JIM DEMING'S FATE
The scene was now transferred to a third chamber which looked
somewhat like an august tribunal of state. It was an imposing room
divided by a long high rostrum upon which sat a terrible looking
individual of the utmost lordliness. The attendants were numerous,
and if Deming had ever heard of the trial of Warren Hastings he
would have thought this appeared an occasion of almost equal
importance and gravity. When he arrived for his ordeal before the
bench, he seemed a rather small and defenseless figure.
For he was now to be subjected to a sort of "third degree," with a
court interpreter at hand. Every word that might be significant in
his bedeviling invitation of February twenty-second was gone over
with the minatory harshness of medieval inquisitors.
"February twenty-second. Why is that day?"
Deming explained through his intermediary. His interrogators
persisted in the idea that it was a pregnant date in English history
and had some sinister meaning like Guy Fawkes day. The pages of
British annals had evidently been scanned to find the hidden clew.
"'No flowers or singing of hymns.' What is all this?"
"Just a joke, tell him, just a little innocent fun," appealed Jim to
his translator.
"You signed yourself as Secretary. That contravenes the law. You had
no authority to assume an official position without conferring."
Then there was the mighty Senate and the Roman People again on the
mystic communication with its cryptic letters as full of mystery as
runes to these Germans. It was, of course, the language of a code.
"Tell him that there is no such thing in the world as the Roman
Senate and People," explained Deming with nervous despair. "That was
just fooling. Nothing political--nothing _political_!" he exclaimed.
Everything became less convincing and therefore visibly more
satisfactory, and looks and voices grew savage in proportion.
There was also the occult CCC.
"Who is Cinderella? Is he in Dresden with you? Where is he to be
found?" The word was indicated by a big thumb. Poor Jim, whose
specific information was as limited about Cinderella as about most
subjects, entered nevertheless on a long explanation not only
concerning her but concerning the playful innocence of the George
Washington meeting.
"Tell him it was a harmless little social affair that a few of us
fellows and girls got up. We will never do it again. I did not know
it would be any offense. Tell him I was only doing what I would do
in my own country. There we can get together and dance a little any
time without disturbing the nation." He wanted to add that the
United States was not like police-ridden Germany where it almost
seemed that a chap couldn't tie his shoe without permission from the
Kaiser. Prudence refrained him.
"Cotillion Coterie. That's French," translated the Ober-Offizier on
the bench, gravely illuminated. An assistant suggested that _sec_
might, in fact, refer to champagne. That would be French too.
"When did you leave France the last time?" the other demanded in a
hoarse, triumphant tone.
"Never been in France," returned Jim in a loud voice.
"Never been in France and yet you use French fluently."
"Tell him I don't know a word of French. I didn't know that was
especially French. With us it's just dancing language--everybody
uses it. Tell him"--Jim added encouragingly--"tell him I never knew
a Frenchman in my life."
"This is evidently a French affair as well as English," commented
the officer. "Anglo-French. Reaches out."
"What are they saying?" anxiously asked Deming of his intermediary.
On learning the new and extensive ramifications into which the
sportive CCC was leading him, he threw up his hands before he
thought and exclaimed, "Oh, my God!" It expressed his disgusted
confirmation of Mr. Anderson's assertion--"What egregious asses such
Germans can be!"--and also his _own_ alarm over his situation. When
would he get back to America at this rate? It was going to cost
money to escape from this scrape, and how would his governor and
mother feel about it? A few months in a political prison with rats
and vermin crawling over him seemed ahead instead of the jolly
summer he had planned. He cursed under his breath the member of the
CCC who had carelessly let his card get away from his clutches.
But a greater surprise awaited him. It revealed an example of the
tremendous thoroughness and immense detail that were the pride of
the Teuton bureaucracy. Deming was taken off his feet. The chief
held up a little battered sheet.
"Have you always paid your bills in Germany?"
"Yes, I have, sir," returned Jim, wondering at this strange turn,
but fully sure of himself on this ground.
"Untruth. Why did you not pay for three candles left in your room at
Karlsruhe? Here is the unreceipted slip."
"Because I did not use them. I did not want them. I left them on the
mantel."
"And here is a balance due on your laundry bill at Hamburg--twelve
cents--unpaid. How do you explain that?" A torn and dirty washing
schedule was handed down to him to refresh his memory.
"I didn't know I owed any balance," argued Jim to his spokesman.
"Tell him it was not presented to me. Tell him I will be only too
glad to pay anything I owe. I always pay what I owe." The examiner
gingerly took up a crumpled napkin, brown from an overturned
_demi-tasse_.
"August sixteenth, you spilled coffee on your napkin at
lunch--half-past twelve. And you went away from the Hotel
Bellevue--Bavaria--without making it good. What have you to
say to that?" The sorry cloth was held up contemptuously for
Jim's inspection and for the edification of the duly pained
official audience, most of whom, however, doubtless made no
use of such an article in their daily lives.
"I never heard anything about it!" cried Deming. "In my country
such things are thrown in. Nothing said about them. But tell him
I'll pay it--I'll pay anything--everything. How much is it?"
"Twenty-five cents, the bill claims."
"What is the total?" And Jim began digging in his pockets while
holding up his head testily. He had never before been accused of
hotel-beating. But payment did not yet appear to be in order. He
stared at the mass of files and papers before his cross-questioner.
He realized that his whole record in Germany lay there. The Imperial
Service had traced him like bloodhounds. Due to his frequent
irritated displays of proud American independence on his tour, the
bill of small grievances, now accumulated, no doubt assumed
troublesome proportions when exposed in its formidable length. Three
hours had been consumed, accounted for in part by the necessity of
an interpreter. As meal time was at hand Deming was commanded to
appear the next morning at nine to have his testimony taken at
length.
He departed, his buoyant nature rising once more in partial relief.
True to his Yankee instincts he now concluded they were only after
the money he owed.
"They want to scare me to make me pay up," he said to himself. "They
are afraid they won't get it. I'll pay the little two or three
dollars and that will end the matter. These blamed Germans with
their ten cents and twenty-five cents! What a system of government
to be bothering with these idiotic trifles!"
He sought distraction in several games of billiards followed by
dinner at his favorite café. When he returned to his room late that
night he found that his effects had been ransacked by two
detectives. Fully incensed by this high-handed procedure he
determined to place his inalienable rights in the hands of a lawyer
the first thing after the early morning meeting.
The taking of his testimony was a proceeding held in a small side
apartment before an elderly crotchety underling who pretended to
understand English and French, but whose thick-wittedness seemed
monumental. The slowness and dullness indicated a whole summer's
programme of this preposterous horseplay. Everything was being
written down in detail in long hand in the form of questions and
answers. All Deming's candles, soiled linen, stained napkins and
what-not, reported from all directions of the Empire, began to be
raked over. There were green, yellow, red, blue telegrams from half
the German States. Harassed by this muck and by the leering taunts
of the old party, Jim was glad to find, at the noon hour, that the
session was postponed to the second day after.
As he was leaving the room, another offensive inquiry about an
absurdity caused him suddenly to remember Mr. Anderson's advice. And
in one immortal moment in his existence he rose to a sublime height
of moral courage.
"Go to hell!" he shot back. And as he saw the clumsy servitor
beginning to pen "Answer: Go to h----" in his great book, Jim
slipped out.
He briskly hunted a lawyer to whom he related all the circumstances,
winding up elatedly with the last remark.
"Did they write that down too?"
"Yes."
The attorney was at first convulsed, familiar with Teuton naïveté.
Then he dubiously shook his head. To Jim's unexpected discomfort the
affair was regarded seriously. If he had not ejaculated this
affront, something could be done. But now he had been guilty of what
the Germans might rightfully construe as a voluntary indignity
offered to the Imperial Secret Service in the performance of its
highly responsible duties. If he wanted to avoid important trouble,
the only simple and effective course would be to quit the country.
He could leave that night and in not many hours would be in Russia
and beyond German control.
And so Jim Deming made a hasty and unceremonious exit from the
Deutschland he had been so fond of, without having time to salute
any of his many friends good-by. He had to send them a line of
farewell from St. Petersburg.
"Here you have German bureaucracy in its full flower and odor,"
remarked Anderson as he recounted the affair to Kirtley. "It
flourishes to a great extent by exaggerating mole hills into
mountains with officious vacuity. It is so large that there is not
enough serious work for it. So something often must be found to do.
It is a civil army radiating the glory of the Kaiser. The more
extensive it is, the more entrenched he is. It is official dry rot
which is part of the price the people pay for having themselves
governed. It is national graft. But while our American forms of
graft at least stimulate individual cleverness among our
compatriots, this German form tends to reduce its recipients to the
level of donkeys, as seen in the Deming case."
Gard little suspected that he was to drift into a somewhat similar
misadventure, but of an advanced type.