by John Buchan
His friends – that had been his chief blessing. As he thought of their warm companionship he could not check a sudden wave of regret. That would be hard to leave. He had sworn Acton Croke to secrecy, and he meant to keep his condition hidden even from his closest intimates – from Hannay and Clanroyden and Lamancha and Palliser-Yeates and Archie Roylance. He could not endure to think of their anxious eyes. He would see less of them than before, of course, but he would continue to meet them on the old terms. Yes – but how? He was giving up Parliament and the Bar – London, too. What story was he to tell? A craving for rest and leisure? Well, he must indulge that craving at a distance, or otherwise his friends would discover the reason.
But where? … Borrowby? Impossible, for it was associated too closely with his years of vigour. He had rejoiced in reshaping that ancient shell into a house for a green old age; he remembered with what care he had planned his library and his garden; Borrowby would be intolerable as a brief refuge for a dying man … Scotland? – somewhere in the Lowland hills or on the sounding beaches of the west coast? But he had been too happy there. All the romance of childhood and forward-looking youth was bound up with those places and it would be agony to revisit them.
His memory sprawled over places he had seen in his much-travelled life. There was a certain Greek island where he had once lived dangerously; there were valleys on the Italian side of the Alps, and a saeter in the Jotunheim to which his fancy had often returned. But in his survey he found that the charm had gone from them; they were for the living, not the dying. Only one spot had still some appeal. In his early youth, when money had not been plentiful, he had had an autumn shooting trip in northern Quebec because it was cheap. He had come down on foot over the height of land, with a single Montagnais guide back-packing their kit, and one golden October afternoon he had stumbled on a place which he had never forgotten. It was a green saddle of land, a meadow of wild hay among the pines. South from it a stream ran to the St Lawrence; from an adjacent well another trickle flowed north on the Arctic watershed. It had seemed a haven of pastoral peace in a shaggy land, and he recalled how loth he had been to leave it. He had often thought about it, often determined to go back and look for it. Now, as he pictured it in its green security, it seemed the kind of sanctuary in which to die. He remembered its name. The spring was called Clairefontaine, and it gave its name both to the south-flowing stream and to a little farm below in the valley.
Supposing he found the proper shelter, how was he to spend his closing months? As an invalid, slowly growing feebler, always expectant of death? That was starkly impossible. He wanted peace to make his soul, but not lethargy either of mind or body. The body! – that was the rub. It was failing him, that body which had once been a mettled horse quickly responding to bridle or spur. Now he must be aware every hour of its ignoble frailty … He stretched out his arms, flexing the muscles as he used to do when he was well, and was conscious that there was no pith in them.
His thoughts clung to this physical shell of his. He had been proud of it, not like an athlete who guards a treasure, but like a master proud of an adequate servant. It had added much to the pleasures of life … But he realised that in his career it had mattered very little to him, for his work had been done with his mind. Labouring men had their physical strength as their only asset, and when the body failed them their work was done. They knew from harsh experience the limits of their strength, what exhaustion meant, and strife against pain and disablement. They had to endure all their days what he had endured to a small degree in the trenches … Had he not missed something, and, missing it, had failed somehow in one of the duties of man?
This queer thought kept returning to him with the force of a revelation. His mood was the opposite of self-pity, a feeling that his life had been too cosseted and fur-lined. Only now that his body was failing did he realise how little he had used it … Among the oddly assorted beliefs which made up his religious equipment, one was conditional immortality. The soul was only immortal if there was such a thing as a soul, and a further existence had to be earned in this one. He had used most of the talents God had given him, but not all. He had never, except in the War, staked his body in the struggle, and yet that was the stake of most of humanity. Was it still possible to meet that test of manhood with a failing body? … If only the War were still going on!
His mind, which had been dragging apathetically along, suddenly awoke into vigour. By God! there was one thing that would not happen. He would not sit down and twiddle his thumbs and await death. His ship, since it was doomed, should go down in action with every flag flying. Lately he had been re-reading Vanity Fair and he remembered the famous passage where Thackeray moralises on the trappings of the conventional death-bed, the soft-footed nurses, the hushed voices of the household, the alcove on the staircase in which to rest the coffin. The picture affected him with a physical nausea. That, by God! should never be his fate. He would die standing, as Vespasian said an emperor should …
The day had broadened into full sunlight. The white paint and the flowered wallpaper of his bedroom glowed with the morning freshness, and from the street outside came pleasant morning sounds like the jingle of milk-cans and the whistling of errand boys. His mind seemed to have been stabbed awake out of a flat stoicism into a dim but masterful purpose.
He got up and dressed, and his cold bath gave him a ghost of an appetite for breakfast.
3
HIS intention was to go down to his chambers later in the morning and get to work on the batch of cases for opinion. As always after a meal, he felt languid and weak, but his mind was no longer comatose. Already it was beginning to move steadily, though hopelessly, towards some kind of plan. As he sat huddled in a chair at the open window Cruddock announced that a Mr Blenkiron was on the telephone and would like an appointment.
This was the American that Sandy Clanroyden had spoken of. Leithen remembered him clearly as his client in a big case. He remembered, too, much that he had heard about him from Sandy and Dick Hannay. One special thing, too – Blenkiron had been a sick man in the War and yet had put up a remarkable show. He had liked him, and, though he felt himself now cut off from human companionship, he could hardly refuse an interview, for Sandy’s sake. The man had probably some lawsuit in hand, and if so it would not take long to refuse.
‘If convenient, sir, the gentleman could come along now,’ said Cruddock.
Leithen nodded and took up the newspaper.
Blenkiron had aged. Eight years ago Leithen recalled him as a big man with a heavy shaven face, a clear skin, and calm ruminant grey eyes. A healthy creature in hard condition, he could have given a good account of himself with his hands as well as his head. Now he was leaner and more grizzled, and there were pouches under his eyes. Leithen remembered Sandy’s doings in South America; Blenkiron had been in that show, and he had heard about his being a sort of industrial dictator in Olifa, or whatever the place was called.
The grey eyes were regarding him contemplatively but keenly. He wondered what they made of his shrunken body.
‘It’s mighty fine to see you again, Sir Edward. And all the boys, too. I’ve been stuck so tight in my job down south that I’ve gotten out of touch with my friends. I’m giving myself a holiday to look them up and to see my little niece. I think you know Babs.’
‘I know her well. A very great woman. I had forgotten she was your niece. How does the old gang strike you?’
‘Lasting well, sir. A bit older and maybe a bit wiser and settling down into good citizens. They tell me that Sir Archibald Roylance is making quite a name for himself in your Parliament, and that Lord Clanroyden cuts a deal of ice with your Government. Dick Hannay, I judge, is getting hayseed into his hair. How about yourself?’
‘Fair,’ Leithen said. ‘I’m going out of business now. I’ve worked hard enough to be entitled to climb out of the rut.’
‘That’s fine!’ Blenkiron’s face showed a quickened interest. ‘I haven’t forgotten what you did fo
r me when I was up against the Delacroix bunch. There’s no man on the globe I’d sooner have with me in a nasty place than you. You’ve a mighty quick brain and a mighty sound judgment and you’re not afraid to take a chance.’
‘You’re very kind,’ said Leithen a little wearily. ‘Well, that’s all done with now. I am going out of harness.’
‘A man like you can’t ever get out of harness. If you lay down one job you take up another.’
Blenkiron’s eyes, appraising now rather than meditative, scanned the other’s face. He leaned forward in his chair and sank his voice.
‘I came round this morning to say something to you, Sir Edward – something very special. Babs has a sister, Felicity – I guess you don’t know her, but she’s something of a person on our side of the water. Two years younger than Babs, and married to a man you’ve maybe heard of, Francis Galliard, one of old Simon Ravelston’s partners. Young Galliard’s gotten a great name in the city of New York, and Felicity and he looked like being a happy pair. But just lately things haven’t been going too well with Felicity.’
In common politeness Leithen forced a show of attention, but Blenkiron had noted his dull eyes.
‘I won’t trouble you with the story now,’ he went on, ‘for it’s long and a bit ravelled, but the gist of it is that Francis Galliard has disappeared over the horizon. Just leaked out of the landscape without a word to Felicity or anybody else. No! There is no suggestion of kidnapping or any dirty work – the trouble is in Francis’s own mind. He is a Canuck – a Frenchman from Quebec – and I expect his mind works different from yours and mine. Now, he has got to be found and brought back – first of all to Felicity, and second, to his business, and third, to the United States. He’s too valuable a man to lose, and in our present state of precarious balance we just can’t afford it.’
Blenkiron stopped as if he expected some kind of reply. Leithen said nothing, but his thoughts had jumped suddenly to the upland meadow of Clairefontaine of which he had been thinking that morning. Odd that that remote memory should have been suddenly dug out of the lumber-room of the past!
‘We want help in the job,’ Blenkiron continued, ‘and it’s not going to be easy to find it. We want a man who can piece together the bits that make up the jigsaw puzzle, though we haven’t got much in the way of evidence. We want a man who can read himself into Francis’s mind and understand the thoughts he might have been thinking, and, most of all, we want a man who can put his conclusions into action. Finding Francis may mean a good deal of bodily wear and tear and taking some risks.’
‘I see,’ Leithen spoke at last. ‘You want a combination of detective, psychologist and sportsman.’
‘Yep.’ Blenkiron beamed. ‘You’ve hit it. And there’s just the one man I know that fills the bill. I’ve had a talk with Lord Clanroyden and he agrees. If you had been going on at the Bar we would have offered you the biggest fee that any brief ever carried, for there’s money to burn in this business – though I don’t reckon the fee would have weighed much with you. But you tell me you are shaking loose. Well, here’s a job for your leisure and, if I judge you right, it’s the sort of job you won’t turn down without a thought or two.’
Leithen raised his sick eyes to the eager face before him, a face whose abounding vitality sharpened the sense of his own weakness.
‘You’ve come a little late,’ he said slowly. ‘I’m going to tell you something which Lord Clanroyden and the others don’t know, and will never know – which nobody knows except myself and my doctor – and I want you to promise to keep it secret … I’m a dying man. I’ve only about a year to live.’
He was not certain what he expected, but he was certain it would be something which would wind up this business for good. He had longed to have one confidant, only one, and Blenkiron was safe enough. The sound of his voice speaking these grim words somehow chilled him, and he awaited dismally the conventional sympathy. After that Blenkiron would depart and he would see him no more.
But Blenkiron did not behave conventionally. He flushed deeply and sprang to his feet, upsetting his chair.
‘My God!’ he cried. ‘If I ain’t the blightedest, God-darned blundering fool! I might have guessed by your looks you were a sick man, and now I’ve hurt you in the raw with my cursed egotistical worries … I’m off, Sir Edward. Forget you ever saw me. God forgive me, for I won’t soon forgive myself.’
‘Don’t go,’ said Leithen. ‘Sit down and talk to me. You may be the very man I want.’
4
HIS hostess noticed his slow appraising look round the table, which took each of the guests in turn.
‘You were here last in ’29,’ she said. ‘Do you think we have changed?’
Leithen turned his eyes to the tall woman at his left hand. Mrs Simon Ravelston had a beautiful figure, ill-chosen clothes, and the weather-beaten face of an English master of foxhounds. She was magnificently in place on horseback, or sailing a boat, or running with her beagles, but no indoor setting could fit her. Sprung from ancient New England stock, she showed her breeding in a wonderful detachment from the hubbub of life. At her own table she would drift into moods of reverie and stare into vacancy, oblivious of the conversation, and then when she woke up would turn such kind eyes upon her puzzled interlocutor that all offences were forgiven. When her husband had been Ambassador at the Court of St James’s she had been widely popular, a magnet for the most sophisticated young men; but of this she had been wholly unconscious. She was deeply interested in life and very little interested in herself.
Leithen answered, ‘Yes, I think you all look a little more fine-drawn and harder trained. The men, that is. The women could never change.’
Mrs Ravelston laughed. ‘I hope that you’re right. Before the depression we were getting rather gross. The old Uncle Sam that we took as our national figure was lean like a Red Indian, but in late years our ordinary type had become round-faced, and puffy, and pallid, like a Latin John Bull. Now we are recovering Uncle Sam, though we have shaved him and polished him up.’ Her eyes ran round the table and stopped at a youngish man with strong rugged features and shaggy eyebrows who was listening with a smile to the talk of a very pretty girl.
‘George Lethaby, for example. Thank goodness he is a career diplomat and can show himself about the world. I should like people to take him as a typical American.’ She lowered her voice, for she was speaking now of her left-hand neighbour, ‘Or Bronson, here. You know him, don’t you? Bronson Jane.’
Leithen glanced beyond his hostess to where a man just passing into middle life was peering at an illegible menu card. This was the bright particular star of the younger America, and he regarded him with more than curiosity, for he counted upon him for help. On paper Bronson Jane was almost too good to be true. He had been a noted sportsman and was still a fine polo player; his name was a household word in Europe for his work in international finance; he was the Admirable Crichton of his day and it was rumoured that in the same week he had been offered the Secretaryship of State, the Presidency of an ancient University, and the control of a great industrial corporation. He had chosen the third, but seemed to have a foot also in every other world. He had a plain sagacious face, a friendly mouth, and deep-set eyes, luminous and masterful.
Leithen glanced round the table again. The dining-room of the Ravelston house was a homely place; it had no tapestries or panelling, and its pictures were family portraits of small artistic merit. In each corner there were marble busts of departed Ravelstons. It was like the rest of the house, and, like their country homes in the Catskills and on the Blue Ridge, a dwelling which bore the mark of successive generations who had all been acutely conscious of the past. Leithen felt that he might have been in a poor man’s dwelling, but for the magnificence of the table flowers and silver and the gold soup plates which had once belonged to a King of France. He let his gaze rest on each of the men.
‘Yes,’ he told his hostess, ‘you are getting the kind of face I like.’
&n
bsp; ‘But not the right colour perhaps,’ she laughed. ‘Is that worry or too much iced water, I wonder?’ She broke off suddenly, remembering her neighbour’s grey visage.
‘Tell me who the people are,’ he said to cover her embarrassment. ‘I have met Mr Jane and Mr Lethaby and Mr Ravelston.’
‘I want you to know my Simon better,’ she said. ‘I know why you have come here – Mr Blenkiron told me. Nobody knows about it except in the family. The story is that Mr Galliard has gone to Peru to look into some pitchblende propositions. Simon is terribly distressed and he feels so helpless. You see, we only came back to America from England four months ago, and we have kind of lost touch.’
Simon Ravelston was a big man with a head like Jove, and a noble silvered beard. He was president of one of the chief private banking houses in the world, which under his great-grandfather had financed the first railways beyond the Appalachians, under his grandfather had salved the wreckage of the Civil War, and under his father had steadied America’s wild gallop to wealth. He had a dozen partners, most of whom understood the technique of finance far better than himself, but on all major questions he spoke the last word, for he had the great general’s gift of reducing complexities to a simple syllogism. In an over-worked world he seemed always to have ample leisure, for he insisted on making time to think. When others of his calling were spending twelve hectic hours daily in their offices, Simon would calmly go fishing. No man ever saw him rattled or hustled, and this Olympian detachment gave him a prestige in two continents against which he himself used to protest vigorously.