by John Buchan
He was silent for a second, and then he said, meditatively:
‘But I don’t think you are a fool. 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 biggish 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 Stumm. ‘His name is Brandt. Brandt, you see before you Herr Gaudian.’
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 blonde 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 jibbahs and Masai shields and one or two good buffalo heads. Presently a bell was rung. Stumm 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 Stumm 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 Stumm telling Gaudian 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 the reason why.’
Stumm laughed. ‘The von Einem! Perhaps, but her charm works well enough.’
Gaudian 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 Tressler 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 Gaudian set 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 Tanganyika way, and I had got up that country-side pretty accurately.
‘You say that with our help you can make trouble for the British on the three borders?’ Gaudian asked at length.
‘I can spread the fire if some one 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 Mussulman peoples. But there you must help me. I know nothing about Islam, and I gather that you do.’
‘Why?’ he asked.
‘Because of what you have done already,’ I answered.
Stumm 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 Moslem world.’ Then, lowering his voice and raising his eyebrows, he said some word like ‘uhnmantl’.
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. Stumm 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 backveld Boer 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 Stumm. That large man was beginning to fascinate me, even though I hated him. Gaudian 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 fleshly appetites. Cruelty, from 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 Under-Secretary fellow had talked small in his presence, and so great a man as Gaudian 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. Stumm had talked of a von Einem woman who was interested in his department, perhaps the same woman as the Hilda he had mentioned the day before to the Under-Secretary. There was not much in that. She was probably some minister’s or ambassador’s wife who had a finger in high politics. If I could have caught the word Stumm had whispered to Gaudian which made him start and look askance at me! But I had only heard a gurgle of something like ‘uhnmantl’, which wasn’t any German word that I knew.
The heat put me into a half-doze and I began dreamily to wonder what other people were doing. Where had Blenkiron 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 S
andy, too? As like as not bucketing in the hold of some Greek coaster in the Aegean. Then I thought of my battalion somewhere on the line between Hulluch and La Bassee, hammering at the Boche, while I was five hundred miles or so inside the Boche 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 Gaudian’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 out one 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 guessed 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 for my pipe.
It was Gaudian, to bid me join him and Stumm in his study.
On our way there he put a kindly hand on my shoulder. I think he thought I was bullied by Stumm 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 Gaudian 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. If you are a rogue you will have little scope for roguery. We will see to that. If you are a fool, you will yourself suffer for it. But if you are a good man, you will have a fair chance, and if you succeed we will not forget it. Tomorrow I go home and you will come with me and get your orders.’
I made shift to stand at attention and salute.
Gaudian spoke in a pleasant voice, as if he wanted to atone for Stumm’s imperiousness. ‘We are men who love our Fatherland, Herr Brandt,’ 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.’
Stumm translated in a sentence, and his voice was quite solemn. He held up his right hand and so did Gaudian, like a man taking an oath or a parson blessing his congregation.
Then I realized something of the might of Germany. She produced good and bad, cads and gentlemen, but she could put a bit of the fanatic into them all.
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 Stumm entered. He strode up to me and stared me in the face. I was half a head 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 every way.
‘I have reason to believe that you are a liar,’ he growled.
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.
‘A liar!’ he repeated. ‘You and that swine Pienaar.’
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.
‘You are a precious pair. 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 Stumm had got it 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 wart-hog, 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 calumniated 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 Boer. Anyhow the upshot was that Peter was marched off to gaol, 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.’
Stumm 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. Do you imagine, you fool, that this great Empire in the thick of a world-war is going to trouble its head to lay snares for an ignorant taakhaar?’
‘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 Pienaar. And you, too, my friend. On you also we 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 cause to love you. For the last two days I’ve had nothing from you but suspicion and insult. The only decent man I’ve met is Herr Gaudian. It’s because I believe that there are many in Germany like him that I’m 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. ‘You had better come down and get your coffee.’
I was safe for the moment but in very low spirits. What on earth would happen to poor old Pete
r? 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 Blenkiron and Sandy as of flying to the moon.
After breakfast I was told to get ready. When I asked where I was going Stumm 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.
Gaudian 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 grey car, with Stumm’s servant sitting beside the chauffeur. It was a morning of hard frost, the bare fields were white with rime, 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. Stumm 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 23rd day of December, and even in war time one had a sort of feel of Christmas. You could see girls carrying evergreens, and when we stopped at a station the 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.
