The Red Cross Girl
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Richard Harding Davis >> The Red Cross Girl
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"You certainly have the darnedest luck in backing the right
horse," exclaimed a rival pork-packer enviously. "Now if I
pay a hundred thousand for a Velasquez it turns out to be a
bad copy worth thirty dollars, but you pay a professor three
thousand and he brings you in half a million dollars' worth
of free advertising. Why, this Doctor Gilman's doing as much
for your college as Doctor Osler did for Johns Hopkins or as
Walter Camp does for Yale."
Mr. Hallowell received these Congratulations as gracefully as
he was able, and in secret raged at Chancellor Black. Each
day his rage increased. It seemed as though there would never
be an end to Doctor Gilman. The stone he had rejected had
become the corner-stone of Stillwater. Whenever he opened a
newspaper he felt like exclaiming: "Will no one rid me of
this pestilent fellow?" For the "Rise and Fall," in an
edition deluxe limited to two hundred copies, was being
bought up by all his book-collecting millionaire friends; a
popular edition was on view in the windows of every book-
shop; It was offered as a prize to subscribers to all the
more sedate magazines, and the name and features of the
distinguished author had become famous and familiar. Not a
day passed but that some new honor, at least so the
newspapers stated, was thrust upon him. Paragraphs announced
that he was to be the next exchange professor to Berlin; that
in May he was to lecture at the Sorbonne; that in June he was
to receive a degree from Oxford.
A fresh-water college on one of the Great Lakes leaped to the
front by offering him the chair of history at that seat of
learning at a salary of five thousand dollars a year. Some of
the honors that had been thrust upon Doctor Gilman existed
only in the imagination of Peter and Stetson, but this offer
happened to be genuine.
"Doctor Gilman rejected it without consideration. He read the
letter from the trustees to his wife and shook his head.
"We could not be happy away from Stillwater," he said. " We
have only a month more in the cottage, but after that we
still can walk past it; we can look into the garden and see
the flowers she planted. We can visit the place where she
lies. But if we went away we should be lonely and miserable
for her, and she would be lonely for us."
Mr. Hallowell could not know why Doctor Gilman had refused to
leave Stillwater; but when he read that the small Eastern
college at which Doctor Gilman had graduated had offered to
make him its president, his jealousy knew no bounds.
He telegraphed to Black: "Reinstate Gilman at once; offer him
six thousand--offer him whatever he wants, but make him
promise for no consideration to leave Stillwater he is only
member faculty ever brought any credit to the college if we
lose him I'll hold you responsible."
The next morning, hat in hand, smiling ingratiatingly, the
Chancellor called upon Doctor Gilman and ate so much humble
pie that for a week he suffered acute mental indigestion. But
little did Hallowell senior care for that. He had got what he
wanted. Doctor Gilman, the distinguished, was back in the
faculty, and had made only one condition--that he might live
until he died in the ivy-covered cottage.
Two weeks later, when Peter arrived at Stillwater to take the
history examination, which, should he pass it, would give him
his degree, he found on every side evidences of the
"worldwide fame" he himself had created. The newsstand at the
depot, the book-stores, the drugstores, the picture-shops,
all spoke of Doctor Gilman; and postcards showing the ivy-
covered cottage, photographs and enlargements of Doctor
Gilman, advertisements of the different. editions of "the"
history proclaimed his fame. Peter, fascinated by the success
of his own handiwork, approached the ivy-covered cottage in a
spirit almost of awe. But Mrs. Gilman welcomed him with the
same kindly, sympathetic smile with which she always gave
courage to the unhappy ones coming up for examinations, and
Doctor Gilman's high honors in no way had spoiled his gentle
courtesy.
The examination was in writing, and when Peter had handed in
his papers Doctor Gilman asked him if he would prefer at once
to know the result.
"I should indeed!" Peter assured him.
"Then I regret to tell you, Hallowell," said the professor,
"that you have not passed. I cannot possibly give you a mark
higher than five." In real sympathy the sage of Stillwater
raised his eyes, but to his great astonishment he found that
Peter, so far from being cast down or taking offense, was
smiling delightedly, much as a fond parent might smile upon
the precocious act of a beloved child.
"I am afraid," said Doctor Gilman gently, "that this summer
you did not work very hard for your degree!"
Peter Laughed and picked up his hat.
"To tell you the truth, Professor," he said, "you're right I
got working for something worth while--and I forgot about the
degree."
Chapter 3. THE INVASION OF ENGLAND
This is the true inside story of the invasion of England in
1911 by the Germans, and why it failed. I got my data from
Baron von Gottlieb, at the time military attaché of the
German Government with the Russian army in the second
Russian-Japanese War, when Russia drove Japan out of
Manchuria, and reduced her to a third-rate power. He told me
of his part in the invasion as we sat, after the bombardment
of Tokio, on the ramparts of the Emperor's palace, watching
the walls of the paper houses below us glowing and smoking
like the ashes of a prairie fire.
Two years before, at the time of the invasion, von Gottlieb
had been Carl Schultz, the head-waiter at the East Cliff
Hotel at Cromer, and a spy.
The other end of the story came to me through Lester Ford,
the London correspondent of the New York Republic. They gave
me permission to tell it in any fashion I pleased, and it is
here set down for the first time.
In telling the story, my conscience is not in the least
disturbed, for I have yet to find any one who will believe
it.
What led directly to the invasion was that some week-end
guest of the East Cliff Hotel left a copy of "The Riddle of
the Sands" in the coffee-room, where von Gottlieb found it;
and the fact that Ford attended the Shakespeare Ball. Had
neither of these events taken place, the German flag might
now be flying over Buckingham Palace. And, then again, it
might not.
As every German knows, "The Riddle of the Sands" is a novel
written by a very clever Englishman in which is disclosed a
plan for the invasion of his country. According to this plan
an army of infantry was to be embarked in lighters, towed by
shallow-draft, sea-going tugs, and despatched simultaneously
from the seven rivers that form the Frisian Isles. From there
they were to be convoyed by battle-ships two hundred and
forty miles through the North Sea, and thrown upon the coast
of Norfolk somewhere between the Wash and Mundesley. The fact
that this coast is low-lying and bordered by sand flats which
at low water are dry, that England maintains no North Sea
squadron, and that her nearest naval base is at Chatham, seem
to point to it as the spot best adapted for such a raid.
What von Gottlieb thought was evidenced by the fact that as
soon as he read the book he mailed it to the German
Ambassador in London, and under separate cover sent him a
letter. In this he said: "I suggest your Excellency bring
this book to the notice of a certain royal personage, and of
the Strategy Board. General Bolivar said, 'When you want
arms, take them from the enemy.' Does not this also follow
when you want ideas?"
What the Strategy Board thought of the plan is a matter of
history. This was in 1910. A year later, during the
coronation week, Lester Ford went to Clarkson's to rent a
monk's robe in which to appear at the Shakespeare Ball, and
while the assistant departed in search of the robe, Ford was
left alone in a small room hung with full-length mirrors and
shelves, and packed with the uniforms that Clarkson rents for
Covent Garden balls and amateur theatricals. While waiting,
Ford gratified a long, secretly cherished desire to behold
himself as a military man, by trying on all the uniforms on
the lower shelves; and as a result, when the assistant
returned, instead of finding a young American in English
clothes and a high hat, he was confronted by a German officer
in a spiked helmet fighting a duel with himself in the
mirror. The assistant retreated precipitately, and Ford,
conscious that he appeared ridiculous, tried to turn the
tables by saying, " Does a German uniform always affect a
Territorial like that?"
The assistant laughed good-naturedly.
"It did give me quite a turn," he said. "It's this talk of
invasion, I fancy. But for a fact, sir, if I was a Coast
Guard, and you came along the beach dressed like that, I'd
take a shot at you, just on the chance, anyway."
"And, quite right, too!" said Ford.
He was wondering when the invasion did come whether he would
stick at his post in London and dutifully forward the news to
his paper, or play truant and as a war correspondent watch
the news in the making. So the words of Mr. Clarkson's
assistant did not sink in. But a few weeks later young Major
Bellew recalled them. Bellew was giving a dinner on the
terrace of the Savoy Restaurant. His guests were his nephew,
young Herbert, who was only five years younger than his
uncle, and Herbert's friend Birrell, an Irishman, both in
their third term at the university. After five years' service
in India, Bellew had spent the last "Eights" week at Oxford,
and was complaining bitterly that since his day the
undergraduate had deteriorated. He had found him serious,
given to study, far too well behaved. Instead of Jorrocks, he
read Galsworthy; instead of "wines" he found pleasure in
debating clubs where he discussed socialism. Ragging,
practical jokes, ingenious hoaxes, that once were wont to set
England in a roar, were a lost art. His undergraduate guests
combated these charges fiercely. His criticisms they declared
unjust and without intelligence.
"You're talking rot!" said his dutiful nephew. "Take Phil
here, for example. I've roomed with him three years and I can
testify that he has never opened a book. He never heard of
Galsworthy until you spoke of him. And you can see for
yourself his table manners are quite as bad as yours!"
"Worse!" assented Birrell loyally.
"And as for ragging! What rags, in your day, were as good as
ours; as the Carrie Nation rag, for instance, when five
hundred people sat through a temperance lecture and never
guessed they were listening to a man from Balliol?"
"And the Abyssinian Ambassador rag!" cried Herbert. "What
price that? When the DREADNOUGHT manned the yards for him and
gave him seventeen guns. That was an Oxford rag, and carried
through by Oxford men. The country hasn't stopped laughing
yet. You give us a rag!" challenged Herbert. " Make it as
hard as you like; something risky, something that will make
the country sit up, something that will send us all to jail,
and Phil and I will put it through whether it takes one man
or a dozen. Go on," he persisted, "And I bet we can get fifty
volunteers right here in town and all of them
undergraduates."
"Give you the idea, yes!" mocked Bellew, trying to gain time.
"That's just what I say. You boys to-day are so dull. You
lack initiative. It's the idea that counts. Anybody can do
the acting. That's just amateur theatricals!"
"Is it!" snorted Herbert. "If you want to know what stage
fright is, just go on board a British battle-ship with your
face covered with burnt cork and insist on being treated like
an ambassador. You'll find it's a little different from a
first night with the Simla Thespians!"
Ford had no part in the debate. He had been smoking
comfortably and with well-timed nods, impartially encouraging
each disputant. But now he suddenly laid his cigar upon his
plate, and, after glancing quickly about him, leaned eagerly
forward. They were at the corner table of the terrace, and,
as it was now past nine o'clock, the other diners had
departed to the theatres and they were quite alone. Below
them, outside the open windows, were the trees of the
embankment, and beyond, the Thames, blocked to the west by
the great shadows of the Houses of Parliament, lit only by
the flame in the tower that showed the Lower House was still
sitting.
"I'LL give you an idea for a rag," whispered Ford. "One that
is risky, that will make the country sit up, that ought to
land you in Jail? Have you read 'The Riddle of the Sands'?"
Bellew and Herbert nodded; Birrell made no sign.
" Don't mind him," exclaimed Herbert impatiently. "HE never
reads anything! Go on!"
"It's the book most talked about," explained Ford. "And what
else is most talked about?" He answered his own question.
"The landing of the Germans in Morocco and the chance of war.
Now, I ask you, with that book in everybody's mind, and the
war scare in everybody's mind, what would happen if German
soldiers appeared to-night on the Norfolk coast just where
the book says they will appear? Not one soldier, but dozens
of soldiers; not in one place, but in twenty places?"
"What would happen?" roared Major Bellew loyally. "The Boy
Scouts would fall out of bed and kick them into the sea!"
"Shut up!" snapped his nephew irreverently. He shook Ford by
the arm. "How?" he demanded breathlessly. "How are we to do
it? It would take hundreds of men."
"Two men," corrected Ford, "And a third man to drive the car.
I thought it out one day at Clarkson's when I came across a
lot of German uniforms. I thought of it as a newspaper story,
as a trick to find out how prepared you people are to meet
invasion. And when you said just now that you wanted a chance
to go to jail --"
"What's your plan?" interrupted Birrell.
"We would start just before dawn--" began Ford.
"We?" demanded Herbert. "Are you in this?"
"Am I in it?" cried Ford indignantly. "It's my own private
invasion! I'm letting you boys in on the ground floor. If I
don't go, there won t be any invasion!"
The two pink-cheeked youths glanced at each other inquiringly
and then nodded.
"We accept your services, sir," said Birrell gravely. "What's
your plan?"
In astonishment Major Bellew glanced from one to the other
and then slapped the table with his open palm. His voice
shook with righteous indignation.
"Of all the preposterous, outrageous--Are you mad?" he
demanded. "Do you suppose for one minute I will allow--"
His nephew shrugged his shoulders and, rising, pushed back
his chair.
"Oh, you go to the devil!" he exclaimed cheerfully. "Come on,
Ford," he said. "We'll find some place where uncle can't hear
us."
Two days later a touring car carrying three young men, in the
twenty-one miles between Wells and Cromer, broke down eleven
times. Each time this misfortune befell them one young man
scattered tools in the road and on his knees hammered
ostentatiously at the tin hood; and the other two occupants
of the car sauntered to the beach. There they chucked pebbles
at the waves and then slowly retraced their steps. Each time
the route by which they returned was different from the one
by which they had set forth. Sometimes they followed the
beaten path down the cliff or, as it chanced to be, across
the marshes; sometimes they slid down the face of the cliff;
sometimes they lost themselves behind the hedges and in the
lanes of the villages. But when they again reached the car
the procedure of each was alike--each produced a pencil and
on the face of his "Half Inch" road map traced strange,
fantastic signs.
At lunch-time they stopped at the East Cliff Hotel at Cromer
and made numerous and trivial inquiries about the Cromer golf
links. They had come, they volunteered, from Ely for a day
of sea-bathing and golf; they were returning after dinner.
The head-waiter of the East Cliff Hotel gave them the
information they desired. He was an intelligent head-waiter,
young, and of pleasant, not to say distinguished, bearing. In
a frock coat he might easily have been mistaken for something
even more important than a head-waiter--for a German riding-
master, a leader of a Hungarian band, a manager of a Ritz
hotel. But he was not above his station. He even assisted the
porter in carrying the coats and golf bags of the gentlemen
from the car to the coffee-room where, with the intuition of
the homing pigeon, the three strangers had, unaided, found
their way. As Carl Schultz followed, carrying the dust-coats,
a road map fell from the pocket of one of them to the floor.
Carl Schultz picked it up, and was about to replace it, when
his eyes were held by notes scrawled roughly in pencil. With
an expression that no longer was that of a head-waiter, Carl
cast one swift glance about him and then slipped into the
empty coat-room and locked the door. Five minutes later, with
a smile that played uneasily over a face grown gray with
anxiety, Carl presented the map to the tallest of the three
strangers. It was open so that the pencil marks were most
obvious. By his accent it was evident the tallest of the
three strangers was an American.
"What the devil!" he protested; "which of you boys has been
playing hob with my map?"
For just an instant the two pink-cheeked ones regarded him
with disfavor; until, for just an instant, his eyebrows rose
and, with a glance, he signified the waiter.
"Oh, that!" exclaimed the younger one. "The Automobile Club
asked us to mark down petrol stations. Those marks mean
that's where you can buy petrol."
The head-waiter breathed deeply. With an assured and happy
countenance, he departed and, for the two-hundredth time that
day, looked from the windows of the dining-room out over the
tumbling breakers to the gray stretch of sea. As though
fearful that his face would expose his secret, he glanced
carefully about him and then, assured he was alone, leaned
eagerly forward, scanning the empty, tossing waters.
In his mind's eye he beheld rolling tug-boats straining
against long lines of scows, against the dead weight of
field-guns, against the pull of thousands of motionless,
silent figures, each in khaki, each in a black leather
helmet, each with one hundred and fifty rounds.
In his own language Carl Schultz reproved himself.
"Patience," he muttered; "patience! By ten to-night all will
be dark. There will be no stars. There will be no moon. The
very heavens fight for us, and by sunrise our outposts will
be twenty miles inland!"
At lunch-time Carl Schultz carefully, obsequiously waited
upon the three strangers. He gave them their choice of soup,
thick or clear, of gooseberry pie or Half-Pay pudding. He
accepted their shillings gratefully, and when they departed
for the links he bowed them on their way. And as their car
turned up Jetty Street, for one instant, he again allowed his
eyes to sweep the dull gray ocean. Brown-sailed fishing-boats
were beating in toward Cromer. On the horizon line a
Norwegian tramp was drawing a lengthening scarf of smoke.
Save for these the sea was empty.
By gracious permission of the manageress Carl had obtained an
afternoon off, and, changing his coat, he mounted his bicycle
and set forth toward Overstrand. On his way he nodded to the
local constable, to the postman on his rounds, to the driver
of the char à banc. He had been a year in Cromer and was well
known and well liked.
Three miles from Cromer, at the top of the highest hill in
Overstrand, the chimneys of a house showed above a thick
tangle of fir-trees. Between the trees and the road rose a
wall, high, compact, forbidding. Carl opened the gate in the
wall and pushed his bicycle up a winding path hemmed in by
bushes. At the sound of his feet on the gravel the bushes new
apart, and a man sprang into the walk and confronted him.
But, at sight of the head-waiter, the legs of the man became
rigid, his heels clicked together, his hand went sharply to
his visor.
Behind the house, surrounded on every side by trees, was a
tiny lawn. In the centre of the lawn, where once had been a
tennis court, there now stood a slim mast. From this mast
dangled tiny wires that ran to a kitchen table. On the table,
its brass work shining in the sun, was a new and perfectly
good wireless outfit, and beside it, with his hand on the
key, was a heavily built, heavily bearded German. In his
turn, Carl drew his legs together, his heels clicked, his
hand stuck to his visor.
"I have been in constant communication," said the man with
the beard. "They will be here just before the dawn. Return to
Cromer vand openly from the post-office telegraph your cousin
in London: 'Will meet you to-morrow at the Crystal Palace.'
On receipt of that, in the last edition of all of this
afternoon's papers, he will insert the final advertisement.
Thirty thousand of our own people will read it. They will
know the moment has come!"
As Carl coasted back to Cromer he flashed past many pretty
gardens where, upon the lawns, men in flannels were busy at
tennis or, with pretty ladies, deeply occupied in drinking
tea. Carl smiled grimly. High above him on the sky-line of
the cliff he saw the three strangers he had served at
luncheon. They were driving before them three innocuous golf
balls.
"A nation of wasters," muttered the German, "sleeping at
their posts. They are fiddling while England falls!"
Mr. Shutliffe, of Stiffkey, had led his cow in from the
marsh, and was about to close the cow-barn door, when three
soldiers appeared suddenly around the wall of the village
church. They ran directly toward him. It was nine o'clock,
but the twilight still held. The uniforms the men wore were
unfamiliar, but in his day Mr. Shutliffe had seen many
uniforms, and to him all uniforms looked alike. The tallest
soldier snapped at Mr. Shutliffe fiercely in a strange
tongue.
"Du bist gefangen!" he announced. "Das Dorf ist besetzt. Wo
sind unsere Leute?" he demanded.
"You'll 'ave to excuse me, sir," said Mr. Shutliffe, "but I
am a trifle 'ard of 'earing."
The soldier addressed him in English.
"What is the name of this village?" he demanded.
Mr. Shuttiffe, having lived in the village upward of eighty
years, recalled its name with difficulty.
"Have you seen any of our people?"
With another painful effort of memory Mr. Shutliffe shook his
head.
"Go indoors!" commanded the soldier, "And put out all lights,
and remain indoors. We have taken this village. We are
Germans. You are a prisoner! Do you understand?"
"Yes, sir, thank'ee, sir, kindly," stammered Mr. Shutliffe.
"May I lock in the pigs first, sir?"
One of the soldiers coughed explosively, and ran away, and
the two others trotted after him. When they looked back, Mr.
Shutliffe was still standing uncertainly in the dusk, mildly
concerned as to whether he should lock up the pigs or obey
the German gentleman.
The three soldiers halted behind the church wall.
"That was a fine start!" mocked Herbert. "Of course, you had
to pick out the Village Idiot. If they are all going to take
it like that, we had better pack up and go home."
"The village inn is still open," said Ford. "We'll close It."
They entered with fixed bayonets and dropped the butts of
their rifles on the sanded floor. A man in gaiters choked
over his ale and two fishermen removed their clay pipes and
stared. The bar-maid alone arose to the occasion.
"Now, then," she exclaimed briskly, "What way is that to come
tumbling into a respectable place? None of your tea-garden
tricks in here, young fellow, my lad, or --"
The tallest of the three intruders, in deep guttural accents,
interrupted her sharply.
"We are Germans!" he declared. "This village is captured. You
are prisoners of war. Those lights you will out put, and
yourselves lock in. If you into the street go, we will
shoot!"
He gave a command in a strange language; so strange, indeed,
that the soldiers with him failed to entirely grasp his
meaning, and one shouldered his rifle, while the other
brought his politely to a salute.
"You ass!" muttered the tall German. " Get out!"
As they charged into the street, they heard behind them a
wild feminine shriek, then a crash of pottery and glass, then
silence, and an instant later the Ship Inn was buried in
darkness.
"That will hold Stiffkey for a while!" said Ford. "Now, back
to the car."
But between them and the car loomed suddenly a tall and
impressive figure. His helmet and his measured tread upon the
deserted cobble-stones proclaimed his calling.
"The constable!" whispered Herbert. "He must see us, but he
mustn't speak to us."
For a moment the three men showed themselves in the middle of
the street, and then, as though at sight of the policeman
they had taken alarm, disappeared through an opening between
two houses. Five minutes later a motor-car, with its canvas
top concealing its occupants, rode slowly into Stiffkey's
main street and halted before the constable. The driver of
the car wore a leather skull-cap and goggles. From his neck
to his heels he was covered by a raincoat.
"Mr. Policeman," he began; " when I turned in here three
soldiers stepped in front of my car and pointed rifles at me.
Then they ran off toward the beach. What's the idea--
manoeuvres? Because, they've no right to--"
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