I feared that, like the soldiers who stand guard round a royal bier, I might suddenly collapse. I did my best to struggle. against the out-growing weakness, and hoped to forget it by concentrating all my attention on the fragments of talk.
‘I have news for you,’ Medina was saying. ‘Kharama is in Europe and proposes to come to England.’
‘You will see him?’ I thought her voice had a trace of alarm in it.
‘Most certainly. I would rather see him than any living man.’
‘Dominick, be careful. I would rather you confined yourself to your old knowledge. I fear these new things from the East.’
He laughed. ‘They are as old as ours—older. And all knowledge is one. I have already drunk of his learning and I must have the whole cup.’
That was the last I heard, for at that moment I made my exit from the scene in a way which I could not have bettered by much cogitation. My legs suddenly gave under me, the room swam round, and I collapsed on the floor in a dead faint. I must have fallen heavily, for I knocked a leg off one of the little tables.
When I came to—which I suppose was a minute or two later—Odell was bathing my face, and Medina with a grave and concerned air was standing by with a brandy decanter.
‘My dear fellow, you gave me a bad fright,’ he said, and his manner was that of the considerate friend. ‘You’re not feeling ill?’
‘I haven’t been quite fit all day, and I suppose the hot room knocked me out. I say, I’m most awfully sorry for playing the fool like this. I’ve damaged your furniture, I’m afraid. I hope I didn’t scare the lady.’
‘What lady?’
‘Your mother.’
He looked at me with a perfectly blank face, and I saw I had made a mistake.
‘I beg your pardon—I’m still giddy. I’ve been dreaming.’
He gave me a glass of brandy and tucked me into a taxi. Long before I got to the Club I was feeling all right, but my mind was in a fine turmoil. I had stumbled at last upon not one clue but many, and though they were confused enough, I hoped with luck to follow them out. I could hardly eat any dinner that night, and my brain was too unsettled to do any serious thinking. So I took a taxi up to Gospel Oak, and, bidding it wait for me, had another look at Palmyra Square. The place seemed to have been dead and decaying for centuries, seen in that windy moonless dark, and N6. 4 was a shuttered tomb. I opened the gate and, after making sure that the coast was clear, stole round to the back-door where tradesmen called. There were some dilapidated outhouses, and the back garden with rank grasses and obscene clothes-posts, looked like nothing so much as a neglected grave-yard. In that house was the terrible blind Fate that span. As I listened I heard from somewhere inside the sound of slow heartbroken sobs. I wondered if they came from the queer-looking little girl.
IX.
I AM INTRODUCED TO STRONG MAGIC
The first thing I did when I got up next morning was to pay a visit to Harlows, the fishing-tackle people. They knew me well enough, for I used to buy my rods there, and one of the assistants had been down to Fosse to teach Mary how to use a light split-cane. With him I embarked on a long talk about Norwegian rivers and their peculiarities, and very soon got his views on the best flies. I asked which river was considered to be the earliest, and was told in an ordinary season the Nirdal and the Skarso.
Then I asked if he knew my friend Dr Newhover. ‘He was in here yesterday afternoon,’ I was told. ‘He is going to the Skarso this year, and hopes to be on the water in the last week of April. Rather too soon in my opinion, though salmon have been caught in it as early as April 17th. By the end of the first week of May it should be all right.’ I asked a good deal more about the Skarso, and was told that it was best fished from Merdal at the head of the Merdalfjord. There were only about three miles of fishable water before the big foss, but every yard of it was good. I told him I had hoped to get a beat on the Leardal for June, but had had to give up the notion this, year and intended to confine myself to Scotland. I bought a new reel, a quantity of sea-trout flies; and a little book about Norwegian fishing.
Then I went to see Macgillivray, with whom I had made an appointment by telephone.
‘I’ve come to ask your help,’ I told him. ‘I’m beginning to get a move on, but it’s a ticklish business, and I must walk very warily. First of all, I want you to find out the movements of a certain Dr Newhover of Wimpole Street. He is going to Norway some time in the next fortnight, to the Skarso to fish, and his jumping-off place will be Stavanger. Find out by which boat he takes a passage, and book me a berth in it also. I’d better have my old name, Cornelius Brand.’
‘You’re not thinking of leaving England just now?’ he asked ‘reproachfully.
‘I don’t know. I may have to go or I may not, but in any case I won’t be long away. Anyhow, find out about Dr Newhover. Now for the more serious business. Just about when have you settled to round up the gang?’
‘For the reasons I gave you it must be before midsummer. It is an infernally complicated job and we must work to a time-table. I had fixed provisionally the 20th of June.’
‘I think you’d better choose an earlier date.’
‘Why?’
‘Because the gang are planning themselves to liquidate by midsummer, and, if you don’t hurry, you may draw the net tight and find nothing in it.’
‘Now how on earth did you find that out?’ he asked, and his usually impassive face was vivid with 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 Der Tag. You realise, of course, that the round-up of all must be simultaneous—that’s why it takes such a lot of bandobast. By the way, you’ve got the same problem with the hostages. You can’t release one without the others, or the show is given away—not your show only but mine. You realise that?’
‘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
