Part 27

In the shed, which had been destined but luckily not used as a kennel for the Adjutant's Pomeranian boar-hound, the boy remained in durance vile for a period of several days. The drills and parades, the buglings and drummings that marked the ordinary course of garrison life, alone enlivened the cramped monotony. He was given coarse food and drink three times a day, and permitted to exercise for half-an-hour in charge of a corporal within the limits of the gravelled courtyard. Soldiers were drilling there on most of these occasions, big men in the brand-new green-grey uniform that seemed a kind of Service kit, and who regarded Bawne with looks of quite incomprehensible malignancy, and when their mouths were not closed by Prussian military discipline, made coarse or beastly jokes at his expense.

You are to suppose a pitifully unequal struggle on the part of the boy to maintain decency, cleanliness, and self-respect under these conditions, which would have ended in hopeless lethargy had the Saxham pup sprung from a feebler race. Two things helped him at this juncture. The Rosary he said in his straw lair at night, and certain stimulating reading contained in a sea-stained and grimy-paged Scout's Notebook, that nobody had seen him with, or having seen had thought it worth their while to take away. You can see him on the sixth morning of captivity squatting on his straw, poring over the Alphabet of the Morse Signalling Code, the Rules for First Aid, and so on, following the ten precepts of Scout Law.

"_Rule No. 7_. A Scout obeys orders of his patrol-leader or scout-master without question."

He nodded his head as he read the words and his heavy eyes brightened. He pushed back the dulled and rumpled hair from his forehead and straightened his hunched back.

"_Rule No. 8_. A Scout smiles and whistles under all difficulties...."

The smile was bravely forced. He held up his head, filled his lungs with air, inflated his chest, pouted his lips, and began to whistle _Rule Britannia_. And at the second bar, somebody booted the door heavily and a thick voice bellowed:

"_Halt den Mund!_"

It was the voice of the soldier who was Bawne's jailor, and the whistle quavered and broke down. And as the boyish heart swelled to bursting and the irrepressible tears brimmed over, a musical motor-horn, some distance off, sounded clearly and sweetly:

"Ta-rara-ta ra!" And a Prussian officer's voice drowned out the sweetness of the answering echo, shouting:

"_Achtung! Wache heraus!_"

Bugles sounded, side-drums beat, there was a crunching of heavy boots upon stone and gravel, followed by the click of presented arms, and the groaning of the heavy gates swung back. Amidst all these significant noises, you caught the purr and crackle of pneumatic tyres rolling over the wooden bridge into the courtyard. As they stopped short, a bugle sounded imperatively, and hoarse voices gave the order:

"_Helm ab!_"

And a multitudinous shout answered--a thick, short, crashing utterance that suggested the fall of a tree. Three trees fell crashing, and then in a little still of awe a sharp, hollow voice answered:

"_Danke, meine Kinden!_"

And the boy squatting, listening in the straw, was conscious of a queer tingling sensation that made his hair stiffen on his scalp and sent odd little waves of shuddering down the whole length of his spine. The voice was not melodious or powerful. But it set the nerves on edge, and made you wonder what he could be like--the man to whom it belonged. And the question made a picture in the mind, of a mouth with thin lips that were parched and discoloured, a cruel mouth, matching the harsh and hollow utterance.

The time crawled on and the sun climbed high. It must have been noon or nearly when measured steps approached the shed, and the door was unlocked. This time a non-commissioned officer who had kicked Bawne yesterday caught hold of the boy, hauled him out of the shed, and made at the double towards the squat stone building bestridden by the pair of Wireless towers. Their intolerable shadows, the sun being nearly overhead, barred the big courtyard with wide lateral and diagonal bands and stripes of blackness. It was as though two Brobdingnagian spiders had spun there a pair of webs of incredible size.

There were soldiers on guard with fixed bayonets at the open doors, that led into the square low-ceiled stone vestibule. Before the two wide steps stood a bright yellow motor-car. It was big, roomy, and luxurious, with the Prussian eagle in black and red on both doors. A young officer in field-grey and flat cap sat immovable at the steering-wheel. At a little distance waited two other cars. Their chauffeurs wore a dark blue livery with silver braid and buttons, and these cars were black-enamelled and studiously plain.

Inside the vestibule were more sentries and a small body of soldiers, all with fixed bayonets. Also three dubious individuals in black uniform who might have been detectives or not. They were grouped outside a heavy door on the right hand as you entered. Despite the presence of so many persons a singular quiet reigned. Footfalls made no noise on the floor, presumably of stone, covered with thick, resilient red rubber. There were no windows, light being admitted from overhead by a skylight of thick opaline glass.

I have said that quiet reigned, but as the corollary of a sharp harsh voice that talked without cessation. It upbraided, denounced, interrogated; interrupted conjectural answers with contradiction; burst out anew into shrill denunciation, and switched off the current of abuse to pelt its object with questions again. It rasped the nerves. Of the men who heard it some grew pale, others were red and sweated freely. When it broke off in a scream like a vicious stallion's neigh, a susurration of horror passed from one to another of the erect, silent, and rigid men waiting in the vestibule. The neighing scream was followed by a small commotion. The door opened, and a tall, grey-moustached, grey-cloaked cavalry officer, in a silver helmet crested with a perching eagle, demanded--Bawne's little German serving him once more at this juncture:

"Water! Immediately--a glass of water!" and vanished again.

An orderly got the water, passing out by another tall door in the centre of the vestibule and coming back with a filled tumbler on a china plate. One of the men in black snatched it from him and knocked officiously. But the harsh shrill voice had begun to rate again, and when the door was opened, a thick-set officer in a spiked infantry helmet, with a glittering gold moustache and sharp blue eyes twinkling through glittering gold pince-nez, waved the water away as though it had never been asked for.

"The boy!" he said, in a shrill falsetto whisper. "_Seine Majestaet_ wants the boy!"

Then it seemed as though twenty zealous hands propelled the boy towards the mysterious room's threshold. The officer in pince-nez grabbed his arm and pulled him briskly in.

*CHAPTER XLVII*

*THE MAN OF "THE DAY"*

You were in a square, singularly light, though windowless room immediately underneath the lower, pointed end of the biggest Wireless. The room was lighted along the top of the walls on two sides by oblong slabs of thick opaque glass with many ventilators controlled by levers. The huge metal ribs and supports of the colossal steel tower overhead were built deep into the solid stone masonry. Through a massive block of crystal glass--the insulator on which the pointed end of the mast rested, your vision was snatched up--up dizzily--through the vertical labyrinth of metal ribs and girders, until it ended at the inner extremity of the apex, seven hundred and fifty feet above. The shrill song of the wind amongst the steel ribs, and spars, and guy-ropes, whose ends were linked to reinforced steel beams or ground-anchors, sunk in heavy outside foundations of masonry, hardly reached one here. But from the dynamo-room that absorbed the space between this and the second Wireless chamber, you heard the deep moan of the Goldberg Alternator, its rotor speed maintained by a 500 horse-power Krafit engine, sunk, to lessen the tremendous vibration, in a solid steel and cement lined power-house, deep below the level of the soggy ground.

The boy's wide blue eyes took in the wonder and the strangeness of his surroundings. Lightness and whiteness, a ship-shape neatness, a scrupulous freedom from dust, a dazzling polish and burnish on surfaces or knobs or handles of wood, brass, or copper, characterised the place. About the walls were metal cylinders with pipes and induction-coils, frames supporting reels of wire in rows, and brass things like pincers in rows above them; and above these, rows of shining crystal bull's-eyes like port-lights, and yet others with stars and circles of electric bulbs.

At the distant end of the long, light, shining room, the deck-like run of the polished boards was broken by a step leading to a platform where the rigidly-erect figures of three men in dark blue uniform sat at the middle, and at either end of a long narrow table burdened with instruments whose use Bawne partly knew. The midmost operator, sitting with his back to you, wore a head-band with receiver ear-pieces, beyond which his ears, large, thick, and red as quarter-pounds of beefsteak, projected in a singularly grotesque way. The man seated on the right of the table had a paper-pad and pencil, and the man on the left sat in front of a typewriter, with lowered intent eyes and fingers crooked above the keys, as one waiting to type off a Wireless message, and the tingling desire to approach and see the apparatus more closely evoked a wiggle on the part of the boy that was grimly checked by a big hard hand that gripped his arm. This reminded him that he was a prisoner. Like von Herrnung, Bawne thought and--then upon his right he became aware of von Herrnung, green as a drowned man--and with all the stiffening gone out of him--wilting over the supporting arms of two officers of the garrison. And then a voice said something shrilly and harshly--and Saxham's son found himself looking into a pair of steel-blue, shining, flickering eyes, with whites curiously veined with red.

The man to whom the eyes belonged sat immediately facing you, on the opposite side of a big kneehole writing-table with rows of drawers in its pedestals, and official-looking ledgers upon it, also files of papers, dispatch-cases, three big inkstands, and the shining metal pillar of a telephone transmitter, the base of which the officer gripped with his right hand as he leaned forwards, sharply scrutinising you. The hand was large and muscular, with short, thick, crooked fingers, covered with jewelled rings that sparkled in the sun.

Half a dozen other officers stood at some little distance behind the seated personage.... Five out of the six wore the Service dress of grey-green serge, with spiked helmets covered with the same material. Badges, buckles, chain-straps, and the hilts of swords curved or straight were dulled to rigorous uniformity, and belts, gloves, and boots were of earth, not tan-coloured, brown. Thus much Bawne grasped, but of these individualities, save one, he got no clear impression. You were obliged to look at, and think of, the man sitting in the chair.

Those strange eyes stung as they fastened on you and sucked at you, somehow making you think of a tiger lurking in a cave of ice. They were shadowed by the peak of a grey-green field-cap, with an edge of vivid crimson showing above its deep band of silver lace, oakleaf and acorn-patterned. He wore a loose grey overcoat with silver buttons, thrown open to reveal a grey-green single-breasted Service jacket with a turn-down collar edged with silver lace and faced with crimson, and a glittering decoration dangling below the hook. But as he was of the short-necked, fleshy type of man, and kept his head well down and thrust forward, staring you out of countenance over a grizzled moustache with upright, bushy ends--and all the light in the room came from overhead, the decoration was obscured by the shadow of his chin. A sharp chin, meagrely modelled, with a cleft in the middle, suggesting petulance and vanity. The chin of a mediocre actor of romantic parts.

"So you are the boy?"

The tobacco-stained teeth in the mouth under the dyed moustache were filled and patched with gold that glittered when he spoke to you. There was a flash of yellow metal now as he added:

"You do not answer, no? Come nearer, boy!"

His legs, short, thick legs in grey riding-breeches and brown boots with beautiful spurs of gold and steel, stuck out towards you under the table. As you stepped out briskly to lessen the distance between you, he pulled the legs back sharply, and a handsome, dark young officer, standing on his right, put out a brown-gloved hand warningly, as though the border of the big Turkey rug on which stood the kneehole writing-table were a frontier-line that must not be crossed.

As he did this, the seated man glanced round at him, nodding approval, and the pale, jagged seam of a scar on his left cheek showed plainly against the dark, harsh, fever-dry skin. With the slewing of his head the decoration hanging by a swivel at the collar of his single-breasted Service jacket flashed into the light. Bawne saw a large Maltese Cross eight-pointed and blue-enamelled, having a black eagle, with outspread wings, between each arm. Crossed swords in diamonds were above, surmounted by a diamond Crown Imperial. And a black and white ribbon supported another Cross of plain black edged with silver, at a buttonhole of the Norfolk-cut jacket of grey-green. Possibly the boy had guessed in whose presence he stood, even before the young officer, at an impatient signal from his master, said in excellent English:

"I am commanded to tell you that you are in the presence of the Emperor of Germany."

*CHAPTER XLVIII*

*PATRINE IS ENGAGED*

"Don't tell me--not that you ever have--that there ain't such a thing as Providence!" Thus Franky, after lunch upon the fateful Third of August, from the hearthrug of the drawing room at 00, Cadogan Place. "When," he went on, "just as I'm on the point of sendin' in my papers to please you--good old England kerwumps into War!"

He continued, as Margot shrugged her small shoulders:

"All right, best child! Bet you twenty to one in gloves it comes off!--as sure as the Austrian monitors were shellin' Belgrade, and the British Cabinet were sittin' on Sunday, and the weekly rags selling like hot cakes, when you and me and the rest of the congregation were slowly oozin' out of Church. Why, the Kaiser and the Tsar have been at loggerheads since Saturday. German troops are swampin' Luxembourg, and the next move will be the Invasion of France. There We come in--and the rest of the big European Powers! Like a row of beehives kicked over!--all the swarms mixed and stingin', and Kittums' little Franky in the middle of the scrum!"

"Why are you so--frightfully keen about it?"

Margot's great dark deer-eyes were vaguely troubled. She got up from her writing-table, a lovely thing in Russian tulip-tree, the shelf of which was graced by a row of mascots: Ti-Ti and the jade tree-frog, Jollikins, Gojo, and half a dozen more.

"Best child, I'm not keen!" asserted Franky. "But I'm pattin' myself on the back--gloatin' over the knowledge that I'm not a bally Has Been--but a real live soldier--just when I'm likely to be wanted to be one! Switch on?"

He added, as Margot shook her head: "My grammar's a bit off, but I know what I mean if I can't express it. Here's a telegraph-kid on a red spider. Two to one in cough-drops that yellow screed's for me! Callin' me to Headquarters just as I'd got into my civvy rags to spend the afternoon with my wife!"

The prophecy proved correct. Franky vanished upstairs to peel, plunge into his Guards' uniform, and whirl away, borne by a taxi, into the dim conjectural regions known as Headquarters.

Margot went back to her desk to re-read a type-written letter from the Secretary of the Krauss and Wolfenbuchel Fraueenklinik at Berlin, counselling the honoured English lady whose introduction, supplied by a former lady-client, was specially satisfactory!--to secure a room at the Institute, by the payment of a moiety of the fee in advance. The crowd of applicants desirous to subject themselves to the wonderful "Purple Dreams" treatment, was so large, the accommodation, by comparison, so restricted, that to follow this course would be the only wise plan. Similar treatment could be obtained in Paris and Brussels, but to ensure success beyond doubt it was wisest to seek it at the German fountainhead. One hundred guineas would secure admission to the Berlin Fraueenklinik. By cheque made payable to the British Agent of Professors Krauss and Wolfenbuchel, Mr. Otto Busch, 000, Cornhill, London, E.C. It would be advisable were the English client to follow her remittance, taking up residence in Berlin within the next few days. Travelling might not be so easy in October, mildly hinted the Secretary of the Institute.

Why, bosh! what utter piffle! Good old England wasn't going to toddle into any European War in a hurry, decided Margot. She had had enough bother over the South African biz. Perhaps if Germany was having a rag with Russia, and a tiny bit of a scrap with France, one would have to get a passport, and travel by a different route to Berlin. Perhaps the best thing would be to go now--and stick the boredom of a three months' residence in the Kaiser's capital! Why not? Under the existing circumstances, one would be bored anywhere.

She drew the cheque, and enclosed it to Mr. Busch's address, and wrote a little letter in a huge hand to the Secretary, saying that she had done this and was obliged by his advice. Then she 'phoned to the Club to ask Patrine to come round to tea at 00, Cadogan Place. Miss Saxham was not there, according to the hall-porter, but might be found at AA, Harley Street. There Margot ran her to earth. Yes, Pat would come with pleasure! but upon condition that Lady Norwater was alone.

"Of course!" Margot remembered. "She's in mourning for the pretty kiddy-cousin! I must be getting stupid, or I'd have thought of that!"

But when the tall figure passed under the Persian portiere of the Cadogan Place drawing-room, it was arrayed in a revealing gown of pale rose lisse with the well-known stole of black feathers and a tall-crowned hat of golden braiding topped the Nile sunrise hair.

"Why, I thought--" Margot began:

"I know! Do you think it horribly unfeeling?" The speaker stooped to kiss the soft cheek of the little creature curled up in the corner of a favourite sofa in a favourite attitude which conveyed an impression of Margot's having no feet. Patrine did not look at all horrid or unfeeling as she said, winking back the tears that had overbrimmed her underlids, "My heart is in crape if my body isn't!"

"I know!" Margot's lovely eyes looked sympathy. "I remember how fond you've always been of the little cousin."

"Uncle Owen and Lynette won't believe that the darling's drowned," Patrine went on. "But I can't hope! I'm not of the hoping kind! When I shut my eyes I seem to see Bawne fighting to keep afloat--then sinking. It's as though he called me, and--it's horrible!" She shuddered. "It's horrible!"

"And--Count von Herrnung? The German Flying Man?" Margot touched the large white hand next her. "You know what a bad hand I am at saying things that are consolatory and cosy. Couldn't rake up a single text for my life--or if I did I'd quote 'em wrong end topside. Like the callow curate who assured the weeping widow that 'Heaven tempers the wind to the lorn sham!'"

"I'll let you off the texts, not being a weeping widow!"

But Patrine's pale cheeks burned. Margot pursued, not looking at them:

"Rhona Helvellyn told me there was nothing serious between you. Indeed, she said you rather hated him than otherwise. But of course you're sorry he's drowned, naturally!"

There was a silence. Then:

"Yes," Patrine agreed, "I rather hated him than otherwise!"

"Ah!" Margot's little face was sage. "It's a pity you don't care for some nice man or other!"

"Isn't it?"

"But you will one day. It's much nicer to live with your husband than with your sister. Though I never had a sister," added Margot. Then her mind, light and brilliant as a humming-bird, flitted to another subject. "Rhona and her two Militants lunched with me on Sunday. Awfully down on their luck, all three. The Grand Slam they'd planned--the surprise-packet for the Mansion House Banquet had had the lid put on it by the Police. Fancy Scotland Yard finding out anything! But it had, for Rhona got a mysterious note warning her that she'd be dropped on before she could open her head. So--the Bishops toddled through their speeches without being interrupted! Sit down and light up. These Balkan Sobranies are tophole!"

"I can't stay!" But Patrine sat down on the sofa, dipped in the ever-brimful silver box, and kindled a cigarette.

"Where's His Nibs?" she asked. For not even the chastening of bereavement could cure Patrine of slanginess.

"Called to B.P.G. Headquarters suddenly." Margot blew rings. "Or doing duty for some pal or other at the Tower. Don't bother about him! Tell me--why can't you stay with me?"

"Aunt Lynette wants me, for one thing. And----"

"And who for the other?"

"A man!" Patrine sent a thin blue spiral of cigarette smoke twirling upwards from her pursed lips. Intently she watched it climbing and spreading. When it faded between her absorbed eyes and the Futurist mouldings of the lapis lazuli-grounded ceiling whereon a silver comet swung in a great elliptical orbit about a golden central Sun, she resumed:

"A man----"

"That makes two men!" said Margot shrewdly,

"No, only one. A man I'm going to marry. Rather soon, too," said Patrine calmly, and put her cigarette into her mouth again.

"PAT!"

Margot was staring at her blankly.

"Well, my dinkie?"

"Isn't this frightfully previous?"

Patrine removed the cigarette to say:

"It depends on how you look at things."

"But--when did you meet?"

"In Paris."

"Do I know him?"

"No, luckily for me!"

Margot's small, amazed face dimpled a little at the compliment.

"Is he nice?"

"I think so!"

"In Our Set?"

"I don't think so! He's a Flying Man by profession. Now you know nearly as much as I do," said Patrine. "And I've to be getting back to Harley Street." She rose from the sofa, towering over her small, indignant friend.

"You're not going out of this room until you tell me the rest of it! What is his name, and when did--it--come off?"

"His name is Alan--and he only asked me on Wednesday, when he came to Harley Street. He has called every day since that horrible 18th of July, but this time he came to bring"--Patrine choked a little--"Bawne's Scout staff and smasher. They had been forgotten in the dressing-shed at the Flying School. Lynette was too ill to go down to receive them. I had to instead--and the sight of them broke me up."

"I--see!"

"And," Patrine went on, "he--Alan--was being sympathetic, when Uncle Owen came in."

"My hat!" Margot sat up, her small face alight and sparkling. "The Doctor-man with the chin and eyebrows! Did he give you unlimited wigging or relent and bless you like the heavy uncle in a proper French Comedy?"

"He saw how things were between us. He wasn't astonished. He was very kind. He is always kind!" said Patrine, swallowing. "If I really believed God were as good as Uncle Owen, I shouldn't be afraid to die."

"He makes me feel like an earwig under a steam-roller," affirmed Margot. "And the charming aunt. Does she cotton to the engagement?"