by John Buchan
‘I suppose yours is politics,’ I said.
‘I suppose it is. A dingy game as it’s played at present, but there are possibilities. There is a mighty Tory revival in sight, and it will want leading. The newly enfranchised classes, especially the women, will bring it about. The suffragists didn’t know what a tremendous force of conservatism they were releasing when they won the vote for their sex. I should like to talk to you about these things some day.’
In the smoking-room we got back to sport and he told me the story of how he met Greenslade in Central Asia. I was beginning to realize that the man’s reputation was justified, for there was a curious mastery about his talk, a careless power as if everything came easily to him and was just taken in his stride. I had meant to open up the business which had made me seek his acquaintance, but I did not feel the atmosphere quite right for it. I did not know him well enough yet, and I felt that if I once started on those ridiculous three facts, which were all I had, I must make a clean breast of the whole thing and take him fully into my confidence. I thought the time was scarcely ripe for that, especially as we would meet again.
‘Are you by any chance free on Thursday?’ he asked as we parted. ‘I would like to take you to dine at the Thursday Club. You’re sure to know some of the fellows, and it’s a pleasant way of spending an evening. That’s capital! Eight o’clock on Thursday. Short coat and black tie.’
As I walked away, I made up my mind that I had found the right kind of man to help me. I liked him, and the more I thought of him the more the impression deepened of a big reservoir of power behind his easy grace. I was completely fascinated, and the proof of it was that I went off to the nearest bookseller’s and bought his two slim volumes of poems. I cared far more about poetry than Macgillivray imagined – Mary had done a lot to educate me – but I hadn’t been very fortunate in my experiments with the new people. But I understood Medina’s verses well enough. They were very simple, with a delicious subtle tune in them, and they were desperately sad. Again and again came the note of regret and transience and disillusioned fortitude. As I read them that evening I wondered how a man, who had apparently such zest for life and got so much out of the world, should be so lonely at heart. It might be a pose, but there was nothing of the conventional despair of the callow poet. This was the work of one as wise as Ulysses and as far-wandering. I didn’t see how he could want to write anything but the truth. A pose is a consequence of vanity, and I was pretty clear that Medina was not vain.
Next morning I found his cadences still running in my head and I could not keep my thoughts off him. He fascinated me as a man is fascinated by a pretty woman. I was glad to think that he had taken a liking for me, for he had done far more than Greenslade’s casual introduction demanded. He had made a plan for us to meet again, and he had spoken not as an acquaintance but as a friend. Very soon I decided that I would get Macgillivray’s permission and take him wholly into our confidence. It was no good keeping a man like that at arm’s length and asking him to solve puzzles presented as meaninglessly as an acrostic in a newspaper. He must be told all or nothing, and I was certain that if he were told all he would be a very tower of strength to me. The more I thought of him the more I was convinced of his exceptional brains.
I lunched with Mr Julius Victor in Carlton House Terrace. He was carrying on his ordinary life, and when he greeted me he never referred to the business which had linked us together. Or rather he only said one word. ‘I knew I could count on you,’ he said. ‘I think I told you that my daughter was engaged to be married this spring. Well, her fiancé had come over from France and will be staying for an indefinite time with me. He can probably do nothing to assist you, but he is here at your call if you want him. He is the Marquis de la Tour du Pin.’
I didn’t quite catch the name, and, as it was a biggish party, we sat down to luncheon before I realized who the desolated lover was. It was my ancient friend Turpin, who had been liaison officer with my old division. I had known that he was some kind of grandee, but as everybody went by nicknames I had become used to think of him as Turpin, a version of his title invented, I think, by Archie Roylance. There he was, sitting opposite me, a very handsome pallid young man, dressed with that excessive correctness found only among Frenchmen who get their clothes in England. He had been a tremendous swashbuckler when he was with the division, unbridled in speech, volcanic in action, but always with a sad gentleness in his air. He raised his heavy-lidded eyes and looked at me, and then, with a word of apology to his host, marched round the table and embraced me.
I felt every kind of a fool, but I was mighty glad all the same to see Turpin. He had been a good pal of mine, and the fact that he had been going to marry Miss Victor seemed to bring my new job in line with other parts of my life. But I had no further speech with him, for I had conversational women on both sides of me, and in the few minutes while the men were left alone at table I fell into talk with an elderly man on my right, who proved to be a member of the Cabinet. I found that out by a lucky accident, for I was lamentably ill-informed about the government of our country.
I asked him about Medina and he brightened up at once.
‘Can you place him?’ he asked. ‘I can’t. I like to classify my fellow-men, but he is a new specimen. He is as exotic as the young Disraeli and as English as the late Duke of Devonshire. The point is, has he a policy, something he wants to achieve, and has he the power of attaching a party to him? If he has these two things, there is no doubt about his future. Honestly, I’m not quite certain. He has very great talents, and I believe if he wanted he would be in the front rank as a public speaker. He has the ear of the House, too, though he doesn’t often address it. But I am never sure how much he cares about the whole business, and England, you know, demands wholeheartedness in her public men. She will follow blindly the second-rate, if he is in earnest, and reject the first-rate if he is not.’
I said something about Medina’s view of a great Tory revival, based upon the women. My neighbour grinned.
‘I dare say he’s right, and I dare say he could whistle women any way he pleased. It’s extraordinary the charm he has for them. That handsome face of his and that melodious voice would enslave anything female from a charwoman to a Cambridge intellectual. Half his power of course comes from the fact that they have no charm for him. He’s as aloof as Sir Galahad from any interest in sex. Did you ever hear his name coupled with a young woman’s? He goes everywhere and they would give their heads for him, and all the while he is as insensitive as a nice Eton boy whose only thought is of getting into the Eleven. You know him?’
I told him, very slightly.
‘Same with me. I’ve only a nodding acquaintance, but one can’t help feeling the man everywhere and being acutely interested. It’s lucky he’s a sound fellow. If he were a rogue he could play the devil with our easy-going society.’
That night Sandy and I dined together. He had come back from Scotland in good spirits, for his father’s health was improving, and when Sandy was in good spirits it was like being on the Downs in the south-west wind. We had so much to tell each other that we let our food grow cold. He had to hear all about Mary and Peter John, and what I knew of Blenkiron and a dozen other old comrades, and I had to get a sketch – the merest sketch – of his doings since the Armistice in the East. Sandy for some reason was at the moment disinclined to speak of his past, but he was as ready as an undergraduate to talk of his future. He meant to stay at home now, for a long spell at any rate; and the question was how he should fill up his time. ‘Country life’s no good,’ he said. ‘I must find a profession or I’ll get into trouble.’
I suggested politics, and he rather liked the notion.
‘I might be bored in Parliament,’ he reflected, ‘but I should love the rough-and-tumble of an election. I only once took part in one, and I discovered surprising gifts as a demagogue and made a speech in our little town which is still talked about. The chief row was about Irish Home Rule, and I thought I
’d better have a whack at the Pope. Has it ever struck you, Dick, that ecclesiastical language has a most sinister sound? I knew some of the words, though not their meaning, but I knew that my audience would be just as ignorant. So I had a magnificent peroration. “Will you men of Kilclavers,” I asked, “endure to see a shasuble set up in your market-place? Will you have your daughters sold into simony? Will you have celibacy practised in the public streets?” Gad, I had them all on their feet bellowing “Never!”’
He also rather fancied business. He had a notion of taking up civil aviation, and running a special service for transporting pilgrims from all over the Moslem world to Mecca. He reckoned the present average cost to the pilgrim at not less than £30, and believed that he could do it for an average of £15, and show a handsome profit. Blenkiron, he thought, might be interested in the scheme and put up some of the capital.
But later, in a corner of the upstairs smoking-room, Sandy was serious enough when I began to tell him the job I was on, for I didn’t need Macgillivray’s permission to make a confidant of him. He listened in silence while I gave him the main lines of the business that I had gathered from Macgillivray’s papers, and he made no comment when I came to the story of the three hostages. But, when I explained my disinclination to stir out of my country rut, he began to laugh.
‘It’s a queer thing how people like us get a sudden passion for cosiness. I feel it myself coming over me. What stirred you up in the end? The little boy?’
Then very lamely and shyly I began on the rhymes and Greenslade’s memory. That interested him acutely. ‘Just the sort of sensible-nonsensical notion you’d have, Dick. Go on. I’m thrilled.’
But when I came to Medina he exclaimed sharply.
‘You’ve met him?’
‘Yesterday at luncheon.’
‘You haven’t told him anything?’
‘No. But I’m going to.’
Sandy had been deep in an armchair with his legs over the side, but now he got up and stood with his arms on the mantelpiece looking into the fire.
‘I’m going to take him into my full confidence,’ I said, ‘when I’ve spoken to Macgillivray.’
‘Macgillivray will no doubt agree?’
‘And you? Have you ever met him?’
‘Never. But course I’ve heard of him. Indeed I don’t mind telling you that one of my chief reasons for coming home was a wish to see Medina.’
‘You’ll like him tremendously. I never met such a man.’
‘So everyone says.’ He turned his face and I could see that it had fallen into that portentous gravity which was one of Sandy’s moods, the complement to his ordinary insouciance. ‘When are you going to see him again?’
‘I’m dining with him the day after tomorrow at a thing called the Thursday Club.’
‘Oh, he belongs to that, does he? So do I. I think I’ll give myself the pleasure of dining also.’
I asked about the Club, and he told me that it had been started after the war by some of the people who had had queer jobs and wanted to keep together. It was very small, only twenty members. There were Collatt, one of the Q-boat V.C.s, and Pugh of the Indian Secret Service, and the Duke of Burminster, and Sir Arthur Warcliff, and several soldiers all more or less well known. ‘They elected me in 1919,’ said Sandy, ‘but of course I’ve never been to a dinner. I say, Dick, Medina must have a pretty strong pull here to be a member of the Thursday. Though I says it as shouldn’t, it’s a show most people would give their right hand to be in.’
He sat down again and appeared to reflect, with his chin on his hand.
‘You’re under the spell, I suppose,’ he said.
‘Utterly. I’ll tell you how he strikes me. Your ordinary very clever man is apt to be a bit bloodless and priggish, while your ordinary sportsman and good fellow is inclined to be a bit narrow. Medina seems to me to combine all the virtues and none of the faults of both kinds. Anybody can see he’s a sportsman, and you’ve only to ask the swells to discover how high they put his brains.’
‘He sounds rather too good to be true.’ I seemed to detect a touch of acidity in his voice. ‘Dick,’ he said, looking very serious, ‘I want you to promise to go slow in this business – I mean about telling Medina.’
‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Have you anything against him?’
‘No-o-o,’ he said. ‘I haven’t anything against him. But he’s just a little incredible, and I would like to know more about him. I had a friend who knew him. I’ve no right to say this, and I haven’t any evidence, but I’ve a sort of feeling that Medina didn’t do him any good.’
‘What was his name?’ I asked, and was told ‘Lavater’; and when I inquired what had become of him Sandy didn’t know. He had lost sight of him for two years.
At that I laughed heartily, for I could see what was the matter. Sandy was jealous of this man who was putting a spell on everybody. He wanted his old friends to himself. When I taxed him with it he grinned and didn’t deny it.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Thursday Club
We met in a room on the second floor of a little restaurant in Mervyn Street, a pleasant room, panelled in white, with big fires burning at each end. The Club had its own cook and butler, and I swear a better dinner was never produced in London, starting with preposterously early plovers’ eggs and finishing with fruit from Burminster’s houses. There were a dozen present including myself, and of these, besides my host, I knew only Burminster and Sandy. Collatt was there, and Pugh, and a wizened little man who had just returned from bird-hunting at the mouth of the Mackenzie. There was Pallister-Yeates, the banker, who didn’t look thirty, and Fulleylove, the Arabian traveller, who was really thirty and looked fifty. I was specially interested in Nightingale, a slim peering fellow with double glasses, who had gone back to Greek manuscripts and his Cambridge fellowship after captaining a Bedouin tribe. Leithen was there, too, the Attorney-General, who had been a private in the Guards at the start of the War, and had finished up a G.S.O.1, a toughly built man, with a pale face and very keen quizzical eyes. I should think there must have been more varied and solid brains in that dozen than you would find in an average Parliament.
Sandy was the last to arrive, and was greeted with a roar of joy. Everybody seemed to want to wring his hand and beat him on the back. He knew them all except Medina, and I was curious to see their meeting. Burminster did the introducing, and Sandy for a moment looked shy. ‘I’ve been looking forward to this for years,’ Medina said, and Sandy, after one glance at him, grinned sheepishly and stammered something polite.
Burminster was chairman for the evening, a plump, jolly little man, who had been a pal of Archie Roylance in the Air Force. The talk to begin with was nothing out of the common. It started with horses and the spring handicaps, and then got on to spring salmon-fishing, for one man had been on the Helmsdale, another on the Naver, and two on the Tay. The fashion of the Club was to have the conversation general, and there was very little talking in groups. I was next to Medina, between him and the Duke, and Sandy was at the other end of the oval table. He had not much to say, and more than once I caught his eyes watching Medina.
Then by and by, as was bound to happen, reminiscences began. Collatt made me laugh with a story of how the Admiralty had a notion that sea-lions might be useful to detect submarines. A number were collected, and trained to swim after submarines to which fish were attached as bait, the idea being that they would come to associate the smell of submarines with food, and go after a stranger. The thing shipwrecked on the artistic temperament. The beasts all came from the music-halls and had names like Flossie and Cissie, so they couldn’t be got to realize that there was a war on, and were always going ashore without leave.
That story started the ball rolling, and by the time we had reached the port the talk was like what you used to find in the smoking-room of an East African coastal steamer, only a million times better. Everybody present had done and seen amazing things, and, moreover, they had the brains and knowledg
e to orientate their experiences. It was no question of a string of yarns, but rather of the best kind of give-and-take conversation, when a man would buttress an argument by an apt recollection. I especially admired Medina. He talked little, but he made others talk, and his keen interest seemed to wake the best in everybody. I noticed that, as at our luncheon three days before, he drank only water.
We talked, I remember, about the people who had gone missing, and whether any were likely still to turn up. Sandy told us about three British officers who had been in prison in Turkestan since the summer of ’18 and had only just started home. He had met one of them at Marseilles, and thought there might be others tucked away in those parts. Then someone spoke of how it was possible to drop off the globe for a bit and miss all that was happening. I said I had met an old prospector in Barberton in 1920 who had come down from Portuguese territory and when I asked him what he had been doing in the War, he said ‘What war?’ Pugh said a fellow had just turned up in Hong Kong, who had been a captive of Chinese pirates for eight years and had never heard a word of our four years’ struggle, till he said something about the Kaiser to the skipper of the boat that picked him up.
Then Sandy, as the newcomer, wanted news about Europe. I remember that Leithen gave him his views on the malaise that France was suffering from, and that Palliser-Yeates, who looked exactly like a Rugby three-quarter back, enlightened him – and incidentally myself – on the matter of German reparations. Sandy was furious about the muddle in the Near East and the mishandling of Turkey. His view was that we were doing our best to hammer a much-divided Orient into a hostile unanimity.
‘Lord!’ he cried, ‘how I loathe our new manners in foreign policy. The old English way was to regard all foreigners as slightly childish and rather idiotic and ourselves as the only grown-ups in a kindergarten world. That meant that we had a cool detached view and did even-handed unsympathetic justice. But now we have got into the nursery ourselves and are bear-fighting on the floor. We take violent sides, and make pets, and of course, if you are – phil something or other you have got to be – phobe something else. It is all wrong. We are becoming Balkanized.’
