The Man on Horseback/Chapter 22

Baron Horst von Götz-Wrede had left Tom found Vyvyan's check where Krauss had dropped it. He had not missed it before. He picked it up and, deciding that he would not need it now his immediate future was assured, was about to tear it up when there was a ring at the front door bell.

He had sent the valet out to get him some cigarettes, and so he went to the door himself to admit a telegraph messenger.

He tipped him and opened the crinkly, manila envelope.

"Gosh," he said, "it's raining cables to-day!"

He read. Then he gave a low whistle.

"Bully, Alec! Bully for you!"

He paused and looked at Lord Vyvyan's check.

"Damned lucky I didn't tear you up, you little rosy-cheeked beauty. You'll come in mighty handy!"

For in a lengthy missive, regardless of expense, lawyer Wynn had cabled that through a sudden change there was now a first-rate chance for Tom to win the Yankee Doodle Glory case, but that he must remit at once a stiff sum of money, say five thousand dollars. Wynn added that he would have asked Martin Wedekind for the amount, but the latter was out of town. And he himself was strapped.

So Tom decided that he would use five thousand dollars of Lord Vyvyan's check, give him back the remaining twenty thousand, and repay the balance just as soon as the case was settled.

He walked down the stairs and whistled for a taxi.

"American Express Company!" he said, speaking in German. He had been making steady and conscientious progress in the mastering of the language. "Mohren Strasse corner of Friedrich! Rasch!"—and twenty minutes later he was leaning across the oak counter of the local branch of the American Express Company and explained matters to the little, black-haired Welshman who presided over the cashier's cage.

"To be sure!" said the Welshman. "We know Lord Vyvyan. We always honor his checks."

"Always?" asked Tom, intrigued. "I thought his aunt only died the other day."

"Beg pardon, sir," replied the diplomatic, suspicious cashier. "I know nothing about his Lordship's deceased aunt. But the check is all right. What? Yes, sir, I shall make the cable transfer."

He figured for a few minutes, asked Tom to sign some papers, and gave him the rest of the money in German bills.

"Don't mention it, sir. Thank you, sir."

Tom dismissed the waiting taxicab.

"I'll walk," he said, and he struck out at a good clip down the Leipziger Strasse, across the Potsdamer Platz, towards the Westend.

The Berlin streets lay in the embrace of a golden afternoon of late autumn, the pale sun still warm with the glory of harvest, with no foretaste of winter tang and winter sadness. The roofs of the great, braggart department stores took on beauty for the time-being, glittering in every shade of green and blue and purple, like the plumage of some gigantic peacock. The oak and beech trees bordering the Spree dipped to the water in a rustling, shimmering rain of yellow and crimson leaves; the spotless windows of the many shops mirrored the cloudless evening sky with a myriad rainbow facets; and even the ugly, pompous statues that rose from every square, were relieved with delicate sprays of color that touched them with the gentle, mellowing hands of romance.

The streets were filled with people. Workmen in brick-powdered clothes went past, smoking cheap cigars, dinner pails swinging from their arms, discussing with loud voices the last editorial in the Vorwärts. Stalwart nurses wheeled their charges home from the Tiergarten. Merchants and bankers purred along in great motor-cars to join their families in an open-air supper at the Zoölogical Gardens. Back of the tennis court to the left of the Charlottenburg depot, on a rough plat of ground, some high schoolboys were playing football, not cleverly, but with a certain lusty Teutonic zest, filling the air with riotous shouts.

Tom stepped amongst aristocrat and burgess and student like a conqueror. His thoughts were with Bertha—and the blue-and-crimson uniform of the Uhlans. For, although there seemed a first-rate chance now of his winning the Yankee Doodle litigation, he had made up his mind nevertheless to accept the Baron's proposal.

It would be such bully fun. And—there was Bertha!

He grinned good-naturedly as he was bumped into by two arrogant "One Year Volunteer" privates of the Maikäfer regiment of grenadiers.

"Wait, my lads!" he thought. "Just wait till I get my uniform—my little monkey-jacket and my pointed roasting spit! I'll make you toe the mark. I'll teach you how to bump into people!"

And, stopping at the Gross Berlin American Bar, where a morose, nostalgic ex-Coney Island barkeeper was earning his living by introducing the gilded youth of Berlin West to the mysteries and delights of trans-Atlantic mixed drinks, he very much astonished that worthy by waving a lofty hand when the man addressed him as: "Hullo, Tom, you old son-of-a-gun! Have one on the house!" and by asking him, in mock dramatic accents, to call him in the future: "Herr Leutnant!"

"Say! Wot's eatin o' you?" asked McCaffrey, the barkeeper, to receive the mystifying reply, pronounced in the horse wrangler's best German:

"Rechts um! Kehrt! Präsentirt das Gewehr! Marsch! Marsch!"

"What'd ye think ye are?" demanded the aggrieved McCaffrey. "A gol-dinged Prooshan lootinant?"

"Right!" snarled Tom, trying his best to copy Colonel Heinrich Wedekind's martial accents. "Hoch der Kaiser!"—and he swaggered out of the bar while McCaffrey looked after him in speechless astonishment.

When Tom reached his flat, he found it filled by a jolly company.

Baron von Götz-Wrede was there, accompanied by Colonel Wedekind, the little Hussar whose name was Graf von Bissingen-Trotzow, the wizened professor with the tiny, red ears, whom he had met that first night at the Colonel's house, and half-a-dozen other officers in glittering regimentals.

They greeted him with jokes and laughter and enthusiasm:

"Guten Abend, Herr Kamerad!"

"Ist ja ganz famos, Herr Kamerad!"

"Grossartig, Herr Kamerad!"

"Herr Kamerad!"

"Herr Kamerad!"—and, again:

"Herr Kamerad!"

They shook his hands. They congratulated him, themselves, the army, and Germany, until the Colonel enjoined silence.

"Gentlemen! Gentlemen, if you please!"

He turned to Tom and wished him luck in a few well-chosen words, both in his own name and that of the regiment.

"Thanks!" smiled the Westerner. "But I'm not in the regiment yet. I guess there are some formalities."

"Everything is arranged. You will receive your commission to-night, Mr. Graves."

"To-night? Gee whizz! That's darned quick work!"

"Isn't it?" replied the Colonel. "But Prince Ludwig Karl spoke a word in your behalf. To-night you will be presented to His All-Gracious Majesty, der Kriegsherr! To him personally you will give the oath of fealty. Hurry into your dress clothes, my dear sir. The audience with His All-Gracious Majesty will be in an hour!"

Krauss helped Tom change, and ten minutes later he was sitting by the side of the Colonel in the latter's motor-car. They drove through the Brandenburger Thor, where the sentinels on duty jumped out, presenting arms. The Colonel saluted. Tom waved a negligent hand.

Up to the Alte Schloss they drove, where Tom was taken in tow by a chamberlain in silken, black knee-breeches, who led him through a long suite of rooms, all furnished rather dingily in the style of two generations ago, and into an antechamber where he was received by Prince Ludwig Karl.

The latter said something about: "Charmirt, mein Herr, ganz charmirt!" and preceded Tom into a large, octagonal salon.

Near the balconied window, sitting stiffly erect on a hard chair, was a short, oldish man in the full uniform of a field marshal, his chest blazing with German and foreign decorations.

"His Majesty!" mumbled Prince Ludwig Karl, and Tom looked curiously at the Prussian War Lord.

He beheld a lean, yellow, dissatisfied, rather morose face, with large ears, and sagging lips brushed by an upsweep of gray, martial mustache. With his blood shot, roving eyes, his haggard cheeks, his high, wrinkled forehead, he seemed to Tom like an old, weary bloodhound.

The ceremony itself took little time. Tom bowed and repeating word for word the oath of fealty, by the terms of which, only half knowing what he was saying, he bound himself to serve His All-Gracious Majesty in peace and war, and to obey all orders, then shook the Emperor's limp, hairy hand, and was ushered out of the salon and the palace.

The Colonel was waiting outside.

"To-morrow I'll take you to my tailor to have you measured for your uniform, Lieutenant Graves," he said.

And it was thus that, the next day, to Bertha's belligerent question of what he was going to do about it, he replied that he was going to get himself the monkey-jacket and the bit of steel.

In fact, both had already been ordered from "Paul Hoffman & Cie, Hoflieferanten, Purveyors to His Majesty the King of Spain and His Majesty the King of Sweden, Militäreffektenlieferanten" … The latter a jaw-breaking noun which even Tom, in spite of his rapidly improving German, could not translate as "army tailors" without the help of the dictionary.