Mr. Standfast
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.”
CHAPTER XV
St Anton
Ten days later the porter Joseph Zimmer of Arosa, clad in the tough and
shapeless trousers of his class, but sporting an old velveteen
shooting-coat bequeathed to him by a former German master—speaking the
guttural tongue of the Grisons, and with all his belongings in one
massive rucksack, came out of the little station of St Anton and
blinked in the frosty sunshine. He looked down upon the little old
village beside its icebound lake, but his business was with the new
village of hotels and villas which had sprung up in the last ten years
south of the station. He made some halting inquiries of the station
people, and a cab-driver outside finally directed him to the place he
sought—the cottage of the Widow Summermatter, where resided an English
_interné_, one Peter Pienaar.
The porter Joseph Zimmer had had a long and roundabout journey. A
fortnight before he had worn the uniform of a British major-general. As
such he had been the inmate of an expensive Paris hotel, till one
morning, in grey tweed clothes and with a limp, he had taken the
Paris-Mediterranean Express with a ticket for an officers’ convalescent
home at Cannes. Thereafter he had declined in the social scale. At
Dijon he had been still an Englishman, but at Pontarlier he had become
an American bagman of Swiss parentage, returning to wind up his
father’s estate. At Berne he limped excessively, and at Zurich, at a
little back-street hotel, he became frankly the peasant. For he met a
friend there from whom he acquired clothes with that odd rank smell,
far stronger than Harris tweed, which marks the raiment of most Swiss
guides and all Swiss porters. He also acquired a new name and an old
aunt, who a little later received him with open arms and explained to
her friends that he was her brother’s son from Arosa who three winters
ago had hurt his leg wood-cutting and had been discharged from the
levy.
A kindly Swiss gentleman, as it chanced, had heard of the deserving
Joseph and interested himself to find him employment. The said
philanthropist made a hobby of the French and British prisoners
returned from Germany, and had in mind an officer, a crabbed South
African with a bad leg, who needed a servant. He was, it seemed, an
ill-tempered old fellow who had to be billeted alone, and since he
could speak German, he would be happier with a Swiss native. Joseph
haggled somewhat over the wages, but on his aunt’s advice he accepted
the job, and, with a very complete set of papers and a store of
ready-made reminiscences (it took him some time to swot up the names of
the peaks and passes he had traversed) set out for St Anton, having
dispatched beforehand a monstrously ill-spelt letter announcing his
coming. He could barely read and write, but he was good at maps, which
he had studied carefully, and he noticed with satisfaction that the
valley of St Anton gave easy access to Italy.
As he journeyed south the reflections of that porter would have
surprised his fellow travellers in the stuffy third-class carriage. He
was thinking of a conversation he had had some days before in a café at
Dijon with a young Englishman bound for Modane....
We had bumped up against each other by chance in that strange flitting
when all went to different places at different times, asking nothing of
each other’s business. Wake had greeted me rather shamefacedly and had
proposed dinner together.
I am not good at receiving apologies, and Wake’s embarrassed me more
than they embarrassed him. “I’m a bit of a cad sometimes,” he said.
“You know I’m a better fellow than I sounded that night, Hannay.”