Mr. Standfast | Page 2

old chap was one of the cross-examining type, and after he had
borrowed my matches he set to work to find out all about me. He was a
tremendous fire-eater, and a bit of a pessimist about our slow progress
in the west. I told him I came from South Africa and was a mining
engineer.
'Been fighting with Botha?' he asked.
'No,' I said. 'I'm not the fighting kind.'
The second lieutenant screwed up his nose.
'Is there no conscription in South Africa?'
'Thank God there isn't,' I said, and the old fellow begged permission to
tell me a lot of unpalatable things. I knew his kind and didn't give much
for it. He was the sort who, if he had been under fifty, would have
crawled on his belly to his tribunal to get exempted, but being over age
was able to pose as a patriot. But I didn't like the second lieutenant's
grin, for he seemed a good class of lad. I looked steadily out of the
window for the rest of the way, and wasn't sorry when I got to my
station.
I had had the queerest interview with Bullivant and Macgillivray. They
asked me first if I was willing to serve again in the old game, and I said
I was. I felt as bitter as sin, for I had got fixed in the military groove,
and had made good there. Here was I--a brigadier and still under forty,
and with another year of the war there was no saying where I might end.
I had started out without any ambition, only a great wish to see the
business finished. But now I had acquired a professional interest in the
thing, I had a nailing good brigade, and I had got the hang of our new
kind of war as well as any fellow from Sandhurst and Camberley. They

were asking me to scrap all I had learned and start again in a new job. I
had to agree, for discipline's discipline, but I could have knocked their
heads together in my vexation.
What was worse they wouldn't, or couldn't, tell me anything about what
they wanted me for. It was the old game of running me in blinkers.
They asked me to take it on trust and put myself unreservedly in their
hands. I would get my instructions later, they said.
I asked if it was important.
Bullivant narrowed his eyes. 'If it weren't, do you suppose we could
have wrung an active brigadier out of the War Office? As it was, it was
like drawing teeth.'
'Is it risky?' was my next question.
'In the long run--damnably,' was the answer.
'And you can't tell me anything more?'
'Nothing as yet. You'll get your instructions soon enough. You know
both of us, Hannay, and you know we wouldn't waste the time of a
good man on folly. We are going to ask you for something which will
make a big call on your patriotism. It will be a difficult and arduous
task, and it may be a very grim one before you get to the end of it, but
we believe you can do it, and that no one else can... You know us pretty
well. Will you let us judge for you?'
I looked at Bullivant's shrewd, kind old face and Macgillivray's steady
eyes. These men were my friends and wouldn't play with Me.
'All right,' I said. 'I'm willing. What's the first step?'
'Get out of uniform and forget you ever were a soldier. Change your
name. Your old one, Cornelis Brandt, will do, but you'd better spell it
"Brand" this time. Remember that you are an engineer just back from
South Africa, and that you don't care a rush about the war. You can't

understand what all the fools are fighting about, and you think we
might have peace at once by a little friendly business talk. You needn't
be pro-German--if you like you can be rather severe on the Hun. But
you must be in deadly earnest about a speedy peace.'
I expect the corners of my mouth fell, for Bullivant burst out laughing.
'Hang it all, man, it's not so difficult. I feel sometimes inclined to argue
that way myself, when my dinner doesn't agree with me. It's not so hard
as to wander round the Fatherland abusing Britain, which was your last
job.'
'I'm ready,' I said. 'But I want to do one errand on my own first. I must
see a fellow in my brigade who is in a shell-shock hospital in the
Cotswolds. Isham's the name of the place.'
The two men exchanged glances. 'This looks like fate,' said Bullivant.
'By all means go to Isham. The place where your work begins is only a
couple of miles