Under Fire For Servia. Fiske James

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СКАЧАТЬ Hallo, after all, sir. He's not a soldier, is he?"

      "No. He's past the age of military service. But this is what it will mean, Dick. In time of war ordinary affairs can't be attended to the way they are in times of peace. Even legal, admitted debts, that a man is perfectly willing to pay, can't be collected. Special laws and rules are made, just for war. It would make it much easier for Hallo to dodge you. And he has a pull, as you say."

      "Yes, but so have you, haven't you, sir?"

      "I hope so," said the consul, with a smile. "Of a different sort from his, too. But I'm afraid it isn't the sort that can help you very much just now, Dick. Still, we'd better do what we can. You want to stay here. Have you got a passport? It would simplify matters for you."

      "No, sir. They told me at home I didn't need it."

      "That's what they are always saying," said the consul, looking annoyed. "They never seem to understand, at home, that Europe isn't just like America. Here war is likely to break out at any moment, and then a passport is a necessity. It's been that way for years. Still, I suppose you've got some sort of proof that you're an American citizen? Your birth certificate or something of the sort?"

      "No, sir, I'm afraid I haven't. I haven't got anything except my Boy Scout certificate."

      "Let me see that."

      Dick produced, rather proudly, the pocket card that showed him to be a first-class scout, a member of a star patrol of a good New York troop, and recorded his many honor badges.

      "This is fine," said the consul, returning it. "But it doesn't prove that you're an American, my boy."

      Dick looked at him in dismay.

      "But you believe that I am, don't you, sir?"

      "I certainly do! There isn't a boy of any other country in the world that could have come here as you have done! But what I believe doesn't count. If Hallo is trying to have you expelled, I'd have to be able to prove definitely that you were an American, instead of just saying that I believed it. In ordinary times – but, as I've told you already, these aren't ordinary times. And I know a little something about this Hallo. I've had trouble with him myself."

      "You have, sir?"

      "Yes. He exports things to America, and it's part of my duty to certify to values and so on, for the customs. I've thought once or twice that he was trying to cheat. I'm sure of this – that his pull is mighty strong. But I tell you what I'll do. I'll cable for proofs of your identity. Your scoutmaster should be able to get them. We'll hope Hallo won't hurry too much. Now be off, but come back at six, and we'll have dinner together."

      CHAPTER II

      A SURPRISING OFFER

      Plucky and self-reliant as Dick Warner really was, he felt a good deal better when he emerged from Consul Denniston's office than when he had been trying to get by the barrier of clerks fifteen minutes earlier. Then he had been a good many thousand miles from home, and not only friendless in a strange and alien country, but possessed of a determined and unscrupulous enemy as well. He had told only the truth about Hallo, but he did not know everything, by any means, about the rich Hungarian who had cheated his widowed mother.

      He had not been very long in Semlin, however, without making the discovery that here, in the old Hungarian town that faced the capital of Servia across the river Save, Mike Hallo was a far more important person than he had ever been in New York. The firm of Warner and Hallo had been a good, sound one in New York, and both partners had been comfortably well off. But in Semlin means that had not seemed very great in New York made a man the equivalent of a millionaire in America. Hallo lived in one of the finest houses of the city, and seemed to be looked up to and respected.

      "Gee!" Dick had said to himself. "They seem to think as much of him here as people in New York do of J. P. Morgan or Andy Carnegie!"

      Dick was boarding in Semlin. The extravagance of a hotel, he felt, was not for him. He had a considerable sum of money, which he always carried with him, in gold, wrapped in a belt, which never left him, but he knew this money might have to last him a long time, and if he could help it he was certainly not going to have to seek charity to get home. He wanted to paddle his own canoe; that was his favorite motto.

      Dick hadn't seen Mike Hallo, to speak to him, since he had come to Semlin. He had seen him at a distance when Mike had been driving in an open carriage, and Mike had seen him, too. Dick had caught the flush on the sallow cheeks, and the look of hate that had sprung into his father's partner's narrow, beady eyes. Oh, yes, Mike knew he was in Semlin! And Dick did not underestimate the man's cleverness. It was just as sure as it could be that Hallo understood very well why he had come and what he hoped to do. Dick had tried to follow Mike's thoughts, too.

      "He's a crook – he cheated my mother," Dick had said to himself. "And any man who would do a thing like that has got a yellow streak in him a mile wide. So it's a cinch he's afraid of me. He may think I can't do anything to hurt him, and all that, but he won't take any chances if he can help it, because he's a coward. He'll know he's in the wrong, even if he thinks he's got the law fixed, so that he couldn't be pinched, even if he went back to New York. But down at bottom, just because he himself knows that he's in the wrong, he'll be afraid. And he'll hate me, too, because he's done me an injury."

      As a matter of fact, that was good reasoning, and showed that Dick had it in him to become a good judge of human nature. A man's worst enemy is always the one to whom he has done the greatest injury. It is much easier to forgive someone who has done one an injury than to retain a liking for the person one has hurt or cheated.

      That morning, before he had gone to the consulate, the Semlin police had visited Dick. First they had asked for his passport and when he couldn't produce one, had told him that, as an English subject, he must leave the town within twenty-four hours.

      "You go tell Mike Hallo I'm not afraid of him, even if he gets the whole Hungarian army after me!" Dick had said.

      The policemen had only professed utter ignorance concerning Hallo, but Dick had not been deceived. He had not lived in New York without coming to the conclusion that a man with a great deal of money can command a good many things not at the disposal of ordinary people, and he was perfectly sure that it was Mike Hallo who was behind this sudden activity of the police in Semlin.

      "He's a dirty sneak," he said to himself. "But I've got to get busy and call on Uncle Sam to help, or I'm apt to be chased out of here before I get a good crack at Mike. Even if I'm not afraid of him and the whole Hungarian army, it's a cinch that it wouldn't take more than a couple of Hungarian cops to put me on a train and see that I stayed there."

      So, if he had not been frightened, Dick had been a good deal worried when he went to the consulate. His travels about Europe had shown him that over here things were allowed that would have been impossible at home, and that there is something more than a pretty line or two of poetry about the verse that sings of the land of the free. There wasn't much freedom, he had long since decided for himself, in countries like Austria and Hungary. Those who had influence with officials, like the police, or with the army, could do very much as they pleased, and those who didn't had to toe the mark whenever anyone in uniform told them to do so whether they liked it or no.

      That was why he was able to leave the consulate with a light heart and a song on his lips. He had found a friend, and it seemed to him that a friend was a pretty good thing to have found here on the banks of the Danube, four thousand miles and more from the apartment on Washington Heights where his mother and his little sister, for whose sakes he had made his adventurous journey, were waiting for him. About Consul Denniston, busy as he was, and rather stern though his aspect had been in СКАЧАТЬ