smile at the obviously cosmopolitan Kranz, “--that is why he was such
an invaluable agent. Go on with your little romance.”
“It is no romance, _Excellenz_, I assure you--it is living fact. Karl
Wertheimer was a useful agent while he lived upon this earth--but he is
immeasurably more useful now that he is a--a spirit. There are no walls
that can keep him out--there is nothing he cannot see if he chooses
to--there is no conversation he cannot overhear----”
“H’m!” grunted the old man, “admitted that if he is a spirit he can do
all this--how can he communicate it to us?”
“Through this girl!”
“Who is she, this girl?”
“The daughter of some shopkeeper or other. I followed her ankles one
evening in the Park--it was night, and I could not see her face.” He
smiled cynically. “I won’t trouble Your Excellency with the details.
I brought her in here and no sooner had she sat down in that chair
when she swooned off. I was just cursing my luck--I saw her face for
the first time then!--and wondering how I was going to get rid of her,
_when Karl spoke to me_. I confess, _Excellenz_, it gave me a pretty
bad turn. It was so utterly unexpected--his voice coming from her
lips. However, I pulled myself together--and we had a most interesting
conversation----”
“He could answer your questions?” interjected the old man, sharply.
“Just as if he were himself sitting in the chair. So, naturally, I kept
a tight hold on the girl. She has not been allowed out since.”
“H’m!” The old man grunted again and looked at his watch. “Well, I have
missed my appointment,” he said with the factitious bad temper he owed
to his dignity. “I may as well see her performance. Fetch her in!”
Kranz went to the door and called.
“Agathe!”
The girl entered, stood with her eyes fixed timorously on him. He
pointed to a large armchair by the fireplace.
“Sit down!” he commanded. The girl obeyed dully, one little
apprehensive glance at him the only sign of any mental life in her. She
sat upright, her hands on her lap, staring stupidly into the fire. Two
heavy tears collected themselves in her protuberant eyes rolled down
her cheeks. They seemed but to emphasize her degradation. Her tyrant
stood over her, his dark eyes hard.
“Lean back and go to sleep!”
She sank back among the cushions. Obviously, she had no will at all of
her own. Her eyes closed. Her expressionless face twitched for a moment
and then was as still as a mask. Her bosom heaved in the commencement
of deep and heavy breathing which continued in the normality of
slumber. The old man watched her, keenly and contemptuously alert for
any sign of simulation.
Kranz pulled a little table across to the fireplace. A telephone
instrument, incongruously utilitarian in this luxurious room, and
writing materials were on it.
“You should note down what is said, _Excellenz_,” he said earnestly, in
a low voice.
The old man ignored him, his eyes on the girl. Suddenly he shuddered in
a rush of cold air. The paper on the table fluttered as in a draught.
He turned to Kranz in savage irritation.
“Shut that window!”
Kranz shook his head.
“They are all shut, _Excellenz_!” His whisper was one of genuine awe.
“Hush! It’s beginning! _He’s come!_”
The old man favoured him with a glance of inexpressible contempt. The
scorn was still in his eyes when he jerked round to the girl again in
an involuntary start of surprise at a sudden greeting.
“Good evening, _Excellenz_!” The words issued from that expressionless
mask of the deeply breathing girl, but they were uttered in a tone of
easy jocularity, followed by a little good-humoured laugh, which was
uncanny in its contrast with her degraded personality. Despite the
feminine vocal chords which had articulated the phrase, the _timbre_
and intonation were vividly those of a man of the world.
The old man stared speechlessly. His faculties seemed inhibited under
the shock. The red faded out of his round face, left it ashen gray
under the close-cropped white hair. Kranz, watching him narrowly,
feared for his heart. He made a brusque little gesture as though
seizing control of himself.
“_Herr Gott!_ It’s--it’s _his_ voice!” he gasped.
His eyes turned to Kranz and there was fear in them, a primitive fear
of the supernatural. Trembling, he reeled rather than walked to the
chair by the table with the telephone, dropped heavily into it. Kranz
broke the oppressive silence, posed himself as master of the situation.
“Good evening, _Karl_!” he said as though welcoming an everyday
acquaintance into the room.
“Hallo, Kranz!” came the easy, jocular voice through the lips of the
entranced girl. “_Wie gehts?_ I am glad you persuaded His Excellency to
come. Now we can start!”
The old man pulled himself together, moistened his lips for speech.
“Is--is that really you, Karl?” he asked, unevenly.
The merry little laugh, so uncanny from the only origin visible,
preceded the answer.
“Really I, _Excellenz_--Karl Wertheimer, shot six months ago by
the English in the Tower of London, and as alive in this room as
ever I was.” The tone changed to that of a humorously bantering
introduction. “Karl Wertheimer, _Excellenz_, the terror of the English
counterespionage department, at your service--still!”
The old man fumblingly produced a handkerchief and mopped at the
perspiration on his brow. He hesitated for an appropriate remark.
“Why----?” he asked falteringly, and stopped.
The merry little laugh rang out again in the silent room.
“Why, _Excellenz_? Because in my earth-life I had only one passion--and
it is as strong as ever it was. _Stronger_, for I owe our enemies a
grudge for that little early-morning shooting party in the Tower.
You’ve no idea how I long for a really good cigar, _Excellenz_,” he
finished in a tone of jesting complaint.
The old man stared into the empty air beyond the girl.
“And you can really obtain information and convey it?” He was
recovering his poise. The question was asked in the brusque tone
familiar to his subordinates.
“Test me, _Excellenz_!”
“I assure you, _Excellenz_----!” interjected Kranz, eagerly.
His superior waved him aside. The brow under the short white hair had
recovered its normal ruddiness, was wrinkled in cogitation. He felt in
his pocket and produced a letter in a sealed envelope.
“Tell me from whom this comes,” he said.
He proffered the letter as though expecting it to be taken out of his
fingers. Then, as it was not, he dropped his hand with a gesture of
hopeless bafflement. There was so real a feeling of the actual presence
of Karl Wertheimer in the room that the quite normal fact of the letter
remaining untouched emphasized suddenly the uncanny nature of this
conversation.
“Permit me, _Excellenz_,” said Kranz, politely. He took the letter and
laid it on the girl’s brow. Her lips moved at once.
“This purports to be from the firm of Wilson and Staunton, Boston,
to the firm of Jensen and Auerstedt, Christiania, with reference to
an overdue account.” The voice was still the chuckling voice of Karl
Wertheimer. “Actually, it is a communication in code to you from
Heinrich Biedermann at New York. Do you wish me to read the message? I
still remember the old code, _Excellenz_!”
“No--no!” interposed the old man. “Never mind!”
“Perhaps you would like me to tell you what Heinrich Biedermann is
doing at this moment, _Excellenz_?”
“But he is in New York! You can’t be here and there, too!”
Again came the merry little laugh.
“Time and Space are an illusion of matter, _Excellenz_. I half forget
that you are still subject to it.--Well, Heinrich Biedermann is sitting
with a young woman in a restaurant, having tea. They are both very
cheerful, for he has just received a remittance from you, and he has
bought her a new hat. The sun is setting and he is lost in admiration
of the glow of her red hair against the background of the illuminated
sky which he can perceive through the window. He is hopelessly in love
with her, which is unfortunate, as the lady happens to be a spy, by
name Desirée Rochefort, in the pay of the French Secret Service.”
“The devil----!” ejaculated the old man.
“But,” said Kranz in a puzzled tone. “Sunset?--It is nearly midnight!”
The old man turned on him.
“Fool! There is a difference of six hours in time between here and
America. That proves it--if anything can be proof of such wild
improbability!”
“Test me again!” said the amused and confident voice of Karl
Wertheimer. “Something really difficult this time!”
The old man leaned back in his chair and pondered. Then the gleam of an
idea came into his malicious gray eyes.
“Right!” he said, emphatically. “You know the library in my house?”
“Certainly, _Excellenz_!”
“Go into my library. Read me the fifteenth line of the ninety-first
page of the sixth volume on the third shelf of the right-hand side,
without opening the book. Can you do that?”
“You shall see, _Excellenz_,” replied the voice, cheerfully. “The sixth
volume counting from the left, I presume?”
“Yes.”
“I will note that,” said Kranz, coming to the table. He wrote the
particulars and looked up to his superior. “Do you know what the line
is, _Excellenz_?” he asked.
“I don’t even know what the book is!” replied the old man, harshly. He
wrinkled his brows in impatience at the silence, which prolonged itself
through several seconds. The girl seemed quite normally asleep.
“Here you are, _Excellenz_!” It was again the mocking voice of Karl
Wertheimer which issued from her lips. “The book is Shakespeare.
The line is ‘_England, bound in with the triumphant sea._’ Can you
interpret the omen, _Excellenz_?”
“The U-boat war----” murmured Kranz, as if to himself.
“Write it down!” commanded the old man. Kranz wrote the line.
His Excellency took up the telephone receiver.
“Hallo! Hallo!” He gave a number and waited. “Hallo! Is Wolff
there?--Tell him I want him at once! Yes--a thousand devils!--Wolff!
my secretary! Are you all deaf?” he vociferated irascibly. “Hallo! Is
that you, Wolff? Yes, of course it is I speaking! You ought to know my
voice by this time!--Go into the library and get--” He hesitated. Kranz
passed him the sheet of paper “--get the sixth volume from the left
on the third shelf of the right-hand side. Bring it to the telephone.
Hurry now!”
Again he waited. There was a tense silence in the room, a silence
which was emphasized by the heavy and regular breathing of the sleeping
girl.
“Hallo! Are you there?--Is that you, Wolff? Be quiet! Answer my
questions!--Have you got the book?--Right--What is it?--An English
book?--Shakespeare--right!--Now turn up page--page ninety-one. Got
it?--Count to the fifteenth line----” He turned from the telephone
to Kranz. “Write down what I repeat!” Then again speaking into the
telephone: “Yes? Read out the line!--what?--‘_England, bound in
with the triumphant sea_’--a thousand devils!--Wolff! Wolff! wait
a minute!--where did you find the book? On the shelf? Had it been
touched? You are sure that it had not been touched--not opened? Oh, you
have been in the library all the evening, working----”
“Tell him that the love-poem he has been writing to Fräulein Mimi
in your library to-night is not only banal but it does not scan,”
interjected the mocking voice of Karl Wertheimer. “The line ‘_Unsere
Herzen schlagen rhythmisch_’ is particularly bad.”
The old man glanced toward the vacant air over the girl and grinned. He
repeated the message into the telephone. He waited a moment--and then
burst into chuckling laughter.
“_Famos!_--He’s smashed the receiver. Scared out of his life!--I heard
him yell.” He put down the instrument and turned again to the chair.
“Karl Wertheimer, I believe in your reality--I believe in your powers.”
His voice was solemn. “The Fatherland has work for you to do.”
“That is why I am here, _Excellenz_.” The voice came jauntily through
the expressionless lips of the unconscious girl.
The old man pursed his mouth under the clipped white moustache and
pondered. Kranz watched him with acute interest.
“Listen!” said the old man, looking up in a sudden decision. “At
the present time the Allied Military Missions in Washington are
negotiating with the United States Government with regard to the
despatch of the American Army to Europe, for the coming campaign. We
know this--we know that any day now they may come to an agreement. It
is of the utmost importance to us that we should know, _immediately_,
the numbers promised and the schedule of sailings. The fate of
the world depends upon it. The secret will be most jealously
guarded--triply locked out of reach of any ordinary agent. Can you read
it, as you read the line in that closed book?”
“I can, _Excellenz_--if you can give me some indication where to look,”
replied the voice. “We must, so to speak, _focus_ ourselves--I can’t
now explain the conditions with us, but you will understand what I
mean--spirit pervades----” For the first time in the colloquy the
voice spoke with hesitation, as though despairing of explaining the
inexplicable. “Direction--definite direction--is essential----”
“H’m,” the old man grunted. “Well, I suggest Forsdyke--you know, the
permanent Chief of Department--as the man most likely to prepare the
schedule. You know where he lives?”
“The very house in Washington!” replied the voice triumphantly. “Good
enough! I will do my best, _Excellenz_.”
“To-day is the 21st of February,” said the old man. “We _must_ know by
the end of the month. Vast issues depend on it. Can you do it?”
“I will try.” The voice came feebly and as from far away. “I
must go now, _Excellenz_--the power--the power is failing--fast.
Good-bye--good-bye, Kranz--take--take care of the girl--she--she is
the--only means--of--communication----” The last words came in a
whisper, ceased. The girl appeared to be in normal slumber.
The old man turned to Kranz, spoke out of preoccupation which otherwise
ignored him.
“Give me my hat and coat!”
A sudden anxiety paled the sallow face.
“Your Excellency remembers what Karl said,” he murmured as he assisted
his chief into the heavy fur-lined garment.--“The girl is the only
means of communication. I need not remind Your Excellency that the girl
is my----”
“You need not remind me of anything, Kranz,” interrupted the old man,
harshly. “You will not be forgotten. Good-night!”
Kranz accompanied him obsequiously to the door.
* * * * *
On that evening of the 21st of February a cheerful little party was
assembled around the dinner-table of Henry Forsdyke, Chief of a certain
department in the United States Administration. The large room, which
had been built by a Southern magnate who led Washington society in
pre-Civil War days, was illumined only by the shaded lights of the
table, and beyond the dazzling shirt-fronts of the men it lapsed
into a gloom that was intensified by the dark curtains over the
long windows and was scarcely relieved by the glinting gilt frames
of the pictures spaced on the walls hung in a dull tint. In that
half-light the servants moved, scarcely real. Only the party within
the illuminated oval of white napery, sparkling glass, and gleaming
silver was vividly actual, plucked out of shadow. It was a fad of the
host’s, this concentration of the light upon the table. He alleged that
it emphasized the personalities of his guests. His daughter, who was
irreverent, accused him of an atavistic tendency that craved for the
candle-light of his ancestors.
Within the magic oval the party exchanged light-hearted talk that
effervesced every now and then into merry laughter where a young girl’s
voice predominated. All were in evident good spirits. The host himself,
a man of between fifty and sixty years, with shrewd gray eyes looking
out of a face characterized by a pointed and neatly clipped iron-gray
beard, set the tone. He smiled down the table with a contentment that
seemed to spring from a secret satisfaction, the contentment of a man
who has completed an anxious and difficult task and can now relax. He
was in his best vein of sententious humour.
The same undertone of relief could have been discerned by the acute in
the gaiety of young Jimmy Lomax, Forsdyke’s private secretary, although
one alone of the little glances between him and his host’s daughter, if
intercepted, might have seemed sufficient reason.
Captain Sergeantson, Jimmy Lomax’s chum, had obvious cause for
cheerfulness. Attached to a Special Service Department, he had just
returned from Europe, where he had fulfilled an extremely difficult
mission with conspicuous success. His home-coming had provided the
excuse for this little dinner-party.
As for Professor Lomax, Jimmy’s father, no one had ever seen him
other than in high spirits. The author--after a lifetime of profound
and exact scientific research that had earned him a world-wide
reputation--of an enquiry into the possible survival of human
personality, which was the controversial topic of that winter and
which threatened to deprive him of that reputation, he was in striking
contrast with the idea of him propagated by the sensational Press.
There was nothing of the visionary about those clear-cut features. A
stranger would have diagnosed him as a lawyer--a lawyer whose judicial
perception of evidence was clarified by a sense of humour. The mobile
mouth, even in silence, hinted at this latter quality. The eyes
twinkled, eminently sane, under a well-balanced brow. He joked like a
schoolboy with his host’s daughter, exciting--for the secretly selfish
pleasure of hearing it--her gay young laugh. Occasionally he glanced
across to his son, approbation in his eyes.
Hetty Forsdyke, the only woman of the party, was a typical specimen
of self-reliant, college-bred American girl. Good to look upon, her
beauty hinted at a race which had been proud of its exclusiveness long
after Napoleon had sold Louisiana to the States. Her vivacity and
charm had roots, perhaps, in the same stock, but the cool, level-headed
understanding of life, which she expressed in a slang that provoked her
father to vain rebuke, and the genuineness of which was vouched for by
her clear gray eyes, was an attribute of the Forsdykes and the North.
The dinner was nearly at an end. Forsdyke, launched on a story of a
Presidential campaign in the Middle West a generation ago, had arrived
at the stage where the chuckles of his hearers were on the point of
culminating in the final burst of laughter. Hetty, her glass between
her fingers, half-way to her mouth, was looking at him with a smile
that pretended the story was quite new to her. Suddenly her expression
changed. She stared, as if spell-bound, at the dark curtains from which
her father’s oval face detached itself in the illumination of the
table. The glass slipped from her fingers, smashed.
Forsdyke’s story ceased abruptly. Four pairs of alarmed eyes focussed
themselves upon his daughter. Jimmy, involuntarily, had half risen from
his chair. The movement seemed to recall the girl to her surroundings.
She shuddered and then, with an evident effort of will, brought back
her gaze to the table. Her smile routed the momentary anxiety of her
companions.
“How careless of me!” she said easily, quelling, with quiet
self-control, her confusion ere it could well be remarked. “I don’t
know what I was thinking of!--Do go on, Poppa! It was just getting
interesting.”
She signed composedly to a servant to pick up the broken glass, and
settled herself, all attention, to the familiar story.
“What a hostess she is!” thought her father. “Just like----” He did not
finish the complementary clause and stifled another which began: “I
wonder what I shall do when----” He picked up his story again and was
rewarded by his meed of laughter. But his eyes rested uneasily on his
daughter and he promised himself a later enquiry into this abnormality.
The party withdrew into the drawing-room, where, since Forsdyke was a
widower of many years’ masculine supremacy, the men lit their cigars.
Hetty, at a request from her father, seated herself at the grand piano
in the far corner, and commenced the soft chords of a Chopin prelude.
Jimmy Lomax stood over her. There was already something proprietary in
his air. But the girl, after one glance up at him, seemed to forget his
presence in the spell of the music. Her position commanded a full view
of the room and she looked dreamily across to where the three men were
gathered by the white marble fireplace.
Suddenly the music stopped on a crashing discord. The girl had jumped
to her feet, was trembling violently. Young Lomax clutched at her.
“Hetty! What----?”
She broke away from him, came swiftly across the room to his father.
“Professor!” she said. “You were once in practice as a doctor, weren’t
you?”
The twinkling eyes went grave as they met hers. There was unmistakable
seriousness in her question.
“Yes, my dear----”
“Then I want you to examine me right here, Professor!” she said. “Tell
me if I’ve got fever!”
She met the amazed eyes of the other men with a look which announced
that she knew her own business.
Without a word the Professor lifted up her wrist and felt her pulse.
“Now show me your tongue!” She obeyed. He nodded his head, and placed
his hand upon her brow. His eyes plunged into hers for one second of
searching scrutiny and then he nodded his head again, satisfied. “My
dear,” he said, “I haven’t a thermometer here, but I should say you are
absolutely normal in every way. Your pulse is a shade rapid, perhaps.”
The girl took a long breath.
“Thank you, Professor,” she said, simply. She turned to the others.
“You heard what the Professor said? There’s no fever about _me_.
Now--listen! I want to tell you something. I’ve been waiting to tell
you ever since we sat down to dinner--and now I _must_ tell you! And
you mustn’t laugh!--Poppa, this is serious!”
The four men, puzzled at her demeanour, grouped themselves round her.
She assured herself of their gravity.
“This evening,” she began, “between five and six o’clock I suddenly
developed a dreadful headache. It was so bad that I just had to go to
my room and lie down. I went to sleep straight off. And then--then I
had a--a dream--only,” she interposed quickly, to hold their interest,
“it wasn’t like an ordinary dream. It was so vivid that I felt all the
time it _meant_ something. I dreamed that someone or something that I
could feel was sort of loving and kind and earnest--_very_ earnest, I
could feel that strongly--took me into a room. And, somehow, I knew
that the room was in Berlin. It seemed quite a nice room but I don’t
remember much about the details of it. I only remember that I saw
myself there with two men, one young and dark, the other old and white,
who were staring at a girl sleeping in a big armchair. They took not
the faintest notice of me, and I didn’t worry much about them. The girl
was the interesting thing to all of us--and yet, though I was staring
at her with a sort of fascination I couldn’t shake off, I didn’t know
why. Then a strange thing happened. The girl kind of faded away--I
don’t know how to describe it, because I felt all the time she was
still there--and as she faded, there came up the figure of a man. He
seemed to grow out of her--to take her place. It was real uncanny. This
man that grew out of the girl like a--like a ghost--was somehow more
_living_ than any of us. It was as if he were in the limelight and we
were in the shadow. I shall never forget his face. It was handsome but
_wicked_--mocking--malicious--like a devil. And he had an ugly scar
over the right eyebrow which made him look even more devilish----”
“What colour was his hair?” interposed Captain Sergeantson. “Any
moustache?”
The girl looked at him in surprise at the question.
“Fair--sticking up straight. No moustache--why?”
Captain Sergeantson nodded.
“I only wondered. Go on, Miss Forsdyke.”
The girl resumed.