“Cheer up!” said Blenkiron soothingly. “We’ll find some prettier way than that.”
“There is no way,” he said; “no way but death. We’re done for, all of us. Hussin got you out of Stumm’s clutches, but you’re in danger every moment. At the best you have three days, and then you, too, will be dead.”
I had no words to reply. This change in the bold and unshakeable Sandy took my breath away.
“She made me her accomplice,” he went on. “I should have killed her on the graves of those innocent men. But instead I did all she asked and joined in her game ... She was very candid, you know ... She cares no more than Enver for the faith of Islam. She can laugh at it. But she has her own dreams, and they consume her as a saint is consumed by his devotion. She has told me them, and if the day in the garden was hell, the days since have been the innermost fires of Tophet. I think—it is horrible to say it—that she has got some kind of crazy liking for me. When we have reclaimed the East I am to be by her side when she rides on her milk-white horse into Jerusalem ... And there have been moments—only moments, I swear to God—when I have been fired myself by her madness ...”
Sandy’s figure seemed to shrink and his voice grew shrill and wild. It was too much for Blenkiron. He indulged in a torrent of blasphemy such as I believe had never before passed his lips.
“I’m blessed if I’ll listen to this God-darned stuff. It isn’t delicate. You get busy, Major, and pump some sense into your afflicted friend.”
I was beginning to see what had happened. Sandy was a man of genius—as much as anybody I ever struck—but he had the defects of such high-strung, fanciful souls. He would take more than mortal risks, and you couldn’t scare him by any ordinary terror. But let his old conscience get cross-eyed, let him find himself in some situation which in his eyes involved his honour, and he might go stark crazy. The woman, who roused in me and Blenkiron only hatred, could catch his imagination and stir in him—for the moment only—an unwilling response. And then came bitter and morbid repentance, and the last desperation.
It was no time to mince matters. “Sandy, you old fool,” I cried, “be thankful you have friends to keep you from playing the fool. You saved my life at Loos, and I’m jolly well going to get you through this show. I’m bossing the outfit now, and for all your confounded prophetic manners, you’ve got to take your orders from me. You aren’t going to reveal yourself to your people, and still less are you going to cut your throat. Greenmantle will avenge the murder of his ministers, and make that bedlamite woman sorry she was born. We’re going to get clear away, and inside of a week we’ll be having tea with the Grand Duke Nicholas.”
I wasn’t bluffing. Puzzled as I was about ways and means I had still the blind belief that we should win out. And as I spoke two legs dangled through the trap and a dusty and blinking Peter descended in our midst.
I took the maps from him and spread them on the table.