Mr. Standfast, John Buchan [ebook pdf reader for pc .txt] 📗

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 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 upcountry 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