‘Die Stubenvogel,’ I said.

’Yes, but all the birds aren’t caged.  There’s a few outside the bars and they don’t collect noos.  They do things.  If there’s anything desperate they’re put on the job, and they’ve got power to act without waiting on instructions from home.  I’ve investigated till my brain’s tired and I haven’t made out more than half a dozen whom I can say for certain are in the business.  There’s your pal, the Portuguese Jew, Dick.  Another’s a woman in Genoa, a princess of some sort married to a Greek financier.  One’s the editor of a pro-Ally up-country paper in the Argentine.  One passes as a Baptist minister in Colorado.  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.  They each get their own jobs to do, but they’re apt to flock together for a big piece of devilment.  There were four of them in France a year ago before the battle of the Aisne, and they pretty near rotted the French Army.  That’s so, Colonel?’

The soldier nodded grimly.  ’They seduced our weary troops and they bought many politicians.  Almost they succeeded, but not quite.  The nation is sane again, and is judging and shooting the accomplices at its leisure.  But the principals we have never caught.’

’You hear that, Dick, said Blenkiron.  ’You’re satisfied this isn’t a whimsy of a melodramatic old Yank?  I’ll tell you more.  You know how Ivery worked the submarine business from England.  Also, it was the Wild Birds that wrecked Russia.  It was Ivery that paid the Bolshevists to sedooce the Army, and the Bolshevists took his money for their own purpose, thinking they were playing a deep game, when all the time he was grinning like Satan, for they were playing his.  It was Ivery or some other of the bunch that doped the brigades that broke at Caporetto.  If I started in to tell you the history of their doings you wouldn’t go to bed, and if you did you wouldn’t sleep . . .  There’s just this to it.  Every finished subtle devilry that the Boche has wrought among the Allies since August 1914 has been the work of the Wild Birds and more or less organized by Ivery.  They’re worth half a dozen army corps to Ludendorff.  They’re the mightiest poison merchants the world ever saw, and they’ve the nerve of hell . . .’

‘I don’t know,’ I interrupted.  ’Ivery’s got his soft spot.  I saw him in the Tube station.’

’Maybe, but he’s got the kind of nerve that’s wanted.  And now I rather fancy he’s whistling in his flock,’

Blenkiron consulted a notebook.  ’Pavia—­that’s the Argentine man—­started last month for Europe.  He transhipped from a coasting steamer in the West Indies and we’ve temporarily lost track of him, but he’s left his hunting-ground.  What do you reckon that means?’