McClure's Magazine/Volume 56/Number 1/A Tryst With Ghosts

by Edgar Wallace

A Tryst

with Ghosts

Christmas Revives an Old Mystery of the Trenches

By Edgar Wallace
Illustrations by Douglas Duer

ONCE upon a time, in the far-away days of war, there was a mythical or semi-mythical individuality whom the British Tommies named “Quiff.” He was credited with a prescience which was quite inhuman. He knew when the divisions were mustering for attack; he warned commanders of impending raids; at his word battalion chiefs were superseded—for he had an uncanny instinct for weakness. He was the guardian angel of five hundred miles of trench line, and was visualized as a white-bearded gentleman with a halo. When the enemy put a price on his head of 50,000 marks—in those days marks were real money—thus proving his tangibility, the line was immensely startled.

Nigel Porter was sitting in the shade of his porch one warm day in early December, reading a Vancouver newspaper. It was the anniversary of a battle in which the Canadians had been heavily engaged, and the writer of the reminiscences which he was reading recalled the fact that “Quiff” had warned the British higher command of the coming attack. This interested Nigel considerably.

Later he saw a brief reference to himself and the mention of his having been blown up by a land mine—— The paper dropped from his hands, and he jumped up with an exclamation. He picked the paper up and looked at the date. Then he went into his house—too big for a well-to-do bachelor—and began writing out cablegrams. In four days he was speeding eastward with two suit cases and a sense of guilt.

If anybody had asked him why he was taking that cold and very comfortless journey, he would have been ashamed to say. A man who owns farmlands in British Columbia views the barrier of the Rockies which keeps in check the shriveling winds that roar down from the frozen north, with the same satisfaction that a man, snuggled by a log fire, a pipe between his teeth and a book on his knee, might regard the frosted windows and the stout walls of the house that keeps from him the howling gale without.

And here he was, a lover of comfort and a man who grudged every second of the cold months that took him from sight of the Pacific and smell of cedar pine, tossing and pitching in the gray, wintry seas of the Atlantic, in the teeth of a nor'westerly gale. The ship was not a large one, the accommodation was fairly poor, his fellow passengers—— But there was a Compensation.

The Compensation was amazing in many respects, for Nigel was not a woman's man, and was almost, if not wholly, unromantic. If you forgot the extraordinary mission which was bringing him across the December sea, you might have said that romance had no place in his equipment. The Compensation came aboard at New York, and their eyes met for the fraction of a second before she stumbled upon the slippery deck—it had been snowing—and was caught in his strong arms. There was a murmured apology, an embarrassed second of incoherence on his part, and then she had vanished.

He did not see her till the second day out, and then, literally, he fell against her. He was on his way to the smoking room, a journey that involved alternate climbing and sliding along the rubber-tiled alleyway, as bow and stern of the Beranic went up and down like delicately poised scales. Again she was in his arms for just as long a time as it might take to count three, quickly.

On the fifth day he found her on deck, stretched in a chair, inadequately covered by a rug. A little self-consciously, he arranged the covering without invitation, and they talked.

HER name was Elsie Steyne, and she was traveling alone. She gave no explanation, such as fellow passengers in the first moments of their confidence give to one another, for her solitary journey. When, after another day's acquaintance, he offered her the opportunity of telling him why she was coming to Europe in Christmas week, she hesitated.

“It is a queer season for holiday-making in Europe,” she confessed, after a long and thoughtful pause, and then, immediately, “but I am going to see my brother. He went over last week; it was arranged that I should spend Christmas with my mother in Ohio. But somehow—I am a little worried about him. And you, Mr. Porter? I suppose you are traveling on business?”

Nigel's blue eyes twinkled for a second.

“No, not exactly,” he said, and she looked up at him in surprise. “The fact is,” he added humorously, “I have a tryst with a ghost!”

To Nigel's astonishment he saw the color fade from her face. She struggled up into a sitting position and stared at him.

“'A tryst with a ghost?'” she repeated, and her voice shook.

For a moment he was dumfounded by the effect that his words had produced on the girl, and he cursed himself for his grim jest. Probably she was nervous; there were people in the world in whom the word “ghost” produced a shiver.

“I am very sorry, Miss Steyne,” he said apologetically. “I am afraid I startled you.”

Her eyes did not leave his.

“What do you mean?” she asked huskily. “A tryst with a ghost? Where did you hear——”

She stopped suddenly and, seeing the quick rise and fall of her breast, the pallor of her face, the queer, hunted look in her blue eyes, Nigel Porter became almost incoherent in his efforts to undo the mischief which his ill-timed remark had produced.

“The fact is——” he began, and then, realizing how fantastic and absurd the explanation that he was on the point of making would sound, he laughed. “It was a startling thing to say, wasn't it? I am afraid I have a latent streak of melodrama in my composition. Won't you please forgive me?”

She settled back in her chair, and for a while gazed blankly out over the tumbling gray seas.

“It was stupid of me,” she said, “but my nerves aren't in very good order. Would you ask the steward to bring a cup of tea?”

No further reference to his unfortunate faux pas was made. He saw her the next morning, when the ship was rolling through the English Channel and Devonshire was a gray blur on the northern horizon, and she was apparently so absorbed in the book she was reading that she only gave him a nod before she returned to a steadfast scrutiny of the printed page.

THE morning on which they reached Cherbourg Nigel made an unpleasant discovery. He had been out of his cabin all the morning, walking the deck, in the hope of seeing the girl. She did not put in an appearance, however, and he went down to his cabin to prepare for lunch, with an unsatisfactory feeling that the morning had been wasted. It was then that he had his shock. Somebody had been in his cabin.

A trunk which was under the bed had been pulled out, and a brief examination of its contents told him that it had been subjected to a hurried, but thorough search. His passport, which he kept with other confidential papers under his pillow, was lying open on the bed. He rang the bell and presently the steward came.

“No, sir,” said the man in surprise, “I've seen nobody in your cabin. I've been on this deck all morning. Are you sure?”

“Of course I'm sure,” said Nigel irritably. “Look at this trunk. And that—I haven't opened that passport since I left New York.”

The steward looked around inadequately.

“Nobody's been in your cabin, sir, as far as I know,” he said. “Of course, I haven't been watching it all the time, because I've been in the other cabins, tidying up.”

“Have you seen any of the passengers near the cabin?”

“No, sir—yes, I have,” he corrected himself. “I saw that young lady in 87, Miss Steyne. She came down this alleyway by mistake. Her cabin is two alleyways farther along.”

Nigel scratched his chin in perplexity.

“Of course, it couldn't have been Miss Steyne,” he said, and the steward, who was happy to agree that it could not have been anybody at all, nodded his relief at Nigel's words.

“It has been a clean trip,” he said. “There are none of the gangs on board that usually work the line, and yours is the first complaint we've had. Would you like me to report this to the purser?”

Nigel shook his head.

“It doesn't matter,” he said.

WHEN the steward had gone, he made a search of his belongings to find if anything had been stolen; but although the intruder had evidently made a systematic search of his cabin, nothing was missing. With his passport had been a letter of credit, and this apparently had not been taken from its envelope. He was a fool, anyway, to leave important papers lying around, he thought, and congratulated himself that he had not suffered any serious loss.

For some reason, he could not escape the conviction that the search of his cabin had been conducted with other object than the examination of his passport. The intruder had been searching for a document. What that document was, Nigel could not guess, though he racked his brains for some plausible explanation.

He saw the girl on the tender at Cherbourg, and to his surprise she was not only friendly, but communicative.

“I am going to Paris,” she said. “You are going there, too, I suppose? Where are you staying?”

“I am not going to Paris,” said Nigel, with a little smile.

Again that look of suspicion and doubt appeared in her eyes, but she made no further inquiries. He saw her through the Customs, and then made his way in a crazy taxicab to the town, where, if his cabled instructions had been carried out, the car would be waiting. He found it—an ancient French machine, but suitable for his purpose. His temptation was to stay the night in Cherbourg, but the time at his disposal was short. He had landed at the French port on the twenty-fourth, and he had less than twenty-four hours to reach his destination.

As the car bumped and jolted along the paved road that leads finally to Calais, he could only wonder at himself. It did not seem real, and yet it was true that, a little more than a fortnight ago, he had been sitting in the sunlight of British Columbia, when there had come to him, in the nature of a shock, the realization that he was fast approaching the Christmas of 1921.

Once he remembered the date, there was no other course for him to follow, being the man he was.

Illustration: Somebody had been in Nigel's cabin. A trunk had been opened and subjected to a thorough search

He did not regret his lost comfort; he did not feel sorry for himself; he did not even regret that he was in a car of uncertain age, rattling through a driving blizzard that obscured all view, that made the pavé so slippery that the car skidded every five minutes. And even when, tired and hungry, with the dawn just showing in a gray sky, he came into the station square at Ypres, he did not regard his adventure as being outside the limitations of common sense.

Ypres was changed, he noticed silently. Handsome red villas were going up in all directions. The Cloth Hall still pointed its maimed tower to the sky, and here and there, half covered with snow, he recognized a gaunt shell of a house that had been as familiar to him, in those horrible and painful days of war, as the Eros in Piccadilly Circus, or the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor.

Early as was the hour, there were workers abroad. A goods train was shunting noisily in a station which had been shelled out of existence in his days. Facing the station was a brand-new hotel, and he got down, gave an instruction to the weary-eyed French driver, and carried his bag into the dimly-lit hallway. A sleepy man was sweeping the floor.

“Yes, monsieur, Major Burns is here, but he is leaving by the early train for England. He has twice been down to look for you. I will tell him you have come,” the man said in answer to Nigel's eager inquiry.

Nigel made his way to the big, bare dining room, redolent of new paint and lighted by one yellow carbon lamp. A table had been laid for two near the window. This he noted with satisfaction. Burns had evidently received his cable and the wire he had sent from Cherbourg.

Illustration: “I was on him before he knew what had happened, We both pulled our guns, and by the most extraordinary coincidence we both missed fire”

There was a quick step in the hall, and the major, wearing his long military overcoat and—as usual—his cap perched rakishly on the side of his head, hurried in and offered a gloved hand.

“I've been over to the station to fix my trunks. I'm going on a month's leave,” he said. “So you've come back to the salient? They all do. Had some fellows here last week who knew you. We were talking of old 'Quiff.”. Do you remember him? Wonder what happened to the old devil—never heard about him—hasn't even written a book! Do you remember that night when he tipped us off about the gas attack?”

THE major rattled on reminiscently. He was a red-faced man, with a bright, twinkling eye, and he was obviously amused. Men who are amused at seven o'clock on a raw, wintry morning, amid the sorrowful shades of Ypres, may be written down as possessing a strong sense of humor.

“I suppose you think I'm mad?” asked Nigel, when the other stopped.

Major Burns pursed his lips.

“I don't think so,” he said at last. “No, I really don't think so. I suppose that, having lived in the midst of so much madness these past years, one takes a generous view of human sanity. Joseph”—he beckoned the waiter—“coffee. I can give you half an hour,” he said to his vis-à-vis. “And by the way, here is the plan—so far as I can reconstruct it from the old operation plans of 1917.”

He lugged out from his inside pocket a thin sheet of paper and spread it on the table.

“There's Kelners Farm, there's Dead Horse Lane, and that's Windy Corner. You'll recognize Windy Corner; it's one of the few bits of the old battlefield that have been left. I had to get this, by the way, from the Belgians, because it was on their front, I think, that it happened. I must tell you that Houthulst Forest has entirely disappeared; you won't find any trace of it, except a few straggling trees. It's a perfect beast of a place, Nigel.”

Nigel was examining the plan, and now looked up as he folded the paper.

“Do you think I'm mad?” he said again.

“I don't, probably because my knowledge of the circumstances is more or less shaky. If I had a larger understanding of what occurred, perhaps I should be less charitable. I only know that you cabled me from British Columbia that you wanted me to discover the exact place where you had been blown up, because you wished to spend Christmas Day in the hole. Which reminds me that I had a Belgian officer in here yesterday—Colonel de Villiers—who said that the mine craters still exist.”

Again Nigel nodded.

“It was lucky your being here. Luckier still that I remembered you were here, Burns,” he said, and then: “I'll tell you the story. It happened on Christmas Eve of 1917. As a matter of fact, it happened on the twenty-third of December. I was attached to the French corps that was holding the southeastern edge of Houthulst Forest. I was working in connection with the Canadian Intelligence, and my instructions were to go over to discover the exact composition of the force that was holding the Belgian front. The G.O.C. wasn't at all satisfied with the intelligence he got from the Belgian staff, who were supposed to be au fait with these particulars, and of course the French had only recently come up and were not in a position to give any accurate information.”

He paused and looked out of the window, and it came to him sadly that this was not the Ypres he knew, that smoldering furnace of a town, bombarded daily, hourly, every minute; rocked and shaken by high explosive shells, a town that rumbled and thundered night and day, year in and year out; a gray, dusty town, where long files of men crept cautiously under such walls as existed, on their way to the muddy inferno which lay along the ridges of the north. Sadly, for he was thinking of all the brave hearts that were stilled and the bright, boyish faces that had gone and were no more seen.

“The curious thing was that, at the identical moment I went over into No Man's Land, a young German officer was sent to discover the exact composition of the French force that was holding this sector. We met halfway. To be exact, I stumbled over wire in the dark and slid down the edge of the crater——”

“Crater No. 17,” murmured Major Burns. “The hole is about twenty metres away.”

The other nodded.

“I was on the Hun before he knew what had happened. We both pulled our guns, and by the most extraordinary coincidence we both missed fire. It looked as if it might be a real caveman's scrap, when the German chuckled and threw down his pistol.

“'I think, my friend,' he said, 'we had better both go home again. It would be stupid for us to batter one another with our fists, for that would probably mean that we should both be killed in attempting to get back to our lines in a condition of exhaustion.'

“The logic of it struck me, and we just sat down and talked. We not only talked, but we exchanged confidences of a highly compromising character. He told me that the 18th Bavarian Division was on our front, and I responded politely with the information that the 43rd French Division was on his front. He didn't seem as interested as he might have been. He produced a packet of sandwiches, I had a flask of whisky, and we sat and talked, until——

“'It will be daylight soon,' he said. 'I think we'd better go home.'

“SO we shook hands, and we were halfway up the crumbling slope of the crater when there broke out the most infernal fire that I had ever heard before or since. The air seemed to be so thick with traveling bullets and shells that you couldn't have put up a fishing line without getting it cut in three places simultaneously!

“'I think we'd better wait!' shouted the German.

“So we retired again to the shell hole, and prayed fervently—at least I did—that 'shorts' on either side would be few, and in other directions than ours. Dawn broke, and the fury of the fire did not abate. And then I found myself talking about things I never thought I would discuss with a German. He didn't tell me a great deal about himself, except that he was an officer in a Bavarian regiment. His English was perfect. I could have sworn, when I first saw him, that he was an American.

“Well, to cut a long story short, there we sat throughout the day. Christmas Eve came and there was no slackening of the fire. Every gun, big and little, on both sides was in action, and we spent the night counting Very lights and speculating upon what was the cause of this unseemly disturbance. Christmas Day came, but still there was practically no reduction of the fire? I afterward discovered that this was the preliminary bombardment to an attack which the French commander had planned, and which he hoped would bring the forest into his hands. Poor soul! He never lived to know what a hell trap that forest was!

“Later in the morning the fire seemed to die down just a little, and I crawled to the edge of the shell hole to take observation. What happened I don't know. I woke up to find my head on the German's knee, and he was draining the last dregs of my whisky flask down my throat. My head was wet and aching; my eyes seemed to be filled with sand.

“'Shell fragment,' he said. 'I don't think you're badly hurt. I have two sandwiches and half a bottle of water left. It looks as if we'd have a peach of a Christmas Day!'”

“What was his name—did you find that out?” asked Burns curiously.

“Karl—that was all he told me,” replied Nigel. “That fellow was some prophet! I think both sides must have brought up all their reserves of artillery and trebled their stock of machine guns. It was when I realized that we had had no 'Quiff' message from G.H.Q. that I knew the initiative was on our side. It was toward evening that Karl said:

“'If we get through this, my friend, I should like to have a little dinner with you somewhere.'

“When and where?' I asked.

“He thought a long time before he answered.

“'Maybe we sha'n't get through,' he said. 'But I'll tell you what I will do. If I am alive in four years' time I will come and meet you here; and if you're not here—well, I'll keep a tryst with your ghost.'”

“Why four years?” questioned Burns.

Illustration: “I woke up to find my head on the German's knee, and he was draining the last dregs of my whisky flask down my throat”

“He thought the war would last another three. He made it four to give us a chance of getting peace. Of course, it was lunatic, it was childish, it was anything you like to call it, but there and then we made our agreement. It was the sort of thing that schoolgirls do, and anyway, there's something peculiarly simple and infantile about the full-grown soldier.

“It was eleven o'clock that night that the French fired the mine. My own impression was that it was just underneath where I was sitting, but my recollections of the circumstances are necessarily hazy. I just remember saying to Karl that I had a passion for marrons glacés when I felt somebody slapping my face, and looked up into the eyes of an English surgeon who was in his shirt sleeves. I heard him say 'He's all right,' and then I sort of dozed myself out of Belgium and woke up in an English hospital.

“THE body of Karl was found and buried on the very edge of the crater. We took the ground and lost it, took it again and lost it again, but I know he was found, because the officer who picked me up after the mine was exploded was in the bed next to me in the hospital, and he told me about it: how they found this poor chap, dead, and buried him.”

“Hum!” said Major Burns, gulping down his coffee. “I think you're a fool, but it's the sort of fool thing I should have done myself.” He scrutinized the lowering skies through the window. “You're going to have a cold Christmas Day, my lad.”

“I never expected any other sort.”

 

Just before noon Nigel came out of the hotel with a basket, a bottle of wine and a box of cigars, which he stowed away in one of the car's pockets. He himself went to the wheel, and in a few minutes was passing slowly westward. The car sped down a perfectly graveled road, and passed cemetery upon cemetery crowded with white crosses, whiter for the rim of snow which lay upon their edges, and presently, turning abruptly from the main road, he came almost instantly into a region of desolation.

The new red buildings were behind him. The road was no longer a road, it was a succession of deep holes and ruts. Sharp-cornered paving blocks jagged up from the sodden earth; stark walls that had once been houses loomed through the sleet on either side. Broken and jagged barbed wire, red with rust, trailed in tangled lengths by the roadside, and here and there he saw the drunken outlines of block-houses where men had lived horribly and had died in fear.

Presently the car was lurching between flat heaps of rubble that the rains of the years had washed and pounded into little unrecognizable plateaux. A village had been here once. Rotting weeds showed where love and life had been, and holes gaped in the roadway before a medley of black wrought-iron crosses which marked a graveyard that had been set around a church. There was no church.

Illustration: Standing on the farther rim of the crater was a tall figure, draped from neck to feet in a long dark cloak. It was bareheaded, and the wind had blown a lock of hair across the forehead. Nigel stared at it, speechless

These sights were too familiar to sadden him, though now it seemed, in the years of peace, that the ugliness of war was emphasized more strongly. He came at last, by the aid of his map, after constant backings and changing of direction, and guided at the very last by a miserable-looking man who lived with his family in a deserted dugout, to the edge of what was once a forest, but was now nothing. For all that was left of the trees were blackened stumps and dead white stems that stood starkly against the cold sky.

He stopped his car, got out and took his bearings, and instinctively he went straight to the place he sought. The hole was deep; it was half filled with yellow water. To the right was a smaller hole, also water-logged, and he smiled faintly, contrasting the calm of that winter day, with no other sound in his ear but the sough and sigh of the wind that swept down from the dunes and the tawny sea beyond, with the deafening fury of the storm that had swept this spot four years before. There was the grave: he saw it at oncea small black cross above a slab of concrete that the Government had laid down to prevent farmers plowing ground hallowed by sacrifice.

Bending down, he read: “Allemand.” Karl was “Allemand.” In small letters was the word “officier.” It was not usual to distinguish the rank of the dead. That was all. It stood for life and humor and courage, and God knows what hope. It stood also for an enemy, but that was incidental and meant nothing to Nigel Porter, sitting there on the edge of the crater, with his fur collar pulled up about his ears.

His eyes roved around the starved landscape. It was such a foul setting for the rare jewel of a soul.

“Well, my friend,” he said—his tone was one of heavy jocularity; insensibly he had recalled, and was reproducing, the very tone of the man whom he apostrophized—“here am I, after four years! I owe you an apology, because I nearly forgot my promise. If I hadn't read in a Vancouver newspaper some highly flattering references to my services during the war, I should certainly have broken my promise.”

There was such quiet dignity in that black cross, such serenity in the truncated pyramid of concrete that marked the abiding place of this “Allemand, officier,” that his voice died down. The dead are so immensely superior to the living that he felt abashed.

He sat for a long time, his gloved hands crossed on his knees, his head bent forward in thought, and then he got up with a sigh and dusted his coat.

“Well——” he began, and his jaw dropped.

STANDING on the farther rim of the crater was a tall figure, draped from neck to feet in a long, dark cloak. It was bareheaded, and the wind had blown a lock of fair hair across the forehead of the man. Nigel stared open-mouthed, speechless, and then:

“Karl!” he croaked.

The voiceless figure stirred.

“Thank God! I thought you were a ghost.”

In a dozen strides Nigel had flown around the edge of the crater and gripped the outstretched hand.

“What are you doing here?” he asked huskily. “Stupid question to ask, but you are——”

The other laughed.

“I'm keeping a tryst with a ghost,” he said, with a twinkle in his eyes. “You see, I thought you were—dead. When our people took the ground they found a grave here.” Suddenly he gripped Nigel by the arm. “Let's get out of this beastliness,” he said. “By Jove! How hideous war is!”

They had nearly reached the sunken road where the stranger's car was waiting, when Nigel remembered that he had some responsibility in the matter of transportation.

“You can go back for it. I want to introduce you to my sister. By the way, my name is Steyne.”

And there Nigel found the girl.

 

It was after dinner in the barracks-like dining room of the Hotel d'Ypres that Nigel Porter heard and understood.

“No, I'm not a German,” said Mr. Charles Steyne, pulling gently at his cigar. “I am an American. I was in the war from the very first month.”

“On the German side?”

“Oh, yes, I was on the German side. That is to say, I wore the German uniform and served in the German Intelligence Department. There were five of us originally, and we were employed by the most effective secret service that the world has ever known. I speak respectfully of Great Britain. Of the five I am the only one left alive.

“Taylor was shot in Hanover after being tried by court-martial for running the secret wireless by which the British were informed of the movements of German ships. Jock Holtz suffered a like fate on the Russian frontier, when he was trying to get through to the Russian Headquarters the news of the German concentration—he owed his death to the treachery of the Russian General Staff, by the way. And Micky Thomas was killed by a night watchman at the German Foreign Office after he had got away with some very important documents which were necessary to your Whitehall.

“Long Bill Fenner,” he went on, “was accidentally killed by an airplane bomb dropped by an American airman. And I was almost, but not quite destroyed by the explosion of a mine——

“Well, you know that story. If Elsie had only told me that she had met you on the ship, and had given me a hint about your keeping a tryst with ghosts—a phrase of mine, by the way, which, coming from you, so startled her that she nearly jumped out of her skin——”

Nigel was looking at the girl, and under his eyes the color came to her face, for she had anticipated the question which was coming.

“Why did you want to see my passport, Miss Steyne?” he asked.

“I think I can answer that,” replied Charles Steyne. “My sister doesn't realize that war ever ends. She thinks that the price the Germans put on the head of their pet enemy is still offered. She pictured you a member of the Government, tracking down the shy and elusive Quiff, and claiming——”

“Quiff!” gasped Nigel. “You don't mean to say that you were——”

The other nodded.

“I was on my way to the French lines to tell the general not to attack. If I had told you I was Quiff you would not have believed me.”

“Phew!” Nigel sat back in his chair and stared at the girl, but she averted her eyes.

“I'm glad—you're not exactly German,” he said, a little gauchely. “I don't believe in mixed marriages—— I mean——”

The ghost smiled wisely.