by John Buchan
“So am I, but we must work on assumptions. Let us suppose Medina is responsible. He may only be trying to find out the extent of his powers, and selects you as the most difficult subject to be found. You may be sure he knows all about your record. He may be only a vain man experimenting.”
“In which case,” I said, “I propose to punch his head.”
“In which case, as you justly observe, you will give yourself the pleasure of punching his head. But suppose that he has got a far deeper purpose, something really dark and damnable. If by his hypnotic power he could make a tool of you, consider what an asset he would have found. A man of your ability and force. I have always said, you remember, that you had a fine natural talent for crime.”
“I tell you, Sandy, that’s nonsense. It’s impossible that there’s anything wrong — badly wrong — with Medina.”
“Improbable, but not impossible. We’re taking no chances. And if he were a scoundrel, think what a power he might be with all his talents and charm and popularity.”
Sandy flung himself into a chair and appeared to be meditating. Once or twice he broke silence.
“I wonder what Dr. Newhover meant by talking of a salmon river in Norway. Why not golf at North Berwick?”
And again:
“You say there was a scent like peat in the room? Peat! You are certain?”
Finally he got up. “To-morrow,” he said, “I think I will have a look round the house in Gospel Oak. Gospel Oak, by the way, is a funny name, isn’t it? You say it has electric light. I will visit it as a man from the corporation to see about the meter. Oh, that can easily be managed. Macgillivray will pass the word for me.”
The mention of Macgillivray brought me to attention. “Look here,” I said, “I’m simply wasting my time. I got in touch with Medina in order to ask his help, and now I’ve been landed in a set of preposterous experiences which have nothing to do with my job. I must see Macgillivray to-morrow about getting alongside his Shropshire squire. For the present there can be nothing doing with Medina.”
“Shropshire squire be hanged! You’re an old ass, Dick. For the present there’s everything doing with Medina. You wanted his help. Why? Because he was the next stage in the clue to that nonsensical rhyme. Well, you’ve discovered that there may be odd things about him. You can’t get his help, but you may get something more. You may get the secret itself. Instead of having to burrow into his memory, as you did with Greenslade, you may find it sticking out of his life.”
“Do you really believe that?” I asked in some bewilderment.
“I believe nothing as yet. But it is far the most promising line. He thinks that from what happened last night plus what happened two hours ago you are under his influence, an acolyte, possibly a tool. It may be all quite straight, or it may be most damnably crooked. You have got to find out. You must keep close to him, and foster his illusions, and play up to him for all you’re worth. He is bound to show his hand. You needn’t take any steps on your own account. He’ll give you the lead all right.”
I can’t say I liked the prospect, for I have no love for playacting, but I am bound to admit that Sandy talked sense. I asked him about himself, for I counted on his backing more than I could say.
“I propose to resume my travels,” he said. “I wish to pursue my studies in the Bibliothèque Nationale of France.”
“But I thought you were with me in this show.”
“So I am. I go abroad on your business, as I shall explain to you some day. Also I want to see the man whom we used to call Ram Dass. I believe him to be in Munich at this moment. The day after to-morrow you will read in The Times that Colonel the Master of Clanroyden has gone abroad for an indefinite time on private business.”
“How long will you be away?” I groaned.
“A week perhaps, or a fortnight — or more. And when I come back it may not be as Sandy Arbuthnot.”
CHAPTER VII. SOME EXPERIENCES OF A DISCIPLE
I didn’t see Sandy again, for he took the night train for Paris next evening, and I had to go down to Oxford that day to appear as a witness in a running-down case. But I found a note for me at the Club when I got back the following morning. It contained nothing except these words: “Coverts drawn blank, no third person in house.” I had not really hoped for anything from Sandy’s expedition to Palmyra Square, and thought no more about it.
He didn’t return in a week, nor yet in a fortnight, and, realising that I had only a little more than two months to do my job in, I grew very impatient. But my time was pretty well filled with Medina, as you shall hear.
While I was reading Sandy’s note Turpin turned up, and begged me to come for a drive in his new Delage and talk to him. The Marquis de la Tour du Pin was, if possible, more pallid than before, his eyelids heavier, and his gentleness more silken. He drove me miles into the country, away through Windsor Forest, and as we raced at sixty miles an hour he uncovered his soul. He was going mad, it seemed; was, indeed, already mad, and only a slender and doubtless ill-founded confidence in me prevented him shooting himself. He was convinced that Adela Victor was dead, and that no trace of her would ever be found. “These policemen of yours — bah!” he moaned. “Only in England can people vanish.” He concluded, however, that he would stay alive till he had avenged her, for he believed that a good God would some day deliver her murderer into his hands. I was desperately sorry for him, for behind his light gasconading manner there were marks of acute suffering, and indeed in his case I think I should have gone crazy. He asked me for hope, and I gave him it, and told him what I did not believe — that I saw light in the business, and had every confidence that we would restore him his sweetheart safe and sound. At that he cheered up and wanted to embrace me, thereby jolly nearly sending the Delage into a ditch and us both into eternity. He was burning for something to do, and wanted me to promise that as soon as possible I would inspan him into my team. That made me feel guilty, for I knew I had no team, and nothing you could call a clue; so I talked hastily about Miss Victor, lest he should ask me more.
I had her portrait drawn for me in lyric prose. She was slight, it seemed, middling tall, could ride like Diana and dance like the nymphs. Her colouring and hair were those of a brunette, but her eyes were a deep grey, and she had the soft voice which commonly goes with such eyes. Turpin, of course, put all this more poetically, relapsing frequently into French. He told me all kinds of things about her — how she was crazy about dogs, and didn’t fear anything in the world, and walked with a throw-out, and lisped delightfully when she was excited. Altogether at the end of it I felt I had a pretty good notion of Miss Victor, especially as I had studied about fifty photographs of her in Macgillivray’s room.
As we were nearing home again it occurred to me to ask him if he knew Medina. He said no, but that he was dining at the Victors’ that evening — a small dinner party, mostly political. “He is wonderful, that Mr. Victor. He will not change his life, and his friends think Adela is in New York for a farewell visit. He is like the Spartan boy with the fox.”
“Tell Mr. Victor, with my compliments,” I said, “that I would like to dine there to-night. I have a standing invitation. Eight-fifteen, isn’t it?”
It turned out to be a very small and select party — the Foreign Secretary, Medina, Palliser-Yeates, the Duke of Alcester, Lord Sunningdale, the ex-Lord Chancellor, Levasseur the French Minister, besides Turpin and myself. There were no women present. The behaviour of the Duke and Mr. Victor was a lesson in fortitude, and you would never have guessed that these two men were living with a nightmare. It was not a talkative assembly, though Sunningdale had a good deal to say to the table about a new book that a German had written on the mathematical conception of infinity, a subject which even his brilliant exposition could not make clear to my thick wits. The Foreign Secretary and Levasseur had a tête-à-tête, with Turpin as a hanger-on, and the rest of us would have been as dull as sticks if it had not been for Medina. I had a good chance of observing his quality,
and I must say I was astonished at his skill. It was he who by the right kind of question turned Sunningdale’s discourse on infinity, which would otherwise have been a pedantic monologue, into good conversation. We got on to politics afterwards, and Medina, who had just come from the House, was asked what was happening.
“They had just finished the usual plat du jour, the suspension of a couple of Labour mountebanks,” he said.
This roused Sunningdale, who rather affected the Labour Party, and I was amused to see how Medina handled the ex-Chancellor. He held him in good-humoured argument, never forsaking his own position, but shedding about the whole subject an atmosphere of witty and tolerant understanding. I felt that he knew more about the business than Sunningdale, that he knew so much he could afford to give his adversary rope. Moreover, he never forgot that he was at a dinner-table, the pitch and key of his talk were exactly right, and he managed to bring everyone into it.
To me he was extraordinarily kind. Indeed he treated me like a very ancient friend, bantering and affectionate and yet respectful, and he forced me to take a full share in the conversation. Under his stimulus, I became quite intelligent, and amazed Turpin, who had never credited me with any talents except for fighting. But I had not forgotten what I was there for, and if I had been inclined to, there were the figures of Victor and the Duke to remind me. I watched the two, the one thin, grey-bearded, rather like an admiral with his vigilant dark eyes, the other heavy-jowled, rubicund, crowned with fine silver hair; in both I saw shadows of pain stealing back to the corners of lip and eye, whenever the face was in repose. And Medina — the very beau ideal of a courteous, kindly, open-air Englishman. I noted how in his clothes he avoided any touch of overdressing, no fancifully-cut waistcoat or too-smartly-tied tie. In manner and presence he was the perfection of unselfconscious good breeding. It was my business to play up to him, and I let my devotion be pretty evident. The old Duke, whom I now met for the first time, patted my shoulder as we left the dining-room. “I am glad to see that you and Medina are friends, Sir Richard. Thank God that we have a man like him among the young entry. They ought to give him office at once, you know, get him inside the shafts of the coach. Otherwise he’ll find something more interesting to do than politics.”
By tacit consent we left the house together, and I walked the streets by his side, as I had done three nights before. What a change, I reflected, in my point of view! Then I had been blind, now I was acutely watchful. He slipped an arm into mine as we entered Pall Mall, but its pressure did not seem so much friendly as possessive.
“You are staying at your Club?” he said. “Why not take up your quarters with me while you are in town? There’s ample room in Hill Street.”
The suggestion put me into a fright. To stay with him at present would wreck all my schemes; but, supposing he insisted, could I refuse, if it was my role to appear to be under his domination? Happily he did not insist. I made a lot of excuses — plans unsettled, constantly running down to the country, and so on.
“All right. But some day I may make the offer again and then I’ll take no refusal.”
They were just the kind of words a friend might have used, but somehow, though the tone was all right, they slightly grated on me.
“How are you?” he asked. “Most people who have led your life find the English spring trying. You don’t look quite as fit as when I first saw you.”
“No. I’ve been rather seedy this past week — headachy, loss of memory, stuffed-up brain and that sort of thing. I expect it’s the spring fret. I’ve seen a doctor and he doesn’t worry about it.”
“Who’s your man?”
“A chap Newhover in Wimpole Street.”
He nodded. “I’ve heard of him. They tell me he’s good.”
“He has ordered me massage,” I said boldly. “That cures the headaches anyway.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
Then he suddenly released my arm.
“I see Arbuthnot has gone abroad.”
There was a coldness in his voice to which I hastened to respond.
“So I saw in the papers,” I said carelessly. “He’s a hopeless fellow. A pity, for he’s able enough; but he won’t stay put, and that makes him pretty well useless.”
“Do you care much for Arbuthnot?”
“I used to,” I replied shamelessly. “But till the other day I hadn’t seen him for years, and I must say he has grown very queer. Didn’t you think he behaved oddly at the Thursday dinner?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I wasn’t much taken by him. He’s too infernally un-English. I don’t know how he got it, but there seems to be a touch of the shrill Levantine in him. Compare him with those fellows to-night. Even the Frenchmen — even Victor, though he’s an American and a Jew — are more our own way of thinking.”
We were at the Club door, and as I stopped he looked me full in the face.
“If I were you I wouldn’t have much to do with Arbuthnot,” he said, and his tone was a command. I grinned sheepishly, but my fingers itched for his ears.
I went to bed fuming. This new possessory attitude, this hint of nigger-driving, had suddenly made me hate Medina. I had been unable to set down the hypnotist business clearly to his account, and, even if I had been certain, I was inclined to think it only the impertinent liberty of a faddist — a thing which I hotly resented but which did not arouse my serious dislike. But now — to feel that he claimed me as his man, because he thought, no doubt, that he had established some unholy power over me — that fairly broke my temper. And his abuse of Sandy put the lid on it — abuse to which I had been shamefully compelled to assent. Levantine, by gad! I swore that Sandy and I would make him swallow that word before he was very much older. I couldn’t sleep for thinking about it. By this time I was perfectly willing to believe that Medina was up to any infamy, and I was resolved that in him and him alone lay the key to the riddle of the three hostages. But all the time I was miserably conscious that if I suggested such an idea to anyone except Sandy I should be set down as a lunatic. I could see that the man’s repute was as solidly planted as the British Constitution.
Next morning I went to see Macgillivray. I explained that I had not been idle, that I had been pursuing lines of my own, which I thought more hopeful than his suggestion of getting alongside the Shropshire squire. I said I had nothing as yet to report, and that I didn’t propose to give him the faintest notion of what I was after till I had secured some results. But I wanted his help, and I wanted his very best men.
“Glad to see you’ve got busy, Dick,” he said. “I await your commands.”
“I want a house watched. No. 4 Palmyra Square, up in North London. So far as I know it is occupied by a woman, who purports to be a Swedish masseuse and calls herself Madame Breda, one or more maids, and an odd-looking little girl. I want you to have a close record kept of the people who go there, and I want especially to know who exactly are the inmates of the house and who are the frequent visitors. It must be done very cautiously, for the people must have no suspicion that they are being spied on.”
He wrote down the details.
“Also I want you to find out the antecedents of Medina’s butler.”
He whistled. “Medina. Dominick Medina, you mean?”
“Yes. Oh, I’m not suspecting him.” We both laughed, as if at a good joke. “But I should like to hear something about his butler, for reasons which I’m not yet prepared to give you. He answers to the name of Odell, and has the appearance of an inferior prize-fighter. Find out all you can about his past, and it mightn’t be a bad plan to have him shadowed. You know Medina’s house in Hill Street. But for Heaven’s sake, let it be done tactfully.”
“I’ll see to that for my own sake. I don’t want head-lines in the evening papers—’House of Member of Parliament Watched. Another Police Muddle.’”
“Also, could you put together all you can get about Medina? It might give me a line on Odell.”
“Dick,” he said solemnly,
“are you growing fantastic?”
“Not a bit of it. You don’t imagine I’m ass enough to think there’s anything shady about Medina. He and I have become bosom friends and I like him enormously. Everybody swears by him, and so do I. But I have my doubts about Mr. Odell, and I would like to know just how and where Medina picked him up. He’s not the ordinary stamp of butler.” It seemed to me very important to let no one but Sandy into the Medina business at present, for our chance lay in his complete confidence that all men thought well of him.
“Right,” said Macgillivray. “It shall be done. Go your own way, Dick. I won’t attempt to dictate to you. But remember that the thing is desperately serious, and that the days are slipping past. We’re in April now, and you have only till midsummer to save three innocent lives.”
I left his office feeling very solemn, for I had suddenly a consciousness of the shortness of time and the magnitude of the job which I had not yet properly begun. I cudgelled my brains to think of my next step. In a few days I should again visit Dr. Newhover, but there was not likely to be much assistance there. He might send me back to Palmyra Square, or I might try to make an appointment with Madame Breda myself, inventing some new ailment; but I would only find the same old business, which would get me no further forward. As I viewed it, the Newhover and Palmyra Square episodes had been used only to test my submission to Medina’s influence, and it was to Medina that I must look for further light. It was a maddening job to sit and wait and tick off the precious days on the calendar, and I longed to consult with Sandy. I took to going down to Fosse for the day, for the sight of Mary and Peter John somehow quieted my mind and fixed my resolution. It was a positive relief when at the end of the week Medina rang me up and asked me to luncheon.
We lunched at his house, which, seen on a bright April day, was a wonderful treasury of beautiful things. It was not the kind of house I fancied myself, being too full of museum pieces, and all the furniture strictly correct according to period. I like rooms in which there is a pleasant jumble of things, and which look as if homely people had lived in them for generations. The dining-room was panelled in white, with a Vandyck above the mantelpiece and a set of gorgeous eighteenth-century prints on the walls. At the excellent meal Medina as usual drank water, while I obediently sampled an old hock, an older port, and a most prehistoric brandy. Odell was in attendance, and I had a good look at him — his oddly-shaped head, his flat sallow face, the bunches of black eyebrow above his beady eyes. I calculated that if I saw him again I would not fail to recognise him. We never went near the library on the upper floor, but sat after luncheon in a little smoking-room at the back of the hall, which held my host’s rods and guns in glass cabinets, and one or two fine heads of deer and ibex.
