Mr. Standfast by John Buchan (best books to read in life TXT) 📖

I saw an old green felt hat, and below it lean tweed-clad shoulders. Then I saw a knapsack with a stick slung through it, as the owner wriggled his way on to a shelf. Presently he turned his face upward to judge the remaining distance. It was the face of a young man, a face sallow and angular, but now a little flushed with the day’s sun and the work of climbing. It was a face that I had first seen at Fosse Manor.

I felt suddenly sick and heartsore. I don’t know why, but I had never really associated the intellectuals of Biggleswick with a business like this. None of them but Ivery, and he was different. They had been silly and priggish, but no more—I would have taken my oath on it. Yet here was one of them engaged in black treason against his native land. Something began to beat in my temples when I remembered that Mary and this man had been friends, that he had held her hand, and called her by her Christian name. My first impulse was to wait till he got up and then pitch him down among the boulders and let his German accomplices puzzle over his broken neck.

With difficulty I kept down that tide of fury. I had my duty to do, and to keep on terms with this man was part of it. I had to convince him that I was an accomplice, and that might not be easy. I leaned over the edge, and, as he got to his feet on the ledge above the boiler-plates, I whistled so that he turned his face to me.

“Hullo, Wake,” I said.

He started, stared for a second, and recognised me. He did not seem over-pleased to see me.

“Brand!” he cried. “How did you get here?”

He swung himself up beside me, straightened his back and unbuckled his knapsack. “I thought this was my own private sanctuary, and that nobody knew it but me. Have you spotted the cave? It’s the best bedroom in Skye.” His tone was, as usual, rather acid.

That little hammer was beating in my head. I longed to get my hands on his throat and choke the smug treason in him. But I kept my mind fixed on one purpose—to persuade him that I shared his secret and was on his side. His off-hand self-possession seemed only the clever screen of the surprised conspirator who was hunting for a plan.

We entered the cave, and he flung his pack into a corner. “Last time I was here,” he said, “I covered the floor with heather. We must get some more if we would sleep soft.” In the twilight he was a dim figure, but he seemed a new man from the one I had last seen in the Moot Hall at Biggleswick. There was a wiry vigour in his body and a purpose in his face. What a fool I had been to set him down as no more than a conceited flâneur!

He went out to the shelf again and sniffed the fresh evening. There was a wonderful red sky in the west, but in the crevice the shades had fallen, and only the bright patches at either end told of the sunset.

“Wake,” I said, “you and I have to understand each other. I’m a friend of Ivery and I know the meaning of this place. I discovered it by accident, but I want you to know that I’m heart and soul with you. You may trust me in tonight’s job as if I were Ivery himself.”

He swung round and looked at me sharply. His eyes were hot again, as I remembered them at our first meeting.

“What do you mean? How much do you know?”

The hammer was going hard in my forehead, and I had to pull myself together to answer.

“I know that at the end of this crack a message was left last night, and that someone came out of the sea and picked it up. That someone is coming again when darkness falls, and there will be another message.”

He had turned his head away. “You are talking nonsense. No submarine could land on this coast.”

I could see that he was trying me.

“This morning,” I said, “I swam in the deep-water inlet below us. It is the most perfect submarine shelter in Britain.”

He still kept his face from me, looking the way he had come. For a moment he was silent, and then he spoke in the bitter, drawling voice which had annoyed me at Fosse Manor.

“How do you reconcile this business with your principles, Mr Brand? You were always a patriot, I remember, though you didn’t see eye to eye with the Government.”

It was not quite what I expected and I was unready. I stammered in my reply. “It’s because I am a patriot that I want peace. I think that.... I mean....”

“Therefore you are willing to help the enemy to win?”

“They have already won. I want that recognised and the end hurried on.” I was getting my mind clearer and continued fluently.

“The longer the war lasts, the worse this country is ruined. We must make the people realise the truth, and—”

But he swung round suddenly, his eyes blazing.

“You blackguard!” he cried, “you damnable blackguard!” And he flung himself on me like a wild-cat.

I had got my answer. He did not believe me, he knew me for a spy, and he was determined to do me in. We were beyond finesse now, and back at the old barbaric game. It was his life or mine. The hammer beat furiously in my head as we closed, and a fierce satisfaction rose in my heart.

He never had a chance, for though he was in good trim and had the light, wiry figure of the mountaineer, he hadn’t a quarter of my muscular strength. Besides, he was wrongly placed, for he had the outside station. Had he been on the inside he might have toppled me over the edge by his sudden assault. As it was, I grappled him and forced him to the ground, squeezing the breath out of his body in the process. I must have hurt him considerably, but he never gave a cry. With a good deal of trouble I lashed his hands behind his back with the belt of my waterproof, carried him inside the cave and laid him in the dark end of it. Then I tied his feet with the strap of his own knapsack. I would have to gag him, but that could wait.

I had still to contrive a plan of action for the night, for I did not know what part he had been meant to play in it. He might be the messenger instead of the Portuguese Jew, in which case he would have papers about his person. If he knew of the cave, others might have the same knowledge, and I had better shift him before they came. I looked at my wrist-watch, and the luminous dial showed that the hour was half past nine.

Then I noticed that the bundle in the corner was sobbing. It was a horrid sound and it worried me. I had a little pocket electric torch and I flashed it on Wake’s face. If he was crying, it was with dry eyes.

“What are you going to do with me?” he asked.

“That depends,” I said grimly.

“Well, I’m ready. I may be a poor creature, but I’m damned if I’m afraid of you, or anything like you.” That was a brave thing to say, for it was a lie; his teeth were chattering.

“I’m ready for a deal,” I said.

“You won’t get it,” was his answer. “Cut my throat if you mean to, but for God’s sake don’t insult me.... I choke when I think about you. You come to us and we welcome you, and receive you in our houses, and tell you our inmost thoughts, and all the time you’re a bloody traitor. You want to sell us to Germany. You may win now, but by God! your time will come! That is my last word to you ... you swine!”

The hammer stopped beating in my head. I saw myself suddenly as a blind, preposterous fool. I strode over to Wake, and he shut his eyes as if he expected a blow. Instead I unbuckled the straps which held his legs and arms.

“Wake, old fellow,” I said, “I’m the worst kind of idiot. I’ll eat all the dirt you want. I’ll give you leave to knock me black and blue, and I won’t lift a hand. But not now. Now we’ve another job on hand. Man, we’re on the same side and I never knew it. It’s too bad a case for apologies, but if it’s any consolation to you I feel the lowest dog in Europe at this moment.”

He was sitting up rubbing his bruised shoulders. “What do you mean?” he asked hoarsely.

“I mean that you and I are allies. My name’s not Brand. I’m a soldier—a general, if you want to know. I went to Biggleswick under orders, and I came chasing up here on the same job. Ivery’s the biggest German agent in Britain and I’m after him. I’ve struck his communication lines, and this very night, please God, we’ll get the last clue to the riddle. Do you hear? We’re in this business together, and you’ve got to lend a hand.”

I told him briefly the story of Gresson, and how I had tracked his man here. As I talked we ate our supper, and I wish I could have watched Wake’s face. He asked questions, for he wasn’t convinced in a hurry. I think it was my mention of Mary Lamington that did the trick. I don’t know why, but that seemed to satisfy him. But he wasn’t going to give himself away.

“You may count on me,” he said, “for this is black, blackguardly treason. But you know my politics, and I don’t change them for this. I’m more against your accursed war than ever, now that I know what war involves.”

“Right-o,” I said, “I’m a pacifist myself. You won’t get any heroics about war from me. I’m all for peace, but we’ve got to down those devils first.”

It wasn’t safe for either of us to stick in that cave, so we cleared away the marks of our occupation, and hid our packs in a deep crevice on the rock. Wake announced his intention of climbing the tower, while there was still a faint afterglow of light. “It’s broad on the top, and I can keep a watch out to sea if any light shows. I’ve been up it before. I found the way two years ago. No, I won’t fall asleep and tumble off. I slept most of the afternoon on the top of Sgurr Vhiconnich, and I’m as wakeful as a bat now.”

I watched him shin up the face of the tower, and admired greatly the speed and neatness with which he climbed. Then I followed the crevice southward to the hollow just below the platform where I had found the footmarks. There was a big boulder there, which partly shut off the view of it from the direction of our cave. The place was perfect for my purpose, for between the boulder and the wall of the tower was a narrow gap, through which I could hear all that passed on the platform. I found a stance where I could rest in comfort and keep an eye through the crack on what happened beyond.

There was still a faint light on the platform, but soon that disappeared and black darkness settled down on the hills. It was the dark of the moon, and, as had happened the night before, a thin wrack blew over the sky, hiding the stars. The place was very still, though now and then would come the cry of a bird from the crags that beetled above me, and from the shore the pipe of a tern or oyster-catcher. An owl hooted from somewhere up