The Double Traitor | Page 6

He waited for the reply without any pleasurable
anticipations. He was filled with a burning sense of resentment, a
feeling which extended even to the innocent cause of it. Soon he heard
her voice.
"That is Mr. Norgate, is it not?"
"Yes," he replied. "I rang up to wish you good-by."
"Good-by! But you are going away, then?"
"I am sent away--dismissed!"
He heard her little exclamation of grief. Its complete genuineness broke
down a little the wall of his anger.
"And it is my fault!" she exclaimed. "If only I could do anything! Will
you wait--please wait? I will go to the Palace myself."
His expostulation was almost a shock to her.
"Baroness," he replied, "if I permitted your intervention, I could never

hold my head up in Berlin again! In any case, I could not stay here. The
first thing I should do would be to quarrel with that insufferable young
cad who insulted us last night. I am afraid, at the first opportunity, I
should tell--"
"Hush!" she interrupted. "Oh, please hush! You must not talk like this,
even over the telephone. Cannot you understand that you are not in
England?"
"I am beginning to realise," he answered gruffly, "what it means not to
be in a free country. I am leaving by the three o'clock train, Baroness.
Farewell!"
"But you must not go like this," she pleaded. "Come first and see me."
"No! It will only mean more disgrace for you. Besides--in any case, I
have decided to go away without seeing you again."
Her voice was very soft. He found himself gripping the pages of the
telephone book which hung by his side.
"But is that kind? Have I sinned, Mr. Francis Norgate?"
"Of course not," he answered, keeping his tone level, almost indifferent.
"I hope that we shall meet again some day, but not in Berlin."
There was a moment's silence. He thought, even, that she had gone
away. Then her reply came back.
"So be it," she murmured. "Not in Berlin. Au revoir!"
CHAPTER III
Faithful to his insular prejudices, Norgate, on finding that the other seat
in his coupé was engaged, started out to find the train attendant with a
view to changing his place. His errand, however, was in vain. The train,
it seemed, was crowded. He returned to his compartment to find
already installed there one of the most complete and absolute types of

Germanism he had ever seen. A man in a light grey suit, the waistcoat
of which had apparently abandoned its efforts to compass his girth,
with a broad, pink, good-humoured face, beardless and bland, flaxen
hair streaked here and there with grey, was seated in the vacant place.
He had with him a portmanteau covered with a linen case, his boots
were a bright shade of yellow, his tie was of white satin with a design
of lavender flowers. A pair of black kid gloves lay by his side. He
welcomed Norgate with the bland, broad smile of a fellow-passenger
whose one desire it is to make a lifelong friend of his temporary
companion.
"We have the compartment to ourselves, is it not so? You are English?"
Some queer chance founded upon his ill-humour, his disgust of
Germany and all things in it, induced Norgate to tell a deliberate
falsehood.
"Sorry," he replied in English. "I don't speak German."
The man's satisfaction was complete.
"But I--I speak the most wonderful English. It pleases me always to
speak English. I like to do so. It is practice for me. We will talk English
together, you and I. These comic papers, they do not amuse. And books
in the train, they make one giddy. What I like best is a companion and a
bottle of Rhine wine."
"Personally," Norgate confessed gruffly, "I like to sleep."
The other seemed a little taken aback but remained, apparently, full of
the conviction that his overtures could be nothing but acceptable.
"It is well to sleep," he agreed, "if one has worked hard. Now I myself
am a hard worker. My name is Selingman. I manufacture crockery
which I sell in England. That is why I speak the English language so
wonderful. For the last three nights I have been up reading reports of
my English customers, going through their purchases. Now it is
finished. I am well posted. I am off to sell crockery in London, in

Manchester, in Leeds, in Birmingham. I have what the people want.
They will receive me with open arms, some of them even welcome me
at their houses. Thus it is that I look forward to my business trip as a
holiday."
"Very pleasant, I'm sure," Norgate remarked, curling himself up in his
corner. "Personally, I can't see why we can't make our own crockery. I
get tired