The Man with the Clubfoot Part 24

"What? Perhaps what?" I exclaimed impatiently.

"Possibly...."

"Out with it, man!" I cried, "and say what you mean."

"Perhaps, if I could render to the gentleman the service I rendered to his brother, I might be able to throw light...."

"What service did you render to my brother?" I demanded hastily. "I'm in the dark."

"Has the gentleman no little difficulty perhaps? ... about his military service, about his papers? The gentleman is young and strong ... has he been to the front? Was life irksome there? Did he ever long for the sweets of home life? Did he never envy those who have been medically rejected? The rich men's sons, perhaps, with clever fathers who know how to get what they want?"

His little eyes bored into mine like gimlets.

I began to understand.

"And if I had?"

"Then all old Kore can say is that the gentleman has come to the right shop, as his gracious brother did. How can we serve the gentleman now?

What are his requirements? It is a difficult, a dangerous business. It costs money, much money, but it can be arranged ... it can be arranged."

"But if you do for me what you did for my brother," I said, "I don't see how that helps to explain this word, this clue to his address!"

"My dear sir, I am as much in the dark as you are yourself about the significance of this word. But I can tell you this, your brother, thanks to my intervention, found himself placed in a situation in which he might well have come across this word...."

"Well?" I said impatiently.

"Well, if we obliged the gentleman as we obliged his brother, the gentleman might be taken where his brother was taken, the gentleman is young and smart, he might perhaps find a clue ..."

"Stop talking riddles, for Heaven's sake!" I cried in exasperation, "and answer my questions plainly. First, what did you do for my brother?"

"Your brother had deserted from the front--that is the most difficult cla.s.s of business we have to deal with--we procured him a _permis de sejour_ for fifteen days and a post in a safe place where no enquiries would be made after him."

"And then?" I cried, trembling with curiosity.

The Jew shrugged his shoulders, waving his hands to and fro in the air.

"Then he disappeared. I saw him a few days before he went, and he gave me the instructions I have repeated to you for anybody who should come asking for him."

"But didn't he tell you where he was going?"

"He didn't even tell me he was going, Herr. He just vanished."

"When was this?"

"Somewhere about the first week in July ... it was the week of the bad news from France."

The message was dated July 1st, I remembered.

"I have a good set of Swedish papers," the Jew continued, "very respectable timber merchant ... with those one could live in the best hotels and no one say a word. Or Hungarian papers, a party rejected medically ... very safe those, but perhaps the gentleman doesn't speak Hungarian. That would be essential."

"I am in the same case as my brother," I said, "I must disappear."

"Not a deserter, Herr?" The Jew cringed at the word.

"Yes," I said. "After all, why not?"

"I daren't do this kind of business any more, my dear sir, I really daren't! They are making it too dangerous."

"Come, come!" I said, "you were boasting just now that you could smooth out any difficulties. You can produce me a very satisfactory pa.s.sport from somewhere, I am sure!"

"Pa.s.sport! Out of the question, my dear sir! Let once one of my pa.s.sports go wrong and I am ruined. Oh, no! no pa.s.sports where deserters are concerned! I don't like the business ... it's not safe! At the beginning of the war ... ah! that was different! Oi, oi, but they ran from the Yser and from Ypres! Oi, oi, and from Verdun! But now the police are more watchful. No! It is not worth it! It would cost you too much money, besides."

I thought the miserable cur was trying to raise the price on me, but I was mistaken. He was frightened: the business was genuinely distasteful to him.

I tried, as a final attempt to persuade him, an old trick: I showed him my money. He wavered at once, and, after many objections, protesting to the last, he left the room. He returned with a handful of filthy papers.

"I oughtn't to do it; I know I shall rue it; but you have overpersuaded me and I liked Herr Eichenholz, a n.o.ble gentleman and free with his money--see here, the papers of a waiter, Julius Zimmermann, called up with the Landwehr but discharged medically unfit, military pay-book and _permis de sejour_ for fifteen days. These papers are only a guarantee in case you come across the police: no questions will be asked where I shall send you."

"But a fifteen days' permit!" I said. "What am I to do at the end of that time?"

"Leave it to me," Kore said craftily. "I will get it renewed for you. It will be all right!"

"But in the meantime...." I objected.

"I place you as waiter with a friend of mine who is kind to poor fellows like yourself. Your brother was with him."

"But I want to be free to move around."

"Impossible," the Jew answered firmly. "You must get into your part and live quietly in seclusion until the enquiries after you have abated.

Then we may see as to what is next to be done. There you are, a fine set of papers and a safe, comfortable life far away from the trenches--all snug and secure--cheap (in spite of the danger to me), because you are a lad of spirit and I liked your brother ... ten thousand marks!"

I breathed again. Once we had reached the haggling stage, I knew the papers would be mine all right. With Semlin's money and my own I found I had about 550, but I had no intention of paying out 500 straight away.

So I beat the fellow down unmercifully and finally secured the lot for 3600 marks--180.

But, even after I had paid the fellow his money, I was not done with him. He had his eye on his perquisites.

"Your clothes will never do," he said; "such richness of apparel, such fine stuff--we must give you others." He rang the bell.

The old man-servant appeared.

"A waiter's suit--for the Linien-Stra.s.se!" he said.

Then he led me into a bedroom where a worn suit of German shoddy was spread out on a sofa. He made me change into it, and then handed me a threadbare green overcoat and a greasy green felt hat.

"So!" he said. "Now, if you don't shave for a day or two, you will look the part to the life!"--a remark which, while encouraging, was hardly complimentary.

He gave me a m.u.f.fler to tie round my neck and lower part of my face and, with that greasy hat pulled down over my eyes and in those worn and shrunken clothes, I must say I looked a pretty villainous person, the very ant.i.thesis of the sleek, well-dressed young fellow that had entered the flat half an hour before.