The Man with the Clubfoot

I ENCOUNTER AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE WHO LEADS ME TO A DELIGHTFUL SURPRISE

He stood in the centre of the room, facing the door, his legs, straddled apart, planted firmly on the ground, one hand behind his back, the other, withered and useless like the rest of the arm, thrust into the side pocket of his tunic. He wore a perfectly plain undress uniform of field-grey, and the unusual simplicity of his dress, coupled with the fact that he was bare-headed, rendered him so unlike his conventional portraits in the full panoply of war that I doubt if I should have recognized him—paradoxical as it may seem—but for the havoc depicted in every lineament of those once so familiar features.

Only one man in the world to-day could look like that. Only one man in the world to-day could show, by the ravage in his face, the appalling weight of responsibility slowly crushing one of the most vigorous and resilient personalities in Europe. His figure, erstwhile erect and well-knit, seemed to have shrunk, and his withered arm, unnaturally looped away into his pocket, assumed a prominence that lent something sinister to that forbidding grey and harassed face.

His head was sunk forward on his breast. His face, always intensely sallow, almost Italian in its olive tint, was livid. All its alertness was gone; the features seemed to have collapsed, and the flesh hung flabbily, bulging in deep pouches under the eyes and in loose folds at the corners of the mouth. His head was grizzled an iron-grey but the hair at the temples was white as driven snow. Only his eyes were unchanged. They were the same grey, steely eyes, restless, shifting, unreliable, mirrors of the man's impulsive, wayward and fickle mind.

He lowered at me. His brow was furrowed and his eyes flashed malice. In the brief instant in which I gazed at him I thought of a phrase a friend had used after seeing the Kaiser in one of his angry moods—"His icy, black look."

I was so taken aback at finding myself in the Emperor's presence that I forgot my part and remained staring in stupefaction at the apparition. The other was seemingly too busy with his thoughts to notice my forgetfulness, for he spoke at once, imperiously, in the harsh staccato of a command.

"What is this I hear?" he said. "Why has not Grundt come? What are you doing here?"

By this time I had elaborated the fable I had begun to tell in the corridor without. I had it ready now: it was thin, but it must suffice.

"If your Majesty will allow me, I will explain," I said. The Emperor was rocking himself to and fro, in nervous irritability, on his feet. His eyes were never steady for an instant: now they searched my face, now they fell to the floor, now they scanned the ceiling.

"Dr. Grundt and I succeeded in our quest, dangerous though it was. As your Majesty is aware, the ... the ... the object had been divided...."

"Yes, yes, I know! Go on!" the other said, pausing for a moment in his rocking.

"I was to have left England first with my portion. I could not get away. Everyone is searched for letters and papers at Tilbury. I devised a scheme and we tested it, but it failed."

"How? It failed?" the other cried.

"With no detriment to the success of our mission, Your Majesty."

"Explain! What was your stratagem?"

"I cut a piece of the lining from a handbag and in this I wrapped a perfectly harmless letter addressed to an English shipping agent in Rotterdam. I then pasted the fragment of the lining back in its place in the bottom of the bag. Grundt gave the bag to one of our number as an experiment to see if it would elude the vigilance of the English police."

A light of interest was growing in the Emperor's manner, banishing his ill-temper. Anything novel always appealed to him.

"Well?" he said.

"The ruse was detected, the letter was found and our man was fined twenty pounds at the police court. It was then that Dr. Grundt decided to send me...."

"You've got it with you?" the other exclaimed eagerly.

"No, Your Majesty," I said. "I had no means of bringing it away. Dr. Grundt, on the other hand ..." And I doubled up my leg and touched my foot.

The Emperor stared at me and the furrow reappeared between his eyes. Then a smile broke out on his face, a warm, attractive smile, like sunshine after rain, and he burst into a regular guffaw. I knew His Majesty's weakness for jokes at the expense of the physical deformities of others, but I had scarcely dared to hope that my subtle reference to Grundt's clubfoot as a hiding-place for compromising papers would have had such a success. For the Kaiser fairly revelled in the idea and laughed loud and long, his sides fairly shaking.

"Ach, der Stelze! Excellent! Excellent!" he cried. "Plessen, come and hear how we've diddled the Englander again!"

We were in a long room, lofty, with a great window at the far end, where the room seemed to run to the right and left in the shape of a T. From the big writing-desk with its litter of photographs in heavy silver frames, the little bronze busts of the Empress, the water-colour sea-scapes and other little touches, I judged this to be the Emperor's study.

At the monarch's call, a white-haired officer emerged from the further end of the room, that part which was hidden from my view.

The Kaiser put his hand on his shoulder.

"A great joke, Plessen!" he said, chuckling. Then, to me:

"Tell it again!"

I had warmed to my work now. I gave as drily humorous an account as I could of Dr. Grundt, fat and massive and podgy, hobbling on board the steamer at Tilbury, under the noses of the British police, with the document stowed away in his boot.

The Kaiser punctuated my story with gusty guffaws, and emphasized the fun of the dénouement by poking the General in the ribs.

Plessen laughed very heartily, as indeed he was expected to. Then he said suavely:

"But has the stratagem succeeded, Your Majesty?"

The monarch knit his brow and looked at me.

"Well, young man, did it work?"

"... Because," Plessen went on, "if so, Grundt must be in Holland. In that case, why is he not here?"

My heart sank within me. Above all things, I knew I must keep my countenance. The least sign of embarrassment and I was lost. Yet I felt the blood fleeing from my face and I was glad I stood in the shadow.

A knock came to the door. The elderly chamberlain who had met me outside appeared.

"Your Majesty will excuse me ... General Baron von Fischer is there to report...."

"Presently, presently," was the answer in an irritable tone. "I am engaged just now...."

The old courtier paused irresolutely for a moment.

"Well, what is it; what is it?"

"Despatches from General Head-quarters, Your Majesty! The General asked me to say the matter was urgent!"

The Kaiser wakened in an instant.

"Bring him in!" Then, to Plessen, he added in a voice from which all mirth had vanished, in accents of gloom:

"At this hour, Plessen? If things have again gone wrong on the Somme!"

An officer came in quickly, rigid with a frozen face, helmet on head, portfolio under his arm. The Kaiser walked the length of the room to his desk and sat down. Plessen and the other followed him. I remained where I was. They seemed to have forgotten all about me.

A murmur rose from the desk. The officer was delivering his report. Then the Kaiser seemed to question him, for I heard his hard, metallic voice:

"Contalmaison ... Trones Wood ... heavy losses ... forced back ... terrific artillery fire ..." were words that reached me. The Kaiser's voice rose on a high note of irritability. Suddenly he dashed the papers on the desk from him and exclaimed:

"It is outrageous! I'll break him! Not another man shall he have if I must go myself and teach his men their duty!"

Plessen hurriedly left the desk and came to me. His old face was white and his hands were shaking.

"Get out of here!" he said to me in a fierce undertone. "Wait outside and I will see you later!" Still, from the desk, resounded that harsh, strident voice, running on in an ascending scale, pouring forth a foaming torrent of menace.

I had often heard of the sudden paroxysms of fury from which the Kaiser was said to suffer of recent years, but never in my wildest daydreams did I ever imagine I should assist at one.

Gladly enough did I exchange the highly charged electrical atmosphere of the Imperial study for the repose of the quiet corridor. Its perfect tranquillity was as balm to my quivering nerves. Of the man in green nothing was to be seen. Only the trooper continued his silent vigil.

Again I acted on impulse. I was wearing my grass-green raincoat, my hat I carried in my hand. I might therefore easily pass for one just leaving the Castle. Without hesitation, I turned to the left, the way I had come, and plunged once more into the labyrinth of galleries and corridors and landings by which the man in green had led me. I very soon lost myself, so I decided to descend the next staircase I should come to. I followed this plan and went down a broad flight of stairs, at the foot of which I found a night porter, clad in a vast overcoat bedizened with eagles and seated on a stool, reading a newspaper.

He stopped me and asked me my business. I told him I was coming from the Emperor's private apartments, whereupon he demanded my pass. I showed him my badge which entirely satisfied him, though he muttered something about "new faces" and not having seen me before. I asked him for the way out. He said that at the end of the gallery I should come to the west entrance. I felt I had had a narrow squeak of running into my mentor outside. I told the man I wanted the other entrance ... I had my car there.

"You mean the south entrance?" he asked, and proceeded to give me directions which brought me, without further difficulty, out upon the open space in front of the great equestrian statue of the Emperor William I.

It was a clear, starry night and I heaved a sigh of relief as I saw the Schloss-Platz glittering in the cold light of the arc lamps. So pressing had been the danger threatening me that the atmosphere of the Castle seemed stifling in comparison with the keen night air. A new confidence filled my veins as I strode along, though the perils to which I was advancing were not a whit less than those I had just escaped. For I had burnt my boats. My disappearance from the Castle must surely arouse suspicion and it was only a matter of hours for the hue and cry to be raised after me. At best it might be delayed until Clubfoot presented himself at the Castle.

I could not remain in Berlin, that was clear. My American passport was not in order, and if I were to fall back upon my silver badge, I should instantly come into contact with the police with all kinds of unwelcome consequences. No, I must get out of Berlin at all costs. Well away from the capital, I might possibly utilize my silver badge or by its help procure identity papers that would give me a status of some kind.

But Francis? Baffled as I was by that obscure jingle of German, something seemed to tell me that it was a message from my brother. It was dated from Berlin, and I felt that the solution of the riddle, if riddle it were, must be found here.

I had reached Unter den Linden. I entered a café and ordered a glass of beer. The place was a blaze of light and dense with a blue cloud of tobacco smoke. A noisy band was crashing out popular tunes and there was a loud buzz of conversation rising from every table. It was all very cheerful and the noise and the bustle did me good after the strain of the night.

I drew from my pocket the slip of paper I had had from Dicky and fell to scanning it again. I had not been twelve hours in Germany, but already I was conscious that, for anyone acting a part, let anything go wrong with his identity papers and he could never leave the country. If he were lucky, he might lie doggo; but there was no other course.

Supposing, then, that this had happened to Francis (as, indeed, Red Tabs had hinted to me was the case) what course would he adopt? He would try and smuggle out a message announcing his plight. Yes, I think that is what I myself would do in similar circumstances.

Well, I would accept this as a message from Francis. Now to study it once more.

O Eichenholz! O Eichenholz!
Wie leer sind deine Blätter.
Wie Achiles in dem Zelte.
Wo zweie sich zanken
Erfreut sich der Dritte.

The message fell into three parts, each consisting of a phrase. The first phrase might certainly be a warning that Francis had failed in his mission.

"O Okewood! how empty are thy leaves!"

What, then, of the other two phrases?

They were short and simple. Whatever message they conveyed, it could not be a lengthy one. Nor was it likely that they contained a report of Francis' mission to Germany, whatever it had been. Indeed, it was not conceivable that my brother would send any such report to a Dutchman like van Urutius, a friendly enough fellow, yet a mere acquaintance and an alien at that.

The message carried in those two phrases must be, I felt sure, a personal one, relating to my brother's welfare. What would he desire to say? That he was arrested, that he was going to be shot? Possibly, but more probably his idea in sending out word was to explain his silence and also to obtain assistance.

My eye recurred continually to the final phrase: "When two people fall out, the third party rejoices."

Might not these numerals refer to the number of a street? Might not in these two phrases be hidden an address at which one might find Francis, or at the worst, hear news of him?

I sent for the Berlin Directory. I turned up the streets section and eagerly ran my eye down the columns of the "A's." I did not find what I was looking for, and that was an "Achilles-Strasse," either with two "l's" or with one.

Then I tried "Eichenholz." There was an "Eichenbaum-Allee" in the Berlin suburb called West-End, but that was all. I tried for a "Blätter" or a "Blatt-Strasse" with an equally negative result.

It was discouraging work, but I went back to the paper again. The only other word likely to serve as a street remaining in the puzzle was "Zelt."

"Wie Achiles in dem Zelte."

Wearily I opened the directory at the "Z's."

There, staring me in the face, I found the street called "In den Zelten."

I had struck the trail at last.

In den Zelten, I discovered, on referring to the directory again, derived its name "In the Tents," from the fact that in earlier days a number of open-air beer-gardens and booths had occupied the site which faces the northern side of the Tiergarten. It was not a long street. The directory showed but fifty-six houses, several of which, I noticed, were still beer-gardens. It appeared to be a fashionable thoroughfare, for most of the occupants were titled people. No. 3, I was interested to see, was still noted as the Berlin office of The Times.

The last phrase in the message decidedly gave the number. Two must refer to the number of the house: third to the number of the floor, since practically all dwelling-houses in Berlin are divided off into flats.

As for the "Achiles," I gave it up.

I looked at my watch. It was twenty past eleven: too late to begin my search that night. Then I suddenly realized how utterly exhausted I was. I had been two nights out of bed without sleep, for I had sat up on deck crossing over to Holland, and the succession of adventures that had befallen me since I left London had driven all thought of weariness from my mind. But now came the reaction and I felt myself yearning for a hot bath and for a nice comfortable bed. To go to an hotel at that hour of night, without luggage and with an American passport not in order, would be to court disaster. It looked as though I should have to hang about the cafés and night restaurants until morning, investigate the clue of the street called In den Zelten, and then get away from Berlin as fast as ever I could.

But my head was nodding with drowsiness. I must pull myself together. I decided I would have some black coffee, and I raised my eyes to find the waiter. They fell upon the pale face and elegant figure of the one-armed officer I had met at the Casino at Goch ... the young lieutenant they had called Schmalz.

He had just entered the café and was standing at the door, looking about him. I felt a sudden pang of uneasiness at the sight of him, for I remembered his cross-examination of me at Goch. But I could not escape without paying my bill; besides, he blocked the way.

He settled my doubts and fears by walking straight over to my table.

"Good evening, Herr Doktor," he said in German, with his pleasant smile. "This indeed is an unexpected pleasure! So you are seeing how we poor Germans are amusing ourselves in war-time. You must admit that we do not take our pleasures sadly. You permit me?"

Without waiting for my reply, he sat down at my table and ordered a glass of beer.

"I wish you had appeared sooner," I exclaimed in as friendly a tone as I could muster, "for I am just going. I have had a long and tiring journey and am anxious to go to an hotel."

Directly I had spoken I realized my blunder.

"You have not got an hotel yet?" said Schmalz. "Why, how curious! Nor have I! As you are a stranger in Berlin, you must allow me to appoint myself your guide. Let us go to an hotel together, shall we?"

I wanted to demur, difficult as it was to find any acceptable excuse, but his manner was so friendly, his offer seemed so sincere, that I felt my resolution wavering. He had a winning personality, this frank, handsome boy. And I was so dog-tired!

He perceived my reluctance but also my indecision.

"We'll go to any hotel you like," he said brightly. "But you Americans are spoilt in the matter of luxurious hotels, I know. Still, I tell you we have not much to learn in that line in Berlin. Suppose we go to the Esplanade. It's a fine hotel ... the Hamburg American line run it, you know. I am very well known there, quite the Hauskind ... my uncle was a captain of one of their liners. They will make us very comfortable: they always give me a little suite, bedroom, sitting-room and bath, very reasonably: I'll make them do the same for you."

If I had been less weary—I have often thought since—I would have got up and fled from the café rather than have countenanced any such mad proposal. But I was drunk with sleep heaviness and I snatched at this chance of getting a good night's rest, for I felt that, under the aegis of this young officer, I could count on any passport difficulties at the hotel being postponed until morning. By that time, I meant to be out of the hotel and away on my investigations.

So I accepted Schmalz's suggestion.

"By the way," I said, "I have no luggage. My bag got mislaid somehow at the station and I don't really feel up to going after it to-night."

"I will fix you up," the other replied promptly, "and with pyjamas in the American fashion. By the by," he added, lowering his voice, "I thought it better to speak German. English is not heard gladly in Berlin just now."

"I quite understand," I said. Then, to change the subject, which I did not like particularly, I added:

"Surely, you have been very quick in coming down from the frontier. Did you come by train?"

"Oh, no!" he answered. "I found that the car in which you drove to the station ... it belonged to the gentleman who came to meet you, you know ... was being sent back to Berlin by road, so I got the driver to give me a lift."

He said this quite airily, with his usual tone of candour. But for a moment I regretted my decision to go to the Esplanade with him. What if he knew more than he seemed to know?

I dismissed the suspicion from my mind.

"Bah!" I said to myself, "you are getting jumpy. Besides, it is too late to turn back now!"

We had a friendly wrangle as to who should pay for the drinks, and it ended in my paying. Then, after a long wait, we managed to get a cab, an antique-looking "growler" driven by an octogenarian in a coat of many capes, and drove to the Esplanade.

It was a regular palace of a place, with a splendid vestibule with walls and pavement of different-hued marbles, with palm trees over-shadowing a little fountain tinkling in a jade basin, with servants in gaudy liveries. The reception clerk overwhelmed me with the cordiality of his welcome to my companion and "the American gentleman," and after a certain amount of coquettish protestations about the difficulty of providing accommodation, allotted us a double suite on the entresol, consisting of two bedrooms with a common sitting-room and bathroom.

In his immaculate evening dress, he was a Beau Brummell among hotel clerks, that man. The luggage of the American gentleman should be fetched in the morning. The gentleman's papers? There was no hurry: the Herr Leutnant would explain to his friend the forms that had to be filled in: they could be given to the waiter in the morning. Would the gentlemen take anything before retiring? A whisky-soda—ah! whisky was getting scarce. No? Nothing? He had the honour to wish the gentlemen pleasant repose.

We went to the lift in procession, Beau Brummell in front, then a waiter, then ourselves and the gold-braided hall porter bringing up the rear. One or two people were sitting in the lounge, attended by a platoon of waiters. The whole place gave an impression of wealth and luxury altogether out of keeping with British ideas of the stringency of life in Germany under the British blockade. I could not help reflecting to myself mournfully that Germany did not seem to feel the pinch very much.

At the lift the procession bowed itself away and we went up in charge of the liftman, a gorgeous individual who looked like one of the Pope's Swiss Guards. We reached the centresol in an instant. The Lieutenant led the way along the dimly lighted corridor.

"Here is the sitting-room," he said, opening a door. "This is my room, this the bathroom, and this," he flung open the fourth door, "is your room!"

He stood aside to let me pass. The lights in the room were full on. In an arm-chair a big man in an overcoat was sitting.

He had a heavy square face and a clubfoot.

A GLASS OF WINE WITH CLUBFOOT

I walked boldly into the room. All sense of fear had vanished in a wave of anger that swept over me, anger with myself for letting myself be trapped, anger with my companion for his treachery.

Schmalz stood at my elbow with a smile full of malice on his face.

"There now!" he cried, "you see, you are among friends! Am I not thoughtful to have prepared this little surprise for you? See, I have brought you to the one man you have crossed so many hundreds of miles of ocean to see! Herr Doktor! this is Dr. Semlin. Dr. Semlin: Dr. Grundt."

The other had by now heaved his unwieldy frame from the chair.

"Dr. Semlin?" he said, in a perfectly emotionless voice, une voix blanche, as the French say, "this is an unexpected pleasure. I never thought we should meet in Berlin. I had believed our rendezvous to have been fixed for Rotterdam. Still, better late than never!" And he extended to me a white, fat hand.

"Our friend, the Herr Leutnant," I answered carelessly, "omitted to inform me that he was acquainted with you, as, indeed, he failed to warn me that I should have the pleasure of seeing you here to-night."

"We owe that pleasure," Clubfoot replied with a smile that displayed a glitter of gold in his teeth, "to a purely fortuitous encounter at the Casino at Goch, as, indeed, it would appear, I am similarly indebted to chance for the unlooked-for boon of making your personal acquaintance here this evening."

He bowed to Schmalz as he said this.

"But come," he went on, "if I may make bold to offer you the hospitality of your own room, sit down and try a glass of this excellent Brauneberger. Rhine wine must be scarce where you come from. We have much to tell one another, you and I."

Again he bared his golden teeth in a smile.

"By all means," I said. "But I fear we keep our young friend from his bed. Doubtless, you have no secrets from him, but you will agree, Herr Doktor, that our conversation should best be tête-à-tète."

"Schmalz, dear friend," Clubfoot exclaimed with a sigh of regret, "much as I should like ... I am indeed truly sorry that we should be deprived of your company, but I cannot contest the profound accuracy of our friend's remark. If you could go to the sitting-room for a few minutes...."

The young lieutenant flushed angrily.

"If you prefer my room to my company ... by all means," he retorted gruffly, "but I think, in the circumstances, that I shall go to bed."

And he turned on his heel and walked out of the room, shutting the door with rather more force than was necessary, I thought.

Clubfoot sighed.

"Ach! youth! youth!" he cried, "the same impetuous youth that is at this very moment hacking out for Germany a world empire amidst the nations in arms. A wonderful race, a race of giants, our German youth, Herr Doktor ... the mainspring of our great German machine—as they find who resist it. A glass of wine!"

The man's speech and manner boded ill for me, I felt. I would have infinitely preferred violent language and open threats to the subtle menace that lay concealed beneath all this suavity.

"You smoke?" queried Clubfoot. "No!"—he held up his hand to stop me as I was reaching for my cigarette case, "you shall have a cigar—not one of our poor German Hamburgers, but a fine Havana cigar given me by a member of the English Privy Council. You stare! Aha! I repeat, by a member of the English Privy Council, to me, the Boche, the barbarian, the Hun! No hole and corner work for the old doctor. Der Stelze may be lame, Clubfoot may be past his work, but when he travels en mission, he travels en prince, the man of wealth and substance. There is none too high to do him honour, to listen to his views on poor, misguided Germany, the land of thinkers sold into bondage to the militarists! Bah! the fools!"

He snarled venomously. This man was beginning to interest me. His rapid change of moods was fascinating, now the kindly philosopher, now the Teuton braggart, now the Hun incorporate. As he limped across the room to fetch his cigar case from the mantelpiece, I studied him.

He was a vast man, not so much by reason of his height, which was below the medium, but his bulk, which was enormous. The span of his shoulders was immense, and, though a heavy paunch and a white flabbiness of face spoke of a gross, sedentary life, he was obviously a man of quite unusual strength. His arms particularly were out of all proportion to his stature, being so long that his hands hung down on either side of him when he stood erect, like the paws of some giant ape. Altogether, there was something decidedly simian about his appearance his squat nose with hairy, open nostrils, and the general hirsuteness of the man, his bushy eyebrows, the tufts of black hair on his cheekbones and on the backs of his big, spade like hands. And there was that in his eyes, dark and courageous beneath the shaggy brows, that hinted at accesses of ape-like fury, uncontrollable and ferocious.

He gave me his cigar which, as he had said, was a good one, and, after a preliminary sip of his wine, began to speak.

"I am a plain man, Herr Doktor," he said, "and I like plain speaking. That is why I am going to speak quite plainly to you. When it became apparent to that person whom it is not necessary to name further greatly desired a certain letter to be recovered, I naturally expected that I, who am a past member in affairs of this order, notably, on behalf of the person concerned, would have been entrusted with the mission. It was I who discovered the author of the theft in an English internment camp; it was I who prevailed upon him to acquiesce in our terms; it was I who finally located the hiding place of the document ... all this, mark you, without setting foot in England."

My thoughts flew back again to the three slips of paper in their canvas cover, the divided crest, the big, sprawling, upright handwriting. I should have known that hand. I had seen it often enough on certain photographs which were accorded the place of honour in the drawing room at Consistorial-Rat von Mayburg's at Bonn.

"I therefore had the prior claim," Clubfoot continued, "to be entrusted with the important task of fetching the document and of handing it back to the writer. But the gentleman was in a hurry; the gentleman always is; he could not wait for that old slowcoach of a Clubfoot to mature his plans for getting into England, securing the document, and getting out again.

"So Bernstorff is called into consultation, the head of an embassy that has made the German secret service the laughing-stock of the world, an ambassador that has his private papers filched by a common sneak-thief in the underground railway and is fool enough to send home the most valuable documents by a jackass of a military attaché who lets the whole lot be taken from him by a dunderheaded British customs officer at Falmouth! This was the man who was to replace me!

"Bernstorff is accordingly bidden to despatch one of his trusty servants to England, with all suitable precautions, to do my work. You are chosen, and I will pay you the compliment of saying that you fulfilled your mission in a manner that is singularly out of keeping with the usual method of procedure of that gentleman's emissaries.

"But, my dear Doktor ... pray fill your glass. That cigar is good, is it not? I thought you would appreciate a good cigar.... As I was saying, you were handicapped from the first. When you reach the place indicated to you in your instructions, you find only half the document. The wily thief has sliced it in two so as to make sure of his money before parting with the goods. They didn't know, of course, that Clubfoot, the old slowcoach, who is past his work, was aware of this already, and had made his plans accordingly. But, in the end, they had to send for me. 'The good Clubfoot,' 'old chap,' 'sly old fox,' and all the rest of it—would run across to England and secure the other half, while Count Bernstorff's smart young man from America would wait in Rotterdam until Herr Dr. Grundt arrived and handed him the other portion.

"But Count Bernstorff's young man does nothing of the kind. He is one too many for the old fox. He does not wait for him. He runs away, after displaying unusual determination in dealing with a prying Englander—whose fate should be a lesson to all who interfere in other people's business—and goes to Germany, leaving poor old Clubfoot in the lurch. You must admit, Herr Doktor, that I have been hardly used—by yourself as well as by another person?"

My throat was dry with anxiety. What did the man mean by his veiled allusions to "all who interfere in other people's business?"

I cleared my throat to speak.

Clubfoot raised a great hand in deprecation.

"No explanation, Herr Doktor, I beg" (his tone was perfectly unconcerned and friendly), "let me have my say. When I found out that you had left Rotterdam—by the way, you must let me congratulate you on the remarkable fertility of resource you displayed in quitting Frau Schratt's hospitable house—when I found you were gone, I sat down and thought things out.

"I reflected that an astute American like yourself (believe me, you are very astute) would probably be accustomed to look at everything from the business standpoint. 'I will also consider the matter from the business standpoint,' I said to myself, and I decided that, in your place, I too would not be content to accept, as sole payment for the danger of my mission, the scarcely generous compensation that Count Bernstorff allots to his collaborators. No, I should wish to secure a little renown for myself, or, were that not possible, then some monetary gain proportionate with the risks I had run. You see, I have been at pains to put myself wholly in your place. I hope I have not said anything tactless. If so, I can at least acquit myself of any desire to offend."

"On the contrary, Herr Doktor," I replied, "you are the model of tact and diplomacy."

His eyes narrowed a little at this. I thought he wouldn't like that word "diplomacy."

"Another glass of wine? You may safely venture; there is not a headache in a bottle of it. Well, Herr Doktor, since you have followed me so patiently thus far, I will go further. I told you, when I first saw you this evening, that I was delighted at our meeting. That was no mere banality, but the sober truth. For, you see, I am the very person with whom, in the circumstances, you would wish to get in touch. Deprived of the honour, rightly belonging to me, of undertaking this mission single-handed and of fulfilling it alone, I find that you can enable me to carry out the mission to a successful conclusion, whilst I, for my part, am able and willing to recompense your services as they deserve and not according to Bernstorff's starvation scale.

"To make a long story short, Herr Doktor ... how much?"

He brought his remarks to this abrupt anticlimax so suddenly that I was taken aback. The man was watching me intently for all his apparent nonchalance, and I felt more than ever the necessity for being on my guard. If I could only fathom how much he knew. Of two things I felt fairly sure: the fellow believed me to be Semlin and was under the impression that I still retained my portion of the document. I should have to gain time. The bargain he proposed over my half of the letter might give me an opportunity of doing that. Moreover, I must find out whether he really had the other half of the document, and in that case, where he kept it.

He broke the silence.

"Well, Herr Doktor," he said, "do you want me to start the bidding? You needn't be afraid. I am generous."

I leant forward earnestly in my chair.

"You have spoken with admirable frankness, Herr Doktor," I said, "and I will be equally plain, but I will be brief. In the first place, I wish to know that you are the man you profess to be: so far, you must remember, I have only the assurance of our excitable young friend."

"Your caution is most praiseworthy," said the other, "but I should imagine I carry my name written on my boot." And he lifted his hideous and deformed foot.

"That is scarcely sufficient guarantee," I answered, "in a matter of this importance. A detail like that could easily be counterfeited, or otherwise provided for."

"My badge," and the man produced from his waistcoat pocket a silver star identical with the one I carried on my braces, but bearing only the letter "G" above the inscription "Abt. VII."

"That, even," I retorted, "is not conclusive."

Clubfoot's mind was extraordinarily alert, however gross and heavy his body might be.

He paused for a moment in reflection, his hands crossed upon his great paunch.

"Why not?" he said suddenly, reached out for his cigar-case, beside him on the table, and produced three slips of paper highly glazed and covered with that unforgettable, sprawling hand, a portion of a gilded crest at the top—in short, the missing half of the document I had found in Semlin's bag. Clubfoot held them out fanwise for me to see, but well out of my reach, and he kept a great, spatulate thumb over the top of the first sheet where the name of the addressee should have been.

"I trust you are now convinced, Herr Doktor," he said, with a smile that bared his teeth, and, putting the pieces together, he folded them across, tucked them away in the cigar-case again, and thrust it into his pocket.

I must test the ground further.

"Has it occurred to you, Herr Doktor," I asked, "that we have very little time at our disposal? The person whom we serve must be anxiously waiting...."

Clubfoot laughed and shook his head.

"I want that half-letter badly," he said, "but there's no violent hurry. So I fear you must leave that argument out of your presentation of the case, for it has no commercial value. The person you speak of is not in Berlin."

I had heard something of the Kaiser's sudden appearances and disappearances during the war, but I had not thought they could be so well managed as to be kept from the knowledge of one of his own trusted servants, for such I judged Clubfoot to be. Evidently, he knew nothing of my visit to the Castle that evening, and I was for a moment unpatriotic enough to wish I had kept my half of the letter that I might give it to Clubfoot now to save the coming exposure. "A thousand dollars!" Clubfoot said.

I remained silent.

"Two? Three? Four thousand? Man, you are greedy. Well, I will make it five thousand—twenty thousand marks...."

"Herr Doktor," I said, "I don't want your money. I want to be fair with you. When the ... the person we know of sends for you, we will go together. You shall tell the large part you have played in this affair. I only want credit for what I have done, nothing more...."

A knock came at the door. The porter entered.

"A telegram for the Herr Doktor," he said, presenting a salver.

Somewhere near by a band was playing dance music ... one of those rousing, splendidly accented Viennese waltzes. There seemed to be a ball on, for through the open door of the room, I heard, mingled with the strains of the music, the sound of feet and the hum of voices.

Then the door closed, shutting out the outer world again.

"You permit me," said Grundt curtly, as he broke the seal of the telegram. So as not to seem to observe him, I got up and walked across to the window, and leaned against the warm radiator.

"Well?" said a voice from the arm-chair.

"Well?" I echoed.

"I have made you my proposal, Herr Doktor: you have made yours. Yours is quite unacceptable. I have told you with great frankness why it is necessary that I should have your portion of the document and the sum I am prepared to pay for it. I set its value at five thousand dollars. I will pay you the money over in cash, here and now, in good German bank-notes, in exchange for those slips of paper."

The man's suavity had all but vanished: his voice was harsh and stern. His eyes glittered under his shaggy brows as he looked at me. Had I been less agitated, I should have noted this, as a portent of the coming storm, also his great ape's hands picking nervously at the telegram in his lap.

"I have already told you," I said firmly, "that I don't want your money. You know my terms!"

He rose up from his seat and his figure seemed to tower.

"Terms?" he cried in a voice that quivered with suppressed passion, "terms? Understand that I give orders. I accept terms from no man. We waste time here talking. Come, take the money and give me the paper."

I shook my head. My brain was clear, but I felt the crisis was coming. I took a good grip with my hands of the marble slab covering the radiator behind me to give me confidence. The slab yielded: mechanically I noted that it was loose.

The man in front of me was shaking with rage.

"Listen!" he said. "I'll give you one more chance. But mark my words well. Do you know what happened to the man that stole that document? The English took him out and shot him on account of what was found in his house when they raided it. Do you know what happened to the interpreter at the internment camp, who was our go-between, who played us false by cutting the document in half? The English shot him too, on account of what was found in letters that came to him openly through the post? And who settled Schulte? And who settled the other man? Who contrived the traps that sent them to their doom? It was I, Grundt, I, the cripple, I, the Clubfoot, that had these traitors despatched as an example to the six thousand of us who serve our Emperor and empire in darkness! You dog, I'll smash you!"

He was gibbering like an angry ape: his frame was shaking with fury: every hair in the tangle on his face and hands seemed to bristle with his Berserker frenzy.

But he kept away from me, and I saw that he was still fighting to preserve his self-control.

I maintained a bold front.

"This may do for your own people," I said contemptuously, "but it doesn't impress me, I'm an American citizen!"

He was calmer now, but his eyes glittered dangerously.

"An American citizen?" he said in an icy tone. Then he fairly hissed at me:

"You fool! Blind, besotted fool! Do you think you can trifle with the might of the German Empire? Ah! I've played a pretty game with you, you dirty English dog! I've watched you squirming and writhing whilst the stupid German told you his pretty little tale and plied you with his wine and his cigars. You're in our power now, you miserable English hound! Do you understand that? Now call on your fleet to come and save you!

"Listen! I'll be frank with you to the last. I've had my suspicions of you from the first, when they telephoned me that you had escaped from the hotel, but I wanted to make sure. Ever since you have been in this room it has been in my power to push that bell there and send you to Spandau, where they rid us of such dirty dogs as you.

"But the game amused me. I liked to see the Herr Englander playing the spy against me, the master of them all. Do you know, you fool, that old Schratt knows English, that she spent years of her harlot's life in London, and that when you allowed her a glimpse of that passport, your own passport, the one you so cleverly burned, she remembered the name? Ah! you didn't know that, did you?

"Shall I tell you what was in that telegram they just brought me? It was from Schratt, our faithful Schratt, who shall have a bangle for this night's work, to say that the corpse at the hotel has a chain round its neck with an identity disc in the name of Semlin. Ha! you didn't know that either, did you?

"And you would bargain and chaffer with me! You would dictate your terms, you scum! You with your head in a noose, a spy that has failed in his mission, a miserable wretch that I can send to his death with a flip of my little finger! You impudent hound! Well, you'll get your deserts this time, Captain Desmond Okewood ... but I'll have that paper first!"

Roaring "Give it to me!" he rushed at me like some frenzied beast of the jungle. The veins stood out at his temples, his hairy nostrils opened and closed as his breath came faster, his long arms shot out and his great paws clutched at my throat.

But I was waiting for him. As he came at me, I heard his clubfoot stump once on the polished floor, then, from the radiator behind me, I raised high in my arms the heavy marble slab, and with every ounce of strength in my body brought it crashing down on his head.

He fell like a log, the blood oozing sluggishly from his head on to the parquet. I stopped an instant, snatched the cigar-case from the pocket where he had placed it, extracted the document and fled from the room.

MISS MARY PRENDERGAST RISKS HER REPUTATION

The rooms of our suite were intercommunicating so that you could pass from one to the other without going into the corridor at all. Schmalz had retired this way, going from my room through the bathroom to his own room. In the excitement of the moment I forgot all about this, else I should not have omitted such an elementary precaution as slipping the bolt of the door communicating between my room and the bathroom.

As I stepped out into the corridor, with the crash of that heavy body still ringing in my ears, I thought I caught the sound of a light step in the bathroom; the next moment I heard a door open and then a loud exclamation of horror in the room I had just left.

The corridor was dim and deserted. The place seemed uninhabited. No boots stood outside the rooms, and open doors, one after the other, were sufficient indication that the apartments they led to were untenanted.

I didn't pause to reason or to plan. On hearing that long drawn out cry of horror, I dashed blindly down the corridor at top speed, followed it round to the right and then, catching sight of a small staircase, rushed up it three steps at a time. As I reached the top I heard a loud cry somewhere on the floor below. Then a door banged, there was the sound of running feet and ... silence.

I found myself on the next floor in a corridor similar to the one I had just left. Like it, it was desolate and dimly lit. Like it, it showed room after room silent and empty. Agitated as I was, the contrast with the bright and busy vestibule and the throng of uniformed servants below was so marked that it struck me with convincing force. Even the hotels, it seemed, were part and parcel of the great German publicity bluff which I had noted in my reading of the German papers at Rotterdam.

I had no plan in my head, only a wild desire to put as much distance as possible between me and that ape-man in the room below. So, after pausing a moment to listen and draw breath, I started off again. Suddenly a door down the corridor, not ten paces away from me, opened and a woman came out. I stopped dead in my headlong course, but it was too late and I found myself confronting her.

She was young and very beautiful with masses of thick brown hair clustering round a very white forehead. She was in evening dress, all in white, with an ermine wrap.

Even as I looked at her I knew her and she knew me.

"Monica," I whispered.

"Why! Desmond!" she said.

A regular hubbub echoed from below. Voices were crying out, doors were banging, there was the sound of feet.

The girl was speaking, saying in her low and pleasant voice phrases that were vague to me about her surprise, her delight at seeing me. But I did not listen to her. I was straining my ears towards that volume of chaotic noises which came swelling up from below.

"Monica!" I interrupted swiftly, "have you any place to hide me? This place is dangerous for me.... I must get away. If you can't save me, don't stay here but get away yourself as fast as you can. They're after me and if they catch you with me it will be bad for you!"

Without a word the girl turned round to the room she had just left. She beckoned to me, then knocked and went in. I followed her. It was a big, pleasant bedroom, elegantly furnished with a soft carpet and silk hangings, and I know not what, with shaded lights and flowers in profusion. Sitting up in bed was a stout, placid-looking woman in a pink silk kimono with her hair coquettishly braided in two short pigtails which hung down on either side of her face.

Monica closed the door softly behind her.

"Why, Monica!" she exclaimed in horror—and her speech was that of the United States—"what on earth ...?"

"Not a word, Mary, but let me explain...."

"But for land's sake, Monica...."

"Mary, I want you to help...."

"But say, child, a man ... in my bedroom ... at this time o' night...."

"Oh, shucks, Mary! let me talk."

The distress of the woman in bed was so comic that I could scarcely help laughing. She had dragged the bed-clothes up till only her eyes could be seen. Her pigtails bobbed about in her emotion.

"Now, Mary dear, listen here. You're a friend of mine. This is Desmond Okewood, another, a very old and dear friend of mine too. Well, you know, Mary, this isn't a healthy country these times for an English officer. That's what Desmond here is. I didn't know he was in Germany. I don't know a thing about him except what he's told me and that's that he's in danger and wants me to help him. I met him outside and brought him right in here, as I know you would want me to, wouldn't you, dear?"

The lady poked her nose over the top of the bed-clothes.

"Present the gentleman properly, Monica!" she said severely.

"Captain Okewood ... Miss Mary Prendergast," said Monica.

The lady's head, pigtails and all, now appeared. She appeared to be somewhat mollified.

"I can't say I approve of your way of doing things, Monica," she observed, but less severely than before, "and I can't think what an English officer wants in my bedroom at ten minutes of two in the morning, but if those Deutschers want to find him, perhaps I can understand!"

Here she smiled affectionately on the beautiful girl at my side.

"Ah! Mary, you're a dear," replied Monica.

"I knew you'd help us. Why, a British officer in Germany ... isn't it too thrilling?"

She turned to me.

"But, Des," she said, "what do you want me to do?"

I knew I could trust Monica and I resolved I would trust her friend too... she looked a white woman all right. And if she was a friend of Monica's, her heart would be in the right place. Francis and I had known Monica all our lives almost. Her father had lived for years ... indeed to the day of his death ... in London as the principal European representative of a big American financial house. They had lived next door to us in London and Francis and I had known Monica from the days when she was a pretty kid in short skirts until she had made her debut and the American ambassadress had presented her at Buckingham Palace. At various stages of our lives, both Francis and I had been in love with her, I believe, but my life in the army had kept me much abroad, so Francis had seen most of her and had been the hardest hit.

Then the father died and Monica went travelling abroad in great state, as befits a young heiress, with a prodigiously respectable American chaperon and a retinue of retainers. I never knew the rights of the case between her and Francis, but at one of the German embassies abroad—I think in Vienna—she met the young Count Rachwitz, head of one of the great Silesian noble houses, and married him.

It was not on the usual rock—money—that this German-American marriage was wrecked, for the Count was very wealthy himself. I had supposed that the German man's habitual attitude of mind towards women had not suited the girl's independent spirit on hearing that Monica, a few years after her marriage, had left her husband and gone to live in America. I had not seen her since she left London, and, though we wrote to one another at intervals, I had not heard from her since the war started and had no idea that she had returned to Germany. Monica Rachwitz was, in fact, the last person I should ever have expected to meet in Berlin in war-time.

So, as briefly as I could and listening intently throughout for any sounds from the corridor, I gave the two women the story of the disappearance of Francis and my journey into Germany to look for him. At the mention of my brother's name, I noticed that the girl stiffened and her face grew rigid, but when I told her of my fears for his safety her blue eyes seemed to me to grow dim. I described to them my adventure in the hotel at Rotterdam, my reception in the house of General von Boden, and my interview at the Castle, ending with the experiences of that night, the trap laid for me at the hotel and my encounter with Clubfoot in the room below. Two things only I kept back: the message from Francis and the document. I decided within myself that the fewer people in those secrets the safer they would be. I am afraid, therefore, that my account of my interview with the Emperor was a trifle garbled, for I made out that I did not know why I was bidden to the presence and that our conversation was interrupted before I could discover the reason.

The two women listened with grave faces. Only once did Monica interrupt me. It was when I mentioned General von Boden.

"I know the beast," she said. "But, oh, Des!" she exclaimed, "you seem to have fallen right among the top set in this country. They're a bad lot to cross. I fear you are in terrible danger."

"I believe you, Monica," I answered, dolefully enough. "And that's just where I feel such a beast for throwing myself upon your mercy in this way. But I was pretty desperate when I met you just now and I didn't know where to turn. Still, I want you to understand that if you can only get me out of this place I shall not trouble you further. I came to this country on my own responsibility and I'm going through with it alone. I have no intention of implicating anybody else along with me. But I confess I don't believe it is possible to get away from this hotel. They're watching every door by now. Besides..."

I stopped abruptly. A noise outside caught my listening ear. Footsteps were approaching along the corridor. I heard doors open and shut. They were hunting for me, floor by floor, room by room.

"Open that wardrobe," said a voice from the bed: a firm, business-like voice that was good to hear. "Open it and get right in, young man; but don't go mussing up my good dresses whatever you do! And you, Monica, quick! Switch off those lights all but this one by the bed. Good! Now go to the door and ask them what they mean by making this noise at this time of night with me ill and all!"

I got into the wardrobe and Monica shut me in. I heard the bedroom door open, then voices. I waited patiently for five minutes, then the wardrobe door opened again.

"Come out, Des," said Monica, "and thank Mary Prendergast for her cleverness."

"What did they say?" I asked.

"That reception clerk was along. He was most apologetic—they know me here, you see. He told me how a fellow had made a desperate attack upon a gentleman on the floor below and had got away. They thought he must be hiding somewhere in the hotel. I told him I'd been sitting here for an hour chatting with Miss Prendergast and that we hadn't heard a sound. They went away then!"

"You won't catch any Deutschers fooling Mary Prendergast," said the jovial lady in the bed; "but, children, what next?"

Monica spoke—quite calmly. She was always perfectly self-possessed.

"My brother is stopping with me in our apartment in the Bendler-Strasse," she said. "You remember Gerry, Des—he got all smashed up flying, you know, and is practically a cripple. He's been so much better here that I've been trying to get an attendant to look after him, to dress him and so on, but we couldn't find anybody; men are so scarce nowadays! You could come home with me, Des, and take this man's place for a day or two ... I'm afraid it couldn't be longer, for one would have to register you with the police—every one has to be registered, you know—and I suppose you have no papers that are any good—now."

"You are too kind, Monica," I answered, "but you risk too much and I can't accept."

"It's no risk for a day or two," she said. "I am a person of consequence in official Germany, you know, with my husband A.D.C. to Marshal von Mackensen: and I can always say I forgot to send in your papers. If they come down upon me afterwards I should say I meant to register you but had to discharge you suddenly ... for drink!"

"But how can I get away from here?" I objected.

"I guess we can fix that too," she replied. "My car is coming for me at two—it must be that now—I have been at a dance downstairs—one of the Radolin girls is getting married to-morrow—it was so deadly dull I ran up here and woke up Mary Prendergast to talk. You shall be my chauffeur! I know you drive a car! You ought to be able to manage mine ... it's a Mercédès."

"I can drive any old car," I said, "but I'm blessed ..."

"Wait there!" cried this remarkable girl, and ran out of the room.

For twenty minutes I stood and made small talk with Miss Prendergast. They were the longest twenty minutes I have ever spent. I was dead tired in any case, but my desperate position kept my thoughts so busy that, for all my endeavours to be polite, I fear my conversation was extremely distraught.

"You poor boy!" suddenly said Miss Mary Prendergast, totally ignoring a profound remark I was making regarding Mr. Wilson's policy, "don't you go on talking to me! Sit down on that chair and go to sleep! You look just beat!"

I sat down and nodded in the arm-chair.

Suddenly I was awake. Monica stood before me. She drew from under her cape a livery cap and uniform.

"Put these things on," she said, "and listen carefully. When you leave here, turn to the right and take the little staircase you will find on the right. Go down to the bottom, go through the glass doors, and across the room you will find there, to a door in a corner which leads to the ballroom entrance of the hotel. I will give you my ermine wrap to carry. I shall be waiting there. You will help me on with my cloak and escort me to the car. Is that clear?"

"Perfectly."

"Now, pay attention once more, for I shall not be able to speak to you again. I shall have to give you your directions for finding the way to the Bendler-Strasse."

She did so and added:

"Drive carefully, whatever you do. If we had a smash and the police intervened, it might be most awkward for you."

"But your chauffeur," I said, "what will he do?"

"Oh, Carter," she answered carelessly, "he's tickled to death ... he's American, you see ... he drove me out into the Tiergarten just now and took off his livery, then drove me back here, hopped off and went home."

"But can you trust him?" I asked anxiously.

"Like myself," she said. "Besides, Carter's been to Belgium ... he drove Count Rachwitz, my husband, while he was on duty there. And Carter hasn't forgotten what he saw in Belgium!"

She gave me the key of the garage and further instructions how to put the car up. Carter would give me a bed at the garage and would bring me round to the house early in the morning as if I were applying for the job of male attendant for Gerry.

"I will go down first," Monica said, "so as not to keep you waiting. My, but they're rattled downstairs—all the crowd at Olga von Radolin's dance have got hold of the story and the place is full of policemen. But there'll be no danger if you walk straight up to me in the hall and keep your face turned away from the crowd as much as possible."

She kissed Miss Prendergast and slipped away. What a splendid pair of women they were: so admirably cool and resourceful: they seemed to have thought of everything.

"Good night, Miss Prendergast," I said. "You have done me a good turn. I shall never forget it!" And as the only means at my disposal for showing my gratitude, I kissed her hand.

She coloured up like a girl.

"It's a long time since any one did that to a silly old woman like me," she said musingly. "Was it you or your brother," she asked abruptly, "who nearly broke my poor girl's heart?"

"I shouldn't like to say," I answered; "but I don't think, speaking personally, that Monica ever cared enough about me for me to plead guilty."

She sniffed contemptuously.

"If that is so," she said, "all I can say is that you seem to have all the brains of your family!"

With that I took my leave.

I reached the ballroom vestibule without meeting a soul. The place was crowded with people, officers in uniform, glittering with decorations, women in evening dress, coachmen, footmen, chauffeurs, waiters. Everybody was talking sixteen to the dozen, and there were such dense knots of people that at first I couldn't see Monica. Two policemen were standing at the swing-doors leading into the street, and with them a civilian who looked like a detective. I caught sight of Monica, almost at the detective's elbow, talking to two very elegant-looking officers. I pushed my way across the vestibule, turned my back on the detective and stood impassively beside her.

"Ah! there you are, Carter!" she said. "Gute Nacht, Herr Baron! Auf wiedersehen, Durchlaucht!"

The two officers kissed her hand whilst I helped her into her wrap. Then I marched straight out of the swing-doors in front of her, looking neither to right nor to left, past the detective and the two policemen. The detective may have looked at me: if so, I didn't perceive it. I had made up my mind not to see him.

Outside Monica took the lead and brought me over to a chocolate-coloured limousine drawn up at the pavement. I noted with dismay that the engine was stopped. That might mean further delay whilst I cranked up. But a friendly chauffeur standing by seized the handle and started the engine whilst I assisted Monica into the car, and the next moment we were gliding smoothly over the asphalt under the twinkling arc-lamps.

The Bendler-Strasse is off the Tiergarten, not far from the Esplanade, and I found my way there without much difficulty. I flatter myself that both Monica and I played our parts well, and I am sure nothing could have been more professional than the way I helped her to alight. It was an apartment house and she had the key of the front door, so, after seeing her safely within doors, I returned to the car and drove it round to the garage by a carriage-way leading to the rear of the premises.

As I unlocked the double doors of the garage, a man came down a ladder outside the place leading to the upper room.

"Did it work all right, sir?" he asked.

"Is that Carter?" I said.

"Sure that's me," came the cheery response. "Stand by now and we'll run her in. Then I'll show you where you are to sleep!"

We stowed the car away and he took me upstairs to his quarters, a bright little room with electric light, a table with a red cloth, a cheerful open fire and two beds. The walls were ornamented with pictures cut from the American Sunday supplements, mostly feminine and horsy studies.

"It's a bit rough, mister," said Carter, "but it's the best I can do. Gee! but you look that dawg-gorn tired I guess you could sleep anywheres!"

He was a friendly fellow, pleasant-looking in an ugly way, with a button nose and honest eyes.

"Say, but I like to think of the way we fooled them Deutschers," he chuckled. He kept on chuckling to himself whilst I took off my boots and began to undress.

"That there is your bed," he said, pointing; "the footman used to sleep there but they grabbed him for the army. There's a pair of Mr. Gerry's pyjamas for you and you'll find a cup of cocoa down warming by the fire. It's all a bit rough, but it's the best we can do. I guess you want to go to sleep mortal bad, so I'll be going down. The bed's clean... there are clean sheets on it...."

"But I won't turn you out of your room," I said. "There are two beds. You must take yours."

"Don't you fret yourself about me," he answered. "I'll make myself comfortable down in the garage. I don't often see a gentleman in this dawg-gorn country, and when I do I know how to treat him."

He wouldn't listen to me, but stumped off down the stairs. As he went I heard him murmuring to himself:

"Gee! but we surely fooled those Deutschers some!"

I drank this admirable fellow's cocoa; I warmed myself at his fire. Then with a thankful heart I crawled into bed and sank into a deep and dreamless sleep.