Mr Standfast rh-3

by John Buchan

  The A.P.M. issued his orders. He gave instructions that my depot should be rung up, and he bade Wilson remove me to what he called the guard-room. He sat down at his desk, and busied himself with a mass of buff dockets.

  in desperation I renewed my appeal. ‘I implore you to telephone to Mr Macgillivray at Scotland Yard. It’s a matter of life and death, Sir. You’re taking a very big responsibility if you don’t.’

  I had hopelessly offended his brittle dignity. ‘Any more of your insolence and I’ll have you put in irons. I’ll attend to you soon enough for your comfort. Get out of this till I send for you.’

  As I looked at his foolish, irritable face I realized that I was fairly UP against it. Short of assault and battery on everybody I was bound to submit. I saluted respectfully and was marched away.

  The hours I spent in that bare anteroom are like a nightmare in my recollection. A sergeant was busy at a desk with more buff dockets and an orderly waited on a stool by a telephone. I looked at my watch and observed that it was one o’clock. Soon the slamming of a door announced that the A.P.M. had gone to lunch. I tried conversation with the fat sergeant, but he very soon shut me up. So I sat hunched up on the wooden form and chewed the cud of my vexation.

  I thought with bitterness of the satisfaction which had filled me in the morning. I had fancied myself the devil of a fine fellow, and I had been no more than a mountebank. The adventures of the past days seemed merely childish. I had been telling lies and cutting capers over half Britain, thinking I was playing a deep game, and I had only been behaving like a schoolboy. On such occasions a man is rarely just to himself, and the intensity of my self-abasement would have satisfied my worst enemy. It didn’t console me that the futility of it all was not my blame. I was looking for excuses. It was the facts that cried out against me, and on the facts I had been an idiotic failure.

  For of course Ivery had played with me, played with me since the first day at Biggleswick. He had applauded my speeches and flattered me, and advised me to go to the Clyde, laughing at me all the time. Gresson, too, had known. Now I saw it all. He had tried to drown me between Colonsay and Mull. It was Gresson who had set the police on me in Morvern. The bagman Linklater had been one of Gresson’s creatures. The only meagre consolation was that the gang had thought me dangerous enough to attempt to murder me, and that they knew nothing about my doings in Skye. Of that I was positive. They had marked me down, but for several days I had slipped clean out of their ken.

  As I went over all the incidents, I asked if everything was yet lost. I had failed to hoodwink Ivery, but I had found out his post office, and if he only believed I hadn’t recognized him for the miscreant of the Black Stone he would go on in his old ways and play into Blenkiron’s hands. Yes, but I had seen him in undress, so to speak, and he knew that I had so seen him. The only thing now was to collar him before he left the country, for there was ample evidence to hang him on. The law must stretch out its long arm and collect him and Gresson and the Portuguese Jew, try them by court martial, and put them decently underground. But he had now had more than an hour’s warning, and I was entangled with red-tape in this damned A.P.M.‘s office. The thought drove me frantic, and I got up and paced the floor. I saw the orderly with rather a scared face making ready to press the bell, and I noticed that the fat sergeant had gone to lunch.

  ‘Say, mate,’ I said, ‘don’t you feel inclined to do a poor fellow a good turn? I know I’m for it all right, and I’ll take my medicine like a lamb. But I want badly to put a telephone call through.’

  ‘It ain’t allowed,’ was the answer. ‘I’d get ‘ell from the old man.’

  ‘But he’s gone out,’ I urged. ‘I don’t want you to do anything wrong, mate, I leave you to do the talkin’ if you’ll only send my message. I’m flush of money, and I don’t mind handin’ you a quid for the job.’

  He was a pinched little man with a weak chin, and he obviously wavered.

  ”Oo d’ye want to talk to?’ he asked.

  ‘Scotland Yard,’ I said, ‘the home of the police. Lord bless you, there can’t be no harm in that. Ye’ve only got to ring up Scotland Yard - I’ll give you the number - and give the message to Mr Macgillivray. He’s the head bummer of all the bobbies.’

  ‘That sounds a bit of all right,’ he said. ‘The old man ‘e won’t be back for ‘alf an hour, nor the sergeant neither. Let’s see your quid though.’

  I laid a pound note on the form beside me. ‘It’s yours, mate, if you get through to Scotland Yard and speak the piece I’m goin’ to give you.’

  He went over to the instrument. ‘What d’you want to say to the bloke with the long name?’ ‘Say that Richard Hannay is detained at the A.P.M.‘s office in Claxton Street. Say he’s got important news - say urgent and secret news - and ask Mr Macgillivray to do something about it at once.’ ‘But ‘Annay ain’t the name you gave.’

  ‘Lord bless you, no. Did you never hear of a man borrowin’ another name? Anyhow that’s the one I want you to give.’

  ‘But if this Mac man comes round ‘ere, they’ll know ‘e’s bin rung up, and I’ll ‘ave the old man down on me.’

  It took ten minutes and a second pound note to get him past this hurdle. By and by he screwed up courage and rang up the number. I listened with some nervousness while he gave my message - he had to repeat it twice - and waited eagerly on the next words.

  ‘No, sir,’ I heard him say, “e don’t want you to come round ‘ere. E thinks as ‘ow - I mean to say, ‘e wants -‘

  I took a long stride and twitched the receiver from him.

  ‘Macgillivray,’ I said, ‘is that you? Richard Hannay! For the love of God come round here this instant and deliver me from the clutches of a tomfool A.P.M. I’ve got the most deadly news. There’s not a second to waste. For God’s sake come quick!’ Then I added: ‘Just tell your fellows to gather Ivery in at once. You know his lairs.’

  I hung up the receiver and faced a pale and indignant orderly. ‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘I promise you that you won’t get into any trouble on my account. And there’s your two quid.’

  The door in the next room opened and shut. The A.P.M. had returned from lunch …

  Ten minutes later the door opened again. I heard Macgillivray’s voice, and it was not pitched in dulcet tones. He had run up against minor officialdom and was making hay with it.

  I was my own master once more, so I forsook the company of the orderly. I found a most rattled officer trying to save a few rags of his dignity and the formidable figure of Macgillivray instructing him in manners.

  ‘Glad to see you, Dick,’ he said. ‘This is General Hannay, sir. It may comfort you to know that your folly may have made just the difference between your country’s victory and defeat. I shall have a word to say to your superiors.’

  It was hardly fair. I had to put in a word for the old fellow, whose red tabs seemed suddenly to have grown dingy.

  ‘It was my blame wearing this kit. We’ll call it a misunderstanding and forget it. But I would suggest that civility is not wasted even on a poor devil of a defaulting private soldier.’

  Once in Macgillivray’s car, I poured out my tale. ‘Tell me it’s a nightmare,’ I cried. ‘Tell me that the three men we collected on the Ruff were shot long ago.’

  ‘Two,’ he replied, ‘but one escaped. Heaven knows how he managed it, but he disappeared clean out of the world.’

  ‘The plump one who lisped in his speech?’

  Macgillivray nodded.

  ‘Well, we’re in for it this time. Have you issued instructions?’

  ‘Yes. With luck we shall have our hands on him within an hour. We’ve our net round all his haunts.’

  ‘But two hours’ start! It’s a big handicap, for you’re dealing with a genius.’

  ‘Yet I think we can manage it. Where are you bound for?’

  I told him my rooms in Westminster and then to my old flat in Park Lane. ‘The day of disguises is past. In half an hour I’ll be Richar
d Hannay. It’ll be a comfort to get into uniform again. Then I’ll look up Blenkiron.’

  He grinned. ‘I gather you’ve had a riotous time. We’ve had a good many anxious messages from the north about a certain Mr Brand. I couldn’t discourage our men, for I fancied it might have spoiled your game. I heard that last night they had lost touch with you in Bradfield, so I rather expected to see you here today. Efficient body of men the Scottish police.’

  ‘Especially when they have various enthusiastic amateur helpers.’

  ‘So?’ he said. ‘Yes, of course. They would have. But I hope presently to congratulate you on the success of your mission.’

  ‘I’ll bet you a pony you don’t,’ I said.

  ‘I never bet on a professional subject. Why this pessimism?’

  ‘Only that I know our gentleman better than you. I’ve been twice up against him. He’s the kind of wicked that don’t cease from troubling till they’re stone-dead. And even then I’d want to see the body cremated and take the ashes into mid-ocean and scatter them. I’ve got a feeling that he’s the biggest thing you or I will ever tackle.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN The Valley of Humiliation

  I collected some baggage and a pile of newly arrived letters from my rooms in Westminster and took a taxi to my Park Lane flat. Usually I had gone back to that old place with a great feeling of comfort, like a boy from school who ranges about his room at home and examines his treasures. I used to like to see my hunting trophies on the wall and to sink into my own armchairs But now I had no pleasure in the thing. I had a bath, and changed into uniform, and that made me feel in better fighting trim. But I suffered from a heavy conviction of abject failure, and had no share in Macgillivray’s optimism. The awe with which the Black Stone gang had filled me three years before had revived a thousandfold. Personal humiliation was the least part of my trouble. What worried me was the sense of being up against something inhumanly formidable and wise and strong. I believed I was willing to own defeat and chuck up the game.

  Among the unopened letters was one from Peter, a very bulky one which I sat down to read at leisure. It was a curious epistle, far the longest he had ever written me, and its size made me understand his loneliness. He was still at his German prison-camp, but expecting every day to go to Switzerland. He said he could get back to England or South Africa, if he wanted, for they were clear that he could never be a combatant again; but he thought he had better stay in Switzerland, for he would be unhappy in England with all his friends fighting. As usual he made no complaints, and seemed to be very grateful for his small mercies. There was a doctor who was kind to him, and some good fellows among the prisoners.

  But Peter’s letter was made up chiefly of reflection. He had always been a bit of a philosopher, and now, in his isolation, he had taken to thinkin hard, and poured out the results to me on pages of thin paper in his clumsy handwriting. I could read between the lines that he was having a stiff fight with himself. He was trying to keep his courage going in face of the bitterest trial he could be called on to face - a crippled old age. He had always known a good deal about the Bible, and that and thePilgrim’s Progress were his chief aids in reflection. Both he took quite literally, as if they were newspaper reports of actual recent events.

  He mentioned that after much consideration he had reached the conclusion that the three greatest men he had ever heard of or met were Mr Valiant-for-Truth, the Apostle Paul, and a certain Billy Strang who had been with him in Mashonaland in ‘92. Billy I knew all about; he had been Peter’s hero and leader till a lion got him in the Blaauwberg. Peter preferred Valiant-for-Truth to Mr Greatheart, I think, because of his superior truculence, for, being very gentle himself, he loved a bold speaker. After that he dropped into a vein of self-examination. He regretted that he fell far short of any of the three. He thought that he might with luck resemble Mr Standfast, for like him he had not much trouble in keeping wakeful, and was also as ‘poor as a howler’, and didn’t care for women. He only hoped that he could imitate him in making a good end.

  Then followed some remarks of Peter’s on courage, which came to me in that London room as if spoken by his living voice. I have never known anyone so brave, so brave by instinct, or anyone who hated so much to be told so. It was almost the only thing that could make him angry. All his life he had been facing death, and to take risks seemed to him as natural as to get up in the morning and eat his breakfast. But he had started out to consider the very thing which before he had taken for granted, and here is an extract from his conclusions. I paraphrase him, for he was not grammatical.

  __It’s easy enough to be brave if you’re feeling well and have food inside you. And it’s not so difficult even if you’re short of a meal and seedy, for that makes you inclined to gamble. I mean by being brave playing the game by the right rules without letting it worry you that you may very likely get knocked on the head. It’s the wisest way to save your skin. It doesn’t do to think about death if you’re facing a charging lion or trying to bluff a lot of savages. If you think about it you’ll get it; if you don’t, the odds are you won’t. That kind of courage is only good nerves and experience … Most courage is experience. Most people are a little scared at new things …

  __You want a bigger heart to face danger which you go out to look for, and which doesn’t come to you in the ordinary way of business. Still, that’s Pretty much the same thing - good nerves and good health, and a natural liking for rows. You see, Dick, in all that game there’s a lot Of fun. There’s excitement and the fun of using your wits and skill, and you know that the bad bits can’t last long. When Arcoll sent me to Makapan’s kraal I didn’t altogether fancy the job, but at the worst it was three parts sport, and I got so excited that I never thought of the risk till it was over …

  __But the big courage is the cold-blooded kind, the kind that never lets go even when you’re feeling empty inside, and your blood’s thin, and there’s no kind of fun or profit to be had, and the trouble’s not over in an hour or two but lasts for months and years. One of the men here was speaking about that kind, and he called it ‘Fortitude’. I reckon fortitude’s the biggest thing a man can have - just to go on enduring when there’s no guts or heart left in you. Billy had it when he trekked solitary from Garungoze to the Limpopo with fever and a broken arm just to show the Portugooses that he wouldn’t be downed by them. But the head man at the job was the Apostle _Paul …

  Peter was writing for his own comfort, for fortitude was all that was left to him now. But his words came pretty straight to me, and I read them again and again, for I needed the lesson. Here was I losing heart just because I had failed in the first round and my pride had taken a knock. I felt honestly ashamed of myself, and that made me a far happier man. There could be no question of dropping the business, whatever its difficulties. I had a queer religious feeling that Ivery and I had our fortunes intertwined, and that no will of mine could keep us apart. I had faced him before the war and won; I had faced him again and lost; the third time or the twentieth time we would reach a final decision. The whole business had hitherto appeared to me a trifle unreal, at any rate my own connection with it. I had been docilely obeying orders, but my real self had been standing aside and watching my doings with a certain aloofness. But that hour in the Tube station had brought me into the serum, and I saw the affair not as Bullivant’s or even Blenkiron’s, but as my own. Before I had been itching to get back to the Front; now I wanted to get on to Ivery’s trail, though it should take me through the nether pit. Peter was right; fortitude was the thing a man must possess if he would save his soul.

  The hours passed, and, as I expected, there came no word from Macgillivray. I had some dinner sent up to me at seven o’clock, and about eight I was thinking of looking up Blenkiron. just then came a telephone call asking me to go round to Sir Walter Bullivant’s house in Queen Anne’s Gate.

  Ten minutes later I was ringing the bell, and the door was opened to me by the same impassive butler who had admitted me on
that famous night three years before. Nothing had changed in the pleasant green-panelled hall; the alcove was the same as when I had watched from it the departure of the man who now called himself Ivery; the telephone book lay in the very place from which I had snatched it in order to ring up the First Sea Lord. And in the back room, where that night five anxious officials had conferred, I found Sir Walter and Blenkiron.

  Both looked worried, the American feverishly so. He walked up and down the hearthrug, sucking an unlit black cigar.

  ‘Say, Dick,’ he said, this is a bad business. It wasn’t no fault of yours. You did fine. It was us - me and Sir Walter and Mr Macgillivray that were the quitters.’

  ‘Any news?’ I asked.

  ‘So far the cover’s drawn blank,’ Sir Walter replied. ‘It was the devil’s own work that our friend looked your way today. You’re pretty certain he saw that you recognized him?’

  ‘Absolutely. As sure as that he knew I recognized him in your hall three years ago when he was swaggering as Lord Alloa.’

  ‘No,’ said Blenkiron dolefully, that little flicker of recognition is just the one thing you can’t be wrong about. Land alive! I wish Mr Macgillivray would come.’

  The bell rang, and the door opened, but it was not Macgillivray. It was a young girl in a white ball-gown, with a cluster of blue cornflowers at her breast. The sight of her fetched Sir Walter out of his chair so suddenly that he upset his coffee cup. ‘Mary, my dear, how did you manage it? I didn’t expect you till the late train.’ ‘I was in London, you see, and they telephoned on your telegram. I’m staying with Aunt Doria, and I cut her theatre party. She thinks I’m at the Shandwick’s dance, so I needn’t go home till morning … Good evening, General Hannay. You got over the Hill Difficulty.’

  ‘The next stage is the Valley of Humiliation,’ I answered.

  ‘So it would appear,’ she said gravely, and sat very quietly on the edge of Sir Walter’s chair with her small, cool hand upon his.