by J. R. Trtek
Holmes glanced expectantly at Bullivant, who sighed and turned toward Blenkiron.
“We’re still waiting for word from Inspector Magillivray,” the American said. “At the moment, all we have is hope.”
“One should never be without it,” said my friend with a tired smile. He then repeated to Blenkiron and Sir Walter the full story of Hannay’s Scottish journey, which had been told to us earlier.
“Well,” said Bullivant. “There is some small shred of good fortune there. Scotland Yard has been directed to organise the seizure of Ivery’s house in Biggleswick, and we are assembling forces in Glasgow to await my order to round up those associated with Abel Gresson. Gresson himself may still be out on the water on board that ship, but we will nab him as well.”
“May I suggest, Sir Walter, that you not interfere with Gresson and his immediate gang?” said Sherlock Holmes. “If left free, they may lead us to still others of whom we are not yet aware.”
“Of course,” agreed Bullivant after a moment’s thought. “That leaves this Portuguese fellow free as well, but with luck, we’ll have them all in the end.”
“Yes, but it’s the big bird that we want now,” noted Blenkiron. “The man we know as Ivery.”
Sir Walter sighed again and put the unlit cigar between his teeth before nodding vigorously. “I wish I had told Hannay to come here,” the spymaster said. “He may have more details about the Portuguese that might be helpful, and in any event, the fellow deserves to be on hand when Inspector Magillivray brings us the news, either good or bad.”
At perhaps half past eight the house bell rang. As if in answer to Bullivant’s desire, it was Hannay, who arrived on his own accord and at once sensed the glum mood that hung over the room.
“Is there any news?” he asked at once. “I am sorry that I failed to—”
“It wasn’t any fault of yours, Dick,” said Blenkiron at once. “You did fine.”
“Yes,” agreed Bullivant. “It was the devil’s own work that our friend Ivery looked your way last night. You are certain you recognised him?” he asked in desperation.
“Absolutely,” replied Hannay. “As certain as I am that he knew I saw him for who he truly was.”
“That little flicker of perception that you can never be wrong about,” said Blenkiron. “Land alive! I wish Mr. Magillivray would arrive soon.”
The bell rang as if on cue, and we turned in anticipation. The person who came through the door, however, was not the Scotland Yard inspector but rather a young woman in a white ball gown, a cluster of blue cornflowers at her breast. At the sight of her, Sir Walter sprang to his feet, almost upsetting a coffee cup that sat upon a table.
“How did you come to be here?” said Bullivant. “I expected you to arrive on a later train.”
“I was in London already,” said Mary Lamington. “With Aunt Doria, but when Sergeant Scaife happened to telephone me to say you wanted me here, I cut her theatre party. Doria believes I’m at a dance, so I needn’t be home till morning.” She glanced round the room and added, “Good evening, General Hannay. I’m pleased to see that you have made it safely back to town.”
“Safely, yes,” he replied, “but not victoriously.”
Bullivant then explained the situation to Miss Lamington, who nodded thoughtfully as the news about Ivery was related to her. There was also, however, an odd look in her eye as Hannay related the incident at the Strand Tube station. She almost interrupted his story once or twice but hesitated. Then, as Hannay concluded, we heard the house bell yet again.
“Are you expecting anyone other than Magillivray?” asked Blenkiron.
“No,” said Sir Walter, and all eyes turned toward the doorway.
One look at the inspector’s face told us all the news.
“So he’s skipped across the Channel,” said Blenkiron as a statement of fact. “Long gone.”
“Gone, for certain,” repeated Magillivray, who removed his hat and silently asked permission to sit. He leaned on the edge of his chair, gripping the hat’s brim. “We have just established how he left the country, and it was cleverly done.”
Sherlock Holmes stepped forward and took hold of an empty chair back. The look in his eyes was enough to cause Magillivray to explain all.
“There was no sign of disturbance at his home in Biggleswick when our men entered it,” the inspector began, “or in any of his other lairs—for we now realise that he had more than one, just as he had more than one identity. Moxon Ivery was but one of his many poses. He had scheduled a dinner party for this evening in Biggleswick, in fact, and the guests arrived and the meal served, but the host, Moxon Ivery, was nowhere to be seen.
“Instead, he was flying to France as a passenger of a different name, in one of our own planes. You see, in this second persona, he had gotten close to the people comprising the new Air Board.”220
“Same man, different face,” grumbled Blenkiron.
“The plane bearing him landed in Normandy this afternoon,” Magillivray informed us. “By now, I reckon the fellow is in Paris.”
“Or beyond,” said Sherlock Holmes.
Sir Walter took off his tortoiseshell spectacles and laid them carefully on the table. “This is total defeat,” he moaned. “Suddenly, I feel very old.”
Magillivray continued to fiddle with his hat while bearing the expression of a man in the throes of bitter disappointment. Blenkiron’s face was flushed, and I could see that he was blaspheming under his breath. Mary Lamington quietly strode over to Sir Walter and took his hand.
“What is the extent of the damage?” I asked calmly from across the room.
“We do not yet know,” replied Bullivant.
“But there is perhaps no limit to its potential,” said Sherlock Holmes, who glanced at Magillivray. “If, as you say, Ivery had several identities, he likely had a few we do not yet know, each one as cleverly conceived as the next.”
“Who knows what politicians he may have beguiled?” said Blenkiron. “Perhaps as someone else, he even may have breakfasted at Downing Street with forged letters of introduction.”
“Or visited the Grand Fleet as a distinguished neutral,” added Bullivant. “We do not know what he may have learnt.” The spymaster gingerly withdrew his hand from that of Mary Lamington. “We should have realised that, having escaped from the Ruff three years ago, he would return and wreak even more havoc. And to think that we do not even know his true name.”
“We must still try to neutralise him,” said Blenkiron.
“We can round up his remaining organisation,” said Magillivray. “Would that not be enough?”
“The greatest danger comes from what he may have in his head,” Bullivant explained. “That was the threat three years ago, if you recall, when he escaped the shadow of the Ruff, and that is our peril now. He may know enough to make an impact upon the present campaign in the field, or to make the next German offensive truly deadly. Both sides are struggling for an advantage over the other at this crucial juncture of the war; Ivery may now give that edge to Berlin. The awful thing is that we don’t know for certain.”
“Then we’ve got to push off and get after him,” Hannay said with an odd, boyish enthusiasm.
“But what do you suggest we do?” asked Magillivray. “If it’s a question of destroying this one man, how are you going to find him? Need I say more than the phrase needle and haystack?”
“All the same, we’ve got to do it,” Hannay countered. “My old friend Peter Pienaar—”
“The Boer?” asked Sir Walter.
“Yes,” said Hannay. “Him. Peter gave me more than one lesson on fortitude and—”
“I wish I could be an optimist,” interjected Bullivant with impatience, waving off Hannay’s remarks with a tired hand. “I do so wish, but it looks as if we must own defeat this time. I have been at my work for some twenty years, and though often been beaten, I’ve always kept a few cards in the game. Now I’m hanged if I have any. This is a knockout, Hannay. It’s
no good deluding ourselves. We’re men enough to look facts in the face and tell ourselves the truth, and the truth is that I don’t see any glint of light in this business. We’ve missed our shot by a hairsbreadth, but that’s the same as missing by miles.”
Sherlock Holmes opened his mouth to speak, but then, observing as did I the play of expression that passed between Hannay and Mary Lamington, he remained silent. And in that moment, Hannay came to the fore again.
“Sir Walter,” the South African said, “three years ago we sat in this room, after that same plump man had made off with vital military secrets. We thought then that we were done to the world, as we think now. We had just a miserable little set of clues, all contained in a few words scribbled in a notebook by a dead man. We had given up hope, and then Mr. Holmes grasped the essence of those words in Frank Scudder’s book, and in twenty-four hours we had won out.”
He paused, perhaps thinking of that same plump man who had eluded our grasp in 1914. “Largely won out, at any rate,” Hannay amended.
Bullivant nodded.
“At that moment, we were very much fighting against time,” Hannay said. “Now we can enjoy a degree of leisure in our approach. Moreover, we have a greater body of knowledge concerning our enemy than before, based on observation. The point is, in this round we have something with which to work. Sir Walter, do you mean to tell me that, when the stakes are so very big, you’re going to chuck in your hand?”
“We do know a good deal about Ivery,” admitted Magillivray, raising his head. “But Ivery’s dead. We know nothing of the man who came to life when that plane landed in Normandy.”
“I beg to differ,” said Sherlock Holmes. “There are many faces to this man, but only one mind, and we know a good deal about that mind.”
“Should we not catalogue that knowledge?” I suggested.
“An excellent thought, Watson,” Holmes said. “And I strongly endorse Mr. Hannay’s sentiment, expressed a moment ago, that we continue the chase without fail.”
“You would pursue him, Holmes?” Sir Walter asked.
“To France and perhaps beyond?” replied my friend. He shook his head. “Not I; that is a younger man’s task. Moreover, I have my own grail to pursue here in Britain.”
“The mythical third head?” asked Bullivant.
Holmes nodded, and Sir Walter silently concurred.
“Unless I miss my guess,” said Blenkiron slyly from his chair, “it is Dick Hannay who wants the job of finding Mr. Moxon Ivery.”
Hannay smiled. “Of course I want it,” he said. “I’ve got a stack of personal affronts to settle with the fellow, not to speak of the interests of the nation in mind as well. Mind you, I’m going back to my brigade in France first. I want a rest and a change, as strange as that remark might sound. Besides, the first stage of our effort will be office work, and I’m no use for that. But I’ll be waiting for your summons, Sir Walter, and I’ll come like a shot as soon as you call for me.”
“You’re certain?” Bullivant asked.
“I’ve a presentiment about this thing. I know in my bones that there will be a finish and that I will be in at it.”
Sherlock Holmes looked down with an abstracted expression.
“And I’ve no illusions,” Hannay added. “It will be a desperate, bloody business.”
“I fear you are all too correct in that sentiment, General Hannay,” said Mary Lamington. “And, acknowledging that, I can make only one suggestion at present.”
“And that is what?” asked Bullivant, looking up.
“That we go upstairs to your drawing room, Sir Walter, and take some tea.”
In less than an hour we found ourselves buoyed by a renewed sense of hope. Within the elegant lines and décor of Sir Walter’s drawing room, we found solace in tea and Miss Lamington’s skill at the piano. Then, at length, we began to assemble what we knew about the man behind the face of Moxon Ivery.
“I observed Abel Gresson pass on instructions to another man on the Isle of Skye—the Portuguese whom I’ve mentioned,” Hannay reminded us at one point. “They didn’t know I was hiding a short distance away and watching. Their conversation included some other names, and there were some strange remarks between them about birds.”
“Was the phrase The Wild Birds employed?” said Sherlock Holmes.
“Why yes, it was,” exclaimed Hannay. “How did you know?”
“Watson and I once heard another German speak of wild birds,” the detective explained. “At a many-gabled house on the Essex shoreline, three years ago.”
“The lines that Ivery and the Portuguese uttered were poetry,” said Hannay. “Launcelot Wake said the passages were from Goethe.”
“You saw Launcelot in Skye?” asked Miss Lamington with sudden urgency.
“I did,” replied Hannay. “And it’s a bit of relief to know your cousin is not a spy, after all.”
Holmes glanced at me, and I turned toward Hannay. In the corner of my eye, I saw Mary Lamington bow her head.
“In any event,” Holmes went on, “the names you overhead being mentioned and the phrase wild birds are items with which we may start.” He looked at Magillivray. “Surely, Inspector, we may hope they lead us somewhere?”
The man from Scotland Yard looked less despondent. “There might be something in all that,” he said, “but still, it’s a slim chance.”
“Of course it is,” said Blenkiron. “And so let’s get out our small-tooth combs and get to work on it.”
“I wish to heaven there was one habit of mind we could definitely attach to the fellow and no one else,” Magillivray said.
“That may not work with this man,” asserted Blenkiron. “He possesses multiple facets, multiple strengths.”
“What about weaknesses, then?” asked Sherlock Holmes.
“Weaknesses?” Magillivray said.
“Yes, blind spots,” said Holmes. “A fault that causes him to ignore or overlook, to become careless.”
“Yes,” said Hannay. “Places he won’t go to, things he can’t do—well, things he can’t do well, anyway. I reckon such knowledge would be useful.”
“Perhaps,” said Magillivray, “if we knew what they were. It’s not what you’d call a burning and shining light, though, is it?”
“There’s one chink in his armour,” Hannay said. “There’s one person in the world he can never practise his transformative disguises on, and that’s me. I will always know him again, even though he should appear as my own commanding officer. That will give us an edge.”
“It would give you an edge,” said Magillivray.
Mary Lamington got up from the piano and stepped to the side of Sir Walter Bullivant, who sat comfortably in an armchair.
“There is one huge blind spot of which none of you are yet aware,” she said, her cheeks suddenly flushing.
“Oh?” said Sherlock Holmes. “And what is that, Miss Lamington?”
“Just before I last saw him in Biggleswick yesterday, Mr. Ivery asked me to marry him.”
Hannay returned to France a few days later. About the same time, I received a letter from Launcelot Wake, informing me that he had been formally inducted into the Labour Corps and would soon be crossing the Channel to France. Making no mention of his meeting Hannay on Skye, the young man reiterated his view that the war was unjust, once more attributing his decision to serve to a desire for fresh air and exercise. I put down his letter with a smile, though in my heart, there was nothing but trepidation for him.
Leaving the search for Moxon Ivery to Magillivray, Scaife, and other agents of Sir Walter Bullivant, Sherlock Holmes devoted himself once more to a concerted search for oddities, anomalies, and inconsistencies in the daily life of our nation and its inhabitants, hoping that by turning over some small, curious pebble he might uncover a clue leading him to the third German spy ring. I noticed that he also took to thumbing through his commonplace books, some of them decades old, in which he had stored a variety of articles on esoteric topics and lit
tle-known individuals.
Farrar, Johnson, and Arbuthnot, meanwhile, kept dredging every street in London for the unusual in general and for Dietrich Baumann in particular, but they found nothing of value during those searches. Similarly, Tatty Evans aboard the Belisama observed only regular river traffic, with no sign of the Nemesis.
I continued to wrestle with the dual discontents of fulfilling what I saw as trivial office duties for the medical corps on the one hand and, on the other, the near useless responsibilities of being a mere listener to my friend’s speculations. I found myself with nothing of value to contribute as Holmes relentlessly poured over newspapers, periodicals, and government reports. More than once each day, I sat and envied Launcelot Wake for his fresh air and exercise, as well as his contribution to our nation’s cause.
In the weeks that followed, Abel Gresson remained free and apparently unsuspected, but his every move was closely watched, as Sherlock Holmes had recommended. The man travelled to France as part of an official labour delegation to observe the front, while the individual identified by Hannay as the Portuguese courier was subsequently seen by British agents and later observed discreetly in London by Magillivray’s Sergeant Scaife.
As we entered October, I received a letter from Charlie Taylor, who was faring well in Dumfries but informed me that Ewan Clark’s soul remained in limbo. Three days later, I also received a note from Captain Edward Ashley Tate, who had been discharged from Isham to rejoin his brigade to France. His second week back at the front, the officer had narrowly escaped a German whiz-bang,221 but the incident had not fazed him, he wrote, for he told me he now believed he lived on borrowed time in any case.
One person I did not hear from was Mary Lamington. I presumed her still to be at Isham, though her task of discreetly watching Moxon Ivery had ended. However, upon being reminded of the Cotswolds hospital by Ashley Tate’s letter, I resolved to write her that very day. As I finished that task, Holmes returned to Queen Anne Street with a loud slamming of the house door. I waited calmly in the sitting room, wondering if his loud report was one of victory or frustration. The buoyant energy of his step upon entering the room answered that question at once.
