Graham Greene (17 page)

The next day after this, three of the brigands we had sent with Bonaparte returned to Athens, having been compelled to leave Larissa by the local police. I asked them what Bonaparte had been doing all this while, and they told us that they had not caught a glimpse of him. I then telegraphed again urgently to Bonaparte under his assumed name, but received no reply. We could only conclude that he had been arrested and wondered what was the prudent way to get him released. It happened that George Leith came in while we were discussing the best steps to take, and he at once volunteered to go up to Larissa himself, and find out what was happening there. This was a capital solution of the problem, for as a member of the British Naval Mission with the rank of Captain in the Greek Navy he was not likely to be troubled by the attentions of the police. George Leith went first to the post office and found that the two telegrams addressed there to Bonaparte under his assumed name had not been called for. He then went to the chief hotel, and while he was in the lavatory washing his hands he heard from inside one of the cabinets a low voice hoarse with apprehension calling to him:

“Captain Georgie, Captain Georgie! It's me, it's Bonaparte. Can you get me out of here, Captain Georgie? I've had to sit in here for all the last two days, Captain Georgie.”

“Well, I've got a bottle of stoppers with me, so come out,” said George Leith, “and I'll dose you.”

“It's not my stomach, Captain Georgie,” Bonaparte breathed from the other side of the door. “It's the police. As soon as I got out of the train at Larissa they started following me around. Then I forgot the name Captain Z gave me, and I didn't dare ask at the post office if there was any telegrams in case they run
me in, and oh, my gawd, Captain Georgie, I'm glad you've come. I've had a cruel time, sitting in here for two days and not daring to put my nose outside for fear of being arrested by these Greeks.”

Presently, under encouragement from George Leith, Bonaparte emerged. Having been reminded of his name, he amassed enough courage to go and fetch his telegrams, after which he got into touch with the two other brigands. Finding that the mail would not leave Larissa until two mornings later he returned with George Leith to Athens and reported to me.

“A nice mess you've made of the first important mission I give you,” I said angrily.

Bonaparte held up one large fleshy paw and with the other mopped his forehead with a musk-scented handkerchief.

“Skipper, there was too many for me. Larissa was stinking with police.”

“You're nothing but a damned coward,” I told him.

“Skipper, that don't come nice from you. Bonaparte is afraid of nothing and nobody within reason. I'm only a sergeant, but I know my duty. Don't say things you'll regret afterwards, Skipper. What could I do locked up for two days in a lavatory? They kept coming and trying the door until I shouted out, ‘The next B—— who tries this B——door I'll plug him.' And so I would have, Captain Z. I had a pistol on the seat each side of me. I meant to die fighting. That's Bonaparte. Game to the last, Skipper.”

“You great buffoon, you were so frightened that you even forgot the name I'd given you.”

“Now, Skipper, that's not a fair thing to say. Nobody can answer for his memory all the time, and that's how I first come into the lavatory. I wanted somewhere I could think quiet what name you give me. I've done the best I could, Skipper.”

COMPTON MACKENZIE

rom behind a screen of foliage a naked woman had appeared, riding on a white horse, its strappings studded with turquoises—a new dancer whose name was already known among the studio and drawing-room cliques: Mata Hari.

She was a dancer who did not dance much, yet at Emma Calvé's, before the portable altar that she used as a background, supported by a little group of coloured attendants and musicians and framed in the pillars of a vast, white hall, she had been sufficiently snake-like and enigmatic to produce a good effect. The people who fell into such dithyrambic raptures and wrote so enthusiastically of Mata Hari's person and talents must be wondering now what collective delusion possessed them. Her dancing and the naïve legends surrounding her were of no better quality than the ordinary clap-trap of the current ‘Indian turns' in the music hall. The only pleasant certainties on which her drawing-room audiences could count were a slender waist below breasts that she prudently kept hidden, a fine, supple moving back, muscular loins, long thighs and slim knees. Her nose and mouth, which were both thick, and the rather oily brilliance of her eyes did nothing to alter—on the contrary—our established notions of the Oriental. It should be said that the finale of her dance, the moment when Mata Hari, freed of her last girdle, fell forward modestly upon her belly, carried the male—and a good proportion of the female—spectators to the extreme limit of decent attention.

In the May sunshine, at Neuilly, despite the turquoises, the dropping black mane of hair, the tinsel diadem and especially
the long thigh against the white flanks of her Arab horse, the colour of her skin was disconcerting, no longer brown and luscious as it had been by artificial light but a dubious, uneven purple. Having finished her equestrian parade, she alighted and wrapped herself in a sari. She bowed, talked, was faintly disappointing. It was much worse on the day Miss Barney invited her as an ordinary guest to a second garden-party.

“Madame Colette Willy?”

A loud, strongly-stressed voice, calling me by my fancy name, made me turn round. I found a lady in a black and white check suit, her breasts held high by a boned cuirass of stays, a veil with velvet chenille dots upon her nose, holding out a hand tightly gloved in white glacé kid stitched with black. I also remember a frilled shirt with a stiff collar and a pair of shoes of a bright egg colour. I remember my amazement.

The lady laughed heartily, displaying a set of strong, white teeth, gave me her name, wrung my hand, expressed the hope that we might meet again and did not move a muscle as the voice of Lady W—— rose beside us, saying in clear, plain words:

“She an Oriental? Don't be silly! Hamburg or Rotterdam, or possibly Berlin.”

COLETTE

UNEXPECTED ENCOUNTERS

Thrust in one pew
By chance that day …

THOMAS HARDY

n the evening of September 2 [1915], the battalion moved cautiously from Mailly-Maillet by cross-country tracks, through pretty Englebelmer, with ghostly Angelus on the green and dewy light, over the downs to Mesnil, and assembled in the
Hamel trenches to attack the Beaucourt ridge next morning. The night all round was drowsily quiet. I stood at the junction of four forward trenches, directing the several companies into them as had been planned.… The cold disturbing air and the scent of the river mist marked the approach of the morning. I got my fellow-officer to move his men nearer to my main supply of bombs, which were ready in canvas buckets; and time slipped by, until scarcely five preliminary minutes remained … As for me, I took off my equipment and began to set out the bomb buckets in a side trench so that the carriers could at the right moment pick them up two at a time; and while I was doing this, and the east began to unveil, a stranger in a soft cap and a trench coat approached, and asked me the way to the German lines. This visitor was white-faced as a ghost, and I liked neither his soft cap nor the mackintosh nor the right hand concealed under his coat. I, too, felt myself grow pale, and I thought it as well to show him the communication trench, Devial Alley, then deserted; he scanned me, and quickly went on. Who he was, I have never explained to myself; but in two minutes the barrage opened, and his chances of doing us harm (I thought he must be a spy) were all gone.

EDMUND BLUNDEN

he morning was one of those damp cold ones of mid-February; the frost had given and everyone expected a good run, for the scent would be excellent. Riding side by side with my fair companion, we chatted and laughed as we went along, until, on
reaching the cover, we drew up with the others and halted while hounds went in.

The first cover was, however, drawn blank, but from the second a fox went away straight for Elton, and soon the hounds were in full cry after him and we followed at a gallop. After a couple of miles more than half the field were left behind, still we kept on, until of a sudden, and without effort, my companion took a high hedge and was cutting across the pastures ere I knew that she had left the road. That she was a straight rider I at once saw, and I must confess that I preferred the gate to the hedge and ditch which she had taken so easily.

Half an hour later the kill took place near Haddon Hall, and of the half-dozen in at the death Beatrice Graham was one.

When I rode up, five minutes afterwards, she smiled at me. Her face was a trifle flushed by hard riding, yet her hair was in no way awry, and she declared that she had thoroughly enjoyed that tearing gallop.

Just, however, as we sat watching Barnard cut off the brush, a tall, rather good-looking man rode up, having apparently been left just as I had. As he approached I noticed that he gave my pretty friend a strange look, almost as of warning, while she on her part, refrained from acknowledging him. It was as though he had made her some secret sign which she had understood.

But there was a further fact that puzzled me greatly.

I had recognised in that well-turned-out hunting man someone whom I had had distinct occasion to recollect. At first I failed to recall the man's identity, but when I did, a few moments later, I sat regarding his retreating figure like one in a dream. The horseman who rode with such military bearing was none other than the renowned spy, one of the cleverest secret agents in the world, Otto Krempelstein, Chief of the German Secret Service.