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Page 34
"Then let us go to dinner," said the General.
It was a nightmare meal. A faded and shrunken female, to whom I was not
introduced--some kind of relative who kept house for the General, I
supposed--was the only other person present. She never opened her lips
save, with eyes glazed with terror, to give some whispered instruction
to the orderly anent the General's food or wine. We dined in a
depressing room with dark brown wallpaper decorated with dusty stags'
antlers, an enormous green-tiled stove dominating everything. The
General and his son ate solidly through the courses while the lady
pecked furtively at her plate. As for myself I could not eat for sheer
fright. Every nerve in my body was vibrating at the thought of the
evening before me. If I could not avoid the interview, I was resolutely
determined to give Master von Boden the slip rather than return to the
frontier empty-handed. I had not braved all these perils to be packed
off home without, at least, making an attempt to find Francis. Besides,
I meant if I could to get the other half of that document.
There was some quite excellent Rhine wine, and I drank plenty of it. So
did the General, with the result that, when the veins starting purple
from his temples proclaimed that he had eaten to repletion, his temper
seemed to have improved. He unbent sufficiently to present me with quite
the worst cigar I have ever smoked.
I smoked it in silence whilst father and son talked shop. The female had
faded away. Both men, I found to my surprise, were furious and bitter
opponents of Hindenburg, as I have since learnt most of the old school
of the Prussian Army are. They spoke little of England: their thoughts
seemed to be centred on Russia as the arch-enemy. They pinned their
faith on Falkenhayn and Mackensen. They had no words strong enough in
their denunciation of Hindenburg, whom they always referred to as "the
Drunkard" ... "der S�ufer." Nor were they sparing of criticism of what
they called the Kaiser's "weakness" in letting him rise to power.
The humming of a car outside broke up our gathering. Remembering that I
was but a humble servant before this great military luminary, I thanked
the General with due servility for his hospitality. Then the Count and I
went out to the car and presently drove forth into the night.
We entered Berlin from the west, as it seemed to me, but then struck off
in a southerly direction and were soon in the commercial quarter of the
city, all but deserted at that hour, save for the trams. Then I caught a
glimpse of lamps reflected in water, and the next moment the car had
stopped on a bridge over a canal or river. My companion sprang out and
hurried me to a small gate in an iron railing enclosing a vast edifice
looming black in the night, while the car moved off into the darkness.
The gate was open. Half a dozen yards from it was a small, slender tower
with a pointed roof jutting out from the corner of the building. In the
tower was a door which yielded easily to my companion's vigorous push as
a clock somewhere within the building beat a double stroke--half-past
ten.
The door led into a little vestibule brilliantly lit with electric
light. There a man was waiting, a fine, upstanding bearded fellow in a
kind of green hunting costume.
"So, Payer!" said the young Uhlan. "Here is the gentleman. I shall be at
the west entrance afterwards. You will bring him down yourself to the
car."
"Jawohl, Herr Graf!" answered the man in green, and the lieutenant
vanished through the door into the night.
A terrifying, an incredible suspicion that had overwhelmed me directly I
stepped out of the car now came surging through my brain. That vast,
black edifice, that slender tower at the corner--did I not know them?
Mechanically, I followed the man in green. My suspicions deepened
with every step. In a little, they became certainty. Up a shallow and
winding stair, along a long and broad corridor, hung with rich
tapestries, the polished parquet glistening faintly in the dim light,
through splendid suites of gilded apartments with old pictures and
splendid furniture... here a lackey with powdered hair yawning on a
landing, there a sentry in field-grey immobile before a door...I was in
the Berlin Schloss.
The Castle seemed to sleep. A hushed silence lay over all. Everywhere
lights were dim, staircases wound down into emptiness, corridors
stretched away into dusky solitude. Now and then an attendant in evening
dress tiptoed past us or an officer vanished round a corner, noiselessly
save for a faint clink of spurs.
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