by John Buchan
‘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 sea-mews,” 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 to-day 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 fail. 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 the name 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 every one 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 interests? 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 — six hundred 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 sculping and writing. Mighty condescending about all that ordinary chaps like you and me like, but liable to enth
use 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 come 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.
Meanwhile I had heard nothing about Haraldsen. Lombard and Macgillivray had both been silent, and Jack Godstow had only reported weekly that the gentleman was doing nicely and was looking forward to the May-fly season. When I got back to Fosse I expected to find him rested and calmed and beginning to put on flesh, for all these weeks he had been deep in country peace and must have felt secure.
I found exactly the opposite. Haraldsen looked worse than when I had left him, leaner, paler, and his eyes had more of a hunted look than ever. He had little to say to me except to repeat his thanks for my kindness. No, he had not been disturbed; nothing had happened to alarm him; he was quite well and had got back a bit of his appetite, he thought; he wasn’t sleeping so badly. But all the time his eyes were shifting about as if he expected any moment to see something mighty unpleasant, and he started at every noise. He was the very model of a nervous wreck.
I had a long talk about him with Jack Godstow. I won’t attempt Jack’s dialect, for no words could reproduce the odd Cotswold lilt and drawl, and the racy idiom of every sentence. The gist of his report was that Mr. Haraldsen was a difficult one to manage, since he never knew his own mind. He would make a plan to fish the evening rise, and then change it and start out at midnight when there was nothing doing. He didn’t like the daylight no more than an owl, and he didn’t like other folks neither, and would get scared if he saw a strange face. He was always asking about new folk in the neighbourhood, but Lord bless you, said Jack, new folk didn’t come this way, except for an odd hiker or two, and the extra hands for the hay harvest, and the motor gentry on the Fosse Way. The gentleman needn’t worry himself, and he had told him so, but it was no good speaking. I explained to Jack that my friend was a sick man, and that part of his sickness was a dread of strange faces. Jack understood that and grinned. ‘Like that new ‘awk of Master Peter John’s,’ he said.
The mention of Peter John gave me an idea. The boy was not going back to school that half, and was settling down to a blissful summer at Fosse before he went north to Sandy Clanroyden at Laverlaw. He had six li
ttle kestrels sitting all day on the lawn, and Morag on her perch in the Crow Wood, and a young badger called Broccoli that rootled about in the stable straw and gave him heart disease at night by getting down into the entrails of the greenhouses. He was still under a mild doctor’s régime, but was picking up strength very fast. Haraldsen had taken to him at Hanham, and I thought that his company might be wholesome for him. So I asked him to take on the job of being a good deal with my guest, for everything about Peter John suggested calm nerves and solid reason. There was something else in my mind.
‘Mr. Haraldsen is an invalid,’ I said, ‘and must keep quiet. He has been through rather a beastly experience, which I’ll tell you about some day. It’s just possible that the experience isn’t over yet, and that some person or persons might turn up here who wouldn’t be well disposed to him. I want you to keep your eyes very wide open and let me know at once if you see or hear anything suspicious. By suspicious I mean something outside the usual — I don’t care how small it is. We can’t afford to take any chances with Mr. Haraldsen.’
Peter John nodded and his face brightened. He asked no questions, but I knew that he had got something to think about.
Nothing happened for a week. The boy did Haraldsen good; Mary and I both noticed it, and Jack Godstow admitted as much. He took him to fish in the early mornings both in our little trout stream and in the Decoy ponds. He took him on the Downs in the afternoon to fly Morag. He took him into the woods after dinner to watch fox cubs at play, and try to intercept Broccoli’s cousin on his way from his sett. Haraldsen began to get some colour into his face, and he confessed that he slept better. I don’t know what the two talked about, but they must have found common subjects, for I could hear them conversing vigorously — Peter John’s slow, grave voice, and Haraldsen’s quicker, more staccato speech. If we were making no progress with Haraldsen’s business we were at any rate mending his health.
Then one evening Peter John came to me with news.