“We are coming, Juliet,” answered Pagan from the balcony.
“Juliet!” She puckered her brows. “My name is Bertha,” she answered.
Pagan struck a stage attitude. “What’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
“And so would Bertha, eh?” grinned Baron. “But its culinary smells I’m interested in at the moment, Charles. Suppose we go down.”
“May I take you in?” asked Pagan offering his arm. And they went down the stairs together.
Bertha waited upon them and served a really excellent meal as Pagan had prophesied.
“What are we going to drink?” asked Baron as the large steaming tureen that had held enough soup for six ordinary persons was removed.
“Bock Tigre,” suggested Pagan.
“You have vulgar tastes, Charles,” Baron told him. “Why not experiment with the local wines?”
“I like Bock Tigre,” asserted Pagan. “When I was a little boy at school I learnt that the tiger was a fine and very fierce animal. And when I drink Bock Tigre I feel a fine and very fierce animal.”
After the meal they had hot coffee brought to them in tall glasses, and they smoked their pipes by the fire under the balcony. The man did not appear again, but Bertha brought her needlework and sat sewing at a table under the lamp. Otherwise the long room was deserted, though it was clear that it fulfilled all the functions of restaurant, bar and living-room.
Baron stretched his slippered feet luxuriously before the blaze. “That tramp through the rain was well worth it for the sake of that meal and this fire. It’s a funny life: you have to be beastly uncomfortable before you can appreciate simple joys.”
“Wisdom falls from your lips like pearls, O Baron,” Pagan agreed. “Personally I am finding the thought of that big bed and fat red eider rather attractive.”
Baron yawned in sympathy. “Bed at an early hour is indicated,” he agreed.
Pagan heaved his body reluctantly from the chair. “I feel like the cove in the play ‘Who with a body filled and vacant mind gets him to rest crammed with distressful bread’—and not too distressful either,” he added as an afterthought. He walked over to Bertha who had raised her head. “We are turning in, Bertha. Nous sommes relentirant dans,” he said with a grin. “We promenadered far to-day and we shall probably promenader further to-morrow. Brekker—that’s petit dejeuner, and not too petit either mind you—at huit heures et demie, s’il vous plait. Bon soir et bon rêves.” And he made her a bow in the correct French manner.
She answered, “Bon soir, Messieurs,” in her stolid fashion. Baron said good night and they went upstairs although it was barely nine o’clock. Before turning in to his room, Pagan looked over the balustrade, and there below him, alone in the long brick floored room, sat the enigmatic Bertha, her shingled head bent again over her work.
In the warm lamplight, the twin bedrooms with their simple massive furniture, mellow walls, and dark ceiling timbers, had an engaging air of rustic peace and comfort. Outside, the wind still moaned and whimpered, and the soft pad of rain sounded now and then upon the window behind the thick red curtains; but within the house itself quietude reigned.
Pagan, in pink pyjamas, was sorting the contents of his knapsack upon the bed. The connecting door between the two rooms was open. “Reminds one of the really good billets we got occasionally in the bad old days,” he said.
“Just what I was thinking,” answered Baron from the other room. “I had a billet rather like this those few days we were at Vaux just before the Somme started. Poor old G. B. had the room opposite, across the passage.”
“Yes,” said Pagan reminiscently. “I had a damned good billet too—in that cottage at the cross roads, with Twist and Hubbard. And I remember how sick I was when my platoon had to go up to man the corps o.pips, and you lazy devils in A Company were left behind.”
“Only for a couple of days,” retorted Baron. “Then they pushed us up to dig toc emma pits at Carnoy.”
“Happy days,” said Pagan.
“Well, we certainly did enjoy those spells in rest.”
“And the leaves,” added Pagan.
“Leave! By gad, yes! Fourteen days freedom from the gory old fracas; plenty of money to burn; Blighty—London! I tell you, old Charles, you and I will never see their like again.”
“’Fraid not—unless there’s another war; which heaven forbid.”
“Not even then. We are not exactly nonagenarians yet, but we are getting on, Charles, you and I. We were very young in those days, and that was half the secret, I suspect. No—it would not be quite the same—ever.”
“I suppose you are right, Dicky.” Pagan climbed into the comfortable bed, under the warm red eiderdown. The lamp was on the table beside him, and he had an interesting book. “Still—old soldiers never die!”
“No. And we haven’t even yet begun to fade away,” answered Baron who also was now in bed.
CHAPTER TWO
PAGAN became interested in his book, and half an hour flashed by in silence, broken only by the turning of pages and the gentle rustle of bedclothes as he shifted his pipe from one side of his mouth to the other. Presently, however, Baron’s voice came from the other room. “Where do we go to-morrow, Charles?”
Pagan blew a cloud of smoke upwards and answered without raising his eyes from the page. “Down to one of those old fortified villages guarding the valleys—Kaisersburg or Riquewihr. I haven’t decided yet.”
“Got the map?” asked Baron.
Pagan looked up and glanced around the room. “Yes, it’s somewhere about. Oh no, I left it in my mac. pocket. Bertha has it downstairs.”
“Oh, damnation!” came Baron’s explosive exclamation from the next room.
“Well, you can go and get it if you want it,” Pagan retorted amiably as he turned over upon one elbow and resumed his reading.
Silence settled down again to be broken a few seconds later by the creaking of a bed in the next room. A series of slight thuds followed and a muttered exclamation. Then Baron appeared in the doorway connecting the two rooms.
“Energetic cove!” murmured Pagan with a yawn.
“I can’t open my door,” said Baron as he crossed the room in thin leather bedroom slippers. “It’s stuck or something; so I’m going to use yours.”
“Use the window and the chimney if you like,” murmured Pagan amiably from the bed.
Baron turned the handle, but the door refused to open. “That’s curious,” he said. “Both doors stuck!”
“What’s that?” demanded Pagan lowering his book.
“Yours has stuck as well. Or else they are both locked,” explained Baron as he prepared for a lusty heave on the handle.
Pagan slipped quickly out of bed. “Here, hold on a moment. Are they really locked?”
“Looks like it,” answered Baron. “They won’t open anyway.” And he prepared again for a heave.
Pagan caught him by the arm. “Shut up. Don’t make a row,” he exclaimed. “This is interesting. I thought there was something fishy in that girl’s manner—and in the old boy’s too.”
“But damn it, they are not going to lock me in,” retorted Baron hotly. And he prepared for an onslaught upon the door.
Pagan restrained him. “But don’t you see, you chuckle-headed old lout, that we want to find out what the game is; and if you go making a row, we shall find out damn all. Come over here and let’s have a powwow.”
Baron allowed himself to be led away from the door, and he sat down on the bed. Pagan refilled his pipe from his pouch on the table by the lamp. “Let’s approach the problem logically,” he said. “If they have locked us in, it means that they don’t want us to get out.”
Baron assumed a mock expression of amazement. “Really, Charles, you ought to be at Scotland Yard,” he said in tones of deep admiration.
Pagan ignored the interruption. He repeated firmly, “Don’t want us to get out—for some reason or other. And I want to find out that reaso
n.” He shifted his pipe across his mouth. “The fellow is obviously a Bosche,” he mused.
“Oh yes, he’s a Fritz all right—an Alsatian Fritz at any rate,” agreed Baron. “And we were probably potting at each other on the salubrious Somme fourteen odd years ago. But that doesn’t explain anything, Charles. The Jerries are not hostile to us now—on the contrary.”
“Well,” said Pagan with a grin, “he’s an innkeeper, and he may think it’s up to him to live up to the old reputation of his profession and murder us for our gold!”
“Then he’s not only an innkeeper but an optimist,” put in Baron dryly.
“I agree with you that the theory is unlikely,” grinned Pagan.
“Very,” asserted Baron. “The simplest explanation is that having seen you, Charles, he is afraid for the honour of the beauteous Bertha, since on your own showing Bock Tigre makes you feel a fine and very fierce animal, and he has locked the door to prevent any tigerish cave man stuff.”
“My dear old Baron,” protested Pagan in pained tones, “allow me some rudiments of taste. Bock Tigre forsooth! Believe me, it would take a whole Bock zoo to place the bashful Bertha in danger.”
“But you said yourself that she was just the sort of wench you would marry, if ever you did marry,” insisted Baron maliciously.
“Oh, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth, that was only what I praught,” retorted Pagan. “And you don’t think I’m fool enough to practise what I preach, do you?”
“Well, why is the door locked, anyway?” demanded Baron.
“Ah, that is the question, as laddie Hamlet said. And we were getting on with it nicely till you butted in with your facetious remarks about the seductive charms of Bertha. Now, as I was saying, I thought there was something fishy about those two. Instead of swooping down upon us like a couple of vultures as any well conducted landlord and daughter would, they didn’t seem a bit glad to see us, and retched at one another in German before they condescended to take us in. And now they lock us in our rooms—which, as the Army Act says, is conduct to the prejudice of good order and landlordly discipline.”
“All of which may be true, but nevertheless doesn’t answer the question Why?” yawned Baron.
“I’m coming to that,” said Pagan patiently. “They have locked us in because there is something going on that they don’t want us to see.”
“But …” began Baron.
Pagan raised a judicial hand and went on. “They know, of course, that we could break our way out, but we are not likely to do that, and anyway it would give them time to hide whatever it is.” Pagan walked up and down the room as he warmed to his subject. “They think that we are tired and are asleep.”
“They are bound to think that with you lumbering up and down the room like a tank,” commented Baron dryly.
Pagan sat down abruptly upon the bed. “They think that we are in bed and asleep,” he went on imperturbably. “But to make quite sure that we won’t stick our heads out of the door and see what is going on in that room down there, they have locked the door. They calculate that if we do by any chance want to get out we shall try the door, and then finding it shut, pull away at the handle and make a devil of a row just as you would have done if I hadn’t stopped you. Then mine host downstairs would have hidden whatever it is, run upstairs and opened our door oozing with apologies and regrets at the strange way doors have of sticking in old houses. And we should have seen damn all. Whereas now—”
“Whereas now,” interrupted Baron, “you’re sitting up in your little pink jimmy-jams enjoying the children’s hour. Anyway, you have a wonderful imagination, Charles; I will say that.”
“Imagination!” echoed Pagan indignantly. “What about that locked door: is that imagination?”
“Well, is it locked?” asked Baron. “We are not sure.”
“Then if we are not sure, let’s jolly well make sure,” cried Pagan springing up.
They crossed to the door and examined it. Pagan peered through the keyhole and cautiously tried the handle. Then he fetched his penknife from the dressing table, opened it, and with the door handle turned, slipped the blade between the door and the jamb. He slid it slowly downwards till it hit something with a metallic click. He withdrew the blade and inserted it lower down. He slid it upwards, and again it clicked and stopped. He shut the knife and threw it on the bed. “Well, there’s proof,” he said. “The door is locked, and the key is not on the outside either.”
Baron turned from the door and walked slowly across the room. “Granting that there may be something in what you have said Charles, what are we going to do about it?” he asked.
“Well, we want to know what is going on, and to do that we must get out without making a row.”
“Yes, that’s all very well; but how?” insisted Baron.
Pagan scratched the back of his head. “Skeleton key,” he suggested.
“Oh, I know that’s the way it’s always done in the penny shockers,” retorted Baron caustically. “But personally I’ve left my burglar’s set of keys at home, and if you have never tried to open a door with a bent nail, I have; and I can tell you that it’s about as easy as opening a tin of bully with a fork. And we haven’t a bent nail, anyway.”
“It’s only your cheery optimism that keeps me from despair,” grinned Pagan. “But what about the window?”
“Now you are talking sense,” admitted Baron. “The only snag is that we should then be outside, and we want to see what is going on inside.”
“True, o King, but once we are outside we might be able to get a squint through the lower windows.”
Baron nodded. “It cannot be much of a drop anyway.”
“Are you game then?”
“Yes—I suppose so; though it’s all damn nonsense.”
“Right ’o! Then we had better get some clothes on first.”
Baron went back into his room, and Pagan hurriedly pulled on his clothes. Baron returned, buttoning his coat about his uncollared neck. “Which window shall we try?” he asked.
“It makes no odds,” said Pagan. “This one will do. But we must put out the light in case there is anyone about.”
They shut the door leading to Baron’s lighted room, switched on a flashlight, and turned out the lamp in Pagan’s room. Baron pulled aside the heavy red curtains. The window glass was still wet, but the rain had ceased. The moon hung clear, but a low vapoury cloud rushed upon it, and its brightness died away in a prismatic rainbow glow.
They opened the casement cautiously to avoid any creaking, and Pagan put his head out. At the same instant the moon sailed out across a narrow rift in the scurrying clouds and was gone again. But during the few brief moments that it hung undimmed in the narrow lane between the fluffy pearly edged clouds, he saw the dark line of a hill crest take shape against the sky across a black abyss, and far below twinkled a cluster of tiny lights. He withdrew his head.
“The drop is not much,” he said. “Twelve or fourteen feet at the most, but the confounded pub is built right on the edge of the hill. You can see the lights of a village in the valley below.”
“Fourteen feet,” repeated Baron; “that’s all right.”
“But the devil of it is,” objected Pagan, “there is no level ground at the bottom. It slopes right away from the wall—and pretty steeply too. If we hung by our hands and dropped we should be sure to go over backwards, and then by the look of it, we should not stop rolling till we reached the Rhine.”
“Well then, we shall have to hang something out of the window and shin down it. But the question is ‘what’. ”
“We might tie sheets together,” hazarded Pagan.
“My dear Charles, what is it you read?—Little Folks? And besides, if this is to be a secret stunt, how are we to explain the crumpled and dirty sheets?”
“Well, we had better put on the light and have a look round,” said Pagan.
They closed the window, drew the curtains and relighted the lamp.
“Doesn’t
seem to be much here in the way of a rope or ladder,” remarked Baron. “I suppose, at a push, we could use sheets.”
Pagan was thoughtfully filling the inevitable pipe, and at the same time casting appraising glances round the room. Suddenly he jumped up and walked in a purposeful manner towards the window. He pulled aside one of the heavy red curtains and from behind it produced in the manner of a conjurer the short red tapestry rope that was used for looping back the curtains in the daytime. “Voilà!” he exclaimed in triumph.
Baron pursed his lips judicially. “Hardly long enough,” he remarked.
“But there is one on the other side of the window,” said Pagan; “and probably two more in your room.” He took the other one from its hook and returned from Baron’s room with another pair. They were each about three feet in length and when knotted together formed a rope some nine feet long.
“That’s all right if we could hang it straight out of the window,” said Baron. “But we shall have to loop it round something and that will make it too short.”
Pagan looked around for further material.
“How about the bell pull,” suggested Baron.
Pagan looked blankly at the bare wall behind the bed. “I didn’t know there was one,” he remarked testily.
“Neither did I till this moment,” answered Baron. “It’s over there by the press—at least the iron gadget at the top is.”
Pagan dodged round the foot of the bed to the big press that stood against the side wall, and there in its shadow and partly behind it hung an old fashioned bell pull of the same material and colour as the curtain loops. Evidently the bed and the press had at some date exchanged places.
Pagan mounted a chair and with great care detached the rope from the ornamental iron lever from which it hung.
“Go on; pull it off,” said Baron. “You never knew one of those things to ring by any chance, did you!”
“Not when you wanted it to,” replied Pagan as he stepped down from the chair. “But everything makes a row when you don’t want it to—even you.”
The rope was about seven feet long, and when joined to the one they already had, brought the total length up to between fourteen and fifteen feet.
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