The Last Shot Part 57

"Thinking of me--little me!" she called back. "Of one person's comfort when hundreds of thousands of other women are in terror; when the destiny of millions is at stake! Lanny, you are in a blue funk!" and she was laughing forcedly and hectically. "I'm going on--going on like one in a trance who can't stop if he would. It's all right, Lanny. I undertook the task myself. I must see it through!"

After she had hung up the receiver her buoyancy vanished. She leaned against the wall of the tunnel weakly. Yes, what if she were found out?

She was thinking of the possibility seriously for the first time. Yet, for only a moment did she dwell upon it before she dismissed it in sudden reaction.

"No matter what they do to me or what becomes of me!" she thought. "I'm a lost soul, anyway. The thing is to serve as long as I can--and then I don't care!"

x.x.xVII

THUMBS DOWN FOR BOUCHARD

Haggard and at bay, Bouchard faced the circle of frowns around the polished expanse of that precious heirloom, the dining-room table of the Gallands. The dreaded reckoning of the apprehensions which kept him restlessly awake at night had come at the next staff council after the fall of the Twin Boulder Redoubt. With the last approach to the main line of defence cleared, one chapter of the war was finished. But the officers did not manifest the elation that the occasion called for, which is not saying that they were discouraged. They had no doubt that eventually the Grays would dictate peace in the Browns' capital. Exactly stated, their mood was one of repressed professional irritation. Not until the third attempt was Twin Boulder Redoubt taken. As far as results were concerned, the nicely planned first a.s.sault might have been a stroke of strategy by the Browns to drive the Grays into an impa.s.sable fire zone.

"The trouble is we are not informed!" exclaimed Turcas, opening his thin lips even less than usual, but twisting them in a significant manner as he gave his words a rasping emphasis. The others hastened to follow his lead with equal candor.

"Exactly. We have no reports of their artillery strength, which we had greatly underestimated," said the chief of artillery.

"Our maps of their forts could not be less correct if revealed to us for purposes of deceit. Again and again we have thought that we had them surprised, only to be surprised ourselves. In short, they know what we are doing and we don't know what they are doing!" said the tactical expert.

There the chief of the aerostatic division took the defensive.

"They certainly don't learn our plans with their planes and dirigibles!"

he declared energetically.

"Hardly, when we never see them over our lines."

"The Browns are acting on the defensive in the air as well as on the earth!"

"But our own planes and dirigibles bring little news," said Turcas. "I mean, those that return," he added pungently.

"And few do return. My men are not wanting in courage!" replied the chief aerostatic officer. "Immediately we get over the Brown lines the Browns, who keep cruising to and fro, are on us like hawks. They risk anything to bring us down. When we descend low we strike the fire of their high-angle guns, which are distributed the length of the frontier.

I believe both their aerial fleet and their high-angle artillery were greatly underestimated. Finally, I cannot reduce my force too much in scouting or they might rake the offensive."

"Another case of not being informed!" concluded Turcas, returning grimly to his point.

He looked at Bouchard, and every one began looking at Bouchard. If the Gray tacticians had been outplayed by their opponents, if their losses for the ground gained exceeded calculations, then it was good to have a scapegoat for their professional mistakes. Bouchard was Westerling's choice for chief of intelligence. His blind loyalty was pleasing to his superior, who, hitherto, had promptly silenced any suggestion of criticism by repeating that the defensive always appeared to the offensive to be better informed than itself. But this time Westerling let the conversation run on without a word of excuse for his favorite.

Each fresh reproach from the staff, whose opinion was the only G.o.d he knew, was a dagger thrust to Bouchard. At night he had lain awake worrying about the leak; by day he had sought to trace it, only to find every clew leading back to the staff. Now he was as confused in his shame as a sensitive schoolboy. Vaguely, in his distress, he heard Westerling asking a question, while he saw all those eyes staring at him.

"What information have we about Engadir?"

"I believe it to be strongly fortified!" stammered Bouchard.

"You believe! You have no information?" pursued Westerling.

"No, sir," replied Bouchard. "Nothing--nothing new!"

"We do seem to get little information," said Westerling, looking hard and long at Bouchard in silence--the combined silence of the whole staff.

This public reproof could have but one meaning. He should soon receive a note which would thank him politely for his services, in the stereotyped phrases always used for the purpose, before announcing his transfer to a less responsible post.

"Very little, sir!" Bouchard replied doggedly.

"There is that we had from one of our aviators whose machine came down in a smash just as he got over our infantry positions on his return,"

said the chief aerostatic officer. "He was in a dying condition when we picked him up, and, as he was speaking with the last breaths in his body, naturally his account of what he had seen was somewhat incoherent.

It would be of use, however, if we had plans of the forts that would enable us to check off his report intelligently."

"Yet, what evidence have we that Partow or Lanstron has done more than to make a fortunate guess or show military insight?" Westerling asked.

"There is the case of my own belief that Bordir was weak, which proved correct."

"Last night we got a written telegraphic staff message from the body of a dead officer of the Browns found in the Twin Boulder Redoubt," said the vice-chief, "which showed that in an hour after our plans were transmitted to our own troops for the first attack they were known to the enemy."

"That looks like a leak!" exclaimed Westerling, "a leak, Bouchard, do you hear?" He was frowning and his lips were drawn and his cheeks mottled with red in a way not pleasant to see.

Stiffening in his chair, a flash of desperation in his eye, Bouchard's bony, long hand gripped the table edge. Every one felt that a sensation was coming.

"Yes, I have known that there was a leak!" he said with hoa.r.s.e, painful deliberation. "I have sent out every possible tracer. I have followed up every sort of clew I have transferred a dozen men. I have left nothing undone!"

"With no result?" persisted Westerling impatiently

"Yes, always the same result: That the leak is here in this house--here in the grand headquarters of the army under our very noses. I know it is not the telegraphers or the clerks. It is a member of the staff!"

"Have you gone out of your head?" demanded Westerling. "What staff-officer? How does he get the information to the enemy? Name the persons you suspect here and now! Explain, if you want to be considered sane!"

Here was the blackest accusation that could be made against an officer!

The chosen men of the staff, tested through many grades before they reached the inner circle of cabinet secrecy, lost the composure of a council. All were leaning forward toward Bouchard breathless for his answer.

"There are three women on the grounds," said Bouchard. "I have been against their staying from the first. I----."

He got no further. His words were drowned by the outburst of one of the younger members of the staff, who had either to laugh or choke at the picture of this deep-eyed, spectral sort of man, known as a woman-hater, in his revelation of the farcical source of his suspicions.

"Why not include Clarissa Eileen?" some one asked, Starting a chorus of satirical exclamations.

"How do they get through the line?"

"Yes, past a wall of bayonets?"

"When not even a soldier in uniform is allowed to move away from his command without a pa.s.s?"

"By wireless?"

"Perhaps by telepathy!"

"Unless," said the chief of the aerostatic division, grinning, "Bouchard lends them the use of our own wires through the capital and around by the neutral countries across the Brown frontier!"