‘You leave that to me,’ I said; ‘I’ll explain it all to you before we get there. We haven’t got much of a spoor, but we’ll cast about, and with luck will pick it up. I’ve seen you do it often enough when we hunted kudu on the Kafue.’
Peter nodded. ‘Do we sit still in a German town?’ he asked anxiously. ‘I shouldn’t like that, Cornelis.’
‘We move gently eastward to Constantinople,’ I said.
Peter grinned. ‘We should cover a lot of new country. You can reckon on me, friend Cornelis. I’ve always had a hankering to see Europe.’
He rose to his feet and stretched his long arms.
‘We’d better begin at once. God, I wonder what’s happened to old Solly Maritz, with his bottle face? Yon was a fine battle at the drift when I was sitting up to my neck in the Orange praying that Brits’ lads would take my head for a stone.’
Peter was as thorough a mountebank, when he got started, as Blenkiron himself. All the way back to Lisbon he yarned about Maritz and his adventures in German South West till I half believed they were true. He made a very good story of our doings, and by his constant harping on it I pretty soon got it into my memory. That was always Peter’s way. He said if you were going to play a part, you must think yourself into it, convince yourself that you were it, till you really were it and didn’t act but behaved naturally. The two men who had started that morning from the hotel door had been bogus enough, but the two men that returned were genuine desperadoes itching to get a shot at England.
We spent the evening piling up evidence in our favour. Some kind of republic had been started in Portugal, and ordinarily the cafes would have been full of politicians, but the war had quieted all these local squabbles, and the talk was of nothing but what was doing in France and Russia. The place we went to was a big, well-lighted show on a main street, and there were a lot of sharp-eyed fellows wandering about that I guessed were spies and police agents. I knew that Britain was the one country that doesn’t bother about this kind of game, and that it would be safe enough to let ourselves go.
I talked Portuguese fairly well, and Peter spoke it like a Lourenco Marques bar-keeper, with a lot of Shangaan words to fill up. He started on curacao, which I reckoned was a new drink to him, and presently his tongue ran freely. Several neighbours pricked up their ears, and soon we had a small crowd round our table.
We talked to each other of Maritz and our doings. It didn’t seem to be a popular subject in that cafe. One big blue-black fellow said that Maritz was a dirty swine who would soon be hanged. Peter quickly caught his knife-wrist with one hand and his throat with the other, and demanded an apology. He got it. The Lisbon _boulevardiers have not lost any lions.
After that there was a bit of a squash in our corner. Those near to us were very quiet and polite, but the outer fringe made remarks. When Peter said that if Portugal, which he admitted he loved, was going to stick to England she was backing the wrong horse, there was a murmur of disapproval. One decent-looking old fellow, who had the air of a ship’s captain, flushed all over his honest face, and stood up looking straight at Peter. I saw that we had struck an Englishman, and mentioned it to Peter in Dutch.
Peter played his part perfectly. He suddenly shut up, and, with furtive looks around him, began to jabber to me in a low voice. He was the very picture of the old stage conspirator.
The old fellow stood staring at us. ‘I don’t very well understand this damned lingo,’ he said; ‘but if so be you dirty Dutchmen are sayin’ anything against England, I’ll ask you to repeat it. And if so be as you repeats it I’ll take either of you on and knock the face off him.’
He was a chap after my own heart, but I had to keep the game up. I said in Dutch to Peter that we mustn’t get brawling in a public house. ‘Remember the big thing,’ I said darkly. Peter nodded, and the old fellow, after staring at us for a bit, spat scornfully, and walked out.
‘The time is coming when the Englander will sing small,’ I observed to the crowd. We stood drinks to one or two, and then swaggered into the street. At the door a hand touched my arm, and, looking down, I saw a little scrap of a man in a fur coat.
‘Will the gentlemen walk a step with me and drink a glass of beer?’ he said in very stiff Dutch. ‘Who the devil are you?’ I asked.
‘Gott strafe _England!’ was his answer, and, turning back the lapel of his coat, he showed some kind of ribbon in his buttonhole.
‘Amen,’ said Peter. ‘Lead on, friend. We don’t mind if we do.’
He led us to a back street and then up two pairs of stairs to a very snug little flat. The place was filled with fine red lacquer, and I guessed that art-dealing was his nominal business. Portugal, since the republic broke up the convents and sold up the big royalist grandees, was full of bargains in the lacquer and curio line.
He filled us two long tankards of very good Munich beer.
‘_Prosit,’ he said, raising his glass. ‘You are from South Africa. What make you in Europe?’
We both looked sullen and secretive.
‘That’s our own business,’ I answered. ‘You don’t expect to buy our confidence with a glass of beer.’
‘So?’ he said. ‘Then I will put it differently. From your speech in the cafe I judge you do not love the English.’
Peter said something about stamping on their grandmothers, a Kaffir phrase which sounded gruesome in Dutch.
The man laughed. ‘That is all I want to know. You are on the German side?’
‘That remains to be seen,’ I said. ‘If they treat me fair I’ll fight for them, or for anybody else that makes war on England. England has stolen my country and corrupted my people and made me an exile. We Afrikanders do not forget. We may be slow but we win in the end. We two are men worth a great price. Germany fights England in East Africa. We know the natives as no Englishmen can ever know them. They are too soft and easy and the Kaffirs laugh at them. But we can handle the blacks so that they will fight like devils for fear of us. What is the reward, little man, for our services? I will tell you. There will be no reward. We ask none. We fight for hate of England.’
Peter grunted a deep approval.
‘That is good talk,’ said our entertainer, and his close-set eyes flashed. ‘There is room in Germany for such men as you. Where are you going now, I beg to know.’
‘To Holland,’ I said. ‘Then maybe we will go to Germany. We are tired with travel and may rest a bit. This war will last long and our chance will come.’
‘But you may miss your market,’ he said significantly. ‘A ship sails tomorrow for Rotterdam. If you take my advice, you will go with her.’
This was what I wanted, for if we stayed in Lisbon some real soldier of Maritz might drop in any day and blow the gaff.
‘I recommend you to sail in the _Machado,’ he repeated. ‘There is work for you in Germany - oh yes, much work; but if you delay the chance may pass. I will arrange your journey. It is my business to help the allies of my fatherland.’
He wrote down our names and an epitome of our doings contributed by Peter, who required two mugs of beer to help him through. He was a Bavarian, it seemed, and we drank to the health of Prince Rupprecht, the same blighter I was trying to do in at Loos. That was an irony which Peter unfortunately could not appreciate. If he could he would have enjoyed it.