‘Sit down, sir,’ I said, ‘and have a drink. It’s a filthy night to move about in.’
‘Thank you, no, Herr Brandt,’ he said. ‘You may burn these passports for they will not be used.’
‘Whatever’s the matter with you?’ I cried. ‘You’ve mistaken the house, my lad. I’m called Hanau - Richard Hanau - and my partner’s Mr John S. Blenkiron. He’ll be here presently. Never knew anyone of the name of Brandt, barring a tobacconist in Denver City.’
‘You have never been to Rustchuk?’ he said with a sneer.
‘Not that I know of. But, pardon me, Sir, if I ask your name and your business here. I’m darned if I’m accustomed to be called by Dutch names or have my word doubted. In my country we consider that impolite as between gentlemen.’
I could see that my bluff was having its effect. His stare began to waver, and when he next spoke it was in a more civil tone.
‘I will ask pardon if I’m mistaken, Sir, but you’re the image of a man who a week ago was at Rustchuk, a man much wanted by the Imperial Government.’
‘A week ago I was tossing in a dirty little hooker coming from Constanza. Unless Rustchuk’s in the middle of the Black Sea I’ve never visited the township. I guess you’re barking up the wrong tree. Come to think of it, I was expecting passports. Say, do you come from Enver Damad?’
‘I have that honour,’ he said.
‘Well, Enver is a very good friend of mine. He’s the brightest citizen I’ve struck this side of the Atlantic.’
The man was calming down, and in another minute his suspicions would have gone. But at that moment, by the crookedest kind of luck, Peter entered with a tray of dishes. He did not notice Rasta, and walked straight to the table and plumped down his burden on it. The Turk had stepped aside at his entrance, and I saw by the look in his eyes that his suspicions had become a certainty. For Peter, stripped to shirt and breeches, was the identical shabby little companion of the Rustchuk meeting.
I had never doubted Rasta’s pluck. He jumped for the door and had a pistol out in a trice pointing at my head.
‘Bonne fortune,’ he cried. ‘Both the birds at one shot.’ His hand was on the latch, and his mouth was open to cry. I guessed there was an orderly waiting on the stairs.
He had what you call the strategic advantage, for he was at the door while I was at the other end of the table and Peter at the side of it at least two yards from him. The road was clear before him, and neither of us was armed. I made a despairing step forward, not knowing what I meant to do, for I saw no light. But Peter was before me.
He had never let go of the tray, and now, as a boy skims a stone on a pond, he skimmed it with its contents at Rasta’s head. The man was opening the door with one hand while he kept me covered with the other, and he got the contrivance fairly in the face. A pistol shot cracked out, and the bullet went through the tray, but the noise was drowned in the crash of glasses and crockery. The next second Peter had wrenched the pistol from Rasta’s hand and had gripped his throat.
A dandified Young Turk, brought up in Paris and finished in Berlin, may be as brave as a lion, but he cannot stand in a rough-and-tumble against a backveld hunter, though more than double his age. There was no need for me to help him. Peter had his own way, learned in a wild school, of knocking the sense out of a foe. He gagged him scientifically, and trussed him up with his own belt and two straps from a trunk in my bedroom. ‘This man is too dangerous to let go,’ he said, as if his procedure were the most ordinary thing in the world. ‘He will be quiet now till we have time to make a plan.’
At that moment there came a knocking at the door. That is the sort of thing that happens in melodrama, just when the villain has finished off his job neatly. The correct thing to do is to pale to the teeth, and with a rolling, conscience-stricken eye glare round the horizon. But that was not Peter’s way.
‘We’d better tidy up if we’re to have visitors,’ he said calmly.
Now there was one of those big oak German cupboards against the wall which must have been brought in in sections, for complete it would never have got through the door. It was empty now, but for Blenkiron’s hatbox. In it he deposited the unconscious Rasta, and turned the key. ‘There’s enough ventilation through the top,’ he observed, ‘to keep the air good.’ Then he opened the door. A magnificent kavass in blue and silver stood outside. He saluted and proffered a card on which was written in pencil, ‘Hilda von Einem’.
I would have begged for time to change my clothes, but the lady was behind him. I saw the black mantilla and the rich sable furs. Peter vanished through my bedroom and I was left to receive my guest in a room littered with broken glass and a senseless man in the cupboard.
There are some situations so crazily extravagant that they key up the spirit to meet them. I was almost laughing when that stately lady stepped over my threshold.
‘Madam,’ I said, with a bow that shamed my old dressing-gown and strident pyjamas. ‘You find me at a disadvantage. I came home soaking from my ride, and was in the act of changing. My servant has just upset a tray of crockery, and I fear this room’s no fit place for a lady. Allow me three minutes to make myself presentable.’
She inclined her head gravely and took a seat by the fire. I went into my bedroom, and as I expected found Peter lurking by the other door. In a hectic sentence I bade him get Rasta’s orderly out of the place on any pretext, and tell him his master would return later. Then I hurried into decent garments, and came out to find my visitor in a brown study.
At the sound of my entrance she started from her dream and stood up on the hearthrug, slipping the long robe of fur from her slim body.
‘We are alone?’ she said. ‘We will not be disturbed?’
Then an inspiration came to me. I remembered that Frau von Einem, according to Blenkiron, did not see eye to eye with the Young Turks; and I had a queer instinct that Rasta could not be to her liking. So I spoke the truth.
‘I must tell you that there’s another guest here tonight. I reckon he’s feeling pretty uncomfortable. At present he’s trussed up on a shelf in that cupboard.’
She did not trouble to look round.
‘Is he dead?’ she asked calmly.
‘By no means,’ I said, ‘but he’s fixed so he can’t speak, and I guess he can’t hear much.’
‘He was the man who brought you this?’ she asked, pointing to the envelope on the table which bore the big blue stamp of the Ministry of War.
‘The same,’ I said. ‘I’m not perfectly sure of his name, but I think they call him Rasta.’
Not a flicker of a smile crossed her face, but I had a feeling that the news pleased her.
‘Did he thwart you?’ she asked.
‘Why, yes. He thwarted me some. His head is a bit swelled, and an hour or two on the shelf will do him good.’
‘He is a powerful man,’ she said, ‘a jackal of Enver’s. You have made a dangerous enemy.’
‘I don’t value him at two cents,’ said I, though I thought grimly that as far as I could see the value of him was likely to be about the price of my neck.
‘Perhaps you are right,’ she said with serious eyes. ‘In these days no enemy is dangerous to a bold man. I have come tonight, Mr Hanau, to talk business with you, as they say in your country. I have heard well of you, and today I have seen you. I may have need of you, and you assuredly will have need of me. …’
She broke off, and again her strange potent eyes fell on my face. They were like a burning searchlight which showed up every cranny and crack of the soul. I felt it was going to be horribly difficult to act a part under that compelling gaze. She could not mesmerize me, but she could strip me of my fancy dress and set me naked in the masquerade.