by John Buchan
The man was really interested and the Under-Secretary, too, pricked up his ears.
‘We can keep our territory,’ said the former; ‘but as for pressing, how the devil are we to press? The accursed English hold the sea. We cannot ship men or guns there. South are the Portuguese and west the Belgians. You cannot move a mass without a lever.’ ‘The lever is there, ready for you,’ I said.
‘Then for God’s sake show it me,’ he cried.
I looked at the door to see that it was shut, as if what I had to say was very secret.
‘You need men, and the men are waiting. They are black, but they are the stuff of warriors. All round your borders you have the remains of great fighting tribes, the Angoni, the Masai, the Manyumwezi, and above all the Somalis of the north, and the dwellers on the upper Nile. The British recruit their black regiments there, and so do you. But to get recruits is not enough. You must set whole nations moving, as the Zulu under Tchaka flowed over South Africa.’
‘It cannot be done,’ said the Under-Secretary.
‘It can be done,’ I said quietly. ‘We two are here to do it.’
This kind of talk was jolly difficult for me, chiefly because of Stumm’s asides in German to the official. I had, above all things, to get the credit of knowing no German, and, if you understand a language well, it is not very easy when you are interrupted not to show that you know it, either by a direct answer, or by referring to the interruption in what you say next. I had to be always on my guard, and yet it was up to me to be very persuasive and convince these fellows that I would be useful. Somehow or other I had to get into their confidence.
‘I have been for years up and down in Africa — Uganda and the Congo and the Upper Nile. I know the ways of the Kaffir as no Englishman does. We Afrikanders see into the black man’s heart, and though he may hate us he does our will. You Germans are like the English; you are too big folk to understand plain men. “Civilize,” you cry. “Educate,” say the English. The black man obeys and puts away his gods, but he worships them all the time in his soul. We must get his gods on our side, and then he will move mountains. We must do as John Laputa did with Sheba’s necklace.’
‘That’s all in the air,’ said Stumm, but he did not laugh.
‘It is sober common sense,’ I said. ‘But you must begin at the right end. First find the race that fears its priests. It is waiting for you — the Mussulmans of Somaliland and the Abyssinian border and the Blue and White Nile. They would be like dried grasses to catch fire if you used the flint and steel of their religion. Look what the English suffered from a crazy Mullah who ruled only a dozen villages. Once get the flames going and they will lick up the pagans of the west and south. This is the way of Africa. How many thousands, think you, were in the Mahdi’s army who never heard of the Prophet till they saw the black flags of the Emirs going into battle?’
Stumm was smiling. He turned his face to the official and spoke with his hand over his mouth, but I caught his words. They were: ‘This is the man for Hilda.’ The other pursed his lips and looked a little scared.
Stumm rang a bell and the lieutenant came in and clicked his heels. He nodded towards Peter. ‘Take this man away with you. We have done with him. The other fellow will follow presently.’
Peter went out with a puzzled face and Stumm turned to me.
‘You are a dreamer, Brandt,’ he said. ‘But I do not reject you on that account. Dreams sometimes come true, when an army follows the visionary. But who is going to kindle the flame?’
‘You,’ I said.
‘What the devil do you mean?’ he asked.
‘That is your part. You are the cleverest people in the world. You have already half the Mussulman lands in your power. It is for you to show us how to kindle a holy war, for clearly you have the secret of it. Never fear but we will carry out your order.’
‘We have no secret,’ he said shortly, and glanced at the official, who stared out of the window.
I dropped my jaw and looked the picture of disappointment. ‘I do not believe you,’ I said slowly. ‘You play a game with me. I have not come six thousand miles to be made a fool of.’
‘Discipline, by God,’ Stumm cried. ‘This is none of your ragged commandos.’ In two strides he was above me and had lifted me out of my seat. His great hands clutched my shoulders, and his thumbs gouged my armpits. I felt as if I were in the grip of a big ape. Then very slowly he shook me so that my teeth seemed loosened and my head swam. He let me go and I dropped limply back in the chair.
‘Now, go! Futsack! And remember that I am your master. I, Ulrich von Stumm, who owns you as a Kaffir owns his mongrel. Germany may have some use for you, my friend, when you fear me as you never feared your God.’
As I walked dizzily away the big man was smiling in his horrible way, and that little official was blinking and smiling too. I had struck a dashed queer country, so queer that I had had no time to remember that for the first time in my life I had been bullied without hitting back. When I realized it I nearly choked with anger. But I thanked heaven I had shown no temper, for I remembered my mission. Luck seemed to have brought me into useful company.
CHAPTER 5. FURTHER ADVENTURES OF THE SAME
Next morning there was a touch of frost and a nip in the air which stirred my blood and put me in buoyant spirits. I forgot my precarious position and the long road I had still to travel. I came down to breakfast in great form, to find Peter’s even temper badly ruffled. He had remembered Stumm in the night and disliked the memory; this he muttered to me as we rubbed shoulders at the dining-room door. Peter and I got no opportunity for private talk. The lieutenant was with us all the time, and at night we were locked in our rooms. Peter discovered this through trying to get out to find matches, for he had the bad habit of smoking in bed.
Our guide started on the telephone, and announced that we were to be taken to see a prisoners’ camp. In the afternoon I was to go somewhere with Stumm, but the morning was for sight-seeing. ‘You will see,’ he told us, ‘how merciful is a great people. You will also see some of the hated English in our power. That will delight you. They are the forerunners of all their nation.’
We drove in a taxi through the suburbs and then over a stretch of flat market-garden-like country to a low rise of wooded hills. After an hour’s ride we entered the gate of what looked like a big reformatory or hospital. I believe it had been a home for destitute children. There were sentries at the gate and massive concentric circles of barbed wire through which we passed under an arch that was let down like a portcullis at nightfall. The lieutenant showed his permit, and we ran the car into a brick-paved yard and marched through a lot more sentries to the office of the commandant.
He was away from home, and we were welcomed by his deputy, a pale young man with a head nearly bald. There were introductions in German which our guide translated into Dutch, and a lot of elegant speeches about how Germany was foremost in humanity as well as martial valour. Then they stood us sandwiches and beer, and we formed a procession for a tour of inspection. There were two doctors, both mild-looking men in spectacles, and a couple of warders — under-officers of the good old burly, bullying sort I knew well. That was the cement which kept the German Army together. Her men were nothing to boast of on the average; no more were the officers, even in crack corps like the Guards and the Brandenburgers; but they seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of hard, competent N.C.O.s.
We marched round the wash-houses, the recreation-ground, the kitchens, the hospital — with nobody in it save one chap with the ‘flu.’ It didn’t seem to be badly done. This place was entirely for officers, and I expect it was a show place where American visitors were taken. If half the stories one heard were true there were some pretty ghastly prisons away in South and East Germany.
I didn’t half like the business. To be a prisoner has always seemed to me about the worst thing that could happen to a man. The sight of German prisoners used to give me a bad feeling inside, whereas I looked at dead Bo
ches with nothing but satisfaction. Besides, there was the off-chance that I might be recognized. So I kept very much in the shadow whenever we passed anybody in the corridors. The few we met passed us incuriously. They saluted the deputy-commandant, but scarcely wasted a glance on us. No doubt they thought we were inquisitive Germans come to gloat over them. They looked fairly fit, but a little puffy about the eyes, like men who get too little exercise. They seemed thin, too. I expect the food, for all the commandant’s talk, was nothing to boast of. In one room people were writing letters. It was a big place with only a tiny stove to warm it, and the windows were shut so that the atmosphere was a cold frowst. In another room a fellow was lecturing on something to a dozen hearers and drawing figures on a blackboard. Some were in ordinary khaki, others in any old thing they could pick up, and most wore greatcoats. Your blood gets thin when you have nothing to do but hope against hope and think of your pals and the old days.
I was moving along, listening with half an ear to the lieutenant’s prattle and the loud explanations of the deputy-commandant, when I pitchforked into what might have been the end of my business. We were going through a sort of convalescent room, where people were sitting who had been in hospital. It was a big place, a little warmer than the rest of the building, but still abominably fuggy. There were about half a dozen men in the room, reading and playing games. They looked at us with lack-lustre eyes for a moment, and then returned to their occupations. Being convalescents I suppose they were not expected to get up and salute.
All but one, who was playing Patience at a little table by which we passed. I was feeling very bad about the thing, for I hated to see these good fellows locked away in this infernal German hole when they might have been giving the Boche his deserts at the front. The commandant went first with Peter, who had developed a great interest in prisons. Then came our lieutenant with one of the doctors; then a couple of warders; and then the second doctor and myself. I was absent-minded at the moment and was last in the queue.
The Patience-player suddenly looked up and I saw his face. I’m hanged if it wasn’t Dolly Riddell, who was our brigade machine-gun officer at Loos. I had heard that the Germans had got him when they blew up a mine at the Quarries.
I had to act pretty quick, for his mouth was agape, and I saw he was going to speak. The doctor was a yard ahead of me.
I stumbled and spilt his cards on the floor. Then I knelt to pick them up and gripped his knee. His head bent to help me and I spoke low in his ear.
‘I’m Hannay all right. For God’s sake don’t wink an eye. I’m here on a secret job.’ The doctor had turned to see what was the matter. I got a few more words in. ‘Cheer up, old man. We’re winning hands down.’
Then I began to talk excited Dutch and finished the collection of the cards. Dolly was playing his part well, smiling as if he was amused by the antics of a monkey. The others were coming back, the deputy-commandant with an angry light in his dull eye. ‘Speaking to the prisoners is forbidden,’ he shouted.
I looked blankly at him till the lieutenant translated.
‘What kind of fellow is he?’ said Dolly in English to the doctor. ‘He spoils my game and then jabbers High-Dutch at me.’
Officially I knew English, and that speech of Dolly’s gave me my cue. I pretended to be very angry with the very damned Englishman, and went out of the room close by the deputy-commandant, grumbling like a sick jackal. After that I had to act a bit. The last place we visited was the close-confinement part where prisoners were kept as a punishment for some breach of the rules. They looked cheerless enough, but I pretended to gloat over the sight, and said so to the lieutenant, who passed it on to the others. I have rarely in my life felt such a cad.
On the way home the lieutenant discoursed a lot about prisoners and detention-camps, for at one time he had been on duty at Ruhleben. Peter, who had been in quod more than once in his life, was deeply interested and kept on questioning him. Among other things he told us was that they often put bogus prisoners among the rest, who acted as spies. If any plot to escape was hatched these fellows got into it and encouraged it. They never interfered till the attempt was actually made and then they had them on toast. There was nothing the Boche liked so much as an excuse for sending a poor devil to ‘solitary’.
That afternoon Peter and I separated. He was left behind with the lieutenant and I was sent off to the station with my bag in the company of a Landsturm sergeant. Peter was very cross, and I didn’t care for the look of things; but I brightened up when I heard I was going somewhere with Stumm. If he wanted to see me again he must think me of some use, and if he was going to use me he was bound to let me into his game. I liked Stumm about as much as a dog likes a scorpion, but I hankered for his society.
At the station platform, where the ornament of the Landsturm saved me all the trouble about tickets, I could not see my companion. I stood waiting, while a great crowd, mostly of soldiers, swayed past me and filled all the front carriages. An officer spoke to me gruffly and told me to stand aside behind a wooden rail. I obeyed, and suddenly found Stumm’s eyes looking down at me.
‘You know German?’ he asked sharply.
‘A dozen words,’ I said carelessly. ‘I’ve been to Windhuk and learned enough to ask for my dinner. Peter — my friend — speaks it a bit.’
‘So,’ said Stumm. ‘Well, get into the carriage. Not that one! There, thickhead!’
I did as I was bid, he followed, and the door was locked behind us. The precaution was needless, for the sight of Stumm’s profile at the platform end would have kept out the most brazen. I wondered if I had woken up his suspicions. I must be on my guard to show no signs of intelligence if he suddenly tried me in German, and that wouldn’t be easy, for I knew it as well as I knew Dutch.
We moved into the country, but the windows were blurred with frost, and I saw nothing of the landscape. Stumm was busy with papers and let me alone. I read on a notice that one was forbidden to smoke, so to show my ignorance of German I pulled out my pipe. Stumm raised his head, saw what I was doing, and gruffly bade me put it away, as if he were an old lady that disliked the smell of tobacco.
In half an hour I got very bored, for I had nothing to read and my pipe was verboten. People passed now and then in the corridors, but no one offered to enter. No doubt they saw the big figure in uniform and thought he was the deuce of a staff swell who wanted solitude. I thought of stretching my legs in the corridor, and was just getting up to do it when somebody slid the door back and a big figure blocked the light.
He was wearing a heavy ulster and a green felt hat. He saluted Stumm, who looked up angrily, and smiled pleasantly on us both.
‘Say, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘have you room in here for a little one? I guess I’m about smoked out of my car by your brave soldiers. I’ve gotten a delicate stomach... ‘
Stumm had risen with a brow of wrath, and looked as if he were going to pitch the intruder off the train. Then he seemed to halt and collect himself, and the other’s face broke into a friendly grin.
‘Why, it’s Colonel Stumm,’he cried. (He pronounced it like the first syllable in ‘stomach’.) ‘Very pleased to meet you again, Colonel. I had the honour of making your acquaintance at our Embassy. I reckon Ambassador Gerard didn’t cotton to our conversation that night.’ And the new-comer plumped himself down in the corner opposite me.
I had been pretty certain I would run across Blenkiron somewhere in Germany, but I didn’t think it would be so soon. There he sat staring at me with his full, unseeing eyes, rolling out platitudes to Stumm, who was nearly bursting in his effort to keep civil. I looked moody and suspicious, which I took to be the right line.
‘Things are getting a bit dead at Salonika,’ said Mr Blenkiron, by way of a conversational opening. Stumm pointed to a notice which warned officers to refrain from discussing military operations with mixed company in a railway carriage.
‘Sorry,’ said Blenkiron, ‘I can’t read that tombstone language of yours. But I rec
kon that that notice to trespassers, whatever it signifies, don’t apply to you and me. I take it this gentleman is in your party.’
I sat and scowled, fixing the American with suspicious eyes.
‘He is a Dutchman,’ said Stumm; ‘South African Dutch, and he is not happy, for he doesn’t like to hear English spoken.’
‘We’ll shake on that,’ said Blenkiron cordially. ‘But who said I spoke English? It’s good American. Cheer up, friend, for it isn’t the call that makes the big wapiti, as they say out west in my country. I hate John Bull worse than a poison rattle. The Colonel can tell you that.’
I dare say he could, but at that moment, we slowed down at a station and Stumm got up to leave. ‘Good day to you, Herr Blenkiron,’ he cried over his shoulder. ‘If you consider your comfort, don’t talk English to strange travellers. They don’t distinguish between the different brands.’
I followed him in a hurry, but was recalled by Blenkiron’s voice.
‘Say, friend,’ he shouted, ‘you’ve left your grip,’ and he handed me my bag from the luggage rack. But he showed no sign of recognition, and the last I saw of him was sitting sunk in a corner with his head on his chest as if he were going to sleep. He was a man who kept up his parts well.
There was a motor-car waiting — one of the grey military kind — and we started at a terrific pace over bad forest roads. Stumm had put away his papers in a portfolio, and flung me a few sentences on the journey.
‘I haven’t made up my mind about you, Brandt,’ he announced. ‘You may be a fool or a knave or a good man. If you are a knave, we will shoot you.’
‘And if I am a fool?’ I asked.
‘Send you to the Yser or the Dvina. You will be respectable cannon-fodder.’
‘You cannot do that unless I consent,’ I said.
‘Can’t we?’ he said, smiling wickedly. ‘Remember you are a citizen of nowhere. Technically, you are a rebel, and the British, if you go to them, will hang you, supposing they have any sense. You are in our power, my friend, to do precisely what we like with you.’