Mr. Standfast
you know plenty about that mind.”
“I wonder,” said Sir Walter. “How can you know a mind which has no
characteristics except that it is wholly and supremely competent? Mere
mental powers won’t give us a clue. We want to know the character which
is behind all the personalities. Above all we want to know its foibles.
If we had only a hint of some weakness we might make a plan.”
“Well, let’s set down all we know,” I cried, for the more I argued the
keener I grew. I told them in some detail the story of the night in the
Coolin and what I had heard there.
“There’s the two names _Chelius_ and _Bommaerts_. The man spoke them in
the same breath as _Elfenbein_, so they must be associated with Ivery’s
gang. You’ve got to get the whole Secret Service of the Allies busy to
fit a meaning to these two words. Surely to goodness you’ll find
something! Remember those names don’t belong to the Ivery part, but to
the big game behind all the different disguises.... Then there’s the
talk about the Wild Birds and the Cage Birds. I haven’t a guess at what
it means. But it refers to some infernal gang, and among your piles of
records there must be some clue. You set the intelligence of two
hemispheres busy on the job. You’ve got all the machinery, and it’s my
experience that if even one solitary man keeps chewing on at a problem
he discovers something.”
My enthusiasm was beginning to strike sparks from Macgillivray. He was
looking thoughtful now, instead of despondent.
“There might be something in that,” he said, “but it’s a far-out
chance.”
“Of course it’s a far-out chance, and that’s all we’re ever going to
get from Ivery. But we’ve taken a bad chance before and won.... Then
you’ve all that you know about Ivery here. Go through his _dossier_
with a small-tooth comb and I’ll bet you find something to work on.
Blenkiron, you’re a man with a cool head. You admit we’ve a sporting
chance.”
“Sure, Dick. He’s fixed things so that the lines are across the track,
but we’ll clear somehow. So far as John S. Blenkiron is concerned he’s
got just one thing to do in this world, and that’s to follow the yellow
dog and have him neatly and cleanly tidied up. I’ve got a stack of
personal affronts to settle. I was easy fruit and he hasn’t been very
respectful. You can count me in, Dick.”
“Then we’re agreed,” I cried. “Well, gentlemen, it’s up to you to
arrange the first stage. You’ve some pretty solid staff work to put in
before you get on the trail.”
“And you?” Sir Walter asked.
“I’m going back to my brigade. I want a rest and a change. Besides, the
first stage is office work, and I’m no use for that. But I’ll be
waiting to be summoned, and I’ll come like a shot as soon as you hoick
me out. I’ve got a presentiment about this thing. I know there’ll be a
finish and that I’ll be in at it, and I think it will be a desperate,
bloody business too.”
I found Mary’s eyes fixed upon me, and in them I read the same thought.
She had not spoken a word, but had sat on the edge of a chair, swinging
a foot idly, one hand playing with an ivory fan. She had given me my
old orders and I looked to her for confirmation of the new.
“Miss Lamington, you are the wisest of the lot of us. What do you say?”
She smiled—that shy, companionable smile which I had been picturing to
myself through all the wanderings of the past month.
“I think you are right. We’ve a long way to go yet, for the Valley of
Humiliation comes only half-way in the _Pilgrim’s Progress_. The next
stage was Vanity Fair. I might be of some use there, don’t you think?”
I remember the way she laughed and flung back her head like a gallant
boy.
“The mistake we’ve all been making,” she said, “is that our methods are
too _terre-à-terre_. We’ve a poet to deal with, a great poet, and we
must fling our imaginations forward to catch up with him. His strength
is his unexpectedness, you know, and we won’t beat him by plodding
only. I believe the wildest course is the wisest, for it’s the most
likely to intersect his.... Who’s the poet among us?”
“Peter,” I said. “But he’s pinned down with a game leg in Germany. All
the same we must rope him in.”
By this time we had all cheered up, for it is wonderful what a tonic
there is in a prospect of action. The butler brought in tea, which it
was Bullivant’s habit to drink after dinner. To me it seemed fantastic
to watch a slip of a girl pouring it out for two grizzled and
distinguished servants of the State and one battered soldier—as
decorous a family party as you would ask to see—and to reflect that all
four were engaged in an enterprise where men’s lives must be reckoned
at less than thistledown.
After that we went upstairs to a noble Georgian drawing-room and Mary
played to us. I don’t care two straws for music from an
instrument—unless it be the pipes or a regimental band—but I dearly
love the human voice. But she would not sing, for singing to her, I
fancy, was something that did not come at will, but flowed only like a
bird’s note when the mood favoured. I did not want it either. I was
content to let “Cherry Ripe” be the one song linked with her in my
memory.
It was Macgillivray who brought us back to business.
“I wish to Heaven there was one habit of mind we could definitely
attach to him and to no one else.” (At this moment “He” had only one
meaning for us.)
“You can’t do nothing with his mind,” Blenkiron drawled. “You can’t
loose the bands of Orion, as the Bible says, or hold Leviathan with a
hook. I reckoned I could and made a mighty close study of his de-vices.
But the darned cuss wouldn’t stay put. I thought I had tied him down to
the double bluff, and he went and played the triple bluff on me.
There’s nothing doing that line.”
A memory of Peter recurred to me.
“What about the ‘blind spot’?” I asked, and I told them old Peter’s pet
theory. “Every man that God made has his weak spot somewhere, some flaw
in his character which leaves a dull patch in his brain. We’ve got to
find that out, and I think I’ve made a beginning.”
Macgillivray in a sharp voice asked my meaning.
“He’s in a funk ... of something. Oh, I don’t mean he’s a coward. A man
in his trade wants the nerve of a buffalo. He could give us all points
in courage. What I mean is that he’s not clean white all through. There
are yellow streaks somewhere in him.... I’ve given a good deal of
thought to this courage business, for I haven’t got a great deal of it
myself. Not like Peter, I mean. I’ve got heaps of soft places in me.
I’m afraid of being drowned for one thing, or of getting my eyes shot
out. Ivery’s afraid of bombs—at any rate he’s afraid of bombs in a big
city. I once read a book which talked about a thing called
_agoraphobia_. Perhaps it’s that.... Now if we know that weak spot it
helps us in our work. There are some places he won’t go to, and there
are some things he can’t do—not well, anyway. I reckon that’s useful.”
“Ye-es,” said Macgillivray. “Perhaps it’s not what you’d call a burning
and a shining light.”
“There’s another chink in his armour,” I went on. “There’s one person
in the world he can never practise his transformations on, and that’s
me. I shall always know him again, though he appeared as Sir Douglas
Haig. I can’t explain why, but I’ve got a feel in my bones about it. I
didn’t recognise him before, for I thought he was dead, and the nerve
in my brain which should have been looking for him wasn’t working. But
I’m on my guard now, and that nerve’s functioning at full power.
Whenever and wherever and howsoever we meet again on the face of the
earth, it will be ‘Dr Livingstone, I presume’ between him and me.”
“That is better,” said Macgillivray. “If we have any luck, Hannay, it
won’t be long till we pull you out of His Majesty’s Forces.”
Mary got up from the piano and resumed her old perch on the arm of Sir
Walter’s chair.
“There’s another blind spot which you haven’t mentioned.” It was a cool
evening, but I noticed that her cheeks had suddenly flushed.
“Last week Mr Ivery asked me to marry him,” she said.
PART II
CHAPTER XII
I Become a Combatant Once More
I returned to France on 13 September, and took over my old brigade on
the 19th of the same month. We were shoved in at the Polygon Wood on
the 26th, and after four days got so badly mauled that we were brought
out to refit. On 7 October, very much to my surprise, I was given
command of a division and was on the fringes of the Ypres fighting
during the first days of November. From that front we were hurried down
to Cambrai in support, but came in only for the last backwash of that
singular battle. We held a bit of the St Quentin sector till just
before Christmas, when we had a spell of rest in billets, which
endured, so far as I was concerned, till the beginning of January, when
I was sent off on the errand which I shall presently relate.
That is a brief summary of my military record in the latter part of
1917. I am not going to enlarge on the fighting. Except for the days of
the Polygon Wood it was neither very severe nor very distinguished, and
you will find it in the history books. What I have to tell of here is
my own personal quest, for all the time I was living with my mind
turned two ways. In the morasses of the Haanebeek flats, in the slimy
support lines at Zonnebeke, in the tortured uplands about Flesquieres,
and in many other odd places I kept worrying at my private conundrum.
At night I would lie awake thinking of it, and many a toss I took into
shell-holes and many a time I stepped off the duckboards, because my
eyes were on a different landscape. Nobody ever chewed a few wretched
clues into such a pulp as I did during those bleak months in Flanders
and Picardy.
For I had an instinct that the thing was desperately grave, graver even
than the battle before me. Russia had gone headlong to the devil, Italy
had taken it between the eyes and was still dizzy, and our own
prospects were none too bright. The Boche was getting uppish and with
some cause, and I foresaw a rocky time ahead till America could line up
with us in the field. It was the chance for the Wild Birds, and I used
to wake in a sweat to think what devilry Ivery might be engineering. I
believe I did my proper job reasonably well, but I put in my most
savage thinking over the other. I remember how I used to go over every
hour of every day from that June night in the Cotswolds till my last
meeting with Bullivant in London, trying to find a new bearing. I
should probably have got brain-fever, if I hadn’t had to spend most of
my days and nights fighting a stiffish battle with a very watchful Hun.
That kept my mind balanced, and I dare say it gave an edge to it; for
during those months I was lucky enough to hit on a better scent than
Bullivant and Macgillivray and Blenkiron, pulling a thousand wires in
their London offices.
I will set down in order of time the various incidents in this private
quest of mine. The first was my meeting with Geordie Hamilton. It
happened just after I rejoined the brigade, when I went down to have a
look at our Scots Fusilier battalion. The old brigade had been roughly
handled on 31st July, and had had to get heavy drafts to come anywhere
near strength. The Fusiliers especially were almost a new lot, formed
by joining our remnants to the remains of a battalion in another
division and bringing about a dozen officers from the training unit at
home.
I inspected the men and my eyes caught sight of a familiar face. I
asked his name and the colonel got it from the sergeant-major. It was
Lance-Corporal George Hamilton.
Now I wanted a new batman, and I resolved then and there to have my old
antagonist. That afternoon he reported to me at brigade headquarters.
As I looked at that solid bandy-legged figure, standing as stiff to