Continental Crimes, page 7
‘Not necessarily,’ said the priest, with a faint smile. ‘What is the next question, doctor?’
‘I fancy you’re ill,’ exclaimed Dr Simon sharply; ‘but I’ll ask the next question if you like. How did Brayne get out of the garden?’
‘He didn’t get out of the garden,’ said the priest, still looking out of the window.
‘Didn’t get out of the garden?’ exploded Simon.
‘Not completely,’ said Father Brown.
Simon shook his fists in a frenzy of French logic. ‘A man gets out of a garden, or he doesn’t,’ he cried.
‘Not always,’ said Father Brown.
Dr Simon sprang to his feet impatiently. ‘I have no time to spare on such senseless talk,’ he cried angrily. ‘If you can’t understand a man being on one side of the wall or the other, I won’t trouble you further.’
‘Doctor,’ said the cleric very gently, ‘we have always got on very pleasantly together. If only for the sake of old friendship, stop and tell me your fifth question.’
The impatient Simon sank into a chair by the door and said briefly: ‘The head and shoulders were cut about in a queer way. It seemed to be done after death.’
‘Yes,’ said the motionless priest, ‘it was done so as to make you assume exactly the one simple falsehood that you did assume. It was done to make you take for granted that the head belonged to the body.’
The borderland of the brain, where all the monsters are made, moved horribly in the Gaelic O’Brien. He felt the chaotic presence of all the horse-men and fish-women that man’s unnatural fancy has begotten. A voice older than his first fathers seemed saying in his ear: ‘Keep out of the monstrous garden where grows the tree with double fruit. Avoid the evil garden where died the man with two heads.’ Yet, while these shameful symbolic shapes passed across the ancient mirror of his Irish soul, his Frenchified intellect was quite alert, and was watching the odd priest as closely and incredulously as all the rest.
Father Brown had turned round at last, and stood against the window with his face in dense shadow; but even in that shadow they could see it was pale as ashes. Nevertheless, he spoke quite sensibly, as if there were no Gaelic souls on earth.
‘Gentlemen,’ he said; ‘you did not find the strange body of Becker in the garden. You did not find any strange body in the garden. In face of Dr Simon’s rationalism, I still affirm that Becker was only partly present. Look here!’ (pointing to the black bulk of the mysterious corpse); ‘you never saw that man in your lives. Did you ever see this man?’
He rapidly rolled away the bald-yellow head of the unknown, and put in its place the white-maned head beside it. And there, complete, unified, unmistakable, lay Julius K. Brayne.
‘The murderer,’ went on Brown quietly, ‘hacked off his enemy’s head and flung the sword far over the wall. But he was too clever to fling the sword only. He flung the head over the wall also. Then he had only to clap on another head to the corpse, and (as he insisted on a private inquest) you all imagined a totally new man.’
‘Clap on another head!’ said O’Brien, staring. ‘What other head? Heads don’t grow on garden bushes, do they?’
‘No,’ said Father Brown huskily, and looking at his boots; ‘there is only one place where they grow. They grow in the basket of the guillotine, beside which the Chief of Police, Aristide Valentin, was standing not an hour before the murder. Oh, my friends, hear me a minute more before you tear me in pieces. Valentin is an honest man, if being mad for an arguable cause is honesty. But did you ever see in that cold, grey eye of his that he is mad? He would do anything, anything, to break what he calls the superstition of the Cross. He has fought for it and starved for it, and now he has murdered for it. Brayne’s crazy millions had hitherto been scattered among so many sects that they did little to alter the balance of things. But Valentin heard a whisper that Brayne, like so many scatter-brained sceptics, was drifting to us; and that was quite a different thing. Brayne would pour supplies into the impoverished and pugnacious Church of France; he would support six Nationalist newspapers like The Guillotine. The battle was already balanced on a point, and the fanatic took flame at the risk. He resolved to destroy the millionaire, and he did it as one would expect the greatest of detectives to commit his only crime. He abstracted the severed head of Becker on some criminological excuse, and took it home in his official box. He had that last argument with Brayne, that Lord Galloway did not hear the end of; that failing, he led him out into the sealed garden, talked about swordsmanship, used twigs and a sabre for illustration, and—’
Ivan of the Scar sprang up. ‘You lunatic,’ he yelled; ‘you’ll go to my master now, if I take you by—’
‘Why, I was going there,’ said Brown heavily; ‘I must ask him to confess, and all that.’
Driving the unhappy Brown before them like a hostage or sacrifice, they rushed together into the sudden stillness of Valentin’s study.
The great detective sat at his desk apparently too occupied to hear their turbulent entrance. They paused a moment, and then something in the look of that upright and elegant back made the doctor run forward suddenly. A touch and a glance showed him that there was a small box of pills at Valentin’s elbow, and that Valentin was dead in his chair; and on the blind face of the suicide was more than the pride of Cato.
The Secret of the Magnifique
E. Phillips Oppenheim
Edward Phillips Oppenheim (1886–1946), famed in his lifetime as ‘the Prince of Storytellers’, was, according to Colin Watson’s Snobbery With Violence (1971), ‘the son of a Leicester leather manufacturer, who first tasted the delights of the Cote d’Azur when he was travelling in France on behalf of his father’s firm…His output in the long life that ended in 1946 was enormous…a total of 150 novels. Into these and countless short stories and articles he poured some thirteen million words. Crime was an important but not the dominant ingredient of an Oppenheim story. His preoccupation always was the elegance and luxury of high life.’
He benefited from having first-hand knowledge of that high life. Exotic foreign locations formed the background to many of his stories, and contributed to their appeal to readers who never came closer to the Riviera than devouring stories set there. Oppenheim’s fellow spy novelist Valentine Williams said: ‘Anyone more thoroughly steeped in the Cote d’Azur atmosphere it is impossible to conceive…he has the sweetest and gentlest of natures…yet…lives in a world of his own imagining, peopled with potential assassins, with mystery behind every lighted window and violent death behind every bush’. This story, a good example of his work, first appeared in The Popular Magazine in 1912 and was collected a year later in Mr Laxworthy’s Adventures; it was adapted for television as an episode in The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, in 1973.
***
The man was awaiting the service of his dinner in the magnificent buffet of the Gare de Lyons. He sat at a table laid for three, on the right-hand side of the entrance and close to the window. From below came the turmoil of the trains. Every few minutes the swing doors opened to admit little parties of travellers. The solitary occupant of the table scarcely ever moved his head. Yet he had always the air of one who watches.
In appearance he was both unremarkable and undistinguished. He was of somewhat less than medium height, of unathletic, almost frail physique. His head was thrust a little forward, as though he were afflicted with a chronic stoop. He wore steel-rimmed spectacles with the air of one who has taken to them too late in life to have escaped the constant habit of peering, which had given to his neck an almost stork-like appearance. His hair and thin moustache were iron-grey, his fingers long and delicate. The labels upon his luggage were addressed in a trim, scholarly hand:
mr john t. laxworthy,
Passenger to —— ,
Via Paris.
A maître d’hôtel, who was passing, paused and looked at the two as yet unoccupied places.
‘Monsieur desires the service of his dinner?’ he inquired.
Mr John T. Laxworthy glanced up at the clock and carefully compared the time with his own watch. He answered the man’s inquiry in French which betrayed no sign of any accent.
‘In five minutes,’ he declared, ‘my friends will have arrived. The service of dinner can then proceed.’
The man bowed and withdrew, a little impressed by his customer’s trim precision of speech. Almost as he left the table, the swing doors opened once more to admit another traveller. The new-comer stood on the threshold for a moment, looking around him. He carried a much-labelled dressing-case in his hand, and an umbrella under his arm. He stood firmly upon his feet, and a more thoroughly British, self-satisfied, and obvious person had, to all appearance, never climbed those stairs. He wore a travelling-suit of dark grey, a check ulster, broad-toed boots, and a Homburg hat. His complexion was sandy, and his figure distinctly inclined towards corpulence. He wore scarcely noticeable side-whiskers, and his chin and upper lip were clean-shaven. His eyes were bright and his mouth had an upward and humorous turn. The initials upon his bag were W.F.A., and a printed label upon the same indicated his full name as:
mr w. forrest anderson,
Passenger to —— ,
Via Paris.
His brief contemplation of the room was soon over. His eyes fell upon the solitary figure, now deep in a book, seated at the table on his right. He set down his dressing-case by the side of the wall, yielded his coat and hat to the attendant vestiaire, and, with the pleased smile of one who greets an old friend approached the table at which Mr John T. Laxworthy sat waiting.
The idiosyncrasies of great men are always worth noting, and Mr John T. Laxworthy was, without a doubt, foredoomed from the cradle to a certain measure of celebrity. His method of receiving the new-comer was in some respects curious. From the moment when the swing doors had been pushed open and the portly figure of Mr Forrest Anderson had crossed the threshold, his eyes had not once quitted the heavy-looking volume, the contents of which appeared so completely to absorb his attention. Even now, when his friend stood by his side, he did not at once look up. Slowly, and with his eyes still riveted upon the pages he was studying, he held out his left hand.
‘I am glad to see you, Anderson,’ he said. ‘Sit down by my side here. You are nearly ten minutes late. I have delayed ordering the wine until your arrival. Shall it be white or red?’
Mr Anderson shook with much heartiness the limp fingers which had been offered to him, and took the seat indicated. His friend’s eccentricity of manner appeared to be familiar to him, and he offered no comment upon it.
‘White, if you please—Chablis of a dry brand, for choice. Sorry if I’m late. Beastly crossing, beastly crowded train. Glad to be here, anyhow.’
Mr John T. Laxworthy closed his book with a little sigh of regret, and placed a marker within it. He then carefully adjusted his spectacles and made a deliberate survey of his companion. Finally he nodded, slowly and approvingly.
‘How about the partridges?’ he inquired.
‘Bad,’ Mr Anderson declared, with a sigh. ‘It was one storm in June that did it. We went light last season, though, and I’m putting down forty brace of Hungarians. You see—’
Mr Laxworthy touched the table with his forefinger, and his companion almost automatically stopped.
‘Quite excellent,’ the former pronounced dryly. ‘Don’t overdo it. I should think that this must be Sydney.’
Mr Anderson glanced towards the entrance. Then he looked back at his companion a little curiously. Mr Laxworthy had not raised his head.
‘How the dickens did you know that it was Sydney?’ he demanded.
Mr Laxworthy smiled at the tablecloth.
‘I have a special sense for that sort of thing,’ he remarked. ‘I like to use my eyes as seldom as possible.’
A young man who had just completed a leisurely survey of the room dropped his monocle and came towards them. From the tips of his shiny tan shoes to his smoothly brushed hair, he was unmistakable. He was young, he was English, he was well-bred, he was an athlete. He had a pleasant, unintelligent face, a natural and prepossessing ease of manner. He handed his ulster to the attendant vestiaire and beamed upon the two men.
‘How are you, Forrest? How do you do, Laxworthy?’ he exclaimed. ‘Looking jolly fit, both of you.’
Mr Laxworthy raised his glass. He looked thoughtfully at the wine for a moment, to be sure that it was free from any atom of cork. Then he inclined his head in turn to each of his companions.
‘I am glad to see you both,’ he said. ‘On the whole, I think that I may congratulate you. You have done well. I drink to our success.’
The toast was drunk in silence. Mr Forrest Anderson set down his glass—empty—with a little murmur of content.
‘It is something,’ he remarked, vigorously attacking a new course, ‘to have satisfied our chief.’
The young man opposite to him subjected the dish which was being offered to a long and deliberate survey through his eyeglass, and finally refused it.
‘Give me everything in France except the beef,’ he declared. ‘Must be the way they cut it, I think. Quite right, Andy,’ he went on, glancing across the table. ‘To have satisfied such a critic as the chief here is an achievement indeed. Having done it, let us hear what he proposes to do with us.’
‘In other words,’ Mr Anderson put in, ‘what is the game to be?’
There was a short pause. Mr John T. Laxworthy was continuing his repast—which was, by the by, of a much more frugal character than that offered to his guests—without any sign of having even heard the inquiry addressed to him by his companions. They knew him, however, and they were content to wait. Presently he commenced to peel an apple and simultaneously to unburden himself.
‘A great portion of this last year,’ he said, ‘which you two have spent apparently with profit in carrying out my instructions, I myself have devoted to the perfection of a certain scholarly tone which I feel convinced is my proper environment. Incidentally, I have devoted myself to the study of various schools of philosophy.’
‘I will take a liqueur,’ decided the young man, whose name was Sydney—‘something brain-stimulating. A Grand Marnier, waiter, if you please.’
‘The same for me,’ Mr Forrest Anderson put in hastily. ‘Also, in a few moments, some black coffee.’
Mr Laxworthy did not by the flicker of an eyelid betray the slightest annoyance at these interruptions. He waited, indeed, until the liqueurs had been brought before he spoke again, continuing the while in a leisurely fashion the peeling and preparing of his apple. Even for some time after his friends had again offered him their undivided attention, he continued his task of extracting from it, with precise care, every fragment of core.
‘In one very interesting treatise,’ he recommenced at last, ‘I found several obvious truths ingeniously put. A certain decadence in the material prosperity of an imaginary state is clearly proved to be due to a too blind following of the tenets of what is known as the hysterical morality, as against the decrees of what we might call expediency. A little sentiment, like garlic in cookery, is a good thing; too much is fatal. A little—sufficient—morality is excellent; a superabundance disastrous. Society is divided into two classes, those who have and those who desire to have. The one must always prey upon the other. They are, therefore, always changing places. It is this continued movement which lends energy to the human race. As soon as it is suspended, degeneration must follow as a matter of course. It is for those who recognise this great truth to follow and obey its tenets.’
‘May we not hear more definitely what it is that you propose?’ Anderson asked, a little anxiously.
‘We stand,’ Mr Laxworthy replied, ‘always upon the threshold of the land of adventure. At no place are we nearer to it than in this room. It is our duty to use our energies to assist in the great principles of movement to which I have referred. We must take our part in the struggle. On which side? you naturally ask. Are we to be amongst those who have, and who, through weakness or desire, must yield to others? or shall we take our place amongst the more intellectual, the more highly gifted minority, those who assist the progress of the world by helping towards the redistribution of its wealth? Sydney, how much money have you?’
‘Three hundred and ninety-five francs and a few coppers,’ the young man answered promptly. ‘It sounds more in French.’
‘And you, Anderson?’
Mr Forrest Anderson coughed.
‘With the exception of a five-franc piece,’ he admitted, ‘I am worth exactly as much as I shall be able to borrow from you presently.’
‘In that case,’ Mr Laxworthy said dryly, ‘our position is preordained. We take our place amongst the aggressors.’
The young man whose name was Sydney dropped his eyeglass.
‘One moment,’ he said. ‘Andy here and I have exposed our financial impecuniosity at your request. It can scarcely be a surprise to you, considering that we have practically lived upon your bounty for the last year. It seems only fair that you should imitate our candour. There were rumours, a short time ago, of a considerable sum of money to which you had become entitled. To tell you the truth,’ the young man went on, leaning a little across the table, ‘we were almost afraid, or rather I was, that you might abandon this shadowy enterprise of ours.’
Mr John T. Laxworthy, without being discomposed, which was almost too much to expect of a man with such perfect poise, seemed nevertheless somewhat taken aback. He opened his lips as though to make some reply, and closed them again. When he did speak, it was grudgingly.
‘No successful enterprise, or series of enterprises, can be conducted without capital,’ he said. ‘I am free to admit that I am in possession of a certain amount of that indispensable commodity. I do not feel myself called upon to state the exact amount, but such money as is required for our journeyings, or for any enterprise in which we become engaged will be forthcoming.’
‘I fancy you’re ill,’ exclaimed Dr Simon sharply; ‘but I’ll ask the next question if you like. How did Brayne get out of the garden?’
‘He didn’t get out of the garden,’ said the priest, still looking out of the window.
‘Didn’t get out of the garden?’ exploded Simon.
‘Not completely,’ said Father Brown.
Simon shook his fists in a frenzy of French logic. ‘A man gets out of a garden, or he doesn’t,’ he cried.
‘Not always,’ said Father Brown.
Dr Simon sprang to his feet impatiently. ‘I have no time to spare on such senseless talk,’ he cried angrily. ‘If you can’t understand a man being on one side of the wall or the other, I won’t trouble you further.’
‘Doctor,’ said the cleric very gently, ‘we have always got on very pleasantly together. If only for the sake of old friendship, stop and tell me your fifth question.’
The impatient Simon sank into a chair by the door and said briefly: ‘The head and shoulders were cut about in a queer way. It seemed to be done after death.’
‘Yes,’ said the motionless priest, ‘it was done so as to make you assume exactly the one simple falsehood that you did assume. It was done to make you take for granted that the head belonged to the body.’
The borderland of the brain, where all the monsters are made, moved horribly in the Gaelic O’Brien. He felt the chaotic presence of all the horse-men and fish-women that man’s unnatural fancy has begotten. A voice older than his first fathers seemed saying in his ear: ‘Keep out of the monstrous garden where grows the tree with double fruit. Avoid the evil garden where died the man with two heads.’ Yet, while these shameful symbolic shapes passed across the ancient mirror of his Irish soul, his Frenchified intellect was quite alert, and was watching the odd priest as closely and incredulously as all the rest.
Father Brown had turned round at last, and stood against the window with his face in dense shadow; but even in that shadow they could see it was pale as ashes. Nevertheless, he spoke quite sensibly, as if there were no Gaelic souls on earth.
‘Gentlemen,’ he said; ‘you did not find the strange body of Becker in the garden. You did not find any strange body in the garden. In face of Dr Simon’s rationalism, I still affirm that Becker was only partly present. Look here!’ (pointing to the black bulk of the mysterious corpse); ‘you never saw that man in your lives. Did you ever see this man?’
He rapidly rolled away the bald-yellow head of the unknown, and put in its place the white-maned head beside it. And there, complete, unified, unmistakable, lay Julius K. Brayne.
‘The murderer,’ went on Brown quietly, ‘hacked off his enemy’s head and flung the sword far over the wall. But he was too clever to fling the sword only. He flung the head over the wall also. Then he had only to clap on another head to the corpse, and (as he insisted on a private inquest) you all imagined a totally new man.’
‘Clap on another head!’ said O’Brien, staring. ‘What other head? Heads don’t grow on garden bushes, do they?’
‘No,’ said Father Brown huskily, and looking at his boots; ‘there is only one place where they grow. They grow in the basket of the guillotine, beside which the Chief of Police, Aristide Valentin, was standing not an hour before the murder. Oh, my friends, hear me a minute more before you tear me in pieces. Valentin is an honest man, if being mad for an arguable cause is honesty. But did you ever see in that cold, grey eye of his that he is mad? He would do anything, anything, to break what he calls the superstition of the Cross. He has fought for it and starved for it, and now he has murdered for it. Brayne’s crazy millions had hitherto been scattered among so many sects that they did little to alter the balance of things. But Valentin heard a whisper that Brayne, like so many scatter-brained sceptics, was drifting to us; and that was quite a different thing. Brayne would pour supplies into the impoverished and pugnacious Church of France; he would support six Nationalist newspapers like The Guillotine. The battle was already balanced on a point, and the fanatic took flame at the risk. He resolved to destroy the millionaire, and he did it as one would expect the greatest of detectives to commit his only crime. He abstracted the severed head of Becker on some criminological excuse, and took it home in his official box. He had that last argument with Brayne, that Lord Galloway did not hear the end of; that failing, he led him out into the sealed garden, talked about swordsmanship, used twigs and a sabre for illustration, and—’
Ivan of the Scar sprang up. ‘You lunatic,’ he yelled; ‘you’ll go to my master now, if I take you by—’
‘Why, I was going there,’ said Brown heavily; ‘I must ask him to confess, and all that.’
Driving the unhappy Brown before them like a hostage or sacrifice, they rushed together into the sudden stillness of Valentin’s study.
The great detective sat at his desk apparently too occupied to hear their turbulent entrance. They paused a moment, and then something in the look of that upright and elegant back made the doctor run forward suddenly. A touch and a glance showed him that there was a small box of pills at Valentin’s elbow, and that Valentin was dead in his chair; and on the blind face of the suicide was more than the pride of Cato.
The Secret of the Magnifique
E. Phillips Oppenheim
Edward Phillips Oppenheim (1886–1946), famed in his lifetime as ‘the Prince of Storytellers’, was, according to Colin Watson’s Snobbery With Violence (1971), ‘the son of a Leicester leather manufacturer, who first tasted the delights of the Cote d’Azur when he was travelling in France on behalf of his father’s firm…His output in the long life that ended in 1946 was enormous…a total of 150 novels. Into these and countless short stories and articles he poured some thirteen million words. Crime was an important but not the dominant ingredient of an Oppenheim story. His preoccupation always was the elegance and luxury of high life.’
He benefited from having first-hand knowledge of that high life. Exotic foreign locations formed the background to many of his stories, and contributed to their appeal to readers who never came closer to the Riviera than devouring stories set there. Oppenheim’s fellow spy novelist Valentine Williams said: ‘Anyone more thoroughly steeped in the Cote d’Azur atmosphere it is impossible to conceive…he has the sweetest and gentlest of natures…yet…lives in a world of his own imagining, peopled with potential assassins, with mystery behind every lighted window and violent death behind every bush’. This story, a good example of his work, first appeared in The Popular Magazine in 1912 and was collected a year later in Mr Laxworthy’s Adventures; it was adapted for television as an episode in The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, in 1973.
***
The man was awaiting the service of his dinner in the magnificent buffet of the Gare de Lyons. He sat at a table laid for three, on the right-hand side of the entrance and close to the window. From below came the turmoil of the trains. Every few minutes the swing doors opened to admit little parties of travellers. The solitary occupant of the table scarcely ever moved his head. Yet he had always the air of one who watches.
In appearance he was both unremarkable and undistinguished. He was of somewhat less than medium height, of unathletic, almost frail physique. His head was thrust a little forward, as though he were afflicted with a chronic stoop. He wore steel-rimmed spectacles with the air of one who has taken to them too late in life to have escaped the constant habit of peering, which had given to his neck an almost stork-like appearance. His hair and thin moustache were iron-grey, his fingers long and delicate. The labels upon his luggage were addressed in a trim, scholarly hand:
mr john t. laxworthy,
Passenger to —— ,
Via Paris.
A maître d’hôtel, who was passing, paused and looked at the two as yet unoccupied places.
‘Monsieur desires the service of his dinner?’ he inquired.
Mr John T. Laxworthy glanced up at the clock and carefully compared the time with his own watch. He answered the man’s inquiry in French which betrayed no sign of any accent.
‘In five minutes,’ he declared, ‘my friends will have arrived. The service of dinner can then proceed.’
The man bowed and withdrew, a little impressed by his customer’s trim precision of speech. Almost as he left the table, the swing doors opened once more to admit another traveller. The new-comer stood on the threshold for a moment, looking around him. He carried a much-labelled dressing-case in his hand, and an umbrella under his arm. He stood firmly upon his feet, and a more thoroughly British, self-satisfied, and obvious person had, to all appearance, never climbed those stairs. He wore a travelling-suit of dark grey, a check ulster, broad-toed boots, and a Homburg hat. His complexion was sandy, and his figure distinctly inclined towards corpulence. He wore scarcely noticeable side-whiskers, and his chin and upper lip were clean-shaven. His eyes were bright and his mouth had an upward and humorous turn. The initials upon his bag were W.F.A., and a printed label upon the same indicated his full name as:
mr w. forrest anderson,
Passenger to —— ,
Via Paris.
His brief contemplation of the room was soon over. His eyes fell upon the solitary figure, now deep in a book, seated at the table on his right. He set down his dressing-case by the side of the wall, yielded his coat and hat to the attendant vestiaire, and, with the pleased smile of one who greets an old friend approached the table at which Mr John T. Laxworthy sat waiting.
The idiosyncrasies of great men are always worth noting, and Mr John T. Laxworthy was, without a doubt, foredoomed from the cradle to a certain measure of celebrity. His method of receiving the new-comer was in some respects curious. From the moment when the swing doors had been pushed open and the portly figure of Mr Forrest Anderson had crossed the threshold, his eyes had not once quitted the heavy-looking volume, the contents of which appeared so completely to absorb his attention. Even now, when his friend stood by his side, he did not at once look up. Slowly, and with his eyes still riveted upon the pages he was studying, he held out his left hand.
‘I am glad to see you, Anderson,’ he said. ‘Sit down by my side here. You are nearly ten minutes late. I have delayed ordering the wine until your arrival. Shall it be white or red?’
Mr Anderson shook with much heartiness the limp fingers which had been offered to him, and took the seat indicated. His friend’s eccentricity of manner appeared to be familiar to him, and he offered no comment upon it.
‘White, if you please—Chablis of a dry brand, for choice. Sorry if I’m late. Beastly crossing, beastly crowded train. Glad to be here, anyhow.’
Mr John T. Laxworthy closed his book with a little sigh of regret, and placed a marker within it. He then carefully adjusted his spectacles and made a deliberate survey of his companion. Finally he nodded, slowly and approvingly.
‘How about the partridges?’ he inquired.
‘Bad,’ Mr Anderson declared, with a sigh. ‘It was one storm in June that did it. We went light last season, though, and I’m putting down forty brace of Hungarians. You see—’
Mr Laxworthy touched the table with his forefinger, and his companion almost automatically stopped.
‘Quite excellent,’ the former pronounced dryly. ‘Don’t overdo it. I should think that this must be Sydney.’
Mr Anderson glanced towards the entrance. Then he looked back at his companion a little curiously. Mr Laxworthy had not raised his head.
‘How the dickens did you know that it was Sydney?’ he demanded.
Mr Laxworthy smiled at the tablecloth.
‘I have a special sense for that sort of thing,’ he remarked. ‘I like to use my eyes as seldom as possible.’
A young man who had just completed a leisurely survey of the room dropped his monocle and came towards them. From the tips of his shiny tan shoes to his smoothly brushed hair, he was unmistakable. He was young, he was English, he was well-bred, he was an athlete. He had a pleasant, unintelligent face, a natural and prepossessing ease of manner. He handed his ulster to the attendant vestiaire and beamed upon the two men.
‘How are you, Forrest? How do you do, Laxworthy?’ he exclaimed. ‘Looking jolly fit, both of you.’
Mr Laxworthy raised his glass. He looked thoughtfully at the wine for a moment, to be sure that it was free from any atom of cork. Then he inclined his head in turn to each of his companions.
‘I am glad to see you both,’ he said. ‘On the whole, I think that I may congratulate you. You have done well. I drink to our success.’
The toast was drunk in silence. Mr Forrest Anderson set down his glass—empty—with a little murmur of content.
‘It is something,’ he remarked, vigorously attacking a new course, ‘to have satisfied our chief.’
The young man opposite to him subjected the dish which was being offered to a long and deliberate survey through his eyeglass, and finally refused it.
‘Give me everything in France except the beef,’ he declared. ‘Must be the way they cut it, I think. Quite right, Andy,’ he went on, glancing across the table. ‘To have satisfied such a critic as the chief here is an achievement indeed. Having done it, let us hear what he proposes to do with us.’
‘In other words,’ Mr Anderson put in, ‘what is the game to be?’
There was a short pause. Mr John T. Laxworthy was continuing his repast—which was, by the by, of a much more frugal character than that offered to his guests—without any sign of having even heard the inquiry addressed to him by his companions. They knew him, however, and they were content to wait. Presently he commenced to peel an apple and simultaneously to unburden himself.
‘A great portion of this last year,’ he said, ‘which you two have spent apparently with profit in carrying out my instructions, I myself have devoted to the perfection of a certain scholarly tone which I feel convinced is my proper environment. Incidentally, I have devoted myself to the study of various schools of philosophy.’
‘I will take a liqueur,’ decided the young man, whose name was Sydney—‘something brain-stimulating. A Grand Marnier, waiter, if you please.’
‘The same for me,’ Mr Forrest Anderson put in hastily. ‘Also, in a few moments, some black coffee.’
Mr Laxworthy did not by the flicker of an eyelid betray the slightest annoyance at these interruptions. He waited, indeed, until the liqueurs had been brought before he spoke again, continuing the while in a leisurely fashion the peeling and preparing of his apple. Even for some time after his friends had again offered him their undivided attention, he continued his task of extracting from it, with precise care, every fragment of core.
‘In one very interesting treatise,’ he recommenced at last, ‘I found several obvious truths ingeniously put. A certain decadence in the material prosperity of an imaginary state is clearly proved to be due to a too blind following of the tenets of what is known as the hysterical morality, as against the decrees of what we might call expediency. A little sentiment, like garlic in cookery, is a good thing; too much is fatal. A little—sufficient—morality is excellent; a superabundance disastrous. Society is divided into two classes, those who have and those who desire to have. The one must always prey upon the other. They are, therefore, always changing places. It is this continued movement which lends energy to the human race. As soon as it is suspended, degeneration must follow as a matter of course. It is for those who recognise this great truth to follow and obey its tenets.’
‘May we not hear more definitely what it is that you propose?’ Anderson asked, a little anxiously.
‘We stand,’ Mr Laxworthy replied, ‘always upon the threshold of the land of adventure. At no place are we nearer to it than in this room. It is our duty to use our energies to assist in the great principles of movement to which I have referred. We must take our part in the struggle. On which side? you naturally ask. Are we to be amongst those who have, and who, through weakness or desire, must yield to others? or shall we take our place amongst the more intellectual, the more highly gifted minority, those who assist the progress of the world by helping towards the redistribution of its wealth? Sydney, how much money have you?’
‘Three hundred and ninety-five francs and a few coppers,’ the young man answered promptly. ‘It sounds more in French.’
‘And you, Anderson?’
Mr Forrest Anderson coughed.
‘With the exception of a five-franc piece,’ he admitted, ‘I am worth exactly as much as I shall be able to borrow from you presently.’
‘In that case,’ Mr Laxworthy said dryly, ‘our position is preordained. We take our place amongst the aggressors.’
The young man whose name was Sydney dropped his eyeglass.
‘One moment,’ he said. ‘Andy here and I have exposed our financial impecuniosity at your request. It can scarcely be a surprise to you, considering that we have practically lived upon your bounty for the last year. It seems only fair that you should imitate our candour. There were rumours, a short time ago, of a considerable sum of money to which you had become entitled. To tell you the truth,’ the young man went on, leaning a little across the table, ‘we were almost afraid, or rather I was, that you might abandon this shadowy enterprise of ours.’
Mr John T. Laxworthy, without being discomposed, which was almost too much to expect of a man with such perfect poise, seemed nevertheless somewhat taken aback. He opened his lips as though to make some reply, and closed them again. When he did speak, it was grudgingly.
‘No successful enterprise, or series of enterprises, can be conducted without capital,’ he said. ‘I am free to admit that I am in possession of a certain amount of that indispensable commodity. I do not feel myself called upon to state the exact amount, but such money as is required for our journeyings, or for any enterprise in which we become engaged will be forthcoming.’
