The Woman of Mystery Part 33

"It's curious, you know, that the tunnel isn't better watched and that we have been able to come so far without accident."

"We'll give them a bad mark for that," said Bernard. "Kultur has made a slip."

Meanwhile a brisker draught blew along the walls. The outside air entered in cool gusts; and they suddenly saw a distant light through the darkness. It was stationary. Everything around it seemed still, as though it were one of those fixed signals which are put up near a railway.

When they came closer, they perceived that it was the light of an electric arc-lamp, that it was burning inside a shed standing at the exit of the tunnel and its rays were cast upon great white cliffs and upon little mounds of sand and pebbles.

Paul whispered:

"Those are quarries. By placing the entrance to their tunnel there, they were able to continue their works in time of peace without attracting attention. You may be sure that those so-called quarries were worked very discreetly, in a compound to which the workmen were confined."

"What Kultur!" Bernard repeated.

He felt Paul's hand grip his arm. Something had pa.s.sed in front of the light, like a shadow rising and falling immediately after.

With infinite caution they crawled up to the shed and raised themselves until their eyes were on a level with the windows. Inside were half a dozen soldiers, all lying down, or rather sprawling one across the other, among empty bottles, dirty plates, greasy paper wrappers and remnants of broken victuals. They were the men told off to guard the tunnel; and they were dead-drunk.

"More Kultur," said Bernard.

"We're in luck," said Paul, "and I now understand why the watch is so ill-kept: this is Sunday."

There was a telegraph-apparatus on a table and a telephone on the wall; and Paul saw under a gla.s.s case a switch-board with five bra.s.s handles, which evidently corresponded by electric wires with the five mine-chambers in the tunnel.

When they pa.s.sed on, Bernard and Paul continued to follow the rails along the bed of a narrow channel, hollowed out of the rock, which led them to an open s.p.a.ce bright with many lights. A whole village lay before them, consisting of barracks inhabited by soldiers whom they saw moving to and fro. They went outside it. They then noticed the sound of a motor-car and the blinding rays of two head-lights; and, after climbing a fence and pa.s.sing through a shrubbery, they saw a large villa lit up from top to bottom.

The car stopped in front of the doorstep, where some footmen were standing, as well as a guard of soldiers. Two officers and a lady wrapped in furs alighted. When the car turned, the lights revealed a large garden, contained within very high walls.

"It is just as I thought," said Paul. "This forms the counterpart of the Chateau d'Ornequin. At either end there are strong walls which allow work to be done un.o.bserved by prying eyes. The terminus is in the open air here, instead of underground, as it is down there; but at least the quarries, the work-yards, the barracks, the garrison, the villa belonging to the staff, the garden, the stables, all this military organization is surrounded by walls and no doubt guarded on the outside by sentries. That explains why one is able to move about so freely inside."

At that moment, a second motor-car set down three officers and then joined the other in the coach-house.

"There's a dinner-party on," said Bernard.

They resolved to approach as near as they could, under cover of the thick clumps of shrubs planted along the carriage-drive which surrounded the house.

They waited for some time; and then, from the sound of voices and laughter that came from the ground-floor, at the back, they concluded that this must be the scene of the banquet and that the guests were sitting down to dinner. There were bursts of song, shouts of applause.

Outside, nothing stirred. The garden was deserted.

"The place seems quiet," said Paul. "I shall ask you to give me a leg up and to keep hidden yourself."

"You want to climb to the ledge of one of the windows? What about the shutters?"

"I don't expect they're very close. You can see the light s.h.i.+ning through the middle."

"Well, but why are you doing it? There is no reason to bother about this house more than any other."

"Yes, there is. You yourself told me that one of the wounded prisoners said Prince Conrad had taken up his quarters in a villa outside ebrecourt. Now this one, standing in the middle of a sort of entrenched camp and at the entrance to the tunnel, seems to me marked out. . . ."

"Not to mention this really princely dinner-party," said Bernard, laughing. "You're right. Up you go."

They crossed the walk. With Bernard's a.s.sistance, Paul was easily able to grip the ledge above the bas.e.m.e.nt floor and to hoist himself to the stone balcony.

"That's it," he said. "Go back to where we were and whistle in case of danger."

After bestriding the bal.u.s.trade, he carefully loosened one of the shutters by pa.s.sing first his fingers and then his hand through the intervening s.p.a.ce; and he succeeded in unfastening the bolt. The curtains, being crossed inside, enabled him to move about unseen; but they were open at the top, leaving an inverted triangle through which he could see by climbing on to the bal.u.s.trade.

He did so and then bent forward and looked.

The sight that met his eyes was such and gave him so horrible a blow that his legs began to shake beneath him. . . .

CHAPTER XV

PRINCE CONRAD MAKES MERRY

A table running parallel with the three windows of the room. An incredible collection of bottles, decanters and gla.s.ses, hardly leaving room for the dishes of cake and fruit. Ornamental side-dishes flanked by bottles of champagne. A basket of flowers surrounded by liqueur-bottles.

Twenty persons were seated at table, including half-a-dozen women in low-necked dresses. The others were officers, covered with gold lace and orders.

In the middle, facing the window, sat Prince Conrad, presiding over the banquet, with a lady on his right and another on his left. And it was the sight of these three, brought together in the most improbable defiance of the logic of things, that caused Paul to undergo a torture which was renewed from moment to moment.

That one of the two women should be there, on the prince's right, sitting stiff-backed in her plum-colored stuff gown, with a black-lace scarf half-hiding her short hair, was easy to understand. But the other woman, to whom Prince Conrad kept turning with a clumsy affectation of gallantry, that woman whom Paul contemplated with horror-struck eyes and whom he would have liked to strangle where she sat, what was she doing there? What was elisabeth doing in the midst of those tipsy officers and dubious German women, beside Prince Conrad and beside the monstrous creature who was pursuing her with her hatred?

The Comtesse Hermine d'Andeville! elisabeth d'Andeville! The mother and the daughter! There was no plausible argument that would allow Paul to apply any other description to the prince's two companions. And something happened to give this description its full value of hideous reality when, a moment later, Prince Conrad rose to his feet, with a gla.s.s of champagne in his hand, and shouted:

"_Hoch! Hoch! Hoch!_ Here's to the health of our very wideawake friend!"

"_Hoch! Hoch! Hoch!_" shouted the band of guests. "The Comtesse Hermine!"

She took up a gla.s.s, emptied it at a draught and began to make a speech which Paul could not hear, while the others did their best to listen with a fervent attention which was all the more meritorious in view of their copious libations.

And elisabeth also sat and listened. She was wearing a gray gown which Paul knew well, quite a simple frock, cut very high in the neck and with sleeves that came down to her wrists. But from her throat a wonderful necklace, consisting of four rows of large pearls, hung over her bodice; and this necklace Paul did not know.

"The wretch! The wretch!" he spluttered.

She was smiling. Yes, he saw on the younger woman's lips a smile provoked by something that Prince Conrad said as he bent over her. And the prince gave such a boisterous laugh that the Comtesse Hermine, who was still speaking, called him to order by tapping him on the hand with her fan.

The whole scene was a horrible one for Paul; and he suffered such scorching anguish that his one idea was to get away, to see no more, to abandon the struggle and to drive this hateful wife of his out of his life and out of his memory.

"She is a true daughter of the Comtesse Hermine," he thought, in despair.

He was on the point of going, when a little incident held him back.

elisabeth raised to her eyes a handkerchief which she held crumpled in the hollow of her hand and furtively wiped away a tear that was ready to flow. At the same time he perceived that she was terribly pale, not with a fact.i.tious pallor, which until then he had attributed to the crudeness of the light, but with a real and deathly pallor. It was as though all the blood had fled from her poor face. And, after all, what a melancholy smile was that which had twisted her lips in response to the prince's jest!

"But then what is she doing here?" Paul asked himself. "Am I not ent.i.tled to regard her as guilty and to suppose that her tears are due to remorse? She has become cowardly through fear, threats and the wish to live; and now she is crying."