United States or Turkmenistan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
A few lanterns set in iron cages projected over ancient doorways, lighting the street but dimly where it lay partly in deep shadow, partly illuminated by the silvery radiance of the moon. Recklow turned into an alley smelling of stables, traversed it, and came out behind into a bushy pasture with a cleared space beyond.
The officer's brilliant smile wrinkled his good-looking features: "There was some little loot: I'm wearing my share." Recklow nodded and let his cold eyes rest on the identification papers. Then, slowly, and without a word, he passed them back over the desk. The Intelligence Officer stuffed them carelessly into his side-pocket. "I thought I'd come over instead of wiring or 'phoning.
Can you find your way back to where we crossed the wire? The dry bed of the torrent was to have guided us." "I know a quicker way," said Recklow. "Come on." The girl took his hand confidingly and walked beside him, holding one arm before her face to shield her eyes from branches in the darkness.
"Echt Deutsch," he whispered in German "and ZERO-TWO-SIX. A good hint to you!" "Waidman's Heil!" said the girl faintly. "O God! what a fright you gave me.... There's a man at Delle we were warned Seventy is his number, Recklow a devil Yankee " "A swine! a fathead, sleeping all day in his garden, too drunk to open despatches!" sneered Recklow. "We were warned against him," she insisted.
If you want to rest before you wash up, your rooms are ready. You'll find me here or in the garden behind the house." Toward sunset they found Recklow in the little garden, seated alone there on a bench looking up at the eastward mountains with the piercing, detached stare of a bird of prey.
The place was rather misty now in the moonlight from the vapours of a cold little brook which ran foaming and clattering through it between banks thickset with fern. And now Recklow moved very swiftly but quietly, down through the misty, ferny valley to the filbert and hazel thicket just beyond; and went in among the bushes, treading cautiously upon the moist black mould.
Credentials being requested, and the request complied with accompanied by a dazzling smile, there ensued a silent interval of some length during which the young man wearing the uniform of an American Intelligence Officer was not at all certain whether Recklow was examining him or the papers of identification. After a while Recklow nodded: "You came through from Toul, Captain?"
And Recklow now walked on very fast in the dim light until he came to a thinning among the trees where just ahead of him, stars shimmered level in the vast sky-gulf above Alsace. Here was the precipice; here the narrow, wooded neck the only way across the mountain except by the peak path and the Crucifix.
And in the enchantment of that lovely liaison which links day and night when the gold and rose soften to mauve as the first star is born John Recklow raised his quiet eyes and saw two dead souls come into his garden by the little door in the wall. "Is it you, Kay McKay?" he said at last.
Clear and truculent rang out the challenge of the Gallic cock in the dawn, warning his wild neighbour to keep to the wilds. So the French trumpets challenge the shrill, barbaric fanfares of the Hun, warning him back into the dull and shadowy wilderness from whence he ventured. Recklow was awake, dressed, and had breakfasted by eight o'clock. McKay, in his little chamber on the right, still slept.
Word Of The Day