She was conscious of my presence, for she turned towards me.
'I was coming to look for you,' she said, 'now that the house is quiet. I have something to say to you, General Hannay.'
She knew my name and must be somehow in the business. The thought entranced me.
'Thank God I can speak to you freely,' I cried. 'Who and what are you—living in that house in that kind of company?'
'My good aunts!' She laughed softly. 'They talk a great deal about their souls, but they really mean their nerves. Why, they are what you call my camouflage, and a very good one too.'
'And that cadaverous young prig?'
'Poor Launcelot! Yes—camouflage too—perhaps something a little more. You must not judge him too harshly.'
'But … but—' I did not know how to put it, and stammered in my eagerness. 'How can I tell that you are the right person for me to speak to? You see I am under orders, and I have got none about you.'
'I will give You Proof,' she said. 'Three days ago Sir Walter Bullivant and Mr. Macgillivray told you to come here tonight and to wait here for further instructions. You met them in the little smoking-room at the back of the Rota Club. You were bidden take the name of Cornelius Brand, and turn yourself from a successful general into a pacifist South African engineer. Is that correct?'
'Perfectly.'
'You have been restless all evening looking for the messenger to give you these instructions. Set your mind at ease. No messenger is coming. You will get your orders from me.'
'I could not take them from a more welcome source,' I said.
'Very prettily put. If you want further credentials I can tell you much about your own doings in the past three years. I can explain to you who don't need the explanation, every step in the business of the Black Stone. I think I could draw a pretty accurate map of your journey to Erzerum. You have a letter from Peter Pienaar in your pocket—I can tell you its contents. Are you willing to trust me?'
'With all my heart,' I said.
'Good. Then my first order will try you pretty hard. For I have no orders to give you except to bid you go and steep yourself in a particular kind of life. Your first duty is to get "atmosphere", as your friend Peter used to say. Oh, I will tell you where to go and how to behave. But I can't bid you do anything, only live idly with open eyes and ears till you have got the "feel" of the situation.'
She stopped and laid a hand on my arm.
'It won't be easy. It would madden me, and it will be a far heavier burden for a man like you. You have got to sink down deep into the life of the half-baked, the people whom this war hasn't touched or has touched in the wrong way, the people who split hairs all day and are engrossed in what you and I would call selfish little fads. Yes. People like my aunts and Launcelot, only for the most part in a different social grade. You won't live in an old manor like this, but among gimcrack little "arty" houses. You will hear everything you regard as sacred laughed at and condemned, and every kind of nauseous folly acclaimed, and you must hold your tongue and pretend to agree. You will have nothing in the world to do except to let the life soak into you, and, as I have said, keep your eyes and ears open.'
'But you must give me some clue as to what I should be looking for?'
'My orders are to give you none. Our chiefs—yours and mine—want you to go where you are going without any kind of parti pris. Remember we are still in the intelligence stage of the affair. The time hasn't yet come for a plan of campaign, and still less for action.'
'Tell me one thing,' I said. 'Is it a really big thing we're after?'
'A—really—big—thing,' she said slowly and very gravely. 'You and I and some hundred others are hunting the most dangerous man in all the world. Till we succeed everything that Britain does is crippled. If we fail or succeed too late the Allies may never win the victory which is their right. I will tell you one thing to cheer you. It is in some sort a race against time, so your purgatory won't endure too long.'
I was bound to obey, and she knew it, for she took my willingness for granted.
From a little gold satchel she selected a tiny box, and opening it extracted a thing like a purple wafer with a white St. Andrew's Cross on it.
'What kind of watch have you? Ah, a hunter. Paste that inside the lid. Some day you may be called on to show it … One other thing. Buy tomorrow a copy of the Pilgrim's Progress and get it by heart. You will receive letters and messages some day and the style of our friends is apt to be reminiscent of John Bunyan … The car will be at the door tomorrow to catch the ten-thirty, and I will give you the address of the rooms that have been taken for you … Beyond that I have nothing to say, except to beg you to play the part well and keep your temper. You behaved very nicely at dinner.'
I asked one last question as we said good night in the hall. 'Shall I see you again?'
'Soon, and often,' was the answer. 'Remember we are colleagues.'
I went upstairs feeling extraordinarily comforted. I had a perfectly beastly time ahead of me, but now it was all glorified and coloured with the thought of the girl who had sung 'Cherry Ripe' in the garden. I commended the wisdom of that old serpent Bullivant in the choice of his intermediary, for I'm hanged if I would have taken such orders from anyone else.
CHAPTER TWO
'The Village Named Morality'
UP on the high veld our rivers are apt to be strings of pools linked by muddy trickles—the most stagnant kind of watercourse you would look for in a day's journey. But presently they reach the edge of the plateau and are tossed down into the flats in noble ravines, and roll thereafter in full and sounding currents to the sea. So with the story I am telling. It began in smooth reaches, as idle as a mill-pond; yet the day soon came when I was in the grip of a torrent, flung breathless from rock to rock by a destiny which I could not control. But for the present I was in a backwater, no less than the Garden City of Biggleswick, where Mr. Cornelius Brand, a South African gentleman visiting England on holiday, lodged in a pair of rooms in the cottage of Mr. Tancred Jimson.
The house—or 'home' as they preferred to name it at Biggleswick—was one of some two hundred others which ringed a pleasant Midland common. It was badly built and oddly furnished; the bed was too short, the windows did not fit, the doors did not stay shut; but it was as clean as soap and water and scrubbing could make it. The three-quarters of an acre of garden were mainly devoted to the culture of potatoes, though under the parlour window Mrs. Jimson had a plot of sweet-smelling herbs, and lines of lank sunflowers fringed the path that led to the front door. It was Mrs. Jimson who received me as I descended from the station fly—a large red woman with hair bleached by constant exposure to weather, clad in a gown which, both in shape and material, seemed to have been modelled on a chintz curtain. She was a good kindly soul, and as proud as Punch of her house.
'We follow the simple life here, Mr. Brand,' she said. 'You must take us as you find us.'
I assured her that I asked for nothing better, and as I unpacked in my fresh little bedroom with a west wind blowing in at the window I considered that I had seen worse quarters.
I had bought in London a considerable number