XI
THE INVISIBLE DIPLOMAT APPEARS
37. This entry is mystifying:
"Last night I waited until there was not a sound overhead…. I knew it would be taking chances—but I HAD TO GET WATER…. We could no longer survive on MUD!… I began pushing against the planking overhead to see if there was anywhere an opening, but every plank I pressed against seemed as solid as a stone sidewalk…. Finally I began thumping with my clenched fist … and this brought on the fracas…. I heard a heavy pair of feet bounding on the floor directly above my head…. Then there was a scraping and a sound like the tearing up of carpets…. Presently I heard an iron bolt crack back and the floor above my head began rising slowly until I found myself looking into the muzzle of a Mauser held in the clenched hands of a tall square-faced man with a jaw like a prize fighter….
"… Another pair of hands reached down and caught me by the collar and I was yanked like a squirming spaniel out of my hole into a large oblong room that was only slightly lighted by a blue student lamp upon a small roll-top desk…. Against the wall was a large steel engraving of King George of England, and I could see the Union Jack displayed upon another wall…. There were papers and documents and army tents in piles here and there round the room…. BUT THE IMPRESSION THAT FLASHED UPON ME was not at all reassuring for a man who had made his way into SUCH surroundings directly from the other underground corridor in Berlin!…"
38. Then this entry follows:
"From that very hour I AM STRONGLY FOR THE BRITISH…. I will not attempt to describe that MEAL…. It was all a King in Exile or any of his suite could ask for; and the silent men who prepared it will always be remembered for their discretion and manly hospitality…. Neither of them appeared to KNOW me NOR ANY OF OUR PARTY…. But those gallant fellows are adepts at dissimulation…. I'm certain that the tall, slender and soldierly bearing officer will remember the day we had our STRAWBERRIES at Carlton Terrace, and the slender, willowy Duchess who forgot her fan until he picked it up and brought it to her AT MY TABLE, where she paused for a moment to say to me, 'MY FATHER IS IN LONDON AND WISHES TO SEE YOU BADLY.'… I am certain he remembers what I told her about the Gordons and the Devons in that slaughter at the Somme,—when so few of those brave lads returned!… If we ever meet again I shall thank him for the robes and provisions and motor trucks he furnished to transport us safely rolled up in army tents for many rough miles across the country in the direction of CHANYI LAKE…."
39. We find this entry of the diarist next:
"I have never beheld a more beautiful landscape than the scene before me…. I am writing this on the banks of Altai Lake…. The balsam from the cone-like firs along the gorges surcharges the air with an intoxicating flavor and reflect their inverted gracefulness in the calm waters of the lake…. The mountains sloping up from either side are delineated in the mirroring surface and form an archway for the snow-capped and broken pinnacle that towers above the others like a sentinel brooding in his frosty and eternal isolation…. Far off in the distance I can see the black and white walls of the KATUN GLACIER and know that, throughout this region, gold and silver, as well as lead and copper, most certainly abound…. In our unending tramp today I have discovered many evidences of the presence of zinc and nickel and other minerals lying around…. My 'prisoner' tells me that there are mines already working in the upper part of the Talovsky River and that the copper runs very high in the vicinity of Chudak…. Alice wrote to Princess G—— today at T——…. I am NOT much impressed nor FAVORABLY by the attitude of these natives in the hills…. They seem to be a mongrel mixture of Tartar and Mongolian who are always ready, like the huge ungainly bears we have encountered in our pilgrimage, to grapple and devour one for the mere pleasure of seeing blood!… Maria seems quite interested in these notes,—today she insisted on giving me her impressions of how a NOVEL should be written…. She says that to make a story interesting it should be all movement from the opening line to the final wedding bells…. When I told her that I was writing HISTORY she pouted prettily and remarked: 'I never think of history without wondering WHO subsidized the writer of the misleading fairy tale.'
"… This girl has lived close enough to the source of history to know what PROPAGANDA is…. Still, I like her uncomplaining buoyancy of spirits in the trial we are going through…. We are headed SOUTH toward Kuria and Khotan, where arrangements have been made to receive us by some people who know our secret and will respect the rights of ASYLUM in a land where oblivion may mean liberty and love!…"