The Lost Naval Papers Part 13

So the day pa.s.sed. They lunched together and dined together. In the intervals they walked upon the sunny front, for the weather was perfect and the sun shone as it only s.h.i.+nes at Brighton. Madame, I am quite sure, did not sit upon the sand. It appears also that they visited a succession of picture houses. Madame declares that she is fascinated by this form of entertainment; the variety and rapid movement delight her--as I admit they do my dull self--and she deeply enjoys the blatant crudity of cinematic drama. "It is so entirely unlike life that it transports one to another world," says she. "Here in this strange visionary world of the pictures one lives in a maelstrom of emotions. Boys and girls meet, embrace, and marry all within the s.p.a.ce of a few minutes upon the screen and of an hour or two of dramatic action. Children are conceived and born by some lightning process which it would be a happiness for the human kind to learn. Heroes die while strong men bare their heads in grief, and ten minutes later the corpse is capering joyously in a new piece. By attending three or four houses in one afternoon one sups upon emotions and feeds without restraint upon rich, satisfying laughter. Yes, _mon ami_, I love the cinema. Rust did not, I think, greatly interest himself in the pictures, but was happy in the darkness--holding my hand."

She laughed as I broke into growls. "Is it not, _mon cher_" she went on, "that the cinemas will always be most popular--however dull may be the pictures--so long as boys and girls, men and women, who love, desire to fondle one another's hands in the dark?"

"You and Rust did not love one another," I grunted.

"No. We were not the real thing, but we made ourselves into quite a plausible imitation."

Madame pursued her programme with indefatigable ardour and patience.

She impressed again and again upon Rust's imagination a picture of herself sleeping unprotected, in a room not far distant from his own, while beneath her pillow reposed a paper precious and mysterious beyond words to describe. She even hinted that a dread of fire, from which she always suffered when sleeping at hotels, forbade the locking of her door. "I am not afraid to die," said she, "for what have I to bind me to life now that I can never visit the spot where repose the shattered fragments of my beloved Capitaine Guilbert? But to be burned, helpless, while rescue was cut off from me by a locked door! I shrink from so terrible a fate." Subtlety, she had discovered, was thrown away upon the obtuseness of Rust. She was compelled to be brutally plain, and so she drove into his thick head the tempting fact that nothing interposed during the hours of darkness between his eager hands and the paper which she had taught him to covet. If she awoke and mistook his motives--if she thought that he had ventured into her room with designs upon her honour--Rust felt sure that her kind heart would forgive him, by breakfast-time, though she would certainly dismiss him from her bedside with the most haughty of reproaches. If he could not find some other way before they separated for the night, he had almost decided to essay the venture. She slept very soundly, said Madame; she had not awakened in her _appartement_ in Paris upon one night when a bomb from a Prussian aeroplane had exploded within two hundred yards of her house. Another way was still possible, and Rust, while he was dressing for dinner, determined to try it; it was a way, too, which thrilled him with pleasurable antic.i.p.ation.

At dinner Madame declined champagne, which she said was a poor, feeble drink. Let them for once share a bottle of sparkling Burgundy, a royal wine, the Wine of Courage. The patron brought them the bottle himself, and lamented that they would not indulge themselves in a second.

Madame had no desire that Rust should, under its influence, become too enterprising. The evening was warm, and afterwards they moved into the pleasant garden behind the hotel and sat together in a quiet corner.

Other guests were in the garden, but it had become tacitly agreed among them that Madame and Rust--the "dear French things"--should be permitted to console one another in seclusion. No one could perceive that the black-sleeved arm of Rust had found a happy resting-place around Madame's black-covered waist, or that her glowing head was not far from his shoulder. Her Paris evening frock was cut low, though never by the fraction of an inch would Madame permit her _couturier_ to exceed the limits of perfect taste. Looking down over her shoulder Rust could see, protruding from the white lace below her bodice, the corner of a paper. She talked little. It seemed to give her pleasure to lean against his shoulder and dreamily, half asleep, to rest there reposefully like a tired child. "But, _mon ami"_ said Madame to me in relating these tender details with the greatest satisfaction, "I was very wide awake indeed."

Rust eyed that corner of paper and waited without speaking until his companion should become almost unconscious of his movements. Then gently he moved his right arm from her waist and placed it over her shoulder. She moved slightly, but it was only to nestle more closely against him. His dangling fingers moved little by little towards the opening of her corsage, they descended, and with his thumb and forefinger he gripped the paper. Madame did not move her body nor, to Rust, did she seem to suspect his intentions. But her right arm lifted slowly up, she gently grasped his hand in hers, pressed it kindly for a moment, and then, still holding it, removed his arm from her shoulder to her waist. "Your coat sleeve scratches my shoulder," she murmured. Rust, who had instantly released the paper when Madame took his hand, never again got an opportunity of touching it, for she kept her arm pressed over his during the whole time that they sat together.

"I gave him the chance," explained Madame to me, "and it worked beautifully. But once was enough. From that moment I became really suspicious of Rust. Before I had only been puzzled. What he was I could not guess, but I was dead set on finding out before the night was over. Till then I had allowed only little freedoms, but when I rose to go into the hotel and he bent over me I let him kiss me on my lips. It was a severe disappointment, that kiss," added Madame contemplatively.

"Spare me the loathsome details," said I crossly.

When at last Madame Gilbert went to her room she was smiling gaily and showing no signs of fatigue at the tiresome exercises of the day.

Though it was approaching midnight the faithful Marie was waiting to a.s.sist her toilet. "Ah, madame," sighed Marie in her frank Parisienne fas.h.i.+on, "le Capitaine is so beautiful and devoted. He regards you as one who would devour. I marvel that you have the heart to separate from him."

"Marie," said Madame, laughing, "you are a naughty girl, a corrupter of my youthful morals. I am afraid that _le bon Capitaine_ must go hungry. For--" and then she pranced off upon that wearisome old story about the blown-up Territorial bore of _le Grand Couronne_. Fidelity to the scattered corpse of a husband--_un mari a.s.sommant, mon Dieu, pas un amant joyeux_!--seemed to Marie the most wasted of emotions.

She, in common with all the other Frenchmen and women in the hotel, was an ardent partisan of Captain Rouille.

"If my bell rings in the night, come quickly, Marie," said Madame, as she dismissed the girl. "I shall need you _a la grande vitesse_."

Madame slipped the seductive paper and something else under her pillow, saw that the electric and the light switch were close to her hand upon the bedside table, and snuggled down contentedly. "The trap is set and baited," she murmured; "I hope that the bird will not keep me waiting."

An hour pa.s.sed slowly. Rust has told me little of his feelings, but admitted that he was in the "devil of a funk." He had determined to make a daring shot at the paper and the solution of Madame's ident.i.ty, but he s.h.i.+vered at the prospect of her wrath should she awake and catch him in the act. "She would have thought the worst of me, and, like you, Copplestone, I cherish her beautiful friends.h.i.+p as the most precious of privileges. On my honour I was only after the paper."

Madame found the waiting time very tedious, but I am sure that her pulse did not quicken by a beat. She has a wonderful nerve.

At one o'clock, when the hotel was very quiet, and the boot-cleaner had made his round of collection, Madame heard the handle of her door move and the door itself push slowly open. Through her partly closed eyes she saw the momentary flash of an electric torch with which Rust took his bearings, and then she felt, rather than saw or heard, a figure draw gently towards her bed. Her right hand was under the pillow grasping that something, not the paper, which she had laid there in readiness. Rust approached, bent over her, and his fingers felt for the pillow. They touched her hair, and she knew that the moment for action had come. Out stretched her arm, holding the pistol well clear of his body, for she was loath to hurt him, and a sharp report within a couple of feet of his side frightened Rust more thoroughly than had the hottest of "crumps" in Flanders. He sprang away, and darted for the door; but in an instant the lights went up, and a loud, commanding voice--utterly unlike Madame's soft musical social tones--called to him to halt. "Halt!" cried Madame in English.

"Right about turn! 'Shun!" The familiar words of command brought him round in prompt obedience, and there before him he saw Madame Gilbert sitting up in her bed, pointing a most business-like automatic pistol straight for his heart. Her hand held it true, without a quiver, and along the sights glittered an eye remorseless as blue steel. This was a woman wholly different from that kindly yielding creature whom he had embraced and kissed a couple of hours earlier!

"You will please stand quite still," said Madame, speaking the slightly tinged Irish-English of her birth, "for if I shoot, le Capitaine Rouille will be no more. See! Upon my dressing-table behind you is a small vase supporting a rose. I will cut off its stem," She quickly moved the pistol, and fired. "You may turn round." He obeyed, and saw that the vase was unbroken, but that the rose, cut off at the stem, lay upon the dressing-table. Behind it appeared a bullet-hole in the plaster of the wall.

Madame flicked the spent cartridge off her counterpane, where it had fallen upon ejection, and resumed. "I have rung the bell, and in a moment there will be a most interested audience. You will then please explain what brings you to my bedroom."

He had faced round towards her again, and his poor mind was a blank.

The situation was too big for him. He had fallen into a trap, but why it had been set he could not guess. Who was this calmly capable, straight-shooting widow who, with the copper hair falling over her shoulders and streaming down the front of her dainty nightdress, appeared in action even more lovely than in repose?

The first to arrive was Marie, then followed another _femme de chambre_, then came the night porter, then the boot-collector, last, with eyes opened wide at the surprising spectacle of a beautiful young woman receiving her lover at the point of a pistol, appeared _monsieur le patron_ himself. They cl.u.s.tered in a group by the door. "I think,"

said Madame serenely, "that we have enough. Marie, the house is full; shut the door and lock it." The order was obeyed. "Now," went on the commanding voice from the bed, using French for the effective shutting out of the English boot-cleaner and night porter, "if you men will turn your backs, and Marie will hand me my dressing-gown, I will prepare myself for the examination of Monsieur le Capitaine Rouille.

It is not seemly that a court of inquiry should be conducted in a nightdress."

The men turned round, or were pushed round. Marie--gasping with wonder at the whole incredible business, so unlike that which she had suggested--brought the silk dressing-gown and robed Madame, who skipped out of bed for the purpose. Then the fair _juge d'instruction,_ wrapped to the neck in blue silk, and looking prettier than ever, propped herself upon the pillows and opened the court.

"Captain Rouille," ordered she in French, "please tell these others why you came to my bedroom."

I regret to record that Marie and the other girl looked towards one another and sn.i.g.g.e.red. The patron lifted up his hands in amazement.

_Mon Dieu_, what a question! The two English servants did not understand French.

Rust said nothing. Madame, who had observed the excusable misunderstanding of her French audience, condescended to explain. "I am sure," she said, "that Captain Rouille will not suggest that his visit was designed to attack my honour."

"_Quelle dame extraordinaire_!" moaned the patron. "_C'est incroyable la sangfroid de celle-la."_

"Of course not," cried Rust, speaking for the first time. "Never would I have dared to think of such a thing. Madame Gilbert is a lady of the highest virtue. It was not to compromise her that I entered her room."

"The man," groaned the patron, "is no less extraordinary than the woman. Why in G.o.d's name this pistol, this scene so public! They are lovers, beyond doubt, yet they spring upon my hotel this scene of the most scandalous. It is not the way of France; I do not understand such goings on."

Madame drew a paper from her bed, and held it up. "Was it for this that you came?"

"Yes," said Rust, "for that and that only."

"_Un billet doux_" said the patron, playing without design the part of a bewildered chorus, "Why should not madame have given it to him if she wished to write that which she was too modest to say?"

"Why did you want it?"

"What more natural," cried the patron, "than that the brave captain should be eager to read the sweet confession of your love?" Madame missed not a word which dribbled from the lips of the poor, puzzled patron, who contributed the comic sauce which t.i.tillated her humorous palate. The patron to her was a sheer joy.

"Why did you want it?" repeated Madame sternly.

"Because," said Rust, "you said that it contained the most important of secrets."

"What have you to do with secrets which concern the fate of nations at war?"

"Nations! War!" muttered the patron. "What words are these to find upon the lips of lovers? By now they should, had they not both been quite mad, have forgotten war in their mutual embraces."

Rust was silent, considering what he should say. He had not the wit to invent a plausible story, and to such men there is only one safe rule--when in doubt, tell the truth. He told the truth.

"I wanted that paper because I am a member of the Secret Service."

"Of Germany?" snapped Madame, flas.h.i.+ng violet lightning from her eyes.

Sensation! The two French women broke into screams of rage, dreadful to hear; the patron raised his clenched hands, and roared like a furious beast. Rust, a brave man, shrank for a long, startled moment.

His flesh quivered, as if it felt fierce French nails fasten into it.

He saw the blood-l.u.s.t flame in the eyes which searched his face. He trembled, but spoke up firmly.

"No. The Secret Service of England."

"Liar!" roared the patron. "_Menteur! Espion_! Foul seducer of a desolate _veuve de France_! Die, traitor! Madame, raise your pistol; shoot--shoot instantly for the honour of France!" The man, a fat, comfortable bourgeois, was transfigured with frightful, murderous rage. He had become a figure almost heroic.

But Madame did not shoot. In ten seconds her swift brain had recalled the whole series of incidents during her commerce with Rust; she penetrated to the heart of the mystery, and immediately became convinced that he spoke the truth.

"No," said she. "_Monsieur le patron_ and you, _mes demoiselles_, cease your cries. You do the brave Capitaine Rouille a very grave injustice for which you must pray his forgiveness _sur le champ_. He is a soldier of France, and of our n.o.ble Allies, the English. He is an officer of the English Secret Service. The mistake was mine, for which, _mon capitaine_, I implore your pardon."

She lay back in her bed, and the laughter poured out of her in one unbroken flood. She laughed until she became weak as a baby, for the idiotic comedy which they two had played--at the expense of the British Treasury--was beyond any other means of expression. Rust, who began to grasp something of the truth, also broke into a laugh, and the amus.e.m.e.nt of the princ.i.p.als brought instant conviction to the audience. The repentance of those who had thirsted for Rust's blood a moment since was very pleasant to witness. The women begged permission to kiss his brave hands, which had slain the foul Boches, and the patron cast his burly person upon Rust's pyjama-clad bosom and saluted him on both cheeks. He had a stiff, hard beard!