The Men Who Wrought Part 26

Von Salzinger was p.r.o.nouncedly of this type. He possessed all the physical and mental force which belongs to it; just as he possessed the full appet.i.te for excess which is its invariable accompaniment. In him was developed to an unusual degree the desire for all the bodily enjoyment that life can offer to a creature in whose veins flows the full tide of the animal.

Once having completed his arrangements with his erstwhile comrade Johann Stryj, he returned to the carefully considered course which he had marked out. With all the Prussian's scheming mind, from the moment he had been made aware of the drift of his fortunes he had cast about for the best outlets which might promise amelioration for the position which chance had placed him in. Nor had he been slow to discover what he sought. Possibilities had promptly opened up before the mental force which he applied to the problem before him.

He withdrew a letter-case from his breast pocket the moment he had finished his communication to Von Berger. He leant back from his desk, and, one by one, turned over the papers the case contained. Finally he selected a letter written on thin paper, in a close, spidery hand. He read this letter through twice. His face was smiling as he read, but his eyes remained unchanging.

Finally he laid the letter down and copied into a notebook two addresses which had been carefully detailed in it. He read them over and verified them. One was in Kensington, and the other was described as being near a well-known market town in the county of Buckinghamshire. With this matter accomplished he glanced at the clock.

Should he wait for lunch in the hotel, or should he run into the West End and regale himself at one of the fashionable restaurants? Finally the attractions of the latter triumphed in their appeal to his gastronomic senses and he telephoned down to the hall porter for a cab.

Von Salzinger had lunched well. He sat back in the taxi-cab in the att.i.tude of a man enjoying the satisfaction of a more than well-lined stomach. Even, for the moment, as he leisurely smoked a great Corona cigar, and reflected on the quart bottle of Pol Roger '06 he had consumed, he felt that the position was not without its compensations, and, after all, in certain departments, the French and the long-legged English were not wholly to be despised.

Such was his satisfaction that his eyes were half closed by the time the cab jerked to a standstill outside a modest block of flats in Kensington. But he was alert in a second, for that was the man. His purpose at all times dominated, and only in the moments of leisure did he permit himself the indulgence he craved.

He negotiated with the cabman for a possible continuance of the journey, and pa.s.sed into the building, his alertness and activity in no way impaired by the amplitude of his luncheon.

Five minutes later he returned with a cloud of annoyance depressing his heavy brows. He strutted up to the driver and gave his orders.

"We'll go on to Wednesford," he said, in his heavy guttural English.

"You must have petrol, for I return to-night by eight o'clock. What is it, the distance? Twenty-five miles? So. It is easy to do."

The Londoner acquiesced without enthusiasm, and Von Salzinger reentered the cab, and slammed the door closed behind him. That was his mood. He had been prepared to make the journey, but he was irritated that he had to do so.

In twenty minutes the cab had threaded its way on to the Oxford Road, and, regardless of all speed limit, raced on towards the famous Chiltern Hills.

Already the early autumn leaves were beginning to fall under the freshening breeze. The hedges were beginning to lose their trim appearance, and the dust-laden leaves on the midsummer growths wore a mildewed aspect that somehow matched the lank, weedy gra.s.s of the road banks. The roads were dry, and the fields looked dry. There was a weary look about the countryside as though Nature had completed her summer's work, and was eagerly looking forward to her winter rest.

A solitary horsewoman was leisurely riding down one of the tarred roads approaching Wednesford. Her horse was steaming, and her obvious intent was to cool him down before reaching her destination. Presently she turned off upon a narrow country lane, whose surface was no advertis.e.m.e.nt for the zeal of the local urban council. It was rough, and deep in dust, with overgrown hedges crowding in upon its narrow limits in a manner which forced her to keep an accurate middle course.

But Princess Vita was not only cooling down her horse after a joyous gallop upon an adjacent gorse-laden common. She was thinking deeply, dreaming as only a woman of romantic ideals can dream. Nor were her thoughts with the rural picture through which she was now moving, and which her ardent heart loved. She was gazing back over past moments so recently spent in the heart of the great capital. Just now her whole mind was filled with thoughts of _the man_. And so she had no room for any other consideration.

For the moment the affairs which had brought this man and herself together were powerless to disturb her dreaming. The sweet, fragrant air of the autumn countryside was filling her lungs, a sense of well-being pervaded her body in the exercise in which she delighted, and so the youthful heart of her had turned aside from the cares which lurked in the background, and sought only the image of the man who was already beginning to occupy so great a part of her life.

The Princess Vita was a well-known figure in the neighborhood. She was known as Madame Vladimir, who occupied Redwithy Farm, standing in a sleepy hollow nearly two miles outside Wednesford. She had occupied the farmhouse for several years, and gossip, supported by the reports of the local police during the late war, declared that she was a refugee from Russian Poland, and consequently one of our Allies, and so those who lived sufficiently near by had set themselves to be kind to her, and, incidentally, to satisfy as much of their curiosity as possible.

But the Princess was not easily available to the curious. She was gentle, she was sufficiently ordinary in her methods of life to please the most exacting of her country neighbors. Furthermore, while professing some Polish religion which the country folk had no understanding of, in the absence of a church of her own she had readily adopted the Church of England. This was enormously in her favor, and she quickly became an admittedly proper person.

But even the most well-meaning never succeeded in penetrating beneath the surface of acquaintanceship. She was credited with being extremely well off. Redwithy Farm was a miniature, restored Elizabethan mansion of rare antiquity, set in the heart of a parkland of over eighty acres.

During the war she had only kept English servants, some seven or eight, but from the moment peace had been declared these had been replaced one by one with foreigners, retainers from her own home in Poland. No one seriously questioned the change. One and all admitted that the conditions of Poland after the war made it a charity on the part of Madame Vladimir to rescue these poor people from such a condition of devastation and afford them the blessings and peace of the English countryside.

So, through her own consummate tact, Vita was enabled to live more or less unquestioned in her English home. And such peace was justly her due, for her objects were simple and honest for the country of her adoption. She was preparing, as many another foreigner had done before her, a refuge in the hospitable heart of Britain for that father for whom she foresaw the growing threat of danger.

Half-way down the winding, narrow lane she turned out through an opening which had once been a five-barred gate. She crossed a field and pa.s.sed into another, and then another. Then, making her way through a small iron gateway, she entered the twenty-acre patch of larch and birch woods which stood on a hill on her own land dominating the farm.

Following the narrow cart track through these woods, her fine eyes busy in every direction with the scuttling rabbits, she emerged in full view of the quaint old L-shaped house. It was a perfect picture of rural England. There was not another house in sight. Redwithy Farm seemed to be shut off from the rest of the world by the hilly surroundings of the Chilterns. The land rose up on every side but one, and that was the direction in which the ribbon-like drive wound its way eastwards between the railed-in pastures of rich gra.s.sland. The building was two-storied for the most part, but here and there dormer attic windows peeped out under the eaves of the beautifully cut thatched roof. Then, behind the house itself lay the old farm buildings, all in excellent repair, and in another direction were the heavy ancient red walls surrounding the various fruit gardens and gla.s.s ranges.

Vita loved the place, and never more appreciated it than when gazing at it from this view-point. Just now there was the added charm of the ripening autumn tints lending warmth to the scene and adding to it that snug suggestion of shelter from the coming inclemencies of winter.

But in the midst of her happy contemplation she became startled. The wonderful peace of it all was abruptly broken. Round the corner of the straight-limbed woods, to the east, a motor vehicle made its appearance. It came on swiftly down the drive. At first Vita took it to be the car of some caller from the neighborhood, but, in a moment, the familiar outline of a taxi-cab impressed itself upon her.

This realization was the startling part of the apparition, and, without hesitation, she pressed her horse on towards the house.

Vita's hasty return to the house was inspired by an intangible dread.

There was no such thing as a taxi-cab in Wednesford. Therefore her visitor must have come from farther afield. There was only one place in her mind a.s.sociated with taxi-cabs--London. If the cab came from London, then----

Her undefined fears received ample confirmation on reaching the house.

Herr von Salzinger was awaiting her in the drawing-room. And at once she realized, without having admitted it to herself, that this was the very thing she had dreaded. How could she have admitted it? It had seemed impossible. Her retreat was known to no one but her father. How then had this man discovered it--and so promptly?

The riddle of it left her troubled. She must somehow gain time to think. Finally, she gave word to the sallow dark-eyed man-servant that she would join Herr von Salzinger in the drawing-room in a few minutes.

Then she pa.s.sed up-stairs to change her habit.

Half an hour later she entered the drawing-room, a picture of such beauty as set the strong pulses of the Prussian hammering, and made him, for the moment, at least, remember only one side of the decision which had brought him to Redwithy Farm.

Vita's ready wit had been active. She had decided on her course of action, and greeted him now with an a.s.sumption of warmth which flattered him, and helped to disarm.

"Ludwig von Salzinger!" she cried, her hand outheld in cordial welcome.

"You, in London, after all this time? How have you managed to tear yourself from the paths of honor, which, if all accounts be true, you have so familiarly been treading of late? Do you know, when I saw your familiar features last night in that cab I really couldn't believe it was you. And how--how in the name of all that's wonderful did you manage to find me out here?"

Her a.s.sumption of pleasure was perfect. Its sincerity even convinced the man who had come prepared for a rebuff.

He laughed in responsive cordiality. But his eyes somehow retained their normal hardness of expression.

"Do not let us talk of how I found you out," he said. "It is likely to arouse--memories. You see, I have still many friends in this England--of yours."

"Mine?" Vita shrugged her superb shoulders, and crossed over to the mantelpiece, where she stood resting an elbow upon it. "But I know what you mean." She sighed a regret. "You found me through your old Secret Service friends. I ought to have remembered." Then she smiled, and her eyes fixed themselves intensely upon the gross face of the man. "But I wanted to forget that. I wanted to remember only the man who had risen by the force of his own personality and attainments to high military command in our beloved Fatherland. You see, _General_, there is no woman but delights in the advancement of her friends over the open road of honor. The secret, underground roads,"--she shook her head,--"no, they are not for a woman's delight in her--friends. They may be necessary, but--they are--underground."

Her purpose was better achieved than perhaps she knew. At the same time, however, she was incurring a serious risk in another direction.

The pa.s.sions of this Prussian were easily stirred. They had been stirred before when he had been younger, when perhaps his experience had not inspired him with so much of the cynicism and selfishness which had come to him through the ruthlessness of his recent campaigning. His ideals of womanhood, if he had ever really possessed any, were now completely negligible. Never in his doctrine could woman be anything but the amus.e.m.e.nt of man. This Princess at one time had suggested to his mind a means of advancement in his career. Now she was merely the daughter of the man who had sought to injure him, a man whom he was convinced was a traitor to his country. She was even something more than merely his daughter. She was something in this man's schemes and plans. This being so, he was left without compunction regarding her.

She was beautiful and--a woman. He was a man. Moreover he felt that his was the power to impress his will upon her in any direction he chose.

This was the Prussian who ever reckons without his adversary.

Von Salzinger settled himself in a comfortable chair and spread out his legs, while Vita pressed an electric bell.

"Maybe," he said drily. "But those underground channels have served me well--in the present instance. So I can't feel as you do towards them.

Do you know, Princess," he went on, with greater warmth, "the sight of you last night left me no longer master of myself. Even then I knew where to find you. Seeing you again impelled me here to-day. I could not wait. I have come here to England in my first leisure to see you--in the hopes that you have at least forgiven if not forgotten our last meeting. You see, I was so much younger then, if not in years at least in the knowledge of those things which humanly speaking really matter. Four years! It seems a lifetime since I was with you."

At that moment the man-servant entered with the tea-tray. Ludwig von Salzinger watched him curiously as he set it before his mistress, in front of the crackling log fire. When the man had withdrawn Vita smiled across at him.

"Tea?" she enquired. "It is British--this tea habit. There are other refreshments if you prefer them, and--you may smoke. We have the house to ourselves. I have given orders. I could not have your visit disturbed by the possible intrusion of--neighbors."

At this fresh mark of the woman's cordiality even the cold eyes began to melt. Von Salzinger was rapidly abandoning himself to the pleasure of the moment. This woman stirred the full depths of pa.s.sion in him.

None had stirred them more deeply. He admitted it, and, with his admission, he promised himself the harvest of the power that was his.

He accepted a cup of tea and lit a cigar.

"Then perhaps you have forgiven the--past?" he said, with a.s.surance.

Vita shrugged. But her smile was radiant.