Page:Alien Souls by Achmed Abdullah (1922).djvu/189

classes, took a delight in deviling the baron's soul, in baiting him, in putting to him sudden questions hard to solve and pouncing on him when the answer did not come swift enough, with such remarks as: "Of course, lieber Herr Leutnant, what can I expect? This is not a hollow square, nor a firing squad, nor anything connected with martingale or rattling scabbard. This is science—the humble work of the proletariat—and, by God, it needs the humble brain of the proletariat to understand it."

Another time—the baron was specializing in poisonous gases and their effect on the human body—the professor burst out with: "I can't get it through my head why you find it so terribly difficult to master the principles of gas. I have always thought that the army is making a specialty of—gas bags!"

Von Eschingen would bite his mustache and blush. But he would not reply to the other's taunts and gibes; and Takagawa knew that the baron, too, was learning; learning honorably; nor because of reward and merit.

They worked side by side through the warm, soft July afternoons—while the sun blazed his golden panoply across a cloudless sky and the scent of the linden trees, drifting in through the open windows, cried them out to field and garden—cramming their minds with the methodical devices of exact science, staining their hands with sharp acids and crystals, with the professor wielding his pedagogic whip, criticizing, sneering, mercilessly driving. More than once, when Kreutzer's back was turned, Takagawa would help the baron, whisper him word or chemical formula from the fund of his tenacious Oriental brain, and then the two would laugh like naughty schoolboys, the German