The van, one among a score of similar vehicles, was backed against the curb of a raised path. At the instant Dalroy quitted the window-ledge a railway employé appeared from behind another van on the left, and was clearly bewildered by seeing a well-dressed man springing from such an unusual and precarious perch.
The new-comer, a big, burly fellow, who wore a peaked and lettered cap, a blouse, baggy breeches, and sabots, and carried a lighted hand-lamp, looked what, in fact, he was—an engine-cleaner. In all likelihood he guessed that any one choosing such a curious exit from a waiting-room was avoiding official scrutiny. He hurried forward at once, holding the lamp above his head, because it was dark behind the row of vans.
“Hi, there!” he cried. “A word with you, Freiherr!” The title, of course, was a bit of German humour. Obviously, he was bent on investigating matters. Dalroy did not run. In the street without he heard the tramp of marching troops, the jolting of wagons, the clatter of horses. He knew that a hue and cry could have only one result—he would be pulled down by a score of hands. Moreover, with the sight of that suspicious Teuton face, its customary boorish leer now replaced by a surly inquisitiveness, came the first glimmer of a fantastically daring way of rescuing Irene Beresford.
He advanced, smiling pleasantly. “It’s all right, Heinrich,” he said. “I’ve arrived by train from Berlin, and the station was crowded. Being an acrobat, I took a bounce. What?”
The engine-cleaner was not a quick-witted person. He scowled, but allowed Dalroy to come near—too near.
“I believe you’re a verdammt Engl——” he began.
But the popular German description of a Briton died on his lips, because Dalroy put a good deal of science and no small leaven of brute force into a straight punch which reached that cluster of nerves known to pugilism as “the point.” The German fell as though he had been pole-axed, and his thick skull rattled on the pavement.
Dalroy grabbed the lamp before the oil could gush out, placed it upright on the ground, and divested the man of blouse, baggy breeches, and sabots. Luckily, since every second was precious, he found that he was able to wedge his boots into the sabots, which he could not have kept on his feet otherwise. His training as a soldier had taught him the exceeding value of our Fifth Henry’s advice to the British army gathered before Harfleur:
In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility;
But when the blast of war blows in our ears
Then imitate the action of the tiger.