excitement.
'I can't tell you. I found it out in the process of hunting for the hostages, and I give you my word it's correct.'
'But you must tell me more. If you have fresh lines on what you call my 'gang,' it may be desperately important for me to know.'
'I haven't. I've just the one fact, which I have given you. Honestly, old man, I can't tell you anything more till I tell you everything. Believe me, I'm working hard.'
I had thought the thing out, and had resolved to keep the Medina business to myself and Sandy. Our one chance with him was that he should be utterly unsuspecting, and even so wary a fellow as Macgillivray might, if he were told, create just that faint breath of suspicion that would ruin all. He grunted, as if he were not satisfied. 'I suppose you must have it your own way. Very well, we'll fix the 10th of June for
'I do,' I said, 'and I realise that the moving forward of your date narrows my time down to less than two months. If I succeed, I must wait till the very eve of your move. Not earlier, I suppose, than June 9th? Assume I only find one of the three? I wait till June 9th before getting him out of their clutches. Then you strike, and what happens to the other two?'
He shrugged his shoulders. 'The worst, I fear. You see, Dick, the gang I mean to crush and the people who hold the hostages are allied, but I take it they are different sets. I may land every member of my gang, and yet not come within speaking distance of the other lot. I don't know, but I'm pretty certain that even if we found the second lot we'd never be able to prove complicity between the two. The first are devilish deep fellows, but the second are great artists.'
'All the same,' I said, 'I'm in hopes of finding at least one of the hostages, and that means some knowledge of the kidnappers.'
'I must not ask, but I'd give my head to know how and where you're working. More power to you! But I wonder if you'll ever get near the real prime fountain of iniquity.'
'I wonder,' I said, and took my leave.
I had been playing with sickness, and now it looked as if I was going to be punished by getting the real thing. For all the rest of that day I felt cheap, and in the evening I was positive I had a temperature. I thought I might have 'flu, so I went round after dinner to see a doctor whom I had known in France. He refused to admit the temperature. 'What sort of life have you been leading these last weeks?' he asked, and when I told him that I had been hanging round London waiting on some tiresome business developments, he said that that was the whole trouble. 'You're accustomed to an active life in fresh air and you've been stuffing in town, feeding too well and getting no exercise. Go home to-morrow and you'll be as right as a trivet.'
'It rather would suit me to be sick for a spell—say a week.'
He looked puzzled and then laughed.
'Oh, if you like I'll give you a chit to say you must go back to the country at once or I won't answer for the consequences.'
'I'd like that, but not just yet. I'll ring you up when I want it. Meantime I can take it that there's nothing wrong with me?'
'Nothing that a game of squash and a little Eno won't cure.'
'Well, when you send me that chit, say I've got to have a quiet week in bed at home—no visitors—regular rest cure.'
'Right,' he said. 'It's a prescription that every son of Adam might follow with advantage four times a year.'
When I got back to the Club I found Medina waiting for me. It was the first time he had visited me there, and I pretended to be delighted to see him—almost embarrassed with delight—and took him to the back smoking-room where I had talked with Sandy. I told him that I was out of sorts, and he was very sympathetic. Then, with a recollection of Sandy's last letter, I started out to blaspheme my gods. He commented on the snugness and seclusion of the little room, which for the moment we had to ourselves.
'It wasn't very peaceful when I was last in it,' I said. 'I had a row here with that lunatic Arbuthnot before he went abroad.'
He looked up at the name.
'You mean you quarrelled. I thought you were old friends.'
'Once we were. Now I never want to see the fellow again.' I thought I might as well do the job thoroughly, though the words stuck in my throat.
I thought he seemed pleased.
'I told you,' he said, 'that he didn't attract me.'
'Attract!' I cried. 'The man has gone entirely to the devil. He has forgotten his manners, his breeding, and everything he once possessed. He has lived so long among cringing Orientals that his head is swollen like a pumpkin. He wanted to dictate to me, and I said I would see him further—and—oh well, we had the usual row. He's gone back to the East, which is the only place for him, and—no! I never want to clap eyes on him again.'
There was a purr of satisfaction in his voice, for he believed, as I meant him to, that his influence over me had been strong enough to shatter an ancient friendship. 'I am sure you are wise. I have lived in the East and know something of its ways. There is the road of knowledge and the road of illusion, and Arbuthnot has chosen the second… . We are friends, Hannay, and I have much to tell you some day—perhaps very soon. I have made a position for myself in the world, but the figure which the world sees is only a little part of me. The only power is knowledge, and I have attained to a knowledge compared with which Arbuthnot's is the merest smattering.'
I noticed that he had dropped the easy, well-bred, deprecating manner which I had first noted in him. He spoke to me now magisterially, arrogantly, almost pompously.
'There has never been a true marriage of East and West,' he went on. 'To-day we incline to put a false interpretation on the word Power. We think of it in material terms like money, or the control of great patches of inanimate nature. But it still means, as it has always meant, the control of human souls, and to him who acquires that everything else is added. How does such control arise? Partly by knowledge of the intricacies of men's hearts, which is a very different thing from the stock platitudes of the professional psychologists. Partly by that natural dominion of spirit which comes from the possession of certain human qualities in a higher degree than other men. The East has the secret knowledge, but, though it can lay down the practice, it cannot provide the practitioners. The West has the tools, but not the science of their use. There has never, as I have said, been a true marriage of East and West, but when there is, its seed will rule the world.'
I was drinking this in with both ears, and murmuring my assent. Now at last I was to be given his confidence, and I prayed that he might be inspired to go on. But he seemed to hesitate, till a glance at my respectful face reassured him. 'The day after to-morrow a man will be in London, a man from the East, who is a great master of this knowledge. I shall see him, and you will accompany me. You will understand little, for you are only at the beginning, but you will be in the presence of wisdom.'
I murmured that I should feel honoured.
'You will hold yourself free for all that day. The time will probably be the evening.'
After that he left with the most perfunctory good-bye. I congratulated myself on having attained to just the kind of position I wanted—that of a disciple whose subjection was so much taken for granted that he was treated like a piece of furniture. From his own point of view Medina was justified; he must have thought the subconscious control so strong, after all the tests I had been through, that my soul was like putty in his hands.
Next day I went down to Fosse and told Mary to expect me back very soon for a day or two. She had never plagued me with questions, but something in my face must have told her that I was hunting a trail, for she asked me for news and looked as if she meant to have it. I admitted that I had found out something, and said I would tell her everything when I next came back. That would only have been prudent, for Mary was a genius at keeping secrets and I wanted some repository of my knowledge in case I got knocked on the head.
When I returned to town I found another note from Sandy, also from France, signed 'Alan Breck'—Sandy was terribly out with his Derby winners. It was simply two lines imploring me again to make Medina believe I had broken with him and that he had gone east of Suez for good.
