The Woman of Mystery Part 31

"Very well, Delroze, you shall have your list to-morrow."

CHAPTER XIV

A MASTERPIECE OF KULTUR

On the morning of Sunday, the tenth of January, Lieutenant Delroze and Sergeant d'Andeville stepped on to the platform at Corvigny, went to call on the commandant of the town and then took a carriage in which they drove to the Chateau d'Ornequin.

"All the same," said Bernard, stretching out his legs in the fly, "I never thought that things would turn out as they have done when I was. .h.i.t by a splinter of shrapnel between the Yser and the ferryman's house.

What a hot corner it was just then! Believe me or believe me not, Paul, if our reinforcements hadn't come up, we should have been done for in another five minutes. We were jolly lucky!"

"We were indeed," said Paul. "I felt that next day, when I woke up in a French ambulance!"

"What I can't get over, though," Bernard continued, "is the way that blackguard of a Major Hermann made off. So you took him prisoner? And then you saw him unfasten his bonds and escape? The cheek of the rascal!

You may be sure he got away safe and sound!"

Paul muttered:

"I haven't a doubt of it; and I don't doubt either that he means to carry out his threats against elisabeth."

"Bos.h.!.+ We have forty-eight hours before us, as he gave his pal Karl the tenth of January as the date of his arrival and he won't act until two days later."

"And suppose he acts to-day?" said Paul, in a husky voice.

Notwithstanding his anguish, however, the drive did not seem long to him. He was at last approaching--and this time really--the object from which each day of the last four months had removed him to a greater distance. Ornequin was on the frontier; and ebrecourt was but a few minutes from the frontier. He refused to think of the obstacles which would intervene before he could reach ebrecourt, discover his wife's retreat and save her. He was alive. elisabeth was alive. No obstacles existed between him and her.

The Chateau d'Ornequin, or rather what remained of it--for even the ruins of the chateau had been subjected to a fresh bombardment in November--was serving as a cantonment for territorial troops, whose first line of trenches skirted the frontier. There was not much fighting on this side, because, for tactical reasons, it was not to the enemy's advantage to push too far forward. The defenses were of equal strength; and a very active watch was kept on either side.

These were the particulars which Paul obtained from the territorial lieutenant with whom he lunched.

"My dear fellow," concluded the officer, after Paul had told him the object of his journey, "I am altogether at your service; but, if it's a question of getting from Ornequin to ebrecourt, you can make up your mind that you won't do it."

"I shall do it all right."

"It'll have to be through the air then," said the officer, with a laugh.

"No."

"Or underground."

"Perhaps."

"There you're wrong. We wanted ourselves to do some sapping and mining.

It was no use. We're on a deposit of rock in which it's impossible to dig."

It was Paul's turn to smile:

"My dear chap, if you'll just be kind enough to lend me for one hour four strong men armed with picks and shovels, I shall be at ebrecourt to-night."

"I say! Four men to dig a six-mile tunnel through the rock in an hour!"

"That's ample. Also, you must promise absolute secrecy both as to the means employed and the rather curious discoveries to which they are bound to lead. I shall make a report to the general commanding in chief; but no one else is to know."

"Very well, I'll select my four fellows for you myself. Where am I to bring them to you?"

"On the terrace, near the donjon."

This terrace commands the Liseron from a height of some hundred and fifty feet and, in consequence of a loop in the river, is exactly opposite Corvigny, whose steeple and the neighboring hills are seen in the distance. Of the castle-keep nothing remains but its enormous base, which is continued by the foundation-walls, mingled with natural rocks, which support the terrace. A garden extends its clumps of laurels and spindle-trees to the parapet.

It was here that Paul went. Time after time he strode up and down the esplanade, leaning over the river and inspecting the blocks that had fallen from the keep under the mantle of ivy.

"Now then," said the lieutenant, on arriving with his men. "Is this your starting-point? I warn you we are standing with our backs to the frontier."

"Pooh!" replied Paul, in the same jesting tone. "All roads lead to Berlin!"

He pointed to a circle which he had marked out with stakes, and set the men to work:

"Go ahead, my lads."

They began to throw up, within a circle of three yards in circ.u.mference, a soil consisting of vegetable mold in which, in twenty minutes' time, they had dug a hole five feet deep. Here they came upon a layer of stones cemented together; and their work now became much more difficult, for the cement was of incredible hardness and they were only to break it up by inserting their picks into the cracks. Paul followed the operations with anxious attention.

After an hour, he told them to stop. He himself went down into the hole and then went on digging, but slowly and as though examining the effect of every blow that he struck.

"That's it!" he said, drawing himself up.

"What?" asked Bernard.

"The ground on which we are standing is only a floor of the big buildings that used to adjoin the old keep, buildings which were razed to the ground centuries ago and on the top of which this garden was laid out."

"Well?"

"Well, in clearing away the soil, I have broken through the ceiling of one of the old rooms. Look."

He took a stone, placed it right in the center of the narrower opening which he himself had made and let it drop. The stone disappeared. A dull sound followed almost immediately.

"All that need now be done is for the men to widen the entrance. In the meantime, we will go and fetch a ladder and lights: as much light as possible."

"We have pine torches," said the officer.

"That will do capitally."

Paul was right. When the ladder was let down and he had descended with the lieutenant and Bernard, they saw a very large hall, whose vaults were supported by ma.s.sive pillars which divided it, like a church of irregular design, into two main naves, with narrower and lower side-aisles.

But Paul at once called his companions' attention to the floor of those two naves:

"A concrete flooring, do you see? . . . And, look there, as I expected, two rails running along one of the upper galleries! . . . And here are two more rails in the other gallery! . . ."