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And there they sat, cross-legged in the warmth of the declining sun in gravest conference concerning the future. "Recklow insisted that I come," repeated Gray. "I was in the 208th Pioneers in a sawmilll near La Roche Rouge Vosges when I got my orders." "And Recklow thinks we're caught and killed?" "So does everybody in the Intelligence.
And now Belfort was through with him and Verdun understood, and Paris had relayed to Headquarters and Headquarters had instructed John Recklow. Before Recklow went to bed he parted his curtain and looked out at the misty dawn. In the silvery dusk a cock-pheasant was crowing somewhere on a wheat-field's edge. A barnyard chanticleer replied.
Standing that same afternoon on the rocks of that grim Calvary, with the weatherbeaten figure of Christ towering on the black cross above them, Recklow and his men gazed out across the tumbled mountains to where the White Shoulder of Thusis gleamed in the sun. Through their glasses they could sweep the glacier to its terminal moraine.
Recklow watched the wire unreeling, foot after foot, rod after rod, plumbing the dark burrow of the Boche deep down under the earth. And, when they were ready, guided by the wire, they lowered the curious hose-pipe, down, down, ever down, attaching reel after reel to the lengthening tube until Recklow checked them and turned to watch the men who stood feeding the wire into the roaring chasm.
Recklow gazed heavily upon her. But if the young fail rapidly, they also respond quickly. "Come into the house," Perhaps it was the hot broth with wine in it that brought a slight colour back into her ghastly face the face once so youthfully lovely but now as delicate as the mask of death itself.
Even when he snapped an automatic handcuff over one wrist she smiled incredulously. But the jeering expression on her dark, handsome features altered when they approached the Swiss wire. And when Recklow produced a pair of heavy wire-cutters all defiance died out in her face. "Make a sound and I'll simply shoot you," he whispered. "W-what is it you want with me?" she asked in a ghost of a voice.
Skelton spoke first, but she scarcely recognised the voice for his: "Who was that man you were talking to down by the Swiss wire?" "I've told you. He's one of us. His name is Wolkcer " "What!" "Wolkcer! That is his name " "Spell it backward!" barked Skelton. "We know what you have done to us! You have sold us to Recklow! That's what you done!" "W-what!" stammered the girl.
Kay McKay and Evelyn Erith had been gone for nearly an hour; but Recklow still sat there at the little green table, an unlighted cigarette in his muscular fingers, his head slightly bent as though listening. Once he rose as though on some impulse, went into the house, took a roll of fine wire, a small cowbell, a heavy pair of wire clippers and a pocket torch from his desk and pocketed them.
"Ten miles from the Rhine, under the earth, there is a Hun city, with a garrison of sixty thousand men!... There are other cities along the line " "Deep down!" "Deep under the earth." "There must be shafts!" said Recklow hoarsely. "None." "No shafts to the surface?" "Not one." "No pipe? No communication with the outer air?"
McKay's sombre eyes rested on his in grim comprehension of all that Recklow had left unsaid. Swift and savage as would be the fate of a man caught within German frontiers on any such business as he was now engaged in, the fate of a woman would be unspeakable. If Miss Erith noticed or understood the silence between these two men she gave no sign of comprehension.
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