Chambers Robert William
The Moonlit Way: A Novel
XXI
THE WHITE BLACKBIRD
Refreshed by icy baths and clean linen, and now further fortified against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune by a supper of cold fowl and Moselle, Captain Renoux and Garret Barres sat in the apartment of the former gentleman, gaily exchanging Latin Quarter reminiscences through the floating haze of their cigars.
But the conversation soon switched back toward the far more serious business which alone accounted for their being there together after many years. For, as the French officer had remarked, a good deal remained to be said between them. And Barres knew what he meant, and was deeply concerned at the prospect.
But Renoux approached the matter with careless good humour and by a leisurely, circuitous route, which polite pussy-footing was obviously to prepare Barres for impending trouble.
He began by referring to his mission in America, admitting very frankly that he was a modest link in the system of military and political intelligence maintained by all European countries in the domains of their neighbours.
“I might as well say so,” he remarked, “because it’s known to the representatives of enemy governments here as well as to your own Government, that some of us are here; and anybody can imagine why.
“And, in the course of my – studies,” he said deliberately, 279 while his clear eyes twinkled, “it has come to my knowledge, and to the knowledge of the French Ambassador, that there is, in New York, a young woman who already has proven herself a dangerous enemy to my country.”
“That is interesting, if true,” said Barres, reddening to the temples. “But it is even more interesting if it is not true… And it isn’t!”
“You think not?”
“I don’t think anything about it, Renoux; I know.”
“I am afraid you have been misled, Barres. And it is natural enough.”
“Why?”
“Because,” said Renoux serenely, “she is very beautiful, very clever, very young, very appealing… Tell me, my friend, where did you meet her?”
Barres looked him in the eyes:
“Where did you learn that I had ever met her?”
“Through the ordinary channels which, if you will pardon me, I am not at liberty to discuss.”
“All right. It is sufficient that you know I have met her. Now, where did I meet her?”
“I don’t know,” said Renoux candidly.
“How long have I known her then?”
“Possibly a few weeks. Our information is that your acquaintance with her is not of long duration.”
“Wrong, my friend: I met her in France several years ago; I know her intimately.”
“Yes, the intimacy has been reported,” said Renoux, blandly. “But it doesn’t take long, sometimes.”
Barres reddened again and shook his head:
“You and your agents are all wrong, Renoux. So is your Government. Do you know what it’s doing – what you and your agents are doing? You’re playing a German game for Berlin!”
This time Renoux flushed and there was a slight quiver to his lips and nostrils; but he said very pleasantly:
“That would be rather mortifying, mon ami, if it were true.”
“It is true. Berlin, the traitor in Paris, the conspirator in America, the German, Austrian, and Turkish diplomatic agents here ask nothing better than that you manage, somehow, to eliminate the person in question.”
“Why?” demanded Renoux.
“Because more than one of your public men in Paris will face charges of conspiracy and treason if the person in question ever has a fair hearing and a chance to prove her innocence of the terrible accusations that have been made against her.”
“Naturally,” said Renoux, “those accused bring counter charges. It is always the history of such cases, mon ami.”
“Your mind is already made up, then?”
“My mind is a real mind, Barres. Reason is what it seeks – the logical evidence that leads to truth. If there is anything I don’t know, then I wish to know it, and will spare no pains, permit no prejudice to warp my judgment.”
“All right. Now, let’s have the thing out between us, Renoux. We are not fencing in the dark; we understand each other and are honest enough to say so. Now, go on.”
Renoux nodded and said very quietly and pleasantly:
“The reference in one of these papers to the celebrated Nihla Quellen reminds me of the first time I ever saw her. I was quite bowled over, Barres, as you may easily imagine. She sang one of those Asiatic 281 songs – and then the dance! – a miracle! – a delight – apparently entirely unprepared, unpremeditated even – you know how she did it? – exquisite perfection – something charmingly impulsive and spontaneous – a caprice of the moment! Ah – there is a wonderful artiste, Nihla Quellen!”
Barres nodded, his level gaze fixed on the French officer.
“As for the document,” continued Renoux, “it does not entirely explain itself to me. You see, this Eurasian, Ferez Bey, was a very intimate friend of Nihla Quellen.”
“You are quite mistaken,” interposed Barres. But the other merely smiled with a slight gesture of deference to his friend’s opinion, and went on.
“This Ferez is one of those persistent, annoying flies which buzz around chancelleries and stir up diplomats to pernicious activities. You know there isn’t much use in swatting, as you say, the fly. No. Better find the manure heap which hatched him and burn that!”
He smiled and shrugged, relighted his cigar, and continued:
“So, mon ami, I am here in your charming and hospitable city to direct the necessary sanitary measures, sub rosa, of course. You have been more than kind. My Government and I have you to thank for this batch of papers – ” He tapped his breast pocket and made salutes which Frenchmen alone know how to make.
“Renoux,” said Barres bluntly, “you have learned somehow that Nihla Quellen is under my protection. You conclude I am her lover.”
The officer’s face altered gravely, but he said nothing.
Barres leaned forward in his chair and laid a hand on his comrade’s shoulder:
“Renoux, do you trust me, personally?”
“Yes.”
“Very well. Then I shall trust you. Because there is nothing you can tell me about Nihla Quellen that I do not already know – nothing concerning her dossier in your secret archives, nothing in regard to the evidence against her and the testimony of the Count d’Eblis. And that clears the ground between you and me.”
If Renoux was surprised he scarcely showed it.
Barres said:
“As long as you know that she is under my protection, I want you to come to my place and talk to her. I don’t ask you to accept my judgment in regard to her; I merely wish you to listen to what she has to say, and then come to your own conclusions. Will you do this?”
For a few moments Renoux sat quite still, his clear, intelligent eyes fixed on the smoking tip of his cigar. Without raising them he said slowly:
“As we understand it, Nihla Quellen has been a spy from the very beginning. Our information is clear, concise, logical. We know her history. She was the mistress of Prince Cyril, then of Ferez, then of d’Eblis – perhaps of the American banker, Gerhardt, also. She came directly from the German Embassy at Constantinople to Paris, on Gerhardt’s yacht, the Mirage, and under his protection and the protection of Comte Alexandre d’Eblis.
“Ferez was of the party. And that companionship of conspirators never was dissolved as long as Nihla Quellen remained in Europe.”
“That Nihla Quellen has ever been the mistress of 283 any man is singularly untrue,” said Barres coolly. “Your Government has to do with a chaste woman; and it doesn’t even know that much!”
Renoux regarded him curiously:
“You have seen her dance?” he enquired gravely.
“Often. And, Renoux, you are too much a man of the world to be surprised at the unexpected. There are white blackbirds.”
“Yes, there are.”
“Nihla Quellen is one.”
“My friend, I desire to believe it if it would be agreeable to you.”
“I know, Renoux; I believe in your good-will. Also, I believe in your honesty and intelligence. And so I do not ask you to accept my word for what I tell you. Only remember that I am absolutely certain concerning my belief in Nihla Quellen… I have no doubt that you think I am in love with her… I can’t answer you. All Europe was in love with her. Perhaps I am… I don’t know, Renoux. But this I do know; she is clean and sweet and honest from the crown of her head to the sole of her foot. In her heart there has never dwelt treachery. Talk to her to-night. You’re like the best of your compatriots, clear minded, logical, intelligent, and full of that legitimate imagination without which intellect is a machine. You know the world; you know men; you don’t know women and you know you don’t. Therefore, you are equipped to learn the truth – to divine it – from Nihla Quellen. Will you come over to my place now?”
“Yes,” said Renoux pleasantly.
The orchestra was playing as they passed through the hotel; supper rooms, corridors, café and lobby were crowded with post-theatre throngs in search of food 284 and drink and dance music; and although few theatres were open in July, Long Acre blazed under its myriad lights and the sidewalks were packed with the audiences filtering out of the various summer shows and into all-night cabarets.
They looked across at the distant war bulletins displayed on Times Square, around which the usual gesticulating crowd had gathered, but kept on across Long Acre, and west toward Sixth Avenue.
Midway in the block, Renoux touched his comrade silently on the arm, and halted.
“A few minutes, mon ami, if you don’t mind – time for you to smoke a cigarette while waiting.”
They had stopped before a brownstone house which had been converted into a basement dwelling, and which was now recessed between two modern shops constructed as far as the building line.
All the shades and curtains in the house were drawn and the place appeared to be quite dark, but a ring at the bell brought a big, powerfully built porter, who admitted them to a brightly lighted reception room. Then the porter replaced the chains on the door of bronze.
“Just a little while, if you will be amiable enough to have patience,” said Renoux.
He went away toward the rear of the house and Barres seated himself. And in a few moments the burly porter reappeared with a tray containing a box of cigarettes and a tall glass of Moselle.
“Monsieur Renoux will not be long,” he said, bringing a sheaf of French illustrated periodicals to the little table at Barres’ elbow; and he retired with a bow and resumed his chair in the corridor by the bronze door.
Through closed doors, somewhere from the rear of 285 the silent house came the distant click of a typewriter. At moments, too, looking over the war pictures in the periodicals, Barres imagined that he heard a confused murmur as of many voices.
Later it became evident that there were a number of people somewhere in the house, because, now and then, the porter unlatched the door and drew the chains to let out some swiftly walking man.
Once two men came out together. One carried a satchel; the other halted in the hallway to slip a clip into an automatic pistol before dropping it into the side pocket of his coat.
And after a while Renoux appeared, bland, debonaire, evidently much pleased with whatever he had been doing.
Two other men appeared in the corridor behind him; he said something to them in a low voice; Barres imagined he heard the words, “Washington” and “Jusserand.”
Then the two men went out, walking at a smart pace, and Renoux sauntered into the tiny reception room.
“You don’t know,” he said, “what a very important service you have rendered us by catching that fellow to-night and stripping him of his papers.”
Barres rose and they walked out together.
“This city,” added Renoux, “is fairly verminous with disloyal Huns. The streets are crawling with them; every German resort, saloon, beer garden, keller, café, club, society – every German drug store, delicatessen shop, music store, tobacconist, is lousy with the treacherous swine.
“There are two great hotels where the boche gathers and plots; two great banking firms are centres of German propaganda; three great department stores, dozens of downtown commercial agencies; various 286 buildings and piers belonging to certain transatlantic steamship lines, the offices of certain newspapers and periodicals… Tell me, Barres, did you know that the banker, Gerhardt, owns the building in which you live?”
“Dragon Court!”
“You didn’t know it, evidently. Yes, he owns it.”
“Is he really involved in pro-German intrigue?” asked Barres.
“That is our information.”
“I ask,” continued Barres thoughtfully, “because his summer home is at Northbrook, not far from my own home. And to me there is something peculiarly contemptible about disloyalty in the wealthy who owe every penny to the country they betray.”
“His place is called Hohenlinden,” remarked Renoux.
“Yes. Are you having it watched?”
Renoux smiled. Perhaps he was thinking about other places, also – the German Embassy, for example, where, inside the Embassy itself, not only France but also the United States Government was represented by a secret agent among the personnel.
“We try to learn what goes on among the boches,” he said carelessly. “They try the same game. But, Barres, they are singularly stupid at such things – not adroit, merely clumsy and brutal. The Hun cannot camouflage his native ferocity. He reveals himself.
“And in that respect it is fortunate for civilisation that it is dealing with barbarians. Their cunning is of the swinish sort. Their stench ultimately discovers them. You are discovering it for yourselves; you detected Dernberg; you already sniff Von Papen, Boy-ed, Bernstorff. All over the world the nauseous effluvia from the vast Teutonic hog-pen is being detected and 287 recognised. And civilisation is taking sanitary measures to abate the nuisance… And your country, too, will one day send out a sanitary brigade to help clean up the world, just as you now supply our details with the necessary chlorides and antiseptics.”
Barres laughed:
“You are very picturesque,” he said. “And I’ll tell you one thing, if we don’t join the sanitary corps now operating, I shall go out with a bottle of chloride myself.”
They entered Dragon Court a few moments later. Nobody was at the desk, it being late.
“To-morrow,” said Barres, as they ascended the stairs, “my friends, Miss Soane, Miss Dunois, and Mr. Westmore are to be our guests at Foreland Farms. You didn’t know that, did you?” he added sarcastically.
“Oh, yes,” replied Renoux, much amused. “Miss Dunois, as you call her, sent her trunks away this evening.”
Barres, surprised and annoyed, halted on the landing:
“Your people didn’t interfere, I hope.”
“No. There was nothing in them of interest to us,” said Renoux naïvely. “I sent a report when I sent on to Washington the papers which you secured for us.”
Barres paused before his studio door, key in hand. They could hear the gramophone going inside. He said:
“I don’t have to ask you to be fair, Renoux, because the man who is unfair to others swindles himself, and you are too decent, too intelligent to do that. I am going to present you to Thessalie Dunois, which happens to be her real name, and I am going to tell her in your presence who you are. Then I shall leave you alone with her.”
He fitted his latchkey and opened the door.
Westmore was trying fancy dancing with Dulcie on one side, and Thessalie on the other – the latter evidently directing operations.
“Garry!” exclaimed Thessalie.
“You’re a fine one! Where have you been?” began Westmore. Then he caught sight of Renoux and became silent.
Barres led his comrade forward and presented him:
“A fellow student of the Beaux Arts,” he explained, “and we’ve had a very jolly evening together. And, Thessa, there is something in particular that I should like to have you explain to Monsieur Renoux, if you don’t mind…” He turned and looked at Dulcie: “If you will pardon us a moment, Sweetness.”
She nodded and smiled and took Westmore’s arm again, and continued the dance alone with him while Barres, drawing Thessalie’s arm through his, and passing his other arm through Renoux’s, walked leisurely through his studio, through the now open folding doors, past his bedroom and Westmore’s, and into the latter’s studio beyond.
“Thessa, dear,” he said very quietly, “I feel very certain that the worst of your troubles are about to end – ” He felt her start slightly. “And,” he continued, “I have brought my comrade, Renoux, here to-night so that you and he can clear up a terrible misunderstanding.
“And Monsieur Renoux, once a student of architecture at the Beaux Arts, is now Captain Renoux of the Intelligence Department in the French Army – ”
Thessalie lost her colour and a tremor passed through the arm which lay within his.
But he said calmly:
“It is the only way as well as the best way, Thessa. I know you are absolutely innocent. I am confident that Captain Renoux is going to believe it, too. If he does not, you are no worse off. Because it has already become known to the French Government that you are here. Renoux knew it.”
They had halted; Barres led Thessalie to a seat. Renoux, straight, deferential, correct, awaited her pleasure.
She looked up at him; his keen, intelligent eyes met hers.
“If you please, Captain Renoux, will you do me the honour to be seated?” she said in a low voice.
Barres went to her, bent over her hand, touched it with his lips.
“Just tell him the truth, Thessa, dear,” he said.
“Everything?” she smiled faintly, “including our first meeting?”
Barres flushed, then laughed:
“Yes, tell him about that, too. It was too charming for him not to appreciate.”
And with a half mischievous, half amused nod to Renoux he went back to find the dancers, whom he could hear laughing far away in his own studio.
It was nearly one o’clock when Dulcie, who had been sleeping with Thessalie, whispered to Barres that she was ready to retire.
“Indeed, you had better,” he said, releasing her as the dance music ran down and ceased. “If you don’t get some sleep you won’t feel like travelling to-morrow.”
“Will you explain to Thessa?”
“Of course. Good-night, dear.”
She gave him her hand in silence, turned and offered it to Westmore, then went away toward her room.
Westmore, who had been fidgeting a lot since Thessalie had retired for a tête-à-tête with a perfectly unknown and alarmingly good-looking young man whom he never before had laid eyes on, finally turned short in his restless pacing of the studio.
“What the deuce can be keeping Thessa?” he demanded. “And who the devil is that black-eyed young sprig of France you brought home with you?”
“Sit down and I’ll tell you,” said Barres crisply, instinctively resenting his friend’s uncalled for solicitude in Thessalie’s behalf.
So Westmore seated himself and Barres told him all about the evening’s adventures. And he was still lingering unctuously over the details of the battle at Grogan’s, the recital of which, Westmore demanding, he had begun again, when at the farther end of the studio Thessalie appeared, coming toward them.
Renoux was beside her, very deferential and graceful in his attendance, and with that niceness of attitude which confesses respect in every movement.
Thessalie came forward; Barres advanced to meet her with the unspoken question in his eyes, and she gave him both her hands with a tremulous little smile of happiness.
“Is it all right?” he whispered.
“I think so.”
Barres turned and grasped Renoux by one hand.
The latter said:
“There is not the slightest doubt in my mind, mon ami. You were perfectly right. A frightful injustice has been done in this matter. Of that I am absolutely convinced.”
“You will do what you can to set things right?”
“Of course,” said Renoux simply.
There was a moment’s silence, then Renoux smiled:
“You know,” he said lightly, “we French have a horror of any more mistakes like the Dreyfus case. We are terribly sensitive. Be assured that my Government will take up this affair instantly upon receiving my report.”
He turned to Barres:
“Would you, perhaps, offer me a day’s hospitality at your home in the country, if I should request it by telegram sometime this week or next?”
“You bet,” replied Barres cordially.
Then Renoux made his adieux, as only such a Frenchman can make them, saying exactly the right thing to each, in exactly the right manner.
When he was gone, Barres took Thessalie’s hands and pressed them:
“Pretty merle-blanc, your little friend Dulcie is already asleep. Tell us to-morrow how you convinced him that you are what you are – the dearest, sweetest girl in the world!”
She laughed demurely, then glanced apprehensively, sideways, at Westmore.
And the mute but infuriated expression on that young man’s countenance seemed to cause her the loss of all self-possession, for she cast one more look at him and fled with a hasty “good-night!”
