The Woman of Mystery Part 26

"Conrad is an a.s.s! The whole of that family will bring us ill-luck and first of all to him who was fool enough to fall in love with that hussy.

You ought to have made away with her at once, Karl--I told you--and not to have waited for the prince's return."

Standing full in the light as he was, Major Hermann displayed the most appalling highwayman's face imaginable, appalling not because of the deformity of the features or any particular ugliness, but because of the most repulsive and savage expression, in which Paul once more recognized, carried to the very limits of paroxysm, the expression of the Comtesse Hermine, as revealed in her picture and the photograph. At the thought of the crime which had failed, Major Hermann seemed to suffer a thousand deaths, as though the murder had been a condition of his own life. He ground his teeth. He rolled his bloodshot eyes.

In a distraught voice, clutching the shoulder of his accomplice with his fingers, he shouted, this time in French:

"Karl, it is beginning to look as though we couldn't touch them, as though some miracle protected them against us. You've missed them three times lately. At the Chateau d'Ornequin you killed two others in their stead. I also missed him the other day at the little gate in the park.

And it was in the same park, near the same chapel--you remember--sixteen years ago, when he was only a child, that you drove your knife into him.

. . . Well, you started your blundering on that day."

The spy gave an insolent, cynical laugh:

"What did you expect, _Excellenz_? I was on the threshold of my career and I had not your experience. Here were a father and a little boy whom we had never set eyes on ten minutes before and who had done nothing to us except annoy the Kaiser. My hand shook, I confess. You, on the other hand: ah, you made neat work of the father, you did! One little touch of your little hand and the trick was done!"

This time it was Paul who, slowly and carefully, slipped the barrel of his revolver into one of the breaches. He could no longer doubt, after Karl's revelations, that the major had killed his father. It was that creature whom he had seen, dagger in hand, on that tragic evening, that creature and none other! And the creature's accomplice of to-day was the accomplice of the earlier occasion, the satellite who had tried to kill Paul while his father was dying.

Bernard, seeing what Paul did, whispered in his ear:

"So you have made up your mind? We're to shoot him down?"

"Wait till I give the signal," answered Paul. "But don't you fire at him, aim at the spy."

In spite of everything, he was thinking of the inexplicable mystery of the bonds connecting Major Hermann with Bernard d'Andeville and his sister elisabeth and he could not allow Bernard to be the one to carry out the act of justice. He himself hesitated, as one hesitates before performing an action of which one does not realize the full scope. Who was that scoundrel? What ident.i.ty was Paul to ascribe to him? To-day, Major Hermann and chief of the German secret service; yesterday, Prince Conrad's boon companion, all-powerful at the Chateau d'Ornequin, disguising himself as a peasant-woman and prowling through Corvigny; long before that, an a.s.sa.s.sin, the Emperor's accomplice . . . and the lady of Ornequin: which of all these personalities, which were but different aspects of one and the same being, was the real one?

Paul looked at the major in bewilderment, as he had looked at the photograph and, in the locked room, at the portrait of Hermine d'Andeville. Hermann, Hermine! In his mind the two names became merged into one. And he noticed the daintiness of the hands, white and small as a woman's hands. The tapering fingers were decked with rings set with precious stones. The booted feet, too, were delicately formed. The colorless face showed not a trace of hair. But all this effeminate appearance was belied by the grating sound of a hoa.r.s.e voice, by heaviness of gait and movement and by a sort of barbarous strength.

The major put his hands before his face and reflected for a few minutes.

Karl watched him with a certain air of pity and seemed to be asking himself whether his master was not beginning to feel some kind of remorse at the thought of the crimes which he had committed. But the major threw off his torpor and, in a hardly audible voice, quivering with nothing but hatred, said:

"On their heads be it, Karl! On their heads be it for trying to get in our path! I put away the father and I did well. One day it will be the son's turn. And now . . . now we have the girl to see to."

"Shall I take charge of that, _Excellenz_?"

"No, I have a use for you here and I must stay here myself. Things are going very badly. But I shall go down there early in January. I shall be at ebrecourt on the morning of the tenth of January. The business must be finished forty-eight hours after. And it shall be finished, that I swear to you."

He was again silent while the spy laughed loudly. Paul had stooped, so as to bring his eyes to the level of his revolver. It would be criminal to hesitate now. To kill the major no longer meant revenging himself and slaying his father's murderer: it meant preventing a further crime and saving elisabeth. He had to act, whatever the consequences of his act might be. He made up his mind.

"Are you ready?" he whispered to Bernard.

"Yes. I am waiting for you to give the signal."

He took aim coldly, waiting for the propitious moment, and was about to pull the trigger, when Karl said, in German: "I say, _Excellenz_, do you know what's being prepared for the ferryman's house?"

"What?"

"An attack, just that. A hundred volunteers from the African companies are on their way through the marshes now. The a.s.sault will be delivered at dawn. You have only just time to let them know at headquarters and to find out what precautions they intend to take."

The major simply said:

"They are taken."

"What's that you say, _Excellenz_?"

"I say, that they are taken. I had word from another quarter; and, as they attach great value to the ferryman's house, I telephoned to the officer in command of the post that we would send him three hundred men at five o'clock in the morning. The African volunteers will be caught in a trap. Not one of them will come back alive."

The major gave a little laugh of satisfaction and turned up the collar of his cloak as he added:

"Besides, to make doubly sure, I shall go and spend the night there . . . especially as I am beginning to wonder whether the officer commanding the post did not chance to send some men here with instructions to take the papers off Rosenthal, whom he knew to be dead."

"But . . ."

"That'll do. Have Rosenthal seen to and let's be off."

"Am I to go with you, _Excellenz_?"

"No, there's no need. One of the boats will take me up the ca.n.a.l. The house is not forty minutes from here."

In answer to the spy's call, three soldiers came down and hoisted the dead man's body to the trap-door overhead. Karl and the major both remained where they were, at the foot of the ladder, while Karl turned the light of the lantern, which he had taken down from the wall, towards the trap-door.

Bernard whispered:

"Shall we fire now?"

"No," said Paul.

"But . . ."

"I forbid you."

When the operation was over, the major said to Karl:

"Give me a good light and see that the ladder doesn't slip."

He went up and disappeared from sight.

"All right," he said. "Hurry."

The spy climbed the ladder in his turn. Their footsteps were heard overhead. The steps moved in the direction of the ca.n.a.l and there was not a sound.

"What on earth came over you?" cried Bernard. "We shall never have another chance like that. The two ruffians would have dropped at the first shot."

"And we after them," said Paul. "There were twelve of them up there. We should have been doomed."

"But elisabeth would have been saved, Paul! Upon my word, I don't understand you. Fancy having two monsters like that at our mercy and letting them go! The man who murdered your father and who is torturing elisabeth was there; and you think of ourselves!"

"Bernard," said Paul Delroze, "you didn't understand what they said at the end, in German. The enemy has been warned of the attack and of our plans against the ferryman's house. In a little while, the hundred volunteers who are stealing up through the marsh will be the victims of an ambush laid for them. We've got to save them first. We have no right to sacrifice our lives before performing that duty. And I am sure that you agree with me."

"Yes," said Bernard. "But all the same it was a grand opportunity."