Villa Elsa Part 16

"'No flowers or singing of hymns.' What is all this?"

"Just a joke, tell him, just a little innocent fun," appealed Jim to his translator.

"You signed yourself as Secretary. That contravenes the law. You had no authority to a.s.sume an official position without conferring."

Then there was the mighty Senate and the Roman People again on the mystic communication with its cryptic letters as full of mystery as runes to these Germans. It was, of course, the language of a code.

"Tell him that there is no such thing in the world as the Roman Senate and People," explained Deming with nervous despair. "That was just fooling. Nothing political--nothing _political_!" he exclaimed.

Everything became less convincing and therefore visibly more satisfactory, and looks and voices grew savage in proportion.

There was also the occult CCC.

"Who is Cinderella? Is he in Dresden with you? Where is he to be found?" The word was indicated by a big thumb. Poor Jim, whose specific information was as limited about Cinderella as about most subjects, entered nevertheless on a long explanation not only concerning her but concerning the playful innocence of the George Washington meeting.

"Tell him it was a harmless little social affair that a few of us fellows and girls got up. We will never do it again. I did not know it would be any offense. Tell him I was only doing what I would do in my own country. There we can get together and dance a little any time without disturbing the nation." He wanted to add that the United States was not like police-ridden Germany where it almost seemed that a chap couldn't tie his shoe without permission from the Kaiser. Prudence refrained him.

"Cotillion Coterie. That's French," translated the Ober-Offizier on the bench, gravely illuminated. An a.s.sistant suggested that _sec_ might, in fact, refer to champagne. That would be French too.

"When did you leave France the last time?" the other demanded in a hoa.r.s.e, triumphant tone.

"Never been in France," returned Jim in a loud voice.

"Never been in France and yet you use French fluently."

"Tell him I don't know a word of French. I didn't know that was especially French. With us it's just dancing language--everybody uses it. Tell him"--Jim added encouragingly--"tell him I never knew a Frenchman in my life."

"This is evidently a French affair as well as English," commented the officer. "Anglo-French. Reaches out."

"What are they saying?" anxiously asked Deming of his intermediary.

On learning the new and extensive ramifications into which the sportive CCC was leading him, he threw up his hands before he thought and exclaimed, "Oh, my G.o.d!" It expressed his disgusted confirmation of Mr. Anderson's a.s.sertion--"What egregious a.s.ses such Germans can be!"--and also his _own_ alarm over his situation. When would he get back to America at this rate? It was going to cost money to escape from this sc.r.a.pe, and how would his governor and mother feel about it? A few months in a political prison with rats and vermin crawling over him seemed ahead instead of the jolly summer he had planned. He cursed under his breath the member of the CCC who had carelessly let his card get away from his clutches.

But a greater surprise awaited him. It revealed an example of the tremendous thoroughness and immense detail that were the pride of the Teuton bureaucracy. Deming was taken off his feet. The chief held up a little battered sheet.

"Have you always paid your bills in Germany?"

"Yes, I have, sir," returned Jim, wondering at this strange turn, but fully sure of himself on this ground.

"Untruth. Why did you not pay for three candles left in your room at Karlsruhe? Here is the unreceipted slip."

"Because I did not use them. I did not want them. I left them on the mantel."

"And here is a balance due on your laundry bill at Hamburg--twelve cents--unpaid. How do you explain that?" A torn and dirty washing schedule was handed down to him to refresh his memory.

"I didn't know I owed any balance," argued Jim to his spokesman.

"Tell him it was not presented to me. Tell him I will be only too glad to pay anything I owe. I always pay what I owe." The examiner gingerly took up a crumpled napkin, brown from an overturned _demi-ta.s.se_.

"August sixteenth, you spilled coffee on your napkin at lunch--half-past twelve. And you went away from the Hotel Bellevue--Bavaria--without making it good. What have you to say to that?" The sorry cloth was held up contemptuously for Jim's inspection and for the edification of the duly pained official audience, most of whom, however, doubtless made no use of such an article in their daily lives.

"I never heard anything about it!" cried Deming. "In my country such things are thrown in. Nothing said about them. But tell him I'll pay it--I'll pay anything--everything. How much is it?"

"Twenty-five cents, the bill claims."

"What is the total?" And Jim began digging in his pockets while holding up his head testily. He had never before been accused of hotel-beating. But payment did not yet appear to be in order. He stared at the ma.s.s of files and papers before his cross-questioner.

He realized that his whole record in Germany lay there. The Imperial Service had traced him like bloodhounds. Due to his frequent irritated displays of proud American independence on his tour, the bill of small grievances, now acc.u.mulated, no doubt a.s.sumed troublesome proportions when exposed in its formidable length. Three hours had been consumed, accounted for in part by the necessity of an interpreter. As meal time was at hand Deming was commanded to appear the next morning at nine to have his testimony taken at length.

He departed, his buoyant nature rising once more in partial relief.

True to his Yankee instincts he now concluded they were only after the money he owed.

"They want to scare me to make me pay up," he said to himself. "They are afraid they won't get it. I'll pay the little two or three dollars and that will end the matter. These blamed Germans with their ten cents and twenty-five cents! What a system of government to be bothering with these idiotic trifles!"

He sought distraction in several games of billiards followed by dinner at his favorite cafe. When he returned to his room late that night he found that his effects had been ransacked by two detectives. Fully incensed by this high-handed procedure he determined to place his inalienable rights in the hands of a lawyer the first thing after the early morning meeting.

The taking of his testimony was a proceeding held in a small side apartment before an elderly crotchety underling who pretended to understand English and French, but whose thick-wittedness seemed monumental. The slowness and dullness indicated a whole summer's programme of this preposterous horseplay. Everything was being written down in detail in long hand in the form of questions and answers. All Deming's candles, soiled linen, stained napkins and what-not, reported from all directions of the Empire, began to be raked over. There were green, yellow, red, blue telegrams from half the German States. Hara.s.sed by this muck and by the leering taunts of the old party, Jim was glad to find, at the noon hour, that the session was postponed to the second day after.

As he was leaving the room, another offensive inquiry about an absurdity caused him suddenly to remember Mr. Anderson's advice. And in one immortal moment in his existence he rose to a sublime height of moral courage.

"Go to h.e.l.l!" he shot back. And as he saw the clumsy servitor beginning to pen "Answer: Go to h----" in his great book, Jim slipped out.

He briskly hunted a lawyer to whom he related all the circ.u.mstances, winding up elatedly with the last remark.

"Did they write that down too?"

"Yes."

The attorney was at first convulsed, familiar with Teuton navete.

Then he dubiously shook his head. To Jim's unexpected discomfort the affair was regarded seriously. If he had not e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed this affront, something could be done. But now he had been guilty of what the Germans might rightfully construe as a voluntary indignity offered to the Imperial Secret Service in the performance of its highly responsible duties. If he wanted to avoid important trouble, the only simple and effective course would be to quit the country.

He could leave that night and in not many hours would be in Russia and beyond German control.

And so Jim Deming made a hasty and unceremonious exit from the Deutschland he had been so fond of, without having time to salute any of his many friends good-by. He had to send them a line of farewell from St. Petersburg.

"Here you have German bureaucracy in its full flower and odor,"

remarked Anderson as he recounted the affair to Kirtley. "It flourishes to a great extent by exaggerating mole hills into mountains with officious vacuity. It is so large that there is not enough serious work for it. So something often must be found to do.

It is a civil army radiating the glory of the Kaiser. The more extensive it is, the more entrenched he is. It is official dry rot which is part of the price the people pay for having themselves governed. It is national graft. But while our American forms of graft at least stimulate individual cleverness among our compatriots, this German form tends to reduce its recipients to the level of donkeys, as seen in the Deming case."

Gard little suspected that he was to drift into a somewhat similar misadventure, but of an advanced type.

CHAPTER XXIX

WINTER AND SPRING

The sudden drop in the life in Villa Elsa occasioned by meteoric Jim Deming's disappearance, was terrific. Frau Bucher gasped, caught her breath and sank voluminously beneath the waters of social oblivion whence she had so grandly emerged. When she finally came up to her plain surface of existence she demanded, Where are now the theater parties, and drives in the Grosse Garten behind the King? The family had almost begun to wonder how they had got on before. She wailed:

"The good Herr Deming, the marvelous Herr Deming! How could he have abruptly left us? Something mightily strange must have forced him to go. He will surely return. How could he treat Elsa so? Here we are with our hopes, our plans and our new underwear. It is terrible."