In Secret

The girl sat bolt upright on her bed of dead leaves, still confused by sleep, her ears ringing with the loud, hard voice which had awakened her to consciousness of pain and hunger once again.

Not ten feet from her, between where she lay under the branches of a fallen tree, and the edge of the precipice beyond, full in the morning sunlight stood two men in the dress of Swiss mountaineers.

One of them was reading aloud from a notebook in a slow, decisive, metallic voice; the other, swinging two dirty flags, signalled the message out across the world of mountains as it was read to him in that nasty, nasal Berlin dialect of a Prussian junker.

"In the Staubbach valley no traces of the bodies have been discovered," continued the tall, square-shouldered reader in his deliberate voice; "It is absolutely necessary that the bodies of these two American secret agents, Kay McKay and Evelyn Erith, be discovered, and all their papers, personal property, and the clothing and accoutrements belonging to them be destroyed without the slightest trace remaining.

"It is ordered also that, when discovered, their bodies be burned and the ashes reduced to powder and sown broadcast through the forest."

The voice stopped; the signaller whipped his dirty tattered flags in the sunlight for a few moments more, then ceased and stood stiffly at attention, his sun-dazzled gaze fixed on a far mountain slope where something glittered--perhaps a bit of mica, perhaps the mirror of a helio.

Presently, in the same disagreeable, distinct, nasal, and measured voice, the speaker resumed the message: "Until last evening it has been taken for granted that the American Intelligence Officer, McKay, and his companion, Miss Erith, made insane through suffering after having drunk at a spring the water of which we had prepared for them according to plan, had either jumped or fallen from the eastward cliffs of Les Errues into the gulf through which flows the Staubbach.

"But, up to last night, my men, who descended by the Via Mala, have been unable to find the bodies of these two Americans, although there is, on the cliffs above, every evidence that they plunged down there to the valley of the brook below, which is now being searched.

"If, therefore, my men fail to discover these bodies, the alarming presumption is forced upon us that these two Americans have once more tricked us; and that they may still be hiding in the Forbidden Forest of Les Errues.

"In that event proper and drastic measures will be taken, the air-squadron on the northern frontier co-operating."

The voice ceased: the flags whistled and snapped in the wind for a little while longer, then the signaller came to stiffest attention.