tells how i went forth into the night, and of my quest, and of my singular state of mind.
“so that is the infamous captain toby,” i thought, as i started back to the inn, all agog over this discovery. “monsieur le capitaine, the sky spy, accessory to a thousand murders! another of dennheimer’s recruits. well, he has his reward.” he would have fared worse, i consoled myself, if he had fallen within the allied lines.
but already (though i would not acknowledge it) i had begun to feel the first pangs of regret, not because i had denounced him, but because i had not at least brought him back and left him in his cave where i had found him. for if, indeed, i wished to leave his punishment to providence, it would have seemed only fair to return him to the spot where providence had placed him when i intervened.
i began to wonder how he had drifted so far and what were the circumstances of his tragic flight. the broken cable told much, but what was the experience which had left him with a tottering, broken will—the victim of hideous fear and haunting guilt? he had evidently a hazy recollection of landing in the darkness, for he had asked me, in his eager, furtive way, if david balfour had reached his destination at night.
i believed that his condition had been worse—was perhaps getting better when i first saw him. and i pictured his being carried through the darkness, a crazed victim locked in his little car, storm-tossed perhaps, borne over those majestic peaks, beating against his glass enclosure in crying fright, and at last dragged across rough canons and over rocks and crawling out of the wreckage in the blackness of night in this unknown country. i pictured him wandering aimlessly among the hills and glens, in storm and tempest perhaps, and finally finding refuge in his lone cave.
before i had reached the inn i turned and retraced my steps to the scene of our parting, but he was gone. i was siezed with remorse. the night was coming on, and the thought of the poor wretch stricken anew by the shock of my tirade, roaming aimlessly among those caverns, went to my heart.
this, i thought, was not the way uncle sam treated his enemy prisoners. i went back to his cave hoping that i might find him there, but there was no sign of him, and i turned back toward the inn remorsefully.
and now i did not spare myself. i recalled my effort to find excuse, or at least a plausible explanation, for tom slade’s truckling to the enemy, because he was my young friend’s pal and lived in my own home town. i recalled my agreeable pastime of recounting the episodes of his loyal service, and of how i had put into the background that dark secret of the scuppers. but for this poor, half demented creature, who was punished already, i had had nothing but heartless contempt and loathing. i would have thought shame to dishonor that grave in pevy. yet here was i dishonoring the dead—for was not this wretched thing dead in a way?
i cannot tell you of the pangs i suffered as the night drew on. herr twann, who had shown little sympathy or interest in our unhappy neighbor, seemed like a saint now compared to myself. a fine bungle i had made of my kind intent! i have seen wounded soldiers handled pretty roughly, but never one with genuine shell shock.
to my host and his good wife i said nothing of what i had learned—much less of what i had done, but all through the evening i nursed my remorse in silence.
as luck would have it, the night blew up cold and stormy. there is a keenness to the slightest breeze in these parts and i have wondered whether it is because of the narrow valleys it passes through, causing, as one might say, a perpetual draft. the rain comes in gusts.
well, on this memorable night there was not so much as a star to be seen—only the tiny light away up on ollon peak, which i always thought must be a star. some hermit monks lived there, i understood, and lonely enough it must have been for them. down in st. craix we could see the lights, dimmed by the misty thickness of the blown rain, disappear one after another as the good peasant people went to their beds, and as i watched them from our tap-room window, i felt that no human being should be abroad in those mountains on such a night. once there came a tap upon our door and i thought it might be that poor distracted soul, but it was only laff turtman, the herdsman, for a warming draught of kirschwasser. he was on his way down to craix with his sheep, and i could see them out in the path, making a kind of community of warmth by crowding together. the blazing fire in our tap-room was cheerful that night and we all sat about it.
at last i could stand it no longer and taking my host’s oilskin cape and hat from their peg, i announced that i was going to see if the gray meteor was all right, that being the name they always called him by. it pleased me to assume that he would be in his cave, and i would not entertain the thought that he was not there. but he was nowhere about the place. outside were the two smooth sticks that he was wont to rub together with such childish confidence of getting a spark from them, and it went to my heart to see them lying there. the rain was streaming down the cliff above his cave and pouring over the opening like a waterfall.
i was thoroughly alarmed now, but what to do i did not know. i cannot say i had any sympathy for him more than any christian would have for the lowest wretch cast adrift on such a night. i was in two minds whether to go all the way down into the village, but what could i do there? awaken the good people out of their slumbers?
it was intolerable to do nothing, and i ended by doing the only other thing i could think of, and that was to pick my way through all that drenching rain and darkness to the wreck of his balloon. now that he had seen it again, i suspected it would have a kind of fascination for him.
but he was not there and i was at my wits’ end. the wreck looked tragic and uncanny enough in the night, the hollow, wrinkled bag moving to and fro, and simulating the stirrings of some crouching thing among the rocks. i groped about among the wreckage of the car and found a dented, rusted spyglass, which had doubtless stolen many a secret from behind our lines, and a jack-knife, so rusted that i could not open it. this i took—i do not know why.
suddenly through the rain i heard a sound near me and peering about i saw a goggled head bobbing close by.
“who is it—speak,” i demanded, and i am afraid my voice was not quite steady.
but there was no answer and approaching i found it to be only an airman’s helmet hanging from a hook in the broken moulding. even as i felt of it i started at a rustling sound beneath me, but i supposed it was only some small creature of the mountains who had made the forlorn ruin its home.
i had no wish to linger there and started homeward, drenched and utterly miserable. nor will i deny that this weird spectacle in those rugged, dark-enshrouded mountains, had made me the prey of shadowy forebodings and uncanny fancies. i, too, must start at every little sound and shudder with a sort of vague apprehension. i cannot describe it any better than to say that i felt as if something dreadful were going to happen. i thought how the war had pushed its long, bloody tentacles out to the farthest corner of the world—causing murder in some tropic village, suicide in the ice-bound north—horror and destruction everywhere. and it was here upon these neutral alpine hills, this war, stalking in the form of one distraught and guilty soul, who had been cast up here with all his crimes upon his head. “one cannot get away from it,” i said.
i felt it, i knew it—that something, i knew not what, but something, was going to happen.
