July 27, 1916 
LAND & WATER 
21 
I was jolly hungry and would have made a good meal if 
I hadn't constantly had to keep jogging my wits. The other 
two talked in German, and wlien a question was put to me 
Stumm translated. The first thing I had to do was to pretend 
1 didn't know German and look Ustlessly round the room 
while they were talking. The second was to miss not a word, 
for there lay my chance. The third was to be ready to answer 
questions at any moment, and to show in the answering that 
I had not followed the previous conversation. Likewise 1 
must not prove myself a fool in these answers, for I had to 
convince them that I was useful. It took some doing, and I 
felt like a witness in the box under a stiff cross-examination, 
or a man trying to play three games of chess at once. 
I heard Stumm telling Gaudian the gist of my plan. The 
engineer shook his head. 
" Too late," he said. " It should have been done at the 
beginning. We neglected Africa. You know the reason 
why." 
Stumm laughed. " The von Einem ! Perhaps, but her 
charm works w 11 enough." 
Gaudian glanced towards me while I was busy with an 
orange salad. " I have much to tell you of that. But it can 
wait. Your friend is right in one thing. Uganda is a vital 
spot for the English and a blow there will make their whole 
fabric shiver. But how can we strike ? They have still the 
coast, and our supplies grow daily smaller." 
" We can send no reinforcements, but have we used all the 
local resources ? That is what I cannot satisfy myself about. 
Zimmerman says we have, but Tressler thinks differently, 
and now we have this fellow coming out of the void with a 
story which confirms my doubt. He seems to know his job. 
You try him." 
Thereupon Gaudian set about' questioning me, and his 
questions were very thorough. I knew just enough and no 
more to get through, but I think I came out with credit. 
You see I have a capacious memory, and in my time I had 
met scores of hunters and pioneers and listened to their 
yarns, so I could pretend to knowledge of a place even when 
i hadn't been there. Besides, I had once been on the point 
of undertaking a job up Tanganyika way, and I had got up 
that country-side pretty accurately. 
" You say that with our help you can make trouble for the 
British on the three borders ? " Gaudian asked at length. 
" I can spread the fire if someone else will kindle it," I said. 
" But there are thousands of tribes with no affinities." 
" They are all African. You can bear me out. All African 
people are alike in one thing— they can go mad,- and the 
madness of one infects the others. The Enghsh know this 
well enough." 
" Wh( re would vou start the fire ? " he asked. 
" Where the fuel is driest. Up in the North among the 
Mussulman peoples. But there you must help^ me. I know 
nothing about Islam and I gather that you do." 
" Why ? " he asked. 
" Because of what you have done already," I^nswered. 
Stumm had translated all this time, and had given the 
sense of my words very fairly. But with my last answer he 
took Uberties. What he said was : " Because the Dutchman 
thinks that we have some big card in dealing with the Moslem 
world." Then, lowering his voice, and raising his eyebrows 
he said some word like " Unmantle." 
The other looked with a quick glance of apprehension at 
me "We had better continue our talk in private, Herr 
Colonel," he said. " If Herr Brandt will forgive us, we wiU 
leave him for a little to entertain himself." He pushed the 
cigar-box towards me and the two got up and left the room. 
I pulled my chair up to the sto>e, and would have liked to 
drop off to sleep. The tension of the talk at supper had made 
me very tired. I was accepted by these men for exactly 
what I professed to be. Stumm might suspect me of being 
a rascal but it was a Dutch rascal. But all the same I was 
skating on thin ice. I could not sink myself utterly in the 
part for if I did I would get no good out of being here. I 
had 'to keep my wits going all the time, and join the appear- 
ance and manners of a back-veld Boer with the mind of a 
British intelligence-officer. Any moment the two parts 
might clash and I would be faced with the most alert and 
deadly suspicion. 
There would be no mercy from Stumm. That large man 
was beginning to fascinate me, even though I hated him. 
Gaudian was clearly a good fellow, a \\*iite man and a gentle- 
man I could have worked with him, for he belonged to my 
own totem. But the other was an incarnation of all that 
makes Germany detested, and yet he wasn t altogether 
the ordinary German, and I couldn't help admiring lum. 1 
noticed he neither smoked nor drank. His grossness was 
apparently not in the way of fleshly ^^PPf titles. Cruelty 
from all I had heard of him in German South West, vvas h s 
hobby; but there were other things in him, some of tli^m 
good, and he had that kind of crazy patriotism which becomes 
a religion. I wondered why he had not some high command 
in the field, for he had had the name of a good soldier. But 
probably he was a big man in his own line, whatever it was, 
for the Under-Secretary fellow had talked small in his 
presence, and so great a man as Gaudian clearly respected 
him. There must be no lack of brains inside that funny j^jTa- 
midal head. 
A^ I sat before the stove I was casting back to think if I 
had got the slightest clue to my real job. There seemed to 
be nothing so far. Stumm had talked of a von Einem woman 
who was interested in his department, perhaps the same 
woman as the Hilda he had mentioned the day before to the 
Under-Secretary. There was not much in that. She was 
probably some Minister s or Ambass'ador's \yife who had a 
finger in high pohtics. If I could have caught the word 
Stumm had whispered to Gaudian which made him start and 
look askance at me ! But I had only heard a gurgle of 
something like " Unmantle," which wasn't any German 
word that I knew. 
The heat put me into a half doze and I began dreamily to 
wonder what other people were doing. Where had Blenkiron 
been posting to in that train, and what was he up to at this 
moment ? He had been hobnobbing with Ambassadors 
and swells— I wondered if he had found out anything. What 
was Peter doing ? I fervently hoped he was behaving him- 
self, for I doubted if Peter had really tumbled to the delicacy 
of our job. Where was Sandy, too ? As like as not bucketing 
in the hold of some Greek coaster in the iEgean. Then I 
thought of my battalion somewhere on the line between 
Hulluck and La Bassee, hammering at the Boche, while I 
was five hundred miles or so inside the Boche frontier. 
It was a comic reflection, so comic that it woke me up. 
After trying in vain to find a way of stoking that stove, for 
it was a cold night, I got up and walked about the room. 
There were portraits of two decent old fellows, probably 
Gaudian's parents. There were enlarged photographs, too, 
of engineering works, and a good picture of Bismarck. And 
close to the stove tliere was a case of maps mounted on rollers. 
I pulled one out at random. It was a geological map of 
Germany, and with some trouble I found out where I was. 
I was an enormous distance from my goal, and, moreover, I 
was clean off the road to the East. To go there I must first 
go to Bavaria and then into Austria. I noticed the Danube 
flowing eastwards and remembered that that was one way to 
Constantinople. 
Then I tried another map. This one covered a big area, 
all Europe from the Rhine and as far east as Persia. I 
guessed that it was meant to show the Bagdad railway and 
the through routes from Germany to Mesopotamia. There 
were markings on it, and as I looked closer I saw that there 
were dates scribbed in blue pencil, as if to denote the stages 
of a journey. The dates began in liuropc, and continued 
right on into Asia Minor and then south to Syria. 
For a moment my heart jumped, for I thought I had fallen 
by accident on the clue I wanted. But I never got that map 
examined. I heard footsteps in the corridor, and very 
gently I let the map roll up and turned away. When the 
door opened I was bending over the stove to get a light for 
my pipe. 
It was Gaudian to bid me join him and Stumm in his study. 
On our way there he put a kindly hand on my shoulder. 
I think he thought I was bullied by Stumm and wanted to 
tell me that he was my friend, and he had no other language 
than a pat on the back. 
The soldier was in his old position with his elbows on the 
mantel-piece and his ^formidable great jaw stuck out. 
" Listen to me," he said. " Herr Gaudian and I are 
inclined to make use of you. You may be a charlatan, in 
which case you will be in the devil of a mess and have yourself 
to thank for it. If you are a ro.gue you will Jiave little scope 
for roguery. We will see to that. If you are a fool, you will 
yourself suffer for it. But if you are a good man you will 
have a fair chance, and if you succeed we will not forget it. 
To-morrow I go home and' you will come with me and get 
your orders." 
I made shift to stand at attention and salute. 
Gaudian spoke in a pleasant voice as if he wanted to atone 
for Stumm's imperiousness. " We are men who love our 
fatherland. Herr Brandt." he said. " You are not of that 
Eatherland, but at least you hate its enemies. Therefore we 
are allies, and trust each other like allies. Our victory is 
ordained by God, and we are none of us more than His instru- 
ments." 
Stumm translated in a sentence and his voice was ciuite 
solemn. He held up his right hand and so did Gaudian, like 
a man taking an oath or a parson blessing his congregation. 
Then I realised something of the might of Germany. She 
produced good and bad, cads and gentlemen, but she could 
put a bit of the fanatic into them all. 
(To he continued.) 
L 
