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

epub:type="se:name.publication.book" xml:lang="de">Uber allen Gipfeln. Have you ever read Goethe?”

“Never a word. And what do you make of that?” I pointed to a flat rock below tidemark covered with a tangle of seaweed. It was of a softer stone than the hard stuff in the hills and somebody had scraped off half the seaweed and a slice of the side. “That wasn’t done yesterday morning, for I had my bath here.”

Wake got up and examined the place. He nosed about in the crannies of the rocks lining the inlet, and got into the water again to explore better. When he joined me he was smiling. “I apologize for my scepticism,” he said. “There’s been some petrol-driven craft here in the night. I can smell it, for I’ve a nose like a retriever. I daresay you’re on the right track. Anyhow, though you seem to know a bit about German, you could scarcely invent immortal poetry.”

We took our belongings to a green crook of the burn, and made a very good breakfast. Wake had nothing in his pack but plasmon biscuits and raisins, for that, he said, was his mountaineering provender, but he was not averse to sampling my tinned stuff. He was a different-sized fellow out in the hills from the anaemic intellectual of Biggleswick. He had forgotten his beastly self-consciousness, and spoke of his hobby with a serious passion. It seemed he had scrambled about everywhere in Europe, from the Caucasus to the Pyrenees. I could see he must be good at the job, for he didn’t brag of his exploits. It was the mountains that he loved, not wriggling his body up hard places. The Coolin, he said, were his favourites, for on some of them you could get two thousand feet of good rock. We got our glasses on the face of Sgurr Alasdair, and he sketched out for me various ways of getting to its grim summit. The Coolin and the Dolomites for him, for he had grown tired of the Chamonix aiguilles. I remember he described with tremendous gusto the joys of early dawn in Tyrol, when you ascended through acres of flowery meadows to a tooth of clean white limestone against a clean blue sky. He spoke, too, of the little wild hills in the Bavarian Wettersteingebirge, and of a guide he had picked up there and trained to the job.

“They called him Sebastian Buchwieser. He was the jolliest boy you ever saw, and as clever on crags as a chamois. He is probably dead by now, dead in a filthy jaeger battalion. That’s you and your accursed war.”

“Well, we’ve got to get busy and end it in the right way,” I said. “And you’ve got to help, my lad.”

He was a good draughtsman, and with his assistance I drew a rough map of the crevice where we had roosted for the night, giving its bearings carefully in relation to the burn and the sea. Then I wrote down all the details about Gresson and the Portuguese Jew, and described the latter in minute detail. I described, too, most precisely the cache where it had been arranged that the messages should be placed. That finished my stock of paper, and I left the record of the oddments overheard of the conversation for a later time. I put the thing in an old leather cigarette-case I possessed, and handed it to Wake.

“You’ve got to go straight off to the Kyle and not waste any time on the way. Nobody suspects you, so you can travel any road you please. When you get there you ask for Mr. Andrew Amos, who has some Government job in the neighbourhood. Give him that paper from me. He’ll know what to do with it all right. Tell him I’ll get somehow to the Kyle before midday the day after tomorrow. I must cover my tracks a bit, so I can’t come with you, and I want that thing in his hands just as fast as your legs will take you. If anyone tries to steal it from you, for God’s sake eat it. You can see for yourself that it’s devilish important.”

“I shall be back in England in three days,” he said. “Any message for your other friends?”

“Forget all about me. You never saw me here. I’m still Brand, the amiable colonial studying social movements. If you meet Ivery, say you heard of me on the Clyde, deep in sedition. But if you see Miss Lamington you can tell her I’m past the Hill Difficulty. I’m coming back as soon as God will let me, and I’m going to drop right into the Biggleswick push. Only this time I’ll be a little more advanced in my views⁠ ⁠… You needn’t get cross. I’m not saying anything against your principles. The main point is that we both hate dirty treason.”

He put the case in his waistcoat pocket. “I’ll go round Garsbheinn,” he said, “and over by Camasunary. I’ll be at the Kyle long before evening. I meant anyhow to sleep at Broadford tonight⁠ ⁠… Goodbye, Brand, for I’ve forgotten your proper name. You’re not a bad fellow, but you’ve landed me in melodrama for the first time in my sober existence. I have a grudge against you for mixing up the Coolin with a shilling shocker. You’ve spoiled their sanctity.”

“You’ve the wrong notion of romance,” I said. “Why, man, last night for an hour you were in the front line⁠—the place where the enemy forces touch our own. You were over the top⁠—you were in No-man’s-land.”

He laughed. “That is one way to look at it”; and then he stalked off and I watched his lean figure till it was round the turn of the hill.

All that morning I smoked peacefully by the burn, and let my thoughts wander over the whole business. I had got precisely what Blenkiron wanted, a post office for the enemy. It would need careful handling, but I could see the juiciest lies passing that way to the