30 Suspense and Thriller Masterpieces. Гилберт Кит Честертон

fingers were digging into my arm and his face was against my shoulder. And then his excitement sobered into an awe which choked his speech, as he stammered—'It's old—'

      But I did not need him to tell me the name, for I had divined it when I first saw the new plane drop from the clouds. I had that queer sense that comes sometimes to a man that a friend is present when he cannot see him. Somewhere up in the void two heroes were fighting their last battle—and one of them had a crippled leg.

      I had never any doubt about the result, though Archie told me later that he went crazy with suspense. Lensch was not aware of his opponent till he was almost upon him, and I wonder if by any freak of instinct he recognized his greatest antagonist. He never fired a shot, nor did Peter … I saw the German twist and side-slip as if to baffle the fate descending upon him. I saw Peter veer over vertically and I knew that the end had come. He was there to make certain of victory and he took the only way. The machines closed, there was a crash which I felt though I could not hear it, and next second both were hurtling down, over and over, to the earth.

      They fell in the river just short of the enemy lines, but I did not see them, for my eyes were blinded and I was on my knees.

      * * * * *

      After that it was all a dream. I found myself being embraced by a French General of Division, and saw the first companies of the cheerful bluecoats whom I had longed for. With them came the rain, and it was under a weeping April sky that early in the night I marched what was left of my division away from the battle-field. The enemy guns were starting to speak behind us, but I did not heed them. I knew that now there were warders at the gate, and I believed that by the grace of God that gate was barred for ever.

      * * * * *

      They took Peter from the wreckage with scarcely a scar except his twisted leg. Death had smoothed out some of the age in him, and left his face much as I remembered it long ago in the Mashonaland hills. In his pocket was his old battered Pilgrim's Progress. It lies before me as I write, and beside it—for I was his only legatee—the little case which came to him weeks later, containing the highest honour that can be bestowed upon a soldier of Britain.

      It was from the Pilgrim's Progress that I read next morning, when in the lee of an apple-orchard Mary and Blenkiron and I stood in the soft spring rain beside his grave. And what I read was the tale in the end not of Mr Standfast, whom he had singled out for his counterpart, but of Mr Valiant-for-Truth whom he had not hoped to emulate. I set down the words as a salute and a farewell:

      Then said he, 'I am going to my Father's; and though with great difficulty I am got hither, yet now I do not repent me of all the trouble I have been at to arrive where I am. My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that can get it. My marks and scars I carry with me, to be a witness for me that I have fought His battles who now will be my rewarder.'

      So he passed over, and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.

      Table of Contents

       Greenmantle

       John Buchan

       Chapter 1 Chapter One: A Mission is Proposed

       Chapter 2 The Gathering of the Missionaries

       Chapter 3 Peter Pienaar

       Chapter 4 Adventures of Two Dutchmen on the Loose

       Chapter 5 Further Adventures of the Same

       Chapter 6 The Indiscretions of the Same

       Chapter 7 Christmastide

       Chapter 8 The Essen Barges

       Chapter 9 The Return of the Straggler

       Chapter 10 The Garden-House of Suliman the Red

       Chapter 11 The Companions of the Rosy Hours

       Chapter 12 Four Missionaries See Light in their Mission

       Chapter 13 I Move in Good Society

       Chapter 14 The Lady of the Mantilla

       Chapter 15 An Embarrassed Toilet

       Chapter 16 The Battered Caravanserai

       Chapter 17 Trouble by The Waters of Babylon

       Chapter 18 Sparrows on the Housetops

       Chapter 19 Greenmantle

       Chapter 20 Peter Pienaar Goes to the Wars

       Chapter 21 The Little Hill

       Chapter 22 The Guns of the North

      Greenmantle

      John Buchan

       Published: 1916 Categorie(s): Fiction, Thrillers

      To

      Caroline Grosvenor

      During the past year, in the intervals of an active life, I have amused myself with constructing this tale. It has been scribbled in every kind of odd place and moment - in England and abroad, during long journeys, in half-hours between graver tasks; and it bears, I fear, the mark of its gipsy begetting. But it has amused me to write, and I shall be well repaid if it amuses you - and a few others - to read.

      Let no man or woman call its events improbable. The war has driven that word from our vocabulary, and melodrama has become the prosiest realism. Things unimagined before happen daily to our friends by sea and land. The one chance in a thousand is habitually taken, and as often as not succeeds. Coincidence, like some new Briareus, stretches a hundred long arms hourly across the earth. Some day, when the full history is written - sober history with ample documents - the poor romancer will give up business and fall to reading Miss Austen in a hermitage.

      The characters of the tale, if you think hard, you will recall. Sandy you know well. That great spirit was last heard of at Basra, where he occupies the post that once was Harry Bullivant's. Richard Hannay is where he longed to be, commanding his battalion on the ugliest bit of front in the West. Mr John S. Blenkiron, full of honour and wholly cured of dyspepsia, has returned to the States, after vainly endeavouring to take Peter with him. As for Peter, he has attained the height of his ambition.