The Project Gutenberg EBook of Somewhere in France, by Richard Harding Davis

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Title: Somewhere in France

Author: Richard Harding Davis

Release Date: February 18, 2004 [EBook #11144]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE ***

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[Illustration: With her eye for detail Marie observed that the young
officer, instead of imparting information, received it.]

SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE

By RICHARD HARDING DAVIS

1915

TO HOPE DAVIS

CONTENTS

"SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE"

PLAYING DEAD

THE CARD-SHARP

BILLY AND THE BIG STICK

THE BOY SCOUT

THE FRAME-UP

"SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE"

Marie Gessler, known as Marie Chaumontel, Jeanne d'Avrechy, the Countess
d'Aurillac, was German. Her father, who served through the
Franco-Prussian War, was a German spy. It was from her mother she
learned to speak French sufficiently well to satisfy even an Academician
and, among Parisians, to pass as one. Both her parents were dead. Before
they departed, knowing they could leave their daughter nothing save
their debts, they had had her trained as a nurse. But when they were
gone, Marie in the Berlin hospitals played politics, intrigued,
indiscriminately misused the appealing, violet eyes. There was a
scandal; several scandals. At the age of twenty-five she was dismissed
from the Municipal Hospital, and as now--save for the violet eyes--she
was without resources, as a _compagnon de voyage_ with a German doctor
she travelled to Monte Carlo. There she abandoned the doctor for Henri
Ravignac, a captain in the French Aviation Corps, who, when his leave
ended, escorted her to Paris.

The duties of Captain Ravignac kept him in barracks near the aviation
field, but Marie he established in his apartments on the Boulevard
Haussmann. One day he brought from the barracks a roll of blue-prints,
and as he was locking them in a drawer, said: "The Germans would pay
through the nose for those!" The remark was indiscreet, but then Marie
had told him she was French, and any one would have believed her.

The next morning the sam