Philippa got up slowly, as though dazed or hurt. The young man hurried forward, reloading his weapon as he ran, but a shot from behind warned him away from the trail of the limping girl, who was now trying to escape on foot.
Whirling in his tracks, he stood for a second glaring at Halkett and Warner, who were advancing, shooting as they came on; then, with a savage glance at Philippa, he fired at her once more, turned, mounted the roadside bank in a single leap, and ran swiftly along the hedge, evidently looking for an opening into the field beyond.
When he found one, he wriggled through and was off like a hare, across the fields and headed for the river, before Halkett and Warner could discover his avenue of escape. Checked for a few moments, they ranged the thorny hedge up and down, like baffled beagles. They had overrun the trail.
Warner was already within speaking distance of Philippa when the girl hailed him.
"Are you hurt?" he called across to her, where she stood knee-deep among the roadside weeds, trying to draw together the points of her torn bodice, to cover her throat and shoulders.
"The tire burst. I have a few scratches!"
"Did he get the papers?" shouted Halkett.
She drew both envelopes from her bosom, and shook them high with a gesture of defiance. Then, replacing them, she made a funnel of her hands and called out to them:
"He crawled under the hedge by that third telephone pole behind you! You have come too far this way! No--the _other_ pole! Wait a moment, Mr. Warner----"
Still calling out her directions in her clear, calm voice, she started to limp down the road toward them; and Warner glanced back at her for a moment; then he suddenly flung up his arm and shouted:
"Philippa! Look out for that car behind you!"
The girl turned, saw the automobile coming, stepped aside into the ditch as a cloud of white dust obscured her.
Before she realized that the car had stopped, three men had jumped out into the ditch and caught hold of her.
Warner heard her cry out; started to run toward her; saw her flung struggling into the car; saw Wildresse rise and strike her with his great fist and knock her headlong across the back seat, where she lay, her disheveled head hanging down over the rear of the tonneau. Then the car started. As she hung there, blood dripping from her mouth, she reached blindly toward her breast, drew out the envelopes, and dropped them in the wake of the moving car.
They fluttered along behind it for a moment, drawn into the dusty suction, then they were whirled away right and left into the roadside ditches.
Evidently nobody in the car except Philippa knew what she had done, for the car, at top speed, dashed on toward the north.
Halkett ran up and found Warner gazing vacantly after the receding machine, pistol leveled, but not daring to shoot. Then they both saw Wildresse jerk the half senseless girl upright, saw him strike her again with the flat of his huge hand so heavily that she crumpled and dropped back into the corner of the seat.
"God!" whispered Halkett at Warner's elbow. "Did you see that?"
Warner, as white as death, made no reply. The ear had vanished, but he still stood there staring at the distant cloud of dust settling slowly in the highway. Presently Halkett walked forward, picked up the two envelopes, pocketed them, and returned swiftly to where the American still stood, his grim features set, the red stain from his bitten lip streaking his chin.
"Warner?"
"Yes?" he answered steadily.
"We'd better start after that man at once."
"Certainly."
Halkett said:
"Have your horse hooked up as soon as you can.... I think----" His voice trembled, but he controlled it. "I am horribly afraid for that child.... He would cut her throat if he dared."
Warner turned a ghastly visage to his companion:
"Why do you say that?"
"Because she knows enough about him to send him before a firing squad," said Halkett. "That's the trouble, Warner."
They turned and walked rapidly toward the inn.
Warner spoke presently in an altered voice, but with the mechanical precision of a man afraid of emotion and any wavering of self-control.
"I'm going to Ausone at once to find her.... Wherever I find her I shall take her.... It makes no difference to me who objects. She is going to have her chance in life.... I shall see to that."
Halkett drew a deep breath:
"Did you ever hear of such a plucky battle as she gave that rascal after he got me? I never shall forget what she has done."
They entered the front door of the inn, almost running; Warner continued on toward the garden and the stable beyond; Halkett halted at the telephone, gazed grimly at the ruined instrument, realized that he was again isolated, and called impatiently to Linette who, with Magda, was gathering up and sweeping aside the debris of the wrecked furniture.
"Linette," he said, "would you do something to help me?"
"Willingly, Monsieur."
"Go to the school; say to Sister Eila that I am in real need of her. Ask her if she could come here at once, because I cannot go to her."
The girl nodded, turned, and went out rapidly by the front way. Halkett hastened upstairs to his room.
When again he returned, the dogcart had just driven up, and Warner sat waiting in silence, reins and whip in hand.
But Halkett had a letter to write before he could start; and it was slow work, because the letter must be written in a cipher, the key to which was the solar spectrum and the three metallic symbols.
He had scarcely completed his letter when Sister Eila and Linette entered the hallway together.
The Sister of Charity caught sight of him through the doorway as he rose from his seat in the empty dining-room; and she instantly went to him.
He thanked Linette, closed the door, and turned to Sister Eila.
"There's nobody else I can trust," he said. "Will you help me?"
"You know I will."
He drew the two envelopes from his breast pocket and handed them to her in silence. Then he laid on the table the letter which he had just, written.
"I am obliged to go to Ausone," he said. "It will take me several hours, I suppose, to go, attend to my business, and return. Could you remain here at the inn until I can get back?"
"Yes. Sister Felicite is with the children."
"Then this is what you must know and prepare for. If, while I am away, a man should come here and ask for me, you will show him this letter lying on the table, and you will say to him that I left it here for a man whom I have been expecting. You will stand here and watch him while he is reading this letter. If he really _can_ read it, then he will ask for pen and ink, and he will _change the punctuation_ of what I have written on the envelope: '_Ibis, redibis non, morieris in bello._' As I have punctuated it, it means: 'Thou shalt go, thou shalt not return, thou shalt die in battle.'
"So if he _can_ read what is _inside_ the envelope, he will erase the comma after the word _non_, and insert a comma after the word _redibis_. And the translation will then read: 'Thou shalt go, thou shalt return, thou shalt _not_ die in battle.' Is all this quite clear to you, Sister?"
"Perfectly."
"Then, if a man comes here and asks for me, and if you see that he really has understood the letter which is written in cipher, then, after he has repunctuated what I have written, give him the other two envelopes which I have entrusted to you.
"Will you do this for--France, Sister Eila?"
"Yes"--she lifted her grave young eyes--"for France."
Through the open dining-room window Sister Eila watched his departure, smiling her adieux as the two men turned toward her and uncovered.
Then she seated herself by the window sill and rested her cheek on her palm, gazing out at the blue sky with vague, enraptured eyes that saw a vision of beatitude perhaps, perhaps the glimmering aura of an earthly martyrdom, in the summer sunshine.
And possibly a vision less holy invaded her tranquil trance, for she suddenly straightened her young shoulders, picked up the crucifix at her girdle, and gazed upon it rather fixedly.
The color slowly cooled in her cheeks till they were as white as the spotless wimple that framed them in its snowy oval.
After a while rosary and crucifix fell between her relaxing hands, and she looked up at the blue foothills of the Vosges with bluer eyes.
The next moment she sprang to her feet, startled. Over the sparkling hills came sailing through the summer sky a gigantic bird--the most enormous winged creature she had ever beheld. A moment later the high clatter of the aeroplane became audible.
*CHAPTER XV*
Wheeling in spirals now above the river meadow, the great, man-made bird of prey turned and turned, hanging aloft in the sky like a giant hawk, sweeping in vast circles through the blinding blue, as though searching every clump and tussock in the fields below for some hidden enemy or victim.
Louder and louder came the rattling clatter from the sky, nearer swooped the great plane on wide-stretched wings, until, close to the earth, it seemed to sheer the very grass blades in the meadow, and the deafening racket of its engines echoed and reechoed, filling the world with outrageous and earsplitting noise.