Mr. Standfast

J >> John Buchan >> Mr. Standfast

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I did not allow myself to think of ultimate escape, for that would
only flurry me, and one step at a time was enough. I remember that
I dusted my clothes, and found that the cut in the back of my head
had stopped bleeding. I retrieved my hat, which had rolled into a
corner when I fell ... Then I turned my attention to the next step.

The tunnel was impossible, and the only way was the door. If I
had stopped to think I would have known that the chances against
getting out of such a house were a thousand to one. The pistol
shots had been muffled by the cavernous walls, but the place, as I
knew, was full of servants and, even if I passed the immediate door,
I would be collared in some passage. But I had myself so well in
hand that I tackled the door as if I had been prospecting to sink a
new shaft in Rhodesia.

It had no handle nor, so far as I could see, a keyhole ... But I
noticed, as I turned my torch on the ground, that from the clamp
which I had shattered a brass rod sunk in the floor led to one of the
door-posts. Obviously the thing worked by a spring and was
connected with the mechanism of the rack.

A wild thought entered my mind and brought me to my feet. I
pushed the door and it swung slowly open. The bullet which freed
me had released the spring which controlled it.

Then for the first time, against all my maxims of discretion, I
began to hope. I took off my hat and felt my forehead burning, so
that I rested it for a moment on the cool wall ... Perhaps my luck
still held. With a rush came thoughts of Mary and Blenkiron and
Peter and everything we had laboured for, and I was mad to win.

I had no notion of the interior of the house or where lay the main
door to the outer world. My torch showed me a long passage with something
like a door at the far end, but I clicked it off, for I did not dare to
use it now. The place was deadly quiet. As I listened I seemed to hear a
door open far away, and then silence fell again.

I groped my way down the passage till I had my hands on the far
door. I hoped it might open on the hall, where I could escape by a
window or a balcony, for I judged the outer door would be locked.
I listened, and there came no sound from within. It was no use
lingering, so very stealthily I turned the handle and opened it a crack.

It creaked and I waited with beating heart on discovery, for inside
I saw the glow of light. But there was no movement, so it must be
empty. I poked my head in and then followed with my body.

It was a large room, with logs burning in a stove, and the floor
thick with rugs. It was lined with books, and on a table in the
centre a reading-lamp was burning. Several dispatch-boxes stood
on the table, and there was a little pile of papers. A man had been
here a minute before, for a half-smoked cigar was burning on the
edge of the inkstand.

At that moment I recovered complete use of my wits and all my
self-possession. More, there returned to me some of the old devil-
may-careness which before had served me well. Ivery had gone, but
this was his sanctum. just as on the roofs of Erzerum I had burned
to get at Stumm's papers, so now it was borne in on me that at all
costs I must look at that pile.

I advanced to the table and picked up the topmost paper. It was
a little typewritten blue slip with the lettering in italics, and in a
corner a curious, involved stamp in red ink. On it I read:

'__Die Wildvogel missen _beimkehren.'

At the same moment I heard steps and the door opened on the
far side, I stepped back towards the stove, and fingered the pistol in
my pocket.

A man entered, a man with a scholar's stoop, an unkempt beard,
and large sleepy dark eyes. At the sight of me he pulled up and his
whole body grew taut. It was the Portuguese Jew, whose back I
had last seen at the smithy door in Skye, and who by the mercy of
God had never seen my face.

I stopped fingering my pistol, for I had an inspiration. Before he
could utter a word I got in first.

'__Die Vogelein schwei igem im _Walde,' I said.

His face broke into a pleasant smile, and he replied:

'_Warte nur, balde rubest du _auch.'

'Ach,' he said in German, holding out his hand, 'you have come
this way, when we thought you would go by Modane. I welcome
you, for I know your exploits. You are Conradi, who did so nobly
in Italy?'

I bowed. 'Yes, I am Conradi,' I said.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The Col of the Swallows

He pointed to the slip on the table.

'You have seen the orders?'

I nodded.

'The long day's work is over. You must rejoice, for your part
has been the hardest, I think. Some day you will tell me about it?'

The man's face was honest and kindly, rather like that of the
engineer Gaudian, whom two years before I had met in Germany.
But his eyes fascinated me, for they were the eyes of the dreamer
and fanatic, who would not desist from his quest while life lasted. I
thought that Ivery had chosen well in his colleague.

'My task is not done yet,' I said. 'I came here to see Chelius.'

'He will be back tomorrow evening.'

'Too late. I must see him at once. He has gone to Italy, and I
must overtake him.'

'You know your duty best,' he said gravely.

'But you must help me. I must catch him at Santa Chiara, for it is
a business of life and death. Is there a car to be had?'

'There is mine. But there is no chauffeur. Chelius took him.'

'I can drive myself and I know the road. But I have no pass to
cross the frontier.'

'That is easily supplied,' he said, smiling.

in one bookcase there was a shelf of dummy books. He unlocked
this and revealed a small cupboard, whence he took a tin dispatch-
box. From some papers he selected one, which seemed to be already
signed.

'Name?' he asked.

'Call me Hans Gruber of Brieg,' I said. 'I travel to pick up my
master, who is in the timber trade.'

'And your return?'

'I will come back by my old road,' I said mysteriously; and if he
knew what I meant it was more than I did myself.

He completed the paper and handed it to me. 'This will take you
through the frontier posts. And now for the car. The servants will
be in bed, for they have been preparing for a long journey, but I
will myself show it you. There is enough petrol on board to take
you to Rome.'

He led me through the hall, unlocked the front door, and we
crossed the snowy lawn to the garage. The place was empty but for
a great car, which bore the marks of having come from the muddy
lowlands. To my joy I saw that it was a Daimler, a type with which
I was familiar. I lit the lamps, started the engine, and ran it out on
to the road.

'You will want an overcoat,' he said.

'I never wear them.'

'Food?'

'I have some chocolate. I will breakfast at Santa Chiara.'

'Well, God go with you!'

A minute later I was tearing along the lake-side towards
St Anton village.

I stopped at the cottage on the hill. Peter was not yet in bed. I
found him sitting by the fire, trying to read, but I saw by his face
that he had been waiting anxiously on my coming.

'We're in the soup, old man,' I said as I shut the door. In a dozen
sentences I told him of the night's doings, of Ivery's plan and my
desperate errand.

'You wanted a share,' I cried. 'Well, everything depends on you
now. I'm off after Ivery, and God knows what will happen.
Meantime, you have got to get on to Blenkiron, and tell him what I've
told you. He must get the news through to G.H.Q. somehow. He
must trap the Wild Birds before they go. I don't know how, but he
must. Tell him it's all up to him and you, for I'm out of it. I must
save Mary, and if God's willing I'll settle with Ivery. But the big
job is for Blenkiron - and you. Somehow he has made a bad break,
and the enemy has got ahead of him. He must sweat blood to make
Up. My God, Peter, it's the solemnest moment of our lives. I
don't see any light, but we mustn't miss any chances. I'm leaving it
all to you.'

I spoke like a man in a fever, for after what I had been through I
wasn't quite sane. My coolness in the Pink Chalet had given place
to a crazy restlessness. I can see Peter yet, standing in the ring of
lamplight, supporting himself by a chair back, wrinkling his brows
and, as he always did in moments of excitement, scratching gently
the tip of his left ear. His face was happy.

'Never fear, Dick,' he said. 'It will all come right.
__Ons sal 'n plan maak.'

And then, still possessed with a demon of disquiet, I was on the
road again, heading for the pass that led to Italy.

The mist had gone from the sky, and the stars were shining
brightly. The moon, now at the end of its first quarter, was setting
in a gap of the mountains, as I climbed the low col from the St Anton
valley to the greater Staubthal. There was frost and the hard
snow crackled under my wheels, but there was also that feel in the
air which preludes storm. I wondered if I should run into snow in
the high hills. The whole land was deep in peace. There was not a
light in the hamlets I passed through, not a soul on the highway.

In the Staubthal I joined the main road and swung to the left up
the narrowing bed of the valley. The road was in noble condition,
and the car was running finely, as I mounted through forests of
snowy Pines to a land where the mountains crept close together,
and the highway coiled round the angles of great crags or skirted
perilously some profound gorge, with only a line of wooden posts
to defend it from the void. In places the snow stood in walls on
either side, where the road was kept open by man's labour. In other
parts it lay thin, and in the dim light one might have fancied that
one was running through open meadowlands.

Slowly my head was getting clearer, and I was able to look
round my problem. I banished from my mind the situation I had
left behind me. Blenkiron must cope with that as best he could. It
lay with him to deal with the Wild Birds, my job was with Ivery
alone. Sometime in the early morning he would reach Santa Chiara,
and there he would find Mary. Beyond that my imagination could
forecast nothing. She would be alone - I could trust his cleverness
for that; he would try to force her to come with him, or he might
persuade her with some lying story. Well, please God, I should
come in for the tail end of the interview, and at the thought I
cursed the steep gradients I was climbing, and longed for some
magic to lift the Daimler beyond the summit and set it racing down
the slope towards Italy.

I think it was about half-past three when I saw the lights of the
frontier post. The air seemed milder than in the valleys, and there
was a soft scurry of snow on my right cheek. A couple of sleepy
Swiss sentries with their rifles in their hands stumbled out as I drew up.

They took my pass into the hut and gave me an anxious quarter
of an hour while they examined it. The performance was repeated
fifty yards on at the Italian post, where to my alarm the sentries
were inclined to conversation. I played the part of the sulky servant,
answering in monosyllables and pretending to immense stupidity.

'You are only just in time, friend,' said one in German. 'The
weather grows bad and soon the pass will close. Ugh, it is as cold
as last winter on the Tonale. You remember, Giuseppe?'

But in the end they let me move on. For a little I felt my way
gingerly, for on the summit the road had many twists and the snow
was confusing to the eyes. Presently came a sharp drop and I let the
Daimler go. It grew colder, and I shivered a little; the snow became
a wet white fog around the glowing arc of the headlights; and
always the road fell, now in long curves, now in steep short dips,
till I was aware of a glen opening towards the south. From long
living in the wilds I have a kind of sense for landscape without the
testimony of the eyes, and I knew where the ravine narrowed or
widened though it was black darkness.

In spite of my restlessness I had to go slowly, for after the first
rush downhill I realized that, unless I was careful, I might wreck
the car and spoil everything. The surface of the road on the southern
slope of the mountains was a thousand per cent worse than that on
the other. I skidded and side-slipped, and once grazed the edge of
the gorge. It was far more maddening than the climb up, for then it
had been a straight-forward grind with the Daimler doing its
utmost, whereas now I had to hold her back because of my own
lack of skill. I reckon that time crawling down from the summit of
the Staub as some of the weariest hours I ever spent.

Quite suddenly I ran out of the ill weather into a different
climate. The sky was clear above me, and I saw that dawn was very
near. The first pinewoods were beginning, and at last came a
straight slope where I could let the car out. I began to recover my
spirits, which had been very dashed, and to reckon the distance I
had still to travel ... And then, without warning, a new world
sprang up around me. Out of the blue dusk white shapes rose like
ghosts, peaks and needles and domes of ice, their bases fading
mistily into shadow, but the tops kindling till they glowed like
jewels. I had never seen such a sight, and the wonder of it for a
moment drove anxiety from my heart. More, it gave me an earnest
of victory. I was in clear air once more, and surely in this diamond
ether the foul things which loved the dark must be worsted ...

And then I saw, a mile ahead, the little square red-roofed building
which I knew to be the inn of Santa Chiara.

It was here that misfortune met me. I had grown careless now,
and looked rather at the house than the road. At one point the
hillside had slipped down - it must have been recent, for the road
was well kept - and I did not notice the landslide till I was on it. I
slewed to the right, took too wide a curve, and before I knew the
car was over the far edge. I slapped on the brakes, but to avoid
turning turtle I had to leave the road altogether. I slithered down a
steep bank into a meadow, where for my sins I ran into a fallen tree
trunk with a jar that shook me out of my seat and nearly broke my
arm. Before I examined the car I knew what had happened. The
front axle was bent, and the off front wheel badly buckled.

I had not time to curse my stupidity. I clambered back to the
road and set off running down it at my best speed. I was mortally
stiff, for Ivery's rack was not good for the joints, but I realized it
only as a drag on my pace, not as an affliction in itself. My whole
mind was set on the house before me and what might be happening there.

There was a man at the door of the inn, who, when he caught
sight of my figure, began to move to meet me. I saw that it was
Launcelot Wake, and the sight gave me hope.

But his face frightened me. It was drawn and haggard like one
who never sleeps, and his eyes were hot coals.

'Hannay,' he cried, 'for God's sake what does it mean?'

'Where is Mary?' I gasped, and I remember I clutched at a lapel
of his coat.

He pulled me to the low stone wall by the roadside.

'I don't know,' he said hoarsely. 'We got your orders to come
here this morning. We were at Chiavagno, where Blenkiron told us
to wait. But last night Mary disappeared ... I found she had hired
a carriage and come on ahead. I followed at once, and reached here
an hour ago to find her gone ... The woman who keeps the place
is away and there are only two old servants left. They tell me that
Mary came here late, and that very early in the morning a closed car
came over the Staub with a man in it. They say he asked to see the
young lady, and that they talked together for some time, and that
then she went off with him in the car down the valley ... I must
have passed it on my way up ... There's been some black devilment
that I can't follow. Who was the man? Who was the man?'

He looked as if he wanted to throttle me.

'I can tell you that,' I said. 'It was Ivery.'

He stared for a second as if he didn't understand. Then he leaped
to his feet and cursed like a trooper. 'You've botched it, as I knew
you would. I knew no good would come of your infernal subtleties.'
And he consigned me and Blenkiron and the British army and
Ivery and everybody else to the devil.

I was past being angry. 'Sit down, man,' I said, 'and listen to
me.' I told him of what had happened at the Pink Chalet. He heard
me out with his head in his hands. The thing was too bad for cursing.

'The Underground Railway!' he groaned. 'The thought of it
drives me mad. Why are you so calm, Hannay? She's in the hands
of the cleverest devil in the world, and you take it quietly. You
should be a raving lunatic.'

'I would be if it were any use, but I did all my raving last night in that
den of Ivery's. We've got to pull ourselves together, Wake. First of all,
I trust Mary to the other side of eternity. She went with him of her own
free will. I don't know why, but she must have had a reason, and be
sure it was a good one, for she's far cleverer than you or me ... We've
got to follow her somehow. Ivery's bound for Germany, but his route
is by the Pink Chalet, for he hopes to pick me up there. He went down
the valley; therefore he is going to Switzerland by the Marjolana. That
is a long circuit and will take him most of the day. Why he chose that
way I don't know, but there it is. We've got to get back by the Staub.'

'How did you come?' he asked.

'That's our damnable luck. I came in a first-class six-cylinder
Daimler, which is now lying a wreck in a meadow a mile up the
road. We've got to foot it.'

'We can't do it. It would take too long. Besides, there's the
frontier to pass.'

I remembered ruefully that I might have got a return passport
from the Portuguese Jew, if I had thought of anything at the time
beyond getting to Santa Chiara.

'Then we must make a circuit by the hillside and dodge the
guards. It's no use making difficulties, Wake. We're fairly up against
it, but we've got to go on trying till we drop. Otherwise I'll take
your advice and go mad.'

'And supposing you get back to St Anton, you'll find the house
shut up and the travellers gone hours before by the Underground Railway.'

'Very likely. But, man, there's always the glimmering of a chance.
It's no good chucking in your hand till the game's out.'

'Drop your proverbial philosophy, Mr Martin Tupper, and look up there.'

He had one foot on the wall and was staring at a cleft in the
snow-line across the valley. The shoulder of a high peak dropped
sharply to a kind of nick and rose again in a long graceful curve of
snow. All below the nick was still in deep shadow, but from the
configuration of the slopes I judged that a tributary glacier ran
from it to the main glacier at the river head.

'That's the Colle delle Rondini,' he said, 'the Col of the Swallows.
It leads straight to the Staubthal near Grunewald. On a good day I
have done it in seven hours, but it's not a pass for winter-time. It
has been done of course, but not often. ... Yet, if the weather held,
it might go even now, and that would bring us to St Anton by the
evening. I wonder' - and he looked me over with an appraising eye
-'I wonder if you're up to it.'

My stiffness had gone and I burned to set my restlessness to
physical toil.

'If you can do it, I can,' I said.
'No. There you're wrong. You're a hefty fellow, but you're no
mountaineer, and the ice of the Colle delle Rondini needs knowledge.
It would be insane to risk it with a novice, if there were any
other way. But I'm damned if I see any, and I'm going to chance it.
We can get a rope and axes in the inn. Are you game?'

'Right you are. Seven hours, you say. We've got to do it in six.'

'You will be humbler when you get on the ice,' he said grimly.
'We'd better breakfast, for the Lord knows when we shall see food again.'

We left the inn at five minutes to nine, with the sky cloudless and a
stiff wind from the north-west, which we felt even in the deep-cut
valley. Wake walked with a long, slow stride that tried my patience.
I wanted to hustle, but he bade me keep in step. 'You take your
orders from me, for I've been at this job before. Discipline in the
ranks, remember.'

We crossed the river gorge by a plank bridge, and worked our
way up the right bank, past the moraine, to the snout of the glacier.
It was bad going, for the snow concealed the boulders, and I often
floundered in holes. Wake never relaxed his stride, but now and
then he stopped to sniff the air.

I observed that the weather looked good, and he differed. 'It's
too clear. There'll be a full-blown gale on the Col and most likely
snow in the afternoon.' He pointed to a fat yellow cloud that was
beginning to bulge over the nearest peak. After that I thought he
lengthened his stride.

'Lucky I had these boots resoled and nailed at Chiavagno,' was
the only other remark he made till we had passed the seracs of the
main glacier and turned up the lesser ice-stream from the Colle
delle Rondini.

By half-past ten we were near its head, and I could see clearly the
ribbon of pure ice between black crags too steep for snow to lie on,
which was the means of ascent to the Col. The sky had clouded
over, and ugly streamers floated on the high slopes. We tied on the
rope at the foot of the bergschrund, which was easy to pass because
of the winter's snow. Wake led, of course, and presently we came
on to the icefall.

In my time I had done a lot of scrambling on rocks and used to
promise myself a season in the Alps to test myself on the big peaks.
If I ever go it will be to climb the honest rock towers around
Chamonix, for I won't have anything to do with snow mountains.
That day on the Colle delle Rondini fairly sickened me of ice. I
daresay I might have liked it if I had done it in a holiday mood, at
leisure and in good spirits. But to crawl up that couloir with a sick
heart and a desperate impulse to hurry was the worst sort of
nightmare. The place was as steep as a wall of smooth black ice that
seemed hard as granite. Wake did the step-cutting, and I admired
him enormously. He did not seem to use much force, but every
step was hewn cleanly the right size, and they were spaced the right
distance. In this job he was the true professional. I was thankful
Blenkiron was not with us, for the thing would have given a
squirrel vertigo. The chips of ice slithered between my legs and I
could watch them till they brought up just above the bergschrund.

The ice was in shadow and it was bitterly cold. As we crawled
up I had not the exercise of using the axe to warm me, and I got
very numb standing on one leg waiting for the next step. Worse
still, my legs began to cramp. I was in good condition, but that
time under Ivery's rack had played the mischief with my limbs.
Muscles got out of place in my calves and stood in aching lumps,
till I almost squealed with the pain of it. I was mortally afraid I
should slip, and every time I moved I called out to Wake to warn
him. He saw what was happening and got the pick of his axe fixed
in the ice before I was allowed to stir. He spoke often to cheer me
up, and his voice had none of its harshness. He was like some ill-
tempered generals I have known, very gentle in a battle.

At the end the snow began to fall, a soft powder like the overspill
of a storm raging beyond the crest. It was just after that that Wake
cried out that in five minutes we would be at the summit. He
consulted his wrist-watch. 'Jolly good time, too. Only twenty-five
minutes behind my best. It's not one o'clock.'

The next I knew I was lying flat on a pad of snow easing my
cramped legs, while Wake shouted in my ear that we were in for
something bad. I was aware of a driving blizzard, but I had no
thought of anything but the blessed relief from pain. I lay for some
minutes on my back with my legs stiff in the air and the toes turned
inwards, while my muscles fell into their proper place.

It was certainly no spot to linger in. We looked down into a
trough of driving mist, which sometimes swirled aside and showed
a knuckle of black rock far below. We ate some chocolate, while
Wake shouted in my ear that now we had less step-cutting. He did
his best to cheer me, but he could not hide his anxiety. Our faces
were frosted over like a wedding-cake and the sting of the wind
was like a whiplash on our eyelids.

The first part was easy, down a slope of firm snow where steps
were not needed. Then came ice again, and we had to cut into it
below the fresh surface snow. This was so laborious that Wake
took to the rocks on the right side of the couloir, where there was
some shelter from the main force of the blast. I found it easier, for I
knew something about rocks, but it was difficult enough with
every handhold and foothold glazed. Presently we were driven
back again to the ice, and painfully cut our way through a throat of
the ravine where the sides narrowed. There the wind was terrible,
for the narrows made a kind of funnel, and we descended, plastered
against the wall, and scarcely able to breathe, while the tornado
plucked at our bodies as if it would whisk us like wisps of grass
into the abyss.
After that the gorge widened and we had an easier slope, till
suddenly we found ourselves perched on a great tongue of rock
round which the snow blew like the froth in a whirlpool. As we
stopped for breath, Wake shouted in my ear that this was the Black Stone.

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