by John Buchan
‘What age?’
‘Youngish. Not more than thirty-five. Oh, and the handsomest thing in mankind since the Greeks.’
‘I’m not a flapper,’ I said impatiently. ‘Good looks in a man are no sort of recommendation to me. I shall probably take a dislike to his face.’
‘You won’t. From what I know of him and you you’ll fall under his charm at first sight. I never heard of a man that didn’t. He has a curious musical voice and eyes that warm you – glow like sunlight. Not that I know him well, but I own I found him extraordinarily attractive. And you see from the papers what the world thinks of him.’
‘All the same I’m not much nearer my goal. I’ve got to find out where he heard those three blessed facts and that idiotic tune. He’ll probably send me to blazes, and, even if he’s civil, he’ll very likely be helpless.’
‘Your chance is that he’s a really clever man, not an old blunderer like me. You’ll get the help of a first-class mind, and that means a lot. Shall I write you a line of introduction?’
He sat down at my desk and wrote. ‘I’m saying nothing about your errand – simply that I’d like you to know each other – common interest in sport and travel – that sort of thing. You’re going to be in London, so I had better give your address as your club.’
Next morning Greenslade went back to his duties and I caught the early train to town. I was not very happy about Mr Dominick Medina, for I didn’t seem able to get hold of him. Who’s Who only gave his age, his residence – Hill Street, his club, and the fact that he was M.P. for a South London division. Mary had never met him, for he had appeared in London after she had stopped going about, but she remembered that her Wymondham aunts raved about him, and she had read somewhere an article on his poetry. As I sat in the express, I tried to reconstruct what kind of fellow he must be – a mixture of Byron and Sir Richard Burton and the young political highbrow. The picture wouldn’t compose, for I saw only a figure like a waxwork, with a cooing voice and a shop-walker’s suavity. Also his name kept confusing me, for I mixed him up with an old ruffian of a Portugee I once knew at Beira.
I was walking down St James’s Street on my way to Whitehall, pretty much occupied with my own thoughts, when I was brought up by a hand placed flat on my chest, and lo and behold! it was Sandy Arbuthnot.
CHAPTER FOUR
I Make the Acquaintance of a Popular Man
You may imagine how glad I was to see old Sandy again, for I had not set eyes on him since 1916. He had been an Intelligence Officer with Maude, and then something in Simla, and after the War had had an administrative job in Mesopotamia, or, as they call it nowadays, Iraq. He had written to me from all kinds of queer places, but he never appeared to be coming home, and, what with my marriage and my settling in the country, we seemed to be fixed in ruts that were not likely to intersect. I had seen his elder brother’s death in the papers, so he was now Master of Clanroyden and heir to the family estates, but I didn’t imagine that that would make a Scotch laird of him. I never saw a fellow less changed by five years of toil and travel. He was desperately slight and tanned – he had always been that, but the contours of his face were still soft like a girl’s, and his brown eyes were merry as ever.
We stood and stared at each other.
‘Dick, old man,’ he cried, ‘I’m home for good. Yes – honour bright. For months and months, if not years and years. I’ve got so much to say to you I don’t know where to begin. But I can’t wait now. I’m off to Scotland to see my father. He’s my chief concern now, for he’s getting very frail. But I’ll be back in three days. Let’s dine together on Tuesday.’
We were standing at the door of a club – his and mine – and a porter was stowing his baggage into a taxi. Before I could properly realize that it was Sandy, he was waving his hand from the taxi window and disappearing up the street.
The sight of him cheered me immensely and I went on along Pall Mall in a good temper. To have Sandy back in England and at call made me feel somehow more substantial, like a commander who knows his reserves are near. When I entered Macgillivray’s room I was smiling, and the sight of me woke an answering smile on his anxious face. ‘Good man!’ he said. ‘You look like business. You’re to put yourself at my disposal while I give you your bearings.’
He got out his papers and expounded the whole affair. It was a very queer story, yet the more I looked into it the thinner my scepticism grew. I am not going to write it all down, for it is not yet time: it would give away certain methods which have not yet exhausted their usefulness; but before I had gone very far, I took off my hat to these same methods, for they showed amazing patience and ingenuity. It was an odd set of links that made up the chain. There was an importer of Barcelona nuts with a modest office near Tower Hill. There was a copper company, purporting to operate in Spain, whose shares were not quoted on the Stock Exchange, but which had a fine office in London Wall, where you could get the best luncheon in the City. There was a respectable accountant in Glasgow, and a French count, who was also some kind of Highland laird and a great supporter of the White Rose League. There was a country gentleman living in Shropshire, who had bought his place after the War and was a keen rider to hounds and a very popular figure in the county. There was a little office not far from Fleet Street, which professed to be the English agency of an American religious magazine; and there was a certain publicist, who was always appealing in the newspaper for help for the distressed populations of Central Europe. I remembered his appeals well, for I had myself twice sent him small subscriptions. The way Macgillivray had worked out the connection between these gentry filled me with awe.
Then he showed me specimens of their work. It was sheer unmitigated crime, a sort of selling a bear on a huge scale in a sinking world. The aim of the gang was money, and already they had made scandalous profits. Partly their business was mere conscienceless profiteering well inside the bounds of the law, such as gambling in falling exchanges and using every kind of brazen and subtle trick to make their gamble a certainty. Partly it was common fraud of the largest size. But there were darker sides – murder when the victim ran athwart their schemes, strikes engineered when a wrecked industry somewhere or other in the world showed symptoms of reviving, shoddy little outbursts in shoddy little countries which increased the tangle. These fellows were wreckers on the grand scale, merchants of pessimism, giving society another kick downhill whenever it had a chance of finding its balance, and then pocketing their profits.
Their motive, as I have said, was gain, but that was not the motive of the people they worked through. Their cleverness lay in the fact that they used the fanatics, the moral imbeciles as Macgillivray called them, whose key was a wild hatred of something or other, or a reasoned belief in anarchy. Behind the smug exploiters lay the whole dreary wastes of half-baked craziness. Macgillivray gave me examples of how they used these tools, the fellows who had no thought of profit, and were ready to sacrifice everything, including their lives, for a mad ideal. It was a masterpiece of cold-blooded, devilish ingenuity. Hideous, and yet comic too; for the spectacle of these feverish cranks toiling to create a new heaven and a new earth and thinking themselves the leaders of mankind, when they were dancing like puppets at the will of a few scoundrels engaged in the most ancient of pursuits, was an irony to make the gods laugh.
I asked who was their leader.
Macgillivray said he wasn’t certain. No one of the gang seemed to have more authority than the others, and their activities were beautifully specialized. But he agreed that there was probably one master mind, and said grimly that he would know more about that when they were rounded. ‘The dock will settle that question.’
‘How much do they suspect?’ I asked.
‘Not much. A little, or they would not have taken hostages. But not much, for we have been very careful to make no sign. Only, since we became cognizant of the affair, we have managed very quietly to put a spoke in the wheels of some of their worst enterprises, though I am positive t
hey have no suspicion of it. Also we have put the brake on their propaganda side. They are masters of propaganda, you know. Dick, have you ever considered what a diabolical weapon that can be – using all the channels of modern publicity to poison and warp men’s minds? It is the most dangerous thing on earth. You can use it cleanly – as I think on the whole we did in the War – but you can also use it to establish the most damnable lies. Happily in the long run it defeats itself, but only after it has sown the world with mischief. Look at the Irish! They are the cleverest propagandists extant, and managed to persuade most people that they were a brave, generous, humorous, talented, warm-hearted race, cruelly yoked to a dull mercantile England, when God knows they were exactly the opposite.’
Macgillivray, I may remark, is an Ulsterman, and has his prejudices.
‘About the gang – I suppose they’re all pretty respectable to outward view?’
‘Highly respectable,’ he said. ‘I met one of them at dinner the other night at —’s’ – he mentioned the name of a member of the Government. ‘Before Christmas I was at a cover shoot in Suffolk, and one of the worst had the stand next me – an uncommonly agreeable fellow.’
Then we sat down to business. Macgillivray’s idea was that I should study the details of the thing and then get alongside some of the people. He thought I might begin with the Shropshire squire. He fancied that I might stumble on something which would give me a line on the hostages, for he stuck to his absurd notion that I had a special flair which the amateur sometimes possessed and the professional lacked. I agreed that that was the best plan, and arranged to spend Sunday in his room going over the secret dossiers. I was beginning to get keen about the thing, for Macgillivray had a knack of making whatever he handled as interesting as a game.
I had meant to tell him about my experiments with Greenslade; but after what he had shown me I felt that that story was absurdly thin and unpromising. But as I was leaving, I asked him casually if he knew Mr Dominick Medina.
He smiled. ‘Why do you ask? He’s scarcely your line of country.’
‘I don’t know. I’ve heard a lot about him and I thought I would rather like to meet him.’
‘I barely know him but I must confess that the few times I’ve met him I was enormously attracted. He’s the handsomest being alive.’
‘So I’m told, and it’s the only thing that puts me off.’
‘It wouldn’t if you saw him. He’s not in the least the ordinary matinée idol. He is the only fellow I ever heard of who was adored by women and also liked by men. He’s a first-class sportsman and said to be the best shot in England after His Majesty. He’s a coming man in politics, too, and a most finished speaker. I once heard him, and, though I take very little stock in oratory, he almost had me on my feet. He has knocked a bit about the world, and he is also a very pretty poet, though that wouldn’t interest you.’
‘I don’t know why you say that,’ I protested. ‘I’m getting rather good at poetry.’
‘Oh, I know. Scott and Macaulay and Tennyson. But that is not Medina’s line. He is a deity of les jeunes and a hardy innovator. Jolly good, too. The man’s a fine classical scholar.’
‘Well, I hope to meet him soon, and I’ll let you know my impression.’
I had posted my letter to Medina, enclosing Greenslade’s introduction, on my way from the station, and next morning I found a very civil reply from him at my club. Greenslade had talked of our common interest in big-game shooting, and he professed to know all about me, and to be anxious to make my acquaintance. He was out of town unfortunately for the week-end, he said, but he suggested that I should lunch with him on the Monday. He named a club, a small, select, old-fashioned one of which most of the members were hunting squires.
I looked forward to meeting him with a quite inexplicable interest and on Sunday, when I was worrying through papers in Macgillivray’s room, I had him at the back of my mind. I had made a picture of something between a Ouida guardsman and the Apollo Belvedere and rigged it out in the smartest clothes. But when I gave my name to the porter at the club door, and a young man who was warming his hands at the hall fire came forward to meet me, I had to wipe that picture clean off my mind.
He was about my own height, just under six feet, and at first sight rather slightly built, but a hefty enough fellow to eyes which knew where to look for the points of a man’s strength. Still he appeared slim, and therefore young, and you could see from the way he stood and walked that he was as light on his feet as a rope-dancer. There is a horrible word in the newspapers, ‘well-groomed’, applied to men by lady journalists, which always makes me think of a glossy horse on which a stable-boy has been busy with the brush and curry-comb. I had thought of him as ‘well-groomed’, but there was nothing glossy about his appearance. He wore a rather old well-cut brown tweed suit, with a soft shirt and collar, and a russet tie that matched his complexion. His get-up was exactly that of a country squire who has come up to town for a day at Tattersalls’.
I find it difficult to describe my first impression of his face, for my memory is all overlaid with other impressions acquired when I looked at it in very different circumstances. But my chief feeling, I remember, was that it was singularly pleasant. It was very English, and yet not quite English; the colouring was a little warmer than sun or weather would give, and there was a kind of silken graciousness about it not commonly found in our countrymen. It was beautifully cut, every feature regular, and yet there was a touch of ruggedness that saved it from conventionality. I was puzzled about this, till I saw that it came from two things, the hair and the eyes. The hair was a dark brown, brushed in a wave above the forehead, so that the face with its strong fine chin made an almost perfect square. But the eyes were the thing. They were of a startling blue, not the pale blue which is common enough and belongs to our Norse ancestry, but a deep dark blue, like the colour of a sapphire. Indeed if you think of a sapphire with the brilliance of a diamond, you get a pretty fair notion of those eyes. They would have made a plain-headed woman lovely, and in a man’s face, which had not a touch of the feminine, they were startling. Startling – I stick to that word – but also entrancing.
He greeted me as if he had been living for this hour, and also with a touch of the deference due to a stranger.
‘This is delightful, Sir Richard. It was very good of you to come. We’ve got a table to ourselves by the fire. I hope you’re hungry. I’ve had a devilish cold journey this morning and I want my luncheon.’
I was hungry enough and I never ate a better meal. He gave me Burgundy on account of the bite in the weather, and afterwards I had a glass of the Bristol Cream for which the club was famous; but he drank water himself. There were four other people in the room, all of whom he appeared to call by their Christian names, and these lantern-jawed hunting fellows seemed to cheer up at the sight of him. But they didn’t come and stand beside him and talk, which is apt to happen to your popular man. There was that about Medina which was at once friendly and aloof, the air of a simple but tremendous distinction.
I remember we began by talking about rifles. I had done a good deal of shikar in my time, and I could see that this man had had a wide experience and had the love of the thing in his bones. He never bragged, but by little dropped remarks showed what a swell he was. We talked of a new .240 bore which had remarkable stopping power, and I said I had never used it on anything more formidable than a Scotch stag. ‘It would have been a godsend to me in the old days on the Pungwe where I had to lug about a .500 express that broke my back.’
He grinned ruefully. ‘The old days!’ he said. ‘We’ve all had ‘em, and we’re all sick to get ‘em back. Sometimes I’m tempted to kick over the traces and be off to the wilds again. I’m too young to settle down. And you, Sir Richard – you must feel the same. So you never regret that that beastly old War is over?’
‘I can’t say I do. I’m a middle-aged man now and soon I’ll be stiff in the joints. I’ve settled down in the Cotswolds, and though I hop
e to get a lot of sport before I die I’m not looking for any more wars. I’m positive the Almighty meant me for a farmer.’
He laughed. ‘I wish I knew what He meant me for. It looks like some sort of politician.’
‘Oh, you!’ I said. ‘You’re the fellow with twenty talents. I’ve only got the one and I’m jolly well going to bury it in the soil.’
I kept wondering how much help I would get out of him. I liked him enormously, but somehow I didn’t yet see his cleverness. He was just an ordinary good fellow of my own totem – just such another as Tom Greenslade. It was a dark day, and the firelight silhouetted his profile, and as I stole glances at it I was struck by the shape of his head. The way he brushed his hair front and back made it look square, but I saw that it was really round, the roundest head I have ever seen except in a Kaffir. He was evidently conscious of it and didn’t like it, so took some pains to conceal it.
All through luncheon I was watching him covertly, and I could see that he was also taking stock of me. Very friendly these blue eyes were, but very shrewd. He suddenly looked me straight in the face.
‘You won’t vegetate,’ he said. ‘You needn’t deceive yourself. You haven’t got the kind of mouth for a rustic. What is it to be? Politics? Business? Travel? You’re well off?’
‘Yes. For my simple tastes I’m rather rich. But I haven’t the ambition of a maggot.’
‘No. You haven’t.’ He looked at me steadily. ‘If you don’t mind me saying it, you have too little vanity. Oh, I’m quick at detecting vanity, and anyhow it’s a thing that defies concealment. But I imagine – indeed I know – that you can work like a beaver, and that your loyalty is not the kind that cracks. You won’t be able to help yourself, Sir Richard. You’ll be caught up in some machine. Look at me. I swore two years ago never to have a groove, and I’m in a deep one already. England is made up of grooves, and the only plan is to select a good one.’
