The Man Without a Memory Part 3

"I'm inclined to be very sorry for all this, and fear it may affect you very seriously. You're not just playing at this, I hope?" he asked then very earnestly.

"Playing at what?"

"This loss of memory. I mean that you need not have the faintest hesitation about speaking to me; and it occurred to me that you might have put it all on just to avoid questions at Rotterdam."

"Are you serious?"

"Absolutely. It's a tremendously serious matter. It's this way. We've seen the _Burgen's_ manifest, of course; we know there were only two male cabin pa.s.sengers on board, both travelling as Americans; one as Jas. R. Lamb, the other as Joseph Lyman. If you are La.s.sen, that was you. The other man, Lamb, as he called himself, we have good reason to believe was an English spy. It follows, therefore, that if you are not La.s.sen, you are the Englishman; and I need scarcely tell you that at such a time as this, spies find Berlin a very unhealthy place."

He was a quicker-witted fellow than I had believed, but he made a mistake in not springing this beastly surprise on me more suddenly. His long preamble gave me time to get myself well in hand.

"It'll be a pretty climax for me if I am the Englishman," I answered, laughing, and without turning a hair.

"You're sure you're not?" he rapped.

I tried to appear amused. "I wish I could be sure of anything."

A pause followed, and then he tried another shot. "You may have noticed that I stared pretty hard at you this morning when you came into the doctor's room, and that afterwards I rather rushed you away from Rotterdam. I reached there yesterday morning and spent the day making such inquiries as I could about you. I was instructed to, of course; and I came to the conclusion that you were the Englishman, and I thought so when you came into that room. That was why I hurried you away; I wished to have you on this side of the frontier. It is also the reason why I am sorry you cannot recover your memory."

I declined the opening without thanks. "I'm just as sorry as you are; but I suppose we can clear up the tangle at Berlin."

"Oh, yes. I've wired to the von Reblings to meet our train. Of course you'll understand that I have some men at hand here. It is better you should know that," he added in an unpleasantly suggestive tone.

But I only laughed. "I wish you would send one of them to get me something to eat."

"I will, of course;" and he looked out into the corridor, beckoned some one and gave him the necessary order, returned to his seat and busied himself with the papers from his despatch case.

A substantial meal for us both was brought to the compartment, and although very little was said as we ate it, I was conscious that a considerable change had come over the relations between us. His manner had become distinctly official, and I understood that I was virtually under arrest until at least we reached Berlin.

Afterwards he went back to his papers, suggesting that I might like to sleep; so I leant back in my corner and gave myself up to my thoughts.

They were anything but pleasant. He had given me a shock that was almost as great as the explosion on the _Burgen_. I was in the very devil's own mess. I had no delusions about my fate if I was held to be an English spy; and that would almost certainly be the case if the von Reblings declared I was not La.s.sen. That that would be their decision was a million to one chance. It was a sheer impossibility that they would be unable to recognize a relation who was actually engaged to the daughter; and how to meet the difficulty baffled me.

I was right in the eye of the net. The fact that there had been only two men as cabin pa.s.sengers on the _Burgen_ was like a mine sprung under my feet. I had reckoned on being able to recover my memory at any necessary moment; but this cut the ground from under me. I couldn't become Jimmy. That was a cert. And I certainly couldn't become any one else, because every lie I might tell would most surely be scrupulously investigated.

Poor Nessa! I was a heap more troubled about her and her mother than about myself. Whether the von Reblings knew me or not, the result would be much the same to her. Tied up as the betrothed of another girl, it would be next to impossible in the short time at my command to do a thing to find Nessa. The only possibility that occurred to me was that if the million to one chance came off and the von Reblings didn't denounce me at once as a fraud, I might manage to lose myself in the city somehow and set to work on the search.

But even in that case I should be in hourly danger of discovery; a state of things which would make it virtually impossible to carry on the search with any hope of success.

How Hoffnung's people could have got on the track of my not being Jimmy, baffled me utterly. But they clearly had; so there was no use in wasting time worrying over it. I did worry over it, however, as well as over every other detail of the job, and continued to ask myself all sorts of unanswerable questions for the rest of the journey.

Hoffnung looked at his watch, shovelled his papers back into their case, and looked across at me. "About ten minutes now only," he said.

"Have you slept?"

I all but gave myself away by blurting out the fact that I never slept in trains, but checked the words in time. "Dozed a bit," I said.

"You look fresh and fit enough," he replied, as if the fact rather justified his suspicions of me, "Wonderful after what you've gone through. You must be as hard as nails. Military training, I suppose."

Neat; but I didn't tumble in. "Have I had any?" I asked.

He shrugged his shoulders and squinted at me with a suggestive smile.

Then he grew earnest. "We won't have a scene at the station. We'd better wait till most of the people have got away, and you'll give me your word of honour not to attempt to get away or anything of the sort?"

"What the deuce good would that be? Of course I shan't make a fool of myself in any such fashion. If I'm the man you call the Englishman, well, I am, that's all."

"You have all an Englishman's coolness."

"Then perhaps I am English," I said with a shrug.

"We'll hope not, at any rate;" but it was clear he was fast making up his mind that I was. After a pause he added: "When the crowd has cleared off, we'll walk together to the barrier, and my men will be behind us. We shall find the von Reblings there."

"And if we don't?"

"Oh, I'll see that you're taken care of for the night; but they'll be there to a certainty."

I don't deny that when the train stopped at the platform and we stayed in the carriage while the other travellers cleared away, I had more than a little trouble to maintain what he had termed an Englishman's coolness. But my anxiety didn't show in my face.

Nessa's fate as well as my own depended upon what occurred in the next few minutes at the barrier; and I think that if it had been practicable to have choked Hoffnung, and his men, into insensibility, I should have been sorely tempted to make the attempt.

But the thought of Nessa made me keep my end up; there was nothing for it but to face the music; and when at last he rose to leave the carriage, all I did was to yawn and stretch myself and say that I should be jolly glad to get to bed.

"What a magnificent station!" I exclaimed, stopping on the platform to look about me as if that was the one subject which interested me at the moment.

Then I went on with him, my eyes fixed on a little knot of people at the barrier on whose words and acts my life not improbably depended.

CHAPTER III

ROSA

I remember a little commonplace incident in Hyde Park one bank holiday which made me smile at the time. Three children were scuffling and squabbling over the division of some sweets when the mother, a kindly-looking soul, came promptly and settled the matter in a somewhat Spartan fashion. She scolded the kids, smacked them impartially, and then s.n.a.t.c.hed the sweets and shied them away. Loud yells followed, of course, and repenting her haste, she kissed and hugged her little brood, immediately produced a bigger bag of sweets and in this way pacified them all.

This has nothing to do with my experience in Berlin, except to serve as a crude ill.u.s.tration of how the fates dealt with me. Just when Hoffnung's story had thoroughly shaken me up and prepared me to face the worst possible, the pendulum swung right over to my side and the fates handed out the bigger bag of sweets.

In other words I was at once recognized as Johann La.s.sen by the Countess von Rebling.

There were several circ.u.mstances to account for her mistake. For one, my bride that was to be was not present: I learnt the reason afterwards; and only her son Hans was with her, a lad who had never seen me. The old lady was, of course, prepared to meet me; she saw me in Hoffnung's company; then just as I reached the barrier the big arc lamps in the station almost went out for a few seconds, leaving the place in comparative gloom; and lastly, being a tender-hearted little woman, her eyes were full of tears and no doubt blurred her sight.

"My poor dear Johann!" she cried, throwing her arms round my neck and giving way to her mingled sympathy for my sufferings and joy at seeing me safe and sound. Then she called to her son, and after I had been kissed by him, she clung to me and could not make enough of me, so that even Hoffnung had to be satisfied.

"You are quite sure that this is your nephew, Countess?" he asked.

"Sure? Of course I am. Whatever do you mean, Heinrich?" she cried in amazement.

He explained my loss of memory; but the only effect was to increase her concern on my account and to make her hug me closer to her side, with many endearing expressions of affection and compa.s.sion.