Greenmantle by John Buchan (snow like ashes series .txt) 📕

“Will the gentlemen walk a step with me and drink a glass of beer?” he said in very stiff Dutch.

“Who the devil are you?” I asked.

“Gott strafe England!” was his answer, and, turning back the lapel of his coat, he showed some kind of ribbon in his buttonhole.

“Amen,” said Peter. “Lead on, friend. We don’t mind if we do.”

He led us to a back street and then up two pairs of stairs to a very snug little flat. The place was filled with fine red lacquer, and I guessed that art-dealing was his nominal business. Portugal, since the republic broke up the convents and sold up the big royalist grandees, was full of bargains in the lacquer and curio line.

He filled us two long tankards of very good Munich beer.

“Prosit,” he said, raising his glass. “You are from South Africa. What make you in Europe?”

We both looked sullen and secretive.

“That’s our own business,” I answered. “You don’t expect to buy our confidence with a glass of beer.”

“So?” he said. “Then I will put it differently. From your speech in the café I judge you do not love the English.”

Peter said something about stamping on their grandmothers, a Kaffir phrase which sounded gruesome in Dutch.

The man laughed. “That is all I want to know. You are on the German side?”

“That remains to be seen,” I said. “If they treat me fair I’ll fight for them, or for anybody else that makes war on England. England has stolen my country and corrupted my people and made me an exile. We Afrikanders do not forget. We may be slow but we win in the end. We two are men worth a great price. Germany fights England in East Africa. We know the natives as no Englishmen can ever know them. They are too soft and easy and the Kaffirs laugh at them. But we can handle the blacks so that they will fight like devils for fear of us. What is the reward, little man, for our services? I will tell you. There will be no reward. We ask none. We fight for hate of England.”

Peter grunted a deep approval.

“That is good talk,” said our entertainer, and his close-set eyes flashed. “There is room in Germany for such men as you. Where are you going now, I beg to know.”

“To Holland,” I said. “Then maybe we will go to Germany. We are tired with travel and may rest a bit. This war will last long and our chance will come.”

“But you may miss your market,” he said significantly. “A ship sails tomorrow for Rotterdam. If you take my advice, you will go with her.”

This was what I wanted, for if we stayed in Lisbon some real soldier of Maritz might drop in any day and blow the gaff.

“I recommend you to sail in the Machado,” he repeated. “There is work for you in Germany⁠—oh yes, much work; but if you delay the chance may pass. I will arrange your journey. It is my business to help the allies of my fatherland.”

He wrote down our names and an epitome of our doings contributed by Peter, who required two mugs of beer to help him through. He was a Bavarian, it seemed, and we drank to the health of Prince Rupprecht, the same blighter I was trying to do in at Loos. That was an irony which Peter unfortunately could not appreciate. If he could he would have enjoyed it.

The little chap saw us back to our hotel, and was with us the next morning after breakfast, bringing the steamer tickets. We got on board about two in the afternoon, but on my advice he did not see us off. I told him that, being British subjects and rebels at that, we did not want to run any risks on board, assuming a British cruiser caught us up and searched us. But Peter took twenty pounds off him for travelling expenses, it being his rule never to miss an opportunity of spoiling the Egyptians.

As we were dropping down the Tagus we passed the old Henry the Navigator.

“I met Sloggett in the street this morning,” said Peter, “and he told me a little German man had been off in a boat at daybreak looking up the passenger list. Yon was a right notion of yours, Cornelis. I am glad we are going among Germans. They are careful people whom it is a pleasure to meet.”

The Germans, as Peter said, are a careful people. A man met us on the quay at Rotterdam. I was a bit afraid that something might have turned up in Lisbon to discredit us, and that our little friend might have warned his pals by telegram. But apparently all was serene.

Peter and I had made our plans pretty carefully on the voyage. We had talked nothing but Dutch, and had kept up between ourselves the role of Maritz’s men, which Peter said was the only way to play a part well. Upon my soul, before we got to Holland I was not very clear in my own mind what my past had been. Indeed the danger was that the other side of my mind, which should be busy with the great problem, would get atrophied, and that I should soon be mentally on a par with the ordinary backveld desperado.

We had agreed that it would be best to get into Germany at once, and when the agent on the quay told us of a train at midday we decided to take it.

I had another fit of cold feet before we got over the frontier. At the station there was a King’s Messenger whom I had seen in France, and a war correspondent who had been trotting round our part of the front before Loos. I heard a woman speaking pretty clean-cut English, which amid the hoarse Dutch jabber