Same
7. Christmas Eve
8. The Essen Barges
9. The Return of the Straggler
10. The Garden-House of Suliman the Red
11. The Companions of the Rosy Hours
12. Four Missionaries See Light in Their Mission
13. I Move in Good Society
14. The Lady of the Mantilla
15. An Embarrassed Toilet
16. The Battered Caravanserai
17. Trouble By the Waters of Babylon
18. Sparrows on the Housetops
19. Greenmantle
20. Peter Pienaar Goes to the Wars
21. The Little Hill
22. The Guns of the North

CHAPTER ONE

A Mission is Proposed

I had just finished breakfast and was filling my pipe when I got
Bullivant's telegram. It was at Furling, the big country house in
Hampshire where I had come to convalesce after Loos, and Sandy, who was
in the same case, was hunting for the marmalade. I flung him the
flimsy with the blue strip pasted down on it, and he whistled.

'Hullo, Dick, you've got the battalion. Or maybe it's a staff billet.
You'll be a blighted brass-hat, coming it heavy over the hard-working
regimental officer. And to think of the language you've wasted on
brass-hats in your time!'

I sat and thought for a bit, for the name 'Bullivant' carried me back
eighteen months to the hot summer before the war. I had not seen the
man since, though I had read about him in the papers. For more than a
year I had been a busy battalion officer, with no other thought than to
hammer a lot of raw stuff into good soldiers. I had succeeded pretty
well, and there was no prouder man on earth than Richard Hannay when he
took his Lennox Highlanders over the parapets on that glorious and
bloody 25th day of September. Loos was no picnic, and we had had some
ugly bits of scrapping before that, but the worst bit of the campaign I
had seen was a tea-party to the show I had been in with Bullivant
before the war started. [Major Hannay's narrative of this affair has
been published under the title of _The Thirty-nine Steps_.]

The sight of his name on a telegram form seemed to change all my
outlook on life. I had been hoping for the command of the battalion,
and looking forward to being in at the finish with Brother Boche. But
this message jerked my thoughts on to a new road. There might be other
things in the war than straightforward fighting. Why on earth should
the Foreign Office want to see an obscure Major of the New Army, and
want to see him in double-quick time?

'I'm going up to town by the ten trai