Good Old Anna Part 39

"No, indeed not. But he told me about this matter when he took me to the station. He said that a friend would call on me some time after my return here, and that to keep these goods would be to my advantage----"

she stopped awkwardly.

"You mean," said Mrs. Guthrie slowly, "that you were paid for keeping these things, Anna?" Somehow she felt a strange sinking of the heart.

"Yes," Anna spoke in a shamed, embarra.s.sed tone. "Yes, that is quite true. I was given a little present each year. But it was no one's business but mine."

"And how long did you have them?" Mrs. Guthrie had remembered suddenly that that was an important point.

Anna waited a moment, but she was only counting. "Exactly three years,"

she answered. "Three years this month."

Mrs. Guthrie also made a rapid calculation. "You mean that they were brought to the Trellis House in the March of 1912?"

Anna nodded. "Yes, gracious lady. When you and Miss Rose were in London.

Do you remember?"

The other shook her head.

Anna felt almost cheerful now. She had told the whole truth, and her gracious lady did not seem so very angry after all.

"They were brought," she went on eagerly, "by a very nice gentleman. He asked me for a safe place to keep them, and I showed him the cupboard behind my bed. He helped me to bring them in."

"Was that the man who came for them this morning?" asked Mrs. Guthrie.

Anna shook her head. "Oh no!" she exclaimed. "The other gentleman was a gentleman. He wrote me a letter first, but when he came he asked me to give it him back. So of course I did so."

"Did he give you any idea of what he had brought you to keep?" asked Mrs. Guthrie. "Now, Anna, I beg--I implore you to tell me the truth!"

"The truth will I willingly tell!" Yes, Anna was feeling really better now. She had confessed the one thing which had always been on her conscience--her deceit towards her kind mistress. "He said they were chemicals, a new wonderful invention, which I must take great care of as they were fragile."

"I suppose he was a German?" said Mrs. Guthrie slowly.

"Yes, he was a German, naturally, being the superior of Willi. But the man who came to-day was no German."

"And during all that time--three years is a long time, Anna--did you never hear from him?" asked Mrs. Guthrie slowly.

It had suddenly come over her with a feeling of repugnance and pain, that old Anna had kept her secret very closely.

"I never heard--no, never, till last night," cried the old woman eagerly.

"But even now," said Mrs. Guthrie, "I can't understand, Anna, what made you do it. Was it to please Willi?"

"Yes," said Anna in an embarra.s.sed tone. "It was to please my good nephew, gracious lady."

CHAPTER x.x.xII

"And now," said Mrs. Guthrie, looking at the little group of people who sat round her in the Council Chamber, "and now I have told you, almost I think word for word, everything my poor old Anna told me."

As Mr. Reynolds remained silent, she added, with a touch of defiance, "And I am quite, quite sure that she told me the truth!"

Her eyes instinctively sought the Dean's face. Yes, there she found sympathy,--sympathy and belief. It was impossible to tell what her husband was thinking. His face was not altered--it was set in stern lines of discomfort and endurance. The Government official looked sceptical.

"I have no doubt that the woman has told you a good deal of the truth, Mrs. Guthrie, but I do not think she has told you _all_ the truth, or the most important part of it. According to your belief, she accepted this very strange deposit without the smallest suspicion of the truth.

Now, is it conceivable that an intelligent, sensible, elderly woman of the kind she has been described to me, could be such a fool?"

And then, for the first time since his wife had returned there from her interview with Anna, Major Guthrie intervened.

"I think you forget, Mr. Reynolds, that this took place long before the war. In fact, if I may recall certain dates to your memory, this must have been a little tiny cog in the machine which Germany began fas.h.i.+oning after the Agadir crisis. It was that very autumn that Anna Bauer went to visit her nephew and niece in Berlin, and it was soon after she came back that, according to her story, a stranger, with some kind of introduction from her nephew, who is, I believe, connected with the German police----"

"Is he indeed?" exclaimed Mr. Reynolds. "You never told me that!" he looked at Mrs. Guthrie.

"Didn't I?" she said. "Yes, it's quite true, Wilhelm Warshauer is a sub-inspector of police in Berlin. But I feel sure he is a perfectly respectable man."

She fortunately did not see the expression which flashed across her questioner's face. Not so the Dean. Mr. Reynolds' look stirred Dr.

Haworth to a certain indignation. He had known Anna Bauer as long as her mistress had, and he had become quite fond of the poor old woman with whom he had so often exchanged pleasant greetings in German.

"Look here!" he began, in a pleasant, persuasive voice. "I have a suggestion to make, Mr. Reynolds. We have here in Witanbury a most excellent fellow, one of our city councillors. He is of German birth, but was naturalised long ago. As I expect you know, there was a little riot here last week, and this man--Alfred Head is his name--had all his windows broken. He refused to prosecute, and behaved with the greatest sense and dignity. Now I suggest that we set Alfred Head on to old Anna Bauer! I believe she would tell him things that she would not even tell her very kind and considerate mistress. I feel sure that he would find out the real truth. As a matter of fact I met him just now when I was coming down here. He was full of regret and concern, and he spoke very kindly and very sensibly of this poor old woman. He said he knew her--that she was a friend of his wife's, and he asked me if he could be of any a.s.sistance to her."

Thinking he saw a trace of hesitation on the London official's face, he added, "After all, such an interview could do no harm, and might do good. Yes, I strongly do advise that we take Alfred Head into our counsels, and explain to him exactly what it is we wish to know."

"I am quite sure," exclaimed Mrs. Guthrie impulsively, "that Anna would not tell him any more than she told me. I am convinced, not only that she told me the truth, but that she told me nothing but the truth--I don't believe she kept _anything_ back!"

Mr. Reynolds looked straight at the speaker of these impetuous words. He smiled. It was a kindly, albeit a satiric smile. He was getting quite fond of Mrs. Guthrie! And though his duties often brought him in contact with strange and unusual little groups of people, this was the first time he had ever had to bring into his official work a bride on her wedding day. This was the first time also that a dean had ever been mixed up in any of the difficult and dangerous affairs with which he was now concerned. It was, too, the first time that he had been brought into personal contact with one of his own countrymen "broken in the war."

"I hope that you are right," he said soothingly. "Still, as Mr. Dean kindly suggests, it may be worth while allowing this man--Head is his name, is it?--to see the woman. It generally happens that a person of the cla.s.s to which Anna Bauer belongs will talk much more freely to some one of their own sort than to an employer, however kind. In fact, it often happens that after having remained quite silent and refused to say anything to, say, a solicitor, such a person will come out with the whole truth to an old friend, or to a relation. We will hope that this will be the case this time. And now I don't think that we need detain you and Major Guthrie any longer. Of course you shall be kept fully informed of any developments."

"If there is any question, as I suppose there will be, of Anna Bauer being sent for trial," said Major Guthrie, "then I should wish, Mr.

Reynolds, that my own solicitor undertakes her defence. My wife feels that she is under a great debt of grat.i.tude to this German woman. Anna has not only been her servant for over eighteen years, but she was nurse to Mrs. Guthrie's only child. We neither of us feel in the least inclined to abandon Anna Bauer because of what has happened. I also wish to a.s.sociate myself very strongly with what Mrs. Guthrie said just now.

I believe the woman to be substantially innocent, and I think she has almost certainly told my wife the truth, as far as she knows it."

He held out his hand, and the other man grasped it warmly. Then Mr.

Reynolds shook hands with Mrs. Guthrie. She looked happy now--happy if a little tearful. "I hope," he said eagerly, "that you will make use of my car to take you home."

Somehow he felt interested in, and drawn to, this middle-aged couple. He was quite sorry to know that, after to-day, he would probably never see them again. The type of man who is engaged in the sort of work which Mr. Reynolds was now doing for his country has to be very human underneath his cloak of official reserve, or he would not be able to carry out his often delicate, as well as difficult, duties.

He followed them outside the Council House. Clouds had gathered, and it was beginning to rain, so he ordered his car to be closed.

"Mr. Reynolds," cried Mrs. Guthrie suddenly, "you won't let them be _too_ unkind to my poor old Anna, will you?"

"Indeed, no one will be unkind to her," he said. "She's only been a tool after all--poor old woman. No doubt there will be a deportation order, and she will be sent back to Germany."

"Remember that you are to draw on me if any money is required on her behalf," cried out Major Guthrie, fixing his sightless eyes on the place where he supposed the other man to be.

"Yes, yes--I quite understand that! But we've found out that the old woman has plenty of money. It is one of the things that make us believe that she knows more than she pretends to do."