CHAPTER III

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 realise that he

must be pretty badly broken up.

Presently the telephone bell rang. It was Blenkiron who spoke. “Go down

and have a talk with your brokers about the War Loan. Arrive there

about twelve o’clock and don’t go upstairs till you have met a friend.

You’d better have a quick luncheon at your club, and then come to

Traill’s bookshop in the Haymarket at two. You can get back to

Biggleswick by the 5.16.”

I did as I was bid, and twenty minutes later, having travelled by

Underground, for I couldn’t raise a taxi, I approached the block of

chambers in Leadenhall Street where dwelt the respected firm who

managed my 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 romancer. 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

hotel 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 _Weser 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 Gresson that he might pass them on. And he did

pass them on—to Ivery. They completed my chain.”

“But they were commonplace enough things which he might have guessed

for himself.”

“No, they weren’t. They were the nicest tit-bits of political noos

which all the cranks have been reaching after.”

“Anyhow, they were quotations from German papers. He might have had the

papers themselves earlier than you thought.”

“Wrong again. The paragraph never appeared in the _Weser Zeitung_. But

we faked up a torn bit of that noospaper, and a very pretty bit of

forgery it was, and Gresson, who’s a kind of a scholar, was allowed to

have it. He passed it on. Ivery showed it me two nights ago. Nothing

like it ever sullied the columns of Boche journalism. No, it was a

perfectly final proof.... Now, Dick, it’s up to you to get after

Gresson.”

“Right,” I said. “I’m jolly glad I’m to start work again. I’m getting

fat from lack of exercise. I suppose you want me to catch Gresson out

in some piece of blackguardism and have him and Ivery snugly put away.”

“I don’t want anything of the kind,” he said very slowly and

distinctly. “You’ve got to attend very close to your instructions, I

cherish these two beauties as if they were my own white-headed boys. I

wouldn’t for the world interfere with their comfort and liberty. I want

them to go on corresponding with their friends. I want to give them

every facility.”

He burst out laughing at my mystified face.

“See here, Dick. How do we want to treat the Boche? Why, to fill him up

with all the cunningest lies and get him to act on them. Now here is

Moxon Ivery, who has always given them good information. They trust him

absolutely, and we would be fools to spoil their confidence. Only, if

we can find out Moxon’s methods, we can arrange to use them ourselves

and send noos in his name which isn’t quite so genooine. Every word he

dispatches goes straight to the Grand High Secret General Staff, and

old Hindenburg and Ludendorff put towels round their heads and cipher

it out. We want to encourage them to go on doing it. We’ll arrange to

send true stuff that don’t matter, so as they’ll continue to trust him,

and a few selected falsehoods that’ll matter like hell. It’s a game you

can’t play for ever, but with luck I propose to play it long enough to

confuse Fritz’s little plans.”

His face became serious and wore the air that our corps commander used

to have at the big pow-wow before a push.

“I’m not going to give you instructions, for you’re man enough to make

your own. But I can give you the general hang of the situation. You

tell Ivery you’re going North to inquire into industrial disputes at

first hand. That will seem to him natural and in line with your recent

behaviour. He’ll tell his people that you’re a guileless colonial who

feels disgruntled with Britain, and may come in useful. You’ll go to a

man of mine in Glasgow, a red-hot agitator who chooses that way of

doing his bit for his country. It’s a darned hard way and darned

dangerous. Through him you’ll get in touch with Gresson, and you’ll

keep alongside that bright citizen. Find out what he is doing, and get

a chance of following him. He must never suspect you, and for that

purpose you must be very near the edge of the law yourself. You go up

there as an unabashed pacifist and you’ll live with folk that will turn

your stomach. Maybe you’ll have to break some of these two-cent rules

the British Government have invented to defend the realm, and it’s up

to you not to get caught out.... Remember, you’ll get no help from me.

You’ve got to wise up about Gresson with the whole forces of the

British State arrayed officially against you. I guess it’s a steep

proposition, but you’re man enough to make good.”

As we shook hands, he added a last word. “You must take your own time,

but it’s not a case for slouching. Every day that passes Ivery is

sending out the worst kind of poison. The Boche is blowing up for a big

campaign in the field, and a big effort to shake the nerve and confuse

the judgement of our civilians. The whole earth’s war-weary, and we’ve

about reached the danger-point. There’s pretty big stakes hang on you,

Dick, for things are getting mighty delicate.”

I purchased a new novel in the shop and reached St Pancras in time to

have a cup of tea at the buffet. Ivery was at the bookstall buying an

evening paper. When we got into the carriage he seized my _Punch_ and

kept laughing and calling my attention to the pictures. As I looked at

him, I thought that he made a perfect picture of the citizen turned

countryman, going back of an evening to his innocent home. Everything

was right—his neat tweeds, his light spats, his spotted neckcloth, and

his aquascutum.

Not that I dared look at him much. What I had learned made me eager to

search his face, but I did not dare show any increased interest. I had

always been a little off-hand with him, for I had never much liked him,

so I had to keep on the same manner. He was as merry as a grig, full of

chat and very friendly and amusing. I remember he picked up the book I

had brought off that morning to read in the train—the second volume of

Hazlitt’s _Essays_, the last of my English classics—and discoursed so

wisely about books that I wished I had spent more time in his company

at Biggleswick.

“Hazlitt was the academic Radical of his day,” he said. “He is always

lashing himself into a state of theoretical fury over abuses he has

never encountered in person. Men who are up against the real thing save

their breath for action.”

That gave me my cue to tell him about my journey to the North. I said I

had learned a lot in Biggleswick, but I wanted to see industrial life

at close quarters. “Otherwise I might become like Hazlitt,” I said.

He was very interested and encouraging. “That’s the right way to set

about it,” he said. “Where were you thinking of going?”

I told him that I had half thought of Barrow, but decided to try

Glasgow, since the Clyde seemed to be a warm corner.

“Right,” he said. “I only wish I was coming with you. It’ll take you a

little while to understand the language. You’ll find a good deal of

senseless bellicosity among the workmen, for they’ve got parrot-cries

about the war as they used to have parrot-cries about their labour

politics. But there’s plenty of shrewd brains and sound hearts too. You

must write and tell me your conclusions.”

It was a warm evening and he dozed the last part of the journey. I

looked at him and wished I could see into the mind at the back of that

mask-like face. I counted for nothing in his eyes, not even enough for

him to want to make me a tool, and I was setting out to try to make a

tool of him. It sounded a forlorn enterprise. And all the while I was

puzzled with a persistent sense of recognition. I told myself it was

idiocy, for a man with a face like that must have hints of resemblance

to a thousand people. But the idea kept nagging at me till we reached

our destination.

As we emerged from the station into the golden evening I saw Mary

Lamington again. She was with one of the Weekes girls, and after the

Biggleswick fashion was bareheaded, so that the sun glinted from her

hair. Ivery swept his hat off and made her a pretty speech, while I

faced her steady eyes with the expressionlessness of the stage

conspirator.

“A charming child,” he observed as we passed on. “Not without a touch

of seriousness, too, which may yet be touched to noble issues.”

I considered, as I made my way to my final supper with the Jimsons,

that the said child was likely to prove a sufficiently serious business

for Mr Moxon Ivery before the game was out.