Mademoiselle of Cambrai

Contents

CHAP. PAGE

I. The Dowager Countess 9

II. Outwitting the Boche 22

CHAPTER I The Dowager Countess

The ancient French City of Cambrai stands upon the right bank of the Scheldt river in the department Du Nord of Northern France. The Scheldt river is called “The Scheldt river” only in Holland, where it empties into the sea. It is called “the river Escaut” in Belgium and France, and is navigable for barges and small steamboats as far up as Cambrai. Above Cambrai, it meanders, twisting and turning, some twenty or thirty miles to the southwest, passing through Noyelles, Marcoing and Ribecourt, skirting the immense forest of Avrincourt and finding its source in the woods of Velu. For most of this distance south of Cambrai, it may be navigated by skiffs and small boats.

The city of Cambrai is very old, almost as old as the Christian religion. About the year 450 it was erected into a bishropric of the Roman church. When one reflects that this period antedated by over a thousand years the discovery of America, one realizes how very, very old is the city of Cambrai.

The town is and always has been a fortified strong-

MADEMOISELLE OF CAMERA I hold. It is surrounded by thick, stout walls which are flanked and dominated by big, round towers. In the walls are several gateways. One of these gateways, which is called the “Scheldt River Gate,” leads outward to a very old and massive stone bridge, a beautiful fourteenth century bridge which crosses the Scheldt to the main highway stretching along the further bank of the river.

The city is intersected by great numbers of narrow, crooked and twisting streets in which a person might easily lose himself. It contains many queer, ancient, Gothic houses! and shops. The upper stories of these gabled structures project over the streets, which are often so narrow that a fairly athletic person might leap from an upper front window to the window facing him across the thoroughfare.

Upon entering the Scheldt or River gate, one .finds, immediately to the right and next the wall, a small public square, or park. Back of the square there is a street, and beyond the street and also next the city wall, in an acre of grounds, stands the mansion, or chateau of the noble family of Keranec. It is a long, three-storied building of crumbling stone and brick, half covered with ivy, and consists of a main or central body with a wing at either end. The grounds are covered for the most part with a dense growth of shrubs and trees, and the whole place is enclosed with an eight foot brick moss-grown wall in which, opposite the main door of the chateau stands a pair of rusty, iron gates. The house is between three and four hundred years old and has been occupied by the Keranec family, father and son, grandson and great grandson for over three centuries. It was now the spring of 1918, and since the autumn of 1914, Count Victor de Keranec, the present head of the house, and his son Paul de Keranec had been fighting with the armies of France, the former as a Colonel of Dragoons, the latter a flier in the aviation corps. For four years the estate had had no care, the vegetation had run wild, some of the window panes had been broken, and there was a look of desolation and abandonment about the place.

Before the great war Cambrai had a population of twenty -five thousand. It had been, taken by the German armies in the fall of 1914, and had been occupied by them ever since. With the flight of all those who could get away in time, with the killing of old men and old women, the transportation and exile of able-bodied men to far-off fields of labor, the kidnapping of hundreds of girls and the starving of children the population had been much reduced. In the spring of 1918 the once beautiful and happy city of Cambrai contained about five thousand human beings and some thirty thousand Germans.

The Chateau of Keranec, during the German occupation of the city, had been pillaged two or three times but, strange to say, a great part of its rich collection of solid old mahogany furniture, its valuable tapestries, paintings and books still remained in the house. The

Germans who invaded the mansion were looking for something else. The rumor had gone abroad that the Keranec cellars were stocked with a tremendous quantity of rare and costly wines. The bodies, though, sought in vain, for not a bottle was found in any part of the premises.

In the early summer of 1918, General Stollberg, whose full title was Major General Baron Hugo Von Stollberg, who commanded a corps of the German army and who was the German mdlitary governor of Cambrai, cast his glance upon the Keranec chateau, and found it very good and much to his liking.

“Why, in der Teufel’s namen,” asked he of his aide, Stirpitz, “haven’t we utilized that old French warren? It would make a most pleasant and convenient residenz, and there’s a lot of room beside for our business offices. I could make it corps headquarters. This place here is too public. One can’t relax, or throw off the bonds of conventionality without everybody knowing it. Go you straightway to the Keranec house and see if there’s anybody there, and what the inside of the place looks like.”

“Zum befehl, Herr General,” said Stirpitz, saluting and leaving the General’s office.

An hour later the General’s aide returned.

“Well, how did you find it?” asked General Stollberg. “What does the inside look like, and how is it furnished?”

“Couldn’t be better, Herr General,” answered Stirpitz, “the rooms are big, light and beautiful, and the furnishing magnificent. I was astonished to find so much left in the house. It will make the most comfortable place in the world. There’s one drawback, though, there’s an old woman there.”

“An old woman! What old woman?”

“She’s the old grandmother, the dowager Countess Mathilde de Keranec. She lives in the right wing, and I didn’t see her. I was let in by an ancient female servant, and she told me about the family. Victor, the present Count is a Colonel in the French army opposite our lines. His son, Paul, is in the French aviation service and his only daughter is a Red Cross nurse at Paris. The old woman seems to have! been left here. Couldn’t get away, probably.”

“Blast her ! We’ll have her thrown out. Why didn’t they leave the daughter here instead of the old woman ? I wouldn’t object to the daughter, would you, Stirpitz? I think I’ll have the car brought around, and run over there.”

The General’s car was brought to the doors of the Hotel de Ville which he was then using for his headquarters, and thej general, with Hauptman Zellner and Ober Leitnant Stirpitz, two members of his staff, drove to the Keranec chateau. Entering the broad gateway to the grounds, the car drew up before the great oaken doors of the building, the three officers dismounted and Stirpitz sounded the brass knocker noisily. After a long interval and much pounding, the doors were opened by a stout female servant of sixty years, or thereabout, a woman of harsh features and a forbidding aspect.

“Tell Madam, the Countess of Keranec, that General, the Baron von Stollberg, wishes to see her,” commanded Lieutenant Stirpitz. “Have her come down immediately.”

“That is impossible,” answered the old woman. “Her ladyship, my mistress, is abed. The poor lady has been bedridden these many months. I will take my mistress your message.”

“That won’t do,” declared General Stollberg. “I will have to see her. Go and get her ready, and be quick about it. I haven’t any time to waste.”

The old servant went away grumbling, and the General with his aides entered the building after her. Coming through the doors of the vestibule, they found themselves in a spacious hallway, and going through another door at the further end of the hallway, they came into a large chamber, full forty feet across and twenty-five feet deep. On the opposite wall there was a gallery which was reached by a stair at either end, and upon the gallery, at right angles with the front of it, stood shelves of books. The room seemed to be a combination of salon and library. It was furnished sparsely, but with great richness. There were large Turkish rugs upon the floors, rare tapestries, portraits and landscapes hung upon the walls, a long stout oaken table stood in the center of the chamber, and pieces of ancient, carved mahogany were scattered here and there.

“Fine, fine!” exclaimed the General. “Just the place for our offices, our audience chamber and our court. A good room also for a banquet now and then. Doubtless the rest of the house is as comfortable, as well furnished and as commodious. I foresee that I am going to enjoy myself here. What a pity that we didn’t discover the chateau before ! The only drawback is the old woman. We’ll have to get rid of her, but there will be a certain amount of unpleasantness about it. The Keranec family is an important one, and we can’t throw her out without raising a lot of talk. Her son has influence and there may be reprisals and retaliation. Of course, though, she has to go. The old cat would be a constant annoyance, and we might wish to do some things here that we would not want her to know about.”

“Suppose,” suggested Hauptman Zellner, “that something should happen, to the old woman which would obviate the necessity of throwing her out?”

“Zellner,” said the General, “you have a quick wit, and a devilishly inventive genius. Recollect though, that I know nothing and that I have suggested nothing.”

The old servant now came, and announcing that her mistress was ready to receive them, led them through a passage into the right wing of the chateau, then up a stairway and into a darkened bed chamber. By the dim light which came from the curtained windows, the general and his aides made out a huge, four poster, canopied bed, upon which, under a pile of bed clothes, so that only a small part of her face and head was visible, lay the slim figure of the old Countess. She wore a white cap, her hair was snowy white and her face almost as white as her hair. Her eyes, though, were black and sparkling.

“Good morning, Monsieur le General,” said she in a weak and quavering voice.

“Madam,” said General Stollberg, harshly and without preamble, “we find it necessary to occupy your house. Our present quarters are inconvenient and impossible, and there is no other building at the present time available or adequate. Of course you will have to move out, and you will have to go today. That is imperative.”

“But, Monsieur le General,” protested the old lady with a husky voice, “I can’t move. It is impossible. It would impair my health, perhaps endanger my life. I haven’t stirred from my bed in weeks. Besides this is my house. I have lived here all my life, and I have no other home to go to.”

“Nevertheless, you will have to go. and that today. These are my orders, and they are final.”

“Listen, Monsieur le General, I will tell you something, something which will induce you to permit me to live here. All I want is this little wing of the chateau. You are at liberty to use all the rest of the building. Listen a moment. Have you ever heard of the immense and costly stock of wines belonging to the Ke ranee family?”

“Yes, I have,” answered the General, pricking up his ears, “who has not heard of it? I have heard too that the wine is gone, vanished, evaporated into thin air. My soldiers have looked for it several times, and haven't found a bottle, and believe nfe, Madam, when a German soldier cannot find wine bottles, there are no wine bottles.”

“That is a mistake, General. The Keranec wines are still intact, still in existence and still upon the premises. They are, however, so well hidden that your soldiers couldn’t find them, so artfully concealed that you yourself couldn’t find them in a thousand years. I will describe them to you. In the first place, there are over one hundred and ninety cases of them, each case containing a dozen bottles. Twenty-three hundred bottles, just think of it, Monsieur le General. And such wines, oh, sifch wines ! Wines of the Champagne district, vintage wines of 1905, 1900, 1891, 1880, and even 1870, wines of Burgundy, red wines and white wines, Clos de Vougeot and Chablis, of an age incredible, wines of the Moselles, fermented in the last century, Sauternes of the clearest amber and Lachrymae Christi like the nectar of the gods, wines of Bordeaux, Pontet Canet, Chateau la Rose and Chateau La Fitte, the drinking of which would make you think yourself in paradise.”

General, the Baron von Stollberg, was a man of sixty, a gross and sensual man with thick lips and a bibulous and highly colored nose. During the Countess’ recital, his eyes scintillated, he smacked his lips more than once, and scarce kept from drooling at the mouth.

“Countess,” said he, with more affability than he had previously shown, “your account of the Keranec wine collection bears out everything which I have heard concerning it. That doesn’t alter the fact, however, that you) must vacate the chateau, and that immediately. Before you go, though, I hope that we may be able to induce you to reveal its whereabouts. We have certain ways, Madam, for making people talk. I hope that you will not put us to the trouble of using them.”

“Ah, I see what you mean. You propose to torture me until I show you where the wine is hidden. That is part of your German Kultur, and is in line with your usual tactics. I will say though, and I swear it, that you will never get one word out of me, no matter what you do to my poor old body. Even in the agony of death I will be silent. If you are acquainted with the Keranec character, you will know that this is so. Furthermore, if you cause even so much as a finger to be laid upon me, your hopes of tasting the contents of the Keranec wine cellars will vanish. On the other hand, I will agree to give you one half of our wine collection upon certain conditions.”

“Madam, you make me laugh. We do not take conditions from a conquered enemy. We make them.”

“Monsieur le General, when you call the French a conquered enemy, you also make me laugh. You have, it is true, overrun a small part, perhaps a one hundredth part of our beloved France. The time will soon come, however, when you will be driven out of our land, and made to pay a hundred fold for the atrocities which you have committed.”

“Have a care, Madam, that you do not end my patience with your injurious talk,” wrathfully exclaimed General Stollberg. “If, as you say, your stock of grape juice is still upon the premises, we can find it, also, I promise you that we shall find it, even if we have to pull the chateau to pieces, and dig up every foot of the grounds. What is to prevent then our taking your wine without any conditions?”

“Nothing at all, providing you can find it. You are at liberty to commence looking for it right away. I tell you now though, that you will assuredly fail. It was hidden by my son, Count Victor de Keranec, who is now a Colonel in the French Army opposing you. Victor never does anything by halves, as you will find out, after you have spent an eternity in your search. It was in August of 1914, that he perfected his arrangements. He knew that you Germans would be more concerned about the wine than anything else upon the estate, and he knew that if he could hide it successfully, that we would have a lever to use upon you which would make you be good. The delay in your advance caused by the delightful little entertainments which the Belgians gave you before Liege and Ghent and Antwerp gave him plenty of time so that he was able to proceed in a scientific and leisurely manner. After completing the receptacle in which the wine was to be hidden, he had all the bottles taken from the cellar bins, packed in boxes and stored neatly in the aforesaid receptacle. Find them if you can.”

“We will find them, Madam, never fear. Just for the amusement of it though, I would like to hear the conditions which you spoke of.”

“The conditions under which I will give you half the wine stock are these — I am to have the undisputed use of this wing of the chateau. The doors between this wing and the main part of the house are to be boarded up, and no one of you is ever to set foot in this end of the building. You may avail yourself of the grounds in front of the chateau, but I am to have the sole use of the grounds in the rear. You may use the front gates, but I alone will have the key to the small postern gate in the wall back of the chateau. Furthermore, I will want safe conduct and protection for myself and for my three servants : for Rachael Prevost, my cook and housekeeper, Jaqueline Benoit, my maid, and Jean Courcel, a boy of fifteen, who works about the place and runs upon errands. They are to go as they wish to all parts of the city, and through the gates of the city, both out and in. They will have passes or cards, I think you call them ‘Sicheres geleit and schutz Karte,’ and your police in all parts of the city are to have special instructions in regard to the safety of these three servants. That, I think, is all.”

“Oh, that is all, is it? Are you sure there is nothing more you want? Madam, your demands are preposterous, and I reject them in toto. We shall commence our search of the premises this very hour, and I give you my word that we shall succeed. You may remain here for the present. When we find those one hundred ninety cases, I will deal with you as you deserve.”

“I wish you luck, Monsieur le General.”

As General Stollberg and his aides stamped out of the chateau and took to the stairs, the old lady gave a derisive cackle of laughter.

CHAPTER II Outwitting the Boche

The General paused for a moment irresolute, his red face was contorted with rage, and he wanted to go back into the chamber and hack the old lady to mince-meat with his sword. It wouldn't do, however, and he was forced to stifle his frantic desires. He might thereby lose all chance of smacking his lips over the choice vintages of the Keranec cellars, and he dared not risk it. His hopes of salvation were not as important to him as the prospect of satisfying so amply his inordinate and epicurean tastes. Count Victor de Keranec had been wise in his concealment of the treasure. By doing so he had safeguarded his poor old mother beyond the shadow of a doubt.

“Zellner,” commanded the General, “take the car and bring a corporal’s guard from the barracks. We will commence our search right away, and keep it up until we succeed. One hundred and ninety cases of wine bulk pretty large, and can’t be stored away in a corner, or a hole in the wall. They couldn’t have hidden such a lot of boxes so that we can’t find them. Gott im Himmel, it’s impossible!”

Hauptman Zellner drove away in the car, and the

General, with Stirpitz, his remaining aide, strolled about the first floor of the chateau and finally descended to the cellar. It was an immense cavern, the Keranec cellar, with a vaulted roof of stone, supported by arches and columns. In one end of it they found the wine vaults, and here they lingered an appreciable time. The walls were lined with many shelves, shelves with scalloped fronts for the accommodation of bottles. They were covered with cobwebs, the necessary accompaniment of old vintages, and there seemed to be no end of them. As General Stollberg and his aide sorrowfully gazed at all these empty spaces, they tried to imagine them filled with the twenty-three hundred bottles, which the old Countess had spoken of.

Presently Hauptman Zellner returned with the corporal’s guard, and the eight soldiers were at once put to work upon the problem of finding the wine cases. Commencing with the cellar, they examined every course of mortar in the walls, but found no new work, nothing which indicated the taking out of a single stone. They ripped out a number of the stones but the result was the same. Then they pried up a lot of the flags from the cellar floor and thrust sharp steel rods a long distance into the earth. They encountered no resistance, except the natural resistance of the soil, and the surface of the soil itself looked as if it had not been removed in fifty years.

“It isn’t in the cellar,” declared the General, emphatically, after they had worked all of six hours. “It may be in the upper part of the house, or they may have buried it in the grounds. Gott strafe die Teuf elhunde, for the trouble they are making us.”

The rest of the day was spent upon the first, second and third floors of the chateau. Every chamber, closet, nook and corner was inspected, floors were ripped up, walls cut open, and all the chambers were measured, and these measurements compared with measurements of other apartments and of outside walls, so that hidden spaces and secret chambers might be found, if there were any such. They even went upon the roof of the building, examined the copings and the cornices, and dangled stones down the chimneys with stout cords. When night came, however, they had discovered absolutely nothing.

The next day was spent upon the grounds of the estate. Sharp steel rods were pounded into the earth at intervals of five or six feet, until every part of the entire area had been gone over. There was a stone curbed well in the midst of the shrubbery, some distance to the rear of the building. One of the soldiers descended this well about fifteen feet, to the surface of the water, by placing his feet on protruding stones and bracing himself against the side walls, and thrust a pole to the bottom of the well. They examined the surface of the wall which encircled the grounds, prying out the mortar, and removing some of the stones. They took up a great part of the flagging of a marble summer house, or kiosk which stood in the middle of the flower garden, and poked their rods into the earth beneath. They even demolished a small brick smoke house and tore up the basin of an unused fountain. When night came at last, all their toil had gone for naught, and they were no nearer a solution of the mystery than when they started the day before.

“Du lieber Gott!” cursed General the Baron von Stollberg. “It is that we have to cry quits, that we have to lie down and surrender, that we have to take terms from that old she fox? Der Teufel hoi die verdammte hexe !”

The next morning at ten o’clock, General Stollberg presented himself at the Chateau Keranec, and was shown again to the darkened chamber of the old Countess by her serving woman. He held himself erect and strove to hide his discomfiture under a bold and uncompromising front. With his breadth of beam, his protruding gray eyes, his red mottled face and his bristling mustache he resembled somewhat his overlord, Field Marshal Von Hindenburg. He had been told of this resemblance many times by his coterie of underlings and sycophants and he neglected no touch of dress or manner to make the likeness more perfect.

“You do not look as if you had found the treasure,” said the Countess with a mocking laugh.

“Madam, it has not yet been found. That is not to say, however, that we could not discover it, if we continued our search. By razing your old rat trap of a house to the earth, rooting up the trees and plowing every foot of the grounds, we would most certainly unearth it, but that would defeat my own purpose which is to make the chateau miy headquarters and provide myself with a comfortable residence. There is also the. extra time and trouble to be taken into consideration. I have wasted too much effort upon the matter already, and I am now willing to talk of terms.”

“My dear General,” answered the old lady, sarcastically, “I sympathize with you deeply in your defeat. You poor, poor man! I told you how it would be, didn’t I? I understand then that you are ready to agree to the conditions which I named.”

“We will let it be so understood. Some of your conditions are quite irregular, and there are difficulties in the way, but I think that I can manage it all as you wish. Are you quite sure that you are not lying to me when you say the goods are upon the premises ?”

“Absolutely. It is not usual for a high army officer to suggest that a lady is telling lies, but I will pass that over on account of your being a German. Now then, for my part of the contract. Today is Tuesday. If you will come here on the morning of Friday, I will deliver to you ninety-five cases or thereabouts of wine.”

“But you said. Madam, that there were one hundred and ninety cases.”

“So I did, but I think that it will be safer to give it to you in installments, half now and the other half at a later date. When you have once sampled the ninety-five cases of the first installment, you will want to make sure of eventually getting possession of the remaining ninety-five cases, and you will govern your conduct accordingly. You doubtless see what I mean.”

“Madam, do you propose to insinuate that I will not keep my agreement with you ?”

“I propose nothing of the kind. I know very well you will keep your agreement. You will keep your agreement because you can’t do anything else. If you were anybody but a German, I wouldn’t take this precaution. You Germans have taught the world not to depend upon your word. You make the most solemn agreements only to break them, and call them scraps of paper.”

“Very well, Madam,” replied General Stollberg, with difficulty repressing an inclination to pound the old woman into a pulp. “I will be satisfied for the present with the ninety-five cases. What is the reason, though, for the delay ? Why must we wait three days ? What is to prevent you from delivering them today or tomorrow ?”

“There are several good reasons for the delay. It will take time to unearth such a quantity of packages from a hiding place so secure and inaccessible as the one which I possess, I can’t get at the business until the second night from to-night, and I can’t make delivery until the following day. I must ask you also to refrain from setting spies upon the house and grounds upon the night in question in order that you may discover the secret of our hiding place. You cannot do so without our knowing it, and you will defeat your own ends, as we shall at once suspend operations.”

The Countess gave this warning because of a suspicious glint in the General’s eye which told her that he meditated doing this very same thing.

“There is no getting the best of the sly old wolf,” grumbled the General as he left the chateau.

That night, as soon as it became dark, the girl, Jaqueline, a maiden of twenty, with dark eyes and hair, a slender yet shapely figure and an oval face which, though pretty and interesting, was somewhat pale, came from the chateau down through the shrubbery of the grounds to the rear wall, unlocked the small door in the wall, and let herself out into the lane. She darted here and there, crept stealthily from shadow to shadow, always keeping to srriall and unfrequented streets and narrow passages between buildings, until she had gone several blocks and had come into a strait and gloomy alleyway. She had encountered several small straggling bodies of soldiers but, by her alertness, circumspection and subtlety had escaped them all. A young girl who traversed the streets of Cambrai at night in those days ran a very great risk, and the girl who did it was a brave girl indeed.

Upon this alleyway stood the rear walls of a number of dilapidated brick houses or shops, structures which fronted upon the street beyond. One of these houses contained the bake shop of Martin Louvac, or Papa Louvac as he was commonly called by the people of the neighborhood. Jaqueline gave a peculiar rap, or succession of raps upon the rear or kitchen door of Martin Louvac’s house, the door was almost immediately opened, and she stepped inside. Papa Louvac’s wife, a stout, good-natured woman of fifty, who had opened the door for Jaqueline, seized the girl in her arms, hugged her closely and kissed her upon both cheeks. The woman had been Jaqueline’s foster mother, and there had always 1 existed a great affection between them.