"All right, I"ll do my best," I replied, laughing, and set out for the hotel.
I was in two minds about the thing. It would never do to be called up as an ordinary ranker; but it might be another matter to go as an air mechanic. Enrolled in the name of Hans Bulich, I should be safe from the trouble which was waiting for Johann La.s.sen. There were other possibilities, moreover. If I could get hold of some valuable information about the German aero service and their types of new planes, it would go a long way with the people at home to condone any breakage of my leave. I had no wish to turn spy, but to be driven into it was a very different proposition.
More than that, it was not at all improbable that when they found I did really know something worth knowing about a bus, I might be told off to take one up; and in that case, well, they wouldn"t see it again, if I was within flying distance of the frontier.
It was best to be careful, however, as Fischer had urged, and not say too much until I could learn what the flying man really wanted. So I turned into the shed before going to him, mucked myself up a bit with black grease, paying particular attention to my face, to avoid the remote but possible chance of recognition, shoved my hands in my pockets and slouched along to the interview.
The luck was with me at the start. The porter was just going out, told me hurriedly where to find the officer"s private room, and then ran off, saying he had to catch a train. He was thus the only person to see me enter the hotel: the importance of which fact I realized later. The officer was alone and had been lunching, and the array of drinks testified to his having done himself remarkably well. Next I recognized him; but he had drunk too much to remember me. He was a coa.r.s.e-tongued bully named Vibach, who had been at Gottingen in my day, and had a well-deserved reputation as a bl.u.s.tering coward.
"What the devil do you mean by keeping me like this?" he said angrily.
"Do you suppose I"ve nothing to do but kick my heels waiting for sc.u.m like you?"
"I"m very sorry, sir, but I only just heard you wished to see me," I replied, with appropriate servile nervousness.
"I"ve a good mind to put you under arrest. And are you the man these Lingen fools think a good mechanic? You look more like a dirty street sweeper, coming into my presence in that filthy state."
"I thought it best----"
"Who the devil wants to know what you think?" he burst in, pouring out another b.u.mper of wine and draining it at a draught. "Answer my question, can"t you? Not stand there gibbering like a lunatic." There was scarcely a sentence without an oath to punctuate it.
"I came at once without stopping to clean myself, sir."
"Then some other fool must have bungled my message. I said you were to come immediately, and when I say a thing I mean it." Another oath for garnishment. "What"s your clownish name, confound you?"
"Hans Bulich, sir."
"Do you know a plough from an aeroplane?"
"Yes, sir," I answered with Teutonic stolidity.
"Ever been in one?"
"Not in a plough, sir."
He roared an expletive at me. "Are you a fool, or trying to joke with me? That won"t pay you, you clod."
"I never joke with my betters, sir. I"ve been up in an aeroplane, sir."
"Where?"
"Schipphasen, sir."
"Oh, you"ve been there, have you? How long were you there?" It was a well-known training school and he began to change his opinion of me.
"About a year. I have my certificates and----" I searched in my pockets as if to find them, and said: "I"ve left them at my lodging, sir."
"Why the devil didn"t you tell me that at first?"
"You didn"t ask me, sir."
"What are you doing in this hole, then?"
"I was going to Ellendorf, but they asked me to stay here a week or so to do some repairs and things."
"Did they? Like their infernal insolence at a time like this. I"m on my way to Ellendorf now to fetch a new machine, and my fool of a mechanic has got drunk, or lost himself, or something. Can you take his place?"
Could I not? Up with him in the bus, what couldn"t I do? But I shook my head doubtfully. "I don"t know that I could pilot----"
"You wooden-headed idiot, do you suppose I want you to pilot it?" he roared, with a shout of laughter. "I want you as a mechanic, you fool."
"I didn"t know, sir. Of course I could test the plane and see that she"s all right for you. That was part of my job at Schipphasen, sir; that and trial flights."
"If that"s the case, you ought to be in the army. Have you served?"
"No, sir."
"Why not? You"ve been in the ranks, I can see that."
Up to that point I had done very well, indeed; but then I tripped. "I was a one-year man, sir." The one-year men were a comparatively limited number drawn from the better cla.s.s; served for only one year instead of three, and had either pa.s.sed an examination or been at one of the Universities, and mixed freely with the officers.
"What regiment?" was the next question.
I named one at random; I think it was the 54th Hanoverians. My luck was clean out, for it chanced to be the same in which he himself had served.
"That"s devilish funny. Let"s have a look at you;" and he straightened up a bit and stared hard at me. "I don"t remember any one of your name.
Bulich. Bulich. There was never a man of that name. I mean to know some more about you, my man. Now that I look closely at you, I believe I"ve seen you before. You remind me of some one. Just walk across the room."
Smothering a curse at the change of luck, I obeyed and slouched across, overdoing it probably in my eagerness and fl.u.s.ter.
"Stop there," he ordered. "Now face round, and come back in your proper walk. Don"t try that game with me again. That"s a little better, but a long way from right, as you know well. Now, who are you? Out with it and don"t try any fool game with me."
"I"ve come down a bit in the world, and no one knows me now by any other name than Hans Bulich."
"I mean to know it. Out with it," he shouted.
I was at my wits" end and didn"t answer.
"If you don"t tell me you"ll have to tell the police, mind. I"m going to bottom this. You"ve lied to me once, remember."
Suddenly a thought occurred to me. I picked up a tumbler and made a peculiar motion with it--the secret sign of a Gottingen students"
society, half-masonic, half-drinking club, of which both of us had been members.
He laughed, swore, and held out his hand. It was part of the ritual we had been bound to observe by the pledge of the society. I gripped his hand in the approved manner.
"So that"s it, eh?" he said, filling his gla.s.s again and motioning me to fill one for myself. The ice was still of the thinnest, for in my time there had not been more than a dozen members, and I could see that he was searching his memory for my name. If he remembered, what was I to do? I knew what he would do--have me arrested as a spy, and then---- There was only one possible "then" in war time.
The long pause while he was thinking back gave me time to think forward. My life was in the balance, and it didn"t take much consideration to decide that it was just as well to die at his hands in that room in an attempt to escape as to be placed against a wall with a firing platoon in front of me.
At such a moment of crisis one thinks quickly, and under the spur of this one a wild idea flashed into my thoughts, and the way to carry it out developed almost instantly. He was a man of my own height and build and colouring; he was a stranger; no one had seen me enter the hotel; his uniform would fit me sufficiently well to pa.s.s muster; and I was already quite convinced that if I did not leave the place in his clothes, I should never do it in my own, except under arrest.