The Great Impersonation

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

  “Prepare yourself, my friend,” he said. “We descend in a few minutes.”

  Dominey glanced out of the window.

  “But where are we?” he enquired.

  “Within five minutes of our destination.”

  “But there is not a house in sight,” Dominey remarked wonderingly.

  “You will be received on board His Majesty’s private train,” Seaman announced. “The Kaiser, with his staff, is making one of his military tours. We are honoured by being permitted to travel back with him as far as the Belgian frontier.”

  They had come to a standstill now. A bearded and uniformed official threw open the door of their compartment, and they stepped onto the narrow wooden platform of a small station which seemed to have been recently built of fresh pine planks. The train, immediately they had alighted, passed on. Their journey was over.

  A brief conversation was carried on between Seaman and the official, during which Dominey took curious note of his surroundings. Around the station, half hidden in some places by the trees and shrubs, was drawn a complete cordon of soldiers, who seemed to have recently disembarked from a military train which stood upon a siding. In the middle of it was a solitary saloon carriage, painted black, with much gold ornamentation, and having emblazoned upon the central panel the royal arms of Germany. Seaman, when he had finished his conversation, took Dominey by the arm and led him across the line towards it. An officer received them at the steps and bowed punctiliously to Dominey, at whom he gazed with much interest.

  “His Majesty will receive you at once,” he announced. “Follow me.”

  They boarded the train and passed along a richly carpeted corridor. Their guide paused and pointed to a small retiring-room, where several men were seated.

  “Herr Seaman will find friends there,” he said. “His Imperial Majesty will receive him for a few minutes later. The Baron von Ragastein will come this way.”

  Dominey was ushered now into the main saloon. His guide motioned him to remain near the entrance, and, himself advancing a few paces, stood at the salute before a seated figure who was bending over a map, which a stern-faced man in the uniform of a general had unrolled before him. The Kaiser glanced up at the sound of footsteps and whispered something in the general’s ear. The latter clicked his heels together and retired. The Kaiser beckoned Dominey to advance.

  “The Baron von Ragastein, your Majesty,” the young officer murmured.

  Dominey stood at attention for a moment and bowed a little awkwardly. The Kaiser smiled.

  “It pleases me,” he said, “to see a German officer ill at ease without his uniform. Count, you will leave us. Baron von Ragastein, be seated.”

  “Sir Everard Dominey, at your service, Majesty,” Dominey replied, as he took the chair to which his august host pointed.

  “Thorough in all things, I see,” the latter observed. “Sit there and be at your ease. Good reports have reached me of your work in Africa.”

  “I did my best to execute your Majesty’s will,” Dominey ventured.

  “You did so well,” the Kaiser pronounced, “that my counsellors were unanimous in advising your withdrawal to what will shortly become the great centre of interest. From the moment of receiving our commands you appear to have displayed initiative. I gather that your personation of this English baronet has been successfully carried through?”

  “Up to the present, your Majesty.”

  “Important though your work in Africa was,” the Kaiser continued, “your present task is a far greater one. I wish to speak to you for these few minutes without reserve. First, though, drink a toast with me.”

  From a mahogany stand at his elbow, the Kaiser drew out a long-necked bottle of Moselle, filled two very beautiful glasses, passed one to his companion and raised the other.

  “To the Fatherland!” he said.

  “To the Fatherland!” Dominey repeated.

  They set down their glasses, empty. The Kaiser threw back the grey military cloak which he was wearing, displaying a long row of medals and decorations. His fingers still toyed with the stem of his wineglass. He seemed for a moment to lose himself in thought. His hard and somewhat cruel mouth was tightly closed; there was a slight frown upon his forehead. He was sitting upright, taking no advantage of the cushioned back of his easy-chair, his eyes a little screwed up, the frown deepening. For quite five minutes there was complete silence. One might have gathered that, turning aside from great matters, he had been devoting himself entirely to the scheme in which Dominey was concerned.

  “Von Ragastein,” he said at last, “I have sent for you to have a few words concerning your habitation in England. I wish you to receive your impressions of your mission from my own lips.”

  “Your Majesty does me great honour,” Dominey murmured.

  “I wish you to consider yourself,” the Kaiser continued, “as entirely removed from the limits, the authority and the duties of my espionage system. From you I look for other things. I desire you to enter into the spirit of your assumed position. As a typical English country gentleman I desire you to study the labour question, the Irish question, the progress of this National Service scheme, and other social movements of which you will receive notice in due time. I desire a list compiled of those writers who, in the Reviews, or by means of fiction, are encouraging the suspicions which I am inclined to fancy England has begun to entertain towards the Fatherland. These things are all on the fringe of your real mission. That, I believe, our admirable friend Seaman has already confided to you. It is to seek the friendship, if possible the intimacy, of Prince Terniloff.”

  The Kaiser paused, and once more his eyes wandered to the landscape which rolled away from the plate-glass windows of the car. They were certainly not the eyes of a dreamer, and yet in those moments they seemed filled with brooding pictures.

  “The Prince has already received me graciously,” Dominey confided.

  “Terniloff is the dove of peace,” the Kaiser pronounced. “He carries the sprig of olive in his mouth. My statesmen and counsellors would have sent to London an ambassador with sterner qualities. I preferred not. Terniloff is the man to gull fools, because he is a fool himself. He is a fit ambassador for a country which has not the wit to arm itself on land as well as by sea, when it sees a nation, mightier, more cultured, more splendidly led than its own, creeping closer every day.”

  “The English appear to put their whole trust in their navy, your Majesty,” Dominey observed tentatively.

  The eyes of his companion flashed. His lips curled contemptuously.

  “Fools!” he exclaimed. “Of what use will their navy be when my sword is once drawn, when I hold the coast towns of Calais and Boulogne, when my cannon command the Straits of Dover! The days of insular nations are passed, passed as surely as the days of England’s arrogant supremacy upon the seas.”

  The Kaiser refilled his glass and Dominey’s.

  “In some months’ time, Von Ragastein,” he continued, “you will understand why you have been enjoined to become the friend and companion of Terniloff. You will understand your mission a little more clearly than you do now. Its exact nature waits upon developments. You can at all times trust Seaman.”

  Dominey bowed and remained silent. His companion continued after another brief spell of silent brooding.

  “Von Ragastein,” he said, “my decree of banishment against you was a just one. The morals of my people are as sacred to me as my oath to win for them a mightier empire. You first of all betrayed the wife of one of the most influential noblemen of a State allied to my own, and then, in the duel that followed, you slew him.”

  “It was an accident, your Majesty,” Dominey pleaded. “I had no intention of even wounding the Prince.”

  The Kaiser frowned. All manner of excuses were loathsome to him.

  “The accident should have happened the other way,” he rejoine
d sharply. “I should have lost a valuable servant, but it was your life which was forfeit, and not his. Still, they tell me that your work in Africa was well and thoroughly done. I give you this one great chance of rehabilitation. If your work in England commends itself to me, the sentence of exile under which you suffer shall be rescinded.”

  “Your Majesty is too good,” Dominey murmured. “The work, for its own sake, will command my every effort, even without the hope of reward.”

  “That,” the Kaiser said, “is well spoken. It is the spirit, I believe, with which every son of my Empire regards the future. I think that they, too, more especially those who surround my person, have felt something of that divine message which has come to me. For many years I have, for the sake of my people, willed peace. Now that the time draws near when Heaven has shown me another duty, I have no fear but that every loyal German will bow his head before the lightnings which will play around my sword and share with me the iron will to wield it. Your audience is finished, Baron von Ragastein. You will take your place with the gentlemen of my suite in the retiring-room. We shall proceed within a few minutes and leave you at the Belgian frontier.”

  Dominey rose, bowed stiffly and backed down the carpeted way. The Kaiser was already bending once more over the map. Seaman, who was waiting outside the door of the anteroom, called him in and introduced him to several members of the suite. One, a young man with a fixed monocle, scars upon his face, and a queer, puppet-like carriage, looked at him a little strangely.

  “We met some years ago in Munich, Baron,” he remarked.

  “I acknowledge no former meetings with any one in this country,” Dominey replied stiffly. “I obey the orders of my Imperial master when I wipe from my mind every episode or reminiscence of my former days.”

  The young man’s face cleared, and Seaman, by his side, who had knitted his brows thoughtfully, nodded understandingly.

  “You are certainly a great actor, Baron,” he declared. “Even your German has become a little English. Sit down and join us in a glass of beer. Luncheon will be served to us here in a few minutes. You will not be recalled to the Presence until we set you down.”

  Dominey bowed stiffly and took his place with the others. The train had already started. Dominey gazed thoughtfully out of the window. Seaman, who was waiting about for his audience, patted him on the arm.

  “Dear friend,” he said, “I sympathise with you. You sorrow because your back is now to Berlin. Still, remember this, that the day is not far off when the sentence of exile against you will be annulled. You will have expiated that crime which, believe me, although I do not venture to claim a place amongst them, none of your friends and equals have ever regarded in the same light as His Imperial Majesty.”

  A smiling steward, in black livery with white facings, made his appearance and served them with beer in tall glasses. The senior officer there, who had now seated himself opposite to Dominey, raised his glass and bowed.

  “To the Baron von Ragastein,” he said, “whose acquaintance I regret not having made before today. May we soon welcome him back, a brother in arms, a companion in great deeds! Hoch!”

  Chapter XV

  Sir Everard Dominey, Baronet, the latest and most popular recruit to Norfolk sporting society, stood one afternoon, some months after his return from Germany, at the corner of the long wood which stretched from the ridge of hills behind almost to the kitchen gardens of the Hall. At a reasonable distance on his left, four other guns were posted. On one side of him stood Middleton, leaning on his ash stick and listening to the approach of the beaters; on the other, Seaman, curiously out of place in his dark grey suit and bowler hat. The old keeper, whom time seemed to have cured of all his apprehensions, was softly garrulous and very happy.

  “That do seem right to have a Squire Dominey at this corner,” he observed, watching a high cock pheasant come crashing down over their heads. “I mind when the Squire, your father, sir, gave up this corner one day to Lord Wendermere, whom folks called one of the finest pheasant shots in England, and though they streamed over his head like starlings, he’d nowt but a few cripples to show for his morning’s work.”

  “Come out with a bit of a twist from the left, don’t they?” Dominey remarked, repeating his late exploit.

  “They do that, sir,” the old man assented, “and no one but a Dominey seems to have learnt the knack of dealing with them proper. That foreign Prince, so they say, is well on to his birds, but I wouldn’t trust him at this corner.”

  The old man moved off a few paces to some higher ground, to watch the progress of the beaters through the wood. Seaman turned to his companion, and there was a note of genuine admiration in his tone.

  “My friend,” he declared, “you are a miracle. You seem to have developed the Dominey touch even in killing pheasants.”

  “You must remember that I have shot higher ones in Hungary,” was the easy reply.

  “I am not a sportsman,” Seaman admitted. “I do not understand sport. But I do know this: there is an old man who has lived on this land since the day of his birth, who has watched you shoot, reverently, and finds even the way you hold your gun familiar.”

  “That twist of the birds,” Dominey explained, “is simply a local superstition. The wood ends on the slant, and they seem to be flying more to the left than they really are.”

  Seaman gazed steadfastly for a moment along the side of the wood.

  “Her Grace is coming,” he said. “She seems to share the Duke’s dislike of me, and she is too great a lady to conceal her feelings. Just one word before I go. The Princess Eiderstrom arrives this afternoon.”

  Dominey frowned, then, warned by the keeper’s shout, turned around and killed a hare.

  “My friend,” he said, with a certain note of challenge in his tone, “I am not certain that you have told me all that you know concerning the Princess’s visit.”

  Seaman was thoughtful for a brief space of time.

  “You are right,” he admitted, “I have not. It is a fault which I will repair presently.”

  He strolled away to the next stand, where Mr. Mangan was displaying an altogether different standard of proficiency. The Duchess came up to Dominey a few minutes later.

  “I told Henry I shouldn’t stop with him another moment,” she declared. “He has fired off about forty cartridges and wounded one hare.”

  “Henry is not keen,” Dominey remarked, “although I think you are a little hard on him, are you not? I saw him bring down a nice cock just now. So far as regards the birds, it really does not matter. They are all going home.”

  The Duchess was very smartly tailored in clothes of brown heather mixture. She wore thick shoes and gaiters and a small hat. She was looking very well but a little annoyed.

  “I hear,” she said, “that Stephanie is coming today.”

  Dominey nodded, and seemed for a moment intent on watching the flight of a pigeon which kept tantalisingly out of range.

  “She is coming down for a few days,” he assented. “I am afraid that she will be bored to death.”

  “Where did you become so friendly with her?” his cousin asked curiously.

  “The first time we ever met,” Dominey replied, “was in the Carlton grill room, a few days after I landed in England. She mistook me for some one else, and we parted with the usual apologies. I met her the same night at Carlton House Terrace—she is related to the Terniloffs—and we came across one another pretty often after that, during the short time I was in town.”

  “Yes,” the Duchess murmured meditatively. “That is another of the little surprises you seem to have all ready dished up for us. How on earth did you become so friendly with the German Ambassador?”

  Dominey smiled tolerantly.

  “Really,” he replied, “there is not anything so very extraordinary about it, is there? Mr. Seaman, my partner in one or two mining enterpris
es, took me to call upon him. He is very interested in East Africa, politically and as a sportsman. Our conversations seemed to interest him and led to a certain intimacy,—of which I may say that I am proud. I have the greatest respect and liking for the Prince.”

  “So have I,” Caroline agreed. “I think he’s charming. Henry declares that he must be either a fool or a knave.”

  “Henry is blinded by prejudice,” Dominey declared a little impatiently. “He cannot imagine a German who feasts with any one else but the devil.”

  “Don’t get annoyed, dear,” she begged, resting her fingers for a moment upon his coat sleeve. “I admire the Prince immensely. He is absolutely the only German I ever met whom one felt instinctively to be a gentleman.—Now what are you smiling at?”

  Dominey turned a perfectly serious face towards her. “Not guilty,” he pleaded.

  “I saw you smile.”

  “It was just a quaint thought. You are rather sweeping, are you not, Caroline?”

  “I’m generally right,” she declared.—“To return to the subject of Stephanie.”

  “Well?”

  “Do you know whom she mistook you for in the Carlton grill room?”

  “Tell me?” he answered evasively.

  “She mistook you for a Baron Leopold von Ragastein,” Caroline continued drily. “Von Ragastein was her lover in Hungary. He fought a duel with her husband and killed him. The Kaiser was furious and banished him to East Africa.”

  Dominey picked up his shooting-stick and handed his gun to Middleton. The beaters were through the wood.

  “Yes, I remember now,” he said. “She addressed me as Leopold.”

  “I still don’t see why it was necessary to invite her here,” his companion observed a little petulantly. “She may—call you Leopold again!”

  “If she does, I shall be deaf,” Dominey promised. “But seriously, she is a cousin of the Princess Terniloff, and the two women are devoted to one another. The Princess hates shooting parties, so I thought they could entertain one another.”