‘But I say, Miss Warren, look here, you know! We’ve not got an office full of Holmeses. They’re all perfectly ordinary fellers—’
‘Colonel Gethryn,’ said the girl quietly.
‘Eh, what?’ Hastings was startled. ‘He’d never—Miss Warren, you’re a wonder. But he wouldn’t take it on. He’s—’
‘Ask him.’ She pointed to the telephone at his side.
‘What? Now?’
‘Why not?’
‘But—but it’s two o’clock,’ stammered Hastings. He met the level gaze of his secretary’s blue eyes, lifted the receiver from its hook, and asked for a number.
‘Hallo,’ he said two minutes later, ‘is that Colonel Gethryn’s flat?’
‘It is,’ said the telephone. Its voice was sleepy.
‘Is—is Colonel Gethryn in—out—up, I mean?’
‘Colonel Gethryn,’ said the voice, ‘who would infinitely prefer to be called Mr Gethryn, is in his flat, out of bed, and upon his feet. Also he is beginning to become annoyed at—’
‘Good Lord—Anthony!’ said Hastings. ‘I didn’t recognise your voice.’
‘Now that you have, O Hastings, perhaps you’ll explain why the hell you’re ringing me up at this hour. I may mention that I am in execrable temper. Proceed.’
Spencer Hastings proceeded. ‘Er I—ah—that is—er—’
‘If those are scales,’ said the telephone, ‘permit me to congratulate you.’
Hastings tried again. ‘Something has happened,’ he began.
‘No!’ said the telephone.
‘D’you think you could—I know it’s an extraordinary thing to ask—er, but will you, er—’
Miss Margaret Warren rose to her feet, removed the instrument from her employer’s hands, put the receiver to her ear and spoke into the transmitter.
‘Mr Gethryn,’ she said, ‘this is Margaret Warren speaking. What Mr Hastings wished to do was to ask whether you could come down here—to the office—at once. Oh, I know it sounds mad, but we’ve received some amazing news, and Mr Hastings wishes to consult you. I can’t tell you any more over the phone, but Mr Hastings is sure that you’ll be willing to help. Please come; it might mean everything to the paper.’
‘Miss Warren,’ said the telephone sadly, ‘against my will you persuade me.’
ANTHONY RUTHVEN GETHRYN was something of an oddity. A man of action who dreamed while he acted; a dreamer who acted while he dreamed. The son of a hunting country gentleman of the old type, who was yet one of the most brilliant mathematicians of his day, and of a Spanish lady of impoverished and exiled family who had, before her marriage with Sir William Gethryn, been in turn governess, dancer, mannequin, actress, and portrait painter, it was perhaps to be expected that he should be no ordinary child. And he was not.
For even after taking into consideration the mixture of blood and talents that were rightly his, Anthony’s parents soon found their only child to be possessed of far more than they had thought to give him. From his birth he proved a refutation of the adage that a Jack-of-all-Trades can be master of none.
At school and at Oxford, though appearing almost to neglect work, he covered himself with academic glory which outshone even that of his excellence at racquets and Rugby football. Not only did he follow in the mathematical tracks of his father, but also became known as an historian and man of classics.
He left Oxford in his twenty-third year; read for the bar; was called, but did not answer. He went instead round and about the world, and did not, during the three and a half years he was away, use a penny other than earnings of one sort and another.
He returned home to settle down, painted two pictures which he gave to his father, wrote a novel which was lauded by the critics and brought him not a penny, and followed up with a book of verse which, though damned by the same critics, was yet remunerative to the extent of one hundred and fifty pounds.
Politics came next, and for some six months he filled adequately the post of private secretary to a Member of Parliament suspected of early promotion to office.
Then, in Anthony’s twenty-eighth year, on top of his decision to contest a seat, came the war. On the 15th of August, 1914, he was a private in an infantry regiment; by the 1st of the following November he had taken a commission in the artillery; on the 4th of May, 1915, he was recovered from the damage caused by a rifle-bullet, an attack of trench-fever, and three pieces of shrapnel. On the 18th of July in that year he was in Germany.
That calls for explanation. Anthony Ruthven Gethryn was in Germany because his uncle, Sir Charles Haultevieux de Courcy Gethryn, was a personage at the War Office. Uncle Charles liked and had an admiration for his nephew Anthony. Also, Uncle Charles was aware that nephew Anthony spoke German like a German, and was, when occasion demanded, a person of tact, courage, and reliability. ‘A boy with guts, sir. A boy with guts! And common sense, sir; in spite of all this poetry-piffle and paintin’ cows in fields and girls with nothin’ on. A damnation clever lad, sir!’
So Uncle Charles, having heard the wailings of a friend in the Secret Service division concerning the terrible dearth of the right men, let fall a few words about his nephew.
And that is how, in the year 1915, Anthony Ruthven Gethryn came to be, not as a prisoner, in the heart of Germany. He was there for eighteen long months, and when Uncle Charles next saw his nephew there were streaks of grey in the dark hair of the thirty-year-old head.
The results of Anthony’s visit were of much value. A grateful Government patted him on the back, decorated him, gave him two months’ leave, promoted him, and then worked him as few men were worked even during the war. It was queer work, funny work, work in the dark, work in strange places.
Anthony Ruthven Gethryn left the army at the end of 1919, at the age of thirty-three. To show for his service he had a limp (slight), the C.M.G., the D.S.O., a baker’s dozen of other orders (foreign: various) and those thick streaks of gray in his black hair. Few save his intimate friends knew either of that batch of medals or of his right to the title of Colonel.
Anthony stayed with his mother until she died, peacefully, and then, since his father—who had preceded his wife by some two years—had left no more than a few hundreds a year, looked round for work.
He wrote another novel; the public were unmoved. He painted three pictures; they would not sell. He published another book of poems; they would not sell either. Then he turned back to his secretaryship, his M.P. being now a minor minister. The work was of a sort he did not care for, and save for meeting every now and then a man who interested him, he was bored to extinction.
Then, in July of 1921, Uncle Charles fell a victim to malignant influenza, became convalescent, developed pneumonia, and died. To Anthony he left a dreadful house in Knightsbridge and nine or ten thousand a year. Anthony sold the house, set up in a flat, and, removed from carking care, did as the fancy took him. When he wanted to write, he wrote. When he wished to paint, he painted. When pleasure called, he answered. He was very happy for a year.
But then came trouble. When he wrote, he found that immediately a picture would form in his head and cry aloud to be put on canvas. If he painted, verse unprecedented, wonderful, clamoured to be written. If he left England, his soul yearned for London.
It