The Girl from Alsace Part 6

"Fall in!"

With a shriek of anguish, the woman threw her arms about him and strained him close.

"My boy!" she moaned. "My youngest one--my baby--they are taking you also!"

"I shall be back, mother, never fear," he said, and loosened her arms gently. "You will write me when--when it is over."

"Yes," she promised, and he took his place in the ranks.

"March!" cried the sergeant, and the section tramped away with Gronau in its midst. At the corner, he turned and waved his hand in farewell to the old woman. For a moment longer she stood clutching at the door and staring at the place where he had vanished, then turned slowly back into the house.

CHAPTER IV

THE MYSTERY OF THE SATIN SLIPPERS

Stewart, awakening from the contemplation of this poignant drama--one of thousands such enacting at that moment all over Europe--realized that he was lingering unduly and hastened his steps. At the end of five minutes, he was again in the wide Franzstra.s.se, and, turning the last corner, saw his landlady standing at her door, looking anxiously up and down the street.

Her face brightened with relief when she saw him--a relief so evidently deep and genuine that Stewart was a little puzzled by it.

"But I am glad to see you!" she cried as he came up, her face wreathed in smiles. "I was imagining the most horrible things. I feared I know not what! But you are safe, it seems."

"Quite safe. In fact, I was never in any danger."

"I was foolish, no doubt, to have fear. But in times like these, one never knows what may happen."

"True enough," Stewart agreed. "Still, an American with a pa.s.sport in his pocket ought to be safe anywhere."

"Ah; you have a pa.s.sport--that is good. That will simplify matters. The police have been here to question you. They will return presently."

"The police?"

"There have been some spies captured, it seems. And there are many who are trying to leave the country. So everyone is suspected. You are not German-born, I hope? If you were, I fear not even your pa.s.sport would be of use."

They had walked back together along the hall as they talked, and now stopped at the foot of the stair. The landlady seemed very nervous--as was perhaps natural amid the alarms of war. She scarcely listened to his a.s.surance that he was American by birth. Little beads of perspiration stood out across her forehead----

"The police visited your room," she rattled on. "You will perhaps find your baggage disarranged."

Stewart smiled wryly.

"So it seems they really suspect me?"

"They suspect everyone," the landlady repeated.

She was standing with her back toward the door, and Stewart wondered why she should watch his face so closely.

Suddenly, over her shoulder, he saw the ugly waiter with the hang-dog air approaching along the hall.

"Such anxiety is quite natural," said the landlady rapidly in German, raising her voice a little. "I can understand it. But it is not remarkable that you should have missed her--the trains are so irregular.

I will send her to you the moment she arrives. Ah, Hans," she added, turning at the sound of the waiter's footsteps, "so you are back at last! You will take up some hot water to the gentleman at once. And now you will excuse me, sir; I have the dinner to attend to," and she hurried away, carrying the waiter with her.

Stewart stood for an instant staring after her; then he turned and mounted slowly to his room. But what had the woman meant? Why should he be anxious? Who was it he had missed? "I will send her to you the moment she arrives." No--she could not have said that--it was impossible that she should have said that. He must have misunderstood; his German was very second-rate, and she had spoken rapidly. But what _had_ she said?

He was still pondering this problem, when a knock at the door told him that the hot water had arrived. As he opened the door, the landlady's voice came shrilly up the stair.

"Hans!" she called. "There is something wrong with the stove. Hasten!

Hasten!"

Stewart took the can which was thrust hastily into his hand, turned back into the room, and proceeded to make a leisurely toilet. If the landlady had not told him, he would never have suspected that his baggage had been searched by the police, for everything seemed to be where he had left it. But then he was a hasty and careless packer, by no means precise----

That vague feeling of uneasiness which had shaken him in the church swept over him again, stronger than before; there was something wrong somewhere; the meshes of an invisible net seemed closing about him. More than once he caught himself standing quite still, in an att.i.tude of profound meditation, though he was not conscious that he had really been thinking of anything. Evidently the events of the day had shaken him more deeply than he had realized.

"Come, old man," he said at last, "this won't do. Pull yourself together."

And then a sudden vivid memory rose before him of those praying women, of that wrinkled mother gazing despairingly after her youngest born as he was marched away perhaps forever, of the set faces of the crowd shuffling silently homeward----

He had been absently turning over the contents of one of his bags, searching for a necktie, when he found himself staring at a pair of satin ball-slippers, into each of which was stuffed a blue silk stocking. For quite a minute he stared, doubting his own senses; then he picked up one of the slippers and looked at it.

It was a tiny affair, very delicate and beautiful--a real jewel in footwear, such as Stewart, with his limited feminine experience, had never seen before. Indeed, he might have doubted that they were intended for actual service, but for the slight discoloration inside the heel, which proved that these had been worn more than once. Very deliberately he drew out the stocking, also a jewel in its way, of a texture so diaphanous as to be almost cobweblike. Then he picked up the other slipper and held them side by side. Yes, they were mates----

"But where on earth could I have picked them up?" he asked himself. "In what strange fit of absent-mindedness could I have packed them with my things? But I couldn't have picked them up--I never saw them before----"

He sat down suddenly, a slipper in either hand. They must have come from somewhere--they could not have concealed themselves among his things. If he had not placed them there, then someone else had. But who? And for what purpose? The police? His landlady had said that they had searched his luggage; but what possible object could they have had for increasing it by two satin slippers and a pair of stockings? Such an action was farcical--French-farcical!--but he could not be incriminated in such a way. He had no wife to be made jealous! And even if he had----

"This is the last straw!" he muttered to himself. "Either the world has gone mad, or I have."

Moving as in a dream, he placed the slippers side by side upon the floor, contemplated them for a moment longer, and then proceeded slowly with his dressing. He found an unaccustomed difficulty in putting his b.u.t.tons in his cuffs, and then he remembered that it was a tie he had been looking for when he found the slippers. The slippers! He turned and glanced at them. Yes--they were still there--they had not vanished. Very coquettish they appeared, standing there side by side, as though waiting for their owner.

And suddenly Stewart smiled a crooked smile.

"Only one thing is necessary to complete this pantomime," he told himself, "and that is that the Princess should suddenly appear and claim them. Well, I'm willing! A woman with a foot like that----"

There was a knock at the door.

"In a moment!" he called.

"But it is I!" cried a woman's voice in English--a sweet, high-pitched voice, quivering with excitement. "It is I!" and the door was flung open with a crash.

A woman rushed toward him--he saw vaguely her vivid face, her shining eyes; behind her, more vaguely still, he saw the staring eyes of the hang-dog waiter. Then she was upon him.

"At last!" she cried, and flung her arms about him and kissed him on the lips--kissed him closely, pa.s.sionately, as he had never been kissed before.

CHAPTER V