of no consequence,” the man replied. “This road was taken over by the military some time ago. There is no passage here for civilians.”
A sergeant, who had been sitting on a rock amongst the sparse pine trees smoking a cigarette, scrambled down to them.
“What is the trouble?” he demanded.
“Monsieur desires to use this route,” his subordinate confided. “I have told him that it exists now only for military purposes. He must return the way he came.”
“C’est exact,” the sergeant declared. “Where were you bound for by this route, Monsieur?”
Fawley leaned from his seat.
“I have been told,” he replied confidentially, “that your army is thinking of erecting military works here. I wish to discover how far that is the truth.”
The sergeant stared at him. So did the private. So did the young lieutenant, who had just ridden up on a high-spirited horse in time to hear the end of the sentence.
“What is the reason for Monsieur’s desire to gain this information?” he asked, wheeling around so that he completely blocked the road.
“I might reply that that is my affair,” Fawley declared. “I really do not see why I should be questioned in this fashion. I have a map in my hand which clearly indicates this as a public thoroughfare.”
The lieutenant made a sign. The sergeant mounted on one footboard, the private on the other.
“Go backwards in reverse,” Fawley was ordered. “Take the narrow turning to the right about thirty metres back.”
“Where will it lead me?” Fawley asked doubtfully.
“You will find out when you get there,” was the curt reply. “If you hesitate, I shall have to ask you to consider yourself under arrest.”
Fawley, grumbling to himself all the time, obeyed orders. He found himself, after a climb of a couple of kilometres along a road which commenced in villainous fashion, but whose latter portion was smooth and beautifully engineered, in front of a recently built, white stone house, around which a considerable clearing had been made. A sentry stood in front of the door. The lieutenant who had galloped on ahead had disappeared into the house. Fawley rose to his feet.
“Is this where I get out?” he asked.
“On the contrary, you remain where you are,” the sergeant replied gruffly. “Our lieutenant is now interviewing the commandant.”
Fawley lit a cigarette and gazed down the avenue of fallen pines to the broken country beyond, the bare peaks fading into the mist with the background of snow-capped ridges incredibly near.
“A trifle wild here,” Fawley remarked. “You seem to have cut down a great many trees. You use a lot of timber in the army, I suppose.”
The sergeant maintained a scornful silence. The private grinned. The horizon was suddenly blurred. A few flakes of sleet began to fall.
“Any objection to my putting up the hood?” Fawley asked, shivering.
The sergeant pointed to the house.
“You will be warm enough in there,” he said. “Monsieur le Lieutenant is coming to fetch you.”
The lieutenant approached them and motioned Fawley to descend.
“Colonel Dumesnil would like a word or two with you, Monsieur,” he announced. “Will you be so good as to come this way. Sergeant!”
The sergeant’s instructions were unspoken but obvious. He walked by Fawley’s side and the steel of his unsheathed bayonet was very much in evidence. Fawley turned up his coat collar and swore softly.
“I shall never find my way down through this labyrinth of passes, if you keep me here much longer,” he grumbled. “Why does your commandant wish to speak to me?”
“That you will soon discover,” the lieutenant answered shortly. “Let me advise you to answer his questions politely and without complaint. The colonel is not noted for his good temper. This way, please.”
Fawley was ushered into what might have been an orderly room. Colonel Dumesnil looked up from his task of studying a pile of maps and watched the newcomer keenly. The former was a short man, whose spurred riding boots scarcely reached the floor, but his face was stern and his steel-grey eyes and tone were alike menacing.
“Will you explain, sir, what you are doing on a military reservation?” he demanded.
“I was following a road which is marked on my map as an ordinary civilian thoroughfare,” Fawley explained. “I had a perfect right to be where I was.”
“That, sir, one might easily dispute,” was the cold reply. “All the roads around here are well known by the handful of scattered residents to be under military supervision. I must ask you what you are doing in this part of the world.”
“There is no secret about it,” Fawley answered blandly. “I have been trying to discover the extent and nature of the new French fortifications.”
No more unexpected reply could have been given. There was a dead silence. The colonel’s face remained immovable but there was an ominous tapping of his fingers upon the desk.
“For what reason?”
Fawley shrugged his shoulders.
“If you insist upon knowing, I suppose I had better tell you,” he said, “but I don’t want the thing to get about. There are some golf links about twelve kilometres from here at a place called Sospel. I have taken a great fancy to them and to the hotel, and as I have a little capital to invest, I thought of buying the lot. The one thing which makes me hesitate is that no one is willing or able to tell me where the new French fortifications and gun emplacements are situated, and until I know that, I feel that my property might be utterly destroyed in case of war.”
There was a further silence. Another officer who might have been the colonel’s aide-de-camp crossed the room and whispered in his ear.
“You have corroborative evidence of what you are telling me?” the Colonel asked.
“Any quantity,” Fawley assured him confidently. “The mayor of the district, the committee of the old golf club, the late hotel proprietor and owner of the land, half the village of Sospel.”
“Your name and passport.”
Fawley produced identification papers from his pocket and handed them across. The Colonel examined them and his face relaxed.
“As an ex-military man, Major Fawley,” he said, with a certain severity still in his tone, “you should have known that yours was a very dangerous enterprise. You should have applied to the authorities for any information you desired.”
“I thought, as mine was a civil enterprise,” Fawley argued, “they might not notice me. All that I need is a little general information.”
“There is none to be given,” was the brusque reply. “Escort this gentleman to our boundaries, Lieutenant, and let me warn you, sir, not to be found in this locality again. This is from no lack of courtesy, Major Fawley. It is a matter of military necessity which I am amazed that you should not already have realised and respected.”
Fawley suffered himself to be led away. A soldier escorted him to the nearest village, where he descended at the local café and accepted
without hesitation a ten franc note to be spent there. He refused, however, to answer the slightest question respecting the geography of the neighbourhood and regarded with evident suspicion Fawley’s few tentative enquiries.
“Monsieur has been generous,” were his parting words, as he stood outside the café. “He would be wise to listen to a word of advice. Strangers are sometimes treated generously, as Monsieur has been, on their first visit to the nest in the mountains. The second visit means the cold steel or the swift