“Vincent! In Doctor Briedenbach’s hall there is a telephone. A hundred yards away there is a post of infantry. Ring up the commandant, tell him that I have arrested Doctor Breidenbach on the charge of abducting a French subject, ask him to send along an armed escort at once—not less than half a dozen!” He glanced at the girl, who was apparently in a swoon upon her chair. “It is important that the force should be imposing! Hurry!”
Vincent snatched at the key, and dashed from the room.
The German smiled in grim contempt. Chassaigne, still covering him with the revolver, smiled back, not less grimly. They waited in a complete silence, through minute after minute. The girl upon the chair did not stir.
Suddenly they heard the rhythmic tramp of a body of armed men on the gravel outside, a sharp voice of command, and then, after a brief pause, the heavy multiple tramp again, resounding through the house, louder and louder in its approach. At the sound, the girl sat up brusquely, stared wild-eyed at the door.
It was flung open. Vincent entered, pointed out the girl to the French officer who accompanied him, evidently in confirmation of a statement made outside. The officer barked an order. A file of helmeted infantrymen, bayoneted rifles at the slope, marched heavily into the room. The girl shrieked.
“Oh, no! no! Don’t take me!” she cried—and her cry was French! “Don’t take me! I will not go! I will not go!” She sprang up from her chair, looked frenziedly around the room in a terror-stricken search for an avenue of escape. Her eyes fell upon Vincent remained curiously fixed upon him. Suddenly, with a cry of recognition, she rushed into his arms. “Maxime! Maxime! Protect me! Oh, don’t let them take me! Don’t let them take me!”
Chassaigne smiled. He had won. As he expected, the shock of this armed entry so vividly recalled the night of terror in Lille when the girl-victims were snatched from their violated homes, had sufficed to reawaken the personality which had then agonized in its last moments of freedom.
Vincent enfolded her, murmuring reassuring words as he caressed the head that hid itself upon his breast. Her body shook with violent sobs.
The German stood up, placed himself, with a shrug of the shoulders, between the double file of infantrymen. The officer produced a notebook, asked a few questions of Chassaigne, jotted down the replies. He turned to the girl.
“Your name, mademoiselle?”