ARE THEY HUNS?
It was an instinctive move to get out of Deutschland--raucous,
hostile Deutschland, lying athwart his soul. But his grip? his
overcoat? his umbrella? He faced back toward the town. His mind was
in a tumult. No, he must make for the frontier at all hazards. The
Germans, whenever they recovered, would naturally expect him to
return for his articles and would watch them or have them watched.
He felt for his passport, money, trunk check. They were safe. He was
sure his trunk would be at the border for him. He turned about and
began running. The bellowing condition of the agonized sleuths and
the locked door would enable him to get a good start under the cover
of the darkness and storm.
When almost breathless he stopped running and walked forward
rapidly. There was no travel in his direction. But he had to dodge
frequent oncoming vehicles with men and materials of some kind. They
were being concentrated at Aix--a main distributing point for the
invasion of Belgium.
He was wet through, yet hot as a furnace. The cooling rain was
grateful. The loss of his grip and things would be inconvenient, not
serious. He began running again. Then he walked as fast as he could.
He was more and more convinced that those Germans would count on his
going back for his belongings. They would not imagine that a dollar
American would leave his possessions and hoof it to the Dutch
Limberg on a night like this.
His brain was on fire. He thought of everything. Furstenheimer had
been a trailing sleuth. He had fooled Kirtley completely. It was a
masterly piece of work. Gard metaphorically took off his hat to the
German Secret Service. Notwithstanding the Jim Deming episode and
Anderson's animadversions, this had been a highly expert
demonstration of the art.
Gard's mind went over his whole trip from Eisenach, trying to find
where his suspicions should have been more aroused. He could
discover no loophole where any unflattering dullness on his part was
particularly at fault. He had made rather the most advances at
Cologne to the self-styled Furstenheimer with his Roman horse.
How casually, too, the two confederates had been picked up at the
cathedral! Their intelligent interest in stained glass! Very clever.
All had been wonderfully clever. He now saw that when Furstenheimer
left him at Cologne to decide about joining him, and also when the
three had gone off to inspect the windows, there had been ample time
to perfect their scheme.
His passport! What on earth could they want of that! In the German
way they had used a steam hammer to crack a hickory nut. No one in
1914 had an inkling of what service American passports were to be to
the Kaiser's Government. The world was soon to rub its eyes over
Germany's treacherous, fiendish, employment of chemicals both on
documents and on humans. Lackadaisical mankind did not then dream of
the thoroughness and elaboration with which Deutschland was
preparing her many deep and diabolical designs.
Toward dawn Gard, pretty well winded and in a bath of perspiration,
trudged along more slowly while his thoughts streamed precipitately
ahead under the pressure of the stupefying developments. He now knew
who the little German was. He was that rigid, whiskered, military
person in the train from Eisenach! The same flat, wide-lobed nose.
He had not guessed it before because the face, clear of a beard, had
really suggested in Aix (he now realized) that of the typical shaven
Teuton waiter. But why had the spy traveled in such a stiff and
mysterious fashion? Likely to locate the passport--find out whether
it was then being carried in the grip or on Kirtley's person. In
some way--probably from the manner in which the grip had been
handled--the sleuth had convinced himself it was kept in a pocket.
Although Gard could not clearly make it out, the puppet must have
been an ingenious device to mislead. The ridiculous card dealer,
going through all his mock part with such desperate earnestness,
could very well have conceived this eccentric project. Would anyone
outside Germany have believed in such use of a stuffed figure? The
maneuver succeeded in a fashion, for Gard had not been as shrewd as
he imagined in taking the auto from Heidelberg. He may have caused a
change in tactics, but he had simply fallen into the hands of
Furstenheimer in the museum. The leisurely stroll, the game of
cards, the badgering over the betting, everything, had been fully
worked out. Somehow, through it all, they were to deprive him of his
state paper--likely when he had become intoxicated, as was evidently
planned.
But the revelation about the Buchers! That was the finishing blow.
"Dastards!" Gard hurled out the word. It was not only Rudi but his
parents who had followed his leadership. The son's surprising
concern over the passport, their insistence on seeing about his
route and his ticket, Rudi's persistence about suggestions for
carrying the document--all was now plain. It must be that war was
coming and Rudi knew it.
Dastards! To betray their guest, to cause him to go through this
miserable experience, endanger his health when he had lately been in
a sick bed! Their kind hospitality, their flush demonstrations of
friendliness, their little presents! This was the final mark that,
to Gard Kirtley, branded the German as only a partly reclaimed Goth.
Perhaps the atmosphere of restraint he had detected in the Buchers
at the last, amid all their cordial expressions and deeds, was due
to the changed rôle they then knew they were playing as against an
American "pig." At their frontier all human relations--obligations,
honor, amicability, trust, good faith, religion--were exchangeable
for brutality and dastardly brutality.
Yet who in 1914 would have believed such things? It was the case of
old Rome asleep, with barbarians swarming in Europe. Gard kept
coming back to the sole word for it all--Hun!--in the Anderson
definition.
And what to do with the Huns--about them? Can the world ever get on
a genuine, fraternal basis for living with them? Can they ever be
made to become like other people? These questions kept surging
through his mind as he hurried along.
When Holland was reached that morning, his passport was declared
impeccable and his faithful trunk caused him no trouble. Although
the war excitement was seizing that region he fortunately met no
delay in getting to the coast. Once out of Deutschland he felt
amazingly well despite the weariness of his exhausting night. He
concluded that the vigorous exercise and sweating he had been
through had steamed out of him the vileness he had found in Germany.
It acted like a rejuvenating process. Gard now seemed to himself
like a clean, new man. He _was_ to be a new man.