CHAPTER X

IN THE HANDS OF THE POLICE

I had been afraid to shift my position lest the change should rouse any suspicions on the part of the "doctor," and his first attempt was to drag me out while he remained outside.

He seized my left arm and tried to pull me forward, but I had hitched my feet under a board of the flooring, and the attempt failed.

"Come here, Marlen. I'll hand him out to you," he said, turning his head for a moment. "He's got caught up in something or other."

"I can't leave the wheel."

"Stop the launch a minute then."

"It's your own job; do it yourself," was the surly reply.

Muttering an oath at his companion's cowardice, the "doctor" stooped down and, first pushing me roughly to one side out of his way, began to crawl head first into the forecastle.

"Curse the darkness," he murmured.

But my eyes had grown accustomed to it; and it helped me although it hindered him. I could watch him easily. The litter in the place hampered him also, and he stumbled and fell on his knees, and swore again volubly.

Taking advantage of the noise he made, I slipped back a yard or two and gripped my weapon in readiness.

"Where the devil is he?" he muttered, and began to feel about for me.

I was crouching in a corner waiting for a favourable chance to strike, and he could not see me.

The chance came an instant later, as he was stooping down in his hunt for me. Raising my hand I struck him two blows on the head with all my strength and at the same instant slammed the hatch to.

"What's the matter?" shouted Marlen, hearing the noise of the blows and coming forward quickly.

The "doctor" lay as still as a log. I had stunned him or killed him, and at the moment I did not much care which. I kept my hands on him, and if there had been the slightest movement I should have struck him again. I was fighting for my life.

When I was satisfied that he would give me no more trouble, I ran my hands quickly over him in the hope that he would have a revolver; but I could feel nothing of the sort; and as Marlen was fingering the hatch to get it open, I drew back into my corner again.

If he came in to see what had happened, I would serve him as I had served the "doctor." I hoped he would with all my heart.

He got the hatch open after some fumbling and peered in.

"Doctor!" he called, and paused. "Doctor!" A little louder this time. "What have you done? You haven't killed him, have you? Doctor!"

He put his head in a little way, but not far enough for me to make sure of disabling him, and then withdrew it again.

"What the devil does it mean?" He was evidently very frightened.

After a few seconds' pause he ran to the after-part of the launch and stopped her. He waited until the way was off her, and then came forward once more and called to his companion.

"The place is as dark as hell," he muttered and went off, as I guessed to get a light.

I used the time to make another search for a revolver in the stunned man's pockets, and failing to find one, I threw some of the litter over the head and shoulders, and went back to my corner and lay down as if still unconscious, but in such a position that I could spring on Marlen the instant he entered.

This time he brought not only a lantern but a revolver. He had little of the courage of the other fellow I soon saw, and he brought the weapon more because he feared the "doctor" than from any suspicion that I was the cause of the mysterious trouble.

"What fool's game are you playing, doc?" he said. "Don't try any pranks with me. What have you done to the man?"

He thrust in the lantern and peered all about him. I saw him take a long look at me, and the scrutiny apparently satisfied him that I was still of no account; and then he turned from me to the prostrate form of his companion.

He looked long and anxiously at him, and shook his head. "He must have had some sort of fit, if he hasn't got some devil's game on. Doctor!"

He appeared to be afraid to trust himself inside the place, and for some minutes remained in stolid thought.

Next he levelled the revolver at the other. "I'm covering you, doc. Get up or I shall fire." He shook his head again in dire perplexity when he received no reply, and at length made up his mind to risk entering.

He set the lantern down, fortunately on the side farther from me, and stooped to enter, holding the weapon all the time in readiness, and glueing his eyes on the still form of the unconscious man.

At that moment I changed my plan. I would have that revolver if it were in any way possible.

I let him enter, therefore, and crawl to the side of the "doctor." He moved very slowly and with intense caution, feeling the body as he approached the head. Then he pulled off the covering of the face and started violently.

For the instant he was entirely off his guard in his consternation, and I took advantage of that moment. I sprang forward, wrested the revolver from his grasp, thrust him violently down, seized the lantern and started out on to the deck, sliding to the hatch and shooting home the bolt.

I was now master of the situation, and with a profound sigh of relief and thankfulness I sank down on the deck.

I was still very shaky, and the reaction from the strain and suspense of my time in the forecastle tried me severely. My nerves were all to pieces, and when Marlen began hammering with his fists at the hatch, I started as if it were some fresh peril to be faced.

I let him hammer. So far as I was concerned he might have hammered all the skin off his knuckles before I would take any notice; and after my first start of alarmed surprise, I just lay still and rested until I had recovered strength and composure.

He grew tired of knocking presently, and began to whine to me to let him out. But I made no response. He was in a very ugly mess indeed, and a taste of the suspense I had had to undergo would do him good. He could spend the interval in thinking out some plausible explanation of his exceedingly compromising situation.

Meanwhile I had to think what I was to do. I did not understand the working of the launch, which was drifting at the will of the stream; and there appeared to be nothing for it but to let her drift until we met a boat, and I could get assistance.

But it then occurred to me that I myself might be hard put to it to give an account of myself. My clothes were in a filthy state as the result of my crawling hunt in the dirty forecastle, and when I examined them by the light of the lantern I found some ugly blood-stains on my sleeves.

These would go far to set up the presumption that I was responsible for the wound to the "doctor"; and as I was now outside and armed with a revolver and the two men were my prisoners, the German police would require a lot of persuasion that I was the innocent and they the guilty parties.

Any investigation would most certainly occupy a long time, moreover; and as my chief desire was to get back to Berlin with the least possible delay, I resolved not to run the risk of waiting for the police or any one else to come to my assistance.

There was only one way to accomplish this: I must swim ashore. I found much to my relief that my pockets had not been rifled, and that I had sufficient money for a ticket to Berlin. But I could not travel in a blood-stained coat; so I hunted through the boat and came across a rough reefer's jacket in the after-cabin, which I annexed. I then undressed, tore out the blood-stained portions of my own coat, made a bundle of my clothes, and managed to fasten it on my head.

Then I waited until the launch had drifted pretty close to the bank on the side where the railway ran, when I let myself carefully over the side and struck out.

Just as I was pushing off I heard Marlen start shouting and hammering again at the hatch, and the muffled sounds reached me across the water until I reached the shore.

They ceased as I finished dressing myself and started out to ascertain where I was and which was the nearest station to make for.

The swim in the cold water chilled me; but I set off at a brisk pace and soon had my blood circulating again.

I had not an idea where I was, except that I knew my way lay up stream; so I struck across country until I came to a road leading in the direction I had to go, and I set off to walk until I could ascertain where to find a station.

I knew I should have to be very cautious about asking any questions. German police methods were very different from English, and a man garbed as I was, without any papers of identification and carrying a loaded revolver, was pretty sure to be an object of suspicion. It would be exceedingly difficult for me to give any acceptable account of myself without telling all that had occurred; and that would certainly mean that I should be detained, and probably left to cool my heels in a police-cell while the cumbersome wheels of the law were put in motion to investigate my story.

I plodded along for an hour or two, keeping my ears at full strain for any footsteps ahead of me, and taking the greatest care to make as little noise in walking as possible.

In my weakened state, I found this extremely fatiguing, and more than once I had to sit down and rest. Eager as I was to reach the capital, I grudged every second of these intervals of inaction.

I was on fire with impatience to ascertain what had happened to Althea in my absence. How long I had been away from home I could not tell; and I tortured myself with a hundred fears on her account.

Von Felsen was not the man to lose a minute in getting to work, as soon as he knew I was out of his way; and of course his creature, Dragen, would have told him at once of the success of the attempt to kidnap me.

Until I had left the launch, the consideration for my own safety and the weighing of the chances of escape had kept me from fretting about matters in Berlin; but now that I was free and on the way back, every minute seemed to be of vital consequence, and the thought that I might be stopped by the police harassed and worried me into a positive fever of dread.

Fortune did me a good turn, however. I heard the rumble of a train as I was sitting by the roadside, and presently I saw it rush rapidly past a few hundred yards above the road where I was.

This did more to revive my strength than anything else could have done, and a moment later I was striding across the intervening fields to reach the line. I knew I should not meet any one there, and I pushed ahead with more confidence than I had yet felt.

Soon afterwards the gloom began to lift, and the sky grew grey in the east. Dawn was near; and as the light grew stronger, I saw a station not far ahead.

If all went well, an hour or two would see me out of my fix and speeding toward Berlin. But everything depended upon the "if." I was already committing an offence in walking on the line; and I knew that my greatest difficulties might easily come at the station itself.

I left the line, therefore, while still at a considerable distance from the station, and made my way back to the road again. In doing this I stumbled into a rather broad ditch and made myself in a pretty mess.

Under ordinary circumstances I should have laughed at this; but as so much might turn on my appearance, already dishevelled enough, it irritated me and promised to prove an additional handicap, when the time came for questions to be asked.

I looked very much like a tramp, and the German law is not kindly disposed toward tramps at any time, and certainly not when they are found wandering about armed in the early dawn. Still, I had to make the best of things, so I plodded along until I reached the station.

But the door was locked and, although some one must have been attending to the signals, I could not see any one. The name on the end of the building was Wilden; but that did not help me much, as I had never heard of the place.

I was debating what to do when a very sleepy-looking official came lounging up to the door, unlocked it and entered, eyeing me with glances full of suspicion the while.

"When is the next train to Berlin?" I asked him.

He looked me up and down carefully and then grinned. "Do you want a first-class ticket?"

I took his impertinence lightly. "You needn't judge by my appearance," I said with a laugh. "I have money to pay for any ticket I want," and I repeated the question.

"Where did you get it from? And what are you doing hanging about here at this time in the morning?"

"I'm going to wait for the next train to Berlin."

"Well, you won't wait in here;" and with that he slammed the door in my face.

It is very little use to argue with a man who is on the right side of a locked door, so I turned away and walked a little distance along the road by which I had come, and sat down under a tree to wait.

I was cold, intensely weary, and famished with hunger; and although I fought against sleep, nature would not be denied, and I was soon off. The thunder of a train woke me, and jumping up I saw a train running into the station.

I hurried back to the station and the man I had seen before met me at the entrance. "Hullo, you again, is it?" he cried.

"I want a ticket for Berlin."

"That train doesn't go to Berlin. You'll have time to go and wash yourself first"; and he deliberately blocked my way.

As all railway officials were Government servants, I had to be cautious in dealing with him. "Where does that train go, then?" I asked very civilly.

He sneered. "Ah, I thought as much. Anywhere, eh, to get away from this place? But you're not going by it, my friend."

It was getting difficult to keep my temper, but I replied quietly:

"You are evidently making a great mistake about me."

"Oh no, I'm not," he laughed, with a knowing shake of the head. "Where did you sleep last night? And who are you?"

"I am going to Berlin," I said. But as the train started at that moment there was nothing to be gained by continuing to wrangle with the man, so I turned away.

Then he said in a less surly tone: "There's no train for two hours. You can wait in the station."

I was glad enough to have the chance, and sitting down on one of the benches in the waiting-room, was soon fast asleep again.

When I woke I saw the reason for his apparent concession. A police officer was with him and had roused me. I blinked at him confusedly.

"Come along with me," he ordered curtly.

"I want to go to Berlin. I must get there without delay."

"Come with me, I tell you," he repeated very sharply. "We must know something about you first."

With a shrug I rose, and he walked me off to the police station, the railway official accompanying us. I concealed my bitter irritation as best I could, and tried to think of the best story to tell. The railwayman said what he knew, and the officer in charge of the station questioned me. "Who are you?"

"There has been a great mistake made by this gentleman. I am an Englishman, Paul Bastable, 78, Miedenstrasse, Berlin, a newspaper correspondent. I have been away in search of information about some events I cannot tell you, and must return to Berlin at once."

"Where have you come from?"

"I am not at liberty to tell you; but you can send some one with me to Berlin if you wish, and I can satisfy him of the truth about me."

"Have you searched him?" he asked the man who had taken me there.

He did it at once without any ceremony, and together they examined the contents of my pockets. When they looked next at me, it was with obvious suspicion, and the constable turned back the collar of the reefer jacket at the back and then nodded to his superior.

"Paul Bastable, English, are you? Then how come you to have the papers of Johann Spackmann, engineer, with you, and to be wearing his coat?"

What a stroke of ill luck! I had seen the man take a paper from the inside pocket of the jacket I had annexed from the launch. I hesitated and then forced a laugh. "I suppose you know that newspaper men have to be somebody else at times. I have told you the truth. Send some one with me to Berlin."

"I knew there was something wrong about him," put in the railwayman. "But I must be off, the Berlin train is due."

"For Heaven's sake don't let me miss that train," I cried earnestly.

A stolid stare and a shake of the head was the only reply.

"But I tell you I must get on at once."

"You will remain here while we make inquiries about you."

My heart sank. "Well, let me telegraph to my people and they will send some one out to identify me. Or wire the message yourself"; and I gave Bassett's name and the address of my former office.

"Well, good-morning," said the railwayman; and as he left the station I was led away and placed in a cell.