"Bah! They die for Belgium and to proclaim to the world that the Germans must be crushed," cried Dale contemptuously. "No, Max, we have nothing to reproach ourselves with in this business."
"No, but still——" Then, rousing himself with an effort, Max went on: "But we need not worry ourselves yet. Will you go into the streets and find out anything else you can? I am going to find Dubec, and we will then see if aught can be done."
The two parted, and in a few minutes Max was at the door of Dubec's house. Here a rude shock awaited him, for Madame Dubec, white-faced but tearless, told him, with a quietude and directness that somehow seemed to make the news more terrible still, that her husband was one of those lying under sentence of death.
The shock was a great one, although, in his heart, Max had half expected it. He knew Dubec had been in the yard, and what more likely than that he had been detained? Too upset to do more than mumble a few words of sorrow, Max turned on his heel and hurried from the house.
Taking the road to the open hills, Max strode on and on, his mind filled with serious and oftentimes conflicting thoughts. He had no doubts as to the fate of the thirty-nine men if the Germans were unable to lay their hands upon the real authors of the destruction of the workshop. They would surely die, and with them Dubec, towards whom Max felt specially drawn by his constant loyal aid and the memory of the day when he had answered his mute appeal for succour.
And to Max the responsibility seemed his. These men had no part nor lot in it. Why should they die? It did not help matters much to blame the Germans—the worst might always be expected of them—for that would not give back to Madame Dubec the husband for whom it seemed to Max she had unconsciously appealed.
Supposing he gave himself up in order that they might go free? Ah, what a triumph for Schenk! How he would rejoice! True, he did not know that Max was at the bottom of all the shrewd blows dealt him of late, but he probably had more than a suspicion of it. At any rate he was known to have traced much of the money and valuables, recovered from his room, to the bank at Maastricht which Madame Durend patronized. Knowing, then, the authorship of that most daring exploit, it would have been strange if he had not looked to the same quarter for an explanation of the similar blows dealt him so soon after.
Yes, it would be a great triumph for Schenk, and the end of that resolute opposition to the use of the Durend workshops for the benefit of the German army that had taken such a grip upon our hero's mind. That task he had made peculiarly his own. All the fixity of purpose he possessed, and it was not a little, was concentrated upon keeping his father's—his—works from aiding the projects of a brutal and unscrupulous enemy.
To give it all up would not only be a victory for Schenk but a bitter pill to himself—the uprooting of something that had taken deep root in the inmost recesses of his mind.
The struggle was a long one, but it came to an end at last, and Max returned to the town, scribbled a short note to Dale, which he left at their lodging, and then walked directly to the governor's house.