Greenmantle - John Buchan (free ebook reader for iphone .TXT) 📗

was standing stark naked next morning in that icy bedroom, trying to bathe in about a quart of water, when Stumm entered. He strode up to me and stared me in the face. I was half a head shorter than him to begin with, and a man does not feel his stoutest when he has no clothes, so he had the pull on me every way.

“I have reason to believe that you are a liar,” he growled.

I pulled the bedcover round me, for I was shivering with cold, and the German idea of a towel is a pocket-handkerchief. I own I was in a pretty blue funk.

“A liar!” he repeated. “You and that swine Pienaar.”

With my best effort at surliness I asked what we had done.

“You lied, because you said you know no German. Apparently your friend knows enough to talk treason and blasphemy.”

This gave me back some heart.

“I told you I knew a dozen words. But I told you Peter could talk it a bit. I told you that yesterday at the station.” Fervently I blessed my luck for that casual remark.

He evidently remembered, for his tone became a trifle more civil.

“You are a precious pair. If one of you is a scoundrel, why not the other?”

“I take no responsibility for Peter,” I said. I felt I was a cad in saying it, but that was the bargain we had made at the start. “I have known him for years as a great hunter and a brave man. I knew he fought well against the English. But more I cannot tell you. You have to judge him for yourself. What has he done?”

I was told, for Stumm had got it that morning on the telephone. While telling it he was kind enough to allow me to put on my trousers.

It was just the sort of thing I might have foreseen. Peter, left alone, had become first bored and then reckless. He had persuaded the lieutenant to take him out to supper at a big Berlin restaurant. There, inspired by the lights and music⁠—novel things for a backveld hunter⁠—and no doubt bored stiff by his company, he had proceeded to get drunk. That had happened in my experience with Peter about once in every three years, and it always happened for the same reason. Peter, bored and solitary in a town, went on the spree. He had a head like a rock, but he got to the required condition by wild mixing. He was quite a gentleman in his cups, and not in the least violent, but he was apt to be very free with his tongue. And that was what occurred at the Franciscana.

He had begun by insulting the Emperor, it seemed. He drank his health, but said he reminded him of a warthog, and thereby scarified the lieutenant’s soul. Then an officer⁠—some tremendous swell at an adjoining table had objected to his talking so loud, and Peter had replied insolently in respectable German. After that things became mixed. There was some kind of a fight, during which Peter calumniated the German army and all its female ancestry. How he wasn’t shot or run through I can’t imagine, except that the lieutenant loudly proclaimed that he was a crazy Boer. Anyhow the upshot was that Peter was marched off to gaol, and I was left in a pretty pickle.

“I don’t believe a word of it,” I said firmly. I had most of my clothes on now and felt more courageous. “It is all a plot to get him into disgrace and draft him off to the front.”

Stumm did not storm as I expected, but smiled.

“That was always his destiny,” he said, “ever since I saw him. He was no use to us except as a man with a rifle. Cannon-fodder, nothing else. Do you imagine, you fool, that this great Empire in the thick of a world-war is going to trouble its head to lay snares for an ignorant traakhaar?”

“I wash my hands of him,” I said. “If what you say of his folly is true I have no part in it. But he was my companion and I wish him well. What do you propose to do with him?”

“We will keep him under our eye,” he said, with a wicked twist of the mouth. “I have a notion that there is more at the back of this than appears. We will investigate the antecedents of Herr Pienaar. And you, too, my friend. On you also we have our eye.”

I did the best thing I could have done, for what with anxiety and disgust I lost my temper.

“Look here, Sir,” I cried, “I’ve had about enough of this. I came to Germany abominating the English and burning to strike a blow for you. But you haven’t given me much cause to love you. For the last two days I’ve had nothing from you but suspicion and insult. The only decent man I’ve met is Herr Gaudian. It’s because I believe that there are many in Germany like him that I’m prepared to go on with this business and do the best I can. But, by God, I wouldn’t raise my little finger for your sake.”

He looked at me very steadily for a minute. “That sounds like honesty,” he said at last in a civil voice. “You had better come down and get your coffee.”

I was safe for the moment but in very low spirits. What on earth would happen to poor old Peter? I could do nothing even if I wanted, and, besides, my first duty was to my mission. I had made this very clear to him at Lisbon and he had agreed, but all the same it was a beastly reflection. Here was that ancient worthy left to the tender mercies of the people he most detested on earth. My only comfort was that they couldn’t do very much with him. If they sent him to the front, which was the worst they could do,