by John Buchan
‘What an infernal nuisance for you!’ I said. ‘You can’t go home, because of the threats of these scallywags! Well, anyhow, you’re safe enough here, and can have an easy mind till we think out some plan.’
‘I am not safe here,’ he said solemnly. ‘At first I thought that no one knew me in England. But I was wrong. They have had descriptions of me – photographs – from the Norlands and from Copenhagen. They have found people who can identify me… One day in the street I saw a barber from Denmark who has often shaved me, and he recognized me, and tried to follow me. He is a poor man and would not have come here on his own account. He has been brought to London. The net is drawing in on me, and I know from many small things that they are very close on my trail. I change my dwelling often, but I feel that I cannot long escape them. So I am very desperate, and that is why I have sought out my father’s friends.’
He sat huddled in his chair, his chin sunk on his breast, the image of impotence and despair. I realized that Lombard and I were going to have a difficult job with him. I had an uneasy suspicion, as I looked at him, that his story might be all moonshine, the hallucination of a lonely neurotic, and I wished I had never heard of him. Keeping a promise was one thing, but nursing a lunatic was quite another.
‘It is not only for myself I fear,’ he said in a leaden voice. ‘There is my little daughter. I dare not visit her in case they follow me. They might kidnap her, and then I should assuredly go mad.’
To that I had nothing to say, for the mention of kidnapping always made me windy. I had had too much of it in the affair with Medina, which I have already written about.*
‘There is my father, too,’ he went on. ‘He may at any moment go to the Norlands or come to England, and I cannot warn him.’
‘You needn’t worry about that,’ I said gently. ‘Your father died two years ago – at a place called Gutok, in Chinese Tibet.’ And I repeated briefly what Sandy Clanroyden had told me.
You never saw such a change in a man. The news seemed to pull him together and put light into his eyes. To him, apparently, it was not a matter of grief, but of comfort.
‘Thesauro feliciter invento,’ he repeated. ‘Then he succeeded – he has died happy. I cannot sorrow for him, for he has greatly ended a great life.’
He put his chin on his hand and brooded, and in that moment I was possessed by one of those queer irrational convictions which I have always made a habit of accepting, for I have never found them wrong. This Valdemar Haraldsen was as sane as myself, and he was in deadly peril. I believed implicitly every word of his tale, and my duty to help him was plain as a pikestaff. My first business must be to tuck him away comfortably somewhere out of the road.
I asked him where he was living and if he was sure he had not been followed here. He said that he had only moved into his new quarters two days before, and was pretty certain that he was safe for the moment. ‘But not for long,’ he added dismally.
‘Well, you must clear out,’ I said. ‘Tomorrow you pack your kit. You are coming to stay with me for a little. I will go down by an earlier train, for we shouldn’t be seen together. Put on your oldest clothes and travel third-class – I’ll send my keeper to meet you, and he’ll bring you up in the old Ford. Your name is still Bosworth.’
I fixed up a train, offered him a whisky-and-soda, which he declined, and saw him shamble off in the direction of his Bayswater lodgings. He looked like a store-farmer who had borrowed an ancient suit of his father’s dress-clothes, and that was the rôle I wanted him to play. Then I rang up Macgillivray in his Mount Street rooms, found that he was at home, and went round to see him.
CHAPTER SIX
Sundry Doings At Fosse
I found Macgillivray reading Greek with his feet on the mantelpiece and the fire out. He was a bit of a scholar and kept up his classics. Of all my friends he was the one who had aged least. His lean, dark head and smooth, boyish face were just as I remembered them twenty years ago. I hadn’t seen him for months, and he gave me a great welcome, rang for beer to which he knew I was partial, and settled me in his best armchair.
‘Why this honour?’ he asked. ‘Is it friendship or business? A sudden craving for my company, or a mess you want to be helped out of?’
‘Both,’ I said. ‘But business first.’
‘A job for the Yard?’
‘No-o. Not just yet, anyhow. I want some information. I’ve just got on the track of a rather ugly affair.’
He whistled. ‘You have a high standard of ugliness. What is it?’
‘Blackmail,’ I said.
‘Yourself? He must be a bold blackmailer to tackle you.’
‘No, a friend. A pretty helpless sort of friend, who will go mad if he isn’t backed up.’
‘Well, let’s have the story.’
‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘It’s a private affair which I would rather keep to myself for a little till I see how things shape. I only want an answer to a few questions.’
He laughed. ‘That was always your way, Dick. You “keep your ain fish-guts for your ain seamews,” as they say in Scotland. You never let in the Yard till the fruitiest episodes are over.’
‘I’ve done a good deal for you in my time,’ I said.
‘True. And you may always count upon us to do our damnedest.’
Then he suddenly became serious.
‘I’m going to talk to you like a grandfather, Dick. You’re not ageing properly.’
‘I’m ageing a dashed sight too fast,’ I said.
‘No, you’re not. We’re all getting old, of course, but you’re not acquiring the virtues of age. There’s still an ineradicable daftness about you. You’ve been lying pretty low lately, and I had hoped you had settled down for good. Consider, you’re a married man with a growing son. You have made for yourself what I should call a happy life. I don’t want to see you wreck it merely because you are feeling restless. So if it’s only a craze for adventure that is taking you into this business, my advice to you as a friend is to keep out of it.’
He picked up the book he had been reading.
‘Here’s a text for you,’ he said. ‘It is Herodotus. This is the advice he makes Amasis give to his friend Polycrates. I’ll translate. “I know that the Gods are jealous, for I cannot remember that I ever heard of any man who, having been constantly successful, did not at last utterly perish.” That’s worth thinking about. You’ve been amazingly lucky, but you mustn’t press your luck too far. Remember, the Gods are jealous.’
‘I’m not going into this affair for fun,’ I replied. ‘It’s a solid obligation of honour.’
‘Oh, in that case I have no more to say. Ask your questions.’
‘Do you know anything about a fellow called Albinus, Erick Albinus? A man about my own age – a Dane by birth who has lived in America and, I should think, in many parts of the world? Dabbles in finance of a shady kind.’ I gave the best description I could of how Albinus had looked thirty years ago, and what his appearance today might be presumed to be.
Macgillivray shook his head. ‘I can’t place him. I’ll have our records looked up, but to the best of my knowledge I don’t know anybody like him. I certainly don’t remember his name.’
‘Well, then, what about a man called Lancelot Troth?’
‘Now we’re getting on familiar ground,’ he said. ‘I know a good deal about Troth. The solicitor, I suppose you mean? He belongs to a firm which has been going on for several generations and has never been quite respectable. The father was a bit of a rogue who died years ago somewhere in Africa. That was before my time, but in the last ten years we have had to keep an eye on the activities of the son. He operates on the borderland of rather dubious finance, but so far he has never quite crossed the frontier, though sometimes he has had to be shepherded back. Company promotion is his chief line, and he is uncommonly clever at taking advantage of every crack in our confused company law. I thought we had him the other day over the Lepcha business, but we were advised that a prosecution would fa
il. He has several side lines – does a good deal of work for Indian rajahs which may now and then be pretty shady – made a pot of money over greyhound-racing in its early days – a mighty gambler, too, they tell me, and fairly successful. Rich! So-so. Flush one day and hard up the next – he leads the apolaustic life, and that’s an expensive thing nowadays.’
I asked about his appearance and Macgillivray described him. A man in his early forties, strongly made, with the square, clean-shaven face of his profession. Like a cross between a Chancery barrister and a Newmarket trainer.
‘He doesn’t make a bad impression at first sight,’ he added. ‘He looks you in the face and he has rather pleasant eyes. On the occasions when I’ve met him I’ve rather liked him. A tough, no doubt, but with some of the merits of the breed. I can imagine him standing stiffly by his friends, and I have heard of him doing generous things. He’s a bit of a sportsman too – keeps a six-ton cutter, and can be seen on a Friday evening departing in old clothes from his City office with his kit in a pillow-case. If your trouble is blackmail, Dick, and Troth is in it, it won’t be the ordinary kind. The man might be a bandit, but he wouldn’t be a sneak-thief.’
Then I spoke of Barralty, and when he heard it Macgillivray’s attention visibly quickened. He whistled, and his face took on that absent-minded look which always means that his brain or his memory is busy.
‘Barralty,’ he repeated. ‘Do you know, Dick, you’ve an uncommon knack of getting alongside interesting folk? Whenever you’ve consulted me it has always been in connection with gentry about whom I was pretty curious myself. Barralty – Joseph Bannatyne Barralty! It would take a cleverer man than me to expound that intricate gentleman. Did you ever see him?’
I said No – I had only heard of him for the first time that day.
‘How shall I describe him? In some lights he looks like a half-pay colonel who inhabits the environs of Cheltenham. Tallish, lean, big-nose, high cheek-bones – dresses generally in well-cut flannels or tweeds – age anything round fifty. He has a moustache which has gone grey at the tips, and it gives him a queer look of innocence. That’s one aspect – the English country gentleman. In another light he is simply Don Quixote – the same unfinished face, the same mild sad eyes and general air of being lost that one associates with the Don. That sounds rather attractive, doesn’t it? – half adventurer, half squire? But there’s a third light – for I have seen him look as ugly as sin. The pale eyes became mean and shallow and hard, the rudimentary features were something less than human, and the brindled moustache with its white points looked like the tusks of an obscene boar… I dare say you’ve gathered that I don’t much like Mr Barralty.
‘But I don’t understand him,’ he went on. ‘First of all, let me say that we have nothing against him. He came down in the Lepcha business, but there was never any suggestion against his character. He behaved perfectly well, and will probably end by paying every creditor in full, for he is bound to come on top again. He has had his ups and downs, and, like everybody in the City, has had to mix with doubtful characters, but his own reputation is unblemished. He doesn’t appear to care for money so much as for the game. Yet nobody likes him, and I doubt if many trust him, though everyone admits his ability. Now if you find a man unpopular for no apparent reason, it is generally safe to assume some pretty rotten patch in him. I assume the patch all right in Barralty’s case, but I’m hanged if I can put my finger on it, or find anything to justify my assumption except that now and then I’ve seen him look like the Devil.’
I asked about his profession.
‘He’s a stockbroker – a one-man firm which he founded himself. His interest? Not financial exclusively – indeed, he professes to despise the whole money-spinning business. Says he is in it only to get cash for the things he cares about. What are these? Well, yachting used to be one. In the days of his power he had the Thelma – 600 tons odd – that might be the original link with Troth. Then he’s a first-class, six-cylindered, copper-bottomed highbrow. A gentlemanly Communist. An intellectual who doesn’t forget to shave. The patron of every new fad in painting and sculpting and writing. Mighty condescending about all that ordinary chaps like you and me like, but liable to enthuse about monstrosities, provided that they’re brand-new and for preference foreign. I should think it was a genuine taste, for he has that kind of rootless, marginal mind. He backs his fancy too. For years he has kept the — going (Macgillivray mentioned a peevishly superior weekly journal), and he imports at his own expense all kinds of exponents of the dernier cri. His line is that he despises capitalism, as he despises all orthodoxies, but that as long as the beastly thing lasts, he will try to make his bit out of it, and spend the proceeds in hastening its end. Quite reasonable. I blame nothing about him except his taste.’
‘Isn’t he popular with his progressive lot?’ I asked.
Macgillivray shook his head. ‘I should doubt it. They flatter him when necessary, and sponge on him, but I’m pretty certain they don’t like him.’
I asked if all this intelligentsia business might not be a dodge to help Barralty’s city interests. It made him a new type of financier, and simple folk might be inclined to trust a man who declared that his only object in getting money was to prevent anybody, including himself, piling it up in the future.
Macgillivray thought that there might be something in that.
‘He’s a cautious fellow. His name is always being appended to protests in the newspapers, but he keeps off anything too extreme. His line is not the fanatic, but the superior critic of human follies. He does nothing to scare the investor… Well, I’ll keep an eye on him, and see if I can find out more about his relations with Troth. And the other fellow – what’s his name – Erick Albinus? You’ve given me an odd triangle.’
As I was leaving, Macgillivray said one last thing, which didn’t make much impression at the time, but which I was to remember later.
‘I should back you against the lot, Dick. They’re not natural criminals, and their nerve might crack. The danger would be if they got into the hands of somebody quite different – some really desperate fellow – like yourself.’
I went down to Fosse next morning by the early train, and Haraldsen duly arrived at midday. He put up with my keeper Jack Godstow, who had a roomy cottage in which I reserved a couple of rooms for bachelor guns when Fosse was overcrowded during a big shoot. I hunted him up after tea, and we went for a walk on the Downs.
My impression of the day before was confirmed. Haraldsen was as sane as I was. Whatever his trouble was, it was real enough, and not a mental delusion. But he was in an appalling condition of nerves. He was inclined to talk to himself under his breath – you could see his lips moving, and he had a queer trick of grunting. When we sat down he kept twitching his hands and fussing with his legs, and he would suddenly go off into an abstraction. He admitted that he had been sleeping badly. I was distressed by his state, for he was a fifty per cent sicker man than he had been at Hanham in January. I discovered that he had two terrors: one that something very bad might at any moment happen to himself or his daughter – especially his daughter. The other was that this miserable thing might simply drag on without anything happening, and that he would be shut off for ever from his beloved home in the north.
I did my best to minister to his tattered nerves. I told him that he was perfectly safe with me, and that I wouldn’t let matters drag on – Lombard and I would take steps to clear them up. I encouraged him to talk about his Island of Sheep, for it did him good to have something pleasant to think about, and he described to me with tremendous feeling the delight of its greenery and peace, the summer days when it was never dark, the fresh, changing seas, the tardy, delicate springs, the roaring, windy autumns, the long, snug, firelit winters.
I impressed upon him that for the present he must lie low. He would have the run of the house and the library, and Mary and I would see a lot of him, but to the countryside he must be an invalid friend of a friend of mine, who had c
ome to Fosse for quiet and mustn’t be disturbed. Jack Godstow would take him out fishing and show him the lie of the land. I gathered that he had some belongings scattered up and down London which he would like to have beside him, and I said that I would arrange for Lombard to collect them quietly and send them on. But I chiefly told him to be quite assured that this persecution was going to be brought to an end, for I saw that it was only that hope which would soothe him.
I spoke confidently, but I hadn’t a notion how it was to be done. Haraldsen’s safety depended on his being hidden away – I was quite clear about that – so we couldn’t draw the fire of his enemies so as to locate them. About these enemies I was wholly in the dark. An Americanized Dane, a shady sporting solicitor, a highbrow financier who looked like Don Quixote and had just crashed; it didn’t sound a formidable combination. I had only met one of them, Albinus, and about him I only knew the episode at Mafudi’s kraal; Macgillivray rather liked Troth, and Barralty sounded unpleasant but ineffective. Yet the three were engaged in something which had put the fear of death on a very decent citizen, and that had to be riddled out and stopped. There was nothing to do but to wait on developments. That night I wrote a long letter to Lombard, telling him the result of my talk with Macgillivray, asking him to keep his ears open for any news which would connect the three names, and warning him that I might summon him at any moment. As we went to bed I told Mary that I had not much to do for the next few weeks, and that I meant to devote them to getting Haraldsen back to an even keel.
But next day I had news which upset all my plans. Peter John at school was stricken with appendicitis, and was to be operated on that day. Mary and I raced off at once and took rooms near the nursing-home. The operation went off well, and after two days, which were purgatory to me and hell to Mary, he was pronounced to be out of danger. He made an excellent quick recovery, being as healthy as a trout, but it was a fortnight before he was allowed up, and three weeks before he left the home. Then, since the weather was hot, we took him to a seaside place on the East coast for a couple of weeks, so it was not till the beginning of June that we returned to Fosse.
