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witH INCOME FROM THE
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I94I


- —T:





MR. STANDFAST
J O H N B U C H A N


BY JOHN BUCHAN
Mr. StANDFAST
THE WATCHER BY THE threSHOLD
SALUTE TO ADVENTURERS
Prester JOHN
GreenMANtle
the BAttle of the SOMME
THE POWER HOUSE
THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY


COPYRIGHT, 1919,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
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Printed in THE UNITED STATES OF AMerica


TO
THAT MOST GALLANT COMPANY
THE OFFICERS AND MEN OF THE
SOUTH AFRICAN INFANTRY BRIGADE
ON THE WESTERN FRONT





NOTE
The earlier adventures of Richard Hannay, to which
occasional reference is made in the narrative, are re-
counted in The Thirty-Nine Steps and Greenmantle.
J. B.





chapter
II.
III.
IV.
VI.
VII.
VIII.
IX.
XI.
XII.
XIII.
XIV.
XV.
XVI.
XVII.
XVIII.
CONTENTS
PART I
THE WICKET-GATE . . . . . .
“THE VILLAGE NAMED MoRALITY”
THE REFLECTIONs of A CURED DYSPEPTIC .
ANDREw AMos .
VARIOUs DoINGS IN THE WEST
THE SKIRTs of THE Coolin .
I HEAR OF THE WILD BIRDs .
THE ADVENTUREs of A BAGMAN
I TAKE THE WINGS OF A Dove
THE ADVANTAGEs of AN AIR RAID
THE VALLEY of HUMILIATION
PART II
I BEcoME A CoMBATANT ONCE MoRE .
THE ADVENTURE of THE PICARDY CHATEAU
MR. BLENKIRoN Discourses on LovE AND
WAR
St. ANTON .
I LIE on A HARD BED
THE Col of THE Swallows .
THE UNDERGROUND RAILwAY
Page
30
48
62
80
101
119
132
149
163
175
191
208
223
248
267
281
299
ix


X
CONTENTS
chapi er
XIX.
XX.
XXI.
XXII.
THE CAGE of THE WILD BIRDS
THE STORM BREAKs IN THE WEST
How AN ExILE RETURNED To HIs Own
PEOPLE .
THE SUMMON's ComEs For Mr. STANDFAST


PART I





MR. STANDFAST
CHAPTER I
THE WICKET-GATE
SPENT one-third of my journey looking out of the
window of a first-class carriage, the next in a local
motor-car following the course of a trout stream in a
shallow valley, and the last tramping over a ridge of down
and through great beech-woods to my quarters for the
night. In the first part I was in an infamous temper; in
the second I was worried and mystified; but the cool twi-
light of the third stage calmed and heartened me, and I
reached the gates of Fosse Manor with a mighty appetite
and a quiet mind.
As we slipped up the Thames valley on the smooth Great
Western line I had reflected ruefully on the thorns in the
path of duty. For more than a year I had never been out
of khaki, except the months I spent in hospital. They gave
me my battalion before the Somme, and I came out of that
weary battle after the first big September fighting with a
crack in my head and a D.S.O. I had received a C.B. for
the Erzerum business, so what with these and my Matabele
and South African medals and the Legion of Honour, I had
a chest like the High Priest's breastplate. I rejoined in
January, and got a brigade on the eve of Arras. There we
had a star turn, and took about as many prisoners as we put
infantry over the top. After that we were hauled out for a
month, and subsequently planted in a bad bit on the Scarpe
11


THE WICKET-GATE 13
now I had acquired a professional interest in the thing, I
had a nailing good brigade, and I had got the hang of our
new kind of war as well as any fellow from Sandhurst and
Camberley. They were asking me to scrap all I had learned
and start again in a new job. I had to agree, for discipline's
discipline, but I could have knocked their heads together in
my vexation.
What was worse they wouldn't, or couldn't, tell me any-
thing about what they wanted me for. It was the old game
of running me in blinkers. They asked me to take it on
trust and put myself unreservedly in their hands. I would
get my instructions later, they said.
I asked if it was important.
Bullivant narrowed his eyes. “If it weren't, do you sup-
pose we could have wrung an active brigadier out of the
War Office? As it was, it was like drawing teeth.”
“Is it risky P” was my next question.
“In the long run—damnably,” was the answer.
“And you can't tell me anything more?”
“Nothing as yet. You'll get your instructions soon
enough. You know both of us, Hannay, and you know we
wouldn't waste the time of a good man on folly. We are
going to ask you for something which will make a big call
on your patriotism. It will be a difficult and arduous task,
and it may be a very grim one before you get to the end
of it. But we believe you can do it, and that no one else
can. . . . You know us pretty well. Will you let us judge
for you?”
I looked at Bullivant's shrewd, kind old face and Mac-
gillivray's steady eyes. These men were my friends and
wouldn't play with me.
“All right,” I said. “I’m willing. What's the first
step?”
“Get out of uniform and forget you ever were a soldier.
Change your name. Your old one, Cornelius Brandt, will
do, but you'd better spell it ‘Brand’ this time. Remember
that you are an engineer just back from South Africa, and


1+ MR. STANDFAST
that you don't care a rush about the war. You can't under-
stand what all the fools are fighting about, and you think we
might have peace at once by a little friendly business talk.
You needn't be pro-German—if you like you can be rather
severe on the Hun. But you must be in deadly earnest about
a speedy peace.”
I expect the corners of my mouth fell, for Bullivant burst
out laughing.
“Hang it all, man, it's not so difficult. I feel sometimes
inclined to argue that way myself, when my dinner doesn't
agree with me. It's not so hard as to wander round the
Fatherland abusing Britain, which was your last job.”
“I’m ready,” I said. “But I want to do one errand on
my own first. I must see a fellow in my brigade who is in
a shell-shock hospital in the Cotswolds. Isham's the name
of the place.”
The two men exchanged glances. “This looks like fate,”
said Bullivant. “By all means go to Isham. The place
where your work begins is only a couple of miles off. I
want you to spend next Thursday night as the guest of two
maiden ladies called Wymondham at Fosse Manor. You
will go down there as a lone South African visiting a sick
friend. They are hospitable souls and entertain many angels
unawares.”
“And I get my orders there?”
“You get your orders, and you are under bond to obey
them . . .” And Bullivant and Macgillivray smiled at each
other.
I was thinking hard about that odd conversation as the
small Ford car, which I had wired for to the inn, carried
me away from the suburbs of the county town into a land
of rolling hills and green water-meadows. It was a gor-
geous afternoon and the blossom of early June was on every
tree. But I had no eyes for landscape and the summer,
being engaged in reprobating Bullivant and cursing my fan-
tastic fate. I detested my new part and looked forward to
naked shame. It was bad enough for anyone to have to


THE WICKET-GATE 15
pose as a pacificist, but for me, as strong as a bull and as
sunburnt as a gipsy and not looking my forty years, it was
a black disgrace. To go into Germany as an anti-British
Afrikander was a stoutish adventure, but to lounge about at
home talking rot was a very different-sized job. My stom-
ach rose at the thought of it, and I had pretty well decided
to wire to Bullivant and cry off. There are some things
that no one has a right to ask of any white man.
When I got to Isham and found poor old Blaikie I didn't
feel happier. He had been a friend of mine in Rhodesia,
and after the German South-West affair was over had come
home to a Fusilier battalion, which was in my brigade at
Arras. He had been buried by a big crump just before we
got our second objective, and was dug out without a scratch
on him, but as daft as a hatter. I had heard he was mend-
ing, and had promised his family to look him up the first
chance I got. I found him sitting on a garden seat staring
steadily before him like a lookout at sea. He knew me all
right and cheered up for a second, but very soon he was
back at his staring, and every word he uttered was like the
careful speech of a drunken man. A bird flew out of a
bush, and I could see him holding himself tight to keep from
screaming. The best I could do was to put a hand on his
shoulder and stroke him as one strokes a frightened horse.
The sight of the price my old friend had paid didn't put me
in love with pacificism.
We talked of brother officers and South Africa, for I
wanted to keep his thoughts off the war, but he kept edging
round to it. “How long will the damned thing last?” he
asked.
“Oh, it's practically over,” I lied cheerfully. “No more
1 fighting for you and precious little for me. The Boche is
done in all right. . . . What you've got to do, my lad, is
to sleep fourteen hours in the twenty-four and spend half
the rest catching trout. We'll have a shot at the grouse-bird
together this autumn, and we'll get some of the old gang
to join us.”


16 MR. STANDFAST
º
º
Someone put a tea-tray on the table beside us, and I
looked up to see the very prettiest girl I ever set eyes on.
She seemed little more than a child, and before the war
would probably have still ranked as a flapper. She wore the
neat blue dress and apron of a V.A.D. and her white cap
was set on hair like spun gold. She smiled demurely as she
arranged the tea-things, and I thought I had never seen eyes
at once so merry and so grave. I stared after her as she
walked across the lawn, and I remember noticing that she
moved with the free grace of an athletic boy.
“Who on earth’s that P” I asked Blaikie.
“That? Oh, one of the sisters,” he said listlessly.
“There are squads of them. I can't tell one from another.”
Nothing gave me such an impression of my friend's sick-
ness as the fact that he should have no interest in something
so fresh and jolly as that girl. Presently my time was up
and I had to go, and as I looked back I saw him sunk in his
chair again, his eyes fixed on vacancy, and his hands grip-
ping his knees.
The thought of him depressed me horribly. Here was I
condemned to some rotten buffoonery in inglorious safety,
while the salt of the earth like Blaikie was paying the ghast-
liest price. From him my thoughts flew to old Peter
Pienaar, and I sat down on a roadside wall and read his
last letter. It nearly made me howl. -
Peter, you must know, had shaved his beard and joined
the Royal Flying Corps the summer before when we got
back from the Greenmantle affair. That was the only kind
of reward he wanted, and, though he was absurdly over
age, the authorities allowed it. . They were wise not to
stickle about rules, for Peter's eyesight and nerve were as
good as those of any boy of twenty. I knew he would do
well, but I was not prepared for his immediate blazing suc-
cess. He got his pilot's certificate in record time and went
out to France; and presently even we foot-sloggers, busy
shifting ground before the Somme, began to hear rumours of
his doings. He developed a perfect genius for air-fighting.


THE WICKET-GATE 17
There were plenty better trick-flyers, and plenty who knew
more about the science of the game, but there was no one
with quite Peter's genius for an actual scrap. He was as
full of dodges a couple of miles up in the sky as he had
been among the rocks of the Berg. He apparently knew
how to hide in the empty air as cleverly as in the long grass
of the Lebombo Flats. Amazing yarns began to circulate
among the infantry about this new airman, who could take
cover below one plane of an enemy squadron while ali the
rest were looking for him. I remember talking about him
with the South Africans when we were out resting next
door to them after the bloody Delville Wood business. The
day before we had seen a good battle in the clouds when the
Boche plane had crashed, and a Transvaal machine-gun
officer brought the report that the British airman had been
Pienaar. “Well done, the old takhaar!” he cried, and
started to yarn about Peter's methods. It appeared that
Peter had a theory that every man has a blind spot, and
that he knew just how to find that blind spot in the world
of air. The best cover, he maintained, was not in cloud or
a wisp of fog, but in the unseeing patch in the eye of your
enemy. I recognised that talk for the real thing. It was
on a par with Peter's doctrine of “atmosphere" and “the
double bluff” and all the other principles that his queer old
mind had cogitated out of his rackety life.
By the end of August that year Peter's was about the
best-known figure in the Flying Corps. If the reports had
mentioned names he would have been a national hero, but
he was only “Lieutenant Blank,” and the newspapers, which
expatiated on his deeds, had to praise the Service and not
the man. That was right enough, for half the magic of our
Flying Corps was its freedom from advertisement. But the
British Army knew all about him, and the men in the
trenches used to discuss him as if he were a crack football-
player. There was a very big German airman called Lensch,
one of the Albatross heroes, who about the end of August
claimed to have destroyed thirty-two Allied machines.


18 MR. STANDFAST
Peter had then only seventeen planes to his credit, but he
was rapidly increasing his score. Lensch was a mighty man
of valour and a good sportsman after his fashion. He was
amazingly quick at manoeuvring his machine in the actual
fight, but Peter was supposed to be better at forcing the
kind of fight he wanted. Lensch, if you like, was the tacti-
cian and Peter the strategist. Anyhow the two were out te
get each other. There were plenty of fellows who saw the
campaign as a struggle not between Hun and Briton, but
between Lensch and Pienaar.
The 15th of September came, and I got knocked out and
went to hospital. When I was fit to read the papers again
and receive letters, I found to my consternation that Peter
had been downed. It happened at the end of October when
the south-west gales badly handicapped our airwork. When
our bombing or reconnaissance jobs behind the enemy lines
were completed, instead of being able to glide back inte
safety, we had to fight our way home slowly against a head-
wind, exposed to Archies and Hun planes. Somewhere east
of Bapaume on a return journey Peter fell in with Lensch
—at least the German Press gave Lensch the credit. His
petrol tank was shot to bits and he was forced to descend
in a wood near Morchies. “The celebrated British airman,
Pinner,” in the words of the German communiqué, was
made prisoner.
I had no letter from him till the beginning of the New
Year, when I was preparing to return to France. It was
a very contented letter. He seemed to have been fairly
well treated, though he had always a low standard of what
he expected from the world in the way of comfort. I
inferred that his captors had not identified in the brilliant
airman the Dutch miscreant who a year before had broken
out of a German jail. He had discovered the pleasures of
reading and had perfected himself in an art which he had
once practised indifferently. Somehow or other he had got
a Pilgrim's Progress, from which he seemed to extract enor-
mous pleasure. And then at the end, quite casually, he


THE WICKET-GATE 19
mentioned that he had been badly wounded and that his
left leg would never be much use again.
After that I got frequent letters, and I wrote to him every
week and sent him every kind of parcel I could think of.
His letters used to make me both ashamed and happy. I
had always banked on old Peter, and here he was behaving
like an early Christian martyr—never a word of complaint,
and just as cheery as if it were a winter morning on the
high veld and we were off to ride down springbok. I knew
what the loss of a leg must mean to him, for bodily fitness
had always been his pride. The rest of life must have un-
rolled itself before him very drab and dusty to the grave.
But he wrote as if he were on the top of his form and kept
commiserating me on the discomforts of my job. The pic-
ture of that patient, gentle old fellow, hobbling about his
compound and puzzling over his Pilgrim's Progress, a
cripple for life after five months of blazing glory, would
have stiffened the back of a jellyfish.
This last letter was horribly touching, for summer had
come and the smell of the woods behind his prison re-
minded Peter of a place in the Woodbush, and one could
read in every sentence the ache of exile. I sat on that
stone wall and considered how trifling were the crumpled
leaves in my bed of life compared with the thorns Peter
and Blaikie had to lie on. I thought of Sandy far off in
Mesopotamia, and old Blenkiron groaning with dyspepsia
somewhere in America, and I considered that they were
the kind of fellows who did their jobs without complaining.
The result was that when I got up to go on I had recovered
a manlier temper. I wasn't going to shame my friends or
pick and choose my duty. I would trust myself to Provi-
dence, for, as Blenkiron used to say, Providence was all
right if you gave him a chance.
It was not only Peter's letter that steadied and calmed
me. Isham stood high up in a fold of the hills away from
the main valley, and the road I was taking brought me over
the ridge and back to the stream-side. I climbed through


20 MR. STANDFAST
great beech-woods, which seemed in the twilight like some
green place far below the sea, and then over a short stretch
of hill pasture to the rim of the vale. All about me were
little fields enclosed with walls of grey stone and full of dim
sheep. Below were dusky woods around what I took to be
Fosse Manor, for the great Roman Fosse Way, straight as
an arrow, passed over the hills to the south and skirted its
grounds. I could see the stream slipping among its water-
meadows and could hear the plash of the weir. A tiny
village settled in a crook of the hill, and its church-tower
sounded seven with a curiously sweet chime. Otherwise
there was no noise but the twitter of small birds and the
night wind in the tops of the beeches.
In that moment I had a kind of revelation. I had a
vision of what I had been fighting for, what we all were
fighting for. It was peace, deep and holy and ancient, peace
older than the oldest wars, peace which would endure when
all our swords were hammered into ploughshares. It was
more; for in that hour England first took hold of me.
Before my country had been South Africa, and when I
thought of home it had been the wide sun-steeped spaces of
the veld or some scented glen of the Berg. But now I
realised that I had a new home. I understood what a
precious thing this little England was, how old and kindly
and comforting, how wholly worth striving for. The free-
dom of an acre of her soil was cheaply bought by the blood
of the best of us. I knew what it meant to be a poet,
though for the life of me I could not have made a line of
verse. For in that hour I had a prospect as if from a hilltop
which made all the present troubles of the road seem of no
account. I saw not only victory after war, but a new and
happier world after victory, when I should inherit some-
thing of this English peace and wrap myself in it till the
end of my days.
Very humbly and quietly, like a man walking through a
cathedral, I went down the hill to the Manor lodge, and
came to a door in an old red-brick facade, smothered in


THE WICKET-GATE 21
magnolias which smelt like hot lemons in the June dusk.
The car from the inn had brought on my baggage, and
presently I was dressing in a room which looked out on a
water-garden. For the first time for more than a year I
put on a starched shirt and a dinner-jacket, and as I dressed
I could have sung from pure lightheartednes. I was in for
some arduous job, and sometime that evening in that place
I should get my marching orders. Someone would arrive
—perhaps Bullivant—and read me the riddle. But what-
ever it was, I was ready for it, for my whole being had
found a new purpose. Living in the trenches, you are apt
to get your horizon narrowed down to the front line of
enemy barbed wire on one side and the nearest rest billets
on the other. But now I seemed to see beyond the fog to
a happy country.
High-pitched voices greeted my ears as I came down the
broad staircase, voices which scarcely accorded with the
panelled walls and the austere family portraits; and when
I found my hostesses in the hall I thought their looks still
less in keeping with the house. Both ladies were on the
wrong side of forty, but their dress was that of young girls.
Miss Doria Wymondham was tall and thin with a mass of
nondescript pale hair confined by a black velvet fillet. Miss
Claire Wymondham was shorter and plumper and had done
her best by ill-applied cosmetics to make herself look like a
foreign demi-mondaine. They greeted me with the friendly
casualness which I had long ago discovered was the right
English manner towards your guests; as if they had just
strolled in and billeted themselves, and you were quite glad
to see them but mustn't be asked to trouble yourself further.
The next second they were cooing like pigeons round a
picture which a young man was holding up in the lamplight.
He was a tallish, lean fellow, of round about thirty years,
wearing grey flannels and shoes dusty from the country
roads. His thin face was sallow as if from living indoors,
and he had rather more hair on his head than most of us.


22 MR. STANDFAST
In the glow of the lamp his features were very clear, and
I examined them with interest, for, remember, I was ex-
pecting a stranger to give me orders. He had a long, rather
strong chin and an obstinate mouth with peevish lines about
its corners. But the remarkable feature was his eyes. I
can best describe them by saying that they looked hot—not
fierce or angry, but so restless that they seemed to ache
physically and to want sponging with cold water.
They finished their talk about the picture—which was
couched in a jargon of which I did not understand one
word—and Miss Doria turned to me and the young man.
“My cousin Launcelot Wake—Mr. Brand. . . .”
We nodded stiffly and Mr. Wake's hand went up to
smooth his hair in a self-conscious gesture.
“Has Barnard announced dinner? By the way, where is
Mary?”
“She came in five minutes ago and I sent her to change,”
said Miss Claire. “I won't have her spoiling the evening
with that horrid uniform. She may masquerade as she
likes out-of-doors, but this house is for civilised people.”
The butler appeared and mumbled something. “Come
along,” cried Miss Doria, “for I'm sure you are starving,
Mr. Brand. And Launcelot has bicycled ten miles.”
The dining-room was very unlike the hall. The panelling
had been stripped off, and the walls and ceiling were cov-
ered with a dead-black satiny paper on which hung the
most monstrous pictures in large dull-gold frames. I
could only see them dimly, but they seemed to be a mere
riot of ugly colour. The young man nodded towards them.
“I see you have got the Dégousses hung at last,” he said.
“How exquisite they are l’ cried Miss Claire. “How
subtle and candid and brave! Doria and I warm our
souls at their flame.”
Some aromatic wood had been burned in the room, and
there was a queer sickly scent about. Everything in that
place was strained and uneasy and abnormal—the candle
shades on the table, the mass of faked china fruit in the


THE WICKET-GATE 23
centre dish, the gaudy hangings and the nightmarish walls.
But the food was magnificent. It was the best dinner I
had eaten since 1914.
“Tell me, Mr. Brand,” said Miss Doria, her long white
face propped on a much-beringed hand. “You are one of
us? You are in revolt against this crazy war?”
“Why, yes,” I said, remembering my part. “I think a
little common-sense would settle it right away.”
“With a little common-sense it would never have started,”
said Mr. Wake.
“Launcelot's a C.O., you know,” said Miss Doria.
I did not know, for he did not look any kind of soldier.
. . . I was just about to ask him what he commanded,
when I remembered that the letters stood also for “Con-
scientious Objector,” and stopped in time.
At that moment someone slipped into the vacant seat on
my right hand. I turned and saw the V.A.D. girl who had
brought tea to Blaikie that afternoon at the hospital.
“He was exempted by his Department,” the lady went
on, “for he's a Civil Servant, and so he never had a chance
of testifying in court, but no one has done better work for
our cause. He is on the committee of the L.D.A., and
questions have been asked about him in Parliament.”
The man was not quite comfortable at this biography.
He glanced nervously at me and was going to begin some
kind of explanation, when Miss Doria cut him short.
“Remember our rule, Launcelot. No turgid war contro-
versy within these walls.”
I agreed with her. The war had seemed closely knit to
the summer landscape for all its peace, and to the noble old
chambers of the Manor. But in that demented modish
dining-room it was shriekingly incongruous.
Then they spoke of other things. Mostly of pictures or
common friends, and a little of books. They paid no heed
to me, which was fortunate, for I know nothing about these
matters and didn't understand half the language. But once
Miss Doria tried to bring me in. They were talking about


THE WICKET-GATE 25
can't imagine, for the most grousing Tommy, with his leave
stopped, never put together such balderdash. Worst of all
he asked me to agree with him.
It took all my sense of discipline. “I don't know much
about the subject,” I said, “but out in South Africa I did
hear that the British leading was the weak point. I expect
there's a good deal in what you say.” -
It may have been fancy, but the girl at my side seemed
to whisper “Well done!”
Wake and I did not remain long behind before joining
the ladies. I purposely cut it short, for I was in mortal fear
lest I should lose my temper and spoil everything. I stood
up with my back against the mantelpiece for as long as a
man may smoke a cigarette, and I let him yarn to me, while
I looked steadily at his face. By this time I was very clear
that Wake was not the fellow to give me my instructions.
He wasn't playing a game. He was a perfectly honest
crank, but not a fanatic, for he wasn't sure of himself.
He had somehow lost his self-respect and was trying to
argue himself back into it. He had considerable brains, for
the reasons he gave for differing from most of his country-
men were good so far as they went. I shouldn't have cared
to take him on in public argument. If you had told me
about such a fellow a week before I should have been sick
at the thought of him. But now I didn't dislike him. I
was bored by him and I was also tremendously sorry for
him. You could see he was as restless as a hen.
When we went back to the hall he announced that he
must get on the road, and commandeered Miss Lamington
to help him find his bicycle. It appeared he was staying at
an inn a dozen miles off for a couple of days' fishing, and
the news somehow made me like him better. Presently the
ladies of the house departed to bed for their beauty sleep
and I was left to my own devices.
For some time I sat smoking in the hall wondering when
the messenger would arrive. It was getting late and there
seemed to be no preparation in the house to receive anybody.


26 MR. STANDFAST
The butler came in with a tray of drinks and I asked him
if he expected another guest that night. “I 'adn't 'eard of
it, sir,” was his answer. “There 'asn't been a telegram
that I know of, and I 'ave received no instructions.”
I lit my pipe and sat for twenty minutes reading a weekly
paper. Then I got up and looked at the family portraits.
The moon coming through the lattice invited me out-of-doors
as a cure for my anxiety. It was after eleven o'clock, and
I was still without any knowledge of my next step. It is
a maddening business to be screwed up for an unpleasant
job and to have the wheels of the confounded thing tarry.
Outside the house beyond a flagged terrace the lawn fell
away, white in the moonshine, to the edge of the stream,
which here had expanded into a miniature lake. By the
water's edge was a little formal garden with grey stone para-
pets which now gleamed like dusky marble. Great wafts of
scent rose from it, for the lilacs were scarcely over and the
may was in full blossom. Out from the shade of it came
suddenly a voice like a nightingale.
It was singing the old song “Cherry Ripe,” a common
enough thing which I had chiefly known from barrel-organs.
But heard in the scented moonlight it seemed to hold all the
lingering magic of an elder England and of this hallowed
countryside. I stepped inside the garden bounds and saw
the head of the girl Mary.
She was conscious of my presence, for she turned towards
me. -
“I was coming to look for you,” she said, “now that
the house is quiet. I have something to say to you, General
Hannay.”
She knew my name and must be somehow in the business.
The thought entranced me.
“Thank God I can speak to you freely,” I cried. “Who
and what are you—living in that house in that kind of
company?”
“My good aunts!” She laughed softly. “They talk a
great deal about their souls, but they really mean their


THE WICKET-GATE 27
nerves. Why, they are what you call my camouflage, and
a very good one too.”
“And that cadaverous young prig’”
“Poor Launcelot! Yes—camouflage too—perhaps some-
thing a little more. You must not judge him too harshly.”
“But . . . but—” I did not know how to put it, and
stammered in my eagerness. “How can I tell that you are
the right person for me to speak to? You see I am under
orders, and I have got none about you.”
“I will give you proof,” she said. “Three days ago Sir
Walter Bullivant and Mr. Macgillivray told you to come
here to-night and to wait here for further instructions. You
met them in the little smoking-room at the back of the Rota
Club. You were bidden take the name of Cornelius Brand,
and turn yourself from a successful general into a pacificist
South African engineer. Is that correct?”
“Perfectly.” -
“You have been restless all evening looking for the mes-
senger to give you these instructions. Set your mind at
ease. No messenger is coming. You will get your orders
from me.”
“I could not take them from a more welcome source,”
I said.
“Very prettily put. If you want further credentials I
can tell you much about your own doings in the past three
years. I can explain to you, who don't need the explanation,
every step in the business of the Black Stone. I think I
could draw a pretty accurate map of your journey to
Erzerum. You have a letter from Peter Pienaar in your
pocket—I can tell you its contents. Are you willing to trust
me?”
“With all my heart,” I said.
“Good. Then my first order will try you pretty hard.
For I have no orders to give except to bid you go and steep
yourself in a particular kind of life. Your first duty is to
get atmosphere,’ as your friend Peter used to say. Oh,
I will tell you where to go and how to behave. But I can't


28 MR. STANDFAST
bid you do anything, only live idly with open eyes and ears
till you have got the ‘feel” of the situation.”
She stopped and laid a hand on my arm. -
“It won't be easy. It would madden me, and it will be
a far heavier burden for a man like you. You have got to
sink down deep into the life of the half-baked, the people
whom this war hasn't touched or has touched in the wrong
way, the people who split hairs all day and are engrossed in
what you and I would call selfish little fads. Yes. People
like my aunts and Launcelot, only for the most part in a
different social grade. You won't live in an old manor like
this, but among gimcrack little ‘arty’ houses. You will
hear everything you regard as sacred laughed at and con-
demned, and every kind of nauseous folly acclaimed, and
you must hold your tongue and pretend to agree. You will
have nothing in the world to do except to let the life soak
into you, and, as I have said, keep your eyes and ears open.”
“But you must give me some clue as to what I should
be looking for 2 "
“My orders are to give you none. Our chiefs—yours
and mine—want you to go where you are going without any
kind of parti pris. Remember we are still in the intelligence
stage of the affair. The time hasn't yet come for a plan of
campaign, and still less for action.”
“Tell me one thing,” I said. “Is it a really big thing
we’re after 2 ”
“A—really—big—thing,” she said slowly and very
gravely. “You and I and some hundred others are hunt-
ing the most dangerous man in all the world. Till we suc-
ceed everything that Britain does is crippled. If we fail
or succeed too late the Allies may never win the victory
which is their right. I will tell you one thing to cheer you.
It is in some sort a race against time, so your purgatory
won't endure too long.”
I was bound to obey, and she knew it, for she took my
willingness for granted.
From a little gold satchel she selected a tiny box, and


THE WICKET-GATE 29
opening it extracted a thing like a purple wafer with a white
St. Andrew's Cross on it.
“What kind of watch have you? Ah, a hunter. Paste
that inside the lid. Some day you may be called on to
show it. . . . One other thing. Buy to-morrow a copy of
the Pilgrim's Progress and get it by heart. You will receive
letters and messages some day and the style of our friends
is apt to be reminiscent of John Bunyan. . . . The car will
be at the door to-morrow to catch the ten-thirty, and I will
give you the address of the rooms that have been taken for
you. . . . Beyond that I have nothing to say, except to beg
you to play the part well and keep your temper. You
behaved very nicely at dinner.”
I asked one last question as we said good-night in the
hall. “Shall I see you again?”
“Soon, and often,” was the answer. “Remember we are
colleagues.”
I went upstairs feeling extraordinarily comforted. I had
a perfectly beastly time ahead of me, but now it was all
glorified and coloured with the thought of the girl who had
sung “Cherry Ripe" in the garden. I commended the wis-
dom of that old serpent Bullivant in the choice of his inter-
mediary, for I'm hanged if I would have taken such orders
from anyone else.


CHAPTER II
“THE VILLAGE NAMED MORALITY"
U. on the high veld our rivers are apt to be strings of
pools linked by muddy trickles—the most stagnant
kind of watercourse you would look for in a day's journey.
But presently they reach the edge of the plateau and are
tossed down into the flats in noble ravines, and roll there-
after in full and sounding currents to the sea. So with the
story I am telling. It began in smooth reaches, as idle as a
mill-pond; yet the day soon came when I was in the grip of
a torrent, flung breathless from rock to rock by a destiny
which I could not control. But for the present I was in a
backwater, no less than the Garden City of Biggleswick,
where Mr. Cornelius Brand, a South African gentleman
visiting England on holiday, lodged in a pair of rooms in the
cottage of Mr. Tancred Jimson.
The house—or “home” as they preferred to name it at
Biggleswick—was one of some two hundred others which
ringed a pleasant Midland common. It was badly built and
oddly furnished; the bed was too short, the windows did
not fit, the doors did not stay shut; but it was as clean as
soap and water and scrubbing could make it. The three-
quarters of an acre of garden were mainly devoted to the
culture of potatoes, though under the parlour window Mrs.
Jimson had a plot of sweet-smelling herbs, and lines of lank
sunflowers fringed the path that led to the front door. It
was Mrs. Jimson who received me as I descended from the
station fly—a large red woman with hair bleached by con-
stant exposure to weather, clad in a gown which, both in
shape and material, seemed to have been modelled on a
chintz curtain. She was a good kindly soul, and as proud
30


“THE WILLAGE NAMED MORALITY 2’ 31
as Punch of her house. “We follow the simple life here,
Mr. Brand,” she said. “You must take us as you find us.”
I assured her that I asked for nothing better, and as I
unpacked in my fresh little bedroom with a west wind blow-
ing in at the window I considered that I had seen worse
quarters. -
I had bought in London a considerable number of books,
for I thought that, as I would have time on my hands, I
might as well do something about my education. They were
mostly English classics, whose names I knew but which I
had never read, and they were all in a little flat-backed series
at a shilling apiece. I arranged them on the top of a chest
of drawers, but I kept the Pilgrim's Progress beside my
bed, for that was one of my working tools and I had got
to get it by heart. Mrs. Jimson, who came in while I
was unpacking to see if the room was to my liking, approved
my taste. At our midday dinner she wanted to discuss
books with me, and was so full of her own knowledge that
I was able to conceal my ignorance. “We are all labouring
to express our personalities,” she informed me. “Have you
found your medium, Mr. Brand? Is it to be the pen or
the pencil P Or perhaps it is music? You have the brow
of an artist, the frontal ‘bar of Michaelangelo,' you
remember 1 ''
I told her that I concluded I would try literature, but
before writing anything I would read a bit more.
It was a Saturday, so Jimson came back from town in
the early afternoon. He was a managing clerk in some
shipping office, but you wouldn't have guessed it from his
appearance. His city clothes were loose dark-grey flannels,
a soft collar, an orange tie, and a soft black hat. His wife
went down the road to meet him, and they returned hand-
in-hand, swinging their arms like a couple of school-chil-
dren. He had a skimpy red beard streaked with grey, and
mild blue eyes behind strong glasses. He was the most
friendly creature in the world, full of rapid questions, and
eager to make me feel one of the family. Presently he got


32 MR. STANDFAST
into a tweed norfolk jacket, and started to cultivate his
garden. I took off my coat and lent him a hand, and when
he stopped to rest from his labours—which was every five
minutes, for he had no kind of physique—he would mop his
brow and rub his spectacles and declaim about the good
smell of the earth and the joy of getting close to nature.
Once he looked at my big brown hands and muscular arms
with a kind of wistfulness. “You are one of the doers, Mr.
Brand,” he said, “and I could find it in my heart to envy
you. You have seen Nature in wild forms in far countries.
Some day I hope you will tell us about your life. I must
be content with my little corner, but happily there are no
territorial limits for the mind. This modest dwelling is a
watch-tower from which I look over all the world.”
After that he took me for a walk. We met parties of
returning tennis-players and here and there a golfer. There
seemed to be an abundance of young men, mostly rather
weedy-looking, but with one or two well-grown ones who
should have been fighting. The names of some of them
Jimson mentioned with awe. An unwholesome youth was
Aronson, the great ncºvelist; a sturdy, bristling fellow with
a fierce moustache was Letchford, the celebrated leader-
writer of the Critic. Several were pointed out to me as
artists who had gone one better than anybody else, and a
vast billowy creature was described as the leader of the new
Orientalism in England. I noticed that these people, ac-
cording to Jimson, were all “great,” and that they all
dabbled in something “new.” There were quantities of
young women, too, most of them rather badly dressed and
inclining to untidy hair. And there were several decent
couples taking the air like householders of an evening all
the world over. Most of these last were Jimson's friends, to
whom he introduced me. They were his own class—modest
folk, who sought for a coloured background to their prosaic
city lives and found it in this odd settlement.
At supper I was initiated into the peculiar merits of
Biggleswick. “It is one great laboratory of thought,” said


“THE WILLAGE NAMED MORALITY " 33
Mrs. Jimson. “It is glorious to feel that you are living
among the eager vital people who are at the head of all the
newest movements, and that the intellectual history of Eng-
land is being made in our studies and gardens. The war to
us seems a remote and secondary affair. As someone has
said, the great fights of the world are all fought in the
mind.”
A spasm of pain crossed her husband's face. “I wish
I could feel it far away. After all, Ursula, it is the
sacrifice of the young that gives people like us leisure and
peace to think. Our duty is to do the best which is per-
mitted to us, but that duty is a poor thing compared with
what our young Soldiers are giving ! I may be quite wrong
about the war. . . . I know I can't argue with Letchford.
But I will not pretend to a superiority I do not feel.”
I went to bed feeling that in Jimson I had struck a pretty
sound fellow. As I lit the candles on my dressing-table I
observed that the stack of silver which I had taken out of
my pockets when I washed before supper was top-heavy.
It had two big coins at the top and sixpences and shillings
beneath. Now it is one of my oddities that ever since I
was a small boy I have arranged my loose coins sym-
metrically, with the smallest uppermost. That made me ob-
servant and led me to notice a second point. The English
classics on the top of the chest of drawers were not in the
order I had left them. Izaak Walton had got to the left
of Sir Thomas Browne, and the poet Burns was wedged
disconsolately between two volumes of Hazlitt. Moreover
a receipted bill which I had stuck in the Pilgrim's Progress
to mark my place had been moved. Someone had been
going through my belongings.
A moment's reflection convinced me that it couldn't have
been Mrs. Jimson. She had no servant and did the house-
work herself, but my things had been untouched when I
left the room before supper, for she had come to tidy up
before I had gone downstairs. Someone had been here
while we were at supper, and had examined elaborately


34 MR. STANDFAST
everything I possessed. Happily I had little luggage, and
no papers save the new books and a bill or two in the name
of Cornelius Brand. The inquisitor, whoever he was, had
found nothing. . . . The incident gave me a good deal of
comfort. It had been hard to believe that any mystery could
exist in this public place, where people lived brazenly in
the open, and wore their hearts on their sleeves and pro-
claimed their opinions from the roof-tops. Yet mystery
there must be, or an inoffensive stranger with a kit-bag
would not have received these strange attentions. I made
a practice after that of sleeping with my watch below my
pillow, for inside the case was Mary Lamington's label.
Now began a period of pleasant idle receptiveness. Once
a week it was my custom to go up to London for the day to
receive letters and instructions, if any should come. I had
moved from my chambers in Park Lane, which I leased
under my proper name, to a small flat in Westminster taken
in the name of Cornelius Brand. The letters addressed to
Park Lane were forwarded to Sir Walter, who sent them
round under cover to my new address. For the rest I used
to spend my mornings reading in the garden, and I dis-
covered for the first time what a pleasure was to be got from
old books. They recalled and amplified that vision I had
seen from the Cotswold ridge, the revelation of the priceless
heritage which is England. I imbibed a mighty quantity
of history, but especially I liked the writers, like Walton,
who got at the very heart of the English countryside. Soon,
too, I found the Pilgrim's Progress not a duty but a de-
light. I discovered new jewels daily in the honest old story,
and my letters to Peter began to be as full of it as Peter's
own epistles. I loved, also, the songs of the Elizabethans,
for they reminded me of the girl who had sung to me in
the June night.
In the afternoons I took my exercise in long tramps along
the good dusty English roads. The country fell away from
Biggleswick into a plain of wood and pasture-land, with low


“THE WILLAGE NAMED MORALITY” 35
hills on the horizon. The place was sown with villages, each
with its green and pond and ancient church. Most, too, had
inns, and there I had many a draught of cool nutty ale, for
the inn at Biggleswick was a reformed place which sold
nothing but washy cider. Often, tramping home in the dusk,
I was so much in love with the land that I could have sung
with the pure joy of it. And in the evening, after a bath,
there would be supper, when a rather fagged Jimson
struggled between sleep and hunger, and the lady, with an
artistic mutch on her untidy head, talked ruthlessly of
culture.
Bit by bit I edged my way into local society. The Jimsons
were a great help, for they were popular and had a nodding
acquaintance with most of the inhabitants. They regarded
me as a meritorious aspirant towards a higher life, and I
was paraded before their friends with the suggestion of a
vivid, if Philistine, past. If I had any gift for writing, I
would make a book about the inhabitants of Biggleswick.
About half were respectable citizens who came there for
country air and low rates, but even these had a touch of
queerness and had picked up the jargon of the place. The
younger men were mostly Government clerks or writers or
artists. There were a few widows with flocks of daughters,
and on the outskirts were several bigger houses—mostly
houses which had been there before the garden city was
planted. One of them was brand-new, a staring villa with
sham-antique timbering, stuck on the top of a hill among
raw gardens. It belonged to a man called Moxon Ivery,
who was a kind of academic pacificist and a great god in the
place. Another, a quiet Georgian manor house, was owned
by a London publisher, an ardent Liberal whose particular
branch of business compelled him to keep in touch with the
new movements. I used to see him hurrying to the station
swinging a little black bag and returning at night with the
fish for dinner.
I soon got to know a surprising lot of people, and they
were the rummiest birds you can imagine. For example,


36 MR. STANDFAST
there were the Weekeses, three girls who lived with their
mother in a house so artistic that you broke your head
whichever way you turned in it. The son of the family
was a conscientious objector who had refused to do any sort
of work whatever, and had got quodded for his pains. They
were immensely proud of him and used to relate his suffer-
ings in Dartmoor with a gusto which I thought rather heart-
less. Art was their great subject, and I am afraid they
found me pretty heavy going. It was their fashion never
to admire anything that was obviously beautiful, like a sun-
set or a pretty woman, but to find surprising loveliness in
things which I thought hideous. Also they talked a lan-
guage that was beyond me. This kind of conversation used
to happen.—Miss WEEKEs: “Don’t you admire Ursula
Jimson?” SELF: “Rather!” Miss W.: “She is so John-
esque in her lines.” SELF: “Exactly!” Miss W.: “And
Tancred, too—he is so full of nuances.” SELF: “Rather!”
Miss W.: “He suggests one of Dégousse's countrymen.”
SELF: “Exactly!”
They hadn't much use for books, except some Russian
ones, and I acquired merit in their eyes for having read
Leprous Souls. If you talked to them about that divine
countryside, you found they didn't give a rap for it and had
never been a mile beyond the village. But they admired
greatly the sombre effect of a train going into Marylebone
station on a rainy day.
But it was the men who interested me most. Aronson,
the novelist, proved on acquaintance the worst kind of
blighter. He considered himself a genius whom it was the
duty of the country to support, and he sponged on his
wretched relatives and anyone who would lend him money.
He was always babbling about his sins, and pretty squalid
they were. I should like to have flung him among a few
good old-fashioned full-blooded sinners of my acquaintance;
they would have scared him considerably. He told me that
he sought “reality” and “life” and “truth,” but it was
hard to see how he could know much about them, for he


“THE WILLAGE NAMED MORALITY” 37
spent half the day in bed smoking cheap cigarettes, and the
rest sunning himself in the admiration of half-witted girls.
The creature was tuberculous in mind and body, and the
only novel of his I read pretty well turned my stomach.
Mr. Aronson's strong point was jokes about the war. If
he heard of any acquaintance who had joined up or was
even doing war work his merriment knew no bounds. My
fingers used to itch to box the little wretch's ears.
Letchford was a different pair of shoes. He was some
kind of a man, to begin with, and had an excellent brain
and the worst manners conceivable. He contradicted every-
thing you said, and looked out for an argument as other
people look for their dinner. He was a double-engined, high-
speed pacificist, because he was the kind of cantankerous
fellow who must always be in the minority. If Britain had
stood out of the war he would have been a raving militarist,
but since she was in it he had got to find reasons why she
was wrong. And jolly good reasons they were, too. I
couldn't have met his arguments if I had wanted to, so I
sat docilely at his feet. The world was all crooked for
Letchford, and God had created him with two left hands.
But the fellow had merits. He had a couple of jolly chil-
dren whom he adored, and he would walk miles with me on
a Sunday, and spout poetry about the beauty and greatness
of England. He was forty-five; if he had been thirty and in
my battalion I could have made a soldier out of him.
There were dozens more whose names I have forgotten,
but they had one common characteristic. They were puffed
up with spiritual pride, and I used to amuse myself with
finding their originals in the Pilgrim's Progress. When I
tried to judge them by the standard of old Peter, they fell
woefully short. They shut out the war from their lives,
some out of funk, some out of pure levity of mind, and some
because they were really convinced that the thing was all
wrong. I think I grew rather popular in my rôle of the
seeker after truth, the honest colonial who was against the
war by instinct and was looking for instruction in the


38 MR. STANDFAST
matter. They regarded me as a convert from an alien
world of action which they secretly dreaded, though they
affected to despise it. Anyhow they talked to me very
freely, and before long I had all the pacificist arguments
by heart. I made out that there were three schools. One
objected to war altogether, and this had few adherents
except Aronson and Weekes, C.O., now languishing in
Dartmoor. The second thought that the Allies' cause was
tainted, and that Britain had contributed as much as Ger-
many to the catastrophe. This included all the adherents
of the L.D.A.—or League of Democrats against Aggression,
—a very proud body. The third and much the largest,
which embraced everybody else, held that we had fought
long enough and that the business could now be settled by
negotiation, since Germany had learned her lesson. I was
myself a modest member of the last school, but I was
gradually working my way up to the second, and I hoped
with luck to qualify for the first. My acquaintances ap-
proved my progress. Letchford said I had a core of
fanaticism in my slow nature, and that I would end by
waving the red flag.
Spiritual pride and vanity, as I have said, were at the
bottom of most of them, and, try as I might, I could find
nothing very dangerous in it all. This vexed me, for I
began to wonder if the mission which I had embarked on
so solemnly were not going to be a fiasco. Sometimes they
worried me beyond endurance. When the news of Mes-
sines came nobody took the slightest interest, while I was
aching to tooth every detail of that great fight. And when
they talked on military affairs, as Letchford and others did
sometimes, it was difficult to keep from sending them all to
the devil, for their amateur cock-Sureness would have riled
Job. One had got to batten down the recollection of our
fellows out there who were sweating blood to keep these
fools snug. Yet I found it impossible to be angry with
them for long, they were so babyishly innocent. Indeed, I
couldn't help liking them, and finding a sort of quality in


“THE WILLAGE NAMED MORALITY” 39
them. I had spent three years among soldiers, and the
British regular, great fellow that he is, has his faults. His
discipline makes him in a funk of red-tape and any kind of
superior authority. Now these people were quite honest and
in a perverted way courageous. Letchford was, at any rate.
I could no more have done what he did and got hunted
off platforms by the crowd and hooted at by women
in the streets than I could have written his leading
articles.
All the same I was rather low about my job. Barring
the episode of the ransacking of my effects the first night,
I had not a suspicion of a clue or a hint of any mystery.
The place and the people were as open and bright as a
Y.M.C.A. hut. But one day I got a solid wad of comfort.
In a corner of Letchford's paper, the Critic, I found a letter
which was one of the steepest pieces of invective I had ever
met with. The writer gave tongue like a beagle pup about
the prostitution, as he called it, of American republicanism
to the vices of European aristocracies. He declared that
Senator La Follette was a much-misundertood patriot, see-
ing that he alone spoke for the toiling millions who had no
other friend. He was mad with President Wilson, and he
prophesied a great awakening when Uncle Sam got up
against John Bull in Europe and found out the kind of
standpatter he was. The letter was signed “John S. Blen-
kiron" and dated “London, July 3rd.”
The thought that Blenkiron was in England put a new
complexion on my business. I reckoned I would see him
soon, for he wasn't the man to stand still in his tracks. He
had taken up the rôle he had played before he left in
December, 1915, and very right too, for not more than half
a dozen people knew of the Erzerum affair, and to the
British public he was only the man who had been fired out
of the Savoy for talking treason. I had felt a bit lonely
before, but now somewhere within the four corners of the
island the best companion God ever made was writing non-
sense with his tongue in his old cheek.


40 MR. STANDFAST
There was an institution in Biggleswick which deserves
mention. On the south of the common, near the station,
stood a red-brick building called the Moot Hall, which was
a kind of church for the very undevout population. Un-
devout in the ordinary sense, I mean, for I had already
counted twenty-seven varieties of religious conviction, in-
cluding three Buddhists, a Celestial Hierarch, five Latter-
day Saints, and about ten varieties of Mystic whose names
I could never remember. The hall had been the gift of the
publisher I have spoken of, and twice a week it was used
for lectures and debates. The place was managed by a
committee and was surprisingly popular, for it gave all the
bubbling intellects a chance of airing their views. When
you asked where somebody was and were told he was “at
Moot,” the answer was spoken in the respectful tone in
which you would mention a sacrament.
I went there regularly and got my mind broadened to
cracking point. We had all the stars of the New Move-
ments. We had Doctor Chirk, who lectured on “God,”
which, as far as I could make out, was a new name he
had invented for himself. There was a woman, a terrible
woman, who had come back from Russia with what she
called a “message of healing.” And to my joy, one night
there was a great buck nigger who had a lot to say about
“Africa and the Africans.” I had a few words with him in
Sesutu afterwards, and rather spoiled his visit. Some of
the people were extraordinarily good, especially one jolly
old fellow who talked about English folk songs and dances,
and wanted us to set up a Maypole. In the debates which
generally followed I began to join, very coyly at first, but
presently with some confidence. If my time at Biggleswick
did nothing else it taught me to argue on my feet.
The first big effort I made was on a full-dress occasion,
when Launcelot Wake came down to speak. Mr. Ivery was
in the chair—the first I had seen of him—a plump middle-
aged man, with a colourless face and nondescript features.
I was not interested in him till he began to talk, and then


“THE WILLAGE NAMED MORALITY " 41
I sat bolt upright and took notice. For he was the genuine
silver-tongue, the sentences flowing from his mouth as
smooth as butter and as neatly dovetailed as a parquet floor.
He had a sort of man-of-the-world manner, treating his
opponents with condescending geniality, deprecating all pas-
sion and exaggeration, and making you feel that his urbane
statement must be right, for if he had wanted he could have
put the case so much higher. I watched him, fascinated,
studying his face carefully; and the thing that struck me
was that there was nothing in it—nothing, that is to
say, to lay hold on. It was simply nondescript, so
almightily commonplace that that very fact made it rather
remarkable.
Wake was speaking of the revelations of the Sukhomlinov
trial in Russia, which showed that Germany had not been
responsible for the war. He was jolly good at the job, and
put up as clear an argument as a first-class lawyer. I had
been sweating away at the subject and had all the ordinary
case at my fingers' ends, so when I got a chance of speak-
ing I gave them a long harangue, with some good quotations
I had cribbed out of the Vossische Zeitung, which Letchford
lent me. I felt it was up to me to be extra violent, for I
wanted to establish my character with Wake, seeing that he
was a friend of Mary and Mary would know that I was
playing the game. I got tremendously applauded, far more
than the chief speaker, and after the meeting Wake came
up to me with his hot eyes, and wrung my hand. “You’re
coming on well, Brand,” he said, and then he introduced me
to Mr. Ivery. “Here's a second and a better Smuts,” he
said.
Ivery made me walk a bit of the road home with him.
“I am struck by your grip on these difficult problems, Mr.
Brand,” he told me. “There is much I can tell you, and
you may be of great value to our cause.” He asked me a
lot of questions about my past, which I answered with easy
mendacity. Before we parted he made me promise to come
one night to supper.


42 MR. STANDFAST
Next day I got a glimpse of Mary, and to my vexation
she cut me dead. She was walking with a flock of bare-
headed girls, all chattering hard, and though she saw me
quite plainly she turned away her eyes. I had been waiting
for my cue, so I did not lift my hat, but passed on as if we
were strangers. I reckoned it was part of the game, but that
trifling thing annoyed me, and I spent a morose evening.
The following day I saw her again, this time walking
sedately with Mr. Ivery, and dressed in a very pretty
summer gown, and a broad-brimmed straw hat with flowers
in it. This time she stopped with a bright smile and held
out her hand. “Mr. Brand, isn't it?” she asked with a
pretty hesitation. And then, turning to her companion—
“This is Mr. Brand. He stayed with us last month in
Gloucestershire.”
Mr. Ivery announced that he and I were already ac-
quainted. Seen in broad daylight he was a very personable
fellow, somewhere between forty-five and fifty, with a
middle-aged figure and a curiously young face. I noticed
that there were hardly any lines on it, and it was rather
that of a very wise child than that of a man. He had a
pleasant smile which made his jaw and cheeks expand like
indiarubber. “You are coming to sup with me, Mr. Brand,”
he cried after me. “On Tuesday after Moot. I have
already written.” He whisked Mary away from me, and
I had to content myself with contemplating her figure till it
disappeared round a bend of the road.
Next day in London I found a letter from Peter. He had
been very solemn of late, and very reminiscent of old days
now that he concluded his active life was over. But this
time he was in a different mood. “I think,” he wrote, “that
you and I will meet again soon, my old friend. Do you
remember when we went after the big black-maned lion in
the Rooirand and couldn't get on his track, and then one
morning we both woke up and said we would get him
to-day?—and we did, but he very near got you first. I’ve
had a feel these last days that we're both going down into


“THE WILLAGE NAMED MORALITY 2’ 43
the Valley to meet with Apollyon, and that the devil will give
us a bad time, but anyhow we'll be together.”
I had the same kind of feel myself, though I didn't see
how Peter and I were going to meet, unless I went out to
the Front again and got put in the bag and sent to the same
Boche prison. But I had an instinct that my time in Biggles-
wick was drawing to a close, and that presently I would be
in rougher quarters. I felt quite affectionate towards the
place, and took all my favourite walks, and drank my own
health in the brew of the village inns, with a consciousness
of saying good-bye. Also I made haste to finish my English
classics, for I concluded I wouldn't have much time in the
future for miscellaneous reading.
The Tuesday came, and in the evening I set out rather
late for the Moot Hall, for I had been getting into decent
clothes after a long, hot stride. When I reached the place
it was pretty well packed, and I could only find a seat on
the back benches. There on the platform was Ivery, and
beside him sat a figure that thrilled every inch of me with
affection and a wild anticipation. “I have now the privi-
lege,” said the chairman, “of introducing to you the speaker
whom we so warmly welcome, our fearless and indefatigable
American friend, Mr. Blenkiron.”
It was the old Blenkiron, but almightily changed. His
stoutness had gone, and he was as lean as Abraham Lincoln.
Instead of a puffy face, his cheek-bones and jaw stood out
hard and sharp, and in place of his former pasty colour his
complexion had the clear glow of health. I saw now that
he was a splendid figure of a man, and when he got to his
feet every movement had the suppleness of an athlete in
training. In that moment I realised that my serious business
had now begun. My senses suddenly seemed quicker, my
nerves tenser, my brain more active. The big game had
started, and he and I were playing it together.
I watched him with strained attention. It was a funny
speech, stuffed with extravagance and vehemence, not very
well argued and terribly discursive. His main point was


44 MR. STANDFAST
that Germany was now in a fine democratic mood and might
well be admitted into a brotherly partnership—that indeed
she had never been in any other mood, but had been forced
into violence by the plots of her enemies. Much of it, I
should have thought, was in stark defiance of the Defense
of the Realm Acts, but if any wise Scotland Yard officer
had listened to it he would probably have considered it
harmless because of its contradictions. It was full of a
fierce earnestness, and it was full of humour—long-drawn
American metaphors at which that most critical audience
roared with laughter. But it was not the kind of thing that
they were accustomed to, and I could fancy what Wake
would have said of it. The conviction grew upon me that
Blenkiron was deliberately trying to prove himself an honest
idiot. If so, it was a huge success. He produced on one
the impression of the type of sentimental revolutionary who
ruthlessly knifes his opponent and then weeps and prays
over his tomb.
Just at the end he seemed to pull himself together and to
try a little argument. He made a great point of the Aus-
trian socialists going to Stockholm, going freely and with
their Government's assent, from a country which its critics
called an autocracy, while the democratic western peoples
held back. “I admit I haven't any real water-tight proof,”
he said, “but I will bet my bottom dollar that the influence
which moved the Austrian Government to allow this em-
bassy of freedom was the influence of Germany herself.
And that is the land from which the Allied Pharisees draw
in their skirts lest their garments be defiled !”
He sat down amid a good deal of applause, for his
audience had not been bored, though I could see that some
of them thought his praise of Germany a bit steep. It was
all right in Biggleswick to prove Britain in the wrong, but
it was a slightly different thing to extol the enemy. I was
puzzled about his last point, for it was not of a piece with
the rest of his discourse, and I was trying to guess at his
purpose. The chairman referred to it in his concluding


“THE VILLAGE NAMED MORALITY 2’ 45
remarks. “I am in a position,” he said, “to bear out all
that the lecturer has said. I can go farther. I can assure
him on the best authority that his surmise is correct, and
that Vienna's decision to send delegates to Stockholm was
largely dictated by representations from Berlin. I am given
to understand that the fact has in the last few days been
admitted in the Austrian Press.”
A vote of thanks was carried, and then I found myself
shaking hands with Ivery while Blenkiron stood a yard off,
talking to one of the Misses Weekes. The next moment I
was being introduced. “Mr. Brand, very pleased to meet
you,” said the voice I knew so well. “Mr. Ivery has been
telling me about you, and I guess we've got something to say
to each other. We're both from noo countries, and we've
got to teach the old nations a little horse-sense.”
Mr. Ivery's car—the only one left in the neighbourhood—
carried us to his villa, and presently we were seated in a
brightly-lit dining-room. It was not a pretty house, but it
had the luxury of an expensive hotel, and the supper we had
was as good as any London restaurant. Gone were the old
days of fish and toast and boiled milk. Blenkiron squared
his shoulders and showed himself a noble trencherman.
“A year ago,” he told our host, “I was the meanest kind
of dyspeptic. I had the love of righteousness in my heart,
but I had the devil in my stomach. Then I heard stories
about the Robson Brothers, the star surgeons way out west
in White Springs, Nebraska. They were reckoned the
neatest hands in the world at carving up a man and remov-
ing devilments from his intestines. Now, sir, I've always
fought pretty shy of surgeons, for I considered that our
Maker never intended His handiwork to be reconstructed
like a bankrupt Dago railway. But by that time I was
feeling so almighty wretched that I could have paid a man
to put a bullet through my head. “There's no other way,’
I said to myself. “Either you forget your religion and your
miserable cowardice and get cut up, or it's you for the
Golden Shore.’ So I set my teeth and journeyed to White


46 MR. STANDFAST
Springs, and the Brothers had a look at my duodenum.
They saw that the darned thing wouldn't do, so they side-
tracked it and made a noo route for my noo-trition traffic.
It was the cunningest piece of surgery since the Lord took
a rib out of the side of our First Parent. They've got a
mighty fine way of charging, too, for they take five per cent.
of a man's income, and it’s all one to them whether he's a
Meat King or a clerk on twenty dollars a week. I can tell
you I took some trouble to be a very rich man last year.”
All through the meal I sat in a kind of stupor. I was
trying to assimilate the new Blenkiron, and drinking in the
comfort of his heavenly drawl, and I was puzzling my head
about Ivery. I had a ridiculous notion that I had seen him
before, but, delve as I might into my memory, I couldn't
place him. He was the incarnation of the commonplace, a
comfortable middle-class sentimentalist, who patronised
pacificism out of vanity, but was very careful not to dip
his hands too far. He was always damping down Blenk-
iron's volcanic utterances. “Of course, as you know, the
other side have an argument which I find rather hard to
meet. . . .” “I can sympathise with patriotism, and even
with jingoism, in certain moods, but I always come back
to this difficulty.” . . . “Our opponents are not ill-meaning
so much as ill-judging,”—these were the sort of sentences
he kept throwing in. And he was full of quotations from
private conversations he had had with every sort of person
—including members of the Government. I remember that
he expressed great admiration for Mr. Balfour.
Of all that talk I only recalled one thing clearly, and I
recalled it because Blenkiron seemed to collect his wits and
try to argue, just as he had done at the end of his lecture.
He was speaking about a story he had heard from someone,
who had heard it from someone else, that Austria in the
last week of July, 1914, had accepted Russia's proposal to
hold her hand and negotiate, and that the Kaiser had sent
a message to the Tsar saying he agreed. According to his
story this telegram had been received in Petrograd, and had


“THE VILLAGE NAMED MORALITY 2’ 47
been rewritten, like Bismarck's Ems telegram, before it
reached the Emperor. He expressed his disbelief in the
yarn. “I reckon if it had been true,” he said, “we’d have
had the right text out long ago. They'd have kept a copy
in Berlin. All the same I did hear a sort of rumour that
some kind of message of that sort was being published in
a German paper.”
Mr. Ivery looked wise. “You are right,” he said. “I
happen to know that it has been published. You will find
it in the Weser Zeitung.”
“You don't say?” he said admiringly. “I wish I could
read the old tombstone language. But if I could they
wouldn't let me have the papers.”
“Oh yes they would.” Mr. Ivery laughed pleasantly.
“England has still a good share of freedom. Any respect-
able person can get a permit to import the enemy press.
I'm not considered quite respectable, for the authorities
have a narrow definition of patriotism, but happily I have
respectable friends.”
Blenkiron was staying the night, and I took my leave as
the clock struck twelve. They both came into the hall to
see me off, and, as I was helping myself to a drink, and my
host was looking for my hat and stick, I suddenly heard
Blenkiron's whisper in my ear. “London . . . the day
after to-morrow,” he said. Then he took a formal farewell.
“Mr. Brand, it’s been an honour for me, as an American
citizen, to make your acquaintance, sir. I will consider my-
self fortunate if we have an early reunion. I am stopping
at Claridge's Ho-tel, and I hope to be privileged to receive
you there.”


CHAPTER III
THE REFLECTIONS OF A CURED DYSPEPTIC
HIRTY-FIVE hours later I found myself in my rooms
- in Westminster. I thought there might be a message
for me there, for I didn't propose to go and call openly on
Blenkiron at Claridge's till I had his instructions. But there
was no message—only a line from Peter, saying he had
hopes of being sent to Switzerland. That made me realise
that he must be pretty badly broken up.
Presently the telephone bell rang. It was Blenkiron who
spoke. “Go down and have a talk with your brokers about
the War Loan. Arrive there about twelve o'clock and don't
go upstairs till you have met a friend. You'd better have
a quick luncheon at your club, and then come to Traill's
bookshop in the Haymarket at two. You can get back to
Biggleswick by the 5.16.”
I did as I was bid, and twenty minutes later, having
travelled by Underground, for I couldn't raise a taxi, I
approached the block of chambers in Leadenhall Street
where dwelt the respected firm who managed my invest-
ments. It was still a few minutes before noon, and as I
slowed down a familiar figure came out of the bank next
door.
Ivery beamed recognition. “Up for the day, Mr.
Brand P’’ he asked.
“I have to see my brokers,” I said, “read the South
African papers in my club, and get back by the 5.16. Any
chance of your company ?”
“Why, yes—that's my train. Au revoir. We meet at
the station.” He bustled off, looking very smart with his
neat clothes and a rose in his buttonhole.
**.
48


REFLECTIONS OF A DYSPEPTIC 49
I lunched impatiently, and at two was turning over some
new books in Traill's shop with an eye on the street-door
behind me. It seemed a public place for an assignation.
I had begun to dip into a big illustrated book on flower-
gardens when an assistant came up. “The manager's com-
pliments, sir, and he thinks there are some old works of
travel upstairs that might interest you.” I followed him
obediently to an upper floor lined with every kind of volume
and with tables littered with maps and engravings. “This
way, sir,” he said, and opened a door in the wall concealed
by bogus book-backs, I found myself in a little study, and
Blenkiron sitting in an armchair smoking.
He got up and seized both my hands. “Why, Dick, this
is better than good noos. I’ve heard all about your exploits
since we parted a year ago on the wharf at Liverpool.
We've both been busy on our own jobs, and, there was "no
way of keeping you wise about my doings, for after I
thought I was cured I got worse than hell inside, and, as I
told you, had to get the doctor-men to dig into me. After
that I was playing a pretty dark game, and had to get down
and out of decent society. But, holy Mike! I'm a new man.
I used to do my work with a sick heart and a taste in my
mouth like a graveyard, and now I can eat and drink what
I like and frolic round like a colt. I wake up every morning
whistling and thank the good God that I'm alive. It was a
bad day for Kaiser when I got on the cars for White
Springs.”
“This is a rum place to meet,” I said, “ and you brought
me by a roundabout road.”
He grinned and offered me a cigar.
“There were reasons. It don't do for you and me to
advertise our acquaintance in the street. As for the shop,
I’ve owned it for five years. I've a taste for good reading,
though you wouldn't think it, and it tickles me to hand it out
across the counter. . . . First, I want to hear about Biggles-
wick.”
“There isn't a great deal to it. A lot of ignorance, a


50 MR. STANDFAST
large slice of vanity, and a pinch or two of wrong-headed
honesty—these are the ingredients of the pie. Not much
real harm in it. There's one or two dirty literary gents who
should be in a navvies' battalion, but they're about as
dangerous as yellow Kaffir dogs. I’ve learned a lot and got
all the arguments by heart, but you might plant a Biggles-
wick in every shire and it wouldn't help the Boche. I can
see where the danger lies all the same. These fellows talked
academic anarchism, but the genuine article is somewhere
about and to find it you've got to look in the big industrial
districts. We had faint echoes of it in Biggleswick. I
mean that the really dangerous fellows are those who want
to close up the war at once and so get on with their blessed
class war, which cuts across nationalities. As for being
spies and that sort of thing, the Biggleswick lads are too
callow.”
“Ye-es,” said Blenkiron reflectively. “They haven't got
as much sense as God gave to geese. You're sure you didn't
hit against any heavier metal?”
“Yes. There's a man called Launcelot Wake, who came
down to speak once. I had met him before. He has the
makings of a fanatic, and he's the more dangerous because
you can see his conscience is uneasy. I can fancy him bomb-
ing a Prime Minister merely to quiet his own doubts.”
“So,” he said. “Nobody else?”
I reflected. “There's Mr. Ivery, but you know him better
than I. I shouldn't put much on him, but I'm not precisely
certain, for I never had a chance of getting to know him.”
“Ivery,” said Blenkiron in surprise. “He has a hobby
for half-baked youth, just as another rich man might fancy
orchids or fast trotters. You sure can place him right
enough.”
“I dare say. Only I don't know enough to be positive.”
He sucked at his cigar for a minute or so. “I guess,
Dick, if I told you all I've been doing since I reached these
shores you would call me a ro-mancer. . I've been way down
among the toilers. I did a spell as unskilled dilooted labour


REFLECTIONS OF A DYSPEPTIC 51
in the Barrow shipyards. I was barman in a ho-tel on the
Portsmouth Road, and I put in a black month driving a
taxicab in the city of London. For a while I was the
accredited correspondent of the Noo York Sentinel and used
to go with the rest of the bunch to the pow-wows of under-
secretaries of State and War Office generals. They cen-
sored my stuff so cruel that the paper fired me. Then I
went on a walking-tour round England and sat for a fort-
night in a little farm in Suffolk. By and by I came back
to Claridge's and this bookshop, for I had learned most of
what I wanted.
“I had learned,” he went on, turning his curious, full,
ruminating eyes on me, “that the British working-man is
about the soundest piece of humanity on God's earth. He
grumbles a bit and jibs a bit when he thinks the Govern-
ment are giving him a crooked deal, but he's gotten the
patience of Job and the sand of a gamecock. And he's
gotten humour too, that tickles me to death. There's not
much trouble in that quarter, for it's he and his kind that's
beating the Hun. . . . But I picked up a thing or two
besides that.”
He leaned forward and tapped me on the knee. “I
reverence the British Intelligence Service. Flies don't settle
on it to any considerable extent. It's got a mighty fine mesh,
but there's one hole in that mesh, and it's our job to mend
it. There's a high-powered brain in the game against us. I
struck it a couple of years ago when I was hunting Dumba
and Albert, and I thought it was in Noo York, but it
wasn’t. I struck its working again at home last year and
located its head office in Europe. So I tried Switzerland
and Holland, but only bits of it were there. The centre
of the web where the old spider sits is right here in Eng-
land, and for six months I’ve been shadowing that spider.
There’s a gang to help, a big gang and a clever gang and
partly an innocent gang. But there's only one brain, and
it's to match that that the Robson Brothers settled my
duodenum.”


52 MR. STANDFAST
I was listening with a quickened pulse, for now at last I
was getting to business.
“What is he—international socialist, or anarchist, or
what?” I asked.
“Pure-blooded Boche agent, but the biggest-sized brand
in the catalogue—bigger than Steinmeier or old Bismarck's
Staubier. Thank God I've got him located. . . . I must
put you wise about some things.”
He lay back in his rubbed leather armchair and yarned
for twenty minutes. He told me how at the beginning of
the war Scotland Yard had had a pretty complete register
of enemy spies, and without making any fuss had just tidied
them away. After that, the covey having been broken up, it
was a question of picking off stray birds. That had taken
some doing. There had been all kinds of inflammatory stuff
around, Red Masons and international anarchists, and, worst
of all, international finance-touts, but they had mostly been
ordinary cranks and rogues, the tools of the Boche agents
rather than agents themselves. However, by the middle of
1915 most of the stragglers had been gathered in. But there
remained loose ends, and towards the close of last year
somebody was very busy combining these ends into a net.
Funny cases cropped up of the leakage of vital information.
They began to be bad about October, 1916, when the Hun
submarines started on a special racket. The enemy sud-
denly appeared possessed of a knowledge which we thought
to be shared only by half a dozen officers. Blenkiron said
he was not surprised at the leakage, for there's always a
lot of people who hear things they oughtn't to. What
surprised him was that it got so quickly to the enemy.
Then after last February, when the Hun submarines went
in for frightfulness on a big scale, the thing grew desperate.
Leakages occurred every week, and the business was man-
aged by people who knew their way about, for they avoided
all the traps set for them, and when bogus news was re-
leased on purpose, they never sent it. A convoy which had
been kept a deadly secret would be attacked at the one


54 MR. STANDFAST
“But you've found him all right,” I cried, a sudden sus-
picion leaping into my brain.
“He’s found,” he said sadly, “but the credit does not
belong to John S. Blenkiron. That child merely muddied
the pond. The big fish was left for a young lady to hook.”
“I know,” I cried excitedly. “Her name is Miss Mary
Lamington.”
He shook a disapproving head. “You’ve guessed right,
my son, but you've forgotten your manners. This is a
rough business and we won't bring in the name of a gently
reared and pure-minded young girl. If we speak of her at
all we call her by a pet name out of the Pilgrim's Progress.
. . . Anyhow she hooked the fish, though he isn't landed.
D'you see any light?”
“Ivery,” I gasped.
“Yes. Ivery. Nothing much to look at, you say. A
common, middle-aged, pie-faced, golf-playing high-brow,
that you wouldn't keep out of a Sunday school. A touch of
the drummer, too, to show he has no dealings with your
effete aristocracy. A languishing silver-tongue that adores
the sound of his own voice. As mild, you'd say, as curds
and cream.”
Blenkiron got out of his chair and stood above me. “I
tell you, Dick, that man makes my spine cold. He hasn't a
drop of good red blood in him. The dirtiest apache is a
Christian gentleman compared to Moxon Ivery. He's as
cruel as a snake and as deep as hell. But, by God, he's got
a brain below his hat. He's hooked and we're playing him,
but Lord knows if he'll ever be landed !”
“Why on earth don't you put him away?” I asked.
“We haven’t the proof–legal proof, I mean; though
there's buckets of the other kind. I could put up a morally
certain case, but he'd beat me in a court of law. And half a
hundred sheep would get up in Parliament and bleat about
persecution. He has a graft with every collection of cranks
in England, and with all the geese that cackle about the
liberty of the individual when the Boche is ranging about
* :
*º


REFLECTIONS OF A DYSPEPTIC 55
to enslave the world. No, sir, that's too dangerous a game!
Besides, I’ve a better in hand. Moxon Ivery is the best-
accredited member of this State. His dossier is the com-
pletest thing outside the Recording Angel's little notebook.
We've taken up his references in every corner of the globe
and they’re all as right as Morgan's balance sheet. From
these it appears he's been a high-toned citizen ever since he
was in short-clothes. He was raised in Norfolk, and there
are people living who remember his father. He was edu-
cated at Melton School and his name's in the register. He
was in business in Valparaiso, and there's enough evidence
to write three volumes of his innocent life there. Then he
came home with a modest competence two years before the
war, and has been in the public eye ever since. He was
Liberal candidate for a London constitooency and he has
decorated the board of every institootion formed for the
amelioration of mankind. He's got enough alibis to choke
a boa constrictor, and they're water-tight and copper-
bottomed, and they're mostly damned lies. . . . But you
can't beat him at that stunt. The man's the superbest actor
that ever walked the earth. You can see it in his face. It
isn't a face, it's a mask. He could make himself look like
Shakespeare or Julius Caesar or Billy Sunday or Brigadier-
General Richard Hannay if he wanted to. He hasn't got
any personality either—he's got fifty, and there's no one he
could call his own. I reckon when the devil gets the
handling of him at last he'll have to put sand on his claws
to keep him from slipping through.”
Blenkiron was settled in his chair again, with one leg
hoisted over the side.
“We’ve closed a fair number of his channels in the last
few months. No, he don't suspect me. The world knows
nothing of its greatest men, and to him I'm only a Yankee
peace-crank, who gives big subscriptions to loony societies
and will travel a hundred miles to let off steam before any
kind of audience. He's been to see me at Claridge's and
I've arranged that he shall know all my record. A darned


56 MR. STANDFAST
bad record it is too, for two years ago I was violent pro-
British before I found salvation and was requested to leave
England. When I was home last I was officially anti-war,
when I wasn't stretched upon a bed of pain. Mr. Moxon
Ivery don't take any stock in John S. Blenkiron as a
serious proposition. And while I’ve been here I’ve been so
low down in the social scale and working in so many devious
ways that he can't connect me up. . . . As I was saying,
we've cut most of his wires, but the biggest we haven't got
at. He's still sending stuff out, and mighty compromising
stuff it is. Now listen close, Dick, for we're coming near
your own business.”
It appeared that Blenkiron had reason to suspect that the
channel still open had something to do with the North.
I He couldn't get closer than that, till he heard from his
people that a certain Abel Gresson had turned up in Glas-
gow from the States. This Gresson he discovered was the
same as one Wrankester, who as a leader of the Industrial
Workers of the World had been mixed up in some ugly
cases of sabotage in Colorado. He kept his news to himself,
for he didn't want the police to interfere, but he had his
own lot get into touch with Gresson and shadow him closely.
The man was very discreet but very mysterious, and he
would disappear for a week at a time leaving no trace. For
some unknown reason—he couldn't explain why—Blenkiron
had arrived at the conclusion that Gresson was in touch with
Ivery, so he made experiments to prove it.
“I wanted various cross-bearings to make certain, and I
got them the night before last. My visit to Biggleswick
was good business.”
“I don't know what they meant,” I said, “but I know
where they came in. One was in your speech when you
spoke of the Austrian socialists, and Ivery took you up
about them. The other was after supper when he quoted
the Weser Zeitung.”
* You’re no fool, Dick,” he said, with his slow smile.
“You’ve hit the mark first shot. You knew me and you


REFLECTIONS OF A DYSPEPTIC 57
could follow my process of thought in those remarks.
Ivery, not knowing me so well, and having his head full of
just that sort of argument, saw nothing unusual. Those
bits of noos were pumped into Gresson that he might pass
them. And he did pass them on—to Ivery. They com-
pleted my chain.”
“But they were commonplace enough things which he
might have guessed for himself.”
“No, they weren't. They were the nicest tit-bits of
political noos which all the cranks have been reaching
after.”
“Anyhow, they were quotations from German papers.
He might have had the papers themselves earlier than you
thought.”
“Wrong again. The paragraph never appeared in the
Weser Zeitung. But we faked up a torn bit of that noos-
paper, and a very pretty bit of forgery it was, and Gresson,
who's a kind of a scholar, was allowed to have it. He
passed it on. Ivery showed it me two nights ago. Nothing
like it ever sullied the columns of Boche journalism. No,
it was a perfectly final proof. . . . Now, Dick, it's up to
you to get after Gresson.”
“Right,” I said. “I’m jolly glad I'm to start work again.
I’m getting fat from lack of exercise. I suppose you want
me to catch Gresson out in some piece of blackguardism
and have him and Ivery snugly put away.”
“I don't want anything of the kind,” he said very slowly
and distinctly. “You’ve got to attend very close to your
instructions. I cherish these two beauties as if they were
my own white-headed boys. I wouldn't for the world inter-
fere with their comfort and liberty. I want them to go on
corresponding with their friends. I want to give them every
facility.”
He burst out laughing at my mystified face.
“See here, Dick. How do we want to treat the Boche 2
Why, to fill him up with all the cunningest lies and get him
to act on them. Now here is Moxon Ivery, who has always


58 MR. STANDFAST
given them good information. They trust him absolutely,
and we would be fools to spoil their confidence. Only, if
we can find out Moxon's methods, we can arrange to use
them ourselves and send noos in his name which isn't quite
so genooine. Every word he dispatches goes straight to the
Grand High Secret General Staff, and old Hindenburg and
Ludendorff put towels round their heads and cipher it out.
We want to encourage them to go on doing it. We'll ar-
range to send true stuff that don't matter, so as they'll con-
tinue to trust him, and a few selected falsehoods that’ll
matter like hell. It's a game you can't play for ever, but
with luck I propose to play it long enough to confuse Fritz's
little plans.”
His face became serious and wore the air that our corps
commander used to have at the big pow-wow before a
push.
“I’m not going to give you instructions, for you're man
enough to make your own. But I can give you the general
hang of the situation. You tell Ivery you're going north
to inquire into industrial disputes at first hand. That will
seem to him natural and in line with your recent behaviour.
He'll tell his people that you're a guileless colonial who feels
disgruntled with Britain, and may come in useful. You'll
go to a man of mine in Glasgow, a red-hot agitator who
chooses that way of doing his bit for his country. It's a
darned hard way and a darned dangerous. Through him
you'll get in touch with Gresson, and you'll keep alongside
that bright citizen. Find out what he is doing, and get a
chance of following him. He must never suspect you, and
for that purpose you must be very near the edge of the
law yourself. You go up there as an unabashed pacificist
and you'll live with folk that will turn your stomach.
Maybe you'll have to break some of these two-cent rules
the British Government has invented to defend the realm,
and it's up to you not to get caught out. . . . Remember,
you'll get no help from me. You've got to wise up about
Gresson with the whole forces of the British State arrayed


REFLECTIONS OF A DYSPEPTIC 59
officially against you. I guess it's a steep proposition, but
you're man enough to make good.”
As we shook hands, he added a last word. “You must
take you own time, but it's not a case for slouching. Every
day that passes Ivery is sending out the worst kind of
poison. The Boche is blowing up for a big campaign in the
field, and a big effort to shake the nerve and confuse the
judgment of our civilians. The whole earth's war-weary,
and we've about reached the danger-point. There's pretty
big stakes hung on you, Dick, for things are getting mighty
delicate.”
I purchased a new novel in the shop and reached St.
Pancras in time to have a cup of tea at the buffet. Ivery
was at the bookstall buying an evening paper. When we
got into the carriage he seized my Punch and kept laughing
and calling my attention to the pictures. As I looked at him,
I thought he made a perfect picture of the citizen turned
countryman, going back of an evening to his innocent home.
Everything was right—his neat tweeds, his light spats, his
spotted neckcloth, and his aquascutum.
Not that I dared look at him much. What I had learned
made me eager to search his face, but I did not dare show
any increased interest. I had always been a little off-hand
with him, for I had never much liked him, so I had to keep
on the same manner. He was as merry as a grig, full of
chat and very friendly and amusing. I remember he picked
up the book I had brought off that morning to read in the
train—the second volume of Hazlitt's Essays, the last of my
English classics, and discoursed so wisely about books that
I wished I had spent more time in his company at Biggles-
wick. “Hazlitt was the academic Radical of his day,” he
said. “He is always lashing himself into a state of theoreti-
cal fury over abuses he had never encountered in person.
Men who are up against the real thing save their breath for
action.”


60 MR. STANDFAST
That gave me my cue to tell him about my journey to
the North. I said I had learned a lot in Biggleswick, but I
wanted to see industrial life at close quarters. “Otherwise
I might become like Hazlitt,” I said.
He was very interested and encouraging. “That's the
right way to set about it,” he said. “Where were you
thinking of going?”
I told him that I had half thought of Barrow, but decided
to try Glasgow, since the Clyde seemed to be a warm
corner.
“Right,” he said. “I only wish I was coming with you.
It'll take you a little while to understand the language.
You'll find a good deal of senseless bellicosity among the
workmen, for they've got parrot-cries about the war
as they used to have parrot-cries about their labour
politics. But there's plenty of shrewd brains and
sound hearts too. You must write and tell me your
conclusions.”
It was a warm evening and he dozed the last part of the
journey. I looked at him and wished I could see into the
mind at the back of that mask-like face. I counted for
nothing in his eyes, not even enough for him to want to
make me a tool, and I was setting out to try to make a tool
of him. It sounded a forlorn enterprise. And all the while
I was puzzled with a persistent sense of recognition. I told
myself it was idiocy, for a man with a face like that
must have hints of resemblance to a thousand people.
But the idea kept nagging at me till we reached our
destination.
As we emerged from the station into the golden evening
I saw Mary Lamington again. She was with one of the
Weekes girls, and after the Biggleswick fashion was bare-
headed, so that the sun glinted from her hair. Ivery swept
his hat off and made her a pretty speech, while I faced her
steady eyes with the expressionlessness of the stage con-
spirator. -
“A charming child,” he observed as we passed on. “Not


REFLECTIONS OF A DYSPEPTIC 61
without a touch of seriousness, too, which may yet be
touched to noble issues.”
I considered, as I made my way to my final supper with
the Jimsons, that the said child was likely to prove a
sufficiently serious business for Mr. Moxon Ivery before
the game was out.


CHAPTER IV
ANDREW AMOS
I TOOK the train three days later from King's Cross to
Edinburgh. I went to the Pentland Hotel in Princes’
Street and left there a suit-case containing some clean linen
and a change of clothes. I had been thinking the thing out,
and had come to the conclusion that I must have a base
somewhere and a fresh outfit. Then, in well-worn tweeds
and with no more luggage than a small trench kit-bag, I
descended upon the city of Glasgow.
I walked from the station to the address which Blenkiron
had given me. It was a hot summer evening, and the streets
were filled with bareheaded women and weary-looking arti-
sans. As I made my way down the Dumbarton Road I was
amazed at the number of able-bodied fellows about, consid-
ering that you couldn't stir a mile on any British front with-
out bumping up against a Glasgow battalion. Then I rea-
lised that there were such things as munitions and ships,
and I wondered no more.
A stout and dishevelled lady at a close-mouth directed me
to Mr. Amos's dwelling. “Twa stairs up. Andra will he
in noo, havin' his tea. He's no yin for overtime. Hº's
generally hame on the chap of six.” I ascended the stairs
with a sinking heart, for like all South Africans I have a
horror of dirt. The place was pretty filthy, out at vac's
landing there were two doors with well-polished handles arºl
brass plates. On one I read the name of Andrew Amos
A man in his shirt-sleeves opened to me, a little man.
without a collar, and with an unbuttoned waistcoat. The
was all I saw of him in the dim light, but he held out a
paw like a gorilla's and drew me in.
62


ANDREW AMOS 63
The sitting-room, which looked over many chimneys to a
pale yellow sky against which two factory stalks stood out
sharply, gave me light enough to observe him fully. He was
about five feet four, broad-shouldered, and with a great
towsy head of grizzled hair. He wore spectacles, and his
face was like some old-fashioned Scots minister's, for he
had heavy eyebrows and whiskers which joined each other
under his jaw, while his chin and enormous upper lip were
clean-shaven. His eyes were steely grey and very solemn,
but full of smouldering energy. His voice was enormous
and would have shaken the walls if he had not had the
habit of speaking with half-closed lips. He had not a sound
tooth in his head.
A saucer full of tea and a plate which had once contained
ham and eggs were on the table. He nodded towards them
and asked me if I had fed.
“Ye'll no eat onything? Well, some would offer ye a
dram, but this house is staunch teetotal. I doot ye'll have
to try the nearest public if ye're thirsty.”
I disclaimed any bodily wants, and produced my pipe, at
which he started to fill an old clay. “Mr. Brand's your
name?” he asked in his gusty voice. “I was expectin' ye,
but Dod! man, ye're late!”
He extricated from his trousers pocket an ancient silver
watch, and regarded it with disfavour. “The dashed thing
has stoppit. What do ye make the time, Mr. Brand?”
He proceeded to prise open the lid of his watch with the
knife he had used to cut his tobacco, and, as he examined
the works, he turned the back of the case towards me. On
the inside I saw pasted Mary Lamington's purple-and-white
wafer.
I held my watch so that he could see the same token.
His keen eyes, raised for a second, noted it, and he shut
his own with a snap and returned it to his pocket. His
manner lost its wariness and became almost genial.
“Ye've come up to see Glasgow, Mr. Brand? Well, it's
a steerin' bit, and there's honest folk bides in it, and some


64 MR. STANDFAST
not so honest. They tell me ye're from South Africa.
That's a long gait away, but I ken something about South
Africa, for I had a cousin's son oot there for his lungs.
He was in a shop in Main Street, Bloomfountain. They
called him Peter Dobson. Ye would maybe mind of
him.”
Then he discoursed of the Clyde. He was an incomer, he
told me, from the Borders, his native place being the town
of Galashiels, or, as he called it, “Gawly.” “I began as a
power-loom tuner in Stavert's mill. Then my father dee’d
and I took up his trade of jiner. But it's no world nowa-
days for the sma’ independent business, so I cam to the
Clyde and learned a shipwright's job. I may say I've be-
come a leader in the trade, for though I'm no an official of
the Union, and not likely to be, there's no man's word car-
ries more weight than mine. And the Goavernment kens
that, for they've sent me on Commissions up and down the
land to look at wuds and report on the nature of the timber.
Bribery, they think it is, but Andrew Amos is not to be
bribit. He'll have his say about ony Goavernment on earth,
and tell them to their face what he thinks of them. Ay, and
he'll fight the case of the workin'-man against his oppressor,
should it be the Goavernment or the fatted calves they ca’
Labour Members. Ye'll have heard tell o' the shop stew-
ards, Mr. Brand?”
I admitted I had, for I had been well coached by Blen-
kiron in the current history of industrial disputes.
“Well, I'm a shop steward. We represent the rank and
file against office-bearers that have lost the confidence o'
the workin'-man. But I'm no socialist, and I would have
ye keep mind of that. I'm yin o' the old Border radicals,
and I’m not like to change. I’m for individual liberty and
equal rights and chances for all men. I'll no more bow
down before a Dagon of a Goavernment official than before
the Baal of a feckless Tweedside laird. I've to keep my
views to mysel', for thae young lads are all drucken-daft
with their wee books about Cawpital and Collectivism and


ANDREW AMOS 65
a wheen long senseless words I wouldna fyle my tongue
with. Them and their socialism There's more gumption
in a page of John Stuart Mill than in all that foreign trash.
But, as I say, I've got to keep a quiet sough, for the world
is gettin' socialism now like the measles. It all comes of a
defective eddication.”
“And what does a Border radical say about the war?”
I asked.
He took off his spectacles and cocked his shaggy brows
at me. “I’ll tell ye, Mr. Brand. All that was bad in all
that I’ve ever wrestled with since I cam to years o' dis-
cretion—Tories and lairds and manufacturers and publicans
and the Auld Kirk—all that was bad, I say, for there were
orra bits of decency, ye’ll find in the Germans full measure
pressed down and running over. When the war started, I
considered the subject calmly for three days, and then I
said: “Andra Amos, ye’ve found the enemy at last. The
ones ye fought before were in a manner o’ speakin' just mis-
guided friends. It's either you or the Kaiser this time, my
man l’’
His eyes had lost their gravity and had taken on a sombre
ferocity. “Ay, and I've not wavered. I got a word early
in the business as to the way I could serve my country best.
It's not been an easy job, and there's plenty of honest folk
the day will give me a bad name. They think I'm stirrin' up
the men at home and desertin' the cause o' the lads at the
front. Man, I'm keepin’ them straight. If I didna fight
their battles on a sound economic isshue, they would take
the dorts and be at the mercy of the first blagyird that
preached revolution. Me and my like are safety-valves, if
ye follow me. And dinna you make ony mistake, Mr.
Brand. The men that are agitating for a rise in wages are
not for peace. They're fighting for the lads overseas as
much as for themselves. There's not yin in a thousand
that wouldna sweat himself blind to beat the Germans. The
Goavernment has made mistakes, and maun be made to pay
for them. If it were not so, the men would feel like a


66 MR. STANDFAST
moose in a trap, for they would have no way to make their
grievance felt. What for should the big man double his
profits and the small man be ill set to get his ham and egg
on Sabbath mornin'? That's the meaning o’ Labour unrest,
as they call it, and it's a good thing, says I, for if Labour
didna get its leg over the traces now and then, the spunk
o' the land would be dead in it, and Hindenburg could
squeeze it like a rotten aipple.”
I asked if he spoke for the bulk of the men.
“For ninety per cent. in ony ballot. I don't say that
there's not plenty of riff-raff—the pint-and-a-dram gentry
and the soft-heads that are aye reading bits of newspapers,
and muddlin' their wits with foreign whigmaleeries. But
the average man on the Clyde, like the average man in ither
places, hates just three things, and that's the Germans, the
profiteers, as they call them, and the Irish. But he hates
the Germans first.”
“The Irish ' " I exclaimed in astonishment.
“Ay, the Irish,” cried the last of the old Border radicals.
“Glasgow's stinkin' nowadays with two things, money and
Irish. I mind the day when I followed Mr. Gladstone's
Home Rule policy, and used to threep about the noble, gen-
erous, warm-hearted sister nation held in a foreign bondage.
My Goad 1 I'm not speakin’ about Ulster, which is a dour,
ill-natured den, but our own folk all the same. But the men
that will not do a hand's turn to help the war and take the
chance of our necessities to set up a bawbee rebellion are
hateful to Goad and man. We treated them like pet lambs
and that's the thanks we get. They're coming over here in
thousands to tak the jobs of the lads that are doing their
duty. I was speakin' last week to a widow woman that
keeps a wee dairy down the Dalmarnock Road. She has
two sons, and both in the airmy, one in the Cameronians
and one a prisoner in Germany. She was telling me that
she could not keep goin’ any more, lacking the help of the
boys, though she had worked her fingers to the bone.
‘Surely it's a crool job, Mr. Amos,” she says, “that the


ANDREW AMOS 67
Goavernment should tak baith my laddies, and I'll maybe
never see them again, and let the Irish gang free and tak
the bread frae our mouth. At the gasworks across the road
they took on a hundred Irish last week, and every yin o'
them as young and well set up as you would ask to see.
And my wee Davie, him that's in Germany, had aye a weak
chest, and Jimmy was troubled wi' a bowel complaint.
That's surely no justice l’. . .”
He broke off and lit a match by drawing it across the seat
of his trousers. “It’s time I got the gas lichtit. There's
some men coming here at half-ten.”
As the gas squealed and flickered in the lighting, he
sketched for me the coming guests. “There's Macnab and
Niven, two o' my colleagues. And there's Gilkison of the
Boiler-fitters, and a lad Wilkie—he's got consumption, and
writes wee bits in the papers. And there's a queer chap o'
the name o' Tombs—they tell me he comes frae Cambridge
and is a kind of a professor there—anyway he's more
stuffed wi' havers than an egg wi' meat. He telled me he
was here to get at the heart o' the workin'-man, and I said
to him that he would hae to look a bit further than the
sleeve o’ the workin'-man's jaicket. There's no muckle in
his head, poor soul. Then there'll be Tam Norie, him that
edits our weekly paper—Justice for All. Tam's a humourist
and great on Robert Burns, but he hasna the balance o' a
dwinin’ teetotum. . . . Ye'll understand, Mr. Brand, that I
keep my mouth shut in such company, and don't express my
own views more than is absolutely necessary. I criticise
whiles, and that gives me a name for whunstane common-
sense, but I never let my tongue wag. The feck o’ the lads -
comin' the night are not the real workin'-man—they're just
the froth on the pot, but it's the froth that will be useful
to you. Remember they've heard tell o' ye already, and
ye've some sort o' reputation to keep up.”
“Will Mr. Abel Gresson be here?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “No yet. Him and me havena yet got
to the point o' payin' visits. But the men that come will be


68 MR. STANDFAST
Gresson's friends and they'll speak of ye to him. It's the
best kind of introduction ye could seek.”
The knocker sounded, and Mr. Amos hastened to admit
the first comers. These were Macnab and Wilkie: the one
a decent middle-aged man with a fresh-washed face and a
celluloid collar; the other a round-shouldered youth, with
lank hair and the large eyes and luminous skin which are
the marks of phthisis. “This is Mr. Brand, boys, from
South Africa,” was Amos's presentation. Presently came
Niven, a bearded giant, and Mr. Norie, the editor, a fat
dirty fellow smoking a rank cigar. Gilkison of the Boiler-
fitters, when he arrived, proved to be a pleasant young man
in spectacles who spoke with an educated voice and clearly
belonged to a slightly different social scale. Last came
Tombs, the Cambridge “professor,” a lean youth with a
sour mouth and eyes that reminded me of Launcelot Wake.
“Ye'll no be a mawgnate, Mr. Brand, though ye come
from South Africa,” said Mr. Norie with a great guffaw.
“Not me. I'm a working engineer,” I said. “My father
was from Scotland, and this is my first visit to my native
country, as my friend Mr. Amos was telling you.”
The consumptive looked at me suspiciously. “We’ve
got two-three of the comrades here that the cawpitalist
Government expelled from the Transvaal. If ye're our way
of thinking, ye will maybe ken them.”
I said I would be overjoyed to meet them, but that at the
time of the outrage in question I had been working on a
mine a thousand miles farther north.
Then ensued an hour of extraordinary talk. Tombs in
his sing-song namby-pamby University voice was concerned
to get information. He asked endless questions, chiefly of
Gilkison, who was the only one who really understood his
language. I thought I had never seen anyone quite so fluent
and so futile, and yet there was a kind of feeble violence in
him like a demented sheep. He was engaged in venting
some private academic spite against society, and I thought
that in a revolution he would be the class of lad I would


ANDREW AMOS 69
personally conduct to the nearest lamp-post. And all the
while Amos and Macnab and Niven carried on their own
conversation about the affairs of their society, wholly
impervious to the tornado raging around them.
It was Mr. Norie, the editor, who brought me into the
discussion.
“Our South African friend is very blate,” he said in his
boisterous way. “Andra, if this place of yours wasn't so
damned teetotal and we had a dram apiece, we might get
his tongue loosened. I want to hear what he's got to say
about the war. You told me this morning he was sound in
the faith.”
“I said no such thing,” said Mr. Amos. “As ye ken well,
Tam Norie, I don't judge soundness on that matter as you
judge it. I'm for the war myself, subject to certain condi-
tions that I’ve often stated. I know nothing of Mr. Brand's
opinions, except that he's a good democrat, which is more
than I can say of some o' your friends.”
“Hear to Andra,” laughed Mr. Norie. “He’s thinkin'
the inspector in the Socialist State would be a waur kind of
awristocrat then the Duke of Buccleugh. Weel, there's may-
be something in that. But about the war he's wrong. Ye
ken my views, boys. This war was made by the cawpitalists,
and it has been fought by the workers, and it's the workers
that maun have the ending of it. That day's comin' very
near. There are those that want to spin it out till Labour
is that weak it can be pit in chains for the rest o' time.
That's the manoeuvre we're out to prevent. We've got to
beat the Germans, but it's the workers that has the right
to judge when the enemy's beaten and not the cawpitalists.
What do you say, Mr. Brand?”
Mr. Norie had obviously pinned his colours to the fence,
but he gave me the chance I had been looking for. I let
them have my views with a vengeance, and these views
were that for the sake of democracy the war must be ended.
I flatter myself I put my case well, for I had got up every
rotten argument and I borrowed largely from Launcelot


70 MR. STANDFAST
Wake's armoury. But I didn't put it too well, for I had a
very exact notion of the impression I wanted to produce.
I must seem to be honest and in earnest, just a bit of a
fanatic, but principally a hard-headed business man who
knew when the time had come to make a deal. Tombs kept
interrupting me with imbecile questions, and I had to sit on
him. At the end Mr. Norie hammered with his pipe on the
table.
“That'll sort ye, Andra. Ye're entertainin’ an angel
unawares. What do ye say to that, my man?”
Mr. Amos shook his head. “I’ll no deny there's some-
thing in it, but I'm not convinced that the Germans have got
enough of a wheepin’.” Macnab agreed with him; the
others were with me. Norie was for getting me to write
an article for his paper, and the consumptive wanted me to
address a meeting.
“Wull ye say a' that over again the morn's night down at
our hall in Newmilns Street? We've got a lodge meeting o'
the I.W.B., and I'll make them pit ye in the programme.”
He kept his luminous eyes, like a sick dog's, fixed on me, and
I saw that I had made one ally. I told him I had come to
Glasgow to learn and not to teach, but I would miss no
chance of testifying to my faith.
“Now, boys, I'm for my bed,” said Amos, shaking the
dottle from his pipe. “Mr. Tombs, I’ll conduct ye the morn
over the Brigend works, but I’ve had enough clavers for
one evening. I'm a man that wants his eight hours' sleep.”
The old fellow saw them to the door, and came back to
me with the ghost of a grin in his face.
“A queer crowd, Mr. Brand 1 Macnab didna like what
ye said. He had a laddie killed in Gallypoly, and he's no
lookin' for peace this side the grave. He's my best friend
in Glasgow. He's an elder in the Gaelic kirk in the Cow-
caddens, and I'm what ye call a free-thinker, but we're
wonderful agreed on the fundamentals. Ye spoke your bit
verra well, I must admit. Gresson will hear tell of ye as a
promising recruit.”


ANDREW AMOS 71
“It’s a rotten job,” I said.
“Ay, it's a rotten job. I often feel like voamiting over
it mysel'. But it's no for us to complain. There's waur
jobs oot in France for better men. . . . A word in your ear,
Mr. Brand. Could ye not look a bit more sheepish? Ye
stare folk ower straight in the een, like a Hieland sergeant-
major up at Maryhill Barracks.” And he winked slowly
and grotesquely with his left eye.
He marched to a cupboard and produced a black bottle
and a glass. “I'm blue-ribbon myself, but ye’ll be the better
of something to tak the taste out of your mouth. There's
Loch Katrine water at the pipe there. . . . As I was say-
ing, there's not much ill in that lot. Tombs is a black
offence, but a dominie's a dominie all the world over. They
may crack about their Industrial Workers and the braw
things they're going to do, but there's a wholesome damp-
ness about the tinder on Clydeside. They should try
Ireland.”
“Supposing,” I said, “there was a really clever man
who wanted to help the enemy. You think he could do little
good by stirring up trouble in the shops here?”
“I’m positive.”
“And if he were a shrewd fellow, he’d soon tumble to
that?”
- 4 Ay.”
“Then if he still stayed on here he would be after bigger
game—something really dangerous and damnable?”
Amos drew down his brows and looked me in the face.
“I see what ye're ettlin' at. Ay! That would be my con-
clusion. I came to it weeks syne about the man ye'll maybe
meet the morn's night.”
Then from below the bed he pulled a box from which
he drew a handsome flute. “Ye'll forgive me, Mr. Brand,
but I aye like a tune before I go to my bed. Macnab says
his prayers, and I have a tune on the flute, and the principle
is just the same.”
So that singular evening closed with music—very sweet


72 MR. STANDFAST
and true renderings of old Border melodies like “My Peggy
is a young thing,” and “When the kye come hame.” I fell
asleep with a vision of Amos, his face all puckered up at
the mouth and a wandering sentiment in his eye, recaptur-
ing in his dingy world the emotions of a boy.
The widow-woman from next door, who acted as house-
keeper, cook, and general factotum to the establishment,
brought me shaving water next morning, but I had to go
without a bath. When I entered the kitchen I found no
one there, but while I consumed the inevitable ham and egg,
Amos arrived back for breakfast. He brought with him
the morning's paper.
“The Herald says there's been a big battle at Eepers,”
he announced.
I tore open the sheet and read of the great attack of
July 31st which was spoiled by the weather. “My God!”
I cried. “They've got St. Julien and that dirty Frezenberg
ridge . . . and Hooge . . . and Sanctuary Wood. I know
every inch of the damned place . . . .”
“Mr. Brand,” said a warning voice, “that'll never do.
If our friends last night heard ye talk like that ye might
as well tak the train back to London. . . . They're speakin'
about ye in the yards this morning. Ye'll get a good turn-
out at your meeting the night, but they're sayin' that the
polis will interfere. That mightna be a bad thing, but I
trust ye to show discretion, for ye’ll not be muckle use to
onybody if they jyle ye in Duke Street. I hear Gresson will
will be there with a fraternal message from his lunattics
in America. . . . I've arranged that ye go down to Tam
Norie this afternoon and give him a hand with his bit paper.
Tam will tell ye the whole clash o' the West country, and I
look to ye to keep him off the drink. He's aye arguin' that
writin' and drinkin' gang thegither, and quotin' Robert
Burns, but the creature has a wife and five bairns dependin’
on him.”
I spent a fantastic day. For two hours I sat in Norie's


ANDREW AMOS 73
dirty den, while he smoked and orated, and, when he remem-
bered his business, took down in shorthand my impressions
of the Labour situation in South Africa for his rag. They
were fine breezy impressions, based on the most whole-
hearted ignorance, and if they ever reached the Rand I
wonder what my friends there made of Cornelius Brand,
their author. I stood him dinner in an indifferent eating-
house in a street off the Broomielaw, and thereafter had a
drink with him in a public-house, and was introduced to
some of his less reputable friends.
About tea-time I went back to Amos's lodgings, and
spent an hour or so writing a long letter to Mr. Ivery. I
described to him everybody I had met, I gave highly coloured
views of the explosive material on the Clyde, and I deplored
the lack of clear-headedness in the progressive forces. I
drew an elaborate picture of Amos, and deduced from it
that the Radicals were likely to be a bar to true progress.
“They have switched their old militancy,” I wrote, “on
to another track, for with them it is a matter of conscience
to be always militant.” I finished up with some very
crude remarks on economics culled from the table-talk of
the egregious Tombs. It was the kind of letter which I
hoped would establish my character in his mind as an
industrious innocent.
Seven o'clock found me in Newmilns Street, where I was
seized upon by Wilkie. He had put on a clean collar for
the occasion and had partially washed his thin face. The
poor fellow had a cough that shook him like the walls of a
power-house when the dynamos are going.
He was very apologetic about Amos. “Andra belongs
to a past worrld,” he said. “He has a big repittation in his
society, and he's a fine fighter, but he has no kind of Vision,
if ye understand me. He's an auld Gladstonian, and that's
done and damned in Scotland. He's not a Modern, Mr.
Brand, like you and me. But to-night ye'll meet one or two
chaps that'll be worth your while to ken. Ye'll maybe
no go quite as far as them, but ye're on the same road. I'm


74 MR. STANDFAST
hoping for the day when we'll have oor Councils of Work-
men and Soldiers like the Russians all over the land and
dictate our terms to the pawrasites in Pawrliament. They
tell me, too, the boys in the trenches are comin’ round to
our side.”
We entered the hall by a backdoor, and in a little waiting-
room I was introduced to some of the speakers. They were
a scratch lot as seen in that dingy place. The chairman was
a shop-steward in one of the Societies, a fierce little rat of a
man, who spoke with a cockney accent and addressed me
as “Comrade.” But one of them roused my liveliest inter-
est. I heard the name of Gresson, and turned to find a
fellow of about thirty-five, rather sprucely dressed, with a
flower in his buttonhole. “Mr. Bland,” he said, in a rich
American voice which recalled Blenkiron’s. “Very pleased
to meet you, sir. We have come from remote parts of the
globe to be present at this gathering.” I noticed that he
had reddish hair, and small bright eyes, and a nose with a
droop like a Polish Jew's.
As soon as we reached the platform I saw that there
was going to be trouble. The hall was packed to the door,
and in all the front half there was the kind of audience I
expected to see—working-men of the political type who
before the war would have thronged to party meetings. But
not all the crowd at the back had come to listen. Some
were scallawags, some looked like better-class clerks out for
a spree, and there was a fair quantity of khaki. There
were also one or two gentlemen not strictly sober.
The chairman began by putting his foot in it. He said
we were there to-night to protest against the continuation
of the war and to form a branch of the new British Council
of Workmen and Soldiers. He told them with a fine
mixture of metaphors that we had got to take the reins into
our own hands, for the men who were running the war had
their own axes to grind and were marching to oligarchy
through the blood of the workers. He added that we had
no quarrel with Germany half as bad as we had with our


ANDREW AMOS 75
own capitalists. He looked forward to the day when British
soldiers would ieap from their trenches and extend the
hand of friendship to their German comrades.
“No me!” said a solemn voice. “I’m not seekin’ a
bullet in my wane,”—at which there was laughter and cat-
calls.
Tombs followed and made a worse hash of it. He was
determined to speak, as he would have put it, to democracy
in its own language, so he said “hell ” several times, loudly
but without conviction. Presently he slipped into the man-
ner of the lecturer, and the audience grew restless. “I
propose to ask myself a question—” he began, and from
the back of the hall came—“and a damned sully answer
ye'll get.” After that there was no more Tombs.
I followed with extreme nervousness, and to my surprise
got a fair hearing. I felt as mean as a mangy dog on a
cold morning, for I hated to talk rot before soldiers—espe-
cially before a couple of Royal Scots Fusiliers, who, for
all I knew, might have been in my own brigade. My line
was the plain, practical, patriotic man, just come from the
colonies, who looked at things with fresh eyes, and called
for a new deal. I was very moderate, but to justify my
appearance there I had to put in a wild patch or two, and
I got these by impassioned attacks on the Ministry of
Munitions. I mixed up a little mild praise of the Germans,
whom I said I had known all over the world for decent
fellows. I received little applause, but no marked dissent,
and sat down with deep thankfulness.
The next speaker put the lid on it. I believe he was a
noted agitator, who had already been deported. Towards
him there was no lukewarmness, for one half of the audi-
ence cheered wildly when he rose, and the other half hissed
and groaned. He began with whirlwind abuse of the idle
rich, then of the middle-classes (he called them the “rich
man's flunkeys”), and finally of the Government. All that
was fairly well received, for it is the fashion of the Briton
to run down every Government and yet to be very averse


76 MR. STANDFAST
to parting from it. Then he started on the soldiers and
slanged the officers (“gentry pups" was his name for
them), and the generals, whom he accused of idleness, of
cowardice, and of habitual intoxication. He told us that
our own kith and kin were sacrificed in every battle by lead-
ers who had not the guts to share their risks. The Scots
Fusiliers looked perturbed, as if they were in doubt of his
meaning. Then he put it more plainly. “Will any soldier
deny that the men are the barrage to keep the officers' skins
whole?”
“That's a bloody lee,” said one of the Fusilier Jocks.
The man took no notice of the interruption, being carried
away by the torrent of his own rhetoric, but he had not
allowed for the persistence of the interrupter. The Jock
got slowly to his feet, and announced that he wanted satis-
faction. “If ye open your dirty gab to blagyird honest men,
I'll come up on that platform and wring your neck.”
At that there was a fine old row, some crying out
“Order,” some “Fair Play,” and some applauding. A
Canadian at the back of the hall started a song, and there
was an ugly press forward. The hall seemed to be moving
up from the back, and already men were standing in all
the passages and right to the edge of the platform. I did
not like the look in the eyes of these new-comers, and among
the crowd I saw several who were obviously plain-clothes
policemen.
The chairman whispered a word to the speaker, who con-
tinued when the noise had temporarily died down. He kept
off the army and returned to the Government, and for a
little sluiced out pure anarchism. But he got his foot in
it again, for he pointed to the Sinn Feiners as examples of
manly independence. At that pandemoninum broke loose,
and he never had another look in. There were several fights
going on in the hall between the public and courageous
supporters of the orator.
Then Gresson advanced to the edge of the platform in a
vain endeavour to retrieve the day. I must say he did it


78 MR. STANDFAST
my companion had no idea how to use his fists, and I was
mortally afraid that he would get busy with the gun in his
pocket. It was that fear that brought me into the scrap.
The Jocks were sportsmen every bit of them, and only one
advanced to the combat. He hit Gresson a clip on the jaw
with his left, and but for the wall would have laid him out.
I saw in the lamplight the vicious gleam in the American's
eye and the twitch of his hand to his pocket. That decided
me to interfere and I got in front of him.
This brought the second Jock into the fray. He was a
broad, thick-set fellow, of the adorable bandy-legged stocky
type that I had seen go through the Railway Triangle at
Arras as though it were blotting-paper. He had some notion
of fighting, too, and gave me a rough time, for I had to keep
edging the other fellow off Gresson.
“Go home, you fool,” I shouted. “Let this gentleman
alone. I don't want to hurt you.”
The only answer was a hook-hit which I just managed to
guard, followed by a mighty drive with his right which I
dodged so that he barked his knuckles on the wall. I heard
a yell of rage, and observed that Gresson seemed to have
kicked his assailant on the shin. I began to long for the
police.
Then there was that swaying of the crowd which be-
tokens the approach of the forces of law and order. But
they were too late to prevent trouble. In self-defence I
had to take my Jock seriously, and got in my blow when
he had overreached himself and lost his balance. I never hit
anyone so unwillingly in my life. He went over like a poled
ox, and measured his length on the causeway.
I found myself explaining things politely to the constables.
“These men objected to this gentleman's speech at the
meeting, and I had to interfere to protect him. No, no!
I don't want to charge anybody. It was all a misunder-
standing.” I helped the stricken Jock to rise and offered
him ten bob for consolation.
He looked at me sullenly and spat on the ground. “Keep


ANDREW AMOS 79
your dirty money,” he said. “I’ll be even with ye yet, my
man—you and that red-headed scab. I'll mind the looks of
ye the next time I see ye.”
Gresson was wiping the blood from his cheek with a silk
handkerchief. “I guess I’m in your debt, Mr. Brand,” he
said. “You may bet I won't forget it.”
I returned to an anxious Amos. He heard my story in
silence and his only comment was—“Well done the Fusi-
liers | *
“It might have been worse, I'll not deny,” he went on.
“Ye've established some kind of a claim upon Gresson,
which may come in handy. . . . Speaking about Gresson,
I’ve news for ye. He's sailing on Friday as purser in the
Tobermory. The Tobermory's a boat that wanders every
month up the West Highlands as far as Stornoway. I've
arranged for ye to take a trip on that boat, Mr. Brand.”
I nodded. “How did you find out that?” I asked.
“It took some finding,” he said drily, “but I’ve ways and
means. Now I’ll not trouble ye with advice, for ye ken
your job as well as me. But I'm going north myself the
morn to look after some of the Ross-shire wuds, and I'll
be in the way of getting telegrams at the Kyle. Ye'll keep
that in mind. Keep in mind, too, that I'm a great reader of
the Pilgrim's Progress and that I've a cousin of the name
of Ochterlony.”


CHAPTER V
VARIOUS DOINGS IN THE WEST
T HE Tobermory was no ship for passengers. Its decks
were littered with a hundred oddments, so that a man
could barely walk a step without tacking, and my bunk was
simply a shelf in the frowsty little saloon, where the odour
of ham and eggs hung hike a fog. I joined her at Greenock
and took a turn on deck with the captain after tea, when
he told me the names of the big blue hills to the north. He
had a fine old copper-coloured face and side-whiskers like
an archbishop, and, having spent all his days beating up
the western seas, had as many yarns in his head as Peter
himself.
“On this boat,” he announced, “we don't ken what a day
may bring forth. I may pit into Colonsay for twa hours
and bide there three days. I get a telegram at Oban and
the next thing I’m awa ayont Barra. Sheep's the difficult
business. They maun be fetched for the sales, and they’re
dooms slow to lift. So ye see it's not what ye call a
pleasure trip, Maister Brand.”
Indeed it wasn't, for the confounded tub wallowed like a
fat sow as soon as we rounded a headland and got the
weight of the south-western wind. When asked my purpose,
I explained that I was a colonial of Scots extraction, who
was paying his first visit to his fatherland and wanted to
explore the beauties of the West Highlands. I let him
gather that I was not rich in this world's goods.
“You’ll have a passport?” he asked. “They'll no let ye
go north o' Fort William without one.”
Amos had said nothing about passports, so I looked
blank.
80


DOINGS IN THE WEST 81
“I could keep ye on board for the whole voyage,” he
went on, “but ye wouldna be permitted to land. If ye're
seekin’ enjoyment, it would be a poor job sittin' on this
deck and admirin' the works o' God and no allowed to step
on the pierhead. Ye should have applied to the military
gentlemen in Glesca. But ye’ve plenty o’ time to make
up your mind afore we get to Oban. We've a heap o' calls
to make Mull and Islay way.”
The purser came up to inquire about my ticket, and
greeted me with a grin.
“Ye're acquaint with Mr. Gresson, then?” said the cap-
tain. “Weel, we're a cheery wee ship's company, and
that's the great thing on this kind o' job.”
I made but a poor supper, for the wind had risen to half
a gale, and I saw hours of wretchedness approaching. The
trouble with me is that I cannot be honestly sick and get it
over. Queasiness and headache beset me and there is no
refuge but bed. I turned into my bunk, leaving the captain
and the mate smoking shag not six feet from my head, and
fell into a restless sleep. When I woke the place was empty,
and smelt vilely of stale tobacco and cheese. My throbbing
brows made sleep impossible, and I tried to ease them by
staggering up on deck. I saw a clear windy sky, with every
star as bright as a live coal, and a heaving waste of dark
waters running to ink-black hills. Then a douche of spray
caught me and sent me down the companio: to my bunk
again, where I lay for hours trying to make a plan of
campaign.
I argued that if Amos had wanted me to have a passport
he would have provided one, so I needn't bother my head
about that. But it was my business to keep alongside Gres-
son, and if the boat stayed a week in some port and he went
off ashore, I must follow him. Having no passport I would
have to be always dodging trouble, which would handicap
my movements and in all likelihood make me more con-
spicuous than I wanted. I guessed that Amos had denied
me the passport for the very reason that he wanted Gresson


82 MR. STANDFAST
to think me harmless. The area of danger would, therefore,
be the passport country, somewhere north of Fort William.
But to follow Gresson I must run risks and enter that
country. His suspicions, if he had any, would be lulled if
I left the boat at Oban, but it was up to me to follow over-
land to the north and hit the place where the Tobermory
made a long stay. The confounded tub had no plans; she
wandered about the West Highlands looking for sheep and
things; and the captain himself could give me no time-table
of her voyage. It was incredible that Gresson should take
all this trouble if he did not know that at some place—and
the right place—he would have time to get a spell ashore.
But I could scarcely ask Gresson for that information,
though I determined to cast a wary fly. over him. I knew
roughly the Tobermory's course—through the Sound of
Islay to Colonsay; then up the east side of Mull to Oban;
then through the Sound of Mull to the islands with names
like cocktails, Rum and Eigg and Coll; then to Skye; and
then for the Outer Hebrides. I thought the last would be
the place, and it seemed madness to leave the boat, for the
Lord knew how I should get across the Minch. This con-
sideration upset all my plans again, and I fell into a troubled
sleep without coming to any conclusion.
Morning found us nosing between Jura and Islay, and
about midday we touched at a little port, where we unloaded
some cargo and took on a couple of shepherds who were
going to Colonsay. The mellow afternoon and the good
smell of salt and heather got rid of the dregs of my queasi-
ness, and I spent a profitable hour on the pier-head with a
guide-book called Baddeley’s Scotland, and one of Bartholo-
mew's maps. I was beginning to think that Amos might
be able to tell me something, for a talk with the captain
had suggested that the Tobermory would not dally long in
the neighbourhood of Rum and Eigg. The big droving
season was scarcely on yet, and sheep for the Oban market
would be lifted on the return journey. In that case Skye
was the first place to watch, and if I could get wind of any


DOINGS IN THE WEST 83
big cargo waiting there I would be able to make a plan.
Amos was somewhere near the Kyle, and that was across
the narrows from Skye. Looking at the map, it seemed to
me that, in spite of being passportless, I might be able
somehow to make my way up through Morvern and Arisaig
to the latitude of Skye. The difficulty would be to get
across the strip of sea, but there must be boats to beg, bor-
row, or steal.
I was poring over Baddeley when Gresson sat down be-
side me. He was in a good temper, and disposed to talk,
and to my surprise his talk was all about the beauties of the
countryside. There was a kind of apple-green light over
everything; the steep heather hills cut into the sky like
purple amethysts, while beyond the straits the western
ocean stretched its pale molten gold to the sunset. Gresson
waxed lyrical over the scene. “This just about puts me
right inside, Mr. Brand. I’ve got to get away from that
little old town pretty frequent or I begin to moult like a
canary. A man feels a man when he gets to a place that
smells as good as this. Why in hell do we ever get messed
up in those stone and lime cages? I reckon some day I'll
pull my freight for a clean location and settle down there
and make little poems. This place would about content me.
And there's a spot out in California in the Coast ranges
that I've been keeping my eye on.” The odd thing was that
I believe he meant it. His ugly face was lit up with a
serious delight. ---
He told me he had taken this voyage before, so I got out
Baddeley and asked for advice. “I can't spend too much
time on holidaying,” I told him, “and I want to see all the
beauty spots. But the best of them seem to be in the area
that this fool British Government won't let you into without
a passport. I suppose I shall have to leave you at Oban.”
“Too bad,” he said sympathetically. “Well, they tell
me there's some pretty sights round Oban.” And he
thumbed the guide-book and began to read about Glencoe.
I said that was not my purpose, and pitched him a yarn


84 MR. STANDFAST
about Prince Charlie and how my mother's great-grand-
father had played some kind of part in that show. I told
him I wanted to see the place where the Prince landed and
where he left for France. “So far as I can make out that
won't take me into the passport country, but I’ll have to do
a bit of footslogging. Well, I'm used to padding the hoof.
I must get the captain to put me off in Morvern, and then
I can foot it round the top of Lochiel and get back to Oban
through Appin. How's that for a holiday trek?”
He gave the scheme his approval. “But if it was me,
Mr. Brand, I would have a shot at puzzling your gallant
policemen. You and I don't take much stock in Govern-
ments and their two-cent laws, and it would be a good game
to see just how far you could get into the forbidden land.
A man like you could put up a good bluff on those hayseeds.
I don't mind having a bet . . . .”
“No,” I said, “I’m out for a rest, and not for sport. If
there was anything to be gained I'd undertake to bluff my
way to the Orkney Islands. But it's a wearing job and I've
better things to think about.”
“So? Well, enjoy yourself your own way. I'll be sorry
when you leave us, for I owe you something for that rough-
house, and beside there's darned little company in the old
moss-back captain.”
That evening Gresson and I swopped yarns after supper
to the accompaniment of the “Ma Goad l’” and “Is’t possi-
ble?” of captain and mate. I went to bed after a glass or
two of weak grog, and made up for the last night's vigil by
falling sound asleep. I had very little kit with me, beyond
what I stood up in and could carry in my waterproof pock-
ets, but on Amos's advice I had brought my little nickel-
plated revolver. This lived by day in my hip pocket, but at
night I put it behind my pillow. But when I woke next
morning to find us casting anchor in a bay below rough low
hills, which I knew to be the island of Colonsay, I could
find no trace of the revolver. I searched every inch of the
bunk and only shook out feathers from the mouldy ticking-


DOINGS IN THE WEST 85
I remembered perfectly putting the thing behind my head
before I went to sleep, and now it had vanished utterly. Of
course I could not advertise my loss, and I didn't greatly
mind it, for this was not a job where I could do much shoot-
ing. But it made me think a good deal about Mr. Gresson.
He simply could not suspect me; if he had bagged my gun,
as I was pretty certain he had, it must be because he wanted
it for himself and not that he might disarm me. Every way
I argued it I reached the same conclusion. In Gresson's
eyes I must seem as harmless as a child.
We spent the better part of a day at Colonsay, and
Gresson, so far as his duties allowed, stuck to me like a
limpet. Before I went ashore I wrote out a telegram for
Amos. I devoted a hectic hour to the Pilgrim's Progress,
but I could not compose any kind of intelligible message with
reference to its text. - We had all the same edition—the one
in the Golden Treasury series—so I could have made up a
sort of cipher by referring to lines and pages, but that would
have taken up a dozen telegraph forms and seemed to me
too elaborate for the purpose. So I sent this message:
“Ochterlong, Post Office, Kyle.
“I hope to spend part of holiday near you and to see
3 ou if boat's programme permits. Are any good cargoes
waiting in your neighbourhood? Reply Post Office, Oban.”
It was highly important that Gresson should not see this,
but it was the deuce of a business to shake him off. I went
for a walk in the afternoon along the shore and passed the
telegraph office, but the confounded fellow was with me all
the time. My only chance was just before we sailed, when
he had to go on board to check some cargo. As the telegraph
office stood full in view of the ship's deck I did not go near
it. But in the back-end of the clachan I found the school-
master, and got him to promise to send the wire. I also
bought off him a couple of well-worn sevenpenny novels.
The result was that I delayed our departure for ten min-


DOINGS IN THE WEST 87
was an automaton, the way a man gets on sentry-go, and I
could have easily hung on till morning. My thoughts ranged
about the earth, beginning with the business I had set out
on, and presently—by way of recollections of Blenkiron and
Peter—reaching the German forest where, in the Christmas
of 1915, I had been nearly done in by fever and old Stumm.
I remembered the bitter cold of that wild race, and the way
the snow seemed to burn like fire when I stumbled and got
my face into it. I reflected that sea-sickness was kitten's
play to a good bout of malaria.
The weather was growing worse, and I was getting more
than spindrift from the seas. I hooked my arm round the
rope, for my fingers were numbing. Then I fell to dream-
ing again, principally about Fosse Manor and Mary Lam-
ington. This so ravished me that I was as good as asleep.
I was trying to reconstruct the picture as I had last seen
her at Biggleswick station. . . .
A heavy body collided with me and shook my arm from
the rope. I slithered across the yard of deck, engulfed in a
whirl of water. One foot caught a stanchion of the rail,
and it gave with me, so that for an instant I was more
than half overboard. But my fingers clawed wildly and
caught in the links of what must have been the anchor
chain. They held, though a ton's weight seemed to be
tugging at my feet. . . . Then the old tub rolled back, the
waters slipped off, and I was sprawling on a wet deck with
no breath in me and a gallon of brine in my windpipe.
I heard a voice cry out sharply, and a hand helped me to
my feet. It was Gresson, and he seemed excited.
“God, Mr. Brand, that was a close call ! I was coming
up to find you, when this damned ship took to lying on her
side. I guess I must have cannoned into you, and I was
calling myself bad names when I saw you rolling into the
Atlantic. If I hadn't got a grip on the rope I would have
been down beside you. Say, you're not hurt? I reckon
you'd better come below and get a glass of rum under your
belt. You're about as wet as mother's dish-clouts.”


88 MR. STANDFAST
There's one advantage about campaigning. You take your
luck when it comes and don't worry about what might have
been. I didn't think any more of the business, except that
it had cured me of wanting to be sea-sick. I went down to
the reeking cabin without one qualm in my stomach, and ate
a good meal of welsh-rabbit and bottled Bass, with a tot of
rum to follow up with. Then I shed my wet garments, and
slept in my bunk till we anchored off a village in Mull in a
clear blue morning.
It took us four days to crawl up that coast and make
Oban, for we seemed to be a floating general store for every
hamlet in those parts. Gresson made himself very pleasant,
as if he wanted to atone for nearly doing me in. We played
some poker, and I read the little books I had got in Colon-
say, and then rigged up a fishing-line, and caught saithe and
lythe and an occasional big haddock. But I found the time
pass slowly, and I was glad when about noon one day we
came into a bay blocked with islands and saw a clean little
town sitting on the hills and the smoke of a railway
engine.
I went ashore and purchased a better brand of hat in a
tweed store. Then I made a bee-line for the post office, and
asked for telegrams. One was given to me and as I
opened it I saw Gresson at my elbow.
It ran thus:
“Brand, Post Office, Oban. Page 117, paragraph 3.
Ochterlony.”
I passed it to Gresson with a rueful face.
“There's a piece of foolishness,” I said. “I’ve got a
cousin who's a Presbyterian minister up in Ross-shire, and
before I knew about this passport humbug I wrote to him
and offered to pay him a visit. I told him to wire me here
if it was convenient, and the old idiot has sent me the wrong
telegram. This was likely as not meant for some brother
parson, who's got my message instead.”


DOINGS IN THE WEST 89
“What's the guy's name?” Gresson asked curiously,
peering at the signature.
“Ochterlony. David Ochterlony. He's a great swell at
writing books, but he's no earthly use at handling the tele-
graph. However, it don't signify, seeing I'm not going near
him.” I crumpled up the pink form and tossed it on the
floor. Gresson and I walked back to the Tobermory
together.
That afternoon, when I got a chance, I had out my
Pilgrim's Progress. Page 117, paragraph 3, read:
“Then I saw in my dream, that a little off the road, over
against the Silver-mine, stood Demas (gentleman-like), to
call to passengers to come and see: who said to Christian
and his fellow, Ho, turn aside hither and I will show you a
thing.”
At tea I led the talk to my own past life. I yarned about
my experiences as a mining engineer, and said I could never
get out of the trick of looking at country with the eye of the
prospector. “For instance,” I said, “if this had been
Rhodesia, I would have said there was a good chance of
copper in these little kopjes above the town. They're not
unlike the hills round the Messina mine.” I told the captain
that after the war I was thinking of turning my attention
to the West Highlands and looking out for minerals.
“Ye'll make nothing of it,” said the captain. “The costs
are ower big, even if ye found the minerals, for ye'd have
to import a' your labour. The West Hielandman is no fond
o' hard work. Ye ken the psalm o' the crofter?
“O that the peats would cut themselves,
The fish chump on the shore,
And that I in my bed might lie
Henceforth for ever more!”
“Has it ever been tried?” I asked.
“Often. There's marble and slate quarries, and there
was word o' coal in Benbecula. And there's the iron mines
at Ranna.”


90 MR. STANDFAST
“Where’s that?” I asked.
“Up forenent Skye. We call in there, and generally bide
a bit. There's a heap of cargo for Ranna, and we usually
get a good load back. But as I tell ye, there's few Hieland-
ers working there. Mostly Irish and lads frae Fife and
Falkirk way.”
I didn't pursue the subject, for I had found Demas's
silver-mine. If the Tobermory lay at Ranna for a week,
Gresson would have time to do his own private business.
Ranna would not be the spot, for the island was bare to the
world in the middle of a much-frequented channel. But
Skye was just across the way, and when I looked in my
map at its big, wandering peninsulas I concluded that my
guess had been right, and that Skye was the place to make
for.
That night I sat on deck with Gresson, and in a wonderful
starry silence we watched the lights die out of the houses
in the town, and talked of a thousand things. I noticed—
what I had had a hint of before—that my companion was
no common man. There were moments when he forgot
himself and talked like an educated gentleman: then he
would remember, and relapse into the lingo of Leadville,
Colorado. In my character of the ingenuous inquirer I set
him posers about politics and economics, the kind of thing I
might have been supposed to pick up from unintelligent
browsing among little books. Generally he answered with
some slangy catchword, but occasionally he was interested
beyond his discretion, and treated me to a harangue like an
equal. I discovered another thing, that he had a craze for
poetry, and a capacious memory for it. I forget how we
drifted into the subject, but I remember he quoted some
queer haunting stuff which he said was Swinburne, and
verses by people I had heard of from Letchford at Big-
gleswick. Then he saw by my silence that he had gone too
far, and fell back into the jargon of the West. He wanted
to know about my plans, and we went down into the cabin
and had a look at the map. I explained my route, up


DOINGS IN THE WEST 91
Morvern and round the head of Lochiel, and back to Oban
by the east side of Loch Linnhe.
“Got you,” he said. “You’ve a hell of a walk before
you. That bug never bit me, and I guess I'm not envying
you any. And after that, Mr. Brand?”
“Back to Glasgow to do some work for the cause,” I
said lightly.
“Just so,” he said, with a grin. “It’s a great life if you
don't weaken.”
We steamed out of the bay next morning at dawn, and
about nine o'clock I got on shore at a little place called
Lochaline. My kit was all on my person, and my water-
proof's pockets were stuffed with chocolates and biscuits I
had bought in Oban. The captain was discouraging. “Ye'll
get your bellyful o' Hieland hills, Mr. Brand, afore ye win
round the Loch head. Ye'll be wishin' yerself back on the
Tobermory.” But Gresson speeded me joyfully on my way,
and said he wished he were coming with me. He even
accompanied me the first hundred yards, and waved his
hat after me till I was round the turn of the road.
The first stage in that journey was pure delight. I was
thankful to be rid of the infernal boat, and the hot summer
scents coming down the glen were comforting after the cold,
salt smell of the sea. The road lay up the side of a small
bay, at the top of which a big white house stood among
gardens. Presently I had left the coast and was in a glen
where a brown salmon-river swirled through acres of bog-
myrtle. It had its source in a loch, from which the moun-
tain rose steeply—a place so glassy in that August forenoon
that every scaur and wrinkle of the hillside were faithfully
reflected. After that I crossed a low pass to the head of
another sea-loch, and, following the map, struck over the
shoulder of a great hill and ate my luncheon far up on its
side, with a wonderful vista of wood and water below me.
All that morning I was very happy, not thinking about
Gresson or Ivery, but getting my mind clear in those wide
spaces, and my lungs filled with the brisk hill air. But I


92 MR. STANDFAST
noticed one curious thing. On my last visit to Scotland,
when I covered more moorland miles a day than any man
since Claverhouse, I had been fascinated by the land, and
had pleased myself with plans for settling down in it. But
now, after three years of war and general racketing, I felt
less drawn to that kind of landscape. I wanted something
more green and peaceful and habitable, and it was to the
Cotswolds that my memory turned with longing.
I puzzled over this till I realised that in all my Cotswold
pictures a figure kept going and coming—a young girl with
a cloud of gold hair and the strong, slim grace of a boy,
who had sung “Cherry Ripe" in a moonlit garden. Up on
that hillside I understood very clearly that I, who had been
as careless of women as any monk, had fallen wildly in love
with a child of half my age. I was loath to admit it,
though for weeks the conclusion had been forcing itself on
me. Not that I didn't revel in my madness, but that it
seemed too hopeless a business, and I had no use for barren
philandering. But, seated on a rock munching chocolate and
biscuits, I faced up to the fact and resolved to trust my
luck. After all we were comrades in a big job, and it was
up to me to be man enough to win her. The thought seemed
to brace any courage that was in me. No task seemed too
hard with her approval to gain and her companionship
somewhere at the back of it. I sat for a long time in a
happy dream, remembering all the glimpses I had had of
her, and humming her song to an audience of one black-
faced sheep.
On the highroad half a mile below me, I saw a figure
on a bicycle mounting the hill, and then getting off to mop
its face at the summit. I turned my Zeiss glasses on to it,
and observed that it was a country policeman. It caught
sight of me, stared for a bit, tucked its machine into the
side of the road, and then very slowly began to climb the
hillside. Once it stopped, waved its hand and shouted
something which I could not hear. I sat finishing my
luncheon, till the features were revealed to me of a fat,


DOINGS IN THE WEST 93
oldish man, blowing like a grampus, his cap well on the
back of a bald head, and his trousers tied about the shins
with string.
There was a spring beside me and I had out my flask to
round off my meal.
“Have a drink,” I said.
His eye brightened, and a smile overran his moist face.
“Thank you, sir. It will be very warrm coming up the
brae.”
“You oughtn't to,” I said. “You really oughtn't, you
know. Scorching up hills and then doubling up a mountain
are not good for your time of life.”
He raised the cap of my flask in solemn salutation.
“Your very good health.” Then he smacked his lips, and
had several cupfuls of water from the spring.
“You will haf come from Achranich way, maybe?” he
said in his soft sing-song, having at last found his breath.
“Just so. Fine weather for the birds, if there was any-
body to shoot them.”
“Ach, no. There will be few shots fired to-day, for there
are no gentlemen left in Morvern. But I wass asking you,
if you come from Achranich, if you haſ seen anybody on the
road.”
From his pocket he extricated a brown envelope and a
bulky telegraph form. “Will you read it, sir, for I haf
forgot my spectacles?”
It contained a description of one Brand, a South African
and a suspected character, whom the police were warned to
stop and return to Oban. The description wasn't bad, but
it lacked any one good distinctive detail. Clearly the police-
man took me for an innocent pedestrian, probably the guest
of some moorland shooting-box, with my brown face and
rough tweeds and hob-nailed shoes. -
I frowned and puzzled a little. “I did see a fellow
about three miles back on the hillside. There's a public-
house just where the burn comes in, and I think he was
making for it. Maybe that was your man. This wire says


94. MR. STANDFAST
“South African '; and now I remember the fellow had the
look of a colonial.”
The policeman sighed. “No doubt it will be the man.
Perhaps he will haſ a pistol and will shoot.”
“Not him,” I laughed. “He looked a mangy sort of
chap, and he'll be scared out of his senses at the sight of
you. But take my advice and get somebody with you before
you tackle him. You're always the better of a witness.”
“That's so,” he said, brightening. “Ach, these are the
bad times' In old days there wass nothing to do but watch
the doors at the flower-shows and keep the yachts from
poaching the sea-trout. But now it is spies, spies, and
‘Donald, get out of your bed, and go off twenty mile to
find a German.’ I wass wishing the war wass by, and the
Germans all dead.”
“Hear, hear!” I cried, and on the strength of it gave
him another dram.
I accompanied him to the road, and saw him mount his
bicycle and zig-zag like a snipe down the hill towards Ach-
ranich. Then I set off briskly northward. It was clear
that the faster I moved the better.
As I went I paid disgusted tribute to the efficiency of
the Scottish police. I wondered how on earth they had
marked me down. Perhaps it was the Glasgow meeting,
or perhaps my association with Ivery at Biggleswick. Any-
how there was somebody somewhere mighty quick at com-
piling a dossier. Unless I wanted to be bundled back to
Oban I must make good speed to the Arisaig coast.
Presently the road fell to a gleaming sea-loch which lay
like the blue blade of a sword among the purple of the
hills. At the head there was a tiny clachan, nestled among
birches and rowans, where a tawny burn wound to the sea.
When I entered the place it was about four o'clock in the
afternoon, and peace lay on it like a garment. In the wide,
sunny street there was no sign of life, and no sound except
of hens clucking and of bees busy among the roses. There
was a little grey box of a kirk, and close to the bridge a


DOINGS IN THE WEST 95
thatched cottage which bore the sign of a post and telegraph
office.
For the past hour I had been considering that I had bet-
ter prepare for mishaps. If the police of these parts had
been warned they might prove too much for me, and Gres-
son would be allowed to make his journey unwatched. The
only thing to do was to send a wire to Amos and leave
the matter in his hands. Whether that was possible or not
depended upon this remote postal authority.
I entered the little shop, and passed from bright sunshine
to a twilight smelling of paraffin and black-striped pepper-
mint balls. An old woman with a mutch sat in an arm-chair
behind the counter. She looked up at me over her spectacles
and smiled, and I took to her on the instant. She had the
kind of old wise face that God loves.
Beside her I noticed a little pile of books, one of which
was a Bible. Open on her lap was a paper, the United
Free Church Monthly. I noticed these details greedily, for
I had to make up my mind on the part to play.
“It’s a warm day, mistress,” I said, my voice falling into
the broad Lowland speech, for I had an instinct that she
was not of the Highlands. t
She laid aside her paper. “It is that, sir. It is grand
weather for the hairst, but here that’s no till the hinner end
o' September, and at the best it's a bit scart o'aits.”
“Ay. It's a different thing down Annandale way,” I
said.
Her face lit up. “Are you from Dumfries, sir?”
“Not just from Dumfries, but I know the Borders
fine.”
“Ye'll no beat them,” she cried. “Not that this is no a
guid place and I’ve muckle to be thankfu' for since John
Sanderson—that was ma man—brocht me here forty-seeven
year syne come Martinmas. But the aulder I get the mair
I think o' the bit whaur I was born. It was twae miles
from Wamphray on the Lockerbie road, but they tell me the
place is noo just a rickle o' stanes.”


96 MR. STANDFAST
“I was wondering, mistress, if I could get a cup of tea
in the village.”
“Ye'll hae a cup wi' me,” she said. “It’s no often we
see onybody frae the Borders hereaways. The kettle's just
on the boil.” -
She gave me tea and Scones and butter, and black-currant
jam, and treacle biscuits that melted in the mouth. And as
we ate we talked of many things—chiefly of the war and
of the wickedness of the world.
“There's nae lads left here,” she said. “They a' joined
the Camerons, and the feck o' them fell at an awful place
called Lowse. John and me never had no boys, jist the one
lassie that's married on Donald Frew, the Strontian carrier.
I used to vex mysel’ about it, but now I thank the Lord that
in His mercy He spared me sorrow. But I wad hae liked
to have had one laddie fechtin' for his country. I whiles
wish I was a Catholic and could pit up prayers for the
sodgers that are deid. It maun be a great consolation.”
I whipped out the Pilgrim's Progress from my pocket.
“That is the grand book for a time like this.”
“Fine I ken it,” she said. “I got it for a prize in the
Sabbath School when I was a lassie.”
I turned the pages. I read out a passage or two, and then
I seemed struck with a sudden memory.
“This is a telegraph office, mistress. Could I trouble
you to send a telegram? You see I’ve a cousin that's a
minister in Ross-shire at the Kyle, and him and me are
great correspondents. He was writing about something in
the Pilgrim's Progress and I think I'll send him a telegram
in answer.”
“A letter would be cheaper,” she said.
“Ay, but I'm on holiday and I've no time for writing.”
She gave me a form, and I wrote:
“Ochterlony. Post Office, Kyle.—Demas will be at his
mine within the week. Strive with him, lest I faint by the
P-
way.


DOINGS IN THE WEST 97
“Ye're unco lavish wi' the words, sir,” was her only
comment.
We parted with regret, and there was nearly a row when
I tried to pay for the tea. I was bidden remember her to
one Davie Tudhope, farmer in Nether Mirecleuch, the
next time I passed by Wamphray.
The village was as quiet when I left it as when I had
entered. I took my way up the hill with an easier mind, for
I had got off the telegram, and I hoped I had covered my
tracks. My friend the postmistress would, if questioned,
be unlikely to recognise any South African suspect in the
frank and homely traveller who had spoken with her of
Annandale and the Pilgrim's Progress.
The soft mulberry gloaming of the west coast was begin-
ning to fall on the hills. I hoped to put in a dozen miles
before dark to the next village on the map, where I might
find quarters. But ere I had gone far I heard the sound
of a motor behind me, and a car slipped past bearing three
men. The driver favoured me with a sharp glance, and
clapped on the brakes. I noted that the two men in the
tonneau were carrying sporting rifles.
“Hi, you sir,” he cried. “Come here.” The two rifle-
bearers—solemn gillies—brought their weapons to attention.
“By God,” he said, “it’s the man. What's your name?
Keep him covered, Angus.” The gillies duly covered me,
and I did not like the look of their wavering barrels. They
were obviously as surprised as myself.
I had about half a second to make my plans. I advanced
with a very stiff air, and asked him what the devil he meant.
No Lowland Scots for me now. My tone was that of an
adjutant of a Guard's battalion.
My inquisitor was a tall man in an ulster, with a green
felt hat on his small head. He had a lean, well-bred face
and very choleric blue eyes. I set him down as a soldier,
retired, Highland regiment or cavalry, old style.
He produced a telegraph form, like the policeman.
“Middle height—strongly built—grey tweeds—brown hat


98 MR. STANDFAST
—speaks with a colonial accent—much sunburnt. What's
your name, sir?”
I did not reply in a colonial accent, but with the hauteur
of the British officer when stopped by a French sentry. I
asked him again what the devil he had to do with my busi-
ness. This made him angry and he began to stammer.
“I’ll teach you what I have to do with it. I'm a deputy-
lieutenant of this county, and I have Admiralty instructions
to watch the coast. Damn it, sir I've a wire here from the
Chief Constable describing you. You're Brand, a very
dangerous fellow, and we want to know what the devil
you're doing here.”
As I looked at his wrathful eye and lean head, which could
not have held much brains, I saw that I must change my
tone. If I irritated him he would get nasty and refuse to
listen and hang me up for hours. So my voice became
respectful.
“I beg your pardon, sir, but I've not been accustomed to
be pulled up suddenly and asked for my credentials. My
name is Blaikie, Captain Robert Blaikie, of the Scots Fusi-
liers. I'm home on three weeks' leave, to get a little peace
after Hooge. We were only hauled out five days ago.” I
hoped my old friend in the shell-shock hospital at Isham
would pardon my borrowing his identity.
The man looked puzzled. “How the devil am I to be
satisfied about that? Have you any papers to prove it?”
“Why, no. I don't carry passports about with me on a
walking tour. But you can wire to the depot, or to my
London address.”
He pulled at his yellow moustache. “I’m hanged if I
know what to do. I want to get home for dinner. I tell
you what, sir, I'll take you on with me and put you up for
the night. My boy's at home, convalescing, and if he says
you're pukka I'll ask your pardon and give you a dashed
good bottle of port. I'll trust him, and I warn you he's a
keen hand.”
There was nothing to do but consent, and I got in beside
-


DOINGS IN THE WEST 99
him with an uneasy conscience. Supposing the son knew
the real Blaikiel I asked the name of the boy's battalion,
and was told the Ioth Seaforths. That wasn't pleasant
hearing, for they had been brigaded with us on the Somme.
But Colonel Broadbury—for he told me his name—volun-
teered another piece of news which set my mind at rest.
The boy was not yet twenty, and had only been out seven
months. At Arras he had got a bit of shrapnel in his thigh,
which had played the deuce with the sciatic nerve, and he
was still on crutches.
We spun over ridges of moorland, always keeping north-
ward, and brought up at a pleasant whitewashed house
close to the sea. Colonel Broadbury ushered me into a hall
where a small fire of peats was burning, and on a couch
beside it lay a slim, pale-faced young man. He had dropped
his policeman's manner, and behaved like a gentleman.
“Ted,” he said, “I’ve brought a friend home for the night.
I went out to look for a suspect and found a British officer.
This is Captain Blaikie, of the Scots Fusiliers.”
The boy looked at me pleasantly. “I’m very glad to meet
you, sir. You'll excuse me not getting up, but I've got a
game leg.” He was the copy of his father in features, but
dark and sallow where the other was blond. He had just
the same narrow head, and stubborn mouth, and honest,
quick-tempered eyes. It is the type that makes dashing
regimental officers, and earns V.C.’s, and gets done in
wholesale. I was never that kind. I belonged to the school
of the cunning cowards.
In the half-hour before dinner the last wisp of suspicion
fled from my host's mind. For Ted Broadbury and I were
immediately deep in “shop.” I had met most of his senior
officers, and I knew all about their doings at Arras, for his
brigade had been across the river on my left. We fought
the great fight over again, and yarned about technicalities
and slanged the Staff in the way young officers have, the
father throwing in questions that showed how mighty proud
he was of his son. I had a bath before dinner, and as he


100 MR. STANDFAST
led me to the bathroom he apologised very handsomely for
his bad manners. “Your coming's been a godsend for Ted.
He was moping a bit in this place. And, though I say it
that shouldn't, he's a dashed good boy.”
I had my promised bottle of port, and after dinner I took
on the father at billiards. Then we settled in the smoking-
room, and I laid myself out to entertain the pair. The
result was that they would have me stay a week, but I spoke
of the shortness of my leave, and said I must get on to the
railway and then back to Fort William for my luggage.
So I spent that night between clean sheets, and ate a
Christian breakfast, and was given my host's car to set me a
bit on the road. I dismissed it after half a dozen miles, and,
following the map, struck over the hills to the west. About
midday I topped a ridge, and beheld the Sound of Sleat shin-
ing beneath me. There were other things in the landscape.
In the valley on the right a long goods train was crawling
on the Mallaig railway. And across the strip of sea, like
some fortress of the old gods, rose the dark bastions and
turrets of the hills of Skye.


CHAPTER VI
THE SKIRTS OF THE COOLIN
O BVIOUSLY I must keep away from the railway. If
the police were after me in Morvern, that line would
be warned, for it was a barrier I must cross if I were to go
farther north. I observed from the map that it turned up
the coast, and concluded that the place for me to make for
was the shore south of that turn, where Heaven might send
me some luck in the boat line. For I was pretty certain that
every porter and station-master on that tin-pot outfit was
anxious to make better acquaintance with my humble self.
I lunched off the sandwiches the Broadburys had given
me, and in the bright afternoon made my way down the hill,
crossed at the foot of a small fresh-water lochan, and pur-
sued the issuing stream through midge-infested woods of
hazels to its junction with the sea. It was rough going, but
very pleasant, and I fell into the same mood of idle con-
tentment that I had enjoyed the previous morning. I never
met a soul. Sometimes a roe deer broke out of the covert,
or an old blackcock startled me with his scolding. The place
was bright with heather, still in its first bloom, and smelt
better than the myrrh of Arabia. It was a blessed glen, and
I was as happy as a king, till I began to feel the coming of
hunger, and reflected that the Lord alone knew when I
might get a meal. I had still some chocolate and biscuits,
but I wanted something substantial.
The distance was greater than I thought, and it was
already twilight when I reached the coast. The shore was
open and desolate—great banks of pebbles to which straggled
alders and hazels from the hillside scrub. But as I marched
101


102 MR. STANDFAST
northward and turned a little point of land I saw before me
in a crook of the bay a smoking cottage. And, plodding
along by the water's edge, was the bent figure of a man,
laden with nets and lobster pots. Also, beached on the
shingle was a boat,
I quickened my pace and overtook the fisherman. He was
an old man with a ragged grey beard, and his rig was sea-
man's boots and a much-darned blue jersey. He was deaf,
and did not hear me when I hailed him. When he caught
sight of me he never stopped, though he very solemnly re-
turned my good evening. I fell into step with him, and in
his silent company reached the cottage.
He halted before the door and unslung his burdens. The
place was a two-roomed building with a roof of thatch, and
the walls all grown over with a yellow-flowered creeper.
When he had straightened his back, he looked seaward and
at the sky, as if to prospect the weather. Then he turned
on me his gentle, absorbed eyes. “It will haſ been a fine
day, sir. Wass you seeking the road to anywhere?”
“I was seeking a night's lodging,” I said. “I’ve had a
long tramp on the hills, and I’d be glad of a chance of not
going farther.”
“We will haſ no accommodation for a gentleman,” he
said gravely.
“I can sleep on the floor, if you can give me a blanket
and a bite of supper.”
“Indeed you will not,” and he smiled slowly. “But I
will ask the wife. Mary, come here!”
An old woman appeared in answer to his call, a woman
whose face was so old that she seemed like his mother. In
highland places one sex ages quicker than the other.
“This gentleman would like to bide the night. I wass
telling him that we had a poor small house, but he says he
will not be minding it.”
She looked at me with the timid politeness that you find
only in outland places.
“We can do our best, indeed, sir. The gentleman can


THE SKIRTS OF THE COOLIN 103
have Colin's bed in the loft, but he will haf to be doing
with plain food. Supper is ready if you will come in now.”
I had a scrub with a piece of yellow soap at an adjacent
pool in the burn and then entered a kitchen blue with peat-
reek. We had a meal of boiled fish, oatcakes and skim-milk
cheese, with cups of strong tea to wash it down. The old
folk had the manners of princes. They pressed food on
me, and asked me no questions, till for very decency's sake
I had to put up a story and give some account of myself.
I found they had a son in the Argylls and a younger boy
in the Navy. But they seemed disinclined to talk of them
or of the war. By a mere accident I hit on the old man's
absorbing interest. He was passionate about the land. He
had taken part in long-forgotten agitations, and had suffered
eviction in some ancient landlords' quarrel farther north.
Presently he was pouring out to me all the woes of the
crofter—woes that seemed so antediluvian and forgotten
that I listened as one would listen to an old song. “You
who come from a new country will not haſ heard of these
things,” he kept telling me, but by that peat fire I made
up for my defective education. He told me of evictions in
the year. One somewhere in Sutherland, and of harsh
doings in the Outer Isles. It was far more than a political
grievance. It was the lament of the conservative for van-
ished days and manners. “Over in Skye wass the fine
land for black cattle, and every man had his bit herd on the
hillside. But the lairds said it wass better for sheep, and
then they said it wass not good for sheep, so they put it
under deer, and now there is no black cattle anywhere in
Skye.” I tell you it was like sad music on the bagpipes hear-
ing that old fellow. The war and all things modern meant
nothing to him; he lived among the tragedies of his youth
and his prime.
I'm a Tory myself and a bit of a land-reformer, so we
agreed well enough. So well, that I got what I wanted with-
out asking for it. I told him I was going to Skye, and he
offered to take me over in his boat in the morning. “It will


104 MR. STANDFAST
be no trouble. Indeed no. I will be going that way myself
to the fishing.”
I told him that after the war every acre of British soil
would have to be used for the men that had earned the
right to it. But that did not comfort him. He was not
thinking about the land itself, but about the men who had
been driven from it fifty years before. His desire was not
for reform, but for restitution, and that was past the power
of any Government. I went to bed in the loft in a sad,
; reflective mood, considering how in speeding our new-
fangled plough we must break down a multitude of molehills
and how desirable and unreplaceable was the life of the
moles.
In brisk, shining weather, with a wind from the south-
east, we put off next morning. In front was a brown line
of low hills, and behind them, a little to the north, that
black toothcomb of mountain which I had seen the day
before from the Arisaig ridge.
“That is the Coolin,” said the fisherman. “It is a bad
place where even the deer cannot go. But all the rest of
Skye wass the fine land for black cattle.”
As we neared the coast, he pointed out many places.
“Look there, sir, in that glen. I haf seen six cot houses
smoking there, and now there is not any left. There were
three men of my own name had crofts on the machars be-
yond the point, and if you go there you will only find the
marks of their bit gardens. You will know the place by
the gean trees.”
When he put me ashore in a sandy bay between green
ridges of bracken, he was still harping upon the past. I got
him to take a pound—for the boat and not for the night's
hospitality, for he would have beaten me with an oar if I
had suggested that. The last I saw of him, as I turned
round at the top of the hill, he had still his sail down, and
was gazing at the lands which had once been full of human
dwellings and now were desolate.
I kept for a while along the ridge, with the Sound of


THE SKIRTS OF THE COOLIN I05
Sleat on my right, and beyond it the high hills of Knoydart
and Kintail. I was watching for the Tobermory, but saw
no sign of her. A steamer put out from Mallaig, and there
were several drifters crawling up the channel, and once I
saw the white ensign and a destroyer bustled northward,
leaving a cloud of black smoke in her wake. Then, after
consulting the map, I struck across country, still keeping
the higher ground, but, except at odd minutes, being out of
sight of the sea. I concluded that my business was to get
to the latitude of Ranna without wasting time.
So soon as I changed my course I had the Coolin for com-
pany. Mountains have always been a craze of mine, and
the blackness and mystery of those grim peaks went to my
head. I forgot all about Fosse Manor and the Cotswolds.
I forgot, too, what had been my chief feeling since I left
Glasgow, a sense of the absurdity of my mission. It had
all seemed too far-fetched and whimsical. I was running
apparently no great personal risk, and I had always the
unpleasing fear that Blenkiron might have been too clever
and that the whole thing might be a mare's nest. But that
dark mountain mass changed my outlook. I began to have
a queer instinct that that was the place, that something
might be concealed there, something pretty damnable. I
remember I sat on a top for half an hour raking the hills
with my glasses. I made out ugly precipices, and glens
which lost themselves in primeval blackness. When the sun
caught them—for it was a gleamy day—it brought out no
colours, only degrees of shade. No mountains I had ever
seen—not the Drakensberg or the red kopjes of Damara-
land or the cold, white peaks around Erzerum—ever looked
so unearthly and uncanny.
Oddly enough, too, the sight of them set me thinking
about Ivery. There seemed no link between a smooth,
sedentary being, dwelling in villas and lecture-rooms, and
that shaggy tangle of precipices. But I felt there was, for I
had begun to realise the bigness of my opponent. Blen-
kiron had said that he spun his web wide. That was intelli-


106 MR. STANDFAST
gible enough among the half-baked youth of Biggleswick,
and the pacificist societies, or even the toughs on the Clyde.
I could fit him in all right to that picture. But that he
should be playing his game among those mysterious black
crags seemed to make him bigger and more desperate, alto-
gether a different kind of proposition. I didn't exactly
dislike the idea, for my objection to my past weeks had been
that I was out of my proper job, and this was more my
line of country. I always felt that I was a better bandit
than a detective. But a sort of awe mingled with my satis-
faction. I began to feel about Ivery as I had felt about the
three devils of the Black Stone who had hunted me before
the war, and as I never felt about any other Hun. The men
we fought at the Front and the men I had run across in
the Greenmantle business, even old Stumm himself, had been
human miscreants. They were formidable enough, but you
could gauge and calculate their capacities. But this Ivery
was like a poison gas that hung in the air and got into
unexpected crannies and that you couldn't fight in an up-
standing way. Till then, in spite of Blenkiron's solemnity, I
had regarded him simply as a problem. But now he seemed
an intimate and omnipresent enemy, intangible, too, as the
horror of a haunted house. Up on that sunny hillside, with
the sea winds round me and the whaups calling, I got a chill
in my spine when I thought of him.
I am ashamed to confess it, but I was also horribly
hungry. There was something about the war that made me
ravenous, and the less chance of food the worse I felt.
If I had been in London with twenty restaurants open to
me, I should as likely as not have gone off my feed. That
was the cussedness of my stomach. I had still a little
chocolate left, and I ate the fisherman's buttered scones for
luncheon, but long before the evening my thoughts were
dwelling on my empty interior.
I put up that night in a shepherd's cottage miles from
anywhere. The man was called Macmorran, and he had
come from Galloway when sheep were booming. He was a


THE SKIRTS OF THE COOLIN 107
very good imitation of a savage, a little fellow with red hair
and red eyes, who might have been a Pict. He lived with a
daughter who had once been in service in Glasgow, a fat
young woman with a face entirely covered with freckles and
a pout of habitual discontent. No wonder, for that cottage
was a pretty mean place. It was so thick with peat-reek
that throat and eyes were always smarting. It was badly
built, and must have leaked like a sieve in a storm. The
father was a surly fellow, whose conversation was one long
growl at the world, the high prices, the difficulty of moving
his sheep, the meanness of his master, and the god-forsaken
character of Skye. “Here's me no seen baker's bread for a
month, and no company but a wheen ignorant Hielanders
that yatter Gawlic. I wish I was back in the Glenkens. And
I’d gang the morn if I could get paid what I’m awed.”
However, he gave me supper—a braxy ham and oatcake,
and I bought the remnants off him for use next day. I did
not trust his blankets, so I slept the night by the fire in the
ruins of an arm-chair, and woke at dawn with a foul taste
in my mouth. A dip in the burn refreshed me, and after a
bowl of porridge I took the road again. For I was anxious
to get to some hill-top that looked over to Ranna.
Before midday I was close under the eastern side of the
Coolin, on a road which was more a rockery than a path.
Presently I saw a big house ahead of me that looked like
an inn, so I gave it a miss and struck the highway that led
to it a little farther north. Then I bore off to the east, and
was just beginning to climb a hill which I judged stood
between me and the sea, when I heard wheels on the road
and looked back.
It was a farmer's gig carrying one man. I was about
half a mile off, and something in the cut of his jib seemed
familiar. I got my glasses on him and made out a short,
stout figure clad in a mackintosh, with a woollen comforter
round its throat. As I watched, it made a movement as if
to rub its nose on its sleeve. That was the pet trick of one
man I knew. Inconspicuously I slipped through the long


/
J.08 MR. STANDFAST
heather so as to reach the road ahead of the gig. When I
rose like a wraith from the wayside the horse started, but
not the driver.
“So ye're there,” said Amos's voice. “I’ve news for ye.
The Tobermory will be in Ranna by now. She passed
Broadford two hours syne. When I saw her I yoked this
beast and came up on the chance of foregathering with ye.”
“How on earth did you know I would be here?” I asked
in some surprise.
“Oh, I saw the way your mind was workin' from your
telegram. And says I to mysel'—that man Brand, says I,
is not the chiel to be easy stoppit. But I was feared ye
might be a day late, so I came up the road to hold the fort.
Man, I'm glad to see ye. Ye're younger and soopler than
me, and yon Gresson's a stirrin' lad.”
“There's one thing you've got to do for me,” I said. “I
can't go into inns and shops, but I can't do without food. I
see from the map there's a town about six miles on. Go
there and buy me anything that's tinned—biscuits and
tongue and sardines, and a couple of bottles of whisky if you
can get them. This may be a long job, so buy plenty.”
“Whaur'il I put them?” was his only question.
We fixed on a cache, a hundred yards from the highway
in a place where two ridges of hill enclosed the view so that
only a short bit of road was visible. “I’ll get back to the
Kyle,” he told me, “and a'body there kens Andra Amos, if
ye should find a way of sendin' a message or comin' your-
self. Oh, and I’ve got a word to ye from a lady that we
ken of. She says, the sooner ye're back in Vawnity Fair
the better she'll be pleased, always provided ye’ve got over
the Hill Difficulty.”
A smile screwed up his old face and he waved his whip
in farewell. I interpreted Mary's message as an incitement
to speed, but I could not make the pace. That was Gresson's
business. I think I was a little nettled, till I cheered myself
by another interpretation. She might be anxious for my
safety, she might want to see me again, anyhow the mere


THE SKIRTS OF THE COOLIN 109
sending of the message showed I was not forgotten. I was
in a pleasant muse as I breasted the hill, keeping discreetly
in the cover of the many gullies. At the top I looked
down on Ranna and the sea.
There lay the Tobermory busy unloading. It would be
some time, no doubt, before Gresson could leave. There
was no row-boat in the channel yet, and I might have to
wait hours. I settled myself snugly between two rocks,
where I could not be seen, and where I had a clear view of
sea and shore. But presently I found that I wanted some
long heather to make a couch, and I emerged to get some.
I had not raised my head for a second when I flopped down
again. For I had a neighbour on the hill-top.
He was about two hundred yards off, just reaching the
crest, and, unlike me, walking quite openly. His eyes were
on Ranna, so he did not notice me, but from my cover I
scanned every line of him. He looked an ordinary country-
man, wearing badly cut, baggy knickerbockers of the kind
that gillies affect. He had a face like a Portuguese Jew,
but I had seen that type before among people with High-
land names; they might be Jews or not, but they could
speak Gaelic. Presently he disappeared. He had followed
my example and selected a hiding-place.
It was a clear, hot day, but very pleasant in that airy
place. Good scents came up from the sea, the heather was
warm and fragrant, bees droned about, and stray seagulls
swept the ridge with their wings. I took a look now and
then towards my neighbour, but he was deep in his hidy-
hole. Most of the time I kept my glasses on Ranna, and
watched the doings of the Tobermory. She was tied up at
the jetty, but seemed in no hurry to unload. I watched the
captain disembark and walk up to a house on the hillside.
Then some idlers sauntered down towards her and stood
talking and smoking close to her side. The captain re-
turned, and left again. A man with papers in his hand
appeared, and a woman with what looked like a telegram.
The mate went ashore in his best clothes. Then at last,


THE SKIRTS OF THE COOLIN 111
course of which sheep had made a track, and which kept me
well below the level of the moor. It took me down the hill,
but some distance from the line the pair were taking, and
I had to reconnoitre frequently to watch their movements.
They were still a quarter of a mile or so from the road,
when they stopped and stared, and I stared with them. On
that lonely highway travellers were about as rare as road-
menders, and what caught their eye was a farmer's gig
driven by a thick-set elderly man with a woollen comforter
round his neck.
I had a bad moment, for I reckoned that if Gresson
recognised Amos he might take fright. Perhaps the driver
of the gig thought the same, for he appeared to be very
drunk. He waved his whip, he jiggoted the reins, and he
made an effort to sing. He looked towards the figures on
the hillside, and cried out something. The gig narrowly
missed the ditch, and then to my relief the horse bolted.
Swaying like a ship in a gale, the whole outfit lurched out
of sight round the corner of hill where lay my cache. If
Amos could stop the beast and deliver the goods there, he
had put up a masterly bit of buffoonery.
The two men laughed at the performance, and then they
parted. Gresson retraced his steps up the hill. The other
man—I called him in my mind the Portuguese Jew—started
off at a great pace due west, across the road, and over a
big patch of bog towards the northern butt of the Coolin.
He had some errand, which Gresson knew about, and he
was in a hurry to perform it. It was clearly my job to
get after him.
I had a rotten afternoon. The fellow covered the moor-
Iand miles like a deer, and under the hot August sun I toiled
on his trail. I had to keep well behind, and as much as
possible in cover, in case he looked back; and that meant
that when he had passed over a ridge I had to double not
to let him get too far ahead, and when we were in an open
place I had to make wide circuits to keep hidden. We
struck a road which crossed a low pass and skirted the flank


112 MR. STANDFAST
of the mountains, and this we followed till we were on the
western side and within sight of the sea. It was gorgeous
weather, and out on the blue water I saw cool sails moving
and little breezes ruffling the calm, while I was glowing like
a furnace. Happily I was in fair training, and I needed it.
The Portuguese Jew must have done a steady six miles an
hour over abominable country.
About five o'clock we came to a point where I dared not
follow. The road ran flat by the edge of the sea, so that
several miles of it were visible. Moreover, the man had
begun to look round every few minutes. He was getting
near something and wanted to be sure that no one was in
his neighbourhood. I left the road accordingly, and took
to the hillside, which to my undoing was one long cascade
of screes and tumbled rocks. I saw him drop over a rise
which seemed to mark the rim of a little bay into which
descended one of the big corries of the mountains. It must
have been a good half-hour later before I at my greater
altitude, and with far worse going, reached the same rim.
I looked into the glen and my man had disappeared.
He could not have crossed it, for the place was wider
than I had thought. A ring of black precipices came down
to within half a mile of the shore, and between them was a
big stream—long, shallow pools at the sea end and a chain
of waterfalls above. He had gone to earth like a badger
somewhere, and I dared not move in case he might be
watching me from behind a boulder.
But even as I hesitated he appeared again, fording the
stream, his face set on the road we had come. Whatever
his errand was he had finished it, and was posting back to
his master. For a moment I thought I should follow him,
but another instinct prevailed. He had not come to this wild
place for the scenery. Somewhere down in that glen there
was something or somebody that held the key of the mys-
tery. It was my business to stay there till I had unlocked
it. Besides, in two hours it would be dark, and I had had
enough walking for one day.


THE SKIRTS OF THE COOLIN 113
I made my way to the stream side and had a long drink.
The corrie behind me was lit up with the western sun, and
the bald cliffs were flushed with pink and gold. On each
side of the stream was turf like a lawn, perhaps a hundred
yards wide, and then a tangle of long heather and boulders
right up to the edge of the great rocks. I had never seen a
more delectable evening, but I could not enjoy its peace be-
cause of my anxiety about the Portuguese Jew. He had not
been there more than half an hour, just about long enough
for a man to travel to the first ridge across the burn and
back. Yet he had found time to do his business. He might
have left a letter in some prearranged place—in which case
I would stay there till the man it was meant for turned up.
Or he might have met someone, though I didn't think that
possible. As I scanned the acres of rough moor and then
looked at the sea lapping delicately on the grey sand I had
the feeling that a knotty problem was before me. It was
too dark to try to track his steps. That must be left for the
morning, and I prayed that there would be no rain in the
night.
I ate for supper most of the braxy ham and oatcake I had
brought from Macmorran's cottage. It took some self-
denial, for I was ferociously hungry, to save a little for
breakfast next morning. Then I pulled heather and bracken
and made myself a bed in the shelter of a rock which stood
on a knoll above the stream. My bed-chamber was well
hidden, but at the same time, if anything should appear in
the early dawn, it gave me a prospect. With my waterproof
I was perfectly warm, and, after smoking two pipes, I fell
asleep.
My night's rest was broken. First it was a fox which
came and barked at my ear and woke me to a pitch-black
night, with scarcely a star showing. The next time it was
nothing but a wandering hill-wind, but as I sat up and
listened I thought I saw a spark of light near the edge of
the sea. It was only for a second, but it disquieted me. I
got out and climbed on the top of the rock, but all was still


II.4. MR. STANDFAST
save for the gentle lap of the tide and the croak of some
night bird among the crags. The third time I was suddenly
quite wide awake, and without any reason, for I had not
been dreaming. Now I have slept hundreds of times alone.
beside my horse on the veld, and I never knew any cause
for such awakenings but the one, and that was the presence
near me of some human being. A man who is accustomed
to solitude gets this extra sense which announces like an
alarm-clock the approach of one of his kind.
But I could hear nothing. There was a scraping and
rustling on the moor, but that was only the wind and the
little wild things of the hills. A fox, perhaps, or a blue
hare. I convinced my reason, but not my senses, and for
long I lay awake with my ears at full cock and every nerve
tense. Then I fell asleep, and woke to the first flush of
dawn.
The sun was behind the Coolin and the hills were black as
ink, but far out in the western seas was a broad band of
gold. I got up and went down to the shore. The mouth of
the stream was shallow, but as I moved south I came to a
place where two small capes enclosed an inlet. It must
have been a fault in the volcanic rock, for its depth was
portentous. I stripped and dived far into its cold abysses,
but I did not reach the bottom. I came to the surface
rather breathless, and struck out to sea, where I floated on
my back and looked at the great rampart of crag. I saw
that the place where I had spent the night was only a little
oasis of green at the base of one of the grimmest corries
the imagination could picture. It was as desert as Damara-
land. I noticed, too, how sharply the cliffs rose from the
level. There were chimneys and gullies by which a man
might have made his way to the summit, but no one of them
could have been scaled except by a mountaineer.
I was feeling better now, with all the frowsiness washed
out of me, and I dried myself by racing up and down the
heather. Then I noticed something. There were marks of
human feet at the top of the deep-water inlet—not mine, for


THE SKIRTS OF THE COOLIN 115
they were on the other side. The short sea-turf was bruised
are trampled in several places, and there were broken stems
of bracken. I thought that some fisherman had probably
landed there to stretch his legs.
But that set me thinking of the Portuguese Jew. After
breakfasting on my last morsels of food—a knuckle of braxy
and a bit of oatcake—I set about tracking him from the
place where he had first entered the glen. To get my
bearings, I went back over the road I had come myself,
and after a good deal of trouble I found his spoor. It was
pretty clear as far as the stream, for he had been walking—
or rather running—over ground with many patches of gravel
on it. After that it was difficult, and I lost it entirely in the
rough heather below the crags. All that I could make out
for certain was that he had crossed the stream, and that his
business, whatever it was, had been with the few acres of
tumbled wilderness below the precipices.
I spent a busy morning there, but found nothing except
the skeleton of a sheep picked clean by the ravens. It was
a thankless job, and I got very cross over it. I had an ugly
feeling that I was on a false scent and wasting my time. I
wished to Heaven I had old Peter with me. He could follow
spoor like a Bushman, and would have riddled the Portu-
guese Jew's track out of any jungle on earth. That was a
game I had never learned, for in old days I had always left
it to my natives. I chucked the attempt, and lay discon-
solately on a warm patch of grass and smoked and thought
about Peter. But my chief reflections were that I had
breakfasted at five, that it was now eleven, that I was
intolerably hungry, that there was nothing here to feed a
grasshopper, and that I should starve unless I got supplies.
It was a long road to my cache, but there were no two
ways of it. My only hope was to sit tight in the glen, and
it might involve a wait of days. To wait I must have food,
and, though it meant relinquishing guard for a matter of
six hours, the risk had to be taken. I set off at a brisk pace
with a very depressed mind.


II6 , MR. STANDFAST
From the map it seemed that a short cut lay over a pass
in the range. I resolved to take it, and that short cut, like
most of its kind, was unblessed by Heaven. I will not
dwell upon the discomforts of the journey. I found myself
slithering among screes, climbing steep chimneys, and travel-
ling precariously along razor-backs. The shoes were nearly
rent from my feet by the infernal rocks, which were all
pitted as if by some geological small-pox. When at last I
crossed the divide, I had a horrible business getting down
from one level to another in a gruesome corrie, where each
step was composed of smooth boiler-plates. But at last I
was among the bogs on the east side, and came to the place
beside the road where I had fixed my cache.
The faithful Amos had not failed me. There were the
provisions—a couple of small loaves, a dozen tins, and a
bottle of whisky. I made the best pack I could of them in
my waterproof, swung it on my stick, and started back,
thinking that I must be very like the picture of Christian on
the title-page of my Pilgrim's Progress.
I was liker Christian before I reached my destination—
Christian after he had got up the Hill Difficulty. The morn-
ing's walk had been bad, but the afternoon's was worse, for
I was in a fever to get back, and, having had enough of the
hills, chose the longer route I had followed the previous day.
I was mortally afraid of being seen, for I cut a queer figure,
so I avoided every stretch of road where I had not a clear
view ahead. Many weary detours I made among moss-hags
and screes and the stony channels of burns. But I got
there at last, and it was almost with a sense of comfort that
I flung my pack down beside the stream where I had passed
the night.
I ate a good meal, lit my pipe, and fell into the equable
mood which follows upon fatigue ended and hunger satis-
fied. The sun was westering, and its light fell upon the
rock-wall above the place where I had abandoned my search
for the spoor.
As I gazed at it idly I saw a curious thing.


118 MR. STANDFAST
way by which he had reached it, for he would not have had
the time to make my ascent. I went very cautiously, for I
felt I was on the eve of a big discovery. The platform was
partly hidden from my end by a bend in the crack, and it
was more or less screened by an outlying bastion of the
tower from the other side. Its surface was covered with
fine powdery dust, as were the steps beyond it. In some
excitement I knelt down and examined it.
Beyond doubt there was spoor here. I knew the Portu-
guese Jew's footsteps by this time, and I made them out
clearly, especially in one corner. But there were other foot-
steps, quite different. The one showed the tackets of rough
country boots, the others were from unnailed soles. Again
I longed for Peter to make certain, though I was pretty
sure of my conclusions. The man I had followed had come
here, and he had not stayed long. Someone else had been
here, probably later, for the unnailed shoes overlaid the
tackets. The first man might have left a message for the
second. Perhaps the second was that human presence of
which I had been dimly conscious in the night-time.
I carefully removed all traces of my own footmarks, and
went back to my cave. My head was humming with my
discovery. I remembered Gresson's words to his friend:
“To-morrow night.” As I read it, the Portuguese Jew had
taken a message from Gresson to someone, and that some-
one had come from somewhere and picked it up. The mes-
sage contained an assignation for this very night. I had
found a point of observation, for no one was likely to come
near my cave, which was reached from the moor by such
a toilsome climb. There I should bivouac and see what the
darkness brought forth. I remember reflecting on the amaz-
ing luck which had so far attended me. As I looked from
my refuge at the blue haze of twilight creeping over the
waters, I felt my pulses quicken with a wild anticipation-
Then I heard a sound below me, and craned my neck
round the edge of the tower. A man was climbing up the
rock by the way I had come.


CHAPTER VII
I HEAR OF THE WILD BIRDS
I SAW an old green felt hat, and below it lean tweed-clad
shoulders. Then I saw a knapsack with a stick slung
through it, as the owner wriggled his way on to a shelf.
Presently he turned his face upward to judge the remain-
ing distance. It was the face of a young man, a face sallow
and angular, but now a little flushed with the day's sun and
the work of climbing. It was a face that I had first seen
at Fosse Manor.
I felt suddenly sick and heartsore. I don't know why, but
I had never really associated the intellectuals of Biggles-
wick with a business like this. None of them but Ivery,
and he was different. They had been silly and priggish, but
no more—I would have taken my oath on it. Yet here was
one of them engaged in black treason against his native land.
Something began to beat in my temples when I remem-
bered that Mary and this man had been friends, that he
had held her hand, and called her by her Christian name.
My first impulse was to wait till he got up and then pitch
him down among the boulders and let his German accom-
plices puzzle over his broken neck.
With difficulty I kept down that tide of fury. I had my
duty to do, and to keep on terms with this man was part
of it. I had to convince him that I was an accomplice, and
that might not be easy. I leaned over the edge, and as he
got to his feet on the ledge above the boiler-plates, I
whistled so that he turned his face to me.
“Hullo, Wake,” I said.
He started, stared for a second, and recognised me. He
did not seem over-pleased to see me. “Brand!” he cried.
119


120 MR. STANDFAST
“How did you get here?” He swung himself up beside
me, straightened his back and unbuckled his knapsack. “I
thought this was my own private sanctuary, and that nobody
knew it but me. Have you spotted the cave? It's the best
bedroom in Skye.” His tone was, as usual, rather acid.
That little hammer was beating in my head. I longed to
get my hands on his throat and choke the smug treason in
him. But I kept my mind fixed on one purpose—to per-
suade him that I shared his secret and was on his side.
His off-hand self-possession seemed only the clever screen
of the surprised conspirator who was hunting for a plan.
We entered the cave, and he flung his pack into a corner.
“Last time I was here,” he said, “I covered the floor with
heather. We must get some more if we would sleep soft.”
In the twilight he was a dim figure, but he seemed a new
man from the one I had last seen in the Moot Hall at
Biggleswick. There was a wiry vigour in his body and a
purpose in his face. What a fool I had been to set him
down as no more than a conceited flâneur !
He went out to the shelf again and sniffed the fresh
evening. There was a wonderful red sky in the west, but
in the crevice the shades had fallen, and only the bright
patches at either end told of the sunset.
“Wake,” I said, “you and I have to understand each
other. I'm a friend of Ivery and I know the meaning of
this place. I discovered it by accident, but I want you to
know that I'm heart and soul with you. You may trust me
in to-night's job as if I were Ivery himself. I . . .”
He swung round and looked at me sharply. His eyes
were hot again, as I remembered them at our first meeting.
“What do you mean? How much do you know?” The
hammer was going hard in my forehead, and I had to pull
myself together to answer.
“I know that at the end of this crack a message was
left last night, and that someone came out of the sea and
picked it up. That someone is coming again when the dark-
ness falls, and there will be another message.”


I HEAR OF THE WILD BIRDS 121
He had turned his head away. “You are talking non-
sense. No submarine could land on this coast.”
I could see that he was trying me.
“This morning,” I said, “I swam in the deep-water inlet
below us. It is the most perfect submarine shelter in
Britain.”
He still kept his face from me, looking the way he had
come. For a moment he was silent, and then he spoke in
the bitter, drawling voice which had annoyed me at Fosse
Manor.
“How do you reconcile this business with your principles,
Mr. Brand? You were always a patriot, I remember,
though you didn't see eye to eye with the Government.”
It was not quite what I expected and I was unready. I
stammered in my reply. “It’s because I am a patriot that
I want peace. I think that . . . I mean . . .”
“Therefore you are willing to help the enemy to win?”
“They have already won. I want that recognised and
the end hurried on.” I was getting my mind clearer and
continued fluently. “The longer the war lasts, the worse
this country is ruined. We must make the people realise
the truth, and—”
But he swung round suddenly, his eyes blazing.
“You blackguard!” he cried, “you damnable black-
guard!” And he flung himself on me like a wild-cat.
I had got my answer. He did not believe me, he knew
me for a spy, and he was determined to do me in. We
were beyond finesse now, and back at the old barbaric
game. It was his life or mine. The hammer beat furiously
in my head as we closed, and a fierce satisfaction rose in
my heart.
He never had a chance, for though he was in good trim
and had the light, wiry figure of the mountaineer, he hadn't
a quarter of my muscular strength. Besides, he was
wrongly placed, for he had the outside station. Had be been
on the inside he might have toppled me over the edge by
his sudden assault. As it was, I grappled him and forced


122 MR. STANDFAST
him to the ground, squeezing the breath out of his body in
the process. I must have hurt him considerably, but he
never gave a cry. With a good deal of trouble I lashed his
hands behind his back with the belt of my waterproof,
carried him inside the cave and laid him in the dark end
of it. Then I tied his feet with the strap of his own knap-
sack. I would have to gag him, but that could wait.
I had still to contrive a plan of action for the night, for
I did not know what part he had been meant to play in it.
He might be the messenger instead of the Portuguese Jew,
in which case he would have papers about his person. If he
knew of the cave, others might have the same knowledge,
and I had better shift him before they came. I looked at
my wrist-watch, and the luminous dial showed that the
hour was half-past nine.
Then I noticed that the bundle in the corner was sobbing.
It was a horrid sound and it worried me. I had a little
pocket electric torch and I flashed it on Wake's face. If
he was crying, it was with dry eyes.
“What are you going to do with me?” he asked.
“That depends,” I said grimly.
“Well, I'm ready. I may be a poor creature, but I'm
damned if I'm afraid of you, or anything like you.” That
was a brave thing to say, for it was a lie; his teeth were
chattering.
“I’m ready for a deal,” I said.
“You won't get it,” was his answer. “Cut my throat if
you mean to, but for God's sake don't insult me. . . . I
choke when I think about you. You come to us and we
welcome you, and receive you in our houses, and tell you
our inmost thoughts, and all the time you're a bloody traitor.
You want to sell us to Germany. You may win now, but
by God! your time will come! That is my last word to you
. . . you swine!”
The hammer stopped beating in my head. I saw myself
suddenly as a blind, preposterous fool. I strode over to
Wake, and he shut his eyes as if he expected a blow. In-


124 MR. STANDFAST
afterglow of light. “It’s broad on the top, and I can keep
a watch out to sea if any light shows. I’ve been up it before.
I found the way two years ago. No, I won't fall asleep and
tumble off. I slept most of the afternoon on the top of
Sgurr Vhiconnich, and I’m as wakeful as a bat now.”
I watched him shin up the face of the tower, and admired
greatly the speed and neatness with which he climbed. Then
I followed the crevice southward to the hollow just below
the platform where I had found the footmarks. There was
a big boulder there, which partly shut off the view of it
from the direction of our cave. The place was perfect for
my purpose, for between the boulder and the wall of the
tower was a narrow gap, through which I could hear all
that passed on the platform. I found a stance where I could
rest in comfort and keep an eye through the crack on what
happened beyond.
There was still a faint light on the platform, but soon that
disappeared and black darkness settled down on the hills.
It was the dark of the moon, and, as had happened the
night before, a thin wrack blew over the sky, hiding the
stars. The place was very still, though now and then would
come the cry of a bird from the crags that beetled above
me, and from the shore the pipe of a tern or oyster-catcher.
An owl hooted from somewhere up on the tower. That I
reckoned was Wake, so I hooted back and was answered.
I unbuckled my wrist-watch and pocketed it, lest its
luminous dial should betray me; and I noticed that the hour
was close on eleven. I had already removed my shoes, and
my jacket was buttoned at the collar so as to show no shirt.
I did not think that the coming visitor would trouble to
explore the crevice beyond the platform, but I wanted to be
prepared for emergencies.
Then followed an hour of waiting. I felt wonderfully
cheered and exhilarated, for Wake had restored my confi-
dence in human nature. In that eerie place we were
wrapped round with mystery like a fog. Some unknown
figure was coming out of the sea, the emissary of that


I HEAR OF THE WILD BIRDS 125
Power we had been at grips with for three years. It was
as if the war had just made contact with our own shores,
and never, not even when I was alone in the South German
forest, had I felt myself so much the sport of a whimsical
fate. I only wished Peter could have been with me. And
so my thoughts fled to Peter in his prison camp, and I
longed for another sight of my old friend as a girl longs
for her lover.
Then I heard the hoot of an owl, and presently the sound
of careful steps fell on my ear. I could see nothing, but I
guessed it was the Portuguese Jew, for I could hear the
grinding of heavily nailed boots on the gritty rock.
The figure was very quiet. It appeared to be sitting down,
and then it rose and fumbled with the wall of the tower just
beyond the boulder behind which I sheltered. It seemed
to move a stone and to replace it. After that came silence,
and then once more the hoot of an owl. There were steps
on the rock staircase, the steps of a man who did not know
the road well and stumbled a little. Also they were the
steps of one without nails in his boots.
They reached the platform and someone spoke. It was
the Portuguese Jew and he spoke in good German:
“Die vögelein schweigen im Walde,” he said.
The answer came from a clear, authoritative voice.
“Warte nur, balde ruhest du auch.”
Clearly some kind of password, for sane men don't talk
about little birds in that kind of situation. It sounded to
me like indifferent poetry.
Then followed a conversation in low tones, of which I
only caught odd phrases. I heard two names—Chelius and
what sounded like a Dutch word, Bommaerts. Then to my
joy I caught Elfenbein, and when uttered it seemed to be
followed by a laugh. I heard too a phrase several times
repeated, which seemed to me to be pure gibberish—Die
Stubenvögel verstehn. It was spoken by the man from the
sea. And then the word Wildvögel. The pair seemed de-
mented about birds.


126 MR. STANDFAST
For a second an electric torch was flashed in the shelter
of the rock, and I could see a tanned, bearded face looking
at some papers. The light disappeared, and again the
Portuguese Jew was fumbling with the stones at the base
of the tower. To my joy he was close to my crack, and I
could hear every word. “You cannot come here very
often,” he said, “and it may be hard to arrange a meeting.
See, therefore, the place I have made to put the Vögelfutter.
When I get a chance I will come here, and you will come
also when you are able. Often there will be nothing, but
sometimes there will be much.”
My luck was clearly in, and my exultation made me care-
less. A stone, on which a foot rested, slipped, and though
I checked myself at once, the confounded thing rolled down
into the hollow, making a great clatter. I plastered myself
in the embrasure of the rock and waited with a beating
heart. The place was pitch dark, but they had an electric
torch, and if they once flashed it on me I was gone. I
heard them leave the platform and climb down into the
hollow. There they stood listening, while I held my breath.
Then I heard “Nir, mein freund,” and the two went back,
the naval officer's boots slipping on the gravel.
They did not leave the platform together. The man from
the sea bade a short farewell to the Portuguese Jew, listen-
ing, I thought, impatiently to his final message as if eager
to be gone. It was a good half-hour before the latter took
himself off, and I heard the sound of his nailed boots die
away as he reached the heather of the moor.
I waited a little longer, and then crawled back to the cave.
The owl hooted, and presently Wake descended lightly be-
side me; he must have known every foothold and handhold
by heart to do the job in that inky blackness. I remember
that he asked no question of me, but he used language rare
on the lips of conscientious objectors about the men who had
lately been in the crevice. We, who four hours earlier had
been at deathgrips, now curled up on the hard floor like two
tired dogs, and fell sound asleep.


I HEAR OF THE WILD BIRDS 127
I woke to find Wake in a thundering bad temper. The
thing he remembered most about the night before was our
scrap and the gross way I had insulted him. I didn't blame
him, for if any man had taken me for a German spy E.
would have been out for his blood, and it was no good
explaining that he had given me grounds for suspicion. He
was as touchy about his blessed principles as an old maid.
about her age. I was feeling rather extra buckish myself
and that didn't improve matters. His face was like a gar-
goyle as we went down to the beach to bathe, so I held my
tongue. He was chewing the cud of his wounded pride.
But the salt water cleared out the dregs of his distemper.
You couldn't be peevish swimming in that jolly, shining sea-
We raced each other away beyond the inlet to the outer
water, which a brisk morning breeze was curling. Then back
to a promontory of heather, where the first beams of the
sun coming over the Coolin dried our skins. He sat hunched
up staring at the mountains while I prospected the rocks at
the edge. Out in the Minch two destroyers were hurrying
southward, and I wondered where in that waste of blue was
the craft which had come here in the night watches.
I found the spoor of the man from the sea quite fresh on
a patch of gravel above the tide-mark.
“There's our friend of the night,” I said.
“I believe the whole thing was a whimsy,” said Wake, his
eyes on the chimneys of Sgurr Dearg. “They were only
two natives—poachers, perhaps, or tinkers.” -
“They don't speak German in these parts.”
“It was Gaelic probably.”
“What do you make of this, then?” and I quoted the
stuff about birds with which they had greeted each other.
Wake looked interested. “That's Uber allen Gipfeln.
Have you ever read Goethe’” -
“Never a word. And what do you make of that?” I
pointed to a flat rock below tide-mark covered with a tangle
of seaweed. It was of a softer stone than the hard stuff
in the hills and some heavy body had scraped off half the


128 MR. STANDFAST
seaweed and a slice of the side. “That wasn't done yester-
day morning, for I had my bath here.”
Wake got up and examined the place. He nosed about in
the crannies of the rocks lining the inlet, and got into the
water again to explore better. When he joined me he
was smiling. “I apologise for my scepticism,” he said.
“There's been some petrol-driven craft here in the night.
I can smell it, for I’ve a nose like a retriever. I daresay
you're on the right track. Anyhow, though you seem to
know a bit about German, you could scarcely invent im-
mortal poetry.”
We took our belongings to a green crook of the burn, and
made a very good breakfast. Wake had nothing in his pack
but plasmon biscuits and raisins, for that, he said, was his
mountaineering provender, but he was not averse to
sampling my tinned stuff. He was a different-sized fellow
out in the hills from the anaemic intellectual of Biggleswick.
He had forgotten his beastly self-consciousness, and spoke
of his hobby with a serious passion. It seemed he had
scrambled about everywhere in Europe, from the Caucasus
to the Pyrenees. I could see he must be good at the job,
for he didn't brag of his exploits. It was the mountains
that he loved, not wriggling his body up hard places. The
Coolin, he said, were his favourites, for on some of them
you could get two thousand feet of good rock. We got our
glasses on the face of Sgurr Alasdair, and he sketched out
for me various ways of getting to its grim summit. The
Coolin and the Dolomites for him, for he had grown tired
of the Chamonix aiguilles. I remember he described with
tremendous gusto the joys of early dawn in Tyrol, when
you ascended through acres of flowery meadows to a tooth
of clean white limestone against a clean blue sky. He spoke,
too, of the little wild hills in the Bavarian Wettersteinge-
birge, and of a guide he had picked up there and trained
to the job.
“They called him Sebastian Buchwieser. He was the
jolliest boy you ever saw, and as clever on crags as a


I HEAR OF THE WILD BIRDS 129
chamois. He is probably dead by now, dead in a filthy
Jäger battalion. That's you and your accursed war.”
“Well, we've got to get busy to end it in the right way,”
I said. “And you've got to help, my lad.”
He was a good draughtsman, and with his assistance I
drew a rough map of the crevice where we had roosted for .
the night, giving its bearings carefully in relation to the
burn and the sea. Then I wrote down all the details about
Gresson and the Portuguese Jew, and described the latter in
minute detail. I described, too, most precisely the cache
where it had been arranged that the messages should be
placed. That finished my stock of paper, and I left the
record of the oddments overheard of the conversation for
a later time. I put the thing in an old leather cigarette-
case I possessed, and handed it to Wake.
“You’ve got to go straight off to the Kyle and not waste
any time on the way. Nobody suspects you, so you can
travel any road you please. When you get there you ask
for Mr. Andrew Amos, who has some Government job in
the neighbourhood. Give him that paper from me. He'll
know what to do with it all right. Tell him I'll get somehow
to the Kyle before midday the day after to-morrow. I
must cover my tracks a bit, so I can't come with you, and
I want that thing in his hands just as fast as your legs will
take you. If anyone tries to steal it from you, for God's
sake eat it. You can see for yourself that it's devilish
important.”
“I shall be back in England in three days,” he said.
“Any message for your other friends?” .
“Forget all about me. You never saw me here. I'm still
Brand, the amiable colonial studying social movéments. If
you meet Ivery, say you heard of me on the Clyde deep in
sedition. But if you see Miss Lamington you can tell her
I’m past the Hill Difficulty. I'm coming back as soon as
God will let me, and I’m going to drop right into the Biggles-
wick push. Only this time I’ll be a little more advanced in
my views. . . . You needn't get cross. I'm not saying any-


130 MR. STANDFAST
thing against your principles. The main point is that we
both hate dirty treason.”
He put the case in his waistcoat pocket. “I’ll go round
Garsbheinn,” he said, “and over by Camasunary. I'll be at
the Kyle long before evening. I meant anyhow to sleep at
Broadford to-night. . . . Good-bye, Brand, for I've for-
gotten your proper name. You're not a bad fellow, but
you've landed me in melodrama for the first time in my
sober existence. I have a grudge against you for mixing up
the Coolin with a shilling shocker. You've spoiled their
sanctity.”
“You’ve the wrong notion of romance,” I said. “Why,
man, last night for an hour you were in the front line—
the place where the enemy forces touch our own. You
were over the top—you were in No-man's-land.”
He laughed. “That is one way to look at it"; and then
he stalked off and I watched his lean figure till it was round
the turn of the hill.
All that morning I smoked peacefully by the burn, and let
my thoughts wander over the whole business. I had got
precisely what Blenkiron wanted, a post office for the
enemy. It would need careful handling, but I could see
the juiciest lies passing that way to the Grosses Haupt-
quartier. Yet I had an ugly feeling at the back of my head
that it had been all too easy, and that Ivery was not the man
to be duped in this way for long. That set me thinking
about the queer talk in the crevice. The poetry stuff I dis-
missed as the ordinary password, probably changed every
time. But who were Chelius and Bommaerts, and what in
the name of goodness were the Wild Birds and the Cage
Birds? Twice in the past three years I had had two such
riddles to solve—Scudder's scribble in his pocket-book, and
Harry Bullivant's three words. I remembered how it had
only been by constant chewing at them that I had got a sort
of meaning, and I wondered if fate would some day ex-
pound this puzzle also.
Meantime I had to get back to London as inconspicuously


I HEAR OF THE WILD BIRDS 131
as I had come. It might take some doing, for the police
who had been active in Morvern might be still on the track,
and it was essential that I should keep out of trouble and
give no hint to Gresson and his friends that I had been so
far north. However, that was for Amos to advise me on,
and about noon I picked up my waterproof with its bursting
pockets and set off on a long detour up the coast. All that
blessed day I scarcely met a soul. I passed a distillery
which seemed to have quit business, and in the evening came
to a little town on the sea where I had a bed and supper in
a superior kind of public-house.
Next day I struck southward along the coast, and had two
experiences of interest. I had a good look at Ranna, and
observed that the Tobermory was no longer there. Gresson
had only waited to get his job finished; he could probably
twist the old captain any way he wanted. The second was
that at the door of a village smithy I saw the back of the
Portuguese Jew. He was talking Gaelic this time—good
Gaelic it sounded, and in that knot of idlers he would have
passed for the ordinariest kind of gillie.
He did not see me, and I had no desire to give him the
chance, for I had an odd feeling that the day might come
when it would be good for us to meet as strangers.
That night I put up boldly in the inn at Broadford, where
they fed me nobly on fresh sea-trout and I first tasted an
excellent liqueur made of honey and whisky. Next morn-
ing I was early afoot, and well before midday was in sight
of the narrows of the Kyle, and the two little stone clachans
which face each other across the strip of sea.
About two miles from the place at a turn of the road I -
came upon a farmer's gig, drawn up by the wayside, with
the horse cropping the moorland grass. A man sat on the
bank smoking, with his left arm hooked in the reins. He
was on oldish man, with a short, square figure, and a woollen
comforter enveloped his throat.


CHAPTER VIII
THE ADVENTURES OF A BAGMAN
“VE’RE punctual to time, Mr. Brand,” said the voice of
Amos. “But losh! man, what have ye done to your
breeks? And your buits? Ye're no just very respectable in
your appearance.”
I wasn't. The confounded rocks of the Coolin had left
their mark on my shoes, which moreover had not been
cleaned for a week, and the same hills had rent my jacket at
the shoulders, and torn my trousers above the right knee,
and stained every part of my apparel with peat and lichen.
I cast myself on the bank beside Amos and lit my pipe.
“Did you get my message?” I asked.
“Ay. It's gone on by a sure hand to the destination we
ken of. Ye've managed well, Mr. Brand, but I wish ye
were back in London.” He sucked at his pipe, and the
shaggy brows were pulled so low as to hide the wary eyes.
Then he proceeded to think aloud.
“Ye canna go back by Mallaig. I don't just understand
why, but they're lookin' for you down that line. It's a
vexatious business when your friends, meanin' the polis, are
doing their best to upset your plans and you no able to
enlighten them. I could send word to the Chief Constable
and get ye through to London without a stop like a load of
fish from Aiberdeen, but that would be spoilin' the fine
character ye’ve been at such pains to construct. Na, na!
Ye maun take the risk and travel by Muirtown without ony
creedentials.”
“It can't be a very big risk,” I interpolated.
“I’m no so sure. Gresson's left the Tobermory. He
went by here yesterday, on the Mallaig boat, and there was
132


ADVENTURES OF A BAGMAN 133.
a wee blackavised man with him that got out at the Kyſe:-
He's there still, stoppin' at the hotel. They ca' him Link-
later and he travels in whisky. I don't like the looks of.
him.”
“But Gresson does not suspect me?”
“Maybe no. But ye wouldna like him to see ye here-
aways. Yon gentry don't leave muckle to chance. Be very
certain that every man in Gresson's lot kens all about ye,
and has your description down to the mole on your chin.”
“Then they've got it wrong,” I replied.
“I was speakin' feeguratively,” said Amos. “I was con-
siderin' your case the feck of yesterday, and I’ve brought
the best I could do for ye in the gig. I wish ye were more
respectable clad, but a good topcoat will hide defeecencies.”
From behind the gig's seat he pulled out an ancient Glad-
stone bag and revealed its contents. There was a bowler of
a vulgar and antiquated style; there was a ready-made over-
coat of some dark cloth, of the kind that a clerk wears on
the road to the office; there was a pair of detachable cellu-
loid cuffs, and there was a linen collar and dickie. Also
there was a small hand-case, such as bagmen carry on their
rounds.
“That's your luggage,” said Amos with pride. “That
wee bag's full of samples. Ye'll mind I took the precaution
of measurin' ye in Glasgow, so the things’ll fit. Ye've got
a new name, Mr. Brand, and I’ve taken a room for ye in
the hotel on the strength of it. Ye're Archibald McCaskie,
and ye're travellin' for the firm o' Todd, Sons & Brothers.
of Edinburgh. Ye ken the folk? They publish wee
releegious books, that ye’ve bin trying to sell for Sabbath-
school prizes to the Free Kirk ministers in Skye.”
The notion amused Amos, and he relapsed into the sombre
chuckle which with him did duty for a laugh.
I put my hat and waterproof in the bag and donned the
bowler and the top-coat. They fitted fairly well. Likewise
the cuffs and collar, though here I struck a snag, for I had
lost my scarf somewhere in the Coolin, and Amos, pelican-


ADVENTURES OF A BAGMAN 135
was something I had never dreamed of before, something
which I now hugged the thought of. It made the whole
earth rosy and golden for me, and life so well worth living
that I felt like a miser towards the days to come.
I had about finished supper, when I was joined by another
guest. Seen in the light of that infamous lamp, he seemed
a small, alert fellow, with a bushy, black moustache, and
black hair parted in the middle. He had fed already and
appeared to be hungering for human society.
In three minutes he had told me that he had come down
from Portree and was on his way to Leith. A minute later
he had whipped out a card on which I read “J. J. Link-
later,” and in the corner the name of Hatherwick Bros.
His accent betrayed that he hailed from the west.
“I’ve been up among the distilleries,” he informed me.
“It’s a poor business distillin' in these times, wi' the tee-
totallers yowlin’ about the nation's shame and the way to
lose the war. I'm a temperate man mysel', but I would
think shame to spile decent folks' business. If the Govern-
ment want to stop the drink, let them buy us out. They've
permitted us to invest good money in the trade, and they
must see that we get it back. The other way will wreck
public credit. That's what I say. Supposin’ some Labour
Government takes the notion that soap's bad for the nation?
Are they goin' to shut up Port Sunlight? Or good clothes?
Or lum hats? There's no end to their daftness if they once
start on that tack. A lawfu' trade's a lawfu' trade, says I,
and it's contrary to public policy to pit it at the mercy
of a wheen cranks. D'ye no agree, sir? By the way, I
havena got your name?”
I told him and he rambled on.
“We're blenders and do a very high-class business, mostly
foreign. The war's hit us wi' our export trade, of course,
but we're no as bad as some. What's your line, Mr.
McCaskie?”
When he heard he was keenly interested.
“D'ye say so? Ye're from Todd's Man, I was in the


136 MR. STANDFAST
book business mysel', till I changed it for something a wee
bit more lucrative. I was on the road for three years for
Andrew Matheson. Ye ken the name—Paternoster Row—
I've forgotten the number. I had a kind of ambition to
start a book-sellin' shop of my own and to make Linklater
o’ Paisley a big name in the trade. But I got the offer from
Hatherwick's, and I was wantin' to get married, so filthy
lucre won the day. And I’m no sorry I changed. If it
hadna been for this war, I would have been makin’ four
figures with my salary and commissions. . . . My pipe's
out. Have you one of those rare and valuable curiosities
called a spunk, Mr. McCaskie?”
He was a merry little grig of a man, and he babbled on,
till I announced my intention of going to bed. If this was
Amos's bagman, who had been seen in company with
Gresson, I understood how idle may be the suspicions of a
clever man. He had probably foregathered with Gresson
on the Skye boat, and wearied that saturnine soul with his
cackle.
I was up betimes, paid my bill, ate a breakfast of porridge
and fresh haddock, and walked the few hundred yards to
the station. It was a warm, thick morning, with no sun
visible, and the Skye hills misty to their base. The three
coaches on the little train were nearly filled when I had
bought my ticket, and I selected a third-class smoking car-
riage which held four soldiers returning from leave.
The train was already moving when a late passenger hur-
ried along the platform and clambered in beside me. A
cheery “Mornin', Mr. McCaskie,” revealed my fellow guest
at the hotel.
We jolted away from the coast up a broad glen and then
on to a wide expanse of bog with big hills showing towards
the north. It was a drowsy day, and in that atmosphere
of shag and crowded humanity I felt my eyes closing. I
had a short nap, and woke to find that Mr. Linklater had
changed his seat and was now beside me.
“We'll no get a Scotsman till Muirtown,” he said.


ADVENTURES OF A BAGMAN 137
“Have ye nothing in your samples ye could give me to
read?”
I had forgotten about the samples. I opened the case and
found the oddest collection of little books, all in gay bind-
ings. Some were religious, with names like Dew of Hermon
and Cool Siloam; some were innocent narratives, How
Tommy saved his Pennies, A Missionary Child in China,
and Little Susie and her Uncle. There was a Life of David
Livingstone, a child's book on sea-shells, and a richly gilt
edition of the poems of one James Montgomery. I offered
the selection to Mr. Linklater, who grinned and chose the
Missionary Child. “It’s not the reading I'm accustomed
to,” he said. “I like strong meat—Hall Caine and Jack
London. By the way, how d'ye square this business of
yours wi' the booksellers? When I was in Matheson's there
would have been trouble if we had dealt direct wi' the public
like you.”
The confounded fellow started to talk about the details of
the book trade, of which I knew nothing. He wanted to
know on what terms we sold “juveniles,” and what dis-
count we gave the big wholesalers, and what class of book
we put out “on sale.” I didn't understand a word of his
jargon, and I must have given myself away badly, for he
asked me questions about firms of which I had never heard,
and I had to make some kind of answer. I told myself that
the donkey was harmless, and that his opinion of me mat-
tered nothing, but as soon as I decently could I pretended
to be absorbed in the Pilgrim's Progress, a gaudy copy of
which was among the samples. It opened at the episode of
Christian and Hopeful in the Enchanted Ground, and in that
stuffy carriage I presently followed the example of Heedless
and Too-Bold and fell sound asleep.
I was awakened by the train rumbling over the points of
a little moorland junction. Sunk in a pleasing lethargy, I
sat with my eyes closed, and then covertly took a glance at
my companion. He had abandoned the Missionary Child
and was reading a little dun-coloured book, and marking


138 MR. STANDFAST
passages with a pencil. His face was absorbed, and it was
a new face, not the vacant, good-humoured look of the
garrulous bagman, but something shrewd, purposeful, and
formidable. I remained hunched up as if still sleeping, and
tried to see what the book was. But my eyes, good as they
are, could make out nothing of the text or title, except that
I had a very strong impression that that book was not
written in the English tongue.
I woke abruptly, and leaned over to him. Quick as
lightning he slid his pencil up his sleeve and turned on me
with a fatuous smile.
“What d'ye make o' this, Mr. McCaskie? It's a wee
book I picked up at a roup along with fifty others. I paid
five shillings for the lot. It looks like Gairman, but in my
young days they didna teach us foreign languages.”
I took the thing and turned over the pages, trying to keep
any sign of intelligence out of my face. It was German
right enough, a little manual of hydrography with no pub-
lisher's name on it. It had the look of the kind of textbook
a Government department might issue to its officials.
I handed it back. “It’s either German or Dutch. I'm
not much of a scholar, barring a little French and the Latin
I got at Heriot's Hospital. . . . This is an awful slow
train, Mr. Linklater.”
The soldiers were playing nap, and the bagman proposed
a game of cards. I remembered in time that I was an elder
in the Nethergate U.F. Church and refused with some
asperity. After that I shut my eyes again, for I wanted
to think out this new phenomenon.
The fellow knew German—that was clear. He had also
been seen in Gresson's company. I didn't believe he sus-
pected me, though I suspected him profoundly. It was my
business to keep strictly to my part and give him no cause
to doubt me. He was clearly practising his own part on
me, and I must appear to take him literally on his pro-
fessions. So, presently, I woke up and engaged him in a
disputatious conversation about the morality of selling


ADVENTURES OF A BAGMAN 139
strong liquors. He responded readily, and put the case for
alcohol with much point and vehemence. The discussion
interested the soldiers, and one of them, to show he was on
Linklater's side, produced a flask and offered him a drink.
I concluded by observing morosely that the bagman had
been a better man when he peddled books for Alexander
Matheson, and that put the closure on the business.
That train was a record. It stopped at every station, and
in the afternoon it simply got tired and sat down in the
middle of a moor and reflected for an hour. I stuck my
head out of the window now and then, and smelt the rooty
fragrance of bogs, and when we halted on a bridge I
watched the trout in the pools of the brown rivers. Then
I slept and smoked alternately, and began to get furiously
hungry.
Once I woke to hear the soldiers discussing the war.
There was an argument between a lance-corporal in the
Camerons and a sapper private about some trivial incident
on the Somme.
“I tell ye I was there,” said the Cameron. “We were
relievin' the Black Watch, and Fritz was shellin' the road,
and we didna get up to the line till one o'clock in the
mornin’. Frae Frickout Circus to the south end o' High
Wood is every bit o' five mile.”
“Not abune three,” said the sapper dogmatically.
“Man, I’ve trampit it.”
“Same here. I took up wire every nicht for a week.”
The Cameron looked moodily round the company. “I
wish there was anither man here that kent the place. He
wad bear me out. These boys are no good, for they didna
join till later. I tell ye it's five mile.”
“Three,” said the sapper.
Tempers were rising, for each of the disputants felt his
veracity assailed. It was too hot for a quarrel and I was
so drowsy that I was heedless.
“Shut up, you fools,” I said. “The distance is six
kilometres, so you're both wrong.”


I40 MR. STANDFAST
My tone was so familiar to the men that it stopped the
wrangle, but it was not the tone of a publisher's traveller.
Mr. Linklater cocked his ears.
“What's a kilometre, Mr. McCaskie?” he asked
blandly.
“Multiply by five and divide by eight and you get the
miles.”
I was on my guard now, and told a long story of a
nephew who had been killed on the Somme, and how I
had corresponded with the War Office about his case.
“Besides,” I said, “I’m a great student o' the newspapers,
and I've read all the books about the war. It's a difficult
time this for us all, and if you can take a serious interest
in the campaign it helps a lot. I mean working out the
places on the map and reading Haig's dispatches.”
“Just so,” he said drily, and I thought he watched me
with an odd look in his eyes.
A fresh idea possessed me. This man had been in Gres-
son's company, he knew German, he was obviously some-
thing very different from what he professed to be. What
if he were in the employ of our own Secret Service? I
had appeared out of the void at the Kyle, and I had made
but a poor appearance as a bagman, showing no knowledge
of my own trade. I was in an area interdicted to the
ordinary public, and he had good reason to keep an eye on
my movements. He was going south, and so was I; clearly
we must somehow part company.
“We change at Muirtown, don't we?” I asked. “When
does the train for the south leave?”
He consulted a pocket time-table. “Ten-thirty-three.
There's generally four hours to wait, for we're due in at
six-fifteen. But this auld hearse will be lucky if it's in by
nine.”
His forecast was correct. We rumbled out of the hills
into haughlands and caught a glimpse of the North Sea.
Then we were hung up while a long goods train passed
down the line. It was almost dark when at last we


ADVENTURES OF A BAGMAN 141
crawled into Muirtown station and disgorged our load of
hot and weary soldiery. -
I bade an ostentatious farewell to Linklater. “Very
pleased to have met you. I'll see you later on the Edinburgh
train. I’m for a walk to stretch my legs, and a bite o'
supper.” I was very determined that the ten-thirty for the
south should leave without me.
My notion was to get a bed and a meal in some secluded
inn, and walk out next morning and pick up a slow train
down the line. Linklater had disappeared towards the
guard's van to find his luggage, and the soldiers were sit-
ting on their packs with that air of being utterly and finally
lost and neglected which characterises the British fighting-
man on a journey. I gave up my ticket and, since I had
come off a northern train, walked unhindered into the town.
It was market night, and the streets were crowded. Blue-
jackets from the Fleet, country-folk in to shop and every
kind of military detail thronged the pavements. Fish-
hawkers were crying their wares, and there was a tatter-
demalion piper making the night hideous at a corner. I
took a tortuous route and finally fixed on a modest-looking
public-house in a back street. When I inquired for a room
I could find no one in authority, but a slatternly girl in-
formed me that there was one vacant bed, and that I could
have ham and eggs in the bar. So, after hitting my head
violently against a cross-beam, I stumbled down some steps
and entered a frowsty little place smelling of spilt beer and
stale tobacco.
The promised ham and eggs proved impossible—there
were no eggs to be had in Muirtown that night—but I was
given cold mutton and a pint of indifferent ale. There was
nobody in the place but two farmers drinking hot whisky
and water and discussing with sombre interest the rise in the
price of feeding-stuffs. I ate my supper, and was just pre-
paring to find the whereabouts of my bedroom when through
the street door there entered a dozen soldiers.
In a second the quiet place became a babel. The men


142 MR. STANDFAST
were strictly sober, but they were in that temper of friendli-
ness which demands a libation of some kind. One was
prepared to stand treat; he was the leader of the lot, and
it was to celebrate the end of his leave that he was enter-
taining his pals. From where I sat I could not see him, but
him voice was dominant. “What's your fancy, Jock? Beer
for you, Andra? A pint and a dram for me. This is better
than vongblong and vongrooge, Davie. Man, when I'm
sittin' in those estamints, as they ca’ them, I often long for
a guid Scots public.”
The voice was familiar. I shifted my seat to get a view
of the speaker, and then I hastily drew back. It was the
Scots Fusilier I had clipped on the jaw in defending Gres-
son after the Glasgow meeting.
But by a strange fatality he had caught sight of me.
“Whae's that i' the corner?” he cried, leaving the bar
to stare at me. Now it is a queer thing, but if you have
once fought with a man, though only for a few seconds, you
remember his face, and the scrap in Glasgow had been
under a lamp. The Jock recognised me well enough.
“By God!” he cried, “if this is no a bit o' luck! Boys,
here's the man I feucht wi' in Glesca. Ye mind I telled ye
about it. He laid me oot, and it's my turn to do the same
wi' him. I had a notion I was gaun to mak' a nicht o't.
There's naebody can hit Geordie Hamilton without Geordie
gettin' his ain back some day. Get up, man, for I'm gaun to
knock the heid off ye.”
I duly got up, and with the best composure I could muster
looked him in the face.
“You’re mistaken, my friend. I never clapped eyes on
you before, and I never was in Glasgow in my life.”
“That's a damned lee,” said the Fusilier. “Ye're the
man, and if ye're no, ye're like enough him to need a
hidin'!”
“Confound your nonsense!” I said. “I’ve no quarrel
with you, and I’ve better things to do than be scrapping with
a stranger in a public-house.”


ADVENTURES OF A BAGMAN 143
“Have ye sae? Well, I'll learn ye better. I’m gaun to
hit ye, and then ye’ll hae to fecht whether ye want it or no.
Tam, haud my jacket, and see that my drink's no skailed.”
This was an infernal nuisance, for a row here would bring
in the police, and my dubious position would be laid bare.
I thought of putting up a fight, for I was certain I could lay
out the Jock a second time, but the worst of that was that
I did not know where the thing would end. I might have
to fight the lot of them, and that meant a noble public
shindy. I did my best to speak my opponent fair. I said
we were all good friends and offered to stand drinks for
the party. But the Fusilier's blood was up and he was
spoiling for a row, ably abetted by his comrades. He had
his tunic off now and was stamping in front of me with
doubled fists.
I did the best thing I could think of in the circumstances.
My seat was close to the steps which led to the other part
of the inn. I grabbed my hat, darted up them, and before
they realised what I was doing had bolted the door behind
me I could hear pandemonium break loose in the bar.
I slipped down a dark passage to another which ran at
right angles to it, and which seemed to connect the street
door of the inn itself with the back premises. I could hear
voices in the little hall, and that stopped me short.
One of them was Linklater's, but he was not talking as
Linklater had talked. He was speaking educated English.
I heard another with a Scots accent, which I took to be the
landlord's, and a third which sounded like some superior
sort of constable's, very prompt and official. I heard one
phrase, too, from Linklater—“He calls himself McCaskie.”
Then they stopped, for the turmoil from the bar had reached
the front door. The Fusilier and his friends were looking
for me by the other entrance.
The attention of the men in the hall was distracted, and
that gave me a chance. There was nothing for it but the
back door. I slipped through it into a courtyard and almost
tumbled over a tub of water. I planted the thing so that


144 MR. STANDFAST
anyone coming that way would fall over it. A door led me
into an empty stable, and from that into a lane. It was all
absurdly easy, but as I started down the lane I heard a
mighty row and the sound of angry voices. Someone had
gone into the tub and I hoped it was Linklater. I had taken
a liking to the Fusilier Jock.
There was the beginning of a moon somewhere, but that
lane was very dark. I ran to the left, for on the right it
looked like a cul-de-sac. This brought me into a quiet road
of two-storied cottages which showed at one end the lights
of a street. So I took the other way, for I wasn't going to
have the whole population of Muirtown on the hue-and-cry
after me. I came into a country, lane, and I also came into
the van of the pursuit, which must have taken a short cut.
They shouted when they saw me."but I had a small start, and
legged it down that road in the belief that I was making
for open country. -
That was where I was wrong. The road took me round
to the other side of the town, and just when I was be-
ginning to think I had a fair chance I saw before me the
lights of a signal box and a little to the left of it the lights
of the station. In half an hour's time the Edinburgh train
would be leaving, but I had made that impossible. Behind
me I could hear the pursuers, giving tongue like hound
puppies, for they had attracted some pretty drunken gentle-
men to their party.
I was badly puzzled where to turn, when I noticed out-
side the station a long line of blurred lights, which could
only mean a train with the carriage blinds down. It had
an engine attached and seemed to be waiting for the addi-
tion of a couple of trucks to start. It was a wild chance,
but the only one I saw. I scrambled across a piece of waste
ground, climbed an embankment and found myself on the
metals. I ducked under the couplings and got on the far
side of the train, away from the enemy.
Then simultaneously two things happened. I heard the
yells of my pursuers a dozen yards off, and the train jolted


ADVENTURES OF A BAGMAN 145
into motion. I jumped on the footboard, and looked into
an open window. The compartment was packed with
troops, six a side and two men sitting on the floor, and the
door was locked. I dived headforemost through the window
and landed on the neck of a weary warrior who had just
dropped off to sleep.
While I was falling I made up my mind on my conduct.
I must be intoxicated, for I knew the infinite sympathy of
the British soldier towards those thus overtaken. They
pulled me to my feet, and the man I had descended on
rubbed his skull and blasphemously demanded explanations.
“Gen'imen,” I hiccoughed, “I 'pologise. I was late for
this bl—blighted train and I mus' be in E'inburgh 'morrow
or I'll get the sack. I 'pologise. If I’ve hurt my friend's
head, I’ll kiss it and make it well.”
At this there was a great laugh. “Ye'd better accept,
Pete,” said one. “It’s the first time onybody ever offered to
kiss your ugly heid.”
A man asked me who I was, and I appeared to be search-
ing for a card-case.
“Losht,” I groaned. “Losht, and so's my wee bag and
I've bashed my po' hat. I'm an awful sight, gen’lmen—an
awful warning to be in time for trains. I'm John John-
stone, managing clerk to Messrs. Watters, Brown & Elph'-
stone, 923 Charl'tte Street, E'inburgh. I've been up north
seein’ my mamma.”
“Ye should be in France,” said one man.
“Wish't I was, but they wouldn't let me. “Mr. John-
stone,' they said, ‘ye're no dam good. Ye've var'cose veins
and a bad heart,” they said. So I says, “Good-mornin',
gen’lmen. Don't blame me if the country's ru'ned.” That's
what I said.”
I had by this time occupied the only remaining space left
on the floor. With the philosophy of their race the men had
accepted my presence, and were turning again to their own
talk. The train had got up speed, and as I judged it to be
a special of some kind I looked for few stoppings. More-


146 MR. STANDFAST
over it was not a corridor carriage, but one of the old-
fashioned kind, so I was safe for a time from the unwelcome
attention of conductors. I stretched my legs below the seat,
rested my head against the knees of a brawny gunner, and
settled down to make the best of it.
My reflections were not pleasant. I had got down too far
below the surface, and had the naked feeling you get in a
dream when you think you have gone to the theatre in your
nightgown. I had had three names in two days, and as
many characters. I felt as if I had no home or position
anywhere, and was only a stray dog with everybody's hand
and foot against me. It was an ugly sensation, and it was
not redeemed by any acute fear or any knowledge of being
mixed up in some desperate drama. I knew I could easily
go on to Edinburgh, and when the police made trouble, as
they would, a wire to Scotland Yard would settle matters
in a couple of hours. There wasn't a suspicion of bodily
danger to restore my dignity. The worst that could happen
would be that Ivery would hear of my being befriended by
the authorities, and the part I had settled to play would be
impossible. He would certainly hear. I had the greatest
respect for his intelligence service.
Yet that was bad enough. So far I had done well. I
had put Gresson off the scent. I had found out what Bulli-
vant wanted to know, and I had only to return unostenta-
tiously to London to have won out on the game. I told
myself all that, but it didn't cheer my spirits. I was feeling
mean and hunted and very cold about the feet.
But I have a tough knuckle of obstinacy in me which
makes me unwilling to give up a thing till I am fairly choked
off it. The chances were badly against me. The Scottish
police were actively interested in my movements and would
be ready to welcome me at my journey's end. I had ruined
my hat, and my clothes, as Amos had observed, were not
respectable. I had got rid of a four-days' beard the night
before, but had cut myself in the process, and what with my
weather-beaten face and tangled hair looked liker a tinker


ADVENTURES OF A BAGMAN 147
than a decent bagman. I thought with longing of my port-
manteau in the Pentland Hotel, Edinburgh, and the neat
blue serge suit and the clean linen that reposed in it. It
was no case for a subtle game, for I held no cards. Still I
was determined not to chuck in my hand till I was forced
to. If the train stopped anywhere I would get out, and
trust to my own wits and the standing luck of the British
Army for the rest.
The chance came just after dawn, when we halted at a
little junction. I got up yawning and tried to open the door,
till I remembered it was locked. Thereupon I stuck my
legs out of the window on the side away from the platform,
and was immediately seized upon by a sleepy Seaforth who
thought I contemplated suicide.
“Let me go,” I said. “I’ll be back in a jiffy.”
“Let him gang, Jock,” said another voice. “Ye ken what
a man's like when he's been on the bash. The cauld air’ll
sober him.”
I was released, and after some gymnastics dropped on the
metals and made my way round the rear of the train. As
I clambered on the platform it began to move, and a face
looked out of one of the back carriages. It was Linklater
and he recognised me. He tried to get out, but the door
was promptly slammed to by an indignant porter. I heard
him protest, and he kept his head out till the train went
round the curve. That cooked my goose all right. He
would wire to the police from the next station.
Meantime in that clean, bare, chilly place there was only
one traveller. He was a slim young man, with a kit-bag
and a gun-case. His clothes were beautiful, a green Hom-
burg hat, a smart green tweed overcoat, and boots as brightly
polished as a horse chestnut. I caught his profile as he gave
up his ticket, and to my amazement I recognized it.
The station-master looked askance at me as I presented
myself, dilapidated and dishevelled, to the official gaze. I
tried to speak in a tone of authority.
“Who is the man who has just gone out?”


148 MR. STANDFAST
“Whaur's your ticket?”
“I had no time to get one at Muirtown, and as you see
I have left my luggage behind me. Take it out of that
pound and I’ll come back for the change. I want to know
if that was Sir Archibald Roylance.”
He looked suspiciously at the note. “I think that's the
name. He's a captain up at the Fleein’ School. What was
ye wantin' with him?”
I charged through the booking-office and found my man
about to enter a big grey motor-car.
“Archie,” I cried and beat him on the shoulders.
He turned round sharply. “What the devil ! Who
are you?” And then recognition crept into his face and he
gave a joyous shout. “My holy aunt! The General dis-
guised as Charlie Chaplin' Can I drive you anywhere,
sir?”


CHAPTER IX
I TAKE THE WINGS OF A DOVE
& 4 RIVE me somewhere to breakfast, Archie,” I said,
“for I'm perishing hungry.”
He and I got into the tonneau, and the driver swung us
out of the station road up a long incline of hill. Sir Archie
had been one of my subalterns in the old Lennox High-
landers, and had left us before the Somme to join the
Flying Corps. I had heard that he had got his wings and
had done well before Arras, and was now training pilots
at home. He had been a light-hearted youth, who had en-
dured a good deal of rough-tonguing from me for his sins
of omission. But it was the casual class of lad I was looking
for now. . -
I saw him steal amused glances at my appearance.
“Been seein’ a bit of life, sir?” he inquired respectfully.
“I’m being hunted by the police,” I said.
“Dirty dogs! But don't worry, sir; we'll get you off all
right. I've been in the same fix myself. You can lie snug
in my little log hut, for that old image Gibbons won't blab.
Or, tell you what, I’ve got an aunt who lives near here and
she's a bit of a sportsman. You can hide in her moated
grange till the bobbies get tired.”
I think it was Archie's calm acceptance of my position as
natural and becoming that restored my good temper. He
was far too well bred to ask what crime I had committed,
and I didn't propose to enlighten him much. But as we
swung up the moorland road I let him know that I was
serving the Government, but that it was necessary that I
should appear to be unauthenticated and that therefore I
must dodge the police. He whistled his appreciation.
149


150 MR. STANDFAST
“Gad, that's a deep game. Sort of camouflage? Speak-
ing from my experience it is easy to overdo that kind of
stunt. When I was at Misieux the French started out to
camouflage the caravans where they keep their pigeons, and
they did it so darned well that the poor little birds couldn't
hit 'em off, and spent the night out.”
We entered the white gates of a big aerodrome, skirted a
forest of tents and huts, and drew up at a shanty on the far
confines of the place. The hour was half-past four, and
the world was still asleep. Archie nodded towards one of
the hangars, from the mouth of which projected the pro-
peller end of an aeroplane.
“I’m by way of flyin' that bus down to Farnton to-
morrow,” he remarked. “It’s the new Shark-Gladas. Got
a mouth like a tree.”
An idea flashed into my mind.
“You're going this morning,” I said.
“How did you know?” he exclaimed. “I’m due to go
to-day, but the grouse up in Caithness wanted shootin' so
badly that I decided to wangle another day's leave. They
can't expect a man to start for the south of England when
he's just off a frowsy journey.”
“All the same you're going to be a stout fellow and start
in two hours' time. And you're going to take me with
you.”
He stared blankly, and then burst into a roar of laughter.
“You’re the man to go tiger-shootin' with. But what price
my commandant? He's not a bad chap, but a trifle shaggy
about the fetlocks. He won't appreciate the joke.”
“He needn't know. He mustn't know. This is an affair
between you and me till it's finished. I promise you I'll
make it all square with the Flying Corps. Get me down to
Farnton before evening, and you'll have done a good piece
of work for the country.” *
“Right-o! Let's have a tub and bit of breakfast,
and then I'm your man. I'll tell them to get the bus
ready.”


THE WINGS OF A DOVE 151
In Archie's bedroom I washed and shaved and borrowed
a green tweed cap and a brand-new aquascutum. The latter
covered the deficiencies of my raiment, and when I com-
mandeered a pair of gloves I felt almost respectable. Gib-
bons, who seemed to be a jack-of-all-trades, cooked us some
bacon and an omelette, and as he ate Archie yarned. In
the battalion his conversation had been mostly of race-
meetings and the forsaken delights of town, but now he had
forgotten all that, and, like every good airman I have ever
known, wallowed enthusiastically in “shop.” I have a deep
respect for the Flying Corps, but it is apt to change its
jargon every month, and its conversation is hard for the
layman to follow. He was desperately keen about the war,
which he saw wholly from the viewpoint of the air. Arras
to him was over before the infantry crossed the top, and the
tough bit of the Somme was October, not September. He
calculated that the big air-fighting had not come along yet,
and all he hoped for was to be allowed out to France to have
his share in it. Like all good airmen, too, he was very
modest about himself.
“I’ve done a bit of steeple-chasin’ and huntin' and I’ve
good hands for a horse, so I can handle a bus fairly well.
It's all a matter of hands, you know. There ain't half the
risk of the infantry down below you, and a million times
the fun. Jolly glad I changed, sir.”
We talked of Peter, and he put him about top. Voss, he
thought, was the only Boche that could compare with him,
for he hadn't made up his mind about Lensch. The French-
man Guynemer he ranked high, but in a different way. I
remember he had no respect for Richthofen and his cele-
brated circus.
At six sharp we were ready to go. A couple of me-
chanics had got out the machine, and Archie put on his
coat and gloves and climbed into the pilot's seat, while I
squeezed in behind in the observer's place. The aerodrome
was waking up, but I saw no officers about. We were
scarcely seated when Gibbons called our attention to a


152 MR. STANDFAST
motor-car on the road, and presently we heard a shout and
saw men waving in our direction.
“Better get off, my lad,” I said. “These look like my
friends.”
The engine started and the mechanics stood clear. As
we taxied over the turf I looked back and saw several
figures running in our direction. The next second we had
left the bumpy earth for the smooth highroad of the air.
I had flown several dozen times before, generally over
the enemy lines when I wanted to see for myself how the
land lay. Then we had flown low, and been nicely dusted
by the Hun Archies, not to speak of an occasional machine-
gun. But never till that hour had I realised the joy of a
straight flight in a swift plane in perfect weather. Archie
didn't lose time. Soon the hangars behind looked like a
child's toys, and the world ran away from us till it seemed
like a great golden bowl spilling over with the quintessence
of light. The air was cold and my hands numbed, but I
never felt them. As we throbbed and tore southward, some-
times bumping in eddies, sometimes swimming evenly in a
stream of motionless ether, my head and heart grew as light
as a boy's. I forgot all about the vexations of my job and
saw only its joyful comedy. I didn't think that anything on
earth could worry me again. Far to the left was a wedge
of silver and beside it a cluster of toy houses. That must
be Edinburgh, where reposed my portmanteau, and where
a most efficient police force was now inquiring for me. At
the thought I laughed so loud that Archie must have heard
me. He turned round, saw my grinning face, and grinned
back. Then he signalled to me to strap myself in. I obeyed,
and he proceeded to practise “stunts”—the loop, the spin-
ning nose-dive, and others I didn't know the names of. It
was glorious fun, and he handled his machine as a good
rider coaxes a nervous horse over a stiff hurdle. He had
that extra something in his blood that makes the great
pilot.
Presently the chessboard of green and brown had changed


THE WINGS OF A DOVE 153
to a deep purple with faint silvery lines like veins in a rock.
We were crossing the Border hills, the place where I had
legged it for weary days when I was mixed up in the Black
Stone business. What a marvellous element was this air,
which took one far above the fatigues of humanity Archie
had done well to change. Peter had been the wise man. I
felt a tremendous pity for my old friend hobbling about a
German prison-yard, when he had once flown like a hawk.
I reflected that I had wasted my life hitherto. And then
I remembered that all this glory had only one use in war
and that was to help the muddy British infantryman to down
his Hun opponent. He was the fellow, after all, that de-
cided battles, and the thought comforted me.
A great exhilaration is often the precursor of disaster, and
mine was to have a sudden downfall. It was getting on
for noon and we were well into England—I guessed from
the rivers we had passed that we were somewhere in the
north of Yorkshire—when the machine began to make odd
sounds, and we bumped in perfectly calm patches of air.
We dived and then climbed, but the confounded thing kept
sputtering. Archie passed back a slip of paper on which
he had scribbled: “Engine conked. Must land at Mickle-
gill. Very sorry.” So we dropped to a lower elevation
where we could see clearly the houses and roads and the
long swelling ridges of a moorland country. I could never
have found my way about, but Archie's practised eye knew
every landmark. We were trundling along very slowly now,
and even I was soon able to pick up the hangars of a big
laerodrome.
We made Micklegill, but only by the skin of our teeth.
We were so low that the smoky chimneys of the city of
Bradfield seven miles to the east were half hidden by a
ridge of down. Archie achieved a clever descent in the lee
of a belt of firs, and got out full of imprecations against
the Gladas engine. “I’ll go up to the camp and report,” he
said, “and send mechanics down to tinker this darned
gramophone. You'd better go for a walk, sir. I don't


154 MR. STANDFAST
want to answer questions about you till we're ready to start.
I reckon it'll be an hour's job.”
The cheerfulness I had acquired in the upper air still
filled me. I sat down in a ditch, as merry as a sand-boy,
and lit a pipe. I was possessed by a boyish spirit of casual
adventure, and waited on the next turn of fortune's wheel
with only a pleasant amusement.
That turn was not long in coming. Archie appeared very
breathless,
* Look here, sir, there's the deuce of a row up there.
They've been wirin' about you all over the country, and
they know you're with me. They've got the police, and
they'll have you in five minutes if you don't leg it. I lied
like billy-o and said I had never heard of you, but they're
comin' to see for themselves. For God's sake get off. . . .
You'd better keep in cover down that hollow and round the
back of these trees. I’ll stay here and try to brazen it out.
Ill set strafed to blazes anyhow. . . . I hope you'll get
re out of the scrape, sir.”
* Don't you worry, my lad,” I said. “I’ll make it all
square when I get back to town. I'll make for Bradfield,
for this place is a bit conspicuous. Good-bye, Archie.
You're a good chap and I'll see you don't suffer.”
I started off down a hollow of the moor, trying to make
speed atone for lack of strategy, for it was hard to know
how much my pursuers commanded from that higher
ground. They must have seen me, for I heard whistles
blown and men's cries. I struck a road, crossed it, and
passed a ridge from which I had a view of Bradfield six
miles off. And as I ran I began to reflect that this kind
of chase could not last long. They were bound to round
re up in the next half-hour unless I could puzzle them. But
in that bare green place there was no cover, and it looked
as if my chances were pretty much those of a hare coursed
by a good greyhound on a naked moor.
Suddenly from just in front of me came a familiar sound.
It was the roar of guns—the slam of field-batteries and


156 MR. STANDFAST
the point of view of the movie-merchant, for his purpose
was not the same as that of the officer in command. You
know how a photographer finicks about and is dissatisfied
with a pose that seems all right to his sitter. I should have
thought the spectacle enough to get any cinema audience off
their feet, but the man on the scaffolding near me judged
differently. He made his megaphone boom like the swan-
song of a dying buffalo. He wanted to change something
and didn't know how to do it. He hopped on one leg; he
took the megaphone from his mouth to curse; he waved it
like a banner and yelled at some opposite number on the
other flank. And then his patience forsook him and he
skipped down the ladder, dropping his megaphone, past
the camera-men, on to the battle-field.
That was his undoing. He got in the way of the second
wave and was swallowed up like a leaf in a torrent. For a
moment I saw a red face and a loud-checked suit, and the
rest was silence. He was carried on over the hill, or rolled
into an enemy trench, but anyhow he was lost to my ken.
I bagged his megaphone and hopped up the steps to the
platform. At last I saw a chance of first-class cover, for
with Archie's coat and cap I made a very good appearance
as a movie-merchant. Two waves had gone over the top,
and the cinema-men, working like beavers, had filmed the
lot. But there was still a fair amount of troops to play with,
and I determined to tangle up that outfit so that the fellows
who were after me would have better things to think
about.
My advantage was that I knew how to command men. I
could see that my opposite number with the megaphone was
helpless, for the mistake which had swept my man into a
shell-hole had reduced him to impotence. The troops seemed
to be mainly in charge of N.C.O.'s (I could imagine that the
officers would try to shirk this business), and an N.C.O. is
the most literal creature on earth. So with my megaphone
I proceeded to change the battle order.
I brought up the third wave to the front trenches. In
*
º
e


THE WINGS OF A DOVE 157
about three minutes the men had recognised the professional
touch and were moving smartly to my orders. They thought
it was part of the show, and the obedient cameras clicked
at everything that came into their orbit. My aim was to
deploy the troops on too narrow a front so that they were
bound to fan outward, and I had to be quick about it, for I
didn't know when the hapless movie-merchant might be
retrieved from the battle-field and dispute my authority.
It takes a long time to straighten a thing out, but it does
not take long to tangle it, especially when the thing is so
delicate a machine as disciplined troops. In about eight
minutes I had produced chaos. The flanks spread out, in
spite of all the shepherding of the N.C.O.'s, and the fringe
engulfed the photographers. The cameras on their little
platforms went down like ninepins. It was solemn to see
the startled face of a photographer, taken unawares, suppli-
cating the purposeful infantry, before he was swept off his
feet into speechlessness.
It was no place for me to linger in, so I chucked away
the megaphone and got mixed up with the tail of the third
wave. I was swept on and came to anchor in the enemy
trenches, where I found, as I expected, my profane and
breathless predecessor, the movie-merchant. I had nothing
to say to him, so I stuck to the trench till it ended against
the slope of the hill.
On that flank, delirious with excitement, stood a knot of
boy scouts. My business was to get to Bradfield as quick
as my legs would take me, and as inconspicuously as the gods
would permit. Unhappily I was far too great an object of
interest to that nursery of heroes. Every boy scout is an
annateur detective and hungry for knowledge. I was fol-
lowed by several, who plied me with questions, and were
told that I was off to Bradfield to hurry up part of the
cinema outfit. It sounded lame enough, for that cinema
outfit was already past praying for. -
We reached the road and against a stone wall stood several
bicycles. I selected one and prepared to mount.


158 MR. STANDFAST
“That's Mr. Emmott's machine,” said one boy sharply.
“He told me to keep an eye on it.”
“I must borrow it, sonny,” I said. “Mr. Emmott's my
very good friend and won't object.”
From the place where we stood I overlooked the back of
the battle-field and could see an anxious congress of officers.
I could see others, too, whose appearance I did not like.
They had not been there when I operated on the megaphone.
They must have come down hill from the aerodrome and in
all likelihood were the pursuers I had avoided. The exhil-
aration which I had won in the air and which had carried
me into the tomfoolery of the past half-hour was ebbing. I
had the hunted feeling once more, and grew middle-aged and
cautious. I had a baddish record for the day, what with
getting Archie into a scrape and busting up an official
cinema show—neither consistent with the duties of a briga-
dier-general. Besides, I had still to get to Lordon.
I had not gone two hundred yards down the road when a
boy scout, pedalling furiously came up abreast me.
“Colonel Edgeworth wants to see you,” he panted.
“You’re to come back at once.”
“Tell him I can't wait now,” I said. “I’ll pay my respects
to him in an hour.
“He said you were to come at once,” said the faithful
messenger. “He’s is an awful temper with you, and he's
got bobbies with him.”
I put on pace and left the boy behind. I reckoned I had
the better part of two miles' start and could beat anything
except petrol. But my enemies were bound to have cars,
so I had better get off the road as soon as possible. I coasted
down a long hill to a bridge which spanned a small dis-
coloured stream that flowed in a wooded glen. There was
nobody for the moment on the hill behind me, so I nipped
into the covert, shoved the bicycle under the bridge, and hid
Archie's aquascutum in a bramble thicket. I was now in
my own disreputable tweeds and I hoped that the shedding


THE WINGS OF A DOVE 159
of my most conspicuous garment would puzzle my pursuers
if they should catch up with me.
But this I was determined they should not do. I made
good going down that stream and out into a lane which led
from the downs to the market-gardens round the city. I
thanked Heaven I had got rid of the aquascutum, for the
August afternoon was warm and my pace was not leisurely.
When I was in secluded ground Iran, and when anyone was
in sight I walked smartly.
As I went I reflected that Bradfield would see the end of
my adventures. The police knew that I was there and
would watch the stations and hunt me down if I lingered in
the place. I knew no one there and had no chance of get-
ting an effective disguise. Indeed I very soon began to
wonder if I should get even as far as the streets. For at
the moment when I had got a lift on the back of a fish-
monger's cart and was screened by its flapping canvas, two
figures passed on motor-cycles, and one of them was the
inquisitive boy scout. The main road from the aerodome
was probably now being patrolled by motor-cars. It looked
as if there would be a degrading arrest in one of the
suburbs.
The fish-cart, helped by half a crown to the driver, took
me past the outlying small-villadom, between long lines of
workmen's houses, to narrow cobbled lanes and the purlieus
of great factories. As soon at I saw the streets well crowded
I got out and walked. In my old clothes I must have
appeared like some second-class bookie or seedy horse-coper.
The only respectable thing I had about me was my gold
watch. I looked at the time and found it half-past five.
I wanted food and was casting about for an eating-house
when I heard the purr of a motor-cycle and across the road
saw the intelligent boy scout. He saw me, too, and put
on the brake with a sharpness which caused him to skid
and all but come to grief under the wheels of a wool-
waggon. That gave me time to efface myself by darting up


160 MR. STANDFAST
a side street. I had an unpleasant sense that I was about
to be trapped, for in a place I knew nothing of I had not
a chance to use my wits.
I remember trying feverishly to think, and I suppose that
my preoccupation made me careless. I was now in a verita-
ble slum, and when I put my hand to my vest pocket I
found that my watch had gone.
That put the top stone on my depression. The reaction
from the wild humour of the forenoon had left me very
cold about the feet. I was getting into the under-world
again and there was no chance of a second Archie Roylance
turning up to rescue me. I remember yet the sour smell of
the factories and the mist of smoke in the evening air. It
is a smell I have never met since without a sort of dulling
of spirit.
Presently I came out into a market-place. Whistles were
blowing, and there was a great hurrying of people back from
the mills. The crowd gave me a momentary sense of secur-
ity, and I was just about to inquire my way to the railway
station when someone jostled my arm.
A rough-looking fellow in mechanic's clothes was beside
Ine.
“Mate,” he whispered, “I’ve got summat o' yours here.”
And to my amazement he slipped my watch into my hand.
“It was took by mistake. We're friends o' yours. You're
right enough if you do what I tell you. There's a peeler
over there got his eye on you. Follow me and I'll get you
off.”
I didn’t much like the man's looks, but I had no choice,
and anyhow he had given me back my watch. He sidled into
an alley between tall houses and I sidled after him. Then
he took to his heels, and led me a twisting course through
smelly courts into a tanyard and then by a narrow lane to
the back-quarters of a factory. Twice we doubled back,
and once we climbed a wall and followed the bank of a
blue-black stream with a filthy scum on it. Then we got
into a very mean quarter of the town, and emerged in a


THE WINGS OF A DOVE 161
dingy garden, strewn with tin cans and broken flower-pots.
By a back door we entered one of the cottages and my guide
very carefully locked it behind him.
He lit the gas and drew the blinds in a small parlour
and looked at me long and quizzically. He spoke now in an
educated voice.
“I ask no questions,” he said, “but it's my business to
put my services at your disposal. You carry the passport.”
I stared at him, and he pulled out his watch and showed a
white-and-purple cross inside the lid.
“I don't defend all the people we employ,” he said, grin-
ning. “Men's morals are not always as good as their
patriotism. One of them pinched your watch, and when he
saw what was inside it he reported to me. We soon picked
up your trail, and observed you were in a bit of trouble.
As I say, I ask no questions. What can we do for you?”
“I want to get to London without any questions asked.
They're looking for me in my present rig, so I’ve got to
change it.”
“That's easy enough,” he said. “Make yourself com-
fortable for a little and I'll fix you up. The night train goes
at eleven-thirty. . . . You'll find cigars in the cupboard and
there's this week's Critic on that table. It's got a good arti-
cle on Conrad, if you care for such things.”
I helped myself to a cigar and spent a profitable half-hour
reading about the vices of the British Government. Then
my host returned and bade me ascend to his bedroom.
“You’re Private Henry Tomkins of the 12th Gloucesters,
and you'll find your clothes ready for you. I'll send on your
present togs if you give me an address.”
I did as I was bid, and presently emerged in the uniform
of a British private, complete down to the shapeless boots
and the dropsical puttees. Then my friend took me in hand
and finished the transformation. He started on my hair
with scissors and arranged a lock which, when well oiled,
curled over my forehead. My hands were hard and rough
and only needed some grubbiness and hacking about the nails


162 MR. STANDFAST
to pass muster. With my cap on the side of my head, a
pack on my back, a service rifle in my hands, and my
pockets bursting with penny picture papers, I was the very
model of the British soldier returning from leave. I had
also a packet of Woodbine cigarettes and a hunch of bread-
and-cheese for the journey. And I had a railway warrant
made out in my name for London.
Then my friend gave me supper—bread and cold meat
and a bottle of Bass, which I wolfed savagely, for I had had
nothing since breakfast. He was a curious fellow, as dis-
creet as a tombstone, very ready to speak about general
subjects, but never once coming near the intimate business
which had linked him and me and Heaven knew how many
others by means of a little purple-and-white cross in a
watchcase. I remember we talked about the topics that
used to be popular at Biggleswick—the big political things
that begin with capital letters. He took Amos's view of the
soundness of the British workingman, but he said some-
thing which made me think. He was convinced that there
was a tremendous lot of German spy work about, and that
most of the practitioners were innocent. “The ordinary
Briton doesn't run to treason, but he's not very bright. A
clever man in that kind of game can make better use of a
fool than of a rogue.”
As he saw me off he gave me a piece of advice. “Get
out of these clothes as soon as you reach London. Private
Tomkins will frank you out of Bradfield, but it mightn't be
a healthy alias in the metropolis.”
At eleven-thirty I was safe in the train, talking the jargon
of the returning soldier with half a dozen of my own type
in a smoky third-class carriage. I had been lucky in my
escape, for at the station entrance and on the platform I
had noticed several men with the unmistakable look of plain-
clothes police. Also—though this may have been my fancy
—I thought I caught in the crowd a glimpse of the bagman
who had called himself Linklater.


CHAPTER X
THE ADVANTAGES OF AN AIR RAID
HE train was abominably late. It was due at eight-
twenty-seven, but it was nearly ten when we reached
St. Pancras. I had resolved to go straight to my rooms in
Westminster, buying on the way a cap and waterproof to
conceal my uniform should anyone be near my door on my
arrival. Then X would ring up Blenkiron and tell him all
my adventures. I breakfasted at a coffee-stall, left my pack
and rifle in the cloak-room, and walked out into the clear
sunny morning.
I was feeling very pleased with myself. Looking back
on my madcap journey, I seemed to have had an amazing
run of luck and to be entitled to a little credit too. I told
myself that persistence always pays and that nobody is
beaten till he is dead. All Blenkiron's instructions had been
faithfully carried out. I had found Ivery's post office, I
had laid the lines of our own special communications with
the enemy, and so far as I could see I had left no clue
behind me. Ivery and Gresson took me for a well-meaning
nincompoop. It was true that I had aroused profound sus-
picion in the breasts of the Scottish police. But that mat-
tered nothing, for Cornelius Brand, the suspect, would
presently disappear, and there was nothing against that ris-
ing soldier. Brigadier-General Richard Hannay, who would
soon be on his way to France. After all this piece of
service had not been so very unpleasant. I laughed when I
remembered my grim forebodings in Gloucestershire. Bulli-
vant had said it would be damnably risky in the long run,
but here was the end and I had never been in danger of
anything worse than making a fool of myself.
163


164: MR. STANDFAST
I remember that, as I made my way through Bloomsbury,
I was not thinking so much of my triumphant report to
Blenkiron as of my speedy return to the Front. Soon I
would be with my beloved brigade again. I had missed
Messines and the first part of Third Ypres, but the battle
was still going on, and I had yet a chance. I might get a
division, for there had been talk of that before I left. I
knew the Army Commander thought a lot of me. But on
the whole I hoped I would be left with the brigade. After
all I was an amateur soldier, and I wasn't certain of my
powers with a bigger command.
In Charing Cross Road I thought of Mary, and the
brigade seemed suddenly less attractive. I hoped the war
wouldn't last much longer, though with Russia heading
straight for the devil I didn't know how it was going to
stop very soon. I was determined to see Mary before I
left, and I had a good excuse, for I had taken my orders
from her. The prospect entranced me, and I was mooning
along in a happy dream, when I collided violently with an
agitated citizen.
Then I realised that something very odd was happening.
There was a dull sound like the popping of the corks of
flat soda-water bottles. There was a humming, too, from
very far up in the skies. People in the street were either
staring at the heavens or running wildly for shelter. A
motor-bus in front of me emptied its contents in a twink-
ling; a taxi pulled up with a jar and the driver and fare
dived into a second-hand bookshop. It took me a moment
or two to realise the meaning of it all, and I had scarcely
done this when I got a very practical proof. A hundred
yards away a bomb fell on a street-island, shivering every
window-pane in a wide radius, and sending splinters of
stone flying about my head. I did what I had done a hun-
dred times before at the Front, and dropped flat on my
face.
The man who says he doesn't mind being bombed or
shelled is either a liar or a maniac. This London air raid


ADVANTAGES OF AN AIR RAID 165
seemed to me a singularly unpleasant business. I think it
was the sight of the decent civilised life around one and
the orderly streets, for what was perfectly natural in a
rubble-heap like Ypres or Arras seemed an outrage here.
I remember once being in billets in a Flanders village where
I had the Maire's house and sat in a room upholstered in
cut velvet, with wax flowers on the mantelpiece and oil
paintings of three generations on the walls. The Boche
took it into his head to shell the place with a long-range
naval gun, and I simply loathed it. It was horrible to
have dust and splinters blown into that smug, homely room,
whereas if I had been in a ruined barn I wouldn't have
given the thing two thoughts. In the same way bombs
dropping in central London seemed a grotesque indecency.
I hated to see plump citizens with wild eyes, and nurse-
maids with scared children, and miserable women scuttling
like rabbits in a warren.
The drone grew louder, and, looking up, I could see the
enemy planes flying in a beautiful formation, very leisurely
as it seemed, with all London at their mercy. Another
bomb fell to the right, and presently bits of our own
shrapnel were clattering viciously around me. I thought
it about time to take cover, and ran shamelessly for the
best place I could see, which was a Tube station. Five
minutes before the street had been crowded; now I left be-
hind me a desert dotted with one bus and three empty
taxicabs.
I found the Tube entrance filled with excited humanity.
One stout lady had fainted, and a nurse had become hyster-
ical, but on the whole people were behaving well. Oddly
enough they did not seem inclined to go down the stairs
to the complete security of underground; but preferred
rather to collect where they could still get a glimpse of the
upper world, as if they were torn between fear of their
lives and interest in the spectacle. That crowd gave me a
good deal of respect for my countrymen. But several were
badly rattled, and one man a little way off, whose back was


166 MR. STANDFAST
turned, kept twitching his shoulders as if he had the
colic.
I watched him curiously, and a movement of the crowd
brought his face into profile. Then I gasped with amaze-
ment, for I saw that it was Ivery.
And yet it was not Ivery. There were the familiar non-
descript features, the blandness, the plumpness, but all, so
to speak, in ruins. The man was in a blind funk. His
features seemed to be dislimning before my eyes. He was
growing sharper, finer, in a way younger, a man without
grip on himself, a shapeless creature in process of trans-
formation. He was being reduced to his rudiments. Under
the spell of panic he was becoming a new man.
And the crazy thing was that I knew the new man
better than the old.
My hands were jammed close to my sides by the crowd;
I could scarcely turn my head, and it was not the occasion
for one's neighbours to observe one's expression. If it had
been, mine must have been a study. My mind was far
away from air raids, back in the hot summer weather of
1914. . . . I saw a row of villas perched on a headland
above the sea. In the garden of one of them two men
were playing tennis, while I was crouching behind an adja-
cent bush. One of these was a plump young man who wore
a coloured scarf round his waist and babbled of golf handi-
caps. . . . I saw him again in the villa dining-room, wear-
ing a dinner-jacket, and lisping a little. . . . I sat opposite
him at bridge, I beheld him collared by two of Macgilli-
vray's men, when his comrade had rushed for the thirty-
nine steps that led to the sea. . . . I saw, too, the sitting-
room of my old flat in Portland Place and heard little
Scudder's quick, anxious voice talking about the three men
he feared most on earth, one of whom lisped in his speech.
I had thought that all three had long ago been laid under
the turf. . . .
He was not looking my way, and I could devour his face
in safety. There was no shadow of doubt. I had always


ADVANTAGES OF AN AIR RAID 167
put him down as the most amazing actor on earth, for had
he not played the part of the First Sea Lord and deluded
that officer's daily colleagues? But he could do far more
than any human actor, for he could take on a new person-
ality and with it a new appearance, and live steadily in i
the character as if he had been born in it. . . . My mind
was a blank, and I could only make blind gropings at con-
clusions. . . . How had he escaped the death of a spy and
a murderer, for I had last seen him in the hands of justice?
. . . Of course he had known me from the first day in
Biggleswick. . . . I had thought to play with him, and he
had played most cunningly and damnably with me. In that
sweating sardine-tin of refugees I shivered in the bitter-
ness of my chagrin.
And then I found his face turned to mine, and I knew
that he recognised me.
More, I knew that he knew that I had recognised him—
not as Ivery, but as that other man. There came into his
eyes a curious look of comprehension, which for a moment
overcame his funk.
I had sense enough to see that that put the final lid on it.
There was still something doing if he believed that I was
blind, but if he once thought that I knew the truth he
would be through our meshes and disappear like a fog.
My first thought was to get at him and collar him and
summon everybody to help me by denouncing him for what
he was. Then I saw that that was impossible. I was a
private soldier in a borrowed uniform, and he could easily
turn the story against me. I must use surer weapons. I
must get to Bullivant and Macgillivray and set their big
machine to work. Above all I must get to Blenkiron.
I started to squeeze out of that push, for air raids now
seemed far too trivial to give a thought to. Moreover the
guns had stopped, but so sheeplike is human nature that
the crowd still hung together, and it took me a good fifteen
minutes to edge my way to the open air. I found that the
trouble was over, and the street had resumed its usual


ADVANTAGES OF AN AIR RAID 169
escape; and I, the sole repository of a deadly secret, was
tramping in this absurd procession.
The A.P.M. issued his orders. He gave instructions that
my depot should be rung up, and he bade Wilson remove
me to what he called the guard room. He sat down at his
desk, and busied himself with a mass of buff dockets.
In desperation I renewed my appeal. “I implore you to
telephone to Mr. Macgillivray at Scotland Yard. It's a
matter of life and death, sir. You're taking a very big
responsibility if you don't.”
I had hopelessly offended his brittle dignity. “Any more
of your insolence and I'll have you put in irons. I'll attend
to you soon enough for your comfort. Get out of this till
I send for you.”
As I looked at his foolish, irritable face I realised that I
was fairly up against it. Short of assault and battery on
everybody I was bound to submit. I saluted respectfully
and was marched away.
The hours I spent in that bare anteroom are like a night-
mare in my recollection. A sergeant was busy at a desk
with more buff dockets and an orderly waited on a stool
by a telephone. I looked at my watch and observed that it
was one o'clock. Soon the slamming of a door announced
that the A.P.M. had gone to lunch. I tried conversation
with the fat sergeant, but he very soon shut me up. So I
sat hunched up on the wooden form and chewed the cud .
\
of my vexation. º
I thought with bitterness of the satisfaction which had
filled me in the morning. I had fancied myself the devil
of a fine fellow, and I had been no more than a mounte-
bank. The adventures of the past days seemed merely
childish. I had been telling lies and cutting capers over
half Britain, thinking I was playing a deep game, and I had
only been behaving like a schoolboy. On such occasions
a man is rarely just to himself, and the intensity of my self-
abasement would have satisfied my worst enemy. It didn't


170 MR. STANDFAST
console me that the futility of it all was not my blame. I
was not looking for excuses. It was the facts that cried
out against me, and on the facts I had been an idiotic failure.
For of course Ivery had played with me, played with me
since the first day at Biggleswick. He had applauded my
speeches and flattered me, and advised me to go to the
Clyde, laughing at me all the time. Gresson, too, had
known. Now I saw it all. He had tried to drown me
between Colonsay and Mull. It was Gresson who had set
the police on me in Morvern. The bagman Linklater had
been one of Gresson's creatures. The only meagre consola-
tion was that the gang had thought me dangerous enough to
attempt to murder me, and that they knew nothing about
my doings in Skye. Of that I was positive. They had
marked me down, but for several days I had slipped clean
out of their ken.
As I went over all the incidents, I asked if everything
was yet lost. I had failed to hoodwink Ivery, but I had
found out his post office, and if he only believed I hadn't
recognised him for the miscreant of the Black Stone he
would go on in his old ways and play into Blenkiron's
hands. Yes, but I had seen him in undress, so to speak, and
he knew that I had so seen him. The only thing now was to
collar him before he left the country, for there was ample
evidence to hang him on. The law must stretch out its long
arm and collect him and Gresson and the Portuguese Jew,
try them by courtmartial, and put them decently under-
ground.
But he had now had more than an hour's warning, and I
was entangled with red-tape in this damned A.P.M.'s office.
The thought drove me frantic, and I got up and paced the
floor. I saw the orderly with rather a scared face making
ready to press the bell, and I noticed that the fat sergeant
had gone to lunch.
“Say, mate,” I said, “don’t you feel inclined to do a
poor fellow a good turn? I know I'm for it all right, and


ADVANTAGES OF AN AIR RAID 171
I'll take my medicine like a lamb. But I want badly to put
a telephone call through.”
“It ain't allowed,” was the answer. “I’d get ’ell from
the old man.”
“But he's gone out,” I urged. “I don't want you to do
anything wrong, mate. I leave you to do the talkin' if you'll
only send my message. I’m flush of money, and I don't
mind handin' you a quid for the job.”
He was a pinched little man with a weak chin, and he
obviously wavered.
“’Oo d'ye want to talk to?” he asked.
“Scotland Yard,” I said, “the home of the police. Lord
bless you, there can't be no harm in that. Ye've only got
to ring up Scotland Yard—I'll give you the number—and
give the message to Mr. Macgillivray. He's the head bum-
mer of all the bobbies.”
“That sounds a bit of all right,” he said. “The old man
'e won't be back for 'alf an hour, nor the sergeant neither.
Let's see your quid, though.”
I laid a pound note on the form beside me. “It's yours,
mate, if you get through to Scotland Yard and speak the
piece I'm goin' to give you.”
He went over to the instrument. “What d'you want to
say to the bloke with the long name?”
“Say that Richard Hannay is detained at the A.P.M.'s
office in Claxon Street. Say he's got important news—say
urgent and secret news—and ask Mr. Macgillivray to do
something about it at once.” -
“But 'Annay ain't the name you gave.”
“Lord bless you, no. Did you never hear of a man bor-
rowin' another name? Anyhow that's the one I want you
to give.”
“But if this Mac man comes round 'ere, they'll know 'e's
bin rung up, and I'll 'ave the old man down on me.”
It took ten minutes and a second pound note to get him
past this hurdle. By and by he screwed up courage and


172 MR. STANDFAST
rang up the number. I listened with some nervousness
while he gave my message—he had to repeat it twice—and
waited eagerly on the next words.
“No, sir,” I heard him say, “’e don't want you to come
round 'ere. 'E thinks as 'ow—I mean to say, 'e wants sy
I took a long stride and twitched the receiver from him.
“Macgillivray,” I said, “is that you? Richard Hannay!
For the love of God come round here this instant and
deliver me from the clutches of a tomfool A.P.M. I’ve
got the most deadly news. There's not a second to waste.
For God's sake, come quick!” Then I added: “Just tell
your fellows to gather in Ivery at once. You know his
Hairs.”
I hung up the receiver and faced a pale and indignant
orderly. “It’s all right,” I said. “I promise you that you
won't get into any trouble on my account. And there's
your two quid.”
The door in the next room opened and shut. The A.P.M.
had returned from lunch. . . .
Ten minutes later the door opened again. I heard Mac-
gillivray's voice, and it was not pitched in dulcet tones. He
had run up against minor officialdom and was making hay
with it.
I was my own master once more, so I forsook the com-
pany of the orderly. I found a most rattled officer trying
to save a few rags of his dignity and the formidable figure
of Macgillivray instructing him in manners.
“Glad to see you, Dick,” he said. “This is General
Hannay, sir. It may comfort you to know that your folly
may have made just the difference between your country's
victory and defeat. I shall have a word to say to your
superiors.”
It was hardly fair. I had to put in a word for the old
fellow, whose red tabs seemed suddenly to have grown
dingy.
“It was my blame wearing this kit. We'll call it a mis-
understanding and forget it. But I would suggest that


ADVANTAGES OF AN AIR RAID 173
civility is not wasted even on a poor devil of a defaulting
private soldier.”
Once in Macgillivray's car, I poured out my tale. “Tell
me it's a nightmare,” I cried. “Tell me that the three men
we collected on the Ruff were shot long ago.”
“Two,” he replied, “but one escaped. Heaven knows
how he managed it, but he disappeared clean out of the
world.”
“The plump one who lisped in his speech?”
Macgillivray nodded.
“Well, we're in for it this time. Have you issued
instructions?”
“Yes. With luck we shall have our hands on him with-
in an hour. We’ve our net round all his haunts.”
“But two hours' start! It's a big handicap, for you're
dealing with a genius.”
“Yet I think we can manage it. Where are you bound
for P’’
I told him my rooms in Westminster and then to my old
flat in Park Lane. “The day of disguises is past. In
half an hour I'll be Richard Hannay. It'll be a comfort to
get into uniform again. Then I'll look up Blenkiron.”
He grinned. “I gather you've had a riotous time. We've
had a good many anxious messages from the north about a
certain Mr. Brand. I couldn't discourage our men, for I
fancied it might have spoiled your game. I heard that last
night they had lost touch with you in Bradfield, so I rather
expected to see you here to-day. Efficient body of men the
Scottish police.”
“Especially when they have various enthusiastic amateur
helpers.”
“So?” he said. “Yes, of course. They would have.
But I hope presently to congratulate you on the success of
your mission.”
“I’ll bet you a pony you don't,” I said.
“I never bet on a professional subject. Why this
pessimism?”


174 MR. STANDFAST
“Only that I know our gentleman better than you. I've
been twice up against him. He's the kind of wicked that
don't cease from troubling till they're stone-dead. And even
then I’d want to see the body cremated and take the ashes
into mid-ocean and scatter them. I’ve got a feeling that
he's the biggest thing you or I will ever tackle.”


176 MR. STANDFAST
mercies. There was a doctor who was kind to him, and
some good fellows among the prisoners.
But Peter's letter was made up chiefly of reflections. He
had always been a bit of a philosopher, and now, in his
isolation, he had taken to thinking hard, and poured out the
results to me on pages of thin paper in his clumsy hand-
writing. I could read between the lines that he was having
a stiff fight with himself. He was trying to keep his cour-
age going in face of the bitterest trial he could be called on
to face—a crippled old age. He had always known a good
deal about the Bible, and that and the Pilgrim's Progress
were his chief aids to reflection. Both he took quite literally,
as if they were newspaper reports of actual recent events.
He mentioned that after much consideration he had
reached the conclusion that the three greatest men he had
ever heard of or met were Mr. Valiant-for-Truth, the
Apostle Paul, and a certain Billy Strang who had been
with him in Mashonaland in '92. Billy I knew all about;
he had been Peter's hero and leader till a lion got him in
the Blaauwberg. Peter preferred Valiant-for-Truth to Mr.
Greatheart, I think because of his superior truculence, for,
being very gentle himself, he loved a bold speaker. After
that he dropped into a vein of self-examination. He re-
gretted that he fell far short of any of the three. He thought
that he might with luck resemble Mr. Standfast, for like
him he had not much trouble in keeping wakeful, and wal
also as “poor as a howlet,” and didn't care for women. He
only hoped that he could imitate him in making a good end.
Then followed some remarks of Peter's on courage, which
came to me in that London room as if spoken by his living
voice. I have never known anyone so brave, so brave by
instinct, or anyone who hated so much to be told so. It
was almost the only thing that could make him angry.
All his life he had been facing death, and to take risks
seemed to him as natural as to get up in the morning and
eat his breakfast. But he had started out to consider the
very things which before he had taken for granted, and here


THE WALLEY OF HUMILIATION 177
is an extract from his conclusions. I paraphrase him, for
he was not grammatical.
“It’s easy enough to be brave if you're feeling well and
have food inside you. And it's not so difficult even if you're
short of a meal and seedy, for that makes you inclined to
gamble. I mean by being brave playing the game by the
right rules without letting it worry you that you may very
likely get knocked on the head. It's the wisest way to save
your skin. It doesn't do to think about death if you're
facing a charging lion or trying to bluff a lot of savages. If
you think about it, you'll get it; if you don't, the odds are
you won't. That kind of courage is only good nerves and
erperience. . . . Most courage is experience. Most people
are a little scared at new things. . . .
“You want a bigger heart to face danger which you go
out to look for, and which doesn't come to you in the
ordinary way of business. Still, that's pretty much the
same thing—good nerves and good health, and a natural
liking for rows. You see, Dick, in all that game there's
a lot of fun. There's ercitement and the fun of using
your wits and skill, and you know that the bad bits can't
last long. When Arcoll sent me to Makapan's kraal I
didn't altogether fancy the job, but at the worst it was
three parts sport, and I got so excited that I never thought
of the risk till it was over. . . .
“But the big courage is the cold-blooded kind, the kind
that never lets go even when you're feeling empty inside,
and your blood's thin, and there's no kind of fun or profit
to be had, and the trouble's not over in an hour or two but
lasts for months and years. One of the men here was
speaking about that kind, and he called it ‘Fortitude.' I
reckon fortitude's the biggest thing a man can have—just
to go on enduring when there's no guts or heart left in you.
Billy had it when he trekked solitary from Garungoze to the
Limpopo with fever and a broken arm just to show the
Portugooses that he wouldn't be downed by them. But
the head man at the job was the Apostle Paul. . . .”


178 MR. STANDFAST
Peter was writing for his own comfort, for fortitude was
all that was left to him now. But his words came pretty
straight to me, and I read them again and again, for I
needed the lesson. Here was I losing heart just because I
had failed in the first round and my pride had taken a knock.
I felt honestly ashamed of myself, and that made me a far
happier man. There could be no question of dropping the
business, whatever its difficulties. I had a queer religious
feeling that Ivery and I had our fortunes intertwined, and
that no will of mine could keep us apart. I had faced him
before the war and won; I had faced him again and lost;
the third time or the twentieth time we would reach a final
decision. The whole business had hitherto appeared to me
a trifle unreal, at any rate my own connection with it. I
had been docilely obeying orders, but my real self had been
standing aside and watching my doings with a certain aloof-
ness. But that hour in the Tube station had brought me
into the scrum, and I saw the affair not as Bullivant's or
even Blenkiron's, but as my own. Before I had been itching
to get back to the Front; now I wanted to get on to Ivery's
trail, though it should take me through the nether pit. Peter
was right; fortitude was the thing a man must possess if
he would save his soul."
The hours passed, and, as I expected, there came no
word from Macgillivray. I had some dinner sent up to me
at seven o'clock, and about eight I was thinking of looking
up Blenkiron. Just then came a telephone call asking me
to go round to Sir Walter Bullivant's house in Queen
Anne's Gate.
Ten minutes later I was ringing the bell, and the door
was opened to me by the same impassive butler who had
admitted me on that famous night three years before. Noth-
ing had changed in the pleasant green-panelled hall;
the alcove was the same as when I had watched from it the
departure of the man who now called himself Ivery; the
telephone book lay in the very place from which I had
snatched it in order to ring up the First Sea Lord. And in


THE WALLEY OF HUMILLATION 179
the back room, where that night five anxious officials had
conferred, I found Sir Walter and Blenkiron.
Both looked worried, the American feverishly so. He
walked up and down the hearthrug, sucking an unlit black
cigar.
“Say, Dick,” he said, “this is a bad business. It wasn't
no fault of yours. You did fine. It was us—me and Sir
Walter and Mr. Macgillivray that were the quitters.”
“Any news?” I asked.
“So far the covers drawn blank,” Sir Walter replied. “It
was the devil's own work that our friend looked your way
to-day. You're pretty certain he saw that you recognised
him P”
“Absolutely. As sure as that he knew I recognised him
in your hall three years ago when he was swaggering as
Lord Alloa.”
“No,” said Blenkiron dolefully, “that little flicker of
recognition is just the one thing you can't be wrong about.
Land alive! I wish Mr. Macgillivray would come.”
The bell rang, and the door opened, but it was not Mac-
gillivray. It was a young girl in a white ball-gown, with
a cluster of blue cornflowers at her breast. The sight of her
fetched Sir Walter out of his chair so suddenly that he upset
his coffee cup.
“Mary, my dear, how did you manage it? I didn't expect
you till the late train.”
“I was in London, you see, and they telephoned on your
telegram. I’m staying with Aunt Doria, and I cut her
theatre party. She thinks I’m at the Shandwick's dance, so
I needn't go home till morning. . . . Good evening, General
Hannay. You got over the Hill Difficulty.”
“The next stage is the Valley of Humiliation,” I
answered.
“So it would appear,” she said gravely, and sat very
quietly on the edge of Sir Walter's chair with her small,
cool hand upon his.
I had been picturing her in my recollection as very young


180 MR. STANDFAST
nd glimmering, a dancing exquisite child. But now I
revised that picture. The crystal freshness of morning was
still there, but I saw how deep the waters were. It was
the clean fineness and strength of her that entranced me.
I didn't even think of her as pretty, any more than a man
thinks of the good looks of the friend he worships.
`We waited, hardly speaking a word, till Macgillivray
came. The first sight of his face told his story.
“Gone?” asked Blenkiron sharply. The man's lethargic
calm seemed to have wholly deserted him.
“Gone,” repeated the new-comer. “We have just tracked
him down. Oh, he managed it cleverly. Never a sign of
disturbance in any of his lairs. His dinner ordered at
Biggleswick and several people invited to stay with him for
the week-end—one a member of the Government. Two
meetings at which he was to speak arranged for next week.
Early this afternoon he flew over to France as a passenger
in one of the new planes. He had been mixed up with the
Air Board people for months—of course as another man
with another face. Miss Lamington discovered that just
too late. The bus went out of its course and came down
in Normandy. By this time our man's in Paris or beyond
it.” -
Sir Walter took off his big tortoiseshell spectacles and
laid them carefully on the table.
“Roll up the map of Europe,” he said. “This is our
Austerlitz. Mary, my dear, I am feeling very old.”
Macgillivray had the sharpened face of a bitterly dis-
appointed man. Blenkiron had got very red, and I could
see that he was blaspheming violently under his breath.
Mary's eyes were quiet and solemn. She kept on patting
Sir Walter's hand. The sense of some great impending dis-
aster hung heavily on me, and to break the spell I asked for
details.
“Tell me just the extent of the damage,” I asked. “Our
neat plan for deceiving the Boche has failed. That is bad.
A dangerous spy has got beyond our power. That's worse.


THE WALLEY OF HUMILLATION 181
Tell me, is there still a worst? What's the limit of mischief
he can do?”
Sir Walter had risen and joined Blenkiron on the hearth-
rug. His brows were furrowed and his mouth hard as if he
were suffering pain.
“There is no limit,” he said. “None that I can see,
except the long-suffering of God. You knew the man as
Ivery, and you knew him as that other whom you believed
to have been shot one summer morning and decently buried.
You feared the second—at least if you didn't, I did—most
mortally. You realised that we feared Ivery, and you knew
enough about him to see his fiendish cleverness. Well, you
have the two men combined in one man. Ivery was the best
brain Macgillivray and I ever encountered, the most cun-
ning and patient and long-sighted. Combine him with the
other, the chameleon who can blend himself with his en-
vironment, and has as many personalities as there are types
and traits on the earth. What kind of enemy is that to have
to fight?”
“I admit it's a steep proposition. But after all how
much ill can he do? There are pretty strict limits to the
activity of even the cleverest spy.”
“I agree. But this man is not a spy who buys a few
wretched subordinates and steals a dozen private letters.
He's a genius who has been living as part of our English
life. There's nothing he hasn't seen. He's been on terms
of intimacy with all kinds of politicians. We know that.
He did it as Ivery. They rather liked him, for he was
clever and flattered them, and they told him things. But
God knows what he saw and heard in his other personalities.
For all I know he may have breakfasted at Downing Street
with letters of introduction from President Wilson, or
visited the Grand Fleet as a distinguished neutral. Then
think of the women; how they talk. We're the leakiest
society on earth, and we safeguard ourselves by keeping
dangerous people out of it. We trust to our outer barrage.
But anyone who has really slipped inside has a million


182 MR. STANDFAST
chances. And this, remember, is one man in ten millions, a
man whose brain never sleeps for a moment, who is quick
to seize the slightest hint, who can piece a plan together out
of a dozen bits of gossip. It's like—it's as if the Chief of
the Intelligence Department were suddenly to desert to the
enemy. . . . The ordinary spy knows only bits of uncon-
nected facts. This man knows our life and our way of
thinking and everything about us.”
“Well, but a treatise on English life in time of war
won't do much good to the Boche.”
Sir Walter shook his head. “Don’t you realise the
explosive stuff that is lying about? Ivery knows enough to
make the next German peace offensive really deadly—not the
blundering thing which it has been up to now, but some-
thing which gets our weak spots on the raw. He knows
enough to wreck our campaign in the field. And the awful
thing is that we don't know just what he knows or what
he is aiming for. This war's a packet of surprises. Both
sides are struggling for the margin, the little fraction of
advantage, and between evenly matched enemies it's just the
extra atom of foreknowledge that tells.”
“Then we've got to push off and get after him,” I said
cheerfully.
“But what are you going to do?” asked Macgillivray.
“If it were merely a question of destroying an organisation
it might be managed, for an organisation presents a big
front. But it's a question of destroying this one man, and
his front is a razor edge. How are you going to find him?
It's like looking for a needle in a haystack, and such a
needle ! A needle which can become a piece of straw or a
tin-tack when it chooses!”
“All the same we've got to do it,” I said, remembering
old Peter's lesson on fortitude, though I can't say I was
feeling very stout-hearted.
Sir Walter flung himself wearily into an arm-chair. “I
wish I could be an optimist,” he said, “but it looks as if we


THE WALLEY OF HUMILIATION 183
must own defeat. I’ve been at this work for twenty years,
and, though I've been often beaten, I’ve always held certain
cards in the game. Now I'm hanged if I’ve any. It looks
like a knock-out, Hannay. It's no good deluding ourselves.
We're men enough to look facts in the face and tell our-
selves the truth. I don't see any ray of light in the
business. We've missed our shot by a hair's-breadth and
that's the same as missing by miles.”
I remember he looked at Mary as if for confirmation,
but she did not smile or nod. Her face was very grave
and her eyes looked steadily at him. Then they moved
and met mine, and they seemed to give me my marching
orders.
“Sir Walter,” I said, “three years ago you and I sat
in this very room. We thought we were done to the world,
as we think now. We had just that one miserable little
clue to hang on to—a dozen words scribbled in a notebook
by a dead man. You thought I was mad when I asked for
Scudder's book, but we put our backs into the job and in
twenty-four hours we had won out. Remember that then
we were fighting against time. Now we have a reasonable
amount of leisure. Then we had nothing but a sentence of
gibberish. Now we have a great body of knowledge, for
Blenkiron has been brooding over Ivery like an old hen,
and he knows his ways of working and his breed of con-
federate. You've got something to work on now. Do you
mean to tell me that, when the stakes are so big, you're going
to chuck in your hand?”
Macgillivray raised his head. “We know a good deal
about Ivery, but Ivery's dead. We know nothing of the
man who was gloriously resurrected this evening in
Normandy.”
“Oh yes, you do. There are many faces to the man, but
only one mind, and you know plenty about that mind.”
“I wonder,” said Sir Walter. “How can you know
a mind which has no characteristics except that it is wholly


184 - MR. STANDFAST
and supremely competent? Mere mental powers won't give
us a clue. We want to know the character which is behind
all the personalities. Above all we want to know its foibles.
: we had only a hint of some weakness we might make a
plan.”
“Well, let's set down all we know,” I cried, for the more
I argued the keener I grew. I told them in some detail the
Story of the night in the Coolin and what I had heard there.
“There's the two names Chelius and Bommaerts. The
man spoke them in the same breath as Elfenbein, so they
must be associated with Ivery's gang. You've got to get
the whole Secret Service of the Allies busy to fit a mean-
ing to these two words. Surely to goodness you'll find
Something! Remember those names don't belong to the
Ivery part, but to the big game behind all the different dis-
guises. . . . Then there's the talk about the Wild Birds and
the Cage Birds. I haven't a guess at what it means. But
it refers to some infernal gang, and among your piles of
records there must be some clue. Yon set the intelligence
of two hemispheres busy on the job. You've got all the
machinery, and it's my experience that if even one solitary
man keeps chewing on at a problem he discovers some-
thing.”
My enthusiasm was beginning to strike sparks from Mac-
gillivray. He was looking thoughtful now, instead of
despondent.
“There might be something in that,” he said, “but it's
a far-out chance.”
“Of course it's a far-out chance, and that's all we're ever
going to get from Ivery. But we’ve taken a bad chance
before and won. . . . Then you've all that you know about
Ivery here. Go through his dossier with a small-tooth comb
and I'll bet you find something to work on. Blenkiron,
you're a man with a cool head. You admit we've a sport-
ing chance.”
“Sure, Dick. He's fixed things so that the lines are
across the tracks, but we'll clear somehow. So far as John


THE WALLEY OF HUMILIATION 185
S. Blenkiron is concerned he's got just one thing to do in this
world, and that's to follow the yellow dog and have him
neatly and cleanly tidied up. I’ve got a stack of personal
affronts to settle. I was easy fruit and he hasn't been very
respectful. You can count me in, Dick.”
“Then we're agreed,” I cried. “Well, gentlemen, it's
up to you to arrange the first stage. You've some pretty
solid staff work to put in before you get on the trail.”
“And you?” Sir Walter asked.
“I’m going back to my brigade. I want a rest and a
change. Besides, the first stage is office work, and I’m no
use for that. But I’ll be waiting to be summoned, and I'll
come like a shot as soon as you hoick me out. I’ve got a
presentiment about this thing. I know there'll be a finish
and that I’ll be in at it, and I think it will be a desperate,
bloody business too.”
I found Mary's eyes fixed upon me, and in them I read
the same thought. She had not spoken a word, but had sat
on the edge of a chair, swinging a foot idly, one hand play-
ing with an ivory fan. She had given me my old orders and
I looked to her for confirmation of the new.
“Miss Lamington, you are the wisest of the lot of us.
What do you say?” *.
She smiled—that shy, companionable smile which I had
been picturing to myself through all the wanderings of the 2
past month.
“I think you are right. We've a long way to go yet, for
the Valley of Humiliation comes only half-way in the
Pilgrim's Progress. The next stage was Vanity Fair. I
might be of some use there, don't you think?”
I remember the way she laughed and flung back her head
like a gallant boy.
“The mistake we've all been making,” she said, “is that
our methods are too terre-à-terre. We've a poet to deal
with, a great poet, and we must fling our imaginations for-
ward to catch up with him. His strength is his unexpected-
ness, you know, and we won't beat him by plodding only. I


186 MR. STANDFAST
believe the wildest course is the wisest, for it's the most
likely to intersect his. . . . Who's the poet among us?”
“Peter,” I said. “But he's pinned down with a game
leg in Germany. All the same we must rope him in.”
By this time we had all cheered up, for it is wonderful
what a tonic there is in a prospect of action. The butler
brought in tea, which it was Bullivant's habit to drink after
dinner. To me it seemed fantastic to watch a slip of a girl
pouring it out for two grizzled and distinguished servants
of the State and one battered soldier—as decorous a family
party as you would ask to see— and to reflect that all four
were engaged in an enterprise where men's lives must be
reckoned at less than thistledown.
After that we went upstairs to a noble Georgian drawing-
room and Mary played to us. I don't care two straws for
music from an instrument—unless it be the pipes or a regi-
mental band—but I dearly love the human voice. But she
would not sing, for singing to her, I fancy, was something
that did not come at will, but flowed only like a bird's note
when the mood favoured. I did not want it either. I was
content to let “Cherry Ripe" be the one song linked with
her in my memory.
It was Macgillivray who brought us back to business.
“I wish to Heaven there was one habit of mind we could
definitely attach to him and to no one else.” (At this mo-
ment “He’” had only one meaning for us.)
“You can't do nothing with his mind,” Blenkiron drawled.
“You can't loose the bands of Orion, as the Bible says, or
hold Leviathan with a hook. I reckoned I could and made
a mighty close study of his de-vices. But the darned cuss
wouldn't stay put. I thought I had tied him down to the
double bluff, and he went and played the triple bluff on me.
There's nothing doing that line.”
A memory of Peter recurred to me.
“What about the ‘blind spot' P” I asked, and I told
them old Peter's pet theory. “Every man that God made
has his weak spot somewhere, some flaw in his character


THE WALLEY OF HUMILIATION 187
which leaves a dull patch in his brain. We've got to find
that out, and I think I’ve made a beginning.”
Macgillivray in a sharp voice asked my meaning.
“He’s in a funk . . . of something. Oh, I don't mean
he’s a coward. A man in his trade wants the nerve of a
buffalo. He could give us all points in courage. What I
mean is that he's not clean white all through. There are
yellow streaks somewhere in him . . . I've given a good
deal of thought to this courage business, for I haven't got a
great deal of it myself. Not like Peter, I mean. I've got
heaps of soft places in me. I'm afraid of being drowned
for one thing, or of getting my eyes shot out. Ivery's
afraid of bombs—at any rate he's afraid of bombs in a big
city. I once read a book which talked about a thing called
agoraphobia. Perhaps it's that. . . . Now if we know that
weak spot it helps us in our work. There are some places
he won't go to, and there are some things he can't do—not
well, anyway. I reckon that's useful.”
“Ye-es,” said Macgillivray. “Perhaps. But it's not
what you'd call a burning and a shining light.”
“There’s another chink in his armour,” I went on.
“There's one person in the world he can never practise his
transformations on, and that's me. I shall always know him
again, though he appeared as Sir Douglas Haig. I can't
explain why, but I’ve got a feel in my bones about it. I
didn't recognise him before, for I thought he was dead, and
the nerve in my brain which should have been looking for
him wasn't working. But I'm on my guard now, and that
nerve's functioning at full power. Whenever and where-
ever and howsoever we meet again on the face of the earth,
it will be “Dr. Livingstone, I presume' between him and
me.”
“That is better,” said Macgillivray. “If we have any
luck, Hannay, it won't be long till we pull you out of His
Majesty's Forces.”
Mary got up from the piano and resumed her old perch
on the arm of Sir Walter's chair.


I88 MR. STANDFAST
“There's another blind spot which you haven't men-
tioned.” It was a cool evening, but I noticed that her cheeks
had suddenly flushed.
“Last week Mr. Ivery asked me to marry him,” she
said.


PART II





CHAPTER XII
I BECOME A COMBATANT ONCE MORE
I RETURNED to France on September 13th, and took
over my old brigade on the 19th of the same month.
We were shoved in at the Polygon Wood on the 26th, and
after four days got so badly mauled that we were brought
out to refit. On October 7th, very much to my surprise, I
was given command of a division, and was on the fringes of
the Ypres fighting during the first days of November. From
that front we were hurried down to Cambrai in support,
but came in only for the last backwash of that singular
battle. We held a bit of the St. Quentin sector till just
before Christmas, when we had a spell of rest in billets,
which endured, so far as I was concerned, till the beginning
of January, when I was sent off on the errand which I shall
presently relate. -
That is a brief summary of my military record in the
latter part of 1917. I am not going to enlarge on the fight-
ing. Except for the days at the Polygon Wood it was
neither very severe nor very distinguished, and you will
find it in the history books. What I have to tell of here is
my own personal quest, for all the time I was living with my
mind turned two ways. In the morasses of the Haanebeek
flats, in the slimy support lines at Zonnebeke, in the tortured
uplands about Flesquières, and in many other odd places I
kept worrying at my private conundrum. At night I would
lie awake thinking of it, and many a toss I took into shell-
holes and many a time I stepped off the duckboards, because
my eyes were on a different landscape. Nobody ever chewed
a few wretched clues into such a pulp as I did during those
bleak months in Flanders and Picardy.
191


192 MR. STANDFAST
For I had an instinct that the thing was desperately grave,
graver even than the battle before me. Russia had gone
headlong to the devil, Italy had taken it between the eyes
and was still dizzy, and our own prospects were none too
bright. The Boche was getting uppish and with some cause,
and I foresaw a rocky time ahead till America could line up
with us in the field. It was the chance for the Wild Birds,
and I used to wake in a sweat to think what devilry Ivery
might be engineering. I believe I did my proper job rea-
sonably well, but I put in my most savage thinking over the
other. I remember how I used to go over every hour of
every day from that June night in the Cotswolds till my last
meeting with Bullivant in London, trying to find a new
bearing. I should probably have got brain-fever, if I hadn't
had to spend most of my days and nights fighting a stiffish
battle with a very watchful Hun. That kept my mind
balanced, and I daresay it gave an edge to it; for during
those months I was lucky enough to hit on a better scent
than Bullivant and Macgillivray and Blenkiron, pulling a
thousand wires in their London offices.
I will set down in order of time the various incidents in
this private quest of mine. The first was my meeting with
Geordie Hamilton. It happened just after I rejoined the
brigade, when I went down to have a look at our Scots
Fusilier battalion. The old brigade had been roughly
handled on July 31st, and had had to get heavy drafts to
come anywhere near strength. The Fusiliers especially were
almost a new lot, formed by joining our remnants to the
remains of a battalion in another division and bringing
about a dozen officers from the training unit at home.
I inspected the men and my eyes caught sight of a familiar
face. I asked his name and the colonel got it from the
sergeant-major. It was Lance-Corporal George Hamilton.
Now I wanted a new batman, and I resolved then and
there to have my old antagonist. That afternoon he reported
to me at brigade headquarters. As I looked at that solid
bandy-legged figure, standing as stiff to attention as a tobac-


I BECOME A COMBATANT 193
conist's sign, his ugly face hewn out of brown oak, his
honest, sullen mouth, and his blue eyes staring sternly into
vacancy, I knew I had got the man I wanted.
“Hamilton,” I said, “you and I have met before.”
“Sirr P” came the mystified answer.
“Look at me, man, and tell me if you don't recognise
me.”
He moved his eyes a fraction, in a respectful glance.
“Sirr, I don't mind of you.”
“Well, I'll refresh your memory. Do you remember
the hall in Newmilns Street and the meeting there? You
had a fight with a man outside, and got knocked down.”
He made no answer, but his colour deepened.
“And a fortnight later in a public-house in Muirtown
you saw the same man, and gave him the chase of his
life.” -
I could see his mouth set, for visions of the penalties laid
down by the King's Regulations for striking an officer must
have crossed his mind. But he never budged.
“Look me in the face, man,” I said. “Do you remember
me now 2 ” -
He did as he was bid.”-
“Sirr, I mind of you.”
“Have you nothing more to say?”
He cleared his throat. “Sirr, I did not ken I was hittin'
an officer.”
“Of course you didn't. You did perfectly right, and if
the war was over and we were both free men, I would give
you a chance of knocking me down here and now. That's
got to wait. When you saw me last I was serving my
country, though you didn't know it. We're serving to-
gether now, and you must get your revenge out of the
Boche. I'm going to make you my servant, for you and I
have a pretty close bond between us. What do you say
to that?”
This time he looked me full in the face. His troubled eye
appraised me and was satisfied. “I’m proud to be servant


194 MR. STANDFAST
to ye, sirr,” he said. Then out of his chest came a strangled
chuckle, and he forgot his discipline. “Losh, but ye're the
great lad!” He recovered himself promptly, saluted, and
marched off.
The second episode befell during our brief rest after the
Polygon Wood, when I had ridden down the line one after-
noon to see a friend in the Heavy Artillery. I was return-
ing in the drizzle of evening, clanking along the greasy
pavé between the sad poplars, when I struck a Labour com-
pany repairing the ravages of a Boche strafe that morn-
ing. I wasn't very certain of my road and asked one of the
workers. He straightened himself and saluted, and I saw
beneath a disreputable cap the features of the man who had
been with me in the Coolin crevice.
I spoke a word to his sergeant, who fell him out, and he
walked a bit of the way with me.
“Great Scott, Wake, what brought you here?” I asked.
“Same thing as brought you. This rotten war.”
I had dismounted and was walking beside him, and I
noticed that his lean face had lost its pallor and that his
eyes were less hot than they used to be.
“You seem to thrive on it,” I said, for I did not know
what to say. A sudden shyness possessed me. Wake must
have gone through some violent cyclones of feeling before
it came to this. He saw what I was thinking and laughed
in his sharp, ironical way.
“Don’t flatter yourself you've made a convert. I think
as I always thought. But I came to the conclusion that since
the fates had made me a Government servant I might as
well do my work somewhere less cushioned than a chair in
the Home Office. . . . Oh, no, it wasn't a matter of princi-
ple. One kind of work's as good as another, and I'm a bet-
ter clerk than a navvy. With me it was self-indulgence: I
wanted fresh air and exercise.”
I looked at him—mud to the waist, and his hands all blis-
tered and cut with unaccustomed labour. I could realise


I BECOME A COMBATANT 19.
-
what his associates must mean to him, and how he would
relish the rough-tonguing of non-coms.
“You’re a confounded humbug,” I said. “Why on earth
didn't you go into an O.T.C. and come out with a commis-
sion? They're easy enough to get.”
“You mistake my case,” he said bitterly. “I experienced
no sudden conviction about the justice of the war. I stand
where I always stood. I'm a non-combatant, and I wanted
a change of civilian work. . . . No, it wasn't any idiotic
tribunal sent me here. I came of my own free will, and I'm
really rather enjoying myself.”
“It’s a rough job for a man like you,” I said.
“Not so rough as the fellows get in the trenches. I
watched a battalion marching back to-day and they looked
like ghosts who had been years in muddy graves. White
faces and dazed eyes and leaden feet. Mine’s a cushy job.
I like it best when the weather's foul. It cheats me into
thinking I’m doing my duty.”
I nodded towards a recent shell-hole. “Much of that sort
of thing?”
“Now and then. We had a good dusting this morning.
I can't say I liked it at the time, but I like to look back on
it. A sort of moral anodyne.”
“I wonder what on earth the rest of your lot make of
you?”
“They don't make anything. I'm not remarkable for my
bonhomie. They think I'm a prig—which I am. It doesn't
amuse me to talk about beer and women or listen to a
gramophone or grouse about my last meal. But I'm quite
content, thank you. Sometimes I get a seat in a corner of
a Y.M.C.A. hut, and I've a book or two. My chief affliction
is the padre. He was up at Keble in my time, and, as one
of my colleagues puts it, wants to be “too bloody helpful.’
. . . What are you doing, Hannay? I see you're some kind
of general. They're pretty thick on the ground here.”
“I’m a sort of general. Soldiering in the Salient isn't
the softest of jobs, but I don't believe it's as tough as yours


196 MR. STANDFAST
is for you. D'you know, Wake, I wish I had you in my
brigade. Trained or untrained, you're a dashed stout-
hearted fellow.”
He laughed with a trifle less acidity than usual. “Almost
thou persuadest me to be a combatant. No, thank you. I
haven't the courage, and besides there's my jolly old princi-
ples. All the same I’d like to be near you. You're a good
chap, and I’ve had the honour to assist in your education.
. . . I must be getting back, or the sergeant will think
I’ve bolted.”
We shook hands, and the last I saw of him was a
figure saluting stiffly in the wet twilight.
The third incident was trivial enough, though momentous
in its results. Just before I got the division I had a bout of
malaria. We were in support in the Salient, in very un-
comfortable trenches behind Wieltje, and I spent three days
on my back in a dug-out. Outside was a blizzard of rain,
and the water now and then came down the stairs through
the gas curtain and stood in pools at my bed foot. It wasn't
the merriest place to convalesce in, but I was as hard as
nails at the time and by the third day I was beginning to
sit up and be bored.
I read all my English papers twice and a big stack of
German ones which I used to have sent up by a friend in
the G.H.Q. Intelligence, who knew I liked to follow what
the Boche was saying. As I dozed and ruminated in the
way a man does after fever, I was struck by the tremendous
display of one advertisement in the English press. It was
a thing called “Gussiter's Deep-breathing System,” which,
according to its promoter, was a cure for every ill, mental,
moral, or physical, that man can suffer. Politicians, gen-
erals, admirals, and music-hall artists all testified to the new
life it had opened up for them. I remember wondering
what these sportsmen got for their testimonies, and thinking
I would write a spoof letter myself to old Gussiter.
Then I picked up the German papers, and suddenly my


I BECOME A COMBATANT 197
eye caught an advertisement of the same kind in the Frank-
furter Zeitung. It was not Gussiter this time, but one Weiss-
mann, but his game was identical—“deep breathing.” The
Hun style was different from the English—all about the
Goddess of Health, and the Nymphs of the Mountains,
and two quotations from Schiller. But the principle was
the same.
That made me ponder a little, and I went carefully
through the whole batch. I found the advertisement in the
Frankfurter and in one or two rather obscure Volkstimmes
and Volkszeitungs. I found it too in Der Grosse Krieg,
the official German propagandist picture-paper. They were
the same all but one, and that one had a bold variation, for
it contained four of the sentences used in the ordinary Eng-
lish advertisement. d
This struck me as fishy, and I started to write a letter to
Macgillivray pointing out what seemed to be a case of trad-
ing with the enemy, and advising him to get on to Mr.
Gussiter's financial backing. I thought he might find a Hun
syndicate behind him. And then I had another notion,
which made me rewrite my letter.
I went through the papers again. The English ones
which contained the advertisement were all good, solid, belli-
cose organs; the kind of thing no censorship would object
to leaving the country. I had before me a small sheaf of
pacificist prints, and they had not the advertisement. That
might be for reasons of circulation, or it might not.
The German papers were either Radical or Socialist pub-
lications, just the opposite of the English lot, except the
Grosse Krieg. Now we have a free press, and Germany
has, strictly speaking, none. All her journalistic indiscre-
tions are calculated. Therefore the Boche has no objection
to his rags getting to enemy countries. He wants it. He
likes to see them quoted in columns headed “Through
German Glasses,” and made the text of articles showing
what a good democrat he is becoming.
As I puzzled over the subject, certain conclusions began


198 MR. STANDFAST
to form in my mind. The four identical sentences seemed
to hint that “Deep Breathing” had Boche affiliations. Here
was a chance of communicating with the enemy which
would defy the argus-eyed gentlemen who examine the
mails. What was to hinder Mr. A at one end writing an
advertisement with a good cipher in it, and the paper con-
taining it getting into Germany by Holland in three days?
Herr B at the other end replied in the Frankfurter, and a
few days later shrewd editors and acute Intelligence offi-
cers—and Mr. A–were reading it in London, though only
Mr. A knew what it really meant.
It struck me as a bright idea, the sort of simple thing
that doesn't occur to clever people, and very rarely to the
Boche. I wished I was not in the middle of a battle, for I
would have had a try at investigating the cipher myself. I
wrote a long letter to Macgillivray putting my case, and then
went to sleep. When I woke I reflected that it was a
pretty thin argument, and would have stopped the letter, if
it hadn't gone off early by a ration party.
After that things began very slowly to happen. The first
was when Hamilton, having gone to Boulogne to fetch some
mess-stores, returned with the startling news that he had
seen Gresson. He had not heard his name, but described
him dramatically to me as “the wee red-heided deevil that
kicked Ecky Brockie's knee yon time in Glesca, sirr.” I
recognised the description.
Gresson, it appeared, was joy-riding. He was with a
party of Labour delegates who had been met by two officers
and carried off in chars-à-bancs. Hamilton reported from
inquiries among his friends that this kind of visitor came
weekly. I thought it a very sensible notion on the Govern-
ment's part, but I wondered how Gresson had been selected.
I had hoped that Macgillivray had weeks ago made a long
arm and quodded him. Perhaps they had too little evidence
to hang him, but he was the blackest sort of suspect and
should have been interned.


I BECOME A COMBATANT I99
A week later I had occasion to be at G.H.Q. on business
connected with my new division. My friends in the Intelli-
gence allowed me to use the direct line to London, and I
called up Macgillivray. For ten minutes I had an exciting
talk, for I had had no news from that quarter since I left
England. I heard that the Portuguese Jew had escaped—
had vanished from his native heather when they went to get
him. They had identified him as a German professor of
Celtic languages, who had held a chair in a Welsh college—
a dangerous fellow, for he was an upright, high-minded,
raging fanatic. Against Gresson they had no evidence at
all, but he was kept under strict observation. When I asked
about his crossing to France, Macgillivray replied that that
was part of their scheme. I inquired if the visit had given
them any clues, but I never got an answer, for the line had
to be cleared at that moment for the War Office.
I hunted up the man who had charge of these Labour
visits, and made friends with him. Gresson, he said, had
been a quiet, well-mannered, and most appreciative guest.
He had wept tears on Vimy Ridge, and—strictly against
orders—had made a speech to some troops he met on the
Arras road about how British Labour was remembering the
Army in its prayers and sweating blood to make guns. On
the last day he had had a misadventure, for he got very
sick on the road—some kidney trouble that couldn't stand
the jolting of the car—and had to be left at a village and
picked up by the party on its way back. They found him
better, but still shaky. I cross-examined the particular
officer in charge about that halt, and learned that Gresson
had been left alone in a peasant's cottage, for he said he
only needed to lie down. The place was the hamlet of Eau-
court Sainte-Anne.
For several weeks that name stuck in my head. It had a
pleasant, quaint sound, and I wondered how Gresson had
spent his hours there. I hunted it up on the map, and
promised myself to have a look at it the next time we came


200 MR. STANDFAST
out to rest. And then I forgot about it till I heard the name
mentioned again.
On October 23rd I had the bad luck, during a tour of my
first-line trenches, to stop a small shell-fragment with my
head. It was a close, misty day and I had taken off my tin
hat to wipe my brow when the thing happened. I got a
long, shallow scalp wound which meant nothing but bled a
lot, and, as we were not in for any big move, the M.O.
sent me back to a clearing station to have it seen to. I
was three days in the place and, being perfectly well, had
leisure to look about me and reflect, so that I recall that
time as a queer, restful interlude in the infernal racket of
war. I remember yet how on my last night there a gale
made the lamps swing and flicker, and turned the grey-green
canvas walls into a mass of mottled shadows. The floor
canvas was muddy from the tramping of many feet bringing
in the constant dribble of casualties from the line. In my
tent there was no one very bad at the time, except a boy
with his shoulder half blown off by a whizz-bang, who lay in
a drugged sleep at the far end. The majority were influ-
enza, bronchitis, and trench-fever—waiting to be moved to
the base, or convalescent and about to return to their units.
A small group of us dined off tinned chicken, stewed fruit,
and ration cheese round the smoky stove, where two screens
manufactured from packing cases gave some protection
against the draughts which swept like young tornadoes down
the tent. One man had been reading a book called the
Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, and the talk turned on the
unexplainable things that happen to everybody once or
twice in a lifetime. I contributed a yarn about the men who
went to look for Kruger's treasure in the bushveld and got
scared by a green wildebeeste. It is a good yarn and I'll
write it down some day. A tall Highlander, who kept his
slippered feet on the top of the stove, and whose costume
consisted of a kilt, a British warm, a grey hospital dressing-
gown, and four pairs of socks, told the story of the Camer-
ons at First Ypres, and of the Lowland subaltern who knew


I BECOME A COMBATANT 201
no Gaelic and suddenly found himself encouraging his men
with some ancient Highland rigmarole. The poor chap had
a racking bronchial cough, which suggested that his country
might well use him on some warmer battle-ground than
Flanders. He seemed a bit of a scholar and explained the
Cameron business in a lot of long words.
I remember how the talk meandered on as talk does when
men are idle and thinking about the next day. I didn't pay
much attention, for I was reflecting on a change I meant to
make in one of my battalion commands, when a fresh voice
broke in. It belonged to a Canadian captain from Winnipeg,
a very silent fellow who smoked shag tobacco.
“There's a lot of ghosts in this darned country,” he said.
Then he started to tell about what happened to him when
his division was last back in rest billets. He had a staff
job and put up with the divisional command at an old
French château. They had only a little bit of the house; the
rest was shut up, but the passages were so tortuous that it
was difficult to keep from wandering into the unoccupied
part. One night, he said, he woke with a mighty thirst, and,
since he wasn't going to get cholera by drinking the local
water in his bedroom, he started out for the room they
messed in to try to pick up a whisky-and-soda. He couldn't
find it, though he knew the road like his own name. He
admitted he might have taken a wrong turning, but he didn't
think so. Anyway he landed in a passage which he had
never seen before, and, since he had no candle, he tried to
retrace his steps. Again he went wrong, and groped on till
he saw a faint light which he thought must be the room of
the G.S.O.1, a good fellow, and a friend of his. So he
barged in, and found a big, dim salon with two figures in it
and a lamp burning between them, and a queer, unpleasant
smell about. He took a step forward, and then he saw that
the figures had no faces. That fairly loosened his joints
with fear, and he gave a cry. One of the two ran towards
him, the lamp went out, and the sickly scent caught suddenly
at his throat. After that he knew nothing till he awoke
-.


202 MR. STANDFAST
in his own bed next morning with a splitting headache. He
said he got the General's permission and went over all the
unoccupied part of the house, but he couldn't find the room.
Dust lay thick on everything, and there was no sign of
recent human presence.
I give the story as he told it in his drawling voice. “I
reckon that was the genuine article in ghosts. You don't
believe me and conclude I was drunk? I wasn't. There
isn't any drink concocted yet that could lay me out like
that. I just struck a crack in the old universe and pushed
my head outside. It may happen to you boys any day.”
The Highlander began to argue with him, and I lost
interest in the talk. But one phrase brought me to atten-
tion. “I’ll give you the name of the darned place, and next
time you're around you can do a bit of prospecting for
yourself. It's called the Château of Eaucourt Sainte-Anne,
about seven kilometres from Douvecourt. If I was purchas-
ing real estate in this country I guess I’d give that location
a miss. . . .”
After that I had a grim month, what with the finish of
Third Ypres and the hustle to Cambrai. By the middle of
December we had shaken down a bit, but the line my
division held was not of our choosing, and we had to keep
a wary eye on the Boche doings. It was a weary job, and
I had no time to think of anything but the military kind of
intelligence—fixing the units against us from prisoners'
stories, organising small raids, and keeping the Royal Flying
Corps busy. I was keen about the last, and I made several
trips myself over the lines with Archie Roylance, who had
got his heart's desire and by good luck belonged to the
squadron just behind me. I said as little as possible about
this, for G.H.Q. did not encourage divisional generals to
practise such methods, though there was one famous army
commander who made a hobby of them. It was on one of
these trips that an incident occurred which brought my
spell of waiting on the bigger game to an end.


204 MR. STANDFAST
“Great God!” he croaked—for he had a fearsome cold
—“we’re either about Calais or near Paris or miles the
wrong side of the Boche line. What the devil are we to
do?”
And then to put the lid on it his engine went wrong. It
was the same performance as on the Yorkshire moors, and
seemed to be a speciality of the Shark-Gladas type. But
this time the end came quick. We dived steeply, and I
could see by Archie's grip on the stick that he was going to
have his work cut out to save our necks. Save them he
did, but not by much, for we jolted down on the edge of a
ploughed field with a series of bumps that shook the teeth in
my head. It was the same dense, dripping fog, and we
crawled out of the old bus and bolted for cover like two
ferreted rabbits.
Our refuge was the lee of a small copse.
“It’s my opinion,” said Archie solemnly, “that we're
somewhere about Le Cateau. Tim Wilbraham got left
there in the Retreat, and it took him nine months to make
the Dutch frontier. It's a giddy prospect, sir.”
I sallied out to reconnoitre. At the other side of the wood
was a highway, and the fog so blanketed sound that I could
not hear a man on it till I saw his face. The first one I
saw made me lie flat in the covert. . . . For he was a
German soldier, field-grey, forage cap, red band and all,
and he had a pick on his shoulder.
A second's reflection showed me that this was not final
proof. He might be one of our prisoners. But it was no
place to take chances. I went back to Archie, and the pair
of us crossed the ploughed field and struck the road farther
on. There we saw a farmer's cart with a woman and a
child in it. They looked French, but melancholy, just what
you would expect from the inhabitants of a countryside in
enemy occupation.
Then we came to the park wall of a great house, and saw
dimly the outlines of a cottage. Here sooner or later we
would get proof of our whereabouts, so we lay and shivered


I BECOME A COMBATANT 205
among the poplars of the roadside. No one seemed abroad
that afternoon. For a quarter of an hour it was as quiet
as the grave. Then came a sound of whistling, and muf-
fled steps.
“That's an Englishman,” said Archie joyfully. “No
Boche could make such a beastly noise.”
He was right. The form of an Army Service Corps pri-
vate emerged from the mist, his cap on the back of his head,
his hands in his pockets, and his walk the walk of a free
man. I never saw a welcomer sight than that jam-merchant.
We stood up and greeted him. “What's this place?” I
shouted.
He raised a grubby hand to his forelock.
“Ockott Saint Anny, sir,” he said. “Beg pardon, sir, but
you ain't hurt, sir?”
Ten minutes later I was having tea in the mess of an .
M.T. workshop while Archie had gone to the nearest Signals
to telephone for a car and give instructions about his
precious bus. It was almost dark, but I gulped my tea and
hastened out into the thick dusk. For I wanted to have a
look at the Château.
I found a big entrance with high stone pillars, but the iron
gates were locked and looked as if they had not been opened
in the memory of man. Knowing the way of such places, I
hunted for the side entrance and found a muddy road which
led to the back of the house. The front was evidently to-
wards a kind of park; at the back was a nest of outbuildings
and a section of moat which looked very deep and black in
the winter twilight. This was crossed by a stone bridge
with a door at the end of it.
Clearly the Château was not being used for billets. There
was no sign of the British soldier; there was no sign of any-
thing human. I crept through the fog as noiselessly as if
I trod on velvet, and I hadn't even the company of my own
footsteps. I remembered the Canadian's ghost story, and
concluded I would be imagining the same sort of thing if
I lived in such a place.


206 MR. STANDFAST
The door was bolted and padlocked. I turned along the
side of the moat, hoping to reach the house front, which
was probably modern and boasted a civilised entrance.
There must be somebody in the place, for one chimney was
smoking. Presently the moat petered out, and gave place.
to a cobbled causeway, but a wall, running at right angles
with the house, blocked my way. I had half a mind to go
back and hammer at the door, but I reflected that major-
generals don't pay visits to deserted châteaux at night with-
out a reasonable errand. I should look a fool in the eyes
of some old concierge. The daylight was almost gone, and
I didn't wish to go groping about the house with a candle.
But I wanted to see what was beyond the wall—one of
those whims that beset the soberest men. I rolled a dis-
solute water-butt to the foot of it, and gingerly balanced
myself on its rotten staves. This gave me a grip of the flat
brick top, and I pulled myself up.
I looked down on a little courtyard with another wall
beyond it, which shut off any view of the park. On the
right was the Château, on the left more outbuildings; the
whole place was not more than twenty yards each way. I
was just about to retire the road I had come, for in spite
of my fur coat it was uncommon chilly on that perch, when
I heard a key turn in the door in the Château wall beneath
me.
A lantern made a blur of light in the misty darkness. I
saw that the bearer was a woman, an oldish woman, round-
shouldered like most French peasants. In one hand she
carried a leather bag, and she moved so silently that she
must have worn rubber boots. The light was held level with
her head and illumined her face. It was the evillest thing
I have ever beheld, for a horrible scar had puckered the
skin of the forehead and drawn up the eyebrows so that it
looked like some diabolical Chinese mask.
Slowly she padded across the yard, carrying the bag as
gingerly as if it had been an infant. She stopped at the
door of one of the outhouses and set down the lantern and


I BECOME A COMBATANT 207
her burden on the ground. From her apron she drew some-
thing which looked like a gas-mask, and put it over her head.
She also put on a pair of long gauntlets. Then she unlocked
the door, picked up the lantern and went in. I heard the
key turn behind her.
Crouching on that wall, I felt a very ugly tremor run
down my spine. I had a glimpse of what the Canadian's
ghost might have been. That hag, hooded like some veno-
mous snake, was too much for my stomach. I dropped off
the wall and ran—yes, ran till I reached the highroad and
saw the cheery headlights of a transport waggon, and heard
the honest speech of the British soldier. That restored me
to my senses, and made me feel every kind of a fool.
As I drove back to the line with Archie, I was black
ashamed of my funk. I told myself that I had seen only
an old countrywoman going to feed her hens. I convinced
my reason, but I did not convince the whole of me. An
insensate dread of the place hung around me, and I could
only retrieve my self-respect by resolving to return and
explore every nook of it.


CHAPTER XIII
THE ADVENTURE OF THE PICARDY ch?TEAU
I LOOKED up Eaucourt Saint-Anne on the map, and the
more I studied its position the less I liked it. It was the
knot from which sprang all the main routes to our Picardy
front. If the Boche ever broke us, it was the place for
which old Hindenburg would make. At all hours troops
and transport trains were moving through that insignificant
hamlet. Eminent generals and their staffs passed daily
within sight of the Château. It was a convenient halting-
place for battalions coming back to rest. Supposing, I
argued, our enemies wanted a key-spot for some assault
upon the moral or the discipline or the health of the
British Army, they couldn't find a better than Eaucourt
Saint-Anne. It was the ideal centre of espionage. But
when I guardedly sounded my friends of the Intelligence
they didn't seem to be worrying about it.
From them I got a chit to the local French authorities,
and, as soon as we came out of the line towards the end
of December, I made straight for the country town of
Douvecourt. By a bit of luck our divisional quarters were
almost next door. I interviewed a tremendous swell in a
black uniform and black kid gloves, who received me
affably and put his archives and registers at my disposal.
By this time I talked French fairly well, having a natural
turn for languages, but half the rapid speech of the sous-
préfet was lost on me. By and by he left me with the
papers and a clerk, and I proceeded to grub up the history
of the Château.
It had belonged since long before Agincourt to the noble
house of the D’Eaucourts, now represented by an ancient
208


THE PICARDY CHATEAU 209
Marquise who dwelt at Biarritz. She had never lived in
the place, which a dozen years before had been falling to
ruins, when a rich American leased it and partially restored
it. He had soon got sick if it—his daughter had married
a blackguard French cavalry officer with whom he quar-
relled, said the clerk—and since then there had been several
tenants. I wondered why a house so unattractive should
have let so readily, but the clerk explained that the cause
was the partridge-shooting. It was about the best in France,
and in 1912 had shown the record bag.
The list of the tenants was before me. There was a
second American, an Englishman called Halford, a Paris
Jew-banker, and an Egyptian prince. But the space for
1913 was blank, and I asked the clerk about it. He told
me that it had been taken by a woollen manufacturer from
Lille, but he had never shot the partridges, though he had
spent occasional nights in the house. He had a five years'
lease, and was still paying rent to the Marquise. I asked
the name, but the clerk had forgotten. “It will be written
there,” he said.
“But, no,” I said. “Somebody must have been asleep
over this register. There's nothing after 1912.”
He examined the page and blinked his eyes. “Someone
indeed must have slept. No doubt it was young Louis who
is now with the guns in Champagne. But the name will
be on the Commissary's list. It is, as I remember, a sort
of Flemish.”
He hobbled off and returned in five minutes.
“Bommaerts,” he said, “Jacques Bommaerts. A young
man with no wife but with money—Dieu de Dieu, what
oceans of it!”
That clerk got twenty-five francs, and he was cheap at
the price. I went back to my division with a sense of awe
on me. It was a marvellous fate that had brought me by
odd routes to this out-of-the-way corner. First, the accident
of Hamilton's seeing Gresson; then the night in the Clear-
ing Station; last the mishap of Archie's plane getting lost


210 MR. STANDFAST
in the fog. I had three grounds of suspicion—Gresson's
sudden illness, the Canadian's ghost, and that horrid old
woman in the dusk. And now I had one tremendous fact.
The place was leased by a man called Bommaerts, and that
was one of the two names I had heard whispered in that
far-away cleft in the Coolin by the stranger from the sea.
A sensible man would have gone off to the contre-
espionage people and told them his story. I couldn't do
this; I felt that it was my own private find and I was
going to do the prospecting myself. Every moment of
leisure I had I was puzzling over the thing. I rode round
by the Château one frosty morning and examined all the
entrances. The main one was the grand avenue with the
locked gates. That led straight to the front of the house
where the terrace was—or you might call it the back, for
the main door was on the other side. Anyhow the drive
came up to the edge of the terrace and then split into two,
one branch going to the stables by way of the outbuildings
where I had seen the old woman, the other circling round
the house, skirting the moat, and joining the back road just
before the bridge. If I had gone to the right instead of the
left that first evening with Archie, I should have circum-
navigated the place without any trouble.
Seen in the fresh morning light the house looked com-
monplace enough. Part of it was as old as Noah, but most
was newish and jerry-built, the kind of flat-chested, thin
French Château, all front and no depth, and full of
draughts and smoky chimneys. I might have gone in and
ransacked the place, but I knew I should find nothing. It
was borne in on me that it was only when evening fell that
that house was interesting and that I must come, like
Nicodemus, by night. Besides I had a private account to
settle with my conscience. I had funked the place in the
foggy twilight, and it does not do to let a matter like that
slide. A man's courage is like a horse that refuses a fence;
you have got to take him by the head and cram him at it
again. If you don't, he will funk worse next time. I hadn't


212 MR. STANDFAST
to Switzerland and I pictured him now in some mountain
village where the snow lay deep. I would have given any-
thing to have had Peter with a whole leg by my side.
I stepped on the terrace and listened. There was not a
sound in the world, not even the distant rumble of a cart.
The pile towered above me like a mausoleum, and I re-
flected that it must take some nerve to burgle an empty
house. It would be good enough fun to break into a bus-
tling dwelling and pinch the plate when the folk were at
dinner, but to burgle emptiness and silence meant a fight
with the terrors in a man's soul. It was worse in my case,
for I wasn't cheered with prospects of loot. I wanted to
get inside chiefly to soothe my conscience.
I hadn't much doubt I would find a way, for three years
of war and the frequent presence of untidy headquarters
staffs have loosened the joints of most Picardy houses.
There's generally a window that doesn't latch or a door that
doesn't bar. But I tried window after window on the ter-
race without result. The heavy green sun-shutters were
down over each, and when I broke the hinges of one there
was a long bar within to hold it firm. I was beginning to
think of Shinning up a rain-pipe and trying the second
floor, when a shutter I had laid hold on swung back in my
hand. It had been left unfastened, and, kicking the snow
from my boots, I entered a room.
A gleam of moonlight followed me and I saw I was in
a big salon with a polished wood floor and dark lumps of
furniture swathed in sheets. I clicked the bulb at my belt,
and the little circle of light showed a place which had not
been dwelt in for years. At the far end was another door,
and as I tiptoed towards it something caught my eye on
the parquet. It was a piece of fresh snow like that which
clumps on the heel of a boot. I had not brought it there.
Some other visitor had passed this way, and not long before
me.
Very gently I opened the door and slipped in. In front
of me was a pile of furniture which made a kind of screen,


THE PICARDY CHATEAU 215
She disengaged herself and let her little electric torch
wander over my rough habiliments.
“You look a tremendous warrior, Dick. I have never
seen you like this before. I was in Doubting Castle and
very much afraid of Giant Despair, till you came.”
“I think I call it the Interpreter's House,” I said.
“It's the house of somebody we both know,” she went
on. “He calls himself Bommaerts here. That was one
of the two names, you remember. I have seen him since
in Paris. Oh, it is a long story and you shall hear
it all soon. I knew he came here sometimes, so I
came here too. I have been nursing for the last
fortnight at the Douvecourt Hospital only four miles
away.”
“But what brought you alone at night?”
“Madness, I think. Vanity, too. You see I had found
out a good deal, and I wanted to find out the one vital
thing which has puzzled Mr. Blenkiron. I told myself
it was foolish, but I couldn't keep away. And then my
courage broke down, and before you came I would have
screamed at the sound of a mouse. If I hadn't whistled
I would have cried.”
“But why alone and at this hour?”
“I couldn't get off in the day. And it was safest to come
alone. You see he is in love with me, and when he heard
I was coming to Douvecourt forgot his caution and pro-
posed to meet me here. He said he was going on a long
journey and wanted to say good-bye. If he had found me
alone—well, he would have said good-bye. If there had
been anyone with me, he would have suspected, and he
mustn't suspect me. Mr. Blenkiron says that would be
fatal to his great plan. He believes I am like my aunts,
and that I think him an apostle of peace working by his
own methods against the stupidity and wickedness of all
the Governments. He talks more bitterly about Germany
than about England. He has told me how he has to dis-
guise himself and play many parts on his mission, and of


THE PICARDY CHATEAU 217
ness complete before we strike. Has old Blenkiron had
any luck?”
“Your guess about the “Deep-breathing' advertisement
was very clever, Dick. It was true, and it may give us
Chelius. I must leave Mr. Blenkiron to tell you how. But
the trouble is this. We know something of the doings of
someone who may be Chelius, but we can't link them with
Ivery. We know that Ivery is Bommaerts, and our hope is
to link Bommaerts with Chelius. That's why I came
here. I was trying to burgle this escritoire in an
amateur way. It's a bad piece of fake Empire and de-
serves smashing.
I could see that Mary was eager to get my mind back to
business, and with some difficulty I clambered down from
the exultant heights. The intoxication of the thing was on
me—the winter night, the circle of light in that dreary
room, the sudden coming together of two souls from the
ends of the earth, the realisation of my wildest hopes, the
gilding and glorifying of all the future. But she had always
twice as much wisdom as me, and we were in the midst of
a campaign which had no use for day-dreaming. I turned
my attention to the desk.
It was a flat table with drawers, and at the back a half-
circle of more drawers with a central cupboard. I tilted it
up and most of the drawers slid out, empty of anything but
dust. I forced two open with my knife and they held empty
cigar boxes. Only the cupboard remained, and that ap-
peared to be locked. I wedged a key from my pocket into
its keyhole, but the thing would not budge.
“It’s no good,” I said. “He wouldn't leave anything he
valued in a place like this. That sort of fellow doesn't
take risks. If he wanted to hide something there are a hun-
dred holes in this Château which would puzzle the best
detective.”
“Can't you open it?” she asked. “I’ve a fancy about
that table. He was sitting here this afternoon and he may
be coming back.”


220 MR. STANDFAST
of the kind they have in stables. I could not see the bearer,
but I guessed it was the old woman.
There was a man behind her. A brisk step sounded on
the parquet, and a figure brushed past her. It wore the
horizon-blue of a French officer, very smart, with those
French riding-boots that show the shape of the leg, and a
handsome fur-lined pelisse. I would have called him a
young man, not more than thirty-five. The face was
brown and clean-shaven, the eyes bright and masterful.
. . . Yet he did not deceive me. I had not boasted idly to
Sir Walter when I said that there was one man alive who
could never again be mistaken by me.
I had my hand on my pistol, as I motioned Mary farther
back into the shadows. For a second I was about to shoot.
I had a perfect mark and could have put a bullet through
his brain with utter certitude. I think if I had been alone
I might have fired. Perhaps not. Anyhow now I could
not do it. It seemed like potting at a sitting rabbit. I was
obliged, though he was my worst enemy, to give him a
chance, while all the while my sober senses kept calling me
a fool.
I stepped into the light.
“Hullo, Mr. Ivery,” I said. “This is an odd place to
meet again!”
In his amazement he fell back a step, while his hungry
eyes took in my face. There was no mistake about the
recognition. I saw something I had seen once before in
him, and that was fear. Out went the light and he sprang
for the door.
I fired in the dark, but the shot must have been too high.
In the same instant I heard him slip on the smooth parquet
and the tinkle of glass as the broken window swung open.
Hastily I reflected that his car must be at the moat end of
the terrace, and that therefore to reach it he must pass out-
side this very room. Seizing the damaged escritoire, I used
it as a ram, and charged the window nearest me. The
panes and shutters went with a crash, for I had driven


THE PICARDY CHATEAU 221
the thing out of its rotten frame. The next second I was
on the moonlit snow.
I got a shot at him as he went over the terrace, and again
I went wide. I never was at my best with a pistol. Still
I reckoned I had got him, for the car which was waiting
below must come back by the moat to reach the highroad.
But I had forgotten the great closed park gates. Somehow
or other they must have been opened, for as soon as the
car started it headed straight for the grand avenue. I tried
a couple of long-range shots after it, and one must have
damaged either Ivery or his chauffeur, for there came back
a cry of pain.
I turned in deep chagrin to find Mary beside me. She
was bubbling with laughter.
“Were you ever a cinema actor, Dick? The last two
minutes have been a really high-class performance. “Fea-
turing Mary Lamington.” How does the jargon go?”
“I could have got him when he first entered,” I said
ruefully.
“I know,” she said in a graver tone. “Only of course
you couldn't. . . . Besides, Mr. Blenkiron doesn't want
it—yet.”
She put her hand on my arm. “Don't worry about it.
It wasn't written it should happen that way. It would have
been too easy. We have a long road to travel yet before
we clip the wings of the Wild Birds.”
“Look,” I cried. “The fire from heaven l’’
Red tongues of flame were shooting up from the out-
buildings at the farther end, the place where I had first seen
the woman. Some agreed plan must have been acted on,
and Ivery was destroying all traces of his infamous yellow
powder. Even now the concierge with her odds and ends
of belongings would be slipping out to some refuge in the
village.
In the still dry night the flames rose, for the place must
have been made ready for a rapid burning. As I hurried
Mary round the moat I could see that part of the main


222 MR. STANDFAST
building had caught fire. The hamlet was awakened, and
before we reached the corner of the highroad sleepy British
soldiers were hurrying towards the scene, and the Town
Major was mustering the fire brigade. I knew that Ivery
had laid his plans well, and that they hadn't a chance—
that long before dawn the Château of Eaucourt Saint-Anne
would be a heap of ashes and that in a day or two the
lawyers of the aged Marquise at Biarritz would be wran-
gling with the insurance company.
At the corner stood Amos beside two bicycles, solid as
a graven image. He recognised me with a gap-toothed
grin.
“It's a cauld night, General, but the home fires keep
burnin'. I havena seen such a cheery lowe since Dickson's
mill at Gawly.”
We packed, bicycles and all, into my car with Amos
wedged in the narrow seat beside Hamilton. Recognising
a fellow countryman, he gave thanks for the lift in the
broadest Doric. “For,” said he, “I’m not what you would
call a practised hand wi' a velocipede, and my feet are
dinnled wi' standin’ in the snaw.”
As for me, the miles to Douvecourt passed as in a blissful
moment of time. I wrapped Mary in a fur rug, and after
that we did not speak a word. I had come suddenly into
a great possession and was dazed with the joy of it.


CHAPTER XIV
MR. BLENKIRON DISCOURSES ON LOVE AND WAR
HREE days later I got my orders to report at Paris for
special service. They came none too soon, for I
chafed at each hour's delay. Every thought in my head was
directed to the game which we were playing against Ivery.
He was the big enemy, compared to whom the ordinary
Boche in the trenches was innocent and friendly. I had
almost lost interest in my division, for I knew that for me
the real battle-front was not in Picardy, and that my job
was not so easy as holding a length of line. Also I longed
to be at the same work as Mary.
I remember waking up in billets the morning after the
night at the Château with the feeling that I had become
extraordinarily rich. I felt very humble, too, and very
kindly towards all the world—even to the Boche, though
I can't say I had ever hated him very wildly. You find hate
more among journalists and politicians at home than among
fighting men. I wanted to be quiet and alone to think, and
since that was impossible I went about my work in a
happy abstraction. I tried not to look ahead, but only to
live in the present, for I knew that a war was on, and that
there was a desperate and dangerous business before me,
and that my hopes hung on a slender thread. Yet for all
that I had sometimes to let my fancies go free, and revel
in delicious dreams.
But there was one thought that always brought me back
to hard gound, and that was Ivery. I do not think I hated
anybody in the world but him. It was his relation to Mary
that stung me. He had the insolence with all his toad-like
past to make love to that clean and radiant girl. I felt that
228


224 MR. STANDFAST
he and I stood as mortal antagonists, and the thought
pleased he, for it helped me to put some honest detestation
into my job. Also I was going to win. Twice I had failed,
but the third time I should succeed. It had been like rang-
ing shots for a gun—first short, second over, and I vowed
that the third should be dead on the mark.
I was summoned to G.H.Q., where I had half an hour's
talk with the greatest British commander. I can see yet
his patient, kindly face and that steady eye which no
vicissitude of fortune could perturb. He took the big-
gest view, for he was statesman as well as soldier, and
knew that the whole world was one battle-field and every
man and woman among the combatant nations was in the
battle-line. So contradictory is human nature, that talk
made me wish for a moment to stay where I was. I wanted
to go on serving under that man. I realised suddenly how
much I loved my work, and when I got back to my quarters
that night and saw my men swinging in from a route march
I could have howled like a dog at leaving them. Though
I say it who shouldn't, there wasn't a better division in
the Army.
One morning a few days later I picked up Mary in
Amiens. I always liked the place, for after the dirt of the
Somme it was a comfort to go there for a bath and a square
meal, and it had the noblest church that the hand of man
ever built for God. It was a clear morning when we started
from the boulevard beside the railway station; and the air
smelt of washed streets and fresh coffee, and women were
going marketing and the little trams ran clanking by, just
as in any other city far from the sound of guns. There was
very little khaki or horizon-blue about, and I remember
thinking how completely Amiens had got out of the war-
zone. Two months later it was a different story.
To the end I shall count that day as one of the happiest
in my life. Spring was in the air, though the trees and
fields had still their winter colouring. A thousand good
fresh scents came out of the earth, and the larks were busy


MR. BLENKIRON DISCOURSES 225
over the new furrows. I remember that we ran up a little~
glen, where a stream spread into pools among sallows, and
the roadside trees were heavy with mistletoe. On the table-
land beyond the Somme valley the sun shone like April.
At Beauvais we lunched badly in an inn—badly as to food,
but there was an excellent burgundy at two francs a bottle.
Then we slipped down through little flat-chested townships
to the Seine, and in the late afternoon passed through St.
Germains forest. The wide green spaces among the trees
set my fancy dwelling on that divine English countryside
where Mary and I would one day make our home. She
had been in high spirits all the journey, but when I spoke
of the Cotswolds her face grew grave.
“Don’t let us speak of it, Dick,” she said. “It’s too
happy a thing and I feel as if it would wither if we touched
it. I don't let myself think of peace and home, for it
makes me too homesick. . . . I think we shall get there
some day, you and I . . . but it's a long road to the
Delectable Mountains, and Faithful, you know, has to die
first. . . . There is a price to be paid.”
The words sobered me.
“Who is our Faithful ?” I asked.
“I don't know. But he was the best of the Pilgrims.”
Then, as if a veil had lifted, her mood changed, and when
we came through the suburbs of Paris and swung down
the Champs Élysées she was in a holiday humour. The
lights were twinkling in the blue January dusk, and the
warm breath of the city came to greet us. I knew little of
the place, for I had visited it once only on a four days'
Paris leave, but it had seemed to me then the most habit-
able of cities, and now, coming from the battle-field with
Mary by my side, it was like the happy ending of a
dream.
I left her at her cousin's house near the Rue St. Honoré,
and deposited myself, according to instructions, at the
Hôtel Louis Quinze. There I wallowed in a hot bath, and
got into the civilian clothes which had been sent on from


226 MR. STANDFAST
__ London. They made me feel that I had taken leave of my
division for good and all this time.
Blenkiron had a private room, where we were to dine;
and a more wonderful litter of books and cigar boxes I
have never seen, for he hadn't a notion of tidiness. I could
hear him grunting at his toilet in the adjacent bedroom, and
I noticed that the table was laid for three. I went down-
stairs to get a paper, and on the way ran into Launcelot
Wake.
He was no longer a private in a Labour battalion. Eve-
ning clothes showed beneath his overcoat.
“Hullo, Wake, are you in this push too?”
“I suppose so,” he said, and his manner was not cordial.
“Anyhow I was ordered down here. My business is to
do as I am told.”
“Coming to dine?” I asked.
“No. I'm dining with some friends at the Crillon.”
Then he looked me in the face, and his eyes were hot
as I first remembered them. “I hear I’ve to congratulate
you, Hannay,” and he held out a limp hand.
I never felt more antagonism in a human being.
“You don't like it?” I said, for I guessed what he meant.
“How on earth can I like it?” he cried angrily. “Good
Lord, man, you'll murder her soul. You an ordinary,
stupid, successful fellow and she—she's the most precious
thing God ever made. You can never understand a fraction
of her preciousness, but you'll clip her wings all right. She
can never fly now. . . .”
He poured out this hysterical stuff to me at the foot of
the staircase within hearing of an elderly French widow
with a poodle. I had no impulse to be angry for I was
far too happy.
“Don’t, Wake,” I said. “We’re all too close together to
quarrel. I'm not fit to black Mary's shoes. You can't put
me too low or her too high. But I've at least the sense to
know it. You couldn't want me to be humbler than I feel.”
He shrugged his shoulders, as he went out to the street.


MR. BLENKIRON DISCOURSES 227
“Your infernal magnanimity would break any man's tem-
per. . . .”
I went upstairs to find Blenkiron, washed and shaven,
admiring a pair of bright patent-leather shoes.
“Why, Dick, I've been wearying bad to see you. I was
nervous you would be blown to glory, for I've been reading
awful things about your battles in the noospapers. The war
correspondents worry me so I can't take breakfast.”
He mixed cocktails and clinked his glass on mine.
“Here's to the young lady. I was trying to write her a
pretty little sonnet, but the darned rhymes wouldn't fit.
I've gotten a heap of things to say to you when we've fin-
ished dinner.”
Mary came in, her cheeks bright from the weather, and
Blenkiron promptly fell abashed. But she had a way to
meet his shyness, for, when he began an embarrassed
speech of good wishes, she put her arms round his neck and
kissed him. Oddly enough, that set him completely at his
ease.
It was pleasant to eat off linen and china again, pleasant
to see old Blenkiron's benignant face and the way he
tucked into his food, but it was delicious for me to sit at a
meal with Mary across the table. It made me feel that she
was really mine, and not a pixie that would vanish at a
word. To Blenkiron she bore herself like an affectionate
but mischievous daughter, while the desperately refined
manners that afflicted him whenever women were concerned
mellowed into something liker his everyday self. They did
most of the talking, and I remember he fetched from some
mysterious hiding-place a great box of chocolates, which
you could no longer buy in Paris, and the two ate them like
spoiled children. I didn't want to talk, for it was pure
happiness for me to look on. I loved to watch her, when the
servants had gone, with her elbows on the table like a school-
boy, her crisp gold hair a little rumpled, cracking walnuts
with gusto, like some child who has been allowed down from
the nursery for dessert and means to make the most of it.


MR. BLENKIRON DISCOURSES 229
spread-eagle announcements of his mission, with the result
that the Swiss Government threatened to turn him out of
the country if he tampered that amount with their neu-
trality. He also wrote a lot of rot in the Geneva news-
papers, which he paid to have printed, explaining how he
was a pacificist, and was going to convert Germany to
peace by “inspirational advertisement of pure-minded war
aims.” All this was in keeping with his English reputation,
and he wanted to make himself a bait for Ivery.
But Ivery did not rise to the fly, and though he had a
dozen agents working for him on the quiet he could never
hear of the name Chelius. That was, he reckoned, a very
private and particular name among the Wild Birds. How-
ever, he got to know a good deal about the Swiss end of
the “Deep-breathing” business. That took some doing
and cost a lot of money. His best people were a girl who
posed as a mannequin in a milliner's shop in Lyons and a
concierge in a big hotel at St. Moritz. His most important
discovery was that there was a second cipher in the return
messages sent from Switzerland, different from the one
that the Gussiter lot used in England. He got this cipher,
but though he could read it he couldn't make anything out
of it. He concluded that it was a very secret means of
communication between the inner circle of the Wild Birds,
and that Ivery must be at the back of it. . . . But he was
still a long way from finding out anything that mattered.
Then the whole situation changed, for Mary got in
touch with Ivery. I must say she behaved like a shame-
less minx, for she kept on writing to him to an address he
had once given her in Paris, and suddenly she got an an-
swer. She was in Paris herself, helping to run one of
the railway canteens, and staying with her French cousins,
the de Mezières. One day he came to see her. That
showed the boldness of the man, and his cleverness, for the
whole secret police of France were after him and they
never got within sight or sound. Yet here he was coming
openly in the afternoon to have tea with an English girl.


230 MR. STANDFAST
It showed another thing, which made me blaspheme. A
man so resolute and single-hearted in his job must have
been pretty badly in love to take a risk like that.
He came, and he called himself the Capitaine Bommaerts,
with a transport job on the staff of the French G.Q.G.
He was on the staff right enough too. Mary said that
when she heard that name she nearly fell down. He was
quite frank with her, and she with him. They were both
peacemakers, ready to break the laws of any land for the
sake of a great ideal. Goodness knows what stuff they
talked together. Mary said she would blush to think of it
till her dying day, and I gathered that on her side it was a
mixture of Launcelot Wake at his most pedantic and school-
girl silliness.
He came again, and they met often, unbeknown to the
decorous Madame de Mezières. They walked together in
the Bois de Boulogne, and once, with a beating heart, she
motored with him to Auteuil for luncheon. He spoke of
his house in Picardy, and there were moments, I gathered,
when he became the declared lover, to be rebuffed with a
hoydenish shyness. Presently the pace became too hot,
and after some anguished arguments with Bullivant on the
long-distance telephone she went off to Douvecourt to Lady
Manorwater's hospital. She went there to escape from him,
but mainly, I think, to have a look—trembling in every limb,
mind you—at the Château of Eaucourt Saint-Anne.
/ I had only to think of Mary to know just what Joan of
Arc was. No man ever born could have done that kind of
thing. It wasn't recklessness. It was sheer calculating
courage.
Then Blenkiron took up the tale. The newspaper we
found that Christmas Eve in the Château was of tremen-
dous importance, for Bommaerts had pricked out in the
advertisement the very special second cipher of the Wild
Birds. That proved that Ivery was at the back of the
Swiss business. But Blenkiron made doubly sure.
“I considered the time had come,” he said. “to pay high


MR. BLENKIRON DISCOURSES 231
for valuable noos, so I sold the enemy a very pretty de-vice.
If you ever gave your mind to ciphers and illicit corre-
spondence, Dick, you would know that the one kind of docu-
ment you can't write on in any invisible ink is a coated
paper, the kind they use in the weeklies to print photo-
graphs of leading actresses and the stately homes of Eng-
land. Anything wet that touches it corrugates the surface
a trifle, and you can tell with a microscope if someone's
been playing with it. Well, we had the good fortune to
discover just how to get over that little difficulty—how to
write on glazed paper with a liquid so as the cutest analyst
couldn't spot it, and likewise how to detect the writing. I
decided to sacrifice that invention, casting my bread upon
the waters and looking for a good-sized bakery in return.
. . . I had it sold to the enemy. The job wanted delicate
handling, but the tenth man from me—he was an Austrian
Jew—did the deal and scooped fifty thousand dollars out
of it. Then I lay low to watch how my friend would use
the de-vice, and I didn't wait long.”
He took from his pocket a folded sheet of L'Illustration.
Over a photogravure plate ran some words in a large
sprawling hand, as if written with a brush.
“That page when I got it yesterday,” he said, “was an
unassuming picture of General Petain presenting military
medals. There wasn't a scratch or a ripple on its surface.
But I got busy with it, and see there !”
He pointed out two names. The writing was a set of
key-words we did not know, but two names stood out
which I knew too well.
They were “Bommaerts” and “Chelius.”
“My God!” I cried, “that's uncanny. It only shows that
if you chew long enough . . . .”
“Dick,” said Mary, “you mustn't say that again. At the
best it's an ugly metaphor, and you're making it a platitude.”
“Who is Ivery anyhow P” I asked. “Do we know more
about him than we knew in the summer? Mary, what did
Bommaerts pretend to be?”


232 MR. STANDFAST
“An Englishman.” Mary spoke in the most matter-of-
fact tone, as if it were a perfectly usual thing to be made
love to by a spy, and that rather soothed my annoyance.
“When he asked me to marry him he proposed to take
me to a country-house in Devonshire. I rather think, too,
he had a place in Scotland. But of course he's a German.”
“Ye-es,” said Blenkiron slowly, “I’ve got on to his
record, and it isn't a pretty story. It's taken some working
out, but I’ve got all the links tested now. . . . He's a Boche
and a large-sized nobleman in his own state. Did you ever
hear of the Graf von Schwabing?”
I shook my head.
“I think I have heard Uncle Charlie speak of him,” said
Mary, wrinkling her brows. “He used to hunt with the
Pytchley.”
“That's the man. But he hasn't troubled the Pytchley
for the last eight years. There was a time when he was
the last thing in smartness in the German court—officer
in the Guards, ancient family, rich, darned clever—all the
fixings. Kaiser liked him, and it's easy to see why. I guess
a man who had as many personalities as the Graf was
amusing after-dinner company. Specially among Germans,
who in my experience don't excel in the lighter vein. Any-
way, he was William's white-headed boy, and there wasn't
a mother with a daughter who wasn't out gunning for Otto
von Schwabing. He was about as popular in London and
Noo York—and in Paris, too. Ask Sir Walter about him,
Dick. He says he had twice the brains of Kuhlmann, and
better manners than the Austrian fellow he used to yarn
about. . . . Well, one day there came an almighty court
scandal, and the bottom dropped out of the Graf's world.
It was a pretty beastly story, and I don't gather that
Schwabing was as deep in it as some others. But the
trouble was that those others had to be shielded at all costs,
and Schwabing was made the scapegoat. His name came
out in the papers and he had to go. . . .”
“What was the case called?” I asked.


934 MR. STANDFAST
ants’ hall. Their fine fixings are just the high light that
reveals the everlasting jay. They can't be gentlemen, be-
cause they aren't sure of themselves. The world laughs at
them, and they know it and it riles them like hell. . . .
That's why when a Graf is booted out of the Fatherland,
he's got to creep back somehow or be a wandering Jew for
the rest of time.”
Blenkiron lit another cigar and fixed me with his steady,
ruminating eye.
“For eight years the man has slaved, body and soul, for
the men who de 'raded him. He's earned his restoration
and I daresay he's got it in his pocket. If merit was re-
warded he should be covered with Iron Crosses and Red
Eagles. . . . He had a pretty good hand to start out with.
He knew other countries and he was a dandy at languages.
More, he had an uncommon gift for living a part. That
is real genius, Dick, however much it gets up against us.
Best of all he had a first-class outfit of brains. I can't say
I ever struck a better, and I’ve come across some bright
citizens in my time. . . . And now he's going to win out,
unless we get mighty busy.”
There was a knock at the door and the solid figure of
Andrew Amos revealed itself.
“It's time ye was home, Miss Mary. It chappit half-
eleven as I came up the stairs. It's comin' on to rain, so
I’ve brought an umbrelly”
“One word,” I said. “How old is the man?”
“Just gone thirty-six,” Blenkiron replied.
I turned to Mary, who nodded. “Younger than you,
Dick,” she said wickedly as she got into her big Jaeger
COat.
“I’m going to see you home,” I said.
“Not allowed. You've had quite enough of my society
for one day. Andrew's on escort duty to-night.”
Blenkiron looked after her as the door closed.
“I reckon you've got the best girl in the world.”
“Ivery thinks the same,” I said grimly, for my detes-


MR. BLENKIRON DISCOURSES 235
tation of the man who had made love to Mary fairly
choked me.
“You can see why. Here's this degenerate coming out
of his rotten class, all pampered and petted and satiated with
the easy pleasures of life. He has seen nothing of women
except the bad kind and the overfed specimens of his own
country. I hate being impolite about females, but I’ve
always considered the German variety uncommon like cows.
He has had desperate years of intrigue and danger, and
consorting with every kind of scallawag. Remember, he's
a big man and a poet, with a brain and an imagination that
takes every grade without changing gears. Suddenly he
meets something that is as fresh and lovely as a spring
flower, and has wits too, and the steeliest courage, and yet
is all youth and gaiety. It's a new experience for him, a
kind of revelation, and he's big enough to value her as
she should be valued. . . . No, Dick, I can understand
you getting cross, but I reckon it an item to the man's
credit.”
“It's his blind spot all the same,” I said.
“His blind spot,” Blenkiron repeated solemnly, “and,
please God, we're going to remember that.”
Next morning in miserable sloppy weather Blenkiron
carted me about Paris. We climbed five sets of stairs to
a flat away up in Montmartre, where I was talked to by a
fat man with spectacles and a slow voice and told various
things that deeply concerned me. Then I went to a room in
the Boulevard St. Germain, with a little cabinet opening off
it, where I was shown papers and maps and some figures
on a sheet of paper that made me open my eyes. We
lunched in a modest café tucked away behind the Palais
Royal, and our companions were two Alsatians who spoke
German better than a Boche and had no names—only
numbers. In the afternoon I went to a low building beside
the Invalides and saw many generals, including more than
one whose features were familiar in two hemispheres. I


236 MR. STANDFAST
told them everything about myself, and I was examined
like a convict, and all particulars about my appearance and
manner of speech written down in a book. That was to
prepare the way for me, in case of need, among the vast
army of those who work underground and know their chief
but do not know each other.
The rain cleared before night, and Blenkiron and I walked
back to the hotel through that lemon-coloured dusk that
you get in a French winter. We passed a company of
American soldiers, and Blenkiron had to stop and stare.
I could see that he was stiff with pride, though he wouldn't
show it.
“What d'you think of that bunch?” he asked.
“First-rate stuff,” I said.
“The men are all right,” he drawled critically. “But
some of the officer-boys are a bit puffy. They want fining
down.”
“They'll get it soon enough, honest fellows. You don't
keep your weight long in this war.”
“Say, Dick,” he said shyly, “what do you truly think of
our Americans? You've seen a lot of them, and I'd value
your views.” His tone was that of a bashful author asking
for an opinion on his first book.
“I’ll tell you what I think. You're constructing a great
middle-class army, and that's the most formidable fighting
machine on earth. This kind of war doesn't want the
Berserker so much as the quiet fellow with a trained
mind and a lot to fight for. The American ranks are filled
with all sorts, from cow-punchers to college boys, but mostly
with decent lads that have good prospects in life before
them and are fighting because they feel they're bound to,
not because they like it. It was the same stock that pulled
through in your Civil War. We have a middle-class
division, too—Scottish Territorials, mostly clerks and shop-
men and engineers and farmers' sons. When I first struck
them my only crab was that the officers weren't much better
than the men. It's still true, but the men are super-excel-


---- -
MR. BLENKIRON DISCOURSES 237
lent, and consequently so are the officers. That division
gets top marks in the Boche calendar for sheer fighting devil-
ment. . . . And, please God, that's what your American
army's going to be. You can wash out the old idea of a
regiment of scallawags commanded by dukes. That was
right enough, maybe, in the days when you hurrooshed into .
battle waving a banner, but it don't do with high explosives
and a couple of million men on each side and a battle front
of five hundred miles. The hero of this war is the plain
man out of the middle classes, who wants to get back to
his home and is going to use all the brains and grit he pos-
sesses to finish the job soon.”
“That sounds about right,” said Blenkiron reflectively.
“It pleases me some, for you've maybe guessed that I re-
spect the British Army quite a little. Which part of it do
you put top?”
“All of it's good. The French are keen judges and they
give front place to the Scots and the Australians. For
myself I think the backbone of the Army is the old-
fashioned English county regiments that hardly ever get
into the papers. . . . Though I don't know, if I had to pick,
but I'd take the South Africans. There's only a brigade of
them, but they're hell's delight in a battle. But then you'll
say I'm prejudiced.”
“Well,” drawled Blenkiron, “you're a mighty Empire
anyhow. I've sojourned up and down it and I can't guess
how the old-time highbrows in your little island came to
put it together. But I'll let you into a secret, Dick. I read
this morning in a noospaper that there was a natural
affinity between Americans and the men of the British Do-
minions. Take it from me, there isn't—at least not with this
American. I don't understand them one little bit. When
I see your lean, tall Australians with the sun at the back
of their eyes, I'm looking at men from another planet.
Outside you and Peter, I never got to fathom a South
African. The Canadians live over the fence from us, but
you mix up a Canuck with a Yank in your remarks and


238 MR. STANDFAST
you'll get a bat in the eye. . . . But most of us Americans
have gotten a grip on your Old Country. You'll find us
mighty respectful to other parts of your Empire, but we
say anything we dam well please about England. You see,
we know her that well and like her that well, we can be free
with her.
“It’s like,” he concluded as we reached the hotel, “it’s
like a lot of boys that are getting on in the world and are a
bit jealous and stand-offish with each other. But they're
all at home with the old man who used to warm them up
with a hickory cane, even though sometimes in their haste
they call him a standpatter.”
That night at dinner we talked solid business—Blenkiron
and I and a young French colonel from the III" Section
at G.Q.G. Blenkiron, I remember, got very hurt about
being called a business man by the Frenchman, who thought
he was paying him a compliment.
“Cut it out,” he said. “It is a word that's gone bad with
me. There's just two kinds of men, those who've gotten
sense and those who haven't. A big percentage of us
Americans make our living by trading, but we don't think
because a man's in business or even because he's made big
money that he's any natural good at every job. We've made
a college professor our President, and do what he tells us
like little boys, though he don't earn more than some of us
pay our works’ manager. You English have gotten business
men on the brain, and think a fellow's a dandy at handling
your Government if he happens to have made a pile by some
flat-catching ramp on your Stock Exchange. It makes me
tired. You're about the best business nation on earth, but
for God's sake don't begin to talk about it or you'll lose your
power. And don't go confusing real business with the
ordinary gift of raking in the dollars. Any man with sense
could make money if he wanted to, but he mayn't want.
He may prefer the fun of the job and let other people do
the looting. I reckon the biggest business on the globe


MR. BLENKIRON DISCOURSES 239
to-day is the work behind your lines and the way you feed
and supply and transport your army. It beats the Steel
Corporation and the Standard Oil to a frazzle. But the
man at the head of it all don't earn more than a thousand
dollars a month. . . . Your nation's getting to worship
Mammon, Dick. Cut it out. There's just the one difference
in humanity—sense or no sense, and most likely you won't
find any more sense in the man that makes a billion selling
bonds than in his brother Tim that lives in a shack and sells
corn-cobs. I'm not speaking out of sinful jealousy, for there
was a day when I was reckoned a railroad king, and I quit
with a bigger pile than kings usually retire on. But I
haven't the sense of old Peter, who never even had a bank
account. . . . And it’s sense that wins in this war.”
The Colonel, who spoke good English, asked a question
about a speech which some politician had made.
“There isn't all the sense I'd like to see at the top,” said
Blenkiron. “They're fine at smooth words. That wouldn't
matter, but they're thinking smooth thoughts. What d'you
make of the situation, Dick?”
“I think it's the worst since First Ypres,” I said.
“Everybody's cock-a-whoop, but God knows why.”
“God knows why,” Blenkiron repeated. “I reckon it's
a simple calculation, and you can't deny it any more than
a mathematical law. Russia is counted out. The Boche
won't get food from her for a good many months, but he
can get more men, and he's got them. He's fighting only on
one front, and he's been able to bring troops and guns west
so he's as strong as the Allies now on paper. And he's
stronger in reality. He's got better railways behind him,
and he's fighting on inside lines and can concentrate fast
against any bit of our front. I'm no soldier, but that's so,
Dick?”
The Frenchman smiled and shook his head. “All the
same they will not pass. They could not when they were
two to one in 1914, and they will not now. If we Allies
could not break through in the last year when we had


240 MR. STANDFAST
many more men, how will the Germans succeed now with
only equal numbers?”
Blenkiron did not look convinced. “That's what they all
say. I talked to a general last week about the coming offen-
sive, and he said he was praying for it to hurry up, for he
reckoned Fritz would get the fright of his life. It's a good
spirit, maybe, but I don't think it's sound on the facts.
We've got two mighty great armies of fine fighting-men, but,
because we've two commands, we're bound to move ragged
like a peal of bells. The Hun's got one army and forty years
of stiff tradition, and, what's more, he's going all out this
time. He's going to smash our front before America lines
up, or perish in the attempt. . . . Why do you suppose all
the peace racket in Germany has died down, and the very
men that were talking democracy in the summer are now hot
for fighting to a finish? I'll tell you. It's because old
Ludendorff has promised them complete victory this spring
if they spend enough men, and the Boche is a good gambler
and is out to risk it. We're not up against a local attack
this time. We're standing up to a great nation going bald-
headed for victory or destruction. If we're broken, then
America's got to fight a new campaign by herself when she's
ready, and the Boche has time to make Russia his feeding-
ground and diddle our blockade. That puts another five
years on to the war, maybe another ten. Are we free and
independent peoples going to endure that much? . . . I
tell you we're tossing to quit before Easter.”
He turned towards me, and I nodded assent.
“That's more or less my view,” I said. “We ought to
hold, but it'll be by our teeth and nails. For the next six
months we'll be fighting without any margin.”
“But, my friends, you put it too gravely,” cried the
Frenchman. “We may lose a mile or two of ground—yes.
But serious danger is not possible. They had better chances
at Verdun and they failed. Why should they succeed
now P”
“Because they are staking everything,” Blenkiron replied.


MR. BLENKIRON DISCOURSES 241
“It is the last desperate struggle of a wounded beast, and
in these struggles sometimes the hunter perishes. Dick's
right. We've got a wasting margin and every extra ounce
of weight's going to tell. The battle's in the field, and it’s
also in every corner of every Allied land. That's why within
the next two months we've got to get even with the Wild
Birds.”
The French colonel—his name was de Vallière—smiled
at the name, and Blenkiron answered my unspoken
question.
“I’m going to satisfy some of your curiosity, Dick, for
I’ve put together considerable noos of the menagerie. Ger-
many has a good army of spies outside her borders. We
shoot a batch now and then, but the others go on working
like beavers and they do a mighty deal of harm. They're
beautifully organised, but they don't draw on such good
human material as we, and I reckon they don't pay in results
more than ten cents on a dollar of trouble. But there they
are. They're the intelligence officers and their business is
just to forward noos. They're the birds in the cage, the—
what is it your friend called them?”
“Die Stubenvögel,” I said.
“Yes, but all the birds aren't caged. There's a few out-
side the bars and they don't collect noos. They do things.
If there's anything desperate they're put on the job, and
they've got the power to act without waiting on instructions
from home. I’ve investigated till my brain's tired and I
haven't made out more than half a dozen whom I can say
for certain are in the business. There's your pal, the Portu-
guese Jew, Dick. Another's a woman in Genoa, a princess
of some sort married to a Greek financier. One's the editor
of a pro-Ally up-country paper in the Argentine. One
passes as a Baptist minister in Colorado. One was a police
spy in the Tsar's Government and is now a red-hot revolu-
tionary in the Caucasus. And the biggest, of course, is
Moxon Ivery, who in happier times was the Graf von
Schwabing. There aren't above a hundred people in the


242 MR. STANDFAST
world know of their existence, and these hundred call them
the Wild Birds.”
“Do they work together?” I asked.
“Yes. They each get their own jobs to do, but they're
apt to flock together for a big piece of devilment. There
were four of them in France a year ago before the battle
of the Aisne, and they pretty near rotted the French Army.
That's so, Colonel?”
The soldier nodded grimly. “They seduced our weary
troops and they bought many politicians. Almost they
succeeded, but not quite. The nation is sane again, and is
judging and shooting the accomplices at its leisure. But the
principals we have never caught.”
“You hear that, Dick,” said Blenkiron. “You’re satis-
fied this isn't a whimsey of a melodramatic old Yank? I'll
tell you more. You know how Ivery worked the submarine
business from England. Also, it was the Wild Birds that
wrecked Russia. It was Ivery that paid the Bolshevists to
sedoo.ce the Army, and the Bolshevists took his money for
their own purpose, thinking they were playing a deep game,
when all the time he was grinning like Satan, for they were
playing his. It was Ivery or some other of the bunch that
doped the brigades that broke at Caporetto. If I started in
to tell you the history of their doings you wouldn't go to
bed, and if you did you wouldn't sleep. . . . There's just
this to it. Every finished subtle devilry that the Boche has
wrought among the Allies since August, 1914, has been the
work of the Wild Birds and more or less organised by
Ivery. They're worth half a dozen army corps to Luden-
dorff. They're the mightiest poison merchants the world
ever saw, and they've the nerve of hell . . .”
“I don't know,” I interrupted. “Ivery's got his soft
spot. I saw him in the Tube station.”
“Maybe, but he's got the kind of nerve that's wanted.
And now I rather fancy he's whistling in his flock.”
Blenkiron consulted a notebook. “Pavia—that's the
Argentine man—started last month for Europe. He tran-


MR. BLENKIRON DISCOURSES 243
shipped from a coasting steamer in the West Indies and
we've temporarily lost track of him, but he's left his hunt-
ing-ground. What do you reckon that means?
“It means,” Blenkiron continued solemnly, “that Ivery
thinks the game's nearly over. The play's working up for
the big climax. . . . And that climax is going to be damna-
tion for the Allies, unless we get a move on.”
“Right,” I said. “That's what I'm here for. What's
the move?”
“The Wild Birds mustn't ever go home, and the man
they call Ivery or Bommaerts or Chelius has to decease.
It's a cold-blooded proposition, but it's him or the world
that's got to break. But before he quits this earth we're
bound to get wise about some of his plans, and that means
that we can't just shoot a pistol at his face. Also we've
got to find him first. We reckon he's in Switzerland, but
that is a state with quite a lot of diversified scenery to lose
a man in. . . . Still I guess we'll find him. But it's the kind
of business to plan out as carefully as a battle. I'm going
back to Berne on my old stunt to boss the show, and I'm
giving the orders. You're an obedient child, Dick, so I
don't reckon on any trouble that way.”
Then Blenkiron did an ominous thing. He pulled up a
little table and started to lay out Patience cards. Since his
duodenum was cured he seemed to have dropped that habit,
and from his resuming it I gathered that his mind was
uneasy. I can see that scene as if it were yesterday—the
French colonel in an arm-chair smoking a cigarette in a
long amber holder, and Blenkiron sitting primly on the edge
of a yellow silk ottoman, dealing his cards and looking
guiltily towards me.
“You’ll have Peter for company,” he said. “Peter's a
sad man, but he has a great heart, and he's been mighty use-
ful to me already. They're going to move him to England
very soon. The authorities are afraid of him, for he's apt
to talk wild, his health having made him peevish about the
British. But there's a deal of red-tape in the world, and


244 MR. STANDFAST
the orders for his repatriation are slow in coming.” The
speaker winked very slowly and deliberately with his left
eye.
I asked if I was to be with Peter, much cheered at the
prospect.
“Why, yes. You and Peter are the collateral in the deal.
But the big game's not with you.”
I had a presentiment of something coming, something
anxious and unpleasant.
“Is Mary in it?” I asked.
He nodded and seemed to pull himself together for an
explanation.
“See here, Dick. Our main job is to get Ivery back to
Allied soil where we can handle him. And there's just the
one magnet that can fetch him back. You aren't going to
deny that.”
I felt my face getting very red, and that ugly hammer
began beating in my forehead. Two grave, patient eyes met
my glare.
“I’m damned if I’ll allow it!” I cried. “I’ve some right
to a say in the thing. I won't have Mary made a decoy.
It's too infernally degrading.”
“It isn't pretty, but war isn't pretty, and nothing we do
is pretty. I'd have blushed like a rose when I was young
and innocent to imagine the things I’ve put my hand to in
the last three years. But have you any other way, Dick?
I’m not proud, and I'll scrap the plan if you can show me
another. . . . Night after night I've hammered the thing
out, and I can't hit on a better. . . . Heigh-ho, Dick, this
isn't like you,” and he grinned ruefully. “You’re making
yourself a fine argument in favour of celibacy—in time of
war, anyhow. What is it the poet sings?—
‘White hands cling to the bridle rein,
Slipping the spur from the booted heel.’”
I was as angry as sin, but I felt all the time I had no
case. Blenkiron stopped his game of Patience, sending the


MR. BLENKIRON DISCOURSES 245
cards flying over the carpet, and straddled on the hearthrug.
“You’re never going to be a piker. What's dooty, if you
won't carry it to the other side of hell? What's the use
of yapping about your country if you're going to keep any-
thing back when she calls for it? What's the good of mean-
ing to win the war if you don't put every cent you’ve got
on your stake? You'll make me think you're like the jacks
in your English novels that chuck in their hand and say it's
up to God, and call that ‘seeing it through.' . . . No, Dick,
that kind of dooty don't deserve a blessing. You dursn't
keep back anything if you want to save your soul.
“Besides,” he went on, “what a girl it is She can't
scare and she can't soil. She's white-hot youth and inno-
cence, and she'd take no more harm than clean steel from
a muck-heap.”
I knew I was badly in the wrong, but my pride was all
raW.
“I’m not going to agree till I’ve talked to Mary.”
“But Miss Mary has consented,” he said gently. “She
made the plan.”
Next day, in clear blue weather that might have been
May, I drove Mary down to Fontainebleau. We lunched in
the inn by the bridge and walked into the forest. I hadn't
slept much, for I was tortured by what I thought was
anxiety for her, but which was in truth jealousy of Ivery.
I don't think that I would have minded her risking her life,
for that was part of the game we were both in, but I jibbed
at the notion of Ivery coming near her again. I told my-
self it was honourable pride, but I knew deep down in me
that it was jealousy.
I asked her if she had accepted Blenkiron's plan, and she
turned mischievous eyes on me.
“I knew I should have a scene with you, Dick. I told
Mr. Blenkiron so. . . . Of course I agreed. I'm not even
very much afraid of it. I'm a member of the team, you
know, and I must play up to my form. I can't do a man's


246 MR. STANDFAST
work, so all the more reason why I should tackle the thing I
can do.”
“But,” I stammered, “it’s such a . . . such a degrading
business for a child like you. I can't bear . . . It makes
me hot to think of it.”
Her reply was merry laughter.
“You’re an old Ottoman, Dick. You haven't doubled
Cape Turk yet, and I don't believe you're round Seraglio
Point. Why, women aren't the brittle things men used to
think them. They never were, and the war has made them
like whipcord. Bless you, my dear, we're the tougher sex
now. We’ve had to wait and endure, and we've been so
beaten on the anvil of patience that we've lost all our
megrims.”
She put her hands on my shoulders and looked me in the
eyes.
“Look at me, Dick, look at your someday-to-be espouséd
saint. I'm nineteen years of age next August. Before the
war I should have only just put my hair up. I should have
been the kind of shivering debutante who blushes when she's
spoken to, and oh! I should have thought such silly, silly
things about life. . . . Well, in the last two years I've
been close to it, and to death. I've nursed the dying. I've
seen souls in agony and in triumph. England has allowed
me to serve her as she allows her sons. Oh, I'm a robust
young woman now, and indeed I think women were always
robuster than men. . . . Dick, dear Dick, we're lovers, but
we're comrades too—always comrades, and comrades trust
each other.”
I hadn't anything to say, except contrition, for I had had
my lesson. I had been slipping away in my thoughts from
the gravity of our task, and Mary had brought me back to
it. I remember that as we walked through the woodland we
came to a place where there were no signs of war. Else-
where there were men busy felling trees, and anti-aircraft
guns, and an occasional transport waggon, but here there
was only a shallow grassy vale, and in the distance, bloomed


CHAPTER XV
ST. ANTON
EN days later the porter Joseph Zimmer of Arosa, clad
in the tough and shapeless trousers of his class, but
sporting an old velveteen shooting-coat bequeathed to him
by a former German master—speaking the guttural tongue
of the Grisons, and with all his belongings in one massive
rucksack, came out of the little station of St. Anton and
blinked in the frosty sunshine. He looked down upon the
old village beside its icebound lake, but his business was with
the new village of hotels and villas which had sprung up in
the last ten years south of the station. He made some
halting inquiries of the station people, and a cab-driver out-
side finally directed him to the place he sought—the cottage
of the Widow Summermatter, where resided an English
interné, one Peter Pienaar.
The porter Joseph Zimmer had had a long and round-
about journey. A fortnight before he had worn the uniform
of a British major-general. As such he had been the inmate
of an expensive Paris hotel, till one morning, in grey tweed
clothes and with a limp, he had taken the Paris-Mediter-
ranean Express with a ticket for an officers' convalescent
home at Cannes. Thereafter he had declined in the social
scale. At Dijon he had been still an Englishman, but at
Pontarlier he had become an American bagman of Swiss
parentage, returning to wind up his father's estate. At
Berne he limped excessively, and at Zurich, at a little back-
street hotel, he became frankly the peasant. For he met a
friend there from whom he acquired clothes with that odd
rank smell, far stronger that Harris tweed, which marks the
raiment of most Swiss guides and all Swiss porters. He
248


ST. ANTON 249
also acquired a new name and an old aunt, who a little later
received him with open arms and explained to her friends
that he was her brother's son from Arosa who three winters
ago had hurt his leg wood-cutting and had been discharged
from the levy.
A kindly Swiss gentleman, as it chanced, had heard of the
deserving Joseph and interested himself to find him employ-
ment. The said philanthropist made a hobby of the French
and British prisoners returned from Germany, and had in
mind an officer, a crabbed South African with a bad leg,
who needed a servant. He was, it seemed, an ill-tempered
old fellow who had to be billeted alone, and since he could
speak German, he would be happier with a Swiss native.
Joseph haggled somewhat over the wages, but on his aunt's
advice he accepted the job, and, with a very complete set of
papers and a store of ready-made reminiscences (it took him
some time to swot up the names of the peaks and passes
he had traversed) set out for St. Anton, having dispatched
beforehand a monstrously ill-spelt letter announcing his
coming. He could barely read and write, but he was good
at maps, which he had studied carefully, and he noticed with
satisfaction that the valley of St. Anton gave easy access
to Italy.
As he journeyed south the reflections of that porter would
have surprised his fellow travellers in the stuffy third-class
carriage. He was thinking of a conversation he had had
some days before in a café at Dijon with a young Eng-
lishman bound for Modane. . . .
We had bumped up against each other by chance in that
strange flitting when we all went to different places at dif-
ferent times, asking nothing of each other's business. Wake
had greeted me rather shamefacedly and had proposed
dinner together.
I am not good at receiving apologies, and Wake's em-
barrassed me more than they embarrassed him. “I’m a bit
of a cad sometimes,” he said. “You know I'm a better
fellow than I sounded that night, Hannay.”


250 MR. STANDFAST
I mumbled something about not talking rot—the conven-
tional phrase. What worried me was that the man was
suffering. You could see it in his eyes. But that evening
I got nearer Wake than ever before, and he and I became
true friends, for he laid bare his soul before me. That was
his trouble, that he could lay bare his soul, for ordinary
healthy folks don't analyse their feelings. Wake did, and
I think it brought him relief. -- --__
- “Don’t think I was ever your rival. I would no more
have proposed to Mary than I would have married one of
her aunts. She was so sure of herself, so happy in her
single-heartedness that she terrified me. My type of man
is not meant for marriage, for women must be in the centre
of life, and we must always be standing aside and looking
on. It is a damnable thing to be born left-handed.”
“The trouble about you, my dear chap,” I said, “is that
you're too hard to please.”
“That's one way of putting it. I should put it more
harshly. I hate more than I love. All we humanitarians
and pacificists have hatred as our mainspring. Odd, isn't
it, for people who preach brotherly love? But it's the truth.
We're full of hate towards everything that doesn't square
in with our ideas, everything that jars on our ladylike
nerves. Fellows like you are so in love with their cause
that they've no time or inclination to detest what thwarts
them. We've no cause—only negatives, and that means
hatred, and self-torture, and a beastly jaundice of soul.”
Then I knew that Wake's fault was not spiritual pride,
as I had diagnosed it at Biggleswick. The man was abased
with humility.
“I see more than other people see,” he went on, “and I
feel more. That's the curse on me. You're a happy man
and you get things done, because you only see one side of a
case, one thing at a time. How would you like it if a
thousand strings were always tugging at you, if you saw
that every course meant the sacrifice of lovely and desir-
able things, or even the shattering of what you know to be


ST. ANTON 251
unreplaceable? I’m the kind of stuff poets are made of,
but I haven't the poet's gift, so " stagger about the world
left-handed and game-legged. . . . Take the war. For me
to fight would be worse than for another man to run away.
From the bottom of my heart I believe that it needn't have
happened, and that all war is a blistering iniquity. And yet
belief has got very little to do with virtue. I'm not as
good a man as you, Hannay, who never thought out any-
thing in your life. My time in the Labour battalion taught
me something. I knew that with all my fine aspirations I
wasn't as true a man as fellows whose talk was silly oaths
and who didn't care a tinker's curse about their soul.”
I remember that I looked at him with a sudden under-
standing. “I think I know you. You're the sort of chap
who won't fight for his country because he can't be sure
that she's altogether in the right. But he'd cheerfully die
for her, right or wrong.”
His face relaxed in a slow smile. “Queer that you should
say that. I think it's pretty near the truth. Men like me
aren't afraid to die, but they haven't quite the courage to
live. Every man should be happy in a service, like you,
when he obeys orders. I couldn't get on in any service. I
lack the bump of veneration. I can't swallow things merely
because I'm told to. My sort are always talking about
‘service,’ but we haven't the temperament to serve. I'd
give all I have to be an ordinary cog in the wheel, instead
of a confounded outsider who finds fault with the machin-
ery. . . . Take a great violent high-handed fellow like
you. You can sink yourself till you become only a name
and a number. I couldn't if I tried. I'm not sure if I
want to, either. I cling to the odds and ends that are my
own.”
“I wish I had had you in my battalion a year ago,” I
said.
“No, you don't. I'd only have been a nuisance. I've
been a Fabian since Oxford, but you're a better socialist
than me. I'm a rancid individualist.”


252 MR. STANDFAST
“But you must be feeling better about the war?” I
asked.
“Not a bit of it. I'm still lusting for the heads of the
politicians that made it and continue it. But I want to help
my country. Honestly, Hannay, I love the old place. More,
I think, than I love myself, and that's saying a devilish lot.
Short of fighting—which would be the sin against the Holy
Spirit for me—I’ll do my damnedest. But you'll remember
I'm not used to team work. If I'm a jealous player, beat
me over the head.”
His voice was almost wistful, and I liked him enormously.
“Blenkiron will see to that,” I said. “We’re going to
break, you to harness, Wake, and then you'll be a happy
man.… You keep your mind on the game and forget about
yourself. That's the cure for jibbers.”
** As I journeyed to St. Anton I thought a lot about that
talk. He was quite right about Mary, who would never
have married him. A man with such an angular soul
couldn't fit into another's. And then I thought that the
chief thing about Mary was just her serene certainty. Her
eyes had that settled happy look that I remembered to have
seen only in one other human face, and that was Peter's.
. . . But I wondered if Peter's eyes were still the same.
I found the cottage, a little wooden thing which had been
left perched on its knoll when the big hotels grew up
around it. It had a fence in front, but behind it was open
to the hillside. At the gate stood a bent old woman with a
face like a pippin. My make-up must have been good, for
she accepted me before I introduced myself.
“God be thanked you are come,” she cried. “The poor
lieutenant needed a man to keep him company. He sleeps
now, as he does always in the afternoon, for his leg wearies
him in the night. . . . But he is brave, like a soldier. . . .
Come, I will show you the house, for you two will be alone
now.”
Stepping softly she led me indoors, pointing with a warn-
ing finger to the little bedroom where Peter slept. I found


ST. ANTON 253
a kitchen with a big stove and a rough floor of planking, on
which lay some badly cured skins. Off it was a sort of
pantry with a bed for me. She showed me the pots and
pans for cooking and the stores she had laid in, and where
to find water and fuel. “I will do the marketing daily,”
she said, “and if you need me, my dwelling is half a mile
up the road beyond the new church. God be with you,
young man, and be kind to that wounded one.”
When the Widow Summermatter had departed I sat
down in Peter's arm-chair and took stock of the place. It
was quiet and simple and homely, and through the window
came the gleam of snow on the diamond hills. On the
table beside the stove were Peter's cherished belongings—
his buck-skin pouch and the pipe which Jannie Grobelaar
had carved for him in St. Helena, an aluminium field match-
box I had given him, a cheap large-print Bible such as
padres present to well-disposed privates, and an old battered
Pilgrim's Progress with gaudy pictures. The illustration at
which I opened showed Faithful going up to Heaven from
the fire of Vanity Fair like a woodcock that has just been
flushed. Everything in the room was exquisitely neat, and
I knew that that was Peter and not the Widow Summer-
matter. On a peg behind the door hung his much-mended
coat, and sticking out of a pocket I recognised a sheaf of
my own letters. In one corner stood something which I
had forgotten about—an invalid chair.
The sight of Peter's plain little oddments made me feel
solemn. I wondered if his eyes would be like Mary's now,
for I could not conceive what life would be for him as a
cripple. Very gently I opened the bedroom door and slipped
inside.
He was lying on a camp bedstead with one of those
striped Swiss blankets pulled up round his ears, and he
was asleep. It was the old Peter beyond doubt. He had
the hunter's gift of breathing evenly through his nose, and
the white scar on the deep brown of his forehead was what
I had always remembered. The only change since I last


254 MR. STANDFAST
saw him was that he had let his beard grow again, and it
was grey.
As I looked at him the remembrance of all we had been
through together flooded back upon me, and I could have
cried with joy at being beside him. Women, bless their
hearts' can never know what long comradeship means to
men; it is something not in their lives, something that
belongs only to that wild, undomesticated world which we
forswear when we find our mates. Even Mary understood
only a bit of it. I had just won her love, which was the
greatest thing that ever came my way, but if she had
entered at that moment I would scarcely have turned my
head. I was back again in the old life and was not thinking
of the new.
Suddenly I saw that Peter was awake and was looking
at me.
“Dick,” he said in a whisper, “Dick, my old friend.”
The blanket was tossed off, and his long, lean arms were
stretched out to me. I gripped his hands, and for a little
we did not speak. Then I saw how woefully he had
changed. His left leg had shrunk, and from the knee down
was like a pipe stem. His face, when awake, showed the
lines of hard suffering and he seemed shorter by half a
foot. But his eyes were still like Mary's. Indeed they
seemed to be more patient and peaceful than in the days
when he sat beside me on the buck-waggon and peered over
the hunting-veld. -
I picked him up—he was no heavier than Mary—and
carried him to his chair beside the stove. Then I boiled
water and made tea, as we had so often done together.
“Peter, old man,” I said, “we’re on trek again, and this
is a very snug little rondavel. We've had many good yarns,
but this is going to be the best. First of all, how about your
health P”
“Good. I'm a strong man again, but slow like a hippo
cow. I have been lonely sometimes, but that is all by now.
Tell me of the big battles.”


ST. ANTON 255
But I was hungry for news of him and kept him to his
own case. He had no complaint of his treatment except
that he did not like Germans. The doctors at the hospital
had been clever, he said, and had done their best for him,
but nerves and sinews and small bones had been so wrecked
that they could not mend his leg, and Peter had all the
Boer's dislike of amputation. One doctor had been in
Damaraland and talked to him of those baked sunny spaces
and made him homesick. But he returned always to his
dislike of Germans. He had seen them herding our soldiers
like brute beasts, and the commandant had a face like
Stumm and a chin that stuck out and wanted hitting. He
made an exception for the great airman Lensch, who had
downed him.
“He is a white man, that one,” he said. “He came to see
me in hospital and told me a lot of things. I think he made
them treat me well. He is a big man, Dick, who would
make two of me, and he has a round, merry face and pale
eyes like Frickie Celliers who could put a bullet through a
pauw's head at two hundred yards. He said he was sorry
I was lame, for he hoped to have more fights with me.
Some woman that tells fortunes had said that I would be
the end of him, but he reckoned she had got the thing the
wrong way on. I hope he will come through this war, for
he is a good man, though a German. . . . But the others!
They are like the fool in the Bible, fat and ugly in good
fortune and proud and vicious when their luck goes. They
are not a people to be happy with.”
Then he told me that to keep up his spirits he had amused
himself with playing a game. He had prided himself on
being a Boer, and spoken coldly of the British. He had also,
I gathered, imparted many things calculated to deceive. So
he left Germany with good marks, and in Switzerland had
held himself aloof from the other British wounded, on the
advice of Blenkiron, who had met him as soon as he crossed
the frontier. I gathered it was Blenkiron who had had
Him sent to St. Anton, and in his time there, as a dis-


ST. ANTON 257
Peter nodded his head sagely. “I think I have guessed
the place. The daughter of the old woman used to pull
my chair sometimes down to the village, and I have sat in
cheap inns and talked to servants. There is a fresh-water
pan there, but it is all covered with snow now, and beside it
there is a big house that they call the Pink Chalet. I do
not know much about it, except that rich folk live in it, but
I know the other houses and they are harmless. Also the
big hotels, which are too cold and public for strangers to
meet in.”
I put Peter to bed, and it was a joy to me to look after
him, to give him his tonic and prepare the hot-water bottle
that comforted his neuralgia. His behaviour was like a
docile child's, and he never lapsed from his sunny temper,
though I could see how his leg gave him hell. They had
tried massage for it and given it up, and there was nothing
for him but to endure till nature and his tough constitution
deadened the tortured nerves again. I shifted my bed out
of the pantry and slept in the room with him, and when I
woke in the night, as one does the first time in a strange
place, I could tell by his breathing that he was wakeful and
suffering.
Next day a bath chair containing a grizzled cripple and
pushed by a limping peasant might have been seen descend-
ing the long hill to the village. It was clear frosty weather
which made the cheeks tingle, and I felt so full of beans
that it was hard to remember my game leg. The valley
was shut in on the east by a great mass of rocks and glaciers,
belonging to a mountain whose top could not be seen. But
on the south, above the snowy fir-woods, there was a most
delicate lace-like peak with a point like a needle. I looked
at it with interest, for beyond it lay the valley which led to
the Staub pass, and beyond that was Italy—and Mary.
The old village of St. Anton had one long, narrow street
which bent at right angles to a bridge which spanned the
river flowing from the lake. Thence the road climbed steeply,


260 MR. STANDFAST
liked best was to go over with me every detail of our old
expeditions. They belonged to a life which he could think
about without pain, whereas the war was too near and bitter
for him. He liked to hobble out-of-doors after the darkness
came and look at his old friends, the stars. He called them
by the words they use on the veld, and the first star of
morning he called the voorlooper—the little boy who inspans
the oxen—a name I had not heard for twenty years. Many
a great yarn we spun in the long evenings, but I always went
to bed with a sore heart. The longing in his eyes was too
urgent, longing not for old days or far countries, but for the
health and strength which had once been his pride.
One night I told him about Mary.
“She will be a happy mysie,” he said, “but you will need
to be very clever with her, for women are queer cattle and
you and I don't know their ways. They tell me English
women do not cook and make clothes like our vrouws, so
what will she find to do? I doubt an idle woman will be
like a mealie-fed horse.”
It was no good explaining to him the kind of girl Mary
was, for that was a world entirely beyond his ken. But I
could see that he felt lonelier than ever at my news. So I
told him of the house I meant to have in England when the
war was over—an old house in a green hilly country, with
fields that would carry four head of cattle to the morgen and
furrows of clear water, and orchards of plums and apples.
“And you will stay with us all the time,” I said. “You will
have your own rooms and your own boy to look after you,
and you will help me to farm, and we will catch fish to-
gether, and shoot the wild ducks when they come up from
the pans in the evening. I have found a better countryside
than the Houtbosch, where you and I planned to have a
farm. It is a blessed and happy place, England.”
He shook his head. “You are a kind man, Dick, but your
pretty mysie won't want an ugly old fellow like me hobbling
about her house. . . . I do not think I will go back to
Africa, for I should be sad there in the sun. I will find


ST. ANTON 263
and measured the distance from there to St. Anton and
pored over the two roads thither—the short one by the Staub
Pass and the long one by the Marjolana. These letters made
me think that things were nearing a climax, but still no
instructions came. I had nothing to report in my own mes-
sages, I had discovered nothing in the Pink Chalet but idle
servants, I was not even sure if the Pink Chalet were not
a harmless villa, and I hadn't come within a thousand miles
of finding Chelius. All my desire to imitate Peter's stoicism
didn't prevent me from getting occasionally rattled and de-
spondent. --
The one thing I could do was to keep fit, for I had a
notion I might soon want all my bodily strength. I had to
keep up my pretence of lameness in the day-time, so I used
to take my exercise at night. I would sleep in the afternoon,
when Peter had his siesta, and then about ten in the evening,
after putting him to bed, I would slip out-of-doors and go
for a four or five hours' tramp. Wonderful were those mid-
night wanderings. I pushed up through the snow-laden
pines to the ridges where the snow lay in great wreaths and
scallops, till I stood on a crest with a frozen world at my
feet and above me a host of glittering stars. Once on a
night of full moon I reached the glacier at the valley head,
scrambled up the moraine to where the ice began, and peered
fearfully into the spectral crevasses. At such hours I had
the earth to myself, for there was not a sound except the
slipping of a burden of snow from the trees or the crack
and rustle which reminded me that a glacier was a moving
river. The war seemed very far away, and I felt the little-
ness of our human struggles, till I thought of Peter turning
from side to side to find ease in the cottage far below me.
Then I realised that the spirit of man was the greatest thing
in this spacious world. . . . I would get back about three or
four, have a bath in the water which had been warming in
my absence, and creep into bed, almost ashamed of having
two sound legs, when a better man a yard away had but one.
Oddly enough at these hours there seemed more life in


264 MR. STANDFAST
the Pink Chalet than by day. Once, tramping across the
lake long after midnight, I saw lights in the lake-front in
windows which for ordinary were blank and shuttered.
Several times I cut across the grounds, when the moon was
dark. On one such occasion a great car with no lights
swept up the drive, and I heard low voices at the door.
Another time a man ran hastily past me, and entered the
house by a little door on the eastern side, which I had not
before noticed. . . . Slowly the conviction began to grow on
me that we were not wrong in marking down this place,
that things went on within it which it deeply concerned us
to discover. But I was puzzled to think of a way. I might
butt inside, but for all I knew it would be upsetting Blen-
kiron's plans, for he had given me no instructions about
housebreaking. All this unsettled me worse than ever. I
began to lie awake planning some means of entrance .
I would be a peasant from the next valley who had twisted
his ankle. . . . I would go seeking an imaginary cousin
among the servants. . . . I would start a fire in the place
and have the doors flung open to zealous neighbours. . .
And then suddenly I got instructions in a letter from
Blenkiron.
It came inside a parcel of warm socks that arrived from
my kind aunt. But the letter for me was not from her.
It was in Blenkiron's large sprawling hand and the style
of it was all his own. He told me that he had about finished
his job. He had got his line on Chelius, who was the bird
he expected, and that bird would soon wing its way south-
ward across the mountains for the reason I knew of.
“We’ve got an almighty move on,” he wrote, “and please
God you're going to hustle some in the next week. It's
going better than I ever hoped.” But something was still
to be done. He had struck a countryman, one Clarence
Donne, a journalist of Kansas City, whom he had taken into
the business. Him he described as a “crackerjack” and
commended to my esteem. He was coming to St. Anton,
for there was a game afoot at the Pink Chalet, which he


ST. ANTON 265
would give me news of. I was to meet him next evening at
nine-fifteen at the little door in the east end of the house.
“For the love of Mike, Dick,” he concluded, “be on time
and do everything Clarence tells you as if he was me. It's
a mightly complex affair, but you and he have sand enough
to pull it through. Don't worry about your little cousin.
She's safe and out of the job now.”
My first feeling was one of immense relief, especially at
the last words. I read the letter a dozen times to make sure
I had its meaning. A flash of suspicion crossed my mind
that it might be a fake, principally because there was no
mention of Peter, who had figured large in the other mis-
sives. But why should Peter be mentioned when he wasn't
on in this piece? The signature convinced me. Ordinarily
Blenkiron signed himself in full with a fine commercial
flourish. But when I was at the Front he had got into the
habit of making a kind of hieroglyphic of his surname to me
and sticking J. S. after it in a bracket. That was how this
letter was signed, and it was sure proof it was all right.
I spent that day day and the next in wild spirts. Peter
spotted what was on, though I did not tell him for fear of
making him envious. I had to be extra kind to him, for I
could see that he ached to have a hand in the business. In-
deed he asked shyly if I couldn't fit him in, and I had to
lie about it and say it was only another of my aimless cir-
cumnavigations of the Pink Chalet.
“Try and find something where I can help,” he pleaded.
“I’m pretty strong still, though I'm lame, and I can shoot
a bit.” -
I declared that he would be used in time, that Blenkiron
had promised he would be used, but for the life of me I
couldn't see how.
At nine o'clock on the evening appointed I was on the lake
opposite the house, close in under the shore, making my way
to the rendezvous. It was a coal-black night, for though
the air was clear the stars were shining with little light, and
the moon had not yet risen. With a premonition that I


266 MR. STANDFAST
might be long away from food, I had brought some slabs
of chocolate, and my pistol and torch were in my pocket.
It was bitter cold, but I had ceased to mind weather, and
I wore my one suit and no overcoat.
The house was like a tomb for silence. There was no
crack of light anywhere, and none of those smells of smoke
and food which proclaim habitation. It was an eerie job
scrambling up the steep bank east of the place, to where
the flat of the garden started, in a darkness so great that
I had to grope my way like a blind man.
I found the little door by feeling along the edge of the
building. Then I stepped into an adjacent clump of laurels
to wait on my companion. He was there before me.
“Say,” I heard a rich Middle West voice whisper, “are
you Joseph Zimmer? I'm not shouting any names, but I
guess you're the guy I was told to meet here.”
“Mr. Donne?” I whispered back.
“The same,” he replied. “Shake.”
I gripped a gloved and mittened hand which drew me
towards the door.


CHAPTER XVI
I LIE ON A HARD Bed
HE Journalist from Kansas City was a man of action.
He wasted no words in introducing himself or unfold-
ing his plan of campaign. “You’ve got to follow me, mister,
and not deviate one inch from my tracks. The explaining
part will come later. There's big business in this shack to-
night.” He unlocked the little door with scarcely a sound,
slid the crust of snow from his boots, and preceded me into
a passage as black as a cellar. The door swung smoothly
behind us, and after the sharp out-of-doors the air smelt
stuffy as the inside of a safe.
A hand reached back to make sure that I followed. We
appeared to be in a flagged passage under the main level
of the house. My hob-nailed boots slipped on the floor,
and I steadied myself on the wall, which seemed to be of
undressed stone. Mr. Donne moved softly and assuredly,
for he was better shod for the job than me, and his guiding
hand came back constantly to make sure of my whereabouts.
I remember that I felt just as I had felt when on that
August night I had explored the crevice of the Coolin—the
same sense that something queer was going to happen, the
same recklessness and contentment. Moving a foot at a
time with immense care, we came to a right-hand turning.
Two shallow steps led us to another passage, and then my
groping hands struck a blind wall. The American was be-
side me, and his mouth was close to my ear.
“Got to crawl now,” he whispered. “You lead, mister,
while I shed this coat of mine. Eight feet on your stomach
and then upright.”
I wriggled through a low tunnel, broad enough to take
267


268 MR. STANDFAST
three men abreast, but not two feet high. Halfway through
I felt suffocated, for I never liked holes, and I had a
momentary anxiety as to what we were after in this cellar
pilgrimage. Presently I smelt free air and got on to my
knees.
“Right, mister?” came a whisper from behind. My
companion seemed to be waiting till I was through before he
followed.
“Right,” I answered, and very carefully rose to my
feet.
Then something happened behind me. There was a jar
and a bump as if the roof of the tunnel had subsided. I
turned sharply and groped at the mouth. I stuck my leg
down and found a block.
“Donne,” I said, as loud as I dared, “are you hurt?
Where are you?”
But no answer came.
Even then I thought only of an accident. Something
had miscarried, and I was cut off in the cellars of an un-
friendly house away from the man who knew the road and
had a plan in his head. I was not so much frightened as
exasperated. I turned from the tunnel-mouth and groped
into the darkness before me. I might as well prospect the
kind of prison into which I had blundered.
I took three steps—no more. My feet seemed suddenly
to go from me and fly upward. So sudden was it that I
fell heavy and dead like a log, and my head struck the floor
with a crash that for a moment knocked me senseless, I
was dimly conscious of something falling on me and of an
intolerable pressure on my chest. I struggled for breath,
and found my arms and legs pinned and my whole body
in a kind of wooden vice. I was sick with the concussion,
and could do nothing but gasp and choke down my nausea.
The cut in the back of my head was bleeding freely and that
helped to clear my wits, but I lay for a minute or two in-
capable of thought. I shut my eyes tight, as a man does
when he is fighting with a swoon.


I LIE ON A HARD BED 269
When I opened them there was light. It came from the
left side of the room, the broad glare of a strong electric
torch. I watched it stupidly, but it gave me the fillip needed
to pick up the threads. I remembered the tunnel now and
the Kansas journalist. Then behind the light I saw a face
which pulled my flickering senses out of the mire.
I saw the heavy ulster and the cap, which I had realised,
though I had not seen, outside in the dark laurels. They
belonged to the journalist, Clarence Donne, the trusted emis-
sary of Blenkiron. But I saw his face now, and it was that
face which I had boasted to Bullivant I could never mistake
again upon earth. I did not mistake it now, and I remember
I had a faint satisfaction that I had made good my word.
I had not mistaken it, for I had not had the chance to look
at it till this moment. I saw with acid clearness the common
denominator of all its disguises—the young man who lisped
in the seaside villa, the stout philanthropist of Biggleswick,
the pulpy panic-stricken creature of the Tube station, the
trim French staff officer of the Picardy château. . . .I saw
more, for I saw it beyond the need of disguise. I was look-
ing at von Schwabing, the exile, who had done more for
Germany than any army commander. . . . Mary's words
came back to me—“the most dangerous man in the wº
. . . I was not afraid, or broken-hearted at failure, or angry
—not yet, for I was too dazed and awe-struck. I looked at
him as one might look at some cataclysm of nature which
had destroyed a continent.
The face was smiling.
“I am happy to offer you hospitality at last,” it said.
I pulled my wits farther out of the mud to attend to him.
The cross-bar on my chest pressed less hard and I breathed
better. But when I tried to speak, the words would not
corne.
“We are old friends,” he went on. “We have known
each other quite intimately for four years, which is a long
time in war. I have been interested in you, for you have
a kind of crude intelligence, and you have compelled me to


270 MR. STANDFAST
take you seriously. If you were cleverer you would ap-
preciate the compliment. But you were fool enough to
think you could beat me, and for that you must be punished.
Oh no, don't flatter yourself you were ever dangerous.
You were only troublesome and presumptuous, like a
mosquito one flicks off one's sleeve.”
He was leaning against the side of a heavy closed door.
He lit a cigar from a little gold tinder box and regarded me
with amused eyes.
“You will have time for reflection, so I propose to en-
lighten you a little. You are an observer of little things.
So? Did you ever see a cat with a mouse? The mouse
runs about and hides and manoeuvres and thinks it is play-
ing its own game. But at any moment the cat can stretch
out its paw and put an end to it. You are the mouse, my
poor General—for I believe you are one of those funny
amateurs that the English call Generals. At any moment
during the last nine months I could have put an end to you
with a nod.”
My nausea had stopped and I could understand what he
said, though I had still no power to reply.
“Let me explain,” he went on. “I watched with amuse-
ment your gambols at Biggleswick. My eyes followed you
when you went to the Clyde and in your stupid twistings in
Scotland. I gave you rope, because you were futile, and I
had graver things to attend to. I allowed you to amuse
yourself at your British Front with childish investigations
and to play the fool in Paris. I have followed every step
of your course in Switzerland, and I have helped your
idiotic Yankee friend to plot against myself. While you
thought you were drawing your net around me, I was draw-
ing mine around you. I asure you, it has been a charming
relaxation from serious business.”
I knew the man was lying. Some part was true, for he
had clearly fooled Blenkiron; but I remembered the hurried
flight from Biggleswick and Eaucourt Saint-Anne when the
game was certainly against him. He had me at his mercy,


272 MR. STANDFAST
contradict him. It may have been the result of the fall, but
my mind had stopped working. I heard his voice as one lis-
tens casually to the ticking of a clock.
“I will tell you more,” he was saying. “This is the eve-
ning of the 18th day of March. Your generals in France
expect an attack, but they are not sure where it will come.
Some think it may be in Champagne or on the Aisne, some
at Ypres, some at St. Quentin. Well, my dear General, you
alone will I take into our confidence. On the morning of the
21st, three days from now, we attack the right wing of the
British Army. In two days we shall be in Amiens. On the
third we shall have driven a wedge as far as the sea. Then
in a week or so we shall have rolled up your army from the
right, and presently we shall be in Boulogne and Calais.
After that Paris falls, and then Peace.”
I made no answer. The word “Amiens” recalled Mary,
and I was trying to remember the day in January when she
and I had motored south from that pleasant city.
“Why do I tell you these things? Your intelligence, for
you are not altogether foolish, will have supplied the an-
swer. It is because your life is over. As your Shakespeare
says, the rest is silence. . . . No, I am not going to kill you.
That would be crude, and I hate crudities. I am going now
on a little journey, and when I return in twenty-four hours'
time you will be my companion. You are going to visit
Germany, my dear General.”
That woke me to attention, and he noticed it, for he went
on with gusto.
“You have heard of the Untergrundbahn 7 No? And
you call yourself an Intelligence officer! Yet your ignorance
is shared by the whole of your General Staff. It is a little
organisation of my own. By it we can take unwilling
and dangerous people inside our frontier to be dealt with as
we please. Some have gone from England and many from
France. Officially I believe they are recorded as “missing,'
but they did not go astray on any battle-field. They have
been gathered from their homes or from hotels or offices


I LIE ON A HARD BED 273
or even the busy streets. I will not conceal from you that
the service of our Underground Railway is a little irregular
from England and France. But from Switzerland it is
smooth as a trunk line. There are unwatched spots on the
frontier, and we have our agents among the frontier guards,
and we have no difficulty about passes. It is a pretty device,
and you will soon be privileged to observe its working. . . .
In Germany I cannot promise you comfort, but I do not
think your life will be dull.”
As he spoke these words, his urbane smile changed to a
grin of impish malevolence. Even through my torpor I
felt the venom and I shivered.
“When I return I shall have another companion.” His
voice was honeyed again. “There is a certain pretty lady
who was to be the bait to entice me into Italy. It was so?
Well, I have fallen to the bait. I have arranged that she
shall meet me this very night at a mountain inn on the
Italian side. I have arranged, too, that she shall be alone.
She is an innocent child, and I do not think that she has been
more than a tool in the clumsy hands of your friends. She
will come with me when I ask her, and we shall be a merry
party in the Underground Express.”
My apathy vanished, and every nerve in me was alive at
the words.
“You cur!” I cried. “She loathes the sight of you. She
wouldn't touch you with the end of a barge-pole.”
He flicked the ash from his cigar. “I think you are mis-
taken. I am very persuasive, and I do not like to use com-
pulsion with a woman. But, willing or not, she will come
with me. I have worked hard and I am entitled to my
pleasure, and I have set my heart on that little lady.”
There was something in his tone, gross, leering, assured,
half contemptuous, that made my blood boil. He had fairly
got me on the raw, and the hammer beat violently in my
forehead. I could have wept with sheer rage, and it took
all my fortitude to keep my mouth shut. But I was deter-
mined not to add to his triumph.


274 MR. STANDFAST
He looked at his watch. “Time passes,” he said. “I
must depart to my charming assignation. I will give your
remembrances to the lady. Forgive me for making no
arrangements for your comfort till I return. Your con-
stitution is so sound that it will not suffer from a day's
fasting. To set your mind at rest I may tell you that
escape is impossible. This mechanism has been proved too
often, and if you did break loose from it, my servants would
deal with you. But I must speak a word of caution. If
you tamper with it or struggle too much it will act in a
curious way. The floor beneath you covers a shaft which
runs to the lake below. Set a certain spring at work and you
may find yourself shot down into the water far below the ice,
where your body will rot till the spring. . . . That, of
course, is an alternative open to you, if you do not care to
wait for my return.”
> He lit a fresh cigar, waved his hand, and vanished
through the doorway. As it shut behind him, the sound of
his footsteps instantly died away. The walls must have been
as thick as a prison's.
I suppose I was what people in books call “stunned.”
The illumination during the past few minutes had been so
dazzling that my brain could not master it. I remember
very clearly that I did not think about the ghastly failure
of our scheme, or the German plans which had been inso-
lently unfolded to me as to one dead to the world. I saw
a single picture—an inn in a snowy valley (I saw it as a
small place like Peter's cottage), a solitary girl, that smiling
devil who had left me, and then the unknown terror of the
Underground Railway. I think my courage went for a bit,
and I cried with feebleness and rage. The hammer in my
forehead had stopped, for it only beat when I was angry
in action. Now that I lay trapped, the manhood had slipped
out of my joints, and if Ivery had still been in the doorway,
I think I would have whined for mercy. I would have


I LIE ON A HARD BED 275
offered him all the knowledge I had in the world if he had
promised to leave Mary alone.
Happily he wasn't there, and there was no witness of my
cowardice. Happily, too, it is just as difficult to be a coward
for long as to be a hero. It was Blenkiron's phrase about
Mary that pulled me together—“She can't scare and she
can't soil.” No, by heavens, she couldn't. I could trust my
lady far better than I could trust myself. I was still sick
with anxiety, but I was getting a pull on myself. I was done
in, but Ivery would get no triumph out of me. Either I
would go under the ice, or I would find a chance of putting
a bullet through my head before I crossed the frontier. If
I could do nothing else I could perish decently. . . . And
then I laughed, and I knew I was past the worst. What
made me laugh was the thought of Peter. I had been pity-
ing him an hour ago for having only one leg, but now he
was abroad in the living, breathing world with years before
him, and I lay in the depths, limbless, and lifeless, with my
number up.
I began to muse on the cold water under the ice where
I could go if I wanted. I did not think that I would take
that road, for a man's chances are not gone till he is stone
dead, but I was glad the way existed. . . . And then I
looked at the wall in front of me, and very far up, I saw
a small square window.
The stars had been clouded when I entered that accursed
house, but the mist must have cleared. I saw my old friend
Orion, the hunter's star, looking through the bars. And that
suddenly made me think.
Peter and I had watched them by night, and I knew the
place of all the chief constellations in relation to the St.
Anton valley. I believed that I was in a room on the lake
side of the Pink Chalet: I must be, if Ivery had spoken the
truth. But if so, I could not conceivably see Orion from
its window. . . . There was no other possible conclusion. I
must be in a room on the east side of the house, and Ivery


276 MR. STANDFAST
had been lying. He had already lied in his boasting of how
he had outwitted me in England and at the Front. He
might be lying about Mary. . . . No, I dismissed that hope.
Those words of his had rung true enough. -
I thought for a minute and concluded that he had lied to
terrorise me and keep me quiet; therefore this infernal
contraption had probably its weak point. I reflected, too,
that I was pretty strong, far stronger probably than Ivery
imagined, for he had never seen me stripped. Since the
place was pitch dark I could not guess how the thing worked,
but I could feel the cross-bars rigid on my chest and legs
and the side-bars which pinned my arms to my sides. .
I drew a long breath and tried to force my elbows apart.
Nothing moved, nor could I raise the bars on my legs the
smallest fraction.
Again I tried, and again. The side-bar on my right
seemed to be less rigid than the others. I managed to get
my right hand raised above the level of my thigh, and then
with a struggle I got a grip with it on the cross-bar, which
gave me a small leverage. With a mighty effort I drove my
right elbow and shoulder against the side-bar. It seemed to
give slightly. . . . I summoned all my strength and tried
again. There was a crack and then a splintering, the mas-
sive bar shuffled limply back, and my right arm was free to
move laterally, though the cross-bar prevented me from
raising it.
With some difficulty I got at my coat pocket where re-
posed my electric torch and my pistol. With immense
labour and no little pain I pulled the former out and
switched it on by drawing the catch against the cross-bar.
Then I saw my prison house.
It was a little square chamber, very high, with on my
left the massive door by which Ivery had departed. The
dark baulks of my rack were plain, and I could roughly
make out how the thing had been managed. Some spring
had tilted up the flooring, and dropped the framework from
its place in the right-hand wall. It was clamped, I observed,


I LIE ON A HARD BED 277
by an arrangement in the floor just in front of the door.
If I could get rid of that catch it would be easy to free
myself, for to a man of my strength the weight would not
be impossibly heavy.
My fortitude had come back to me, and I was living only
in the moment, choking down any hope of escape. My first
job was to destroy the catch that clamped down the rack,
and for that my only weapon was my pistol. I managed
to get the little electric torch jammed in the corner of the
cross-bar, where it lit up the floor towards the door. Then
it was hell's own business extricating the pistol from my
pocket. Wrist and fingers were always cramping, and I was
in terror that I might drop it where I could not retrieve it.
I forced myself to think out calmly the question of the
clamp, for a pistol bullet is a small thing, and I could not
afford to miss. I reasoned it out from my knowledge of
mechanics, and came to the conclusion that the centre of
gravity was a certain bright spot of metal which I could just
see under the cross-bars. It was bright and so must have
been recently repaired, and that was another reason for
thinking it important. The question was how to hit it, for
I could not gºt the pistol in line with my eye. Let anyone
try that kind of shooting, with a bent arm over a bar, when
you are lying flat and looking at the mark from under the
bar, and he will understand its difficulties. I had six shots
in my revolver, and I must fire two or three ranging shots
in any case. I must not exhaust all my cartridges, for I
must have a bullet left for any servant who came to pry,
and I wanted one in reserve for myself. But I did not think
shots would be heard outside the room; the walls were too
thick.
I held my wrist rigid above the cross-bar and fired. The
bullet was an inch to the right of the piece of bright steel.
Moving a fraction, I fired again. It had grazed it on the
left. With aching eyes glued on the mark, I tried a third
time. I saw something leap apart, and suddenly the whole
framework under which I lay felt loose and mobile. .


280 MR. STANDFAST
beard, and large sleepy dark eyes. At the sight of me he
pulled up and his whole body grew taut. It was the Portu-
guese Jew, whose back I had last seen at the smithy door
in Skye, and who by the mercy of God had never seen
my face.
I stopped fingering the pistol, for I had an inspiration.
Before he could utter a word I got in first.
“Die vögelein schweigen im Walde,” I said.
His face broke into a pleasant smile, and he replied:
“Warte nur, balde ruhest du auch.”
“Ach,” he said in German, holding out his hand, “you
have come this way, when we thought you would go by
Modane. I welcome you, for I know your exploits. You
are Conradi, who did so nobly in Italy P"
I bowed. “Yes, I am Conradi,” I said.


CHAPTER XVII
THE COL OF THE SWALLOWS
E pointed to the slip on the table.
“You have seen the orders?”
I nodded.
“The long day's work is over. You must rejoice, for
your part has been the hardest, I think. Some day you
will tell me about it?”
The man's face was honest and kindly, rather like that of
the engineer Gaudian, whom two years before I had met in
Germany. But his eyes fascinated me, for they were the
eyes of the dreamer and fanatic, who would not desist from
his quest while life lasted. I thought that Ivery had chosen
well in his colleague.
“My task is not done yet,” I said. “I came here to see
Chelius.”
“He will be back to-morrow evening.”
“Too late. I must see him at once. He has gone to Italy,
and I must overtake him.”
“You know your duty best,” he said gravely.
“But you must help me. I must catch him at Santa
Chiara, for it is a business of life and death. Is there a
car to be had 2 ”
“There is mine. But there is no chauffeur. Chelius
took him.”
“I can drive myself and I know the road. But I have no
pass to cross the frontier.”
“That is easily supplied,” he said, smiling.
In one bookcase there was a shelf of dummy books. He
unlocked this and revealed a small cupboard, whence he
281


THE COL OF THE SWALLOWS 285
it is as cold as last winter on the Tonale. You remember,
Giuseppe?”
But in the end they let me move on. For a little I felt
my way gingerly, for on the summit the road had many
twists and the snow was confusing to the eyes. Presently
came a sharp drop and I let the Daimler go. It grew
colder, and I shivered a little: the snow became a wet
white fog around the glowing arc of the headlights; and
always the road fell, now in long curves, now in steep short
dips, till I was aware of a glen opening towards the south.
From long living in the wilds I have a kind of sense for
landscape without the testimony of the eyes, and I knew
where the ravine narrowed or widened though it was black
darkness.
In spite of my restlessness I had to go slowly, for after
the first rush downhill I realised that, unless I was careful,
I might wreck the car and spoil everything. The surface of
the road on the southern slope of the mountains was a
thousand per cent. worse than that on the other. I skidded
and side-slipped, and once grazed the edge of the gorge. It
was far more maddening than the climb up, for then it had
been a straightforward grind with the Daimler doing its
utmost, whereas now I had to hold her back because of my
own lack of skill. I reckon that time crawling down from
the summit of the Staub as some of the weariest hours I
ever spent.
Quite suddenly I ran out of the ill weather into a different
climate. The sky was clear above me, and I saw that dawn
was very near. The first pinewoods were beginning, and
at last came a straight slope where I could let the car out.
I began to recover my spirits, which had been very dashed,
and to reckon the distance I had still to travel. . . . . And
then, without warning, a new world sprang up around me.
Out of the blue dusk white shapes rose like ghosts, peaks
and needles and domes of ice, their bases fading mistily into
shadow, but the tops kindling till they glowed like jewels.
I had never seen such a sight, and the wonder of it for a


THE COL OF THE SWALLOWS 287
to come here this morning. We were at Chiavagno, where
Blenkiron told us to wait. But last night Mary disappeared.
. . . I found she had hired a carriage and come on ahead.
I followed at once, and reached here an hour ago to find her
gone. . . . The woman who keeps the place is away and
there are only two old servants left. They tell me that
Mary came here late, and that very early in the morning a
closed car came over the Staub with a man in it. They say
he asked to see the young lady, and that they talked together
for some time, and that then she went off with him in the
car down the valley. . . . I must have passed it on my way
up. . . . There's been some black devilment that I can't
follow. Who was the man? Who was the man?”
He looked as if he wanted to throttle me.
“I can tell you that,” I said. “It was Ivery.”
He stared for a second as if he didn't understand. Then
he leaped to his feet and cursed like a trooper. “You've
botched it, as I knew you would. I knew no good would
come of your infernal subtleties.” And he consigned me
and Blenkiron and the British army and Ivery and every-
body else to the devil.
I was past being angry. “Sit down, man,” I said, “and
listen to me.” I told him of what had happened at the Pink
Chalet. He heard me out with his head in his hands. The
thing was too bad for cursing.
“The Underground Railway !” he groaned. “The
thought of it drives me mad. Why are you so calm,
Hannay? She's in the hands of the cleverest devil in the
world, and you take it quietly. You should be a raving
lunatic.”
“I would be if it were any use, but I did all my raving
last night in that den of Ivery's. We've got to pull our-
selves together, Wake. First of all, I trust Mary to the
other side of eternity. She went with him of her own free
will. I don't know why, but she must have had a reason,
and be sure it was a good one, for she's far cleverer than you
or me. . . . We've got to follow her somehow. Ivery's


288 MR. STANDFAST
bound for Germany, but his route is by the Pink Chalet, for
he hopes to pick me up there. He went down the valley;
therefore he is going to Switzerland by the Marjolana.
That is a long circuit and will take him most of the day.
Why he chose that way I don't know, but there it is.
We've got to get back by the Staub.”
“How did you come?” he asked.
“That's our damnable luck. I came in a first-class six-
cylinder Daimler, which is now lying a wreck in a meadow
a mile up the road. We've got to foot it.”
“We can't do it. It would take too long. Besides, there's
the frontier to pass.”
I remembered ruefully that I might have got a return
passport from the Portuguese Jew, if I had thought of
anything at the time beyond getting to Santa Chiara.
“Then we must make a circuit by the hillside and dodge
the guards. It's no use making difficulties, Wake. We're
fairly up against it, but we've got to go on trying till we
drop. Otherwise I'll take your advice and go mad.”
“And supposing you get back to St. Anton, you'll find the
house shut up and the travellers gone hours before by the
Underground Railway.”
“Very likely. But, man, there's always the glimmering of
a chance. It's no good chucking in your hand till the game's
out.”
“Drop your proverbial philosopy, Mr. Martin Tupper,
and look up there.”
He had one foot on the wall and was staring at a cleft
in the snow-line across the valley. The shoulder of a high
peak dropped sharply to a kind of nick and rose again in a
long graceful curve of snow. All below the nick was still
in deep shadow, but from the configuration of the slopes I
judged that a tributary glacier ran from it to the main
glacier at the river head.
“That's the Colle delle Rondini,” he said, “the Col of the
Swallows. It leads straight to the Staubthal near Grüne-
wald. On a good day I have done it in seven hours, but


THE COL OF THE SWALLOWS 289
it's not a pass for winter-time. It has been done of course,
but not often. . . . Yet, if the weather held, it might go
even now, and that would bring us to St. Anton by the
evening. I wonder"—and he looked me over with an ap-
praising eye—“I wonder if you're up to it.”
My stiffness had gone and I burned to set my restlessness
to physical toil.
“If you can do it, I can,” I said.
“No. There you're wrong. You're a hefty fellow, but
you're no mountaineer, and the ice of the Colle delle Rondini
needs knowledge. It would be insane to risk it with a
novice, if there were any other way. But I'm damned if I
see any, and I'm going to chance it. We can get a rope
and axes in the inn. Are you game?”
“Right you are. Seven hours, you say. We've got to
do it in six.”
“You will be humbler when you get on the ice,” he said
grimly. “We'd better breakfast, for the Lord knows when
we shall see food again.”
We left the inn at five minutes to nine, with the sky
cloudless and a stiff wind from the north-west, which we
felt even in the deep-cut valley. Wake walked with a long,
slow stride that tried my patience. I wanted to hustle, but
he bade me keep in step. “You take your orders from me,
for I've been at this job before. Discipline in the ranks,
remember.”
We crossed the river gorge by a plank bridge, and worked
our way up the right bank, past the moraine, to the snout
of the glacier. It was bad going, for the snow concealed the
boulders, and I often floundered in holes. Wake never
relaxed his stride, but now and then he stopped to sniff
the air.
I observed that the weather looked good, and he differed.
“It’s too clear. There'll be a full-blown gale on the Col
and most likely snow in the afternoon.” He pointed to a
fat yellow cloud that was beginning to bulge over the


290 MR. STANDFAST
nearest peak. After that I thought he lengthened his
stride.
“Lucky I had these boots resoled and nailed at Chia-
vagno,” was the only other remark he made till we had
passed the scracs of the main glacier and turned up the
lesser ice-stream from the Colle delle Rondini.
By half-past ten we were near its head, and I could see
clearly the ribbon of pure ice between black crags too steep
for snow to lie on, which was the means of ascent to the
Col. The sky had clouded over, and ugly streamers floated
on the high slopes. We tied on the rope at the foot of the
bergschrund, which was easy to pass because of the winter's
snow. Wake led, of course, and presently we came on to
the icefall.
In my time I had done a lot of scrambling on rocks and
used to promise myself a season in the Alps to test myself
on the big peaks. If I ever go it will be to climb the honest
rock towers around Chamounix, for I won't have anything
to do with snow mountains. That day on the Colle delle
Rondini fairly sickened me of ice. I daresay I might have
liked it if I had done it in a holiday mood, at leisure and
in good spirits. But to crawl up that couloir with a sick
heart and a desperate impulse to hurry was the worst sort
of nightmare. The place was as steep as a wall, of smooth
black ice that seemed hard as granite. Wake did the step-
cutting, and I admired him enormously. He did not seem
to use much force, but every step was hewn cleanly the right
size, and they were spaced the right distance. In this job
he was the true professional. I was thankful Blenkiron was
not with us, for the thing would have given a squirrel
vertigo. The chips of ice slithered between my legs and I
could watch them till they brought up just above the
bergschrund.
The ice was in shadow and it was bitterly cold. As we
crawled up I had not the exercise of using the axe to warm
me, and I got very numb standing on one leg waiting for
the next step. Worse still, my legs began to cramp. I was


THE COL OF THE SWALLOWS 291
in good condition, but that time under Ivery's rack had
played the mischief with my limbs. Muscles got out of place
in my calves and stood in aching lumps, till I almost squealed
with the pain of it. I was mortally afraid I should slip, and
every time I moved I called out to Wake to warn him.
He saw what was happening and got the pick of his axe
fixed in the ice before I was allowed to stir. He spoke often
to cheer me up, and his voice had none of its harshness. He
was like some ill-tempered generals I have known, very
gentle in a battle.
At the end the snow began to fall, a soft powder like the
over-spill of a storm raging beyond the crest. It was just
after that that Wake cried out that in five minutes we would
be at the summit. He consulted his wrist-watch. “Jolly
good time, too. Only twenty-five minutes behind my best.
It's not one o'clock.”
The next thing I knew I was lying flat on a pad of snow
easing my cramped legs, while Wake shouted in my ear that
we were in for something bad. I was aware of a driving
blizzard, but I had no thought of anything but the blessed
relief from pain. I lay for some minutes on my back with
my legs stiff in the air and the toes turned inwards, while
my muscles fell into their proper place.
It was certainly no spot to linger in. We looked down
into a trough of driving mist, which sometimes swirled
aside and showed a knuckle of black rock far below. We
ate some chocolate, while Wake shouted in my ear that now
we had less step-cutting. He did his best to cheer me, but
he could not hide his anxiety. Our faces were frosted over
like a wedding-cake and the sting of the wind was like a
whiplash on our eyelids.
The first part was easy, down a slope of firm snow where
steps were not needed. Then came ice again, and we had
to cut into it below the fresh surface snow. This was so
laborious that Wake took to the rocks on the right side of
the couloir, where there was some shelter from the main
force of the blast. I found it easier, for I knew something


THE COL OF THE SWALLOWS 293
faned their sanctuary. I yearned for warmth, for the glow
of a fire, for a tree or blade of grass or anything which
meant the sheltered homeliness of mortality. I knew then
what the Greeks meant by panic, for I was scared by the
apathy of nature. But the terror gave me a kind of com-
fort, too. Ivery and his doings seemed less formidable.
Let me but get out of this cold hell and I could meet him
with a new confidence.
Wake led, for he knew the road and the road wanted
knowing. Otherwise he should have been last on the rope,
for that is the place of the better man in a descent. I had
some horrible moments following on when the rope grew
taut, for I had no help from it. We zig-zagged down the
rock, sometimes driven to the ice of the adjacent couloirs,
sometimes on the outer ridge of the Black Stone, sometimes
wriggling down little cracks and over evil boiler-plates. The
snow did not lie on it, but the rock crackled with thin ice or
oozed ice water. Often it was only by the grace of God
that I did not fail headlong, and pull Wake out of his hold
to the bergschrund far below. I slipped more than once, but
always by a miracle recovered myself. To make things
worse, Wake was tiring. I could feel him drag on the rope,
and his movements had not the precision they had had in
the morning. He was the mountaineer, and I the novice.
If he gave out, we should never reach the valley.
The fellow was clear grit all through. When we reached
the foot of the tooth and sat huddled up with our faces
away from the wind, I saw that he was on the edge of
fainting. What that effort must have cost him in the way
of resolution you may guess, but he did not fail till the
worst was past. His lips were colourless, and he was chok-
ing with the nausea of fatigue. I found a flask of brandy
in his pocket, and a mouthful revived him.
“I’m all out,” he said. “The road's easier now, and I
can direct you about the rest. . . . You'd better
leave me. I'll only be a drag. I'll come on when I
feel better.”


THE COL OF THE SWALLOWS 295
“Get on my back,” I said. “I won't part from you till
I've found a cottage. You're a hero. You've brought me
over those damned mountains in a blizzard, and that's what
no other man in England would have done. Get up.”
He obeyed, for he was too far gone to argue. I tied his
wrists together with a handkerchief below my chin, for I
wanted my arms to hold up his legs. The rope and axes I
left in a cache beneath the pine tree. Then I started trot-
ting down the track for the nearest dwelling.
My strength felt inexhaustible and the quicksilver in my
bones drove me forward. The snow was still falling, but
the wind was dying down, and after the inferno of the pass
it was like summer. The road wound over the shale of the
hillside and then into what in spring must have been upland
meadows. Then it ran among trees, and far below me on
the right I could hear the glacier river churning in its gorge.
Soon little empty huts appeared, and rough enclosed pad-
docks, and presently I came out on a shelf above the stream
and smelt the wood-smoke of a human habitation.
I found a middle-aged peasant in the cottage, a guide by
profession in summer and a woodcutter in winter.
“I have brought my Herr from Santa Chiara,” I said,
“over the Schwarzsteinthor. He is very weary and must
sleep.”
I decanted Wake into a chair, and his head nodded on his
chest. But his colour was better.
“You and your Herr are fools,” said the man gruffly,
but not unkindly. “He must sleep or he will have a fever.
The Schwarzsteinthor in this devil's weather Is he Eng-
lish P”
“Yes,” I said, “like all madmen. But he's a good Herr,
and a brave mountaineer.”
We stripped Wake of his Red Cross uniform, now a col-
lection of sopping rags, and got him between blankets with
a huge earthenware bottle of hot water at his feet. The
woodcutter's wife boiled milk, and this, with a little brandy
added, we made him drink. I was quite easy in my mind


THE COL OF THE SWALLOWS 297
Soon I was on the highroad, and then at the Chalet gates.
I heard as in a dream what seemed to be three shrill blasts
on a whistle. Then a big closed car passed me, making for
St. Anton. For a second I would have hailed it, but it
was past me and away. But I had a conviction that my
business lay in the house, for I thought Ivery was there,
and Ivery was what mattered.
I marched up the drive with no sort of plan in my head,
only a blind rushing on fate. I remembered dimly that I
had still three cartridges in my revolver.
The front door stood open and I entered and tiptoed
down the passage to the room when I had found the Portu-
guese Jew. No one hindered me, but it was not for lack
of servants. I had the impression that there were people
near me in the darkness, and I thought I heard German
softly spoken. There was someone ahead of me, perhaps
the speaker, for I could hear careful footsteps. It was very
dark, but a ray of light came from below the door of the
room. Then behind me I heard the hall door clang, and the
noise of a key turned in its lock. I had walked straight into
a trap and all retreat was cut off.
My mind was beginning to work more clearly, though my
purpose was still vague. I wanted to get at Ivery, and I
believed that he was somewhere in front of me. And then
I thought of the door which led from the chamber where
I had been imprisoned. If I could enter that way I would
have the advantage of surprise.
I groped on the right-hand side of the passage and found
a handle. It opened upon what seemed to be a dining-room,
for there was a faint smell of food. Again I had the im-
pression of people near, who for some unknown reason did
not molest me. At the far end I found another door, which
led to a second room, which I guessed to be adjacent to the
library. Beyond it again must lie the passage from the
chamber with the rack. The whole place was as quiet as a
shell.


298 MR. STANDFAST
I had guessed right. I was standing in the passage
where I had stood the night before. In front of me was
the library, and there was the same chink of light showing.
Very softly I turned the handle and opened it a crack. . . .
The first thing that caught my eye was the profile of
Ivery. He was looking towards the writing-table, where
someone was sitting.


CHAPTER XVIII
THE UNDERGROUND RAILWAY
HIS is the story which I heard later from
Mary. . . .
She was at Milan with the new Anglo-American hospital
when she got Blenkiron's letter. Santa Chiara had always
been the place agreed upon, and this message mentioned
specifically Santa Chiara, and fixed a date for her presence
there. She was a little puzzled by it, for she had not yet
had a word from Ivery, to whom she had written twice by
the roundabout address in France which Bommaerts had
given her. She did not believe that he would come to Italy
in the ordinary course of things, and she wondered at Blen-
kiron's certainty about the date.
The following morning came a letter from Ivery in which
he ardently pressed for a meeting. It was the first of sev-
eral, full of strange talk of some approaching crisis, in
which the forebodings of the prophet were mingled with the
solicitude of a lover. “The storm is about to break,” he
wrote, “and I cannot think only of my own fate. I have
something to tell you which vitally concerns yourself. You
say you are in Lombardy. The Chiavagno valley is within
easy reach, and at its head is the inn of Santa Chiara, to
which I come on the morning of March 19th. Meet me
there even if only for half an hour, I implore you. We
have already shared hopes and confidences, and I would now
share with you a knowledge which I alone in Europe pos-
sess. You have the heart of a lion, my lady, worthy of
what I can bring you.”
Wake was summoned from the Croce Rossa unit with
which he was working at Vicenza, and the plan arranged by
299


THE UNDERGROUND RAILWAY 303
was about to give her the power to decide the world's fate,
and it was for him and his kind to see that that decision
was beneficent. The greater task of his people was only
now beginning.
That was the gist of his talk. She appeared to listen, but
her mind was far away. She must delay him for two hours,
three hours, four hours. If not, she must keep beside him.
She was the only one of our company left in touch with
the enemy. . . .
“I go to Germany now,” he was saying. “I want you to
come with me—to be my wife.”
He waited for an answer, and got it in the form of a
startled question.
“To Germany? How?”
“It is easy,” he said, smiling. “The car which is waiting
outside is the first stage of a system of travel which we have
perfected.” Then he told her about the Underground Rail-
way—not as he had told it to me, to scare, but as a proof
of power and forethought.
His manner was perfect. He was respectful, devoted,
thoughtful in all things. He was the suppliant, not the
master. He offered her power and pride, a dazzling career,
for he had deserved well of his country, the devotion of
the faithful lover. He would take her to his mother's house,
where she would be welcomed like a princess. I have no
doubt he was sincere, for he had many moods, and the
libertine whom he had revealed to me at the Pink Chalet had
given place to the honourable gentleman. He could play
all parts well because he could believe in himself in them all.
Then he spoke of danger, not so as to slight her courage,
but to emphasise his own thoughtfulness. The world in
which she had lived was crumbling, and he alone could offer
a refuge. She felt the steel gauntlet through the texture of
the velvet glove.
All the while she had been furiously thinking, with her
chin in her hand in the old way. . . . She might refuse to
go. He could compel her, no doubt, for there was no help


304 MR. STANDFAST
to be got from the old servants. But it might be difficult
to carry an unwilling woman over the first stages of the
Underground Railway. There might be chances. . . .
Supposing he accepted her refusal and left her. Then in-
deed he would be gone for ever and our game would have
closed with a fiasco. The great antagonist of England
would go home rejoicing, taking his sheaves with him.
At this time she had no personal fear of him. So curious
a thing is the human heart that her main preoccupation was
with our mission, not with her own fate. To fail utterly
seemed too bitter. Supposing she went with him. They had
still to get out of Italy and cross Switzerland. If she were
with him she would be an emissary of the Allies in the
enemy's camp. She asked herself what could she do, and
told herself “Nothing.” She felt like a small bird in a very
large trap, and her chief sensation was that of her own
powerlessness. But she had learned Blenkiron's gospel and
knew that Heaven sends amazing chances to the bold. And,
even as she made her decision, she was aware of a dark
shadow lurking at the back of her mind, the shadow of the
fear which she knew was awaiting her. For she was going
into the unknown with a man whom she hated, a man who
claimed to be her lover.
It was the bravest thing I have ever heard of, and I have
lived my life among brave men.
“I will come with you,” she said. “But you mustn't
speak to me, please. I am tired and troubled and I want
peace to think.”
As she rose weakness came over her and she swayed till
his arm caught her. “I wish I could let you rest for a
little,” he said tenderly, “but time presses. The car runs
smoothly and you can sleep there.”
He summoned one of the servants to whom he handed
Mary. “We leave in ten minutes,” he said, and he went
out to see to the car.
Mary's first act in the bedroom to which she was taken
was to bathe her eyes and brush her hair. She felt dimly


THE UNDERGROUND RAILWAY 305
that she must keep her head clear. Her second was to
scribble a note to Wake, telling him what had happened, and
to give it to the servant with a tip. “The gentleman will
come in the morning,” she said. “You must give it him at
once, for it concerns the fate of your country.” The woman
grinned and promised. It was not the first time she had
done errands for pretty ladies.
Ivery settled her in the great closed car with much solici-
tude, and made her comfortable with rugs. Then he went
back to the inn for a second, and she saw a light move in
the salle-à-manger. He returned and spoke to the driver in
German, taking his seat beside him.
But first he handed Mary her note to Wake. “I think
you left this behind you,” he said. He had not opened it.
Alone in the car Mary slept. She saw the figures of Ivery
and the chauffeur in the front seat dark against the head-
lights, and then they dislimned into dreams. She had under-
gone a greater strain than she knew, and was sunk in the
heavy sleep of weary nerves.
When she woke it was daylight. They were still in Italy,
as her first glance told her, so they could not have taken the
Staub route. They seemed to be among the foothills, for
there was little snow, but now and then up tributary valleys
she had glimpses of the high peaks. She tried hard to think
what it could mean, and then remembered the Marjolana.
Wake had laboured to instruct her in the topography of the
Alps, and she had grasped the fact of the two open passes.
But the Marjolana meant a big circuit, and they would not
be in Switzerland till the evening. They would arrive in the
dark, and pass out of it in the dark, and there would be no
chance of succour. She felt very lonely and very weak.
Throughout the morning her fear grew. The more hope-
less her chance of defeating Ivery became the more in-
sistently the dark shadow crept over her mind. She tried
to steady herself by watching the snow from the windows.
The car swung through little villages, past vineyards and
pine-woods and the blue of lakes, and over the gorges of


308 MR. STANDFAST
Staubthal. The snow was still drifting thick and the car
crawled.
Then she felt the rise as they mounted to the pass. Here
the going was bad, very different from the dry frost in
which I had covered the same road the night before. More-
over, there seemed to be curious obstacles. Some careless
wood-cart had dropped logs on the highway, and more than
once both Ivery and the chauffeur had to get out to shift
them. In one place there had been a small landslide which
left little room to pass, and Mary had to descend and cross
on foot while the driver took the car over alone. Ivery's
temper seemed to be souring. To the girl's relief he re-
sumed the outside seat, where he was engaged in constant
argument with the chauffeur.
At the head of the pass stands an inn, the comfortable
hostelry of Herr Kronig, well known to all who clamber
among the lesser peaks of the Staubthal. There in the
middle of the way stood a man with a lantern.
“The road is blocked by a snowfall,” he cried. “They
are clearing it now. It will be ready in half an hour's
time.”
Ivery sprang from his seat and darted into the hotel. His
business was to speed up the clearing party, and Herr
Kronig himself accompanied him to the scene of the catas-
trophe. Mary sat still, for she had suddenly become pos-
sessed of an idea. She drove it from her as foolishness,
but it kept returning. Why had these tree-trunks been spilt
on the road? Why had an easy pass after a moderate
snowfall been suddenly closed?
A man came out of the inn-yard and spoke to the chauf-
feur. It seemed to be an offer of refreshment, for the latter
left his seat and disappeared inside. He was away for
some time and returned shivering and grumbling at the
weather, with the collar of his great coat turned up around
his ears. A lantern had been hung in the porch and as he
passed Mary saw the man. She had been watching the
back of his head idly during the long drive, and had ob-


THE UNDERGROUND RAILWAY 309
served that it was of the round bullet type, with no nape
to the neck, which is common in the Fatherland. Now she
could not see his neck for the coat collar, but she could have
sworn that the head was a different shape. The man seemed
to suffer acutely from the cold, for he buttoned the collar
round his chin and pulled his cap far over his brows.
Ivery came back, followed by a dragging line of men with
spades and lanterns. He flung himself into the front seat
and nodded to the driver to start. The man had his engine
going already so as to lose no time. He bumped over the
rough débris of the snowfall and then fairly let the car
hum. Ivery was anxious for speed, but he did not want his
neck broken and he yelled out to take care. The driver
nodded and slowed down, but presently he had got up speed
again.
If Ivery was restless, Mary was worse. She seemed sud-
denly to have come on the traces of her friends. In the St.
Anton valley the snow had stopped and she let down the
window for air, for she was choking with suspense. The
car rushed past the station, down the hill by Peter's cottage,
through the village, and along the lake shore to the Pink
Chalet.
Ivery halted it at the gate. “See that you fill up with
petrol,” he told the man. “Bid Gustav get the Daimler
and be ready to follow in half an hour.”
He spoke to Mary through the open window.
“I will keep you only a very little time. I think you had
better wait in the car, for it will be more comfortable than
a dismantled house. A servant will bring you food and
more rugs for the night journey.”
Then he vanished up the dark avenue.
Mary's first thought was to slip out and get back to the
village and there to find someone who knew me or could take
her where Peter lived. But the driver would prevent her,
for he had been left behind on guard. She looked anxiously
at his back, for he alone stood between her and liberty.
That gentleman seemed to be intent on his own business.


CHAPTER XIX
THE CAGE OF THE WILD BIRDS
- G HY, Mr. Ivery, come right in,” said the voice at
the table.
There was a screen before me, stretching from the fire-
place to keep off the draught from the door by which I had
entered. It stood higher than my head but there were
cracks in it through which I could watch the room. I found
a little table on which I could lean my back, for I was
dropping with fatigue.
Blenkiron sat at the writing-table and in front of him
were little rows of Patience cards. Wood ashes still
smouldered in the stove, and a lamp stood at his right elbow
which lit up the two figures. The bookshelves and the
cabinets were in twilight.
“I’ve been hoping to see you for quite a time.” Blen-
kiron was busy arranging the little heaps of cards, and his
face was wreathed in hospitable smiles. I remember won-
dering why he should play the host to the true master of the
house.
Ivery stood erect before him. He was rather a splendid
figure now that he had sloughed all disguises and was on
the threshold of his triumph. Even through the fog in
which my brain worked it was forced upon me that here
was a man born to play a big part. He had a jowl like a
Roman king on a coin, and scornful eyes that were used to
mastery. He was younger than me, confound him, and
now he looked it.
He kept his eyes on the speaker, while a smile played
round his mouth, a very ugly smile.
“So,” he said. “We have caught the old crow too. I
311


312 MR. STANDFAST
had scarcely hoped for such good fortune, and, to speak the
truth, I had not concerned myself much about you. But
now we shall add you to the bag. And what a bag of vermin
to lay out on the lawn l’” He flung back his head and
laughed.
“Mr. Ivery ” Blenkiron began, but was cut short.
“Drop that name. All that is past, thank God! I am the
Graf von Schwabing, an officer of the Imperial Guard. I
am not the least of the weapons that Germany has used
to break her enemies. . . .”
“You don't say,” drawled Blenkiron, still fiddling with
his Patience cards.
The man's moment had come, and he was minded not to
miss a jot of his triumph. His figure seemed to expand, his
eye kindled, his voice rang with pride. It was melodrama
of the best kind and he fairly rolled it round his tongue.
I don't think I grudged it him, for I was fingering some-
thing in my pocket. He had won all right, but he wouldn't
enjoy victory long, for soon I would shoot him. I had my
eye on the very spot above his right ear where I meant to
put my bullet. . . . For I was very clear that to kill him
was the only way to protect Mary. I feared the whole
seventy millions of Germany less than this man. That was
the single idea that remained firm against the immense
fatigue that pressed down on me.
“I have little time to waste on you,” said he who had
been called Ivery. “But I will spare a moment to tell you
a few truths. Your childish game never had a chance. I
played with you in England and I have played with you
ever since. You have never made a move but I have quietly
countered it. Why, man, you gave me your confidence.
The American Mr. Donne . . .”
“What about Clarence?” asked Blenkiron. His face
seemed a study in pure bewilderment.
“I was that interesting journalist.”
“Now to think of that!” said Blenkiron in a sad, gentle
voice. “I thought I was safe with Clarence. Why, he


THE CAGE OF THE WILD BIRDS 313
brought me a letter from old Joe Hooper and he knew all
the boys down Emporia way.”
Ivery laughed. “You have never done me justice, I fear;
but I think you will do it now. Your gang is helpless in
my hands. General Hannay . . .” And I wish I could
give you a notion of the scorn with which he pronounced
the word “General.”
“Yes—Dick?” said Blenkiron intently.
“He has been my prisoner for twenty-four hours. And
the pretty Miss Mary, too. You are all going with me in a
little to my own country. You will not guess how. We
call it the Underground Railway, and you will have the
privilege of studying its workings. . . . I had not troubled
much about you, for I had no special dislike of you. You
are only a blundering fool, what you call in your country
easy fruit.”
“I thank you, Graf,” Blenkiron said solemnly.
“But since you are here you will join the others. . . .
One last word. To beat inepts such as you is nothing.
There is a far greater thing. My country has conquered.
You and your friends will be dragged at the chariot wheels
of a triumph such as Rome never saw. Does that pene-
trate your thick skull? Germany has won, and in two days
the whole round earth will be stricken dumb by her great-
ness.”
As I watched Blenkiron a grey shadow of hopelessness
seemed to settle on his face. His big body drooped in his
chair, his eyes fell, and his left hand shuffled limply among
his Patience cards. I could not get my mind to work, but
I puzzled miserably over his amazing blunders. He had
walked blindly into the pit his enemies had digged for him.
Peter must have failed to get my message to him, and he
knew nothing of last night's work or my mad journey to
Italy. We had all bungled, the whole wretched bunch of
us, Peter and Blenkiron and myself. . . . I had a feeling
at the back of my head that there was something in it all
that I couldn't understand, that the catastrophe could not


314 MR. STANDFAST
º
be quite as simple as it seemed. But I had no power to
think, with the insolent figure of Ivery dominating the
room. . . . Thank God I had a bullet waiting for him.
That was the one fixed point in the chaos of my mind. For
the first time in my life I was resolute on killing one par-
ticular man, and the purpose gave me a horrid comfort.
Tº Suddenly Ivery's voice rang out sharp. “Take your hand
out of your pocket. You fool, you are covered from three
points in the walls. A movement and my men will make a
sieve of you. Others before you have sat in that chair, and
I am used to take precautions. Quick. Both hands on the
table.”
There was no mistake about Blenkiron's defeat. He was
done and out, and I was left with the only card. He leaned
wearily on his arms with the palms of his hands spread
Out.
“I reckon you've gotten a strong hand, Graf,” he said,
and his voice was flat with despair.
“I hold a royal straight flush,” was the answer.
And then suddenly came a change. Blenkiron raised his
head, and his sleepy, ruminating eyes looked straight at
Ivery.
“I call you,” he said.
I didn't believe my ears. Nor did Ivery.
“The hour for bluff is past,” he said.
“Nevertheless I call you.”
At that moment I felt someone squeeze through the door
behind me and take his place at my side. The light was so
dim that I saw only a short, square figure, but a familiar
voice whispered in my ear, “It's me—Andra Amos. Man,
this is a great ploy. I'm here to see the end o't.”
No prisoner waiting on the finding of the jury, no com-
mander expecting news of a great battle, ever hung in more
desperate suspense that I did during the next seconds. I
had forgotten my fatigue; my back no longer needed sup-


THE CAGE OF THE WILD BIRDS 315
*
port. I kept my eyes glued to the crack in the screen and
my ears drank in greedily every syllable.
Blenkiron was now sitting bolt upright with his chin in
his hands. There was no shadow of melancholy in his
lean face.
“I say I call you, Herr Graf von Schwabing. I'm going
to put you wise about some little things. You don't carry
arms, so I needn't warn you against monkeying with a gun.
You're right in saying that there are three places in these
walls from which you can shoot. Well, for your informa-
tion I may tell you that there's guns in all three, but they're
covering you at this moment. So you'd better be good.”
Ivery sprang to attention like a ramrod. “Karl ' " he
cried. “Gustav l’’
As if by magic figures stood on either side of him, like
warders by a criminal. They were not the sleek German
footmen whom I had seen at the Chalet. One I did not
recognize. The other was my servant, Geordie Hamilton.
He gave them one glance, looked round like a hunted
animal, and then steadied himself. The man had his own
kind of courage.
“I’ve gotten something to say to you,” Blenkiron drawled.
“It's been a tough fight, but I reckon the hot end of the
poker is with you. I compliment you on Clarence Donne.
You fooled me fine over that business, and it was only by
the mercy of God you didn't win out. You see, there was
just the one of us who was liable to recognise you whatever
way you twisted your face, and that was Dick Hannay. I
give you good marks for Clarence. . . . For the rest, I
had you beaten flat.”
He looked steadily at him. “You don't believe it. Well,
I'll give you proof. I’ve been watching your Underground
Railway for quite a time. I've had my men on the job, and
I reckon most of the lines are now closed for repairs. All
but the trunk line into France. That I'm keeping open, for
soon there's going to be some traffic on it.”


316 MR. STANDFAST
At that I saw Ivery's eyelids quiver. For all his self-
command he was breaking.
“I admit we cut it mighty fine, along of your fooling me
about Clarence. But you struck a bad snag in General
Hannay, Graf. Your heart-to-heart talk with him was poor
business. You reckoned you had him safe, but that was
too big a risk to take with a man like Dick, unless you saw
him cold before you left him. . . . He got away from this
place, and early this morning I knew all he knew. After
that it was easy. I got the telegram you had sent this
morning in the name of Clarence Donne and it made me
laugh. Before midday I had this whole outfit under my
hand. Your servants have gone by the Underground Rail-
way—to France. Ehrlich—well, I'm sorry about Ehrlich.”
I knew now the name of the Portuguese Jew.
“He wasn't a bad sort of man,” Blenkiron said regret-
fully, “and he was plumb honest. I couldn't get him to
listen to reason, and he would play with firearms. So I
had to shoot.”
“Dead?” asked Ivery sharply.
“Ye-es. I don't miss, and it was him or me. He's under
the ice now—where you wanted to send Dick Hannay. He
wasn't your kind, Graf, and I guess he has some chance of
getting into Heaven. If I weren't a hard-shell Presbyterian
I'd say a prayer for his soul.”
I looked only at Ivery. His face had gone very pale,
and his eyes were wandering. I am certain his brain was
working at lightning speed, but he was a rat in a steel trap
and the springs held him. If ever I saw a man going
through hell it was now. His pasteboard castle had
crumbled about his ears and he was giddy with the fall of
it. The man was made of pride, and every proud nerve of
him was caught on the raw.
“So much for ordinary business,” said Blenkiron.
“There's the matter of a certain lady. You haven't be-
haved over-nice about her, Graf, but I'm not going to blame
you. You maybe heard a whistle blow when you were


320 MR. STANDFAST
less. I believe in a righteous God and I know that sooner or
later you will find death—death at the hands of your own
people—an honourable death which is far beyond your
desserts. But before it comes you will have understood the
hell to which you have condemned honest men.”
In moments of great fatigue, as in moments of great
crisis, the mind takes charge, and may run on a track inde-
pendent of the will. It was not myself that spoke, but an
impersonal voice which I did not know, a voice in whose
tones rang a strange authority. Ivery recognized the icy
finality of it, and his body seemed to wilt and droop. Only
the hold of the warders kept him from falling.
I, too, was about the end of my endurance. I felt dimly
that the room had emptied except for Blenkiron and Amos,
and that the former was trying to make me drink brandy
from the cup of a flask. I struggled to my feet with the
intention of going to Mary, but my legs would not carry
me. . . . I heard as in a dream Amos giving thanks to an
Omnipotence in whom he officially disbelieved. “What's
that the auld man in the Bible said? Now let thou thy
servant depart in peace. That's the way I'm feelin' mysel'.”
And then slumber came on me like an armed man, and in
the chair by the dying wood-ash I slept off the ache of my
limbs, the tension of my nerves, and the confusion of my
brain.


CHAPTER XX
THE STORM BREAKS IN THE WEST
HE following evening—it was the 20th day of March—
I started for France after the dark fell. I drove
Ivery's big closed car, and within sat its owner, bound and
gagged, as others had sat before him on the same errand.
Geordie Hamilton and Amos were his companions. From
what Blenkiron had himself discovered and from the papers
seized in the Pink Chalet I had full details of the road
and its mysterious stages. It was like the journey of a
mad dream. In a back street of a little town I would
exchange passwords with a nameless figure and be given
instructions. At a wayside inn at an appointed hour a voice
speaking thick German would advise that this bridge or
that railway crossing had been cleared. At a hamlet among
pine-woods an unknown man would clamber up beside me
and take me past a sentry-post. Smooth as clockwork was
the machine, till in the dawn of a spring morning I found
myself dropping into a broad valley through little orchards
just beginning to blossom, and knew that I was in France.
After that, Blenkiron's own arrangements began, and soon
I was drinking coffee with a young lieutenant of Chasseurs,
and had taken the gag from Ivery's mouth. The bluecoats
looked curiously at the man in the green ulster whose face
was the colour of clay and who lit cigarette from cigarette
with a shaky hand.
The lieutenant rang up a General of Division who knew
all about us. At his headquarters I explained my purpose,
and he telegraphed to an Army Headquarters for a per-
mission which was granted. It was not for nothing that in
January I had seen certain great personages in Paris, and
321


THE STORM BREAKS IN THE WEST 323
St. Quentin. Be comforted, for they will not pass. Your
Maréchal will hold them.”
That was the first news I had of the battle.
At Dijon according to plan I met the others. I only just
caught the Paris train, and Blenkiron's great wrists lugged
me into the carriage when it was well in motion. There sat
Peter, a docile figure in a carefully patched old R.F.C. uni-
form. Wake was reading a pile of French papers, and in a
corner Mary, with her feet up on the seat, was sound asleep.
We did not talk much, for the life of the past days had
been so hectic that we had no wish to recall it. Blenkiron's
face wore an air of satisfaction, and as he looked out at the
sunny spring landscape he hummed his only tune. Even
Wake had lost his restlessness. He had on a pair of big
tortoiseshell reading glasses, and when he looked up from
his newspaper and caught my eye he smiled. Mary slept
like a child, delicately flushed, her breath scarcely stirring
the collar of the greatcoat which was folded across her
throat. I remember looking with a kind of awe at the curve
of her young face and the long lashes that lay so softly on
her cheek, and wondering how I had borne the anxiety of
the last months. Wake raised his head from his reading,
glanced at Mary and then at me, and his eyes were kind,
almost affectionate. He seemed to have won peace of mind
among the hills.
Only Peter was out of the picture. He was a strange,
disconsolate figure, as he shifted about to ease his leg, or
gazed incuriously from the window. He had shaved his
beard again, but it did not make him younger, for his face
was too lined and his eyes too old to change. When I
spoke to him he looked towards Mary and held up a warn-
ing finger.
“I go back to England,” he whispered. “Your little
mysie is going to take care of me till I am settled. We
spoke of it yesterday at my cottage. I will find a lodging
and be patient till the war is over. And you, Dick?”
“Oh, I rejoin my division. Thank God, this job is over.


THE STORM BREAKS IN THE WEST 325
ploughland were beginning to quicken into green, the cat-
kins made a blue mist on the willows by the watercourses,
and in the orchards by the red-roofed hamlets the blossom
was breaking. In such a scene it was hard to keep the mind
sober and grey, and the pall of war slid from us. Mary
cosseted and fussed over Peter like an elder sister over a
delicate little boy. She made him stretch his bad leg full
length on the seat, and when she made tea for the party of
us it was a protesting Peter who had the last sugar biscuit.
Indeed, we were almost a merry company, for Blenkiron
told stories of old hunting and engineering days in the West
and Peter and I were driven to cap them, and Mary asked
provocative questions, and Wake listened with amused in-
terest. It was well that we had the carriage to ourselves,
for no queerer rigs were ever assembled. Mary, as always,
was neat and workmanlike in her dress; Blenkiron was
magnificent in a suit of russet tweed with a pale-blue shirt
and collar, and well-polished brown shoes; but Peter and
Wake were in uniforms which had seen far better days, and
I wore still the boots and the shapeless and ragged clothes
of Joseph Zimmer, the porter from Arosa.
We appeared to forget the war, but we didn't, for it
was in the background of all our minds. Somewhere, in the
north there was raging a desperate fight, and its issue was
the true test of our success or failure. Mary showed it by
bidding me ask for news at every stopping-place. I asked
gendarmes and permissionnaires, but I learned nothing.
Nobody had even heard of the battle. The upshot was that
for the last hour we all fell silent, and when we reached
Paris about seven o'clock my first errand was to the book-
stall.
I bought a batch of evening papers, which we tried to
read in the taxis that carried us to our hotel. Sure enough
there was the announcement in big headlines. The enemy
had attacked in great strength from south of Arras to the
Oise; but everywhere he had been repulsed and held in our
battle-zone. The leading articles were confident, the notes


THE STORM BREAKS IN THE WEST 327
the morrow. The great men were very complimentary to
us, so complimentary that my knowledge of grammatical
French ebbed away and I could only stutter in reply. That
telegram sent by Blenkiron on the night of the 18th, from
the information given me in the Pink Chalet, had done
wonders in clearing up the situation.
But when I asked them about the battle they could tell me
little. It was a very serious attack in tremendous force, but
the British line was strong and the reserves were believed
to be sufficient. Pétain and Foch had gone north to consult
with Haig. The situation in Champagne was still obscure,
but some French reserves were already moving thence to
the Somme sector. One thing they did show me, the British
dispositions. As I looked at the plan I saw that my old
division was in the thick of the fighting.
“Where do you go now?” I was asked.
“To Amiens, and then, please God, to the battle front,”
I said.
“Good fortune to you. You do not give body or mind
much rest, my general.”
After that I went to the Mission Anglaise, but they had
nothing beyond Haig's communiqué and a telephone message
from G.H.Q. that the critical sector was likely to be that
between St. Quentin and the Oise. The northern pillar of
our defence, south of Arras, which they had been nervous
about, had stood like a rock. That pleased me, for my old
battalion of the Lennox Highlanders was there.
Crossing the Place de la Concorde, we fell in with a
British staff officer of my acquaintance, who was just start-
ing to motor back to G.H.Q. from Paris leave. He had a
longer face than the people at the Invalides.
“I don't like it, I tell you,” he said. “It’s this mist that
worries me. I went down the whole line from Arras to
the Oise ten days ago. It was beautifully sited, the cleverest
thing you ever saw. The outpost line was mostly a chain
of blobs—redoubts, you know, with machine guns—so ar-
ranged as to bring flanking fire to bear on the advancing


328 MR. STANDFAST
enemy. But mist would play the devil with that scheme, for
the enemy would be past the place for flanking fire before
we knew it. . . . Oh, I know we had good warning, and
had the battle zone manned in time, but the outpost line was
meant to hold out long enough to get everything behind in
apple-pie order, and I can't see but how big chunks of it
must have gone in the first rush. . . . Mind you, we've
banked everything on that battle-zone. It's damned good,
but if it's gone—” He flung up his hands.
“Have we good reserves?” I asked.
“Middling,” and he shrugged his shoulders.
“Have we positions prepared behind the battle-zone?”
“I didn't notice any,” he said drily, and was off before
I could get more out of him.
“You look rattled, Dick,” said Blenkiron as we walked
to the hotel.
“I seem to have got the needle. It's silly, but I feel worse
about this show than I’ve ever felt since the war started.
Look at this city here. The papers take it easily, and the
people are walking about as if nothing was happening.
Even the soldiers aren't worried. You may call me a fool
to take it so hard, but I've a sense in my bones that we're
in for the bloodiest and darkest fight of our lives, and that
soon Paris will be hearing the Boche guns as she did in
1914.”
“You're a cheerful old Jeremiah. Well, I'm glad Miss
Mary's going to be in England soon. Seems to me she's
right and that this game of ours isn't quite played out yet.
I'm envying you some, for there's a place waiting for you
in the fighting line.”
“You’ve got to get home and keep people's heads straight
there. That's the weak link in our chain and there's a
mighty lot of work before you.”
“Maybe,” he said abstractedly, with his eye on the top
of the Vendôme column.
The train that afternoon was packed with officers recalled
from leave, and it took all the combined purchase of Blen-


‘’.530 MR. STANDFAST
which Peter had never seen and had to have explained to
him.
Outside a haze had drawn over the meadows with the twi-
light. I pointed it out to Blenkiron.
“There's the fog that's doing us in. This March weather
is just like October, mist morning and evening. I wish to
Heaven we could have some good old drenching spring
rains.”
Archie was discoursing of the Shark-Gladas machine.
“I’ve always stuck to it, for it's a marvel in its way, but
it has my heart fairly broke. The General here knows its
little tricks. Don't you, sir? Whenever things get really
excitin', the engine's apt to quit work and take a rest.”
“The whole make should be publicly burned,” I said, with
gloomy recollections.
“I wouldn't go so far, sir. The old Gladas has surprisin'
merits. On her day there's nothing like her for pace and
climbing-power, and she steers as sweet as a racin' cutter.
The trouble about her is she's too complicated. She's like
some breeds of car—you want to be a mechanical genius
to understand her. . . . If they'd only get her a little simpler
and safer, there wouldn't be her match in the field. I'm
about the only man that has patience with her and knows
her merits, but she's often been nearly the death of me.
All the same, if I were in for a big fight against some fellow
like Lensch, where it was neck or nothing, I’m hanged if
I wouldn't pick the Gladas.”
Archie laughed apologetically. “The subject is banned
for me in our mess. I'm the old thing's only champion,
and she's like a mare I used to hunt that loved me so much
she was always tryin' to chew the arm off me. But I wish
I could get her a fair trial from one of the big pilots. I'm
only in the second class myself after all.”
We were running north of St. Just when above the rattle
of the train rose a curious dull sound. It came from the
east, and was like the low growl of a veld thunderstorm, or
a steady roll of muffled drums.


THE STORM BREAKS IN THE WEST 331
“Hark to the guns!” cried Archie. “My aunt, there's a
tidy bombardment goin' on somewhere.”
I had been listening on and off to guns for three years.
I had been present at the big preparations before Loos and
the Somme and Arras, and I had come to accept the racket
of artillery as something natural and inevitable like rain or
sunshine. But this sound chilled me with its eeriness, I
don't know why. Perhaps it was its unexpectedness, for I
was sure that the guns had not been heard in this area since
before the Marne. The noise must be travelling down the
Oise valley, and I judged there was big fighting somewhere
about Chauny or La Fère. That meant that the enemy was
pressing hard on a huge front, for here was clearly a great
effort on his extreme left wing. Unless it was our counter-
attack. But somehow I didn't think so.
I let down the window and stuck my head into the night.
The fog had crept to the edge of the track, a gossamer mist
through which houses and trees and cattle could be seen dim
in the moonlight. The noise continued—not a mutter, but
a steady rumbling flow as solid as the blare of a trumpet.
Presently, as we drew nearer Amiens, we left it behind us,
for in all the Somme valley there is some curious configura-
tion which blankets sound. The country folk call it the
“Silent Land,” and during the first phase of the Somme
battle a man in Amiens could not hear the guns twenty
miles off at Albert.
As I sat down again I found that the company had fallen
silent, even the garrulous Archie. Mary's eyes met mine,
and in the indifferent light of the French railway-carriage
I could see excitement in them—I knew it was excitement,
not fear. She had never heard the noise of a great barrage
before. Blenkiron was restless, and Peter was sunk in his
own thoughts. I was growing very depressed, for in a little
I would have to part from my best friends and the girl I
loved. But with the depression was mixed an odd expecta-
tion, which was almost pleasant. The guns had brought
back my profession to me; I was moving towards their


332 MR. STANDFAST
thunder, and God only knew the end of it. The happy
dream I had dreamed of the Cotswolds and a home with
Mary beside me seemed suddenly to have fallen away to an
infinite distance. I felt once again that I was on the razor-
edge of life.
The last part of the journey I was casting back to rake
up my knowledge of the countryside. I saw again the
stricken belt from Serre to Combles where we had fought
in the summer of '17. I had not been present in the ad-
vance of the following spring, but I had been at Cambrai
and I knew all the down country from Lagnicourt to St.
Quentin. I shut my eyes and tried to picture it, and to see
the roads running up to the line, and wondered just at what
points the big pressure had come. They had told me in
Paris that the British were as far south as the Oise, so
the bombardment we had heard must be directed to our
address. With Passchendaele and Cambrai in my mind, and
some notion of the difficulties we had always had in getting
drafts, I was puzzled to think where we could have found
the troops to man the new front. We must be unholily thin
on that long line. And against that awesome bombardment!
And the masses and the new tactics that Ivery had bragged
of
When we ran into the dingy cavern which is Amiens
station, I seemed to note a new excitement. I felt it in the
air rather than deduced it from any special incident, except
that the platform was very crowded with civilians, most of
them with an extra amount of baggage. I wondered if the
place had been bombed the night before.
“We won't say good-bye yet,” I told the others. “The
train doesn't leave for half an hour. I'm off to try and get
news.”
Accompanied by Archie, I hunted out an R.T.O. of my
acquaintance. To my questions he responded cheerfully.
“Oh, we're doing famously, sir. I heard this afternoon
from a man in Operations that G.H.Q. was perfectly satis-
fied. We've killed a lot of Huns and only lost a few kilo-


334 MR. STANDFAST
Plumer. But all that takes days, and meantime we're walk-
ing back like we did at Mons. And at this time of day,
too. . . . Oh yes, the whole line's retreating. Parts of it
were pretty comfortable, but they had to get back or be
put in the bag. I wish to Heaven I knew where our right
divisions have got to. For all I know there're at Compiègne
by now. The Boche was over the canal this morning, and by
this time most likely he's across the Somme.”
At that I exclaimed. “D'you mean to tell me we're
going to lose Peronne?”
“Peronne!” he cried. “We'll be lucky not to lose
Amiens! . . . And on the top of it all I’ve got some kind
of blasted fever. I’ll be raving in an hour.”
He was rushing off, but I held him.
“What about my old lot?” I asked.
“Oh, damned good, but they're shot all to bits. Every
division did well. It's a marvel they weren't all scuppered,
and it'll be a flaming miracle if they find a line they can
stand on. Westwater's got a leg smashed. He was brought
down this evening, and you'll find him in the hospital.
Fraser's killed and Lefroy's a prisoner—at least, that was
my last news. I don't know who's got the brigades, but
Masterton's carrying on with the division. . . . You'd
better get up the line as fast as you can and take over from
him. See the Army Commander. He'll be in Amiens to-
morrow morning for a pow-wow.”
Laidlaw lay wearily back in his car and disappeared into
the night, while I hurried to the train.
The others had descended to the platform and were
grouped round Archie, who was discoursing optimistic
nonsense. I got them into the carriage and shut the
door.
“It's pretty bad,” I said. “The front's pierced in sev-
eral places and we're back to the Upper Somme. I'm afraid
it isn't going to stop there. I'm off up the line as soon as I
can get my orders. Wake, you'll come with me, for every
man will be wanted. Blenkiron, you'll see Mary and Peter


THE STORM BREAKS IN THE WEST 337
As I went out of the convent door I felt that once again
I had been given my orders.
It did not surprise me that, when I sought out my room
on an upper floor of the Hôtel de France, I found Blen-
kiron in the corridor. He was in the best of spirits.
“You can't keep me out of the show, Dick,” he said,
“so you needn't start arguing. Why, this is the one orig-
inal chance of a lifetime for John S. Blenkiron. Our little
fight at Erzerum was only a side-show, but this is a real high-
class Armageddon. I guess I’ll find a way to make myself
useful.”
I had no doubt he would, and I was glad he had stayed
behind. But I felt it was hard on Peter to have the job of
returning to England alone at such a time, like useless flot-
sam washed up by a flood.
“You needn't worry,” said Blenkiron. “Peter's not mak-
ing England this trip. To the best of my knowledge he has
beat it out of this township by the eastern postern. He had
some talk with Sir Archibald Roylance, and presently other
gentlemen of the Royal Flying Corps appeared, and the
upshot was that Sir Archibald hitched on to Peter's grip
and departed without saying farewell. My notion is that
he's going to have a few words with his old friends at some
flying station. Or he might have the idea of going back to
England by aeroplane, and so having one last flutter before
he folds his wings. Anyhow, Peter looked a mighty happy
man. The last I saw of him he was smoking his pipe with
a batch of young lads in a Flying Corps waggon and head-
ing straight for Germany.” -


a
HOW AN EXILE RETURNED 339
that the Gairmans is gettin' on fine, and I was tellin' him
that he should be proud of his ain folk. But he wasn't
verra weel pleased.”
Three days had wrought a transformation in Ivery. That
face, once so cool and capable, was now sharpened like a
hunted beast's. His imaginaion was preying on him and I
could imagine its torture. He, who had been always at the
top directing the machine, was now only a cog in it. He
had never in his life been anything but powerful; now he
was impotent. He was in a hard, unfamiliar world, in the
grip of something which he feared and didn't understand, in
the charge of men who were in no way amenable to his
persuasiveness. It was like a proud and bullying manager
suddenly forced to labour in a squad of navvies, and worse,
for there was the gnawing physical fear of what was
coming.
He made an appeal to me.
“Do the English torture their prisoners?” he asked.
“You have beaten me. I own it, and I plead for mercy.
I will go on my knees if you like. I am not afraid of
death—in my own way.”
“Few people are afraid of death—in their own way.”
“Why do you degrade me? I am a gentleman.”
“Not as we define the thing,” I said.
His jaw dropped, “What are you going to do with me?”
he quavered. -
“You have been a soldier,” I said. “You are going to
see a little fighting—from the ranks. There will be no
brutality, you will be armed if you want to defend your-
self, you will have the same chance of survival as the men
around you. You may have heard that your countrymen
are doing well. It is even possible that they may win the
battle. What was your forecast to me? Amiens in two
days, Abbeville in three. Well, you are a little behind
scheduled time, but still you are prospering. You told me
that you were the chief architect of all this, and you are
going to be given the chance of seeing it, perhaps of sharing


340 MR. STANDFAST
in it—from the other side. Does it not appeal to your sense
of justice?”
He groaned and turned away. I had no more pity for
him than I would have had for a black mamba that had
killed my friend and was now caught in a cleft tree. Nor,
oddly enough, had Wake. If we had shot Ivery outright
at St. Anton, I am certain that Wake would have called
us murderers. Now he was in complete agreement. His
passionate hatred of war made him rejoice that a chief
contriver of war should be made to share in its terrors.
“He tried to talk me over this morning,” he told me.
“Claimed he was on my side and said the kind of thing
I used to say last year. It made me rather ashamed of
some of my past performances to hear that scoundrel imi-
tating them. . . . By the way, Hannay, what are you going
to do with me?”
“You’re coming on my staff. You're a stout fellow and
I can't do without you.”
“Remember I won't fight.”
“You won't be asked to. We're trying to stem the tide
which wants to roll to the sea. You know how the Boche
behaves in occupied country, and Mary's in Amiens.”
At that news he shut his lips.
“Still ” he began.
“Still,” I said. “I don't ask you to forfeit one of your
blessed principles. You needn't fire a shot. But I want
a man to carry orders for me, for we haven't a line any
more, only a lot of blobs like quicksilver. I want a clever
man for the job and a brave one, and I know that you're
not afraid.”
“No,” he said, “I don’t think I am—much. Well, I'm
content | *
I started Blenkiron off in a car for Corps Headquarters,
and in the afternoon took the road myself. I knew every
inch of the country—the lift of the hill east of Amiens, the
Roman highway that ran straight as an arrow to St. Quen-
tin, the marshy lagoons of the Somme, and that broad strip


HOW AN EXILE RETURNED 341
of land wasted by battle between Dompierre and Peronne.
I had come to Amiens through it in January, for I had been
up to the line before I left for Paris, and then it had been
a peaceful place, with peasants tilling their fields and new
buildings going up on the old battle-fields, and carpenters
busy at cottage roofs, and scarcely a transport waggon on
the road to remind one of war. Now the main route was
choked like the Albert road when the Somme battle first
began—troops going up and troops coming down, the latter
in the last stage of weariness; a ceaseless traffic of ambu-
lances one way and ammunition waggons the other; busy
staff cars trying to worm a way through the mass; strings
of gun horses, oddments of cavalry, and here and there blue
French uniforms. All that I had seen before; but one thing
was new to me. Little country cars with sad-faced women
and mystified children in them and piles of household plen-
ishing were creeping westward, or stood waiting at village
doors. Beside these tramped old men and boys, mostly in
their Sunday best as if they were going to church. I had
never seen the sight before, for I had never seen the British
Army falling back. The dam which held up the waters
had broken and the dwellers in the valley were trying to
save their pitiful little treasures. And over everything,
horse and man, cart and wheelbarrow, road and tillage, lay
the white March dust, the sky was blue as June, small birds
were busy in the copses, and in the corners of abandoned
gardens I had a glimpse of the first violets.
Presently as we topped a rise we came within full noise
of the guns. That, too, was new to me, for it was not an
ordinary bombardment. There was a special quality in
the sound, something ragged, straggling, intermittent, which
I had never heard before. It was the sign of open warfare
and a moving battle.
At Peronne, from which the newly returned inhabitants
had a second time fled, the battle seemed to be at the doors.
There I had news of my division. It was farther south
towards St. Christ. We groped our way among bad roads


342 MR. STANDFAST
to where its headquarters were believed to be, while the
voice of the guns grew louder. They turned out to be those
of another division, which was busy getting ready to cross
the river. Then the dark fell, and while airplanes flew
west into the sunset there was a redder sunset in the east,
where the unceasing flashes of gun-fire were pale against
the angry glow of burning dumps. The sight of the bonnet-
badge of a Scots Fusilier made me halt, and the man turned
out to belong to my division. Half an hour later I was
taking over from the much relieved Masterton in the ruins
of what had once been a sugar-beet factory.
There to my surprise I found Lefroy. The Boche had
held him prisoner for precisely eight hours. During that
time he had been so interested in watching the way the
enemy handled an attack that he had forgotten the miseries
of his position. He described with blasphemous admiration
the endless wheel by which supplies and reserve troops
moved up, the silence, the smoothness, the perfect discipline.
Then he had realised that he was a captive and unwounded,
and had gone mad. Being a heavy-weight boxer of note, he
had sent his two guards spinning into a ditch, dodged the
ensuing shots, and found shelter in the lee of a blazing
ammunition dump where his pursuers hesitated to follow.
Then he had spent an anxious hour trying to get through an
outpost line, which he thought was Boche. Only by over-
hearing an exchange of oaths in the accents of Dundee
did he realise that it was our own. . . . It was a comfort
to have Lefroy back, for he was both stout-hearted and
resourceful. But I found that I had a division only on
paper. It was about the strength of a brigade, the brigades
battalions, and the battalions companies.
This is not the place to write the story of the week that
followed. I could not write it even if I wanted to, for I
don't know it. There was a plan somewhere, which you will
find in the history books, but with me it was blank chaos.
Orders came, but long before they arrived the situation had


HOW AN EXILE RETURNED 343
changed, and I could no more obey them than fly to the
moon. Often I had lost touch with the divisions on both
flanks. Intelligence arrived erratically out of the void, and
for the most part we worried along without it. I heard we
were under the French—first it was said to be Foch, and
then Fayolle, whom I had met in Paris. But the higher
command seemed a million miles away, and we were left
to use our mother wits. My problem was to give ground
as slowly as possible and at the same time not to delay too
long, for retreat we must, with the Boche sending in brand-
new divisions each morning. It was a kind of war worlds
distant from the old trench battles, and since I had been
taught no other I had to invent rules as I went along.
Looking back, it seems a miracle that any of us came out
of it. Only the grace of God and the uncommon toughness
of the British soldier bluffed the Hun and prevented him
pouring through the breach to Abbeville and the sea. We
were no better than a mosquito curtain stuck in a doorway
to stop the advance of an angry bull.
The Army Commander was right; we were hanging on
with our eyelashes.
We must have been easily the weakest part of the whole
front, for we were holding a line which was never less than
two miles and was often, as I judged, nearer five, and there
was nothing in reserve to us except some oddments of
cavalry who chased about the whole battle-field under vague
orders. Mercifully for us the Boche blundered. Perhaps
he did not know our condition, for our airmen were mag-
nificent and you never saw a Boche plane over our line by
day, though they bombed us merrily by night. If he had
called our bluff we should have been done, but he put his
main strength to the north and the south of us. North he
pressed hard on the Third Army, but he got well ham-
mered by the Guards at Bapaume and he could make no
headway at Arras. South he drove at the Paris railway
and down the Oise valley, but there Pétain's reserves had
arrived, and the French made a noble stand.


350 MR. STANDFAST
kiron, some of the Army engineers, and a staff officer from
Corps Headquarters, and I found Archie Roylance.
They had dug a mighty good line and wired it nobly. It
ran from the river to the wood of La Bruyère on the little
hill above the Ablain stream. It was desperately long, but
I saw at once it couldn't well be shorter, for the division on
the south of us had its hands full with the fringe of the big
thrust against the French.
“It's no good blinking the facts,” I told them, “I haven't
a thousand men, and what I have are at the end of their
tether. If you put 'em in these trenches they'll go to sleep
on their feet. When can the French take over?”
I was told that it had been arranged for next morning, but
that it had now been put off twenty-four hours. It was
only a temporary measure, pending the arrival of British
divisions from the north.
Archie looked grave. “The Boche is pushin' up new
troops in this sector. We got the news before I left
squadron headquarters. It looks as if it would be a near
thing, sir.”
“It won't be a near thing. It's an absolute black cer-
tainty. My fellows can't carry on as they are another day.
Great God, they've had a fortnight in hell! Find me more
men or we buckle up at the next push.” My temper was
coming very near its limits.
“We've raked the country with a small-tooth comb,
sir,” said one of the staff officers. “And we've raised a
scratch pack. Best part of two thousand. Good men, but
most of them know nothing about infantry fighting. We've
put them into platoons, and done our best to give them some
kind of training. There's one thing may cheer you. We've
plenty of machine-guns. There's a machine-gun school near
by and we got all the men who were taking the course and
all the plant.”
I don't suppose there was ever such a force put into the
field before. It was a wilder medley than Moussy's camp-
followers at First Ypres. There was every kind of detail


352 MR. STANDFAST
“Then for Heaven's sake don't let him do it again. I
look to you, Archie, remember. Promise.”
“Funny thing, but he's always worryin’ about you. He
has a map on which he marks every day the changes in the
position, and he'd hobble a mile to pump any of our fellows
who have been up your way.”
That night under cover of darkness I drew back the
division to the new prepared lines. We got away easily, for
the enemy was busy with his own affairs. I suspected a
relief by fresh troops.
There was no time to lose, and I can tell you I toiled to
get things straight before dawn. I would have liked to
send my own fellows back to rest, but I couldn't spare
them yet. I wanted them to stiffen the fresh lot, for they
were the veterans. The new position was arranged on the
same principles as the old front which had been broken
on March 21st. There was our forward zone, consisting of
an outpost line and redoubts, very cleverly sited, and a line
of resistance. Well behind it were the trenches which
formed the battle-zone. Both zones were heavily wired,
and we had plenty of machine-guns; I wish I could say we
had plenty of men who knew how to use them. The out-
posts were merely to give the alarm and fall back to the line
of resistance which was to hold out to the last. In the
forward zone I put the freshest of my own men, the units
being brought up to something like strength by the details
returning from leave that the Corps had commandeered.
With them I put the American engineers, partly in the
redoubts and partly in companies for counter-attack. Blen-
kiron had reported that they could shoot like Dan'l Boone,
and were simply spoiling for a fight. The rest of the force
was in the battle-zone, which was our last hope. If that
went the Boche had a clear walk to Amiens. Some addi-
tional field batteries had been brought up to support our very
weak divisional artillery. The front was so long that I
had to put all three of my emaciated brigades in the line, so


HOW AN EXILE RETURNED 355
zones, when I got the first warning of a new and unexpected
peril. A dud shell plumped down a few yards from me.
“Those fools across the river are firing short and badly
off the straight,” I said.
Wake examined the shell. “No, it's a German one,” he
said.
Then came others, and there could be no mistake about
the direction—followed by a burst of machine-gun fire from
the same quarter. We ran in cover to a point from which
we could see the north bank of the river, and I got my
glass on it. There was a lift of land from behind which
the fire was coming. We looked at each other, and the same
conviction stood in both faces. The Boche had pushed down
the northern bank, and we were no longer in line with our
neighbours. The enemy was in a situation to catch us with
his fire on our flank and left rear. We couldn't retire to
conform, for to retire meant giving up our prepared
position.
It was the last straw to all our anxieties, and for a
moment I was at the end of my wits. I turned to Wake,
and his calm eyes pulled me together.
“If they can't retake that ground, we're fairly carted,”
I said.
“We are. Therefore they must retake it.”
“I must get on to Mitchinson.” But as I spoke I realised
the futility of a telephone message to a man who was
pretty hard up against it himself. Only an urgent personal
appeal could effect anything. . . . I must go myself. . . .
No, that was impossible. I must send Lefroy. . . . But he
couldn't be spared. And all my staff officers were up to
their necks in the battle. Besides, none of them knew the
position as I knew it. . . . And how to get there? It
was a long round by the bridge at Loisy.
Suddenly I was aware of Wake's voice. “You had better
send me,” he was saying. “There's only one way—to swim
the river a little lower down.”


356 MR. STANDFAST
“That's too damnably dangerous. I won't send any man
to certain death.”
“But I volunteer,” he said. “That, I believe, is always
allowed in war.”
“But you'll be killed before you can cross.”
“Send a man with me to watch. If I get over, you may
be sure I'll get to General Mitchinson. If not, send some-
body else by Loisy. There's desperate need for hurry, and
you see yourself it's the only way.”
The time was past for argument. I scribbled a line to
Mitchinson as his credentials. No more was needed, for
Wake knew the position as well as I did. I sent an orderly
to accompany him to his starting-place on the bank.
“Good-bye,” he said, as we shook hands. “You’ll see,
I'll come back all right.” His face, I remember, looked
singularly happy.”
Five minutes later the Boche guns opened for the final
attack.
I believe I kept a cool head; at least so Lefroy and the
others reported. They said I went about all afternoon grin-
ning as if I liked it, and that I never raised my voice once.
(It's rather a fault of mine that I bellow in a scrap.) But
I know I was feeling anything but calm, for the problem was
ghastly. It all depended on Wake and Mitchinson. The
flanking fire was so bad that I had to give up the left of
the forward zone, which caught it fairly, and retire the men
there to the battle-zone. The latter was better protected, for
between it and the river was a small wood and the bank rose
into a bluff which sloped inwards towards us. This with-
drawal meant a switch, and a switch isn't a pretty thing
when it has to be improvised in the middle of a battle.
The Boche had counted on that flanking fire. His plan
was to break our two wings—the old Boche plan which
crops up in every fight. He left our centre at first pretty
well alone, and thrust along the river bank and at the
wood of La Bruyère, where we linked up with the division
on our right. Lefroy was in the first area, and Masterton


HOW AN EXILE RETURNED 357
in the second, and for three hours it was as desperate a
business as I have ever faced. . . . The improvised switch
went, and more and more of the forward zone disappeared.
It was a hot, clear spring afternoon, and in that open fight-
ing the enemy came on like troops at manoeuvres. On the
left they got into the battle-zone, and I can see yet Lefroy's
great figure leading a counter-attack in person, his face all
puddled with blood from a scalp wound. . . .
I would have given my soul to be in two places at once,
but I had to risk our left and keep close to Masterton, who
needed me most. The wood of La Bruyère was the maddest
sight. Again and again the Boche was almost through it.
You never knew where he was, and most of the fighting
there was duels between machine-gun parties. Some of the
enemy got round behind us, and only a fine performance
of a company of Cheshires saved a complete break
through.
As for Lefroy I don't know how he stuck it out, and he
doesn't know himself, for he was galled all the time by that
accursed flanking fire. I got a note about half-past four
saying that Wake had crossed the river, but it was some
weary hours after that before the fire slackened. I tore
back and forward between my wings, and every time I
went north I expected to find that Lefroy had broken.
But by some miracle he held. The Boches were in his battle-
zone time and again, but he always flung them out. I have
a recollection of Blenkiron, stark mad, encouraging his
Americans with strange tongues. Once as I passed him I
saw that he had his left arm tied up. His blackened face
grinned at me. “This bit of landscape's mighty unsafe for
democracy,” he croaked. “For the love of Mike get your
guns on those devils across the river. They're plaguing my
boys too bad.” -
It was about seven o'clock, I think, when the flanking fire
slacked off, but it was not because of our divisional guns.
There was a short and very furious burst of artillery fire
on the north bank, and I knew it was British. Then things


358 MR. STANDFAST
began to happen. One of our planes—they had been mar-
vels all day, swinging down like hawks for machine-gun
bouts with the Boche infantry—reported that Mitchinson
was attacking hard and getting on well. That eased my
mind, and I started off for Masterton, who was in greater
straits than ever, for the enemy seemed to be weakening on
the river bank and putting his main strength in against our
right. . . . But my G.S.O. 2 stopped me on the road.
“Wake,” he said. “He wants to see you.”
“Not now,” I cried.
“He can't live many minutes.”
I turned and followed him to the ruinous cowshed which
was my divisional headquarters. Wake, as I heard later,
had swum the river opposite to Mitchinson's right, and
reached the other shore safely, though the current was
whipped with bullets. But he had scarcely landed before
he was badly hit by shrapnel in the groin. Walking at first
with support and then carried on a stretcher, he managed
to struggle on to the divisional headquarters, where he
gave my message and explained the situation. He would
not let his wound be looked to till his job was done.
Mitchinson told me afterwards that with a face grey from
pain he drew for him a sketch of our position and told him
exactly how near we were to our end. . . . After that he
asked to be sent back to me, and they got him down to Loisy
in a crowded ambulance, and then up to us in a returning
empty. The M.O. who looked at his wound saw that the
thing was hopeless, and did not expect him to live beyond
Loisy. He was bleeding internally and no surgeon on earth
could have saved him.
When he reached us he was almost pulseless, but he
recovered for a moment and asked for me.
I found him, with blue lips and a face drained of blood,
lying on my camp bed. His voice was very small and far
away.
“How goes it?” he asked.


CHAPTER XXII
THE SUMMONS COMES FOR MR. STANDFAST
I SLEPT for one and three-quarter hours that night, and
when I awoke I seemed to emerge from deeps of slumber
which had lasted for days. That happens sometimes after
heavy fatigue and great mental strain. Even a short sleep
sets up a barrier between past and present which has to be
elaborately broken down before you can link on with what
has happened before. As my wits groped at the job some
drops of rain splashed on my face through the broken roof.
That hurried me out-of-doors. It was just after dawn and
the sky was piled with thick clouds, while a wet wind blew
up from the south-west. The long-prayed-for break in the
weather seemed to have come at last. A deluge of rain was
what I wanted, something to soak the earth and turn the
roads into water-courses and clog the enemy transport,
something above all to blind the enemy's eyes. . . . For
I remembered what a preposterous bluff it all had been,
and what a piteous broken handful stood between the
Germans and their goal. If they knew, if they only knew,
they would brush us aside like flies.
As I shaved I looked back on the events of yesterday as
on something that had happened long ago. I seemed to
judge them impersonally, and I concluded that it had been
a pretty good fight. A scratch force, half of it dog-tired
and half of it untrained, had held up at least a couple of
fresh divisions. . . . But we couldn't do it again, and there
were still some hours before us of desperate peril. When
had the Corps said that the French would arrive? . . . I
was on the point of shouting for Hamilton to get Wake te
ring up Corps Headquarters, when I remembered that Wake
362


THE SUMMONS COMES 365
God has some work for him to do. He's quite serious about
it, and ever since he got the notion he has perked up amazin’.
He's always askin’ about Lensch, too—not vindictive-like,
you understand, but quite friendly. Seems to take a sort
of proprietary interest in him. I told him Lensch had had
a far longer spell of first-class fightin' than anybody else and
was bound by the law of averages to be downed soon, and
he was quite sad about it.”
I had no time to worry about Peter. Archie and I swal-
lowed breakfast and I had a pow-wow with my brigadiers.
By this time I had got through to Corps H.Q. and got news
of the French. It was worse than I expected. General
Péguy would arrive about ten o'clock, but his men couldn't
take over till well after midday. The Corps gave me their
whereabouts and I found it on the map. They had a long
way to cover yet, and then there would be the slow business
of relieving. I looked at my watch. There were still six
hours before us when the Boche might knock us to blazes,
six hours of maddening anxiety. . . . Lefroy announced
that all was quiet on the front, and that the new wiring
at the Bois de la Bruyère had been completed. Patrols had
reported that during the night a fresh German division
seemed to have relieved that which we had punished so
stoutly yesterday. I asked him if he could stick it out
against another attack. “No,” he said without hesitation.
“We're too few and too shaky on our pins to stand any
more. I’ve only a man to every three yards.” That im-
pressed me, for Lefroy was usually the most devil-may-care
optimist.
“Curse it, there's the sun,” I heard Archie cry. It was
true, for the clouds were rolling back and the centre of the
heavens was a patch of blue. The storm was coming—I
could smell it in the air—but probably it wouldn't break
till the evening. Where, I wondered, would we be by that
time?
It was now nine o'clock, and I was keeping tight hold on
myself, for I saw that I was going to have hell for the next


368 MR. STANDFAST
I felt my arm clutched.
“Look there!” said a fierce voice, and his glasses were
turned upwards.
I looked, and far up in the sky saw a thing like a wedge
of wild geese flying towards us from the enemy's country.
I made out the small dots which composed it, and my glasses
told me they were planes. But only Archie's practised eye
knew that they were enemy.
“Boche P” I asked.
“Boche,” he said. “My God, we're for it now.”
My heart had sunk like a stone, but I was fairly cool.
I looked at my watch and saw that it was ten minutes to
eleven.
“How many?”
“Five,” said Archie. “Or there may be six—not
more.”
“Listen!” I said. “Get on to your headquarters. Tell
them that it's all up with us if a single plane gets back. Let
them get well over the line, the deeper in the better, and tell
them to send up every machine they possess and down them
all. Tell them it's life or death. Not one single plane goes
back. Quick!”
Archie disappeared, and as he went our anti-aircraft guns
broke out. The formation above opened and zigzagged, but
they were too high to be in much danger. But they were
not too high to see that which we must keep hidden or
perish.
The roar of our batteries died down as the invaders
passed westwards. As I watched their progress they seemed
to be dropping lower. Then they rose again and a bank of
cloud concealed them.
I had a horrid certainty that they must beat us, that some
at any rate would get back. They had seen our thin lines
and the roads behind us empty of supports. They would
see, as they advanced, the blue columns of the French
marching up from the south-west, and they would return
and tell the enemy that a blow now would open the road to
Amiens and the sea. He had plenty of strength for it, and


THE SUMMONS COMES 369
presently he would have overwhelming strength. It only
needed a spear-point to burst the jerry-built dam and let
the flood through. . . . They would return in twenty
minutes, and by noon we would be broken. Unless—unless
the miracle of miracles happened, and they never
returned.
Archie reported that his skipper would do his damnedest
and that our machines were now going up. “We’ve a
chance, sir,” he said, “a good sportin' chance.” It was a
new Archie, with a hard voice, a lean face, and rather old
eyes.
Behind the jagged walls of the farm buildings was a knoll
which had once formed part of the highroad. I went up
there alone, for I didn't want anybody near me. I wanted
a view-point, and I wanted quiet, for I had a grim time
before me. From that knoll I had a big prospect of country.
I looked east to our lines on which an occasional shell was
falling, and where I could hear the chatter of machine-guns.
West there was peace, for the woods closed down on the
landscape. Up to the north, I remember, there was a big
glare as from a burning dump, and heavy guns seemed to be
at work in the Ancre valley. Down in the south there was
the dull murmur of a great battle. But just around me, in
the gap, the deadliest place of all, there was an odd quiet.
I could pick out clearly the different sounds. Somebody
down at the farm had made a joke and there was a short
burst of laughter. I envied the humorist his composure.
There was a clatter and jingle from a battery changing posi-
tion. On the road a tractor was jolting along—I could hear
its driver shout and the screech of its unoiled axle.
My eyes were glued to my glasses, but they shook in my
hands so that I could scarcely see. I bit my lip to steady
myself, but they still wavered. From time to time I
glanced at my wrist-watch. Eight minutes gone—ten—
seventeen. If only the planes would come into sight!
Even the certainty of failure would be better than this har-
rowing doubt. They should be back by now unless they had


THE SUMMONS COMES 373
in the completeness of his triumph looped more than once
as if to cry an insulting farewell. In less than three minutes
he would be safe inside his own lines, and he carried the
knowledge which for us was death.
Someone was bawling in my ear, and pointing upward.
It was Archie and his face was wild. I looked and gasped
—seized my glasses and looked again.
A second before Lensch had been alone; now there were
two machines.
I heard Archie's voice. “My God, it's the Gladas—the
little Gladas.” His fingers were digging into my arm and
his face was against my shoulder. And then his excitement
sobered into an awe which choked his speech, as he stam-
mered—“It’s old—"
But I did not need him to tell me the name, for I had
divined it when I first saw the new plane drop from the
clouds. I had that queer sense that comes sometimes to a
man that a friend is present when he cannot see him. Some-
where up in the void two heroes were fighting their last
battle—and one of them had a crippled leg.
I had never any doubt about the result, though Archie
told me later that he went crazy with suspense. Lensch was
not aware of his opponent till he was almost upon him, and
I wonder if by any freak of instinct he recognised his great-
est antagonist. He never fired a shot, nor did Peter. . . .
I saw the German twist and side-slip as if to baffle the fate
descending upon him. I saw Peter veer over vertically and
I knew that the end had come. He was there to make
certain of victory and he took the only way. . . . The
machines closed, there was a crash which I felt though I
could not hear it, and next second both were hurtling down,
over and over, to the earth.
They fell in the river just short of the enemy lines, but
I did not see them, for my eyes were blinded and I was on
my knees.