They spent the rest of the day in discussing the killing qualities of shells, grenades, bombs; the stabbing qualities of bayonets, daggers, swords; the exploding properties of dynamite, nitroglycerin, TNT, and others. As they talked Monsieur Satan sucked in his breath exultantly and hissed between his teeth, “Zigouille, toujours zigouille!” while his hand stabbed and twisted into the air.
Another day and he had taken Sheila entirely into his confidence. “I have my mind made. You shall hear the cure, ma’am’selle, for you and I will be partners. A Boche world can be cured but the one way—destroyed, completely destroyed,” and he laughed uproariously. Then his eyes narrowed; he was all cunning and intensity, a beast of prey crouched for the spring. “Ah, but we must whisper; there are spies everywhere. The men in the wards are all spies pretending they are French wounded; and the doctors are spies. Oh, the Boches are damnably clever, but we will be more damnable—we will outwit them. We will blow them into a million atoms. They will make good fertilizer for French vineyards in a hundred years. Eh bien?”
So Sheila became partner in evolving the most colossal crime the world had ever known. Everything played into her hands and gave credence to her deceptions. The great cases that came by night packed with dressings were to Monsieur Satan air-bombs with propellers. They were to be set loose on the day appointed in such millions that the air would be charged with them, the sun blotted out; and they would drop in exploding masses over the earth, exterminating humanity.
“They shall be like the hordes of locusts that nearly destroyed Egypt—only these shall destroy. And how every one shall run in terror! You will see, ma’am’selle. It will be a good sight.” And Monsieur Satan rubbed his hands in keen anticipation.
The tanks of oxygen placed on motor-trucks, the gasoline-tanks, were nothing else than a deadly gas. The partners had concocted it out of the strangest compounds, unshed-tears, heart-agony, fear-in-the-night, snipers’ barks, and moonshine. Monsieur Satan chuckled over the formula and said he would swear not a living soul could withstand a single whiff of it. It was agreed that the makers of the gas—mythological beings Sheila had created—should be killed at once so that their secret should never be discovered; and Sheila herself was despatched to compass the deed. Before she returned the bell in the church near by was tolling for their parting souls; and Monsieur Satan chuckled as he cast admiring glances at this prompt executioner.
“You are a good pupil, ma’am’selle; you learn quickly. Now the maps.” And they fell to diagraming where the piping for this deadly gas should be laid.
Not an inch of the old world was to be left peopled; from east to west and north to south everything was to be destroyed. No, not everything. Even as Monsieur Satan decreed it he hesitated. “There are the children, I think—yes, I think they shall live. Their hearts are pure; the Boches cannot contaminate them. They shall live after us with no memory of evil, so they can build again the beautiful world.” He stopped and looked across at the nurse with a haunting, wistful stare. “Tell me, ma’am’selle, was the world ever beautiful?”
“Very beautiful, capitaine.”
He passed an uncertain hand over his eyes. “I seem to remember that it was; but now I see it always running with red blood boiling from hell.”
After that the children were always in his mind; as he planned the destruction of the rest of the world he planned their re-creation. Thereupon Sheila saw to it that the war orphans from the crêche came to play in the hospital gardens—under the window of the little room. Soon it became a custom for Monsieur Satan to look for them, to ask their names, and wave gaily to them. And they waved back. And the chief of the surgical staff began to marvel that Monsieur Satan should give no more trouble.