DEUTSCHLAND UBER ALLES
Standing there staring after him, I felt like a murderer of the deepest
dye. It is one thing to hand over to the police their natural prey, a
thief taken red-handed, but quite another, and a much more harrowing
one, to have him slip through your fingers, precipitate himself into
mid-air, and drop four stories to the pavement, scattering his brains
far and wide. There was not a vestige of hope for the poor wretch.
Unnerved, I groped to the window and peered downward for his remains.
My first glance proved my regrets to be superfluous. Beneath my window,
which, owing to the crowded condition of the hotel, opened on a side
street, a fire-escape descended jaggedly; and upon it, just out of arm’s
reach, my recent guest clung and wobbled, struggling with an attack of
natural vertigo before proceeding toward the earth.
By this time my rage was such that I would have followed that little
thief almost anywhere. It was not the dizziness of the yawning void that
stayed me. I should have climbed the Matterhorn with all cheerfulness to
catch him at the top. But sundry visions of the figure I would cut, the
crowd that might gather, and the probable ragging in the morning papers,
were too much for me, and I sorrowfully admitted that the game was not
worth the price.
The little man’s nerves, meanwhile, seemed to be steadying. Feeling
each step, he began cautiously to work his way down. To my wrath he
even looked up at me and indulged in a grimace--but his triumph was
ill-timed, for at that very instant I beheld, strolling along the street
below, humming and swinging his night-stick, as leisurely, complacent,
and stalwart a representative of the law as one could wish to see.
“Hi, there! Officer!” I shouted lustily. My hail, if not my words,
reached him; he glanced up, saw the figure on the ladder, and was seized
instantaneously with the spirit of the chase.
Yelling something reassuring, the gist of which escaped me, he
constituted himself a reception committee of one and started for the
ladder’s foot. But our doughty Teuton was a resourceful person. Roused
to the urgency of his plight, he looked wildly up at me, down at the
officer, and, hastily pushing up the nearest window, hoisted himself
across its sill, and again took refuge in the St. Ives Hotel.
With a bellow of rage, the policeman dashed toward the porte-cochere,
while I ducked back into the room, rapidly revolving my chances of
cutting off the man’s retreat below. If the system of numbering was the
same on every floor, my thief must, of course, emerge from Room 303. But
this similarity was problematical, and to invade apartments at random,
disturbing women at their opera toilets and maybe even waking babies,
was too desperate a shift to try.
It reminded me to wait with what patience I could summon for the house
detective. And where was he, by the way? I had turned in my alarm a good
five minutes before.
In an unenviable humor I stumbled across the room, tripping and barking
my shins over various malignant hassocks, tables, and chairs. Finding
the switch at last, I flooded the room with light, and saw myself in the
mirror, with tie and coat askew.
“Now,” I muttered, straightening them viciously, “we’ll see what he
took away.” But the trunk seemed undisturbed when I examined it, and my
various bags and suitcases were securely locked. I had found Forrest’s
power of attorney and was storing it in my pocket when voices rose
outside.
A group of four was approaching, comprised of a spruce, dress-coated
manager; a short thick-set, broad-faced man who was doubtless the
long-overdue detective; a professional-appearing gentleman with a
black bag, obviously the house-physician; and the policeman that I had
summoned from his stroll below. The latter, in an excited brogue, was
recounting his late vision of the thief, “hangin’ between hivin and
earth, no less,” while the detective scornfully accused him of having
been asleep or jingled, on the ground of my late telephone to the effect
that I was holding the man.
The manager, as was natural, took the initiative, bustling past me into
my room and peering eagerly around.
“I needn’t say, Mr. Bayne,” he orated fluently, “how sorry I am that
this has happened--especially beneath our roof. It is our first case,
I assure you, of anything so regrettable. If it gets into the papers it
won’t do us any good. Now the important thing is to take the fellow
out by the rear without courting notice. Why, where is he?” he asked
hopefully. “Surely he isn’t gone?”
“Sure, and didn’t I tell ye? ‘Tis without eyes ye think me!” The
policeman was resentful, and so, to tell the truth, was I. The whole
maddening affair seemed bent on turning to farce at every angle; the
doctor, as a final straw, had just offered _sotto voce_ to mix me a
soothing draft!
“Gone! Of course he’s gone, man!” I exclaimed with some natural temper.
“Did you expect him to sit here waiting all this time? What on earth
have you been doing--reading the papers--playing bridge? A dozen thieves
could have escaped since I telephoned downstairs!”
“But you said,” he murmured, apparently dazed, “that you could hold
him.” A tactless remark, which failed to assuage my wrath!
“So I could,” I responded savagely. “But I didn’t expect him to turn
into a conjuring trick, which is what he did. He went out that window
head foremost, down the ladder, and into the room below. Let’s be after
him--though we stand as much chance of catching him as we do of finding
the King of England!” and I turned toward the doorway, where the
manager, the doctor and the detective were massed.
The manager put his hand upon my arm. I looked down at it with raised
eyebrows, and he took it away.
“Excuse me, sir,” he said, adopting a manner of appeal, “but if you’ll
reflect for a moment you’ll see how it is, I know. People don’t care for
houses where burglars fly in and out of windows; it makes them nervous;
you wouldn’t believe how easily a hotel can get a bad name and lose its
clientele. Besides, from what you tell me, the fellow must be well away
by this time. You’d do me a favor--a big one--by dropping the matter
here.”
“Well, I won’t!” I snapped indignantly. “I’ll see it through--or start
something still livelier. Are you coming down with me to investigate
the room beneath us or do you want me to ring up police headquarters and
find out why?”
In the hall the policeman looked at me across the intervening heads
and dropped one slow, approving eyelid. “If the gintleman says so--” he
remarked in heavy tones fraught with meaning, and fixed a cold,
blue, appraising gaze on the detective, who thereupon yielded with
unexpectedly good grace.
“Aw, what’s eating you?” was his amiable demand. “Sure, we was going
right down there anyhow--soon’s we found out how the land lay up here.”
The five of us took the elevator to the lower floor. An unfriendly
atmosphere surrounded me. I was held a hotel wrecker without reason. We
found the corridor empty, the floor desk abandoned--a state of things
rather strikingly the duplicate of that reigning overhead--and in due
course paused before Room 303, where the manager, figuratively speaking,
washed his hands of the affair.
“Here is the room, Mr. Bayne, for which you ask.” If I would persist in
my nefarious course, added his tone.
The detective, obeying the hypnotic eye of the policeman, knocked. There
was silence. The bluecoat, my one ally, was crouching for a spring. Then
light steps crossed the room, and the door was opened. There stood a
girl,--a most attractive girl, the girl that I had seen downstairs.
Straight and slender, spiritedly gracious in bearing, with gray eyes
questioning us from beneath lashes of crinkly black, she was a radiant
figure as she stood facing us, with a coat of bright-blue velvet thrown
over her rosy gown.
“Beg pardon, miss,” said the policeman, brightly, “this gintleman’s been
robbed.”
As her eyebrows went up a fraction, I could have murdered him, for how
else could she read his statement save that I took her for the thief?
“I am very sorry,” I explained, bowing formally, “to disturb you. We
are hunting a thief who took French leave by my fire-escape. I must have
been mistaken--I thought that he dodged in again by this window. You
have not seen or heard anything of him, of course?”
“No, I haven’t. But then, I just this instant came up from dinner,”
she replied. Her low, contralto tones, quite impersonal, were yet
delightful; I could have stood there talking burglars with her till
dawn. “Do you wish to come in and make sure that he is not in hiding?”
With a half smile for which I didn’t blame her, she moved a step aside.
“Certainly not!” I said firmly, ignoring a nudge from the policeman.
“He left before you came--there was ample time. It is not of the least
consequence, anyhow. Again I beg your pardon.” As she inclined her head,
I bowed, and closed the door.
“I trust Mr. Bayne, that you are satisfied at last.” This was the St.
Ives manager, and I did not like his tone.
“I am satisfied of several things,” I retorted sharply, “but before I
share them with you, will you kindly tell me your name?”
“My name is Ritter,” he said with dignity. “I confess I fail to see what
bearing--”
“Call it curiosity,” I interrupted. “Doctor, favor me with yours.”
The doctor peered at me over his glasses, hesitated, and then revealed
his patronym. It was Swanburger, he informed me.
“But, my dear sir, what on earth--”
“Merely,” said I, with conviction, “that this isn’t an Allies’ night. It
is _Deutschland uber Alles_; the stars are fighting for the Teuton race.
Now, let’s hear how you were christened,” I added, turning to the house
detective, who looked even less sunny than before if that could be.
“See here, whatcher giving us?” snarled that somewhat unpolished worthy.
“My name’s Zeitfeld; but I was born in this country, don’t you forget
it, same as you.”
“A great American personality,” I remarked dreamily, “has declared that
in the hyphenate lies the chief menace to the United States. And
what’s your name?” I asked the representative of law and order. “Is it
Schmidt?”
“No, sir,” he responded, grinning; “it’s O’Reilly, sorr.”
“Thank heaven for that! You’ve saved my reason,” I assured him as I
leaned against the wall and scanned the Germanic hordes.
“Mr. Ritter,” said I, addressing that gentleman coldly, “when I am next
in New York I don’t think I shall stop with you. The atmosphere here is
too hectic; you answer calls for help too slowly--calls, at least, in
which a guest indiscreetly tells you that he has caught a German thief.
It looks extremely queer, gentlemen. And there are some other points as
well--”
But there I paused. I lacked the necessary conviction. After all I was
the average citizen, with the average incredulity of the far-fetched,
the melodramatic, the absurd. To connect the head waiter’s panic at my
departure with the episode in my room, to declare that the floor clerks
had been called from their posts for a set purpose, and the halls
deliberately cleared for the thief, were flights of fancy that were
beyond me. The more fool I!
By the time I saw the last of the adventure I began that night--it was
all written in the nth power, and introduced in more or less important
roles the most charming girl in the world, the most spectacular hero of
France, the cleverest secret-service agent in the pay of the fatherland,
and I sometimes ruefully suspected, the biggest imbecile of the United
States in the person of myself--I knew better than to call any idea
impossible simply because it might sound wild. But at the moment my
education was in its initial stages, and turning with a shrug from three
scowling faces, I led my friendly bluecoat a little aside.
“I’ve no more time to-night to spend thief-catching, Officer,” I told
him. I had just recalled my dinner, now utterly ruined, and Dunny,
probably at this instant cracking walnuts as fiercely as if each one
were the kaiser’s head. “But I’m an amateur in these affairs, and you
are a master. Before I go, as man to man, what the dickens do you make
of this?”
Flattered, he looked profound.
“I’m thinking, sorr,” he gave judgment, “ye had the rights of it. Seein’
as how th’ thafe is German, ye’ll not set eyes on him more--for divil
a wan here but’s of that counthry, and they stick together something
fierce!”
“Well,” I admitted, “our thoughts run parallel. Here is something to
drink confusion to them all. And, O’Reilly, I am glad I’m going to sail
to-morrow. I’d rather live on a sea full of submarines than in this
hotel, wouldn’t you?”
Touching his forehead, he assented, and wished me good-night and a
good journey; part of his hope went unfulfilled, by the way. That ocean
voyage of mine was to take rank, in part at least, as a first-class
nightmare. The Central powers could scarcely have improved on it by
torpedoing us in mid-ocean or by speeding us upon our trip with a cargo
of clock-work bombs.