When Rizzio commented upon the beauty of the passing landscape she assented with a smile and then returned to her own thoughts. Cyril, she knew, would be at Windenberg, for it was to Windenberg that the Yellow Dove had made its flights. She had succeeded in eliciting that much information from her captor the other night at dinner when he was attempting by frankness and hospitality to minimize the brutality of his actions. She had many reasons to believe that he had already regretted that frankness for at every subsequent attempt of hers to get more information about von Stromberg, John Rizzio had turned the subject adroitly or had remained obstinately silent.
She tried to put together the scraps of information she possessed in order to understand just what Cyril’s position at Windenberg might be. He had answered the summons of the secret messenger willingly and at once. That much was in his favor. If they had suspected him before, this immediate obedience must have disarmed them. In the mind of General von Stromberg there could be no possible reason why Cyril should put himself at his mercy. General von Stromberg could not know as she knew that Cyril had another mission to perform. She looked up quickly to find John Rizzio’s dark eyes gazing at her. He frightened her at that moment, for it almost seemed from the expression of his face that he had succeeded in reading her thoughts—and in the light of his previous omniscience even that psychic feat seemed within the realm of possibility. But he merely smiled at her and looked out of the window.
That mission of Cyril’s! What was it? The obtaining of some information necessary to England? Some military secret such as the machinery of ordnance or the chemical mixture of explosive shells? Or was it something more personal, more sinister and dreadful—the death of some high official—perhaps the Emperor himself? She shuddered and shut her eyes, her mind painting unimaginable horrors. Not murder—even for Cyril she could not connive at that. But she must be prepared to do something for him, to help him, if she could by false testimony or if necessary, no matter what they did to her, by silence. If they suspected Cyril, of course he would be kept in ignorance of her arrival. Of all these things and others she thought with ever-growing doubt and timidity. And all the while in the back of her head was the idea of her possible appeal to the American Ambassador at Berlin.
But if she had any hopes that an opportunity would be given her to use the post, or even to be free from surveillance, their arrival at Windenberg speedily diminished them. For upon the platform of the small station a German officer met them and conducted them at once to a closed carriage which started off through the village immediately. The officer and Mr. Rizzio exchanged a few commonplaces which politely included her, but as to the real meaning of her visit and their possible intentions—nothing. So she sank back in her seat and looked out through a small window at the forest into which the road almost immediately passed, reaching their destination in apparent calmness, the high tension of her nerves resolutely schooled to obedience.
A farmhouse in the midst of meadows surrounded by forests, with a broad hospitable door in which they entered, seeing no one. The German officer who directed them showed her the way to a room upstairs and when she was in the room locked the door. She was in the dark, for the shutters of the windows were closed. Her first impulse at reaching a haven of privacy even though a prison was to seek the line of least resistance and give her nerves the relaxation they needed in tears. But she fought the weakness down, going to the windows and peering out through a crack in the shutters. When she tried to open them, she discovered that they were locked or nailed from the outside. She had been a prisoner she knew, upon the yacht, but the firmness with which the hard wood and iron resisted her efforts gave her for the first time the grim reality of her predicament. A prisoner in the heart of a German forest with no way to turn for help! Where was Cyril? Perhaps after all, her surmises had been incorrect. They had sent him away to Berlin. Or perhaps he had gone back in freedom to England. Grave fears assailed her as to Rizzio and his intentions. Once a friend, but after that an unsuccessful lover! What did she know of him or of these people into whose hands he was committing her? Germans! She was ready to believe anything of them after Belgium—the worst! Had Rizzio’s story about bringing her to the head of the Secret Service of Germany been a mere invention to serve other ends? He had told her at Kilmorack House that he would never give her up. Was this what he had meant? A blind terror seized her which seemed for the moment to deaden all her faculties for analysis. The room, though chill, seemed to stifle her, its walls and ceiling to be closing in to crush her. She stumbled to the bed upon which she fell and lay for a long while exhausted and at last the blessing of tears came to her and then, sleep.
How long Doris slept she did not know, but she realized that it could not have been long, for strange ugly figures came into her dreams and strange ugly events followed each other with lightning swiftness. But a knock upon the door brought her back to the terrors of her predicament and she answered it, wondering what was to happen. It was a tall man in the Jäger uniform bearing a tray of food—some toast, eggs and a cup of chocolate. He entered with a smile and a polite greeting in German, putting the tray upon the table and then forcing open the shutters a little so that a narrow bar of sunlight came into the room and lay upon the bright drugget upon the floor. By its light she examined the man. He was tall, grizzled at the temples and walked with a slight limp. He smiled at her again and she could not refrain from answering the smile in kind.
“I hope the Fräulein will enjoy her lunch,” he said. “The toast especially, for I have made it myself. I trust that the Fräulein prefers dry toast.”
“Thanks, anything will do. I am not hungry.”
“I am sorry,” said the Forester, bowing and then continuing in a lower tone: “The Fräulein will not forget that the toast is excellent and that I made it myself.”