The fellow-travellers
climbed down onto the fiery sand of the platform. It was a junction, a junction
of that kind where there is no town for miles, and where the resources of the
railway and its neighbourhood compare unfavourably with those of the average
quarantine station.
The first to
descend was a man unmistakably English. He was complaining of the management
even while he extracted his hand-baggage from the carriage with the assistance
of his companion. “It is positively a disgrace to civilisation,” he was saying,
“that there should be no connection at such a station as this, an important
station, sir, let me tell you, the pivot — if I may use the metaphor — of the
branch which serves practically the whole of Muckshire south of the Tream. And
we have certainly one hour to wait, and Heaven knows it’s more likely to be two,
and perhaps three. And, of course, there’s not as much as a bar nearer than
Fatloam; and if we got there we should find no drinkable whisky. I say, sir, the
matter is a positive and actual disgrace to the railway that allows it, to the
country that tolerates it, to the civilisation that permits that such things
should be. The same thing happened to me here last year, sir, though luckily on
that occasion I had but half-an-hour to wait. But I wrote to The Times a strong
half-column letter on the subject, and I’m damned if they didn’t refuse to print
it. Of course, our independent press, etc.; I might have known. I tell you, sir,
this country is run by a ring, a dirty ring, a gang of Jews, Scotchmen, Irish,
Welsh — where’s the good old jolly True Blue Englishman? In the cart, sir, in
the cart.”
The train gave
a convulsive backward jerk, and lumbered off in imitation of the solitary porter
who, stationed opposite the guard’s van, had witnessed without emotion the
hurling forth of two trunks like rocks from a volcano, and after a moment’s
contemplation had, with screwed mouth, mooched along the platform to his grub,
which he would find in an isolated cottage some three hundred yards away.
In strong
contrast to the Englishman, with his moustache afforesting a whitish face,
marked with deep red rings on neck and forehead, his impending paunchiness and
his full suit of armour, was the small, active man with the pointed beard whom
fate had thrown first into the same compartment, and then into the same hour of
exile from all their fellows.
His eyes were
astonishingly black and fierce; his beard was grizzled and his face heavily
lined and obviously burnt by tropical suns; but that face also expressed
intelligence, strength, and resourcefulness in a degree which would have made
him an ideal comrade in a forlorn hope, or the defence of a desperate village.
Across the back of his left hand was a thick and heavy scar. In spite of all
this, he was dressed with singular neatness and correctness; which circumstance,
although his English was purer than that of his companion in distress, made the
latter secretly incline to suspect him of being a Frenchman. In spite of the
quietness of his dress and the self-possession of his demeanour, the sombre
glitter of those black eyes, pin-points below shaggy eye-brows, inspired the
large man with a certain uneasiness. Not at all a chap to quarrel with, was his
thought. However, being himself a widely-travelled man — Boulogne, Dieppe,
Paris, Switzerland, and even Venice — he had none of that insularity of which
foreigners accuse some Englishmen, and he had endeavoured to make conversation
during the journey. The small man had proved a poor companion, taciturn to a
fault, sparing of words where a nod would satisfy the obligations of courtesy,
and seemingly fonder of his pipe than of his fellow-man. A man with a secret,
thought the Englishman.
The train had
jolted out of the station and the porter had faded from the landscape.
“A deserted
spot,” remarked the Englishman, whose name was Bevan, “especially in such
fearful heat. Really, in the summer of 1911, it was hardly as bad. Do you know,
I remember once at Boulogne—” He broke off sharply, for the brown man, sticking
the ferrule of his stick repeatedly in the sand, and knotting his brows came
suddenly to a decision. “What do you know of heat?” he cried, fixing Bevan with
the intensity of a demon. “What do you know of desolation?”
Taken aback,
as well he might be, Bevan was at a loss to reply.
“Stay,” cried
the other. “What if I told you my story? There is no one here but ourselves.” He
glared menacingly at Bevan, seemed to seek to read his soul. “Are you a man to
be trusted?” he barked, and broke off short.
At another
time Bevan would most certainly have declined to become the confidant of a
stranger; but here the solitude, the heat, not a little boredom induced by the
previous manner of his companion, and even a certain mistrust of how he might
take a refusal, combined to elicit a favourable reply.
Stately as an
oak, Bevan answered, “I was born an English gentleman, and I trust that I have
never done anything to derogate from that estate.
“I am a
Justice of the Peace,” he added after a momentary pause.
“I knew it,”
cried the other excitedly. “The trained legal mind is that of all others which
will appreciate my story. Swear, then,” he went on with sudden gravity, “ swear
that you will never whisper to any living soul the smallest word of what I am
about to tell you. Swear by the soul of your dead mother.”
“My mother is
alive,” returned Bevan.
“I knew it,”
exclaimed his companion, a great and strange look of god-like pity illuminating
his sunburnt face. It was such a look as one sees upon many statues of Buddha, a
look of divine, of impersonal compassion.
“Then swear by
the Lord Chancellor.” Bevan was more than ever persuaded that the stranger was a
Frenchman. However, he readily gave the required promise.
“My name,”
said the other, “is Duguesclin. Does that tell you my story?” he asked
impressively. “Does that convey anything to your mind?”
“Nothing at
all.”
“I knew it,”
said the man from the tropics. “Then I must tell you all. In my veins boils the
fiery blood of the greatest of the French warriors, and my mother was the lineal
descendant of the Maid of Saragossa.”
Bevan was startled, and showed it.
“After the
siege, sir, she was honourably married to a nobleman,” snapped Duguesclin. “Do
you think a man of my ancestry will permit a stranger to lift the shadow of an
eyebrow against the memory of my great-grandmother?”
The Englishman
protested that nothing had been further from his thoughts.
“I suppose
so,” proceeded the other more quietly, “and the more, perhaps, that I am a
convicted murderer.”
Bevan was now fairly alarmed.
“I am proud of
it,” continued Duguesclin. “At the age of twenty-five my blood was more fiery
than it is to-day. I married. Four years later I found my wife in the embraces
of a neighbour. I slew him. I slew her. I slew our three children, for vipers
breed only vipers. I slew the servants; they were accomplices of the adultery,
or if not, they should at any rate not witness their master’s shame. I slew the
gendarmes who came to take me — servile hirelings of a corrupt republic. I set
my castle on fire, determined to perish in the ruins. Unfortunately, a piece of
masonry, falling, struck me on the arm. My rifle dropped. The accident was seen,
and I was rescued by the firemen. I determined to live; it was my duty to my
ancestors to continue the family of which I was the sole direct scion. It is in
search of a wife that I am travelling in England.” He paused, and gazed proudly
on the scenery, with the air of a Selkirk. Bevan suppressed the obvious comment
on the surprising termination of the Frenchman’s narrative. He only remarked,
“Then you were not guillotined?”
“I was not,
sir,” retorted the other passionately. “At that time capital punishment was
never inflicted in France, though not officially abrogated. I may say,” he
added, with the pride of a legislator, “that my action lent considerable
strength to the agitation which led to its re-introduction.
“No, sir, I
was not guillotined. I was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment in Devil’s
Island.” He shuddered. “Can you imagine that accursed Isle? Can your fancy paint
one tithe of its horror? Can nightmare itself shadow that inferno, that limbo of
the damned? My language is strong, sir; but no language can depict that hell. I
will spare you the description. Sand, vermin, crocodiles, venomous snakes,
miasma, mosquitoes, fever, filth, toil, jaundice, malaria, starvation, foul
undergrowth, weedy swamps breathing out death, hideous and bloated trees of
poison, themselves already poisoned by their earth, heat unendurable,
insufferable, intolerable, unbearable (as the Daily Telegraph said at the time
of the Dreyfus case), heat continuous and stifling, no breeze but the
pestilential stench of the lagoon, heat that turned the skin into a raging sea
of irritation to which the very stings of the mosquitoes and centipedes came as
a relief, the interminable task of the day beneath the broiling sun, the lash on
every slightest infraction of the harsh prison rules, or even of the laws of
politeness toward our warders, men only one degree less damned than we ourselves
— all this was nothing. The only amusement of the governors of such a place is
cruelty; and their own discomfort makes them more ingenious than all the
inquisitors of Spain, than Arabs in their religious frenzy, than Burmans and
Kachens and Shans in their Buddhist hatred of all living men, than even the
Chinese in their cold lust of cruelty. The governor was a profound psychologist;
no corner of the mind that he did not fathom, so as to devise a means of
twisting it to torture.
“I remember
one of us who took pleasure in keeping his spade bright — it was the regulation
that spades must be kept bright, a torture in itself in such a place, where
mildew grows on everything as fast almost as snow falls in happier climates.
Well, sir, the governor found out that this man took a pleasure in the glint of
the sun on the steel, and he forbade that man to clean his spade. A trifle,
indeed. What do you know of what prisoners think of trifles? The man went raving
mad, and for no other reason. It seemed to him that such detailed refinement of
cruelty was a final proof of the innate and inherent devilishness of the
universe. Insanity is the logical consequence of such a faith. No, sir, I will
spare you the description.”
Bevan thought
that there had already been too much description, and in his complacent English
way surmised that Duguesclin was exaggerating, as he was aware that Frenchmen
did. But he only remarked that it must have been terrible. He would have given a
good deal, now, to have avoided the conversation. It was not altogether nice to
be on a lonely platform with a self-confessed multiple murderer, who had
presumably escaped only by a further and extended series of crimes.
“But you ask,”
pursued Duguesclin, “you ask how I escaped? That, sir, is the story I propose to
tell you. My previous remarks have been but preliminary; they have no pertinence
or interest, I am aware; but they were necessary, since you so kindly expressed
interest in my personality, my family history — heroic (I may claim it) as is
the one, and tragic (no one will deny it) as is the other.”
Bevan again
reflected that his interlocutor must be as bad a psychologist as the governor of
Devil’s Island was a good one; for he had neither expressed nor felt the
slightest concern with either of these matters.
“Well, sir, to my story! Among the convicts there was one universal pleasure, a
pleasure that could cease only with life or with the empire of the reason, a
pleasure that the governor might (and did) indeed restrict, but could not take
away. I refer to hope — the hope of escape. Yes, sir, that spark (alone of all
its ancient fires) burnt in this breast — and in that of my fellow-convicts. And
in this I did not look so much to myself as to another. I am not endowed with
any great intellect,” he modestly pursued,” my grandmother was pure English, a
Higginbotham, one of the Warwickshire Higginbothams (what has that to do with
his stupidity? thought Bevan) and the majority of my companions were men not
only devoid of intelligence, but of education. The one pinnacled exception was
the great Dodu — ha! you start?”
Bevan had not
done anything of the sort; he had continued to exhibit the most stolid
indifference to the story.
“Yes, you are
not mistaken; it was indeed the world-famous philosopher, the discoverer of
Dodium, rarest of known elements, supposed only to exist in the universe to the
extent of the thirty-thousand and fifth part of a milligramme, and that in the
star called Pegasi; it was Dodu who has shattered the logical process of
obversion, and reduced the quadrangle of oppositions to the condition of the
British square at Abu-Klea. So much you know; but this perhaps you did not know,
that, although a civilian, he was the greatest strategist of France. It was he
who in his cabinet made the dispositions of the armies of the Ardennes; and the
1890 scheme of the fortifications of Luné-ville was due to his genius alone. For
this reason the Government were loth to condemn him, though public opinion
revolted bitterly against his crime. You remember that, having proved that women
after the age of fifty were a useless burden to the State, he had demonstrated
his belief by decapitating and devouring his widowed mother. It was consequently
the intention of the Government to connive at his escape on the voyage, and to
continue to employ him under an assumed name in a flat in an entirely different
quarter of Paris. However, the Government fell suddenly; a rival ousted him, and
his sentence was carried out with as much severity as if he had been a common
criminal.
“It was to
such a man (naturally) that I looked to devise a plan for our escape. But rack
my brains as I would — my grandmother was a Warwickshire Higgin-botham — I could
devise no means of getting into touch with him. He must, however, have divined
my wishes; for, one day after he had been about a month upon the island (I had
been there seven months myself) he stumbled and fell as if struck by the sun at
a moment when I was close to him. And as he lay upon the ground he managed to
pinch my ankle three times. I caught his glance — he hinted rather than gave me
the sign of recognition of the fraternity of Freemasons. Are you a Mason?”
“I am Past
Provincial Deputy Grand Sword-Bearer of this province,” returned Bevan. “I
founded Lodge 14,883, ‘Boetic’ and Lodge 17,212, ‘Colenso.’ And I am Past Grand
Haggai in my Provincial Grand Chapter.”
“I knew it!”
exclaimed Duguesclin enthusiastically.
Bevan began to
dislike this conversation exceedingly. Did this man — this criminal — know who
he was? He knew he was a J.P., that his mother was alive, and now his Masonic
dignities. He distrusted this Frenchman more and more. Was the story but a
pretext for the demand of a loan? The stranger looked prosperous and had a first
class ticket. More likely a blackmailer; perhaps he knew of other things — say
that affair at Oxford — or the incident of the Edgware Road — or the matter of
Esme Holland. He determined to be more than ever on his guard.
“You will
understand with what joy,” continued Duguesclin, innocent or careless of the
sinister thoughts which occupied his companion, “I received and answered this
unmistakable token of friendship. That day no further opportunity of intercourse
occurred, but I narrowly watched him on the morrow, and saw that he was dragging
his feet in an irregular way. Ha! thought I, a drag for long, an ordinary pace
for short. I imitated him eagerly, giving the Morse letter A. His alert mind
grasped instantly my meaning; he altered his code (which had been of a different
order) and replied with a Morse B on my own system. I answered C; he returned D.
From that moment we could talk fluently and freely as if we were on the terrace
of the Cafe de la Paix in our beloved Paris. However, conversation in such
circumstances is a lengthy affair. During the whole march to our work he only
managed to say, ‘Escape soon — please God.’ Before his crime he had been an
atheist. I was indeed glad to find that punishment had brought repentance.”
Bevan himself
was relieved. He had carefully refrained from admitting the existence of a
French Freemason; that one should have repented filled him with a sense of
almost personal triumph. He began to like Duguesclin, and to believe in him. His
wrong had been hideous; if his vengeance seemed excessive and even
indiscriminate, was not he a Frenchman? Frenchmen do these things! And after all
Frenchmen were men. Bevan felt a great glow of benevolence; he remembered that
he was not only a man, but a Christian. He determined to set the stranger at his
ease.
“Your story
interests me intensely,” said he. “I sympathise deeply with you in your wrongs
and in your sufferings. I am heartily thankful that you have escaped, and I beg
of you to proceed with the narration of your adventures.”
Duguesclin
needed no such encouragement. His attitude, from that of the listless weariness
with which he had descended from the train, had become animated, sparkling,
fiery; he was carried away by the excitement of his passionate memories.
“On the second
day Dodu was able to explain his mind. ‘If we escape, it must be by a
stratagem,’ he signalled. It was an obvious remark; but Dodu had no reason to
think highly of my intelligence. ‘By a stratagem,’ he repeated with emphasis.
“‘I have a
plan,’ he continued. ‘It will take twenty-three days to communicate, if we are
not interrupted; between three and four months to prepare; two hours and eight
minutes to execute. It is theoretically possible to escape by air, by water, or
by earth. But as we are watched day and night, it would be useless to try to
drive a tunnel to the mainland; we have no aeroplanes or balloons, or means of
making them. But if we could once reach the water’s edge, which we must do in
whatever direction we set out if we only keep in a straight line, and if we can
find a boat unguarded, and if we can avoid arousing the alarm, then we have
merely to cross the sea, and either find a land where we are unknown, or
disguise ourselves and our boat and return to Devil’s Island as shipwrecked
mariners. The latter idea would be foolish. You will say that the Governor would
know that Dodu would not be such a fool; but more, he would know also that Dodu
would not be such a fool as to try to take advantage of that circumstance; and
he would be right, curse him!’
“It implies
the intensest depth of feeling to curse in the Morse code with one’s feet — ah!
how we hated him.
“Dodu explained to me that he was telling me these obvious things for several
reasons: (1) to gauge my intelligence by my reception of them; (2) to make sure
that if we failed it should be by my stupidity and not by his neglect to inform
me of every detail; (3) because he had acquired the professorial habit as
another man might have the gout.
“Briefly,
however, this was his plan; to elude the guards, make for the coast, capture a
boat, and put to sea. Do you understand? Do you get the idea?”
Bevan replied
that it seemed to him the only possible plan.
“A man like
Dodu,” pursued Dugues-clin,” takes nothing for granted. He leaves no precaution
untaken; in his plans, if chance be an element, it is an element whose value is
calculated to twenty-eight places of decimals.
“But hardly
had he laid down these bold outlines of his scheme when interruption came. On
the fourth day of our intercourse he signalled only ‘Wait. Watch me!’ again and
again.
“In the
evening he manoeuvred to get to the rear of the line of convicts, and only then
dragged out ‘There is a traitor, a spy. Henceforth I must find a new means of
communicating the details of my plan. I have thought it all out. I shall speak
in a sort of rebus, which not even you will be able to understand unless you
have all the pieces — and the key. Mind you engrave upon your memory every word
I say.’
“The following
day: ‘Do you remember the taking of the old mill by the Prussians in ’70? My
difficulty is that I must give you the skeleton of the puzzle, which I can’t do
in words. But watch the line of my spade and my heelmarks, and take a copy.’
“I did this
with the utmost minuteness of accuracy and obtained this figure. At my autopsy,”
said Duguesclin, dramatically, “this should be found engraved upon my heart.”
He drew a
notebook from his pocket, and rapidly sketched the subjoined figure for the now
interested Bevan.
“You will note that the figure has eight sides, and that twenty-seven crosses
are disposed in groups of three, while in one corner is a much larger and
thicker cross and two smaller crosses not so symmetrical. This group represents
the element of chance; and you will at least gain a hint of the truth if you
reflect that eight is the cube of two, and twenty-seven of three.”
Bevan looked intelligent.
“On
the return march,” continued Duguesclin, “Dodu said, ‘The spy is on the watch.
But count the letters in the name of Aristotle’s favourite disciple.’ I guessed
(as he intended me to do) that he did not mean Aristotle. He wished to suggest
Plato, and so Socrates; hence I counted A-L-C-I-B-I-A-D-E-S = 10, and thus
completely baffled the spy for that day. The following day he rapped out ‘Rahu’
very emphatically, meaning that the next lunar eclipse would be the proper
moment for our evasion, and spent Pope; the Pompadour; the Stag and Cross.’ ‘The
men of the fourth of September; their leader divided by the letters of the
Victim of the Eighth of Thermidor.’ ‘Crillon was unfortunate that day, though
braver than ever.’
“Such were the indications from which I sought to piece together our plan of
escape!
“Perhaps rather by intuition than by reason, I gathered from some two hundred of
such clues that the guards Bertrand, Rolland, and Monet, had been bribed, and
also promised advancement, and (above all) removal from the hated Island, should
they connive at our escape. It seemed that the Government had still use for its
first strategist. The eclipse was due some ten weeks ahead, and needed neither
bribe nor promise. The difficulty was to ensure the presence of Bertrand as
sentinel in our corridor, Rolland at the ring-fence, and Monet at the outposts.
The chances against such a combination at the eclipse were infinitesimal,
99,487,306,294,236, 873,489 to 1.
“It
would have been madness to trust to luck in so essential a matter. Dodu set to
work to bribe the Governor himself. This was unfortunately impossible; for (a)
no one could approach the governor even by means of the intermediary of the
bribed guards; (b] the offence for which he had been promoted to the
governorship was of a nature unpardonable by any Government. He was in reality
more a prisoner than ourselves; (c] he was a man of immense wealth, assured
career, and known probity.
“I
cannot now enter into his history, which you no doubt know in any case. I will
only say that it was of such a character that these facts (of so curiously
contradictory appearance — on the face of it) apply absolutely. However the tone
of confidence which thrilled in Dodu’s messages, ‘Pluck grapes in Burgundy;
press vats in Cognac; ha!’ ‘The souffle with the nuts in it is ready for us by
the Seine’ and the like, showed me that his giant brain had not only grappled
with the problem, but solved it to his satisfaction. The plan was perfect; on
the night of the eclipse those three guards would be on duty at such and such
gates; Dodu would tear his clothes into strips, bind and gag Bertrand, come and
release me. Together we should spring on Rolland, take his uniform and rifle,
and leave him bound and gagged. We should then dash for the shore, do the same
with Monet, and then, dressed in their uniforms, take the boat of an
octopus-fisher, row to the harbour, and ask in the name of the governor for the
use of his steam yacht to chase an escaped fugitive. We should then steam into
the track of ships and set fire to the yacht, so as to be ‘rescued’ and conveyed
to England, whence we could arrange with the French Government for
rehabilitation.
“Such was the simple yet subtle plan of Dodu. Down to the last detail was it
perfected — until one fatal day.
“The spy, stricken by yellow fever, dropped suddenly dead in the fields before
noon ‘Cease work’ had sounded. Instantly, without a moment’s hesitation, Dodu
strode across to me and said, at the risk of the lash; ‘The whole plan which I
have explained to you in cipher these last four months is a blind. That spy knew
all. His lips are sealed in death. I have another plan, the real plan, simpler
and surer. I will tell it to you tomorrow.’“ The whistle of an approaching
engine interrupted this tragic episode of the adventures of Duguesclin.
“‘Yes,’ said Dodu” (continued the narrator), “‘I have a better plan. I have a
stratagem. I will tell it you tomorrow.’“ The train which was to carry the
narrator and his hearer to Mudchester came round the corner.
“That morrow,” glowered Duguesclin, “that morrow never came. The same sun that
slew the spy broke the great brain of Dodu; that very afternoon, a gibbering
maniac, they thrust him in the padded room, never again to emerge.”
The
train drew up at the platform of the little junction. He almost hissed in
Bevan’s face.
“It
was not Dodu at all,” he screamed, “it was a common criminal, an epileptic; he
should never have been sent to Devil’s Island at all. He had been mad for
months. His messages had no sense at all; it was a cruel practical joke!”
“But how,” said Bevan getting into his carriage and looking back, “how did you
escape in the end?”
“By
a stratagem,” replied the Irishman, and jumped into another compartment.
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