A word, a sign, the slightest aid to such a prisoner, and he would be as guilty as his cousin. Hammersley knew that he did Udo no injustice in supposing that any help from such a source was out of the question. If Udo had been caught in England as Hammersley was caught in Germany, Hammersley knew that he could do nothing to save him.
But Lindberg! Here the case was different. It was Lindberg whose life Hammersley had saved three years ago in this very forest, when the Forester had stumbled and fallen in the path of an angry boar who would have gored him to death, if Hammersley had not shot the beast. Lindberg the Forester it was, who, in his hours off duty, had been Hammersley’s chosen companion in many a hunt up through the rocky gorges of these very mountains, every stick and stone of which he knew as he knew his own rugged face in the mirror. It was Lindberg who had been so useful in keeping him informed of the exact state of affairs at Blaufelden. It was Lindberg who had learned of the microphone that von Stromberg had installed and it was Lindberg who had listened at the receiver upstairs in von Stromberg’s room to the conversation when the Councilor had told Captain Wentz the nature of the documents from Berlin and the hour of their arrival.
Already Lindberg had repaid a hundredfold the debt of Hammersley’s service and it was quite possible, now that Hammersley’s actual mission had been discovered, that he would take to cover, his mind clear in the thought that he had done all that could be expected of him. But there was a warm affection between the two, born of many a long day in the open and many a night by the campfire where the old man had taught him the Foresters’ secrets of the trees, the birds in their branches and of the many four-legged things that scurried beneath them. They had often talked, too, of many other things, and Hammersley had learned that Lindberg’s politics were those that one learns under the open sky—the eternal peace of Nature, before which war and men, its armed instruments, were a blasphemy.
Perhaps Lindberg would find a way. But what way? How? Udo von Winden, too, was aware of the woodcraft fellowship, for often he had made their duet a trio. Hammersley knew that Udo von Winden as yet suspected nothing of the services Lindberg had rendered him and he wondered whether in this pass the ties of kinship would be strong enough to keep him silent as to the possible capabilities of the old Forester for mischief in Hammersley’s behalf.
Hammersley hoped. He clung to the thought of Lindberg’s fidelity and affection as a dying man clings to the hope of Heaven. He tried to analyze the old man’s capacities for sympathy and courage. To help a man in his position seemed to require larger stores of both of these qualities than human clay was molded for. Lindberg did not fear death, he knew, but the death he courted was the kind of death Hammersley had saved him from, a good death in a fair game with a noble enemy, not the kind of death that awaited Hammersley, a cold, machine-made death against a kitchen wall. And he must know as Hammersley knew that this was what would follow.
The dusk faded into dark and the soldier lit a candle. Hammersley turned his head and examined him attentively. His face was unfamiliar at Blaufelden, one of the men probably sent down at von Stromberg’s orders from the upper district to be useful in just this emergency. Von Stromberg would make no mistakes, of course. He never did make mistakes. He had enough men about him to cope with the situation safely. He would leave no opportunity for his plans to miscarry. Any opportunity, should there be one, must be created. Hammersley managed to wriggle into a sitting posture on the bed and spoke to his captor in German.
“You wouldn’t mind my having a smoke, would you?” he asked.
The man looked at him, debating the matter.
“Just get into the side pocket of my jacket and fish out my pipe and tobacco, mein junger. I need a smoke badly. And so would you if you were going to be shot in the morning.”
“Ach, wohl. I see no harm in that, mein Herr. You cannot smoke yourself away.”