle, Lilith. Vrow Alys, though as fair as woman ever was, had a terror of growing fat. Her mother had been fat. Her grandmother had been fat. Her great-grandmother had been a whale. So also, as far as she was aware, had been her male ancestors. To avoid the accretion of fatness on her own lovely bones, she had adopted the custom of taking a sunset stroll of precisely two miles and a quarter, through the deer park, around the pond, down to the hayfield, and so forth, and so forth, after which she returned in an exhausted condition to her boudoir suite and massaged the tired muscles of her shapely legs.
These sunset walks were a happy time for the black poodle, Lilith. In fact, Lilith lived for them. At all other times, the little black dog did nothing but lie on a pink silk cushion and chew viciously at fleas. But, at the time of these sunset walks, Lilith really lived. She was a sharp-voiced and nasty-tempered bitch who was clipped with a lion’s mane. Being somewhat larger than a rat, though less courageous then a rabbit, she had developed a furious and inveterate hatred of the whole tribe of field mice. She loved to dash with mad yelling around her mistress’s ankles and bark at them. Sometimes she even pursued their squeaking fight for a few yards. Once, indeed, in a fit of extreme heroism, she had killed one of them. The victim mouse upon this occasion, however, had probably been one that was totally blind or with all its teeth fallen out from senility. Lilith, in spite of her lion’s mane and her lion’s tail-tuft, would never dare, drunk or sober, to attack a full-grown mouse in all the possession of its faculties. Her soul was the soul of a rat, her heart was the heart of a rabbit, her bark was the bark of a tree toad, her smell was the smell of a weasel, and her mistress, Vrow Alys Dervanter, loved her.
“Here, Lilith! Here, Lilith!” Vrow Alys went softly calling through the quiet sunset woods. “Naughty ’ittle doggie mustn’t hurt poor ’ittle mouses.”
Sitting to rest on a stone wall at the edge of the cedar wood—a favorite haunt of hers, where she was accustomed to stretch and sun herself like a lazy cat that curves its claws—there Vrow Alys caught a sudden furtive glimpse of a man who moved swiftly and with inaudible litheness through the wood to one side of her. It was Herr Oberleutnant Ritter von Reuter of the Prussian Guards, the handsome aide to Colonel the Count von Kleinhals.
Vrow Alys arose quickly, with her hand on her heart. Silently, she followed after von Reuter as he slipped out of the cedars and went striding across the hayfields with a fishing rod under his arm.
Fishing? she thought. Fishing, han’some man?
She moved quietly after the erect, lithe young Guardsman over the stubble, shadowing her way from hay mound to mound with more skill than she might have been suspected of possessing. Her pale green eyes had narrowed with a huntress look. The poodle slunk at her heels. There was no one else visible in the mile-wide meadows, except a couple of strapping peasant women crossing slowly over from the hedgerow a quarter mile away.
At the fifth haystack in, von Reuter heeled about. Vrow Alys slipped out of sight immediately. Von Reuter spoke sharply to someone she could not see.
“Donner-wetter, Wolf! You are like a disease,” he said. “What are you doing down here with the grasshoppers? Report to Herr Oberst Graf von Kleinhals with my compliments. Inform him I have gone fishing.”
Out from behind a haypile, the gaunt, bony face of Sergeant Ordonnanz Wolf appeared sheepishly, as if he had been discovered by surprise at some business he preferred to keep hidden. He straightened up and stood at salute. Bright spots burned on the cheekbones of his white face.
Von Reuter twisted up his eyebrows, eyeing the shambling orderly sergeant through a monocle.
“Dust the hay off your uniform, you unkempt fool,” he said. “I don’t want to catch you down here again making love to the farm wenches. Report to the colonel I have gone fishing.”
“Zu Befehl, Herr Leutant!”
“Oh, and—Wolf! You might advise Madame Alys Dervanter that His Excellency has been inquiring about her. You will find Madame Dervanter with her poodle behind that hay mound there, the second one from the end.”
Vrow Alys arose gaily then, hearing her name spoken. She patted back stray yellow curls behind her ears. Sergeant Wolf touched his brimless forage cap ironically in salute to her, but she passed him by contemptuously. Lifting her skirts about her dainty calves, she went sailing over the stubble toward von Reuter.
“Good efening, han’some man!” she said.
Von Reuter bowed from the waist.
“Guten Abend, gnadige Frau.”
“Going fishing, han’some man?”
“Fischen,” said von Reuter.
“Fishing for what?” said Vrow Alys archly, laying her head on her shoulder.
“Fisch,” said he.
That exhausted the possibilities of bilingual conversation.
“It iss a pity you do not speak English, han’some man,” said Vrow Alys sadly.
Again von Reuter bowed stiffly from the waist, with the precision of a hinge. The poodle came yapping about his ankles. Von Reuter eyed the black beast coldly through his glass, then lifted back a booted foot and planked it in the stomach.
“Verdammnis und Schweinigelei!” screeched Vrow Alys.
So she could indeed speak German, after all. It was something that von Reuter had suspected all along. He grinned quietly and lit a cigarette.
Von Schmee would hear of this.
Whistling softly to himself, he went on across the hayfields toward the sluggish Meser, where squads of men and dogs were still hunting Big Dick Fahnestock.
* * * * *
Big Dick Fahnestock lay in the sixth hay mound from the end. He had been there fifteen hours w
hen the sun went down. He thought to himself:
K-13 is around here! K-13 is trying to get some message to you. Boy, watch your step! Use your bean, if you’ve got any. Don’t make a move till you’re sure, because there’re a lot of Heinies watching K-13.
Vrow Alvs Dervanter crouched on the ground not far away, holding her smitten poodle pressed to her bosom, crying like a mother over a child. Her long yellow hair had become unpinned. It had fallen down over her shoulders.
This woman with the pale green eyes—was she K-13? Her delicate pink and white face looked rather haggard and hard in the gaudy sunlight that was growing crimson in the west, while the girl who slipped away from Dick in the cedar wood before the dawn had the fairest face, he thought, that he had ever seen beneath the stars.
Yet, he had lived long enough to learn that ladies’ faces do not always look in daylight the same as in the night.
K-13?
“Poor ’ittle girl, did nasty man kick her.” she was crooning to that wretched, snarling canine cross between a woodlouse and a flea. “Did nasty man hurt her precious ’ittle heart?”
For some reason, Vrow Alys always conversed with the poodle in English. Perhaps that was because the poodle’s bristly black lion mane reminded Vrow Alys of the beard that had been the pride of her lord, von Schmee, before it was shorn.
“Poor ’ittle doggie!”
Two heavy-footed peasant women came lumbering across the stubble. They were the women who had left Dick the dinner basket. Vrow Alys looked up at them and spoke a few sharp words in Flemish or Dutch. What was said, Dick did not know. The women drew back with a frightened manner. They answered her sullenly. At a quicker pace, they hastened away, glancing uneasily about them.
Presently, they were gone, and Vrow Alys arose, dusting grass blades from her skirt. She tucked her fallen yellow curls back of her ears. She looked thoughtfully at the sunset. The sun had half gone down below the horizon. The light of it was red upon her cheeks and lips. For the moment, she was facing Dick.
“Lilith! Here, Lilith!” she called softly. “It iss time to return.”
Lilith had gone scampering after a grasshopper. Scampering and yelping furiously, showing her nasty little teeth. Here was a game she preferred even to field mice. The grasshopper couldn’t bite back.
The grasshopper looked at her contemptuously. He chewed tobacco and hopped into a hay mound. In an instant, the ridiculous poodle had dived headforemost into the hay in pursuit, yelping and slavering and trembling through all her meager body.
It was thus that Dick Fahnestock was betrayed. What von Reuter and the grim dogs of war had failed to find, it was left for Vrow Alys Dervanter and her damned fleabitten cur to find.
“Lilith, come here!”
The woman with the pale green eyes plunged her hand into the hay, and touched Dick on the shoulder.
She stood with her hands on her bosom, staring at him silently.
“Well?” he said. “Where do you stand? Yell for the guard if you’re with von Schmee, and I’ll strangle your sweet little throat. I’ve seen you before. It was last night. Tell me, who are you?”
Her eyes darted quickly to right and left.
“Don’t you know?” she said.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Are you K-13?”
Again she answered:
“Don’t you know?”
A curious smile grew on her face.
Dick chewed a grass blade.
“I’m the one that’s asking questions,” he said grimly. “Are you K-13? You look different, somehow.”
Her eyes were clouded a moment. Then she smiled, nodding quickly.
“Ah, the peasant girl!” she said. “It was she you expected to see. Long yellow braids? A dress to the knees, so? But I should not have on the stockings. So, you would recognize me for K-13, eh?”
“That would be more like it,” said Dick, glancing at her elegant, slim legs.
“Ah, but they are all looking for that peasant girl,” said Vrow Alys in a low voice, turning her glance again quickly about her. “It would not be safe, you see? And all day you have been waiting here for K-13—for me?”
“What does it look like I’ve been doing?” grunted Dick. “Making a nonstop flight to Tokyo on the kitchen range? You told me to wait—”
“Of course,” she nodded.
“Till you came.”
“Of course.”
“I’m not built for waiting,” said Dick irritably, feeling much less liking for her than he had felt last night. “I crave action. It’s been hell lying here. What’s going on? Where’s the whole Fritz army headed for? You know the game, and I don’t. But what’s to prevent us from making a break and fighting our way clear somehow? I want to be hopping back and tell the Lady—old Cothaven—that the Huns are on the move.”
“You must lie quiet some more,” whispered Vrow Alys.
“I’ve been lying quiet so long I’ve got blisters on my stomach,” Dick growled. “I’m filled with hay dust clean down to the bottom of my toes. There’s a couple of armies of man-eating ants have crawled down my neck, and they’re fighting the battle of the Marne all over again on my backbone. I’m dry as a petrified horned toad, and some new kind of a chigger with an electric drill for a snout has started boring tunnels through my hide, and I want a chew of tobacco. Far be it from me to interfere with your game, sister. You’ve got your own epidermis to protect, and you seem to know how to do it. I watched you handling Fritz last night, and it was sweet. I want to say I couldn’t have done it better myself if I’d kissed him with a bag of cement. But you told me they almost have you, and you’ve got to get away. If I wait much longer, there won’t be anything of me to get away. I’ll be only a dinner walking around in the stomachs of all the ants, chiggers, fleas and titmice in Belgium. I’m getting to the stage where I want to climb up on my hind legs and yell. I’m getting irritated.
“You’re a swell fighting kid, sister, by what you showed me of your stuff last night. And you’ve got a head on your shoulders. I suppose my play is to do just what you tell me, though I’ve never got the habit of taking orders from a woman. But while I’m lying here flat on my breadbasket, you’ll be dodging the Heinies all alone. And I don’t like that. I hopped up here into this nest of rattlesnakes to lend you a hand and help you get away. I may look dumb, but I’m a kind of useful guy to have around you when the fireworks start. Nobody has ever said yet that Big Dick Fahnestock is a coward, or that he couldn’t finish what he set out to do.”
Vrow Alys Dervanter put her finger to her lips. Again she glanced around her with fleeting haste. The red sunlight was in her eyes. They looked like the eyes of a cat.
“Hush!” she whispered. “Someone is near!”
She moved away softly. Dick buried himself deeper in the hay.
“Be patient!” she whispered. “Lie still!”
Carefully, she picked her way off over the ragged stubble. At the last glimpse Dick had of her pink and white face, it was hard as painted china.
“Come, Lilith, ’ittle doggie. It iss time to go home,” she was calling softly.
And Dick, watching her walking carefully in her high-heeled slippers, felt a vague inquietude stirring in his mind. She did not seem quite the same as she had in the darkness.
As he moved his hands about in the hay, drawing himself in deeper, a piece of paper rumpled in his grasp. It was a cigarette paper wrapped about a pebble that had been dropped, or flicked, or thrown into the hay mound.
Keep cool, big boy. They haven’t got you yet.
K-13
A slate-blue pigeon with a milk-white breast went soaring high over Oldemonde. On steady wings it beat due south.
There was no other thing visible in the; sky No living thing in the hayfields either, except grasshoppers that hopped and flies that droned, and little brown mice with terrified eyes that dashed along squeakingly.
As the twilight came, the faint vibration of cannonading that rumbled in the ground grew ste
adily more pronounced. Southward down the road, the camions were still rolling in a long dust cloud. But von Schmee was no longer standing to review them at Oldemonde’s gates and take the salute that is the due of Caesar. He had grown tired of the sight of so much cannon fodder. In his headquarters, with telegraph instruments clicking and aides rushing in and out, he was poring over maps.
The sun had gone down, and the pale green twilight of midsummer lay over the world. In the east stars twinkled in a clear sly, and Mars, the red war star, von Schmee’s own guiding star, burned like a great tiger eye.
Wind rustled in the hedgerows and through the cedars. It crept across the stubble of the fields, laying bands of silver where it bent the short, yellow-rooted grass. From the west, where the marshes of the Meser lay, Dick Fahnestock saw the figure of a man coming slowly over the hayfields. For a moment, the silhouette of him appeared sharp and black against the burning horizon.
Slowly he drew near. He was swinging a fishing rod over his head. It was Oberleutnant Ritter von Reuter of the Prussian Guards. At times he paused in his sauntering, and practiced casts at running mice. Through the fringes of the hay, Dick watched him for fifteen minutes.
Von Reuter carried a small string of fish, seven or eight perch, pickerel and sunfish. His meandering way led him in time past Dick’s hiding place. For a moment he paused once more, setting his catch down. He made a far cast over the stubble at the fleeting shadow of a mouse. He reeled in, whistling meditatively a bar of Heine’s “Die Lorelei.” Cautiously Dick burrowed himself deeper. He had come to a belief that von Reuter was one of the cleverest and most ruthless of the Germans.
Die Luft ist kühl, und es dunkelt . . .
With stormy blue eyes, von Reuter glanced toward the west, where a deepening crimson streak still lingered. He glanced toward the north, where the swelling, new-mown fields stretched endlessly into the twilight, dotted by innumerable cones of stacked hay. He glanced toward the east, where, beyond hedgerows and stone fences, the Invincible’s regiments were rolling down. He glanced toward the south, where stood the thick cedar wood, and Oldemonde’s gray mass above it. He put out his hand and glanced up at the sky, feeling for a drop of rain.
Secret Operative K-13 Page 10
