The Man on Horseback/Chapter 37

swung to its end with a great, brassy avalanche of heat, the sudden heat of North Prussia that, reflected by the Brandenburg sand dunes as by a glacier, dried up the trees and grasses and caused the very birds to open their beaks and gasp for air.

Cooped up in his room the greater part of the day, Tom felt the heat badly. All his life he had taken a great deal of physical exercise, mostly on horseback, and the confinement, in spite of the daily evening stroll, began to tell on him. Physically, not mentally, for he knew that he must bear up.

Impatient he was when, as the days passed, there was no more news from Bertha except an occasional word from Ensign von Königsmark that he had seen her drive down Unter den Linden, in a carriage, hedged in on either side by her uncle and her aunt.

Nor was he summoned to court-martial. Forgotten he seemed by the whole world.

Outside, on the dusty Spandau drill ground, the troops were still at their eternal training, running, leaping, charging, shooting, sweating, the officers cursing the non-coms, the latter passing on the compliment, plus kicks, to the privates. The work was feverish, incessant.

Even Captain von Quitzow, who was now altogether stationed at Spandau, heavy, sentimental though he was, caught something of the hectic spirit that swirled about him in unhealthy, braggart waves, and one day, as he was talking to Tom, his enthusiasm got the best of his discretion.

"You will see, Lieutenant Graves," he said, pointing out of the window where the sun rays danced on innumerable bayonets, "when all is ready we will blow them to hell—poof!—just like that!" making a clumsy, brutal gesture with his great, red, hairy fist.

"Whom? The French? What have they done to you?"

"Say—Us! You are one of us!"

"Wait until after the court-martial," laughed Tom. "But you haven't answered. Whom are you threatening with that dainty little paw of yours?"

"Anybody! Everybody!"

"Meaning?"

"Anybody who envies us our riches, our culture, our civilization, our trade, our progress, our achievement! All those foreign nations who hate us, who try to put stumbling-blocks into the path of our natural development!" He had learned the words somewhere, like a parrot, and he believed in their wisdom, their justice and truth, implicitly, with all his top-heavy Teuton soul. "Everybody wants to hurt us Germans!" he added, half plaintively, half defiantly.

"Ah—cut it out! Nobody wants to hurt you. You are only hurting yourselves. The world at large is too busy looking after its own affairs, von Quitzow."

"Well—perhaps. But just the same—we are ready"—and again he quoted from some unknown authority—"with every gill of red fighting blood, with every bolt and nut and wheel of war machinery, with every howitzer and caisson, with every Zeppelin and airplane, with every haversack and sabretache! With every last ounce of strength and discipline and efficiency and patriotism! We will hurl it all, all into the finishing fight!"

Tom laughed.

"Cut out the Fourth of July dope," he said, "it's got whiskers," but, secretly, his uneasiness increased.

Towards the end of that week, watching from his window as usual, he was surprised to see a generous sprinkling of strange uniforms amongst those of the Germans.

There were some tall, very slight men, with peaked, coquettish caps, short, tight white tunics braided profusely with gold, and high lacquered riding-boots. Others in tailed, bottle-green jackets with leather shorts and leggings, and bow-legged cavalrymen in black with bright orange plastrons. Still others were olive complexioned men, very silent, with beady eyes, high cheek bones, and a long, swaggering stride. They were mostly dressed in black. Black, too, was the frogging and the fur on their tunics, black their tall, fur caps. Still others were short men, extremely broad and heavy, gnarled looking like peasants, in light blue uniforms with a great deal of vermilion and silver.

"Austrians," explained von Quitzow when Tom appealed to him, "also Turks and Bulgarians."

"Why," smiled the Westerner, "if you're so all-fired set on fighting all the world, what's the big idea of putting all these foreign ginks wise to your military preparations?"

The Captain raised a didactic hand.

"They are our friends, our brothers-in-arms. Their sovereigns are the friends of His All-Gracious Majesty the Kaiser."

"Seems to be hard up for friends," mumbled the irrepressible Tom.

Thus Tom composed his soul in peace, until one day (and afterwards he could never quite explain why he did it; perhaps it was a calling, calling back to the range life, the free life, the zest and sweep and tang of the open; perhaps it was an overpowering desire to see Bertha, to speak to her, to make sure that she was all right; perhaps it was the suggestion of the saddled horse which had stopped directly beneath his window)—until one day his patience snapped, suddenly, jarringly.

It had been another day of maneuvering, charges and counter-charges, the phutt-phutt of machine guns, the deeper notes of great guns and trench mortars warming up to the task.

A regiment of cavalry had been thrown into the iron game. They came on, straight, lances at the carry, thundering across the heat-baked drill ground. They rode mostly new mounts, not yet broken to the roll and sob of the guns, and many reared, bucked, plunged, threw their riders and danced on, fretting, foaming, mad, in all directions.

There was one horse in particular—a great, black half-hunter with broad back and streaming tail. A stout General was riding it, spurring and whipping it on brutally. Tom was watching from the window of his room with his keen eyes.

He was anxious—more for the horse, than for the man. He clenched his fists.

"Stop, you fool!" he said under his breath. "Leave those spurs be! That isn't the way …"

Then there was a cry, followed by shouts, yells, hectic words of warning. The half-hunter, maddened to frenzy, took the bit between its teeth, sailed along like a ship under canvas, cleared at a magnificent jump a shiny, blue-gray gun barrel, and threw its rider, head foremost, amongst the caissons.

More cries. Then a voice:

"Lieber Himmel! Der Prinz!"

And Tom knew. The rider was Prinz Ludwig Karl of Hohenzollern, cousin to the Emperor, and he was not surprised at the excitement which followed.

A staff officer blew a whistle. A trumpet called. Everybody ran to the spot where the Prince lay prostrate. The war game was forgotten. Even the sentry outside Tom's room rushed out and away.

Tom, half turning, saw him run down the hall as fast as he could. The next moment, turning back to the window, he saw directly beneath it the Prince's horse standing there, trembling in every limb, great brown eyes half-glazed with fright and pain, saddle slipped a little to one side.

And Tom thought and acted in a fraction of a second.

Out of the room! Down the hall! Past the outer sentry, who saw nothing but a flash of blue and crimson uniform!

Quickly his hands busied themselves with the saddle girth. The saddle came off—and Tom was up and away!

Nobody paid any attention to him. They were crowding around the Prince, and Tom, on horseback, was the Tom he had been on his native range—master of himself, the animal, the dust and stones that flew away to right and left as the horse, feeling the rider's softly strong hand, hearing his caressing voice, leaped on with a great gathering of speed—on to Berlin!

All afternoon and evening Tom rode. It was around midnight when he turned into the outer suburbs, and it was then that a realization of his desperate position came to him.

The Web!

He remembered Vyvyan's words.

And what did the Web want of him—stretching, knitting, crushing, looping …?

His property, his mine, the Yankee Doodle Glory, for whatever mysterious reasons?

Why, they had that. They had cheated him out of it. The meshes of the Web were about it, tightly, crushingly, like the slimy, merciless arms of a giant octopus.

And what else did the Web want?

Tom gave a bitter laugh. He knew. No use trying to fool himself.

His life!

That was the stake!

Well—he'd fight for it!

They had tried to get him by every means in their power. They had not even stopped short of murder, for there was that duel—the Baron's shot before the umpire's word to fire. He had fooled them and, by God! he'd fool them again.

But how? What could he do? To whom could he turn?

If before he had been in danger of his life, he was doubly so now. For now he was an outlaw. He had committed the worst crime on the Prussian military calendar. Everybody's hand would be against his.

And—who could help him?

Bertha? Old Mrs. wedekind?

No! That wasn't his sort of a game. He could not compromise women, endanger them.

Vyvyan? Was away.

The man with the silver ring? That, too, was hopeless. By this time the Spandau authorities would know of his get-away, and the British Embassy, judging from his former experience, was the very place they would watch most carefully.

Poole? The man would faint of fright, would not lift his little finger to help him.

He had not a cent in. his pockets, nothing but the uniform. Not even his saber, which had been taken away from him at the time of his arrest. And an officer without his sword was an object of suspicion. He might be able to get into communication with McCaffrey. The barkeeper was sure to lend him clothes and money. Here was his chance to get out of Germany.

And then he thought of Bertha. Without her he could not leave the country. Could not. Would not!

What then?

The first thing to do would be to get rid of his horse. So he turned west, back to the beginning of the Spandau road, dismounted, and slapped the animal smartly across the withers. Silently he prayed that the horse might be a "homer," the sort that, allowed to travel free, makes straight for the accustomed stable, not to forget the accustomed oats.

"Thank God!" he whispered, as the horse whinnied softly, and was off to the west, towards Spandau, at an easy, graceful canter.

On foot Tom returned to the suburbs, crossed them, reached the Westend.

Then the courage of despair came to him. Also memories.

Back home, in the West, when he had been a boy, there had been a famous Bad Man, Silvertongue Charley by name. Charley had not killed very often. His argument had usually been more mild, yet more subtle, more persuasive, and (Tom laughed suddenly) somehow it would be appreciated in Germany, for here they fought with the same weapon—as in the case of Martin and Bertha Wedekind.

He walked on, turned into the Dahlmann Strasse, and rang the night bell of the Colonel's apartment.

The door was opened, he walked upstairs, and the sleepy Bursche let him in.

"I want to speak to the Colonel, at once. Most important," he snarled.

"Zu Befehl, Herr Leutnant!"

The Bursche left, and Tom looked rapidly about him. He needed a weapon.

There was the Colonel's writing-desk. He tried drawer after drawer until finally he found what he wanted—a heavy cavalry revolver. He made sure that it was loaded.

The next moment the Colonel came in, dressed in pajamas and slippers.

His first word was a curse, a terrible threat:

"What'd you mean, Lieutenant Graves? Himmeldonnerwetter! Who let you out of Festung? Who …"

"Shut up!" drawled Tom, and up came his gun to emphasize the command. "No, no!" as the Colonel was about to bluster again, "this time I hold the winning ace—and I'm going to rake in the pot. I tell you what you are going to do. You are going to dress, under my supervision. You are going to give me all the money in the house, call Bertha, very gently, without waking up the rest of the household, and then you are going to accompany both of us downstairs, enter a taxicab, drive with us to the station. There Bertha is going to buy the tickets. A private compartment, for the frontier, see?"

"But …"

"Didn't I tell you to shut up, you bastard?" Tom took a firmer hold on his gun. "I'm going to be right close to you straight through. We'll walk arm in arm, ride arm in arm, and, by God! eat arm in arm—and you'll always feel this little bit of steel pressing into your ribs. Nobody'll know. That big silver-gray uniform cape of mine—and yours—will hide that part all right, all right. And—no fooling—my finger itches. I've got a peculiar disease called Trigger-fingeritis where I was raised. Get me, don't you? Now lead on! First we'll go to your room and have you dressed for the slaughter."

Tom's argument was persuasive. Silently, without saying a word, without making an unnecessary gesture, the Colonel preceded him to his dressing-room, arm in arm with him, on the way, obeying the pressure of the revolver, telling the Bursche to go back to bed, and put on his uniform.

"Now we'll call Bertha," Tom went on. "Where is her room?"

"Over there." The Colonel pointed.

"All right." Tom pressed the revolver into the small of the other's back. "Call her. Be careful what you say. If this is somebody else's room, God help you!"

"Bertha, Bertha," whispered the Colonel, and then, a little louder: "Oh, Bertha!"

"Yes, Uncle?" came a sleepy voice.

"Come here a moment."

There was a rustle of clothes and a few seconds later Bertha appeared, in a loose dressing-robe, her hair a curly, unruly, shimmering mass.

She was still half asleep.

"What is the matter?" Then, seeing Tom: "Why—Tom …?"

"No time to explain," replied the Westerner. "You've got to get into your clothes quickly. Throw some things into a bag. We're going to take a little trip …"

"A little trip?"

"Yes. To the French frontier. The three of us. They kidnapped you, those darned Dutchmen, held you as a hostage, eh? Well, two can play at the same game, by Ginger, and …"

Very suddenly the Colonel twisted and turned, was about to shout for help, and Tom brought up his gun.

"No, you don't!" he said in a low, minatory voice. "Look out. This thing's going to go off sure!"

And then, just as he was about to fire: "Oh, my God!"

For the Colonel, agile in spite of his weight, had rapidly shifted his position, had picked up Bertha, was holding her against his breast, like a shield.

Wedekind laughed.

"Shoot, why don't you?"

"I— God da—"

"Don't swear in the presence of a lady," sneered the German. "The winning card? Have you? I am afraid you have been a little too previous." He raised his voice to a shout: "Franz! Franz!" he called the Bursche. "Come in here—no, wait—bring the janitor with you and a couple of other stout fellows. Bring some ropes, too, while you're about it. We've got a wild American in here."

And, five minutes later, when Tom was stretched on the leather couch in the Colonel's study, tied, helpless, the German said:

"I don't think you'll be so very wild in the future. You're going to be as quiet as a mouse. For you're going to be dead. This thing is going to be finished in a hurry. Court-martial to-morrow. And a firing squad the day after. Good night! Sweet dreams!"

And Tom did sleep, like the simple, fearless man he was. He had done his best, had tried to do his best, for the girl he loved, for Martin Wedekind, for Vyvyan, for himself.

He had failed. The odds had been too great.

He, alone, had fought the Web.

And the Web had won.