Under Fire For Servia

Excerpt

DICK MAKES A FRIEND

The American consul in the small but highly important city of Semlin, in Hungary, was a busy man. He was probably one of the first men in the world who knew how great was the danger of war between Austria-Hungary and the little kingdom of Servia after the assassination of the heir to the Austrian throne in the summer of 1914. Now, since the Austrian ultimatum to Servia had aroused all Europe to the peril, refugees had doubled the consul's work. All the Americans in Servia, and there had been quite a number there that summer, seemed to be pouring through Semlin. Indeed, all the Americans gathered there from all the Balkan states, and from Turkey as well, since the great trunk railway, the famous Orient line, crossed the Save river at Belgrade, and Semlin was therefore a border town, where in many cases passports had to be examined.

So it was a hard matter for any stranger to see the consul in person unless he could prove that his business was of the greatest importance. His office force did all it could to give him the time he needed to catch up with his duties, but on a sunny morning late in July there came a visitor who refused to be put off. The consul heard him as he sat at his desk, writing frantically.

"I tell you I've got to see him!" That was what the consul heard, in a voice that caused him to sit straight in his chair in astonishment. For the voice was that of an American boy. Clear, penetrating, self-reliant, it rang out like a call from home. The consul smiled and touched a bell on his desk. And a minute later Dick Warner faced him, bearing out what his voice had already told about him.

"You want to see me?" said the consul. "Well, sir, what can I do for you? Lost your folks? Want money to get home? Something like that, eh?" a note of condescension in his voice.

"No, sir. I just want to get permission to stay here in Semlin. The police say that I'm English, and that I'll have to go away. But that's because Mike Hallo has a pull."

"Michael Hallo, the great merchant?" the consul frowned.

"I don't know anything about his being a great merchant, sir, but I know that he's a great crook! I've chased him here from New York, and now that I've found him, I'm not going to let him frighten me into going away before he makes good!"

"Tell me about this, my boy," said the consul. "It sounds as if it should be interesting."

"That's what I want to do, sir. My name's Dick Warner, and my father's dead. He and Mike Hallo were partners in New York, and they had a good business. We always had lots of money until my father died. Then, right away after that, Mike Hallo said the business began to go wrong and lost money. And, after a while, it got so bad, he said, that it had to be closed down, and there wasn't any more money coming in. He sold out, and gave my mother a little money and said he was going home."

"That might have happened," said the consul.

"Sure—only it didn't, you see! My mother was soft, and she believed everything Mike Hallo told her. And I wasn't old enough to know anything about it....