He lay looking up at her with hell’s own glimmer in his eyes again:
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “You talk of cures, and I tell you that I’m half dead for a drink right now! And I’m going to get up and dress and get it!”
The expression of his features and his voice and words appalled her, left her dumb for an instant. Then she said breathlessly:
“You won’t do that!”
“Yes I will.”
“No.”
“Why not?” he demanded excitedly.
“You owe me something.”
“What I said was conventional. I’m NOT grateful to you for saving the sort of life mine is!”
“I was not thinking of your life.”
After a moment he said more quietly: “I know what you mean…. Yes,
I am grateful. Our Government ought to know.”
“Then tell me, now.”
“You know,” he said brutally, “I have only your word that you are what you say you are.”
She reddened but replied calmly: “That is true. Let me show you my credentials.”
From her muff she drew a packet, opened it, and laid the contents on the bedspread under his eyes. Then she walked to the window and stood there with her back turned looking out at the falling snow.
After a few minutes he called her. She went back to the bedside, replaced the packet in her muff, and stood waiting in silence.
He lay looking up at her very quietly and his bruised young features had lost their hard, sullen expression.
“I’d better tell you all I know,” he said, “because there is really no hope of curing me… you don’t understand… my will-power is gone. The trouble is with my mind itself. I don’t want to be cured…. I WANT what’s killing me. I want it now, always, all the time. So before anything happens to me I’d better tell you what I know so that our Government can make the proper investigation. Because what I shall tell you is partly a surmise. I leave it to you to judge — to our Government.”
She drew from her muff a little pad and a pencil and seated herself on the chair beside him.
“I’ll speak slowly,” he began, but she shook her head, saying that she was an expert stenographer. So he went on:
“You know my name — Kay McKay. I was born here and educated at Yale. But my father was Scotch and he died in Scotland. My mother had been dead many years. They lived on a property called Isla which belonged to my grandfather. After my father’s death my grandfather allowed me an income, and when I had graduated from Yale I continued here taking various post-graduate courses. Finally I went to Cornell and studied agriculture, game breeding and forestry — desiring some day to have a place of my own.
“In 1914 I went to Germany to study their system of forestry. In July of that year I went to Switzerland and roamed about in the vagabond way I like — once liked.” His visage altered and he cast a side glance at the girl beside him, but her eyes were fixed on her pad.
He drew a deep breath, like a sigh:
“In that corner of Switzerland which is thrust westward between Germany and France there are a lot of hills and mountains which were unfamiliar to me. The flora resembled that of the Vosges — so did the bird and insect life except on the higher mountains.
“There is a mountain called Mount Terrible. I camped on it. There was some snow. You know what happens sometimes in summer on the higher peaks. Well, it happened to me — the whole snow field slid when I was part way across it — and I thought it was all off — never dreamed a man could live through that sort of thing — with the sheer gneiss ledges below!
“It was not a big avalanche — not the terrific thundering sort — rather an easy slipping, I fancy — but it was a devilish thing to lie aboard, and, of course, if there had been precipices where I slid—” He shrugged.
The girl looked up from her shorthand manuscript; he seemed to be dreamily living over in his mind those moments on Mount Terrible. Presently he smiled slightly:
“I was horribly scared — smothered, choked, half-senseless…. Part of the snow and a lot of trees and boulders went over the edge of something with a roar like Niagara…. I don’t know how long afterward it was when I came to my senses.
“I was in a very narrow, rocky valley, up to my neck in soft snow, and the sun beating on my face. … So I crawled out… I wasn’t hurt; I was merely lost.
“It took me a long while to place myself geographically. But finally, by map and compass, I concluded that I was in some one of the innumerable narrow valleys on the northern side of Mount Terrible. Basle seemed to be the nearest proper objective, judging from my map…. Can you form a mental picture of that particular corner of Europe, Miss Erith?”
“No.”
“Well, the German frontier did not seem to be very far northward — at least that was my idea. But there was no telling; the place where I landed was a savage and shaggy wilderness of firs and rocks without any sign of habitation or of roads.
“The things that had been strapped on my back naturally remained with me — map, binoculars, compass, botanising paraphernalia, rations for two days — that sort of thing. So I was not worried. I prowled about, experienced agreeable shivers by looking up at the mountain which had dumped me down into this valley, and finally, after eating, I started northeast by compass.
“It was a rough scramble. After I had been hiking along for several hours I realised that I was on a shelf high above another valley, and after a long while I came out where I could look down over miles of country. My map indicated that what I beheld must be some part of Alsace. Well, I lay flat on a vast shelf of rock and began to use my field-glasses.”
He was silent so long that Miss Erith finally looked up questioningly. McKay’s face had become white and stern, and in his fixed gaze there was something dreadful.
“Please,” she faltered, “go on.”
He looked at her absently; the colour came back to his face; he shrugged his shoulders.
“Oh, yes. What was I saying? Yes — about that vast ledge up there under the mountains… I stayed there three days. Partly because I couldn’t find any way down. There seemed to be none.
“But I was not bored. Oh, no. Just anxious concerning my situation.
Otherwise I had plenty to look at.”
She waited, pencil poised.
“Plenty to look at,” he repeated absently. “Plenty of Huns to gaze at. Huns? They were like ants below me, there. They swarmed under the mountain ledge as far as I could see — thousands of busy Boches — busy as ants. There were narrow-gauge railways, too, apparently running right into the mountain; and a deep broad cleft, deep as another valley, and all crawling with Huns.
“A tunnel? Nobody alive ever dreamed of such a gigantic tunnel, if
it was one!… Well, I was up there three days. It was the first of
August — thereabouts — and I’d been afield for weeks. And, of course,
I’d heard nothing of war — never dreamed of it.
“If I had, perhaps what those thousands of Huns were doing along the mountain wall might have been plainer to me.
“As it was, I couldn’t guess. There was no blasting — none that I could hear. But trains were running and some gigantic enterprise was being accomplished — some enterprise that apparently demanded speed and privacy — for not one civilian was to be seen, not one dwelling. But there were endless mazes of fortifications; and I saw guns being moved everywhere.
“Well, I was becoming hungry up on that fir-clad battlement. I didn’t know how to get down into the valley. It began to look as though I’d have to turn back; and that seemed a rather awful prospect.
“Anyway, what happened, eventually, was this: I started east through the forest along that pathless tableland, and on the afternoon of the next day, tired out and almost starved, I stepped across the Swiss boundary line — a wide, rocky, cleared space crossing a mountain flank like a giant’s road.
“No guards were vi
sible anywhere, no sentry-boxes, but, as I stood hesitating in the middle of the frontier — and just why I hesitated I don’t know — I saw half a dozen jagers of a German mounted regiment ride up on the German side of the boundary.
“For a second the idea occurred to me that they had ridden parallel to the ledge to intercept me; but the idea seemed absurd, granted even that they had seen me upon the ledge from below, which I never dreamed they had. So when they made me friendly gestures to come across the frontier I returned their cheery ‘Gruss Gott!’ and plodded thankfully across. … And their leader, leaning from his saddle to take my offered hand, suddenly struck me in the face, and at the same moment a trooper behind me hit me on the head with the butt of a pistol.”
The girl’s flying pencil faltered; she lifted her brown eyes, waiting.
“That’s about all,” he said— “as far as facts are concerned…. They treated me rather badly…. I faced their firing-squads half-a-dozen times. After that bluff wouldn’t work they interned me as an English civilian at Holzminden…. They hid me when, at last, an inspection took place. No chance for me to communicate with our Ambassador or with any of the Commission.”
He turned to her in his boyish, frank way: “But do you know, Miss Erith, it took me quite a while to analyse the affair and to figure out why they arrested me, lied about me, and treated me so hellishly.
“You see, I was kept in solitary confinement and never had a chance to speak to any of the other civilians interned there at Holzminden. There was no way of suspecting why all this was happening to me except by the attitude of the Huns themselves and their endless questions and threats and cruelties. They were cruel. They hurt me a lot.”
Miss Erith’s eyes suddenly dimmed as she watched him, and she hastily bent her head over the pad.
“Well,” he went on, “the rest, as I say, is pure surmise. This is my conclusion: I think that for the last forty years the Huns have been busy with an astounding military enterprise. Of course, since 1870, the Boche has expected war, and has been feverishly preparing for it. All the world now knows what they have done — not everything that they have done, however.
“My conclusion is this: that, when Mount Terrible shrugged me off its northern flank, the snow slide carried me to an almost inaccessible spot of which even the Swiss hunters knew nothing. Or, if they did, they considered it impossible to reach from their own territory.
“From Germany it could be reached, but it was Swiss territory. At any rate I think I am the only civilian who has been there, and who has viewed from there this enormous work in which the Huns are engaged.
“And I belive that this mysterious, overwhelmingly enormous work is nothing less than the piercing — not of a mountain or a group of mountains — but of that entire part of Switzerland which lies between Germany and France.
“I believe that a vast military road, deep, deep, under the earth, is being carried by an enormous tunnel from far back on the German side of the frontier, under Mount Terrible, under all the mountains, hills, valleys, forests, rivers — under Switzerland, in fact — into French territory.
“I believe it has been building since 1871. I believe it is nearly finished, and that it will, on French territory, give egress to a Hun army debouching from Alsace, under Switzerland, into France behind the French lines. That part of the Franco-Swiss frontier is unguarded, unfortified, uninhabited. From there a Hun army can strike the French trenches from the rear — strike Toul, Nancy, Belfort, Verdun — why, the road is open to Paris that way — open to Calais, to England!”
“This is frightful!” cried the girl. “If such a dreadful—”
“Wait! I told you that it is merely a surmise. I don’t know. I guess. Why I guess it I have told you…. They were savage with me — those Huns…. They got nothing out of me. I lied steadily, even when drunk. No, they got nothing out of me. I denied I had seen anything. I denied — and truly enough — that anybody had accompanied me. No, they wrenched nothing out of me — not by starving me, not by water torture, not by their firing-squads, not by blows, not even by making of me the drunkard I am.”
The pencil fell from Miss Erith’s hand and the hand caught McKay’s, held it, crushed it.
“You’re only a boy,” she murmured. “I’m not much more than a girl.
We’ve both got years ahead of us — the best of our lives.”
“YOU have.”
“You also! Oh, don’t, don’t look at me that way. I’ll help you. We’ve got work to do, you and I. Don’t you see? Don’t you understand? Work to do for our Government! Work to do for America!”
“It’s too late for me to—”
“No. You’ve got to live. You’ve got to find yourself again. This depends on you. Don’t you see it does? Don’t you see that you have got to go back there and PROVE what you merely suspect?”
“I simply can’t.”
“You shall! I’ll make this right with you! I’ll stick to you! I’ll fight to give you back your will-power — your mind. We’ll do this together, for our country. I’ll give up everything else to make this fight.”
He began to tremble.
“I — if I could—”
“I tell you that you shall! We must do our bit, you and I!”
“You don’t know — you don’t know!” he cried in a bitter voice, then fell trembling again with the sweat of agony on his face.
“No, I don’t know,” she whispered, clutching his hand to steady him.
“But I shall learn.”
“You’ll learn that a drunkard is a dirty beast!” he cried. “Do you know what I’d do if anybody tried to keep me from drink? ANYBODY! — even you!”
“No, I don’t know.” She shook her head sorrowfully: “A mindless man becomes a demon, I suppose. … Would you — injure me?”
He was shaking all over now, and presently he sat up in bed and covered his head with one desperate hand.
“You poor boy!” she whispered.
“Keep away from me,” he muttered, “I’ve told you all I know. I’m no further use…. Keep clear of me…. I’m sorry — to be — what I am.”
“When I leave what are you going to do?” she asked gently.
“Do? I’ll dress and go to the nearest bar.”
“Do you need it so much already?”
He nodded his bowed head covered by the hand that gripped his hair:
“Yes, I need it — badly.”
She rose, loosened his clutch on her slender hand, picked up her muff:
“I’ll be waiting for you downstairs,” she said simply.
His face expressed sullen defiance as he passed through the waiting-room. Yet he seemed a little taken aback as well as relieved when Miss Erith did not appear among the considerable number of people waiting there for discharged patients. He walked on, buttoning his fur coat with shaky fingers, passed the doorway and stepped out into the falling snow. At the same moment a chauffeur buried in coon-skins moved forward touching his cap:
“Miss Erith’s car is here, sir; Miss Erith expects you.”
McKay hesitated, scowling now in his perplexity; passed his quivering hand slowly across his face, then turned, and looked at the waiting car drawn up at the gutter. Behind the frosty window Miss Erith gave him a friendly smile. He walked over to the curb, the chauffeur opened the door, and McKay took off his hat.
“Don’t ask me,” he said in a low voice that trembled slightly like a sick man’s.
“I DO ask you.”
“You know what’s the matter with me, Miss Erith,” he insisted in the same low, unsteady voice.
“Please,” she said: and laid one small gloved hand lightly on his arm.
So he entered the car; the chauffeur drew the robe over them, and stood awaiting orders.
“Home,” said Miss Erith faintly.
If McKay was astonished he did not betray it. Neither said anything more for a while. The man rested an elbow on the sill, his troubled, haggard face on his hand; the girl kept her ga
ze steadily in front of her with a partly resolute, partly scared expression. The car went up Park Avenue and then turned westward.
When it stopped the girl said: “You will give me a few moments in my library with you, won’t you?”
The visage he turned to her was one of physical anguish. They sat confronting each other in silence for an instant; then he rose with a visible effort and descended, and she followed.
“Be at the garage at two, Wayland,” she said, and ascended the snowy stoop beside McKay.
The butler admitted them. “Luncheon for two,” she said, and mounted the stairs without pausing.
McKay remained in the hall until he had been separated from hat and coat; then he slowly ascended the stairway. She was waiting on the landing and she took him directly into the library where a wood fire was burning.
“Just a moment,” she said, “to make myself as — as persuasive as I can.”
“You are perfectly equipped, Miss Erith—”
“Oh, no, I must do better than I have done. This is the great moment of our careers, Mr. McKay.” Her smile, brightly forced, left his grim features unresponsive. The undertone in her voice warned him of her determination to have her way.
He took an involuntary step toward the door like a caged thing that sees a loophole, halted as she barred his way, turned his marred young visage and glared at her. There was something terrible in his intent gaze — a pale flare flickering in his eyes like the uncanny light in the orbs of a cornered beast.
“You’ll wait, won’t you?” she asked, secretly frightened now.
After a long interval, “Yes,” his lips motioned.
“Thank you. Because it is the supreme moment of our lives. It involves life or death…. Be patient with me. Will you?”
“But you must be brief,” he muttered restlessly. “You know what I need. I am sick, I tell you!”
So she went away — not to arrange her beauty more convincingly, but to fling coat and hat to her maid and drop down on the chair by her desk and take up the telephone:
“Dr. Langford’s Hospital?”
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 898
