_ BOOK VI. IN BALTIMORE
CHAPTER II
But when his lips hunted hers she hid them in her fur collar; and he, imputing it to coquetry, humored her, finding her delicate timidity enhancing and inspiring. He chuckled:
"You shall kiss me yet."
"Not till you have told me what you sent for me for."
"No, feerst you must give me one to proof your good fate--your good face--" He was trying to say "good faith."
She was stubborn, but he was more obstinate still, and he had the advantage of the secret.
And so at last she sighed "All right," and put up her cheek to pay the price. His arms tightened about her, and his lips were not content with her cheek. He fought to win her lips, but she began to tear off her gloves to scratch his eyes out if need be for release.
She was revolted, and she would have marred his beauty if he had not let her go. Once freed, she regained her self-control, for the sake of her mission, and said, with a mock seriousness:
"Now, be careful, or I won't listen to you at all."
Sighing with disappointment, but more determined than ever to make her his, he said:
"Feerst I must esk you, how is your feelink about Chermany?"
"Just as before."
"Chust as vich 'before'? Do you loaf Chermany or hate?"
She was permitted to say only one thing. It came hard:
"I love her, of course."
"
Ach, behuet' dich, Gott!" he cried, and would have clasped her again, but she insisted on discipline. He began his explanation.
"I did told you how, to safe my life in England, I confessed somethings. Many of our people here will not forgive. My only vay to get back vere I have been is to make--as Americans say--to make myself skvare by to do some big vork. I have done a little, not much, but more can be if you help."
"What could I do?"
"Much things, but the greatest--listen once: our Chermany has no fear of America so long America is on this side of the Atlentic Ozean. Americans build ships; Chermany must destroy fester as they build. Already I have made one ship less for America. I cannot pooblish advertisink, but my people shall one day know, and that day comes soon;
Der Tag is almost here--you shall see! Our army grows alvays, in France; and England and France can get no more men. Ven all is ready, Chermany moves like a--a avalenche down a mountain and covers France to the sea.
"On that day our fleet--our glorious ships--comes out from Kiel Canal, vere man holds them beck like big dogs in leash. Oh those beautiful day, Chermany conquers on lent and on sea. France dies, and England's navy goes down into the deep and comes never back.
"
Ach Gott, such a day it shall be--when old England's empire goes into history, into ancient history vit Roossia and Rome and Greece and Bebylonia.
"England gone, France gone, Italy gone--who shall safe America and her armies and her unborn ships, and her cannon and shell and air-ships not yet so much as begun?
"
Der Tag shall be like the lest day ven
Gott makes the graves open and the dead come beck to life. The Americans shall fall on knees before our Kaiser, and he shall render chudgment. Such a payink!
"Now the Yenkees despise us Chermans. Ve cannot go to this city, to that dock. Everywhere is dead-lines and permissions and internment camps and persecutions, and all who are not in prison are afraid. They change their names from Cherman to English now, but soon they shall lift their heads and it shall be the Americans who shall know the dead-lines, the licenses, the internment camps.
"So, Marie Louise, my sveetheart, if you can show and I can show that in the dark night ve did not forget the
Vaterland, ve shall be proud and safe.
"It is to make you safe ven comes
Der Tag I speak to you now. I vish you should share my vork now, so you can share my life efterwards. Now do I loaf you, Marie Louise? Now do I give you proof?"
Mamise was all ashudder with the intensity of his conviction. She imagined an all-conquering Germany in America. She needed but to multiply the story of Belgium, of Serbia, of prostrate Russia. The Kaiser had put in the shop-window of the world samples enough of the future as it would be made by Germany.
And in the mood of that day, with defeatism rife in Europe, and pessimism miasmatic in America, there was reason enough for Nicky to believe in his prophecy and to inspire belief in its possibility. The only impossible thing about it was that the world should ever endure the dominance of Germany. Death would seem better to almost everybody than life in such a civilization as she promised.
Mamise feared the Teutonic might, but she could not for a moment consent to accept it. There was only one thing for her to do, and that was to learn what plans she could, and thwart them. Here within her grasp was the long-sought opportunity to pay off the debt she had incurred. She could be a soldier now, at last. There was no price that Nicky might have demanded too great, too costly, too shameful for her to pay. To denounce him or defy him would be a criminal waste of opportunity.
She said: "I understand. You are right, of course. Let me help in any way I can. I only wish there were something big for me to do."
Nicky was overjoyed. He had triumphed both as patriot and as lover.
"There is a big think for you to do," he said. "You can all you vill."
"Tell me," she pleaded.
"You are in shipyard. This man Davidge goes on building ships. I gave him fair warning. I sinked one ship for him, but he makes more."
"You sank his ship?" Mamise gasped.
"Sure! The
Clara, he called her. I find where she goes to take cargo. I go myself. I row up behind the ship in little boat, and I fasten by the rudder-post under the water, where no one sees, a bomb. It is all innocent till ship moves. Then every time the rudder turns a little screw turns in the machine.
"It turns for two, three days; then--
boom! It makes explosion, tears ship to pieces, and down she goes. And so goes all the next ships if you help again."
"Again? What do you mean by again?"
"It is you, Marie Louise, who sinks the
Clara."
Her laugh of incredulity was hardly more than a shiver of dread.
"
Ja wohl! You did told Chake Nuttle vat Davidge tells you. Chake Nuttle tells me. I go and make sink the ship!"
"Jake Nuddle! It was Jake that told you!" Mamise faltered, seeing her first vague suspicions damnably confirmed.
"Sure! Chake Nuttle is my
Leutnant. He has had much money. He gets more. He shall be rich man after comes
Der Tag. It might be we make him von Nuttle! and you shall be Graefin von Oesten."
Mamise was in an abject terror. The thick trees of the park were spooky as the dim light of the car elicited from the black wall of dark faint details of tree-trunks and naked boughs stark with winter. She was in a hurry to learn the rest and be gone. She spoke with a poor imitation of pride:
"So I have already done something more for Germany. That's splendid. Now tell me what else I can do, for I want to--to get busy right away."
Nicky was too intoxicated with his success to see through her thin disguise.
"You are close by Davidge. Chake Nuttle tells me he is sveet on you. You have his confidence. You can learn what secrets he has. Next time we do not vait for ship to be launched and to go for cargo. It might go some place ve could not find.
"So now ve going blow up those ships before they touch vater--ve blow up his whole yard. You shall go beck and take up again your vork, and ven all is right I come down and get a job. I dress like vorkman and get into the yard. And I bring in enough bombs to blow up all the ships and the cranes and the machines.
"Chake Nuttle tells me Davidge just gets a plate-bending machine. Forty-five t'ousand dollars it costs him, and long time to get. In one minute--poof! Ve bend that plate-bender!"
He laughed a great Teutonic laugh and supposed that she was laughing, too. When he had subsided a little, he said:
"So now you know vat you are to make! You like to do so much for Chermany, yes?"
"Oh yes! Yes!" said Mamise.
"You promise to do vat I send you vord?"
"Yes." She would have promised to blow up the Capitol.
"
Ach, how beautiful you are even in the dark! Kiss me!"
Remembering Judith, she paid that odious price, wishing that she might have the beast's infamous head with a sword. It was a kiss of betrayal, but she felt that it was no Judas-kiss, since Nicky was no Christ.
He told her more of his plans in detail, and was so childishly proud of his superb achievements, past and future, that she could hardly persuade him to take her back to the station. He assured her that there was abundant time, but she would not trust his watch. She explained how necessary it was for her to return to Washington and to Polly Widdicombe's house before midnight. And at last he yielded to her entreaties, opened the door, and leaned out to tell the driver to turn back.
Mamise was uneasy till they were out of the park and into the lighted streets again. But there was no safety here, for as they glided down Charles Street a taxicab going with the reckless velocity of taxicabs tried to cut across their path.
There was a swift fencing for the right of way, and then the two cars came together with a clash and much crumpling of fenders.
The drivers descended to wrangle over the blame, and Mamise had visions of a trip to the police station, with a consequent exposure. But Nicky was alive to the danger of notoriety. He got out and assumed the blame, taking the other driver's part and offering to pay the damages.
The taxicab-driver assessed them liberally at fifty dollars, and Nicky filled his palm with bills, ordering his own driver to proceed. The car limped along with a twisted steering-gear, and Nicky growled thanksgivings over the narrow escape the German Empire had had from losing two of its most valuable agents.
Mamise was sick with terror of what might have been. She saw the collision with a fatal result, herself and Nicky killed and flung to the street, dead together. It was not the fear of dying that froze her soul; it was the posthumous blow she would have given to Davidge's trust in her and all women, the pain she would have inflicted on his love. For to his dying day he would have believed her false to him, a cheap and nasty trickster, sneaking off to another town to a rendezvous with another man. And that man a German!
The picture of his bitter disillusionment and of her own unmerited and eternal disgrace was intolerably real in spite of the fact that she knew it to be untrue, for our imaginations are far more ancient and more irresistible than our late and faltering reliance on the truth; the heavens and hells we fancy have more weight with our credulities than any facts we encounter. We can dodge the facts or close our eyes to them, but we cannot escape our dreams, whether our eyes are wide or sealed.
Mamise could not free herself of this nightmare till she had bidden Nicky good-by the last time and left him in the cab outside the station.
Further nightmares awaited her, for in the waiting-room she could not fight off the conviction that the train would never arrive. When it came clanging in on grinding wheels and she clambered aboard, she knew that it would be wrecked, and the finding of her body in the debris, or its disappearance in the flames, would break poor Davidge's heart and leave her to the same ignominy in his memory.
While the train swung on toward Washington, she added another torment to her collection: how could she save Davidge from Nicky without betraying her sister's husband into the hands of justice? What right had she to tell Davidge anything when her sacred duty to her family and her poor sister must first be heartlessly violated? _