The Amazing Chance

by Patricia Wentworth

  There were two doors to the room. He thought he would go and prospect a bit. The need to know where he was and what had been happening took possession of him to the exclusion of everything else. With a glance at his bare legs, he pulled the coverlet off the bed and wrapped it about him. Then he turned the handle of the nearest door, opened it, and found himself looking through into another room.

  It was a dining-room this time. There was a red carpet on the floor and red curtains at the windows. A bowl of snowdrops stood on a bare, polished table.

  The man who had been Anton Blum nodded. Snowdrops—“I thought those trees looked like spring all right.” December—January—February—it must be at least February; and that meant that he had been knocked out for three months. He frowned again, spread out his hands, and looked at them. They were not the hands of a man who had been three months on the sick list. They were not his own hands as he remembered them. They were broad, blackened, horny; and every nail was broken, worn to the quick, and thickened at the edge; the palms were ridged with callosities. The muscles of his fore-arms stood out like cords.

  He looked again about the quiet, empty room. There was a writing-table in the window, and a magazine thrown down carelessly on a chair beside it. He picked the paper up and turned the leaves. A page of pictures caught his eye—a young man; a smiling girl; and underneath: “The Duke and Duchess of York en route for——” The Duchess of York! There wasn’t any Duchess of York. What on earth were they gassing about? He looked up impatiently to the top of the page and saw the name of the paper, The Weekly Whisper, and the date, March the seventh, 1925.

  March? So it was march. 1925? That was a misprint of course; it was 1915—November the fifteenth, 1915 was the last date he remembered. He stood there with his head bent forward over the paper, his mind fumbling with the figures. They came and went. November the fifteenth—March the seventh—1915—1925. It was as if he was leaning against a closed door. On the other side of the door things were happening; people were talking. He pushed against the door, and felt it give. In a moment it would open and he would see and hear. November—March—fifteen—twenty-five.

  He gripped the paper in his hands, and a leaf fell over. Evelyn’s face looked at him, and he saw Evelyn’s name: “We all know Mrs Jim Laydon.” He read the paragraph right through; and then, with the ground slipping beneath his feet and a roaring noise in his ears, he began to read it again: “We all know Mrs Jim Laydon. Some of us remember her pretty, tragic wedding ten years ago.”

  Evelyn! Time went by him. The roaring in his ears stopped; the floor was steady under his feet; the room was as still as a grave! Ten years! He had been dead ten years!

  Ten years. Time and space were gone; all landmarks were gone. The shock was like the shock of some huge, shattering wave whose resistless force submerged and swept him into the unknown. After a timeless agony he felt the wave recede; and as it receded, it drew him with it, dragging him towards the abyss from which it had come. He began to resist, at first in a blind, confused flurry, then with increasing strength and clearing vision. The confusion began to pass; the sense of being drawn down into madness and chaos passed. He was left battered, but himself. As he lifted his head from that victory, he heard footsteps and voices that seemed to sound from a long way off. They came nearer. The door opened. He saw a face most blessedly familiar—Manning—it was Manning—good old Monkey Manning!

  VII

  For the briefest moment he looked at Manning and felt that astonishing relief. Then, as Manning exclaimed, Anna Blum passed him quickly and stood a yard inside the room, with her hands out, and a cry of “Anton!”

  To the man who had been Anton Blum, that was in some way the most dreadful moment of this whole dreadful hour. He had fought with all his strength to hold on to himself; and in the very moment of victory he felt himself betrayed, felt sanity slip and his hard-won footing fail beneath his feet. This woman belonged to the senseless, interminable dream which had no relation to reality. She stood there between himself and Manning, a broad figure with an anxious, comely face. He knew her face, every line of it; he knew the battered felt hat, the faded cape with straps that crossed the ample bosom; he knew the voice that said “Anton!” It was Tante Anna—and she belonged to a horrible, formless dream.

  Manning looked over Anna’s shoulder and saw the man he had left sleeping stand ghastly between the windows, O’Neill’s bandage about his head and a crumpled paper at his feet. The long folds of the white coverlet gave him a strange, fantastic height. But before the terror in the man’s eyes all other strangeness died.

  Manning came into the room, shutting the door behind him, and the man called out hoarsely:

  “Monkey! For God’s sake, Monkey!”

  “Anton!” said Anna Blum again. She came towards him. But Manning was before her.

  “Who are you?” he said, quick and sharp.

  The man took a blind step forward and caught at him with his great hands.

  “Monkey! For God’s sake—who’s that?”

  A shaking hand pointed at Anna, who stood grave-eyed and motionless, her hands locked together, her mouth twitching a little.

  “Monkey, is there anyone there?—or am I mad? I tell you I can see her. She was in the dream; but I can see her just as plainly as I can see you. Monkey——” The voice broke, gasping. The whole great form shook as Manning tried to steady it.

  “My dear chap, hold up. You’re all right; you’re not seeing things; you’re as right as rain. This is Frau Blum, who——”

  The man had his hands on Manning’s shoulders; his face was convulsed; his teeth chattered.

  “You—see—her—too?”

  “Good Lord, yes—of course I do.”

  Nothing mattered except the torture of uncertainty in the eyes that searched his face. Manning saw the uncertainty break into bewilderment.

  “You can see her? She’s here?” The words were jerked out and, even so, hardly audible.

  “Yes, yes—I say, hold up!”

  For a moment the man’s whole weight came on Manning. Then he reeled back, lurched to the table, caught at it, and came down heavily on a chair. Still gripping the table, he looked long and steadily at Anna Blum. Long and steadily Anna looked back at him. At last he turned his head, looked at Manning, and spoke as a man speaks when he has come to the last of his strength.

  “Monkey—I must know—she knows—make her speak!” With the last word he put his arms on the table, and bending forward, laid his head upon them.

  Manning’s look of pity and concern passed into one of sharp inquiry as he swung round on Anna.

  “Well, Frau Blum? What have you to say? You’ll hardly stick to last night’s story now, I imagine.”

  “No,” said Anna. There was a great sadness in her voice, but no fear. She took a chair and sat down by the table. The bowl of snowdrops was between her and the man who had been as a son to her for ten years. She said, “No. I have understood.” She took out a clean, folded handkerchief, shook it out, and wiped her brow. Then she undid her cape and pushed it back.

  Manning, leaning over the high-backed chair at the end of the table, watched her closely. When she had wiped her brow a second time, she sighed and said,

  “Yes, I will speak now, Herr Major.”

  “You’d better,” said Manning, and saw her head lift a little.

  “I am not afraid. I have done no wrong. I will tell you everything now.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Manning. He went over to the man, whose face was hidden, and touched him on the shoulder. Then he said in English:

  “She’ll speak. Can you follow the German?”

  The man moved, raised his head a little, nodded, and resumed his former position. Manning went back to the head of the table.

  “Now, Frau Blum.”

  Anna nodded.

  “Yes, now I will speak.” She paused for a moment as if considering. “I must begin at the beginning, or you will not understand.” She frowned slightly
, and began to speak slowly, with pauses here and there. Every now and then she looked over the table at the man, who lay half across it with his head on his arms. Then her eyes came back to Manning again—round, serious eyes, very clear and blue.

  “When the war came we were living in the Schwarzwald. My man had inherited a little holding there, and we were just making a living, no more. Everything had been very much neglected. Then the war came and my husband was called up—not just at first, you understand, but after Christmas. He went to garrison duty, and then to the Russian front. And then I heard that he was killed. That was in April; and at the end of the month I had his nephew Anton, the real Anton Blum, on my hands. He had been wounded in the head, and they sent him to me from hospital because his mind was gone and he had no other relations. Well, Herr Major, that was a hard blow. I had no love for Anton, whom I had only seen once or twice, and who had always given himself airs towards us and behaved as if we were not as good as he. I had my hands full enough without him, I can tell you—two cows until the Government took them; pigs; geese; hens; and an acre of potatoes to plant. That, you may really say, was work enough for one woman’s hands. With Anton, everything was at once a hundred times more. When the mood came on him he would be violent and dangerous; and when it passed he would do nothing except eat and sleep. Very soon no one would come near me, because they were afraid of Anton. So it went on all the summer.

  “In July I had to take him to the hospital. They said he was no better, and never would be, but I must bring him again in six months’ time. We went back. And in November everything happened. I remember that there was a very fine day, and then a fog such as one gets in November; and then, on the top of that, a three days’ storm as wild as any I have seen. When the storm came on, Anton became very hard to manage. When he was in bed that night I took away his clothes and locked them up. It was the first quiet time I had had all day. I went into the kitchen and began to put things tidy. Then I went into my own room. But I was uneasy. After half an hour I went to look at Anton—and he was gone. Ach, Herr Major, think of it! It was a night like the night that you came for him.” She put out her hand across the table and almost touched the man’s bare arm. “Thunder and rain like the day of judgment; and Anton gone out into it in his shirt, not even a pair of shoes to his feet.”

  She drew back her hand and folded it with the other on her lap. Manning saw the fingers lock and the knuckles whiten. She went on:

  “Though I had no love for him, he was in my charge. I dressed myself, and I was out for two hours calling to him. At the end of two hours I came back. My clothes were drenched. I made up the fire and set a light in the window to guide him home. I did not sleep. And he did not come. As soon as it was light I went out again. It was still fearful weather. I went up through the forest calling. I thought I would go as far as the waterfall, because Anton used to like to watch the water come down with such a roar on to the rocks in the pool below. I could not see why he should go there on such a night of storm; but—it is the truth—I did not know where to go. The wind blew so that I could hardly keep my feet, and the noise was terrible; but the rain had stopped. It was when I could already hear the sound of the fall that I smelt something burning. I came out between the bushes into a clearing. And there was an aeroplane fallen down and broken to pieces. I had never seen one so close before. It had been burning, and the bits of it still smoked. I looked all round, and I saw a man sitting on a fallen tree a dozen yards away. He had his head in his hands and the blood was running down between his fingers.

  “I knew at once that it was an English officer—I have seen many of them, because, when I was sixteen, I went to England for three years to be under-nurse in an officer’s family. The lady’s mother was German from near my home, and she engaged me to go to her daughter; and I was happy, and I learned to speak English. There was a little boy whose name was Hugh—girls too and a baby. But it was the little Hugh whom I loved most. Often after the war came I wondered where he was fighting, and I said many prayers for him. Well, when I saw that English officer, I thought of my little Hugh. I knew that it could not be he; but I thought of him. Then I went up to the man, and put my hand on his shoulder, and spoke to him in English. He did not seem to hear. I sat down beside him and wiped away the blood from his wound; and I tore a strip from my petticoat and bound it round his head. He kept saying one word over and over, ‘Fog—fog—fog,’ just like that. And then he groaned. I could not make him understand anything. But in the end I got him on to his feet and put my arm round him, and he came with me, leaning on my shoulder. Fortunately I am very strong.

  “I got him home, and took his clothes off, and put him into Anton’s bed. Everything that he had on was soaked. I gave him a night-shirt of my husband’s; and I fed him, and he went to sleep in Anton’s bed. When he was asleep I locked all the doors and went out again to look for Anton.” She paused, took up her handkerchief, and wiped her forehead. “Well, Herr Major, I found him. First I found his shirt, which he had taken off and folded up. It was lying by the stream at the head of the waterfall. God knows whether he meant to bathe, or what he meant to do, but Anton himself I found in the pool below. He had fallen on the rocks, and I do not think that his own mother would have known him. I took his shirt and I went back. Later I meant to go and get help. But when I got home I found the Englishman so ill that I could not leave him. I stayed with him all that day and all the night, only leaving him to see to the animals.

  “Herr Major, he was only a lad, and in his illness he was like a child. He would hold my hand tight, tight, and look at me with eyes that were always asking something. But after I brought him home he never spoke more than two or three words. When the morning came he slept, and I sat down and thought what I must do. To go down into the village and say ‘My nephew Anton is drowned, and there is an English officer in my house—come and help me’—that would be one way. I thought of doing that, because, after all, I am a God-fearing, law-abiding German woman. But all the time I thought of it a voice said to me, ‘Jawohl, Anna, but if you do that, the Englishman will die—they will take him away, perhaps not very gently, and he will die.’ I thought again. I thought about my little Hugh. I thought about Anton in the pool under the waterfall. And a plan came to me.”

  Anna looked again across the bowl of snowdrops at the bowed head with the bandage about it. This time, as she looked, the head was lifted, and for a moment the man looked back at her. She said quickly, “Ja, ja, mein bester, it was like that,” and he caught his breath and let his head fall again upon his arms. Anna’s eyes dwelt on him sadly. Then she turned back to Manning.

  “The plan came to me. At first I thought to myself, ‘One cannot do such a thing—but in such and such a way it might be done.’ I went on thinking about it as if it were a story in a book. I did not mean to do it; but in the end I did it because there did not seem to be anything else to do. I could not let him die.”

  “What did you do?” said Manning harshly. He leaned nearer, his arms upon the table, the lines in his face cut deep.

  “I went back to the waterfall,” said Anna Blum. “I took with me the English officer’s clothes and his identity disc. I laid them down in the place where I had found Anton’s shirt. Then I went home again and waited. It was in my mind that perhaps the Englishman would die. But he did not die. Then I thought, ‘If he recovers, what shall I do?’ And I thought, ‘Perhaps when he is well I can give him up.’ Well, I waited, and after a time he stopped being ill, his strength came back; but he remembered nothing, and he was dumb. When I saw this I knew that the way was easy and I need not give him up. It was a fortnight after the storm that they found the aeroplane and Anton’s body. No one had any thought but that it was the Englishman. They believed that he had gone in to bathe and been carried over the fall. There was a lot of talk about it, but no one had any other thought—how should they? Presently they stopped talking. I gave out that Anton had fallen in one of his fits and that his wound had broken out again. When t
he Englishman began to go out he had a bandage round his head, and I had let his hair and beard grow. He was of the same age as Anton, and about the same height; also his hair and eyes were the right colour. There was no one who really knew Anton, because all had been frightened of him and had kept away. It was quite easy. And he was easy to manage too; he was like a child, good and obedient, never violent as Anton had been. I taught him as one teaches a child. It needed great patience, but he got to understand what I said to him. And I taught him to dig and plough, and to do all the heavy work. By the time the spring came I was thanking God every day that I had him to help me.”

  “No one suspected?” said Manning. His clenched fist struck the table as he spoke.

  “No one, Herr Major. The worst time was when I had to take him to the hospital.”

  “You took him?” Manning stood amazed at the woman’s courage.

  “Jawohl—and all went well. I was very much afraid, but all went well. The journey frightened and confused him, and when we came to where the doctors were, he knew nothing and could understand nothing. They were not the same doctors as before, and there were many, many for them to see; they made haste, or they would never have been done. They told me that his mind was gone, and that he would have his discharge. And we came home again. That is all, Herr Major.”

  “Not quite,” said Manning sharply. “When the war was over, when the Armistice came—why didn’t you speak then? Did you never think of his people?”

  Anna returned his look with one of reproach.

  “Ja gewiss, I thought of them. And I thought ‘If he has parents, what can I do? Can I give them back their son? They have wept for him—and they have stopped weeping. Can I give him back to them? He will not even know who they are. For them it would be a new and heavier sorrow; and for him——Ach, mein Gott! What would it be for him? They would put him in a hospital, perhaps in an asylum. God forbid! They would take him away from me!’ No, Herr Major, I could not do it. With me he was safe—yes, and happy. He had grown broad and strong—stronger than other men—and he was proud of his strength. He loved to work hard and to be in the open air. I could not send him away. Presently my brother, Josef Müller, wrote to me from here that his wife was dead, and that he could not manage his daughter. He asked me to come and keep house for him. I told him that I must bring Anton with me; and he said ‘Bring him.’ So we came. Now that is all.”