With Joffre at Verdun: A Story of the Western Front

by F. S. Brereton

It was curious that, at that very moment, there should arrive at the station, brought there in the police officer's car, which he had sent to the sugar factory for that purpose, the manager whose office Henri had so lately entered. The poor fellow was shaking with trepidation, with fear of what was to happen; and if his thoughts had been vague before, and not a little muddled, if terror of the law had somewhat disconcerted him, and upset his equilibrium during and after his cross-examination, terror of the future had made him now little more than a babbling idiot—an object, indeed, for the contemptuous glances of the police inspector and for his gibes and sallies.

"So," he said, standing over the portly figure of the little man, as he came from the motor-car and stumbled down the platform, "so, you have obeyed, Herr Winterborgen, you are here to identify the three whose return in captivity we are waiting. That is good, and certainly you will be able to tell us that they are the individuals."

The manager held his hands up, expostulating weakly. There were tears in his eyes, tears of fear, of rage, and of anguish.

"But, identify them," he cried, almost shrieked indeed, "identify the three who purloined garments from my office? But no, it is impossible; for hear me, Inspector, I never saw those individuals; not once, to my knowledge, have I ever set eyes on them."

But if he expected pity or leniency, he might just as well have appealed to the wooden pillar which supported the roof of the platform. The huge police inspector was adamant, inflexible, unmoved, and surveyed the trembling figure of his victim with cold eyes which glinted cruelly. Very slowly, he slid one broad hand back into the short tail of his tunic, extricated his notebook with a flourish, and, opening it and producing a pencil, called upon the station-master to bear witness to the words uttered.

"Mark the words of this Herr Winterborgen," he said. "'Not to my knowledge,' he states, has he seen these three individuals; and yet, mark this again, he was able to describe their appearance fully, to describe the clothes they wore, their sex, and their possible destination."

By then the eyes of the manager were almost starting out of his head, and he was gaping and gasping with amazement at the story to which he listened. Never before, indeed, had he imagined that anyone—let alone a police inspector, a pillar of the law—could have invented such a story, could have produced such a lying fabrication. The words stunned his ears, and he felt more than ever that he was hopelessly involved in circumstances which would end in nothing less than his utter downfall. Nor did the hour which passed ere the train came to the station relieve him of his fears or make him any the happier. For even if the fugitives were captured—and it seemed more than likely that they would be brought to the station in the train then approaching—their coming could result in nothing but further embarrassment, for he would be expected to identify them definitely, and if he did that he well knew that difficulties would become greater.

"Ha! At last it is signalled, this train," said the police inspector, "and we shall soon know whether our friends have made this capture."

"Wait, though," the station-master cautioned him, coming from his office at that moment; "this is a special and does not stop, but behind it, only a few minutes intervening, there is another train, the ordinary train, which stopped at the station down the line to which your telegrams were forwarded, and where the fugitives will have been surrounded. Stand back there!"

The three of them—the station-master, the police inspector, and the trembling manager of the sugar factory—stood on the platform and watched the train as it ran through the station at moderate speed; and then, thinking nothing more of it, waited for that other one, the smoke from the engine of which was already visible in the distance. Nor need we describe how the inspector—determined upon a capture, confident, indeed, that his telegrams had produced that result, and already bursting with triumph and rehearsing the terrible things that he would do to his captives—pounced upon the train, ran from carriage to carriage, and eagerly interrogated the officials. Imagine his rage, his mortification, his disappointment, when he was informed that no such people as the three whose description he had sent could be found upon the train going westward.