'Because they are staking everything,' Blenkiron replied. 'It is the last desperate struggle of a wounded beast, and in these struggles sometimes the hunter perishes. d.i.c.k's right. We've got a wasting margin and every extra ounce of weight's going to tell. The battle's in the field, and it's also in every corner of every Allied land. That's why within the next two months we've got to get even with the Wild Birds.'

The French Colonel-his name was de Valliere-smiled at the name, and Blenkiron answered my unspoken question.

'I'm going to satisfy some of your curiosity, d.i.c.k, for I've put together considerable noos of the menagerie. Germany has a good army of spies outside her borders. We shoot a batch now and then, but the others go on working like beavers and they do a mighty deal of harm. They're beautifully organized, but they don't draw on such good human material as we, and I reckon they don't pay in results more than ten cents on a dollar of trouble. But there they are. They're the intelligence officers and their business is just to forward noos. They're the birds in the cage, the-what is it your friend called them?'

'Die Stubenvogel,' I said.

'Yes, but all the birds aren't caged. There's a few outside the bars and they don't collect noos. They do things. If there's anything desperate they're put on the job, and they've got power to act without waiting on instructions from home. I've investigated till my brain's tired and I haven't made out more than half a dozen whom I can say for certain are in the business. There's your pal, the Portuguese Jew, d.i.c.k. Another's a woman in Genoa, a princess of some sort married to a Greek financier. One's the editor of a pro-Ally up-country paper in the Argentine. One pa.s.ses as a Baptist minister in Colorado. One was a police spy in the Tzar's Government and is now a red-hot revolutionary in the Caucasus. And the biggest, of course, is Moxon Ivery, who in happier times was the Graf von Schwabing. There aren't above a hundred people in the world know of their existence, and these hundred call them the Wild Birds.'

'Do they work together?' I asked.

'Yes. They each get their own jobs to do, but they're apt to flock together for a big piece of devilment. There were four of them in France a year ago before the battle of the Aisne, and they pretty near rotted the French Army. That's so, Colonel?'

The soldier nodded grimly. 'They seduced our weary troops and they bought many politicians. Almost they succeeded, but not quite. The nation is sane again, and is judging and shooting the accomplices at its leisure. But the princ.i.p.als we have never caught.'

'You hear that, d.i.c.k, said Blenkiron. 'You're satisfied this isn't a whimsy of a melodramatic old Yank? I'll tell you more. You know how Ivery worked the submarine business from England. Also, it was the Wild Birds that wrecked Russia. It was Ivery that paid the Bolshevists to sedooce the Army, and the Bolshevists took his money for their own purpose, thinking they were playing a deep game, when all the time he was grinning like Satan, for they were playing his. It was Ivery or some other of the bunch that doped the brigades that broke at Caporetto. If I started in to tell you the history of their doings you wouldn't go to bed, and if you did you wouldn't sleep ... There's just this to it. Every finished subtle devilry that the Boche has wrought among the Allies since August 1914 has been the work of the Wild Birds and more or less organized by Ivery. They're worth half a dozen army corps to Ludendorff. They're the mightiest poison merchants the world ever saw, and they've the nerve of h.e.l.l ...'

'I don't know,' I interrupted. 'Ivery's got his soft spot. I saw him in the Tube station.'

'Maybe, but he's got the kind of nerve that's wanted. And now I rather fancy he's whistling in his flock.'

Blenkiron consulted a notebook. 'Pavia-that's the Argentine man-started last month for Europe. He transhipped from a coasting steamer in the West Indies and we've temporarily lost track of him, but he's left his hunting-ground. What do you reckon that means?'

'It means,' Blenkiron continued solemnly, 'that Ivery thinks the game's nearly over. The play's working up for the big climax ... And that climax is going to be d.a.m.nation for the Allies, unless we get a move on.'

'Right,' I said. 'That's what I'm here for. What's the move?'

'The Wild Birds mustn't ever go home, and the man they call Ivery or Bommaerts or Chelius has to decease. It's a cold-blooded proposition, but it's him or the world that's got to break. But before he quits this earth we're bound to get wise about some of his plans, and that means that we can't just shoot a pistol at his face. Also we've got to find him first. We reckon he's in Switzerland, but that is a state with quite a lot of diversified scenery to lose a man in ... Still I guess we'll find him. But it's the kind of business to plan out as carefully as a battle. I'm going back to Berne on my old stunt to boss the show, and I'm giving the orders. You're an obedient child, d.i.c.k, so I don't reckon on any trouble that way.'

Then Blenkiron did an ominous thing. He pulled up a little table and started to lay out Patience cards. Since his duodenum was cured he seemed to have dropped that habit, and from his resuming it I gathered that his mind was uneasy. I can see that scene as if it were yesterday-the French colonel in an armchair smoking a cigarette in a long amber holder, and Blenkiron sitting primly on the edge of a yellow silk ottoman, dealing his cards and looking guiltily towards me.

'You'll have Peter for company,' he said. 'Peter's a sad man, but he has a great heart, and he's been mighty useful to me already. They're going to move him to England very soon. The authorities are afraid of him, for he's apt to talk wild, his health having made him peevish about the British. But there's a deal of red-tape in the world, and the orders for his repatriation are slow in coming.' The speaker winked very slowly and deliberately with his left eye.

I asked if I was to be with Peter, much cheered at the prospect.

'Why, yes. You and Peter are the collateral in the deal. But the big game's not with you.'

I had a presentiment of something coming, something anxious and unpleasant.

'Is Mary in it?' I asked.

He nodded and seemed to pull himself together for an explanation.

'See here, d.i.c.k. Our main job is to get Ivery back to Allied soil where we can handle him. And there's just the one magnet that can fetch him back. You aren't going to deny that.'

I felt my face getting very red, and that ugly hammer began beating in my forehead. Two grave, patient eyes met my glare.

'I'm d.a.m.ned if I'll allow it!' I cried. 'I've some right to a say in the thing. I won't have Mary made a decoy. It's too infernally degrading.'

'It isn't pretty, but war isn't pretty, and nothing we do is pretty. I'd have blushed like a rose when I was young and innocent to imagine the things I've put my hand to in the last three years. But have you any other way, d.i.c.k? I'm not proud, and I'll sc.r.a.p the plan if you can show me another ... Night after night I've hammered the thing out, and I can't hit on a better ... Heigh-ho, d.i.c.k, this isn't like you,' and he grinned ruefully. 'You're making yourself a fine argument in favour of celibacy-in time of war, anyhow. What is it the poet sings?-

White hands cling to the bridle rein, Slipping the spur from the booted heel-'

I was as angry as sin, but I felt all the time I had no case. Blenkiron stopped his game of Patience, sending the cards flying over the carpet, and straddled on the hearthrug.

'You're never going to be a piker. What's dooty, if you won't carry it to the other side of h.e.l.l? What's the use of yapping about your country if you're going to keep anything back when she calls for it? What's the good of meaning to win the war if you don't put every cent you've got on your stake? You'll make me think you're like the jacks in your English novels that chuck in their hand and say it's up to G.o.d, and call that "seeing it through" ... No, d.i.c.k, that kind of dooty don't deserve a blessing. You dursn't keep back anything if you want to save your soul.

'Besides,' he went on, 'what a girl it is! She can't scare and she can't soil. She's white-hot youth and innocence, and she'd take no more harm than clean steel from a muck-heap.'

I knew I was badly in the wrong, but my pride was all raw.

'I'm not going to agree till I've talked to Mary.'

'But Miss Mary has consented,' he said gently. 'She made the plan.'

Next day, in clear blue weather that might have been May, I drove Mary down to Fontainebleau. We lunched in the inn by the bridge and walked into the forest. I hadn't slept much, for I was tortured by what I thought was anxiety for her, but which was in truth jealousy of Ivery. I don't think that I would have minded her risking her life, for that was part of the game we were both in, but I jibbed at the notion of Ivery coming near her again. I told myself it was honourable pride, but I knew deep down in me that it was jealousy.

I asked her if she had accepted Blenkiron's plan, and she turned mischievous eyes on me.

'I knew I should have a scene with you, d.i.c.k. I told Mr Blenkiron so ... Of course I agreed. I'm not even very much afraid of it. I'm a member of the team, you know, and I must play up to my form. I can't do a man's work, so all the more reason why I should tackle the thing I can do.'

'But,' I stammered, 'it's such a ... such a degrading business for a child like you. I can't bear ... It makes me hot to think of it.'

Her reply was merry laughter.

'You're an old Ottoman, d.i.c.k. You haven't doubled Cape Turk yet, and I don't believe you're round Seraglio Point. Why, women aren't the brittle things men used to think them. They never were, and the war has made them like whipcord. Bless you, my dear, we're the tougher s.e.x now. We've had to wait and endure, and we've been so beaten on the anvil of patience that we've lost all our megrims.'

She put her hands on my shoulders and looked me in the eyes.

'Look at me, d.i.c.k, look at your someday-to-be espoused saint. I'm nineteen years of age next August. Before the war I should have only just put my hair up. I should have been the kind of shivering debutante who blushes when she's spoken to, and oh! I should have thought such silly, silly things about life ... Well, in the last two years I've been close to it, and to death. I've nursed the dying. I've seen souls in agony and in triumph. England has allowed me to serve her as she allows her sons. Oh, I'm a robust young woman now, and indeed I think women were always robuster than men ... d.i.c.k, dear d.i.c.k, we're lovers, but we're comrades too-always comrades, and comrades trust each other.'

I hadn't anything to say, except contrition, for I had my lesson. I had been slipping away in my thoughts from the gravity of our task, and Mary had brought me back to it. I remember that as we walked through the woodland we came to a place where there were no signs of war. Elsewhere there were men busy felling trees, and anti-aircraft guns, and an occasional transport wagon, but here there was only a shallow gra.s.sy vale, and in the distance, bloomed over like a plum in the evening haze, the roofs of an old dwelling-house among gardens.

Mary clung to my arm as we drank in the peace of it.

'That is what lies for us at the end of the road, d.i.c.k,' she said softly.

And then, as she looked, I felt her body shiver. She returned to the strange fancy she had had in the St Germains woods three days before.

'Somewhere it's waiting for us and we shall certainly find it ... But first we must go through the Valley of the Shadow ... And there is the sacrifice to be made ... the best of us.'

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

St Anton

Ten days later the porter Joseph Zimmer of Arosa, clad in the tough and shapeless trousers of his cla.s.s, but sporting an old velveteen shooting-coat bequeathed to him by a former German master-speaking the guttural tongue of the Grisons, and with all his belongings in one ma.s.sive rucksack, came out of the little station of St Anton and blinked in the frosty sunshine. He looked down upon the little old village beside its icebound lake, but his business was with the new village of hotels and villas which had sprung up in the last ten years south of the station. He made some halting inquiries of the station people, and a cab-driver outside finally directed him to the place he sought-the cottage of the Widow Summermatter, where resided an English intern, one Peter Pienaar.