actress. The woman who served her had not the remotest notion that this bright-eyed girl belonged to the hated English race.
The incident brought back Dalroy’s vagrom thoughts from German methods of making war to the serious business which was his own particular concern. The shop was only a couple of doors removed from the Franz Strasse; he waited for Irene at the corner, buying some cheap cigars and a box of matches at a tobacconist’s kiosk. He still retained the lantern, which lent a touch of character. The carriage-cleaner’s breeches were wide and loose at the ankles, and concealed his boots. Between the sabots and his own heels he had added some inches to his height, so he could look easily over the heads of the crowd; he was watching the passing of a battery of artillery when an open automobile was jerked to a standstill directly in front of him. In the car was seated Von Halwig.
That sprig of Prussian nobility was in a mighty hurry, but even he dared not interfere too actively with troops in motion, so, to pass the time as it were, he rolled his eyes in anger at the crowd on the pavement.
It was just possible that Irene might appear inopportunely, so Dalroy rejoined her, and led her to the opposite side of the cross street, where a wagon and horses hid her from the Guardsman’s sharp eyes.
Thus it happened that Chance again took the wanderers under her wing.
A short, thick-set Walloon had emptied a glass of schnapps at the counter of a small drinking-bar which opened on to the street, and was bidding the landlady farewell.
“I must be off,” he said. “I have to be in Visé by daybreak. This cursed war has kept me here a whole day. Who is fighting who, I’d like to know?”
“Visé!” guffawed a man seated at the bar. “You’ll never get there. The army won’t let you pass.”
“That’s the army’s affair, not mine,” was the typically Flemish answer, and the other came out, mounted the wagon, chirped to his horses, and made away.
Dalroy was able to note the name on a small board affixed to the side of the vehicle: “Henri Joos, miller, Visé.”
“That fellow lives in Belgium,” he whispered to Irene, who had draped the shawl over her head and neck, and now carried the jacket rolled into a bundle. “He is just the sort of dogged countryman who will tackle and overcome all obstacles. I fancy he is carrying oats to a mill, and will be known to the frontier officials. Shall we bargain with him for a lift?”
“It sounds the very thing,” agreed the girl.
In their eagerness, neither took the precaution of buying something to eat. They overtook the wagon before it passed the market. The driver was not Joos, but Joos’s man. He was quite ready to earn a few francs, or marks—he did not care which—by conveying a couple of passengers to the placid little town of whose mere existence the wide world outside Belgium was unaware until that awful first week in August 1914.
And so it came to pass that Dalroy and his protégé passed out of Aix-la-Chapelle without let or hindrance, because the driver, spurred to an effort of the imagination by promise of largesse, described Irene to the Customs men as Henri Joos’s niece, and Dalroy as one deputed by the railway to see that a belated consignment of oats was duly delivered to the miller.
Neither rural Germany nor rural Belgium was yet really at war. The monstrous shadow had darkened the chancelleries, but it was hardly perceptible to the common people. Moreover, how could red-fanged war affect a remote place like Visé? The notion was nonsensical. Even Dalroy allowed himself to assure his companion that there was now a reasonable prospect of reaching Belgian soil without incurring real danger. Yet, in truth, he was taking her to an inferno of which the like is scarce known to history. The gate which opened at the Customs barrier gave access apparently to a good road leading through an undulating country. In sober truth, it led to an earthly hell.
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