CHAPTER XVI

I Lie on a Hard Bed

The journalist from Kansas City was a man of action. He wasted no words

in introducing himself or unfolding his plan of campaign. “You’ve got

to follow me, mister, and not deviate one inch from my tracks. The

explaining part will come later. There’s big business in this shack

tonight.” He unlocked the little door with scarcely a sound, slid the

crust of snow from his boots, and preceded me into a passage as black

as a cellar. The door swung smoothly behind us, and after the sharp

out-of-doors the air smelt stuffy as the inside of a safe.

A hand reached back to make sure that I followed. We appeared to be in

a flagged passage under the main level of the house. My hobnailed boots

slipped on the floor, and I steadied myself on the wall, which seemed

to be of undressed stone. Mr Donne moved softly and assuredly, for he

was better shod for the job than me, and his guiding hand came back

constantly to make sure of my whereabouts.

I remember that I felt just as I had felt when on that August night I

had explored the crevice of the Coolin—the same sense that something

queer was going to happen, the same recklessness and contentment.

Moving a foot at a time with immense care, we came to a right-hand

turning. Two shallow steps led us to another passage, and then my

groping hands struck a blind wall. The American was beside me, and his

mouth was close to my ear.

“Got to crawl now,” he whispered. “You lead, mister, while I shed this

coat of mine. Eight feet on your stomach and then upright.”

I wriggled through a low tunnel, broad enough to take three men

abreast, but not two feet high. Half-way through I felt suffocated, for

I never liked holes, and I had a momentary anxiety as to what we were

after in this cellar pilgrimage. Presently I smelt free air and got on

to my knees.

“Right, mister?” came a whisper from behind. My companion seemed to be

waiting till I was through before he followed.

“Right,” I answered, and very carefully rose to my feet.

Then something happened behind me. There was a jar and a bump as if the

roof of the tunnel had subsided. I turned sharply and groped at the

mouth. I stuck my leg down and found a block.

“Donne,” I said, as loud as I dared, “are you hurt? Where are you?”

But no answer came.

Even then I thought only of an accident. Something had miscarried, and

I was cut off in the cellars of an unfriendly house away from the man

who knew the road and had a plan in his head. I was not so much

frightened as exasperated. I turned from the tunnel-mouth and groped

into the darkness before me. I might as well prospect the kind of

prison into which I had blundered.

I took three steps—no more. My feet seemed suddenly to go from me and

fly upward. So sudden was it that I fell heavy and dead like a log, and

my head struck the floor with a crash that for a moment knocked me

senseless. I was conscious of something falling on me and of an

intolerable pressure on my chest. I struggled for breath, and found my

arms and legs pinned and my whole body in a kind of wooden vice. I was

sick with concussion, and could do nothing but gasp and choke down my

nausea. The cut in the back of my head was bleeding freely and that

helped to clear my wits, but I lay for a minute or two incapable of

thought. I shut my eyes tight, as a man does when he is fighting with a

swoon.

When I opened them there was light. It came from the left side of the

room, the broad glare of a strong electric torch. I watched it

stupidly, but it gave me the fillip needed to pick up the threads. I

remembered the tunnel now and the Kansas journalist. Then behind the

light I saw a face which pulled my flickering senses out of the mire.

I saw the heavy ulster and the cap, which I had realised, though I had

not seen, outside in the dark laurels. They belonged to the journalist,

Clarence Donne, the trusted emissary of Blenkiron. But I saw his face

now, and it was that face which I had boasted to Bullivant I could

never mistake again upon earth. I did not mistake it now, and I

remember I had a faint satisfaction that I had made good my word. I had

not mistaken it, for I had not had the chance to look at it till this

moment. I saw with acid clearness the common denominator of all its

disguises—the young man who lisped in the seaside villa, the stout

philanthropist of Biggleswick, the pulpy panic-stricken creature of the

Tube station, the trim French staff officer of the Picardy château....

I saw more, for I saw it beyond the need of disguise. I was looking at

von Schwabing, the exile, who had done more for Germany than any army

commander.... Mary’s words came back to me—“the most dangerous man in

the world”.... I was not afraid, or broken-hearted at failure, or

angry—not yet, for I was too dazed and awestruck. I looked at him as

one might look at some cataclysm of nature which had destroyed a

continent.

The face was smiling.

“I am happy to offer you hospitality at last,” it said.

I pulled my wits farther out of the mud to attend to him. The cross-bar

on my chest pressed less hard and I breathed better. But when I tried

to speak, the words would not come.

“We are old friends,” he went on. “We have known each other quite

intimately for four years, which is a long time in war. I have been

interested in you, for you have a kind of crude intelligence, and you

have compelled me to take you seriously. If you were cleverer you would

appreciate the compliment. But you were fool enough to think you could

beat me, and for that you must be punished. Oh no, don’t flatter

yourself you were ever dangerous. You were only troublesome and

presumptuous like a mosquito one flicks off one’s sleeve.”

He was leaning against the side of a heavy closed door. He lit a cigar

from a little gold tinder box and regarded me with amused eyes.

“You will have time for reflection, so I propose to enlighten you a

little. You are an observer of little things. So? Did you ever see a

cat with a mouse? The mouse runs about and hides and manœuvres and

thinks it is playing its own game. But at any moment the cat can

stretch out its paw and put an end to it. You are the mouse, my poor

General—for I believe you are one of those funny amateurs that the

English call Generals. At any moment during the last nine months I

could have put an end to you with a nod.”

My nausea had stopped and I could understand what he said, though I had

still no power to reply.

“Let me explain,” he went on. “I watched with amusement your gambols at

Biggleswick. My eyes followed you when you went to the Clyde and in

your stupid twistings in Scotland. I gave you rope, because you were

futile, and I had graver things to attend to. I allowed you to amuse

yourself at your British Front with childish investigations and to play

the fool in Paris. I have followed every step of your course in

Switzerland, and I have helped your idiotic Yankee friend to plot

against myself. While you thought you were drawing your net around me,

I was drawing mine around you. I assure you, it has been a charming

relaxation from serious business.”

I knew the man was lying. Some part was true, for he had clearly fooled

Blenkiron; but I remembered the hurried flight from Biggleswick and

Eaucourt Sainte-Anne when the game was certainly against him. He had me

at his mercy, and was wreaking his vanity on me. That made him smaller

in my eyes, and my first awe began to pass.

“I never cherish rancour, you know,” he said. “In my business it is

silly to be angry, for it wastes energy. But I do not tolerate

insolence, my dear General. And my country has the habit of doing

justice on her enemies. It may interest you to know that the end is not

far off. Germany has faced a jealous world in arms and she is about to

be justified of her great courage. She has broken up bit by bit the

clumsy organisation of her opponents. Where is Russia today, the

steam-roller that was to crush us? Where is the poor dupe Rumania?

Where is the strength of Italy, who was once to do wonders for what she

called Liberty? Broken, all of them. I have played my part in that work

and now the need is past. My country with free hands is about to turn

upon your armed rabble in the West and drive it into the Atlantic. Then

we shall deal with the ragged remains of France and the handful of

noisy Americans. By midsummer there will be peace dictated by

triumphant Germany.”

“By God, there won’t!” I had found my voice at last.

“By God, there will,” he said pleasantly. “It is what you call a

mathematical certainty. You will no doubt die bravely, like the savage

tribes that your Empire used to conquer. But we have the greater

discipline and the stronger spirit and the bigger brain. Stupidity is

always punished in the end, and you are a stupid race. Do not think

that your kinsmen across the Atlantic will save you. They are a

commercial people and by no means sure of themselves. When they have

blustered a little they will see reason and find some means of saving

their faces. Their comic President will make a speech or two and write

us a solemn note, and we will reply with the serious rhetoric which he

loves, and then we shall kiss and be friends. You know in your heart

that it will be so.”

A great apathy seemed to settle on me. This bragging did not make me

angry, and I had no longer any wish to contradict him. It may have been

the result of the fall, but my mind had stopped working. I heard his

voice as one listens casually to the ticking of a clock.

“I will tell you more,” he was saying. “This is the evening of the 18th

day of March. Your generals in France expect an attack, but they are

not sure where it will come. Some think it may be in Champagne or on

the Aisne, some at Ypres, some at St Quentin. Well, my dear General,

you alone will I take into our confidence. On the morning of the 21st,

three days from now, we attack the right wing of the British Army. In

two days we shall be in Amiens. On the third we shall have driven a

wedge as far as the sea. Then in a week or so we shall have rolled up

your army from the right, and presently we shall be in Boulogne and

Calais. After that Paris falls, and then Peace.”

I made no answer. The word “Amiens” recalled Mary, and I was trying to

remember the day in January when she and I had motored south from that

pleasant city.

“Why do I tell you these things? Your intelligence, for you are not

altogether foolish, will have supplied the answer. It is because your

life is over. As your Shakespeare says, the rest is silence.... No, I

am not going to kill you. That would be crude, and I hate crudities. I

am going now on a little journey, and when I return in twenty-four

hours’ time you will be my companion. You are going to visit Germany,

my dear General.”

That woke me to attention, and he noticed it, for he went on with

gusto.

“You have heard of the _Untergrundbahn_? No? And you boast of an

Intelligence service! Yet your ignorance is shared by the whole of your

General Staff. It is a little organisation of my own. By it we can take

unwilling and dangerous people inside our frontier to be dealt with as

we please. Some have gone from England and many from France. Officially

I believe they are recorded as ‘missing’, but they did not go astray on

any battle-field. They have been gathered from their homes or from

hotels or offices or even the busy streets. I will not conceal from you

that the service of our Underground Railway is a little irregular from

England and France. But from Switzerland it is smooth as a trunk line.

There are unwatched spots on the frontier, and we have our agents among

the frontier guards, and we have no difficulty about passes. It is a

pretty device, and you will soon be privileged to observe its

working.... In Germany I cannot promise you comfort, but I do not think

your life will be dull.”

As he spoke these words, his urbane smile changed to a grin of impish

malevolence. Even through my torpor I felt the venom and I shivered.

“When I return I shall have another companion.” His voice was honeyed

again. “There is a certain pretty lady who was to be the bait to entice

me into Italy. It was so? Well, I have fallen to the bait. I have

arranged that she shall meet me this very night at a mountain inn on

the Italian side. I have arranged, too, that she shall be alone. She is

an innocent child, and I do not think that she has been more than a

tool in the clumsy hands of your friends. She will come with me when I

ask her, and we shall be a merry party in the Underground Express.”

My apathy vanished, and every nerve in me was alive at the words.

“You cur!” I cried. “She loathes the sight of you. She wouldn’t touch

you with the end of a barge-pole.”

He flicked the ash from his cigar. “I think you are mistaken. I am very

persuasive, and I do not like to use compulsion with a woman. But,

willing or not, she will come with me. I have worked hard and I am

entitled to my pleasure, and I have set my heart on that little lady.”

There was something in his tone, gross, leering, assured, half

contemptuous, that made my blood boil. He had fairly got me on the raw,

and the hammer beat violently in my forehead. I could have wept with

sheer rage, and it took all my fortitude to keep my mouth shut. But I

was determined not to add to his triumph.

He looked at his watch. “Time passes,” he said. “I must depart to my

charming assignation. I will give your remembrances to the lady.

Forgive me for making no arrangements for your comfort till I return.

Your constitution is so sound that it will not suffer from a day’s

fasting. To set your mind at rest I may tell you that escape is

impossible. This mechanism has been proved too often, and if you did

break loose from it my servants would deal with you. But I must speak a

word of caution. If you tamper with it or struggle too much it will act

in a curious way. The floor beneath you covers a shaft which runs to

the lake below. Set a certain spring at work and you may find yourself

shot down into the water far below the ice, where your body will rot

till the spring.... That, of course, is an alternative open to you, if

you do not care to wait for my return.”

He lit a fresh cigar, waved his hand, and vanished through the doorway.

As it shut behind him, the sound of his footsteps instantly died away.

The walls must have been as thick as a prison’s.

I suppose I was what people in books call “stunned”. The illumination

during the past few minutes had been so dazzling that my brain could

not master it. I remember very clearly that I did not think about the

ghastly failure of our scheme, or the German plans which had been

insolently unfolded to me as to one dead to the world. I saw a single

picture—an inn in a snowy valley (I saw it as a small place like

Peter’s cottage), a solitary girl, that smiling devil who had left me,

and then the unknown terror of the Underground Railway. I think my

courage went for a bit, and I cried with feebleness and rage. The

hammer in my forehead had stopped for it only beat when I was angry in

action. Now that I lay trapped, the manhood had slipped out of my

joints, and if Ivery had still been in the doorway, I think I would

have whined for mercy. I would have offered him all the knowledge I had

in the world if he had promised to leave Mary alone.

Happily he wasn’t there, and there was no witness of my cowardice.

Happily, too, it is just as difficult to be a coward for long as to be

a hero. It was Blenkiron’s phrase about Mary that pulled me

together—“She can’t scare and she can’t soil”. No, by heavens, she

couldn’t. I could trust my lady far better than I could trust myself. I

was still sick with anxiety, but I was getting a pull on myself. I was

done in, but Ivery would get no triumph out of me. Either I would go

under the ice, or I would find a chance of putting a bullet through my

head before I crossed the frontier. If I could do nothing else I could

perish decently.... And then I laughed, and I knew I was past the

worst. What made me laugh was the thought of Peter. I had been pitying

him an hour ago for having only one leg, but now he was abroad in the

living, breathing world with years before him, and I lay in the depths,

limbless and lifeless, with my number up.

I began to muse on the cold water under the ice where I could go if I

wanted. I did not think that I would take that road, for a man’s

chances are not gone till he is stone dead, but I was glad the way

existed.... And then I looked at the wall in front of me, and, very far

up, I saw a small square window.

The stars had been clouded when I entered that accursed house, but the

mist must have cleared. I saw my old friend Orion, the hunter’s star,

looking through the bars. And that suddenly made me think.

Peter and I had watched them by night, and I knew the place of all the

chief constellations in relation to the St Anton valley. I believed

that I was in a room on the lake side of the Pink Chalet: I must be, if

Ivery had spoken the truth. But if so, I could not conceivably see

Orion from its window.... There was no other possible conclusion, I

must be in a room on the east side of the house, and Ivery had been

lying. He had already lied in his boasting of how he had outwitted me

in England and at the Front. He might be lying about Mary.... No, I

dismissed that hope. Those words of his had rung true enough.

I thought for a minute and concluded that he had lied to terrorise me

and keep me quiet; therefore this infernal contraption had probably its

weak point. I reflected, too, that I was pretty strong, far stronger

probably than Ivery imagined, for he had never seen me stripped. Since

the place was pitch dark I could not guess how the thing worked, but I

could feel the cross-bars rigid on my chest and legs and the side-bars

which pinned my arms to my sides.... I drew a long breath and tried to

force my elbows apart. Nothing moved, nor could I raise the bars on my

legs the smallest fraction.

Again I tried, and again. The side-bar on my right seemed to be less

rigid than the others. I managed to get my right hand raised above the

level of my thigh, and then with a struggle I got a grip with it on the

cross-bar, which gave me a small leverage. With a mighty effort I drove

my right elbow and shoulder against the side-bar. It seemed to give

slightly.... I summoned all my strength and tried again. There was a

crack and then a splintering, the massive bar shuffled limply back, and

my right arm was free to move laterally, though the cross-bar prevented

me from raising it.

With some difficulty I got at my coat pocket where reposed my electric

torch and my pistol. With immense labour and no little pain I pulled

the former out and switched it on by drawing the catch against the

cross-bar. Then I saw my prison house.

It was a little square chamber, very high, with on my left the massive

door by which Ivery had departed. The dark baulks of my rack were

plain, and I could roughly make out how the thing had been managed.

Some spring had tilted up the flooring, and dropped the framework from

its place in the right-hand wall. It was clamped, I observed, by an

arrangement in the floor just in front of the door. If I could get rid

of that catch it would be easy to free myself, for to a man of my

strength the weight would not be impossibly heavy.

My fortitude had come back to me, and I was living only in the moment,

choking down any hope of escape. My first job was to destroy the catch

that clamped down the rack, and for that my only weapon was my pistol.

I managed to get the little electric torch jammed in the corner of the

cross-bar, where it lit up the floor towards the door. Then it was

hell’s own business extricating the pistol from my pocket. Wrist and

fingers were always cramping, and I was in terror that I might drop it

where I could not retrieve it.

I forced myself to think out calmly the question of the clamp, for a

pistol bullet is a small thing, and I could not afford to miss. I

reasoned it out from my knowledge of mechanics, and came to the

conclusion that the centre of gravity was a certain bright spot of

metal which I could just see under the cross-bars. It was bright and so

must have been recently repaired, and that was another reason for

thinking it important. The question was how to hit it, for I could not

get the pistol in line with my eye. Let anyone try that kind of

shooting, with a bent arm over a bar, when you are lying flat and

looking at the mark from under the bar, and he will understand its

difficulties. I had six shots in my revolver, and I must fire two or

three ranging shots in any case. I must not exhaust all my cartridges,

for I must have a bullet left for any servant who came to pry, and I

wanted one in reserve for myself. But I did not think shots would be

heard outside the room; the walls were too thick.

I held my wrist rigid above the cross-bar and fired. The bullet was an

inch to the right of the piece of bright steel. Moving a fraction I

fired again. I had grazed it on the left. With aching eyes glued on the

mark, I tried a third time. I saw something leap apart, and suddenly

the whole framework under which I lay fell loose and mobile.... I was

very cool and restored the pistol to my pocket and took the torch in my

hand before I moved.... Fortune had been kind, for I was free. I turned

on my face, humped my back, and without much trouble crawled out from

under the contraption.

I did not allow myself to think of ultimate escape, for that would only

flurry me, and one step at a time was enough. I remember that I dusted

my clothes, and found that the cut in the back of my head had stopped

bleeding. I retrieved my hat, which had rolled into a corner when I

fell.... Then I turned my attention to the next step.

The tunnel was impossible, and the only way was the door. If I had

stopped to think I would have known that the chances against getting

out of such a house were a thousand to one. The pistol shots had been

muffled by the cavernous walls, but the place, as I knew, was full of

servants and, even if I passed the immediate door, I would be collared

in some passage. But I had myself so well in hand that I tackled the

door as if I had been prospecting to sink a new shaft in Rhodesia.

It had no handle nor, so far as I could see, a keyhole.... But I

noticed, as I turned my torch on the ground, that from the clamp which

I had shattered a brass rod sunk in the floor led to one of the

door-posts. Obviously the thing worked by a spring and was connected

with the mechanism of the rack.

A wild thought entered my mind and brought me to my feet. I pushed the

door and it swung slowly open. The bullet which freed me had released

the spring which controlled it.

Then for the first time, against all my maxims of discretion, I began

to hope. I took off my hat and felt my forehead burning, so that I

rested it for a moment on the cool wall.... Perhaps my luck still held.

With a rush came thoughts of Mary and Blenkiron and Peter and

everything we had laboured for, and I was mad to win.

I had no notion of the interior of the house or where lay the main door

to the outer world. My torch showed me a long passage with something

like a door at the far end, but I clicked it off, for I did not dare to

use it now. The place was deadly quiet. As I listened I seemed to hear

a door open far away, and then silence fell again.

I groped my way down the passage till I had my hands on the far door. I

hoped it might open on the hall, where I could escape by a window or a

balcony, for I judged the outer door would be locked. I listened, and

there came no sound from within. It was no use lingering, so very

stealthily I turned the handle and opened it a crack.

It creaked and I waited with beating heart on discovery, for inside I

saw the glow of light. But there was no movement, so it must be empty.

I poked my head in and then followed with my body.

It was a large room, with logs burning in a stove, and the floor thick

with rugs. It was lined with books, and on a table in the centre a

reading-lamp was burning. Several dispatch-boxes stood on the table,

and there was a little pile of papers. A man had been here a minute

before, for a half-smoked cigar was burning on the edge of the

inkstand.

At that moment I recovered complete use of my wits and all my

self-possession. More, there returned to me some of the old

devil-may-careness which before had served me well. Ivery had gone, but

this was his sanctum. Just as on the roofs of Erzerum I had burned to

get at Stumm’s papers, so now it was borne in on me that at all costs I

must look at that pile.

I advanced to the table and picked up the topmost paper. It was a

little typewritten blue slip with the lettering in italics, and in a

corner a curious, involved stamp in red ink. On it I read:

“_Die Wildvögel müssen heimkehren._”

At the same moment I heard steps and the door opened on the far side, I

stepped back towards the stove, and fingered the pistol in my pocket.

A man entered, a man with a scholar’s stoop, an unkempt beard, and

large sleepy dark eyes. At the sight of me he pulled up and his whole

body grew taut. It was the Portuguese Jew, whose back I had last seen

at the smithy door in Skye, and who by the mercy of God had never seen

my face.

I stopped fingering my pistol, for I had an inspiration. Before he

could utter a word I got in first.

“_Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde,_” I said.

His face broke into a pleasant smile, and he replied:

“_Warte nur, balde ruhest du auch._”

“Ach,” he said in German, holding out his hand, “you have come this

way, when we thought you would go by Modane. I welcome you, for I know

your exploits. You are Conradi, who did so nobly in Italy?”

I bowed. “Yes, I am Conradi,” I said.