THE SECRET SPRING BY PIERRE BENOIT NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 1920 CONTENTS A FOREWORD PROLOGUE CHAPTER I CHAPTER II CHAPTER III CHAPTER IV CHAPTER V CHAPTER VI CHAPTER VII CHAPTER VIII EPILOGUE A FOREWORD Long have I hesitated to give back to Life the legacy left me by Death. But at last, reflecting that Lieutenant Vignerte and She whom he loved have vanished into the eternal shades, I have decided that there is no longer any reason to keep silence about the tragic events staged in the German court of Lautenburg-Detmold in the months immediately preceding the Great War. P. B. PROLOGUE "Unpile Arms!" Of its own motion and by that force of habit which makes the word of command superfluous, the dark mass of the company rose and formed fours to the right. The darkness was falling, cold and cruel, slashed with long liquid streaks. It had been raining all day. In the middle of the clearing a grey-green sky looked up at us from shadowy pools. An order rang out: "Quick March!" The little body moved off. I was at the head. At the edge of the wood was a country-house, some eighteenth-century fantasy; two or three shells had been enough to demolish the wings. The chandeliers of the big ground-floor room, multiplied in its mirrors and sparkling through its tall windows, enhanced the sinister blackness of the falling October night. Five or six shadowy forms in long cloaks stood out against this background of light. "What Company?" "The 24th of the 218th Regiment, sir." "Are you taking over the Blanc-Sablon trenches?" "Yes, sir." "Good. When you've got your men installed, go for your orders to battalion headquarters. Your C.O. has them. Good luck!" "Thank you, sir." In the darkness, like a group of fantastic hunch-backs, the men stood round, leaning on their sticks and arching their backs under the amazing weight of their packs, crammed with miscellaneous paraphernalia. For the trenches were a desert island. How could you tell what you might want there? So the men took down everything they could carry. They maintained a grave, morose silence, the usual silence that marked the occupation of a new sector. Besides, Blanc-Sablon had a bad reputation. The enemy's trenches were some way off--three or four hundred yards--it is true, but the nature of the ground was such that the only cover consisted of a few wretched dug-outs which were always collapsing and indeed, only kept in existence at all by great baulks of timber. Further, the place was wooded and cut by ravines where you could not see fifty yards ahead of you. And nothing in war is so nerve-racking as the mystery of the invisible. A voice--"Any chance of lights?"