XII A TRICK ACCORDING TO FANDOR

It was a November Sunday evening. A crowd of leave-expired soldiers were entraining at the Eastern Station. They would be dropped at their respective garrisons along the line of some 400 kilometres separating the capital from the frontier.

They had dined, supped, feasted with friends and relatives: now they were voicing regretful farewells by medley of songs and ear-splitting serenades. They scrambled into the third-class compartments, fifteen, sixteen at a time, filling the seats and overflowing on to the floor. Little by little the deafening din of the "wild beasts," as they were jokingly called, diminished; their enthusiasm died down as the night advanced, while the train rushed full steam ahead for the frontier of France.

They fell asleep, knowing that kind comrades would awaken them when the train drew up at their various garrisons. At Reims, the compartments disgorged the dragoons pell-mell; at Châlons, so many gunners and infantry had got out that the train was half emptied. At Sainte-Menehould, a large contingent of cuirassiers and infantry had cleared out. Towards four in the morning the express was nearing Verdun.

As the train steamed out of Sainte-Menehould, a corporal of the line, who had been forced to sit up as stiff as a poker for several hours, stretched himself at length on the compartment seat with a sigh of relief. But the jerks and jolts of the carriage, the hard seat, made sleep impossible: the epaulettes of his uniform were an added source of discomfort. The corporal sat up, rubbed the musty glass of the window, and watched for the coming day. On the far horizon, beyond a shadowy stretch of country, a pallid dawn was breaking. Trees were swaying in a gusty wind. At intervals, when the clatter of the onrushing train lessened, the heavy pattering of rain on the roof became audible.

"Confound it!" growled the corporal. "Detestable weather! Hateful country!"

Whilst attempting some muscular exercises to unstiffen his aching limbs, he muttered:

"And only to think of that wretch Vinson enjoying the benefit of my first-class permit!... Started off to-night under my name, and is now rolling along in a comfortable sleeping-car towards the sunny South with a nice bit of money in his purse!"

The corporal in the inhospitable third-class of the Verdun train made mental pictures of Vinson's progress south. He talked to himself aloud.

"Good journey to you, you jolly dog!... In six weeks' time, if you have a thought to spare for me, you will send your news as we arranged!"

The corporal began breathing warm breaths on his numbed fingers.

"By Jove! The company is not prodigal of foot-warmers, that's certain! It's an ice-house in here!"

He continued to soliloquise:

"It's a deuce of a risky business I have let myself in for!... To take Vinson's place, and set off for Verdun, where his regiment is doing garrison duty, the regiment to which he has just been attached!... It would run as smooth as oil if I had done my military service, but, owing to circumstances, I have never been called up!... A pretty sort of fool I may make of myself!"...

After a reflective silence, he went on:

"Bah! I shall pull through all right! Have I not crammed my head with theory the last eight days, and pumped Vinson for all he was worth about the rules and regulations, and the ways of camp life!... All the same ... to make my début in an Eastern garrison, in the 'Iron Division,' straight off the reel takes some nerve!... What cheek!... It's the limit!... But, my dear little Fandor, don't forget you are at Verdun not to play the complete soldier but to gather exact information about a band of traitors, and to unmask them at the first opportunity—a work of national importance, little Fandor, and don't you forget it!"

Thus our adventurous Vinson-Fandor lay shivering in the night train on the point of drawing up at Verdun.

Having saved the wretched Vinson from suicide, Fandor had made him promise to leave France and await developments, whilst Fandor, posing as Vinson, studied at close quarters the spies who had drawn the miserable corporal into their net. Fandor could personate Vinson with every chance of success, because the 257th of the line had never set eyes on the corporal.

After a week of perplexity, Fandor had come to a decision the previous night. Wishing to let his "dear master" know of his audacious project, he had telephoned to Juve on the Sunday evening to ask him to come to the flat. Then Vagualame had appeared on the scene. Fandor knew him to be an agent of the Second Bureau. Evidently Vagualame was after Vinson. If Fandor had let himself be caught in the corporal's uniform, which he had just put on, his spy plans would have been ruined, and the corporal, to whom he had promised his protection, would have been caught.

Fandor fled. The situation would have to be made clear when opportunity offered.

"Certainly," said Fandor to himself, with a smile: "things are pretty well mixed up at present! That meeting between Vagualame and Juve at the flat must have been a queer one! Two birds of a feather, though differing in glory, who would not make head or tail of so unexpected a conference!"

To clear up the imbroglio, Fandor had meant to send Juve a wire on his arrival at Verdun; on second thoughts he had decided against it. Probably the spies, or the Second Bureau, or both, were keeping a sharp watch on Vinson: it would be wiser to refrain from any communication which might reveal the fact that the corporal Vinson, who joined the 257th of the line at Verdun, was none other than Jérôme Fandor, journalist.

Though stiff with cold and fatigue, Fandor's brain was clear and active.

It is all right! Juve would be surprised, anxious, would make enquiries at the Company's offices, would learn that on the Sunday evening Fandor had occupied the place reserved for him in the sleeping-car, would be reassured, would not worry about Fandor's abrupt departure and silence—Fandor was holiday making!

"Yes, it is all right!" reiterated Fandor. "What I have to do is to throw myself wholeheartedly into my part, and play it as jovially as possible!"

The train whistled, slowed down, entered the station of Verdun.

Fandor let the crowd of soldiers precede him, as well as one or two civilians whom the night express had brought to this important frontier fortress. Having readjusted his coat, the fringes of his epaulettes, and put on his cap correctly, this corporal of the 257th line, stepped on to the platform, reached the exit, passed out on to a vast flat space, and found himself floundering in a sea of mud.

The men who had arrived with him had hurried off: Fandor was alone on the outskirts of the silent town.

What to do? Which way to go?

Under the flame of a gas-jet struggling against the onslaughts of the wind, Fandor caught sight of the honest face of a constable enveloped in a thick hooded coat. He eyed Fandor.

"Excuse me," said Corporal Vinson-Fandor, rolling his r's, in imitation of a rustic fresh from the country, "but could you tell me where I shall find the 257th of the line?"

"What do you want with the 257th of the line?" queried the constable.

"It is like this, Monsieur: I was in the 214th, garrisoned at Châlons. I have had eight days' leave, and they inform me I am attached to the 257th."

The constable nodded.

"And now you want to get to your new regiment?"

"Precisely."

"Well, the 257th is in three places: at bastion 14; at the Saint Benoit barracks; and at Fort Vieux—which are you bound for, Corporal?"

"I don't know—I've no preference," murmured Corporal Vinson-Fandor.

The two men stood staring at each other in the rain.

Despite the chill and melancholy dawn, with its darkly reddening skies, Fandor felt he was on the very verge of bursting into wild laughter.

"Let us see your route instructions," quoth the constable.

Corporal Vinson-Fandor showed his paper.

"That's it!" cried the constable triumphantly. "You are down to report yourself at the Saint Benoit barracks. You're in luck, my lad! It's only fifty yards or so from here!... Go down the road, and you will see the barrack wall on the left. The entrance is in the middle."

Fandor saluted the friendly constable, hurried off, and reached the Saint Benoit gate in a few minutes.

"The 257th?" he asked the sentry.

"Here!... You will find the sergeant in the guard-room."

Fandor entered a smoke-filled room; several soldiers were stretched at full length on a bench, slumbering: a snoring non-commissioned officer was lying on three straw bottomed chairs close to a stove.

At Fandor's entrance he was wide awake in a moment: he swore: it was the sergeant.

"What do you want?" he demanded roughly.

Adopting a military manner, Fandor announced:

"Corporal Vinson, just arrived from Châlons, exchanged from the 214th, sergeant!"

"Ah! Quite so. Wait! I will show you your company."

Stretching himself, the sergeant marched to the end of the room, turned up a gas-jet, opened a book, looked through the pages slowly. His finger stopped at a name.

"Orderly!"

A man presented himself.

"Conduct Corporal Vinson to A block, second floor."

Turning to Fandor, the sergeant informed him:

"You are attached to the third of the second."

While plodding through the mud of the courtyard, Fandor said to himself:

"The third of the second means, I suppose, that I have the honour of belonging to the third company of the second battalion."

Fandor gazed with lively curiosity at the immense building in which he was to pass his days and nights for he did not know how long a time. As he scrutinised this enormous pile, standing harsh and stark in its uncompromising and ordered strength, as he took stock of the vast courtyards and the stony lengths of imprisoning walls, he got an idea of that formidable organisation called a regiment, which itself is but an infinitesimal part of that great whole we call an army. Appreciating as he now did the importance, the immutability, the regularity of the movements of the military machine, with its wheels within wheels, Fandor asked himself if it were possible to carry through the programme he had drawn up for himself. Could he, at one and the same time, trick the French Army and save it?... He had taken his precautions: he had read and reread Vinson's manual, now his manual. Mentally he had put himself in the skin of a corporal: he was letter perfect, and now he must cover himself with the mantle of Vinson—for the greater glory of France!

He could not help laughing when he read the list of his facial characteristics: chin, round; nose, medium; face, oval; eyes, grey. Vague enough this to be safe! Fandor's hair was dark chestnut: Vinson's was brown. Vinson and Fandor were sufficiently alike as to height and figure: besides, soldiers' uniforms were not an exact fit.

"Here you are, Corporal!" announced the orderly. He pointed to a vast room at the end of a corridor. The bugle had just sounded the reveille and the barrack-room was humming like a hive of awakened bees. The orderly had vanished. Fandor stood at the threshold, hesitating: his self-confidence had gone down with a run. It was a momentary lapse. Pulling himself together he walked into the room.

When giving him his instructions, Vinson had warned Fandor, that when it came to settling down in barracks he would find nothing to hand.

"Among other little items, your bed will be missing. As corporal you have a right to round on them. Row them hot and good—start reprisals straight away. The men will pretend not to understand, but insist—don't take no for an answer; take whatever you want right and left—in the end you will get properly settled in."

Fandor carried out these instructions. Before he had been ten minutes in the room, men were rushing in all directions, fussing, jostling one another, coming, going, demanding of all the echoes in that huge white-washed barn of a barrack-room dormitory:

"Where is the palliasse of Corporal Vinson!"

"Find me the bolster of Corporal Vinson!"