Mr. Standfast, John Buchan [best large ebook reader .TXT] 📗

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 Vallière—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 organised, 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 Stubenvögel,” 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 organised 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