5 Further Adventures of the Same This morning there was a touch of frost and a nip in the air which stirred my blood and put me in buoyant spirits. I forgot my precarious position and the long road I had still to travel. I came down to breakfast in great form to find Peter's even temper badly ruffled. He had remembered Stoom in the night and disliked the memory. This he muttered to me as we rubbed shoulders at the dining-room door. Peter and I got no opportunity for private talk. The Lieutenant was with us all the time, and at night we were locked in our rooms. Peter had discovered this through trying to get out to find matches, for he had the bad habit of smoking in bed. Our guide started on the telephone and announced that we were to be taken to see a prisoner's camp. In the afternoon I was to go somewhere with Stoom, but the morning was for sight-seeing. You will see, he told us, how merciful is a great people. You will also see some of the hated English in our power. That will delight you. They are the forerunners of all their nation. We drove in a taxi through the suburbs and then over a stretch of flat market-garden-like country to a low rise of wooded hills. After an hour's ride we entered the gate of what looked like a big reformatory or hospital. I believe it had been a home for destitute children. There were sentries at the gate and massive concentric circles of barbed wire through which we passed under an arch that was let down like a portcullis at nightfall. The Lieutenant showed his permit and we ran the car into a brick-paved yard and marched through a lot more sentries to the office of the commandant. He was away from home and we were welcomed by his deputy, a pale young man with a head nearly bald. There were introductions in German which our guide translated into Dutch, and a lot of elegant speeches about how Germany was foremost in humanity as well as Marshal Valor. Then they stood us sandwiches and beer and we formed a procession for a tour of inspection. There were two doctors, both mild-looking men and spectacles, and a couple of warders, under officers of the good old burly, bullying sort I knew well. That was the cement which kept the German army together. Her men were nothing to boast of on the average. No more were the officers, even in crack cores like the guards and the Brandenburgers, but they seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of hard, competent NCOs. We marched around the wash houses, the recreation ground, the kitchens, the hospital. With nobody in it saved one chap with the flu. It didn't seem to be badly done. This place was entirely for officers and I expect it was a show place where American visitors were taken. If half the stories one heard were true there were some pretty ghastly prisons away in South and East Germany. I didn't half like the business. To be a prisoner has always seemed to me about the worst thing that could happen to a man. The sight of German prisoners used to give me a bad feeling inside, whereas I looked at dead bosses with nothing but satisfaction. Besides there was the off chance that I might be recognized. So I kept very much in the shadow whenever we passed anybody in the corridors. The few we met passed us incuriously. They saluted the deputy commandant but scarcely wasted a glance on us. No doubt they thought we were inquisitive Germans come to gloat over them.  They seemed thin too. I expect the food for all the commandant's talk was nothing to boast of. In one room people were writing letters.  In another room a fellow was lecturing on something to a dozen hearers and drawing figures on a blackboard. Some were an ordinary khaki, others in any old thing they could pick up, and most wore great coats. Your blood gets thin when you have nothing to do but hope against hope and think of your pals and the old days. I was moving along, listening with half an ear to the lieutenant's prattle and the loud explanations of the deputy commandant when I pitchforked into what might have been the end of my business. We were going through a sort of convalescent room where people were sitting who had been in hospital. It was a big place, a little warmer than the rest of the building, but still abominably fuggie. There were about half a dozen men in the room reading and playing games. They looked at us with lackluster eyes for a moment, and then returned to their occupations. Being convalescence I suppose they were not expected to get up and salute. All but one who was playing patience at a little table by which we passed. I was feeling very bad about the thing, for I hated to see these good fellows locked away in this infernal German hole when they might have been giving the Bosch's desserts at the front. The commandant went first with Peter, who had developed a great interest in prisons. Then came our lieutenant with one of the doctors, then a couple of warders, and then the second doctor and myself. I was absent-minded at the moment, and was last in the queue. The patient's player suddenly looked up and I saw his face. I'm hanged if it wasn't Dolly Riddle, who was our brigade machine-gun officer at Luz. I had heard that the Germans had got him when they blew up a mine at the quarries. I had to act pretty quick, where his mouth was a scape, and I saw he was going to speak. The doctor was a yard ahead of me. I stumbled and spilt his cards on the floor. Then I kneeled to pick them up and gripped his knee. His head bent to help me, and I spoke low in his ear. I'm Hene, all right, for God's sake, don't wink an eye. I'm here on a secret job. The doctor had turned to see what was the matter. I got a few more words in. Cheerable, men. We're winning, hands down. Then I began to talk excited Dutch and finished the collection of the cards. Dolly was playing his part well, smiling as if he was amused by the antics of a monkey. The others were coming back. The deputy commandant was an angry light in his dull eye. Speaking to the prisoners is forbidden, he shouted. I looked blankly at him till the lieutenant translated. What kind of fellow is he? said Dolly in English to the doctor. He spoils my game and then jabbers high Dutch at me. Officially I knew English, and that speech of Dolly's gave me my cue.  After that I had to act a bit. The last place we visited was the close confinement part, where prisoners were kept as a punishment for some breach of the rules. They looked cheerless enough, but I pretended to gloat over the site, and said so to the lieutenant who passed it on to the others. I have rarely in my life felt such a cad. On the way home, the lieutenant discussed a lot about prisoners and detention camps, for at one time he had been on duty at Reuben. Peter, who had been in quad more than once in his life, was deeply interested and kept on questioning him. Among other things he told us was that they often put bogus prisoners among the rest who acted as spies. If any plot to escape was hatched, these fellows got into it and encouraged it. They never interfered till the attempt was actually made, and then they had them on toast. There was nothing the Bosch liked so much as an excuse for sending a poor devil to solitary. That afternoon Peter and I separated. He was left behind with lieutenant, and I was sent off to the station with my bag in the company of a land-sturm sergeant. Peter was very cross, and I didn't care for the look of things, but I brightened up when I heard I was going somewhere with Stoom. If he wanted to see me again, he must think me of some use, and if he was going to use me, he was bound to let me into his game. I'd like Stoom about as much as a dog likes a scorpion, but I hankered for his society. At the station platform where the ornament of the land-sturm saved me all the trouble about tickets, I could not see my companion. I stood waiting while a great crowd, mostly of soldiers, swayed past me, and filled all the front carriages. An officer spoke to me gruffly and told me to stand aside behind a wooden rail. I obeyed, and suddenly found Stoom's eyes looking down at me. You're no German, he asked sharply. A dozen words, I said carelessly. I've been to Windhoek and learned enough to ask for my dinner. Peter, my friend, speaks it a bit. So, said Stoom, fell, get into the carriage. Not that one, there, thick head! I did as I was bid. He followed, and the door was locked behind us. The precaution was needless, for the sight of Stoom's profile at the platform end would have kept out the most brazen. I wondered if I had woken up his suspicions. I must be on my guard to show no signs of intelligence if he suddenly tried me in German. And that wouldn't be easy, for I knew it as well as I knew Dutch. We moved into the country, but the windows were blurred with frost, and I saw nothing of the landscape. Stoom was busy with papers and let me alone. I read on a notice that one was forbidden to smoke, so to show my ignorance of German I pulled out my pipe. Stoom raised his head, saw what I was doing, and gruffly bade me put it away, as if he were an old lady that disliked the smell of tobacco. In half an hour I got very bored, for I had nothing to read and my pipe was verboten. People passed now and then in the corridors, but no one offered to enter. No doubt they saw the big figure in uniform and thought he was the deuce of a staff swell who wanted solitude. I thought of stretching my legs in the corridor, and was just getting up to do it when somebody slid the door back and a big figure blocked the light. He was wearing a heavy ulster and a green felt hat. He saluted Stoom, who looked up angrily, and smiled pleasantly on us both. Say, gentlemen, he said, have you room in here for a little one? I guess I'm about smoked out of my car by your brave soldiers. I've gotten a delicate stomach. Stoom had risen with a brow of wrath, and looked as if he were going to pitch the intruder off the train. Then he seemed to halt and collect himself, and the other's face broke into a friendly grin. Why, it's Colonel Stoom! he cried. He pronounced it like the first syllable in stomach. Very pleased to meet you again, Colonel. I had the honor of making your acquaintance at our embassy. I reckon Ambassador Gerard didn't cotton to our conversation that night, and the newcomer plumped himself down in the corner opposite me. I had been pretty certain I would run across blank iron somewhere in Germany, but I didn't think it would be so soon. There he sat, staring at me with his full, unseeing eyes, rolling out platitudes to Stoom, who was nearly bursting in his effort to keep civil. I looked moody and suspicious, which I took to be the right line. Things are getting a bit dead at Solonica, said Mr. Blank Iron, by way of a conversational opening. Stoom pointed to a notice which warned officers to refrain from discussing military operations with mixed company in a railway carriage. Sorry, said Blank Iron. I can't read that tombstone language of yours, but I reckon that that notice to trespassers, whatever it signifies, don't apply to you and me. I take it this gentleman is in your party. I sat and scowled, fixing the American with suspicious eyes. He's a Dutchman, said Stoom, South African Dutch, and he is not happy, for he does not like to hear English spoken. We'll shake on that, said Blank Iron cordially, but who said I spoke English? It's good American, cheer up, friend. For it isn't the call that makes the big wapiti, as they say out west in my country.  The Colonel can tell you that. I daresay he could, but at that moment we slowed down at a station, and Stoom got up to leave. Good day to you, Herr Blank Iron. He cried over his shoulder. If you'll consider your comfort, don't talk English to strange travellers. They don't distinguish between the different brands. I followed him in a hurry, but was recalled by Blank Iron's voice. Say, friend, he shouted, you've left your grip. And he handed me my bag from the luggage rack. But he showed no sign of recognition, and the last I saw of him was sitting sunk in a corner with his head on his chest as if he were going to sleep. He was a man who kept up his parts well. There was a motor-car waiting, one of the grey military kind, and we started at a terrific pace over bad forest roads. Stoom had put away his papers in a portfolio, and flung me a few sentences on the journey. I haven't made up my mind about your brand, he announced. You may be a fool or a naïve or a good man.  And if I am a fool, I asked, send you to the east or a divine. You will be a respectable cannon fodder. You cannot do that unless I consent, I said. Can't we? He said, smiling wickedly.   You are in our power, my friend, to do precisely what we like with you. He was silent for a second, and then he said meditatively.  You may be a scoundrel. Some kinds of scoundrel are useful enough. Other kinds are strung up with a rope. Of that, we shall know more soon. And if I am a good man, you will be given a chance to serve Germany, the proudest privilege a mortal man can have. The strange man said this, with a ringing sincerity in his voice that impressed me. The car swung out from the trees into a park lined with saplings, and in the twilight I saw before me a bigish house like an overgrown Swiss chalet. There was a kind of archway with a sham portcullis, and a terrace with battlements which looked as if they were made of stucco. We drew up at a gothic front door where a thin middle-aged man in a shooting jacket was waiting. As we moved into the lighted hall, I got a good look at our host. He was very lean and brown, with the stoop in the shoulder that one gets from being constantly on horseback. He had untidy, grizzled hair and a ragged beard, and a pair of pleasant, short-sighted brown eyes. Welcome, my Colonel, he said. Is this the friend you spoke of? This is the Dutchman, said Stoom. His name is Bront. Bront, you see before you Herr Gordian. I knew the name, of course. There weren't many in my profession that didn't. He was one of the biggest railway engineers in the world, the man who had built the Baghdad and Syrian railways and the new lines in German East. I suppose he was about the greatest living authority on tropical construction. He knew the East, and he knew Africa. Clearly, I had been brought down for him to put me through my paces. A blond maidservant took me to my room, which had a bare polished floor, a stove, and windows that, unlike most of the German kind I had sampled, seemed made to open. When I had washed, I descended to the hall, which was hung round with trophies of travel, like dervish jebaz and messiah shields, and one or two good buffalo heads. Presently a bell was rung, Stoom appeared with his host, and we went in to supper. I was jolly hungry and would have made a good meal if I hadn't constantly had to keep jogging my wits. The other two talked in German, and when a question was put to me, Stoom translated. The first thing I had to do was to pretend I didn't know German, and look listlessly round the room while they were talking. The second was to miss not a word, for there lay my chance. The third was to be ready to answer questions at any moment, and to show in the answering that I had not followed the previous conversation. Likewise, I must not prove myself a fool in these answers, for I had to convince them that I was useful. It took some doing, and I felt like a witness in the box under a stiff cross-examination, or a man trying to play three games of chess at once. I heard Stoom telling Gordian the gist of my plan. The engineer shook his head. Too late, he said, it should have been done at the beginning. We neglected Africa. You know that reason thy. Stoom laughed. Devon in heim. Perhaps, but her charm works well enough. Gordian glanced towards me while I was busy with an orange salad. I have much to tell you of that, but it can wait. Your friend is right in one thing. Uganda is a vital spot for the English, and a blow there will make their whole fabric shiver. But how can we strike? They have still the coast, and our supplies grow daily smaller. We can send no reinforcements, but have we used all the local resources? That is what I cannot satisfy myself about. Zimmerman says we have. But Tressor thinks differently, and now we have this fellow coming out of the void with a story which confirms my doubt. He seems to know his job, you try him. Thereupon Gordian said about questioning me, and his questions were very thorough. I knew just enough and no more to get through, but I think I came out with credit. You see, I have a capacious memory, and in my time I had met scores of hunters and pioneers, and listened to their yarns, so I could pretend to knowledge of a place even when I hadn't been there. Besides, I had once been on the point of undertaking a job up Tanganika Way, and I had got up that countryside pretty accurately. You say that, with our help, you can make trouble for the British on the three borders? Gordian asked at length. I can spread the fire if someone else will kindle it, I said. But there are thousands of tribes with no affinities. They are all African. You can bear me out. All African peoples are alike in one thing. They can go mad, and the madness of one infects the others. The English know this well enough. Where would you start the fire? he asked. Where the fuel is driest, up in the north among the Muslimen peoples. But there you must help me. I know nothing about Islam, and I gather that you do. Why? he said. Because of what you have done already, I answered. Stum had translated all this time, and had given the sense of my words very fairly. But with my last answer he took liberties. What he gave was, because the Dutchman thinks that we have some big card in dealing with the Muslim world. Then lowering his voice and raising his eyebrows, he said some word like unemantel. The other looked with a quick glance of apprehension at me. We had better continue our talk in private, Herr Colonel. He said, if Herr Brandt will forgive us, we will leave him for a little to entertain himself. He pushed the cigar-box towards me, and the two got up and left the room. I pulled my chair up to the stove, and would have liked to drop off to sleep. The tension of the talk at supper had made me very tired. I was accepted by these men for exactly what I professed to be. Stum might suspect me of being a rascal, but it was a Dutch rascal. But all the same I was skating on thin ice. I could not sink myself utterly in the part, for if I did I would get no good out of being there. I had to keep my wits going all the time, and join the appearance and manners of a backfelled boar with the mentality of a British intelligence officer. Any moment the two parts might clash and I would be faced with the most alert and deadly suspicion. There would be no mercy from Stum. That large man was beginning to fascinate me, even though I hated him. Gordian was clearly a good fellow, a white man, and a gentleman. I could have worked with him, for he belonged to my own totem. But the other was an incarnation of all that makes Germany detested, and yet he wasn't altogether the ordinary German, and I couldn't help admiring him. I noticed he neither smoked nor drank. His grossness was apparently not in the way of fleshy appetites. Cruelty for all I had heard of him in German south-west was his hobby. But there were other things in him, some of them good, and he had that kind of crazy patriotism which becomes a religion. I wondered why he had not some high command in the field, for he had had the name of a good soldier. But probably he was a big man in his own line, whatever it was, for the undersecretary fellow had talked small in his presence. And so great a man as Gordian clearly respected him. There must be no lack of brains inside that funny, pyramidal head. As I sat beside the stove I was casting back to think if I had got the slightest clue to my real job. There seemed to be nothing so far. Sturm had talked of a von Einheim woman who was interested in his department, perhaps the same woman as the Hilda he had mentioned the day before to the undersecretary. There was not much in that.  If I could have caught the word Sturm had whispered to Gordian which made him start and look a skance at me. But I had only heard a gurgle of something like Unmöntel, which wasn't any German word that I knew. The heat put me into a half dose and I began dreamily to wonder what other people were doing. Where had blank iron been posting to in that train? And what was he up to at this moment? He had been hobnobbing with ambassadors and swells. I wondered if he had found out anything. What was Peter doing? I fervently hoped he was behaving himself, for I doubted if Peter had really tumbled to the delicacy of our job. Where was Sandy, too? As like as not, bucketing in the hold of some Greek coaster in the Aegean. Then I thought of my battalion, somewhere between Holok and Labazi, hammering at the Bosch, while I was five hundred miles or so inside the Bosch frontier. It was a comic reflection, so comic that it woke me up. After trying in vain to find a way of stoking that stove, for it was a cold night, I got up and walked about the room. There were portraits of two decent old fellows, probably Gordian's parents. There were enlarged photographs, too, of engineering works, and a good picture of Bismarck. And close to the stove there was a case of maps mounted on rollers. I pulled one out at random. It was a geological map of Germany, and with some trouble I found out where I was. I was an enormous distance from my goal, and moreover I was clean off the road to the east. To go there I must first go to Bavaria, and then into Austria. I noticed the Danube flowing eastwards, and remembered that that was one way to Constantinople. Then I tried another map. This one covered a big area, all Europe from the Rhine and as far east as Persia. I guess that it was meant to show the Baghdad Railway and the through routes from Germany to Mesopotamia. There were markings on it, and as I looked closer I saw that there were dates scribbled in blue pencil, as if to denote the stages of a journey. The dates began in Europe, and continued right on into Asia Minor, and then south to Syria. For a moment my heart jumped, for I thought I had fallen by accident on the clue I wanted. But I never got that map examined. I heard footsteps in the corridor, and very gently I let the map roll up and turned away. When the door opened I was bending over the stove trying to get a light from my pipe. It was Goryen to bid me join him in Stum in his study. On our way there he put a kindly hand on my shoulder. I think he thought I was bullied by Stum and wanted to tell me that he was my friend, and he had no other language than a pat on the back. The soldier was in his old position with his elbows on the mantelpiece, and his formidable great jaw stuck out. Listen to me, he said. Herr Gordian and I are inclined to make use of you. You may be a charlatan. In which case you will be in the devil of a mess, and have yourself to thank for it.  V will cede to that.  But if you are a good man you will have a fair chance, and if you succeed V will not forget it.  I made shift to stand at attention and salute. Gordian spoke in a pleasant voice as if he wanted to atone for Stum's imperiousness. We are men who love our fatherland, Herr Brant, he said. You are not of that fatherland, but at least you hate its enemies. Therefore we are allies, and trust each other like allies. Our victory is ordained by God, and we are none of us more than his instruments. Stum translated in a sentence, and his voice was quite solemn. He held up his right hand, and so did Gordian, like a man taking an oath, or a person blessing his congregation. Then I realized something of the might of Germany. She produced good and bad, cadds and gentlemen. But she could put a bit of the fanatic into them all. Recording by Zachary Brewstergeis, Greenbelt, Maryland, April 2007. Green Mantle by John Buchan Chapter 6 The Indiscretions of the Same I was standing stark naked next morning in that icy bedroom trying to bathe in about a quart of water when Stum entered. He strode up to me and stared me in the face. I was half ahead shorter than him to begin with, and a man does not feel his stoutest when he has no clothes, so he had the pull on me in every way.  I pulled the bed cover round me, for I was shivering with cold, and the German idea of a towel is a pocket handkerchief. I own I was in a pretty blue funk.  With my best effort at surliness I asked what we had done. You lied because you said you know no German. Apparently your friend knows enough to talk treason and blasphemy. This gave me back some heart. I told you I knew a dozen words, but I told you Peter could talk it a bit. I told you that yesterday at the station. Fervently I blessed my luck for that casual remark. He evidently remembered, for his tone became a trifle more civil.  If one of you is a scoundrel, why not the other? I take no responsibility for Peter, I said. I felt I was a cad in saying it, but that was the bargain we had made at the start. I have known him for years as a great hunter and a brave man. I knew he fought well against the English, but more I cannot tell you. You have to judge him for yourself. What has he done? I was told for Stoom had got that morning on the telephone, while telling it he was kind enough to allow me to put on my trousers. It was just the sort of thing I might have foreseen. Peter, left alone, had become first bored and then reckless. He had persuaded the lieutenant to take him out to supper at a big Berlin restaurant. There, inspired by the lights and music, novel things for a backveld hunter. And no doubt bored stiff by his company, he had proceeded to get drunk. That had happened in my experience with Peter about once in every three years, and it always happened for the same reason. Peter, bored and solitary in a town, went on the spree. He had a head like a rock, but he got to the required condition by wild mixing. He was quite a gentleman in his cups, and not in the least violent, but he was apt to be very free with his tongue, and that was what occurred at the Franciscana. He had begun by insulting the emperor, it seemed. He drank his health, but said he reminded him of a warthog, and thereby scarified the lieutenant's soul. Then an officer, some tremendous swell at an adjoining table, had objected to his talking so loud, and Peter had replied insolently in respectable German. After that things became mixed. There was some kind of a fight, during which Peter columnated the German army and all its female ancestry. How he wasn't shot or run through, I can't imagine, except that the lieutenant loudly proclaimed that he was a crazy bower. Anyhow the upshot was that Peter was marched off to jail, and I was left in a pretty pickle. I don't believe a word of it, I said firmly. I had most of my clothes on now and felt more courageous. It is all a plot to get him into disgrace and draft him off to the front. Stoom did not storm as I expected, but smiled. That was always his destiny, he said, ever since I saw him. He was no use to us except as a man with a rifle. Cannon fodder, nothing else.  I wash my hands of him, I said. If what you say of his folly is true I have no part in it, but he was my companion, and I wish him well. What do you propose to do with him? We will keep him under our eye, he said, with a wicked twist of the mouth. I have a notion that there is more at the back of this than appears. We will investigate the antecedents of Herr Pinar. And you too, my friend, on you we also have our eye. I did the best thing I could have done for what with anxiety and disgust I lost my temper. Look here, sir, I cried. I've had about enough of this. I came to Germany, abominating the English, and burning to strike a blow for you. But you haven't given me much calls to love you. For the last two days I've had nothing before me but suspicion and insult. The only decent man I've met is Herr Gaudien. It's because I believe there are many in Germany like him that I am prepared to go on with this business and do the best I can, but by God I wouldn't raise my little finger for your sake. He looked at me very steadily for a minute. That sounds like honesty, he said at last, in a civil voice.  I was saved for the moment, but in very low spirits. What on earth would happen to poor old Peter? I could do nothing even if I wanted and besides my first duty was to my mission. I had made this very clear to him at Lisbon, and he had agreed, but all the same it was a beastly reflection. Here was that ancient worthy left to the tender mercies of the people he most detested on earth. My only comfort was that they couldn't do very much with him. If they sent him to the front, which was the worst they could do, he would escape, for I would have backed him to get through any mortal lines. It wasn't much fun for me, either, only when I was to be deprived of it did I realize how much his company had meant to me. I was absolutely alone now and I didn't like it. I seemed to have about as much chance of joining Blankiron and Sandy as of flying to the moon. After breakfast I was told to get ready. When I asked where I was going, Stoom advised me to mind my own business, but I remembered that last night he had talked of taking me home with him and giving me my orders. I wondered where his home was. Goudian patted me on the back when we started and wrung my hand. He was a capital good fellow, and it made me feel sick to think that I was humbugging him. We got into the same big gray car with Stoom's servant sitting beside the chauffeur. It was a morning of hard frost, the bare fields were white with rhyme, and the fir trees powdered like a wedding-cake. We took a different road from the night before, and after a run of half a dozen miles came to a little town with a big railway station. It was a junction on some main line, and after five minutes waiting we found our train. Once again we were alone in the carriage. Stoom must have had some colossal graft for the train was crowded. I had another three hours of complete boredom. I dared not smoke and could do nothing but stare out of the window. We soon got into hilly country, where a good deal of snow was lying. It was the twenty-third day of December, and even in wartime one had a sort of feel of Christmas. You could see girls carrying evergreens, and when we stopped at a station soldiers on leave had all the air of holiday-making. The middle of Germany was a cheerier place than Berlin or the western parts. I liked the look of the old peasants, and the women in their neat Sunday best, but I noticed too how pinched they were. Here in the country, where no neutral tourists came, there was not the same stage management as in the capital. Stoom made an attempt to talk to me on the journey. I could see his aim. Before this he had cross-examined me, but now he wanted to draw me into ordinary conversation. He had no notion how to do it.  That is the weakness of the German. He has no gift for laying himself alongside different types of men. He is such a hard-shelled being that he cannot put out feelers to his kind. He may have plenty of brains, as Stoom had, but he has the porous notion of psychology of any of God's creatures. In Germany only the Jew can get outside himself, and that is why, if you look into the matter, you will find that the Jew is at the back of most German enterprises. After midday we stopped at a station for luncheon. We had a very good meal in the restaurant, and when we were finishing two officers entered. Stoom got up and saluted, and went aside to talk to them. Then he came back and made me follow him to a waiting room, where he told me to stay till he fetched me. I noticed that he called a porter and had the door locked when he went out. It was a chilly place with no fire, and I kicked my heels there for twenty minutes. I was living by the hour now and did not trouble to worry about this strange behavior. There was a volume of timetables on a shelf, and I turned the pages idly till I struck a big railway map. Then it occurred to me to find out where we were going. I had heard Stoom take my ticket for a place called Schvondorf, and after a lot of searching I found it. It was away south in Bavaria, and so far as I could make out less than fifty miles from the Danube. That cheered me enormously. If Stoom lived there he would most likely start me off on my travels by the railway which I saw running to Vienna and then on to the east. It looked as if I might get to Constantinople after all, but I feared it would be a useless achievement. But what could I do when I got there? I was being hustled out of Germany without picking up the slenderest clue. The door opened and Stoom entered. He seemed to have got bigger in the interval and carry his head higher.  Brant, he said, you are about to receive the greatest privilege that ever fell to one of your race. His Imperial Majesty is passing through here and has halted for a few minutes. He has done me the honour to receive me, and when he heard my story he expressed a wish to see you. You will follow me to his presence. Do not be afraid. The all-highest is merciful and gracious. Answer his questions like a man. I followed him with a quickened pulse. Here was a bit of luck I had never dreamed of. At the far side of the station a train had drawn up, a train consisting of three big coaches, chocolate-coloured and picked out with gold. On the platform beside it stood a small group of officers, tall men in long grey-blue cloaks. They seemed to be mostly elderly and one or two of the faces I thought I remembered from photographs in the picture papers. As we approached they drew apart and left us face to face with one man. He was a little below middle height and all muffled in a thick coat with a fur colour. He wore a silver helmet with an eagle atop of it and kept his left hand resting on his sword. Below the helmet was a face the colour of grey paper, from which shown curious, sombre, restless eyes with dark pouches beneath them. There was no fear of my mistaking him. These were the features which, since Napoleon, have been best known to the world. I stood as stiff as a ramrod and saluted. I was perfectly cool and most desperately interested. For such a moment I would have gone through fire and water. Majesty, this is the Dutchman I spoke of, I heard Stum say. What language does he speak, the Emperor asked. Dutch, was the reply, but being a South African, he also speaks English. A spasm of pain seemed to flit over the face before me, then he addressed me in English. You have come from a land which will yet be our ally to offer your sword to our service. I accept the gift and hail it as a good omen. I would have given your race its freedom, but there were fools and traitors among you who misjudged me, but that freedom I shall yet give you in spite of yourselves. Are there many like you in your country?  I am one of many who think that my race's life lies in your victory, and I think that that victory must be one not in Europe alone. In South Africa for the moment there is no chance, so we look to other parts of the continent. You will win in Europe, you have won in the East, and now it remains to strike the English where they cannot fend the blow. If we take Uganda, Egypt will fall. By your permission I go there to make trouble for your enemies. A flicker of a smile passed over the worn face.  That is well, he said. Some Englishman once said that he would call in the new world to redress the balance of the old. We Germans will summons a whole earth to suppress the infamies of England. Serve us well, and you will not be forgotten. Then he suddenly asked, Did you fight in the last South African war? Yes, sir, I said. I was in the commando of that smutz who has now been bought by England. What were your countrymen's losses? He asked eagerly. I did not know, but I hazarded a guess. In the field some twenty thousand, but many more by sickness and in the accursed prison camps of the English. Again a spasm of pain crossed his face. Twenty thousand, he repeated huskily, a mere handful. Today we lose as many in a skirmish in the Polish marshes. Then he broke out fiercely. I did not seek the war. It was forced on me. I laboured for peace. The blood of millions is on the heads of England and Russia, but England most of all, God will yet avenge it. He that takes the sword will perish by the sword. Mine was forced from the scabbard in self-defense, and I am guiltless. Do they know that among your people? All the world knows it, Sire, I said. He gave his hand to Sturm and turned away. The last I saw of him was a figure moving like a sleep-walker with no spring in his step amid his tall suite. I felt that I was looking on at a far bigger tragedy than any I had seen in action. Here was one that had loosed hell and the furies of hell had got hold of him. He was no common man, for in his presence I felt an attraction which was not merely the mastery of one used to command. That would not have impressed me, for I had never owned a master. But here was a human being who, unlike Sturm and his kind, had the power of laying himself alongside other men. That was the irony of it. Sturm would not have cared a tinker's curse for all the massacres in history, but this man, the chief of a nation of Sturm's, paid the price in war for the gifts that had made him successful in peace. He had imagination and nerves, and the one was white-hot, and the others were quivering. I would not have been in his shoes for the throne of the universe. All afternoon we sped southward, mostly in a country of hills and wooded valleys. Sturm, for him, was very pleasant. His imperial master must have been gracious to him, and he passed a bit of it on to me. But he was anxious to see that I had got the right impression. The all-highest is merciful, as I told you, he said. I agreed with him. Mercy is the prerogative of kings, he said sententiously, but for us, lesser folks, it is a trimming we can well do without. I nodded my approval. I am not merciful, he went on, as if I needed telling that. If any man stands in my way, I trample the life out of him. That is the German fashion. That is what has made us great. We do not make war with lavender gloves and fine phrases, but with hard steel and hard brains. We Germans would cure the green sickness of the world. The nations rise against us? Poof! They are soft flesh, and flesh cannot resist iron. The shining plowshare will cut its way through acres of mud. I hasten to add that these were also my opinions.   Not but what, he added, there is metal in you slow Dutchmen once the Germans have had the forging of it. The winter evening closed in, and I saw that we had come out of the hills and were in flat country. Sometimes a big sweep of river showed, and looking out at one station, I saw a funny church with a thing like an onion on top of its spire. It might almost have been a mosque, judging from the pictures I remembered of mosques. I wished to heaven I had given geography more attention in my time. Presently we stopped, and Schtum led the way out. The train must have been specially halted for him, for it was a one-horse little place whose name I could not make out. The station master was waiting, bowing and saluting, and outside was a motor car with big headlights. Next minute we were sliding through dark woods where the snow lay far deeper than in the north. There was a mild frost in the air, and the tires slipped and skidded at the corners. We hadn't far to go. We climbed a little hill and on the top of it stopped at the door of a big black castle. It looked enormous in the winter night, with not a light showing anywhere on its front. The door was opened by an old fellow who took a long time about it and got well cursed for its slowness. Inside the place was very noble and ancient. Schtum switched on the electric light, and there was a great hall with black tarnished portraits of men and women in old-fashioned clothes and mighty horns of deer on the walls. There seemed to be no superfluity of servants. The old fellow said that food was ready, and without more ado we went into the dining room, another vast chamber with rough stone walls above the panelling, and found some cold meats on the table beside a big fire. The servant presently brought in a ham omelet and on that in the cold stuff we dined. I remember there was nothing to drink but water. It puzzled me how Schtum kept his great body going on the very moderate amount of food he ate. He was the type you expect to swill beer by the bucket and put away a pie in a sitting. When we had finished he rang for the old man and told him that we should be in the study for the rest of the evening. You can lock up and go to bed with me like, he said, but see you have coffee ready at seven sharp in the morning. Ever since I entered that house I had the uncomfortable feeling of being in a prison. Here was I alone in this great place with a fellow who could and would ring my neck if he wanted. Berlin and all the rest of it had seemed comparatively open country. I had felt that I could move freely and at the worst make a bolt for it. But here I was trapped and I had to tell myself every minute that I was there as a friend and colleague. The fact is I was afraid of Schtum and I don't mind admitting it. He was a new thing in my experience and I didn't like it. If only he had drunk and guzzled a bit I should have been happier. We went up a staircase to a room at the end of a long corridor. Schtum locked the door behind him and laid the key on the table.  In place of the grim bareness of downstairs here was a place all luxury in colour and light. It was very large but low in the ceiling and the walls were full of little recesses with statues in them. A thick grey carpet of velvet pile covered the floor and the chairs were low and soft and upholstered like a lady's boudoir. A pleasant fire burned on the hearth and there was a flavour of scent in the air, something like incense or birch sandalwood. A French clock on the mantelpiece told me that it was ten minutes past eight. Everywhere on little tables and in cabinets was a profusion of knickknacks and there was some beautiful embroidery framed on screens. At first sight you would have said it was a woman's drawing room. But it wasn't. I soon saw the difference. There had never been a woman's hand in that place. It was the room of a man who had a passion for frippery, who had a perverted taste for soft delicate things. It was the compliment to his bluff brutality. I began to see the queer other side to my host, that evil side which Gossip had spoken of as not unknown in the German army. The room seemed a horribly unwholesome place and I was more than ever afraid of Sturm. The hearth rug was a wonderful old Persian thing all, faint greens and pinks. As he stood on it he looked uncommonly like a bull in a china shop. He seemed to bask in the comfort of it and sniffed like a satisfied animal. Then he sat down at an espritoir, unlocked a drawer, and took out some papers. We will now settle your business, friend Brandt. He said, you will go to Egypt and there take your orders from one whose name and address are in this envelope. This card, and he lifted a square piece of gray pasteboard with a big stamp at the corner and some code words stenciled on it, will be your passport. You will show it to the man you seek. Keep it jealously and never use it save under orders or in the last necessity. It is your badge as an accredited agent of the German crown. I took the card in the envelope and put them in my pocketbook. Where do I go after Egypt? I asked. That remains to be seen. Probably you will go up the blue Nile. Reiser, the man you will meet, will direct you. Egypt is a nest of our agents who work peacefully under the nose of the English Secret Service. I am willing, I said. But how do I reach Egypt? You will travel by Holland and London. Here is your route, and he took a paper from his pocket. Your passports are ready and will be given you at the frontier. This was a pretty kettle of fish. I was to be packed off to Cairo by sea, which would take weeks, and God knows how I would get from Egypt to Constantinople. I saw all my plans falling to pieces about my ears and just when I thought they were shaping nicely.  You have no cause to be afraid, he said. We have passed the word to the English police to look out for a suspicious South African named Brant, one of Marit's rebels. It is not difficult to have that kind of a hint conveyed to the proper quarter. But the description will not be yours. Your name will be van der Linden, a respectable Java merchant going home to his plantations after a visit to his native shores. You had bet you'll get your dossier by heart, but I guarantee you will be asked no questions. We manage these things well in Germany. I kept my eyes on the fire, where I did some savage thinking. I knew they would not let me out of their sight till they saw me in Holland, and once there there would be no possibility of getting back. When I left this house I would have no chance of giving them the slip. And yet I was well on my way to the East, the daynube could not be fifty miles off, and that way ran the road to Constantinople. It was a fairly desperate position. If I tried to get away, Shtum would prevent me, and the odds were that I would go to join Peter in some infernal prison camp. Those moments were some of the worst I ever spent. I was absolutely and utterly baffled like a rat in a trap. There seemed nothing for it but to go back to London, and tell Sir Walter the game was up, and that was about as bitter as death. He saw my face and laughed.  You funk the English? I will tell you one thing for your comfort. There is nothing in the world to be feared except me. Fail, and you have caused to shiver. Play me false, and you had far better never have been born. His ugly, sneering face was close above mine. Then he put out his hands, and gripped my shoulders as he had done the first afternoon. I forget if I mentioned that part of the damage I got at Luz was a shrapnel bullet down low at the back of my neck. The wound had healed well enough, but I had pains there on a cold day.  There was a very narrow line between despair and black rage. I had about given up the game, but the sudden ache of my shoulders gave me purpose again. He must have seen the rage in my eyes, for his own became cruel. The weasel would like to bite, he cried, but the poor weasel has found its master. Stand still, vermin. Smile, look pleasant, or I will make pulp of you. Do you dare to frown at me?  I was choking in my throat and could not have uttered a syllable if I had tried. Then he let me go, grinning like an ape. I stepped back a pace and gave him my left between the eyes. For a second he did not realize what had happened, for I don't suppose anyone had dared to lift a hand to him since he was a child. He blinked at me madly, then his face grew as red as fire.  And he flung himself on me like a mountain. I was expecting him and dodged the attack. I was quite calm now, but pretty helpless. The man had a gorilla's reach and could give me at least a couple of stone. He wasn't soft either, but looked as hard as granite. I was only just from hospital and absurdly out of training. He would certainly kill me if he could, and I saw nothing to prevent him. My only chance was to keep him from getting to grips, for he could have squeezed in my ribs in two seconds. I fancied, I was lighter on my legs than him and I had a good eye. Black Monty at Kimberley had taught me to fight a bit, but there is no art on earth which can prevent a big man in a narrow space from sooner or later cornering a lesser one. That was the danger. Backwards and forwards we padded on the soft carpet. He had no notion of guarding himself, and I got in a good few blows. Then I saw a queer thing. Every time I hit him, he blinked and seemed to pause. I guess the reason for that. He had gone through life keeping the crown of the causeway and nobody had ever stood up to him. He wasn't cowered by a long chalk but he was a bully and had never been struck in his life. He was getting struck now in real earnest and he didn't like it. He had lost his bearings and was growing as mad as a hatter. I kept half an eye on the clock. I was hopeful now and was looking for the right kind of chance. The risk was that I might tire sooner than him and be at his mercy. Then I learned a truth I have never forgotten.  Shtum did not know any rules to this game and I forgot to allow for that. Suddenly when I was watching his eyes he launched a mighty kick at my stomach. If he had got me this yarn would have had an abrupt ending. But by the mercy of God I was moving sideways when he let out and his heavy boot just grazed my left thigh. It was the place where most of the shrapnel had lodged and for a second I was sick with pain and stumbled. Then I was on my feet again but with a new feeling in my blood. I had to smash Shtum or never sleep in my bed again. I got a wonderful power from this new cold rage of mine. I felt I couldn't tire and I danced round and round his face till it was streaming with blood. His bulky padded chest was no good to me so I couldn't try for the mark. He began to snort now and his breath came heavily. You infernal cad, I said in good round English, I'm going to knock the stuffing out of you. But he didn't know what I was saying. Then at last he gave me my chance.  I got him on the point of the chin and put every ounce of weight I possessed behind the blow. He crumpled up in a heap and rolled over, upsetting a lamp and knocking a big china jar in two. His head, I remember, lay under the escritoir from which he had taken my passport. I picked up the key and unlocked the door. In one of the gilded mirrors I smoothed my hair and tidied up my clothes. My anger had completely gone and I had no particular ill will left against Shtum. He was a man of remarkable qualities, which would have brought him to the highest distinction in the Stone Age. But for all that he and his kind were back numbers. I stepped out of the room, locked the door behind me, and started out on the second stage of my travels. End of Chapter 6 Chapter 7 of Green Mantle This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Vivian Bush, Houston, Texas, on May 19, 2007. Green Mantle, by John Buchan Chapter 7 Christmas Tide Everything depended on whether the servant was in the hall. I had put Shtum to sleep for a bit, but I couldn't flatter myself he would long be quiet, and when he came to he would kick the locked door to match wood. I must get out of the house without a minute's delay, and if the door was shut and the old man gone to bed I was done. I met him at the foot of the stairs, carrying a candle.  Where is the nearest office? There's one in the village, isn't there? I spoke in my best German the first time I had used the tongue since I crossed the frontier. The village is five minutes off at the foot of the avenue, he said. Will you be long, sir? I'll be back in a quarter of an hour, I said. Don't lock up till I get in. I put on my Ulster and walked out into a clear, starry night. My bag I left lying on a settle in the hall. There was nothing in it to compromise me, but I wished I could have got a toothbrush and some tobacco out of it. So began one of the craziest escapades you can well imagine. I couldn't stop to think of the future yet, but must take one step at a time. I ran down the avenue, my feet cracking on the hard snow, planning hard my program for the next hour. I found the village, half a dozen houses with one big-ish place that looked like an inn. The moon was rising, and as I approached I saw that there was some kind of a store. A funny little two-seated car was purring before the door, and I guessed this was also the telegraph office. I marched in and told my story to a stout woman with spectacles on her nose, who was talking to a young man. It is too late, she shook her head. The herb burglar knows that well. There is no connection from here after eight o'clock. If the matter is urgent, you must go to Schwandorf. How far is that, I asked, looking for some excuse to get decently out of the shop? Seven miles, she said, but here is Franz in the post-wagon. Franz, you will be glad to give the gentleman a seat beside you. The sheepish-looking youth muttered something which I took to be a scent, and finished off a glass of beer. From his eyes and manner he looked as if he were half drunk. I thanked the woman and went out to the car, for I was in a fever to take advantage of this unexpected bit of luck. I could hear the postmistress and joining Franz not to keep the gentleman waiting, and presently he came out and flopped into the driver's seat. We started in a series of voluptuous curves, till his eyes got accustomed to the darkness. At first we made good going along the straight broad highway, lined with woods on one side, and on the other snowy fields melting into haze. Then he began to talk, and as he talked he slowed down. This by no means suited my book, and I seriously wondered whether I should pitch him out and take charge of the thing. He was obviously a weakling left behind in the conscription, and I could have done it with one hand. But by fortunate chance I left him alone. That is a fine hat of yours, my nare, he said. He took off his own blue peat cap, the uniform, I suppose, of the driver of the post wagon, and laid it on his knee. The night air ruffled a shock of toe-colored hair. Then he calmly took my hat and clapped it on his head. With this thing I should be a gentleman, he said. I said nothing but put on his cap and waited. That is a noble overcoat, my nare, he went on. It goes well with the hat. It is the kind of garment I have always desired to own. In two days it will be the holy Christmas, when gifts are given. Wood that the good God sent me such a coat is yours. You can try it on to see how it looks, I said, good humoredly. He stopped the car with a jerk, and pulled off his blue coat. The exchange was soon affected. He was about my height, and my Ulster fitted not so badly. I put on his overcoat, which had a big collar that buttoned round the neck.  Drink and vanity had primed him for any folly. He drove so carelessly for a bit, that he nearly put us into a ditch. We passed several cottages, and at the last he slowed down. A friend of mine lives here, he announced. Gertrude would like to see me in the fine clothes which the most amiable air has given me. Wait for me, I will not be long. And he scrambled out of the car, and lurched into the little garden. I took his place and moved very slowly forward. I heard the door open, and the sound of laughing and loud voices.  I waited no longer, but sent the car forward at its best speed. Five minutes later the infernal thing began to give trouble. A nut loosened the antiquated steering gear. I unhooked a lamp, examined it, and put the mischief right. But I was a quarter an hour doing it. The highway ran now in a thick forest, and I noticed branches going off now and then to the right. I was just thinking of turning up one of them, for I had no anxiety to visit Swandorf, when I heard behind me the sound of a great car driven furiously. I drew in to the right side, thank goodness I remembered the rule of the road, and proceeded decorously, wondering what was going to happen. I could hear the brakes being clamped on, and the car slowing down.  It was stumb looking like something that has been run over. He had his jaw on a sling, so that I wondered if I had broken it, and his eyes were beautifully bunged up. It was that that saved me, that and his raging temper. The collar of the postman's coat was round my chin, hiding my beard, and I had his cap pulled well down on my brow. I remembered what Blinkiron had said, that the only way to deal with the Germans was naked bluff. Mine was naked enough, for it was all that was left to me. Where is the man you brought from Andresbach, he roared, as well as his jaw would allow him? I pretended to be mortally scared, and spoke in the best imitation I could manage of the postman's high, cracked voice. He got out a mile back, air burg grave, I quavered. He was a rude fellow who wanted to go to Swandorf, and then changed his mind. Where, you fool? Say exactly where he got down, or I will ring your neck. In the wood, this side of Gertrude's cottage, on the left hand, I left him running among the trees. I put all the terror I knew how into my pipe, and it wasn't all acting. He means the Heinrich's cottage, air colonel, said the chauffeur. This man is courting the daughter. Stum gave an order, and the great car backed, and as I looked round I saw it turning. Then as it gathered speed it shot forward, and presently was lost in the shadows. I had got over the first hurdle. But there was no time to be lost. Stum would meet the postman, and would be tearing after me any minute. I took the first turning, and bucketed along a narrow woodland road. The hard ground would show very few tracks, I thought, and I hoped the pursuit would think I had gone on to Swandorf. But it wouldn't do to risk it, and I was determined very soon to get the car off the road, leave it, and take to the forest. I took out my watch, and calculated I could give myself ten minutes. I was very nearly caught. Presently I came on a bit of rough heath, with a slope away from the road, and here and there a patch of black, which I took to be a sand pit. Opposite one of these I slewed the car to the edge, got out, started it again, and saw it pitch head foremost into the darkness. There was a splash of water, and then silence. Craning over I could see nothing but murk, and the mark at the lip where the wheels had passed. They would find my tracks in daylight, but scarcely at this time of night. Then I ran across the road to the forest. I was only just in time, for the echoes of the splash had hardly died away when I heard the sound of another car. I lay flat in a hollow below a tangle of snow-laden brambles, and looked between the pine trees at the moonlit road. It was Stum's car again, and to my consternation it stopped just a little short of the sand pit. I saw an electric torch flashed, and Stum himself got out and examined the tracks on the highway. Thank God they would be still there for him to find, but had he tried half a dozen yards on he would have seen them turn towards the sand pit. If that had happened he would have beaten the adjacent woods, and no certainly found me. There was a third man in the car, with my hat and coat on him. That poor devil of a postman had paid dear for his vanity. They took a long time before they started again, and I was jolly well relieved when they went scouring down the road. I ran deeper into the woods till I found a track which, as I judged from the sky when I saw a clearing, took me nearly due west. That wasn't the direction I wanted, so I bore off at right angles, and presently struck another road which I crossed in a hurry. After that I got entangled in some confounded kind of enclosure, and had to climb pailing after pailing of rough stakes plated with osiers. Then came a rise in the ground, and I was on a low hill of pines which seemed to last for miles. All the time I was going at a good pace, and before I stopped to rest I calculated I had put six miles between me and the sand pit. My mind was getting a little more active now. For the first part of the journey I had simply staggered from impulse to impulse. These impulses had been uncommon lucky, but I couldn't go on like that forever. Exalin pluck mocks as the old boar when he gets into trouble, and it was up to me now to make a plan. As soon as I began to think I saw the desperate business I was in for. Here was I with nothing except what I stood up in, including a coat and cap that weren't mine, alone in midwinter in the heart of south Germany. There was a man behind me looking for my blood, and soon there would be a hue and cry for me up and down the land. I had heard that the German police were pretty efficient, and I couldn't see that I stood the slimmest chance. If they caught me they would shoot me beyond doubt. I asked myself on what charge, and answered, for knocking about a German officer. They couldn't have me for espionage, for as far as I knew they had no evidence. I was simply a Dutchman that had got riled and had run amuck. But if they cut down a cobbler for laughing at a second lieutenant, which is what happened at Zebrn, I calculated that hanging would be too good for a man that had broken a colonel's jaw. To make things worse my job was not to escape, though that would have been hard enough, but to get to Constantinople, more than a thousand miles off, and I reckoned I couldn't get there as a tramp. I had to be sent there, and now I had flung away my chance. If I had been a Catholic I would have said a prayer to St. Teresa, for she would have understood my troubles. My mother used to say that when you felt down on your luck it was a good cure to count your mercies. So I said about counting mine. The first was that I was well-started on my journey, for I couldn't be above two score miles from the Danube. The second was that I had stumps pass. I didn't see how I could use it, but there it was. Lastly I had plenty of money. Fifty-three English sovereigns and the equivalent of three pounds in German paper, which I had changed at the hotel. Also I had squared accounts with Old Stem. That was the biggest mercy of all. I thought I'd better get some sleep, so I found a dryish hole below an oak root and squeezed myself into it. The snow lay deep in these woods, and I was sopping wet up to the knees. All the same I managed to sleep for some hours, and got up and shook myself just as the winter's dawn was breaking through the treetops. Breakfast was the next thing, and I must find some sort of dwelling. Almost at once I struck a road, a big highway running north and south. I trod it along in the bitter morning to get my circulation started, and presently I began to feel a little better. In a little I saw a church spire which meant a village. Stem wouldn't be likely to have gotten on my tracks yet, I calculated, but there was always the chance that he'd warned all the villages round by telephone that they might be on the lookout for me. But that risk had to be taken, for I must have food. It was the day before Christmas I remembered, and people would be holidaying. The village was quite a big place, but at this hour, just after eight o'clock, there was nobody in the street except a wandering dog. I chose the most unassuming shop I could find, where a little boy was taking down the shutters, one of those general stores where they sell everything. The boy fetched a very old woman who hobbled in from the back, pitting on her spectacles. "'Grew Scott,' she said in a friendly voice, and I took off my cap, saw from my reflection in a saucepan that I looked moderately respectable in spite of my night in the woods. I told her the story of how I was walking from Shwondorf to see my mother, at an imaginary place called Judenfeld, banking on the ignorance of villagers about any place five miles from their homes. I said my luggage had gone astray, and I hadn't time to wait for it since my leave was short. The old lady was sympathetic and unsuspecting. She sold me a pound of chocolate, a box of biscuits, the better part of a ham, two tins of sardines, and a rucksack to carry them. I also bought some soap, a comb, and a cheap razor, and a small tourist guide published by a leapsig firm. As I was leaving, I saw what seemed like garments hanging up in the back shop, and turned to have a look at them. They were the kind of thing that Germans wear on their summer walking tours, long shooting capes made of a green stuff they call Loden. I bought one, and a green felt hat, and an Alpenstock to keep it company. Then, wishing the old woman and her belongings a merry Christmas, I departed and took the shortest cut out of the village. There were one or two people about now, but they did not seem to notice me. I went into the woods again, and walked for two miles till I halted for breakfast. I was not feeling quite so fit now, and I did not make much of my provisions, beyond eating a biscuit and some chocolate. I felt very thirsty and longed for hot tea. In an icy pool I washed, and with infinite agony shaved my beard. That razor was the worst of its species, and my eyes were running all the time with the pain of the operation. Then I took off the postman's coat and cap, and buried them below some bushes. I was now a clean-shaven German pedestrian with a green cape and hat, and an absurd walking stick with an iron-shot end, the sort of person who roams in thousands over the fatherland in summer, but is a rare-ish bird in mid-winter. The tourist guide was a fortunate purchase, for it contained a big map of Bavaria which gave me my bearings. I was certainly not forty miles from the Danube, more like thirty. The red through the village I had left would have taken me to it. I had only to walk due south, and I would reach it before night. So far as I could make out there were long tongues of forest running down to the river, and I resolved to keep to the woodlands.  On the high road there might be awkward questions. When I started out again I felt very stiff, and the cold seemed to be growing intense. This puzzled me, for I had not minded it much up to now, and being warm-blooded by nature, it never used to worry me. A sharp winter night on the high veld was a long sight chillier than anything I had struck so far in Europe. But now my teeth were chattering, and the marrows seemed to be freezing in my bones. The day had started bright and clear, but a rack of grey clouds soon covered the sky, and a wind from the east began to whistle. As I stumbled along through the snowy undergrowth I kept longing for bright warm places. I thought of those long days on the veld when the earth was like a great yellow bowl with white roads running to the horizon and a tiny white farm basking in the heart of it, with its blue dam and patches of bright green lucren. I thought of those baking days on the east coast when the sea was like mother of pearl and the sky one burning turquoise, but most of all I thought of warm scented noons on track when one dozed in the shadow of the wagon and sniffed the wood smoke from the fire where the boys were cooking dinner. From these pleasant pictures I returned to the beastly present, the thick snowy woods, the lowering sky, wet clothes, a hunted present, and a dismal future. I felt miserably depressed, and I couldn't think of any mercies to count. It struck me that I might be falling sick. About midday I woke with a start to the belief that I was being pursued. I cannot explain how or why the feeling came, except that it is a kind of instinct that men get who have lived much in wild countries. My senses which had been numbed suddenly grew keen, and my brain began to work double quick. I asked myself what I would do if I were stumped, with hatred in my heart, a broken jaw to avenge, and pretty well limitless powers. He must have found the car in the sand pit and seen my tracks in the wood opposite. I didn't know how good he and his men might be at following a spore, but I knew that any ordinary coffer could have nosed it out easily. But he didn't need to do that.  I must sometime and somewhere come out of the woods. He could have all the roads watched, and the telephone would set everyone on my track within a radius of fifty miles. Besides, he would soon pick up my trail in the village I had visited that morning. From the map I learned that it was called Grief, and it was likely to live up to that name with me. Presently I came to a rocky knoll which rose out of the forest. Keeping well in shelter, I climbed to the top and cautiously looked around me. Away to the east I saw the veil of a river with broad fields and church spires. West and south the forest rolled unbroken in a wilderness of snowy treetops. There was no sign of life anywhere, not even a bird, but I knew very well that behind me in the woods were men moving swiftly on my track, and that it was pretty well impossible for me to get away. There was nothing for it but to go on till I dropped or was taken. I changed my course south with a shade of west in it, for the map showed me that in that direction I would soon as strike the Danube. What I was going to do when I got there I didn't trouble to think. I had fixed the river as my immediate goal, and the future must take care of itself. I was now certain that I had fever on me. It was still in my bones as a legacy from Africa, and had come out once or twice when I was with the battalion in Hampshire. The bouts had been short for I had known of their coming and dosed myself, but now I had no quinine, and it looked as if I were in for a heavy go.  For suddenly I came on a road and was going to cross it blindly, when a man-road slowly passed on a bicycle. Luckily I was in the shade of a clump of hollies, and he was not looking my way, though he was not three yards off. I crawled forward to Reconoiter. I saw about half a mile of road running straight through the forest, and every two hundred yards was a bicyclist. They wore uniform and appeared to be acting as sentries. This could only have one meaning. Strum had picketed all the roads and cut me off in an angle of the woods. There was no chance of getting across unobserved. As I lay there with my heart sinking, I had the horrible feeling that the pursuit might be following me from behind, and that at any moment I would be enclosed between two fires. For more than an hour I stayed there with my chin on the snow. I didn't see any way out, and I was feeling so ill that I didn't seem to care. Then my chance came suddenly out of the skies. The wind rose and a great gust of snow blew from the east. In five minutes it was so thick that I couldn't see across the road. At first I thought it was a new addition to my troubles, and then very slowly I saw the opportunity. I slipped down the bank and made ready to cross. I almost blundered into one of the bicyclists. He cried out and fell off his machine, but I didn't wait to investigate. A sudden access of strength came to me, and I darted into the woods on the farther side. I knew I would soon be swallowed from sight in the drift, and I knew that the falling snow would hide my tracks, so I put my best foot forward.  There was no sound except the crush of falling snow. The wind seemed to have gone, and the place was very solemn and quiet. But heavens how the snow fell! It was partly screened by the branches, but all the same it was piling itself up deep everywhere. My legs seemed made of lead, my head burned, and there were fiery pains all over my body. I stumbled on blindly, without a notion of any direction, determined only to keep going to the last, for I knew that if I once lay down I would never rise again. When I was a boy I was fond of fairy tales, and most of the stories I remembered had been about great German forest, and snow, and charcoal-burners, and woodman's hats. Once I had longed to see these things, and now I was fairly in the thick of them. There had been wolves, too, and I wondered idly if I should fall in with the pack. I felt myself getting light-headed. I fell repeatedly and laughed sillily every time. Once I dropped into a hole and lay for some time at the bottom, giggling. If anyone had found me then he would have taken me for a madman. The twilight of the forest grew dimmer, but I scarcely noticed it. Evening was falling, and soon it would be night, a night without mourning for me. My body was going on without the direction of my brain, for my mind was filled with craziness. I was like a drunk man who keeps running, for he knows that if he stops he will fall, and I had to sort of bet with myself not to lie down, not at any rate just yet.  Once I had ridden for five days down country with fever on me, and the flat brush trees had seemed to melt into one big mirage and dense quadrils before my eyes, but then I had more or less kept my wits. Now I was fairly daft in every minute growing dafter. Then the trees seemed to stop, and I was walking on flat ground. It was a clearing, and before me twinkled a little light. The change restored me to consciousness, and suddenly I felt with hard intensity the fire in my head and bones, and the weakness of my limbs. I longed to sleep, and I had a notion that a place to sleep was before me. I moved towards the light and presently saw through a screen of snow the outline of a cottage. I had no fear, only an intolerable longing to lie down. Very slowly I made my way to the door and knocked. My weakness was so great that I could hardly lift my hand. There were voices within, and a corner of the curtain was lifted from the window.  Gruskott, she said, while children peeped from behind her skirts. Gruskott, I replied. I leaned against the doorpost, and speech forsook me. She saw my condition. Come in, sir, she said.  I stumbled after her and stood dripping in the center of the little kitchen. While three wondering children stared at me. It was a poor place, scantily furnished, but a good log fire burned on the hearth. The shock of warmth gave me one of those minutes of self-possession which comes sometimes in the middle of a fever. I am sick, mother, and I have walked far in the storm and lost my way. I am from Africa, where the climate is hot, and your cold brings me fever. It will pass in a day or two if you can give me a bed. You are welcome, she said, but first I will make you coffee. I took off my dripping cloak and crouched close to the hearth. She gave me coffee, poor washy stuff, but blessedly hot. Poverty was spelled large in everything I saw. I felt the tides of fever beginning to overflow my brain again, and I made a great attempt to set my affair straight before I was overtaken. With difficulty I took out strum's pass from my pocket-book. This is my warrant, I said. I am a member of the Imperial Secret Service, and for the sake of my work I must move in the dark. If you will permit it, mother, I will sleep till I am better, but no one must know that I am here. If anyone comes you must deny my presence. She looked at the big seal as if it were a talisman. Yes, yes, she said, you will have the bed and the garret and be left in peace until you are well.  I will be silent and the little ones. My head was beginning to swim, but I made one more effort. There is food in my rucksack, biscuits and ham and chocolate. Pray take it for your use. And here is some money to buy Christmas fare for the little ones. And I gave her some of the German notes. After that my recollection becomes dim. She helped me up a ladder to the garret, undressed me, and gave me a thick coarse nightgown. I seemed to remember that she kissed my hand and that she was crying. The good Lord has sent you, she said. Now the little ones will have their prayers answered, and the crest kind will not pass by our door. Chapter 8 The Essin Barges I lay for four days like a log in that garret bed. The storm died down, the thaw set in, and the snow melted. The children played about the doors and told stories at night around the fire. Stoom's mermidians no doubt beset every road and troubled the lives of innocent wayfarers. But no one came near the cottage, and the fever worked itself out while I lay in peace. It was a bad bout, but on the fifth day it left me, and I lay as weak as a kitten, staring at the rafters in the little skylight. It was a leaky, draughty old place, but the woman of the cottage had heaped deer skins and blankets on my bed, and kept me warm. She came in now and then, and once she brought me a brew of some bitter herbs which greatly refreshed me. A little thin porridge was all the food I could eat, and some chocolate made from the slabs in my rucksack. I lay and dozed through the day, hearing the faint chatter of children below, and getting stronger hourly. Malaria passes as quickly as it comes, and leaves a man little the worse, though this was one of the sharpest turns I had ever had. As I lay I thought, and my thoughts followed curious lines.  He didn't seem to be a creature of the living present, but a distant memory on which I could look calmly. I thought a good deal about my battalion and the comedy of my present position. You see, I was getting better, for I called it comedy now, not tragedy. But chiefly I thought of my mission. All that wild day in the snow it had seemed the merest farce.  They were present to me now, but coolly and sanely in all their meagerness. I remember that I took each one separately and chewed on it for hours. Kasrudin, there was nothing to be got out of that. Cancer, there were too many meanings, all blind. Vi, that was the worst gibberish of all. Before this I had always taken the i as the letter of the alphabet. I thought the vi must stand for von, and I had considered the German names beginning with i, Ingelstad, Ingeberg, Ingehol, and all the rest of them. I had made a list of about seventy at the British Museum before I left London. Now I suddenly found myself taking the i as the numeral one. Idley, not thinking what I was doing, I put it into German. Then I nearly fell out of the bed. Von Einem, the name I had heard at Gaudien's house, the name Stum had spoken behind his hand, the name to which Hilda was probably the prefix. It was a tremendous discovery, the first real bit of light I had found. Harry Bullivant knew that some man or woman called Von Einem was at the heart of the mystery. Stum had spoken of the same personage with respect, and in connection with the work I proposed to do in raising the Muslim Africans. If I found Von Einem I would be getting very warm. What was the word that Stum had whispered to Gaudien and scared that worthy? It had sounded like Unmantel. If I could only get that clear I would solve the riddle. I think that discovery completed my cure. At any rate on the evening of the fifth day, it was Wednesday the 29th of December, I was well enough to get up. When the dark had fallen and it was too late to fear a visitor, I came downstairs and wrapped in my green cape, took a seat by the fire. As we sat there in the firelight with the three white-headed children staring at me with saucer eyes and smiling when I looked their way, the woman talked. Her man had gone to the wars on the eastern front, and the last she had heard from him he was in a Polish bog and longing for his dry native woodlands. The struggle meant little to her. It was an act of God, a thunderbolt out of the sky, which had taken a husband from her. It might soon make her a widow and her children fatherless. She knew nothing of its causes and purposes, and thought of the Russians as a gigantic nation of savages, heathens who had never been converted, and who would eat up German homes if the good Lord and the brave German soldiers did not stop them. I tried hard to find out if she had any notion of affairs in the west, but she hadn't, beyond the fact that there was trouble with the French. I doubt if she knew of England sharing it. She was a decent soul, with no bitterness against anybody, not even the Russians if they would spare her man. That night I realized the crazy folly of war. When I saw the splintered shell of Ypres and heard hideous tales of German doings, I used to want to see the whole land of the Bosch given up to fire and sword. I thought we could never end the war properly without giving the Huns some of their own medicine. But that woodcutters cottage cured me of such nightmares. I was for punishing the guilty, but letting the innocent go free. It was our business to thank God and keep our hands clean from the ugly blunders to which Germany's madness had driven her. What good would it do Christian folk to burn poor little huts like this and leave children's bodies by the wayside? To be able to laugh and to be merciful are the only things that make man better than the beasts. The place, as I have said, was desperately poor. The woman's face had the skin stretched tight over the bones and that transparency which means underfeeding. I fancied she did not have the liberal allowance that soldiers' wives get in England. The children looked better nourished, but it was by their mother's sacrifice. I did my best to cheer them up. I told them long yarns about Africa and lions and tigers, and I got some pieces of wood and whittled them into toys. I am fairly good with a knife, and I carve very presentable likenesses of a monkey, a springbok, and a rhinoceros. The children went to bed hugging the first toys I expect they ever possessed. It was clear to me that I must leave as soon as possible. I had to get on with my business, and besides it was not fair to the woman. Any moment I might be found there, and she would get into trouble for harboring me. I asked her if she knew where the Danube was, and her answer surprised me. You will reach it in an hour's walk, she said. The track through the wood ran straight to the ferry. Next morning after breakfast I took my departure. It was drizzling weather, and I was feeling very lean. Before going I presented my hostess and the children with two sovereigns apiece. It is English gold, I said, for I have to travel among our enemies and use our enemies' money. But the gold is good, and if you go to any town they will change it for you. But I advise you to put it in your stocking foot, and use it only if all else fails. You must keep your home going. For some day there will be peace, and your man will come back from the wars. I kissed the children, shook the woman's hand, and went off down the clearing. They had cried, I'll feed her zane, but it wasn't likely I would ever see them again. The snow had all gone, except in patches in the deep polos. The ground was like a full sponge and a cold rain drifted in my eyes. After half an hour's steady treach, the trees thinned, and presently I came out on a knuckle of open ground cloaked in dwarf junipers, and there before me lay the plain and a mile off a broad, brimming river. I sat down and looked dismally at the prospect. The exhilaration of my discovery the day before had gone. I had stumbled on a worthless piece of knowledge, for I could not use it. Hildem on Einem, if such a person existed and possessed the great secret, was probably living in some big house in Berlin, and I was about as likely to get anything out of her as to be asked to dine with the Kaiser. Blinkiron might do something, but where on earth was Blinkiron? I dared say Sir Walter would value the information, but I could not get to Sir Walter. I was to go on to Constantinople, running away from the people who really pulled the ropes. But if I stayed I could do nothing, and I could not stay. I must go on, and I didn't see how I could go on. Every course seemed shut to me, and I was in as pretty a tangle as ever any man stumbled into. For I was morally certain that Sturm would not let the thing drop. I knew too much, and besides I had outraged his pride. He would beat the countryside till he got me, and he undoubtedly would get me if I waited much longer. But how was I to get over the border? My passport would be no good, for the number of that pass would long air this have been wired to every police station in Germany, and to produce it would be to ask for trouble. Without it I could not cross the borders by any railway. My studies of the tourist guide had suggested that once I was in Austria I might find things slacker and move about easier. I thought of having a try at the Tyrol, and I also thought of Bohemia. But these places were a long way off, and there were several thousand chances each day that I would be caught on the road. This was Thursday the 30th of December, the second last day of the year. I was due in Constantinople on the 17th of January. Constantinople I had thought myself a long way from it in Berlin, but now it seemed as distant as the moon. But that big, sullen river in front of me led to it, and as I looked my attention was caught by a curious sight. On the far eastern horizon, where the water slipped round a corner of hill, there was a long trail of smoke. The streamers thinned out, and it seemed to come from some boat well round the corner, but I could see at least two boats in view. Therefore there must be a long train of barges with a tug-in-toe. I looked to the west and saw another such procession coming into sight. First went a big river steamer. It can't have been much less than a thousand tons, and after came a string of barges. I counted no less than six besides the tug. They were heavily loaded, and their jot must have been considerable, but there was plenty of depth in the flooded river. A moment's reflection told me what I was looking at. Once Sandy, in one of the discussions you have in hospital, had told us just how the Germans munitioned their Balkan campaign. They were pretty certain of dishing Serbia at the first go, and it was up to them to get through guns and shells to the old Turk, who was running pretty short in his first supply. Sandy said that they wanted the railway, but they wanted still more of the river, and they could make certain of that in a week. He told us how endless strings of barges, loaded up at the big factories of Westphalia, were moving through the canals from the Rhine or the Elbit to the Danube. Once the first reached Turkey, there would be regular delivery, you see, as quick as the Turks could handle the stuff. And they didn't return empty, Sandy said, but came back full of Turkish cotton and Bulgarian beef and Romanian corn. I don't know where Sandy got the knowledge, but there was the proof of it before my eyes. It was a wonderful sight, and I could have gnashed my teeth to see those loads of munitions going snugly off to the enemy.  And then, as I looked, an idea came into my head, and with it an eighth part of a hope. There was only one way for me to get out of Germany, and that was to leave in such good company that I would be asked no questions. That was plain enough. If I traveled to Turkey, for instance, in the Kaiser suite, I would be as safe as the mail, but if I went on my own I was done. I had, so to speak, to get my passport inside Germany, to join some caravan which had free marching powers. And there was the kind of caravan before me, the Essen barges. It sounded lunacy, for I guessed that munitions of war would be as jealously guarded as old Hindenburg's health. All the safer, I replied to myself, once I got there. If you were looking for a deserter, you don't seek him at the favorite regimental public house. If you're after a thief, among the places you'd be apt to leave on search would be Scotland Yard. It was sound reasoning, but how was I to get on board? Probably the beastly things did not stop once in a hundred miles, and stim would get me long before I struck a halting place. And even if I did get a chance like that, how was I to get permission to travel? One step was clearly indicated to get down to the river bank at once, so I set off at a sharp walk across squelchy fields, till I struck a road where the ditches had overflowed, so as almost to meet in the middle. The place was so bad that I hoped travelers might be few. And as I trudged, my thoughts were busy with my prospects as a stowaway. If I bought food, I might get a chance to lie snug on one of the barges. They would not break bulk till they got to their journey's end. Suddenly I noticed that the steamer, which was now abreast of me, began to move towards the shore. And as I came over a low rise, I saw on my left a straggling village with a church, and a small landing stage. The houses stood about a quarter of a mile from the stream, and between them was a straight, poplar-fringed road. Soon there could be no doubt about it. The procession was coming to a standstill. The big tug nosed her way in and lay up alongside the pier, where in that season of flood there was enough depth of water. She signaled to the barges, and they also started to drop anchors, which showed that there must be at least two men aboard each. Some of them dragged a bit, and it was rather a cockeyed train that lay in midstream. The tug got out of gangway, and from where I lay I saw half a dozen men leave it, carrying something on their shoulders. It could only be one thing, a dead body. Someone of the crew must have died, and this halt was to bury him. I watched the procession move towards the village, and I reckoned they would take some time there, that they might have wired ahead for a grave to be dug. Anyhow, they would be long enough to give me a chance. For I had decided upon the brazen course. Blinkiron had said you couldn't cheat the Bosch, but you could bluff him. I was going to put up the most monstrous bluff. If the whole countryside was hunting for Richard Hane, Richard Hane would walk through as a pal of the hunters. For I remembered the past Stoom had given me. If that was worth a tinker's curse, it should be good enough to impress a ship's captain. Of course there were a thousand risks. They might have heard of me in the village, and told the ship's party the story. For that reason I resolved not to go there, but to meet the sailors when they were returning to the boat. Or the captain might have been warned and got the number of my pass, in which case Stoom would have his hands on me pretty soon.  In that case I might wait on another convoy. I had shaved and made myself a fairly respectable figure before I left the cottage. It was my cue to wait for the men when they left the church. Wait on that quarter a mile of a straight highway. I judged the captain must be in the party. The village I was glad to observe seemed very empty. I have my own notions about the Bavarians as fighting men, but I am bound to say that judging by my observations, very few of them stayed at home. That funeral took hours. They must have had to dig the grave, for I waited near the road in a clump of cherry trees, with my feet in two inches of mud and water, till I felt chilled to the bone. I prayed to God it would not bring back my fever, for I was only one day out of bed. I had very little tobacco left in my pouch, but I stood myself one pipe, and I ate one of the three cakes of chocolate I still carried. At last, well after midday, I could see the ship's party returning. They marched two by two, and I was thankful to see that they had no villagers with them. I walked to the road, turned up it, and met the vanguard, carrying my head as high as I knew how. Where's your captain, I asked, and a man jerked his thumb over his shoulder. The others wore thick jerseys and knitted caps, but there was one man in the rear in uniform. He was a short, broad man, with a weather-beaten face and an anxious eye. May I have a word with you, Air Captain, I said, with what I hoped was a judicious blend of authority and conciliation. He nodded to his companion, who walked on. Yes, he asked rather impatiently. I proffered him my pass. Thank heaven he had seen the kind of thing before. For his face at once took on that curious look, which one person in authority always wears when he is confronted with another. He studied it closely, and then raised his eyes. Well, sir, he said, I observe your credentials. What can I do for you? I take it you are bound for Constantinople, I asked. The boats go as far as Ruschuk, he replied. There the stuff is transferred to the railway. And you reach Ruschuk when? In ten days, bar accidents. Let us say twelve to be safe. I want to accompany you, I said. In my profession, Air Captain, it is necessary sometimes to make journeys by other than the common route. That is now my desire. I have the right to call upon some other branch of our country's service to help me. Hence my request. Very plainly he did not like it. I must telegraph about it. My instructions are to let no one aboard, not even a man like you. I am sorry, sir, but I must get authority first before I can fall in with your desire. Besides, my boat is ill-found. You had better wait for the next batch and ask Dricer to take you. I lost Walter to-day. He was ill when he came aboard, a disease of the heart, but he would not be persuaded. And last night he died. Was that him you have been burying, I asked? Even so, he was a good man and my wife's cousin, and now I have no engineer. Only a fool of a boy from Hamburg. I have just come from wiring to my owners for a fresh man, but even if he comes by the quickest train he will scarcely overtake us before Vienna, or even Buda. I saw light at last. We will go together, I said, and cancel that wire. For behold, Air Captain, I am an engineer, and will gladly keep an eye on your boilers till we get to Rushchuk. He looked at me doubtfully. I am speaking truth, I said. Before the war I was an engineer in De Meraland. Mining was my branch, but I had a good general training, and I know enough to run a riverboat. Have no fear. I promise you I will earn my passage. His face cleared, and he looked what he was. An honest, good-humored, North German seamen. Come then, in God's name, he cried, and we will make a bargain. I will let the telegraph sleep. I require authority from the government to take a passenger, but I need none to engage a new engineer. He sent one of the hands back to the village to cancel his wire. In ten minutes I found myself on board, and ten minutes later we were out in mid-stream, and our toes were lumbering into line. Coffee was being made ready in the cabin, and while I waited for it I picked up the captain's binoculars and scanned the place I had left. I saw some curious things. On the first road I had struck on leaving the cottage, there were men on bicycles moving rapidly. They seemed to wear uniform. On the next parallel road, the one that ran through the village, I could see others. I noticed, too, that several figures appeared to be beating the intervening fields. Stoom's cordon had got busy at last, and I thanked my stars that not one of the villagers had seen me. I had not got away much too soon, for in another half hour he would have had me. END OF CHAPTER VIII