Chapter Fifteen. An Embarrassed Toilet

Greenmantle

by John Buchan

I was soaked to the bone, and while Peter set off to look for
dinner I went to my room to change. I had a rubdown and then got
into pyjamas for some dumb-bell exercises with two chairs, for that
long wet ride had stiffened my arm and shoulder muscles. They were a
vulgar suit of primitive blue, which Blenkiron had looted from my
London wardrobe. As Cornelis Brandt I had sported a flannel
nightgown.

My bedroom opened off the sitting-room, and while I was busy
with my gymnastics I heard the door open. I thought at first it was
Blenkiron, but the briskness of the tread was unlike his measured
gait. I had left the light burning there, and the visitor, whoever
he was, had made himself at home. I slipped on a green dressing-gown
Blenkiron had lent me, and sallied forth to investigate.

My friend Rasta was standing by the table, on which he had laid
an envelope. He looked round at my entrance and saluted.

'I come from the Minister of War, sir,' he said, 'and bring you
your passports for tomorrow. You will travel by ...' And then his
voice tailed away and his black eyes narrowed to slits. He had seen
something which switched him off the metals.

At that moment I saw it too. There was a mirror on the wall
behind him, and as I faced him I could not help seeing my reflection.
It was the exact image of the engineer on the Danube boat - blue
jeans, loden cloak, and all. The accursed mischance of my costume
had given him the clue to an identity which was otherwise buried deep
in the Bosporus.

I am bound to say for Rasta that he was a man of quick action.
In a trice he had whipped round to the other side of the table
between me and the door, where he stood regarding me wickedly.

By this time I was at the table and stretched out a hand for the
envelope. My one hope was nonchalance.

'Sit down, sir,' I said, 'and have a drink. It's a filthy night
to move about in.'

'Thank you, no, Herr Brandt,' he said. 'You may burn these
passports for they will not be used.'

'Whatever's the matter with you?' I cried. 'You've mistaken the
house, my lad. I'm called Hanau - Richard Hanau - and my partner's
Mr John S. Blenkiron. He'll be here presently. Never knew anyone
of the name of Brandt, barring a tobacconist in Denver City.'

'You have never been to Rustchuk?' he said with a sneer.

'Not that I know of. But, pardon me, Sir, if I ask your name
and your business here. I'm darned if I'm accustomed to be called by
Dutch names or have my word doubted. In my country we consider that
impolite as between gentlemen.'

I could see that my bluff was having its effect. His stare
began to waver, and when he next spoke it was in a more civil
tone.

'I will ask pardon if I'm mistaken, Sir, but you're the image of
a man who a week ago was at Rustchuk, a man much wanted by the
Imperial Government.'

'A week ago I was tossing in a dirty little hooker coming from
Constanza. Unless Rustchuk's in the middle of the Black Sea I've
never visited the township. I guess you're barking up the wrong
tree. Come to think of it, I was expecting passports. Say, do you
come from Enver Damad?'

'I have that honour,' he said.

'Well, Enver is a very good friend of mine. He's the brightest
citizen I've struck this side of the Atlantic.'

The man was calming down, and in another minute his suspicions
would have gone. But at that moment, by the crookedest kind of luck,
Peter entered with a tray of dishes. He did not notice Rasta, and
walked straight to the table and plumped down his burden on it. The
Turk had stepped aside at his entrance, and I saw by the look in his
eyes that his suspicions had become a certainty. For Peter, stripped
to shirt and breeches, was the identical shabby little companion of
the Rustchuk meeting.

I had never doubted Rasta's pluck. He jumped for the door and
had a pistol out in a trice pointing at my head.

'Bonne fortune,' he cried. 'Both the birds at one shot.' His
hand was on the latch, and his mouth was open to cry. I guessed
there was an orderly waiting on the stairs.

He had what you call the strategic advantage, for he was at the
door while I was at the other end of the table and Peter at the side
of it at least two yards from him. The road was clear before him,
and neither of us was armed. I made a despairing step forward, not
knowing what I meant to do, for I saw no light. But Peter was before
me.

He had never let go of the tray, and now, as a boy skims a stone
on a pond, he skimmed it with its contents at Rasta's head. The man
was opening the door with one hand while he kept me covered with the
other, and he got the contrivance fairly in the face. A pistol shot
cracked out, and the bullet went through the tray, but the noise was
drowned in the crash of glasses and crockery. The next second Peter
had wrenched the pistol from Rasta's hand and had gripped his
throat.

A dandified Young Turk, brought up in Paris and finished in
Berlin, may be as brave as a lion, but he cannot stand in a rough-
and-tumble against a backveld hunter, though more than double his
age. There was no need for me to help him. Peter had his own way,
learned in a wild school, of knocking the sense out of a foe. He
gagged him scientifically, and trussed him up with his own belt and
two straps from a trunk in my bedroom. 'This man is too dangerous to
let go,' he said, as if his procedure were the most ordinary thing in
the world. 'He will be quiet now till we have time to make a
plan.'

At that moment there came a knocking at the door. That is the
sort of thing that happens in melodrama, just when the villain has
finished off his job neatly. The correct thing to do is to pale to
the teeth, and with a rolling, conscience-stricken eye glare round
the horizon. But that was not Peter's way.

'We'd better tidy up if we're to have visitors,' he said
calmly.

Now there was one of those big oak German cupboards against the
wall which must have been brought in in sections, for complete it
would never have got through the door. It was empty now, but for
Blenkiron's hatbox. In it he deposited the unconscious Rasta, and
turned the key. 'There's enough ventilation through the top,' he
observed, 'to keep the air good.' Then he opened the door. A
magnificent kavass in blue and silver stood outside. He saluted and
proffered a card on which was written in pencil, 'Hilda von
Einem'.

I would have begged for time to change my clothes, but the lady
was behind him. I saw the black mantilla and the rich sable furs.
Peter vanished through my bedroom and I was left to receive my guest
in a room littered with broken glass and a senseless man in the
cupboard.

There are some situations so crazily extravagant that they key
up the spirit to meet them. I was almost laughing when that stately
lady stepped over my threshold.

'Madam,' I said, with a bow that shamed my old dressing-gown and
strident pyjamas. 'You find me at a disadvantage. I came home
soaking from my ride, and was in the act of changing. My servant has
just upset a tray of crockery, and I fear this room's no fit place
for a lady. Allow me three minutes to make myself presentable.'

She inclined her head gravely and took a seat by the fire. I
went into my bedroom, and as I expected found Peter lurking by the
other door. In a hectic sentence I bade him get Rasta's orderly out
of the place on any pretext, and tell him his master would return
later. Then I hurried into decent garments, and came out to find my
visitor in a brown study.

At the sound of my entrance she started from her dream and stood
up on the hearthrug, slipping the long robe of fur from her slim
body.

'We are alone?' she said. 'We will not be disturbed?'

Then an inspiration came to me. I remembered that Frau von
Einem, according to Blenkiron, did not see eye to eye with the Young
Turks; and I had a queer instinct that Rasta could not be to her
liking. So I spoke the truth.

'I must tell you that there's another guest here tonight. I
reckon he's feeling pretty uncomfortable. At present he's trussed up
on a shelf in that cupboard.'

She did not trouble to look round.

'Is he dead?' she asked calmly.

'By no means,' I said, 'but he's fixed so he can't speak, and I
guess he can't hear much.'

'He was the man who brought you this?' she asked, pointing to
the envelope on the table which bore the big blue stamp of the
Ministry of War.

'The same,' I said. 'I'm not perfectly sure of his name, but I
think they call him Rasta.'

Not a flicker of a smile crossed her face, but I had a feeling
that the news pleased her.

'Did he thwart you?' she asked.

'Why, yes. He thwarted me some. His head is a bit swelled, and
an hour or two on the shelf will do him good.'

'He is a powerful man,' she said, 'a jackal of Enver's. You
have made a dangerous enemy.'

'I don't value him at two cents,' said I, though I thought
grimly that as far as I could see the value of him was likely to be
about the price of my neck.

'Perhaps you are right,' she said with serious eyes. 'In these
days no enemy is dangerous to a bold man. I have come tonight, Mr
Hanau, to talk business with you, as they say in your country. I
have heard well of you, and today I have seen you. I may have need
of you, and you assuredly will have need of me. ...'

She broke off, and again her strange potent eyes fell on my
face. They were like a burning searchlight which showed up every
cranny and crack of the soul. I felt it was going to be horribly
difficult to act a part under that compelling gaze. She could not
mesmerize me, but she could strip me of my fancy dress and set me
naked in the masquerade.

'What came you forth to seek?' she asked. 'You are not like the
stout American Blenkiron, a lover of shoddy power and a devotee of a
feeble science. There is something more than that in your face. You
are on our side, but you are not of the Germans with their hankerings
for a rococo Empire. You come from America, the land of pious
follies, where men worship gold and words. I ask, what came you
forth to seek?' As she spoke I seemed to get a vision of a figure,
like one of the old gods looking down on human nature from a great
height, a figure disdainful and passionless, but with its own
magnificence. It kindled my imagination, and I answered with the
stuff I had often cogitated when I had tried to explain to myself
just how a case could be made out against the Allied cause.

'I will tell you, Madam,' I said. 'I am a man who has followed
a science, but I have followed it in wild places, and I have gone
through it and come out at the other side. The world, as I see it,
had become too easy and cushioned. Men had forgotten their manhood
in soft speech, and imagined that the rules of their smug
civilization were the laws of the universe. But that is not the
teaching of science, and it is not the teaching of life. We have
forgotten the greater virtues, and we were becoming emasculated
humbugs whose gods were our own weaknesses. Then came war, and the
air was cleared. Germany, in spite of her blunders and her
grossness, stood forth as the scourge of cant. She had the courage
to cut through the bonds of humbug and to laugh at the fetishes of
the herd. Therefore I am on Germany's side. But I came here for
another reason. I know nothing of the East, but as I read history it
is from the desert that the purification comes. When mankind is
smothered with shams and phrases and painted idols a wind blows out
of the wild to cleanse and simplify life. The world needs space and
fresh air. The civilization we have boasted of is a toy-shop and a
blind alley, and I hanker for the open country.'

This confounded nonsense was well received. Her pale eyes had
the cold light of the fanatic. With her bright hair and the long
exquisite oval of her face she looked like some destroying fury of a
Norse legend. At that moment I think I first really feared her;
before I had half-hated and half-admired. Thank Heaven, in her
absorption she did not notice that I had forgotten the speech of
Cleveland, Ohio.

'You are of the Household of Faith,' she said. 'You will
presently learn many things, for the Faith marches to victory.
Meantime I have one word for you. You and your companion travel
eastward.'

'We go to Mesopotamia,' I said. 'I reckon these are our
passports,' and I pointed to the envelope.

She picked it up, opened it, and then tore it in pieces and
tossed it in the fire.

'The orders are countermanded,' she said. 'I have need of you
and you go with me. Not to the flats of the Tigris, but to the great
hills. Tomorrow you will receive new passports.'

She gave me her hand and turned to go. At the threshold she
paused, and looked towards the oak cupboard. 'Tomorrow I will
relieve you of your prisoner. He will be safer in my hands.'

She left me in a condition of pretty blank bewilderment. We
were to be tied to the chariot-wheels of this fury, and started on an
enterprise compared to which fighting against our friends at Kut
seemed tame and reasonable. On the other hand, I had been spotted by
Rasta, and had got the envoy of the most powerful man in
Constantinople locked in a cupboard. At all costs we had to keep
Rasta safe, but I was very determined that he should not be handed
over to the lady. I was going to be no party to cold-blooded murder,
which I judged to be her expedient. It was a pretty kettle of fish,
but in the meantime I must have food, for I had eaten nothing for
nine hours. So I went in search of Peter.

I had scarcely begun my long deferred meal when Sandy entered.
He was before his time, and he looked as solemn as a sick owl. I
seized on him as a drowning man clutches a spar.

He heard my story of Rasta with a lengthening face.

'That's bad,' he said. 'You say he spotted you, and your
subsequent doings of course would not disillusion him. It's an
infernal nuisance, but there's only one way out of it. I must put
him in charge of my own people. They will keep him safe and sound
till he's wanted. Only he mustn't see me.' And he went out in a
hurry.

I fetched Rasta from his prison. He had come to his senses by
this time, and lay regarding me with stony, malevolent eyes.

'I'm very sorry, Sir,' I said, 'for what has happened. But you
left me no alternative. I've got a big job on hand and I can't have
it interfered with by you or anyone. You're paying the price of a
suspicious nature. When you know a little more you'll want to
apologize to me. I'm going to see that you are kept quiet and
comfortable for a day or two. You've no cause to worry, for you'll
suffer no harm. I give you my word of honour as an American
citizen.'

Two of Sandy's miscreants came in and bore him off, and
presently Sandy himself returned. When I asked him where he was
being taken, Sandy said he didn't know. 'They've got their orders,
and they'll carry them out to the letter. There's a big unknown area
in Constantinople to hide a man, into which the Khafiyeh never
enter.'

Then he flung himself in a chair and lit his old pipe.

'Dick,' he said, 'this job is getting very difficult and very
dark. But my knowledge has grown in the last few days. I've found
out the meaning of the second word that Harry Bullivant
scribbled.'

'Cancer?' I asked.

'Yes. It means just what it reads and no more. Greenmantle is
dying - has been dying for months. This afternoon they brought a
German doctor to see him, and the man gave him a few hours of life.
By now he may be dead.' The news was a staggerer. For a moment I
thought it cleared up things. 'Then that busts the show,' I said.
'You can't have a crusade without a prophet.'

'I wish I thought it did. It's the end of one stage, but the
start of a new and blacker one. Do you think that woman will be
beaten by such a small thing as the death of her prophet? She'll
find a substitute - one of the four Ministers, or someone else.
She's a devil incarnate, but she has the soul of a Napoleon. The big
danger is only beginning.'

Then he told me the story of his recent doings. He had found
out the house of Frau von Einem without much trouble, and had
performed with his ragamuffins in the servants' quarters. The
prophet had a large retinue, and the fame of his minstrels - for the
Companions were known far and wide in the land of Islam - came
speedily to the ears of the Holy Ones. Sandy, a leader in this most
orthodox coterie, was taken into favour and brought to the notice of
the four Ministers. He and his half-dozen retainers became inmates
of the villa, and Sandy, from his knowledge of Islamic lore and his
ostentatious piety, was admitted to the confidence of the household.
Frau von Einem welcomed him as an ally, for the Companions had been
the most devoted propagandists of the new revelation.

As he described it, it was a strange business. Greenmantle was
dying and often in great pain, but he struggled to meet the demands
of his protectress. The four Ministers, as Sandy saw them, were
unworldly ascetics; the prophet himself was a saint, though a
practical saint with some notions of policy; but the controlling
brain and will were those of the lady. Sandy seemed to have won his
favour, even his affection. He spoke of him with a kind of desperate
pity.

'I never saw such a man. He is the greatest gentleman you can
picture, with a dignity like a high mountain. He is a dreamer and a
poet, too - a genius if I can judge these things. I think I can
assess him rightly, for I know something of the soul of the East, but
it would be too long a story to tell now. The West knows nothing of
the true Oriental. It pictures him as lapped in colour and idleness
and luxury and gorgeous dreams. But it is all wrong. The Kaf he
yearns for is an austere thing. It is the austerity of the East that
is its beauty and its terror ... It always wants the same things at
the back of its head. The Turk and the Arab came out of big spaces,
and they have the desire of them in their bones. They settle down
and stagnate, and by the by they degenerate into that appalling
subtlety which is their ruling passion gone crooked. And then comes
a new revelation and a great simplifying. They want to live face to
face with God without a screen of ritual and images and priestcraft.
They want to prune life of its foolish fringes and get back to the
noble bareness of the desert. Remember, it is always the empty
desert and the empty sky that cast their spell over them - these, and
the hot, strong, antiseptic sunlight which burns up all rot and decay
. -. It isn't inhuman. It's the humanity of one part of the human
race. It isn't ours, it isn't as good as ours, but it's jolly good
all the same. There are times when it grips me so hard that I'm
inclined to forswear the gods of my fathers!

'Well, Greenmantle is the prophet of this great simplicity. He
speaks straight to the heart of Islam, and it's an honourable
message. But for our sins it's been twisted into part of that damned
German propaganda. His unworldliness has been used for a cunning
political move, and his creed of space and simplicity for the
furtherance of the last word in human degeneracy. My God, Dick, it's
like seeing St Francis run by Messalina.'

'The woman has been here tonight,' I said. 'She asked me what I
stood for, and I invented some infernal nonsense which she approved
of. But I can see one thing. She and her prophet may run for
different stakes, but it's the same course.'

Sandy started. 'She has been here!' he cried. 'Tell me, Dick,
what do you think of her?'

'I thought she was about two parts mad, but the third part was
uncommon like inspiration.'

'That's about right,' he said. 'I was wrong in comparing her to
Messalina. She's something a dashed sight more complicated. She
runs the prophet just because she shares his belief. Only what in
him is sane and fine, in her is mad and horrible. You see, Germany
also wants to simplify life.'

'I know,' I said. 'I told her that an hour ago, when I talked
more rot to the second than any normal man ever achieved. It will
come between me and my sleep for the rest of my days.'

'Germany's simplicity is that of the neurotic, not the
primitive. It is megalomania and egotism and the pride of the man in
the Bible that waxed fat and kicked. But the results are the same.
She wants to destroy and simplify; but it isn't the simplicity of the
ascetic, which is of the spirit, but the simplicity of the madman
that grinds down all the contrivances of civilization to a
featureless monotony. The prophet wants to save the souls of his
people; Germany wants to rule the inanimate corpse of the world. But
you can get the same language to cover both. And so you have the
partnership of St Francis and Messalina. Dick, did you ever hear of
a thing called the Superman?'

'There was a time when the papers were full of nothing else,' I
answered. 'I gather it was invented by a sportsman called
Nietzsche.'

'Maybe,' said Sandy. 'Old Nietzsche has been blamed for a great
deal of rubbish he would have died rather than acknowledge. But it's
a craze of the new, fatted Germany. It's a fancy type which could
never really exist, any more than the Economic Man of the
politicians. Mankind has a sense of humour which stops short of the
final absurdity. There never has been, and there never could be a
real Superman ... But there might be a Superwoman.'

'You'll get into trouble, my lad, if you talk like that,' I
said.

'It's true all the same. Women have got a perilous logic which
we never have, and some of the best of them don't see the joke of
life like the ordinary man. They can be far greater than men, for
they can go straight to the heart of things. There never was a man
so near the divine as Joan of Arc. But I think, too, they can be
more entirely damnable than anything that ever was breeched, for they
don't stop still now and then and laugh at themselves ... There is no
Superman. The poor old donkeys that fancy themselves in the part are
either crackbrained professors who couldn't rule a Sunday-school
class, or bristling soldiers with pint-pot heads who imagine that the
shooting of a Duc d'Enghien made a Napoleon. But there is a
Superwoman, and her name's Hilda von Einem.'

'I thought our job was nearly over,' I groaned, 'and now it
looks as if it hadn't well started. Bullivant said that all we had
to do was to find out the truth.' 'Bullivant didn't know. No man
knows except you and me. I tell you, the woman has immense power.
The Germans have trusted her with their trump card, and she's going
to play it for all she is worth. There's no crime that will stand in
her way. She has set the ball rolling, and if need be she'll cut all
her prophets' throats and run the show herself ... I don't know
about your job, for honestly I can't quite see what you and Blenkiron
are going to do. But I'm very clear about my own duty. She's let me
into the business, and I'm going to stick to it in the hope that I'll
find a chance of wrecking it ... We're moving eastward tomorrow -
with a new prophet if the old one is dead.'

'Where are you going?' I asked.

'I don't know. But I gather it's a long journey, judging by the
preparations. And it must be to a cold country, judging by the
clothes provided.'

'Well, wherever it is, we're going with you. You haven't heard
the end of our yarn. Blenkiron and I have been moving in the best
circles as skilled American engineers who are going to play Old Harry
with the British on the Tigris. I'm a pal of Enver's now, and he has
offered me his protection. The lamented Rasta brought our passports
for the journey to Mesopotamia tomorrow, but an hour ago your lady
tore them up and put them in the fire. We are going with her, and
she vouchsafed the information that it was towards the great
hills.'

Sandy whistled long and low. 'I wonder what the deuce she wants
with you? This thing is getting dashed complicated, Dick ... Where,
more by token, is Blenkiron? He's the fellow to know about high
politics.'

The missing Blenkiron, as Sandy spoke, entered the room with his
slow, quiet step. I could see by his carriage that for once he had
no dyspepsia, and by his eyes that he was excited.

'Say, boys,' he said, 'I've got something pretty considerable in
the way of noos. There's been big fighting on the Eastern border,
and the Buzzards have taken a bad knock.'

His hands were full of papers, from which he selected a map and
spread it on the table.

'They keep mum about this thing in the capital, but I've been
piecing the story together these last days and I think I've got it
straight. A fortnight ago old man Nicholas descended from his
mountains and scuppered his enemies there - at Kuprikeui, where the
main road eastwards crosses the Araxes. That was only the beginning
of the stunt, for he pressed on on a broad front, and the gentleman
called Kiamil, who commands in those parts, was not up to the job of
holding him. The Buzzards were shepherded in from north and east and
south, and now the Muscovite is sitting down outside the forts of
Erzerum. I can tell you they're pretty miserable about the situation
in the highest quarters ... Enver is sweating blood to get fresh
divisions to Erzerum from Gally-poly, but it's a long road and it
looks as if they would be too late for the fair ... You and I, Major,
start for Mesopotamy tomorrow, and that's about the meanest bit of
bad luck that ever happened to John S. We're missing the chance of
seeing the goriest fight of this campaign.'

I picked up the map and pocketed it. Maps were my business, and
I had been looking for one.

'We're not going to Mesopotamia,' I said. 'Our orders have been
cancelled.'

'But I've just seen Enver, and he said he had sent round our
passports.'

'They're in the fire,' I said. 'The right ones will come along
tomorrow morning.'

Sandy broke in, his eyes bright with excitement.

'The great hills! ... We're going to Erzerum ... Don't you
see that the Germans are playing their big card? They're sending
Greenmantle to the point of danger in the hope that his coming will
rally the Turkish defence. Things are beginning to move, Dick, old
man. No more kicking the heels for us. We're going to be in it up
to the neck, and Heaven help the best man ... I must be off now, for
I've a lot to do. Au revoir. We meet some time in the hills.'

Blenkiron still looked puzzled, till I told him the story of
that night's doings. As he listened, all the satisfaction went out
of his face, and that funny, childish air of bewilderment crept
in.

'It's not for me to complain, for it's in the straight line of
our dooty, but I reckon there's going to be big trouble ahead of this
caravan. It's Kismet, and we've got to bow. But I won't pretend
that I'm not considerable scared at the prospect.'

'Oh, so am I,' I said. 'The woman frightens me into fits.
We're up against it this time all right. All the same I'm glad we're
to be let into the real star metropolitan performance. I didn't
relish the idea of touring the provinces.'

'I guess that's correct. But I could wish that the good God
would see fit to take that lovely lady to Himself. She's too much
for a quiet man at my time of life. When she invites us to go in on
the ground-floor I feel like taking the elevator to the
roof-garden.'