Part 44 (1/2)

”Yes, you brute, we've bagged the pair of you,” said Dennis, with a grim laugh; ”it's been Von Dussel versus Dashwood for a long time, but the Dashwoods have 'won out' in the end.”

”I do not understand,” faltered Von Dussel in a choking voice, and then instantly recovering his true Prussian bl.u.s.ter: ”I demand the right treatment accorded to every officer who has the misfortune to be taken prisoner. I have high connections in my country, and I am willing to give you my parole.”

”Parole for a cowardly murderer!” interrupted Dennis hotly. ”You are talking through the back of your neck, and you know it. Besides, apart from all that, there is only one end for spies.”

Then all the bl.u.s.ter went out of the cur, and he s.h.i.+vered like a man with ague as they took him away under escort into a safe place.

In the rear of that formidable trench, which they had taken with such gallantry, the Reeds.h.i.+res buried their dead. There were not many of them, considering the fury of the fight, but the little row of white wood crosses told of good comrades gone for ever, and had a grim significance all its own.

Harry Hawke stood in the rain, leaning on his rifle before one of the crosses, reading the simple inscription which the armourer-sergeant had painted for him on the rough wood: ”Jim Tiddler, 2/12th R.R.R., aged 21.

He was a good pal.”

”Yus, he was a good pal,” muttered Hawke, ”one of the best, and so was Mr. Wetherby. I'm glad old Tiddler's planted alongside 'im.”

His wicked little eye ranged away to another chalk mound which had no name upon it. It stood apart from the rest, and was close to that angle of the German salient where Dennis had crouched on the night that all the survivors would remember as long as they remembered anything. An ugly red smear on the sandbags at the head of the mound had not been washed away by the rain.

Two spies had been buried there, after a court martial held in a dug-out, and one of them had been a woman, who had tried to brazen it out in spite of the overwhelming evidence produced against them.

Threats, tears, piteous appeals for mercy, Ottilie's big black eyes, all had proved in vain.

Then she had swallowed poison, but the tabloid she tried to pa.s.s to her husband was intercepted, and the volley of ball cartridge that dealt stern justice in the grey light of a wet afternoon had rid our lines of a deadly and insidious peril that had cost us many lives.

”Shooting was too good for 'im, the dirty dog,” said Private Hawke, as he lit a woodbine and turned away.

And that was the requiem of the Von Dussels!

The weather brightened and the Great Push still rolled on. Day by day the sh.e.l.l dumps grew to incredible size, and the British guns never ceased their remorseless preparations. Names. .h.i.therto unknown to British readers became household words to those at home, who, reading between the lines, knew that at last our great and glorious armies were on the high road to victory.