The Man with the Clubfoot Part 27

I flashed in his eyes the silver star I held in my hand.

"The Chief wants lanterns!" I said low in his ear.

He grabbed my hand holding the badge and lowered it to the light.

"All right, comrade," he replied. "Drechsler has a lantern, I think!

You'll find him outside!"

I rushed up the stairs right into a group of three policemen.

"The Chief wants Drechsler at once with the lantern," I shouted, and showed my star. The three dispersed in different directions calling for Drechsler.

I walked quickly away.

CHAPTER XV

THE WAITER AT THE CAFE REGINA

I calculated that I had at least two hours, at most three, in which to get clear of Berlin. However swiftly Clubfoot might act, it would take him certainly an hour and a half, I reckoned, from the discovery of my flight from Haase's to warn the police at the railway stations to detain me. If I could lay a false trail I might at the worst prolong this period of grace; at the best I might mislead him altogether as to my ultimate destination, which was, of course, Dusseldorf. The unknown quant.i.ty in my reckonings was the time it would take Clubfoot to send out a warning all over Germany to detain Julius Zimmermann, waiter and deserter, wherever and whenever apprehended.

At the first turning I came to after leaving Haase's, tram-lines ran across the street. A tram was waiting, bound in a southerly direction, where the centre of the city lay. I jumped on to the front platform beside the woman driver. It is fairly dark in front and the conductor cannot see your face as you pay your fare through a trap in the door leading to the interior of the tram. I left the tram at Unter den Linden and walked down some side streets until I came across a quiet-looking cafe. There I got a railway guide and set about reviewing my plans.

It was ten minutes to twelve. A man in my position would in all probability make for the frontier. So, I judged, Clubfoot must calculate, though, I fancied, he must have wondered why I had not long since attempted to escape back to England. Dusseldorf was on the main road to Holland, and it would certainly be the more prudent course, say, to make for the Rhine and travel on to my destination by a Rhine steamer. But time was the paramount factor in my case. By leaving immediately--that very night--for Dusseldorf I might possibly reach there before the local authorities had had time to receive the warning to be on the look-out for a man answering to my description. If I could leave behind in Berlin a really good false clue, it was just possible that Clubfoot might follow it up _before_ taking general dispositions to secure my arrest if that clue failed. I decided I must gamble on this hypothesis.

The railway guide showed that a train left for Dusseldorf from the Potsdamer Bahnhof--the great railway terminus in the very centre of Berlin--at 12.45 a.m. That left me roughly three-quarters of an hour to lay my false trail and catch my train. My false trail should lead Clubfoot in a totally unexpected direction, I determined, for it is the unexpected that first engages the notice of the alert, detective type of mind. I would also have to select another terminus.

Why not Munich? A large city on the high road to a foreign frontier--Switzerland--with authorities whose easy-going ways are proverbial in Germany. You leave Berlin for Munich from the Anhalter Bahnhof, a terminus which was well suited for my purpose, as it is only a few minutes' drive from the Potsdamer station.

The railway guide showed there was a train leaving for Munich at 12.30 a.m.--an express. That would do admirably. Munich it should be then.

Fortunately I had plenty of money. I had taken the precaution of getting Kore to change my money into German notes before we left In den Zelten ... at a preposterous rate of exchange, be it said. How lost I should have been without Semlin's wad of notes!

I paid for my coffee and set forth again. It was 12.15 as I walked into the hall of the Anhalt station.

Remembering the ruse which the friendly guide at Rotterdam had taught me, I began by purchasing a platform ticket. Then I looked about for an official upon whom I could suitably impress my ident.i.ty. Presently I espied a pompous-looking fellow in a bright blue uniform and scarlet cap, some kind of junior stationmaster, I thought.

I approached him and, raising my hat, politely asked him if he could tell me when there was a train leaving for Munich.

"The express goes at 12.30," he said, "but only first and second cla.s.s, and you'll have to pay the supplementary charge. The slow train is not till 5.49."

I a.s.sumed an expression of vexation.

"I suppose I must go by the express," I said. "Can you tell me where the booking-office is?"

The official pointed to a pigeon-hole and I took care to speak loud enough for him to hear me ask for a second-cla.s.s ticket, single, to Munich.

I walked upstairs and presented my Munich ticket to the collector at the barrier. Then I hurried past the main-line platforms over the suburban side, where I gave up my platform ticket and descended again to the street.

It was just on the half-hour as I came out of the station. Not a cab to be seen! I hastened as fast as my legs would carry me until, breathless and panting, I reached the Potsdam terminus. The clock over the station pointed to 12.39.

A long queue, composed mostly of soldiers returning to Belgium and the front, stood in front of the booking-office. The military were getting their warrants changed for tickets. I chafed at the delay, but it was actually this circ.u.mstance which afforded me the chance of getting my ticket for Dusseldorf without leaving any clue behind.

A big, bearded Landsturm man with a kind face was at the pigeon-hole.

"I am very late for my train, my friend," I said, "would you get me a third-cla.s.s single for Dusseldorf?" I handed him a twenty-mark note.

"Right you are," he answered readily.

"There," he said, handing me my ticket and a handful of change, "and lucky you are to be going to the Rhine. I'm from the Rhine myself and now I'm going back to guarding the bridges in Belgium!"

I thanked him and wished him luck. Here at least was a witness who was not likely to trouble me. And with a thankful heart I bolted on to the platform and caught the train.

Third-cla.s.s travel in Germany is not a hobby to be cultivated if your means allow the luxury of better accommodation. The travelling German has a habit of taking off his boots when he journeys in the train by night--and a carriageful of lower middle-cla.s.s Huns, thus unshod, in the temperature at which railway compartments are habitually kept in Germany, is an environment which makes neither for comfort nor for sleep.

The atmosphere, indeed, was so unbearable that I spent most of the night in the corridor. Here I was able to destroy the papers of Julius Zimmermann, waiter ... I felt I was in greater danger whilst I had them on me ... and to a.s.sure myself that my precious doc.u.ment was in its usual place--in my portfolio. It was then I made the discovery, annihilating at the first shock, that my silver badge had disappeared. I could not remember what I had done with it in the excitement of my escape from Haase's. I remembered having it in my hand and showing it to the police at the top of the stairs, but after that my mind was a blank.

I could only imagine I must have carried it unconsciously in my hand and then dropped it unwittingly. I looked at the place where it had been clasped on my braces: it was not there and I searched all my pockets for it in vain.

I had relied upon it as a stand-by in case there were trouble at the station in Dusseldorf. Now I found myself defenceless if I were challenged. It was a hard knock, but I consoled myself by the reflection that, by now, Clubfoot knew I had this badge ... it would doubtless figure in any description circulated about me.

It was a most unpleasant journey. There was some kind of choral society on the train, occupying seven or eight compartments of the third-cla.s.s coach in which I was travelling. For the first few hours they made night hideous with part-songs, catches and glees chanted with a volume of sound that in that confined place was simply deafening. Then the noise abated as one by one the singers dropped off to sleep. Presently silence fell, while the train rushed forward in the darkness bearing me towards fresh perils, fresh adventures.

A gust of fresh air in my face, the trample of feet, loud greetings in guttural German, awoke me with a start. It was broad daylight and through my compartment, to which I had crept in the night, weary with standing, filed the jovial members of the choral society, with bags in their hands and huge c.o.c.kades in their b.u.t.tonholes. There was a band on the platform and a huge choir of men who bawled a stentorian-voiced hymn of greeting. "Dusseldorf" was the name printed on the station lamps.

All the pa.s.sengers, save the members of the choral society, had left the train, apparently, for every carriage door stood open. I sprang to my feet and let myself go with the stream of men. Thus I swept out of the train and right into the midst of the jostling crowd of bandsmen, singers and spectators on the platform. I stood with the new arrivals until the hymn was ended and thus solidly _encadres_ by the Dusseldorfers, we drifted out through the barrier into the station courtyard. There brakes were waiting into which the jolly choristers, guests and hosts, clambered noisily. But I walked straight on into the streets, scarcely able to realize that no one had questioned me, that at last, unhindered, I stood before my goal.

Dusseldorf is a bright, clean town with a touch of good taste in its public buildings to remind one that this busy, industrial city has found time even while making money to have called into being a school of art of its own. It was a delightful morning with dazzling suns.h.i.+ne and an eager nip in the air that spoke of the swift, deep river that bathes the city walls. I revelled in the clear, cold atmosphere after the foulness of the drinking-den and the stifling heat of the journey. I exulted in the sense of liberty I experienced at having once more eluded the grim clutches of Clubfoot. Above all, my heart sang within me at the thought of an early meeting with Francis. In the mood I was in, I would admit no possibility of disappointment now. Francis and I would come together at last.

I came upon a public square presently and there facing me was a great, big cafe, white and new and dazzling, with large plate-gla.s.s windows and rows of tables on a covered verandah outside. It was undoubtedly a "_kolossal_" establishment after the best Berlin style. So that there might be no mistake about the name it was placarded all over the front of the place in gilt letters three feet high on gla.s.s panels--Cafe Regina.

It was about nine o'clock in the morning and at that early hour I had the place to myself. I felt very small, sitting at a tiny table, with tables on every side of me, stretching away as it were into the _Ewigkeit_, in a vast white room with mural paintings of the cra.s.sest school of impressionism.

I ordered a good, substantial breakfast and whiled away the time while it was coming by glancing at the morning paper which the waiter brought me.

My eyes ran down the columns without my heeding what I read, for my thoughts were busy with Francis. When did he come to the cafe? How was he living at Dusseldorf?

Suddenly, I found myself looking at a name I knew ... it was in the personal paragraphs.

"Lieut.-General Count von Boden," the paragraph ran, "Aide-de-Camp to H.M. the Emperor, has been placed on the retired list owing to ill-health. General von Boden has left for Abbazia, where he will take up his permanent residence." There followed the usual biographical notes.

Of a truth, Clubfoot was a power in the land.

I ate my breakfast at a table by the open door, and surveyed the busy life of the square where the pigeons circled in the suns.h.i.+ne. A waiter stood on the verandah idly watching the birds as they pecked at the stones. I was struck with the profound melancholy depicted in his face.