CHAPTER XIV

Mr Blenkiron Discourses on Love and War

Three 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, remembering that a war was

on, and that there was 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 ground,

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 he and I stood as mortal antagonists, and the thought

pleased me, 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 ranging 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 biggest 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 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 tableland 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 habitable 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 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 downstairs to get a paper,

and on the way ran into Launcelot Wake.

He was no longer a private in a Labour Battalion. Evening 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 felt.”

He shrugged his shoulders, as he went out to the street. “Your infernal

magnanimity would break any man’s temper.”

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 finished 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

like 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 schoolboy, 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.

With his first cigar Blenkiron got to business.

“You want to know about the staff-work we’ve been busy on at home.

Well, it’s finished now, thanks to you, Dick. We weren’t getting on

very fast till you took to peroosing the press on your sick-bed and

dropped us that hint about the ‘Deep-breathing’ ads.”

“Then there was something in it?” I asked.

“There was black hell in it. There wasn’t any Gussiter, but there was a

mighty fine little syndicate of crooks with old man Gresson at the back

of them. First thing, I started out to get the cipher. It took some

looking for, but there’s no cipher on earth can’t be got hold of

somehow if you know it’s there, and in this case we were helped a lot

by the return messages in the German papers. It was bad stuff when we

read it, and explained the darned leakages in important noos we’ve been

up against. At first I figured to keep the thing going and turn

Gussiter into a corporation with John S. Blenkiron as president. But it

wouldn’t do, for at the first hint of tampering with their

communications the whole bunch got skeery and sent out SOS signals. So

we tenderly plucked the flowers.”

“Gresson, too?” I asked.

He nodded. “I guess your seafaring companion’s now under the sod. We

had collected enough evidence to hang him ten times over.... But that

was the least of it. For your little old cipher, Dick, gave us a line

on Ivery.”

I asked how, and Blenkiron told me the story. He had about a dozen

cross-bearings proving that the organisation of the “Deep-breathing”

game had its headquarters in Switzerland. He suspected Ivery from the

first, but the man had vanished out of his ken, so he started working

from the other end, and instead of trying to deduce the Swiss business

from Ivery he tried to deduce Ivery from the Swiss business. He went to

Berne and made a conspicuous public fool of himself for several weeks.

He called himself an agent of the American propaganda there, and took

some advertising space in the press and put in 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 neutrality. He also wrote a lot of rot in the Geneva

newspapers, which he paid to have printed, explaining how he was a

pacifist, 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. However, 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 shameless minx, for she kept on writing to

him to an address he had once given her in Paris, and suddenly she got

an answer. 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. 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 are 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

schoolgirl 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 Sainte-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 tremendous 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 for valuable

noos, so I sold the enemy a very pretty de-vice. If you ever gave your

mind to ciphers and illicit correspondence, Dick, you would know that

the one kind of document you can’t write on in invisible ink is a

coated paper, the kind they use in the weeklies to print photographs of

leading actresses and the stately homes of England. Anything wet that

touches it corrugates the surface a little, and you can tell with a

microscope if someone’s been playing at 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 quill 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 Pétain 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?” I asked. “Do you know more about him than we

knew in the summer? Mary, what did Bommaerts pretend to be?”

“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 the Germans, who in my experience

don’t excel in the lighter vein. Anyway, 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.

Blenkiron mentioned a name, and I knew why the word Schwabing was

familiar. I had read the story long ago in Rhodesia.

“It was some smash,” Blenkiron went on. “He was drummed out of the

Guards, out of the clubs, out of the country.... Now, how would you

have felt, Dick, if you had been the Graf? Your life and work and

happiness crossed out, and all to save a mangy princeling. ‘Bitter as

hell,’ you say. Hungering for a chance to put it across the lot that

had outed you? You wouldn’t rest till you had William sobbing on his

knees asking your pardon, and you not thinking of granting it? That’s

the way you’d feel, but that wasn’t the Graf’s way, and what’s more it

isn’t the German way. He went into exile hating humanity, and with a

heart all poison and snakes, but itching to get back. And I’ll tell you

why. It’s because his kind of German hasn’t got any other home on this

earth. Oh, yes, I know there’s stacks of good old Teutons come and

squat in our little country and turn into fine Americans. You can do a

lot with them if you catch them young and teach them the Declaration of

Independence and make them study our Sunday papers. But you can’t deny

there’s something comic in the rough about all Germans, before you’ve

civilised them. They’re a pecooliar people, a darned pecooliar people,

else they wouldn’t staff all the menial and indecent occupations on the

globe. But that pecooliarity, which is only skin-deep in the working

Boche, is in the bone of the grandee. Your German aristocracy can’t

consort on terms of equality with any other Upper Ten Thousand. They

swagger and bluff about the world, but they know very well that the

world’s sniggering at them. They’re like a boss from Salt Creek Gully

who’s made his pile and bought a dress suit and dropped into a Newport

evening party. They don’t know where to put their hands or how to keep

their feet still.... Your copper-bottomed English nobleman has got to

keep jogging himself to treat them as equals instead of sending them

down to the servants’ hall. Their fine fixings are just the high light

that reveals the everlasting jay. They can’t be gentlemen, because 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

degraded him. He’s earned his restoration and I daresay he’s got it in

his pocket. If merit was rewarded 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 tonight.”

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 detestation 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 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 your Civil War. We have a

middle-class division, too—Scottish Territorials, mostly clerks and

shopmen 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-excellent, and consequently so are

the officers. That division gets top marks in the Boche calendar for

sheer fighting devilment.... 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 class, who wants to get back to his home and is

going to use all the brains and grit he possesses to finish the job

soon.”

“That sounds about right,” said Blenkiron reflectively. “It pleases me

some, for you’ve maybe guessed that I respect 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

Dominions. 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 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 damn 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 stand-patter.”

That night at dinner we talked solid business—Blenkiron and I and a

young French lolonel from the IIIme 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 kind 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 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 today 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 foot, 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 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 offensive, 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?”

“Because they are staking everything,” Blenkiron replied. “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. Germany 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 outside 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 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 Portuguese 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 Tzar’s Government and is now a red-hot revolutionary

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 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 satisfied this isn’t a

whimsy 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

sedooce 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 Ludendorff. 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 transhipped from a coasting steamer in the

West Indies and we’ve temporarily lost track of him, but he’s left his

hunting-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 damnation 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 armchair 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 useful 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 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 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 anything back when she calls for it? What’s the

good of meaning 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 innocence, 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 myself 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 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 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.

Elsewhere there were men busy felling trees, and anti-aircraft guns,

and an occasional transport wagon, but here there was only a shallow

grassy vale, and in the distance, bloomed over like a plum in the

evening haze, the roofs of an old dwelling-house among gardens.

Mary clung to my arm as we drank in the peace of it.

“That is what lies for us at the end of the road, Dick,” she said

softly.

And then, as she looked, I felt her body shiver. She returned to the

strange fancy she had had in the St Germains woods three days before.

“Somewhere it’s waiting for us and we shall certainly find it.... But

first we must go through the Valley of the Shadow.... And there is the

sacrifice to be made ... the best of us.”