“I hope you have done wisely, dear,” she said.
CHAPTER XIII
Table of Contents
At a little after noon on the following day Captain Granet descended from a taxicab in the courtyard of the Milan Hotel, and, passing through the swing doors, made his way to the inquiry office. A suave, black-coated young clerk hastened to the desk.
“Can you tell me,” Granet inquired, “whether a gentlemen named Guillot is staying here?”
The young man bowed.
“Monsieur Guillot arrived last night, sir,” he announced. “He has just rung down to say that if a gentlemen called to see him he could be shown up. Here, page,” he went on, turning to a diminutive youth in the background, “show this gentleman to number 322.”
Granet followed the boy to the lift and was conducted to a room on the third floor. The door was opened by a tall, white-haired Frenchman.
“Monsieur Guillot?” Captain Granet inquired pleasantly. “My name is Granet.”
The Frenchman ushered him in. The door was closed and carefully locked. Then Monsieur Guillot swung around and looked at his visitor with some curiosity. Granet was still wearing his uniform.
“France must live,” Granet murmured.
The Frenchman at once extended his hand.
“My friend,” he confessed, “for a moment I was surprised. It did not occur to me to see you in this guise.”
Granet smiled.
“I have been out at the Front,” he explained, “and am home wounded.”
“But an English officer?” Monsieur Guillot remarked dubiously. “I do not quite understand, then. The nature of the communication which I have come to receive is known to you?”
Granet nodded and accepted the chair which his host had offered.
“I do not think that you should be so much surprised,” he said simply. “If the war is grievous for your country, it is ruin to mine. We do not, perhaps, advertise our apprehensions in the papers. We prefer to keep them locked up in our own brain. There is one great fact always before us. Germany is unconquerable. One must find peace or perish.”
Monsieur Guillot listened with a curious look upon his face. His forefinger tapped the copy of the Times which was lying upon the table. The other nodded gravely.
“Yes,” he continued, “I know that our Press is carrying on a magnificent campaign of bluff. I know that many of the ignorant people of the country believe that this war is still being prosecuted with every hope of success. We who have been to the Front, especially those who have any source of information in Germany, know differently. The longer the war, the more ruinous the burden which your country and mine will have to bear.”
“It is my opinion also,” Monsieur Guillot declared, “and furthermore, listen. It is not our war at all, that is the cruel part of it. It is Russia’s war and yours. Yet it is we who suffer most, we, the richest part of whose country is in the hands of the foe, we whose industries are paralysed, my country from whom the life-blood is being slowly drained. You English, what do you know of the war? No enemy has set foot upon your soil, no Englishman has seen his womankind dishonoured or his home crumble into ashes. The war to you is a thing of paper, an abstraction—that same war which has turned the better half of my beloved country into a lurid corner of hell.”
“Our time has not yet come,” Granet admitted, “but before long, unless diplomacy can avert it, fate will be knocking at our doors, too. Listen. You have friends still in power, Monsieur Guillot?—friends in the Cabinet, is it not so?”
“It is indeed true,” Monsieur Guillot assented.
“You have, too,” Granet continued, “a great following throughout France. You are the man for the task I bring to you. You, if you choose, shall save your country and earn the reward she will surely bestow upon you.”
Monsieur Guillot’s cheeks were flushed a little. With long, nervous fingers he rolled a cigarette and lit it.
“Monsieur,” he said, “I listen to you eagerly, and yet I am puzzled. You wear the uniform of an English officer, but you come to me, is it not so, as an emissary of Germany?”
“In bald words that may be true,” Granet confessed, “yet I would remind you of two things. First, that the more dominant part of the personality which I have inherited comes to me from Alsatian ancestors; and secondly, that this peace for which I am striving may in the end mean salvation for England, too.”
“I hear you with relief,” Monsieur Guillot admitted. “In this transaction it is my great desire to deal with a man of honour. As such I know perceive that I can recognise you, monsieur.”
Granet bowed gravely and without any shadow of embarrassment.
“That assuredly, Monsieur Guillot,” he said. “Shall I proceed?”
“By all means.”
Granet drew a thin packet from the breast pocket of his coat. He laid it on the table between them.
“I received this,” he announced, “less than three weeks ago from the hands of the Kaiser himself.”
Monsieur Guillot gazed at his companion incredulously.
“It was very simple,” Granet continued. “I was taken prisoner near the village of Ossray. I was conducted at once to headquarters and taken by motor-car to a certain fortified place which I will not specify, but which was at that time the headquarters of the German Staff. I received this document there in the way I have told you. I was then assisted, after some very remarkable adventures, to rejoin my regiment. You can open that document, Monsieur Guillot. It is addressed to you. Guard it carefully, though, for it is signed by the Kaiser himself. I have carried it with me now for more than a fortnight in the inner sole of my shoe. As you can imagine, its discovery upon my person would have meant instant death.”
Monsieur Guillot was engrossed in reading the few lines of the missive. When he had finished, he covered the paper with the palm of his hand and leaned forward. There was a queer light in his eyes.
“Germany will give up Alsace and Lorraine,” he said hoarsely, “and will retire within her own frontiers. She will ask for no indemnity. What is the meaning of it?”
“Simple enough,” Granet pointed out. “A great politician like you should easily realise the actual conditions which prompt such an offer. What good is territory to Germany, territory over which she must rule by force, struggling always against the accumulated hatred of years? Alsace and Lorraine have taught her her lesson. It is not French territory she wants. Russia has far more to give. Russia and England between them can pay an indemnity which will make Germany rich beyond the dreams of avarice. Form your party, Monsieur Guillot, spread your tidings in any way that seems fit to you, only until the hour comes, guard that document as you would your soul. Its possession would mean death to you as it would to me.”
Monsieur Guillot took the document and buttoned it up in his inside pocket.
“Supposing I succeed,” he said quietly, “what of your country then?”
“My country will make peace,” Granet replied.
“It will be a peace that will cost us much, but nothing more than we deserve. For generations the war has been the perfectly obvious and apparent sequence of European events. It threw its warning shadow across our path for years, and our statesmen deliberately turned their heads the other way or walked blindfolded. Not only our statesmen, mind, but our people, our English people. Our young men shirked their duty, our philosophers and essayists shirked theirs. We prated of peace and conventions, and we knew very well that we were living in times when human nature and red blood were still the controlling elements. We watched Germany arm and prepare. We turned for comfort towards our fellow sinners, America, and we prattled about conventions and arbitration, and hundred other silly abstractions. A father can watch the punishment of his child, Monsieur Guillot. Believe me, there are many other Englishmen besides me who will feel a melancholy satisfaction in the chastisement of their country, many who are more English, even, than I.”
Monsieur Guillot passed away from the person
al side of the matter. Already his mind was travelling swiftly along the avenues of his own future greatness.
“This is the chance which comes to few men,” he muttered. “There is Dejane, Gardine, Debonnot, Senn, besides my own followers. My own journal, too! It is a great campaign, this which I shall start.”
Granet rose to his feet.
“After to-day I breathe more freely,” he confessed. “There have been enemies pressing closely around me, I have walked in fear. To-day I am a free man. Take care, monsieur. Take care especially whilst you are in England.”
Monsieur Guillot extended his hand.
“My young friend,” he said, “in the years to come you and I shall perhaps meet in our wonderful Paris, and if I may not tell the world so, I shall yet feel, as we look upon her greatness, that you and I together have saved France. Adieu!”
Granet made his way along the empty corridor, rang for the lift and descended into the hall. A smile was upon his lips. The torch at last was kindled! In the hall of the hotel he came across a group of assembling guests just starting for the luncheon room. A tall, familiar figure stepped for a moment on one side. His heart gave a little jump. Geraldine held out her pearl-gloved hand.
“Captain Granet,” she said, “I wanted to tell you something.”
“Yes?” he answered breathlessly.
She glanced towards where the little group of people were already on their way to the stairs.
“I must not stay for a second,” she continued, dropping her voice, “but I wanted to tell you—I am no longer engaged to Major Thomson. Goodbye!”
A rush of words trembled upon his lips but she was gone. He watched her slim, graceful figure as she passed swiftly along the vestibule and joined her friends. He even heard her little laugh as she greeted one of the men who had waited for her.
“Decidedly,” Granet said to himself triumphantly as he turned towards the door, “this is my day!”
CHAPTER XIV
Table of Contents
Monsieur Guillot was a man of emotional temperament. For more than an hour after Granet had left him, he paced up and down his little room, stood before the high windows which overlooked the Thames, raised his hands above his head and gazed with flashing eyes into the future—such a future! All his life he had been a schemer, his eyes turned towards the big things, yet with himself always occupying the one glorified place in the centre of the arena. He was, in one sense of the word, a patriot, but it was the meanest and smallest sense. There was no great France for him in which his was not the commanding figure. In every dream of that wonderful future, of a more splendid and triumphant France, he saw himself on the pinnacle of fame, himself acclaimed by millions the strong great man, the liberator. France outside himself lived only as a phantasy. And now at last his chance had come. The minutes passed unnoticed as he built his way up into the future. He was shrewd and calculating, he took note of the pitfalls he must avoid. One by one he decided upon the men whom gradually and cautiously he would draw into his confidence. Finally he saw the whole scheme complete, the bomb-shell thrown, France hysterically casting laurels upon the man who had brought her unexpected peace.
The door-bell rang. He answered it a little impatiently. A slim, fashionably dressed young Frenchman stood there, whose face was vaguely familiar to him.
“Monsieur Guillot?” the newcomer inquired politely.
Guillot bowed. The young man handed him a card.
“I am the Baron D’Evignon,” he announced, “second secretary at the Embassy here.”
Monsieur Guillot held the card and looked at his visitor. He was very puzzled. Some dim sense of foreboding was beginning to steal in upon him.
“Be so kind as to come in, Monsieur le Baron,” he invited. “Will you not be seated and explain to me to what I am indebted for this honour? You do not, by any chance, mistake me for another? I am Monsieur Guillot, lately, alas! Of Lille.”
The Baron smiled ever so slightly as he waved away the chair.
“There is no mistake, Monsieur Guillot,” he said. “I come to you with a message from my Chief. He would be greatly honoured if you would accompany me to the Embassy. He wishes a few minutes’ conversation with you.”
“With me?” Monsieur Guillot echoed incredulously. “But there is some mistake.”
“No mistake, I assure you,” the young man insisted.
Monsieur Guillot drew back a little into the room.
“But what have I to do with the Ambassador, or with diplomatic matters of any sort?” he protested. “I am here on business, to see what can be saved from the wreck of my affairs. Monsieur the Ambassador is mistaking me for another.”
The Baron shook his head.
“There is no mistake, my dear sir,” he insisted. “We all recognise,” he added, with a bow, “the necessities which force the most famous of us to live sometimes in the shadow of anonymity. If the Chief could find little to say to Monsieur Guillot of Lille, he will, I am sure, be very interested in a short conversation with Monsieur Henri Pailleton.”
There was a brief, tense silence. The man who had called himself Guillot was transformed. The dreams which had uplifted him a few minutes ago, had passed. He was living very much in the present—an ugly and foreboding present. The veins stood out upon his forehead and upon the back of his hands, his teeth gleamed underneath his coarse, white moustache. Then he recovered himself.
“There is some mistake,” he said, “but I will come.”
In silence they left the hotel and drove to the Embassy, in silence the young man ushered his charge into the large, pleasant apartment on the ground floor of the Embassy, where the ambassador was giving instructions to two of his secretaries. He dismissed them with a little wave of his hand and bowed politely to his visitor. There was no longer any pretext on the part of Monsieur Guillot. He recognised its complete futility.
“Monsieur Pailleton,” the ambassador began, “will you take a seat? It is very kind of you to obey so quickly my summons.”
“I had no idea,” the latter remarked, “that my presence in England was known. I am here on private business.”
The ambassador bowed suavely.
“Precisely, my friend! You see, I use the epithet ‘my friend’ because at a time like this all Frenchmen must forget their differences and work together for the good and honour of their country. Is it not so, monsieur?”
“That is indeed true,” Monsieur Pailleton admitted slowly. “We may work in different ways but we work towards the same end.”
“No one has ever doubted your patriotism, Monsieur Pailleton,” the ambassador continued. “It is my privilege now to put it to the test. There is a little misunderstanding in Brazil, every particular concerning which, and the views of our Government, is contained in the little parcel of documents which you see upon this table. Put them in your pocket, Monsieur Pailleton. I am going to ask you to serve your country by leaving for Liverpool this afternoon and for Brazil to-morrow on the steamship Hermes.”
Monsieur Pailleton had been a little taken aback by the visit of the Baron. He sat now like a man temporarily stupefied. He was too amazed to find any sinister significance in this mission. He could only gasp. The ambassador’s voice, as he continued talking smoothly, seemed to reach him from a long way off.
“It may be a little contrary to your wishes, my friend,” the latter proceeded, “to find yourself so far from the throb of our great struggle, yet in these days we serve best who obey. It is the wish of those who stand for France that you should take that packet and board that steamer.”
Monsieur Pailleton began in some measure to recover himself. He was still, however, bewildered.
“Monsieur,” he protested, “I do not understand. This mission to Brazil of which you speak—it can have no great importance. Cannot it be entrusted to some other messenger?”
“Alas! No, my dear sir,” was the uncompromising reply. “It is you—Monsieur Pailleton—whom the President desires to travel to Brazil.”
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The light was breaking in upon Pailleton. He clenched his fists.
“I am to be got out of the way!” he exclaimed. “The President fears me politically, he fears my following!”
The ambassador drew himself a little more upright, a stiff unbending figure. His words seemed suddenly to become charged with more weight.
“Monsieur Pailleton,” he said, “the only thing that France fears is treachery!”
Pailleton gripped at the back of his chair. The room for a moment swam before his eyes.
“Is this an insult, Monsieur l’Ambassadeur?” he demanded.
“Take it as an insult if in your heart there is no shadow of treachery towards the France that is today, towards the cause of the Allies as it is to-day,” was the stern answer.
“I refuse to accept this extraordinary mission,” Pailleton declared, rising to his feet. “You can send whom you will to Brazil. I have greater affairs before me.”
The ambassador shrugged his shoulders.
“I shall not press you,” he said. “I shall only put before you the alternative. You are at this present moment upon French soil. If you refuse this mission which has been offered to you, I shall detain you here until I have the means of sending you under escort to France.”
“Detain me? On what charge?” Pailleton exclaimed angrily.
“On the charge of treason,” was the quiet reply. “I shall have you stripped and searched in this room. I shall have your luggage and your room searched at the Milan Hotel. And now, Monsieur Pailleton?”
Once more the man was bewildered. This time, however, it was bewilderment of a different sort. He thought for a moment steadfastly. Who was there who could have betrayed him?
“What is the nature of this document, monsieur, which you expect to find amongst my belongings?” he demanded.
“An authorised offer of peace from Germany to the French people,” the ambassador answered slowly. “It is the second attempt which has been made. The first was torn into fragments before the face of the person who had the effrontery to present it. The second, Monsieur Pailleton, is in your possession. You may keep it if you will. In Brazil you will find it of little use.”
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