by John Buchan
I told Mary that I was ordered by my doctor to go to bed for a week and take a rest cure.
‘Dick,’ she asked anxiously, ‘you’re not ill, are you?’
‘Not a bit, only a trifle stale. But officially I’m to be in bed for a week and not a blessed soul is to be allowed to come near me. Tell the servants, please, and get the cook on to invalid dishes. I’ll take Paddock into my confidence, and he’ll keep up a show of waiting on me.’
‘A show?’
‘Yes, for you see I’m going to put in a week in Norway – that is, unless Sandy has anything to say against it.’
‘But I thought Colonel Arbuthnot was still abroad?’
‘So he is – officially. But I’m going to breakfast with him the day after tomorrow at The Silent Woman – you remember, the inn we used to have supper at last summer when I was fishing the Colne.’
‘Dick,’ she said solemnly, ‘isn’t it time you told me a little more about what you’re doing?’
‘I think it is,’ I agreed, and that night after dinner I told her everything.
She asked a great many questions, searching questions, for Mary’s brain was about twice as good as mine. Then she sat pondering for a long time with her chin on her hand.
‘I wish I had met Mr Medina,’ she said at last. ‘Aunt Claire and Aunt Doria know him… I am afraid of him, terribly afraid, and I think I should be less afraid if I could just see him once. It is horrible, Dick, and you are fighting with such strange weapons. Your only advantage is that you’re such a gnarled piece of oak. I wish I could help. It’s dreadful to have to wait here and be tortured by anxiety for you, and to be thinking all the time of those poor people. I can’t get the little boy out of my head. I often wake in a terror, and have to go up to the night-nursery to hug Peter John. Nanny must think I’m mad… I suppose you’re right to go to Norway?’
‘I see no other way. We have a clue to the whereabouts of one of the hostages – I haven’t a notion which. I must act on that, and besides, if I find one it may give me a line on the others.’
‘There will still be two lost,’ she said, ‘and the time grows fearfully short. You are only one man. Can you not get helpers? Mr Macgillivray.’
‘No. He has his own job, and to let him into mine would wreck both.’
‘Well, Colonel Arbuthnot? What is he doing?’
‘Oh, Sandy’s busy enough, and, thank God! he’s back in England. I’ll know more about his game when I see him, but you may be sure it’s a deep one. While I’m away Sandy will be working all the time.’
‘Do you know, I have never met him. Couldn’t I see him some time when you’re away? It would be a great comfort to me. And, Dick, can’t I help somehow? We’ve always shared everything, even before we were married, and you know I’m dependable.’
‘Indeed I do, my darling,’ I said. ‘But I can’t see how you can help – yet. If I could, I would inspan you straight off, for I would rather have you with me than a regiment.
‘It’s the poor little boy. I could endure the rest, but the thought of him makes me crazy. Have you seen Sir Arthur?’
‘No, I have avoided him. I can stand the sight of Victor and the Duke, but I swear I shall never look Sir Arthur in the face unless I can hand him over his son.’
Then Mary got up and stood over me like a delivering angel.
‘It is going to be done,’ she cried. ‘Dick, you must never give up. I believe in my heart we shall win. We must win or I shall never be able to kiss Peter John again with a quiet mind. Oh, I wish – I wish I could do something.’
I don’t think Mary slept that night, and next morning she was rather pale and her eyes had that funny long-sighted look that they had when I said goodbye to her at Amiens in March ’18, before going up to the line.
I spent a blissful day with her and Peter John wandering round our little estate. It was one of those April days which seem to have been borrowed from late May when you have the warmth of summer joined with the austerity and fresh colouring of spring. The riot of daffodils under the trees was something to thank God for, the banks of the little lake were one cascade of grape hyacinths, blue and white, and every dell in the woods was bright with primroses. We occupied the morning deepening the pools in a tiny stream which was to be one of the spawning-grounds for the new trout in the lake, and Peter John showed conspicuous talent as a hydraulic engineer. His nurse, who was a middle-aged Scotswoman from the Cheviots, finally carried him off for his morning rest, and when he had gone, Mary desisted from her watery excavations and sat down on a bank of periwinkles.
‘What do you really think of Nanny?’ she asked.
‘About as good as they make,’ I replied.
‘That’s what I think too. You know, Dick, I feel I’m far too fussy about Peter John. I give hours of my time to him, and it’s quite unnecessary. Nanny can do everything better than I can. I scarcely dare let him out of my sight, and yet I’m certain that I could safely leave him for weeks with Nanny and Paddock – and Dr Greenslade within call.’
‘Of course you could,’ I agreed, ‘but you’d miss him, as I do, for he’s jolly good company.’
‘Yes, he’s jolly good company, the dear fellow,’ she said.
In the afternoon we went for a canter on the downs, and I came back feeling as fit as a race-horse and keyed up for anything. But that evening, as we walked in the garden before dinner, I had another fit of longing to be free of the business and to return to my quiet life. I realized that I had buried my heart in my pleasant acres, and the thought of how much I loved them made me almost timid. I think Mary understood what I was feeling, for she insisted on talking about David Warcliff, and before I went to bed worked me into the honest indignation which is the best stiffener of resolution. She went over my plans with me very carefully. On the 28th, if I could manage it, I was to come home, but if I was short of time I was to send her a wire and go straight to London. The pretence of my being in bed was to be religiously kept up. For safety’s sake I was to sign every wire with the name of Cornelius.
Very early next morning, long before anyone was stirring, I started the big Vauxhall with Paddock’s assistance, and, accompanied by a very modest kit, crept down the avenue. Paddock, who could drive a car, was to return to the house about ten o’clock, and explain to my chauffeur that by my orders he had taken the Vauxhall over to Oxford as a loan for a week to a friend of mine. I drove fast out of the silent hill roads and on to the great Roman way which lay like a strap across the highlands. It was not much after six o’clock when I reached The Silent Woman, which sat like an observation post on a ridge of down, at a junction of four roads. Smoke was going up from its chimneys, so I judged that Sandy had ordered early breakfast. Presently, as I was garaging the car in an outhouse, Sandy appeared in flannel bags and a tweed jacket, looking as fresh as paint and uncommonly sunburnt.
‘I hope you’re hungry,’ he said. ‘Capital fellow the landlord! He knows what a man’s appetite is. I ordered eggs, kidneys, sausages, and cold ham, and he seemed to expect it. Yes. These are my headquarters for the present, though Advanced G.H.Q. is elsewhere. By the by, Dick, just for an extra precaution, my name’s Thomson – Alexander Thomson – and I’m a dramatic critic taking a belated Easter holiday.’
The breakfast was as good as Sandy had promised, and what with the run in the fresh air and the sight of him opposite me I began to feel light-hearted.
‘I got your letters,’ I said, ‘but, I say, your knowledge of Derby winners is pretty rocky. I thought that was the kind of information no gentleman was without.’
‘I’m the exception. Did you act on them?’
‘I told Medina I had broken with you for good and never wanted to see your face again. But why did you make such a point of it?’
‘Simply because I wanted to be rid of his attentions, and I reckoned that if he thought we had quarrelled and that I had gone off for good, he might let me alone. You see he has been trying hard to murder me.’
; ‘Good Lord!’ I exclaimed. ‘When?’
‘Four times,’ said Sandy calmly, counting on his fingers. ‘Once before I left London. Oh, I can tell you I had an exciting departure. Three times in Paris, the last time only four days ago. I fancy he’s off my trail now, for he really thinks I sailed from Marseilles the day before yesterday.’
‘But why on earth?’
‘Well, I made some ill-advised remarks at the Thursday Club dinner. He believes that I’m the only man alive who might uncover him, and he won’t sleep peacefully till he knows that I am out of Europe and is convinced that I suspect nothing. I sent you those letters because I wanted to be let alone, seeing I had a lot to do, and nothing wastes time like dodging assassins. But my chief reason was to protect you. You mayn’t know it, Dick, but you’ve been walking for three weeks on the edge of a precipice with one foot nearly over. You’ve been in the most hideous danger, and I was never more relieved in my life than when I saw your solemn old face this morning. You were only safe when he regarded our friendship as broken and me out of the way and you his blind and devoted slave.’
‘I’m that all right,’ I said. ‘There’s been nothing like it since Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’
‘Good. That’s the great thing, for it gives us a post in the enemy’s citadel. But we’re only at the beginning of a tremendous fight and there’s no saying how it will go. Have you sized up Medina?’
‘Only a little bit. Have you?’
‘I’m on the road. He’s the most complex thing I’ve ever struck. But now we’ve got to pool our knowledge. Shall I start?’
‘Yes. Begin at the Thursday dinner. What started you off then? I could see that something he said intrigued you.’
‘I must begin before that. You see, I’d heard a good deal about Medina up and down the world and couldn’t for the life of me place him. Everybody swore by him, but I had always a queer feeling about the man. I told you about Lavater. Well, I had nothing to go upon there except the notion that his influence upon my friend had been bad. So I began making inquiries, and, as you know, I’ve more facilities than most people for finding things out. I was curious to know what he had been doing during the War. The ordinary story was that he had been for the first two years pretty well lost in Central Asia, where he had gone on a scientific expedition, and that after that he had been with the Russians, and had finished up by doing great work with Denikin. I went into the story and discovered that he had been in Central Asia all right, but had never been near any fighting front and had never been within a thousand miles of Denikin. That’s what I meant when I told you that I believed the man was one vast lie.’
‘He made everybody believe it.’
‘That’s the point. He made the whole world believe what he wanted. Therefore he must be something quite out of the common – a propagandist of genius. That was my first conclusion. But how did he work? He must have a wonderful organization, 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 vini abstemius qui hermeneuma tentat aut hominum petit dominatum. I nearly had a fit when I heard it. Listen, Dick, I’ve always had a craze for recondite subjects, and when I was at Oxford I wasted my time on them when I should have been working for my schools. I only got a third in Greats, but I acquired a lot of unusual information. One of my subjects was Michael Scott. Yes – the wizard, only he wasn’t a wizard, but a very patient and original thinker. He was a Borderer like me, and I started out to write a life of him. I kept up the study, and when I was at the Paris Embassy I spent my leisure tracking him through the libraries of Europe. Most of his works were published in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and mighty dull they are, but there are some still in manuscript, and I had always the hope of discovering more, for I was positive that the real Michael Scott was something far bigger than the translator and commentator whom we know. I believed that he taught the mad Emperor Ferdinand some queer things, and that the centre of his teaching was just how one human soul could control another. Well, as it turned out, I was right. I found some leaves of manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale, which I was certain were to be attributed to Michael. One of his best-known works, you remember, is the Physionomia, but that is only a version of Aristotle. This, too, was part of a Physionomia, and a very different thing from the other, for it purported to give the essence of the Secreta Secretorum – it would take too long to explain about that – and the teaching of the Therapeutae, with Michael’s own comments. It is a manual of the arts of spiritual control – oh, amazingly up-to-date, I assure you, and a long way ahead of our foolish psycho-analysts. Well, that quotation of Medina’s comes from that fragment – the rare word “hermeneuma” caught my attention as soon as he uttered it. That proved that Medina was a student of Michael Scott, and showed me what was the bent of his mind.’
‘Well, he gave himself away then, and you didn’t.’
‘Oh yes, I did. You remember I asked him if he knew the guru who lived at the foot of the Shansi pass as you go over to Kaikand? That was a bad blunder, and it is on account of that question that he has been trying to remove me from the earth. For it was from that guru that he learned most of his art.’
‘Was the guru’s name Kharáma?’ 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! Kharáma in London! Lord, Dick, this is an awesome business. Quick, tell me every single thing that passed.’
I told him as well as I remembered, and he seemed to forget his alarm and to be well satisfied. ‘This is tremendously important. You see the point of Medina’s talk? He wants to rivet his control over those three unfortunate devils, and to do that he is advised to assert it in some environment similar to that of their past lives. That gives us a chance to get on their track. And the control can only be released by him who first imposed it! I happened to know that, but I was not sure that Medina knew it. It is highly important to have found this out.’
‘Finish your story,’ I begged him. ‘I want to know what you have been doing abroad?’
‘I continued my studies in the Bibliothèque Nationale, and I found that, as I suspected, Medina, or somebody like him, had got on to the Michael Scott MS. and had had a transcript made of it. I pushed my researches further, for Michael wasn’t the only pebble on the beach, though he was the biggest. Lord, Dick, it’s a queer business in a problem like ours to have to dig for help in the debris of the Middle Ages. I found out something – not much, but something.’
‘And then?’
‘Oh, all the time I was making inquiries about Medina’s past – not very fruitful I’ve told you most of the results. Then I went to see Ram Dass – you remember my speaking about him. I thought he was in Munich, but I found him in Westphalia, keeping an eye on the German industrials. Don’t go to Germany for a holiday, Dick; it’s a sad country and a comfortless. I had to see Ram Dass, for he happens to be the brother of Kharáma.’
‘What size of a fellow is Kharáma?’ 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 i
n 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 I could the gradual change in Medina’s manner from friendship to proprietorship. I told how he had begun to talk freely to me, as if I were a disciple, and I described that extraordinary evening in Hill Street when I had met his mother.
‘His mother!’ Sandy exclaimed, and made me go over every incident several times – the slap in the face, the spitting, my ultimate fainting. He seemed to enjoy it immensely. ‘Good business,’ he said. ‘You never did a better day’s work, old man.’
‘I have found the Blind Spinner at any rate,’ I said.
‘Yes. I had half guessed it. I didn’t mention it, but when I got into the house in Gospel Oak as the electric light man, I found a spinning-wheel in the back room, and they had been burning peat on the hearth. Well, that’s Number One.’
‘I think I am on my way to find Number Two,’ I said, and I told him of the talk I had overheard between the two about secundus and sending ‘the doctor’ somewhere, and of how I had discovered that Dr Newhover was starting this very day for the Skarso. ‘It’s the first clear clue,’ I said, ‘and I think I ought to follow it up.’
‘Yes. What do you propose to do?’
‘I am travelling this evening on the Gudrun and I’m going to trail the fellow till I find out his game. I’m bound to act upon what little information we’ve got.’
‘I agree. But this means a long absence from London, and secundus is only one of three.’
‘Just a week,’ I said. ‘I’ve got sick leave from Medina for a week, and I’m supposed to be having a rest cure at Fosse, with Mary warding off visitors. I’ve arranged with Archie Roylance to pick me up in an aeroplane about the 28th and bring me back. It doesn’t allow me much time, but an active man can do the deuce of a lot in a week.’
