has really slipped inside has a million chances. And this, remember, is one man in ten millions, a man whose brain never sleeps for a moment, who is quick to seize the slightest hint, who can piece a plan together out of a dozen bits of gossip. It’s like - it’s as if the Chief of the Intelligence Department were suddenly to desert to the enemy … The ordinary spy knows only bits of unconnected facts. This man knows our life and our way of thinking and everything about us.’
‘Well, but a treatise on English life in time of war won’t do much good to the Boche.’
Sir Walter shook his head. ‘Don’t you realize the explosive stuff that is lying about? Ivery knows enough to make the next German peace offensive really deadly - not the blundering thing which it has been up to now, but something which gets our weak spots on the raw. He knows enough to wreck our campaign in the field. And the awful thing is that we don’t know just what he knows or what he is aiming for. This war’s a packet of surprises. Both sides are struggling for the margin, the little fraction of advantage, and between evenly matched enemies it’s just the extra atom of foreknowledge that tells.’ ‘Then we’ve got to push off and get after him,’ I said cheerfully.
‘But what are you going to do?’ asked Macgillivray. ‘If it were merely a question of destroying an organization it might be managed, for an organization presents a big front. But it’s a question of destroying this one man, and his front is a razor edge. How are you going to find him? It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack, and such a needle! A needle which can become a piece of straw or a tin-tack when it chooses!’
‘All the same we’ve got to do it,’ I said, remembering old Peter’s lesson on fortitude, though I can’t say I was feeling very stout-hearted.
Sir Walter flung himself wearily into an armchair. ‘I wish I could be an optimist,’ he said, ‘but it looks as if we must own defeat. I’ve been at this work for twenty years, and, though I’ve been often beaten, I’ve always held certain cards in the game. Now I’m hanged if I’ve any. It looks like a knock-out, Hannay. It’s no good deluding ourselves. We’re men enough to look facts in the face and tell ourselves the truth. I don’t see any ray of light in the business. We’ve missed our shot by a hairsbreadth and that’s the same as missing by miles.’
I remember he looked at Mary as if for confirmation, but she did not smile or nod. Her face was very grave and her eyes looked steadily at him. Then they moved and met mine, and they seemed to give me my marching orders.
‘Sir Walter,’ I said, ‘three years ago you and I sat in this very room. We thought we were done to the world, as we think now. We had just that one miserable little clue to hang on to - a dozen words scribbled in a notebook by a dead man. You thought I was mad when I asked for Scudder’s book, but we put our backs into the job and in twenty-four hours we had won out. Remember that then we were fighting against time. Now we have a reasonable amount of leisure. Then we had nothing but a sentence of gibberish. Now we have a great body of knowledge, for Blenkiron has been brooding over Ivery like an old hen, and he knows his ways of working and his breed of confederate. You’ve got something to work on now. Do you mean to tell me that, when the stakes are so big, you’re going to chuck in your hand?’
Macgillivray raised his head. ‘We know a good deal about Ivery, but Ivery’s dead. We know nothing of the man who was gloriously resurrected this evening in Normandy.’
‘Oh, yes we do. There are many faces to the man, but only one mind, and you know plenty about that mind.’
‘I wonder,’ said Sir Walter. ‘How can you know a mind which has no characteristics except that it is wholly and supremely competent? Mere mental powers won’t give us a clue. We want to know the character which is behind all the personalities. Above all we want to know its foibles. If we had only a hint of some weakness we might make a plan.’
‘Well, let’s set down all we know,’ I cried, for the more I argued the keener I grew. I told them in some detail the story of the night in the Coolin and what I had heard there.
‘There’s the two names Chelius and Bommaerts. The man spoke them in the same breath as Effenbein, so they must be associated with Ivery’s gang. You’ve got to get the whole Secret Service of the Allies busy to fit a meaning to these two words. Surely to goodness you’ll find something! Remember those names don’t belong to the Ivery part, but to the big game behind all the different disguises … Then there’s the talk about the Wild Birds and the Cage Birds. I haven’t a guess at what it means. But it refers to some infernal gang, and among your piles of records there must be some clue. You set the intelligence of two hemispheres busy on the job. You’ve got all the machinery, and it’s my experience that if even one solitary man keeps chewing on at a problem he discovers something.’
My enthusiasm was beginning to strike sparks from Macgillivray. He was looking thoughtful now, instead of despondent.
‘There might be something in that,’ he said, ‘but it’s a far-out chance.’
‘Of course it’s a far-out chance, and that’s all we’re ever going to get from Ivery. But we’ve taken a bad chance before and won … Then you’ve all that you know about Ivery here. Go through his _dossier with a small- tooth comb and I’ll bet you find something to work on. Blenkiron, you’re a man with a cool head. You admit we’ve a sporting chance.’
‘Sure, Dick. He’s fixed things so that the lines are across the track, but we’ll clear somehow. So far as John S. Blenkiron is concerned he’s got just one thing to do in this world, and that’s to follow the yellow dog and have him neatly and cleanly tidied up. I’ve got a stack of personal affronts to settle. I was easy fruit and he hasn’t been very respectful. You can count me in, Dick.’
‘Then we’re agreed,’ I cried. ‘Well, gentlemen, it’s up to you to arrange the first stage. You’ve some pretty solid staff work to put in before you get on the trail.’
‘And you?’ Sir Walter asked.
‘I’m going back to my brigade. I want a rest and a change. Besides, the first stage is office work, and I’m no use for that. But I’ll be waiting to be summoned, and I’ll come like a shot as soon as you hoick me out. I’ve got a presentiment about this thing. I know there’ll be a finish and that I’ll be in at it, and I think it will be a desperate, bloody business too.’
I found Mary’s eyes fixed upon me, and in them I read the same thought. She had not spoken a word, but had sat on the edge of a chair, swinging a foot idly, one hand playing with an ivory fan. She had given me my old orders and I looked to her for confirmation of the new.
‘Miss Lamington, you are the wisest of the lot of us. What do you say?’
She smiled - that shy, companionable smile which I had been picturing to myself through all the wanderings of the past month.
‘I think you are right. We’ve a long way to go yet, for the Valley of Humiliation comes only half-way in the
I remember the way she laughed and flung back her head like a gallant boy.
‘The mistake we’ve all been making,’ she said, ‘is that our methods are too terre-a-terre. We’ve a poet to deal with, a great poet, and we must fling our imaginations forward to catch up with him. His strength is his unexpectedness, you know, and we won’t beat him by plodding only. I believe the wildest course is the wisest, for it’s the most likely to intersect his … Who’s the poet among us?’
‘Peter,’ I said. ‘But he’s pinned down with a game leg in Germany. All the same we must rope him in.’
By this time we had all cheered up, for it is wonderful what a tonic there is in a prospect of action. The butler brought in tea, which it was Bullivant’s habit to drink after dinner. To me it seemed fantastic to watch a slip of a girl pouring it out for two grizzled and distinguished servants of the State and one battered soldier - as decorous a family party as you would ask to see - and to reflect that all four were engaged in an enterprise where men’s lives must be reckoned at less than thistledown.
After that we went upstairs to a noble Georgian drawing-room and Mary played to us. I don’t care two straws for music from an instrument - unless it be the pipes or a regimental band - but I dearly love the human voice. But she would not sing, for singing to her, I fancy, was something that did not come at will, but flowed only like a bird’s note when the mood favoured. I did not want it either. I was content to let ‘Cherry Ripe’ be the one song linked with her in my memory.
It was Macgillivray who brought us back to business.
‘I wish to Heaven there was one habit of mind we could definitely attach to him and to no one else.’ (At this moment ‘He’ had only one meaning for us.)
