Adventure, December 1914 — page 200: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

198 “You are the most troublesome man who ever came to Bulgaria,’”’ Boris was protest- ing between his exclamations of delight. “It seems to me you are always being helped out of difficulties that you get yourself into.”’ Masoya simply smiled and squeezed my other hand. What could I say to her? What could any man say to a woman like this, who was not afraid to play with men at their own game, and not ask for odds? As a matter of fact, before we had oppor- tunity for speech, an automobile rolled through the crowd, and the staff officer who alighted from it announced that General Savoff had sent him to fetch us at once to his quarters in the village. “Did you do—what you did—for me or for the cause?” I asked abruptly when we were alone in the tonneau. “That is not a fair question,’’ she an- swered with averted eyes. “Yes, it is,” I insisted. “Did you?” “TI did it for you,” she: said slowly, and looked me squarely in the face. “But I would have done it for the cause—if it had not been for you,” she added hastily. ‘‘I would have done it anyway, for the cause.”’ ‘“‘And the cause prospers?”’ She hesitated. : ‘‘Yes—now that we have you again. Yet ? She shook her head. “I can not discuss this offhand with you. Wait until affairs here at Tchataldja are settled. Then you can go to Sofia and talk it over with Boris’s uncle.”’ “T’d lots rather talk it over with you,” I answered less fatuously than it sounds. A smile flickered across her tired face. “T dare say you would,” she retorted. ‘‘But here are General Savoff’s quarters. You may make my excuses to the General. I need a rest. Good-by—Dan.” The tone in which she said that last word —a very plain, homely word—left me trans- fixed to the muddy, frost-riven cobblestones of Muradli’s main street, while the aide-de- camp who had climbed down from the driver’s seat of the car spoke to me twice. Finally he touched me on the arm. “The General is waiting for you, guspo- dine,’’ he said politely. “Ehe”’ I exclaimed. “Ah, yes. Of course.” Then my temper got the better of me. “Well, why didn’t you say it before? Oh! No, I didn’t hear—— All right.” He answered with a cheerful smile and Adventure bowed me most courteously into the Gen- eral’s waiting-room, where an orderly hand- ed me a cup of coffee that was the most welcome thing I had tasted in months. Savoff listened to my story in silence un- til I was half way through. Then he rang the bell on his desk, and when the orderly entered said— “Tell my adjutant to telephone General Dimitrieff to have General Gortcheff put under arrest at once.”’ He did not interrupt me again, and after I had finished he sat for some minutes with his head in his hand, pondering deeply. Then he went to a great map of the Balkan terrain that hung on one of the walls of the room and studied minutely the clumps of tiny, vari-colored flags that were stuck here and there, and especially those before Con- stantinople and Adrianople. When he swung around abruptly I knew that he had made up his mind. “IT could force terms tomorrow, now that you are safe again, Mr. Blair,”’ he said. “But to make the terms more crushingly in- sistent—and to lift our prestige above any possibility of dispute—I judge it essential that we should first capture Adrianople by storm. Our plans had not contemplated this for two weeks yet, but by sacrificing a few thousand men we can do it successfully within the week. Therefore I am afraid I must ask you to stay with us a few days longer.” He said it as coolly as I would have dis- cussed a matter of a few thousands more or less in interest. All that day headquarters fairly seethed. Generals came and went by train and auto- mobile and on horseback. The telegraph and telephone offices were buried under official messages. The clerks and orderlies did not have an idle moment. It seemed as if I was the only man in that vicinity with- out an allotted task—although I had been given strict injunctions to sleep. Sleep was impossible in the midst of such bustle, however, and I remained a looker- on until the fruition of Savoff’s activities, which came about five o’clock in the after- noon in the shape of a husky, thunderous murmur, pulsing over the rolling hills and plains of Thrace like echoes of the monoto- nous hammer-blows of some gigantic Titan. It was the opening of the cannonade that was to prepare the way for the last assault upon Adrianople. MICLOOOK C@