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Page 57
"There has been no shooting there for two years now and the place is
overstocked with game. The Government has been appealing to people with
shooting preserves to kill their game and put it on the market, so I had
arranged to go up to Bellevue this month and see the agent about this. I
thought if I could prevail on Gerry to come with me, you could accompany
him and you might get across the Dutch frontier from there. It's only
about fifteen miles away from the Castle. If I can get a move on Gerry,
there is no reason why we shouldn't go away in a day or two. In the
meantime you'll be quite safe here."
I told her I must think it over: she seemed to be risking too much. But
I think my mind was already made up. I could not bring destruction on
this faithful friend.
Then I went upstairs again to Gerry, who was in as vile a temper as
before. His lunch had disagreed with him: he hadn't slept: the room was
not hot enough ... these were a few of the complaints he showered at me
as soon as I appeared. He was in his most impish and malicious mood. He
sent me running hither and thither: he gave me an order and withdrew it
in the same breath: my complacency seemed to irritate him, to encourage
him to provoke me.
At last he came back to his old sore subject, my English accent.
"I guess our good American is too homely for a fine English gentleman
like you," he said, "but I believe you'll as lief speak as you were
taught before you're through with this city. An English accent is not
healthy in Berlin at present, Mister Meyer, sir, and you'd best learn to
talk like the rest of us if you want to keep on staying in this house.
"I'm in no state to be worried just now and I've no notion of having
the police in here because some of their dam' plain-clothes men have
heard my attendant saying 'charnce' and 'darnce' like any
Britisher--especially with this English spy running round loose. By the
way, you'll have to be registered? Has my sister seen about it yet?"
I said she was attending to it.
"I want to know if she's done it. I'm a helpless cripple and I can't get
a thing done for me. Have you given her your papers? Yes, or no?"
This was a bad fix. With all the persistence of the invalid, the man was
harping on his latest whim.
So I lied. The Countess had my papers, I said.
Instantly he rang the bell and demanded Monica and had fretted himself
into a fine state by the time she appeared.
"What's this I hear, Monica?" he cried in his high-pitched, querulous
voice. "Hasn't Meyer been registered with the police yet?"
"I'm going to see to it myself in the morning, Gerry," she said.
"In the morning. In the morning!" he cried, throwing up his hands. "Good
God, how can you be so shiftless? A law is a law. The man's papers must
be sent in to-day ... this instant."
Monica looked appealingly at me.
"I'm afraid I'm to blame, sir," I said. "The fact is, my passport is
not quite in order and I shall have to take it to the embassy before I
send it to the police."
Then I saw Josef standing by the bed, a salver in his hand.
"Zom letters, sir," he said to Gerry. I wondered how long he had been in
the room.
Gerry waved the letters aside and burst into a regular screaming fit.
He wouldn't have things done that way in the house; he wouldn't
have unknown foreigners brought in, with the city thick with
spies--especially people with an English accent--his nerves wouldn't
stand it: Monica ought to know better, and so on and so forth. The long
and the short of it was that I was ordered to produce my passport
immediately. Monica was to ring up the embassy to ask them to stretch a
point and see to it out of office hours, then Josef should take me round
to the police.
I don't know how we got out of that room. It was Monica, with her sweet
womanly tact, who managed it. I believe the madman even demanded to see
my passport, but Monica scraped me through that trap as well.
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