He did not weigh the words of his answer. A hare with the breath of a greyhound hot on her thighs does not weigh this and that. Some god gives her the tip when to double, and which way to go, and she does it. “Listen again,” he said in his turn, and so pressingly that she too held her breath and the Rhine could again be heard whispering earnestly. “Listen to it—you,” he said in a low voice as earnest as its. “You think I have got nothing like that in my ears? I live in a house on the Thames, near a weir. When I was a boy I went off to sleep every night to the sound of the lasher—water tumbling about at the end of our garden—always the same and always changing, like somebody’s voice. Well, that’s my Rhine. That’s the voice of my country, to me. It’s what told me to put on this kit and come here. When I lie down in your prison tonight, I shall hear it until I’m asleep. I don’t suppose all this is rational. Your Germany may be a much finer country than ours. It’s love, though. Isn’t that the thing to go by? Doesn’t it make everything right that’s done for it—even what you were going to do for it—even what I’m doing here?”
“Go quickly,” she said, “before I remember my duty.”
He made out that she was extending a hand in farewell. He found it ungloved and kissed the back of it twice. “You are even more splendid,” he said, before letting it go, “than I thought you, that night in Amiens.”
“And you,” she said, “have the great heart that I saw in you then.”
She hurried off towards the riverside quarter beyond the black bulk of the Cathedral, and Gresson hurried off, almost forgetting to limp, the opposite way, to hide in the thronged Hohe Strasse and make for the old Severin Gate in the South. Cologne was a sizeable city, but not big enough to hold that magnificent woman and him.
VI
As punctual as a constitutional King the plane glided silently down the long slant from the clouds to the field in the bend of the Rhine. “Not nabbed, sir, yet?” the cheerful boy said airily, as Gresson scrambled in. “Simple souls, these Germans.”
Gresson wasn’t so sure. But there was no need to answer. The whirling blast from the propeller had begun to blow the hoar-frost off the turf under the plane. Nothing more could be said without effort, or easily heard, until the many-coloured lights of their home port came rushing forward and upward to bring the frozen traveller in.
PEIFFER
A. E. W. MASON
THE PROLIFIC and distinguished writing career of Alfred Edward Woodley Mason (1865–1948) brought success in several genres, most notably mystery fiction and historical novels.
As the author of mysteries, his major contribution to the genre was the creation of Inspector Hanaud, the first official policeman of importance in twentieth-century detective literature. Like most French detectives portrayed in English mysteries, he is a comic character, though not drawn quite as broadly as John Dickson Carr’s Henri Bencolin or Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot (who is technically Belgian). It has been widely recognized that Christie, a dedicated reader of mystery fiction, largely based her famous character on Hanaud, who appeared in six novels that were so highly regarded that the first two, At the Villa Rose (1910) and The House of the Arrow (1924), were selected for the prestigious Howard Haycraft–Ellery Queen list of cornerstone works in the history of the genre.
Equal success was accorded Mason for his adventure and historical novels, the most famous of which is The Four Feathers (1902), the classic about a soldier handed a white feather, the symbol of cowardice, who is then shunned by his friends, family, and fellow soldiers, and the trials he endures to prove them wrong. Of the many film versions produced of The Four Feathers, the 1939 version starring Ralph Richardson and John Clements is the best and remains a staple of late-night television.
Numerous films were made from Mason’s prodigious output of fiction, which was both commercially successful and critically acclaimed. His writing style was smooth, his characters believable, his moods convincing, and, above all, his stories were excellent. Meticulous about realistic detail, Mason often used personal experiences in his books. His tenure in Parliament resulted in a political novel, his role as civilian chief of British Naval Intelligence during World War I provided material for his espionage novels, and his travels in the Mideast informed the authentic background for some of his adventure fiction.
“Peiffer” was originally published in the June 1916 issue of The Story-Teller; it was first collected in The Four Corners of the World by A. E. W. Mason (London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1917).
PEIFFER
A. E. W. MASON
FOR A MOMENT I was surprised to see the stout and rubicund Slingsby in Lisbon. He was drinking a vermouth and seltzer at five o’clock in the afternoon at a café close to the big hotel. But at that time Portugal was still a neutral country and a happy hunting ground for a good many thousand Germans. Slingsby was lolling in his chair with such exceeding indolence that I could not doubt his business was pressing and serious. I accordingly passed him by as if I had never seen him in my life before. But he called out to me. So I took a seat at his table.
Of what we talked about I have not the least recollection, for my eyes were quite captivated by a strange being who sat alone fairly close to Slingsby, at one side and a little behind him. This was a man of middle age, with reddish hair, a red, square, inflamed face and a bristly moustache. He was dressed in a dirty suit of grey flannel; he wore a battered Panama pressed down upon his head; he carried pince-nez on the bridge of his nose, and he sat with a big bock of German beer in front of him. But I never saw him touch the beer. He sat in a studied attitude of ferocity, his elbow on the table, his chin propped on the palm of his hand, his head pushed aggressively forward, and he glared at Slingsby through his glasses with the fixed stare of hatred and fury which a master workman in wax might give to a figure in a Chamber of Horrors. Indeed, it seemed to me that he must have rehearsed his bearing in some such quarter, for there was nothing natural or convinced in him from the brim of his Panama to the black patent leather tips of his white canvas shoes.
I touched Slingsby on the arm.
“Who is that man, and what have you done to him?”
Slingsby looked round unconcernedly.
“Oh, that’s only Peiffer,” he replied. “Peiffer making frightfulness.”
“Peiffer?”
The name was quite strange to me.
“Yes. Don’t you know him? He’s a product of 1914,” and Slingsby leaned towards me a little. “Peiffer is an officer in the German Navy. You would hardly guess it, but he is. Now that their country is at war, officers in the German Navy have a marked amount of spare time which they never had before. So Peiffer went to a wonderful Government school in Hamburg, where in twenty lessons they teach the gentle art of espionage, a sort of Berlitz school. Peiffer ate his dinners and got his degrees, so to speak, and now he’s at Lisbon putting obi on me.”
“It seems rather infantile, and must be annoying,” I said; but Slingsby would only accept half the statement.
“Infantile, yes. Annoying, not at all. For so long as Peiffer is near me, being frightful, I know he’s not up to mischief.”
“Mischief!” I cried. “That fellow? What mischief can he do?”
Slingsby viciously crushed the stub of his cigarette in the ashtray.
“A deuce of a lot, my friend. Don’t make any mistake. Peiffer’s methods are infantile and barbaric, but he has a low and fertile cunning in the matter of ideas. I know. I have had some.”
And Slingsby was to have more, very much more: in the shape of a great many sleepless nights, during which he wrestled with a dreadful uncertainty to get behind that square red face and those shining pince-nez, and reach the dark places of Peiffer’s mind.
The first faint wisp of cloud began to show six weeks later, when Slingsby happened to be in Spain.
“Something’s up,” he said, scratching his head. “But I’m han
ged if I can guess what it is. See what you can make of it”; and here is the story which he told.
Three Germans dressed in the black velvet corduroy, the white stockings and the rope-soled white shoes of the Spanish peasant, arrived suddenly in the town of Cartagena, and put up at an inn in a side-street near the harbour. Cartagena, for all that it is one of the chief naval ports of Spain, is a small place, and the life of it ebbs and flows in one narrow street, the Calle Mayor; so that very little can happen which is not immediately known and discussed. The arrival of the three mysterious Germans provoked, consequently, a deal of gossip and curiosity, and the curiosity was increased when the German Consul sitting in front of the Casino loudly professed complete ignorance of these very doubtful compatriots of his, and an exceeding great contempt for them. The next morning, however, brought a new development. The three Germans complained publicly to the Alcalde. They had walked through Valencia, Alicante, and Murcia in search of work, and everywhere they had been pestered and shadowed by the police.
“Our Consul will do nothing for us,” they protested indignantly. “He will not receive us, nor will any German in Cartagena. We are poor people.” And having protested, they disappeared in the night.
But a few days later the three had emerged again at Almeria, and at a mean café in one of the narrow, blue-washed Moorish streets of the old town. Peiffer was identified as one of the three—not the Peiffer who had practised frightfulness in Lisbon, but a new and wonderful Peiffer, who inveighed against the shamelessness of German officials on the coasts of Spain. At Almeria, in fact, Peiffer made a scene at the German Vice-Consulate, and, having been handed over to the police, was fined and threatened with imprisonment. At this point the story ended.
“What do you make of it?” asked Slingsby.
“First, that Peiffer is working south; and, secondly, that he is quarrelling with his own officials.”
“Yes, but quarrelling with marked publicity,” said Slingsby. “That, I think we shall find, is the point of real importance. Peiffer’s methods are not merely infantile; they are elaborate. He is working down South. I think that I will go to Gibraltar. I have always wished to see it.”
Whether Slingsby was speaking the truth, I had not an idea. But he went to Gibraltar, and there an astonishing thing happened to him. He received a letter, and the letter came from Peiffer. Peiffer was at Algeciras, just across the bay in Spain, and he wanted an interview. He wrote for it with the most brazen impertinence.
“I cannot, owing to this with-wisdom-so-easily-to-have-been-avoided war, come myself to Gibraltar, but I will remain at your disposition here.”
“That,” said Slingsby, “from the man who was making frightfulness at me a few weeks ago, is a proof of some nerve. We will go and see Peiffer. We will stay at Algeciras from Saturday to Monday, and we will hear what he has to say.”
A polite note was accordingly dispatched, and on Sunday morning Peiffer, decently clothed in a suit of serge, was shown into Slingsby’s private sitting-room. He plunged at once into the story of his wanderings. We listened to it without a sign that we knew anything about it.
“So?” from time to time said Slingsby, with inflections of increasing surprise, but that was all. Then Peiffer went on to his grievances.
“Perhaps you have heard how I was treated by the Consuls?” he interrupted himself to ask suddenly.
“No,” Slingsby replied calmly. “Continue!”
Peiffer wiped his forehead and his glasses. We were each one, in his way, all working for our respective countries. The work was honourable. But there were limits to endurance. All his fatigue and perils went for nothing in the eyes of comfortable officials sure of their salary. He had been fined; he had been threatened with imprisonment. It was unverschämt the way he had been treated.
“So?” said Slingsby firmly. There are fine inflections by which that simple word may be made to express most of the emotions. Slingsby’s “So?” expressed a passionate agreement with the downtrodden Peiffer.
“Flesh and blood can stand it no longer,” cried Peiffer, “and my heart is flesh. No, I have had enough.”
Throughout the whole violent tirade, in his eyes, in his voice, in his gestures, there ran an eager, wistful plea that we should take him at his face value and believe every word he said.
“So I came to you,” he said at last, slapping his knee and throwing out his hand afterwards like a man who has taken a mighty resolution. “Yes. I have no money, nothing. And they will give me none. It is unverschämt. So,” and he screwed up his little eyes and wagged a podgy forefinger—“so the service I had begun for my Government I will now finish for you.”
Slingsby examined the carpet curiously.
“Well, there are possibly some shillings to be had if the service is good enough. I do not know. But I cannot deal in the dark. What sort of a service is it?”
“Ah!”
Peiffer hitched his chair nearer.
“It is a question of rifles—rifles for over there,” and, looking out through the window he nodded towards Gibel Musa and the coast of Morocco.
Slingsby did not so much as flinch. I almost groaned aloud. We were to be treated to the stock legend of the ports, the new edition of the Spanish prisoner story. I, the mere tourist in search of health, could have gone on with Peiffer’s story myself, even to the exact number of the rifles.
“It was a great plan,” Peiffer continued. “Fifty thousand rifles, no less.” There always were fifty thousand rifles. “They are buried—near the sea.” They always were buried either near the sea or on the frontier of Portugal. “With ammunition. They are to be landed outside Melilla, where I have been about this very affair, and distributed amongst the Moors in the unsubdued country on the edge of the French zone.”
“So?” exclaimed Slingsby with the most admirable imitation of consternation.
“Yes, but you need not fear. You shall have the rifles—when I know exactly where they are buried.”
“Ah!” said Slingsby.
He had listened to the familiar rigmarole, certain that behind it there was something real and sinister which he did not know—something which he was desperately anxious to find out.
“Then you do not know where they are buried?”
“No, but I shall know if—I am allowed to go into Gibraltar. Yes, there is some one there. I must put myself into relations with him. Then I shall know, and so shall you.”
So here was some part of the truth, at all events. Peiffer wanted to get into Gibraltar. His disappearance from Lisbon, his reappearance in corduroys, his quarrelsome progress down the east coast, his letter to Slingsby, and his story, were all just the items of an elaborate piece of machinery invented to open the gates of that fortress to him. Slingsby’s only movement was to take his cigarette-case lazily from his pocket.
“But why in the world,” he asked, “can’t you get your man in Gibraltar to come out here and see you?”
Peiffer shook his head.
“He would not come. He has been told to expect me, and I shall give him certain tokens from which he can guess my trustworthiness. If I write to him, ‘Come to me,’ he will say ‘This is a trap.’ ”
Slingsby raised another objection:
“But I shouldn’t think that you can expect the authorities to give you a safe conduct into Gibraltar upon your story.”
Peiffer swept that argument aside with a contemptuous wave of his hand.
“I have a Danish passport. See!” and he took the document from his breast pocket. It was complete, to his photograph.
“Yes, you can certainly come in on that,” said Slingsby. He reflected for a moment before he added: “I have no power, of course. But I have some friends. I think you may reasonably reckon that you won’t be molested.”
I saw Peiffer’s eyes glitter behind his glasses.
“But there’s
a condition,” Slingsby continued sharply. “You must not leave Gibraltar without coming personally to me and giving me twenty-four hours’ notice.”
Peiffer was all smiles and agreement.
“But of course. We shall have matters to talk over—terms to arrange. I must see you.”
“Exactly. Cross by the nine-fifty steamer tomorrow morning. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir.” And suddenly Peiffer stood up and actually saluted, as though he had now taken service under Slingsby’s command.
The unexpected movement almost made me vomit. Slingsby himself moved quickly away, and his face lost for a second the mask of impassivity. He stood at the window and looked across the water to the city of Gibraltar.
* * *
—
Slingsby had been wounded in the early days of the war, and ever since he had been greatly troubled because he was not still in the trenches in Flanders. The casualty lists filled him with shame and discontent. So many of his friends, the men who had trained and marched with him, were laying down their gallant lives. He should have been with them. But during the last few days a new knowledge and inspiration had come to him. Gibraltar! A tedious, little, unlovely town of yellow houses and coal sheds, with an undesirable climate. Yes. But above it was the Rock, the heart of a thousand memories and traditions which made it beautiful. He looked at it now with its steep wooded slopes, scarred by roads and catchments and the emplacements of guns. How much of England was recorded there! To how many British sailing on great ships from far dominions this huge buttress towering to its needle-ridge was the first outpost of the homeland! And for the moment he seemed to be its particular guardian, the ear which must listen night and day lest harm come to it. Harm the Rock, and all the Empire, built with such proud and arduous labour, would stagger under the blow, from St. Kilda to distant Lyttelton. He looked across the water and imagined Gibraltar as it looked at night, its house-lights twinkling like a crowded zone of stars, and its great search-beams turning the ships in the harbour and the stone of the moles into gleaming silver, and travelling far over the dark waters. No harm must come to Gibraltar. His honour was all bound up in that. This was his service, and as he thought upon it he was filled with a cold fury against the traitor who thought it so easy to make him fail. But every hint of his anger had passed from his face as he turned back into the room.
The Big Book of Espionage Page 15
