A Prince of the Captivity (Unabridged). Buchan John

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СКАЧАТЬ a string of foul names, and the black eyes under the tinted lids blazed a warning. He had to submit to be soundly cuffed by the soldiers, and to see the woman dragged screaming into a covered waggon. After that it took him a long time to recover his peace of mind. The words of the old man in the Northamptonshire village were his chief comfort. “You must be prepared to sacrifice much that you think honourable and of good report if you would fulfil the whole Law.”

      On a certain day in March ‘17 an urchin from the village brought Jules a message which had been left for him by a farmer from the Sambre side— that he had better bestir himself about the summering of the young beasts. It was an agreed password, and it made Jules knit his brows, for it meant that the long chain of intelligence which he supervised was in danger. That night he went on his travels and presently his fears were confirmed. The enemy had discovered one link and might discover the whole, for the interconnection was close, unless his suspicions could be switched on to a different track.

      Three nights later Jules found a British aeroplane at a place agreed on for emergency meetings, meetings appointed by a very delicate and bold method which was only to be used in an hour of crisis. There was a passenger beside the pilot, an officer in a great blanket coat, who sat hunched on the ground and listened with a grim face to Jules’s story.

      “What devil’s own luck!” he said. “At this time of all others! The Arras affair as you know is due in three weeks—and there are others to follow. We simply cannot do without your crowd. Have you anything to suggest?”

      “Yes,” was the answer. “I have thought it all out, and there is one way. The enemy is on the alert and must be soothed down. That can be done only by giving him good ground for his suspicions—but it must not be the right ground. We want a decoy. You follow me, sir?”

      The other nodded. “But what—or rather who?” he asked.

      “Myself. You see, sir, I think I have done my work here. The machine is working well, and I can safely hand over the direction of it to S. S. I have taught him all I know, and he’s a sound fellow. It’s the machine that matters, not me, so my proposal is that to save the machine I draw suspicion on myself. I know the Germans pretty well, and they like to hunt one hare at a time. I can so arrange it that every doubt and suspicion they entertain can be made to fasten on me. I will give them a run for their money, and after that S. S. and his lads will be allowed to function in peace.”

      “Gad, that’s a sporting notion,” said the officer. “But what about yourself? Can you keep out of their hands long enough?”

      “I think so. I know the countryside better than most people, and I have a good many possible lairs. I shall want a clear week to make arrangements, for they are bound to be rather complicated. For one thing I must get Mother Raus to a hole where she cannot be found. Then I press the button and become a fugitive. I think I can count on keeping the hounds in full cry for a week.”

      “Won’t it be hard to pick you up if the pace is hot?”

      “I don’t want to be picked up. I must draw the hunt as far east as possible—away from the front. That will make S. S. and his machine more secure.”

      The other did not reply for a little. “You realise that if you’re caught it’s all up with you?” he said at length.

      “Of course. But that has been true every moment during the past two years. I’m only slightly speeding up the risks. Besides, I don’t think I shall be caught.”

      “You’ll try for Holland?”

      “Holland or Germany. It will probably take some time.”

      The officer stood up and glanced at his luminous wrist-watch. “We should be safe here for the next hour. I want all the details of the new lay- out—S. S. I mean.”

      When this conference was finished he turned to Jules and offered his hand.

      “You are right. It’s the only way, and a big part of the fate of the war hangs on it. I won’t wish you good luck, for that’s too feeble for such an occasion. But I’d like to say this to you, More. I’ve seen many gallant things done in my time, and I’ve met many brave men, but by God! for sheer cold-blooded pluck I never knew the like of you. If you win out, I shall have a good deal to say about that.”

      Two days later the Widow Raus set off for Brussels to visit her relations. She took with her a great basket of eggs and butter, and she got a lift in a German transport waggon to save the railway fare. Thereafter she disappeared, and though her whereabouts were sought by many they were never discovered. She did not emerge into the light again till a certain day in December 1918, when she was one of many women thanked by her King, and was given a red ribbon to wear on her ample bosom.

      Left alone at the farm, Jules went on his travels for two days, during which he had interviews with many people in retired places. Then he returned and showed himself in the Three Parrots. But that night he left the farm, which was occupied next morning by soldiers who were in a hurry. They ransacked every room, slit the mattresses, pulled up the floors, probed in straw heaps in the outhouses. There were wild rumours in the village. Jules the simpleton had, it appeared, been a spy—some said an Englishman—and a confederate had betrayed him. A damning message from him had been found, for it seemed he could write, and he had been drawn into rash talk by a woman in the German pay. Much of the leakage to the Allies of vital secrets had been traced to him. He would be taken soon, of course, and set up against a wall—there was no hope of escape from the fine-meshed net which enveloped the land. But the bravery of it! Many a villager wished he had been kinder to the angel they had entertained unawares, and dolefully awaited the news of his end.

      It did not come, for Jules seemed to have slipped out of the world. “He has been taken,” said one rumour. “He will be taken,” said all. But the best-informed knew nothing for certain. Only the discipline was uncomfortably tightened in the countryside, and the German officers looked darkly on every peasant they met. “Curse that Jules!” some began to say. “He has only made our bondage more burdensome.”

      Meantime Jules was far away. He had made his plans with care, and began by drawing the hunt northward as if he were making for Brussels. The first day he took pains to show himself at places from which the news could be carried. Then he doubled back to the Meuse valley, and in the dark, in a miller’s cellar, shaved his beard, and was transformed into a young woodcutter who spoke the patois of the hills and was tramping to Liège, with papers all complete, to a job in a timber yard. His plan was to change his appearance again in Liège, and, having muddied the trail, to get to Antwerp, where certain preparations had been made in advance.

      But on one point he had miscalculated. The chase became far closer than he had foreseen, for Belgium was suddenly stirred to a fury of spy-hunting. The real Jules had been lost sight of somewhere in the beet-fields of Gembloux, but every stranger was a possible Jules, and a man had to be well-accredited indeed before he could move a step without suspicion. He realised that he simply could not afford to be arrested, or even detained, so he was compelled to run desperate risks.

      The story of his month’s wanderings was never fully told, but these are the main points in it.

      In Liège the woodcutter only escaped arrest on suspicion by slipping into a little civilian hospital where he knew the matron, and being in bed with the blankets up to his chin and bandages round his forehead when the military police arrived in quest of him… He travelled by rail to Malines as a young doctor who had taken a Berlin degree, and was ready to discourse in excellent German on the superior medical science of the exalted country where he had had his training. At Malines there was danger, for his permit was not strictly in order, and he realised that five СКАЧАТЬ