Linnet: A Romance
police off his track, if it came to police, by getting out short,
portmanteau in hand, at Verona, for the Brenner. All day long, he
travelled on by that beautiful mountain line, up the Adige towards
Botzen; and, though he was flying for his life, it gave him none the
less a genuine thrill of joy when he beheld once more those beloved
Tyrolese peaks, and heard the German tongue spoken with a Tyrolese
accent. He slept that night at Botzen. There, he felt his foot once more
upon his native heath. In the morning, he rose early, and went into a
hatter’s, where he bought a Tyrolese hat of the old conical pattern; all
fugitive that he was, the ingrained instincts of his youth yet made him
turn the blackcock’s feather in it the wrong way forward, Robbler-wise.
Vain-glorious still and defiant, nobody would ever have taken him for a
runaway criminal. He bought also a pair of stout Tyrolese boots, and
introduced a few other little changes in his costume, sufficient to
transform him at once from the cosmopolitan snob into the simple Franz
Lindner of the old days at St Valentin. Then he took the train north
again, right through to Innsbruck, where he slept his third night, more
confident than before, and had a chance of reading all in a Vienna
paper.
That all was bad enough. No doubt now remained on the minds of the
French police that Joaquin Holmes had been really murdered. The
hypothesis of suicide broke down at every step. Suspicion pointed most
to one or other of three persons whom he was believed to have duped just
before the murder. One of these three was being traced by detectives to
Marseilles and Paris; the other two, it was believed, had gone on to
Italy. In the interests of justice, the police would mention no names at
present, but one of these three, they held, must almost certainly be the
murderer.
Still, the instinct of his race urged Franz on to St Valentin. He took
the afternoon train north as far as Jenbach; then he tramped all the way
on foot to his native village. It was late when he arrived, and, tired
and hunted down, he went straight to the _Wirthshaus_. Cousin Fridolin
held up his hands in astonishment to see the wanderer. It wasn’t merely
surprise that Franz should come back at all, but that he should come
back as he went—a genuine Tyroler. All were well in the place: the Herr
Vicar and everyone. And Andreas Hausberger and Linnet were here as
well—returned home for a holiday.
It was Franz’s turn now to start back in surprise. What, Andreas and
Linnet come back to St Valentin! Impossible! You don’t mean it!
But Cousin Fridolin _did_ mean it—with his thumbs in the armholes of
his red Tyrolese waistcoat. They’d retired for the night—they were here
at the inn; but he’d knock at their door (full of country hospitality as
he was, the simple soul!) and tell them to come out and welcome a friend
home again.
Franz seized his arm to prevent him. “Oh no,” he cried; “not that. . . .
There are reasons why you mustn’t. . . . Andreas and I had a difference
some years ago at Meran; and though we patched it all up again in a way
in London, I don’t want to see him now—at least, not till to-morrow.”
As for Cousin Fridolin, standing back and regarding him in surprise, he
could hardly understand these fine town-bred manners. If Franz had come
back a true Tyroler in dress, he brought with him none the less all the
airs and graces of Western civilisation, as understood by the
frequenters of the London Pavilion. They sat awhile and talked, while
Franz ate the rough supper and drank as much as was good for him of the
thin country beer; but Cousin Fridolin noticed that his old rival and
companion seemed unaccountably stiff and reserved in his demeanour.
Especially did he shirk any obtrusive questions as to whence he had
come, and by what route he had got there. As they parted for the night,
Franz turned to Cousin Fridolin, who alone in the village had yet seen
or spoken with him. “Don’t tell Andreas and Linnet I came here
to-night,” he said. “I want them not to know till they meet me as a
surprise to-morrow morning.”
Cousin Fridolin, much wondering, promised compliance with his wish. He
lighted Franz to his room, and bade him good-night in a very audible
whisper. Herr Andreas and his wife had the next rooms to him, he said.
Franz nodded a distant assent, and shook his hand somewhat coldly. The
terror that had stood over him since he left Monte Carlo grew somehow
much deeper, much nearer, much more real, as he found himself once more
in these familiar surroundings. He bolted the door with its little
wooden button, and sat alone on the bed for some minutes in silence. The
solitude appalled him more than ever before; he felt conscious, in some
dim way, the hue-and-cry of the police was now well after him.
As he sat there and listened to his own heart beating, while the tallow
candle guttered on the table by his side, a low sound from the next room
began to attract his attention. It was a stifled sound, with a choking
sort of sob in it. Just at first, too preoccupied with his own emotions,
Franz hardly noticed it; but at last it obtruded itself upon him by its
very unobtrusiveness. Of a sudden, he realised to himself what manner of
noise this was. It was the deep suppressed sound of a woman weeping.
With her head under the bed-clothes, she was crying, crying, crying
silently.
Rising up from his bed, Franz crept over to the door of communication
between the two rooms, his mind for the moment distracted by the sound
even from his own immediate and pressing danger. For it was borne in
upon him at once by what Fridolin Telser had said, that the woman in the
next room was none other than Linnet!
Sob, sob, sob, the voice continued, chokingly. Franz could feel rather
than hear that the noise was muffled by the intervention of the
bed-clothes, and that Linnet, if it was she, was doing the very best she
knew to check it. But, in spite of her efforts, the sobs broke out
afresh every now and again, spasmodically; she was sobbing, sobbing,
sobbing, as if her heart would break—sobbing by herself in the solitude
of her bedroom.
All terrified as he was, Franz’s heart stood still at it.
Presently, another door on the far side seemed to open, and a voice was
heard saying in low, angry tones, “Won’t you stop that noise? I can’t
sleep for hearing you.”
It was Andreas Hausberger’s voice; Franz clenched his hands to hear it.
But Linnet seemed to raise her head from the bed-clothes at those words,
and speak at last with a great effort to calm herself. “Andreas,” she
said, through her sobs, “as the Church bids, I follow you; but I can’t
help crying when I think how you treat me. I cry as silently and quietly
as I can to myself. If I keep you awake, you must take another room a
little farther off from me.”
That was all. She said no more; and Andreas closed the door, as Franz
judged, and went back again. But even in his own hour of peril and
terror—perhaps all the more keenly because of all that had happened to
him—Franz read in those few words the whole story of Linnet’s unhappy
marriage. He had suspected it before, of course, but now he knew it.
Andreas’s gruff tone of reproof, poor Linnet’s shrinking accent of
despairing misery, were more eloquent in his ears than whole hours of
deliberate and demonstrative talking. This episode meant much to him. It
was for Linnet he had hazarded and encountered everything—it was for
Linnet, indirectly, he had risked his own life by stabbing that wretched
man away over at Monte Carlo!
His anger burned bright against Andreas Hausberger; Hausberger who had
cheated him of his Linnet long ago; Hausberger who was making his
Linnet’s life a burden to her! The cold-blooded wretch! How Franz wished
it was into _him_ he had plunged that good knife that did swift
execution on the dead cheat at Monte Carlo! Ah well, ah well, it was not
too late even now! If he couldn’t marry Linnet, he could at least avenge
her! He could have wiped out old scores and redressed new wrongs—if it
had only been Andreas in place of that other man!
CHAPTER L
ANDREAS HAUSBERGER PAYS
That night again Franz didn’t trouble to undress. He lay on the bed in
his clothes, and let the candle burn out as it would in its socket.
Early next morning, with the restlessness of a hunted man, he rose
betimes, and went down to the wonted breakfast of the inn with Cousin
Fridolin. Their talk over their coffee was of Linnet and Andreas.
Fridolin retailed to him, bit by bit, all the sinister surmises of the
village gossips; people thought at St Valentin Andreas was jealous at
last of his beautiful Frau—Fridolin let his voice drop to a
confidential key—and had brought her away hither from some lover in
London. Franz smiled bitterly at that thought; why, the man hadn’t heart
enough in him to be even jealous—for one may be beneath jealousy as one
may be above it. Was he unkind to her? Franz asked, curiously, as Cousin
Fridolin broke off in the midst of a sentence.
Well, he didn’t exactly _strike_ her, Cousin Fridolin believed; though,
to be sure, when she first came to the inn, she bore marks of violence.
But she cried all day, and she cried all night; and folks fancied in the
village it might perhaps be for Will Deverill. At any rate, she and
Andreas lost no love between them; man said it was only as a good
Catholic she stopped with him.
After breakfast, Franz rose up and walked out on the road aimlessly.
Restless still, with the ever-present fear of detection upon him, and
with the fiery Tyrolese heart eating itself out within, he walked on and
on, hardly knowing why he did so. At last he reached Zell, the little
capital of the valley. It was early still, for he had started at
daybreak; but already a strange group of whispering villagers crowded
agog round the door of the post-office and telegraph, where the
post-master was affixing an official notice. Franz joined them, and
read. His blood ran cold within him. It was a Kaiserlich-Königlich
police announcement of a public reward of ten thousand florins for
information leading to the capture of one Karl von Forstemann of
Vienna—age, height, and description as below annexed—accused of the
murder of Joaquin Holmes, an American citizen, at Monte Carlo, and known
to have returned to Austrian territory by Verona and Botzen, where he
had altered his clothing, and gone on to Innsbruck.
As Franz read those damning words, he knew in a second all was really up
with him. Once they had tracked him so far, they must track him to St
Valentin. Again the instinct of his race drove him back towards his
native village, after a word or two interchanged with his friends at the
post-office. Those simple country souls never dreamt in their hearts of
suspecting their old comrade, Franz Lindner the _jäger_, who had come
back unexpectedly, like Andreas and Linnet, of being the Karl von
Forstemann of Vienna referred to in the announcement. But Franz knew it
couldn’t be long before the police were on his track; and he turned and
fled upwards to his old home at St Valentin, like a fox to its lair, or
a rabbit to its burrow.
All the way up the hill his soul seethed within him. He would sell his
life dear, if the worst came to the worst; they should fight for it now
before ever they took him. He had stopped at a shop at Zell to buy a
_jäger’s_ knife, in place of the one he had left behind him at Monte
Carlo, in the card-sharper’s body. He stuck it ostentatiously in the
leather belt he had bought at Botzen to complete his costume; as he went
on his way, he fingered it ever and anon with affectionate familiarity.
Old moods came back to him; with his feather in his hat and his blade by