The Man with the Clubfoot | Page 3

Martin, who is the perfection of tact and
diplomacy--probably on that account he failed for the
Diplomatic--chipped in with an anecdote about a man who was rating
the waiter at an adjoining table, and I held my peace. But as Red Tabs
rose to go, a little later, he held my hand for a minute in his and with
that curious look of his, said slowly and with meaning:
"When a nation is at war, officers on active service must occasionally
disappear, sometimes in their country's interest, sometimes in their
own."
He emphasised the words "on active service."
In a flash my eyes were opened. How blind I had been! Francis was in
Germany.
CHAPTER II
THE CIPHER WITH THE INVOICE
Red Tabs' sphinx-like declaration was no riddle to me. I knew at once
that Francis must be on secret service in the enemy's country and that
country Germany. My brother's extraordinary knowledge of the
Germans, their customs, life and dialects, rendered him ideally suitable

for any such perilous mission. Francis always had an extraordinary
talent for languages: he seemed to acquire them all without any mental
effort, but in German he was supreme. During the year that he and I
spent at Consistorial-Rat von Mayburg's house at Bonn, he rapidly
outdistanced me, and though, at the end of our time, I could speak
German like a German, Francis was able, in addition, to speak Bonn
and Cologne patois like a native of those ancient cities--ay and he
could drill a squad of recruits in their own language like the smartest
Leutnant ever fledged from Gross-Lichterfelde.
He never had any difficulty in passing himself off as a German. Well I
remember his delight when he was claimed as a fellow Rheinländer by
a German officer we met, one summer before the war, combining golf
with a little useful espionage at Cromer.
I don't think Francis had any ulterior motive in his study of German. He
simply found he had this imitative faculty; philology had always
interested him, so even after he had gone into the motor trade, he used
to amuse himself on business trips to Germany by acquiring new
dialects.
His German imitations were extraordinarily funny. One of his "star
turns", was a noisy sitting of the Reichstag with speeches by Prince
Bülow and August Bebel and "interruptions"; another, a patriotic
oration by an old Prussian General at a Kaiser's birthday dinner. Francis
had a marvellous faculty not only of seeming German, but even of
almost looking like a German, so absolutely was he able to slip into the
skin of the part.
Yet never in my wildest moments had I dreamt that he would try and
get into Germany in war-time, into that land where every citizen is
catalogued and pigeonholed from the cradle. But Red Tabs' oracular
utterance had made everything clear to me. Why a mission to Germany
would be the very thing that Francis would give his eyes to be allowed
to attempt! Francis with his utter disregard of danger, his love of taking
risks, his impish delight in taking a rise out of the stodgy Hun--why, if
there were Englishmen brave enough to take chances of that kind,
Francis would be the first to volunteer.

Yes, if Francis were on a mission anywhere it would be to Germany.
But what prospect had he of ever returning--with the frontiers closed
and ingress and egress practically barred even to pro-German neutrals?
Many a night in the trenches I had a mental vision of Francis, so
debonair and so fearless, facing a firing squad of Prussian privates.
From the day of the luncheon at the Bath Club to this very afternoon I
had had no further inkling of my brother's whereabouts or fate. The
authorities at home professed ignorance, as I knew, in duty bound, they
would, and I had nothing to hang any theory on to until Dicky
Allerton's letter came. Ashcroft at the F.O. fixed up my passports for
me and I lost no time in exchanging the white gulls and red cliffs of
Cornwall for the windmills and trim canals of Holland.
And now in my breast pocket lay, written on a small piece of cheap
foreign notepaper, the tidings I had come to Groningen to seek. Yet so
trivial, so nonsensical, so baffling was the message that I already felt
my trip to Holland to have been a fruitless errand.
I found Dicky fat and bursting with health in his quarters at the
internment camp. He only knew that Francis had disappeared. When I
told him of my meeting with Red Tabs at the Bath Club, of the latter's
words to me at parting and of my own conviction in the matter he
whistled, then looked grave.
He went straight to the point in his