"You've picked up wonderfully, Herr Lassen, wonderfully!" said the doctor. "I declare no one would guess from your appearance what you have been through."
"And I feel as well as I look, doctor, thanks to you and the nurses," I replied. "I owe my life to the doctor here," I added, turning to the stranger.
"You are Johann Lassen?" he asked.
"I told you how we know," put in the doctor, adding to me: "I have explained the nature of your case to Herr Hoffnung. He has come to take you to Berlin."
It was clearly time to bring matters to a head, so I turned to the man. "Have I ever had the pleasure of seeing you before?" I asked, with a perplexed3 and rather bewildered look.
He shook his head. "No, we have never met, but——" He paused and then added: "But of course it must be right."
I could have shouted for joy, but I put my hand before my eyes that he should not see the delight in them.
"You will wish to see Herr Lassen alone, of course," said the doctor. "You will bear in mind all that I have told you, I trust."
Hoffnung crossed to the door with him and the two stood speaking together in low tones for a minute, giving me an opportunity to observe my visitor. He was rather a good-looking man of about thirty, well-dressed and smart, and I placed him as somebody's secretary. Certainly a decent sort and not too quick-witted.
"First let me congratulate you on your marvellous escape, Herr Lassen," he said when the doctor had gone.
"It seems to have been touch and go; but——" and I gestured to suggest that I knew nothing about it.
"The doctor tells me he quite despaired at one time of saving your life. But he says you are quite fit to travel. Do you agree with that?"
"It's all the same to me. I feel all right."
"It is rather urgent that I should return to Berlin as soon as possible. Do you think you could manage the journey to-day?"
"I don't see why not. But—er—it's a bit awkward, you know. Are you sure I'm your man?"
He glanced at his watch and started. "It's just possible that we could catch the express, and we can talk in the train; that is, if you haven't many preparations to make."
"I haven't any. I've nothing but what I stand up in, and one place is as good as another to me unti——" and I sighed and gestured hopelessly.
"Then I should like to go."
"Can I go without any papers or anything?"
"With me, certainly. I have everything necessary, and will explain on the journey."
And go we did to my infinite satisfaction.
In the cab to the station he was silent and thoughtful, and as my one consuming desire was to get across the frontier before anything could happen, I didn't worry him with any questions. It was all clear sailing at the station. Whoever Hoffnung might be, there was no doubt about his having authority. He secured a special compartment4, although the train was crowded, and did all possible for my comfort.
"That's the best of travelling officially," he said pleasantly as he settled himself in the seat opposite me, while the train ran out of the station. "Now, you asked me a question at the hospital which I did not answer—whether I'm sure you're Lassen. Frankly5, I'm not; and the more I look at you the more I'm puzzled."
"It's a bit awkward. I don't wish to be somebody else."
"Do you feel fit to talk? The doctor warned me against worrying you; but there are things I should enormously like to know."
"You're not half so keen as I am," I told him truthfully. "If I am Lassen, what am I; where do I live; have I any friends anywhere; isn't there any one who knows me anywhere? It's such a devil of a mess."
"There's one thing certain, my friend, you're a German; and as for the rest you'll find plenty of people in Berlin who'll know you. The von Reblings, for instance. Which reminds me I have the Countess's letter;" he opened his despatch6 case and handed me a sealed envelope.
But I had already told the doctors that I could not write and could not read handwriting, although I had fumbled7 out some large print. That had been one of the specialities of my peculiar8 aphasia9. So I just smiled vacantly and shook my head. "Will you read it to me?" I asked.
He agreed after some little demur10, and a very charming letter it was. The Countess addressed me as "My dear Johann," wrote in the familiar thee and thou, said how anxious she and Rosa—especially Rosa, it seemed—had been about me; urged me to hurry to Berlin as soon as possible, where, of course, I should be the most welcome guest in the world, and signed herself "Your affectionate aunt, Olga von Rebling."
"Doesn't that remind you of anything?" asked Hoffnung.
"Not in the faintest. Who is Rosa?"
Instead of telling me, he smiled suggestively and I smiled back. "Did the Countess send you to fetch me?"
"Oh, no. I came officially. I'll tell you about that directly; but it is because of what she told us about you that I was sent. She received a letter from you from England saying that you were crossing in the Burgen, and when the newspapers reported the loss of the steamer and that you were the only survivor11, she told me about it. I reported it at Headquarters, and—well, here I am in consequence."
"And you've never seen me, or Lassen, or whoever I am, before?"
"Never. I have seen a photograph of you, but it was taken some long time ago; and while you answer to the likeness12 in some respects, you certainly do not in others, although I can see that you may be Lassen, allowing for the difference of time."
"Well, anyway, these von Reblings will know, thank Heaven."
But he shook his head. "I'm not so sure. You see, it's a good many years since you were in Berlin. The family arrangement dates back many more years than that, moreover—since you were children."
"What family arrangement?"
"The devil!" I exclaimed. "Do you mean to tell me I'm engaged to marry this Rosa von Rebling?"
"Certainly I do, and a very charming girl she is, and very rich too," he replied, smiling unrestrainedly.
But it cost me some effort to smile in return. It was the very deuce of a mix up; there were no end of bothering complications in it, and I leant back in my seat to try and think it out. It was quite on the cards, after what he had said about my photograph, that even these people themselves might mistake me for Lassen; and if they did, I should be hampered14 at every turn in my search for Nessa.
"Is it really possible that you don't remember anything about it?" he asked after a long pause.
"Not a thing."
"The doctor hoped that the mention of them would stir your memory."
I shook my head hopelessly. "It may when I see them—if I'm really Lassen, that is. Phew! What a kettle of fish!"
We reached the frontier soon afterwards, and I breathed more freely as soon as I was on the right side of it. Whatever happened now, I could play at being a German. I recalled with immense satisfaction his confident assertion that whoever I might be I was certainly one of his countrymen; and I could gamble on it that when the von Reblings met me, my "case" would still continue to be interesting enough to secure my safety.
Hoffnung had begun to study some papers from his grip and presently looked across at me and put a surprising question. "Do you speak English?" he asked in my own tongue.
"Then you've been in America?"
"Have I?" My practice with the Rotterdam people was coming in well.
"Oh, yes. You went from there to England," he replied, going back to his own language. "Can't you remember that?"
I shook my head and frowned.
"Nor anything you did in England?" Another mystified shake of the head. "It's a pity. Don't you know that you sent a report from England of what you'd seen there?"
A little duet followed in which he asked me a series of questions, and I replied each time with a shake of the head. The subject matter of them all was the mention of persons, places, dockyards, ships and so on, which had obviously been embodied16 in the report Lassen had sent to Berlin. He referred to them in a casual tone and in a way which would not give anything away supposing I should turn out not to be Lassen.
"I'm inclined to be very sorry for all this, and fear it may affect you very seriously. You're not just playing at this, I hope?" he asked then very earnestly.
"Playing at what?"
"This loss of memory. I mean that you need not have the faintest hesitation17 about speaking to me; and it occurred to me that you might have put it all on just to avoid questions at Rotterdam."
"Are you serious?"
"Absolutely. It's a tremendously serious matter. It's this way. We've seen the Burgen's manifest, of course; we know there were only two male cabin passengers on board, both travelling as Americans; one as Jas. R. Lamb, the other as Joseph Lyman. If you are Lassen, that was you. The other man, Lamb, as he called himself, we have good reason to believe was an English spy. It follows, therefore, that if you are not Lassen, you are the Englishman; and I need scarcely tell you that at such a time as this, spies find Berlin a very unhealthy place."
He was a quicker-witted fellow than I had believed, but he made a mistake in not springing this beastly surprise on me more suddenly. His long preamble18 gave me time to get myself well in hand.
"It'll be a pretty climax19 for me if I am the Englishman," I answered, laughing, and without turning a hair.
"You're sure you're not?" he rapped.
I tried to appear amused. "I wish I could be sure of anything."
A pause followed, and then he tried another shot. "You may have noticed that I stared pretty hard at you this morning when you came into the doctor's room, and that afterwards I rather rushed you away from Rotterdam. I reached there yesterday morning and spent the day making such inquiries20 as I could about you. I was instructed to, of course; and I came to the conclusion that you were the Englishman, and I thought so when you came into that room. That was why I hurried you away; I wished to have you on this side of the frontier. It is also the reason why I am sorry you cannot recover your memory."
I declined the opening without thanks. "I'm just as sorry as you are; but I suppose we can clear up the tangle21 at Berlin."
"Oh, yes. I've wired to the von Reblings to meet our train. Of course you'll understand that I have some men at hand here. It is better you should know that," he added in an unpleasantly suggestive tone.
But I only laughed. "I wish you would send one of them to get me something to eat."
"I will, of course;" and he looked out into the corridor, beckoned22 some one and gave him the necessary order, returned to his seat and busied himself with the papers from his despatch case.
A substantial meal for us both was brought to the compartment, and although very little was said as we ate it, I was conscious that a considerable change had come over the relations between us. His manner had become distinctly official, and I understood that I was virtually under arrest until at least we reached Berlin.
Afterwards he went back to his papers, suggesting that I might like to sleep; so I leant back in my corner and gave myself up to my thoughts.
They were anything but pleasant. He had given me a shock that was almost as great as the explosion on the Burgen. I was in the very devil's own mess. I had no delusions23 about my fate if I was held to be an English spy; and that would almost certainly be the case if the von Reblings declared I was not Lassen. That that would be their decision was a million to one chance. It was a sheer impossibility that they would be unable to recognize a relation who was actually engaged to the daughter; and how to meet the difficulty baffled me.
I was right in the eye of the net. The fact that there had been only two men as cabin passengers on the Burgen was like a mine sprung under my feet. I had reckoned on being able to recover my memory at any necessary moment; but this cut the ground from under me. I couldn't become Jimmy. That was a cert. And I certainly couldn't become any one else, because every lie I might tell would most surely be scrupulously24 investigated.
Poor Nessa! I was a heap more troubled about her and her mother than about myself. Whether the von Reblings knew me or not, the result would be much the same to her. Tied up as the betrothed25 of another girl, it would be next to impossible in the short time at my command to do a thing to find Nessa. The only possibility that occurred to me was that if the million to one chance came off and the von Reblings didn't denounce me at once as a fraud, I might manage to lose myself in the city somehow and set to work on the search.
But even in that case I should be in hourly danger of discovery; a state of things which would make it virtually impossible to carry on the search with any hope of success.
How Hoffnung's people could have got on the track of my not being Jimmy, baffled me utterly26. But they clearly had; so there was no use in wasting time worrying over it. I did worry over it, however, as well as over every other detail of the job, and continued to ask myself all sorts of unanswerable questions for the rest of the journey.
Hoffnung looked at his watch, shovelled27 his papers back into their case, and looked across at me. "About ten minutes now only," he said. "Have you slept?"
I all but gave myself away by blurting28 out the fact that I never slept in trains, but checked the words in time. "Dozed29 a bit," I said.
"You look fresh and fit enough," he replied, as if the fact rather justified30 his suspicions of me, "Wonderful after what you've gone through. You must be as hard as nails. Military training, I suppose."
Neat; but I didn't tumble in. "Have I had any?" I asked.
He shrugged his shoulders and squinted31 at me with a suggestive smile. Then he grew earnest. "We won't have a scene at the station. We'd better wait till most of the people have got away, and you'll give me your word of honour not to attempt to get away or anything of the sort?"
"What the deuce good would that be? Of course I shan't make a fool of myself in any such fashion. If I'm the man you call the Englishman, well, I am, that's all."
"You have all an Englishman's coolness."
"We'll hope not, at any rate;" but it was clear he was fast making up his mind that I was. After a pause he added: "When the crowd has cleared off, we'll walk together to the barrier, and my men will be behind us. We shall find the von Reblings there."
"And if we don't?"
"Oh, I'll see that you're taken care of for the night; but they'll be there to a certainty."
I don't deny that when the train stopped at the platform and we stayed in the carriage while the other travellers cleared away, I had more than a little trouble to maintain what he had termed an Englishman's coolness. But my anxiety didn't show in my face.
Nessa's fate as well as my own depended upon what occurred in the next few minutes at the barrier; and I think that if it had been practicable to have choked Hoffnung, and his men, into insensibility, I should have been sorely tempted32 to make the attempt.
But the thought of Nessa made me keep my end up; there was nothing for it but to face the music; and when at last he rose to leave the carriage, all I did was to yawn and stretch myself and say that I should be jolly glad to get to bed.
"What a magnificent station!" I exclaimed, stopping on the platform to look about me as if that was the one subject which interested me at the moment.
Then I went on with him, my eyes fixed33 on a little knot of people at the barrier on whose words and acts my life not improbably depended.
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1
shrug
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| v.耸肩(表示怀疑、冷漠、不知等) | |
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shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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perplexed
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| adj.不知所措的 | |
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compartment
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| n.卧车包房，隔间；分隔的空间 | |
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frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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despatch
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| n./v.(dispatch)派遣；发送；n.急件；新闻报道 | |
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7
fumbled
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| （笨拙地）摸索或处理（某事物）( fumble的过去式和过去分词 )； 乱摸，笨拙地弄； 使落下 | |
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8
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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aphasia
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| n.失语症 | |
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demur
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| v．表示异议，反对 | |
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survivor
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| n.生存者，残存者，幸存者 | |
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likeness
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| n.相像，相似（之处） | |
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betrothal
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| n. 婚约, 订婚 | |
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14
hampered
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| 妨碍，束缚，限制( hamper的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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gee
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| n.马；int.向右！前进！，惊讶时所发声音；v.向右转 | |
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16
embodied
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| v.表现( embody的过去式和过去分词 )；象征；包括；包含 | |
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hesitation
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| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
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18
preamble
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| n.前言；序文 | |
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climax
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| n.顶点；高潮；v.(使)达到顶点 | |
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inquiries
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| n.调查( inquiry的名词复数 )；疑问；探究；打听 | |
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tangle
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| n.纠缠；缠结；混乱；v.(使)缠绕；变乱 | |
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beckoned
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| v.（用头或手的动作）示意，召唤( beckon的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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delusions
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| n.欺骗( delusion的名词复数 )；谬见；错觉；妄想 | |
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scrupulously
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| adv.一丝不苟地；小心翼翼地，多顾虑地 | |
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25
betrothed
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| n. 已订婚者 动词betroth的过去式和过去分词 | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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shovelled
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| v.铲子( shovel的过去式和过去分词 )；锹；推土机、挖土机等的)铲；铲形部份 | |
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28
blurting
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| v.突然说出，脱口而出( blurt的现在分词 ) | |
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29
dozed
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| v.打盹儿，打瞌睡( doze的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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30
justified
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| a.正当的，有理的 | |
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squinted
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| 斜视( squint的过去式和过去分词 )； 眯着眼睛； 瞟； 从小孔或缝隙里看 | |
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32
tempted
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| v.怂恿（某人）干不正当的事；冒…的险（tempt的过去分词） | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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