But she simply replied, "Ça ne fait rien. "
She. "MY DEAR BOY, WHAT CAN ONE DO, EXCEPT JUST CARRY ON?"
OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
Mr. Standfast (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) is the third book of the super-spy trilogy that Colonel JOHN BUCHAN has given us, as a kind of supplement to his more official record of the War. We have the same hero, Hannay, as in Greenmantle and The Thirty-Nine Steps, the same group of associates, reinforced for purposes of love-interest by a young and attractive female, and the same arch-Hun, now identified as the Graf von Schwabing. Also the affair pursues much the same hide-and-seek course that gave the former adventures their deserved popularity. I entirely decline even to sketch the manifold vicissitudes of Hannay (now a General), tracking and being tracked, captive and captor, ranging the habitable and non-habitable globe, always (with a fine disregard for the requirements of book-making) convinced that the next chapter will be the last. Three criticisms I cannot avoid. To begin with, Colonel BUCHAN is really becoming too lavish with his coincidences. Secondly, I found it odd that the spy-hunters, after employing so many ruses and so much camouflage that one might say they almost refused to recognise their own reflections in a mirror, should proceed to the opposite extreme and arrange all their plans, with engaging frankness, over the telephone. Finally, the tale, though full of admirable disconnected moments, does not carry one along sufficiently quickly. General Hannay was, I thought, too apt to interpolate lengthy reminiscences of active service, just when I wanted to get on with the matter in hand. Pace in such affairs is everything, and my complaint is that, though the hunt had yielded some capital sport, its end found me with my pulse rather disappointingly calm.