Greenmantle by John Buchan (learn to read activity book TXT) đ
- Author: John Buchan
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âOver!â I cried incredulously, for my wits were still wool-gathering. âWhat place is this?â
âYou may call it my humble homeââit was Blenkironâs sleek voice that spoke. âWeâve been preparing for you, Major, but it was only yesterday I heard of your friend.â
I introduced Peter.
âMr Pienaar,â said Blenkiron, âpleased to meet you. Well, as I was observing, youâre safe enough here, but youâve cut it mighty fine. Officially, a Dutchman called Brandt was to be arrested this afternoon and handed over to the German authorities. When Germany begins to trouble about that Dutchman she will find difficulty in getting the body; but such are the languid ways of an Oriental despotism. Meantime the Dutchman will be no more. He will have ceased upon the midnight without pain, as your poet sings.â
âBut I donât understand,â I stammered. âWho arrested us?â
âMy men,â said Sandy. âWe have a bit of a graft here, and it wasnât difficult to manage it. Old Moellendorff will be nosing after the business tomorrow, but he will find the mystery too deep for him. That is the advantage of a Government run by a pack of adventurers. But, by Jove, Dick, we hadnât any time to spare. If Rasta had got you, or the Germans had had the job of lifting you, your goose would have been jolly well cooked. I had some unquiet hours this morning.â
The thing was too deep for me. I looked at Blenkiron, shuffling his Patience cards with his old sleepy smile, and Sandy, dressed like some bandit in melodrama, his lean face as brown as a nut, his bare arms all tattooed with crimson rings, and the fox pelt drawn tight over brow and ears. It was still a nightmare world, but the dream was getting pleasanter. Peter said not a word, but I could see his eyes heavy with his own thoughts.
Blenkiron hove himself from the sofa and waddled to a cupboard.
âYou boys must be hungry,â he said. âMy duo-denum has been giving me hell as usual, and I donât eat no more than a squirrel. But I laid in some stores, for I guessed you would want to stoke up some after your travels.â
He brought out a couple of Strassburg pies, a cheese, a cold chicken, a loaf, and three bottles of champagne.
âFizz,â said Sandy rapturously. âAnd a dry Heidsieck too! Weâre in luck, Dick, old man.â
I never ate a more welcome meal, for we had starved in that dirty hotel. But I had still the old feeling of the hunted, and before I began I asked about the door.
âThatâs all right,â said Sandy. âMy fellows are on the stair and at the gate. If the Metreb are in possession, you may bet that other people will keep off. Your past is blotted out, clean vanished away, and you begin tomorrow morning with a new sheet. Blenkironâs the man youâve got to thank for that. He was pretty certain youâd get here, but he was also certain that youâd arrive in a hurry with a good many inquirers behind you. So he arranged that you should leak away and start fresh.â
âYour name is Richard Hanau,â Blenkiron said, âborn in Cleveland, Ohio, of German parentage on both sides. One of our brightest mining-engineers, and the apple of Guggenheimâs eye. You arrived this afternoon from Constanza, and I met you at the packet. The clothes for the part are in your bedroom next door. But I guess all that can wait, for Iâm anxious to get to business. Weâre not here on a joy-ride, Major, so I reckon weâll leave out the dime-novel adventures. Iâm just dying to hear them, but theyâll keep. I want to know how our mutual inquiries have prospered.â
He gave Peter and me cigars, and we sat ourselves in armchairs in front of the blaze. Sandy squatted cross-legged on the hearthrug and lit a foul old briar pipe, which he extricated from some pouch among his skins. And so began that conversation which had never been out of my thoughts for four hectic weeks.
âIf I presume to begin,â said Blenkiron, âitâs because I reckon my story is the shortest. I have to confess to you, gentlemen, that I have failed.â
He drew down the corners of his mouth till he looked a cross between a music-hall comedian and a sick child.
âIf you were looking for something in the root of the hedge, you wouldnât want to scour the road in a high-speed automobile. And still less would you want to get a birdâs-eye view in an aeroplane. That parable about fits my case. I have been in the clouds and Iâve been scorching on the pikes, but what I was wanting was in the ditch all the time, and I naturally missed it ... I had the wrong stunt, Major. I was too high up and refined. Iâve been processing through Europe like Barnumâs Circus, and living with generals and transparencies. Not that I havenât picked up a lot of noos, and got some very interesting sidelights on high politics. But the thing I was after wasnât to be found on my beat, for those that knew it werenât going to tell. In that kind of society they donât get drunk and blab after their tenth cocktail. So I guess Iâve no contribution to make to quieting Sir Walter Bullivantâs mind, except that heâs dead right. Yes, Sir, he has hit the spot and rung the bell. There is a mighty miracle-working proposition being floated in these parts, but the promoters are keeping it to themselves. They arenât taking in more than they can help on the ground-floor.â
Blenkiron stopped to light a fresh cigar. He was leaner than when he left London and there were pouches below his eyes. I fancy his journey had not been as fur-lined as he made out. âIâve found out one thing, and that is, that the last dream Germany will part with is the control of the Near East. That is what your statesmen donât figure enough on. Sheâll give up Belgium and Alsace-Lorraine and Poland, but by God! sheâll never give up the road to Mesopotamia till you have her by the throat and make her drop it. Sir Walter is a pretty bright-eyed citizen, and he sees it right enough. If the worst happens, Kaiser will fling overboard a lot of ballast in Europe, and it will look like a big victory for the Allies, but he wonât be beaten if he has the road to the East safe. Germanyâs like a scorpion: her stingâs in her tail, and that tail stretches way down into Asia.
âI got that clear, and I also made out that it wasnât going to be dead easy for her to keep that tail healthy. Turkeyâs a bit of an anxiety, as youâll soon discover. But Germany thinks she can manage it, and I wonât say she canât. It depends on the hand she holds, and she reckons it a good one. I tried to find out, but they gave me nothing but eyewash. I had to pretend to be satisfied, for the position of John S. wasnât so strong as to allow him to take liberties. If I asked one of the highbrows he looked wise and spoke of the might of German arms and German organization and German staff-work. I used to nod my head and get enthusiastic about these stunts, but it was all soft soap. She has a trick in handâthat much I know, but Iâm darned if I can put a name to it. I pray to God you boys have been cleverer.â
His tone was quite melancholy, and I was mean enough to feel rather glad. He had been the professional with the best chance. It would be a good joke if the amateur succeeded where the expert failed.
I looked at Sandy. He filled his pipe again, and pushed back his skin cap from his brows. What with his long dishevelled hair, his high-boned face, and stained eyebrows he had the appearance of some mad mullah.
âI went straight to Smyrna,â he said. âIt wasnât difficult, for you see I had laid down a good many lines in former travels. I reached the town as a Greek money-lender from the Fayum, but I had friends there I could count on, and the same evening I was a Turkish gipsy, a member of the most famous fraternity in Western Asia. I had long been a member, and Iâm blood-brother of the chief boss, so I stepped into the part ready made. But I found out that the Company of the Rosy Hours was not what I had known it in 1910. Then it had been all for the Young Turks and reform; now it hankered after the old regime and was the last hope of the Orthodox. It had no use for Enver and his friends, and it did not regard with pleasure the beaux yeux of the Teuton. It stood for Islam and the old ways, and might be described as a Conservative-Nationalist caucus. But it was uncommon powerful in the provinces, and Enver and Talaat darenât meddle with it. The dangerous thing about it was that it said nothing and apparently did nothing. It just bided its time and took notes.
âYou can imagine that this was the very kind of crowd for my purpose. I knew of old its little ways, for with all its orthodoxy it dabbled a good deal in magic, and owed half its power to its atmosphere of the uncanny. The Companions could dance the heart out of the ordinary Turk. You saw a bit of one of our dances this afternoon, Dickâpretty good, wasnât it? They could go anywhere, and no questions asked. They knew what the ordinary man was thinking, for they were the best intelligence department in the Ottoman Empireâfar better than Enverâs Khafiyeh. And they were popular, too, for they had never bowed the knee to the Nemsehâthe Germans who are squeezing out the life-blood of the Osmanli for their own ends. It would have been as much as the life of the Committee or its German masters was worth to lay a hand on us, for we clung together like leeches and we were not in the habit of sticking at trifles.
âWell, you may imagine it wasnât difficult for me to move where I wanted. My dress and the pass-word franked me anywhere. I travelled from Smyrna by the new railway to Panderma on the Marmora, and got there just before Christmas. That was after Anzac and Suvla had been evacuated, but I could hear the guns going hard at Cape Helles. From Panderma I started to cross to Thrace in a coasting steamer. And there an uncommon funny thing happenedâI got torpedoed.
âIt must have been about the last effort of a British submarine in those waters. But she got us all right. She gave us ten minutes to take to the boats, and then sent the blighted old packet and a fine cargo of 6-inch shells to the bottom. There werenât many passengers, so it was easy enough to get ashore in the shipâs boats. The submarine sat on the surface watching us, as we wailed and howled in the true Oriental way, and I saw the captain quite close in the conning-tower. Who do you think it was? Tommy Elliot, who lives on the other side of the hill from me at home.
âI gave Tommy the surprise of his life. As we bumped past him, I started the âFlowers of the Forestââthe old versionâon the antique stringed instrument I carried, and I sang the words very plain. Tommyâs eyes bulged out of his head, and he shouted at me in English to know who the devil I was. I replied in the broadest Scots, which no man in the submarine or in our boat could have understood a word of. âMaister Tammy,â I cried, âwhat for wad ye skail a dacent tinkler lad intil a cauld sea? Iâll gie ye your kail through the reek for this ploy the next time I forgaither wiâ ye on the tap oâ Caerdon.â
âTommy spotted me in a second. He laughed till he cried, and as we moved off shouted to me in the same language to âpit a stoot hert tae a stey braeâ. I hope to Heaven he had the sense not to tell my father, or the old man will have had a fit. He never much approved of my wanderings, and thought I was safely anchored in the battalion.
âWell, to
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