Mr. Standfast by John Buchan (mystery books to read .TXT) 📕

to link Bommaerts with Chelius. That’s why I came here. I was trying to burgle this escritoire in an amateur way. It’s a bad piece of fake Empire and deserves smashing.”

I could see that Mary was eager to get my mind back to business, and with some difficulty I clambered down from the exultant heights. The intoxication of the thing was on me⁠—the winter night, the circle of light in that dreary room, the sudden coming together of two souls from the ends of the earth, the realization of my wildest hopes, the gilding and glorifying of all the future. But she had always twice as much wisdom as me, and we were in the midst of a campaign which had no use for daydreaming. I turned my attention to the desk.

It was a flat table with drawers, and at the back a half-circle of more drawers with a central cupboard. I tilted it up and most of the drawers slid out, empty of anything but dust. I forced two open with my knife and they held empty cigar boxes. Only the cupboard remained, and that appeared to be locked. I wedged a key from my pocket into its keyhole, but the thing would not budge.

“It’s no good,” I said. “He wouldn’t leave anything he valued in a place like this. That sort of fellow doesn’t take risks. If he wanted to hide something there are a hundred holes in this Château which would puzzle the best detective.”

“Can’t you open it?” she asked. “I’ve a fancy about that table. He was sitting here this afternoon and he may be coming back.”

I solved the problem by turning up the escritoire and putting my knee through the cupboard door. Out of it tumbled a little dark-green attaché case.

“This is getting solemn,” said Mary. “Is it locked?”

It was, but I took my knife and cut the lock out and spilled the contents on the table. There were some papers, a newspaper or two, and a small bag tied with black cord. The last I opened, while Mary looked over my shoulder. It contained a fine yellowish powder.

“Stand back,” I said harshly. “For God’s sake, stand back and don’t breathe.”

With trembling hands I tied up the bag again, rolled it in a newspaper, and stuffed it into my pocket. For I remembered a day near Peronne when a Boche plane had come over in the night and had dropped little bags like this. Happily they were all collected, and the men who found them were wise and took them off to the nearest laboratory. They proved to be full of anthrax germs⁠ ⁠…

I remembered how Eaucourt Sainte-Anne stood at the junction of a dozen roads where all day long troops passed to and from the lines. From such a vantage ground an enemy could wreck the health of an army⁠ ⁠…

I remembered the woman I had seen in the courtyard of this house in the foggy dusk, and I knew now why she had worn a gas-mask.

This discovery gave me a horrid shock. I was brought down with a crash from my high sentiment to something earthly and devilish. I was fairly well used to Boche filthiness, but this seemed too grim a piece of the utterly damnable. I wanted to have Ivery by the throat and force the stuff into his body, and watch him decay slowly into the horror he had contrived for honest men.

“Let’s get out of this infernal place,” I said.

But Mary was not listening. She had picked up one of the newspapers and was gloating over it. I looked and saw that it was open at an advertisement of Weissmann’s “Deep-breathing” system.

“Oh, look, Dick,” she cried breathlessly.

The column of type had little dots made by a red pencil below certain words.

“It’s it,” she whispered, “it’s the cipher⁠—I’m almost sure it’s the cipher!”

“Well, he’d be likely to know it if anyone did.”

“But don’t you see it’s the cipher which Chelius uses⁠—the man in Switzerland? Oh, I can’t explain now, for it’s very long, but I think⁠—I think⁠—I have found out what we have all been wanting. Chelius⁠ ⁠…”

“Whisht!” I said. “What’s that?”

There was a queer sound from the out-of-doors as if a sudden wind had risen in the still night.

“It’s only a car on the main road,” said Mary.

“How did you get in?” I asked.

“By the broken window in the next room. I cycled out here one morning, and walked round the place and found the broken catch.”

“Perhaps it is left open on purpose. That may be the way M. Bommaerts visits his country home⁠ ⁠… Let’s get off, Mary, for this place has a curse on it. It deserves fire from heaven.”

I slipped the contents of the attaché case into my pockets. “I’m going to drive you back,” I said. “I’ve got a car out there.”

“Then you must take my bicycle and my servant too. He’s an old friend of yours⁠—one Andrew Amos.”

“Now how on earth did Andrew get over here?”

“He’s one of us,” said Mary, laughing at my surprise. “A most useful member of our party, at present disguised as an infirmier in Lady Manorwater’s Hospital at Douvecourt. He is learning French, and⁠ ⁠…”

“Hush!” I whispered. “There’s someone in the next room.”

I swept her behind a stack of furniture, with my eyes glued on a crack of light below the door. The handle turned and the shadows raced before a big electric lamp of the kind they have in stables. I could not see the bearer, but I guessed it was the old woman.

There was a man behind her. A brisk step sounded on the parquet, and a figure brushed past her. It wore the horizon-blue of a French officer, very smart, with those French riding-boots that show the shape of the leg, and a handsome fur-lined pelisse. I would have called him a young man, not more than thirty-five. The face was brown and clean-shaven, the eyes bright and masterful⁠ ⁠… Yet he did not deceive me. I had not boasted