Villa Elsa Part 24

"I do not bet," Kirtley repeated as pleasantly as he could, and the tall German tried to quiet his mate.

The rain, which had been brewing, presently began to come down and was breaking up the sport. They agreed to dine in the inn and go back to town when the downpour was over. Gard's friend squared accounts--four hundred and eighty marks pa.s.sed across. He looked unhappy enough. But the dealer was still far from satisfied because the American had not played. The German had won from the other two.

Could he not win from an American in an American game? He had been eager to wager at one turn all the money he had gained.

"A pair of cheap gamblers," Gard repeated to himself. He wished his foolish friend from Wuerttemberg had kept out of it. They were here on the edge of a strange city, in an unknown inn, at nightfall. It showed that Furstenheimer was a green country man who, as he admitted, had seldom been away from home. He had not even seen his neighboring Rhine in years.

The rain was now pelting them and they scurried indoors.

CHAPTER XL

THE END OF A LITTLE GAME

The short German had worked himself up into an irritable state. He led the way about the arrangements for dining, his tall friend all the while mildly attempting to soothe his ruffled feelings.

Furstenheimer, appearing much crest-fallen, meekly followed their wishes.

A private room must be had, the dealer announced. They took a detached one with the door opening out toward the highway. Each one of the three proposed to have a favorite dish from his province.

The little German grew more fussy. He condemned the restaurant manager and got at loggerheads with the waiter. He must at least have a Mecklenburg salad as he came from Mecklenburg-Schwerin. The waiter did not know what it was and the irascible Teuton informed him bluntly that he was a _Dummkopf_. The card player would make it himself and all must do him the honor of eating it. He proclaimed in a loud voice that it was the superior of all salads. He had won at cards, the money stuck out of his pockets. He was triumphant and becoming insolent.

Kirtley wished he were out of this company. He opened the outside door a moment for fresh air. He noticed that the door had a spring lock. The rain was coming down in torrents. And he ought not to abandon his nave friend.

The repast was begun by drinking the prevailing toast to Der Tag!

His companions now talked openly about the threatening war, and Gard, who had not seen a paper since morning, did not know that hostilities were at last in the way of breaking out. From the conversation he could but judge that all Belgium and northern France were to be made German. This seemed simple and inevitable through all the bl.u.s.tering and bragging. England--America--did not appear to cut any figure. They had no armies, hence they were negligible.

When the company got down to the Mecklenburg salad, the clamorous German expatiated about it at length as he began his bustling preparations for its manufacture.

"One of the great points of my salad is plenty of pepper." With a flourish he grabbed the little pepper box to suit the action to the words, and nothing came out. It was empty.

"Waiter, waiter, bring some pepper, you stupid _Kerl_. Don't you know enough to set the table properly?"

Another pepper receptacle was brought, but it would not work. It was stopped up.

"Gott im Himmel! waiter, you idiot, bring some _pepper_ and be quick about it." And the swaggerer began abusing him, the inn and inferentially men who would not wager in a social little card game.

The servitor raced in, mad and muttering, and banged down a big can of the much desired condiment. At last, Gott sei Dank! there was pepper by the wholesale. The salad proceeded on its troubled course.

"You like our Germany--yes?" was inserted. Kirtley a.s.sured the three that he had had a pleasant year.

"Our Germany is a great country," explained the tall Teuton in a high, cracked voice. "And after the war it will be a much greater country." He was flushed with drink like the other two. The Germans lifted their gla.s.ses again to Der Tag, and Gard, their guest, joined in half-heartedly. There was this time an ugly firmness showing in the demonstration that he did not fancy. He was frankly uncomfortable. His companions did not like it because he drank sparingly in spite of all the vehement urging.

The salad proved to be a wonderful dish, hot and strong, fit for the iron stomach of a "blond beast." It not only bit but was provocative. In the growing conviviality the subject leaped from salad to cards. The winner took out his money. He began shaking it in Gard's eyes, insisting once more on wagering it that his American friend could not pick the card. With the _demi-ta.s.ses_ and cigars he ordered the deck and table. He started the game, having locked out the blockhead of a waiter and dropped the key into his own pocket.

Gard would not play. His ire was rising. The small German declared himself mistreated. He jumped up from the table and burst out in a tirade against shoddy Americans. This brought each man to his feet.

The dealer, violent and familiar, put his hands on Gard.

"You are a dollar American and dare not bet."

"Please keep your hands off me," cried Kirtley and drew back, shaking with the affront. The German persisted and Gard's football days stood him in good stead. He knocked him down. At this the mask was thrown off.

"Get his pa.s.sport!" yelled the dealer on the floor. The other two began to draw weapons and started toward Kirtley. He was almost unnerved. His genial Wuerttemberg friend a spy! It was the _Secret Service_.

As he stepped back, thunderstruck, his hand grazed the big pepper can which had been left on the side table. It sent an inspiration whizzing through his brain. He whisked off its unfastened top, grabbed a handful of pepper, and with a swing of the kind he used to use in his throws from left field to home plate--let go with all his force.

The aim was true. The pepper swept into the eyes and mouths of the two men. The other was half lying on the floor near their feet and he also received a dose. Pepper filled their side of the room and blinded them as they sneezed and groped about in pain. Gard bolted for the outer, self-locking door and, almost before he realized it, was out in the highway in the rain, heading away from the city and in the direction of the Dutch border which, he knew, lay not far away.

CHAPTER XLI

ARE THEY HUNS?

It was an instinctive move to get out of Deutschland--raucous, hostile Deutschland, lying athwart his soul. But his grip? his overcoat? his umbrella? He faced back toward the town. His mind was in a tumult. No, he must make for the frontier at all hazards. The Germans, whenever they recovered, would naturally expect him to return for his articles and would watch them or have them watched.

He felt for his pa.s.sport, money, trunk check. They were safe. He was sure his trunk would be at the border for him. He turned about and began running. The bellowing condition of the agonized sleuths and the locked door would enable him to get a good start under the cover of the darkness and storm.

When almost breathless he stopped running and walked forward rapidly. There was no travel in his direction. But he had to dodge frequent oncoming vehicles with men and materials of some kind. They were being concentrated at Aix--a main distributing point for the invasion of Belgium.

He was wet through, yet hot as a furnace. The cooling rain was grateful. The loss of his grip and things would be inconvenient, not serious. He began running again. Then he walked as fast as he could.

He was more and more convinced that those Germans would count on his going back for his belongings. They would not imagine that a dollar American would leave his possessions and hoof it to the Dutch Limberg on a night like this.

His brain was on fire. He thought of everything. Furstenheimer had been a trailing sleuth. He had fooled Kirtley completely. It was a masterly piece of work. Gard metaphorically took off his hat to the German Secret Service. Notwithstanding the Jim Deming episode and Anderson's animadversions, this had been a highly expert demonstration of the art.

Gard's mind went over his whole trip from Eisenach, trying to find where his suspicions should have been more aroused. He could discover no loophole where any unflattering dullness on his part was particularly at fault. He had made rather the most advances at Cologne to the self-styled Furstenheimer with his Roman horse.

How casually, too, the two confederates had been picked up at the cathedral! Their intelligent interest in stained gla.s.s! Very clever.

All had been wonderfully clever. He now saw that when Furstenheimer left him at Cologne to decide about joining him, and also when the three had gone off to inspect the windows, there had been ample time to perfect their scheme.

His pa.s.sport! What on earth could they want of that! In the German way they had used a steam hammer to crack a hickory nut. No one in 1914 had an inkling of what service American pa.s.sports were to be to the Kaiser's Government. The world was soon to rub its eyes over Germany's treacherous, fiendish, employment of chemicals both on doc.u.ments and on humans. Lackadaisical mankind did not then dream of the thoroughness and elaboration with which Deutschland was preparing her many deep and diabolical designs.

Toward dawn Gard, pretty well winded and in a bath of perspiration, trudged along more slowly while his thoughts streamed precipitately ahead under the pressure of the stupefying developments. He now knew who the little German was. He was that rigid, whiskered, military person in the train from Eisenach! The same flat, wide-lobed nose.

He had not guessed it before because the face, clear of a beard, had really suggested in Aix (he now realized) that of the typical shaven Teuton waiter. But why had the spy traveled in such a stiff and mysterious fashion? Likely to locate the pa.s.sport--find out whether it was then being carried in the grip or on Kirtley's person. In some way--probably from the manner in which the grip had been handled--the sleuth had convinced himself it was kept in a pocket.

Although Gard could not clearly make it out, the puppet must have been an ingenious device to mislead. The ridiculous card dealer, going through all his mock part with such desperate earnestness, could very well have conceived this eccentric project. Would anyone outside Germany have believed in such use of a stuffed figure? The maneuver succeeded in a fashion, for Gard had not been as shrewd as he imagined in taking the auto from Heidelberg. He may have caused a change in tactics, but he had simply fallen into the hands of Furstenheimer in the museum. The leisurely stroll, the game of cards, the badgering over the betting, everything, had been fully worked out. Somehow, through it all, they were to deprive him of his state paper--likely when he had become intoxicated, as was evidently planned.

But the revelation about the Buchers! That was the finishing blow.

"Dastards!" Gard hurled out the word. It was not only Rudi but his parents who had followed his leadership. The son's surprising concern over the pa.s.sport, their insistence on seeing about his route and his ticket, Rudi's persistence about suggestions for carrying the doc.u.ment--all was now plain. It must be that war was coming and Rudi knew it.

Dastards! To betray their guest, to cause him to go through this miserable experience, endanger his health when he had lately been in a sick bed! Their kind hospitality, their flush demonstrations of friendliness, their little presents! This was the final mark that, to Gard Kirtley, branded the German as only a partly reclaimed Goth.

Perhaps the atmosphere of restraint he had detected in the Buchers at the last, amid all their cordial expressions and deeds, was due to the changed role they then knew they were playing as against an American "pig." At their frontier all human relations--obligations, honor, amicability, trust, good faith, religion--were exchangeable for brutality and dastardly brutality.

Yet who in 1914 would have believed such things? It was the case of old Rome asleep, with barbarians swarming in Europe. Gard kept coming back to the sole word for it all--Hun!--in the Anderson definition.

And what to do with the Huns--about them? Can the world ever get on a genuine, fraternal basis for living with them? Can they ever be made to become like other people? These questions kept surging through his mind as he hurried along.