The Man on Horseback/Chapter 15
CHAPTER XV
ANONYMOUS
It was not as if Tom Graves had been slow-witted or unobserving of what was going on about him.
No man of his ancestry, straight American, Scotch and English, descendant of sturdy, independent, courageous, fairly well-educated people who for generations had not felt the pinch of want nor the lessening of mentality that goes with it, who had lived away from the reek of city slums yet away, too, from the stultifying influence of meager, worked-out farms, who following the keen call in their own brains, their own imagination, had taken the trail of the ever-broadening Western frontier from Virginia via Kentucky, Kansas, and California to the Northwest; no man of his bringing up and early surroundings, with the sweep and tang of the open range about him, and the range of a decade or so ago where often a man's quickness of wit counted as much as his quickness on the draw; no such man could be slow, could be entirely unobserving.
What was wrong with him was a national American fault, rather habit, which blinded him to everything that went on about him during this, his first, visit abroad except his love for Bertha Wedekind and the frivolous, shifting interests of the passing minutes.
A national habit which caused him to see foreigners entirely through the smoked, distorting spectacles of provinciality and, in judging them, to accept certain cut-and-dried verdicts and well-defined standards that were nearly always the result of frivolous newspaper comment, of light fiction, of music-hall catchwords, of a motion pictures director's abysmal ignorance, of smart, would-be witty remarks coined by returned travelers!
Standards hoary with age! Standards more hoary with lies! Yet standards accepted and repeated!
To Tom Graves (and small blame to him for believing it since the majority of his countrymen, including even those who, thanks to a better education, a better chance to see and compare, should have known better, shared his belief) a Frenchman was a man who wore a flat-brimmed, comical silk hat, white spats, and a pointed beard, who gesticulated and shrugged his shoulders, lived rather exclusively on pastry and cloudy, opalescent absinthe, had neither manhood nor stamina nor virtues—Verdun in those days was only a geographical term!—and spent his hours of leisure fighting bloodless duels and flirting with the wife of his most intimate friend. The typical Russian was an enormous, bearded half-savage who ate candles, got dismally drunk upon raw spirits, called his fellow Russian "Little dove!" and "Little brother!" and amused himself by roasting Jewish babies on a spit.
And the German was simple, good-natured, naïve, even stupid; a man who wept copious tears into his beer glass, sang the Lorelei, and was as guileless as the whitest, woolliest, softest baby lamb that ever gamboled on the green.
Thus small blame to the young Westerner that he did not notice what was going on below the surface in Colonel Wedekind's dining-room, what had been going on about him ever since he had taken ship and even before: in fact, ever since Newson Garrett had discovered the presence of the unknown metal in his assay of the Yankee Doodle Glory ore.
Tom was a stranger to the word Intrigue.
Of course he was aware of occasional lapses from the straight and narrow path of truth on the part of some as, for instance, when Baron Horst von Götz-Wrede mentioned the broken engagement with Lord Vyvyan although Kraufes had told Tom that he had not said a word about it to the Colonel. He had also been taken a little aback that the Colonel knew he had taken passage on the Augsburg, that von Götz-Wrede was familiar with his fight on board ship, and that the cable summoning Bertha from Spokane to Berlin should have been so thoroughly distorted in transmission.
But he dismissed and condoned it all as an instance of European characteristics. Generally European; not typically German any more. For to him all Europeans were slightly mad.
"Otherwise," as he explained to Bertha during dinner, "the poor simps wouldn't insist on living in Europe with all the Northwest to choose spots in for their wigwams!"
One of the mad European characteristics—and for this he had the man's own words at the time when he had begged him not to speak about his stubborn intention to acquire the Yankee Doodle Glory since people might make fun of him—was the Baron's returning to the subject when dinner was over and he had drawn the horse wrangler into a corner of the salon.
"Look here," replied the Westerner, "that subject is taboo. You told me you would never speak of it again if I came to Berlin."
The Baron laughed.
"Did I?" he asked, lighting a cigar.
"You sure did, sonny!"
"Well—I can't help it. Here you are in my clutches, helpless, what? And you must listen to me."
"Why must I?"
"Because the Prince …"
"The fellow with the decorations and the grouch?"
"The same. You see, this is not America. Germany is not a Republic. A chap like myself simply has to kowtow to a man like the Prince. I told him quite casually about my trip to the West, mentioned the Yankee Doodle Glory, and he …" He was silent, then went on in a whisper. "You know," touching his forehead significantly, "some of our German royalty are slightly—oh …"
"Loco? Too much inbreeding. Just like horses. Sure, I know."
"Well, there you are, Graves."
"What'd you mean there I am?"
"Mad or not, Ludwig Karl is a Prince of the Royal House and a big man in the war office. He can make me or break me. And he's got it into his head that it's up to me to buy the Yankee Doodle Glory. I was a fool ever to have told him!"
"But why should he be so nutty about it? For the Lord's sake, pipe me the reason, man!"
"Because—well—the Prince is one of those thorough paced Germans, not a cosmopolite like myself. He thinks that whatever is German is right, and what ever is foreign is wrong."
Tom inclined his head. "No wonder the poor old gink is loco!" he said with conviction.
"Yes, yes," agreed the Baron. "But that's the way the field lays and—you must pardon me, old chap—he thinks that I, being a German, should be able to persuade you, an American, to sell whatever I want to buy. Sort of national conceit, I suppose. National stubbornness, too."
"Well," laughed Tom, who had dined and wined well, who felt in a generous mood, who was anxious to finish the conversation and join Bertha, who was talking to the dapper little Hussar. He had completely forgotten Martin Wedekind's warning. "You and he are a pair when it comes to being as stubborn as a mule. And I'm not a mule skinner. Horses for mine. And so, just to oblige you, I'll …"
"You'll sell me the Yankee Doodle?" cut in the Baron, quickly, excitedly.
Too quickly. Too excitedly.
For Tom knew poker. At once, watching the other's features, he drew back a little. "Over anxious," he said to himself, and then, in a loud voice: "I'll let you know in the morning."
The Baron studied the Westerner's calm, clean-shaven face. He knew that it would be lost time to argue any more to-night.
"I'll be at your place at ten in the morning sharp. I have a spare horse and we'll take a little gallop together if you care."
"Fine and dandy! But—say!" Suddenly he remembered the riders he had seen cantering down the Kurfurstendamm from the windows of his apartment. "None of your measly postage stamp saddles. Either you get me a good old forty-pound stock saddle with a horn to swing my leg over when I get tired, or I'll ride that goat of yours barebacked, see?"
An hour later Tom was in his flat. Two hours later he was sound asleep. Three hours later the jarring ring of the telephone bell startled him wide awake.
He rushed out and took down the receiver.
"What?" he asked. "Say that again! I shouldn't sell the Yankee Doodle Glory? Who's that talking? Who …? Anonymous? Don't know a party by that name, but your voice sounds darned familiar. Oh—Anonymous isn't your name—you don't want to tell me your name … Oh! Look here, stranger, I don't cotton to that sort o' thing—if you got a square, decent reason for butting into my affairs, there isn't a reason in the world why you shouldn't tell me your name. Politics? Politics—hell! I mixed up considerable in politics when my boss ran for sheriff. What? German politics? Say, what do these Dutchmen know of politics? Eh? More than I think? … All right, all right! Keep your hair on, Mister Anonymous. Maybe I won't sell—yet!" and he went back to bed.
He did not know that in the servant's room, hidden in the clothes press, there was another telephone instrument connecting with his own, and that Krauss had taken down the receiver and had listened to every word of the conversation.