 CHAPTER 18 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 to visit to the club and a telephone message to Mary, but I durst not venture it, for I realized, 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 McGillivray, and on McGillivray's taking the necessary steps to hasten the rounding up. By the second of June, Merckhardt would be restored to his friends, and Ms. 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? Merckhardt and Guardian 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 Walkliffe. I had come to the conclusion that Mary's farewell words at Hill Street had met 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. Even the thought of him made success with the other two seemed 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. I 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 favorite slave. He unbent to me as a relief to his long spiritual tension, and let me see the innermost dreams of his heart. I realized with a shudder that he thought me a part of that hideous world he had 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 he, 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 civilization 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 Timor. 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 going. 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 Greenslaid 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 Gaudien, as there must be, wire him to start at once, and go straight to Julie's victor. Then wire the duke to meet him there. Do you understand? Now, what have you to tell me? Surely 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? Greenslaid 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 Hene 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 her 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 worshiper. He wanted to steep his limbs in it and wash his soul in light and swim in wide warm waters. He rhapsodized 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 thymidowns with his eyes abstracted. Since 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 parson 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 kin 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, 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 the 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 in only half a week, 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. Murkart and Gaudien were having a late tea in the Midland Express, having nearly broken their necks in a furious motor-ace to catch the train at Haywick. 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 Gaudien's study of the works of Sir Walter Scott. "'New hovers to be let loose to-day. What do you suppose he'll do?' he asked. Nothing yet, a while, was the answer. I said certain things to him. He cannot openly go back to Germany, and I do not think he'd 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 middle sex and buck's borders, Turpin was talking to a girl. He was an evening dress, a very point-device young man, and she was wearing a wonderful gown, grass green in color, and fantastically cut. Her face was heavily made up, and her scarlet lips and stained eyebrow 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 in bewilderment, but they were human again and shone at this moment with a wild affection. "'I'm 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 gray man—I do not know his name—he told me so, and he is a friend. A car is ordered for me in 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 dear 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 jewels and he has 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 tonight I do not know, but I fancy it is the end of our troubles. Sir Gray 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 will 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 unclear cisman. Also, please, God, a reckoning. The wooden-faced valet he 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 over 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 Clarge's 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 discomforture of his guests, and a telephone message to his rooms near the Champ Balazé 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. But 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 and 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 the 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 Mervin 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 odor of flowers, scent, hardwood pavements, and asphalt, which is the summer smell of London. Cars were waiting in house-doors, and women in pretty clothes getting into them. Men were walking dinner-words, with some of whom we exchanged greetings. The whole earth seemed full of laughter and happy movement. And it was shot 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 Mervin 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 Burmenster, with Pallister Yead's opposite me. At first the talk was chiefly about the derby and ask-it 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 Burmenster, 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 fish-ponds 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 clerits, 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. At 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 Bermenster's fooling. Presently the talk drifted away from sport. Palasse Yates was speaking, and his fresh boyish color contrasted oddly with his wise eyes and gray voice. I can't make out what is happening, he said in reply to a remark of Leithans. 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 realization 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 Whittington's then, and we suddenly found the foundations beginning to crumble. Oh, yes, before the Sarajevo 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 Leithan, I don't like this. Is it another war? Palisades 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 civilized 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. Berminster looked relieved. The next war, he said, will be a dash at 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 embossed gays 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 Berminster'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 tanket of beer. There was a chorus of questions. Just arrived an hour ago. I'd been in the East, Egypt and Palestine, flew most of the way back. He nodded to me and smiled at Medina and raised his tanker 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 Pew, who nodded. You remember the Hamaladari crowd who used to organize the transport from Mespot? Well, I'm a Hamaladari on a big scale. I'm prepared to bring the rank of the Hajji 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 Pallas or Yates, 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 McGillivary's round trip, but his manner reassured me. There were people there who wanted to turn Sandy to other subjects, especially Fully Love 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 on riddled, 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. Monnington, 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 poles, unto 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 burnmouth. 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 peening my life to milk-camels. They're chancy brutes. I don't believe there's anything there, said fully love, 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 Mana Oasis. He stopped to taste the club Madeira, then sat 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 budding in? He was half-way to the door, when Burnminster asked where he was going. To see 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 Madeira saw it and put it down, I dare say, to my dislike of Sandy. He asked Palisades 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 Berminster 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 Roylands, and yet I had a queer sense of having seen his face before. I stepped into the dancing room with its heavy flavor of scent and its infernal dean of Mountabag 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 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 men on the spree. They were heavier-footed too, though good enough performers. Somehow I got the notion that most of them were not habituaries 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 it our hunt-ball in March, and her hair was dressed in this 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, looking 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 roundup and the course to be followed towards the hostages. He signed peremptorily to Ms. Victor and went forward as if to take her arm. You got to come along, I heard, when my eyes were occupied with a new figure. Turpan was there, a pale-taught 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 Turpan 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 Ms. Victor's hand clutching his arm and Odell advancing with a flush on his sallow face. You let her go that goil, he was saying. You've got no business with her. She's my goil. Turpan 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 Turpan's place, for I felt that a scrap was what I needed to knit up my ragged nerves. But I couldn't ship in, for this was clearly his special quarrel, and very soon I saw that he was not likely to need my help. Being wickedly, he moved round the pug who had his fists up. Fish 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. Turpan kept Odell at long range, for infighting 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 muddling, he started to sail in. That part I witnessed, and I hoped that Mary and Miss Victor did not understand Old Turpan's language, for he spoke gently to himself the whole time, and it was the quintessence of all the esoteric abuse that the French Pouillou 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 realized that 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 deafness of youth. They fought for just over six minutes. Turpan'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. Turpan 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 awful, 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. Turpan and Odella 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 Pinar'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. End of Section 19 Section 20 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. The Three Hostages By John Buckin Chapter 19 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 neighborhood. A large motor-car drew up at the gate of Number Seven, 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 center of the square made a patch of shade. She seemed to find there what she expected, for she hastened to the gate of Number Four. She did not approach the front door, but ran down the path to the back where the tradesman called, and as soon as she was out of sight several figures emerged from the shadow and moved towards the gate. Miss Althwaite 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, madam,' the girl gasped. "'Never mind, madam. You are done with, madam. Tomorrow 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 mesmerized 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 four. 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. Even 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 recognize him I knew where he came from. My spirits were at the 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 Murcot, 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 a jar. 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 lamplet, 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. Hello! 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 Tuff put to sleep with a crack on the chin from Turpan. You know, the Marquis de la Tour de Pan. 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, Turpan has taken Miss Victor back to her father. I looked at my watch. And by this time Lord Murcot 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 Murcot. You mean the Alchester 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 believed 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 realized 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 Brada, 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 Murkart, and I expected this moment, Newhover, is feeling rather cheap. Miss Victor, too. She wasn't very difficult, once we hid 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 my hat off to the best actor I have ever met. The best but one, the German Count, who lies buried at the farm of Gavrel. 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 baser 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, or he 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 his hands over the lot for months, and tonight 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 Walkliffe, safe and sane. Sane, I say, for whatever you have made of the poor little chap you have got to un-make it. I had made of 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 blank iron 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 are madder than I thought. My lassitude was disappearing. I began to get angry. If you do not agree, I said, I will blacken your reputation throughout the civilized world. What use will England have for a kidnapper and a blackmailer and 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. I 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 blaggard 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 realization of Medina's quality. Here was a man who had just learned that his pet schemes were shattered, who had had his vanity wounded by the quick 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 Walkliffe. 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 lap, 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 defenses? He had kinks in him, witnessed 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 devined 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. One had come into the room, and I turned and found Karama. He was an 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 devouries 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. In 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 coal, 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 armchair 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 tears 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 own 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. I 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 armchair. All that is very interesting, Sandy went on. But it is not quite germane to the subject before us. Karama, whom we both remember in his pride, unfortunately died last year. He was kept very secret for obvious reasons. The good will 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 Karama 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 Pan, when it was important that they should be in safekeeping. 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. Lavita, he cried, come in, we're ready for you. There entered the gray 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. Lavita, 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 honor. Lavita will be able to tell the world a good deal about you. Medina's face had become like a mask, and the collar 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 that they have been fools. You have been a very popular man, Mr. Medina, and your many friends will loathe 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 Englishmen may call it unbelievable, for we are not an imaginative nation. Again we can get no help from the principal sufferers. This Victor and Lord Murcot 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 recognize 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 Warcliffe. 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 the 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 Laveter, and Dick will bury himself in Oxfordshire mud, and in return we ask that you hand over to us David Warcliffe 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 him 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 fear he burned the mask of 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 hearth rug 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 Carama. He fought like a tiger, but lavoured her and I with a little help from Sandy, men should trust 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? Sandy 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 met 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. 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 Walkliffe. The others are free now, and he must be free tonight. 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 tonight'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 her mother's. I must give David Walkliffe 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 maize-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 protest 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 all. But all the same I did not recognize her. It was a stranger that stood there, a stern goddess that wheeled 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 sulleness the shadow of terror. You are a desperate man, she was saying, but I am far more desperate. There's 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'll 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 she 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 mantelpiece. 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 like 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 three-fold chime which announced the quarter had begun when out of his dry throat came a sound like a clucking hens. 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 faggot 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 the 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. Medina 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 mountain bank under those fearless eyes. The voices droned on, the man asking questions, the child answering in a weak unnatural voice. You are David Warcliffe. You lost your way coming from school. You have been ill and have forgotten. You are better now. You remember Heverham and the Red Shanks 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. Davy, I said loudly, Davy, 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. Davy, 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. She 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 Ode to 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 Davy's hair. I can't change his clothes, but at any rate I can make his head like a boy's again, sought 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 Davy. She clipped assiduously, and by the time we came to the Pimlico Square where Sir Arthur Walkliffe 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 Davy 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 Davy. 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 Mousehead, 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 Carleton 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 Murcott, who looked uncommonly fit and handsome, toasting me in champagne, and a della Victor sitting in a piano and singing to us divinely. But my chief memory is of a French nobleman whirling a distinguished German engineer into an extemporized dance of joy. End of Section 20. Section 21 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. A Week Later, after much consultation with Sandy, I wrote Medina a letter. The paper 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, and 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 how 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 Fawcy, and not inclined to leave it. In the meantime, McGillivray's business was going on and the press was full of strange cases which no one seemed to think of connecting. I gathered from McGillivray that, though the syndicate was smashed to little bits, he had failed to make the complete bag of malfactors 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 jail for life, and there was the famous rounding up of the murder-gang in Turin. But McGillivray 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 Murcott 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 Warcliffe 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 Roylands 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 Flaxo. 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 I was down at 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 macrée begin, he asked. I have it now, ever since April, the sea trout come early there. And can you go up whenever you like? Yes, we propose starting about the fifth of August. Take my advice and start it once, he said. I asked why, though I guessed the 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. Peter 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 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 a while. But he would be much happier deck if you were dead. The thought had been in my 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 were with duty to your family and your friends. Of course, you might get police protection from McGillivray, 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 McRae 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 McRae, 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 argous-eyed stalkers and gillies following him. They're the right sort of police protection. I want you, for all our sakes, to go to McRae 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 fought 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 men matters. I'd rather face half a dozen cut-throats 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 Fawcy 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'd visaged the risk, then good-bye to the charm of my summer meadows. The upshot was that I warned Tom Greensleigh to be ready to take his holiday, and by the twentieth 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 ultimately at a shrunken river and a cloudless sky while we prayed for rain. Very in calm weather is the most solitary place on earth, lonelier and quieter even than a boa 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-lock 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 rowens 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 a 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 Aesil 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 daytime, 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 macaque extend on both sides of the Aesil Glend, but principally to the south. Next lies the Macrae Seelock, where the hills are low and green and mostly sheep-ground. East up to the riverhead is Glenacil Forest, the lodge of which is beyond the watershed and the shore of another Seelock, and on our side of the divide there is only a stalker's cottage. Glenacil is an enormous place, far too big to be a single forest. It had been leased for years by Lord Glenfinan, an uncle of Archy Roylands, 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 Macrae, 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 onto Glenacil, and that beat had all our best grazing and seemed to attract all our best heads. Harrapal Forest to the south was not so large, but I should think it was the roughest ground in Scotland. Macrae had good-beach south of the Aesol right up to the watershed, and two noble quarries, the quarry Nasith and the quarry Essen. Beyond the watershed was the Glen of the Reskel, both sides of which were harrapal ground. The Macrae heights were all over the three thousand feet, but rounded and fairly easy going. But the harrapal peaks beyond the stream were desperate rock mountains. Stop Ben, stop quarries and skirmore, comprising some of the most difficult climbing in the British Isles. The biggest and hardest top of all was at the head of the Reskel, skir-darg with its two pinnacle ridges, its three prongs, and the awesome precipice of its eastern face. Macrae marched with Harrapal on its summit, but it wasn't often that any of our stalkers went that way. All that upper part of the Reskel 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. Macrae 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 three thousand feet several times in a day. But Harrapal, 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-well 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. Ah! he would be killed, Angus said. He would never get up a hundred feet of Harrapal without being killed. So I found myself, to my disgust, afflicted with another unauthorized 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's stock. His father had come to the north from Galloway in the days of the booming 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, Do you see your own stone? Aye, but you see another stone! And so forth. Kennedy, when we sat down to rest, would smoke a cigarette in a holder, while Angus let the dawdle in a foul old pipe. In the first fortnight of August we had alternate days of rain, real drenching torrents, and the acyl 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 water side. Once at luncheon we took with us an iron pot, made a fire, and boiled a fresh-killed salmon in his brew, a device I recommend to any one who wants the full flavor of that noble fish. Archie Reudance arrived on August 16th, full of the lust of hunting. He reported that they had seen nothing remarkable in the way of birds at Flaxholm, but that David Warcliffe 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 fought him a bit hip 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. Asked in Angus and talked dear. Angus was ready to talk dear till all hours. I had fixed the twenty-first 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 neighbors. My uncle Alexander is past praying for, says Archie. He lives for that forest of his, and it 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 humble or diseased ancient. The result is the place is crawling with fine stags that have begun to go back and won't perish till they're fairly mouldering. Poor notion of a stud has my uncle Alexander. What about Heropole, who has it this year? When he heard, he exclaimed delightedly, I know old Claybody, rather a good old fellow in his way, an 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 going up to Magdalen, but even the Herald's College jibbed at that. But he'll never get up those Heropole 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. Here maybe have visitors, said Angus. You bet he will. He'll have the large stuff with young men, for there are various honourable Claybody daughters. But fancy there'll be much good on the hill, though. They will not be good, Sir Archibald, said the melancholy Angus. That would be some of them on the hill already. There'll be no better than tourists. Tourists, 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 Monteneers, 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 roots with Angus. They went where no deer could travel and spent their time, as he said, shamming the serfs and tishimnis. But the tourist was blatant and foolish and abundantly discourteous. He tramped, generally in a noisy party, over deer-ground, and if remonstrated with became truckulent. A single member of the species could wreck the stalking on a beat for several days. The next I see on Macrae, said Angus, I'll be rolling down a big stone on him. Some of the heropold guests appeared were of this malign breed and had been wandering thoughtlessly over the forest, thereby wrecking their own sport and mine. They would have Alan McNichol's heart broke, he concluded, and Alan was saying to me that they was offered bad shots. They were shooting at the big stone and missing it, and they would have little ponies to ride up to the tops, for the creatures is no use at walking. They hoped they would have fallen down and break their necks. To care all be bad shots, said Archie. By the way, Dick, if I got to tell you, you know Medina, Dominic 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 Clay-Buddy. That piece of news took the light out of the day for me. If Medina was at heropold, it was most certainly with a purpose. I had thought little about the matter since I arrived at Macrae, 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 Harrapal and wondered what mischief was hatching behind it. I warned Angus and Kennedy and the Gillies to keep a good look out for trespasses. Whenever one was seen, they would 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 consider 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 marry, 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 Harrapal, and I sat 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 twenty-first was a glorious blue day, with a morning haze which promised heat. What wind there was came from the southeast, so I sent Archie out on the Corrie-Essenbeat, and wet myself with one giddy to clock less, which is the western peak on the north bank of the Aesel. 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 infernotators from Haropold were out to-day. Pretty wild shots they must be. When we were luncheon I spent bullets whistled over our heads, a long way off, to be sure, but I call it uncommon bad form. Who should have heard Angus curse in Gaelic? Look here, Dick. I have 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 doing any harm, but there's always that millionth chance. I had a feeling today 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 realize now what Medina's plans were. He had been trapping about Haropold, 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 Haropold 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 heartbroken 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 in the north beats of Macrae, 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 Corina Seath beat the day after to-morrow, and asked him to send word privately to Alan McNichol at Haropold. Et ur benoe, ouser," he groaned. The visitors were 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 Clockless, from which I could get a view of the ground on the south side of the Aesil. It was a clear, quiet day, with the wind steady in the southeast and promising to continue there. The great green hollow of Corina Seath was clear in every detail. Much of it looked like a tennis court, but I knew that what seemed smooth-sward was really matted play-berries and hidden boulders, and that the darker patches were breast-high bracken and heather. Cori Esen I could not see, for it was hidden by the long spur of Ben Fadda, over which peeped the cloven summit of Skorodarg. I searched all the ground with my glasses, and picked up several lots of hines and a few stags, but there was no sign of human activity. There seemed to be a rifle-out, however, on Glenaesil Forest, for I heard two faraway shots toward the northeast. I lay a long time amid the fern, with bees humming round me and pippets 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 Hedderpole. I could see her eyes grow troubled, for I expect she had been having the same anxiety as myself these 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 clay-bodies. 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 quarry Nasithh 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 stag. There was a big bust on Ben Fadda yesterday. Kennedy seen him, a great beast he was, maybe a 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'll 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, an 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 thinches 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. End of section twenty-one.