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Updated: June 14, 2025
"He can't get away from here," began Jovannic impatiently; but the old sergeant lifted a vast gnarled hand and wagged it at him with a kind of elderly rebuke. "They're getting away in dozens every day," he rumbled. He put his hands on the silent man and turned him where he stood to face the light. "Yes," he said; "you've been knocking him about, too!"
Jovannic, as one of his assistants, was out early and late, on horseback or motoring, till the daily scenes of violence and pain palled on him like a routine. Once, in the village near headquarters, he saw the Contessina; she was entering the house whence the prisoner had been dragged forth, but though he loitered in the neighborhood for an hour she did not come forth.
"Good morning, Herr Hauptmann," said Jovannic, clicking his heels. Captain Hahn gave him a furious glance and grunted inarticulately. He made the effect as he sat of emitting fumes, vapors of an overcharged personality; his naturally violent face was clenched like a fist. "Here, you dog!" he exploded. The mess waiter all but leaped into the air. "Get me another glass of brandy."
An Italian renegade, a discovery of Captain Hahn's, had served in the affair; a whole machinery of espionage and secret treachery had been put in motion; and now Lieutenant Jovannic, of the Austrian Army, was to be shown how the German method ensured the German success.
But never before had he had her thus alone; even to share her silence was a sort of intimacy, and he groped for more. "It it is really true, signorina what the sergeant said?" he asked at length. She raised her face but did not look towards him. Her profile was a cameo upon the dusk. "It is true," she answered in a low voice. "I don't know what to do," said Jovannic.
The thin squeal of it was barely audible thirty yards away, yet it seemed to Jovannic as though the brief jet of sound had screamed the afternoon stillness to rags. The two slack-bodied soldiers were suddenly swift and violent; drawn bayonet in hand, they plunged together into the black of the door and vanished within.
"Tonight if he can; tomorrow if he can't. He's dead, he is. I know 'em, Herr Leutnant. Dozens of 'em already, for a flogging or even for a kick; they call it 'escaping by the back door. And now she knows. It's spreading, I tell you." "Good Lord!" said Jovannic slowly.
The manner of the man's death had distorted the face that lay in the trough of the stretcher, but it was pitiful and ugly rather than terrible or horrifying. The body, its inertness, the still sprawl of the limbs, were puppet-like, with none of death's pomp and menace. Jovannic stood gazing; the sergeant, with the blanket over his arm, stood by smoking.
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