An Imperial Marriage Part 33

"You have great influence with your a.s.sociates, then?"

"I am the leader of the whole movement. My word is absolute."

The declaration was made with a singular mixture of pride and simpleness. It was obvious that he believed it. "You think those men last night would have obeyed you?"

"They would not have dared to disobey," he replied in the same tone. "I went there to inquire into a charge of treachery against Ziegler--that he had betrayed some of our plans to an Englishman---- Why it was to you, of course." He said this with a little start as if he had just recalled it. "I was called to Berlin on that very matter."

I began to see light now. Althea was right in one respect--his mind was so affected and his memory so clouded that consecutive reasoning was impossible. He was not responsible for either words or deeds. But there was more behind. Some one was using him as a stalking horse for very sinister purposes.

"You arrived in the capital yesterday and were told to come to the house of a man believed to be about to betray your schemes?"

"Yes," he said simply, almost pathetically.

"Can you think of any reason for that?"

"No. I didn't understand it. I forgot until this moment, indeed, that you were the suspected Englishman."

It was obviously useless to question him any more about that. "Now, as to this other purpose--the bigger plan of your a.s.sociates?"

"You know that too?"

"Have I not proved to you that I know things? But I am not a traitor, Baron."

He smiled childishly. He had become almost like a child, indeed, now.

"It will be a grand stroke against the Government. We shall destroy the vessel, of course; but there will be no loss of life. I will not sanction the taking of lives, Herr Bastable."

So this was the scheme. To blow up one of the Kaiser's warships. I repressed all signs of astonishment and tried to look as if I had expected the reply. "But you cannot avoid loss of life, Baron."

It proved a very fortunate remark. With a very cunning smile he looked up and nodded his head knowingly. "I shall not allow it to be done until I am sure of that. I keep the bomb in my own possession till then"; and he hugged the little bag closer than ever to his side.

Here was a complication indeed. A lunatic in the house with a bomb in his possession capable of blowing a warship to fragments.

And this was the man I had described to Bessie as harmless!

CHAPTER XVI

MY RoLE AS A CONSPIRATOR

Baron von Ringheim did not observe my profound consternation at hearing that he had a bomb in his possession, and he appeared to regard it only as a useful thing to carry about in a dressing-bag. He was indeed engrossed by his own shrewdness in keeping it by him so as to prevent its use at the wrong moment.

I believe that he interpreted my dismay rather as a tribute to his admirable caution. That I should object to have such a thing in my house did not occur to him.

For some moments I was at a loss what line to take. Of course I had to get possession of the bomb at any cost. If he were arrested and it were to be found there, we should all find ourselves in prison and called on to face a charge involving heavy punishment.

"I have done you an injustice, Baron," I said, changing my tone for one of profound admiration. "You are a wonderful leader."

He accepted this with something of a return to his former dignified bearing. "You have greatly wronged me, Herr Bastable," he said with dignity.

I played up to this at once. "For the future you will have no more devoted follower than myself. I crave your pardon for my bluntness; but you shall know the truth. I was told that you had ceased to lead the movement, and it was essential that I should satisfy myself. My life is at stake in this cause. But I shall doubt no more."

"Then you are with us?"

"With you, Baron, heart and soul. I raised my voice against it all at the time; I protested against the shame of doubting you; I used every means in my power to convince the others. But all was in vain. They insisted; and I was but one against all the rest."

He was as much bewildered at this as I had intended. "I don't understand," he said.

I replied with a pa.s.sionate harangue against the wickedness of any attempt to undermine his authority, and talked until his poor half-crazed wits were in a whirl of perplexity. Then with dramatic earnestness I cried: "You have been shamefully betrayed and deceived."

"What do you mean?" he stammered.

"That," I exclaimed indignantly, pointing at the bag. "But I will see that all is made right. The bomb you have there is a sham, a fraud, a trick. The real one is in the hands of those who mean to use it when and how they please. Your counsels of humanity have been set at naught, and the lives of hundreds are in peril."

"It is impossible," he protested weakly.

"Show it to me and I will prove my words; aye, and do more than that. I will see that the real one is placed in your possession."

The look he cast at me was almost piteous in its appealing trustfulness; and after a second's pause, he unfastened the bag, and with fingers which trembled so violently that I feared he would drop it, he handed me the bomb.

That I took it with intense relief may well be imagined, and I handled it with the utmost caution and no little dread. Whether it was really the terrible engine of destruction that he believed, I did not know; but with an a.s.sumption of confidence I was very far from feeling, I pointed to some mark on it. "I knew it," I cried. "See that. The proof of the betrayal; shame! shame!" and with that I slipped it into a large inner pocket of my jacket.

"What are you going to do?" he asked as I turned to the door.

"I am on fire until this has been righted. When I return I shall have something to tell you. From this moment you, and you only, are my leader."

He was going to protest, but I gave him no time. My one thought was to get rid of the thing at once. But how to do so perplexed me sorely.

I was consumedly uncomfortable and intensely scared. I felt that my life was in danger every second the confounded thing was in my possession.

Every time it moved ever so slightly as I walked I feared that it would explode, and I drew my first deep breath of relief the instant I was out of the house.

But the streets had even more potential terrors. When any one approached me on the side where I was carrying it, I was afraid they would knock against it and blow me and half Berlin with me into eternity.

Every policeman I met was an object of dread; and when one turned to gaze after me, I jumped to the conclusion that he knew what I was carrying and was about to arrest me.

I left the house with no definite purpose or plan for getting rid of it, and I walked on at first aimlessly, wondering vaguely whether I should hide it or bury it somewhere without being observed.

With this thought I made for the Thiergarten, and I had reached the west end of Unter den Linden when it occurred to me that the best and simplest course would be to drop it over the Marschall Bridge into the river.

I walked down North Wilhelmsstra.s.se with much the sort of feeling a thief might have who had the proceeds of his theft upon him and knew that the police were close on his track. Every harmless citizen I met became a detective, told off especially to watch me; and when I reached the bridge and loitered along, gazing enviously at the water below and waiting for a chance to drop the thing over unseen, I was convinced that everybody there could tell from my manner that I was intent upon the commission of some ill deed and had slackened their pace to watch me.

My fingers trembled so violently as I held it in readiness that I wonder I did not drop it on the pavement; and when a chance did come at last, and I was alone close to the middle of the bridge and took it out of my pocket, glancing furtively all round me the while, the perspiration stood in great beads on my forehead.

At the last moment even I had a horrible and almost paralysing fear that when dropped from such a height it might be exploded by contact with the water; and when at last I did succeed in letting it go, I watched its fall with bated breath and a sort of dread that the end of all things for me was at hand.

But it disappeared from sight and nothing happened, and I drew one deep, deep breath of fierce exultant joy, and then leaned against the parapet with the helpless inertness of a drunken man.