Chapter 8

Then the Signor would strum on two strings of the fiddle, smiling the while a smile that no woman should see, and Bill would waltz laboriously on his hind legs. After that he would walk on his front legs, throw somersaults, find a hidden handkerchief, and so on. And between each piece of clowning, he would go round with Trotter's hat to collect coppers. Bill was an honest dog, and a fairly big one as well, and when a man tried to ignore the hat, he had a way of drawing back his lips from his splendid teeth which by itself was frequently worth as much to the treasury as all his other tricks put together. But the truth of it was, it was a feeble show, a scanty, pitiful show; and only the gross truculence of Trotter and the venomous litheness of the Signor withheld the average yokel from saying so flatly.

But it gave them enough to live on and drink on. At any rate, Trotter grew fat and the Signor grew thinner. Bill depended on what they had left when they were satisfied; it was little enough. He begged at cottages on his own account, sometimes; sitting up in the attitude of mendicancy till something was thrown to him. Occasionally, too, he stole fowls or raided a butcher's shop. Then Trotter and the Signor would disown him vociferously to the bereaved one, and hasten on to come up with him before he had eaten it all. He preferred being beaten to going hungry, so they never caught him till he had fed full. But what troubled him most was the tramping, the long dusty stages afoot in country where the unsociable villages lay remote from each other, and the roads were hot and long. A man can outwalk any other animal. After thirty miles, a horse is nowhere and the man is still going, but even fifteen miles leaves the ordinary dog limp and sorry. And then, when every bone in him was aching, a wretched village might poke up at an elbow of the way, and there would be dancing to do and his whole fatuous repertoire to accomplish, while his legs were soft under him with weariness.

Trotter took his heavy boots off; he threw one at Bill.

It was a pleasant spot. Where they sat, in a bay of shade, they could see a far reach of rich land, bright in the sunshine and dotted with wood, stretching back to where the high shoulder of the downs shut out the sea.

The two men ate in much contentment, passing the bottle to and fro.

Bill waited for them to have done and fling him his share. In common with all Bohemians, he liked regular meals.

"That dog's goin' silly," said Trotter, looking at him where he lay.

"Oh, him!" said the Signor.

"He's bin loafin' a furlong be'ind all the mornin'," said Trotter. "Yer know if he was to get lazy, it 'ud be a poor lookout for us. He's bin spoilt, that dog 'as spoilt with indulgence. Soon as we stop for a spell oh, he plops down on 'is belly and 'angs on for us to chuck 'im a bit of grub. Might be a man by the ways of 'im, 'stead of a dog. Now I don't 'old with spoilin' dogs."

"Pass da beer," requested the Signor.

Bill looked up with concern, for Trotter was filling his pipe; the meal was at an end.

"Yus, yer can look," snarled Trotter. "You'll wait, you will."

He began to pack up the bread and meat again in the towel where it belonged.

"Think you've got yer rights, don't yer?" he growled, as he swept the fragments together. "No dog comes them games on me. Hey, get out, ye brute!"

Bill had walked over and was now helping himself to the food that lay between Trotter's very hands.

Trotter clenched a bulging red fist and hauled off to knock him away. But Bill had some remainder of the skill, as well as the ferocity, of the fighting dog in him. He snapped sideways in a purposeful silence, met the swinging fist adroitly, and sank his fine teeth cruelly in the fat wrist.

"Hey! Signor, Signor!" howled Trotter. "Kick 'im orf, can't yer! Ow, o-o-ow!"

Bill let him go as the Signor approached, but the kick that was meant for him spent itself in the air. Again he snapped, with that sideways striking action of the big bony head, and the Signor shrieked like a woman and sprang away.

Bill watched the pair of them for half a minute, as they took refuge among the trees, and both saw the glint of his strong teeth as he stared after them. Then he finished the food at his ease, while they cursed and whimpered from a distance.

"'E's mad," moaned Trotter. "'Es 'ad a stroke. An' we'll get hydrophobia from 'im as like as not."

He nursed his bitten wrist tenderly.

"Look at my laig!" babbled the Signor. "It is a sacred bite, an' all-a da trouser tore. What da hell you fool wid da dog for, you big fool?"

"'E was pinchin' the grub," growled Trotter. "E's mad. Look at 'im, lyin' down on my coat. 'Ere, Bill! Goo' dog, then. Good ole feller!"

Bill took no notice of the blandishments of Trotter, but presently he rose and strolled off to where a little pond stood in the corner of a field.

"'E's drinkin'," reported Trotter, who had stolen from cover to make observations. "So 'e can't be mad. Mad dogs won't look at water. Go into fits if they sees it. 'Ere, Signor, let's make a grab for those bundles before 'e gets back."

Bill rejoined them while they were yet stuffing their shabby possessions together.

The Signor moved behind Trotter and Trotter picked up a boot. But Bill was calm and peaceful again. He lay down in the grass and wagged his tail cheerfully.

"Bill, ole feller," said Trotter, in tones of conciliation, and Bill wagged again.

"'Ell, I can't make nothing of it," confessed Trotter blankly. "Must have gone sort o' temp'ry insane, like the sooicides. But well, we'll be even with 'im before all's over."

And the lean Signor's sidelong look at the dog was full of menace.

They reached another village before dark, a village with a good prosperous alehouse, and here Bill showed quite his old form. He waltzed, he threw somersaults, he found handkerchiefs, he carried the hat; his docility was all that Trotter and the Signor could have asked. They cleared one and sevenpence out of his tricks, and would have stayed to drink it; but Bill walked calmly on up the road and barely gave them time enough to buy food.

They cursed him lavishly; the Signor raved in a hot frenzy; but they dared not lose him. The dog led them at an easy pace and they labored after him furiously, while a great pale moon mounted in the sky and the soft night deepened over the fields.

He let them down at last at an end of grass where a few of last year's straw ricks afforded lodging for the night. Both the men were tired enough to be glad of the respite and they sank down in the shadow of a rick with little talk.

"It gets me," Trotter said. "The dog's a danger. 'E ought to be drownded."

The Signor snarled. "An' us?" he demanded. "We go to work, eh? You pick da grass-a to make-a da hay and me I drive-a da cart, eh? Oh, Trottair, you fool!"

"'Ere, let's 'ave some grub and stow the jaw for a bit," said Trotter.

He had bread and meat, bought in a hurry at the tail of the village while Bill receded down the road.

As soon as he laid it bare, Bill growled.

"T'row heem some, queeck," cried the Signor.

Bill caught the loaf and settled down to it with an appetite. Trotter stared at him with a gape.

"Well, blow me!" he said. "'Ave we come to feedin' the bloomin' dog before we feeds ourselves? 'As the beggar struck for that? I s'pose 'e'll be wantin' wages next."

"Oh, shutta da gab!" snapped the Signor.

"That's all very well," retorted Trotter. "But I'm an Englishman, I am. You're only a furriner; you're used to bein' put upon. But I'm--."

Bill growled again and rose to his feet. Trotter tossed him a piece of meat.

All that was long ago. Now if you stray through the South of England during the months between May and October, you may yet meet Bill and his companions. Trotter still wears tights, but he is thinner and much more wholesome to see; but the Signor has added a kind of shiny servility to his courtly Italian manner.

Bill is sleek and fat.

And now, when they come to rest at noonday, you will see, if you watch them, that before Trotter takes his boots off he feeds the dog. And the Signor fetches him water.

VII

"PLAIN GERMAN"

Beyond the arcaded side-walks, whose square-pillared arches stand before the house-fronts like cloisters, the streets of Thun were channels 'of standing sunlight, radiating heat from every cobblestone. Herr Haase, black-coated and white-waistcoated as for a festival, his large blond face damp and distressful, came panting into the hotel with the manner of an exhausted swimmer climbing ashore. In one tightly-gloved hand he bore a large and bulging linen envelope.

"Pfui!" He puffed, and tucked the envelope under one arm in order to take off his green felt hat and mop himself. "Aber what a heat, what a heat!"

The brass-buttoned hotel porter, a-sprawl in a wicker chair in the hall, lowered his newspaper and looked up over his silver spectacles. He was comfortably unbuttoned here and there, and had omitted to shave that morning, for this was July, 1916, and since the war had turned Switzerland's tourists into Europe's cannon-fodder, he had run somewhat to seed.

"Yes, it is warm," he agreed, without interest, and yawned. "You have come to see" he jerked his head towards the white staircase and its strip of red carpet "to see him not? He is up there. But what do you think of the news this morning?"

Herr Haase was running, his handkerchief round the inside of his collar. "To see him! I have come to see the Herr Baron von Steinlach," he retorted, crossly. "And what news are you talking about now?" He continued to pant and wipe while the porter read from his copy of the Bund, the German official communique of the previous day's fighting on the Somme.

"I don't like it," said the porter, when he had finished. "It looks as if we were losing ground. Those English."

Herr Haase pocketed his handkerchief and took the large envelope in his hand again. He was a bulky, middle-aged man, one of whose professional qualifications it was that he looked and sounded commonplace, the type of citizen who is the patron of beer-gardens, wars of aggression, and the easily remembered catchwords which are the whole political creed of his kind. His appearance was the bushel under which his secret light burned profitably; it had indicated him for his employment as a naturalized citizen of Switzerland and the tenant of the pretty villa on the hill above Thun, whence he drove his discreet and complicated traffic in those intangible wares whose market is the Foreign Office in Berlin.

He interrupted curtly. "Don't talk to me about the English!" he puffed. "Gott strafe England!" He stopped. The porter was paid by the same hand as himself. The hall was empty save for themselves, and there was no need to waste good acting on a mere stage-hand in the piece.

"The English," he said, "are going to have a surprise."

"Eh?" The slovenly man in the chair gaped up at him stupidly. Herr Haase added to his words the emphasis of a nod and walked on to the stairs.

In the corridor above, a row of white-painted bedroom doors had each its number. Beside one of them a tall young man was sunk spinelessly in a chair, relaxed to the still warmth of the day. He made to rise as Herr Haase approached, swelling for an instant to a drilled and soldierly stature, but, recognizing him, sank back again.

"He's in there," he said languidly. "Knock for yourself."

"Schlapschwanz!" remarked Herr Haase indignantly, and rapped upon the door. A voice within answered indistinctly. Herr Haase, removing his hat, opened the door and entered.

The room was a large one, an hotel bedroom converted into a sitting-room, with tall French windows opening to a little veranda, and a view across the lime-trees of the garden to the blinding silver of the lake of Thun and the eternal snow-fields of the Bernese Oberland. Beside the window and before a little spindle-legged writing-table a man sat. He turned his head as Herr Haase entered.

"Ach, der gute Haase," he exclaimed.

Herr Haase brought his patent leather heels together with a click and bowed like a T-square.

"Excellenz!" he said, in a strange, loud voice, rather like a man in a trance. "Your Excellency's papers, received by the train arriving from Bern at eleven-thirty-five."

The other smiled, raising to him a pink and elderly face, with a clipped white moustache and heavy tufted brows under which the faint blue eyes were steady and ironic. He was a large man, great in the frame and massive; his movements had a sure, unhurried deliberation; and authority, the custom and habit of power, clad him like a garment. Years and the moving forces of life had polished him as running water polishes a stone. The Baron von Steinlach showed to Herr Haase a countenance supple as a hand and formidable as a fist.

"Thank you, my good Haase," he said, in his strong deliberate German. "You look hot. This sun, eh? Poor fellow!"

But he did not bid him sit down. Instead, he turned to the linen envelope, opened it, and shook out upon the table its freight of lesser envelopes, typed papers, and newspaper-clippings. Deliberately, but yet with a certain discrimination and efficiency, he began to read them. Herr Haase, whose new patent leather boots felt red-hot to his feet, whose shirt was sticking to his back, whose collar was melting, watched him expressionlessly.

"There is a cloud of dust coming along the lake road," said the Baron presently, glancing through the window. "That should be Captain von Wetten in his automobile. We will see what he has to tell us, Haase."

"At your orders, Excellency," deferred Herr Haase.

"Because" he touched one of the papers before him "this news, Haase, is not good. It is not good. And this discovery here, if it be all that is claimed for it, should work miracles."

He glanced up at Herr Haase and smiled again. "Not that I think miracles can ever be worked by machinery," he added.

It was ten minutes after this that the column of dust on the lake road delivered its core and cause in the shape of a tall man, who knocked once at the door and strode in without waiting for an answer.

"Ah, my dear Von Wetten," said the Baron pleasantly. "It is hot, eh?"

"An oven," replied Von Wetten curtly. "This place is an oven. And the dust, ach!"

The elder man made a gesture of sympathy. "Poor fellow!" he said. "Sit down; sit down. Haase, that chair!"

And Herr Haase, who controlled a hundred and twelve subordinates, who was a Swiss citizen and a trusted secret agent, brought the chair and placed it civilly, neither expecting nor receiving thanks.

The new-comer was perhaps twenty-eight years of age, tall, large in the chest and little in the loins, with a narrow, neatly-chiseled face which fell naturally to a chill and glassy composure. "Officer" was written on him as clear as a brand; his very quiet clothes sat on his drilled and ingrained formality of posture and bearing as noticeably as a mask and domino; he needed a uniform to make him inconspicuous. He picked up his dangling monocle, screwed it into his eye, and sat back.

"And now?" inquired the Baron agreeably, "and now, my dear Von Wetten, what have you to tell us?"

"Well, Excellenz" Captain von Wetten hesitated. "As a matter of fact, I've arranged for you to see the thing yourself this afternoon."

The Baron said nothing merely waited, large and still against the light of the window which shone on the faces of the other two.

Captain von Wetten shifted in his chair awkwardly. "At five, Excellenz," he added; "it'll be cooler then. You see, Herr Baron, it's not the matter of the machine I've seen that all right; it's the man."

"So!" The explanation, which explained nothing to Herr Haase, seemed to satisfy the Baron. "The man, eh? But you say you have seen the machine. It works?"

"It worked all right this morning," replied Von Wetten. "I took my own explosives with me, as you know some French and English rifle-cartridges and an assortment of samples from gun charges and marine mines. I planted some in the garden; the place was all pitted already with little craters from his experiments; and some, especially the mine stuff, I threw into the lake. The garden's on the edge of the lake, you know. Well, he got out his machine thing like a photographic camera, rather, on a tripod turned it this way and that until it pointed to my explosives, and pop! off they went like a lot of fireworks. Pretty neat, I thought."

"Ah!" The Baron's elbow was on his desk and his head rested in his hand. "Then it is what that Italian fellow said he had discovered in 1914. 'Ultra-red rays,' he called them. What was his name, now?"

"Never heard of him," said Von Wetten.

From the background where Herr Haase stood among the other furniture came a cough. "Oliver," suggested Herr Haase mildly.

The Baron jerked a look at him. "No, not Oliver," he said. "Ulivi that was it; Ulivi! I remember at the time we were interested, because, if the fellow could do what he claimed." He broke off. "Tell me," he demanded of Von Wetten. "You are a soldier; I am only a diplomat. What would this machine mean in war in this war, for instance? Supposing you were in command upon a sector of the front; that in the trenches opposite you were the English; and you had this machine? What would be the result?"

"Well!" Von Wetten deliberated. "Pretty bad for the English, I should think," he decided.

"But how, man how?" persisted the Baron. "In what way would it be bad for them?"

Von Wetten made an effort; he was not employed for his imagination. "Why," he hesitated, "because I suppose the cartridges would blow up in the men's pouches and in the machine-gun belts; and then the trench-mortar ammunition and the hand grenades; well, everything explosive would simply explode! And then we'd go over to what was left of them, and it would be finished."

He stopped abruptly as the vision grew clearer. "Aber," he began excitedly.

The old Baron lifted a hand and quelled him.

"The machine you saw this morning, which you tested, will do all this?" he insisted.

Von Wetten was staring at the Baron. Upon the question he let his monocle fall and seemed to consider. "I, I don't see why not," he replied.

The Baron nodded thrice, very slowly. Then he glanced up at Herr Haase. "Then miracles are worked by machinery, after all," he said. Then he turned again to Von Wetten.

"Well?" he said. "And the man? We are forgetting the man; I think we generally do, we Germans. What is the difficulty about the man?"

Von Wetten shrugged. "The difficulty is that he won't name his price," he answered. "Don't understand him! Queer, shambling sort of fellow, all hair and eyes, with the scar of an old cut, or something, across one side of his face. Keeps looking at you as if he hated you! Showed me the machine readily enough; consented to every test even offered to let me take my stuff to the other side of the lake, three miles away, and explode it at that distance. But when it came to terms, all he'd do was to look the other way and mumble."

"What did you offer him?" demanded the Baron.

"My orders, Your Excellency," answered Captain von Wetten formally, "were to agree to his price, but not to attempt negotiations in the event of difficulty over the terms. That was reserved for Your Excellency."

"H'm!" The Baron nodded. "Quite right," he approved. "Quite right; there is something in this. Men have their price, but sometimes they have to be paid in a curious currency. By the way, how much money have we?"

Herr Haase, a mere living ache inhabiting the background, replied.

"I am instructed, Excellency, that my cheque will be honored at sight here for a million marks," he answered, in the loud hypnotized voice of the drill-ground. "But there is, of course, no limit."

The Baron gave him an approving nod. "No limit," he said. "That is the only way to do things no limit, in money or anything else! Well, Haase can bring the car round at what time, Von Wetten?"

"Twenty minutes to five!" Von Wetten threw the words over his shoulder.

"And I shall lunch up here; it's cooler. You'd better lunch with me, and we can talk. Send up a waiter as you go, my good Haase."

Herr Haase bowed, but clicked only faintly. "Zu Befehl, Excellenz," he replied, and withdrew.

In the hall below he sank into a chair, groaned and fumbled at the buttons of his boots. He was wearing them for the first time, and they fitted him as though they had been shrunk on to him. The porter, his waistcoat gaping, came shambling over to him.

"You were saying," began the porter, "that the English."

Herr Haase boiled over. "Zum Teufel mit den Englandern und mit Dir, Schafskopf!" he roared, tearing at the buttons. "Send up a waiter to the Herr Baron and call me a cab to go home in!"

It was in a sunlight tempered as by a foreboding of sunset, when the surface of the lake was ribbed like sea sand with the first breathings of the evening breeze, that Herr Haase, riding proudly in the back seat of honor, brought the motor-car to the hotel. He had changed his garb of ceremony and servitude; he wore grey now, one of those stomach-exposing, large-tailed coats which lend even to the straightest man the appearance of being bandy-legged; and upon his feet were a pair of tried and proven cloth boots.

The porter, his waistcoat buttoned for the occasion, carried out a leather suit-case and placed it in the car, then stood aside, holding open the door, as the Baron and Von Wetten appeared from the hall. Von Wetten, true to his manner, saw neither Herr Haase's bow nor the porter's lifted cap; to him, salutations and civilities came like the air he breathed, and were as little acknowledged. The Baron gave to Herr Haase the compliment of a glance that took in the grey coat and the cloth boots, and the ghost of an ironic, not unkindly smile.

"Der gute Haase," he murmured, and then, as though in absence of mind, "Poor fellow, poor fellow!"

His foot was upon the step of the car when he saw the leather suit-case within. He paused in the act of entering.

"What is this baggage?" he inquired.

Von Wetten craned forward to look. "Oh, that! I wanted you to see the machine at work, Excellenz, so I'm bringing a few cartridges and things."

His Excellency withdrew his foot and stepped back. "Explosives, eh?" He made a half-humorous grimace of distaste. "Haase, lift that bag out carefully, man! and carry it in front with you. And tell the chauffeur to drive cautiously!"

Their destination was to the eastward of the little town, where the gardens of the villas trail their willow-fringes in the water. Among them, a varnished yellow chalet lifted its tiers of glassed-in galleries among the heavy green of fir-trees; its door, close beside the road, was guarded by a gate of iron bars. The big car slid to a standstill beside it with a scrape of tires in the dust.

"A moment," said the old baron, as Herr Haase lifted his hand to the iron bell-pull that hung beside the gate. "Who are we? What names have you given, Von Wetten? Schmidt and Meyer or something more fanciful?"

"Much more fanciful, Excellenz." Von Wetten allowed himself a smile. "I am Herr Wetten; Your Excellency is Herr Steinlach. It could not be simpler."

The Baron laughed quietly. "Very good, indeed," he agreed. "And Haase? You did not think of him? Well, the good Haase, for the time being, shall be the Herr von Haase. Eh, Haase?"

"Zu Befehl, Excellenz," deferred Herr Haase.