The Man Without a Memory by Arthur W. Marchmont (good summer reads txt) 📖

declaring that both she and her daughter owed me their lives, and making so much of the matter, that I had to chip in with a suggestion that she had better get home as soon as possible.

"But how?" she exclaimed hopelessly. "Where's Wilhelm?"

But Wilhelm, evidently the chauffeur, was nowhere to be seen; and there was nothing for it but to volunteer to drive the car myself.

All this time friend Hans had been making the best of his opportunity with the daughter, who also thanked me profusely when I had helped her mother into the car.

"Where am I to drive?" I asked as I took the wheel.

"Hans knows the way," suggested the daughter, with the faintest little flush of confusion as she hazarded the suggestion. He grinned.

"Come along then, Hans," I said; and he nipped in and told me where to go and which way to take.

"Rather a nice little child," I said presently, chipping him; the girl was about sixteen, I guessed, as her hair was still down. But he resented the speech.

"Child! She's only a year younger than I am," he exclaimed quite indignantly.

"So that's how the wind blows, eh?"

"I wish to Heaven I'd come up sooner; but I say, you did make a fight of it, cousin. Nita's been telling me all about it. She says they'd have been torn to pieces if it hadn't been for you. You're a lucky beggar!"

"I don't take too kindly to that sort of luck, Hans, I can tell you."

"I only wish it had been mine," he declared regretfully.

"You did all right as it was when you came; and of course she saw you. Rather a pretty name—Nita."

He smiled self-consciously and coloured. "But her mother didn't; if she had it might change her opinion and——" He didn't finish the sentence and exclaimed: "But I say, you do know how to handle a car!"

This didn't suit me, however, so I went back to the pretty Nita. "The mother's against it all, eh?"

"Only for the silly reason that we're too young. And I shall be an officer in a month or two; but the Baroness is like Rosa in that, she can't understand when a fellow's grown up."

"It'll come all right when you've been in the army a year or two," I said consolingly.

"A year or two," he exclaimed in some dismay.

"Well, if she won't wait for you as long as that, she isn't worth bothering about, Hans."

But he wasn't in a mood for any philosophic consolation. "But she will; she's said so a hundred times. There's no doubt about her; but there's something else; somebody else, rather."

"And which are you? Number one or number two?"

"Oh, I don't mean with her; but old Gratz has some one else."

"And what's he got to do with it?"

"Johann! Seeing that he's her father, he's got everything to do with it, of course."

This was something like a jar in all truth. He was about the last soul in Berlin who ought to know that I had so far recovered my memory as to be able to handle the car. "Do you mean that this old lady is Baron von Gratzen's wife?"

"Of course she is. I thought you knew it."

CHAPTER X COMPLICATIONS

The fact that it was Baron von Gratzen's wife and daughter whom I had managed to snatch from the clutches of the mob was startling, and might have vital consequences. But whether it would help or harm me, it was difficult to decide.

The first impression was that it was rotten luck. By all accounts Lassen was far too great a coward to have faced the mob; and that fact alone was dangerous since it tended to emphasize the difference between us. More than enough had transpired in the interview with the Baron to show that he already suspected I was not Lassen; and this business might put the finishing touch to his suspicions. My handling of the car, moreover, might be accepted as an additional proof of the impersonation.

There was of course another side. It was his wife and child who had been rescued; and if he hadn't a stone in place of a heart, he was bound to feel some amount of gratitude. But would that be sufficient to cause him to smother his suspicions?

The German official is commonly a two-natured individual; showing one side in his private life and the other in his office. His manner to me that morning had been friendly enough; but that was after his suspicions had been quieted and he had regarded me as Lassen. What the effect would be when his suspicions were again roused, it was impossible to say.

If he was like many of those I had known in the old days, he would be quite capable of professing and even feeling the deepest gratitude privately and at home, and the next minute at his office regretting, with tears in his eyes, that his duty compelled him to pack me off to gaol. That's the worst of Teutonic sentimentality. It's pretty much like a compass needle in an electric storm; you never know where it will point next.

When we reached the house nothing would satisfy the Baroness but that I should go in so that her husband should have an opportunity of thanking me; and in we went. It was a relief to find that he wasn't home; but she would not hear of my leaving until she was satisfied that I was not seriously hurt, and wished to send straight off for a doctor to examine me.

Discussion resulted as usual in a compromise, and Hans carried me off to the bathroom. There was nothing the matter that soap and water and a clothes-brush couldn't put right. I was very dirty; had a bruise or two, a couple of scratches on my face, and a cut on my hand where one of the men had jabbed at it to make me release my hold of the stick.

The last looked the worst, because of the drop or two of blood smeared about; but it didn't amount to anything, and I was really lucky to have got off so lightly.

While I was removing the traces of the scrap, Hans told me a good deal more about Nita and the position of affairs in the von Gratzen household, together with his impressions of Nita's father.

"I think he's a regular bear, you know. He is to me; but then he doesn't like me any more than I do him, worse luck," he said dolefully.

"Do you think the best way to get any one to like you is to begin by disliking him?"

"I didn't begin it; but he always scowls when he finds me here, talks to me as if I was a kid of ten, and calls me 'Hansikin.' It makes me regularly sick, I can tell you. Of course he's awfully decent to his wife and Nita, and they both worship him; and so does he them. But he's always trying to make fun of me; and he's such an artful old beggar that I never get a chance of scoring off him. I believe he's as big a humbug as any in Berlin. And I'm not the only one who thinks so, too."

"What you've done to-day ought to change his opinion, Hans."

"That's just my rotten luck. I came up too late to do anything, and even the little I did do, the Baroness couldn't see."

"But Nita saw it."

"And a lot he'll care for what she says. He'll just grin and say I was a good boy, or some such rot as that, and forget it."

"We'll see about that. He'll know that no boy could send a grown man headlong into the gutter as you did."

"Did I?" he cried excitedly.

The truth was that he did not; but there seemed a chance of doing him a good turn, so I described a little fictional incident of the sort, telling him that he was too excited at the moment to remember anything. "It was the turning point of the whole show, Hans, for if the beggar hadn't been downed at that very moment, they'd have got us to a cert."

"Do you think Nita saw it?" he cried boyishly.

"How could she, when her mother was lying all but fainting on the pavement? She wanted all her eyes for her."

"Just my luck!" he exclaimed with a disconsolate toss of the head, as we went downstairs.

Nita and her mother had also been using the time to repair, and both of them appeared to have rallied from the shock. I had to go through more of the thanksgiving ceremonial. Only the plea of an urgent engagement got me out of a most pressing invitation to remain to supper in order to be thanked over again by the Baron; and I had to stem the torrent of gratitude by bringing Hans' part into action.

"It's awfully sweet of you to give me all the credit, my dear madam, but you're overlooking my cousin's part; and you owe quite as much to him. I'm afraid there would have been a very different tale to tell, if he had not come up when he did."

"I didn't know that," she exclaimed in great surprise; and I saw Hans and Nita, who were snugging it together in a corner, prick up their ears.

"I don't want to make him blush," I replied, lowering my voice, and repeated the fable I had told him in the bathroom, garnishing it with one or two more or less artistic touches.

"I didn't see all that."

"Unfortunately at the moment you were not able to take notice of anything, I'm afraid."

"Nita hasn't told me about it either."

"She could not have had eyes or thoughts for any one but you just then. It's only natural, of course."

"Then I've done the boy an injustice, Herr Lassen."

"Boy!" I echoed with a start. "No boy could have done what he did, and no man could have behaved more bravely;" with special emphasis on the "man."

It worked all right. After a moment she called him up, repeated the pith of the story, and showed her gratitude in a way that made him blush like a girl. Then she kissed him and declared, to the profound delight and astonishment of them both: "That's a good-bye kiss to the boy, Hans. I shall never think of you as one again after this; neither will the Baron, I am sure. You must stop to supper and hear what he thinks of it."

He was so overwhelmed by all this that he could scarcely stammer out his acceptance of the invitation, and when I was leaving he came to the door and couldn't say enough to thank me. He had a very hazy idea of all that he had really done, and it wasn't surprising that, being a German, he was ready to accept the story as gospel and rather to preen his feathers over his own prowess.

Still he was a decent youngster, and his little harmless swagger was very intelligible. "I say, cousin," he added as he opened the door, "I wish you'd do me a favour and tell Rosa. She'll believe it, if you say it."

"Of course I will. I'm taking the Karlstrasse on my way," I promised readily. I wanted to hear if there was any news about the progress of our "conspiracy." The afternoon's affair wasn't all honey, for there was the question of its effect on the Baron; and the sooner my back was turned on Berlin the better.

It was old Gretchen's job to attend to the front door, and when she answered my ring, she told me no one was at home, and that Rosa had left a parcel for me. A glance showed that the paper wrapper was torn and that the packet had been put up clumsily as if in a great hurry by unskilled fingers. Gretchen had evidently been curious about the contents.

I opened it in her presence, therefore, as there could be no harm in her having