THE BOY IN THE BLUE BLOUSE
A sharp exclamation brought the Count to Alban's side.
"Lois is down there," Alban said, "I am sure of it--she waved to me just
now. She was walking with a man in a dark blue blouse. I could not have
been mistaken."
He was quite excited that he should have discovered her thus, and
Sergius Zamoyski did not lag behind him in interest.
"Do you still see her?" he asked--"is she there now?"
"I cannot see her now--the soldiers drove the people back. Perhaps if we
went down--"
The Count laughed.
"Even I could not protect you to-night," he exclaimed dryly,
"no--whatever is to be done must be done to-morrow. But does not that
prove to you what eyes and ears these people have. Here we left London
as secretly as a man on a love affair. With the single exception of our
friend at Hampstead, not a human being should have known of our
departure or our destination. And yet we are not three hours in this
place before this girl is outside our hotel, as well aware that we have
arrived as we are ourselves. That is what baffles our police. They
cannot contend with miracles. They are only human, and I tell you that
these people are more than human."
Alban, still peering down into the press in the hope that he might see
Lois' face again, confessed that he could offer no explanation whatever.
"They told me the same thing in London," he said, "but I did not believe
them. Old Boriskoff used to boast that he knew of things which had
happened in Warsaw before the Russian Government. They seem to have
spies in every street and every house. If Lois' presence is not a
coincidence--"
"My dear fellow, are you also a believer in coincidence--the idle excuse
of men who will not reason. Forgive me, but I think very little of
coincidence. Just figure the chances against such a meeting as this.
Would it not run into millions--your first visit to Warsaw; nobody
expecting you; nobody knowing your name in the city--and here is the
girl waiting under your window before you have changed your clothes. Oh,
no, I will have nothing to do with coincidence. These people certainly
knew that we had left England--they have been expecting us; they will do
their best to baffle us. Yes, and that means that we run some danger. I
must think of it--I must see the Chief of the Police to-night. It would
be foolish to neglect all reasonable precautions."
Alban looked at him with surprise.
"None of those people will do me an injury," he exclaimed, "and you,
Count, why should you fear them?"
The Count lighted a cigarette very deliberately. "There may be
reasons," he said--and that was all.
Had he told the whole truth, revealed the secrets of his work during the
last three years, Alban would have understood very well what those
reasons were. A shrewder agent of the Government, a more discreet
zealous official of the secret service, did not exist. His very bonhomie
and good-fellowship had hitherto been his surest defence against
discovery. Men spoke of him as the great gambler and a fine sportsman.
The Revolutionaries had been persuaded to look upon him as their friend.
Some day they would learn the truth--and then, God help him. Meanwhile,
the work was well enough. He found it even more amusing than making love
and a vast deal more exciting than big-game hunting.
"Yes," he repeated anon, "There may be reasons, but it is a little too
late to remember them. I am sending over to the Bureau now. If the Chief
is there, he will be able to help me. Of course, you will see or hear
from this girl again. These people would deliver a letter if you locked
yourself up in an iron safe. They will communicate with you in the
morning and we must make up our minds what to do. That is why I want
advice."
"If you take mine," said Alban quietly, "you will permit me to see her
at once. I am the last person in all Warsaw whom Lois Boriskoff will
desire to injure."
"Am I to understand, then--but no, it would be impossible. Forgive me
even thinking of it. I had really imagined for a moment that you might
be her lover."
Alban's face flushed crimson.
"She was my little friend in London--she will be the same in Warsaw,
Count."
Count Sergius bowed as though he readily accepted this simple
explanation and apologized for his own thoughts. A shrewd man of the
world, he did not believe a word of it, however. These two, boy and girl
together, had been daily associates in the slums of London. They had
shared their earnings and their pleasures and passed for those who would
be man and wife presently. This Richard Gessner had told him when they
discussed the affair, and he remembered it to his great satisfaction.
For if Alban were Lois Boriskoff's lover, then might he venture even
where the police were afraid to go.
"I will talk it all over with the Chief," the Count exclaimed abruptly;
"you have had a long day and are better in bed. Don't stand on any
ceremony, but please go directly you feel inclined."
Alban did not demur for he was tired out and that was the truth of it.
In his own room he recalled the question the Count had put to him and
wondered that it had so distressed him. Why had his cheeks tingled and
the words stumbled upon his lips because he had been called Lois
Boriskoff's lover? It used not to be so when they walked Union Street
together and all the neighbors regarded the engagement as an
accomplished fact. He had never resented such a charge then--what had
happened that he should resent it now? Was it the long weeks of
temptation he had suffered in Anna Gessner's presence? Had the world of
riches so changed him that any mention of the old time could make him
ashamed? He knew not what to think--the blood rushed to his cheeks again
and his heart beat quickly when he remembered that but for Count
Sergius's visit to Hampstead, he might have been Anna's betrothed
to-day.
In this he was, as ever, entirely candid with himself, neither condoning
his faults nor accusing himself blindly. There had been nothing of the
humbler realities of love in his relations with Richard Gessner's
daughter; none of the superb spirit of self-sacrifice; none of those
fine ideals which his boyhood had desired to set up. He had worshipped
her beauty--so much he readily admitted; her presence had ever been
potent to quicken his blood and claim the homage of his senses; but of
that deeper understanding and mutual sympathy by which love is born she
had taught him nothing. Why this should have been so, he could not
pretend to say. Her father's riches and the glamour of the great house
may have had not a little to do with it. Alban had always seemed to
stand apart from all which the new world showed to him. He felt that he
had no title to a place there, no just claim at all to those very favors
his patron thrust upon him so lavishly.
He was as a man escaped from a prison whose bars were of gold--a prison
whereof the jailer had been a beautiful and capricious woman. Here in
Warsaw he discovered a new world; but one that seemed altogether
familiar. All this clamor of the streets, this going to and fro of
people, the roar of traffic, the shriek of whistles, the ringing of
bells--had he not known them all in London when Lois was his friend and
old Paul his neighbor? There had been many Poles by Thrawl Street and
the harsh music of their tongue came to him as an old friend. It is true
that he was housed luxuriously, in a palace built for millionaires; but
he had the notion that he would not long continue there and that a newer
and a stranger destiny awaited him. This thought, indeed, he carried to
his bedroom and slept upon at last. He would find Lois to-morrow and she
would be his messenger.
There had still been excited crowds in the streets when he found his
bedroom and a high balcony showed him the last phases of a weird
pageant. Though it was then nearly midnight, Cossacks continued to
patrol the avenue and the mob to deride them. By here and there, where
the arc lamps illuminated the pavement, the white faces and slouching
figures of the more obstinate among the Revolutionaries spoke of dogged
defiance and an utter indifference to personal safety. Alban could well
understand why the people had ventured out, but that they should have
taken women and even young children with them astonished him beyond
measure. These, certainly, could vindicate no principle when their flesh
was cut by the brutal whips and the savage horses rode them down to
emphasize the majesty of the Czar. Such sights he had beheld that
afternoon and such were being repeated, if the terrible cries which came
to his ears from time to time were true harbingers. Alban closed his
windows at last for very shame and anger. He tried to shut the city's
terrible voice from his ears. He wished to believe that his eyes had
deceived him.
This would have been about one o'clock in the morning. When he awoke
from a heavy sleep (and youth will sleep whatever the circumstance) the
sun was shining into his rooms and the church-bells called the people to
early Mass. An early riser, long accustomed to be up and out when the
clock struck six, he dressed himself at once and determined to see
something of Warsaw before the Count was about. This good resolution led
him first to the splendid avenue upon which the great hotel was built,
and here he walked awhile, rejoicing in his freedom and wondering why he
had ever parted with it. Let a man have self-reliance and courage enough
and there is no city in all the world which may not become a home to
him, no land among whose people he may not find friends, no government
whose laws shall trouble him. Alban's old nomadic habits brought these
truths to his mind again as he walked briskly down the avenue and filled
his lungs with the fresh breezes of that sunny morning. Why should he
return to the Count at all? What was Gessner's money to him now? He
cared less for it than the stones beneath his feet; he would not have
purchased an hour's command of a princely fortune for one of these
precious moments.
He was not alone in the streets. The electric cars had already commenced
to run and there were many soberly dressed work-people hurrying to the
factories. It was difficult to believe that this place had been the
scene of a civic battle yesterday, or to picture the great avenues, with
their pretty trees, tall and stately houses and fine broad pavements, as
the scene of an encounter bloody beyond all belief. Not a sign now
remained of all this conflict. The dead had already been carried to the
mortuaries; the prisoners were safe at the police-stations where, since
sundown, the whips had been so busy that their lashes were but crimson
shreds. True there were Cossacks at many a street corner and patrols
upon some of the broader thoroughfares--but of Revolutionaries not a
trace. These, after the patient habits of their race, would go to work
to-day as though yesterday had never been. Not a tear would be shed
where any other eye could see it--not a tear for the children whose
voices were forever silent or the mothers who had perished that their
sons might live. Warsaw had become schooled to the necessity of
sacrifice. Freedom stood upon the heights, but the valley was the valley
of the shadow of death.
Alban realized this in a dim way, for he had heard the story from many a
platform in Whitechapel. Perhaps he had enough selfishness in his nature
to be glad that the evil sights were hidden from his eyes. His old
craving for journeying amid narrow streets came upon him here in Warsaw
and held him fascinated. Knowing nothing of the city or its environment,
he visited the castle, the barracks, the Saxon gardens, watched the
winding river Vistula and the Praga suburb beyond, and did not fail to
spy out the old town, lying beneath the guns of the fortress, a maze of
red roofs and tortuous streets and alleys wherein the outcasts were
hiding. To this latter he turned by some good instinct which seemed to
say that he had an errand there. And here little Lois Boriskoff touched
him upon the shoulder and bade him follow her--just as imagination had
told him would be the case. She had come up to him so silently that even
a trained ear might not have detected her footstep. Whence she came or
how he could not say. The street wherein they met was one of the
narrowest he had yet discovered. The crazy eaves almost touched above
his head--the shops were tenanted by Jews already awake and crying their
merchandise. Had Alban been a traveller he would have matched the scene
only in Nuremberg, the old German town. As it was, he could but stare
open-mouthed.
Lois--was it Lois? The voice rang familiarly enough in his ears, the
eyes were those pathetic, patient eyes he had known so well in London.
But the black hair cut in short and silky curls about the neck, the blue
engineer's blouse reaching to the knees, the stockings and shoes
below--was this Lois or some young relative sent to warn him of her
hiding-place? For an instant he stared at her amazed. Then he
understood.
"Lois--it is Lois?" he said.
The girl looked swiftly up and down the street before she answered him.
He thought her very pale and careworn. He could see that her hands were
trembling while she spoke.
"Go down to the river and ask for Herr Petermann," she said almost in a
whisper. "I dare not speak to you here, Alb dear. Go down to the river
and find out the timber-yard--I shall be there when you come."
She ran from him without another word and disappeared in one of the
rows which diverged from the narrow street and were so many filthy lanes
in the possession of the scum of Warsaw. To Alban both her coming and
her going were full of mystery. If Count Sergius had told him the truth,
the Russian Government wished well not only to her but also to her
father, the poor old fanatic Paul who was now in the prison at
Petersburg. Why, then, was it necessary for her to appear in the streets
of Warsaw disguised as a boy and afraid to exchange a single word with a
friend from England. The truth astounded him and provoked his curiosity
intolerably. Was Lois in danger then? Had the Count been lying to him?
He could come to no other conclusion.
It was not difficult to find Herr Petermann's timber-yard, for many
Englishmen found their way there and many a ship's captain from Dantzig
had business with the merry old fellow whom Alban now sought out at
Lois' bidding. The yard itself might have covered an acre of ground
perhaps, bordering the river by a handsome quay and showing mighty
stacks of good wood all ready for the barges or seasoning against next
year's shipment. Two gates of considerable size admitted the lorries
that went in from the town, and by them stood the wooden hut at whose
window inquiries must be made. Here Alban presented himself ten minutes
after Lois had left him.
"I wish to see Herr Petermann," he said in English.
A young Jew clerk took up a scrap of paper and thrust it forward.
"To write your name, please, mein Herr."
Alban wrote his name without any hesitation whatever. The clerk called a
boy, who had been playing by a timber stack, and dispatched him in quest
of his chief.
"From Dantzig, mein Herr?" he asked.
"No," said Alban civilly, "from London."
"Ah," said the clerk, "I think it would be Dantzig. Lot of Englishes
from Dantzig--you have not much of the woods in Engerland, mein Herr."
He did not expect a reply and immediately applied himself to the useful
occupation of killing a blue-bottle with the point of his pen. Two or
three lorries rolled in and out while Alban waited. He could see ships
passing upon the river and hear the scream of a steam-saw from a shed
upon his left hand. A soldier passed the gate, but hardly cast a glance
at the yard. Five minutes must have elapsed before Herr Petermann
appeared. He held the paper in a thin cadaverous hand as though quite
unacquainted with his visitor's name and not at all curious to be
enlightened.
"You are Mr. Kennedy," he said in excellent English.
"Yes," said Alban, "a friend of mine told me to come here."
"It would be upon the business of the English ship--ah, I should have
remembered it. Please come to my office. I am sorry to have kept you
waiting."
He was a short man and very fat, clean shaven and a thorough German in
appearance. Dressed in a very dirty white canvas suit, he shuffled
rather than walked across the yard, never once looking to the right
hand or to the left and apparently oblivious of the presence of a
stranger. This manner had befriended him through all the stormy days
Warsaw had lately known. Even the police had no suspicion of him. Old
fat Petermann, who hobnobbed with sailors--what had revolution to do
with him!
"This way, mein Herr--yonder is my office. When I go to Dantzig by water
my books go with me. That is very good for the health to live upon the
water. Now please to cross the plank carefully, for what shall you say
to me if you fall in? This is my _bureau de travail_--you will tell me
how you like him by and by."
There were two barges of considerable size moored to the quay and a
substantial plank bridged the abyss between the stone and the combings
of the great hatchway. Herr Petermann went first, walking briskly in
spite of his fat; Alban, no less adroit, followed with a lad's nimble
foot and was upon the old fellow's heels when they stepped on board. The
barges, he perceived, were fully laden and covered by heavy tarpaulins.
Commodious cabins at the stern accommodated the crew--and into one of
these Herr Petermann now turned, stooping as he went and crying to his
guest to take care.
"It is rather dark, my friend, but you soon shall be accustomed to that.
This is my private room, you see. In England you would not laugh at a
man who works afloat, for you are all sailors. Now, tell me how you like
it?"
The cabin certainly was beautifully furnished. Walls of polished wood
had their adornment of excellent seascapes, many of them bought at the
Paris salon. A bureau with delightful curves and a clock set at the apex
above the writing-shelf pleased Alban immensely--he thought that he had
seen nothing more graceful even at "Five Gables"; while the chair to
match it needed no sham expert to declare its worth. The carpet was of
crimson, without pattern but elegantly bordered. There were many shelves
for books, but no evidence of commercial papers other than a great
staring ledger which was the one eyesore.
"I like your room very much indeed," said Alban upon his swift
survey--"not many people would have thought of this. We are all afraid
of the damp in England, and if we talked of a floating office, people
would think us mad." And then he added--"But you don't come here in
winter, Herr Petermann--this place is no use to you then?"
Herr Petermann smiled as though he were well pleased.
"Every place has its uses sometimes," he rejoined a little vaguely, "we
never know what is going to happen to us. That is why we should help
each other when the occasion arises. You, of course, are visiting Warsaw
merely as a tourist, Mr. Kennedy?"
"Indeed, no--I have come here to find a very old friend, the daughter--"
"No names, if you please, Mr. Kennedy. You have come here, I think you
said, to find the son of a very old friend. What makes you suppose that
I can help you?"
His change of tone had been a marvellous thing to hear--so swift, so
masterful that Alban understood in a moment what strength of will and
purpose lay hidden by this bland smile and benevolent manner. Herr
Petermann was far from being the simple old fellow he pretended to be.
You never could have named him that if you had heard him speak as he
spoke those few stern words. Alban, upon his part, felt as though some
one had slapped him upon the cheek and called him a fool.
"I am very sorry," he blundered--and then recovering himself, he said as
honestly--"Is there any need to ask me for reasons? Are not our aims the
same, Herr Petermann?"
"To sell wood, Mr. Kennedy?"
Alban was almost angry.
"I was walking down from the Castle," he began, but again the stern
voice arrested him.
"Neither names nor history, if your please, Mr. Kennedy. We are here to
do business together as two honest merchants. All that I shall have to
ask you is your word, the word of an English gentleman, that nothing
which transpires upon my premises shall be spoken of outside under any
circumstances whatever."
"That is very readily given, Herr Petermann."
"Your solemn assurance?"
"My solemn assurance."
The old fellow nodded and smiled. He had become altogether benevolent
once more and seemed exceedingly pleased with himself and everybody
else.
"It is fortunate that you should have applied to me," he exclaimed very
cheerily--"since you are thinking of taking a Polish servant--please do
not interrupt me--since you are thinking of taking a Polish servant and
of asking him to accompany you to England, by boat, if you should find
the journey otherwise inconvenient--I merely put the idea to you--there
is a young man in my employment who might very honestly be recommended
to your notice. Is it not lucky that he is here at this moment--on board
this very barge, Mr. Kennedy?"
Alban looked about him astonished. He half expected to see Lois step out
of one of the cupboards or appear from the recess beneath Herr
Petermann's table. The amiable wood merchant enjoyed his perplexity--as
others of his race he was easily amused.
"Ah, I see that I am troubling you," he exclaimed, "and really there is
not much time to be lost. Let me introduce this amiable young man to you
without delay, Mr. Kennedy. I am sure he will be very pleased to see
you."
He stood up and went to the wall of the cabin nearest to the ship's bow.
A panel cut in this gave access to the lower deck; he opened it and
revealed a great empty hold, deftly covered by the tarpaulin and made to
appear fully loaded to any one who looked at the barge from the shore.
"Here is your friend," he cried with huge delight of his own cleverness,
"here is the young servant you are looking for, Mr. Kennedy. And mind,"
he added this in the same stern voice which had exacted the promise,
"and mind, I have your solemn promise."