The Riddle of the Sands
who complained that her head was going round; and no wonder. But at
this juncture, and very much to my surprise, Davies struck in.
“_I_ should like to go to Memmert,” he said.
“You?” said von Brüning. “Now I’m surprised at that.”
“But you won’t be staying here either, Davies,” I objected.
“Yes, I shall,” said Davies. “Why, I told you I should. If you leave me
in the lurch like this I must have time to look round.”
“You needn’t pretend that you cannot sail alone,” said von Brüning.
“It’s much more fun with two; I think I shall wire for another friend.
Meanwhile, I should like to see Memmert.”
“That’s only an excuse, I’m afraid,” said I.
“I want to shoot ducks too,” pursued Davies, reddening. “I always have
wanted to; and you promised to help in that, Commander.”
“You can’t get out of it now,” I laughed.
“Certainly not,” said he, unmoved; “but, honestly, I should advise Herr
Davies, if he is ever going to get home this season, to make the best
of this fine weather.”
“It’s too fine,” said Davies; “I prefer wind. If I cannot get a friend
I think I shall stop cruising, leave the yacht here, and come back for
her next year.
There was some mute telegraphy between the allies.
“You can leave her in my charge,” said Dollmann, “and start with your
friend to-morrow.”
“Thanks; but there is no hurry,” said Davies, growing redder than ever.
“I like Norderney—and we might have another sail in your dinghy,
Fräulein,” he blurted out.
“Thank you,” she said, in that low dry voice I had heard yesterday;
“but I think I shall not be sailing again—it is getting too cold.”
“Oh, no!” said Davies, “it’s splendid.” But she had turned to von
Brüning, and took no notice.
“Well, send me a report about Memmert, Davies,” I laughed, with the
idea of drawing attention from his rebuff. But Davies, having once
delivered his soul, seemed to have lost his shyness, and only gazed at
his neighbour with the placid, dogged expression that I knew so well.
That was the end of those delicate topics; and conviviality grew apace.
I am not indifferent at any time to good wine and good cheer, nor was
it for lack of pressing that I drank as sparingly as I was able, and
pretended to a greater elation than I felt. Nor certainly was it from
any fine scruples as to the character of the gentleman whose
hospitality we were receiving—scruples which I knew affected Davies,
who ate little and drank nothing. In any case he was adamant in such
matters, and I verily believe would at any time have preferred our own
little paraffin-flavoured messes to the best dinner in the world. It
was a very wholesome caution that warned me not to abuse the finest
brain tonic ever invented by the wit of man. I had finessed Memmert, as
one finesses a low card when holding a higher; but I had too much
respect for our adversaries to trade on any fancied security we had won
thereby. They had allowed me to win the trick, but I credited them with
a better knowledge of my hand than they chose to show. On the other
hand I hugged the axiom that in all conflicts it is just as fatal to
underrate the difficulties of your enemy as to overrate your own. Their
chief one—and it multiplied a thousandfold the excitement of the
contest—was, I felt sure, the fear of striking in error; of using a
sledge-hammer to break a nut. In breaking it they risked publicity, and
publicity, I felt convinced, was death to their secret. So, even
supposing they had detected the finesse, and guessed that we had in
fact got wind of imperial designs; yet, even so, I counted on immunity
so long as they thought we were on the wrong scent, with Memmert, and
Memmert alone, as the source of our suspicions.
Had it been necessary I was prepared to encourage such a view,
admitting that the cloth von Brüning wore had made his connexion with
Memmert curious, and had suggested to Davies, for I should have put it
on him, with his naval enthusiasms, that the wreck-works were really
naval-defence works. If they went farther, and suspected that we had
tried to go to Memmert that very day, the position was worse, but not
desperate; for the fear that they would take the final step and suppose
that we had actually got there and overheard their talk, I flatly
refused to entertain, until I should find myself under arrest.
Precisely how near we came to it I shall never rightly know; but I have
good reason to believe that we trembled on the verge. The main issue
was fully enough for me, and it was only in passing flashes that I
followed the play of the warring under-currents. And yet, looking back
on the scene, I would warrant there was no party of seven in Europe
that evening where a student of human documents would have found so
rich a field, such noble and ignoble ambitions, such base and holy
fears, aye, and such pitiful agonies of the spirit. Roughly divided
though we were into separate camps, no two of us were wholly at one.
Each wore a mask in the grand imposture; excepting, I am inclined to
think, the lady on my left, who, outside her own well-being, which she
cultivated without reserve, had, as far as I could see, but one axe to
grind—the intimacy of von Brüning and her stepdaughter—and ground it
openly.
Not even Böhme and von Brüning were wholly at one; and as moral
distances are reckoned, Davies and I were leagues apart. Sitting
between Dollmann and Dollmann’s daughter, the living and breathing
symbols of the two polar passions he had sworn to harmonise, he kept an
equilibrium which, though his aims were nominally mine, I could not
attain to. For me the man was the central figure; if I had attention to
spare it was on him that I bestowed it; groping disgustfully after his
hidden springs of action, noting the evidences of great gifts
squandered and prostituted; questioning where he was most vulnerable;
whom he feared most, us or his colleagues; whether he was open to
remorse or shame; or whether he meditated further crime. The girl was
incidental. After the first shock of surprise I had soon enough
discovered that she, like the rest, had assumed a disguise; for she was
far too innocent to sustain the deception; and yesterday was fresh in
my memory. I was forced to continue turning her assumed character to
account; but it would be pharisaical in me to say that I rose to any
moral heights in her regard—wine and excitement had deadened my better
nature to that extent. I thought she looked prettier than ever, and, as
time passed, I fell into a cynical carelessness about her. This glimpse
of her home life, and the desperate expedients to which she was driven
(whether by compulsion or from her own regard for Davies) to repel and
dismiss him, did not strike me as they might have done as the crowning
argument in favour of the course we had adopted the night before, that
of compassing our end without noise and scandal, disarming Dollmann,
but aiding him to escape from the allies he had betrayed. To Davies,
the man, if not a pure abstraction, was at most a noxious vermin to be
trampled on for the public good; while the girl, in her blackguardly
surroundings, and with her sinister future, had become the very source
of his impulse.
And the other players? Böhme was _my_ abstraction, the fortress whose
foundations we were sapping, the embodiment of that systematised force
which is congenital to the German people. In von Brüning, the personal
factor was uppermost. Callous as I was this evening, I could not help
wondering occasionally, as he talked and laughed with Clara Dollmann,
what in his innermost thoughts, knowing her father, he felt and meant.
It is a point I cannot and would not pursue, and, thank Heaven, it does
not matter now; yet, with fuller knowledge of the facts, and, I trust,
a mellower judgement, I often return to the same debate, and, by I know
not what illogical bypaths, always arrive at the same conclusion, that
I liked the man and like him still.
We behaved as sportsmen in the matter of time, giving them over two
hours to make up their minds about us. It was only when tobacco-smoke
and heat brought back my faintness, and a twinge of cramp warned me
that human strength has limits, that I rose and said we must go; that I
had to make an early start to-morrow. I am hazy about the farewells,
but I think that Dollmann was the most cordial, to me at any rate, and
I augured good therefrom. Böhme said he should see me again. Von
Brüning, though bound for the harbour also, considered it was far too
early to be going yet, and said good-bye.
“You want to talk us over,” I remember saying, with the last flicker of
gaiety I could muster.
We were in the streets again, under a silver, breathless night; dizzily
footing the greasy ladder again; in the cabin again, where I collapsed
on a sofa just as I was, and slept such a deep and stringent sleep that
the men of the _Blitz_’s launch might have handcuffed and trussed and
carried me away, without incommoding me in the least.
CHAPTER XXV.
I Double Back
“Good-bye, old chap,” called Davies.
“Good-bye,” the whistle blew and the ferry-steamer forged ahead,
leaving Davies on the quay, bareheaded and wearing his old Norfolk
jacket and stained grey flannels, as at our first meeting in Flensburg
station. There was no bandaged hand this time, but he looked pinched
and depressed; his eyes had black circles round them; and again I felt
that same indefinable pathos in him.
“Your friend is in low spirits,” said Böhme, who was installed on a
seat beside me, voluminously caped and rugged against the biting air.
It was a still, sunless day.
“So am I,” I grunted, and it was the literal truth. I was only half
awake, felt unwashed and dissipated, heavy in head and limbs. But for
Davies I should never have been where I was. It was he who had
patiently coaxed me out of my bunk, packed my bag, fed me with tea and
an omelette (to which I believe he had devoted peculiarly tender care),
and generally mothered me for departure. While I swallowed my second
cup he was brushing the mould and smoothing the dents from my felt hat,
which had been entombed for a month in the sail-locker; working at it
with a remorseful concern in his face. The only initiative I am
conscious of having shown was in the matter of my bag. “Put in my sea
clothes, oils, and all,” I had said; “I may want them again.” There was
mortal need of a thorough consultation, but this was out of the
question. Davies did not badger or complain, but only timidly asked me
how we were to meet and communicate, a question on which my mind was an
absolute blank.
“Look out for me about the 26th,” I suggested feebly.
Before we left the cabin he gave me a scrap of pencilled paper and saw
that it went safely into my pocket-book. “Look at it in the train,” he
said.
Unable to cope with Böhme, I paced the deck aimlessly as we swung round
the See Gat into the Buse Tief, trying to identify the point where we
crossed it yesterday blindfold. But the tide was full, and the waters
blank for miles round till they merged in haze. Soon I drifted down
into the saloon, and crouching over a stove pulled out that scrap of
paper. In a crabbed, boyish hand, and much besmudged with
tobacco-ashes, I found the following notes:
(1) _Your journey_. [See Maps A and B.] Norddeich 8.58, Emden 10.32,
Leer 11.16 (Böhme changes for Bremen), Rheine 1.8 (change), Amsterdam
7.17 p.m. Leave again _via_ Hook 8.52, London 9 am.
(2) The coast-station—_their_ rondezvous—querry is it _Norden_? (You
pass it 9.13)—there is a tidal creek up to it. High-water there on
25th, say 10.30 to 11 p.m. It cannot be Norddeich, which I find has a
dredged-out low-water channel for the steamer, so tide “serves” would
not apply.
(3) _Your other clews_ (tugs, pilots, depths, railway, Esens, seven of