Chapter Seven.
In the Eagle’s Claws.
Two days later the Sixth Brigade, to which the Eighth Chasseurs belonged, had been christened by the men “The Flying Column,” for it had been designed to support the other brigades in action. Since their retreat from the Meuse, Edmond Valentin had marched with his regiment hither and thither; marched until he was footsore, with few intervals of rest, sometimes engaging the enemy, and then moving forward again to some new position, blindly, but with the knowledge that it was upon some general, previously conceived plan.
War is truly a strange experience. The mere man in the fighting-line shoots in a trench, lies low, smokes a cigarette and chaffs his comrades, shoots again, then advances—or retreats, as the case may be. Rumours pass from mouth to mouth of success or of defeat; he knows not which is the truth. Retire or advance, what does it matter? If one retires it is for strategic purposes; if one advances it does not mean victory. Edmond Valentin, sous-officier of infantry, was but a mere little pawn in that colossal game of world-power.
They had made a great détour around Liège, behind the forts of Lanlin, Loncin, and Flémalle, and as the fighting had now become intense near Fort Boncelles, they had been called up to assist the attacked brigade.
It was night when they reached the little village of Esneux, prettily situated on the river. On the previous day the place had been occupied by the Germans under Von Emmich, but the big guns from Boncelles had been turned upon them, and the Bavarians had been compelled to evacuate the place, not, however, before they had driven out the poor frightened inhabitants and sacked it. But the heavy shell-fire from the Boncelles fort had wrecked the town and set fire to it, so that when the Chasseurs arrived they found it only a heap of still smoking ruins.
About nine o’clock that evening Edmond’s company took up a position in a dark wood close to an old ruined château above the burnt-out village, but presently, with about thirty others, he was ordered out to the edge of the wood where the highroad ran to Liège. Once there, every one of them was left to his own thoughts, and Edmond, having fixed his gun in position in a ditch well covered behind a wall, sat back with his men, lit a cigarette and reflected.
He was thinking of Aimée, as he thought of her always every hour, wondering whether she had fled from Belgium, now that invasion was an accomplished fact. That day the wildest rumours had reached them—rumours of German successes everywhere, save at Liège. It was declared, from mouth to mouth, that the French had been driven back all along the line, and that the enemy were already marching through Holland on to Antwerp—German-made lies which were, later on, proved to have been circulated to create panic.
As they waited there, gazing anxiously across the river where blood-red glares showed away in the distance—farms and homesteads fired deliberately by the Uhlans—the moon rose brightly in the clear sky. Now and then could be heard the distant rumble of heavy artillery, while at infrequent intervals the forts of Embourg across the river and Boncelles on their left roared forth, showing sharp, angry flashes in the night.
Close by where Edmond had taken up his position was a small stone-built hut, roofless and in ruins; but upon its walls he noticed that a big white paper had been pasted.
He strode up to it, and in the moonlight examined it. The poster was one of the enemy’s proclamations which had been printed in Berlin in readiness months before, and he read as follows:
AU PEUPLE BELGE!
C’est à mon plus grand regret que les troupes Allemandes se voient forcées de franchir la frontière de la Belgique. Elles agissant sous la contrainte d’une nécessité inévitable la neutralité de la Belgique ayant été déjà violée par des officiers français qui, sous un déguisement, aient traversé le territoire belge en automobile pour pénétrer en Allemagne.
Belges! C’est notre plus grand désir qu’il y ait encore moyen d’éviter un combat entre deux peuples qui étaient amis jusqu’à présent, jadis même allies. Souvenez vous au glorieux jour de Waterloo où c’étaient les armes allemandes qui ont contribué à fonder et établir l’indépendance et la prospérité de votre patrie.
Mais il nous faut le chemin libre. Des destructions de ponts, de tunnels, de voies ferrées devront être regardées comme des actions hostiles. Belges, vous avez à choisir.
J’espère donc que l’Armée allemande de la Meuse ne sera pas contrainte de vous combattre. Un chemin libre pour attaquer celui qui voulait nous attaquer, c’est tout ce que nous désirons.
Je donne des garanties formelles à la population belge qu’elle n’aura rien a souffrir des horreurs de la guerre; que nous payerons en monnayé les vivres qu’il faudra prendre du pays; que nos soldats se montreront les meilleurs amis d’un peuple pour lequel nous éprouvons la plus haute estime, la plus grand sympathie.
C’est de votre sagesse et d’un patriotisme bien compris qu’il dépend d’éviter à votre pays les horreurs de la guerre.
Le Général Commandant en Chef l’Armée de la Meuse!
Von Emmich.
It was a proclamation which was now posted everywhere, not only in the districts occupied by the Germans, but it had also been secretly affixed to walls by spies in Liège, Louvain, Charleroi, and even in Brussels itself. By it, the Germans were hoping to secure the allegiance of the Belgian people.
While this proclamation expressed regret that the German troops found themselves obliged to cross the Belgian frontier, it pointed out that only necessity compelled them to do so because French officers had violated Belgian territory by crossing from France into Germany by motor-cars. A poor excuse surely for the burning and sacking of all those little undefended frontier towns—Visé, Argenteau, Soumagne, Poulseur, and the rest.
“Belgians?” it went on. “It is our great desire that there may still be means to avoid a combat between two peoples who were friends until now, and were formerly even allies. Remember the glorious day of Waterloo, where fought the German armies who contributed to found and establish the independence and prosperity of your country.
“But we must have an open road. Any destruction of bridges, tunnels, or railways must be regarded as hostile actions. Belgians, it is for you to choose!
“I hope, then, that the German army of the Meuse will not be compelled to wage war with you. An open way to attack those who wish to attack us: that is all we desire.
“I give these formal guarantees to the Belgian population: that it will suffer nothing from the horrors of war; that we will pay in gold for the provisions that we find necessary to take from your country; that our soldiers will show themselves to be the best friends of a people for whom we cherish the highest esteem and the greatest sympathy.
“By your wisdom and patriotism, which we fully recognise, your country will be spared the horrors of war.
“General Commander-In-Chief of the Army of the Meuse,—
“Von Emmich.”
And yet the poor inhabitants of Visé had been outraged and shot by the Kaiser’s unrestrained savages! In all those villages lying across the rippling Ourthe and the broad Meuse, the treatment of the inoffensive civilians had been ruthless and merciless. Removal from the face of the earth—a favourite phrase of the Germans themselves—was, from the first, the invader’s idea of how best to deal with the unarmed, unoffending villagers, the only crime of whose hard-working people was that they had fallen in the path of the blasphemous Prussian militarism.
A private who was reading the proclamation remarked to Edmond:
“What trickery—eh? I hear that the Uhlans yesterday shot the Burgomaster of Esneux, over yonder, and propped his body against a wall all day as a warning—because he had carried a revolver. Thirty men were afterwards shot in the Place without any trial whatever, and women and children were outraged and bayoneted and their bodies flung into the river. Our women, they say, are being treated infamously, and all the possessions of the villagers are being destroyed. May God curse those Germans!”
“Yes,” replied the sous-officier, and as he turned away with a sigh a red light behind the hill gradually appeared, and then quickly grew brighter. “There is another village on fire, over there. I suppose the Uhlans will drive our people to reprisals so that excuse for further cruelty may be found.”
“And yet they post up this proclamation!” cried the man in Flemish, and with the point of his bayonet he succeeded in tearing holes in the notice, and eventually mutilated and obliterated it, saying:
“Death to the Alboches! Death to the Kaiser’s murderers and brigands! After all, the Emperor who makes war upon women and children is only a brigand, just like those in Sicily. Surely a prize should be offered for his head!”
Just as the man spoke they both saw, in the distance, sudden little red flashes, which told that the troops were vomiting death upon the enemy again, so they dashed back to their ditch, while in the trees above them could already be heard the “phit” of the enemy’s bullets as they struck the branches.
Ere a few moments the order was given to fire, and quickly Edmond’s pom-pom again began its regular spitting of death, whilst on the flank their invisible batteries also opened fire with destructive shrapnel.
The night grew darker, and the moon became, for a time, obscured behind a bank of swiftly-drifting cloud. In the distance the fires lit up the battle scene with a red, sinister glare, while, far away upon the hills on the right, could be seen moving masses of Belgian soldiers, a Dantean vision of hell, and whilst the men lay in their shallow ditch firing away with monotonous regularity, bullets were whistling past, striking the trees, or flattening themselves with muffled noise in the earth.
The fight was a hot one. In front were the millions of the Kaiser, oncoming like a great irresistible tide, yet the gallant little Belgian army, which for years had been jeered at by every Frenchman, soldier or civilian, as a comic-opera force, were defending their country in a manner so patriotic and desperate that it held the whole world in surprise.
Confronted by a big and arrogant Empire, which for years had laid its cunningly-devised plots for their destruction, the Belgian army stood undaunted, and meant to strive on and defend their soil until France and Great Britain could come to their aid.
That the Germans should never take Belgium had been resolved in the hearts of all King Albert’s subjects, while His Majesty himself, in the uniform of a private of infantry, was daily in the trenches, and often spoke quiet, homely words of encouragement to private and general alike. The whole army knew how, two days before, he had been in the trenches at Herstal, and had given private soldiers cigarettes with his own hands. In some cases he had not, at first, been recognised, dressed in a shabby, dusty uniform, just like themselves.
But he was a king—a king eventually without a country—and his name will for ever go down in history as a wonderful example of self-denial, personal bravery, and of human sympathy with his crushed and desolated nation.
Suddenly, while Edmond was commanding his gun, a shrapnel burst just behind him. A bullet struck his water-bottle, and a splinter passing through it the water ran out down his leg. But at the same moment another bullet struck in the head a man to whom he was giving an order and he fell heavily forward on his face—dead.
In a moment the place seemed swept by lead. Two or three shells fell in quick succession, the enemy having apparently advanced to a long copse just across the river-bank.
“The brutes have occupied Esneux again, I believe,” remarked a man close by.
Away on the crest of one of the hills a small but very bright light showed. It was flashing in Morse code. A signaller quite near read it aloud.
“The enemy!” he shouted. “The message is in German!”
Yet they still plugged away with their rifles, undaunted at the enemy’s advance. The forts were speaking more frequently now, and continually the very earth trembled beneath the great crashes of modern artillery of the Brailmont system of defence.
Along that dark line of low hills was seen constant flashing in the blackness; storm clouds had arisen to obscure the moon, and rain was now threatening. The whole sky was now a deep, angry red, with patches of crimson heightening and dying down—the reflections of the inferno of war. The noise was deafening, and on every hand the gallant defenders were sustaining heavy losses.
Of a sudden, before indeed they were aware of it, the whole edge of the wood became lit up by an intense white brilliance, so dazzling that one could not discern anything in front. A thousand headlights of motor-cars seemed to be there focussed into one. The Germans had turned one of their great field searchlights upon them, and a second later shells fell and burst in all directions in the vicinity.
Handicapped by want of such modern appliances, the Belgians were unable to retaliate. They could only remain there, in the actual zone of the enemy’s pitiless fire. Dozens of brave men fell shattered or dead amid that awful whirlwind of bullets and fragments of steel, as slowly the long ray of intense light moved along the line, searching for its prey, followed by the enemy’s artillery which never failed to keep up a pitiless, relentless fire, with wonderful accuracy for a night engagement.
From end to end swept that white line of brilliancy; then slowly—very slowly—it came back again, causing the men to lie flat upon their stomachs and wait in breathless anxiety until it had passed. Time after time that long, shallow trench which was, after all, only a ditch, for no opportunity had been afforded for military engineering—was swept by both light and fire from end to end, and each time Edmond’s comrades were being placed hors de combat. That the situation was critical, he knew. Yet not a single man stood dismayed. Their Mausers crackled with just the same regularity, and, thanks to the fine spirit of his men, his pom-pom continued to rain lead upon the trenches of Von Emmich’s walls of men across the river.
At last the “retire” was sounded. The position had by this time become quite untenable. Edmond Valentin bit his nether lip. The same order always. They retired, but never advanced. For them, the Teuton tide seemed utterly overwhelming. Yet their spirit was never broken. The Belgian is ever an optimist.
Surely Belgium would never fall beneath the Kaiser’s rule, to be ground under his iron heel and smashed by that “mailed fist” which had so long been the favourite joke of the great caricaturists of Europe.
Impossible!
With alacrity the Maxim was dismounted, and with calm orderliness the retirement was commenced at a moment when that annoying searchlight had turned its attention to the right flank, and the great white beam lay full upon it.
They were to withdraw towards Liège, first retiring into the wood.
“Wat sullen wy doen?” (what is to be done?) asked one of Edmond’s men in Flemish—the thickset man who had read the proclamation.
“Our general knows best, my comrade,” Edmond reassured him in his own language. “This may be only a strategic move. We shall sweep them off our soil before long—depend upon it.”
“Gy hebt gelyk,” (You are right), muttered the man, panting beneath his load—the barrel of the Maxim strapped across his shoulder.
“Ik stem geheel met U!” (I quite agree with you), murmured another of the men in his soft, musical Flemish. “We will never surrender to those brigands! Never, while there is breath left in us. They are assassins, not soldiers!”
They marched forward along the wide, dark, dusty road, safe from the enemy’s fire at that point because of the rising ground between them and the winding, peaceful valley of the Ourthe.
In their faces stood Liège, five miles distant. They were moving forward, still in high spirits. Many of the men were whistling to themselves as they marched, sturdy and undaunted. The Eighth Chasseurs was one of the first regiments of King Albert, all men of splendid bravery, and of finer physique than the average Belgian.
From Liège came still the continuous boom of artillery, for the forts untaken were keeping up a regular fire, and the enemy, it was known, were sustaining terrible losses both night and day.
The forts, built in a ring in the environs of the city, were safe enough. But not so the town. The Germans, aided by their swarms of spies in the place, had made a dozen attempts to take it during the past forty-eight hours, but had always been repulsed.
They had resorted to every ruse. One party of Germans had dressed themselves in British uniforms—whence they obtained them nobody has ever known—and on entering the town were at once welcomed enthusiastically as allies. But, fortunately, the ruse was discovered when one was overheard to speak in German, and all were promptly shot. Then another party appeared as Belgian Red Cross men, and they, on being discovered to be enemies, shared a similar fate: they were shot in the Place Cockerill. The Germans had requested an armistice for twenty-four hours to bury their dead. This, however, was refused, because it was well known that the big Krupp howitzers—“the German surprise to Europe”—were being brought up, each drawn by forty horses, and that the cessation of hostilities asked for was really craved in order to gain time to get these ponderous engines of destruction into position.
As they were marching, the moon again shone out over the doomed city of Liège, when of a sudden Edmond saw over it, in the sky, three black points which immediately changed into a light cloud, and soon flames were rising from the town. The Germans were now firing petrol-shells upon the place!
They gained a small village called Angleur, a quaint little whitewashed place, over which shot and shell had swept for the past three days, until the villagers now took no notice. Here generous hearts offered comfort to the tired soldiers, jugs of fresh milk and bread were brought out though it was the middle of the night.
But they had no time to accept those gifts.
Presently they met some terrified people—men, women, and children—fleeing from outside Liège, carrying bundles, all they could save from their wrecked homes.
“The Germans are in the wood!” they cried.
Before them lay a blazing village.
Edmond’s captain gave an order to halt, and they drew up. Then they saw the disappearance into the red furnace of entire companies, and soon afterwards the stretchers and ambulance corps following each other in quick succession told them of the splendid heroism of their glorious defenders.
Again they went forward, every man’s mouth hard-set and determined, yet in some cases with a grim joke upon their lips, for they resolved to defend the lives of their dearly-loved ones, and to account for as many of the enemy as they could.
“For God and Belgium?” shouted one man, a stout private from Malines, who had lost his shako and his kit.
Then they all ran to death with but little hope left in them. Such an illustration of bravery had been rare in this present century.
The remembrance of the Almighty, shouted by that fat private, had an effect upon the religious men in the ranks, officers and privates alike, and in that red glare of war, with blood showing in the very sky, they dashed on with renewed hope and a spirit of splendid patriotism unbroken.
They took cover in an orchard and, pulling down the hedges frantically, soon saw, descending from the hill on their right, the batteries and remains of their own much-tested regiments.
Stretchers were taken up to the woods on the left, and soon came down again with the wounded. Edmond’s “Flying Column” was protecting the transport of these “braves,” but an order was shouted that they had to withdraw away up on to the plateaux. Then they rushed to the fort of Flémalle, where they took up fighting positions. But the Germans did not want to make another attempt. The mission of the Eighth Chasseurs was over. Three hours later they moved forward again. The forts would now defend their position in the campaigning army.
Such was a typical night of the defence of Liège.
Chapter Eight.
The Double Face.
At the Château de Sévérac the hot, fevered days were passing but slowly.
Aimée and the Baroness were still there, and now they had been joined by the Baron, who had in Brussels been assured that the enemy would respect the houses of the rich, and that at his splendid home, perched high on that rock above the Meuse, they would have nothing to fear. Rigaux, indeed, had declared to his friend that at the château they would be far safer than in any of the towns, which might be invested or bombarded—safer even than in Brussels itself.
Hence they had remained there, full of hourly anxiety as to what really would be the outcome of it all.
The Baron de Neuville had suggested that his wife and Aimée should flee to England. But while Aimée felt that so long as she remained in Belgium she might at least have a chance of seeing Edmond very soon, the Baroness, on her part, refused to leave her husband’s side, while he, in his responsible position as financial adviser to the Government, could not leave Belgium.
From time to time they received scraps of terrifying news over the telephone from Brussels. Aimée, indeed, each hour rang up her father’s secretary in Brussels, and listened to the latest news from the scene of the fighting.
But, alas! it was a tale of repeated disaster, until she became sick at heart. Of the whereabouts of the Eighth Chasseurs she could glean nothing. She had heard nothing whatsoever of them since they passed through Liège on their way to the front. For aught she knew, they might have shared the same fate as that of other regiments, or been swept out of existence by the terrible fire of the enemy’s machine-guns.
Often she would step out upon the balcony which led from her own room and gave such a wonderful panorama of river and woods, and there she would listen attentively.
Sometimes she fancied she could hear the far-distant booming of the guns. And yet the world about her, warm and sunlit, without a cloud in the brilliant summer sky, seemed so very peaceful. The birds sang merrily, and the peasants, undisturbed after the first days of war, were now garnering in the yellow corn.
The first panic of war had passed, and the dull-eyed Walloons, who composed the major part of the population in that district, clattered along in their wooden sabots and declared that the enemy were going straight on towards Brussels. They would never come near them.
They were unaware as yet of the frightful deeds being done beyond Liège in those warm summer days, acts of merciless savagery and every refinement of cruelty which degenerate minds, filled with the blood-lust of war, could conceive. They knew not of the dastardly practice, made by the Kaiser’s “cultured” troops, of placing before them innocent women and children to act as a living screen, in the hope that the Allies would not, from motives of humanity, fire upon them.
The whole world was being thrilled and shocked by the unspeakable acts of these blonde beasts who, at the behest of their arrogant Kaiser, had simply become hordes of savages, and whose atrocious acts could only be compared with those of the troops of African wilds. But in Belgium little was known of it all, save in the devastated villages themselves, and by Monsieur Carton de Wiart, the Minister of Justice in Brussels, who was preparing an official report to present to the Powers.
The hideous atrocities perpetrated during that bloody fortnight, from August 6th to the 20th, during which the country north of Liège was being swept by fire and sword, were being hidden from the gallant little nation.
In the great high-up Château de Sévérac they only knew of them by rumour, and whenever Aimée told what she had heard over the telephone to her father sitting there so grave and morose, he always shook his head and declared that they were only wild rumours.
“The German soldiers are civilised. They do not shoot women, my dear girl,” he would always declare. The true stories of the Kaiser’s “frightful examples”—which his bloody Majesty himself admitted—had not yet been told. The Baron and his family did not know how, at Aerschot, the male inhabitants who crossed their thresholds were seized and shot under the eyes of their wives and children; how poor Monsieur Thielemans, the Burgomaster, and his fifteen-year-old son, with a dozen prominent citizens, were set up against a wall and shot, and their bodies cast unceremoniously into a hole. They knew not how young girls, and even little children, had been raped at Orsmael; how wounded Belgian soldiers were tied to telegraph poles and shot; how, constantly, Red Cross waggons bearing doctors and wounded were deliberately fired upon; or how these Teuton apostles of “kultur” had actually mounted machine-guns in their own Red Cross vans and fired at the unsuspecting! Of the awful scenes in St. Trond, Velm, and Haelen, rumour only gave the faintest outline, which was dismissed as imaginary and without foundation.
Alas! however, it was the bitter and terrible truth. Abominable deeds were committed not only in those places, but at Sempst men had their arms and hands cut off; at Corbeek Loo women and girls were bayoneted; at Seraing the blood-guilty ruffians massacred several hundred people, and in more than one village terrified women were made to pass in front of machine-guns amid the laughter of the drunken German soldiers and their threats to blow them out of existence at any moment.
Was it any wonder that many poor wretches went stark mad with terror?
Over this stricken country, between Liège and Louvain, towards Brussels, the “Flying Column” were fighting—struggling along bravely from day to day against the most fearful odds.
While Aimée sat, hour after hour in silence, watching and wondering, Edmond with his Maxim was doing terrible execution. Yet of what use was it all? They were being gradually driven back towards Brussels, compelled to leave the villagers to their fate.
The roads were crowded by homeless men, women, and children, poor wretched people who had watched their homes sacked and burnt. For years they had been thrifty, and saved until they could live in quiet comfort, still working hard. Yet in one short fortnight all had gone from them; all they now possessed was piled into a wheelbarrow, perambulator, or cart, or else carried in a sack upon their backs.
The scenes on that wide, open main road leading through Louvain and Tirlemont to Brussels, a well-kept highway, lined in places by tall poplars, were enough to cause one’s heart to bleed.
Edmond looked upon them with a sigh. Beneath the pitiless sun the never-ceasing crowd moved westward, driven on by the advancing German army. All sorts of ramshackle vehicles were mixed up in the slowly moving mass of humanity who were tramping their way, day and night, on and on to some place of safety—where, they knew not—Brussels, Antwerp, or to Ghent, Ostend, or perhaps the sea. The iron of despair was in their souls.
Such a human tide as this, naturally, hampered the Belgian army severely. Weary, footsore, and sad-eyed, many old persons fainted by the wayside, and those who were friendless were left there to die. Everybody was thinking of his or her own family. They had no time for sympathy with others. Most of them were dressed in their best clothes—in order to save them—and all had fearful tales to tell of the behaviour of the Uhlans. Many of those poor, red-eyed, hatless women in black had seen their husbands, brothers, sons, or lovers shot down before their eyes. Some had been falsely accused of firing at the troops; some had simply been seized by drunken, laughing soldiers; some had been questioned by swaggering German officers, others had not. With all, trial or no trial, the end was the same—death.
And their corpses had been left to rot where they fell, and the village fired by those little black cubes of a highly inflammable chemical substance, which the brutes carried with them for that one purpose.
The fog of war was over everything.
“It is not warfare, father,” declared Aimée one evening, as she sat with her parents in a big, handsome salon, wherein the last blood-red light of the fiery afterglow was fast fading. “It is massacre. They have just told me, over the telephone, of fearful things that have happened in Aerschot. The Germans have wrecked the beautiful church, smashed the holy statues, desecrated the crucifix, and stabled their horses there. And these are the troops upon whom the Kaiser is beseeching God’s blessing. It is all too awful for words!”
“Yes, child,” replied the grey-haired Baroness, looking up from her embroidery—for in these days of excitement she tried to occupy her mind with her needlework. “The Kaiser respects neither the laws of nations, nor the laws of Almighty God, Whose aid he asks. His evil deeds cry aloud to Heaven, and to us who, horror-struck, are watching.”
“The Emperor is carrying out the policy, which I read yesterday in the Indépendance, advocated by Bismarck,” said the Baron. “The Iron Chancellor laid it down, as a maxim, that true strategy consisted in hitting the enemy hard, and in inflicting on the inhabitants of invaded towns the maximum of suffering, so that they might bring pressure upon their Government to discontinue it. He is declared to have said: ‘You must leave the people through whom you march only their eyes to weep with.’”
“The inhuman brute!” ejaculated the Baroness. “But our dear Belgium will never sue for peace.”
“Never,” declared the Baron fiercely, rising and passing to the window, an erect, refined figure. “We have the British on our side. They will quickly wipe the Germans from the seas, and then come here to our assistance. The speech of Asquith in the House of Commons shows their intentions. Besides, have we not Russia—a colossal power in Europe when she commences to move? So we may rest assured that for every evil and unwarrantable act committed upon our soil, ample vengeance will be exacted when the Cossacks are let loose upon our friends of Berlin.”
“They say that at Liège and in other places, German spies have been discovered,” Aimée remarked. “I hear that at the entrance to Liège, the German soldiers were actually met by spies—hitherto respectable inhabitants of the place—who acted as their guides through the city, and pointed out the principal buildings and the residences of the rich.”
“Exaggerated stories,” declared the Baron. “I do not believe in the existence of German spies in Belgium.”
“But they have arrested many both in Brussels and Antwerp.”
“Spy-mania seems to arise in every war,” was his reply.
“But Germany has been long preparing. Her spies are said to be everywhere,” declared the girl with emphasis. “No game is too low or despicable for the enemy to play, it seems.”
At that moment the liveried footman entered and, bowing, announced to the Baron:
“Monsieur Rigaux has arrived.”
“Ah! show him in. He may have news,” cried his master, eagerly.
Next moment the thin-faced, dark-haired man, wearing a smart grey suit and yellow gloves, came forward all smiles and graces, as he bowed low over the Baroness’s hand and then over Aimée’s.
“Well, my dear Arnaud?” the Baron commenced anxiously. “What is the latest from the front? Have you motored from Brussels?”
“Yes. And the news is disquieting—distinctly disquieting. Max, the Burgomaster, is already taking precautions in anticipation of the occupation of the capital by the enemy. Our troops are evacuating the city.”
Mother and daughter exchanged glances, both pale-faced and startled at such a turn of events.
“Then we have again been defeated,” exclaimed the Baron in a hard voice.
“It seems so. The news is out that Liège has fallen at last. The forts are silent—reduced to rubbish-heaps.”
“Liège fallen!” gasped both mother and daughter. “Yes. It seems that several days ago the Germans brought up some big Krupp howitzers, the secret of which has been so admirably kept, and—”
“Why do you say so admirably, M’sieur Rigaux?” interrupted Aimée quickly. “Such words would make it appear that you admire the Germans.”
The man started. His eyes narrowed, and his face assumed a sinister look. But only for a second. He saw the slip he had made, and hastily corrected it.
“My dear Mademoiselle,” he laughed. “Surely you cannot suspect me of pro-German sympathies? I hate the Kaiser, and all his abominable works. I used the words ‘admirably kept’ because in Germany they really know how to keep a secret. They are not like the English, for example, who will show any foreigner of distinction over their latest Dreadnoughts, or their strongest defences.”
“Well, the tone in which you spoke was certainly as though you entertained pro-German tendencies,” said the girl frankly, adding “but what about these wonderful guns?”
“Ah! Mademoiselle. They are wonderful, alas! As soon as they got these fearful engines of destruction into position they simply pulverised the forts. Poor General Leman was taken out of the ruins, unconscious, and is now a prisoner in Germany.”
“Leman a prisoner?” gasped the Baron. “Why, it was only a month ago that he dined here with us.”
“Poor fellow!” exclaimed the Baroness. “But why was he unconscious?”
“Owing to the deadly fumes from the explosion. One of the big shells from the German howitzer penetrated to the magazine, and it blew up.”
“Ah! But Leman did not surrender.”
“Certainly not,” said Rigaux, who was, in secret, very well informed of all that was in progress along the front. His wireless—worked by a German naval wireless operator who lived in seclusion in his house at Brussels—had, for days been picking up all the official messages, the operator having in his pocket the key to the war-cipher.
Not a move on land or on sea on the part of the Germans but was known at once to Arnaud Rigaux, who daily handed to the fair-haired young operator a brief report of what was in progress in Brussels. This the young man reduced to code and transmitted it, after having called up the German station at Nauen. Other stations heard it, but the message being in a code specially supplied for the purpose, it conveyed to them no meaning.
Arnaud Rigaux, the most clever and most dangerous spy which Germany possessed on Belgian soil, was, because of his high position as a financier, still unsuspected.
From his manner the Baron could see that his friend had come out from Brussels hastily, in order to tell him something which he hesitated to do in the presence of the ladies.
“So an advance is really being made towards Brussels and the Government has moved to Antwerp?” Aimée asked anxiously. “The papers are so vague about it all.”
“I fear that is so,” was Rigaux’s reply. “It seems, too, that the British are moving uncommonly slowly. They have not yet, it is said, embarked their expeditionary force, as we fully expected they would have done days ago.”
“The British, if they move slowly, always move very surely,” was the girl’s reply. “I was at school in England, you know, and I am quite aware of their slowness.”
“It is fatal in war, Mademoiselle. Why are they not here to help us—eh? We have relied upon them.”
“They will be here soon, and when they come they will give a good account of themselves, never fear. They are tried soldiers. The Germans have never seen a modern war. They are only swaggerers.”
“True. But they are at least scientific in their campaign. The English are not.”
“Well, Arnaud, if you continue to talk like that I shall begin to agree with Aimée, and accuse you of taking the German side,” laughed her father.
“Diable! I hate them too much. Look what I have lost—what I stand to further lose—eh?” protested the thin-faced man, with a quick gesture of the hands. “All I hope is that the English army will be in Belgium before the enemy enters Brussels.”
“But the French,” suggested the Baron. “What are they doing? One hears so very little of General Joffré and his army!”
“Ah! he, too, is moving slowly. At Verdun, and along the line of Alsace-Lorraine, there has been some fierce fighting, I hear.”
“How do you know?” asked the girl.
“By the papers.”
“But the papers have published no reports,” she said in surprise. “What journal has given the news? We have them all, and I read them very carefully.”
Again Rigaux was, for a second, nonplussed.
“Oh! I think it was in the Antwerp Matin—the day before yesterday—if I recollect aright.”
The truth was that he had heard it over his secret wireless only that morning.
“Who won?”
“Unfortunately, the Germans.”
“Ah!” sighed the girl. “It is always so. When shall we ever have a victory?”
“Who knows, Mademoiselle? Let us hope it will be very soon. Belgium will never be crushed.”
“Not so long as a single man remains alive who can carry a gun,” declared the Baron fiercely. “I wish I were younger. I’d go to the front at once and do my share.”
“As Edmond Valentin has gone,” Aimée remarked, more in order to spite Arnaud Rigaux than anything else.
In a second the spy’s face was wreathed in smiles.
“Ah, how is M’sieur Valentin? where is he, Mademoiselle?” he inquired.
“He is with the Eighth Chasseurs-à-pied, somewhere near Liège.”
“He is not near Liège now,” their visitor said. “The whole country, up to Louvain, is now held by the enemy. His brigade has, I expect, been thrown back to somewhere near Brussels—unless, of course, it has come south, towards Namur.”
In an instant the girl was eager and anxious. Namur, with its great forts, believed to be impregnable, was only a few miles away.
“Would they come across in this direction, do you think?” she asked eagerly.
“Certainly. If they were in the Meuse Valley they might follow it up towards Huy, and onward.”
“But there has been no sign of the enemy along there.”
“There will be soon, I fear, Mademoiselle. We are not sufficiently strong to keep them back.”
As a matter of fact, he knew that Uhlan patrols were in the woods within fifteen miles of them, and that very soon the whole Meuse Valley would probably run with blood. The Potsdam plan of campaign was to sweep every part of Belgium, from the frontier to the sea, with the fire of war.
“What shall we do if they come?” asked the pale-faced girl, dismayed. “Is it best to stay here?”
“I believe so. You are far safer here in your château than in Brussels.”
“But what will happen to us?”
“Oh, you may have a visit, perhaps, from a polite German officer who may billet some of his men here for the night. He will simply apologise for the inconvenience he causes. That is all.”
“But they have been massacring people north of Liège,” Aimée remarked.
“Bah! those are simply exaggerated tales of the country-people. Do not credit them, Mademoiselle. Nobody in Brussels believes them. In war, such tales are always told,” he said assuringly.
“Who is commanding the Eighth Chasseurs? Do you know?” asked the girl anxiously.
“Well, yes, I happen to know because Jacques, my second chauffeur, is in the regiment of Monsieur Valentin. They belong to the Sixth Brigade under General Paul Thalmann.”
“Thalmann!” echoed the Baroness. “Ah, we know him quite well. He was commandant at Bruges a year ago. Then he was moved to Ghent. Aimée and I stayed with him for three days during the Exhibition. A fine old soldier. One of the best men in all Belgium.”
Arnaud Rigaux smiled curiously. The Hebrew came out in him at that moment.
“Yes,” he said, with slight hesitation. “But a gambler, my dear Baroness. He is in my debt to a considerable extent. Besides, I—well, I suspect him.”
“Of what?” asked the great financier.
“Of dealings with the enemy.”
Aimée started.
“What do you mean, m’sieur?” she asked quickly.
“I simply mean what I say, Mademoiselle. General Thalmann has, to my knowledge, been on the verge of bankruptcy for the past three years. He is a bosom friend of a certain Karl Schnerb, whom I have long suspected of being a secret agent of Germany. After his acquaintance with Schnerb, the General began to repay me some of what I had lent him. Voilà tout!”
“You say, then, that General Thalmann is in the pay of our enemies?” asked Aimée quickly.
“You surely don’t mean that, Arnaud?” asked her father at the same moment.
“I only tell you facts that I know, my dear Baron,” was their visitor’s reply. “And for that reason, and that alone, I say: ‘May God help our poor little Belgium.’”
Aimée was silent.
Was it possible that a traitor was in command of Edmond’s brigade?
The girl held her breath. If what Arnaud Rigaux had alleged was the actual truth—and he always knew the truth—if such things were, then poor little Belgium was, alas! doomed.
Chapter Nine.
The Kaiser’s Secret Agent.
“The position is a very grave one, Henri,” Rigaux explained when, a few minutes later, they were alone together in a small, circular, book-lined room, that room below one of the high round towers of the château, which the Baron used as a bureau. “I hesitated to speak very openly before your wife, because it would cause her undue alarm. There is no doubt—indeed, there has been abundant proof in these last four days—that Belgium swarms with German spies. They are everywhere. Our enemies have been most crafty and cunning in their preparations for our undoing. They have arrested and shot sixteen German agents in Antwerp alone. They had carrier-pigeons, secret wireless, code-books, German ammunition, secret stores of petrol, and other things, which showed, only too plainly, their intentions. Now your telephone was cut at noon to-day, was it not, and you are wondering? Well, the truth is that the Germans occupied Brussels at eleven o’clock this morning?”
“They are in Brussels!” gasped the Baron, starting up. “You must be joking!”
“I am not, I regret to say. To-day, at eleven, Burgomaster Max met the German commander in the Chausée de Louvain. There was no resistance, and the enemy marched into the city, doing the goose-step as they passed the Gare du Nord.”
“Impossible?” gasped de Neuville, pale as death.
“But it is the unfortunate truth. The Germans are asking for an indemnity of eight millions sterling. The Minister of finance has asked me to negotiate the loan. Will you and your friends take part in it?”
For a moment the Baron de Neuville was silent. He knew the financial straits of the Government at that moment, and he was reflecting.
At last he said, in a low, earnest voice:
“Arnaud, if I touch it at all, my friends in London and myself will make the whole loan.”
“What, you will bear the eight millions?” asked Rigaux, with some surprise.
“Yes. I feel it my duty to assist in the present crisis.”
“But I only asked for a portion. I can do some myself, and obtain the remainder in Holland.”
“I tell you I will arrange to bear the whole responsibility. I will send word to Monsieur Max to-night. I can arrange with good substantial friends in London to assist me.”
Rigaux was silent for a few seconds.
“Well,” he said enthusiastically at last, “yours is indeed a fine example of patriotism, Henri, I will let Max know your generous offer. There is no telegraphic or telephonic communication with Brussels now.”
He did not add that in his pocket was a special pass, signed by the German commander, which allowed him to go through the enemy’s lines, backwards and forwards, at will. If the Baron and his friends paid over eight millions to the enemy, then his friends in Berlin would be highly pleased at his clever diplomacy.
“You return to Brussels to-night—eh?”
“Yes, at once. It is a risky business to be on the roads at night nowadays.”
“I shall go to Brussels to-morrow, and make the offer personally,” the Baron said.
“But, if you do so, you will not leave your wife and daughter here. If I were you I would send them to Ostend, where, if further trouble occurs, they can easily cross to England. They should not be left here alone. One never knows what may happen.” The Baron did not reply. He was still reassured by the words of certain highly-placed officials in Brussels that the Baroness and Aimée would be quite safe at Sévérac, and Rigaux, on his part, did not think it worth while to tell him of the close proximity of the Uhlans.
“I shall see you in Brussels to-morrow,” the Baron said briefly.
“Yes. May I tell Max that you will be at the Hôtel de Ville at noon—eh?” asked the secret agent of the Kaiser, “and that you and your English friends will, if necessary, guarantee the loan to the municipality of the eight millions demanded?”
“Yes,” was his friend’s reply.
“Ah, Henri,” cried Arnaud Rigaux, “you are a true patriot. You, the wealthiest man in Belgium, to come forward at such a time,” And, Judas-like, he took the Baron’s hand—he who was now secretly acting as financial agent of the German Government. “Monsieur Max has been made responsible for the good behaviour of the capital, and they have handed him back his scarf of office. The surrender was a sad and impressive scene, I can assure you,” he added.
“Ah, yes,” replied the Baron very gravely. “I had no idea that the enemy were already in Brussels.”
“Yes. They have taken Liège, Tirlemont, and Louvain, and are now coming up to bombard Namur.”
“So near!” cried the broad-shouldered Baron, amazed.
“Yes. That is why I suggest to you, privately, that the ladies should be sent at once to the coast.”
“Thanks for your hint, my dear Arnaud. I will certainly consider it,” was the other’s reply.
He handed Rigaux the big silver box of cigarettes, and when both had lit up, the footman brought, in response to his master’s summons, two tiny Bohemian liqueur glasses and filled them with fine old cognac.
They tossed them off, in Belgian fashion, and soon afterwards Rigaux gripped his friend’s hand, saying:
“Au revoir, till to-morrow. And all Belgians will thank you, Henri, for saving their capital from the Kaiser’s brigands.”
The Baron de Neuville smiled, and shrugged his thickset shoulders.
“It is but my duty as a loyal Belgian. I cannot fight side by side with our brave men, as I certainly would if I were younger. So I will help as far as my means permit.”
And then Arnaud Rigaux, with those winds in his ears, waved his hand and descended the winding stairway to the great hall, outside which in the courtyard his fast, open car was in waiting.
Having put on his holland dust-coat, he flung himself into the bucket-seat next the driver, and then they moved away cautiously down the steep hill into the peaceful valley, where the summer twilight was fast darkening into night.
Many groups of homeless, despairing people, hauling along great packages and tramping towards an unknown bourne, were upon the road, and now and then suspicious cars passed without salute or challenge.
Once they met a patrol of Uhlans riding merrily along, big-booted fellows with lances, who chatted gaily, and who seemed to take no notice of them, knowing that in that particular area there was no opposition.
Suddenly Rigaux, who had now become very alert, remarked to the driver:
“Be careful. We are getting near Loverai, outside Charleroi.”
Before them had suddenly showed points of light from lanterns in the road, and then, a few hundred yards further on, they heard a gruff challenge in German, and a stern command to halt.
The driver drew up at once, and the car was instantly surrounded by half a dozen stalwart German outposts, their fixed bayonets shining in the headlights, demanding to know the destination of the travellers.
“To Brussels,” replied Rigaux, in German. “Here is my official permit from headquarters, signed by the Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the Meuse.”
The sentry, in his spiked helmet, examined it beneath the flickering light of a lantern held by one of his comrades, and while doing so a lieutenant strolled up and also carefully scrutinised it. Yet for the moment the motorists were under arrest.
“Herr Rigaux—eh?—and chauffeur?” the officer read. “A general secret service pass from headquarters. You are going to Brussels, I suppose?”
Arnaud Rigaux replied in the affirmative, whereupon the lieutenant gave an order and the half-dozen men drew up in the dark, clicking their heels together, and presented arms in salute.
“You are free to pass, Herr Rigaux,” said the officer. “Take the left-hand road, and you will avoid the outposts of Charleroi and get to Nivelles. Our lines are two miles farther on, but with your pass you will have no difficulty. I see that you are one of us.”
Rigaux remounted into his car, and with a merry good night they swept along the dark, wide road, which at that point ran between two rows of high poplars, which were swaying and rustling slightly in the cool night wind, so refreshing after the broiling day.
Half a dozen times the car had been challenged in as many miles, but on each occasion the permit to travel was scrutinised closely, and as they went forward they saw in the sky, on the far-off horizon, the dull, red glare of the fires of war. They had left Charleroi on their right—the town of hardware, which the Germans had now surrounded, and intended on the morrow to reduce—and had now set their faces straight for the capital.
The pass which that morning Rigaux had received, on application to the headquarters at the Hôtel Cosmopolite, in Brussels, proved an open-sesame everywhere, for it was one of those cryptic passports which the German Empire had issued to all its spies, from the lowly to the wealthy.
That small piece of grey paper, stamped, signed, and countersigned, rendered its bearer immune from arrest, and provided safe conduct everywhere. What would his friends the Belgians say, or do, if they had known he had possessed such a document?
Time after time, on that dark, straight road between Charleroi and Brussels, the car was held up by men in spiked helmets, who covered both master and chauffeur threateningly with their rifles. But sight of that paper was magical. Arnaud Rigaux was bowed to with politeness, and urged onward with cautionary words to the next post.
Brussels lay thirty miles from Charleroi. They were now within the enemy’s lines, and were passing many burnt-out cottages and villages, some of the débris of which, strewn in the roadway, still glowed red in the night. Before them, in the dark, heavy sky, showed the glare of the lights of Brussels, the gay little city which now lay crushed and invested by the Teuton invaders.
The reflection of the light was not red, as in the case of a burning town. The Germans were committing no atrocities there, for the simple reason that, in the capital, they were beneath the eyes of the representatives of neutral powers. In the country it mattered not, and could easily be denied, but in Brussels the Commander-in-Chief had decreed that all should preserve a correct attitude and present the quintessence of German “culture.”
It was nearly one o’clock in the morning when at last, Rigaux having pulled his cap over his eyes, they passed the sentries outside the station of Uccle, and were allowed to proceed down the long, straight Avenue Brugmann and the Chausée to the end of the Avenue Louise.
Half the street lamps of Brussels were out, and no one was in the streets save German sentries at the corners, acting as policemen, their fixed bayonets glinting in the brilliance of the car’s headlights. Brussels, with her Civil Guard disbanded, was in the grip of the invader, who modestly demanded eight millions as its ransom.
The car turned into the small Place Louise, past the café in the corner, and De Boek’s Hotel so long a famous “English house,” turned to the left, and then ran along the tree-lined boulevard to where Rigaux lived.
There was now no secrecy of presence of the fair-haired German naval wireless operator, for the enemy had occupied the capital. Indeed, as soon as Arnaud Rigaux arrived home he met him in the hall, and accompanied him to the room in the roof, in which was that powerful wireless plant run off the electric-light main.
The young fellow seated himself at once at his table, and, touching a Morse-key, a long blue spark was emitted and crackled across the big coil.
“Call up Nauen,” Rigaux said, his holland dust-coat not yet removed. “Give them this message: That the Baron de Neuville has consented, upon representations I have made, to negotiate the whole of the indemnity of eight millions levied upon the city of Brussels. Let me know of the acknowledgment of the receipt of the message by R.X.”
“Certainly, m’sieur,” was the operator’s reply in good French, and he began to tap out the preliminary “Da-de-Da-de-Da,” the call-signal, followed by the code-letters indicating that he wished to speak with Nauen.
Then he switched over, and adjusting his headphones to his ears, listened attentively.
Again he repeated the call, with dexterous rapidity, when, a few seconds later, he heard the answering ticks of the Telefunken near Potsdam, after which he reduced to code the significant message which Rigaux had given him for transmission, and tapped it out.