XIII.

       I VISIT THE FIELDS OF EDEN

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      There was a change in Medina. I noticed it the following day when I lunched with him, and very particularly at the next dinner of the Thursday Club to which I went as his guest. It was a small change, which nobody else would have remarked, but to me, who was watching him like a lynx, it was clear enough. His ease of manner towards the world was a little less perfect, and when we were alone he was more silent than before. I did not think that he had begun to suspect any danger to his plans, but the day for their consummation was approaching, and even his cold assurance may have been flawed by little quivers of nervousness. As I saw it, once the big liquidation took place and he realised the assets which were to be the foundation of his main career, it mattered little what became of the hostages. He might let them go; they would wander back to their old world unable to give any account of their absence, and, if the story got out, there would be articles in the medical journals about these unprecedented cases of lost memory. So far I was certain that they had taken no lasting harm. But if the liquidation failed, God knew what their fate would be. They would never be seen again, for if his possession of them failed to avert disaster to his plans, he would play for safety, and, above all, for revenge. Revenge to a mind like his would be a consuming passion.

      The fact that I had solved one conundrum and laid my hand on one of the hostages put me in a perfect fever of restlessness.

      Our time was very short, and there were still two poor souls hidden in his black underworld. It was the little boy I thought most of, and perhaps my preoccupation with him made me stupid about other things. My thoughts were always on the Blind Spinner, and there I could not advance one single inch. Macgillivray’s watchers had nothing to report. It was no use my paying another visit to Madame Breda, and going through the same rigmarole. I could only stick to Medina and pray for luck. I had resolved that if he asked me again to take up my quarters with him in Hill Street I would accept, though it might be hideously awkward in a score of ways.

      I longed for Sandy, but no word came from him, and I had his strict injunctions not to try to reach him. The only friend I saw in those early days of May was Archie Roylance who seemed to have forgotten his Scotch greenshanks and settled down in London for the season. He started playing polo, which was not a safe game for a man with a crocked leg, and he opened his house in Grosvenor Street and roosted in a corner of it. He knew I was busy in a big game, and he was mad to be given a share in it, but I had to be very careful with Archie. He was the best fellow alive, but discretion had never been his strong point. So I refused to tell him anything at present, and I warned Turpin, who was an ancient friend of his, to do the same. The three of us dined together one night, and poor old Turpin was rallied by Archie on his glumness.

      ‘You’re a doleful bird, you know,’ he told him. ‘I heard somewhere you were goin’ to be married and I expect that’s the cause. What do you call it—ranger yourself? Cheer up, my son. It can’t be as bad as it sounds. Look at Dick there.’

      I switched him on to other subjects, and we got his opinion on the modern stage. Archie had been doing a course of plays and had very strong views on the drama. Something had got to happen, he said, or he fell asleep in the first act, and something very rarely happened, so he was left to slumber peacefully till he was awakened and turned out by the attendants. He liked plays with shooting in them, and knockabout farce—anything indeed with a noise in it. But he had struck a vein of serious drama which he had found soporific. One piece in especial, which showed the difficulties of a lady of fifty who fell in love with her stepson, he seriously reprobated.

      ‘Rotten,’ he complained. ‘What did it matter to anyone what the old cat did? But I assure you, everybody round me was gloatin’ over it. A fellow said to me it was a masterpiece of tragic irony. What’s irony, Dick? I thought it was the tone your commandin’ officer adopted, when you had made an ass of yourself, and he showed it by complimentin’ you on your intelligence… Oh, by the way, you remember the girl in green we saw at that dancin’ place? Well, I saw her at the show at least I’m pretty sure it was her—in a box with the black-bearded fellow. She didn’t seem to be takin’ much of it in. Wonder who she is and what she was doin’ there? Russian, d’you think? I believe the silly play was translated from the Russian. I want to see that girl dance again.’

      The next week was absolutely blank, except for my own perpetual worrying. Medina kept me close to him, and I had to relinquish any idea of going down to Fosse for an occasional night. I longed badly for the place and for a sight of Peter John, and Mary’s letters didn’t comfort me, for they were getting scrappier arid scrappier. My hope was that Medina would act on Kharama’s advice, and in order to establish his power over his victims bring them into the open and exercise it in the environment to which they had been accustomed. That wouldn’t help me with the little boy, but it might give me a line on Miss Victor. I rather hoped that at some ball I would see him insisting on some strange woman dancing with him, or telling her to go home; or something, and then I would have cause to suspect. But no such luck. He never spoke to a woman in my presence who wasn’t somebody perfectly well known; I began to think that he had rejected the Indian’s advice as too dangerous.

      Kharama, more by token, was back in town, and Medina took me to see him again. The fellow had left Claridge’s and was living in a little house in Eaton Place, and away from the glitter of a big hotel he looked even more sinister and damnable. We went there one evening after dinner, and found him squatting on the usual couch in a room lit by one lamp and fairly stinking with odd scents. He seemed to have shed his occidental dress, for he wore flowing robes, and I could see his beastly bare feet under the skirts of them, when he moved to rearrange a curtain.

      They took no more notice of me than if I had been a grand-father’s clock, and to my disgust they conducted the whole conversation in some Eastern tongue. I gathered nothing from it, except a deduction as to Medina’s state of mind. There was an unmistakable hint of nervousness in his voice. He seemed to be asking urgent questions, and the Indian was replying calmly and soothingly. By and by Medina’s voice became quieter, and suddenly I realised that the two were speaking of me. Kharama’s heavy eyes were raised for a second in my direction, and Medina turned ever so little towards me. The Indian asked some question about me, and Medina replied carelessly with a shrug of his shoulders and a slight laugh. The laugh rasped my temper. He was evidently saying that I was packed up arid sealed and safe on the shelf.

      That visit didn’t make me feel happier, and next day, when I had a holiday from Medina’s company, I had nothing better to do than to wander about London and think dismal thoughts. Yet, as luck would have it, that