The Man Without a Memory Part 53

When we reached Lingen he said he'd like to have a chat with me and suggested we should go to his shop. "Won't do you any harm to be seen with me, either; I'm well known; and what with escaped prisoners and our skulkers trying to jump the frontier, the police are pretty curious about strangers of your age and build especially."

He was well known, as he had said. Several people nodded to him on the platform, and one man came after him. "Good-day, Father Fischer, can I have a word with you?" and they stopped to talk together.

"Hear that, Nessa?" I asked excitedly. "By Jove, we're in luck if it's our man!" and when he rejoined us I asked him if he was Adolf Fischer.

"I am. Every one in Lingen knows Adolf Fischer."

"Have you a brother out Ma.s.sen way?"

"I had, but he drank himself to death five years or so back, poor fool.

Why do you ask?"

"I've a letter for you;" and I gave it him.

He read it and pocketed it with a chuckle of pleasure. "Couldn't be better. Friends of Martha's are friends of mine. Come along."

We had not left the station before we had a proof of our good luck. We were in front of him as we went out and the police sergeant at the door stopped us and was beginning to question me, when he intervened.

"It's all right, Braun. They're friends of mine. A stroke of luck, too," he said with a wink, which suggested there was a mutually satisfactory understanding between them.

We were allowed to pa.s.s at once, and he stayed talking to the sergeant for a couple of minutes. "Lucky you gave me that letter when you did,"

he said when he caught us up. "They've been ordered to keep a special look-out for a couple such as you. But they won't worry you while you're with me."

Ominous news in view of what had occurred just before the train smash outside Osnabruck, and it made me more anxious than ever to get Nessa safely over the frontier.

"You'll bide with me, of course," he said when we reached his house, a flouris.h.i.+ng grocer's store in the main street of the little town. "I don't have any one in the house nights. We'll have a bite of food and then talk things over."

He was silent and thoughtful during the meal, and the trend of his thoughts was shown in a question he put.

"There's nothing black against you, is there?"

"Nothing to make me afraid to face any man in the Empire," I replied positively. It was the truth, if not quite as I meant him to understand it.

"I only asked, because I have to be very careful," he said; and nothing more pa.s.sed until we were smoking, while Nessa had resumed the knitting which she had kept up incessantly in the train.

"Now, you'd like to tell me your story," he opened.

I told him the tale we had prepared and he put a question or two which were easily answered.

"I'm sorry for you, my la.s.s," he said to her. "Very sorry; you're only one among too many thousands; and you shall get away all right. They're not particular about women and girls, you know," he added to me. "But it's different with men. Their orders are to shoot first and ask questions afterwards. Three were found trying to jump the frontier last week and were shot. Two the week before; and one of 'em was our only engineer. So if that's what's brought you here, I can't help you. We'd all the trouble we wanted over the last affair."

"I'm no skulker, I a.s.sure you. If they call 'em up, I'm ready any time."

"You'll give me your word to stop here then?"

"Unless I have to go anywhere else. I'm pretty handy at my job, you know."

He seemed satisfied, and then told me his plans.

Nessa was to leave that night. He had a nephew in the Landwehr regiment at present guarding a part of the frontier, which was especially promising for the scheme, and we were to run out there in his car. I was to stay with him in Lingen, partly to help in the smuggling operations but largely to keep in order his and his a.s.sociates' motors.

There were a number of Lingen people in the thing, which was winked at by the authorities, who would not ask any questions about me if I was known to be in the swim.

He gave me a host of details, took me out later to see the place where I was to work; a very well-equipped place it was, too, but with only a lad and a doddering old fellow as the staff: explained that they often lost considerably by breakdowns; and then left me to return to Nessa, saying that he must go and arrange about the night's venture.

I found Nessa very dejected, buried in thought, with her knitting on her lap.

"Looks good enough, eh?" I said to cheer her.

It wasn't a success. She did not answer for a while. "Do you trust him?" she asked, looking up at length.

"Why not? He was frank enough; and we should have been in a deuce of a mess without him. It can't be worse even if he gives us away. But he won't. I'm sure of that."

"But about you?"

"Meaning?" I knew what was coming, however.

"You heard what he said about those men being shot. It brought my heart up in my mouth."

"It's no more than we heard at Ma.s.sen."

"We agreed to try together, remember."

"I haven't forgotten. We'll see what happens to-night."

"You don't want me to go by myself? You promised, Jack."

"Better one than neither of us, surely. That reminds me. You must have some money in case I fail;" and I offered her some notes.

She shook her head and pushed them away. "I have more than enough for my purpose."

I knew what she meant. She was resolved not to go alone, and it worried me considerably. It was splendidly staunch and lovable and brave, but none the less quixotic and a serious blunder. "You heard what that police sergeant had told old Fischer?"

"Of course," she nodded casually, as if it didn't make the least difference.

"You shall settle it for yourself, Nessa." There was nothing to be gained by trying to dissuade her then, so I left it until the moment for action should arrive. After my promise, it was impossible for me to think of going with her.

Fischer came back chuckling. "We're in luck," he declared. "I met my nephew, Fritz, in the town just now. He'll do it all right. He'll be on guard at one of the roads; the very spot of all others for us; near a little thicket they call the Pike Wood. We're to be there about nine. I explained everything to him, and of course I've pledged my word that only your sister's going over. That's right, eh?"

"Quite," I a.s.sured him.

Nessa's needles stopped clicking for an instant and I heard her catch her breath. It augured badly for the night's enterprise; but if I had wished to renew the attempt to persuade her, I could not have done it, as we were not left alone altogether again until the time came for us to set out.

I drove the car with Fischer at my side, and by his instructions, Nessa lay on the bottom of the tonneau which was constructed much like that of the farmer's I had mended at Osnabruck. She was hidden under a rug and a tarpaulin, and he told her to cover up even her head if any one spoke to us on the way.

We had some dozen miles to run, and for the greater part of the way no one attempted to interfere with us. The old fellow seemed to be hugely pleased by the way I handled the ramshackle machine; and even more so when I explained the reason of some of the queer noises and jumps which the engine developed. "You're the man for us!" he exclaimed more than once.

When we reached the outskirts of a village close to the frontier, he bent over and told Nessa to hide herself completely. "We shall be questioned here; but it won't matter. Go slow for a bit," he added to me; "and pull up at once if they order us."

The village was full of soldiers, and I began to realize in earnest then the difficulties of our escaping without his help. We were pulled up twice in the village, but allowed to proceed the moment he was recognized and produced some authority he had.