Chapter Three. The Reflections of a Cured Dyspeptic

Mr. Standfast

by John Buchan

Thirty-five hours later I found myself in my rooms in Westminster.
I thought there might be a message for me there, for I didn't propose
to go and call openly on Blenkiron at Claridge's till I had his
instructions. But there was no message - only a line from Peter,
saying he had hopes of being sent to Switzerland. That made me
realize that he must be pretty badly broken up.

Presently the telephone bell rang. It was Blenkiron who spoke.
'Go down and have a talk with your brokers about the War Loan. Arrive
there about twelve o'clock and don't go upstairs till you have met a
friend. You'd better have a quick luncheon at your club, and then
come to Traill's bookshop in the Haymarket at two. You can get back
to Biggleswick by the 5.16.'

I did as I was bid, and twenty minutes later, having travelled
by Underground, for I couldn't raise a taxi, I approached the block
of chambers in Leadenhall Street where dwelt the respected firm who
managed my investments. It was still a few minutes before noon, and
as I slowed down a familiar figure came out of the bank next door.

Ivery beamed recognition. 'Up for the day, Mr Brand?' he asked.
'I have to see my brokers,' I said, 'read the South African papers in
my club, and get back by the 5.16. Any chance of your company?'

'Why, yes - that's my train. Au revoir. We meet at the
station.' He bustled off, looking very smart with his neat clothes
and a rose in his button-hole.

I lunched impatiently, and at two was turning over some new
books in Traill's shop with an eye on the street-door behind me. It
seemed a public place for an assignation. I had begun to dip into a
big illustrated book on flower-gardens when an assistant came up.
'The manager's compliments, sir, and he thinks there are some old
works of travel upstairs that might interest you.' I followed him
obediently to an upper floor lined with every kind of volume and with
tables littered with maps and engravings. 'This way, sir,' he said,
and opened a door in the wall concealed by bogus book- backs. I
found myself in a little study, and Blenkiron sitting in an armchair
smoking.

He got up and seized both my hands. 'Why, Dick, this is better
than good noos. I've heard all about your exploits since we parted a
year ago on the wharf at Liverpool. We've both been busy on our own
jobs, and there was no way of keeping you wise about my doings, for
after I thought I was cured I got worse than hell inside, and, as I
told you, had to get the doctor-men to dig into me. After that I was
playing a pretty dark game, and had to get down and out of decent
society. But, holy Mike! I'm a new man. I used to do my work with a
sick heart and a taste in my mouth like a graveyard, and now I can
eat and drink what I like and frolic round like a colt. I wake up
every morning whistling and thank the good God that I'm alive, It was
a bad day for Kaiser when I got on the cars for White Springs.'

'This is a rum place to meet,' I said, 'and you brought me by a
roundabout road.'

He grinned and offered me a cigar.

'There were reasons. It don't do for you and me to advertise
our acquaintance in the street. As for the shop, I've owned it for
five years. I've a taste for good reading, though you wouldn't think
it, and it tickles me to hand it out across the counter ... First, I
want to hear about Biggleswick.'

'There isn't a great deal to it. A lot of ignorance, a large
slice of vanity, and a pinch or two of wrong-headed honesty - these
are the ingredients of the pie. Not much real harm in it. There's
one or two dirty literary gents who should be in a navvies'
battalion, but they're about as dangerous as yellow Kaffir dogs.
I've learned a lot and got all the arguments by heart, but you might
plant a Biggleswick in every shire and it wouldn't help the Boche. I
can see where the danger lies all the same. These fellows talked
academic anarchism, but the genuine article is somewhere about and to
find it you've got to look in the big industrial districts. We had
faint echoes of it in Biggleswick. I mean that the really dangerous
fellows are those who want to close up the war at once and so get on
with their blessed class war, which cuts across nationalities. As
for being spies and that sort of thing, the Biggleswick lads are too
callow.'

'Yes,' said Blenkiron reflectively. 'They haven't got as much
sense as God gave to geese. You're sure you didn't hit against any
heavier metal?'

'Yes. There's a man called Launcelot Wake, who came down to
speak once. I had met him before. He has the makings of a fanatic,
and he's the more dangerous because you can see his conscience is
uneasy. I can fancy him bombing a Prime Minister merely to quiet his
own doubts.'

'So,' he said. 'Nobody else?'

I reflected. 'There's Mr Ivery, but you know him better than I.
I shouldn't put much on him, but I'm not precisely certain, for I
never had a chance of getting to know him.'

'Ivery,' said Blenkiron in surprise. 'He has a hobby for half-
baked youth, just as another rich man might fancy orchids or fast
trotters. You sure can place him right enough.'

'I dare say. Only I don't know enough to be positive.'

He sucked at his cigar for a minute or so. 'I guess, Dick, if I
told you all I've been doing since I reached these shores you would
call me a ro-mancer. I've been way down among the toilers. I did a
spell as unskilled dilooted labour in the Barrow shipyards. I was
barman in a ho-tel on the Portsmouth Road, and I put in a black month
driving a taxicab in the city of London. For a while I was the
accredited correspondent of the Noo York Sentinel and used to go with
the rest of the bunch to the pow-wows of under-secretaries of State
and War Office generals. They censored my stuff so cruel that the
paper fired me. Then I went on a walking-tour round England and sat
for a fortnight in a little farm in Suffolk. By and by I came back
to Claridge's and this bookshop, for I had learned most of what I
wanted.

'I had learned,' he went on, turning his curious, full,
ruminating eyes on me, 'that the British working-man is about the
soundest piece of humanity on God's earth. He grumbles a bit and
jibs a bit when he thinks the Government are giving him a crooked
deal, but he's gotten the patience of job and the sand of a gamecock.
And he's gotten humour too, that tickles me to death. There's not
much trouble in that quarter for it's he and his kind that's beating
the Hun ... But I picked up a thing or two besides that.'

He leaned forward and tapped me on the knee. 'I reverence the
British Intelligence Service. Flies don't settle on it to any
considerable extent. It's got a mighty fine mesh, but there's one
hole in that mesh, and it's our job to mend it. There's a
high-powered brain in the game against us. I struck it a couple of
years ago when I was hunting Dumba and Albert, and I thought it was
in Noo York, but it wasn't. I struck its working again at home last
year and located its head office in Europe. So I tried Switzerland
and Holland, but only bits of it were there. The centre of the web
where the old spider sits is right here in England, and for six
months I've been shadowing that spider. There's a gang to help, a
big gang, and a clever gang, and partly an innocent gang. But
there's only one brain, and it's to match that that the Robson
Brothers settled my duodenum.'

I was listening with a quickened pulse, for now at last I was
getting to business.

'What is he - international socialist, or anarchist, or what?' I
asked.

'Pure-blooded Boche agent, but the biggest-sized brand in the
catalogue - bigger than Steinmeier or old Bismarck's Staubier. Thank
God I've got him located ... I must put you wise about some
things.'

He lay back in his rubbed leather armchair and yarned for twenty
minutes. He told me how at the beginning of the war Scotland Yard
had had a pretty complete register of enemy spies, and without making
any fuss had just tidied them away. After that, the covey having
been broken up, it was a question of picking off stray birds. That
had taken some doing. There had been all kinds of inflammatory stuff
around, Red Masons and international anarchists, and, worst of all,
international finance-touts, but they had mostly been ordinary cranks
and rogues, the tools of the Boche agents rather than agents
themselves. However, by the middle Of 1915 most of the stragglers
had been gathered in. But there remained loose ends, and towards the
close of last year somebody was very busy combining these ends into a
net. Funny cases cropped up of the leakage of vital information.
They began to be bad about October 1916, when the Hun submarines
started on a special racket. The enemy suddenly appeared possessed
of a knowledge which we thought to be shared only by half a dozen
officers. Blenkiron said he was not surprised at the leakage, for
there's always a lot of people who hear things they oughtn't to. What
surprised him was that it got so quickly to the enemy.

Then after last February, when the Hun submarines went in for
frightfulness on a big scale, the thing grew desperate. Leakages
occurred every week, and the business was managed by people who knew
their way about, for they avoided all the traps set for them, and
when bogus news was released on purpose, they never sent it. A convoy
which had been kept a deadly secret would be attacked at the one
place where it was helpless. A carefully prepared defensive plan
would be checkmated before it could be tried. Blenkiron said that
there was no evidence that a single brain was behind it all, for
there was no similarity in the cases, but he had a strong impression
all the time that it was the work of one man. We managed to close
some of the bolt-holes, but we couldn't put our hands near the big
ones. 'By this time,' said he, 'I reckoned I was about ready to
change my methods. I had been working by what the highbrows call
induction, trying to argue up from the deeds to the doer. Now I
tried a new lay, which was to calculate down from the doer to the
deeds. They call it deduction. I opined that somewhere in this
island was a gentleman whom we will call Mr X, and that, pursuing the
line of business he did, he must have certain characteristics. I
considered very carefully just what sort of personage he must be. I
had noticed that his device was apparently the Double Bluff. That is
to say, when he had two courses open to him, A and B, he pretended he
was going to take B, and so got us guessing that he would try A. Then
he took B after all. So I reckoned that his camouflage must
correspond to this little idiosyncrasy. Being a Boche agent, he
wouldn't pretend to be a hearty patriot, an honest old blood-and-
bones Tory. That would be only the Single Bluff. I considered that
he would be a pacifist, cunning enough just to keep inside the law,
but with the eyes of the police on him. He would write books which
would not be allowed to be exported. He would get himself disliked
in the popular papers, but all the mugwumps would admire his moral
courage. I drew a mighty fine picture to myself of just the man I
expected to find. Then I started out to look for him.'

Blenkiron's face took on the air of a disappointed child. 'It
was no good. I kept barking up the wrong tree and wore myself out
playing the sleuth on white-souled innocents.'

'But you've found him all right,' I cried, a sudden suspicion
leaping into my brain.

'He's found,' he said sadly, 'but the credit does not belong to
John S. Blenkiron. That child merely muddied the pond. The big
fish was left for a young lady to hook.'

'I know,' I cried excitedly. 'Her name is Miss Mary
Lamington.'

He shook a disapproving head. 'You've guessed right, my son,
but you've forgotten your manners. This is a rough business and we
won't bring in the name of a gently reared and pure-minded young
girl. If we speak to her at all we call her by a pet name out of the
Pilgrim's Progress ... Anyhow she hooked the fish, though he isn't
landed. D'you see any light?'

'Ivery,' I gasped.

'Yes. Ivery. Nothing much to look at, you say. A common,
middle-aged, pie-faced, golf-playing high-brow, that you wouldn't
keep out of a Sunday school. A touch of the drummer, too, to show he
has no dealings with your effete aristocracy. A languishing
silver-tongue that adores the sound of his own voice. As mild, you'd
say, as curds and cream.'

Blenkiron got out of his chair and stood above me. 'I tell you,
Dick, that man makes my spine cold. He hasn't a drop of good red
blood in him. The dirtiest apache is a Christian gentleman compared
to Moxon Ivery. He's as cruel as a snake and as deep as hell. But,
by God, he's got a brain below his hat. He's hooked and we're
playing him, but Lord knows if he'll ever be landed!'

'Why on earth don't you put him away?' I asked.

'We haven't the proof - legal proof, I mean; though there's
buckets of the other kind. I could put up a morally certain case,
but he'd beat me in a court of law. And half a hundred sheep would
get up in Parliament and bleat about persecution. He has a graft
with every collection of cranks in England, and with all the geese
that cackle about the liberty of the individual when the Boche is
ranging about to enslave the world. No, sir, that's too dangerous a
game! Besides, I've a better in hand, Moxon Ivery is the
best-accredited member of this State. His dossier is the completest
thing outside the Recording Angel's little note-book. We've taken up
his references in every corner of the globe and they're all as right
as Morgan's balance sheet. From these it appears he's been a high-
toned citizen ever since he was in short-clothes. He was raised in
Norfolk, and there are people living who remember his father. He was
educated at Melton School and his name's in the register. He was in
business in Valparaiso, and there's enough evidence to write three
volumes of his innocent life there. Then he came home with a modest
competence two years before the war, and has been in the public eye
ever since. He was Liberal candidate for a London constitooency and
he has decorated the board of every institootion formed for the
amelioration of mankind. He's got enough alibis to choke a boa
constrictor, and they're water-tight and copper- bottomed, and
they're mostly damned lies ... But you can't beat him at that stunt.
The man's the superbest actor that ever walked the earth. You can
see it in his face. It isn't a face, it's a mask. He could make
himself look like Shakespeare or Julius Caesar or Billy Sunday or
Brigadier-General Richard Hannay if he wanted to. He hasn't got any
personality either - he's got fifty, and there's no one he could call
his own. I reckon when the devil gets the handling of him at last
he'll have to put sand on his claws to keep him from slipping
through.'

Blenkiron was settled in his chair again, with one leg hoisted
over the side.

'We've closed a fair number of his channels in the last few
months. No, he don't suspect me. The world knows nothing of its
greatest men, and to him I'm only a Yankee peace-crank, who gives big
subscriptions to loony societies and will travel a hundred miles to
let off steam before any kind of audience. He's been to see me at
Claridge's and I've arranged that he shall know all my record. A
darned bad record it is too, for two years ago I was violent pro-
British before I found salvation and was requested to leave England.
When I was home last I was officially anti-war, when I wasn't
stretched upon a bed of pain. Mr Moxon Ivery don't take any stock in
John S. Blenkiron as a serious proposition. And while I've been
here I've been so low down in the social scale and working in so many
devious ways that he can't connect me up ... As I was saying, we've
cut most of his wires, but the biggest we haven't got at. He's still
sending stuff out, and mighty compromising stuff it is. Now listen
close, Dick, for we're coming near your own business.'

It appeared that Blenkiron had reason to suspect that the
channel still open had something to do with the North. He couldn't
get closer than that, till he heard from his people that a certain
Abel Gresson had turned up in Glasgow from the States. This Gresson
he discovered was the same as one Wrankester, who as a leader of the
Industrial Workers of the World had been mixed up in some ugly cases
of sabotage in Colorado. He kept his news to himself, for he didn't
want the police to interfere, but he had his own lot get into touch
with Gresson and shadow him closely. The man was very discreet but
very mysterious, and he would disappear for a week at a time, leaving
no trace. For some unknown reason - he couldn't explain why -
Blenkiron had arrived at the conclusion that Gresson was in touch
with Ivery, so he made experiments to prove it.

'I wanted various cross-bearings to make certain, and I got them
the night before last. My visit to Biggleswick was good
business.'

'I don't know what they meant,' I said, 'but I know where they
came in. One was in your speech when you spoke of the Austrian
socialists, and Ivery took you up about them. The other was after
supper when he quoted the Wieser Zeitung.'

'You're no fool, Dick,' he said, with his slow smile. 'You've
hit the mark first shot. You know me and you could follow my process
of thought in those remarks. Ivery, not knowing me so well, and
having his head full of just that sort of argument, saw nothing
unusual. Those bits of noos were pumped into Gresson that he might
pass them on. And he did pass them on - to ivery. They completed my
chain.'

'But they were commonplace enough things which he might have
guessed for himself.'

'No, they weren't. They were the nicest tit-bits of political
noos which all the cranks have been reaching after.'

'Anyhow, they were quotations from German papers. He might have
had the papers themselves earlier than you thought.'

'Wrong again. The paragraph never appeared in the Wieser
Zeitung. But we faked up a torn bit of that noospaper, and a very
pretty bit of forgery it was, and Gresson, who's a kind of a scholar,
was allowed to have it. He passed it on. Ivery showed it me two
nights ago. Nothing like it ever sullied the columns of Boche
journalism. No, it was a perfectly final proof ... Now, Dick, it's
up to you to get after Gresson.'

'Right,' I said. 'I'm jolly glad I'm to start work again. I'm
getting fat from lack of exercise. I suppose you want me to catch
Gresson out in some piece of blackguardism and have him and Ivery
snugly put away.'

'I don't want anything of the kind,' he said very slowly and
distinctly. 'You've got to attend very close to your instructions, I
cherish these two beauties as if they were my own white-headed boys.
I wouldn't for the world interfere with their comfort and liberty. I
want them to go on corresponding with their friends. I want to give
them every facility.'

He burst out laughing at my mystified face.

'See here, Dick. How do we want to treat the Boche? Why, to
fill him up with all the cunningest lies and get him to act on them.
Now here is Moxon Ivery, who has always given them good information.
They trust him absolutely, and we would be fools to spoil their
confidence. Only, if we can find out Moxon's methods, we can arrange
to use them ourselves and send noos in his name which isn't quite so
genooine. Every word he dispatches goes straight to the Grand High
Secret General Staff, and old Hindenburg and Ludendorff put towels
round their heads and cipher it out. We want to encourage them to go
on doing it. We'll arrange to send true stuff that don't matter, so
as they'll continue to trust him, and a few selected falsehoods
that'll matter like hell. It's a game you can't play for ever, but
with luck I propose to play it long enough to confuse Fritz's little
plans.'

His face became serious and wore the air that our corps
commander used to have at the big pow-wow before a push.

'I'm not going to give you instructions, for you're man enough
to make your own. But I can give you the general hang of the
situation. You tell Ivery you're going North to inquire into
industrial disputes at first hand. That will seem to him natural and
in line with your recent behaviour. He'll tell his people that
you're a guileless colonial who feels disgruntled with Britain, and
may come in useful. You'll go to a man of mine in Glasgow, a red-hot
agitator who chooses that way of doing his bit for his country. It's
a darned hard way and darned dangerous. Through him you'll get in
touch with Gresson, and you'll keep alongside that bright citizen.
Find out what he is doing, and get a chance of following him. He
must never suspect you, and for that purpose you must be very near
the edge of the law yourself. You go up there as an unabashed
pacifist and you'll live with folk that will turn your stomach. Maybe
you'll have to break some of these two-cent rules the British
Government have invented to defend the realm, and it's up to you not
to get caught out ... Remember, you'll get no help from me. you've
got to wise up about Gresson with the whole forces of the British
State arrayed officially against you. I guess it's a steep
proposition, but you're man enough to make good.'

As we shook hands, he added a last word. 'You must take your
own time, but it's not a case for slouching. Every day that passes
ivery is sending out the worst kind of poison. The Boche is blowing
up for a big campaign in the field, and a big effort to shake the
nerve and confuse the judgement of our civilians. The whole earth's
war-weary, and we've about reached the danger-point. There's pretty
big stakes hang on you, Dick, for things are getting mighty
delicate.'

I purchased a new novel in the shop and reached St Pancras in
time to have a cup of tea at the buffet. Ivery was at the bookstall
buying an evening paper. When we got into the carriage he seized my
Punch and kept laughing and calling my attention to the pictures. As
I looked at him, I thought that he made a perfect picture of the
citizen turned countryman, going back of an evening to his innocent
home. Everything was right - his neat tweeds, his light spats, his
spotted neckcloth, and his Aquascutum.

Not that I dared look at him much. What I had learned made me
eager to search his face, but I did not dare show any increased
interest. I had always been a little off-hand with him, for I had
never much liked him, so I had to keep on the same manner. He was as
merry as a grig, full of chat and very friendly and amusing. I
remember he picked up the book I had brought off that morning to read
in the train - the second volume of Hazlitt's Essays, the last of my
English classics - and discoursed so wisely about books that I wished
I had spent more time in his company at Biggleswick.

'Hazlitt was the academic Radical of his day,' he said. 'He is
always lashing himself into a state of theoretical fury over abuses
he has never encountered in person. Men who are up against the real
thing save their breath for action.'

That gave me my cue to tell him about my journey to the North.
I said I had learned a lot in Biggleswick, but I wanted to see
industrial life at close quarters. 'Otherwise I might become like
Hazlitt,' I said.

He was very interested and encouraging. 'That's the right way
to set about it,' he said. 'Where were you thinking of going?'

I told him that I had half thought of Barrow, but decided to try
Glasgow, since the Clyde seemed to be a warm corner.

'Right,' he said. 'I only wish I was coming with you. It'll
take you a little while to understand the language. You'll find a
good deal of senseless bellicosity among the workmen, for they've got
parrot-cries about the war as they used to have parrot-cries about
their labour politics. But there's plenty of shrewd brains and sound
hearts too. You must write and tell me your conclusions.'

It was a warm evening and he dozed the last part of the journey.
I looked at him and wished I could see into the mind at the back of
that mask-like face. I counted for nothing in his eyes, not even
enough for him to want to make me a tool, and I was setting out to
try to make a tool of him. It sounded a forlorn enterprise. And all
the while I was puzzled with a persistent sense of recognition. I
told myself it was idiocy, for a man with a face like that must have
hints of resemblance to a thousand people. But the idea kept nagging
at me till we reached our destination.

As we emerged from the station into the golden evening I saw
Mary Lamington again. She was with one of the Weekes girls, and
after the Biggleswick fashion was bareheaded, so that the sun glinted
from her hair. Ivery swept his hat off and made her a pretty speech,
while I faced her steady eyes with the expressionlessness of the
stage conspirator.

'A charming child,' he observed as we passed on. 'Not without a
touch of seriousness, too, which may yet be touched to noble
issues.'

I considered, as I made my way to my final supper with the
jimsons, that the said child was likely to prove a sufficiently
serious business for Mr Moxon Ivery before the game was out.