r closed, and the whole
party had passed through a garden and orchard to the gloom of the
ravine. The hour was about half-past eight o'clock. Twenty-four hours
earlier he and Irene were about to leave Cologne by train, believing
with some degree of confidence that they might be allowed to cross the
frontier without let or hindrance! Life was then conventional, with a
spice of danger. Now it had descended in the social scale until they
ranked on a par with the dog that had gone mad and must be slain at
sight. The German code of war is a legal paraphrase of the trickster's
formula, "Heads I win, tails you lose." The armies of the Fatherland
are ordered to practise "frightfulness," and so terrorise the civil
population that the inhabitants of the stricken country will compel
their rulers to sue for peace on any terms. But woe to that same civil
population if some small section of its members resists or avenges any
act of "frightfulness." Soldiers might murder the Widow Jaquinot and
ravish her granddaughter, officers might plan a bestial orgy in the
miller's house; but Dalroy and Joos and Maertz, in punishing the one set
of crimes and preventing another, had placed themselves outside the law.
Neither Joos nor Maertz cared a farthing rushlight about the moral
consequences of that deadly struggle in the kitchen, but Dalroy was in
different case. He knew the certain outcome. Small wonder if his heart
was heavy and his brow seamed. His own fate was of slight concern,
since he had ceased to regard life as worth more than an hour's purchase
at any time from the moment he leaped down into the station yard at
Aix-la-Chapelle. But it was hard luck that the accident of mere
association should have bound up Irene Beresford's fortunes so
irrevocably with his. Was there no way out of the maze in which they
were wandering? What, for instance, had Jan Maertz meant by his cryptic
statements?

"We must halt here," Dalroy said authoritatively, stopping short in the
shadow of a small clump of trees on the edge of the ravine, a place
whence there was a fair field of view, yet so close to dense brushwood
that the best of cover was available instantly if needed.

"Why?" demanded Joos. "I know every inch of the way."

"I want to question Maertz," said Dalroy shortly. "But don't let me
delay you on that account. Indeed, I advise you to go ahead, and
safeguard Madame Joos and your daughter. I would even persuade, if
I can, Mademoiselle Beresford