The Man on Horseback/Chapter 11
CHAPTER XI
THE WIRELESS
Holding on to one of the life-boats just the other side of the wireless operator's hut on top deck, braced against the pitch and roll with straddled feet and standing aslant when the gathering wind came in fits and starts, Tom Graves looked out into the west, where the sun had died in a flat disc of unhealthy, decayed brown to give way to a dense bank of olive-tinted cloud that rushed down with the speed of a stage drop, lay motionless upon the sea that was like dirty oil, suddenly changing into a slow, immense roll that sent the ship down a slope and up again.
A moment later, with savage rapidity, the full force of the hurricane struck the Augsburg, and she pitched crazily to leeward, taking a drunken lurch into the inky void, straightening again, again tripping like a bulky matron on a waxed dancing-floor, then riding up with a certain measure of heavy, challenging grace. The song of the whipped, tortured air came with a gigantic roar and sob, and Tom, landsman from the rim of his stetson to the curve of his knees where they had gripped saddle leather, decided that discretion was the better part of valor and that the smoking saloon held warmth and comfort.
He turned to go.
Passing the wireless hut, the wind struck him in the small of his back and he tumbled against the door. It was thus, quite by chance, that he overheard a scrap of conversation which later on caused him to wonder and speculate.
Inside the hut the ship's doctor, a young American, was talking to the wireless operator.
"Sorry," said the latter. "I know you are anxious to send wireless waves to your best girl in New York. But the thing's out of order."
"Out of order?"
"Yes. Has been for two days, and we won't be able to fix it till we make Bremen. Makes no difference though. She's a sound old tub."
"Sure …"
Just a scrap of talk, temporarily forgotten, yet stored away in some back cell of Tom's brain, and remembered an hour or two later when, as he was washing in his cabin, Lord Vyvyan knocked at the door, came in, sat himself on the edge of the narrow bed, and begged the American to shake hands with him.
"Sure," said Tom, complying. "What for?"
"To wish me luck. Regular, jolly, sizzling whirlwind of luck, old cock!"
"What's happened?" laughed the Westerner. "Sat in a poker game with that St. Louis brewer and held a royal against his four o' the kind and copped his wad?"
"Rather not. Much bigger. Guess again."
"Fell in love?"
"My word, no! Can't afford to. I'm stony, you know. But"—he rubbed his hands—"my brother, the Duke, you know, did a damned rapid bit of wire pulling. In again, out again! Chevied out of the Washington embassy about a week ago for frightful incompetence—and …"
"What? Can your mysterious dope!"
"Chevied into a fat attachéship—where, d'you imagine?"
"Paris."
"No. Berlin. Corkin'—what? Same bully old place you're bound for. Just got my appointment by wireless."
Tom looked up sharply.
"Did you say—by wireless?"
"Right-oh. The Duke is a terribly modern sort of chap. Takes to all these jolly new inventions like a fish to water."
"Seems so," rejoined Tom dryly.
He remembered the scrap of conversation he had overheard on top deck: "Wireless out of order. Has been for two days." There was no doubt that Vyvyan was lying. But he decided to keep the knowledge to himself. He had an idea that the diplomatic game was the same as poker, and bluff, another word for lying, is permissible, even virtuous, if you have sweetened the pot to the tail end of your roll and have hopes of filling an inside straight. And … He cut off his thoughts, and stretched out a hearty hand.
"Tickled to death, old man," he said.
"So am I. Let's have a drink. By the way, are you going straight from Bremen to Berlin?"
"Yes."
"Fine. We'll travel down together. I have to report to the Embassy immediately. Frightful bore, though."
Twenty-four hours later, Bremerhaven came out of the low, coiling shore fog in a neat checker-board pattern of white and gray and bister brown, punctured here and thereby the spires of square churches, the solid bulk of some braggart warehouse, the rigging and funnels and smoke-stacks of ships that rode breast-high above the stone quays. It came stolidly, massively, German to the core, striking Tom's ears with the cumulated sound waves of hundreds of lips speaking a strange, guttural language that made him feel homesick, and caused him to hold close to Lord Vyvyan as to an anchor in a storm.
The farewells of passengers. An exchange of cards and of promises, soon forgotten, to write, to call, to keep in touch with one another.
Then the short ride to Bremen itself, through a wedge-shaped stretch of rolling fields with plump Holstein cattle that looked ridiculously small and ridiculously tame to Tom's range sense, and through a sweep of box-like suburban houses, each framed by a bit of lawn that was almost English in its moist, pristine greenness.
Bremen at mid-day. Bremen—clean-cut, hard, preoccupied, blending the tortured Gothic of ancient Hanseatic buildings with the pinchbeck, stuccoed efficiency of modern Germany.
"Haben Sie was zu deklariren?" a customs inspector, in blue with narrow gold braid, truculently mustached and bearded, asked of Tom.
Tom became flustered. The little German he had learned flew away like rubbish in a wind, and he looked appealingly at Vyvyan.
The latter laughed.
"Right!" he said. "I'll be dragoman," and he addressed the official in fluent German for which afterwards he apologized, really apologized, rather shamefacedly.
"You see, old fellow," he said, "when I was a little nipper they deviled my young soul with governesses and Fräuleins and tutors and what-not. Taught me German …"
"And French?"
"Rather!"
"And a few more assorted lingoes?" suggested Tom dryly.
Vyvyan looked up quickly. But Tom was a poker player. There was no twinkle in his eyes, only an honest question, and the Englishman said that "Yes!" He had quite a few languages at his command.
"But keep it under your hat," he added. "I, well, you wouldn't understand, being an American. But we Englishmen, Englishmen like me, y know … have the devil's own horror of being thought clever or gifted. Not that I am clever," he wound up hurriedly.
"Oh, no!" Tom's accents were ingenuous and sincere.
"But I do speak languages. Can't help it. They crammed me no end. Frightfully sorry and all that. And now—" turning to a taxicab driver dressed in brown, red-faced and with a nose that beaked away from the plump, shiny cheeks at a tremendously exaggerated angle, "Nach dem Bahnhof! Rasch! The next train for Berlin leaves in a few minutes," he explained to Tom, "unless you want to stay over in Bremen for a day or two?"
"No. I don't."
Tom shook his head and his eyes followed Bertha's lithe figure, dressed in a becoming greenish tweed, a tiny toque pressed deep over her silken tresses. She was accompanied by a tall, elderly man in the uniform of the Uhlans of the Guard, in tightly fitting regimentals of dark blue, a double stripe of crimson running down the trousers and disappearing in the high, lacquered riding-boots, crimson collar and plastron, epaulettes of heavy twisted gold braid, and the uhlanka, the helmet with its Polish top-piece that made it look like a glorified mortarboard, tilted slightly over the right eye. The saber, carried on a long chain, clanked belligerently against the ground.
He turned when he heard Tom's unmistakable American voice, and Tom saw a full, round, high-colored face, not unhandsome with its well-shaped lips brushed by a small, iron-gray mustache, its long, straight nose, and small ears set close against the head.
The officer bent from his great height and spoke to Bertha. Tom saw her shake her head, as if angrily, turn, look at him, then whisper a quick word to the German.
The latter gave a short laugh, patted her on the shoulder, and walked up to Tom with outstretched hand.
"You are Mr. Graves?" he asked in English.
"Yes … Sure …"
"Charmed! Charmed!" The other saluted. "I am Colonel Wedekind—Colonel Heinrich Wedekind. Martin's brother!"