I returned from the City about three o'clock on that May afternoon
pretty well disgusted with life. I had been three months in the Old
Country, and was fed up with it. If anyone had told me a year ago
that I would have been feeling like that, I should have laughed at
him; but there was the fact. The weather made me liverish, the talk
of the ordinary Englishman made me sick, I couldn't get enough
exercise, and the amusements of London seemed as flat as soda-water that has been standing in the sun. 'Richard Hannay,' I kept
telling myself, 'you have got into the wrong ditch, my friend, and
you had better climb out.'
It made me bite my lips to think of the plans I had been building
up those last years in Bulawayo. I had got my pile - not one of the
big ones, but good enough for me; and I had figured out all kinds
of ways of enjoying myself. My father had brought me out from
Scotland at the age of six, and I had never been home since; so
England was a sort of Arabian Nights to me, and I counted on
stopping there for the rest of my days.
But from the first I was disappointed with it. In about a week I
was tired of seeing sights, and in less than a month I had had
enough of restaurants and theatres and race-meetings. I had no real
pal to go about with, which probably explains things. Plenty of
people invited me to their houses, but they didn't seem much
interested in me. They would fling me a question or two about
South Africa, and then get on their own affairs. A lot of Imperialist
ladies asked me to tea to meet schoolmasters from New Zealand
and editors from Vancouver, and that was the dismalest business of
all. Here was I, thirty-seven years old, sound in wind and limb,
with enough money to have a good time, yawning my head off all
day. I had just about settled to clear out and get back to the veld,
for I was the best bored man in the United Kingdom.
That afternoon I had been worrying my brokers about
investments to give my mind something to work on, and on my
way home I turned into my club - rather a pot-house, which took
in Colonial members. I had a long drink, and read the evening
papers. They were full of the row in the Near East, and there was
an article about Karolides, the Greek Premier. I rather fancied the
chap. From all accounts he seemed the one big man in the show;
and he played a straight game too, which was more than could be
said for most of them. I gathered that they hated him pretty blackly
in Berlin and Vienna, but that we were going to stick by him, and
one paper said that he was the only barrier between Europe and
Armageddon. I remember wondering if I could get a job in those
parts. It struck me that Albania was the sort of place that might
keep a man from yawning.
About six o'clock I went home, dressed, dined at the Café Royal,
and turned into a music-hall. It was a silly show, all capering
women and monkey-faced men, and I did not stay long. The night
was fine and clear as I walked back to the flat I had hired near
Portland Place. The crowd surged past me on the pavements, busy
and chattering, and I envied the people for having something to
do. These shop-girls and clerks and dandies and policemen had
some interest in life that kept them going. I gave half-a-crown to a
beggar because I saw him yawn; he was a fellow-sufferer. At Oxford
Circus I looked up into the spring sky and I made a vow. I would
give the Old Country another day to fit me into something; if
nothing happened, I would take the next boat for the Cape.
My flat was the first floor in a new block behind Langham Place.
There was a common staircase, with a porter and a liftman at the
entrance, but there was no restaurant or anything of that sort, and
each flat was quite shut off from the others. I hate servants on the
premises, so I had a fellow to look after me who came in by the
day. He arrived before eight o'clock every morning and used to
depart at seven, for I never dined at home.
I was just fitting my key into the door when I noticed a man at
my elbow. I had not seen him approach, and the sudden appearance
made me start. He was a slim man, with a short brown beard and
small, gimlety blue eyes. I recognized him as the occupant of a flat
on the top floor, with whom I had passed the time of day on the
stairs.
'Can I speak to you?' he said. 'May I come in for a minute?' He
was steadying his voice with an effort, and his hand was pawing my arm.
I got my door open and motioned him in. No sooner was he
over the threshold than he made a dash for my back room, where I
used to smoke and write my letters. Then he bolted back.
'Is the door locked?' he asked feverishly, and he fastened the
chain with his own hand.
'I'm very sorry,' he said humbly. 'It's a mighty liberty, but you
looked the kind of man who would understand. I've had you in my
mind all this week when things got troublesome. Say, will you do
me a good turn?'
'I'll listen to you,' I said. 'That's all I'll promise.' I was getting
worried by the antics of this nervous little chap.
There was a tray of drinks on a table beside him, from which he
filled himself a stiff whisky-and-soda. He drank it off in three
gulps, and cracked the glass as he set it down.
'Pardon,' he said, 'I'm a bit rattled tonight. You see, I happen at
this moment to be dead.'
I sat down in an armchair and lit my pipe.
'What does it feel like?' I asked. I was pretty certain that I had to
deal with a madman.
A smile flickered over his drawn face. 'I'm not mad - yet. Say,
Sir, I've been watching you, and I reckon you're a cool customer. I
reckon, too, you're an honest man, and not afraid of playing a bold
hand. I'm going to confide in you. I need help worse than any man
ever needed it, and I want to know if I can count you in.'
'Get on with your yarn,' I said, 'and then I'll tell you.'
He seemed to brace himself for a great effort, and then started on
the queerest rigmarole. I didn't get hold of it at first, and I had to
stop and ask him questions. But here is the gist of it:
He was an American, from Kentucky, and after college, being
pretty well off, he had started out to see the world. He wrote a bit,
and acted as war correspondent for a Chicago paper, and spent a
year or two in South-Eastern Europe. I gathered that he was a fine
linguist, and had got to know pretty well the society in those parts.
He spoke familiarly of many names that I remembered to have seen
in the newspapers.
He had played about with politics, he told me, at first for the
interest of them, and then because he couldn't help himself. I read
him as a sharp, restless fellow, who always wanted to get down to
the roots of things. He got a little further down than he wanted.
I am giving you what he told me as well as I could make it out.
Away behind all the Governments and the armies there was a big
subterranean movement going on, engineered by very dangerous
people. He had come on it by accident; it fascinated him; he went
further, and then got caught. I gathered that most of the people
in it were the sort of educated anarchists that make revolutions, but
that beside them there were financiers who were playing for money.
A clever man can make big profits on a falling market, and it suited
the book of both classes to set Europe by the ears.
He told me some queer things that explained a lot that had
puzzled me - things that happened in the Balkan War, how one
state suddenly came out on top, why alliances were made and
broken, why certain men disappeared, and where the sinews of war
came from. The aim of the whole conspiracy was to get Russia and
Germany at loggerheads.
When I asked why, he said that the anarchist lot thought it
would give them their chance. Everything would be in the melting-pot, and they looked to see a new world emerge. The capitalists
would rake in the shekels, and make fortunes by buying up wreckage.
Capital, he said, had no conscience and no fatherland. Besides,
the Jew was behind it, and the Jew hated Russia worse than hell.
'Do you wonder?' he cried. 'For three hundred years they have
been persecuted, and this is the return match for the pogroms. The
Jew is everywhere, but you have to go far down the backstairs to
find him. Take any big Teutonic business concern. If you have
dealings with it the first man you meet is Prince von und Zu Something,
an elegant young man who talks Eton-and-Harrow English.
But he cuts no ice. If your business is big, you get behind him and
find a prognathous Westphalian with a retreating brow and the
manners of a hog. He is the German business man that gives your
English papers the shakes. But if you're on the biggest kind of job
and are bound to get to the real boss, ten to one you are brought up
against a little white-faced Jew in a bath-chair with an eye like a
rattlesnake. Yes, Sir, he is the man who is ruling the world just
now, and he has his knife in the Empire of the Tzar, because his
aunt was outraged and his father flogged in some one-horse location
on the Volga.'
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