With the French in France and Salonika Part 13

Or if you want to help the orphans of soldiers killed in battle write to August F. Jaccaci, Hotel de Crillon; if you want to help the families of soldiers rendered homeless by this war, to the Secours National through Mrs. Whitney Warren, 16 West Forty-Seventh Street, New York; if you want to clothe a French soldier against the snows of the Vosges send him a Lafayette kit. In the clearing-house in Paris I have seen on file 20,000 letters from French soldiers asking for this kit. Some of them were addressed to the Marquis de Lafayette, but the clothes will get to the front sooner if you forward two dollars to the Lafayette Kit Fund, Hotel Vanderbilt, New York. If you want to help the Belgian refugees, address Mrs. Herman Harjes, Hotel de Crillon, Paris; if the Serbian refugees, address Monsieur Vesnitch, the Serbian minister to France.

If among these bargains you cannot find one to suit you, you should consult your doctor. Tell him there is something wrong with your heart.

CHAPTER XII

LONDON, A YEAR LATER

February, 1916.

A year ago you could leave the Continent and enter England by showing a pa.s.sport and a steamer ticket. To-day it is as hard to leave Paris, and no one ever _wants_ to leave Paris, as to get out of jail; as difficult to invade England as for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. To leave Paris for London you must obtain the permission of the police, the English consul-general, and the American consul-general. That gets you only to Havre. The Paris train arrives at Havre at nine o'clock at night, and while the would-be pa.s.sengers for the Channel boat to Southampton are waiting to be examined, they are kept on the wharf in a goods-shed. An English sergeant hands each of them a ticket with a number, and when the number is called the pa.s.senger enters a room on the shed where French and English officials put him, or her, through a third degree. The examination is more or less severe, and sometimes the pa.s.senger is searched.

There is nothing on the wharf to eat or drink, and except trunks nothing on which to sit. If you prefer to be haughty and stand, there is no law against that. Should you leave the shed for a stroll, you would gain nothing, for, as it is war-time, at nine o'clock every restaurant and cafe in Havre closes, and the town is so dark you would probably stroll into the harbor.

So, like emigrants on our own Ellis Island, English and French army and navy officers, despatch bearers, American ambulance drivers, Red Cross nurses, and all the other picturesque travellers of these interesting times, s.h.i.+ver, yawn, and swear from nine o'clock until midnight. To make it harder, the big steamer that is to carry you across the Channel is drawn up to the wharf not forty feet way, all lights and warmth and cleanliness. At least ten men a.s.sured me they would return to Havre and across the street from the examination-shed start an all-night restaurant. After a very few minutes of standing around in the rain it was a plan to get rich quick that would have occurred to almost any one.

My number was forty-three. After seeing only five people in one hour pa.s.s through the examination-room, I approached a man of proud bearing, told him I was a detective, and that I had detected he was from Scotland Yard. He looked anxiously at his feet.

"How did you detect that?" he asked.

"Your boots are all right," I a.s.sured him. "It's the way you stand with your hands behind your back."

By shoving his hands into his pockets he disguised himself, and asked what I wanted. I wanted to be put through the torture-chamber ahead of all the remaining pa.s.sengers. He asked why he should do that. I showed him the letter that, after weeks of experiment, I found of all my letters, was the one that produced the quickest results. It is addressed vaguely, "To His Majesty's Officers." I call it Exhibit A.

I explained that for purposes of getting me out of the goods-shed and on board the steamer he could play he was one of his Majesty's officers.

The idea pleased him. He led me into the examination-room, where, behind a long table, like inspectors in a voting-booth on election day, sat French police officials, officers of the admiralty, army, consular, and secret services. Some were in uniform, some in plain clothes. From above, two arc-lights glared down upon them and on the table covered with papers.

In two languages they were examining a young Englishwoman who was pale, ill, and obviously frightened.

"What is your purpose in going to London?" asked the French official.

"To join my children."

To the French official it seemed a good answer. As much as to say: "Take the witness," he bowed to his English colleagues.

"If your children are in London," demanded one, "what are you doing in France?"

"I have been at Amiens, nursing my husband."

"Amiens is inside our lines. Who gave you permission to remain inside our lines?"

The woman fumbled with some papers.

"I have a letter," she stammered.

The officer scowled at the letter. Out of the corner of his mouth he said: "Permit from the 'W. O.' Husband, Captain in the Berks.h.i.+res.

Wounded at La Ba.s.see."

He was already scratching his vise upon her pa.s.sport. As he wrote, he said, cordially: "I hope your husband is all right again." The woman did not reply. So long was she in answering that they looked up at her. She was chilled with waiting in the cold rain. She had been on a strain, and her lips began to tremble. To hide that fact, and with no intention of being dramatic, she raised her hand, and over her face dropped a black veil.

The officer half rose.

"You should have told us at once, madam," he said. He jerked his head at the detective and toward the door, and the detective picked up her valise, and asked her please to follow. At the door she looked back, and the row of officials, like one man, bent forward.

One of them was engaged in studying my pa.s.sport. It had been viseed by the representatives of all the civilized powers, and except the Germans and their fellow gunmen, most of the uncivilized. The officer was fascinated with it. Like a jig-saw puzzle, it appealed to him. He turned it wrong side up and sideways, and took so long about it that the others, hoping there was something wrong, in antic.i.p.ation scowled at me.

But the officer disappointed them.

"Very interestin'," he said. "You ought to frame it."

Now that I was free to leave the detention camp I perversely felt a desire to remain. Now that I was free, the sight of all the other pa.s.sengers kicking each other's heels and being herded by Tommies gave me a feeling of infinite pleasure. I tried to express this by forcing money on the detective, but he absolutely refused it. So, instead, I offered to introduce him to a King's messenger. We went in search of the King's messenger. I was secretly alarmed lest he had lost himself. Since we had left the Balkans together he had lost nearly everything else. He had set out as fully equipped as the white knight, or a "temp. sec.

lieutenant." But his route was marked with lost trunks, travelling-bags, hat-boxes, umbrellas, and receipts for reservations on steams.h.i.+ps, railroad-trains, in wagon-lits, and dining-cars.

A King's messenger has always been to me a fascinating figure. In fiction he is resourceful, daring, ubiquitous. He shows his silver staff, with its running greyhound, which he inherits from the days of Henry VIII, and all men must bow before it. To speed him on his way, railroad-carriages are emptied, special trains are thrown together, steamers cast off only when he arrives. So when I found for days I was to travel in company with a King's messenger I foresaw a journey of infinite ease and comfort. It would be a royal progress. His ever-present, but invisible, staff of secret agents would protect me.

I would share his special trains, his suites of deck cabins. But it was not like that. My King's messenger was not that kind of a King's messenger. Indeed, when he left the Levant, had it not been for the man from Cook's, he would never have found his way from the hotel to the right railroad-station. And that he now is safely in London is because at Patras we rescued him from a boatman who had placed him unresisting on a steamer for Australia.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Very interestin'. You ought to frame it."]

I pointed him out to the detective. He recalled him as the gentleman who had blocked the exit gate at the railroad-station. I suggested that that was probably because he had lost his ticket.

"Lost his ticket! A King's messenger!" The detective was indignant with me. "Impossible, sir!"

I told him the story of the drunken bandsman returning from the picnic.

"You can't have lost your ticket," said the guard.

"Can't I?" exclaimed the bandsman triumphantly. "I've lost the ba.s.s-drum!"

Scotland Yard reproved the K. M. with deference, but severely.

"You should have told us at once, sir," he said, "that you were carrying despatches. If you'd only shown your credentials, we'd had you safe on board two hours ago."

The King's messenger blushed guiltily. He looked as though he wanted to run.

"Don't tell me," I cried, "you've lost your credentials, too!"

"Don't be an a.s.s!" cried the K. M. "I've mislaid them, that's all."

The detective glared at him as though he would enjoy leading him to the moat in the tower.

"You've been robbed!" he gasped.

"Have you looked," I asked, "in the unlikely places?"

"I always look there first," explained the K. M.

"Look again," commanded the detective.