The Man with the Clubfoot by Valentine Williams

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"Stop talking riddles, for Heaven's sake!" I cried in exasperation, "and
answer my questions plainly. First, what did you do for my brother?"

"Your brother had deserted from the front--that is the most difficult
class of business we have to deal with--we procured him a _permis de
sejour_ for fifteen days and a post in a safe place where no enquiries
would be made after him."

"And then?" I cried, trembling with curiosity.

The Jew shrugged his shoulders, waving his hands to and fro in the air.

"Then he disappeared. I saw him a few days before he went, and he gave
me the instructions I have repeated to you for anybody who should come
asking for him."

"But didn't he tell you where he was going?"

"He didn't even tell me he was going, Herr. He just vanished."

"When was this?"

"Somewhere about the first week in July ... it was the week of the bad
news from France."

The message was dated July 1st, I remembered.

"I have a good set of Swedish papers," the Jew continued, "very
respectable timber merchant ... with those one could live in the best
hotels and no one say a word. Or Hungarian papers, a party rejected
medically ... very safe those, but perhaps the gentleman doesn't speak
Hungarian. That would be essential."

"I am in the same case as my brother," I said, "I must disappear."

"Not a deserter, Herr?" The Jew cringed at the word.

"Yes," I said. "After all, why not?"

"I daren't do this kind of business any more, my dear sir, I really
daren't! They are making it too dangerous."

"Come, come!" I said, "you were boasting just now that you could smooth
out any difficulties. You can produce me a very satisfactory passport
from somewhere, I am sure!"

"Passport! Out of the question, my dear sir! Let once one of my
passports go wrong and I am ruined. Oh, no! no passports where deserters
are concerned! I don't like the business ... it's not safe! At the
beginning of the war ... ah! that was different! Oi, oi, but they ran
from the Yser and from Ypres! Oi, oi, and from Verdun! But now the
police are more watchful. No! It is not worth it! It would cost you too
much money, besides."

I thought the miserable cur was trying to raise the price on me, but I
was mistaken. He was frightened: the business was genuinely distasteful
to him.

I tried, as a final attempt to persuade him, an old trick: I showed him
my money. He wavered at once, and, after many objections, protesting to
the last, he left the room. He returned with a handful of filthy papers.

"I oughtn't to do it; I know I shall rue it; but you have overpersuaded
me and I liked Herr Eichenholz, a noble gentleman and free with his
money--see here, the papers of a waiter, Julius Zimmermann, called up
with the Landwehr but discharged medically unfit, military pay-book and
_permis de sejour_ for fifteen days. These papers are only a guarantee
in case you come across the police: no questions will be asked where I
shall send you."

"But a fifteen days' permit!" I said. "What am I to do at the end of
that time?"

"Leave it to me," Kore said craftily. "I will get it renewed for you. It
will be all right!"

"But in the meantime...." I objected.

"I place you as waiter with a friend of mine who is kind to poor fellows
like yourself. Your brother was with him."

"But I want to be free to move around."

"Impossible," the Jew answered firmly. "You must get into your part and
live quietly in seclusion until the enquiries after you have abated.
Then we may see as to what is next to be done. There you are, a fine set
of papers and a safe, comfortable life far away from the trenches--all
snug and secure--cheap (in spite of the danger to me), because you are a
lad of spirit and I liked your brother ... ten thousand marks!"

I breathed again. Once we had reached the haggling stage, I knew the
papers would be mine all right. With Semlin's money and my own I found I
had about L550, but I had no intention of paying out L500 straight away.
So I beat the fellow down unmercifully and finally secured the lot for
3600 marks--L180.

But, even after I had paid the fellow his money, I was not done with
him. He had his eye on his perquisites.

"Your clothes will never do," he said; "such richness of apparel, such
fine stuff--we must give you others." He rang the bell.

The old man-servant appeared.

"A waiter's suit--for the Linien-Strasse!" he said.

Then he led me into a bedroom where a worn suit of German shoddy was
spread out on a sofa. He made me change into it, and then handed me a
threadbare green overcoat and a greasy green felt hat.

"So!" he said. "Now, if you don't shave for a day or two, you will look
the part to the life!"--a remark which, while encouraging, was hardly
complimentary.

He gave me a muffler to tie round my neck and lower part of my face and,
with that greasy hat pulled down over my eyes and in those worn and
shrunken clothes, I must say I looked a pretty villainous person, the
very antithesis of the sleek, well-dressed young fellow that had entered
the flat half an hour before.

"Now, Julius," said Kore humorously, "come, my lad, and we will seek out
together the good situation I have found for you."

A horse-cab was at the door and we entered it together. The Jew chatted
pleasantly as we rattled through the darkness. He complimented me on my
ready wit in deciphering Francis' message.

"How do you like my idea?" he said, "'Achilles in his Tent'... that is
the device of the hidden part of my business--you observe the parallel,
do you not?' Achilles holding himself aloof from the army and young men
like yourself who prefer the gentle pursuits of peace to the sterner
profession of war! Clients of mine who have enjoyed a classical
education have thought very highly of the humour of my device."

The cab dropped us at the corner of the Friedrich-Strasse, which was
ablaze with light from end to end, and the Linien-Strasse, a narrow,
squalid thoroughfare of dirty houses and mean shops. The street was all
but deserted at that hour save for an occasional policeman, but from
cellars with steps leading down from the streets came the jingle of
automatic pianos and bursts of merriment to show that the Linien-Strasse
was by no means asleep.

Before one of these cellar entrances the Jew stopped. At the foot of the
steep staircase leading down from the street was a glazed door, its
panels all glistening with moisture from the heated atmosphere within.
Kore led the way down, I following.

A nauseous wave of hot air, mingled with rank tobacco smoke, smote us
full as we opened the door. At first I could see nothing except a very
fat man, against a dense curtain of smoke, sitting at a table before an
enormous glass goblet of beer. Then, as the haze drifted before the
draught, I distinguished the outline of a long, low-ceilinged room,
with small tables set along either side and a little bar, presided over
by a tawdry female with chemically tinted hair, at the end. Most of the
tables were occupied, and there was almost as much noise as smoke in the
place.

A woman's voice screamed: "Shut the door, can't you, I'm freezing!" I
obeyed and, following Kore to a table, sat down. A man in his
shirt-sleeves, who was pulling beer at the bar, left his beer-engine
and, coming across the room to Kore, greeted him cordially, and asked
him what we would take.

Kore nudged me with his elbow.

"We'll take a Boonekamp each, Haase," he said.

CHAPTER XIV

CLUBFOOT COMES TO HAASE'S

Kore presently retired to an inner room with the man in shirt-sleeves,
whom I judged to be the landlord, and in a little the flaxen-haired lady
at the bar beckoned me over and bade me join them.

"This is Julius Zimmermann, the young man I have spoken of," said the
Jew; then turning to me:

"Herr Haase is willing to take you on as waiter here on my
recommendation, Julius, See that you do not make me repent of my
kindness!"

Here the man in shirt-sleeves, a great, fat fellow with a bullet head
and a huge double chin, chuckled loudly.

"Kolossal!" he cried. "Herr Kore loves his joke! Ausgezeichnet!" And he
wagged his head roguishly at me.

On that Kore took his leave, promising to look in and see how I was
faring in a few days' time. The landlord opened a low door in the corner
and revealed a kind of large cupboard, windowless and horribly stale and
stuffy, where there were two unsavoury-looking beds.

"You will sleep here with Otto," said the landlord. Pointing to a dirty
white apron lying on one of the beds, he bade me take off my overcoat
and jacket and put it on.

"It was Johann's," he said, "but Johann won't want it any more. A good
lad, Johann, but rash. I always said he would come to a bad end." And he
laughed noisily.

"You can go and help with the waiting now," he went on. "Otto will show
you what to do!"

And so I found myself, within twenty-four hours, spy, male nurse and
waiter in turn.

I am loth to dwell on the degradation of the days that followed. That
cellar tavern was a foul sink of iniquity, and in serving the dregs of
humanity that gathered nightly there I felt I had indeed sunk to the
lowest depths. The place was a regular thieves' kitchen ... what is
called in the hideous Yiddish jargon that is the criminal slang of
modern Germany a "Kaschemme." Never in my life have I seen such brutish
faces as those that leered at me nightly through the smoke haze as I
shuffled from table to table in my mean German clothes. Gallows' birds,
sneak thieves, receivers, bullies, prostitutes and harpies of every
description came together every evening in Herr Haase's beer-cellar.
Many of the men wore the soiled and faded field-grey of the soldier back
from the front, and in looking at their sordid, vulpine faces, inflamed
with drink, I felt I could fathom the very soul of Belgium's misery.

The conversation was all of crime and deeds of violence. The men back
from the front told gloatingly of rapine and feastings in lonely Belgian
villages or dwelt ghoulishly on the horrors of the battlefield, the
mounds of decaying corpses, the ghastly mutilations they had seen in the
dead. There were tales, too, of "vengeance" wreaked on "the treacherous
English." One story, in particular, of the fate of a Scottish
Sergeant ... "der Hochlaender" they called him in this oft-told
tale ... still makes me quiver with impotent rage when I think of it.

One evening the name of the Hotel Esplanade caught my ear. I approached
the table and found two flashily dressed bullies and a bedraggled drab
from the streets talking in admiration of my exploit.

"Clubfoot met his match that time," the woman cried. "The dirty dog! But
why didn't this English spy make a job of it and kill the scum? Pah!"

And she spat elegantly into the sawdust on the floor.

"I wouldn't be in that fellow's shoes for something," muttered one of
the men. "No one ever had the better of Clubfoot yet. Do you remember
Meinhardt, Franz? He tried to cheat Clubfoot, and we know what happened
to him!"

"They're raking the whole city for this Englishman," answered the other
man. "Vogel, who works for Section Seven, you know the man I mean, was
telling me. They've done every hotel in Berlin and the suburbs, but they
haven't found him. They raided Bauer's in the Favoriten-Strasse last
night. The Englishman wasn't there, but they got three or four others
they were looking for--Fritz and another deserter included. I was nearly
there myself!"

I was always hearing references of this kind to my exploit. I was never
spoken of except in terms of admiration, but the name of Clubfoot--der
Stelze--excited only execration and terror.

I lived in daily fear of a raid at Haase's. Why the place had escaped so
long, with all that riff-raff assembled there nightly, I couldn't
imagine. It was one of those defects in German organization which puzzle
the best of us at times. In the meantime, I was powerless to escape. The
first thing Haase had done was to take away my papers--to send them to
the police, as he explained--but he never gave them back, and when I
asked for them he put me off with an excuse.

I was a virtual prisoner in the place. On my feet from morning till
night, I had indeed few opportunities for going out; but once, during
a slack time in the afternoon, when I broached the subject to the
landlord, he refused harshly to let me out of his sight.

"The street is not healthy for you just now. You would be a danger to
yourself and to all of us!" he said.

My life in that foul den was a burden to me. The living conditions were
unspeakable. Otto, a pale and ill-tempered consumptive, compelled, like
me, to rise in the darkness of the dawn, never washed, and his
companionship in the stuffy hole where we slept was offensive beyond
belief. He openly jeered at my early morning journeys out to a narrow,
stinking court, where I exulted in the ice-cold water from the pump. And
the food! It was only when I saw the mean victuals--the coarse and often
tainted horseflesh, the unappetizing war-bread, the coffee substitute,
and the rest--that I realized how Germany was suffering, though only
through her poor as yet, from the British blockade. That thought used to
help to overcome the nausea with which I sat down to eat.

Domestic life at Haase's was a hell upon earth. Haase himself was a
drunken bully, who made advances to every woman he met, and whose
complicated intrigues with the feminine portion of his clientele led to
frequent scenes with the fair-haired Hebe who presided at the bar and
over his household. It was she and Otto who fared daily forth to take
their places in the long queues that waited for hours with food cards
outside the provision shops.

These trips seemed to tell upon her temper, which would flash out
wrathfully at meal-times, when Haase began his inevitable grumbling
about the food. As Otto took a malicious delight in these family scenes,
I was frequently called upon to assume the role of peace-maker. More
than once I intervened to save Madame from the violence she had called
down upon herself by the sharpness of her tongue. She was a poor, faded
creature, and the tragedy of it all was that she was in love with this
degraded bully. She was grateful to me for my good offices, I think,
for, though she hardly ever addressed me, her manner was always
friendly.

These days of dreary squalor would have been unbearable if it had not
been for my elucidation of the word Boonekamp, which was said to hold
the clue to my brother's address. On the wall in the cubby-hole where I
slept was a tattered advertisement card of this _aperitif_--for such is
the preparation--proclaiming it to be "Germany's Best Cordial." As I
undressed at night, I often used to stare at this placard, wondering
what connection Boonekamp could possibly have with my brother. I
determined to take the first opportunity of examining the card itself.
One morning, while Otto was out in the queue at the butcher's, I slipped
away from the cellar to our sleeping-place and, lighting my candle, took
down the card and examined it closely. It was perfectly plain, red
letters on a green background in front, white at the back.

As I was replacing the card on the nail I saw some writing in pencil on
the wall where the card had hung. My heart seemed to stand still with
the joy of my discovery. For the writing was in my brother's neat,
artistic hand, the words were English, and, best of all, my brother's
initials were attached. This is what I read:

(Facsimile.) 5.7.16.

"You will find me at the Cafe Regina, Duesseldorf--F.O."

After that I felt I could bear with everything. The message awakened
hope that was fast dying in my heart. At least on July 5th, Francis was
alive. To that fact I clung as to a sheet-anchor. It gave me courage for
the hardest part of all my experiences in Germany, those long days of
waiting in that den of thieves. For I knew I must be patient. Presently,
I hoped, I might extract my papers from Haase or persuade Kore, when he
came back, to see me, to give me a permit that would enable me to get to
Duesseldorf. But the term of my permit was fast running out and the Jew
never came.

There were often moments when I longed to ask Haase or one of the others
about the time my brother had served in that place. But I feared to draw
attention to myself. No one asked any questions of me (questions as to
personal antecedents were discouraged at Haase's), and, as long as I
remained the unpaid, useful drudge I felt that my desire for obscurity
would be respected. Desultory questions about my predecessors elicited
no information about Francis. The Haase establishment seemed to have had
a succession of vague and shadowy retainers.

Only about Johann, whose apron I wore, did Otto become communicative.

"A stupid fellow!" he declared. "He was well off here. Haase liked him,
the customers liked him, especially the ladies. But he must fall in love
with Frau Hedwig (the lady at the bar), then he quarrelled with Haase
and threatened him--you know, about customers who haven't got their
papers in order. The next time Johann went out, they arrested him. And
he was shot at Spandau!"

"Shot?" I exclaimed. "Why?"

"As a deserter."

"But was he a deserter?"

"Ach! was! But he had a deserter's papers in his pockets ... his own had
vanished. Ach! it's a bad thing to quarrel with Haase!"

I made a point of keeping on the right side of the landlord after that.
By my unfailing diligence I even managed to secure his grudging
approval, though he was always ready to fly into a passion at the least
opportunity.

One evening about six o'clock a young man, whom I had never seen among
our regular customers, came down the stairs from the street and asked
for Haase, who was asleep on the sofa in the inner room. At the sight of
the youth, Frau Hedwig jumped off her perch behind the bar and vanished.
She came back directly and, ignoring me, conducted the young man into
the inner room, where he remained for about half an hour. Then he
reappeared again, accompanied by Frau Hedwig, and went off.

I was shocked by the change in the appearance of the woman. Her face was
pale, her eyes red with weeping, and her eyes kept wandering towards the
door. It was a slack time of the day within and the cellar was free of
customers.

"You look poorly, Frau Hedwig," I said. "Trouble with Haase again?"

She looked up at me and shook her head, her eyes brimming over. A tear
ran down the rouge on her cheek.

"I must speak," she said. "I can't bear this suspense alone. You are a
kind young man. You are discreet. Julius, there is trouble brewing for
us!"

"What do you mean?" I asked. A foreboding of evil rose within me.

"Kore!" she whispered.

"Kore?" I echoed. "What of him?"

She looked fearfully about her.

"He was taken yesterday morning," she said.

"Do you mean arrested?" I exclaimed, unwilling to believe the staggering
news.

"They entered his apartment early in the morning and seized him in bed.
Ach! it is dreadful!" And she buried her face in her hands.

"But surely," I added soothingly, though with an icy fear at my heart,
"there is no need to despair. What is an arrest to-day with all these
regulations...."

The woman raised her face, pallid beneath its paint, to mine.

"Kore was shot at Moabit Prison this morning," she said in a low voice.
"That young man brought the news just now." Then she added breathlessly,
her words pouring out in a torrent:

"You don't know what this means to us. Haase had dealings with this Jew.
If they have shot him, it is because they have found out from him all
they want to know. That means our ruin, that means that Haase will go
the same way as the Jew.

"But Haase is stubborn, foolhardy. The messenger warned him that a raid
might be expected here at any moment. I have pleaded with him in vain.
He believes that Kore has split; he believes the police may come, but he
says they daren't touch him: he has been too useful to them: he knows
too much. Ach, I am afraid! I am afraid!"

Haase's voice sounded from the inner room.

"Hedwig!" he called.

The woman hastily dried her eyes and disappeared through the door.

The coast was clear, if I wanted to escape, but where could I go,
without a paper or passport, a hunted man?

The news of Kore's arrest and execution haunted me. Of course, the man
was in a most perilous trade, and had probably been playing the game for
years. But suppose they had tracked me to the house in the street called
In den Zelten.

I crossed the room and opened the door to the street. I had never set
foot outside since I had come, and, hopeless as it would be for me to
attempt to escape, I thought I might reconnoitre the surroundings of the
beer-cellar for the event of flight.

I lightly ran up the stairs to the street and nearly cannoned into a man
who was lounging in the entrance. We both apologized, but he stared at
me hard before he strolled on. Then I saw another man sauntering along
on the opposite side of the street. Further away, at the corner, two men
were loitering.

Every one of them had his eyes fixed on the cellar entrance at which I
was standing.

I knew they could not see my face, for the street was but dimly lit, and
behind me was the dark background of the cellar stairway. I took a grip
on my nerves and very deliberately lit a cigarette and smoked it, as if
I had come up from below to get a breath of fresh air. I waited a
little while and then went down.

I was scarcely back in the cellar when Haase appeared from the inner
room, followed by the woman. He carried himself erect, and his eyes were
shining. I didn't like the man, but I must say he looked game. In his
hand he carried my papers.

"Here you are, my lad," he said in quite a friendly tone, "put 'em in
your pocket--you may want 'em to-night."

I glanced at the papers before I followed his advice.

He noted my action and laughed.

"They have told you about Johann," he said. "Never fear, Julius, you and
I are good friends."

The papers were those of Julius Zimmermann all right.

We were having supper at one of the tables in the front room--there were
only a couple of customers, as it was so early--when a man, a regular
visitor of ours, came down the stairs hurriedly. He went straight over
to Haase and spoke into his ear.

"Mind yourself, Haase," I heard him say. "Do you know who had Kore
arrested and shot? It was Clubfoot. There is more in this than we know.
Mind yourself and get out! In an hour or so it may be too late."

Then he scurried away, leaving me dazed.

"By God!" said the landlord, bringing a great fist down on the table so
that the glasses rang, "they won't touch me. Not the devil himself will
make me leave this house before they come, if coming they are!"

The woman burst into tears, while Otto blinked his watery eyes in
terror. I sat and looked at my plate, my heart too full for words. It
was bitter to have dared so much to get this far and then find the path
blocked, as it seemed, by an insuperable barrier. They were after me all
right: the mention of Clubfoot's name, the swift, stern retribution that
had befallen Kore, made that certain--and I could do nothing. That
cellar was a cul-de-sac, a regular trap, and I knew that if I stirred a
foot from the house I should fall into the hands of those men keeping
their silent vigil in the street.

Therefore, I must wait, as calmly as I might, and see what the evening
would bring forth. Gradually the cellar filled up as people drifted in,
but many familiar faces, I noticed, were missing. Evidently the ill
tidings had spread. Once a man looked in for a glass of beer and drifted
out again, leaving the door open. As I was closing it, I heard a muffled
exclamation and the sound of a scuffle at the head of the stairs. It was
so quietly done that nobody below, save myself, knew what had happened.
The incident showed me that the watch was well kept.

The evening wore on--interminably, as it seemed to me. I darted to and
fro from the bar, laden with mugs of beer and glasses of schnaps,
incessantly, up and down. But I never failed, whenever there came a
pause in the orders, to see that my journey finished somewhere in the
neighbourhood of the door. A faint hope was glimmering in my brain.

Until the end of my life, that interminable evening in the beer-cellar
will remain stamped in my memory. I can still see the scene in its every
detail, and I know I shall carry the picture with me to the grave; the
long, low room with its blackened ceiling, the garish yellow gaslight,
the smoke haze, the crowded tables, Otto, shuffling hither and hither
with his mean and sulky air, Frau Hedwig, preoccupied at her desk,
red-eyed, a graven image of woe, and Haase, presiding over the
beer-engine, silent, defiant, calm, but watchful every time the door
opened.

When at last the blow fell, it came suddenly. A trampling of feet on the
stairs, a great blowing of whistles ... then the door was burst open
just as everybody in the cellar sprang to their feet amid exclamations
and oaths from the men and shrill screams from the women. Outlined in
the doorway stood Clubfoot, majestic, authoritative, wearing some kind
of little skull-cap, such as duelling students wear, over a black silk
handkerchief bound about his head. At the sight of the man the hubbub
ceased on the instant. All were still save Haase, whose bull-like voice
roaring for silence broke on the quiet of the room with the force of an
explosion.

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