“The same uneventful, sedentary life,” I replied. “Nothing happens except that my scale of fees grows. I suppose nothing will happen till the conductor comes to take the tickets. I shall soon grow fat.”
“I notice it already, my lad. You want a bit of waking up or you’ll get a liver. A little sensation would do you a pot of good.”
“And you?” I asked. “I congratulate you on your success. I hear you have retrieved Pitt-Heron for his mourning family.”
Tommy’s laughing eyes grew solemn.
“I have had the time of my life,” he said. “It was like a chapter out of the Arabian Nights with a dash of Fenimore Cooper. I feel as if I had lived years since I left England in May. While you have been sitting among your musty papers we have been riding like moss-troopers and seeing men die. Come and dine to-night and hear about our adventures. I can’t tell you the full story, for I don’t know it, but there is enough to curl your hair.”
Then I achieved my first and last score at the expense of Tommy Deloraine.
“No,” I said, “you will dine with me instead, and I will tell you the full story. All the papers on the subject are over there in my safe.”
THE END
John Macnab
I. IN WHICH THREE GENTLEMEN CONFESS THEIR ENNUI
II. DESPERATE CHARACTERS IN COUNCIL
VI. THE RETURN OF HARALD BLACKTOOTH
VIII. SIR ARCHIE IS INSTRUCTED IN THE CONDUCT OF LIFE
IX. SIR ARCHIE INSTRUCTS HIS COUNTRYMEN
X. IN WHICH CRIME IS ADDED TO CRIME
XIII. HARIPOL—AUXILIARY TROOPS
XIV. HARIPOL—WOUNDED AND MISSING
I.
IN WHICH THREE GENTLEMEN CONFESS THEIR ENNUI
The great doctor stood on the hearth-rug looking down at his friend who sprawled before him in an easy-chair. It was a hot day in early July, and the windows were closed and the blinds half-down to keep out the glare and the dust. The standing figure had bent shoulders, a massive clean-shaven face, and a keen interrogatory air, and might have passed his sixtieth birthday. He looked like a distinguished lawyer, who would soon leave his practice for the Bench. But it was the man in the chair who was the lawyer, a man who had left forty behind him, but was still on the pleasant side of fifty.
“I tell you for the tenth time that there’s nothing the matter with you.”
“And I tell you for the tenth time that I’m miserably ill.”
The doctor shrugged his shoulders. “Then it’s a mind diseased, to which I don’t propose to minister. What do you say is wrong?”
“Simply what my housekeeper calls a ‘no-how’ feeling.”
“It’s clearly nothing physical. Your heart and lungs are sound. Your digestion’s as good as anybody’s can be in London in Midsummer. Your nerves—well, I’ve tried all the stock tests, and they appear to be normal.”
“Oh, my nerves are all right,” said the other wearily.
“Your brain seems good enough, except for this dismal obsession that you are ill. I can find no earthly thing wrong, except that you’re stale. I don’t say run-down, for that you’re not. You’re stale in mind. You want a holiday.”
“I don’t. I may need one, but I don’t want it. That’s precisely the trouble. I used to be a glutton for holidays, and spent my leisure moments during term planning what I was going to do. Now there seems to be nothing in the world I want to do—neither work nor play.”
“Try fishing. You used to be keen.”
“I’ve killed all the salmon I mean to kill. I never want to look the ugly brutes in the face again.”
“Shooting?”
“Too easy and too dull.”
“A yacht.”
“Stop it, old fellow. Your catalogue of undesired delights only makes it worse. I tell you that there’s nothing at this moment which has the slightest charm for me. I’m bored with my work, and I can’t think of anything else of any kind for which I would cross the street. I don’t even want to go into the country and sleep. It’s been coming on for a long time—I did not feel it so badly, for I was in a service and not my own master. Now I’ve nothing to do except to earn an enormous income, which I haven’t any need for. Work comes rolling in—I’ve got retainers for nearly every solvent concern in this land—and all that happens is that I want to strangle my clerk and a few eminent solicitors. I don’t care a tinker’s curse for success, and what is worse, I’m just as apathetic about the modest pleasures which used to enliven my life.”
“You may be more tired than you think.”
“I’m not tired at all.” The speaker rose from his chair yawning, and walked to the windows to stare into the airless street. He did not look tired, for his movements were vigorous, and, though his face had the slight pallor of his profession, his eye was clear and steady. He turned round suddenly.
“I tell you what I’ve got, It’s what the Middle ages suffered from— I read a book about it the other day—and its called Taedium Vitae. It’s a special kind of ennui. I can diagnose my ailment well enough and Shakespeare has the words for it. I’ve come to a pitch where I find ‘nothing left remarkable beneath the visiting moon.’”
Then why do you come to me, if the trouble is not with your body?”
“Because you’re you. I should come