A dead silence ensued. And after it had lasted a little while the tall Prussian lifted his hand absently to his mustache and touched it caressingly.
"I am satisfied, whatever your opinion may be of me or of my people, that you will return if you say you will, successful or otherwise. I promise you immunity if you return with my daughter; I promise you a wall and a file of men if you return unsuccessful. But, in either event, I am satisfied that you will return. Will you go?"
"Yes," said Guild, thoughtfully. They stood for a moment longer, the young man gazing absently out of the window toward the menacing smoke pall which was increasing above Yslemont.
"You promise not to burn the remainder of the village?" he asked, turning to look at von Reiter.
"I promise not to burn it if you keep your promise."
"I'll try… And the Burgomaster, notary, magistrate, and the others are to be released?"
"If you do what I ask."
"Very well. It's worth trying for. Give me my credentials."
"You need no written ones. Letters are unsafe. You will go to my daughter, who has leased a small cottage at Westheath. You will say to her that you come from me; that the question which she was to decide on the first of November must be decided sooner, and that when she arrives at Rehthal in Silesia she is to telegraph me through the General Staff of her arrival. If I can obtain leave to go to Silesia I shall do so. If not, I shall telegraph my instructions to her."
"Will that be sufficient for your daughter to place her confidence in a man absolutely strange to her and accompany that man on a journey of several days?" asked Guild, slightly astonished.
"Not quite sufficient," said von Reiter, his dry, blond visage slightly relaxing.
He drew a rather plain ring from his bony finger: "See if you can wear that," he said. "Does it fit you?"
Guild tried it on. "Well enough."
"Is there any danger of its slipping off?"
Guild tried it on another finger, which it fitted snugly.
"It looks like any other plain gold ring," he remarked.
"Her name is engraved inside."
"Karen?"
"Karen."
There came a short pause. Then: "Do you know London?" asked von Reiter.
"Passably."
"Oh! You are likely to require a touring car. You'll find it difficult to get. May I recommend the Edmeston Agency? It's about the only agency, now, where any gasoline at all is obtainable. The Edmeston Agency. I use it when I am in London. Ask for Mr. Louis Grätz."
After a moment he added, "My chauffeur brought your luggage, rücksack, stick, and so forth, from Yslemont. You will go to the enemies' lines south of Ostend in my car. One of my aides-de-camp will accompany you and show you a letter of instructions before delivering you to the enemies' flag of truce. You will read the letter, learn it by heart, and return it to my aide, Captain von Klipper.
"There is a bedroom above. Go up there. Food will be sent you. Get what sleep you can, because you are to leave at sunrise. Is this arrangement agreeable to you —Monsieur le Comte de Gueldres?"
"Perfectly, General Baron von Reiter."
"Also. Then I have the honour to wish you good night and a pleasant sleep."
"I thank you and I have the honour to wish you the same," said Guild, bowing pleasantly.
General von Reiter stood aside and saluted with stiff courtesy as the young man passed out.
A few moments later a regimental band somewhere along the Yslemont highway began to play "Polen Blut."
If blood were the theme, they ought to have played it well enough.
CHAPTER III
TIPPERARY
At noon on the following day Kervyn Guild wrote to his friend Darrel:
Dear Harry:
Instead of joining you on the Black Erenz for the late August trout fishing I am obliged to go elsewhere.
I have had a most unpleasant experience, and it is not ended, and I do not yet know what the outcome is to be.
From the fact that I have not dated this letter it will be evident to you that I am not permitted to do so. Also you will understand that I have been caught somewhere in the war zone and that is why the name of the place from which I am writing you is omitted – by request.
We have halted for luncheon at a wayside inn – the gentleman who is kind enough to accompany me, and I – and I have obtained this benevolent gentleman's authorization to write you whatever I please as long as I do NOT
1st. Tell you where I am going.
2d. Tell you where I am.
3d. Tell you anything else that does not suit him.
And he isn't a censor at that; he is just a very efficient, polite, and rather good-looking German officer serving as aide on the staff of a certain German major-general.
Day before yesterday, after luncheon, I was playing a quiet game of chess with the Burgomaster of a certain Belgian village, and was taking a last look before setting out for Luxembourg on foot, rücksack, stick, and all, when – well, circumstances over which I had no control interrupted the game of chess. It was white to go and mate in three moves. The Burgomaster was playing black. I had him, Harry. Too bad, because he was the best player in – well in that neighbourhood. I opened with a Lopez and he replied most irregularly. It certainly was interesting. I am sorry that I couldn't mate him and analyze the game with him. However, thank Heaven, I did announce mate in three moves, and the old gentleman was still defiantly studying the situation. I admit he refused to resign.
I left that village toward evening in a large, grey automobile. I and the gentleman who still accompanies me slept fairly well that night, considering the fact that a town was on fire all around us.
In the morning we made slow progress in our automobile. Roads and fields were greenish grey with troops – a vast horde of them possessed the valleys; they enveloped the hills like fog-banks turning the whole world grey – infantry, artillery, cuirassiers, Uhlans, hussars – all mist colour from helmet to heel – and so are their waggons and guns and caissons and traction-engines and motor-cycles and armoured cars and aeroplanes.
The latter are magnificent in an artistic sense – perfect replicas of giant pigeon-hawks, circling, planing, sheering the air or sailing high, majestic as a very lammergeier, fierce, relentless, terrible.
My efficient companion who is reading this letter over my shoulder as I write it, and who has condescended to permit a ghost of a smile to mitigate, now and then, the youthful seriousness of his countenance, is not likely to object when I say to you that what I have seen of the German army on the march is astoundingly impressive.
(He smiles again very boyishly and says he doesn't object.)
Order, precision, a knowledge of the country absolutely unhesitating marks its progress. There is much singing in the infantry ranks. The men march well, their physique is fine, the cavalry are superbly mounted, the guns – (He shakes his head, so never mind the guns.)
Their regimental bands are wonderful. It is a sheer delight to listen to them. They play everything from "Polen Blut" and "Sari," to Sousa, "Tannhäuser," and "A Hot Time," but I haven't yet heard "Tipperary." (He seems puzzled at this, but does not object.) I expect shortly to hear a band playing it. (I have to explain to my efficient companion that "Tipperary" is a tune which ought to take Berlin and Vienna by storm when they hear it. It takes Berlin and Vienna to really appreciate good music. He agrees with me.)
Yesterday we passed a convoy of prisoners, some were kilted. I was not permitted to speak to them – but, Oh, those wistful eyes of Scottish blue! I guess they understood, for they got all the tobacco I had left. (My companion is doubtful about this, but finally shrugs his shoulders.)
There is an awesome noise going on beyond us in – well in a certain direction. I think that all the artillery ever made is producing it. There's practically no smoke visible against the clear blue August sky – nothing to see at all except the feathery cotton fleece of shrapnel appearing, expanding, vanishing over a hill on the horizon, and two aeroplanes circling high like a pair of mated hawks.
And all the while this earth-rocking diapason continues more terrible, more majestic than any real thunder I ever heard.
We have had luncheon and are going on. He drank five quarts of Belgian beer! I am permitted a few minutes more and he orders the sixth quart. This is what I have to say:
In case anything should go wrong with me give the enclosed note to my mother. Please see to it that everything I have goes to her. My will is in my box in our safe at the office. It is all quite clear. There should be no trouble.
I expressed my trunk to your care in Luxembourg. You wrote me that you had received it and placed it in storage to await my leisurely arrival. In case of accident to me send it to my mother.
About the business, my share in any deals now on should go to my brother. After that if you care to take George in when he comes out of Harvard it would gratify his mother and me.
He's all to the good, you know. But don't do this if the business does not warrant it. Don't do it out of sentiment, Harry. If he promises to be of use, and if you have no other man in view, and if, as I say, business conditions warrant such an association with a view to eventual partnership, then if you care to take in George it will be all right.
He has sufficient capital, as you know. He lacks only the business experience. And he is intelligent and quick and it won't take him long.
But if you prefer somebody else don't hesitate. George is perfectly able to take care of his mother and himself.
This is all, I think. I'm sorry about the August fishing on the Black Erenz. It is a lovely stream and full of trout. All Luxembourg is lovely; it is a story-book country – a real land of romance. I wish I might have seen it again. Never were such forests, such silver streams, such golden glades, such wild-flowers – never such hills, such meadows, such skies.
Well – if I come back to you, I come back. If not – good-bye, old fellow – with all it implies between friends of many years.
Say to your kind friends, the Courlands, who so graciously invited you to bring me with you to Lesse Forest, that I shall not be able to accept their delightful hospitality, and that my inability to do so must remain to me a regret as long as I live. (These guns are thundering enough to crack the very sky! I really wish I could hear some band playing "Tipperary.")
Good-bye for a while – or indefinitely. Good luck to you.
Kervyn Guild.
"Is that quite acceptable to you?" asked Guild of the young Death's Head hussar beside him.
"Quite acceptable," replied the officer politely. "But what is there remarkable in anybody drinking six quarts of beer?"
Guild laughed: "Here is the note that I desire to enclose with it, if I may do so." And he wrote:
Dearest:
You must not grieve too much. You have George. It could not be avoided, honourably. He and I are good Americans; we are, perhaps, something else, too. But what the Book of Gold holds it never releases; what is written there is never expunged. George must do what I did when the time comes. I would have done more – was meaning to – was on my way. Destiny has ordered it otherwise.
While I live I think always of you. And it shall be so until the last.
This letter is to be sent to you by Harry Darrel only in the event of my death.
There's a good chance for me. But if things go wrong, then, good-bye, dearest.
Kervyn.
P. S.
Tell George that it's up to him, now.
K.
He held out the letter cheerfully to the hussar, but the latter had read it, and he merely nodded in respectful silence. So Guild folded it, sealed it in an envelope, wrote on it, "For my Mother in case of my death," and inclosed it in his letter to Darrel.
"Any time you are ready now," he said, rising from the little enameled iron table under the arbour.
The hussar rose, clanking, and set a whistle to his lips. Then, turning: "I shall have yet one more glass of beer," he said blandly, but his eyes twinkled.
The grey car rolled up in a few moments. Over it at a vast height something soared in hawk-like circles. It may have been a hawk. There was no telling at such a height.
So they drove off again amid the world-shaking din of the guns paralleling the allied lines toward the west. Ostend lay somewhere in that direction, the channel flowed beyond; beyond that crouched England – where bands were playing "Tipperary" – and where, perhaps, a young girl was listening to that new battle song of which the young hussar beside him had never even heard.
As the grey car hummed westward over the Belgian road, Guild thought of these things while the whole world about him was shaking with the earthquake of the guns.
"Karen," he repeated under his breath, "Karen Girard."
After a while sentinels began to halt them every few rods. The chauffeur unrolled two white flags and set them in sockets on either side of the hood. The hussar beside him produced a letter from his grey despatch-pouch.
"General von Reiter's orders," he said briefly. "You are to read them now and return the letter to me before the enemies' parlementaire answers our flag."
Guild took the envelope, tore it open, and read:
Orders received since our interview make it impossible for me to tell you where to find me on your return.
My country place in Silesia is apparently out of the question at present as a residence for the person you are expected to bring back with you. The inclosed clipping from a Danish newspaper will explain why. Therefore you will sail from London on Wednesday or Sunday, taking a Holland liner. You will land at Amsterdam, go by rail through Utrecht, Helmond, Halen, Maastricht. You will be expected there. If I am not there you will remain over night.
If you return from your journey alone and unsuccessful you will surrender yourself as prisoner to the nearest German post and ask the officer in charge to telegraph me.
If you return successful you shall be permitted at Eijsden to continue your journey with the person you bring with you, across the Luxembourg border to Trois Fontaines, which is just beyond the Grand Duchy frontier; and you shall then deliver the person in question to the housekeeper of the hunting lodge, Marie Bergner. The lodge is called Quellenheim, and it belongs to me. If I am not there you must remain there over night. In the morning if you do not hear from me, you are at liberty to go where you please, and your engagements vis-à-vis to me are cancelled.
VON REITER, MAJ-GEN'L.
The inclosed newspaper clipping had been translated into French and written out in long-hand. The translation read as follows:
Russia's invasion of East Prussia, Posen and Silesia has sent a wave of panic over the eastern provinces of the German Empire, if reports from Copenhagen and Stockholm are to be credited. These reports are chiefly significant as indicating that the Russian advance is progressing more rapidly than has been asserted even by despatches from Petrograd.
A correspondent of the Daily Telegraph reports from Stockholm that the whole of eastern Germany is upset by the menace of Cossack raids. He hears that a diplomatic despatch from Vienna contains information that the civilian inhabitants of Koenigsberg, East Prussia, and Breslau, in Silesia, are abandoning their homes and that only the military will remain in these strongholds.
From Copenhagen it is reported, allegedly from German sources, that Silesia expects devastation by fire and sword and that the wealthy Prussian landholders, whose immense estates cover Silesia, are leading the exodus toward the west. The military authorities have done everything possible to check the panic, fearing its hurtful influence on Germany's prospects, but have been unable to reassure the inhabitants. Many of these have seen bands of Cossacks who have penetrated a few miles over the border and their warnings have spread like a forest fire.
For a long while the young man studied the letter, reading and re-reading it, until, closing his eyes, he could repeat it word for word.
And when he was letter perfect he nodded and handed back the letter to the hussar, who pouched it.
A moment later the car ran in among a horde of mounted Uhlans, and one of their officers came galloping up alongside of the machine.
He and the hussar whispered together for a few minutes, then an Uhlan was summoned, a white cloth tied to his lance-shaft, and away he went on his powerful horse, the white flag snapping in the wind. Behind him cantered an Uhlan trumpeter.
Toward sunset the grey automobile rolled west out into open country. A vast flat plain stretched to the horizon, where the sunset flamed scarlet and rose.
But it was almost dusk before from somewhere across the plain came the faint strains of military music.
The hussar's immature mustache bristled. "British!" he remarked. "Gott in Himmel, what barbarous music!"
Guild said nothing. They were playing "Tipperary."
And now, through the late rays of the afterglow, an Uhlan trumpeter, sitting his horse on the road ahead, set his trumpet to his lips and sounded the parley again. Far, silvery, from the misty southwest, a British bugle answered.
Guild strained his eyes. Nothing moved on the plain. But, at a nod to the chauffeur from the hussar, the great grey automobile rolled forward, the two Uhlans walking their horses on either side.
Suddenly, east and west as far as the eye could see, trenches in endless parallels cut the plain, swarming with myriads and myriads of men in misty grey.
The next moment the hussar had passed a black silk handkerchief over Guild's eyes and was tying it rather tightly.
CHAPTER IV
BAD DREAMS
His first night in London was like a bad dream to him. Lying half awake on his bed, doggedly, tenaciously awaiting the sleep he needed, at intervals even on its vision-haunted borderland, but never drifting across it, he remained always darkly conscious of his errand and of his sinister predicament.
The ineffaceable scenes of the last three days obsessed him; his mind seemed to be unable to free itself. The quieter he lay, the more grimly determined he became that sleep should blot out these tragic memories for a few hours at least, the more bewildering grew the confusion in his haunted mind. Continually new details were evoked by his treacherous and insurgent memory – trifles terrible in their minor significance – the frightened boy against the wall snivelling against his ragged shirt-sleeve – the sprawling attitudes of the dead men in the dusty grass – and how, after a few moments, a mangled arm moved, blindly groping – and what quieted it.
Incidents, the petty details of sounds, of odours, of things irrelevant, multiplied and possessed him – the thin gold-rimmed spectacles on the Burgomaster's nose and the honest, incredulous eyes which gazed through them at him when he announced checkmate in three moves.
Did that tranquil episode happen years ago in another and calmer life? – or a few hours ago in this?
He heard again the startling and ominous sounds of raiding cavalry even before they had become visible in the misty street – the flat slapping gallop of the Uhlan's horses on the paved way, the tinkling clash of broken glass. Again the thick, sour, animal-like stench of the unwashed infantry seemed to assail and sicken him to the verge of faintness; and, half awake, he saw a world of fog set thick with human faces utterly detached from limbs and bodies – thousands and thousands of faces watching him out of thousands and thousands of little pig-like eyes.
His nerves finally drove him into motion and he swung himself out of bed and walked to the window.
His hotel was the Berkeley, and he looked out across Piccadilly into a silent, sad, unlighted city of shadows. Only a single line of lighted lamps outlined the broad thoroughfare. Crimson sparks twinkled here and there – the lights of cabs.
The great darkened Ritz towered opposite, Devonshire House squatted behind its grilles and shadowy walls on the right, and beyond the great dark thoroughfare stretched away into the night, melancholy, deserted save for the slight stirring of a policeman here and there or the passage of an automobile running in silence without lights.
He had been standing by the window for ten minutes or so, a lighted cigarette between his lips, both hands dropped into the pocket of his pyjamas, when he became aware of a slight sound – a very slight one – behind him.
He turned around and his eyes fell upon the knob of the door. Whether or not it was turning he could not determine in the dusk of the room. The only light in it came through his windows from the starry August night-sky.
After a moment he walked toward the door, bare-footed across the velvet carpet, halted, fixed his eyes on the door knob.
After a moment it began to turn again, almost imperceptibly. And, in him, every over-wrought nerve tightened to its full tension till he quivered. Slowly, discreetly, noiselessly the knob continued to turn. The door was not locked. Presently it began to open, the merest fraction of an inch at a time; then, abruptly but stealthily, it began to close again, as though the unseen intruder had caught sight of him, and Guild stepped forward swiftly and jerked the door wide open.
There was only the darkened hallway there, and a servant with a tray who said very coolly, "Thanky, sir," and entered the room.
"What-do-you-want?" asked Guild unsteadily.
"You ordered whiskey and soda for eleven o'clock, sir."
"I did not. Why do you try to enter my room without knocking?"
"I understood your orders were not to disturb you but to place the tray on the night-table beside your bed, sir."
Guild regarded him steadily. The servant, clean-shaven, typical, encountered the young man's gaze respectfully and with no more disturbance than seemed natural under the circumstances of a not unusual blunder.
Guild's nerves relaxed and he drew a deep, quiet breath.
"Somebody has made a mistake," he said. "I ordered nothing. And, hereafter, anybody coming to my door will knock. Is that plain?"
"Perfectly, sir."
"Have the goodness to make it very plain to the management."
"I'm sorry, sir – "
"You understand, now?"
"Certainly, sir."
"Very well… And, by the way, who on this corridor is likely to have ordered that whiskey?"
"Sir?"
"Somebody ordered it, I suppose?"
"Very likely the gentleman next door, sir – "
"All right," said Guild quietly. "Try the door while I stand here and look on."
"Very good, sir."
With equanimity unimpaired the waiter stepped to the next door on the corridor, placed his tray flat on the palm of his left hand, and, with his right hand, began to turn the knob, using, apparently, every precaution to make no noise.
But he was not successful; the glassware on his tray suddenly gave out a clear, tinkling clash, and, at the same moment the bedroom door opened from within and a man in evening dress appeared dimly framed by the doorway.
"Sorry, sir," said the waiter, "your whiskey, sir – "
He stepped inside the room and the door closed behind him. Guild quietly waited. Presently the waiter reappeared without the tray.
"Come here," motioned Guild.
The waiter said: "Yes, sir," in a natural voice. Doubtless the man next door could hear it, too.
Guild, annoyed, lowered his own voice: "Who is the gentleman in the next room?"
"A Mr. Vane, sir."
"From where?"
"I don't know, sir."
"What is he, English?"
"Yes sir, I believe so."
"You don't happen to know his business, do you?"
"No, sir."
"I ask – it's merely curiosity. Wait a moment." He turned, picked up a sovereign from a heap of coins on his night-table and gave it to the waiter.
"No need to repeat to anybody what I have asked you."
"Oh, no, sir – "
"All right. Listen very attentively to what I tell you. When I arrived here this afternoon I desired the management to hire for my use a powerful and absolutely reliable touring car and a chauffeur. I mentioned the Edmeston Agency and a Mr. Louis Grätz.
"Half an hour later the management informed me that they had secured such a car for me from Mr. Louis Grätz at the Edmeston Agency; that I was permitted sufficient gasoline to take me from here to Westheath, back here again, and then to the docks of the Holland Steamship Company next Sunday.
"I've changed my mind. Tomorrow is Wednesday and a steamer sails from Fresh Wharf for Amsterdam. Tell the management that I'll take that steamer and that I want them to telephone the Edmeston Agency to have the car here at six o'clock tomorrow morning."
"Very good, sir."
"Go down and tell them now. Ask them to confirm the change of orders by telephone."
"Very good, sir."
A quarter of an hour later the bell tinkled in his room: "Are you there, sir? Thank you, sir. The car is to be here at six o'clock. What time would you breakfast, Mr. Guild?"
"Five. Have it served here, please."
"Thank you, sir."
Guild went back to bed. Another detail bothered him now. If the man next door had ordered whiskey and soda for eleven, to be placed on the night-table beside the bed, why was he up and dressed and ready to open the door when the jingle of glassware awaited him?
Still there might be various natural explanations. Guild thought of several, but none of them suited him.
He began to feel dull and sleepy. That is the last he remembered, except that his sleep was disturbed by vaguely menacing dreams, until he awoke in the grey light of early morning, scarcely refreshed, and heard the waiter knocking. He rose, unlocked his door, and let him in with his tray.
When the waiter went out again Guild relocked his door, turned on his bath, took it red hot and then icy. And, thoroughly awake, now, he returned to his room, breakfasted, dressed, rang for his account, and a few minutes later descended in the lift to find his car and chauffeur waiting, and the tall, many-medalled porter at salute by the door.
"Westheath," he said to the smiling chauffeur. "Go as fast as you dare and by the direct route."
The chauffeur touched his peaked cap. He seemed an ideal chauffeur, neat, alert, smiling, well turned out in fact as the magnificent and powerful touring car which had been as thoroughly and minutely groomed as a race-horse or a debutante.
When the car rolled out into Piccadilly the waiter who had mistaken the order for whiskey, watched it from the dining-room windows. Several floors above, the man who had occupied the next bedroom also watched the departure of the car. When it was out of sight the man whose name was Vane went to the telephone and called 150 Fenchurch Street, E. C. It was the office of the Holland Steamship Company.
And the waiter who had entered the room unannounced, stood listening to the conversation over the wire, and finally took the transmitter himself for further conversation while Vane stood by listening, one hand resting familiarly on the waiter's shoulder.
After the waiter had hung up the receiver, Vane walked to the window, stood a moment looking out, then came slowly back.
"Gwynn," he said to the waiter, "this man, Guild, seems to be harmless. He's known at the American Embassy. He's an American in the real estate business in New York. It's true that Dart telegraphed from Ostend that Guild came to our lines in a German military automobile under a white flag. But he told a straight story. I'll run out to Westheath, and if his business there is clean and above-board, I think we can give him a clean bill of health."
Gwynn said, slowly: "I don't like the way he questioned me last night. Besides, a sovereign is too much even for an American."
"He might have been afraid of robbery."
"He was afraid of something."
"Very well. We've passage on the boat if necessary. I'll go out to Westheath anyway. If I don't care for what he is doing out there we can hold him on the dock."
"Another thing," mused Gwynn. "The Edmeston Agency may be quite all right, but the man's name is Grätz."
"He's been under scrutiny. He seems to be all right."
"All the same – his name is all wrong. What was that chauffeur's name?"
"Bush."
"Busch?"
"He spells it without a c. I saw his signature on the Agency rolls."
"Have you his history?"
"He's Canadian. I've sent for it."
"You'll find that his father spelled his name with a c," remarked Gwynn, gloomily. But Vane only laughed.
"I'm off," he said. "Stick around where I can get you on the telephone if necessary. But I don't think it will be necessary."
"I do," muttered Gwynn.