The Man with the Clubfoot by Valentine Williams

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I was in my corner by the door, pressed back against the coats and hats
hanging on the wall. In front of me a frieze of frightened faces
screened me from observation. Quickly, I slipped off my apron.

Clubfoot, after casting a cursory glance round the room, strode its
length towards the bar where Haase stood, a crowd of plain-clothes men
and policemen at his heels. Then quite suddenly the light went out,
plunging the place into darkness. Instantly the room was in confusion;
women screamed; a voice, which I recognized as Clubfoot's, bawled
stentorianly for lights ... the moment had come to act.

I grabbed a hat and coat from the hall, got into them somehow, and
darted to the door. In the dim light shining down the stairs from a
street lamp outside, I saw a man at the door. Apparently he was guarding
it.

"Back!" he cried, as I stepped up to him.

I flashed in his eyes the silver star I held in my hand.

"The Chief wants lanterns!" I said low in his ear.

He grabbed my hand holding the badge and lowered it to the light.

"All right, comrade," he replied. "Drechsler has a lantern, I think!
You'll find him outside!"

I rushed up the stairs right into a group of three policemen.

"The Chief wants Drechsler at once with the lantern," I shouted, and
showed my star. The three dispersed in different directions calling for
Drechsler.

I walked quickly away.

CHAPTER XV

THE WAITER AT THE CAFE REGINA

I calculated that I had at least two hours, at most three, in which to
get clear of Berlin. However swiftly Clubfoot might act, it would take
him certainly an hour and a half, I reckoned, from the discovery of my
flight from Haase's to warn the police at the railway stations to detain
me. If I could lay a false trail I might at the worst prolong this
period of grace; at the best I might mislead him altogether as to my
ultimate destination, which was, of course, Duesseldorf. The unknown
quantity in my reckonings was the time it would take Clubfoot to send
out a warning all over Germany to detain Julius Zimmermann, waiter and
deserter, wherever and whenever apprehended.

At the first turning I came to after leaving Haase's, tram-lines ran
across the street. A tram was waiting, bound in a southerly direction,
where the centre of the city lay. I jumped on to the front platform
beside the woman driver. It is fairly dark in front and the conductor
cannot see your face as you pay your fare through a trap in the door
leading to the interior of the tram. I left the tram at Unter den Linden
and walked down some side streets until I came across a quiet-looking
cafe. There I got a railway guide and set about reviewing my plans.

It was ten minutes to twelve. A man in my position would in all
probability make for the frontier. So, I judged, Clubfoot must
calculate, though, I fancied, he must have wondered why I had not long
since attempted to escape back to England. Duesseldorf was on the main
road to Holland, and it would certainly be the more prudent course, say,
to make for the Rhine and travel on to my destination by a Rhine
steamer. But time was the paramount factor in my case. By leaving
immediately--that very night--for Duesseldorf I might possibly reach
there before the local authorities had had time to receive the warning
to be on the look-out for a man answering to my description. If I could
leave behind in Berlin a really good false clue, it was just possible
that Clubfoot might follow it up _before_ taking general dispositions to
secure my arrest if that clue failed. I decided I must gamble on this
hypothesis.

The railway guide showed that a train left for Duesseldorf from the
Potsdamer Bahnhof--the great railway terminus in the very centre of
Berlin--at 12.45 a.m. That left me roughly three-quarters of an hour to
lay my false trail and catch my train. My false trail should lead
Clubfoot in a totally unexpected direction, I determined, for it is the
unexpected that first engages the notice of the alert, detective type of
mind. I would also have to select another terminus.

Why not Munich? A large city on the high road to a foreign
frontier--Switzerland--with authorities whose easy-going ways are
proverbial in Germany. You leave Berlin for Munich from the Anhalter
Bahnhof, a terminus which was well suited for my purpose, as it is only
a few minutes' drive from the Potsdamer station.

The railway guide showed there was a train leaving for Munich at 12.30
a.m.--an express. That would do admirably. Munich it should be then.

Fortunately I had plenty of money. I had taken the precaution of
getting Kore to change my money into German notes before we left In den
Zelten ... at a preposterous rate of exchange, be it said. How lost I
should have been without Semlin's wad of notes!

I paid for my coffee and set forth again. It was 12.15 as I walked into
the hall of the Anhalt station.

Remembering the ruse which the friendly guide at Rotterdam had taught
me, I began by purchasing a platform ticket. Then I looked about for an
official upon whom I could suitably impress my identity. Presently I
espied a pompous-looking fellow in a bright blue uniform and scarlet
cap, some kind of junior stationmaster, I thought.

I approached him and, raising my hat, politely asked him if he could
tell me when there was a train leaving for Munich.

"The express goes at 12.30," he said, "but only first and second class,
and you'll have to pay the supplementary charge. The slow train is not
till 5.49."

I assumed an expression of vexation.

"I suppose I must go by the express," I said. "Can you tell me where the
booking-office is?"

The official pointed to a pigeon-hole and I took care to speak loud
enough for him to hear me ask for a second-class ticket, single, to
Munich.

I walked upstairs and presented my Munich ticket to the collector at the
barrier. Then I hurried past the main-line platforms over the suburban
side, where I gave up my platform ticket and descended again to the
street.

It was just on the half-hour as I came out of the station. Not a cab to
be seen! I hastened as fast as my legs would carry me until, breathless
and panting, I reached the Potsdam terminus. The clock over the station
pointed to 12.39.

A long queue, composed mostly of soldiers returning to Belgium and the
front, stood in front of the booking-office. The military were getting
their warrants changed for tickets. I chafed at the delay, but it was
actually this circumstance which afforded me the chance of getting my
ticket for Duesseldorf without leaving any clue behind.

A big, bearded Landsturm man with a kind face was at the pigeon-hole.

"I am very late for my train, my friend," I said, "would you get me a
third-class single for Duesseldorf?" I handed him a twenty-mark note.

"Right you are," he answered readily.

"There," he said, handing me my ticket and a handful of change, "and
lucky you are to be going to the Rhine. I'm from the Rhine myself and
now I'm going back to guarding the bridges in Belgium!"

I thanked him and wished him luck. Here at least was a witness who was
not likely to trouble me. And with a thankful heart I bolted on to the
platform and caught the train.

Third-class travel in Germany is not a hobby to be cultivated if your
means allow the luxury of better accommodation. The travelling German
has a habit of taking off his boots when he journeys in the train by
night--and a carriageful of lower middle-class Huns, thus unshod, in
the temperature at which railway compartments are habitually kept in
Germany, is an environment which makes neither for comfort nor for
sleep.

The atmosphere, indeed, was so unbearable that I spent most of the night
in the corridor. Here I was able to destroy the papers of Julius
Zimmermann, waiter ... I felt I was in greater danger whilst I had them
on me ... and to assure myself that my precious document was in its
usual place--in my portfolio. It was then I made the discovery,
annihilating at the first shock, that my silver badge had disappeared. I
could not remember what I had done with it in the excitement of my
escape from Haase's. I remembered having it in my hand and showing it to
the police at the top of the stairs, but after that my mind was a blank.
I could only imagine I must have carried it unconsciously in my hand and
then dropped it unwittingly. I looked at the place where it had been
clasped on my braces: it was not there and I searched all my pockets for
it in vain.

I had relied upon it as a stand-by in case there were trouble at the
station in Duesseldorf. Now I found myself defenceless if I were
challenged. It was a hard knock, but I consoled myself by the reflection
that, by now, Clubfoot knew I had this badge ... it would doubtless
figure in any description circulated about me.

It was a most unpleasant journey. There was some kind of choral society
on the train, occupying seven or eight compartments of the third-class
coach in which I was travelling. For the first few hours they made night
hideous with part-songs, catches and glees chanted with a volume of
sound that in that confined place was simply deafening. Then the noise
abated as one by one the singers dropped off to sleep. Presently silence
fell, while the train rushed forward in the darkness bearing me towards
fresh perils, fresh adventures.

* * * * *

A gust of fresh air in my face, the trample of feet, loud greetings in
guttural German, awoke me with a start. It was broad daylight and
through my compartment, to which I had crept in the night, weary with
standing, filed the jovial members of the choral society, with bags in
their hands and huge cockades in their buttonholes. There was a band on
the platform and a huge choir of men who bawled a stentorian-voiced hymn
of greeting. "Duesseldorf" was the name printed on the station lamps.

All the passengers, save the members of the choral society, had left the
train, apparently, for every carriage door stood open. I sprang to my
feet and let myself go with the stream of men. Thus I swept out of the
train and right into the midst of the jostling crowd of bandsmen,
singers and spectators on the platform. I stood with the new arrivals
until the hymn was ended and thus solidly _encadres_ by the
Duesseldorfers, we drifted out through the barrier into the station
courtyard. There brakes were waiting into which the jolly choristers,
guests and hosts, clambered noisily. But I walked straight on into the
streets, scarcely able to realize that no one had questioned me, that at
last, unhindered, I stood before my goal.

Duesseldorf is a bright, clean town with a touch of good taste in its
public buildings to remind one that this busy, industrial city has found
time even while making money to have called into being a school of art
of its own. It was a delightful morning with dazzling sunshine and an
eager nip in the air that spoke of the swift, deep river that bathes the
city walls. I revelled in the clear, cold atmosphere after the foulness
of the drinking-den and the stifling heat of the journey. I exulted in
the sense of liberty I experienced at having once more eluded the grim
clutches of Clubfoot. Above all, my heart sang within me at the thought
of an early meeting with Francis. In the mood I was in, I would admit no
possibility of disappointment now. Francis and I would come together at
last.

I came upon a public square presently and there facing me was a great,
big cafe, white and new and dazzling, with large plate-glass windows
and rows of tables on a covered verandah outside. It was undoubtedly a
"_kolossal_" establishment after the best Berlin style. So that there
might be no mistake about the name it was placarded all over the front
of the place in gilt letters three feet high on glass panels--Cafe
Regina.

It was about nine o'clock in the morning and at that early hour I had
the place to myself. I felt very small, sitting at a tiny table, with
tables on every side of me, stretching away as it were into the
_Ewigkeit_, in a vast white room with mural paintings of the crassest
school of impressionism.

I ordered a good, substantial breakfast and whiled away the time while
it was coming by glancing at the morning paper which the waiter brought
me.

My eyes ran down the columns without my heeding what I read, for my
thoughts were busy with Francis. When did he come to the cafe? How was
he living at Duesseldorf?

Suddenly, I found myself looking at a name I knew ... it was in the
personal paragraphs.

"Lieut.-General Count von Boden," the paragraph ran, "Aide-de-Camp to
H.M. the Emperor, has been placed on the retired list owing to
ill-health. General von Boden has left for Abbazia, where he will take
up his permanent residence." There followed the usual biographical
notes.

Of a truth, Clubfoot was a power in the land.

I ate my breakfast at a table by the open door, and surveyed the busy
life of the square where the pigeons circled in the sunshine. A waiter
stood on the verandah idly watching the birds as they pecked at the
stones. I was struck with the profound melancholy depicted in his face.
His cheeks were sunken and he had a pinched look which I had observed in
the features of most of the customers at Haase's. I set it down to the
insufficient feeding which is general among the lower classes in Germany
to-day.

But in addition to this man's wasted appearance, his eyes were hollow,
there were deep lines about his mouth and he wore a haggard look that
had something strangely pathetic about it. His air of brooding sadness
seemed to attract me, and I found my eyes continually wandering back to
his face.

And then, without warning, through some mysterious whispering of the
blood, the truth came to me that this was my brother. I don't know
whether it was a passing mood reflected in his face or the shifting
lights and shadows in his eyes that lifted the veil. I only know that
through those features ravaged by care and suffering and in spite of
them I caught a glimpse of the brother I had come to seek.

I rattled a spoon on the table and called softly out to the verandah.

"_Kellner!_"

The man turned.

I beckoned to him. He came over to my table. He never recognized me, so
dull was he with disappointment ... me with my unshaven, unkempt
appearance and in my mean German shoddy ... but stood silently, awaiting
my bidding.

"Francis," I said softly ... and I spoke in German ... "Francis, don't
you know me?"

He was magnificent, strong and resourceful in his joy at our meeting as
he had been in his months of weary waiting.

Only his mouth quivered a little as instantly his hands busied
themselves with clearing away my breakfast.

"Jawohl!" he answered in a perfectly emotionless voice.

And then he smiled and in a flash the old Francis stood before me.

"Not a word now," he said in German as he cleared away the breakfast.
"I am off this afternoon. Meet me on the river promenade by the Schiller
statue at a quarter past two and we'll go for a walk. Don't stay here
now but come back and lunch in the restaurant ... it's always crowded
and pretty safe!"

Then he called out into the void:

"Twenty-six wants to pay!"

Such was my meeting with my brother.

CHAPTER XVI

A HAND-CLASP BY THE RHINE

That afternoon Francis and I walked out along the banks of the swiftly
flowing Rhine until we were far beyond the city. Anxious though I was
that he should reveal to me that part of his life which lay hidden
beneath those lines of suffering in his face, he made me tell my story
first. So I unfolded to him the extraordinary series of adventures that
had befallen me since the night I had blundered upon the trail of a
great secret in that evil hotel at Rotterdam.

Francis did not once interrupt the flow of my narrative. He listened
with the most tense interest but with a growing concern which betrayed
itself clearly on his face. At the end of my story, I silently handed to
him the half of the stolen letter I had seized from Clubfoot at the
Hotel Esplanade.

"Keep it, Francis," I said. "It's safer with a respectable waiter like
you than with a hunted outcast like myself!"

My brother smiled wanly, but his face assumed the look of grave anxiety
with which he had heard my tale. He scrutinized the slips of paper very
closely, then tucked them away in a letter-case, which he buttoned up in
his hip pocket.

"Fortune is a strange goddess, Des," he said, his weary eyes roving out
over the turgid, yellow stream, "and she has been kind to you, though,
God knows, you have played a man's part in all this. She has placed in
your possession something for which at least five men have died in vain,
something that has filled my thoughts, sleeping and waking, for more
than half a year. What you have told me throws a good deal of light upon
the mystery which I came to this cursed country to elucidate, but it
also deepens the darkness which still envelops many points in the
affair.

"You know there are issues in this game of ours, old man, that stand
even higher than the confidence that there has always been between us
two. That is why I wrote to you so seldom out in France--I could tell
you nothing about my work: that is one of the rules of our game. But now
you have broken into the scramble yourself, I feel that we are partners,
so I will tell you all I know.

"Listen, then. Some time about the beginning of the year a letter
written by a German interned at one of the camps in England was stopped
by the Camp Censor. This German went by the name of Schulte: he was
arrested at a house in Dalston the day after we declared war on
Germany. There was a good reason for this, for our friend Schulte--we
don't know his real name--was known to my Chief as one of the most
daring and successful spies that ever operated in the British Isles.

"Therefore, a sharp eye was kept on his correspondence, and one day this
letter was seized. It was, I believe, perfectly harmless to the eye, but
the expert to whom it was eventually submitted soon detected a
conventional code in the chatty phrases about the daily life of the
camp. It proved to be a communication from Schulte to a third party
relating to a certain letter which, apparently, the writer imagined the
third party had a considerable interest in acquiring. For he offered to
sell this letter to the third party, mentioning a sum so preposterously
high that it attracted the earnest attention of our Intelligence people.
On half the sum mentioned being paid into the writer's account at a
certain bank in London, the letter went on to say, the writer would
forward the address at which the object in question would be found."

"It was a simple matter to send Schulte a letter in return, agreeing to
his terms, and to have the payment made, as desired, into the bank he
mentioned. His communication in reply to this was duly stopped. The
address he gave was that of a house situated on the outskirts of
Cleves.

"We had no idea what this letter was, but its apparent value in the eyes
of the shrewd Mr. Schulte made it highly desirable that we should obtain
possession of it without delay. Four of us were selected for this
dangerous mission of getting into Germany and fetching it, by hook or by
crook, from the house at Cleves where it was deposited. We four were to
enter Germany by different routes and different means and to converge on
Cleves (which is quite close to the Dutch frontier).

"It would take too long to tell you of the very exact organization which
we worked out to exclude all risk of failure and the various schemes we
evolved for keeping in touch with one another though working separately
and in rotation. Nor does it matter very much how I got into Germany.
The fact is that, at my very first attempt to get across the frontier, I
realized that some immensely powerful force was working against me.

"I managed it, with half a dozen hairbreadth escapes, and I set down my
success solely to my knowledge of German and to that old trick of mine
of German imitations. But I felt everywhere the influence of this unseen
hand, enforcing a meticulous vigilance which it was almost impossible to
escape. I was not surprised, therefore, to learn that two of my
companions came to grief at the very outset."

My brother lowered his voice and looked about him.

"Do you know what happened to those two gallant fellows?" he said. "Jack
Tracy was found dead on the railway: Herbert Arbuthnot was discovered
hanging in a wood. 'Suicide of an Unknown Individual' was what the
German papers called it in each case. But I heard the truth ... never
mind how. They were ambushed and slaughtered in cold blood."

"And the third man you spoke of?" I asked.

"Philip Brewster? Vanished, Des ... vanished utterly. I fear he, too,
has gone west, poor chap!

"Of the whole four of us I was the only one to reach our objective.
There I drew blank. The letter was not in the hiding-place indicated.
I think it never had been or the Huns would have got it. I felt all the
time that they didn't know exactly where the letter was but that
they anticipated our attempt to get it, hence the unceasing vigilance all
along the frontier and inside it, too.

"They damned nearly got me at Cleves: I escaped as by a miracle, and the
providential thing for me was that I had never posed as anything but a
German, only I varied the type I represented almost from day to day.
Thus I left no traces behind or they would have had me long since."

The sadness in my brother's voice increased and the shadows deepened in
his face.

"Then I tried to get out," he continued. "But it was hopeless from the
first. They knew they had one of us left in the net and they closed
every outlet. I made two separate attempts to cross the line back into
Holland, but both failed. The second time I literally had to flee for my
life. I went straight to Berlin, feeling that a big city, as remote from
the frontier as possible, was the only safe hiding-place for me as long
as the hue and cry lasted.

"I was in a desperate bad way, too, for I had had to abandon the last
set of identity papers left to me when I bolted. I landed in Berlin with
the knowledge that no roof could safely shelter me until I got a fresh
lot of papers.

"I knew of Kore--I had heard of him and his shirkers' and deserters'
agency in my travels--and I went straight to him. He sent me to
Haase's ... this was towards the end of June. It was when I was at
Haase's that I sent out that message to van Urutius that fell into your
hands. That happened like this.

"I was rather friendly with a chap that frequented Haase's, a man
employed in the packing department at the Metal Works at Steglitz. He
was telling us one night how short-handed they were and what good money
packers were earning. I was sick of being cooped up in that stinking
cellar, so, more by way of a joke than anything else, I offered to come
and lend a hand in the packing department. I thought I might get a
chance of escape, as I saw none at Haase's. To my surprise, Haase, who
was sitting at the table, rather fancied the idea and said I could go if
I paid him half my wages: I was getting nothing at the beer-cellar.

"So I was taken on at Steglitz, sleeping at Haase's and helping in the
beer-cellar in the evenings. One day a package for old van Urutius came
to me to be made up and suddenly it occurred to me that here was a
chance of sending out a message to the outside world. I hoped that old
van U., if he tumbled to the 'Eichenholz,' would send it to you and that
you would pass it on to my Chief in London."

"Then you expected me to come after you?" I said.

"No," replied Francis promptly, "I did not. But the arrangement was
that, if none of us four men had turned up at Head-quarters by May 15th,
a fifth man should come in and be at a given rendezvous near the
frontier on June 15th. I went to the place on June 15th, but he never
showed up and, though I waited about for a couple of days, I saw no
sign of him. I made my final attempt to get out and it failed, so, when
I fled to Berlin, I knew that I had cut off all means of communication
with home. As a last hope, I dashed off that cipher on the spur of the
moment and tucked it into old van U's invoice."

"But why 'Achilles' with one 'l'?" I asked.

"They knew all about Kore's agency at Head-quarters, but I didn't dare
mention Kore's name for fear the parcel might be opened. So I purposely
spelt 'Achilles' with one 'l' to draw attention to the code word, so
that they should know where news of me was to be found. It was devilish
smart of you to decipher that, Des!"

Francis smiled at me.

"I meant to stay quietly in Berlin, going daily between Haase's and the
factory and wait, for a month or two, in case that message got home. But
Kore began to give trouble. At the beginning of July he came to see me
and hinted that the renewal of my _permis de sejour_ would cost money. I
paid him, but I realized then that I was absolutely in his power and I
had no intention of being blackmailed. So I made use of his cupidity to
leave a message for the man who, I hoped, would be coming after me,
wrote that line on the wall under the Boonekamp poster in that filthy
hovel where we slept and came up here after a job I had heard of at the
Cafe Regina.

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