 CHAPTER VII of THE THREE HOSTIGES by John Buckin. This Leibovax recording is in the public domain. Recording by K. L. Zolke. Some Experiences of a Disciple. I didn't see Sandy again, for he took the night train for Paris next evening, and I had to go down to Oxford that day, to appear as a witness in a running down case. But I found a note for me at the club, when I got back the following morning. It contained nothing except these words—covert strong blank, no third person in house. I had not really hoped for anything from Sandy's expedition to Palmyra Square, and thought no more about it. He didn't return in a week, no yet in a fortnight, and realizing that I had only a little more than two months to do my job in, I grew very impatient. But my time was pretty well filled with Medina, as you shall hear. While I was reading Sandy's note, Turpin turned up, and begged me to come for a drive in his new delage, and talk to him. The Marquis de la Tour dupin was, if possible, more pallid than before, his eyelids heavier, and his gentleness more silken. He drove me miles into the country, away through Windsor Forest, and as we raced at sixty miles an hour he uncovered his soul. He was going mad, it seemed. Was indeed already mad, and only a slender and doubtless ill-founded confidence in me prevented him shooting himself. He was convinced that Adela Victor was dead, and that no trace of her would ever be found. He's policeman of yours. Bah! he moaned. Only in England can people vanish. He concluded, however, that he would stay alive till he had avenged her, for he believed that a good God would someday deliver her murderer into his hands. I was desperately sorry for him, for behind his light gas-canadian manner there were marks of acute suffering, and indeed in his case I think I should have gone crazy. He asked me for hope, and I gave him it, and told him what I did not believe, that I saw light in the business, and had every confidence that we would restore him his sweetheart safe and sound. Except that he cheered up and wanted to embrace me, thereby jolly nearly sending the Delage into a ditch, and both of us into eternity. He was burning for something to do, and wanted me to promise that as soon as possible I would in span him into my team. That made me feel guilty, for I knew I had no team, and nothing you could call a clue. So I talked hastily about Miss Victor, lest he should ask me more. I had her portrait drawn for me in lyric prose. She was slight, it seemed, middling tall, could ride like Diana, and dance like the nymphs. Her coloring and hair were those of a brunette, but her eyes were a deep gray, and she had the soft voice which commonly goes with such eyes. And of course put all this more poetically, relapsing frequently into French. He told me all kinds of things about her, how she was crazy about dogs, and didn't fear anything in the world, and walked with a throw-out, and lips delightfully when she was excited. All together at the end of it I felt I had a pretty good notion of Miss Victor, especially as I had studied about fifty photographs of her in Megillivry's room. As we were nearing home again, it occurred to me to ask him if he knew Medina. He said no, but that he was dining at the Victor's that evening, a small dinner party, mostly political. He is wonderful at Miss Victor. He will not change his life, and his friends think Adelaide is in New York, for a farewell visit. He is like the Spartan boy with the fox.fulness to Victor with my compliments, I said, that I would like to dine there to-night. I have a standing invitation. Eight-fifteen, isn't it? It turned out to be a very small and select party. The Foreign Secretary, Medina, Palace to Yates, the Duke of Alkester, Lord Sunningdale, the Ex-Lord Chancellor, Lavasser, the French Minister, besides Turpin and myself. There were no women present. The behaviour of the Duke and Mr. Victor was a lesson in fortitude. You would never have guessed that these two men were living with a nightmare. It was not a talkative assembly, though Sunningdale had a good deal to say to the table about a new book that a German had written on the mathematical conception of infinity, a subject which even his brilliant exposition could not make clear to my thick wits. The Foreign Secretary and Lavasser had a tate-de-tate with Turpin as a hangarron, and the rest of us would have been as dull as sticks if it had not been for Medina. I had a good chance of observing his quality, and I must say I was astonished at his skill. It was he who, by the right kind of question, turned Sunningdale's discourse on infinity, which would otherwise have been a pedantic monologue, into good conversation. We got on to politics afterwards, and Medina, who had just come from the house, was asked what was happening. They had just finished the usual plai des jours, the suspension of a couple of labour-monter-banks, he said. This row of Sunningdale, who rather affected the labour-party, and I was amused to see how Medina handled the ex-chancellor. He held him in good-humoured argument, never forsaking his own position, but shedding about the whole subject an atmosphere of witty and tolerant understanding. I felt that he knew more about the business than Sunningdale, that he knew so much he could afford to give his adversary rope. Moreover he never forgot that he was at a dinner-table, the pitch and key of his talk were exactly right, and he managed to bring everyone into it. To me he was extraordinarily kind. Indeed he treated me like a very ancient friend, bantering and affectionate and yet respectful, and he forced me to take a full share in the conversation. Under his stimulus I became quite intelligent and amazed herpen, who had never credited me with any talents except for fighting. But I had not forgotten what I was there for, and if I had been inclined to, there were the figures of Victor and the Duke to remind me. I watched the two, the one thin, grey-bearded, rather like an admiral with his vigilant dark eyes, the other, heavy jowled, thickened, crowned with fine silver hair. In both I saw shadows of pain stealing back to the corners of lip and eye, whenever the face was in repose, and Medina, the very bow-ideal of a courteous, kindly, open-air Englishman. I noted how in his clothes he avoided any touch of overdressing, no fancifully cut waistcoat, or too smartly tied tie. In manner and presence he was the perfection of unself-conscious good-breeding. It was my business to play up to him, and I let my devotion be pretty evident. The old Duke, whom I now met for the first time, patted my shoulder as we left the room. I am glad to see that you and Medina are friends, Sir Richard. Thank God that we have a man like him among the young entry. They ought to give him office at once, you know. Get him inside the shafts of the coach, otherwise he'll find something more interesting to do than politics. By tac consent we left the house together, and I walked the streets by his side as I had done three nights before. What a change I reflected in my point of view! When I had been blind, now I was acutely watchful. He slipped an arm into mine as we entered Palmall. But its pressure did not seem so much friendly. As possessive. You're staying at your club, he said. Why not take up your quarters with me while you are in town? There's ample room in Hill Street. The suggestion put me into a fright. To stay with him at present would wreck all my schemes. But supposing he insisted, could I refuse? If it was my role to appear to be under his domination? Happily, he did not insist. I made a lot of excuses. Plans unsettled, constantly running down to the country, and so on. All right, but some day I may make the offer again, and then I'll take no refusal. They were just the kind of words a friend might have used. But somehow, though the tone was all right, they slightly graded on me. How are you, he asked? Most people who have led your life find the English Spring trying. You don't look quite as fit as when I first saw you. No, I've been rather seedy this past week. Headache, loss of memory, stuffed up brain, and that sort of thing. I expect it's the spring fret. I've seen a doctor, and he doesn't worry about it. Who's your man? A chap, Newhofer, in Wimpole Street. He nodded. I've heard of him. They tell me he's good. He has ordered me massage, I said boldly. That cures the headaches, anyway. I'm glad to hear it. Then he suddenly released my arm. I see Arbuthnot has gone abroad. There was a coldness in his voice, to which I hastened to respond. So I saw on the papers, I said carelessly. He's a hopeless fellow. A pity, for he's able enough. But he won't stay put, and that makes him pretty well useless. Do you care much for Arbuthnot? I used to, I replied shamelessly. But till the other day I hadn't seen him for years. And I must say he has grown very queer. Didn't you think he behaved oddly at the Thursday dinner? He shrugged his shoulders. I wasn't much taken by him. He's too infernally un-English. I don't know how he got it. But there seems to be a touch of the shrill laventine in him. Come hair him with those fellows to-night. Even the Frenchman, even Victor, though he's an American and a Jew, are more our own way of thinking. We were at the club door, and as I stopped he looked me full in the face. If I were you I wouldn't have much to do with Arbuthnot, he said. And his tone was a command. I grinned sheepishly, but my fingers itched for his ears. I went to bed fuming. This new possessory attitude, this hint of nigger-driving, had suddenly made me hate Medina. I had been unable to set down the hypnotist business clearly to his account. And even if I had been certain, I was inclined to think it only the impertinent liberty of a fattest, a thing which I hotly resented, but which did not arouse my serious dislike. But now, to feel that he claimed me as his man, because he thought, no doubt, that he had established some unholy power over me, that fairly broke my temper. And his abuse of Sandy put the lid on it, abuse to which I had been shamefully compelled to assent. Laventine by God, I swore that Sandy and I would make him swallow that word before he was very much older. I couldn't sleep for thinking about it. By this time I was perfectly willing to believe that Medina was up to any infamy, and I was resolved that in him and him alone lay the key to the riddle of the three hostages. But all the time I was miserably conscious that if I suggested such an idea to any one, except Sandy, I should be set down as a lunatic. I could see that the man's repute was as solidly planted as the British constitution. Next morning I went to see McGillivray. I explained that I had not been idle, that I had been pursuing lines of my own, which I thought more hopeful than his suggestion of getting alongside the Shropshire Squire. I said I had nothing as yet to report, and that I didn't propose to give him the faintest notion of what I was after till I had secured some result. But I wanted his help, and I wanted his very best men. Glad to see you've got busy, Dick, he said. I'll wait your commands. I want a house watched. Number four, Palmyra Square, up in north London. So far as I know it is occupied by a woman who purports to be a Swedish masseuse and calls herself Madame Breida. One or more maids, and an odd-looking little girl. I want you to have a close record-cap of the people who go there, and I want especially to know who exactly are the inmates of the house, and who are the frequent visitors. It must be done very cautiously. For the people must have no suspicion that they are being spied on. He wrote down the details. Also, I want you to find out the antecedents of Medina's butler. He whistled. Whew! Medina! Dominic Medina, you mean? Yes. Oh, I'm not suspecting him. We both laughed, as if at a good joke. But I should like to hear something about his butler, for reasons which I'm not yet prepared to give you. He answers to the name of Odell, and has the appearance of an inferior price-fighter. Find out all you can about his past. And it mightn't be a bad plan to have him shadowed. You know Medina's house in Hill Street. But for heaven's sake, let it be done tactfully. I'll see to that, for my own sake. I don't want headlines in the evening papers, howks of members of parliament watched. Another police muddle. Also, could you put together all you can about Medina? It might give me a line on Odell. Dick, he said, solemnly, are you growing fantastic? Not a bit of it. You don't imagine I'm ass enough to think there's anything shady about Medina. He and I have become bosom friends, and I like him enormously. Everybody swears by him, and so do I. But I have my doubts about Mr. Odell. And I would like to know just how and where Medina picked him up. He's not the ordinary stamp of a butler. It seemed to me very important to let no one but Sandy into the Medina business at present, for our chance lay in his complete confidence that all men thought well of him. Right, said McGillivray, it shall be done. Go your own way, Dick. I won't attempt to dictate to you. But remember that the thing is desperately serious, and that the days are slipping past. We're in April now, and you have only till mid-summer to save three innocent lives. I left his office feeling very solemn, for I had suddenly a consciousness of the shortness of time, and the magnitude of the job which I had not yet properly begun. I could jell'd my brains to think of my next step. In a few days I should again visit Dr. Newhover, but there was not likely to be much assistance there. He might send me back to Palmyra Square, or I might try to make an appointment with Madame Breida myself, inventing some new ailment. But I would only find the same old business, which would get me no further forward. As I viewed it, the Newhover and Palmyra Square episodes had been used only to test my submission to Medina's influence, and it was to Medina that I must look for further light. It was a maddening job to sit and wait, and tick off the precious days on the calendar, and I longed to consult with Sandy. I took to going down to Fosse for the day, for the sight of Mary and Peter John somehow quieted my mind and fixed my resolution. It was a positive relief when at the end of the week Medina rang me up and asked me to luncheon. We lunched at his house, which, seen on a bright April day, was a wonderful treasury of beautiful things. It was not the kind of house I fancied myself, being too full of museum pieces and all the furniture strictly correct according to period. I like rooms in which there is a pleasant jumble of things, and which look as if homely people had lived in them for generations. The dining room was paneled in white with a van dyke above the mantelpiece, and a set of gorgeous eighteenth-century prints on the walls. At the excellent meal Medina as usual drank water, while I obediently sampled an old hawk, an older port, and a most prehistoric brandy. Odell was in attendance, and I had a good look at him, his oddly shaped head, his flat, shallow face, the bunches of black eyebrow above his beady eyes. I calculated that if I saw him again I would not fail to recognize him. We never went near the library on the upper floor, but sat after luncheon in a little smoking-room at the back of the hall, which held my host rods and guns in glass cabinets, and one or two fine heads of deer and ivyx. I had made up my mind, as I walked to Hill Street, that I was going to convince Medina once and for all of the abjectness of my surrender. He should have proof that I was clay in his hands. For only that way would he fully reveal himself. I detested the job, and as I walked through the pleasant crisp noontide I reflected with bitterness that I might have been fishing for salmon in Scotland, or better still, cantering with Mary over the Cotswood Downs. All through luncheon I kept my eyes fixed on him like a dog's on his master. Several times I wondered if I were not overdoing it, but he seemed to accept my homeage as quite natural. I had thought when I first met him that the man had no vanity. Now I saw that he had mountains of it, that he was all vanity, and that his public modesty was only a cloak to set off his immense private conceit. He unbent himself, his whole mind was in undress, and behind the veneer of good fellowship I seemed to see a very cold, arrogant soul. Nothing worse, though that was bad enough. He was too proud to boast in words, but his whole attitude was one long brag. He was cynical about everything except, as I suspected, his private self-worship. The thing would have been monstrously indecent if it had not been done with such consummate skill. Indeed I found my part easy to play, for I was deeply impressed, and had no difficulty in showing it. The odd thing was that he talked a good deal about myself. He seemed to take pains to route out the codes and standards, the points of honor and points of conduct which somebody like me was likely to revere and to break them down with his cynicism. I felt that I was looking on at an attempt, which the devil is believed to specialize in, to make evil good and good evil. Of course I assented gladly. Never had Master a more ready disciple. He broke down to my modest ambitions, a country life, a wife and family. He showed that they were too trivial for more than a passing thought. He flattered me grossly, and I drank it all in with a silly face. I was fit for bigger things, to which he would show me the way. He sketched some of the things, very flattering they were, and quite respectable. But somehow they seemed out of the picture when compared to his previous talk. He was clearly initiating me, step by step, into something for which I was not yet fully ready. I wish Sandy could have seen me, sitting in Medina's armchair, smoking on one of his cigars, and agreeing to everything he said, like a schoolgirl who wants to keep on the good side of her school mistress. And yet I didn't find it difficult, for the man's talk was masterly, and in its way convincing. And while my mind repudiated it, it was easy for my tongue to assent. He was in a prodigious good mood, and he was kindly, as a keeper is to a well-broken dog. On the doorstep I stambered my thanks. I wish I could tell you what knowing you means to me. It's far the biggest thing in my life. What I mean to say is, the familiar pathos of the tongue-tied British soldier. He looked at me with those amazing eyes of his. No kindness in them, only patronage and proprietorship. I think he was satisfied that he had got someone who would serve him body and soul. I too was satisfied, and walked away feeling more cheerful than I had done for days. Surely things would begin to move now, I thought. At the club too I got encouragement, in the shape of a letter from Sandy. It bore a French postmark which I could not decipher, and it was the mere scribble, but it greatly heartened me. I have made progress, it ran, but I still have a lot to do, and we can't talk to each other yet a while. But I shall have to send you letters occasionally, which you must burn on receipt. I shall sign them, with some letter of the Greek alphabet. No, you wouldn't recognize that. With the names of recent Derby winners. Keep our affair secret as the grave, don't let in a soul, not even Mac, and for God's sake stick close to M, and serve him like a slave. There wasn't much in it, but it was hopeful, though the old Ruffian didn't seem in a hurry to come home. I wondered what on earth he had found. Being solid, I judged, for he didn't talk lightly of making progress. That evening I had nothing to do, and after dinner I felt too restless to sit down to a pipe and book. There was no one in the club I wanted to talk to, so I saluted forth to another pot-house to which I belonged, where there was a chance of finding some of the younger and cheerier generation. Sure enough the first man I saw there was Archie Roylands, who greeted me with a whoop and announced that he was in town for a couple of days to see his doctor. He had had a bad fall steeple-chasing earlier in the year, when he had all but broken his neck. But he declared that he was perfectly fit again, except for some stiffness in his shoulder muscles. He was as lame as a duck from his flying smash just before the armistice. But all the same he got about at a surprising pace. Indeed out of cussedness he walked more than he used to in the old days, and had taken to deer-stalking with enthusiasm. I think I have mentioned that he was my partner in the Tennessee of Mackray Forest. I propose that we should go to a music-hall or cut into the second act of some play, but Archie had another idea. One of his fads was to be an amateur of dancing, though he had never been a great performer before his smash and would never dance again. He said he wanted to see the latest fashions, and suggested that we should go for an hour to a small, and he added select, club, somewhere in Merle-le-Born, of which he believed he was a member. It bore an evil reputation, he said, for there was a good deal of high play, and the licensing laws were not regarded, but it was a place to see the best dancing. I made no objection, so we strolled up Regent Street in that season of comparative peace, when busy people had gone home, and the idle are still shut up in theaters and restaurants. It was a divine April night, and I observed that I wished I were in a better place to enjoy spring weather. I've just come from a scotch moor, said Archie, Lord, the curlews are making a joyful noise. That is the bird for my money. Come back with me, Dick, on Friday, and I'll teach you a lot of things. You're a wise man, but you might be a better naturalist. I thought how much I would have given to be able to accept, as the light wind blew down Langham Place. Then I wished that this job would take me out of town into fresh air, or I could get some exercise. The result was that I was in a baddish temper when we reached our destination, which was in one of the streets near Fitzroy Square. The place proved to be about as hard to get into as the Vatican. It took a long harangue and a tip from Archie to persuade the doorkeeper that we were of the right brand of disreputability to be admitted. Finally we found ourselves in a room with sham Chinese decorations, very garishly lit, with about twenty couples dancing, and about twenty more sitting, drinking at little tables. We paid five shillings apiece for liqueur, found a table, and took notice of the show. It seemed to me a wholly rotten and venereal business. A nigger-ban, looking like monkeys in uniform, pounded out some kind of barbarous jingle, and sad-faced marionettes moved to it. There was no gaiety or devil in that dancing, only a kind of board perfection. Thin, young men, with rabbit heads and hair brushed straight back from their brows, who I suppose were professional dancing partners, held close to their breast women of every shape and age, but all alike in having dead eyes and mask for faces, and the macabre possession moved like automata to the nigger's rhythm. I daresay it was all very wonderful, but I was not built by Providence to appreciate it. I can't stay on much more of this, I told Archie. It's no great shakes, but there are one or two high-class performers. Look at that girl dancing with the young Jew. The one in the green. I looked and saw a slim girl, very young, apparently, who might have been pretty, but for the way her face was loaded with paint, and the preposterous style in which her hair was dressed. Little though I know of dancing, I could see that she was a mistress of the art, for every motion was a delight to watch, and she made poetry out of that hideous ragtime. But her face shocked me. It was blind, if you understand me, as expressionless as a mummy, a kind of awful death in life. I wondered what kind of experience that poor soul had gone through to give her the stare of a sleep-walker. As my eyes passed from her, they fell on another figure that seemed familiar. I saw that it was Odell, the butler. Odell got up for his night out in dress-clothes, white-waist coat, and diamond studs. There was no mistake in the pugilistic air of the fellow, now that I saw him out of service. I had seen a dozen such behind the bars of sporting public-houses. He could not see me, but I had a fair view of him, and I observed that he also was watching the girl in green. Do you know who she is, I ask? Some professional. God, she can dance! But the poor child looks as if she found it a hard life. I'd rather like to talk to her. But the music had stopped, and I could see that Odell had made a sign to the dancer. She came up to him as obediently as a dog. He said something to another man with him, a man with a black beard, and the three passed out at the further door. A moment later I caught a glimpse of her with a cloak round her shoulders, passing the door by which we had entered. Archie laughed. That big brute is probably her husband. I bet she earns the living of both by dancing at these places, and gets beaten every night. I would say my prayer is before taking on that fellow in a scrap. End of Chapter 7. Chapter 8 of the Three Hostages. This is a LibriVox recording. A LibriVox recording is earned the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Beth Blakely. The Three Hostages by John Buckin. Chapter 8. The Blind Spinner. I look back upon those days of waiting as among the beastliest of my life. I had the clearest conviction now that Medina was the key of the whole puzzle. But as yet I had found out nothing worth mentioning, and I had to wait like the sick folk by the pool of Bethesda till something troubled the waters. The only thing that comforted me was the final fashion dislike to the man which now possessed me. I couldn't pretend to understand more than a fragment of him, but what I understood I detested. I had been annexed by him as a slave, and every drop of free blood in my veins was in revolt. But I was also resolved to be the most docile slave that ever kissed the ground before a tyrant. Some day my revenge would come, and I promised myself that it would be complete. Meantime I thanked Heaven that he had that blind spot of vanity which would prevent him seeing the cracks in my camouflage. For the better part of a week we were very little separate. I lunged with him two days out of three, and we motored more than once down to Brighton for fresh air. He took me to a dinner he gave at the House of Commons to a Canadian statesman who was over on a visit. And he made me accompany him to a very smart dance at Lady Amy Sports, and he got me invited to a weekend party at Whirlston because he was going there. I went through the whole program dutifully and not unpleasurably. I must say he treated me admirably in the presence of other people with a jolly affectionate friendliness, constantly asking for my opinion, and deferring to me in making me talk so that the few people I met whom I had known before wondered what had come over me. Mary had a letter from a cousin of hers who reported that I seemed to have gotten to society and to be making a big success of it. A letter she forwarded to me with a penciled note of congratulation at the end. On these occasions I didn't find my task difficult, for I fell unconsciously under the man's spell and could easily play up to him. But when we were alone and his manner changed, iron crept into his voice, and though he was pleasant enough, he took a devil of a lot for granted, and the note of authority grew more habitual. After such occasions I used to go home grinding my teeth. I never had a worse job than to submit voluntarily to that insolent protection. Repeatedly in my bedroom at the club I tried to put together the meager handful of ascertained facts, but they were like a lot of remnants of different jigsaw puzzles and nothing fitted into anything else. McGillivray reported that so far he had drawn a blank in the case of Odell, and that the watchers at Palmyra Square had noted very few visitors, except tradesmen and organ grinders. Nothing resembling a gentleman had been seen to enter or leave, so it appeared that my estimate of Madame Brada's flourishing business was wrong. A woman frequently went out and returned, never walking but always in a taxi or a motor car, probably the same woman, but so hooded and wrapped up as to make details difficult to be clear about. There were a host of little notes, coal or firewood had been delivered one day, twice the wrapped up lady had gone out in the evening to come back in a couple of hours, but mostly she made her visits abroad in daylight. The household woke late and retired to bed early, once or twice a sound like weeping had been heard, but it might have been the cat. Altogether it was a poor report, and I concluded that I was either barking up the wrong tree, or that McGillivray's agents were a pretty useless crowd. For the rest what had I, a clear and well-founded suspicion of Medina, but of what, only that he was behaving towards me in a way that I resented, that he dabbled in an ugly brand of hypnotism, and that the more I saw of him the less I liked him. I knew that his public repute was false, but I had no worse crime to accuse him of than vanity. He had a butler who had been a prize fighter, and who had a taste for nightclubs. I remember I wrote all this down, and sat staring blankly at it, feeling how trivial it was. Then I wrote down the six-lined jingle and stared at that too, and I thought of the girl and the young man and the small boy who liked birds and fishing. I head into scrap of evidence to link up Medina with that business, except that Tom Greenslade believed that he had got from him the three facts which ran more or less in the rhyme. But Tom might be mistaken, or Medina might have learned them in some perfectly innocent way. I head into enough evidence to swing a cat on, but yet the more I thought of Medina the more dark and subtle his figure loomed in my mind. I had a conviction, on which I would have staked my life, that if I stuck to him I would worry out some vital and damning truth, so with no very lively or cheerful hope, but with complete certainty, I resolved for the hundredth time to let logic go and back my fancy. As in duty-bound I paid another visit to Dr. Newover. He received me casually, and appeared to have forgotten about my case till he looked up his diary. Ah, yes, you saw Madame Breda, he said. I have her report. Your headaches are cured, but you are still a little shaky. Yes, please, take off your coat and waistcoat. He vetted me very thoroughly, and then sat down in his desk chair and tapped his eyeglasses on his knee. You are better, much better, but you are not cured. That will take time and care and lies, of course, in your own hands. You are leading a quiet life, half town, half country. It is probably the best plan. Well, I don't think you can improve on that. You said something about fishing in Norway when I was here last. No, on the whole I don't recommend it. Your case is slightly different from what I at first supposed. You are a fisherman yourself, I said? He admitted that he was, and for a minute or two spoke more like a human being. He always used a two-piece castle connell rod, though he granted it was a cumbersome thing to travel with. For flies he swore by Harlow's, certainly the best people for Norwegian flies. He thought that there was a greater difference between Norwegian rivers than most people imagined, and Harlow's understood that. He concluded by giving me some simple instructions about diet and exercise. If my headaches return, shall I go back to Madame Breda? I asked. He shook his head. Your headaches won't return. I paid him his fee, and as I was leaving, I asked if he wanted to see me again. I don't think it necessary, at any rate, not till the autumn. I may have to be out of London myself a good deal this summer. Of course if you should find the malaise recurring, which I do not anticipate, you must come and see me. If I am out of town you can see my colleague. He scribbled a name and a dress on a sheet of paper. I left the house feeling considerably puzzled. Dr. Newover, who on my first visit had made a great to-do about my health, seemed now to want to be quid of me. His manner was exactly that of a busy doctor dealing with a maladay imaginaire. The odd thing was that I was really beginning to feel rather seedy, a punishment from my former pretense. It may have been the reaction of my mental worry, but I had the sort of indefinite out-of-sorts feelings which I believe precedes an attack of the influenza. Only I had hitherto been immune from influenza. That night I had another of Sandy's communications, a typed half-sheet with a Paris postmark. Be close to M, it ran. Do everything he wants. Make it clear that you have broken forever with me. This is desperately important. It was signed Bucken, a horse which Sandy seemed to think had been the derby winner. He knew no more about racing than I knew of Chinese. Next morning I woke with a bad taste in my mouth and a feeling that I had probably about of malaria do me. Now I had had no malaria since the autumn of 17 and I didn't like the prospect of the re-visitation. However as the day wore on I felt better and by mid-day I concluded I was not going to be ill, but all the same I was as jumpy as a cat in a thunderstorm. I had the odd sense of anticipation which I used to have before a battle, a lurking excitement by no means pleasant, not exactly apprehension, but first cousin to it. It made me want to go see Medina as if there was something between him and me that I ought to get over. All afternoon this dentist anti-room atmosphere hung about me and I was almost relieved when about five o'clock I got a telephone message from Hill Street asking me to come there at six. I went round to the bath club and had a swim in a shampoo and then started for the house. On the way there I had those tremors in my legs and coldness in the pit of my stomach which brought back my childish toothaches. Yes that was it. I felt exactly like a small boy setting off with dreadful anticipations to have a tooth drawn and not all my self contempt could cure me of my funk. The house when I reached it seemed larger and lonelier than ever and the April evening had darkened down to a scurry of chill dusty winds under a sky full of cloud. Odell opened the door to me and took me to the back of the hall where I found a lift which I had not known existed. We went up to the top of the house and I realized that I was about to enter again the library where before I had so strangely spent the midnight hours. The curtains were drawn shutting out the bleak spring twilight and the room was warmed by and had for its only light a great fire of logs. I smelt more than wood smoke. There was peat burning among the oak billets. The scent recalled not the hundred times when I had sniffed peat-reak in happy places but the flavor of the room in Palmyra Square when I had lain with bandaged eyes and felt light fingers touch my face. I had suddenly a sense that I had taken a long stride forward, that something fateful was about to happen and my nervousness dropped from me like a cloak. Medina was standing before the hearth but his was not the figure that took my eyes. There was another person in the room, a woman. She sat in the high back chair which he had used on the former night and she sat in it as if it were a throne. The firelight lit her face and I saw that it was very old, waxing with age, though the glow made the wax rosy. Her dress was straight and black like a gabardine and she had thick folds of lace at her wrists and neck. Wonderful hair, masses of it was piled on her head and it was snow white and fine as silk. Her hands were laid on the arms of the chair and hands more delicate and shapely I have never seen though they had also the suggestion of a furious power like the talons of a bird of prey. But it was the face that took away my breath. I have always been a great admirer of the beauty of old age, especially in women but this was a beauty of which I had never dreamed. It was a long face and the features were large though exquisitely cut and perfectly proportioned. Usually in an old face there is a certain loosening of muscles or blurring of contours which detracts from sheer beauty but gives another kind of charm. But in this face there was no blurring or loosening. The mouth was as firm, the curve of the chin is rounded and the arch of the eyes is triumphant as in some proud young girl. And then I saw that the eyes which were looking at the fire were the most remarkable things of all. Even in that half-light I could see that they were brightly, vividly blue. There was no film or blurring to mar their glory but I saw also that they were sightless. How I knew it I do not know for there was no physical sign of it but my conviction was instantaneous and complete. These star-like things were turned inward. In most blind people the eyes are like marbles, dead windows in an empty house. But how shall I describe it? These were blinds drawn in a room which was full of light and movement. Stage curtains behind which some great drama was always set. Blind though they were, they seemed to radiate an ardent vitality to glow and flash like the soul within. I realized that it was the most wonderful face of a woman I had ever looked on and I realized in the same moment that I hated it that the beauty of it was devilish and the soul within was on fire with all the hatred of hell. Hene, I heard Medina's voice, I have brought you here because I wish to present you to my mother. I behaved just like somebody in a play. I advanced to her chair, lifted one of the hands and put it to my lips. That seemed to me the right thing to do. The face turned towards me and broke into a smile, the kind of smile you may see on the marble of a Greek goddess. The woman spoke to Medina in a tongue which was strange to me and he replied, there seemed to be many questions and answers but I did not trouble to try and catch a word I knew. I was occupied with the voice. I recognized in it those soft tones which had crooned over me as I lay in the room in Palmyra Square. I had discovered who had been the third person in that scene. Then it spoke to me in English with that odd, lilting accent I had tried in vain to trace. You are a friend of Dominic and I am glad to meet you, Sir Richard Hene. My son has told me about you. Will you bring a chair and sit close to me? I pulled up a long, low arm chair, so long and low that the sitter was compelled almost to recline. My head was on a level with the hand which lay on the arm of her chair. Suddenly I felt that hand laid on my head and I recognized her now by touch as well as voice. I am blind, Sir Richard, she said, so I cannot see my son's friends but I long to know how they look and I have but one sense which can instruct me. Will you permit me to pass my hands over your face? You may do what you please, madam, I said. I would to God I could give you eyes. That is a pretty speech, she said. You might be one of my own people. And I felt the light fingers straying over my brow. I was so placed that I was looking into the red heart of the fire, the one patch of bright light in the curtained room. I knew what I was in for and remembering past experience, I averted my eyes to the dark folios on the lowest shelves beyond the hearth. The fingers seemed to play a gentle tattoo on my temples and then drew long, soft strokes across my eyebrows. I felt a pleasant langer beginning to creep down my neck and spine but I was fully prepared and without much trouble resisted it. Indeed my mind was briskly busy for I was planning how best to play my game. I let my head recline more and more upon the cushion back of my chair and I let my eyelids droop. The gentle fingers were very thorough and I had let myself sink back beyond their reach before they ceased. You are asleep, the voice said. Now wake. I was puzzled to know how to stage manage that awakening but she saved me the trouble. Her voice suddenly hissed like a snake's. Stand up, it said. Quick on your life. I scrambled to my feet with extreme energy and stood staring at the fire wondering what to do next. Look at your master, came the voice again, peremptory as a drill sergeant. That gave me my cue. I knew where Medina was standing and in the words of the Bible, my eyes regarded him as a handmade in regards her master. I stood before him, dumb and dazed and obedient. Down, he cried, down on all fours. I did as I was bid, thankful that my job was proving so easy. Go to the door. No, on all fours. Open it twice, shut it twice and bring me the paper knife from the far table in your mouth. I obeyed in a queer sight I must have presented prancing across the room, a perfectly sane man behaving like a lunatic. I brought the paper knife and remained dog-wise. Get up, he said and I got up. I heard the woman's voice say triumphantly. He is well broken and Medina laughed. There is yet the last test, he said. I may as well put him through it now. If it fails, it means only that he needs more schooling. He cannot remember for his mind is now in my keeping. There is no danger. He walked up to me and gave me a smart slap in the face. I accepted it with Christian meekness. I wasn't even angry. In fact, I would have turned the other cheek in the scriptural fashion if it hadn't occurred to me that it might be overacting. Then he spat in my face. That, I admit, tried me pretty high. It was such a filthy, kefir trick that I had some trouble in taking it resignedly but I managed it. I kept my eyes on the ground and didn't even get out my handkerchief to wipe my cheek till he had turned away. Well broken to heal, I heard him say. It is strange how easily these flat tough English natures succumb to the stronger spirit. I have got a useful weapon in him, mother mine. They paid no more attention to me than if I had been a piece of furniture, which indeed, in their eyes, I was. I was asleep or rather awake in a phantasmal world and I could not return to my normal life till they bade me. I could know nothing, so they thought and remember nothing except what they willed. Medina sat in my chair and the woman had her hand on his head and they talked as if they were alone in the desert. All the while I was standing sheepishly on the rug, not daring to move, scarcely to breathe, lest I should give the show away. They made a pretty picture. The prodigal's return were the old folks at home by Simkins, R.A. Royal Academy, 1887. No, by heaven, there was no suggestion of that. It was a marvelous and tragic scene that I regarded. The fitful light of the fire showed figures of an antique beauty and dignity. The regal profile of the woman, her superb pose and the soft eerie music of her voice were a world removed from vulgarity and so was the live figure and the proud face of the man. They were more like a king and queen in exile, decreeing the sea of blood which was to wash them back again. I realized for the first time that Medina might be damnable, but was also great. Yes, the man who had spat on me like a stable boy had also something of the prince. I realized another thing. The woman's touch had flattened down the hair above his forehead, which he brushed square, and his head outlined in the firelight against the white cushion was as round as a football. I had suspected this when I first saw him, and now I was certain. What did a head like that portend? I had a vague remembrance that I had heard somewhere that it meant madness, at any rate, degeneracy. They talked rapidly and unceasingly, but the confounded thing was that I could hear very little of it. They spoke in low tones and I was three yards off and derent for my life move an inch nearer. Also they spoke for the most part in a language of which I did not know a word. It may have been Choctaw, but was probably Earth. If I had only comprehended that tongue, I might there and then have learned all I wanted to know. But sometimes Medina talked English, though it seemed to me that the woman always tried to bring him back to the other speech. All I heard were broken sentences that horribly tantalized me. My brain was cool and very busy. This woman was the blind spinner of the Rhimes. No doubt of it. I could see her spinning besides a peep fire, nursing ancient hate and madness and crooning forgotten poetry. Beside the sacred tree, Iggdrasil be damned. I had it, it was the gospel oak. Lord, what a fool I had been not to guess it before. The satisfaction of having got one of the three conundrums dead right made me want to shout. These two harpies held the key to the whole riddle and I had only to keep up my present character to solve it. They thought they were dealing with a hypnotized fool and instead they had a peculiarly wide awake if rather slow and elderly Englishmen. I wished to heaven I knew what they were saying, sleucing out malice about my country no doubt or planning the ruin of our civilization for the sake of a neurotic dream. Medina said something impatiently about danger as if his purpose were to reassure. Then I caught nothing for several minutes till he laughed and repeated the word Secundus. Now I was looking for three people and if there was a Secundus, there must have been a primus and possibly a tertius. He is the least easy to handle, he said and it is quite necessary that Jason should come home. I have decided that the doctor must go out. It won't be for long, only till mid-summer. To date interested me acutely, so did what followed for he went on. By mid-summer they liquidate and disband. There is no fear that it won't succeed. We have the whip hand, remember? Trust me, all will go smoothly and then we will begin a new life. I thought she sighed and for the first time she spoke in English. I fear sometimes that you are forgetting your own land, Dominic. He put up an arm and drew her head to his. Never, mother mine, it is our strength that we can seem to forget and still remember. I was finding my stand on that hearth rug extraordinarily trying. You see, I had to keep perfectly rigid. For every now and then, Medina would look towards me and I knew that the woman had an ear like a hound but my knees were beginning to shake with fatigue and my head to grow giddy and I feared that, like the soldiers who stand guard round of royal beer, I might suddenly collapse. I did my best to struggle against the growing weakness and hope to forget it by concentrating all my attention on the fragments of talk. I have news for you, Medina was saying. Karama is in Europe and proposes to come to England. You will see him? I thought her voice had a trace of alarm in it. Most certainly, I would rather see him than any living man. Dominic, be careful. I would rather you confide yourself to your old knowledge. I fear these new things from the East. He laughed. There is old as ours, older and all knowledge is one. I have already drunk of his learning and I must have the whole cup. That was all I heard for at that moment I made my exit from the scene in a way which I could not have bettered by much cogitation. My legs suddenly gave under me. The room swam round and I collapsed on the floor in a dead faint. I must have fallen heavily for I knocked a leg off one of the little tables. When I came to, which I suppose was a minute or two later, Odell was bathing my face and Medina with a grave and concerned air was standing by with a brandy decanter. My dear fellow, you gave me a bad fright, he said and his manner was that of considerate friend. You're not feeling ill? I haven't been quite fit all day and I suppose the hot room knocked me out. I say, I'm most awfully sorry for playing the fool like this. I've damaged your furniture, I'm afraid. I hope I didn't scare the lady. What lady? Your mother. He looked at me with a perfectly blank face and I saw I had made a mistake. I beg your pardon, I'm still giddy. I've been dreaming. He gave me a glass of brandy and tucked me into a taxi. Long before I got to the club I was feeling all right but my mind was in a fine turmoil. I had stumbled at last upon not one clue but many and though they were confused enough I hoped with luck to follow them out. I could hardly eat any dinner that night and my brain was too unsettled to do any serious thinking so I took a taxi up to Gospel Oak and bidding it wait for me had another look at Palmyra Square. The place seemed to have been dead and decaying for centuries seen in that windy moonless dark and number four was a shuttered tomb. I opened the gate and after making sure that the coast was clear stole round to the back door where tradesmen called. There were some dilapidated outhouses and the back garden with ranked grasses and obscene clothes posts looked like nothing so much as a neglected graveyard. In that house was the terrible blind fate that span. As I listened I heard from somewhere inside the sound of slow heartbroken sobs. I wondered if they came from the queer looking little girl. End of chapter eight. Recording by Beth Blakely. Chapter nine of The Three Hostages. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Beth Blakely. The Three Hostages by John Buckin. Chapter nine. I am introduced to strong magic. The first thing I did when I got up next morning was to pay a visit to Harlow's, the fishing tackle people. They knew me well enough before I used to buy my rods there and one of the assistants had been down to Foss to teach Mary how to use a light split cane. With him I embarked on a long talk about Norwegian rivers and their peculiarities and very soon got his views on the best flies. I asked which river was considered to be the earliest and was told in an ordinary season the Nerdle and the Scarceau. Then I asked if he knew my friend Dr. Newover. He was in here yesterday afternoon, I was told. He is going to the Scarceau this year and hopes to be on the water in the last week of April, rather too soon in my opinion, though salmon have been caught in it as early as April 17th. By the end of the first week of May, it should be all right. I asked a good deal more about the Scarceau and was told that it was the best fished from Nerdle at the head of the Nerdle Fjord. There were only about three miles of fishable water before the big Foss, but every yard of it was good. I told him I had hoped to get a beat on the Nerdle for June, but had had to give up the notion this year and intended to confine myself to Scotland. I bought a new reel, a quantity of sea trout flies and a little book about Norwegian fishing. Then I went on to see McGillivray, with whom I had made an appointment by telephone. I have come to ask your help, I told him. I'm beginning to get a move on, but it's a ticklish business and I must walk very warily. First of all, I want you to find out the movements of a certain Dr. Newover of Wimple Street. He is going to Norway sometime in the next fortnight to the Scarceau to fish and his jumping off place will be the Stavanger. Find out by which boat he takes a passage and book me a birth in it also. I'd better have my old name Cornelius Brand. You're not thinking of leaving England just now, he asked reproachfully. I don't know, I may have to go or I may not, but in any case, I won't be long away. Anyhow, find out about Dr. Newover. Now for the most serious business. Just about when have you settled to round up the gang? For the reasons I gave you, it must be before midsummer. It is an infernally complicated job and we must work to a timetable. I have fixed provisionally the 20th of June. I think you'd better choose an earlier date. Why? Because the gang are planning themselves to liquidate by midsummer and if you don't hurry, you may draw the net tight and find nothing in it. Now how on earth did you find that out? He asked and his usually impassive face was vivid with excitement. I can't tell you. I found it out in the process of hunting for the hostages and I give you my word, that's correct. But you must tell me more. If you have fresh lines on what you call my gang, it may be desperately important for me to know. I haven't. I've just the one fact which I've given you. Honestly, old man, I can't tell you anything more till I tell you everything. Believe me, I'm working hard. I had thought the thing out and had resolved to keep the Medina business to myself and Sandy. Our one chance with him was that he should be utterly unsuspecting and even so wary a fellow as McGillivray might, if he were told, create just that faint breath of suspicion that would ruin all. He grunted as if he were not satisfied. I suppose you must have it your own way. Very well, we'll fix the 10th of June for Dirtug. You realize, of course, that the roundup of all must be simultaneous. That's why it takes such a lot of bandabast. By the way, you've got the same problem with the hostages. You can't release one without the others or the show is given away. Not your show only, but mine. You realize that? I do, I said. And I realized that the moving forward of your date narrows my time down to less than two months. If I succeed, I must wait till the very eve of your move. Not earlier, I suppose, than June 9th. Assume I only find one of the three. I wait till June 9th before getting him out of their clutches. Then you strike, and what happens to the other two? He shrugged his shoulders. The worst I fear. You see, Dick, the gang I made to crush and the people who hold the hostages are allied. But I take it they are different sets. I may land every member of my gang and yet not come within speaking distance of the other lot. I don't know, but I'm pretty certain that even if we found the second lot, we'd never be able to prove complicity between the two. The first are devilish, deep fellows, but the second are great artists. All the same, I said. I'm in hopes of finding at least one of the hostages and that means some knowledge of the kidnappers. I must not ask, but I'd give my head to know how and where you're working. More power to you, but I wonder if you'll ever get near the real prime fountain of iniquity. I wonder, I said, and took my leave. I had been playing with sickness and now it looked as if I was going to be punished by getting the real thing. For all the rest of that day, I felt cheap and in the evening I was positive I had a temperature. I thought I might have flu, so I went around after dinner to see a doctor whom I had known in France. He refused to admit the temperature. What sort of life have you been leaving these last weeks? He asked and when I told him that I had been hanging around London, waiting on some tiresome business developments, he said that that was the whole trouble. You're accustomed to an active life in fresh air and you've been stuffing in town, feeding too well and getting no exercise. Go home tomorrow and you'll be right as a trivet. It rather would suit me to be sick for a spell, say a week. He looked puzzled and then laughed. Oh, if you like, I'll give you a chit to say you must go back to the country at once or I won't answer for the consequences. I'd like that, but not just yet. I'll ring you up when I want it. Meantime, I can take it that there's nothing wrong with me. Nothing that a game of squash and a little Eno won't cure. Well, when you send me that chit, say I've got to have a quiet week in bed at home. No visitors, regular rest cure. Right, he said. It's a prescription that every son of Adam might follow with advantage four times a year. When I got back to the club, I found Medina waiting for me. It was the first time he had visited me there and I pretended to be delighted to see him, almost embarrassed with delight and took him to the back smoking room where I had talked with Sandy. I told him that I was out of sorts and he was very sympathetic. Then with a recollection of Sandy's last letter, I started out to blaspheme my gods. He commented on the snugness and seclusion of the little room which for the moment we had to ourselves. It wasn't very peaceful when I was last in it, I said. I had a row here with the lunatic Arbuthnot before he went abroad. He looked up at the name. You mean you quarreled? I thought you were old friends. Once we were. Now I never want to see the fellow again. I thought I might as well do the job thoroughly though the words stuck in my throat. I thought he seemed pleased. I told you, he said, that he didn't attract me. Attract, I cried. The man has gone entirely to the devil. He has forgotten his manners, his breeding and everything he once possessed. He has lived so long among cringing orientals that his head has swollen like a pumpkin. He wanted to dictate to me and I said I would see him further and oh well, we had the usual row. He's gone back to the east which is the only place for him and no, I never want to clap eyes on him again. There was a pur of satisfaction in his voice for he believed as I meant him to that his influence over me had been strong enough to shatter an ancient friendship. I am sure you are wise. I have lived in the east and know something of its ways. There is the road of knowledge and the road of illusion and Arbuthnot has chosen the second. We are friends, Hene and I have much to tell you someday. Perhaps very soon I have made a position for myself and the world but the figure which the world sees is only a little part of me. The only power is knowledge and I have attained to a knowledge compared with which Arbuthnot's is the nearest smattering. I noticed that he had dropped the easy well-bred deprecating manner which I had first noted in him. He spoke to me now majestically, arrogantly, almost pompously. There has never been a true marriage of east and west he went on. Today we inclined to put a false interpretation on the word power. We think of it in material terms like money or the control of great patches of inanimate nature but it still means as it has always meant the control of human souls and to him it acquires that everything else is added. How does such control arise? Partly by knowledge of the intricacies of men's hearts which is a very different thing from the stock platitudes of the professional psychologists. Partly by that natural dominion of spirit which comes from the possession of certain human qualities in a higher degree than other men. The east has the secret knowledge but though it can lay down the practice it cannot provide the practitioners. The west has the tools but not the science of their use. There has never as I have said been a true marriage of east and west but when there is its seed will rule the world. I was drinking this in with both ears and murmuring my assent. Now at last I was to be given his confidence and I prayed that he might be inspired to go on but he seemed to hesitate till the glance at my respectful face reassured him. The day after tomorrow a man will be in London a man from the east who is a great master of this knowledge. I shall see him and you will accompany me. You will understand little for you are only at the beginning but you will be in the presence of wisdom. I remember that I should feel honored. You will hold yourself free for all that day. The time will probably be the evening. After that he left with the most perfunctory goodbye. I congratulated myself on having attained to just the kind of position I wanted that of a disciple whose subjection was so much taken for granted that he was treated like a piece of furniture. From his own point of view Medina was justified. He must have thought the subconscious control so strong after all the tests I had been through that my soul was like putty in his hands. Next day I went down to Foss and told Mary to expect me back very soon for a day or two. She had never plagued me with questions but something in my face must have told her that I was hunting a trail for she asked me for news and looked as if she meant to have it. I admitted that I had found out something and said I would tell her everything when I next came back. That would only have been prudent for Mary was a genius at keeping secrets and I wanted some repository of my knowledge in case I got knocked on the head. When I returned to town I found another note from Sandy also from France, signed Allen Breck. Sandy was terribly out with his Derby winners. It was simply two lines imploring me again to make Medina believe I had broken with him and that he had gone east of Suez for good. There was also a line from McGillivray saying the doctor knew over had taken a passage on the Gudrun leaving Hall at 6.30 p.m. on the 21st and that a passage had been booked for C brand Esquire by the same boat. That decided me so I wrote to my own doctor asking for the chit he had promised to be dated the 19th. I was busy with a plan for it seemed to me that it was my duty to follow up the one trail that presented itself, though it meant letting the rest of the business sleep. I longed more than I could say for a talk with Sandy who was now playing the fool in France and sending me imbecile notes. I also rang up Archie Royalance and found to my delight that he had not left town for I ran him to ground at the travelers and fixed a meeting for next morning. Archie I said when we met, I want to ask a great favor from you. Are you doing anything special in the next fortnight? He admitted that he had thought of getting back to Scotland to watch a pair of nesting green shanks. Let the green shanks alone like a good fellow. I've probably got to go to Norway on the 21st and I shall want to get home in the deuce of a hurry. The steamers far too slow. Destroyer he suggested. Hang it, this is not the war talk sense. I want an aeroplane and I want you to fetch me. Archie whistled long and loud. You're a surprising old bird, Dick. It's no joke being a pal of yours. I dare say I could raise a bus all right, but you've got to chance the weather. And my recollection of Norway is that it's not very well provided with land and places. What part do you favor? I told him the mouth of the myrtle fjord. Lord, I've been there, he said. It's all as steep as the side of a house. Yes, but I've been studying the map and there are some eligible little islands off the mouth which look flattish from the contouring. I'm desperately serious, old man. I'm engaged in a job where failure means the loss of innocent lives. I'll tell you all about it soon, but meantime, you must take my word for it. I managed to get Archie suitably impressed and even to interest him in the adventure, for he was never the man to lag behind in anything that included risk and wanted daring. He promised to see Hansen, who had been in his squadron and was believed to have flown many times across the North Sea. As I left him, I could see he was really enormously cheered by the prospect, for if he couldn't watch his blessed birds, the next best thing was to have a chance of breaking his neck. I had expected to be bitten by Medina to meet his necromancer in some den in the East End or some Bloomsbury lodging house. Judge of my surprise then, when I was summoned to Claridge's for 9.30 that evening. When I got to the hotel, it was difficult to believe that a place so bright and commonplace could hold any mystery. There was the usual dancing going on and squads of people who had dined well were sitting around watching. Medina was standing by a fireplace, talking to a man who wore a long row of miniature metals and a star and whom I recognized as Tom Majin, who had commanded a cavalry brigade in France. Medina nodded casually to me and Tom, who I had not seen for years, made a great fuss. Regimental dinner, he explained, came out for a moment to give instructions about my car. Been telling Medina here of the dirty trick the government have played in my old crowd. I say it's up to the few Sahebes like him in that damned monkey house at Westminster to make a row about it. You back me up, Henay. What I say is, and so on, with the eternal iteration of absolutely and if you follow me and you see what I mean of the incoherent British regular. Medina gently disengaged himself. Sorry, Tom, but I must be off now. You're dining with Bermanster on Thursday, aren't you? We'll talk about that business then. I agree, it's an infernal shame. He signed to me and we went together to the lift. On the first floor, where the main suites are, a turbaned Indian waited for us in the corridor. He led us into a little anti-room and then disappeared through big folding doors. I wondered what kind of swell this oriental necromancer must be who could take rooms like these. For the last time I had been in them was when they were occupied by a crown prince who wanted to talk to me about a certain little problem in Anatolia. You were about to see Karama, Medina whispered, and there was an odd exultation in his voice. You do not know his name, but there are millions in the East who reverence it like that of a god. I last saw him in a hut on the wildest pass in the Karakoran, and now he is in this gilded hotel with dance music of the West jiggling below. It is a parable of the unity of all power. The door was opened and the servant beckoned us to enter. It was a large room furnished with the usual indifferent copies of French furniture, very hot and scented, just the kind of place where international financiers make their deals over liquor and brandy and big cigars, or itinerant stars of the cinema world receive their friends. Bright, hard and glossy, you would have said that no vulgarer environment could be found. And yet after the first glance I did not feel its commonness for it was filled with the personality of the man who sat on the couch at the far end. I realized that here was one who carried with him his own pre-potent atmosphere and who could transform his surroundings, whether it was a Pamir hut or a London restaurant. To my surprise, he was quite young. His hair was hidden by a great turban, but the face was smooth and hairless, and the figure, so far as I could judge, had not lost the grace of youth. I had imagined someone immensely venerable and old with a beard to his girdle, or alternately, an obese baboo with a soft face like a eunuch. I had forgotten that this man was of the hills. To my amazement, he wore ordinary evening dress, well-cut too, I thought, and overt a fine silk dressing gown. He had his feet tucked up on the couch, but he did not sit cross-legged. At our entrance, he slightly inclined his head while we both bowed. Medina addressed him in some Indian tongue, and he replied, and his voice was like the purr of a big cat. He motioned us to sit down, looking not so much at us as through us, and while Medina spoke, I kept my eyes on his face. It was the thin, high-boned, high-bred face of the hillman, not the Mongolian type, but that other, which is like an Arab, the kind of thing you can see in path and troops. And yet, though it was as hard as flint and as fierce as Satan, there was a horrid feline softness in it, like that of a man who would never need to strike a blow in anger since he could win his way otherwise. The brow was straight and heavy, such as I had always associated with mathematical talent and broader than is common with orientals. The eyes I could not see, for he kept them half shut, but there was something uncanny in the way they were chased in his head, with an odd slant the opposite from what you see in the Chinaman. His mouth had a lift at each corner as if he were perpetually sneering, and yet there was a hint of humor in the face, though it was as grave as a stone statue. I have rarely seen a human being at once so handsome and so repulsive, but both beauty and horror were merged in the impression of ruthless power. I had been skeptical enough about this Eastern mage, as I had been skeptical about Medina's arts because they had failed with me. But as I looked on that dark countenance, I had a vision of a world of terrible knowledge, a hideousness like an evil smell, but a power like a blasting wind or a pestilence. Somehow Sandy's talk at the Thursday club dinner came back to me about the real danger to the world lying in the constraint of spirit over spirit. This swarthy brute was the priest of that obscene domination, and I had an insane desire there and then to hammer him to a pulp. He was looking at me and seemed to be asking a question to which Medina replied. I fancy he was told that I was a chela or whatever was the right name, a well-broken and submissive disciple. Then to my surprise he spoke in English, good English, with the shishi accent of the Indian. You have followed far in the path of knowledge, brother. I did not think a son of the West could have traveled so far and so soon. You have won two of the three keys to mastery. If you can make a man forget his past and begin life anew subject to your will. But what of the third key? I thought Medina's voice had a tinge of disappointment. It is the third key which I look for, master. What good is it to wipe out the past and establish my control if it is only temporary? I want the third key to lock the door so that I have my prisoners safe forever. Is there such a key? The key is there, but to find it is not easy. All control tends to grow weak and may be broken by an accident, except in the case of young children and some women and those of feeble mind. That I know, said Medina almost pettishly, but I do not want to make disciples only of babies, idiots, and women. Only some women, I said, among our women perhaps all, but among Western women who are hard as men, only the softer and feebler. That is my trouble. I wish to control forever and to control without constant watching on my part. I have a busy life and time is precious. Tell me, master, is there a way? I listened to this conversation with feelings of genuine horror. Now I saw Medina's plans and I realized that he and he alone was at the bottom of the kidnapping. I realized too how he had dealt with the three hostages and how he proposed to deal. Compared to him, a murderer was innocent, for a murderer only took life while he took the soul. I hated him and that dark scoundrel more intensely than I think I have ever hated man. Indeed it was only by a great effort that I checked myself from clutching the two by the throat. The three stories, which had been half forgotten and overlaid by my recent experiences returned sharp and clear to my memory. I saw again Victor's haggard face. I heard Sir Arthur Warcliffe's voice break and my wrath rose and choked me. The stealing of souls was the worst infamy ever devised by devils among mankind. I must have showed my emotion, but happily the two had no eyes for me. There is a way, a sure way, the Indian was saying, and a wicked half smile flitted over his face. But it is a way which, though possible in my own country, may be difficult in yours. I am given to understand that your police are troublesome and you have a public repute which it is necessary to cherish. There is another way which is slower, but which is also sure if it is boldly entered upon. The sage seemed to open his half shut eyes and I thought I saw the opaque brightness which comes from drug taking. Him who you would make your slave, he said, you first strip of memory and then attune to your own will. To keep him attuned you must be with him often and reinforce the control, but this is burdensome. And if the slave be kept apart and seen rarely the influence will ebb. I accept, as I have said, in the case of a young child. There is a way to rivet the bondage and it is this. Take him or her whom you govern into the same life as they have been accustomed to live before, and there, among familiar things, assert your control. Your influence will thus acquire the sanction of familiarity. For though the conscious memory has gone, the unconscious remains and presently will be a second nature. I see, said Medina abstractedly. I had already guessed as much. Tell me, master, can the dominion, once it is established, be shaken off? It cannot save by the will of him who exercises it. Only the master can release. After they spoke again in the foreign tongue of I know not what devilry, it seemed to me that the sage was beginning to tire of the interview, for he rang a bell and when the servant appeared, gave him some rapid instructions. Medina rose and kissed the hand which was held out to him and I, of course, followed suit. You stay here long, master, he asked. Two days, then I have business in Paris and elsewhere, but I return in May when I will summon you again. Prosper brother, the God of wisdom befriend you. We went downstairs to the dancing and the supper parties. The regimental dinner was breaking up and Tom Machen was holding forth in the hall to a knot of be-meddled friends. I had to say something to Medina to round off the evening and the contrast of the two scenes seemed to give me a cue. As we were putting on our coats, I observed that it was like coming from light to darkness. He approved, like falling from a real world into shadows, he said. He evidently wished to follow his own thoughts for he did not ask me to walk home with him. I, too, had a lot to think about. When I got back to the club, I found a note signed spy and cop with an English postmark. Meet me, it said, on the 21st for breakfast at the inn called The Silent Woman on the Fosse Way as you go over from Cologne to Windrush. I have a lot to tell you. I thanked heaven that Sandy was home again, though he chose fantastic spots for his assinations. I, too, had something to say to him, for that evening had given me insight into Medina's mind and what was more, the glimmerings of a plan of my own. End of Chapter 9. Recording by Bath Blakely. Chapter 10 of the Three Hostages. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Matej Bracic. The Three Hostages by John Buchan. Chapter 10. Confidences at a Wayside Inn. My first impulse was to go to McGillaray about this Kerama fellow who I was certain was up to mischief. I suspected him of some kind of political intrigue. Otherwise, what was he doing touring the capitals of Europe and putting up at expensive hotels? But on second thoughts, I resolved to let the police alone. I could not explain about Kerama without bringing in Medina, and I was determined to do nothing which would stir a breath of suspicion against him. But I got the chit from my doctor, recommending a week's rest, and I went round to see Medina on the morning of the nineteenth. I told him I had been feeling pretty cheap for some days, and that my doctor ordered me to go home and go to bed. He didn't look pleased, so I showed him the doctor's letter, and made a poor mouth as if I hated the business, but was torn between my inclinations and my duty. I think he liked my producing that chit like a second lieutenant asking for leave. Anyhow, he made the best of it, and was quite sympathetic. I'm sorry you're going out of town, he said, for I want you badly. But it is well to get quite fit, and to lie up for a week or to put you all right. When am I to expect you back? I told him that without fail I would be in London on the twenty-ninth. I'm going to disappear into a monastery, I said. Write no letters, receive none, not at home to visitors, only sleep and eat. I can promise you that my wife will watch me like a dragon. Then I hunted up Archie Roylands, whom I found on the very top of his form. He had seen Hanson, and discovered that on the island of Flaxholm, just off the mouth of the Myrdalfjord, there was good landing. It was a big, flatish island, with a loch in the centre, and entirely uninhabited except for a farm at the south end. Archie had got a machine, a sopwith, which he said he could trust, and I arranged with him to be at Flaxholm, not later than the twenty-seventh, and to camp there as best as he could. He was to keep watch by day for a motorboat from the Myrdalfjord, and at night, if he saw a green light, he was to make for it. I told him to take ample supplies, and he replied that he wasn't such a fool as to neglect the commissariat. He said he had been to Fortmenmason, and was going to load up with knickers and delicatessen. Take all the clothes you've got, Dick, he added. It will be perishing cold in those parts at this time of year. He arranged, too, to cable through Hanson for a motor-launch to be ready as Stavanger for a Mr. Brandt, who was doomed by the Hull steamer on the morning of the twenty-third. If I had to change my plans, I was to wire him at once. That evening, I went down to Fosse a little easier in my mind. It was a blessed relief to get out of London, and smell clean air, and to reflect that for a week at any rate, I should be engaged in a more congenial job than loafing about town. I found Peter John in the best of health, and the Manor Garden a glory of spring flowers. I told Mary that I was ordered by my doctor to go to bed for a week, and take a rescue. Dick! she asked anxiously. You're not ill, are you? Not a bit, only a trifle stale. But officially, I am to be in bed for a week, and not a blessed soul is to be allowed to come near me. Tell the servants, please, and get the cook on to invalid dishes. I'll take Paddock into my confidence, and he'll keep up a show of waiting on me. A show? Yes, you see, I'm going to put in a week in Norway. That is, unless Sandy has anything to say against it. But I thought Colonel Arbuthnok was still abroad. So he is, officially. But I'm going to breakfast with him the day after tomorrow at the Silent Woman. You remember, the inn we used to have supper at last summer when I was fishing the coal? Dick! she said solemnly. Is it time you told me a little more about what you're doing? I think it is, I agreed, and that night after dinner I told her everything. She asked a great many questions, searching questions, for Mary's brain was about twice as good as mine. Then she sat pondering for a long time with her chin on her hand. I wish I had met Mr Medina, she said at last. Oh, Claire and Aunt Doria know him. I am afraid of him, terribly afraid, and I think I should be less afraid if I could just see him once. It is horrible, Dick, and you are fighting with such strange weapons. Your only advantage is that you're such a gnarled piece of oak. I wish I could help. It's dreadful to have to wait here and be tortured by anxiety for you, and to be thinking all the time of those poor people. I can't get the little boy out of my head. I often wake in terror and have to go up the night nursery to hug Peter John. Nanny must think I'm mad. I suppose you're right to go to Norway. I see no other way. We have a clue to the whereabouts of one of the hostages. I haven't a notion which. I must act on that, and besides if I find one it may give me a line on the others. There will still be two lost, she said, and the time grows fearfully short. You are only one man. Can you not get helpers? Mr McGillire? No, he has his own job, and to let him into mine would break both. Well, Colonel Arbuthnot, what is he doing? Oh, Sandy's busy enough, and thank God he's back in England. I'll know more about his game when I see him, but you may be sure it's a deep one. While I'm away, Sandy will be working all the time. Do you know? I have never met him. Can I see him sometime when you're away? It would be a great comfort to me. And, Dick, can't I help somehow? We've always shared everything, even before we were married, and you know I'm dependable. Indeed I do, my darling, I said, but I can't see how you can help. Yet, if I could, I would in span you straight off, for I would rather have you with me than a regiment. It's the poor little boy. I could endure the rest, but the thought of him makes me crazy. Have you seen Sir Arthur? No, I have avoided him. I can stand the sight of Victor and the Duke, but I swear I shall never look Sir Arthur in the face, unless I can hand him over his son. Then Mary got up and stood over me like a delivering angel. It is going to be done, she cried. Dick, you must never give up. I believe in my heart we shall win. We must win, or I shall never be able to kiss Peter John again with a quiet mind. Oh, I wish. I wish I could do something. I don't think Mary slept that night, and next morning she was rather pale, and her eyes had that funny, long-sighted look that they had had when I said good-bye to her at Amyon in March 18, before going up to the line. I spent a blissful day with her and Peter John wandering round our little estate. It was one of those April days, which seemed to have been borrowed from late May, when you have the warmth of summer joined with the austerity and fresh colouring of spring. The riot of daffodils under the trees was something to thank God for. The banks of the little lake were one cascade of grape hyacinths, blue and white, and every dell in the woods was bright with primroses. We occupied the morning deepening the pools in a tiny stream which was to be one of the spawning grounds for the new trout in the lake, and Peter John showed conspicuous talent as a hydraulic engineer. His nurse, who was a middle-aged Scotswoman from the Cheviots, finally carried him off for his morning rest, and when he had gone, Mary desisted from her watery excavations and sat down on a bank of periwinkles. What do you really think of Nanny? she asked. About as good as they make, I replied. That's what I think too. You know, Dick, I feel I'm far too fussy about Peter John. I give hours of my time to him, and it's quite unnecessary. Nanny can do everything better than I can. I scarcely dare let him out of my sight, and yet I'm certain that I could safely leave him for weeks with Nanny and Paddock, and Dr Greenslay within call. Of course you could, I agreed, but you'd miss him, as I do, for he's jolly good company. Yes, he's jolly good company, the dear fellow, she said. In the afternoon we went for a canter on the downs, and I came back feeling as fit as a racehorse and teed up for anything, but that evening, as we walked in the garden before dinner, I had another fit of longing to be free of the business, and to return to my quiet life. I realised that I had buried my heart in my pleasant acres, and the thought of how much I loved them made me almost timid. I think Mary understood what I was feeling, for she insisted on talking about David Walkley, and before I went to bed had worked me into that honest indignation which is the best stiffener of resolution. She went over my plans with me very carefully. On the 28th, if I could manage it, I was to come home, but if I was short of time, I was to send her a wire, and go straight to London. The pretense of my being in bed was to be religiously kept up. For safety's sake, I was to sign every wire with the name Cornelius. Very early next morning, long before anyone was stirring, I started the big voxel with Paddock's assistance, and, accompanied by a very modest kit, crept down the avenue. Paddock, who could drive a car, was to return to the house about ten o'clock, and explained to my chauffeur that by my orders he had taken the voxel over to Oxford as a loan for a week to a friend of mine. I drove fast out of the Silent Hill roads and onto the Great Roman Way, which lay like a strap across the highlands. It was not much after six o'clock when I reached the Silent Woman, which sat like an observation post on a ridge of dow, at a junction of four roads. Smoke was going up from its chimneys, so I judged that Sandy had ordered early breakfast. Presently, as I was garaging the car in an outhouse, Sandy appeared in flannel bags and a tweed jacket, looking as fresh as paint and uncommonly sunburned. I hope you're hungry, he said. Capital fellow the landlord. He knows what a man's appetite is. I ordered eggs, kidneys, sausages and cold ham, and he seemed to expect it. Yes, these are my headquarters for the present, although advanced GHQ is elsewhere. By the by, Dick, just for an extra precaution, my name's Thompson, Alexander Thompson, and I am a dramatic critic taking a belated Easter holiday. The breakfast was as good as Sandy had promised, and what with the run in the fresh air and the sight of him opposite me, I began to feel light-hearted. I got your letters, I said, but I say, your knowledge of Derby winners is pretty rocky. I thought that was the kind of information no gentleman was without. I'm the exception. Did you act on them? I told Medina I had broken with you for good, and never wanted to see your face again. But why did you make such a point of it? Simply because I wanted to be rid of his attentions, and I reckoned that if he thought we had quarrelled, and that I had gone off for good, he might let me alone. You see, he has been trying hard to murder me. Good Lord, I exclaimed, when? Four times, said Sandy calmly, counting on his fingers. Once before I left London—oh, I can tell you, I had an exciting departure—three times in Paris, the last time only four days ago. I fancy he's off my trail now, for he really thinks I sails from Marseille the day before yesterday. But why on earth? Well, I made some ill-advised remarks at the Thursday Club dinner. He believes that I'm the only man alive who might uncover him, and he won't sleep peacefully till he knows that I am out of Europe, and is convinced that I suspect nothing. I sent you those letters because I wanted to be let alone, seeing I had a lot to do, and nothing waste time like dodging assassins. But my chief reason was to protect you. You may know it, Dick, but you've been walking for three weeks on the edge of a precipice, with one foot nearly over. You've been in the most hideous danger, and I was never more relieved in my life than when I saw your solemn old face this morning. You were only safe when he regarded our friendship as broken, and me out of the way, and you his blind and devoted slave. I'm that all right, I said. There's been nothing like it since Uncle Tom's cabin. Good. That's the great thing, for it gives us a post in the enemy's citadel. But we're only at the beginning of a tremendous fight, and there's no saying how it will go. Have you sized up Medina? Only a little bit, have you? I'm on the road. He's the most complex thing I've ever struck. But now we've got to pool our knowledge. Shall I start? Yes. Begin at the Thursday dinner. What started you off then? I could see that's something he said intrigued you. I must begin before that. You see, I'd heard a good deal about Medina up and down the world, and couldn't for the life of me place him. Everybody swore by him, but I had always a queer feeling about the man. I told you about Levator. Well, I had nothing to go upon there except the notion that his influence upon my friend had been bad. So I began making inquiries, and as you know I have more facilities than most people for finding things out. I was curious to know what he had been doing during the war. The ordinary story was that he had been for the first two years pretty well lost in Central Asia, where he had gone on a scientific expedition, and that after that he had been with the Russians, and had finished up by doing great work with Denikin. I went into that story, and discovered that he had been in Central Asia all right, but had never been near any fighting front, and had never been within a thousand miles of Denikin. That's what I meant when I told you I believed the man was one vast lie. He made everybody believe it. That's the point. He made the whole world believe what he wanted. Therefore he must be something quite out of the common, a propagandist of genius. That was my first conclusion. But how did he work? He must have a wonderful organisation, but he must have something more. The kind of personality which can diffuse itself like an atmosphere, and which, like an electric current, is not weakened by distance. He must also have unique hypnotic powers. I had made a study of that in the East, and had discovered how little we know here about the compulsion of spirit by spirit. That, I have always believed, is today and ever has been the true magic. You remember I said something about that at the Thursday dinner? I nodded. I suppose you did it to try him. Yes, it wasn't very wise, for I might easily have frightened him, but I was luckier than I deserved, and I drew from him a tremendous confession. The Latin quotation. The Latin quotation. Sit viny, abstemia, squee, hermenuma, tenot, out hominem, pettit, dominatum. I nearly had a fit when I heard it. Listen, Dick, I've always had a craze for recondite subjects, and when I was at Oxford, I wasted my time on them when I should have been working for my schools. I only got a third in grades, but I acquired a lot of unusual information. One of my subjects was Michael Scott. Yes, the wizard, only he wasn't a wizard, but a very patient and original thinker. He was a boarder, like me, and I started out to write a life of him. I kept up the study, and when I was at the Paris Embassy, I spent my leisure tracking him through the libraries of Europe. Most of his works were published in the 15th and 16th centuries, and mighty doubt they are, but there are some still in manuscripts, and I had always the hope of discovering more. For I was positive that the real Michael Scott was something far bigger than the translator and commentator whom we know. I believe that he taught the mad emperor further than some queer things, and that the centre of his teaching was just how one human soul could control another. Well, as it turned out, I was right. I found some leaves of manuscript in the Bibliotheque Nationale, which I was certain were to be attributed to Michael. One of his best known works, you remember, is the Physiognomia, but that is only a version of Aristotle. This too was part of the Physiognomia, and a very different thing from the other, for it purported to give the essence of the secretar secretorum. It would take too long to explain about that, and the teaching of the therapeutic, with Michael's own comments. It is a manual of the arts of spiritual control. Oh, amazingly up to date, I assure you, and a long way ahead of our foolish psychoanalysts. Well, that quotation of Medina's comes from that fragment. The rare word homo-numa caught my attention as soon as he uttered it. That proved that Medina was a student of Michael's scot, and showed me what was the bent of his mind. Well, he gave himself away then, and you didn't. Oh yes, I did. You remember, I asked him if he knew the guru who lived at the foot of the Shonsi Pass as you go over to Kaikand? That was a bad blunder, and it is on account of that question that he has been trying to remove me from the earth, for it was from that guru that he learned most of his art. What's the guru's name Karama? I asked. Sandy stared as if he had seen a ghost. Now, how on earth do you know that? Simply because I spent an hour with him and Medina a few nights ago. The devil you did, Karama in London. Lord Dick, this is an awesome business. Quick, tell me every single thing that passed. I told him as well as I remembered, and he seemed to forget his alarm and to be well satisfied. This is tremendously important. You see the point of Medina's talk. He wants to rivet his control over those three unfortunate devils, and to do that he is advised to assert it in some environments similar to that of their past lives. That gives us a chance to get on their track, and the control can only be released by him who first imposed it. I happened to know that, but I was not sure that Medina knew it. It is highly important to have found this out. Finish your story, I begged him. I want to know what you have been doing abroad. I continued my studies in the Bibliothack Nationale, and I found that, as I suspected, Medina or somebody like him had got onto the Michael Scott MS and had had a transcript made of it. I pushed my researchers further, for Michael wasn't the only pebble on the beach, though he was the biggest. Lord Dick, it's a queer business in a problem like ours to have to dig for help in the debris of the Middle Ages. I found out something, not much, but something. And then, oh all the time I was making inquiries about Medina's past, not very fruitful, I've told you most of the results. Then I went to see Ram Dass. You remember my speaking about him? I thought he was in Munich, but I found him in Westphalia, keeping an eye on the German industrials. Don't go to Germany for a holiday, Dick. It's a sad country and a comfortless. I had to see Ram Dass, for he happens to be the brother of Karama. What size of a fellow is Karama? I asked. Sandy's reply was, for knowledge of the practice unequalled, but only a second-class practitioner. Exactly what Medina had said. Ram Dass told me most of what I wanted to know, but he isn't aware that his brother is in Europe. I rather fancy he thinks he is dead. That's all I need to tell you now. Fire away, Dick, and give me an exact account of your own doings. I explained as best as I could the gradual change in Medina's manner, from friendship to proprietorship. I told how he had begun to talk freely to me, as if I were a disciple, and I described that extraordinary evening in Hill Street when I had met his mother. His mother? Sandy exclaimed, and made me go over every incident several times. The slap in the face, the spitting, my ultimate fainting. He seemed to enjoy it immensely. Good business, he said. You never did a better day's work, old man. I have found the blind spinner at any rate, I said. Yes, I had half guessed it. I didn't mention it, but when I got into the house in Gospel Oak as the electric light man, I found a spinning wheel in the back room, and they had been burning peat on the hearth. Well, that's number one. I think I am on my way to find number two, I said, and I told him of the talk I had overheard between the two about Secundus and sending the Doctor somewhere, and of how I had discovered that Dr. Newhower was starting this very day for the Scarzo. It's the first very clear clue, I said, and I think I ought to follow it up. Yes, what do you propose to do? I'm travelling this evening on the good room, and I'm going to trail the fellow till I find out his game. I'm bound to act upon what little information we've got. I agree, but this means a long absence from London, and Secundus is only one of three. Just a week, I said. I've got sickly from Medina for a week, and I'm supposed to be having a rescuer at Fosse with Mary warding off visitors. I've arranged with Archie Wardens to pick me up in an airplane about the 28th and bring me back. It doesn't allow me much time, but an active man could do the doos of a lot in a week. Bravo, he cried. That's your old, moss-trooping self. Do you approve? Entirely. And whatever happens, you present yourself to Medina on the 29th. That leaves us about six weeks for the rest of the job. More like five, I said gloomily, and I told him how I had learnt that the gang proposed a liquidate by mid-summer, and that McGillire had therefore moved the date when he would take action ten days forward. You see how we are placed. He must collect all the gang at the same moment, and we must release all three hostages if we can at the same time. The releasing mustn't be done too soon, or it will warn the gang. Therefore, if McGillire strikes on the 10th of June, we must be ready to strike not earlier than the 9th, and, of course, not later. I see, he said, and was silent for a little. Have you anything more to tell me? I ransacked my memory and remembered about Odell. He wrote down the name of the dancing club where I had seen that unprepossessing butler. I mentioned that I had asked McGillire to get onto his dossier. You haven't told McGillire too much. He inquired anxiously, and seemed relieved when I replied that I had never mentioned the Medina business. Well, here's the position, he said at last. You go off for a week hunting number two. We are pretty certain that we have got number one. Number three, that nonsense about the fields of Eden and the Jew with a dyed beard in a curiosity shop in Marleyburn, still eludes us. And, of course, we have as yet no word of any of the three hostages. There's a terrible lot still to do. How do you envisage the thing, Dick? Do you think of the three, the girl, the young man, and the boy shut up somewhere and guarded by Medina's minions? Do you imagine that if we find their places of concealment, we shall have done the job? That was my idea. He shook his head. It is far subtler than that. Did no one ever tell you that the best way of hiding a person is to strip him of his memory? Why is it that when a man loses his memory, he's so hard to find? You see it constantly in the newspapers. Even a well-known figure, if he loses his memory and wanders away, is only discovered by accident. The reason is that the human personality is identified far less by appearance than by its habits and mind. Loss of memory means the loss of all true marks of identification, and the physical look alters to correspond. Medina has stolen these three poor soul's memories and set them adrift like waves. David Walkliffe may at this moment be playing in a London gutter along with a dozen gutter snipes, and his own father could scarcely pick him out from the rest. Murcot may be a dog labourer or a duck hand, whom you wouldn't recognise if you met him, though you had sat opposite him in a college hall every night for a year. At Miss Victor may be in a gayety chorus or a milliner's assistant, or a girl in a dancing saloon. Wait a minute. You saw Adele at a dance club? There may be something in that. I could see his eyes abstracted in thought. There's another thing I forgot to mention, I said. Miss Victor's fiancée is over here, staying in Carton House Terrace. He is old Turpin, who used to be with the division, the Marquis de la Tour de Pin. Sandy wrote the name down. Her fiancée. He may come in useful. What sort of fellow? What sort of fellow? Brave as a lion, but he'll want watching, for he's a bit of a gasket. We went out after breakfast, and sat in an arbor looking down a shallow side valley to the upper streams of the Windrush. The sounds of mourning were beginning to rise from the little village far away in the bottom, the jolt of the wagon, the cling-clang from the smithy, the babble of children at play. In a fortnight the mayfly would be here, and every laburnum and galdor rose in bloom. Sandy, who had been away from England for years, did not speak for a long time, but drank him the sweet-scented piece of it. Poor devil, he said at last. He has nothing like this to love. He can only hate. I asked whom he was talking about, and he said, Medina, I'm trying to understand him. Can't fight a man unless you understand him, and in a way sympathise with him. But I can't say I sympathise with him, and I certainly don't understand him. Do you remember once telling me that he had no vanity? You were paddly out there. He has a vanity which amounts to delirium. This is how I read him, he went on. To begin with, there's a far-away streak of the Latin in him, but he's mainly Irish, and that never makes a good cross. He is the deiroussine Irish, such as you find in America. I take it that he imbibed from that terrible old woman. I have never met her, but I see her plainly, and I know that she is terrible. He imbibed that venomous hatred of imaginary things, and imaginary England, and imaginary civilization, which they call love of country. There is no love in it. They think there is, and sentimentalise about an old simplicity, and spinning wheels and turf fires in an uncouth language, but it's all hollow. There's plenty of decent plainfolk in Ireland, but his kind of deiroussine is a ghastly throwback to something you find in the dawn of history, hollow and cruel like the fantastic gods of their own myths. Well, you start with this ingrained hate. I agree about the old lady. She looked like Lady Macbeth, but hate soon becomes conceit. If you hate, you despise, and when you despise, you esteem inordinately the self which despises. This is how I look at it, but remember, I'm still in the dark and only feeling my way to an understanding. I see Medina growing up, I don't know in what environment, conscious of great talent and immense good looks, flattered by those around him till he thinks himself a god. His hatred does not die, but it is transformed into a colossal egotism and vanity, which, of course, is a form of hate. He discovers quite early that he has this remarkable hypnotic power. Oh, you may laugh at it, because you happen to be immune from it, but it is a big thing in the world for all that. He discovers another thing, that he has an extraordinary gift of attracting people and making them believe in him. Some of the worst scoundrels in history have had it. Now, remember his vanity, it makes him want to play the biggest game. He does not want to be a king among pariahs, he wants to be the ruler of what is most strange to him, what he hates and, in an unwilling bitter way, admires. So he aims at conquering the very heart, the very soundest part of our society. Above all, he wants to be admired by men and admitted into the innermost circle. He has succeeded, all right, I said. He has succeeded, and that is the greatest possible tribute to his huge cleverness. Everything about him is dead right, clothes, manner, modesty, accomplishments. He has made himself an excellent sportsman. Do you know why he shoots so well, Dick? By faith, or fatalism, if you like, his vanity doesn't allow him to believe that he could miss, but he governs himself strictly. In his life he is practically an ascetic. Although he is adorned by women, he doesn't care a straw for them. There are no lusts of the flesh in that kind of character. He has one absorbing passion which subdues all others, what our friend Michael Scott called hominem dominatus. I see that, but how do you explain the other side? It is all the ancestral hate. First of all, he has got to have money, so he gets it in the way McGillire knows about. Second, he wants to build up a regiment of faithful slaves. That's where you come in, Dick. There is always that inhuman hate at the back of his egotism. He wants to conquer in order to destroy, for destruction is the finest meat for his vanity. You'll find the same thing in the lives of Eastern tyrants, for when a man aspires to be like God, he becomes an incarnate devil. It is a tough proposition, I observed dismally. It would be an impossible proposition, but for one thing. He is always in danger of giving himself away out of sheer arrogance. Did you ever read the old Irish folklore? Very beautiful it is, but there is always something fantastic and silly which marls the finest stories. They lack the grave good sense which you find in the Norse sagas, and of course in the Greek. Well, he has this freakish element in his blood. That is why he sent out that rhyme about the three hostages, which by an amazing concatenation of chances put you onto his trail. Our hope is, and mind you, I think it is a slender hope, that his vanity may urge him to further indiscretions. I don't know how you feel about it, I said, but I've got a pretty healthy hatred for that lad. I'm longing for a quiet life, but I swear I won't settle down again till I've got even with him. You never will, said Sandy solemnly. Don't let flatter ourselves that you and I are going to down the deed, we are not. A wise man once said to me that in this life you could often get success, if you didn't want victory. In this case we're out for success only. You want to release the hostages. Victory we can never hope for. His tools are faithful, because he has stolen their souls, and they work blindly under him. Supposing McGillire rounds up all the big gang, and puts the halter round their necks, there will be none of them to turn King's evidence and give Medina away. Why? Because none of them know anything against him. They're his unconscious agents, and very likely most have never seen him. You may be pretty sure that his banking accounts are too skillfully arranged to show anything. All the same, I said stubbornly, I have a notion that I'll be able to put a spoke in his wheel. Oh, I dare say we can sow suspicion, but I believe he'll be too strong for us. He'll advance in his glorious career, and may become Prime Minister, or Vice-royal of India, what a chance the second would be for him, and publish exquisite little poetry books, as finished and melancholy as the Shropshire lad. Pessimism, you know, is often a form of vanity. At midday it was time for me to be off, if I was to be at home by six o'clock. I asked Sandy what he proposed to do next, and he said he was undecided. My position, he said, badly cramps my fall. It would be ruination if Medina knew how I was in England, ruination for both you and me. Mr Alexander Thompson must lie very low. I must somehow get in touch with McGillire to hear if he has anything about Odell. I rather fancy Odell, but there will probably be nothing doing till you come back, and I think I'll have a little fishing. Suppose I want to get hold of you. Suppose nothing of the kind. You mustn't make any move in my direction. That's our only safety. If I want you, I'll come to you. As I was starting, he said suddenly, I've never met your wife, Dick. What about my going over to Fosse and introducing myself? The very thing, I cried, she is longing to meet you. But remember that I'm supposed to be lying sick upstairs. As I look back, he was waving his hand, and his face wards familiar elfish smile.