Read Ebook: Asmodeus; or The Devil on Two Sticks by Le Sage Alain Ren Janin Jules Gabriel Contributor Johannot Tony Illustrator Thomas Joseph Translator

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Ebook has 1354 lines and 108651 words, and 28 pages

"I'm engaged. But it's a secret."

His jaw dropped, "Engaged!" he faltered. "But--who to? And why is it a secret?"

"I can't tell you who to. I promised to keep it secret; and then he suddenly went away and the war broke out and I've never seen him since."

"But you've heard from him?"

She bit her lip and looked away. "Not a line," she faltered.

"But--I don't understand." His tone was infinitely tender. "Why hasn't he written to you? Violet girl, why would he not have written?"

It was out at last.

"Mother of God!" Dick leaned back in his chair, his eyes fixed on her, his cigarette unheeded, burning the tablecloth. "Do you love him?"

"Yes." The whispered answer was hardly audible. "Oh, Dick, I wonder if you can understand. It all came so suddenly, and then there was this war, and I know it's awful to love a German, but I do, and I can't tell anyone but you; they'd think it horrible of me. Oh, Dick! tell me you understand."

"I understand, little girl," he answered, very slowly. "I understand."

It was all very involved and infinitely pathetic. But, as I have said before, Dick O'Rourke was a gallant gentleman.

"It's not his fault he's a German," she went on after a while. "He didn't start the war--and, you see, I promised him."

That was the rub--she'd promised him. Truly a woman is a wonderful thing! Very gentle and patient was O'Rourke with her that evening, and when at last he turned into his club, he sat for a long while gazing into the fire. Just once a muttered curse escaped his lips.

"Did you speak?" said the man in the next chair.

At 3 p.m. on April 22nd Dick O'Rourke received a wire. It was short and to the point. "Leave cancelled. Return at once." He tore round to Victoria, found he'd missed the boat-train, and went down to Folkestone on chance. For the time Moyra was almost forgotten. Officers are not recalled from short leave without good and sufficient reason; and as yet there was nothing in the evening papers that showed any activity. At Folkestone he met other officers--also recalled; and when the boat came in rumours began to spread. The whole line had fallen back--the Germans were through and marching on Calais--a ghastly defeat had been sustained.

The morning papers were a little more reassuring; and in them for the first time came the mention of the word "gas." Everything was vague, but that something had happened was obvious, and also that that something was pretty serious.

One p.m. on the 23rd found him at Boulogne, ramping like a bull. An unemotional railway transport officer told him that there was a very nice train starting at midnight, but that the leave train was cancelled.

"But, man!" howled O'Rourke, "I've been recalled. 'Tis urgent!" He brandished the wire in his face.

The R.T.O. remained unmoved, and intimated that he was busy, and that O'Rourke's private history left him quite cold. Moreover, he thought it possible that the British Army might survive without him for another day.

In the general confusion that ensued on his replying that the said R.T.O. was no doubt a perfect devil as a traveller for unshrinkable underclothes, but that his knowledge of the British Army might be written on a postage-stamp, O'Rourke escaped, and ensconcing himself near the barrier, guarded by French sentries, at the top of the hill leading to St. Omer, he waited for a motor-car.

Having stopped two generals and been consigned elsewhere for his pains, he ultimately boarded a flying corps lorry, and 4 p.m. found him at St. Omer. And there--but we will whisper--was a relative--one of the exalted ones of the earth, who possessed many motor-cars, great and small.

Dick chose the second Rolls-Royce, and having pursued his unit to the farm where he'd left it two days before, he chivied it round the country, and at length traced it to Poperinghe.

And there he found things moving. As yet no one was quite sure what had happened; but he found a solemn conclave of Army Service Corps officers attached to his division, and from them he gathered twenty or thirty of the conflicting rumours that were flying round. One thing, anyway, was clear: the Huns were not triumphantly marching on Calais--yet. It was just as a charming old boy of over fifty, who had perjured his soul over his age and had been out since the beginning--a standing reproach to a large percentage of the so-called youth of England--it was just as he suggested a little dinner in that hospitable town, prior to going up with the supply lorries, that with a droning roar a twelve-inch shell came crashing into the square....

That night at 11 p.m. Dick stepped out of another car into a ploughed field just behind the little village of Woesten, and, having trodden on his major's face and unearthed his servant, lay down by the dying fire to get what sleep he could. Now and again a horse whinnied near by; a bit rattled, a man cursed; for the unit was ready to move at a moment's notice and the horses were saddled up. The fire died out--from close by a battery was firing, and the sky was dancing with the flashes of bursting shells like summer lightning flickering in the distance. And with his head on a sharp stone and another in his back Dick O'Rourke fell asleep and dreamed of--but dreams are silly things to describe. It was just as he'd thrown the hors-d'oeuvres at the head-waiter of Ciro's, who had suddenly become the hated German rival, and was wiping the potato salad off Moyra's face, which it had hit by mistake, with the table-cloth, that with a groan he turned on his other side--only to exchange the stones for a sardine tin and a broken pickle bottle. Which is really no more foolish than the rest of life nowadays....

And now for a moment I must go back and, leaving our hero, describe shortly the events that led up to the sending of the wire that recalled him.

Early in the morning of April 22nd the Germans launched at that part of the French line which lay in front of the little villages of Elverdinge and Brielen, a yellowish-green cloud of gas, which rolled slowly over the intervening ground between the trenches, carried on its way by a faint, steady breeze. I do not intend to describe the first use of that infamous invention--it has been done too often before. But, for the proper understanding of what follows, it is essential for me to go into a few details. Utterly unprepared for what was to come, the French divisions gazed for a short while spellbound at the strange phenomenon they saw coming slowly towards them. Like some liquid the heavy-coloured vapour poured relentlessly into the trenches, filled them, and passed on. For a few seconds nothing happened; the sweet-smelling stuff merely tickled their nostrils; they failed to realise the danger. Then, with inconceivable rapidity, the gas worked, and blind panic spread. Hundreds, after a dreadful fight for air, became unconscious and died where they lay--a death of hideous torture, with the frothing bubbles gurgling in their throats and the foul liquid welling up in their lungs. With blackened faces and twisted limbs one by one they drowned--only that which drowned them came from inside and not from out. Others, staggering, falling, lurching on, and of their ignorance keeping pace with the gas, went back. A hail of rifle-fire and shrapnel mowed them down, and the line was broken. There was nothing on the British left--their flank was up in the air. The north-east corner of the salient round Ypres had been pierced. From in front of St. Julian, away up north towards Boesienge, there was no one in front of the Germans.

It is not my intention to do more than mention the rushing up of the cavalry corps and the Indians to fill the gap; the deathless story of the Canadians who, surrounded and hemmed in, fought till they died against overwhelming odds; the fate of the Northumbrian division--fresh from home--who were rushed up in support, and the field behind Fortuin where they were caught by shrapnel, and what was left. These things are outside the scope of my story. Let us go back to the gap.

Hard on the heels of the French came the Germans advancing. For a mile or so they pushed on, and why they stopped when they did is--as far as I am concerned--one of life's little mysteries. Perhaps the utter success of their gas surprised even them; perhaps they anticipated some trap; perhaps the incredible heroism of the Canadians in hanging up the German left caused their centre to push on too far and lose touch; perhaps--but, why speculate? I don't know, though possibly those in High Places may. The fact remains they did stop; their advantage was lost and the situation was saved.

When, therefore, Dick O'Rourke perceived an unshaven and unwashed warrior, garbed as a gunner officer, coming down the road from Woesten, and, moreover, recognised him as one of his own term at the "Shop," known to his intimates as the Land Crab, he hailed him with joy.

"All hail, oh, crustacean!" he cried, as the other came abreast of him. "Whither dost walk so blithely?"

"Halloa, Dick!" The gunner paused. "You haven't seen my major anywhere, have you?"

"Not that I'm aware of, but as I don't know your major from Adam, my evidence may not be reliable. What news from the seat of war?"

"None that I know of--except this cursed gun, that is rapidly driving me to drink."

"What cursed gun? I am fresh from Ciro's and the haunts of love and ease. Expound to me your enigma, my Land Crab."

He stopped suddenly. "Listen!" Perfectly clear from the woods to the north of them--the woods that lie to the west of the Woesten-Oostvleteren road, for those who may care for maps--there came the distinctive boom! crack! of a smallish gun. Three more shots, and then silence. The gunner turned to Dick.

"There you are--that's the gun."

"But how nice! Only, why curse it?"

"Principally because it's German; and those four shots that you have just heard have by this time burst in Poperinghe."

"What!" O'Rourke looked at him in amazement. "Is it my leg you would be pulling?"

"Certainly not. When the Germans came on in the first blind rush after the French two small guns on motor mountings got through behind our lines. One was completely wrecked with its detachment The motor mounting of the other you can see lying in a pond about a mile up the road. The gun is there." He pointed to the wood.

"And the next!" said O'Rourke. "D'you mean to tell me that there is a German gun in that wood firing at Poperinghe? Why, hang it, man! it's three miles behind our lines."

"Taking the direction those shells are coming from, the distance from Poperinghe to that gun must be more than ten miles--if the gun is behind the German trenches. Your gunnery is pretty rotten, I know, but if you know of any two-inch gun that shoots ten miles, I'll be obliged if you'll give me some lessons." The gunner lit a cigarette. "Man, we know it's not one of ours, we know where they all are; we know it's a Hun."

"Then, what in the name of fortune are ye standing here for talking like an ould woman with the indigestion? Away with you, and lead us to him, and don't go chivying after your bally major." Dick shouted for his revolver. "If there's a gun in that wood, bedad! we'll gun it."

"My dear old flick," said the other, "don't get excited. The woods have been searched with a line of men--twice; and devil the sign of the gun. You don't suppose they've got a concrete mounting and the Prussian flag flying on a pole, do you? The detachment are probably dressed as Belgian peasants, and the gun is dismounted and hidden when it's not firing."

But O'Rourke would have none of it. "Get off to your major, then, and have your mothers' meeting. Then come back to me, and I'll give you the gun. And borrow a penknife and cut your beard--you'll be after frightening the natives."

That evening a couple of shots rang out from the same wood, two of the typical shots of a small gun. And then there was silence. A group of men standing by an estaminet on the road affirmed to having heard three faint shots afterwards like the crack of a sporting-gun or revolver; but in the general turmoil of an evening hate which was going on at the same time no one thought much about it. Half an hour later Dick O'Rourke returned, and there was a strange look in his eyes. His coat was torn, his collar and shirt were ripped open, and his right eye was gradually turning black. Of his doings he would vouchsafe no word. Only, as we sat down round the fire to dinner, the gunner subaltern of the morning passed again up the road.

"Got the gun yet, Dick?" he chaffed.

"I have that," answered O'Rourke, "also the detachment."

The Land Crab paused. "Where are they?"

"The gun is in a pond where you won't find it, and the detachment are dead--except one who escaped."

"Yes, I don't think." The gunner laughed and passed on.

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