Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  As the grey car hummed westward over the Belgian road, Guild thought of these things while the whole world about him was shaking with the earthquake of the guns.

  “Karen,” he repeated under his breath, “Karen Girard.”

  After a while sentinels began to halt them every few rods. The chauffeur unrolled two white flags and set them in sockets on either side of the hood. The hussar beside him produced a letter from his grey despatch-pouch.

  “General von Reiter’s orders,” he said briefly. “You are to read them now and return the letter to me before the enemies’ parlementaire answers our flag.”

  Guild took the envelope, tore it open, and read:

  Orders received since our interview make it impossible for me to tell you where to find me on your return.

  My country place in Silesia is apparently out of the question at present as a residence for the person you are expected to bring back with you. The inclosed clipping from a Danish newspaper will explain why. Therefore you will sail from London on Wednesday or Sunday, taking a Holland liner. You will land at Amsterdam, go by rail through Utrecht, Helmond, Halen, Maastricht. You will be expected there. If I am not there you will remain over night.

  If you return from your journey alone and unsuccessful you will surrender yourself as prisoner to the nearest German post and ask the officer in charge to telegraph me.

  If you return successful you shall be permitted at Eijsden to continue your journey with the person you bring with you, across the Luxembourg border to Trois Fontaines, which is just beyond the Grand Duchy frontier; and you shall then deliver the person in question to the housekeeper of the hunting lodge, Marie Bergner. The lodge is called Quellenheim, and it belongs to me. If I am not there you must remain there over night. In the morning if you do not hear from me, you are at liberty to go where you please, and your engagements vis-à-vis to me are cancelled.

  von Reiter, Maj-Gen’l.

  The inclosed newspaper clipping had been translated into French and written out in long-hand. The translation read as follows:

  Russia’s invasion of East Prussia, Posen and Silesia has sent a wave of panic over the eastern provinces of the German Empire, if reports from Copenhagen and Stockholm are to be credited. These reports are chiefly significant as indicating that the Russian advance is progressing more rapidly than has been asserted even by despatches from Petrograd.

  A correspondent of the Daily Telegraph reports from Stockholm that the whole of eastern Germany is upset by the menace of Cossack raids. He hears that a diplomatic despatch from Vienna contains information that the civilian inhabitants of Koenigsberg, East Prussia, and Breslau, in Silesia, are abandoning their homes and that only the military will remain in these strongholds.

  From Copenhagen it is reported, allegedly from German sources, that Silesia expects devastation by fire and sword and that the wealthy Prussian landholders, whose immense estates cover Silesia, are leading the exodus toward the west. The military authorities have done everything possible to check the panic, fearing its hurtful influence on Germany’s prospects, but have been unable to reassure the inhabitants. Many of these have seen bands of Cossacks who have penetrated a few miles over the border and their warnings have spread like a forest fire.

  For a long while the young man studied the letter, reading and re-reading it, until, closing his eyes, he could repeat it word for word.

  And when he was letter perfect he nodded and handed back the letter to the hussar, who pouched it.

  A moment later the car ran in among a horde of mounted Uhlans, and one of their officers came galloping up alongside of the machine.

  He and the hussar whispered together for a few minutes, then an Uhlan was summoned, a white cloth tied to his lance-shaft, and away he went on his powerful horse, the white flag snapping in the wind. Behind him cantered an Uhlan trumpeter.

  Toward sunset the grey automobile rolled west out into open country. A vast flat plain stretched to the horizon, where the sunset flamed scarlet and rose.

  But it was almost dusk before from somewhere across the plain came the faint strains of military music.

  The hussar’s immature mustache bristled. “British!” he remarked. “Gott in Himmel, what barbarous music!”

  Guild said nothing. They were playing “Tipperary.”

  And now, through the late rays of the afterglow, an Uhlan trumpeter, sitting his horse on the road ahead, set his trumpet to his lips and sounded the parley again. Far, silvery, from the misty southwest, a British bugle answered.

  Guild strained his eyes. Nothing moved on the plain. But, at a nod to the chauffeur from the hussar, the great grey automobile rolled forward, the two Uhlans walking their horses on either side.

  Suddenly, east and west as far as the eye could see, trenches in endless parallels cut the plain, swarming with myriads and myriads of men in misty grey.

  The next moment the hussar had passed a black silk handkerchief over Guild’s eyes and was tying it rather tightly.

  CHAPTER IV

  BAD DREAMS

  His first night in London was like a bad dream to him. Lying half awake on his bed, doggedly, tenaciously awaiting the sleep he needed, at intervals even on its vision-haunted borderland, but never drifting across it, he remained always darkly conscious of his errand and of his sinister predicament.

  The ineffaceable scenes of the last three days obsessed him; his mind seemed to be unable to free itself. The quieter he lay, the more grimly determined he became that sleep should blot out these tragic memories for a few hours at least, the more bewildering grew the confusion in his haunted mind. Continually new details were evoked by his treacherous and insurgent memory — trifles terrible in their minor significance — the frightened boy against the wall snivelling against his ragged shirt-sleeve — the sprawling attitudes of the dead men in the dusty grass — and how, after a few moments, a mangled arm moved, blindly groping — and what quieted it.

  Incidents, the petty details of sounds, of odours, of things irrelevant, multiplied and possessed him — the thin gold-rimmed spectacles on the Burgomaster’s nose and the honest, incredulous eyes which gazed through them at him when he announced checkmate in three moves.

  Did that tranquil episode happen years ago in another and calmer life? — or a few hours ago in this?

  He heard again the startling and ominous sounds of raiding cavalry even before they had become visible in the misty street — the flat slapping gallop of the Uhlan’s horses on the paved way, the tinkling clash of broken glass. Again the thick, sour, animal-like stench of the unwashed infantry seemed to assail and sicken him to the verge of faintness; and, half awake, he saw a world of fog set thick with human faces utterly detached from limbs and bodies — thousands and thousands of faces watching him out of thousands and thousands of little pig-like eyes.

  His nerves finally drove him into motion and he swung himself out of bed and walked to the window.

  His hotel was the Berkeley, and he looked out across Piccadilly into a silent, sad, unlighted city of shadows. Only a single line of lighted lamps outlined the broad thoroughfare. Crimson sparks twinkled here and there — the lights of cabs.

  The great darkened Ritz towered opposite, Devonshire House squatted behind its grilles and shadowy walls on the right, and beyond the great dark thoroughfare stretched away into the night, melancholy, deserted save for the slight stirring of a policeman here and there or the passage of an automobile running in silence without lights.

  He had been standing by the window for ten minutes or so, a lighted cigarette between his lips, both hands dropped into the pocket of his pyjamas, when he became aware of a slight sound — a very slight one — behind him.

  He turned around and his eyes fell upon the knob of the door. Whether or not it was turning he could not determine in the dusk of the room. The only light in it came through his windows from the starry August night-sky.

  After a moment he walked toward the door, bare-footed across the velvet c
arpet, halted, fixed his eyes on the door knob.

  After a moment it began to turn again, almost imperceptibly. And, in him, every over-wrought nerve tightened to its full tension till he quivered. Slowly, discreetly, noiselessly the knob continued to turn. The door was not locked. Presently it began to open, the merest fraction of an inch at a time; then, abruptly but stealthily, it began to close again, as though the unseen intruder had caught sight of him, and Guild stepped forward swiftly and jerked the door wide open.

  There was only the darkened hallway there, and a servant with a tray who said very coolly, “Thanky, sir,” and entered the room.

  “What-do-you-want?” asked Guild unsteadily.

  “You ordered whiskey and soda for eleven o’clock, sir.”

  “I did not. Why do you try to enter my room without knocking?”

  “I understood your orders were not to disturb you but to place the tray on the night-table beside your bed, sir.”

  Guild regarded him steadily. The servant, clean-shaven, typical, encountered the young man’s gaze respectfully and with no more disturbance than seemed natural under the circumstances of a not unusual blunder.

  Guild’s nerves relaxed and he drew a deep, quiet breath.

  “Somebody has made a mistake,” he said. “I ordered nothing. And, hereafter, anybody coming to my door will knock. Is that plain?”

  “Perfectly, sir.”

  “Have the goodness to make it very plain to the management.”

  “I’m sorry, sir — —”

  “You understand, now?”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  “Very well.... And, by the way, who on this corridor is likely to have ordered that whiskey?”

  “Sir?”

  “Somebody ordered it, I suppose?”

  “Very likely the gentleman next door, sir — —”

  “All right,” said Guild quietly. “Try the door while I stand here and look on.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  With equanimity unimpaired the waiter stepped to the next door on the corridor, placed his tray flat on the palm of his left hand, and, with his right hand, began to turn the knob, using, apparently, every precaution to make no noise.

  But he was not successful; the glassware on his tray suddenly gave out a clear, tinkling clash, and, at the same moment the bedroom door opened from within and a man in evening dress appeared dimly framed by the doorway.

  “Sorry, sir,” said the waiter, “your whiskey, sir — —”

  He stepped inside the room and the door closed behind him. Guild quietly waited. Presently the waiter reappeared without the tray.

  “Come here,” motioned Guild.

  The waiter said: “Yes, sir,” in a natural voice. Doubtless the man next door could hear it, too.

  Guild, annoyed, lowered his own voice: “Who is the gentleman in the next room?”

  “A Mr. Vane, sir.”

  “From where?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “What is he, English?”

  “Yes sir, I believe so.”

  “You don’t happen to know his business, do you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I ask — it’s merely curiosity. Wait a moment.” He turned, picked up a sovereign from a heap of coins on his night-table and gave it to the waiter.

  “No need to repeat to anybody what I have asked you.”

  “Oh, no, sir — —”

  “All right. Listen very attentively to what I tell you. When I arrived here this afternoon I desired the management to hire for my use a powerful and absolutely reliable touring car and a chauffeur. I mentioned the Edmeston Agency and a Mr. Louis Grätz.

  “Half an hour later the management informed me that they had secured such a car for me from Mr. Louis Grätz at the Edmeston Agency; that I was permitted sufficient gasoline to take me from here to Westheath, back here again, and then to the docks of the Holland Steamship Company next Sunday.

  “I’ve changed my mind. Tomorrow is Wednesday and a steamer sails from Fresh Wharf for Amsterdam. Tell the management that I’ll take that steamer and that I want them to telephone the Edmeston Agency to have the car here at six o’clock tomorrow morning.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  “Go down and tell them now. Ask them to confirm the change of orders by telephone.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  A quarter of an hour later the bell tinkled in his room: “Are you there, sir? Thank you, sir. The car is to be here at six o’clock. What time would you breakfast, Mr. Guild?”

  “Five. Have it served here, please.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Guild went back to bed. Another detail bothered him now. If the man next door had ordered whiskey and soda for eleven, to be placed on the night-table beside the bed, why was he up and dressed and ready to open the door when the jingle of glassware awaited him?

  Still there might be various natural explanations. Guild thought of several, but none of them suited him.

  He began to feel dull and sleepy. That is the last he remembered, except that his sleep was disturbed by vaguely menacing dreams, until he awoke in the grey light of early morning, scarcely refreshed, and heard the waiter knocking. He rose, unlocked his door, and let him in with his tray.

  When the waiter went out again Guild relocked his door, turned on his bath, took it red hot and then icy. And, thoroughly awake, now, he returned to his room, breakfasted, dressed, rang for his account, and a few minutes later descended in the lift to find his car and chauffeur waiting, and the tall, many-medalled porter at salute by the door.

  “Westheath,” he said to the smiling chauffeur. “Go as fast as you dare and by the direct route.”

  The chauffeur touched his peaked cap. He seemed an ideal chauffeur, neat, alert, smiling, well turned out in fact as the magnificent and powerful touring car which had been as thoroughly and minutely groomed as a race-horse or a debutante.

  When the car rolled out into Piccadilly the waiter who had mistaken the order for whiskey, watched it from the dining-room windows. Several floors above, the man who had occupied the next bedroom also watched the departure of the car. When it was out of sight the man whose name was Vane went to the telephone and called 150 Fenchurch Street, E. C. It was the office of the Holland Steamship Company.

  And the waiter who had entered the room unannounced, stood listening to the conversation over the wire, and finally took the transmitter himself for further conversation while Vane stood by listening, one hand resting familiarly on the waiter’s shoulder.

  After the waiter had hung up the receiver, Vane walked to the window, stood a moment looking out, then came slowly back.

  “Gwynn,” he said to the waiter, “this man, Guild, seems to be harmless. He’s known at the American Embassy. He’s an American in the real estate business in New York. It’s true that Dart telegraphed from Ostend that Guild came to our lines in a German military automobile under a white flag. But he told a straight story. I’ll run out to Westheath, and if his business there is clean and above-board, I think we can give him a clean bill of health.”

  Gwynn said, slowly: “I don’t like the way he questioned me last night. Besides, a sovereign is too much even for an American.”

  “He might have been afraid of robbery.”

  “He was afraid of something.”

  “Very well. We’ve passage on the boat if necessary. I’ll go out to Westheath anyway. If I don’t care for what he is doing out there we can hold him on the dock.”

  “Another thing,” mused Gwynn. “The Edmeston Agency may be quite all right, but the man’s name is Grätz.”

  “He’s been under scrutiny. He seems to be all right.”

  “All the same — his name is all wrong. What was that chauffeur’s name?”

  “Bush.”

  “Busch?”

  “He spells it without a c. I saw his signature on the Agency rolls.”

  “Have you his history?”

  “He’s
Canadian. I’ve sent for it.”

  “You’ll find that his father spelled his name with a c,” remarked Gwynn, gloomily. But Vane only laughed.

  “I’m off,” he said. “Stick around where I can get you on the telephone if necessary. But I don’t think it will be necessary.”

  “I do,” muttered Gwynn.

  CHAPTER V

  KAREN

  The journey was the usual one through interminable London streets alternately respectable and squalid; and straight ahead through equally interminable suburbs with their endless “terraces,” semi-detached and detached villas, and here and there a fine old house behind neglected garden walls, making its last forlorn stand against the all-destroying inroad of the London jungle.

  There had been a heavy haze in London, but no fog. In the country, however, beyond the last outstretched suburban tentacle of the inky octopus the morning sun glimmered low through a golden smother, promising a glimpse of blue sky.

  To Guild, one “heath” has always resembled another, and now, as they passed through the country at high speed, there seemed to him very little difference between the several named points which marked his progress toward Westheath. Hedges alternated with ivy-covered walls on either side of a wide, fine road; trees were splendid as usual, sheep fat, cattle sleek. Here and there a common or heath glimmered bewitchingly where sunlight fell among the whins; birds winged their way, waters glimmered, and the clean, singing August wind of England blew steadily in his face strangely reviving within him some ancient, forgotten, pre-natal wistfulness. Maybe it came from his American mother’s English mother.

  Near two villages and once on the open highway policemen leisurely signalled the chauffeur to stop, and came sauntering around to the tonneau to question Guild as to his origin, his business, and his destination; quiet, dignified, civil, respectable men they seemed to be in their night cloaks and their always smart and business-like helmets and uniforms.

  All seemed satisfied, but all politely suggested that passports were now becoming fashionable in England. And Guild thanked them pleasantly and drove on.