Mr. Standfast
by John Buchan
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman

JOHN BUCHAN

TO THAT MOST GALLANT COMPANY
THE OFFICERS AND MEN
OF THE
SOUTH AFRICAN INFANTRY BRIGADE
on the Western Front

CONTENTS

PART I

1. The Wicket-Gate
2. 'The Village Named Morality'
3. The Reflections of a Cured Dyspeptic
4. Andrew Amos
5. Various Doings in the West
6. The Skirts of the Coolin
7. I Hear of the Wild Birds
8. The Adventures of a Bagman
9. I Take the Wings of a Dove
10. The Advantages of an Air Raid
11. The Valley of Humiliation

PART II

12. I Become a Combatant Once More
13. The Adventure of the Picardy Chateau
14. Mr Blenkiron Discourses on Love and War
15. St Anton
16. I Lie on a Hard Bed
17. The Col of the Swallows
18. The Underground Railway
19. The Cage of the Wild Birds
20. The Storm Breaks in the West
21. How an Exile Returned to His Own People
22. The Summons Comes for Mr Standfast

NOTE

The earlier adventures of Richard Hannay, to which occasional
reference is made in this narrative, are recounted in _The
_Thirty-Nine _Steps and _Greenmantle.
J.B.

PART I

CHAPTER ONE
The Wicket-Gate

I 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 downland 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 twilight 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 with a hint that we would soon be used for a big
push. Then suddenly I was ordered home to report to the War
Office, and passed on by them to Bullivant and his merry men. So
here I was sitting in a railway carriage in a grey tweed suit, with a
neat new suitcase on the rack labelled C.B. The initials stood for
Cornelius Brand, for that was my name now. And an old boy in the
corner was asking me questions and wondering audibly why I
wasn't fighting, while a young blood of a second lieutenant with a
wound stripe was eyeing me with scorn.

The old chap was one of the cross-examining type, and after he
had borrowed my matches he set to work to find out all about me.
He was a tremendous fire-eater, and a bit of a pessimist about our
slow progress in the west. I told him I came from South Africa and
was a mining engineer.

'Been fighting with Botha?' he asked.

'No,' I said. 'I'm not the fighting kind.'
The second lieutenant screwed up his nose.

'Is there no conscription in South Africa?'

'Thank God there isn't,' I said, and the old fellow begged
permission to tell me a lot of unpalatable things. I knew his kind and
didn't give much for it. He was the sort who, if he had been under
fifty, would have crawled on his belly to his tribunal to get
exempted, but being over age was able to pose as a patriot. But I
didn't like the second lieutenant's grin, for he seemed a good class
of lad. I looked steadily out of the window for the rest of the way,
and wasn't sorry when I got to my station.

I had had the queerest interview with Bullivant and Macgillivray.
They asked me first if I was willing to serve again in the old game,
and I said I was. I felt as bitter as sin, for I had got fixed in the
military groove, and had made good there. Here was I - a brigadier
and still under forty, and with another year of the war there was no
saying where I might end. I had started out without any ambition,
only a great wish to see the business finished. But 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 anything
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 suppose we
could have wrung an active brigadier out of the War Office? As it
was, it was like drawing teeth.'

'Is it risky?' 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 Macgillivray'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, Cornelis Brandt, will do, but you'd
better spell it "Brand" this time. Remember that you are an engineer
just back from South Africa, and that you don't care a rush about
the war. You can't understand 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 gorgeous 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 fantastic fate. I detested my new part and looked forward to
naked shame. It was bad enough for anyone to have to pose as a
pacifist, but for me, 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 stomach 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 mending, 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 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.'

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?' 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 sickness 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 gripping 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 ghastliest 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 immediately blazing success.
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. 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 all 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
recognized 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. 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 tactician and Peter the
strategist. Anyhow the two were out to 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 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 southwest gales badly
handicapped our airwork. When our bombing or reconnaissance
jobs behind the enemy lines were completed, instead of being able
to glide back into 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
communique, 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 enormous pleasure. And then at
the end, quite casually, he 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 unrolled 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 picture 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 reminded 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 Providence,
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 great beechwoods, 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 realized 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 freedom 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 something 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 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 lightheartedness. 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 whatever 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. In the glow of the lamp his features
were very clear, and I examined them with interest, for, remember,
I was expecting 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 civilized 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 covered 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 Degousses hung at last,' he said.

'How exquisite they are!' 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 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 'Conscientious 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 controversy 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 some Russian novel - a name like Leprous
Souls - and she asked me if I had read it. By a curious chance I had.
It had drifted somehow into our dug-out on the Scarpe, and after
we had all stuck in the second chapter it had disappeared in the
mud to which it naturally belonged. The lady praised its 'poignancy'
and 'grave beauty'. I assented and congratulated myself on my
second escape - for if the question had been put to me I should
have described it as God-forgotten twaddle.

I turned to the girl, who welcomed me with a smile. I had
thought her pretty in her V.A.D. dress, but now, in a filmy black
gown and with her hair no longer hidden by a cap, she was the
most ravishing thing you ever saw. And I observed something else.
There was more than good looks in her young face. Her broad, low
brow and her laughing eyes were amazingly intelligent. She had an
uncanny power of making her eyes go suddenly grave and deep,
like a glittering river narrowing into a pool.

'We shall never be introduced,' she said, 'so let me reveal myself.
I'm Mary Lamington and these are my aunts ... Did you really like
Leprous Souls?'

it was easy enough to talk to her. And oddly enough her mere
presence took away the oppression I had felt in that room. For she
belonged to the out-of-doors and to the old house and to the world
at large. She belonged to the war, and to that happier world
beyond it - a world which must be won by going through the
struggle and not by shirking it, like those two silly ladies.

I could see Wake's eyes often on the girl, while he boomed and
oraculated and the Misses Wymondham prattled. Presently the
conversation seemed to leave the flowery paths of art and to verge
perilously near forbidden topics. He began to abuse our generals in
the field. I could not choose but listen. Miss Lamington's brows
were slightly bent, as if in disapproval, and my own temper began
to rise.

He had every kind of idiotic criticism - incompetence, faint-
heartedness, corruption. Where he got the stuff I 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 countrymen 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. 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 parapets 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 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 something 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 tonight 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 pacifist South African engineer. Is that correct?'

'Perfectly.'

'You have been restless all evening looking for the messenger 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 you 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 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 condemned,
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?'

'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?'

'A - really - big - thing,' she said slowly and very gravely. 'You
and I and some hundred others are hunting the most dangerous
man in all the world. Till we succeed 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 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 tomorrow 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 tomorrow 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 wisdom of that old serpent Bullivant in
the choice of his intermediary, for I'm hanged if I would have
taken such orders from anyone else.

CHAPTER TWO
'The Village Named Morality'

UP 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 thereafter 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 constant 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 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 blowing 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
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? Or perhaps it is music? You have the brow of
an artist, the frontal "bar of Michelangelo", you remember!'

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
schoolchildren. 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 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 novelist; 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, according 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 house-holders 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 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 England 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 permitted 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
symmetrically, with the smallest uppermost. That made me observant
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 housework 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 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 proclaimed their opinions from the
rooftops. 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 discovered 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 delight. 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 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, 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
sufferings in Dartmoor with a gusto which I thought rather heartless.
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 sunset or a pretty woman, but
to find surprising loveliness in things which I thought hideous.
Also they talked a language 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
Degousse'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 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 everything 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 a 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 children 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 role of the seeker after
truth, the honest colonial who was against the war by instinct and
was looking for instruction in the 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 pacifist 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 Germany 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
approved 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 Messines came nobody took the slightest interest, while I
was aching to tooth every detail of the 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 cocksureness 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 them. I
had spent three years among soldiers, and the British regular, great
follow 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-misunderstood patriot, seeing 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. Blenkiron' and
dated 'London, 3 July-'

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 role
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 nonsense with his tongue
in his old cheek.

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. Undevout in the ordinary sense, I mean,
for I had already counted twenty-seven varieties of religious
conviction, including 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 Movements. 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 for 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 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 passion
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 Sukhomhnov trial
in Russia, which showed that Germany had not been responsible
for the war. He was jolly good at the job, and put 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 speaking 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.

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 talking 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 acquainted. 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 woke up and said we would get him today? - 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 Valley to meet with Apolyon, 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 Biggleswick 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 goodbye. 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
privilege,' 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 realized 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 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
Defence 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 Austrian 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 embassy 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 remarks.
'I am in a position,' he said, 'to bear out all that the lecturer has
said. I can go further. 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 removing 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 Springs, and the Brothers had a look at my
duodenum. They saw that the darned thing wouldn't do, so they
sidetracked 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
patronized pacificism out of vanity, but was very careful not to dip
his hands too far. He was always damping down Blenkiron's
volcanic utterances. 'Of course, as you know, the other side have
an argument which I find rather hard to meet ...'  'I can
sympathize 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 been re-
written, 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 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
_Wieser _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 respectable 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 tomorrow,' 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 myself 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 THREE
The Reflections of a Cured Dyspeptic

Thirty-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
realize 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 investments. 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?' 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 button-hole.

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 compliments, 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 Biggleswick.'

'There isn't a great deal to it. A lot of ignorance, a 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
Biggleswick 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.'

'Yes,' 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 bombing 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 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 censored my stuff so cruel
that the paper fired me. Then I went on a walking-tour round
England and sat for a fortnight 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 Government 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 England, 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.'

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 suddenly 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 managed by people who
knew their way about, for they avoided all the traps set for them,
and when bogus news was released on purpose, they never sent it.
A convoy which had been kept a deadly secret would be attacked at
the one place where it was helpless. A carefully prepared defensive
plan would be checkmated before it could be tried. Blenkiron said
that there was no evidence that a single brain was behind it all, for
there was no similarity in the cases, but he had a strong impression
all the time that it was the work of one man. We managed to close
some of the bolt-holes, but we couldn't put our hands near the big ones.
'By this time,' said he, 'I reckoned I was about ready to change
my methods. I had been working by what the highbrows call
induction, trying to argue up from the deeds to the doer. Now I
tried a new lay, which was to calculate down from the doer to the
deeds. They call it deduction. I opined that somewhere in this
island was a gentleman whom we will call Mr X, and that, pursuing
the line of business he did, he must have certain characteristics. I
considered very carefully just what sort of personage he must be. I
had noticed that his device was apparently the Double Bluff. That is
to say, when he had two courses open to him, A and B, he pretended
he was going to take B, and so got us guessing that he would try A.
Then he took B after all. So I reckoned that his camouflage must
correspond to this little idiosyncrasy. Being a Boche agent, he
wouldn't pretend to be a hearty patriot, an honest old blood-and-
bones Tory. That would be only the Single Bluff. I considered that
he would be a pacifist, cunning enough just to keep inside the
law, but with the eyes of the police on him. He would write books
which would not be allowed to be exported. He would get himself
disliked in the popular papers, but all the mugwumps would admire
his moral courage. I drew a mighty fine picture to myself of just the
man I expected to find. Then I started out to look for him.'

Blenkiron's face took on the air of a disappointed child. 'It was
no good. I kept barking up the wrong tree and wore myself out
playing the sleuth on white-souled innocents.'

'But you've found him all right,' I cried, a sudden suspicion
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 to 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 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 completest thing outside
the Recording Angel's little note-book. 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 educated 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 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. He couldn't get
closer than that, till he heard from his people that a certain Abel
Gresson had turned up in Glasgow 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 _Wieser _Zeitung.'

'You're no fool, Dick,' he said, with his slow smile. 'You've hit
the mark first shot. You know me and you 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 Gre