The Lost Road, etc.
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Richard Harding Davis >> The Lost Road, etc.
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Until the senior partner has finished with Gaskell young Thorne
must remain seated.
"Gaskell," said Mr. Carroll, "if we had listened to you, if we'd run
this place as it was when father was alive, this never would have
happened. It hasn't happened, but we've had our lesson. And
after this we're going slow and going straight. And we don't need
you to tell us how to do that. We want you to go away--on a month's
vacation. When I thought we were going under I planned to send the
children on a sea voyage with the governess--so they wouldn't see the
newspapers. But now that I can look them in the eye again, I need
them, I can't let them go. So, if you'd like to take your wife on an
ocean trip to Nova Scotia and Quebec, here are the cabins I reserved
for the kids. They call it the royal suite--whatever that is--and the trip
lasts a month. The boat sails to-morrow morning. Don't sleep too late
or you may miss her."
The head clerk was secreting the tickets in the inside pocket of
his waistcoat. His fingers trembled, and when he laughed his
voice trembled.
"Miss the boat!" the head clerk exclaimed. "If she gets away from
Millie and me she's got to start now. We'll go on board to-night!"
A half-hour later Millie was on her knees packing a trunk, and
her husband was telephoning to the drug-store for a sponge-bag
and a cure for seasickness.
Owing to the joy in her heart and to the fact that she was on her
knees, Millie was alternately weeping into the trunk-tray and
offering up incoherent prayers of thanksgiving. Suddenly she
sank back upon the floor.
"John!" she cried, "doesn't it seem sinful to sail away in a
'royal suite' and leave this beautiful flat empty?"
Over the telephone John was having trouble with the drug clerk.
"No!" he explained, "I'm not seasick now. The medicine I want is
to be taken later. I know I'm speaking from the Pavonia; but the
Pavonia isn't a ship; it's an apartment-house."
He turned to Millie. "We can't be in two places at the same
time," he suggested.
"But, think," insisted Millie, "of all the poor people stifling
to-night in this heat, trying to sleep on the roofs and fire-escapes;
and our flat so cool and big and pretty--and no one in it."
John nodded his head proudly.
"I know it's big," he said, "but it isn't big enough to hold all
the people who are sleeping to-night on the roofs and in the
parks."
"I was thinking of your brother--and Grace," said Millie. "They've
been married only two weeks now, and they're in a stuffy hall
bedroom and eating with all the other boarders. Think what our
flat would mean to them; to be by themselves, with eight rooms
and their own kitchen and bath, and our new refrigerator and the
gramophone! It would be heaven! It would be a real honeymoon!"
Abandoning the drug clerk, John lifted Millie in his arms and
kissed her, for, next to his wife, nearest his heart was the
younger brother.
The younger brother and Grace were sitting on the stoop of the
boarding-house. On the upper steps, in their shirt-sleeves, were
the other boarders; so the bride and bridegroom spoke in whispers.
The air of the cross street was stale and stagnant; from it rose
exhalations of rotting fruit, the gases of an open subway, the
smoke of passing taxicabs. But between the street and the hall
bedroom, with its odors of a gas-stove and a kitchen, the choice
was difficult.
"We've got to cool off somehow," the young husband was saying,
"or you won't sleep. Shall we treat ourselves to ice-cream sodas
or a trip on the Weehawken ferry-boat?"
"The ferry-boat!" begged the girl, "where we can get away from
all these people."
A taxicab with a trunk in front whirled into the street, kicked
itself to a stop, and the head clerk and Millie spilled out upon
the pavement. They talked so fast, and the younger brother and
Grace talked so fast, that the boarders, although they listened
intently, could make nothing of it.
They distinguished only the concluding sentences:
"Why don't you drive down to the wharf with us," they heard the
elder brother ask, "and see our royal suite?"
But the younger brother laughed him to scorn.
"What's your royal suite," he mocked, "to our royal palace?"
An hour later, had the boarders listened outside the flat of the
head clerk, they would have heard issuing from his bathroom the
cooling murmur of running water and from his gramophone the
jubilant notes of "Alexander's Rag-time Band."
When in his private office Carroll was making a present of the
royal suite to the head clerk, in the main office Hastings, the
junior partner, was addressing "Champ" Thorne, the bond clerk.
He addressed him familiarly and affectionately as "Champ." This
was due partly to the fact that twenty-six years before Thorne had
been christened Champneys and to the coincidence that he had
captained the football eleven of one of the Big Three to the
championship.
"Champ," said Mr. Hastings, "last month, when you asked me to
raise your salary, the reason I didn't do it was not because you
didn't deserve it, but because I believed if we gave you a raise
you'd immediately get married."
The shoulders of the ex-football captain rose aggressively; he
snorted with indignation.
"And why should I not get married?" he demanded. "You're a fine
one to talk! You're the most offensively happy married man I ever
met."
"Perhaps I know I am happy better than you do," reproved the
junior partner; "but I know also that it takes money to support a
wife."
"You raise me to a hundred a week," urged Champ, "and I'll make
it support a wife whether it supports me or not."
"A month ago," continued Hastings, "we could have promised you a
hundred, but we didn't know how long we could pay it. We didn't
want you to rush off and marry some fine girl--"
"Some fine girl!" muttered Mr. Thorne. "The finest girl!"
"The finer the girl," Hastings pointed out, "the harder it would
have been for you if we had failed and you had lost your job."
The eyes of the young man opened with sympathy and concern.
"Is it as bad as that?" he murmured.
Hastings sighed happily.
"It was," he said, "but this morning the Young Man of Wall Street
did us a good turn--saved us--saved our creditors, saved our homes,
saved our honor. We're going to start fresh and pay our debts, and
we agreed the first debt we paid would be the small one we owe you.
You've brought us more than we've given, and if you'll stay with us
we're going to 'see' your fifty and raise it a hundred. What do you
say?"
Young Mr. Thorne leaped to his feet. What he said was: "Where'n
hell's my hat?"
But by the time he had found the hat and the door he mended his
manners.
"I say, 'Thank you a thousand times,"' he shouted over his
shoulder. "Excuse me, but I've got to go. I've got to break the
news to--"
He did not explain to whom he was going to break the news; but
Hastings must have guessed, for again he sighed happily and then,
a little hysterically laughed aloud. Several months had passed
since he had laughed aloud.
In his anxiety to break the news Champ Thorne almost broke his
neck. In his excitement he could not remember whether the red
flash meant the elevator was going down or coming up, and sooner
than wait to find out he started to race down eighteen flights of
stairs when fortunately the elevator-door swung open.
"You get five dollars," he announced to the elevator man, "if you
drop to the street without a stop. Beat the speed limit! Act like
the building is on fire and you're trying to save me before the
roof falls."
Senator Barnes and his entire family, which was his daughter
Barbara, were at the Ritz-Carlton. They were in town in August
because there was a meeting of the directors of the Brazil and
Cuyaba Rubber Company, of which company Senator Barnes was
president. It was a secret meeting. Those directors who were
keeping cool at the edge of the ocean had been summoned by
telegraph; those who were steaming across the ocean, by wireless.
Up from the equator had drifted the threat of a scandal, sickening,
grim, terrible. As yet it burned beneath the surface, giving out only
an odor, but an odor as rank as burning rubber itself. At any moment
it might break into flame. For the directors, was it the better wisdom
to let the scandal smoulder, and take a chance, or to be the first to give
the alarm, the first to lead the way to the horror and stamp it out?
It was to decide this that, in the heat of August, the directors and the
president had foregathered.
Champ Thorne knew nothing of this; he knew only that by a miracle
Barbara Barnes was in town; that at last he was in a position to ask
her to marry him; that she would certainly say she would. That was
all he cared to know.
A year before he had issued his declaration of independence.
Before he could marry, he told her, he must be able to support a
wife on what he earned, without her having to accept money from
her father, and until he received "a minimum wage" of five thousand
dollars they must wait.
"What is the matter with my father's money?" Barbara had demanded.
Thorne had evaded the direct question.
"There is too much of it," he said.
"Do you object to the way he makes it?" insisted Barbara. "Because
rubber is most useful. You put it in golf balls and auto tires and
galoshes. There is nothing so perfectly respectable as galoshes.
And what is there 'tainted' about a raincoat?"
Thorne shook his head unhappily.
"It's not the finished product to which I refer," he stammered; "it's
the way they get the raw material."
"They get it out of trees," said Barbara. Then she exclaimed with
enlightenment--"Oh!" she cried, "you are thinking of the Congo.
There it is terrible! That is slavery. But there are no slaves on the
Amazon. The natives are free and the work is easy. They just tap
the trees the way the farmers gather sugar in Vermont. Father has
told me about it often."
Thorne had made no comment. He could abuse a friend, if the
friend were among those present, but denouncing any one he
disliked as heartily as he disliked Senator Barnes was a public
service he preferred to leave to others. And he knew besides that
if the father she loved and the man she loved distrusted each
other, Barbara would not rest until she learned the reason why.
One day, in a newspaper, Barbara read of the Puju Mayo atrocities,
of the Indian slaves in the jungles and backwaters of the Amazon,
who are offered up as sacrifices to "red rubber." She carried the
paper to her father. What it said, her father told her, was untrue,
and if it were true it was the first he had heard of it.
Senator Barnes loved the good things of life, but the thing he
loved most was his daughter; the thing he valued the highest was
her good opinion. So when for the first time she looked at him in
doubt, he assured her he at once would order an investigation.
"But, of course," he added, "it will be many months before our
agents can report. On the Amazon news travels very slowly."
In the eyes of his daughter the doubt still lingered.
"I am afraid," she said, "that that is true."
That was six months before the directors of the Brazil and Cuyaba
Rubber Company were summoned to meet their president at his
rooms in the Ritz-Carlton. They were due to arrive in half an hour,
and while Senator Barnes awaited their coming Barbara came to
him. In her eyes was a light that helped to tell the great news. It
gave him a sharp, jealous pang. He wanted at once to play a part
in her happiness, to make her grateful to him, not alone to this
stranger who was taking her away. So fearful was he that she
would shut him out of her life that had she asked for half his
kingdom he would have parted with it.
"And besides giving my consent," said the rubber king, "for which
no one seems to have asked, what can I give my little girl to make
her remember her old father? Some diamonds to put on her head,
or pearls to hang around her neck, or does she want a vacant lot
on Fifth Avenue?"
The lovely hands of Barbara rested upon his shoulders; her lovely
face was raised to his; her lovely eyes were appealing, and a little
frightened.
"What would one of those things cost?" asked Barbara.
The question was eminently practical. It came within the scope of
the senator's understanding. After all, he was not to be cast into
outer darkness. His smile was complacent. He answered airily:
"Anything you like," he said; "a million dollars?"
The fingers closed upon his shoulders. The eyes, still frightened,
still searched his in appeal.
"Then, for my wedding-present," said the girl, "I want you to take
that million dollars and send an expedition to the Amazon. And I
will choose the men. Men unafraid; men not afraid of fever or
sudden death; not afraid to tell the truth--even to you. And all the
world will know. And they--I mean you--will set those people free!"
Senator Barnes received the directors with an embarrassment which
he concealed under a manner of just indignation.
"My mind is made up," he told them. "Existing conditions cannot
continue. And to that end, at my own expense, I am sending an
expedition across South America. It will investigate, punish, and
establish reforms. I suggest, on account of this damned heat, we
do now adjourn."
That night, over on Long Island, Carroll told his wife all, or
nearly all. He did not tell her about the automatic pistol. And
together on tiptoe they crept to the nursery and looked down at
their sleeping children. When she rose from her knees the mother
said: "But how can I thank him?"
By "him" she meant the Young Man of Wall Street.
"You never can thank him," said Carroll; "that's the worst of it."
But after a long silence the mother said: "I will send him a
photograph of the children. Do you think he will understand?"
Down at Seabright, Hastings and his wife walked in the sunken
garden. The moon was so bright that the roses still held their
color.
"I would like to thank him," said the young wife. She meant the
Young Man of Wall Street. "But for him we would have lost this."
Her eyes caressed the garden, the fruit-trees, the house with wide,
hospitable verandas. "To-morrow I will send him some of these
roses," said the young wife. "Will he understand that they mean
our home?"
At a scandalously late hour, in a scandalous spirit of independence,
Champ Thorne and Barbara were driving around Central Park in a
taxicab.
"How strangely the Lord moves, his wonders to perform," misquoted
Barbara. "Had not the Young Man of Wall Street saved Mr. Hastings,
Mr. Hastings could not have raised your salary; you would not have
asked me to marry you, and had you not asked me to marry you,
father would not have given me a wedding-present, and--"
"And," said Champ, taking up the tale, "thousands of slaves would
still be buried in the jungles, hidden away from their wives and
children and the light of the sun and their fellow men. They
still would be dying of fever, starvation, tortures."
He took her hand in both of his and held her finger-tips against
his lips.
"And they will never know," he whispered, "when their freedom
comes, that they owe it all to you."
On Hunter's Island, Jimmie Reeder and his bunkie, Sam Sturges,
each on his canvas cot, tossed and twisted. The heat, the moonlight,
and the mosquitoes would not let them even think of sleep.
"That was bully," said Jimmie, "what you did to-day about saving
that dog. If it hadn't been for you he'd ha' drownded."
"He would not!" said Sammy with punctilious regard for the truth;
"it wasn't deep enough."
"Well, the scout-master ought to know," argued Jimmie; "he said
it was the best 'one good turn' of the day!"
Modestly Sam shifted the lime-light so that it fell upon his
bunkie.
"I'll bet," he declared loyally, "your 'one good turn' was a
better one!"
Jimmie yawned, and then laughed scornfully.
"Me!" he scoffed. "I didn't do nothing. I sent my sister to the
movies."
"SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE"
Marie Gessler, known as Marie Chaumontel, Jeanne d'Avrechy,
the Countess d'Aurillac, was German. Her father, who served
through the Franco-Prussian War, was a German spy. It was
from her mother she learned to speak French sufficiently well
to satisfy even an Academician and, among Parisians, to pass
as one. Both her parents were dead. Before they departed,
knowing they could leave their daughter nothing save their
debts, they had had her trained as a nurse. But when they
were gone, Marie in the Berlin hospitals played politics,
intrigued, indiscriminately misused the appealing, violet
eyes. There was a scandal; several scandals. At the age of
twenty-five she was dismissed from the Municipal Hospital,
and as now-save for the violet eyes--she was without resources,
as a compagnon de voyage with a German doctor she travelled
to Monte Carlo. There she abandoned the doctor for Henri
Ravignac, a captain in the French Aviation Corps, who,
when his leave ended, escorted her to Paris.
The duties of Captain Ravignac kept him in barracks near the
aviation field, but Marie he established in his apartments on the
Boulevard Haussmann. One day he brought from the barracks a
roll of blue-prints, and as he was locking them in a drawer, said:
"The Germans would pay through the nose for those!" The remark
was indiscreet, but then Marie had told him she was French, and
any one would have believed her.
The next morning the same spirit of adventure that had exiled her
from the Berlin hospitals carried her with the blue-prints to the
German embassy. There, greatly shocked, they first wrote down her
name and address, and then, indignant at her proposition, ordered
her out. But the day following a strange young German who was
not at all indignant, but, on the contrary, quite charming, called
upon Marie. For the blue-prints he offered her a very large sum,
and that same hour with them and Marie departed for Berlin. Marie
did not need the money. Nor did the argument that she was serving
her country greatly impress her. It was rather that she loved intrigue.
And so she became a spy.
Henri Ravignac, the man she had robbed of the blue-prints, was tried
by court-martial. The charge was treason, but Charles Ravignac, his
younger brother, promised to prove that the guilty one was the girl,
and to that end obtained leave of absence and spent much time and
money. At the trial he was able to show the record of Marie in
Berlin and Monte Carlo; that she was the daughter of a German
secret agent; that on the afternoon the prints disappeared Marie,
with an agent of the German embassy, had left Paris for Berlin.
In consequence of this the charge of selling military secrets was
altered to one of "gross neglect," and Henri Ravignac was sentenced
to two years in the military prison at Tours. But he was of an ancient
and noble family, and when they came to take him from his cell in the
Cherche-Midi, he was dead. Charles, his brother, disappeared. It was
said he also had killed himself; that he had been appointed a military
attache in South America; that to revenge his brother he had entered
the secret service; but whatever became of him no one knew. All that
was certain was that, thanks to the act of Marie Gessler, on the rolls
of the French army the ancient and noble name of Ravignac no longer
appeared.
In her chosen profession Marie Gessler found nothing discreditable.
Of herself her opinion was not high, and her opinion of men was
lower. For her smiles she had watched several sacrifice honor, duty,
loyalty; and she held them and their kind in contempt. To lie, to
cajole, to rob men of secrets they thought important, and of secrets
the importance of which they did not even guess, was to her merely
an intricate and exciting game.
She played it very well. So well that in the service her advance
was rapid. On important missions she was sent to Russia, through
the Balkans; even to the United States. There, with credentials
as an army nurse, she inspected our military hospitals and
unobtrusively asked many innocent questions.
When she begged to be allowed to work in her beloved Paris,
"they" told her when war came "they" intended to plant her
inside that city, and that, until then, the less Paris knew of
her the better.
But just before the great war broke, to report on which way Italy
might jump, she was sent to Rome, and it was not until September
she was recalled. The telegram informed her that her Aunt
Elizabeth was ill, and that at once she must return to Berlin.
This, she learned from the code book wrapped under the cover
of her thermos bottle, meant that she was to report to the general
commanding the German forces at Soissons.
From Italy she passed through Switzerland, and, after leaving Basle,
on military trains was rushed north to Luxemburg, and then west to
Laon. She was accompanied by her companion, Bertha, an elderly
and respectable, even distinguished-looking female. In the secret
service her number was 528. Their passes from the war office
described them as nurses of the German Red Cross. Only the
Intelligence Department knew their real mission. With her, also,
as her chauffeur, was a young Italian soldier of fortune, Paul
Anfossi. He had served in the Belgian Congo, in the French
Foreign Legion in Algiers, and spoke all the European languages.
In Rome, where as a wireless operator he was serving a commercial
company, in selling Marie copies of messages he had memorized,
Marie had found him useful, and when war came she obtained
for him, from the Wilhelmstrasse, the number 292. From Laon,
in one of the automobiles of the General Staff, the three spies
were driven first to Soissons, and then along the road to Meaux
and Paris, to the village of Neufchelles. They arrived at midnight,
and in a chateau of one of the Champagne princes, found the
colonel commanding the Intelligence Bureau. He accepted their
credentials, destroyed them, and replaced them with a laissez-
passer signed by the mayor of Laon. That dignitary, the colonel
explained, to citizens of Laon fleeing to Paris and the coast had
issued many passes. But as now between Laon and Paris there were
three German armies, the refugees had been turned back and their
passes confiscated.
"From among them," said the officer, "we have selected one for
you. It is issued to the wife of Count d'Aurillac, a captain of
reserves, and her aunt, Madame Benet. It asks for those ladies
and their chauffeur, Briand, a safe-conduct through the French
military lines. If it gets you into Paris you will destroy it and
assume another name. The Count d'Aurillac is now with his
regiment in that city. If he learned of the presence there of his
wife, he would seek her, and that would not be good for you. So,
if you reach Paris, you will become a Belgian refugee. You are
high-born and rich. Your chateau has been destroyed. But you
have money. You will give liberally to the Red Cross. You will
volunteer to nurse in the hospitals. With your sad story of ill
treatment by us, with your high birth, and your knowledge of
nursing, which you acquired, of course, only as an amateur, you
should not find it difficult to join the Ladies of France, or the
American Ambulance. What you learn from the wounded English
and French officers and the French doctors you will send us through
the usual channels."
"When do I start?" asked the woman.
"For a few days," explained the officer, "you remain in this chateau.
You will keep us informed of what is going forward after we
withdraw."
"Withdraw?" It was more of an exclamation than a question. Marie
was too well trained to ask questions.
"We are taking up a new position," said the officer, "on the
Aisne."
The woman, incredulous, stared.
"And we do not enter Paris?"
"You do," returned the officer. "That is all that concerns you.
We will join you later--in the spring. Meanwhile, for the winter
we intrench ourselves along the Aisne. In a chimney of this
chateau we have set up a wireless outfit. We are leaving it intact.
The chauffeur Briand--who, you must explain to the French, you
brought with you from Laon, and who has been long in your
service--will transmit whatever you discover. We wish especially
to know of any movement toward our left. If they attack in front
from Soissons, we are prepared; but of any attempt to cross the
Oise and take us in flank you must warn us."
The officer rose and hung upon himself his field-glasses,
map-cases, and side-arms.
"We leave you now," he said. "When the French arrive you will
tell them your reason for halting at this chateau was that the owner,
Monsieur Iverney, and his family are friends of your husband. You
found us here, and we detained you. And so long as you can use the
wireless, make excuses to remain. If they offer to send you on to Paris,
tell them your aunt is too ill to travel."
"But they will find the wireless," said the woman. "They are sure to
use the towers for observation, and they will find it."
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