"No, but I shall know if--I am allowed to go into Gibraltar. Yes, there is someone there. I must put myself into relations with him.
Then I shall know, and so shall you."
So here was some part of the truth, at all events. Peiffer wanted to get into Gibraltar. His disappearance from Lisbon, his reappearance in corduroys, his quarrelsome progress down the east coast, his letter to Slingsby, and his story, were all just the items of an elaborate piece of machinery invented to open the gates of that fortress to him.
Slingsby"s only movement was to take his cigarette-case lazily from his pocket.
"But why in the world," he asked, "can"t you get your man in Gibraltar to come out here and see you?"
Peiffer shook his head.
"He would not come. He has been told to expect me, and I shall give him certain tokens from which he can guess my trustworthiness. If I write to him, "Come to me," he will say "This is a trap.""
Slingsby raised another objection:
"But I shouldn"t think that you can expect the authorities to give you a safe conduct into Gibraltar upon your story."
Peiffer swept that argument aside with a contemptuous wave of his hand.
"I have a Danish pa.s.sport. See!" and he took the doc.u.ment from his breast pocket. It was complete, to his photograph.
"Yes, you can certainly come in on that," said Slingsby. He reflected for a moment before he added: "I have no power, of course. But I have some friends. I think you may reasonably reckon that you won"t be molested."
I saw Peiffer"s eyes glitter behind his gla.s.ses.
"But there"s a condition," Slingsby continued sharply. "You must not leave Gibraltar without coming personally to me and giving me twenty-four hours" notice."
Peiffer was all smiles and agreement.
"But of course. We shall have matters to talk over--terms to arrange.
I must see you."
"Exactly. Cross by the nine-fifty steamer tomorrow morning. Is that understood?"
"Yes, sir." And suddenly Peiffer stood up and actually saluted, as though he had now taken service under Slingsby"s command.
The unexpected movement almost made me vomit. Slingsby himself moved quickly away, and his face lost for a second the mask of impa.s.sivity.
He stood at the window and looked across the water to the city of Gibraltar.
Slingsby had been wounded in the early days of the war, and ever since he had been greatly troubled because he was not still in the trenches in Flanders. The casualty lists filled him with shame and discontent.
So many of his friends, the men who had trained and marched with him, were laying down their gallant lives. He should have been with them.
But during the last few days a new knowledge and inspiration had come to him. Gibraltar! A tedious, little, unlovely town of yellow houses and coal sheds, with an undesirable climate. Yes. But above it was the rock, the heart of a thousand memories and traditions which made it beautiful. He looked at it now with its steep wooded slopes, scarred by roads and catchments and the emplacements of guns. How much of England was recorded there! To how many British sailing on great ships from far dominions this huge b.u.t.tress towering to its needle-ridge was the first outpost of the homeland! And for the moment he seemed to be its particular guardian, the ear which must listen night and day lest harm come to it. Harm the Rock, and all the Empire, built with such proud and arduous labour, would stagger under the blow, from St. Kilda to distant Lyttelton. He looked across the water and imagined Gibraltar as it looked at night, its houselights twinkling like a crowded zone of stars, and its great search-beams turning the ships in the harbour and the stone of the moles into gleaming silver, and travelling far over the dark waters. No harm must come to Gibraltar.
His honour was all bound up in that. This was his service, and as he thought upon it he was filled with a cold fury against the traitor who thought it so easy to make him fail. But every hint of his anger had pa.s.sed from his face as he turned back into the room.
"If you bring me good information, why, we can do business," he said; and Peiffer went away.
I was extremely irritated by the whole interview, and could hardly wait for the door to close.
"What knocks me over," I cried, "is the impertinence of the man. Does he really think that any old yarn like the fifty thousand rifles is going to deceive you?"
Slingsby lit a cigarette.
"Peiffer"s true to type, that"s all," he answered imperturbably. "They are vain, and vanity makes them think that you will at once believe what they want you to believe. So their deceits are a little crude."
Then a smile broke over his face, and to some tune with which I was unfamiliar he sang softly: "But he"s coming to Gibraltar in the morning."
"You think he will?"
"I am sure of it."
"And," I added doubtfully--it was not my business to criticise--"on conditions he can walk out again?"
Slingsby"s smile became a broad grin.
"His business in Gibraltar, my friend, is not with me. He will not want to meet us any more; as soon as he has done what he came for he will go--or try to go. He thinks we are fools, you see."
And in the end it seemed almost as though Peiffer was justified of his belief. He crossed the next morning. He went to a hotel of the second cla.s.s; he slept in the hotel, and next morning he vanished. Suddenly there was no more Peiffer. Peiffer was not. For six hours Peiffer was not; and then at half-past five in the afternoon the telephone bell rang in an office where Slingsby was waiting. He rushed to the instrument.
"Who is it?" he cried, and I saw a wave of relief surge into his face.
Peiffer had been caught outside the gates and within a hundred yards of the neutral zone. He had strolled out in the thick of the dockyard workmen going home to Linea in Spain.
"Search him and bring him up here at once," said Slingsby, and he dropped into his chair and wiped his forehead. "Phew! Thirty seconds more and he might have snapped his fingers at us." He turned to me. "I shall want a prisoner"s escort here in half an hour."
I went about that business and returned in time to see Slingsby giving an admirable imitation of a Prussian police official.
"So, Peiffer," he cried sternly, "you broke your word. Do not deny it.
It will be useless."
The habit of a lifetime a.s.serted itself in Peiffer. He quailed before authority when authority began to bully.
"I did not know I was outside the walls," he faltered. "I was taking a walk. No one stopped me."
"So!" Slingsby snorted. "And these, Peiffer--what have you to say of these?"
There were four separate pa.s.sports which had been found in Peiffer"s pockets. He could be a Dane of Esbjerg, a Swede of Stockholm, a Norwegian of Christiania, or a Dutchman from Amsterdam. All four nationalities were open to Peiffer to select from.
"They provide you with these, no doubt, in your school at Hamburg,"
and Slingsby paused to collect his best German. "You are a prisoner of war. _Das ist genug_," he cried, and Peiffer climbed to the internment camp.
So far so good. Slingsby had annexed Peiffer, but more important than Peiffer was Peiffer"s little plot, and that he had not got. Nor did the most careful inquiry disclose what Peiffer had done and where he had been during the time when he was not. For six hours Peiffer had been loose in Gibraltar, and Slingsby began to get troubled. He tried to a.s.sume the mentality of Peiffer, and so reach his intention, but that did not help. He got out all the reports in which Peiffer"s name was mentioned and read them over again.
I saw him sit back in his chair and remain looking straight in front of him.
"Yes," he said thoughtfully, and he turned over the report to me, pointing to a pa.s.sage. It was written some months before, at Melilla, on the African side of the Mediterranean, and it ran like this:
"Peiffer frequents the low houses and cafes, where he spends a good deal of money and sometimes gets drunk. When drunk he gets very arrogant, and has been known to boast that he has been three times in Bordeaux since the war began, and, thanks to his pa.s.sports, can travel as easily as if the world were at peace. On such occasions he expresses the utmost contempt for neutral nations. I myself have heard him burst out: "Wait until we have settled with our enemies. Then we will deal properly with the neutral nations. They shall explain to us on their knees. Meanwhile," and he thumped the table, making the gla.s.ses rattle, "let them keep quiet and hold their tongues. We shall do what we like in neutral countries.""
I read the pa.s.sage.