Part 58 (1/2)

”But the correct plans and location of their forts and the numbers of their heavy guns and of their planes and dirigibles--your failure to have this information is not the result of any leak from our staff since the war began,” said Turcas in his dry, penetrating voice, clearing the air of the smoke of scattered explosions.

All were staring at Bouchard again. What answer had he to this? He was in the box, the evidence stated by the prosecutor. Let him speak!

He was fairly beside himself in a paroxysm of rage and struck at the air with his clenched fist.

”---- ---- Lanstron!” he cried.

”There's no purpose in that. He can't hear you!” said Turcas, dryly as ever.

”He might, through the leak,” said the chief aerostatic officer, who considered that many of his gallant subordinates had lost their lives through Bouchard's inefficiency. ”Perhaps Clarissa Eileen has already telepathically wigwagged it to him.”

To lose your temper at a staff council is most unbecoming. Turcas would have kept his if hit in the back by a fool automobilist. Westerling had now recovered his. He was again the superman in command.

”It is for you and not for us to locate the leak; yes, for you!” he said. ”That is all on the subject for the present,” he added in a tone of mixed pity and contempt, which left Bouchard freed from the stare of his colleagues and in the miserable company of his humiliation.

All on the subject for the present! When it was taken up again his successor would be in charge. He, the indefatigable, the over-intense, with his mediaeval partisan fervor, who loathed in secret machines like Turcas, was the first man of the staff to go for incompetency.

”And Engadir is the key-point,” Westerling was saying.

”Yes,” agreed Turcas.

”So we concentrate to break through there,” Westerling continued, ”while we engage the whole line fiercely enough to make the enemy uncertain where the crucial attack is to be made.”

”But, general, if there is any place that is naturally strong, that--”

Turcas began.

”The one place where they are confident that we won't attack!”

Westerling interrupted. He resented the staff's professional respect for Turcas. After a silence and a survey of the faces around, he added with sententious effect: ”And I was right about Bordir!”

To this argument there could be no answer. The one stroke of generals.h.i.+p by the Grays, who, otherwise, had succeeded alone through repeated ma.s.s attacks, had been Westerling's hypothesis that had gained Bordir in a single a.s.sault.

”Engadir it is, then!” said Turcas with the loyalty of the subordinate who makes a superior's conviction his own, the better to carry it out.

Hazily, Bouchard had heard the talk, while he was looking at Westerling and seeing him, not at the head of the council table, but in the arbor in eager appeal to Marta.

”I shall find out! I shall find out!” was drumming in his temples when the council rose; and, without a word or a backward glance, he was the first to leave the room.

x.x.xVIII

HUNTING GHOSTS

In his search for the medium of the leak to the enemy Bouchard had studied every detail of the Galland premises and also of the ruins of the castle, with the exception of one feature mentioned in the regular staff records, prepared before the war, in the course of their minute description of the architecture of buildings which were accessible to the spies of the Grays. The tunnel to the dungeons could be reached only through the private quarters of the Gallands.

When he came out onto the veranda from the staff council a glimpse of Mrs. Galland walking in the garden told him that one of the guardians who stood between him and the satisfaction of his desperate curiosity was absent. He started for the tower and found the door open and the sitting-room empty. In his impatience he had one foot across the threshold before a prompting sense of respect for form made him pause.

After all, this was a private residence. There being no bell, he rapped, and was glad that it was Minna and not Marta who appeared. He watched her intently for the effect of his abrupt announcement as he exclaimed:

”I want to go into the tunnel under the castle!”