The Red Book Magazine/Volume 36/Number 4/The Reckoning

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

 

THE
RECKONING

By E. PHILLIPS
OPPENHEIM

Illustrated by
RAEBURN
VAN BUREN

MR. JOSEPH P. CRAY followed the usual routine observed by members of the “Americans in London” society on the occasion of their weekly lunches. He left his coat and hat in the cloak-room, and deposited the ticket which he received in exchange in his waistcoat pocket. Afterward he slipped into the anteroom, where a little crowd of men were thronging around a narrow counter, exchanging hearty greetings, and indulging in various forms of pre-luncheon nourishment. Mr. Cray, who had a mesmeric way of getting served over the shoulders of waiting throngs, disposed of a small cocktail in a matter of seconds and made his way to the reception-room, where the guest of the day stood by the side of his host, exchanging platitudes and handshakes with more or less cordiality with the little streams of arrivals.

Presently Mr. Cray wandered into the luncheon-room, where he discovered the round table for four at which he was placed, exchanged friendly greetings with the two men who were already in their seats. recognized the fact with a little sigh that they were not kindred spirits, and glanced with curiosity at the vacant place on his right hand, no claimant to which had up to this time arrived.

It was a crowded gathering, and it takes some time for six hundred men to take their places and be seated. Mr. Cray studied the menu with mild approval, glanced through the wine-list and finally, yielding to an impulse of not unnatural curiosity, he raised the card which reposed upon the tablecloth opposite the vacant chair on his right, and read it: Mr. Otto M. Schreed.....

The four walls of the banqueting room dropped away. The pleasant hum of voices, the clatter of crockery and the popping of corks fell upon deaf ears. Mr. Cray's blue eyes were set in a steady stare. Gone, his morning coat, his irreproachable linen and carefully tied tie, his patent boots and well-creased trousers. He was back in the tight, ill-fitting khaki of months ago, a strange, sober figure in the midst of the bustle of life, yet living under the shadow of death. He stood at the door of the canteen and he saw them marching by, a long, snakelike procession, some singing, some shouting cheery greetings, some pale and limping. Back to the opening in the hills he could trace them, the hill which had once been a forest and now seemed as though a cataclysm had smitten it, a nightmare of stumps and of shell-holes. The whole horizon seemed streaked with little feathers of smoke. The sound of guns was incessant. The boys were on their way to the mess-tents after a stiff twelve hours.

Mr. Cray stepped back into the canteen, tasted the coffee in the great urn, ran through the stock of extra provisions, looked carefully round to see that all was ready for the hordes of his customers who would presently throng the place. They came much sooner than they should have done, a little sullen many of them cursing, pushed and struggled for a place at the counter, swept him clear of the whole of his stock. He could hear their voices: “More of that filthy chuck!” “Say there's some of those chaps at home deserve to swing!”

“What is it today, boys?” Mr. Cray asked.

There was a string of lurid adjectives. Mr. Cray looked as concerned as he felt.

“More of that bum meat, eh?” he asked sympathetically. He was met with a chorus of groans. A score or more had left the counter already. He heard the curses of further hordes struggling to get in. Then the scene faded away. He walked down the great impromptu annex to the hospital and spoke to one of the doctors. The doctor's adjectives made the words of his patients sound like the babbling of children.

“More cases of that bad meat,” was the plain English of what he said. “We are just in the one corner of the line, too, where we can't rely on stores for a few days. Curse the man who ever made the stuff, and the inspector who passed it!”

A LITTLE movement by Mr. Cray's side brought him back to the present. He glanced up. A tall man of early middle age was taking his seat. The two men exchanged greetings.

“Mr. Schreed?” Mr. Cray observed.

The man winced a little but acknowledged his identity.

“And your name?” he asked.

“Mr. Joesph P. Cray,” Mr. Cray replied. “We seem to be neighbors, Mr. Schreed. Will you join me in a bottle of wine?”

“That's a great idea,” was the hearty response.

So Mr. Cray did what those few months ago he would have deemed impossible; he fraternized with Mr. Otto Schreed, exporter of canned beef. They talked together of many subjects. Their conversation was the conversation of two high-minded patriots, with the obvious views of the well-meaning man. Mr. Schreed, encouraged toward the end of the meal by his companion's friendliness, and warmed a little by the wine which he had drunk, became confidential.

“Say, it's a hard question I'm going to put to you, Mr. Cray,” he said, lowering his voice a little, “but does my name suggest anything to you?”

Mr. Cray took up the card and looked at it.

“Can't say that it does,” he replied, “except that your front name reads German.”

“That aint it,” the other observed. “My father was one, all right, but I was born in America and I am a good American citizen. It aint that. I was one of the unlucky devils that got into some trouble with the Government contractors.”

“And I was one of those,” Mr. Cray mused, “who spent a hundred dollars cabling to the head of the Y. M. C. A. in the States exactly my opinion of you.” But aloud, Mr. Cray's words betrayed nothing of this fact.

“That was hard luck!” he admitted. “How did it happen?”

“Just as those things do happen,” the other explained, “however almighty careful you may be. We were canning night and day, with Government officials standing over us, and Washington wiring all the time: 'Get a move on. Get a move on. We want the stuff.' I guess some of the foremen got a bit careless. I was worn out myself. The weather was moist and hot, and a load or two of stuff got in that shouldn't. Not but what I always believed,” Mr. Schreed went on, “that the complaints were exaggerated; but anyway, the busybodies over yonder took it up, and they got me before the court.”

“Did it cost you much?” Mr. Cray inquired.

“They fined me fifty thousand dollars,” the other replied, “and I had to sell out. Just at the time, too,” he went on gloomily, “when one was making so much money you couldn't count it.”

Cray had time, in a few rapid sentences, to put a certain matter before his friend Pierre.

It was just at this moment that Mr. Cray was on the point of raising his voice and of speaking words which without doubt would have led to his neighbor's precipitate ejection from the room. And then something struck him. There was something more than the natural humiliation of a punished man in Mr. Schreed's drawn face and furtive expression. There was something beyond the look of the man who has done wrong and borne an unacceptable punishment. There was still fear, there was still terror of some unnamed possibility. Mr. Cray saw this, and he held his peace. He took his thoughts back a few months to the little conversation he had had with the doctor in that impromptu hospital. He recalled the latter's impassioned words, and he chocked down certain rebellious feelings. He decided to offer the right hand of fellowship to the unfortunate Mr. Schreed.

MR. OTTO SCHREED was alone and friendless in a strange city, with the shadows of disgrace resting upon his unattractive name. He was more than disposed, therefore, to accept the advances of this genial and companionable new acquaintance. He was not by disposition a gregarious person; but he was too uncultured to find any pleasure in books or pictures, the newspapers of London were an unknown world to him, and a certain measure of companionship became therefore almost a necessity. It appeared that he was staying at the Milan Hotel, and it was quite natural that he should see a great deal of his new friend during the next few days. He was not at first disposed to be communicative. He said very little about his plans, and he asked a great many personal questions, some of which Mr. Cray evaded, and others of which he answered with artless candor. Mr. Cray's work in France was not once alluded to.

“Say, what's keeping you over here?” Mr. Schreed asked one day. “You've nothing against the other side?”

“Haven't I!” Mr. Cray replied. “That's where you're making the mistake of your life. I am not a drunkard,” he went on, warming to his subject, “but I am a man who loves his liberty, and I hate a country where the bars are crowded out with soft drinks, and where the waiters wink and jerk their thumbs round corners when you want a drop of Scotch. I am over here, Schreed, my lad, till the United States comes to its senses and until then over here I mean to stop. What about yourself?”

Mr. Schreed had been exceedingly close-mouthed about his own movements, but this morning he spoke with more freedom of his plans.

“I am not so strong as you on the liquor question,” he admitted, “but I feel I have been badly treated over there by the Government, and I'm not hurrying back yet awhile. I thought some,” he went on after a moment's pause, glancing sidewise at Mr. Cray as though to watch the effect of his words, “of taking a little tour out to the battle fields of France.”

“That's quite an idea,” Mr. Cray admitted with kindling interest.

His companion looked around to make sure they were alone.

“I don't mind confiding to you, Cray,” he said, “that I have another reason for wanting to get out there. When the War Department discovered that something was wrong with those few thousand cans of beef of mine, they burned the lot. They sent a certificate to Washington as to its condition, upon which I was fined, although I was well able to prove that the week the defective canning must have been done, I was taking' a few days' vacation. However, that's neither here nor there. I made inquiries as to whether any of it was still in existence, and I was told that before any had been officially opened, a matter of fifty cans or so had been doled out in some French village where the peasants hadn't any food. Nothing was ever heard about those cans.”

“I see,” Mr. Cray murmured, and there was nothing in his face to indicate that he had found the information interesting.

“I kind of thought,” Mr. Schreed continued, “that I'd like to look around over there, and if any of those cans were still in existence, I'd buy them up and destroy them. You see, they all have my name and trademark on the outside. The Department insisted upon that.”

“Rather like looking for a needle in a haystack,” Mr. Cray remarked.

As they entered, the landlord from the estaminet opposite issued from the back quarters.

“Not so much,” the other replied. “I know the name of. the place where our men were billeted when they opened the stuff, and the name of the village to which they sent fifty cans. I thought I'd just look around there, and if there are no traces of any—well, I've done the best I could. Then I thought some of coming home by way of Holland.”

“Business in Holland, eh?” Mr. Cray inquired.

“Not exactly business—or rather, if it is, it wouldn't take more than an hour or two,” Mr. Schreed announced.

“When did you think of going?”

“Next week. They tell me they're running some tours from Paris out to the battle fields. The one that goes to Château Thierry would serve my purpose. The worst of it is, I can't speak a word of the lingo.”

“It's dead easy,” Mr. Cray observed. “I've been going to Paris too many years not to have picked up a bit.”

“You wouldn't care about a trip out with me, I suppose,” Mr. Schreed suggested, “just in a friendly fashion, you understand, each paying his own share?”

“I don't know,” Mr. Cray replied cautiously. “Next week did you say you were going?”

“I'm fixing it up to leave on Wednesday.”

“It's some trip,” “Mr. Cray said thoughtfully.

“A day or two in Paris wouldn't do us any harm,” Mr. Schreed remarked.

“We'll take a bite together at seven o'clock tonight,” Mr. Cray decided, “and I'll let you know. I don't know as I can see anything to prevent my going, providing I can get accommodations. I might be able to help you with the language, too. Finish up in Holland, you said, eh?”

“I don't know as you'd care to go up that far with me,” Mr. Schreed said doubtfully. “I sha'n't be stopping there, either. You might wait in Paris.”

Mr. Cray smiled beatifically.

“Paris,” he murmured. “Gee, I think I'll go, Schreed!”

MR. OTTO SCHREED was both surprised and gratified at his companion's proficiency in the French language and his capacity for making traveling endurable. Their journey to Paris was accomplished under the most favorable circumstances, and by dint of a long argument and great tact, the very inferior accommodation which had been secured for them was canceled, and rooms with a small salon and bathrooms en suite provided at a well-known hotel. As a guide to Paris itself, except to the American bars and the restaurants pure and simple, Mr. Cray was perhaps a little disappointing, but his companion was restless and eager to be off on their quest. On the third day Mr. Cray announced their imminent departure.

“Say, I've done better for you than these Cook's charabancs,” he announced triumphantly. “I've I engaged a private car, and we can get out to Château Thierry, see the whole of that part of the line, visit the village you were speaking of and get back before nightfall. How's that?”

“Fine!” Mr. Schreed declared, showing every impatience to depart. “Does the man speak any English?”

“I don't know as he does,” Mr. Cray admitted, “but that don't matter any, I guess, as long as I'm around all the time.” Mr. Schreed seemed a little disappointed.

“How about making the inquiries in these small grocer's shops or whatever you call them?”

“I shall be along,” Mr. Cray reminded him. “You can stand by my side and hear what they say.”

So the pilgrimage started. Mr. Cray felt a great silence creep over him as he stood once more on well-remembered ground. It was a bright day in early October, and the familiar landmarks for many miles were visible. Behind that remnant of wood a thousand Americans had been ambushed. On the hillside there a great mine had been sprung. Down in the valley below, the bodies of his countrymen had lain so thick that Mr. Cray found himself remembering that one awful night when every spare hand, he himself included, had been pressed into the stretcher-bearer's service. He grew more and more silent as they neared their journey's end. Mr. Schreed appeared to be a trifle bored.

“Lutaples is the name of the village we want,” he announced, as they began to pass a few white-plastered cottages.

Mr. Cray nodded.

“I know,” he said reminiscently. “Our canteen was in the hollow, just at the bottom there.”

“Our canteen?” Mr. Schreed repeated.

“The American canteen,” Mr. Cray explained. “I've been making inquiries for you. So far as I can gather, there was only one shop in Lutaples at the time, and it's up at this end of the village. However, we'll soon find out all about it now.”

They stopped at a small estaminet, and here trouble nearly came, for no disguise could conceal from the warm-hearted little landlord the kindly man in a tight uniform who had fed him and his wife and children and left them money as well to make a fresh start. Fortunately, however, Schreed had lingered behind, making a vain attempt to converse with the chauffeur, and Cray had time, in a few rapid sentences, to put a certain matter before his friend Pierre. So when Schreed returned and took his seat by Cray's side before the marble table in the village street, Pierre was able to serve them with liqueurs and speak as though to strangers. Mr. Cray conversed with him for some time.

“Well, what does he say?” Schreed asked eagerly when he had gone.

“There was only one grocer's shop in the village at the time we were in occupation,” Mr. Cray explained, “and the majority of the goods presented by the Americans were handed over to him for distribution. There's the store, plumb opposite—Henri Lalarge. Épicier.”

“That mean grocer?” Otto Schreed asked.

“Some of it does. Let's be getting along.”

Mr. Cray led the way across the cobbled street. Monsieur

Lalarge was short, fat and black-whiskered. As they entered his shop, the landlord from the estaminet opposite issued from the back quarters.

“What's he been doing over here?“ Schreed demanded suspiciously.

Mr. Cray shrugged his shoulders

“I suppose these fellows all live on one another's doorsteps,” he observed.

The result of the landlord's visit, however, was that although the tears of welcome glistened in the eyes of the warm-hearted Monsieur Lalarge, he greeted the two men as strangers. Mr Cray, having satisfied himself as to his companion's absolute ignorance of the language, talked fluently to the grocer in rapid French. Presently he appeared satisfied and turned to Schreed.

“He says he had fifty cans,” he explained, “but they were distributed half an hour after he received them. The complaint was made from some of the villagers, and the unopened cans were returned and burned. There is a drug-store at the farther end of the village where it would be as well to make inquiries The chauffeur might take you there, and I will explain to him what you want to ask for. Meanwhile I will see the curé.”

Mr. Schreed saw nothing to object to in the arrangement, and drove off with the chauffeur. Monsieur Lalarge, with the tears streaming down his cheeks, threw his arms around Mr. Cray and kissed him.

“Heaven has brought you back!” he exclaimed. “Our deliverer—our saint! But how thin—how wasted!”

“Simply a matter of clothes, Jean, my boy,” Cray assured him. “Uncle Sam used to pinch his a bit tight about the loins. And now how goes it, eh?”

“Thanks to the benevolence of Monsieur, everything prospers,” Monsieur Lalarge declared. “His little loan—but give me time to write the check; it can be paid this moment.”

“Not on your life!” Mr. Cray replied vigorously. “Not a franc, Jean! We both did good work, eh, when those guns were thundering and Fritz was skulking behind the hills there. Finished, Jean! I am a rich man, and what you call a loan was my thank-offering. We did our best together for the poor people, you know.”

“But monsieur—” the little grocer sobbed.

“About those cans,” Mr. Cray interrupted the man. “You have two?”

“I kept them, monsieur,” the man explained, “because I read in the paper that some day inquiry might be held into all these matters.”

“And an inquiry is going to be held,” Mr. Cray declared. “What you have to do, Jean, is to pack those two cans securely and to send them to me at once by registered post to the Ritz Hotel, Paris.”

“One of us,” he confided, “is not dining. That one, Otto Schreed, is you.”

“It shall be done, monsieur.”

“Were there any who died after eating the stuff?” Mr. Cray inquired.

“Two,” the little grocer answered. “They are buried in the civic cemetery. One has talked but little of these things; the Americans came as saviors; and this was certainly an unfortunate accident.”

Cray glanced down the street. His companion was still interviewing the chemist.

“One petit verre, Monsieur Lalarge,” he said, “for the sake of old times.”

Monsieur Lalarge threw aside his apron.

“And to drink to the great goodness of Monsieur!” he responded fervently.

MR. OTTO SCHREED was in high good humor that evening, on the way back to Paris. He insisted upon paying for a little dinner at the Ambassador's, and a box at the Folies Bergères. He spent money freely, for him, and drank far more wine than usual. As he drank he expanded.

“It is like a nightmare passed away, he confided to his companion. “I know now that no one else in the world will ever suffer because of that terrible mistake. There is not a single can of that beef in existence.”

“A load off your mind, eh?” Mr. Cray murmured.

Mr, Schreed smiled a peculiar smile.

“For more reasons than you know of my friend,” he confided. “Now my little trip to Holland, and after that I am a free man.”

“When are you off there?” his companion asked.

“The day after tomorrow—Thursday was the prompt reply. “And Cray—”

“Something bothering you?” the latter remarked as Schreed hesitated.

“Just this, old fellow. My little trip to Holland is unimportant in its way, and in another sense it's a trip I want to do alone. Do you get me?”

“Sure!” Mr. Cray replied. “I am no butter-in. There are some of the boys in this gay little burg I haven't had time to look up yet. When shall you be back?”

“Monday,” was the eager reply, “—Monday, sure. I'll go alone, then, Cray. I guess it would be better. But look here. Get together a few of your friends, and we'll have a little dinner the night of my return—at my expense, you understand. You've been very useful to me over here, and I should like to make you a little return. Ask anyone you please, and take a couple of boxes for any show you fancy. It isn't a thing I do as a rule, you understand, but I've a fancy for making a celebration of it.”

“That's easy,” Mr. Cray declared. “It shall be some celebration, I can tell you. We'll dine in the hotel here, and I promise there shall be one or two people you'll be interested in meeting.”

So on the following morning Mr. Otto Schreed started for Holland, and Mr. Joseph P. Cray, with a brown paper parcel under his arm, set out to pay a few calls in Paris.

WHEN Mr. Otto Schreed made his punctual appearance in the hotel salon on Monday evening at a few minutes before eight, he found Mr. Cray and three other guests awaiting him. Mr Cray was busy mixing cocktails, so was unable to shake hands. He looked around and nodded.

“Glad you're punctual, Schreed,” he said. “Pleasant trip?”

“Fine!”

“Business turn out all right?”

“Couldn't have been better. Wont you introduce me to these gentlemen, Cray?”

“Sure!” Mr. Cray replied. “Gentlemen, this is Mr. Otto Schreed—Colonel Wilmot, of the American Intelligence Department, Mr. Neville of the same service, and Doctor Lemarten.”

“Delighted to meet you all, gentlemen,” Mr. Schreed declared.

His outstretched hand was uselessly offered. Neville and Colonel Wilmot contented themselves with a military salute. The Frenchman bowed. Mr. Schreed for the first moment was conscious of a vague feeling of uneasiness. He turned toward Cray, who was approaching with a tray upon which were four cocktails.

“Hope you've ordered a good dinner, Cray,” he said, “and that these gentlemen are ready to do justice to it. Why, you're a cocktail short.”

Colonel Wilmot, Mr. Neville and Doctor Lemarten had each accepted a glass. Mr. Cray took the last.

“And dash it all, the table's only laid for four!” Schreed continued as he gazed with dismay at the empty silver tray. “Is this a practical joke?”

Mr. Cray shook his head.

“One of us,” he confided “is not having a cocktail. One of us is not dining. That one, Otto Schreed, is you.”

SCHREED was suddenly pale. He backed a little toward the door, gripped the back of a chair with his hand.

“What the devil does this mean?” he demanded.

“You just stay where you are, and you shall hear,” Mr. Cray replied, setting down his empty glass. “I worked out at that little village of Lutaples for the last year of the war—ran an American canteen there for the 'Y'. I was there when your filthy stuff was unloaded upon the boys. I saw their sufferings.”

“God!” Schreed muttered beneath his breath. “And you never told me?”

“I never told you,” Cray assented, “although I came pretty near telling you with an end of my fist that day at the luncheon-club. Glad I didn't, now. When I tumbled to it that you were scared about any more of those cans being in existence, I began to guess how things were. I came over with you to be sure you didn't get them. I got two cans from Monsieur Jean Lalarge, and a nice tale he had to tell me about the rest. Doctor Lemarten here analyzed them and has prepared a report. He's here to tell you about it.”

“The beef was poisoned,” the Frenchman said calmly. “My report has been handed to Colonel Wilmot.”

“It's a lie!” Schreed declared, trembling. “Besides, this matter has been dealt with. It is finished.”

“Not on your life,” Mr. Cray replied. “Ten thousand cans of your beef, Otto Schreed, contained poison. No wonder you were glad to get out of it, as you thought, with a fine. Now we'll move on a step. You've just come back from Holland.

“You may not have known it, but Mr. Neville here, of the American Intelligence Department, was our fellow-passenger. You cashed five drafts at the Amsterdam Bank, amounting in all to something like five hundred thousand dollars of American money. Half of that went to your credit in London, the other half you've got with you. Blood-money, Schreed—foul blood-money!”

SCHREED was on the point of collapse.

“You have employed spies to dog me?” he shouted.

“We don't call the officers of American Intelligence Department spies,” Mr. Cray observed coldly.

“Otto Schreed,” Colonel Wilmot said, speaking for the first time, “I have a warrant for your arrest, and an extradition warrant from the French Government. You will leave for Cherbourg tonight and be taken back to New York!”

“On what charge?” Schreed faltered.

“Political conspiracy—perhaps murder.”

Colonel Wilmot walked to the door and called in two men who were waiting outside. Schreed collapsed.

“I've two hundred and fifty thousand dollars here,” he shrieked. “Can't we arrange this? Cray! Colonel Wilmot!”

The two men were obliged to drag him out. Mr. Cray moved to the window and threw it open.

“What we want,” he muttered, “is fresh air.”

Colonel Wilmot smiled.

“He was a poisonous beast, Cray,” he said, “but you've done a fine piece of work for the United States Government, and we're anxious to drink your health.”

Two waiters, followed by a maître d'hôtel, were already in the room. The latter came forward and bowed.

“Monsieur est servi,” he announced.