A Pretty Picture (The Three Hostages)

     They made a pretty picture – “The Prodigal’s Return” or “The Old Folks Home”,  bySimpkins, R.A., Royal Academy, 1887.  No, byHeaven,there was no suggestion of that.  It was a marvellousand tragic scene I regarded.  The fitfullightof the fire showed figures of an antique beauty and dignity.  The regal profile of the woman, her superb pose, and the soft eerie music of her voice were a world removedfrom vulgarity, and so was the lithe vigour and proud face of theman.  They were more like a king and queen in exile, decreeing the sea of blood which was to wash them back again. I realized for the first time that Medina might be damnable, but was also great.   Yes, the man who had spat on me like a stable-boyhad also something of the prince. I realized another thing.  Thewoman’s touch had flattened down the hair above hisforehead,which he brushed square, and his head, outlined in the firelight against thewhite cushion, was as round as a football.  I hadsuspected this when I first saw him, and now I was certain.  What did a head like that portend?  I had a vagueremembrance that I had heard somewhere that it meant madness – at any rate degeneracy.

On The Map (The Three Hostages)

     Other things, which Idid not know about, were happening that evening.  From a certain modestoffice near Tower Hill a gentleman emergedto seek his rooms in Mayfair.  His car waswaiting for him at the street corner, but to his surprise as he got into itsome on entered also from the other side, and the address to which the carultimately drove was not Clarges Street.  The office,too, which he had left locked and bolted, was presently open, and men were busythere till far into the night – men who did not belong to his staff.  Aneminent publicist, who was the special patron of the distressed populations of Central Europe, was starting out to dine at his club, where he wasunaccountably delayed, and had to postpone his dinner.  The Spanish copper company in London Wall had been doing littlebusiness of late, except to give luncheons to numerous gentlemen, but thatnight its rooms were lit, and people who did not look like city clerks wereinvestigating its documents.  In Paris a certain Frenchcount of royalist proclivities, who had a box that night for the opera and wasgiving a little dinner beforehand, did not keep his appointment, to thediscomfiture of his guests, and a telephone message to his rooms near the Champs-Elysées elicited no reply.  There was a gruff fellow at the otherend who discouraged conversation.   



 

     A worthy Glasgow accountant, an elder of the kirk and a prospective candidatefor Parliament, did not return that evening to his family, and the police, whenappealed to, gave curious answers.  The office, just off Fleet Street of the Christian Advocateof Milwaukee, a paper which cannot have had much of a circulation in England, was filled about six o’clock with silent, preoccupied people,and the manager, rather surprised and wild of eye, was taken off in a taxi bytwo large gentlemen who had not previously the honour of hisacquaintance.  Odd things seemed to be happening up and down the whole world.  More than one ship did not sail at the appointed hour because ofthe interest of certain people in the passenger lists; a meeting of decorousbankers in Genoa was unexpectedlyinterrupted by the police; offices of utmost respectability were occupied andexamined by the blundering minions of the law; several fashionable actressesdid not appear to gladden their admirers, and more than one pretty dancer wasabsent from the scene of her usual triumphs.   A Senator in Western America, a high official in Rome, and four deputies inFrance found their movements restricted, and a Prince of the Church, afterreceiving a telephone message, fell to his prayers.   A miningmagnate in Westphalia, visiting Antwerp on business, found that he was not permitted to catch the trainhe had settled on.  Five men, all highly placed, and one woman, for no causeapparent to their relatives, chose to rid themselves of life between the hoursof six and seven.  There was an unpleasant occurrence in a town on the Loire, where an Englishman, motoring to the south of France – atypical English squire, well known in hunting circles in Shropshire – was visited at his hotel by two ordinary Frenchmen, whoseconversation seemed unpalatable to him.  He was passing something from hiswaistcoat pocket to his mouth, when they had the audacity to lay violent handson him, and slip something over his wrists.