“I know a quicker way,” said Recklow.  “Come on.”

The girl took his hand confidingly and walked beside him, holding one arm before her face to shield her eyes from branches in the darkness.

They had gone, perhaps, a dozen paces when a man stepped from behind a great beech-tree, peered after them, then turned and hurried down the slope to where the Swiss wire stretched glistening under the stars.  He ran along this wire until he came to the dry bed of a torrent.

Up this he stumbled under the forest patches of alternate moonlight and shadow until he came to a hard path crossing it on a masonry viaduct.

“Harry!” he called in a husky, quavering voice, choking for breath.  “Cripes, Harry—­where in hell are you?”

“Here, you blighter!  What’s the bully row?  Where’s Helsa—­”

“With Recklow!”

“What!!”

“Double-crossed us!” he whispered; “I seen her!  I was huntin’ along the fence when I come on them, thick as thieves.  She’s crossed us; she’s hollered!  Oh, Cripes, Harry, Helsa has went an’ squealed!”

“Helsa!”

“Yes, Helsa—­I wouldn’t ‘a’ believed it!  But I seen ’em.  I seen ’em whispering.  I seen her take his hand an’ lead him up through the trees.  She’s squealed on us!  She’s bringing Recklow—­”

“Recklow!  Are you sure?”

“I got closte to ’em.  There was enough moonlight to spot him by.  I know the cut of him, don’t I?  That wuz him all right.”  He wiped his face on his sleeve.  “Now what are we goin’ to do?” he demanded brokenly.  “Where do we get off, Harry?”

Skelton appeared dazed: 

“The slut,” he kept repeating without particular emphasis, “the little slut!  I thought she’d fallen for me.  I thought she was my girl.  And now to do that!  And now to go for to do us in like that—­”

“Well, we’re all right, ain’t we?” quavered Macniff.  “We make our getaway all right, don’t we?  Don’t we?”

“I can’t understand—­”

“Say, listen, Harry.  To blazes with Helsa!  She’s hollered and that ends her.  But can we make our getaway?  And how about them Germans waitin’ for us by that there crucifix on top of this mountain?  Where do they get off?  Does this guy, Recklow, get them?”

“He can’t get six men alone.”

“Well, can’t he sic the Swiss onto ’em?”

A terrible doubt arose in Skelton’s mind:  “Recklow wouldn’t come here alone.  He’s got his men in these woods!  That damn woman fixed all this.  It’s a plant!  She’s framed us!  What do I care about the Germans on the mountain!  To hell with them.  I’m going!”

“Where?”

“Into Alsace.  Where do you think?”

“You gotta cross the mountain, then—­or go back into France.”

But neither man dared do that now.  There was only one way out, and that lay over Mount Terrible—­either directly past the black crucifix towering from its limestone cairn on the windy peak, or just below through a narrow belt of woods.