Mr. Standfast
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.