by John Buchan
I was so dazzled by the suddenness of the glare that at first I blinked and saw nothing. Then my eyes cleared and I found myself looking at the inside of a car upholstered in some soft dove-coloured fabric, and beautifully finished off in ivory and silver. The woman who sat in it had a mantilla of black lace over her head and shoulders, and with one slender jewelled hand she kept its fold over the greater part of her face. I saw only a pair of pale grey-blue eyes — these and the slim fingers.
I remember that Sandy was standing very upright with his hands on his hips, by no means like a servant in the presence of his mistress. He was a fine figure of a man at all times, but in those wild clothes, with his head thrown back and his dark brows drawn below his skull-cap, he looked like some savage king out of an older world. He was speaking Turkish, and glancing at me now and then as if angry and perplexed. I took the hint that he was not supposed to know any other tongue, and that he was asking who the devil I might be.
Then they both looked at me, Sandy with the slow unwinking stare of the gipsy, the lady with those curious, beautiful pale eyes. They ran over my clothes, my brand-new riding-breeches, my splashed boots, my wide-brimmed hat. I took off the last and made my best bow.
‘Madam,’ I said, ‘I have to ask pardon for trespassing in your garden. The fact is, I and my servant — he’s down the road with the horses and I guess you noticed him — the two of us went for a ride this afternoon, and got good and well lost. We came in by your back gate, and I was prospecting for your front door to find someone to direct us, when I bumped into this brigand-chief who didn’t understand my talk. I’m American, and I’m here on a big Government proposition. I hate to trouble you, but if you’d send a man to show us how to strike the city I’d be very much in your debt.’
Her eyes never left my face. ‘Will you come into the car?’ she said in English. ‘At the house I will give you a servant to direct you.’
She drew in the skirts of her fur cloak to make room for me, and in my muddy boots and sopping clothes I took the seat she pointed out. She said a word in Turkish to Sandy, switched off the light, and the car moved on.
Women had never come much my way, and I knew about as much of their ways as I knew about the Chinese language. All my life I had lived with men only, and rather a rough crowd at that. When I made my pile and came home I looked to see a little society, but I had first the business of the Black Stone on my hands, and then the war, so my education languished. I had never been in a motor-car with a lady before, and I felt like a fish on a dry sandbank. The soft cushions and the subtle scents filled me with acute uneasiness. I wasn’t thinking now about Sandy’s grave words, or about Blenkiron’s warning, or about my job and the part this woman must play in it. I was thinking only that I felt mortally shy. The darkness made it worse. I was sure that my companion was looking at me all the time and laughing at me for a clown.
The car stopped and a tall servant opened the door. The lady was over the threshold before I was at the step. I followed her heavily, the wet squelching from my field-boots. At that moment I noticed that she was very tall.
She led me through a long corridor to a room where two pillars held lamps in the shape of torches. The place was dark but for their glow, and it was as warm as a hothouse from invisible stoves. I felt soft carpets underfoot, and on the walls hung some tapestry or rug of an amazingly intricate geometrical pattern, but with every strand as rich as jewels. There, between the pillars, she turned and faced me. Her furs were thrown back, and the black mantilla had slipped down to her shoulders.
‘I have heard of you,’ she said. ‘You are called Richard Hanau, the American. Why have you come to this land?’
‘To have a share in the campaign,’ I said. ‘I’m an engineer, and I thought I could help out with some business like Mesopotamia.’
‘You are on Germany’s side?’ she asked.
‘Why, yes,’ I replied. ‘We Americans are supposed to be nootrals, and that means we’re free to choose any side we fancy. I’m for the Kaiser.’
Her cool eyes searched me, but not in suspicion. I could see she wasn’t troubling with the question whether I was speaking the truth. She was sizing me up as a man. I cannot describe that calm appraising look. There was no sex in it, nothing even of that implicit sympathy with which one human being explores the existence of another. I was a chattel, a thing infinitely removed from intimacy. Even so I have myself looked at a horse which I thought of buying, scanning his shoulders and hocks and paces. Even so must the old lords of Constantinople have looked at the slaves which the chances of war brought to their markets, assessing their usefulness for some task or other with no thought of a humanity common to purchased and purchaser. And yet — not quite. This woman’s eyes were weighing me, not for any special duty, but for my essential qualities. I felt that I was under the scrutiny of one who was a connoisseur in human nature.
I see I have written that I knew nothing about women. But every man has in his bones a consciousness of sex. I was shy and perturbed, but horribly fascinated. This slim woman, poised exquisitely like some statue between the pillared lights, with her fair cloud of hair, her long delicate face, and her pale bright eyes, had the glamour of a wild dream. I hated her instinctively, hated her intensely, but I longed to arouse her interest. To be valued coldly by those eyes was an offence to my manhood, and I felt antagonism rising within me. I am a strong fellow, well set up, and rather above the average height, and my irritation stiffened me from heel to crown. I flung my head back and gave her cool glance for cool glance, pride against pride.
Once, I remember, a doctor on board ship who dabbled in hypnotism told me that I was the most unsympathetic person he had ever struck. He said I was about as good a mesmeric subject as Table Mountain. Suddenly I began to realize that this woman was trying to cast some spell over me. The eyes grew large and luminous, and I was conscious for just an instant of some will battling to subject mine. I was aware, too, in the same moment of a strange scent which recalled that wild hour in Kuprasso’s garden-house. It passed quickly, and for a second her eyes drooped. I seemed to read in them failure, and yet a kind of satisfaction, too, as if they had found more in me than they expected.
‘What life have you led?’ the soft voice was saying.
I was able to answer quite naturally, rather to my surprise. ‘I have been a mining engineer up and down the world.’
‘You have faced danger many times?’
‘I have faced danger.’
‘You have fought with men in battles?’
‘I have fought in battles.’
Her bosom rose and fell in a kind of sigh. A smile — a very beautiful thing — flitted over her face. She gave me her hand. ‘The horses are at the door now,’ she said, ‘and your servant is with them. One of my people will guide you to the city.’
She turned away and passed out of the circle of light into the darkness beyond...
Peter and I jogged home in the rain with one of Sandy’s skin-clad Companions loping at our side. We did not speak a word, for my thoughts were running like hounds on the track of the past hours. I had seen the mysterious Hilda von Einem, I had spoken to her, I had held her hand. She had insulted me with the subtlest of insults and yet I was not angry. Suddenly the game I was playing became invested with a tremendous solemnity. My old antagonists, Stumm and Rasta and the whole German Empire, seemed to shrink into the background, leaving only the slim woman with her inscrutable smile and devouring eyes. ‘Mad and bad,’ Blenkiron had called her, ‘but principally bad.’ I did not think they were the proper terms, for they belonged to the narrow world of our common experience. This was something beyond and above it, as a cyclone or an earthquake is outside the decent routine of nature. Mad and bad she might be, but she was also great.
Before we arrived our guide had plucked my knee and spoken some words which he had obviously got by heart. ‘The Master says,’ ran the message, ‘expect him at midnight.’
CHAPTER 15. AN EMBARRASSED TOI
LET
I was soaked to the bone, and while Peter set off to look for dinner I went to my room to change. I had a rubdown and then got into pyjamas for some dumb-bell exercises with two chairs, for that long wet ride had stiffened my arm and shoulder muscles. They were a vulgar suit of primitive blue, which Blenkiron had looted from my London wardrobe. As Cornelis Brandt I had sported a flannel nightgown.
My bedroom opened off the sitting-room, and while I was busy with my gymnastics I heard the door open. I thought at first it was Blenkiron, but the briskness of the tread was unlike his measured gait. I had left the light burning there, and the visitor, whoever he was, had made himself at home. I slipped on a green dressing-gown Blenkiron had lent me, and sallied forth to investigate.
My friend Rasta was standing by the table, on which he had laid an envelope. He looked round at my entrance and saluted.
‘I come from the Minister of War, sir,’ he said, ‘and bring you your passports for tomorrow. You will travel by... ‘ And then his voice tailed away and his black eyes narrowed to slits. He had seen something which switched him off the metals.
At that moment I saw it too. There was a mirror on the wall behind him, and as I faced him I could not help seeing my reflection. It was the exact image of the engineer on the Danube boat — blue jeans, loden cloak, and all. The accursed mischance of my costume had given him the clue to an identity which was otherwise buried deep in the Bosporus.
I am bound to say for Rasta that he was a man of quick action. In a trice he had whipped round to the other side of the table between me and the door, where he stood regarding me wickedly.
By this time I was at the table and stretched out a hand for the envelope. My one hope was nonchalance.
‘Sit down, sir,’ I said, ‘and have a drink. It’s a filthy night to move about in.’
‘Thank you, no, Herr Brandt,’ he said. ‘You may burn these passports for they will not be used.’
‘Whatever’s the matter with you?’ I cried. ‘You’ve mistaken the house, my lad. I’m called Hanau — Richard Hanau — and my partner’s Mr John S. Blenkiron. He’ll be here presently. Never knew anyone of the name of Brandt, barring a tobacconist in Denver City.’
‘You have never been to Rustchuk?’ he said with a sneer.
‘Not that I know of. But, pardon me, Sir, if I ask your name and your business here. I’m darned if I’m accustomed to be called by Dutch names or have my word doubted. In my country we consider that impolite as between gentlemen.’
I could see that my bluff was having its effect. His stare began to waver, and when he next spoke it was in a more civil tone.
‘I will ask pardon if I’m mistaken, Sir, but you’re the image of a man who a week ago was at Rustchuk, a man much wanted by the Imperial Government.’
‘A week ago I was tossing in a dirty little hooker coming from Constanza. Unless Rustchuk’s in the middle of the Black Sea I’ve never visited the township. I guess you’re barking up the wrong tree. Come to think of it, I was expecting passports. Say, do you come from Enver Damad?’
‘I have that honour,’ he said.
‘Well, Enver is a very good friend of mine. He’s the brightest citizen I’ve struck this side of the Atlantic.’
The man was calming down, and in another minute his suspicions would have gone. But at that moment, by the crookedest kind of luck, Peter entered with a tray of dishes. He did not notice Rasta, and walked straight to the table and plumped down his burden on it. The Turk had stepped aside at his entrance, and I saw by the look in his eyes that his suspicions had become a certainty. For Peter, stripped to shirt and breeches, was the identical shabby little companion of the Rustchuk meeting.
I had never doubted Rasta’s pluck. He jumped for the door and had a pistol out in a trice pointing at my head.
‘Bonne fortune,’ he cried. ‘Both the birds at one shot.’ His hand was on the latch, and his mouth was open to cry. I guessed there was an orderly waiting on the stairs.
He had what you call the strategic advantage, for he was at the door while I was at the other end of the table and Peter at the side of it at least two yards from him. The road was clear before him, and neither of us was armed. I made a despairing step forward, not knowing what I meant to do, for I saw no light. But Peter was before me.
He had never let go of the tray, and now, as a boy skims a stone on a pond, he skimmed it with its contents at Rasta’s head. The man was opening the door with one hand while he kept me covered with the other, and he got the contrivance fairly in the face. A pistol shot cracked out, and the bullet went through the tray, but the noise was drowned in the crash of glasses and crockery. The next second Peter had wrenched the pistol from Rasta’s hand and had gripped his throat.
A dandified Young Turk, brought up in Paris and finished in Berlin, may be as brave as a lion, but he cannot stand in a rough-and-tumble against a backveld hunter, though more than double his age. There was no need for me to help him. Peter had his own way, learned in a wild school, of knocking the sense out of a foe. He gagged him scientifically, and trussed him up with his own belt and two straps from a trunk in my bedroom. ‘This man is too dangerous to let go,’ he said, as if his procedure were the most ordinary thing in the world. ‘He will be quiet now till we have time to make a plan.’
At that moment there came a knocking at the door. That is the sort of thing that happens in melodrama, just when the villain has finished off his job neatly. The correct thing to do is to pale to the teeth, and with a rolling, conscience-stricken eye glare round the horizon. But that was not Peter’s way.
‘We’d better tidy up if we’re to have visitors,’ he said calmly.
Now there was one of those big oak German cupboards against the wall which must have been brought in in sections, for complete it would never have got through the door. It was empty now, but for Blenkiron’s hatbox. In it he deposited the unconscious Rasta, and turned the key. ‘There’s enough ventilation through the top,’ he observed, ‘to keep the air good.’ Then he opened the door. A magnificent kavass in blue and silver stood outside. He saluted and proffered a card on which was written in pencil, ‘Hilda von Einem’.
I would have begged for time to change my clothes, but the lady was behind him. I saw the black mantilla and the rich sable furs. Peter vanished through my bedroom and I was left to receive my guest in a room littered with broken glass and a senseless man in the cupboard.
There are some situations so crazily extravagant that they key up the spirit to meet them. I was almost laughing when that stately lady stepped over my threshold.
‘Madam,’ I said, with a bow that shamed my old dressing-gown and strident pyjamas. ‘You find me at a disadvantage. I came home soaking from my ride, and was in the act of changing. My servant has just upset a tray of crockery, and I fear this room’s no fit place for a lady. Allow me three minutes to make myself presentable.’
She inclined her head gravely and took a seat by the fire. I went into my bedroom, and as I expected found Peter lurking by the other door. In a hectic sentence I bade him get Rasta’s orderly out of the place on any pretext, and tell him his master would return later. Then I hurried into decent garments, and came out to find my visitor in a brown study.
At the sound of my entrance she started from her dream and stood up on the hearthrug, slipping the long robe of fur from her slim body.
‘We are alone?’ she said. ‘We will not be disturbed?’
Then an inspiration came to me. I remembered that Frau von Einem, according to Blenkiron, did not see eye to eye with the Young Turks; and I had a queer instinct that Rasta could not be to her liking. So I spoke the truth.
‘I must tell you that there’s another guest here tonight. I reckon he’s feeling pretty uncomfortable. At present he’s trussed up on a shelf in that cupboard.’
She did not trouble to look round.
‘Is he dead?’ she asked calmly.
‘By no means,’ I said, ‘but he’s fixed so he can’
t speak, and I guess he can’t hear much.’
‘He was the man who brought you this?’ she asked, pointing to the envelope on the table which bore the big blue stamp of the Ministry of War.
‘The same,’ I said. ‘I’m not perfectly sure of his name, but I think they call him Rasta.’
Not a flicker of a smile crossed her face, but I had a feeling that the news pleased her.
‘Did he thwart you?’ she asked.
‘Why, yes. He thwarted me some. His head is a bit swelled, and an hour or two on the shelf will do him good.’
‘He is a powerful man,’ she said, ‘a jackal of Enver’s. You have made a dangerous enemy.’
‘I don’t value him at two cents,’ said I, though I thought grimly that as far as I could see the value of him was likely to be about the price of my neck.
‘Perhaps you are right,’ she said with serious eyes. ‘In these days no enemy is dangerous to a bold man. I have come tonight, Mr Hanau, to talk business with you, as they say in your country. I have heard well of you, and today I have seen you. I may have need of you, and you assuredly will have need of me... ‘
She broke off, and again her strange potent eyes fell on my face. They were like a burning searchlight which showed up every cranny and crack of the soul. I felt it was going to be horribly difficult to act a part under that compelling gaze. She could not mesmerize me, but she could strip me of my fancy dress and set me naked in the masquerade.
‘What came you forth to seek?’ she asked. ‘You are not like the stout American Blenkiron, a lover of shoddy power and a devotee of a feeble science. There is something more than that in your face. You are on our side, but you are not of the Germans with their hankerings for a rococo Empire. You come from America, the land of pious follies, where men worship gold and words. I ask, what came you forth to seek?’ As she spoke I seemed to get a vision of a figure, like one of the old gods looking down on human nature from a great height, a figure disdainful and passionless, but with its own magnificence. It kindled my imagination, and I answered with the stuff I had often cogitated when I had tried to explain to myself just how a case could be made out against the Allied cause.
