by John Buchan
Loeffler, awed by the majesty of the scene, and thinking his own thoughts, found his arm taken by the other.
“See, that big surge is past. Now we may look over the other side and be back before the next one.”
Obediently he took three steps amid the back-wash of the last wave, and looked into a trough of green darkness over which the little vessel was slightly heeling.
Then suddenly he found himself grasped in arms like a bear’s, grasped so firmly that the breath went from him. The big man was bracing himself for some effort against which he was powerless to struggle. He felt his feet leave the deck. . . .
The grip slackened. A sharp voice had cried out behind them. It cried a single word, but that word was enough to check Loeffler’s assailant.
Then it spoke in fierce German.
“You fool, Kurbin. You have got the wrong man.”
The giant let his arms relax, and Loeffler found himself switched from his grasp by a man in a trench-waterproof. The ship was heeling again to port, and a shove sent him reeling against the port rails.
“Back,” a voice shouted. “Run, man, run for your life.”
Loeffler had heard that voice before. When the next surge broke over the stern he was already halfway across the bridge over the hold. He glanced back once and saw the after-part of the ship blotted out in a shroud of spray.
Loeffler’s going seemed to rouse the knickerbockered man to a berserk fury. He flung himself upon the other, and the two swung against the port rails. But the man in the trench-waterproof was equal to the occasion. The giant was wearing rubber-soled shoes which had a poor purchase on the swimming deck. He slipped, and the other wriggled out of his clutch and managed to clasp him round the middle from behind. Then, while his balance had gone, he swung him in his arms against the low rail which defended the place from the hold. The rail gave under the weight and the big man pitched down among the motor-cars. His head hit the bonnet of one, and he rolled over and lay quiet.
The man in the trench-waterproof glanced forward and saw that no one was in sight. He slipped down into the hold and had a look at his adversary. The man was bleeding from a gash on the head, and was doubtless concussed, but his neck was unbroken.
Then he went forward and found a sailor. “There has been an accident,” he said. “A gentleman has fallen into the hold from the after-deck. He is unconscious, but not, I think, badly hurt. Get him moved to a cabin. Meantime I will see the captain.”
He showed the captain certain papers, and told him a story which caused that honest seaman to rub his eyes.
“There need be no fuss,” he said. “There must be no fuss, since no harm has been done. You know Lord Lamancha by sight? He will meet the small gentleman in the white mackintosh and take charge of him. Never mind who the gentleman is. He travels incognito, but he is a person of some importance. As for the other, the doctor had better attend to him. He has no baggage, but he has plenty of money — he will probably wish to return to France with you to-morrow. Only, till we reach England, his cabin door must be kept locked.”
III
As Lamancha drove Loeffler through the dusk from the coast, by way of a broad river valley into wooded uplands, he did not talk politics.
“You’ll have five days of peace here,” he told him, “peace very slightly interrupted by discussion. Geraldine is coming down, and Stannix, and that is the party. It is a jolly place and the weather looks to be mending. Don’t you call this time the ‘Old Wives’ Summer’ in Germany? You don’t shoot, I know, but I will take you for some long rides on the Moor. One doesn’t often get the chance of entertaining a man like you in our simple country way. The last European celebrity who came here had three secretaries with him and Scotland Yard sent down a couple of men.”
Loeffler observed that it was a pleasure to get away from the surveillance of detectives, and Lamancha laughed.
“Well, as it happens, you won’t quite escape that. The fact is, we had a burglary two night ago. Oh no, nothing serious. It was very much the usual business — my wife’s room while we were at dinner, open windows, a ladder from the garden. The burglars were scared away by the return of her maid, and had no time to pinch anything. But the police have chosen to take it seriously, and there are London men in the village making enquiries. It has nothing to do with you, of course, for nobody knows that you are here. But I thought I’d let you know about it, in case you are surprised by the sight of sharp-faced fellows looking on at our doings.”
The weather mellowed, as Lamancha had hoped, into a St Luke’s summer, and for five days Loeffler enjoyed a leisure the existence of which he had almost forgotten. The old house, set among meadows of hill turf and flanked by russet woods, seemed a sanctuary remote from a fevered world. The hostess was the only woman in the party, and Mildred Lamancha’s slow, sweet, drawling voice gave the appropriate key of peace. Geraldine, the Prime Minister, shot all day with Stannix, while Lamancha and his guest, mounted on hill ponies, quartered the uplands, and Loeffler’s face took on a wholesome colour from wind and sun. At night they talked, and their talk ranged far. In such company Loeffler felt at his ease, and threw off much of his habit of caution. Through his dogged matter-of-factness there came glimpses of enthusiasms and dreams. Geraldine, who of the three ministers knew him least well, was moved to confide to his host that he had got a new notion of the little man.
On the evening before they were due to leave for London there was a small party. “Old Jocelyn is coming to dine,” Lamancha told Loeffler; “asked himself and I didn’t like to refuse. He used to be our Ambassador at Vienna, and he speaks good German — not the limping affair of the rest of us. You’ll like the old fellow. He’s uncommonly knowledgeable, and he’ll be thrilled to meet you. There’s no more need for secrecy, for to-morrow evening the papers will announce your arrival. I hope you have had a pleasant time here. It has been a very educative time for all of us, especially for the P.M. I don’t mind telling you that I have been rather anxious about him. He sees a little too much of Creevey and his lot.”
“I have learned much,” Loeffler replied with his slow smile, “and I have seen many beautiful things. Also my English has improved, is it not so?”
To his wife later in the day Lamancha brought a message.
“Jocelyn wants to know if he can bring a friend to dinner to-night. He has a man staying with him, an American doctor. Upcott’s the name. Trust Jocelyn to have an assortment of odd friends. He collects them up and down the world like rare postage stamps. I suppose it’s all right, for Jocelyn thinks it’s only a country dinner-party. Anyhow, it’s too late to matter. Things have gone well so far, I think.”
“I have loved it,” said Lady Lamancha. “I have completely lost my heart to the Chancellor. He is like one of the old wise collie dogs at Leriot. I don’t suppose he realised he was being so closely looked after. He has been, you know. Kit spoke to me about it. He asked what dark secret we were hiding. The police have been simply squatting round the place. You didn’t notice it perhaps, for you were out most of the day, but there’s always been somebody hanging about each of the gates. And then there’s the absurd old Scotsman that Adam Melfort insisted on our having in the house. I believe he is the life and soul of the housekeeper’s room, but he is an odd figure for a servant. I am sure that he is wearing his best Sunday blacks.”
Lamancha laughed.
“Amos is a wonderful graven image, but you couldn’t get a better watch-dog. There’s a new ghost haunting the west corridor, the wraith of an elder of the kirk. . . . By the way, you remember that Adam himself is coming to-night. He’ll arrive late, and will have dined already.”
Sir Francis Jocelyn was a stately old gentleman verging upon eighty whose gout made him lean heavily upon two sticks. He was a little surprised at finding himself in what looked like a committee of the Cabinet, and his eyes opened wide when he was presented to Loeffler. Retirement from the world had not dimmed his interest in the world’s affairs. Mr Upcott, the
American doctor, proved to be a youngish man with a cheerful clean-shaven face and a mop of fair hair brushed back from his forehead. He spoke almost with an English intonation, for it seemed that he was a Bostonian, though now a professor at Baltimore. Jocelyn introduced him with a short sketch of his attainments, and he gravely informed each member of the party that he was pleased to meet them.
On a side table in the hall stood the materials for making cocktails.
“I told Upcott that he would find here what he was accustomed to,” said Jocelyn. “Better let him mix the drinks. He has already turned my butler into an artist.”
Mr Upcott announced his willingness, and set to work at the side table with a professional air. Lamancha, who detested cocktails, drank sherry, but the others accepted an agreeable mixture which appeared to be known as a “Maryland side-car.” Loeffler raised his glass to the health of the compounder.
It was a pleasant meal. Jocelyn was too skilled a talker to steer near the shoals of current politics. His memory dallied with old days in pre-war Vienna, and Geraldine, who had many continental friendships, kept up the ball of reminiscence. It was a world which Loeffler knew only by hearsay, but he was eager in his questions, and the Maryland side-car seemed to have thawed his gentle taciturnity. But the success of the dinner was Mr Upcott, who showed that medical science had not monopolised his interests. He seemed to know everybody and to have been everywhere in the civilised world. He was enlightening in his comments on his own land, and he had the lovable solemnity on public questions which characterises one type of young American. But he had also a wealth of idiomatic slang and curious metaphors which introduced an agreeable spice of comedy. He had often to be explained to Loeffler, generally by Jocelyn, who professed to specialise in American idioms, and the explanations produced that rare thing in the Chancellor, hearty laughter.
After dinner Jocelyn, Lamancha, Stannix and Geraldine made a four at bridge. Loeffler and Mr Upcott did not play, and sat with Lady Lamancha round the library hearth, for the autumn frosts had begun. Their talk was desultory, for the Chancellor had relapsed into his customary silence, and sat with his eyes on the fire, as if he were seeing pictures in the flames. Mr Upcott was as sparkling as before, and entertained his hostess with an account of the last St Cecilia’s ball at Charleston which he had attended, and which he said was the ultimate outpost of the well-born South against a vulgar world. He was very amusing, and the third in the group was forgotten.
Suddenly Loeffler raised himself from his chair.
“I think if you will permit me, gracious lady,” he said, “I will go to bed. I am feeling weary, and I have much to do to-morrow.”
He spoke in a small, strained voice, and his face was very white. Lady Lamancha was full of kindly anxiety.
“No. I am quite well,” he said. “Only tired. Pray do not disturb yourself. I will have a long sleep.”
He swayed a little as he passed the bridge-table.
“What! Off already!” Lamancha cried. “Well, perhaps it’s wise.”
Loeffler shook hands ceremoniously with Jocelyn and left the room. Lamancha rose and came over to the fire.
“Anything wrong, Mildred? Can his food have upset him? He had the complexion of a deerstalker when he came down to dinner. Perhaps it was your cocktail, Mr Upcott!”
The young American looked grave.
“He certainly doesn’t look good. Say, Lord Lamancha, hadn’t I better go up to him? It’s my job, after all. We oughtn’t to take chances with so big a man.”
“That’s a good idea. It would ease my mind. I’ll show you his room.”
He said something to the bridge-players, and led the young doctor up the main staircase to where the west corridor turned off from the upper hall. In the dim light at the end of it stood the rock-like figure of Andrew Amos. Lamancha knocked at the door of Loeffler’s bedroom, and opened it for Mr Upcott to enter. “You’ll find your way down again all right,” he said. As he turned away he noticed that Amos was no longer in the corridor.
Loeffler had taken off his coat and waistcoat and was lying on his bed. He opened his eyes languidly as the young doctor entered, and made an effort to sit up.
“You stay still, Excellency,” said Mr Upcott. “Lord Lamancha thought I might as well have a look at you, for I’m a doctor by profession. Just keep as you are.”
He felt his patient’s pulse, looked at his tongue, and listened to the beating of his heart.
“Nothing much the matter, Excellency,” he said. “But I’m going to fix you so that you’ll have a good night and wake in the morning as jolly as a bird. We doctors don’t work with coarse medicines now. Just a prick of a needle and a spot of the right kind of dope. Give me your arm.”
Mr Upcott took from the pocket of his dinner jacket a small flat leather case, from which he selected a tiny syringe. He did not fill it, so it appeared that it had been already prepared. He was about to take Loeffler’s arm, when suddenly his right hand was seized from behind and the syringe was forced from his grasp.
Mr Upcott turned to find that two men had entered from the adjacent sitting-room. One was the grotesque figure in black that he had noticed in the corridor. The other was a tallish man in tweeds.
“No,” said the latter. “You do nothing more, Mr Upcott.”
He balanced the syringe in his palm, and then picked up the leather case from the bed.
“You have made your preparations well,” he said. “One touch of this and your job would have been done. It’s the new stuff, hamaline, isn’t it? Doesn’t kill, but atrophies the mind and drugs the body for a week or two. I congratulate you on your ingenuity.”
Mr Upcott had been transformed from the bland doctor into something alert and formidable. He looked as if he were going to strike, but there was that in the air of the two men that made him think better of it.
The man who had spoken handed him back his case.
“I take it there’s nothing much wrong with Herr Loeffler,” he said. “Something in your cocktail, perhaps. They tell me you are very adroit at that game. . . . You will go quietly downstairs and tell Lord Lamancha that everything is well. Then you will go home with Sir Francis Jocelyn. You had better leave England to-morrow or there may be trouble. Do you understand me?”
Mr Upcott lifted the bedside lamp and looked at the other’s face. Then he put it down and shrugged his shoulders. He laughed and his laugh was not pleasant.
“I’ve got you now,” he said. “Colonel Melfort, isn’t it? One of us too, by God! Well, we shan’t forget this evening.”
Adam appeared in the library about eleven o’clock after Jocelyn and his friend had departed.
“Just arrived,” he explained. He glanced at the array of glasses around the siphons and decanters. “Hullo, have you had a party?” he said. “Where is the great man?”
“Gone to bed,” said Lamancha. “He wasn’t feeling his best, but a man that old Jocelyn brought to dinner, a young American doctor, had a look at him and reported him all right. Amusing chap, that doctor. Mildred went upstairs whooping at some jape of his on the doorstep. I must get her to tell it me in the morning.”
IV
After breakfast next day Adam sat in Loeffler’s sitting-room. The Chancellor had breakfasted in bed, but had sent word to his host that he was wholly recovered. Lamancha had interviewed him, and then Adam had been sent for.
“I have to thank you, Colonel Melfort, for a great service,” Loeffler said in his shy, deprecating voice. “How great a service I do not know, but I can guess. That man last night — he would have drugged me? Would the drug have killed?”
Adam shook his head.
“I do not think so — from what I know of hamaline. But it would have made you useless in the Conference. The Iron Hands are artists, and do not take stronger measures than the case requires.”
“What do you know of the Iron Hands?”
“A good deal. I am by way of being one of their inner brotherhood — the extremists who s
tick at nothing. You cannot defeat such people unless you are of them. For three weeks, Excellency, you have been leading a dangerous life, but now for a little you are safe. Since you are now officially in England you are in the keeping of the English police. As a matter of fact, you have been in their charge for the last five days, but your anonymity made it difficult to take full precautions.”
Loeffler had been staring at him, and suddenly recognition awoke in his eyes.
“You were the man on the boat,” he said, “the man who saved me from being flung into the sea? Am I right?”
“I was the man. Do not blame the Iron Hands for that. That was the work of another branch of your enemies who are clumsier and more desperate.”
Loeffler’s puzzled face broke into a smile.
“It is a world of marvels,” he said. “I did not think when we sat at dinner in August in Berlin that at our next meeting you would save my life. You have been my good angel.”
“We met in between,” said Adam. “Consider, Excellency, search your memory. What of the Freiburg chemist at Andersbach and the Wandervögel?”
Loeffler sprang to his feet.
“Then you were the man at Rottenburg that plucked me out of the Ganzstrasse business? Him I recognised. God in Heaven, who and what are you? Can you change your person like a wizard? You are miraculous — beyond belief. I can observe and my memory is good, but you have vanquished me utterly.”
“I served a long apprenticeship to the job,” said Adam. “You think we first met at dinner with Lord Lamancha in London eighteen months ago. But you are wrong. We met before that.”
“It cannot be.”
“It is true. Do you remember a day in February ‘18 at Bodenheim? You were then Major Loeffler, a convalescent recovering from wounds. You had before you for examination a neutral commercial agent, a Dane called Randers, with whose doings you were not altogether satisfied. You and your colleagues — you especially — gave Randers a pretty hot time. More than once you nearly broke through his defences. Had you succeeded Randers would have died, and I think that you yourself would not be alive this morning.”
