Soane glared at the crowd out of enraged and blood-shot eyes:
"G"wan home, ye bunch of b.u.ms!" he said thickly, and slammed the door to the Family Entrance of Grogan"s notorious cafe.
At 42d Street and Madison Avenue the taxi stopped and Souchez and Alost got out and went rapidly across the street toward the Grand Central depot. Then the taxi proceeded west, north again, then once more west.
Renoux, busy with a bleeding nose, remarked carelessly that Souchez and Alost were taking a train and were in a hurry, and that he himself was going back to the Astor.
"You do not mind coming with me, Barres?" he added. "In my rooms we can have a bite and a gla.s.s together, and then we can brush up. That was a nice little fight, was it not, mon ami?"
"Fine," said Barres with satisfaction.
"Quite like the old and happy days," mused Renoux, surveying wilted collar and rumpled tie of his comrade. "You came off well; you have merely a bruised cheek." His eyes began to sparkle and he laughed: "Do you remember that May evening when your very quarrelsome atelier barricaded the Cafe de la Source and forbade us to enter--and my atelier marched down the Boul" Mich" with its Kazoo band playing our atelier march, determined to take your cafe by a.s.sault? Oh, my! What a delightful fight that was!"
"Your crazy comrades stuffed me into the fountain among the goldfish.
I thought I"d drown," said Barres, laughing.
"I know, but your atelier gained a great victory that night, and you came over to Muller"s with your Kazoo band playing the Fireman"s March, and you carried away our palms and bay-trees in their green tubs, and you threw them over the Pont-au-Change into the Seine!----"
They were laughing like a pair of schoolboys now, quite convulsed and holding to each other.
"Do you remember," gasped Barres, "that girl who danced the Carmagnole on the Quay?"
"Yvonne Tete-de-Linotte!"
"And the British giant from Julien"s, who threw everybody out of the Cafe Montparna.s.se and invited the Quarter in to a free banquet?"
"McNeil!"
"What ever became of that pretty girl, Doucette de Valmy?"
"Oh, it was she who cheered on your atelier to the a.s.sault on Mullers!----"
Laughter stifled them.
"What crazy creatures we all were," said Renoux, staunching the last crimson drops oozing from his nose. Then, more soberly: "We French have a grimmer affair over there than the joyous rows of the Latin Quarter. I"m sorry now that we didn"t throw every waiter in Muller"s after the bay-trees. There would have been so many fewer spies to betray France."
The taxi stopped at the 44th Street entrance to the Astor. They descended, Renoux leading, walked through the corridor to Peac.o.c.k Alley, turned to the right through the bar, then to the left into the lobby, and thence to the elevator.
In Renoux"s rooms they turned on the electric light, locked the door, closed the transom, then spread their plunder out on a table.
To Renoux"s disgust his own loot consisted of sealed envelopes full of clippings from German newspapers published in Chicago, Milwaukee, and New York.
"That animal, Lehr," he said with a wry face, "has certainly played us a filthy turn. These clippings amount to nothing----" His eyes fell on the packet of papers which Barres was now opening, and he leaned over his shoulder to look.
"Thank G.o.d!" he said, "here they are! Where on earth did you find these papers, Barres? They"re the doc.u.ments we were after! They ought to have been in Lehr"s pockets!"
"He must have pa.s.sed them to the fellow who b.u.mped into me near the wash-room," said Barres, enchanted at his luck. "What a fortunate chance that you sent me around there!"
Renoux, delighted, stood under the electric light unfolding doc.u.ment after doc.u.ment, and nodding his handsome, mischievous head with satisfaction.
"What luck, Barres! What did you do to the fellow?"
"Thumped him to sleep and turned out his pockets. Are these really what you want?"
"I should say so! This is precisely what we are looking for!"
"Do you mind if I read them, too?"
"No, I don"t. Why should I? You"re my loyal comrade and you understand discretion.... _What_ do you think of _this_!" displaying a typewritten doc.u.ment marked "Copy," enclosing a sheaf of maps.
It contained plans of all the East River and Harlem bridges, a tracing showing the course of the new aqueduct and the Ashokan Dam, drawings of the Navy Yard, a map of Iona Island, and a plan of the Welland Ca.n.a.l.
The doc.u.ment was brief:
"Included in report by _K17_ to Diplomatic Agent controlling Section 7-4-11-B. Recommended that detail plan of DuPont works be made without delay.
"SKEEL."
Followed several sheets in cipher, evidently some intricate variation of those which are always ultimately solved by experts.
But the doc.u.ments that were now unfolded by Captain Renoux proved readable and intensely interesting.
These were the papers which Renoux read and which Barres read over his shoulder:
"(Copy)
Berlin Military Telegraph Office Telegram
Berlin. Political Division of the General Staff Nr. Pol. 6431.
(SECRET)
8, Moltkestra.s.se, Berlin, NW, 40.
March 20, 1916.
"FEREZ BEY, N. Y.
"Referring to your correspondence and conversations with Colonel Skeel, I most urgently request that the necessary funds be raised through the New York banker, Adolf Gerhardt; also that Bernstorff be immediately informed through Boy-Ed, so that plans of Head General Staff of Army on campaign may not be delayed.
"Begin instantly enlist and train men, secure and arm power-boat a.s.semble equipment and explosives, Welland Ca.n.a.l Exp"d"n. War Office No. 159-16, Secret U. K.:--T, 3, P."
"Foreign Office, Berlin,
"Dec. 28, 1914.
"DEAR SIR ROGER:--I have the honour to acknowledge receipt of your letter of the 23d inst., in which you submitted to his Imperial Majesty"s Government a proposal for the formation of an Irish brigade which would be pledged to fight only for the cause of Irish nationalism, and which is to be composed of any Irish prisoners of war willing to join such a regiment.