Роберт Чамберс - Who Goes There!

Guild, still holding his naked sword, drew his automatic with his left hand. Then he looked silently at Karen.

"Can't you leave the house by the garden?" she whispered tremulously.

"The gate is padlocked."

"Kervyn, they'll kill you if you step out of that door!"

Von Reiter, drowsy with pain, opened his eyes:

"No, they won't," he said. "Be kind enough to speak to my aide. I—I'm afraid I'm rather—ill."

He glanced at Guild: "Honour of an officer," he added weakly.

Karen stepped to the door and flung it open.

"Captain!" she called sharply.

A moment later the young hussar aide–de–camp who had escorted Guild to the British lines came clanking in.

He glanced obliquely at Guild and at Karen, but when his eyes fell on von Reiter he stared, astonished. Nevertheless, his spurred heels clicked together at salute.

Von Reiter's eyes became ironical. He looked for a moment at his aide, then his gaze wandered to Karen and to Guild.

"Where do you desire to go?" he asked with an effort.

"To Antwerp."

"The road is still open." And, to the hussar: "Safe conduct for Captain the Comte d'Yvoir across the railway. Write it now."

"And for my comrade, Mr. Darrel, and ten recruits," said Guild quietly.

"And for his comrade, Mr. Darrel, and ten recruits," repeated von Reiter in a failing voice. But he was smiling.

"And—for me !" said Karen.

Von Reiter's eyes had almost closed; he opened them again, heavily, as she spoke. Karen bent over him:

"Kurt, I must go. I can not remain here now. Besides—I want—my—husband."

"Think well," he said drowsily. "Think diligently—at this moment—solemn—supreme—" He raised himself a little, then relapsed: "God," he murmured, "what luck to meet with under your own roof!…" And, to the hussar: "Write it that Miss Karen Girard goes also—if she so desires."

There was a silence. The hussar scribbled on the stamped paper in his tablets. After he had finished he laid the tablets and the fountain pen on von Reiter's knees. Very slowly the latter affixed his signature.

He said to the hussar: "I am ill. Go to Trois Fontaines and bring me a medical officer."

When the hussar had gone and when the whirr of the automobile had died away down the drive, Guild aided the hurt man to a sofa and Karen brought pillows from a bedroom.

He was very thirsty, too, and she gave him water continually. At intervals there were slight signs of mental wandering, perhaps symptoms of pneumonia, from his crushed ribs, for he coughed a great deal and the fever already reddened his blond skin. But in the main his mind seemed to be clear. He opened his light–blue eyes and glanced at Guild continually.

"Bad luck, old chap," he said in English, "but no reflection on you. Just bad luck, bad, very bad! We Germans usually have an ally in God. But the trinity is incomplete without luck."

Guild said in a low voice: "I am really sorry, von Reiter. I hope you will come out all right. God knows I bear you no ill will."

"Many thanks. I shall come out all right. There is much work to do." A ghost of the ironical smile touched his feverish lips again. "And much work to be done after this business in Europe is settled…. I mean in America. She must pay her reckoning. She must settle with us Germans…. I wish it might come soon― now! —while their present administration remains—while yet this dull President and his imbecile and grotesque cabinet ministers are in power…. I beg your pardon—seeing you in that uniform made me forget that you are also Mr. Guild ."

But the irony in his wearied eyes made it very plain that he had not forgotten.

"Karen?" he said presently. She leaned forward in her chair beside him.

"It was just bad luck, very bad luck," he muttered; "but yours is luck"—he turned his dulled eyes toward Guild—"luck to be envied…. Some day I hope it may be—the hand."

"It is now, if you wish," said Guild.

The other shook his head: "Too soon, too soon," he muttered. "Even a German officer has his—limits. Between you and my luck I'm in a bad way—a very bad mess."

Karen bent over his hand and touched it with her lips.

The fever was gaining; he began to roll his blond head from side to side, muttering of love and luck and of the glory of God and the German Empire. A slight smile remained on his lips.

Before the automobile arrived from Trois Fontaines the fever seized him fiercely. His coughing racked him incessantly now, and the first heavy hemorrhage soaked his grey tunic and undershirt.

They eased him all they could, laying open his broad blond chest and the ribs now terribly discoloured where his fall had crushed them in again under the bandage.

How the man could have risen and come at him again Guild could not understand. He was terribly shocked.

Dreadful sounds came from his laboured breathing; he lay with eyes closed now, one burning hand lying in Karen's.

Toward four o'clock in the morning a far, faint sound penetrated the room.

Von Reiter's eyes opened. "Halt!" he whispered. "Who goes there?"

It was Death. He seemed to understand that, for he sighed very lightly, his hand closed on Karen's, and he lay gazing straight upward with brilliant eyes.

A few moments later there came a rush, a crunching of gravel, the loud purr of the motor outside.

Then Karen opened the door and a medical officer entered the room in haste.

Guild turned to Karen: "I must go to the woods and bring in my men and Darrel. Dearest, are you decided to go with me?"

"I could not remain here now. I do not wish to."

"Then wait for me," he said, and went out into the night.

A few moments later they took von Reiter upstairs to his own room. His mind seemed to clear again for a while and he said feebly but distinctly to his aide–de–camp:

"My daughter and her fiancé, the Comte d'Yvoir, are going to Antwerp for their wedding. I remember that military trains now leave Trois Fontaines by way of Trois Vierges, Liège, and Lesten. We control to Lesten, I think."

"Yes, Excellence."

"Write for me that my daughter and the Comte d'Yvoir shall be accorded transportation as far as we control. You will take them to Trois Fontaines in my automobile; you will make personal requisition of the chef–de–gar for the privacy of a compartment. You will affix to the outside of the compartment a notice that the persons in possession are travelling on my business and under my personal protection, and that they are not to be detained or interfered with in any way…. Write it separately to be affixed." His voice was weak but perfectly distinct.

The hussar wrote steadily in his tablets, finished, and waited.

"Hold them while I sign," whispered von Reiter. He signed both orders.

"Take them now. I shall not need the car. I shall be here a long time—a—long—time. I am ill. So inform headquarters by telegraph."

"At orders, Excellence."

Von Reiter closed his eyes: "Say to the Comte d'Yvoir that it was—bad luck—very bad luck…. But not—his fault…. Tell him I am—contented—that a Gueldres is to marry my—daughter."

The aide saluted. But the sick man said nothing more.

Von Reiter was still unconscious when Guild returned from the forest.

Karen met him on the steps; he drew her aside:

"Dear," he whispered, "there has been more violence during my absence. The Lesse men caught a traitor—a wretched charcoal burner from Moresnet—prowling about their camp.

"They hung him with his own belt. I saw him hanging to a beech–tree.

"Darrel was greatly worried when I told him that the Courlands had been forced to continue on to Luxembourg City. He has gone to the hamlet of Croix to hire a peasant to drive him after them and try to overtake them.