"Are you fit to go on?"
"Yes--but not----" She paused and searched his face anxiously. "Do you think that Herr Rowland could have failed?"
He shrugged.
"How can I tell, Fräulein," he replied softly.
CHAPTER XXIV
A NIGHT ADVENTURE
After clasping Frau Nisko warmly by the hand, Rowland left Number 16 Schwaiger Strasse and went out into the darkness of a small street at the rear of the house. The clock on the kitchen wall had told the hour of ten and he realized that he had a little more than an hour to accomplish his purpose of boarding the train for Lindau. It would be suicide to attempt without a passport the purchase of a ticket at the Haupt Bahnhof, and it was with a feeling of great uncertainty as to the result of the project that he made his way across the bridge and in the general direction of the railway station. He knew that any appearance of hesitation in his manner in the streets would lead to questions and arrest and so whistling cheerfully to keep up his courage he went his way along the Sommer Strasse as far as the Schwanthaler Museum (the very one of which he, Prof. Leo Knaus, was curator) when, the Haupt Bahnhof looming in sight, he turned to his left and followed a street which ran parallel to the railroad tracks. Having come this far he felt more encouraged for he was now in a region of breweries and factories where his rough clothes were less conspicuous than in the fashionable region through which he had just passed. He realized that he wasn't very pretty to look at, for there was a six days' growth of beard upon his chin and the dust of the garret had completed the damage to Georg Senf's clothing, begun the other night upon the roofs.
Poor Senf! It was prison for him--and for Weiss and Benz. The hour was not ripe for mutiny in Germany--but there had been signs.... Next winter when the pinch of hunger came....
But this was no time to be thinking of misfortunes of the Munich Committeemen. Prison for a while and then conditional release, with a warning.... His own case was more desperate and required a desperate expedient--to board the eleven-thirteen train without buying a ticket. He went on until he reached the edge of the brewery district where he stopped in a small tobacconist's to buy pipe tobacco and ask questions. The man behind the counter was old and querulous, but Rowland found out what he wished to know--that he had already passed the switches of the freight yards and that the straight double track to Pasing began just here at Friedenheim. Rowland didn't wait to discuss the matter further, for a clock upon the shelf indicated that the hour of eleven was near, and so, leaving the old man staring after him, he went out abruptly and strode rapidly eastward, crossing the tracks and at last coming to a stop in the shadow of an abutment close to the rails.
A train passed going toward the city and another approached him going eastward, but it could scarcely be the time yet. So he waited and watched it pass--(a train of goods-cars)--calculating its speed and figuring on his chances of success. If the speed of the eleven thirteen was no greater than this.... But what if he missed it--or boarded a train for Berlin by mistake? He would have to take that chance. Silence except for the distant rattle of the train that had passed. He glanced around him. There was no one near, no lights, no watchmen--no police. He had chosen well. There was a cinder path beside the track--if for few seconds he could get up as much speed as the train--that was all he needed, that and a good grip on something....