The Man with the Clubfoot by Valentine Williams (best books to read in your 20s TXT) 📖

The deuce! This was getting awkward. Who the devil was Stelze?

"Coming at eight is he?" I said, simply for the sake of saying something.

"Jawohl!" replied Frau Schratt. "He was here already this morning. He was nervous, oh! very, and expected you to be here. Already two days he is waiting here to go on."

"So," I said, "he is going to take ... it on with him, is he?" (I knew where he was "going on" to, well enough: he was going to see that document safe into Germany.)

There was a malicious ring in the woman's voice when she spoke of Stelze. I thought I might profit by this. So I drew her out.

"So Stelze called to-day and gave you his orders, did he?" I said, "and ... and took charge of things generally, eh?"

Her little eyes snapped viciously.

"Ach!" she said, "der Stelze is der Stelze. He has power; he has authority; he can make and unmake men. But I ... I in my time have broken a dozen better men than he and yet he dares to tell Anna Schratt that ... that ..."

She raised her voice hysterically, but broke off before she could finish the sentence. I saw she thought she had said too much.

"He won't play that game with me," I said. Strength is the quality that every German, man, woman and child, respects, and strength alone. My safety depended on my showing this ignoble creature that I received orders from no one. "You know what he is. One runs the risk, one takes trouble, one is successful. Then he steps in and gathers the laurels. No, I am not going to wait for him."

The hotel-keeper sprang to her feet, her faded face all ravaged by the shadow of a great fear.

"You wouldn't dare!" she said.

"I would," I retorted. "I've done my work and I'll report to head-quarters and to no one else!"

My eyes fell upon the body.

"Now, what are we going to do with this?" I said. "You must help me, Frau Schratt. This is serious. This must not be found here."

She looked up at me in surprise.

"That?" she said, and she kicked the body with her foot. "Oh, that will be all right with die Schratt! 'It must not be found here'" (she mimicked my grave tone). "It will not be found here, young man!"

And she chuckled with all the full-bodied good humour of a fat person.

"You mean?"

"I mean what I mean, young man, and what you mean," she replied. "When they are in a difficulty, when there are complications, when there is any unpleasantness.. like this ... they remember die Schratt, 'die fesche Anna,' as they called me once, and it is 'gnadige Frau' here and 'gnadige Frau' there and a diamond bracelet or a pearl ring, if only I will do the little conjuring trick that will smooth everything over. But when all goes well, then I am 'old Schratt,' 'old hag,' 'old woman,' and I must take my orders and beg nicely and ... bah!"

Her words ended in a gulp, which in any other woman would have been a sob.

Then she added in her hard harlot's voice:

"You needn't worry your head about him, there! Leave him to me! It's my trade!"

At those words, which covered God only knows what horrors of midnight disappearances, of ghoulish rites with packing-case and sack, in the dark cellars of that evil house, I felt that, could I but draw back from the enterprise to which I had so rashly committed myself, I would do so gladly. Only then did I begin to realize something of the utter ruthlessness, the cold, calculating ferocity, of the most bitter and most powerful enemy which the British Empire has ever had.

But it was too late to withdraw now. The die was cast. Destiny, knocking at my door, had found me ready to follow, and I was committed to whatever might befall me in my new personality.

The German woman turned to go.

"Der Stelze will be here at eight, then," she said. "I suppose the gentleman will take his early morning coffee before."

"I shan't be here," I said. "You can tell your friend I've gone."

She turned on me like a flash.

She was hard as flint again.

"Nein!" she cried. "You stay here!"

"No," I answered with equal force, "not I ..."

"... Orders are orders and you and I must obey!"

"But who is Stelze that he should give orders to me?" I cried.

"Who is...?" She spoke aghast.

"... And you yourself," I continued, "were saying ..."

"When an order has been given, what you or I think or say is of no account," the woman said. "It is an order: you and I know whose order. Let that suffice. You stay here! Good night!"

With that she was gone. She closed the door behind her; the key rattled in the lock and I realized that I was a prisoner. I heard the woman's footfalls die away down the corridor.

That distant clock cleaved the silence of the night with twelve ponderous strokes. Then the chimes played a pretty jingling little tune that rang out clearly in the still, rain-washed air.

I stood petrified and reflected on my next move.

Twelve o'clock! I had eight hours' grace before Stelze, the man of mystery and might, arrived to unmask me and hand me over to the tender mercies of Madame and of Karl. Before eight o'clock arrived I must—so I summed up my position—be clear of the hotel and in the train for the German frontier—if I could get a train—else I must be out of Rotterdam, by that hour.

But I must act and act without delay. There was no knowing when that dead man lying on the floor might procure me another visit from Madame and her myrmidons. The sooner I was out of that house of death the better.

The door was solid; the lock was strong. That I discovered without any trouble. In any case, I reflected, the front-door of the hotel would be barred and bolted at this hour of the night, and I could scarcely dare hope to escape by the front without detection, even if Karl were not actually in the entrance hall. There must be a back entrance to the hotel, I thought, for I had seen that the windows of my room opened on to the narrow street lining the canal which ran at the back of the house.

Escape by the windows was impossible. The front of the house dropped sheer down and there was nothing to give one a foothold. But I remembered the window in the cabinet de toilette giving on to the little air-shaft. That seemed to offer a slender chance of escape.

For the second time that night I opened the casement and inhaled the fetid odours arising from the narrow court. All the windows looking, like mine, upon the air-shaft were shrouded in darkness; only a light still burned in the window beneath the grating with the iron stair to the little yard. What was at the foot of the stair I could not descry, but I thought I could recognize the outline of a door.

From the window of the cabinet de toilette to the yard the sides of the house, cased in stained and dirty stucco, fell sheer away. Measured with the eye the drop from window to the pavement was about fifty feet. With a rope and something to break one's fall, it might, I fancied, be managed....

From that on, things moved swiftly. First with my penknife I ripped the tailor's tab with my name from the inside pocket of my coat and burnt it in the candle; nothing else I had on was marked, for I had had to buy a lot of new garments when I came out of hospital. I took Semlin's overcoat, hat and bag into the cabinet de toilette and stood them in readiness by the window. As a precaution against surprise I pushed the massive mahogany bedstead right across the doorway and thus barricaded the entrance to the room.

From either side of the fireplace hung two bell-ropes, twisted silk cords of faded crimson with dusty tassels. Mounting on the mantelpiece I cut the bell-ropes off short where they joined the wire. Testing them I found them apparently solid—at any rate they must serve. I knotted them together.

Back to the cabinet de toilette I went to find a suitable object to which to fasten my rope. There was nothing in the little room save the washstand, and that was fragile and quite unsuited for the purpose. I noticed that the window was fitted with shutters on the outside fastened back against the wall. They had not been touched for years, I should say, for the iron peg holding them back was heavy with rust and the shutters were covered with dust. I closed the left-hand shutter and found that it fastened solidly to the window-frame by means of massive iron bolts, top and bottom.

Here was the required support for my rope. The poker thrust though the wooden slips of the shutter held the rope quite solidly. I attached my rope to the poker with an expert knot that I had picked up at a course in tying knots during a preposterously dull week I had spent at the base in France. Then I dragged from the bed the gigantic eiderdown pincushion and the two massive pillows, stripping off the pillow-slips lest their whiteness might attract attention whilst they were fulfilling the unusual mission for which I destined them.

At the window of the cabinet de toilette I listened a moment. All was silent as the grave. Resolutely I pitched out the eiderdown into the dark and dirty air shaft. It sailed gracefully earthwards and settled with a gentle plop on the stones of the tiny yard. The pillows followed. The heavier thud they would have made was deadened by the billowy mass of the édredon. Semlin's bag went next, and made no sound to speak of; then his overcoat and hat followed suit.

I noticed, with a grateful heart, that the eiderdown and pillows covered practically the whole of the flags of the yard.

I went back once more to the room and blew out the candle. Then, taking a short hold on my silken rope, I clambered out over the window ledge and started to let myself down, hand over hand, into the depths.

My two bell-ropes, knotted together, were about twenty feet long, so I had to reckon on a clear drop of something over thirty feet. The poker and shutter held splendidly firm, and I found little difficulty in lowering myself, though I barked my knuckles most unpleasantly on the rough stucco of the wall. As I reached the extremity of my rope I glanced downward. The red splash of the eiderdown, just visible in the light from the adjoining window, seemed to be a horrible distance below me. My spirit failed me. My determination began to ebb. I could never risk it.

The rope settled the question for me. It snapped without warning—how it had supported my weight up to then I don't know—and I fell in a heap (and, as it seemed to me at the time, with a most reverberating crash) on to the soft divan I had prepared for my reception.

I came down hard, very hard, but old Madame's plump eiderdown and pillows certainly helped to break my fall. I dropped square on top of the eiderdown with one knee on a pillow and, though shaken and jarred, I found I had broken no bones.

Nor did my sense leave me. In a minute I was up on my feet again. I listened. All was still silent. I cast a glance upwards. The window from which I had descended was still dark. I could see the broken bell-ropes dangling from the shutter, and I noted, with a glow of professional pride, that my expert join between the two ropes had not given. The lower rope had parted in the middle ....

I crammed Semlin's hat on