The Man Without a Memory

by Arthur W. Marchmont

I declined the opening without thanks. "I'm just as sorry as you are; but I suppose we can clear up the tangle at Berlin."

"Oh, yes. I've wired to the von Reblings to meet our train. Of course you'll understand that I have some men at hand here. It is better you should know that," he added in an unpleasantly suggestive tone.

But I only laughed. "I wish you would send one of them to get me something to eat."

"I will, of course;" and he looked out into the corridor, beckoned some one and gave him the necessary order, returned to his seat and busied himself with the papers from his despatch case.

A substantial meal for us both was brought to the compartment, and although very little was said as we ate it, I was conscious that a considerable change had come over the relations between us. His manner had become distinctly official, and I understood that I was virtually under arrest until at least we reached Berlin.

Afterwards he went back to his papers, suggesting that I might like to sleep; so I leant back in my corner and gave myself up to my thoughts.

They were anything but pleasant. He had given me a shock that was almost as great as the explosion on the Burgen. I was in the very devil's own mess. I had no delusions about my fate if I was held to be an English spy; and that would almost certainly be the case if the von Reblings declared I was not Lassen. That that would be their decision was a million to one chance. It was a sheer impossibility that they would be unable to recognize a relation who was actually engaged to the daughter; and how to meet the difficulty baffled me.

I was right in the eye of the net. The fact that there had been only two men as cabin passengers on the Burgen was like a mine sprung under my feet. I had reckoned on being able to recover my memory at any necessary moment; but this cut the ground from under me. I couldn't become Jimmy. That was a cert. And I certainly couldn't become any one else, because every lie I might tell would most surely be scrupulously investigated.

Poor Nessa! I was a heap more troubled about her and her mother than about myself. Whether the von Reblings knew me or not, the result would be much the same to her. Tied up as the betrothed of another girl, it would be next to impossible in the short time at my command to do a thing to find Nessa. The only possibility that occurred to me was that if the million to one chance came off and the von Reblings didn't denounce me at once as a fraud, I might manage to lose myself in the city somehow and set to work on the search.

But even in that case I should be in hourly danger of discovery; a state of things which would make it virtually impossible to carry on the search with any hope of success.