I had two trunks—two, you ninny! Two! Ou est l'autre?
The grinning customs guard lifted his shoulders to his ears and spread out his palms. "Mais, mamselle——"
Don't you 'mais' me, sir! I had two trunks—deux troncs—when I got aboard that wabbly old boat at Dover this morning, and I'm not going to budge from this wharf until I find the other one. Where did you learn your French, anyway? Can't you understand when I speak your language?
The girl plumped herself down on top of the unhasped trunk and folded her arms truculently. With a quizzical smile, the customs guard looked down into her brown eyes, smoldering dangerously now, and began all over again his speech of explanation.
Wagon-lit? She caught a familiar word. "Mais oui; that's where I want to go—aboard your wagon-lit, for Paris. Voilà!"—the girl carefully gave the word three syllables—"mon ticket pour Paree!" She opened her patent-leather reticule, rummaged furiously therein, brought out a handkerchief, a tiny mirror, a packet of rice papers, and at last a folded and punched ticket. This she displayed with a triumphant flourish.
Voilà! Il dit 'Miss Jane Gerson'; that's me—moi-meme, I mean. And il dit 'deux troncs'; now you can't go behind that, can you? Where is that other trunk?
A whistle shrilled back beyond the swinging doors of the station. Folk in the customs shed began a hasty gathering together of parcels and shawl straps, and a general exodus toward the train sheds commenced. The girl on the trunk looked appealingly about her; nothing but bustle and confusion; no Samaritan to turn aside and rescue a fair traveler fallen among customs guards. Her eyes filled with trouble, and for an instant her reliant mouth broke its line of determination; the lower lip quivered suspiciously. Even the guard started to walk away.
Oh, oh, please don't go! Jane Gerson was on her feet, and her hands shot out in an impulsive appeal. "Oh, dear; maybe I forgot to tip you. Here, attende au secours, if you'll only find that other trunk before the train——"
Pardon; but if I may be of any assistance——
Miss Gerson turned. A tallish, old-young-looking man, in a gray lounge suit, stood heels together and bent stiffly in a bow. Nothing of the beau or the boulevardier about his face or manner. Miss Gerson accepted his intervention as heaven-sent.
Oh, thank you ever so much! The guard, you see, doesn't understand good French. I just can't make him understand that one of my trunks is missing. And the train for Paris——
Already the stranger was rattling incisive French at the guard. That official bowed low, and, with hands and lips, gave rapid explanation. The man in the gray lounge suit turned to the girl.
A little misunderstanding, Miss—ah——
Gerson—Jane Gerson, of New York, she promptly supplied.
A little misunderstanding, Miss Gerson. The customs guard says your other trunk has already been examined, passed, and placed on the baggage van. He was trying to tell you that it would be necessary for you to permit a porter to take this trunk to the train before time for starting. With your permission——
The stranger turned and halloed to a porter, who came running. Miss Gerson had the trunk locked and strapped in no time, and it was on the shoulders of the porter.
You have very little time, Miss Gerson. The train will be making a start directly. If I might—ah—pilot you through the station to the proper train shed. I am not presuming?
You are very kind, she answered hurriedly.
They set off, the providential Samaritan in the lead. Through the waiting-room and on to a broad platform, almost deserted, they went. A guard's whistle shrilled. The stranger tucked a helping hand under Jane Gerson's arm to steady her in the sharp sprint down a long aisle between tracks to where the Paris train stood. It began to move before they had reached its mid-length. A guard threw open a carriage door, in they hopped, and with a rattle of chains and banging of buffers the Express du Nord was off on its arrow flight from Calais to the capital.
The carriage, which was of the second class, was comfortably filled. Miss Gerson stumbled over the feet of a puffy Fleming nearest the door, was launched into the lap of a comfortably upholstered widow on the opposite seat, ricochetted back to jam an elbow into a French gentleman's spread newspaper, and finally was catapulted into a vacant space next to the window on the carriage's far side. She giggled, tucked the skirts of her pearl-gray duster about her, righted the chic sailor hat on her chestnut-brown head, and patted a stray wisp of hair back into place. Her meteor flight into and through the carriage disturbed her not a whit.
As for the Samaritan, he stood uncertainly in the narrow cross aisle, swaying to the swing of the carriage and reconnoitering seating possibilities. There was a place, a very narrow one, next to the fat Fleming; also there was a vacant place next to Jane Gerson. The Samaritan caught the girl's glance in his indecision, read in it something frankly comradely, and chose the seat beside her.
Very good of you, I'm sure, he murmured. "I did not wish to presume——"
You're not, the girl assured, and there was something so fresh, so ingenuous, in the tone and the level glance of her brown eyes that the Samaritan felt all at once distinctly satisfied with the cast of fortune that had thrown him in the way of a distressed traveler. He sat down with a lifting of the checkered Alpine hat he wore and a stiff little bow from the waist.
If I may, Miss Gerson—I am Captain Woodhouse, of the signal service.
Oh! The girl let slip a little gasp—the meed of admiration the feminine heart always pays to shoulder straps. "Signal service; that means the army?"
His majesty's service; yes, Miss Gerson.
You are, of course, off duty? she suggested, with the faintest possible tinge of regret at the absence of the stripes and buttons that spell "soldier" with the woman.
You might say so, Miss Gerson. Egypt—the Nile country is my station. I am on my way back there after a bit of a vacation at home—London I mean, of course.
She stole a quick side glance at the face of her companion. A soldier's face it was, lean and school-hardened and competent. Lines about the eyes and mouth—the stamp of the sun and the imprint of the habit to command—had taken from Captain Woodhouse's features something of freshness and youth, though giving in return the index of inflexible will and lust for achievement. His smooth lips were a bit thin, Jane Gerson thought, and the out-shooting chin, almost squared at the angles, marked Captain Woodhouse as anything but a trifler or a flirt. She was satisfied that nothing of presumption or forwardness on the part of this hard-molded chap from Egypt would give her cause to regret her unconventional offer of friendship.
Captain Woodhouse, in his turn, had made a satisfying, though covert, appraisal of his traveling companion by means of a narrow mirror inset above the baggage rack over the opposite seat. Trim and petite of figure, which was just a shade under the average for height and plumpness; a small head set sturdily on a round smooth neck; face the very embodiment of independence and self-confidence, with its brown eyes wide apart, its high brow under the parting waves of golden chestnut, broad humorous mouth, and tiny nose slightly nibbed upward: Miss Up-to-the-Minute New York, indeed! From the cocked red feather in her hat to the dainty spatted boots Jane Gerson appeared in Woodhouse's eyes a perfect, virile, vividly alive American girl. He'd met her kind before; had seen them browbeating bazaar merchants in Cairo and riding desert donkeys like strong young queens. The type appealed to him.
The first stiffness of informal meeting wore away speedily. The girl tactfully directed the channel of conversation into lines familiar to Woodhouse. What was Egypt like; who owned the Pyramids, and why didn't the owners plant a park around them and charge admittance? Didn't he think Rameses and all those other old Pharaohs had the right idea in advertising—putting up stone billboards to last all time? The questions came crisp and startling; Woodhouse found himself chuckling at the shrewd incisiveness of them. Rameses an advertiser and the Pyramids stone hoardings to carry all those old boys' fame through the ages! He'd never looked on them in that light before.
I say, Miss Gerson, you'd make an excellent business person, now, really, the captain voiced his admiration.
Just cable that at my expense to old Pop Hildebrand, of Hildebrand's department store, New York, she flashed back at him. "I'm trying to convince him of just that very thing."
Really, now; a department shop! What, may I ask, do you have to do for—ah—Pop Hildebrand?
Oh, I'm his foreign buyer, Jane answered, with a conscious note of pride. "I'm over here to buy gowns for the winter season, you see. Paul Poiret—Worth—Paquin; you've heard of those wonderful people, of course?"
Can't say I have, the captain confessed, with a rueful smile into the girl's brown eyes.
Then you've never bought a Worth? she challenged. "For if you had you'd not forget the name—or the price—very soon."
Gowns—and things are not in my line, Miss Gerson, he answered simply, and the girl caught herself feeling a secret elation. A man who didn't know gowns couldn't be very intimately acquainted with women. And—well—
And this Hildebrand, he sends you over here alone just to buy pretties for New York's wonderful women? the captain was saying. "Aren't you just a bit—ah—nervous to be over in this part of the world—alone?"
Not in the least, the girl caught him up. "Not about the alone part, I should say. Maybe I am fidgety and sort of worried about making good on the job. This is my first trip—my very first as a buyer for Hildebrand. And, of course, if I should fall down——"
Fall down? Woodhouse echoed, mystified. The girl laughed, and struck her left wrist a smart blow with her gloved right hand.
There I go again—slang; 'vulgar American slang,' you'll call it. If I could only rattle off the French as easily as I do New Yorkese I'd be a wonder. I mean I'm afraid I won't make good.
Oh!
But why should I worry about coming over alone? Jane urged. "Lots of American girls come over here alone with an American flag pinned to their shirt-waists and wearing a Baedeker for a wrist watch. Nothing ever happens to them."
Captain Woodhouse looked out on the flying panorama of straw-thatched houses and fields heavy with green grain. He seemed to be balancing words. He glanced at the passenger across the aisle, a wizened little man, asleep. In a lowered voice he began:
A woman alone—over here on the Continent at this time; why, I very much fear she will have great difficulties when the—ah—trouble comes.
Trouble? Jane's eyes were questioning.
I do not wish to be an alarmist, Miss Gerson, Captain Woodhouse continued, hesitant. "Goodness knows we've had enough calamity shouters among the unionists at home. But have you considered what you would do—how you would get back to America in case of—war?" The last word was almost a whisper.
War? she echoed. "Why, you don't mean all this talk in the papers is——"
Is serious, yes, Woodhouse answered quietly. "Very serious."
Why, Captain Woodhouse, I thought you had war talk every summer over here just as our papers are filled each spring with gossip about how Tesreau is going to jump to the Feds, or the Yanks are going to be sold. It's your regular midsummer outdoor sport over here, this stirring up the animals.
Woodhouse smiled, though his gray eyes were filled with something not mirth.
I fear the animals are—stirred, as you say, too far this time, he resumed. "The assassination of the Archduke Ferd——"
Yes, I remember I did read something about that in the papers at home. But archdukes and kings have been killed before, and no war came of it. In Mexico they murder a president before he has a chance to send out 'At home' cards.
Europe is so different from Mexico, her companion continued, the lines of his face deepening. "I am afraid you over in the States do not know the dangerous politics here; you are so far away; you should thank God for that. You are not in a land where one man—or two or three—may say, 'We will now go to war,' and then you go, willy-nilly."
The seriousness of the captain's speech and the fear that he could not keep from his eyes sobered the girl. She looked out on the sun-drenched plains of Pas de Calais, where toy villages, hedged fields, and squat farmhouses lay all in order, established, seeming for all time in the comfortable doze of security. The plodding manikins in the fields, the slumberous oxen drawing the harrows amid the beet rows, pigeons circling over the straw hutches by the tracks' side—all this denied the possibility of war's corrosion.
Don't you think everybody is suffering from a bad dream when they say there's to be fighting? she queried. "Surely it is impossible that folks over here would all consent to destroy this." She waved toward the peaceful countryside.
A bad dream, yes. But one that will end in a nightmare, he answered. "Tell me, Miss Gerson, when will you be through with your work in Paris, and on your way back to America?"
Not for a month; that's sure. Maybe I'll be longer if I like the place.
Woodhouse pondered.
A month. This is the tenth of July. I am afraid—— I say, Miss Gerson, please do not set me down for a meddler—this short acquaintance, and all that; but may I not urge on you that you finish your work in Paris and get back to England at least in two weeks? The captain had turned, and was looking into the girl's eyes with an earnest intensity that startled her. "I can not tell you all I know, of course. I may not even know the truth, though I think I have a bit of it, right enough. But one of your sort—to be caught alone on this side of the water by the madness that is brewing! By George, I do not like to think of it!"
I thank you, Captain Woodhouse, for your warning, Jane answered him, and impulsively she put out her hand to his. "But, you see, I'll have to run the risk. I couldn't go scampering back to New York like a scared pussy-cat just because somebody starts a war over here. I'm on trial. This is my first trip as buyer for Hildebrand, and it's a case of make or break with me. War or no war, I've got to make good. Anyway"—this with a toss of her round little chin—"I'm an American citizen, and nobody'll dare to start anything with me."
Right you are! Woodhouse beamed his admiration. "Now we'll talk about those skyscrapers of yours. Everybody back from the States has something to say about those famous buildings, and I'm fairly burning for first-hand information from one who knows them."
Laughingly she acquiesced, and the grim shadow of war was pushed away from them, though hardly forgotten by either. At the man's prompting, Jane gave intimate pictures of life in the New World metropolis, touching with shrewd insight the fads and shams of New York's denizens even as she exalted the achievements of their restless energy.
Woodhouse found secret amusement and delight in her racy nervous speech, in the dexterity of her idiom and patness of her characterizations. Here was a new sort of for him. Not the languid creature of studied suppression and feeble enthusiasm he had known, but a virile, vivid, sparkling woman of a new land, whose impulses were as unhindered as her speech was heterodox. She was a woman who worked for her living; that was a new type, too. Unafraid, she threw herself into the competition of a man's world; insensibly she prided herself on her ability to "make good"—expressive Americanism, that,—under any handicap. She was a woman with a "job"; Captain Woodhouse had never before met one such.
Again, here was a woman who tried none of the stale arts and tricks of coquetry; no eyebrow strategy or maidenly simpering about Jane Gerson. Once sure Woodhouse was what she took him to be, a gentleman, the girl had established a frank basis of comradeship that took no reckoning of the age-old conventions of sex allure and sex defense. The unconventionality of their meeting weighed nothing with her. Equally there was not a hint of sophistication on the girl's part.
So the afternoon sped, and when the sun dropped over the maze of spires and chimney pots that was Paris, each felt regret at parting.
To Egypt, yes, Woodhouse ruefully admitted. "A dreary deadly 'place in the sun' for me. To have met you, Miss Gerson; it has been delightful, quite."
I hope, the girl said, as Woodhouse handed her into a taxi, "I hope that if that war comes it will find you still in Egypt, away from the firing-line."
Not a fair thing to wish for a man in the service, Woodhouse answered, laughing. "I may be more happy when I say my best wish for you is that when the war comes it will find you a long way from Paris. Good-by, Miss Gerson, and good luck!"
Captain Woodhouse stood, heels together and hat in hand, while her taxi trundled off, a farewell flash of brown eyes rewarding him for the military correctness of his courtesy. Then he hurried to another station to take a train—not for a Mediterranean port and distant Egypt, but for Berlin.
It would be wiser to talk in German, the woman said. "In these times French or English speech in Berlin——" she finished, with a lifting of her shapely bare shoulders, sufficiently eloquent. The waiter speeded his task of refilling the man's glass and discreetly withdrew.
Oh, I'll talk in German quick enough, the man assented, draining his thin half bubble of glass down to the last fizzing residue in the stem. "Only just show me you've got the right to hear, and the good fat bank-notes to pay; that's all." He propped his sharp chin on a hand that shook slightly, and pushed his lean flushed face nearer hers. An owlish caution fought the wine fancies in his shifting lynx eyes under reddened lids; also there was admiration for the milk-white skin and ripe lips of the woman by his side. For an instant—half the time of a breath—a flash of loathing made the woman's eyes tigerish; but at once they changed again to mild bantering.
So? Friend Billy Capper, of Brussels, has a touch of the spy fever himself, and distrusts an old pal? She laughed softly, and one slim hand toyed with a heavy gold locket on her bosom. "Friend Billy Capper forgets old times and old faces—forgets even the matter of the Lord Fisher letters——"
Chop it, Louisa! The man called Capper lapsed into brusk English as he banged the stem of his wineglass on the damask. "No sense in raking that up again—just because I ask you a fair question—ask you to identify yourself in your new job."
We go no further, Billy Capper, she returned, speaking swiftly in German; "not another word between us unless you obey my rule, and talk this language. Why did you get that message through to me to meet you here in the Café Riche to-night if you did not trust me? Why did you have me carry your offer to—to headquarters and come here ready to talk business if it was only to hum and haw about my identifying myself?"
The tenseness of exaggerated concentration on Capper's gaunt face began slowly to dissolve. First the thin line of shaven lips flickered and became weak at down-drawn corners; then the frown faded from about the eyes, and the beginnings of tears gathered there. Shrewdness and the stamp of cunning sped entirely, and naught but weakness remained.
Louisa—Louisa, old pal; don't be hard on poor Billy Capper, he mumbled. "I'm down, girl—away down again. Since they kicked me out at Brussels I haven't had a shilling to bless myself with. Can't go back to England—you know that; the French won't have me, and here I am, my dinner clothes my only stock in trade left, and you even having to buy the wine." A tear of self-pity slipped down the hard drain of his cheek and splashed on his hand. "But I'll show 'em, Louisa! They can't kick me out of the Brussels shop like a dog and not pay for it! I know too much, I do!"
And what you know about the Brussels shop you want to sell to the—Wilhelmstrasse? the woman asked tensely.
Yes, if the Wilhelmstrasse is willing to pay well for it, Capper answered, his lost cunning returning in a bound.
I am authorized to judge how much your information is worth, his companion declared, leveling a cold glance into Capper's eyes. "You can tell me what you know, and depend on me to pay well, or—we part at once."
But, Louisa—again the whine—"how do I know you're what you say? You've flown high since you and I worked together in the Brussels shop. The Wilhelmstrasse—most perfect spy machine in the world! How I'd like to be in your shoes, Louisa!"
She detached the heavy gold locket from the chain on her bosom, with a quick twist of slim fingers had one side of the case open, then laid the locket before him, pointing to a place on the bevel of the case. Capper swept up the trinket, looked searchingly for an instant at the spot the woman had designated, and returned the locket to her hand.
Your number in the Wilhelmstrasse, he whispered in awe. "Genuine, no doubt. Saw the same sort of mark once before in Rome. All right. Now, listen, Louisa. What I'm going to tell you about where Brussells stands in this—this business that's brewing will make the German general staff sit up." The woman inclined her head toward Capper's. He, looking not at her but out over the rich plain of brocades, broadcloths and gleaming shoulders, began in a monotone:
When the war comes—the day the war starts, French artillerymen will be behind the guns at Namur. The English——
The Hungarian orchestra of forty strings swept into a wild gipsy chant. Dissonances, fierce and barbaric, swept like angry tides over the brilliant floor, of the café. Still Capper talked on, and the woman called Louisa bent her jewel-starred head to listen. Her face, the face of a fine animal, was set in rapt attention.
You mark my words, he finished, "when the German army enters Brussels proof of what I'm telling you will be there. Yes, in a pigeonhole of the foreign-office safe those joint plans between England and Belgium for resisting invasion from the eastern frontier. If the Germans strike as swiftly as I think they will the foreign-office Johnnies will be so flustered in moving out they'll forget these papers I'm telling you about. Then your Wilhelmstrasse will know they've paid for the truth when they paid Billy Capper."
Capper eagerly reached for his glass, and, finding it empty, signaled the waiter.
I'll buy this one, Louisa, he said grandiloquently. "Can't have a lady buying me wine all night." He gave the order. "You're going to slip me some bank-notes to-night—right now, aren't you, Louisa, old pal?" Capper anxiously honed his cheeks with a hand that trembled. The woman's eyes were narrowed in thought.
If I give you anything to-night, Billy Capper, you'll get drunker than you are now, and how do I know you won't run to the first English secret-service man you meet and blab?
Louisa! Louisa! Don't say that! Great fear and great yearning sat in Capper's filmed eyes. "You know I'm honest, Louisa! You wouldn't milk me this way—take all the info I've got and then throw me over like a dog!" Cold scorn was in her glance.
Maybe I might manage to get you a position—with the Wilhelmstrasse. She named the great secret-service office under her breath. "You can't go back to England, to be sure; but you might be useful in the Balkans, where you're not known, or even in Egypt. You have your good points, Capper; you're a sly little weasel—when you're sober. Perhaps——"
Yes, yes; get me a job with the Wilhelmstrasse, Louisa! Capper was babbling in an agony of eagerness. "You know my work. You can vouch for me, and you needn't mention that business of the Lord Fisher letters; you were tarred pretty much with the same brush there, Louisa. But, come, be a good sport; pay me at least half of what you think my info's worth, and I'll take the rest out in salary checks, if you get me that job. I'm broke, Louisa!" His voice cracked in a sob. "Absolutely stony broke!"
She sat toying with the stem of her wineglass while Capper's clasped hands on the table opened and shut themselves without his volition. Finally she made a swift move of one hand to her bodice, withdrew it with a bundle of notes crinkling between the fingers.
Three hundred marks now, Billy Capper, she said. The man echoed the words lovingly. "Three hundred now, and my promise to try to get a number for you with—my people. That's fair?"
Fair as can be, Louisa. He stretched out clawlike fingers to receive the thin sheaf of notes she counted from her roll. "Here comes the wine—the wine I'm buying. We'll drink to my success at landing a job with—your people."
For me no more to-night, the woman answered. "My cape, please." She rose.
But, I say! Capper protested. "Just one more bottle—the bottle I'm buying. See, here it is all proper and cooled. Marks the end of my bad luck, so it does. You won't refuse to drink with me to my good luck that's coming?"
Your good luck is likely to stop short with that bottle, Billy Capper, she said, her lips parting in a smile half scornful. "You know how wine has played you before. Better stop now while luck's with you."
Hanged if I do! he answered stubbornly. "After these months of hand to mouth and begging for a nasty pint of ale in a common pub—leave good wine when it's right under my nose? Not me!" Still protesting against her refusal to drink with him the wine he would pay for himself—the man made that a point of injured honor—Capper grudgingly helped place the cape of web lace over his companion's white shoulders, and accompanied her to her taxi.
If you're here this time to-morrow night—and sober, were her farewell words, "I may bring you your number in the—you understand; that and your commission to duty."
God bless you, Louisa, girl! Capper stammered thickly. "I'll not fail you."
He watched the taxi trundle down the brilliant mirror of Unter den Linden, a sardonic smile twisting his lips. Then he turned back to the world of light and perfume and wine—the world from which he had been barred these many months and for which the starved body of him had cried out in agony. His glass stood brimming; money crinkled in his pocket; there were eyes for him and fair white shoulders. Billy Capper, discredited spy, had come to his own once more.
The orchestra was booming a rag-time, and the chorus on the stage of the Winter Garden came plunging to the footlights, all in line, their black legs kicking out from the skirts like thrusting spindles in some marvelous engine of stagecraft. They screeched the final line of a Germanized coon song, the cymbals clanged "Zam-m-m!" and folk about the clustered tables pattered applause. Captain Woodhouse, at a table by himself, pulled a wafer of a watch from his waistcoat pocket, glanced at its face and looked back at the rococo entrance arches, through which the late-comers were streaming.
Henry Sherman, do you think Kitty ought to see this sort of thing? It's positively indecent!
The high-pitched nasal complaint came from a table a little to the right of the one where Woodhouse was sitting.
There, there, mother! Now, don't go taking all the joy outa life just because you're seeing something that would make the minister back in Kewanee roll his eyes in horror. This is Germany, mother!
Out of the tail of his eye, Woodhouse could see the family group wherein Mrs. Grundy had sat down to make a fourth. A blocky little man with a red face and a pinky-bald head, whose clothes looked as if they had been whipsawed out of the bolt; a comfortably stout matron wearing a bonnet which even to the untutored masculine eye betrayed its provincialism; a slim slip of a girl of about nineteen with a face like a choir boy's—these were the American tourists whose voices had attracted Woodhouse's attention. He played an amused eavesdropper, all the more interested because they were Americans, and since a certain day on the Calais-Paris express, a week or so gone, he'd had reason to be interested in all Americans.
I'm surprised at you, Henry, defending such an exhibition as this, the matron's high complaint went on, "when you were mighty shocked at the bare feet of those innocent Greek dancers the Ladies' Aid brought to give an exhibition on Mrs. Peck's lawn."
Well, mother, that was different, the genial little chap answered. "Kewanee's a good little town, and should stay proper. Berlin, from what I can see, is a pretty bad big town—and don't care." He pulled a heavy watch from his waistcoat pocket and consulted it. "Land's sakes, mother; seven o'clock back home, and the bell's just ringing for Wednesday-night prayer meeting! Maybe since it's prayer-meeting night we might be passing our time better than by looking at this—ah—exhibition."
There was a scraping of chairs, then:
Henry, I tell you he does look like Albert Downs—the living image! This from the woman, sotto voce.
Sh! mother! What would Albert Downs be doing in Berlin? The daughter was reproving.
Well, Kitty, they say curiosity once killed a cat; but I'm going to have a better look. I'd swear——
Woodhouse was slightly startled when he saw the woman from America utilize the clumsy subterfuge of a dropped handkerchief to step into a position whence she could look at his face squarely. Also he was annoyed. He did not care to be stared at under any circumstances, particularly at this time. The alert and curious lady saw his flush of annoyance, flushed herself, and joined her husband and daughter.
Well, if I didn't know Albert Downs had a livery business which he couldn't well leave, floated back the hoarse whisper, "I'd say that was him setting right there in that chair."
Come, mother, bedtime and after—in Berlin, was the old gentleman's admonition. Woodhouse heard their retreating footsteps, and laughed in spite of his temporary chagrin at the American woman's curiosity. He was just reaching for his watch a second time when a quick step sounded on the gravel behind him. He turned. A woman of ripe beauty had her hand outstretched in welcome. She was the one Billy Capper had called Louisa. Captain Woodhouse rose and grasped her hand warmly.
Ah! So good of you! I've been expecting——
Yes, I'm late. I could not come earlier. Salutation and answer were in German, fluently spoken on the part of each.
You will not be followed? Woodhouse asked, assisting her to sit. She laughed shortly.
Hardly, when a bottle of champagne is my rival. The man will be well entertained—too well.
I have been thinking, Woodhouse continued gravely, "that a place hardly as public as this would have been better for our meeting. Perhaps——"
You fear the English agents? Pah! They have ears for keyholes only; they do not expect to use them in a place where there is light and plenty of people. You know their clumsiness. Woodhouse nodded. His eyes traveled slowly over the bold beauty of the woman's face.
The man Capper will do for the stalking horse—a willing nag, went on the woman in a half whisper across the table. "You know the ways of the Wilhelmstrasse. Capper is what we call 'the target.' The English suspect him. They will catch him; you get his number and do the work in safety. We have one man to draw their fire, another to accomplish the deed. We'll let the English bag him at Malta—a word placed in the right direction will fix that—and you'll go on to Alexandria to do the real work."
Good, good! Woodhouse agreed.
The Wilhelmstrasse will give him a number, and send him on this mission on my recommendation; I had that assurance before ever I met the fellow to-night. They—the big people—know little Capper's reputation, and, as a matter of fact, I think they are convinced he's a little less dangerous working for the Wilhelmstrasse than against it. At Malta the arrest—the firing squad at dawn—and the English are convinced they've nipped something big in the bud, whereas they've only put out of the way a dangerous little weasel who's ready to bite any hand that feeds him.
Woodhouse's level glance never left the eyes of the woman called Louisa; it was alert, appraising.
But if there should be some slip-up at Malta, he interjected. "If somehow this Capper should get through to Alexandria, wouldn't that make it somewhat embarrassing for me?"
Not at all, my dear Woodhouse, she caught him up, with a little pat on his hand. "His instructions will be only to report to So-and-so at Alexandria; he will not have the slightest notion what work he is to do there. You can slip in unsuspected by the English, and the trick will be turned."
For a minute Woodhouse sat watching the cavortings of a dancer on the stage. Finally he put a question judiciously:
The whole scheme, then, is——
This, she answered quickly. "Captain Woodhouse—the real Woodhouse, you know—is to be transferred from his present post at Wady Halfa, on the Nile, to Gibraltar—transfer is to be announced in the regular way within a week. As a member of the signal service he will have access to the signal tower on the Rock when he takes his new post, and that, as you know, will be very important."
Very important! Woodhouse echoed dryly.
This Woodhouse arrives in Alexandria to await the steamer from Suez to Gib. He has no friends there—that much we know. Three men of the Wilhelmstrasse are waiting there, whose business it is to see that the real Woodhouse does not take the boat for Gib. They expect a man from Berlin to come to them, bearing a number from the Wilhelmstrasse—the man who is to impersonate Woodhouse and as such take his place in the garrison on the Rock. There are two others of the Wilhelmstrasse at Gibraltar already; they, too, are eagerly awaiting the arrival of 'Woodhouse' from Alexandria. Capper, with a number, will start from Berlin for Alexandria. Capper will never arrive in Alexandria. You will.
With a number—the number expected? the man asked.
If you are clever en route—yes, she answered, with a smile. "Wine, remember, is Billy Capper's best friend—and worst enemy."
Then I will hear from you as to the time and route of departure for Alexandria?
To the very hour, yes. And, now, dear friend——
Interruption came suddenly from the stage. The manager, in shirt-sleeves and with hair wildly rumpled over his eyes, came prancing out from the wings. He held up a pudgy hand to check the orchestra. Hundreds about the tables rose in a gust of excitement, of questioning wonder.
Herren! The stage manager's bellow carried to the farthest arches of the Winter Garden. "News just published by the general staff: Russia has mobilized five divisions on the frontier of East Prussia and Galicia!"
Not a sound save the sharp catching of breath over all the acre of tables. Then the stage manager nodded to the orchestra leader, and in a fury the brass mouths began to bray. Men climbed on table tops, women stood on chairs, and all—all sang in tremendous chorus:
Deutschland, Deutschland üeber alles!
The night of July twenty-sixth. The scene is the table-cluttered sidewalk before the Café Pytheas, where the Cours St. Louis flings its night tide of idlers into the broader stream of the Cannebière, Marseilles' Broadway—the white street of the great Proven?al port. Here at the crossing of these two streets summer nights are incidents to stick in the traveler's mind long after he sees the gray walls of the Chateau d'If fade below the steamer's rail. The flower girls in their little pulpits pressing dewy violets and fragrant clusters of rosebuds upon the strollers with persuasive eloquence; the mystical eyes of hooded Moors who see everything as they pass, yet seem to see so little; jostling Greeks, Levantines, burnoosed Jews from Algiers and red-trousered Senegalese—all the color from the hot lands of the Mediterranean is there.
But on the night of July twenty-sixth the old spirit of indolence, of pleasure seeking, flirtation, intriguing, which was wont to make this heart of arc-light life in Marseilles pulse languorously, was gone. Instead, an electric tenseness was abroad, pervading, infectious. About each sidewalk table heads were clustered close in conference, and eloquent hands aided explosive argument. Around the news kiosk at the Café Pytheas corner a constant stream eddied. Men snatched papers from the pile, spread them before their faces, and blundered into their fellow pedestrians as they walked, buried in the inky columns. Now and again half-naked urchins came charging down the Cannebière, waving shinplaster extras above their heads—"L'Allemagne s'arme! La guerre vient!" Up from the Quai marched a dozen sailors from a torpedo boat, arms linked so that they almost spanned the Cannebière. Their red-tasseled caps were pushed back at cocky angles on their black heads, and as they marched they shouted in time: "A Berlin! Hou—hou!"
The black shadow of war—the first hallucinations of the great madness—gripped Marseilles.
For Captain Woodhouse, just in from Berlin that evening, all this swirling excitement had but an incidental interest. He sat alone by one of the little iron tables before the Café Pytheas, sipping his boc, and from time to time his eyes carelessly followed the eddying of the swarm about the news kiosk. Always his attention would come back, however, to center on the thin shoulders of a man sitting fifteen or twenty feet away with a wine cooler by his side. He could not see the face of the wine drinker; he did not want to. All he cared to do was to keep those thin shoulders always in sight. Each time the solicitous waiter renewed the bottle in the wine cooler Captain Woodhouse nodded grimly, as a doctor might when he recognized the symptoms of advancing fever in a patient.
So for two days, from Berlin across to Paris, and now on this third day here in the Mediterranean port, Woodhouse had kept ever in sight those thin shoulders and that trembling hand beyond the constantly crooking elbow. Not a pleasant task; he had come to loathe and abominate the very wrinkles in the back of that shiny coat. But a very necessary duty it was for Captain Woodhouse to shadow Mr. Billy Capper until—the right moment should arrive. They had come down on the same express together from Paris. Woodhouse had observed Capper when he checked his baggage, a single shoddy hand-bag, for La Vendée, the French line ship sailing with the dawn next morning for Alexandria and Port Said via Malta. Capper had squared his account at the Hotel Allées de Meilhan, for the most part a bill for absinth frappés, after dinner that night, and was now enjoying the night life of Marseilles in anticipation, evidently, of carrying direct to the steamer with him as his farewell from France all of the bottled laughter of her peasant girls he could accommodate.
The harsh memories of how he had been forced to drink the bitter lees of poverty during the lean months rode Billy Capper hard, and this night he wanted to fill all the starved chambers of his soul with the robust music of the grape. So he drank with a purpose and purposefully. That he drank alone was a matter of choice with Capper; he could have had a pair of dark eyes to glint over a goblet into his had he wished—indeed, opportunities almost amounted to embarrassment. But to all advances from the fair, Billy Capper returned merely an impolite leer. He knew from beforetime that he was his one best companion when the wine began to warm him. So he squared himself to his pleasure with an abandoned rakishness expressed in the set of his thin shoulders and the forward droop of his head.
Woodhouse, who watched, noted only one peculiarity in Capper's conduct: The drinker nursed his stick, a plain, crook-handled malacca, with a tenderness almost maternal. It never left his hands. Once when Capper dropped it and the waiter made to prop the stick against a near-by chair, the little spy leaped to his feet and snatched the cane away with a growl. Thereafter he propped his chin on the handle, only removing this guard when he had to tip his head back for another draft of champagne.
Eleven o'clock came. Capper rose from the table and looked owlishly about him. Woodhouse quickly turned his back to the man, and was absorbed in the passing strollers. When he looked back again Capper was slowly and a little unsteadily making his way around the corner into the Cannebière. Woodhouse followed, sauntering. Capper began a dilatory exploration of the various cafés along the white street; his general course was toward the city's slums about the Quai. Woodhouse, dawdling about tree boxes and dodging into shadows by black doorways, found his quarry easy to trail. And he knew that each of Capper's sojourns in an oasis put a period to the length of the pursuit. The time for him to act drew appreciably nearer with every tipping of that restless elbow.
Midnight found them down in the reek and welter of the dives and sailors' frolic grounds. Now the trailer found his task more difficult, inasmuch as not only his quarry but he himself was marked by the wolves. Dances in smoke-wreathed rooms slackened when Capper lurched in, found a seat and ordered a drink. Women with cheeks carmined like poppies wanted to make predatory love to him; dock rats drew aside and consulted in whispers. When Capper retreated from an evil dive on the very edge of the Quai, Woodhouse, waiting by the doors, saw that he was not the only shadower. Close against the dead walls flanking the narrow pavement a slinking figure twisted and writhed after the drunkard, now spread-eagling all over the street.
Woodhouse quickened his pace on the opposite sidewalk. The street was one lined with warehouses, their closely shuttered windows the only eyes. Capper dropped his stick, laboriously halted, and started to go back for it. That instant the shadow against the walls detached itself and darted for the victim. Woodhouse leaped to the cobbles and gained Capper's side just as he dropped like a sack of rags under a blow from the dock rat's fist.
Son of a pig! This is my meat; you clear out! The humped black beetle of a man straddling the sprawling Capper whipped a knife from his girdle and faced Woodhouse. Quicker than light the captain's right arm shot out; a thud as of a maul on an empty wine butt, and the Apache turned a half somersault, striking the cobbles with the back of his head. Woodhouse stooped, lifted the limp Capper from the street stones, and staggered with him to the lighted avenue of the Cannebière, a block away. He hailed a late-cruising fiacre, propped Capper in the seat, and took his place beside him.
To La Vendée, Quai de la Fraternité! Woodhouse ordered.
The driver, wise in the ways of the city, asked no questions, but clucked to his crow bait. Woodhouse turned to make a quick examination of the unconscious man by his side. He feared a stab wound; he found nothing but a nasty cut on the head, made by brass knuckles. With the wine helping, any sort of a blow would have put Capper out, he reflected.
Woodhouse turned his back on the bundle of clothes and reached for the malacca stick. Even in his coma its owner grasped it tenaciously at midlength. Without trying to disengage the clasp, Woodhouse gripped the wood near the crook of the handle with his left Hand while with his right he applied torsion above. The crook turned on hidden threads and came off in his hand. An exploring forefinger in the exposed hollow end of the cane encountered a rolled wisp of paper. Woodhouse pocketed this, substituted in its place a thin clean sheet torn from a card-case memorandum, then screwed the crook on the stick down on the secret receptacle. By the light of a match he assured himself the paper he had taken from the cane was what he wanted.
Larceny from the person—guilty, he murmured, with a wry smile of distaste. "But assault—unpremeditated."
The conveyance trundled down a long spit of stone and stopped by the side of a black hull, spotted with round eyes of light. The driver, scenting a tip, helped Woodhouse lift Capper to the ground and prop him against a bulkhead. A bos'n, summoned from La Vendée by the cabby's shrill whistle, heard Woodhouse's explanation with sympathy.
Occasionally, yes, m'sieu, the passengers from Marseilles have these regrets at parting, he gravely commented, accepting the ticket Woodhouse had rummaged from the unconscious man's wallet and a crinkled note from Woodhouse's. Up the gangplank, feet first, went the new agent of the Wilhelmstrasse. The one who called himself "captain in his majesty's signal service" returned to his hotel.
At dawn, La Vendée cleared the harbor for Alexandria via Malta, bearing a very sick Billy Capper to his destiny. Five hours later the Castle liner, Castle Claire, for the Cape via Alexandria and Suez direct, sailed out of the Old Port, among her passengers a Captain Woodhouse.
Many a long starlit hour alone on the deck of the Castle Claire Captain Woodhouse found himself tortured by a persistent vision. Far back over the northern horizon lay Europe, trembling and breathless before the imminent disaster—a great field of grain, each stalk bearing for its head the helmeted head of a man. Out of the east came a glow, which spread from boundary to boundary, waxed stronger in the wind of hate. Finally the fire, devastating, insensate, began its sweep through the close-standing mazes of the grain. Somewhere in this fire-glow and swift leveling under the scythe of the flame was a girl, alone, appalled. Woodhouse could see her as plainly as though a cinema was unreeling swift pictures before him—the girl caught in this vast acreage of fire, in the standing grain, with destruction drawing nearer in incredible strides. He saw her wide eyes, her streaming hair—saw her running through the grain, whose heads were the helmeted heads of men. Her hands groped blindly and she was calling—calling, with none to come in aid. Jane Gerson alone in the face of Europe's burning!
Strive as he would, Woodhouse could not screen this picture from his eyes. He tried to hope that ere this, discretion had conquered her resolution to "make good," and that she had fled from Paris, one of the great army of refugees who had already begun to pour out of the gates of France when he passed through the war-stunned capital a few days before. But, no; there was no mistaking the determination he had read in those brown eyes that day on the express from Calais. "I couldn't go scampering back to New York just because somebody starts a war over here." Brave, yes; but hers was the bravery of ignorance. This little person from the States, on her first venture into the complex life of the Continent, could not know what war there would mean; the terror and magnitude of it. And now where was she? In Paris, caught in its hysteria of patriotism and darkling fear of what the morrow would bring forth? Or had she started for England, and become wedged in the jam of terrified thousands battling for place on the Channel steamers? Was her fine self-reliance upholding her, or had the crisis sapped her courage and thrown her back on the common helplessness of women before disaster?
Captain Woodhouse, the self-sufficient and aloof, whose training had been all toward suppression of every instinct save that in the line of duty, was surprised at himself. That a little American inconnu—a "business person," he would have styled her under conditions less personal—should have come into his life in this definite way was, to say the least, highly irregular. The man tried to swing his reason as a club against his heart—and failed miserably. No, the fine brave spirit that looked out of those big brown eyes would not be argued out of court. Jane Gerson was a girl who was different, and that very difference was altogether alluring. Woodhouse caught himself going over the incidents of their meeting. Fondly he reviewed scraps of their conversation on the train, lingering on the pat slang she used so unconsciously.
Was it possible Jane Gerson ever had a thought for Captain Woodhouse? The man winced a little at this speculation. Had it been fair of him when he so glibly practised a deception on her? If she knew what his present business was, would she understand; would she approve? Could this little American ever know, or believe, that some sorts of service were honorable?
Just before the Castle Claire raised the breakwater of Alexandria came a wireless, which was posted at the head of the saloon companionway:
Germany declares war on Russia. German flying column reported moving through Luxemburg on Belgium.
The fire was set to the grain.
Upon landing, Captain Woodhouse's first business was to go to a hotel on the Grand Square, which is the favorite stopping place of officers coming down from the Nile country. He fought his way through the predatory hordes of yelling donkey boys and obsequious dragomans at the door, and entered the palm-shaded court, which served as office and lounge. Woodhouse paused for a second behind a screen of palm leaves and cast a quick eye around the court. None of the loungers there was known to him. He strode to the desk.
Ah, sir, a room with bath, overlooking the gardens on the north side—very cool. The Greek clerk behind the desk smiled a welcome.
Perhaps, Woodhouse answered shortly, and he turned the register around to read the names of the recent comers. On the first page he found nothing to interest him; but among the arrivals of the day before he saw this entry: "C. G. Woodhouse, Capt. Sig. Service; Wady Halfa." After it was entered the room number: "210."
Woodhouse read right over the name and turned another page a bit impatiently. This he scanned with seeming eagerness, while the clerk stood with pen poised.
Um! When is the first boat out for Gibraltar? Woodhouse asked.
Well, sir, the Princess Mary is due to sail at dawn day after to-morrow, the Greek answered judiciously. "She is reported at Port Said to-day, but, of course, the war——"
Woodhouse turned away.
But you wish a room, sir—nice room, with bath, overlooking——
No.
You expected to find a friend, then?
Not here, Woodhouse returned bruskly, and passed out into the blinding square.
He strode swiftly around the statue of Mehemet Ali and plunged into the bedlam crowd filling a side street. With sure sense of direction, he threaded the narrow alleyways and by-streets until he had come to the higher part of the mongrel city, near the Rosetta Gate. There he turned into a little French hotel, situated far from the disordered pulse of the city's heart; a sort of pension, it was, known only to the occasional discriminating tourist. Maitre Mouquère was proud of the anonymity his house preserved, and abhorred poor, driven Cook's slaves as he would a plague. In his Cap de Liberté one was lost to all the world of Alexandria.
Thither the captain's baggage had been sent direct from the steamer. After a glass with Maitre Mouquère and a half hour's discussion of the day's great news, Woodhouse pleaded a touch of the sun, and went to his room. There he remained, until the gold of sunset had faded from the Mosque of Omar's great dome and all the city from Pharos and its harbor hedge of masts to El Meks winked with lights. Then he took carriage to the railroad station and entrained for Ramleh. What South Kensington is to London and the Oranges are to New York, Ramleh is to Alexandria—the suburb of homes. There pretty villas lie in the lap of the delta's greenery, skirted by canals, cooled by the winds off Aboukir Bay and shaded by great palms—the one beauty spot in all the hybrid product of East and West that is the present city of Alexander.
Remembering directions he had received in Berlin, Woodhouse threaded shaded streets until he paused before a stone gateway set in a high wall. On one of the pillars a small brass plate was inset. By the light of a near-by arc, Woodhouse read the inscription on it:
EMIL KOCH, M.D.,
32 Queen's Terrace.
He threw back his shoulders with a sudden gesture, which might have been taken for that of a man about to make a plunge, and rang the bell. The heavy wooden gate, filling all the space of the arch, was opened by a tall Numidian in house livery of white. He nodded an affirmative to Woodhouse's question, and led the way through an avenue of flaming hibiscus to a house, set far back under heavy shadow of acacias. On every hand were gardens, rank foliage shutting off this walled yard from the street and neighboring dwellings. The heavy gate closed behind the visitor with a sharp snap. One might have said that Doctor Koch lived in pretty secure isolation.
Woodhouse was shown into a small room off the main hall, by its furnishings and position evidently a waiting-room for the doctor's patients. The Numidian bowed, and disappeared. Alone, Woodhouse rose and strolled aimlessly about the room, flipped the covers of magazines on the table, picked up and hefted the bronze Buddha on the onyx mantel, noted, with a careless glance, the position of the two windows in relation to the entrance door and the folding doors, now shut, which doubtless gave on the consultation room. As he was regarding these doors they rolled back and a short thickset man, with a heavy mane of iron-gray hair and black brush of beard, stood between them. He looked at Woodhouse through thick-lensed glasses, which gave to his stare a curiously intent bent.
My office hours are from two to four, afternoons, Doctor Koch said. He spoke in English, but his speech was burred by a slight heaviness on the aspirants, reminiscent of his mother tongue. The doctor did not ask Woodhouse to enter the consultation room, but continued standing between the folding doors, staring fixedly through his thick lenses.
I know that, Doctor, Woodhouse began apologetically, following the physician's lead and turning his tongue to English. "But, you see, in a case like mine I have to intrude"—it was "haf" and "indrude" as Woodhouse gave these words—"because I could not be here during your office hours. You will pardon?"
Doctor Koch's eyes widened just perceptibly at the hint of a Germanic strain in his visitor's speech—just a hint quickly glossed over. But still he remained standing in his former attitude of annoyance.
Was the sun, then, too hot to bermit you to come to my house during regular office hours? At nights I see no batients—bositively none.
The sun—perhaps, Woodhouse replied guardedly. "But as I happened just to arrive to-day from Marseilles, and your name was strongly recommended to me as one to consult in a case such as mine——"
Where was my name recommended to you, and by whom? Doctor Koch interrupted in sudden interest.
Woodhouse looked at him steadily. "In Berlin—and by a friend of yours," he answered.
Indeed? The doctor stepped back from the doors, and motioned his visitor into the consultation room.
Woodhouse stepped into a large room lighted by a single green-shaded reading lamp, which threw a white circle of light straight down upon a litter of thin-bladed scalpels in a glass dish of disinfectant on a table. The shadowy outlines of an operating chair, of high-shouldered bookcases, and the dull glint of instruments in a long glass case were almost imperceptible because of the centering of all light upon the glass dish of knives. Doctor Koch dragged a chair out from the shadows, and, carelessly enough, placed it in the area of radiance; he motioned Woodhouse to sit. The physician leaned carelessly against an arm of the operating chair; his face was in the shadow save where reflected light shone from his glasses, giving them the aspect of detached eyes.
So, a friend—a friend in Berlin told you to consult me, eh? Berlin is a long way from Ramleh—especially in these times. Greater physicians than I live in Berlin. Why——
My friend in Berlin told me you were the only physician who could help me in my peculiar trouble. Imperceptibly the accenting of the aspirants in Woodhouse's speech grew more marked; his voice took on a throaty character. "By some specialists my life even has been set to end in a certain year, so sure is fate for those afflicted like myself."
So? What year is it, then, you die? Doctor Koch's strangely detached eyes—those eyes of glass glowing dimly in the shadow—seemed to flicker palely with a light all their own. Captain Woodhouse, sitting under the white spray of the shaded incandescent, looked up carelessly to meet the stare.
Why, they give me plenty of time to enjoy myself, he answered, with a light laugh. "They say in 1932——"
Nineteen thirty-two! Doctor Koch stepped lightly to the closed folding doors, trundled them back an inch to assure himself nobody was in the waiting-room, then closed and locked them. He did similarly by a hidden door on the opposite side of the room, which Woodhouse had not seen. After that he pulled a chair close to his visitor and sat down, his knees almost touching the other's. He spoke very low, in German:
If your trouble is so serious that you will die—in 1932, I must, of course, examine you for—symptoms.
For half a minute the two men looked fixedly at each other. Woodhouse's right hand went slowly to the big green scarab stuck in his cravat. He pulled the pin out, turned it over in his fingers, and by pressure caused the scarab to pop out of the gold-backed setting holding it. The bit of green stone lay in the palm of his left hand, its back exposed. In the hollowed back of the beetle was a small square of paper, folded minutely. This Woodhouse removed, unfolded and passed to the physician. The latter seized it avidly, holding it close to his spectacled eyes, and then spreading it against the light as if to read a secret water mark. A smile struggled through the jungle of his beard. He found Woodhouse's hand and grasped it warmly.
Your symptom tallies with my diagnosis, Nineteen Thirty-two, he began rapidly. "Five days ago we heard from—the Wilhelmstrasse—you would come. We have expected you each day, now. Already we have got word through to our friends at Gibraltar of the plan; they are waiting for you."
Good! Woodhouse commented. He was busy refolding the thin slip of paper that had been his talisman, and fitting it into the back of the scarab. "Woodhouse—he is already at the Hotel Khedive; saw his name on the register when I landed from the Castle this morning." Now the captain was talking in familiar German.
Quite so, Doctor Koch put in. "Woodhouse came down from Wady Halfa yesterday. Our man up there had advised of the time of his arrival in Alexandria to the minute. The captain has his ticket for the Princess Mary, which sails for Gibraltar day after to-morrow at dawn."
Number Nineteen Thirty-two listened to Doctor Koch's outlining of the plot with set features; only his eyes showed that he was acutely alive to every detail. Said he:
But Woodhouse—this British captain who's being transferred from the Nile country to the Rock; has he ever served there before? If he has, why, when I get there—when I am Captain Woodhouse, of the signal service—I will be embarrassed if I do not know the ropes.
Seven years ago Woodhouse was there for a very short time, Doctor Koch explained. "New governor since then—changes all around in the personnel of the staff, I don't doubt. You'll have no trouble."
Silence between them for a minute, broken by the captain:
Our friends at Gib—who are they, and how will I know them?
The doctor bent a sudden glance of suspicion upon the lean face before him. His thick lips clapped together stubbornly.
Aha, my dear friend; you are asking questions. In my time at Berlin the Wilhelmstrasse taught that all orders and information came from above—and from there only. Why——
I suppose in default of other information I may ask the governor to point out the Wilhelmstrasse men, Woodhouse answered, with a shrug. "I was told at Berlin I would learn all that was necessary to me as I went along, therefore, I supposed——"
Come—come! Doctor Koch patted the other's shoulder, with a heavy joviality. "So you will. When you arrive at Gib, put up at the Hotel Splendide, and you will not be long learning who your friends are. I, for instance, did not hesitate overmuch to recognize you, and I am under the eyes of the English here at every turn, even though I am a naturalized English citizen—and of undoubted loyalty." He finished with a booming laugh.
But Woodhouse; you have arranged a way to have him drop out of sight before the Princess Mary sails? There will be no confusion—no slip-up?
Do not fear, the physician reassured. "Everything will be arranged. His baggage will leave the Hotel Khedive for the dock to-morrow night; but it will not reach the dock. Yours——"
Will be awaiting the transfer of tags at the Cap de Liberté—Mouquère's little place, the captain finished. "But the man himself—you're not thinking of mur——"
My dear Nineteen Thirty-two, Doctor Koch interrupted, lifting protesting hands; "we do not use such crude methods; they are dangerous. The real Captain Woodhouse will not leave Alexandria—by sea, let us say—for many months. Although I have no doubt he will not be found in Alexandria the hour the Princess Mary sails. The papers he carries—the papers of identity and of transfer from Wady Halfa to Gibraltar—will be in your hands in plenty of time. You——"
The doctor stopped abruptly. A hidden electric buzzer somewhere in the shadowed room was clucking an alarm. Koch pressed a button at the side of the operating chair. There was a sound beyond closed doors of some one passing through a hallway; the front door opened and closed.
Some one at the gate, Doctor Koch explained. "C?sar, my playful little Numidian—and an artist with the Bedouin dagger is C?sar—he goes to answer."
Their talk was desultory during the next minutes. The doctor seemed restless under the suspense of a pending announcement as to the late visitor. Finally came a soft tapping on the hidden door behind Woodhouse. The latter heard the doctor exchange whispers with the Numidian in the hallway. Finally, "Show him into the waiting-room," Koch ordered. He came back to where the captain was sitting, a puzzled frown between his eyes.
An Englishman, C?sar says—an Englishman, who insists on seeing me—very important. Koch bit the end of one stubby thumb in hurried thought. He suddenly whipped open the door of one of the instrument cases, pulled out a stethoscope, and hooked the two little black receivers into his ears. Then he turned to Woodhouse.
Quick! Off with your coat and open your shirt. You are a patient; I am just examining you when interrupted. This may be one of these clumsy English secret-service men, and I might need your alibi. The sound of an opening door beyond the folding doors and of footsteps in the adjoining room.
You say you are sleepless at night? Doctor Koch was talking English. "And you have a temperature on arising? Hm'm! This under your tongue, if you please"—he thrust a clinical thermometer between Woodhouse's lips; the latter already had his coat off, and was unbuttoning his shirt. Koch gave him a meaning glance, and disappeared between the folding doors, closing them behind him.
The captain, feeling much like a fool with the tiny glass tube sprouting from his lips, yet with all his faculties strained to alertness, awaited developments. If Doctor Koch's hazard should prove correct and this was an English secret-service man come to arrest him, wouldn't suspicion also fall on whomever was found a visitor in the German spy's house? Arrest and search; examination of his scarab pin—that would not be pleasant.
He tried to hear what was being said beyond the folding doors, but could catch nothing save the deep rumble of the doctor's occasional bass and a higher, querulous voice raised in what might be argument. Had he dared, Woodhouse would have drawn closer to the crack in the folding doors so that he could hear what was passing; every instinct of self-preservation in him made his ears yearn to dissect this murmur into sense. But if Doctor Koch should catch him eavesdropping, embarrassment fatal to his plans might follow; besides, he had a feeling that eyes he could not see—perhaps the unwinking eyes of the Numidian, avid for an excuse to put into practise his dexterity with the Bedouin dagger—were on him.
Minutes slipped by. The captain still nursed the clinical thermometer. The mumble and muttering continued to sound through the closed doors. Suddenly the high whine of the unseen visitor was raised in excitement. Came clearly through to Woodhouse's ears his passionate declaration:
But I tell you you've got to recognize me. My number's Nineteen Thirty-two. My ticket was stolen out of the head of my cane somewhere between Paris and Alexandria. But I got it all right—got it from the Wilhelmstrasse direct, with orders to report to Doctor Emil Koch, in Alexandria!
Capper! Capper, who was to be betrayed to the firing squad in Malta, after his Wilhelmstrasse ticket had passed from his possession. Capper on the job!
Woodhouse hurled every foot pound of his will to hear into his ears. He caught Koch's gruff answer:
Young man, you're talking madness. You're talking to a loyal British subject. I know nothing about your Wilhelmstrasse or your number. If I did not think you were drunk I'd have you held here, to be turned over to the military as a spy. Now, go before I change my mind.
Again the querulous protestation of Capper, met by the doctor's peremptory order. The captain heard the front door close. A long wait, and Doctor Koch's black beard, with the surmounting eyes of thick glass, appeared at a parting of the folding doors. Woodhouse, the tiny thermometer still sticking absurdly from his mouth, met the basilisk stare of those two ovals of glass with a coldly casual glance. He removed the thermometer from between his lips and read it, with a smile, as if that were part of playing a game. Still the ghastly stare from the glass eyes over the bristling beard, searching—searching.
Well, Woodhouse said lightly, "no need of an alibi evidently."
Doctor Koch stepped into the room with the lightness of a cat, walked to a desk drawer at one side, and fumbled there a second, his back to his guest. When he turned he held a short-barreled automatic at his hip; the muzzle covered the shirt-sleeved man in the chair.
Much need—for an alibi—from you! Doctor Koch croaked, his voice dry and flat with rage. "Much need, Mister Nineteen Thirty-two. Commence your explanation immediately, for this minute my temptation is strong—very strong—to shoot you for the dog you are."
Is this—ah, customary? Woodhouse twiddled the tiny mercury tube between his fingers and looked unflinchingly at the small round mouth of the automatic. "Do you make a practise of consulting a—friend with a revolver at your hip?"
You heard—what was said in there! Koch's forehead was curiously ridged and flushed with much blood.
Did you ask me to listen? Surely, my dear Doctor, you have provided doors that are sound-proof. If I may suggest, isn't it about time that you explain this—this melodrama? The captain's voice was cold; his lips were drawn to a thin line. Koch's big head moved from side to side with a gesture curiously like that of a bull about to charge, but knowing not where his enemy stands. He blurted out:
For your information, if you did not overhear: An Englishman comes just now to address me familiarly as of the Wilhelmstrasse. He comes to say he was sent to report to me; that his number in the Wilhelmstrasse is nineteen thirty-two—nineteen thirty-two, remember; and I am to give him orders. Please explain that before I pull this trigger.
He showed you his number—his ticket, then? Woodhouse added this parenthetically.
The man said his ticket had been stolen from him some time after he left Paris—stolen from the head of his cane, where he had it concealed. But the number was nineteen thirty-two. The doctor voiced this last doggedly.
You have, of course, had this man followed, the other put in. "You have not let him leave this house alone."
C?sar was after him before he left the garden gate—naturally. But——
Woodhouse held up an interrupting hand.
Pardon me, Doctor Koch; did you get this fellow's name?
He refused to give it—said I wouldn't know him, anyway.
Was he an undersized man, very thin, sparse hair, and a face showing dissipation? Woodhouse went on. "Nervous, jerky way of talking—fingers to his mouth, as if to feel his words as they come out—brandy or wine breath? Can't you guess who he was?"
I guess nothing.
The target!
At the word Louisa had used in describing Capper to Woodhouse, Koch's face underwent a change. He lowered his pistol.
Ach! he said. "The man they are to arrest. And you have the number."
That was Capper—Capper, formerly of the Belgian office—kicked out for drunkenness. One time he sold out Downing Street in the matter of the Lord Fisher letters; you remember the scandal when they came to light—his majesty, the kaiser's, Kiel speech referring to them. He is a good stalking horse.
Koch's suspicion had left him. Still gripping the automatic, he sat down on the edge of the operating chair, regarding the other man respectfully.
Come—come, Doctor Koch; you and I can not continue longer at cross-purposes. The captain spoke with terse displeasure. "This man Capper showed you nothing to prove his claims, yet you come back to this room and threaten my life on the strength of a drunkard's bare word. What his mission is you know; how he got that number, which is the number I have shown you on my ticket from the Wilhelmstrasse—you understand how such things are managed. I happen to know, however, because it was my business to know, that Capper left Marseilles for Malta aboard La Vendée four days ago; he was not expected to go beyond Malta."
Koch caught him up: "But the fellow told me his boat didn't stop at Malta—was warned by wireless to proceed at all speed to Alexandria, for fear of the Breslau, known to be in the Adriatic." Woodhouse spread out his hands with a gesture of finality.
There you are! Capper finds himself stranded in Alexandria, knows somehow of your position as a man of the Wilhelmstrasse—such things can not be hid from the underground workers; comes here to explain himself to you and excuse himself for the loss of his number. Is there anything more to be said except that we must keep a close watch on him?
The physician rose and paced the room, his hands clasped behind his back. The automatic bobbed against the tails of his long coat as he walked. After a minute's restless striding, he broke his step before the desk, jerked open the drawer, and dropped the weapon in it. Back to where Woodhouse was sitting he stalked and held out his right hand stiffly.
Your pardon, Number Nineteen Thirty-two! For my suspicion I apologize. But, you see my position—a very delicate one. Woodhouse rose, grasped the doctor's hand, and wrung it heartily.
And now, he said, "to keep this fellow Capper in sight until the Princess Mary sails and I aboard her as Captain Woodhouse, of Wady Halfa. The man might trip us all up."
He will not; be sure of that, Koch growled, helping Woodhouse into his coat and leading the way to the folding doors. "I will have C?sar attend to him the minute he comes back to report where Capper is stopping."
Until when? the captain asked, pausing at the gate, to which Koch had escorted him.
Here to-morrow night at nine, the doctor answered, and the gate shut behind him. Captain Woodhouse, alone under the shadowing trees of Queen's Terrace, drew in a long breath, shook his shoulders and started for the station and the midnight train to Alexandria.
Consider the mental state of Mr. Billy Capper as he sank into a seat on the midnight suburban from Ramleh to Alexandria. Even to the guard, unused to particular observation of his passengers save as to their possible propensity for trying to beat their fares, the bundle of clothes surmounted by a rusty brown bowler which huddled under the sickly light of the second-class carriage bespoke either a candidate for a plunge off the quay or a "bloomer" returning from his wassailing. But the eyes of the man denied this latter hypothesis; sanity was in them, albeit the merciless sanity that refuses an alternative when fate has its victim pushed into a corner. So submerged was Capper under the flood of his own bitter cogitations that he had not noticed the other two passengers boarding the train at the little tiled station—a tall, quietly dressed white man and a Numidian with a cloak thrown over his white livery. The latter had faded like a shadow into the third-class carriage behind the one in which Capper rode.
Here was Capper—poor old Hardluck Billy Capper—floored again, and just when the tide of bad fortune was on the turn; so ran the minor strain of self-pity under the brown bowler. A failure once more, and through no fault of his own. No, no! Hadn't he been ready to deliver the goods? Hadn't he come all the way down here from Berlin, faithful to his pledge to Louisa, the girl in the Wilhelmstrasse, ready and willing to embark on that important mission of which he was to be told by Doctor Emil Koch? And what happens? Koch turns him into the street like a dog; threatens to have him before the military as a spy if he doesn't make himself scarce. Koch refuses even to admit he'd ever heard of the Wilhelmstrasse. Clever beggar! A jolly keen eye he's got for his own skin; won't take a chance on being betrayed into the hands of the English, even when he ought to see that a chap's honest when he comes and tells a straight story about losing that silly little bit of paper with his working number on it. What difference if he can't produce the ticket when he has the number pat on the tip of his tongue, and is willing to risk his own life to give that number to a stranger?
Back upon the old perplexity that had kept Capper's brain on strain ever since the first day aboard La Vendée—who had lifted his ticket, and when was it done? The man recalled, for the hundredth time, his awakening aboard the French liner—what a horror that first morning was, with the ratty little surgeon feeding a fellow aromatic spirits of ammonia like porridge! Capper, in this mood of detached review, saw himself painfully stretching out his arm from his bunk to grasp his stick the very first minute he was alone in the stateroom; the crooked handle comes off under his turning, and the white wisp of paper is stuck in the hollow of the stick. Blank paper!
Safe as safe could be had been that little square of paper Louisa had given him with his expense money, from the day he left Berlin until—when? To be sure, he had treated himself to a little of the grape in Paris and, maybe, in Marseilles; but his brain had been clear every minute. Oh, Capper would have sworn to that! The whole business of the disappearance of his Wilhelmstrasse ticket and the substitution of the blank was simply another low trick the Capper luck had played on him.
The train rushed through the dark toward the distant prickly coral bed of lights, and the whirligig of black despair churned under the brown bowler. No beginning, no end to the misery of it. Each new attempt to force a little light of hope into the blackness of his plight fetched up at the same dead wall—here was Billy Capper, hired by the Wilhelmstrasse, after having been booted out of the secret offices of England and Belgium—given a show for his white alley—and he couldn't move a hand to earn his new salary. Nor could he go back to Berlin, even though he dared return with confession of the stolen ticket; Berlin was no place for an Englishman right now, granting he could get there. No, he was in the backwash again—this time in this beastly half-caste city of Alexandria, and with—how much was it now?—with a beggarly fifteen pounds between himself and the beach.
Out of the ruck of Capper's sad reflections the old persistent call began to make itself heard before ever the train from Ramleh pulled into the Alexandria station. That elusive country of fountains, incense and rose dreams which can only be approached through the neck of a bottle spread itself before him alluringly, inviting him to forgetfulness. And Capper answered the call.
From the railroad station, he set his course through narrow villainous streets down to the district on Pharos, where the deep-water men of all the world gather to make vivid the nights of Egypt. Behind him was the faithful shadow, C?sar, Doctor Koch's man. The Numidian trailed like a panther, slinking from cover to cover, bending his body as the big cat does to the accommodations of the trail's blinds.
Once Capper found himself in a blind alley, turned and strode out of it just in time to bump heavily into the unsuspected pursuer. Instantly a hem of the Numidian's cloak was lifted to screen his face, but not before the sharp eyes of the Englishman had seen and recognized it. A tart smile curled the corners of Capper's mouth as he passed on down the bazaar-lined street to the Tavern of Thermopyl?, at the next corner. So old Koch was taking precautions, eh? Well, Capper, for one, could hardly blame him; who wouldn't, under the circumstances?
The Tavern of Thermopyl? was built for the Billy Cappers of the world—a place of genial deviltry where every man's gold was better than his name, and no man asked more than to see the color of the stranger's money. Here was gathered as sweet a company of assassins as one could find from Port Said to Honmoku, all gentle to fellows of their craft under the freemasonry of hard liquor. Greeks, Levantines, Liverpool lime-juicers from the Cape, leech-eyed Finns from a Russian's stoke-hole, tanned ivory runners from the forbidden lands of the African back country—all that made Tyre and Sidon infamous in Old Testament police records was represented there.
Capper called for an absinth dripper and established himself in a deserted corner of the smoke-filled room. There was music, of sorts, and singing; women whose eyes told strange stories, and whose tongues jumped nimbly over three or four languages, offered their companionship to those who needed company with their drink. But Billy Capper ignored the music and closed his ears to the sirens; he knew who was his best cup companion.
The thin green blood of the wormwood drip-dripped down on to the ice in Capper's glass, coloring it with a rime like moss. He watched it, fascinated, and when he sipped the cold sicky-sweet liquor he was eager as a child to see how the pictures the absinth drew on the ice had been changed by the draft. Sip—sip; a soothing numbness came to the tortured nerves. Sip—sip; the clouds of doubt and self-pity pressing down on his brain began to shred away. He saw things clearly now; everything was sharp and clear as the point of an icicle.
He reviewed, with new zest, his recent experiences, from the night he met Louisa in the Café Riche up to his interview with Doctor Koch. Louisa—that girl with the face of a fine animal and a heart as cold as carved amethyst; why had she been so willing to intercede for Billy Capper with her superiors in the Wilhelmstrasse and procure him a number and a mission to Alexandria? For his information regarding the Anglo-Belgian understanding? But she paid for that; the deal was fairly closed with three hundred marks. Did Louisa go further and list him in the Wilhelmstrasse out of the goodness of her heart, or for old memory's sake? Capper smiled wryly over his absinth. There was no goodness in Louisa's heart, and the strongest memory she had was how nearly Billy Capper had dragged her down with him in the scandal of the Lord Fisher letters.
How the thin green blood of the wormwood cleared the mind—made it leap to logical reasoning!
Why had Louisa instructed him to leave Marseilles by the steamer touching at Malta when a swifter boat scheduled to go to Alexandria direct was leaving the French port a few hours later? Was it that the girl intended he should get no farther than Malta; that the English there should——
Capper laughed like the philosopher who has just discovered the absolute of life's futility. The ticket—his ticket from the Wilhelmstrasse which Louisa had procured for him; Louisa wanted that for other purposes, and used him as the dummy to obtain it. She wanted it before he could arrive at Malta—and she got it before he left Marseilles. Even Louisa, the wise, had played without discounting the Double 0 on the wheel—fate's percentage in every game; she could not know the Vendée would be warned from lingering at Malta because of the exigency of war, and that Billy Capper would reach Alexandria, after all.
The green logic in the glass carried Capper along with mathematical exactness of deduction. As he sipped, his mind became a thing detached and, looking down from somewhere high above earth, reviewed the blundering course of Billy Capper's body from Berlin to Alexandria—the poor deluded body of a dupe. With this certitude of logic came the beginnings of resolve. Vague at first and intangible, then, helped by the absinth to focus, was this new determination. Capper nursed it, elaborated on it, took pleasure in forecasting its outcome, and viewing himself in the new light of a humble hero. It was near morning, and the Tavern of Thermopyl? was well-nigh deserted when Capper paid his score and blundered through the early-morning crowd of mixed races to his hotel. His legs were quite drunk, but his mind was coldly and acutely sober.
Very drunk, master, was the report C?sar, the Numidian, delivered to Doctor Koch at the Ramleh villa. The doctor, believing C?sar to be a competent judge, chuckled in his beard. C?sar was called off from the trail.
Across the street from Doctor Koch's home on Queen's Terrace was the summer home of a major of fusileers, whose station was up the Nile. But this summer it was not occupied. The major had hurried his family back to England at the first mutterings of the great war, and he himself had to stick by his regiment up in the doubtful Sudan country. Like Doctor Koch's place, the major's yard was surrounded by a high wall, over which the fronds of big palms and flowered shrubs draped themselves. The nearest villa, aside from the Kochs' across the street, was a hundred yards away. At night an arc light, set about thirty feet from Doctor Koch's gate, marked all the road thereabouts with sharp blocks of light and shadow. One lying close atop the wall about the major's yard, screened by the palms and the heavy branches of some night-blooming ghost flower, could command a perfect view of Doctor Koch's gateway without being himself visible.
At least, so Billy Capper found it on the night following his visit to the German physician's and his subsequent communion with himself at the Tavern of Thermopyl?. Almost with the falling of the dark, Capper had stepped off the train at Ramleh station, ferried himself by boat down the canal that passed behind the major's home, after careful reconnoitering, discovered that the tangle of wildwood about the house was not guarded by a watchman, and had so achieved his position of vantage on top of the wall directly opposite the gateway of No. 32. He was stretched flat. Through the spaces between the dry fingers of a palm leaf he could command a good view of the gate and of the road on either side. Few pedestrians passed below him; an automobile or two puffed by; but in the main, Queen's Terrace was deserted and Capper was alone. It was a tedious vigil. Capper had no reliance except his instinct of a spy familiar with spy's work to assure that he would be rewarded for his pains. Some sixth sense in him had prompted him to come thither, sure in the promise that the night would not be misspent. A clock somewhere off in the odorous dark struck the hour twice, and Capper fidgeted. The hard stone he was lying on cramped him.
The sound of footsteps on the flagged walk aroused momentary interest. He looked out through his screen of green and saw a tall well-knit figure of a man approach the opposite gate, stop and ring the bell. Instantly Capper tingled with the hunting fever of his trade. In the strong light from the arc he could study minutely the face of the man at the gate—smoothly shaven, slightly gaunt and with thin lips above a strong chin. It was a striking face—one easily remembered. The gate opened; beyond it Capper saw, for an instant, the white figure of the Numidian he had bumped into at the alley's mouth. The gate closed on both.
Another weary hour for the ferret on the wall, then something happened that was reward enough for cramped muscles and taut nerves. An automobile purred up to the gate; out of it hopped two men, while a third, tilted over like one drunk, remained on the rear seat of the tonneau. One rang the bell. The two before the gate fidgeted anxiously for it to be opened. Capper paid not so much heed to them as to the half-reclining figure in the machine. It was in strong light. Capper saw, with a leap of his heart, that the man in the machine was clothed in the khaki service uniform of the British army—an officer's uniform he judged by the trimness of its fitting, though he could not see the shoulder straps. The unconscious man was bareheaded and one side of his face was darkened by a broad trickle of blood from the scalp.
When the gate opened, there were a few hurried words between the Numidian and the two who had waited. All three united in lifting an inert figure from the car and carrying it quickly through the gate. Consumed with the desire to follow them into the labyrinth of the doctor's yard, yet not daring, Capper remained plastered to the wall.
Captain Woodhouse, sitting in the consultation room with the doctor, heard the front door open and the scuffle of burdened feet in the hall. Doctor Koch hopped nimbly to the folding doors and threw them back. First, the Numidian's broad back, then, the bent shoulders of two other men, both illy dressed, came into view. Between them they carried the form of a man in officer's khaki. Woodhouse could not check a fluttering of the muscles in his cheeks; this was a surprise to him; the doctor had given no hint of it.
Good—good! clucked Koch, indicating that they should lay their burden on the operating chair. "Any trouble?"
None in the least, Herr Doktor, the larger of the two white men answered. "At the corner of the warehouse near the docks, where it is dark—he was going early to the Princess Mary, and——"
Yes, a tap on the head—so? Koch broke in, casting a quick glance toward where Captain Woodhouse had risen from his seat. A shrewd appraising glance it was, which was not lost on Woodhouse. He stepped forward to join the physician by the side of the figure on the operating chair.
Our man, Doctor? he queried casually.
Your name sponsor, Koch answered, with a satisfied chuckle; "the original Captain Woodhouse of his majesty's signal service, formerly stationed at Wady Halfa."
Quite so, the other answered in English. Doctor Koch clapped him on the shoulder.
Perfect, man! You do the Englishman from the book. It will fool them all.
Woodhouse shrugged his shoulders in deprecation. Koch cackled on, as he began to lay out sponge and gauze bandages on the glass-topped table by the operating chair:
You see, I did not tell you of this because—well, that fellow Capper's coming last night looked bad; even your explanation did not altogether convince. So I thought we'd have this little surprise for you. If you were an Englishman you'd show it in the face of this—you couldn't help it. Eh?
Possibly not, the captain vouchsafed. "But what is your plan, Doctor? What are you going to do with this Captain Woodhouse to insure his being out of the way while I am in Gibraltar. I hope no violence—unless necessary."
Nothing more violent than a violent headache and some fever, Koch answered. He was busy fumbling in the unconscious man's pockets. From the breast pocket of the uniform jacket he withdrew a wallet, glanced at its contents, and passed it to the captain.
Your papers, Captain—the papers of transfer from Wady Halfa to Gibraltar. Money, too. I suppose we'll have to take that, also, to make appearances perfect—robbery following assault on the wharves.
Woodhouse pocketed the military papers in the wallet and laid it down, the money untouched. The two white aids of Doctor Koch, who were standing by the folding doors, eyed the leather folder hungrily. Koch, meanwhile, had stripped off the jacket from the Englishman and was rolling up the right sleeve of his shirt. That done, he brought down from the top of the glass instrument case a wooden rack containing several test tubes, stoppled with cotton. One glass tube he lifted out of the rack and squinted at its clouded contents against the light.
A very handy little thing—very handy. Koch was talking to himself as much as to Woodhouse. "A sweet little product of the Niam Niam country down in Belgian Kongo. Natives think no more of it than they would of a water fly's bite; but the white man is——"
A virus of some kind? the other guessed.
Of my own isolation, Doctor Koch answered proudly. He scraped the skin on the victim's arm until the blood came, then dipped an ivory spatula into the tube of murky gelatine and transferred what it brought up to the raw place in the flesh.
The action is very quick, and may be violent, he continued. "Our friend here won't recover consciousness for three days, and he will be unable to stand on his feet for two weeks, at least—dizziness, intermittent fever, clouded memory; he'll be pretty sick."
But not too sick to communicate with others, Woodhouse suggested. "Surely——"
Maybe not too sick, but unable to communicate with others, Doctor Koch interrupted, with a booming laugh. "This time to-morrow night our friend will be well out on the Libyan Desert, with some ungentle Bedouins for company. He's bound for Fezzan—and it will be a long way home without money. Who knows? Maybe three months."
Very deftly Koch bound up the abrasion on the Englishman's arm with gauze, explaining as he worked that the man's desert guardians would have instructions to remove the bandages before he recovered his faculties. There would be nothing to tell the luckless prisoner more than that he had been kidnaped, robbed and carried away by tribesmen—a not uncommon occurrence in lower Egypt. Koch completed his work by directing his aids to strip off the rest of the unconscious man's uniform and clothe him in a nondescript civilian garb that C?sar brought into the consultation room from the mysterious upper regions of the house.
Exit Captain Woodhouse of the signal service, the smiling doctor exclaimed when the last button of the misfit jacket had been flipped into its buttonhole, "and enter Captain Woodhouse of the Wilhelmstrasse." Turning, he bowed humorously to the lean-faced man beside him. He nodded his head at C?sar; the latter dived into a cupboard at the far end of the room and brought out a squat flask and glasses, which he passed around. When the liquor had been poured, Doctor Koch lifted his glass and squinted through it with the air of a gentle satyr.
Gentlemen, we drink to what will happen soon on the Rock of Gibraltar! All downed the toast gravely. Then the master of the house jerked his head toward the unconscious man on the operating chair. C?sar and the two white men lifted the limp body and started with it to the door, Doctor Koch preceding them to open doors. The muffled chug-chugging of the auto at the gate sounded almost at once.
The doctor and Number Nineteen Thirty-two remained together in the consultation room for a few minutes, going over, in final review, the plans that the latter was to put into execution at the great English stronghold on the Rock. The captain looked at his watch, found the hour late, and rose to depart. Doctor Koch accompanied him to the gate, and stood with him for a minute under the strong light from the near-by arc.
You go direct to the Princess Mary? he asked.
Direct to the Princess Mary, the other answered. "She is to sail at five o'clock."
Then God guard you, my friend, on—your great adventure. They clasped hands, and the gate closed behind the doctor.
A shadow skipped from the top of the wall about the major's house across the road. A shadow dogged the footsteps of the tall well-knit man who strode down the deserted Queen's Terrace toward the tiled station by the tracks. A little more than an hour later, the same shadow flitted up the gangplank of the Princess Mary at her berth. When the big P. & O. liner pulled out at dawn, she carried among her saloon passengers one registered as "C. G. Woodhouse, Capt. Sig. Service," and in her second cabin a "William Capper."
No, madam does not know me; but she must see me. Oh, I know she will see me. Tell her, please, it is a girl from New York all alone in Paris who needs her help.
The butler looked again at the card the visitor had given him. Quick suspicion flashed into his tired eyes—the same suspicion that had all Paris mad.
Ger-son—Mademoiselle Ger-son. That name, excuse me, if I say it—that name ees——
It sounds German; yes. Haven't I had that told me a thousand times these last few days? The girl's shoulders drooped limply, and she tried to smile, but somehow failed. "But it's my name, and I'm an American—been an American twenty-two years. Please—please!"
Madam the ambassador's wife; she ees overwhelm wiz woark. The butler gave the door an insinuating push. Jane Gerson's patent-leather boot stopped it. She made a quick rummage in her bag, and when she withdrew her hand, a bit of bank paper crinkled in it. The butler pocketed the note with perfect legerdemain, smiled a formal thanks and invited Jane into the dark cool hallway of the embassy. She dropped on a skin-covered couch, utterly spent. Hours she had passed moving, foot by foot, in an interminable line, up to a little wicket in a steamship office, only to be told, "Every boat's sold out." Other grilling hours she had passed similarly before the express office, to find, at last, that her little paper booklet of checks was as worthless as a steamship folder. Food even lacked, because the money she offered was not acceptable. For a week she had lived in the seething caldron that was Paris in war time, harried, buffeted, trampled and stampeded—a chip on the froth of madness. This day, the third of August, found Jane Gerson summoning the last remnants of her flagging nerve to the supreme endeavor. Upon her visit to the embassy depended everything: her safety, the future she was battling for. But now, with the first barrier passed, she found herself suddenly faint and weak.
Madam the ambassador's wife will see you. Come! The butler's voice sounded from afar off, though Jane saw the gleaming buckles at his knees very close. The pounding of her heart almost choked her as she rose to follow him. Down a long hall and into a richly furnished drawing-room, now strangely transformed by the presence of desks, filing cabinets, and busy girl stenographers; the click of typewriters and rustle of papers gave the air of an office at top pressure. The butler showed Jane to a couch near the portières and withdrew. From the tangle of desks at the opposite end of the room, a woman with a kindly face crossed, with hand extended. Jane rose, grasped the hand and squeezed convulsively.
You are——
Yes, my dear, I am the wife of the ambassador. Be seated and tell me all your troubles. We are pretty busy here, but not too busy to help—if we can.
Jane looked into the sympathetic eyes of the ambassador's wife, and what she found there was like a draft of water to her parched soul. The elder woman, smiling down into the white face, wherein the large brown eyes burned unnaturally bright, saw a trembling of the lips instantly conquered by a rallying will, and she patted the small hand hearteningly.
Dear lady, Jane began, almost as a little child, "I must get out of Paris, and I've come to you to help me. Every way is closed except through you."
So many hundreds like you, poor girl. All want to get back to the home country, and we are so helpless to aid every one. The lady of the embassy thought, as she cast a swift glance over the slender shoulders and diminutive figure beneath them, that here, indeed, was a babe in the woods. The blatant, self-assured tourist demanding assistance from her country's representative as a right she knew; also the shifty, sloe-eyed demi-vierge who wanted no questions asked. But such a one as this little person——
You see, I am a buyer for Hildebrand's store in New York. Jane was rushing breathlessly to the heart of her tragedy. "This is my very first trip as buyer, and—it will be my last unless I can get through the lines and back to New York. I have seventy of the very last gowns from Poiret, from Paquin and Worth—you know what they will mean in the old town back home—and I must—just simply must get them through. You understand! With them, Hildebrand can crow over every other gown shop in New York. He can be supreme, and I will be—well, I will be made!"
The kindly eyes were still smiling, and the woman's heart, which is unchanged even in the breast of an ambassador's wife, was leaping to the magic lure of that simple word—gowns.
But—but the banks refuse to give me a cent on my letter of credit. The express office says my checks, which I brought along for incidentals, can not be cashed. The steamship companies will not sell a berth in the steerage, even, out of Havre or Antwerp or Southampton—everything gobbled up. You can't get trunks on an aeroplane, or I'd try that. I just don't know where to turn, and so I've come to you. You must know some way out.
Jane unconsciously clasped her hands in supplication, and upon her face, flushed now with the warmth of her pleading, was the dawning of hope. It was as if the girl were assured that once the ambassador's wife heard her story, by some magic she could solve the difficulties. The older woman read this trust, and was touched by it.
Have you thought of catching a boat at Gibraltar? she asked. "They are not so crowded; people haven't begun to rush out of Italy yet."
But nobody will honor my letter of credit, Jane mourned. "And, besides, all the trains south of Paris are given up to the mobilization. Nobody can ride on them but soldiers." The lady of the embassy knit her brows for a few minutes while Jane anxiously scanned her face. Finally she spoke:
The ambassador knows a gentleman—a large-hearted American gentleman here in Paris—who has promised his willingness to help in deserving cases by advancing money on letters of credit. And with money there is a way—just a possible way—of getting to Gibraltar. Leave your letter of credit with me, my dear; go to the police station in the district where you live and get your pass through the lines, just as a precaution against the possibility of your being able to leave to-night. Then come back here and see me at four o'clock. Perhaps—just a chance——
Hildebrand's buyer seized the hands of the embassy's lady ecstatically, tumbled words of thanks crowding to her lips. When she went out into the street, the sun was shining as it had not shone for her for a dreary terrible week.
At seven o'clock that night a big Roman-nosed automobile, long and low and powerful as a torpedo on wheels, pulled up at the door of the American embassy. Two bulky osier baskets were strapped on the back of its tonneau; in the rear seat were many rugs. A young chap with a sharp shrewd face—an American—sat behind the wheel.
The door of the embassy opened, and Jane Gerson, swathed in veils, and with a gray duster buttoned tight about her, danced out; behind her followed the ambassador, the lady of the embassy and a bevy of girls, the volunteer aids of the overworked representative's staff. Jane's arms went about the ambassador's wife in an impulsive hug of gratitude and good-by; the ambassador received a hearty handshake for his "God speed you!" A waving of hands and fluttering of handkerchiefs, and the car leaped forward. Jane Gerson leaned far over the back, and, through cupped hands, she shouted: "I'll paint Hildebrand's sign on the Rock of Gibraltar!"
Over bridges and through outlying faubourgs sped the car until the Barrier was gained. There crossed bayonets denying passage, an officer with a pocket flash pawing over pass and passport, a curt dismissal, and once more the motor purred its speed song, and the lights of the road flashed by. More picket lines, more sprouting of armed men from the dark, and flashing of lights upon official signatures. On the heights appeared the hump-shouldered bastions of the great outer forts, squatting like huge fighting beasts of the night, ready to spring upon the invader. Bugles sounded; the white arms of search-lights swung back and forth across the arc of night in their ceaseless calisthenics; a murmuring and stamping of many men and beasts was everywhere.
The ultimate picket line gained and passed, the car leaped forward with the bound of some freed animal, its twin headlights feeling far ahead the road to the south. Behind lay Paris, the city of dread. Ahead—far ahead, where the continent is spiked down with a rock, Gibraltar. Beyond that the safe haven from this madness of the millions—America.
Jane Gerson stretched out her arms to the vision and laughed shrilly.