“I doubt the inn may be too good for my purse,” I said. “I am on a walking-tour and must lodge cheaply.”
He laughed pleasantly. “There may be accommodation elsewhere. Peter Bojer may have a spare bed. I am going that way, sir, and can direct you.”
He had turned towards me, and his figure caught the beam of the riding-light of the motor-launch. I saw a thin sunburnt face with a very pleasant expression, and an untidy grizzled beard. Then I knew him, and I could have shouted with amazement at the chance which had brought us two together again.
We walked side by side up the jetty road and on to the highway.
“I think,” I said, “that we have met before, Herr Gaudian.”
He stopped short. “That is my name … but I do not … I do not think …”
“Do you remember a certain Dutchman called Cornelius Brandt whom you entertained at your country house one night in December ’15?”
He looked searchingly in my face.
“I remember,” he said. “I also remember a Mr. Richard Hanau, one of Guggenheim’s engineers, with whom I talked at Constantinople.”
“The same,” I said. For a moment I was not clear how he was going to take the revelation, but his next action reassured me, and I saw that I had not been wrong in my estimate of the one German I have ever wholeheartedly liked. He began to laugh, a friendly tolerant laugh.
“Kritzi Turken!” he cried. “It is indeed romantic. I have often wondered whether I should see or hear of you again, and behold! you step out of the darkness on a Norwegian fjord.”
“You bear no malice?” I said. “I served my country as you served yours. I played fair, as you played fair.”
“Malice!” he cried. “But we are gentlemen; also we are not children. I rejoice to see that you have survived the War. I have always wished you well, for you are a very bold and brave man.”
“Not a bit of it,” I said—“only lucky.”
“By what name shall I call you now—Brandt or Hanau?”
“My name is Richard Hannay, but for the present I am calling myself Cornelius Brand—for a reason which I am going to tell you.” I had suddenly made up my mind to take Gaudian into my full confidence. He seemed to have been sent by Providence for that purpose, and I was not going to let such a chance slip.
But at my words he stopped short.
“Mr. Hannay,” he said, “I do not want your confidence. You are still engaged, I take it, in your country’s service? I do not question your motive, but remember I am a German, and I cannot be party to the pursuit of one of my countrymen, however base I may think him.”
I could only stare. “But I am not in my country’s service,” I stammered. “I left it at the Armistice, and I’m a farmer now.”
“Do English farmers travel in Norway under false names?”
“That’s a private business which I want to explain to you. I assure you there is no German in it. I want to keep an eye on the doings of a fashionable English doctor.”
“I must believe you,” he said after a pause. “But two hours ago a man arrived in the launch you see anchored out there. He is a fisherman and is now at the inn. That man is known to me—too well known. He is a German, who during the War served Germany in secret ways, in America and elsewhere. I did not love him and I think he did my country grievous ill, but that is a matter for us Germans to settle, and not for foreigners.”
“I know your man as Dr. Newhover of Wimpole Street.”
“So?” he said. “He has taken again his father’s name, which was Neuhofer. We knew him as Kristoffer. What do you want with him?”
“Nothing that any honest German wouldn’t approve,” and there and then I gave him a sketch of the Medina business. He exclaimed in horror.
“Mr. Hannay,” he said hesitatingly, “you are being honest with me?”
“I swear by all that’s holy I am telling you the plain truth, and the full truth. Newhover may have done anything you jolly well like in the War. That’s all washed out. I’m after him to get a line on a foul business which is English in origin. I want to put a spoke in the wheel of English criminals, and to save innocent lives. Besides, Newhover is only a subordinate. I don’t propose to raise a hand against him, only to find out what he is doing.”
He held out his hand. “I believe you,” he said, “and if I can I will help you.”
He conducted me through the long street of the village, past the inn, where I supposed Newhover was now going to bed, and out on to the road which ran up the Skarso valley. We came in sight of the river, a mighty current full of melted snow, sweeping in noble curves through the meadowland in that uncanny dusk. It appeared that he lodged with Peter Bojer, who had a spare bed, and when we reached the cottage, which stood a hundred yards from the highway on the very brink of the stream, Peter was willing to let me have it. His wife gave us supper—an omelette, smoked salmon, and some excellent Norwegian beer—and after it I got out my map and had a survey of the neighbourhood.
Gaudian gave me a grisly picture of the condition of his own country. It seemed that the downfall of the old regime had carried with it the decent wise men like himself, who had opposed its follies, but had lined up with it on patriotic grounds when the War began. He said that Germany was no place for a moderate man, and that the power lay with the bloated industrials, who were piling up fortunes abroad while they were wrecking their country at
