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

about the meanest bit of bad luck that ever happened to John S. We’re missing the chance of seeing the goriest fight of this campaign.”

I picked up the map and pocketed it. Maps were my business, and I had been looking for one.

“We’re not going to Mesopotamia,” I said. “Our orders have been cancelled.”

“But I’ve just seen Enver, and he said he had sent round our passports.”

“They’re in the fire,” I said. “The right ones will come along tomorrow morning.”

Sandy broke in, his eyes bright with excitement.

“The great hills!⁠ ⁠… We’re going to Erzerum⁠ ⁠… Don’t you see that the Germans are playing their big card? They’re sending Greenmantle to the point of danger in the hope that his coming will rally the Turkish defence. Things are beginning to move, Dick, old man. No more kicking the heels for us. We’re going to be in it up to the neck, and Heaven help the best man⁠ ⁠… I must be off now, for I’ve a lot to do. Au revoir. We meet some time in the hills.”

Blenkiron still looked puzzled, till I told him the story of that night’s doings. As he listened, all the satisfaction went out of his face, and that funny, childish air of bewilderment crept in.

“It’s not for me to complain, for it’s in the straight line of our dooty, but I reckon there’s going to be big trouble ahead of this caravan. It’s Kismet, and we’ve got to bow. But I won’t pretend that I’m not considerable scared at the prospect.”

“Oh, so am I,” I said. “The woman frightens me into fits. We’re up against it this time all right. All the same I’m glad we’re to be let into the real star metropolitan performance. I didn’t relish the idea of touring the provinces.”

“I guess that’s correct. But I could wish that the good God would see fit to take that lovely lady to Himself. She’s too much for a quiet man at my time of life. When she invites us to go in on the ground-floor I feel like taking the elevator to the roof-garden.”

XVI The Battered Caravanserai

Two days later, in the evening, we came to Angora, the first stage in our journey.

The passports had arrived next morning, as Frau von Einem had promised, and with them a plan of our journey. More, one of the Companions, who spoke a little English, was detailed to accompany us⁠—a wise precaution, for no one of us had a word of Turkish. These were the sum of our instructions. I heard nothing more of Sandy or Greenmantle or the lady. We were meant to travel in our own party.

We had the railway to Angora, a very comfortable German Schlafwagen, tacked to the end of a troop-train. There wasn’t much to be seen of the country, for after we left the Bosporus we ran into scuds of snow, and except that we seemed to be climbing on to a big plateau I had no notion of the landscape. It was a marvel that we made such good time, for that line was congested beyond anything I have ever seen. The place was crawling with the Gallipoli troops, and every siding was packed with supply trucks. When we stopped⁠—which we did on an average about once an hour⁠—you could see vast camps on both sides of the line, and often we struck regiments on the march along the railway track. They looked a fine, hardy lot of ruffians, but many were deplorably ragged, and I didn’t think much of their boots. I wondered how they would do the five hundred miles of road to Erzerum.

Blenkiron played Patience, and Peter and I took a hand at picquet, but mostly we smoked and yarned. Getting away from that infernal city had cheered us up wonderfully. Now we were out on the open road, moving to the sound of the guns. At the worst, we should not perish like rats in a sewer. We would be all together, too, and that was a comfort. I think we felt the relief which a man who has been on a lonely outpost feels when he is brought back to his battalion. Besides, the thing had gone clean beyond our power to direct. It was no good planning and scheming, for none of us had a notion what the next step might be. We were fatalists now, believing in Kismet, and that is a comfortable faith.

All but Blenkiron. The coming of Hilda von Einem into the business had put a very ugly complexion on it for him. It was curious to see how she affected the different members of our gang. Peter did not care a rush: man, woman, and hippogriff were the same to him; he met it all as calmly as if he were making plans to round up an old lion in a patch of bush, taking the facts as they came and working at them as if they were a sum in arithmetic. Sandy and I were impressed⁠—it’s no good denying it: horribly impressed⁠—but we were too interested to be scared, and we weren’t a bit fascinated. We hated her too much for that. But she fairly struck Blenkiron dumb. He said himself it was just like a rattlesnake and a bird.

I made him talk about her, for if he sat and brooded he would get worse. It was a strange thing that this man, the most imperturbable and, I think, about the most courageous I have ever met, should be paralysed by a slim woman. There was no doubt about it. The thought of her made the future to him as black as a thunder cloud. It took the power out of his joints, and if she was going to be much around, it looked as if Blenkiron might be counted out.

I suggested that he was in love with her, but this he vehemently denied.

“No, Sir; I haven’t got no sort