Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  Yet, was the matter hopeless? Were the papers gone beyond recovery? I began to consider. There was just a bare possibility that Norma Mackay under the stress of suffering had made a mistake; that she had either forgotten where she had hidden the packet, or had described the hiding place so ill that a false impression of it had been stamped on my mind. But I set little faith and less hope on this.

  No, she had secreted the papers where she had told us, and within the last twelve hours, during which the secret had ceased to be hers, they had been removed, either by an agent of the Waechters — who might have got speech of them in the gaol — or by some one who with aims of his own to serve, had learned from them what they knew — and what only they and I and the girl did know.

  That person might be in the French interest, or in the German: for in this matter I could trust no one, not von Kalisch, not even Platen. And yet the thing perhaps was not hopeless. If I challenged the possessor at once, and while the scent was hot, something might be done. But I must act quickly — quickly and with assurance.

  I opened the door and went out. The first thing I had to do was to dress myself. But as I hurried down the stairs with that in mind, I came upon the chambermaid whom I had seen as I went up. The sight of the woman started a new hare, and I stopped and went back to her. “Who had that room — last night?” I asked, pointing to the door. “Someone slept in it?”

  “So!” she said, staring up at me, for she was on her knees. “ That room? One of the French gentlemen from the floor below. He offered to remove to accommodate mein Herr.”

  My heart sank. “Oh!” I said. “One of the French officers?” Then, “How long, meine Kammerjungfrau, have they been here — the French guests?”

  “A week or more, mein Herr.”

  “Doing what?” impatiently. “What is their business?”

  The woman spread out her hands. “Ich weissd nicht,” she said.

  I asked no more, but all my suspicions confirmed, I plunged into my room and dressed. Then down into the hall hot-foot, where I found the good-natured landlord. He beamed on me doubtfully, astonished to see me abroad so early. “Is the Wohlgeborener Herr prudent to be about so—”

  “Yes,” I said, cutting him short. “I am in trouble. Have you seen the Lieutenant of Police Platen?”

  “Surely, mein Hen. He went out ten minutes ago.” And reading the question my eyes put to him, “To the Governor’s, where he has the honour to breakfast, I believe.”

  I was through the door and in the street almost before the words had passed his lips. I hurried along under the Sainted signs and by the mob-capped short-skirted Madchen who were whitening the steps. I saw the wide grass-grown Market Place open before me, saw the couchant bulk of the Cathedral, caught a glimpse of Grey Roland, the next moment I knocked at the spotless green door of the Governor’s lodging.

  The pleasant-faced girl who had admitted me before opened the door. I brushed by her without a word, and it was not until I stood in the presence of the Governor and Platen and read the astonishment their faces betrayed, as they viewed the uninvited guest, that I bethought me that I had not arranged what I would say.

  Habit, however, goes for much; in a trice I had determined to hinge my offensive on the French officer, and “Pardon me, Herr Governor,” I said, hat in hand, “I am in great trouble. I am thankful to find you, with my friend here. If you will be so good as to continue your meal I will explain. The despatches —— — —”

  “Ah, the despatches?” Platen said, taking me up and nodding. “That’s it, is it? Have no fear. We shall wring the secret out of them. A little patience and a little pressure and a good examining judge, and rest assured—”

  “But wait! Wait!” said I. “The Waechters never had the despatches. They never got them. It was not until ten minutes before you entered that they learned where they were hidden.”

  “Hidden?” Platen rose to his feet and sat down again, his face as keen as a terrier dog’s. He cracked his fingers. “Hidden, eh? And not by them? Then I was right when I suspected that the woman’s search in that bedroom had to do with them?”

  “You were,” I said. And then, pretty certain from his manner and from the surprise which I read in von Kalisch’s face — he looked more like a student than ever this morning, with his spectacles and his short fair beard — that they were innocent of the theft, I recalled also that they had not heard the full story. And I proceeded to enlighten them.

  “Ho! ho!” the Lieutenant cried when I had done, “I thought that something like that was at the bottom of it. But a clever girl! Clever and staunch! And a good thought, too. But—” he shook his head—” if the police had searched—”

  “Just so,” I said. “But they did not. Or—” with a keen look first at him and then at von Kalisch, “perhaps they did — and found them?”

  “What?” Platen exclaimed, and he rose cracking his fingers again and looking more than ever like a terrier on a scent. “I see, I see. You’ve looked, Excellency — and they are not there. That’s it, is it?”

  “That’s it,” I said heavily.

  “Are you sure that you did not mistake the room?”

  “Quite sure. There is only one room that looks on the brewery gable. The chambermaid too, identified it for me when she told me the tale. If you,” with a little lingering suspicion, “know nothing about it?” I looked from one to the other.

  The Governor shook his head. The Police Lieutenant, who had sat down again, stretched out his legs and thrust his hands deep into his fobs, “Innocent,” he said. “Quite innocent!” And I believed him.

  “Then,” I decided, “there is only one explanation. The Waechters must have contrived to convey the secret to some one on their way to the gaol — and the papers were removed during the night.”

  “During the night?” von Kalisch exclaimed, and they both stared at me. “But surely you searched as soon as you —— — —”

  I groaned. “I ought to have,” I said. “But the truth is — I am ashamed to avow it, Governor — I was so shaken last night that I never thought of the despatches until I awoke this morning.”

  “Umph!” Platen muttered. “Well, I don’t wonder. No. But you may be sure of one thing. I can trust my people, and I will answer for this, mein Herr, that the Waechters had no chance of passing out word or sign — last night.”

  “Yet the papers are gone this morning,” I retorted, “and the room was occupied last night by a French officer, who moved in, ostensibly, to accommodate me. He may have been the Waechters’ accomplice?”

  Platen shook his head.

  “Or the agent to whom they hoped to sell the papers? He may have been waiting here to receive them — waiting on the chance that the packet would come to hand?” I turned to the Governor. “Who are these Frenchmen — there are two of them. How long have they been here? What is their business?”

  Von Kalisch fingered his light, pointed beard and I could see that neither my manner nor the subject was palatable. Platen looked thoughtful, but did not interpose. “Well,” the Governor said at last, “they are on furlough from Magdeburg, if you must know, sir. One is an invalid, and the other is studying German. I know,” reluctantly “no more than that.”

  “They must be seized,” I cried, “and searched — searched at once!”

  Platen laughed. The Governor stared. “Oh, impossible,” he said stiffly. “We have nothing against them.

  They are quiet, peaceable—”

  “Frenchmen!” I cried. “And they have got those despatches!” I spoke aggressively, for I already recognized that I was fighting a losing battle. Already I felt that the atmosphere of the room was changed. Even the attitudes of the two men were no longer the same.

  They sat on guard, stiff, rigid, watchful lest they should be committed to anything, and determined that they would not be tricked or blustered into a false position. I was confronted, I saw it clearly, by that fear of the conqueror which enslaves the conquered, by that fear of France which
for three years had held Germany in thrall, and which to every official from Stein and Hardenburg to the meanest town-crier was an abiding and subduing presence.

  “We have no evidence of that,” said von Kalisch at last “None,” said Platen with a face of wood. “Still” — as one conceding a great point—” we might have them shadowed perhaps.”

  “Ay, back to Magdeburg!” I cried scornfully. “Over the border!” And I rose to my feet in a rage. “ If that is all you can do, gentlemen, a fig for it!”

  They looked at me stonily, keeping their seats. The Governor took off his glasses and rubbed them. “ Certainly, without evidence, we can do no more,” he said. “To do even what the Lieutenant of Police Platen suggests might be going in my judgment too far. These papers may have been found by someone by chance.”

  “By chance!” I cried.

  “By the chambermaid,” Platen said smoothly. “She may have been led to hunt for the ear-ring and come on the papers.”

  “Under the eaves! Outside!” I retorted. “And in that case would she have told the tale of the ear-ring and the search? To me? To you?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “The unlikely happens,” he said woodenly.

  I saw that, friendly as he had been, I could no longer look to him for help, but that on the contrary the notion of interfering with the Frenchmen had paralysed them both. And in a passion I reached for my hat. But with my hand upon it I had an inspiration. I remembered the Prince of Eckmuhl’s passport — it enjoined all into whose hands it might come to aid, forward, and support me.

  Fortunately, secreted in a pocket in my shirt, the letter had escaped the Waechters’ search, and I dived for it, while the two watched me. When I had extricated it, I handed it to the Governor. “Enough!” I said with arrogance — but I knew well that with a German arrogance serves. “You’ve seen this once, Herr von Kalisch, but I think you must have forgotten its purport. There is your authority, and I call upon you to act upon it.”

  He read it, an angry flush on his cheek-bones, his eyes hard — to take orders from an enemy, there are easier ways than this out of a difficulty! In silence, he handed it to Platen, and Platen read it. The Governor received it again, perused it once more, still in silence and with a pinched, wintry face. And I have no doubt that, as he recalled the trouble that from first to last this wretched affair had given him, and foresaw that which it was likely to give him in the future, he wished all Englishmen at the devil.

  “Well,” he said at length, his manner of the coldest, “I will consider, sir, what, if anything, can be done. If you will be good enough to call upon me at noon I will inform you of my decision.”

  I saw that this was as much as I should get — and lucky to get it! And I thanked him and made my adieux, adding some words of acknowledgment which I hoped might reconcile him to the position. But friendship is more easy to break than to mend, and I was bowed out, from the waist upwards with more formality than freedom.

  I had played my last card, and it might be unwisely, for it is a maxim in the Service that a friendly neutrality is of more value than an unwilling alliance. However, it was done, and the card played, for good or ill.

  I left the house with little hope and in low spirits. To have come so near to success, to have had it within the grasp of my hand, and to have let it slip through my own neglect — no wonder that I walked with my head bent, or that I ignored, thankless and ungrateful as I was, the great mercy which had within the last twelve hours preserved me from a dreadful fate. For, alas, it is the way of the world to let the bitter drop at the bottom of the cup poison the good wine that sparkles and mantles above it!

  With no knowledge of how I had come there, I found myself again at the door of the inn and I entered and stood wondering gloomily what I should do next. What indeed remained to do? And then with a lift of the heart, with a lightening of the spirits, which surprised me as much as it changed me, I thought of the girl — ay, there still remained that.

  A servant was crossing the hall. I sent her upstairs to inquire how the Fraulein had slept. “ I should wish to see the young lady,” I added, “if she is well enough to receive me. Inquire, will you?” And I turned away, with an air of indifference assumed as much to deceive myself as the maid.

  I waited, deep to all appearance in the study of an Eilwagen time-table that hung on the wall beside the washing-tap and the roller towel. Ah! She had slept well, had she? And would be glad to receive me. I went up the stairs, the lower ones two at a time; the upper ones more slowly, for I was seized with an unaccountable fit of shyness.

  It occurred to me that I did not know what I was going to say to her. I felt a lack of words and ideas that was new to me. And outside the door which a chambermaid held open, I would have paused to collect myself if the woman had not been there, broadly smiling.

  “She goes on well?” I muttered. I was out of breath — the stairs no doubt.

  “Uberaus!” the woman replied and smiled more broadly.

  I went in. Beside the stove at the foot of the bed I saw a forlorn figure sunk low and almost hidden in the depths of a great chair — a little figure, all eyes. Then my sight cleared, I perceived details; a pink and white wrapper, borrowed doubtless from someone in the inn, and rising from it a delicate, flower-like head, overweighted by coils of dark shining hair; and turned towards me a pale face, the eyes so dark and large and troubled that for a moment I imagined the girl as I had always seen her — the scared, pitiful, terror-stricken victim of a tragic situation. As I crossed the floor, muttering something inadequate, and she rose shakily to her feet, with her solemn eyes fixed on me, the illusion persisted.

  But as our hands met, there came a change. The flower bloomed, the blood mantled in the delicate face, crimsoned the slender neck, the little ears, mounted painfully to the tendrils of the hair. And though she still held her head erect, though she faced me bravely, denying as it were her own confusion, her eyes wavered and fell — and I had the most delicious sensation of my life.

  For a moment she was the portrait of my memory, the portrait that had so long and so persistently haunted me; but the portrait transfigured, made flesh and blood, made a hundred times more lovely by emotion.

  “How can I ever thank you enough!” she whispered.

  “Or I you?” I replied.

  And then I found that I was still holding her hand, and colouring in my turn, I let it go. For what had passed between us that could warrant me in retaining it?

  And yet — and yet now that I had let it go, I reflected that things had passed between us that might stand warrant for much — things that transcended time and overleapt punctilio — danger, self-sacrifice, life, death, things strong as steel to bind us together. And now that it was too late, I regretted that I had let her hand go — the little, trembling, passive hand, that yet had been strong enough to save life, to save my life.

  The more as I could find no words to say to her, no words that as between us would not sound silly and futile, would not sink to the depths of bathos. She had dropped back into her chair, and I remained standing before her — for there was no second chair. I repeated something banal about sleep — hoped that she had slept well — had not been troubled by dreams, had not —

  “Dreams,” she repeated, yet with an irrepressible shiver. “No, I thank you, I slept well.” She spoke, I was surprised to see, with ease. For her, it seemed, the bad moment had passed and she was again mistress of herself, and so much mistress that something like a smile trembled on her lips. “The doctor gave me a sleeping draught,” she continued. “And you, too, I hope, Mr. Cartwright? I am sure that you must have needed it.”

  “Yes,” I assented stupidly. And that — shade of Canning! — was all that I — I who had bearded the Ball Platz and bandied arguments with statesmen! — could find to say. I stared at the stove; she must think me an idiot! Not that things to say, many things, were not welling up in my mind, but I did not know how to say them. They seemed to be such — such impossibl
e things to say when nothing had gone before to lead to them. And after all a man must break ground.

  Well, I could do that. But how? Ay, how?

  “It was a terrible, terrible time!” she murmured. “I do not know, I cannot think how I lived through it. Or how I can ever, ever thank you enough, Mr. Cartwright. But for you — but for you—” She faltered, and suddenly broke down, overcome by remembrance, unable to finish her sentence.

  And on that I saw her once more as the lonely pathetic little figure, the panic-stricken, white-faced, despairing girl whom I had watched in the crowded inn by the water, in the sinister house beside the forest, in that accursed brewery last evening. She was once more the lonely child whose woes had pierced my heart, who had cried to me for succour, who had challenged the small remains of chivalry that the world and the world’s ways had left to me. And seeing her so, on a sudden I found words and courage.

  “And but for you,” I rejoined, leaning forward, “but for you where should I be? And for thanks,” I continued and I stepped forward until I stood over her, looked down on her, dominated her, “I can tell you how you can thank me. But to thank me in the way that I wish will be a long task, a life’s task, Fraulein. Still, I can tell you, and I will tell you. And perhaps some other day, when you know me better, on some later day, if not now, you will answer me. But — what is it?” I broke off, for she had risen in confusion. “What is it? You are surely not afraid of me?”

  “Oh, no, no,” she stammered. “But,” in a disorder that I found delightful, “but I had forgotten something. Something that I ought to have told you—”

  “Told me?” I rejoined. “It will keep. Nevermind that now, I beg.”

  “No, no, something,” her breath coming short and quick, “that I ought to have given you — at once, Mr. Cartwright. The chambermaid got it for me before I slept. I could not rest until — until I knew that it was safe.” And slipping deftly by me, for I was very close to her by this time, she stepped to the head of the bed. She drew something from beneath the pillow. “I think it is quite safe” she murmured. “But — but I could not be easy until it lay in your hands, Mr. Cartwright. It has not been opened I am sure.”