Part 12 (1/2)
”I myself shall be in Berlin next week for my medical examination, and perhaps we may meet again. I should much like to talk more with you about America ... and London. We must have mutual acquaintances.”
I murmured something about being only too glad, at the same time making a mental note to get out of Berlin as soon as I conveniently could.
CHAPTER VIII
I HEAR OF CLUBFOOT AND MEET HIS EMPLOYER
As we went down the staircase, the Major whispered to me:
”I don't think your man wished me to know his name, for he did not introduce himself when he arrived and he does not come to our Casino.
But I know him for all that: it is the young Count von Boden, of the Uhlans of the Guard: his father, the General, is one of the Emperor's aides-de-camp: he was, for a time, tutor to the Crown Prince.”
A motor-car stood at the door, in it a young man in a grey-blue military great-coat and a flat cap with a pink band round it. He sprang out as we appeared. His manner was most _empresse_. He completely ignored my companion.
”I am extremely glad to see you, Herr Doktor,” he said. ”You are most anxiously expected. I must present my apologies for not being at the station to welcome you, but, apparently, there was some misunderstanding. The arrangements at the station for your reception seem to have broken down completely ...” and he stared through his monocle at the old Major, who flushed with vexation.
”If you will step into my car,” the young man added, ”I will drive you to the station. We need not detain this gentleman any longer.”
I felt sorry for the old Major, who had remained silent under the withering insolence of this young lieutenant, so I shook hands with him cordially and thanked him for his hospitality. He was a jovial old fellow after all.
The young Count drove himself and chatted amiably as we whirled through the streets. ”I must introduce myself,” he said: ”Lieutenant Count von Boden of the 2nd Uhlans of the Guard. I did not wish to say anything before that old chatterbox. I trust you have had a pleasant journey. Von Steinhardt, of our Legation at the Hague, was instructed to make all arrangements for your comfort on this side. But I was forgetting, you and he must be old acquaintances, Herr Doktor!”
I said something appropriate about von Steinhardt's invariable kindness.
Inwardly, I noted the explanation of the visiting card in the portfolio in my pocket.
At the station we found two orderlies, one with my things, the other with von Boden's luggage and fur _pelisse_. The platforms were now deserted save for sentries: all life at this dreary frontier station seemed to die with the pa.s.sing of the mail train.
I could not help noticing, after we had left the car and were strolling up and down the platform waiting for the special, that my companion kept casting furtive glances at my feet. I looked down at my boots: they wanted brus.h.i.+ng, certainly, but otherwise I could see nothing wrong with them. They were brown, it is true, and I reflected that the German man about town has a way of regulating his tastes in footgear by the calendar, and that brown boots are seldom worn in Germany after September 1st.
Our special came in, an engine and tender, a brakesman's van, a single carriage and a guard's van. The stationmaster bid us a most ceremonious adieu, and the guard, cap in hand, helped me into the train.
It was a Pullman car in which I found myself, with comfortable arm-chairs and small tables. One of the orderlies was laying the table for luncheon, and here, presently, the young Count and I ate a meal, which, save for the inevitable ”_Kriegsbrod_,” showed few signs of the stringency of the British blockade. But by this time I had fully realized that, for some unknown reason, no pains were spared to do me honour, so probably the fare was something out of the common.
My companion was a bright, amusing fellow and delightfully typical of his cla.s.s. He had seen a year's service with the cavalry on the Eastern front, had been seriously wounded and was now attached to the General Staff in Berlin in what I judged to be a decorative rather than a useful capacity, for, apart from what he had learnt in his own campaigning he seemed singularly ignorant of the development of the military situation.
Particularly, his ignorance of conditions on the Western front was supreme. He was full to the brim with the most extraordinary fables about the British. He solemnly a.s.sured me, for example--on the faith of a friend of his who had seen them--that j.a.panese were fighting with the English in France, dressed as Highlanders--his friend had heard these Asiatic Scotsmen talking j.a.panese, he declared. I thought of the Gaelic-speaking battalions of the Camerons and could hardly suppress a smile.
Young von Boden was superbly contemptuous of the officers of the obscure and much reduced infantry battalion doing garrison duty at Goch, the frontier station we had just left, where--as he was careful to explain to me--he had spent four days of unrelieved boredom, waiting for me.
”Of course, in war time we are a united army and all that,” he observed unsophistically, ”but none of these fellows at Goch was a fit companion for a das.h.i.+ng cavalry officer. They were a dull lot. I wouldn't go near the Casino. I met some of them at the hotel one evening. That was enough for me. Why, only one of them knew anything at all about Berlin, and that was the lame fellow. Now, there is one thing we learn in the cavalry....”
But I had ceased to listen. In his irresponsible chatter the boy used a word that struck a harsh note which went jarring through my brain. He had mentioned ”the lame fellow,” using a German word ”der Stelze.” In a flash I saw before me again that scene in the squalid bedroom in the Vos in't Tuintje--the candle guttering in the draught, the livid corpse on the floor and that sinister woman crying out: ”Der Stelze has power, he has authority, he can make and unmake men!”
The mind has unaccountable lapses. The phrase had slipped out of my German vocabulary. I had not even recognized it until the boy had rapped it out in a context with which I was familiar and then it had come back.
With it, it brought that tableau in the dimly lit room, but also another--a picture of a vast and ma.s.sive man, swarthy and sinister, with a clubfoot, limping heavily after Karl, the waiter, on the platform at Rotterdam.
That, then, was why the young lieutenant had glanced down at my feet at the station at Goch, The messenger he had come to meet, the bearer of the doc.u.ment, the man of power and authority, was clubfooted, and I was he!