Chapter 100 Sleeping Beauty
Three mornings after the death of Professor Leung some weeks earlier,
{Chapter 14} Erika Weiss turned over in bed only to feel something stiff and
cold pressing against a tender spot on the inner curve of her left breast.
Opening one eye groggily she made out the figure of a man leaning over her, a
man with something hanging from his neck, a man with a dark, pointed goatee, and
eyes darker than his beard. Intense, brooding, intelligent eyes that seemed to
be studying her with an air of great concentration.
"She seems to be coming to, Herr Doktor. She's an exquisite creature is she
not?"
The man in the goatee glanced up at the well-dressed man in gray who stood
on the other side of the bead. "Indeed, Mr. Secretary." And then he resumed his
air of concentration and leaned closer over the body of his patient and adjusted
the position of the medallion-like object hanging from his neck.
"Useful device, that," replied Klaus Schumacher, the tall, dignified, but
rather obtuse Assistant Secretary of the German Foreign Office in Shanghai, as
he let his eyes wander over the beautiful features of the reclining woman. The
doctor had undone the top few buttons of her nightgown for his examination and
the diplomat's eyes lingered on the creamy flesh of her half-revealed breasts.
"You say you can hear her heart and lungs with it? What do you call it again?"
The doctor frowned at the continued interruptions, removed the instrument
from around his neck and laid it down on the bed. "It's a stethoscope -
invented by a Frenchman, one Laennec, some years ago. He was treating a very
heavy woman and was unable to hear her heart through all of the tissue with his
unaided ear. He got the idea of rolling up several sheets of paper to
'telescope' the sound to his ears and 'Voila!- the first stethoscope.'"
"Indeed?" Schumacher said rather disparagingly. The assistant secretary
was one of that large class of men who regarded the possession of any knowledge
which did nothing to enhance his prestige, titillate his senses or enrich his
bank account with some suspicion. "Well I suppose we should be thankful that
the French gave the world something in this century besides that
devil of a Corsican and his arrogant nephew!"
"Well, the Napoleons are long dead now, Mr. Secretary." The doctor paused
to glance up at the two forbidding portraits that represented the blood and iron
of Germany that hung on the wall opposite his patient's bed. "It has taken a
generation but the Kaiser and Bismarck have unified Germany. It is unfortunate
that our Emperor is in his late eighties. It will be up to his son to solidify
our place as the leading power on the continent. In the long run, Herr
Schumacher, I suspect that it is with the sea power of the English and their
colonial expansionism, that we will one day contend."
Schumacher nodded. "Possibly so. The last cable from Berlin suggested
that we are on the verge of annexing Tanganyika and Zanzibar. And only last
year we brought Southwest Africa into the Empire. Between us and the Boers that
will put some pressure on Gladstone and Salisbury no matter which party holds
power. And on Rhodes, too, the greedy bastard. He carries on as if Africa were
his private plaything." He glanced at the young woman on the bed, as she turned
her head tossing her long blonde hair from side to side. "She seems to be
coming around."
Erika Weiss, who had heard the preceding conversation through the foggy
veil of semi-consciousness, had opened her blue eyes. A soft moan escaped her
lips; her body was sore in a hundred places.
"Sprechen Sie Deutsch?" asked the doctor.
"W-wo bin ich?" she whispered in a weak voice to the man leaning over her.
"Why, you are here with us!" said the doctor with a friendly smile. "And
you are safe. So you do speak German. Sehr gut! Then the note we found with
you was accurate, at least in that respect. Excellent! Welcome back to the
world of the living," the man with the goatee said. "You have been asleep for
several days, Miss ....?" the doctor paused expectantly.
"I-I am ...." A troubled look crept across Erika Weiss' face, and her blue
eyes seemed to tighten at the corners.
"Yes?" the doctor's voice was soft, encouraging.
"I ...I ...don't ... know...." Erika looked up at the two men with
frightened eyes. "I ... I can't remember." Trying to suppress the rising tide
of panic that was welling up within her, she sat up a little and put her hands
to her temples as if that movement might somehow prevent the rest of her
faculties from joining her fugitive memory.
"Miss ... is it 'Miss'?" The doctor was scrutinizing her very strangely.
"I think so. I...I can not remember ... " She looked around the room,
which had been tastefully decorated as a feminine bedroom, a little wildly.
"Where am I? Who are you? Why ... why am I in pain?" she cradled her her arms
protectively against her chest, smothering her breasts which billowed outward
provocatively against the lacy bodice of her nightgown.
The man standing at the side of the bed took the lead. "May I present to
you Dr. Daniel Kauffmann." Then, clicking his heels together slightly, he
continued, "I am Klaus Schumacher, the Assistant Secretary of the German
consulate in Shanghai. You are in the west wing of the building, which houses
the living quarters of most of the official German staff here. The interim
vice-consul has arranged for you to stay in these pleasant accommodations until
you recover. You were left, unconscious, with no identification papers, at the
entryway of the Embassy a few days ago. With only a note saying that you were a
German citizen who had escaped some abductors."
"Escaped? Abductors? I - I can't remember." Erika made an attempt to sit
up and cried out softly in pain. Her elegant fingers reached toward her left
breast to soothe the soreness. She opened another button of her bedclothes and
peeked at the faded marks on her breast in consternation. "My God! What has
happened to me?"
"Please, Miss, do not alarm yourself," Dr. Kauffmann's voice was soothing.
"Your abductors, whoever they were, seem to have given you a severe beating just
before you escaped; we found blood that was barely dry. But I have treated all
of your visible injuries and with God's help you will be as good as new in a few
days. Luckily you are young and have a strong constitution. But do you remember
nothing of how you came by such a beating?
Erika looked around the room uncertainly, before once again meeting the
earnest gaze of the doctor. While the diplomat was a tall, bulky,
perfectly-groomed Teutonic type in his early forties, the doctor was smaller,
slender, almost frail-looking and perhaps a dozen years younger, with a rather
olive complexion and somewhat unruly black hair. "No, I'm sorry. I remember
... nothing.
"Parents? Children? Family of any kind? How do you come to be in China?"
Erika pressed her hands to her golden hair, which Doctor Kauffmann had
asked Ju, the pretty young Chinese housemaid, to brush that very morning, and Ju
had brushed it as carefully as she would have done her own. Erika sat for a
moment anxiously, trying to restore her memory, but shook her head despairingly
a few moments later. "I - I came by ship, I think"
"We hardly thought you had flown here on angel's wings, Miss," the doctor
said with an amused grin.
"Do not upset yourself, fraulein," Schumacher interjected. "Perhaps
everything will come back to you with a few days' rest. In the meantime, what
shall we call you? What do you think, Herr Doktor?"
Kauffmann's dark eyes stared piercingly into the blue eyes of the troubled
young woman. He took her wrist in his hand and felt her pulse for perhaps a
few seconds longer than absolutely necessary. "Our young friend seems to be
both strong and enchanting." He smiled at her warmly and then spoke in a low
voice
Die schonste Jungfrau sitzet
Dort oben wunderbar,
Ihr goldenes Geschmeide blitzet,
Sie kammt ihr goldnes Haar. **
"For the time being, may we call you, 'Lorelei'? You seem to have the
strength of that fabled cliff along the Rhine and yet the beauty of the fair
maiden who Heine tells us dwells nearby?"
Erika assented with a smile, touched by the doctor's words, even though she
had only the faintest recollection of either the poet or his subject.
"Very well, then, Lorelei, try to get some rest. When you recover a bit
more of your strength, we shall see what we can do to find out who you are."
Dr. Kauffmann leaned forward and patted Erika on the cheek and a moment later
she closed her eyes and drifted back off into a peaceful slumber.
** The fairest of maidens reposing
So wondrously up there.
Her golden treasure disclosing;
She's combing her golden hair.
