The Riddle of the Sands Part 26

'She had no notion of foul play?'

'None--that I could see. After all, there I was, alive and well.'

'But she was remorseful for having induced you to sail at all that day, and for not having waited to see you arrived safely.'

'That's about it.'

'Now what did you say about Cuxhaven?'

'Nothing. I let her understand that I went there, and, not finding them, went on to the Baltic by the Eider river, having changed my mind about the s.h.i.+p ca.n.a.l.'

'Now, what about her voyage back from Hamburg? Was she alone?'

'No; the stepmother joined her.'

'Did she say she had inquired about you at Brunsb.u.t.tel?'

'No; I suppose she didn't like to. And there was no need, because my taking the Eider explained it.'

I reflected. 'You're sure she hadn't a notion that you took the short cut?'

'Quite sure; but she may guess it now. She guessed foul play by seeing that book.'

'Of course she did; but I was thinking of something else. There are two stories afloat now--yours to von Bruning, the true one, that you followed the 'Medusa' to the short cut; and Dollmann's to her, that you went round the Scharhorn. That's evidently his version of the affair--the version he would have given if you had been drowned and inquiries were ever made; the version he would have sworn his crew to if they discovered the truth.'

'But he must drop that yarn when he knows I'm alive and back again.'

'Yes; but meanwhile, supposing von Bruning sees him _before_ he knows you're back again, and wants to find out the truth about that incident. If I were von Bruning I should say, "By the way, what's become of that young Englishman you decoyed away to the Baltic?"

Dollmann would give his version, and von Bruning, having heard ours, would know he was lying, and had tried to drown you.'

'Does it matter? He must know already that Dollmann's a scoundrel.'

'So we've been supposing; but we may be wrong. We're still in the dark as to Dollmann's position towards these Germans. They may not even know he's English, or they may know that and not know his real name and past. What effect your story will have on their relations with him we can't forecast. But I'm clear about one thing, that it's our paramount interest to maintain the _status quo_ as long as we can, to minimize the danger you ran that day, and act as witnesses in his defence. We can't do that if his story and yours don't tally. The discrepancy will not only d.a.m.n him (that may be immaterial), but it will throw doubt on us.'

'Why?'

'Because if the short cut was so dangerous that he dared not own to having led you to it, it was dangerous enough to make you suspect foul play; the very supposition we want to avoid. We want to be thought mere travellers, with no scores to wipe out, and no secrets to pry after.'

'Well, what do you propose?'

'Hitherto I believe we stand fairly well. Let's a.s.sume we hoodwinked von Bruning at Bensersiel, and base our policy on that a.s.sumption. It follows that we must show Dollmann at the earliest possible moment that you _have_ come back, and give him time to revise his tactics before he commits himself. Now--'

'But _she'll_ tell him we're back,' interrupted Davies.

'I don't think so. We've just agreed to keep this afternoon's episode a secret. She expects never to see us again.'

Now, he comes to-morrow by the morning boat, she said. What did that mean? Boat from where?'

'I know. From Norddeich on the mainland opposite. There's a railway there from Norden, and a steam ferry crosses to the island.'

'At what time?'

'Your Bradshaw will tell us--here it is: "Winter Service, 8.30 a.m., due at 9.5."'

'Let's get away at once.'

We had a tussle with the tide at first, but once over the watershed the channel improved, and the haze lightened gradually. A lighthouse appeared among the sand-dunes on the island sh.o.r.e, and before darkness fell we dimly saw the spires and roofs of a town, and two long black piers stretching out southwards. We were scarcely a mile away when we lost our wind altogether, and had to anchor. Determined to reach our destination that night we waited till the ebb stream made, and then towed the yacht with the dinghy. In the course of this a fog dropped on us suddenly, just as it had yesterday. I was towing at the time, and, of course, stopped short; but Davies shouted to me from the tiller to go on, that he could manage with the lead and compa.s.s. And the end of it was that, at about nine o'clock, we anch.o.r.ed safely in the five-fathom roadstead, close to the eastern pier, as a short reconnaissance proved to us. It had been a little masterpiece of adroit seamans.h.i.+p.

There was utter stillness till our chain rattled down, when a m.u.f.fled shout came from the direction of the pier, and soon we heard a boat groping out to us. It was a polite but sleepy portofficer, who asked in a perfunctory way for our particulars, and when he heard them, remembered the 'Dulcibella's' previous visit.

'Where are you bound to?' he asked.

'England--sooner or later,' said Davies.

The man laughed derisively. 'Not this year,' he said; 'there will be fogs for another week; it is always so, and then storms. Better leave your yawl here. Dues will be only sixpence a month for you.

'I'll think about it,' said Davies. 'Good-night.'

The man vanished like a ghost in the thick night.

'Is the post-office open?' I called after him.

'No; eight to-morrow,' came back out of the fog.

We were too excited to sup in comfort, or sleep in peace, or to do anything but plan and speculate. Never till this night had we talked with absolute mutual confidence, for Davies broke down the last barriers of reserve and let me see his whole mind. He loved this girl and he loved his country, two simple pa.s.sions which for the time absorbed his whole moral capacity. There was no room left for casuistry. To weigh one pa.s.sion against the other, with the discordant voices of honour and expediency dinning in his ears, had too long involved him in fruitless torture. Both were right; neither could be surrendered. If the facts showed them irreconcilable, _tant pis pour les faits._ A way must be found to satisfy both or neither.

I should have been a spiritless dog if I had not risen to his mood.

But in truth his cutting of the knot was at this juncture exactly what appealed to me. I, too, was tired of vicarious casuistry, and the fascination of our enterprise, intensified by the discovery of that afternoon, had never been so strong in me. Not to be insincere, I cannot pretend that I viewed the situation with his single mind. My philosophy when I left London was of a very worldly sort, and no one can change his temperament in three weeks. I plainly said as much to Davies, and indeed took perverse satisfaction in stating with brutal emphasis some social truths which bore on this attachment of his to the daughter of an outlaw. Truths I call them, but I uttered them more by rote than by conviction, and he heard them unmoved. And meanwhile I s.n.a.t.c.hed recklessly at his own solution. If it imparted into our adventure a strain of crazy chivalry more suited to knights-errant of the Middle Ages than to sober modern youths--well, thank Heaven, I was not too sober, and still young enough to s.n.a.t.c.h at that fancy with an ardour of imagination, if not of character; perhaps, too, of character, for Galahads are not so common but that ordinary folk must needs draw courage from their example and put something of a blind trust in their tenfold strength.

To reduce a romantic ideal to a working plan is a very difficult thing.

'We shall have to argue backwards,' I said. 'What is to be the final stage? Because that must govern the others.'

There was only one answer--to get Dollmann, secrets and all, daughter and all, away from Germany altogether. So only could we satisfy the double aim we had set before us. What a joy it is, when beset with doubts, to find a bed-rock necessity, however unattainable! We fastened on this one and reasoned back from it. The first lesson was that, however many and strong were the enemies we had to contend with, our sole overt foe must be Dollmann. The issue of the struggle must be known only to ourselves and him. If we won, and found out 'what he was at', we must at all costs conceal our success from his German friends, and detach him from them before he was compromised.

(You will remark that to blithely accept this limitation showed a very sanguine spirit in us.) The next question, how to find out what he was at, was a deal more th.o.r.n.y. If it had not been for the discovery of Dollmann's ident.i.ty, we should have found it as hard a nut to crack as ever. But this discovery was illuminating. It threw into relief two methods of action which hitherto we had been hazily seeking to combine, seesawing between one and the other, each of us influenced at different times by different motives. One was to rely on independent research; the other to extort the secret from Dollmann direct, by craft or threats. The moral of to-day was to abandon the first and embrace the second.

The prospects of independent research were not a whit better than before. There were only two theories in the field, the channel theory and the Memmert theory. The former languished for lack of corroboration; the latter also appeared to be weakened. To Fraulein Dollmann the wreck-works were evidently what they purported to be, and nothing more. This fact in itself was unimportant, for it was clear as crystal that she was no party to her father's treacherous intrigues, if he was engaged in such. But if Memmert was his sphere for them, it was disconcerting to find her so familiar with that sphere, lightly talking of a descent in a diving-bell--hinting, too, that the mystery as to results was only for local consumption.

Nevertheless, the charm of Memmert as the place we had traced Grimm to, and as the only tangible clue we had obtained, was still very great. The really cogent objection was the insuperable difficulty, known and watched as we were, of learning its significance. If there was anything important to see there we should never be allowed to see it, while by trying and failing we risked everything. It was on this point that the last of all misunderstandings between me and Davies was dissipated. At Bensersiel he had been influenced more than he owned by my arguments about Memmert; but at that time (as I hinted) he was biased by a radical prejudice. The channel theory had become a sort of religion with him, promising double salvation--not only avoidance of the Dollmanns, but success in the quest by methods in which he was past master. To have to desert it and resort to spying on naval defences was an idea he dreaded and distrusted. It was not the morality of the course that bothered him. He was far too clear-headed to blink at the essential fact that at heart we were spies on a foreign power in time of peace, or to salve his conscience by specious distinctions as to our mode of operation. The foreign power to him was Dollmann, a traitor. There was his final justification, fearlessly adopted and held to the last. It was rather that, knowing his own limitations, his whole nature shrank from the sort of action entailed by the Memmert theory. And there was strong common sense in his antipathy.

So much for independent research.

On the other hand the road was now clear for the other method. Davies no longer feared to face the imbroglio at Norderney; and that day fortune had given us a new and potent weapon against Dollmann; precisely how potent we could not tell, for we had only a glimpse of his past, and his exact relations with the Government were unknown to us. But we knew who he was. Using this knowledge with address, could we not wring the rest from him? Feel our way, of course, be guided by his own conduct, but in the end strike hard and stake everything on the stroke? Such at any rate was our scheme to-night. Later, tossing in my bunk, I be-thought me of the little drab book, lit a candle, and fetched it. A preface explained that it had been written during a spell of two months' leave from naval duty, and expressed a hope that it might be of service to Corinthian sailors. The style was unadorned, but scholarly and pithy. There was no trace of the writer's individuality, save a certain subdued relish in describing banks and shoals, which reminded me of Davies himself. For the rest, I found the book dull, and, in fact, it sent me to sleep.

XXI. Blindfold to Memmert