“In 1915.”
“From whence?”
“From the front.”
“Do you know the place?”
“No.”
“You are quite sure?”
“Quite sure.”
“And all these other things?”
“My husband sent them to me.”
“From France?”
“Yes.”
“How did he become possessed of them?”
“He took them out of houses.”
There was a pause in which the young woman did not move in the
slightest. She appeared like some oracular statue waiting for the next
question.
“Why did you lie to me?” asked the doctor in his level voice.
“Because you would have thought my husband a thief, and I am so proud
of him.”
“Can you be proud of him, knowing that he was a thief?”
“Yes,” came the dreamy answer. “It was not his crime. He sent these
things to me because I asked him for them and he loved me.”
“You asked him to send you these things? Why?”
“Because all the other officers’ wives were having things sent to them.”
“_So!_ Your husband would not have taken them if you had not asked for
them?”
“No. He only took them to give me pleasure. He never thought of
anybody but me. That is why I love him so--why I shall always love him.”
The doctor bit his lip, and hesitated for a moment.
“You do not think your husband would have offered violence to a woman
in the house where he got this clock?”
“No. He loved me too much. He never thought of any woman but me. I am
sure of it. He was an ideal man, my Heinrich--always gentle, always
loving, always faithful.” She paused a moment before continuing. “It is
cruel of you to make me realize how much I love him!”
The doctor stood over her, contemplating her, his brows wrinkled in
a puzzled frown. His comrades looked at him enquiringly. He ignored
them. The young woman, having ceased to speak, remained motionless and
upright on her chair. The only sound in the room was the ticking of the
clock.
Suddenly the doctor’s brows cleared in an evident decision. He lifted
the young woman’s hand again as he spoke in his level, positive voice.
His face was very grave.
“You are asleep. But you are going into a very much deeper sleep--a
sleep so profound that it takes you far out of this time and place.
Nevertheless you will remain in touch with me and you will hear my
voice. But everything else is going from you. You are now released from
the limitations of this body. You are on a plane from which you can
enter into any time and place that I shall command.”
He dropped her hand and, with his finger-tips, closed the lids over her
eyes. Her body still remained upright in its trancelike rigidity.
“What do you see?” he asked.
“Nothing,” came the dreamy answer.
“Where are you?”
“I do not know--I--I am nowhere, I think,” she said with hesitation.
“I--I--oh, do not keep me like this!” There was a new note of anxiety
in her voice.
“Wait a moment,” said the doctor. He turned to the mantelpiece, took
down the clock, placed it on her lap, and clasped her hands about it.
“Now,” he said in his quiet, tense tones, “you are in touch with that
clock. I want you to go into the time and place when that clock had
another owner--before your husband had it. Focus yourself upon it. Go
into the room where it stands.”
The young woman’s eyelids twitched flickeringly but otherwise her rigid
attitude was unmodified.
“Yes,” she said, in a slow and doubtful tone, “yes----”
“What do you see?” asked the doctor. His lips compressed themselves
firmly after the words, the muscles of his lean jaw stood out, in the
intense effort of his will to keep emotion under control, to avoid an
unconscious suggestion of ideas.
“I see a _salon_,” said the young woman dreamily, “a _salon_ with
French windows opening on to a lawn. There is a grand piano in it--and
a young woman seated at the piano. She is dark--young--oh, she is
very beautiful! She keeps on looking at the clock--the clock is on
the mantelpiece between two bronze statuettes. She is expecting
somebody----”
“Yes?” said the doctor, crouching over her, his fists clenched in a
spasm of supremely willed self-control, his breath coming in the quick
gasps enforced by that tumultuous beating of the heart he could not
command.
“Yes?--Go on!”
“She hears a footstep--she jumps up from the piano. A man comes into
the room--a civilian. She throws her arms about him and kisses him.
She leads him across to the mantelpiece and takes up the clock. She
puts it into his hands--she is showing him something on the back of it,
something written! They kiss again. They are in love these two--how
she loves him! I can feel that--I can feel her love vibrating in me!”
She paused dreamily. “I know what real love is--and she loves him like
that----”
“The man?” asked the doctor, his eyes wild. “The man?--describe him!”
“His back is turned to me--I cannot see his face. Ah, he turns round.
The man is--_you!_”
The doctor looked as though he were going to collapse. His companions
watched him, fascinated, completely mystified, trying to guess at
the drama their ignorance of the language hid from them. He mastered
himself with a mighty effort.
“Yes,” he said. “You have the place right--but not the time. Go on a
year--more than a year! Go on to the time when this clock passed out of
that woman’s possession!”
“More than a year!” she repeated dreamily. “I--I must sleep--I
cannot----” She was silent for a few moments. “Yes--yes--I see the
room again. The young woman is in it. She is seated at a little
table--writing. She looks up--Oh, how sad and pale she is!--but she is
still very beautiful. I am so sorry for her--she is so unhappy--and she
is still in love, I can still feel it vibrating in me. She is picking
up a photograph--she kisses it--it is yours!--she kisses it again and
again. Why are you not with her? I feel that you are a great distance
off--she does not know where you are. That worries her, because she
loves you so.” She stopped.
“Go on,” said the doctor sternly. “What do you see next?”
“She puts away her writing hurriedly. She is frightened of
something--someone is coming, I think--yes! The door opens--a
soldier--no, a German officer! Oh, she is frightened of him, but she
is brave! She stands up as he comes toward her. She draws back from
him--he is between her and the door. He puts out his hands, tries to
hold her--_Ach!_” her voice rose to a scream, “_it is Heinrich!_”
“Go on!” commanded the doctor. “_Go on!_ What do you see?” His voice
was terrible in its inexorability.
“Oh no, no!” she whispered. “No! Don’t make me see! don’t make me see!
I don’t want to--I don’t want to--_Ach, Heinrich, Heinrich!_” Her voice
came on a note of anguish. “I cannot bear it!”
The doctor frowned at the rigid figure with closed eyes that began to
sway slightly to and fro upon its chair. Her face was drawn with a
suffering beyond expression.
“See!” he commanded. “And tell me what you see!”
“Oh!” she moaned, “you are cruel--cruel! I do not want to see! I do not
want to look!”
“You must!”
“Oh!” Evidently she surrendered helplessly. She commenced in a
fatigued, dreary voice: “They are there together--the two of them!
That beautiful woman--oh, I hate her now, I hate her!--_Ach, Heinrich,
have you forgotten me?_” It was as if she called to him. “He does not
hear me. His eyes are fixed on the woman.” She continued in short
panting sentences uttered with increasing horror. “She is retreating
from him--further and further back. He is following her. Oh, something
terrible is going to happen--it is in the air--I feel it--something
horrible!--What?--Ah, _he is trying to kiss her!_ My Heinrich! Oh, how
dreadful, how dreadful!--Oh, don’t make me see any more--don’t make me
see any more!--He has got her in his arms--she is struggling. Oh, I
can’t look--I will not look!--Oh, Heinrich, and I loved you so!” Her
voice fell from the scream of a nightmare to a plaintive moaning. “Oh,
no more--no more! I can bear no more!”
“Look!--Look to the very end!”
The doctor’s comrades shuddered at his aspect as he crouched over her,
seeming as though he were trying to peer with her eyes into some scene
of horror they could not even imagine.
The young woman’s face was a mask of agony.
“Oh, you torture me,” she moaned, “you torture me--I see, and I do not
want to see--oh, I do not want to see----”
“What do you see?”
“They are struggling together!--She fights desperately--what a wild
cat she is! He is pinning her arms to her sides with his embrace--she
throws her head back, back, to escape him. Ah! She has broken away!
She runs to the table. _What is she going to do?_” The seer’s voice
rose in acute alarm. “_Ach_, a revolver! Oh, no, no!” The ejaculation
was a vehement and agonized protest. “_Heinrich!_ Oh, leave her--leave
her!--No, he laughs at her as he follows--and she is so desperate. Ah,
he has got her up in a corner--he has seized her again--she is crying
out--it is a name--she cries it again and again----”
“What name?”
“I hear it! _Jules!_--_Jules!_--that is it--_Jules!_ Oh, what a tone of
despair!”
The doctor closed his eyes and swayed. Then, mastering himself with a
superhuman effort, he said hoarsely:
“Go on!--To the end!”
“I cannot see plainly--they are struggling still. _Ach!_ the revolver!
_She has fired!_ I see the thin smoke in the air.--What has happened?
He has her in his arms--he stumbles with her.--_Ach, she is dead!_ She
has shot herself. He stretches her out on the floor--he is bending over
her--Ach, _Heinrich_, _Heinrich_, you have broken my heart!” She wailed
as if from the depths of a wretchedness beyond all solace. “You have
killed my love for ever! I hate you, I hate you, I hate you as long
as I live--I hate myself for having loved you! _Faithless, despicable
brute!_”
She finished in a tone of fierce vindictiveness, a resentment, at once
horrified and implacable, of unforgivable wrong.
But the doctor no longer heeded her. Hands to his brow, eyes closed, he
reeled away from her.
“_Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!_” he groaned. “Marcelle, Marcelle! How shall I
avenge you?”
He glanced at the now silent and still rigid figure of the young woman.
Tears were trickling down her cheeks from the closed eyes. Her trance
was unbroken. She sat still nursing the clock.
Then, with a deep breath, he drew himself erect. The jaw that expressed
his powerful will set hard again. His two companions looked with horror
upon the dreadful pallor of that face from which two fierce eyes
blazed. A little laugh from him. It was a sickening mockery of mirth.
“_Mes amis!_” he said. “You asked me a little time ago what I thought
of the policy of reprisals. I ask you that question now. That young
woman, in a hypnotic trance, has just described to me, as though she
had seen it acted before her eyes, the suicide of my wife. She killed
herself rather than be outraged by that woman’s husband. In her waking
life the young woman is, of course, totally ignorant of the event.
In her waking life she adores the memory of her dead husband as of a
perfect and faithful lover. Now, in her hypnotic state, she loathes
him--her love has turned to bitter jealous hatred. She despises him.
In fact, she feels toward him just as she would have felt had she
witnessed the scene that destroyed my life’s happiness. It rests with
me to call her back to waking life, totally ignorant of her husband’s
crime, adoring him as before--or to leave her in an agony of shattered
love. Virtually, her husband murdered my wife. Her memory of him is
the only thing that I can touch. Shall I leave it sacred? Or shall I,
justly, kill it?--What do you say?--It is a pretty little problem in
reprisals for you!”
His comrades stared at him in horrified astonishment.
“But,” cried the battalion-commander, “are you sure----”
“Look at her!” replied the doctor.
The young woman still sat rigidly upright. Her face was drawn with
anguish. Heavy tears rolled ceaselessly from under the closed eyelids.
She sobbed quietly in a far-off kind of way that was nevertheless
eloquent of an immense despair.
“She sees what happened----?” queried the captain in an incredulous and
puzzled tone.
“Three years ago. She is looking at it now,” asserted the doctor. “She
sees her husband bending over my dead wife.--Come, _messieurs_, let
me have your verdict!” He seemed to be experiencing a grim, unhuman
enjoyment at their evident recoil from the terrible problem he offered
them. “I must wake her soon!”
“And if she wakes--knowing----?” faltered the captain.
“She will probably kill herself. She has been living in an intense
love for the idealized memory of her husband. The revulsion will be
overwhelming.”
The battalion-commander interposed.
“But, _mon cher_--a suicide--that goes beyond----”
The doctor shrugged his shoulders.
“Her husband drove _my_ wife to suicide----”
“It is terribly logical,” murmured the young captain, “but,” he glanced
at the unconscious figure in its mysterious and awful grief, “one needs
to be God to indulge in logic to that point.”
“And yet we are but men,” said the doctor, “and the problem is there
before us--must be solved at once! In my place, what would you do?”
The battalion-commander rose. He went up to his comrade and looked him
in the eyes.
“_Mon cher_,” he said solemnly, “God forbid that I should ever be in
your place! I do not know.”
The doctor turned to the young man. There was a terrible smile on his
lips.
“And you, _mon cher Jordan_?”
The captain rose also. He also read the hell in the doctor’s eyes. He
shook his head and shuddered.
“_Mon ami_,” he replied, “I should go mad.”
The doctor nodded grimly.
“The terrible thing is that I cannot go mad,” he said. “I am still
sane.--So you both decline the problem?”
The two officers shook their heads, not trusting themselves to speech.
The doctor turned away from them and covered his face with both hands.
He reeled to the mantelpiece, leaned against it. They saw his body
shake in the intensity of the nervous crisis which swept over him.
“Marcelle!” he cried. “Marcelle!--if you are a living spirit, counsel
me! Shall I avenge?”
The watchers turned to the entranced woman as though involuntarily
expecting a reply through her from that mysterious region where her
soul was in touch with the long-past tragedy she had revealed. She
still wept silently in that awful sleep which was no sleep. But no
word passed her lips. Only the clock she held upon her lap struck one
silvery note, marking the half-hour.
At the sound the doctor turned from the fireplace and took up the
clock. He gazed, with a passionate intensity, upon the inscription on
the back.
“Marcelle!” he murmured. “Our love ceases not when time itself
shall cease! Though you are dead, that still lives--_that_ was not
murdered!--I understand, _ma bien-aimée_, I understand!”
He put the clock gently upon the mantelpiece and turned once more to
the rigid, waiting figure. His comrades watched him, spell-bound,
keying themselves to deduce his decision from the tone of his voice
when he should speak. His stern face was set in an unfaltering resolve
they could not penetrate. He lifted her hand.
“_Gnädige Frau_,” he said, and the level, passionless voice gave no
hint to those ignorant of the language of the purport of the German
words which followed, “when you wake from this sleep you will entirely
forget the hideous dream through which you have passed. You will never
remember it, waking or asleep. You will think of your husband as you
have always thought of him--faithful and loving. You will completely
resume your normal life. You will not even be aware that you have
slept. It will seem to you as if you had only just sat down in this
chair. But when you wake you will present me with the clock upon the
mantelpiece. You will feel an overmastering impulse to do this, and you
will obey it.--Now,” he wiped the tears from her face and blew sharply
upon her closed eyelids, “_wake!_”
The two officers watched her, fascinated. Would she shriek? What
terrible paroxysm would be the expression of a heart-broken despair? Or
had he----? They held their breath.
Her eyelids flickered for a moment, and then, with one deep sigh, her
eyes opened. She smiled round on them.
“_Meine Herren?_” she said in her voice of timid enquiry. Then, fixing
her eyes on the doctor, “You sent for me?”
The doctor looked at her gravely.
“The Commandant desired me to assure you, _gnädige Frau_, that you need
be under no apprehensions during our stay here. We consider ourselves
the guests of a charming lady and we hope to leave only a pleasant
memory behind us.”
His companions marvelled at the strength of will which could enforce so
complete a normality of voice and feature.
The German woman smiled up at him, a pathetic little smile.
“You are very kind, Herr Doctor--please convey my thanks to the
Commandant.” She made a little movement which drew attention to her
black dress. “My--my husband in heaven, if he can see you, will--will
bless you.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Please excuse me!” she said
with a pretty little gesture of apology, “his memory is all I have--I
cannot help bringing him into every act of my life.”
“Love need not cease with death, _gnädige Frau_,” replied the doctor.
“One hopes that those we loved still watch over us--though we cannot
see them.”
She smiled again.
“He had no thought but of me, Herr Doctor, and I have none but of
him.--I see you understand,” she finished in a tone of involuntary
sympathy. “You also have loved?”
“_Ja, gnädige Frau_,” he replied with a grave and enigmatic smile. “I
also.”
Her eyes went past him to the mantelpiece, rested with a curiously
fixed expression on the clock. Suddenly, as though moved by an
uncontrollable impulse, she jumped up, took the clock from the
mantelpiece and thrust it into the doctor’s hands.
“Please accept this!” she said appealingly.
The doctor fixed his grave eyes upon her.
“Why?” he asked.
She stammered, evidently at a loss for her reason.
“Because--because I want you to have it--because I feel, I do not
know why, that you have protected me from something----” She stopped,
puzzled by her own words. “That is absurd, I know!” she exclaimed. “But
it belonged to two lovers, Herr Doctor--you, who understand love, will
value it, I know. I--I feel you _ought_ to have it!”
She left him standing with it. Then she turned to the other officers
with her appealing little smile and bowed slightly in farewell.
“_Gute Nacht, meine Herren!_” she said, and went out of the room.
The doctor stared after her, his face deathly white. Suddenly his body
broke and crumpled. He sank down to his knees by one of the chairs,
still clasping the clock in his hands.
“Marcelle!” he cried, his head bowed over his recovered love-token, his
body shaking, “Marcelle! have I done right?--have I done right?”
The battalion-commander touched his subordinate on the shoulder. Both
tip-toed silently out of the room.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] “To Jules, to mark the hours of a love which will not cease when
Time itself shall cease, from his Marcelle.”
SECRET SERVICE
“But, _Excellenz_----!” The entreaty, from such a man, was oddly
and strikingly sincere. About forty years of age, sprucely dressed
in a well-cut lounge suit, spats over patent boots, he was the type
to be seen any day gazing rather aimlessly into the shop-windows of
Piccadilly or the Rue de la Paix, the type that haunts the hotels
frequented by the best society and yet is not of that society, the
type that drifts behind the chairs of every gambling casino in the
world. A dark moustache, carefully trimmed, curled over lips whose
fine curves were unpleasantly thin and clear-cut. His complexion was
sallow; his dark eyes, fixed on his companion in an accentuation of his
entreaty, implored now with an expression of genuine truthfulness which
was certainly not habitual to them. He gesticulated with a white and
exquisitely manicured hand.
“But rubbish!” The speaker was an oldish, thick-set man in evening
dress. His round red face, barred with a clipped white moustache, with
a pair of small gray eyes vivacious behind pince-nez, was set upon a
short apoplectic neck which rucked into folds above his collar. The
scalp showed pink through close-cropped white hair. He stood warming
himself with his back to the fire--a very large fire for Berlin in the
winter of early 1918--and glared angrily at the young man. He spoke
with the irascibility of a brutal superior whose impunity is of long
date and unquestioned.
“Are you mad, Kranz? Do you take me for an imbecile old woman? Am
I feeble-minded--do I _look_ feeble-minded--that you should dare
to--to play such a trick upon me?” He was obviously working himself
up into one of his official rages. “You--you tell me that you have
an infallible means for obtaining secret information, no matter how
hidden. You persuade me to come and test it--_me!_ I give you credit
for your impudence!--and this is what it is!” He almost choked with
offended dignity. “Be careful, Kranz! You have traded this once upon
your record with us--you will never do it again! To bring me--_me!_--to
this absurdity!--to expect me to listen to the hypnotic ravings of that
idiot girl! I wonder you didn’t offer me crystal-gazing!”
“But, _Excellenz_----!”
The old man waved a hand at him.
“My dear Kranz,” he said, dropping suddenly into a tone of tolerant
contempt. “I forgive you this once. I daresay you have been the victim
of a genuine hallucination. You would not have dared else.--You don’t
drug, do you?” The question was asked with a disconcertingly sudden
sharpness. The younger man made a gesture of emphatic denial, defying
the piercing gray eyes that probed him. The old man grunted. “Keep your
sanity, Kranz--or the Bureau will lose a valued servant. Drop this
nonsense. I know what I am talking about--I studied psychology under
Wundt of Jena. The whole thing is a hallucination--the raving of the
dream-self released from control--_dummes Zeug!_--Give me my coat!”
“_Excellenz_, I implore you!”
The old man looked at him with a snarl of savage mockery.
“Don’t waste any more of my time, Kranz! Look at her--is it even
probable that an imbecile creature like that can be of use in our
business? Look at her, I say!”
He flung out a hand toward a young girl who stood with obvious
reluctance in the centre of the luxuriously furnished apartment. She
was perhaps eighteen but her youth had neither beauty nor charm. Her
features were soft and heavy; the nose thick; the chin receding; the
eyes weak and protuberant. Unmistakably, her personality was of the
feeblest. Her face flooded scarlet with shame and her eyes swam with
tears at this brutal insult. Yet evidently she did not dare to rush
away. Only she looked beseechingly toward Kranz, like a dog who awaits
a sign from its master.
His sallow face blanched. The thin lips under the dark moustache lost
their curves, became a straight line.
“Agathe!” he said, and his voice of command was strangely in contrast
with the tone in which he had entreated the old man. “Go into the next
room and wait!”
The girl vanished without a word. Kranz waited until she had closed the
door, and then he turned once more to his superior.
“I implore Your Excellency to listen!” he said with a desperate
gesture. “I stake my reputation upon it----”
The old man grunted scornfully.
“Your reputation!”
The dark eyes flashed.
“My reputation with you, _Excellenz_,” he corrected in a gentle voice
of complete cynicism.
The old man stared at him.
“Well, go on!” he said brutally, after a short pause which was eloquent
of his appraisement. He cleaned his pince-nez to mark his contemptuous
indifference to anything that might be said.
“You remember Karl Wertheimer, _Excellenz_?”
The old man swung round on him, replaced the pince-nez.
“Shot by the English.--You’ll never equal him, Kranz.”
Kranz shrugged his shoulders.
“_Excellenz_, I believe neither in God nor Devil--until the other day I
believed that death finished us completely--but I assure you solemnly
upon my--upon anything which you think will bind me--that the soul,
or whatever you choose to call it, of Karl Wertheimer speaks through
that girl!” There was a pause of silence in which the old man’s eyes
probed him to the depths. He proffered no comment and Kranz continued,
his voice intensely earnest. “The English shot Karl Wertheimer in
London--but they did not kill him. His--his soul is here, in Berlin, in
this room, alive as ever, as eager as ever to work for the Fatherland!”