The Great Secret Part 15

"Diplomacy demanded a victim," he said, "and I never flinched. Two men knew the truth, and they are dead. My scheme was a bold one. If it had succeeded, it would have meant an alliance with Germany, an absolute incontrovertible alliance and an imperishable peace. France and Russia would have been powerless--the balance of strength, of accessible strength, must always have been with us. Every German statesman of note was with me. The falsehood, the vilely egotistic ambition of one man, chock-full to the lips with personal jealousy, a madman posing as a genius, wrecked all my plans. My life's work went for nothing. We escaped disaster by a miracle and my name is written in the pages of history as a scheming spy--I who narrowly escaped the greatest diplomatic triumph of all ages. That is the epitome of my career. You believe me?"

"I must," I answered.

"I was reported to have committed suicide," he continued. "Nothing was ever farther from my thoughts."

I followed an ancient maxim. I sought safety in the shadow of the enemy.

I went to Berlin."

"The man who foiled you--" I said slowly.

"You know who it was," he interrupted. "The man who believes that he hears voices from heaven, that by the side of his Divine wisdom his ministers are fools and children, crying for they know not what! I may not see it, but you most surely will see the p.r.i.c.king of the bubble of his reputation. His name may stand for little more than mine, when the book of fate is finally closed."

He was silent for a moment, and glanced towards the sideboard. I could see the perspiration standing out in little white beads upon his forehead; he had the air of a man utterly exhausted. I poured him out a gla.s.s of wine, and brought it over. He drank it slowly, and reached out his hand for a cigarette.

"Never mind these things," he said more quietly. "A man in my condition should avoid talking of his enemies. I lived for two years quietly in Berlin. I changed as much of my appearance as illness had left recognizable; and during all that time I lived the ordinary life of a German citizen of moderate means, without my ident.i.ty being once suspected. I frequented the cafes, I made friends with people in official positions. At the end of that time, I commenced to shape my plans. You can imagine of what nature they were. You can imagine what it was that I desired. I wanted to catch my enemy tripping."

I looked across at him a little incredulously. This was a strange story which he was telling me, and I knew very well, from the growing excitement of his manner, that its culmination was to come.

"But how could you in Berlin, alone, hope to accomplish this?" I asked.

"I knew the ropes," he answered simply, "and I lived for nothing else. I saw him drive amongst his people every day, and I bowed with the rest, I who could have spat in his face, I who carried with me the secret of his miserable perfidy, who knew alone why his ministers regarded him as a spoilt and fretful child. But I waited. Gradually I wormed my way a little into the fringe of the German Secret Service. I took them sc.r.a.ps of information; but such sc.r.a.ps that they were always hungry for more. I posed as a Dutch South African. They even chaffed me about my hatred for England. All the time I progressed, until, by chance, I stumbled across one of the threads which led--to the great Secret!"

There was a discreet knocking at the door. We both turned impatiently around. A servant was just ushering in our village doctor.

"Dr. Rust, sir," he announced.

CHAPTER XI

A LEGACY OF DANGER

I was scarcely aware myself to what an extent my attention had been riveted upon this strange story of my guest's, until the interruption came. The entry of the cheerful little village doctor seemed to dissolve an atmosphere thick with sensation. I drew a long breath as I rose to my feet. There was a certain measure of relief in the escape from such high tension.

"Glad to see you, doctor," I said mechanically. "My friend here, Mr.

Guest, Dr. Rust," I added, completing the introduction, "is a little run down. I thought that I would like you to have a look at him."

The doctor sniffed the air disparagingly as he shook hands.

"Those beastly cigarettes," he remarked. "If you young men would only take to pipes!"

"Our insides aren't strong enough for your sort of tobacco, doctor," I answered. "I will leave you with Mr. Guest for a few minutes. You may like to overhaul him a little."

I made my way into the gardens, and stood for a few minutes looking out across the park. It was a still, hot evening; the scene was perhaps as peaceful a one as a man could conceive. The tall elms stood out like painted trees upon a painted sky, the only movement in the quiet pastoral landscape was where a little string of farm laborers were trudging homeward across the park, with their baskets over their shoulders.

Beyond, the land sloped into a pleasant tree-encompa.s.sed hollow, and I could see the red-tiled roofs of the cottages, and the worn, grey spire of the village church. There was scarcely a breath of wind. Everything around me seemed to stand for peace. Many a night before I had stood here, smoking my pipe and drinking it all in--absolutely content with myself, my surroundings, and my life. And to-night I felt, with a certain measure of sadness, that it could never be the same again. A few yards behind me, in the room which I had just quitted, a man was looking death in the face; a man, the pa.s.sionate, half-told fragments of whose life had kindled in me a whole world of new desires. These two, the man and the girl, enemies perhaps, speaking from the opposite poles of life, had made sad havoc with my well-ordered days. The excitement of his appeal was perhaps more directly potent; yet there was something far more subtle, far stranger, in my thoughts of her. She and her maid and her queer, black-eyed poodle were creatures of flesh and blood without a doubt; yet they had come into my life so strangely, and pa.s.sed into so wonderful a place there, that I thought of them with something of the awe which belongs to things having in themselves some element of the mystic, if not of the supernatural. The blue of her eyes was not more wonderful than the flawless grace of her person and her environment. I could compare her only with visions one has read and dreamed about in the unreal worlds of poetry and romance. Her actual existence as a woman of the moment, a possible adventuress, certainly a very material and actual person, was hard indeed to realize.

I moved a little farther away into the gardens. The still air was full of the perfume of sweet-smelling flowers, of honeysuckle and roses, climbing about the maze of arches which sheltered the lower walks. To-night their sweetness seemed to mean new things to me. The twilight was falling rapidly; the shadows were blotting out the landscape. Out beyond there, beyond the boundaries of my walled garden, I seemed to be looking into a new and untravelled world. I knew very well that the old days were over.

Already the change had come.

I turned my head at the sound of a footstep upon the gravel path. The doctor was standing beside me.

"Well," I asked, "what do you think of him?"

He answered me a little evasively. The cheerful optimism which had made him a very popular pract.i.tioner seemed for the moment to have deserted him.

"Your friend is in rather a curious state of health," he said slowly. "To tell you the truth, I scarcely know how to account for certain of his symptoms."

I smiled.

"He seems in a very weak state," I remarked supinely.

"Is he a very old friend?" the doctor asked.

"Why do you ask that?" I inquired curiously.

"Simply because I thought that you might know something of his disposition," the doctor answered. "Whether, for instance, he is the sort of man who would be likely to indulge in drugs."

I shook my head.

"I cannot tell," I said.

"There is something a little peculiar about his indifference," the doctor continued. "He answers my questions and submits to my examination, and all the time he has the air of a man who would say, 'I could tell you more about myself, if I would, than you could ever discover.' He has had a magnificent const.i.tution in his time."

"Is he likely to die?" I asked.

"Not from any symptoms that I can discover," the doctor answered. "Yet, as I told you before, there are certain things about his condition which I do not understand. I should like to see him again in the morning!

I am giving him a tonic, more as a matter of form. I scarcely think his system will respond to it!"

"It has not occurred to you, I suppose," I remarked, "that he might be suffering from poisoning?"

The doctor shook his head.

"There are no traces of anything of the sort," he declared. "My own impression is that he has been taking some sort of drug."

"Will you come in and have something?" I asked, as we neared the house.

The doctor shook his head.

"Not to-night," he answered; "I have another call to pay."

So I went back into the house alone, and found my guest waiting for me in some impatience. He was lying upon a sofa, piled up with cus.h.i.+ons, and the extreme pallor of his face alarmed me.

"Give me some brandy and soda," he demanded. "Your village Aesculapius has been prodding me about, till I scarcely know where I am."

I hastened to the sideboard and attended to his wants.