Once, I remember, a doctor on board ship who dabbled in hypnotism told me that I was the most unsympathetic person he had ever struck. He said I was about as good a mesmeric subject as Table Mountain. Suddenly I began to realize that this woman was trying to cast some spell over me. The eyes grew large and luminous, and I was conscious for just an instant of some will battling to subject mine. I was aware, too, in the same moment of a strange scent which recalled that wild hour in Kupra.s.so"s garden-house. It pa.s.sed quickly, and for a second her eyes drooped. I seemed to read in them failure, and yet a kind of satisfaction, too, as if they had found more in me than they expected.
"What life have you led?" the soft voice was saying.
I was able to answer quite naturally, rather to my surprise. "I have been a mining engineer up and down the world."
"You have faced danger many times?"
"I have faced danger."
"You have fought with men in battles?"
"I have fought in battles."
Her bosom rose and fell in a kind of sigh. A smile-a very beautiful thing-flitted over her face. She gave me her hand. "The horses are at the door now," she said, "and your servant is with them. One of my people will guide you to the city."
She turned away and pa.s.sed out of the circle of light into the darkness beyond ...
Peter and I jogged home in the rain with one of Sandy"s skin-clad Companions loping at our side. We did not speak a word, for my thoughts were running like hounds on the track of the past hours. I had seen the mysterious Hilda von Einem, I had spoken to her, I had held her hand. She had insulted me with the subtlest of insults and yet I was not angry. Suddenly the game I was playing became invested with a tremendous solemnity. My old antagonists, Stumm and Rasta and the whole German Empire, seemed to shrink into the background, leaving only the slim woman with her inscrutable smile and devouring eyes. "Mad and bad," Blenkiron had called her, "but princ.i.p.ally bad." I did not think they were the proper terms, for they belonged to the narrow world of our common experience. This was something beyond and above it, as a cyclone or an earthquake is outside the decent routine of nature. Mad and bad she might be, but she was also great.
Before we arrived our guide had plucked my knee and spoken some words which he had obviously got by heart. "The Master says," ran the message, "expect him at midnight."
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
An Embarra.s.sed Toilet
I was soaked to the bone, and while Peter set off to look for dinner I went to my room to change. I had a rubdown and then got into pyjamas for some dumb-bell exercises with two chairs, for that long wet ride had stiffened my arm and shoulder muscles. They were a vulgar suit of primitive blue, which Blenkiron had looted from my London wardrobe. As Cornelis Brandt I had sported a flannel nightgown.
My bedroom opened off the sitting-room, and while I was busy with my gymnastics I heard the door open. I thought at first it was Blenkiron, but the briskness of the tread was unlike his measured gait. I had left the light burning there, and the visitor, whoever he was, had made himself at home. I slipped on a green dressing-gown Blenkiron had lent me, and sallied forth to investigate.
My friend Rasta was standing by the table, on which he had laid an envelope. He looked round at my entrance and saluted.
"I come from the Minister of War, sir," he said, "and bring you your pa.s.sports for tomorrow. You will travel by ..." And then his voice tailed away and his black eyes narrowed to slits. He had seen something which switched him off the metals.
At that moment I saw it too. There was a mirror on the wall behind him, and as I faced him I could not help seeing my reflection. It was the exact image of the engineer on the Danube boat-blue jeans, loden cloak, and all. The accursed mischance of my costume had given him the clue to an ident.i.ty which was otherwise buried deep in the Bosporus.
I am bound to say for Rasta that he was a man of quick action. In a trice he had whipped round to the other side of the table between me and the door, where he stood regarding me wickedly.
By this time I was at the table and stretched out a hand for the envelope. My one hope was nonchalance.
"Sit down, sir," I said, "and have a drink. It"s a filthy night to move about in."
"Thank you, no, Herr Brandt," he said. "You may burn these pa.s.sports for they will not be used."
"Whatever"s the matter with you?" I cried. "You"ve mistaken the house, my lad. I"m called Hanau-Richard Hanau-and my partner"s Mr John S. Blenkiron. He"ll be here presently. Never knew anyone of the name of Brandt, barring a tobacconist in Denver City."
"You have never been to Rustchuk?" he said with a sneer.
"Not that I know of. But, pardon me, Sir, if I ask your name and your business here. I"m darned if I"m accustomed to be called by Dutch names or have my word doubted. In my country we consider that impolite as between gentlemen."
I could see that my bluff was having its effect. His stare began to waver, and when he next spoke it was in a more civil tone.
"I will ask pardon if I"m mistaken, Sir, but you"re the image of a man who a week ago was at Rustchuk, a man much wanted by the Imperial Government."
"A week ago I was tossing in a dirty little hooker coming from Constanza. Unless Rustchuk"s in the middle of the Black Sea I"ve never visited the township. I guess you"re barking up the wrong tree. Come to think of it, I was expecting pa.s.sports. Say, do you come from Enver Damad?"
"I have that honour," he said.
"Well, Enver is a very good friend of mine. He"s the brightest citizen I"ve struck this side of the Atlantic."
The man was calming down, and in another minute his suspicions would have gone. But at that moment, by the crookedest kind of luck, Peter entered with a tray of dishes. He did not notice Rasta, and walked straight to the table and plumped down his burden on it. The Turk had stepped aside at his entrance, and I saw by the look in his eyes that his suspicions had become a certainty. For Peter, stripped to shirt and breeches, was the identical shabby little companion of the Rustchuk meeting.
I had never doubted Rasta"s pluck. He jumped for the door and had a pistol out in a trice pointing at my head.
"Bonne fortune," he cried. "Both the birds at one shot." His hand was on the latch, and his mouth was open to cry. I guessed there was an orderly waiting on the stairs.
He had what you call the strategic advantage, for he was at the door while I was at the other end of the table and Peter at the side of it at least two yards from him. The road was clear before him, and neither of us was armed. I made a despairing step forward, not knowing what I meant to do, for I saw no light. But Peter was before me.
He had never let go of the tray, and now, as a boy skims a stone on a pond, he skimmed it with its contents at Rasta"s head. The man was opening the door with one hand while he kept me covered with the other, and he got the contrivance fairly in the face. A pistol shot cracked out, and the bullet went through the tray, but the noise was drowned in the crash of gla.s.ses and crockery. The next second Peter had wrenched the pistol from Rasta"s hand and had gripped his throat.
A dandified Young Turk, brought up in Paris and finished in Berlin, may be as brave as a lion, but he cannot stand in a rough-and-tumble against a backveld hunter, though more than double his age. There was no need for me to help him. Peter had his own way, learned in a wild school, of knocking the sense out of a foe. He gagged him scientifically, and trussed him up with his own belt and two straps from a trunk in my bedroom.
"This man is too dangerous to let go," he said, as if his procedure were the most ordinary thing in the world. "He will be quiet now till we have time to make a plan."
At that moment there came a knocking at the door. That is the sort of thing that happens in melodrama, just when the villain has finished off his job neatly. The correct thing to do is to pale to the teeth, and with a rolling, conscience-stricken eye glare round the horizon. But that was not Peter"s way.
"We"d better tidy up if we"re to have visitors," he said calmly.
Now there was one of those big oak German cupboards against the wall which must have been brought in in sections, for complete it would never have got through the door. It was empty now, but for Blenkiron"s hatbox. In it he deposited the unconscious Rasta, and turned the key. "There"s enough ventilation through the top," he observed, "to keep the air good." Then he opened the door. A magnificent kava.s.s in blue and silver stood outside. He saluted and proffered a card on which was written in pencil, "Hilda von Einem".
I would have begged for time to change my clothes, but the lady was behind him. I saw the black mantilla and the rich sable furs. Peter vanished through my bedroom and I was left to receive my guest in a room littered with broken gla.s.s and a senseless man in the cupboard.
There are some situations so crazily extravagant that they key up the spirit to meet them. I was almost laughing when that stately lady stepped over my threshold.
"Madam," I said, with a bow that shamed my old dressing-gown and strident pyjamas. "You find me at a disadvantage. I came home soaking from my ride, and was in the act of changing. My servant has just upset a tray of crockery, and I fear this room"s no fit place for a lady. Allow me three minutes to make myself presentable."
She inclined her head gravely and took a seat by the fire. I went into my bedroom, and as I expected found Peter lurking by the other door. In a hectic sentence I bade him get Rasta"s orderly out of the place on any pretext, and tell him his master would return later. Then I hurried into decent garments, and came out to find my visitor in a brown study.
At the sound of my entrance she started from her dream and stood up on the hearthrug, slipping the long robe of fur from her slim body.
"We are alone?" she said. "We will not be disturbed?"
Then an inspiration came to me. I remembered that Frau von Einem, according to Blenkiron, did not see eye to eye with the Young Turks; and I had a queer instinct that Rasta could not be to her liking. So I spoke the truth.
"I must tell you that there"s another guest here tonight. I reckon he"s feeling pretty uncomfortable. At present he"s trussed up on a shelf in that cupboard."