Kitabı oku: «Over There with the Canadians at Vimy Ridge», sayfa 3
CHAPTER IX
BOB'S LETTER
Irving almost forgot that there had ever been any difficulty between him and Lieut. Tourtelle in contemplation of the novel service he had promised to perform. Perhaps his remembrance of that trouble had been smothered by his curiosity as to the character of this tattooed copy of a "Basket of Eggs Spilling Down Stairs."
The surgeon came at 3 o'clock in the afternoon and got busy at once. However, before administering the ether, he acknowledged an introduction to Private Ellis and promised to "skin the tattoo off the arm" after the amputation and turn it over to its delegated caretaker.
Irving was permitted to be present during the operation. He watched with a good deal of curiosity for a first vision of the cubist art on the patient's arm, and was not at all disappointed. It surely was a clever piece of work, from the point of view of a votary of this sort of art. This was the conclusion of all who saw the operation, and it was the general subject of conversation until the arm was removed.
The surgeon took more interest in the subject now than he had taken at any time previously. This doubtless was due to the special preparations made by the patient for the preservation of the tattooed skin. While the ether was being administered by a nurse, he bared the wounded arm and examined the "copy of quaint art" with interest.
"What does he call this picture?" the "military sawbones" asked as he gazed at the seemingly unmethodical arrangement of distorted "cubes" of all sorts of shapes and angles.
The patient was not yet unconscious, although the nurse was dropping ether into the mask covering his mouth and nose. In a low dreamy voice he answered the question thus:
"It's 'The Basket of Eggs Spilling Down Stairs.'"
The surgeon and the two attending nurses laughed at this answer.
"His mind is wandering under the anæsthetic," said the surgeon.
"No, it isn't," Irving interposed. "He told you the same thing he told me. You see, he's a cubist. That's his idea of art. That tattooing on his arm is a copy of a picture painted by him when he was a student in an art school. That's the story he told me this morning."
The expression on the surgeon's face went through a motion-picture metamorphosis while the boy onlooker was making his statement. First it indicated a kind of professional resentment at the contradiction; then followed a wave of incredulity, succeeded by an enigmatical smirk. As he cast a glance of still-smirking amusement at young Ellis, the latter interpreted it to mean that he questioned the sanity of the patient.
"If I were to perform this operation in the manner that cubists execute their art, he'd probably want to sue me for malpractice," said the scientific man as he finished preparation for the use of the knife.
The operation was quickly performed, and the surgeon obligingly peeled off the portion of skin containing the cubist tattooing and handed it to Irving. The latter proceeded at once to pack it in the box of salt provided for the purpose, and said to the nurse in charge:
"I'll lay it here on the bed beside his pillow, so that he'll find it when he wakes up. Will you please call his attention to it?"
The nurse promised to do as requested, and Irving left the building and heard nothing more of the incident for several days. At last his shoulder recovered from its lameness and he was ordered back to the front.
Before returning to the trenches, however, he received a letter from his cousin, Bob, that stirred in him a thrill of excitement that no sensational activities of battle could have aroused. The affair thus revealed over a distance of thousands of miles confronted Irving with what seemed at first a most remarkable coincidence. But the boy was unable to accept it as such without first making an inquiry about certain suspicious circumstances. He suspected at once that something was doing that ought to be laid before army officials for investigation.
"I'm getting along first rate, Irving," Bob wrote. "My wounds have all healed. I was pretty badly shot to pieces. One of the bones of my left leg was pretty much shattered. They thought, at first they'd have to amputate the limb, but it was saved, thank goodness, although the knee will always be stiff. I had half a dozen shell and machine gun wounds in my body, too, though fortunately all of them were well removed from vital spots. But, although these injuries were as bad as one would care to receive, all of them together were not nearly as dangerous or uncomfortable as the dose of gas I got. Believe me, Irving, I don't want any more of that. If you want my opinion of it, I'll tell you I think it's more cruel than submarine warfare where they sink passenger ships without warning. The doctors thought for a while that I was going to have the 'con,' but I'm about over the effects of my dose now."
"Well, while I was convalescing, I had to have some amusement-I mean after I was able to be up and around, but hardly strong enough to shovel snow. Say, we've had some awful heavy snow storms this winter. Regular blizzards, with snow over your shoetops when you're standing on your head. That's snowing some, isn't it?
"Well, about the time I was able to get around without doing myself any harm-the gas effects kept me pretty weak quite a while, – I went up to Toronto to visit some friends. I was invited up there by one of the boys who was gassed at the same time I was. He and others had organized a 'Gas club,' consisting of fellows who had been gassed in the war. Grewsome idea, wasn't it? But it took famously. They wanted me to join, and I went up there and was initiated.
"Well, while I was up there, I saw considerable outdoor life. Several of us went hunting on snowshoes one day, and that capped the climax of my physical exertions. I ought to have been more careful, for I was not strong enough yet for such life. Well, I became ill on the way, and the boys got me to a hospital in the outskirts of the city and a physician examined me. The doctor said there was nothing serious the matter with me, only over-exertion in my weakened condition, so I did not notify father and mother.
"Two days later the doctor said I was in good enough condition to leave the hospital, but advised me to go straight home and not try any more such vigorous exercise until I was in condition to return to the trenches. This was in the evening, and I decided to remain in the hospital until morning. I was sitting up when the doctor called, and after he left I went out into the hall to find a telephone to call up my friend and tell him of my plan to return home next day.
"The building is an old brick structure that undoubtedly would have been condemned for hospital purposes if the interior woodwork had not been of the best material and well put together. However, the layout was decidedly old-fashioned and confusing to one accustomed to modern architecture. Anyway, I got lost, so to speak, in the hall while trying to find my way to the stairway.
"I found a stairway, but soon realized that it was not the one I wanted, and was about to turn back, when something caught my attention and held it for several minutes. I was on a kind of half-floor landing before an entrance into a low rear addition, and from that position found myself gazing into a laboratory in which something very strange was going on. Three men were in the room, one of them little more than a boy and in the khaki uniform of a soldier; the other two in civilian clothes. In the upper half of the door were two glass panels, through which I could see very clearly, and the transom over the door was swung partly open.
"There was something peculiar about the two older men which almost fascinated me. Both had a decidedly foreign look. One was smooth-shaven, except for a heavy kaiser mustache; the other, the older of these two, wore a full beard.
"The young fellow in khaki was seated on a chair, with his left arm bared above the elbow, resting on a table. The other two men were working over the arm in a most studious manner. Over them was a brilliant calcium light which illuminated their work. I could see the arm very plainly and it took me only a minute or two to determine what the two older men were doing to it.
"They were tattooing the arm, and a most remarkable kind of tattooing it was. They were extremely careful with their work and progressed slowly. Judging from the care they took and the slowness with which they progressed, they must have worked on that arm several days. Also, spread out before them, was a small sheet of white paper, to which they referred frequently.
"It is hard to describe to you the appearance of the result of their work, but I'll send you a copy of the original they were working from and explain how I got it. I think you'll agree with me that it looks more like a piece of kindergarten patchwork than anything else imaginable.
"While I was gazing in a kind of fascination at the strange scene, the man with the kaiser mustache turned suddenly and saw me. His next movement was just as sudden and much more astonishing. He sprang to the door, flung it open, and before I could realize what was taking place he had seized me by the arm and was dragging me into the laboratory. I struggled to prevent him from getting me inside, but, because of my weakened condition, was unsuccessful. My next impulse was to cry out for help, but the situation seemed to me so ridiculous that I decided I would only make myself look foolish by so doing. This hospital was surely a highly respectable institution, I reasoned, and the misunderstanding of which I was a victim would soon be cleared up. Perhaps these men thought I was a spying meddler bent on some malicious mischief.
"After they got me inside-for the other men sprang to my captor's assistance-they closed and locked the door, also the transom, and began to quiz me as to what I was doing out in the hall. I was too sore at their treatment of me to give an explanation and demanded what they meant by their actions. I saw that they were very uneasy about something and that made me bolder. It soon dawned upon me that they had been doing something that they wanted to keep secret. That resolved me to get back at them with interest, and while they were busy with their excited demands, I got my wits together to devise some sort of trick that would show them it wasn't quite so easy to browbeat me as they seemed to imagine.
"All three of them huddled together right in front of me and rained questions at me excitedly. This suited me first rate as soon as I had decided what to do. I wasn't afraid of any desperate violence on their part; the place was too public for that. I retreated slowly to the table at which they had been working and leaned back resting my hands on it. They never caught on to what I was up to, but pressed close to me with their excited questions. I met these with noncommittal replies, and at the same time got one hand closer and closer to the mysterious slip of paper on the table. It was not more than six inches long and three wide, and I figured that if I could get one hand on it I might crumple it in my fist without their observing what I was doing. After I had been dragged into the room, I saw the young fellow hurriedly draw down the sleeve of his shirt over the tattooed portion of his forearm. He seemed so nervous while doing this that my suspicion of something wrong became very acute; and yet, the mystery could hardly have been more baffling.
"Well, I got my hand on the paper and crumpled it in my fist, and they never got onto my trick, at least, not until I got out of that room and away from them. I was now ready to answer their questions. I told them I was a patient in the hospital and was just trying to find my way to the office and started down the wrong stairway-that was all there was to it. I then demanded that they release me at once or I would make serious trouble for them. They asked me my name, and I told them. Then the bearded man left the laboratory, and I presume he went to the office to make inquiry about me, for he came back in a few minutes and reported that he guessed I was all right. But they held a whispered conversation in German-I caught enough of their words to be sure of that-and then told me I might go. But before the door was unlocked, the bearded man apologized, as nearly as I can remember, in the following words:
"I hope you will forgive our rough conduct, but we are engaged in very important government work, and when we saw you looking through the glass at us and apparently listening to our conversation, we presumed you were a German spy. You have satisfied us that you are all right, and we recommend that, as you love your country and wish to aid us to win the war, you keep this affair strictly to yourself."
"I was astonished and more confused than ever. That statement convicted them of something on the face of it, but of what I could not conjecture. The idea that a responsible secret agent of the government should make such a speech as that under any circumstances was simply ridiculous. I was mighty sure they were not doing work for the government. They were trying to cover something up, but what I could make no rational guess.
"I decided not to remain in the hospital any longer than it would take to get my few belongings together and pay my bill. I was afraid they would discover the loss of the paper I had stolen. Well, I got out of that place so rapidly that I had everybody staring at me who beheld my movements.
"I went to a hotel, but I am dead sure I was followed. In the morning when I went down to breakfast I was conscious of being watched. I telephoned to my friend, but while in the booth I glanced about with apparent unconcern and caught one of my shadowers looking in my direction over the top of a newspaper from a seat in the hotel lobby. I met my friend, but said nothing to him about my adventure. I wanted to get back home as soon as possible. I wasn't in condition physically to undergo any great strain.
"At last I was on the train and speeding toward home, but hadn't covered more than half of the journey when I discovered that one of my shadowers was making the journey with me. He got off when I got off and for several days had a room in one of our local hotels. I talked the matter over with father and we came to the conclusion that I had fallen into a nest of the kaiser's spies. We examined the paper I had taken from the table in the laboratory of the Toronto hospital and I made a copy of it. Then we went to the chief of police and I told nay story to him. He said the matter ought to be taken up with government officials and asked me to let him show the mysterious paper in my possession to them. I had expected this, and gave him the paper.
"A few days later I read in a newspaper that the hospital had been raided by government agents. Also, I saw nothing more of the fellow who had followed me from Toronto after I made my report to the chief of police.
"Now, what do you think of all this? Isn't it some adventure? I'm sending to you, just for your amusement, a copy of the drawing on the paper that I stole from the hospital laboratory. Can you make anything out of it? It may afford you some diversion during long, dreary watches in camp, trench or dugout."
CHAPTER X
DOTS AND DASHES
Not more than a minute after reading this letter and examining the slip of paper that accompanied it, Irving said to himself:
"This drawing is very similar to the cubist tattooing on the arm of Lieut. Tourtelle."
He studied over the matter a little more and then added:
"I believe that both were made from the same copy, or original."
A little more puzzling over the problem caused him to supplement thus:
"It looks very much as if Tourtelle and the soldier who bared his arm over the table in the hospital laboratory are one and the same person."
The suggestion startled the boy as a realization of the logical sequence flashed in his mind.
"Gee whillikens!" he exclaimed. "That means that his story about being an art student and about the tattooing of that picture on his arm by one of his fellow students is a fake. But why should he have faked it? Why wouldn't the truth have served his purpose just as well?"
Irving was at battalion headquarters, awaiting orders, which were expected to come after sundown, to move forward into the trenches. While reading the letter he was seated on the log of a tree that had been literally uprooted by a concentrated shell fire at this point a week or two before. Nobody else was interested in what he was doing and he was too much preoccupied to feel much interest in anybody right now except the mysterious Lieut. Tourtelle and his equally mysterious "amputation souvenir."
"Now," continued the boy, resuming his reasoning soliloquy, "if he told me a fake story about being an art student and having one of his fellow students copy one of his pictures on his arm, what was the motive? He wanted to deceive me, of course, but why? I'll have to leave that question unanswered for the present, I'm afraid. If I could get at his real reason for wanting that picture tattooed on his arm, I might feel some encouragement in trying to get at his motive in deceiving me. There's no doubt the picture on his arm is practically the same as the copy on this paper. I shouldn't wonder if they were the same size, drawn with precisely the same dimensions. Supposed to represent a basket of eggs spilling down stairs. What a ridiculous title. I'm sure I'd have hard work picking out the basket and the smashed eggs. It looks to me almost as if someone had pinned this paper up on a wall and fired a lot of eggs at it-and hit it, too, every crack. After all, it's the best title to a cubist art picture I ever heard of. I remember our teacher gave us a talk about that kind of art and showed us some copies of cubist paintings in magazines at the time when everybody was gossiping-yes, that's the word-about cubist art. And we surely had a lot of fun over it.
"Tourtelle told me that another student tattooed that picture on his arm. Bob's description of the scene in the hospital laboratory makes that 'second looie' look very much like a liar. I take it from this letter that both of those men were pretty well advanced in years. Art students as a rule are younger people. Moreover, students wouldn't act so strangely just because they suspected somebody of secretly watching them at their work. Then, again, Bob says the government raided that hospital. What for? Enemy agents, of course; there could be no other reason. And this raid followed Bob's report of his experience to the police. Plain as daylight. And yet, what possible connection can there be between enemy spies and cubist art? I give it up."
Irving would have liked to make a report of some kind concerning the web of strange events that clung in confusing tangle to the mystery of the ridiculous tattooing recently peeled from the amputated arm of Lieut. Tourtelle, but the more he studied over the matter, the more probable it appeared to him that such action on his part would be unwise. His conclusions must of necessity be exceedingly vague. He could not figure out a motive in any way explaining the apparently eccentric ideas and actions of the "hobby ridden second lieutenant." Yes, that phrase characterized Tourtelle exactly when the spy suspicion contained in Bob's letter was dismissed, and undoubtedly the average officer, unless he be of a very suspicious nature, would take that view of it.
"I'd be laughed at if I made a report of this affair without being able to place my finger on anything more definite than I seem to be able to single out now," he concluded. "So I guess I'll have to keep this thing to myself or else whittle my wits to a sharper point than I have been able to whittle them thus far."
About an hour after nightfall Irving returned to the front line trenches together with seventy-five or a hundred other soldiers who constituted a relief shift, to take the place of a like number of tried and muscle-cramped boys whose capacity for efficient service was in need of recuperation. The sector was quiet on this occasion and the relief exchange was effected without notable incident. In fact, conditions were such that it was considered safe to permit most of the soldiers to sleep under ground of sentries here and there along the trenches and in listening posts out in No Man's Land.
But Irving did not "sleep a wink," although general conditions were favorable for sleep in the dugout where he wrapped himself in a blanket and attempted to follow the reposeful example of half a dozen comrades with little on their minds save the ordinary routine of bloody battle in the past and prospect of much more fight and blood in the future. No mystery racked their minds, and they rested peacefully enough. With Private Ellis, however, it was different, and in a very few minutes after he lay down a plausible solution of the puzzle that had been teasing him for several hours popped into his brain with startling suddenness and rendered sleep about as impossible to him as peaceful surrender was to outraged Belgium.
After the excitement of the first thrill was over, Irving was unable to trace the process by which he arrived at his conclusion. After all, "process" is too slow a word to use in this relation. "The first thing he knew," his mind had jumped from the rough pen sketch of the cubist art drawing in his pocket to the tattooed copy as he had seen it on Tourtelle's arm. A moment later he found himself almost weirdly interested in the recollection of a marked difference in these two copies which had not impressed him before.
Then came a new thrill of eagerness, followed by incredulity, then eagerness and incredulity battling for supremacy, over a suspicion that would not be downed in spite of its almost laughable character. Could it be possible? Yes, no, yes, no-back and forth the contradictions swung. But one thing was certain; Irving recalled it distinctly: In the maze of configurations of "distorted cubes" were myriads of dots and dashes, dots and dashes. What could they mean? If the theory which forced itself upon him was correct there was only one reasonable solution of the whole mystery.
The boy in the dugout could scarcely contain his excitement as the seemingly logical explanation of the mystery "dotted and dashed" itself into a position of settled conviction in his mind.
