Part 57 (2/2)
This public reproof could have but one meaning. He should soon receive a note which would thank him politely for his services, in the stereotyped phrases always used for the purpose, before announcing his transfer to a less responsible post.
”Very little, sir!” Bouchard replied doggedly.
”There is that we had from one of our aviators whose machine came down in a smash just as he got over our infantry positions on his return,”
said the chief aerostatic officer. ”He was in a dying condition when we picked him up, and, as he was speaking with the last breaths in his body, naturally his account of what he had seen was somewhat incoherent.
It would be of use, however, if we had plans of the forts that would enable us to check off his report intelligently.”
”Yet, what evidence have we that Partow or Lanstron has done more than to make a fortunate guess or show military insight?” Westerling asked.
”There is the case of my own belief that Bordir was weak, which proved correct.”
”Last night we got a written telegraphic staff message from the body of a dead officer of the Browns found in the Twin Boulder Redoubt,” said the vice-chief, ”which showed that in an hour after our plans were transmitted to our own troops for the first attack they were known to the enemy.”
”That looks like a leak!” exclaimed Westerling, ”a leak, Bouchard, do you hear?” He was frowning and his lips were drawn and his cheeks mottled with red in a way not pleasant to see.
Stiffening in his chair, a flash of desperation in his eye, Bouchard's bony, long hand gripped the table edge. Every one felt that a sensation was coming.
”Yes, I have known that there was a leak!” he said with hoa.r.s.e, painful deliberation. ”I have sent out every possible tracer. I have followed up every sort of clew I have transferred a dozen men. I have left nothing undone!”
”With no result?” persisted Westerling impatiently
”Yes, always the same result: That the leak is here in this house--here in the grand headquarters of the army under our very noses. I know it is not the telegraphers or the clerks. It is a member of the staff!”
”Have you gone out of your head?” demanded Westerling. ”What staff-officer? How does he get the information to the enemy? Name the persons you suspect here and now! Explain, if you want to be considered sane!”
Here was the blackest accusation that could be made against an officer!
The chosen men of the staff, tested through many grades before they reached the inner circle of cabinet secrecy, lost the composure of a council. All were leaning forward toward Bouchard breathless for his answer.
”There are three women on the grounds,” said Bouchard. ”I have been against their staying from the first. I----.”
He got no further. His words were drowned by the outburst of one of the younger members of the staff, who had either to laugh or choke at the picture of this deep-eyed, spectral sort of man, known as a woman-hater, in his revelation of the farcical source of his suspicions.
”Why not include Clarissa Eileen?” some one asked, Starting a chorus of satirical exclamations.
”How do they get through the line?”
”Yes, past a wall of bayonets?”
”When not even a soldier in uniform is allowed to move away from his command without a pa.s.s?”
”By wireless?”
”Perhaps by telepathy!”
”Unless,” said the chief of the aerostatic division, grinning, ”Bouchard lends them the use of our own wires through the capital and around by the neutral countries across the Brown frontier!”
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