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At this the mask was thrown off. "Get his passport!" yelled the dealer on the floor. The other two began to draw weapons and started toward Kirtley. He was almost unnerved. His genial Wuerttemberg friend a spy! It was the Secret Service. As he stepped back, thunderstruck, his hand grazed the big pepper can which had been left on the side table. It sent an inspiration whizzing through his brain.
Although the family were entirely obliging, Rudi, odd to say, occupied himself the most about the trip. He seemed wonderfully keyed up and more full of military talk even than usual. He insisted on seeing about time-tables, hotels to be recommended, the favorite dishes and brews to be called for at each stopping place for local tone. Kirtley was pleased over his friendly attentions.
He must be a spy, as Anderson had insisted. Was the son trying to act with confederates far away over here near the Rhine? The passport! Rudi and the family knew all about it. Kirtley felt in his inside shirt pocket. He was relieved to find the parchment still there. How foolish he would have been to leave it in his grip, as Rudi had urged! A traveler couldn't be with his grip every moment.
And so Jim Deming made a hasty and unceremonious exit from the Deutschland he had been so fond of, without having time to salute any of his many friends good-by. He had to send them a line of farewell from St. Petersburg. "Here you have German bureaucracy in its full flower and odor," remarked Anderson as he recounted the affair to Kirtley.
Kirtley did not want to be discourteous or appear unappreciative. He had come to Germany to do as the superior Germans do. His digestive tract was on the narrow-gage American plan. Theirs was broad-gage, with their surpassing organisms. At the Buchers Gard had manfully to face six meals a day. Must he be swamped in order to put the desirable adipose tissue on his bones?
And this is because she is vain, timid and without plan. Is that logical, wise and serving mankind for the best? Were conditions reversed, would she herself favor such a backward, lagging programme?" Kirtley admitted to himself that this was a very good and valid point of view for Germans. He recognized its general source, for the Buchers, in the Dresden newspapers.
More regrets, but the Von Tielitzes were unable to carry out their plan. Would not Herr Kirtley kindly renew his invitation? This stately despatching of communications, as with a foreign power, went on side by side of and unseparated from the usual daily informal intercourse of the family.
Gard now descended unwittingly into one of the darkest regions of German life, and one which foreign publics had persistently missed or voluntarily overlooked in their chorus of approbation of the race. It is a familiar dictum that one can judge of a nation pretty fairly by the position and treatment of its women. Kirtley had never, in America, heard anything about Deutschland in this light.
He could see to better advantage the far-famed, vine-clad valley of the Neckar where it merges into the wide and noble plains of the Rhine. From Mannheim he went by boat as proposed. His be-whiskered friend did not put in an appearance and Kirtley congratulated himself on the riddance. The more he reflected, the less he made any sense out of it.
Fräulein observed a meaningless familiarity with Kirtley as if he were an old member of the home circle. He wondered again if Rudolph had influenced and troubled from the first her relations with himself. And nowadays Tekla was surly toward him. She served him unwillingly and grabbed his occasional Trinkgelds with scarcely a thank-you.
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