For a little while no one answered. Ultimately, the officer who regarded Liege as a joke said shortly, "Your Sir Grey has made some impudent suggestions. I suppose it is what the Americans call "bluff"; but bluffing Germany is a dangerous game."
"Newspapers exaggerate such matters," said Dalroy.
"It may be so. Still, you"ll be lucky if you get beyond Aachen," was the ungracious retort. The speaker refused to give the town its French name.
An hour pa.s.sed, the third in Cologne, before the train rumbled away into the darkness. The girl pretended to sleep. Indeed, she may have dozed fitfully. Dalroy did not attempt to engage her in talk. The Germans gossiped in low tones. They knew that their nation had spied on the whole world. Naturally, they held every foreigner in their midst as tainted in the same vile way.
From Cologne to Aix-la-Chapelle is only a two hours" run. That night the journey consumed four. Dalroy no longer dared look out when the train stood in a siding. He knew by the sounds that all the dread paraphernalia of war was speeding toward the frontier; but any display of interest on his part would be positively dangerous now; so he, too, closed his eyes.
By this time he was well aware that his real trials would begin at Aix; but he had the philosopher"s temperament, and never leaped fences till he reached them.
At one in the morning they entered the station of the last important town in Germany. Holland lay barely three miles away, Belgium a little farther. The goal was near. Dalroy felt that by calmness and quiet determination he and his charming protege might win through. He was very much taken by Irene Beresford. He had never met any girl who attracted him so strongly. He found himself wondering whether he might contrive to cultivate this strangely formed friendship when they reached England. In a word, the self-denying ordinance popularly attributed to Lord Kitchener was weakening in Captain Arthur Dalroy.
Then his sky dropped, dropped with a bang.
The train had not quite halted when the door was torn open, and a bespectacled, red-faced officer glared in.
"It is reported from Cologne that there are English in this carriage,"
he shouted.
"Correct, my friend. There they are!" said the man who had snarled at Dalroy earlier.
"You must descend," commanded the new-comer. "You are both under arrest."
"On what charge?" inquired Dalroy, bitterly conscious of a gasp of terror which came involuntarily from the girl"s lips.
"You are spies. A sentry heard you talking English, and saw you examining troop-trains from the carriage window."
So that Bavarian lout had listened to the Prussian officer"s taunt, and made a story of his discovery to prove his diligence.
"We are not spies, nor have we done anything to warrant suspicion," said Dalroy quietly. "I have letters----"
"No talk. Out you come!" and he was dragged forth by a bloated fellow whom he could have broken with his hands. It was folly to resist, so he merely contrived to keep on his feet, whereas the fat bully meant to trip him ignominiously on to the platform.
"Now you!" was the order to Irene, and she followed. Half-a-dozen soldiers closed around. There could be no doubting that preparations had been made for their reception.
"May I have my portmanteau?" said Dalroy. "You are acting in error, as I shall prove when given an opportunity."
"Shut your mouth, you d.a.m.ned Englishman"--that was a favourite phrase on German lips apparently--"would you dare to argue with me?--Here, one of you, take his bag. Has the woman any baggage? No. Then march them to the----"
A tall young lieutenant, in the uniform of the Prussian Imperial Guard, dashed up breathlessly.
"Ah, I was told the train had arrived!" he cried. "Yes, I am in search of those two----"
"Thank goodness you are here, Von Halwig!" began Dalroy.
The Guardsman turned on him a face aflame with fury. "Silence!" he bellowed. "I"ll soon settle _your_ affair.--Take his papers and money, and put him in a waiting-room till I return," he added, speaking to the officer of reserves who had affected the arrest. "Place the lady in another waiting-room, and lock her in. I"ll see that she is not molested. As for this English _schwein-hund_, shoot him at the least sign of resistance."
"But, Herr Lieutenant," began the other, whose heavy paunch was a measure of his self-importance, "I have orders----"
"_Ach, was!_ I know! This Englishman is not an ordinary spy. He is a cavalry captain, and speaks our language fluently. Do as I tell you. I shall come back in half-an-hour.--Fraulein, you are in safer hands.
You, I fancy, will be well treated."
Dalroy said not a word. He saw at once that some virus had changed Von Halwig"s urbanity to bitter hatred. He was sure the Guardsman had been drinking, but that fact alone would not account for such an amazing _volte-face_. Could it be that Britain had thrown in her lot with France? In his heart of hearts he hoped pa.s.sionately that the rumour was true. And he blazed, too, into a fierce if silent resentment of the Prussian"s satyr-like smile at Irene Beresford. But what could he do?
Protest was worse than useless. He felt that he would be shot or bayoneted on the slightest pretext.
Von Halwig evidently resented the presence of a crowd of gaping onlookers.
"No more talk!" he ordered sharply. "Do as I bid you, Herr Lieutenant of Reserves!"
"Captain Dalroy!" cried the girl in a voice of utter dismay, "don"t let them part us!"
Von Halwig pointed to a door. "In there with him!" he growled, and Dalroy was hustled away. Irene screamed, and tried to avoid the Prussian"s outstretched hand. He grasped her determinedly.
"Don"t be a fool!" he hissed in English. "_I_ can save you. He is done with. A firing-party or a rope will account for him at daybreak. Ah!
calm yourself, _gnadiges Fraulein_. There are consolations, even in war."
Dalroy contrived, out of the tail of his eye, to see that the distraught girl was led toward a ladies" waiting-room, two doors from the apartment into which he was thrust. There he was searched by the lieutenant of reserves, not skilfully, because the man missed nearly the whole of his money, which he carried in a pocket in the lining of his waistcoat. All else was taken--tickets, papers, loose cash, even a cigarette-case and favourite pipe.
The instructions to the sentry were emphatic: "Don"t close the door!
Admit no one without sending for me! Shoot or stab the prisoner if he moves!"
And the fat man bustled away. The station was swarming with military big-wigs. He must remain in evidence.
During five long minutes Dalroy reviewed the situation. Probably he would be executed as a spy. At best, he could not avoid internment in a fortress till the end of the war. He preferred to die in a struggle for life and liberty. Men had escaped in conditions quite as desperate. Why not he? The surge of impotent anger subsided in his veins, and he took thought.
Outside the open door stood the sentry, holding his rifle, with fixed bayonet, in the att.i.tude of a sportsman who expects a covey of partridges to rise from the stubble. A window of plain gla.s.s gave on to the platform. Seemingly, it had not been opened since the station was built. Three windows of frosted gla.s.s in the opposite wall were, to all appearance, practicable. Judging by the sounds, the station square lay without. Was there a lock and key on the door? Or a bolt? He could not tell from his present position. The sentry had orders to kill him if he moved. Perhaps the man would not interpret the command literally. At any rate, that was a risk he must take. With head sunk, and hands behind his back, obviously in a state of deep dejection, he began to stroll to and fro. Well, he had a fighting chance. He was not shot forthwith.
A slight commotion on the platform caught his eye, the sentry"s as well.
A tall young officer, wearing a silver helmet, and accompanied by a glittering staff, clanked past; with him the lieutenant of reserves, gesticulating. Dalroy recognised one of the Emperor"s sons; but the sentry had probably never seen the princeling before, and was agape. And there was not only a key but a bolt!
With three noiseless strides, Dalroy was at the door and had slammed it.
The key turned easily, and the bolt shot home. Then he raced to the middle window, unfastened the hasp, and raised the lower sash. He counted on the thick-headed sentry wasting some precious seconds in trying to force the door, and he was right. As it happened, before the man thought of looking in through the platform window Dalroy had not only lowered the other window behind him but dropped from the sill to the pavement between the wall and a covered van which stood there.
Now he was free--free as any Briton could be deemed free in Aix-la-Chapelle at that hour, one man among three army corps, an unarmed Englishman among a bitterly hostile population which recked naught of France or Belgium or Russia, but hated England already with an almost maniacal malevolence.
And Irene Beresford, that sweet-voiced, sweet-faced English girl, was a prisoner at the mercy of a "big blonde brute," a half-drunken, wholly enraged Prussian Junker. The thought rankled and stung. It was not to be borne. For the first time that night Dalroy knew what fear was, and in a girl"s behalf, not in his own.
Could he save her? Heaven had befriended him thus far; would a kindly Providence clear his brain and nerve his spirit to achieve an almost impossible rescue?
The prayer was formless and unspoken, yet it was answered. He had barely gathered his wits after that long drop of nearly twelve feet into the station yard before he was given a vague glimpse of a means of delivering the girl from her immediate peril.
CHAPTER II
IN THE VORTEX