LITMIR.BIZ

      PROLOGUE

      BY SIR RICHARD HANNAY

      I

       Table of Contents

      This story begins, so far as I am concerned, in the August of 192-, when I had for the second time a lease of the forest of Machray. Mary and Peter John and the household had gone north at the end of July, but I was detained for ten days in London over the business of a Rhodesian land company, of which I had recently become chairman. I was putting up at my club, and one morning I was rung up by Ellery Willis of the American Embassy, who had been wiring about me all over the country. He seemed to be in a hurry to see me, so I asked him to luncheon.

      I had known Willis in the War, when he had had a field battery with the American 2nd Corps. After that he had been on the Headquarters Staff at Washington, and was now a military attached at the London Embassy. He seemed to have a good many duties besides the study of military affairs, and when I met him he was always discoursing about world politics and the need of England and America getting close to each other. I agreed with him about that, but used to tell him that the best way was not to talk too much, but to send Englishmen and Americans fishing together. He was an ardent, rather solemn young man, but with a quick sense of humour, and Mary said he was the best dancer in London.

      He cut at once into business.

      “You are a friend of Mr Blenkiron’s—John S. Blenkiron,” he said. “I want to know if you have heard from him lately?”

      “Not for months,” I said. “Blenkiron was never a regular correspondent, and the fount has dried up since last December.”

      He looked grave. “That’s bad,” he said.

      “There’s nothing wrong?” I asked anxiously.

      “Only that nobody knows what has become of him.”

      “But that was always the old ruffian’s way. He likes to cover his tracks, like Providence, and turn up suddenly when he is not expected. There’s a lot of the child in him.”

      Willis shook his head. “I expect there’s more to it this time than that. I’ll tell you what we know. He made a dive back into Wall Street last fall, and did some big things in electrolytic zinc. Then he went to Santa Catalina, and returned to New York in the second week of January. On the 27th day of that month he sailed for Panama in a fruit-steamer, having previously shut up his office and wound up his affairs as if he were thinking of his decease. From that day no one has clapped eyes on him. He has nothing in the way of family life, but I needn’t tell you that he has plenty of friends, and they are beginning to get anxious. All that we can find out is that last March a little Jew man turned up in New York with an order from Mr Blenkiron for a quarter of a million dollars. It was all right, and the money was handed over, and the shape it took was a draft on Valparaiso to be paid after counter-signature by our consul there. We got in touch with the consul, and heard that the money had been collected on Mr Blenkiron’s instructions by some fellow with a Spanish name.”

      “That sounds queer,” I said.

      “It certainly does. But there’s something queerer still. In June Mr Neston of the Treasury got a letter—he had been a business associate of Mr Blenkiron’s at one time and they used to go bass-fishing in Minnesota.

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