"Yes, if you want to get run over."
Without waiting for her, he turned, shouldered the ladder, and made for a platform on the inner side of the bay. A ten-foot wall indicated the station"s boundary. Irene ran after him. Within a few yards they were hidden by the train from the sentry"s sight.
"That was clever of you!" she whispered breathlessly.
"Speak German, even when you think we are alone," he commanded.
The platform curved sharply, and the train was a long one. When they neared the engine they saw three men standing there. Dalroy at once wrapped the lamp in a fold of his blouse, and leaped into the black shadow cast by the wall, which lay athwart the flood of moonlight pouring into the open part of the station. Quick to take the cue, it being suicidal to think of bamboozling local railway officials, Irene followed. Kicking off the clumsy sabots, Dalroy bade his companion pick them up, ran back some thirty yards, and placed the ladder against the wall. Mounting swiftly, he found, to his great relief, that some sheds with low-pitched roofs were ranged beneath; otherwise, the height of the wall, if added to the elevation of the station generally above the external ground level, might well have proved disastrous.
"Up you come," he said, seating himself astride the coping-stones, and holding the top of the ladder.
Irene was soon perched there too. He pulled up the ladder, and lowered it to a roof.
"Now, you grab hard in case it slips," he said.
Disdaining the rungs, he slid down. He had hardly gathered his poise before the girl tumbled into his arms, one of the heavy wooden shoes she was carrying giving him a smart tap on the head.
"These men!" she gasped. "They saw me, and shouted."
Dalroy imagined that the trio near the engine must have noted the swinging lantern and its sudden disappearance. With the instant decision born of polo and pig-sticking in India, he elected now not to essay the slanting roof just where they stood. Shouldering the ladder again, he made off toward a strip of shadow which seemed to indicate the end of a somewhat higher shed. He was right. Irene followed, and they crouched there in panting silence.
Nearly every German is a gymnast, and it was no surprise to Dalroy when one of their pursuers mounted on the shoulders of a friend and gained the top of the wall.
"There"s nothing to be seen here," he announced after a brief survey.
The pair beneath must have answered, because he went on, evidently in reply, "Oh, I saw it myself. And I"m sure there was some one up here.
There"s a sentry on No. 5. Run, Fritz, and ask him if a man with a lantern has pa.s.sed recently. I"ll mount guard till you return."
Happily a train approached, and, in the resultant din Dalroy was enabled to scramble down the roof unheard.
The ladder just reached the ground; so, before Fritz and the sentry began to suspect that some trickery was afoot in that part of the station, the two fugitives were speeding through a dark lane hemmed in by warehouses. At the first opportunity, Dalroy extinguished the lantern. Then he bethought him of his companion"s appearance. He halted suddenly ere they entered a lighted thoroughfare.
"I had better put on these clogs again," he said. "But what about you?
It will never do for a lady in smart attire to be seen walking through the streets with a ruffian like me at one o"clock in the morning."
For answer, the girl took off her hat and tore away a cl.u.s.ter of roses and a coquettish bow of ribbon. Then she discarded her jacket, which she adjusted loosely across her shoulders.
"Now I ought to look raffish enough for anything," she said cheerfully.
Singularly enough, her confidence raised again in Dalroy"s mind a lurking doubt which the success thus far achieved had not wholly stilled.
"My candid advice to you now, Miss Beresford, is that you leave me," he said. "You will come to no harm in the main streets, and you speak German so well that you should have little difficulty in reaching the Dutch frontier. Once in Holland you can travel to Brussels by way of Antwerp. I believe England has declared war against Germany. The behaviour of Von Halwig and those other Prussians is most convincing on that point. If so----"
"Does my presence imperil you, Captain Dalroy?" she broke in. She could have said nothing more unwise, nothing so subtly calculated to stir a man"s pride.
"No," he answered shortly.
"Why, then, are you so anxious to get rid of me, after risking your life to save me a few minutes ago?"
"I am going straight into Belgium. I deem it my duty. I may pick up information of the utmost military value."
"Then I go into Belgium too, unless you positively refuse to be bothered with my company. I simply must reach my sister without a moment of unnecessary delay. And is it really sensible to stand here arguing, so close to the station?"
They went on without another word. Dalroy was ruffled by the suggestion that he might be seeking his own safety. Trust any woman to find the joint in any man"s armour when it suits her purpose.
Aix-la-Chapelle was more awake on that Wednesday morning at one o"clock than on any ordinary day at the same hour in the afternoon. The streets were alive with excited people, the taverns and smaller shops open, the main avenues crammed with torrents of troops streaming westward.
Regimental bands struck up martial airs as column after column debouched from the various stations. When the musicians paused for sheer lack of breath the soldiers bawled "_Deutschland, Deutschland, uber alles_" or "_Die Wacht am Rhine_" at the top of their voices. The uproar was, as the Germans love to say, colossal. The enthusiasm was colossal too.
Aix-la-Chapelle might have been celebrating a great national festival.
It seemed ludicrous to regard the community as in the throes of war. The populace, the officers, even the heavy-jowled peasants who formed the majority of the regiments then hurrying to the front, seemed to be intoxicated with joy. Dalroy was surprised at first. He was not prepared for the savage exultation with which German militarism leaped to its long-dreamed-of task of conquering Europe.
Irene Beresford, momentarily more alive than he to the exigencies of their position, bought a common shawl at a shop in a side street, and threw away her tattered hat with a careless laugh. She was an excellent actress. The woman who served her had not the remotest notion that this bright-eyed girl belonged to the hated English race.
The incident brought back Dalroy"s vagrom thoughts from German methods of making war to the serious business which was his own particular concern. The shop was only a couple of doors removed from the Franz Stra.s.se; he waited for Irene at the corner, buying some cheap cigars and a box of matches at a tobacconist"s kiosk. He still retained the lantern, which lent a touch of character. The carriage-cleaner"s breeches were wide and loose at the ankles, and concealed his boots.
Between the sabots and his own heels he had added some inches to his height, so he could look easily over the heads of the crowd; he was watching the pa.s.sing of a battery of artillery when an open automobile was jerked to a standstill directly in front of him. In the car was seated Von Halwig.
That sprig of Prussian n.o.bility was in a mighty hurry, but even he dared not interfere too actively with troops in motion, so, to pa.s.s the time as it were, he rolled his eyes in anger at the crowd on the pavement.
It was just possible that Irene might appear inopportunely, so Dalroy rejoined her, and led her to the opposite side of the cross street, where a wagon and horses hid her from the Guardsman"s sharp eyes.
Thus it happened that Chance again took the wanderers under her wing.
A short, thick-set Walloon had emptied a gla.s.s of schnapps at the counter of a small drinking-bar which opened on to the street, and was bidding the landlady farewell.
"I must be off," he said. "I have to be in Vise by daybreak. This cursed war has kept me here a whole day. Who is fighting who, I"d like to know?"
"Vise!" guffawed a man seated at the bar. "You"ll never get there. The army won"t let you pa.s.s."
"That"s the army"s affair, not mine," was the typically Flemish answer, and the other came out, mounted the wagon, chirped to his horses, and made away.
Dalroy was able to note the name on a small board affixed to the side of the vehicle: "Henri Joos, miller, Vise."
"That fellow lives in Belgium," he whispered to Irene, who had draped the shawl over her head and neck, and now carried the jacket rolled into a bundle. "He is just the sort of dogged countryman who will tackle and overcome all obstacles. I fancy he is carrying oats to a mill, and will be known to the frontier officials. Shall we bargain with him for a lift?"
"It sounds the very thing," agreed the girl.
In their eagerness, neither took the precaution of buying something to eat. They overtook the wagon before it pa.s.sed the market. The driver was not Joos, but Joos"s man. He was quite ready to earn a few francs, or marks--he did not care which--by conveying a couple of pa.s.sengers to the placid little town of whose mere existence the wide world outside Belgium was unaware until that awful first week in August 1914.
And so it came to pa.s.s that Dalroy and his protege pa.s.sed out of Aix-la-Chapelle without let or hindrance, because the driver, spurred to an effort of the imagination by promise of largesse, described Irene to the Customs men as Henri Joos"s niece, and Dalroy as one deputed by the railway to see that a belated consignment of oats was duly delivered to the miller.
Neither rural Germany nor rural Belgium was yet really at war. The monstrous shadow had darkened the chancelleries, but it was hardly perceptible to the common people. Moreover, how could red-fanged war affect a remote place like Vise? The notion was nonsensical. Even Dalroy allowed himself to a.s.sure his companion that there was now a reasonable prospect of reaching Belgian soil without incurring real danger. Yet, in truth, he was taking her to an inferno of which the like is scarce known to history. The gate which opened at the Customs barrier gave access apparently to a good road leading through an undulating country. In sober truth, it led to an earthly h.e.l.l.
CHAPTER III
FIRST BLOOD