Mr. Standfast by John Buchan (mystery books to read .TXT) 📕

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 notebook. 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 watertight 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 Wiener 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 titbits 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 Wiener 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