Mr. Standfast

ons of a Cur

dn't propose to go and call openly on Blenkiron at Claridge's till I had his instructions. But there was no message-only a l

oan. Arrive there about twelve o'clock and don't go upstairs till you have met a friend. You'd better have a quick lunche

pproached the block of chambers in Leadenhall Street where dwelt the respected firm who managed my investments.

I have to see my brokers,' I said, 'read the South African papers

he station.' He bustled off, looking very smart wi

er-gardens when an assistant came up. 'The manager's compliments, sir, and he thinks there are some old works of travel upstairs that might interest you.' I followed him obediently to an upper floor lined with every kind of

after I thought I was cured I got worse than hell inside, and, as I told you, had to get the doctor-men to dig into me. After that I was playing a pretty dark game, and had to get down and out of decent society. But, holy Mike! I'm a new man. I used to do my work with

t,' I said, 'and you brough

and offered

the shop, I've owned it for five years. I've a taste for good reading, though you wouldn't think i

dogs. I've learned a lot and got all the arguments by heart, but you might plant a Biggleswick in every shire and it wouldn't help the Boche. I can see where the danger lies all the same. These fellows talked academic anarchism, but the genuine article is somewhere about and to find it you've got to look in the

t got as much sense as God gave to geese. You're

e. He has the makings of a fanatic, and he's the more dangerous because you can see his con

said. 'No

han I. I shouldn't put much on him, but I'm not precisely

alf-baked youth, just as another rich man might fancy orch

I don't know enoug

n in a hotel on the Portsmouth Road, and I put in a black month driving a taxicab in the city of London. For a while I was the accredited correspondent of the Noo York Sentinel and used to go with the rest of the bunch to the pow-wows of under-secretaries of State and

mbles a bit and jibs a bit when he thinks the Government are giving him a crooked deal, but he's gotten the patience of Job and the sand of a gamecock. And he's gotten hum

I struck it a couple of years ago when I was hunting Dumba and Albert, and I thought it was in Noo York, but it wasn't. I struck its working again at home last year and located its head office in Europe. So I tried Switzerland and Holland, but only bits of it were there. The centre of the

kened pulse, for now at las

al socialist, or anarch

alogue-bigger than Steinmeier or old Bismarck's Staubier. Thank G

s and international anarchists, and, worst of all, international finance-touts, but they had mostly been ordinary cranks and rogues, the tools of the Boche agents rather than agents themselves. However, by the middle of 1915 most of the stragglers had been gathered in. But there remained loose ends, and towards the close of last year somebody was very busy combining these ends into a net. Funny cases cropped up of t

ose some of the bolt-holes, but we couldn't put our hands near the big ones. 'By this time,' said he, 'I reckoned I was about ready to change my methods. I had been working by what the highbrows call induction, trying to argue up from the deeds to the doer. Now I tried a new lay, which was to calculate down from the doer to the deeds. They call it deduction. I opined that somewhere in this island was a gentleman whom we will call Mr X, and that, pursuing the line of business he did, he must have certain characteristics. I considered very carefully just what sort of personage he must be. I had noticed that his device was apparently the Double Bluff. That is to say, when he had two courses open to him, A and B, he pr

'It was no good. I kept barking up the wrong tree and wore

ght,' I cried, a sudden susp

elong to John S. Blenkiron. That child merely muddied t

itedly. 'Her name is

s and we won't bring in the name of a gently reared and pure-minded young girl. If we speak to her at all we call her b

,' I g

ouldn't keep out of a Sunday school. A touch of the drummer, too, to show he has no dealings with your effete arist

ed blood in him. The dirtiest apache is a Christian gentleman compared to Moxon Ivery. He's as cruel as a snake and as deep as

on't you put hi

ces in every corner of the globe and they're all as right as Morgan's balance sheet. From these it appears he's been a high-toned citizen ever since he was in short-clothes. He was raised in Norfolk, and there are people living who remember his father. He was educated at Melton School and his name's in the register. He was in business in Valparaiso, and there's enough evidence to write three volumes of his innocent life there. Then he came home with a modest competence two years before the war, and has been in the public eye ever since. He was Liberal candidate for a London constitooency and he has decorated the board of every institootion formed for the

his chair again, with one

ranged that he shall know all my record. A darned bad record it is too, for two years ago I was violent pro-British before I found salvation and was requested to leave England. When I was home last I was officially anti-war, when I wasn't stretched upon a bed of pain. Mr Moxon Ivery don't take any stock in John S. Blenkiron as a serious proposition

e same as one Wrankester, who as a leader of the Industrial Workers of the World had been mixed up in some ugly cases of sabotage in Colorado. He kept his news to himself, for he didn't want the police to interfere, but he had his own lot get into touch with Gresson and shadow hi

rtain, and I got them the night before last

s in your speech when you spoke of the Austrian socialists, and Ivery took you

thought in those remarks. Ivery, not knowing me so well, and having his head full of just that sort of argument, saw nothing unusual

enough things which he migh

t tit-bits of political noos which all

man papers. He might have had the pape

rgery it was, and Gresson, who's a kind of a scholar, was allowed to have it. He passed it on. Ivery showed it me two nights ago. Nothing l

fat from lack of exercise. I suppose you want me to catch Gresson out

uctions, I cherish these two beauties as if they were my own white-headed boys. I wouldn't for the world interfere with

aughing at my

nd out Moxon's methods, we can arrange to use them ourselves and send noos in his name which isn't quite so genooine. Every word he dispatches goes straight to the Grand High Secret General Staff, and old Hindenburg and Ludendorff put towels round their heads and cipher it out. We want to en

air that our corps commander used to

e in Glasgow, a red-hot agitator who chooses that way of doing his bit for his country. It's a darned hard way and darned dangerous. Through him you'll get in touch with Gresson, and you'll keep alongside that bright citizen. Find out what he is doing, and get a chance of following him. He must never suspect you, and for that purpose you must be very near the edge of the law yourself. You go up there as an unabashed pacifist a

st kind of poison. The Boche is blowing up for a big campaign in the field, and a big effort to shake the nerve and confuse the judgement of our civilians.

into the carriage he seized my Punch and kept laughing and calling my attention to the pictures. As I looked at him, I thought that he made a perfect picture of the ci

ever much liked him, so I had to keep on the same manner. He was as merry as a grig, full of chat and very friendly and amusing. I remember he picked up the book I had brought off that morning

himself into a state of theoretical fury over abuses he has never encountered

I had learned a lot in Biggleswick, but I wanted to see industrial l

That's the right way to set about it,' he

arrow, but decided to try Glasgow, sinc

d deal of senseless bellicosity among the workmen, for they've got parrot-cries about the war as they used to have parrot-cries a

t even enough for him to want to make me a tool, and I was setting out to try to make a tool of him. It sounded a forlorn enterprise. And all the while I was puzzled with a persistent sense o

irls, and after the Biggleswick fashion was bareheaded, so that the sun glinted from her hair. Ivery swept his hat

on. 'Not without a touch of seriousness, to

msons, that the said child was likely to prove a sufficiently