Chapter Fourteen. Mr Blenkiron Discourses on Love and War

Mr. Standfast

by John Buchan

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 Chateau 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
realized 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 Elysees
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 Honore, and
deposited myself, according to instructions, at the Hotel 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 organization 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 Mezieres. 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 Mezieres. 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 Chateau 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 Chateau 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 Petain presenting military medals. There wasn't a
scratch or a ripple on its surface. But I got busy with it, and see
there!' He pointed out two names. The writing was a set of key-words
we did not know, but two names stood out which I knew too well. They
were 'Bommaerts' and 'Chelius'.

'My God!' I cried, 'that's uncanny. It only shows that if you
chew long enough - - .'

'Dick,' said Mary, 'you mustn't say that again. At the best
it's an ugly metaphor, and you're making it a platitude.'

'Who is Ivery anyhow?' 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 civilized 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
cafe 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 Colonel from the IIIeme 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 Valliere - 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 organized, 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 Stubenvogel,' 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 organized 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 espoused 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.'