i8 
LAND & WATER 
September 21, 1916 
Hanau — and my partner's Mr. John S. Blenkiron. He'U 
be here presently. Never knew any one of the name of 
lirandt, barring a tobacconist m Denver City." 
" You liavc never been to Kustchuk ? " he siid with a 
sneer. 
" Not that I know of. But pardon me, sir, if I ask your 
name and your business liere. I'm darned if I'm accustomed 
to be calle<l by Dutch names or have my word doubted. In 
my country we consider that impolite as between gentle- 
men. " 
I could see that my bluff was having its effect. His stare 
l>ei;an to waver, and when he next spoke it was in a more 
civil tone. 
■■ I will ask pardon if I'm mistaken, sir, but j'ou're the 
image of a man who a week ago was at Kustchuk, a man 
much wanted by the Impeiial Government. ' 
" A week ago I was tossing in a dirty little hooker coming 
from Constanza. Unless Rustchuks in the middle of the 
Black Sea I've never visited the township. I guess you're 
barking up the wrong tree. Come to think (jf it, I was ex- 
jjecting passports. Say. do you come from Enver Damad ? " 
I have that honour," he said. 
" Well. Knver is a very good friend of mine. He's the 
brightest citizen I've struck this side of the .\tlantic." 
Tlie man was calming down, and in another minute his 
suspicions would have gone. But at that moment, by the 
crookedest kind of luck, Peter entered with a tray of dishes. 
He did not notice Kasta, and walked straight to the table 
and plumped down his burden on it. The Turk had stepped 
aside at his entrance, and I saw by the hxik in his eyes that 
suspicions had become a certainty. For Peter, stripj)ed 
to shirt and breeches, was the identical shabby little com- 
panion of the K)istchuk meeting. 
I had never doubted Kasta's pluck. He jumped for the 
door and had a jiistol out in a trice p<3inting at my head. 
•' Bimiic Ivrtimc." he cried. " Both the birds at one shot." 
His hand was on the latch, and his mouth was open to cry. 
I guessed there was an orderly waiting on the stairs. 
He had what you call the strategic advantage, for he was 
at the dwjr while I was at the other end of the table and Peter 
at the side of it at least two yards from him. The road was 
clear before him, and neither of us was armed. I made 
a despairing step forward, not knowing what I meant to do, 
lor I saw no light. But Peter was before me. 
He had never let go of the tray, and now, as a boy skims 
a stone on a pond, he skinnned itwith its contents at "Kasta's 
head. The man was opening the door with one hand while 
he kept me covered with the other, and he got the contrivance 
fairly in the face. A pistol shot cracked out, and the bullet 
went through the tray, but the noise was drowned in the 
crash of glasses and crockery. The next second Peter had 
wrenched the pistol from Kasta's hand and had gripped his 
throat. 
A dandified Young Turk, brought up in Paris and finished 
in Berlin, may be as brave as a lion, but he cannot stand in a 
rough-and-tumble against a back-veld hunter, though more 
than double his age. There was no need for me to help. 
Peter had his own way, learrted in a wild school, of knocking 
the sense out of a foe. He gagged him scientifically, and 
trussed him up with his own belt and two straps from a trunk 
in mv bedroom. 
" this man is too dangerous to let go," he said, as if his 
])r<x:edure were the most f)rdinary thing in the world. " He 
will be (juiet now till we have time to make a plan." 
.\t that moment there came a knocking at the door. That 
is the sort of thing that happens in melodrama, just when the 
villain has finished off his joi) neatly. The correct thing to do 
is to pale to the teeth, and with a rolling, conscience-stricken 
eye glare round the horizon. But that was not Peter's way. 
" We'd better tidy up if we're to have visitors," he said 
calmly. 
Now there was one of those big oak German cupboards 
against the wall which must have been brought in in sections 
for complete it would never have got through the door. It 
was empty now, but for Bleukiron's hat-box. In it he de- 
posited the unconscious Kasta, and turned the key, " There's 
enough ventilation through the top," he observed, " to keep 
the air good." Then he opened the door. 
A magnificent kavass in blue and silver stood outside. He 
saluted and proffered a card on which was written in pencil, 
" Hilda von Einem." 
I would have begged for time to change my clothes, but 
the lady was belimd him. I saw the black mantilla and the 
rich sable furs. Peter vanished through my bedroom and I 
was left to receive my guest in a room littered with broken 
glass and a senseless man in the cupboard. 
There are some situations so crazily extravagant that they 
key up the spirit to meet them. I was almost laughing when 
that stately lady stepped over my threshold. 
" ,Madani," I said, with a bow that shamed my old dressing- 
gown and strident pajamas. " You find me at a disadvantage. 
I came home soaking from my, ride, and was in the act of 
changing. My .servant has just iii)sct a tiay of crockery, and 
I fear this room's no fit place for a lady. Allow me three 
minutes to make myself presentable." 
She inclined her head gravely and ttwk a seat by the fire. I 
went into my bedroom, and as I expected found Peter lurk- 
ing by the other door. In a hectic sentence I bade him get 
Kasta's orderly out of the place on any pretext, and tell him 
his master would return later. 
Then 1 hurried into decent garments and came out to find 
my visitor in a brown study. 
.\t the sound of my entrance she started from her dream 
and stood up on the hearthrug, slipping the long robe of fur 
from her shm body. 
" We are alone ? " she said. " We will not be disturbed ? " 
Then an inspiration came to me. I remembered that Prau 
von Einem, according to Blenkiron, did not sec eye to eye 
with the Young Turk ; and I had a queer instinct that Kasta 
could not be to her liking. So I spoke the truth. 
" 1 must tell you that there's another guest here to-night. 
I reckon he's feeling pretty uncomfortable. At present he's 
trussed up on a shelf in that cupboard. 
She did not trouble to look round. 
Is he dead ? " she asked calmly. 
" By no means," I said, " but he's fixed so he can't speak, 
and I guess he can't hear mucii. " 
" He was the man who brought you this ? " she asked, 
pointing to the enevelopc on the table which bore the big 
blue stamp of the Ministry of War. 
" The same," I said. " I'm not perfectly sure of his name, 
Uut I think they call him Kasta." 
Not a flicker pf a smile crossed her face, but I had a feeling 
that the news pleased her. 
" Did lie thwart you ? " she asked. 
" Why, yes. He thwarted me sonie^ His head is a bit 
swelled, and an hour or two on the shelf will do him good." 
" He is a powerful man," she said, " a jackal of Enver' s. 
You have made a dangerous enemy." 
" 1 don't value him at two cents?' said I, though I thought 
grimly that as far as I could see the value of him was likely 
to be about the price of jny neck. 
" Perhaps you are right," she said with serious eyes. 
" In these daj's no enemy is dangerous to a bold man. I 
have come to-night, Mr. Hanau, to talk business with you, as 
they say in your country. I have heard well of you, and 
to-day I have seen jou. I may have need of you, "and you 
assuredly will have need of me. ..." 
She broke off, and again her strange potent eves fell on 
my face. They were like a burning searchliglit which showed 
up every cranny and crack of the soul. I felt it was going to 
be horribly difficult to act a part under that comp<;lling gaze. 
She could not mesmerise me, but she could strip me of my 
fancy dress and set me naked in the masquerade. 
" What came you forth to seek ? " she asked. " You 
are not like the stout American Blenkiron, a lover of shoddy 
power and a devotee of a feeble science. There is something 
more than that in your face. You are on onr side, but you 
are not of the Germans with their hankerings for a rococo 
Empire. You come from America, the land of pious follies, 
where man worships gold and words. I ask, what came vou 
forth to seek ? " ' 
As she spoke I seemed to get a vision of a figure, like one 
of the old gods looking down on human nature from a great 
height, a figure disdainful and passionless, but with its own 
magnificence. It kindled my imagination, and I answered 
with the stuff I had often cogitated when I had tried to 
explain to myself just how a case could be made out against 
the Allied cause. 
*■ I will tell you. Madam," I said. " I am a man who has 
followed a science, but I have followed it in wild places, and 
1 have gone through it and come out at the other side. The 
world, as I see it, had become too easy and cushioned. Men. 
had forgotten their manhood in soft speech, and 
imagined that the rules of their smug civilisation were the 
laws of the universe. But that is not the teaching of science, 
and It IS not the teaching of life. We had forgotten the 
greater virtues, and we were becoming emasculated humbugs 
whose gods were our own weaknesses. Then came war. and 
the air was cleared. Germany, in spite of her blunders and 
her grossness, stood forth as the scourge of cant. She had 
the courage to cut through the bonds of humbug and to laugh 
at the fetishes of the herd. Therefore I am on Germany's 
side But I came here for another reason. I know nothing 
of the hast, but as I read history it is from the desert that 
the purification comes. When mankind is smothered with 
shams and phrases and painted idols a wind blows out of the 
wilds to cleanse and simphfy life. The world needs space 
and iresh air. 1 he civilisation we have boasted of is a toy- 
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