Danger! and Other Stories, Arthur Conan Doyle [most life changing books .txt] 📗

small quarrels on this account, when I asked questions to which I could get no answers, but they have been exaggerated in the address for the prosecution.  Too much has been made also of the intervention of Mrs. Murreyfield, though I admit that the quarrel was more serious upon that occasion.  It arose from my finding the photograph of a man upon her table, and her evident confusion when I asked her for some particulars about him.  The name “H. Vardin” was written underneath—evidently an autograph.  I was worried by the fact that this photograph had the frayed appearance of one which has been carried secretly about, as a girl might conceal the picture of her lover in her dress.  She absolutely refused to give me any information about him, save to make a statement which I found incredible, that it was a man whom she had never seen in her life.  It was then that I forgot myself.  I raised my voice and declared that I should know more about her life or that I should break with her, even if my own heart should be broken in the parting.  I was not violent, but Mrs. Murreyfield heard me from the passage, and came into the room to remonstrate.  She was a kind, motherly person who took a sympathetic interest in our romance, and I remember that on this occasion she reproved me for my jealousy and finally persuaded me that I had been unreasonable, so that we became reconciled once more.  Ena was so madly fascinating and I so hopelessly her slave that she could always draw me back, however much prudence and reason warned me to escape from her control.  I tried again and again to find out about this man Vardin, but was always met by the same assurance, which she repeated with every kind of solemn oath, that she had never seen the man in her life.  Why she should carry about the photograph of a man—a young, somewhat sinister man, for I had observed him closely before she snatched the picture from my hand—was what she either could not, or would not, explain.

Then came the time for my leaving Radchurch.  I had been appointed to a junior but very responsible post at the War Office, which, of course, entailed my living in London.  Even my week-ends found me engrossed with my work, but at last I had a few days’ leave of absence.  It is those few days which have ruined my life, which have brought me the most horrible experience that ever a man had to undergo, and have finally placed me here in the dock, pleading as I plead to-day for my life and my honour.

It is nearly five miles from the station to Radchurch.  She was there to meet me.  It was the first time that we had been reunited since I had put all my heart and my soul upon her.  I cannot enlarge upon these matters, gentlemen.  You will either be able to sympathize with and understand the emotions which overbalance a man at such a time, or you will not.  If you have imagination, you will.  If you have not, I can never hope to make you see more than the bare fact.  That bare fact, placed in the baldest language, is that during this drive from Radchurch Junction to the village I was led into the greatest indiscretion—the greatest dishonour, if you will—of my life.  I told the woman a secret, an enormously important secret, which might affect the fate of the war and the lives of many thousands of men.

It was done before I knew it—before I grasped the way in which her quick brain could place various scattered hints together and weave them into one idea.  She was wailing, almost weeping, over the fact that the allied armies were held up by the iron line of the Germans.  I explained that it was more correct to say that our iron line was holding them up, since they were the invaders.  “But is France, is Belgium, never to be rid of them?” she cried.  “Are we simply to sit in front of their trenches and be content to let them do what they will with ten provinces of France?  Oh, Jack, Jack, for God’s sake, say something to bring a little hope to my heart, for sometimes I think that it is breaking!  You English are stolid.  You can bear these things.  But we others, we have more nerve, more soul!  It is death to us.  Tell me!  Do tell me that there is hope!  And yet it is foolish of me to ask, for, of course, you are only a subordinate at the War Office, and how should you know what is in the mind of your chiefs?”

“Well, as it happens, I know a good deal,” I answered.  “Don’t fret, for we shall certainly get a move on soon.”

“Soon!  Next year may seem soon to some people.”

“It’s not next year.”

“Must we wait another month?”

“Not even that.”

She squeezed my hand in hers.  “Oh, my darling boy, you have brought such joy to my heart!  What suspense I shall live in now!  I think a week of it would kill me.”

“Well, perhaps it won’t even be a week.”

“And tell me,” she went on, in her coaxing voice, “tell me just one thing, Jack.  Just one, and I will trouble you no more.  Is it our brave French soldiers who advance?  Or is it your splendid Tommies?  With whom will the honour lie?”

“With both.”

“Glorious!” she cried.  “I see it all.  The attack will be at the point where the French and British lines join.  Together they will rush forward in one glorious advance.”

“No,” I said.  “They will not be together.”

“But I understood you to say—of course, women know nothing of such matters, but I understood you to say that it would be a joint advance.”

“Well, if the French advanced, we will say, at Verdun, and the British advanced at Ypres, even if they were hundreds of miles apart it would still be a joint advance.”

“Ah, I see,” she cried, clapping her hands with delight.  “They would advance at both ends of the line, so that the Boches would not know which way to send their reserves.”

“That is exactly the idea—a real advance at Verdun, and an enormous feint at Ypres.”

Then suddenly a chill of doubt seized me.  I can remember how I sprang back from her and looked hard into her face.  “I’ve told you too much!” I cried.  “Can I trust you?  I have been mad to say so much.”

She was bitterly hurt by my words.  That I should for a moment doubt her was more than she could bear.  “I would cut my tongue out, Jack, before I would tell any human being one word of what you have said.”  So earnest was she that my fears died away.  I felt that I could trust her utterly.  Before we had reached Radchurch I had put the matter from my mind, and we were lost in our joy of the present and in our plans for the future.

I had a business message to deliver to Colonel Worral, who commanded a small camp at Pedley-Woodrow.  I went there and was away for about two hours.  When I returned I inquired for Miss Garnier, and was told by the maid that she had gone to her bedroom, and that she had asked the groom to bring her motor-bicycle to the door.  It seemed to me strange that she should arrange to go out alone when my visit was such a short one.  I had gone into her little study to seek her, and here it was that I waited, for it opened on to the hall passage, and she could not pass without my seeing her.

There was a small table in the window of this room at which she used to write.  I had seated myself beside this when my eyes fell upon a name written in her large, bold hand-writing.  It was a reversed impression upon the blotting-paper which she had used, but there could be no difficulty in reading it.  The name was Hubert Vardin.  Apparently it was part of the address of an envelope, for underneath I was able to distinguish the initials S.W., referring to a postal division of London, though the actual name of the street had not been clearly reproduced.

Then I knew for the first time that she was actually corresponding with this man whose vile, voluptuous face I had seen in the photograph with the frayed edges.  She had clearly lied to me, too, for was it conceivable that she should correspond with a man whom she had never seen?  I don’t desire to condone my conduct.  Put yourself in my place.  Imagine that you had my desperately fervid and jealous nature.  You would have done what I did, for you could have done nothing else.  A wave of fury passed over me.  I laid my hands upon the wooden writing-desk.  If it had been an iron safe I should have opened it.  As it was, it literally flew to pieces before me.  There lay the letter itself, placed under lock and key for safety, while the writer prepared to take it from the house.  I had no hesitation or scruple, I tore it open.  Dishonourable, you will say, but when a man is frenzied with jealousy he hardly knows what he does.  This woman, for whom I was ready to give everything, was either faithful to me or she was not.  At any cost I would know which.

A thrill of joy passed through me as my eyes fell upon the first words.  I had wronged her.  “Cher Monsieur Vardin.”  So the letter began.  It was clearly a business letter, nothing else.  I was about to replace it in the envelope with a thousand regrets in my mind for my want of faith when a single word at the bottom of the page caught my eyes, and I started as if I had been stung by an adder.  “Verdun”—that was the word.  I looked again.  “Ypres” was immediately below it.  I sat down, horror-stricken, by the broken desk, and I read this letter, a translation of which I have in my hand:—

Murreyfield House, Radchurch.

Dear M. Vardin,—Stringer has told me that he has kept you sufficiently informed as to Chelmsford and Colchester, so I have not troubled to write.  They have moved the Midland Territorial Brigade and the heavy guns towards the coast near Cromer, but only for a time.  It is for training, not embarkation.

And now for my great news, which I have straight from the War Office itself.  Within a week there is to be a very severe attack from Verdun, which is to be supported by a holding attack at Ypres.  It is all on a very large scale, and you must send off a special Dutch messenger to Von Starmer by the first boat.  I hope to get the exact date and some further particulars from my informant to-night, but meanwhile you must act with energy.

I dare not post this here—you know what village postmasters are, so I am taking it into Colchester, where Stringer will include it with his own report which goes by hand.—Yours faithfully, Sophia Heffner.

I was stunned at first as I read this letter, and then a kind of cold, concentrated rage came over me.  So this woman was a German and a spy!  I thought of her hypocrisy and her treachery towards me, but, above all, I thought of the danger to the Army