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Till now, the matter had been for him a play without a plot; suddenly understanding, he cast a startled glance at Von Wetten. The captain sat up alert. "Certainly!" The old baron was replying to young Bettermann. "And stand to attention! And salute! I told you that I would agree to your terms, and I agree accordingly.
"Zu Befehl, Excellenz," acquiesced Herr Haase, and made of his solidity and stolidity a screen and a shield for the master-mind in its master-body. Herr Bettermann, bending behind his machine, took in the grouping with an eye that sneered and exulted, jerked his angular blue-clad shoulders contemptuously, and turned again to his business.
He died at ten minutes past eleven this morning." His parade voice rang in the room; when it ceased the silence, for a space of moments, was absolute. What broke it was the voice of Von Wetten. "Thank God!" it said, loudly and triumphantly. The Baron swung round to him, but before he could speak Bettermann gathered up the slack of his long limbs and rose from his chair.
It was the Baron who answered from his seat on the parapet, not varying his tone and measured delivery. "Colonel von Specht," he said, "is to bring a whip here and stand to attention while Herr Bettermann cuts him over the face with it. That is all. Now sit down and be silent." Captain von Wetten did not move. "This is impossible," he said. "There are limits.
Von Wetten stared, arrested in the very act of rising. "Zu Befehl, Herr Baron," he said, in a strained voice, and continued staring. The Baron watched him frowningly an instant, to make sure of his submission, and turned again to Herr Bettermann where he stood, lean and glowering, before them. "Now," he said, "I am beginning to see my way dimly, dimly.
A deserter a German and that scar is your passport! Ye-es! Well, will you tell me, Herr Bettermann, in plain German, how you came by that scar?" "Yes," said Bettermann, fiercely, "I will!" Behind him, where the house windows shone rosy in the sunset, Herr Haase could see upon the lower balcony the shimmer of a white frock and a face that peeped and drew back. The little wife was listening.
"There has been much elegance of talk and I am stupid, no doubt; but, in plain German, what is it that Colonel von Specht is to do?" Bettermann swooped at him again, choking with words; the captain stood like a monument callous to his white and stammering rage, the personification and symbol of his caste and its privilege.
Bettermann was upon the second step, gauntly silhouetted against the yellow wood of the house. He looked down into the elder man's strong and subtle face. "No," he answered. "I meant to at first, but I haven't purged the German out of me yet and I couldn't. But I'd let your army of slaves and slave-drivers be beaten by its own slavery as it would be and you know it.
He sat as he spoke, letting himself down upon the low parapet with an elderly deliberation; at his gesture Von Wetten sat likewise, a few yards away; Herr Haase moved a pace, hesitated, and remained standing. "I'll stand," said Bettermann shortly. "And what are the three things that you have got to do?"
When at last the fifth and final hole was filled and trodden down under the sore heels in the cloth boots, the others were standing around the apparatus. They looked up at him as he cast down the spade and clapped a hand to the main stiffness in the small of his back. "All finished?" called the Baron. "Then come over here, my good friend, or you will be blown up. Eh, Herr Bettermann?"
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