Part 53 (1/2)

”Well?” said Partow, looking up at the sound of Lanstron's step. Then he half raised himself from his chair at sight of a Lanstron with eyes in a daze of brilliancy; a Lanstron with his maimed hand twitching in an outstretched gesture; a Lanstron in the dilemma of being at the same time lover and chief of intelligence. Should he let her make the sacrifice of everything that he held to be sacred to a woman's delicacy?

Should he not return to the telephone and tell her that he would not permit her to play such a part? Partow's voice cut in on his demoralization with the sharpness of a blade.

”Well, what, man, what?” he demanded. He feared that the girl might be dead. Anything that could upset Lanstron in this fas.h.i.+on struck a chord of sympathy and apprehension.

Lanstron advanced to the table, pressed his hands on the edge, and, now master of himself, began an account of Marta's offer. Partow's formless arms lay inert on the table, his soft, pudgy fingers outspread on the map and his bulk settled deep in the chair, while his eagle eyes were seeing through Lanstron, through a mountain range, into the eyes of a woman and a general on the veranda of an enemy's headquarters. The plan meant giving, giving in the hope of receiving much in return. Would he get the return?

”A woman was the ideal one for the task we intrusted to Feller,” he mused, ”a gentlewoman, big enough, adroit enough, with her soul in the work as no paid woman's could be! There seemed no such one in the world!”

”But to let her do it!” gasped Lanstron.

”It is her suggestion, not yours? She offers herself? She wants no persuasion?” Partow asked sharply.

”Entirely her suggestion,” said Lanstron. ”She offers herself for her country--for the cause for which our soldiers will give their lives by the thousands. It is a time of sacrifice.”

Partow raised his arms. They were not formless as he brought them down with sledge-hammer force to the table.

”Your tendon of Achilles? My boy, she is your sword-arm!” His st.u.r.dy forefinger ran along the line of frontier under his eye with little staccato leaps. ”Eh?” he chuckled significantly, finger poised.

”Let them up the Bordir road and on to redoubts 36 and 37, you mean?”

asked Lanstron.

”You have it! The position looks important, but so well do we command it that it is not really vital. Yes, the Bordir road is her bait for Westerling!” Partow waved his hand as if the affair were settled.

”But,” interjected Lanstron, ”we have also to decide on the point of the main defence which she is to make Westerling think is weak.”

”Hm-m!” grumbled Partow. ”That is not necessary to start with. We can give that to her later over the telephone, can't we, eh?”

”She asked for it now.”

”Why?” demanded Partow with one of his shrewd, piercing looks.

”She did not say, but I can guess,” explained Lanstron. ”She must put all her cards on the table; she must tell Westerling all she knows at once. If she tells him piecemeal it might lead to the supposition that she still had some means of communication with the Browns.”

”Of course, of course!” Partow spatted the flat of his hand resoundingly on the map. ”As I decided the first time I met her, she has a head, and when a woman has a head for that sort of thing there is no beating her.

Well--” he was looking straight into Lanstron's eyes, ”well, I think we know the point where we could draw them in on the main line, eh?”

”Up the ap.r.o.n of the approach from the Engadir valley. We yield the advance redoubts on either side.”

”Meanwhile, we have ma.s.sed heavily behind the redoubt. We retake the advance redoubts in a counter-attack and--” Partow brought his fist into his palm with a smack.

”Yes, if we could do that! If we could get them to expend their attack there!” put in Lanstron very excitedly for him.

”We must! She shall help!” Partow was on his feet. He had reached across the table and seized Lanstron's shoulders in a powerful if flesh-padded grip. Then he turned Lanstron around toward the door of his bedroom and gave him a mighty slap of affection. ”My boy, the brightest hope of victory we have is holding the wire for you. Tell her that a bearded old behemoth, who can kneel as gracefully as a rheumatic rhinoceros, is on both knees at her feet, kissing her hands and trying his best, in the name of mercy, to keep from breaking into verse of his own composition.”

Back at the telephone, Lanstron, in the fervor of the cheer and the enthusiasm that had transported his chief, gave Marta Partow's message.

”You, Marta, are our brightest hope of victory!”