of the tune, which made no appeal to my conscious memory. Only of course they must have been there.’
‘When did this happen?’
‘Early last December, the time we had the black frost. You remember, Dick, how I took a week’s holiday and went down to Norfolk after duck.’
‘You haven’t told me the man’s name.’
‘I have. Medina.’
‘Who on earth is Medina?’
‘Oh, Lord! Dick. You’re overdoing the rustic. You’ve heard of Dominick Medina.’
I had, of course, when he mentioned the Christian name. You couldn’t open a paper without seeing something about Dominick Medina, but whether he was a poet or a politician or an actor-manager I hadn’t troubled to inquire. There was a pile of picture-papers on a side-table, and I fetched them and began to turn them over. Very soon I found what I wanted. It was a photograph of a group at a country house party for some steeplechase, the usual ‘reading-from-left-to-right’ business, and there between a Duchess and a foreign Princess was Mr Dominick Medina. The poverty of the photograph could not conceal the extraordinary good looks of the man. He had the kind of head I fancy Byron had, and I seemed to discern, too, a fine, clean, athletic figure.
‘If you had happened to look at that rag you might have short-circuited your inquiry.’
He shook his head. ‘No. It doesn’t happen that way. I had to get your broken pipe and the tune or I would have been stuck.’
‘Then I suppose I have to get in touch with this chap and find where he picked up the three facts and the tune. But how— if he turns out to be like you, another babbler from the subconscious?’
‘That is the risk you run, of course. He may be able to help you, or more likely he may prove only another dead wall.’
I felt suddenly an acute sense of the difficulty of the job I had taken on, and something very near hopelessness.
‘Tell me about this Medina. Is he a decent fellow?’
‘I suppose so. Yes, I should think so. But he moves in higher circles than I’m accustomed to, so I can’t judge. But I’ll tell you what he is beyond doubt—he’s rather a great man. Hang it, Dick, you must have heard of him. He’s one of the finest shots living, and he’s done some tall things in the exploration way, and he was the devil of a fellow as a partisan leader in South Russia. Also—though it may not interest you— he’s an uncommon fine poet.’
‘I suppose he’s some sort of a dago.’
‘Not a bit of it. Old Spanish family settled here for three centuries. One of them rode with Rupert. Hold on! I rather believe I’ve heard that his people live in Ireland, or did live, till life there became impossible.’
‘What age?’
‘Youngish. Not more than thirty-five. Oh, and the handsomest thing in mankind since the Greeks.’
‘I’m not a flapper,’ I said impatiently. ‘Good looks in a man are no sort of recommendation to me. I shall probably take a dislike to his face.’
‘You won’t. From what I know of him and you you’ll fall under his charm at first sight. I never heard of a man that didn’t. He has a curious musical voice and eyes that warm you—glow like sunlight. Not that I know him well, but I own I found him extraordinarily attractive. And you see from the papers what the world thinks of him.’
‘All the same I’m not much nearer my goal. I’ve got to find out where he heard those three blessed facts and that idiotic tune. He’ll probably send me to blazes, and, even if he’s civil, he’ll very likely be helpless.’
‘Your chance is that he’s a really clever man, not an old blunderer like me. You’ll get the help of a first-class mind, and that means a lot. Shall I write you a line of introduction?’
He sat down at my desk and wrote.’ ‘I’m saying nothing about your errand—simply that I’d like you to know each other—common interest in sport and travel—that sort of thing. You’re going to be in London, so I had better give your address as your club.’
Next morning Greenslade went back to his duties and I caught the early train to town. I was not very happy about Mr Dominick Medina, for I didn’t seem able to get hold of him. Who’s Who only gave his age, his residence Hill Street, his club, and the fact that he was M.P. for a South London division. Mary had never met him, for he had appeared in London after she had stopped going about, but she remembered that her Wymondham aunts raved about him, and she had read somewhere an article on his poetry. As I sat in the express, I tried to reconstruct what kind of fellow he must be—a mixture of Byron and Sir Richard Burton and the young political highbrow. The picture wouldn’t compose, for I saw only a figure like a waxwork, with a cooing voice and a shop-walker’s suavity. Also his name kept confusing me, for I mixed him up with an old ruffian of a Portugee I once knew at Beira.
I was walking down St James’s Street on my way to Whitehall, pretty much occupied with my own thoughts, when I was brought up by a hand placed flat on my chest, and lo and behold! it was Sandy Arbuthnot.
IV.
I MAKE THE ACQUAINTANCE OF A POPULAR MAN
You may imagine how glad I was to see old Sandy again, for I had not set eyes on him since 1916. He had been an Intelligence Officer with Maude, and then something at Simla, and after the War had had an administrative job in Mesopotamia, or, as they call it nowadays, Iraq. He had written to me from all kinds of queer places, but he never appeared to be coming home, and, what with my marriage and my settling in the country, we seemed to be fixed in ruts that were not likely to intersect. I had seen his elder brother’s death. in the papers, so he was now Master of Clanroyden and heir to the family estates, but I didn’t imagine that that would make a Scotch laird of him. I never saw a fellow less changed by five years of toil and travel. He was desperately slight and tanned—he had always been that, but the contours of his face were still soft like a girl’s, and his brown eyes were merry as ever.
We stood and stared at each other.
‘Dick, old man,’ he cried, ‘I’m home for good. Yes— honour bright. For months and months, if not years and years. I’ve got so much to say to you I don’t know where to begin. But I can’t wait now. I’m off to Scotland to see my father. He’s my chief concern now, for he’s getting very frail. But I’ll be back in three days. Let’s dine together on Tuesday.’
We were standing at the door of a club—his and mine—and a porter was stowing his baggage into a taxi. Before I could properly realise that it was Sandy, he was waving his hand from the taxi window and disappearing up the street.
The sight of him cheered me immensely and I went on along Pall Mall in a good temper. To have Sandy back in England and at call made me feel somehow more substantial, like a commander who knows his reserves are near. When I entered Macgillivray’s room I was smiling, and the sight of me woke an answering smile on his anxious face. ‘Good man!’ he said. ‘You look like business. You’re to put yourself at my disposal while I give you your bearings.’
He
