The Secret Witness by George Gibbs (book recommendations txt) 📕

My orders were to bring you safely into Germany, or to—to eliminate you. Perhaps you will understand now my difficulties in keeping you unscathed."

"My death would have relieved you of that responsibility. It would have been so easy to have let me die——"

"I could not!" He bent his head over his folded arms. "I could not," he repeated. And then, after a silence, "Countess Strahni, I beg that you will consider that I have succeeded so far in saving you from personal danger."

"And yet you used me as a shield to save yourself from the bullets of the man you killed——" She broke off, laughing bitterly.

"He would not fire. I knew it. He was a fool to give me the chance. I took it. There was nothing else——"

"It was murder. And you——"

She glanced at him once and then turning away, hid her head in her arm. "O God!" she whispered, as though to herself. "How I loathe you!"

Though the words were not even meant for him to hear, he did not miss them.

"That is your privilege," he said after a moment, "and mine—to—to adore you," he said in deep accents.

Slowly she lowered her hands and gazed at him with eyes that though they looked, seemed to see not.

"You—you—! You care for me!" She dropped her hands to her sides, and then with a voice that sought steadiness in its contempt, "What object has the Fatherland to gain by this new hypocrisy, Herr Goritz?"

He stood stock still, making no effort to approach her.

"I think you do me some injustice," he said.

"Injustice!" she said coldly. "I do you injustice? I think you forget."

"If you will permit—it is only fair at least that you should listen. Even if what I say does not interest you."

She waved a hand in a gesture of deprecation—but he went on rapidly in spite of her protest, with an air of pride, which somehow robbed the confession of its sincerity.

"Your words have been cruel, Countess, but the cruelest were those in which you attribute the highest motive of my life to the baseness of hypocrisy. I have done many wrongs, broken many oaths, sinned many sins—in the interests of my country—the service of which has been the only aim of my existence. I have been entrusted by the Emperor himself with missions which would have tested the courage of any man, and I have not failed. That is my pride—the glory of my manhood, for the means of accomplishment no matter how unworthy, are unimportant compared with the great mission of the Germanic race in the betterment of humanity."

"I fail to see, Herr Hauptmann, how——"

He commanded her silence with an abrupt gesture.

"If you will be pleased to bear with me a little longer. Bitte. I shall not be very long. I merely wanted you to understand how my whole life has been devoted to the great uses of the State, with the most unselfish motives. I have been not a human sentient being, but a highly specialized physical organism to which any wish, any emotion, unless of service to the state, was forbidden. Charity, kindness, altruism, all the gentler emotions—I foreswore them. I relinquished friendship. I became a pariah, an outcast, save to those few beings from whom I took my orders, and to them I was merely the piece of machinery which always accomplished its tasks. I have had no happiness, no friendships, no affection, but I am the most famous secret agent in Germany. A somber picture, is it not?"

He paused and shrugged expressively. And then his voice lowered a note. "Perhaps you will believe me when I say that my whole existence is a living lie. Ah, yes, you think that. It is a lie, Countess, because no human being can defy the living God that is within him. He cannot forever quell the aspirations of the spirit. The spark is always alight. Sometimes it glows and fades, but sometimes a worthy motive sets it on fire. It is that spark which has survived in me, Countess Strahni, in spite of my efforts—my desires even—to deny its existence. Your illness——"

"Herr Hauptmann, I beg of you——"

"No. You cannot deny me. I nursed you, there—brought you back to life. Ah, you did not know. I brought a doctor at the hazard of the discovery of my hiding place. Charity came, love——"

"Herr Hauptmann, I forbid you," whispered Marishka chokingly, wondering now why she had listened to him for so long. "I must go—go to my room."

Goritz straightened and stood aside.

"You need not fear me, Countess," he said. "You see?" he added quickly. "I do not touch you."

Marishka moved a few paces away and then turned to look at him. He stood erect, smiling at her, his cap in his hand.

"I—I must go to my room, Herr Hauptmann," she murmured haltingly. "I—I am yet—far from strong."

"I am sorry. I pray that you will feel stronger in the morning. Adieu!"

"Adieu——" she murmured, and hurried through the stone portal, aware of the gaze of those dark, slightly oblique eyes which had puzzled, then fascinated—then frightened her.

CHAPTER XXIV PRISONER AND CAPTIVE

It was with mingled feelings that Marishka found the sanctuary of her sleeping room. Her abhorrence of Goritz as the murderer of Hugh Renwick was uppermost in her breast, her fear of him as her captor of scarcely less import, but his tumultuous plea for her forgiveness and his strange avowal had given her food for thought. Such a rapid volte-face was beyond credence. This man had watched by her bedside, nursed her during the week that she had lain unconscious. Her cheeks burned hot at the thought of the situation, and quickly she questioned Ena who at last reluctantly admitted the truth. Herr Hauptmann Goritz had sat many nights by the bedside while she, Ena, had slept so as to be fresh for the day to follow. He had commanded her silence, and Ena had obeyed. She hoped that the Excellency would understand.

Marishka nodded and sent her from the room, for she wanted to be alone with her thoughts. He had watched by her sickbed, carrying out the orders of the doctor while she had lain unconscious—Goritz, the master craftsman of duplicity—Goritz, the insensible! What did it mean? Had the man spoken the truth? Was he—? Love to such a man as Goritz! It was impossible.

He had always been courteous and considerate, but there was a new note in his voice which rang strangely. Another lie—another hypocrisy? And yet the very frankness of his admission with regard to her safety for a moment disarmed her. He would have killed her—"eliminated" her—had the necessities of his duty demanded it of him. And yet he had confessed his love for her. What was the meaning of the paradox? Had he something to gain by her favor? Had a change taken place in their situation? A chance phrase had revealed the fact that there was now a danger of the revelation of this hiding place. They had been pursued—what had balked him in the continuance of their flight into Germany? Meditation only served to enhance the mystery, and she emerged from an hour of thought over the scene in the courtyard with no very clear idea of what the future had in store for her, sure only of one thing—that she must not hang importance upon the words of this man, who had already proved himself a deadly enemy to her happiness. He had hired assassins to kill Hugh, and when they had failed, had accomplished his purpose by a vile expedient.

Love! She knew what love was. She closed her eyes and buried her face in her arms in wordless, silent grief for the man to whom she had given all that was best and noblest of her—Hugh! But she could not weep. It seemed as though, long since, the fountains of her misery were dry. For a long while she crouched in the window, motionless, and when at last she raised her head and gazed out down the shimmering vista of the gorge, it was with a look of new resolution and intelligence. She must escape. Every iota of cleverness must be given to find a way out of Schloss Szolnok. What if, in spite of all, the things that Leo Goritz had confessed were true! She doubted it and yet—if he loved her—! Here was a woman's revenge, to bait, to charm, to spurn; and then to outwit him! A test of the sincerity of his professions, and of her own feminine art—a dangerous game which she had once before thought of playing, until his cruelty had atrophied all impulse.

But now! If he really cared—her power would grow with the venture, her own safety the pledge of his purity—a dangerous game, indeed, here alone upon this crag in the mountains, but if he were sincere, she was armed with a flaming sword to defend—to destroy! If—? She would not trust him, but she would fight him with the weapons she had. Her lips closed in a thin line, and a glint as of polished metal came into her eyes as the scene in the house of the Beg of Rataj shut out the lovely landscape before her. To destroy—to fan the spark to flame that she might extinguish it; to corrode the spirit with the biting acid of contempt; to envenom the soul—newly born, perhaps—to the sweeter uses of beneficence, and then escape! If he cared!

And if he did not care—if, as she really believed, he lied to gain an end....

This was the thought of him that obsessed her. A liar, always. Why not now? Men of his kind were unusual to women of hers, but even in the midst of his confession—as near self-abasement as a man of his type could come, the note of egotism rang clear above the graceful phrases—too graceful to be anything but manufactured in that clear inventive brain of his.

She paced the floor, thinking deeply, and at last stopped by the window and sought again the counsel of the eternal hills. After a while she turned again into the room and peered into a mirror, seeking in her face the answer to the riddle. It was pale, resolute, but it was not ugly.

She planned her campaign with the calm forethought of a general who picks out his own battlefield, disposing his forces to the best advantage, for attack or for repulse, for victory, or defeat. She must mask her approach, conceal her intentions, and develop slowly the real strength of her position. There was much that she wished to learn as to Schloss Szolnok, and its security from those who sought to intercept them, much in regard to the plans of her captor for the future, but she knew that she must act with caution and skill, if she hoped to escape.

Goritz had previously expressed a wish that when she grew strong enough to leave her bedroom, she would join him at dinner, which she heard was served in one end of the great Hall, but she decided that the first skirmish should take place in a situation of her own choosing. And so after dusk, the moon coming out, she went again upon the terrace where she leaned upon the wall of the bastion and looked down with an air of self-sought seclusion, upon the mists of the valley.

Goritz was not long in joining her. She heard his footsteps as he approached but did not give any sign or acknowledgment of his presence.

"May I talk with you, Countess Strahni?" he asked easily.

Her shrug, under her cloak, was hardly perceptible.

"Since you have already done so it seems that my own wishes do not matter," she said coolly.

"I have no wish to intrude."

Marishka laughed. "I can go in——" She drew her wrap more closely about her throat and straightened.

"I hope that you will not do that," he said.

"Is there anything you wished to speak to me about—? That is—er—anything of importance?"

Goritz looked past her