THE GERMANS
Boris jumped up.
"That is good!" he said. "I have been hoping he would come."
"You do not know who it is," said the servant. "Boris Petrovitch, do not
see this man. He is a German. He looks to me like one of their spies."
"I will look at him first," said Boris, with a smile. "But, Vladimir, I
think your eyes are getting feeble. It is time you were sent to the
place in the Crimea to rest, like the old horses that can no longer do
their share of the work."
Vladimir bridled indignantly. But then a slow smile came over his face.
"Is it Ivan?" he asked.
"It should be," said Boris. "I shall know as soon as I see him."
The newcomer was waiting in the great hall. Boris, with Fred at his
heels, got a glimpse of him; then without ceremony he ran down the
polished staircase.
"So you have come at last!" he cried.
Ivan was a loutish German in appearance, and only his eyes betrayed the
fact that he was not as stupid as he looked. At the sight of Boris he
smiled, and the act changed his whole expression. But Fred thought he
had never dreamed of so splendid a disguise. This man, he guessed, must
have come many miles through Germany, in a country where the closest
possible watch was being kept for spies, and for all, indeed, who might
even be suspected of espionage. And it was easy to see how he had been
able to do it. Fred knew that he must be a Russian. Yet in every detail
of his appearance he was German. His clothes, his bearing, his every
little mannerism, were carefully studied. Fred guessed that this was no
servant, but a secret agent of much skill and experience. He was to
learn the truth of his surmise before many days had passed.
"Ivan Feodorovitch!" said Boris. "So you really got through! Have you
brought the--"
He stopped at a forbidding look in the man's eye. For a moment he seemed
to be puzzled. Then he understood that it was the presence of Fred, a
stranger, that was bothering Ivan.
"Oh!" he cried, with a laugh. "Ivan, you may speak before this stranger
as freely as before me. Let him be a stranger to you no longer. He is my
cousin from America--the son of Marie Feodorovna, who went away to be
married before I was born!"
Fred was not prepared for what followed. There was an outcry, first of
all, from the half dozen servants in the great hall. They crowded
forward curiously to look at him. And as for Ivan, he stared blankly for
a moment, and then plumped down on one knee and, to Fred's unspeakable
embarrassment, seized his hand and kissed it.
"He and all of them are old, old retainers of our house," Boris
explained swiftly. "To them one of our blood ranks second only to the
Czar himself. My father saw to it always that here we were surrounded
only by such faithful ones. These people and their ancestors before them
have been in the service of us and of our ancestors for many, many
generations--since before the freeing of the serfs, of course."
It was Boris who brought Ivan back to the errand that had caused his
sudden appearance.
"Have you brought the parts for the wireless?" he asked. "It was as my
father foresaw. The first thing the Germans did was to come here and
render the installation useless, as they supposed."
"It need not remain useless," said Ivan. "Everything needful I have
brought. The station may be working by to-night. Except that there can
not be anything worth sending for a few hours, it might be set up now.
Better not to use it and risk betraying our secret until there is real
need of it."
Boris turned to Fred to explain.
"We have spies all through East Prussia, and through Galicia and
Silesia, too, of course," he said. "They can find out a good many things
of interest and importance to our army. But it is one thing to obtain
such knowledge and quite another to find some means of sending it back
to our people. We hope, if we are not sent away from here too soon, that
we can make this house very useful that way. It stands high, you see,
and we have a very powerful wireless. The Germans knew this and they
thought they had made it useless."
"Oh, that's great!" said Fred. "Perhaps I can help, too, because I can
send by wireless. I don't know whether I would be much good with the
Continental code, because I've learned only with Morse. But I might be
of some use."
"Another operator will be of the greatest use," said Boris. "I know a
little, a very little, about it. And there is a man here. But I am
afraid that they will come very soon and take every man who is of
fighting age away."
"But your men aren't soldiers!"
"Most of them have served their term in the army. But, even if they had
not, the Germans would take every able-bodied man. That is all right.
We are probably keeping back all Germans who might go home and go into
the army, and all the other countries will do the same with men of a
nation with which they are at war."
"Vladimir has all that I brought," said Ivan, breaking in now. "As for
me, I must go again."
"Go? Now? Aren't you going to stay?"
"No! I have much to do. I may be back. But if I return, I shall come
through the cellar--you understand? There are strange movements of
troops in this region that I cannot understand at all. There are far
fewer soldiers here than I thought there would be. I have not been able
to find traces of more than a single corps of Germans--and we had
expected them to have three or four, at the very least, concentrated in
East Prussia as soon as the war broke out. At Augustowo they were even
expecting an attack."
"Then if there are so few as that, won't we advance?"
"Ah, that I don't know! The Austrians, I hear, are very busy. They say
they are moving already in great strength across the border, but that is
far away from here, and it is not our concern. It is for us to keep the
Germans so busy here that they will not be able to crush France before
England can get her army into action. At the beginning it does not
matter so much whether we win victories or not, so long as we can force
the Germans to send many corps here instead of using them to invade
France. But I have talked enough. Now--good-bye, and may God be with you
here!"
"Good-bye," said Boris, and Fred repeated Ivan's wish in Russian. Ivan
seemed astonished.
"So your mother taught you her mother tongue!" he said. "Ah, but that is
splendid!"
Then he was off.
"Ivan might have been a great actor, I believe," said Boris. "See, isn't
he the German to the life as he goes, there? No wonder he can deceive
them so!"
"It's pretty dangerous work for him, though, I should think," said Fred.
"They wouldn't waste much time on him if they caught him, would they?"
"Only the time they needed for a drumhead court-martial. After that, if
he was lucky, he would be shot instead of being hung. But he is ready,
you see. It is his part. Oh, we Russians are all united now, if we never
were before! Germany has threatened us for years. She has set Austria
against us. This time we had to fight, and you will see that all Russia
will be behind the Czar. We learned our lessons against the Japanese.
That was not a popular war. It was not made by the people, but by a few
who forced the Czar's hand. Now we shall make the world see that though
Russia may be beaten, she has the power to rise from defeat."
"What will happen here if they do take the men away?"
"They won't take them all. Only the younger ones. There will be enough
left to look after the place and after us. Though if they come, I shall
have to hide you, my cousin! I am just thinking of that. I shouldn't
wonder if those stupid people would have sent word to someone. We had
better be prepared. Come with me--I will show you something."
Fred followed Boris, and in a few minutes found himself in a great room
that was obviously the dining-room of the house. In this room there were
many pictures, and the walls were panelled in oak, blackened by smoke
and age. Boris looked about to make sure that they were not observed,
then he touched a spot in one of the panels, and it slid open. Beyond
this, however, was revealed an unbroken wall. Again Boris touched a
certain spot, and now this wall, seemingly solid and unbroken, gave way,
just as the oaken panel had done.
"Even if they discovered the panel, you see, they would not have the
secret," said Boris. "I will show you the exact spots you must touch.
Then if they come, you can reach this place by yourself. Once in here,
you will be safe. Carry an electric torch always with you. I will give
you one later. You will find two sets of arrows marked every few feet
through the passages to which this leads. The upper ones point to the
outside door that is at the end of a passage far beyond the house. The
lower ones, if you follow their course, will bring you back to these
panels. So you cannot lose your way."
"By George, that certainly sounds mysterious! Have you always planned
for something like this?"
"Oh, these passages are very old. This house, you see, was built at a
time when intrigue was more common than now. But when my father began to
see, as he did years ago, that Germany was sure to force war upon us,
and that it would probably come in his lifetime, he made many changes.
This is not really a private house at all--it is a little outpost of
Russia, here in the midst of an enemy's country. And it is not the only
one. In Silesia and in Galicia we have places like it."
"Perhaps the Germans will find that Russia is not so slow after all!"
Outside now there rose a peculiar sound, but one that Fred identified
at once.
"That sounds like your Germans coming now, Boris," he said, quietly.
"I've heard crowds making just that same noise at home--on election
night, for instance, when they were coming to make the winner give them
a speech."
Boris listened for a moment, then he went to a window.
"Yes," he said. "But it's not the sort of Germans we need to worry
about. It's only the people from the village. Old men, and women, and
children--boys, of course. I'm surprised that they should come for they
know they can't get in."
But even as he spoke, there came a thunderous sound of knocking at the
outer door and the sharp grounding of arms--a noise as ominous as it was
unmistakable.
"There are soldiers, too. They are here much sooner than I thought they
could come!" exclaimed Boris. "Here, into that passage with you! Listen!
Follow the arrows! They will lead you down. Stop at a double arrow. You
will be able to hear. The wall is very thin there, on purpose. You can
hear what is going on in the great hall and still be perfectly safe.
I'll come for you as soon as I can get rid of them."
"All right. But will you be safe yourself? Oughtn't you to come with me,
Boris?"
"Oh, they won't do anything to me! I'm only a boy, you see. They'll
never think that I could be dangerous. In with you, now! We can't keep
the soldiers out. I don't want to give them an excuse for burning the
place down, and they'd do it in a minute if there was any resistance."