Part 37 (1/2)
”An Englishman?” he asked.
And the other nodded.
”Come this way.”
The cobbler hobbled towards the Kneiphof, where the streets are quiet, and the Englishman followed him. At the corner of the Kohl Markt he turned and looked, not at the man, but at his boots.
”You are a sailor?” he said.
”Yes.”
”I was told to look for an English sailor--Louis d'Arragon.”
”Then you have found me,” was the reply.
Still the cobbler hesitated.
”How am I to know it?” he asked suspiciously.
”Can you read?” asked D'Arragon. ”I can prove who I am--if I want to.
But I am not sure that I want to.”
”Oh! it is only a letter--of no importance. Some private business of your own. It comes from Dantzig--written by one whose name begins with 'B.'”
”Barlasch,” suggested D'Arragon quietly, as he took from his pocket a paper which he unfolded and held beneath the eyes of the cobbler. It was a pa.s.sport written in three languages. If the man could read, he was not anxious to boast of an accomplishment so far above his station; but he glanced at the paper, not without a practised skill, to seize the essential parts of it.
”Yes, that is the name,” he said, searching in his pockets. ”The letter is an open one. Here it is.”
In pa.s.sing the letter, the man made a scarcely perceptible movement of the hand which might have been a signal.
”No,” said D'Arragon, ”I do not belong to the Tugendbund or to any other secret society. We have need of no such a.s.sociations in my country.”
The cobbler laughed, not without embarra.s.sment.
”You have a quick eye,” he said. ”It is a great country, England. I have seen the river full of English s.h.i.+ps before Napoleon chased you off the seas.”
D'Arragon smiled as he unfolded the letter.
”He has not done it yet,” he said, with that spirit which enables mariners of the Anglo-Saxon race to be amused when there is a talk of supremacy on the high seas. He read the letter carefully, and his face hardened.
”I was instructed,” said the cobbler, ”to give you the letter, and at the same time to inform you that any a.s.sistance or facilities you may require will be forth-coming; besides...” he broke off and pointed with his thick, leather-stained finger, ”that writing is not the writing of him who signs.”
”He who signs cannot write at all.”
”That writing,” went on the cobbler, ”is a pa.s.sport in any German state.
He who carries a letter written in that hand can live and travel free anywhere from here to the Rhine or the Danube.”