THE HOTEL SPLENDIDE
Mr. Joseph Almer, proprietor of the Hotel Splendide, on Gibraltar's
Waterport Street, was alone in his office, busy over his books. The
day was August fifth. The night before the cable had flashed word to
General Sir George Crandall, Governor-general of the Rock, that England
had hurled herself into the great war. But that was no concern of Mr.
Joseph Almer except as it affected the hotel business; admittedly it
did bring complications there.
A sleek well-fed Swiss he was; one whose neutrality was publicly as
impervious as the rocky barriers of his home land. A bland eye and a
suave professional smile were the ever-present advertisements of
urbanity on Joseph Almer's chubby countenance. He spoke with an accent
that might have got him into trouble with the English masters of the
Rock had they not known that certain cantons in Switzerland occupy an
unfortunate contiguity with Germany, and Almer, therefore, was hardly
to be blamed for an accident of birth. From a window of his office, he
looked out on crooked Waterport Street, where all the world of the
Mediterranean shuffled by on shoes, slippers and bare feet. Just
across his desk was the Hotel Splendide's reception room--a sad
retreat, wherein a superannuated parlor set of worn red plush tried to
give the lie to the reflection cast back at it by the dingy gold-framed
mirror over the battered fireplace. Gaudy steamship posters and
lithographs of the Sphinx and kindred tourists' delights were the
walls' only decorations. Not even the potted palm, which is the hotel
man's cure-all, was there to screen the interior of the
office-reception room from the curious eyes of the street, just beyond
swinging glass doors. Joseph Almer had taken poetic license with the
word "splendide"; but in Gibraltar that is permissible; necessary, in
fact. Little there lives up to its reputation save the Rock itself.
It was four in the afternoon. The street outside steamed with heat,
and the odors that make Gibraltar a lasting memory were at their prime
of distillation. The proprietor of the Splendide was nodding over his
books. A light footfall on the boards beyond the desk roused him. A
girl with two cigar boxes under her arm slipped, like a shadow, up to
the desk. She was dressed in the bright colors of Spain,
claret-colored skirt under a broad Romany sash, and with thin white
waist, open at rounded throat. A cheap tortoise-shell comb held her
coils of chestnut hair high on her head. Louisa of the Wilhelmstrasse;
but not the same Louisa--the sophisticated Louisa of the Café Riche and
the Winter Garden. A timid little cigar maker she was, here in
Gibraltar.
"Louisa!" Almer's head bobbed up on a suddenly stiffened neck as he
whispered her name. She set her boxes of cigars on the desk, opened
them, and as she made gestures to point the worthiness of her wares,
she spoke swiftly, and in a half whisper:
"All is as we hoped, Almer. He comes on the _Princess Mary_--a
cablegram from Koch just got through to-day. I wanted----"
"You mean----" Almer thrust his head forward in his eagerness, and his
eyes were bright beads.
"Captain Woodhouse--our Captain Woodhouse!" The girl's voice trembled
in exultation. "And his number--his Wilhelmstrasse number--is--listen
carefully: Nineteen Thirty-two."
"Nineteen Thirty-two," Almer repeated, under his breath. Then aloud:
"On the _Princess Mary_, you say?"
"Yes; she is already anchored in the straits. The tenders are coming
ashore. He will come here, for such were his directions in
Alexandria." Louisa started to move toward the street door.
"But you," Almer stopped her; "the English are making a round-up of
suspects on the Rock. They will ask questions--perhaps arrest----"
"Me? No, I think not. Just because I was away from Gibraltar for six
weeks and have returned so recently is not enough to rouse suspicion.
Haven't I been Josepha, the cigar girl, to every Tommy in the garrison
for nearly a year? No--no, señor; you are wrong. These are the purest
cigars made south of Madrid. Indeed, señor."
[Illustration: "Haven't I been Josepha for nearly a year?"]
The girl had suddenly changed her tone to one of professional
wheedling, for she saw three entering the door. Almer lifted his voice
angrily:
"Josepha, your mother is substituting with these cigars. Take them
back and tell her if I catch her doing this again it means the cells
for her."
The cigar girl bowed her head in simulated fright, sped past the
incoming tourists, and lost herself in the shifting crowd on the
street. Almer permitted himself to mutter angrily as he turned back to
his books.
"You see, mother? See that hotel keeper lose his temper and
tongue-lash that poor girl? Just what I tell you--these foreigners
don't know how to be polite to ladies."
Henry J. Sherman--"yes, sir, of Kewanee, Illynoy"--mopped his bald pink
dome and glared truculently at the insulting back of Joseph Almer.
Mrs. Sherman, the lady of direct impulses who had contrived to stare
Captain Woodhouse out of countenance in the Winter Garden not long
back, cast herself despondently on the decrepit lounge and appeared to
need little invitation to be precipitated into a crying spell. Her
daughter Kitty, a winsome little slip, stood behind her, arms about the
mother's neck, and her hands stroking the maternal cheeks.
"There--there, mother; everything'll come out right," Kitty vaguely
assured. Mrs. Sherman, determined to have no eye for the cloud's
silver lining, rocked back and forth on the sofa and gave voice to her
woe:
"Oh, we'll never see Kewanee again. I know it! I know it! With
everybody pushing and shoving us away from the steamers--everybody
refusing to cash our checks, and all this fighting going on somewhere
up among the Belgians----" The lady from Kewanee pulled out the
stopper of her grief, and the tears came copiously. Mr. Sherman, who
had made an elaborate pretense of studying a steamer guide he found on
the table, looked up hurriedly and blew his nose loudly in sympathy.
"Cheer up, mother. Even if this first trip of ours--this 'Grand
Tower,' as the guide-books call it--has been sorta tough, we had one
compensation anyway. We saw the Palace of Peace at the Hague before
the war broke out. Guess they're leasing it for a skating rink now,
though."
"How can you joke when we're in such a fix? He-Henry, you ne-never do
take things seriously!"
"Why not joke, mother? Only thing you can do over here you don't have
to pay for. Cheer up! There's the _Saxonia_ due here from Naples some
time soon. Maybe we can horn a way up her gangplank. Consul says----"
Mrs. Sherman looked up from her handkerchief with withering scorn.
"Tell me a way we can get aboard any ship without having the money to
pay our passage. Tell me that, Henry Sherman!"
"Well, we've been broke before, mother," her spouse answered cheerily,
rocking himself on heels and toes. "Remember when we were first
married and had that little house on Liberty Street--the newest house
in Kewanee it was; and we didn't have a hired girl, then, mother. But
we come out all right, didn't we?" He patted his daughter's shoulder
and winked ponderously. "Come on, girls and boys, we'll go look over
those Rock Chambers the English hollowed out. We can't sit in our room
and mope all day."
The gentleman who knew Kewanee was making for the door when Almer, the
suave, came out from behind his desk and stopped him with a warning
hand.
"I am afraid the gentleman can not see the famous Rock Chambers," he
purred. "This is war time--since yesterday, you know. Tourists are
not allowed in the fortifications."
"Like to see who'd stop me!" Henry J. Sherman drew himself up to his
full five feet seven and frowned at the Swiss. Almer rubbed his hands.
"A soldier--with a gun, most probably, sir."
Mrs. Sherman rose and hurried to her husband's side, in alarm.
"Henry--Henry! Don't you go and get arrested again! Remember that
last time--the Frenchman at that Bordeaux town." Sherman allowed
discretion to soften his valor.
"Well, anyway"--he turned again to the proprietor--"they'll let us see
that famous signal tower up on top of the Rock. Mother, they say from
that tower up there, they can keep tabs on a ship sixty miles away.
Fellow down at the consulate was telling me just this morning that's
the king-pin of the whole works. Harbor's full of mines and things;
electric switch in the signal tower. Press a switch up there, and
everything in the harbor--Blam!" He shot his hands above his head to
denote the cataclysm. Almer smiled sardonically and drew the Illinois
citizen to one side.
"I would give you a piece of advice," he said in a low voice. "It
is----"
"Say, proprietor; you don't charge for advice, do you?" Sherman
regarded him quizzically.
"It is this," Almer went on, unperturbed: "If I were you I would not
talk much about the fortifications of the Rock. Even talk
is--ah--dangerous if too much indulged."
"Huh! I guess you're right," said Sherman thoughtfully. "You see--we
don't know much about diplomacy out where I come from. Though that
ain't stopping any of the Democrats from going abroad in the Diplomatic
Service as fast as Bryan'll take 'em."
Interruption came startlingly. A sergeant and three soldiers with guns
swung through the open doors from Waterport Street. Gun butts struck
the floor with a heavy thud. The sergeant stepped forward and saluted
Almer with a businesslike sweep of hand to visor.
"See here, landlord!" the sergeant spoke up briskly. "Fritz, the
barber, lives here, does he not?" Almer nodded. "We want him. Find
him in the barber shop, eh?"
The sergeant turned and gave directions to the guard. They tramped
through a swinging door by the side of the desk while the Shermans,
parents and daughter alike, looked on, with round eyes. In less than a
minute, the men in khaki returned, escorting a quaking man in white
jacket. The barber, greatly flustered, protested in English strongly
reminiscent of his fatherland.
"Orders to take you, Fritz," the sergeant explained not unkindly.
"But I haf done nothing," the barber cried. "For ten years I haf
shaved you. You know I am a harmless old German." The sergeant
shrugged.
"I fancy they think you are working for the Wilhelmstrasse, Fritz, and
they want to have you where they can keep their eyes on you. Sorry,
you know."
The free-born instincts of Henry J. Sherman would not be downed longer.
He had witnessed the little tragedy of the German barber with growing
ire, and now he stepped up to the sergeant truculently.
"Seems to me you're not giving Fritz here a square deal, if you want to
know what I think," he blustered. "Now, in my country----" The
sergeant turned on him sharply.
"Who are you--and what are you doing in Gib?" he snapped. A moan from
Mrs. Sherman, who threw herself in her daughter's arms.
[Illustration: "Who are you?" snapped the sergeant.]
"Kitty, your father's gone and got himself arrested again!"
"Who am I?" Sherman echoed with dignity. "My name, young fellow, is
Henry J. Sherman, and I live in Kewanee, Illynoy. I'm an American
citizen, and you can't----"
"Your passports--quick!" The sergeant held out his hand imperiously.
"Oh, that's all right, young fellow; I've got 'em, all right."
Kewanee's leading light began to fumble in the spacious breast pocket
of his long-tailed coat. As he groped through a packet of papers and
letters, he kept up a running fire of comment and exposition:
"Had 'em this afternoon, all right. Here; no, that's my letter of
credit. It would buy Main Street at home, but I can't get a ham
sandwich on it here. This is--no; that's my only son's little girl,
Emmaline, taken the day she was four years old. Fancy little girl, eh?
Now, that's funny I can't--here's that list of geegaws I was to buy for
my partner in the Empire Mills, flour and buckwheat. Guess he'll have
to whistle for 'em. Now don't get impatient, young fellow. This----
Land's sakes, mother, that letter you gave me to mail, in
Algy-kiras---- Ah, here you are, all proper and scientific enough as
passports go, I guess."
The sergeant whisked the heavily creased document from Sherman's hand,
scanned it hastily, and gave it back, without a word. The outraged
American tucked up his chin and gave the sergeant glare for glare.
"If you ever come to Kewanee, young fellow," he snorted. "I'll be
happy to show you our new jail."
"Close in! March!" commanded the sergeant. The guard surrounded the
hapless barber and wheeled through the door, their guns hedging his
white jacket about inexorably. Sherman's hands spread his coat tails
wide apart, and he rocked back and forth on heels and toes, his eyes
smoldering.
"Come on, father"--Kitty had slipped her hand through her dad's arm,
and was imparting direct strategy in a low voice--"we'll take mother
down the street to look at the shops and make her forget our troubles.
They've got some wonderful Moroccan bazaars in town; Baedeker says so."
"Shops, did you say?" Mrs. Sherman perked up at once, forgetting her
grief under the superior lure.
"Yes, mother. Come on, let's go down and look 'em over." Sherman's
good humor was quite restored. He pinched Kitty's arm in compliment
for her guile. "Maybe they'll let us look at their stuff without
charging anything; but we couldn't buy a postage stamp, remember."
They sailed out into the crowded street and lost themselves amid the
scourings of Africa and south Europe. Almer was alone in the office.
The proprietor fidgeted. He walked to the door and looked down the
street in the direction of the quays. He pulled his watch from his
pocket and compared it with the blue face of the Dutch clock on the
wall. His pudgy hands clasped and unclasped themselves behind his back
nervously. An Arab hotel porter and runner at the docks came swinging
through the front door with a small steamer trunk on his shoulders, and
Almer started forward expectantly. Behind the porter came a tall
well-knit man, dressed in quiet traveling suit--the Captain Woodhouse
who had sailed from Alexandria as a passenger aboard the _Princess
Mary_.
He paused for an instant as his eyes met those of the proprietor.
Almer bowed and hastened behind the desk. Woodhouse stepped up to the
register and scanned it casually.
"A room, sir?" Almer held out a pen invitingly.
"For the night, yes," Woodhouse answered shortly, and he signed the
register. Almer's eyes followed the strokes of the pen eagerly.
"Ah, from Egypt, Captain? You were aboard the _Princess Mary_, then?"
"From Alexandria, yes. Show me my room, please. Beastly tired."
The Arab porter darted forward, and Woodhouse was turning to follow him
when he nearly collided with a man just entering the street door. It
was Mr. Billy Capper.
Both recoiled as their eyes met. Just the faintest flicker of
surprise, instantly suppressed, tightened the muscles of the captain's
jaws. He murmured a "Beg pardon" and started to pass. Capper
deliberately set himself in the other's path and, with a wry smile,
held out his hand.
"Captain Woodhouse, I believe." Capper put a tang of sarcasm,
corroding as acid, into the words. He was still smiling. The other
man drew back and eyed him coldly.
"I do not know you. Some mistake," Woodhouse said.
Almer was moving around from behind the desk with the soft tread of a
cat, his eyes fixed on the hard-bitten face of Capper.
"Hah! Don't recognize the second-cabin passengers aboard the _Princess
Mary_, eh?" Capper sneered. "Little bit discriminating that way, eh?
Well, my name's Capper--Mr. William Capper. Never heard the name--in
Alexandria; what?"
"You are drunk. Stand aside!" Woodhouse spoke quietly; his face was
very white and strained. Almer launched himself suddenly between the
two and laid his hands roughly on Capper's thin shoulders.
"Out you go!" he choked in a thick guttural. "I'll have no loafer
insulting guests in my house."
"Oh, you won't, won't you? But supposing I want to take a room
here--pay you good English gold for it. You'll sing a different tune,
then."
"Before I throw you out, kindly leave my place." By a quick turn,
Almer had Capper facing the door; his grip was iron. The smaller man
tried to walk to the door with dignity. There he paused and looked
back over his shoulder.
"Remember, Captain Woodhouse," he called back. "Remember the name
against the time we'll meet again. Capper--Mr. William Capper."
Capper disappeared. Almer came back to begin profuse apologies to his
guest. Woodhouse was coolly lighting a cigarette. Their eyes met.