“Umph! Well, there again we are in doubt. Can I see the maid?”
Certainly.” He went out and called her in, explaining — but I knew that this was unnecessary — my interest in the matter: “ Speak freely, Lotte,” he added, for she looked much inclined to cry. “We know your only desire is to tell the truth.”
“I only want to know one thing,” I said. “Do you believe that the gentleman who called at nine o’clock was the traveller who had taken tea with the Governor earlier in the afternoon?”
She looked at me piteously. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know. He had a cloak like the other, and he was of the same height. And his speech seemed foreign. But there was no light in the passage and the lamp in the Market Place was behind him.”
“He went away as if for the German Coffee House?”
“Yes. He turned the corner as if to go down the street.”
“And someone joined him?”
“I don’t know,” she said with the same unhappy expression.
“But you thought that someone joined him? You have said so?” I insisted.
“There was a man near the Roland Statue who seemed to move in the same direction at the same time as the gentleman turned from the door. I fancied that he had been waiting for him, and was about to rejoin him. But I did not see them meet, and” — with a sigh—” it may not have been so.”
“You could not see what that man was like?”
“Only that he was rather tall than short. I can say no more.”
“At any rate, it was no one you knew?”
“It might have been my brother — I should not have known.”
It was evident that she was telling the truth, and I could get no more from her. When I had thanked her and she had retired: “What are you going to do?” the Governor asked.
“Stay here and look about me,” I replied. But I spoke despondently. What could I do or what could I learn that had not been done and learned already?
“At the Golden Crown?”
“No, at the German Coffee House. The only clue that we have seems to lead in that direction. If the traveller who called on you at nine o’clock was my friend, then somewhere between here and that inn — he disappeared.”
“Very good,” he rejoined. “It’s a decent house, though plain. I will take you there and see that they make you comfortable.”
He took up his hat and cloak and we went out, and turning the corner of the house walked down a narrow street rendered narrower by the horse-blocks and shutter-bars that projected from the houses. It was a quiet old-fashioned street and clean, despite the kennel that ran down the middle. A dozen painted signs swinging on iron-work gave it an antique and almost a gay appearance.
It ended in the Shoe Market, a bourne unworthy of it, for the market was as sordid as the street was respectable. A tiny draggle-tailed square it seemed, shut in by frowsy houses and not made more sightly by the stalls that encumbered the middle space. However, we did not enter it, for the Coffee-house was the last house in the street, and we turned in there.
“It is an excellent house,” von Kalisch explained as we passed in, “if it were not next door to the Shoe Market. A little old-fashioned” — as my eye fell on the washing apparatus, which was just outside the door of the coffee-room—” but clean, you will find.”
“Respectable people?”
“Oh, perfectly. They must give you rooms at the front.”
That, however, was just what they could not do. The Baron von Graben, his lady and family, had the first floor. Two French officers were over them, and a Bremen merchant and his clerk.
The host — a very fat man — greatly regretted it, but if the Governor’s friend would put up with the first floor back for a day or two something would doubtless fall in! Everything should be done to make the illustrious Herr with the hotel satisfaction feel.
The Governor was displeased, and said so — he was a friendly man, but that did not help — and leaving him in the coffee-room I went upstairs to see the rooms. I found that the first floor suite was darkened by the wall of a house, separated from the windows by an alley, scarcely six feet wide; and I decided to go up higher.
For lack of better, I chose a single room on the upper floor, the dormer windows of which overtopped the opposite eaves. Having settled this, and accepted von Kalisch’s invitation to sup with him next evening, I bowed him out and went up again to the room I had chosen.
A stout serving-wench was lighting the stove, but fled on my entrance, and, glad to be alone and free to arrange my thoughts, I threw myself on the bed. I had been so continually on the move since I left Zerbst that to feel that I was now established in settled quarters even for a short time was a relief to me. The room, though bare and sparsely furnished, was spotlessly clean, and I felt that for a day or two I could do with it.
I did not mean to sleep; I meant to think; I meant to weigh what I had heard. But as the room grew warm I drowsed off, my last remembered thought a resolve that in another ten minutes I would descend and set forth on a thorough exploration of the town.
Dinner-time was past, supper-time not yet come, and so no one came near me, and I must have slept nearly three hours, for when I awoke the room was in twilight, though the sky shone clear and cold above the opposite roof.
Ashamed of this waste of time, I sprang to my feet. To learn the hour by my watch I had to go to the window, and there I stood awhile looking out. Six feet away a dormer window, similar to that from which I looked, but a little lower, faced mine. It was closed with shutters of rough unpainted deal, and so did not lessen my privacy.
I paused, gazing at the sky above the gable, until, feeling that the stove had over-heated the room, I opened the window and thrust out my head. The alley below was almost in darkness, but I could see that the crazy looking building opposite — of which the dormer was a part — appeared to be a brewery or the like, for the wall, blind and bald, was broken half-way down by a doorway surmounted by a hook and pulley. My curiosity satisfied, I drew in my head and I was debating, with my eyes on the window opposite, whether I should shut my window or leave it open, when I experienced the oddest thing.
A voice whispered “Cartwright!” apparently in my ear; whispered my name so clearly and distinctly that I started and turned, assured that someone had entered the room. But the room was empty — empty of all but shadows, and I remembered, moreover, that I had turned the key in the door.
No one, therefore, could have come in. Still, the impression that I had heard my name uttered by someone close to me was so vivid that I stepped to the door, unlocked it, and looked down the passage. The passage was empty. The whole of the upper floor of the house was quiet. I might have heard a mouse move.
I was puzzled. I went back into the room, closed the door, and again looked round the place. I even, though the idea was ridiculous, looked under the bed, which like most German beds was long enough for a lad of fourteen.
Of course, I found no one, and nothing; and smiling at my own fatuity, I went back to the window. I took hold of it to close it, for the room had grown cold, and would certainly be colder when I returned if I left the window open.
“Cartwright!”
This time I whipped round as if a hand had been laid on my shoulder. Not that the voice was loud; it was so low as to be barely audible. But if my name had been shouted aloud, if it had been attended by a trumpet blast, it could not have shaken me more, for the voice was Perceval Ellis’s. It certainly sounded like Perceval’s.
I felt a tingling in my scalp, and after one hasty glance round, which showed me nothing, I closed the window and stepped back into the middle of the room. Thence, turning about, I looked keenly and intently into every comer.
It was fancy — just fancy — I told myself, but I could not refrain from a shudder. The room was assuredly cold, and perhaps I had caught a chill standing at the window. The bed looked a little odd, too; almost as if someone were lying on it; and while I knew that this was i
mpossible, it was, nevertheless, with an effort that I forced myself to approach it.
Of course, what I had seen on it was no more than my cloak, but as I took it up and hastily threw it about me, I could not refrain from glancing over my shoulder. The room was darker as well as colder than it had been — and what was that odd-looking thing on the floor?
I laughed aloud. This would never do! I crossed the floor and dealt the thing a hearty kick. It was an extra duvet which I had thrown off the bed when I lay down. So much for that! And with another laugh at my own folly I flung the door open and tramped noisily and with something of a swagger down the stairs.
I would not look behind me — I was not a fool to that extent — but all the same I breathed more freely when I reached the hall, and in the street I squared my shoulders and strode along. No doubt I had been thinking so much of poor Perceval and his last troubled hours that — but I was myself again now, and able to smile at my foolishness.
By the time I reached the Market Place it was night.
On one side of the great open space the cathedral lay long and dark, a crouching beast. On the other, a light or two twinkled under the Arcade — mainly in an oilman’s window. In the middle a single lamp shed a faint radiance on old Roland.
I stepped into the Governor’s doorway and tried to visualise the scene which the maid had described — Ellis, tall and cloaked, approaching me, his face in shadow, behind him the form of the man lurking near the statue, then the two moving, the one behind the other, towards the narrow street up which I had come. I found that I was able to do this — and I did it a little in bravado — without a qualm. No voice spoke in my ear, no unseen presence sought to make itself felt.
Satisfied, and smiling at myself, I crossed the open square at a brisk pace and plunged into the wider street that led to the posthouse. I had not only my baggage to seek, but Grussbaum and his mission on my mind. He should have learned something by this time, and even if I did not find him awaiting me, I felt certain that I should hear news of him.
But the reception that I met with at the posthouse was discouraging. I suppose that my arrival that morning had taken the people of the house by surprise, and so they had answered my questions, Now they had had time to think, and associating me with the trouble which Ellis’s disappearance had brought upon the house — for I believe that there was not one among them who had not been at one time or another under arrest — they looked upon me as an enemy and a person to be kept at arm’s length.
The most harmless questions now met only with grunts or sullen answers, and when I asked if the person who had arrived with me was there, or had left a message for me, they denied all knowledge of him. It was only when, baffled by the stupidity of the people in the house, I had pushed my inquiries into the yard, that I learned the dismaying truth — if it was the truth. For at first I doubted.
It was an ostler seated on a bucket cleaning a horse’s legs by the light of a horn-lanthorn who informed me.
“The man that came with you?” he repeated. “He posted on — at two sharp, he did.”
“Posted on?” I exclaimed. “At two? Impossible!”
“Ay, but he did. Smallish man, white-faced, wasn’t he? Soft spoken?”
“Yes. That’s the man, but—”
“Well, he went for Hamburg — with two horses, at two sharp, as I told you. Seemed in a mortal hurry to be gone, too!”
“Are you sure?” I cried, with a sinking heart.
“Well, I see him go,” dryly. “Didn’t they tell you in the house?”
“No, they didn’t, d — n them!”
“Well, they knew well enough. Well enough they knew,” doggedly. “See him go as well as me!”
In a towering rage, and with a very unpleasant suspicion in my mind, I returned to the house. I caught master and maid conferring in the passage, and I fell upon them. “ If you don’t tell me the truth,” I swore, “I’ll have the Governor here in ten minutes, and I’ll see if he can make you speak!”
That brought Master Postmaster to his senses. He lowered his tone. He remembered now. To be sure, of course he remembered. The gentleman’s friend had gone on at two — for Hamburg.”
“Then he must have left a message,” I stormed. “Or a letter? Out with it, rascal! Or if I have to go to the Governor—”
But the Postmaster, cringing now, asseverated by all his gods that nothing had been left for me — no letter, no message, nothing! The traveller had appeared to be in a great hurry to be gone and had wasted no words on anyone. He had ordered the horses within five minutes of my departure, and had started to the minute at two.
Now I had given Grussbaum the clearest order that if he found that the Waechters had passed through the town he was not to follow them without informing me. But I had also, that he might not be without money, given him a hundred and fifty thalers in advance. And with this in my mind, and the fact that he had driven off the moment my back was turned, what was I to think? What could I think?
Well, only one thing, and I ground out a savage oath as I recognized it. The man had duped me. He had taken my money, and the moment he had got it in hand he had absconded, laughing at my folly. Ay, and by now he was a couple of stages on his way to his sick wife — if he had a sick wife, and the whole story which had gained him a free ride and a full purse was not a flam.
I saw it all, and saw, too, what a fool I had been to trust him, with his crafty white face and his secretive ways! Why, his very manner should have warned me! Had it not roused my suspicions a dozen times?
Yet, with all that to reason from, I had handed him a sum large enough to tempt an honest man, and, of course, he had treated me as I deserved to be treated! He had not thought it necessary even to go into the town, or to make a pretence of inquiry, but had made sure of his plunder the moment my back was turned.
“Oh, d — n!” I cried, and on a sudden suspicion I inquired for my valise. Had the rogue taken that, too?
Well, he had not — for a wonder! Perhaps he had feared that I might trace him by it. I gave the order for it to be taken to the Coffee House, and recalling, with a pang — a pang of remorse and pity — that my plan for keeping the Waechters in view was now at an end, I inquired, but with little hope, if they had passed through.
So far as I could learn they had not; no party resembling theirs had come or gone. But I felt that I could now trust no one; even my one honest informant, the ostler, might have been bribed. And it was with a painful sense of defeat that I left the yard and slowly and heavily made my way back into the town.
The honours were with them! The wretches had won, and might laugh at me and my abortive threats. And the girl? Whatever her fate, and I shuddered to dwell on it, she would think that I had abandoned her.
In the depths of her misery, in her despair and fear, she would know that I had failed her; and ignorant of that other quest that weighed so heavily on me, she would believe that I had done so in sheer wantonness, caring nothing! The thought was torture to me!
I wandered, seeing little, across the dark Market Place and along the street which left it at the corner of the Rathhaus. I cast a cold eye at the other inn, the Golden Crown, and turning at right angles when I came to the end of the street, I made my way back to my inn through a narrow and not over-clean lane that came out in the Shoe Market at the Coffee House comer.
Near the end of the lane I passed the brewery — if brewery it was, for it seemed to be unoccupied — as well as the mouth of the alley on which my window looked.
I glanced at the one and into the other, but idly and without interest. I had not valued Grussbaum’s company, much less had it occurred to me that I leant on him. But his desertion, and the manner of it, left with me an extraordinary feeling of loneliness.
I had come to Perleberg to succeed, were it possible, where others had failed; to read a riddle that had defied experience and baffled old hands. And never had I felt myself so unfit, so inefficient, so unequal to the task as at this moment.
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I carried my mind back to the time when I had left London for Vienna, confident in myself and proud of my mission; when, holding myself on a par with Gentz and Haugwitz and their like, I had fondly looked forward to crossing swords with them; when, gaily, with all the threads in my hands, I had sneered at the old school of diplomats, and thought nothing above my powers.
Ay, and thence I carried my mind forward to the moment when Perceval’s arrival had dashed the cup from my lips and I had sworn that but for this I had in another week or another month scored such a success as would have saved Austria and changed the face of Europe.
Vain imaginings, but never had they seemed as vain as now, when I felt that the smallest, the youngest of third-class clerks might smile at me. A diplomat? Why, I had not the wits of a mouse. A reader of men? Why, a common cheat of the road had fleeced me! A pair of vulgar intriguers had baffled me! I had sunk from the Ball Platz to the common police-office, from Vienna to Perleberg — and Perleberg gave me a fool’s mate. Ah, I muttered, how ready men are to plume themselves when for a moment fortune has smiled on them!
CHAPTER XXI
THE DWARF AGAIN
MY heart was not quite so low next morning, but it was with little courage and less hope, and simply as a matter of duty, that I turned to my inquiry. I had come to the conclusion that the police had focused their attention on the posthouse and the Black Cow.
They had ransacked the adjoining buildings, they had dug up the gardens, they had searched the stream, they had turned every stone and arrested every person in both houses on whom suspicion could lie. And in doing this they had rendered sullen or mute all those whom they had not arrested. To look for further evidence in that quarter seemed now to be hopeless.
But either because they had not believed the story of the nine o’clock call, or because the respectability of the German Coffee House had discouraged them, they did not appear to have followed the trail into the town with the same vigour. Here, therefore, I judged that I must make my discoveries, if I was destined to make any.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 702