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I got my exchange all right: it is on that account I have eight days' leave; but next Monday, November 21st, before midday, I must report to my new regiment. But this regiment, the 257th Infantry, is in garrison at Verdun!... You grasp it?" "I begin to," murmured Fandor.
"We will speak of it later on.... The next step is to confront you with certain witnesses: Lieutenant Servin, see if the witnesses are there!" Fandor himself had demanded this confrontation. He did not deny having assumed the personality of Corporal Vinson, dating from the day when the corporal entered officially on his duties as a unit of the 257th of the line, in garrison at Verdun.
"What do you want with the 257th of the line?" queried the constable. "It is like this, Monsieur: I was in the 214th, garrisoned at Châlons. I have had eight days' leave, and they inform me I am attached to the 257th." The constable nodded. "And now you want to get to your new regiment?" "Precisely."
Nine notes fell into the outstretched hands of Corporal Fandor-Vinson of the 257th of the line, stationed at Verdun. Our journalist had sharp eyes. He was no longer puzzling over this performance. "Look here, Corporal! Keep these notes if they amuse you!" said the red-bearded young man, smiling. "You might even try to pass them off, if the joke appeals to you!"
Fandor saluted the friendly constable, hurried off, and reached the Saint Benoit gate in a few minutes. "The 257th?" he asked the sentry. "Here!... You will find the sergeant in the guard-room." Fandor entered a smoke-filled room; several soldiers were stretched at full length on a bench, slumbering: a snoring non-commissioned officer was lying on three straw bottomed chairs close to a stove.
Having readjusted his coat, the fringes of his epaulettes, and put on his cap correctly, this corporal of the 257th line, stepped on to the platform, reached the exit, passed out on to a vast flat space, and found himself floundering in a sea of mud. The men who had arrived with him had hurried off: Fandor was alone on the outskirts of the silent town. What to do? Which way to go?
"Well, the 257th is in three places: at bastion 14; at the Saint Benoit barracks; and at Fort Vieux which are you bound for, Corporal?" "I don't know I've no preference," murmured Corporal Vinson-Fandor. The two men stood staring at each other in the rain. Despite the chill and melancholy dawn, with its darkly reddening skies, Fandor felt he was on the very verge of bursting into wild laughter.
Fandor could personate Vinson with every chance of success, because the 257th of the line had never set eyes on the corporal. After a week of perplexity, Fandor had come to a decision the previous night. Wishing to let his "dear master" know of his audacious project, he had telephoned to Juve on the Sunday evening to ask him to come to the flat. Then Vagualame had appeared on the scene.
Under the flame of a gas-jet struggling against the onslaughts of the wind, Fandor caught sight of the honest face of a constable enveloped in a thick hooded coat. He eyed Fandor. "Excuse me," said Corporal Vinson-Fandor, rolling his r's, in imitation of a rustic fresh from the country, "but could you tell me where I shall find the 257th of the line?"
Probably the spies, or the Second Bureau, or both, were keeping a sharp watch on Vinson: it would be wiser to refrain from any communication which might reveal the fact that the corporal Vinson, who joined the 257th of the line at Verdun, was none other than Jérôme Fandor, journalist. Though stiff with cold and fatigue, Fandor's brain was clear and active. It is all right!
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