The Phantom Army, etc. (Second impression.)

Front matter

BY THE SAME AUTHOR. QUEEN OF THE JESTERS. (C. Arthur Pearson, Limited, _s. 6rf.) KRONSTADT. A PURITAN'S WIFE. THE IMPREGNABLE CITY. THE SEA WOLVES. THE IRON PIRATE. CHRISTINE OF THE HILLS. BEING THE STORY OF A MAN AND A MYSTERY By MAX PEMBERTON LONDON C. ARTHUR PEARSON LIMITED HENRIETTA STREET FIRST EDITION, SEPTEMBER, 1898 SECOND IMPRESSION, OCTOBER, AUTHOR'S NOTE I would take this opportunity of saying that " The Phantom Army " is an attempt to depict the emprise of a man who is a victim of the Napoleonic idea. In this endeavour, I have sought to show what might be achieved by a regiment of determined men harboured by a lawless province, befriended by a people ripe for revolution, and so organized that in every country of Europe a refuge from the law and the police is open to them. That a soldier accustomed to the reckless liberty of the hills, a soldier who believes that, as Napoleon did, so may others do, should achieve something of his ambition, is, I hope, no improbable assumption.

That he would achieve much is beyond all bounds of military probability. It has been my endeavour in " The Phantom Army " to show how far such a man might hope to go, and what would be the causes which ultimately would contribute to his downfall. In this work I owe much to the assistance V AUTHOR'S NOTE VI of many military friends, who assure me that the successes of Lorenzo de la Cruz are neither beyond the limit of possible achievement, nor are successes which any adventurer equipped as this Spaniard was equipped might not accomplish in Europe to-morrow. It remains to be said that in Books I. and II. the White Hussars are described from the point of view of the stranger and the new recruit. The remaining Book is, in some measure, the outcome of actual con spiracies known to the Civil Guards of Spain during the last five years. CONTENTS

Book I

The Man CHAP. PAGU I A Woman standing in the Steeet . . . . 1 II The Garret 15 III Isabella de Gavaenie . 19 IV The "White Hussars of the Mountains ... 29 V Giralda, the Gipsy 35 VI At the Gate op Zaragoza 40 VII The Phantom Army 45 VIII The Glen below Torla 52 IX The Camp in the Forest 56 X Lorenzo de la Cruz 62 XI The Prison op the Torrent 68 XII A Man not as Other Men 77 XIII Ximeno proves a Philosopher 87 XTV A Eegiment op Devils 95 XV A la Guerre comme a la Guerre .... 99 XVI The Rift 103 XVII Falconer hears of a Journey Ill XVHI The Wooded Heights of Languedoc .... 114 XIX As a Man upon a Wire 117 XX A Gold Wagon 122 XXI Toulouse Awakes 130 XXII Horse pressing upon Horse 140 XXIII A Message of Farewell 143 CONTENTS VIII

Book II

The Woman PAGE CHAP. XXIV The Interlude 151 XXV The Fioaro makes a Promise 161 XXVI At the Chalet de Puts 165 XXVII Je T'aime 173 XXVIII The Shadow of the Man 176 XXIX The Aftermath of Dreams 180

Book III

The Downfall XXX Four at the Rag 187 XXXI A Woman of Lourdes 192 XXXII Jules Labarre, Banker 196 XXXIII The Great Boisson 208 XXXIV Messengers from the Hills 212 XXXV The Sleek Subordinate drinks Chianti . . 220 XXXVI The Spaniard is here 224 XXXVII The Great Panic 228 XXXVIII The Chief of the Police again .... 239 XXXIX Two Women in the Hills 247 XL A People Awakened 253 XLI Ten Thousand hear the Cry 259 XLII Onward 263 XLIII El Demonio 271 XLIV " At Dawn Two will Die " 281 XLV A Woman's Voice 288 XLVI The Queen's Kiss 293 XLVII The Philosopher 301 XLVIII The Life of One 307 XLIX " There are Six Hours yet " 310 L Dawn . . . , . . , , _ 001 LI Xamate wakes the Prisoner 333 LII To the Gates of Day 040 LIII Carnival at Mont-St.-Jean 350 LIV The Last of the White Hussars ....

Chapter I

A WOMAN STANDING IN THE STREET A STREET of Bayswater — an interminable street ; the hour, two o'clock of the morning ; the month, June ; the year, 1893. And in the silence of this street, a woman crying for help. There had been a lull of the breeze when first the man heard the cry, but now the gust came again to blow his cape about his ears, and to send him cringing to the doorstep of a house for shelter. For a moment the gas lamps went black before the blast ; leaves and paper were whirled almost to the upper windows of the houses ; a hurricane raged, and the woman's voice was lost in it. But at the ebb of the wind, the lis tener heard the cry for the second time, and in the same instant saw the woman standing at the open door of a house upon the opposite side of the way. It was plain to him at once that she was greatly agitated, and in deep distress, for she turned often to look, now up and down the street, now into the dark hall behind her.

Once, indeed, she raised her voice to a high pitch, crying, " Help, help ! " but immedi ately upon this she returned to the hall, and when 1 B he crossed the road, the door was already shut, and all was silence. He crossed the road, and stood wondering before the house. In outward shape as the other dwellings about, a Georgian monument to artistic imbecility, it was unlighted, as its fellows; silent as they were silent, gaunt as they were gaunt, a tower of ugliness to harbour the willing sleepers who lived in the mourn ful street. Save for a faint glow of light shining upon the ceiling of the hall— as you could observe through the skylight of the front door — there was no indication whatever that man or woman moved in that abode of gloom. Yet Falconer had seen a woman come out of it ; had heard her cry for help ; had watched her look up and down the street, as though seeking a friend and ally of the night.

And even as he saw her, a woman of majestic height, and, he judged instinctively, a young woman, he knew that London at last had put a mystery in his path. Long he listened for any sound from the house ; a moan of the wind alone answered him. He looked down the terrible street ; its pavements glistened still with the rain of the earlier hours ; but no living being trod them. Curiosity rooted him to the spot. He had the impulse to knock at the door, and to ask the woman if he could be of service to her. It may be, but for the moment's delay, that he would not have brought his courage to the point, that he would have lighted another cigar, and gone at length to his own house with curiosity still high strung. Those are questions which he did not reflect upon, for he had been standing but a couple of minutes when the door was opened for the second time, and the woman ran out almost into his arms.

She wore a dress of grey silk with red at the shoulders — a gown that had the stamp of Paris and not of Bayswater upon it. Jewels glittered upon her pretty white neck, and a tiara of diamonds flashed in the curls of her jet-black hair. His surmise as to her height was confirmed when he found that she stood well above his shoulder — the shoulder of Noel Falconer, whom brother officers in the Hussars used to call "length without breadth." But of her face he could see nothing, for little white hands covered it, and checked the sobs which shook her. That her distress was genuine he had no manner of doubt. Yet how she came there, dressed like that, at such an hour of morn ing, he knew no more than the dead. " Madame," he said, stepping out of the shadows suddenly, " you seem to be in some trouble."

She did not notice him upon the instant ; but he heard her say again and again in French which had the charm of a Southern accent : " Oh, what shall I do ! how shall I help him? " Vague as the cry was, it won the man's pity ; he made bold, to touch her arm. "Madame," he said, "you are ill, and have no business to be standing here. Even I am cold, and I wear a thick coat." She looked up at the words, and observed him for the first time. A more stately or noble creature he had never seen in all his life. And her voice did not lie to him. The warm light of youth shone in her brilliant eyes — was painted upon her pretty lips and flushing face. He thought then that she was an Austrian, for nowhere out of Vienna had he met one who stood so well for all the dignity and grace of womanhood. In this surmise as to country he was wrong, but he did not know that he was wrong until days had passed, and he had seen strange cities and strange men.

" Let me implore you to return to your house," he continued, while she stood shivering and watching him with curious eyes. " If I can be of any service there, do not hesitate to ask me. My name is Noel Falconer, and I was a captain in the 10th Hussars three months ago. You are a stranger, I see ; but you will find my arm stronger than my French, if you have need of it." Not until that moment, he was sure, did she awake to the fact that she stood in the street without cloak or hat, and that a stranger talked to her. But now, swiftly, his words recalled her to the truth, and she turned to him imploringly. " Monsieur," she said in a low and gentle voice, " a very great crime had been committed in that house to night. I have no right to ask you, but will you go in with me ? There is one dead there, and I cannot go alone."

He stepped back a pace and looked at her. For an instant he thought that she was amusing herself with him, but the heaving breast, the tears still upon her cheek, the quivering mouth forbade such a thought. " Madame," he exclaimed, " you may count upon me in all things. I am ready to come with you now. Perhaps you would not wish others to know of this ?" " Yes, yes," she exclaimed, a spasm as of fear passing over her troubled face, "I do not wish that. They must know nothing ; you will not tell them — you will not speak of these things." He protested that her secret would be well kept, and was reiterating the promise, when a footstep, echoing in the distance, cut short his words. She heard it, too and taking his hand timidly and with the air of one who feared to go alone, she drew him into the hall of the house and closed the door softly behind her.

Noel Falconer had been in many a situation of peril in his adventurous life; but never, truly, did such a sense of hidden danger take possession of him as at that moment when the street door of the unknown woman's house closed upon him, and they were face to face, Heaven knew with what tragedy or terrible deed of the night. The silence, the hour, the suggestion of some mystery, the strange manner of the woman's appearance in the street, the words he had heard from her lips, and had regarded until this time as the ravings of hysteria — all these were at war with nerves shaken by long months of misfortune and of trouble. He shuddered to remember that she had spoken of a dead man lying there in the house. An overwrought and weary brain so played with him that if a hand had been stretched out from the darkness of the hall to touch him, he would have cried out as a child in the terror of a dream.

These things he recalled afterwards with some Httle shame. Courage is much a matter of circumstance, and circumstance was to prove so strange a friend to him that he never hesitated to speak freely of his first meeting with one who changed the course of his life at an hour when life seemed to have no other gift for him. And it was a strange circumstance indeed that, within ten minutes of his first meeting with Isabella de Gavarnie, they should have come together to the hall of a house in Bayswater, hand in hand, as children upon a quest, the man, it may be, more terrified than the woman, yet both in their hearts fearing that the darkness was the shield of some momentous mystery from which the light would send them trembling presently. It was a large hall, wide and lofty, and giving upon a staircase of finer proportions than the man had looked for in such a house.

A glimmer of gas upon the landing showed him many pictures in heavy frames, and a star of swords which caught the feeble rays, and cast them back in points of fire. But the hall itself was in darkness ; and such grey light of a summer's night as the street vouchsafed was here lost to them. He could scarce see the face of the woman — could distinguish nothing of his surroundings, though the soft carpet beneath his feet spoke of luxury and of wealth. In all that great house no sound, save the ticking of a clock, and the deep breathing of his com panion, whose hot hand touched his own, was to be heard. If a tragedy had been played, assuredly the actors now rested. Yet where should he look for them — where lay the mystery of which she had spoken ? So scared was he that the thought of stumbling upon the dead man in the darkness of the hall froze his very heart.

"Do you wish me to enter one of these rooms with you ? " he asked in a deep whisper, while the woman stood fear-stricken and irresolute. " Was it here that it happened ? " "Yes, yes, it was here," she answered quickly, dragging him towards a door upon his left hand. " I returned from South Audley Street at half-past one and heard them quarrelling— my brother and his friend. It happened then. Oh, God help me, what shall I do?" His hand was upon the knob when she spoke. He felt her instinctive gesture which would have dragged him back from the place as from the scene of dreadful sights. But at the mention of a quarrel — a human thing at the worst — he took heart and began to remember that they had called him the strongest man in his regiment. After all, if there were but one other in the house, he could very well take the risk of meeting with him.

Yet he would have given much to have had a revolver in his hand ; and when he threw opsn the door of the room and saw that it was in darkness, his courage went trickling away like water from a cracked jar. " Madame," he said, standing suddenly and facing her, " how many are in this house with you ? " She listened a moment before answering, as though some sounds would give her words. " Except my servants, there are none," she whisp3red presently. " I cannot — I dare not speak to them. And I have no right to ask you." " You have a woman's right, which is the best right," he said, feeling in his pocket for a match. " If you will remain here a moment, I will see what this room has to tell us." " You must not go alone," she protested, but he loosed her hand and left her standing, a pitiful figure of fear and distress, in the gloomy light of the alcove.

The wan and feeble rays of the wax match aggravated the darkness of the great room into which he now stepped. For an instant he beheld his own face, white and hollow-eyed in a mirror above a buffet, and that gave him such a start that he dropped the match and was in darkness again. " What is it ? What do you see ? " she asked from her place at the door. "I see my own face," said he with the poorest attempt possible to conceal from her his dread of the room and of that which he believed it to contain. " You have another match," she exclaimed in a whisper which betrayed her impatience. " I have a boxful," said he, and with that he struck a light for the second time, and held it up that he might discover the chandelier ; but there was a draught as from an open window in the place, and his second match dropped reddening upon the carpet, leaving him with a momentary vision of a table set for supper, and of glasses overturned upon it.

He did not know to what mad instinct it was due, but as his fingers fumbled for another light, he had the thought that the body of the dead man might be at his very feet. And, at that, his hand was clumsy as the hand of one bitten by the cold ; nor could the woman's distress quicken him or make him forget the horrid thought. "Oh!" she repeated, "what is it? What do you see ? Why do you light the gas ? " He suppressed a word of impatience, and at the third attempt obtained a flaming match. The chandelier now showed itself hanging low over the table, and he picked his way to it, thinking that every step might bring him to the body. Not until five burners were lighted, and a brilliant aureola was cut from the shadows, did he breathe a full breath in that place of mystery. The room was a large one, furnished in the modern style.

The pictures, as well as he could see them beyond the aureola, were of the Spanish school. There was a heavy mirror in a black oak frame above the fireplace ; a second mirror hung above the buffet. Two chairs, he observed, had been drawn to the table, but one of them was overturned. A stain of red wine had run over the white cloth, and dropped upon the chair beneath. A candle in a silver stick was broken in half, as though by a blow. Trivial as these omens were, they confirmed the woman's story strikingly. It was plain that there had been a brawl in the room, but what of the brawlers ? Certainly, in that space which the circle of Hght covered, there was no sign of life or of the end of life. But beyond, in the shadows ? He passed swiftly round the room, warmed to courage by the friendly gas.

The matches no longer fell from clumsy fingers. There was no nook nor cranny into which he did not peer. " Madame," he said at last, and it was a word of vast relief, "you may come in; there is no one here." She entered with noiseless steps, and the light fall ing upon the superb jewels in her hair and about her neck gave a changing radiance of fire to them, so that her lightest movement was a glitter anew of sparkling gems. When she stood at his side and searched the room with her dark eyes, now aflame with curiosity, she seemed to him to be some queen of the East come masquerading to this suburb of London ; yet from what city or upon what errand he could not so much as surmise. Nevertheless, he was sure of two things at the start of it — she was an aristocrat, and her jewels were the finest he had ever seen on woman.

" There is no one here," he repeated, resisting the temptation to stare at her ; " I have looked everywhere, and am sure of it." She drew a deep breath, and appeared to be thinking. Presently she turned to the buffet, and her quick eyes detected that which he had not seen there. It was a handkerchief stained with blood. She held it for a moment in her shapely hand, which quivered as a leaf that is to fall. " My God ! " she exclaimed, while all the colour rushed from her face, " what has happened ? where are they ? Why do I suffer like this ? " He thought that she would have swooned, and he put his arm about her, but she drew back from him and turned again toward the hall. " Captain Falconer," she continued, in a quick and nervous tone which betrayed an agony of doubt, " will you search the other rooms with me ?

I do not know what it is — I cannot tell you — but this house has a great secret to give up to us, and I am alone. Oh, I have no right to ask you, no right to claim your kindness ! " She stood expectant, an exquisite figure in the circle of the light. Mystified as he was, afraid of the dread ful secret of that house, he yet could say to himself that here was a woman whom he would follow to the world's end. " Madame," he said, " there is no question of right — I shall not soon forget the privilege." " Nor I the service," she answered, but with such meaning in her tone that he turned quickly to look at her, and in that instant their eyes met. Ever afterwards he knew that Isabella de Gavarnie was his friend. " Shall we begin on this floor ? " he asked, as they stood once more in the darkness of the hall.

" If you please," she said quietly, and with that he struck another match and threw open the door of a room upon his right hand— a library, as he could see, but empty as the other room. The drawn blinds showed a glimmer of the morning light without ; paper and pens littered upon a bureau spoke. of the n occupations of the dead day ; a book lay upon a little table, and an empty coffee cup stood beside it. But this was a room of repose. A child could have told that there had been no brawl there. " We waste our time here," he said, shutting the door of the library behind him. " Have you any reason to believe that your friends are still in the house ? " She held the blood-stained handkerchief which she had carried from the dining-room with her. " I know that they are here — one of them," she ex claimed impatiently ; " yet if you wish to go " " I wish to go where you tell me," he answered.

" Then we will look in the drawing-room." It was dark upon the staircase, but a great stained glass window shimmered at the first touch of day, and the gas jet, which he turned up as he ascended, shone white and feeble before the Hght of dawn. The woman had not waited while he fumbled with the gas, and stood already upon the second landing, when he was ready to follow her. He hastened up the remain ing stairs that she might not go alone ; but three steps still lay between them when she uttered a cry of distress, and he saw her drop upon one knee, and cover her eyes, as though to shut from them the secret which was a secret no more. And then he knew that the whole of her story was true ; for a man lay full length upon the floor, and those who saw him did not doubt that he was dead. He was a young man, short in stature, and wearing the pointed beard beloved of the old Spanish painters.

It was to be noticed that he wore a great white bow in the place of the narrow English neckties ; but his dress clothes seemed to be very new, and his embroidered shirt front was scarcely ruffled. That he had been struck down in that place was Falconer's first thought, so that he feared to move him lest some gaping wound should show itself to the woman. But when he bent down and felt the young man's wrist, warm and pulsing with an even beat of the heart, ho knew that he was mistaken. He lived ; what was more, and this was the surpassing mystery, he breathed like a hale man. "I am ashamed to ask you," said the woman, ig noring his astonishment, " but will you carry him to my boudoir ? I thank Heaven that it is no worse ; he is only sleeping." It was not a moment for argument, but as Falconer lifted the unknown in his arms, two unanswerable questions flashed upon his mind — the first, how came it that this man lay in sleep in such a place ; the second, what instinct guided the woman so that she knew that he was sleeping.

Just as he had feared the secret of the house when it was not discovered, so did this discovery of it seem to him the greatest wonder he had heard or read of. He began to have a dread of the place which nothing could shake off. Who were these people ? he asked himself. Whence came their riches ; what was the meaning of the work of that night ; where was that other of whom she had made mention? The very situation in which he found himself was one of awe ; — the unbroken silence was as a harbinger of death. He could feel the sweat rolling down his face when he carried the sleeping man to the boudoir she had named and then laid him upon a sofa. But the mistress of the house was herself again. Fear had fallen from her like a cloak. Her new manner was imperious, almost commanding. " I thank you from my heart," she said.

" My brother only sleeps, as you see. He is subject to these attacks. They leave him weak and ill, but we can do nothing for him while they last. I shall be here until he wakes." She stood at the door hesitating as though she had the wish that he should leave her. But his astonish ment at her desire and at the spectacle of the man, lying as in a trance upon her sofa, kept him rooted to the spot. He was about to question her, when he heard a door shut very softly in the hall below, and so unexpected was the sound that he drew back as though a hand had touched him. " Madame," he whispered, " there are others in the house." " Oh, go — go ! " she cried with an agitation she could not control. " Go, I beseech you, and leave me alone." He bowed to her and left the room. When he turned the corner of the first landing, he could see her majestic figure outstanding in the morning light.

He thought that he looked upon it for the last time. There was sunshine in the hall ; but he passed through it swiftly, fearing, with a child's fear, that some unseen hand would be outstretched to touch him as he walked. Not until the street door had closed behind him, and the sweet air of a June morning breathed upon his face, did dread of that house of mystery leave him. In the street he stood to gaze at its lightless windows, and to ask himself if, indeed, he had witnessed the things of that night, or had dreamed them upon his way. Outwardly it was as other houses — black and bare, with drawn blinds and gloomy portals — but within, what story could it tell ? He asked himself the question a hundred times as he turned towards his home. At the corner of the interminable street he drank a cup of coffee from a stall.

The man who served him remarked that his hand trembled. He did not answer him ; but the wind of the morning told him that sweat was still running down his face.

Chapter II The Garret On

the seventh day after his meeting with the woman in the interminable street of Bayswater, Noel Falconer sat in his garret in the Marylebone Road and heard from his man Benjamin the news he had been awaiting so expectantly. " WeU ? " he said, with as much assumed indifference as his curiosity could command, " you have been there, Benjamin." Benjamin sidled up Hke a crab, for thus was his habit acquired in many years of faithful service at a mess table. There was no door in London, open but the half of a foot though it might have been, through which the old man could not slip when the need was. " Yes, sir," he said, coming quite close to his master's chair, " I have been." " And have learnt something new ? " Benjamin fingered the brim of his hat nervously. He was always a little frightened of the great hussar.