The Woman of Mystery Part 11

"Yes, Paul, and the coincidence struck me as so curious that I just gave her the number of your regiment and your company, without telling her that we were related. 'Good,' she said. 'And is the regiment at Corvigny?' I said it had just arrived. 'And do you know Paul Delroze?'

'Only by name,' I answered. I can't tell you why I answered like that, or why I continued the conversation so as not to let her guess my surprise: 'He has been promoted to sergeant,' I said, 'and mentioned in dispatches. That's how I come to have heard his name. Shall I find out where he is and take you to him?' 'Not yet,' she said, 'not yet. I should be too much upset.'"

"What on earth did she mean?"

"I can't imagine. It struck me as more and more suspicious. Here was a woman looking for you eagerly and yet putting off the chance of seeing you. I asked her if she was very much interested in you and she said yes, that you were her son."

"Her son!"

"Up to then I am certain that she did not suspect for a second that I was cross-examining her. But my astonishment was so great that she drew back into the shadow, as though to put herself on the defensive. I slipped my hand into my pocket, pulled out my little electric lamp, went up to her, pressed the spring and flung the light full in her face. She seemed disconcerted and stood for a moment without moving. Then she quickly lowered a scarf which she wore over her head and, with a strength which I should never have believed, struck me on the arm and made me drop my lamp. Then came a second of absolute silence. I couldn't make out where she was: whether in front of me, or on the right or the left. There was no sound to tell me if she was there still or not. But I understood presently, when, after picking up my lamp and switching on the light again, I saw her two wooden shoes on the ground. She had stepped out of them and run away on her stocking-feet. I hunted for her, but couldn't find her. She had disappeared."

Paul had listened to his brother-in-law's story with increasing attention.

"Then you saw her face?" he asked.

"Oh, quite distinctly! A strong face, with black hair and eyebrows and a look of great wickedness. . . . Her clothes were those of a peasant-woman, but too clean and too carefully put on: I felt somehow that they were a disguise."

"About what age was she?"

"Forty."

"Would you know her again?"

"Without a moment's hesitation."

"What was the color of the scarf you mentioned?"

"Black."

"How was it fastened? In a knot?"

"No, with a brooch."

"A cameo?"

"Yes, a large cameo set in gold. How did you know that?"

Paul was silent for some time and then said:

"I will show you to-morrow, in one of the rooms at Ornequin, a portrait which should bear a striking resemblance to the woman who spoke to you, the sort of resemblance that exists between two sisters perhaps . . . or . . . or . . ." He took his brother-in-law by the arm and, leading him along, continued, "Listen to me, Bernard. There are terrible things around us, in the present and the past, things that affect my life and elisabeth's . . . and yours as well. Therefore, I am struggling in the midst of a hideous obscurity in which enemies whom I do not know have for twenty years been pursuing a scheme which I am quite unable to understand. In the beginning of the struggle, my father died, the victim of a murder. To-day it is I that am being threatened. My marriage with your sister is shattered and nothing can bring us together again, just as nothing will ever again allow you and me to be on those terms of friends.h.i.+p and confidence which we had the right to hope for. Don't ask me any questions, Bernard, and don't try to find out any more. One day, perhaps--and I do not wish that day ever to arrive--you will know why I begged for your silence."

CHAPTER VI

WHAT PAUL SAW AT ORNEQUIN

Paul Delroze was awakened at dawn by the bugle-call. And, in the artillery duel that now began, he at once recognized the sharp, dry voice of the seventy-fives and the hoa.r.s.e bark of the German seventy-sevens.

"Are you coming, Paul?" Bernard called from his room. "Coffee is served downstairs."

The brothers-in-law had found two little bedrooms over a publican's shop. While they both did credit to a substantial breakfast, Paul told Bernard the particulars of the occupation of Corvigny and Ornequin which he had gathered on the evening before:

"On Wednesday, the nineteenth of August, Corvigny, to the great satisfaction of the inhabitants, still thought that it would be spared the horrors of war. There was fighting in Alsace and outside Nancy, there was fighting in Belgium; but it looked as if the German thrust were neglecting the route of invasion offered by the valley of the Liseron. The fact is that this road is a narrow one and apparently of secondary importance. At Corvigny, a French brigade was busily pus.h.i.+ng forward the defense-works. The Grand Jonas and the Pet.i.t Jonas were ready under their concrete cupolas. Our fellows were waiting."

"And at Ornequin?" asked Bernard.

"At Ornequin, we had a company of light infantry. The officers put up at the house. This company, supported by a detachment of dragoons, patrolled the frontier day and night. In case of alarm, the orders were to inform the forts at once and to retreat fighting. The evening of Wednesday was absolutely quiet. A dozen dragoons had galloped over the frontier till they were in sight of the little German town of ebrecourt.

There was not a movement of troops to be seen on that side, nor on the railway-line that ends at ebrecourt. The night also was peaceful. Not a shot was fired. It is fully proved that at two o'clock in the morning not a single German soldier had crossed the frontier. Well, at two o'clock exactly, a violent explosion was heard, followed by four others at close intervals. These explosions were due to the bursting of five four-twenty sh.e.l.ls which demolished straightway the three cupolas of the Grand Jonas and the two cupolas of the Pet.i.t Jonas."

"What do you mean? Corvigny is fifteen miles from the frontier; and the four-twenties don't carry as far as that!"

"That didn't prevent six more sh.e.l.ls falling at Corvigny, all on the church or in the square. And these six sh.e.l.ls fell twenty minutes later, that is to say, at the time when it was to be presumed that the alarm would have been given and that the Corvigny garrison would have a.s.sembled in the square. This was just what had happened; and you can imagine the carnage that resulted."

"I agree; but, once more, the frontier was fifteen miles away. That distance must have given our troops time to form up again and to prepare for the attacks foretold by the bombardment. They had at least three or four hours before them."

"They hadn't fifteen minutes. The bombardment was not over before the a.s.sault began. a.s.sault isn't the word: our troops, those at Corvigny as well as those which hastened up from the two forts, were decimated and routed, surrounded by the enemy, shot down or obliged to surrender, before it was possible to organize any sort of resistance. It all happened suddenly under the blinding glare of flash-lights erected no one knew where or how. And the catastrophe was immediate. You may take it that Corvigny was invested, attacked, captured and occupied by the enemy, all in ten minutes."

"But where did he come from? Where did he spring from?"

"n.o.body knows."

"But the night-patrols on the frontier? The sentries? The company on duty at Ornequin?"

"Never heard of again. No one knows anything, not a word, not a rumor, about those three hundred men whose business it was to keep watch and to warn the others. You can reckon up the Corvigny garrison, with the soldiers who escaped and the dead whom the inhabitants identified and buried. But the three hundred light infantry of Ornequin disappeared without leaving the shadow of a trace behind them, not a fugitive, not a wounded man, not a corpse, nothing at all."

"It seems incredible. Whom did you talk to?"

"I saw ten people last night who, for a month, with no one to interfere with them except a few soldiers of the Landsturm placed in charge of Corvigny, have pursued a minute inquiry into all these problems, without establis.h.i.+ng so much as a plausible theory. One thing alone is certain: the business was prepared long ago, down to the slightest detail. The exact range had been taken of the forts, the cupolas, the church and the square; and the siege-gun had been placed in position before and accurately laid so that the eleven sh.e.l.ls should strike the eleven objects aimed at. That's all. The rest is mystery."

"And what about the chateau? And elisabeth?"

Paul had risen from his seat. The bugles were sounding the morning roll-call. The gun-fire was twice as intense as before. They both started for the square; and Paul continued:

"Here, too, the mystery is bewildering and perhaps worse. One of the cross-roads that run through the fields between Corvigny and Ornequin has been made a boundary by the enemy which no one here had the right to overstep under pain of death."

"Then elisabeth . . . ?"

"I don't know, I know nothing more. And it's terrible, this shadow of death lying over everything, over every incident. It appears--I have not been able to find out where the rumor originated--that the village of Ornequin, near the chateau, no longer exists. It has been entirely destroyed, more than that, annihilated; and its four hundred inhabitants have been sent away into captivity. And then . . ." Paul shuddered and, lowering his voice, went on, "And then . . . what did they do at the chateau? You can see the house, you can still see it at a distance, with its walls and turrets standing. But what happened behind those walls?

What has become of elisabeth? For nearly four weeks she has been living in the midst of those brutes, poor thing, exposed to every outrage!

The sun had hardly risen when they reached the square. Paul was sent for by his colonel, who gave him the heartiest congratulations of the general commanding the division and told him that his name had been submitted for the military cross and for a commission as second lieutenant and that he was to take command of his section from now.

"That's all," said the colonel, laughing. "Unless you have any further request to make."

"I have two, sir."