The Man with the Clubfoot Read online

  CHAPTER III

  A VISITOR IN THE NIGHT

  A volley of invective from the box of the cab--bad language in Dutch isfearfully effective--aroused me from my musings. The cab, a small,uncomfortable box with a musty smell, stopped with a jerk that flung meforward. From the outer darkness furious altercation resounded above theplashing of the rain. I peered through the streaming glass of thewindows but could distinguish nothing save the yellow blur of a lamp.Then a vehicle of some kind seemed to move away in front of us, for Iheard the grating of wheels against the kerb, and my cab drew up to thepavement.

  On alighting, I found myself in a narrow, dark street with high houseson either side. A grimy lamp with the word "Hotel" in half-obliteratedcharacters painted on it hung above my head, announcing that I hadarrived at my destination. As I paid off the cabman another cab passed.It was apparently the one with which my Jehu had had words, for heturned round and shouted abuse into the night.

  My cabman departed, leaving me with my bag on the pavement at my feet,gazing at a narrow dirty door, the upper half of which was filled inwith frosted glass. I was at last awake to the fact that I, anEnglishman, was going to spend the night in a German hotel to which Ihad been specially recommended by a German porter on the understandingthat I was a German. I knew that, according to the Dutch neutralityregulations, my passport would have to be handed in for inspection bythe police and that therefore I could not pass myself off as a German.

  "Bah!" I said to give myself courage, "this is a free country, a neutralcountry. They may be offensive, they may overcharge you, in a Hun hotel,but they can't eat you. Besides, any bed in a night like this!" and Ipushed open the door.

  Within, the hotel proved to be rather better than its uninvitingexterior promised. There was a small vestibule with a little glass cageof an office on one side and beyond it an old-fashioned flight ofstairs, with a glass knob on the post at the foot, winding to the upperstories.

  At the sound of my footsteps on the mosaic flooring, a waiter emergedfrom a little cubby-hole under the stairs. He had a blue apron girtabout his waist, but otherwise he wore the short coat and the dicky andwhite tie of the Continental hotel waiter. His hands were grimy withblack marks and so was his apron. He had apparently been cleaningboots.

  He was a big, fat, blonde man with narrow, cruel little eyes. His hairwas cut so short that his head appeared to be shaven. He advancedquickly towards me and asked me in German in a truculent voice what Iwanted.

  I replied in the same language, I wanted a room.

  He shot a glance at me through his little slits of eyes on hearing mygood Bonn accent, but his manner did not change.

  "The hotel is full. The gentleman cannot have a bed here. Theproprietress is out at present. I regret...." He spat this all out inthe offhand insolent manner of the Prussian official.

  "It was Franz, of the Bopparder Hof, who recommended me to come here," Isaid. I was not going out again into the rain for a whole army ofPrussian waiters.

  "He told me that Frau Schratt would make me very comfortable," I added.

  The waiter's manner changed at once.

  "So, so," he said--quite genially this time--"it was Franz who sent thegentleman to us. He is a good friend of the house, is Franz. Ja, FrauSchratt is unfortunately out just now, but as soon as the lady returns Iwill inform her you are here. In the meantime, I will give the gentlemana room."

  He handed me a candlestick and a key.

  "So," he grunted, "No. 31, the third floor."

  A clock rang out the hour somewhere in the distance.

  "Ten o'clock already," he said. "The gentleman's papers can wait tillto-morrow, it is so late. Or perhaps the gentleman will give them to theproprietress. She must come any moment."

  As I mounted the winding staircase I heard him murmur again:

  "So, so, Franz sent him here! Ach, der Franz!"

  As soon as I had passed out of sight of the lighted hall I found myselfin complete darkness. On each landing a jet of gas, turned down low,flung a dim and flickering light a few yards around. On the third floorI was able to distinguish by the gas rays a small plaque fastened to thewall inscribed with an arrow pointing to the right above the figures:46-30.

  I stopped to strike a match to light my candle. The whole hotel seemedwrapped in silence, the only sound the rushing of water in the gutterswithout. Then from the darkness of the narrow corridor that stretchedout in front of me, I heard the rattle of a key in a lock.

  I advanced down the corridor, the pale glimmer of my candle showing meas I passed a succession of yellow doors, each bearing a white porcelainplate inscribed with a number in black. No. 46 was the first room onthe right counting from the landing: the even numbers were on the right,the odd on the left: therefore I reckoned on finding my room the last onthe left at the end of the corridor.

  The corridor presently took a sharp turn. As I came round the bend Iheard again the sound of a key and then the rattling of a door knob, butthe corridor bending again, I could not see the author of the noiseuntil I had turned the corner.

  I ran right into a man fumbling at a door on the left-hand side of thepassage, the last door but one. A mirror at the end of the corridorcaught and threw back the reflection of my candle.

  The man looked up as I approached. He was wearing a soft black felt hatand a black overcoat and on his arm hung an umbrella streaming withrain. His candlestick stood on the floor at his feet. It had apparentlyjust been extinguished, for my nostrils sniffed the odour of burningtallow.

  "You have a light?" the stranger said in German in a curiouslybreathless voice. "I have just come upstairs and the wind blew out mycandle and I could not get the door open. Perhaps you could ..." Hebroke off gasping and put his hand to his heart.

  "Allow me," I said. The lock of the door was inverted and to open thedoor you had to insert the key upside-down. I did so and the dooropened easily. As it swung back I noticed the number of the room was 33,next door to mine.

  "Can I be of any assistance to you? Are you unwell?" I said, at the sametime lifting my candle and scanning the stranger's features.

  He was a young man with close-cropped black hair, fine dark eyes and anaquiline nose with a deep furrow between the eyebrows. The crispness ofhis hair and the high cheekbones gave a suggestion of Jewish blood. Hisface was very pale and his lips were blueish. I saw the perspirationglistening on his forehead.

  "Thank you, it is nothing," the man replied in the same breathlessvoice. "I am only a little out of breath with carrying my bag upstairs.That's all."

  "You must have arrived just before I did," I said, remembering the cabthat had driven away from the hotel as I drove up.

  "That is so," he answered, pushing open his door as he spoke. Hedisappeared into the darkness of the room and suddenly the door shutwith a slam that re-echoed through the house.

  As I had calculated, my room was next door to his, the end room of thecorridor. It smelt horribly close and musty and the first thing I didwas to stride across to the windows and fling them back wide.

  I found myself looking across a dark and narrow canal, on whosestagnant water loomed large the black shapes of great barges, into thewindows of gaunt and weather-stained houses over the way. Not a lightshone in any window. Away in the distance the same clock as I had heardbefore struck the quarter--a single, clear chime.

  It was the regular bedroom of the _maison meublee_--worn carpet,discoloured and dingy wallpaper, faded rep curtains and mahoganybedstead with a vast _edredon_, like a giant pincushion. My candle,guttering wildly in the unaccustomed breeze blowing dankly through thechamber, was the sole illuminant. There was neither gas nor electriclight laid on.

  The house had relapsed into quiet. The bedroom had an evil look andthis, combined with the dank air from the canal, gave my thoughts asombre tinge.

  "Well," I said to myself, "you're a nice kind of ass! Here you are, aBritish officer, posing as a brother Hun in a cut-throat Hun hotel, witha waiter who looks like the official Prussia
n executioner. What's goingto happen to you, young feller my lad, when Madame comes along and findsyou have a British passport? A very pretty kettle of fish, I must say!

  "And suppose Madame takes it into her head to toddle along up hereto-night and calls your bluff and summons the gentle Hans or Fritz orwhatever that ruffianly waiter's name is to come upstairs and settleyour hash! What sort of a fight are you going to put up in that narrowcorridor out there with a Hun next door and probably on every side ofyou, and no exit this end? You don't know a living soul in Rotterdam andno one will be a penny the wiser if you vanish off the face of theearth ... at any rate no one on this side of the water."

  Starting to undress, I noticed a little door on the left-hand side ofthe bed. I found it opened into a small _cabinet de toilette_, a narrowslip of a room with a wash-hand stand and a very dirty window coveredwith yellow paper. I pulled open this window with great difficulty--itcannot have been opened for years--and found it gave on to a very smalland deep interior court, just an air shaft round which the house wasbuilt. At the bottom was a tiny paved court not more than five footsquare, entirely isolated save on one side where there was a basementwindow with a flight of steps leading down from the court through aniron grating. From this window a faint yellow streak of light wasvisible. The air was damp and chill and horrid odours of a dirty kitchenwere wafted up the shaft. So I closed the window and set about turningin.

  I took off my coat and waistcoat, then bethought me of the mysteriousdocument I had received from Dicky. Once more I looked at thoseenigmatical words:

  _O Oak-wood! O Oak-wood_ (for that much wasclear),_How empty are thy leaves._Like Achiles_ (with one "l") _in the tent.When two people fall outThe third party rejoices._

  What did it all mean? Had Francis fallen out with some confederate who,having had his revenge by denouncing my brother, now took thisextraordinary step to announce his victim's fate to the latter'sfriends? "Like Achilles in the tent!" Why not "in _his_ tent"?Surely ...

  A curious choking noise, the sound of a strangled cough, suddenly brokethe profound silence of the house. My heart seemed to stop for a moment.I hardly dared raise my eyes from the paper which I was conning, leaningover the table in my shirt and trousers.

  The noise continued, a hideous, deep-throated gurgling. Then I heard afaint foot-fall in the corridor without.

  I raised my eyes to the door.

  Someone or something was scratching the panels, furiously, frantically.

  The door-knob was rattled loudly. The noise broke in raucously upon thathorrid gurgling sound without. It snapped the spell that bound me.

  I moved resolutely towards the door. Even as I stepped forward thegurgling resolved itself into a strangled cry.

  "Ach! ich sterbe" were the words I heard.

  Then the door burst open with a crash, there was a swooping rush of windand rain through the room, the curtains flapped madly from the windows.

  The candle flared up wildly.

  Then it went out.

  Something fell heavily into the room.