I now approach a point in my story where it is difficult for me to write calmly, yet I wish to unfold this wretched business to you exactly as it unfolded itself to me. What I learned that night was all I ever knew until I knew all, and much was to happen before that time. It is not easy, sitting here now and with the whole amazing story in mind, to reproduce my mental state so that you may see and feel exactly as I saw and felt then.
Reaching the ground, I took the bundle of stiffened shreds and crawled into the little cave formed by the tree roots, for it was now nearly dark and I was cautious enough not to turn my flashlight on in the open.
I think I never experienced such a feeling of suspense as when I hurriedly rummaged the rotted pockets of this bleached rag which had once been part of the uniform of the boy from my own home town, in far-off America, Roy Blakeley’s friend, the young hero who had begun as a Boy Scout and gone to his death in a glorious dramatic triumph. And I was thrilled as I repeated his name to myself—Tom Slade.
In the sickening, earth-smelling dampness of that little grotto I ransacked the pockets of the tattered garment, my searchlight laid upon a piece of rotted wood so that its glare was cast upon my work. The watch I found to be at one end of a coarse, brass, lock-link chain, at the other end of which was fastened an oilskin wallet with an ingenious system of folds and interfolds intended to exclude water and dampness. The chain was long enough so that the watch could rest in the breast and the wallet in the hip pocket. There was no hip pocket here, of course, and the wallet I found in the rotted folds of the garment. I think it must have been plastered fast between the jacket and the tree-trunk. Probably it had been jerked out of the trousers pocket when the victim fell from the tree.
Three things about the watch interested but did not surprise me. It had stopped at twenty minutes after five, presumably the time of Slade’s fall; it was of American manufacture, and the initials T. S. were engraved upon the back of it. Here was confirmation, if I needed any, of the identity of its owner. It was very much the worse for rain and weather, but these facts were plainly discernible.
The oilskin wallet was of German manufacture, exactly like one which the boys had taken from a dead Boche and which I had seen and examined. That wallet of poor dead Fritzie’s had contained a childishly sentimental letter from Frankfort. This one, as you shall hear, contained documents of quite a different character.
The first thing I brought forth was the photograph of a girl—a very pretty girl indeed, if I am any judge. As I looked at it I had a vague recollection of having seen the girl somewhere—at a patriotic gathering in Bridgeboro, I thought, or perhaps it was just on Main Street, or in the library or the post-office. Anyway, she was no French girl and I could have vowed that I had seen her in Bridgeboro. So here, at least, was a pretty touch in the harrowing catastrophe. Tom had had a girl—as every soldier should have.
You will not be impatient if I run over the contents of this wallet with some particularity. The next thing was half of a half sheet of note paper, torn from a letter presumably, and with an irrelevant memorandum written on the other side The letter was from our young lady, I felt sure, and I thought it rather an ungallant treatment of her missive. The few sentences on this fragment ran thus. I copy them from the scrap itself.
looked about it seemed as if everyone in Bridgeboro was there. And of course the Boy Scouts and that excruciating imp of a Blakeley boy were on hand—Ruth’s brother, you know. Oh, by the way, who do you suppose is in the old place on Terrace Avenue? Guess. The Red Cross ladies and I’m working with
That was all, but it took me back home to Bridgeboro with a rush! And here, thought I, with half the world between us, here in this ghostly, forlorn scene of tragedy, am I reading of that “excruciating imp”—Roy Blakeley! Of course the Red Cross ladies were plying their needles in a vacant store on Terrace Avenue—I knew that well enough. But what was the grand affair at which the whole of Bridgeboro seemed to be present?
Poor Roy, poor Tom, poor girl, all to be stricken in one way or another because some bloody tyrant thought he owned the earth.
But I found companionship and solace in those few broken sentences and it was with wistful thoughts of home that I turned the scrap over and read in another hand:
See Capt. Pfeifer about list and supplies from Berry-au-Bac.
Captain Pfeiffer! Here was a good old German name for a loyal American captain—Pfeiffer! The least he could have done would have been to change it to Fifer. Well, he could kill the Germans with any name, but——
I scrutinized the memorandum a little more intently. List and supplies from Berry-au-Bac. Hmph! Why, Berry-au-Bac was fifteen or twenty miles within the German lines. At the time of Tom’s last service it must have been double that. What had Tom Slade to do with lists and supplies from Berry-au-Bac?
Why, of course, he had descended upon Berry-au-Bac and captured lists and— No, it was absurd.
Puzzled, I turned the scrap of paper over and found some reassurance in those cordial, friendly words written in the girl’s hand. No, sir, we do not turn out spies or traitors in Bridgeboro. How should I know what that memorandum meant? But if my name were Pfeiffer, I’d change it to Fifer or Fife, I knew that much. Tom Slade knew his business, I was sure of that.
So thinking, I unfolded the next paper and found that he knew his business only too well. Here was a rough map showing every last hospital and dressing station beyond the American lines in that sector.
Two were crossed off—blown up, I suppose. There were some twenty or more still to be blown up. Underneath were written these words, as nearly as I can remember them:
Report dressing station foot of Fav Hill joined to one on top—empty—don’t bother. Ask about supplies from Wangardt. Correct list sent to Cap. Dennheimer so I don’t get blame. Tell him G station on other list is full.
And so on, and so on—I could not read any more. The name of that unspeakable wretch, Dennheimer, was quite enough. His deeds of bestial inhumanity were such as to call down the vengeance of Heaven and damn him for all eternity. I knew that he had his minions peering out under their big gas bags and skulking about like the unclean bird I had been watching, putting the doom of certain death on those already wounded. I knew that, like that sinister, cowardly bird, he made it his special function to defile the blue sky, sending his sneaking minions of the air forth upon their barbarous errands. They did not fight, the gallant fliers of this command, they skulked and murdered and fled.
And here in my hands, incredible as it seemed, was the last damning memorial of one of them.
And an American!
With an uncertain hand and a kind of limp disgust, I drew the papers forth and scanned them one after another. I felt sick, sick with a kind of nausea of bewilderment and utter despair. For if this were true (and how could it be otherwise?), then I had no more faith in human nature.
Yes, I had—I had faith in the faith which I knew lived back in Bridgeboro, and I think I drew a little hope, perhaps still a little confidence, from the stout heart which would not even believe that this—this aviator—was dead. Excruciating imp! Hero, I called him, and I resolved that he should never hear this from me. He believed that the worst had not happened, loyal, stouthearted friend and champion and comrade that he was. But death is not the worst.
I need not trouble you with the sordid contents of those other papers; nor have I them at hand to copy. They were the familiar baggage of a traitor and a spy, with all the nice details of sneaking ingenuity and signs of moral turpitude, such as to arouse the wrath of a saint. It will be enough to tell you that if this creature had lived, the hospital at Dormans would probably have seen its agonized victims writhing in flames. And one of our little cemeteries, with its rows of wooden crosses, was to have been torn with jagged holes—I do not know why. There was a detailed report for Dennheimer which would have pleased him had he received it. And Captain Pfeiffer would not have been disappointed.
I sat there, holding the watch in one hand, the wallet in the other, jerking the coarse chain as If I would break it asunder, and separate the American timepiece bearing the initials of an American boy from this other souvenir of cowardice and treachery. Then I looked again at the picture of the girl with the clear, honest eyes, and then at her friendly words about Bridgeboro. And he had torn a piece from that letter to make a treacherous memorandum. The wretch!
So I sat in the darkness and pondered, noticing a spider which hurried back and forth in the small glare of my light, and other irrelevant trifles, as one will do under the stress of shock and sorrow. My head throbbed and I felt a strange disinclination to move.
Could this thing be? Why, he had vowed to be revenged upon those wretches! Had the whole business, first and last, been a treacherous ruse? Had he gained admission to the hospital simply to spy there? Was the newspaper account all wrong and he, the sneak and traitor, been but the hero of some misinformed newspaper correspondent? Everything is green when you look through green spectacles and the only thing I could be certain of now was the unmistakable meaning of these papers and the identity of their possessor. Everything else seemed readily susceptible of a dark and sinister construction.
As I groped in my mind for some saving fact or discrepancy which might explain, or at least raise a doubt, the thought of one final clinching circumstance forced itself upon me and I gave up in hopeless despair. I knew now why the Germans had come here and taken away Slade’s body. It was not his body they were after, but his papers and for these they had searched in vain. The decent burial of his poor remains in some less cheerless spot than here, and the dropping of his American identification disk and scout badge (which apparently he had continued to wear) were perhaps the kindly act of Fritz in one of his erratic, sentimental moods—a fraternal and charitable afterthought.
And this was the secret of the Scuppers—dark and sordid and depressing, like all else there; and so, I was resolved, it should remain—an invisible part of that gloomy derelict community, like the very atmosphere of that grim, cheerless spot to which fate or a merciful Providence had relegated it.