Part 3 (2/2)
It was I who had the idea this time.
”Lend me your lantern and I will Morse them a message.”
”The sentinel may not be able to read it off.”
”No, but he will bring someone who can. At any rate let us try.”
We established ourselves in an old summer-house at the edge of a pond, with a foolishly rustic door which opened straight upon the front of the house. Our light would be seen only by someone on the balconies, or at the windows of the upper floors. It was entirely dark, of course, but Deventer had no doubt that his father was there with all his faithful forces, ”keeping his end up like a good old fighting Derryman,” as his son expressed it.
”Hugh--Deventer--and--his--friend--Cawdor-are--down--here.
Answer--by--Morse--by--which--door--they--can--enter--the--house.”
I had Morsed this message three times before any notice was taken from within, and I had begun to give up hope. There must be n.o.body inside Chateau Schneider, as the place was called. But Deventer was far more hopeful.
”They have gone to waken my father,” he whispered. ”You see, they daren't do anything in these parts without the old bird. He is quite a different man from the one you saw poking about among your father's books, or drinking in his wisdom. Here he makes people do things. Try her again.”
It was tedious work, but I flashed the whole message over again, according to the Morse code. This time the reply came back short and sweet.
”What--the--devil--are--you--doing--there?”
”That's Dad,” said Hugh Deventer triumphantly. ”Now we shall catch it.”
I answered that having seen the soldiers retreat, we had come to help.
”Did--anybody--send--word--that--you--were--wanted?” twinkled the point of fire somewhere high among the chimney-stacks on the roof. These were a rarity in a district where one chimney for a house is counted a good average, but after one winter's experience of the windy Rhone valley, Dennis Deventer had refused to be done out of an open fireplace in every room.
Now he reaped the fruit of his labours, for in summer he had sat behind his low wall and taken the air of an evening, and now it needed little to convert the chimney-stacks on the flat roof of his house into reliable defences.
It was difficult to say in slow Morse alphabetage what we were doing down in the old summer-house, but at least I managed to convey that we had run the insurgent pickets and were in danger of being captured.
We got our reply quickly enough.
”Hugh--knows--the--door--under--the--main-outer--staircase.”
”Of course,” said Hugh, ”I always went in that way when my feet were dirty. Come on!”
And we hurried across the sward, keeping between a sundial and fountain-basin railed about, into which half a dozen copper frogs sent each a thin thrill of water, with a sound quite unexpectedly cheerful and domestic thus heard in the darkness of the night.
This time there was no clatter of firing behind us. The sharpshooters of the insurrectionaries had learned a lesson of caution near the house of the manager of the Small Arms Factory. Dennis Deventer had been training his a.s.sistants and lieutenants the whole year at movable b.u.t.ts. He had rigged up a defile of six men-shaped figures which pa.s.sed in front of a firing party, or, bent forward in the att.i.tude of men running, dashed one by one across the men's field of vision as they lay at the firing line.
Hugh Deventer and I took for our goal the great double flight of steps, broad as a couple of carriage ways, which in the style of the Adams architecture united in front of a debased Corinthian portico at the height of the first floor windows of the Chateau.
”What, Jack Jaikes!” cried Hugh to the grinning young man who opened the door for us.
”Aye, just Jack Jaikes same as yesterday, and eh, but the chief is going to leather ye properly afore he sends ye back to school.”
”But we are not going to school any more!”
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