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Title: The Three Hostages
Author: Buchan, John (1875-1940)
Cartographer: Anonymous
Date of first publication: June 1924
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   London: Hodder and Stoughton, July 1940
Date first posted: 20 December 2010
Date last updated: 20 December 2010
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #678

This ebook was produced by Al Haines




[Illustration: The Adventure at Snaasen]





JOHN BUCHAN



THE THREE HOSTAGES




HODDER AND STOUGHTON




  FIRST PRINTED . . JUNE      1924
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  REPRINTED . . . . NOVEMBER  1939
  REPRINTED . . . . JULY      1940



Made and Printed in Great Britain for

Hodder and Stoughton Limited, London, by

Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ltd., London and Aylesbury.




_Dedication_


_To_

_A Young Gentleman of Eton College_

HONOURED SIR,

On your last birthday a well-meaning godfather presented you with a
volume of mine, since you had been heard on occasion to express
approval of my works.  The book dealt with a somewhat arid branch of
historical research, and it did not please you.  You wrote to me, I
remember, complaining that I had "let you down," and summoning me, as I
valued your respect, to "pull myself together."  In particular you
demanded to hear more of the doings of Richard Hannay, a gentleman for
whom you professed a liking.  I, too, have a liking for Sir Richard,
and when I met him the other day (he is now a country neighbour) I
observed that his left hand had been considerably mauled, an injury
which I knew had not been due to the War.  He was so good as to tell me
the tale of an unpleasant business in which he had recently been
engaged, and to give me permission to retell it for your benefit.  Sir
Richard took a modest pride in the affair, because from first to last
it had been a pure contest of wits, without recourse to those more
obvious methods of strife with which he is familiar.  So I herewith
present it to you, in the hope that in the eyes of you and your friends
it may atone for certain other writings of mine with which you have
been afflicted by those in authority.

J. B.

_June_ 1924.




_Contents_


CHAPTER

     I.  DOCTOR GREENSLADE THEORISES
    II.  I HEAR OF THE THREE HOSTAGES
   III.  RESEARCHES IN THE SUBCONSCIOUS
    IV.  I MAKE THE ACQUAINTANCE OF A POPULAR MAN
     V.  THE THURSDAY CLUB
    VI.  THE HOUSE IN GOSPEL OAK
   VII.  SOME EXPERIENCES OF A DISCIPLE
  VIII.  THE BLIND SPINNER
    IX.  I AM INTRODUCED TO STRONG MAGIC
     X.  CONFIDENCES AT A WAYSIDE INN
    XI.  HOW A GERMAN ENGINEER FOUND STRANGE FISHING
   XII.  I RETURN TO SERVITUDE
  XIII.  I VISIT THE FIELDS OF EDEN
   XIV.  SIR ARCHIBALD ROYLANCE PUTS HIS FOOT IN IT
    XV.  HOW A FRENCH NOBLEMAN DISCOVERED FEAR
   XVI.  OUR TIME IS NARROWED
  XVII.  THE DISTRICT-VISITOR IN PALMYRA SQUARE
 XVIII.  THE NIGHT OF THE FIRST OF JUNE
   XIX.  THE NIGHT OF THE FIRST OF JUNE--LATER
    XX.  MACHRAY
   XXI.  HOW I STALKED WILDER GAME THAN DEER




NOTE

Occasional references will be found in this tale to the earlier
experiences of Sir Richard Hannay, which are chronicled in _The
Thirty-nine Steps, Greenmantle_ and _Mr Standfast_.  They are also to
be found in the Richard Hannay Omnibus.




_Chapter I_

_Doctor Greenslade Theorises_

That evening, I remember, as I came up through the Mill Meadow, I was
feeling peculiarly happy and contented.  It was still mid-March, one of
those spring days when noon is like May, and only the cold pearly haze
at sunset warns a man that he is not done with winter.  The season was
absurdly early, for the blackthorn was in flower and the hedge roots
were full of primroses.  The partridges were paired, the rooks were
well on with their nests, and the meadows were full of shimmering grey
flocks of fieldfares on their way north.  I put up half a dozen snipe
on the boggy edge of the stream, and in the bracken in Sturn Wood I
thought I saw a woodcock, and hoped that the birds might nest with us
this year, as they used to do long ago.  It was jolly to see the world
coming to life again, and to remember that this patch of England was my
own, and all these wild things, so to speak, members of my little
household.

As I say, I was in a very contented mood, for I had found something I
had longed for all my days.  I had bought Fosse Manor just after the
War as a wedding present for Mary, and for two and a half years we had
been settled there.  My son, Peter John, was rising fifteen months, a
thoughtful infant, as healthy as a young colt and as comic as a terrier
puppy.  Even Mary's anxious eye could scarcely detect in him any
symptoms of decline.  But the place wanted a lot of looking to, for it
had run wild during the War, and the woods had to be thinned, gates and
fences repaired, new drains laid, a ram put in to supplement the wells,
a heap of thatching to be done, and the garden borders to be brought
back to cultivation.  I had got through the worst of it, and as I came
out of the Home Wood on to the lower lawns and saw the old stone gables
that the monks had built, I felt that I was anchored at last in the
pleasantest kind of harbour.

There was a pile of letters on the table in the hall, but I let them
be, for I was not in the mood for any communication with the outer
world.  As I was having a hot bath Mary kept giving me the news through
her bedroom door.  Peter John had been raising Cain over a first tooth;
the new shorthorn cow was drying off; old George Whaddon had got his
granddaughter back from service; there was a new brood of runner-ducks;
there was a missel-thrush building in the box hedge by the lake.  A
chronicle of small beer, you will say, but I was by a long chalk more
interested in it than in what might be happening in Parliament or
Russia or the Hindu Kush.  The fact is I was becoming such a mossback
that I had almost stopped reading the papers.  Many a day _The Times_
would remain unopened, for Mary never looked at anything but the first
page to see who was dead or married.  Not that I didn't read a lot, for
I used to spend my evenings digging into county history, and learning
all I could about the old fellows who had been my predecessors.  I
liked to think that I lived in a place that had been continuously
inhabited for a thousand years.  Cavalier and Roundhead had fought over
the country-side, and I was becoming a considerable authority on their
tiny battles.  That was about the only interest I had left in
soldiering.

As we went downstairs, I remember we stopped to took out of the long
staircase window which showed a segment of lawn, a corner of the lake,
and through a gap in the woods a vista of green downland.  Mary
squeezed my arm.  "What a blessed country," she said.  "Dick, did you
ever dream of such peace?  We're lucky, lucky people."

Then suddenly her face changed in that way she has and grew very grave.
I felt a little shiver run along her arm.

"It's too good and beloved to last," she whispered.  "Sometimes I am
afraid."

"Nonsense," I laughed.  "What's going to upset it?  I don't believe in
being afraid of happiness."  I knew very well, of course, that Mary
couldn't be afraid of anything.

She laughed too.  "All the same I've got what the Greek called _aidos_.
You don't know what that means, you old savage.  It means that you feel
you must walk humbly and delicately to propitiate the Fates.  I wish I
knew how."

She walked too delicately, for she missed the last step and our descent
ended in an undignified shuffle right into the arms of Dr Greenslade.

Paddock--I had got Paddock back after the War and he was now my
butler--was helping the doctor out of his ulster, and I saw by the
satisfied look on the latter's face that he was through with his day's
work and meant to stay to dinner.  Here I had better introduce Tom
Greenslade, for of all my recent acquaintances he was the one I had
most taken to.  He was a long lean fellow with a stoop in his back from
bending over the handles of motor-bicycles, with reddish hair, and the
greeny-blue eyes and freckled skin that often accompany that kind of
hair.  From his high cheek bones and his colouring you would have set
him down as a Scotsman, but as a matter of fact he came from
Devonshire--Exmoor, I think, though he had been so much about the world
that he had almost forgotten where he was raised.  I have travelled a
bit, but nothing to Greenslade.  He had started as a doctor in a
whaling ship.  Then he had been in the South African War and afterwards
a temporary magistrate up Lydenburg way.  He soon tired of that, and
was for a long spell in Uganda and German East, where he became rather
a swell on tropical diseases, and nearly perished through experimenting
on himself with fancy inoculations.  Then he was in South America,
where he had a good practice in Valparaiso, and then in the Malay
States, where he made a bit of money in the rubber boom.  There was a
gap of three years after that when he was wandering about Central Asia,
partly with a fellow called Duckett exploring Northern Mongolia, and
partly in Chinese Tibet hunting for new flowers, for he was mad about
botany.  He came home in the summer of 1914, meaning to do some
laboratory research work, but the War swept him up and he went to
France as M.O. of a territorial battalion.  He got wounded of course,
and after a spell in hospital went out to Mesopotamia, where he stayed
till the Christmas of 1918, sweating hard at his job but managing to
tumble into a lot of varied adventures, for he was at Baku with
Dunsterville and got as far as Tashkend, where the Bolsheviks shut him
up for a fortnight in a bath-house.  During the War he had every kind
of sickness, for he missed no experience, but nothing seemed to damage
permanently his whipcord physique.  He told me that his heart and lungs
and blood pressure were as good as a lad's of twenty-one, though by
this time he was on the wrong side of forty.

But when the War was over he hankered for a quiet life, so he bought a
practice in the deepest and greenest corner of England.  He said his
motive was the same as that which in the rackety Middle Ages made men
retire into monasteries; he wanted quiet and leisure to consider his
soul.  Quiet he may have found, but uncommon little leisure, for I
never heard of a country doctor that toiled at his job as he did.  He
would pay three visits a day to a panel patient, which shows the kind
of fellow he was; and he would be out in the small hours at the birth
of a gipsy child under a hedge.  He was a first-class man in his
profession, and kept abreast of it, but doctoring was only one of a
thousand interests.  I never met a chap with such an insatiable
curiosity about everything in heaven and earth.  He lived in two rooms
in a farmhouse some four miles from us, and I daresay he had several
thousand books about him.  All day, and often half the night, he would
scour the country in his little run-about car, and yet, when he would
drop in to see me and have a drink after maybe twenty visits, he was as
full of beans as if he had just got out of bed.  Nothing came amiss to
him in talk--birds, beasts, flowers, books, politics,
religion--everything in the world except himself.  He was the best sort
of company, for behind all his quickness and cleverness you felt that
he was solid bar-gold.  But for him I should have taken root in the
soil and put out shoots, for I have a fine natural talent for
vegetating.  Mary strongly approved of him and Peter John adored him.

He was in tremendous spirits that evening, and for once in a way gave
us reminiscences of his past.  He told us about the people he badly
wanted to see again; an Irish Spaniard up in the north of the Argentine
who had for cattle-men a most murderous brand of native from the
mountains, whom he used to keep in good humour by arranging fights
every Sunday, he himself taking on the survivor with his fists and
always knocking him out; a Scots trader from Hankow who had turned
Buddhist priest and intoned his prayers with a strong Glasgow accent;
and most of all a Malay pirate, who, he said, was a sort of St. Francis
with beasts, though a perfect Nero with his fellow-men.  That took him
to Central Asia, and he observed that if ever he left England again he
would make for those parts, since they were the refuge of all the
superior rascality of creation.  He had a notion that something very
odd might happen there in the long run.  "Think of it!" he cried.  "All
the places with names like spells--Bokhara, Samarkand--run by seedy
little gangs of communist Jews.  It won't go on for ever.  Some day a
new Genghis Khan or a Timour will be thrown up out of the maelstrom.
Europe is confused enough, but Asia is ancient Chaos."

After dinner we sat round the fire in the library, which I had modelled
on Sir Walter Bullivant's room in his place on the Kennet, as I had
promised myself seven years ago.  I had meant it for my own room where
I could write and read and smoke, but Mary would not allow it.  She had
a jolly panelled sitting-room of her own upstairs, which she rarely
entered; but though I chased her away, she was like a hen in a garden
and always came back, so that presently she had staked out a claim on
the other side of my writing-table.  I have the old hunter's notion of
order, but it was useless to strive with Mary, so now my desk was
littered with her letters and needlework, and Peter John's toys and
picture-books were stacked in the cabinet where I kept my fly-books,
and Peter John himself used to make a kraal every morning inside an
up-turned stool on the hearth-rug.

It was a cold night and very pleasant by the fireside, where some
scented logs from an old pear-tree were burning.  The doctor picked up
a detective novel I had been reading, and glanced at the title page.

"I can read most things," he said, "but it beats me how you waste time
over such stuff.  These shockers are too easy, Dick.  You could invent
better ones for yourself."

"Not I.  I call that a dashed ingenious yarn.  I can't think how the
fellow does it."

"Quite simple.  The author writes the story inductively, and the reader
follows it deductively.  Do you see what I mean?"

"Not a bit," I replied.

"Look here.  I want to write a shocker, so I begin by fixing on one or
two facts which have no sort of obvious connection."

"For example?"

"Well, imagine anything you like.  Let us take three things a long way
apart----"  He paused for a second to consider----"say, an old blind
woman spinning in the Western Highlands, a barn in a Norwegian
_saeter_, and a little curiosity shop in North London kept by a Jew
with a dyed beard.  Not much connection between the three?  You invent
a connection--simple enough if you have any imagination, and you weave
all three into the yarn.  The reader, who knows nothing about the three
at the start, is puzzled and intrigued and, if the story is well
arranged, finally satisfied.  He is pleased with the ingenuity of the
solution, for he doesn't realise that the author fixed upon the
solution first, and then invented a problem to suit it."

"I see," I said.  "You've gone and taken the gilt off my favourite
light reading.  I won't be able any more to marvel at the writer's
cleverness."

"I've another objection to the stuff--it's not ingenious enough, or
rather it doesn't take account of the infernal complexity of life.  It
might have been all right twenty years ago, when most people argued and
behaved fairly logically.  But they don't nowadays.  Have you ever
realised, Dick, the amount of stark craziness that the War has left in
the world?"

Mary, who was sitting sewing under a lamp, raised her head and laughed.

Greenslade's face had become serious.  "I can speak about it frankly
here, for you two are almost the only completely sane people I know.
Well, as a pathologist, I'm fairly staggered.  I hardly meet a soul who
hasn't got some slight kink in his brain as a consequence of the last
seven years.  With most people it's rather a pleasant kink--they're
less settled in their grooves, and they see the comic side of things
quicker, and are readier for adventure.  But with some it's _pukka_
madness, and that means crime.  Now, how are you going to write
detective stories about that kind of world on the old lines?  You can
take nothing for granted, as you once could, and your argus-eyed,
lightning-brained expert has nothing solid with which to build his
foundations."

I observed that the poor old War seemed to be getting blamed for a good
deal that I was taught in my childhood was due to original sin.

"Oh, I'm not questioning your Calvinism.  Original sin is always there,
but the meaning of civilisation was that we had got it battened down
under hatches, whereas now it's getting its head up.  But it isn't only
sin.  It's a dislocation of the mechanism of human reasoning, a general
loosening of screws.  Oddly enough, in spite of parrot-talk about
shell-shock, the men who fought suffer less from it on the whole than
other people.  The classes that shirked the War are the worst--you see
it in Ireland.  Every doctor nowadays has got to be a bit of a mental
pathologist.  As I say, you can hardly take anything for granted, and
if you want detective stories that are not childish fantasy you'll have
to invent a new kind.  Better try your hand, Dick."

"Not I.  I'm a lover of sober facts."

"But, hang it, man, the facts are no longer sober.  I could tell
you----"  He paused and I was expecting a yarn, but he changed his mind.

"Take all this chatter about psycho-analysis.  There's nothing very new
in the doctrine, but people are beginning to work it out into details,
and making considerable asses of themselves in the process.  It's an
awful thing when a scientific truth becomes the quarry of the
half-baked.  But as I say, the fact of the subconscious self is as
certain as the existence of lungs and arteries."

"I don't believe that Dick has any subconscious self," said Mary.

"Oh yes, he has.  Only, people who have led his kind of life have their
ordinary self so well managed and disciplined--their wits so much about
them, as the phrase goes--that the subconscious rarely gets a show.
But I bet if Dick took to thinking about his soul, which he never does,
he would find some queer corners.  Take my own case."  He turned
towards me so that I had a full view of his candid eyes and hungry
cheek-bones which looked prodigious in the firelight.  "I belong more
or less to the same totem as you, but I've long been aware that I
possessed a most curious kind of subconsciousness.  I've a good memory
and fair powers of observation, but they're nothing to those of my
subconscious self.  Take any daily incident.  I see and hear, say,
about a twentieth part of the details and remember about a hundredth
part--that is, assuming that there is nothing special to stimulate my
interest.  But my subconscious self sees and hears practically
everything, and remembers most of it.  Only I can't use the memory, for
I don't know that I've got it, and can't call it into being when I
wish.  But every now and then something happens to turn on the tap of
the subconscious, and a thin trickle comes through.  I find myself
sometimes remembering names I was never aware of having heard, and
little incidents and details I had never consciously noticed.
Imagination, you will say; but it isn't, for everything that that inner
memory provides is exactly true.  I've tested it.  If I could only find
some way of tapping it at will, I should be an uncommonly efficient
fellow.  Incidentally I should become the first scientist of the age,
for the trouble with investigation and experiment is that the ordinary
brain does not observe sufficiently keenly or remember the data
sufficiently accurately."

"That's interesting," I said.  "I'm not at all certain I haven't
noticed the same thing in myself.  But what has that to do with the
madness that you say is infecting the world?"

"Simply this.  The barriers between the conscious and the subconscious
have always been pretty stiff in the average man.  But now with the
general loosening of screws they are growing shaky and the two worlds
are getting mixed.  It is like two separate tanks of fluid, where the
containing wall has worn into holes, and one is percolating into the
other.  The result is confusion, and, if the fluids are of a certain
character, explosions.  That is why I say that you can't any longer
take the clear psychology of most civilised human beings for granted.
Something is welling up from primeval deeps to muddy it."

"I don't object to that," I said.  "We've overdone civilisation, and
personally I'm all for a little barbarism.  I want a simpler world."

"Then you won't get it," said Greenslade.  He had become very serious
now, and was looking towards Mary as he talked.  "The civilised is far
simpler than the primeval.  All history has been an effort to make
definitions, clear rules of thought, clear rules of conduct, solid
sanctions, by which we can conduct our life.  These are the work of the
conscious self.  The subconscious is an elementary and lawless thing.
If it intrudes on life two results must follow.  There will be a
weakening of the power of reasoning, which after all is the thing that
brings men nearest to the Almighty.  And there will be a failure of
nerve."

I got up to get a light, for I was beginning to feel depressed by the
doctor's diagnosis of our times.  I don't know whether he was
altogether serious, for he presently started on fishing, which was one
of his many hobbies.  There was very fair dry-fly fishing to be had in
our little river, but I had taken a deer-forest with Archie Roylance
for the season, and Greenslade was coming up with me to try his hand at
salmon.  There had been no sea-trout the year before in the West
Highlands, and we fell to discussing the cause.  He was ready with a
dozen theories, and we forgot about the psychology of mankind in
investigating the uncanny psychology of fish.  After that Mary sang to
us, for I considered any evening a failure without that, and at
half-past ten the doctor got into his old ulster and departed.

As I smoked my last pipe I found my thoughts going over Greenslade's
talk.  I had found a snug harbour, but how yeasty the waters seemed to
be outside the bar and how erratic the tides!  I wondered if it wasn't
shirking to be so comfortable in a comfortless world.  Then I reflected
that I was owed a little peace, for I had had a roughish life.  But
Mary's words kept coming back to me about "walking delicately."  I
considered that my present conduct filled that bill, for I was mighty
thankful for my mercies and in no way inclined to tempt Providence by
complacency.

Going up to bed, I noticed my neglected letters on the hall table.  I
turned them over and saw that they were mostly bills and receipts or
tradesmen's circulars.  But there was one addressed in a handwriting
that I knew, and as I looked at it I experienced a sudden sinking of
the heart.  It was from Lord Artinswell--Sir Walter Bullivant, as
was--who had now retired from the Foreign Office, and was living at his
place on the Kennet.  He and I occasionally corresponded about farming
and fishing, but I had a premonition that this was something different.
I waited for a second or two before I opened it.


"My dear Dick,

"This note is in the nature of a warning.  In the next day or two you
will be asked, nay pressed, to undertake a troublesome piece of
business.  I am not responsible for the request, but I know of it.  If
you consent, it will mean the end for a time of your happy vegetable
life.  I don't want to influence you one way or another; I only give
you notice of what is coming in order that you may adjust your mind and
not be taken by surprise.  My love to Mary and the son.

"Yours ever,
  "A."


That was all.  I had lost my trepidation and felt very angry.  Why
couldn't the fools let me alone?  As I went upstairs I vowed that not
all the cajolery in the world would make me budge an inch from the path
I had set myself.  I had done enough for the public service and other
people's interests, and it was jolly well time that I should be allowed
to attend to my own.




_Chapter II_

_I Hear of the Three Hostages_

There is an odour about a country-house which I love better than any
scent in the world.  Mary used to say it was a mixture of lamp and dog
and wood-smoke, but at Fosse, where there was electric light and no
dogs indoors, I fancy it was wood-smoke, tobacco, the old walls, and
wafts of the country coming in at the windows.  I liked it best in the
morning, when there was a touch in it of breakfast cooking, and I used
to stand at the top of the staircase and sniff it as I went to my bath.
But on the morning I write of I could take no pleasure in it; indeed it
seemed to tantalise me with a vision of country peace which had somehow
got broken.  I couldn't get that confounded letter out of my head.
When I read it I had torn it up in disgust, but I found myself going
down in my dressing-gown, to the surprise of a housemaid, piecing
together the fragments from the waste-paper basket, and reading it
again.  This time I flung the bits into the new-kindled fire.

I was perfectly resolved that I would have nothing to do with Bullivant
or any of his designs, but all the same I could not recapture the
serenity which yesterday had clothed me like a garment.  I was down to
breakfast before Mary, and had finished before she appeared.  Then I
lit my pipe and started on my usual tour of my domain, but nothing
seemed quite the same.  It was a soft fresh morning with no frost, and
the scillas along the edge of the lake were like bits of summer sky.
The moor-hens were building, and the first daffodils were out in the
rough grass below the clump of Scots firs, and old George Whaddon was
nailing up rabbit wire and whistling through his two remaining teeth,
and generally the world was as clear and jolly as spring could make it.
But I didn't feel any more that it was really mine, only that I was
looking on at a pretty picture.  Something had happened to jar the
harmony between it and my mind, and I cursed Bullivant and his
intrusions.

I returned by the front of the house, and there at the door to my
surprise stood a big touring Rolls-Royce.  Paddock met me in the hall
and handed me a card, on which I read the name of Mr Julius Victor.

I knew it, of course, for the name of one of the richest men in the
world, the American banker who had done a lot of Britain's financial
business in the War, and was in Europe now at some international
conference.  I remembered that Blenkiron, who didn't like his race, had
once described him to me as "the whitest Jew since the Apostle Paul."

In the library I found a tall man standing by the window looking out at
our view.  He turned as I entered, and I saw a thin face with a neatly
trimmed grey beard, and the most worried eyes I have ever seen in a
human countenance.  Everything about him was spruce and dapper--his
beautifully-cut grey suit, his black tie and pink pearl pin, his
blue-and-white linen, his exquisitely polished shoes.  But the eyes
were so wild and anxious that he looked dishevelled.

"General," he said, and took a step towards me.

We shook hands and I made him sit down.

"I have dropped the 'General,' if you don't mind," I said.  "What I
want to know is, have you had breakfast?"

He shook his head.  "I had a cup of coffee on the road.  I do not eat
in the morning."

"Where have you come from, sir?" I asked.

"From London."

Well, London is seventy-six miles from us, so he must have started
early.  I looked curiously at him, and he got out of his chair and
began to stride about.

"Sir Richard," he said, in a low pleasant voice which I could imagine
convincing any man he tried it on, "you are a soldier and a man of the
world and will pardon my unconventionality.  My business is too urgent
to waste time on apologies.  I have heard of you from common friends as
a man of exceptional resource and courage.  I have been told in
confidence something of your record.  I have come to implore your help
in a desperate emergency."

I passed him a box of cigars, and he took one and lit it carefully.  I
could see his long slim fingers trembling as he held the match.

"You may have heard of me," he went on.  "I am a very rich man, and my
wealth has given me power, so that Governments honour me with their
confidence.  I am concerned in various important affairs, and it would
be false modesty to deny that my word is weightier than that of many
Prime Ministers.  I am labouring, Sir Richard, to secure peace in the
world, and consequently I have enemies, all those who would perpetuate
anarchy and war.  My life has been more than once attempted, but that
is nothing.  I am well guarded.  I am not, I think, more of a coward
than other men, and I am prepared to take my chance.  But now I have
been attacked by a subtler weapon, and I confess I have no defence.  I
had a son, who died ten years ago at college.  My only other child is
my daughter, Adela, a girl of nineteen.  She came to Europe just before
Christmas, for she was to be married in Paris in April.  A fortnight
ago she was hunting with friends in Northamptonshire--the place is
called Rushford Court.  On the morning of the 8th of March she went for
a walk to Rushford village to send a telegram, and was last seen
passing through the lodge gates at twenty minutes past eleven.  She has
not been seen since."

"Good God!" I exclaimed, and rose from my chair.  Mr Victor was looking
out of the window, so I walked to the other end of the room and fiddled
with the books on a shelf.  There was silence for a second or two, till
I broke it.

"Do you suppose it is loss of memory?" I asked.

"No," he said.  "It is not loss of memory.  I know--we have proof--that
she has been kidnapped by those whom I call my enemies.  She is being
held as a hostage."

"You know she is alive?"

He nodded, for his voice was choking again.  "There is evidence which
points to a very deep and devilish plot.  It may be revenge, but I
think it more likely to be policy.  Her captors hold her as security
for their own fate."

"Has Scotland Yard done nothing?"

"Everything that man could do, but the darkness only grows thicker."

"Surely it has not been in the papers.  I don't read them carefully but
I could scarcely miss a thing like that."

"It has been kept out of the papers--for a reason which you will be
told."

"Mr Victor," I said, "I'm most deeply sorry for you.  Like you, I've
just the one child, and if anything of that kind happened to him I
should go mad.  But I shouldn't take too gloomy a view.  Miss Adela
will turn up all right, and none the worse, though you may have to pay
through the nose for it.  I expect it's ordinary blackmail and ransom."

"No," he said very quietly.  "It is not blackmail, and if it were, I
would not pay the ransom demanded.  Believe me, Sir Richard, it is a
very desperate affair.  More, far more is involved than the fate of one
young girl.  I am not going to touch on that side, for the full story
will be told you later by one better equipped to tell it.  But the
hostage is my daughter, my only child.  I have come to beg your
assistance in the search for her."

"But I'm no good at looking for things," I stammered.  "I'm most
awfully sorry for you, but I don't see how I can help.  If Scotland
Yard is at a loss, it's not likely that an utter novice like me would
succeed."

"But you have a different kind of imagination and a rarer kind of
courage.  I know what you have done before, Sir Richard.  I tell you
you are my last hope."

I sat down heavily and groaned.  "I can't begin to explain to you the
bottomless futility of your idea.  It is quite true that in the War I
had some queer jobs and was lucky enough to bring some of them off.
But, don't you see, I was a soldier then, under orders, and it didn't
greatly signify whether I lost my life from a crump in the trenches or
from a private bullet on the backstairs.  I was in the mood for any
risk, and my wits were strung up and unnaturally keen.  But that's all
done with.  I'm in a different mood now and my mind is weedy and
grass-grown.  I've settled so deep into the country that I'm just an
ordinary hayseed farmer.  If I took a hand--which I certainly
won't--I'd only spoil the game."

Mr Victor stood looking at me intently.  I thought for a moment he was
going to offer me money, and rather hoped he would, for that would have
stiffened me like a ramrod, though it would have spoiled the good
notion I had of him.  The thought may have crossed his mind, but he was
clever enough to reject it.

"I don't agree with a word you say about yourself, and I'm accustomed
to size up men.  I appeal to you as a Christian gentleman to help me to
recover my child.  I am not going to press that appeal, for I have
already taken up enough of your time.  My London address is on my card.
Good-bye, Sir Richard, and believe me, I am very grateful to you for
receiving me so kindly."

In five minutes he and his Rolls-Royce had gone, and I was left in a
miserable mood of shame-faced exasperation.  I realised how Mr Julius
Victor had made his fame.  He knew how to handle men, for if he had
gone on pleading he would only have riled me, whereas he had somehow
managed to leave it all to my honour, and thoroughly unsettle my mind.

I went for a short walk, cursing the world at large, sometimes feeling
horribly sorry for that unfortunate father, sometimes getting angry
because he had tried to mix me up in his affairs.  Of course I would
not touch the thing; I couldn't; it was manifestly impossible; I had
neither the capacity nor the inclination.  I was not a professional
rescuer of distressed ladies whom I did not know from Eve.

A man, I told myself, must confine his duties to his own circle of
friends, except when his country has need of him.  I was over forty,
and had a wife and a young son to think of; besides, I had chosen a
retired life, and had the right to have my choice respected.  But I
can't pretend that I was comfortable.  A hideous muddy wave from the
outer world had come to disturb my little sheltered pool.  I found Mary
and Peter John feeding the swans, and couldn't bear to stop and play
with them.  The gardeners were digging in sulphates about the fig trees
on the south wall, and wanted directions about the young chestnuts in
the nursery; the keeper was lying in wait for me in the stable-yard for
instructions about a new batch of pheasants' eggs, and the groom wanted
me to look at the hocks of Mary's cob.  But I simply couldn't talk to
any of them.  These were the things I loved, but for a moment the gilt
was off them, and I would let them wait till I felt better.  In a very
bad temper I returned to the library.

I hadn't been there two minutes when I heard the sound of a car on the
gravel.  "Let 'em all come," I groaned, and I wasn't surprised when
Paddock entered, followed by the spare figure and smooth keen face of
Macgillivray.

I don't think I offered to shake hands.  We were pretty good friends,
but at that moment there was no one in the world I wanted less to see.

"Well, you old nuisance," I cried, "you're the second visitor from town
I've had this morning.  There'll be a shortage of petrol soon."

"Have you had a letter from Lord Artinswell?" he asked.

"I have, worse luck," I said.

"Then you know what I've come about.  But that can keep till after
luncheon.  Hurry it up, Dick, like a good fellow, for I'm as hungry as
a famished kestrel."

He looked rather like one, with his sharp nose and lean head.  It was
impossible to be cross for long with Macgillivray, so we went out to
look for Mary.  "I may as well tell you," I told him, "that you've come
on a fool's errand.  I'm not going to be jockeyed by you or anyone into
making an ass of myself.  Anyhow, don't mention the thing to Mary.  I
don't want her to be worried by your nonsense."

So at luncheon we talked about Fosse and the Cotswolds, and about the
deer-forest I had taken--Machray they called it--and about Sir
Archibald Roylance, my co-tenant, who had just had another try at
breaking his neck in a steeplechase.  Macgillivray was by way of being
a great stalker and could tell me a lot about Machray.  The crab of the
place was its neighbours, it seemed; for Haripol on the south was too
steep for the lessee, a middle-aged manufacturer, to do justice to it,
and the huge forest of Glenaicill on the east was too big for any
single tenant to shoot, and the Machray end of it was nearly thirty
miles by road from the lodge.  The result was, said Macgillivray, that
Machray was surrounded by unauthorised sanctuaries, which made the deer
easy to shift.  He said the best time was early in the season when the
stags were on the upper ground, for it seemed that Machray had
uncommonly fine high pastures....  Mary was in good spirits, for
somebody had been complimentary about Peter John, and she was satisfied
for the moment that he wasn't going to be cut off by an early
consumption.  She was full of housekeeping questions about Machray, and
revealed such spacious plans that Macgillivray said that he thought he
would pay us a visit, for it looked as if he wouldn't be poisoned, as
he usually was in Scotch shooting-lodges.  It was a talk I should have
enjoyed if there had not been that uneasy morning behind me and that
interview I had still to get over.

There was a shower after luncheon, so he and I settled ourselves in the
library.  "I must leave at 3.30," he said, "so I have got just a little
more than an hour to tell you my business in."

"Is it worth while starting?" I asked.  "I want to make it quite plain
that under no circumstances am I open to any offer to take on any
business of any kind.  I'm having a rest and a holiday.  I stay here
for the summer and then I go to Machray."

"There's nothing to prevent your going to Machray in August," he said,
opening his eyes.  "The work I am going to suggest to you must be
finished long before then."

I suppose that surprised me, for I did not stop him as I had meant to.
I let him go on, and before I knew I found myself getting interested.
I have a boy's weakness for a yarn, and Macgillivray knew this and
played on it.

He began by saying very much what Dr Greenslade had said the night
before.  A large part of the world had gone mad, and that involved the
growth of inexplicable and unpredictable crime.  All the old sanctities
had become weakened, and men had grown too well accustomed to death and
pain.  This meant that the criminal had far greater resources at his
command, and, if he were an able man, could mobilise a vast amount of
utter recklessness and depraved ingenuity.  The moral imbecile, he
said, had been more or less a sport before the War; now he was a
terribly common product, and throve in batches and battalions.  Cruel,
humourless, hard, utterly wanting in sense of proportion, but often
full of a perverted poetry and drunk with rhetoric--a hideous,
untamable breed had been engendered.  You found it among the young
Bolshevik Jews, among the young entry of the wilder Communist sects,
and very notably among the sullen murderous hobbledehoys in Ireland.

"Poor devils," Macgillivray repeated.  "It is for their Maker to judge
them, but we who are trying to patch up civilisation have to see that
they are cleared out of the world.  Don't imagine that they are
devotees of any movement, good or bad.  They are what I have called
them, moral imbeciles, who can be swept into any movement by those who
understand them.  They are the neophytes and hierophants of crime, and
it is as criminals that I have to do with them.  Well, all this
desperate degenerate stuff is being used by a few clever men who are
not degenerates or anything of the sort, but only evil.  There has
never been such a chance for a rogue since the world began."

Then he told me certain facts, which must remain unpublished, at any
rate during our life-times.  The main point was that there were
sinister brains at work to organise for their own purposes the perilous
stuff lying about.  All the contemporary anarchisms, he said, were
interconnected, and out of the misery of decent folks and the agony of
the wretched tools certain smug _entrepreneurs_ were profiting.  He and
his men, and indeed the whole police force of civilisation--he
mentioned especially the Americans--had been on the trail of one of the
worst of these combines and by a series of fortunate chances had got
their hand on it.  Now at any moment they could stretch out that hand
and gather it in.

But there was one difficulty.  I learned from him that this particular
combine was not aware of the danger in which it stood, but that it
realised that it must stand in some danger, so it had taken
precautions.  Since Christmas it had acquired hostages.

Here I interrupted, for I felt rather incredulous about the whole
business.  "I think since the War we're all too ready to jump at
grandiose explanations of simple things.  I'll want a good deal of
convincing before I believe in your international clearing-house for
crime."

"I guarantee the convincing," he said gravely.  "You shall see all our
evidence, and, unless you have changed since I first knew you, your
conclusion won't differ from mine.  But let us come to the hostages."

"One I know about," I put in.  "I had Mr Julius Victor here after
breakfast."

Macgillivray exclaimed.  "Poor soul!  What did you say to him?"

"Deepest sympathy, but nothing doing."

"And he took that answer?"

"I won't say he took it.  But he went away.  What about the others?"

"There are two more.  One is a young man, the heir to a considerable
estate, who was last seen by his friends in Oxford on the 17th day of
February, just before dinner.  He was an undergraduate of Christ
Church, and was living out of college in rooms in the High.  He had tea
at the Gridiron and went to his rooms to dress, for he was dining that
night with the Halcyon Club.  A servant passed him on the stairs of his
lodgings, going up to his bedroom.  He apparently did not come down,
and since that day has not been seen.  You may have heard his
name---Lord Mercot."

I started.  I had indeed heard the name, and knew the boy a little,
having met him occasionally at our local steeplechases.  He was the
grandson and heir of the old Duke of Alcester, the most respected of
the older statesmen of England.

"They have picked their bag carefully," I said.  "What is the third
case?"

"The cruellest of all.  You know Sir Arthur Warcliff.  He is a
widower--lost his wife just before the War, and he has an only child, a
little boy about ten years old.  The child--David is his name--was the
apple of his eye, and was at a preparatory school near Rye.  The father
took a house in the neighbourhood to be near him, and the boy used to
be allowed to come home for luncheon every Sunday.  One Sunday he came
to luncheon as usual, and started back in the pony-trap.  The boy was
very keen about birds, and used to leave the trap and walk the last
half-mile by a short cut across the marshes.  Well, he left the groom
at the usual gate, and, like Miss Victor and Lord Mercot, walked into
black mystery."

This story really did horrify me.  I remembered Sir Arthur
Warcliff--the kind, worn face of the great soldier and administrator,
and I could imagine his grief and anxiety.  I knew what I should have
felt if it had been Peter John.  A much-travelled young woman and an
athletic young man were defenceful creatures compared to a poor little
round-headed boy of ten.  But I still felt the whole affair too
fantastic for real tragedy.

"But what right have you to connect the three cases?" I asked.  "Three
people disappear within a few weeks of each other in widely separated
parts of England.  Miss Victor may have been kidnapped for ransom, Lord
Mercot may have lost his memory, and David Warcliff may have been
stolen by tramps.  Why should they be all part of one scheme?  Why, for
that matter, should any one of them have been the work of your criminal
combine?  Have you any evidence for the hostage theory?"

"Yes."  Macgillivray took a moment or two to answer.  "There is first
the general probability.  If a band of rascals wanted three hostages
they could hardly find three better--the daughter of the richest man in
the world, the heir of our greatest dukedom, the only child of a
national hero.  There is also direct evidence."  Again he hesitated.

"Do you mean to say that Scotland Yard has not a single clue to any one
of these cases?"

"We have followed up a hundred clues, but they have all ended in dead
walls.  Every detail, I assure you, has been gone through with a fine
comb.  No, my dear Dick, the trouble is not that we're specially stupid
on this side, but that there is some superlative cunning on the other.
That is why I want you.  You have a kind of knack of stumbling on
truths which no amount of ordinary reasoning can get at.  I have fifty
men working day and night, and we have mercifully kept all the cases
out of the papers, so that we are not hampered by the amateur.  But so
far it's a blank.  Are you going to help?"

"No, I'm not.  But, supposing I were, I don't see that you've a scrap
of proof that the three cases are connected, or that any one of them is
due to the criminal gang that you say you've got your hand on.  You've
only given me presumptions, and precious thin at that.  Where's your
direct evidence?"

Macgillivray looked a little embarrassed.  "I've started you at the
wrong end," he said.  "I should have made you understand how big and
desperate the thing is that we're out against, and then you'd have been
in a more receptive mood for the rest of the story.  You know as well
as I do that cold blood is not always the most useful accompaniment in
assessing evidence.  I said I had direct evidence of connection, and so
I have, and the proof to my mind is certain."

"Well, let's see it."

"It's a poem.  On Wednesday of last week, two days after David Warcliff
disappeared, Mr Julius Victor, the Duke of Alcester, and Sir Arthur
Warcliff received copies of it by the first post.  They were typed on
bits of flimsy paper, the envelopes had the addresses typed, and they
had been posted in the West Central district of London the afternoon
before."

He handed me a copy, and this was what I read:

  "Seek where under midnight's sun
  Laggard crops are hardly won;--
  Where the sower casts his seed in
  Furrows of the fields of Eden;--
  Where beside the sacred tree
  Spins the seer who cannot see."


I burst out laughing, for I could not help it--the whole thing was too
preposterous.  These six lines of indifferent doggerel seemed to me to
put the coping-stone of nonsense on the business.  But I checked myself
when I saw Macgillivray's face.  There was a slight flush of annoyance
on his cheek, but for the rest it was grave, composed, and in deadly
earnest.  Now Macgillivray was not a fool, and I was bound to respect
his beliefs.  So I pulled myself together and tried to take things
seriously.

"That's proof that the three cases are linked together," I said.  "So
much I grant you.  But where's the proof that they are the work of the
great criminal combine that you say you have got your hand on?"

Macgillivray rose and walked restlessly about the room.  "The evidence
is mainly presumptive, but to my mind it is certain presumption.  You
know as well as I do, Dick, that a case may be final and yet very
difficult to set out as a series of facts.  My view on the matter is
made up of a large number of tiny indications and cross-bearings, and I
am prepared to bet that if you put your mind honestly to the business
you will take the same view.  But I'll give you this much by way of
direct proof--in hunting the big show we had several communications of
the same nature as this doggerel, and utterly unlike anything else I
ever struck in criminology.  There's one of the miscreants who amuses
himself with sending useless clues to his adversaries.  It shows how
secure the gang thinks itself."

"Well, you've got that gang anyhow.  I don't quite see why the hostages
should trouble you.  You'll gather them in when you gather in the
malefactors."

"I wonder.  Remember we are dealing with moral imbeciles.  When they
find themselves cornered they won't play for safety.  They'll use their
hostages, and when we refuse to bargain they'll take their last revenge
on them."

I suppose I stared unbelievingly, for he went on.  "Yes.  They'll
murder them in cold blood--three innocent people--and then swing
themselves with a lighter mind.  I know the type.  They've done it
before."  He mentioned one or two recent instances.

"Good God!" I cried.  "It's a horrible thought!  The only thing for you
is to go canny, and not strike till you have got the victims out of
their clutches."

"We can't," he said solemnly.  "That is precisely the tragedy of the
business.  We must strike early in June.  I won't trouble you with the
reasons, but believe me, they are final.  There is just a chance of a
settlement in Ireland, and there are certain events of the first
importance impending in Italy and America, and all depend upon the
activities of the gang being at an end by midsummer.  Do you grasp
that?  By midsummer we must stretch out our hand.  By midsummer, unless
they are released, the three hostages will be doomed.  It is a ghastly
dilemma, but in the public interest there is only one way out.  I ought
to say that Victor and the Duke and Warcliff are aware of this fact,
and accept the situation.  They are big men, and will do their duty
even if it breaks their hearts."

There was silence for a minute or two, for I did not know what to say.
The whole story seemed to me incredible, and yet I could not doubt a
syllable of it when I looked at Macgillivray's earnest face.  I felt
the horror of the business none the less because it seemed also partly
unreal; it had the fantastic grimness of a nightmare.  But most of all
I realised that I was utterly incompetent to help, and as I understood
that I could honestly base my refusal on incapacity and not on
disinclination I began to feel more comfortable.

"Well," said Macgillivray, after a pause, "are you going to help us?"

"There's nothing doing with that Sunday-paper anagram you showed me.
That's the sort of riddle that's not meant to be guessed.  I suppose
you are going to try to work up from the information you have about the
combine towards a clue to the hostages."

He nodded.

"Now, look here," I said; "you've got fifty of the quickest brains in
Britain working at the job.  They've found out enough to put a lasso
round the enemy which you can draw tight whenever you like.  They're
trained to the work and I'm not.  What on earth would be the use of an
amateur like me butting in?  I wouldn't be half as good as any one of
the fifty.  I'm not an expert, I'm not quick-witted, I'm a slow patient
fellow, and this job, as you admit, is one that has to be done against
time.  If you think it over, you'll see that it's sheer nonsense, my
dear chap."

"You've succeeded before with worse material."

"That was pure luck, and it was in the War when, as I tell you, my mind
was morbidly active.  Besides, anything I did then I did in the field,
and what you want me to do now is office-work.  You know I'm no good at
office-work--Blenkiron always said so, and Bullivant never used me on
it.  It isn't because I don't want to help, but because I can't."

"I believe you can.  And the thing is so grave that I daren't leave any
chance unexplored.  Won't you come?"

"No.  Because I could do nothing."

"Because you haven't a mind for it."

"Because I haven't the right kind of mind for it."

He looked at his watch and got up, smiling rather ruefully.

"I've had my say, and now you know what I want of you.  I'm not going
to take your answer as final.  Think over what I've said, and let me
hear from you within the next day or two."

But I had lost all my doubts, for it was very clear to me that on every
ground I was doing the right thing.

"Don't delude yourself with thinking that I'll change my mind," I said,
as I saw him into his car.  "Honestly, old fellow, if I could be an
atom of use I'd join you, but for your own sake you've got to count me
out this time."

Then I went for a walk, feeling pretty cheerful.  I settled the
question of the pheasants' eggs with the keeper, and went down to the
stream to see if there was any hatch of fly.  It had cleared up to a
fine evening, and I thanked my stars that I was out of a troublesome
business with an easy conscience, and could enjoy my peaceful life
again.  I say "with an easy conscience," for though there were little
dregs of disquiet still lurking about the bottom of my mind, I had only
to review the facts squarely to approve my decision.  I put the whole
thing out of my thoughts and came back with a fine appetite for tea.

There was a stranger in the drawing-room with Mary, a slim oldish man,
very straight and erect, with one of those faces on which life has
written so much that to look at them is like reading a good book.  At
first I didn't recognise him when he rose to greet me, but the smile
that wrinkled the corners of his eyes and the slow deep voice brought
back the two occasions in the past when I had run across Sir Arthur
Warcliff....  My heart sank as I shook hands, the more as I saw how
solemn was Mary's face.  She had been hearing the story which I hoped
she would never hear.

I thought it best to be very frank with him.  "I can guess your errand,
Sir Arthur," I said, "and I'm extremely sorry that you should have come
this long journey to no purpose."  Then I told him of the visits of Mr
Julius Victor and Macgillivray, and what they had said, and what had
been my answer.  I think I made it as clear as day that I could do
nothing, and he seemed to assent.  Mary, I remember, never lifted her
eyes.

Sir Arthur had also looked at the ground while I was speaking, and now
he turned his wise old face to me, and I saw what ravages his new
anxiety had made in it.  He could not have been much over sixty and he
looked a hundred.

"I do not dispute your decision, Sir Richard," he said.  "I know that
you would have helped me if it had been possible.  But I confess I am
sorely disappointed, for you were my last hope.  You see--you see--I
had nothing left in the world but Davie.  If he had died I think I
could have borne it, but to know nothing about him and to imagine
terrible things is almost too much for my fortitude."

I have never been through a more painful experience.  To hear a voice
falter that had been used to command, to see tears in the steadfastest
eyes that ever looked on the world, made me want to howl like a dog.  I
would have given a thousand pounds to be able to bolt into the library
and lock the door.

Mary appeared to me to be behaving very oddly.  She seemed to have the
deliberate purpose of probing the wound, for she encouraged Sir Arthur
to speak of his boy.  He showed us a miniature he carried with him--an
extraordinarily handsome child with wide grey eyes and his head most
nobly set upon his shoulders.  A grave little boy, with the look of
utter trust which belongs to children who have never in their lives
been unfairly treated.  Mary said something about the gentleness of the
face.

"Yes, Davie was very gentle," his father said.  "I think he was the
gentlest thing I have ever known.  That little boy was the very flower
of courtesy.  But he was curiously stoical, too.  When he was
distressed, he only shut his lips tight, and never cried.  I used often
to feel rebuked by him."

And then he told us about Davie's performances at school, where he was
not distinguished, except as showing a certain talent for cricket.  "I
am very much afraid of precocity," Sir Arthur said with the ghost of a
smile.  "But he was always educating himself in the right way, learning
to observe and think."  It seemed that the boy was a desperately keen
naturalist and would be out at all hours watching wild things.  He was
a great fisherman too, and had killed a lot of trout with the fly on
hill burns in Galloway.  And as the father spoke I suddenly began to
realise the little chap, and to think that he was just the kind of boy
I wanted Peter John to be.  I liked the stories of his love of nature
and trout streams.  It came on me like a thunderclap that if I were in
his father's place I should certainly go mad, and I was amazed at the
old man's courage.

"I think he had a kind of genius for animals," Sir Arthur said.  "He
knew the habits of birds by instinct, and used to talk of them as other
people talk of their friends.  He and I were great cronies, and he
would tell me long stories in his little quiet voice of birds and
beasts he had seen on his walks.  He had odd names for them too...."

The thing was almost too pitiful to endure.  I felt as if I had known
the child all my life, I could see him playing, I could hear his voice,
and as for Mary she was unashamedly weeping.

Sir Arthur's eyes were dry now, and there was no catch in his voice as
he spoke.  But suddenly a sharper flash of realisation came on him and
his words became a strained cry: "Where is he now?  What are they doing
to him?  Oh, God!  My beloved little man--my gentle little Davie!"

That fairly finished me.  Mary's arm was round the old man's neck, and
I saw that he was trying to pull himself together, but I didn't see
anything clearly.  I only know that I was marching about the room,
scarcely noticing that our guest was leaving.  I remember shaking hands
with him, and hearing him say that it had done him good to talk to us.
It was Mary who escorted him to the car, and when she returned it was
to find me blaspheming like a Turk at the window.  I had flung the
thing open, for I felt suffocated, though the evening was cool.  The
mixture of anger and disgust and pity in my heart nearly choked me.

"Why the devil can't I be left alone?" I cried.  "I don't ask for
much--only a little peace.  Why in Heaven's name should I be dragged
into other people's business?  Why on earth----"

Mary was standing at my elbow, her face rather white and tear-stained.

"Of course you are going to help," she said.

Her words made clear to me the decision which I must have taken a
quarter of an hour before, and all the passion went out of me like wind
out of a pricked bladder.

"Of course," I answered.  "By the way, I had better telegraph to
Macgillivray.  And Warcliff too.  What's his address?"

"You needn't bother about Sir Arthur," said Mary.  "Before you came
in--when he told me the story--I said he could count on you.  Oh, Dick,
think if it had been Peter John!"




_Chapter III_

_Researches in the Subconscious_

I went to bed in the perfect certainty that I wouldn't sleep.  That
happened to me about once a year, when my mind was excited or angry,
and I knew no way of dodging it.  There was a fine moon, and the
windows were sheets of opal cut by the dark jade limbs of trees; light
winds were stirring the creepers; owls hooted like sentries exchanging
passwords, and sometimes a rook would talk in its dreams; the little
odd squeaks and rumbles of wild life came faintly from the woods; while
I lay staring at the ceiling with my thoughts running round about in a
futile circus.  Mary's even breathing tantalised me, for I never knew
anyone with her perfect gift for slumber.  I used to say that if her
pedigree could be properly traced it would be found that she descended
direct from one of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus who married one of the
Foolish Virgins.

What kept me wakeful was principally the thought of that poor little
boy, David Warcliff.  I was sorry for Miss Victor and Lord Mercot, and
desperately sorry for the parents of all three, but what I could not
stand was the notion of the innocent little chap, who loved birds and
fishing and the open air, hidden away in some stuffy den by the worst
kind of blackguards.  The thing preyed on me till I got to think it had
happened to us and that Peter John was missing.  I rose and prowled
about the windows, looking out at the quiet night, and wondering how
the same world could contain so much trouble and so much peace.

I laved my face with cold water and lay down again.  It was no good
letting my thoughts race, so I tried to fix them on one point in the
hope that I would get drowsy.  I endeavoured to recapitulate the
evidence which Macgillivray had recited, but only made foolishness of
it, for I simply could not concentrate.  I saw always the face of a
small boy, who bit his lips to keep himself from tears, and another
perfectly hideous face that kept turning into one of the lead figures
in the rose garden.  A ridiculous rhyme too ran in my head--something
about the "midnight sun" and the "fields of Eden."  By and by I got it
straightened out into the anagram business Macgillivray had mentioned.
I have a fly-paper memory for verse when there is no reason why I
should remember it, and I found I could repeat the six lines of the
doggerel.

After that I found the lines mixing themselves up, and suggesting all
kinds of odd pictures to my brain.  I took to paraphrasing them--"Under
the midnight sun, where harvests are poor"--that was Scandinavia
anyhow, or maybe Iceland or Greenland or Labrador.  Who on earth was
the sower who sowed in the fields of Eden?  Adam, perhaps, or Abel, who
was the first farmer?  Or an angel in heaven?  More like an angel, I
thought, for the line sounded like a hymn.  Anyhow it was infernal
nonsense.

The last two lines took to escaping me, and that made me force my mind
out of the irritable confusion in which it was bogged.  Ah!  I had them
again:

  "Where beside the sacred tree
  Spins the seer who cannot see."

The sacred tree was probably Yggdrasil and the spinner one of the
Norns.  I had once taken an interest in Norse mythology, but I couldn't
remember whether one of the Norns was blind.  A blind woman spinning.
Now where had I heard something like that?  Heard it quite recently,
too?

The discomfort of wakefulness is that you are not fully awake.  But now
I was suddenly in full possession of my senses, and worrying at that
balderdash like a dog at a bone.  I had been quite convinced that there
was a clue in it, but that it would be impossible to hit on the clue.
But now I had a ray of hope, for I seemed to feel a very faint and
vague flavour of reminiscence.

Scandinavian harvests, the fields of Eden, the blind spinner--oh, it
was maddening, for every time I repeated them the sense of having
recently met with something similar grew stronger.  The
North--Norway--surely I had it there!  Norway--what was there about
Norway?--Salmon, elk, reindeer, midnight sun, _saeters_--the last cried
out to me.  And the blind old woman that spun!  I had it.  These were
two of the three facts which Dr Greenslade had suggested the night
before as a foundation for his imaginary "shocker."  What was the
third?  A curiosity shop in North London kept by a Jew with a dyed
beard.  That had no obvious connection with a sower in the fields of
Eden.  But at any rate he had got two of them identical with the
doggerel....  It was a clue.  It must be a clue.  Greenslade had
somewhere and somehow heard the jingle or the substance of it, and it
had sunk into the subconscious memory he had spoken of, without his
being aware of it.  Well, I had got to dig it out.  If I could discover
where and how he had heard the thing, I had struck a trail.

When I had reached this conclusion, I felt curiously easier in my mind,
and almost at once fell asleep.  I awoke to a gorgeous spring morning,
and ran down to the lake for my bath.  I felt that I wanted all the
freshening and screwing up I could get, and when I dressed after an icy
plunge I was ready for all comers.

Mary was down in time for breakfast, and busy with her letters.  She
spoke little, and seemed to be waiting for me to begin; but I didn't
want to raise the matter which was uppermost in our minds till I saw my
way clearer, so I said I was going to take two days to think things
over.  It was Wednesday, so I wired to Macgillivray to expect me in
London on Friday morning, and I scribbled a line to Mr Julius Victor.
By half-past nine I was on the road making for Greenslade's lodgings.

I caught him in the act of starting on his rounds, and made him sit
down and listen to me.  I had to give him the gist of Macgillivray's
story, with extracts from those of Victor and Sir Arthur.  Before I was
half-way through he had flung off his overcoat, and before I had
finished he had lit a pipe, which was a breach of his ritual not to
smoke before the evening.  When I stopped he had that wildish look in
his light eyes which you see in a cairn terrier's when he is digging
out a badger.

"You've taken on this job?" he asked brusquely.

I nodded.

"Well, I shouldn't have had much respect for you if you had refused.
How can I help?  Count on me, if I'm any use.  Good God!  I never heard
a more damnable story."

"Have you got hold of the rhyme?" I repeated it, and he said it after
me.

"Now, you remember the talk we had after dinner the night before last.
You showed me how a 'shocker' was written, and you took at random three
facts as the foundation.  They were, you remember, a blind old woman
spinning in the Western Highlands, a _saeter_ in Norway, and a
curiosity shop in North London, kept by a Jew with a dyed beard.  Well,
two of your facts are in that six-line jingle I have quoted to you."

"That is an odd coincidence.  But is it anything more?"

"I believe that it is.  I don't hold with coincidences.  There's
generally some explanation which we're not clever enough to get at.
Your inventions were so odd that I can't think they were mere
inventions.  You must have heard them somehow and somewhere.  You know
what you said about your subconscious memory.  They're somewhere in it,
and, if you can remember just how they got there, you'll give me the
clue I want.  That six-line rhyme was sent in by people who were so
confident that they didn't mind giving their enemies a clue--only it
was a clue which they knew could never be discovered.  Macgillivray and
his fellows can make nothing of it--never will.  But if I can start
from the other end I'll get in on their rear.  Do you see what I mean?
I'm going to make you somehow or other dig it out."

He shook his head.  "It can't be done, Dick.  Admitting your
premise--that I heard the nonsense and didn't invent it--the
subconscious can't be handled like a business proposition.  I remember
unconsciously and I can't recall consciously....  But I don't admit
your premise.  I think the whole thing is common coincidence."

"I don't," I said stubbornly, "and even if I did I'm bound to assume
the contrary, for it's the only card I possess.  You've got to sit
down, old chap, and do your damnedest to remember.  You've been in
every kind of odd show, and my belief is that you _heard_ that
nonsense.  Dig it out of your memory and we've a chance to win.
Otherwise, I see nothing but tragedy."

He got up and put on his overcoat.  "I've got a long round of visits
which will take me all day.  Of course I'll try, but I warn you that I
haven't the ghost of a hope.  These things don't come by care and
searching.  I'd better sleep at the Manor to-night.  How long can you
give me?"

"Two days--I go up to town on Friday morning.  Yes, you must take up
your quarters with us.  Mary insists on it."

There was a crying of young lambs from the meadow, and through the open
window came the sound of the farm-carts jolting from the stackyard into
the lane.  Greenslade screwed up his face and laughed.

"A nasty breach in your country peace, Dick.  You know I'm with you if
there's any trouble going.  Let's get the thing clear, for there's a
lot of researching ahead of me.  My three were an old blind woman
spinning in the Western Highlands--Western Highlands, was it?--a
_saeter_ barn, and a Jew curiosity shop.  The other three were a blind
spinner under a sacred tree, a _saeter_ of sorts, and a sower in the
fields of Eden--Lord, such rot!  Two pairs seem to coincide, the other
pair looks hopeless.  Well, here goes for fortune!  I'm going to break
my rule and take my pipe with me, for this business demands tobacco."

I spent a busy day writing letters and making arrangements about the
Manor, for it looked as if I might be little at home for the next
month.  Oddly enough, I felt no restlessness or any particular anxiety.
That would come later; for the moment I seemed to be waiting on
Providence in the person of Tom Greenslade.  I was trusting my instinct
which told me that in those random words of his there was more than
coincidence, and that with luck I might get from them a line on our
problem.

Greenslade turned up about seven in the evening, rather glum and
preoccupied.  At dinner he ate nothing, and when we sat afterwards in
the library he seemed to be chiefly interested in reading the
advertisements in the _Times_.  When I asked "What luck?" he turned on
me a disconsolate face.

"It is the most futile job I ever took on," he groaned.  "So far it's
an absolute blank, and anyhow I've been taking the wrong line.  I've
been trying to think myself into recollection, and, as I said, this
thing comes not by searching, nor yet by prayer and fasting.  It
occurred to me that I might get at something by following up the
differences between the three pairs.  It's a familiar method in
inductive logic, for differences are often more suggestive than
resemblances.  So I worried away at the 'sacred tree' as contrasted
with the 'Western Highlands' and the 'fields of Eden' as set against
the curiosity shop.  No earthly good.  I gave myself a headache and I
daresay I've poisoned half my patients.  It's no use, Dick, but I'll
peg away for the rest of the prescribed two days.  I'm letting my mind
lie fallow now and trusting to inspiration.  I've got two faint
glimmerings of notions.  First, I don't believe I said 'Western
Highlands.'"

"I'm positive those were your words.  What did you say, then?"

"Hanged if I know, but I'm pretty certain it wasn't that.  I can't
explain properly, but you get an atmosphere about certain things in
your mind and that phrase somehow jars with the atmosphere.  Different
key.  Wrong tone.  Second, I've got a hazy intuition that the thing, if
it is really in my memory, is somehow mixed up with a hymn tune.  I
don't know what tune, and the whole impression is as vague as smoke,
but I tell it you for what it is worth.  If I could get the right tune,
I might remember something."

"You've stopped thinking?"

"Utterly.  I'm an olian harp to be played on by any wandering wind.
You see, if I did hear these three things there is no conscious
rational clue to it.  They were never part of my workaday mind.  The
only chance is that some material phenomenon may come along and link
itself with them and so rebuild the scene where I heard them.  A scent
would be best, but a tune might do.  Our one hope--and it's about as
strong as a single thread of gossamer on the grass--is that that tune
may drift into my head.  You see the point, Dick?  Thought won't do,
for the problem doesn't concern the mind, but some tiny physical
sensation of nose, ear, or eye might press the button.  Now, it may be
hallucination, but I've a feeling that the three facts I thought I
invented were in some infinitely recondite way connected with a hymn
tune."

He went to bed early, while I sat up till nearly midnight writing
letters.  As I went upstairs, I had a strong sense of futility and
discouragement.  It seemed the merest trifling to be groping among
these spectral unrealities, while tragedy, as big and indisputable as a
mountain, was overhanging us.  I had to remind myself how often the
trivial was the vital before I got rid of the prick in my conscience.
I was tired and sleepy, and as I forced myself to think of the
immediate problem, the six lines of the jingle were all blurred.  While
I undressed I tried to repeat them, but could not get the fourth to
scan.  It came out as "fields of Erin," and after that "the green
fields of Erin."  Then it became "the green fields of Eden."

I found myself humming a tune.

It was an old hymn which the Salvation Army used to play in the Cape
Town streets when I was a schoolboy.  I hadn't heard it or thought of
it for thirty years.  But I remembered the tune very clearly, a pretty,
catchy thing like an early Victorian drawing-room ballad, and I
remembered the words of the chorus--

  "On the other side of Jordan
  In the green fields of Eden,
  Where the Tree of Life is blooming,
    There is rest for you."


I marched off to Greenslade's room and found him lying wide awake
staring at the ceiling, with the lamp by his bedside lit.  I must have
broken in on some train of thought, for he looked at me crossly.

"I've got your tune," I said, and I whistled it, and then quoted what
words I remembered.

"Tune be blowed," he said.  "I never heard it before."  But he hummed
it after me, and made me repeat the words several times.

"No good, I'm afraid.  It doesn't seem to hank on to anything.  Lord,
this is a fool's game.  I'm off to sleep."

But three minutes later came a knock at my dressing-room door, and
Greenslade entered.  I saw by his eyes that he was excited.

"It's the tune all right.  I can't explain why, but those three blessed
facts of mine fit into it like prawns in an aspic.  I'm feeling my way
towards the light now.  I thought I'd just tell you, for you may sleep
better for hearing it."

I slept like a log, and went down to breakfast feeling more cheerful
than I had felt for several days.  But the doctor seemed to have had a
poor night.  His eyes looked gummy and heavy, and he had ruffled his
hair out of all hope of order.  I knew that trick of his; when his hair
began to stick up at the back he was out of sorts either in mind or
body.  I noticed that he had got himself up in knickerbockers and thick
shoes.

After breakfast he showed no inclination to smoke.  "I feel as if I
were going to be beaten on the post," he groaned.  "I'm a complete
convert to your view, Dick.  I heard my three facts and didn't invent
them.  What's more, my three are definitely linked with the three in
those miscreants' doggerel.  That tune proves it, for it talks about
the 'fields of Eden,' and yet is identified in my memory with my three
which didn't mention Eden.  That's a tremendous point and proves we're
on the right road.  But I'm hanged if I can get a step farther.
Wherever I heard the facts I heard the tune, but I'm no nearer finding
out that place.  I've got one bearing, and I need a second to give me
the point of intersection I want, and how the deuce I'm to get it I
don't know."

Greenslade was now keener even than I was on the chase, and indeed his
lean anxious face was uncommonly like an old hound's.  I asked him what
he was going to do.

"At ten o'clock precisely I start on a walk--right round the head of
the Windrush and home by the Forest.  It's going to be a thirty-mile
stride at a steady four and a half miles an hour, which, with half an
hour for lunch, will get me back here before six.  I'm going to drug my
body and mind into apathy by hard exercise.  Then I shall have a hot
bath and a good dinner, and after that, when I'm properly fallow, I may
get the revelation.  The mistake I made yesterday was in trying to
_think_."

It was a gleamy blustering March morning, the very weather for a walk,
and I would have liked to accompany him.  As it was I watched his long
legs striding up the field we call Big Pasture, and then gave up the
day to the job of putting Loch Leven fry into one of the ponds--a task
so supremely muddy and wet that I had very little leisure to think of
other things.  In the afternoon I rode over to the market-town to see
my builder, and got back only just before dinner to learn that
Greenslade had returned.  He was now wallowing in a hot bath, according
to his programme.

At dinner he seemed to be in better spirits.  The wind had heightened
his colour, and given him a ferocious appetite, and the 1906 Clicquot,
which I regard as the proper drink after a hard day, gave him the
stimulus he needed.  He talked as he had talked three nights ago,
before this business got us in its clutches.  Mary disappeared after
dinner, and we sat ourselves in big chairs before the library fire,
like two drowsy men who have had a busy day in the open air.  I thought
I had better say nothing till he chose to speak.

He was silent for a long time, and then he laughed not very mirthfully.

"I'm as far off it as ever.  All day I've been letting my mind wander
and measuring off miles with my two legs like a pair of compasses.  But
nothing has come to me.  No word yet of that confounded cross-bearing I
need.  I might have heard that tune in any one of a thousand parts of
the globe.  You see, my rackety life is a disadvantage--I've had too
many different sorts of experience.  If I'd been a curate all my days
in one village it would have been easier."

I waited, and he went on, speaking not to me but to the fire.

"I've got an impression so strong that it amounts to certainty that I
never heard the words 'Western Highlands.'  It was something like it,
but not that."

"Western Islands," I suggested.

"What could they be?"

"I think I've heard the phrase used about the islands off the west
coast of Ireland.  Does that help you?"

He shook his head.  "No good.  I've never been in Ireland."

After that he was silent again, staring at the fire, while I smoked
opposite him, feeling pretty blank and dispirited.  I realised that I
had banked more than I knew on this line of inquiry which seemed to be
coming to nothing....

Then suddenly there happened one of those trivial things which look
like accidents but I believe are part of the reasoned government of the
universe.

I leaned forward to knock out the ashes of my pipe against the stone
edge of the hearth.  I hammered harder than I intended, and the pipe,
which was an old one, broke off at the bowl.  I exclaimed irritably,
for I hate to lose an old pipe, and then pulled up sharp at the sight
of Greenslade.

He was staring open-mouthed at the fragments in my hand, and his eyes
were those of a man whose thoughts are far away.  He held up one hand,
while I froze into silence.  Then the tension relaxed, and he dropped
back into his chair with a sigh.

"The cross-bearing!" he said.  "I've got it.... Medina."

Then he laughed at my puzzled face.

"I'm not mad, Dick.  I once talked to a man, and as we talked he broke
the bowl of his pipe as you have just done.  He was the man who hummed
the hymn tune, and though I haven't the remotest recollection of what
he said, I am as certain as that I am alive that he gave me the three
facts which sunk into the abyss of my subconscious memory.  Wait a
minute.  Yes.  I see it as plain as I see you.  He broke his pipe just
as you have done, and some time or other he hummed that tune."

"Who was he?" I asked, but Greenslade disregarded the question.  He was
telling his story in his own way, with his eyes still abstracted as if
he were looking down a long corridor of memory.

"I was staying at the Bull at Hanham--shooting wild-fowl on the sea
marshes.  I had the place to myself, for it wasn't weather for a
country pub, but late one night a car broke down outside, and the owner
and his chauffeur had to put up at the Bull.  Oddly enough I knew the
man.  He had been at one of the big shoots at Rousham Thorpe and was on
his way back to London.  We had a lot to say to each other and sat up
into the small hours.  We talked about sport, and the upper glens of
the Yarkand river, where I first met him.  I remember quite a lot of
our talk, but not the three facts or the tune, which made no appeal to
my conscious memory.  Only of course they must have been there."

"When did this happen?"

"Early last December, the time we had the black frost.  You remember,
Dick, how I took a week's holiday and went down to Norfolk after duck."

"You haven't told me the man's name."

"I have.  Medina."

"Who on earth is Medina?"

"Oh Lord!  Dick.  You're overdoing the rustic.  You've heard of
Dominick Medina."

I had, of course, when he mentioned the Christian name.  You couldn't
open a paper without seeing something about Dominick Medina, but
whether he was a poet or a politician or an actor-manager I hadn't
troubled to inquire.  There was a pile of picture-papers on a
side-table, and I fetched them and began to turn them over.  Very soon
I found what I wanted.  It was a photograph of a group at a
country-house party for some steeplechase, the usual
"reading-from-left-to-right" business, and there between a Duchess and
a foreign Princess was Mr Dominick Medina.  The poverty of the
photograph could not conceal the extraordinary good looks of the man.
He had the kind of head I fancy Byron had, and I seemed to discern,
too, a fine, clean, athletic figure.

"If you had happened to look at that rag you might have short-circuited
your inquiry."

He shook his head.  "No.  It doesn't happen that way.  I had to get
your broken pipe and the tune or I would have been stuck."

"Then I suppose I have to get in touch with this chap and find where he
picked up the three facts and the tune.  But how if he turns out to be
like you, another babbler from the subconscious?"

"That is the risk you run, of course.  He may be able to help you, or
more likely he may prove only another dead wall."

I felt suddenly an acute sense of the difficulty of the job I had taken
on, and something very near hopelessness.

"Tell me about this Medina.  Is he a decent fellow?"

"I suppose so.  Yes, I should think so.  But he moves in higher circles
than I'm accustomed to, so I can't judge.  But I'll tell you what he is
beyond doubt--he's rather a great man.  Hang it, Dick, you must have
heard of him.  He's one of the finest shots living, and he's done some
tall things in the exploration way, and he was the devil of a fellow as
a partisan leader in South Russia.  Also--though it may not interest
you--he's an uncommon fine poet."

"I suppose he's some sort of a Dago."

"Not a bit of it.  Old Spanish family settled here for three centuries.
One of them rode with Rupert.  Hold on!  I rather believe I've heard
that his people live in Ireland, or did live, till life there became
impossible."

"What age?"

"Youngish.  Not more than thirty-five.  Oh, and the handsomest thing in
mankind since the Greeks."

"I'm not a flapper," I said impatiently.  "Good looks in a man are no
sort of recommendation to me.  I shall probably take a dislike to his
face."

"You won't.  From what I know of him and you you'll fall under his
charm at first sight.  I never heard of a man that didn't.  He has a
curious musical voice and eyes that warm you--glow like sunlight.  Not
that I know him well, but I own I found him extraordinarily attractive.
And you see from the papers what the world thinks of him."

"All the same I'm not much nearer my goal.  I've got to find out where
he heard those three blessed facts and that idiotic tune.  He'll
probably send me to blazes, and, even if he's civil, he'll very likely
be helpless."

"Your chance is that he's a really clever man, not an old blunderer
like me.  You'll get the help of a first-class mind, and that means a
lot.  Shall I write you a line of introduction?"

He sat down at my desk and wrote.  "I'm saying nothing about your
errand--simply that I'd like you to know each other--common interest in
sport and travel--that sort of thing.  You're going to be in London, so
I had better give your address as your club."

Next morning Greenslade went back to his duties and I caught the early
train to town.  I was not very happy about Mr Dominick Medina, for I
didn't seem able to get hold of him.  _Who's Who_ only gave his age,
his residence--Hill Street, his clubs, and the fact that he was M.P.
for a South London division.  Mary had never met him, for he had
appeared in London after she had stopped going about, but she
remembered that her Wymondham aunts raved about him, and she had read
somewhere an article on his poetry.  As I sat in the express, I tried
to reconstruct what kind of fellow he must be--a mixture of Byron and
Sir Richard Burton and the young political highbrow.  The picture
wouldn't compose, for I saw only a figure like a waxwork, with a cooing
voice and a shop-walker's suavity.  Also his name kept confusing me,
for I mixed him up with an old ruffian of a Portugee I once knew at
Beira.

I was walking down St. James's Street on my way to Whitehall, pretty
much occupied with my own thoughts, when I was brought up by a hand
placed flat on my chest, and lo! and behold! it was Sandy Arbuthnot.




_Chapter IV_

_I Make the Acquaintance of a Popular Man_

You may imagine how glad I was to see old Sandy again, for I had not
set eyes on him since 1916.  He had been an Intelligence Officer with
Maude, and then something at Simla, and after the War had had an
administrative job in Mesopotamia, or, as they call it nowadays, Iraq.
He had written to me from all kinds of queer places, but he never
appeared to be coming home, and, what with my marriage and my settling
in the country, we seemed to be fixed in ruts that were not likely to
intersect.  I had seen his elder brother's death in the papers, so he
was now Master of Clanroyden and heir to the family estates, but I
didn't imagine that that would make a Scotch laird of him.  I never saw
a fellow less changed by five years of toil and travel.  He was
desperately slight and tanned--he had always been that, but the
contours of his face were still soft like a girl's, and his brown eyes
were merry as ever.

We stood and stared at each other.

"Dick, old man," he cried, "I'm home for good.  Yes--honour bright.
For months and months, if not years and years.  I've got so much to say
to you I don't know where to begin.  But I can't wait now.  I'm off to
Scotland to see my father.  He's my chief concern now, for he's getting
very frail.  But I'll be back in three days.  Let's dine together on
Tuesday."

We were standing at the door of a club--his and mine--and a porter was
stowing his baggage into a taxi.  Before I could properly realise that
it was Sandy, he was waving his hand from the taxi window and
disappearing up the street.

The sight of him cheered me immensely and I went on along Pall Mall in
a good temper.  To have Sandy back in England and at call made me feel
somehow more substantial, like a commander who knows his reserves are
near.  When I entered Macgillivray's room I was smiling, and the sight
of me woke an answering smile on his anxious face.  "Good man!" he
said.  "You look like business.  You're to put yourself at my disposal
while I give you your bearings."

He got out his papers and expounded the whole affair.  It was a very
queer story, yet the more I looked into it the thinner my scepticism
grew.  I am not going to write it all down, for it is not yet time; it
would give away certain methods which have not yet exhausted their
usefulness; but before I had gone very far, I took off my hat to these
same methods, for they showed amazing patience and ingenuity.  It was
an odd set of links that made up the chain.  There was an importer of
Barcelona nuts with a modest office near Tower Hill.  There was a
copper company, purporting to operate in Spain, whose shares were not
quoted on the Stock Exchange, but which had a fine office in London
Wall, where you could get the best luncheon in the City.  There was a
respectable accountant in Glasgow, and a French count, who was also
some kind of Highland laird and a great supporter of the White Rose
League.  There was a country gentleman living in Shropshire, who had
bought his place after the War and was a keen rider to hounds and a
very popular figure in the county.  There was a little office not far
from Fleet Street, which professed to be the English agency of an
American religious magazine; and there was a certain publicist, who was
always appealing in the newspapers for help for the distressed
populations of Central Europe.  I remembered his appeals well, for I
had myself twice sent him small subscriptions.  The way Macgillivray
had worked out the connection between these gentry filled me with awe.

Then he showed me specimens of their work.  It was sheer unmitigated
crime, a sort of selling a bear on a huge scale in a sinking world.
The aim of the gang was money, and already they had made scandalous
profits.  Partly their business was mere conscienceless profiteering
well inside the bounds of the law, such as gambling in falling
exchanges and using every kind of brazen and subtle trick to make their
gamble a certainty.  Partly it was common fraud of the largest size.
But there were darker sides--murder when the victim ran athwart their
schemes, strikes engineered when a wrecked industry somewhere or other
in the world showed symptoms of reviving, shoddy little outbursts in
shoddy little countries which increased the tangle.  These fellows were
wreckers on the grand scale, merchants of pessimism, giving society
another kick downhill whenever it had a chance of finding its balance,
and then pocketing their profits.

Their motive, as I have said, was gain, but that was not the motive of
the people they worked through.  Their cleverness lay in the fact that
they used the fanatics, the moral imbeciles as Macgillivray called
them, whose key was a wild hatred of something or other, or a reasoned
belief in anarchy.  Behind the smug exploiters lay the whole dreary
wastes of half-baked craziness.  Macgillivray gave me examples of how
they used these tools, the fellows who had no thought of profit, and
were ready to sacrifice everything, including their lives, for a mad
ideal.  It was a masterpiece of cold-blooded, devilish ingenuity.
Hideous, and yet comic too; for the spectacle of these feverish cranks
toiling to create a new heaven and a new earth and thinking themselves
the leaders of mankind, when they were dancing like puppets at the will
of a few scoundrels engaged in the most ancient of pursuits, was an
irony to make the gods laugh.

I asked who was their leader.

Macgillivray said he wasn't certain.  No one of the gang seemed to have
more authority than the others, and their activities were beautifully
specialised.  But he agreed that there was probably one master mind,
and said grimly that he would know more about that when they were
rounded up.  "The dock will settle that question."

"How much do they suspect?" I asked.

"Not much.  A little, or they would not have taken hostages.  But not
much, for we have been very careful to make no sign.  Only, since we
became cognisant of the affair, we have managed very quietly to put a
spoke in the wheels of some of their worst enterprises, though I am
positive they have no suspicion of it.  Also we have put the brake on
their propaganda side.  They are masters of propaganda, you know.
Dick, have you ever considered what a diabolical weapon that can
be--using all the channels of modern publicity to poison and warp men's
minds?  It is the most dangerous thing on earth.  You can use it
cleanly--as I think on the whole we did in the War--but you can also
use it to establish the most damnable lies.  Happily in the long run it
defeats itself, but only after it has sown the world with mischief.
Look at the Irish!  They are the cleverest propagandists extant, and
managed to persuade most people that they were a brave, generous,
humorous, talented, warm-hearted race, cruelly yoked to a dull
mercantile England, when God knows they were exactly the opposite."

Macgillivray, I may remark, is an Ulsterman, and has his prejudices.

"About the gang--I suppose they're all pretty respectable to outward
view?"

"Highly respectable," he said.  "I met one of them at dinner the other
night at ----'s"--he mentioned the name of a member of the Government.
"Before Christmas I was at a cover shoot in Suffolk, and one of the
worst had the stand next me--an uncommonly agreeable fellow."

Then we sat down to business.  Macgillivray's idea was that I should
study the details of the thing and then get alongside some of the
people.  He thought I might begin with the Shropshire squire.  He
fancied that I might stumble on something which would give me a line on
the hostages, for he stuck to his absurd notion that I had a special
_flair_ which the amateur sometimes possessed and the professional
lacked.  I agreed that that was the best plan, and arranged to spend
Sunday in his room going over the secret _dossiers_.  I was beginning
to get keen about the thing, for Macgillivray had a knack of making
whatever he handled as interesting as a game.

I had meant to tell him about my experiments with Greenslade; but after
what he had shown me I felt that that story was absurdly thin and
unpromising.  But as I was leaving, I asked him casually if he knew Mr
Dominick Medina.

He smiled.  "Why do you ask?  He's scarcely your line of country."

"I don't know.  I've heard a lot about him and I thought I would rather
like to meet him."

"I barely know him, but I must confess that the few times I've met him
I was enormously attracted.  He's the handsomest being alive."

"So I'm told, and it's the only thing that puts me off."

"It wouldn't if you saw him.  He's not in the least the ordinary
matine idol.  He is the only fellow I ever heard of who was adored by
women and also liked by men.  He's a first-class sportsman and said to
be the best shot in England after His Majesty.  He's a coming man in
politics, too, and a most finished speaker.  I once heard him, and,
though I take very little stock in oratory, he almost had me on my
feet.  He has knocked a bit about the world, and he is also a very
pretty poet, though that wouldn't interest you."

"I don't know why you say that," I protested.  "I'm getting rather good
at poetry."

"Oh, I know.  Scott and Macaulay and Tennyson.  But that is not
Medina's line.  He is a deity of _les jeunes_ and a hardy innovator.
Jolly good, too.  The man's a fine classical scholar."

"Well, I hope to meet him soon, and I'll let you know my impression."

I had posted my letter to Medina, enclosing Greenslade's introduction,
on my way from the station, and next morning I found a very civil reply
from him at my club.  Greenslade had talked of our common interest in
big-game shooting, and he professed to know all about me, and to be
anxious to make my acquaintance.  He was out of town unfortunately for
the week-end, he said, but he suggested that I should lunch with him on
the Monday.  He named a club, a small, select, old-fashioned one of
which most of the members were hunting squires.

I looked forward to meeting him with a quite inexplicable interest and
on Sunday, when I was worrying through papers in Macgillivray's room, I
had him at the back of my mind.  I had made a picture of something
between a Ouida guardsman and the Apollo Belvedere and rigged it out in
the smartest clothes.  But when I gave my name to the porter at the
club door, and a young man who was warming his hands at the hall fire
came forward to meet me, I had to wipe that picture clean off my mind.

He was about my own height, just under six feet, and at first sight
rather slightly built, but a hefty enough fellow to eyes which knew
where to look for the points of a man's strength.  Still he appeared
slim, and therefore young, and you could see from the way he stood and
walked that he was as light on his feet as a rope-dancer.  There is a
horrible word in the newspapers, "well-groomed," applied to men by lady
journalists, which always makes me think of a glossy horse on which a
stable-boy has been busy with the brush and curry-comb.  I had thought
of him as "well-groomed," but there was nothing glossy about his
appearance.  He wore a rather old well-cut brown tweed suit, with a
soft shirt and collar, and a russet tie that matched his complexion.
His get-up was exactly that of a country squire who has come up to town
for a day at Tattersalls'.

I find it difficult to describe my first impression of his face, for my
memory is all overlaid with other impressions acquired when I looked at
it in very different circumstances.  But my chief feeling, I remember,
was that it was singularly pleasant.  It was very English, and yet not
quite English; the colouring was a little warmer than sun or weather
would give, and there was a kind of silken graciousness about it not
commonly found in our countrymen.  It was beautifully cut, every
feature regular, and yet there was a touch of ruggedness that saved it
from conventionality.  I was puzzled about this, till I saw that it
came from two things, the hair and the eyes.  The hair was a dark
brown, brushed in a wave above the forehead, so that the face with its
strong fine chin made an almost perfect square.  But the eyes were the
thing.  They were of a startling blue, not the pale blue which is
common enough and belongs to our Norse ancestry, but a deep dark blue,
like the colour of a sapphire.  Indeed if you think of a sapphire with
the brilliance of a diamond, you get a pretty fair notion of those
eyes.  They would have made a plain-headed woman lovely, and in a man's
face, which had not a touch of the feminine, they were startling.
Startling--I stick to that word--but also entrancing.

He greeted me as if he had been living for this hour, and also with a
touch of the deference due to a stranger.

"This is delightful, Sir Richard.  It was very good of you to come.
We've got a table to ourselves by the fire.  I hope you're hungry.
I've had a devilish cold journey this morning and I want my luncheon."

I was hungry enough and I never ate a better meal.  He gave me Burgundy
on account of the bite in the weather, and afterwards I had a glass of
the Bristol Cream for which the club was famous; but he drank water
himself.  There were four other people in the room, all of whom he
appeared to call by their Christian names, and these lantern-jawed
hunting fellows seemed to cheer up at the sight of him.  But they
didn't come and stand beside him and talk, which is apt to happen to
your popular man.  There was that about Medina which was at once
friendly and aloof, the air of a simple but tremendous distinction.

I remember we began by talking about rifles.  I had done a good deal of
shikar in my time, and I could see that this man had had a wide
experience and had the love of the thing in his bones.  He never
bragged, but by little dropped remarks showed what a swell he was.  We
talked of a new .240 bore which had remarkable stopping power, and I
said I had never used it on anything more formidable than a Scotch
stag.  "It would have been a godsend to me in the old days on the
Pungwe where I had to lug about a .500 express that broke my back."

He grinned ruefully.  "The old days!" he said.  "We've all had 'em, and
we're all sick to get 'em back.  Sometimes I'm tempted to kick over the
traces and be off to the wilds again.  I'm too young to settle down.
And you, Sir Richard--you must feel the same.  Do you never regret that
that beastly old War is over?"

"I can't say I do.  I'm a middle-aged man now and soon I'll be stiff in
the joints.  I've settled down in the Cotswolds, and though I hope to
get a lot of sport before I die I'm not looking for any more wars.  I'm
positive the Almighty meant me for a farmer."

He laughed.  "I wish I knew what He meant me for.  It looks like some
sort of politician."

"Oh, you!" I said.  "You're the fellow with twenty talents.  I've only
got the one, and I'm jolly well going to bury it in the soil."

I kept wondering how much help I would get out of him.  I liked him
enormously, but somehow I didn't yet see his cleverness.  He was just
an ordinary good fellow of my own totem--just such another as Tom
Greenslade.  It was a dark day, and the firelight silhouetted his
profile, and as I stole glances at it I was struck by the shape of his
head.  The way he brushed his hair front and back made it look square,
but I saw that it was really round, the roundest head I have ever seen
except in a Kaffir.  He was evidently conscious of it and didn't like
it, so took some pains to conceal it.

All through luncheon I was watching him covertly, and I could see that
he was also taking stock of me.  Very friendly these blue eyes were,
but very shrewd.  He suddenly looked me straight in the face.

"You won't vegetate," he said.  "You needn't deceive yourself.  You
haven't got the kind of mouth for a rustic.  What is it to be?
Politics?  Business?  Travel?  You're well off?"

"Yes.  For my simple tastes I'm rather rich.  But I haven't the
ambition of a maggot."

"No.  You haven't."  He looked at me steadily.  "If you don't mind my
saying it, you have too little vanity.  Oh, I'm quick at detecting
vanity, and anyhow it's a thing that defies concealment.  But I
imagine--indeed I know--that you can work like a beaver, and that your
loyalty is not the kind that cracks.  You won't be able to help
yourself, Sir Richard.  You'll be caught up in some machine.  Look at
me.  I swore two years ago never to have a groove, and I'm in a deep
one already.  England is made up of grooves, and the only plan is to
select a good one."

"I suppose yours is politics," I said.

"I suppose it is.  A dingy game as it's played at present, but there
are possibilities.  There is a mighty Tory revival in sight, and it
will want leading.  The newly enfranchised classes, especially the
women, will bring it about.  The suffragists didn't know what a
tremendous force of conservatism they were releasing when they won the
vote for their sex.  I should like to talk to you about these things
some day."

In the smoking-room we got back to sport and he told me the story of
how he met Greenslade in Central Asia.  I was beginning to realise that
the man's reputation was justified, for there was a curious mastery
about his talk, a careless power as if everything came easily to him
and was just taken in his stride.  I had meant to open up the business
which had made me seek his acquaintance, but I did not feel the
atmosphere quite right for it.  I did not know him well enough yet, and
I felt that if I once started on those ridiculous three facts, which
were all I had, I must make a clean breast of the whole thing and take
him fully into my confidence.  I thought the time was scarcely ripe for
that, especially as we would meet again.

"Are you by any chance free on Thursday?" he asked as we parted.  "I
would like to take you to dine at the Thursday Club.  You're sure to
know some of the fellows, and it's a pleasant way of spending an
evening.  That's capital!  Eight o'clock on Thursday.  Short coat and
black tie."

As I walked away, I made up my mind that I had found the right kind of
man to help me.  I liked him, and the more I thought of him the more
the impression deepened of a big reservoir of power behind his easy
grace.  I was completely fascinated, and the proof of it was that I
went off to the nearest bookseller's and bought his two slim volumes of
poems.  I cared far more about poetry than Macgillivray imagined--Mary
had done a lot to educate me--but I hadn't been very fortunate in my
experiments with the new people.  But I understood Medina's verses well
enough.  They were very simple, with a delicious subtle tune in them,
and they were desperately sad.  Again and again came the note of regret
and transience and disillusioned fortitude.  As I read them that
evening I wondered how a man, who had apparently such zest for life and
got so much out of the world, should be so lonely at heart.  It might
be a pose, but there was nothing of the conventional despair of the
callow poet.  This was the work of one as wise as Ulysses and as
far-wandering.  I didn't see how he could want to write anything but
the truth.  A pose is a consequence of vanity, and I was pretty clear
that Medina was not vain.

Next morning I found his cadences still running in my head and I could
not keep my thoughts off him.  He fascinated me as a man is fascinated
by a pretty woman.  I was glad to think that he had taken a liking for
me, for he had done far more than Greenslade's casual introduction
demanded.  He had made a plan for us to meet again, and he had spoken
not as an acquaintance but as a friend.  Very soon I decided that I
would get Macgillivray's permission and take him wholly into our
confidence.  It was no good keeping a man like that at arm's length and
asking him to solve puzzles presented as meaninglessly as an acrostic
in a newspaper.  He must be told all or nothing, and I was certain that
if he were told all he would be a very tower of strength to me.  The
more I thought of him the more I was convinced of his exceptional
brains.

I lunched with Mr Julius Victor in Carlton House Terrace.  He was
carrying on his ordinary life, and when he greeted me he never referred
to the business which had linked us together.  Or rather he only said
one word.  "I knew I could count on you," he said.  "I think I told you
that my daughter was engaged to be married this spring.  Well, her
fianc has come over from France and will be staying for an indefinite
time with me.  He can probably do nothing to assist you, but he is here
at your call if you want him.  He is the Marquis de la Tour du Pin."

I didn't quite catch the name, and, as it was a biggish party, we had
sat down to luncheon before I realised who the desolated lover was.  It
was my ancient friend Turpin, who had been liaison officer with my old
division.  I had known that he was some kind of grandee, but as
everybody went by nicknames I had become used to think of him as
Turpin, a version of his title invented, I think, by Archie Roylance.
There he was, sitting opposite me, a very handsome pallid young man,
dressed with that excessive correctness found only among Frenchmen who
get their clothes in England.  He had been a tremendous swashbuckler
when he was with the division, unbridled in speech, volcanic in action,
but always with a sad gentleness in his air.  He raised his
heavy-lidded eyes and looked at me, and then, with a word of apology to
his host, marched round the table and embraced me.

I felt every kind of a fool, but I was mighty glad all the same to see
Turpin.  He had been a good pal of mine, and the fact that he had been
going to marry Miss Victor seemed to bring my new job in line with
other parts of my life.  But I had no further speech with him, for I
had conversational women on both sides of me, and in the few minutes
while the men were left alone at table I fell into talk with an elderly
man on my right, who proved to be a member of the Cabinet.  I found
that out by a lucky accident, for I was lamentably ill-informed about
the government of our country.

I asked him about Medina and he brightened up at once.

"Can you place him?" he asked.  "I can't.  I like to classify my
fellow-men, but he is a new specimen.  He is as exotic as the young
Disraeli and as English as the late Duke of Devonshire.  The point is,
has he a policy, something he wants to achieve, and has he the power of
attaching a party to him?  If he has these two things, there is no
doubt about his future.  Honestly, I'm not quite certain.  He has very
great talents, and I believe if he wanted he would be in the front rank
as a public speaker.  He has the ear of the House, too, though he
doesn't often address it.  But I am never sure how much he cares about
the whole business, and England, you know, demands wholeheartedness in
her public men.  She will follow blindly the second-rate if he is in
earnest, and reject the first-rate if he is not."

I said something about Medina's view of a great Tory revival, based
upon the women.  My neighbour grinned.

"I daresay he's right, and I daresay he could whistle women any way he
pleased.  It's extraordinary the charm he has for them.  That handsome
face of his and that melodious voice would enslave anything female from
a charwoman to a Cambridge intellectual.  Half his power of course
comes from the fact that they have no charm for him.  He's as aloof as
Sir Galahad from any interest in the sex.  Did you ever hear his name
coupled with a young woman's?  He goes everywhere and they would give
their heads for him, and all the while he is as insensitive as a nice
Eton boy whose only thought is of getting into the Eleven.  You know
him?"

I told him, very slightly.

"Same with me.  I've only a nodding acquaintance, but one can't help
feeling the man everywhere and being acutely interested.  It's lucky
he's a sound fellow.  If he were a rogue he could play the devil with
our easy-going society."

That night Sandy and I dined together.  He had come back from Scotland
in good spirits, for his father's health was improving, and when Sandy
was in good spirits it was like being on the Downs in a south-west
wind.  We had so much to tell each other that we let our food grow
cold.  He had to hear all about Mary and Peter John, and what I knew of
Blenkiron and a dozen other old comrades, and I had to get a
sketch--the merest sketch--of his doings since the Armistice in the
East.  Sandy for some reason was at the moment disinclined to speak of
his past, but he was as ready as an undergraduate to talk of his
future.  He meant to stay at home now, for a long spell at any rate;
and the question was how he should fill up his time.  "Country life's
no good," he said.  "I must find a profession or I'll get into trouble."

I suggested politics, and he rather liked the notion.

"I might be bored in Parliament," he reflected, "but I should love the
rough-and-tumble of an election.  I only once took part in one, and I
discovered surprising gifts as a demagogue, and made a speech in our
little town which is still talked about.  The chief row was about Irish
Home Rule, and I thought I'd better have a whack at the Pope.  Has it
ever struck you, Dick, that ecclesiastical language has a most sinister
sound?  I knew some of the words, though not their meaning, but I knew
that my audience would be just as ignorant.  So I had a magnificent
peroration.  'Will you, men of Kilclavers,' I asked, 'endure to see a
chasuble set up in your market-place?  Will you have your daughters
sold into simony?  Will you have celibacy practised in the public
streets?'  Gad, I had them all on their feet bellowing 'Never!'"

He also rather fancied business.  He had a notion of taking up civil
aviation, and running a special service for transporting pilgrims from
all over the Moslem world to Mecca.  He reckoned the present average
cost to the pilgrim at not less than 30, and believed that he could do
it for an average of 15 and show a handsome profit.  Blenkiron, he
thought, might be interested in the scheme and put up some of the
capital.

But later, in a corner of the upstairs smoking-room, Sandy was serious
enough when I began to tell him the job I was on, for I didn't need
Macgillivray's permission to make a confidant of him.  He listened in
silence while I gave him the main lines of the business that I had
gathered from Macgillivray's papers, and he made no comment when I came
to the story of the three hostages.  But, when I explained my
disinclination to stir out of my country rut, he began to laugh.

"It's a queer thing how people like us get a sudden passion for
cosiness.  I feel it myself coming over me.  What stirred you up in the
end?  The little boy?"

Then very lamely and shyly I began on the rhymes and Greenslade's
memory.  That interested him acutely.  "Just the sort of
sensible-nonsensical notion you'd have, Dick.  Go on.  I'm thrilled."

But when I came to Medina he exclaimed sharply.

"You've met him?"

"Yesterday at luncheon."

"You haven't told him anything?"

"No.  But I'm going to."

Sandy had been deep in an arm-chair with his legs over the side, but
now he got up and stood with his arms on the mantelpiece looking into
the fire.

"I'm going to take him into my full confidence," I said, "when I've
spoken to Macgillivray."

"Macgillivray will no doubt agree?"

"And you?  Have you ever met him?"

"Never.  But of course I've heard of him.  Indeed I don't mind telling
you that one of my chief reasons for coming home was a wish to see
Medina."

"You'll like him tremendously.  I never met such a man."

"So everyone says."  He turned his face and I could see that it had
fallen into that portentous gravity which was one of Sandy's moods, the
complement to his ordinary insouciance.  "When are you going to see him
again?"

"I'm dining with him the day after to-morrow at a thing called the
Thursday Club."

"Oh, he belongs to that, does he?  So do I.  I think I'll give myself
the pleasure of dining also."

I asked about the Club, and he told me that it had been started after
the War by some of the people who had had queer jobs and wanted to keep
together.  It was very small, only twenty members.  There were Collatt,
one of the Q-boat V.C.'s, and Pugh of the Indian Secret Service, and
the Duke of Burminster, and Sir Arthur Warcliff, and several soldiers
all more or less well-known.  "They elected me in 1919," said Sandy,
"but of course I've never been to a dinner.  I say, Dick, Medina must
have a pretty strong pull here to be a member of the Thursday.  Though
I says it as shouldn't, it's a show most people would give their right
hand to be in."

He sat down again and appeared to reflect, with his chin on his hand.

"You're under the spell, I suppose," he said.

"Utterly.  I'll tell you how he strikes me.  Your ordinary very clever
man is apt to be a bit bloodless and priggish, while your ordinary
sportsman and good fellow is inclined to be a bit narrow.  Medina seems
to me to combine all the virtues and none of the faults of both kinds.
Anybody can see he's a sportsman, and you've only to ask the swells to
discover how high they put his brains."

"He sounds rather too good to be true."  I seemed to detect a touch of
acidity in his voice.  "Dick," he said, looking very serious, "I want
you to promise to go slow in this business--I mean about telling
Medina."

"Why?" I asked.  "Have you anything against him?"

"No--o--o," he said.  "I haven't anything against him.  But he's just a
little incredible, and I would like to know more about him.  I had a
friend who knew him.  I've no right to say this, and I haven't any
evidence, but I've a sort of feeling that Medina didn't do him any
good."

"What was his name?" I asked, and was told "Lavater"; and when I
inquired what had become of him Sandy didn't know.  He had lost sight
of him for two years.

At that I laughed heartily, for I could see what was the matter.  Sandy
was jealous of this man who was putting a spell on everybody.  He
wanted his old friends to himself.  When I taxed him with it he grinned
and didn't deny it.




_Chapter V_

_The Thursday Club_

We met in a room on the second floor of a little restaurant in Mervyn
Street, a pleasant room, panelled in white, with big fires burning at
each end.  The Club had its own cook and butler, and I swear a better
dinner was never produced in London, starting with preposterously early
plovers' eggs and finishing with fruit from Burminster's houses.  There
were a dozen present including myself, and of these, besides my host, I
knew only Burminster and Sandy.  Collatt was there, and Pugh, and a
wizened little man who had just returned from bird-hunting at the mouth
of the Mackenzie.  There was Palliser-Yeates, the banker, who didn't
look thirty, and Fulleylove, the Arabian traveller, who was really
thirty and looked fifty.  I was specially interested in Nightingale, a
slim peering fellow with double glasses, who had gone back to Greek
manuscripts and his Cambridge fellowship after captaining a Bedouin
tribe.  Leithen was there, too, the Attorney-General, who had been a
private in the Guards at the start of the War and had finished up a
G.S.O.I., a toughly built man, with a pale face and very keen quizzical
eyes.  I should think there must have been more varied and solid brains
in that dozen than you would find in an average Parliament.

Sandy was the last to arrive, and was greeted with a roar of joy.
Everybody seemed to want to wring his hand and beat him on the back.
He knew them all except Medina, and I was curious to see their meeting.
Burminster did the introducing, and Sandy for a moment looked shy.
"I've been looking forward to this for years," Medina said, and Sandy,
after one glance at him, grinned sheepishly and stammered something
polite.

Burminster was chairman for the evening, a plump, jolly little man, who
had been a pal of Archie Roylance in the Air Force.  The talk to begin
with was nothing out of the common.  It started with horses and the
spring handicaps, and then got on to spring salmon-fishing, for one man
had been on the Helmsdale, another on the Naver, and two on the Tay.
The fashion of the Club was to have the conversation general, and there
was very little talking in groups.  I was next to Medina, between him
and the Duke, and Sandy was at the other end of the oval table.  He had
not much to say, and more than once I caught his eyes watching Medina.

Then by and by, as was bound to happen, reminiscences began.  Collatt
made me laugh with a story of how the Admiralty had a notion that
sea-lions might be useful to detect submarines.  A number were
collected, and trained to swim after submarines to which fish were
attached as bait, the idea being that they would come to associate the
smell of submarines with food, and go after a stranger.  The thing
shipwrecked on the artistic temperament.  The beasts all came from the
music-halls and had names like Flossie and Cissie, so they couldn't be
got to realise that there was a war on, and were always going ashore
without leave.

That story started the ball rolling, and by the time we had reached the
port the talk was like what you used to find in the smoking-room of an
East African coastal steamer, only a million times better.  Everybody
present had done and seen amazing things, and moreover they had the
brains and knowledge to orientate their experiences.  It was no
question of a string of yarns, but rather of the best kind of
give-and-take conversation, when a man would buttress an argument by an
apt recollection.  I especially admired Medina.  He talked little, but
he made others talk, and his keen interest seemed to wake the best in
everybody.  I noticed that, as at our luncheon three days before, he
drank only water.

We talked, I remember, about the people who had gone missing, and
whether any were likely still to turn up.  Sandy told us about three
British officers who had been in prison in Turkestan since the summer
of '18 and had only just started home.  He had met one of them at
Marseilles, and thought there might be others tucked away in those
parts.  Then someone spoke of how it was possible to drop off the globe
for a bit and miss all that was happening.  I said I had met an old
prospector in Barberton in 1920 who had come down from Portuguese
territory and when I asked him what he had been doing in the War, he
said "What war?"  Pugh said a fellow had just turned up in Hong Kong,
who had been a captive of Chinese pirates for eight years and had never
heard a word of our four years' struggle, till he said something about
the Kaiser to the skipper of the boat that picked him up.

Then Sandy, as the new-comer, wanted news about Europe.  I remember
that Leithen gave him his views on the malaise that France was
suffering from, and that Palliser-Yeates, who looked exactly like a
Rugby three-quarter back, enlightened him--and incidentally myself--on
the matter of German reparations.  Sandy was furious about the muddle
in the Near East and the mishandling of Turkey.  His view was that we
were doing out best to hammer a much-divided Orient into a hostile
unanimity.

"Lord!" he cried, "how I loathe our new manners in foreign policy.  The
old English way was to regard all foreigners as slightly childish and
rather idiotic and ourselves as the only grown-ups in a kindergarten
world.  That meant that we had a cool detached view and did even-handed
unsympathetic justice.  But now we have got into the nursery ourselves
and are bear-fighting on the floor.  We take violent sides, and make
pets, and of course if you are _-phil_ something or other you have got
to be _-phobe_ something else.  It is all wrong.  We are becoming
Balkanised."

We would have drifted into politics, if Pugh had not asked him his
opinion of Gandhi.  That led him into an exposition of the meaning of
the fanatic, a subject on which he was well qualified to speak, for he
had consorted with most varieties.

"He is always in the technical sense mad--that is, his mind is tilted
from its balance, and since we live by balance he is a wrecker, a
crowbar in the machinery.  His power comes from the appeal he makes to
the imperfectly balanced, and as these are never the majority his
appeal is limited.  But there is one kind of fanatic whose strength
comes from balance, from a lunatic balance.  You cannot say that there
is any one thing abnormal about him, for he is all abnormal.  He is as
balanced as you or me, but, so to speak, in a fourth-dimensional world.
That kind of man has no logical gaps in his creed.  Within his insane
postulates he is brilliantly sane.  Take Lenin for instance.  That's
the kind of fanatic I'm afraid of."

Leithen asked how such a man got his influence.  "You say that there is
no crazy spot in him which appeals to a crazy spot in other people."

"He appeals to the normal," said Sandy solemnly, "to the perfectly
sane.  He offers reason, not visions--in any case his visions are
reasonable.  In ordinary times he will not be heard, because, as I say,
his world is not our world.  But let there come a time of great
suffering or discontent, when the mind of the ordinary man is in
desperation, and the rational fanatic will come by his own.  When he
appeals to the sane and the sane respond, revolutions begin."

Pugh nodded his head, as if he agreed.  "Your fanatic of course must be
a man of genius."

"Of course.  And genius of that kind is happily rare.  When it exists,
its possessor is the modern wizard.  The old necromancer fiddled away
with cabalistic signs and crude chemicals and got nowhere; the true
wizard is the man who works by spirit on spirit.  We are only beginning
to realise the strange crannies of the human soul.  The real magician,
if he turned up to-day, wouldn't bother about drugs and dopes.  He
would dabble in far more deadly methods, the compulsion of a fiery
nature over the limp things that men call their minds."

He turned to Pugh.  "You remember the man we used to call Ram Dass in
the War--I never knew his right name?"

"Rather," said Pugh.  "The fellow who worked for us in San Francisco.
He used to get big sums from the agitators and pay them in to the
British Exchequer, less his commission of ten per cent."

"Stout fellow!" Burminster exclaimed approvingly.

"Well, Ram Dass used to discourse to me on this subject.  He was as
wise as a serpent and as loyal as a dog, and he saw a lot of things
coming that we are just beginning to realise.  He said that the great
offensives of the future would be psychological, and he thought the
Governments should get busy about it and prepare their defence.  What a
jolly sight it would be--all the high officials sitting down to little
primers!  But there was sense in what he said.  He considered that the
most deadly weapon in the world was the power of mass-persuasion, and
he wanted to meet it at the source, by getting at the mass-persuader.
His view was that every spell-binder had got something like Samson's
hair which was the key of his strength, and that if this were tampered
with he could be made innocuous.  He would have had us make pets of the
prophets and invite them to Government House.  You remember the winter
of 1917 when the Bolsheviks were making trouble in Afghanistan and
their stuff was filtering through into India.  Well, Ram Dass claimed
the credit of stopping that game by his psychological dodges."

He looked across suddenly at Medina.  "You know the Frontier.  Did you
ever come across the _guru_ that lived at the foot of the Shansi pass
as you go over to Kaikand?"

Medina shook his head.  "I never travelled that way.  Why?"

Sandy seemed disappointed.  "Ram Dass used to speak of him.  I hoped
you might have met him."

The club madeira was being passed round, and there was a little silence
while we sipped it.  It was certainly a marvellous wine, and I noticed
with pain Medina's abstinence.

"You really are missing a lot, you know," Burminster boomed in his
jolly voice, and for a second all the company looked Medina's way.

He smiled and lifted his glass of water.

"_Sit vini abstemius qui hermeneuma tentat aut hominum petit
dominatum_," he said.

Nightingale translated.  "Meaning that you must be pussyfoot if you
would be a big man."

There was a chorus of protests, and Medina again lifted his glass.

"I'm only joking.  I haven't a scrap of policy or principle in the
matter, I don't happen to like the stuff--that's all."

I fancy that the only two scholars among us were Nightingale and Sandy.
I looked at the latter and was surprised by the change in his face.  It
had awakened to the most eager interest.  His eyes, which had been
staring at Medina, suddenly met mine, and I read in them not only
interest but disquiet.

Burminster was delivering a spirited defence of Bacchus, and the rest
joined in, but Sandy took the other side.

"There's a good deal in that Latin tag," he said.  "There are places in
the world where total abstinence is reckoned a privilege.  Did you ever
come across the Ulai tribe up the Karakoram way?"  He was addressing
Medina.  "No?  Well, the next time you meet a man in the Guides ask him
about them, for they're a curiosity.  They're Mahommedan and so should
by rights be abstainers, but they're a drunken set of sweeps and the
most priest-ridden community on earth.  Drinking is not only a habit
among them, it's an obligation, and their weekly _tamasha_ would make
Falstaff take the pledge.  But their priests--they're a kind of
theocracy--are strict teetotal.  It is their privilege and the secret
of their power.  When one of them has to be degraded he is filled
compulsorily full of wine.  That's your--how does the thing go?--your
'_hominum dominatus_.'"

From that moment I found the evening go less pleasantly.  Medina was as
genial as ever, but something seemed to have affected Sandy's temper
and he became positively grumpy.  Now and then he contradicted a man
too sharply for good manners, but for the most part he was silent,
smoking his pipe and answering his neighbours in monosyllables.  About
eleven I began to feel it was time to leave, and Medina was of the same
opinion.  He asked me to walk with him, and I gladly accepted, for I
did not feel inclined to go to bed.

As I was putting on my coat, Sandy came up.  "Come to the Club, Dick,"
he said.  "I want to talk to you."  His manner was so peremptory that I
opened my eyes.

"Sorry," I said.  "I've promised to walk home with Medina."

"Oh, damn Medina!" he said.  "Do as I ask or you'll be sorry for it."

I wasn't feeling very pleased with Sandy, especially as Medina was near
enough to hear what he said.  So I told him rather coldly that I didn't
intend to go back on my arrangement.  He turned and marched out,
cannoning at the doorway into Burminster, to whom he did not apologise.
That nobleman rubbed his shoulder ruefully.  "Old Sandy hasn't got used
to his corn yet," he laughed.  "Looks as if the madeira had touched up
his liver."

It was a fine still March night with a good moon, and as we walked
along Piccadilly I was feeling cheerful.  The good dinner I had eaten
and the good wine I had drunk played their part in this mood, and there
was also the satisfaction of having dined with good fellows and having
been admitted into pretty select company.  I felt my liking for Medina
enormously increase, and I had the unworthy sense of superiority which
a men gets from seeing an old friend whom he greatly admires behave
rather badly.  I was considering what had ailed Sandy when Medina
raised the subject.

"A wonderful fellow Arbuthnot," he said.  "I have wanted to meet him
for years, and he is certainly up to my expectations.  But he has been
quite long enough abroad.  A mind as keen as his, if it doesn't have
the company of its equals, is in danger of getting viewy.  What he said
to-night was amazingly interesting, but I thought it a little
fantastic."

I agreed, but the hint of criticism was enough to revive my loyalty.
"All the same there's usually something in his most extravagant
theories.  I've seen him right when all the sober knowledgable people
were wrong."

"That I can well believe," he said.  "You know him well?"

"Pretty well.  We've been in some queer places together."

The memory of those queer places came back to me as we walked across
Berkeley Square.  The West End of London at night always affected me
with a sense of the immense solidity of our civilisation.  These great
houses, lit and shuttered and secure, seemed the extreme opposite of
the world of half-lights and perils in which I had sometimes journeyed.
I thought of them as I thought of Fosse Manor, as sanctuaries of peace.
But to-night I felt differently towards them.  I wondered what was
going on at the back of those heavy doors.  Might not terror and
mystery lurk behind that barricade as well as in tent and slum?  I
suddenly had a picture of a plump face all screwed up with fright
muffled beneath the bed-clothes.

I had imagined that Medina lived in chambers or a flat, but we stopped
before a substantial house in Hill Street.

"You're coming in?  The night's young and there's time for a pipe."

I had no wish to go to bed, so I followed him as he opened the front
door with a latch-key.  He switched on a light, which lit the first
landing of the staircase but left the hall in dusk.  It seemed to be a
fine place full of cabinets, the gilding of which flickered dimly.  We
ascended thickly carpeted stairs, and on the landing he switched off
the first light and switched on another which lit a further flight.  I
had the sensation of mounting to a great height in a queer shadowy
world.

"This is a big house for a bachelor," I observed.

"I've a lot of stuff, books and pictures and things, and I like it
round me."

He opened a door and ushered me into an enormous room, which must have
occupied the whole space on that floor.  It was oblong, with deep bays
at each end, and it was lined from floor to ceiling with books.  Books,
too, were piled on the tables, and sprawled on a big flat couch which
was drawn up before the fire.  It wasn't an ordinary gentleman's
library, provided by the bookseller at so much a yard.  It was the
working collection of a scholar, and the books had that used look which
makes them the finest tapestry for a room.  The place was lit with
lights on small tables, and on a big desk under a reading lamp were
masses of papers and various volumes with paper slips in them.  It was
workshop as well as library.

A servant entered, unsummoned, and put a tray of drinks on a side
table.  He was dressed like an ordinary butler, but I guessed that he
had not spent much of his life in service.  The heavy jowl, the small
eyes, the hair cut straight round the nape of the neck, the swollen
muscles about the shoulder and upper arm told me the profession he had
once followed.  The man had been in the ring, and not so very long ago.
I wondered at Medina's choice, for a pug is not the kind of servant I
would choose myself.

"Nothing more, Odell," said Medina.  "You can go to bed.  I will let
Sir Richard out."

He placed me in a long arm-chair, and held the syphon while I mixed
myself a very weak whisky-and-soda.  Then he sat opposite me across the
hearth-rug in a tall old-fashioned chair which he pulled forward from
his writing-table.  The servant in leaving had turned out all the
lights except one at his right hand, which vividly lit up his face, and
which, since the fire had burned low, made the only bright patch in the
room.

I stretched my legs comfortably and puffed at my pipe, wondering how I
would have the energy to get up and go home.  The long dim shelves,
where creamy vellum and morocco ran out of the dusk into darkness, had
an odd effect on me.  I was visited again by the fancies which had
occupied me coming through Berkeley Square.  I was inside one of those
massive sheltered houses, and lo and behold! it was as mysterious as
the aisles of a forest.  Books--books--old books full of forgotten
knowledge!  I was certain that if I had the scholarship to search the
grave rows I would find out wonderful things.

I was thirsty, so I drank off my whisky-and-soda, and was just adding a
little more soda-water from the syphon at my elbow, when I looked
towards Medina.  There was that in his appearance which made me move my
glass so that a thin stream of liquid fell on my sleeve.  The patch was
still damp next morning.

His face, brilliantly lit up by the lamp, seemed to be also lit from
within.  It was not his eyes or any one feature that enthralled me, for
I did not notice any details.  Only the odd lighting seemed to detach
his head from its environment so that it hung in the air like a planet
in the sky, full of intense brilliance and power.

It is not very easy to write down what happened.  For twelve hours
afterwards I remembered nothing--only that I had been very sleepy, and
must have been poor company and had soon got up to go....  But that was
not the real story: it was what the man had willed that I should
remember, and because my own will was not really mastered I remembered
other things in spite of him; remembered them hazily, like a drunkard's
dream.

The head seemed to swim in the centre of pale converging lines.  These
must have been the book-shelves, which in that part of the room were
full of works bound in old vellum.  My eyes were held by two violet
pin-points of light which were so bright that they hurt me.  I tried to
shift my gaze, but I could only do that by screwing round my head
towards the dying fire.  The movement demanded a great effort, for
every muscle in my body seemed drugged with lethargy.

As soon as I looked away from the light I regained some possession of
my wits.  I felt that I must be in for some sickness, and had a moment
of bad fright.  It seemed to be my business to keep my eyes on the
shadows in the hearth, for where darkness was there I found some
comfort.  I was as afraid of the light before me as a child of a bogy.
I thought that if I said something I should feel better, but I didn't
seem to have the energy to get a word out.  Curiously enough I felt no
fear of Medina; he didn't seem to be in the business; it was that
disembodied light that scared me.

Then I heard a voice speaking, but still I didn't think of Medina.

"Hannay," it said.  "You are Richard Hannay?"

Against my will I slewed my eyes round, and there hung that intolerable
light burning into my eyeballs and my soul.  I found my voice now, for
it seemed to be screwed out of me, and I said "Yes" like an automaton.

I felt my wits and my senses slipping away under that glare.  But my
main discomfort was physical, the flaming control of the floating
brightness--not face, or eyes but a dreadful overmastering aura.  I
thought--if at that moment you could call any process of my mind
thought--that if I could only link it on to some material thing I
should find relief.  With a desperate effort I seemed to make out the
line of a man's shoulder and the back of a chair.  Let me repeat that I
never thought of Medina for he had been wiped clean out of my world.

"You are Richard Hannay," said the voice.  "Repeat 'I am Richard
Hannay.'"

The words came out of my mouth involuntarily.  I was concentrating all
my wits on the comforting outline of the chair-back, which was
beginning to be less hazy.

The voice spoke again.

"But till this moment you have been nothing.  There was no Richard
Hannay before.  Now, when I bid you, you begin your life.  You remember
nothing.  You have no past."

"I remember nothing," said my voice, but as I spoke I knew I lied, and
that knowledge was my salvation.

I have been told more than once by doctors who dabbled in the business
that I was the most hopeless subject for hypnotism that they ever
struck.  One of them once said I was about as unsympathetic as Table
Mountain.  I must suppose that the intractable bedrock of
common-placeness in me now met the something which was striving to
master me and repelled it.  I felt abominably helpless, my voice was
not my own, my eyes were tortured and aching, but I had recovered my
mind.

I seemed to be repeating a lesson at someone's dictation.  I said I was
Richard Hannay, who had just come from South Africa on his first visit
to England.  I knew no one in London, and had no friends.  Had I heard
of a Colonel Arbuthnot?  I had not.  Or the Thursday Club?  I had not.
Or the War?  Yes, but I had been in Angola most of the time and had
never fought.  I had money?  Yes, a fair amount, which was in
such-and-such a bank and such-and-such investments....  I went on
repeating the stuff as glibly as a parrot, but all the while I knew I
lied.  Something deep down in me was insisting that I was Sir Richard
Hannay, K.C.B., who had commanded a division in France, and was the
squire of Fosse Manor, the husband of Mary, and the father of Peter
John.

Then the voice seemed to give orders.  I was to do this and that, and I
repeated them docilely.  I was no longer in the least scared.  Someone
or something was trying to play monkey-tricks with my mind, but I was
master of that, though my voice seemed to belong to an alien
gramophone, and my limbs were stupidly weak.  I wanted above all things
to be allowed to sleep....

I think I must have slept for a little, for my last recollection of
that queer sederunt is that the unbearable light had gone, and the
ordinary lamps of the room were switched on.  Medina was standing by
the dead fire, and another man beside him--a slim man with a bent back
and a lean grey face.  The second man was only there for a moment, but
he looked at me closely and I thought Medina spoke to him and
laughed....  Then I was being helped by Medina into my coat, and
conducted downstairs.  There were two bright lights in the street which
made me want to lie down on the kerb and sleep....

      *      *      *      *      *

I woke about ten o'clock next morning in my bedroom at the Club,
feeling like nothing on earth.  I had a bad headache, my eyes seemed to
be backed with white fire, and my legs were full of weak pains as if I
had influenza.  It took me several minutes to realise where I was, and
when I wondered what had brought me to such a state I could remember
nothing.  Only a preposterous litany ran in my brain--the name "Dr
Newhover," and an address in Wimpole Street.  I concluded glumly that
that for a man in my condition was a useful recollection, but where I
had got it I hadn't an idea.

The events of the night before were perfectly clear.  I recalled every
detail of the Thursday Club dinner, Sandy's brusqueness, my walk back
with Medina, my admiration of his great library.  I remembered that I
had been drowsy there and thought that I had probably bored him.  But I
was utterly at a loss to account for my wretched condition.  It could
not have been the dinner; or the wine, for I had not drunk much, and in
any case I have a head like cast iron; or the weak whisky-and-soda in
Medina's house.  I staggered to my feet and looked at my tongue in the
glass.  It was all right, so there could be nothing the matter with my
digestion.

You are to understand that the account I have just written was pieced
together as events came back to me, and that at 10 a.m. the next
morning I remembered nothing of it--nothing but the incidents up to my
sitting down in Medina's library, and the name and address of a doctor
I had never heard of.  I concluded that I must have got some infernal
germ, probably botulism, and was in for a bad illness.  I wondered
dismally what kind of fool I had made of myself before Medina, and
still more dismally what was going to happen to me.  I decided to wire
for Mary when I had seen a doctor, and to get as soon as possible into
a nursing home.  I had never had an illness in my life, except malaria,
and I was as nervous as a cat.

But after I had had a cup of tea I felt a little better, and inclined
to get up.  A cold bath relieved my headache, and I was able to shave
and dress.  It was while I was shaving that I observed the first thing
which made me puzzle about the events of the previous evening.  The
valet who attended to me had put out the contents of my pockets on the
dressing-table--my keys, watch, loose silver, notecase, and my pipe and
pouch.  Now I carry my pipe in a little leather case, and, being very
punctilious in my habits, I invariably put it back in the case when it
is empty.  But the case was not there, though I remembered laying it on
the table beside me in Medina's room, and moreover the pipe was still
half full of unsmoked tobacco.  I rang for the man, and learned that he
had found the pipe in the pocket of my dinner jacket, but no case.  He
was positive, for he knew my ways and had been surprised to find my
pipe so untidily pocketed.

I had a light breakfast in the coffee-room, and as I ate it I kept
wondering as to what exactly I had been doing the night before.  Odd
little details were coming back to me; in particular, a recollection of
some great effort which had taken all the strength out of me.  Could I
have been drugged?  Not the Thursday Club madeira.  Medina's
whisky-and-soda?  The idea was nonsense; in any case a drugged man does
not have a clean tongue the next morning.

I interviewed the night porter, for I thought he might have something
to tell me.

"Did you notice what hour I came home last night?" I asked.

"It was this morning, Sir Richard," the man replied, with the suspicion
of a grin.  "About half-past three, it would be, or twenty minutes to
four."

"God bless my soul!" I exclaimed.  "I had no notion it was so late.  I
sat up talking with a friend."

"You must have been asleep in the car, Sir Richard, for the chauffeur
had to wake you, and you were that drowsy I thought I'd better take you
upstairs myself.  The bedrooms on the top floor is not that easy found."

"I didn't drop a pipe-case?" I asked.

"No, sir."  The man's discreet face revealed that he thought I had been
dining too well but was not inclined to blame me for it.

By luncheon-time I had decided that I was not going to be ill, for
there was no longer anything the matter with my body except a certain
stiffness in the joints and the ghost of a headache behind my eyes.
But my mind was in a precious confusion.  I had stayed in Medina's room
till after three, and had not been conscious of anything that happened
there after, say, half-past eleven.  I had left finally in such a state
that I had forgotten my pipe-case, and had arrived at the Club in
somebody's car--probably Medina's--so sleepy that I had to be escorted
upstairs, and had awoke so ill that I thought I had botulism.  What in
Heaven's name had happened?  I fancy that the fact that I had resisted
the influence brought to bear on me with my mind, though tongue and
limbs had been helpless, enabled me to remember what the wielder of the
influence had meant to be forgotten.  At any rate bits of that strange
scene began to come back.  I remembered the uncanny
brightness--remembered it not with fear but with acute indignation.  I
vaguely recalled that I had repeated nonsense to somebody's dictation,
but what it was I could not yet remember.  The more I thought of it the
angrier I grew.  Medina must have been responsible, though to connect
him with it seemed ridiculous when I thought of what I had seen of him.
Had he been making me the subject of some scientific experiment?  If
so, it was infernal impertinence.  Anyhow it had failed--that was a
salve to my pride--for I had kept my head through it.  The doctor had
been right who had compared me with Table Mountain.

I had got thus far in my reflections, when I recollected that which put
a different complexion on the business.  Suddenly I remembered the
circumstances in which I had made Medina's acquaintance.  From him Tom
Greenslade had heard the three facts which fitted in with the jingle
which was the key to the mystery that I was sworn to unravel.  Hitherto
I had never thought of this dazzling figure except as an ally.  Was it
possible that he might be an enemy?  The turn-about was too violent for
my mind to achieve it in one movement.  I swore to myself that Medina
was straight, that it was sheer mania to believe that a gentleman and a
sportsman could ever come within hailing distance of the hideous
underworld which Macgillivray had revealed to me....  But Sandy had not
quite taken to him....  I thanked my stars that anyhow I had said
nothing to him about my job.  I did not really believe that there was
any doubt about him, but I realised that I must walk very carefully.

And then another idea came to me.  Hypnotism had been tried on me, and
it had failed.  But those who tried it must believe from my behaviour
that it had succeeded.  If so, somehow and somewhere they would act on
that belief.  It was my business to encourage it.  I was sure enough of
myself to think that, now I was forewarned, no further hypnotic
experiments could seriously affect me.  But let them show their game,
let me pretend to be helpless wax in their hands.  Who "they" were I
had still to find out.

I had a great desire to get hold of Sandy and talk it over, but though
I rung up several of his lairs I could not find him.  Then I decided to
see Dr Newhover, for I was certain that that name had come to me out of
the medley of last night.  So I telephoned and made an appointment with
him for that afternoon, and four o'clock saw me starting out to walk to
Wimpole Street.




_Chapter VI_

_The House in Gospel Oak_

It was a dry March afternoon, with one of those fantastic winds which
seem to change their direction hourly, and contrive to be in a man's
face at every street corner.  The dust was swirling in the gutters, and
the scent of hyacinth and narcissus from the flower-shops was mingled
with that bleak sandy smell which is London's foretaste of spring.  As
I crossed Oxford Street I remember thinking what an odd pointless
business I had drifted into.  I saw nothing for it but to continue
drifting and see what happened.  I was on my way to visit a doctor of
whom I knew nothing, about some ailment which I was not conscious of
possessing.  I didn't even trouble to make a plan, being content to let
chance have the guiding of me.

The house was one of those solid dreary erections which have usually
the names of half a dozen doctors on their front doors.  But in this
case there was only one--Dr M. Newhover.  The parlourmaid took me into
the usual drab waiting-room furnished with Royal Academy engravings,
fumed oak, and an assortment of belated picture-papers, and almost at
once she returned and ushered me into the consulting-room.  This again
was of the most ordinary kind--glazed bookcases, wash-hand basin in a
corner, roll-top desk, a table with a medical journal or two and some
leather cases.  And Dr Newhover at first sight seemed nothing out of
the common.  He was a youngish man, with high cheek-bones, a high
forehead, and a quantity of blond hair brushed straight back from it.
He wore a _pince-nez_, and when he removed it showed pale prominent
blue eyes.  From his look I should have said that his father had called
himself Neuhofer.

He greeted me with a manner which seemed to me to be at once
patronising and dictatorial.  I wondered if he was some tremendous
swell in his profession, of whom I ought to have heard.  "Well, Mr
Hannay, what can I do for you?" he said.  I noticed that he called me
"Mr," though I had given "Sir Richard" both on the telephone and to the
parlour-maid.  It occurred to me that someone had already been speaking
of me to him, and that he had got the name wrong in his memory.

I thought I had better expound the alarming symptoms with which I had
awakened that morning.

"I don't know what's gone wrong with me," I said.  "I've a pain behind
my eyeballs, and my whole head seems muddled up.  I feel drowsy and
slack, and I've got a weakness in my legs and back like a man who has
just had 'flu.'"

He made me sit down and proceeded to catechise me about my health.  I
said it had been good enough, but I mentioned my old malaria and
several concussions, and I pretended to be pretty nervous about my
condition.  Then he went through the whole bag of tricks--sounding me
with a stethoscope, testing my blood pressure, and hitting me hard
below the knee to see if I reacted.  I had to play up to my part, but
upon my soul I came near reacting too vigorously to some of his
questions and boxing his ears.  Always he kept up that odd, intimate,
domineering, rather offensive manner.

He made me lie down on a couch while he fingered the muscles of my neck
and shoulder and seemed to be shampooing my head with his long chilly
hands.  I was by this time feeling rather extra well, but I managed to
invent little tendernesses here and there and a lot of alarming mental
aberrations.  I wondered if he were not getting suspicious, for he
asked abruptly: "Have you had these symptoms long?" so I thought it
better to return to the truth, and told him "only since this morning."

At last he bade me get up, took off the tortoise-shell spectacles he
had been wearing and resumed his _pince-nez_, and while I was buttoning
my collar seemed to be sunk in reflection.  He made me sit in the
patient's chair, and stood up and looked down on me with a magisterial
air that made me want to laugh.

"You are suffering," he said, "from a somewhat abnormal form of a
common enough complaint.  Just as the effects of a concussion are often
manifest only some days after the blow, so the results of nervous
strain may take a long time to develop.  I have no doubt that in spite
of your good health you have during recent years been working your mind
and body at an undue pressure, and now this morning quite suddenly you
reap the fruits.  I don't want to frighten you, Mr Hannay, but neurosis
is so mysterious a disease in its working that we must take it
seriously, especially at its first manifestations.  There are one or
two points in your case which I am not happy about.  There is, for
example, a certain congestion--or what seems to me a congestion--in the
nerve centres of the neck and head.  That may be induced by the
accidents--concussion and the like--which you have told me of, or it
may not.  The true cure must, of course, take time, and rest and change
of scene are obligatory.  You are fond of sport?  A fisherman?"

I told him I was.

"Well, a little later I may prescribe a salmon river in Norway.  The
remoteness of the life from ordinary existence and the contemplation of
swift running water have had wonderful results with some of my
patients.  But Norway is not possible till May, and in the meantime I
am going to order you specific treatment.  Yes.  I mean massage, but by
no means ordinary massage.  That science is still in its infancy, and
its practitioners are only fumbling at the doorway.  But now and then
we find a person, man or woman, with a kind of extra sense for
disentangling and smoothing out muscular and nervous abnormalities.  I
am going to send you to such an one.  The address may surprise you, but
you are man of the world enough to know that medical skill is not
confined to the area between Oxford Street and the Marylebone Road."
He took off his glasses, and smiled.

Then he wrote something on a slip of paper and handed it to me.  I read
"Madame Breda, 4 Palmyra Square, N.W."

"Right!" I said.  "Much obliged to you.  I hope Madame Breda will cure
this infernal headache.  When can I see her?"

"I can promise you she will cure the headache.  She is a Swedish lady
who has lived in London since the War, and is so much an enthusiast in
her art that she will only now and then take a private patient.  For
the most part she gives her skill free to the children's hospitals.
But she will not refuse me.  As for beginning, I should lose no time
for the sake of your own comfort.  What about to-morrow morning?"

"Why not to-night?  I have nothing to do, and I want to be quit of my
headache before bedtime.  Why shouldn't I go on there now?"

"No reason in the world.  But I must make an appointment.  Madame is on
the telephone.  Excuse me a moment."

He left the room and returned in a few minutes to say that he had made
an appointment for seven o'clock.  "It is an outlandish place to get
to, but most taxi-drivers know it.  If your man doesn't, tell him to
drive to Gospel Oak, and then any policeman will direct you."

I had my cheque-book with me, but he didn't want his fee, saying that
he was not done with me.  I was to come back in a week and report
progress.  As I left I had a strong impression of a hand as cold as a
snake, pale bulging eyes, and cheek-bones like a caricature of a
Scotchman.  An odd but rather impressive figure was Dr Newhover.  He
didn't look a fool, and if I hadn't known the uncommon toughness of my
constitution I might have been unsettled by his forebodings.

I walked down to Oxford Street and had tea in a tea-shop.  As I sat
among the chattering typists and shop-boys I kept wondering whether I
was not wasting my time and behaving like a jackass.  Here was I, as
fit as a hunter, consulting specialists and visiting unknown masseuses
in North London, and all with no clear purpose.  In less than
twenty-four hours I had tumbled into a perfectly crazy world, and for a
second I had a horrid doubt whether the craziness was not inside my
mind.  Had something given in my brain last night in Medina's room, so
that now I was what people call "wanting"?  I went over the sequence of
events again, and was reassured by remembering that in it all I had
kept my head.  I had not got to the stage of making theories; I was
still only waiting on developments, and I couldn't see any other way
before me.  I must, of course, get hold of Sandy, but first let me see
what this massage business meant.  It might all be perfectly square; I
might have remembered Dr Newhover's name by a queer trick of
memory--heard it, perhaps, from some friend--and that remarkable
practitioner might be quite honest.  But then I remembered the man's
manner--I was quite clear that he knew something of me, that someone
had told him to expect me.  Then it occurred to me that I might be
doing a rash thing in going off to an unknown house in a seedy suburb.
So I went into a public telephone-booth, rang up the Club, and told the
porter that if Colonel Arbuthnot called, I was at 4 Palmyra Square,
N.W.--I made him write down the address--and would be back before ten
o'clock.

I was rather short of exercise, so I decided to walk, since I had
plenty of time.  Strangely enough, the road was pretty much that which
I had taken on that June day of 1914 when I had been waiting on
Bullivant and the Black Stone gentry, and had walked clean out of
London to pass the time.[1]  Then, I remembered, I had been thrilling
with wild anticipation, but now I was an older and much wiser man, and
though I was sufficiently puzzled I could curb my restlessness with
philosophy.  I went up Portland Place, past the Regent's Park, till I
left the houses of the well-to-do behind me, and got into that belt of
mean streets which is the glacis of the northern heights.  Various
policemen directed me, and I enjoyed the walk as if I had been
exploring, for London is always to me an undiscovered country.  I
passed yards which not so long ago had been patches of market-garden,
and terraces, sometime pretentious, and now sinking into slums; for
London is like the tropical bush--if you don't exercise constant care
the jungle, in the shape of the slums, will break in.  The streets were
full of clerks and shop-girls waiting for buses, and workmen from the
St. Pancras and Clerkenwell factories going home.  The wind was rising,
and in the untidy alleys was stirring up a noisome dust; but as the
ground rose it blew cleaner and seemed to bring from Kentish fields and
the Channel the tonic freshness of spring.  I stopped for a little and
watched behind me the plain of lights, which was London, quivering in
the dark-blue windy dusk.


[1] See _The Thirty-nine Steps_.


It was almost dark when at last, after several false casts, I came into
Palmyra Square.  It was a square only in name, for one side was filled
with a warehouse of sorts, and another straggled away in nests of small
brick houses.  One side was a terrace of artisans' dwellings, quite
new, each with a tiny bow-window and names like "Chatsworth" and
"Kitchener Villa."  The fourth side, facing south, had once had a
certain dignity, and the builder who had designed the place seventy
years ago had thought, no doubt, that he was creating a desirable
residential quarter.  There the houses stood apart, each in a patch of
garden, which may at one time have had lawns and flowers.  Now these
gardens were mere dusty yards, the refuge of tin cans and bits of
paper, and only a blackened elm, an ill-grown privet hedge, and some
stunted lilacs told of the more cheerful past.  On one house was the
brass plate of a doctor, on another that of a teacher of music; several
advertised lodgings to let; the steps were untidy, the gates askew on
their hinges, and over everything was written the dreary legend of a
shabby gentility on the very brink of squalor.

Number 4 was smarter than the others, and its front door had been newly
painted a vivid green.  I rang the bell, which was an electric one, and
the door was opened by a maid who looked sufficiently respectable.
When I entered I saw that the house was on a more generous scale than I
had thought, and had once, no doubt, been the home of some comfortable
citizen.  The hall was not the tank-like thing of the small London
dwelling, and the room into which I was ushered, though small, was well
furnished and had an electric fire in the grate.  It seemed to be a
kind of business room, for there was a telephone, a big safe, and on
the shelves a line of lettered boxes for papers.  I began to think that
Madame Breda, whoever she might be, must be running a pretty prosperous
show on ordinary business lines.

I was presently led by the maid to a room on the other side of the
hall, where I was greeted by a smiling lady.  Madame was a plump person
in the early forties, with dark hair and a high colour, who spoke
English almost without an accent.  "Dr Newhover has sent you.  So?  He
has told me.  Will you please go in there and take off your coat and
waistcoat?  Your collar, too, please."

I did as I was bid, and in a little curtained cubicle divested myself
of these garments and returned in my shirt-sleeves.  The room was a
very pleasant one, with folding doors at one end, furnished like an
ordinary drawing-room, with flowers in pots, and books, and what looked
like good eighteenth-century prints.  Any suspicion I may have had of
the _bona fides_ of the concern received a rude shock.  Madame had
slipped over her black dress a white linen overall, such as surgeons
wear, and she had as her attendant a small thin odd-looking girl, who
also wore an overall, and whose short hair was crowned with a small
white cap.

"This is Gerda," Madame said.  "Gerda helps me.  She is very clever."
She smiled on Gerda, and Gerda smiled back, a limp little contortion of
a perfectly expressionless face.

Madame made me lie down on a couch.  "You have a headache?"

I mendaciously said that I had.

"That I can soon cure.  But there are other troubles?  So?  These I
must explore.  But first I will take away the pain."

I felt her light firm fingers playing about my temples and the base of
my skull and my neck muscles.  A very pleasant sensation it was, and I
am certain that if I had been suffering from the worst headache in the
world it would have been spirited away.  As it was, being in excellent
health, I felt soothed and freshened.

"So," she said, beaming down on me.  "You are better?  You are so beeg
that it is not easy to be well all over at once.  Now, I must look into
more difficult things.  You are not happy in your nerves--not
altogether.  Ah! these nerves!  We do not quite know what they are,
except that they are what you call the devil.  You are very wakeful
now.  Is it not so?  Well I must put you to sleep.  That is necessary,
if you are willing."

"Right-o," I answered; but inwardly I said to myself, "No, my woman, I
bet you don't."  I was curious to see if, now that I was forewarned, I
could resist any hypnotic business, as I believed I could.

I imagined that she would try to master me with her eyes, which were
certainly remarkable orbs.  But her procedure was the very opposite,
for the small girl brought some things on a tray, and I saw that they
were bandages.  First of all, with a fine cambric handkerchief, she
swathed my eyes, and then tied above it another of some heavy opaque
material.  They were loosely bound, so that I scarcely felt them, but I
was left in the thickest darkness.  I noticed that she took special
pains so to adjust them that they should not cover my ears.

"You are not wakeful," I heard her voice say, "I think you are sleepy.
You will sleep now."

I felt her fingers stray over my face, and the sensation was different,
for whereas, when she had treated my headache, they had set up a
delicious cool tingling of the skin, now they seemed to induce wave
upon wave of an equally pleasant languor.  She pressed my forehead, and
my senses seemed to be focussed there and to be lulled by that
pressure.  All the while she was cooing to me in a voice which was like
the drowsy swell of the sea.  If I had wanted to go to sleep I could
have dropped off easily, but, as I didn't want to, I had no difficulty
in resisting the gentle coercion.  That, I fancy, is my position about
hypnotism.  I am no kind of use under compulsion, and for the thing to
affect me it has to have the backing of my own will.  Anyhow, I could
appreciate the pleasantness of it and yet disregard it.  But it was my
business to be a good subject, so I pretended to drift away into
slumber.  I made my breath come slowly and softly, and let my body
relax into impassivity.

Presently she appeared to be satisfied.  She said a word to the child,
whose feet I could hear cross the room.  There was a sound of opening
doors--my ears, remember, were free of the bandages and my hearing is
acute--and then it seemed to me that the couch on which I lay began
slowly to move.  I had a moment of alarm and nearly gave away the show
by jerking up my head.  The couch seemed to travel very smoothly on
rails, and I was conscious that I had passed through the folding doors
and was now in another room.  Then the movement stopped, and I realised
that I was in an entirely different atmosphere.  I realised, too, that
a new figure had come on the scene.

There was no word spoken, but I had the queer inexplicable
consciousness of human presences which is independent of sight and
hearing.  I have said that the atmosphere of the place had changed.
There was a scent in the air which anywhere else I would have sworn was
due to peat smoke, and mixed with it another intangible savour which I
could not put a name to, but which did not seem to belong to London at
all, or to any dwelling, but to some wild out-of-doors....  And then I
was aware of noiseless fingers pressing my temples.

They were not the plump capable hands of Madame Breda.  Nay, they were
as fine and tenuous as a wandering wind, but behind their airy
lightness was a hint of steel, as if they could choke as well as
caress.  I lay supine, trying to keep my breathing regular, since I was
supposed to be asleep, but I felt an odd excitement rising in my heart.
And then it quieted, for the fingers seemed to be smoothing it away....
A voice was speaking in a tongue of which I knew not a word, not
speaking to me, but repeating, as it were, a private incantation.  And
the touch and voice combined to bring me nearer to losing my wits than
even on the night before, nearer than I have ever been in all my days.

The experience was so novel and overpowering that I find it hard to
give even a rough impression of it.  Let me put it this way.  A man at
my time of life sees old age not so very far distant, and the nearer he
draws to the end of his journey the more ardently he longs for his
receding youth.  I do not mean that, if some fairy granted him the
gift, he would go back to boyhood; few of us would choose such a
return; but he clothes all his youth in a happy radiance and aches to
recapture the freshness and wonder with which he then looked on life.
He treasures, like a mooning girl, stray sounds and scents and corners
of landscape, which for a moment push the door ajar....  As I lay
blindfolded on that couch I felt mysterious hands and voices plucking
on my behalf at the barrier of the years and breaking it down.  I was
escaping into a delectable country, the Country of the Young, and I
welcomed the escape.  Had I been hypnotised, I should beyond doubt have
moved like a sheep whithersoever this shepherd willed.

But I was awake, and, though on the very edge of surrender, I managed
to struggle above the tides.  Perhaps to my waking self the compulsion
was too obvious and aroused a faint antagonism.  Anyhow I had already
begun a conscious resistance when the crooning voice spoke in English.

"You are Richard Hannay," it said.  "You have been asleep, but I have
wakened you.  You are happy in the world in which you have wakened?"

My freedom was now complete, for I had begun to laugh, silently, far
down at the bottom of my heart.  I remembered last night, and the
performance in Medina's house which had all day been growing clearer in
my memory.  I saw it as farce, and this as farce, and at the coming of
humour the spell died.  But it was up to me to make some kind of an
answer, if I wanted to keep up the hoax, so I did my best to screw out
an eerie sleep-walker's voice.

"I am happy," I said, and my pipe sounded like the twittering of
sheeted ghosts.

"You wish to wake often in this world?"

I signified by a croak that I did.

"But to wake you must first sleep, and I alone can make you sleep and
wake.  I exact a price, Richard Hannay.  Will you pay my price?"

I was puzzled about the voice.  It had not the rich foreign tones of
Madame Breda, but it had a very notable accent, which I could not
place.  At one moment it seemed to have the lilt which you find in
Western Ross, but there were cadences in it which were not Highland.
Also, its _timbre_ was curious--very light and thin like a child's.
Was it possible that the queer little girl I had seen was the sibyl?
No, I decided; the hands had not been a child's hands.

"I will pay any price," I said, which seemed to be the answer required
of me.

"Then you are my servant when I summon you.  Now, sleep again."

I had never felt less like being anyone's servant.  The hands fluttered
again around my temples, but they had no more effect on me than the
buzzing of flies.  I had an insane desire to laugh, which I repressed
by thinking of the idiotic pointlessness of my recent doings....  I
felt my couch slide backwards, and heard the folding doors open again
and close.  Then I felt my bandages being deftly undone, and I lay with
the light on my closed eyelids, trying to look like a sleeping warrior
on a tomb.  Someone was pressing below my left ear and I recognised the
old hunter's method of bringing a man back gently from sleep to
consciousness, so I set about the job of making a workmanlike awaking.
I hope I succeeded.  Anyhow I must have looked dazed enough, for the
lamps hurt my eyes after the muffled darkness.

I was back in the first room, with only Madame beside me.  She beamed
on me with the friendliest eyes, and helped me on with my coat and
collar.  "I have had you under close observation," she said, "for sleep
often reveals where the ragged ends of the nerves lie.  I have made
certain deductions, which I will report to Doctor Newhover....  No,
there is no fee.  Doctor Newhover will make arrangements."  She bade me
good-bye in the best professional manner, and I descended the steps
into Palmyra Square as if I had been spending a commonplace hour having
my back massaged for lumbago.

Once in the open air I felt abominably tired and very hungry.  By good
luck I hadn't gone far when I picked up a taxi and told it to drive to
the Club.  I looked at my watch and saw that it was later than I
thought--close on ten o'clock.  I had been several hours in the house,
and small wonder I was weary.

I found Sandy wandering restlessly about the hall.  "Thank God," he
said when he saw me.  "Where the devil have you been, Dick?  The porter
gave me a crazy address in North London.  You look as if you wanted a
drink."

"I feel as if I wanted food," I said.  "I have a lot to tell you, but I
must eat first.  I've had no dinner."

Sandy sat opposite me while I fed, and forbore to ask questions.

"What put you in such a bad humour last night?" I asked.

He looked very solemn.  "Lord knows.  No, that's not true.  I know well
enough.  I didn't take to Medina."

"Now I wonder why?"

"I wonder too.  But I'm just like a dog: I take a dislike to certain
people at first sight, and the queer thing is that my instinct isn't
often wrong."

"Well, you're pretty well alone in your opinion.  What sets you against
him?  He is well-mannered, modest, a good sportsman, and you can see
he's as clever as they make."

"Maybe.  But I've got a notion that the man is one vast lie.  However,
let's put it that I reserve my opinion.  I have various inquiries to
make."

We found the little back smoking-room on the first floor empty, and
when I had lit my pipe and got well into an arm-chair, Sandy drew up
another at my elbow.  "Now, Dick," he said.

"First," I said, "it may interest you to learn that Medina dabbles in
hypnotism."

"I knew that," he said, "from his talk last night."

"How on earth----?"

"Oh, from a casual quotation he used.  It's a longish story, which I'll
tell you later.  Go on."

I began from the break-up of the Thursday Club dinner and told him all
I could remember of my hours in Medina's house.  As a story it met with
an immense success.  Sandy was so interested that he couldn't sit in
his chair, but must get up and stand on the hearth-rug before me.  I
told him that I had wakened up feeling uncommonly ill, with a blank
mind except for the address of a doctor-man in Wimpole Street, and how
during the day recollection had gradually come back to me.  He
questioned me like a cross-examining counsel.

"Bright light--ordinary hypnotic property.  Face, which seemed
detached--that's a common enough thing in Indian magic.  You say you
must have been asleep, but were also in a sense awake and could hear
and answer questions, and that you felt a kind of antagonism all the
time which kept your will alive.  You're probably about the toughest
hypnotic proposition in the world, Dick, and you can thank God for
that.  Now, what were the questions?  A summons to forget your past and
begin as a new creature, subject to the authority of a master.  You
assented, making private reservations of which the hypnotist knew
nothing.  If you had not kept your head and made those reservations,
you would have remembered nothing at all of last night, but there would
have been a subconscious bond over your will.  As it is, you're
perfectly free; only the man who tried to monkey with you doesn't know
that.  Therefore you begin by being one up on the game.  You know where
you are and he doesn't know where he is."

"What do you suppose Medina meant by it?  It was infernal impertinence
anyhow.  But was it Medina?  I seem to remember another man in the room
before I left."

"Describe him."

"I've only a vague picture--a sad grey-faced fellow."

"Well, assume for the present that the experimenter was Medina.
There's such a thing, remember, as spiriting away a man's recollection
of his past, and starting him out as a waif in a new world.  I've heard
in the East of such performances, and of course it means that the
memory-less being is at the mercy of the man who has stolen his memory.
That is probably not the intention in your case.  They wanted only to
establish a subconscious control.  But it couldn't be done at once with
a fellow of your antecedents, so they organised a process.  They
suggested to you in your trance a doctor's name, and the next stage was
his business.  You woke feeling very seedy and remembering a doctor's
address, and they argued that you would think that you had been advised
about the fellow and make a bee-line for him.  Remember, they would
assume that you had no recollection of anything else from the night's
doings.  Now go ahead and tell me about the chirurgeon.  Did you go to
see him?"

I continued my story, and at the Wimpole Street episode Sandy laughed
long and loud.

"Another point up in the game.  You say you think the leech had been
advised of your coming and not by you?  By the way, he seems to have
talked fairly good sense, but I'd as soon vet a hippopotamus for nerves
as you."  He wrote down Dr Newhover's address in his pocket book.
"_Continuez_.  You then proceeded, I take it, to 4 Palmyra Square."

At the next stage in my narrative he did not laugh.  I daresay I told
it better than I have written it down here, for I was fresh from the
experience, and I could see that he was a good deal impressed.

"A Swedish masseuse and an odd-looking little girl.  She puts you to
sleep, or thinks she has, and then, when your eyes are bandaged,
someone else nearly charms the soul out of you.  That sounds big magic.
I see the general lines of it, but it is big magic, and I didn't know
that it was practised on these shores.  Dick, this is getting horribly
interesting.  You kept wide awake--you are an old buffalo, you
know--but you gave the impression of absolute surrender.  Good for
you--you are now three points ahead in the game."

"Well, but what is the game?  I'm hopelessly puzzled."

"So am I, but we must work on assumptions.  Let us suppose Medina is
responsible.  He may be only trying to find out the extent of his
powers, and selects you as the most difficult subject to be found.  You
may be sure he knows all about your record.  He may be only a vain man
experimenting."

"In which case," I said, "I propose to punch his head."

"In which case, as you justly observe, you will give yourself the
pleasure of punching his head.  But suppose that he has got a far
deeper purpose, something really dark and damnable.  If by his hypnotic
power he could make a tool of you, consider what an asset he would have
found.  A man of your ability and force.  I have always said, you
remember, that you had a fine natural talent for crime."

"I tell you, Sandy, that's nonsense.  It's impossible that there's
anything wrong--badly wrong--with Medina."

"Improbable, but not impossible.  We're taking no chances.  And if he
were a scoundrel, think what a power he might be with all his talents
and charm and popularity."

Sandy flung himself into a chair and appeared to be meditating.  Once
or twice he broke silence.

"I wonder what Doctor Newhover meant by talking of a salmon river in
Norway.  Why not golf at North Berwick?"

And again:

"You say there was a scent like peat in the room?  Peat!  You are
certain?"

Finally he got up.  "To-morrow," he said, "I think I will have a look
round the house in Gospel Oak.  Gospel Oak, by the way, is a funny
name, isn't it?  You say it has electric light.  I will visit it as a
man from the corporation to see about the meter.  Oh, that can easily
be managed.  Macgillivray will pass the word for me."

The mention of Macgillivray brought me to attention.  "Look here," I
said, "I'm simply wasting my time.  I got in touch with Medina in order
to ask his help, and now I've been landed in a set of preposterous
experiences which have nothing to do with my job.  I must see
Macgillivray to-morrow about getting alongside his Shropshire squire.
For the present there can be nothing doing with Medina."

"Shropshire squire be hanged!  You're an old ass, Dick.  For the
present there's everything doing with Medina.  You wanted his help.
Why?  Because he was the next stage in the clue to that nonsensical
rhyme.  Well, you've discovered that there may be odd things about him.
You can't get his help, but you may get something more.  You may get
the secret itself.  Instead of having to burrow into his memory, as you
did with Greenslade, you may find it sticking out of his life."

"Do you really believe that?" I asked in some bewilderment.

"I believe nothing as yet.  But it is far the most promising line.  He
thinks that from what happened last night plus what happened two hours
ago you are under his influence, an acolyte, possibly a tool.  It may
be all quite straight, or it may be most damnably crooked.  You have
got to find out.  You must keep close to him, and foster his illusions,
and play up to him for all you're worth.  He is bound to show his hand.
You needn't take any steps on your own account.  He'll give you the
lead all right."

I can't say I liked the prospect, for I have no love for play-acting,
but I am bound to admit that Sandy talked sense.  I asked him about
himself, for I counted on his backing more than I could say.

"I propose to resume my travels," he said.  "I wish to pursue my
studies in the Bibliothque Nationale of France."

"But I thought you were with me in this show."

"So I am.  I go abroad on your business, as I shall explain to you some
day.  Also I want to see the man whom we used to call Ram Dass.  I
believe him to be in Munich at this moment.  The day after to-morrow
you will read in _The Times_ that Colonel the Master of Clanroyden has
gone abroad for an indefinite time on private business."

"How long will you be away?" I groaned.

"A week perhaps, or a fortnight--or more.  And when I come back it may
not be as Sandy Arbuthnot."




_Chapter VII_

_Some Experiences of a Disciple_

I didn't see Sandy again, for he took the night train for Paris next
evening, and I had to go down to Oxford that day to appear as a witness
in a running-down case.  But I found a note for me at the Club when I
got back the following morning.  It contained nothing except these
words: "_Coverts drawn blank, no third person in house_."  I had not
really hoped for anything from Sandy's expedition to Palmyra Square,
and thought no more about it.

He didn't return in a week, nor yet in a fortnight, and, realising that
I had only a little more than two months to do my job in, I grew very
impatient.  But my time was pretty well filled with Medina, as you
shall hear.

While I was reading Sandy's note Turpin turned up, and begged me to
come for a drive in his new Delage and talk to him.  The Marquis de la
Tour du Pin was, if possible, more pallid than before, his eyelids
heavier, and his gentleness more silken.  He drove me miles into the
country, away through Windsor Forest, and as we raced at sixty miles an
hour he uncovered his soul.  He was going mad, it seemed; was, indeed,
already mad, and only a slender and doubtless ill-founded confidence in
me prevented him shooting himself.  He was convinced that Adela Victor
was dead, and that no trace of her would ever be found.  "These
policemen of yours--bah!" he moaned.  "Only in England can people
vanish."  He concluded, however, that he would stay alive till he had
avenged her, for he believed that a good God would some day deliver her
murderer into his hands.  I was desperately sorry for him, for behind
his light gasconading manner there were marks of acute suffering, and
indeed in his case I think I should have gone crazy.  He asked me for
hope, and I gave him it, and told him what I did not believe--that I
saw light in the business, and had every confidence that we would
restore him his sweetheart safe and sound.  At that he cheered up and
wanted to embrace me, thereby jolly nearly sending the Delage into a
ditch and us both into eternity.  He was burning for something to do,
and wanted me to promise that as soon as possible I would inspan him
into my team.  That made me feel guilty, for I knew I had no team, and
nothing you could call a clue; so I talked hastily about Miss Victor,
lest he should ask me more.

I had her portrait drawn for me in lyric prose.  She was slight, it
seemed, middling tall, could ride like Diana and dance like the nymphs.
Her colouring and hair were those of a brunette, but her eyes were a
deep grey, and she had the soft voice which commonly goes with such
eyes.  Turpin, of course, put all this more poetically, relapsing
frequently into French.  He told me all kinds of things about her--how
she was crazy about dogs, and didn't fear anything in the world, and
walked with a throw-out, and lisped delightfully when she was excited.
Altogether at the end of it I felt I had a pretty good notion of Miss
Victor, especially as I had studied about fifty photographs of her in
Macgillivray's room.

As we were nearing home again it occurred to me to ask him if he knew
Medina.  He said no, but that he was dining at the Victors' that
evening--a small dinner party, mostly political.  "He is wonderful,
that Mr Victor.  He will not change his life, and his friends think
Adela is in New York for a farewell visit.  He is like the Spartan boy
with the fox."

"Tell Mr Victor, with my compliments," I said, "that I would like to
dine there to-night.  I have a standing invitation.  Eight-fifteen,
isn't it?"

It turned out to be a very small and select party--the Foreign
Secretary, Medina, Palliser-Yeates, the Duke of Alcester, Lord
Sunningdale, the ex-Lord Chancellor, Levasseur the French Minister,
besides Turpin and myself.  There were no women present.  The behaviour
of the Duke and Mr Victor was a lesson in fortitude, and you would
never have guessed that these two men were living with a nightmare.  It
was not a talkative assembly, though Sunningdale had a good deal to say
to the table about a new book that a German had written on the
mathematical conception of infinity, a subject which even his brilliant
exposition could not make clear to my thick wits.  The Foreign
Secretary and Levasseur had a _tte--tte_, with Turpin as a
hanger-on, and the rest of us would have been as dull as sticks if it
had not been for Medina.  I had a good chance of observing his quality,
and I must say I was astonished at his skill.  It was he who by the
right kind of question turned Sunningdale's discourse on infinity,
which would otherwise have been a pedantic monologue, into good
conversation.  We got on to politics afterwards, and Medina, who had
just come from the House, was asked what was happening.

"They had just finished the usual _plat du jour_, the suspension of a
couple of Labour mountebanks," he said.

This roused Sunningdale, who rather affected the Labour party, and I
was amused to see how Medina handled the ex-Chancellor.  He held him in
good-humoured argument, never forsaking his own position, but shedding
about the whole subject an atmosphere of witty and tolerant
understanding.  I felt that he knew more about the business than
Sunningdale, that he knew so much he could afford to give his adversary
rope.  Moreover, he never forgot that he was at a dinner-table, the
pitch and key of his talk were exactly right, and he managed to bring
everyone into it.

To me he was extraordinarily kind.  Indeed he treated me like a very
ancient friend, bantering and affectionate and yet respectful, and he
forced me to take a full share in the conversation.  Under his
stimulus, I became quite intelligent, and amazed Turpin, who had never
credited me with any talents except for fighting.  But I had not
forgotten what I was there for, and if I had been inclined to, there
were the figures of Victor and the Duke to remind me.  I watched the
two, the one thin, grey-bearded, rather like an admiral with his
vigilant dark eyes, the other heavy-jowled, rubicund, crowned with fine
silver hair; in both I saw shadows of pain stealing back to the corners
of lip and eye, whenever the face was in repose.  And Medina--the very
_beau ideal_ of a courteous, kindly, open-air Englishman.  I noted how
in his clothes he avoided any touch of overdressing, no fancifully-cut
waistcoat or too-smartly-tied tie.  In manner and presence he was the
perfection of un-self-conscious good-breeding.  It was my business to
play up to him, and I let my devotion be pretty evident.  The old Duke,
whom I now met for the first time, patted my shoulder as we left the
dining-room.  "I am glad to see that you and Medina are friends, Sir
Richard.  Thank God that we have a man like him among the young entry.
They ought to give him office at once, you know, get him inside the
shafts of the coach.  Otherwise he'll find something more interesting
to do than politics."

By tacit consent we left the house together, and I walked the streets
by his side, as I had done three nights before.  What a change, I
reflected, in my point of view!  Then I had been blind, now I was
acutely watchful.  He slipped an arm into mine as we entered Pall Mall,
but its pressure did not seem so much friendly as possessive.

"You are staying at your Club?" he said.  "Why not take up your
quarters with me while you are in town?  There's ample room in Hill
Street."

The suggestion put me into a fright.  To stay with him at present would
wreck all my schemes; but, supposing he insisted, could I refuse, if it
was my role to appear to be under his domination?  Happily he did not
insist.  I made a lot of excuses--plans unsettled, constantly running
down to the country, and so on.

"All right.  But some day I may make the offer again, and then I'll
take no refusal."

They were just the kind of words a friend might have used, but somehow,
though the tone was all right, they slightly grated on me.

"How are you?" he asked.  "Most people who have led your life find the
English spring trying.  You don't look quite as fit as when I first saw
you."

"No.  I've been rather seedy this past week--head-achy, loss of memory,
stuffed-up brain and that sort of thing.  I expect it's the spring
fret.  I've seen a doctor and he doesn't worry about it."

"Who's your man?"

"A chap Newhover in Wimpole Street."

He nodded.  "I've heard of him.  They tell me he's good."

"He has ordered me massage," I said boldly.  "That cures the headaches
anyway."

"I'm glad to hear it."

Then he suddenly released my arm.

"I see Arbuthnot has gone abroad."

There was a coldness in his voice to which I hastened to respond.

"So I saw in the papers," I said carelessly.  "He's a hopeless fellow.
A pity, for he's able enough; but he won't stay put, and that makes him
pretty well useless."

"Do you care much for Arbuthnot?"

"I used to," I replied shamelessly.  "But till the other day I hadn't
seen him for years, and I must say he has grown very queer.  Didn't you
think he behaved oddly at the Thursday dinner?"

He shrugged his shoulders.  "I wasn't much taken by him.  He's too
infernally un-English.  I don't know how he got it, but there seems to
be a touch of the shrill Levantine in him.  Compare him with those
fellows to-night.  Even the Frenchmen--even Victor, though he's an
American and a Jew--are more our own way of thinking."

We were at the Club door, and as I stopped he looked me full in the
face.

"If I were you I wouldn't have much to do with Arbuthnot," he said, and
his tone was a command.  I grinned sheepishly, but my fingers itched
for his ears.  I went to bed fuming.  This new possessory attitude,
this hint of nigger-driving, had suddenly made me hate Medina.  I had
been unable to set down the hypnotist business clearly to his account,
and, even if I had been certain, I was inclined to think it only the
impertinent liberty of a faddist--a thing which I hotly resented but
which did not arouse my serious dislike.  But now--to feel that he
claimed me as his man, because he thought, no doubt, that he had
established some unholy power over me--that fairly broke my temper.
And his abuse of Sandy put the lid on it--abuse to which I had been
shamefully compelled to assent.  Levantine, by gad!  I swore that Sandy
and I would make him swallow that word before he was very much older.
I couldn't sleep for thinking about it.  By this time I was perfectly
willing to believe that Medina was up to any infamy, and I was resolved
that in him and him alone lay the key to the riddle of the three
hostages.  But all the time I was miserably conscious that if I
suggested such an idea to anyone except Sandy I should be set down as a
lunatic.  I could see that the man's repute was as solidly planted as
the British Constitution.

Next morning I went to see Macgillivray.  I explained that I had not
been idle, that I had been pursuing lines of my own, which I thought
more hopeful than his suggestion of getting alongside the Shropshire
squire.  I said I had nothing as yet to report, and that I didn't
propose to give him the faintest notion of what I was after till I had
secured some results.  But I wanted his help, and I wanted his very
best men.

"Glad to see you've got busy, Dick," he said.  "I await your commands."

"I want a house watched.  No. 4 Palmyra Square, up in North London.  So
far as I know it is occupied by a woman, who purports to be a Swedish
masseuse and calls herself Madame Breda, one or more maids, and an
odd-looking little girl.  I want you to have a close record kept of the
people who go there, and I want especially to know who exactly are the
inmates of the house and who are the frequent visitors.  It must be
done very cautiously, for the people must have no suspicion that they
are being spied on."

He wrote down the details.

"Also I want you to find out the antecedents of Medina's butler."

He whistled.  "Medina.  Dominick Medina, you mean?"

"Yes.  Oh, I'm not suspecting him."  We both laughed, as if at a good
joke.  "But I should like to hear something about his butler, for
reasons which I'm not yet prepared to give you.  He answers to the name
of Odell, and has the appearance of an inferior prize-fighter.  Find
out all you can about his past, and it mightn't be a bad plan to have
him shadowed.  You know Medina's house in Hill Street.  But for
Heaven's sake, let it be done tactfully."

"I'll see to that for my own sake.  I don't want head-lines in the
evening papers--'House of Member of Parliament Watched.  Another Police
Muddle.'"

"Also, could you put together all you can get about Medina?  It might
give me a line on Odell."

"Dick," he said solemnly, "are you growing fantastic?"

"Not a bit of it.  You don't imagine I'm ass enough to think there's
anything shady about Medina.  He and I have become bosom friends and I
like him enormously.  Everybody swears by him, and so do I.  But I have
my doubts about Mr Odell, and I would like to know just how and where
Medina picked him up.  He's not the ordinary stamp of butler."  It
seemed to me very important to let no one but Sandy into the Medina
business at present, for our chance lay in his complete confidence that
all men thought well of him.

"Right," said Macgillivray.  "It shall be done.  Go your own way, Dick.
I won't attempt to dictate to you.  But remember that the thing is
desperately serious, and that the days are slipping past.  We're in
April now, and you have only till midsummer to save three innocent
lives."

I left his office feeling very solemn, for I had suddenly a
consciousness of the shortness of time and the magnitude of the job
which I had not yet properly begun.  I cudgelled my brains to think of
my next step.  In a few days I should again visit Dr Newhover, but
there was not likely to be much assistance there.  He might send me
back to Palmyra Square, or I might try to make an appointment with
Madame Breda myself, inventing some new ailment; but I would only find
the same old business, which would get me no further forward.  As I
viewed it, the Newhover and Palmyra Square episodes had been used only
to test my submission to Medina's influence, and it was to Medina that
I must look for further light.  It was a maddening job to sit and wait
and tick off the precious days on the calendar, and I longed to consult
with Sandy.  I took to going down to Fosse for the day, for the sight
of Mary and Peter John somehow quieted my mind and fixed my resolution.
It was a positive relief when at the end of the week Medina rang me up
and asked me to luncheon.

We lunched at his house, which, seen on a bright April day, was a
wonderful treasury of beautiful things.  It was not the kind of house I
fancied myself, being too full of museum pieces, and all the furniture
strictly correct according to period.  I like rooms in which there is a
pleasant jumble of things, and which look as if homely people had lived
in them for generations.  The dining-room was panelled in white, with a
Vandyck above the mantelpiece and a set of gorgeous eighteenth-century
prints on the walls.  At the excellent meal Medina as usual drank
water, while I obediently sampled an old hock, an older port, and a
most prehistoric brandy.  Odell was in attendance, and I had a good
look at him--his oddly shaped head, his flat sallow face, the bunches
of black eyebrow above his beady eyes.  I calculated that if I saw him
again I would not fail to recognise him.  We never went near the
library on the upper floor, but sat after luncheon in a little
smoking-room at the back of the hall, which held my host's rods and
guns in glass cabinets, and one or two fine heads of deer and ibex.

I had made up my mind, as I walked to Hill Street, that I was going to
convince Medina once and for all of the abjectness of my surrender.  He
should have proof that I was clay in his hands, for only that way would
he fully reveal himself.  I detested the job, and as I walked through
the pleasant crisp noontide I reflected with bitterness that I might
have been fishing for salmon in Scotland, or, better still, cantering
with Mary over the Cotswold downs.

All through luncheon I kept my eyes fixed on him like a dog's on his
master.  Several times I wondered if I were not overdoing it, but he
seemed to accept my homage as quite natural.  I had thought when I
first met him that the man had no vanity; now I saw that he had
mountains of it, that he was all vanity, and that his public modesty
was only a cloak to set off his immense private conceit.  He unbent
himself, his whole mind was in undress, and behind the veneer of
good-fellowship I seemed to see a very cold arrogant soul.  Nothing
worse, though that was bad enough.  He was too proud to boast in words,
but his whole attitude was one long brag.  He was cynical about
everything, except, as I suspected, his private self-worship.  The
thing would have been monstrously indecent, if it had not been done
with such consummate skill.  Indeed I found my part easy to play, for I
was deeply impressed and had no difficulty in showing it.

The odd thing was that he talked a good deal about myself.  He seemed
to take pains to rout out the codes and standards, the points of honour
and points of conduct, which somebody like me was likely to revere, and
to break them down with his cynicism.  I felt that I was looking on at
an attempt, which the devil is believed to specialise in, to make evil
good and good evil....  Of course I assented gladly.  Never had master
a more ready disciple....  He broke down, too, my modest ambitions.  A
country life, a wife and family--he showed that they were too trivial
for more than a passing thought.  He flattered me grossly, and I drank
it all in with a silly face.  I was fit for bigger things, to which he
would show me the way.  He sketched some of the things--very flattering
they were and quite respectable, but somehow they seemed out of the
picture when compared to his previous talk.  He was clearly initiating
me step by step into something for which I was not yet fully ready....
I wished Sandy could have seen me sitting in Medina's arm-chair,
smoking one of his cigars, and agreeing to everything he said like a
schoolgirl who wants to keep on the good side of her schoolmistress.
And yet I didn't find it difficult, for the man's talk was masterly and
in its way convincing, and, while my mind repudiated it, it was easy
for my tongue to assent.  He was in a prodigious good-humour, and he
was kindly, as a keeper is kind to a well-broken dog.

On the doorstep I stammered my thanks.  "I wish I could tell you what
knowing you means to me.  It's--it's far the biggest thing in my life.
What I mean to say is----" the familiar patois of the tongue-tied
British soldier.

He looked at me with those amazing eyes of his, no kindness in them,
only patronage and proprietorship.  I think he was satisfied that he
had got someone who would serve him body and soul.

I, too, was satisfied, and walked away feeling more cheerful than I had
done for days.  Surely things would begin to move now, I thought.  At
the Club, too, I got encouragement in the shape of a letter from Sandy.
It bore a French postmark which I could not decipher, and it was the
merest scribble, but it greatly heartened me.


"_I have made progress,_" it ran, "_but I have still a lot to do and we
can't talk to each other yet awhile.  But I shall have to send you
letters occasionally, which you must burn on receipt.  I shall sign
them with some letter of the Greek alphabet--no, you wouldn't recognise
that--with the names of recent Derby winners.  Keep our affair secret
as the grave--don't let in a soul, not even Mac.  And for God's sake
stick close to M. and serve him like a slave._"


There wasn't much in it, but it was hopeful, though the old ruffian
didn't seem in a hurry to come home.  I wondered what on earth he had
found out--something solid, I judged, for he didn't talk lightly of
making progress.

That evening I had nothing to do, and after dinner I felt too restless
to sit down to a pipe and book.  There was no one in the Club I wanted
to talk to, so I sallied forth to another pot-house to which I
belonged, where there was a chance of finding some of the younger and
cheerier generation.  Sure enough the first man I saw there was Archie
Roylance, who greeted me with a whoop and announced that he was in town
for a couple of days to see his doctor.  He had had a bad fall
steeplechasing earlier in the year, when he had all but broken his
neck, but he declared that he was perfectly fit again except for some
stiffness in his shoulder muscles.  He was as lame as a duck from his
flying smash just before the Armistice, but all the same he got about
at a surprising pace.  Indeed, out of cussedness he walked more than he
used to do in the old days, and had taken to deer-stalking with
enthusiasm.  I think I have mentioned that he was my partner in the
tenancy of Machray forest.

I proposed that we should go to a music-hall or cut into the second act
of some play, but Archie had another idea.  One of his fads was to be
an amateur of dancing, though he had never been a great performer
before his smash and would never dance again.  He said he wanted to see
the latest fashions, and suggested that we should go for an hour to a
small (and he added, select) club somewhere in Marylebone, of which he
believed he was a member.  It bore an evil reputation, he said, for
there was a good deal of high play, and the licensing laws were not
regarded, but it was a place to see the best dancing.  I made no
objection, so we strolled up Regent Street in that season of
comparative peace when busy people have gone home and the idle are
still shut up in theatres and restaurants.

It was a divine April night, and I observed that I wished I were in a
better place to enjoy spring weather.  "I've just come from a Scotch
moor," said Archie.  "Lord! the curlews are makin' a joyful noise.
That is the bird for my money.  Come back with me, Dick, on Friday and
I'll teach you a lot of things.  You're a wise man, but you might be a
better naturalist."

I thought how much I would have given to be able to accept, as the
light wind blew down Langham Place.  Then I wished that this job would
take me out of town into fresh air, where I could get some exercise.
The result was that I was in a baddish temper when we reached our
destination, which was in one of the streets near Fitzroy Square.  The
place proved to be about as hard to get into as the Vatican.  It took a
long harangue and a tip from Archie to persuade the door-keeper that we
were of the right brand of disreputability to be admitted.  Finally we
found ourselves in a room with sham Chinese decorations, very garishly
lit, with about twenty couples dancing, and about twenty more sitting
drinking at little tables.

We paid five shillings apiece for a liqueur, found a table and took
notice of the show.  It seemed to me a wholly rotten and funereal
business.  A nigger band, looking like monkeys in uniform, pounded out
some kind of barbarous jingle, and sad-faced marionettes moved to it.
There was no gaiety or devil in that dancing, only a kind of bored
perfection.  Thin young men with rabbit heads and hair brushed straight
back from their brows, who I suppose were professional dancing
partners, held close to their breasts women of every shape and age, but
all alike in having dead eyes and masks for faces, and the macabre
procession moved like automata to the niggers' rhythm.  I daresay it
was all very wonderful, but I was not built by Providence to appreciate
it.

"I can't stand much more of this," I told Archie.

"It's no great shakes.  But there are one or two high-class performers.
Look at that girl dancing with the young Jew--the one in green."

I looked and saw a slim girl, very young apparently, who might have
been pretty but for the way her face was loaded with paint and the
preposterous style in which her hair was dressed.  Little though I know
of dancing, I could see that she was a mistress of the art, for every
motion was a delight to watch, and she made poetry out of that hideous
ragtime.  But her face shocked me.  It was blind, if you understand me,
as expressionless as a mummy, a kind of awful death-in-life.  I
wondered what kind of experience that poor soul had gone through to
give her the stare of a sleep-walker.

As my eyes passed from her they fell on another figure that seemed
familiar.  I saw that it was Odell the butler, splendidly got up for
his night out in dress clothes, white waistcoat, and diamond studs.
There was no mistaking the pugilistic air of the fellow, now I saw him
out of service; I had seen a dozen such behind the bars of sporting
public-houses.  He could not see me, but I had a fair view of him, and
I observed that he also was watching the girl in green.

"Do you know who she is?" I asked.

"Some professional.  Gad, she can dance, but the poor child looks as if
she found it a hard life.  I'd rather like to talk to her."

But the music had stopped, and I could see that Odell had made a sign
to the dancer.  She came up to him as obediently as a dog, he said
something to another man with him, a man with a black beard, and the
three passed out at the further door.  A moment later I caught a
glimpse of her with a cloak round her shoulders passing the door by
which we had entered.

Archie laughed.  "That big brute is probably her husband.  I bet she
earns the living of both by dancing at these places, and gets beaten
every night.  I would say my prayers before taking on that fellow in a
scrap."




_Chapter VIII_

_The Blind Spinner_

I look back upon those days of waiting as among the beastliest of my
life.  I had the clearest conviction now that Medina was the key of the
whole puzzle, but as yet I had found out nothing worth mentioning, and
I had to wait like the sick folk by the pool of Bethesda till something
troubled the waters.  The only thing that comforted me was the fine
old-fashioned dislike to the man which now possessed me.  I couldn't
pretend to understand more than a fragment of him, but what I
understood I detested.  I had been annexed by him as a slave, and every
drop of free blood in my veins was in revolt; but I was also resolved
to be the most docile slave that ever kissed the ground before a
tyrant.  Some day my revenge would come and I promised myself that it
would be complete.  Meantime I thanked Heaven that he had that blind
spot of vanity, which would prevent him seeing the cracks in my
camouflage.

For the better part of a week we were very little separate.  I lunched
with him two days out of three, and we motored more than once down to
Brighton for fresh air.  He took me to a dinner he gave at the House of
Commons to a Canadian statesman who was over on a visit, and he made me
accompany him to a very smart dance at Lady Amysfort's, and he got me
invited to a week-end party at Wirlesdon because he was going there.  I
went through the whole programme dutifully and not unpleasurably.  I
must say he treated me admirably in the presence of other people--with
a jolly affectionate friendliness, constantly asking for my opinion,
and deferring to me and making me talk, so that the few people I met
whom I had known before wondered what had come over me.  Mary had a
letter from a cousin of hers, who reported that I seemed to have got
into society and to be making a big success of it--a letter she
forwarded to me with a pencilled note of congratulation at the end.  On
these occasions I didn't find my task difficult, for I fell
unconsciously under the man's spell and could easily play up to him....
But when we were alone his manner changed.  Iron crept into his voice,
and, though he was pleasant enough, he took a devil of a lot for
granted, and the note of authority grew more habitual.  After such
occasions I used to go home grinding my teeth.  I never had a worse job
than to submit voluntarily to that insolent protection.

Repeatedly in my bedroom at the Club I tried to put together the meagre
handful of ascertained facts, but they were like a lot of remnants of
different jig-saw puzzles and nothing fitted in to anything else.
Macgillivray reported that so far he had drawn a blank in the case of
Odell; and that the watchers at Palmyra Square had noted very few
visitors except tradesmen and organ-grinders.  Nothing resembling a
gentleman had been seen to enter or leave, so it appeared that my
estimate of Madame Breda's flourishing business was wrong.  A woman
frequently went out and returned, never walking but always in a taxi or
a motor-car--probably the same woman, but so hooded and wrapped up as
to make details difficult to be clear about.  There were a host of
little notes--coal or firewood had been delivered one day, twice the
wrapped-up lady had gone out in the evening, to come back in a couple
of hours, but mostly she made her visits abroad in daylight, the
household woke late and retired to bed early, once or twice a sound
like weeping had been heard but it might have been the cat.  Altogether
it was a poor report, and I concluded that I was either barking up the
wrong tree, or that Macgillivray's agents were a pretty useless crowd.

For the rest, what had I?  A clear and well-founded suspicion of
Medina.  But of what?  Only that he was behaving towards me in a way
that I resented, that he dabbled in an ugly brand of hypnotism, and
that the more I saw of him the less I liked him.  I knew that his
public repute was false, but I had no worse crime to accuse him of than
vanity.  He had a butler who had been a prize-fighter, and who had a
taste for night clubs.  I remember I wrote all this down, and sat
staring blankly at it, feeling how trivial it was.  Then I wrote down
the six-line jingle and stared at that too, and I thought of the girl,
and the young man, and the small boy who liked birds and fishing.  I
hadn't a scrap of evidence to link up Medina with that business, except
that Tom Greenslade believed that he had got from him the three facts
which ran more or less in the rhyme; but Tom might be mistaken, or
Medina might have learned them in some perfectly innocent way.  I
hadn't enough evidence to swing a cat on.  But yet--the more I thought
of Medina the more dark and subtle his figure loomed in my mind.  I had
a conviction, on which I would have staked my life, that if I stuck to
him I would worry out some vital and damning truth; so, with no very
lively or cheerful hope, but with complete certainty, I resolved for
the hundredth time to let logic go and back my fancy.

As in duty bound I paid another visit to Dr Newhover.  He received me
casually, and appeared to have forgotten about my case till he looked
up his diary.

"Ah yes, you saw Madame Breda," he said.  "I have her report.  Your
headaches are cured but you are still a little shaky?  Yes, please.
Take off your coat and waistcoat."

He vetted me very thoroughly, and then sat down in his desk-chair and
tapped his eye-glasses on his knee.

"You are better, much better, but you are not cured.  That will take
time and care, and lies, of course, in your own hands.  You are leading
a quiet life?  Half town, half country--it is probably the best plan.
Well, I don't think you can improve on that."

"You said something about fishing in Norway when I was here last."

"No, on the whole I don't recommend it.  Your case is slightly
different from what I at first supposed."

"You are a fisherman yourself?" I said.

He admitted that he was, and for a minute or two spoke more like a
human being.  He always used a two-piece Castle-Connell rod, though he
granted it was a cumbrous thing to travel with.  For flies he swore by
Harlows--certainly the best people for Norwegian flies.  He thought
that there was a greater difference between Norwegian rivers than most
people imagined, and Harlows understood that.

He concluded by giving me some simple instructions about diet and
exercise.

"If my headaches return, shall I go back to Madame Breda?" I asked.

He shook his head.  "Your headaches won't return."

I paid him his fee, and, as I was leaving, I asked if he wanted to see
me again.

"I don't think it necessary.  At any rate not till the autumn.  I may
have to be out of London myself a good deal this summer.  Of course if
you should find the _malaise_ recurring, which I do not anticipate, you
must come and see me.  If I am out of town, you can see my colleague."
He scribbled a name and address on a sheet of paper.

I left the house feeling considerably puzzled.  Dr Newhover, who on my
first visit had made a great to-do about my health, seemed now to want
to be quit of me.  His manner was exactly that of a busy doctor dealing
with a _malade imaginaire_.  The odd thing was that I was really
beginning to feel rather seedy, a punishment for my former pretence.
It may have been the reaction of my mental worry, but I had the sort of
indefinite out-of-sorts feeling which I believe precedes an attack of
influenza.  Only I had hitherto been immune from influenza.

That night I had another of Sandy's communications, a typed half-sheet
with a Paris postmark.

"_Keep close to M._," it ran.  "_Do everything he wants.  Make it clear
that you have broken for ever with me.  This is desperately important._"

It was signed "Buchan," a horse which Sandy seemed to think had been a
Derby winner.  He knew no more about racing than I knew of Chinese.

Next morning I woke with a bad taste in my mouth and a feeling that I
had probably a bout of malaria due me.  Now I had had no malaria since
the autumn of '17, and I didn't like the prospect of the revisitation.
However, as the day wore on, I felt better, and by midday I concluded I
was not going to be ill.  But all the same I was as jumpy as a cat in a
thunderstorm.  I had the odd sense of anticipation, which I used to
have before a battle, a lurking excitement by no means pleasant,--not
exactly apprehension, but first cousin to it.  It made me want to see
Medina, as if there was something between him and me that I ought to
get over.

All afternoon this dentist-anteroom atmosphere hung about me, and I was
almost relieved when about five o'clock I got a telephone message from
Hill Street asking me to come there at six.  I went round to the Bath
Club and had a swim and a shampoo, and then started for the house.  On
the way there I had those tremors in my legs and coldness in the pit of
the stomach which brought back my childish toothaches.  Yes, that was
it.  I felt exactly like a small boy setting off with dreadful
anticipations to have a tooth drawn, and not all my self-contempt could
cure me of my funk.  The house when I reached it seemed larger and
lonelier than ever, and the April evening had darkened down to a scurry
of chill dusty winds under a sky full of cloud.

Odell opened the door to me, and took me to the back of the hall, where
I found a lift which I had not known existed.  We went up to the top of
the house, and I realised that I was about to enter again the library
where before I had so strangely spent the midnight hours.

The curtains were drawn, shutting out the bleak spring twilight, and
the room was warmed by, and had for its only light, a great fire of
logs.  I smelt more than wood smoke; there was peat burning among the
oak billets.  The scent recalled, not the hundred times when I had
sniffed peat-reek in happy places, but the flavour of the room in
Palmyra Square when I had lain with bandaged eyes and felt light
fingers touch my face.  I had suddenly a sense that I had taken a long
stride forward, that something fateful was about to happen, and my
nervousness dropped from me like a cloak.

Medina was standing before the hearth, but his was not the figure that
took my eyes.  There was another person in the room, a woman.  She sat
in the high-backed chair which he had used on the former night, and she
sat in it as if it were a throne.  The firelight lit her face, and I
saw that it was very old, waxen with age, though the glow made the wax
rosy.  Her dress was straight and black like a gaberdine, and she had
thick folds of lace at her wrists and neck.  Wonderful hair, masses of
it, was piled on her head, and it was snow-white and fine as silk.  Her
hands were laid on the arms of the chair, and hands more delicate and
shapely I have never seen, though they had also the suggestion of a
furious power, like the talons of a bird of prey.

But it was the face that took away my breath.  I have always been a
great admirer of the beauty of old age, especially in women, but this
was a beauty of which I had never dreamed.  It was a long face, and the
features were large, though exquisitely cut and perfectly proportioned.
Usually in an old face there is a certain loosening of muscles or
blurring of contours, which detracts from sheer beauty but gives
another kind of charm.  But in this face there was no blurring or
loosening; the mouth was as firm, the curve of the chin as rounded, the
arch of the eyes as triumphant as in some proud young girl.

And then I saw that the eyes which were looking at the fire were the
most remarkable things of all.  Even in that half-light I could see
that they were brightly, vividly blue.  There was no film or blearing
to mar their glory.  But I saw also that they were sightless.  How I
knew it I do not know, for there was no physical sign of it, but my
conviction was instantaneous and complete.  These starlike things were
turned inward.  In most blind people the eyes are like marbles, dead
windows in an empty house; but--how shall I describe it?--these were
blinds drawn in a room which was full of light and movement, stage
curtains behind which some great drama was always set.  Blind though
they were, they seemed to radiate an ardent vitality, to glow and flash
like the soul within.

I realised that it was the most wonderful face of a woman I had ever
looked on.  And I realised in the same moment that I hated it, that the
beauty of it was devilish, and the soul within was on fire with all the
hatred of Hell.

"Hannay," I heard Medina's voice, "I have brought you here because I
wish to present you to my mother."

I behaved just like somebody in a play.  I advanced to her chair,
lifted one of the hands, and put it to my lips.  That seemed to me the
right thing to do.  The face turned towards me, and broke into a smile,
the kind of smile you may see on the marble of a Greek goddess.

The woman spoke to Medina in a tongue which was strange to me, and he
replied.  There seemed to be many questions and answers, but I did not
trouble to try to catch a word I knew.  I was occupied with the voice.
I recognised in it those soft tones which had crooned over me as I lay
in the room in Palmyra Square.  I had discovered who had been the third
person in that scene.

Then it spoke to me in English, with that odd lilting accent I had
tried in vain to trace.

"You are a friend of Dominick, and I am glad to meet you, Sir Richard
Hannay.  My son has told me about you.  Will you bring a chair and sit
close to me?"

I pulled up a long low arm-chair, so long and low that the sitter was
compelled almost to recline.  My head was on a level with the hand
which lay on the arm of her chair.  Suddenly I felt that hand laid on
my head, and I recognised her now by touch as well as voice.

"I am blind, Sir Richard," she said, "so I cannot see my son's friends.
But I long to know how they look, and I have but one sense which can
instruct me.  Will you permit me to pass my hands over your face?"

"You may do what you please, Madame," I said.  "I would to God I could
give you eyes."

"That is a pretty speech," she said.  "You might be one of my own
people."  And I felt the light fingers straying over my brow.

I was so placed that I was looking into the red heart of the fire, the
one patch of bright light in the curtained room.  I knew what I was in
for, and, remembering past experience, I averted my eyes to the dark
folios on the lowest shelves beyond the hearth.  The fingers seemed to
play a gentle tattoo on my temples, and then drew long soft strokes
across my eyebrows.  I felt a pleasant languor beginning to creep down
my neck and spine, but I was fully prepared, and without much trouble
resisted it.  Indeed my mind was briskly busy, for I was planning how
best to play my game.  I let my head recline more and more upon the
cushioned back of my chair, and I let my eyelids droop.

The gentle fingers were very thorough and I had let myself sink back
beyond their reach before they ceased.

"You are asleep," the voice said.  "Now wake."

I was puzzled to know how to stage-manage that wakening, but she saved
me the trouble.  Her voice suddenly hissed like a snake's.  "Stand up!"
it said.  "Quick--on your life."

I scrambled to my feet with extreme energy, and stood staring at the
fire, wondering what to do next.

"Look at your master," came the voice again, peremptory as a
drill-sergeant's.

That gave me my cue.  I knew where Medina was standing, and, in the
words of the Bible, my eyes regarded him as a handmaiden regards her
master.  I stood before him, dumb and dazed and obedient.

"Down," he cried.  "Down, on all-fours."

I did as I was bid, thankful that my job was proving so easy.

"Go to the door--no, on all-fours, open it twice, shut it twice, and
bring me the paper-knife from the far table in your mouth."

I obeyed, and a queer sight I must have presented prancing across the
room, a perfectly sane man behaving like a lunatic.

I brought the paper-knife, and remained dog-wise.  "Get up," he said,
and I got up.

I heard the woman's voice say triumphantly, "He is well broken," and
Medina laughed.

"There is yet the last test," he said.  "I may as well put him through
it now.  If it fails, it means only that he needs more schooling.  He
cannot remember, for his mind is now in my keeping.  There is no
danger."

He walked up to me, and gave me a smart slap in the face.

I accepted it with Christian meekness.  I wasn't even angry.  In fact I
would have turned the other cheek in the Scriptural fashion, if it
hadn't occurred to me that it might be over-acting.

Then he spat in my face.

That, I admit, tried me pretty high.  It was such a filthy Kaffir trick
that I had some trouble in taking it resignedly.  But I managed it.  I
kept my eyes on the ground, and didn't even get out my handkerchief to
wipe my cheek till he had turned away.

"Well broken to heel," I heard him say.  "It is strange how easily
these flat tough English natures succumb to the stronger spirit.  I
have got a useful weapon in him, mother mine."

They paid no more attention to me than if I had been a piece of
furniture, which, indeed, in their eyes I was.  I was asleep, or rather
awake in a phantasmal world, and I could not return to my normal life
till they bade me.  I could know nothing--so they thought--and remember
nothing, except what they willed.  Medina sat in my chair, and the
woman had her hand on his head, and they talked as if they were alone
in the desert.  And all the while I was standing sheepishly on the rug,
not daring to move, scarcely to breathe, lest I should give the show
away.

They made a pretty picture--"The Prodigal's Return" or "The Old Folks
at Home," by Simpkins, R.A., Royal Academy, 1887.  No, by Heaven, there
was no suggestion of that.  It was a marvellous and tragic scene that I
regarded.  The fitful light of the fire showed figures of an antique
beauty and dignity.  The regal profile of the woman, her superb pose,
and the soft eerie music of her voice were a world removed from
vulgarity, and so was the lithe vigour and the proud face of the man.
They were more like a king and queen in exile, decreeing the sea of
blood which was to wash them back again.  I realised for the first time
that Medina might be damnable, but was also great.  Yes, the man who
had spat on me like a stable-boy had also something of the prince.  I
realised another thing.  The woman's touch had flattened down the hair
above his forehead, which he brushed square, and his head, outlined in
the firelight against the white cushion, was as round as a football.  I
had suspected this when I first saw him, and now I was certain.  What
did a head like that portend?  I had a vague remembrance that I had
heard somewhere that it meant madness---at any rate degeneracy.

They talked rapidly and unceasingly, but the confounded thing was that
I could hear very little of it.  They spoke in low tones, and I was
three yards off and daren't for my life move an inch nearer.  Also they
spoke for the most part in a language of which I did not know a
word--it may have been Choctaw, but was probably Erse.  If I had only
comprehended that tongue I might there and then have learned all I
wanted to know.  But sometimes Medina talked English, though it seemed
to me that the woman always tried to bring him back to the other
speech.  All I heard were broken sentences that horribly tantalised me.

My brain was cool and very busy.  This woman was the Blind Spinner of
the rhymes.  No doubt of it.  I could see her spinning beside a peat
fire, nursing ancient hate and madness, and crooning forgotten poetry.
"Beside the Sacred Tree."  Yggdrasil be hanged!  I had it, it was
Gospel Oak.  Lord, what a fool I had been not to guess it before!  The
satisfaction of having got one of the three conundrums dead right made
me want to shout.  These two harpies held the key to the whole riddle,
and I had only to keep up my present character to solve it.  They
thought they were dealing with a hypnotised fool, and instead they had
a peculiarly wide-awake, if rather slow and elderly, Englishman.  I
wished to Heaven I knew what they were saying.  Sluicing out malice
about my country, no doubt, or planning the ruin of our civilisation
for the sake of a neurotic dream.

Medina said something impatiently about "danger," as if his purpose
were to reassure.  Then I caught nothing for several minutes, till he
laughed and repeated the word "_secundus_."  Now I was looking for
three people, and if there was a "_secundus_" there must have been a
"_primus_," and possibly a "_tertius_."

"He is the least easy to handle," he said.  "And it is quite necessary
that Jason should come home.  I have decided that the doctor must go
out.  It won't be for long--only till midsummer."

The date interested me acutely.  So did what followed, for he went on:

"By midsummer they liquidate and disband.  There is no fear that it
won't succeed.  We have the whip hand, remember.  Trust me, all will go
smoothly, and then we begin a new life...."

I thought she sighed, and for the first time she spoke in English:

"I fear sometimes that you are forgetting your own land, Dominick."

He put up an arm and drew her head to his.

"Never, mother mine.  It is our strength that we can seem to forget and
still remember."

I was finding my stand on that hearth-rug extraordinarily trying.  You
see I had to keep perfectly rigid, for every now and then Medina would
look towards me, and I knew that the woman had an ear like a hound.
But my knees were beginning to shake with fatigue and my head to grow
giddy, and I feared that, like the soldiers who stand guard round a
royal bier, I might suddenly collapse.  I did my best to struggle
against the growing weakness, and hoped to forget it by concentrating
all my attention on the fragments of talk.

"I have news for you," Medina was saying.  "Kharma is in Europe and
proposes to come to England."

"You will see him?"  I thought her voice had a trace of alarm in it.

"Most certainly.  I would rather see him than any living man."

"Dominick, be careful.  I would rather you confined yourself to our old
knowledge.  I fear these new things from the East."

He laughed.  "They are as old as ours--older.  And all knowledge is
one.  I have already drunk of his learning and I must have the whole
cup."

That was the last I heard, for at that moment I made my exit from the
scene in a way which I could not have bettered by much cogitation.  My
legs suddenly gave under me, the room swam round, and I collapsed on
the floor in a dead faint.  I must have fallen heavily, for I knocked a
leg off one of the little tables.

When I came to--which I suppose was a minute or two later--Odell was
bathing my face, and Medina with a grave and concerned air was standing
by with a brandy decanter.

"My dear fellow, you gave me a bad fright," he said, and his manner was
that of the considerate friend.  "You're not feeling ill?"

"I haven't been quite fit all day, and I suppose the hot room knocked
me out.  I say, I'm most awfully sorry for playing the fool like this.
I've damaged your furniture, I'm afraid.  I hope I didn't scare the
lady."

"What lady?"

"Your mother."

He looked at me with a perfectly blank face, and I saw I had made a
mistake.

"I beg your pardon--I'm still giddy.  I've been dreaming."

He gave me a glass of brandy and tucked me into a taxi.  Long before I
got to the Club I was feeling all right, but my mind was in a fine
turmoil.  I had stumbled at last upon not one clue but many, and though
they were confused enough, I hoped with luck to follow them out.  I
could hardly eat any dinner that night, and my brain was too unsettled
to do any serious thinking.  So I took a taxi up to Gospel Oak, and,
bidding it wait for me, had another look at Palmyra Square.  The place
seemed to have been dead and decaying for centuries, seen in that windy
moonless dark, and No. 4 was a shuttered tomb.  I opened the gate and,
after making sure that the coast was clear, stole round to the
back-door where tradesmen called.  There were some dilapidated
outhouses, and the back garden, with rank grasses and obscene
clothes-posts, looked like nothing so much as a neglected grave-yard.
In that house was the terrible blind Fate that span.  As I listened, I
heard from somewhere inside the sound of slow heartbroken sobs.  I
wondered if they came from the queer-looking little girl.




_Chapter IX_

_I am Introduced to Strong Magic_

The first thing I did when I got up next morning was to pay a visit to
Harlows, the fishing-tackle people.  They knew me well enough, for I
used to buy my rods there, and one of the assistants had been down to
Fosse to teach Mary how to use a light split-cane.  With him I embarked
on a long talk about Norwegian rivers and their peculiarities, and very
soon got his views on the best flies.  I asked which river was
considered to be the earliest, and was told in an ordinary season the
Nirdal and the Skarso.  Then I asked if he knew my friend Doctor
Newhover.  "He was in here yesterday afternoon," I was told.  "He is
going to the Skarso this year, and hopes to be on the water in the last
week of April.  Rather too soon in my opinion, though salmon have been
caught in it as early as April 17th.  By the end of the first week of
May it should be all right."  I asked a good deal more about the
Skarso, and was told that it was best fished from Merdal at the head of
the Merdalfjord.  There were only about three miles of fishable water
before the big foss, but every yard of it was good.  I told him I had
hoped to get a beat on the Leardal for June, but had had to give up the
notion this year and intended to confine myself to Scotland.  I bought
a new reel, a quantity of sea-trout flies, and a little book about
Norwegian fishing.

Then I went on to see Macgillivray, with whom I had made an appointment
by telephone.

"I've come to ask your help," I told him.  "I'm beginning to get a move
on, but it's a ticklish business, and I must walk very warily.  First
of all, I want you to find out the movements of a certain Dr Newhover
of Wimpole Street.  He is going to Norway some time in the next
fortnight, to the Skarso to fish, and his jumping-off place will be
Stavanger.  Find out by which boat he takes a passage, and book me a
berth in it also.  I'd better have my old name, Cornelius Brand."

"You're not thinking of leaving England just now?" he asked
reproachfully.

"I don't know.  I may have to go or I may not, but in any case I won't
be long away.  Anyhow, find out about Dr Newhover.  Now for the more
serious business.  Just about when have you settled to round up the
gang?"

"For the reasons I gave you it must be before mid-summer.  It is an
infernally complicated job and we must work to a time-table.  I had
fixed provisionally the 20th of June."

"I think you'd better choose an earlier date."

"Why?"

"Because the gang are planning themselves to liquidate by midsummer,
and, if you don't hurry, you may draw the net tight and find nothing in
it."

"Now how on earth did you find that out?" he asked, and his usually
impassive face was vivid with excitement.

"I can't tell you.  I found it out in the process of hunting for the
hostages, and I give you my word it's correct."

"But you must tell me more.  If you have fresh lines on what you call
my 'gang,' it may be desperately important for me to know."

"I haven't.  I've just the one fact, which I have given you.  Honestly,
old man, I can't tell you anything more till I tell you everything.
Believe me, I'm working hard."

I had thought the thing out, and had resolved to keep the Medina
business to myself and Sandy.  Our one chance with him was that he
should be utterly unsuspecting, and even so wary a fellow as
Macgillivray might, if he were told, create just that faint breath of
suspicion that would ruin all.

He grunted, as if he were not satisfied.  "I suppose you must have it
your own way.  Very well, we'll fix the 10th of June for _Der Tag_.
You realise, of course, that the round-up of all must be
simultaneous--that's why it takes such a lot of _bandobast_.  By the
way, you've got the same problem with the hostages.  You can't release
one without the others, or the show is given away--not your show only,
but mine.  You realise that?"

"I do," I said, "and I realise that the moving forward of your date
narrows my time down to less than two months.  If I succeed, I must
wait till the very eve of your move.  Not earlier, I suppose, than June
9th?  Assume I only find one of the three?  I wait till June 9th before
getting him out of their clutches.  Then you strike, and what happens
to the other two?"

He shrugged his shoulders.  "The worst, I fear.  You see, Dick, the
gang I mean to crush and the people who hold the hostages are allied,
but I take it they are different sets.  I may land every member of my
gang, and yet not come within speaking distance of the other lot.  I
don't know, but I'm pretty certain that even if we found the second lot
we'd never be able to prove complicity between the two.  The first are
devilish deep fellows, but the second are great artists."

"All the same," I said, "I'm in hopes of finding at least one of the
hostages, and that means some knowledge of the kidnappers."

"I must not ask, but I'd give my head to know how and where you're
working.  More power to you!  But I wonder if you'll ever get near the
real prime fountain of iniquity."

"I wonder," I said, and took my leave.

I had been playing with sickness, and now it looked as if I was going
to be punished by getting the real thing.  For all the rest of that day
I felt cheap, and in the evening I was positive I had a temperature.  I
thought I might have 'flu, so I went round after dinner to see a doctor
whom I had known in France.  He refused to admit the temperature.
"What sort of life have you been leading these last weeks?" he asked,
and when I told him that I had been hanging round London waiting on
some tiresome business developments, he said that that was the whole
trouble.  "You're accustomed to an active life in fresh air and you've
been stuffing in town, feeding too well and getting no exercise.  Go
home to-morrow and you'll be as right as a trivet."

"It rather would suit me to be sick for a spell--say a week."

He looked puzzled and then laughed.

"Oh, if you like I'll give you a chit to say you must go back to the
country at once or I won't answer for the consequences."

"I'd like that, but not just yet.  I'll ring you up when I want it.
Meantime I can take it that there's nothing wrong with me?"

"Nothing that a game of squash and a little Eno won't cure."

"Well, when you send me that chit, say I've got to have a quiet week in
bed at home--no visitors--regular rest cure."

"Right," he said.  "It's a prescription that every son of Adam might
follow with advantage four times a year."

When I got back to the Club I found Medina waiting for me.  It was the
first time he had visited me there, and I pretended to be delighted to
see him--almost embarrassed with delight--and took him to the back
smoking-room where I had talked with Sandy.  I told him that I was out
of sorts, and he was very sympathetic.  Then, with a recollection of
Sandy's last letter, I started out to blaspheme my gods.  He commented
on the snugness and seclusion of the little room, which for the moment
we had to ourselves.

"It wasn't very peaceful when I was last in it," I said.  "I had a row
here with that lunatic Arbuthnot before he went abroad."

He looked up at the name.

"You mean you quarrelled.  I thought you were old friends."

"Once we were.  Now I never want to see the fellow again."  I thought I
might as well do the job thoroughly, though the words stuck in my
throat.

I thought he seemed pleased.

"I told you," he said, "that he didn't attract me."

"Attract!" I cried.  "The man has gone entirely to the devil.  He has
forgotten his manners, his breeding, and everything he once possessed.
He has lived so long among cringing Orientals that his head is swollen
like a pumpkin.  He wanted to dictate to me, and I said I would see him
further--and--oh well, we had the usual row.  He's gone back to the
East, which is the only place for him, and--no!  I never want to clap
eyes on him again."

There was a purr of satisfaction in his voice, for he believed, as I
meant him to, that his influence over me had been strong enough to
shatter an ancient friendship.  "I am sure you are wise.  I have lived
in the East and know something of its ways.  There is the road of
knowledge and the road of illusion, and Arbuthnot has chosen the
second....  We are friends, Hannay, and I have much to tell you some
day--perhaps very soon.  I have made a position for myself in the
world, but the figure which the world sees is only a little part of me.
The only power is knowledge, and I have attained to a knowledge
compared with which Arbuthnot's is the merest smattering."

I noticed that he had dropped the easy, well-bred, deprecating manner
which I had first noted in him.  He spoke to me now magisterially,
arrogantly, almost pompously.

"There has never been a true marriage of East and West," he went on.
"To-day we incline to put a false interpretation on the word Power.  We
think of it in material terms like money, or the control of great
patches of inanimate nature.  But it still means, as it has always
meant, the control of human souls, and to him who acquires that
everything else is added.  How does such control arise?  Partly by
knowledge of the intricacies of men's hearts, which is a very different
thing from the stock platitudes of the professional psychologists.
Partly by that natural dominion of spirit which comes from the
possession of certain human qualities in a higher degree than other
men.  The East has the secret knowledge, but, though it can lay down
the practice, it cannot provide the practitioners.  The West has the
tools, but not the science of their use.  There has never, as I have
said, been a true marriage of East and West, but when there is, its
seed will rule the world."

I was drinking this in with both ears, and murmuring my assent.  Now at
last I was to be given his confidence, and I prayed that he might be
inspired to go on.  But he seemed to hesitate, till a glance at my
respectful face reassured him.

"The day after to-morrow a man will be in London, a man from the East,
who is a great master of this knowledge.  I shall see him, and you will
accompany me.  You will understand little, for you are only at the
beginning, but you will be in the presence of wisdom."

I murmured that I should feel honoured.

"You will hold yourself free for all that day.  The time will probably
be the evening."

After that he left with the most perfunctory good-bye.  I congratulated
myself on having attained to just the kind of position I wanted--that
of a disciple whose subjection was so much taken for granted that he
was treated like a piece of furniture.  From his own point of view
Medina was justified; he must have thought the subconscious control so
strong, after all the tests I had been through, that my soul was like
putty in his hands.

Next day I went down to Fosse and told Mary to expect me back very soon
for a day or two.  She had never plagued me with questions, but
something in my face must have told her that I was hunting a trail, for
she asked me for news and looked as if she meant to have it.  I
admitted that I had found out something, and said I would tell her
everything when I next came back.  That would only have been prudent,
for Mary was a genius at keeping secrets and I wanted some repositary
of my knowledge in case I got knocked on the head.

When I returned to town I found another note from Sandy, also from
France, signed "Alan Breck"--Sandy was terribly out with his Derby
winners.  It was simply two lines imploring me again to make Medina
believe I had broken with him and that he had gone east of Suez for
good.

There was also a line from Macgillivray, saying that Dr Newhover had
taken a passage on the _Gudrun_, leaving Hull at 6.30 p.m. on the 21st,
and that a passage had been booked for C. Brand, Esqre, by the same
boat.  That decided me, so I wrote to my own doctor asking for the chit
he had promised, to be dated the 19th.  I was busy with a plan, for it
seemed to me that it was my duty to follow up the one trail that
presented itself, though it meant letting the rest of the business
sleep.  I longed more than I could say for a talk with Sandy, who was
now playing the fool in France and sending me imbecile notes.  I also
rang up Archie Roylance, and found to my delight that he had not left
town, for I ran him to ground at the Travellers', and fixed a meeting
for next morning.

"Archie," I said, when we met, "I want to ask a great favour from you.
Are you doing anything special in the next fortnight?"

He admitted that he had thought of getting back to Scotland to watch a
pair of nesting greenshanks.

"Let the greenshanks alone, like a good fellow.  I've probably got to
go to Norway on the 21st, and I shall want to get home in the deuce of
a hurry.  The steamer's far too slow."

"Destroyer," he suggested.

"Hang it, this is not the War.  Talk sense.  I want an aeroplane, and I
want you to fetch me."

Archie whistled long and loud.

"You're a surprisin' old bird, Dick.  It's no joke bein' a pal of
yours....  I daresay I could raise a bus all right.  But you've got to
chance the weather.  And my recollection of Norway is that it's not
very well provided with landin' places.  What part do you favour?"

I told him the mouth of the Merdalfjord.

"Lord!  I've been there," he said.  "It's all as steep as the side of a
house."

"Yes, but I've been studying the map, and there are some eligible
little islands off the mouth, which look flattish from the contouring.
I'm desperately serious, old man.  I'm engaged on a job where failure
means the loss of innocent lives.  I'll tell you all about it soon, but
meantime you must take my word for it."

I managed to get Archie suitably impressed, and ever to interest him in
the adventure, for he was never the man to lag behind in anything that
included risk and wanted daring.  He promised to see Hansen, who had
been in his squadron and was believed to have flown many times across
the North Sea.  As I left him I could see that he was really enormously
cheered by the prospect, for if he couldn't watch his blessed birds the
next best thing was to have a chance of breaking his neck.

I had expected to be bidden by Medina to meet his necromancer in some
den in the East End or some Bloomsbury lodging-house.  Judge of my
surprise, then, when I was summoned to Claridge's for nine-thirty that
evening.  When I got to the hotel it was difficult to believe that a
place so bright and commonplace could hold any mystery.  There was the
usual dancing going on, and squads of people who had dined well were
sitting around watching.  Medina was standing by a fireplace talking to
a man who wore a long row of miniature medals and a star, and whom I
recognised as Tom Machin, who had commanded a cavalry brigade in
France.  Medina nodded casually to me, and Tom, whom I had not seen for
years, made a great fuss.

"Regimental dinner," he explained.  "Came out for a moment to give
instructions about my car.  Been telling Medina here of the dirty trick
the Government have played on my old crowd.  I say it's up to the few
sahibs like him in that damned monkey-house at Westminster to make a
row about it.  You back me up, Hannay.  What I say is..." and so on
with all the eternal iteration of "abso-lutely" and "If you follow me"
and "You see what I mean" of the incoherent British regular.

Medina gently disengaged himself.  "Sorry, Tom, but I must be off now.
You're dining with Burminster on Thursday, aren't you?  We'll talk
about that business then.  I agree it's an infernal shame."

He signed to me and we went together to the lift.  On the first floor,
where the main suites are, a turbaned Indian waited for us in the
corridor.  He led us into a little anteroom, and then disappeared
through big folding-doors.  I wondered what kind of swell this Oriental
necromancer must be who could take rooms like these, for the last time
I had been in them was when they were occupied by a Crown Prince who
wanted to talk to me about a certain little problem in Anatolia.

"You are about to see Kharma," Medina whispered, and there was an odd
exaltation in his voice.  "You do not know his name, but there are
millions in the East who reverence it like that of a god.  I last saw
him in a hut on the wildest pass in the Karakoram, and now he is in
this gilded hotel with the dance-music of the West jigging below.  It
is a parable of the unity of all Power."

The door was opened, and the servant beckoned us to enter.  It was a
large room furnished with the usual indifferent copies of French
furniture--very hot and scented, just the kind of place where
international financiers make their deals over liqueur brandy and big
cigars, or itinerant stars of the cinema world receive their friends.
Bright, hard and glossy, you would have said that no vulgarer
environment could be found....  And yet after the first glance I did
not feel its commonness, for it was filled with the personality of the
man who sat on a couch at the far end.  I realised that here was one
who carried with him his own prepotent atmosphere, and who could
transform his surroundings, whether it was a Pamir hut or a London
restaurant.

To my surprise he was quite young.  His hair was hidden by a great
turban, but the face was smooth and hairless, and the figure, so far as
I could judge, had not lost the grace of youth.  I had imagined someone
immensely venerable and old with a beard to his girdle, or,
alternately, an obese babu with a soft face like a eunuch.  I had
forgotten that this man was of the hills.  To my amazement he wore
ordinary evening dress, well-cut too, I thought, and over it a fine
silk dressing-gown.  He had his feet tucked up on the couch, but he did
not sit cross-legged.  At our entrance he slightly inclined his head,
while we both bowed.  Medina addressed him in some Indian tongue, and
he replied, and his voice was like the purr of a big cat.

He motioned us to sit down, looking not so much at us as through us,
and while Medina spoke I kept my eyes on his face.  It was the thin,
high-boned, high-bred face of the hillman; not the Mongolian type, but
that other which is like an Arab, the kind of thing you can see in
Pathan troops.  And yet, though it was as hard as flint and as fierce
as Satan, there was a horrid feline softness in it, like that of a man
who would never need to strike a blow in anger, since he could win his
way otherwise.  The brow was straight and heavy, such as I had always
associated with mathematical talent, and broader than is common with
Orientals.  The eyes I could not see, for he kept them half shut, but
there was something uncanny in the way they were chased in his head,
with an odd slant the opposite from what you see in the Chinaman.  His
mouth had a lift at each corner as if he were perpetually sneering, and
yet there was a hint of humour in the face, though it was as grave as a
stone statue.

I have rarely seen a human being at once so handsome and so repulsive,
but both beauty and horror were merged in the impression of ruthless
power.  I had been sceptical enough about this Eastern mage, as I had
been sceptical about Medina's arts, because they had failed with me.
But as I looked on that dark countenance I had a vision of a world of
terrible knowledge, a hideousness like an evil smell, but a power like
a blasting wind or a pestilence....  Somehow Sandy's talk at the
Thursday Club dinner came back to me, about the real danger to the
world lying in the constraint of spirit over spirit.  This swarthy
brute was the priest of that obscene domination, and I had an insane
desire there and then to hammer him into pulp.

He was looking at me, and seemed to be asking a question to which
Medina replied.  I fancy he was told that I was a _chela_, or whatever
was the right name, a well-broken and submissive disciple.

Then to my surprise he spoke in English--good English, with the
_chi-chi_ accent of the Indian.

"You have followed far in the path of knowledge, brother.  I did not
think a son of the West could have travelled so far and so soon.  You
have won two of the three keys to Mastery, if you can make a man forget
his past, and begin life anew subject to your will.  But what of the
third key?"

I thought Medina's voice had a tinge of disappointment.  "It is the
third key which I look for, master.  What good is it to wipe out the
past and establish my control if it is only temporary?  I want the
third key, to lock the door, so that I have my prisoner safe for ever.
Is there such a key?"

"The key is there, but to find it is not easy.  All control tends to
grow weak and may be broken by an accident, except in the case of young
children, and some women, and those of feeble mind."

"That I know," said Medina almost pettishly.  "But I do not want to
make disciples only of babes, idiots, and women."

"Only some women, I said.  Among our women perhaps all, but among
Western women, who are hard as men, only the softer and feebler."

"That is my trouble.  I wish to control for ever, and to control
without constant watching on my part.  I have a busy life and time is
precious.  Tell me, master, is there a way?"

I listened to this conversation with feelings of genuine horror.  Now I
saw Medina's plans, and I realised that he and he alone was at the
bottom of the kidnapping.  I realised, too, how he had dealt with the
three hostages, and how he proposed to deal.  Compared to him a
murderer was innocent, for a murderer only took life, while he took the
soul.  I hated him and that dark scoundrel more intensely than I think
I have ever hated man; indeed it was only by a great effort that I
checked myself from clutching the two by the throat.  The three
stories, which had been half forgotten and overlaid by my recent
experiences, returned sharp and clear to my memory.  I saw again
Victor's haggard face, I heard Sir Arthur Warcliff's voice break; and
my wrath rose and choked me.  This stealing of souls was the worst
infamy ever devised by devils among mankind.  I must have showed my
emotion, but happily the two had no eyes for me.

"There is a way, a sure way," the Indian was saying, and a wicked
half-smile flitted over his face.  "But it is a way which, though
possible in my own country, may be difficult in yours.  I am given to
understand that your police are troublesome, and you have a public
repute, which it is necessary to cherish.  There is another way which
is slower, but which is also sure, if it is boldly entered upon."

The sage seemed to open his half-shut eyes, and I thought I saw the
opaque brightness which comes from drug-taking.

"Him whom you would make your slave," he said, "you first strip of
memory, and then attune to your own will.  To keep him attuned you must
be with him often and reinforce the control.  But this is burdensome,
and if the slave be kept apart and seen rarely the influence will
ebb--except, as I have said, in the case of a young child.  There is a
way to rivet the bondage and it is this.  Take him or her whom you
govern into the same life as they have been accustomed to live before,
and there, among familiar things, assert your control.  Your influence
will thus acquire the sanction of familiarity--for though the conscious
memory has gone, the unconscious remains--and presently will be a
second nature."

"I see," said Medina abstractedly.  "I had already guessed as much.
Tell me, master, can the dominion, once it is established, be shaken
off?"

"It cannot save by the will of him who exercises it.  Only the master
can release."

After that they spoke again in the foreign tongue of I know not what
devilry.  It seemed to me that the sage was beginning to tire of the
interview, for he rang a bell and when the servant appeared gave him
some rapid instructions.  Medina rose, and kissed the hand which was
held out to him, and I, of course, followed suit.

"You stay here long, master?" he asked.

"Two days.  Then I have business in Paris and elsewhere.  But I return
in May, when I will summon you again.  Prosper, brother.  The God of
Wisdom befriend you."

We went downstairs to the dancing and the supper parties.  The
regimental dinner was breaking up and Tom Machin was holding forth in
the hall to a knot of be-medalled friends.  I had to say something to
Medina to round off the evening, and the contrast of the two scenes
seemed to give me a cue.  As we were putting on our coats I observed
that it was like coming from light to darkness.  He approved.  "Like
falling from a real world into shadows," he said.

He evidently wished to follow his own thoughts, for he did not ask me
to walk home with him.  I, too, had a lot to think about.  When I got
back to the Club I found a note signed "Spion Kop," and with an English
postmark.  "_Meet me_," it said, "_on the_ 21_st for breakfast at the
inn called 'The Silent Woman' on the Fosse Way as you go over from
Colne to Windrush.  I have a lot to tell you_."

I thanked Heaven that Sandy was home again, though he chose fantastic
spots for his assignations.  I, too, had something to say to him.  For
that evening had given me an insight into Medina's mind, and, what was
more, the glimmerings of a plan of my own.




_Chapter X_

_Confidences at a Wayside Inn_

My first impulse was to go to Macgillivray about this Kharma fellow,
who I was certain was up to mischief.  I suspected him of some kind of
political intrigue; otherwise what was he doing touring the capitals of
Europe and putting up at expensive hotels?  But on second thoughts I
resolved to let the police alone.  I could not explain about Kharma
without bringing in Medina, and I was determined to do nothing which
would stir a breath of suspicion against him.  But I got the chit from
my doctor, recommending a week's rest, and I went round to see Medina
on the morning of the 19th.  I told him I had been feeling pretty cheap
for some days and that my doctor ordered me to go home and go to bed.
He didn't look pleased, so I showed him the doctor's letter, and made a
poor mouth, as if I hated the business but was torn between my
inclinations and my duty; I think he liked my producing that chit, like
a second-lieutenant asking for leave, anyhow he made the best of it and
was quite sympathetic.  "I'm sorry you're going out of town," he said,
"for I want you badly.  But it's as well to get quite fit, and to lie
up for a week ought to put you all right.  When am I to expect you
back?"  I told him that without fail I would be in London on the 29th.
"I'm going to disappear into a monastery," I said.  "Write no letters,
receive none, not at home to visitors, only sleep and eat.  I can
promise you that my wife will watch me like a dragon."

Then I hunted up Archie Roylance, whom I found on the very top of his
form.  He had seen Hansen, and discovered that on the island of
Flacksholm, just off the mouth of the Merdalfjord, there was good
landing.  It was a big flattish island with a loch in the centre, and
entirely uninhabited except for a farm at the south end.  Archie had
got a machine, a Sopwith, which he said he could trust, and I arranged
with him to be at Flacksholm not later than the 27th, and to camp there
as best he could.  He was to keep watch by day for a motor-boat from
the Merdalfjord, and at night if he saw a green light he was to make
for it.  I told him to take ample supplies, and he replied that he
wasn't such a fool as to neglect the commissariat.  He said he had been
to Fortnum & Mason and was going to load up with liqueurs and
_delicatessen_.  "Take all the clothes you've got, Dick," he added.
"It will be perishing cold in those parts at this time of year."  He
arranged, too, to cable through Hansen for a motor-launch to be ready
at Stavanger for a Mr Brand who was due by the Hull steamer on the
morning of the 23rd.  If I had to change my plans I was to wire him at
once.

That evening I went down to Fosse a little easier in my mind.  It was a
blessed relief to get out of London and smell clean air, and to reflect
that for a week at any rate I should be engaged in a more congenial job
than loafing about town.  I found Peter John in the best of health and
the Manor garden a glory of spring flowers.

I told Mary that I was ordered by my doctor to go to bed for a week and
take a rest cure.

"Dick," she asked anxiously, "you're not ill, are you?"

"Not a bit, only a trifle stale.  But officially I'm to be in bed for a
week and not a blessed soul is to be allowed to come near me.  Tell the
servants, please, and get the cook on to invalid dishes.  I'll take
Paddock into my confidence, and he'll keep up a show of waiting on me."

"A show?"

"Yes, for you see I'm going to put in a week in Norway--that is, unless
Sandy has anything to say against it."

"But I thought Colonel Arbuthnot was still abroad?"

"So he is--officially.  But I'm going to breakfast with him the day
after to-morrow at The Silent Woman--you remember, the inn we used to
have supper at last summer when I was fishing the Colne."

"Dick," she said solemnly, "isn't it time you told me a little more
about what you're doing?"

"I think it is," I agreed, and that night after dinner I told her
everything.

She asked a great many questions, searching questions, for Mary's brain
was about twice as good as mine.  Then she sat pondering for a long
time with her chin on her hand.

"I wish I had met Mr Medina," she said at last.  "Aunt Claire and Aunt
Doria know him....  I am afraid of him, terribly afraid, and I think I
should be less afraid if I could just see him once.  It is horrible,
Dick, and you are fighting with such strange weapons.  Your only
advantage is that you're such a gnarled piece of oak.  I wish I could
help.  It's dreadful to have to wait here and be tortured by anxiety
for you, and to be thinking all the time of those poor people.  I can't
get the little boy out of my head.  I often wake in a terror, and have
to go up to the night-nursery to hug Peter John.  Nanny must think I'm
mad....  I suppose you're right to go to Norway?"

"I see no other way.  We have a clue to the whereabouts of one of the
hostages--I haven't a notion which.  I must act on that, and besides,
if I find one it may give me a line on the others."

"There will still be two lost," she said, "and the time grows fearfully
short.  You are only one man.  Can you not get helpers?  Mr
Macgillivray?"

"No.  He has his own job, and to let him into mine would wreck both."

"Well, Colonel Arbuthnot?  What is he doing?"

"Oh, Sandy's busy enough, and thank God! he's back in England.  I'll
know more about his game when I see him, but you may be sure it's a
deep one.  While I'm away Sandy will be working all the time."

"Do you know, I have never met him.  Couldn't I see him some time when
you're away?  It would be a great comfort to me.  And, Dick, can't I
help somehow?  We've always shared everything, even before we were
married, and you know I'm dependable."

"Indeed I do, my darling," I said.  "But I can't see how you can
help--yet.  If I could, I would inspan you straight off, for I would
rather have you with me than a regiment."

"It's the poor little boy.  I could endure the rest, but the thought of
him makes me crazy.  Have you seen Sir Arthur?"

"No, I have avoided him.  I can stand the sight of Victor and the Duke,
but I swear I shall never look Sir Arthur in the face unless I can hand
him over his son."

Then Mary got up and stood over me like a delivering angel.

"It is going to be done," she cried.  "Dick, you must never give up.  I
believe in my heart we shall win.  We must win or I shall never be able
to kiss Peter John again with a quiet mind.  Oh, I wish--I wish I could
do something."

I don't think Mary slept that night, and next morning she was rather
pale and her eyes had that funny long-sighted look that they had had
when I said good-bye to her at Amiens in March '18, before going up to
the line.

I spent a blissful day with her and Peter John wandering round our
little estate.  It was one of those April days which seem to have been
borrowed from late May, when you have the warmth of summer joined with
the austerity and fresh colouring of spring.  The riot of daffodils
under the trees was something to thank God for, the banks of the little
lake were one cascade of grape hyacinths, blue and white, and every
dell in the woods was bright with primroses.  We occupied the morning
deepening the pools in a tiny stream which was to be one of the
spawning-grounds for the new trout in the lake, and Peter John showed
conspicuous talent as a hydraulic engineer.  His nurse, who was a
middle-aged Scotswoman from the Cheviots, finally carried him off for
his morning rest, and when he had gone, Mary desisted from her watery
excavations and sat down on a bank of periwinkles.

"What do you really think of Nanny?" she asked.

"About as good as they make," I replied.

"That's what I think too.  You know, Dick, I feel I'm far too fussy
about Peter John.  I give hours of my time to him, and it's quite
unnecessary.  Nanny can do everything better than I can.  I scarcely
dare let him out of my sight, and yet I'm certain that I could safely
leave him for weeks with Nanny and Paddock--and Dr Greenslade within
call."

"Of course you could," I agreed, "but you'd miss him, as I do, for he's
jolly good company."

"Yes, he's jolly good company, the dear fellow," she said.

In the afternoon we went for a canter on the downs, and I came back
feeling as fit as a race-horse and keyed up for anything.  But that
evening, as we walked in the garden before dinner, I had another fit of
longing to be free of the business and to return to my quiet life.  I
realised that I had buried my heart in my pleasant acres, and the
thought of how much I loved them made me almost timid.  I think Mary
understood what I was feeling, for she insisted on talking about David
Warcliff, and before I went to bed had worked me into that honest
indignation which is the best stiffener of resolution.  She went over
my plans with me very carefully.  On the 28th, if I could manage it, I
was to come home, but if I was short of time I was to send her a wire
and go straight to London.  The pretence of my being in bed was to be
religiously kept up.  For safety's sake I was to sign every wire with
the name of Cornelius.

Very early next morning, long before anyone was stirring, I started the
big Vauxhall with Paddock's assistance, and, accompanied by a very
modest kit, crept down the avenue.  Paddock, who could drive a car, was
to return to the house about ten o'clock, and explain to my chauffeur
that by my orders he had taken the Vauxhall over to Oxford as a loan
for a week to a friend of mine.  I drove fast out of the silent hill
roads and on to the great Roman way which lay like a strap across the
highlands.  It was not much after six o'clock when I reached The Silent
Woman, which sat like an observation post on a ridge of down, at a
junction of four roads.  Smoke was going up from its chimneys, so I
judged that Sandy had ordered early breakfast.  Presently, as I was
garaging the car in an outhouse, Sandy appeared in flannel bags and a
tweed jacket, looking as fresh as paint and uncommonly sunburnt.

"I hope you're hungry," he said.  "Capital fellow the landlord!  He
knows what a man's appetite is, I ordered eggs, kidneys, sausages and
cold ham, and he seemed to expect it.  Yes.  These are my headquarters
for the present, though Advanced G.H.Q. is elsewhere.  By the by, Dick,
just for an extra precaution, my name's Thomson--Alexander Thomson--and
I'm a dramatic critic taking a belated Easter holiday."

The breakfast was as good as Sandy had promised, and what with the run
in the fresh air and the sight of him opposite me I began to feel
light-hearted.

"I got your letters," I said, "but, I say, your knowledge of Derby
winners is pretty rocky.  I thought that was the kind of information no
gentleman was without."

"I'm the exception.  Did you act on them?"

"I told Medina I had broken with you for good and never wanted to see
your face again.  But why did you make such a point of it?"

"Simply because I wanted to be rid of his attentions, and I reckoned
that if he thought we had quarrelled and that I had gone off for good,
he might let me alone.  You see he has been trying hard to murder me."

"Good Lord!" I exclaimed.  "When?"

"Four times," said Sandy calmly, counting on his fingers.  "Once before
I left London.  Oh, I can tell you I had an exciting departure.  Three
times in Paris, the last time only four days ago.  I fancy he's off my
trail now, for he really thinks I sailed from Marseilles the day before
yesterday."

"But why on earth?"

"Well, I made some ill-advised remarks at the Thursday Club dinner.  He
believes that I'm the only man alive who might uncover him, and he
won't sleep peacefully till he knows that I am out of Europe and is
convinced that I suspect nothing.  I sent you those letters because I
wanted to be let alone, seeing I had a lot to do, and nothing wastes
time like dodging assassins.  But my chief reason was to protect you.
You mayn't know it, Dick, but you've been walking for three weeks on
the edge of a precipice with one foot nearly over.  You've been in the
most hideous danger, and I was never more relieved in my life than when
I saw your solemn old face this morning.  You were only safe when he
regarded our friendship as broken and me out of the way and you his
blind and devoted slave."

"I'm that all right," I said.  "There's been nothing like it since
Uncle Tom's Cabin."

"Good.  That's the great thing, for it gives us a post in the enemy's
citadel.  But we're only at the beginning of a tremendous fight and
there's no saying how it will go.  Have you sized up Medina?"

"Only a little bit.  Have you?"

"I'm on the road.  He's the most complex thing I've ever struck.  But
now we've got to pool our knowledge.  Shall I start?"

"Yes.  Begin at the Thursday dinner.  What started you off then?  I
could see that something he said intrigued you."

"I must begin before that.  You see, I'd heard a good deal about Medina
up and down the world and couldn't for the life of me place him.
Everybody swore by him, but I had always a queer feeling about the man.
I told you about Lavater.  Well, I had nothing to go upon there except
the notion that his influence upon my friend had been bad.  So I began
making inquiries, and, as you know, I've more facilities than most
people for finding things out.  I was curious to know what he had been
doing during the War.  The ordinary story was that he had been for the
first two years pretty well lost in Central Asia, where he had gone on
a scientific expedition, and that after that he had been with the
Russians, and had finished up by doing great work with Denikin.  I went
into that story and discovered that he had been in Central Asia all
right, but had never been near any fighting front and had never been
within a thousand miles of Denikin.  That's what I meant when I told
you that I believed the man was one vast lie."

"He made everybody believe it."

"That's the point.  He made the whole world believe what he wanted.
Therefore he must be something quite out of the common---a propagandist
of genius.  That was my first conclusion.  But how did he work?  He
must have a wonderful organisation, but he must have something
more--the kind of personality which can diffuse itself like an
atmosphere and which, like an electric current, is not weakened by
distance.  He must also have unique hypnotic powers.  I had made a
study of that in the East and had discovered how little we know here
about the compulsion of spirit by spirit.  That, I have always
believed, is to-day, and ever has been, the true magic.  You remember I
said something about that at the Thursday dinner?"

I nodded.  "I suppose you did it to try him?"

"Yes.  It wasn't very wise, for I might easily have frightened him.
But I was luckier than I deserved, and I drew from him a tremendous
confession."

"The Latin quotation?"

"The Latin quotation.  _Sit vini abstemius qui hermeneuma tentat aut
hominum petit dominatum_.  I nearly had a fit when I heard it.  Listen,
Dick.  I've always had a craze for recondite subjects, and when I was
at Oxford I wasted my time on them when I should have been working for
my schools.  I only got a third in Greats, but I acquired a lot of
unusual information.  One of my subjects was Michael Scott.  Yes--the
wizard, only he wasn't a wizard, but a very patient and original
thinker.  He was a Borderer like me, and I started out to write a life
of him.  I kept up the study, and when I was at the Paris Embassy I
spent my leisure tracking him through the libraries of Europe.  Most of
his works were published in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and
mighty dull they are, but there are some still in manuscript, and I had
always the hope of discovering more, for I was positive that the real
Michael Scott was something far bigger than the translator and
commentator whom we know.  I believed that he taught the mad Emperor
Ferdinand some queer things, and that the centre of his teaching was
just how one human soul could control another.  Well, as it turned out,
I was right.  I found some leaves of manuscript in the Bibliothque
Nationale, which I was certain were to be attributed to Michael.  One
of his best-known works, you remember, is the _Physionomia_, but that
is only a version of Aristotle.  This, too, was part of a
_Physionomia_, and a very different thing from the other, for it
purported to give the essence of the _Secreta Secretorum_--it would
take too long to explain about that--and the teaching of the
Therapeutae, with Michael's own comments.  It is a manual of the arts
of spiritual control--oh, amazingly up-to-date, I assure you, and a
long way ahead of our foolish psycho-analysts.  Well, that quotation of
Medina's comes from that fragment--the rare word 'hermeneuma' caught my
attention as soon as he uttered it.  That proved that Medina was a
student of Michael Scott, and showed me what was the bent of his mind."

"Well, he gave himself away then, and you didn't."

"Oh yes, I did.  You remember I asked him if he knew the _guru_ who
lived at the foot of the Shansi pass as you go over to Kaikand?  That
was a bad blunder, and it is on account of that question that he has
been trying to remove me from the earth.  For it was from that guru
that he learned most of his art."

"Was the _guru's_ name Kharma?" I asked.

Sandy stared as if he had seen a ghost.

"Now how on earth do you know that?"

"Simply because I spent an hour with him and Medina a few nights ago."

"The devil you did!  Kharma in London!  Lord, Dick, this is an awesome
business.  Quick, tell me every single thing that passed."

I told him as well as I remembered, and he seemed to forget his alarm
and to be well satisfied.  "This is tremendously important.  You see
the point of Medina's talk?  He wants to rivet his control over those
three unfortunate devils, and to do that he is advised to assert it in
some environment similar to that of their past lives.  That gives us a
chance to get on their track.  And the control can only be released by
him who first imposed it!  I happened to know that, but I was not sure
that Medina knew it.  It is highly important to have found this out."

"Finish your story," I begged him.  "I want to know what you have been
doing abroad?"

"I continued my studies in the Bibliothque Nationale, and I found
that, as I suspected, Medina, or somebody like him, had got on to the
Michael Scott MS. and had had a transcript made of it.  I pushed my
researches further, for Michael wasn't the only pebble on the beach,
though he was the biggest.  Lord, Dick, it's a queer business in a
problem like ours to have to dig for help in the debris of the Middle
Ages.  I found out something--not much, but something."

"And then?"

"Oh, all the time I was making inquiries about Medina's past--not very
fruitful--I've told you most of the results.  Then I went to see Ram
Dass--you remember my speaking about him.  I thought he was in Munich,
but I found him in Westphalia, keeping an eye on the German
industrials.  Don't go to Germany for a holiday, Dick; it's a sad
country and a comfortless.  I had to see Ram Dass, for he happens to be
the brother of Kharma."

"What size of a fellow is Kharma?" I asked.

Sandy's reply was: "For knowledge of the practice unequalled, but only
a second-class practitioner"--exactly what Medina had said.

"Ram Dass told me most of what I wanted to know.  But he isn't aware
that his brother is in Europe.  I rather fancy he thinks he is dead....
That's all I need tell you now.  Fire away, Dick, and give me an exact
account of your own doings."

I explained as best I could the gradual change in Medina's manner from
friendship to proprietorship.  I told how he had begun to talk freely
to me, as if I were a disciple, and I described that extraordinary
evening in Hill Street when I had met his mother.

"His mother!" Sandy exclaimed, and made me go over every incident
several times--the slap in the face, the spitting, my ultimate
fainting.  He seemed to enjoy it immensely.  "Good business," he said.
"You never did a better day's work, old man."

"I have found the Blind Spinner at any rate," I said.

"Yes.  I had half guessed it.  I didn't mention it, but when I got into
the house in Gospel Oak as the electric-light man, I found a
spinning-wheel in the back room, and they had been burning peat on the
hearth.  Well, that's Number One."

"I think I am on my way to find Number Two," I said, and I told him of
the talk I had overheard between the two about _secundus_ and sending
"the doctor" somewhere, and of how I had discovered that Dr Newhover
was starting this very day for the Skarso.  "It's the first clear
clue," I said, "and I think I ought to follow it up."

"Yes.  What do you propose to do?"

"I am travelling this evening on the _Gudrun_ and I'm going to trail
the fellow till I find out his game.  I'm bound to act upon what little
information we've got."

"I agree.  But this means a long absence from London, and _secundus_ is
only one of three."

"Just a week," I said.  "I've got sick leave from Medina for a week,
and I'm supposed to be having a rest cure at Fosse, with Mary warding
off visitors.  I've arranged with Archie Roylance to pick me up in an
aeroplane about the 28th and bring me back.  It doesn't allow me much
time, but an active man can do the deuce of a lot in a week."

"Bravo!" he cried.  "That's your old moss-trooping self!"

"Do you approve?"

"Entirely.  And, whatever happens, you present yourself to Medina on
the 29th?  That leaves us about six weeks for the rest of the job."

"More like five," I said gloomily, and I told him how I had learnt that
the gang proposed to liquidate by midsummer, and that Macgillivray had
therefore moved the date when he would take action ten days forward.
"You see how we are placed.  He must collect all the gang at the same
moment, and we must release all three hostages, if we can, at the same
time.  The releasing mustn't be done too soon or it will warn the gang.
Therefore if Macgillivray strikes on the 10th of June, we must be ready
to strike not earlier than the 9th and, of course, not later."

"I see," he said, and was silent for a little.  "Have you anything more
to tell me?"

I ransacked my memory and remembered about Odell.  He wrote down the
name of the dancing club where I had seen that unprepossessing butler.
I mentioned that I had asked Macgillivray to get on to his _dossier_.

"You haven't told Macgillivray too much?" he inquired anxiously and
seemed relieved when I replied that I had never mentioned the Medina
business.

"Well, here's the position," he said at last.  "You go off for a week
hunting Number Two.  We are pretty certain that we have got Number One.
Number Three--that nonsense about the fields of Eden and the Jew with a
dyed beard in a curiosity shop in Marylebone--still eludes us.  And of
course we have as yet no word of any of the three hostages.  There's a
terrible lot still to do.  How do you envisage the thing, Dick?  Do you
think of the three, the girl, the young man, and the boy, shut up
somewhere and guarded by Medina's minions?  Do you imagine that if we
find their places of concealment we shall have done the job?"

"That was my idea."

He shook his head.  "It is far subtler than that.  Did no one ever tell
you that the best way of hiding a person is to strip him of his memory?
Why is it that when a man loses his memory he is so hard to find?  You
see it constantly in the newspapers.  Even a well-known figure, if he
loses his memory and wanders away, is only discovered by accident.  The
reason is that the human personality is identified far less by
appearance than by its habits and mind.  Loss of memory means the loss
of all true marks of identification, and the physical look alters to
correspond.  Medina has stolen these three poor souls' memories and set
them adrift like waifs.  David Warcliff may at this moment be playing
in a London gutter along with a dozen guttersnipes and his own father
could scarcely pick him out from the rest.  Mercot may be a dock
labourer or a deck hand, whom you wouldn't recognise if you met him,
though you had sat opposite him in a college hall every night for a
year.  And Miss Victor may be in a gaiety chorus or a milliner's
assistant or a girl in a dancing saloon....  Wait a minute.  You saw
Odell at a dance-club?  There may be something in that."  I could see
his eyes abstracted in thought.

"There's another thing I forgot to mention," I said.  "Miss Victor's
fianc is over here, staying in Carlton House Terrace.  He is old
Turpin, who used to be with the division--the Marquis de la Tour du
Pin."

Sandy wrote the name down.  "Her fianc.  He may come in useful.  What
sort of fellow?"

"Brave as a lion, but he'll want watching, for he's a bit of a Gascon."

We went out after breakfast and sat in an arbour looking down a shallow
side-valley to the upper streams of the Windrush.  The sounds of
morning were beginning to rise from the little village far away in the
bottom, the jolt of a waggon, the "clink-clenk" from the smithy, the
babble of children at play.  In a fortnight the may-fly would be here,
and every laburnum and guelder rose in bloom.  Sandy, who had been away
from England for years, did not speak for a long time, but drank in the
sweet-scented peace of it.  "Poor devil," he said at last.  "He has
nothing like this to love.  He can only hate."

I asked whom he was talking about, and he said "Medina."

"I'm trying to understand him.  You can't fight a man unless you
understand him, and in a way sympathise with him."

"Well, I can't say I sympathise with him, and I most certainly don't
understand him."

"Do you remember once telling me that he had no vanity?  You were badly
out there.  He has a vanity which amounts to delirium.

"This is how I read him," he went on.  "To begin with, there's a
far-away streak of the Latin in him, but he is mainly Irish, and that
never makes a good cross.  He's the _dracin_ Irish, such as you find
in America.  I take it that he imbibed from that terrible old
woman--I've never met her, but I see her plainly and I know that she is
terrible--he imbibed that venomous hatred of imaginary things--an
imaginary England, an imaginary civilisation, which they call love of
country.  There is no love in it.  They think there is, and
sentimentalise about an old simplicity, and spinning wheels and turf
fires and an uncouth language, but it's all hollow.  There's plenty of
decent plain folk in Ireland, but his kind of _dracin_ is a ghastly
throw-back to something you find in the dawn of history, hollow and
cruel like the fantastic gods of their own myths.  Well, you start with
this ingrained hate."

"I agree about the old lady.  She looked like Lady Macbeth."

"But hate soon becomes conceit.  If you hate, you despise, and when you
despise you esteem inordinately the self which despises.  This is how I
look at it, but remember, I'm still in the dark and only feeling my way
to an understanding.  I see Medina growing up--I don't know in what
environment--conscious of great talents and immense good looks,
flattered by those around him till he thinks himself a god.  His hatred
does not die, but it is transformed into a colossal egotism and vanity,
which, of course, is a form of hate.  He discovers quite early that he
has this remarkable hypnotic power----  Oh, you may laugh at it,
because you happen to be immune from it, but it is a big thing in the
world for all that.  He discovers another thing--that he has an
extraordinary gift of attracting people and making them believe in him.
Some of the worst scoundrels in history have had it.  Now, remember his
vanity.  It makes him want to play the biggest game.  He does not want
to be a king among pariahs; he wants to be the ruler of what is most
strange to him, what he hates and in an unwilling bitter way admires.
So he aims at conquering the very heart, the very soundest part of our
society.  Above all he wants to be admired by men and admitted into the
innermost circle."

"He has succeeded all right," I said.

"He has succeeded, and that is the greatest possible tribute to his
huge cleverness.  Everything about him is dead right--clothes, manner,
modesty, accomplishments.  He has made himself an excellent sportsman.
Do you know why he shoots so well, Dick?  By faith--or fatalism, if you
like.  His vanity doesn't allow him to believe that he could miss....
But he governs himself strictly.  In his life he is practically an
ascetic, and though he is adored by women he doesn't care a straw for
them.  There are no lusts of the flesh in that kind of character.  He
has one absorbing passion which subdues all others--what our friend
Michael Scott called 'hominum dominatus.'"

"I see that.  But how do you explain the other side?"

"It is all the ancestral hate.  First of all, of course, he has got to
have money, so he gets it in the way Macgillivray knows about.  Second,
he wants to build up a regiment of faithful slaves.  That's where you
come in, Dick.  There is always that inhuman hate at the back of his
egotism.  He wants to conquer in order to destroy, for destruction is
the finest meat for his vanity.  You'll find the same thing in the
lives of Eastern tyrants, for when a man aspires to be like God he
becomes an incarnate devil."

"It is a tough proposition," I observed dismally.  "It would be an
impossible proposition, but for one thing.  He is always in danger of
giving himself away out of sheer arrogance.  Did you ever read the old
Irish folk-lore?  Very beautiful it is, but there is always something
fantastic and silly which mars the finest stories.  They lack the grave
good-sense which you find in the Norse sagas and, of course, in the
Greek.  Well, he has this freakish element in his blood.  That is why
he sent out that rhyme about the three hostages, which by an amazing
concatenation of chances put you on to his trail.  Our hope is--and,
mind you, I think it is a slender hope--that his vanity may urge him to
further indiscretions."

"I don't know how you feel about it," I said, "but I've got a pretty
healthy hatred for that lad.  I'm longing for a quiet life, but I swear
I won't settle down again till I've got even with him."

"You never will," said Sandy solemnly.  "Don't let's flatter ourselves
that you and I are going to down Medina.  We are not.  A very wise man
once said to me that in this life you could often get success, if you
didn't want victory.  In this case we're out for success only.  We want
to release the hostages.  Victory we can never hope for.  Why, man,
supposing we succeed fully, we'll never be able to connect Medina with
the thing.  His tools are faithful, because he has stolen their souls
and they work blindly under him.  Supposing Macgillivray rounds up all
the big gang and puts the halter round their necks.  There will be none
of them to turn King's evidence and give Medina away.  Why?  Because
none of them know anything against him.  They're his unconscious
agents, and very likely most have never seen him.  And you may be
pretty sure that his banking accounts are too skilfully arranged to
show anything."

"All the same," I said stubbornly, "I have a notion that I'll be able
to put a spoke in his wheel."

"Oh, I daresay we can sow suspicion, but I believe he'll be too strong
for us.  He'll advance in his glorious career, and may become Prime
Minister--or Viceroy of India--what a chance the second would be for
him!--and publish exquisite little poetry books, as finished and
melancholy as _The Shropshire Lad_.  Pessimism, you know, is often a
form of vanity."

At midday it was time for me to be off, if I was to be at Hull by six
o'clock.  I asked Sandy what he proposed to do next, and he said he was
undecided.  "My position," he said, "badly cramps my form.  It would be
ruination if Medina knew I was in England--ruination for both you and
me.  Mr Alexander Thomson must lie very low.  I must somehow get in
touch with Macgillivray to hear if he has anything about Odell.  I
rather fancy Odell.  But there will probably be nothing doing till you
come back, and I think I'll have a little fishing."

"Suppose I want to get hold of you?"

"Suppose nothing of the kind.  You mustn't make any move in my
direction.  That's our only safety.  If I want you I'll come to you."

As I was starting he said suddenly: "I've never met your wife, Dick.
What about my going over to Fosse and introducing myself?"

"The very thing," I cried.  "She is longing to meet you.  But remember
that I'm supposed to be lying sick upstairs."

As I looked back he was waving his hand, and his face wore its familiar
elfish smile.




_Chapter XI_

_How a German Engineer Found Strange Fishing_

I got to Hull about six o'clock, having left my car at a garage in
York, and finished the journey by train.  I had my kit in a small
suit-case and rucksack, and I waited on the quay till I saw Dr Newhover
arrive with a lot of luggage and a big rod-box.  When I reckoned he
would be in his cabin arranging his belongings, I went on board myself,
and went straight to my own cabin, which was a comfortable two-berthed
one well forward.  There I had sandwiches brought me, and settled
myself to doze and read for thirty-six hours.

All that night and all next day it blew fairly hard, and I remained
quietly in my bunk, trying to read Boswell's _Life of Johnson_, and
thanking my stars that I hadn't lived a thousand years earlier and been
a Viking.  I didn't see myself ploughing those short steep seas in an
open galley.  I woke on the morning of the 23rd to find the uneasy
motion at an end, and, looking out of my port-hole, saw a space of
green sunlit water, a rocky beach, and the white and red of a little
town.  The _Gudrun_ waited about an hour at Stavanger, so I gave Dr
Newhover time to get on shore, before I had a hurried breakfast in the
saloon and followed him.  I saw him go off with two men, and get on
board a motor-launch which was lying beside one of the jetties.  The
coast was now clear, so I went into the town, found the agents to whom
Archie Roylance had cabled, and learned that my own motor-launch was
ready and waiting in the inner harbour where the fishing-boats lie.  A
clerk took me down there, and introduced me to Johan, my skipper, a
big, cheerful, bearded Norwegian, who had a smattering of English.  I
bought a quantity of provisions, and by ten o'clock we were on the
move.  I asked Johan about the route to Merdal, and he pointed out a
moving speck a couple of miles ahead of us.  "That is Kristian Egge's
boat," he said.  "He carries an English fisherman to Merdal and we
follow."  I got my glasses on the craft, and made out Newhover smoking
in the stern.

It was a gorgeous day, with that funny Northern light which makes noon
seem like early morning.  I enjoyed every hour of it, partly because I
had now a definite job before me, and partly because I was in the open
air to which I properly belonged.  I got no end of amusement watching
the wild life--the cormorants and eider-duck on the little islands, and
the seals, with heads as round as Medina's, that slipped off the
skerries at our approach.  The air was chilly and fresh, but when we
turned the corner of the Merdalfjord out of the sea-wind and the sun
climbed the sky it was as warm as June.  A big flat island we passed,
all short turf and rocky outcrops, was pointed out to me by Johan as
Flacksholm.  Soon we were shaping due east in an inlet which was
surrounded by dark steep hills, with the snow lying in the gullies.  I
had Boswell with me in two volumes; the first I had read in the
steamer, and the second I was now starting on, when it fell overboard,
through my getting up in a hurry to look at a flock of duck.  So I
presented the odd volume to Johan, and surrendered myself to tobacco
and meditation.

In the afternoon the inlet narrowed to a fjord, and the walls of hill
grew steeper.  They were noble mountains, cut sharp like the edge of
the Drakensberg, and crowned with a line of snow, so that they looked
like a sugar-coated cake that had been sliced.  Streams came out of the
upper snow-wreaths and hurled themselves down the steeps--above a
shimmering veil of mist, and below a torrent of green water tumbling
over pebbles to the sea.  The landscape and the weather lulled me into
a delectable peace which refused to be disturbed by any "looking before
or after," as some poet says.  Newhover was ahead of me--we never lost
track of his launch--and it was my business to see what he was up to
and to keep myself out of his sight.  The ways and means of it I left
to fortune to provide.

By and by the light grew dimmer, and the fjord grew narrower, so that
dusk fell on us, though, looking back down the inlet, we could see a
bright twilight.  I assumed that Newhover would go on to Merdal and the
fjord's head, where the Skarso entered the sea, and had decided to stop
at Hauge, a village two miles short of it, on the south shore.  We came
to Hauge about half-past eight, in a wonderful purple dusk, for the
place lay right under the shadow of a great cliff.  I gave Johan full
instructions: he was to wait for me and expect me when I turned up, and
to provision himself from the village.  On no account must he come up
to Merdal, or go out of sight or hail of the boat.  He seemed to relish
the prospect of a few days' idleness, for he landed me at a wooden
jetty in great good-humour, and wished me sport.  What he thought I was
after I cannot imagine, for I departed with a rucksack on my back and a
stout stick in my hand, which scarcely suggested the chase.

I was in good spirits myself as I stretched my legs on the road which
led from Hauge to Merdal.  The upper fjord lay black on my left hand,
the mountains rose black on my right, but though I walked in darkness I
could see twilight ahead of me, where the hills fell back from the
Skarso valley, that wonderful apple-green twilight which even in spring
is all the northern night.  I had never seen it before, and I suppose
something in my blood answered to the place--for my father used to say
that the Hannays came originally from Norse stock.  There was a jolly
crying of birds from the waters, ducks and geese and oyster-catchers
and sandpipers, and now and then would come a great splash as if a
salmon were jumping in the brackish tides on his way to the Skarso.  I
was thinking longingly of my rods left behind, when on turning a corner
the lights of Merdal showed ahead, and it seemed to me that I had
better be thinking of my next step.

I knew no Norwegian, but I counted on finding natives who could speak
English, seeing so many of them have been in England or America.
Newhover, I assumed, would go to the one hotel, and it was for me to
find lodgings elsewhere.  I began to think this spying business might
be more difficult than I had thought, for if he saw me he would
recognise me, and that must not happen.  I was ready, of course, with a
story of a walking tour, but he would be certain to suspect, and
certain to let Medina know....  Well, a lodging for the night was my
first business, and I must start inquiries.  Presently I came to the
little pier of Merdal, which was short of the village itself.  There
were several men sitting smoking on barrels and coils of rope, and one
who stood at the end looking out to where Kristian Egge's boat, which
had brought Newhover, lay moored.  I turned down the road to it, for it
seemed a place to gather information.

I said good evening to the men, and was just about to ask them for
advice about quarters, when the man who had been looking out to sea
turned round at the sound of my voice.  He seemed an oldish fellow,
with rather a stoop in his back, wearing an ancient shooting-jacket.
The light was bad, but there was something in the cut of his jib that
struck me as familiar, though I couldn't put a name to it.

I spoke to the Norwegians in English, but it was obvious that I had hit
on a bunch of indifferent linguists.  They shook their heads, and one
pointed to the village, as if to tell me that I would be better
understood there.  Then the man in the shooting-jacket spoke.

"Perhaps I can help," he said.  "There is a good inn in Merdal, which
at this season is not full."

He spoke excellent English, but it was obvious that he wasn't an
Englishman.  There was an unmistakable emphasis of the gutturals.

"I doubt the inn may be too good for my purse," I said.  "I am on a
walking-tour and must lodge cheaply."

He laughed pleasantly.  "There may be accommodation elsewhere.  Peter
Bojer may have a spare bed.  I am going that way, sir, and can direct
you."

He had turned towards me, and his figure caught the beam of the
riding-light of the motor-launch.  I saw a thin sunburnt face with a
very pleasant expression, and an untidy grizzled beard.  Then I knew
him, and I could have shouted with amazement at the chance which had
brought us two together again.

We walked side by side up the jetty road and on to the highway.

"I think," I said, "that we have met before, Herr Gaudian."

He stopped short.  "That is my name ... but I do not ... I do not
think..."

"Do you remember a certain Dutchman called Cornelius Brandt whom you
entertained at your country house one night in December '15?"

He looked searchingly in my face.

"I remember," he said.  "I also remember a Mr Richard Hanau, one of
Guggenheim's engineers, with whom I talked at Constantinople."

"The same," I said.  For a moment I was not clear how he was going to
take the revelation, but his next action reassured me, and I saw that I
had not been wrong in my estimate of the one German I have ever
whole-heartedly liked.  He began to laugh, a friendly tolerant laugh.

"_Kritzi Turken!_" he cried.  "It is indeed romantic.  I have often
wondered whether I should see or hear of you again, and behold! you
step out of the darkness on a Norwegian fjord."

"You bear no malice?" I said.  "I served my country as you served
yours.  I played fair, as you played fair."

"Malice!" he cried.  "But we are gentlemen; also we are not children.
I rejoice to see that you have survived the War.  I have always wished
you well, for you are a very bold and brave man."

"Not a bit of it," I said--"only lucky."

"By what name shall I call you now--Brandt or Hanau?"

"My name is Richard Hannay, but for the present I am calling myself
Cornelius Brand--for a reason which I am going to tell you."  I had
suddenly made up my mind to take Gaudian into my full confidence.  He
seemed to have been sent by Providence for that purpose, and I was not
going to let such a chance slip.

But at my words he stopped short.

"Mr Hannay," he said, "I do not want your confidence.  You are still
engaged, I take it, in your country's service?  I do not question your
motive, but remember I am a German, and I cannot be party to the
pursuit of one of my countrymen, however base I may think him."

I could only stare.  "But I am not in my country's service," I
stammered.  "I left it at the Armistice, and I'm a farmer now."

"Do English farmers travel in Norway under false names?"

"That's a private business which I want to explain to you.  I assure
you there is no German in it.  I want to keep an eye on the doings of a
fashionable English doctor."

"I must believe you," he said after a pause.  "But two hours ago a man
arrived in the launch you see anchored out there.  He is a fisherman
and is now at the inn.  That man is known to me--too well known.  He is
a German, who during the War served Germany in secret ways, in America
and elsewhere.  I did not love him and I think he did my country
grievous ill, but that is a matter for us Germans to settle, and not
for foreigners."

"I know your man as Dr Newhover of Wimpole Street."

"So?" he said.  "He has taken again his father's name, which was
Neuhofer.  We knew him as Kristoffer.  What do you want with him?"

"Nothing that any honest German wouldn't approve," and there and then I
gave him a sketch of the Medina business.  He exclaimed in horror.

"Mr Hannay," he said hesitatingly, "you are being honest with me?"

"I swear by all that's holy I am telling you the plain truth, and the
full truth.  Newhover may have done anything you jolly well like in the
War.  That's all washed out.  I'm after him to get a line on a foul
business which is English in origin.  I want to put a spoke in the
wheel of English criminals, and to save innocent lives.  Besides,
Newhover is only a subordinate.  I don't propose to raise a hand
against him, only to find out what he is doing."

He held out his hand.  "I believe you," he said, "and if I can I will
help you."

He conducted me through the long street of the village, past the inn,
where I supposed Newhover was now going to bed, and out on to the road
which ran up the Skarso valley.  We came in sight of the river, a
mighty current full of melted snow, sweeping in noble curves through
the meadowland in that uncanny dusk.  It appeared that he lodged with
Peter Bojer, who had a spare bed, and when we reached the cottage,
which stood a hundred yards from the highway on the very brink of the
stream, Peter was willing to let me have it.  His wife gave us
supper--an omelette, smoked salmon, and some excellent Norwegian
beer--and after it I got out my map and had a survey of the
neighbourhood.

Gaudian gave me a grisly picture of the condition of his own country.
It seemed that the downfall of the old regime had carried with it the
decent wise men like himself, who had opposed its follies, but had
lined up with it on patriotic grounds when the War began.  He said that
Germany was no place for a moderate man, and that the power lay with
the bloated industrials, who were piling up fortunes abroad while they
were wrecking their country at home.  The only opposition, he said,
came from the communists, who were half-witted, and the monarchists,
who wanted the impossible.  "Reason is not listened to, and I fear
there is no salvation till my poor people have passed through the last
extremity.  You foreign Powers have hastened our destruction, when you
had it in your hands to save us.  I think you have meant well, but you
have been blind, for you have not supported our moderate men and have
by your harshness played the game of the wreckers among us."

It appeared that he was very poor now, like all the professional
classes.  I thought it odd that this man, who had a world-wide
reputation as an engineer, couldn't earn a big income in any country he
chose.  Then I saw that it was because he had lost the wish to make
money.  He had seen too deep into the vanity of human wishes to have
any ambition left.  He was unmarried, with no near relations, and he
found his pleasure in living simply in remote country places and
watching flowers and beasts.  He was a keen fisherman, but couldn't
afford a good beat, so he leased a few hundred yards from a farmer, who
had not enough water to get a proper rent for it, and he did a lot of
trout fishing in the tarns high up in the hills and in the Skarso above
the foss.  As he sat facing me beyond the stove, with his kind sad
brown eyes and his rugged face, I thought how like he was to a Scottish
moorland shepherd.  I had liked him when I first saw him in Stumm's
company, but now I liked him so much that because of him I was prepared
to think better of the whole German race.

I asked him if he had heard of any other Englishman in the
valley--anyone of the name of Jason, for instance.  He said no; he had
been there for three weeks, but the fishing did not begin for another
fortnight, and foreign visitors had not yet arrived.  Then I asked him
about the _saeter_ farms, and he said that few of these were open yet,
since the high pastures were not ready.  One or two on the lower
altitudes might be already inhabited, but not many, though the winter
had been a mild one and the spring had come early.  "Look at the
Skarso," he said.  "Usually in April it is quite low, for the
snowfields have not begun to melt.  But to-day it is as brimming as if
it were the middle of May."

He went over the map with me--an inch-to-a-mile one I had got in
London--and showed me the lie of the land.  The _saeters_ were mostly
farther up the river, reached by paths up the tributary glens.  There
was a good road running the length of the valley, but no side roads to
connect with the parallel glens, the Uradal and the Bremendal.  I found
indeed one track marked on the map, which led to the Uradal by a place
called Snaasen.  "Yes," said Gaudian, "that is the only thing in the
way of what you soldiers would call lateral communications.  I've
walked it, and I'm sorry for the man who tries the road in bad weather.
You can see the beginning of the track from this house; it climbs up
beside the torrent just across the valley.  Snaasen is more or less
inhabited all the year round, and I suppose you would call it a kind of
_saeter_.  It is a sort of shelter hut for travellers taking that road,
and in summer it is a paradise for flowers.  You would be surprised at
the way the natives can cross the hills even in winter.  Snaasen
belongs to the big farm two miles up-stream, which carries with it the
best beat on the Skarso.  Also there is said to be first-class
ryper-shooting later in the year, and an occasional bear.  By the way,
I rather fancy someone told me that the whole thing was owned by, or
had been leased to, an Englishman....  You are rich, you see, and you
do not leave much in Norway for poor people."

I slept like a log on a bed quite as hard as a log, and woke to a
brilliant blue morning, with the birds in the pine-woods fairly
riotous, and snipe drumming in the boggy meadows, and the Skarso coming
down like a sea.  I could see the water almost up to the pathway of a
long wooden bridge that led to the big farm Gaudian had spoken of.  I
got my glass on the torrent opposite, and saw the track to Snaasen
winding up beside it till it was lost in a fold of the ravine.  Above
it I scanned the crown of the ridge, which was there much lower than on
the sides of the fjord.  There was no snow to be seen, and I knew by a
sort of instinct that if I got up there I should find a broad tableland
of squelching pastures with old snowdrifts in the hollows and tracts of
scrubby dwarf birch.

While I was waiting for breakfast I heard a noise from the high-road,
and saw a couple of the little conveyances they call _stolkjaeres_
passing.  My glass showed me Dr Newhover in the first and a quantity of
luggage in the second.  They took the road across the wooden bridge to
the big farm, and I could see the splash of their wheels at the far end
of it, where the river was over the road.  So Dr Newhover, or some
friend of his, was the lessee of this famous fishing, which carried
with it the shooting on the uplands behind it.  I rather thought I
should spend the day finding out more about Snaasen, and I counted
myself lucky to have got quarters in such an excellent observation-post
as Peter Bojer's cottage.

I wouldn't go near the track to Snaasen till I saw what Newhover did,
so Gaudian and I sat patiently at Peter Bojer's window.  About ten
o'clock a couple of ponies laden with kit in charge of a tow-headed boy
appeared at the foot of the track and slowly climbed up the ravine.  An
hour later came Dr Newhover, in a suit that looked like khaki, and
wearing a long mackintosh cape.  He strode out well and breasted the
steep path like a mountaineer.  I wanted to go off myself in pursuit of
him, keeping well behind, but Gaudian very sensibly pointed out how
sparse the cover was, and that if he saw a man on that lonely road he
would certainly want to know all about him.

We sat out-of-doors after luncheon in a pleasant glare of sun, and by
and by were rewarded by the sight of the pack-ponies returning, laden
with a different size and shape of kit.  They did not stop at the big
farm, but crossed the wooden bridge and took the high-road for Merdal.
I concluded that this was the baggage of the man whom Newhover had
replaced, and that he was returning to Stavanger in Kristian Egge's
boat.  About tea-time the man himself appeared--Jason, or whatever his
name was.  I saw two figures come down the ravine by the Snaasen road,
and stop at the foot and exchange farewells.  One of them turned to go
back, and I saw that this was Newhover, climbing with great strides
like a man accustomed to hills.  The other crossed the bridge, and
passed within hail of us--a foppish young man, my glass told me,
wearing smart riding-breeches and with an aquascutum slung over his
shoulder.

I was very satisfied with what I had learned.  I had seen Newhover
relieve his predecessor, just as Medina had planned, and I knew where
he was lodged.  Whatever his secret was it was hidden in Snaasen, and
to Snaasen I would presently go.  Gaudian advised me to wait till after
supper, when there would be light enough to find the way and not too
much to betray us.  So we both lay down and slept for four hours, and
took the road about ten-thirty as fresh as yearlings.

It was a noble night, windless and mild, and, though darkness lurked in
the thickets and folds of hill, the sky was filled with a translucent
amethyst glow.  I felt as if I were out on some sporting expedition and
enjoyed every moment of the walk with that strung-up expectant
enjoyment which one gets in any form of chase.  The torrent made wild
music on our left hand, grumbling in pits and shooting over ledges with
a sound like a snowslip.  There was every kind of bird about, but I had
to guess at them by their sounds and size, for there was no colour in
that shadowy world.

By and by we reached the top and had a light cold wind in our faces
blowing from the snowy mountains to the north.  The place seemed a huge
broken tableland and every hollow glistened as if filled with snow or
water.  There were big dark shapes ahead of us which I took to be the
hills beyond the Uradal.  Here it was not so easy to follow the track,
which twined about in order to avoid the boggy patches, and Gaudian and
I frequently strayed from it and took tosses over snags of juniper.
Once I was up against an iron pole, and to my surprise saw wires above.
Gaudian nodded.  "Snaasen is on the telephone," he said.

I had hoped to see some light in the house, so as to tell it from a
distance.  But we did not realise its presence till we were close upon
it, standing a little back from the path, as dark as a tomb-stone.  The
inhabitants must have gone early to bed, for there was no sign of life
within.  It was a two-storeyed erection of wood, stoutly built, with
broad eaves to the roof.  Adjacent there stood a big barn or hayshed,
and behind it some other outbuildings which might have been byres or
dairies.  We walked stealthily round the place, and were amazed at its
utter stillness.  There was no sound of an animal moving in the
steading, and when a brace of mallards flew overhead we started at the
noise like burglars at the creaking of a board.

Short of burglary there was nothing further to be done, so we took the
road home and scrambled at a great pace down the ravine, for it was
chilly on the tableland.  Before we went to bed, we had settled that
next day Gaudian should go up to Snaasen like an ordinary tourist and
make some excuse to get inside, while I would take a long tramp over
the plateau, keeping well away from the house, in case there might be
something ado in that barren region.

Next morning saw the same cloudless weather, and we started off about
ten o'clock.  I had a glorious but perfectly futile day.  I went up the
Skarso to well above the foss, and then climbed the north wall of the
valley by a gulley choked with brushwood, which gave out long before
the top and left me to finish my ascent by way of some very loose
screes and unpleasant boiler-plates.  I reached the plateau much
farther to the east, where it was at a greater altitude, so that I
looked down upon the depression where ran the track to Uradal.  I
struck due north among boggy meadows and the remains of old
snow-drifts, through whose fringes flowers were showing, till I was
almost on the edge of Uradal, and looked away beyond it to a fine
cluster of rock peaks streaked and patched with ice.  The Uradal glen
was so deep cut that I could not see into it, so I moved west and
struck the Merdal track well to the north of Snaasen.  After that I
fetched a circuit behind Snaasen, and had a good view of the house from
the distance of about half a mile.  Two of its chimneys were smoking,
and there were sounds of farm work from the yard.  There was no sign of
live stock, but it looked as if someone was repairing the sheds against
the summer season.  I waited for more than an hour, but I saw no human
being, so I turned homeward, and made a careful descent by the ravine,
reconnoitring every corner in case I should run into Newhover.

I found that Gaudian had returned before me.  When I asked him what
luck he had had he shook his head.

"I played the part of a weary traveller, and asked for milk.  An ugly
woman gave me beer.  She said she had no milk, till the cattle came up
from the valleys.  She would not talk and she was deaf.  She said an
English Herr had the ryper shooting, but lived at Tryssil.  That is the
name of the big farm by the Skarso.  She would tell me no more, and I
saw no other person.  But I observed that Snaasen is larger than I
thought.  There are rooms built out at the back, which we thought were
barns.  There is ample space there for a man to be concealed."

I asked him if he had any plan, and he said he thought of going boldly
up next day and asking for Newhover, whom he could say he had seen
passing Peter Bojer's cottage.  He disliked the man, but had never
openly quarrelled with him.  I approved of that, but in the meantime I
resolved to do something on my own account that night.  I was getting
anxious, for I felt that my time was growing desperately short; it was
now the 25th of April and I was due back in London on the 29th, and, if
I failed to turn up, Medina would make inquiries at Fosse Manor and
suspect.  I had made up my mind to go alone that night to Snaasen and
do a little pacific burgling.

I set out about eleven, and I put my pistol in my pocket, as well as my
flask and sandwiches and electric torch, for it occurred to me that
anything might happen.  I made good going across the bridge and up the
first part of the track, for I wanted to have as much time as possible
for my job.  My haste was nearly my undoing, for instead of
reconnoitring and keeping my ears open, I strode up the hill as if I
had been walking to make a record.  It was by the mercy of Heaven that
I was at a point where an out-jutting boulder made a sharp corner when
I was suddenly aware that someone was coming down the road.  I
flattened myself into the shadow, and saw Newhover.

He did not see or hear me, for he, too, was preoccupied.  He was
descending at a good pace, and he must have started in a hurry, for he
had no hat.  His longish blond locks were all touzled, and his face
seemed sharper than usual with anxiety.

I wondered what on earth had happened, and my first notion was to
follow him downhill.  And then it occurred to me that his absence gave
me a sovereign chance at Snaasen.  But if the household was astir there
might be other travellers on the road and it behoved me to go warily.
Now, near the top of the ravine, just under the edge of the tableland,
there was a considerable patch of wood--birches, juniper, and
wind-blown pines--for there the torrent flowed in a kind of cup, after
tumbling off the plateau and before hurling itself down to the valley.
Here it was possible to find an alternative road to the path, so I
dived in among the matted whortleberries and moss-covered boulders.

I had not gone ten yards before I realised that there was somebody or
something else in the thicket.  There was a sound of plunging ahead of
me, then the crack of a rotten log, then the noise of a falling stone.
It might be a beast, but it struck me that no wild thing would move so
awkwardly.  Only human boots make that kind of clumsy slipping.

If this was somebody from Snaasen, what was he doing off the track?
Could he be watching me?  Well, I proposed to do a little stalking on
my own account.  I got down on all-fours and crawled in cover in the
direction of the sound.  It was very dark there, but I could see a
faint light where the scrub thinned round the stream.

Soon I was at the edge of the yeasty water.  The sounds had stopped,
but suddenly they began again a little farther up, and there was a
scuffle as if part of the bank had given way.  The man, whoever he was,
seemed to be trying to cross.  That would be a dangerous thing to do,
for the torrent was wide and very strong.  I crawled a yard or two
up-stream, and then in an open patch saw what was happening.

A fallen pine made a crazy bridge to a great rock, from which the rest
of the current might conceivably be leaped.  A man was kneeling on the
trunk and beginning to move along it....  But as I looked the rotten
thing gave way and the next I saw he was struggling in the foam.  It
was all the matter of a fraction of a second, and before I knew I was
leaning over the brink and clutching at an arm.  I gripped it, braced
one leg against a rock, and hauled the owner close into the edge out of
the main current.  He seemed to have taken no hurt, for he found a
foothold, and scarcely needed my help to scramble up beside me.

Then to my surprise he went for me tooth and nail.  It was like the
assault of a wild beast, and its suddenness rolled me on my back.  I
felt hands on my throat, and grew angry, caught the wrists and wrenched
them away.  I flung a leg over his back and got uppermost, and after
that he was at my mercy.  He seemed to realise it, too, for he lay
quite quiet and did not struggle.

"What the devil do you mean?" I said angrily.  "You'd have been drowned
but for me, and then you try to throttle me."

I got out my torch and had a look at him.  It was the figure of a
slight young man, dressed in rough homespun such as Norwegian farm lads
wear.  His face was sallow and pinched, and decorated with the most
preposterous wispish beard, and his hair was cut roughly as if with
garden shears.  The eyes that looked up at me were as scared and wild
as a deer's.

"What the devil do you mean?" I repeated, and then to my surprise he
replied in English.

"Let me up," he said, "I'm too tired to fight.  I'll go back with you."

Light broke in on me.

"Don't you worry, old chap," I said soothingly.  "You're going back
with me, but not to that infernal _saeter_.  We've met before, you
know.  You're Lord Mercot, and I saw you ride 'Red Prince' last year at
the 'House' Grind."

He was sitting up, staring at me like a ghost.

"Who are you?  Oh, for God's sake, who are you?"

"Hannay's my name.  I live at Fosse Manor in the Cotswolds.  You once
came to dine with us before the Heythrop Ball."

"Hannay!"  He repeated stumblingly--"I remember--I
think--remember--remember Lady Hannay.  Yes--and Fosse.  It's on the
road between----"

He scrambled to his feet.

"Oh, sir, get me away.  He's after me--the new devil with the long
face, the man who first brought me here.  I don't know what has
happened to me, but I've been mad a long time, and I've only got sane
in the last days.  Then I remembered--and I ran away.  But they're
after me.  Oh, quick, quick!  Let's hide."

"See here, my lad," I said, and I took out my pistol.  "The first man
that lays a hand on you I shoot, and I don't miss.  You're as safe now
as if you were at home.  But this is no place to talk, and I've the
devil of a lot to tell you.  I'm going to take you down with me to my
lodging in the valley.  But they're hunting you, so we've got to go
cannily.  Are you fit to walk?  Well, do exactly as I tell you, and in
an hour you'll be having a long drink and looking up time-tables."

I consider that journey back a creditable piece of piloting.  The poor
boy was underfed and shaking with excitement, but he stepped out
gallantly, and obeyed me like a lamb.  We kept off the track so as to
muffle our steps in grass, and took every corner like scouts in a
reconnaissance.  We met Newhover coming back, but we heard him a long
way off and were in good cover when he passed.  He was hurrying as
furiously as ever and I could hear his laboured breathing.  After that
we had a safe road over the meadow, but we crossed the bridge most
circumspectly, making sure that there was no one in the landscape.
About half-past one I pushed open Gaudian's bedroom window, woke him,
and begged him to forage for food and drink.

"Did you get into Snaasen?" he asked sleepily.

"No, but I've found what we've been looking for.  One of the three
hostages is at this moment sitting on your cabin-box."




_Chapter XII_

_I Return to Servitude_

We fed Mercot with tinned meats and biscuits and bottled beer, and he
ate like a famished schoolboy.  The odd thing was that his terror had
suddenly left him.  I suppose the sight of me, which had linked him up
definitely with his past, had made him feel a waif no more, and, once
he was quite certain who he was, his natural courage returned.  He got
great comfort from looking at Gaudian, and indeed I could not imagine a
better sedative than a sight of that kind, wise old face.  I lent him
pyjamas, rubbed him down to prevent a chill from his ducking, put him
in my bed, and had the satisfaction of seeing him slip off at once into
deep slumber.

Next morning Gaudian and I interviewed Peter Bojer and explained that a
young English friend of ours had had an accident, while on a walking
tour, and might be with us for a day to two.  It was not likely that
Newhover would advertise his loss, and in any case Peter was no gossip,
and Gaudian, who had known him for years, let him see that we wanted
the fact of a guest being with us kept as quiet as possible.  The boy
slept till nearly midday, while I kept a watch on the road.  Newhover
appeared early, and went down to Merdal village, where he spent the
better part of the forenoon.  He was probably making inquiries, but
they were bound in his own interest to be discreet ones.  Then he
returned to Tryssil, and later I saw a dejected figure tramping up the
Snaasen track.  He may have thought that the body of the fugitive was
in some pool of the torrent or being swirled down by the Skarso to the
sea, and I imagined that that scarcely fitted in with his instructions.

When Mercot awoke at last and had his breakfast he looked a different
lad.  His eyes had lost their fright, and though he stuttered badly and
seemed to have some trouble in collecting his wits, he had obviously
taken hold of himself.  His great desire was to get clean, and that
took some doing, for he could not have had a bath for weeks.  Then he
wanted to borrow my razor and shave his beard, but I managed to prevent
him in time, for I had been thinking the thing out, and I saw that that
would never do.  So far as I could see, he had recovered his memory,
but there were still gaps in it; that is to say, he remembered all his
past perfectly well till he left Oxford on February 17th, and he
remembered the events of the last few days, but between the two points
he was still hazy.

On returning to his rooms that February evening he had found a note
about a horse he was trying to buy, an urgent note asking him to come
round at once to certain stables.  He had just time for this, before
dressing for dinner, so he dashed out of the house--meeting nobody, as
it chanced, on the stairs, and, as the night was foggy, being seen by
no one in the streets.  After that his memory was a blank.  He had
wakened in a room in London, which he thought was a nursing home, and
had seen a doctor--I could picture that doctor--and had gone to sleep
again.  After that his recollection was like a black night studded with
little points of light which were physical sensations.  He remembered
being very cold and sometimes very tired, he recollected the smell of
paraffin, and of mouldy hay, and of a treacly drink which made him
sick.  He remembered faces, too, a cross old woman who cursed him, a
man who seemed to be always laughing, and whose laugh he feared more
than curses....

I suppose that Medina's spell must have been wearing thin during these
last days, and that the keeper, Jason, or whoever he was, could not
revive it.  For Mercot had begun to see Jason no longer as a terror but
as an offence--an underbred young bounder whom he detested.  And with
this clearing of the foreground came a lightening of the background.
He saw pictures of his life at Alcester, at first as purely objective
things, but soon as in some way connected with himself.  Then longing
started, passionate longing for something which he knew was his own....
It was a short step from that to the realisation that he was Lord
Mercot, though he happened to be clad like a tramp and was as dirty as
a stoker.  And then he proceeded to certain halting deductions.
Something bad had happened to him: he was in a foreign land--which land
he didn't know: he was being ill-treated and kept prisoner; he must
escape and get back to his old happy world.  He thought of escape quite
blindly, without any plan; if only he could get away from that accursed
_saeter_, he would remember better, things would happen to him, things
would come back to him.

Then Jason went and Newhover came, and Newhover drove him half crazy
with fear, for the doctor's face was in some extraordinary way mixed up
with his confused memory of the gaps between the old world and the new.
He was mad to escape now, but rather to escape from Newhover then to
reach anywhere.  He watched for his chance, and found it about eight
o'clock the evening before, when the others in the house were at
supper.  Some instinct had led him towards Merdal.  He had heard
footsteps behind him and had taken to the thicket....  I appeared, an
enemy as he thought, and he had despairingly flung himself on me.  Then
I had spoken his name, and that fixed the wavering panorama of his
memory.  He "came to himself" literally, and was now once more the
undergraduate of Christ Church, rather shell-shocked and jumpy, but
quite sane.

The question which worried me was whether the cure was complete,
whether Newhover could act as Medina's deputy and resurrect the spell.
I did not believe that he could, but I wasn't certain.  Anyhow it had
to be risked.

Mercot repeated his request for the loan of my razor.  He was smoking a
Turkish cigarette as if every whiff took him nearer Elysium.  Badly
shorn, ill-clad, and bearded as he was, he had still the ghost of the
air of the well-to-do, sporting young men.  He wanted to know when the
steamer sailed, but there seemed no panic now in his impatience.

"Look here," I said.  "I don't think you can start just yet.  There's a
lot I want to tell you now you're able to hear it."

I gave him a rough summary of Macgillivray's story, and the tale of the
three hostages.  I think he found it comforting to know that there were
others in the same hole as himself.  "By Jove!" he said, "what a
damnable business!  And I'm the only one you've got on the track of.
No word of the girl and the little boy?"

"No word!"

"Poor devils," he said, but I do not think he really took in the
situation.

"So you see how we are placed.  Macgillivray's round-up is fixed for
the 10th of June.  We daren't release the hostages till the 9th, for
otherwise the gang would suspect.  They have everything ready, as I've
told you, for their own liquidation.  Also we can't release one without
the others, unless by the 9th of June we have given up hope of the
others.  Do you see what I mean?"

He didn't.  "All I want is to get home in double-quick time," he said.

"I don't wonder.  But you must see that that is impossible, unless we
chuck in our hand."

He stared at me, and I saw fright beginning to return to his eyes.

"Do you mean that you want me to go back to that bloody place?"

"That's what I mean.  If you think it out, you'll see it's the only
way.  We must do nothing to spoil the chances of the other two.  You're
a gentleman, and are bound to play the game."

"But I can't," he cried.  "Oh, my God, you can't ask me to."  There
were tears in his voice, and his eyes were wild.

"It's a good deal to ask, but I know you will do it.  There's not a
scrap of danger now, for you have got back your memory, and you know
where you are.  It's up to you to play a game with your gaoler.  He is
the dupe now.  You fill the part of the half-witted farm-boy and laugh
at him all the time in your sleeve.  Herr Gaudian will be waiting down
here to keep an eye on you, and when the time is ripe--and it won't be
more than five weeks--I give you full permission to do anything you
like with Dr Newhover."

"I can't, I can't," he wailed, and his jaw dropped like a scared
child's.

Then Gaudian spoke.  "I think we had better leave the subject for the
present.  Lord Mercot will do precisely what he thinks right.  You have
sprung the thing on him too suddenly.  I think it might be a good plan
if you went for a walk, Hannay.  Try the south side of the
foss--there's some very pretty scrambling to be had there."

He spoke to me at the door.  "The poor boy is all in pieces.  You
cannot ask him for a difficult decision when his nerves are still raw.
Will you leave him with me?  I have had some experience in dealing with
such cases."

When I got back for supper, after a climb which exercised every muscle
in my body, I found Gaudian teaching Mercot a new patience game.  We
spent a very pleasant evening, and I noticed that Gaudian led the talk
to matters in which the boy could share, and made him speak of himself.
We heard about his racing ambitions, his desire to ride in the Grand
National, his hopes for his polo game.  It appeared that he was
destined for the Guards, but he was to be allowed a year's travel when
he left the 'Varsity, and we planned out an itinerary for him.
Gaudian, who had been almost everywhere in the world, told him of
places in Asia where no tourist had ever been and where incredible
sport was to be had in virgin forest, and I pitched him some yarns
about those few districts of Africa which are still unspoiled.  He got
very keen, for he had a bit of the explorer in him, and asked modestly
if we thought he could pull off certain plans we had suggested.  We
told him there was no doubt about it.  "It's not as tough a proposition
as riding in the National," I said.

When we had put him to bed, Gaudian smiled as if well pleased.  "He has
begun to get back his confidence," he said.

He slept for twelve hours, and when he woke I had gone out, for I
thought it better to leave him in Gaudian's hands.  I had to settle the
business that day, for it was now the 27th.  I walked down the fjord to
Hauge, and told Johan to be ready to start next morning.  I asked him
about the weather, which was still cloudless, and he stared at the sky
and sniffed, and thought it would hold for a day or two.  "But rain is
coming," he added, "and wind.  The noise of the foss is too loud."

When I returned Gaudian met me at the door.  "The boy has recovered,"
he said.  "He will speak to you himself.  He is a brave boy and will do
a hard task well."

It was a rather shy and self-conscious Mercot that greeted me.

"I'm afraid I behaved rather badly yesterday, sir.  I was feeling a bit
rattled, and I'm ashamed of myself, for I've always rather fancied my
nerve."

"My dear chap," I said, "you've been through enough to crack the nerve
of a buffalo."

"I want to say that of course I'll do what you want.  I must play the
game by the others.  That poor little boy!  And I remember Miss Victor
quite well--I once stayed in the same house with her.  I'll go back to
the _saeter_ when you give the word.  Indeed, I'm rather looking
forward to it.  I promise to play the half-wit so that Dr Newhover will
think me safe in the bag.  All I ask is that you let me have my innings
with him when the time comes.  I've a biggish score to settle."

"Indeed I promise that.  Look here, Mercot, if you don't mind my saying
it, I think you're behaving uncommonly well.  You're a gallant fellow."

"Oh, that's all right," he said, blushing.  "When do you want me to
start?  If it's possible, I'd like another night in a decent bed."

"You shall have it.  Early to-morrow morning we'll accompany you to the
prison door.  You've got to gibber when you see Newhover, and pretend
not to be able to give any account of your doings.  I leave you to put
up a camouflage.  The next five weeks will be infernally dull for you,
but you must just shut your teeth and stick it out.  Remember, Gaudian
will be down here all the time and in touch with your friends, and when
the day comes you will take your instructions from him.  And, by the
way, I'm going to leave you my pistol.  I suppose you can keep it
concealed, for Newhover is not likely to search your pockets.  Don't
use it, of course, but it may be a comfort to you to know that you have
it."

He took it gladly.  "Don't be afraid I'll use it.  What I'm keeping for
Newhover is the best hiding man ever had.  He's a bit above my weight,
but I don't mind that."

Very early next morning we woke Mercot, and, while the sky was turning
from sapphire to turquoise, took our way through the hazy meadows and
up the Snaasen track.  We left it at the summit, and fetched a circuit
round by the back of the _saeter_, but first we made Mercot roll in the
thicket till he had a very grubby face and plenty of twigs and dust in
his untidy hair.  Then the two of us shook hands with him, found a lair
in a patch of jumper, and watched him go forward.

A forlorn figure he looked in that cold half-light as he approached the
_saeter_ door.  But he was acting his part splendidly, for he stumbled
with fatigue, dropped heavily against the door, and beat on it feebly.
It seemed a long time till it opened, and then he appeared to shrink
back in terror.  The old woman cried out shrilly to summon someone from
within, and presently Newhover came out in a dressing-gown.  He caught
Mercot by the shoulder and shook him, and that valiant soul behaved
exactly like a lunatic, shielding his head and squealing like a rabbit.
Finally we saw him dragged indoors....  It was horrible to leave him
like that, but I comforted myself with the thought of what Newhover
would be like in five weeks' time.

We raced back to Peter Bojer's and after a hasty breakfast started off
for Hauge.  I settled with Gaudian that he was to report any
developments to me by cable, and I was to do the same to him.  When the
day of release was fixed, he was to go boldly up to Snaasen and deal
with the doctor as he liked, making sure that he could not communicate
with Medina for a day or two.  A motor-launch would be waiting at
Merdal to take the two to Stavanger, for I wanted him to see Mercot on
board the English steamer.  I arranged, too, that he should be supplied
with adequate funds, for Mercot had not a penny.

We pushed off at once, for I had to be at Flacksholm in good time, and
as the morning advanced I did not feel so sure of the weather.  What
wind we had had these last days had been mild breezes from the west,
but now it seemed to be shifting more to the north, and increasing in
vehemence.  Down in that deep-cut fjord it was calm enough, but up on
the crest of the tableland on the northern shore I could see that it
was blowing hard, for my glass showed me little _tourmentes_ of snow.
Also it had suddenly got much colder.  I made Johan force the pace, and
early in the afternoon we were out of the shelter of the rock walls in
the inlet into which the fjord broadened.  Here it was blowing fairly
hard, and there was a stiff sea running.  Flying squalls of rain beat
down on us from the north, and for five minutes or so would shut out
the view.  It was a regular gusty April day, such as you find in spring
salmon-fishing in Scotland, and had my job been merely to catch the
boat at Stavanger I should not have minded it at all.  But there was no
time for the boat, for in little more than twenty-four hours I had to
meet Medina.  I wondered if Archie Roylance had turned up.  I wondered
still more how an aeroplane was to make the return journey over these
stormy leagues of sea.

Presently the low green lines of Flacksholm showed through the spray,
and when Johan began to shape his course to the south-west for
Stavanger, I bade him go straight forward and land me on the island.  I
told him I had a friend who was camping there, and that we were to be
picked up in a day or two by an English yacht.  Johan obviously thought
me mad, but he did as he was told.  "There will be no one on the island
yet," he said.  "The farmer from Rosmaer does not come till June, when
the haymaking begins.  The winter pasture is poor and sour."  That was
all to the good, for I did not want any spectator of our madness.

As we drew nearer I could see no sign of life on the low shore, except
an infinity of eider-ducks, and a fine osprey which sat on a pointed
rock like a heraldic griffin.  I was watching the bird, for I had only
seen an osprey twice before, when Johan steered me into a creek, where
there was deep water alongside a flat reef.  This, he told me, was the
ordinary landing-place from the mainland.  I flung my suit-case and
rucksack on shore, said good-bye to Johan and tipped him well, and
watched the little boat ploughing south till it was hidden by a squall.
Then, feeling every kind of a fool, I seized my baggage and proceeded,
like Robinson Crusoe, into the interior.

It was raining steadily, a fine thin rain, and every now and then a
squall would burst on me and ruffle the sea.  Jolly weather for flying,
I reflected, especially for flying over some hundreds of miles of
ocean! ... I found the farm, a few rough wooden buildings and a thing
like a stone cattle-pen, but there was no sign of human life there.
Then I got out my map, and concluded that I had better make for the
centre of the island, where there seemed to be some flat ground at one
end of the loch.  I was feeling utterly depressed, walking like a
bagman with my kit in my hand in an uninhabited Norwegian isle, and due
in London the next evening.  London seemed about as inaccessible in the
time as the moon.

When I got to the rim of the central hollow there was a brief clearing
of the weather, and I looked down on a little grey tarn set in very
green meadows.  In the meadows at the north end I saw to my joy what
looked like an aeroplane picketed down, and a thing like a small tent
near it.  Also I could see smoke curling up from a group of boulders
adjourning.  The gallant Archie had arrived, and my spirits lightened.
I made good going down the hill, and, as I shouted, a figure like an
Arctic explorer crawled out of the tent.

"Hullo, Dick," it cried.  "Any luck?"

"Plenty," I said.  "And you?"

"Famous.  Got here last night after a clinkin' journey with the bus
behavin' like a lamb.  Had an interestin' evenin' with the birds--Lord!
such a happy huntin'-ground for 'em.  I've been doin' sentry-go on the
tops all mornin' lookin' for you, but the weather got dirty, so I
returned to the wigwam.  Lunch is nearly ready."

"What about the weather?" I asked anxiously.

"_Pas si bte_," he said, sniffing.  "The wind is pretty sure to go
down at sunset.  D'you mind a night journey?"

Archie's imperturbable good humour cheered me enormously.  I must say
he was a born campaigner, for he had made himself very snug, and gave
me as good a meal as I have ever eaten--a hot stew of tinned stuff and
curry, a plum-pudding, and an assortment of what he called
"_delicatessen_."  To keep out the cold we drank benedictine in horn
mugs.  He could talk about nothing but his blessed birds, and announced
that he meant to come back to Flacksholm and camp for a week.  He had
seen a special variety--some kind of phalarope--that fairly ravished
his heart.  When I asked questions about the journey ahead of us, he
scarcely deigned to answer, so busy he was with speculation on the
feathered fauna of Norway.

"Archie," I said, "are you sure you can get me across the North Sea?"

"I won't say 'sure.'  There's always a lottery in this game, but with
any luck we ought to manage it.  The wind will die down, and besides
it's a ground wind, and may be quiet enough a few hundred feet up.
We'll have to shape a compass course anyhow, so that darkness won't
worry us."

"What about the machine?" I asked.  I don't know why, but I felt
horribly nervous.

"A beauty.  But of course you never know.  If we were driven much out
of a straight course, our petrol might run short."

"What would that mean?"

"Forced landin'."

"But supposing we hadn't reached land?"

"Oh, then we'd be for it," said Archie cheerfully.  He added, as if to
console me: "We might be picked up by a passin' steamer or a fishin'
smack.  I've known fellows that had that luck."

"What are the chances of our getting over safely?"

"Evens.  Never better or worse than evens in this flyin' business.  But
it will be all right.  Dash it all, a woodcock makes the trip
constantly in one flight."

After that I asked no more questions, for I knew I could not get him
past the woodcock.  I was not feeling happy, but Archie's calm put me
to shame.  We had a very good tea, and then, sure enough, the wind
began to die down, and the clouds opened to show clear sky.  It grew
perishing cold, and I was glad of every stitch of clothing, and envied
Archie his heavy skin coat.  We were all ready about nine, and in a
dead calm cast loose, taxied over a stretch of turf, rose above the
loch so as to clear the hill, and turned our faces to the west, which
was like a shell of gold closing down upon the molten gold of the sea.

Luck was with us that night, and all my qualms were belied.  Apart from
the cold, which was savage, I enjoyed every moment of the trip, till in
the early dawn we saw a crawling black line beneath us which was the
coast of Aberdeen.  We filled up with petrol at a place in Kincardine,
and had an enormous breakfast at the local hotel.  Everything went
smoothly and it was still early in the day when I found we were
crossing the Cheviots.  We landed at York about noon, and, while Archie
caught the London train, I got my car from the garage and started for
Oxford.  But first I wired to Mary asking her to wire to Medina in my
name that I would reach London by the 7.15.  I had a pleasant run
south, left the car at Oxford, and duly emerged on the platform at
Paddington to find Medina waiting for me.

His manner was almost tender.

"My dear fellow, I do hope you are better?"

"Perfectly fit again, thank you.  Ready for anything."

"You look more sunburnt than when you left town."

"It's the wonderful weather we've had.  I've been lying basking on the
verandah."




_Chapter XIII_

_I Visit the Fields of Eden_

There was a change in Medina.  I noticed it the following day when I
lunched with him, and very particularly at the next dinner of the
Thursday Club to which I went as his guest.  It was a small change,
which nobody else would have remarked, but to me, who was watching him
like a lynx, it was clear enough.  His ease of manner towards the world
was a little less perfect, and when we were alone he was more silent
than before.  I did not think that he had begun to suspect any danger
to his plans, but the day for their consummation was approaching, and
even his cold assurance may have been flawed by little quivers of
nervousness.  As I saw it, once the big liquidation took place and he
realised the assets which were to be the foundation of his main career,
it mattered little what became of the hostages.  He might let them go;
they would wander back to their old world unable to give any account of
their absence, and, if the story got out, there would be articles in
the medical journals about these unprecedented cases of lost memory.
So far I was certain that they had taken no lasting harm.  But if the
liquidation failed, God knew what their fate would be.  They would
never be seen again, for if his possession of them failed to avert
disaster to his plans, he would play for safety, and, above all, for
revenge.  Revenge to a mind like his would be a consuming passion.

The fact that I had solved one conundrum and laid my hand on one of the
hostages put me in a perfect fever of restlessness.  Our time was very
short, and there were still two poor souls hidden in his black
underworld.  It was the little boy I thought most of, and perhaps my
preoccupation with him made me stupid about other things.  My thoughts
were always on the Blind Spinner, and there I could not advance one
single inch.  Macgillivray's watchers had nothing to report.  It was no
use my paying another visit to Madame Breda, and going through the same
rigmarole.  I could only stick to Medina and pray for luck.  I had
resolved that if he asked me again to take up my quarters with him in
Hill Street I would accept, though it might be hideously awkward in a
score of ways.

I longed for Sandy, but no word came from him, and I had his strict
injunctions not to try to reach him.  The only friend I saw in those
early days of May was Archie Roylance, who seemed to have forgotten his
Scotch greenshanks and settled down in London for the season.  He
started playing polo, which was not a safe game for a man with a
crocked leg, and he opened his house in Grosvenor Street and roosted in
a corner of it.  He knew I was busy in a big game, and he was mad to be
given a share in it, but I had to be very careful with Archie.  He was
the best fellow alive, but discretion had never been his strong point.
So I refused to tell him anything at  present, and I warned Turpin, who
was an ancient friend of his, to do the same.  The three of us dined
together one night, and poor old Turpin was rallied by Archie on his
glumness.

"You're a doleful bird, you know," he told him.  "I heard somewhere you
were goin' to be married and I expect that's the cause.  What do you
call it--_ranger_ yourself?  Cheer up, my son.  It can't be as bad as
it sounds.  Look at Dick there."

I switched him on to other subjects, and we got his opinion on the
modern stage.  Archie had been doing a course of plays, and had very
strong views on the drama.  Something had got to happen, he said, or he
fell asleep in the first act, and something very rarely happened, so he
was left to slumber peacefully till he was awakened and turned out by
the attendants.  He liked plays with shooting in them, and knockabout
farce--anything indeed with a noise in it.  But he had struck a vein of
serious drama which he had found soporific.  One piece in especial,
which showed the difficulties of a lady of fifty who fell in love with
her stepson, he seriously reprobated.

"Rotten," he complained.  "What did it matter to anyone what the old
cat did?  But I assure you, everybody round me was gloatin' over it.  A
fellow said to me it was a masterpiece of tragic irony.  What's irony,
Dick?  I thought it was the tone your commandin' officer adopted, when
you had made an ass of yourself, and he showed it by complimentin' you
on your intelligence....  Oh, by the way, you remember the girl in
green we saw at that dancin' place?  Well, I saw her at the show--at
least I'm pretty sure it was her--in a box with the black-bearded
fellow.  She didn't seem to be takin' much of it in.  Wonder who she is
and what she was doin' there?  Russian, d'you think?  I believe the
silly play was translated from the Russian.  I want to see that girl
dance again."

The next week was absolutely blank, except for my own perpetual
worrying.  Medina kept me close to him, and I had to relinquish any
idea of going down to Fosse for an occasional night.  I longed badly
for the place and for a sight of Peter John, and Mary's letters didn't
comfort me, for they were getting scrappier and scrappier.  My hope was
that Medina would act on Kharma's advice, and in order to establish
his power over his victims bring them into the open and exercise it in
the environment to which they had been accustomed.  That wouldn't help
me with the little boy, but it might give me a line on Miss Victor.  I
rather hoped that at some ball I would see him insisting on some
strange woman dancing with him, or telling her to go home, or
something, and then I would have cause to suspect.  But no such luck.
He never spoke to a woman in my presence who wasn't somebody perfectly
well known.  I began to think that he had rejected the Indian's advice
as too dangerous.

Kharma, more by token, was back in town, and Medina took me to see him
again.  The fellow had left Claridge's and was living in a little house
in Eaton Place, and away from the glitter of a big hotel he looked even
more sinister and damnable.  We went there one evening after dinner,
and found him squatting on the usual couch in a room lit by one lamp
and fairly stinking with odd scents.  He seemed to have shed his
occidental dress, for he wore flowing robes, and I could see his
beastly bare feet under the skirts of them, when he moved to rearrange
a curtain.

They took no more notice of me than if I had been a grandfather's
clock, and to my disgust they conducted the whole conversation in some
Eastern tongue.  I gathered nothing from it, except a deduction as to
Medina's state of mind.  There was an unmistakable hint of nervousness
in his voice.  He seemed to be asking urgent questions, and the Indian
was replying calmly and soothingly.  By and by Medina's voice became
quieter, and suddenly I realised that the two were speaking of me.
Kharma's heavy eyes were raised for a second in my direction, and
Medina turned ever so little towards me.  The Indian asked some
question about me, and Medina replied carelessly with a shrug of his
shoulders and a slight laugh.  The laugh rasped my temper.  He was
evidently saying that I was packed up and sealed and safe on the shelf.

That visit didn't make me feel happier, and next day, when I had a
holiday from Medina's company, I had nothing better to do than to
wander about London and think dismal thoughts.  Yet, as luck would have
it, that aimless walk had its consequences.  It was a Sunday, and on
the edge of Battersea Park I encountered a forlorn little company of
Salvationists conducting a service in the rain.  I stopped to listen--I
always do--for I am the eternal average man who is bound to halt at
every street show, whether it be a motor accident or a Punch and Judy.
I listened to the tail-end of an address from a fat man who looked like
a reformed publican, and a few words from an earnest lady in
spectacles.  Then they sang a hymn to a trombone accompaniment, and lo
and behold, it was my old friend, which I had last whistled in Tom
Greenslade's bedroom at Fosse.  "There is rest for the weary," they
sang:

  "On the other side of Jordan,
  In the green fields of Eden,
  Where the Tree of Life is blooming,
    There is rest for you."

I joined heartily in the singing, and contributed two half-crowns to
the collecting box, for somehow the thing seemed to be a good omen.

I had been rather neglecting that item in the puzzle, and that evening
and during the night I kept turning it over till my brain was nearly
addled.

  "Where the sower casts his seed in
  Furrows of the fields of Eden."

That was the version in the rhyme, and in Tom Greenslade's recollection
the equivalent was a curiosity shop in North London kept by a Jew with
a dyed beard.  Surely the two must correspond, though I couldn't just
see how.  The other two items had panned out so well that it was
reasonable to suppose that the third might do the same.  I could see no
light, and I finally dropped off to sleep with that blessed "fields of
Eden" twittering about my head.

I awoke with the same obsession, but other phrases had added themselves
to it.  One was the "playing-fields of Eton," about which some fellow
had said something, and for a moment I wondered if I hadn't got hold of
the right trail.  Eton was a school for which Peter John's name was
down, and therefore it had to do with boys, and might have to do with
David Warcliff.  But after breakfast I gave up that line, for it led
nowhere.  The word was "Eden," to rhyme with "seed in."  There were
other fields haunting me--names like Tothill Fields and Bunhill Fields.
These were places in London, and that was what I wanted.  The Directory
showed no name like that of "Fields of Eden," but was it not possible
that there had once in old days been a place called by that odd title?

I spent the morning in the Club library, which was a very good one,
reading up Old London.  I read all about Vauxhall Gardens and Ranelagh
and Cremorne, and a dozen other ancient haunts of pleasure, but I found
nothing to my purpose.  Then I remembered that Bullivant--Lord
Artinswell--had had for one of his hobbies the study of bygone London,
so I telephoned to him and invited myself to lunch.

He was very pleased to see me, and it somehow comforted me to find
myself again in the house in Queen Anne's Gate where I had spent some
of the most critical moments of my life.

"You've taken on the work I wrote to you about," he said.  "I knew you
would.  How are you getting on?"

"So-so.  It's a big job and there's very little time.  I want to ask
you a question.  You're an authority on Old London.  Tell me, did you
ever come across in your researches the name of the 'Fields of Eden'?"

He shook his head.  "Not that I remember.  What part of London?"

"I fancy it would be somewhere north of Oxford Street."

He considered.  "No.  What is your idea?  A name of some private
gardens or place of amusement?"

"Yes.  Just like Cremorne or Vauxhall."

"I don't think so, but we'll look it up.  I've a good collection of old
maps and plans, and some antique directories."

So after luncheon we repaired to his library and set to work.  The maps
showed nothing, nor did the books at first.  We were searching too far
back, in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, when you went
fox-hunting in what is now Regent's Park and Tyburn gallows stood near
the Marble Arch.  Then, by sheer luck, I tried a cast nearer our own
time, and found a ribald work belonging to about the date of the
American War, which purported to be a countryman's guide to the
amusements of town.  There was all sorts of information about "Cider
Cellars" and "Groves of Harmony," which must have been pretty low pubs,
and places in the suburbs for cock-fighting and dog-fighting.  I turned
up the index, and there to my joy I saw the word "Eden."

I read the passage aloud, and I believe my hands were shaking.  The
place was, as I hoped, north of Oxford Street in what we now call
Marylebone.  "The Fields of Eden," said the book, "were opened by Mr
Askew as a summer resort for the gentlemen and sportsmen of the
capital.  There of a fine afternoon may be seen Lord A---- and the Duke
of B---- roving among the shady, if miniature, groves, not
unaccompanied by the fair nymphs of the garden, while from adjacent
arbours comes the cheerful tinkle of glasses and the merry clatter of
dice, and the harmonious strains of Signora F----'s Italian choir."

There was a good deal more of it, but I stopped reading.  There was a
plan of London in the book, and from it I was able to plot out the
boundaries of that doubtful paradise.

Then I got a modern map, and fixed the location on it.  The place had
been quite small, only a few acres, and to-day it was covered by the
block defined by Wellesley Street, Apwith Lane, Little Fardell Street,
and the mews behind Royston Square.  I wrote this down in my notebook
and took my leave.

"You look pleased, Dick.  Have you found what you want?  Curious that I
never heard the name, but it seems to have belonged to the dullest part
of London at the dullest period of its history."  Lord Artinswell, I
could see, was a little nettled, for your antiquary hates to be caught
out in his own subject.

I spent the rest of the afternoon making a very thorough examination of
a not very interesting neighbourhood.  What I wanted was a curiosity
shop, and at first I thought I was going to fail.  Apwith Lane was a
kind of slum, with no shops but a disreputable foreign chemist's and a
small dirty confectioner's, round the door of which dirty little
children played.  The inhabitants seemed to be chiefly foreigners.  The
mews at the back of Royston Square were of course useless; it was long
since any dweller in that square had kept a carriage, and they seemed
to be occupied chiefly with the motor vans of a steam laundry and the
lorries of a coal merchant.  Wellesley Street, at least the part of it
in my area, was entirely occupied with the show-rooms of various
American automobile companies.  Little Fardell Street was a curious
place.  It had one odd building which may have been there when the
Fields of Eden flourished, and which now seemed to be a furniture
repository of a sort, with most of the windows shuttered.  The other
houses were perhaps forty years old, most of them the offices of small
wholesale businesses, such as you find in back streets in the City.
There was one big French baker's shop at the corner, a
picture-framer's, a watch-maker's and a small and obviously decaying
optician's.  I walked down the place twice, and my heart sank, for I
could see nothing in the least resembling an antique-shop.

I patrolled the street once more, and then I observed that the old
dwelling, which looked like a furniture depository, was also some kind
of shop.  Through a dirty lower window I caught a glimpse of what
seemed to be Persian rugs and the bland face of a soap-stone idol.  The
door had the air of never having been used, but I tried it and it
opened, tinkling a bell far in the back premises.  I found myself in a
small dusty place, littered up like a lumber room with boxes and
carpets and rugs and bric--brac.  Most of the things were clearly
antiques, though to my inexpert eye they didn't look worth much.  The
Turcoman rugs, especially, were the kind of thing you can buy anywhere
in the Levant by the dozen.

A dishevelled Jewess confronted me, wearing sham diamond earrings.

"I'm interested in antiques," I said pleasantly, taking off my hat to
her.  "May I look round?"

"We do not sell to private customers," she said.  "Only to the trade."

"I'm sorry to hear that.  But may I look round?  If I fancied
something, I daresay I could get some dealer I know to offer for it."

She made no answer, but fingered her earrings with her plump grubby
hands.

I turned over some of the rugs and carpets, and my first impression was
confirmed.  They were mostly trash, and a lacquer cabinet I uncovered
was a shameless fake.

"I like that," I said, pointing to a piece of Persian embroidery.
"Can't you put a price on it for me?"

"We only sell to the trade," she repeated, as if it were a litany.  Her
beady eyes, which never left my face, were entirely without expression.

"I expect you have a lot of things upstairs," I said.  "Do you think I
might have a look at them?  I'm only in London for the day, and I might
see something I badly wanted.  I quite understand that you are
wholesale people, but I can arrange any purchase through a dealer.  You
see, I'm furnishing a country house."

For the first time her face showed a certain life.  She shook her head
vigorously.  "We have no more stock at present.  We do not keep a large
stock.  Things come in and go out every day.  We only sell to the
trade."

"Well, I'm sorry to have taken up your time.  Good afternoon."  As I
left the shop, I felt that I had made an important discovery.  The
business was bogus.  There was very little that any dealer would touch,
and the profits from all the trade done would not keep the proprietor
in Virginian cigarettes.

I paid another visit to the neighbourhood after dinner.  The only sign
of life was in the slums of Apwith Lane, where frowsy women were
chattering on the kerb.  Wellesley Street was shuttered and silent from
end to end.  So was Little Fardell Street.  Not a soul was about in it,
not a ray of light was seen at any window, in the midst of the din of
London it made a little enclave like a graveyard.  I stopped at the
curiosity shop, and saw that the windows were heavily shuttered and
that the flimsy old door was secured by a strong outer frame of iron
which fitted into a groove at the edge of the pavement and carried a
stout lock.  The shutters on the ground-floor windows were substantial
things, preposterously substantial for so worthless a show.  As I
looked at them I had a strong feeling that the house behind that
palisade was not as dead as it looked, that somewhere inside it there
was life, and that in the night things happened there which it
concerned me tremendously to know.

Next morning I went to see Macgillivray.

"Can you lend me a first-class burglar?" I asked.  "Only for one night.
Some fellow who won't ask any questions and will hold his tongue."

"I've given up being surprised when you're about," he said.  "No.  We
don't keep tame burglars here, but I can find you a man who knows
rather more about the art than any professional.  Why?"

"Simply because I want to get inside a certain house to-night, and I
see no chance of doing it except by breaking my way in.  I suppose you
could so arrange it that the neighbouring policemen would not
interfere.  In fact I want them to help to keep the coast clear."

I went into details with him, and showed him the lie of the land.  He
suggested trying the back of the house, but I had reconnoitred that
side and seen that it was impossible, for the building seemed to join
on with the houses in the street behind.  In fact there was no back
door.  The whole architecture was extremely odd, and I had a notion
that the entrance in Little Fardell Street might itself be a back door.
I told Macgillivray that I wanted an expert who could let me in by one
of the ground-floor windows, and replace everything so that there
should be no trace next morning.  He rang a bell and asked for Mr Abel
to be sent for.  Mr Abel was summoned, and presently appeared, a small
wizened man, like a country tradesman.  Macgillivray explained what was
required of him, and Mr Abel nodded.  It was a job which offered no
difficulties, he said, to an experienced man.  He would suggest that he
investigated the place immediately after closing time, and began work
about ten o'clock.  If I arrived at 10.30, he promised to have a means
of entrance prepared.  He inquired as to who were the constables at the
nearest points, and asked that certain special ones should be put on
duty, with whom he could arrange matters.  I never saw anyone approach
what seemed to me to be a delicate job with such businesslike assurance.

"Do you want anyone to accompany you inside?" Macgillivray asked.

I said no.  I thought I had better explore the place alone, but I
wanted somebody within call in case there was trouble, and of course if
I didn't come back, say within two hours, he had better come and look
for me.

"We may have to arrest you as a housebreaker," he said.  "How are you
going to explain your presence if there's nothing wrong indoors and you
disturb the sleep of a respectable caretaker?"

"I must take my chance," I said.  I didn't feel nervous about that
point.  The place would either be empty, or occupied by those who would
not invite the aid of the police.


After dinner I changed into an old tweed suit and rubber-soled shoes,
and as I sat in the taxi I began to think that I had entered too
lightly on the evening's business.  How was that little man Abel to
prepare an entrance without alarming the neighbourhood, even with the
connivance of the police; and if I found anybody inside, what on earth
was I to say?  There was no possible story to account for a clandestine
entry into somebody else's house, and I had suddenly a vision of the
earringed Jewess screeching in the night and my departure for the cells
in the midst of a crowd of hooligans from Apwith Lane.  Even if I found
something very shady indoors it would only be shady to my own mind in
connection with my own problem, and would be all right in the eyes of
the law.  I was not likely to hit on anything patently criminal, and,
even if I did, how was I to explain my presence there?  I suffered from
a bad attack of cold feet, and would have chucked the business there
and then but for that queer feeling at the back of my head that it was
my duty to risk it--that if I turned back I should be missing something
of tremendous importance.  But I can tell you I was feeling far from
happy when I dismissed the taxi at the corner of Royston Square, and
turned into Little Fardell Street.

It was a dark cloudy evening, threatening rain, and the place was none
too brilliantly lit.  But to my disgust I saw opposite the door of the
curiosity shop a brazier of hot coals and the absurd little shelter
which means that part of the street is up.  There was the usual
roped-in enclosure, decorated with red lamps, a heap of debris, and a
hole where some of the setts had been lifted.  Here was bad luck with a
vengeance, that the Borough Council should have chosen this place and
moment of all others for investigating the drains.  And yet I had a
kind of shame-faced feeling of relief, for this put the lid on my
enterprise.  I wondered why Macgillivray had not contrived the thing
better.

I found I had done him an injustice.  It was the decorous face of Mr
Abel which regarded me out of the dingy pent-house.

"This seemed to me the best plan, sir," he said respectfully.  "It
enables me to wait for you here without exciting curiosity.  I've seen
the men on point duty, and it is all right in that quarter.  This
street is quiet enough, and taxis don't use it as a short cut.  You'll
find the door open.  The windows might have been difficult, but I had a
look at the door first, and that big iron frame is a piece of bluff.
The bolt of the lock runs into the side-bar of the frame, but the frame
itself is secured to the wall by another much smaller lock which you
can only detect by looking closely.  I have opened that for you--quite
easily done."

"But the other door--the shop-door--that rings a bell inside."

"I found it unlocked," he said, with the ghost of a grin.  "Whoever
uses this place after closing hours doesn't want to make much noise.
The bell is disconnected.  You have only to push it open and walk in."

Events were forcing me against all my inclinations to go forward.

"If anyone enters when I am inside? ..." I began.

"You will hear the sound and must take measures accordingly.  On the
whole, sir, I am inclined to think that there's something wrong with
the place.  You are armed?  No.  That is as well.  Your position is
unauthorised, as one would say, and arms might be compromising."

"If you hear me cry?"

"I will come to your help.  If you do not return within--shall we
say?--two hours, I will make an entrance along with the nearest
constable.  The unlocked door will give us a pretext."

"And if I come out in a hurry?"

"I have thought of that.  If you have a fair start there is room for
you to hide here," and he jerked his thumb towards the pent-house.  "If
you are hard-pressed I will manage to impede the pursuit."

The little man's calm matter-of-factness put me on my mettle.  I made
sure that the street was empty, opened the iron frame, and pushed
through the shop-door, closing it softly behind me.

The shop was as dark as the inside of a nut, not a crack of light
coming through the closely-shuttered windows.  I felt very eerie, as I
tiptoed cautiously among the rugs and tables.  I listened, but there
was no sound of any kind either from within or without, so I switched
on my electric torch and waited breathlessly.  Still no sound or
movement.  The conviction grew upon me that the house was uninhabited,
and with a little more confidence I started out to explore.

The place did not extend far to the back, as I had believed.  Very soon
I came upon a dead wall against which every kind of litter was stacked,
and that way progress was stopped.  The door by which the Jewess had
entered lay to the right, and that led me into a little place like a
kitchen, with a sink, a cupboard or two, a gas-fire, and in the corner
a bed--the kind of lair which a caretaker occupies in a house to let.
I made out a window rather high up in the wall, but I could discover no
other entrance save that by which I had come.  So I returned to the
shop and tried the passage to the left.

Here at first I found nothing but locked doors, obviously cupboards.
But there was one open, and my torch showed me that it contained a very
steep flight of stairs--the kind of thing that in old houses leads to
the attics.  I tried the boards, for I feared that they would creak,
and I discovered that all the treads had been renewed.  I can't say I
liked diving into that box, but there was nothing else for it unless I
were to give up.

At the top I found a door, and I was just about to try to open it when
I heard steps on the other side.

I stood rigid in that narrow place, wondering what was to happen next.
The man--it was a man's foot--came up to the door and to my
consternation turned the handle.  Had he opened it I would have been
discovered, for he had a light, and Lord knows what mix-up would have
followed.  But he didn't; he tried the handle and then turned a key in
the lock.  After that I heard him move away.

This was fairly discouraging, for it appeared that I was now shut off
from the rest of the house.  When I had waited for a minute of two for
the coast to clear, I too tried the handle, expecting to find it fast.
To my surprise the door opened; the man had not locked, but unlocked
it.  This could mean only one of two things.  Either he intended
himself to go out by this way later, or he expected someone and wanted
to let him in.

From that moment I recovered my composure.  My interest was excited,
there was a game to play and something to be done.  I looked round the
passage in which I found myself and saw the explanation of the
architecture which had puzzled me.  The old building in Little Fardell
Street was the merest slip, only a room thick, and it was plastered
against a much more substantial and much newer structure in which I now
found myself.  The passage was high and broad, and heavily carpeted,
and I saw electric fittings at each end.  This alarmed me, for if
anyone came along and switched on the light, there was not cover to
hide a cockroach.  I considered that the boldest plan would be the
safest, so I tiptoed to the end, and saw another passage equally bare
going off at right angles.  This was no good, so I brazenly assaulted
the door of the nearest room.  Thank Heaven! it was empty, so I could
have a reconnoitring base.

It was a bedroom, well furnished in the Waring & Gillow style, and to
my horror I observed that it was a woman's bedroom.  It was a woman's
dressing-table I saw, with big hair-brushes and oddments of scents and
powders.  There was a wardrobe with the door ajar full of hanging
dresses.  The occupant had been there quite lately, for wraps had been
flung on the bed and a pair of slippers lay by the dressing-table, as
if they had been kicked off hurriedly.

The place put me into the most abject fright.  I seemed to have burgled
a respectable flat and landed in a lady's bedroom, and I looked forward
to some appalling scandal which would never be hushed up.  Little Abel
roosting in his pent-house seemed a haven of refuge separated from me
by leagues of obstacles.  I reckoned I had better get back to him as
soon as possible, and I was just starting, when that happened which
made me stop short.  I had left the room door ajar when I entered, and
of course I had switched off my torch after my first look round.  I had
been in utter darkness, but now I saw a light in the passage.

It might be the confounded woman who owned the bedroom, and my heart
went into my boots.  Then I saw that the passage lights had not been
turned on, and that whoever was there had a torch like me.  The
footsteps were coming by the road I had come myself.  Could it be the
man for whom the staircase door had been unlocked?

It was a man all right, and, whatever his errand, it was not with my
room.  I watched him through the crack left by the door, and saw his
figure pass.  It was someone in a hurry who walked swiftly and quietly,
and, beyond the fact that he wore a dark coat with the collar turned up
and a black soft hat, I could make out nothing.  The figure went down
the corridor and at the end seemed to hesitate.  Then it turned into a
room on the left and disappeared.

There was nothing to do but wait, and happily I had not to wait long,
for I was becoming pretty nervous.  The figure reappeared, carrying
something in its hand, and as it came towards me I had a glimpse of its
face.  I recognised it at once as that of the grey melancholy man whom
I had seen the first night in Medina's house, when I was coming out of
my stupor.  For some reason or another that face had become stamped on
my memory, and I had been waiting to see it again.  It was sad,
forlorn, and yet in a curious way pleasant; anyhow there was nothing
repellent in it.  But he came from Medina, and at that thought every
scrap of hesitation and funk fled from me.  I had been right in my
instinct; this place was Medina's, it was the Fields of Eden of the
rhyme.  A second ago I had felt a futile blunderer; now I was
triumphant.

He passed my door and turned down the passage which ran at right
angles.  I stepped after him and saw the light halt at the staircase
door, and then disappear.  My first impulse was to follow, tackle him
in the shop, and get the truth out of him, but I at once discarded that
notion, which would have given the whole show away.  My business was to
make further discoveries.  I must visit the room which had been the
object of his visit.

I was thankful to be out of that bedroom.  In the passage I listened,
but could hear no sound anywhere.  There was indeed a sound in the air,
but it appeared to come from the outer world, a sound like an organ or
an orchestra a long way off.  I concluded that there must be a church
somewhere near where the choir-boys were practising.

The room I entered was a very queer place.  It looked partly like a
museum, partly like an office, and partly like a library.  The
curiosity shop had been full of rubbish, but I could see at a glance
that there was no rubbish here.  There were some fine Italian
plaques--I knew something about these, for Mary collected them--and a
set of green Chinese jars which looked the real thing.  Also, there was
a picture which seemed good enough to be a Hobbema.  For the rest there
were several safes of a most substantial make; but there were no papers
lying about, and every drawer of a big writing-table was locked.  I had
not the wherewithal to burgle the safes and the table, even if I had
wanted to.  I was certain that most valuable information lurked
somewhere in that place, but I did not see how I could get at it.

I was just about to leave, when I realised that the sound of music
which I had heard in the passage was much louder here.  It was no
choir-boys' practising, but strictly secular music, apparently fiddles
and drums, and the rhythm suggested a dance.  Could this odd building
abut on a dance-hall?  I looked at my watch and saw that it was
scarcely eleven and that I had only been some twenty minutes indoors.
I was now in a mood of almost foolhardy confidence, so I determined to
do a little more research.

The music seemed to come from somewhere to the left.  The windows of
the room, so far as I could judge, must look into Wellesley Street,
which showed me how I had misjudged that thoroughfare.  There might be
a dancing-hall tucked in among the automobile shops.  Anyhow I wanted
to see what lay beyond this room, for there must be an entrance to it
other than by the curiosity shop.  Sure enough I found a door between
two bookcases covered with a heavy _portire_, and emerged into still
another passage.

Here the music sounded louder, and I seemed to be in a place like those
warrens behind the stage in a theatre, where rooms are of all kinds of
shapes and sizes.  The door at the end was locked, and another door
which I opened gave on a flight of wooden steps.  I did not want to
descend just yet, so I tried another door, and then shut it softly.
For the room it opened upon was lighted, and I had the impression of
human beings not very far off.  Also the music, as I opened the door,
came out in a great swelling volume of sound.

I stood for a moment hesitating, and then I opened that door again.
For I had a notion that the light within did not come from anything in
the room.  I found myself in a little empty chamber, dusty and
cheerless, like one of those cubby-holes you see in the Strand, where
the big plate-glass front window reaches higher than the shop, and
there is a space between the ceiling and the next floor.  All one side
was of glass, in which a casement was half open, and through the glass
came the glare of a hundred lights from somewhere beyond.  Very
gingerly I moved forward, till I could look down on what was happening
below.

For the last few seconds I think I had known what I was going to see.
It was the dancing-club which I had visited some weeks before with
Archie Roylance.  There were the sham Chinese decorations, the blaze of
lights, the nigger band, the whole garish spectacle.  Only the place
was far more crowded than on my previous visit.  The babble of laughter
and talk which rose from it added a further discord to the ugly music,
but there was a fierce raucous gaiety about it all, an overpowering
sense of something which might be vulgar but was also alive and ardent.
Round the skirts of the hall was the usual _rastaqoure_ crowd of men
and women drinking liqueurs and champagne, and mixed with fat Jews and
blue-black dagos the flushed faces of boys from barracks or college who
imagined they were seeing life.  I thought for a moment that I saw
Archie, but it was only one of Archie's kind, whose lean red visage
made a queer contrast with the dead white of the woman he sat by.

The dancing was madder and livelier than on the last occasion.  There
was more vigour in the marionettes, and I was bound to confess that
they knew their trade, little as I valued it.  All the couples were
expert, and when now and then a bungler barged in he did not stay long.
I saw no sign of the girl in green whom Archie had admired, but there
were plenty like her.  It was the men I most disliked, pallid skeletons
or puffy Latins, whose clothes fitted them too well, and who were
sometimes as heavily made-up as the women.

One especially I singled out for violent disapproval.  He was a tall
young man, with a waist like a wasp, a white face, and hollow drugged
eyes.  His lips were red like a chorus-girl's, and I would have sworn
that his cheeks were rouged.  Anyhow he was a loathsome sight.  But ye
gods! he could dance.  There was no sign of animation in him, so that
he might have been a corpse, galvanised by some infernal power and
compelled to move through an everlasting dance of death.  I noticed
that his heavy eyelids were never raised.

Suddenly I got a bad shock.  For I realised that this mannequin was no
other than my ancient friend, the Marquis de la Tour du Pin.

I hadn't recovered from that when I got a worse.  He was dancing with a
woman whose hair seemed too bright to be natural.  At first I could not
see her face clearly, for it was flattened against his chest, but she
seemed to be hideously and sparsely dressed.  She too knew how to
dance, and the slim grace of her body was conspicuous even in her
vulgar clothes.  Then she turned her face to me, and I could see the
vivid lips and the weary old pink and white enamel of her class.
Pretty, too....

And then I had a shock which nearly sent me through the window.  For in
this painted dancer I recognised the wife of my bosom and the mother of
Peter John.




_Chapter XIV_

_Sir Archibald Roylance Puts his Foot in It_

Three minutes later I was back in the curiosity shop.  I switched off
my light, and very gently opened the street door.  There was a sound of
footsteps on the pavement, so I drew back till they had passed.  Then I
emerged into the quiet street, with Abel's little brazier glowing in
front of me, and Abel's little sharp face poked out of his pent-house.

"All right, sir?" he asked cheerfully.

"All right," I said.  "I have found what I wanted."

"There was a party turned up not long after you had gone in.  Lucky I
had locked the door after you.  He wasn't inside more than five
minutes.  A party with a black top-coat turned up at the
collar--respectable party he looked--oldish--might have been a curate.
Funny thing, sir, but I guessed correctly when you were coming back,
and had the door unlocked ready for you...  If you've done with me I'll
clear off."

"Can you manage alone?" I asked.  "There's a good deal to tidy up."

He winked solemnly.  "In an hour there won't be a sign of anything.  I
have my little ways of doing things.  Good night, sir, and thank you."
He was like a boots seeing a guest off from an hotel.

I found that the time was just after half-past eleven, so I walked to
Tottenham Court Road and picked up a taxi, telling the man to drive to
Great Charles Street in Westminster.  Mary was in London, and I must
see her at once.  She had chosen to take a hand in the game, probably
at Sandy's instigation, and I must find out what exactly she was doing.
The business was difficult enough already with Sandy following his own
trail and me forbidden to get into touch with him, but if Mary was also
on the job it would be naked chaos unless I knew her plans.  I own I
felt miserably nervous.  There was nobody in the world whose wisdom I
put higher than hers, and I would have trusted her to the other side of
Tophet, but I hated to think of a woman mixed up in something so ugly
and perilous.  She was far too young and lovely to be safe on the
back-stairs.  And yet I remembered that she had been in uglier affairs
before this and I recalled old Blenkiron's words: "She can't scare and
she can't soil."  And then I began to get a sort of comfort from the
feeling that she was along with me in the game; it made me feel less
lonely.  But it was pretty rough luck on Peter John.  Anyhow I must see
her, and I argued that she would probably be staying with her Wymondham
aunts, and that in any case I could get news of her there.

The Misses Wymondham were silly ladies, but their butler would have
made Montmartre respectable.  He and I had always got on well, and I
think the only thing that consoled him when Fosse was sold was that
Mary and I were to have it.  The house in Great Charles Street was one
of those tremendously artistic new dwellings with which the
intellectual plutocracy have adorned the Westminster slums.

"Is her ladyship home yet?" I asked.

"No, Sir Richard, but she said she wouldn't be late.  I expect her any
moment."

"Then I think I'll come in and wait.  How are you, Barnard?  Found your
city legs yet?"

"I am improving, Sir Richard, I thank you.  Very pleased to have Miss
Mary here, if I may take the liberty of so speaking of her.  Miss
Claire is in Paris still, and Miss Wymondham is dancing to-night, and
won't be back till very late.  How are things at Fosse, sir, if I may
make so bold?  And how is the young gentleman?  Miss Mary has shown me
his photograph.  A very handsome young gentleman, sir, and favours
yourself."

"Nonsense, Barnard.  He's the living image of his mother.  Get me a
drink, like a good fellow.  A tankard of beer, if you have it, for I've
a throat like a grindstone."

I drank the beer and waited in a little room which would have been
charming but for the garish colour scheme which Mary's aunts had on the
brain.  I was feeling quite cheerful again, for Peter John's photograph
was on the mantelpiece and I reckoned that any minute Mary might be at
the doorway.

She came in just before midnight.  I heard her speak to Barnard in the
hall, and then her quick step outside the door.  She was preposterously
dressed, but she must have done something to her face in the taxi, for
the paint was mostly rubbed from it, leaving it very pale.

"Oh, Dick, my darling," she cried, tearing off her cloak and running to
my arms.  "I never expected you.  There's nothing wrong at home?"

"Not that I know of, except that it's deserted.  Mary, what on earth
brought you here?"

"You're not angry, Dick?"

"Not a bit--only curious."

"How did you know I was here?"

"Guessed.  I thought it the likeliest cover to draw.  You see I've been
watching you dancing to-night.  Look here, my dear, if you put so much
paint and powder on your face and jam it so close to old Turpin's
chest, it won't be easy for the poor fellow to keep his shirt-front
clean."

"You--watched--me--dancing!  Were you in that place?"

"Well, I wouldn't say in it.  But I had a prospect of the show from the
gallery.  And it struck me that the sooner we met and had a talk the
better."

"The gallery!  Were you in the house?  I don't understand."

"No more do I.  I burgled a certain house in a back street for very
particular reasons of my own.  In the process I may mention that I got
one of the worst frights of my life.  After various adventures I came
to a place where I heard the dickens of a row which I made out to be
dance music.  Eventually I found a dirty little room with a window and
to my surprise looked down on a dancing-hall.  I know it, for I had
once been there with Archie Roylance.  That was queer enough, but
imagine my surprise when I saw my wedded wife, raddled like a geisha,
dancing with an old friend who seemed to have got himself up to imitate
a wax-work."

She seemed scarcely to be listening.  "But in the house!  Did you see
no one?"

"I saw one man and I heard another.  The fellow I saw was a man I once
met in the small hours with Medina."

"But the other?  You didn't see him?  You didn't hear him go out?"

"No."  I was puzzled at her excitement.  "Why are you so keen about the
other?"

"Because I think--I'm sure--it was Sandy--Colonel Arbuthnot."

This was altogether beyond me.  "Impossible!" I cried.  "The place is a
lair of Medina's.  The man I saw was Medina's servant or satellite.  Do
you mean to say that Sandy has been exploring that house?"

She nodded.  "You see, it is the Fields of Eden."

"Oh, I know.  I found that out for myself.  Do you tell me that Sandy
discovered it too?"

"Yes.  That is why I was there.  That is why I have been living a
perfectly loathsome life and am now dressed like a chorus girl."

"Mary," I said solemnly, "my fine brain won't support any more violent
shocks.  Will you please to sit down beside me, and give me the plain
tale of all you have been doing since I said good-bye to you at Fosse?"

"First," she said, "I had a visit from a dramatic critic on holiday, Mr
Alexander Thomson.  He said he knew you and that you had suggested that
he should call.  He came three times to Fosse, but only once to the
house.  Twice I met him in the woods.  He told me a good many things,
and one was that he couldn't succeed and you couldn't succeed, unless I
helped.  He thought that if a woman was lost only a woman could find
her.  In the end he persuaded me.  You said yourself, Dick, that Nanny
was quite competent to take charge of Peter John, with Dr Greenslade so
close at hand.  And I hear from her every day, and he is very well and
happy."

"You came to London.  But when?"

"The day you came back from Norway."

"But I've been having letters regularly from you since then."

"That is my little arrangement with Paddock.  I took him into my
confidence.  I send him the letters in batches and he posts one daily."

"Then you've been here more than a fortnight.  Have you seen Sandy?"

"Twice.  He has arranged my life for me, and has introduced me to my
dancing partner, the Marquis de la Tour du Pin, whom you call Turpin.
I think I have had the most horrible, the most wearing time that any
woman ever had.  I have moved in raffish circles and have had to be the
most raffish of the lot.  Do you know, Dick, I believe I'm really a
good actress?  I have acquired a metallic voice, and a high silly
laugh, and hard eyes, and when I lie in bed at night I blush all over
for my shamelessness.  I know you hate it, but you can't hate it more
than I do.  But it had to be done.  I couldn't be a 'piker,' as Mr
Blenkiron used to say."

"Any luck?"

"Oh yes," she said wearily.  "I have found Miss Victor.  It wasn't very
difficult, really.  When I had made friends with the funny people that
frequent these places it wasn't hard to see who was different from the
others.  They're all mannequins, but the one I was looking for was
bound to be the most mannequinish of the lot.  I wanted someone without
mind or soul, and I found her.  Besides, I had a clue to start with.
Odell, you know."

"It was the green girl."

She nodded.  "I couldn't be certain of course, till I had her lover to
help me.  He is a good man, your French Marquis.  He has played his
part splendidly.  You see, it would never do to try to awake Adela
Victor now.  We couldn't count on her being able to keep up appearances
without arousing suspicion, till the day of release arrived.  But
something had to be done, and that is my business especially.  I have
made friends with her, and I talk to her and I have attached her to me
just a little, like a dog.  That will give me the chance to do the rest
quickly when the moment comes.  You cannot bring back a vanished soul
all at once unless you have laid some foundation.  We have to be very,
very careful, for she is keenly watched, but I think--yes, I am
sure--it is going well."

"Oh, bravo!" I cried.  "That makes Number Two.  I may tell you that I
have got Number One."  I gave her a short account of my doings in
Norway.  "Two of the poor devils will get out of the cage anyhow.  I
wonder if it wouldn't be possible to pass the word to Victor and the
Duke.  It would relieve their anxiety."

"I thought of that," she replied, "but Colonel Arbuthnot says No, on no
account.  He says it might ruin everything.  He takes a very solemn
view of the affair, you know.  And so do I.  I have seen Mr. Medina."

"Where?" I asked in astonishment.

"I got Aunt Doria to take me to a party where he was to be present.
Don't be worried.  I wasn't introduced to him, and he never heard my
name.  But I watched him, and knowing what I did I was more afraid than
I have ever been in my life.  He is extraordinarily attractive--no, not
attractive--seductive, and he is as cold and hard as chilled steel.
You know these impressions I get of people which I can't explain--you
say they are always right.  Well, I felt him almost super-human.  He
exhales ease and power like a god, but it is a god from a lost world.
I can see that, like a god too, it is souls that he covets.  Ordinary
human badness seems decent in comparison with that Lucifer's pride of
his.  I think if I ever could commit murder it would be his life I
would take.  I should feel like Charlotte Corday.  Oh, I'm dismally
afraid of him."

"I'm not," I said stoutly, "and I see him at closer quarters than most
people."  The measure of success we had attained was beginning to make
me confident.

"Colonel Arbuthnot is afraid for you," she said.  "The two times I have
seen him in London he kept harping on the need of your keeping very
near to him.  I think he meant me to warn you.  He says that when you
are fighting a man with a long-range weapon the only chance is to hug
him.  Dick, didn't you tell me that Mr Medina suggested that you should
stay in his house?  I have been thinking a lot about that, and I
believe it would be the safest plan.  Once he saw you secure in his
pocket he might forget about you."

"It would be most infernally awkward, for I should have no freedom of
movement.  But all the same I believe you are right.  Things may grow
very hectic as we get near the day."

"Besides, you might find out something about Number Three.  Oh, it is
the little boy that breaks my heart.  The others might escape on their
own account--some day, but unless we find him he is lost for ever.  And
Colonel Arbuthnot says that, even if we found him, it might be hard to
restore the child's mind.  Unless--unless----"

Mary's face had become grim, if one could use the word of a thing so
soft and gentle.  Her hands were tightly clasped, and her eyes had a
strained far-away look.

"I am going to find him," she cried.  "Listen, Dick.  That man despises
women and rules them out of his life, except in so far as he can make
tools of them.  But there is one woman who is going to stop at nothing
to beat him....  When I think of that little David I grow mad and
desperate.  I am afraid of myself.  Have you no hope to give me?"

"I haven't the shadow of a clue," I said dolefully.  "Has Sandy none?"

She shook her head.  "He is so small, the little fellow, and so easy to
hide."

"If I were in Central Africa, I would get Medina by the throat, and peg
him down and torture him till he disgorged."

Again she shook her head.  "Those methods are useless here.  He would
laugh at you, for he isn't a coward--at least I think not.  Besides, he
is certain to be magnificently guarded.  And for the rest he has the
entrenchments of his reputation and popularity, and a quicker brain
than any of us.  He can put a spell of blindness on the world--on all
men and nearly all women."

The arrival of Miss Wymondham made me get up to leave.  She was still
the same odd-looking creature, with a mass of tow-coloured hair piled
above her long white face.  She had been dancing somewhere, and looked
at once dog-tired and excited.  "Mary has been having such a good
time," she told me.  "Even I can scarcely keep pace with her ardent
youth.  Can't you persuade her to do her hair differently?  The present
arrangement is so _demod_ and puts her whole figure out of drawing.
Nancy Travers was speaking about it only to-night.  Properly turned
out, she said, Mary would be the most ravishing thing in London.  By
the way, I saw your friend Sir Archie Roylance at the Parminters'.  He
is lunching here on Thursday.  Will you come, Richard?"

I told her that my plans were vague and that I thought I might be out
of town.  But I arranged with Mary before I left to keep me informed at
the Club of any news that came from Sandy.  As I walked back I was
infected by her distress over little David Warcliff.  That was the most
grievous business of all, and I saw no light in it, for though
everything else happened according to plan, we should never be able to
bring Medina to book.  The more I thought of it the more hopeless our
case against him seemed to be.  We might free the hostages, but we
could never prove that he had had anything to do with them.  I could
give damning evidence, to be sure, but who would take my word against
his?  And I had no one to confirm me.  Supposing I indicted him for
kidnapping and told the story of what I knew about the Blind Spinner
and Newhover and Odell?  He and the world would simply laugh at me, and
I should probably have to pay heavy damages for libel.  None of his
satellites, I was certain, would ever give him away; they couldn't,
even if they wanted to, for they didn't know anything.  No, Sandy was
right.  We might have a measure of success, but there would be no
victory.  And yet only victory would give us full success, for only to
get him on his knees, gibbering with terror, would restore the poor
little boy.  I strode through the empty streets with a sort of hopeless
fury in my heart.

One thing puzzled me.  What was Sandy doing in that house behind the
curiosity shop, if indeed it was Sandy?  Whoever had been there had
been in league with the sad grey man whom I watched from behind the
bedroom door.  Now the man was part of Medina's entourage: I had no
doubt about the accuracy of my recollection.  Had Sandy dealings with
someone inside the enemy's citadel?  I didn't see how that was
possible, for he had told me he was in deadly danger from Medina, and
that his only chance was to make him believe that he was out of
Europe....  As I went to bed, one thing was very clear in my mind.  If
Medina asked me to stay with him, I would accept.  It would probably be
safer, though I wasn't so much concerned about that, and it would
possibly be more fruitful.  I might find out something about the grey
man.

Next day I went to see Medina, for I wanted him to believe that I
couldn't keep away from him.  He was in tremendous spirits about
something or other, and announced that he was going off to the country
for a couple of days.  He made me stay to luncheon, when I had another
look at Odell, who seemed to be getting fat.  "Your wind, my lad," I
said to myself, "can't be as good as it should be.  You wouldn't have
my money in a scrap."  I hoped that Medina was going to have a holiday,
for he had been doing a good deal lately in the way of speaking, but he
said "No such luck."  He was going down to the country on business--an
estate of which he was a trustee wanted looking into.  I asked in what
part of England, and he said Shropshire.  He liked that neighbourhood
and had an idea of buying a place there when he had more leisure.

Somehow that led me to speak of his poetry.  He was surprised to learn
that I had been studying the little books, and I could see took it as a
proof of my devotion.  I made a few fulsome observations on their
merits, and said that even an ignorant fellow like me could see how
dashed good they were.  I also remarked that they seemed to me a trifle
melancholy.

"Melancholy!" he said.  "It's a foolish world, Hannay, and a wise man
must have his moods of contempt.  Victory loses some of its salt when
it is won over fools."

And then he said what I had been waiting for.  "I told you weeks ago
that I wanted you to take up your quarters with me.  Well, I repeat the
offer and will take no refusal."

"It is most awfully kind of you," I stammered.  "But wouldn't I be in
the way?"

"Not in the least.  You see the house--it's as large as a barracks.
I'll be back from Shropshire by Friday, and I expect you to move in
here on Friday evening.  We might dine together."

I was content, for it gave me a day or two to look about me.  Medina
went off that afternoon, and I spent a restless evening.  I wanted to
be with Mary, but it seemed to me that the less I saw her the better.
She was going her own way, and if I showed myself in her neighbourhood
it might ruin all.  Next day was no better; I actually longed for
Medina to return so that I might feel I was doing something, for there
was nothing I could turn my hand to, and when I was idle the thought of
David Warcliff was always present to torment me.  I went out to Hampton
Court and had a long row on the river; then I dined at the Club and sat
in the little back smoking-room, avoiding anyone I knew, and trying to
read a book of travels in Arabia.  I fell asleep in my chair, and,
waking about half-past eleven, was staggering off to bed, when a
servant came to tell me that I was wanted on the telephone.

It was Mary; she was speaking from Great Charles Street and her voice
was sharp with alarm.

"There's been an awful mishap, Dick," she said breathlessly.  "Are you
alone?  You're sure there's no one there? ... Archie Roylance has made
a dreadful mess of things....  He came to that dancing-place to-night,
and Adela Victor was there, and Odell with her.  Archie had seen her
before, you know, and apparently was much attracted.  No!  He didn't
recognise me, for when I saw him I kept out of range.  But of course he
recognised the Marquis.  He danced with Adela, and I suppose he talked
nonsense to her--anyhow he made himself conspicuous.  The result was
that Odell proposed to take her away--I suppose he was suspicious of
anybody of Archie's world--and, well, there was a row.  The place was
very empty--only about a dozen, and mostly a rather bad lot.  Archie
asked what right he had to carry off the girl, and lost his temper, and
the manager was called in--the man with the black beard.  He backed up
Odell, and then Archie did a very silly thing.  He said he was Sir
Archibald Roylance and wasn't going to be dictated to by any Jew, and,
worse, he said his friend was the Marquis de la Tour du Pin, and that
between them they would burst up this show, and that he wouldn't have a
poor girl ordered about by a third-rate American bully....  I don't
know what happened afterwards.  The women were hustled out, and I had
to go with the rest....  But, Dick, it's bad trouble.  I'm not afraid
so much for Archie, though he has probably had a bad mauling, but the
Marquis.  They're sure to know who he is and all about him and remember
his connection with Adela.  They're almost certain to make certain in
some horrible way that he can't endanger them again.

"Lord," I groaned, "what a catastrophe!  And what on earth can I do?  I
daren't take any part!"

"No," came a hesitating voice.  "I suppose not.  But you can warn the
Marquis--if nothing has happened to him already."

"Precious poor chance.  These fellows don't waste time.  But go to bed
and sleep, my dear.  I'll do my best."

My best at that time of night was pretty feeble, rang up Victor's house
and found, as I expected, that Turpin had not returned.  Then I rang up
Archie's house in Grosvenor Street and got the same answer about him.
It was no good my going off to the back streets of Marylebone, so I
went to bed and spent a wretched night.

Very early next morning I was in Grosvenor Street, and there I had
news.  Archie's man had just had a telephone message from a hospital to
say that his master had had an accident, and would he come round and
bring clothes.  He packed a bag and he and I drove there at once, and
found the miserable Archie in bed, the victim officially of a motor
accident.  He did not seem to be very bad, but it was a rueful face,
much battered about the eyes and bandaged as to the jaw, which was
turned on me when the nurse left us.

"You remember what I said about the pug with the diamond studs," he
whistled through damaged teeth.  "Well, I took him on last night and
got tidily laid out.  I'm not up to professional standards, and my game
leg made me slow."

"You've put your foot into it most nobly," I said.  "What do you mean
by brawling in a dance-club?  You've embarrassed me horribly in the job
I'm on."

"But how?" he asked, and but for the bandage his jaw would have dropped.

"Never mind how at present.  I want to know exactly what happened.
It's more important than you think."

He told me the same story that I had heard from Mary, but much
garlanded with objurgations.  He denied that he had dined too
well--"nothing but a small whisky-and-soda and one glass of port."  He
had been looking for the girl in green for some time, and having found
her, was not going to miss the chance of making her acquaintance.  "A
melancholy little being with nothin' to say for herself.  She's had
hard usage from some swine--you could see it by her eyes--and I expect
the pug's the villain.  Anyway, I wasn't goin' to stand his orderin'
her about like a slave.  So I told him so, and a fellow with a black
beard chipped in and they began to hustle me.  Then I did a dam' silly
thing.  I tried to solemnise 'em by sayin' who I was, and old Turpin
was there, so I dragged his name in.  Dashed caddish thing to do, but I
thought a Marquis would put the wind up that crowd."

"Did he join in?"

"I don't know--I rather fancy he got scragged at the start.  Anyhow I
found myself facin' the pug, seein' bright red, and inclined to fight a
dozen.  I didn't last for more than one round--my game leg cramped me,
I suppose.  I got in one or two on his ugly face, and then I suppose I
took a knock-out.  After that I don't remember anything till I woke up
in this bed feelin' as if I had been through a mangle.  The people here
say I was brought in by two bobbies and a fellow with a motor-car, who
said I had walked slap into his bonnet at a street corner and hurt my
face.  He was very concerned about me, but omitted to leave his name
and address.  Very thoughtful of the sweeps to make sure there would be
no scandal....  I say, Dick, you don't suppose this will get into the
newspapers?  I don't want to be placarded as havin' been in such a
vulgar shindy just as I'm thinkin' of goin' in for Parliament."

"I don't think there's the remotest chance of your hearing another word
about it, unless you talk too much yourself.  Look here, Archie, you've
got to promise me never to go near that place again, and never on any
account whatever to go hunting for that girl in green.  I'll tell you
my reasons some day, but you can take it that they're good ones.
Another thing.  You've got to keep out of Turpin's way.  I only hope
you haven't done him irreparable damage because of your idiocy last
night."

Archie was desperately penitent.  "I know I behaved like a cad.  I'll
go and grovel to old Turpin as soon as they let me up.  But he's all
right--sure to be.  He wasn't lookin' for a fight like me.  I expect he
only got shoved into the street and couldn't get back again."

I did not share Archie's optimism, and very soon my fear was a
certainty.  I went straight from the hospital to Carlton House Terrace,
and found Mr Victor at breakfast.  I learned that the Marquis de la
Tour du Pin had been dining out on the previous evening and had not
returned.




_Chapter XV_

_How a French Nobleman Discovered Fear_

I have twice heard from Turpin the story I am going to set down--once
before he understood much of it, a second time when he had got some
enlightenment--but I doubt whether to his dying day he will ever be
perfectly clear about what happened to him.

I have not had time to introduce Turpin properly, and in any case I am
not sure that the job is not beyond me.  My liking for the French is
profound, but I believe there is no race on earth which the average
Briton is less qualified to comprehend.  For myself, I could far more
easily get inside the skin of a Boche.  I knew he was as full of
courage as a Berserker, pretty mad, but with that queer core of
prudence which your Latin possesses and which in the long-run makes his
madness less dangerous than an Englishman's.  He was high-strung,
excitable, imaginative, and I should have said in a general way very
sensitive to influences such as Medina wielded.  But he was forewarned.
Mary had told him the main lines of the business, and he was playing
the part she had set him as dutifully as a good child.  I had not done
justice to his power of self-control.  He saw his sweetheart leading
that blind unearthly life, and it must have been torture to him to do
nothing except look on.  But he never attempted to wake her memory, but
waited obediently till Mary gave orders, and played the part to
perfection of the ordinary half-witted dancing mountebank.

When the row with Archie started, and the scurry began, he had the
sense to see that he must keep out of it.  Then he heard Archie speak
his real name, and saw the mischief involved in that, for nobody knew
him except Mary, and he had passed as a Monsieur Claud Simond from
Buenos Aires.  When he saw his friend stand up to the bruiser, he
started off instinctively to his help, but stopped in time and turned
to the door.  The man with the black beard was looking at him, but said
nothing.

There seemed to be a good deal of racket at the foot of the stairs.
One of the girls caught his arm.  "No good that way," she whispered.
"It's a raid all right.  There's another road out.  You don't want your
name in to-morrow's papers."

He followed her into a little side passage, which was almost empty and
very dark, and there he lost her.  He was just starting to prospect,
when he saw a little dago whom he recognised as one of the bar-tenders.
"Up the stairs, monsieur," the man said.  "Then first to the left and
down again.  You come out in the yard of the Apollo Garage.  Quick,
monsieur, or _les flics_ will be here."

Turpin sped up the steep wooden stairs, and found himself in another
passage fairly well lit, with a door at each end.  He took the one to
the left, and dashed through, wondering how he was to recover his hat
and coat, and also what had become of Mary.  The door opened easily
enough, and in his haste he took two steps forward.  It swung behind
him, so that he was in complete darkness, and he turned back to open it
again to give him light.  But it would not open.  With the shutting of
that door he walked clean out of the world.

At first he was angry, and presently, when he realised his situation, a
little alarmed.  The place seemed to be small, it was utterly dark, and
as stuffy as the inside of a safe.  His chief thought at the moment was
that it would never do for him to be caught in a raid on a dance-club,
for his true name might come out and the harm which Archie's foolish
tongue had wrought might be thereby aggravated.  But soon he saw that
he had stepped out of one kind of danger into what was probably a
worse.  He was locked in an infernal cupboard in a house which he knew
to have the most unholy connections.

He started to grope around, and found that the place was larger than he
thought.  The walls were bare, the floor seemed to be of naked boards,
and there was not a stick of furniture anywhere, nor, so far as he
could see, any window.  He could not discover the door he had entered
by, which on the inside must have been finished dead level with the
walls.  Presently he found that his breathing was difficult, and that
almost put him in a panic, for the dread of suffocation had always been
for him the private funk from which the bravest man is not free.  To
breathe was like having his face tightly jammed against a pillow.  He
made an effort and controlled himself, for he realised that if he let
himself become hysterical he would only suffocate the faster....

Then he declares that he felt a hand pressing on his mouth....  It must
have been imagination, for he admits that the place was empty, but all
the same the hand came again and again--a large soft hand smelling of
roses.  His nerves began to scream, and his legs to give under him.
The roses came down on him in a cloud, and that horrible flabby hand,
as big as a hill, seemed to smother him.  He tried to move, to get away
from it, and before he knew he found himself on his knees.  He
struggled to get up, but the hand was on him, flattening him out, and
that intolerable sweet sickly odour swathed him in its nauseous
folds....  And then he lost consciousness....

How long he was senseless he doesn't know, but he thinks it must have
been a good many hours.  When he came to he was no longer in the
cupboard.  He was lying on what seemed to be a couch in a room which
felt spacious, for he could breathe freely, but it was still as black
as the nether pit.  He had a blinding headache, and felt rather sick
and as silly as an owl.  He couldn't remember how he had come there,
but as his hand fell on his shirt-front, and he realised he was in
dress clothes, he recollected Archie's cry.  That was the last clear
thing in his head, but it steadied him, for it reminded him how grave
was his danger.  He has told me that at first he was half stifled with
panic, for he was feeling abominably weak; but he had just enough
reason left in him to let him take a pull on his nerves.  "You must be
a man," he repeated to himself.  "Even if you have stumbled into hell,
you must be a man."

Then a voice spoke out of the darkness, and at the sound of it most of
his fright disappeared.  It was no voice that he knew, but a pleasant
voice, and it spoke to him in French.  Not ordinary French, you
understand, but the French of his native valley in the South, with the
soft slurring patois of his home.  It seemed to drive away his headache
and nausea, and to soothe every jangled nerve, but it made him weaker.
Of that he has no doubt.  This friendly voice was making him a child
again.

His memory of what it said is hopelessly vague.  He thinks that it
reminded him of the life of his boyhood--the old chateau high in a fold
of the limestone hills, the feathery chestnuts in the valley bottom,
the clear pools where the big trout lived, the snowy winters when the
wolves came out of the forests to the farmyard doors, the hot summers
when the roads were blinding white and the turf on the downs grew as
yellow as corn.  The memory of it was all jumbled, and whatever the
voice said its effect was more like music than spoken words.  It
smoothed out the creases in his soul, but it stole also the manhood
from him.  He was becoming limp and docile and passive like a weak
child.

The voice stopped and he felt a powerful inclination to sleep.  Then
suddenly, between sleeping and waking, he became aware of a light, a
star which glowed ahead of him in the darkness.  It waxed and then
waned, and held his eyes like a vice.  At the back of his head he knew
that there was some devilry in the business, that it was something
which he ought to resist, but for the life of him he could not remember
why.

The light broadened till it was like the circle which a magic-lantern
makes on a screen.  Into the air there crept a strange scent--not the
sickly smell of roses, but a hard pungent smell which tantalised him
with its familiarity.  Where had he met it before?  ... Slowly out of
it there seemed to shape a whole world of memories.

Now Turpin before the War had put in some years' service in Africa with
the Arme Coloniale as a lieutenant of Spahis, and had gone with
various engineering and military expeditions south of the Algerian
frontier into the desert.  He used to rave to me about the glories of
those lost days, that first youth of a man which does not return....
This smell was the desert, that unforgettable, untameable thing which
stretches from the Mediterranean to the Central African forests, the
place where, in the days when it was sea, Ulysses wandered, and where
the magic of Circe and Calypso for all the world knows may still linger.

In the moon of light a face appeared, a face so strongly lit up that
every grim and subtle line of it was magnified.  It was an Eastern
face, a lean high-boned Arab face, with the eyes set in a strange
slant.  He had never seen it before, but he had met something like it
when he had dabbled in the crude magic of the sands, the bubbling pot,
and the green herb fire.  At first it was only a face, half averted,
and then it seemed to move so that the eyes appeared, like lights
suddenly turned on at night as one looks from without at a dark house.

He felt in every bone a thing he had almost forgotten, the spell and
the terror of the desert.  It was a cruel and inhuman face, hiding God
knows what of ancient horror and sin, but wise as the Sphinx and
eternal as the rocks.  As he stared at it the eyes seemed to master and
envelop him, and, as he put it, suck the soul out of him.

You see he had never been told about Kharma.  That was the one mistake
Mary made, and a very natural one, for it was not likely that he and
the Indian would foregather.  So he had nothing in his poor muddled
head to help him to combat this mastering presence.  He didn't try.  He
said he felt himself sinking into a delicious lethargy, like the coma
which overtakes a man who is being frozen to death.

I could get very little out of Turpin about what happened next.  The
face spoke to him, but whether in French or some African tongue he
didn't know--French, he thought--certainly not English.  I gather that,
while the eyes and the features were to the last degree awe-inspiring,
the voice was, if anything, friendly.  It told him that he was in
instant danger, and that the only hope lay in utter impassivity.  If he
attempted to exercise his own will, he was doomed, and there was
sufficient indication of what that doom meant to shake his lethargy
into spasms of childish fear.  "Your body is too feeble to move," said
the voice, "for Allah has laid His hand on it."  Sure enough, Turpin
realised that he hadn't the strength of a kitten.  "You have
surrendered your will to Allah till He restores it to you."  That also
was true, for Turpin knew he could not summon the energy to brush his
hair, unless he was ordered to.  "You will be safe," said the voice,
"so long as you sleep.  You will sleep till I bid you awake."

Sleep he probably did, for once again came a big gap in his
consciousness....  The next he knew he was being jolted in something
that ran on wheels, and he suddenly rolled over on his side, as the
vehicle took a sharp turn.  This time it didn't take him quite so long
to wake up.  He found he was in a big motor-car, with his overcoat on,
and his hat on the seat beside him.  He was stretched out almost at
full length, and comfortably propped up with cushions.  All this he
realised fairly soon, but it was some time before he could gather up
the past, and then it was all blurred and sketchy....  What he
remembered most clearly was the warning that he was in grave peril and
was only safe while he did nothing.  That was burned in on his mind,
and the lesson was pointed by the complete powerlessness of his limbs.
He could hardly turn over from his side to his back, and he knew that
if he attempted to stand he would fall down in a heap.  He shut his
eyes and tried to think.

Bit by bit the past pieced itself together.  He remembered Archie's
cry--and things before that--Mary--the girl in green.  Very soon the
truth smote him in the face.  He had been kidnapped like the rest, and
had had the same tricks played on him....  But they had only affected
his body.  As he realised this tremendous fact Turpin swelled with
pride.  Some devilry had stolen his physical strength, but his soul was
his own still, his memory and his will.  A sort of miasma of past fear
still clung about him, like the after-taste of influenza, but this only
served to make him angry.  He was most certainly not going to be
beaten.  The swine had miscalculated this time; they might have a
cripple in their hands, but it would be a very watchful, wary, and
determined cripple, quick to seize the first chance to be even with
them.  His anger made his spirits rise.  All his life he had been a man
of tropical loves and tempestuous hates.  He had loathed the Boche, and
free-masons, and communists, and the deputies of his own land, and ever
since Adela's disappearance he had nursed a fury against a person or
persons unknown: and now every detestation of which he was capable had
been focussed against those who were responsible for this night's work.
The fools!  They thought they had got a trussed sheep, when all the
time it was a lame tiger.

The blinds of the car were down, but by small painful movements he
managed to make out that there was a man in the front seat beside the
chauffeur.  By and by he got a corner of the right-hand blind raised,
and saw that it was night time and that they were moving through broad
streets that looked like a suburb.  From the beat of the engine he
gathered that the car was a Rolls-Royce, but not, he thought, one of
the latest models.  Presently the motion became less regular, and he
realised that the suburban streets were giving place to country roads.
His many expeditions in his Delage had taught him a good deal about the
ways out of London, but, try as he might, he could not pick up any
familiar landmark.  The young moon had set, so he assumed that it was
near midnight; it was a fine, clear night, not very dark, and he picked
up an occasional inn and church, but they never seemed to pass through
any village.  Probably the driver was taking the less frequented
roads--a view he was confirmed in by the frequent right-angled turns
and the many patches of indifferent surface.

Very soon he found his efforts at reconnaissance so painful that he
gave them up, and contented himself with planning his policy.  Of
course he must play the part of the witless sheep.  That duty, he
thought, presented no difficulties, for he rather fancied himself as an
actor.  The trouble was his bodily condition.  He did not believe that
a constitution as good as his could have taken any permanent damage
from the night's work....  The night's!  He must have been away for
more than one night, for the row with Archie had taken place very near
twelve o'clock.  This must be the midnight following.  He wondered what
Mr Victor was thinking about it--and Mary--and Hannay.  The miserable
Hannay had now four lost ones to look for instead of three! ... Anyhow
the devils had got an ugly prisoner in him.  His body must soon be all
right, unless of course they took steps to keep it all wrong.  At that
thought Turpin's jaw set.  The role of the docile sheep might be
difficult to keep up very long.

The next he knew the car had turned in at a gate and was following a
dark tree-lined avenue.  In another minute it had stopped before the
door of a house, and he was being lifted out by the chauffeur and the
man from the front seat, and carried into a hall.  But first a dark
bandana was tied over his eyes, and, as he could do nothing with his
arms or legs, he had to submit.  He felt himself carried up a short
staircase, and then along a corridor into a bedroom, where a lamp was
lit.  Hands undressed him--his eyes still bandaged--and equipped him
with pyjamas which were not his own, and were at once too roomy and too
short.  Then food was brought, and an English voice observed that he
had better have some supper before going to sleep.  The bandage was
taken off and he saw two male backs disappearing through the door.

Up till now he had felt no hunger or thirst, but the sight of food made
him realise that he was as empty as a drum.  By twisting his head he
could see it all laid out on the table beside his bed--a good meal it
looked--cold ham and galantine, an omelette, a salad, cheese, and a
small decanter of red wine.  His soul longed for it, but what about his
feeble limbs?  Was this some new torture of Tantalus?

Desire grew, and like an automaton he moved to it.  He felt all numbed,
with needles and pins everywhere, but surely he was less feeble than he
had been in the car.  First he managed to get his right arm extended,
and by flexing the elbow and wrist a certain life seemed to creep back.
Then he did the same thing with his right leg, and presently found that
he could wriggle by inches to the edge of the bed.  He was soon out of
breath, but there could be no doubt about it--he was getting stronger.
A sudden access of thirst enabled him to grasp the decanter, and, after
some trouble with the stopper, to draw it to his lips.  Spilling a good
deal, he succeeded in getting a mouthful.  "Larose," he murmured, "and
a good vintage.  It would have been better if it had been cognac."

But the wine put new life into him.  He found he could use both arms,
and he began wolfishly on the omelette, making a rather messy job of
it.  By this time he was feeling a remarkably vigorous convalescent,
and he continued with the cold meat, till the cramp in his left
shoulder forced him to lie back on the pillow.  It soon passed, and he
was able in fair comfort to finish the meal down to the last lettuce
leaf of the salad, and the last drop of the claret.  The Turpin who
reclined again on the bed was to all intents the same vigorous young
man who the night before had stumbled through that fateful door into
the darkness.  But it was a Turpin with a profoundly mystified mind.

He would have liked to smoke, but his cigarettes were in the pocket of
his dress clothes which had been removed.  So he started to do for his
legs what he had already achieved for his arms, and with the same happy
results.  It occurred to him that, while he was alone, he had better
discover whether or not he could stand.  He made the effort, rolled out
of bed on to the floor, hit the little table with his head and set the
dishes rattling.

But after a few scrambles he got to his feet and managed to shuffle
round the room.  The mischief was leaving his body--so much was plain,
and but for a natural stiffness in the joints he felt as well as ever.
But what it all meant he hadn't a notion.  He was inclined to the
belief that somehow he had scored off his enemies, and was a tougher
proposition than they had bargained for.  They had assuredly done no
harm to his mind with their witchcraft, and it looked as if they had
also failed with his body.  The thought emboldened him.  The house
seemed quiet; why should he not do a little exploration?

He cautiously opened the door, finding it, somewhat to his surprise,
unlocked.  The passage was lit by a hanging oil-lamp, carpeted with an
old-fashioned drugget, and its walls decorated with a set of flower
pictures.  Turpin came to the conclusion that rarely in his life had he
been in a dwelling which seemed more innocent and homelike.  He
considered himself sensitive to the nuances of the sinister in an
atmosphere, and there was nothing of that sort in this.  He took a step
or two down the passage, and then halted, for he thought he heard a
sound.  Yes, there could be no doubt of it.  It was water gushing from
a tap.  Someone in the establishment was about to have a bath.

Then he slipped back to his room just in time.  The someone was
approaching with light feet and a rustle of draperies.  He had his door
shut when the steps passed, and then opened it and stuck his head out.
He saw a pink dressing-gown, and above it a slender neck and masses of
dark hair.  It was the figure which he of all men was likely to know
best.

It seemed that the place for him was bed, so he got between the sheets
again and tried to think.  Adela Victor was here; therefore he was in
the hands of her captors, and made a fourth in their bag.  But what
insanity had prompted these wary criminals to bring the two of them to
the same prison?  Were they so utterly secure, so confident of their
power, that they took this crazy risk?  The insolence of it made him
furious.  In the name of every saint he swore that he would make them
regret it.  He would free the lady and himself, though he had to burn
down the house and wring the neck of every inmate.  And then he
remembered the delicacy of the business, and the need of exact timing
if the other two hostages were not to be lost, and at the thought he
groaned.

There was a tap at the door, and a man entered to clear away the supper
table.  He seemed an ordinary English valet, with his stiff collar and
decent black coat and smug expressionless face.

"Beg pardon, my lord," he said, "at what hour would you like your
shavin' water?  Seein' it's been a late night I make so bold as to
suggest ten o'clock."

Turpin assented, and the servant had hardly gone when another visitor
appeared.  It was a slim pale man, whom he was not conscious of having
seen before, a man with grey hair and a melancholy droop of the head.
He stood at the foot of the bed, gazing upon the prostrate Turpin, and
his look was friendly.  Then he addressed him in French of the most
Saxon type.

"tes-vous comfortable, monsieur?  C'est bien.  Soyez tranquille.  Nous
sommes vos amis.  Bon soir."




_Chapter XVI_

_Our Time is Narrowed_

I lunched that day with Mary--alone, for her aunts were both in
Paris--and it would have been hard to find in the confines of the
British islands a more dejected pair.  Mary, who had always a singular
placid gentleness, showed her discomposure only by her pallor.  As for
me I was as restless as a bantam.

"I wish I had never touched the thing," I cried.  "I have done more
harm than good."

"You have found Lord Mercot," she protested.

"Yes, and lost Turpin.  The brutes are still three up on us.  We
thought we had found two, and now we have lost Miss Victor again.  And
Turpin!  They'll find him an ugly customer, and probably take strong
measures with him.  They'll stick to him and the girl and the little
boy now like wax; for last night's performance is bound to make them
suspicious."

"I wonder," said Mary, always an optimist.  "You see, Sir Archie only
dragged him in because of his rank.  It looked odd his being in Adela's
company, but then all the times he has seen her he never spoke a word
to her.  They must have noticed that.  I'm anxious about Sir Archie.
He ought to leave London."

"Confound him!  He's going to, as soon as he gets out of hospital,
which will probably be this afternoon.  I insisted on it, but he meant
to in any case.  He's heard an authentic report of a green sandpiper
nesting somewhere.  It would be a good thing if Archie would stick to
birds.  He has no head for anything else....  And now we've got to
start again at the beginning."

"Not quite the beginning," she interposed.

"Dashed near it.  They won't bring Miss Victor into that kind of world
again, and all your work goes for nothing, my dear.  It's uncommon bad
luck that you didn't begin to wake her up, for then she might have done
something on her own account.  But she's still a dummy, and tucked
away, you may be sure, in some place where we can never reach her.  And
we have little more than three weeks left."

"It is bad luck," Mary agreed.  "But, Dick, I've a feeling that I
haven't lost Adela Victor.  I believe that somehow or other we'll soon
get in touch with her again.  You remember how children when they lose
a ball sometimes send another one after it in the hope that one will
find the other.  Well, we've sent the Marquis after Adela, and I've a
notion we may find them both together.  We always did that as
children." ... She paused at the word 'children' and I saw pain in her
eyes.  "Oh, Dick, the little boy!  We're no nearer him, and he's far
the most tragic of all."

The whole business looked so black that I had no word of comfort to
give her.

"And to put the lid on it," I groaned, "I've got to settle down in
Medina's house this evening.  I hate the idea like poison."

"It's the safest way," she said.

"Yes, but it puts me out of action.  He'll watch me like a lynx, and I
won't be able to take a single step on my own--simply sit there and eat
and drink and play up to his vanity.  Great Scott, I swear I'll have a
row with him and break his head."

"Dick, you're not going to--how do you say it?--chuck in your hand?
Everything depends on you.  You're our scout in the enemy's
headquarters.  Your life depends on your playing the game.  Colonel
Arbuthnot said so.  And you may find out something tremendous.  It will
be horrible for you, but it isn't for long, and it's the only way."

That was Mary all over.  She was trembling with anxiety for me, but she
was such a thorough sportsman that she wouldn't take any soft option.

"You may hear something about David Warcliff," she added.

"I hope to God I do.  Don't worry, darling.  I'll stick it out.  But,
look here, we must make a plan.  I shall be more or less shut off from
the world, and I must have a line of communication open.  You can't
telephone to me at that house, and I daren't ring you up from there.
The only chance is the Club.  If you have any message, ring up the head
porter and make him write it down.  I'll arrange that he keeps it
quiet, and I'll pick up the messages when I get the chance.  And I'll
ring you up occasionally to give you the news.  But I must be jolly
careful, for, likely as not, Medina will keep an eye on me even there.
You're in touch with Macgillivray?"

She nodded.

"And with Sandy?"

"Yes, but it takes some time--a day at least.  We can't correspond
direct."

"Well, there's the lay-out.  I'm a prisoner--with qualifications.  You
and I can keep up some sort of communication.  As you say, there's only
about another three weeks."

"It would be nothing if only we had some hope."

"That's life, my dear.  We've got to go on to the finish anyhow,
trusting that luck will turn in the last ten minutes."

I arrived in Hill Street after tea and found Medina in the back
smoking-room, writing letters.

"Good man, Hannay," he said; "make yourself comfortable.  There are
cigars on that table."

"Had a satisfactory time in Shropshire?" I asked.

"Rotten.  I motored back this morning, starting very early.  Some
tiresome business here wanted my attention.  I'm sorry, but I'll be out
to dinner to-night.  The same thing always happens when I want to see
my friends--a hideous rush of work."

He was very hospitable, but his manner had not the ease it used to
have.  He seemed on the edge about something, and rather preoccupied.
I guessed it was the affair of Archie Roylance and Turpin.

I dined alone and sat after dinner in the smoking-room, for Odell never
suggested the library, though I would have given a lot to fossick about
that place.  I fell asleep over the _Field_ and was wakened about
eleven by Medina.  He looked almost tired, a rare thing for him; also
his voice was curiously hard.  He made some trivial remark about the
weather, and a row in the Cabinet which was going on.  Then he said
suddenly:

"Have you seen Arbuthnot lately?"

"No," I replied, with real surprise in my tone.  "How could I?  He has
gone back to the East."

"So I thought.  But I have been told that he has been seen again in
England."

For a second I had a horrid fear that he had got on the track of my
meeting with Sandy at the Cotswold inn and his visit to Fosse.  His
next words reassured me.

"Yes.  In London.  Within the last few days."

It was easy enough for me to show astonishment.  "What a crazy fellow
he is!  He can't stay put for a week together.  All I can say is that I
hope he won't come my way.  I've no particular wish to see him again."

Medina said no more.  He accompanied me to my bedroom, asked if I had
everything I wanted, bade me good night, and left me.

Now began one of the strangest weeks in my life.  Looking back, it has
still the inconsequence of a nightmare, but one or two episodes stand
out like reefs in a tide-race.  When I woke the first morning under
Medina's roof I believed that somehow or other he had come to suspect
me.  I soon saw that that was nonsense, that he regarded me as a pure
chattel; but I saw, too, that a most active suspicion of something had
been awakened in his mind.  Probably Archie's fiasco, together with the
news of Sandy, had done it, and perhaps there was in it something of
the natural anxiety of a man nearing the end of a difficult course.
Anyhow I concluded that this tension of mind on his part was bound to
make things more difficult for me.  Without suspecting me, he kept me
perpetually under his eye.  He gave me orders as if I were a child, or
rather he made suggestions, which in my character of worshipping
disciple I had to treat as orders.

He was furiously busy night and day, and yet he left me no time to
myself.  He wanted to know everything I did, and I had to give an
honest account of my doings, for I had a feeling that he had ways of
finding out the truth.  One lie discovered would, I knew, wreck my
business utterly, for if I were under his power, as he believed I was,
it would be impossible for me to lie to him.  Consequently I dared not
pay many visits to the Club, for he would want to know what I did
there.  I was on such desperately thin ice that I thought it best to
stay most of my time in Hill Street, unless he asked me to accompany
him.  I consulted Mary about this, and she agreed that it was the wise
course.

Apart from a flock of maids, there was no other servant in the house
but Odell.  Twice I met the grey, sad-faced man on the stairs, the man
I had seen on my first visit, and had watched a week before in the
house behind the curiosity shop.  I asked who he was, and was told a
private secretary, who helped Medina in his political work.  I gathered
that he did not live regularly in the house, but only came there when
his services were required.

Now Mary had said that the other man that evening in Little Fardell
Street had been Sandy.  If she was right, this fellow might be a
friend, and I wondered if I could get in touch with him.  The first
time I encountered him he never raised his eyes.  The second time I
forced him by some question to look at me, and he turned on me a
perfectly dead expressionless face like a codfish.  I concluded that
Mary had been in error, for this was the genuine satellite, every
feature of whose character had been steam-rollered out of existence by
Medina's will.

I was seeing Medina now at very close quarters, and in complete
undress, and the impression he had made on me at our first
meeting--which had been all overlaid by subsequent happenings--grew as
vivid again as daylight.  The "good fellow," of course, had gone; I saw
behind all his perfection of manner to the naked ribs of his soul.  He
would talk to me late at night in that awful library, till I felt that
he and the room were one presence, and that all the diabolic lore of
the ages had been absorbed by this one mortal.  You must understand
that there was nothing wrong in the ordinary sense with anything he
said.  If there had been a phonograph recording his talk it could have
been turned on with perfect safety in a girls' school....  He never
spoke foully, or brutally.  I don't believe he had a shadow of those
faults of the flesh which we mean when we use the word "vice."  But I
swear that the most wretched libertine before the bar of the Almighty
would have shown a clean sheet compared to his.

I know no word to describe how he impressed me except "wickedness."  He
seemed to annihilate the world of ordinary moral standards, all the
little rags of honest impulse and stumbling kindness with which we try
to shelter ourselves from the winds of space.  His consuming egotism
made life a bare cosmos in which his spirit scorched like a flame.  I
have met bad men in my day, fellows who ought to have been quietly and
summarily put out of existence, but if I had had the trying of them I
would have found bits of submerged decency and stunted remnants of good
feeling.  At any rate they were human, and their beastliness was a
degeneration of humanity, not its flat opposite.  Medina made an
atmosphere which was like a cold bright air in which nothing can live.
He was utterly and consumedly wicked, with no standard which could be
remotely related to ordinary life.  That is why, I suppose, mankind has
had to invent the notion of devils.  He seemed to be always lifting the
corner of a curtain and giving me peeps into a hoary mystery of
iniquity older than the stars....  I suppose that someone who had never
felt his hypnotic power would have noticed very little in his talk
except its audacious cleverness, and that someone wholly under his
dominion would have been less impressed than me because he would have
forgotten his own standards, and been unable to make the comparison.  I
was just in the right position to understand and tremble....  Oh, I can
tell you, I used to go to bed solemnised, frightened half out of my
wits, and yet in a violent revulsion, and hating him like hell.  I was
pretty clear that he was mad, for madness means just this dislocation
of the modes of thought which mortals have agreed upon as necessary to
keep the world together.  His head used to seem as round as a bullet,
like nothing you find even in the skulls of cave-men, and his eyes to
have a blue light in them like the sunrise of death in an arctic waste.

One day I had a very narrow escape.  I went to the Club, to see if
there was anything from Mary, and received instead a long cable from
Gaudian in Norway.  I had just opened it, when I found Medina at my
elbow.  He had seen me enter, and followed me, in order that we should
walk home together.

Now I had arranged a simple code with Gaudian for his cables, and by
the mercy of Heaven that honest fellow had taken special precautions,
and got some friend to send this message from Christiania.  Had it
borne the Merdal stamp, it would have been all up with me.

The only course was the bold one, though I pursued it with a quaking
heart.

"Hullo," I cried, "here's a cable from a pal of mine in Norway.  Did I
tell you I had been trying to get a beat on the Leardal for July?  I
had almost forgotten about the thing.  I started inquiring in March,
and here's my first news."

I handed him the two sheets and he glanced at the place of dispatch.

"Code," he said.  "Do you want to work it out now?"

"If you don't mind waiting a few seconds.  It's a simple code of my own
invention, and I ought to be able to decipher it pretty fast."

We sat down at one of the tables in the hall, and I took up a pen and a
sheet of note paper.  As I think I have mentioned before, I am rather a
swell at codes, and this one in particular I could read without much
difficulty.  I jotted down some letters and numbers, and then wrote out
a version, which I handed to Medina.  This was what he read:


"Upper beat Leardal available from first of month.  Rent two hundred
and fifty with option of August at one hundred more.  No limit to rods.
Boat on each pool.  Tidal waters can also be got for sea trout by
arrangement.  If you accept please cable word 'Yes.'  You should arrive
not later than June 29th.  Bring plenty of bottled prawns.  Motor boat
can be had from Bergen.  Andersen, Grand Hotel, Christiania."


But all the time I was scribbling this nonsense, I was reading the code
correctly and getting the message by heart.  Here is what Gaudian
really sent:


"Our friend has quarrelled with keeper and beaten him soundly.  I have
taken charge at farm and frightened latter into docility.  He will
remain prisoner in charge of ally of mine till I give the word to
release.  Meantime, think it safer to bring friend to England and start
on Monday.  Will wire address in Scotland and wait your instructions.
No danger of keeper sending message.  Do not be anxious, all is well."


Having got that clear in my head, I tore the cable into small pieces
and flung them into the waste-paper basket.

"Well, are you going?" Medina asked.

"Not I.  I'm off salmon-fishing for the present."  I took a cable form
from the table, and wrote: "Sorry, must cancel Leardal plan," signed it
"Hannay," addressed it to "Andersen, Grand Hotel, Christiania," and
gave it to the porter to send off.  I wonder what happened to that
telegram.  It is probably still stuck up on tin hotel-board, awaiting
the arrival of the mythical Andersen.

On our way back to Hill Street Medina put his arm in mine, and was very
friendly.  "I hope to get a holiday," he said, "perhaps just after the
beginning of June.  Only a day or two off now.  I may go abroad for a
little.  I would like you to come with me."

That puzzled me a lot.  Medina could not possibly leave town before the
great liquidation, and there could be no motive in his trying to
mislead me on such a point, seeing that I was living in his house.  I
wondered if something had happened to make him change the date.  It was
of the first importance that I should find this out, and I did my best
to draw him about his plans.  But I could get nothing out of him except
that he hoped for an early holiday, and "early" might apply to the
middle of June as well as to the beginning, for it was now the 27th of
May.

Next afternoon at tea-time to my surprise Odell appeared in the
smoking-room, followed by the long lean figure of Tom Greenslade.  I
never saw anybody with greater pleasure, but I didn't dare to talk to
him alone.  "Is your master upstairs?" I asked the butler.  "Will you
tell him that Dr Greenslade is here?  He is an old friend of his."

We had rather less than two minutes before Medina appeared.  "I come
from your wife," Greenslade whispered.  "She has told me all about the
business, and she thought this was the safest plan.  I was to tell you
that she has news of Miss Victor and the Marquis.  They are safe
enough.  Any word of the little boy?"

He raised his voice as Medina entered.  "My dear fellow, this is a
great pleasure.  I had to be in London for a consultation, and I
thought I would look up Hannay.  I hardly hoped to have the luck to
catch a busy man like you."

Medina was very gracious--no, that is not the word, for there was
nothing patronising in his manner.  He asked in the most friendly way
about Greenslade's practice, and how he like English country life after
his many wanderings.  He spoke with an air of regret of the great
valleys of loess and the windy Central Asian tablelands where they had
first foregathered.  Odell brought in tea, and we made as pleasant a
trio of friends as you could find in London.  I asked a few casual
questions about Fosse, and then I mentioned Peter John.  Here
Greenslade had an inspiration; he told me afterwards that he thought it
might be a good thing to open a channel for further communications.

"I think he's all right," he said slowly.  "He's been having occasional
stomach-aches, but I expect that is only the result of hot weather and
the first asparagus.  Lady Hannay is a little anxious--you know what
she is, and all mothers to-day keep thinking about appendicitis.  So
I'm keeping my eye on the little man.  You needn't worry, Dick."

I take credit to myself for having divined the doctor's intention.  I
behaved as if I scarcely heard him, and as if Fosse Manor and my family
were things infinitely remote.  Indeed I switched off the conversation
to where Medina had last left it, and I behaved towards Tom Greenslade
as if his presence rather bored me, and I had very little to say to
him.  When he got up to go, it was Medina who accompanied him to the
front door.  All this was a heavy strain upon my self-command, for I
would have given anything for a long talk with him--though I had the
sense not to believe his news about Peter John.

"Not a bad fellow, that doctor of yours," Medina observed on his return.

"No," I said carelessly.  "Rather a dull dog all the same, with his
country gossip.  But I wish him well, for it is to him that I owe your
friendship."

I must count that episode one of my lucky moments, for it seemed to
give Medina some special satisfaction.  "Why do you make this your only
sitting-room?" he asked.  "The library is at your disposal, and it is
pleasanter in summer than any other part of the house."

"I thought I might be disturbing your work," I said humbly.

"Not a bit of it.  Besides, I've nearly finished my work.  After
to-night I can slack off, and presently I'll be an idle man."

"And then the holiday?"

"Then the holiday."  He smiled in a pleasant boyish way, which was one
of his prettiest tricks.

"How soon will that be?"

"If all goes well, very soon.  Probably after the second of June.  By
the way, the Thursday Club dines on the first.  I want you to be my
guest again."

Here was more food for thought.  The conviction grew upon me that he
and his friends had put forward the date of liquidation; they must have
suspected something--probably from Sandy's presence in England--and
were taking no risks.  I smoked that evening till my tongue was sore
and went to bed in a fever of excitement.  The urgency of the matter
fairly screamed in my ears, for Macgillivray must know the truth at
once, and so must Mary.  Mercot was safe, and there was a chance
apparently of Turpin and Miss Victor, which must be acted upon
instantly if the main date were changed.  Of the little boy I had given
up all hope....  But how to find the truth!  I felt like a man in a bad
dream who is standing on the line with an express train approaching,
and does not know how to climb back on to the platform.

Next morning Medina never left me.  He took me in his car to the City,
and I waited while he did his business, and then to call in Carlton
House Terrace a few doors from the Victors' house.  I believe it was
the residence of the man who led his party in the Lords.  After
luncheon he solemnly installed me in the library.  "You're not much of
a reader, and in any case you would probably find my books dull.  But
there are excellent arm-chairs to doze in."

Then he went out and I heard the wheels of his car move away.  I felt a
kind of awe creeping over me when I found myself left alone in the
uncanny place, which I knew to be the devil's kitchen for all his
schemes.  There was a telephone on his writing-table, the only one I
had seen in the house, though there was no doubt one in the butler's
pantry.  I turned up the telephone book and found a number given, but
it was not the one on the receiver.  This must be a private telephone,
by means of which he could ring up anybody he wanted, but of which only
his special friends knew the number.  There was nothing else in the
room to interest me, except the lines and lines of books, for his table
was as bare as a bank-manager's.

I tried the books, but most of them were a long sight too learned for
me.  Most were old, and many were in Latin, and some were evidently
treasures, for I would take one down and find it a leather box with
inside it a slim battered volume wrapped in wash-leather.  But I found
in one corner a great array of works of travel, so I selected one of
Aurel Stein's books and settled down in an arm-chair with it.  I tried
to fix my attention, but found it impossible.  The sentences would not
make sense to my restless mind, and I could not follow the maps.  So I
got up again, replaced the work on its shelf, and began to wander
about.  It was a dull close day, and out in the street a water-cart was
sprinkling the dust and children were going park-wards with their
nurses....  I simply could not account for my disquiet, but I was like
a fine lady with the vapours.  I felt that somewhere in that room there
was something that it concerned me deeply to know.

I drifted toward the bare writing-table.  There was nothing on it but a
massive silver inkstand in the shape of an owl, a silver tray of pens
and oddments, a leather case of notepaper and a big blotting-book.  I
would never have made a good thief, for I felt both nervous and ashamed
as, after listening for steps, I tried the drawers.

They were all locked--all, that is, except a shallow one at the top
which looked as if it were meant to contain one of those big engagement
tablets which busy men affect.  There was no tablet there, but there
were two sheets of paper.

Both had been torn from a loose-leaf diary, and both covered the same
dates--the fortnight between Monday the 29th of May, and Sunday the
11th of June.  In the first the space for the days was filled with
entries in Medina's neat writing, entries in some sort of shorthand.
These entries were close and thick up to and including Friday the 2nd
of June; after that there was nothing.  The second sheet of paper was
just the opposite.  The spaces were virgin up to and including the 2nd
of June; after that, on till the 11th, they were filled with notes.

As I stared at these two sheets, some happy instinct made me divine
their meaning.  The first sheet contained the steps that Medina would
take up to the day of liquidation, which was clearly the 2nd of June.
After that, if all went well, came peace and leisure.  But if it didn't
go well, the second sheet contained his plans--plans I have no doubt
for using the hostages, for wringing safety out of certain great men's
fears....  My interpretation was confirmed by a small jotting in
long-hand on the first sheet in the space for 2nd June.  It was the two
words "_Dies irae_," which my Latin was just good enough to construe.

I had lost all my tremors now, but I was a thousandfold more restless.
I must get word to Macgillivray at once--no, that was too dangerous--to
Mary.  I glanced at the telephone and resolved to trust my luck.

I got through to the Wymondhams' house without difficulty.  Barnard the
butler answered, and informed me that Mary was at home.  Then after a
few seconds I heard her voice.

"Mary," I said, "the day is changed to the 2nd of June.  You
understand, warn everybody ... I can't think why you are worrying about
that child."

For I was conscious that Medina was entering the room.  I managed with
my knee to close the shallow drawer with the two sheets in it, and I
nodded and smiled to him, putting my hand over the receiver.

"Forgive me using your telephone.  Fact is, my wife's in London and she
sent me round a note here asking me to ring her up.  She's got the boy
on her mind."

I put the tube to my ear again.  Mary's voice sounded sharp and
high-pitched.

"Are you there?  I'm in Mr Medina's library and I can't disturb him
talking through this machine.  There's no cause to worry about Peter
John.  Greenslade is usually fussy enough, and if he's calm there's no
reason why you shouldn't be.  But if you want another opinion, why not
get it?  We may as well get the thing straightened out now, for I may
be going abroad early in June....  Yes, some time after the 2nd."

Thank God Mary was quick-witted.

"The 2nd is very near.  Why do you make such sudden plans, Dick?  I
can't go home without seeing you.  I think I'll come straight to Hill
Street."

"All right," I said, "do as you please."  I rang off and looked at
Medina with a wry smile.  "What fussers women are!  Do you mind if my
wife comes round here?  She won't be content till she has seen me.  She
has come up with a crazy notion of taking down a surgeon to give an
opinion on the child's appendix.  Tommy rot!  But that's a woman's way."

He clearly suspected nothing.  "Certainly let Lady Hannay come here.
We'll give her tea.  I'm sorry that the drawing-room is out of
commission just now.  She might have liked to see my miniatures."

Mary appeared in ten minutes, and most nobly she acted her part.  It
was the very model of a distraught silly mother who bustled into the
room.  Her eyes looked as if she had been crying and she had managed to
disarrange her hat and untidy her hair.

"Oh, I've been so worried," she wailed, after she had murmured
apologies to Medina.  "He really has had a bad tummy pain, and nurse
thought last night that he was feverish.  I've seen Mr Dobson-Wray, and
he can come down by the 4.45....  He's such a precious little boy, Mr
Medina, that I feel we must take every precaution with him.  If Mr
Dobson-Wray says it is all right, I promise not to fuss any more.  I
think a second opinion would please Dr Greenslade, for he too looked
rather anxious....  Oh, no, thank you so much, but I can't stay for
tea.  I have a taxi waiting, and I might miss my train.  I'm going to
pick up Mr Dobson-Wray in Wimpole Street."

She departed in the same tornado in which she had come, just stopping
to set her hat straight at one of the mirrors in the hall.

"Of course I'll wire when the surgeon has seen him.  And, Dick, you'll
come down at once if there's anything wrong, and bring nurses.  Poor,
poor little darling! ... Did you say after the 2nd of June, Dick?  I do
hope you'll be able to get off.  You need a holiday away from your
tiresome family....  Good-bye, Mr Medina.  It was so kind of you to be
patient with a silly mother.  Look after Dick and don't let him worry."

I had preserved admirably the aloof air of the bored and slightly
ashamed husband.  But now I realised that Mary was not babbling at
large, but was saying something which I was meant to take in.

"Poor, poor little darling!" she crooned as she got into the taxi.  "I
do pray he'll be all right--I _think_ he may, Dick....  I hope, oh I
hope ... to put your mind at ease ... before the 2nd of June."

As I turned back to Medina I had a notion that the poor little darling
was no longer Peter John.




_Chapter XVII_

_The District-Visitor in Palmyra Square_

During the last fortnight a new figure had begun to appear in Palmyra
Square.  I do not know if Macgillivray's watchers reported its
presence, for I saw none of their reports, but they must have been
cognisant of it, unless they spent all their time in the nearest
public-house.  It was a district-visitor of the familiar type--a woman
approaching middle age, presumably a spinster, who wore a plain black
dress and, though the weather was warm, a cheap fur round her neck, and
carried a rather old black silk satchel.  Her figure was good, and had
still a suggestion of youth, but her hair, which was dressed very flat
and tight and coiled behind in an unfashionable bun, seemed--the little
that was seen of it--to be sprinkled with grey.  She was dowdy, and yet
not altogether dowdy, for there was a certain faded elegance in her
air, and an observer might have noted that she walked well.  Besides
the black satchel she carried usually a sheaf of papers, and invariably
and in all weathers a cheap badly-rolled umbrella.

She visited at the doctor's house with the brass plate, and the
music-teacher's, and at the various lodging-houses.  She was attached,
it appeared, to the big church of St Jude's a quarter of a mile off,
which had just got a new and energetic vicar.  She was full of
enthusiasm for her vicar, praised his earnestness and his eloquence,
and dwelt especially, after the way of elderly maiden ladies, on the
charm of his youth.  She was also very ready to speak of herself, and
eager to explain that her work was voluntary--she was a gentlewoman of
modest but independent means, and had rooms in Hampstead, and her
father had been a clergyman at Eastbourne.  Very full of her family she
was to those who would hear her.  There was a gentle simplicity about
her manners, and an absence of all patronage, which attracted people
and made them willing to listen to her when they would have shut the
door on another, for the inhabitants of Palmyra Square are not a
courteous or patient or religious folk.

Her aim was to enlist the overworked general servants of the Square in
some of the organisations of St Jude's.  There were all kinds of
activities in that enlightened church--choral societies, and mothers'
meetings, and country holiday clubs, and classes for adult education.
She would hand out sheaves of literature about the Girls' Friendly
Society, and the Mothers' Union, and such-like, and try to secure a
promise of attendance at some of the St Jude's functions.  I do not
think she had much success at the doctor's and the music-teacher's,
though she regularly distributed her literature there.  The wretched
little maids were too down-trodden and harassed to do more than listen
dully on the doorstep and say "Yes'm."  Nor was she allowed to see the
mistresses, except one of the lodging-house keepers, who was a
Primitive Methodist and considered St Jude's a device of Satan.  But
she had better fortune with the maid at No. 4.

The girl belonged to a village in Kent, and the district-visitor, it
seemed, had been asked to look her up by the rector of her old parish.
She was a large flat-faced young woman, slow of speech, heavy of
movement, and suspicious of nature.  At first she greeted the
district-visitor coldly, but thawed at the mention of familiar names
and accepted a copy of the St Jude's Magazine.  Two days later, when on
her afternoon out, she met the district-visitor and consented to walk a
little way with her.  Now the girl's hobby was dress, and her taste was
better than most of her class and aspired to higher things.  She had a
new hat which her companion admired, but she confessed that she was not
quite satisfied with it.  The district-visitor revealed a knowledge of
fashions which one would have scarcely augured from her own sombre
clothes.  She pointed out where the trimming was wrong, and might
easily be improved, and the girl--her name was Elsie Outhwaite--agreed.
"I could put it right for you in ten minutes," she was told.  "Perhaps
you would let me come and see you when you have a spare half-hour, and
we could do it together.  I'm rather clever at hats, and used to help
my sisters."

The ice was broken and the aloof Miss Outhwaite became confidential.
She liked her place, had no cause to complain, received good wages, and
above all was not fussed.  "I minds my own business, and Madame minds
'ers," she said.  Madame was a foreigner, and had her queer ways, but
had also her good points.  She did not interfere unnecessarily, and was
not mean.  There were handsome presents at Christmas, and every now and
then the house would be shut up and Miss Outhwaite returned to Kent on
generous board wages.  It was not a hard billet, though of course there
were a lot of visitors, Madame's clients.  "She's a massoose, you know,
but very respectable."  When asked if there were no other inmates of
the house she became reticent.  "Not what you would call reg'lar part
of the family," she admitted.  "There's an old lady, Madame's aunt,
that stops with us a bit, but I don't see much of 'er.  Madame attends
to 'er 'erself, and she 'as her private room.  And of course
there's..."  Miss Outhwaite seemed suddenly to recollect something, and
changed the subject.

The district-visitor professed a desire to make Madame's acquaintance,
but was not encouraged.  "She's not the sort for the likes of you.  She
don't 'old with churches and God and such-like--I've 'eard 'er say so.
You won't be getting 'er near St Jude's, miss."

"But if she is so clever and nice I would like to meet her.  She could
advise me about some of the difficult questions in this big parish.
Perhaps she would help with our Country Holidays."

Miss Outhwaite primmed her lips and didn't think so.  "You've got to be
ill and nervy for Madame to have an interest in you.  I'll take in your
name if you like, but I expect Madame won't be at 'ome to you."

It was eventually arranged that the district-visitor should call at No.
4 the following afternoon and bring the materials for the reconstructed
hat.  She duly presented herself, but was warned away by a flustered
Miss Outhwaite.  "We're that busy to-day I 'aven't a minute to myself."
Sunday was suggested, but it appeared that that was the day when the
district-visitor was fully occupied, so a provisional appointment was
made for the next Tuesday evening.

This time all went well.  Madame was out, and the district-visitor
spent a profitable hour in Miss Outhwaite's room.  Her nimble fingers
soon turned the hat, purchased in Queen's Crescent for ten and
sixpence, into a distant imitation of a costlier mode.  She displayed
an innocent interest in the household, and asked many questions which
Miss Outhwaite, now in the best of tempers, answered readily.  She was
told of Madame's habits, her very occasional shortness of temper, her
love of every tongue but English.  "The worst of them furriners," said
Miss Outhwaite, "is that you can't never be sure what they thinks of
you.  Half the time I'm with Madame and her aunt they're talking some
'eathen language."

As she departed the district-visitor was given a sketch of the
topography of the house about which she showed an unexpected curiosity.
Before she left there was a slight _contretemps_.  Madame's latch-key
was heard in the door and Miss Outhwaite had a moment of panic.  "Here,
miss, I'll let you out through the kitchen," she whispered.  But her
visitor showed no embarrassment.  "I'd like to meet Madame Breda," she
declared.  "This is a good chance."

Madame's plump dark face showed surprise, and possibly annoyance, as
she observed the two.  Miss Outhwaite hastened to explain the situation
with a speed which revealed nervousness.  "This is a lady from St
Jude's, Madame," she said.  "She comes 'ere districk-visiting and she
knows the folk in Radhurst, where I comes from, so I made bold to ask
her in."

"I am very glad to meet you, Madame Breda," said the district-visitor.
"I hope you don't mind my calling on Elsie Outhwaite.  I want her to
help in our Girls' Friendly Society work."

"You have been here before, I think," was the reply in a sufficiently
civil tone.  "I have seen you in the Square sometimes.  There is no
objection on my part to Outhwaite's attending your meetings, but I warn
you that she has very little free time."  The woman was a foreigner, no
doubt, but on this occasion her English showed little trace of accent.

"That is very good of you.  I should have asked your permission first,
but you were unfortunately not at home when I called, and Elsie and I
made friends by accident.  I hope you will let me come again."

As the visitor descended the steps and passed through the bright green
gate into the gathering dusk of the Square, Madame Breda watched her
contemplatively from one of the windows.

The lady came again four days later--it must, I think, have been the
29th of May.  Miss Outhwaite, when she opened the door, looked
flustered.  "I can't talk to you to-night, miss.  Madame's orders is
that when you next came you was to be shown in to her room."

"How very kind of her!" said the lady.  "I should greatly enjoy a talk
with her.  And, Elsie--I've got such a nice present for you--a hat
which a friend gave me and which is too young--really too young--for me
to wear.  I'm going to give it you, if you'll accept it.  I'll bring it
in a day or two."

The district-visitor was shown into the large room on the right-hand
side of the hall where Madame received her patients.  There was no one
there except a queer-looking little girl in a linen smock, who beckoned
her to follow to the folding doors which divided the apartment from the
other at the back.  The lady did a strange thing, for she picked up the
little girl, held her a second in her arms, and kissed her--after the
emotional habit of the childless _dvote_.  Then she passed through the
folding-doors.

It was an odd apartment in which she found herself--much larger than
could have been guessed from the look of the house, and, though the
night was warm, there was a fire lit, a smouldering fire which gave off
a fine blue smoke.  Madame Breda was there, dressed in a low-cut gown
as if she had been dining out, and looking handsome and dark and very
foreign in the light of the shaded lamps.  In an arm-chair by the
hearth sat a wonderful old lady, with a thing like a mantilla over her
snow-white hair.  It was a room so unlike anything in her narrow
experience that the new-comer stood hesitating as the folding-doors
shut behind her.

"Oh, Madame Breda, it is so very kind of you to see me," she faltered.

"I do not know your name," Madame said, and then she did a curious
thing, for she lifted a lamp and held it in the visitor's face,
scrutinising every line of her shabby figure.

"Clarke--Agnes Clarke.  I am the eldest of three sisters--the other two
are married--you may have heard of my father--he wrote some beautiful
hymns, and edited----"

"How old are you?" Madame broke in, still holding up the lamp.

The district-visitor gave a small nervous laugh.  "Oh, I am not so very
old--just over forty--well, to be quite truthful, nearly forty-seven.
I feel so young sometimes that I cannot believe it, and then--at other
times--where I am tired--I feel a hundred.  Alas!  I have many useless
years behind me.  But then we all have, don't you think?  The great
thing is to be resolved to make the most of every hour that remains to
us.  Mr Empson at St Jude's preached such a beautiful sermon last
Sunday about that.  He said we must give every unforgiving minute its
sixty seconds' worth of distance run--I think he was quoting poetry.
It is terrible to think of unforgiving minutes."

Madame did not appear to be listening.  She said something to the older
lady in a foreign tongue.

"May I sit down, please?" the visitor asked.  "I have been walking a
good deal to-day."

Madame waved her away from the chair she seemed about to take.  "You
will sit there, if you please," she said, pointing to a low couch
beside the old woman.

The visitor was obviously embarrassed.  She sat down on the edge of the
couch, a faded nervous figure compared to the two masterful personages,
and her fingers played uneasily with the handle of her satchel.

"Why do you come to this house?" Madame asked, and her tone was almost
menacing.  "We have nothing to do with your church."

"Oh, but you live in the parish, and it's such a large and difficult
parish, and we want help from everyone.  You cannot imagine how
horrible some of the slums are--what bitter poverty in these bad
times--and the worn-out mothers and the poor little neglected children.
We are trying to make it a brighter place."

"Do you want money?"

"We always want money."  The district-visitor's face wore an
ingratiating smile.  "But we want chiefly personal service.  Mr Empson
always says that one little bit of personal service is better than a
large subscription--better for the souls of the giver and the receiver."

"What do you expect to get from Outhwaite?"

"She is a young girl from a country village and alone in London.  She
is a good girl, I think, and I want to give her friends an innocent
amusement.  And I want her help too in our work."

The visitor started, for she found the hand of the old woman on her
arm.  The long fingers were running down it and pressing it.  Hitherto
the owner of the hand had not spoken, but now she said:

"This is the arm of a young woman.  She has lied about her age.  No
woman of forty-seven ever had such an arm."

The soft passage of the fingers had suddenly become a grip of steel,
and the visitor cried out.

"Oh, please, please, you are hurting me....  I do not tell lies.  I am
proud of my figure--just a little.  It is like my mother's, and she was
so pretty.  But oh!  I am not young.  I wish I was.  I'm afraid I'm
quite old when you see me by daylight."

The grip had relaxed, and the visitor moved along the couch to be out
of its reach.  She had begun to cry in a helpless silly way, as if she
were frightened.  The two other women spoke to each other in a strange
tongue, and then Madame said:

"I will not have you come here.  I will not have you meddle with my
servants.  I do not care a fig for your church.  If you come here again
you will repent it."

Her tone was harsh, and the visitor looked as if her tears would begin
again.  Her discomposure had deprived her of the faded grace which had
been in her air before, and she was now a pathetic and flimsy creature,
like some elderly governess pleading against dismissal.

"You are cruel," she sighed.  "I am so sorry if I have done anything
wrong, but I meant it for the best.  I thought that you might help me,
for Elsie said you were clever and kind.  Won't you think of poor
Elsie?  She is so young and far from her people.  Mayn't she come to St
Judo's sometimes?"

"Outhwaite has her duties at home, and so I daresay have you, if truth
was spoken.  Bah!  I have no patience with restless English old maids.
They say an Englishman's house is his castle, and yet there is a plague
of barren virgins always buzzing round it in the name of religion and
philanthropy.  Listen to me.  I will not have you in this house.  I
will not have you talking to Outhwaite.  I will not have an idle woman
spying on my private affairs."

The visitor dabbed her eyes with a wisp of handkerchief.  The old woman
had stretched out her hand again and would have laid it on her breast,
but she had started up violently.  She seemed to be in a mood between
distress and fear.  She swallowed hard before her voice came, and then
it quavered.

"I think I had better go.  You have wounded me very deeply.  I know I'm
not clever, but I try so hard ... and ... and--it pains me to be
misunderstood.  I am afraid I have been tactless, so please forgive me
... I won't come again ... I'll pray that your hearts may some day be
softened."

She seemed to make an effort to regain composure, and with a final dab
at her eyes smiled shakily at the unrelenting Madame, who had touched
an electric bell.  She closed the folding-doors gently behind her, like
a repentant child who has been sent to bed.  The front room was in
darkness, but there was a light in the hall where Miss Outhwaite waited
to show her out.

At the front door the district-visitor had recovered herself.

"Elsie," she whispered, "Madame Breda does not want me to come again.
But I must give you the hat I promised you.  I'll have it ready by
Thursday night.  I'm afraid I may be rather late--after eleven
perhaps--but don't go to bed till I come.  I'll go round to the back
door.  It's such a smart pretty hat.  I know you'll love it."

Once in the Square she looked sharply about her, cast a glance back at
Number 4, and then walked away briskly.  There was a man lounging at
the corner to whom she spoke; he nodded and touched his hat, and a big
motor car, which had been waiting in the shadows on the other side,
drew up at the kerb.  It seemed a strange conveyance for the
district-visitor, but she entered it as if she were used to it, and
when it moved off it was not in the direction of her rooms in Hampstead.




_Chapter XVIII_

_The Night of the First of June_

The last two days of May were spent by me in the most miserable
restlessness and despondency.  I was cut off from all communications
with my friends and I did not see how I could reopen them.  For Medina,
after his late furious busyness, seemed to have leisure again, and he
simply never let me out of his sight.  I daresay I might have managed a
visit to the Club and a telephone message to Mary, but I durst not
venture it, for I realised as I had never done before how delicate was
the ground I walked on and how one false step on my part might blow
everything sky-high.  It would have mattered less if I had been hopeful
of success, but a mood of black pessimism had seized me.  I could count
on Mary passing on my news to Macgillivray and on Macgillivray's taking
the necessary steps to hasten the rounding-up; by the second of June
Mercot would be restored to his friends, and Miss Victor too, if Mary
had got on her track again.  But who was arranging all that?  Was Mary
alone in the business, and where was Sandy?  Mercot and Gaudian would
be arriving in Scotland, and telegraphing to me any moment, and I could
not answer them.  I had the maddening feeling that everything was on a
knife edge, that the chances of a blunder were infinite, and that I
could do nothing.  To crown all, I was tortured by the thought of David
Warcliff.  I had come to the conclusion that Mary's farewell words at
Hill Street had meant nothing: indeed, I couldn't see how she could
have found out anything about the little boy, for as yet we had never
hit on the faintest clue, and the thought of him made success with the
other two seem no better than failure.  Likewise I was paying the
penalty for the assurance about Medina which I had rashly expressed to
Mary.  I felt the terror of the man in a new way; he seemed to me
impregnable beyond the hope of assault; and while I detested him I also
shuddered at him--a novel experience, for hitherto I had always found
that hatred drove out fear.

He was abominable during those two days--abominable but also wonderful.
He seemed to love the sight of me, as if I were a visible and intimate
proof of his power, and he treated me as an Oriental tyrant might treat
a favourite slave.  He unbent to me as a relief to his long spiritual
tension, and let me see the innermost dreams of his heart.  I realised
with a shudder that he thought me a part of that hideous world he had
created, and--I think for the first time in the business--I knew fear
on my own account.  If he dreamed I could fail him he would become a
ravening beast....  I remember that he talked a good deal of politics,
but, ye gods! what a change from the respectable conservative views
which he had once treated me to--a Tory revival owing to the women and
that sort of thing!  He declared that behind all the world's creeds,
Christianity, Buddhism, Islam and the rest, lay an ancient
devil-worship and that it was raising its head again.  Bolshevism, he
said, was a form of it, and he attributed the success of Bolshevism in
Asia to a revival of what he called Shamanism--I think that was the
word.  By his way of it the War had cracked the veneer everywhere and
the real stuff was showing through.  He rejoiced in the prospect,
because the old faiths were not ethical codes but mysteries of the
spirit, and they gave a chance for men who had found the ancient magic.
I think he wanted to win everything that civilisation would give him,
and then wreck it, for his hatred of Britain was only a part of his
hatred of all that most men hold in love and repute.  The common
anarchist was a fool to him, for the cities and temples of the whole
earth were not sufficient sacrifice to appease his vanity.  I knew now
what a Goth and a Hun meant, and what had been the temper of scourges
like Attila and Timour....  Mad, you will say.  Yes, mad beyond doubt,
but it was the most convincing kind of madness.  I had to fight hard,
by keeping my mind firm on my job, to prevent my nerve giving.

I went to bed on the last night of May in something very near despair,
comforting myself, I remember, by what I had said to Mary, that one
must go on to the finish and trust to luck changing in the last ten
minutes.  I woke to a gorgeous morning, and when I came down to
breakfast I was in a shade better spirits.  Medina proposed a run out
into the country and a walk on some high ground.  "It will give us an
appetite for the Thursday dinner," he said.  Then he went upstairs to
telephone, and I was in the smoking-room filling my pipe when suddenly
Greenslade was shown in.

I didn't listen to what he had to say, but seized a sheet of paper and
scribbled a note: "take this to the head porter at the Club and he will
give you any telegram there is for me.  If there is one from Gaudian,
as there must be, wire him to start at once and go straight to Julius
Victor.  Then wire the Duke to meet him there.  Do you understand?
Now, what have you to tell me?"

"Only that your wife says things are going pretty well.  You must turn
up to-night at ten-thirty at the Fields of Eden.  Also somehow you must
get a latch-key for this house, and see that the door is not chained."

"Nothing more?"

"Nothing more."

"And Peter John?"

Greenslade was enlarging on Peter John's case when Medina entered.  "I
came round to tell Sir Richard that it was all a false alarm.  Only the
spring fret.  The surgeon was rather cross at being taken so far on a
fool's errand.  Lady Hannay thought he had better hear it from me
personally, for then he could start on his holiday with an easy mind."

I was so short with him that Medina must have seen how far my thoughts
were from my family.  As we motored along the road to Tring I talked of
the approaching holiday, like a toadying schoolboy who has been asked
to stay for a cricket week with some senior.  Medina said he had not
fixed the place, but it must be somewhere south in the sun--Algiers,
perhaps, and the fringes of the desert, or better still some remote
Mediterranean spot where we could have both sunlight and blue sea.  He
talked of the sun like a fire-worshipper.  He wanted to steep his limbs
in it, and wash his soul in light, and swim in wide warm waters.  He
rhapsodised like a poet, but what struck me about his rhapsodies was
how little sensuous they were.  The man's body was the most obedient
satellite of his mind, and I don't believe he had any weakness of the
flesh.  What he wanted was a bath of radiance for his spirit.

We walked all day on the hills around Ivinghoe, and had a late lunch in
the village inn.  He spoke very little, but strode over the thymy downs
with his eyes abstracted.  Once, as we sat on the summit, he seemed to
sigh and his face for a moment was very grave.

"What is the highest pleasure?" he asked suddenly.  "Attainment? ...
No.  Renunciation."

"So I've heard the parsons say," I observed.

He did not heed me.  "To win everything that mankind has ever striven
for, and then to cast it aside.  To be Emperor of the Earth and then to
slip out of the ken of mankind and take up the sandals and
begging-bowl.  The man who can do that has conquered the world--he is
not a king but a god.  Only he must be a king first to achieve it."

I cannot hope to reproduce the atmosphere of that scene, the bare top
of the hill in the blue summer weather, and that man, nearing, as he
thought, the summit of success, and suddenly questioning all mortal
codes of value.  In all my dealings with Medina I was obsessed by the
sense of my inferiority to him, that I was like a cab horse compared to
an Arab stallion, and now I felt it like a blow in the face.  That was
the kind of thing Napoleon might have said--and done--had his schemes
not gone astray.  I knew I was contending with a devil, but I know also
that it was a great devil.

We returned to town just in time to dress for dinner, and all my
nervousness revived a hundredfold.  This was the night of crisis, and I
loathed having to screw myself up to emergencies late in the day.  Such
things should take place in the early morning.  It was like going over
the top in France; I didn't mind it so much when it happened during a
drizzling dawn, when one was anyhow depressed and only half-awake, but
I abominated an attack in the cold-blooded daylight, or in the dusk
when one wanted to relax.

That evening I shaved, I remember, very carefully, as if I were decking
myself out for a sacrifice.  I wondered what would be my feelings when
I next shaved.  I wondered what Mary and Sandy were doing....

      *      *      *      *      *

What Mary and Sandy were doing at that precise moment I do not know,
but I can now unfold certain contemporary happenings which were then
hid from me....  Mercot and Gaudian were having a late tea in the
Midland express, having nearly broken their necks in a furious motor
race to catch the train at Hawick.  The former was clean and shaven,
his hair nicely cut, and his clothes a fairly well-fitting ready-made
suit of flannels.  He was deeply sunburnt, immensely excited, and
constantly breaking in on Gaudian's study of the works of Sir Walter
Scott.

"Newhover is to be let loose to-day.  What do you suppose he'll do?" he
asked.

"Nothing--yet awhile," was the answer.  "I said certain things to him.
He cannot openly go back to Germany, and I do not think he dare come to
England.  He fears the vengeance of his employer.  He will disappear
for a little, and then emerge in some new crime with a new name and a
changed face.  He is the eternal scoundrel."

The young man's face lighted up pleasantly.  "If I live to be a
hundred," he said, "I can't enjoy anything half as much as that clip I
gave him on the jaw."

      *      *      *      *      *

In a room in a country house on the Middlesex and Bucks borders Turpin
was talking to a girl.  He was in evening dress, a very point-device
young man, and she was wearing a wonderful gown, grass-green in colour
and fantastically cut.  Her face was heavily made up, and her scarlet
lips and stained eyebrows stood out weirdly against the dead white of
her skin.  But it was a different face from that which I first saw in
the dancing-hall.  Life had come back to it, the eyes were no longer
dull like pebbles, but were again the windows of a soul.  There was
still fear in those eyes and bewilderment, but they were human again,
and shone at this moment with a wild affection.

"I am terrified," she said.  "I have to go to that awful place with
that awful man.  Please, Antoine, please, do not leave me.  You have
brought me out of a grave, and you cannot let me slip back again."

He held her close to him and stroked her hair.

"I think it is--how do you say it?--the last lap.  My very dear one, we
cannot fail our friends.  I follow you soon.  The grey man--I do not
know his name--he told me so, and he is a friend.  A car is ordered for
me half an hour after you drive off with that Odell."

"But what does it all mean?" she asked.

"I do not know, but I think--I am sure--it is the work of our friends.
Consider, my little one.  I am brought to the house where you are, but
those who have charge of you do not know I am here.  When Odell comes I
am warned and locked in my room.  I am not allowed out of it.  I have
had no exercise except sparring with that solemn English valet.  He
indeed has been most amiable, and has allowed me to keep myself in
form.  He boxes well, too, but I have studied under our own Jules and
he is no match for me.  But when the coast is clear I am permitted to
see you, and I have waked you from sleep, my princess.  Therefore so
far it is good.  As to what will happen to-night I do not know, but I
fancy it is the end of our troubles.  The grey man has told me as much.
If you go back to that dance place, I think I follow you, and then we
shall see something.  Have no fear, little one.  You go back as a
prisoner no more, but as an actress to play a part, and I know you will
play the part well.  You will not permit the man Odell to suspect.
Presently I come, and I think there will be an _claircissement_--also,
please God, a reckoning."

The wooden-faced valet entered and signed to the young man, who kissed
the girl and followed him.  A few minutes later Turpin was in his own
room, with the door locked behind him.  Then came a sound of the wheels
of a car outside, and he listened with a smile on his face.  As he
stood before the glass putting the finishing touches to his smooth hair
he was still smiling--an ominous smile.

      *      *      *      *      *

Other things, which I did not know about, were happening that evening.
From a certain modest office near Tower Hill a gentleman emerged to
seek his rooms in Mayfair.  His car was waiting for him at the street
corner, but to his surprise as he got into it someone entered also from
the other side, and the address to which the car ultimately drove was
not Clarges Street.  The office, too, which he had left locked and
bolted was presently open, and men were busy there till far into the
night--men who did not belong to his staff.  An eminent publicist, who
was the special patron of the distressed populations of Central Europe,
was starting out to dine at his club, when he was unaccountably
delayed, and had to postpone his dinner.  The Spanish copper company in
London Wall had been doing little business of late, except to give
luncheons to numerous gentlemen, but that night its rooms were lit, and
people who did not look like city clerks were investigating its
documents In Paris a certain French count of royalist proclivities, who
had a box that night for the opera and was giving a little dinner
beforehand, did not keep his appointment, to the discomfiture of his
guests, and a telephone message to his rooms near the Champs Elyses
elicited no reply.  There was a gruff fellow at the other end who
discouraged conversation.  A worthy Glasgow accountant, an elder of the
kirk and a prospective candidate for Parliament, did not return that
evening to his family, and the police, when appealed to, gave curious
answers.  The office, just off Fleet Street, of the _Christian
Advocate_ of Milwaukee, a paper which cannot have had much of a
circulation in England, was filled about six o'clock with silent
preoccupied people, and the manager, surprised and rather wild of eye,
was taken off in a taxi by two large gentlemen who had not had
previously the honour of his acquaintance.  Odd things seemed to be
happening up and down the whole world.  More than one ship did not sail
at the appointed hour because of the interest of certain people in the
passenger lists; a meeting of decorous bankers in Genoa was
unexpectedly interrupted by the police; offices of the utmost
respectability were occupied and examined by the blundering minions of
the law; several fashionable actresses did not appear to gladden their
admirers, and more than one pretty dancer was absent from the scene of
her usual triumphs; a Senator in Western America, a high official in
Rome, and four deputies in France found their movements restricted, and
a Prince of the Church, after receiving a telephone message, fell to
his prayers.  A mining magnate in Westphalia, visiting Antwerp on
business, found that he was not permitted to catch the train he had
settled on.  Five men, all highly placed, and one woman, for no cause
apparent to their relatives, chose to rid themselves of life between
the hours of six and seven.  There was an unpleasant occurrence in a
town on the Loire, where an Englishman, motoring to the south of
France--a typical English squire, well known in hunting circles in
Shropshire--was visited at his hotel by two ordinary Frenchmen, whose
conversation seemed unpalatable to him.  He was passing something from
his waistcoat pocket to his mouth, when they had the audacity to lay
violent hands on him, and to slip something over his wrists.

      *      *      *      *      *

It was a heavenly clear evening when Medina and I set out to walk the
half-mile to Mervyn Street.  I had been so cloistered and harassed
during the past weeks that I had missed the coming of summer.  Suddenly
the world seemed to have lighted up, and the streets were filled with
that intricate odour of flowers, scent, hot wood pavements and asphalt,
which is the summer smell of London.  Cars were waiting at house-doors,
and women in pretty clothes getting into them; men were walking
dinner-wards, with some of whom we exchanged greetings; the whole earth
seemed full of laughter and happy movement.  And it was shut off from
me.  I seemed to be living on the other side of a veil from this
cheerful world, and I could see nothing but a lonely old man with a
tragic face waiting for a lost boy.  There was one moment at the corner
of Berkeley Square when I accidentally jostled Medina, and had to
clench my hands and bite my lips to keep myself from throttling him
there and then.

The dining-room in Mervyn Street looked west, and the evening light
strove with the candles on the table, and made a fairy-like scene of
the flowers and silver.  It was a full meeting--fifteen, I think--and
the divine weather seemed to have put everybody in the best of spirits.
I had almost forgotten Medina's repute with the ordinary man, and was
staggered anew at the signs of his popularity.  He was in the chair
that evening, and a better chairman of such a dinner I have never seen.
He had the right word for everybody, and we sat down to table like a
party of undergraduates celebrating a successful cricket-match.

I was on the chairman's right hand, next to Burminster, with
Palliser-Yeates opposite me.  At first the talk was chiefly about the
Derby and Ascot entries, about which Medina proved uncommonly well
posted.  He had a lot of inside knowledge from the Chilton stables, and
showed himself a keen critic of form; also he was a perfect pundit
about the pedigree of race-horses, and made Burminster, who fancied
himself in the same line, gape with admiration.  I suppose a brain like
his could get up any subject at lightning speed, and he thought this
kind of knowledge useful to him, for I don't believe he cared more for
a horse than for a cat.

Once, during the Somme battle, I went to dine at a French chateau
behind the lines, as the guest of the only son of the house.  It was an
ancient place, with fishponds and terraces, and there were only two
people in it, an old Comtesse and a girl of fifteen called Simone.  At
dinner, I remember, a decrepit butler filled for me five glasses of
different clarets, till I found the one I preferred.  Afterwards I
walked in the garden with Simone in a wonderful yellow twilight,
watching the fat carp in the ponds, and hearing the grumbling of the
distant guns.  I felt in that hour the poignant contrast of youth and
innocence and peace with that hideous world of battle a dozen miles
off.  To-night I had the same feeling--the jolly party of clean, hard,
decent fellows, and the abominable hinterland of mystery and crime of
which the man at the head of the table was the master.  I must have
been poor company, but happily everybody was talkative, and I did my
best to grin at Burminster's fooling.

Presently the talk drifted away from sport.  Palliser-Yeates was
speaking, and his fresh boyish colour contrasted oddly with his wise
eyes and grave voice.

"I can't make out what is happening," he said in reply to a remark of
Leithen's.  "The City has suddenly become jumpy, and there's no reason
in the facts that I can see for it.  There's been a good deal of
realisation of stocks, chiefly by foreign holders, but there are a
dozen explanations of that.  No, there's a kind of malaise about, and
it's unpleasantly like what I remember in June 1914.  I was in
Whittingtons' then, and we suddenly found the foundations beginning to
crumble--oh yes, before the Serajevo murders.  You remember Charlie
Esmond's smash---well, that was largely due to the spasm of insecurity
that shook the world.  People now and then get a feeling in their bones
that something bad is going to happen.  And probably they are right,
and it has begun to happen."

"Good Lord!" said Leithen.  "I don't like this.  Is it another war?"

Palliser-Yeates did not answer at once.  "It looks like it.  I admit
it's almost unthinkable, but then all wars are really unthinkable, till
you're in the middle of them."

"Nonsense!" Medina cried.  "There's no nation on the globe fit to go to
war, except half-civilised races with whom it is the normal condition.
You forget how much we know since 1914.  You couldn't get even France
to fight without provoking a revolution--a middle-class revolution, the
kind that succeeds."

Burminster looked relieved.  "The next war," he said, "will be a dashed
unpleasant affair.  So far as I can see there will be very few soldiers
killed, but an enormous number of civilians.  The safest place will be
the front.  There will be such a rush to get into the army that we'll
have to have conscription to make people remain in civil life.  The
_embusqus_ will be the regulars."

As he spoke someone entered the room, and to my amazement I saw that it
was Sandy.

He was looking extraordinarily fit and as brown as a berry.  He
murmured an apology to the chairman for being late, patted the bald
patch on Burminster's head, and took a seat at the other end of the
table.  "I'll cut in where you've got to," he told the waiters.
"No--don't bother about fish.  I want some English roast beef and a
tankard of beer."

There was a chorus of questions.

"Just arrived an hour ago.  I've been in the East--Egypt and Palestine.
Flew most of the way back."

He nodded to me, and smiled at Medina and raised his tankard to him.

I was not in a good position for watching Medina's face, but so far as
I could see it was unchanged.  He hated Sandy, but he didn't fear him
now, when his plans had practically come to fruition.  Indeed he was
very gracious to him, and asked in his most genial tones what he had
been after.

"Civil aviation," said Sandy.  "I'm going to collar the pilgrim traffic
to the Holy Places.  You've been in Mecca?" he asked Pugh, who nodded.
"You remember the _hamelidari_ crowd who used to organise the transport
from Mespot.  Well, I'm a _hamelidari_ on a big scale.  I am prepared
to bring the rank of _hadji_ within reach of the poorest and feeblest.
I'm going to be the great benefactor of the democracy of Islam, by
means of a fleet of patched-up 'planes and a few kindred spirits that
know the East.  I'll let you fellows in on the ground-floor when I
float my company.  John"--he addressed Palliser-Yeates--"I look to you
to manage the flotation."

Sandy was obviously ragging, and no one took him seriously.  He sat
there with his merry brown face, looking absurdly young and girlish, so
that the most suspicious could have seen nothing more in him than the
ordinary mad Englishman who lived for adventure and novelty.  Me he
never addressed, and I was glad of it, for I was utterly at sea.  What
did he mean by turning up now?  What part was he to play in the events
of the night?  I could not have controlled the anxiety in my voice if I
had been forced to speak to him.

A servant brought Medina a note, which he opened at leisure and read.
"No answer," he said, and stuffed it into his pocket.  I had a
momentary dread that he might have got news of Macgillivray's round-up,
but his manner reassured me.

There were people there who wanted to turn Sandy to other subjects,
especially Fulleylove and the young Cambridge don, Nightingale.  They
wanted to know about South Arabia, of which at the time the world was
talking.  Some fellow, I forget his name, was trying to raise an
expedition to explore it.

"It's the last geographical secret left unriddled," he said, and now he
spoke seriously.  "Well, perhaps not quite the last.  I'm told there's
still something to be done with the southern tributaries of the Amazon.
Mornington, you know, believes there's a chance of finding some of the
Inca people still dwelling in the unexplored upper glens.  But all the
rest have gone.  Since the beginning of the century we've made a clean
sweep of the jolly old mysteries that made the world worth living in.
We have been to both the Poles, and to Lhasa, and to the Mountains of
the Moon.  We haven't got to the top of Everest yet, but we know what
it is like.  Mecca and Medina are as stale as Bournemouth.  We know
that there's nothing very stupendous in the Brahmaputra gorges.
There's little left for a man's imagination to play with, and our
children will grow up in a dull, shrunken world.  Except, of course,
the Great Southern Desert of Arabia."

"Do you think it can be crossed?" Nightingale asked.

"It's hard to say, and the man who tried it would take almighty risks.
I don't fancy myself pinning my life to milk camels.  They're chancy
brutes."

"I don't believe there's anything there," said Fulleylove, "except
eight hundred miles of soft sand."

"I'm not so sure.  I've heard strange stories.  There was a man I met
once in Oman, who went west from the Manah oasis..."

He stopped to taste the club madeira, then set down the glass and
looked at his watch.

"Great Scott!" he said.  "I must be off.  I'm sorry, Mr. President, but
I felt I must see you all again.  You don't mind my butting in?"

He was half-way to the door, when Burminster asked where he was going.

"To seek the straw in some sequestered grange....  Meaning the
ten-thirty from King's Cross.  I'm off to Scotland to see my father.
Remember, I'm the last prop of an ancient house.  Good-bye, all of you.
I'll tell you about my schemes at the next dinner."

As the door closed on him I had a sense of the blackest depression and
loneliness.  He was my one great ally, and he came and disappeared like
a ship in the night, without a word to me.  I felt like a blind bat,
and I must have showed my feeling in my face, for Medina saw it and put
it down, I daresay, to my dislike of Sandy.  He asked Palliser-Yeates
to take his place.  "It's not the Scotch express, like Arbuthnot, but
I'm off for a holiday very soon, and I have an appointment I must
keep."  That was all to the good, for I had been wondering how I was to
make an excuse for my visit to the Fields of Eden.  He asked me when I
would be back, and I said listlessly within the next hour.  He nodded.
"I'll be home by then, and can let you in if Odell has gone to bed."
Then with a little chaff of Burminster he left, so much at ease that I
was positive he had had no bad news.  I waited for five minutes and
followed suit.  The time was a quarter past ten.

      *      *      *      *      *

At the entrance to the Club in Wellesley Street I expected to have some
difficulty, but the man in the box at the head of the stairs, after a
sharp glance at me, let me pass.  He was not the fellow who had been
there on my visit with Archie Roylance and yet I had a queer sense of
having seen his face before.  I stepped into the dancing-room with its
heavy flavour of scent and its infernal din of mountebank music, sat
down at a side table and ordered a liqueur.

There was a difference in the place, but at first I could not put my
finger on it.  Everything seemed the same; the only face I knew was
Miss Victor's, and that had the same mask-like pallor; she was dancing
with a boy, who seemed to be trying to talk to her and getting few
replies.  Odell I did not see, nor the Jew with the beard.  I observed
with interest the little casement above from which I had looked when I
burgled the curiosity shop.  There were fewer people to-night, but
apparently the same class.

No, not quite the same class.  The women were the same, but the men
were different.  They were older and more--how shall I put
it?--responsible-looking, and had not the air of the professional
dancing partner or the young man on the spree.  They were heavier
footed, too, though good enough performers.  Somehow I got the notion
that most of them were not habitus of this kind of place and were here
with a purpose.

As soon as this idea dawned on me I began to notice other things.
There were fewer foreign waiters, and their number was steadily
decreasing.  Drinks would be ordered and would be long in coming; a
servant, once he left the hall, seemed to be unaccountably detained.
And then I observed another thing.  There was a face looking down from
the casement above; I could see it like a shadow behind the dirty glass.

Presently Odell appeared, a resplendent figure in evening dress, with a
diamond solitaire in his shirt and a red silk handkerchief in his left
sleeve.  He looked massive and formidable, but puffier than ever, and
his small pig's eyes were very bright.  I fancied he had been having a
glass or two, just enough to excite him.  He swaggered about among the
small tables, turning now and then to stare at the girl in green, and
then went out again.  I looked at my watch, and saw that it was a
quarter to eleven.

When I lifted my head Mary had arrived.  No more paint and powder and
bizarre clothes.  She was wearing the pale blue gown she had worn at
our Hunt Ball in March, and her hair was dressed in the simple way I
loved, which showed all the lights and shadows in the gold.  She came
in like a young queen, cast a swift glance round the room, and then,
shading her eyes with her hand, looked up towards the casement.  It
must have been a signal, for I saw a hand wave.

As she stood there, very still and poised like a runner, the music
stopped suddenly.  The few men who were still dancing spoke to their
partners and moved towards the door.  I observed the bearded Jew hurry
in and look round.  A man touched him on the arm and drew him away, and
that was the last I saw of him.

Suddenly Odell reappeared.  He must have had some warning which
required instant action.  I shall never know what it was, but it may
have announced the round-up, and the course to be followed towards the
hostages.  He signed peremptorily to Miss Victor and went forward as if
to take her arm.  "You gotta come along," I heard, when my eyes were
occupied with a new figure.

Turpin was there, a pale taut young man with his brows knit, as I
remembered them in tight corners in France.  The green girl had darted
to Mary's side, and Turpin strode up to her.

"Adela, my dear," he said, "I think it is time for you to be going
home."

The next I saw was Miss Victor's hand clutching his arm and Odell
advancing with a flush on his sallow face.

"You letta go that goil," he was saying.  "You got no business with
her.  She's my goil."

Turpin was smiling.  "I think not, my friend."  He disengaged Adela's
arm and put her behind him, and with a swift step struck Odell a
resounding smack on the cheek with the flat of his hand.

The man seemed to swell with fury.  "Hell!" he cried, with a torrent of
Bowery oaths.  "My smart guy, I've got something in my mitt for you.
You for the sleep pill."

I would have given a fortune to be in Turpin's place, for I felt that a
scrap was what I needed to knit up my ragged nerves.  But I couldn't
chip in, for this was clearly his special quarrel, and very soon I saw
that he was not likely to need my help.

Smiling wickedly, he moved round the pug, who had his fists up.
"_Fiche-moi la paix_," he crooned.  "My friend, I am going to massacre
you."

I stepped towards Mary, for I wanted to get the women outside, but she
was busy attending to Miss Victor, whom the strain of the evening had
left on the verge of swooning.  So I only saw bits of the fight.
Turpin kept Odell at long range, for in-fighting would have been fatal,
and he tired him with his lightning movements, till the professional's
bad training told and his wind went.  When the Frenchman saw his
opponent puffing and his cheeks mottling he started to sail in.  That
part I witnessed, and I hope that Mary and Miss Victor did not
understand old Turpin's language, for he spoke gently to himself the
whole time, and it was the quintessence of all the esoteric abuse that
the French _poilu_ accumulated during the four years of war.  His
tremendous reach gave him an advantage, he was as light on his legs as
a fencer, and his arms seemed to shoot out with the force of a
steam-hammer.  I realised what I had never known before, that his
slimness was deceptive, and that stripped he would be a fine figure of
sinew and bone.  Also I understood that a big fellow, however
formidable, if he is untrained and a little drunk, will go down before
speed and quick wits and the deftness of youth.

They fought for just over six minutes.  Turpin's deadliest blows were
on Odell's body, but the knockout came with one on the point of the
chin.  The big man crumpled up in a heap, and the back of his head
banged on the floor.  Turpin wrapped a wisp of a handkerchief round his
knuckles, which had suffered from Odell's solitaire, and looked about
him.

"What is to become of this offal?" he asked.

One of the dancers replied.  "We will look after him, sir.  The whole
house is in our hands.  This man is wanted on a good many grounds."

I walked up to the prostrate Odell, and took the latch-key from his
waistcoat pocket.  Turpin and Adela had gone, and Mary stood watching
me.  I observed that she was very pale.

"I am going to Hill Street," I said.

"I will come later," was her answer.  "I hope in less than an hour.
The key will let you in.  There will be people there to keep the door
open for me."

Her face had the alert and absorbed look that old Peter Pienaar's used
to have when he was after big game.  There was no other word spoken
between us.  She entered a big saloon-car which was waiting in the
street below, and I walked to Royston Square to find a taxi.  It was
not yet eleven o'clock.




_Chapter XIX_

_The Night of the First of June--Later_

A little after eleven that night a late walker in Palmyra Square would
have seen a phenomenon rare in the dingy neighbourhood.  A large
motor-car drew up at the gate of Number 7, where dwelt the teacher of
music who had long retired to rest.  A woman descended, wearing a dark
cloak and carrying a parcel, and stood for a second looking across the
road to where the lean elms in the centre of the square made a patch of
shade.  She seemed to find there what she expected, for she hastened to
the gate of Number 4.  She did not approach the front door, but ran
down the path to the back where the tradesmen called, and as soon as
she was out of sight several figures emerged from the shadow and moved
towards the gate.

Miss Outhwaite opened to her tap.  "My, but you're late, miss," she
whispered, as the woman brushed past her into the dim kitchen.  Then
she gasped, for some transformation had taken place in the
district-visitor.  It was no longer a faded spinster that she saw, but
a dazzling lady, gorgeously dressed as it seemed to her, and of a
remarkable beauty.

"I've brought your hat, Elsie," she said.  "It's rather a nice one, and
I think you'll like it.  Now go at once and open the front door."

"But Madame..." the girl gasped.

"Never mind Madame.  You are done with Madame.  To-morrow you will come
and see me at this address," and she gave her a slip of paper.  "I will
see that you do not suffer.  Now hurry, my dear."

The girl seemed to be mesmerised, and turned to obey.  The
district-visitor followed her, but did not wait in the hall.  Instead,
she ran lightly up the stairs, guiding herself by a small electric
torch, and when the front door was open and four silent figures had
entered she was nowhere to be seen.

For the next quarter of an hour an inquisitive passer-by would have
noted lights spring out and then die away in more than one room of
Number 4.  He might have also heard the sound of low excited speech.
At the end of that space of time he would have seen the
district-visitor descend the steps and enter the big car which had
moved up to the gate.  She was carrying something in her arms.

Within, in a back room, a furious woman was struggling with a
telephone, from which she got no answer, since the line had been cut.
And an old woman sat in a chair by the hearth, raving and muttering,
with a face like death.


When I got to Hill Street, I waited till the taxi had driven off before
I entered.  There was a man standing in the porch of the house
opposite, and as I waited another passed me, who nodded.  "Good
evening, Sir Richard," he said, and though I did not recognise him I
knew where he came from.  My spirits were at their lowest ebb, and not
even the sight of these arrangements could revive them.  For I knew
that, though we had succeeded with Miss Victor and Mercot, we had
failed with the case which mattered most.  I was going to try to scare
Medina or to buy him, and I felt that both purposes were futile, for
the awe of him was still like a black fog on my soul.

I let myself in with Odell's latch-key and left the heavy door ajar.
Then I switched on the staircase lights and mounted to the library.  I
left the lights burning behind me, for they would be needed by those
who followed.

Medina was standing by the fireplace, in which logs had been laid ready
for a match.  As usual, he had only the one lamp lit, that on his
writing-table.  He had a slip of paper in his hand, one of the two
which had lain in the top drawer, as I saw by the dates and the ruled
lines.  I fancy he had been attempting in vain to ring up Palmyra
Square.  Some acute suspicion had been aroused in him, and he had been
trying to take action.  His air of leisure was the kind which is
hastily assumed; a minute before I was convinced he had been furiously
busy.

There was surprise in his face when he saw me.

"Hullo!" he said, "how did you get in?  I didn't hear you ring.  I told
Odell to go to bed."

I was feeling so weak and listless that I wanted to sit down, so I
dropped into a chair out of the circle of the lamp.

"Yes," I said.  "Odell's in bed all right.  I let myself in with his
key.  I've just seen that Bowery tough put to sleep with a crack on the
chin from Turpin.  You know--the Marquis de la Tour du Pin."

I had a good strategic position, for I could see his face clearly and
he could only see the outline of mine.

"What on earth are you talking about?" he said.

"Odell has been knocked out.  You see, Turpin has taken Miss Victor
back to her father."  I looked at my watch.  "And by this time Lord
Mercot should be in London--unless the Scotch express is late."

A great tide of disillusion must have swept over his mind, but his face
gave no sign of it.  It had grown stern, but as composed as a judge's.

"You're behaving as if you were mad.  What has come over you?  I know
nothing of Lord Mercot--you mean the Alcester boy?  Or Miss Victor."

"Oh yes, you do," I said wearily.  I did not know where to begin, for I
wanted to get him at once to the real business.  "It's a long story.
Do you want me to tell it when you know it all already?"  I believe I
yawned and I felt so tired I could hardly put the sentences together.

"I insist that you explain this nonsense," was his reply.  One thing he
must have realised by now, that he had no power over me, for his jaw
was set and his eyes stern, as if he were regarding not a satellite,
but an enemy and an equal.

"Well, you and your friends for your own purposes took three hostages,
and I have made it my business to free them.  I let you believe that
your tomfoolery had mastered me--your performance in this room and
Newhover and Madame Breda and the old blind lady and all the rest of
it.  When you thought I was drugged and demented I was specially wide
awake.  I had to abuse your hospitality--rather a dirty game, you may
say, but then I was dealing with a scoundrel.  I went to Norway when
you thought I was in bed at Fosse, and I found Mercot, and I expect at
this moment Newhover is feeling rather cheap....  Miss Victor, too.
She wasn't very difficult, once we hit on the Fields of Eden.  You're a
very clever man, Mr Medina, but you oughtn't to circulate doggerel
verses.  Take my advice and stick to good poetry."

By this time the situation must have been clear to him, but there was
not a quiver in that set hard face.  I take off my hat to the best
actor I have ever met--the best but one, the German count who lies
buried at the farm of Gavrelle.

"You've gone off your head," he said, and his quiet considerate voice
belied his eyes.

"Oh no!  I rather wish I had.  I hate to think that there can be so
base a thing in the world as you.  A man with the brains of a god and
living only to glut his rotten vanity!  You should be scotched like a
snake."

For a moment I had a blessed thought that he was about to go for me,
for I would have welcomed a scrap like nothing else on earth.  There
may have been a flicker of passion, but it was quickly suppressed.  His
eyes had become grave and reproachful.

"I have been kind to you," he said, "and have treated you as a friend.
This is my reward.  The most charitable explanation is that your wits
are unhinged.  But you had better leave this house."

"Not before you hear me out.  I have something to propose, Mr Medina.
You have still a third hostage in your hands.  We are perfectly aware
of the syndicate you have been working with--the Barcelona nut
business, and the Jacobite count, and your friend the Shropshire
master-of-hounds.  Scotland Yard has had its hand over the lot for
months, and to-night the hand will be closed.  That shop is shut for
good.  Now listen to me, for I have a proposal to make.  You have the
ambition of the devil, and have already made for yourself a great name.
I will do nothing to smirch that name.  I will swear a solemn oath to
hold my tongue.  I will go away from England, if you like.  I will bury
the memory of the past months, and my knowledge will never be used to
put a spoke in your wheel.  Also, since your syndicate is burst up, you
will want money.  Well, I will give you one hundred thousand pounds.
And in return for my silence and my cash I ask you to restore to me
David Warcliff, safe and sane.  Sane, I say, for whatever you have made
of the poor little chap you have got to unmake it."

I had made up my mind about this offer as I came along in the taxi.  It
was a big sum, but I had more money than I needed, and Blenkiron, who
had millions, would lend a hand.

His face showed no response, no interest, only the same stern
melancholy regard.

"Poor devil!" he said, "You're madder than I thought."

My lassitude was disappearing, and I began to get angry.

"If you do not agree," I said, "I will blacken your reputation
throughout the civilised world.  What use will England have for a
kidnapper and a blackmailer and--a--a--bogus magician?"

But as I spoke I knew that my threats were foolish.  He smiled, a wise,
pitying smile, which made me shiver with wrath.

"No, it is you who will appear as the blackmailer," he said softly.
"Consider.  You are making the most outrageous charges.  I don't quite
follow your meaning, but clearly they are outrageous--and what evidence
have you to support them?  Your own dreams.  Who will believe you?  I
have had the good fortune to make many friends, and they are loyal
friends."  There was a gentle regret in his voice.  "Your story will be
laughed to scorn.  Of course people will be sorry for you, for you are
popular in a way.  They will say that a meritorious soldier, more
notable perhaps for courage than for brains, has gone crazy, and they
will comment on the long-drawn-out effects of the War.  I must of
course protect myself.  If you blackguard me I will prosecute you for
slander and get your mental condition examined."

It was only too true.  I had no evidence except my own word.  I knew
that it would be impossible to link up Medina with the doings of the
syndicate--he was too clever for that.  His blind mother would die on
the rack before she spoke, and his tools could not give him away,
because they were tools and knew nothing.  The world would laugh at me
if I opened my mouth.  At that moment I think I had my first full
realisation of Medina's quality.  Here was a man who had just learned
that his pet schemes were shattered, who had had his vanity wounded to
the quick by the revelation of how I had fooled him, and yet he could
play what was left of the game with coolness and precision.  I had
struck the largest size of opponent.

"What about the hundred thousand pounds, then?" I asked.  "That is my
offer for David Warcliff."

"You are very good," he said mockingly.  "I might feel insulted, if I
did not know you were a lunatic."

I sat there staring at the figure in the glow of the one lamp, which
seemed to wax more formidable as I looked, and a thousandfold more
sinister.  I saw the hideous roundness of his head, the mercilessness
of his eyes, so that I wondered how I had ever thought him handsome.
But now that most of his game was spoiled he only seemed the greater,
the more assured.  Were there no gaps in his defences?  He had kinks in
him--witness the silly rhyme which had given me the first clue....  Was
there no weakness in that panoply which I could use?  Physical
fear--physical pain--could anything be done with that?

I got to my feet with a blind notion of closing with him.  He divined
my intention, for he showed something in his hand which gleamed dully.
"Take care," he said.  "I can defend myself against any maniac."

"Put it away," I said hopelessly.  "You're safe enough from me.  My
God, I hope that somewhere there is a hell."  I felt as feeble as a
babe, and all the while the thought of the little boy was driving me
mad.

      *      *      *      *      *

Suddenly I saw Medina's eyes look over my shoulder.  Someone had come
into the room, and I turned and found Kharma.

He was in evening dress, wearing a turban, and in the dusk his dark
malign face seemed an embodied sneer at my helplessness.  I did not see
how Medina took his arrival, for all at once something seemed to give
in my head.  For the Indian I felt now none of the awe which I had for
the other, only a flaming, overpowering hate.  That this foul thing out
of the East should pursue his devilries unchecked seemed to me beyond
bearing.  I forgot Medina's pistol and everything else, and went for
him like a wild beast.

He dodged me, and, before I knew, had pulled off his turban, and tossed
it in my face.

"Don't be an old ass, Dick," he said.

Panting with fury, I stopped short and stared.  The voice was Sandy's,
and so was the figure....  And the face, too, when I came to look into
it.  He had done something with the corners of his eyebrows and tinted
the lids with kohl, but the eyes, which I had never before seen
properly opened, were those of my friend.

"What an artist the world has lost in me!" he laughed, and tried to
tidy his disordered hair.

Then he nodded to Medina.  "We meet again sooner than we expected.  I
missed my train, and came to look for Dick....  Lay down that pistol,
please.  I happen to be armed too, you see.  It's no case for shooting
anyhow.  Do you mind if I smoke?"

He flung himself into an arm-chair and lit a cigarette.  Once more I
was conscious of my surroundings, for hitherto for all I knew I might
have been arguing in a desert.  My eyes had cleared and my brain was
beginning to work again.  I saw the great room with its tiers of books,
some glimmering, some dusky; Sandy taking his ease in his chair and
gazing placidly up into Medina's face; Medina with his jaw set but his
eyes troubled--yes, for the first time I saw flickers of perplexity in
those eyes.

"Dick, I suppose, has been reasoning with you," Sandy said mildly.
"And you have told him that he was a madman?  Quite right.  He is.  You
have pointed out to him that his story rests on his unsupported
evidence, which no one will believe, for I admit it is an incredible
tale.  You have warned him that if he opens his mouth you will have him
shut up as a lunatic.  Is that correct, Dick?"

"Well," he continued, looking blandly at Medina, "that was a natural
view for you to take.  Only, of course, you made one small error.  His
evidence will not be unsupported."

Medina laughed, but there was no ease in his laugh.  "Who are the other
lunatics?"

"Myself for one.  You have interested me for quite a long time, Mr
Medina.  I will confess that one of my reasons for coming home in March
was to have the privilege of your acquaintance.  I have taken a good
deal of pains about it.  I have followed your own line of
studies--indeed, if the present situation weren't so hectic, I should
like to exchange notes with you as a fellow-inquirer.  I have traced
your career in Central Asia and elsewhere with some precision.  I think
I know more about you than anybody else in the world."

Medina made no answer.  The tables were turning, and his eyes were
chained to the slight figure in the arm-chair.

"All that is very interesting," Sandy went on, "but it is not quite
germane to the subject before us.  Kharma, whom we both remember in
his pride, unfortunately died last year.  It was kept very secret for
obvious reasons--the goodwill of his business was very valuable and
depended upon his being alive--and I only heard of it by a lucky
accident.  So I took the liberty of borrowing his name, Mr Medina.  As
Kharma I was honoured with your confidence.  Rather a cad's trick, you
will say, and I agree, but in an affair like this one has no choice of
weapons....  You did more than confide in me.  You trusted me with Miss
Victor and the Marquis de la Tour du Pin, when it was important that
they should be in safe keeping....  I have a good deal of evidence to
support Dick."

"Moonshine!" said Medina.  "Two lunacies do not make sense.  I deny
every detail of your rubbish."

"Out of the mouth of two or three witnesses," said Sandy pleasantly.
"There is still a third ... Lavater," he cried, "come in, we're ready
for you."

There entered the grey melancholy man, whom I had seen on my first
visit here, and in the house behind Little Fardell Street.  I noticed
that he walked straight to Sandy's chair, and did not look at Medina.

"Lavater you know already, I think.  He used to be a friend of mine,
and lately we have resumed the friendship.  He was your disciple for
some time, but has now relinquished that honour.  Lavater will be able
to tell the world a good deal about you."

Medina's face had become like a mask, and the colour had gone out of
it.  He may have been a volcano within, but outside he was cold ice.
His voice, acid and sneering, came out like drops of chilly water.

"Three lunatics," he said.  "I deny every word you say.  No one will
believe you.  It is a conspiracy of madmen."

"Let's talk business anyhow," said Sandy.  "The case against you is
proven to the hilt, but let us see how the world will regard it.  The
strong point on your side is that people don't like to confess they
have been fools.  You have been a very popular man, Mr Medina, and your
many friends will be loath to believe that you are a scoundrel.  You've
the hedge of your reputation to protect you.  Again, our story is so
monstrous that the ordinary Englishman may call it unbelievable, for we
are not an imaginative nation.  Again, we can get no help from the
principal sufferers.  Miss Victor and Lord Mercot can tell an ugly
story of kidnapping, which may get a life-sentence for Odell, and for
Newhover if he is caught, but which does not implicate you.  That will
be a stumbling-block to most juries, who are not as familiar with
occult science as you and I....  These are your strong points.  But
consider what we can bring on the other side.  You are a propagandist
of genius, as I once told Dick, and I can explain just how you have
fooled the world--your exploits with Denikin and such-like.  Then the
three of us can tell a damning story, and tell it from close quarters.
It may sound wild, but Dick has some reputation for good sense, and a
good many people think that I am not altogether a fool.  Finally we
have on our side Scotland Yard, which is now gathering in your
associates, and we have behind us Julius Victor, who is not without
influence....  I do not say we can send you to prison, though I think
it likely, but we can throw such suspicion on you that for the rest of
your days you will be a marked man.  You will recognise that for you
that means utter failure, for to succeed you must swim in the glory of
popular confidence."

I could see that Medina was shaken at last.  "You may damage me with
your lies," he said slowly, "but I will be even with you.  You will
find me hard to beat."

"I don't doubt it," was Sandy's answer.  "I and my friends do not want
victory, we want success.  We want David Warcliff."

There was no answer, and Sandy went on.

"We make you a proposal.  The three of us will keep what we know to
ourselves.  We will pledge ourselves never to breathe a word of it--if
you like we will sign a document to say that we acknowledge our
mistake.  So far as we are concerned you may go on and become Prime
Minister of Britain or Archbishop of Canterbury, or anything you jolly
well like.  We don't exactly love you, but we will not interfere with
the adoration of others.  I'll take myself off again to the East with
Lavater, and Dick will bury himself in Oxfordshire mud.  And in return
we ask that you hand over to us David Warcliff in his right mind."

There was no answer.

Then Sandy made a mistake in tactics.  "I believe you are attached to
your mother," he said.  "If you accept our offer she will be safe from
annoyance.  Otherwise--well, she is an important witness."

The man's pride was stung to the quick.  His mother must have been for
him an inner sanctuary, a thing apart from and holier than his fiercest
ambitions, the very core and shrine of his monstrous vanity.  That she
should be used as a bargaining counter stirred something deep and
primeval in him, something--let me say it--higher and better than I had
imagined.  A new and a human fury burned the mask off him like tissue
paper.

"You fools!" he cried, and his voice was harsh with rage.  "You perfect
fools!  You will sweat blood for that insult."

"It's a fair offer," said Sandy, never moving a muscle.  "Do I
understand that you refuse?"

Medina stood on the hearthrug like an animal at bay, and upon my soul I
couldn't but admire him.  The flame in his face would have scorched
most people into abject fear.

"Go to hell, the pack of you!  Out of this house!  You will never hear
a word from me till you are bleating for mercy.  Get out..."

      *      *      *      *      *

His eyes must have been dimmed by his rage, for he did not see Mary
enter.  She had advanced right up to Sandy's chair before even I
noticed her.  She was carrying something in her arms, something which
she held close as a mother holds a child.

It was the queer little girl from the house in Palmyra Square.  Her
hair had grown longer and fell in wisps over her brow and her pale
tear-stained cheeks.  A most piteous little object she was, with dull
blind eyes which seemed to struggle with perpetual terror.  She still
wore the absurd linen smock, her skinny little legs and arms were bare,
and her thin fingers clutched at Mary's gown.

Then Medina saw her, and Sandy ceased to exist for him.  He stared for
a second uncomprehendingly, till the passion in his face turned to
alarm.  "What have you done with her?" he barked, and flung himself
forward.

I thought he was going to attack Mary, so I tripped him up.  He
sprawled on the floor, and since he seemed to have lost all command of
himself I reckoned that I had better keep him there.  I looked towards
Mary, who nodded.  "Please tie him up," she said, and passed me the
turban cloth of the late Kharma.

He fought like a tiger, but Lavater and I with a little help from Sandy
managed to truss him fairly tight, supplementing the turban with one of
the curtain cords.  We laid him in an arm-chair.

"What have you done with her?" he kept on, screwing his head round to
look at Mary.

I could not understand his maniacal concern for the little girl, till
Mary answered, and I saw what he meant by "her."

"No one has touched your mother.  She is in the house in Palmyra
Square."

Then Mary laid the child down very gently in the chair where Sandy had
been sitting, and stood erect before Medina.

"I want you to bring back this little boy's mind," she said.

I suppose I should have been astonished, but I wasn't--at least not at
her words, though I had not had an inkling beforehand of the truth.
All the astonishment I was capable of was reserved for Mary.  She stood
there looking down on the bound man, her face very pale, her eyes quite
gentle, her lips parted as if in expectation.  And yet there was
something about her so formidable, so implacable, that the other three
of us fell into the background.  Her presence dominated everything, and
the very grace of her body and the mild sadness of her eyes seemed to
make her the more terrifying.  I know now how Joan of Arc must have
looked when she led her troops into battle.

"Do you hear me?" she repeated.  "You took away his soul and you can
give it back again.  That is all I ask of you."

He choked before he replied.  "What boy?  I tell you I know nothing.
You are all mad."

"I mean David Warcliff.  The others are free now, and he must be free
to-night.  Free, and in his right mind, as when you carried him off.
Surely you understand."

There was no answer.

"That is all I ask.  It is such a little thing.  Then we will go away."

I broke in.  "Our offer holds.  Do as she asks, and we will never open
our mouths about to-night's work."

He was not listening to me, nor was she.  It was a duel between the two
of them, and as she looked at him, his face seemed to grow more dogged
and stone-like.  If ever he had felt hatred it was for this woman, for
it was a conflict between two opposite poles of life, two worlds
eternally at war.

"I tell you I know nothing of the brat..."

She stopped him with lifted hand.  "Oh, do not let us waste time,
please.  It is far too late for arguing.  If you do what I ask we will
go away, and you will never be troubled with us again.  I promise--we
all promise.  If you do not, of course we must ruin you."

I think it was the confidence in her tone which stung him.

"I refuse," he almost screamed.  "I do not know what you mean ... I
defy you....  You can proclaim your lies to the world....  You will not
crush me.  I am too strong for you."

There was no mistaking the finality of that defiance.  I thought it put
the lid on everything.  We could blast the fellow's reputation no
doubt, and win victory; but we had failed, for we were left with that
poor little mindless waif.

Mary's face did not change.

"If you refuse, I must try another way"; her voice was as gentle as a
mother's.  "I must give David Warcliff back to his father....  Dick,"
she turned to me, "will you light the fire."

I obeyed, not knowing what she meant, and in a minute the dry faggots
were roaring up the chimney, lighting up our five faces and the mazed
child in the chair.

"You have destroyed a soul," she said, "and you refuse to repair the
wrong.  I am going to destroy your body, and nothing will ever repair
it."

Then I saw her meaning, and both Sandy and I cried out.  Neither of us
had led the kind of life which makes a man squeamish, but this was too
much for us.  But our protests died half-born, after one glance at
Mary's face.  She was my own wedded wife, but in that moment I could no
more have opposed her than could the poor bemused child.  Her spirit
seemed to transcend us all and radiate an inexorable command.  She
stood easily and gracefully, a figure of motherhood and pity rather
than of awe.  But all the same I did not recognise her; it was a
stranger that stood there, a stern goddess that wielded the lightnings.
Beyond doubt she meant every word she said, and her quiet voice seemed
to deliver judgment as aloof and impersonal as Fate.  I could see
creeping over Medina's sullenness the shadow of terror.

"You are a desperate man," she was saying.  "But I am far more
desperate.  There is nothing on earth that can stand between me and the
saving of this child.  You know that, don't you?  A body for a soul--a
soul for a body--which shall it be?"

The light was reflected from the steel fire-irons, and Medina saw it
and shivered.

"You may live a long time, but you will have to live in seclusion.  No
woman will ever cast eyes on you except to shudder.  People will point
at you and say 'There goes the man who was maimed by a woman--because
of the soul of a child.'  You will carry your story written on your
face for the world to read and laugh and revile."

She had got at the central nerve of his vanity, for I think that he was
ambitious less of achievement than of the personal glory that attends
it.  I dared not look at her, but I could look at him, and I saw all
the passions of hell chase each other over his face.  He tried to
speak, but only choked.  He seemed to bend his whole soul to look at
her, and to shiver at what he saw.

She turned her head to glance at the clock on the mantel-piece.

"You must decide before the quarter strikes," she said.  "After that
there will be no place for repentance.  A body for a soul--a soul for a
body."

Then from her black silk reticule she took a little oddly-shaped green
bottle.  She held it in her hand as if it had been a jewel, and I
gulped in horror.

"This is the elixir of death--of death in life, Mr Medina.  It makes
comeliness a mockery.  It will burn flesh and bone into shapes of
hideousness, but it does not kill.  Oh no--it does not kill.  A body
for a soul--a soul for a body."

It was that, I think, which finished him.  The threefold chime which
announced the quarter had begun when out of his dry throat came a sound
like a clucking hen's.  "I agree," a voice croaked, seeming to come
from without, so queer and far away it was.

"Thank you," she said, as if someone had opened a door for her.  "Dick,
will you please make Mr Medina more comfortable...."

The fire was not replenished, so the quick-burning faggots soon died
down.  Again the room was shadowy, except for the single lamp that
glowed behind Medina's head.

I cannot describe that last scene, for I do not think my sight was
clear, and I know that my head was spinning.  The child sat on Mary's
lap, with its eyes held by the glow of light.  "You are Gerda ... you
are sleepy ... now you sleep"--I did not heed the patter, for I was
trying to think of homely things which would keep my wits anchored.  I
thought chiefly of Peter John.

Sandy was crouched on a stool by the hearth.  I noticed that he had his
hands on his knees, and that from one of them protruded something round
and dark, like the point of a pistol barrel.  He was taking no chances,
but the thing was folly, for we were in the presence of far more potent
weapons.  Never since the world began was there a scene of such utter
humiliation.  I shivered at the indecency of it.  Medina performed his
sinister ritual, but on us spectators it had no more effect than a
charade.  Mary especially sat watching it with the detachment with
which one watches a kindergarten play.  The man had suddenly become a
mountebank under those fearless eyes.

The voices droned on, the man asking questions, the child answering in
a weak unnatural voice.  "You are David Warcliff ... you lost your way
coming from school ... you have been ill and have forgotten....  You
are better now ... you remember Haverham and the redshanks down by the
river...  You are sleepy ... I think you would like to sleep again."

Medina spoke.  "You can wake him now.  Do it carefully."

I got up and switched on the rest of the lights.  The child was
peacefully asleep in Mary's arms, and she bent and kissed him.  "Speak
to him, Dick," she said.

"Davie," I said loudly.  "Davie, it's about time for us to get home."

He opened his eyes and sat up.  When he found himself on Mary's knee,
he began to clamber down.  He was not accustomed to a woman's lap, and
felt a little ashamed.

"Davie," I repeated.  "Your father will be getting tired waiting for
us.  Don't you think we should go home?"

"Yes, sir," he said, and put his hand in mine.

      *      *      *      *      *

To my dying day I shall not forget my last sight of that library--the
blazing lights which made the books, which I had never seen before
except in shadow, gleam like a silk tapestry, the wood-fire dying on
the hearth, and the man sunk in the chair.  It may sound odd after all
that had happened, but my chief feeling was pity.  Yes, pity!  He
seemed the loneliest thing on God's earth.  You see he had never had
any friends except himself, and his ambitions had made a barrier
between him and all humanity.  Now that they were gone he was stripped
naked, and left cold and shivering in the arctic wilderness of his
broken dreams.


Mary leaned back in the car.

"I hope I'm not going to faint," she said.  "Give me the green bottle,
please."

"For Heaven's sake!" I cried.

"Silly!" she said.  "It's only eau-de-cologne."

She laughed, and the laugh seemed to restore her a little, though she
still looked deadly pale.  She fumbled in her reticule, and drew out a
robust pair of scissors.

"I'm going to cut Davie's hair.  I can't change his clothes, but at any
rate I can make his head like a boy's again, so that his father won't
be shocked."

"Does he know we are coming?"

"Yes.  I telephoned to him after dinner, but of course I said nothing
about Davie."

She clipped assiduously, and by the time we came to the Pimlico square
where Sir Arthur Warcliff lived she had got rid of the long locks, and
the head was now that of a pallid and thin but wonderfully composed
little boy.  "Am I going back to Dad?" he had asked, and seemed content.

I refused to go in--I was not fit for any more shocks--so I sat in the
car while Mary and David entered the little house.  In about three
minutes Mary returned.  She was crying, and yet smiling too.

"I made Davie wait in the hall, and went into Sir Arthur's study alone.
He looked ill--and oh, so old and worn.  I said: 'I have brought Davie.
Never mind his clothes.  He's all right!'  Then I fetched him in.  Oh,
Dick, it was a miracle.  That old darling seemed to come back to
life....  The two didn't run into each other's arms ... they shook
hands ... and the little boy bowed his head and Sir Arthur kissed the
top of it, and said 'Dear Mouse-head, you've come back to me.' ...  And
then I slipped away."

      *      *      *      *      *

There was another scene that night in which I played a part, for we
finished at Carlton House Terrace.  Of what happened there I have only
a confused recollection.  I remember Julius Victor kissing Mary's hand,
and the Duke shaking mine as if he would never stop.  I remember
Mercot, who looked uncommonly fit and handsome, toasting me in
champagne, and Adela Victor sitting at a piano and singing to us
divinely.  But my chief memory is of a French nobleman whirling a
distinguished German engineer into an extemporised dance of joy.




_Chapter XX_

_Machray_

A week later, after much consultation with Sandy, I wrote Medina a
letter.  The papers said he had gone abroad for a short rest, and I
could imagine the kind of mental purgatory he was enduring in some
Mediterranean bay.  We had made up our mind to be content with success.
Victory meant a long campaign in the courts and the press, in which no
doubt we should have won, but for which I at any rate had no stomach.
The whole business was a nightmare which I longed to shut the door on;
we had drawn his fangs, and for all I cared he might go on with his
politics and dazzle the world with his gifts, provided he kept his
hands out of crime.  I wrote and told him that; told him that the three
people who knew everything would hold their tongues, but that they
reserved the right to speak if he ever showed any sign of running
crooked.  I had no reply and did not expect one.  I had lost all my
hate for the man, and, so strangely are we made, what I mostly felt was
compassion.  We are all, even the best of us, egotists and
self-deceivers, and without a little comfortable make-believe to clothe
us we should freeze in the outer winds.  I shuddered when I thought of
the poor devil with his palace of cards about his ears and his naked
soul.  I felt that further triumph would be an offence against humanity.

He must have got my message, for in July he was back at his work, and
made a speech at a big political demonstration which was highly
commended in the papers.  Whether he went about in society I do not
know, for Sandy was in Scotland and I was at Fosse, and not inclined to
leave it....  Meantime Macgillivray's business was going on, and the
Press was full of strange cases, which no one seemed to think of
connecting.  I gathered from Macgillivray that though the syndicate was
smashed to little bits he had failed to make the complete bag of
malefactors that he had hoped.  In England there were three big
financial exposures followed by long sentences; in Paris there was a
first-rate political scandal and a crop of convictions; a labour
agitator and a copper magnate in the Middle West went to gaol for life,
and there was the famous rounding-up of the murder gang in Turin.  But
Macgillivray and his colleagues, like me, had success rather than
victory; indeed in this world I don't think you can get both at
once--you must make your choice.

We saw Mercot at the "House" Ball at Oxford, none the worse for his
adventures, but rather the better, for he was a man now and not a
light-witted boy.  Early in July Mary and I went to Paris for Adela
Victor's wedding, the most gorgeous show I have ever witnessed, when I
had the privilege of kissing the bride and being kissed by the
bridegroom.  Sir Arthur Warcliff brought David to pay us a visit at
Fosse, where the boy fished from dawn to dusk, and began to get some
flesh on his bones.  Archie Roylance arrived and the pair took such a
fancy to each other that the three of them went off to Norway to have a
look at the birds on Flacksholm.

I was busy during those weeks making up arrears of time at Fosse, for
my long absence had put out the whole summer programme.  One day, as I
was down in the Home Meadow, planning a new outlet for one of the
ponds, Sandy turned up, announcing that he must have a talk with me and
could only spare twenty minutes.

"When does your tenancy of Machray begin?" he asked.

"I have got it now--ever since April.  The sea-trout come early there."

"And you can go up whenever you like?"

"Yes.  We propose starting about the 5th of August."

"Take my advice and start at once," he said.

I asked why, though I guessed his reason.

"Because I'm not very happy about you here.  You've insulted to the
marrow the vainest and one of the cleverest men in the world.  Don't
imagine he'll take it lying down.  You may be sure he is spending
sleepless nights planning how he is to get even with you.  It's you he
is chiefly thinking about.  Me he regards as a rival in the same line
of business--he'd love to break me, but he'll trust to luck for the
chance turning up.  Lavater has been his slave and has escaped--but at
any rate he once acknowledged his power.  You have fooled him from
start to finish and left his vanity one raw throbbing sore.  He won't
be at ease till he has had his revenge on you--on you and your wife."

"Peter John!" I exclaimed.

He shook his head.  "No, I don't think so.  He won't try that line
again--at any rate not yet awhile.  But he would be much happier, Dick,
if you were dead."

The thought had been in my own mind for weeks, and had made me pretty
uncomfortable.  It is not pleasant to walk in peril of your life, and
move about in constant expectation of your decease.  I had considered
the thing very carefully, and had come to the conclusion that I could
do nothing but try to forget the risk.  If I ever allowed myself to
think about it, my whole existence would be poisoned.  It was a most
unpleasant affair, but after all the world is full of hazards.  I told
Sandy that.

"I'm quite aware of the danger," I said.  "I always reckoned that as
part of the price I had to pay for succeeding.  But I'm hanged if I'm
going to allow the fellow to score off me to the extent of disarranging
my life."

"You've plenty of fortitude, old fellow," said Sandy, "but you owe a
duty to your family and your friends.  Of course you might get police
protection from Macgillivray, but that would be an infernal nuisance
for you, and, besides, what kind of police protection would avail
against an enemy as subtle as Medina? ... No, I want you to go away.  I
want you to go to Machray now, and stay there till the end of October."

"What good would that do?  He can follow me there, if he wants to, and
anyhow the whole thing would begin again when I came back."

"I'm not so sure," he said.  "In three months' time his wounded vanity
may have healed.  It's no part of his general game to have a vendetta
with you, and only a passion of injured pride would drive him to it.
Presently that must die down, and he will see his real interest.  Then
as for Machray--why a Scotch deer-forest is the best sanctuary on
earth.  Nobody can come up that long glen without your hearing about
it, and nobody can move on the hills without half a dozen argus-eyed
stalkers and gillies following him.  They're the right sort of police
protection.  I want you for all our sakes to go to Machray at once."

"It looks like funking," I objected.

"Don't be an old ass.  Is there any man alive, who is not a raving
maniac, likely to doubt your courage?  You know perfectly well that it
is sometimes a brave man's duty to run away."

I thought for a bit.  "I don't think he'll hire ruffians to murder me,"
I said.

"Why."

"Because he challenged me to a duel.  Proposed a place in the Pyrenees
and offered to let me choose both seconds."

"What did you reply?"

"I wired, 'Try not to be a fool.'  It looks as if he wanted to keep the
job of doing me in for himself."

"Very likely, and that doesn't mend matters.  I'd rather face half a
dozen cutthroats than Medina.  What you tell me strengthens my
argument."

I was bound to admit that Sandy talked sense, and after he had gone I
thought the matter out and decided to take his advice.  Somehow the
fact that he should have put my suspicions into words made them more
formidable, and I knew again the odious feeling of the hunted.  It was
hardly fear, for I think that, if necessary, I could have stayed on at
Fosse and gone about my business with a stiff lip.  But all the peace
of the place had been spoiled.  If a bullet might at any moment come
from a covert--that was the crude way I envisaged the risk--then
good-bye to the charm of my summer meadows.

The upshot was that I warned Tom Greenslade to be ready to take his
holiday, and by the 20th of July he and I and Mary and Peter John were
settled in a little white-washed lodge tucked into the fold of a
birch-clad hill, and looking alternately at a shrunken river and a
cloudless sky, while we prayed for rain.


Machray in calm weather is the most solitary place on earth, lonelier
and quieter even than a Boer farm lost in some hollow of the veld.  The
mountains rise so sheer and high, that it seems that only a bird could
escape, and the road from the sea-loch ten miles away is only a strip
of heather-grown sand which looks as if it would end a mile off at the
feet of each steep hill-shoulder.  But when the gales come, and the
rain is lashing the roof, and the river swirls at the garden-edge, and
the birches and rowans are tossing, then a thousand voices talk, and
one lives in a world so loud that one's ears are deafened and one's
voice acquires a sharp pitch of protest from shouting against the storm.

We had few gales, and the last week of July was a very fair imitation
of the Tropics.  The hills were cloaked in a heat haze, the Aicill
river was a chain of translucent pools with a few reddening salmon
below the ledges, the burns were thin trickles, the sun drew hot scents
out of the heather and bog-myrtle, and movement was a weariness to man
and beast.  That was for the day-time; but every evening about five
o'clock there would come a light wind from the west, which scattered
the haze, and left a land swimming in cool amber light.  Then Mary and
Tom Greenslade and I would take to the hills, and return well on for
midnight to a vast and shameless supper.  Sometimes in the hot
noontides I went alone, with old Angus the head stalker, and long
before the season began I had got a pretty close knowledge of the
forest.

The reader must bear with me while I explain the lie of the land.  The
twenty-thousand acres of Machray extend on both sides of the Aicill
glen, but principally to the south.  West lies the Machray sea-loch,
where the hills are low and green and mostly sheep-ground.  East, up to
the river-head, is Glenaicill Forest, the lodge of which is beyond the
watershed on the shore of another sea-loch, and on our side of the
divide there is only a stalker's cottage.  Glenaicill is an enormous
place, far too big to be a single forest.  It had been leased for years
by Lord Glenfinnan, an uncle of Archie Roylance, but he was a frail old
gentleman of over seventy who could only get a stag when they came down
to the low ground in October.  The result was that the place was
ridiculously undershot, and all the western end, which adjoined
Machray, was virtually a sanctuary.  It was a confounded nuisance, for
it made it impossible to stalk our northern beat except in a south-west
wind, unless you wanted to shift the deer on to Glenaicill, and that
beat had all our best grazing and seemed to attract all our best heads.

Haripol Forest to the south was not so large, but I should think it was
the roughest ground in Scotland.  Machray had good beats south of the
Aicill right up to the watershed, and two noble corries, the
Corrie-na-Sidhe and the Corrie Easain.  Beyond the watershed was the
glen of the Reascuill, both sides of which were Haripol ground.  The
Machray heights were all over the 3,000 feet, but rounded and fairly
easy going, but the Haripol peaks beyond the stream were desperate rock
mountains--Stob Ban, Stob Coire Easain, Sgurr Mor--comprising some of
the most difficult climbing in the British Isles.  The biggest and
hardest top of all was at the head of the Reascuill--Sgurr Dearg, with
its two pinnacle ridges, its three prongs, and the awesome precipice of
its eastern face.  Machray marched with Haripol on its summit, but it
wasn't often that any of our stalkers went that way.  All that upper
part of the Reascuill was a series of cliffs and chasms, and the red
deer--who is no rock-climber--rarely ventured there.  For the rest
these four southern beats of ours were as delightful hunting-ground as
I have ever seen, and the ladies could follow a good deal of the
stalking by means of a big telescope in the library window of the
Lodge.  Machray was a young man's forest, for the hills rose steep
almost from the sea-level, and you might have to go up and down 3,000
feet several times in a day.  But Haripol--at least the north and east
parts of it--was fit only for athletes, and it seemed to be its fate to
fall to tenants who were utterly incapable of doing it justice.  In
recent years it had been leased successively to an elderly distiller, a
young racing ne'er-do-weel who drank, and a plump American railway
king.  It was now in the hands of a certain middle-aged Midland
manufacturer, Lord Claybody, who had won an easy fortune and an easier
peerage during the War.  "Ach, he will be killed," Angus said.  "He
will never get up a hundred feet of Haripol without being killed."  So
I found myself, to my disgust, afflicted with another unauthorised
sanctuary.

Angus was very solemn about it.  He was a lean anxious man, just over
fifty, with a face not unlike a stag's, amazingly fast on the hills, a
finished cragsman, and with all the Highlander's subtle courtesy.
Kennedy, the second stalker, was of Lowland stock; his father had come
to the North from Galloway in the days of the boom in sheep, and had
remained as a keeper when sheep prices fell.  He was a sturdy young
fellow, apt to suffer on steep slopes on a warm day, but strong as an
ox and with a better head than Angus for thinking out problems of
weather and wind.  Though he had the Gaelic, he was a true Lowlander,
plain-spoken and imperturbable.  It was a contrast of new and old, for
Kennedy had served in the War, and learned many things beyond the
other's ken.  He knew, for example, how to direct your eye to the point
he wanted, and would give intelligent directions like a battery
observer, whereas with Angus it was always "D'ye see yon stone?  Ay,
but d'ye see another stone?"--and so forth.  Kennedy, when we sat down
to rest, would smoke a cigarette in a holder, while Angus lit the
dottle in a foul old pipe.

In the first fortnight of August we had alternate days of rain, real
drenching torrents, and the Aicill rose and let the fish up from the
sea.  There were few sea-trout that year, but there was a glorious run
of salmon.  Greenslade killed his first, and by the end of a week had a
bag of twelve, while Mary, with the luck which seems to attend casual
lady anglers, had four in one day to her own rod.  Those were pleasant
days, though there were mild damp afternoons when the midges were worse
than tropical mosquitoes.  I liked it best when a breeze rose and the
sun was hot and we had all our meals by the waterside.  Once at
luncheon we took with us an iron pot, made a fire, and boiled a
fresh-killed salmon "in his broo"--a device I recommend to anyone who
wants the full flavour of that noble fish.

Archie Roylance arrived on August 16th, full of the lust of hunting.
He reported that they had seen nothing remarkable in the way of birds
at Flacksholm, but that David Warcliff had had great sport with the
sea-trout.  "There's a good boy for you," he declared.  "First-class
little sportsman, and to see him and his father together made me want
to get wedded straight off.  I thought him a bit hipped at Fosse, but
the North Sea put him right, and I left him as jolly as a grig.  By the
way, what was the matter with him in the summer?  I gathered that he
had been seedy or something, and the old man can't let him out of his
sight....  Let's get in Angus, and talk deer."

Angus was ready to talk deer till all hours.  I had fixed the 21st for
the start of the season, though the beasts were in such forward
condition that we might have begun four days earlier.  Angus reported
that he had already seen several stags clear of velvet.  But he was
inclined to be doleful about our neighbours.

"My uncle Alexander is past prayin' for," said Archie.  "He lives for
that forest of his, and he won't have me there early in the season, for
he says I have no judgment about beasts and won't listen to the
stalkers.  In October, you see, he has me under his own eye.  He
refuses to let a stag be killed unless it's a hummel or a diseased
ancient.  Result is, the place is crawlin' with fine stags that have
begun to go back and won't perish till they're fairly moulderin'.  Poor
notion of a stud has my uncle Alexander....  What about Haripol?  Who
has it this year?"

When he heard he exclaimed delightedly.  "I know old Claybody.  Rather
a good old fellow in his way, and uncommon free-handed.  Rum old bird,
too!  He once introduced his son to me as 'The Honourable Johnson
Claybody.'  Fairly wallows in his peerage.  You know he wanted to take
the title of Lord Oxford, because he had a boy goin' up to Magdalen,
but even the Heralds' College jibbed at that.  But he'll never get up
those Haripol hills.  He's a little fat puffin' old man.  I'm not very
spry on my legs now, but compared to Claybody I'm a gazelle."

"He'll maybe have veesitors," said Angus.

"You bet he will.  He'll have the Lodge stuffed with young men, for
there are various Honourable Claybody daughters.  Don't fancy they'll
be much good on the hill, though."

"They will not be good, Sir Archibald," said the melancholy Angus.
"There will have been some of them on the hill already.  They will be
no better than towrists."

"Towrists" I should explain were the poison in Angus's cup.  By that
name he meant people who trespassed on a deer forest during, or shortly
before, the stalking season, and had not the good manners to give him
notice and ask his consent.  He distinguished them sharply from what he
called "muntaneers," a class which he respected, for they were modest
and civil folk who came usually with ropes and ice axes early in the
spring, and were accustomed to feast off Angus's ham and eggs and thaw
their frozen limbs by Angus's fire.  If they came at other seasons it
was after discussing their routes with Angus.  They went where no deer
could travel, and spent their time, as he said, "shamming themselves
into shimneys."  But the "towrist" was blatant and foolish and
abundantly discourteous.  He tramped, generally in a noisy party, over
deer-ground, and, if remonstrated with, became truculent.  A single
member of the species could wreck the stalking on a beat for several
days.  "The next I see on Machray," said Angus, "I will be rolling down
a big stone on him."  Some of the Haripol guests, it appeared, were of
this malign breed, and had been wandering thoughtlessly over the
forest, thereby wrecking their own sport--and mine.

"They will have Alan Macnicol's heart broke," he concluded.  "And Alan
was saying to me that they was afful bad shots.  They was shooting at a
big stone and missing it.  And they will have little ponies to ride on
up to the tops, for the creatures is no use at walking.  I hope they
will fall down and break their necks."

"They can't all be bad shots," said Archie.  "By the way, Dick, I
forgot to tell you.  You know Medina, Dominick Medina?  You once told
me you knew him.  Well, I met him on the steamer, and he said he was
going to put in a week with old Claybody."

That piece of news took the light out of the day for me.  If Medina was
at Haripol it was most certainly with a purpose.  I had thought little
about the matter since I arrived at Machray, for the place had an
atmosphere of impregnable seclusion, and I seemed to have shut a door
on my recent life.  I had fallen into a mood of content and
whole-hearted absorption in the ritual of wild sport.  But now my
comfort vanished.  I looked up at the grim wall of hills towards
Haripol and wondered what mischief was hatching behind it.

I warned Angus and Kennedy and the gillies to keep a good look-out for
trespassers.  Whenever one was seen, they were to get their glasses on
him and follow him and report his appearance and doings to me.  Then I
went out alone to shoot a brace of grouse for the pot, and considered
the whole matter very carefully.  I had an instinct that Medina had
come to these parts to have a reckoning with me, and I was determined
not to shirk it.  I could not go on living under such a menace; I must
face it and reach a settlement.  To Mary, of course, I could say
nothing, and I saw no use in telling either Archie or Greenslade.  It
was, metaphorically, and perhaps literally, my own funeral.  But next
morning I did not go fishing.  Instead, I stayed at home and wrote out
a full account of the whole affair up to Medina's appearance at
Haripol, and I set down baldly what I believed to be his purpose.  This
was in case I went out one day and did not return.  When I finished it,
I put the document in my dispatch-box, and felt easier, as a man feels
when he has made his will.  I only hoped the time of waiting would not
be prolonged.

The 21st was a glorious blue day, with a morning haze which promised
heat.  What wind there was came from the south-east, so I sent Archie
out on the Corrie Easain beat, and went myself, with one gillie, to
Clach Glas, which is the western peak on the north bank of the Aicill.
I made a practice of doing my own stalking, and by this time I knew the
ground well enough to do it safely.  I saw two shootable stags, and
managed to get within range of one of them, but spared him for the good
of the forest, as he was a young beast whose head would improve.  I had
a happy and peaceful day, and found to my relief that I wasn't worrying
about the future.  The clear air and the great spaces seemed to have
given me the placid fatalism of an Arab.

When I returned I was greeted by Mary with the news that Archie had got
a stag, and that she had followed most of his stalk through the big
telescope.  Archie himself arrived just before dinner, very cheerful
and loquacious.  He found that his game leg made him slow, but he
declared that he was not in the least tired.  At dinner we had to
listen to every detail of his day, and we had a sweep on the beast's
weight, which Mary won.  Afterwards in the smoking-room he told me more.

"Those infernal tailors from Haripol were out to-day.  Pretty wild
shots they must be.  When we were lunchin' a spent bullet whistled over
our heads--a long way off, to be sure, but I call it uncommon bad form.
You should have heard Angus curse in Gaelic.  Look here, Dick, I've a
good mind to drop a line to old Claybody and ask him to caution his
people.  The odds are a million to one, of course, against their doin'
any harm, but there's always that millionth chance.  I had a feelin'
to-day as if the War had started over again."

I replied that if anything of the sort happened a second time I would
certainly protest, but I pretended to make light of it, as a thing only
possible with that particular brand of wind.  But I realised now what
Medina's plans were.  He had been tramping about Haripol, getting a
notion of the lie of the land, and I knew that he had a big-game
hunter's quick eye for country.  He had fostered the legend of wild
shooting among the Haripol guests, and probably he made himself the
wildest of the lot.  The bullet which sang over Archie's head was a
proof, but he waited on the chance of a bullet which would not miss.
If a tragedy happened, everyone would believe it was a pure accident,
there would be heart-broken apologies, and, though Sandy and one or two
others would guess the truth, nothing could be proved, and in any case
it wouldn't help me....  Of course I could stalk only on the north
beats of Machray, but the idea no sooner occurred to me than I
dismissed it.  I must end this hideous suspense.  I must accept
Medina's challenge and somehow or other reach a settlement.

When Angus came in for orders, I told him that I was going stalking on
the Corrie-na-Sidhe beat the day after to-morrow, and I asked him to
send word privately to Alan Macnicol at Haripol.

"It will be no use, sir," he groaned.  "The veesitors will no heed
Alan."

But I told him to send word nevertheless.  I wanted to give Medina the
chance he sought.  It was my business to draw his fire.

Next day we slacked and fished.  In the afternoon I went a little way
up the hill called Clach Glas, from which I could get a view of the
ground on the south side of the Aicill.  It was a clear quiet day, with
the wind steady in the south-east, and promising to continue there.
The great green hollow of Corrie-na-Sidhe was clear in every detail;
much of it looked like a tennis-court, but I knew that what seemed
smooth sward was really matted blaeberries and hidden boulders, and
that the darker patches were breast-high bracken and heather.  Corrie
Easain I could not see, for it was hidden by the long spur of Bheinn
Fhada, over which peeped the cloven summit of Sgurr Dearg.  I searched
all the ground with my glasses, and picked up several lots of hinds,
and a few young stags, but there was no sign of human activity.  There
seemed to be a rifle out, however, on Glenaicill Forest, for I heard
two far-away shots towards the north-east.  I lay a long time amid the
fern, with bees humming around me and pipits calling, and an occasional
buzzard or peregrine hovering in the blue, thinking precisely the same
thoughts that I used to have in France the day before a big action.  It
was not exactly nervousness that I felt, but a sense that the
foundations of everything had got loose, and that the world had become
so insecure that I had better draw down the blinds on hoping and
planning and everything, and become a log.  I was very clear in my mind
that next day was going to bring the crisis.

Of course I didn't want Mary to suspect, but I forgot to caution
Archie, and that night at dinner, as ill luck would have it, he
mentioned that Medina was at Haripol.  I could see her eyes grow
troubled, for I expect she had been having the same anxiety as myself
those past weeks, and had been too proud to declare it.  As we were
going to bed she asked me point-blank what it meant.  "Nothing in the
world," I said.  "He is a great stalker and a friend of the Claybodys.
I don't suppose he has the remotest idea that I am here.  Anyhow that
affair is all over.  He is not going to cross our path if he can help
it.  The one wish in his heart is to avoid us."

She appeared to be satisfied, but I don't know how much she slept that
night.  I never woke till six o'clock, but when I opened my eyes I felt
too big a load on my heart to let me stay in bed, so I went down to the
Garden Pool and had a swim.  That invigorated me, and indeed it was not
easy to be depressed in that gorgeous morning, with the streamers of
mist still clinging to the high tops, and the whole glen a harmony of
singing birds and tumbling waters.  I noticed that the wind, what there
was of it, seemed to have shifted more to the east--a very good quarter
for the Corrie-na-Sidhe beat.

Angus and Kennedy were waiting outside the smoking-room, and even the
pessimism of the head stalker was mellowed by the weather.  "I think,"
he said slowly, "we will be getting a sta-ag.  There was a big beast on
Bheinn Fhada yesterday--Kennedy seen him--a great beast he was--maybe
nineteen stone, but Kennedy never right seen his head....  We'd better
be moving on, sir."

Mary whispered in my ear.  "There's no danger, Dick?  You're sure?"  I
have never heard her voice more troubled.

"Not a scrap," I laughed.  "It's an easy day and I ought to be back for
tea.  You'll be able to follow me all the time through the big
telescope."

We started at nine.  As I left, I had a picture of Greenslade sitting
on a garden-seat busy with fly-casts, and Archie smoking his pipe and
reading a three-days-old _Times_, and Peter John going off with his
nurse, and Mary looking after me with a curious tense gaze.  Behind,
the smoke of the chimneys was rising straight into the still air, and
the finches were twittering among the Prince Charlie roses.  The sight
gave me a pang.  I might never enter my little kingdom again.  Neither
wife nor friends could help me: it was my own problem, which I must
face alone.

We crossed the bridge, and began to plod upwards through a wood of
hazels.  In such fashion I entered upon the strangest day of my life.




_Chapter XXI_

_How I Stalked Wilder Game than Deer_


I

9 A.M. TO 2.15 P.M.

Obviously I could make no plan, and I had no clear idea in my head as
to what kind of settlement I wanted with Medina.  I was certain that I
should find him somewhere on the hill, and that, if he got a chance, he
would try to kill me.  The odds were, of course, against his succeeding
straight off, but escape was not what I sought--I must get rid of this
menace for ever.  I don't think that I wanted to kill him, but indeed I
never tried to analyse my feelings.  I was obeying a blind instinct,
and letting myself drift on the tides of fate.

Corrie-na-Sidhe is an upper corrie, separated from the Aicill valley by
a curtain of rock and scree which I daresay was once the moraine of a
glacier and down which the Alt-na-Sidhe tumbled in a fine chain of
cascades.  So steep is its fall that no fish can ascend it, so that,
while at the foot it is full of sizable trout, in the Corrie itself it
holds nothing, as Greenslade reported, but little dark fingerlings.  It
was very warm as we mounted the chaos of slabs and boulders, where a
very sketchy and winding track had been cut for bringing down the deer.
Only the toughest kind of pony could make that ascent.  Though the day
was young the heat was already great, and the glen behind us swam in a
glassy sheen.  Kennedy, as usual, mopped his brow and grunted, but the
lean Angus strode ahead as if he were on the flat.

At the edge of the corrie we halted for a spy.  Deep hollows have a
trick of drawing the wind, and such faint currents of air as I could
detect seemed to be coming on our left rear from the north-east.  Angus
was positive, however, that though the south had gone out of the wind,
it was pretty well due east, with no north in it, and maintained that
when we were farther up the corrie we would have it fair on our left
cheek.  We were not long in finding beasts.  There was a big drove of
hinds on the right bank of the burn, and another lot, with a few small
stags, on the left bank, well up on the face of Bheinn Fhada.  But
there was nothing shootable there.

"The big stags will be all on the high tops," said Angus.  "We must be
getting up to the burn-head."

It was easier said than done, for there were the hinds to be
circumvented, so we had to make a long circuit far up the hill called
Clonlet, which is the westernmost of the Machray tops south of the
Aicill.  It was rough going, for we mounted to about the 3,000 feet
level, and traversed the hill-side just under the upper scarp of rock.
Presently we were looking down upon the cup which was the head of the
corrie, and over the col could see the peak of Stob Coire Easain and
the ridge of Stob Ban, both on Haripol and beyond the Reascuill.  We
had another spy, and made out two small lots of stags on the other side
of the Alt-na-Sidhe.  They were too far off to get a proper view of
them, but one or two looked good beasts, and I decided to get nearer.

We had to make a cautious descent of the hill-side in case of deer
lying in pockets, for the place was seamed with gullies.  Before we
were half-way down I got my telescope on one of the lots, and picked
out a big stag with a poor head, which clearly wanted shooting.  Angus
agreed, and we started down a sheltering ravine to get to the
burn-side.  The sight of a quarry made me forget everything else, and
for the next hour and a half I hadn't a thought in the world except how
to get within range of that beast.  One stalk is very much like
another, and I am not going to describe this.  The only trouble came
from a small stag in our rear, which had come over Clonlet and got the
scent of our track on the hill-face.  This unsettled him and he went
off at a great pace towards the top of the burn.  I thought at first
that the brute would go up Bheinn Fhada and carry off our lot with him,
but he came to a halt, changed his mind, and made for the Haripol march
and the col.

After that it was plain sailing.  We crawled up the right of the
Alt-na-Sidhe, which was first-class cover, and then turned up a
tributary gully which came down from Bheinn Fhada.  Indeed the whole
business was too simple to be of much interest to anyone, except the
man with the rifle.  When I judged I was about the latitude of my stag,
I crept out of the burn and reached a hillock from which I had a good
view of him.  The head, as I suspected, was poor--only nine points,
though the horns were of the rough, thick, old Highland type, but the
body was heavy, and he was clearly a back-going beast.  After a wait of
some twenty minutes he got up and gave me a chance at about two hundred
yards, and I dropped him dead with a shot in the neck, which was the
only part of him clear.

It was for me the first stag of the season, and it is always a pleasant
moment when the tension relaxes and you light your pipe and look around
you.  As soon as the gralloch was over I proposed lunch, and we found
for the purpose a little nook by a spring.  We were within a few
hundred yards of the Haripol march, which there does not run along the
watershed but crosses the corrie about half a mile below the col.  In
the old days of sheep there had been a fence, the decaying posts of
which could be observed a little way off on a knoll.  Between the fence
and the col lay some very rough ground, where the Alt-na-Sidhe had its
source, ground so broken that it was impossible, without going a good
way up the hill, to see from it the watershed ridge.

I finished Mary's stuffed scones and ginger biscuits, and had a drink
of whisky and spring water, while Angus and Kennedy ate their lunch a
few yards off in the heather.  I was just lighting my pipe, when a
sound made me pause with the match in my hand.  A rifle bullet sang
over my head.  It was not very near--fifty feet or so above me, and a
little to the left.

"The tamned towrists!" I heard Angus exclaim.

I knew it was Medina as certainly as if I had seen him.  He was
somewhere in the rough ground between the Haripol march and the
col--probably close to the col, for the sound of the report seemed to
come from a good way off.  He could not have been aiming at me, for I
was perfectly covered, but he must have seen me when I stalked the
stag.  He had decided that his chance was not yet come, and the shot
was camouflage--to keep up the reputation of Haripol for wild shooting.

"It would be the staggie that went over the march," grunted Angus.
"The towrists--to be shooting at such a wee beast!"

I had suddenly made up my mind.  I would give Medina the opportunity he
sought.  I would go and look for him.

I got up and stretched my legs.  "I'm going to try a stalk on my own,"
I told Angus.  "I'll go over to Corrie Easain.  You had better pull
this beast down to the burnside, and then fetch the pony.  You might
send Hughie and the other pony up Glenaicill to the Mad Burn.  If I get
a stag I'll gralloch him and get him down somehow to the burn, so tell
Hughie to look out for my signal.  I'll wave a white handkerchief.  The
wind is backing round to the north, Angus.  It should be all right for
Corrie Easain, if I take it from the south."

"It would be better for Sgurr Dearg," said Angus, "but that's ower far.
Have you the cartridges, sir?"

"Plenty," I said, patting a side pocket.  "Give me that spare rope,
Kennedy.  I'll want it for hauling down my stag, if I get one."

I put my little .240 into its cover, nodded to the men, and turned down
the gully to the main burn.  I wasn't going to appear on the bare
hill-side so long as it was possible for Medina to have a shot at me.
But soon a ridge shut off the view from the Haripol ground, and I then
took a slant up the face of Bheinn Fhada.

Mary had spent most of the morning at the big telescope in the library
window.  She saw us reach the rim of the corrie and lost us when we
moved up the side of Clonlet.  We came into view again far up the
corrie, and she saw the stalk and the death of the stag.  Then she went
to luncheon, but hastened back in the middle of it in time to see me
scrambling alone among the screes of Bheinn Fhada.  At first she was
reassured because she thought I was coming home.  But when she realised
that I was mounting higher and was making for Corrie Easain her heart
sank, and, when I had gone out of view, she could do nothing but range
miserably about the garden.


II

2.15 P.M. TO ABOUT 5 P.M.

It was very hot on Bheinn Fhada, for I was out of the wind, but when I
reached the ridge and looked down on Corrie Easain I found a fair
breeze, which had certainly more north than east in it.  There was not
a cloud in the sky, and every top for miles round stood out clear,
except the Haripol peaks which were shut off by the highest part of the
ridge I stood on.  Corrie Easain lay far below--not a broad cup like
Corrie-na-Sidhe, but a deep gash in the hills, inclined at such an
angle that the stream in it was nothing but white water.  We called it
the Mad Burn--its Gaelic name, I think, was the Alt-a-mhuillin--and
half-way up and just opposite me a tributary, the Red Burn, came down
from the cliffs of Sgurr Dearg.  I could see the northern peak of that
mountain, a beautiful cone of rock, rising like the Matterhorn from its
glacis of scree.

I argued that Medina would have seen me going up Bheinn Fhada and would
assume that I was bound for Corrie Easain.  He would re-cross the col
and make for the Haripol side of the _beallach_ which led from that
corrie to the Reascuill.  Now I wanted to keep the higher ground, where
I could follow his movements, so it was my aim to get to the watershed
ridge looking down on Haripol before he did.  The wind was a nuisance,
for it was blowing from me and would move any deer towards him, thereby
giving him a clue to my whereabouts.  So I thought that if I could once
locate him, I must try to get the lee side of him.  At that time I
think I had a vague notion of driving him towards Machray.

I moved at my best pace along the east face of Bheinn Fhada towards the
_beallach_--which was a deep rift in the grey rock-curtain through
which deer could pass.  My only feeling was excitement, such as I had
never known before in any stalk.  I slipped and sprawled among the
slabs, slithered over the screes, had one or two awkward traverses
round the butt-end of cliffs, but in about twenty minutes I was at the
point where the _massif_ of Bheinn Fhada joined the watershed ridge.
The easy way was now to get on to the ridge, but I dared not appear on
the sky-line, so I made a troublesome journey along the near side of
the ridge-wall, sometimes out on the face of sheer precipices, but more
often involved in a chaos of loose boulders which were the debris of
the upper rocks.  I was forced pretty far down, and eventually struck
the beallach path about five hundred feet below the summit.

At the crest I found I had no view of the Reascuill valley--only a
narrow corrie blocked by a shoulder of hill and the bald top of Stob
Coire Easain beyond.  A prospect I must have, so I turned east along
the watershed ridge in the direction of Sgurr Dearg.  I was by this
time very warm, for I had come at a brisk pace; I had a rifle to carry,
and had Angus's rope round my shoulders like a Swiss guide; I was
wearing an old grey suit, which, with bluish stockings, made me pretty
well invisible on that hill-side.  Presently as I mounted the ridge,
keeping of course under the sky-line, I came to a place where a lift of
rock enabled me to clear the spurs and command a mile or so of the
Reascuill.

The place was on the sky-line, bare and exposed, and I crawled to the
edge where I could get a view.  Below me, after a few hundred yards of
rocks and scree, I saw a long tract of bracken and deep heather
sweeping down to the stream.  Medina, I made sure, was somewhere
thereabouts, watching the ridge.  I calculated that, with his
re-crossing of the col at the head of Corrie-na-Sidhe and his working
round the south end of Bheinn Fhada, he could not have had time to get
to the _beallach_, or near the _beallach_, before me, and must still be
on the lower ground.  Indeed I hoped to catch sight of him, for, while
I was assured he was pursuing me, he could not know that I was after
him, and might be off his guard.

But there was no sign of life in that sunny stretch of green and
purple, broken by the grey of boulders.  I searched it with my glass
and could see no movement except pipits, and a curlew by a patch of
bog.  Then it occurred to me to show myself.  He must be made to know
that I had accepted his challenge.

I stood up straight on the edge of the steep, and decided to remain
standing till I had counted fifty.  It was an insane thing to do, I
daresay, but I was determined to force the pace....  I had got to
forty-one without anything happening.  Then a sudden instinct made me
crouch and step aside.  That movement was my salvation.  There was a
sound like a twanged fiddle-string, and a bullet passed over my left
shoulder.  I felt the wind of it on my cheek.

The next second I was on my back wriggling below the sky-line.  Once
there I got to my feet and ran--up the ridge on my left to get a view
from higher ground.  The shot, so far as I could judge, had come from
well below and a little to the east of where I had been standing.  I
found another knuckle of rock, and crept to the edge of it, so that I
looked from between two boulders into the glen.

The place was still utterly quiet.  My enemy was hidden there, probably
not half a mile off, but there was nothing to reveal his presence.  The
light wind stirred the bog cotton, a merlin sailed across to Stob Coire
Easain, a raven croaked in the crags, but these were the only sounds.
There was not even a sign of deer.

My glass showed that half-way down an old ewe was feeding--one of those
melancholy beasts which stray into a forest from adjacent sheep-ground,
and lead a precarious life among the rocks, lean and matted and wild,
till some gillie cuts their throats.  They are far sharper-eyed and
quicker of hearing than a stag, and an unmitigated curse to the
stalker.  The brute was feeding on a patch of turf near a big stretch
of bracken, and suddenly I saw her raise her head and stare.  It was
the first time I had ever felt well disposed towards a sheep.

She was curious about something in a shallow gully which flanked the
brackens, and so was I.  I kept my glass glued on her, and saw her toss
her disreputable head, stamp her foot, and then heard her whistle
through her nose.  This was a snag Medina could not have reckoned with.
He was clearly in that gully, working his way upward in its cover,
unwitting that the ewe was giving him away.  I argued that he must want
to reach the high ground as soon as possible.  He had seen me on the
ridge, and must naturally conclude that I had beaten a retreat.  My
first business, therefore, was to reassure him.

I got my rifle out of its cover, which I stuffed into my pocket.  There
was a little patch of gravel just on the lip of the gully, and I
calculated that he would emerge beside it, under the shade of a
blaeberry-covered stone.  I guessed right ... I saw first an arm, and
then a shoulder part the rushes, and presently a face which peered
up-hill.  My glass showed me that the face was Medina's, very red, and
dirty from contact with the peaty soil.  He slowly reached for his
glass, and began to scan the heights.

I don't know what my purpose was at this time, if indeed I had any
purpose.  I didn't exactly mean to kill him, I think, though I felt it
might come to that.  Vaguely I wanted to put him out of action, to put
the fear of God into him, and make him come to terms.  Of further
consequences I never thought.  But now I had one clear intention--to
make him understand that I accepted his challenge.

I put a bullet neatly into the centre of the patch of gravel, and then
got my glass on it.  He knew the game all right.  In a second like a
weasel he was back in the gully.

I reckoned that now I had my chance.  Along the ridge I went, mounting
fast, and keeping always below the sky-line.  I wanted to get to the
lee side of him and so be able to stalk him up-wind, and I thought that
I had an opportunity now to turn the head of the Reascuill by one of
the steep corries which descend from Sgurr Dearg.  Looking back, it all
seems very confused and amateurish, for what could I hope to do, even
if I had the lee side, beyond killing or wounding him?  and I had a
chance of that as long as I had the upper ground.  But in the
excitement of the chase the mind does not take long views, and I was
enthralled by the crazy sport of the thing.  I did not feel any fear,
because I was not worrying about consequences.

Soon I came to the higher part of the ridge and saw frowning above me
the great rock face of Sgurr Dearg.  I saw, too, a thing I had
forgotten.  There was no way up that mountain direct from the ridge,
for the tower rose as perpendicular as a house-wall.  To surmount it a
man must traverse on one side or the other--on the Machray side by a
scree slope, or on the Haripol side by a deep gully which formed the
top of the corrie into which I was now looking.  Across that corrie was
the first of the great buttresses which Sgurr Dearg sends down to the
Reascuill.  It was the famous Pinnacle Ridge (as mountaineers called
it); I had climbed it three weeks before and found it pretty stiff; but
then I had kept the ridge all the way from the valley bottom, and I did
not see any practicable road up the corrie face of it, which seemed
nothing but slabs and rotten rocks, while the few chimneys had ugly
overhangs.

I lay flat and reconnoitred.  What was Medina likely to do?  After my
shot he could not follow up the ridge--the cover was too poor on the
upper slopes.  I reasoned that he would keep on in the broken ground up
the glen till he reached this corrie, and try to find a road to the
high ground either by the corrie itself or by one of the spurs.  In
that case it was my business to wait for him.  But first I thought I
had better put a fresh clip in my magazine, for the shot I had fired
had been the last cartridge in the old clip.

It was now that I made an appalling discovery.  I had felt my pockets
and told Angus that I had plenty of cartridges.  So I had, but they
didn't fit....  I remembered that two days before I had lent Archie my
.240 and had been shooting with a Mannlicher.  What I had in my pocket
were Mannlicher clips left over from that day....  I might chuck my
rifle away, for it was no more use than a poker.

At first I was stunned by the fatality.  Here was I, engaged in a duel
on a wild mountain with one of the best shots in the world, and I had
lost my gun!  The sensible course would have been to go home.  There
was plenty of time for that, and long before Medina reached the ridge I
could be in cover in the gorge of the Mad Burn.  But that way out of it
never occurred to me.  I had chosen to set the course, and the game
must be played out here and now.  But I confess I was pretty well in
despair and could see no plan.  I think I had a faint hope of
protracting the thing till dark and then trusting to my hill-craft to
get even with him, but I had an unpleasant feeling that he was not
likely to oblige me with so long a delay.

I forced myself to think, and decided that Medina would either come up
the corrie or take the steep spur which formed the right-hand side of
it and ran down to the Reascuill.  The second route would give him
cover, but also render him liable to a surprise at close quarters if I
divined his intention, for I might suddenly confront him four yards off
at the top of one of the pitches.  He would therefore prefer the
corrie, which was magnificently broken up with rocks, and seamed with
ravines, and at the same time gave a clear view of all the higher
ground.

With my face in a clump of louse-wort I raked the place with my glass;
and to my delight saw deer feeding about half-way down in the
right-hand corner.  Medina could not ascend the corrie without
disturbing these deer--a batch of some thirty hinds, with five small
and two fairish stags among them.  Therefore I was protected from that
side, and had only the ridge to watch.

But as I lay there I thought of another plan.  Medina, I was pretty
certain, would try the corrie first, and would not see the deer till he
was well inside it, for they were on a kind of platform which hid them
from below.  Opposite me across the narrow corrie rose the great black
wall of the Pinnacle Ridge, with the wind blowing from me towards it.
I remembered a trick which Angus had taught me--how a stalker might
have his wind carried against the face of an opposite mountain and
then, so to speak, reflected from it and brought back to his own side,
so that deer below him would get it and move away from it up _towards
him_.  If I let my scent be carried to the Pinnacle Ridge and diverted
back, it would move the deer on the platform up the corrie towards me.
It would be a faint wind, so they would move slowly away from it--no
doubt towards a gap under the tower of Sgurr Dearg which led to the
little corrie at the head of the Red Burn.  We never stalked that
corrie, because it was impossible to get a stag out of it without
cutting him up, so the place was a kind of sanctuary to which disturbed
deer would naturally resort.

I stood on the sky-line, being confident that Medina could not yet be
within sight, and let the wind, which was now stronger and nearly due
north, ruffle my hair.  I did this for about five minutes, and then lay
down to watch the result, with my glass on the deer.  Presently I saw
them become restless, first the hinds and then the small stags lifting
their heads and looking towards the Pinnacle Ridge.  Soon a little
fellow trotted a few yards up-hill; then a couple of hinds moved after
him; and then by a sudden and simultaneous impulse the whole party
began to drift up the corrie.  It was a quiet steady advance; they were
not scared, only a little doubtful.  I saw with satisfaction that their
objective seemed to be the gap which led over to the Red Burn.

Medina must see this and would assume that wherever I was I was not
ahead of the deer.  He might look for me on the other side, but more
likely would follow the beasts so as to get the high ground.  Once
there he could see my movements, whether I was on the slopes of the
Pinnacle Ridge, or down on the Machray side.  He would consider no
doubt that his marksmanship was so infinitely better than mine that he
had only to pick me out from the landscape to make an end of the
business.

What I exactly intended I do not know.  I had a fleeting notion of
lying hidden and surprising him, but the chances against that were
about a million to one, and even if I got him at close quarters he was
armed and I was not.  I moved a little to the right so as to keep my
wind from the deer, and waited with a chill beginning to creep over my
spirit....  My watch told me it was five o'clock.  Mary and Peter John
would be having tea among the Prince Charlie roses, and Greenslade and
Archie coming up from the river.  It would be heavenly at Machray now
among greenery and the cool airs of evening.  Up here there was
loveliness enough, from the stars of butterwort and grass of Parnassus
by the well-heads to the solemn tops of Sgurr Dearg, the colour of
stormy waves against a faint turquoise sky.  But I knew now that the
beauty of earth depends on the eye of the beholder, for suddenly the
clean airy world around me had grown leaden and stifling.


III

5 P.M. TO ABOUT 7.30 P.M.

It was a good hour before he came.  I had guessed rightly, and he had
made the deduction I hoped for.  He was following the deer towards the
gap, assuming that I was on the Machray side.  I was in a rushy hollow
at a junction of the main ridge and the spur I have mentioned, and I
could see him clearly as, with immense circumspection and the use of
every scrap of cover, he made his way up the corrie.  Once he was over
the watershed, I would command him from the higher ground and have the
wind to my vantage.  I had some hope now, for I ought to be able to
keep him on the hill till the light failed, when my superior local
knowledge would come to my aid.  He must be growing tired, I reflected,
for he had had far more ground to cover.  For myself I felt that I
could go on for ever.

That might have been the course of events but for a second sheep.
Sgurr Dearg had always been noted for possessing a few sheep even on
its high rocks--infernal tattered outlaws, strays originally from some
decent flock, but now to all intents a new species, unclassified by
science.  How they lived and bred I knew not, but there was a legend of
many a good stalk ruined by their diabolical cunning.  I heard
something between a snort and a whistle behind me, and, screwing my
head round, saw one of these confounded animals poised on a rock and
looking in my direction.  It could see me perfectly, too, for on that
side I had no cover.

I lay like a mouse watching Medina.  He was about half a mile off,
almost on the top of the corrie, and he had halted for a rest and a
spy.  I prayed fervently that he would not see the sheep.

He heard it.  The brute started its whistling and coughing, and a
novice could have seen that it suspected something and knew where that
something was.  I observed him get his glass on my lair, though from
the place where he was he could see nothing but rushes.  Then he seemed
to make up his mind and suddenly disappeared from view.

I knew what he was after.  He had dropped into a scaur, which would
take him to the sky-line and enable him to come down on me from above,
while he himself would be safe from my observation.

There was nothing to do but to clear out.  The spur dropping to the
Reascuill seemed to give me the best chance, so I started off,
crouching and crawling, to get round the nose of it and on to the steep
glen-ward face.  It was a miserable job till I had turned the corner,
for I expected every moment a bullet in my back.  Nothing happened,
however, and soon I was slithering down awesome slabs on to insecure
ledges of heather.  I am a fairly experienced mountaineer, and a lover
of rock, but I dislike vegetation mixed up with a climb, and I had too
much of it now.  There was perhaps a thousand feet of that spur, and I
think I must hold the speed record for its descent.  Scratched,
bruised, and breathless, I came to anchor on a bed of screes, with the
infant Reascuill tumbling below me, and beyond it, a quarter of a mile
off, the black cliffs of the Pinnacle Ridge.

But what was my next step to be?  The position was reversed.  Medina
was above me with a rifle, and my own weapon was useless.  He must find
out the road I had taken and would be after me like a flame....  It was
no good going down the glen; in the open ground he would get the chance
of twenty shots.  It was no good sticking to the spur or the adjacent
ridge, for the cover was bad.  I could not hide for long in the
corrie....  Then I looked towards the Pinnacle Ridge and considered
that, once I got into those dark couloirs, I might be safe.  The
Psalmist had turned to the hills for his help--I had better look to the
rocks.

I had a quarter of a mile of open to cross, and a good deal more if I
was to reach the ridge at a point easy of ascent.  There were chimneys
in front of me, deep black gashes, but my recollection of them was that
they had looked horribly difficult, and had been plentifully supplied
with overhangs.  Supposing I got into one of them and stuck.  Medina
would have me safe enough....  But I couldn't wait to think.  With an
ugly cold feeling in my inside I got into the ravine of the burn, and
had a long drink from a pool.  Then I started down-stream, keeping
close to the right-hand bank, which mercifully was high and dotted with
rowan saplings.  And as I went I was always turning my head to see
behind and above me what I feared.

I think Medina, who of course did not know about my rifle, may have
suspected a trap, for he came on slowly, and when I caught sight of him
it was not on the spur I had descended but farther up the corrie.  Two
things I now realised.  One was that I could not make the easy end of
the Pinnacle Ridge without exposing myself on some particularly bare
ground.  The other was that to my left in the Ridge was a deep gully
which looked climbable.  Moreover the foot of that gully was not a
hundred yards from the burn, and the mouth was so deep that a man would
find shelter as soon as he entered it.

For the moment I could not see Medina, and I don't think he had yet
caught sight of me.  There was a trickle of water coming down from the
gully to the burn, and that gave me an apology for cover.  I ground my
nose into the flowe-moss and let the water trickle down my neck, as I
squirmed my way up, praying hard that my enemy's eyes might be sealed.

I think I had got about half-way, when a turn gave me a view of the
corrie, and there was Medina halted and looking towards me.  By the
mercy of Providence my boots were out of sight, and my head a little
lower than my shoulders, so that I suppose among the sand and gravel
and rushes I must have been hard to detect.  Had he used his telescope
I think he must have spotted me, though I am not certain.  I saw him
staring.  I saw him half-raise his rifle to his shoulder, while I heard
my heart thump.  Then he lowered his weapon, and moved out of sight.

Two minutes later I was inside the gully.

The place ran in like a cave with a sandy floor, and then came a steep
pitch of rock, while the sides narrowed into a chimney.  This was not
very difficult.  I swung myself up into the second storey, and found
that the cleft was so deep that the back wall was about three yards
from the opening, so that I climbed in almost complete darkness and in
perfect safety from view.  This went on for about fifty feet, and then,
after a rather awkward chockstone, I came to a fork.  The branch on the
left looked hopeless, while that on the right seemed to offer some
chances.  But I stopped to consider, for I remembered something.

I remembered that this was the chimney which I had prospected three
weeks before when I climbed the Pinnacle Ridge.  I had prospected it
from above, and had come to the conclusion that, while the left fork
might be climbed, the right was impossible or nearly so, for, modestly
as it began, it ran out into a fearsome crack on the face of the cliff,
and did not become a chimney again till after a hundred feet of
unclimbable rotten granite.

So I tried the left fork, which looked horribly unpromising.  The first
trouble was a chockstone, which I managed to climb round, and then the
confounded thing widened and became perpendicular.  I remembered that I
had believed a way could be found by taking to the right hand-face, and
in the excitement of the climb I forgot all precautions.  It simply did
not occur to me that this face route might bring me in sight of eyes
which at all costs I must avoid.

It was not an easy business, for there was an extreme poverty of decent
holds.  But I have done worse pitches in my time, and had I not had a
rifle to carry (I had no sling), might have thought less of it.  Very
soon I was past the worst, and saw my way to returning to the chimney,
which had once more become reasonable.  I stopped for a second to
prospect the route, with my foot on a sound ledge, my right elbow
crooked round a jag of rock, and my left hand, which held the rifle,
stretched out so that my fingers could test the soundness of a certain
handhold.

Suddenly I felt the power go out of those fingers.  The stone seemed to
crumble and splinters flew into my eye.  There was a crashing of
echoes, which drowned the noise of my rifle as it clattered down the
precipice.  I remember looking at my hand spread-eagled against the
rock, and wondering why it looked so strange.

The light was just beginning to fail, so it must have been about
half-past seven.


IV

7.30 P.M. AND ONWARDS

Had anything of the sort happened to me during an ordinary climb I
should beyond doubt have lost my footing with the shock and fallen.
But, being pursued, I suppose my nerves were keyed to a perpetual
expectancy, and I did not slip.  The fear of a second bullet saved my
life.  In a trice I was back in the chimney, and the second bullet
spent itself harmlessly on the granite.

Mercifully it was now easier going--honest knee-and-back work, which I
could manage in spite of my shattered fingers.  I climbed feverishly
with a cold sweat on my brow, but every muscle was in order, and I knew
I would make no mistake.  The chimney was deep, and a ledge of rock hid
me from my enemy below....  Presently I squeezed through a gap, swung
myself up with my right hand and my knees to a shelf, and saw that the
difficulties were over.  A shallow gully, filled with screes, led up to
the crest of the ridge.  It was the place I had looked down on three
weeks before.

I examined my left hand, which was in a horrid mess.  The top of my
thumb was blown off, and the two top joints of my middle and third
fingers were smashed to pulp.  I felt no pain in them, though they were
dripping blood, but I had a queer numbness in my left shoulder.  I
managed to bind the hand up in a handkerchief, where it made a gory
bundle.  Then I tried to collect my wits.

Medina was coming up the chimney after me.  He knew I had no rifle.  He
was, as I had heard, an expert cragsman, and he was the younger man by
at least ten years.  My first thought was to make for the upper part of
the Pinnacle Ridge, and try to hide or to elude him somehow till the
darkness.  But he could follow me in the transparent Northern night,
and I must soon weaken from loss of blood.  I could not hope to put
sufficient distance between us for safety, and he had his deadly rifle.
Somewhere in the night or in the dawning he would get me.  No, I must
stay and fight it out.

Could I hold the chimney?  I had no weapon but stones, but I might be
able to prevent a man ascending by those intricate rocks.  In the
chimney at any rate there was cover, and he could not use his rifle....
But would he try the chimney?  Why should he not go round by the lower
slopes of the Pinnacle Ridge and come on me from above?

It was the dread of his bullets that decided me.  My one passionate
longing was for cover.  I might get him in a place where his rifle was
useless and I had a chance to use my greater muscular strength.  I did
not care what happened to me provided I got my hands on him.  Behind
all my fear and confusion and pain there was now a cold fury of rage.

So I slipped back into the chimney and descended it to where it turned
slightly to the left past a nose of rock.  Here I had cover, and could
peer down into the darkening deeps of the great couloir.

A purple haze filled the corrie, and the Machray tops were like dull
amethysts.  The sky was a cloudy blue sprinkled with stars, and mingled
with the last flush of sunset was the first tide of the afterglow....
At first all was quiet in the gully.  I heard the faint trickle of
stones which are always falling in such a place, and once the croak of
a hungry raven....  Was my enemy there?  Did he know of the easier
route up the Pinnacle Ridge?  Would he not assume that if I could climb
the cleft he could follow, and would he feel any dread of a man with no
gun and a shattered hand?

Then from far below came a sound I recognised--iron hobnails on rock.
I began to collect loose stones and made a little pile of such
ammunition beside me....  I realised that Medina had begun the ascent
of the lower pitches.  Every breach in the stillness was perfectly
clear--the steady scraping in the chimney, the fall of a fragment of
rock as he surmounted the lower chockstone, the scraping again as he
was forced out on to the containing wall.  The light must have been
poor, but the road was plain.  Of course I saw nothing of him, for a
bulge prevented me, but my ears told me the story.  Then there was
silence.  I realised that he had come to the place where the chimney
forked.

I had my stones ready, for I hoped to get him when he was driven out on
the face at the overhang, the spot where I had been when he fired.

The sounds began again, and I waited in a desperate choking calm.  In a
minute or two would come the crisis.  I remember that the afterglow was
on the Machray tops and made a pale light in the corrie below.  In the
cleft there was still a kind of dim twilight.  Any moment I expected to
see a dark thing in movement fifty feet below, which would be Medina's
head.

But it did not come.  The noise of scraped rock still continued, but it
seemed to draw no nearer.  Then I realised that I had misjudged the
situation.  Medina had taken the right-hand fork.  He was bound to,
unless he had made, like me, an earlier reconnaissance.  My route in
the half-light must have looked starkly impossible.

The odds were now on my side.  No man in the fast-gathering darkness
could hope to climb the cliff face and rejoin that chimney after its
interruption.  He would go on till he stuck--and then it would not be
too easy to get back.  I reascended my own cleft, for I had a notion
that I might traverse across the space between the two forks, and find
a vantage point for a view.

Very slowly and painfully, for my left arm was beginning to burn like
fire and my left shoulder and neck to feel strangely paralysed, I
wriggled across the steep face till I found a sort of _gendarme_ of
rock, beyond which the cliff fell smoothly to the lip of the other
fork.  The great gully below was now a pit of darkness, but the
afterglow still lingered on this upper section and I saw clearly where
Medina's chimney lay, where it narrowed and where it ran out.  I fixed
myself so as to prevent myself falling, for I feared I was becoming
light-headed.  Then I remembered Angus's rope, got it unrolled, took a
coil round my waist, and made a hitch over the _gendarme_.

There was a smothered cry from below, and suddenly came the ring of
metal on stone, and then a clatter of something falling.  I knew what
it meant.  Medina's rifle had gone the way of mine and lay now among
the boulders at the chimney foot.  At last we stood on equal terms,
and, befogged as my mind was, I saw that nothing now could stand
between us and a settlement.

It seemed to me that I saw something moving in the half-light.  If it
was Medina, he had left the chimney and was trying the face.  That way
I knew there was no hope.  He would be forced back, and surely would
soon realise the folly of it and descend.  Now that his rifle had gone
my hatred had ebbed.  I seemed only to be watching a fellow-mountaineer
in a quandary.

He could not have been forty feet from me, for I heard his quick
breathing.  He was striving hard for holds, and the rock must have been
rotten, for there was a continuous dropping of fragments, and once a
considerable boulder hurtled down the couloir.

"Go back, man," I cried instinctively.  "Back to the chimney.  You
can't get further that way."

I suppose he heard me, for he made a more violent effort, and I thought
I could see him sprawl at a foothold which he missed, and then swing
out on his hands.  He was evidently weakening, for I heard a sob of
weariness.  If he could not regain the chimney, there was three hundred
feet of a fall to the boulders at the foot.

"Medina," I yelled, "I've a rope.  I'm going to send it down to you.
Get your arm in the loop."

I made a noose at the end with my teeth and my right hand, working with
a maniac's fury.

"I'll fling it straight out," I cried.  "Catch it when it falls to you."

My cast was good enough, but he let it pass, and the rope dangled down
into the abyss.

"Oh, damn it, man," I roared, "you can trust me.  We'll have it out
when I get you safe.  You'll break your neck if you hang there."

Again I threw, and suddenly the rope tightened.  He believed my word,
and I think that was the greatest compliment ever paid me in all my
days.

"Now you're held," I cried.  "I've got a belay here.  Try and climb
back into the chimney."

He understood and began to move.  But his arms and legs must have been
numb with fatigue, for suddenly that happened which I feared.  There
was a wild slipping and plunging, and then he swung out limply, missing
the chimney, right on to the smooth wall of the cliff.

There was nothing for it but to haul him back.  I knew Angus's ropes
too well to have any confidence in them, and I had only the one good
hand.  The rope ran through a groove of stone which I had covered with
my coat, and I hoped to work it even with a single arm by moving slowly
upwards.

"I'll pull you up," I yelled, "but for God's sake give me some help.
Don't hang on the rope more than you need."

My loop was a large one and I think he had got both arms through it.
He was a monstrous weight, limp and dead as a sack, for though I could
feel him scraping and kicking at the cliff face, the rock was too
smooth for fissures.  I held the rope with my feet planted against
boulders, and wrought till my muscles cracked.  Inch by inch I was
drawing him in, till I realised the danger.

The rope was grating on the sharp brink beyond the chimney and might at
any moment be cut by a knife-edge.

"Medina"--my voice must have been like a wild animal's scream--"this is
too dangerous.  I'm going to let you down a bit so that you can
traverse.  There's a sort of ledge down there.  For Heaven's sake go
canny with this rope."

I slipped the belay from the _gendarme_, and hideously difficult it
was.  Then I moved farther down to a little platform nearer the
chimney.  This gave me about six extra yards.

"Now," I cried, when I had let him slip down, "a little to your left.
Do you feel the ledge?"

He had found some sort of foothold, and for a moment there was a
relaxation of the strain.  The rope swayed to my right towards the
chimney.  I began to see a glimmer of hope.

"Cheer up," I cried.  "Once in the chimney you're safe.  Sing out when
you reach it."

The answer out of the darkness was a sob.  I think giddiness must have
overtaken him, or that atrophy of muscle which is the peril of
rock-climbing.  Suddenly the rope scorched my fingers and a shock came
on my middle which dragged me to the very edge of the abyss.

I still believe that I could have saved him if I had had the use of
both my hands, for I could have guided the rope away from that fatal
knife-edge.  I knew it was hopeless, but I put every ounce of strength
and will into the effort to swing it with its burden into the chimney.
He gave me no help, for I think--I hope--that he was unconscious.  Next
second the strands had parted, and I fell back with a sound in my ears
which I pray God I may never hear again--the sound of a body rebounding
dully from crag to crag, and then a long soft rumbling of screes like a
snowslip.

      *      *      *      *      *

I managed to crawl the few yards to the anchorage of the _gendarme_
before my senses departed.  There in the morning Mary and Angus found
me.




BOOKS BY

JOHN BUCHAN


THE RICHARD HANNAY NOVELS

  The Thirty-Nine Steps
  Greenmantle
  Mr. Standfast
  The Three Hostages
  The Island of Sheep


NOVELS AND STORIES

  The Path of the King
  Huntingtower
  Midwinter
  John Macnab
  The Dancing Floor
  Witch Wood
  The Runagates Club
  The Courts of the Morning
  Castle Gay
  The Blanket of the Dark
  The Gap in the Curtain
  A Prince of the Captivity
  The Three Fishers
  The House of the Four Winds
  The Half-Hearted
      and
  The Moon Endureth


OMNIBUS BOOKS

  The Four Adventures of Richard Hannay
  The Adventures of Sir Edward Leithen
  The Adventures of Dickson McCunn
  A Five-Fold Salute to Adventure


HIS OTHER BOOKS

  Augustus
  Oliver Cromwell
  The King's Grace
  Montrose
  Homilies and Recreations and his Autobiography
  Memory Hold-the-Door


HODDER AND STOUGHTON




[End of The Three Hostages, by John Buchan]
