The sergeant grew a deeper crimson, casting a sour look at the young Britisher. “I will get you a taxi, Herr Officer,” he said to Bob. “But a policeman—where are they? I haven’t a man left here.”
“All right, a taxi will do,” said Bob. “Only, please tell the driver to stick to his job and not run away at the first shot.”
“And if I tell him, will he do it?” grumbled the sergeant. He picked up the telephone once more.
It was half an hour before he succeeded in getting hold of a taxi, and he probably never would have done so if Bob had not told him to offer double tariff to pay the driver for his fear of death. In that half hour Elizabeth drew from Bob as much of the Gordon family’s recent history as he could collect his wits to impart. At the news that General Gordon was stationed at Coblenz she gave a little cry of joyful thanksgiving.
“I could go there with you, Mr. Bob? Say yes! I could the house of your father keep? I will the hardest work do!”
“Elizabeth, don’t be in a hurry,” Bob fenced, casting about for decisive objections. “How can you run away from Berlin like this? It’s idiotic. You may be sorry. Why, you’ve no baggage nor anything.”
“My baggage, Mr. Bob? The best clothes I have are on my back. No people in Berlin have good clothes now, not even the rich.”
Alan said in Bob’s ear, “Boche and all, I feel sorry for her. Let’s buy her a new shawl, if nothing else.”
Bob gave up the struggle of trying to harden his heart against Elizabeth’s pleadings. With Lucy in his mind he said, as the slow taxi neared the hotel, which after all this delay turned out to be on the Pariser Platz itself, some hundred yards from the councillor’s house.
“All right, Elizabeth, I’ll take you to Coblenz. I don’t say to America.”