Many a long starlit hour alone on the deck of the Castle Claire Captain Woodhouse found himself tortured by a persistent vision. Far back over the northern horizon lay Europe, trembling and breathless before the imminent disaster—a great field of grain, each stalk bearing for its head the helmeted head of a man. Out of the east came a glow, which spread from boundary to boundary, waxed stronger in the wind of hate. Finally the fire, devastating, insensate, began its sweep through the close-standing mazes of the grain. Somewhere in this fire-glow and swift leveling under the scythe of the flame was a girl, alone, appalled. Woodhouse could see her as plainly as though a cinema was unreeling swift pictures before him—the girl caught in this vast acreage of fire, in the standing grain, with destruction drawing nearer in incredible strides. He saw her wide eyes, her streaming hair—saw her running through the grain, whose heads were the helmeted heads of men. Her hands groped blindly and she was calling—calling, with none to come in aid. Jane Gerson alone in the face of Europe's burning!
Strive as he would, Woodhouse could not screen this picture from his eyes. He tried to hope that ere this, discretion had conquered her resolution to "make good," and that she had fled from Paris, one of the great army of refugees who had already begun to pour out of the gates of France when he passed through the war-stunned capital a few days before. But, no; there was no mistaking the determination he had read in those brown eyes that day on the express from Calais. "I couldn't go scampering back to New York just because somebody starts a war over here." Brave, yes; but hers was the bravery of ignorance. This little person from the States, on her first venture into the complex life of the Continent, could not know what war there would mean; the terror and magnitude of it. And now where was she? In Paris, caught in its hysteria of patriotism and darkling fear of what the morrow would bring forth? Or had she started for England, and become wedged in the jam of terrified thousands battling for place on the Channel steamers? Was her fine self-reliance upholding her, or had the crisis sapped her courage and thrown her back on the common helplessness of women before disaster?
Captain Woodhouse, the self-sufficient and aloof, whose training had been all toward suppression of every instinct save that in the line of duty, was surprised at himself. That a little American inconnu—a "business person," he would have styled her under conditions less personal—should have come into his life in this definite way was, to say the least, highly irregular. The man tried to swing his reason as a club against his heart—and failed miserably. No, the fine brave spirit that looked out of those big brown eyes would not be argued out of court. Jane Gerson was a girl who was different, and that very difference was altogether alluring. Woodhouse caught himself going over the incidents of their meeting. Fondly he reviewed scraps of their conversation on the train, lingering on the pat slang she used so unconsciously.
Was it possible Jane Gerson ever had a thought for Captain Woodhouse? The man winced a little at this speculation. Had it been fair of him when he so glibly practised a deception on her? If she knew what his present business was, would she understand; would she approve? Could this little American ever know, or believe, that some sorts of service were honorable?
Just before the Castle Claire raised the breakwater of Alexandria came a wireless, which was posted at the head of the saloon companionway:
"Germany declares war on Russia. German flying column reported moving through Luxemburg on Belgium."
The fire was set to the grain.
Upon landing, Captain Woodhouse's first business was to go to a hotel on the Grand Square, which is the favorite stopping place of officers coming down from the Nile country. He fought his way through the predatory hordes of yelling donkey boys and obsequious dragomans at the door, and entered the palm-shaded court, which served as office and lounge. Woodhouse paused for a second behind a screen of palm leaves and cast a quick eye around the court. None of the loungers there was known to him. He strode to the desk.
"Ah, sir, a room with bath, overlooking the gardens on the north side—very cool." The Greek clerk behind the desk smiled a welcome.
"Perhaps," Woodhouse answered shortly, and he turned the register around to read the names of the recent comers. On the first page he found nothing to interest him; but among the arrivals of the day before he saw this entry: "C. G. Woodhouse, Capt. Sig. Service; Wady Halfa." After it was entered the room number: "210."
Woodhouse read right over the name and turned another page a bit impatiently. This he scanned with seeming eagerness, while the clerk stood with pen poised.
"Um! When is the first boat out for Gibraltar?" Woodhouse asked.
"Well, sir, the Princess Mary is due to sail at dawn day after to-morrow," the Greek answered judiciously. "She is reported at Port Said to-day, but, of course, the war——"
Woodhouse turned away.
"But you wish a room, sir—nice room, with bath, overlooking——"
"No."
"You expected to find a friend, then?"
"Not here," Woodhouse returned bruskly, and passed out into the blinding square.
He strode swiftly around the statue of Mehemet Ali and plunged into the bedlam crowd filling a side street. With sure sense of direction, he threaded the narrow alleyways and by-streets until he had come to the higher part of the mongrel city, near the Rosetta Gate. There he turned into a little French hotel, situated far from the disordered pulse of the city's heart; a sort of pension, it was, known only to the occasional discriminating tourist. Maitre Mouquère was proud of the anonymity his house preserved, and abhorred poor, driven Cook's slaves as he would a plague. In his Cap de Liberté one was lost to all the world of Alexandria.
Thither the captain's baggage had been sent direct from the steamer. After a glass with Maitre Mouquère and a half hour's discussion of the day's great news, Woodhouse pleaded a touch of the sun, and went to his room. There he remained, until the gold of sunset had faded from the Mosque of Omar's great dome and all the city from Pharos and its harbor hedge of masts to El Meks winked with lights. Then he took carriage to the railroad station and entrained for Ramleh. What South Kensington is to London and the Oranges are to New York, Ramleh is to Alexandria—the suburb of homes. There pretty villas lie in the lap of the delta's greenery, skirted by canals, cooled by the winds off Aboukir Bay and shaded by great palms—the one beauty spot in all the hybrid product of East and West that is the present city of Alexander.
Remembering directions he had received in Berlin, Woodhouse threaded shaded streets until he paused before a stone gateway set in a high wall. On one of the pillars a small brass plate was inset. By the light of a near-by arc, Woodhouse read the inscription on it:
EMIL KOCH, M.D.,
32 Queen's Terrace.
He threw back his shoulders with a sudden gesture, which might have been taken for that of a man about to make a plunge, and rang the bell. The heavy wooden gate, filling all the space of the arch, was opened by a tall Numidian in house livery of white. He nodded an affirmative to Woodhouse's question, and led the way through an avenue of flaming hibiscus to a house, set far back under heavy shadow of acacias. On every hand were gardens, rank foliage shutting off this walled yard from the street and neighboring dwellings. The heavy gate closed behind the visitor with a sharp snap. One might have said that Doctor Koch lived in pretty secure isolation.
Woodhouse was shown into a small room off the main hall, by its furnishings and position evidently a waiting-room for the doctor's patients. The Numidian bowed, and disappeared. Alone, Woodhouse rose and strolled aimlessly about the room, flipped the covers of magazines on the table, picked up and hefted the bronze Buddha on the onyx mantel, noted, with a careless glance, the position of the two windows in relation to the entrance door and the folding doors, now shut, which doubtless gave on the consultation room. As he was regarding these doors they rolled back and a short thickset man, with a heavy mane of iron-gray hair and black brush of beard, stood between them. He looked at Woodhouse through thick-lensed glasses, which gave to his stare a curiously intent bent.
"My office hours are from two to four, afternoons," Doctor Koch said. He spoke in English, but his speech was burred by a slight heaviness on the aspirants, reminiscent of his mother tongue. The doctor did not ask Woodhouse to enter the consultation room, but continued standing between the folding doors, staring fixedly through his thick lenses.
"I know that, Doctor," Woodhouse began apologetically, following the physician's lead and turning his tongue to English. "But, you see, in a case like mine I have to intrude"—it was "haf" and "indrude" as Woodhouse gave these words—"because I could not be here during your office hours. You will pardon?"
Doctor Koch's eyes widened just perceptibly at the hint of a Germanic strain in his visitor's speech—just a hint quickly glossed over. But still he remained standing in his former attitude of annoyance.
"Was the sun, then, too hot to bermit you to come to my house during regular office hours? At nights I see no batients—bositively none."
"The sun—perhaps," Woodhouse replied guardedly. "But as I happened just to arrive to-day from Marseilles, and your name was strongly recommended to me as one to consult in a case such as mine——"
"Where was my name recommended to you, and by whom?" Doctor Koch interrupted in sudden interest.
Woodhouse looked at him steadily. "In Berlin—and by a friend of yours," he answered.
"Indeed?" The doctor stepped back from the doors, and motioned his visitor into the consultation room.
Woodhouse stepped into a large room lighted by a single green-shaded reading lamp, which threw a white circle of light straight down upon a litter of thin-bladed scalpels in a glass dish of disinfectant on a table. The shadowy outlines of an operating chair, of high-shouldered bookcases, and the dull glint of instruments in a long glass case were almost imperceptible because of the centering of all light upon the glass dish of knives. Doctor Koch dragged a chair out from the shadows, and, carelessly enough, placed it in the area of radiance; he motioned Woodhouse to sit. The physician leaned carelessly against an arm of the operating chair; his face was in the shadow save where reflected light shone from his glasses, giving them the aspect of detached eyes.
"So, a friend—a friend in Berlin told you to consult me, eh? Berlin is a long way from Ramleh—especially in these times. Greater physicians than I live in Berlin. Why——"
"My friend in Berlin told me you were the only physician who could help me in my peculiar trouble." Imperceptibly the accenting of the aspirants in Woodhouse's speech grew more marked; his voice took on a throaty character. "By some specialists my life even has been set to end in a certain year, so sure is fate for those afflicted like myself."
"So? What year is it, then, you die?" Doctor Koch's strangely detached eyes—those eyes of glass glowing dimly in the shadow—seemed to flicker palely with a light all their own. Captain Woodhouse, sitting under the white spray of the shaded incandescent, looked up carelessly to meet the stare.
"Why, they give me plenty of time to enjoy myself," he answered, with a light laugh. "They say in 1932——"
"Nineteen thirty-two!" Doctor Koch stepped lightly to the closed folding doors, trundled them back an inch to assure himself nobody was in the waiting-room, then closed and locked them. He did similarly by a hidden door on the opposite side of the room, which Woodhouse had not seen. After that he pulled a chair close to his visitor and sat down, his knees almost touching the other's. He spoke very low, in German:
"If your trouble is so serious that you will die—in 1932, I must, of course, examine you for—symptoms."
For half a minute the two men looked fixedly at each other. Woodhouse's right hand went slowly to the big green scarab stuck in his cravat. He pulled the pin out, turned it over in his fingers, and by pressure caused the scarab to pop out of the gold-backed setting holding it. The bit of green stone lay in the palm of his left hand, its back exposed. In the hollowed back of the beetle was a small square of paper, folded minutely. This Woodhouse removed, unfolded and passed to the physician. The latter seized it avidly, holding it close to his spectacled eyes, and then spreading it against the light as if to read a secret water mark. A smile struggled through the jungle of his beard. He found Woodhouse's hand and grasped it warmly.
"Your symptom tallies with my diagnosis, Nineteen Thirty-two," he began rapidly. "Five days ago we heard from—the Wilhelmstrasse—you would come. We have expected you each day, now. Already we have got word through to our friends at Gibraltar of the plan; they are waiting for you."
"Good!" Woodhouse commented. He was busy refolding the thin slip of paper that had been his talisman, and fitting it into the back of the scarab. "Woodhouse—he is already at the Hotel Khedive; saw his name on the register when I landed from the Castle this morning." Now the captain was talking in familiar German.
"Quite so," Doctor Koch put in. "Woodhouse came down from Wady Halfa yesterday. Our man up there had advised of the time of his arrival in Alexandria to the minute. The captain has his ticket for the Princess Mary, which sails for Gibraltar day after to-morrow at dawn."
Number Nineteen Thirty-two listened to Doctor Koch's outlining of the plot with set features; only his eyes showed that he was acutely alive to every detail. Said he:
"But Woodhouse—this British captain who's being transferred from the Nile country to the Rock; has he ever served there before? If he has, why, when I get there—when I am Captain Woodhouse, of the signal service—I will be embarrassed if I do not know the ropes."
"Seven years ago Woodhouse was there for a very short time," Doctor Koch explained. "New governor since then—changes all around in the personnel of the staff, I don't doubt. You'll have no trouble."
Silence between them for a minute, broken by the captain:
"Our friends at Gib—who are they, and how will I know them?"
The doctor bent a sudden glance of suspicion upon the lean face before him. His thick lips clapped together stubbornly.
"Aha, my dear friend; you are asking questions. In my time at Berlin the Wilhelmstrasse taught that all orders and information came from above—and from there only. Why——"
"I suppose in default of other information I may ask the governor to point out the Wilhelmstrasse men," Woodhouse answered, with a shrug. "I was told at Berlin I would learn all that was necessary to me as I went along, therefore, I supposed——"
"Come—come!" Doctor Koch patted the other's shoulder, with a heavy joviality. "So you will. When you arrive at Gib, put up at the Hotel Splendide, and you will not be long learning who your friends are. I, for instance, did not hesitate overmuch to recognize you, and I am under the eyes of the English here at every turn, even though I am a naturalized English citizen—and of undoubted loyalty." He finished with a booming laugh.
"But Woodhouse; you have arranged a way to have him drop out of sight before the Princess Mary sails? There will be no confusion—no slip-up?"
"Do not fear," the physician reassured. "Everything will be arranged. His baggage will leave the Hotel Khedive for the dock to-morrow night; but it will not reach the dock. Yours——"
"Will be awaiting the transfer of tags at the Cap de Liberté—Mouquère's little place," the captain finished. "But the man himself—you're not thinking of mur——"
"My dear Nineteen Thirty-two," Doctor Koch interrupted, lifting protesting hands; "we do not use such crude methods; they are dangerous. The real Captain Woodhouse will not leave Alexandria—by sea, let us say—for many months. Although I have no doubt he will not be found in Alexandria the hour the Princess Mary sails. The papers he carries—the papers of identity and of transfer from Wady Halfa to Gibraltar—will be in your hands in plenty of time. You——"
The doctor stopped abruptly. A hidden electric buzzer somewhere in the shadowed room was clucking an alarm. Koch pressed a button at the side of the operating chair. There was a sound beyond closed doors of some one passing through a hallway; the front door opened and closed.
"Some one at the gate," Doctor Koch explained. "C?sar, my playful little Numidian—and an artist with the Bedouin dagger is C?sar—he goes to answer."
Their talk was desultory during the next minutes. The doctor seemed restless under the suspense of a pending announcement as to the late visitor. Finally came a soft tapping on the hidden door behind Woodhouse. The latter heard the doctor exchange whispers with the Numidian in the hallway. Finally, "Show him into the waiting-room," Koch ordered. He came back to where the captain was sitting, a puzzled frown between his eyes.
"An Englishman, C?sar says—an Englishman, who insists on seeing me—very important." Koch bit the end of one stubby thumb in hurried thought. He suddenly whipped open the door of one of the instrument cases, pulled out a stethoscope, and hooked the two little black receivers into his ears. Then he turned to Woodhouse.
"Quick! Off with your coat and open your shirt. You are a patient; I am just examining you when interrupted. This may be one of these clumsy English secret-service men, and I might need your alibi." The sound of an opening door beyond the folding doors and of footsteps in the adjoining room.
"You say you are sleepless at night?" Doctor Koch was talking English. "And you have a temperature on arising? Hm'm! This under your tongue, if you please"—he thrust a clinical thermometer between Woodhouse's lips; the latter already had his coat off, and was unbuttoning his shirt. Koch gave him a meaning glance, and disappeared between the folding doors, closing them behind him.
The captain, feeling much like a fool with the tiny glass tube sprouting from his lips, yet with all his faculties strained to alertness, awaited developments. If Doctor Koch's hazard should prove correct and this was an English secret-service man come to arrest him, wouldn't suspicion also fall on whomever was found a visitor in the German spy's house? Arrest and search; examination of his scarab pin—that would not be pleasant.
He tried to hear what was being said beyond the folding doors, but could catch nothing save the deep rumble of the doctor's occasional bass and a higher, querulous voice raised in what might be argument. Had he dared, Woodhouse would have drawn closer to the crack in the folding doors so that he could hear what was passing; every instinct of self-preservation in him made his ears yearn to dissect this murmur into sense. But if Doctor Koch should catch him eavesdropping, embarrassment fatal to his plans might follow; besides, he had a feeling that eyes he could not see—perhaps the unwinking eyes of the Numidian, avid for an excuse to put into practise his dexterity with the Bedouin dagger—were on him.
Minutes slipped by. The captain still nursed the clinical thermometer. The mumble and muttering continued to sound through the closed doors. Suddenly the high whine of the unseen visitor was raised in excitement. Came clearly through to Woodhouse's ears his passionate declaration:
"But I tell you you've got to recognize me. My number's Nineteen Thirty-two. My ticket was stolen out of the head of my cane somewhere between Paris and Alexandria. But I got it all right—got it from the Wilhelmstrasse direct, with orders to report to Doctor Emil Koch, in Alexandria!"
Capper! Capper, who was to be betrayed to the firing squad in Malta, after his Wilhelmstrasse ticket had passed from his possession. Capper on the job!
Woodhouse hurled every foot pound of his will to hear into his ears. He caught Koch's gruff answer:
"Young man, you're talking madness. You're talking to a loyal British subject. I know nothing about your Wilhelmstrasse or your number. If I did not think you were drunk I'd have you held here, to be turned over to the military as a spy. Now, go before I change my mind."
Again the querulous protestation of Capper, met by the doctor's peremptory order. The captain heard the front door close. A long wait, and Doctor Koch's black beard, with the surmounting eyes of thick glass, appeared at a parting of the folding doors. Woodhouse, the tiny thermometer still sticking absurdly from his mouth, met the basilisk stare of those two ovals of glass with a coldly casual glance. He removed the thermometer from between his lips and read it, with a smile, as if that were part of playing a game. Still the ghastly stare from the glass eyes over the bristling beard, searching—searching.
"Well," Woodhouse said lightly, "no need of an alibi evidently."
Doctor Koch stepped into the room with the lightness of a cat, walked to a desk drawer at one side, and fumbled there a second, his back to his guest. When he turned he held a short-barreled automatic at his hip; the muzzle covered the shirt-sleeved man in the chair.
"Much need—for an alibi—from you!" Doctor Koch croaked, his voice dry and flat with rage. "Much need, Mister Nineteen Thirty-two. Commence your explanation immediately, for this minute my temptation is strong—very strong—to shoot you for the dog you are."
"Is this—ah, customary?" Woodhouse twiddled the tiny mercury tube between his fingers and looked unflinchingly at the small round mouth of the automatic. "Do you make a practise of consulting a—friend with a revolver at your hip?"
"You heard—what was said in there!" Koch's forehead was curiously ridged and flushed with much blood.
"Did you ask me to listen? Surely, my dear Doctor, you have provided doors that are sound-proof. If I may suggest, isn't it about time that you explain this—this melodrama?" The captain's voice was cold; his lips were drawn to a thin line. Koch's big head moved from side to side with a gesture curiously like that of a bull about to charge, but knowing not where his enemy stands. He blurted out:
"For your information, if you did not overhear: An Englishman comes just now to address me familiarly as of the Wilhelmstrasse. He comes to say he was sent to report to me; that his number in the Wilhelmstrasse is nineteen thirty-two—nineteen thirty-two, remember; and I am to give him orders. Please explain that before I pull this trigger."
"He showed you his number—his ticket, then?" Woodhouse added this parenthetically.
"The man said his ticket had been stolen from him some time after he left Paris—stolen from the head of his cane, where he had it concealed. But the number was nineteen thirty-two." The doctor voiced this last doggedly.
"You have, of course, had this man followed," the other put in. "You have not let him leave this house alone."
"C?sar was after him before he left the garden gate—naturally. But——"
Woodhouse held up an interrupting hand.
"Pardon me, Doctor Koch; did you get this fellow's name?"
"He refused to give it—said I wouldn't know him, anyway."
"Was he an undersized man, very thin, sparse hair, and a face showing dissipation?" Woodhouse went on. "Nervous, jerky way of talking—fingers to his mouth, as if to feel his words as they come out—brandy or wine breath? Can't you guess who he was?"
"I guess nothing."
"The target!"
At the word Louisa had used in describing Capper to Woodhouse, Koch's face underwent a change. He lowered his pistol.
"Ach!" he said. "The man they are to arrest. And you have the number."
"That was Capper—Capper, formerly of the Belgian office—kicked out for drunkenness. One time he sold out Downing Street in the matter of the Lord Fisher letters; you remember the scandal when they came to light—his majesty, the kaiser's, Kiel speech referring to them. He is a good stalking horse."
Koch's suspicion had left him. Still gripping the automatic, he sat down on the edge of the operating chair, regarding the other man respectfully.
"Come—come, Doctor Koch; you and I can not continue longer at cross-purposes." The captain spoke with terse displeasure. "This man Capper showed you nothing to prove his claims, yet you come back to this room and threaten my life on the strength of a drunkard's bare word. What his mission is you know; how he got that number, which is the number I have shown you on my ticket from the Wilhelmstrasse—you understand how such things are managed. I happen to know, however, because it was my business to know, that Capper left Marseilles for Malta aboard La Vendée four days ago; he was not expected to go beyond Malta."
Koch caught him up: "But the fellow told me his boat didn't stop at Malta—was warned by wireless to proceed at all speed to Alexandria, for fear of the Breslau, known to be in the Adriatic." Woodhouse spread out his hands with a gesture of finality.
"There you are! Capper finds himself stranded in Alexandria, knows somehow of your position as a man of the Wilhelmstrasse—such things can not be hid from the underground workers; comes here to explain himself to you and excuse himself for the loss of his number. Is there anything more to be said except that we must keep a close watch on him?"
The physician rose and paced the room, his hands clasped behind his back. The automatic bobbed against the tails of his long coat as he walked. After a minute's restless striding, he broke his step before the desk, jerked open the drawer, and dropped the weapon in it. Back to where Woodhouse was sitting he stalked and held out his right hand stiffly.
"Your pardon, Number Nineteen Thirty-two! For my suspicion I apologize. But, you see my position—a very delicate one." Woodhouse rose, grasped the doctor's hand, and wrung it heartily.
"And now," he said, "to keep this fellow Capper in sight until the Princess Mary sails and I aboard her as Captain Woodhouse, of Wady Halfa. The man might trip us all up."
"He will not; be sure of that," Koch growled, helping Woodhouse into his coat and leading the way to the folding doors. "I will have C?sar attend to him the minute he comes back to report where Capper is stopping."
"Until when?" the captain asked, pausing at the gate, to which Koch had escorted him.
"Here to-morrow night at nine," the doctor answered, and the gate shut behind him. Captain Woodhouse, alone under the shadowing trees of Queen's Terrace, drew in a long breath, shook his shoulders and started for the station and the midnight train to Alexandria.