Neither Madame Gilbert nor Captain Rust are very communicative concerning their adventures, until they begin to speak of that day when first they met one another in the courtyard of the Savoy Hotel. They both then become voluble. I rather gather—though I did not cross-examine them at all closely—that they had been a good deal bored. Their instructions were so very vague, and the best method of carrying them out so far from clear to their ingenious minds, that they wandered aimlessly about the resorts most affected by officers on leave, spent much money, made a good many pleasant acquaintances, but progressed not at all in their researches. Madame did not meet with any French or Belgian flying officers who seemed likely to be German agents, and Captain Rust failed to discover a siren who appeared to be French and yet was not French, and who aroused any plausible suspicion that she dwelt in the central web of German intrigue. Madame began to think that for once the impeccable Dawson had despatched her upon a wild goose chase, and Rust became convinced that Froissart's vivid longing to score off the detested Dawson had misled him in the selection of the means to bring about this much-desired consummation. They told me little of these wanderings, but when I asked for details of their first meeting, the one with the other, and their subsequent rather startling proceedings, they broke into eager speech. It was not until my keen and curious eye began to penetrate the delicate mysteries surrounding their surprising week-end visit to Brighton that Rust again became tongue-tied. He reprehensibly slurred over the most entertaining details. Madame Gilbert, on the other hand, revealed everything with that plain-spoken frankness which, in any other woman, would appear to be brazen. Madame is thirty-two; Captain Rust no more than twenty-six. He is a modest young man in spite of his French training; she, I am afraid, is a hussy. But I would not have her other than she is.

Madame Gilbert was taking tea alone in the courtyard of the Savoy. She occupied one place at a table laid for four. It was a fine afternoon in late spring, motors and taxis ran in and out unceasingly, the open-air restaurant began to fill up, but none ventured to approach any one of three empty places at Madame's table. She was, as usual, perfectly dressed—though she assures me that her clothes cost next to nothing. "It is the wearing of them, my friend, not the cost which counts." I fancy that her unshakable temper and her gay humour, like her beauty, are really based, as she says, upon her complete freedom from ailments. She loves life, and this, perhaps, is why life loves her.

Madame Gilbert, though to the unobservant eye intent upon her tea and cakes, saw every one who came and went. Many officers were in the restaurant, but one only attracted her special notice. He was a young handsome man in the field-service kit of the French Army, and upon his sleeves and cap were the wings of the Flying Corps. This young man was looking for a table, but could not find one that was empty. She waited until he paused not far from her, and then, sweeping her eyes slowly over the crowded tables, brought them to rest upon his face. He was quite an attractive-looking young man. There was an appeal in his dark eyes as they met hers; he was imploring her of her gracious kindness to permit him to occupy one of her superfluous seats, and she telegraphed to him an encouraging reply. The French officer approached, saluted, and bowed: "Is it permitted, madame, to inconvenience you?" he asked humbly. "The tables are very full, or I would not venture to intrude." He spoke in careful, accurate English, and with an accent markedly French.

"Please favour me by sitting down at once," replied Madame. "I feel
myself to be very selfish with my four places and one small person."
She spoke in careful, accurate English, and with an accent markedly
French.

"Ah!" he exclaimed, seating himself opposite to her, and breaking into
French. "Madame is of my country, is it not so?"

"But certainly," said Madame in the same language, which was to her a second mother-tongue. "I am of Paris. If you had not been French I should not have dared to hint to you that a place at this table might be taken."

For a few minutes they talked together in the ceremonious style for which the French language is the perfect medium, and then dropped into more easy friendly speech. Madame, when she likes the look of a man, becomes intimate at the shortest notice, and Rust, like every man born of woman, succumbed helplessly, instantly, to the wiles of Madame. Though she had finished tea, she urged Rust not to be hurried; there was plenty of time, and one did not often have the happiness to meet a French officer in this dreary London. She enveloped him in her meshes of kindliness, and he responded by thinking to himself that she was the loveliest, most friendly creature whom he had ever met. Madame knows a great deal more of military details than most male civilians, but when she talked to Captain Rust at the Savoy, her ignorance of the Flying Corps was absolute. She asked questions, quite intelligent questions, and he bubbled over with eagerness to answer them. Poor Rust; I can picture the humbling scene. He made an ass of himself, of course, but not a greater ass than I always make of myself—and I am not far from double his age—whenever Madame gets to work upon me.

Within ten minutes she had wheedled out of him an account of his accident. "I was out on patrol duty," he explained, "spotting for submarines between the Straits and Zeebrugge. When the weather is fine we can see deep down into the water, a hundred feet or so, and quite easily make out a submerged U boat. I was testing a new plane fitted with a 90 h.p. R.A.F. engine—" He paused and quickly glanced at her, for he realised his blunder the instant the slip had been made. Madame was all eager attention—what did she know of the marques of aeroplane engines!—"It was a day of rotten luck for me. I spotted nothing, and late in the afternoon my engine began to overheat and miss fire. I did my utmost to struggle towards Do——, Dunkirk, but the beastly thing gave out altogether, and down I dropped into the sea. I had an ordinary land plane without floats, and was obliged to cut myself clear and keep up as best I could with my air belt. It was a weary time, waiting to be picked up, all that night and all the next day; the cold of the water struck right through me, and I was senseless, like a dead man, when at last, thirty hours afterwards, one of our destroyers found me floating there, picked me up, and carried me into Dover. I was in hospital for six weeks, crippled with rheumatic fever, and my heart went wrong. It is much better now, and I hope soon to get back to flying again. I am still on sick leave."

"Poor heart," sighed Madame, and smiled to herself…. "He looked at me," she explained long afterwards, "as if there was still life in his poor strained heart. It was a real kindness to give it some gentle exercise."

"And when you are well you will again fly for France?" she inquired.

"Ah, yes. I yearn for the day when the obdurate doctors will permit me to fly again—for France…. And you, madame, who are so kind to a poor crippled soldier, is it permitted to ask—"

"I am, alas, a widow." She paused, and though demurely looking at her empty tea cup, saw his eyes light up. ["The silly boy was pleased that I was a widow," she explained. "As if that mattered."] "My poor husband fell for France—at Le Grand Couronne. That was eight months ago, and I am still inconsolable. I love to meet the brother officers of my dear lost husband. He was killed by a shell, close beside his general, and I do not even know where he was buried." She delicately wiped her eyes, and Rust murmured broken words of the deepest sympathy. Yet he was not sorry to hear that his new friend was a widow. It must have been a most pathetic scene.

Madame recovered from her sudden rush of grief—brought on by thoughts of that unknown grave upon Le Grand Couronne!—and began to pull on her gloves. "And you, my friend?" she asked gently.

"No one lives who will grieve for me," he replied sadly.

"You are young, my friend, and your heart will—recover itself. I am old, made old by illness and sorrow." She was a picture of glowing health! "May I ask the name by which I may remember you?"

He was clean bowled, for he, foolishly, had not prepared a plausible name. "I am called," stammered he, "Captain Rouille." It was the best that he could do on the instant—the translation of his uncommon English name into French.

"A strange name," she murmured, "though the sound of it is beautiful. Rouille! It signifies, for the moment, the decay of hopes, a mould of rust obscuring ambition. But in a little while the steel of your courage will shine bright once more. I am Madame Gilbert; my husband was of the Territorial Army—a Captain also." She had thought to have made him a Colonel on General Castelnau's staff, but refrained from so risky a flight of imagination. An obscure Captain of Territorials might well be called Guilbert, and pass unidentified.

As they pressed hands at parting, Rust hesitated. "May one hope, madame, to meet you again. Your kindness has been great, and I feel that I have made a new friend."

"And I also," sighed Madame. "I often come here to drink the English tea. It is a pleasing custom of London."

"To-morrow?" he inquired anxiously. "It is possible," replied Madame, very graciously.

* * * * *

"Well," said I, when Madame had told me of this meeting, "I hope that you had the grace to feel ashamed of yourself. To deceive an invalided flying officer with your tale of the Captain of Territorials, blown up by a shell beside his general upon Le Grand Couronne. It was abominable."

"It was the unknown grave which fetched him," said Madame cheerfully.

"Worse and worse. Why could you not have told him the truth?"

"Because, my stupid friend, the Captain Rouille interested me, and I was on duty. What was a captain in the French Flying Corps doing with an aeroplane driven by a 90 h.p. Royal Aircraft Factory engine (R.A.F.)? Why should he speak of 'our' destroyers, referring to those of the British, when he ought to have said the 'English' destroyers as a French officer would have done? Why again should he hesitate over his name, and then give so impossible a one as Rouille? No, I had discerned plainly that M. le Capitaine Rouille, whatever he might be, was not the man he pretended that he was. He spoke French perfectly, but he was not in the French flying service. He was English. I recollected my instructions from the great Dawson—to stick to any one who excited my suspicions, to let him make love to me if need be, and to discover his secrets. I am, my friend, a martyr to duty. Besides, le Capitaine Rouille was a handsome young man, very attractive. I was not grieved at the thought that he might pursue me with his attentions."

"Why," I asked in turn of Rust, "did you begin by telling lies to the charming Madame Gilbert?"

"I was in French uniform," said he, "and I had to play my part."

"And a nice mess you made of it," said I rudely.

"I am afraid that I did. That slip about the R.A.F. engine was unpardonable. But then how was I to know that the dear woman knew as much about aeroplanes as I did myself? She was like Desdemona at the feet of Othello, and, of course, I lost my head. You are as crazy about her as I am, with less excuse. Besides, I was on duty. Before Madame had spoken to me for five minutes, I was certain that she was not French. She spoke perfectly, but there was a little accent, a delightful accent, that told me she was Irish. That soupcon of a brogue which gives so delicate a spice to her English appears also in her French. My mother was an Irish woman, though I have never lived in Ireland. You know that all the Irish, especially those of America or of France, are watched most carefully by the police. Many of them hate the English, and spy upon us. When, therefore, I perceived that Madame, though she appeared to be French was by birth Irish, I recollected my instructions from Froissart. It was my duty to stick to her, to study her. If necessary to make love to her. It did not seem wholly disagreeable to me," he added dryly, "to make love to Madame Gilbert."

"I forgive you," said I, "though, from what I learn, you somewhat exceeded your instructions."

* * * * *

If I were not a most serious writer, this veracious history of Madame Gilbert and Captain Rust would tend to degenerate into comedy, possibly to reach the depths of farce. But, to one of my grave bent of mind, wasted deception, wasted energies, and, above all, wasted national money, excite rather to tears than to laughter. What a spectacle was this which I place before the reader! Here were two trusted members of the English Secret Service pitting against one another those treasures of intelligence, wit, and sensibility which they were employed—and paid—to exercise in the defence of their countries. It may be conceded that one of them was more or less honest. Rust, I am convinced, had persuaded himself—he has no marked ability or attractions of any kind that I can discern—that his duty impelled him to watch Madame with exceeding closeness of attention. That his strong inclinations marched with his duty may be allowed him as a privilege; the plea of duty was not, I believe, merely an excuse. But what can one say in defence of Madame, one who has stored within her little copper-covered head enough brains to furnish a brigade, say, of the Women's Emergency Corps? She had perceived that Rust was an English officer masquerading as a Frenchman, yet she could not have thought that he was a German spy. Why did she not ask him point blank what he was doing in that galley. She has never supplied me with a credible explanation, She pleads, with obvious insincerity, the instructions of Dawson, which in the most reprehensible way granted to her the vaguest of roving commissions. She parades her duty before me in the most tattered of rags.

Upon the following afternoon, when Madame Gilbert drove up to the Savoy in a taxi-cab at half-past four, a young man, in the uniform of a French officer, opened the door and handed her out. It was, of course, Captain Rust, who had waited palpitating upon the curb for some three-quarters of an hour. He led her to a small table which he had reserved for another charming duet of tea, cakes, and conversation.

At this second meeting, Madame bent herself to the deft cross-examination of Rust "Had the Captain Rouille joined St. Cyr as a cadet officer, or had he served in the ranks of the French Army?" He had served in the ranks, and broke into details of his training and garrison service which convinced her that he really had served. She became thoughtful. Rust, eager to show off his accomplishments, explained that he had been recommended for a commission and had joined St. Cyr. More details followed, all of a verisimilitude wholly convincing. Madame, who knew France and the French Army up and down, became more thoughtful and more puzzled. It was plain that Rust had really served in the ranks of the Army, and had been at St. Cyr. Yet he was an Englishman and an officer of the English Flying Corps! She asked further questions, innocent, flattering questions, seeking to discover what had happened to him after his course at St. Cyr. He did his best, but he was of inconsiderable agility of mind and deficient in imagination. He had been, he said, with Maunoury's Sixth Army, which, emerging from Paris in red taxis, had fallen upon the exposed right wing of von Kluck. His description was accurate enough, but the lavish details of former narratives were lacking. He had been officier de liaison on the Aisne; again the little intimate touches were lacking. He had joined the flying corps, but omitted to explain how he had learned to fly. It had been at Farnborough, but he could hardly admit this, and was, unhappily, quite ignorant of the French flying grounds.

Madame's quick mind began to see daylight. "How came it, my friend, that you were flying upon the coast when you suffered that accident, so terrible, and paralysed that poor brave heart of yours?" Madame asked the question in the most natural, sympathetic way. It was a facer for Rust, who regretted that he had been so communicative at that first meeting "I was lent to the Naval Wing," he explained, and avoided to particularise. By this time Madame had sorted out his service. She was quite sure that he had not been with Maunoury or upon the Aisne, but that in some manner, as yet not clear, he had left St. Cyr to pass into the English Army.

When in his turn Rust sought diffidently to penetrate the mystery surrounding Madame Gilbert, she overflowed with untruthful particulars. She resembles her master Dawson in this—it is unwise to believe one word which she wishes you to believe. Of her early life in Paris she spoke with emotion. She was the beloved only child of a French doctor—ah, the most learned and pious of men! He died early smitten by disease contracted during his gratuitous practice amongst the friendless poor. A most noble parent! Her mother, too, a saint and angel, had gone aloft shortly after seeing her daughter, Madame, happily married to a maker of caloriferes (anthracite stoves). "I am unworthy of those so noble parents," wailed Madame in broken tones. It was not until they were about to separate that Madame Gilbert herself threw him a bone of truth designed to test his appetite for curiosity. "I must fly," exclaimed she; "I am a woman tres occupee. I work, oh, so very hard, for my belle France and to avenge the death of my glorious husband." The blown-up stove maker did not seem to Rust to be a figure of glory, yet he forced himself again to express the deepest sympathy. "Yes," went on Madame, "I would avenge him. I work,"—she glanced round cautiously, and then whispered—"I work for the gouvernement anglais. I am an agent de police."

"Were you not rather rash," I asked of Madame Gilbert, "to give yourself away so completely? He might not have been so thorough an ass as you thought."

"My friend," said Madame calmly, "I had taken tea with him twice, and had satisfied myself that he was not, what you call, very bright. A dear fellow, handsome, a gentleman of the English pattern, but not bright. If I had not helped him to get a move on, I might have lunched with him, had tea, dined with him, attended theatres, traversed in motors your pleasant countryside, flirted, until I had become a very old woman, and there would have been nothing to show for all my exertions. I remembered the instructions of Mr. Dawson, I recalled to myself my duty, I was compelled to discover who and what was this Capitaine Rouille, and I could only succeed by forcing him to reveal himself—to give himself away. When I said that I was an agent of the English police, he did not believe me; but he was curious—he watched me. I gave him much to watch and to imagine that he had discovered. Then one began to get forward."

* * * * *

I am ignorant of the diplomatic pourparlers which led up to the week-end trip to Brighton, that remarkable trip which ended l'affaire Rust. It must have been planned by Madame; it bears the unmistakable imprint of her impish wit; it was, too, a bold development of her designs for the effective speeding up of Rust. He would have dallied all through the summer, looking feebly for an opportunity to ravish a despatch-case which always accompanied Madame and which had become the inseparable and ostentatious "gooseberry" at their meetings. Madame declared that it was stuffed with papers the most secret. "The English Government would be desolated if they passed for one moment out of my hands." This despatch-case played parts quite human. It was perpetually provocative of Rust's curiosity, and a reminder that the agreeable pastime of making love to Madame was not an end in itself, but a means whereby he might discharge his official duties. It was, moreover, a visible sign that Madame was a woman, tres occupee, and a self-styled agent de police; it rested always silent at her side as a protector of innocence. Rust becomes uneasy when that case is mentioned, but Madame bubbles over at the thoughts of her petite chere portefeuille, cette idee de genie. She brags of her genius, of her notion si lumineuse, of her guet-apens si adorable.

While Madame must have planned the Brighton trip, she contrived that the suggestion should come timidly, deprecatingly, from Rust. She would have scorned so crude an advance, one, too, falling so far short of her high standard of womanly virtue, as a direct hint that she was willing to pass three days in a seaside hotel with a young man! Mais, non. Ce serait une betise incroyable! I can imagine her hints, increasing in strength as she beat against the obtuse heaviness of Rust's intellect. But I cannot imagine how any one, least of all the brilliant Froissart, should have conceived that lumpish soldier to be capable of the finesse needful for the Secret Service. He has since been returned empty, and I do not wonder at it.

Madame must have lamented the stuffiness of London during the bright days of early June, and painted, in her enthusiastic French fashion, a picture of southern England and the glittering Channel. "Ma foi, mon ami, what would I not give for one hour of peace and rest, away from this swarming hive of men and women? It is as yet too cold to swim in that sea which washes the shores of my beautiful France—and bears the so gallant English soldiers to her help—but I would love to sit upon the sands and gaze, gaze across the waters towards my poor bleeding land. But, alas, I am a woman tres occupee." After a great deal of this sort of thing, Rust was spurred up to suggest that he also was weary, and that nothing could be more delightful than to sit beside Madame upon those sands and to bewail with her the woes of their common country. The idiot did not reflect that a woman of Madame's taste in dress does not usually mess up her Paris frocks with nasty sea sand. Madame sighed. It was a charming picture, but, alas, quite impossible. Rust still further spurred by Madame—"Le Capitaine Rouille is not very bright"—at last broke into a proposal delivered with many hesitations and many apologies. Why should not they travel to Brighton on the Friday evening and draw solace for their weary souls from a Saturday, Sunday, and possibly Monday, at Brighton? Madame became a frozen statue of offended womanhood! What, mon Dieu, had she done that he should conceive her to be a light woman? She, the never-to-be-comforted widow of the incomparably gallant hero of anthracite stoves and le Grand Couronne. She had been too unsuspicious, too trustful; their pleasant acquaintance must end upon the instant; the too-gross insult which he had put upon her could never be pardoned. Rust was borne away and overwhelmed in the flow of her sad reproaches. Abjectly he grovelled: He regard the ineffable Madame Guilbert as a light woman! Perish the thought! He, to whom she had been an angel of kindness and discretion! He cast a slur upon the shining brightness of her reputation! Rust had never in his life been so eloquent. Madame listened with satisfaction. She might in time, after long years, forgive him, but not yet. The insult, however unintended, was too fresh and her heart was desolated! She scorched and scarified Rust during two whole days, for their meetings continued unbroken, and at last, as an undeserved concession and as evidence of her soft forgiving heart, she consented to go to Brighton on the Friday. "We must regard closely les convenances. You men, so rash and so stupid, you do not understand how infinitely precious to us poor women is the spotless bloom of our reputation." Rust protested that the bloom upon the unplucked peach was not, in his eyes, more stainless than the reputation of Madame. How she must have grinned! He made plans, rude, coarse plans, for the shielding of the so precious reputation of dear Madame Guilbert, but she gently put them aside. "In my hands," she declared grandly, "le Capitaine Guilbert has left his honour, and I will guard it with my life. Alas, what is my life when my heart is buried in that lonely grave upon le Grand Couronne in which I pray rests his much-blown-up body. I myself will devise the means by which I can grant you a mark of my condescending forgiveness and preserve sans reproche the honour of a Guilbert."

I confess that I have drawn upon my imagination for most of this touching scene, but, knowing Madame as I do, I am sure that I have given the hang of it.