"You see what the letter says," Hillyard explained. "These tubes have been very successful in France."
Marnier nodded his head:
"If you will leave them with me, I will show them to our chemists, and perhaps, in a few days, I will have news for you."
For a week Hillyard took his ease in Paris and was glad of the rest in the midst of those strenuous days. He received one morning at his hotel, a batch of letters, many of which had been written months before. But two were of recent date. Henry Luttrell wrote to him:
"_My battalion did splendidly and our debt to old Oakley is great. There is only a handful of us left and we are withdrawn, of course, from the lines. By some miracle I escaped without a hurt. Everybody has been very generous, making it up to us for our bad times. The Corps Commander came and threw bouquets in person, and we hear that D.H.
himself is going out of his way to come and inspect us. I go home on leave in a fortnight and hope to come back in command of the battalion. Perhaps we may meet in London. Let me hear if that is possible._"
The second letter had been sent from Rackham Park, and in it Millie Splay wrote:
"_We have not heard from you for years. Will you be in England this August? We are trying to gather again our old Goodwood party. Both Dennis Brown and Harold Jupp will be home on leave. There will be no Goodwood of course, but there is a meeting at Gatwick which is easily reached from here. Do come if you can and bring your friend with you, if he is in London and has nothing better to do. We have all been reading about him in the papers, and Chichester is very proud of belonging to the same mess, and says what a wonderful thing it must be to be able to get into the papers like that, without trying to._"
Hillyard could see the smile upon Lady Splay"s face as she wrote that sentence. Hillyard laughed as he read it but it was less in amus.e.m.e.nt as from pleasure at the particular information which this sentence contained. Harry Luttrell had clearly won a special distinction in the hard fighting at Thiepval. There was not a word in Harry"s letter to suggest it. There would not be. All his pride and joy would be engrossed by the great fact that his battalion had increased its good name.
There was a closing sentence in Millie Splay"s letter which brought another smile to his lips.
"_Linda Spavinsky is, alas, going as strong as ever. She was married last week, in violet, as you will remember, to the Funeral March of a Marionette and already she is in the throes of domestic unhappiness. Her husband, fleshy, of course, red in the face, and accustomed to sleep after dinner, simply_ WON"T _understand her._"
Here again Hillyard was able to see the smile on Millicent Splay"s face, but it was a smile rather rueful and it ended, no doubt, in a sigh of annoyance. Hillyard himself was caught away to quite another scene. He was once more in the small motor-car on the top of Duncton Hill, and looked out over the Weald of Suss.e.x to the Blackdown and Hindhead, and the slopes of Leith Hill, imagined rather than seen, in the summer haze.
He saw Joan Whitworth"s rapt face, and heard her eager cry.
"Look out over the Weald of Suss.e.x, so that you can carry it away with you in your breast. Isn"t it worth everything--banishment, suffering--everything? Not the people so much, but the earth itself and the jolly homes upon it!"
A pa.s.sage followed which disturbed him:
"_There are other things too. My magnolia is still in bud. I dread a blight before the flower opens._"
It was a cry of distress--nothing less than that--uttered in some moment of intense depression. Else it would never have been allowed to escape at all.
Hillyard folded up the letter. He would be going home in any case. There were those tubes. There was B45. He had enjoyed no leave since he had left England. Yes, he would go down to Rackham Park, and take Harry Luttrell with him if he could.
Two days later the Commandant Marnier came to see him at the Ritz Hotel.
They dined together in a corner of the restaurant.
"We have solved the problem of those tubes," said Marnier. "They are nothing more nor less than time-fuses."
"Time-fuses!" Hillyard repeated. "I don"t understand."
"Listen!"
Marnier looked around. There was no one near enough to overhear him, if he did not raise his voice; and he was careful to speak in a whisper.
"Two things." He ticked them off upon his fingers. "First, hydrofluoric acid when brought into contact with certain forms of explosive will create a fire. Second, hydrofluoric acid will bite its way through gla.s.s. The thicker the gla.s.s, the longer the time required to set the acid free. Do you follow?"
"Yes," said Hillyard.
"Good! Make a gla.s.s tube of such thickness that it will take hydrofluoric acid four hours and a half to eat its way through. Then fill it with acid and seal it up. You have a time-fuse which will act precisely in four hours and a half."
"If it comes into contact with the necessary explosive," Hillyard added.
"Exactly. Now attend to this! Our workmen in our munition factories work three hours and a half. Then they go to their luncheon."
"Munition factories!" said Hillyard with a start.
"Yes, my friend. Munition factories. We are short of labour as you know.
Our men are in the firing line. We must get labour from some other source. And there is only one source."
"The neutrals," Hillyard exclaimed.
"Yes, the neutrals, and especially the neutrals who are near to us, who can come without difficulty and without much expense. We have a good many Spanish workmen in our munition factories and three of these factories have recently been burnt down. We have the proof now, thanks to you, that those little gla.s.s tubes so carefully manufactured in Berlin to last four hours and a half and no more, set the fires going."
"Proof, you say?" Hillyard asked earnestly. "It is not probability or moral certainty? It is actual bed-rock proof?"
"Yes. For once our chemists had grasped how these tubes could be used, we knew what to look for when the workmen were searched on entering the factory. Two days ago we caught a man. He had one of these little tubes in his mouth and in the lining of his waistcoat, just a little high explosive, so little was necessary that it must escape notice unless you knew what to search for. Yes, we caught him and he, the good fellow, the good honest neutral"--it would be difficult to describe the bitterness and scorn which rang through Marnier"s words, "has been kind enough to tell me how he earned his German pay as well as his French wages."
Hillyard leaned forward.
"Yes, tell me that!"
"On his way to the factory in the morning, he makes a call."
"Yes."
"The one on whom he calls fills the tube or has it just filled and gives it to the workman. The time fuse is set for four hours and a half. The workman has so arranged it that he will reach the factory half an hour after the tube is filled. He pa.s.ses the searcher. At his place he takes off his waistcoat and hangs it up and in the pocket, just separated from the explosive by the lining of the waistcoat, he places, secretly, the tube. The tube has now four hours of life and the workman three and a half hours of work. When the whistle goes to knock off for luncheon, the workman leaves his waist coat still hanging up on the peg and goes out in the stream. But half an hour afterwards, half-way through the hour of luncheon, the acid reaches the explosive. There is a tiny explosion in that empty hall, not enough to make a great noise, but quite enough to start a big fire; and when the workmen return, the building is ablaze.
No lives are lost, but the factory is burnt down."
Hillyard sat for a little while in thought.
"Perhaps you can tell me," he said at length. "I hear nothing from England or very little; and naturally. Are we obtaining Spanish workmen, too, for our munition factories?"
"Yes."
It was clear now why B45 was especially suitable for this work. B45 was Mario Escobar, a Spaniard himself.
"And filling the tubes! That is simple?"
"A child could do it," answered Marnier.
"Thank you," said Martin Hillyard.
The next evening he left Paris and travelling all night to Boulogne, reached London in the early afternoon of the following day. Twenty months had pa.s.sed since he had set foot there.
CHAPTER XIX