Part 18 (1/2)
”You'll please consider me,” I proclaimed firmly, ”to be a tyrant. I am so much bigger than you are that you can't possibly drive me off. I don't mean to interfere or to ask questions, or to bother you. But I vow I'm coming with you if I cling to the running-board!”
Her lashes fluttered as she racked her brains for new protests.
”The car is a French make,” she urged,--”which you couldn't drive--”
”I can drive any car with four wheels!” I exclaimed vaingloriously.
”It's kismet, Miss Falconer; it's the hand of Providence, no less. Now, we'll leave these notes in the _salle a manger_ to pay for our lodging, which would have been dear at twopence, and be off, if you please, for Prezelay.”
She had yielded. We were standing side by side in the silence of the morning, the dimness fading round us, the air taking a golden tinge.
My surroundings were plebeian; my costume was comic; yet I felt oddly uplifted.
”Jolly old garden, isn't it?” said I.
CHAPTER XVIII
IN THE HIGH GEAR
To pa.s.s straight from a humdrum, comfortable, conventionally ordered life into a career of insane adventure is a step that is radical; but it can be exhilarating, and I proved the fact that day. To dwell on present danger was to forget the past hour in the garage, which I had to forget or begin gibbering. Once committed to the adventure and away from the scene of the murder, I found a positive relief in facing the madness of the affair.
While the girl sat silent and listless, blotted against the cus.h.i.+ons, rousing from her thoughts only to indicate the turns of the road, I had time for cogitation; and I began to feel like a man who has drunk freely of champagne. Hitherto I had been a law-abiding citizen. Now I had kicked over the traces. Like the distinguished fraternity that includes Raffles and a.r.s.ene Lupin, I should be ”wanted” by the police, those good-natured, deferential beings so given to saluting and grinning, with whom, save for occasional episodes not unconnected with the speed laws,--Dunny says libelously that my progress in an automobile resembles a fabulous monster with a flying car for the head, a cloud of smoke and gasoline for the body, and a cohort of incensed motor-cycle men for the tail,--I had lived on the most cordial terms.
I was not certain whether they would accuse me of murder or espionage.
There were pegs enough, undeniably, on which to hang either charge.
Myself, I rather inclined to the latter; the case was so clear, so detailed! My rush from Paris to Bleau,--in order, no doubt, that I might at an unostentatious spot join forces with my confederate, Miss Falconer, whom I had been meeting at intervals ever since we left New York in company,--my behavior there, and the fas.h.i.+on in which we were vanis.h.i.+ng should suffice to doom me as a spy.
When the French began tracing my movements, when they joined my present activities to the fact that only by the skin of my teeth had I escaped a charge of bringing German papers into Italy, there would be the devil to pay. I acknowledged it; then--really, this brand-new, unfounded, cast-iron trust of mine in Miss Falconer was changing me beyond recognition--I recalled the old recipe for the preparation of Welsh rabbit, and light-heartedly challenged the authorities to ”catch me first.” I had a disguise; if I bore any superior earmarks my leather coat obliterated them; and I could drive; even Dario Resta could not have sniffed at my technic. Better still, my French, learned even before my English, would not betray me. As nurse and as _mecanicien_, we stood a fair chance in our masquerade.
I might have to pay my shot, but I was enjoying it. This was a good world through which we were speeding; life was in the high gear to-day.
The car purred beneath us like a splendid, harnessed tiger; the spring air was fresh and fragrant, the country charming, with here a forest, there a valley, farther off the tiled, colored roofs of some little town. Our road, like a white ribbon, wound itself out endlessly between stone walls or brown fields. In my content I forgot food and such prosaic details till I noticed that the girl looked pale.
”I say,” I exclaimed remorsefully: ”we've been omitting rolls and coffee! I'm going to get you some at the first town we pa.s.s.”
”We are coming to a town now, to Le Moreau.” She was looking anxious.
”Yes? I'm afraid I don't place it exactly. Ought I to?”
”It is the first town in the war zone. And--and our road pa.s.ses through it.”
”Oh!” I was enlightened. ”Then they will probably ask to see our papers at the _octroi_?”
”Yes.”
The car was eating up the smooth white road; I could see the little _octroi_ building at the town boundary-line, and a group of gendarmes in readiness close by. It was a critical moment. Miss Falconer, I recalled, had said she could get through to Carrefonds; but glittering generalities were not likely to convince these sentries; one needed safe-conducts, pa.s.ses, ident.i.ty cards, and such concrete aids. She couldn't give a reasonable account of herself, I felt quite certain; and even if she did, how was she to account for me?
As I brought the car to a standstill, my conscience clamored, and my costume seemed to shriek incongruity from every seam. In this dilemma I trusted to sheer blind luck--a rather thrilling business. As a gray-headed sergeant stepped forward to welcome us, I looked him unfalteringly in the eye, though I wondered if he would not say:
”Monsieur, kindly remove that childish travesty with which you are trying to impose on justice. We know all about you. Your name is Devereux Bayne. You are a German agent and intriguer; you have smuggled papers; you have murdered a man and concealed his body. Unless you can give a satisfactory explanation of all your actions since leaving New York, your last hour has arrived!”
What he really said was: