1 Chapter 1 (A Mission is Proposed)

I had just finished breakfast and was filling my pipe when I got

Bullivant's telegram. It was at Furling, the big country house in

Hampshire where I had come to convalesce after Loos, and Sandy, who was

in the same case, was hunting for the marmalade. I flung him the flimsy

with the blue strip pasted down on it, and he whistled.

"Hullo, Dick, you've got the battalion. Or maybe it's a staff billet.

You'll be a blighted brass-hat, coming it heavy over the hard-working

regimental officer. And to think of the language you've wasted on

brass-hats in your time!"

I sat and thought for a bit, for the name "Bullivant' carried me back

eighteen months to the hot summer before the war. I had not seen the

man since, though I had read about him in the papers. For more than a

year I had been a busy battalion officer, with no other thought than to

hammer a lot of raw stuff into good soldiers. I had succeeded pretty

well, and there was no prouder man on earth than Richard Hannay when he

took his Lennox Highlanders over the parapets on that glorious and

bloody 25th day of September. Loos was no picnic, and we had had some

ugly bits of scrapping before that, but the worst bit of the campaign I

had seen was a tea-party to the show I had been in with Bullivant

before the war started. [Major Hannay's narrative of this affair has

been published under the title of _The Thirty-nine Steps_.]

The sight of his name on a telegram form seemed to change all my

outlook on life. I had been hoping for the command of the battalion,

and looking forward to being in at the finish with Brother Boche. But

this message jerked my thoughts on to a new road. There might be other

things in the war than straightforward fighting. Why on earth should

the Foreign Office want to see an obscure Major of the New Army, and

want to see him in double-quick time?

"I'm going up to town by the ten train," I announced; "I'll be back in

time for dinner."

"Try my tailor," said Sandy. "He's got a very nice taste in red tabs.

You can use my name."

An idea struck me. "You're pretty well all right now. If I wire for

you, will you pack your own kit and mine and join me?"

"Right-o! I'll accept a job on your staff if they give you a corps. If

so be as you come down tonight, be a good chap and bring a barrel of

oysters from Sweeting's."

I travelled up to London in a regular November drizzle, which cleared

up about Wimbledon to watery sunshine. I never could stand London

during the war. It seemed to have lost its bearings and broken out into

all manner of badges and uniforms which did not fit in with my notion

of it. One felt the war more in its streets than in the field, or

rather one felt the confusion of war without feeling the purpose. I

dare say it was all right; but since August 1914 I never spent a day in

town without coming home depressed to my boots.

I took a taxi and drove straight to the Foreign Office. Sir Walter did

not keep me waiting long. But when his secretary took me to his room I

would not have recognized the man I had known eighteen months before.

His big frame seemed to have dropped flesh and there was a stoop in the

square shoulders. His face had lost its rosiness and was red in

patches, like that of a man who gets too little fresh air. His hair was

much greyer and very thin about the temples, and there were lines of

overwork below the eyes. But the eyes were the same as before, keen and

kindly and shrewd, and there was no change in the firm set of the jaw.

"We must on no account be disturbed for the next hour," he told his

secretary. When the young man had gone he went across to both doors and

turned the keys in them.

"Well, Major Hannay," he said, flinging himself into a chair beside the

fire. "How do you like soldiering?"

"Right enough," I said, "though this isn't just the kind of war I would

have picked myself. It's a comfortless, bloody business. But we've got

the measure of the old Boche now, and it's dogged as does it. I count

on getting back to the front in a week or two."

"Will you get the battalion?" he asked. He seemed to have followed my

doings pretty closely.

"I believe I've a good chance. I'm not in this show for honour and

glory, though. I want to do the best I can, but I wish to heaven it was

over. All I think of is coming out of it with a whole skin."

He laughed. "You do yourself an injustice. What about the forward

observation post at the Lone Tree? You forgot about the whole skin

then."

I felt myself getting red. "That was all rot," I said, "and I can't

think who told you about it. I hated the job, but I had to do it to

prevent my subalterns going to glory. They were a lot of fire-eating

young lunatics. If I had sent one of them he'd have gone on his knees

to Providence and asked for trouble."

Sir Walter was still grinning.

"I'm not questioning your caution. You have the rudiments of it, or our

friends of the Black Stone would have gathered you in at our last merry

meeting. I would question it as little as your courage. What exercises

my mind is whether it is best employed in the trenches."

"Is the War Office dissatisfied with me?" I asked sharply.

"They are profoundly satisfied. They propose to give you command of

your battalion. Presently, if you escape a stray bullet, you will no

doubt be a Brigadier. It is a wonderful war for youth and brains. But

... I take it you are in this business to serve your country, Hannay?"

"I reckon I am," I said. "I am certainly not in it for my health."

He looked at my leg, where the doctors had dug out the shrapnel

fragments, and smiled quizzically.

"Pretty fit again?" he asked.

"Tough as a sjambok. I thrive on the racket and eat and sleep like a

schoolboy."

He got up and stood with his back to the fire, his eyes staring

abstractedly out of the window at the wintry park.

"It is a great game, and you are the man for it, no doubt. But there

are others who can play it, for soldiering today asks for the average

rather than the exception in human nature. It is like a big machine

where the parts are standardized. You are fighting, not because you are

short of a job, but because you want to help England. How if you could

help her better than by commanding a battalion—or a brigade—or, if it

comes to that, a division? How if there is a thing which you alone can

do? Not some _embusque_ business in an office, but a thing compared to

which your fight at Loos was a Sunday-school picnic. You are not afraid

of danger? Well, in this job you would not be fighting with an army

around you, but alone. You are fond of tackling difficulties? Well, I

can give you a task which will try all your powers. Have you anything

to say?"

My heart was beginning to thump uncomfortably. Sir Walter was not the

man to pitch a case too high.

"I am a soldier," I said, "and under orders."

"True; but what I am about to propose does not come by any conceivable

stretch within the scope of a soldier's duties. I shall perfectly

understand if you decline. You will be acting as I should act myself—as

any sane man would. I would not press you for worlds. If you wish it, I

will not even make the proposal, but let you go here and now, and wish

you good luck with your battalion. I do not wish to perplex a good

soldier with impossible decisions."

This piqued me and put me on my mettle.

"I am not going to run away before the guns fire. Let me hear what you

propose."

Sir Walter crossed to a cabinet, unlocked it with a key from his chain,

and took a piece of paper from a drawer. It looked like an ordinary

half-sheet of note-paper.

"I take it," he said, "that your travels have not extended to the

East."

"No," I said, "barring a shooting trip in East Africa."

"Have you by any chance been following the present campaign there?"

"I've read the newspapers pretty regularly since I went to hospital.

I've got some pals in the Mesopotamia show, and of course I'm keen to

know what is going to happen at Gallipoli and Salonika. I gather that

Egypt is pretty safe."

"If you will give me your attention for ten minutes I will supplement

your newspaper reading."

Sir Walter lay back in an arm-chair and spoke to the ceiling. It was

the best story, the clearest and the fullest, I had ever got of any bit

of the war. He told me just how and why and when Turkey had left the

rails. I heard about her grievances over our seizure of her ironclads,

of the mischief the coming of the _Goeben_ had wrought, of Enver and

his precious Committee and the way they had got a cinch on the old

Turk. When he had spoken for a bit, he began to question me.

"You are an intelligent fellow, and you will ask how a Polish

adventurer, meaning Enver, and a collection of Jews and gipsies should

have got control of a proud race. The ordinary man will tell you that

it was German organization backed up with German money and German arms.

You will inquire again how, since Turkey is primarily a religious

power, Islam has played so small a part in it all. The Sheikh-ul-Islam

is neglected, and though the Kaiser proclaims a Holy War and calls

himself Hadji Mohammed Guilliamo, and says the Hohenzollerns are

descended from the Prophet, that seems to have fallen pretty flat. The

ordinary man again will answer that Islam in Turkey is becoming a back

number, and that Krupp guns are the new gods. Yet—I don't know. I do

not quite believe in Islam becoming a back number."

"Look at it in another way," he went on. "If it were Enver and Germany

alone dragging Turkey into a European war for purposes that no Turk

cared a rush about, we might expect to find the regular army obedient,

and Constantinople. But in the provinces, where Islam is strong, there

would be trouble. Many of us counted on that. But we have been

disappointed. The Syrian army is as fanatical as the hordes of the

Mahdi. The Senussi have taken a hand in the game. The Persian Moslems

are threatening trouble. There is a dry wind blowing through the East,

and the parched grasses wait the spark. And that wind is blowing

towards the Indian border. Whence comes that wind, think you?"

Sir Walter had lowered his voice and was speaking very slow and

distinct. I could hear the rain dripping from the eaves of the window,

and far off the hoot of taxis in Whitehall.

"Have you an explanation, Hannay?" he asked again.

"It looks as if Islam had a bigger hand in the thing than we thought,"

I said. "I fancy religion is the only thing to knit up such a scattered

empire."

"You are right," he said. "You must be right. We have laughed at the

Holy War, the jehad that old Von der Goltz prophesied. But I believe

that stupid old man with the big spectacles was right. There is a jehad

preparing. The question is, How?"

"I'm hanged if I know," I said; "but I'll bet it won't be done by a

pack of stout German officers in _pickelhaubes_. I fancy you can't

manufacture Holy Wars out of Krupp guns alone and a few staff officers

and a battle cruiser with her boilers burst."

"Agreed. They are not fools, however much we try to persuade ourselves

of the contrary. But supposing they had got some tremendous sacred

sanction—some holy thing, some book or gospel or some new prophet from

the desert, something which would cast over the whole ugly mechanism of

German war the glamour of the old torrential raids which crumpled the

Byzantine Empire and shook the walls of Vienna? Islam is a fighting

creed, and the mullah still stands in the pulpit with the Koran in one

hand and a drawn sword in the other. Supposing there is some Ark of the

Covenant which will madden the remotest Moslem peasant with dreams of

Paradise? What then, my friend?"

"Then there will be hell let loose in those parts pretty soon."

"Hell which may spread. Beyond Persia, remember, lies India."

"You keep to suppositions. How much do you know?" I asked.

"Very little, except the fact. But the fact is beyond dispute. I have

reports from agents everywhere—pedlars in South Russia, Afghan

horse-dealers, Turcoman merchants, pilgrims on the road to Mecca,

sheikhs in North Africa, sailors on the Black Sea coasters,

sheep-skinned Mongols, Hindu fakirs, Greek traders in the Gulf, as well

as respectable Consuls who use cyphers. They tell the same story. The

East is waiting for a revelation. It has been promised one. Some

star—man, prophecy, or trinket—is coming out of the West. The Germans

know, and that is the card with which they are going to astonish the

world."

"And the mission you spoke of for me is to go and find out?"

He nodded gravely. "That is the crazy and impossible mission."

"Tell me one thing, Sir Walter," I said. "I know it is the fashion in

this country if a man has a special knowledge to set him to some job

exactly the opposite. I know all about Damaraland, but instead of being

put on Botha's staff, as I applied to be, I was kept in Hampshire mud

till the campaign in German South West Africa was over. I know a man

who could pass as an Arab, but do you think they would send him to the

East? They left him in my battalion—a lucky thing for me, for he saved

my life at Loos. I know the fashion, but isn't this just carrying it a

bit too far? There must be thousands of men who have spent years in the

East and talk any language. They're the fellows for this job. I never

saw a Turk in my life except a chap who did wrestling turns in a show

at Kimberley. You've picked about the most useless man on earth."

"You've been a mining engineer, Hannay," Sir Walter said. "If you

wanted a man to prospect for gold in Barotseland you would of course

like to get one who knew the country and the people and the language.

But the first thing you would require in him would be that he had a

nose for finding gold and knew his business. That is the position now.

I believe that you have a nose for finding out what our enemies try to

hide. I know that you are brave and cool and resourceful. That is why I

tell you the story. Besides ..."

He unrolled a big map of Europe on the wall.

"I can't tell you where you'll get on the track of the secret, but I

can put a limit to the quest. You won't find it east of the

Bosporus—not yet. It is still in Europe. It may be in Constantinople,

or in Thrace. It may be farther west. But it is moving eastwards. If

you are in time you may cut into its march to Constantinople. That much

I can tell you. The secret is known in Germany, too, to those whom it

concerns. It is in Europe that the seeker must search—at present."

"Tell me more," I said. "You can give me no details and no

instructions. Obviously you can give me no help if I come to grief."

He nodded. "You would be beyond the pale."

"You give me a free hand."

"Absolutely. You can have what money you like, and you can get what

help you like. You can follow any plan you fancy, and go anywhere you

think fruitful. We can give no directions."

"One last question. You say it is important. Tell me just how

important."

"It is life and death," he said solemnly. "I can put it no higher and

no lower. Once we know what is the menace we can meet it. As long as we

are in the dark it works unchecked and we may be too late. The war must

be won or lost in Europe. Yes; but if the East blazes up, our effort

will be distracted from Europe and the great _coup_ may fail. The

stakes are no less than victory and defeat, Hannay."

I got out of my chair and walked to the window. It was a difficult

moment in my life. I was happy in my soldiering; above all, happy in

the company of my brother officers. I was asked to go off into the

enemy's lands on a quest for which I believed I was manifestly

unfitted—a business of lonely days and nights, of nerve-racking strain,

of deadly peril shrouding me like a garment. Looking out on the bleak

weather I shivered. It was too grim a business, too inhuman for flesh

and blood. But Sir Walter had called it a matter of life and death, and

I had told him that I was out to serve my country. He could not give me

orders, but was I not under orders—higher orders than my Brigadier's? I

thought myself incompetent, but cleverer men than me thought me

competent, or at least competent enough for a sporting chance. I knew

in my soul that if I declined I should never be quite at peace in the

world again. And yet Sir Walter had called the scheme madness, and said

that he himself would never have accepted.

How does one make a great decision? I swear that when I turned round to

speak I meant to refuse. But my answer was Yes, and I had crossed the

Rubicon. My voice sounded cracked and far away.

Sir Walter shook hands with me and his eyes blinked a little.

"I may be sending you to your death, Hannay—Good God, what a damned

task-mistress duty is!—If so, I shall be haunted with regrets, but you

will never repent. Have no fear of that. You have chosen the roughest

road, but it goes straight to the hill-tops."

He handed me the half-sheet of note-paper. On it were written three

words—"_Kasredin_", "_cancer_", and "_v. I._"

"That is the only clue we possess," he said. "I cannot construe it, but

I can tell you the story. We have had our agents working in Persia and

Mesopotamia for years—mostly young officers of the Indian Army. They

carry their lives in their hands, and now and then one disappears, and

the sewers of Baghdad might tell a tale. But they find out many things,

and they count the game worth the candle. They have told us of the star

rising in the West, but they could give us no details. All but one—the

best of them. He had been working between Mosul and the Persian

frontier as a muleteer, and had been south into the Bakhtiari hills. He

found out something, but his enemies knew that he knew and he was

pursued. Three months ago, just before Kut, he staggered into

Delamain's camp with ten bullet holes in him and a knife slash on his

forehead. He mumbled his name, but beyond that and the fact that there

was a Something coming from the West he told them nothing. He died in

ten minutes. They found this paper on him, and since he cried out the

word 'Kasredin' in his last moments, it must have had something to do

with his quest. It is for you to find out if it has any meaning."

I folded it up and placed it in my pocket-book.

"What a great fellow! What was his name?" I asked.

Sir Walter did not answer at once. He was looking out of the window.

"His name," he said at last, "was Harry Bullivant. He was my son. God

rest his brave soul!"