The Man on Horseback/Chapter 29

telephone bell cut through Tom's revery with a jarring, acrid twang.

Lazily, half reluctantly, he turned from the open window where he had been sitting, since his return from the "Gross Berlin American Bar," pleasantly shivering in the sudden chill of autumn leaping into winter. It was such a long, still night. Few people roamed the streets of the Westend. A glittering veil of stars was flung across the crest of the night, and a sweet smell was in the air, a mixture of far-off snow and decaying leaves.

Tom had filled his lungs with it. It had made him think of home, his own country, the Northwest.

Dr-rr-rrr came the telephone bell again, with an impatient, accusing note. Tom left the window. He took down the receiver. Next door, in the valet's room, Krauss, too, was gluing his ear to the hard rubber tube.

"Hello."

"Hello, hello," came the voice from the other end of the line. "Is that you, Tom?"

"Yes. Who's that?"

"Vyvyan. Got to see you at once."

"Why—I thought you told me you had important business …"

"Exactly! That's why I got to see you. And I don't want that nosy servant of yours to hang 'round and listen."

"Ah—keep your shirt on. Krauss is in his little chaste dada, dreaming of blond beer, a blond breakfast roll, and a blond hausfrau."

"All right. Be straight over."

Fifteen minutes later a motor-car purred to a stop in front of the apartment house. There was a ringing of bells, angry, impatient voices, a drawing of bolts and slamming of heavy doors, and Vyvyan came into the flat.

"Sure Krauss is asleep?"

"You bet. Convince yourself if you do not believe me."

"That's just what I'll do. Where is his room?"

"There—to the left," said Tom, pointing; and the Englishman walked over on tiptoe, pressed his ear against the door, and listened.

There wasn't a sound.

Very cautiously he opened the door. The electric light from the hall danced into the room, sharply out lining the valet's face. The man was sleeping the sleep of the just, breathing rhythmically and peacefully. Only, as soon as the Englishman had closed the door again, the sleeping man groped underneath his pillow, drew out a long, silk-covered rubber tube that disappeared in the direction of the wall, and inserted the narrow orifice in his right ear.

"Well, what's biting you?" Tom asked his friend, back in the other room.

Vyvyan looked the Westerner up and down, with cutting, sneering contempt.

"I tell you what's biting me," he replied, his voice at first low, then leaping up extraordinarily strong, all his habitual British phlegm suddenly dancing away in a whirlwind of temper. "You are a damned, double crossing, traitorous …"

"Hold on! Back up your horse!" Tom's words came in a deep, soft, feline purr. "Don't you say things for which you might be sorry afterwards!"

"I? Sorry? My God, I'm only sorry for you, you damned …"

"Vyvyan," cut in the Westerner in that same soft purr, "I gave you warning!"

"Warning of what?"

"That I am going to lose my temper in exactly three seconds—unless you behave and tell me straight what is the matter!"

The Englishman -looked at him in silence for a minute. His Adam's apple worked up and down like a ball in a fountain. He seemed to swallow his rage as if it were some nauseating drug, choking him.

Then he spoke. And his voice was quite cold, quite passionless.

"All right. I know that Germany is a swine of a land. I know that the rulers of Germany hold the charming belief that the rest of the world is a dirty, decadent shrub that must be mulched with caked blood and that the German sword will supply that same blood. I know that Germany intends to …"

"For the love o' Mike, what are you driveling about?"

"Wait. You asked me to explain. And I am doing it. I know that Germany is an ugly beast ready to jump at the throat of civilization the moment the word is said, the moment the leash is slipped. I know how they are working here, for that one end, blood and conquest and booty, with all their might, their energy, their strength. I know Germans. They believe. They obey. They think that whatever is told them by their master is the truth. But you, man …"

"What have I got to do with it?"

"You're an American, an Anglo-Saxon, a free man, an independent man. You are an individual, not a Prussianized number! I can excuse the German man in the street. He doesn't know any better. He has been clouted and flattened into a pattern. But you … My God!" Again his passion was getting the best of him. "You …"

"Cut out the melodrama! Come to the point!"

"You gave me your promise, your solemn promise, and you broke it! That's all!"

Vyvyan turned to go when Tom's hand caught his shoulder and twirled him round.

"That isn't all by a long shot. What promise did I give you?"

"The Yankee Doodle Glory! You promised that you would not let it get into German hands!"

"Well—didn't I keep my promise?"

"You didn't!"

"I did!"

"You didn' 't!"

"I did!"

"You …"

"Scissors, Vyvyan! One of us two is nutty. Let's figure out who!" The words were spoken with such evident good-humor, such utter sincerity, that Vyvyan controlled himself.

"Tom," he said very quietly, "didn't you sign a statement just the other day?"

"A …? Sure. I remember. The morning after Alec cabled me that I had won my suit and after I had gone on that grand, celebrating spree. Yes. Statement of property for the regimental archives."

"Did you read through the whole document?"

"Well no!"

"Would have been better if you had," Vyvyan said dryly.

"Why?"

"Because on the back of that little statement—and you signed that, too—was a clause by the terms of which you turned your whole property, including the Yankee Doodle Glory, over to the German Government."

"Gee!" Tom was dumbfounded. "I never thought …"

"You should have. You should never sign anything, anywhere, chiefly here in Germany, without reading it through first." The Englishman spoke with a certain hopeless, weary despair. "Well—the harm's done—and there you are. I am sorry I lost my temper, old chap. I thought …"

"That's all right, Vyvyan. I know what you thought. You thought I double-crossed you. You made it pretty damned plain. And …" Suddenly he laughed. "Why," he went on, "there's no harm done. They won't steal my little pot. I am sure the Germans won't take advantage of that clause."

"They won't steal your money. I know. Only—they're going to work that mine for you."

"I have my own engineer in charge. Fellow called Gamble. Good man."

"All right. I lay you long odds—say a hundred to one—that Gamble is going to get the boot, that the Germans will work the mine, and put one of their own men in charge."

"I take that bet," replied Tom. "I am nuts over easy money."

It was only after his friend had left that Tom considered how strange it was that Vyvyan should have known about the statement to the regiment. He was quite certain that he himself had never said a word about it, had not considered it worth while, and he also knew that the Englishman was not popular with the Uhlans.

Still, there had been a leak somewhere.

Too, he remembered other odd circumstances in which Vyvyan had figured: His appointment to the Berlin attachéship by wireless when the Augsburg's apparatus had been out of order; the fact that his aunt had died at that convenient time, leaving him enough money to come to Tom's support when the litigation against the Yankee Doodle Glory seemed hopeless; the Baron's dislike of the Englishman, and his row with Colonel Heinrich Wedekind on the same subject.

"Young fellow," he apostrophized his absent friend, "I don't know a darned thing about that Chinese stink pot called European politics, but I bet you know more than's good for you, and you aren't half the silly fool you try to make yourself out at times."

It was a rather rueful Tom who, the next morning, opened and read an indignant cable from the Hoodoos, signed "Gamble," in which the latter complained that a party of German engineers had suddenly come to the mine, had produced fully authorized papers, had taken over the workings, and had given him three days notice.

Tom went straight to the British Embassy in the Wilhelm Strasse.

He found his friend packing his trunk.

"You win, Vyvyan," was his greeting. "Gamble got sacked. The Dutchmen are working the mine. Here you are," giving the other a bank note in payment of the wager.

Vyvyan slipped it into his waistcoat pocket.

"Thanks, old top," he said dryly, with a return to his usual inane, slangy drawl. "Come in jolly handy, what? It'll pay my fare."

"Going away for long?"

"Right-oh! Don't s'pose I'll ever come back again to Berlin."

"What?" Tom was astonished. "You mean—you are leaving for good?"

"Exactly. The Ambassador—'Old Titmouse'—chevied me. Just as I got chevied from Washington. For frightful incompetence. Oh, well … I fancy my brother, the Duke, will have to pull a few more wires."

He finished packing, and shook hands with Tom.

"Sorry," he said. "I like you. Well—good-by." Then, suddenly lowering his voice: "And—don't forget—if ever you are in trouble, if ever your own people at the American Embassy should refuse to help you …"

"Yes, yes," replied Tom. "I remember. I have to find the guy with the ring. All right."

He drove to the station with his friend, and thence to the regimental barracks.

"Looking blue," was Baron von Götz-Wrede's greeting. "Anything wrong?"

"Yes. My friend Vyvyan has left Berlin. The Ambassador chucked him."

"Oh, no, he didn't!" laughed the Baron. "The German Government demanded His Lordship's immediate recall. His Lordship is persona non grata with His All-Gracious Majesty the Kaiser." He put his hand on the Westerner's shoulder. "You see," he went on, "I know. That's why I warned you against Vyvyan. Awfully good for you that he has been sent away."

"I'm not sure of that," mumbled Tom under his breath.