XXXII
Every waking ear in the neighborhood, and there were now a good many, pricked with curiosity as the Sergeant half-rose, and, inclining his inflamed countenance and bearded lips toward the ear of his selected confidant, continued in a hoarse rumbling undertone:
"Two of those verdammte English newspaper-scribblers that have got on the blind side of Their Excellencies and His Majesty the Commander-in-Chief were at the station at Berlin picking up information the very day we entrained. Well do I know that paunchy little one with the big beard, who has, they say, as many Orders as a Field-Marshal, and who will venture to thrust himself upon Our Moltke in his study, and accost His Excellency Count Bismarck upon the very doorsteps of the Reichstag itself. They got off three trains ahead of us, paying for men and horses and trucks, to Cologne; and if this fellow were not a knave, would he not have gone with them? Ach, ja! It would have been so! But they did not even know him, though he pretended to touch his cap to them.... I tell you he turned as red as beetroot when they passed him without a glance. Nu, nu! he is an unlicensed meddler, if not a French spy, speaking English. Do they not teach it at their Lycées? And he has got on the blind side of the Commandant at Berlin and the Herr Colonel. But I, Sergeant Schmidt, have my weather-eye open, and it sticks in my gizzard that our so-glorious Moltke, let alone His Majesty, should with so much civility these quill-driving vagabonds encourage; when they say the French Emperor has given orders that, should the like of them about the heels of his Army Corps be caught sniffing, they are to be shot."
"Possibly the Napoleon has more deficiencies to be ashamed of than we have, Herr Sergeant!"
Taking a deep breath, the Sergeant blew himself out to the utmost of his capacity and bellowed:
"Himmeldonnerwetter! are you going to insinuate in my presence that the Prussian Army has anything at all to be ashamed of? Now you've waked this rascal with your racket, maybe you'll sit on his head while I go through his pockets. Here, Braun and Kleiss, catch hold of his arms and legs!"
Waking in the chiaroscuro of the smoke-filled, lamplit troop-carriage to find himself in the brawny grip of the aforesaid Braun and Kleiss, P. C. Breagh fought for freedom, yelling as one possessed, and lashing out with all his might. In the heat of the scrimmage that followed, as a muscular arm in a coarse blue sleeve came round his neck from behind and choked him into silence, somebody said in his ear:
"Keep still ... not hurt you! Only going ... search!"
And before he had rallied his wits sufficiently to realize that the warning was in English, a pair of extra-sized hands had deftly emptied the pockets of the old brown Norfolk jacket, relieved him of the cherished binoculars, a brand-new revolver, and a purse and letter-case that had been hidden in his bosom next the skin. Then, a soiled newspaper having been spread upon the carriage-bench and the pieces of conviction arranged upon it, Sergeant Schmidt, surrounded by an audience of admiring inferiors, commenced to interrogate their owner:
"What is this?" He held up the well-used briar-root. "A pipe, and yet it might be used to conceal dispatches or tracings. A pistol also. On the principle of the French mitraille, with many barrels. Prisoner, answer! Where did you get this?"
Returned P. C. Breagh, scarlet and breathing shortly:
"I bought it in Berlin from a pawnbroker in the Landsberger-strasse. By what right..."
Someone behind hacked him on the ankle, driving home the axiom that silence was wisdom, and he subsided, boiling within, as the Colt, a nearly brand-new six-barreled weapon, seen and purchased, together with its box of three hundred cartridges, for seven of P. C. Breagh's cherished sovereigns, was laid by, while the Sergeant, breathing stertorously, examined the contents of the purse. He snorted, letting the bright coins run through his greedy fingers like yellow water:
"Nine pieces of gold. French coins, too, or call me a sheepshead!"
"At your service, Herr Sergeant," put in the smooth, well-bred voice of Valverden, following on the ominous murmur that had greeted the Sergeant's announcement; "the money is as English as this revolver is American. Prove the first for yourself. When has the French Emperor figured in a woman's hair and corsage?"
A guffaw went up. P. C. Breagh, recognizing the voice which had spoken from behind him, realized that here was a friend in need. But an attempt at speech on his part was frustrated by an ominous tightening of the muscular arm that had previously half-strangled him. The Sergeant, his fiery pot-zeal rather damped by frequent set-backs, snapped-to the purse and said, keeping it tucked in one capacious palm, as he shook out the contents of the letter-case:
"So! He is cunning, like many another of his kidney. Yet it may be here is proof sufficient to show him a rogue! Who here reads French?"
"I do, Herr Sergeant." Once again the well-bred voice of Valverden. The Sergeant grunted surlily:
"There is another here ... Private Kunz!"
The spectacled soldier who read Homer in the original, and who had been violently displaced when the muscular Braun and the athletic Kleiss had obeyed the order to pinion the suspected one, shot bolt upright in his distant corner, saluted and said in a meek voice:
"At your service, Herr Sergeant!"
"Private Kunz, canst thou read French?"
"Zu befehl, Herr Sergeant!" The spectacled private added as the Sergeant passed him over the contents of the letter-case: "But these letters are not in French. Two are in English, and one is in German."
The Sergeant scowled and thundered:
"Thou art an ass!"
"At your service, Herr Sergeant," mildly agreed the spectacled soldier, "but Private Count von Schön-Valverden, who understands the French and English languages, will corroborate my statement if you will kindly refer to him."
"'Kindly refer.' ... 'Corroborate my statement.' ..." The Sergeant, purple in the gills, and with bolting eyes, loosened his collar-hook before he launched into profanity: "Potzblitz! Never did I meet with language to equal thine. What wert thou as a civilian before thou didst enter the Army?"
"Graduate of the University of Würzburg, Herr Sergeant," faltered the spectacled Guardsman, "and Privat-docent in Chemistry and Philosophy. Occupying the post of assistant to Herr Weber, Dispensing Chemist, of Strahlsund, near Stettin."
"Sehrgut, Private Kunz," said the Sergeant, conscious of the grins lurking behind the respectful faces about him. "Tell us plainly, and without lying or skipping, what are these papers the fellow has got on him? Put him back on the seat, Braun and Kleiss, and sit on either side, each taking a wing. Now, Kunz, do thou begin!"
And the little sheaf that had been transferred from the horny clutches of the Sergeant, to the yellow-stained sensitive-looking fingers of the chemist's assistant, was subjected to the scrutiny of the weak eyes behind his large round spectacles, as sleepy-looking Westphalian villages of cottages with tall tiled roofs, grouped about squat, low-spired churches; and leagues of rye and barley, almost ready for the sickle, streamed by the half-glazed windows, all black in shadow and white in the clear, pure radiance of August's crescent moon.
Item, a worn letter in English handwriting of the legal kind, dated in the January previous, and directed to P. C. Breagh, Esq., Care of Frau Busch, Jaeger-strasse, Schwärz-Brettingen. Item, a passport issued some ten days previously, to the same person on application at the London Foreign Office, on disbursement of the sum of Two Shillings, and authorizing him, on payment of the proper dues and at his own risk, to proceed via Ostend to Berlin. Item, another passport, procured as a last resource—granting the said P. C. Breagh permission on the part of the Berlin Foreign Office, and as a strictly non-combatant British subject, to transfer himself, via Belgium and Luxembourg, to French territory. Lastly, a half-sheet of tough Chancellory note-paper, covered with the large, closely-set, vigorous handwriting of the man who was meant when newspaper-editors and politicians, diplomats and monarchs, guttersnipes and generals, talked of Prussia. What would happen when that came under the spectacles of the ex-chemist's assistant? P. C. Breagh thirsted to know.
What happened was, that the Sergeant, rendered impatient by delay on the part of the spectacled one, grabbed at the documents and dropped them on the unclean floor. The half-sheet of Chancellory note was picked up by Valverden. He gave it one glance and said, smoothly and with an indefinable change in the tone of the voice that P. C. Breagh had thought so friendly:
"I would put this paper back with the rest and return them to their owner, Herr Sergeant, and prosecute no further inquiries, if I were you."
"Nu? ... Was? I cannot read the crabbed stuff that is written and printed on the other papers," grunted the Sergeant. "But this seems wholesome German.... What says it, then? Tell us, you, since that gimpel in glasses can make nothing of it, for all his brag."
Valverden obeyed and read:
"The bearer of this is an Englishman, named Patrick Carolan Breagh, speaking German with a slight accent. Height five feet nine inches, age 23. Hair reddish and curling, complexion fresh, much freckled. Short, straight nose, gray eyes with dots of yellow, chin square, slightly cleft. Further his desire to proceed with our troops, if possible. I can personally vouch for his honesty and good faith.
"BERLIN,
"July, 1870."