IN THE HANDS OF THE POLICE
I had been afraid to shift my position lest the change should rouse any
suspicions on the part of the "doctor," and his first attempt was to
drag me out while he remained outside.
He seized my left arm and tried to pull me forward, but I had hitched my
feet under a board of the flooring, and the attempt failed.
"Come here, Marlen. I'll hand him out to you," he said, turning his
head for a moment. "He's got caught up in something or other."
"I can't leave the wheel."
"Stop the launch a minute then."
"It's your own job; do it yourself," was the surly reply.
Muttering an oath at his companion's cowardice, the "doctor" stooped
down and, first pushing me roughly to one side out of his way, began to
crawl head first into the forecastle.
"Curse the darkness," he murmured.
But my eyes had grown accustomed to it; and it helped me although it
hindered him. I could watch him easily. The litter in the place
hampered him also, and he stumbled and fell on his knees, and swore
again volubly.
Taking advantage of the noise he made, I slipped back a yard or two and
gripped my weapon in readiness.
"Where the devil is he?" he muttered, and began to feel about for me.
I was crouching in a corner waiting for a favourable chance to strike,
and he could not see me.
The chance came an instant later, as he was stooping down in his hunt
for me. Raising my hand I struck him two blows on the head with all my
strength and at the same instant slammed the hatch to.
"What's the matter?" shouted Marlen, hearing the noise of the blows and
coming forward quickly.
The "doctor" lay as still as a log. I had stunned him or killed him,
and at the moment I did not much care which. I kept my hands on him,
and if there had been the slightest movement I should have struck him
again. I was fighting for my life.
When I was satisfied that he would give me no more trouble, I ran my
hands quickly over him in the hope that he would have a revolver; but I
could feel nothing of the sort; and as Marlen was fingering the hatch to
get it open, I drew back into my corner again.
If he came in to see what had happened, I would serve him as I had
served the "doctor." I hoped he would with all my heart.
He got the hatch open after some fumbling and peered in.
"Doctor!" he called, and paused. "Doctor!" A little louder this time.
"What have you done? You haven't killed him, have you? Doctor!"
He put his head in a little way, but not far enough for me to make sure
of disabling him, and then withdrew it again.
"What the devil does it mean?" He was evidently very frightened.
After a few seconds' pause he ran to the after-part of the launch and
stopped her. He waited until the way was off her, and then came forward
once more and called to his companion.
"The place is as dark as hell," he muttered and went off, as I guessed
to get a light.
I used the time to make another search for a revolver in the stunned
man's pockets, and failing to find one, I threw some of the litter over
the head and shoulders, and went back to my corner and lay down as if
still unconscious, but in such a position that I could spring on Marlen
the instant he entered.
This time he brought not only a lantern but a revolver. He had little
of the courage of the other fellow I soon saw, and he brought the weapon
more because he feared the "doctor" than from any suspicion that I was
the cause of the mysterious trouble.
"What fool's game are you playing, doc?" he said. "Don't try any pranks
with me. What have you done to the man?"
He thrust in the lantern and peered all about him. I saw him take a long
look at me, and the scrutiny apparently satisfied him that I was still
of no account; and then he turned from me to the prostrate form of his
companion.
He looked long and anxiously at him, and shook his head. "He must have
had some sort of fit, if he hasn't got some devil's game on. Doctor!"
He appeared to be afraid to trust himself inside the place, and for some
minutes remained in stolid thought.
Next he levelled the revolver at the other. "I'm covering you, doc.
Get up or I shall fire." He shook his head again in dire perplexity
when he received no reply, and at length made up his mind to risk
entering.
He set the lantern down, fortunately on the side farther from me, and
stooped to enter, holding the weapon all the time in readiness, and
glueing his eyes on the still form of the unconscious man.
At that moment I changed my plan. I would have that revolver if it were
in any way possible.
I let him enter, therefore, and crawl to the side of the "doctor." He
moved very slowly and with intense caution, feeling the body as he
approached the head. Then he pulled off the covering of the face and
started violently.
For the instant he was entirely off his guard in his consternation, and
I took advantage of that moment. I sprang forward, wrested the revolver
from his grasp, thrust him violently down, seized the lantern and
started out on to the deck, sliding to the hatch and shooting home the
bolt.
I was now master of the situation, and with a profound sigh of relief
and thankfulness I sank down on the deck.
I was still very shaky, and the reaction from the strain and suspense of
my time in the forecastle tried me severely. My nerves were all to
pieces, and when Marlen began hammering with his fists at the hatch, I
started as if it were some fresh peril to be faced.
I let him hammer. So far as I was concerned he might have hammered all
the skin off his knuckles before I would take any notice; and after my
first start of alarmed surprise, I just lay still and rested until I had
recovered strength and composure.
He grew tired of knocking presently, and began to whine to me to let him
out. But I made no response. He was in a very ugly mess indeed, and a
taste of the suspense I had had to undergo would do him good. He could
spend the interval in thinking out some plausible explanation of his
exceedingly compromising situation.
Meanwhile I had to think what I was to do. I did not understand the
working of the launch, which was drifting at the will of the stream; and
there appeared to be nothing for it but to let her drift until we met a
boat, and I could get assistance.
But it then occurred to me that I myself might be hard put to it to give
an account of myself. My clothes were in a filthy state as the result
of my crawling hunt in the dirty forecastle, and when I examined them by
the light of the lantern I found some ugly blood-stains on my sleeves.
These would go far to set up the presumption that I was responsible for
the wound to the "doctor"; and as I was now outside and armed with a
revolver and the two men were my prisoners, the German police would
require a lot of persuasion that I was the innocent and they the guilty
parties.
Any investigation would most certainly occupy a long time, moreover; and
as my chief desire was to get back to Berlin with the least possible
delay, I resolved not to run the risk of waiting for the police or any
one else to come to my assistance.
There was only one way to accomplish this: I must swim ashore. I found
much to my relief that my pockets had not been rifled, and that I had
sufficient money for a ticket to Berlin. But I could not travel in a
blood-stained coat; so I hunted through the boat and came across a rough
reefer's jacket in the after-cabin, which I annexed. I then undressed,
tore out the blood-stained portions of my own coat, made a bundle of my
clothes, and managed to fasten it on my head.
Then I waited until the launch had drifted pretty close to the bank on
the side where the railway ran, when I let myself carefully over the
side and struck out.
Just as I was pushing off I heard Marlen start shouting and hammering
again at the hatch, and the muffled sounds reached me across the water
until I reached the shore.
They ceased as I finished dressing myself and started out to ascertain
where I was and which was the nearest station to make for.
The swim in the cold water chilled me; but I set off at a brisk pace and
soon had my blood circulating again.
I had not an idea where I was, except that I knew my way lay up stream;
so I struck across country until I came to a road leading in the
direction I had to go, and I set off to walk until I could ascertain
where to find a station.
I knew I should have to be very cautious about asking any questions.
German police methods were very different from English, and a man garbed
as I was, without any papers of identification and carrying a loaded
revolver, was pretty sure to be an object of suspicion. It would be
exceedingly difficult for me to give any acceptable account of myself
without telling all that had occurred; and that would certainly mean
that I should be detained, and probably left to cool my heels in a
police-cell while the cumbersome wheels of the law were put in motion to
investigate my story.
I plodded along for an hour or two, keeping my ears at full strain for
any footsteps ahead of me, and taking the greatest care to make as
little noise in walking as possible.
In my weakened state, I found this extremely fatiguing, and more than
once I had to sit down and rest. Eager as I was to reach the capital, I
grudged every second of these intervals of inaction.
I was on fire with impatience to ascertain what had happened to Althea
in my absence. How long I had been away from home I could not tell; and
I tortured myself with a hundred fears on her account.
Von Felsen was not the man to lose a minute in getting to work, as soon
as he knew I was out of his way; and of course his creature, Dragen,
would have told him at once of the success of the attempt to kidnap me.
Until I had left the launch, the consideration for my own safety and the
weighing of the chances of escape had kept me from fretting about
matters in Berlin; but now that I was free and on the way back, every
minute seemed to be of vital consequence, and the thought that I might
be stopped by the police harassed and worried me into a positive fever
of dread.
Fortune did me a good turn, however. I heard the rumble of a train as I
was sitting by the roadside, and presently I saw it rush rapidly past a
few hundred yards above the road where I was.
This did more to revive my strength than anything else could have done,
and a moment later I was striding across the intervening fields to reach
the line. I knew I should not meet any one there, and I pushed ahead
with more confidence than I had yet felt.
Soon afterwards the gloom began to lift, and the sky grew grey in the
east. Dawn was near; and as the light grew stronger, I saw a station
not far ahead.
If all went well, an hour or two would see me out of my fix and speeding
toward Berlin. But everything depended upon the "if." I was already
committing an offence in walking on the line; and I knew that my
greatest difficulties might easily come at the station itself.
I left the line, therefore, while still at a considerable distance from
the station, and made my way back to the road again. In doing this I
stumbled into a rather broad ditch and made myself in a pretty mess.
Under ordinary circumstances I should have laughed at this; but as so
much might turn on my appearance, already dishevelled enough, it
irritated me and promised to prove an additional handicap, when the time
came for questions to be asked.
I looked very much like a tramp, and the German law is not kindly
disposed toward tramps at any time, and certainly not when they are
found wandering about armed in the early dawn. Still, I had to make the
best of things, so I plodded along until I reached the station.
But the door was locked and, although some one must have been attending
to the signals, I could not see any one. The name on the end of the
building was Wilden; but that did not help me much, as I had never heard
of the place.
I was debating what to do when a very sleepy-looking official came
lounging up to the door, unlocked it and entered, eyeing me with glances
full of suspicion the while.
"When is the next train to Berlin?" I asked him.
He looked me up and down carefully and then grinned. "Do you want a
first-class ticket?"
I took his impertinence lightly. "You needn't judge by my appearance,"
I said with a laugh. "I have money to pay for any ticket I want," and I
repeated the question.
"Where did you get it from? And what are you doing hanging about here
at this time in the morning?"
"I'm going to wait for the next train to Berlin."
"Well, you won't wait in here;" and with that he slammed the door in my
face.
It is very little use to argue with a man who is on the right side of a
locked door, so I turned away and walked a little distance along the
road by which I had come, and sat down under a tree to wait.
I was cold, intensely weary, and famished with hunger; and although I
fought against sleep, nature would not be denied, and I was soon off.
The thunder of a train woke me, and jumping up I saw a train running
into the station.
I hurried back to the station and the man I had seen before met me at
the entrance. "Hullo, you again, is it?" he cried.
"I want a ticket for Berlin."
"That train doesn't go to Berlin. You'll have time to go and wash
yourself first"; and he deliberately blocked my way.
As all railway officials were Government servants, I had to be cautious
in dealing with him. "Where does that train go, then?" I asked very
civilly.
He sneered. "Ah, I thought as much. Anywhere, eh, to get away from
this place? But you're not going by it, my friend."
It was getting difficult to keep my temper, but I replied quietly:
"You are evidently making a great mistake about me."
"Oh no, I'm not," he laughed, with a knowing shake of the head. "Where
did you sleep last night? And who are you?"
"I am going to Berlin," I said. But as the train started at that moment
there was nothing to be gained by continuing to wrangle with the man, so
I turned away.
Then he said in a less surly tone: "There's no train for two hours. You
can wait in the station."
I was glad enough to have the chance, and sitting down on one of the
benches in the waiting-room, was soon fast asleep again.
When I woke I saw the reason for his apparent concession. A police
officer was with him and had roused me. I blinked at him confusedly.
"Come along with me," he ordered curtly.
"I want to go to Berlin. I must get there without delay."
"Come with me, I tell you," he repeated very sharply. "We must know
something about you first."
With a shrug I rose, and he walked me off to the police station, the
railway official accompanying us. I concealed my bitter irritation as
best I could, and tried to think of the best story to tell. The
railwayman said what he knew, and the officer in charge of the station
questioned me. "Who are you?"
"There has been a great mistake made by this gentleman. I am an
Englishman, Paul Bastable, 78, Miedenstrasse, Berlin, a newspaper
correspondent. I have been away in search of information about some
events I cannot tell you, and must return to Berlin at once."
"Where have you come from?"
"I am not at liberty to tell you; but you can send some one with me to
Berlin if you wish, and I can satisfy him of the truth about me."
"Have you searched him?" he asked the man who had taken me there.
He did it at once without any ceremony, and together they examined the
contents of my pockets. When they looked next at me, it was with
obvious suspicion, and the constable turned back the collar of the
reefer jacket at the back and then nodded to his superior.
"Paul Bastable, English, are you? Then how come you to have the papers
of Johann Spackmann, engineer, with you, and to be wearing his coat?"
What a stroke of ill luck! I had seen the man take a paper from the
inside pocket of the jacket I had annexed from the launch. I hesitated
and then forced a laugh. "I suppose you know that newspaper men have to
be somebody else at times. I have told you the truth. Send some one
with me to Berlin."
"I knew there was something wrong about him," put in the railwayman.
"But I must be off, the Berlin train is due."
"For Heaven's sake don't let me miss that train," I cried earnestly.
A stolid stare and a shake of the head was the only reply.
"But I tell you I must get on at once."
"You will remain here while we make inquiries about you."
My heart sank. "Well, let me telegraph to my people and they will send
some one out to identify me. Or wire the message yourself"; and I gave
Bassett's name and the address of my former office.
"Well, good-morning," said the railwayman; and as he left the station I
was led away and placed in a cell.