The Man Without a Memory Part 1

The Man Without a Memory.

by Arthur W. Marchmont.

CHAPTER I

HOW I LOST MY MEMORY

It was a glorious sc.r.a.p, and d.i.c.k Gunter and I had the best of it right up to the last moment.

We were about 6,000 feet up and a mile or so inside the German lines when their two machines came out to drive us away.

"We'll take 'em on, Jack," shouted d.i.c.k, chortling like the rare old sport he was, and we began our usual manoeuvre for position. Our dodge was to let them believe we were novices at the game, and I messed about with the old bus as if we were undecided and in a deuce of a funk.

They fell in, all right, and at the proper moment I swung round and gave d.i.c.k a chance which he promptly took, pouring in a broadside which sent one of the machines hurtling nose first to earth. This put the fear of G.o.d into the others, who tried to bolt; but we were too fast for them and, after a short running fight, d.i.c.k got them. The pilot crumpled up and down went the machine like a stone to prevent the other from feeling lonely.

We were jubilating righteously over this, when the luck turned. A third machine, which, in the excitement of the sc.r.a.p, we hadn't seen, swooped out of the clouds and gave us a broadside at close range, which messed us up pretty badly. We were both hit, the petrol poured out of the riddled tank, the engine stopped, and I realized that we could put up the shutters, as we were absolutely at the beggar's mercy.

I was wrong, however. d.i.c.k had managed to let the other chap have a dose of lead, and either because we had had enough of it or his bus was damaged, he didn't stop to finish us off but scuttled off home to mother.

I was. .h.i.t somewhere in the shoulder, but it wasn't bad enough to prevent my working the controls, and I pointed for home on a long glissade. There was a "certain liveliness," as the communiques say, during that joy ride. The Archies barked continuously as we crossed the lines, the shrapnel was all over us, d.i.c.k was. .h.i.t again, and the poor old bus fairly riddled; but we got through it somehow, although my pal was nearly done in by the time we reached the ground.

Some pretty things were said about it and we each got the M.C. I was very little hurt, and came out of the base hospital a week or two later feeling as fit as a fiddle again, but as the chief decided I had earned a good spell of leave, I went off to old Blighty to convalesce.

Then it was that for the first time I heard of the trouble about Nessa Caldicott. Both my parents had died when I was a kid, and Mrs.

Caldicott, the dearest and sweetest woman in the world, had been like a mother to me, had taken me into her home, and thus I had grown up with Nessa and her sister. Nessa and I had been to school in Germany; had travelled out and home together; I had spent my holidays in their home; and I can't remember the time when I wasn't in love with her.

Mrs. Caldicott was keen that we should marry, and a year or two after I came back to England for good from Gottingen University we had been engaged. But there was a "n.i.g.g.e.r in the fence." I had plenty of money and preferred being a sort of "nut" to working; and Nessa didn't like it. She urged me to "do something and make a career for myself"; but I was a swollen-headed young a.s.s, and shied at it; so at last the engagement was broken off until, as she put it, I "had given up the idea of lounging and loafing through life."

She was right, of course; but like a fool I wouldn't see it; so we quarrelled, and she went off to Germany to stay with an old school friend. She was still there when the war broke out, and thus did not know that I had found my chance and had joined up. There was nothing "nutty" about the army training and work, and when I went home, of course, my first thoughts were of her and what she would say when she knew I had taken her advice.

But I found poor Mrs. Caldicott in the very depth of anxiety and despair. Nessa had never returned from Germany, and there was nothing but the most disconcerting and perplexing news of her. During the first few months she had been able to write home that all was well with her, although she could not get out of the country.

Then came a gap in the correspondence, followed by a short letter that her school friend was dead, and that she feared she would not be allowed to remain in the house. A month or so later another letter came, saying she had left Hanover to go to another friend in Berlin, and that her mother was not to worry, as she expected soon to be home.

"And that's the last letter I've had from her, Jack, and that's three months ago," said Mrs. Caldicott, the tears streaming down her cheeks.

"The only news I've had is these two odd communications."

They were odd, in all truth. The first was a sentence which had evidently been cut out of a longer letter in Nessa's handwriting and pasted on a sheet of paper. "I am quite well, but cannot get away yet."

That was all, and a very ugly-looking all too. The second was a postcard in a strange handwriting, like a man's fist. "Your daughter is well and is going to be married. She will communicate with you after the war."

I did not let the dear old lady see what I thought of the matter, nor did I tell her how my months at the front and what I had seen there led me to put the most sinister interpretation on the affair.

"I've tried every means in my power, Jack, to find Nessa," she declared; "but with no result at all; and it's killing me."

I did what I could to rea.s.sure her, and then a somewhat harum-scarum idea occurred to me--that I should use my leave to go to Berlin and make inquiries. She wouldn't hear of it at first, because of the danger to me; but I showed her that there would really be very little risk, as I had often pa.s.sed for a German, and that the only real difficulty was getting permission from the authorities.

I set about that at once and succeeded--the result of having a friend at court in the War Office; but before that was settled Nessa's brother-in-law, Jimmy Lamb, an American manufacturer, came over on munitions business and wouldn't hear of my going.

"See here, Jack, this is my show, not yours. For one thing I can do it better than you, as I'm a bit of a hustler and have a good friend, Greg Watson, in our Berlin Emba.s.sy. More than that, I can go safely, while if you were found out, you'd be shot as a spy;" and he wouldn't listen to my protests.

But the scheme fell through at the last moment. On the very day he was to have started, he had a cable that his father was dying; and he had to catch the first boat home.

"I'm real sick about it, Jack, but there's nothing else for it. I've booked a berth in the _Slavonic_ to-day."

"Then I shall go, Jimmy. I can't bear the thought of Nessa being in those beggars' hands. I'm certain there's some devilment at the bottom of it;" and I told him a few of the items I had seen with my own eyes.

"Well, what price your going in my name? Much better than the German stunt; and you can actually see about the business that I meant to do.

Here are all the papers needed, my pa.s.sport and ticket, a bunch of German notes I've picked up at a good discount, and you can see Greg Watson--I'll give you a letter to him--and you'll find him a white man right through, ready to do his durndest to help you."

A few minutes clinched the job; an hour or two sufficed for all the preparations I needed to make for the trip; and that night I left Harwich for Rotterdam in a little steamer called the _Burgen_, as Jas. R. Lamb, an American merchant, equipped with all the credentials necessary to keep up my end.

It was all plain sailing enough, but it didn't turn out so simple as it looked. There was another American on board and I kept out of his way at first, but when he had heard me talking to a waiter in German, he came sidling up and sc.r.a.ped acquaintance. He soon let out that he was as genuine an American as I was, and the best of it was that he took me for what he was in reality--a German.

"You speak German well for--an American," he said suggestively. "You know Germany, perhaps?"

"I was at school there and afterwards at Gottingen."

He was cautious enough to test this, and I let him have some choice specimens of student slang which strengthened his opinion.

"I was also at Gottingen. Need we pretend any longer?" and he held out his hand. He was very much my own build and colouring, but I hoped the resemblance stopped short there, for I didn't like his looks a bit.

"Pretend what?" I asked as if on my guard.

"That we are Americans."

"You needn't, but I didn't say I wasn't one."

He made a peculiar flourish with his left hand which was one of the membership signs of a secret society among the students, and I answered it. It was enough, and he let himself go then. He was a good swaggerer; told me that he had come from America to England, where he had been ferretting out every possible sc.r.a.p of information, having represented himself as the agent of an American firm of munition makers; that he had sent his report to Berlin and had been summoned to go there at once on the strength of it; and that he was to join the Secret Service.

He was so full of his self-importance and seemingly so glad to have some one to listen to him, that, with a very little prompting, he told me a whole lot about himself, and the great things he had done. He only stopped when he got sea-sick, and before he went below he told me his real name was Johann La.s.sen, and scribbled his address in Berlin on his card, so that we might meet again there.

I was a little worried by the business. It might be awkward if we did run against one another in Berlin; but there was no need to look for trouble before it arrived, so I dismissed the thing and went on thinking out my own plan of campaign. But the affair had very unexpected results.

We were nearing the Dutch coast and I was considering how to avoid La.s.sen on landing, when there was the very d.i.c.kens of an explosion. As if the lid of h.e.l.l itself had lifted!

What happened I only learnt afterwards, for the next thing I knew was that I was lying in bed somewhere, with a grave-eyed nurse bending over me.

"Herr La.s.sen!" Just a whisper. After a pause the name was repeated with slightly more solicitous emphasis.

I was too weak and exhausted to reply or feel either surprise or curiosity at the mistake about my name; and with a sigh of utter weariness I closed my eyes and fell asleep. When I woke it was in the dead stillness of the night.

I was far less exhausted and my mind was beginning to work again. I was lying alone in a small bare-walled room, lighted by one carefully shaded electric light. There were two other beds in the room, both unoccupied; and I was not too dazed to understand that it was a hospital ward. Then I remembered the nurse had addressed me as "Herr La.s.sen"; and was puzzling over the mistake when the remembrance of Nessa and her peril flashed across my mind and stirred a confused jangle of disturbing thoughts.

I was still too weak to clear the tangle then, however, and fell asleep again, and did not wake until the morning.

I was much better and the nurse was very pleased at my improvement.