The Men Who Wrought Part 39

"My next report to your Excellency I hope will be on the result of our endeavors here.

"Your obedient servant, "K 1."

Von Salzinger raised his eyes from the paper. They encountered the profile of the Prince. He regarded it for some moments without friendliness. Then he changed his expression to one of official cordiality.

"Stryj is a capable man," he hazarded.

The reply came without a change in the direction of the Prince's gaze.

"He seems successful in the things of lesser importance. Von Hertzwohl has slipped through his fingers. He may be capable. We shall see. But we want the--body--of Von Hertzwohl. This man has made no attempt to communicate with his daughter--yet. Do you know what that means? I doubt if you do. It means that your first visit to her alarmed them. It warned the Prince, through this man Farlow, that there was danger. You, with your attempt at liaison, are responsible for that. Perhaps that will appeal to your--imagination. Herr von Salzinger, you have made two mistakes. The second is more serious than the first. If we do not secure the person of this man you will be recalled to Germany."

The calmness with which he spoke robbed his words of none of their significance. With his final p.r.o.nouncement his cold eyes were turned full upon his companion, searching his gross face with a glance of inflexible resolve.

Von Salzinger's spirit was tame. But the lash and unjust condemnation goaded him.

"Discipline must be observed, Excellency," he said, with a thickness which warned the other of the effect of his words. "If I am recalled, then I must obey. But it is the authority in Berlin which is to blame for his escape. I came here to track this other, Farlow, and the work at his yards. Von Hertzwohl was still in the Baltic when I visited the Princess. There was no suggestion at the time that the Berlin authority would be sufficiently blundering to permit his escape. It would be more just to find the scapegoat amongst those who were responsible in Berlin. I submit that this matter was in your department, Excellency, of which you are the sole head."

Von Berger's reply came with a flicker of the eyelids.

"Those who are responsible for acts which jeopardize the ends of the Fatherland will reap the consequent punishment--whoever they be. No distinction will be made. That is the discipline of our country, Herr von Salzinger." Then he pointed to a chair.

The other accepted the silent order. But it was with an ill grace. Von Salzinger, for all his discipline, was no weakling. At that moment he was ready to rebel against the iron rod which Von Berger wielded. It would have required but one more sting to set the man's headstrong pa.s.sions loose, whatever, in the end, it might have cost him.

But the Prince was alive to the danger signal. His understanding of human nature was something more than a study--it was an instinct. A secret purpose lay behind his charge. The value of the terror of authority upon a Prussian subject was well understood by him, and none knew better than he that rank and position afforded no emanc.i.p.ation from its peculiar claims. The danger signal, however, warned him that in the present case he was dealing with a man of hot pa.s.sion and physical bravery. To gain full effect for his charge he must not jeopardize his purpose by risking an outbreak of pa.s.sion. The effect would come after Von Salzinger's private reflection through the inborn discipline that was his.

The two men sat facing each other. The truculent regard of Von Salzinger would not be denied. But Von Berger gave no sign. He was entirely master of himself as always, just as he knew he was master of the position at the moment, and of this man.

"That which has happened to us is a greater disaster than the defeat of our armies could have been," he said slowly. "You, as well as everybody else, must realize this. If you do not you must be made to. That is why I have talked plainly. That is why you have indiscreetly permitted your anger to get the better of you. Now you must listen to me while I show you how we can achieve that which Berlin has failed to do, and which this man Stryj has failed to do. I mean lay our hands upon Prince von Hertzwohl. The woman up-stairs has been condemned to death."

"To--death?"

The square figure of Von Salzinger was erect, and his eyes were alight with a horror unusual to him. Then his feelings subsided under incredulity. "But that is a threat--merely."

Von Berger shook his head.

"It is a reality. She will die, if we do not get her father. It is part of my plan for trapping him. The news of her death will be whispered through certain channels which we know will convey it to him--wherever he be. Listen, this is the plan, and this is the work which will be a.s.signed to you."

Half an hour later the Prince rose from his chair and crossed to the window. He stood with his back towards his companion. He had talked long and earnestly in his cold, even voice. Now he waited.

"Well?" he said at last without looking round at the still rec.u.mbent figure behind him. "That is the duty allotted to you. You accept the position?"

For answer Von Salzinger sprang to his feet. His face was purple with shame. The diabolical nature of the plan had sunk deeply into the half-savage heart of the man and found some small grains of genuine manhood there. Even he was revolted, and the habit of discipline tottered and crumpled.

"No! By G.o.d, no!" he cried, with a savage clenching of the fists.

Von Berger remained gazing out at the autumn scene.

"Think again."

But no answer was forthcoming. Von Salzinger's att.i.tude remained, only now it seemed as if his clenching fists were a threat to the man at the window.

"Think again, Herr von Salzinger. Berlin gives no second chance."

The frigidity of the words became a threat that was insupportable. Von Salzinger was a Prussian. Self-preservation counted with him before all things. He saw every hope that had ever been his slipping from his tenacious grasp. To refuse--to refuse. He knew all it meant. He must accept or--kill this man.

His clenching fists relaxed.

"Very good, Excellency. If those are my orders I must execute them."

"Those are your orders."

Von Berger had turned about, and Von Salzinger beheld that terrible gleam in his eyes which Vita had once so painfully witnessed.

Von Salzinger spent a bad evening with himself, and a worse night.

Curiously enough this man regarded himself as not only a man of honor, but chivalrous towards women. How he arrived at the latter conclusion was one of those miracles of psychology which are beyond the understanding of the human mind. To him woman was weaker than the man whose plaything she was set on earth to become. Man's will must be her law. She possessed no rights of her own. Man's strength to enforce his will on all weaker vessels was the only right he could understand. Then woman, in the nature of things, must be intended as his plaything.

But Von Salzinger drew the line hard and fast at the limits of this understanding. Woman must be protected from physical harm and discomfort by the man whose plaything she became. As soon would he deem it right to treat ill any other of those things in life which gave him pleasure. As soon would he expect to see a child tear and rend its favorite toy. Woman must be cared for, woman must be sheltered from the buffets of life outside her own little life. She must be indulged in the feminine luxuries and pastimes. Any other course he believed would be an exhibition of brutality by no means in keeping with the boasted Kultur of his people. The moral and spiritual side of the woman was something which failed entirely to enter into his comprehension. In the moral and spiritual side of life she had no place--no place whatever.

The plan of Von Berger, and the cruel nature of the work a.s.signed to him, had outraged all his ideas of his peculiar form of chivalry. To condemn Vita to death, and wilfully carry out the sentence, failing the success of their plans, was an unthinkable and useless cruelty which he felt he could not take part in. Brutality had here exceeded itself.

So he endured a painful and troubled night as he revolved in his mind the diabolical scheme which Von Berger had unfolded to him.

He contemplated disobedience. Yes, he contemplated defying the terrible power which Von Berger wielded so ruthlessly. But the consequence of such defiance left him panic-stricken, albeit unconvinced. He searched for a way out. But every mode of egress seemed barred to him. Every one except---- She was so very, very beautiful.

A tempting thought possessed him, and surged through the thickly flowing channels of the animal in him. The temptation grew and grew, and, with each pa.s.sing hour, it more surely took possession of all that was most obstinate in him. He was yielding to it. He knew. He left Von Berger out of his calculations, he left all thoughts of the purposes of his Government out and thought only of himself, and this new temptation which dangled before his greedy eyes. Should he yield to the temptation?

His mind went back again of a sudden to the man, Von Berger, whom he knew he hated as much as he feared. It seemed so hopeless to oppose him, hopeless to oppose Berlin. Yet he felt he ought to. Then his thoughts flew again to Vita, and conjured visions of her perfect charms--and so he fell asleep.

Vita's days and nights had become one long nightmare of terror. The terror for herself had undermined all her confidence for her father, and in her lover's ability to succor. The hours of racking thought since learning the fate awaiting herself left her beautiful face drawn, and her spirit bowed and crushed. There was no hope anywhere.

From the moment she had first recognized Frederick von Berger, a dreary hopelessness had set in, and now she knew that her worst apprehensions were to be more than fulfilled. She knew something of the machinery he controlled, and she knew how hopeless it was that Ruxton, with all his manhood and confidence, could ever hope to contend with it and defeat it. Her father, she knew, would be hunted down and--punished. While she--she must inevitably fall a victim of the sentence pa.s.sed upon her here in this desolate, secret prison.

The torture she endured was insupportable. Every moment of the day she was watched either by the hard-faced matron of the place, or by her own maid, Francella. She had railed at the latter for her cruel perfidy, she had appealed to the former. But in neither case had she elicited the smallest spark of sympathy.

The matron had merely shrugged her broad shoulders.

"You would sell our Fatherland to an enemy. You are not fit to live,"

she had said, with a coldness which none can display more effectively than a woman.

In Francella she met only the heartless cruelty of a servant who finds it in her power to rend a late mistress.

"Some day I take my children to the grave of the woman who would have betrayed our country, and I make them spit upon it."

So Vita was left to nurse her terror in the awful solitude and silence of the splendid halls of this isolated mansion.