Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  I thrust myself forward. “She is not your daughter,” I said. “And we are here to remove her and to restore her to her family.”

  “Ah!” The woman looked viciously at me, and Azor shot out a shrill bark. “It’s you, is it? Now I understand. You who persecuted her before! The Englishman.”

  “No matter who I am,” I retorted. “ We are here to free the young lady, to whom you have no right.”

  “No right?” She laughed in scorn, defying us all, denouncing me — and I am bound to own that the woman was a consummate actress. “No right to my own daughter? And you’ll take her out of my hands? You will free her, will you? No, sir, not while there is law in this country. Why, for sheer impudence — do you think that I do not know who you are? You, who persecuted the girl in Berlin, who had the insolence to follow her to her mother’s room and would have dragged her even from there! But I was alone then, and I am not alone now. “ Her father is here, and he will deal with you. And you, mein Herr” — turning to the officer—” have a care what you do. This man who has imposed on you is, I tell you, an Englishman. An Englishman and a spy. And I denounce him in your hearing. You have heard me!”

  The officer eyed me doubtfully. He was evidently shaken. “I don’t know about that,” he said. “But anyway, the gentleman is prepared to swear that the young woman is not your daughter, and that you are detaining her by force.”

  “Not my daughter!” the woman cried. “ Not my daughter? Then who is she?”

  He told her, and asked where the girl was.

  “In her bed,” she retorted defiantly. “Where else should she be at this hour? And there she stays.”

  “Well, I must have your papers,” the man replied.

  “Then I’ll see. Produce them, mein Herr,” he continued, addressing the man, who had seated himself in a nonchalant attitude on the table — the table at which I had seen him make that strange experiment!— “Who are you, and whence do you come? And why” — with a sharp look round the wretched room with its rotting plaster and mean pallets—” why, I ask you, are you here?”

  “To escape that man, whom we knew to be following us,” Waechter replied, pointing to me. “He has followed my daughter, Walburga, from Berlin — has followed her for days — and for no good, as you may imagine. But we wanted no trouble with him, and we came here to be out of his way, though it is not comfortable.”

  “Well, anyway, your papers,” the man announced shortly. “ Let me see them.”

  Waechter put his hand into his breast-pocket. “ Willingly,” he said. “Of course. With pleasure. But—” he paused. He looked at me and I caught a gleam of triumph — of spiteful, malicious triumph in his eyes. “ Not before that man. You will see why, officer, when I produce the papers.”

  The policeman looked at me. I could see that doubt was becoming suspicion. “Are you English?” he asked.

  I admitted it.

  “So! Then I think the man has reason. You will retire, mein Herr, if you please.”

  “But,” I rejoined, standing my ground, “ his papers may be in order, but that won’t make the young lady his daughter. She is not his daughter! I swear it! And I am the accuser. I claim the right to be present.”

  He shook his head. “I am the judge of that,” he said.

  “At any rate, ask the young lady. Ask her in my presence who she is,” I urged.

  But he had made up his stolid mind, and my remonstrances only set him against me. “I have decided,” he said. He pointed to the door. “You will retire, mein Herr. If you do not, I give up the matter.”

  Baffled, already scenting defeat, I saw that there was nothing else for it, and I yielded with an ill grace. I went out, Grussbaum with me. The two policemen remained in the room. They closed the door on us.

  Outside, in the squalid noisome kitchen lighted by a single candle, and with the landlord scowling at us from the hearth, I glared at Grussbaum. “Why didn’t you prime them?” I growled. “ And why didn’t you speak up? You are no use. If you had said a word, if you had backed me up! But the man is a fool!”

  But Grussbaum only shook his head, and of all the people I have ever met, he could be the most depressing. His very stoop, the droop of his shoulders invited defeat. And we waited, I, for my part, in hot anger, which as the minutes passed gave place to despair. The rogues had the man’s ear, and what use might they not make of it? He was a raw country policeman, dull and stupid, and doubtful of me as a foreigner! They might impose on him, bribe him, even browbeat him! And the woman was clever and plausible, capable of that and more than that.

  Yet I might have had no fears, so much did the issue surpass them. After a long delay I heard a hand on the latch, the door fell ajar, I stepped forward to enter. But instead of admitting me, the men came out, signed sternly to me to stand back, and closed the door behind them. I heard the key turned in the lock. “Well?” I cried. “What have you learned? What is it?”

  “A cock-and-bull story,” growled the chief, eyeing me with anything but friendly looks. “Trouble for nothing! A cock-and-bull story — or worse.”

  “But, heaven and earth, man,” I remonstrated, “you can’t mean to leave the girl? I am prepared to swear that she is not their daughter.”

  “Their daughter? Piff!” He cracked his fingers contemptuously. “If she is not, what business is it of yours? I’ll trouble you for your papers, Mr. Englishman.”

  “Fiddlesticks!” I cried, carried away by the thought of the girl left helpless and hopeless in that woman’s hands. “Fiddlesticks, man! Don’t talk nonsense! And have a care! I call on you to go back into that room and release that girl. I tell you she is not their daughter, and I am prepared to swear it.”

  “Your papers! Your papers!” was his only answer. He held out his hand.

  I confess it with shame — a boy in his teens could not have acted more foolishly. In the heat of my chagrin I lost my temper and I thrust the man’s hand aside. It was hardly more than a gesture: it certainly was not a blow, but it was enough. In a twinkling he drew his clumsy hanger, and, “I arrest you! I arrest you for resistance to lawful authority,” he shouted, red with anger. “And I call on you” — to the now grinning landlord—” to witness that this man has resisted me in my duty. To the lock-up, mein Hen! To the lock-up!” pushing me towards the door. “You will sleep without sheets to-night!”

  “Oh, dear, oh, dear!” cried Grussbaum, almost weeping. “It was but an accident, Herr Offizier. The Herr meant nothing. Nothing! He is a stranger. He does not understand—”

  “Nevertheless, to the lock-up he goes,” the man rejoined truculently. “And you too, my little cock; you, too, if I have more of it. We’ll search him there. Come, my gentleman, be moving unless you want a stroke over the head! On! on! Without words, Herr Englander!”

  I was sober now; sober enough to know that I had played into the enemy’s hands and made a foe of the one ally to whom I could look for aid. And that was bad, though, possessing a talisman equal to the crisis, I had no fear for myself. As the officer, with his hand on my shoulder, urged me along the passage, “Wait! wait, my friend, a moment,” I said. “You had better look at my papers first.” And I sought to get at that inner pocket in which I kept my precious safe conduct. For I saw that if I did not wish to face an unpleasant night at the police office, I must produce it.

  But, “No, at the lock-up!” cried the arbitrary one, continuing to push me along. “On! Don’t trouble yourself! We will see what you have about you at the lock-up.”

  “Still, for you own sake,” I protested. “You’ll find it wiser—”

  And then, most unexpectedly, Grussbaum intervened. He laid a hand on the officer’s arm, gabbled something in his ear, caught his attention, drew him aside. The two muttered together, the policeman suspicious, but taken aback. A moment, and they retired into a corner of the kitchen, and with their backs to us, while the other man remained to guard me, they conferred together.

  The result surprised me. The officer eme
rged from the corner looking considerably abashed. “Well, I’ll look it over for this time, mein Herr,” he muttered sulkily. “But be less quick with your hands another time, or you’ll be in trouble. Come” — to his subordinate—” we’ve done here — nothing in it!” And with a half salute, made, it seemed to me, against his will, he stalked off down the passage, leaving me a free man.

  And a very bewildered man! It was like nothing so much as the turn-over by which in a Punch and Judy show the executioner of one moment becomes the culprit of the next. I looked at Grussbaum. “Man alive!” I cried. “How the devil did you do it?”

  “Ah,” he said, and with a sly look he laid the fingers of one hand in the palm of the other. “That way. That way, honoured sir. I knew that you would not see me a loser. The Waechters showed him, I fancy, your card. The card you lost. But another time mein Herr must not, craving pardon, lose his temper, as well as his card.”

  “Temper!” I cried. “ If you knew!” And again I thought of the girl and shuddered. And halfway along the dark tunnel of a passage, I paused. Why not? The means that Grussbaum had used, why should I not use them. Hurriedly I reckoned up the money I had, the balance of the sum which the Grand Duke had provided for my journey. I had much of it left, and, at any rate, I might try. True, it was an ignoble way to success, but if it succeeded where other ways had failed? I turned to Grussbaum, took him by the shoulder, faced the astonished man about.

  “Go back to the Waechters!” I said. “ Make them open to you, do you hear? Get speech with them; tell them that I have an offer to make to them — that they have nothing to fear! Tell them it is to their advantage to see me. Go, go now! Do it at once. Lose not a minute, man!”

  “You are going to bribe them, mein Herr?” he said. There were times when the creature was strangely sharp-witted. “Yet consider, honoured sir, the girl is nothing to you, and—”

  “Go! Go!” I answered, pushing him on his way. “That’s my business, man! Do you do as I bid you! That’s your business. And take no refusal. Get me speech with them or—”

  “Enough!” he said, and shrugged his shoulders. And he went, though I could see that he went a contre coeur. However, I cared nothing for that, for there, in the darkness of the passage, had risen before my eyes a picture, or rather a series of pictures, so vivid and so startling that I shuddered as I viewed them. As plainly as I had seen the thing with the bodily eye, I saw those mouldering damp-stained rooms, shut away at the back of this gloomy echoing house — so shut away that no cry from within, no call for help, could issue from them.

  I saw again the greedy faces that pored over that mysterious, that sombre experiment; I heard again the jarring crazy laugh of the half-witted lad. Once more I watched the dark brooding countenance of the woman as, her chin resting on her hand, she gazed with fearful intent on the hapless form prone on the bed — gazed and saw, I was sure, things invisible to me! And whether the vile surroundings coloured my thoughts, or worn down by my long journey I yielded to imagination, I seemed to touch the skirts of some horror, some deed which shook me even as I strove vainly to comprehend it.

  And then — I had another vision; of the pure oval of that face that, limned on the canvas — ah, God, in a scene so different! — had struck my fancy and attracted me. I recalled the face as I had first seen it; the spacious airy chamber bright with sunlight and humming with summer scents; the garden without, and the Terrace; and comparing that scene with my latest impression, comparing it with that form cast in hopeless abandonment on the ragged couch, I shook with rage.

  So much so, that I have no recollection of Grussbaum’s return, or of anything that passed until I found myself once more face to face with the three, the door closed behind us. And how, with the impression of those sinister visions still upon me, I hated them! How I longed to cast myself upon them! But with the need sobriety returned, and as I looked from one greedy face to another I bade myself be prudent. Force had failed; I was here to try another way, and already I fancied that they foresaw that way. To manoeuvre was useless, and, “It has come to this,” I said curtly. “What will you take for the girl?”

  The woman smiled vilely. She for one had certainly foreseen my errand. But she knew her part by heart, and “For my daughter?” she sneered, holding the dog to her breast and soothing it. “I am to sell her, then, am I? My daughter? I am to sell her to you, young man, am I! Ay, and turn—”

  “Silence!” I said. “Silence, woman! You may discard all that. We are alone; there is no one to be deceived. Come, I speak plainly. I have here a thousand thalers. If you will release her and commend her to my care—’

  “Fine care!” she jeered. “You would buy a mistress, would you?”

  I put aside her words as if she had not spoken. “I will give you that sum,” I said.

  “A thousand thalers?” the man muttered, and cupidity shone in his eyes. “ You have it? With you?”

  I nodded.

  “Show it to us,” he said, his eyes shining. “ Show it to us! Let us see that you have it.”

  “I have it,” I said. And then, noting the glance he shot at the closed door, “but I have pistols also,” I added grimly, “ and know how to use them. See — here is the money.” And I drew from the pocket inside the breast of my coat a packet of notes and laid it on the table beside me. “They are hundred thaler notes — of Frankfort, and there are ten of them. Restore the girl; hand her over to me, and they are yours.” And purposely I fluttered the notes before him, separating them with my thumb.

  The man, I saw, was tempted. He drew a step nearer, his eyes fixed on the money. “For two thousand,” he muttered greedily. “Make it two thousand and I will do it. By G — d I will!”

  “I have no more,” I said. “It’s to take or leave.” He hesitated; I was sure that he hesitated. And though my attention was directed to him, and I was less sure of the woman — whom I took to be the brains of the trio — I fancied that she, too, wavered. Defeat came from an unexpected quarter. The dwarf came between us. He uttered a snarling cry — such a cry as a dog might utter that saw a bone about to be taken from it. “Nein!” he growled. “Nein! She’s my girl! To hell with his money!”

  The woman smiled. “See!” she sneered. “You are late for the fair, mein Hen.”

  But I still hoped; I still thought the battle far from lost, and I fluttered the money before their eyes. “A thousand thalers!” I repeated. “It is a fortune, and in your hands, sir” — I looked towards the man, and still held out the money—” it may make more.”

  But “Nein! Nein!” the lad cried passionately, and he rose to his feet, clawing the air with his great misshapen hands, and crouching as if with a little more he would spring upon me. “She’s mine! Mine!” His hands opened and closed, as if he had me by the throat.

  “That’s your answer,” the woman said dryly, and she drew a deep breath. “We don’t sell” — with that evil smile—” our daughter, mein Herr.”

  “Still,” the man muttered doubtfully, “if you’ve two thousand? For two thousand?”

  “I have no more,” I said.

  “Then — nein!” the man answered, shrugging his shoulders — and I saw that his mind, too, was made up. “After all — the lad is right. She is his.”

  I looked from one to the other and saw — saw that I had indeed failed; and for a moment the impulse to draw upon them and force the girl from them at any risk almost overcame me. Then I saw the hopelessness of the thought and the madness of it, and I put it away. Instead, “ Then, listen,” I said as I hid the notes away. “It will be for your own good if you do. I shall have you tracked from this house. I know you, and do what you will you cannot escape me. And if a hair of this girl’s head is injured; if there is foul play” — I looked from one to the other—” if lead succeeds where pewter fails — ay, you flinch, but I know more than you think! — if she dies in your hands, no matter in what way, then God have mercy on you, for I will have none! I will have none!” I repeated, “nor tho
se who are behind me. So be warned! Be warned! No!”

  For the man, his eyes devilish with rage, had made a movement as if he would get between me and the door. “Stand back!” I cried. “Stand where you are, or I will scatter your brains on that wall. And remember! From this moment I am on your track, and I will never leave it! Use your lead, or whatever devilish contrivance you have, but if the girl be injured your heads shall pay for it as sure as there is a God in Heaven! Be warned! That is my last word! Be warned!”

  I went out, almost falling over Grussbaum as I passed through the doorway, but not heeding him — what if he had listened? I strode through the noisome kitchen and down the passage. If I had failed to release the girl, still I had done what I could, and I could do no more. And the remembrance of their malignant faces as I had seen them at the last, certified me that I had done something — that at the worst they would hesitate before they pursued their evil path to the end. I had done something.

  CHAPTER XX

  THE HAUNTING VOICE

  IT was noon on the following day when I approached Perleberg, and only those who have known the perplexity of a divided allegiance will be able to divine the painful state of doubt into which the first view of the town plunged me.

  For it had been — and were I faithful to my dead friend, it must still be — the goal of all my efforts; the scene to which, in the face of many obstacles and difficulties, I had struggled forward. For here, at Perleberg, poor Perceval had disappeared. Here, beyond reasonable doubt, he had been foully done to death.

  And here, could I but wrest them from the obscurity in which they lay buried, were both the secret of his fate and the clue to those papers, so valuable, and fraught with such tremendous mischief, for which he had given his life.

  It followed that with Perleberg rising before me out of the dreary plain in which the town stands, I should have had but one desire at heart, to solve that mystery and grasp that clue. With that intent I had come. To that end my thoughts and faculties had been long directed.