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

be a trap; so I returned his look with equal steadiness and shook my head. "I don't recollect it, sir."

"Try to think. Try hard. Look back over the years to when you were a boy."

Of course I "tried," and equally of course failed.

He dropped back in his chair with a sigh which seemed to breathe the essence of sincere regret, and after a moment said with almost equal earnestness:

"You know all I have said to you; you believe it, believe that I am really a friend to you?"

"Of course, sir. No one could speak as you have otherwise," I replied, smiling. It was a queer question.

"Then, believing it, is there anything you would care to tell me?"

What the dickens did this mean? I smothered my doubts under another smile and then nodded. "There is one thing, sir." His face lighted and he was all expectation and interest on the instant.

"It's about the man you mentioned yesterday—Count von Erstein."

His look changed directly. All the light and eagerness died away and he put his cigar back in his lips. "Oh, about him, is it? Well?" he asked, as if the subject didn't interest him in the slightest.

But he listened carefully to the account of the interview with von Erstein, squinting at me curiously whenever Nessa's name was mentioned, and seemed sufficiently interested to put some questions about her.

"An ugly story, my boy, very ugly; although I'm not much surprised, knowing the man. But why have you told me?"

"Because I wish you to be prepared if he still tries to carry out his infernal scheme."

He smiled. "And because you're naturally indignant, eh?"

"I am. For my cousin's sake. The two are very old friends."

"I see. Then it's not for the girl's own sake?"

What the deuce was he driving at? His manner kept me guessing all the time. "Partly for her sake, of course. That sort of beastliness always makes me wild."

"I can understand that, my boy, and am glad to hear it. Just what I should expect of you. Is she pretty?"

"I suppose she is in an English way," I replied, shrugging.

"It's not because she is English that you feel like this?"

"I hope I should feel much the same if she was a Hottentot, sir."

"I wish all our young fellows were the same. Well, for your sake, I'll see that she comes to no harm. I presume, however, that you are quite sure she is not really a spy? Very serious, just now, you know."

"My cousin is, and she has known her many years."

"Then why doesn't the girl go home?"

"It's her one absorbing wish, sir. She has been trying for months to get permission, but von Erstein has managed to stop it."

He nodded once or twice and leant back in his chair thinking until he glanced at the clock and rose. "Time's up. I must get back. I make a point of being back always to the tick. It's a hobby of mine. I'll think over all you've told me, for I'm interested in it; far more so than you may imagine. I'll make an inquiry or two about this Miss Caldicott, and if it's all right, she shall go home. You can tell your cousin so. But it's a long way and a bad time for her to travel alone."

"I don't think she would mind that a bit, sir."

"You make a very earnest champion, my boy; but let me give you a hint. Don't let any one else get the same idea. I mustn't take you away with me now, unless you wish to make an enemy of my wife. You must stay and be heroized for a while. Now mind, don't fail to come to me, if you're in any sort of difficulty," he said.

"I certainly will come, sir."

As we went out into the hall and were shaking hands, he said, "By the way, I've had the doctor's report about you; and Gorlitz is very strong about our sending you to England to see if the environment would bring your memory back. What think you?"

It was all I could manage to prevent him seeing what I did think of it in reality, but I stammered, "I'm quite in your hands, sir."

He laughed softly and with such meaning. "Perhaps we could kill two birds with one stone, then. How would it do for you to take this Miss Caldicott there with you?" And without waiting to hear my reply he went, leaving me in such amazement that I could have almost shouted for joy.

But did he mean it? Or was it just a subtle test? A trap? I was worrying over this when his daughter came out to fetch me in for the "heroizing" business.

Nita was quite a pretty girl, and now that she had recovered from the previous day's shock and had a rich colour in her cheeks and brightly shining eyes, I wasn't surprised at Hans' infatuation.

"I do so want to speak to you alone," she said. "I want to thank——"

"My dear young lady, no one has been doing anything else since I entered the house. Do give me a breathing space."

She laughed; and a particularly sweet merry laugh it was. "I understand; but this is something special; something else, I mean."

"Oh! Shall I guess?"

With a start and a vivid blush she dropped her eyes, fiddled nervously with her blouse for a moment, and then looked up and laughed again. "I don't mind your guessing," she challenged.

"Something to do with——"

She interrupted with some vigorous nods. "You did tell some taradiddles though. Hans didn't really do anything. I saw it all."

"If he had not rushed up to me just when I called him, my dear young lady, none of us would have got out of the scrape as easily as we did," I said seriously. It would never do for her to think small beer of her lover. "It was that and the way he went for the brutes that decided everything and sent them scuttling off."

"But he didn't do anything, Herr Lassen!"

"Do you mean to tell me you didn't see him knock that dark brute, the biggest of them I mean, head foremost into the gutter?"

"Did he really?" she cried, open-eyed.

"If you didn't see that, you can't have seen everything as you said."

"But he told me he hadn't a chance to do a thing."

"Bravo, Hans!" I exclaimed. "Just like him. You wouldn't expect him to spread himself and swagger about his own pluck, would you?"

But all roads lead to Rome and so did this one. "He declared it was all your own doing, and after the way you fought before, I——"

"Come along, let's go to your mother," I broke in, and linking my arm in hers I moved toward the drawing-room door. "Hans is one of the best; if he weren't, he wouldn't be so ready to give me the credit for what he himself did. But we can't have that, you know."

She held me back a moment. "What you said about him has done wonders with mother; changed her right round; and we're going together to the von Reblings. Oh, I do thank you so!" and being only a kid she squeezed my arm ecstatically.

I had to endure a bout of "heroizing," but something came out in the course of it that made me put my thinking cap on afterwards. Nita playing chorus to her mother's praise as she repeated some of the pretty things von Gratzen had said to her about me.

"I've never heard him speak in such a way of any one in my life before," she declared; "and he is so grieved about your extraordinary loss of memory. I think he is even rather provoked about it. He was in England as a young man, you know, and has made several visits there in later years."

"I did not know that," I said, pricking up my ears.

"He loves to talk of the country and the people, and, as you have just come from there, I am sure he is bitterly disappointed because you can't tell him about the things you saw and the people you met and all the rest of it."

"It would have been very interesting to me too," I said.

"You don't know how long you were there, I suppose?"

I shook my head. It seemed less mean somehow to do that than to lie outright in words; and it answered all the purpose quite as well.

"It must be a dreadful thing to lose one's memory," put in Nita.

"It makes everything very difficult," I said with a shrug. It did.

"And yet you can remember everything that's happened since, can't you?" she persisted.

"Perfectly. As perfectly as if I had never had that shock."

"It is odd."

Her mother took up the running again then. "My husband thinks you must have been a very long time in England," she said.

"That's very interesting. Why does he?"

"I don't know exactly. Of course it can only be a guess. But he declares you are much more like an Englishman than one of us. I fancy it's your reserved manner; the way he said you pronounced English to him; and then your knowing something of the English words of command. In fact he took you for an Englishman at first; and he questioned me ever so closely, almost cross-examined me indeed, as I told him, about your fighting yesterday, the way you used your fists, and so on. I was quite amused."

My feeling was anything but amusement, however. "It's a thousand pities I can't tell him anything."

To my surprise this seemed to make her laugh, and I thought it prudent to join in the laugh. But it was something else which had tickled her. "There was one thing he insisted upon worrying us both about. You remember, Nita?"

"Do you mean the kicking, mother?" The latter nodded and Nita continued. "I thought it awfully funny, Herr Lassen, to tell the truth; at least I should have done if it had been any one else; but father always has a strong motive in such things. If he asked me one question he must have asked fifty, I'm sure, taking me right over every incident of yesterday, to find out whether in beating off those awful men you had ever once used your feet. I told him I was sure you hadn't; and he seemed to think it was a most extraordinary thing for a German to have used only his fists. Don't you think it silly?"

"I don't know quite what to think of it," I replied truthfully.

"For shame, Nita, your father is never silly," said her mother severely; but Nita had her own opinion about that, judging by the pout and shrug which the rebuke called forth.

There was a moment's pause, and this offered me a chance to change the subject by putting a question about the war work which both were doing; and soon afterwards I left the house.

It was clear as mud in a wineglass that von Gratzen was still undecided about me. That close questioning about my method of fighting was disquieting; so was the reference to my reserved English manner; and the reference to my pronunciation, especially as I had rather plumed myself on my American accent. It all pointed to the conclusion that my nationality was suspect in his opinion.

He had been in England, too, and I myself knew how well he spoke the language. Altogether he was probably as well able to spot an Englishman as any one in the whole of Berlin. And yet all the while I had been flattering myself that he had been completely hoodwinked.

At the same time no one could have shown me greater kindness. That he was really grateful for the previous day's affair was beyond doubt; it had appeared so to me anyhow; and his implied offer of help—that I should go to him in any trouble—made with such earnestness as to amount almost to insistence, all suggested an intention to be a friend.

There was the reference to Nessa, again; his ready promise that she