In Secret

"Is it you, Kay McKay?" he said at last.

But the shock of the encounter still fettered him so that he walked very slowly to the woman who was now moving toward him across the grass.

"Evelyn Erith," he said, taking her thin hands in his own, which were trembling now.

"It's a year," he complained unsteadily.

"More than a year," said McKay in his dead voice.

With his left hand, then, John Recklow took McKay's gaunt hand, and stood so, mute, looking at him and at the girl beside him.

"God!" he said blankly. Then, with no emphasis: "It's rather more than a year!… They sent me two fire-charred skulls—the head of a man and the head of a woman…. That was a year ago…. After your pigeon arrived… I found the scorched skulls wrapped in a Swiss newspaper-lying inside the garden wall—over there on the grass!… And the swine had written your names on the skulls…."

Into Evelyn Erith's eyes there came a vague light—the spectre of a smile. And as Recklow looked at her he remembered the living glory she had once been; and wrath blazed wildly within him. "What have they done to you?" he asked in an unsteady voice. But McKay laid his hand on Recklow's arm:

"Nothing. It is what they have not done—fed her. That's all she needs—and sleep."

Recklow gazed heavily upon her. But if the young fail rapidly, they also respond quickly.

"Come into the house,"

Perhaps it was the hot broth with wine in it that brought a slight colour back into her ghastly face—the face once so youthfully lovely but now as delicate as the mask of death itself.

Candles twinkled on the little table where the girl now lay back listlessly in the depths of an armchair, her chin sunk on her breast.

Recklow sat opposite her, writing on a pad in shorthand. McKay, resting his ragged elbows on the cloth, his haggard face between both hands, went on talking in a colourless, mechanical voice which an iron will alone flogged into speech:

"Killed two of them and took their clothes and papers," he continued monotonously; "that was last August—near the end of the month…. The Boche had tens of thousands working there. AND EVERY ONE OF THEM WAS INSANE."

"What!"

"Yes, that is the way they were operating—the only way they dared operate. I think all that enormous work has been done by the insane during the last forty years. You see, the Boche have nothing to dread from the insane. Anyway the majority of them died in harness. Those who became useless—intractable or crippled—were merely returned to the asylums from which they had been drafted. And the Hun government saw to it that nobody should have access to them.

"Besides, who would believe a crazy man or woman if they babbled about the Great Secret?"

He covered his visage with his bony hands and rested so for a few moments, then, forcing himself again:

"The Hun for forty years has drafted the insane from every asylum in the Empire to do this gigantic work for him. Men, women, even children, chained, guarded, have done the physical work…. The Pyramids were builded so, they say…. And in this manner is being finished that colossal engineering work which is never spoken of among the Huns except when necessary, and which is known among them as The Great Secret…. Recklow, it was conceived as a vast engineering project forty-eight years ago—in 1870 during the Franco-Prussian war. It was begun that same year…. And it is practically finished. Except for one obstacle."

Recklow's lifted eyes stared at him over his pad.

"It is virtually finished," repeated McKay in his toneless, unaccented voice which carried such terrible conviction to the other man. "Forty-eight years ago the Hun planned a huge underground highway carrying four lines of railroad tracks. It was to begin east of the Rhine in the neighbourhood of Zell, slant into the bowels of the earth, pass deep under the Rhine, deep under the Swiss frontier, deep, deep under Mount Terrible and under the French frontier, and emerge in France BEHIND Belfort, Toul, Nancy, and Verdun."

Recklow laid his pad on the table and looked intently at McKay. The latter said in his ghost of a voice: "You are beginning to suspect my sanity." He turned with an effort and fixed his hollow eyes on Evelyn Erith.

"We are sane," he said. "But I don't blame you, Recklow. We have lived among the mad for more than a year—among thousands and thousands and thousands of them—of men and women and even children in whose minds the light of reason had died out…. Thirty thousand dying minds in which only a dreadful twilight reigned!… I don't know how we endured it—and retained our reason…. Do you, Yellow-hair?"

The girl did not reply. He spoke to her again, then fell silent. For the girl slept, her delicate, deathly face dropped forward on her breast.

Presently McKay turned to Recklow once more; and Recklow picked up his pad with a slight shudder.

"Forty-eight years," repeated McKay—"and the work of the Hun is nearly done—a wide highway under the earth's surface flanked by four lines of rails—broad-gauge tracks—everything now working, all rolling-stock and electric engines moving smoothly and swiftly…. Two tracks carry troops; two carry ammunition and munitions. A highway a hundred feet wide runs between.

"Ten miles from the Rhine, under the earth, there is a Hun city, with a garrison of sixty thousand men!… There are other cities along the line—"

"Deep down!"

"Deep under the earth."

"There must be shafts!" said Recklow hoarsely.

"None."

"No shafts to the surface?"

"Not one."

"No pipe? No communication with the outer air?"

Then McKay's sunken eyes glittered and he stiffened up, and his wasted features seemed to shrink until the parting of his lips showed his teeth. It was a dreadful laughter—his manner, now, of expressing mirth.

"Recklow," he said, "in 1914 that vast enterprise was scheduled to be finished according to plan. With the declaration of war in August the Hun was to have blasted his way to the surface of French soil behind the barrier forts! He was prepared to do it in half an hour's time.

"Do you understand? Do you see how it was planned? For forty-eight years the Hun had been preparing to seize France and crush Europe.

"When the Hun was ready he murdered the Austrian archduke—the most convenient solution of the problem for the Hun Kaiser, who presented himself with the pretext for war by getting rid of the only Austrian with whom he couldn't do business."

Again McKay laughed, silently, showing his discoloured teeth.

"So the archduke died according to plan; and there was war—according to plan. And then, Recklow, GOD'S HAND MOVED!—very slightly—indolently—scarcely stirring at all…. A drop of icy water percolated the limestone on Mount Terrible; other drops followed; linked by these drops a thin stream crept downward in the earth along the limestone fissures, washing away glacial sands that had lodged there since time began."… He leaned forward and his brilliant, sunken eyes peered into Recklow's:

"Since 1914," he said, "the Staubbach has fallen into the bowels of the earth and the Hun has been fighting it miles under the earth's surface.

"They can't operate from the glacier on the white Shoulder of Thusis; whenever they calk it and plug it and stop it with tons of reinforced waterproof concrete—whenever on the surface of the world they dam it and turn it into new channels, it evades them. And in a new place its icy water bursts through—as though every stratum in the Alps dipped toward their underground tunnel to carry the water from the Glacier of Thusis into it!"

He clenched his wasted hands and struck the table without a sound:

"God blocks them, damn them!" he said in his ghost of a voice. "God bars the Boche! They shall not pass!"

He leaned nearer, twisting his clenched fingers together: "We saw them, Recklow. We saw the Staubbach fighting for right of way; we saw the Hun fighting the Staubbach—Darkness battling with Light!—the Hun against the Most High!—miles under the earth's crust, Recklow…. Do you believe in God?"

"Yes."

"Yes…. We saw Him at work—that young girl asleep there, and I—month after month we watched Him check and dismay the modern Pharaoh—we watched Him countermine the Nibelungen and mock their filthy Gott! And Recklow, we laughed, sometimes, where laughter among clouded minds means nothing—nothing even to the Hun—nor causes suspicion nor brings punishment other than the accustomed kick and blow which the Hun reserves for all who are helpless."… He bowed his head in his hands. "All who are weak and stricken," he whispered to himself.

Recklow said: "Did they harm—HER?" And, McKay looked up at that, baring his teeth in a swift snarl:

"No—you see her clipped hair—and the thin body…. In her blouse she passed for a boy, unquestioned, unnoticed. There were thousands of us, you see…. Some of the insane women were badly treated—all of the younger ones…. But she and I were together…. And I had my pistol in reserve—for the crisis!—always in reserve—always ready for her." Recklow nodded. McKay went on: