In Secret

As the blinding lens of the sun glittered level and its first rays poured over tree and rock, a man in the faded field-uniform of a Swiss officer of mountain artillery came out on the misty ledge across the chasm.

"You over there!" he shouted in English. "Here is a Swiss officer to speak with you! Show yourselves!"

Again, after waiting a few moments, he shouted: "Show yourselves or answer. It is a matter of life or death for you both!"

There was no reply to the invitation, no sound from the forest, no movement visible. Thin threads of vapour began to ascend from the tremendous depths of the precipice, steaming upward out of mist-choked gorges where, under thick strata of fog, night still lay dark over unseen Alpine valleys below.

The Swiss officer advanced to the cliff's edge and looked down upon a blank sea of cloud. Presently he turned east and walked cautiously along the rim of the chasm for a hundred yards. Here the gulf narrowed so that the cleft between the jutting crags was scarcely a hundred feet in width. And here he halted once more and called across in a resonant, penetrating voice: "Attention, you, over there in the Forest of Les Errues! You had better wake up and listen! Here is a Swiss officer come to speak with you. Show yourselves or answer!"

There came no sound from within the illuminated edges of the woods.

But outside, upon the chasm's sparkling edge, lay a dead man stark and transfigured and stiff as gold in the sun.

And already the first jewelled death-flies zig-zagged over him, lacing the early sunshine with ominous green lightning.

They who had killed this man might not be there behind the sunlit foliage of the forest's edge; but the Swiss officer, after waiting a few moments, called again, loudly. Then he called a third time more loudly still, because into his nostrils had stolen the faint taint of dry wood smoke. And he stood there in silhouette against the rising sun listening, certain, at last, of the hidden presence of those he sought.

Now there came no sound, no stirring behind the forest's sunny edge; but just inside it, in the lee of a huge rock, a young girl in ragged boy's clothing, uncoiled her slender length from her blanket and straightened out flat on her stomach. Her yellow hair made a spot like a patch of sunlight on the dead leaves. Her clear golden eyes were as brilliant as a lizard's.

From his blanket at her side a man, gaunt and ragged and deeply bitten by sun and wind, was pulling an automatic pistol from its holster. The girl set her lips to his ear: "Don't trust him, for God's sake, Kay," she breathed.