The False Faces | Page 6

workings of the Prussian spy system. From

time to time I found means to communicate somewhat of this to the
Surété in Paris. I believe France and England have already profited a
little through my efforts. They shall profit more, and quickly, when I
have told all that I have to tell....
"Of a sudden Ekstrom vanished. Overnight he disappeared from
Germany. A false lead brought me back to this front. Two days ago I
learned he had been sent to America on a secret mission. Knowing that
the States have severed diplomatic relations with Berlin and tremble on
the verge of a declaration of war, we can surmise something of the
nature of his mission. I mean to see that he fails.... To follow him to
America, making my way out through Belgium and Holland, pursuing
such furtive ways as I must in territory dominated by the Boche, meant
much time lost. So I came through the lines to-night. Fortune was kind
in throwing me into your hands: I count upon your assistance. As an
ex-agent of the Secret Service you are in a position to make smooth my
path; as an Englishman, you will advance the interests of a prospective
ally of England if you help me to the limit of your ability; for what I
mean to do in America will serve that country, by exposing the
conspiracies of the Boche across the water, as much as it will serve my
private ends."
The officer's hand fell across the table and closed upon the knotted fist
of the Lone Wolf.
"As an Englishman," he said simply--"of course. But no less as your
friend."

II
FROM A BRITISH PORT
"And one man in his time plays many parts": few more than this same
Lanyard. In no way to be identified with the hunted creature who crept
into the British lines out of No Man's Land was the Monsieur
Duchemin who, ten days after that wintry midnight, took passage for
New York from "a British port," aboard the steamship Assyrian.
André Duchemin was the name inscribed in the credentials furnished
him in recognition of signal assistance rendered the British Secret
Service in its task of scotching the Prussian spy system. And the
personality he chose to assume suited well the name. A man of modest
and amiable deportment, viewing the world with eyes intelligent and

curious, his temper reacting from its ways in terms of grave humour,
Monsieur Duchemin passed peaceably on his lawful occasions, took
life as he found it, made the best of irksome circumstances.
This last idiosyncrasy stood him in good stead. For the Assyrian failed
to clear upon her proposed sailing date and for a livelong week
thereafter chafed alongside her landing stage, steam up, cargo laden
and stowed, nothing lacking but the Admiralty's permission to begin
her westbound voyage--a permission inscrutably withheld, giving rise
to a common discontent which the passengers dissembled to the various
best of their abilities, that is to say, in most cases thinly or not at all.
Yet they were none of them unreasonable beings. They had come
aboard one and all keyed up to a high nervous pitch, pardonable in such
as must commit their lives to the dread adventure of the barred zone,
wanting nothing so much as to get it over with, whatever its upshot.
And everlasting procrastination required them day after day to steel
their hearts anew against that Terror which followed its furtive ways
beneath the leaden waters of the Channel!
Alone among them this Monsieur Duchemin paraded successfully a
false face of resignation, protesting no predilection whatsoever for a
watery grave, no infatuate haste to challenge the Hun upon his chosen
hunting-ground. In the fullness of time it would be permitted to him to
go down to the sea in this ship. Meanwhile he found it apparently
pleasant and restful to explore the winding cobbled ways of that
antiquated waterside community, made over by the hand of War into a
bustling seaport, or to tramp the sunken lanes that seamed those green
old Cornish hills which embosomed the wide harbour waters, or to
lounge about the broad white decks of the Assyrian watching the
diurnal traffic of the haven--a restless, warlike pageant.
Daily, in earliest dusk of dawn, the wakeful might watch the faring
forth of a weirdly assorted fleet of small craft, the day patrol, to relieve
a night patrol as weirdly heterogeneous. Daily, at all hours,
mine-sweepers came and went, by twos and twos, in flocks, in schools;
and daily bellowing offshore detonations advertised their success in
garnering those horned black seeds of death which the Hun and his kin
were sedulous to sow in the fairways. While daily battleships both great
and small rolled in wearily to refit and dress their wounds,