RUTH moved from him and to the end of the seat.
He laughed and again edged up to her.
"Where are we bound?" Ruth asked.
"That's up to you."
"How?"
"I send you one place, if you cut up; a more pleasant one, if you do not."
"What are the two places?"
"The first I may leave to your heated imagination; the other—it is quite pretty, I assure you. Particularly in the spring, with all nature budding to increase. I own it—in the Schwarzwald, near Biberach. You know the Schwarzwald?"
"No," Ruth said.
"Indeed; it is not so far from Losheim."
He put a taunt into his tone—confident, mocking raillery; and Ruth knew that he had discovered her; she recognized that from the very first, probably, he had known about her and that she had never deceived him. Whether he had received information prior to her appearance that she was not to be trusted, or whether she had betrayed herself to him, she could not know; and now it scarcely mattered. The fact was that he was aware that she was not of the Germans and that he had brought her into Germany with power to punish her as might appeal to him.
"Then you do not know Lauengratz?" he went on.
"No," Ruth said.
"You do not call me Herr Baron now, Liebchen," he reproached, patting her face.
Ruth made no reply but the futile movement of slipping to the cushions opposite, where he permitted her to sit alone, contenting himself by leaning back and smirking at her.
He continued to speak to her in English, except for his native liebchens, to show off his perfect familiarity with her language. For he entirely abandoned all pretense of believing her anything but American. Near Lauengratz, he informed her, was his favorite estate, where, when he wished, even the war would not unpleasantly intrude; he trusted that she would have the good sense to wish to visit Lauengratz.
Dawn was brightening, and Wessels—Ruth did not yet know his true name—switched off the lights in the compartment, lifted the curtains and motioned to the right and ahead, where, along the length of Baden, lay the wooded hills of his Schwarzwald—the Black Forest. The gray light, sweeping over the sky, showed Ruth the wooded slopes reaching down toward the Rhine, which had formed the Swiss-German boundary at Basel, but which now flowed almost due north between the German grand duchy of Baden and the German Imperial Territory of Alsace, within the western edge of which now ran the French and American battle line.
Four railroads, Ruth knew, reached from Basel into Germany— one west of the Rhine to Mühlhausen; one almost due east and up the river valley to the Rhinefall; one northeast to Tedtnau; the other north and parallel with the Rhine to Freiburg and Karlsruhe. The train evidently was traveling this last road with the Rhine valley dimly in sight to the west. There had come to Ruth the wholly irrational sensation that Germany, when at last seen, must appear a land distinct from all others; but nothing in this quiet countryside, which was disclosing itself to greater and greater distance under the brightening dawn, was particularly alarming or peculiar. She viewed a fair and beautiful land of forest, and farm, and tiny, neat villages very like the Swiss, and with not so many soldiers in evidence about them as Ruth had noticed upon the Swiss side of the frontier.
Perhaps it was the appearance of this fair, quiet countryside which spared Ruth from complete dismay; perhaps, deep within her, she had always realized that her venture must prove inevitably fatal, and this realization now controlled her reactions as well as her conscious thought; perhaps she was one of those whom despair amazingly arms with coolness and resource.
"I will go with you to Lauengratz," Ruth replied.
"That's good!" He patted the seat beside him. "Come back here now."
Ruth recognized that she must obey or he would seize her; so she returned to the other seat and suffered his arm about her.
"You do not recall me, Liebchen?" he asked indulgently.
He referred, obviously, to some encounter previous to their very recent meetings in Lucerne. Ruth could recollect no such occasion, but she feared to admit it lest she offend his vanity. And, indeed, now that he suggested that they had met before, his features became to her, not familiar, but it seemed that she had seen him before.
"Didn't I see you in Paris, Herr Baron?" she ventured boldly
"In Paris precisely," he confirmed, boastfully.
"I would have placed you, if I had thought about the possibility of your having been in Paris," Ruth explained.
"Ah! Why should I not have been there? A Norwegian gentleman, shipwrecked from a vessel torpedoed by the horrid Huns!" He laughed, self-flatteringly, and squeezed Ruth tighter. "A kiss, Liebchen! I swear, if you are a loyal girl, surely you'll say I deserve a kiss!"
He bent his head to take his reward; and Ruth, unable fully to oppose him, contented herself with turning her cheek, avoiding touch of his lips upon hers. It satisfied him, or he was in such excellent humor with himself that he let it content him for the moment.
The loathing which his embrace stirred within her and the helpless fury for repulse of him called clear images from Ruth's subconsciousness.
"About two weeks ago—" she began.
"A week ago Thursday, Liebchen."
"You brought a child for clothing to the relief rooms where I was working. I waited upon you."
"And following your excellent explanation of your wonderful work, Liebchen, I gave you—" He halted to permit her to recount his generosity.
"Two hundred francs, Herr Baron."
"Ah! You do recollect. That deserves a kiss from me!" he cried, as though she had given the other. Accordingly, he rewarded her as before. "You remember the next time?"
"It was not there," Ruth said vaguely. "It was upon the street."
"Quite so. The Boulevard Madeleine. There was a widow—a refugee—who halted you"
Ruth remembered and took up the account. "She stopped me to try to sell a bracelet, a family treasure"
"Which you admired, I saw, Liebchen."
"It was beautiful, but quite beyond my means to buy—at any fair price for the poor woman," Ruth explained.
"So I purchased it!" He went into a pocket and produced the bracelet. "Put it on, Liebchen!" he bid, himself slipping it over her hand. "Now another kiss for that!"
He took it.
"I did not know you were honoring me with your attentions all that time, Herr Baron."
"Oh, no trouble, Liebchen; a pleasure, I assure you. Besides, with more than your prettiness you piqued curiosity. You see, I received word in Paris when I am there before—a few months ago—that we can confidently employ one who will appear as Cynthia Gail. The word came from Chicago, I may tell you, quite roundabout and with some difficulty. Before we learn more about you—well, Mecklen took it upon himself to do you a little turn, it seems."
Ruth merely nodded, waiting.
"Then a correction arrives from America, laying bare an extraordinary circumstance, Liebchen. Our people in Chicago sent us in January one Mathilde Igel, and now they have ascertained beyond any possible doubt that two days before they dispatched Mathilde to Paris, she has been interned in America. Who, then, have our Chicago people sent to us and advised us to employ—who is this Cynthia Gail? You would not need to be pretty to pique curiosity now, would you, Liebchen?"
He petted her with mocking protectiveness as he spoke; and Ruth, recoiling, at least had gained from him explanation of much about which she had been uncertain. The Germans in Chicago, plainly, had made such a mistake as she had supposed and had been long in discovering it; longer, perhaps, in communicating knowledge of it to Paris. But it had arrived in time to destroy her. Herr Baron gratuitously continued his explanation.
"So I took it upon me, myself, to have a squint at our Cynthia and I got my good look at you, Liebchen! What a pretty girl—how do you Americans say it? A dazzler; indeed, a dazzler! What a needless pity to add you to the total of destruction, already too great—you so young and innocent and maidenly? I have never been in favor of women's intrusion in war; no, it is man's business. For women, the solacing of those who fight—whether with sword or by their wits behind the enemy's lines! Not so, Liebchen?"
It was broad daylight—a sunny, mild morning amid wooded hills and vales with clear, rushing streams, with the Rhine Valley lost now to the west as the railroad swept more closely to the Black Forest. The train was slowing and, as it came to halt before a little countryside station, Wessels took his arm from about Ruth and refrained, for a few moments, from petting her; he went so far, indeed, as to sit a little away from her so that anyone glancing into the compartment would see merely a man and a girl traveling together. Mad impulses had overwhelmed Ruth when she felt the train to be slowing—impulses that she must be able to appeal to whoever might be at the station to free her from this man; but sight of those upon the platform instantly had cooled her. They were soldiers—oxlike, servile soldiery who leaped forward when, from a compartment ahead, a German officer signaled them for attention; or they were peasant women and old men, only more unobtrusive and submissive than the soldiers. Appeal to them against one of their "gentlemen" and one who, too, undoubtedly was an officer! The idea was lunacy; her sole chance was to do nothing to offend this man while he flattered himself and boasted indulgently.
The train proceeded.
He put his arm about Ruth again. "So I took upon myself the responsibility of saving you, Liebchen! You have yet done us no harm, I say; you mean us harm, of course. But you have not yet had the opportunity."
Ruth caught breath. He did not know, then, of her betrayal of De Trevenac? Or was he merely playing with her in this as in the rest?
"What is it, Liebchen?" he asked.
"Nothing."
"So I say to myself, I can let her go on and blunder across our border in some way and, of course, surely be shot; or I may take a little trouble about her myself and spare her. You do not make yourself overthankful, Liebchen."
"I am trying to, Herr Baron."
"A kiss, darling, to your better success!" He gave it. "Now I will have you compose yourself. A few more kilometers and the next stop is ours. Lauengratz is not upon the railroad; it is not so modern, nor is my family so new as that."
He gazed out complacently while the train ran the few kilometers swiftly. It drew into a tiny woodland station of the sort which Ruth had frequently observed—a depot with switch tracks serving no visible community, but with a traveled highway reaching back from it toward a town hidden within the hills. No one waited here but the station master and a man in the uniform of a military driver, who stood near a large touring car. He was gazing at the train windows and, seeing Wessels, he saluted. He came forward as the train stopped and, when the compartment door was opened, he took Wessels' traveling bag.
"Those in the racks, too," Wessels directed curtly in German. Those were Ruth's; and she shrank back into the corner of the seat as the man obediently took them down. Wessels stepped out upon the platform and turned to Ruth.
No one else was leaving the train at that station; indeed, the door of no other compartment opened. There was no one to whom Ruth might appeal, even if appeal were possible. Wessels stood patiently in the doorway; behind him rose quiet, beautiful woodland.
"Come," he commanded Ruth, stretching a hand toward her.
She arose, neglecting his hand, and stepped from the train. The guard closed the door behind her; immediately the train departed. The station master—an old and shrunken man—approached, abjectedly, to inquire whether Hauptmann von Forstner had desires. Herr Hauptmann disclaimed any which he required the station master to satisfy; and the old man retired swiftly to the kiosk at the farther end of the platform.
The driver, who had finished securing the luggage behind his car, opened the door of the tonneau and waited there at attention.
"Welcome to Lauengratz, gnädiges Fräulein." Von Forstner dropped the insulting liebchens to employ his term of respectful and gallant address; and before the soldier-servant he refrained from accents of too evident irony. Ruth's position must be perfectly plain to the man, she thought; but it pleased the master to pretend that he concealed it.
She made no reply; she merely stood a moment longer gazing about her to get her bearings. She had no conscious plan except that she recognized that she was to be taken into some sort of duress from which she must attempt to escape; and if she succeeded she would require memory of landmarks and directions. Von Forstner's eyes narrowed as he watched her and divined what was passing through her mind; but he pretended that he did not.
"Have I not said it was beautiful here?" he asked.
"It is very beautiful," Ruth replied and, as he motioned to her, she preceded him into the car and sat upon the rear seat with him.
The car, which was fairly new and in good condition, drove off rapidly. It evidenced to Ruth either that reports of the scarcity of motor cars in Germany had been exaggerated or that Captain von Forstner was a person of sufficient importance to possess a most excellent vehicle from the vanishing supply. It followed a narrow but excellent road through forest for half a mile; it ran out beside cleared land, farm, and meadows, where a few cattle were grazing. A dozen men were working in a field—big, slow-moving laborers.
Von Forstner observed that Ruth gazed at them. "Russians," he explained to her. "Some of my prisoners."
He spoke as if he had taken them personally. "I have had, at various times, also French and English and Canadians; and I expect some Americans soon. I have asked for some; but they have not appeared against us frequently enough yet for us to have a great many."
"Still we have already not a few of you," Ruth returned quietly. Her situation scarcely could become worse, no matter what she now said; and, as it turned out, von Forstner was amused at this defiance.
"If they are much like the Canadians they will not be much good anyway," he said.
"For fighting or farm work, you mean?"
Von Forstner hesitated just a trifle before he returned, "They can stand nothing; they die too easily."
The car was past the fields where the Russians toiled and was skirting woodlands again; when fields opened once more quite different figures appeared—figures of women and of a familiarity which sent the blood choking in Ruth's throat. They were French women and girls, or perhaps Belgians of the sort whom she had seen tilling free, French farms; but these were captives—slaves. And seeing them, Ruth understood with a flaming leap of realization what von Forstner had meant about the Russians. They were captives also, and slaves; but they had never known freedom.
But to see these women slaves!
Von Forstner himself betrayed especial interest in them. He spoke sharply to the driver, who halted the car and signaled for the nearest of the slaves to approach.
"Where are you from?" he questioned them in French. They named various places in the invaded lands; most of them had been but recently deported and had arrived during von Forstner's absence. Two of the group, which numbered eight, were very young—girls of sixteen or seventeen, Ruth thought. They gazed up at Ruth with wide, agonized eyes and then gazed down upon the ground. Ruth glanced to von Forstner and caught him estimating them—their faces, their figures, as he had estimated her own. She caught him glancing from them to herself now, comparing them; and her loathing, and detestation of him and of all that he was, and which he represented suddenly became dynamic.
He did not see that; but one of the French girls, who had glanced up at her again, did see; and the girl looked quickly down at once as though fearing to betray it. But Ruth saw her thin hands clenching at her sides and crumpling the rags of her skirt; and from this Ruth was first aware that her own hands had clenched and through her pulled a new tension.
"Go on," von Forstner ordered his driver.
The car sped along the turning road into woods; the road followed a stream which rushed down a tiny valley thirty or forty feet below. At times the turns gave glimpses far ahead and in one of these glimpses Ruth saw a large house which must be the Landgut—or the manor—of this German country-place.
"See! We are almost home, Liebchen!" Von Forstner pointed it out to her when it was clearer and nearer at the next turn. He had his hand upon Ruth again; and the confident lust of his fingers set hot blood humming dizzily, madly in Ruth's brain. The driver, as though responding to the impatience of his master, sent the car spinning in and out upon the turns of the road beside the brook. In two or three minutes more—not longer—the car would reach the house. Now the car was rushing out upon a reach of road abruptly above the stream and with a turn ahead sharper, perhaps, than most. In spite of the speed the driver easily could make the turn if unimpeded; but if interfered with at all . . . .
The plan barely was in Ruth's brain before she acted upon it. Accordingly, there was no chance for von Forstner to prevent it; nor for the driver to oppose her. She sprang from her seat, seized the driver's right arm and shoulder, as he should have been turning the steering-wheel sharply; and, for the necessary fraction of a second, she kept the car straight ahead and off the road over the turn.
When a motor car is going over, crouch down; do not try to leap out. So a racing driver, who had been driving military cars in France, had drilled into Ruth when he was advising her how to run the roads back of the battle lines. Thus as the car went over she sprang back and knelt on the floor between the seats.
The driver fought for an instant, foolishly, to bring the car back onto the road; then he flung himself forward and down in front of his seat. Von Forstner, who had grabbed at Ruth too late, had been held standing up when the car turned over. He tried to get down. Ruth could feel him—she could not look up—as he tumbled half upon her, half beside her. She heard him scream—a frightful, hoarse man's scream of mad rage as he saw he was caught. Then the car was all the way over; it crushed, scraped, slid, swung, turned over; was on its wheels for a flash; at least air and light were above again; it pounded, smashed, and slid through brush, against small trees; and was over once more. It ground and skewed in soft soil, horribly; cold water splashed below it. It settled, sucking, and stopped.
The sound of water washing against metal; for a moment the hiss of the water on the hot engine; then only the gurgle and rush of the little brook.
Ruth lay upon her back in the stream with the floor of the car above her; below her was von Forstner's form, and about him were the snapped ribs of the top with the fabric like a black shroud.
At first he was alive and his face was not under water; for he shouted frantic oaths, threats, appeals for help. Wildly he cursed Ruth; his back was broken, he said. He seemed to struggle at first, not so much to free himself as to grasp and choke her. Then the back of the car dammed the water and it rose above his face. He coughed and thrashed to lift himself; he begged Ruth to help him; and, turning as far about as she could, she tried to lift his head with her hands, but she could not. The water covered him; and, after a few moments, he was quite still.
The dam at the back of the car, which had caused the pool to rise that high, failed to hold the water much higher; it ran out of the sides of the car before it covered Ruth. It soaked her through; and the weight of the machine held her quite helpless. But she had air and could breathe.
From the forward seat came no sound and no movement. The driver either had been flung out in one of the tumbles of the car or, like his master, he had been killed under it. Ruth could only wonder which.
But someone was coming down the embankment from the road now; more than one person; several. Ruth could hear their movements through the underbrush. Now they talked together—timidly, it seemed, and at a little distance. Now they approached, still timidly and talking.
These were men's voices, but strange in intonations and in language. It was not German, or French, or any tongue with which Ruth was at all familiar. It must be Russian. The timid men were Russians—some of the slaves!
One of them touched the car and, kneeling, peered under it.