 CHAPTER XIV 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 penthouse. All right, sir, he asked cheerfully. All right, I said. I found what I wanted. There was a party turned up not long after he had gone in. Luckily I had locked the door after you. He wasn't inside more than five minutes. A party with a black topcoat turned up at the collar. Respectable party he looked. Oldish. Not to ban a curate. Funny thing, sir, but I guessed correctly when you were coming back, and had the door unlocked, ready for you. If you're 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 boot seeing a guest off from a 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 in 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 Toffette. 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 Blankiron'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 Wymanham aunts, and that in any case I could get news over there. The Mrs. Wymanham were silly ladies, but their butler would have made Momar respectable. He and I had always gotten on well, and I think the only thing that can hold him, when Fawzi 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 ask. No, Sir Richard. But she said she wouldn't be late. I expect her at any moment. Then I think I'll come in and wait. How are you, Bernard? 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 Wymanham is dancing to-night, and won't be back till very late. How are things at Fawzi, Sir, if I make so bold? And how is the young gentleman? Miss Mary has shown me a photograph. A very handsome young gentleman, Sir, and favours yourself. Nonsense, Bernard. He is the living image of his mother. Get me a drink like a good fellow, a tankard of beer, if you have it, for I have 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 Bernard 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? Guest, I thought of the likeliest cover to draw. You see, I've been watching you dancing tonight. Look here, my dear, if you put so much paint and powder on your face, and jam it so close to old Turpan'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 knew it, for I had once been there with Archie Roiland's. That was queer enough. But imagine my surprise when I saw my wedded wife rattled 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 liar 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 that you have been doing since I said goodbye to you at Fawcett? First, she said, I had a visit from a dramatic critic on holiday, Mr. Alexander Thompson. He said he knew you, and that you had suggested that he should call. He came three times to Fawcett, 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'd 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 and batches, and he posts one daily. Then you've been here for 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 Torpe 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. Blankiron 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 mannequin-ish 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 parts blendedly. You see, it would never do to try to awake Odell of 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 talked 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. Ah, 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 Arbuthnott says no, on no account. He says it might ruin everything. He takes a very solemn view of this affair, you know. And so do I. I have seen Mr. Medina. Where, I ask 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 superhuman. 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 that 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 Arbuthnott is afraid for you, she said. The two times I have seen him in London, he kept harping on the need of you 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 forever. And Colonel Arbuthnott 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 dothily. 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 Wyman Dam made me get up to leave. She was still the same odd-looking creature, with a mass of toe-colored 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 demowed. It puts her whole figure out of drying. 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 Royalance at Parliamenters. He is launching 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 Warcliffe. 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 gray man whom I watched from behind the bedroom door. Now that man was a 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 gray 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. You're a 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, in a state of which he was a trustee wanted looking into. I asked him what part of England, and he said Shropshire. He liked that neighborhood 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 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, Hanny, and a wise man must have his moods of contempt. Victory loses some of its salt when it is one 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 we'll 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. The 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 Warcliffe 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 any one 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 Royalance has made a dreadful mess of things. He came to that dancing-place tonight, and Adele of Victor was there, and Adele 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 marquee. He danced with Adele, and I suppose he talked nonsense to her. Anyhow, he made himself conspicuous. The result was that Adele 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 Adele, and then Archie did a very silly thing. He said he was Sir Archibald Royalance and wasn't going to be dictated to, by any Jew. And worse, he said his friend was the marquee 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 woman 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 marquee, they're sure to know who he is and all about him. And remember his connection with Adele. 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 dare not take any part. No, came a hesitating voice. I suppose not. But you can warn the marquee, if nothing has happened to him already. Precious poor chants. 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. I rang up Victor's house and found, as I expected, that Turpin had not returned. Then I rang up Archie's house in Groesvenor Street, and got the same answer about him. It was no good, my going off to the back streets of Mariborne, so I went to bed and spent a wretched night. Very early next morning I was in Groesvenor 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 tidally 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 objugations. He denied that he had dying too well. Nothing but a small whiskey 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 nothing to say for herself, she's had hard usage from some swine, you could see it by her eyes, and I expect to pugs the villain. Anyway, I wasn't going to stand his order in her about like a slave, so I told him so, and a fellow with a black beer chipped in, and they began to hustle me. Then I did a damn silly thing. I tried to solemnize him by saying who I was, and Old Turpin was there, so I dragged his name in. Dashed cat-ish thing to do, but I thought a marquee 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 facing the pug, seeing bright red and inclined to fight a dozen. I didn't last for more than one round. A game-wide cramped me, I suppose. I got in one or two on his ugly face. Then I suppose I took a knock-out. After that I don't remember anything till I woke up in this bed, feeling as if I had been through a mangle. The people here say I was brought in by two bodies, 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 having been in such a vulgar shindy, just as I'm thinking of going in for Parliament. I don't think there's a 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, go hunting for that girl in green. I'll give you my reason some day, but you can take it that they're good ones. Another thing, you've got to keep out of Terpen'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 Terpen as soon as they let me up. But he's all right. Sure to be. He wasn't looking 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 Carleton 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 15 How a French Noble Man Discovered Fear I have twice heard from Terpen the story I'm 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 Terpen properly, and in any case I'm 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 Britain is less qualified to comprehend. For myself I could far more easily get inside the skin of a Bosch. 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 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 a torture to him to do nothing except look on. But he never tempted to wake him memory, but waited obediently till Mary gave orders, and played the part of perfection of the ordinary half-witted dancing mount-a-bank. When the road 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 Claude Simon 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 a black beard was looking at him, but said nothing. There seemed to be a good deal of record at the foot of the stairs. One of the girls caught his arm. Nigger that way, she whispered. It's a raid all right. There's another road out. You don't want your name in Tamara'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 day go whom he recognized as one of the bartenders. Up at 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, all you fleek 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 realized the 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 floors 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 the pillow. He made an effort and controlled himself, for he realized that if he let himself become hysterical, he would only suffocate the faster. Then he declared 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 odor swathed him in its nauseous faults. 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 realized he wasn't dressed clothed, he recollected Artie'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 ale you must be a man. Then a voice broke out of the darkness, and that 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 were the soft slurring patches of his home. It seemed to drive away his headache and nausea, and 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 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 forest through 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 a 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 heart-pungeant 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 a turpin before the war had put in some year's service in Africa, with the Ami colonial as a lieutenant of space, 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 Cersei 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 doubled 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 light suddenly turned on at night as one looks from without at a dark house. He felt in every boner thing he had almost forgotten, the spell and the terror of the desert. It was cruel and inhuman face, harding 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 Kurama. That was the one mistake Mary made, and a very natural one, for it was not likely that he and the engine would fogather. 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 leathergy, like the Kurama which overtakes a man who is being frozen to death. I could get very little out of Tappan 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 all inspiring, the voice was, if anything, friendly. It told him that he was an 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 do meant to shake his leathergy into spousings of childish fear. Your body is still feeble to move, said the voice, for Allah has laid his hand on it. Sure enough, Tappan 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 Tappan 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. Or 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, Terpence welled 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 aftertaste 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 Bosch, the Freemasons, and Communists, and the deputies of his own land, and ever since a dealess disappearance he had nursed a fury against a person or persons unknown. And now every detestation of which he was capable had been focused against those who were responsible for this night's work. The fools, they thought they had got a trust cheap, 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 given 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 road 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 Hane, the miserable Hane, 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 rule 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 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. Killed ham and jenontine, an omelet, salad, cheese, and a small decant of red wine. He so 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 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 excess of thirst enabled him to grasp the decanter and, after some trouble, the stopper to draw it to his lips. Spilling a good deal, he succeeded in getting a mouthful. La Rose, 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 omelet, making a rather messy job of it. By this time he was feeling a remarkably vigorous convalescent, and he continued with a 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 were 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 onto 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 for natural stiffness in the joints he felt as well as ever. But what it all meant he had not 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 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 surprise, unlocked. The passage was lit by a hanging oil-lamp, carpeted with an old-fashioned droguette, 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 home-like. He considered himself sensitive to the nuances of sinister 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 had 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, though 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 masters of dark hair. It was the figure which he of all men was likely to know best. It seemed that the place for whom was bid, 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 wearer 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 ring 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 third he groaned. There was a tap at the door, and a man entered to clear away the supper-table. He seemed an ordinary English vellet, with his stiff colour and decent black coat, and smug expressionless face. "'Beg pardon, my lord,' he said, "'at what hour would you like your shaving water? Seen it's been late night, I make so bold as to suggest ten o'clock.' Terpen 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 Terpen, and his look was friendly. He addressed him in French of the most sex and type. Chapter 16 of the Three Hostages This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by K. L. Zelke. The Three Hostages by John Buchan Chapter 16 Our Time Is Narrowed I lunch 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 McCott, she protested. Yes, and I lost Terpen. The roots are still three up on us. I thought we had found two. And now we have lost Miss Victor again, and Terpen. 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. Count found 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. Da should 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 have 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 have a notion we may find them both together. We always did that as children. She paused at the word children, and I saw a 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 a 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 gut! 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 Arbuthnott said so. You may find out something tremendous. It won't 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 Warcliffe, 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 in the world, and I must have a line of communication open. You can't telephone me at the 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 a 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 McGillivray, she nodded. And with Sandy? Yes, but it takes some time. A day at least. We can't correspond direct. Well, there's the layout. 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, Annie, he said. Make yourself comfortable. There are cigars on the 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 tonight. The same thing always happens when I want to see my friends. A hideous rush of work. It 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 Royalance 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 awakened 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 Arbuth not 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 had been told that he has been seen in England. For a second I had a horrid fear that he had got on the track of my meeting with Sandy, at the Cotswalled 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 have 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 at his 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 during 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 worshiping 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, and 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 mates, there was no other servant in the house, but Odell. Twice I met the gray, 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 lower 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 girl's 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 solemnized, frightened half out of my wits, and yet in a violent revulsion, and hating him like hell. It 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 cavemen, 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 Gaudien 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 Gaudien 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 Merdell stamp it would have been all up with me. The only course was the bold one, though I pursued it with a quaking heart. Hello, I cried. Here's a cable from a panel of mine in Norway. Did I tell you I had been trying to get a beat on the Lirdel 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. 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 have 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 is what he read. Upper Beat Lirdel, 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, title water 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. Motorboat can be had from Bergen, Anderson, Grant 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 Gaudien really sent. Our friend has quarreled 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 all salmon fishing for the present. I took a cable from the table, and wrote, Sorry, must cancel, Leerdahl plan, signed it, Hanny, addressed it to Anderson, Grant 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 the hotel board awaiting their arrival of the mythical Anderson. On the way back to Hill Street, Medina put his arm in mine, and was very friendly. I hoped 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 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 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 twenty-seventh of May. Next afternoon at tea-time, to my surprise, O'Dell appeared in the smoking-room, followed by the long-ling figure of Tom Greenslade. I never saw anybody with greater pleasure, but I didn't dare to talk to him alone. He's 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 Ms. 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 handy. 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 patronizing in his manner. He asked in the most friendly way about Greenslade's practice and how he liked English country life after his many wanderings. He spoke with an air of regret of the great valleys of Loss and the windy central Asian table-lands where they had first foregathered. Odell brought in tea, and we made as pleasant a trio as friends as you could find in London. I asked a few casual questions about Fawzi, 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 Annie is a little anxious. You know what she is, and all mothers today 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 divineed the doctor's intention. I behaved as if I scarcely heard him, and as if Fawzi 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 myself 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 tonight I can slack off, and presently I'll be an idle man. And then the holiday, and 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 risk. 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 McGillivray must know the truth at once, and so must Mary. Mercat 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 was standing on the lines with an express train approaching, and does not know how to climb back onto 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 Victor's 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 bring up anybody he wanted, but of which only his special friends knew the number. That 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 at 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 Oriole Steen's books and settled down in an armchair 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 a dust, and children were going parkwards with their nurses. I simply could not account for my disquiet, but I was like a fine lady with the vapors. I felt that somewhere in that room there was something that it concerned me deeply to know. I drifted toward the bear-writing-table. There was nothing on it but a massive silver ink-stand in the shape of an owl, a silver tray of pens and oddments, a leather case of note-paper, 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. 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, until 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 they didn't go well, the second sheet contained his plans—plans I have no doubt for using the hostages for ringing safety out of certain great men's fears. My interpretation was confirmed by a small jotting in longhand on the first sheet in the space for 2nd June. It was the two words, Diaz 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 McGillivray 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 Wymanham's house without difficulty. Bernard 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 has changed to the 2nd of June. You understand? Weren't everybody? I can't think why you were 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 for 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 second. Thank God Mary was quick-witted. The second 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. But that's a woman's way. He clearly suspected nothing. Certainly. Let Lady Hannie 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 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 Ray, and he can come down by the 445. He's such a precious little boy, Mr. Medina, that I feel we must take every precaution with him. If Mr. Dobson Ray 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 Ray in Wimple 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 the 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 realize 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. End of chapter 16 Chapter 17 of The Three Hostages by John Buckin This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Peter Tomlinson. Chapter 17 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 cognizant 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 called behind in an unfashionable bum, seemed, the little that was seen of it, to be sprinkled with grey. She was dowdy, yet not altogether dowdy, for there was a certain faded elegance in her hair, 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 teachers, 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 anew an 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 gentle woman 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 organisation's of St. Jude's. There were all kinds of activities in that enlightened church, choral societies and mother's meetings, and country holiday clubs, and classes for adult education. She would hand out sheaves of literature about the girl's friendly society, and the mother's 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 doctors and the music teachers, though she regularly distributed her literature there. The wretched little maids were too downtrodden and harassed to do more than listen dullly on the doorstep, and say, yes, nor was she allowed to see the mistresses, except one of the lodging housekeepers, who was a primitive methodist and consider St. Jude's, a device of Satan. But she had better fortune with the maid at number four. 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 away with her. Now the girl's hobby was dress, and her taste was better than most of her class, and aspired to hire 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 somber clothes. She pointed out where the trimming was wrong, and might easily be improved, and the girl, her name was Elsie Othwaite, 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. Yice was broken, and the aloof Miss Elswaite became confidential. She liked her place, had no cause to complain, received good wages, and, above all, was not fussed. I mined my own business, and madden mined hers, she said. Madden was a foreigner, and had her queer ways, but had also her good points. She did not interfere unnecessarily, and was not mean. There was handsome presents at Christmas, and every now and then the house would be shut up, and Miss Elswaite returned to Kent on generous board wages. It was not a hard billet, although, of course, there were a lot of visitors. Madden's clients. She's a masseuse, you know, but very respectable. When asked if there were no other inmates of the house, she became reticent. Not what you would call regular part of the family, she admitted. There's an old lady, Madden's aunt, that stops with us a bit, but I don't see much of her. Madden attends to her herself, and she has her private room. And, of course, there's Miss Elswaite seemed suddenly to recollect something and change the subject. The district visitor professed a desire to make Madden'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 heard her say so. You won't be getting ear 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 Elswaite primmed her lips and didn't think so. You've got to be ill and nervy for Madden to have an interest in you. I'll take in your name if you like, but I expect Madden won't be at home to you. It was eventually arranged that the district visitor should call at number four the following afternoon and bring the materials for the reconstructed hat. She duly presented herself, but was warned away by a flustered Miss Elswaite. We're that busy today. I haven'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. Madden was out and the district visitor spent a profitable hour in Miss Elswaite's room. Her nimble fingers soon turned the hat purchased in Queen's Crescent for ten and six months into a distant imitation of a costlier mode. She displayed an innocent interest in the household and asked many questions which Miss Elswaite, now in the best of tempers, answered readily. She was told of Madden's habits, her very occasional shortness of temper, her love of every tongue but English. The worst of them foreigners, said Miss Elswaite, is that you can't never be sure what they think of you. After time, I'm with Madden and her aunt, they're talking some Ethan 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 confiton. Madden's latchkey was heard in the door and Miss Elswaite had a moment of panic. Here Miss, I'll let you out through the kitchen, she whispered. But a visitor showed no embarrassment. I'd like to meet Madam Breeder, she declared. This is a good chance. Madden's plump dark face showed surprise and possibly annoyance, as she observed the two. Miss Elswaite hastened to explain the situation with a speed which revealed nervousness. This is a lady from St Jude's, Madam, she said. She comes here district visiting and she knows the folk in Redhurst where I come from. So I made bold to ask her in. I'm very glad to meet you, Madam Breeder, said the district visitor. I hope you don't mind my calling on Elswaite. I want her to help in our girl's friendly society work. You have been here before, I think, was a reply in a sufficiently civil tone. I have seen you in the square sometimes. There is no objection on my part to Elswaite'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, Madam Breeder watched her contemplatively from one of the windows. The lady came again four days later. It must, I think, I've been the 29th of May. Miss Elswaite, when she opened the door, looked flustered. I can't talk to you tonight, Miss. Madam's orders is that when you next came, you used to be shown into 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 to 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 Madam received her patience. 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, but she picked up the little girl, held her a second in her arms, and kissed her after the emotional habit of the childless devotee. Then she passed through the folding doors. It was not an apartment in which she found herself much larger than it could have been guessed from the look of the house, and, though the night was warm, there was a fire-lit, a smoldering fire which gave off a fine blue smoke. Madam Breeder 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 armchair by the house 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 newcomer stood hesitating as the folding door shut behind her. Oh, Madam Breeder, it is so very kind of you to see me, she faltered. I do not know your name, Madam said, and then she did a curious thing, for she lifted a lamp and held it in the visitor's face, scrutinizing every line of her shabby figure. Clark, Agnes Clark, and 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, Madam Broken, still holding up the lamp? The district visitor gave a small nervous laugh. Oh, I am not so very old, just over forty. To be quite truthful, nearly forty-seven. I feel so young sometimes that I cannot believe it, and then, at other times, when 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. Madam did not appear to be listening. She said something to the other lady in a foreign tongue. May I sit down please, the visitor asked. I have been walking a good deal today. Madam 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, Madam asked? And her tone was almost menacing. We have nothing to do with your church. Oh, but you live in a 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 visitors face war and 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 Outwait? 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 to help, too, in our work. The visitor started, but she found the hand of the old woman on her arm. The long fingers were running down it and pressing it. Here the two, 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 am afraid I am 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 Madam 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 dyscomposure 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 this missile. 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. May she come to St. Jude's sometimes? Arthwaite has her duties at home, and so I dare say have you if truth was spoken. I have no patience with restless English old maids. They say in Englishman's house is his castle, and yet there is a plague of barren virgins always buzzing around 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 Arthwaite. I will not have an idle woman spying on my private affairs. The visitors had down to rise with a whisper fangative. 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 it pains me to be misunderstood. I am afraid I have been tackless, 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's been sent to bed. The front room was in darkness, but there was a light in the hall where Miss Arthwaite waited to show her out. At the front door the district visitor had recovered herself. Elsie! she whispered. Madam Breeder 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 four, 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 curb. 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 enhanced it.