The Case of the Four Friends

by J. C. Masterman

  ‘Yet I am sure that he was not a man for whom money was an end in itself. It would have been much too easy for him to make a fortune to bring real satisfaction. It was the making of money, the adventure of pitting his brains against those of other men, the thrill of taking risks and seeing his daring justified – it was all these things which gave him the most intense pleasure. Whereas other men found satisfaction in love or sport, in religion or in the arts or learning, Bannister derived the keenest, the most exquisite satisfaction from his financial adventures. If you ask me how or why, I cannot answer you with certainty, but I believe that at the bottom of it all was the love of power. Not the pursuit of wealth, not ordinary ambition for high place, not personal qualities inherited from forebears who had been acquisitive through generations – nothing like that – but simply a dunkler Instinkt, a deeply ingrained and imperfectly understood desire for power. The most sinister type of successful man is the one who has an urge to power derived from a sense of his own inferiority. Perhaps subconsciously Bannister had this sense of inferiority, but I must come to that later.

  ‘To this appetite for power was added the longing for adventure, the imperative necessity to take risks. I wonder if you have read a truly remarkable tale written by C. E. Montague – he calls it, I think, Action. In that he describes the character of a mountaineer who had realized that in all his climbs and all his feats of physical endurance he had never quite reached the final limits of his powers – always he could compel his body at need to find strength for one more effort. Then, when fate had turned against him and his life was in pieces, he decided on suicide. He would climb once more and go on and on until at last the breaking-point was reached – and so would perish. His plan was, if I remember the story accurately, to cut down the margin of safety which every mountaineer must keep, little by little, until it was entirely gone. To what height of achievement might he not reach before the inevitable end came? But I need not tell you the rest of the tale – enough that, when another needed his aid, he was still able to summon resources of endurance hitherto undreamed of and still to carry on. There’s a happy ending, as I remember. Bannister was like that; in all his financial operations he seemed to be making a wager with himself – let him dare just one thing more to see if he could bring it off against all reasonable odds. Yes, he was an adventurer, and an adventurer on a great scale but on a modern pattern. When others had found satisfaction in voyages of discovery over uncharted seas or in the dangers of exploration in savage lands, so he sought his adventure in the world of finance and speculation. It was the inborn risks, the hidden enemies, the brains of his rivals which challenged him and lured him on.’

  Gresham was quietly murmuring to himself some of the last lines of Hassan.

  ‘… we shall go

  Always a little further; it may be

  Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow,

  Across that angry or that glimmering sea.’

  Brendel nodded in appreciation. ‘Exactly, my friend, exactly; Bannister was just like that. He was the adventurer who will always experiment and always go a little further – and then those later lines:

  ‘What would ye, ladies? It was ever thus.

  Men are unwise and curiously planned.

  They have their dreams and do not think of us.

  We take the Golden Road to Samarkand.’

  Of course he was unwise, and of course he was curiously planned, but I don’t believe that he was ever dishonest, though I’m sure that he took risks which would have daunted lesser men, and no doubt he approached dangerously near to that line which divides the allowable from what is not permitted.

  ‘All the time he remained a popular and (I use the term advisedly) a respected man. He had hosts of friends; he took his part in the sports and diversions of his social equals; he was regarded as a man who was prosperous, generous, and reliable. Of his private speculations, his financial adventures, little was known or even guessed at. That was his inner and secret life. He was known to be well off, he was thought to be very wealthy; he was regarded as a good companion and a staunch friend. And in a manner he deserved his reputation. Truly his financial career was only one side of his life – in such things he was an amateur – a man who played with money as an adventurer, and who treated business as a sport, where risks and prizes, perils and triumphs, were ever precariously balanced against each other. You’ll remember how Byron always thought of himself as a great English gentleman who wrote poetry as a parergon. In a curious sort of way Bannister was much the same. How natural then that when Charles Sandham was in difficulties he should turn first and immediately to Bannister – for advice and support as well as, if need be, for financial aid.

  ‘But still I’ve not explained how Bannister came to trade in blackmail, and it’s not at all easy for me to make that explanation. For a time, when first I interested myself in his character and his undertakings, I could not bring myself to believe that he was a blackmailer at all; it was only when the fact stared me in the face, and the proof was irrefutable, that I could convince myself of the truth of the charge. And yet, in retrospect, I can appreciate the position without much difficulty, for once more the driving motive was a love of power. Somehow I feel that the power which comes from the possession of wealth must in time lose its zest and attraction. Certainly that would be so in the case of a man of the type of Bannister. For him an infinitely greater satisfaction would come from the exercise of personal power – the power to control men’s lives – to move men like pawns because he had a personal hold over them. I do not know the details, but my imagination supplies them. He often lent money, though he was not a usurer at heart. I’ve heard him quote with approval that member of a great merchant banking family who said that you should never try to sell at the very top of the market, but always a bit earlier to leave a little for the next man. Perhaps that is how great fortunes have been made. So I see Bannister lending money on easy terms to men who needed it, and then gradually realizing the sort of power which this gave him over individuals. It must have been a short step from this to becoming a blackmailer, but a blackmailer, I feel sure, on the highest level and with the maximum of success – for no breath of scandal or criticism touched him in the days before the war. You’ve read, no doubt, De Quincey’s Murder as a Fine Art – well, blackmail was a fine art to Bannister, and he was a consummate artist. Since all this happened, I mean since the events that I am describing took place, I have delved a good deal into his early enterprises. If I may put it crudely, I should say that he never had more than a few names on his books, but that every name was a good one. He must have loved the fine distinctions and the subtle calculations which told him just how far he could press a client without reducing him to despair or to violent action. It was an art; indeed it was! He collected his victims, if I may use the conventional term, just as some men have collected Chinese jade or Italian primitives, and I doubt if he ever added a really bad piece to his collection. No doubt, in a way, blackmail was connected with his other interests. It may well be that when he was launching an unusually risky financial venture and when he needed ready money, he might turn the screws a little more strongly; but for the most part he played blackmail as a game, and would exert the pressure when it seemed to him that it would be agreeable to show the power which he possessed. Perhaps the “business” of Charles Sandham was the first of his experiments in this genre. I do not know, but I am sure that it was a very early example of his new technique. Power – power – power that was the real goal of his ambition. To feel that he could influence and control the lives of other men – to feel that others would obey his wishes because they must – to feel that he was superior to them, and could indicate his superiority as he wished and when he would.

  ‘And this urge to power was derived from a hidden or subconscious feeling of inferiority. I’m not a trained psychologist, only an observer, but, after all, the general theories of the psychologists are universal knowledge nowadays. Bannister was an
illegitimate son, or as a less mealy-mouthed generation would have said, a bastard, and there’s no sort of doubt that that secret, for it was a secret, had influenced him all through his life. In telling you this I am playing more than fair, for I did not know the fact myself till afterwards. It was, so to speak, the confirmatory evidence which convinced me that my analysis of his character had been in the main correct. I doubt if half a dozen of his friends knew his secret – certainly Charles Sandham did not – and I am really giving you a piece of information which should help you in making your estimate. That’s not just fair, it’s generous – for I repeat that I had not this knowledge at the time of which I am speaking. Yet think, or imagine, what influence this secret must have had on him. All his life he had felt in some sense an inferiority compared to other men, and all his life, in consequence, he had aimed at asserting his superiority. That, as I see it, is the true explanation of his career as a blackmailer, and of his love of power over his fellows.

  ‘Granted all that, I still find it difficult to explain to you how he moved so far down his slippery path of crime – for blackmail is a crime. Someone spoke just now of a “flashback”, and I do believe that if I gave you a flash-back of his life during the war I could go a long way to giving you a true and complete picture of the man. Bannister was a patriotic man and he had moved heaven and earth to get into active service when the war started, but he was then already well over forty and it was not easy for him to find the sort of active employment for which he craved. Yet he did contrive to be enrolled in one of those paramilitary formations which trained men for unusual and often dangerous undertakings, and, after a good deal of training, he found himself for the greater part of the war in Lisbon. It’s not for me, a foreigner, to probe too deeply into the nature of his work or the results which he achieved. I can only say, in the broadest terms, something of his task, and I may be well wide of the mark.’

  Brendel paused and the quizzical smile which his intimates knew so well fluttered across his mouth. ‘Oh dear,’ he said, ‘how difficult this story-telling is! If only I had the visual aids to help me! As I said, someone talked earlier of the “flash-back” which you can use in a film – and that’s just what I need now. A flash-back of Lisbon in the war years, for I’m convinced that it was that curious, sinister, and complicated little world that finished and, as it were, finally moulded Bannister’s character. I was myself for some little time in Lisbon during the war, and I saw something of life there and absorbed its atmosphere. Let me try to explain, though I’m aware that I do it badly. Portugal was neutral, and so to Portugal came the agents official and unofficial of many countries and countries on both sides. It was not possible to learn in Berlin what was happening in London, but it might well be possible to hear, or guess, or deduce in neutral Portugal what was happening in both. And further, it might be possible to spread information (and make it appear credible) of what was not happening in London or Berlin and yet have it believed in the other place. And so Lisbon became a kind of international clearing-ground, a busy ant-heap of spies and agents, where political and military secrets and information – true and false, but mainly false – were bought and sold and where men’s brains were pitted against each other. There was, of course, more in it than this. The life of the secret agent is dangerous enough, but the life of the double agent is infinitely more precarious. If anyone balances on a swaying tight-rope it is he, and a single slip must send him crashing to destruction. Bannister went to Lisbon ostensibly in a commercial capacity, and he was well-known and respected in British and allied diplomatic and business circles – but he was much more than that. Through a long and cautious period he had insinuated himself into the confidence of the Germans who, as time went on, believed that they had bought him and that he was firmly attached to them. He gave them information at a high price, and enough of that information was correct and true for them to believe more and more that self-interest bound him to them. Once to my certain knowledge, and, as I surmise, on another occasion also, Bannister was smuggled into Germany and visited both Berlin and Hamburg for consultations. It’s not necessary to stress the cool, the almost unnatural courage which was necessary for these journeys. I can picture the long interviews with German secret service chiefs – at which a false word or unconscious admission or slip would have meant death for Bannister. But it was just that sort of courage which he had. I believe that if he had dined with the Borgias and been faced with two glasses of wine of which one was probably poisoned, he could have lifted and drained one of them without a tremor of the hand. I believe, too, that he would have been quicker than any other man to note the smallest indication which might suggest that one glass was more likely to be safe than the other. And the very risks of his life were meat and drink to him. What an odd thing courage is! Cool, calculated, steel-cold courage he had, but yet he shrank from physical violence, and that, I fancy, was his heel of Achilles, which he disguised from others and perhaps from himself. If he had been told to eliminate some agent who was better out of the way, I can see him ordering his death without a tremor, but if, as an officer, it had been his duty to draw his revolver and shoot, let us say, a man for cowardice, I can see him flinching and going to any lengths to escape the task. And even more with regard to himself. He could have faced any sentence of death or suchlike, but he would have crumpled up before the threat of physical violence.

  ‘Once I asked him to tell me, just at the end of the war, what he thought he had learned from his Lisbon experiences, and rather to my surprise he answered the question with a good deal of care. “First of all,” he said, “I learned some respect for a few individuals, but I acquired contempt for the human race in gross. Beyond that, I came to see that nothing is too strange to be credible, especially where human character is concerned, and that every human being has his weaknesses and usually his villainies, and that these can be exploited at will. If you know just what you want, and if you enjoy taking risks, as I do, there is no limit to what you can achieve; but you must be ruthless – quite ruthless – or you will fail.” It wasn’t a pretty picture, but I believe it was a true one. I wish I could develop his character more for you, for indeed it fascinates me, and some day I’d like to write a book about Lisbon in wartime and its effect upon the characters of those that lived there, but – ’

  ‘But, not now!’ interrupted Gresham. ‘You have surely given us enough to let us judge fairly about Bannister, and you have still to describe the fourth friend to us. Let me see, you said that he was Bannister’s nephew, I think?’

  The General supported him.

  ‘Yes, the nephew, as I remember, whom you had only met once, and then in a crowded room.’

  The twinkle in his eye robbed the remark of all malice, but Brendel was quick to take the point and he burst into a laugh.

  ‘Yes, yes, that is so, and you rightly accuse me of garrulity, but you must excuse the unpractised story-teller. I’ll try not to offend again, and really in the case of Piers Gradon I have little or no excuse to be long-winded. For, you see, for me he was gar nicht sympathisch, and for that reason I cannot do justice to him. That’s a favourite belief of mine. Do you remember that remark of Montesquieu’s, simple yet profound: “Listen neither to Père Tournemine nor to me when we speak of each other, for we are no longer friends”? If you want to understand men you must have sympathy with them; charity, I’m sure, is the best illuminant in the search for truth about the character of individuals.’

  The General gave a warning cough, gentle but sufficient.

  ‘So I cannot pretend to describe Gradon accurately. I can only tell you what was said and thought of him by others. Few men in England were better known to a certain section of the public than the Hon. Piers Gradon, though the reasons for his notoriety were not entirely creditable to him. He was the younger son of an impecunious Irish peer, who claimed royal descent and who had himself in his day been notorious for every kind of wild adventure. Like his father, Piers did not know the meaning of restrain
t or moderation. A reckless physical courage, founded on a lack of imagination and a contempt for his fellow-creatures, had brought him distinction for gallantry in the war; the same and other qualities had led to his speedy dismissal from any job which he had undertaken in time of peace. He was wildly generous, but with the generosity of a selfish and egotistic man. Had he commanded an income of ten thousand a year, he would have spent twenty; had he been married to the most charming and virtuous wife in the world, he would have deserted her without a qualm had some other woman caught his passing fancy. How very little true generosity there is in the world compared with false! It’s easy enough to give away that which you don’t really need, and even some of the apparently most generous acts are dictated by a wish to do what is considered right and proper rather than by spontaneous generosity. Gradon’s generosity was of the wrong brand; it was never founded on a willingness to deprive himself of anything he coveted. If he had lived in the eighteenth century, he would have rivalled the most temerarious gamblers and the most profligate rakes, a little later he might well have shared the notoriety of Byron. He was indeed born in the wrong age, and he lived his life always in extremes. Yet thanks to his birth, to his handsome – almost magnificent – personal appearance, to his wild and reckless generosity and his eminence at outdoor sports, he was something of a social hero, received everywhere, admired, and popular to a degree which he did not deserve. Always he appeared to think that the rules made for other mortals did not apply to him, and though he was capable of acts of apparent magnanimity, his pleasures were always the first consideration. Like Henry VIII, he spared neither men in his rage nor women in his lust. To me he seemed just a splendid animal, and a savage one at that. Yet women, and especially society women, adored him, and, as one of his friends remarked, whatever crime he was ultimately tried for he would be safe for an acquittal if there was even one woman on the jury. When I first saw him I was irresistibly reminded of that first picture of Gray Maturin in The Razor’s Edge. Do you remember it? “His virility was impressive,” says Maugham, and then goes on to the comments of his shy dinner neighbour. “He’s very much admired. I know several girls who would stop at nothing short of murder to get him.” Piers Gradon was just like that. He was only in his early thirties, but his life had been crammed with incident and adventure. Some of his exploits had been in the highest degree creditable, some had been disgraceful. When he was twenty-five he had, at a time when duelling had long ceased to be the practice of civilized men, fought a duel “somewhere in Europe”. That might have been passed off as a youthful escapade had not he fought with a sword and killed his adversary on the spot. His hasty departure from the country was followed by a two years’ journey of exploration in Central Asia, where he had shown courage and physical endurance to an unusual degree, and where he had sustained and led his party to a deserved triumph. Yet again, and this time in South America, he had killed a man in what, in another age, would have been called a tavern brawl. That episode had been to some extent hushed up also, but the fact remained that Gradon had twice committed manslaughter, if not murder. He was, in short, a man of violence, who struck first and thought, if at all, afterwards – more fitted as it seemed for the films than for the prosaic life of London or the English countryside. And above all he was vain; to him it seemed that no one had the right to stand in his way, and that no woman could resist him or fail to yield to his advances. Yet one woman had. He had courted Dahlia Constant with complete confidence that she would fall for him. She had not fallen, and Piers had watched not so much with rage as with sheer astonishment her apparent preference for Toby Barrick. Previously he had regarded Toby with some condescension as his friend, but it seemed incredible that he should venture to become a successful rival. That was the sort of man, then, whose voice came over the phone to Bannister that morning. A splendid animal – but as dangerous as could be.’