Achmed Abdullah

“ If Takagawa Takamori had been small among the short, sturdy daimios of Kiushu, he seemed wizened and diminutive among the long-limbed, well-fleshed men of Prussia and Mecklenburg, and Saxony who crowded the chemical laboratory of Professor Kreutzer. Gentlemen according to the stiff, angular, ramrod German code, they recognized that the little parchment-skinned, spectacled Asian was a gentleman according to his own code, and so, while they pitied him after the manner of big blond men, lusty of tongue, hard of thirst and greedy of meat, they sympathized with him. ”

“ But gas, too, can kill—poison gas, projected from iron tanks on an unsuspecting, unprepared enemy! It can win a battle, a campaign, a war! It can change the course of world history! It can ram imperial Germany's slavery down the throat of a free world! Poison gas—it is a weapon—the newest, most wicked, most effective weapon!" The professor was getting slightly hysterical. "Take it back with you to Japan—to France, to England—anywhere! Fight us with our own weapons! Fight us—and give us freedom—freedom!" ”

“ The German students laughed boisterously, while the baron smiled. For it was well known throughout the empire that Professor Kreutzer was a Liberaler who disliked bureaucratic authority, sneered at the military, and was negligent of imperial favor.
From the first Takagawa felt a strong liking and even kinship for Baron von Eschingen. He understood him. The man, tall, lean, powerful, red-faced, ponderous of gesture and raucous of speech, was nevertheless a samurai like himself. ”

“ Ships that sail the ocean, drifting clouds, the waning moon, shores that are washed away—these are symbolic of change. These, and the body. But the human mind is essential, absolute, changeless, and everlasting. ”

“ The poison gas! It was his sword! But first he must get out of the country. He hailed a taxicab and drove straight to the Presidency of Police. A crowd of foreigners of all nationalities—anxious, nervous, shouting, gesticulating—was surging in the lower entrance hall of the square, baroque building. But the baron's card proved a talisman, and in less than half an hour Takagawa had seen Police Captain von Wilmowitz, had had his passport viséed and had received permission for himself and his servant Kaguchi to leave Berlin for Lake Constance on the following day. ”

“ And so the young samurai took ship for Europe. He was accompanied by Kaguchi, an old family servant, short, squat, flat-nosed, dark of skin and long of arm. A low-caste he was who had sunk his personality in that of the family whom his ancestors had been serving for generations, who had never considered his personal honor but only that of his master's clan which to him stood for the whole of Nippon. ”

“ Komoto had said to the marquis when the governors of the cadet school at Nagasaki had decided that the young samurai's body was too weak, his eyes too shortsighted, his blood too thin to stand the rigorous military training of modern Japan. "It is not affected by the will of man. ”

“ Perhaps his memory was mechanical, automatic, the fruit of his early schooling when, with the mountain wind blowing icy through the flimsy shoji walls, he had knelt in front of Komoto and had laboriously learned by heart long passages from the Yuen-Chioh and the erudite commentaries of Lao-tse. ”

“ Works like a slave. But, auf Ehrenwort, he hates it, the poor old beggar!"—and, seeing a drop of moisture in the other's oblique eyes, he went on hurriedly: "Now, as to that gas—that new one Kreutzer is driveling about—with some unearthly, jaw-breaking Greek name and that fine, juicy stink to it—do you remember how—" And a moment later they were deep once more in the discussion of poison gases.
July swooned into August and, overnight, it seemed, the idyl of peace was spattered out by a brushful of blood. Excitement struck Berlin like a crested wave. People cheered. People laughed. People wept. ”