On the way home the lieutenant discoursed a lot about prisoners and detention-camps, for at one time he had been on duty at Ruhleben. Peter, who had been in quod more than once in his life, was deeply interested and kept on questioning him. Among other things he told us was that they often put bogus prisoners among the rest, who acted as spies. If any plot to escape was hatched these fellows got into it and encouraged it. They never interfered till the attempt was actually made and then they had them on toast. There was nothing the Boche liked so much as an excuse for sending a poor devil to ‘solitary’.
That afternoon Peter and I separated. He was left behind with the lieutenant and I was sent off to the station with my bag in the company of a Landsturm sergeant. Peter was very cross, and I didn’t care for the look of things; but I brightened up when I heard I was going somewhere with Stumm. If he wanted to see me again he must think me of some use, and if he was going to use me he was bound to let me into his game. I liked Stumm about as much as a dog likes a scorpion, but I hankered for his society.
At the station platform, where the ornament of the Landsturm saved me all the trouble about tickets, I could not see my companion. I stood waiting, while a great crowd, mostly of soldiers, swayed past me and filled all the front carriages. An officer spoke to me gruffly and told me to stand aside behind a wooden rail. I obeyed, and suddenly found Stumm’s eyes looking down at me.
‘You know German?’ he asked sharply.
‘A dozen words,’ I said carelessly. ‘I’ve been to Windhuk and learned enough to ask for my dinner. Peter - my friend - speaks it a bit.’
‘So,’ said Stumm. ‘Well, get into the carriage. Not that one! There, thickhead!’
I did as I was bid, he followed, and the door was locked behind us. The precaution was needless, for the sight of Stumm’s profile at the platform end would have kept out the most brazen. I wondered if I had woken up his suspicions. I must be on my guard to show no signs of intelligence if he suddenly tried me in German, and that wouldn’t be easy, for I knew it as well as I knew Dutch.
We moved into the country, but the windows were blurred with frost, and I saw nothing of the landscape. Stumm was busy with papers and let me alone. I read on a notice that one was forbidden to smoke, so to show my ignorance of German I pulled out my pipe. Stumm raised his head, saw what I was doing, and gruffly bade me put it away, as if he were an old lady that disliked the smell of tobacco.
In half an hour I got very bored, for I had nothing to read and my pipe was _verboten. People passed now and then in the corridors, but no one offered to enter. No doubt they saw the big figure in uniform and thought he was the deuce of a staff swell who wanted solitude. I thought of stretching my legs in the corridor, and was just getting up to do it when somebody slid the door back and a big figure blocked the light.
He was wearing a heavy ulster and a green felt hat. He saluted Stumm, who looked up angrily, and smiled pleasantly on us both.
‘Say, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘have you room in here for a little one? I guess I’m about smoked out of my car by your brave soldiers. I’ve gotten a delicate stomach …’
Stumm had risen with a brow of wrath, and looked as if he were going to pitch the intruder off the train. Then he seemed to halt and collect himself, and the other’s face broke into a friendly grin.
‘Why, it’s Colonel Stumm,‘he cried. (He pronounced it like the first syllable in ‘stomach’.) ‘Very pleased to meet you again, Colonel. I had the honour of making your acquaintance at our Embassy. I reckon Ambassador Gerard didn’t cotton to our conversation that night.’ And the newcomer plumped himself down in the corner opposite me.
I had been pretty certain I would run across Blenkiron somewhere in Germany, but I didn’t think it would be so soon. There he sat staring at me with his full, unseeing eyes, rolling out platitudes to Stumm, who was nearly bursting in his effort to keep civil. I looked moody and suspicious, which I took to be the right line.
‘Things are getting a bit dead at Salonika,’ said Mr Blenkiron, by way of a conversational opening. Stumm pointed to a notice which warned officers to refrain from discussing military operations with mixed company in a railway carriage.
‘Sorry,’ said Blenkiron, ‘I can’t read that tombstone language of yours. But I reckon that that notice to trespassers, whatever it signifies, don’t apply to you and me. I take it this gentleman is in your party.’
I sat and scowled, fixing the American with suspicious eyes.
‘He is a Dutchman,’ said Stumm; ‘South African Dutch, and he is not happy, for he doesn’t like to hear English spoken.’
‘We’ll shake on that,’ said Blenkiron cordially. ‘But who said I spoke English? It’s good American. Cheer up, friend, for it isn’t the call that makes the big wapiti, as they say out west in my country. I hate John Bull worse than a poison rattle. The Colonel can tell you that.’
I dare say he could, but at that moment, we slowed down at a station and Stumm got up to leave. ‘Good day to you, Herr Blenkiron,’ he cried over his shoulder. ‘If you consider your comfort, don’t talk English to strange travellers. They don’t distinguish between the different brands.’
I followed him in a hurry, but was recalled by Blenkiron’s voice.
‘Say, friend,’ he shouted, ‘you’ve left your grip,’ and he handed me my bag from the luggage rack. But he showed no sign of recognition, and the last I saw of him was sitting sunk in a corner with his head on his chest as if he were going to sleep. He was a man who kept up his parts well.
There was a motor-car waiting - one of the grey military kind - and we started at a terrific pace over bad forest roads. Stumm had put away his papers in a portfolio, and flung me a few sentences on the journey.
‘I haven’t made up my mind about you, Brandt,’ he announced. ‘You may be a fool or a knave or a good man. If you are a knave, we will shoot you.’
‘And if I am a fool?’ I asked.
‘Send you to the Yser or the Dvina. You will be respectable cannon-fodder.’
‘You cannot do that unless I consent,’ I said.
‘Can’t we?’ he said, smiling wickedly. ‘Remember you are a citizen of nowhere. Technically, you are a rebel, and the British, if you go to them, will hang you, supposing they have any sense. You are in our power, my friend, to do precisely what we like with you.’
He was silent for a second, and then he said, meditatively:
‘But I don’t think you are a fool. You may be a scoundrel. Some kinds of scoundrel are useful enough. Other kinds are strung up with a rope. Of that we shall know more soon.’
‘And if I am a good man?’
‘You will be given a chance to serve Germany, the proudest privilege a mortal man can have.’ The strange man said this with a ringing sincerity in his voice that impressed me.
The car swung out from the trees into a park lined with saplings, and in the twilight I saw before me a biggish house like an overgrown Swiss chalet. There was a kind of archway, with a sham portcullis, and a terrace with battlements which looked as if they were made of stucco. We drew up at a Gothic front door, where a thin middle-aged man in a shooting-jacket was waiting.
As we moved into the lighted hall I got a good look at our host. He was very lean and brown, with the stoop in the shoulder that one gets from being constantly on horseback. He had untidy grizzled hair and a ragged beard, and a pair of pleasant, short-sighted brown eyes.