The Man on Horseback/Chapter 35
CHAPTER XXXV
BACK FIRE
By the time the machine reached the Leipziger Strasse it was fairly late. The sidewalks were packed with a homing throng of clerks and girls from banks and counting-houses and department stores. Trucks and motor-cars, often driving three abreast, busses and surface cars, clanked and hooted down the main roads, splitting here and there to deliver their freight, human or otherwise, in the Southern and Western suburbs. The white-gloved policemen had their hands full, and Tom fretted as his taxicab was caught in a crush at the corner of the Wilhelm Strasse.
By this time the inquest must be nearly over. Somebody might call at his house, perhaps try to reach it by telephone. He was playing the game by a dangerously narrow margin.
He breathed a sigh of relief when finally the machine made the corner and purred down the Wilhelm Strasse, past the stolid, gray bulk of the Agrarian Bank, past the red sand-stone monstrosity of the Berliner Bank, past the Radziwil Palace and the back entrance to the Chancellor's park, and he felt very much like a Moslem pilgrim when he beholds the sacred Kaaba standing out above the yellow Arabian desert, or a nervous skipper who makes port after a stormy crossing, when the British Embassy came into view, a beautiful little marble building, cool and white and gleaming, pagan in its utter Greek simplicity.
The taxicab stopped.
"Na—hier—sind wir ja, Herr Leutnant!" came the driver's jovial voice, and Tom jumped out, giving Bertha a helping hand.
It was now very dark. The trailing, swift shadows of April were dropping like a cloak—grim, portentous—and Tom shivered a little, involuntarily.
"Come on, Bertha. We've no time to waste, and I've got to find me my unknown friend inside."
Already he had crossed the sidewalk. Already his foot was on the first step of the short flight of stairs that led up to the main entrance of the Embassy when, suddenly, there was a rush that carried him off his feet, away from the girl.
Tom swore, looked, hit.
Half-a-dozen men had jumped from the shadowy gateway of the bank building that was next to the Embassy. They were officers all. Some were of the Uhlans, men he knew, others were infantrymen whom he had met casually.
He heard the Colonel's voice:
"Get him. He's dangerous. No, no—don't kill him!" as a saber flashed free, gleaming evilly in the flickering light.
Somebody had blown a whistle. A platoon of policemen came panting up at double quick step. They drew a cordon around the scene, screening it against the excited, curious crowd that poured up the street and from neighboring houses.
A window opened in the Embassy.
"What is the matter?" inquired a woman's voice, anxious, in English.
Nobody answered. There was no time. For Tom kept his assailants busy. He had left his saber at home, but his fists flew out, right and left, right and left, up and down, like flails. One man went down. Another, cursing:
"Der Kerl ist ja verrückt!"
"Das ist ja ganz unerhört …"
And again Tom's fist descended, taking toll. He fought silently, shrewdly, with a certain savage, ringing joy in his heart.
He heard Bertha's stifled outcry; and he redoubled his blows.
"Damn you!"—as a man grabbed him around the neck, from the back, and his foot kicked sideways and up—and a howl of pain.
But the odds were against him. The flat of a saber struck his right elbow, paralyzing it. He fought on with his left, blindly. That, too, was disarmed. Somebody hit him in the face. Blood squirted, half blinding him; and the last thing he saw as he was being dragged towards the cab that was still at the curb, was Colonel Wedekind. He was holding Bertha by both arms, pressing the elbows back until they touched each other. The girl's lips were tightly compressed, but she did not utter a sound. Somebody had called another taxicab, and a young lieutenant of infantry was holding the door open.
The Colonel forced the girl inside. He addressed the lieutenant in a snarling, cutting voice:
"See her home, Baron von Blitzewitz. Let nobody near her. Watch over her until my return. No excuse, no loop-hole! She is your prisoner, and you are responsible. Understand?"
"Zu Befehl, Herr Oberst!"
Lieutenant von Blitzewitz saluted, clicked his heels and entered the car, which purred away while the Colonel turned to the Westerner.
His little blue eyes blazed with fury. His fists were clenched, he was about to strike Tom, who was helpless in the grip of half-a-dozen officers. But he controlled himself.
Only his words came, venomous, triumphant, quick, like machine-gun bullets:
"Got you. Right in the act. About to communicate with the enemy of the Fatherland, eh?"
Tom's wits had a trick, learned at roundup and, too, if the truth be told, at poker, of acting quickly and tellingly when he was in a tight corner, with the odds against him.
"Who's the enemy?" he inquired gently.
"You tried to enter the British Embassy!"
"Well? And since when are England and Germany at war?" came Tom's jeering rejoinder.
Wedekind choked down his reply.
"In with him!" he bellowed at the officers who were holding Tom.
They obeyed, and the Colonel entered after them, having given the driver Tom's address. The machine clanked away.
But all the way home Tom fought savagely, joyously. He was convinced that his captors had positive instructions not to kill him, and so he took advantage of the situation. At every opportunity his fists flew out, finding their mark, and it was a torn, bleeding, perspiring, cursing group of Prussians that finally entered the apartment on the Kurfürstendamm.
There the officers surrounded him with drawn sabers while the Colonel faced him, speaking quickly, hectically.
"You will be tried for the death of Baron von Götz-Wrede." He smiled cynically. "A bad enough offense that. No mercy will be shown you. And so—ah—I shall be considerate enough not to press all the minor charges against you: The breaking of your parole, resistance to arrest, striking your superior officer—" he touched rather gingerly his right eye that was framed in prismatic green and heliotrope where the horse wrangler's fist had come into contact with it. "I give you fifteen minutes to pack your trunk.
"Hauptmann von Quitzow! Leutnant von Bayerlein!" He turned to the two officers. "You will watch the prisoner while he packs. Krauss!" to the valet who had appeared on the threshold, "help Lieutenant Graves. Quick! Fifteen minutes! No more!"
"Zu Befehl, Herr Oberst!"
The two officers marched the Westerner into his bedroom, Krauss following, where Tom rapidly threw the necessary articles into his trunk.
Krauss helped loyally.
"Sorry, old fellow," whispered Tom as, both bending over the trunk, his head touched that of the valet. "Didn't mean to hit you so hard."
Krauss muttered an indistinct, tearful reply, and Tom put his hand in his pocket, came out with a hundred mark banknote, and pressed it surreptitiously into the other's hand.
A minute later he straightened up.
"All ready, gentlemen," he said. "Lead on. By the way"—to von Quitzow, whom he knew fairly well from riding drill—"what's going to happen?"
Von Quitzow shook his head sadly. He was a tall, very fat, red-faced Junker from East Prussia who, a musician by nature, had only entered the army because his father had forced him. He was a good enough officer, who took his duties seriously, but, underlying it, was a streak of hot, heavy, rather boyish sentimentality that came to the surface at odd moments.
Now he shook Tom's hand.
"Our orders are to get you to Spandau, to the fortification—Festung, you know—military prison. I am sorry, Graves. I wish I could …"
"I get you all right, sonny!" came Tom's cheerful reply. "Zu Befehl! That's what's biting you, eh? Never mind. It'll all come out in the wash."
And he went into the other room, saluted the Colonel, walked down-stairs and, two Uhlans with drawn sabers right and left, entered the waiting taxicab with out showing further fight.
But his thoughts were feverishly at work.
For there was Bertha.
It was up to him to see her safely out of Germany!