Chapter 10

Von Wetten shrugged. "They are strictly illegal, sir," he replied, formally. "There are severe penalties prescribed for such actions. But, in the army, in the daily give-and-take of the life of a regiment, of course, they do happen. Herr Bettermann," very stiffly, "was unfortunate."

Betterman was staring at him, but said nothing. The Baron glanced from Von Wetten to the lean young man and shook his head.

"I am beginning I think I am beginning to see," he said. "And it seems to me that I shall not need that cheque-book. Herr Bettermann, I am very sure you have not forgotten the name of that officer."

"Forgotten!" said the other. "No, I've not forgotten. And, so that you shan't forget, I've got it written down for you!"

He fished a card from the breast-pocket of his blue shirt. The Baron received it, and held it up to the light.

"Captain Graf von Specht, the Kaiserjaeger," he read aloud. "Ever hear of him, Von Wetten?"

Von Wetten nodded. "Neighbor of mine in the country, Excellenz," he replied. "We were at the cadet-school together. Colonel now; promoted during the war. He would regret, I am sure."

"He will regret, I am sure," interrupted the Baron, pocketing the card. "And he will have good cause. Well, Herr Bettermann, I think I know your terms now. You want to see the Graf von Specht again here? I am right, am I not?"

Bettermann's eyes narrowed at him. "Yes," he said. "You're right. Only this time it is he that must bring the whip!"

Herr Haase's intelligence, following like a shorthand-writer's pencil, ten words behind the speaker, gave a leap at this. Till now, the matter had been for him a play without a plot; suddenly understanding, he cast a startled glance at Von Wetten.

The captain sat up alert.

"Certainly!" The old baron was replying to young Bettermann. "And stand to attention! And salute! I told you that I would agree to your terms, and I agree accordingly. Captain that is, Colonel von Specht shall be here, with the whip, as soon as the telegraph and the train can bring him. And then, I assume, the machine."

"Pardon!" Captain von Wetten had risen. "I have not understood." He came forward between the two, very erect and military, and rather splendid with his high-held head and drilled comeliness of body. "There has been much elegance of talk and I am stupid, no doubt; but, in plain German, what is it that Colonel von Specht is to do?"

Bettermann swooped at him again, choking with words; the captain stood like a monument callous to his white and stammering rage, the personification and symbol of his caste and its privilege.

It was the Baron who answered from his seat on the parapet, not varying his tone and measured delivery.

"Colonel von Specht," he said, "is to bring a whip here and stand to attention while Herr Bettermann cuts him over the face with it. That is all. Now sit down and be silent."

Captain von Wetten did not move. "This is impossible," he said. "There are limits. As a German officer, I resent the mere suggestion of this insult to the corps of officers. Your Excellency."

The Baron lifted that quiet hand of his. "I order you to sit down and be silent," he said.

Captain von Wetten hesitated. It seemed to Herr Haase, for a flattering instant, that the captain's eyes sought his own, as though in recognition of a familiar and favorable spirit. He tried to look respectfully sympathetic.

"Very good, your Excellency," said Von Wetten, at length. "The Emperor, of course, will be informed."

He turned and stalked away to his former place. The Baron, watching him, smiled briefly.

"Well, Herr Bettermann," said the Baron, rising stiffly, "it will not help us to have this arrangement of ours in writing. I think we'll have to trust one another. Our chemists, then, can come to you for the formula as soon as you have finished with Colonel von Specht? That is agreed yes? Good! And you see, I was right from the beginning; I did not need my cheque-book after all."

He began to move towards the house, beckoning Captain von Wetten and Herr Haase to follow him. Herr Haase picked up the empty suit-case, stood aside to let Von Wetten pass, and brought up the rear of the procession.

At the foot of the wooden steps that led up to the veranda, the Baron halted and turned to Bettermann.

"One thing makes me curious," he said. "Suppose we had not accepted your terms, what would you have done? Sold your machine to our enemies?"

Bettermann was upon the second step, gauntly silhouetted against the yellow wood of the house. He looked down into the elder man's strong and subtle face.

"No," he answered. "I meant to at first, but I haven't purged the German out of me yet and I couldn't. But I'd let your army of slaves and slave-drivers be beaten by its own slavery as it would be and you know it. I wouldn't take a hand in it; only, if anything happened to me; if, for instance, I disappeared some night, well, you'd find the machine and the formula in the hands of the English, that's all!"

He turned and led the way up the wooden steps. It seemed to tired Herr Haase, lugging the suit-case, that Captain von Wetten was swearing under his breath.

He was not imaginative, our Herr Haase; facts were his livelihood and the nurture of his mind. But in the starved wastes of his fancy something had struck a root, and as he rode Thun-wards in the front seat of the car, with the suit-case in his lap and the setting sun in his eyes, he brooded upon it. It was the glimpse of the little wife in the balcony the girl who had lived with the scar upon her husband's face and in his soul, and had leaned forward to eavesdrop upon his cruel triumph. Behind him, the two demi-gods talked together; snatches of their conversation tempted him to listen; but Herr Haase was engrossed with another matter. When the Prussian colonel, one living agony of crucified pride, stood for the blow, and the whip whistled through the air to thud on the flesh of his upturned face would she be watching then?

He was still thinking of it when the car drew up at the hotel door.

"Upstairs at once," directed the Baron, as he stepped hastily to the sidewalk. "You too, my good Haase; we shall want you."

In the Baron's upper room, where that morning he had suffered the torture of the boot, Herr Haase was given a seat at the little writing-table. The Baron himself cleared it for him, wiping its piles of papers to the floor with a single sweep of his hand.

"Get ready to write the telegrams which we shall dictate," he commanded. "But first will you be able to get them through in code?"

"Code is forbidden, your Excellency," replied Herr Haase, in his parade voice. "But we have also a phrase-code, a short phrase for every word of the message which passes. It makes the telegram very long."

"Also gut!" approved the Baron. "Now, Von Wetten, first we will wire the Staff. You know how to talk to them; so dictate a clear message to Haase here."

Von Wetten was standing by the door, hat and cane in hand. His face, with its vacant comeliness, wore a formality that was almost austere.

"Zu Befehl, Excellenz," he replied. "But has your Excellency considered that, after all, there may be other means? I beg your Excellency's pardon, but it occurs to me that we have not tried alternative offers. For instance, we are not limited as to money."

The Baron made a little gesture of impatience, indulgent and paternal. He leaned a hand on the table and looked over Herr Haase's head to the tall young officer.

"We are not limited as to colonels, either," he answered. "We must think ourselves lucky, I suppose, that he went no higher than a colonel. There was a moment when I thought he was going very much higher to the very top, Von Wetten. For, make no mistake, that young man knows his value."

Von Wetten frowned undecidedly. "The top," he repeated. "There is only one top. You can't mean?"

The Baron took the word from his mouth. "Yes," he said, "the Emperor. I thought for a while he was going to demand that. And do you know what I should have answered?"

Von Wetten threw up his head and his face cleared. "Of course I know," he said. "You'd have cut the dirty traitor down where he stood!"

The Baron did not move. "No," he said. "I should have accepted those terms also, Von Wetten."

The Baron's hand rested on the edge of the table in front of Herr Haase; he sat, staring at it, a piece of human furniture on the stage of a tragedy. The other two confronted each other above his patient and useful head. He would have liked to look from one to the other, to watch their faces, but he was too deeply drilled for that. He heard Von Wetten's voice with a quaver in it.

"Then things are going as badly as all that?"

"Yes," answered the Baron. "Badly! It is not just this battle that is going on now in France; it strikes deeper than that. The plan that was to give us victory has failed us; we find ourselves, with a strength which must diminish, fighting an enemy whose strength increases. We must not stop at anything now; what is at stake is too tremendous."

"But--."

The Baron hushed him. "Listen, Von Wetten," he said. "I will be patient with you. I do not speak to you of of the Idea of which Germany and Prussia are the body and the weapon. No; but have you ever realized that you, yes, you! belong to the most ridiculed, most despised nation on earth? That your countrywomen furnish about eighty per cent. of the world's prostitutes; that a German almost anywhere is a waiter, or a sausage-manufacturer, or a beer-seller, the butt of comic papers in a score of languages? All that has not occurred to you, eh?

"Well, think of it, and think, too, of what this machine may do for us. Think of a Germany armed in a weaponless world, and, if empire and mastery convey nothing to you, think of oh! American women walking the streets in Berlin, comic English waiters in German cafe's, slavish French laborers in German sweat-shops. And all this boxed into a machine on a tripod by a monomaniac whose price we can pay!"

He paused and walked towards the window. "Dictate the telegram to the Staff, Von Wetten," he said, over his shoulder.

Von Wetten laid his hat and cane on a chair and crossed the room. "I feel as if I were stabbing a fellow-officer in the back," he said, drearily. Then, to Herr Haase: "Take this, you!"

"Zu Befehl, Herr Hauptmann," said Herr Haase, and picked up his pen.

There were twelve long telegrams in all, of which many had to be amended, pruned, sub-edited, and rewritten; each was directed to a plain private address in Berlin, and each was to be answered to the address of Herr Haase. One, which gave more trouble than any of the others, was to Siegfried Meyer, Number One, Unter den Linden; it was long before the Baron and Von Wetten could smooth its phrases to a suavity and deference which satisfied them. Coffee was brought them to lubricate their labors, but none to Herr Haase; his part was to write down, scratch out, rewrite, while beyond the windows the night marched up from the east and the lake grew bleak and vague.

"Now, my good Haase," said the Baron, when the last word-fabric was decided upon and confirmed, "you will take those home with you, put them into code, and dispatch them. You should have the last of them off by midnight. And to-morrow, when the answers begin to come, you will report here as quickly as possible."

"Zu befehl, Excellenz," said Herr Haase, his hands full of papers.

"Then good night, my good Haase," said the Baron.

"Good night to your Excellency," returned Herr Haase, from the doorway. "Good night, Herr Hauptmann!" to Von Wetten's back.

"Shut the door," replied Von Wetten.

There was a moon at midnight, a great dull disc of soft light touching the antique gables and cloistered streets of the little city to glamour, blackening the shadows under the arches, and streaking the many channels of the swift river with long reflections. Herr Haase, returning from the telegraph office, walked noiseless as a ghost through those ancient streets, for he had soft bedroom slippers on his feet. His work was done for the day; he had put off business as one lays aside a garment. From his lips ascended the mild incense of one of those moist yellow cigars they make at Vevey. He paused upon the first bridge to gaze down upon the smooth, hurrying water, and his soul that soul which served the general purpose of a monkey-wrench in adjusting the machine of history spoke aloud.

"A rum-punch," it confided to the night and the moon. "Yes, two glasses; and a belegtes Brodchen; and a warm foot-bath. And then, bed!"

Not for him, at any rate, were the doubts and hopes that tangled in the Baron von Steinlach's massive head. A man with sore feet is prone to feel that the ground he stands on is at least solid. In his pleasant veranda next morning, with his coffee fragrant before him on the chequered tablecloth, he read in the Bund: the British communique of the battle of the Somme, new villages taken, fortified woods stormed, prisoners multiplying, the whole monstrous structure of the German war-machine cracking and failing. While he read he ate and drank tranquilly; no thoughts of yesterday's business intruded upon his breakfast peace. He finished the communique.

Then: "Liars!" he commented, comfortably, reaching for his cup. "Those English are always liars!"

It was a good and easy day that thus opened. The answers to his telegrams did not begin to arrive till noon, and then they were only formulae acknowledging receipt, which he did not need his code-book to decipher. With his black umbrella opened against the drive of the sun, he carried them at his leisure to the Baron, where he sat alone in his cool upper chamber working deliberately among his papers, received the customary ghost of a smile and the murmur, "Der gute Haase," and got away. The slovenly porter, always with his look of having slept in his clothes, tried to engage him in talk upon the day's news. "You," said Herr Haase, stepping round him, "are one of those who believe anything; schamen Sie sich!" And so back to the comfortable villa on the hillside with its flaming geraniums and its atmosphere of that comfort and enduring respectability which stood to Herr Haase for the very inwardness of Germany. Yes, a good day!

It lasted as long as the daylight; the end of it found Herr Haase, his lamp alight, his back turned to the Alpine-glow on the mountains, largely at ease in his chair, awaiting the arrival of his Dienstmadchen with the culminating coffee of the day. His yellow cigar was alight; he was fed and torpid; digestion and civilization were doing their best for him. As from an ambush there arrived the fat, yellow telegraph envelope.

"Ach, was!" protested Herr Haase. "And I thought it was the coffee you were bringing."

"'S Kaffee kommt gleich," the stout, tow-haired girl assured him; but already he had torn open the envelope and was surveying its half-dozen sheets of code. Two hours of work with the key, at least; he groaned, and hoisted himself from his chair.

"Bring the coffee to the office," he bade, and went to telephone a warning to the Baron.

The code was a cumbersome one; its single good quality was that it passed unsuspected at a time when nervous telegraph departments were refusing all ciphers. It consisted of brief phrases and single words alternately; the single words the codebook offered a selection of a couple of hundred of them were meaningless, and employed solely to separate the phrases; and for half an hour Herr Haase's task was to separate this ballast from the cargo of the message and jettison it. There lay before him then a string of honest-looking mercantile phrases "market unsettled," "collections difficult," and the like which each signified a particular word. He sat back in his chair and took a preliminary glance at the thing.

It was a code he used frequently himself, and there were phrases in the message, two or three, which he knew by heart. As he scanned it it struck him that all of these were of the same character; they were words of deprecation or demur. "Existing rate of exchange" meant "regret"; "active selling" meant "impossible"; and "usual discount" was the code-form of "unfortunate." Herr Haase frowned and reached for his key.

Midnight was close at hand when he reached the Baron's room, with the telegram and his neatly-written interpretation in an envelope. He had changed his coat and shoes for the visit; it was the usual Herr Haase, softish of substance, solemn of attire, official of demeanor, who clicked and bowed to the Baron and Von Wetten in turn.

"Our good Haase," said the Baron. "At last!"

He wore a brown cloth dressing-gown with a cord about the middle; and somehow the garment, with its long skirts and its tied-in waist, looked like a woman's frock? With the white hair and the contained benevolence and power of his face it gave him the aspect of a distorted femininity, a womanhood unnatural and dire. Even Herr Haase perceived it, for he stared a moment open-mouthed before he recovered himself. Von Wetten, smoking, in an easy chair, was in evening dress.

Herr Haase, with customary clockwork-like military motions, produced his envelope and held it forth.

"The code-telegram of which I telephoned your Excellency and a transcription of it," he announced.

Von Wetten took his cigar from his lips and held it between his fingers. The Baron waved the proffered envelope from him.

"Read it to us, my good Haase," he said.

"Zu befehl, Excellenz!" Herr Haase produced from the envelope the crackling sheet of thin paper, held it up to the light, standing the while with heels together and chest outthrust, and read in the high barrack-square voice:

"Herr Sigismund Haase, Friedrichsruhe, Thunam-See, Switzerland. From Secret Service Administration, Berlin. July 21st, 1916. In reply to your code-message previously acknowledged, regret to report that officer you require was recently severely wounded. Hospital authorities report that it is impossible to move him. Trust this unfortunate event does not stultify your arrangements. Your further instructions awaited."

Herr Haase refolded the paper and returned it to the envelope and stood waiting.

It was Von Wetten who spoke first. "Thank God!" he said loudly.

The old baron, standing near him, hands joined behind his back, had listened to the reading with eyes on the floor. He shook his head now, gently, dissenting rather than contradicting.

"Oh, no," he said slowly. "Don't be in a hurry to do that, Von Wetten."

"But, Excellency," Von Wetten protested, "I meant, of course."

"I know," said the Baron. "I know what you thanked God for; and I tell you don't be in too great a hurry."

He began to walk to and fro in the room. He let his hands fall to his sides; he was more than ever distortedly womanlike, almost visibly possessed and driven by his single purpose. Von Wetten, the extinct cigar still poised in his hand, watched him frowningly.

"Sometimes" the Baron seemed to speak as often a man deep in thought will hum a tune "sometimes I have felt before what I feel now a current in the universe that sets against me, against us. Something pulls the other way. It has all but daunted me once or twice."

He continued to pace to and fro, staring at the varnished floor.

"But, Excellency," urged Von Wetten, "there are still ways and means. If we can decoy this inventor-fellow across the frontier and then, there is his wife! Pressure could be brought to bear through the woman. If we got hold of her, now!"

The Baron paused in his walk to hear him.

"And find an English army blasting its way through Belgium with that machine to come to her rescue? No," he said; and then, starting from his moody quiet to a sudden loudness: "No! We know his price to lash this Von Specht across the face with a whip and we have agreed to it. Let him lash him as he lies on a stretcher, if he likes! I know that type of scorched brain, simmering on the brink of madness. He'll do it, and he'll keep faith; and it'll be cheap at the price. Haase!"

He wheeled on Herr Haase suddenly.

"Zu befehl, Excellenz," replied Herr Haase.

The Baron stared at him for some moments, at the solid, capable, biddable creature he was, stable and passive in the jar of the overturned world. He pointed to the table.

"Sit there, my good Haase," he ordered. "I will dictate you a telegram. Not code this time, plain German!"

He resumed his to-and-fro walk while Herr Haase established himself.

"Direct it to our private address in the Wilhelmstrasse," he ordered. "Then write: 'You are to carry out orders previously communicated. Send Von Specht forthwith, avoiding all delay. Telegraph hour of his departure and keep me informed of his progress. No objections to this order are to be entertained.'"

"'Entertained,'" murmured Herr Haase, as he wrote the last word.

"Sign it as before," directed the Baron. "You see, Von Wetten, it was too soon!"

Von Wetten had not moved; he sat staring at the Baron. His hand twitched and the dead cigar fell to the floor.

"I don't care," he burst out, "it's wrong; it's not worth it nothing could be. I'd be willing to go a long way, but a Prussian officer! It's, it's sacrilege. And a wounded man at that!"

The Baron did not smile but mirth was in his face. "That was an afterthought, Von Wetten," he said "the wounded man part of it." He turned to Herr Haase impatiently.

"Off with you!" he commanded. "Away, man, and get that message sent! Let me have the replies as they arrive. No, don't wait to bow and say good night; run, will you!"

His long arm, in the wide sleeve of the gown, leaped up, pointing to the door. Herr Haase ran.

Obediently as a machine, trotting flat-footed over the cobbles of the midnight streets, he ran, pulling up at moments to take his breath, then running on again. Panting, sweating, he lumbered up the steps of the telegraph office and thrust the message through the grille to the sleepy clerk.

"What is Von Specht?" grumbled the clerk. "Is this a cipher-message?"

"No," gasped Herr Haase. "Can't you read? This is plain German!"

Herr Haase, one has gathered, was not afflicted with that weakness of the sense which is called imagination. Not his to dream dreams and see visions; nor, while he tenderly undressed himself and put himself into his bed, to dwell in profitless fancy over the message he had sent, bursting like a shell among the departments and administrations which are the body of Germany's official soul. Nor later either, when the spate of replies kept him busy decoding and carrying them down to the Baron, did he read into them more than the bare import of their wording. "Von Specht transferred to hospital coach attached special train, accompanied military doctor and orderlies in civil clothes. Left Base Hospital No. 64 at 3:22 P.M. Condition weak, feverish," said the first of them. It did not suggest to him the hush of the white ward broken by the tread of the stalwart stretcher-bearers, the feeble groaning as they shifted the swathed and bandaged form from the bed to the stretcher, the face thin and haggard with yet remains of sunburn on its bloodlessness, the progress to the railway, the grunt and heave of the men as they hoisted their burden to the waiting hospital-carriage. None of all that for Herr Haase.

Later came another message: "Patient very feverish. Continually inquires whither going and why. Please telegraph some answer to meet train at Bengen with which may quiet him." To that Herr Haase was ordered to reply: "Tell Colonel von Specht that he is serving his Fatherland," and that elicited another message from the train at Colmar: "Gave patient your message, to which he replied, 'That is good enough for me.' Is now less feverish, but very weak."

And finally, from Basle, came the news that the train and its passengers had crossed the frontier; Colonel von Specht was in Switzerland.