5 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 Boches 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 kneeled 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 reckon 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."

He was silent for a second, and then he said, meditatively:

"But I don't think you are a fool. You may be a scoundrel. Some kinds

of scoundrel are useful enough. Other kinds are strung up with a rope.

Of that we shall know more soon."

"And if I am a good man?"

"You will be given a chance to serve Germany, the proudest privilege a

mortal man can have." The strange man said this with a ringing

sincerity in his voice that impressed me.

The car swung out from the trees into a park lined with saplings, and

in the twilight I saw before me a biggish house like an overgrown Swiss

chalet. There was a kind of archway, with a sham portcullis, and a

terrace with battlements which looked as if they were made of stucco.

We drew up at a Gothic front door, where a thin middle-aged man in a

shooting-jacket was waiting.

As we moved into the lighted hall I got a good look at our host. He was

very lean and brown, with the stoop in the shoulder that one gets from

being constantly on horseback. He had untidy grizzled hair and a ragged

beard, and a pair of pleasant, short-sighted brown eyes.

"Welcome, my Colonel," he said. "Is this the friend you spoke of?"

"This is the Dutchman," said Stumm. "His name is Brandt. Brandt, you

see before you Herr Gaudian."

I knew the name, of course; there weren't many in my profession that

didn't. He was one of the biggest railway engineers in the world, the

man who had built the Baghdad and Syrian railways, and the new lines in

German East. I suppose he was about the greatest living authority on

tropical construction. He knew the East and he knew Africa; clearly I

had been brought down for him to put me through my paces.

A blonde maidservant took me to my room, which had a bare polished

floor, a stove, and windows that, unlike most of the German kind I had

sampled, seemed made to open. When I had washed I descended to the

hall, which was hung round with trophies of travel, like Dervish

jibbahs and Masai shields and one or two good buffalo heads. Presently

a bell was rung. Stumm appeared with his host, and we went in to

supper.

I was jolly hungry and would have made a good meal if I hadn't

constantly had to keep jogging my wits. The other two talked in German,

and when a question was put to me Stumm translated. The first thing I

had to do was to pretend I didn't know German and look listlessly round

the room while they were talking. The second was to miss not a word,

for there lay my chance. The third was to be ready to answer questions

at any moment, and to show in the answering that I had not followed the

previous conversation. Likewise, I must not prove myself a fool in

these answers, for I had to convince them that I was useful. It took

some doing, and I felt like a witness in the box under a stiff

cross-examination, or a man trying to play three games of chess at

once.

I heard Stumm telling Gaudian the gist of my plan. The engineer shook

his head.

"Too late," he said. "It should have been done at the beginning. We

neglected Africa. You know the reason why."

Stumm laughed. "The von Einem! Perhaps, but her charm works well

enough."

Gaudian glanced towards me while I was busy with an orange salad. "I

have much to tell you of that. But it can wait. Your friend is right in

one thing. Uganda is a vital spot for the English, and a blow there

will make their whole fabric shiver. But how can we strike? They have

still the coast, and our supplies grow daily smaller."

"We can send no reinforcements, but have we used all the local

resources? That is what I cannot satisfy myself about. Zimmerman says

we have, but Tressler thinks differently, and now we have this fellow

coming out of the void with a story which confirms my doubt. He seems

to know his job. You try him."

Thereupon Gaudian set about questioning me, and his questions were very

thorough. I knew just enough and no more to get through, but I think I

came out with credit. You see I have a capacious memory, and in my time

I had met scores of hunters and pioneers and listened to their yarns,

so I could pretend to knowledge of a place even when I hadn't been

there. Besides, I had once been on the point of undertaking a job up

Tanganyika way, and I had got up that country-side pretty accurately.

"You say that with our help you can make trouble for the British on the

three borders?" Gaudian asked at length.

"I can spread the fire if some one else will kindle it," I said.

"But there are thousands of tribes with no affinities."

"They are all African. You can bear me out. All African peoples are

alike in one thing—they can go mad, and the madness of one infects the

others. The English know this well enough."

"Where would you start the fire?" he asked.

"Where the fuel is dryest. Up in the North among the Mussulman peoples.

But there you must help me. I know nothing about Islam, and I gather

that you do."

"Why?" he asked.

"Because of what you have done already," I answered.

Stumm had translated all this time, and had given the sense of my words

very fairly. But with my last answer he took liberties. What he gave

was: "Because the Dutchman thinks that we have some big card in dealing

with the Moslem world." Then, lowering his voice and raising his

eyebrows, he said some word like "Ühnmantl".

The other looked with a quick glance of apprehension at me. "We had

better continue our talk in private, Herr Colonel," he said. "If Herr

Brandt will forgive us, we will leave him for a little to entertain

himself." He pushed the cigar-box towards me and the two got up and

left the room.

I pulled my chair up to the stove, and would have liked to drop off to

sleep. The tension of the talk at supper had made me very tired. I was

accepted by these men for exactly what I professed to be. Stumm might

suspect me of being a rascal, but it was a Dutch rascal. But all the

same I was skating on thin ice. I could not sink myself utterly in the

part, for if I did I would get no good out of being there. I had to

keep my wits going all the time, and join the appearance and manners of

a backveld Boer with the mentality of a British intelligence-officer.

Any moment the two parts might clash and I would be faced with the most

alert and deadly suspicion.

There would be no mercy from Stumm. That large man was beginning to

fascinate me, even though I hated him. Gaudian was clearly a good

fellow, a white man and a gentleman. I could have worked with him for

he belonged to my own totem. But the other was an incarnation of all

that makes Germany detested, and yet he wasn't altogether the ordinary

German, and I couldn't help admiring him. I noticed he neither smoked

nor drank. His grossness was apparently not in the way of fleshly

appetites. Cruelty, from all I had heard of him in German South West,

was his hobby; but there were other things in him, some of them good,

and he had that kind of crazy patriotism which becomes a religion. I

wondered why he had not some high command in the field, for he had had

the name of a good soldier. But probably he was a big man in his own

line, whatever it was, for the Under-Secretary fellow had talked small

in his presence, and so great a man as Gaudian clearly respected him.

There must be no lack of brains inside that funny pyramidal head.

As I sat beside the stove I was casting back to think if I had got the

slightest clue to my real job. There seemed to be nothing so far. Stumm

had talked of a von Einem woman who was interested in his department,

perhaps the same woman as the Hilda he had mentioned the day before to

the Under-Secretary. There was not much in that. She was probably some

minister's or ambassador's wife who had a finger in high politics. If I

could have caught the word Stumm had whispered to Gaudian which made

him start and look askance at me! But I had only heard a gurgle of

something like "Ühnmantl", which wasn't any German word that I knew.

The heat put me into a half-doze and I began dreamily to wonder what

other people were doing. Where had Blenkiron been posting to in that

train, and what was he up to at this moment? He had been hobnobbing

with ambassadors and swells—I wondered if he had found out anything.

What was Peter doing? I fervently hoped he was behaving himself, for I

doubted if Peter had really tumbled to the delicacy of our job. Where

was Sandy, too? As like as not bucketing in the hold of some Greek

coaster in the Aegean. Then I thought of my battalion somewhere on the

line between Hulluch and La Bassee, hammering at the Boche, while I was

five hundred miles or so inside the Boche frontier.

It was a comic reflection, so comic that it woke me up. After trying in

vain to find a way of stoking that stove, for it was a cold night, I

got up and walked about the room. There were portraits of two decent

old fellows, probably Gaudian's parents. There were enlarged

photographs, too, of engineering works, and a good picture of Bismarck.

And close to the stove there was a case of maps mounted on rollers.

I pulled out one at random. It was a geological map of Germany, and

with some trouble I found out where I was. I was an enormous distance

from my goal and moreover I was clean off the road to the East. To go

there I must first go to Bavaria and then into Austria. I noticed the

Danube flowing eastwards and remembered that that was one way to

Constantinople.

Then I tried another map. This one covered a big area, all Europe from

the Rhine and as far east as Persia. I guessed that it was meant to

show the Baghdad railway and the through routes from Germany to

Mesopotamia. There were markings on it; and, as I looked closer, I saw

that there were dates scribbled in blue pencil, as if to denote the

stages of a journey. The dates began in Europe, and continued right on

into Asia Minor and then south to Syria.

For a moment my heart jumped, for I thought I had fallen by accident on

the clue I wanted. But I never got that map examined. I heard footsteps

in the corridor, and very gently I let the map roll up and turned away.

When the door opened I was bending over the stove trying to get a light

for my pipe.

It was Gaudian, to bid me join him and Stumm in his study.

On our way there he put a kindly hand on my shoulder. I think he

thought I was bullied by Stumm and wanted to tell me that he was my

friend, and he had no other language than a pat on the back.

The soldier was in his old position with his elbows on the mantelpiece

and his formidable great jaw stuck out.

"Listen to me," he said. "Herr Gaudian and I are inclined to make use

of you. You may be a charlatan, in which case you will be in the devil

of a mess and have yourself to thank for it. If you are a rogue you

will have little scope for roguery. We will see to that. If you are a

fool, you will yourself suffer for it. But if you are a good man, you

will have a fair chance, and if you succeed we will not forget it.

Tomorrow I go home and you will come with me and get your orders."

I made shift to stand at attention and salute.

Gaudian spoke in a pleasant voice, as if he wanted to atone for Stumm's

imperiousness. "We are men who love our Fatherland, Herr Brandt," he

said. "You are not of that Fatherland, but at least you hate its

enemies. Therefore we are allies, and trust each other like allies. Our

victory is ordained by God, and we are none of us more than His

instruments."

Stumm translated in a sentence, and his voice was quite solemn. He held

up his right hand and so did Gaudian, like a man taking an oath or a

parson blessing his congregation.

Then I realized something of the might of Germany. She produced good

and bad, cads and gentlemen, but she could put a bit of the fanatic

into them all.