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Ask Sir Walter about him, Dick. He says he had twice the brains of Kuhlmann, and better manners than the Austrian fellow he used to yarn about ... Well, one day there came an almighty court scandal, and the bottom dropped out of the Graf's World. It was a pretty beastly story, and I don't gather that Schwabing was as deep in it as some others.
One was a police spy in the Tzar's Government and is now a red-hot revolutionary in the Caucasus. And the biggest, of course, is Moxon Ivery, who in happier times was the Graf von Schwabing. There aren't above a hundred people in the world know of their existence, and these hundred call them the Wild Birds. 'Do they work together? I asked. 'Yes.
I guess a man who had as many personalities as the Graf was amusing after-dinner company. Specially among the Germans, who in my experience don't excel in the lighter vein. Anyway, he was William's white-headed boy, and there wasn't a mother with a daughter who wasn't out gunning for Otto von Schwabing. He was about as popular in London and Noo York and in Paris, too.
We watched him spin round like a teetotum and kenned that he was bye with it. 'You are sure he was killed? I asked. 'Yes, sirr. When we counter-attacked we fund his body. There is a grave close by the farm of Gavrelle, and a wooden cross at its head bears the name of the Graf von Schwabing and the date of his death. The Germans took Gavrelle a little later.
But the trouble was that those others had to be shielded at all costs, and Schwabing was made the scapegoat. His name came out in the papers and he had to go . 'What was the case called? I asked. Blenkiron mentioned a name, and I knew why the word Schwabiog was familiar. I had read the story long ago in Rhodesia. 'It was some smash, Blenkiron went on.
On Friday night Gisela left her apartment in the Königinstrasse, where she had slept for a few hours after a visit to the principal cities of the Empire, and walked out to Schwabing, that picturesque "village" that looked like a bit of the Alps transferred to the edge of Munich.
Together, walking with ferocious care down the middle of the street, they had swayed through Schwabing seeking an open cafe. Cafe Benz was closed, but further up there was a little place still lighted, inhabited by one waiter, innumerable chairs and tables piled on each other for the night, and a row of chess-boards, in front of which sat a little bald, bearded man in dress-clothes, waiting.
'You're at the bar now, Graf von Schwabing. For years you've done your best against the decencies of life. You have deserved well of your country, I don't doubt it. But what has your country deserved of the world? One day soon Germany has to do some heavy paying, and you are the first instalment. 'I appeal to the Swiss law.
I was looking at von Schwabing, the exile, who had done more for Germany than any army commander ... Mary's words came back to me 'the most dangerous man in the world' ... I was not afraid, or broken-hearted at failure, or angry not yet, for I was too dazed and awestruck. I looked at him as one might look at some cataclysm of nature which had destroyed a continent. The face was smiling.
And what a bag of vermin to lay out on the lawn! He flung back his head and laughed. 'Mr Ivery Blenkiron began, but was cut short. 'Drop that name. All that is past, thank God! I am the Graf von Schwabing, an officer of the Imperial Guard. I am not the least of the weapons that Germany has used to break her enemies. 'You don't say, drawled Blenkiron, still fiddling with his Patience cards.
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