"Good heavens! Monsieur l'Abbé."...
"Corporal, that contains a fortune for you and for me ... a piece of artillery ... the mouthpiece of 155-R ... rapid firer!... You see its importance?... To-night we sleep in the outskirts of Rouen ... to-morrow, we leave early for Havre.... As I am known there, Corporal, we shall have to separate.... You will go with the driver to the Nez d'Antifer.... There you will find a fishing-boat in charge of a friendly sailor ... all you have to do is to hand over this package to him.... He will make for the open sea, where he will deliver it—into the right hands."...
Involuntarily Fandor drew away from the priestly spy. The statements just made to him were of so grave a nature; the adventure in which he found himself involved was so dangerous, so nefarious, that Fandor thrilled with terror and disgust. He kept silence: he was thinking. Suddenly he saw his way clear.
"Between Havre and the Nez d'Antifer I must get rid of this gun piece. However interesting my investigations are I cannot possibly deliver such a thing to the enemy, to a foreign power! Death for preference!"...
His companion broke in.
"And now, Corporal, I fancy you fully understand how awkward it would be for you, much more so than for me, if this package were opened, because you are a soldier, and in uniform."
Fandor showed an unflinching front, but a wave of positive anguish rushed over him.
"This cursed abbé has me in his net!" he thought. "Like it, or not, I must follow him now. I am regularly let in!... As a civilian, as Fandor the journalist, I might go to the first military dépôt I can come at, and state that I had discovered a priest who was going to hand over to a foreign power an important piece of artillery!... The pretended Vinson would have done the trick and would then vanish.... But in uniform!... They would certainly accuse me of suspicious traffic with spies.... They would confine me—cell me.... I should have the work of the world to obtain a release under six months!... Another point.... Why had they chosen him, Corporal Vinson as they believed, for such a mission?... Assuredly the spies possessed a thousand other agents, capable of carrying triumphantly through this dangerous mission, this delivery of a stolen piece of ordnance to a sailor spy in the pay of a foreign power inimical to France!"
It was horrible! Abominable! This spy traffic! Only to think of it soiled one's soul! Fandor sickened at the realisation of what was involved—that this betrayal of France was not a solitary instance—that there must be a hundred betrayals going on at that very moment! That France was being bought and sold in a hundred ways for Judas money—France!
His thoughts turned shudderingly away from such hell depths of treachery.