Chapter 21

THE BOY IN THE BLUE BLOUSE

A sharp exclamation brought the Count to Alban's side.

"Lois is down there," Alban said, "I am sure of it--she waved to me just now. She was walking with a man in a dark blue blouse. I could not have been mistaken."

He was quite excited that he should have discovered her thus, and Sergius Zamoyski did not lag behind him in interest.

"Do you still see her?" he asked--"is she there now?"

"I cannot see her now--the soldiers drove the people back. Perhaps if we went down--"

The Count laughed.

"Even I could not protect you to-night," he exclaimed dryly, "no--whatever is to be done must be done to-morrow. But does not that prove to you what eyes and ears these people have. Here we left London as secretly as a man on a love affair. With the single exception of our friend at Hampstead, not a human being should have known of our departure or our destination. And yet we are not three hours in this place before this girl is outside our hotel, as well aware that we have arrived as we are ourselves. That is what baffles our police. They cannot contend with miracles. They are only human, and I tell you that these people are more than human."

Alban, still peering down into the press in the hope that he might see Lois' face again, confessed that he could offer no explanation whatever.

"They told me the same thing in London," he said, "but I did not believe them. Old Boriskoff used to boast that he knew of things which had happened in Warsaw before the Russian Government. They seem to have spies in every street and every house. If Lois' presence is not a coincidence--"

"My dear fellow, are you also a believer in coincidence--the idle excuse of men who will not reason. Forgive me, but I think very little of coincidence. Just figure the chances against such a meeting as this. Would it not run into millions--your first visit to Warsaw; nobody expecting you; nobody knowing your name in the city--and here is the girl waiting under your window before you have changed your clothes. Oh, no, I will have nothing to do with coincidence. These people certainly knew that we had left England--they have been expecting us; they will do their best to baffle us. Yes, and that means that we run some danger. I must think of it--I must see the Chief of the Police to-night. It would be foolish to neglect all reasonable precautions."

Alban looked at him with surprise.

"None of those people will do me an injury," he exclaimed, "and you, Count, why should you fear them?"

The Count lighted a cigarette very deliberately. "There may be reasons," he said--and that was all.

Had he told the whole truth, revealed the secrets of his work during the last three years, Alban would have understood very well what those reasons were. A shrewder agent of the Government, a more discreet zealous official of the secret service, did not exist. His very bonhomie and good-fellowship had hitherto been his surest defence against discovery. Men spoke of him as the great gambler and a fine sportsman. The Revolutionaries had been persuaded to look upon him as their friend. Some day they would learn the truth--and then, God help him. Meanwhile, the work was well enough. He found it even more amusing than making love and a vast deal more exciting than big-game hunting.

"Yes," he repeated anon, "There may be reasons, but it is a little too late to remember them. I am sending over to the Bureau now. If the Chief is there, he will be able to help me. Of course, you will see or hear from this girl again. These people would deliver a letter if you locked yourself up in an iron safe. They will communicate with you in the morning and we must make up our minds what to do. That is why I want advice."

"If you take mine," said Alban quietly, "you will permit me to see her at once. I am the last person in all Warsaw whom Lois Boriskoff will desire to injure."

"Am I to understand, then--but no, it would be impossible. Forgive me even thinking of it. I had really imagined for a moment that you might be her lover."

Alban's face flushed crimson.

"She was my little friend in London--she will be the same in Warsaw, Count."

Count Sergius bowed as though he readily accepted this simple explanation and apologized for his own thoughts. A shrewd man of the world, he did not believe a word of it, however. These two, boy and girl together, had been daily associates in the slums of London. They had shared their earnings and their pleasures and passed for those who would be man and wife presently. This Richard Gessner had told him when they discussed the affair, and he remembered it to his great satisfaction. For if Alban were Lois Boriskoff's lover, then might he venture even where the police were afraid to go.

"I will talk it all over with the Chief," the Count exclaimed abruptly; "you have had a long day and are better in bed. Don't stand on any ceremony, but please go directly you feel inclined."

Alban did not demur for he was tired out and that was the truth of it. In his own room he recalled the question the Count had put to him and wondered that it had so distressed him. Why had his cheeks tingled and the words stumbled upon his lips because he had been called Lois Boriskoff's lover? It used not to be so when they walked Union Street together and all the neighbors regarded the engagement as an accomplished fact. He had never resented such a charge then--what had happened that he should resent it now? Was it the long weeks of temptation he had suffered in Anna Gessner's presence? Had the world of riches so changed him that any mention of the old time could make him ashamed? He knew not what to think--the blood rushed to his cheeks again and his heart beat quickly when he remembered that but for Count Sergius's visit to Hampstead, he might have been Anna's betrothed to-day.

In this he was, as ever, entirely candid with himself, neither condoning his faults nor accusing himself blindly. There had been nothing of the humbler realities of love in his relations with Richard Gessner's daughter; none of the superb spirit of self-sacrifice; none of those fine ideals which his boyhood had desired to set up. He had worshipped her beauty--so much he readily admitted; her presence had ever been potent to quicken his blood and claim the homage of his senses; but of that deeper understanding and mutual sympathy by which love is born she had taught him nothing. Why this should have been so, he could not pretend to say. Her father's riches and the glamour of the great house may have had not a little to do with it. Alban had always seemed to stand apart from all which the new world showed to him. He felt that he had no title to a place there, no just claim at all to those very favors his patron thrust upon him so lavishly.

He was as a man escaped from a prison whose bars were of gold--a prison whereof the jailer had been a beautiful and capricious woman. Here in Warsaw he discovered a new world; but one that seemed altogether familiar. All this clamor of the streets, this going to and fro of people, the roar of traffic, the shriek of whistles, the ringing of bells--had he not known them all in London when Lois was his friend and old Paul his neighbor? There had been many Poles by Thrawl Street and the harsh music of their tongue came to him as an old friend. It is true that he was housed luxuriously, in a palace built for millionaires; but he had the notion that he would not long continue there and that a newer and a stranger destiny awaited him. This thought, indeed, he carried to his bedroom and slept upon at last. He would find Lois to-morrow and she would be his messenger.

There had still been excited crowds in the streets when he found his bedroom and a high balcony showed him the last phases of a weird pageant. Though it was then nearly midnight, Cossacks continued to patrol the avenue and the mob to deride them. By here and there, where the arc lamps illuminated the pavement, the white faces and slouching figures of the more obstinate among the Revolutionaries spoke of dogged defiance and an utter indifference to personal safety. Alban could well understand why the people had ventured out, but that they should have taken women and even young children with them astonished him beyond measure. These, certainly, could vindicate no principle when their flesh was cut by the brutal whips and the savage horses rode them down to emphasize the majesty of the Czar. Such sights he had beheld that afternoon and such were being repeated, if the terrible cries which came to his ears from time to time were true harbingers. Alban closed his windows at last for very shame and anger. He tried to shut the city's terrible voice from his ears. He wished to believe that his eyes had deceived him.

This would have been about one o'clock in the morning. When he awoke from a heavy sleep (and youth will sleep whatever the circumstance) the sun was shining into his rooms and the church-bells called the people to early Mass. An early riser, long accustomed to be up and out when the clock struck six, he dressed himself at once and determined to see something of Warsaw before the Count was about. This good resolution led him first to the splendid avenue upon which the great hotel was built, and here he walked awhile, rejoicing in his freedom and wondering why he had ever parted with it. Let a man have self-reliance and courage enough and there is no city in all the world which may not become a home to him, no land among whose people he may not find friends, no government whose laws shall trouble him. Alban's old nomadic habits brought these truths to his mind again as he walked briskly down the avenue and filled his lungs with the fresh breezes of that sunny morning. Why should he return to the Count at all? What was Gessner's money to him now? He cared less for it than the stones beneath his feet; he would not have purchased an hour's command of a princely fortune for one of these precious moments.

He was not alone in the streets. The electric cars had already commenced to run and there were many soberly dressed work-people hurrying to the factories. It was difficult to believe that this place had been the scene of a civic battle yesterday, or to picture the great avenues, with their pretty trees, tall and stately houses and fine broad pavements, as the scene of an encounter bloody beyond all belief. Not a sign now remained of all this conflict. The dead had already been carried to the mortuaries; the prisoners were safe at the police-stations where, since sundown, the whips had been so busy that their lashes were but crimson shreds. True there were Cossacks at many a street corner and patrols upon some of the broader thoroughfares--but of Revolutionaries not a trace. These, after the patient habits of their race, would go to work to-day as though yesterday had never been. Not a tear would be shed where any other eye could see it--not a tear for the children whose voices were forever silent or the mothers who had perished that their sons might live. Warsaw had become schooled to the necessity of sacrifice. Freedom stood upon the heights, but the valley was the valley of the shadow of death.

Alban realized this in a dim way, for he had heard the story from many a platform in Whitechapel. Perhaps he had enough selfishness in his nature to be glad that the evil sights were hidden from his eyes. His old craving for journeying amid narrow streets came upon him here in Warsaw and held him fascinated. Knowing nothing of the city or its environment, he visited the castle, the barracks, the Saxon gardens, watched the winding river Vistula and the Praga suburb beyond, and did not fail to spy out the old town, lying beneath the guns of the fortress, a maze of red roofs and tortuous streets and alleys wherein the outcasts were hiding. To this latter he turned by some good instinct which seemed to say that he had an errand there. And here little Lois Boriskoff touched him upon the shoulder and bade him follow her--just as imagination had told him would be the case. She had come up to him so silently that even a trained ear might not have detected her footstep. Whence she came or how he could not say. The street wherein they met was one of the narrowest he had yet discovered. The crazy eaves almost touched above his head--the shops were tenanted by Jews already awake and crying their merchandise. Had Alban been a traveller he would have matched the scene only in Nuremberg, the old German town. As it was, he could but stare open-mouthed.

Lois--was it Lois? The voice rang familiarly enough in his ears, the eyes were those pathetic, patient eyes he had known so well in London. But the black hair cut in short and silky curls about the neck, the blue engineer's blouse reaching to the knees, the stockings and shoes below--was this Lois or some young relative sent to warn him of her hiding-place? For an instant he stared at her amazed. Then he understood.

"Lois--it is Lois?" he said.

The girl looked swiftly up and down the street before she answered him. He thought her very pale and careworn. He could see that her hands were trembling while she spoke.

"Go down to the river and ask for Herr Petermann," she said almost in a whisper. "I dare not speak to you here, Alb dear. Go down to the river and find out the timber-yard--I shall be there when you come."

She ran from him without another word and disappeared in one of the rows which diverged from the narrow street and were so many filthy lanes in the possession of the scum of Warsaw. To Alban both her coming and her going were full of mystery. If Count Sergius had told him the truth, the Russian Government wished well not only to her but also to her father, the poor old fanatic Paul who was now in the prison at Petersburg. Why, then, was it necessary for her to appear in the streets of Warsaw disguised as a boy and afraid to exchange a single word with a friend from England. The truth astounded him and provoked his curiosity intolerably. Was Lois in danger then? Had the Count been lying to him? He could come to no other conclusion.

It was not difficult to find Herr Petermann's timber-yard, for many Englishmen found their way there and many a ship's captain from Dantzig had business with the merry old fellow whom Alban now sought out at Lois' bidding. The yard itself might have covered an acre of ground perhaps, bordering the river by a handsome quay and showing mighty stacks of good wood all ready for the barges or seasoning against next year's shipment. Two gates of considerable size admitted the lorries that went in from the town, and by them stood the wooden hut at whose window inquiries must be made. Here Alban presented himself ten minutes after Lois had left him.

"I wish to see Herr Petermann," he said in English.

A young Jew clerk took up a scrap of paper and thrust it forward.

"To write your name, please, mein Herr."

Alban wrote his name without any hesitation whatever. The clerk called a boy, who had been playing by a timber stack, and dispatched him in quest of his chief.

"From Dantzig, mein Herr?" he asked.

"No," said Alban civilly, "from London."

"Ah," said the clerk, "I think it would be Dantzig. Lot of Englishes from Dantzig--you have not much of the woods in Engerland, mein Herr."

He did not expect a reply and immediately applied himself to the useful occupation of killing a blue-bottle with the point of his pen. Two or three lorries rolled in and out while Alban waited. He could see ships passing upon the river and hear the scream of a steam-saw from a shed upon his left hand. A soldier passed the gate, but hardly cast a glance at the yard. Five minutes must have elapsed before Herr Petermann appeared. He held the paper in a thin cadaverous hand as though quite unacquainted with his visitor's name and not at all curious to be enlightened.

"You are Mr. Kennedy," he said in excellent English.

"Yes," said Alban, "a friend of mine told me to come here."

"It would be upon the business of the English ship--ah, I should have remembered it. Please come to my office. I am sorry to have kept you waiting."

He was a short man and very fat, clean shaven and a thorough German in appearance. Dressed in a very dirty white canvas suit, he shuffled rather than walked across the yard, never once looking to the right hand or to the left and apparently oblivious of the presence of a stranger. This manner had befriended him through all the stormy days Warsaw had lately known. Even the police had no suspicion of him. Old fat Petermann, who hobnobbed with sailors--what had revolution to do with him!

"This way, mein Herr--yonder is my office. When I go to Dantzig by water my books go with me. That is very good for the health to live upon the water. Now please to cross the plank carefully, for what shall you say to me if you fall in? This is my _bureau de travail_--you will tell me how you like him by and by."

There were two barges of considerable size moored to the quay and a substantial plank bridged the abyss between the stone and the combings of the great hatchway. Herr Petermann went first, walking briskly in spite of his fat; Alban, no less adroit, followed with a lad's nimble foot and was upon the old fellow's heels when they stepped on board. The barges, he perceived, were fully laden and covered by heavy tarpaulins. Commodious cabins at the stern accommodated the crew--and into one of these Herr Petermann now turned, stooping as he went and crying to his guest to take care.

"It is rather dark, my friend, but you soon shall be accustomed to that. This is my private room, you see. In England you would not laugh at a man who works afloat, for you are all sailors. Now, tell me how you like it?"

The cabin certainly was beautifully furnished. Walls of polished wood had their adornment of excellent seascapes, many of them bought at the Paris salon. A bureau with delightful curves and a clock set at the apex above the writing-shelf pleased Alban immensely--he thought that he had seen nothing more graceful even at "Five Gables"; while the chair to match it needed no sham expert to declare its worth. The carpet was of crimson, without pattern but elegantly bordered. There were many shelves for books, but no evidence of commercial papers other than a great staring ledger which was the one eyesore.

"I like your room very much indeed," said Alban upon his swift survey--"not many people would have thought of this. We are all afraid of the damp in England, and if we talked of a floating office, people would think us mad." And then he added--"But you don't come here in winter, Herr Petermann--this place is no use to you then?"

Herr Petermann smiled as though he were well pleased.

"Every place has its uses sometimes," he rejoined a little vaguely, "we never know what is going to happen to us. That is why we should help each other when the occasion arises. You, of course, are visiting Warsaw merely as a tourist, Mr. Kennedy?"

"Indeed, no--I have come here to find a very old friend, the daughter--"

"No names, if you please, Mr. Kennedy. You have come here, I think you said, to find the son of a very old friend. What makes you suppose that I can help you?"

His change of tone had been a marvellous thing to hear--so swift, so masterful that Alban understood in a moment what strength of will and purpose lay hidden by this bland smile and benevolent manner. Herr Petermann was far from being the simple old fellow he pretended to be. You never could have named him that if you had heard him speak as he spoke those few stern words. Alban, upon his part, felt as though some one had slapped him upon the cheek and called him a fool.

"I am very sorry," he blundered--and then recovering himself, he said as honestly--"Is there any need to ask me for reasons? Are not our aims the same, Herr Petermann?"

"To sell wood, Mr. Kennedy?"

Alban was almost angry.

"I was walking down from the Castle," he began, but again the stern voice arrested him.

"Neither names nor history, if your please, Mr. Kennedy. We are here to do business together as two honest merchants. All that I shall have to ask you is your word, the word of an English gentleman, that nothing which transpires upon my premises shall be spoken of outside under any circumstances whatever."

"That is very readily given, Herr Petermann."

"Your solemn assurance?"

"My solemn assurance."

The old fellow nodded and smiled. He had become altogether benevolent once more and seemed exceedingly pleased with himself and everybody else.

"It is fortunate that you should have applied to me," he exclaimed very cheerily--"since you are thinking of taking a Polish servant--please do not interrupt me--since you are thinking of taking a Polish servant and of asking him to accompany you to England, by boat, if you should find the journey otherwise inconvenient--I merely put the idea to you--there is a young man in my employment who might very honestly be recommended to your notice. Is it not lucky that he is here at this moment--on board this very barge, Mr. Kennedy?"

Alban looked about him astonished. He half expected to see Lois step out of one of the cupboards or appear from the recess beneath Herr Petermann's table. The amiable wood merchant enjoyed his perplexity--as others of his race he was easily amused.

"Ah, I see that I am troubling you," he exclaimed, "and really there is not much time to be lost. Let me introduce this amiable young man to you without delay, Mr. Kennedy. I am sure he will be very pleased to see you."

He stood up and went to the wall of the cabin nearest to the ship's bow. A panel cut in this gave access to the lower deck; he opened it and revealed a great empty hold, deftly covered by the tarpaulin and made to appear fully loaded to any one who looked at the barge from the shore.

"Here is your friend," he cried with huge delight of his own cleverness, "here is the young servant you are looking for, Mr. Kennedy. And mind," he added this in the same stern voice which had exacted the promise, "and mind, I have your solemn promise."