of street accidents became formidable, and there were terrifying tales of footpads who leaped on the shoulders of old gentlemen on the very steps of their clubs, or beat them to jelly on Hay Hill.
Everyone whom Basil met was busy getting a job. Some consciously or unconsciously had taken out an insurance policy against unemployment by joining some military unit in the past; there were those like Peter, who in early youth had gratified a parental whim by spending a few expensive years in the regular Army, and those like Freddy who had gone into the yeomanry as they sat on the Bench and the county council as part of the normal obligations of rural life. These were now in uniform with their problems solved. In later months, as they sat idle in the Middle East, they were to think enviously of those who had made a more deliberate and judicious choice of service, but at the moment their minds were enviably at rest. The remainder were possessed with a passion to enroll in some form of public service, however uncongenial. Some formed ambulance parties and sat long hours at their posts waiting for air raid victims; some became firemen, some minor civil servants. None of these honourable occupations made much appeal to Basil.
He was exactly the type of man who, if English life had run as it did in books of adventure, should at this turn in world affairs have been sent for. He should have been led to an obscure address in Maida Vale and there presented to a lean, scarred man with hard grey eyes ? one of the men behind the scenes; one of the men whose names were unknown to the public and the newspapers, who passed unnoticed in the street, a name known only to the inner circle of the Cabinet and to the heads of the secret police of the world… “Sit down, Seal. We’ve followed your movements with interest ever since that affair in La Paz in ‘32. You’re a rascal, but I’m inclined to think you’re the kind of rascal the country needs at this moment. I take it you’re game for anything?”
“I’m game.”
“That’s what I expected you to say. These are your orders. You will go to Uxbridge aerodrome at 4:30 this afternoon, where a man will meet you and give you your passport. You will travel under the name of Blenkinsop. You are a tobacco grower from Latakia. A civil aeroplane will take you by various stages to Smyrna, where you will register at the Miramar Hotel and await orders. Is that clear?…”
It was clear, and Basil, whose life up to the present had been more like an adventure story than most people’s, did half expect some such summons. None came. Instead he was invited to luncheon by Sir Joseph Mainwaring at the Travellers’ Club.
Basil’s luncheons at the Travellers’ with Sir Joseph Mainwaring had for years formed a series of monuments in his downward path. There had been the luncheons of his four major debt settlements, the luncheon of his political candidature, the luncheons of his two respectable professions, the luncheon of the threatened divorce of Angela Lyne, the Luncheon of the Stolen Emeralds, the Luncheon of the Knuckledusters, the Luncheon of Freddy’s Last Cheque ? each would provide both theme and title for a work of popular fiction.
Hitherto these feasts had taken place r deux in a secluded corner. The Luncheon of the Commission in the Guards was altogether a more honourable affair and its purpose was to introduce Basil to the Lieutenant-Colonel of the Bombardiers ? an officer whom Sir Joseph wrongly believed to have a liking for him.
The Lieutenant-Colonel did not know Sir Joseph well and was surprised and slightly, alarmed by the invitation, for his distrust was based not, as might have been expected, on any just estimate of his capabilities, but, paradoxically, on the fear of him as a politician and man of affairs. All politicians were, to the Lieutenant-Colonel, not so much boobies as bogies. He saw them all, even Sir Joseph, as figures of Renaissance subtlety and intrigue. It was by being in with them that the great professional advances were achieved; but it was by falling foul of them that one fell into ignominy. For a simple soldier ? and if ever anyone did, the Lieutenant-Colonel qualified for that honourable title ? the only safe course was to avoid men like Sir Joseph. When met with, they should be treated with bluff and uncompromising reserve. Sir Joseph thus found himself, through his loyal friendship with Cynthia Seal, in the equivocal position of introducing, with a view to his advancement, a man for whom he had a deep-seated horror to a man who had something of the same emotion towards himself. It was not a concurrence which, on the face of it, seemed hopeful of good results.
Basil, like “Lord Monmouth,” “never condescended to the artifice of the toilet,” and the Lieutenant-Colonel studied him with distaste. Together the ill-assorted trio went to their table.
Soldier and statesman spread their napkins on their knees and in the interest of ordering their luncheon allowed a silence to fall between them into which Basil cheerfully plunged.
“We ought to do something about Liberia, Colonel,” he said.
The Colonel turned on him the outraged gaze with which a good regimental soldier always regards the discussion of war in its larger aspects.
“I expect those whose business it is have the question in hand,” he said.
“Don’t you believe it,” said Basil. “I don’t expect they’ve given it a thought,” and for some twenty minutes he explained why and how Liberia should be immediately annexed.
The two older men ate in silence. At length a chance reference to Russia gave Sir Joseph the chance to interpose an opinion.
“I always distrust prophecy in any form,” he said. “But there is one thing of which I am certain. Russia will come in against us before the end of the year. That will put Italy and Japan on our side. Then it is simply a question of time before our blockade makes itself felt. All kinds of things that you and I have never heard of, like manganese and bauxite, will win the war for us.”
“And infantry.”
“And infantry.”
“Teach a man to march and shoot. Give him the right type of officer. Leave the rest to him.”
This seemed to Basil a suitable moment to introduce his own problems. “What do you think is the right type of officer?”
“The officer-type.”
“It’s an odd thing,” Basil began, “that people always expect the upper class to be good leaders of men. That was all right in the old days when most of them were brought up with tenantry to look after. But now three-quarters of your officer-type live in towns. I haven’t any tenantry.”
The Lieutenant-Colonel looked at Basil with detestation. “No, no. I suppose not.”
“Well, have you any tenantry?”
“I? No. My brother sold the old place years ago.”
