Mr. Standfast

J >> John Buchan >> Mr. Standfast

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28

Suddenly from just in front of me came a familiar sound. It was
the roar of guns - the slam of field-batteries and the boom of small
howitzers. I wondered if I had gone off my head. As I plodded on
the rattle of machine-guns was added, and over the ridge before me
I saw the dust and fumes of bursting shells. I concluded that I was
not mad, and that therefore the Germans must have landed. I
crawled up the last slope, quite forgetting the pursuit behind me.

And then I'm blessed if I did not look down on a veritable battle.

There were two sets of trenches with barbed wire and all the
fixings, one set filled with troops and the other empty. On these
latter shells were bursting, but there was no sign of life in them. In
the other lines there seemed the better part of two brigades, and the
first trench was stiff with bayonets. My first thought was that
Home Forces had gone dotty, for this kind of show could have no
sort of training value. And then I saw other things - cameras and
camera-men on platforms on the flanks, and men with megaphones
behind them on wooden scaffoldings. One of the megaphones was
going full blast all the time.
I saw the meaning of the performance at last. Some movie-
merchant had got a graft with the Government, and troops had been
turned out to make a war film. It occurred to me that if I were
mixed up in that push I might get the cover I was looking for. I
scurried down the hill to the nearest camera-man.

As I ran, the first wave of troops went over the top. They did it
uncommon well, for they entered into the spirit of the thing, and
went over with grim faces and that slow, purposeful lope that I had
seen in my own fellows at Arras. Smoke grenades burst among
them, and now and then some resourceful mountebank would roll
over. Altogether it was about the best show I have ever seen. The
cameras clicked, the guns banged, a background of boy scouts
applauded, and the dust rose in billows to the sky.

But all the same something was wrong. I could imagine that this
kind of business took a good deal of planning from the point of
view of the movie-merchant, for his purpose was not the same as
that of the officer in command. You know how a photographer
finicks about and is dissatisfied with a pose that seems all right to
his sitter. I should have thought the spectacle enough to get any
cinema audience off their feet, but the man on the scaffolding near
me judged differently. He made his megaphone boom like the
swan-song of a dying buffalo. He wanted to change something and
didn't know how to do it. He hopped on one leg; he took the
megaphone from his mouth to curse; he waved it like a banner and
yelled at some opposite number on the other flank. And then his
patience forsook him and he skipped down the ladder, dropping his
megaphone, past the camera-men, on to the battlefield.

That was his undoing. He got in the way of the second wave and
was swallowed up like a leaf in a torrent. For a moment I saw a red
face and a loud-checked suit, and the rest was silence. He was
carried on over the hill, or rolled into an enemy trench, but anyhow
he was lost to my ken.

I bagged his megaphone and hopped up the steps to the platform.
At last I saw a chance of first-class cover, for with Archie's coat
and cap I made a very good appearance as a movie-merchant. Two
waves had gone over the top, and the cinema-men, working like
beavers, had filmed the lot. But there was still a fair amount of
troops to play with, and I determined to tangle up that outfit so
that the fellows who were after me would have better things to
think about.

My advantage was that I knew how to command men. I could
see that my opposite number with the megaphone was helpless, for
the mistake which had swept my man into a shell-hole had reduced
him to impotence. The troops seemed to be mainly in charge of
N.C.O.s (I could imagine that the officers would try to shirk this
business), and an N.C.O. is the most literal creature on earth. So
with my megaphone I proceeded to change the battle order.

I brought up the third wave to the front trenches. In about three
minutes the men had recognized the professional touch and were
moving smartly to my orders. They thought it was part of the
show, and the obedient cameras clicked at everything that came
into their orbit. My aim was to deploy the troops on too narrow a
front so that they were bound to fan outward, and I had to be
quick about it, for I didn't know when the hapless movie-merchant
might be retrieved from the battle-field and dispute my authority.

It takes a long time to straighten a thing out, but it does not take
long to tangle it, especially when the thing is so delicate a machine as
disciplined troops. In about eight minutes I had produced chaos. The
flanks spread out, in spite of all the shepherding of the N.C.O.s, and
the fringe engulfed the photographers. The cameras on their little
platforms went down like ninepins. It was solemn to see the startled
face of a photographer, taken unawares, supplicating the purposeful
infantry, before he was swept off his feet into speechlessness.

It was no place for me to linger in, so I chucked away the
megaphone and got mixed up with the tail of the third wave. I was
swept on and came to anchor in the enemy trenches, where I found,
as I expected, my profane and breathless predecessor, the movie-
merchant. I had nothing to say to him, so I stuck to the trench till
it ended against the slope of the hill.

On that flank, delirious with excitement, stood a knot of boy
scouts. My business was to get to Bradfield as quick as my legs
would take me, and as inconspicuously as the gods would permit.
Unhappily I was far too great an object of interest to that nursery
of heroes. Every boy scout is an amateur detective and hungry for
knowledge. I was followed by several, who plied me with questions,
and were told that I was off to Bradfield to hurry up part of the
cinema outfit. It sounded lame enough, for that cinema outfit was
already past praying for.

We reached the road and against a stone wall stood several
bicycles. I selected one and prepared to mount.

'That's Mr Emmott's machine,' said one boy sharply. 'He told
me to keep an eye on it.'

'I must borrow it, sonny,' I said. 'Mr Emmott's my very good
friend and won't object.'

From the place where we stood I overlooked the back of the
battle-field and could see an anxious congress of officers. I could see
others, too, whose appearance I did not like. They had not been
there when I operated on the megaphone. They must have come
downhill from the aerodrome and in all likelihood were the pursuers
I had avoided. The exhilaration which I had won in the air and
which had carried me into the tomfoolery of the past half-hour was
ebbing. I had the hunted feeling once more, and grew middle-aged
and cautious. I had a baddish record for the day, what with getting
Archie into a scrape and busting up an official cinema show -
neither consistent with the duties of a brigadier-general. Besides, I
had still to get to London.

I had not gone two hundred yards down the road when a boy
scout, pedalling furiously, came up abreast me.

'Colonel Edgeworth wants to see you,' he panted. 'You're to
come back at once.'

'Tell him I can't wait now,' I said. 'I'll pay my respects to him in
an hour.'

'He said you were to come at once,' said the faithful messenger.
'He's in an awful temper with you, and he's got bobbies with him.'

I put on pace and left the boy behind. I reckoned I had the better
part of two miles' start and could beat anything except petrol. But
my enemies were bound to have cars, so I had better get off the
road as soon as possible. I coasted down a long hill to a bridge
which spanned a small discoloured stream that flowed in a wooded
glen. There was nobody for the moment on the hill behind me, so I
slipped into the covert, shoved the bicycle under the bridge, and hid
Archie's aquascutum in a bramble thicket. I was now in my own
disreputable tweeds and I hoped that the shedding of my most
conspicuous garment would puzzle my pursuers if they should
catch up with me.

But this I was determined they should not do. I made good
going down that stream and out into a lane which led from the
downs to the market-gardens round the city. I thanked Heaven I
had got rid of the aquascutum, for the August afternoon was warm
and my pace was not leisurely. When I was in secluded ground I
ran, and when anyone was in sight I walked smartly.

As I went I reflected that Bradfield would see the end of my
adventures. The police knew that I was there and would watch the
stations and hunt me down if I lingered in the place. I knew no one
there and had no chance of getting an effective disguise. Indeed I
very soon began to wonder if I should get even as far as the streets.
For at the moment when I had got a lift on the back of a fishmonger's
cart and was screened by its flapping canvas, two figures
passed on motor-bicycles, and one of them was the inquisitive boy
scout. The main road from the aerodrome was probably now being
patrolled by motor-cars. It looked as if there would be a degrading
arrest in one of the suburbs.

The fish-cart, helped by half a crown to the driver, took me past
the outlying small-villadom, between long lines of workmen's
houses, to narrow cobbled lanes and the purlieus of great factories.
As soon as I saw the streets well crowded I got out and walked. In
my old clothes I must have appeared like some second-class bookie
or seedy horse-coper. The only respectable thing I had about me
was my gold watch. I looked at the time and found it half past five.

I wanted food and was casting about for an eating-house when
I heard the purr of a motor-cycle and across the road saw the
intelligent boy scout. He saw me, too, and put on the brake with a
sharpness which caused him to skid and all but come to grief under
the wheels of a wool-wagon. That gave me time to efface myself by
darting up a side street. I had an unpleasant sense that I was about
to be trapped, for in a place I knew nothing of I had not a chance
to use my wits.

I remember trying feverishly to think, and I suppose that my
preoccupation made me careless. I was now in a veritable slum, and
when I put my hand to my vest pocket I found that my watch had gone.
That put the top stone on my depression. The reaction from the
wild burnout of the forenoon had left me very cold about the feet. I
was getting into the under-world again and there was no chance of
a second Archie Roylance turning up to rescue me. I remember yet
the sour smell of the factories and the mist of smoke in the evening air.
It is a smell I have never met since without a sort of dulling of spirit.

Presently I came out into a market-place. Whistles were blowing,
and there was a great hurrying of people back from the mills. The
crowd gave me a momentary sense of security, and I was just about
to inquire my way to the railway station when someone jostled my arm.

A rough-looking fellow in mechanic's clothes was beside me.

'Mate,' he whispered. 'I've got summat o' yours here.' And to
my amazement he slipped my watch into my hand.

'It was took by mistake. We're friends o' yours. You're right
enough if you do what I tell you. There's a peeler over there got
his eye on you. Follow me and I'll get you off.'

I didn't much like the man's looks, but I had no choice, and
anyhow he had given me back my watch. He sidled into an alley
between tall houses and I sidled after him. Then he took to his
heels, and led me a twisting course through smelly courts into a
tanyard and then by a narrow lane to the back-quarters of a factory.
Twice we doubled back, and once we climbed a wall and followed
the bank of a blue-black stream with a filthy scum on it. Then we
got into a very mean quarter of the town, and emerged in a dingy
garden, strewn with tin cans and broken flowerpots. By a back
door we entered one of the cottages and my guide very carefully
locked it behind him.

He lit the gas and drew the blinds in a small parlour and looked
at me long and quizzically. He spoke now in an educated voice.

'I ask no questions,' he said, 'but it's my business to put my
services at your disposal. You carry the passport.'

I stared at him, and he pulled out his watch and showed a white-
and-purple cross inside the lid.

'I don't defend all the people we employ,' he said, grinning.
'Men's morals are not always as good as their patriotism. One of
them pinched your watch, and when he saw what was inside it he
reported to me. We soon picked up your trail, and observed you
were in a bit of trouble. As I say, I ask no questions. What can we
do for you?'

'I want to get to London without any questions asked. They're
looking for me in my present rig, so I've got to change it.'

'That's easy enough,' he said. 'Make yourself comfortable for a
little and I'll fix you up. The night train goes at eleven-thirty. ...
You'll find cigars in the cupboard and there's this week's _Critic on
that table. It's got a good article on Conrad, if you care for
such things.'

I helped myself to a cigar and spent a profitable half-hour reading
about the vices of the British Government. Then my host returned
and bade me ascend to his bedroom. 'You're Private Henry
Tomkins of the 12th Gloucesters, and you'll find your clothes
ready for you. I'll send on your present togs if you give me an address.'

I did as I was bid, and presently emerged in the uniform of a
British private, complete down to the shapeless boots and the
dropsical puttees. Then my friend took me in hand and finished the
transformation. He started on my hair with scissors and arranged a
lock which, when well oiled, curled over my forehead. My hands
were hard and rough and only needed some grubbiness and hacking
about the nails to pass muster. With my cap on the side of my head,
a pack on my back, a service rifle in my hands, and my pockets
bursting with penny picture papers, I was the very model of the
British soldier returning from leave. I had also a packet of Woodbine
cigarettes and a hunch of bread-and-cheese for the journey. And I had a
railway warrant made out in my name for London.

Then my friend gave me supper - bread and cold meat and a
bottle of Bass, which I wolfed savagely, for I had had nothing since
breakfast. He was a curious fellow, as discreet as a tombstone, very
ready to speak about general subjects, but never once coming near
the intimate business which had linked him and me and Heaven
knew how many others by means of a little purple-and-white
cross in a watch-case. I remember we talked about the topics that
used to be popular at Biggleswick - the big political things that
begin with capital letters. He took Amos's view of the soundness of
the British working-man, but he said something which made me
think. He was convinced that there was a tremendous lot of German
spy work about, and that most of the practitioners were innocent.
'The ordinary Briton doesn't run to treason, but he's not very
bright. A clever man in that kind of game can make better use of a
fool than a rogue.'

As he saw me off he gave me a piece of advice. 'Get out of
these clothes as soon as you reach London. Private Tomkins will
frank you out of Bradfield, but it mightn't be a healthy alias
in the metropolis.'

At eleven-thirty I was safe in the train, talking the jargon of the
returning soldier with half a dozen of my own type in a smoky
third-class carriage. I had been lucky in my escape, for at the station
entrance and on the platform I had noticed several men with the
unmistakable look of plainclothes police. Also - though this may
have been my fancy - I thought I caught in the crowd a glimpse of
the bagman who had called himself Linklater.

CHAPTER TEN
The Advantages of an Air Raid

The train was abominably late. It was due at eight-twenty-seven,
but it was nearly ten when we reached St Pancras. I had resolved to
go straight to my rooms in Westminster, buying on the way a cap
and waterproof to conceal my uniform should anyone be near
my door on my arrival. Then I would ring up Blenkiron and tell
him all my adventures. I breakfasted at a coffee-stall, left my pack
and rifle in the cloak-room, and walked out into the clear sunny morning.

I was feeling very pleased with myself. Looking back on my
madcap journey, I seemed to have had an amazing run of luck and
to be entitled to a little credit too. I told myself that persistence
always pays and that nobody is beaten till he is dead. All Blenkiron's
instructions had been faithfully carried out. I had found Ivery's
post office. I had laid the lines of our own special communications
with the enemy, and so far as I could see I had left no clue behind
me. Ivery and Gresson took me for a well-meaning nincompoop. It
was true that I had aroused profound suspicion in the breasts of the
Scottish police. But that mattered nothing, for Cornelius Brand, the
suspect, would presently disappear, and there was nothing against
that rising soldier, Brigadier-General Richard Hannay, who would
soon be on his way to France. After all this piece of service had not
been so very unpleasant. I laughed when I remembered my grim
forebodings in Gloucestershire. Bullivant had said it would be
damnably risky in the long run, but here was the end and I had
never been in danger of anything worse than making a fool of myself.

I remember that, as I made my way through Bloomsbury, I was
not thinking so much of my triumphant report to Blenkiron as of
my speedy return to the Front. Soon I would be with my beloved
brigade again. I had missed Messines and the first part of Third
Ypres, but the battle was still going on, and I had yet a chance. I
might get a division, for there had been talk of that before I left. I
knew the Army Commander thought a lot of me. But on the whole
I hoped I would be left with the brigade. After all I was an amateur
soldier, and I wasn't certain of my powers with a bigger command.

In Charing Cross Road I thought of Mary, and the brigade
seemed suddenly less attractive. I hoped the war wouldn't last
much longer, though with Russia heading straight for the devil I
didn't know how it was going to stop very soon. I was determined
to see Mary before I left, and I had a good excuse, for I had taken
my orders from her. The prospect entranced me, and I was mooning
along in a happy dream, when I collided violently with in
agitated citizen.

Then I realized that something very odd was happening.

There was a dull sound like the popping of the corks of flat
soda-water bottles. There was a humming, too, from very far up in
the skies. People in the street were either staring at the heavens or
running wildly for shelter. A motor-bus in front of me emptied its
contents in a twinkling; a taxi pulled up with a jar and the driver
and fare dived into a second-hand bookshop. It took me a moment
or two to realize the meaning of it all, and I had scarcely done this
when I got a very practical proof. A hundred yards away a bomb
fell on a street island, shivering every window-pane in a wide
radius, and sending splinters of stone flying about my head. I did
what I had done a hundred times before at the Front, and dropped
flat on my face.

The man who says he doesn't mind being bombed or shelled is
either a liar or a maniac. This London air raid seemed to me a
singularly unpleasant business. I think it was the sight of the decent
civilized life around one and the orderly streets, for what was
perfectly natural in a rubble-heap like Ypres or Arras seemed an
outrage here. I remember once being in billets in a Flanders village
where I had the Maire's house and sat in a room upholstered in cut
velvet, with wax flowers on the mantelpiece and oil paintings of
three generations on the walls. The Boche took it into his head to
shell the place with a long-range naval gun, and I simply loathed it.
It was horrible to have dust and splinters blown into that snug,
homely room, whereas if I had been in a ruined barn I wouldn't
have given the thing two thoughts. In the same way bombs dropping in
central London seemed a grotesque indecency. I hated to see plump
citizens with wild eyes, and nursemaids with scared children, and
miserable women scuttling like rabbits in a warren.

The drone grew louder, and, looking up, I could see the enemy
planes flying in a beautiful formation, very leisurely as it seemed,
with all London at their mercy. Another bomb fell to the right, and
presently bits of our own shrapnel were clattering viciously around
me. I thought it about time to take cover, and ran shamelessly for
the best place I could see, which was a Tube station. Five minutes
before the street had been crowded; now I left behind me a desert
dotted with one bus and three empty taxicabs.

I found the Tube entrance filled with excited humanity. One
stout lady had fainted, and a nurse had become hysterical, but on
the whole people were behaving well. Oddly enough they did not
seem inclined to go down the stairs to the complete security of
underground; but preferred rather to collect where they could still
get a glimpse of the upper world, as if they were torn between fear
of their lives and interest in the spectacle. That crowd gave me a
good deal of respect for my countrymen. But several were badly
rattled, and one man a little way off, whose back was turned, kept
twitching his shoulders as if he had the colic.

I watched him curiously, and a movement of the crowd brought
his face into profile. Then I gasped with amazement, for I saw that
it was Ivery.

And yet it was not Ivery. There were the familiar nondescript
features, the blandness, the plumpness, but all, so to speak, in ruins.
The man was in a blind funk. His features seemed to be dislimning
before my eyes. He was growing sharper, finer, in a way younger, a
man without grip on himself, a shapeless creature in process of
transformation. He was being reduced to his rudiments. Under the
spell of panic he was becoming a new man.

And the crazy thing was that I knew the new man better than the old.

My hands were jammed close to my sides by the crowd; I could
scarcely turn my head, and it was not the occasion for one's neighbours
to observe one's expression. If it had been, mine must have
been a study. My mind was far away from air raids, back in the hot
summer weather Of 1914. I saw a row of villas perched on a
headland above the sea. In the garden of one of them two men
were playing tennis, while I was crouching behind an adjacent
bush. One of these was a plump young man who wore a coloured
scarf round his waist and babbled of golf handicaps ... I saw him
again in the villa dining-room, wearing a dinner-jacket, and lisping
a little. ... I sat opposite him at bridge, I beheld him collared by
two of Macgillivray's men, when his comrade had rushed for the
thirty-nine steps that led to the sea ... I saw, too, the sitting-room
of my old flat in Portland Place and heard little Scudder's quick,
anxious voice talking about the three men he feared most on earth,
one of whom lisped in his speech. I had thought that all three had
long ago been laid under the turf ...

He was not looking my way, and I could devour his face
in safety. There was no shadow of doubt. I had always put him
down as the most amazing actor on earth, for had he not played
the part of the First Sea Lord and deluded that officer's daily
colleagues? But he could do far more than any human actor, for he
could take on a new personality and with it a new appearance, and
live steadily in the character as if he had been born in it ... My
mind was a blank, and I could only make blind gropings at conclusions
... How had he escaped the death of a spy and a murderer,
for I had last seen him in the hands of justice? ... Of course he had
known me from the first day in Biggleswick ... I had thought to
play with him, and he had played most cunningly and damnably
with me. In that sweating sardine-tin of refugees I shivered in the
bitterness of my chagrin.

And then I found his face turned to mine, and I knew that he
recognized me.
more, I knew that he knew that I had recognized him - not as
Ivery, but as that other man. There came into his eyes a curious
look of comprehension, which for a moment overcame his funk.

I had sense enough to see that that put the final lid on it. There
was still something doing if he believed that I was blind, but if he
once thought that I knew the truth he would be through our
meshes and disappear like a fog.

My first thought was to get at him and collar him and summon
everybody to help me by denouncing him for what he was. Then I
saw that that was impossible. I was a private soldier in a borrowed
uniform, and he could easily turn the story against me. I must use
surer weapons. I must get to Bullivant and Macgillivray and set
their big machine to work. Above all I must get to Blenkiron.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28