In Direst Peril Part 4

"Not at all," the lieutenant answered. "You have done with him? Very good. Go. And let me hear of you no more, or I shall report you. To your general. Do you hear?"

The man saluted and went out.

"He is so good, and so stupid--that individual there," said Breschia, gladly plunging back into a more familiar language than English, though I could see he was proud of having acquitted himself so well in that tongue. "He is so stupid and so good, but I do nothing but laugh at him.

But Rodetzsky is a martinet, and if he were here just now the man would be in trouble."

"What has he been doing?" I asked.

"He has been smuggling tobacco to the prisoners," Breschia answered, and all of a sudden I found my heart beating like a hammer. Was this the man, I wondered, who had shown compa.s.sion to Miss Ros-sano's hapless father? And was he therefore the man of all others whom I needed to lay hands on? If that were so it seemed nothing less than a providence that the man should be English, for my ignorance of all the patois dialects of the country, and even of its main language, made the speech of the Austrian soldiers a sealed book to me.

Did it ever happen to you that you have met a person whom you have never heard of and never thought of before--a person who was destined to affect your fate in some way--and that from the first moment of your encounter you seemed fated to renew acquaintance with him? It has happened more than once to me, and it happened so in this case. That very afternoon, when I returned from a lonely tramp upon the hills, I found the man Hinge in the kitchen of the inn. He bore a note from Breschia to Brunow, and was awaiting the return of that gentleman, who was once again away in pursuit of the _soi-disant_ baroness, but had promised to be back in time for dinner. When I entered the kitchen to demand a draught of milk, the man rose up and saluted me, and explained his errand. In the course of my ramble I had had hardly anything but this man in mind, and I had been planning to make use of him. When I met him all my plans seemed to go to pieces. I shall have to confess before I have done with it that I am the poorest plotter in the world. Give me something downright to do, and I will try to do it; but in dodges and evasions and pretences I have little skill indeed. I took the note from the man's hand and promised that Brunow should receive it. Then I drank the milk which the landlady's daughter had already set before me, and stood there tongue-tied and bewildered, not knowing how to begin. The man himself relieved me.

"Excuse me, sir," he said, taking his gla.s.s in his left hand, and saluting again with the right. "Your health, sir."

"That's poor tack," I said, nodding towards the gla.s.s. He had made a grimace over the wine.

"Well, so it is, sir," he replied; "but it's better than nothing, and it's about all we poor folks can afford, sir."

"Did you ever taste Scotch whiskey?" I asked him. He smiled a slow smile as if he remembered something pleasing.

"Why, yes, sir, I have, sir, and I won't deceive you."

"Come to my room," I said, "and I'll give you as good a gla.s.s as you ever tasted in your life."

He set down his gla.s.s of sour wine on the table with an emphatic quickness, and his soldierly tread sounded behind me in the uncarpeted pa.s.sage and up the bare deal steps. When he came to my room I bade him sit down, but he remained standing, and I had to give the invitation as an order before he would obey it. Then he sat like a figure carved in wood, with his shoulders back, his head well up, a hand on either knee, and a face as expressionless as the back of his head. I got my flask out of my knapsack, and with it a little collapsible cup of silver, found the water-bottle, and set everything before him.

"Help yourself!" He took a thimbleful. "Help yourself, man!" He took another thimbleful. I seized the flask from his hand and poured him enough for a good tumbler. "Now, there's the water; help yourself to that."

He obeyed, and tasted the mixture with a solemn satisfaction.

"My friend, Lieutenant Breschia, tells me," I said then, for by this time I had made up my mind how to begin with him, "that you are constantly breaking the rules of the fortress. He tells me that you have been giving the prisoners tobacco."

"That's a fact, sir," he admitted.

"Give them some more," I said, "first chance you get." I laid a gold coin on the table before him, and sat down in front of him. "I'd give some of the poor beggars something better than tobacco if I had my way."

"And so would I, sir," he answered. "And the Lord knows it. It needn't all go in tobacco, I suppose, sir?" He had taken up the coin and was holding it in his thumb and finger by this time. "Any kind o' little comfort 'l do as well, sir?"

"Any kind of little comfort, as you say," I answered.

"Thank you, sir," he said, pocketing the coin. "You're an Englishman and you're a gentleman, sir, and I'm very much obliged to you."

I made no answer, for I wanted to see if my man would talk. I thought he looked as if he would like to ease his mind.

"You haven't been over the fortress, have you, sir?" I shook my head.

"Miserable kind of an 'ole it is, sir, for a man to live in. I think I should go stark, starin', ravin' mad if I was to live there long, sir."

"So bad as that?" I asked.

"You may well say that, sir," he rejoined. "I've got a nice, easy, comfortable place along with the general, and I don't want to lose it.

So long as we're in Vienna or anywhere else but here, I'm satisfied. But here! Why, good Lord, sir, it's simply sickening."

I supposed it was pretty dull.

"Oh, it's dull enough, sir, but it ain't that. It's what you may call such a miserable hole, sir. There's nothing like it in old England, thank G.o.d, sir!"

"Have they many prisoners here?" I asked.

"Prisoners, sir? There's a regular rookery of 'em. The place swarms with 'em. I should think there's a matter o' five hundred, as near as I can guess."

I e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed "Nonsense!"

"Don't you believe it's nonsense, sir," he answered. "They're as thick on the ground as rats in an old rick, sir. P'litical prisoners most of 'em is, sir; Eyetalians, mainly. Of course one doesn't value that kind o' rubbish much. They're foreigners, sir, every man Jack of 'em. But then, sir, these d.a.m.ned Austrians ain't no better, and they treat their prisoners like they was so much dirt beneath 'em."

"You look like an honest fellow," I said, "but you're not very discreet.

Suppose I repeated what you have told me to the general?"

"Why, sir," he answered, with a twinkle in his eye, "I don't suppose you'll do that, sir; but if you did, sir, the general's got a good groom, sir, and he knows it. He's a judge of a horse, sir, and he knows when a horse is in condition. And, besides that, he knows my opinion about these here Austrians, sir."

No, I thought to myself. Robert Hinge sounds very plausible, looks very honest, and is undeniably an Englishman. But supposing Robert Hinge to have been put purposely in my way this morning as a very good-natured and very stupid fellow, and supposing Robert Hinge to have been sent over to me on purpose to draw me out? Quite possible, quite likely, indeed--quite in the Austrian manner, as all the world knew well.

"Don't get yourself into more mischief, anyway," I said, rising from my seat. He took the hint, finished his gla.s.s standing, and left me with a military salute. I sat for a full hour smoking and thinking, occupied mainly in wondering whether I had thrown a chance away. There was nothing to be got by wasting time, and I worried myself into a state of feverish nervousness by thinking that this man Hinge was probably a true and genuine fellow, and that I had missed my chance with him. It was the clattering of a horse's hoof in the back yard of the inn that awoke me from my reverie, and looking out I saw Brunow in the act of dismounting.

He waved his hand to me, and surrendering his horse to a hostler, entered the house. I heard Hinge address him in English, and then he came tearing upstairs. The note Breschia had sent to him lay upon the table, and when he had read it he shouted from the stair-head, "Certainly. My compliments to the lieutenant, and we will come with pleasure."

"Here's Breschia suddenly left almost alone," he explained when he re-entered the room. "He writes apologizing for troubling us with his poor hospitality so often, but will I go over and take you with me?

He declares it will be a charity, and in the great hereafter will be remembered in our favor."

I was willing enough to go; and the hour being already near, we made some slight change in our attire and strolled across to the fortress.

Breschia met us gayly and entertained us well, but nothing of note happened at the dinner. We sat late over our wine, and it was pitch dark when at last we rose to go. Breschia at first insisted on accompanying us, but, to tell the plain truth about the matter, he had taken more than was altogether good for him, and was not to be trusted to return alone. We compromised for a man with a lantern, and on that shook hands and took our leave. A man in uniform met us at the gate of the grim place, and was about to set out with us when Hinge appeared, and, without a word, took the lantern from his hand. As we made our way along the dark and stony road, with the little circle of light dancing and waving in front of us, Hinge stumbled against me twice or thrice. At first it crossed me that he had been making free with the gift of that afternoon, and that he had spent a portion of it for his own benefit, rather than that of the prisoners, in whom he professed to take so great an interest; but at the third or fourth lurch he gave it dawned upon me that with his left hand he was groping for my right. Brunow was just a step in front of us, and I held my hand out openly. The man slipped into it a twisted sc.r.a.p of paper, which I transferred carefully to my waistcoat pocket.

"Here's the bridge, gentlemen," said Hinge, "and that's the inn right before you, where the lights are."

"All right," I answered. "We can find the way now quite easily.

Good-night!"

"Good-night, gentlemen," he answered, and so turned away, while Brunow and I footed it home in silence.

We occupied the same room, and I did not care to read whatever message I might have received in his presence. He had proved so lukewarm in the enterprise on which we had both embarked, and had now so apparently forgotten all about it in dancing attendance on the Baroness Bonnar, that I should have made no scruple of leaving him out of my councils altogether. When he had half undressed I made some pretence of wanting something from below, and read my missive in the kitchen. It was late, and the room was empty.

I was not surprised to find I knew the handwriting, and that it was the same that Brunow had shown me in his rooms on the night on which I had first seen Miss Rossano.

This is what I read:

"The wretched prisoner, the Conte di Rossano, who has languished for years in this fortress, asks, for the love of Heaven, that the Englishman for whose hands this is meant will send a line to the Contessa di Rossano, daughter of General Sir Arthur Rollinson, to a.s.sure her that her husband still lives. If she should still live, and have remarried, for pity find some means to let the writer know it."

I went to bed saying nothing of this, but held sleepless by it all the night. With the idea which had come to me that afternoon of the possibility of Hinge being set upon me to act as a spy and to discover my intent so strong upon me that I could not shake it off, I tossed and tumbled in a very sea of doubt and trouble. I was more than half persuaded all along that this fancy was a mere chimera, and yet it took such force in my mind. It was past two o'clock when the moon rose. I got up noiselessly, filled and lit my pipe, and sat staring at the great solemn bulk of the fortress, as it stood for the time being almost white in the moonlight against the monstrous shadow of the bills. My mind was in a miserable whirl, and I knew not what to make of anything. This wretched state lasted until broad dawn, and I was still troubled by it when I walked into the keen morning air, towel in hand, for my customary swim. I undressed slowly by the river-side and stood thinking, until I was so nipped by the keen breath of the wind which blew clear down from the mountain-tops that I plunged into the stream for refuge from it. I remember as distinctly as if it had happened a minute ago, that at the very second when I dived an impulse came into my mind. I thought as I struck the water, "I'll trust that fellow!" I dived far, and swam under water until I was forced to rise for air. "I'll trust that fellow!" I thought again; and as I pa.s.sed my hand across my forehead to squeeze the water from my hair, I saw "that fellow" on the very top of a little rise of land which lay between me and the fortress, and hid it entirely from my sight.

I swam back to the place from which I had originally dived, towelled myself hastily, dressed, and set out at a round pace towards the bridge.

I reached it when he was within a hundred yards, and with a signal to him to follow, sauntered on towards the pine wood.