Bulldog Drummond Page 2

  Those were the days. Yea, verily (as Hugh might have said when he had been at the Bible again). They were the days when you lunched your ‘birds’ at the ‘Cri’; when you left your two-seater in the Haymarket in front of the Carlton while you went in and had tea with a topping girl; when a villain could surround his Surrey grounds with a lethal electric fence and have a murderous young gorilla roaming the bushes; when the gorilla or a Boche could tear a man’s throat out; when you thrashed swine to within an inch of their lives on the steps of their clubs; when snarls came thick and fast; when the hoot of an owl meant ‘Hugh’s coming, you priceless old beans!’ (Blakeney in Baroness Orczy’s Pimpernel books sang ‘God Save The King’ in disguise in the shadow of the guillotine in Paris during the Revolution, and summoned his pals back to his yacht in the Channel with the cry of a seamew thrice repeated.) Those were the days when your cigarette case had ‘Turkish this side, Virginians that’; when there was always a lounger under the lamppost outside your house; when the Director of Criminal Investigation in Whitehall was old ‘Tumpkins’ whose fag you had been at school; when the villain lashed his victims to chairs, kissed the hero’s wife (also lashed to a chair), hit the hero across the face with a rhinoceros-hide whip and, when he was unconscious, kicked him in the ribs. Those were the days when Drummond and his Mayfair friends could disguise themselves and baffle their Scotland Yard Inspector colleague, whose own disguise they had, of course, spotted instantly. Sapper knew his Sherlock Holmes stories and adopted disguise as an essential mechanism in plot-making.

  There is an enormous narrative energy in everything that Sapper wrote. His short stories were a staple of the ‘dear old’ Strand Magazine. Many, but not all, have been collected, a dozen at a time, into books. Fifty-one stories ‘of thrill and adventure’ were collected into the fat Hodder and Stoughton Omnibus, in parallel with the ‘Four Rounds’ of Drummond v. Peterson and the collection of the first four Scarlet Pimpernel novels of Baroness Orczy. Gerard Fairlie wrote that ‘Mac’ said that a short story should be like a good iron shot to the green at golf, streaking away up to a peak and then dropping plop, with spin-back to stop it dead. The dénouement, the drop and the full-stop might be in a short, final paragraph, or even in a single, last sentence.

  Sapper had clearly read, and remembered consciously or unconsciously, his O Henry, Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, Baroness Orczy and Guy Boothby. I possess a copy of an 1895 novel, A Bid for Fortune or Dr Nikola’s Vendetta, by the copious Guy Boothby. It is interesting to compare the Prologue of A Bid for Fortune with the Prologue of Bulldog Drummond. In both there is a dinner party at which neither the host nor his guests have met each other before. Dr Nikola’s party is in the Imperial Hotel on the Embankment in London; the Comte de Guy (who is Carl Peterson, whoever Carl Peterson is) gives his party in Room X at the Hôtel Nationale in Berne. Each has ordered the dinner by letter sufficiently in advance for the guests to be able to come from the ends of the earth, if necessary, for the date. Dr Nikola specifies a saucer of milk for his cat, a constant companion, and his purpose is to set up a complicated strategy for the achievement of personal revenge on someone who has done him down in an earlier book. The Comte de Guy’s plan is simpler: to bring England to her knees through strikes and lower-class disaffection, and thus (somehow) become enormously rich himself. He has no cat-companion, unless you count dear Irma.

  Dear Irma! She is clearly Peterson’s mistress, and we think of her as such. But we call her Irma Peterson, though Carl changes his name, face and status from book to book and they never marry. (In The Black Gang he is the Rev. Theodosius Longmoor, a dear old American clergyman staying at the Ritz in London, and Irma, his alleged daughter, sits around knitting while Carl prepares poisons in the bathroom.) We know Peterson isn’t this great villain’s real name, but when he dies, as a Mr Wilmot, at the end of the fourth novel, it is Irma Peterson who lives on, not Irma Wilmot. All rather baffling. But Irma is a great girl. She smokes too much, but we love her.

  Hugh, Algy, Toby, Peter, Ted – the comrade-gang of footloose do-gooders goes back though Baroness Orczy’s Percy Blakeney and his lot, through Dumas’ three musketeers to Malory’s Knights of the Round Table, if not further. I am sure that, for his Hugh Drummond, Sapper was strongly influenced by Sir Percy Blakeney (the Scarlet Pimpernel). Sir Percy’s gang of rich, foppish Regency friends cheerfully risked the guillotine in obedience to his orders. Note Sir Percy’s own wealth, his constantly specified lazy smile, and most particularly his quest for sport. ‘Why do you do this?’ ask characters in the know of Sir Percy and his rich friends. The answer is ‘For sport’, and this is constantly echoed in the Drummond books of Sapper. Near the end of this novel, you’ll find, Drummond positively rejoices that Carl slips out of his, and the police’s, grasp. With the battle won, ‘the tedium of respectability positively stares us in the face’. Blakeney’s team was more numerous than Drummond’s, but loyalty to their captains was never questioned by either team. They did their good deeds because they were sportsmen. It was grand sport rescuing aristos from the guillotine. It was sport for Drummond and Co. to be standing on chairs, locked in a room near the great tanks in Cornwall where the ghastly liquid (one touch and you’re dead) laps higher and higher up the chair legs.

  That’s not in this book. If this is your introduction to Bulldog Drummond, I bet it leads you by the nose to the rest of the novels built around this fine sportsman-hero, and to the other Sapper books. Go to them.

  Prologue

  In the month of December, 1918, and on the very day that a British Cavalry Division marched into Cologne, with flags flying and bands playing as the conquerors of a beaten nation, the manager of the Hôtel Nationale in Berne received a letter. Its contents appeared to puzzle him somewhat, for having read it twice he rang the bell on his desk to summon his secretary. Almost immediately the door opened, and a young French girl came into the room.

  ‘Monsieur rang?’ She stood in front of the manager’s desk, awaiting instructions.

  ‘Have we ever had staying in the hotel a man called le Comte de Guy?’ He leaned back in his chair and looked at her through his pince-nez.

  The secretary thought for a moment and then shook her head.

  ‘Not so far as I can remember,’ she said.

  ‘Do we know anything about him? Has he ever fed here, or taken a private room?’

  Again the secretary shook her head.

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  The manager handed her the letter, and waited in silence until she had read it.

  ‘It seems on the face of it a peculiar request from an unknown man,’ he remarked as she laid it down. ‘A dinner of four covers; no expense to be spared. Wines specified, and if not in the hotel to be obtained. A private room at half-past seven sharp. Guests to ask for Room X.’

  The secretary nodded in agreement.

  ‘It can hardly be a hoax,’ she remarked after a short silence.

  ‘No.’ The manager tapped his teeth with his pen thoughtfully. ‘But if by any chance it was, it would prove an expensive one for us. I wish I could think who this Comte de Guy is.’

  ‘He sounds like a Frenchman,’ she answered. Then after a pause: ‘I suppose you’ll have to take it seriously?’

  ‘I must.’ He took off his pince-nez and laid them on the desk in front of him. ‘Would you send the maître d’hôtel to me at once?’

  Whatever may have been the manager’s misgivings, they were certainly not shared by the head waiter as he left the office after receiving his instructions. War and short rations had not been conducive to any particular lucrative business in his sphere; and the whole sound of the proposed entertainment seemed to him to contain considerable promise. Moreover, he was a man who loved his work, and a free hand over preparing a dinner was a joy in itself. Undoubtedly he personally would meet the three guests and the mysterious Comte de Guy; he personally would see that they had nothing to complain of in the matter of service at dinner…

  And so at
about twenty minutes past seven the maître d’hôtel was hovering round the hall porter, the manager was hovering round the maître d’hôtel, and the secretary was hovering round both. At five-and-twenty minutes past the first guest arrived…

  He was a peculiar-looking man, in a big fur coat, reminding one irresistibly of a codfish.

  ‘I wish to be taken to Room X.’ The French secretary stiffened involuntarily as the maître d’hôtel stepped obsequiously forward. Cosmopolitan as the hotel was, even now she could never bear German spoken without an inward shudder of disgust.

  ‘A Boche,’ she murmured in disgust to the manager as the first arrival disappeared through the swing doors at the end of the lounge. It is to be regretted that that worthy man was more occupied in shaking himself by the hand, at the proof that the letter was bona fide, than in any meditation on the guest’s nationality.

  Almost immediately afterwards the second and third members of the party arrived. They did not come together, and what seemed peculiar to the manager was that they were evidently strangers to one another.

  The leading one – a tall gaunt man with a ragged beard and a pair of piercing eyes – asked in a nasal and by no means an inaudible tone for Room X. As he spoke a little fat man who was standing just behind him started perceptibly, and shot a birdlike glance at the speaker.

  Then in execrable French he too asked for Room X.

  ‘He’s not French,’ said the secretary excitedly to the manager as the ill-assorted pair were led out of the lounge by the head waiter. ‘That last one was another Boche.’

  The manager thoughtfully twirled his pince-nez between his fingers.

  ‘Two Germans and an American.’ He looked a little apprehensive. ‘Let us hope the dinner will appease everybody. Otherwise–’

  But whatever fears he might have entertained with regard to the furniture in Room X, they were not destined to be uttered. Even as he spoke the door again swung open, and a man with a thick white scarf around his neck, so pulled up as almost completely to cover his face, came in. A soft hat was pulled down well over his ears, and all that the manager could swear to as regards the newcomer’s appearance was a pair of deep-set, steel-grey eyes which seemed to bore through him.

  ‘You got my letter this morning?’

  ‘M’sieur le Comte de Guy?’ The manager bowed deferentially and rubbed his hands together. ‘Everything is ready, and your three guests have arrived.’

  ‘Good. I will go to the room at once.’

  The maître d’hôtel stepped forward to relieve him of his coat, but the Count waved him away.

  ‘I will remove it later,’ he remarked shortly. ‘Take me to the room.’

  As he followed his guide his eye swept round the lounge. Save for two or three elderly women of doubtful nationality, and a man in the American Red Cross, the place was deserted; and as he passed through the swing doors he turned to the head waiter.

  ‘Business good?’ he asked.

  No – business decidedly was not good. The waiter was voluble. Business had never been so poor in the memory of man… But it was to be hoped that the dinner would be to Monsieur le Comte’s liking… He personally had superintended it… Also the wines.

  ‘If everything is to my satisfaction you will not regret it,’ said the Count tersely. ‘But remember one thing. After the coffee has been brought in, I do not wish to be disturbed under any circumstances whatever.’ The head waiter paused as he came to a door, and the Count repeated the last few words. ‘Under no circumstances whatever.’

  ‘Mais certainement, Monsieur le Comte… I, personally, will see to it…’

  As he spoke he flung open the door and the Count entered. It cannot be said that the atmosphere of the room was congenial. The three occupants were regarding one another in hostile silence, and as the Count entered, they, with one accord, transferred their suspicious glance to him.

  For a moment he stood motionless, while he looked at each one in turn. Then he stepped forward…

  ‘Good evening, gentlemen’ – he still spoke in French – ‘I am honoured at your presence.’ He turned to the head waiter. ‘Let dinner be served in five minutes exactly.’

  With a bow the man left the room, and the door closed.

  ‘During that five minutes, gentlemen, I propose to introduce myself to you, and you to one another.’ As he spoke he divested himself of his coat and hat. ‘The business which I wish to discuss we will postpone, with your permission, till after coffee, when we shall be undisturbed.’

  In silence the three guests waited while he unwound the thick white muffler; then, with undisguised curiosity, they studied their host. In appearance he was striking. He had a short dark beard, and in profile his face was aquiline and stern. The eyes, which had so impressed the manager, seemed now to be a cold grey-blue; the thick brown hair, flecked slightly with grey, was brushed back from a broad forehead. His hands were large and white; not effeminate, but capable and determined: the hands of a man who knew what he wanted, knew how to get it and got it. To even the most superficial observer the giver of the feast was a man of power: a man capable of forming instant decisions and of carrying them through…

  And if so much was obvious to the superficial observer, it was more than obvious to the three men who stood by the fire watching him. They were what they were simply owing to the fact that they were not superficial servers of humanity; and each one of them, as he watched his host, realised that he was in the presence of a great man. It was enough: great men do not send fool invitations to dinner to men of international repute. It mattered not what form his greatness took – there was money in greatness, big money. And money was their life…

  The Count advanced first to the American.

  ‘Mr Hocking, I believe,’ he remarked in English, holding out his hand. ‘I am glad you managed to come.’

  The American shook the proffered hand, while the two Germans looked at him with sudden interest. As the man at the head of the great American cotton trust, worth more in millions than he could count, he was entitled to their respect…

  ‘That’s me, Count,’ returned the millionaire in his nasal twang. ‘I am interested to know to what I am indebted for this invitation.’

  ‘All in good time, Mr Hocking,’ smiled the host. ‘I have hopes that the dinner will fill in that time satisfactorily.’

  He turned to the taller of the two Germans, who without his coat seemed more like a codfish than ever.

  ‘Herr Steinemann, is it not?’ This time he spoke in German.

  The man whose interest in German coal was hardly less well known than Hocking’s in cotton, bowed stiffly.

  ‘And Herr von Gratz?’ The Count turned to the last member of the party and shook hands. Though less well known than either of the other two in the realms of international finance, von Gratz’s name in the steel trade in Central Europe was one to conjure with.

  ‘Well, gentlemen,’ said the Count, ‘before we sit down to dinner, I may perhaps be permitted to say a few words of introduction. The nations of the world have recently been engaged in a performance of unrivalled stupidity. As far as one can tell that performance is now over. The last thing I wish to do is to discuss the war – except in so far as it concerns our meeting here tonight. Mr Hocking is an American, you two gentlemen are Germans. I’ – the Count smiled slightly – ‘have no nationality. Or rather, shall I say, I have every nationality. Completely cosmopolitan… Gentlemen, the war was waged by idiots, and when idiots get busy on a large scale, it is time for clever men to step in… That is the raison d’être for this little dinner… I claim that we four men are sufficiently international to be able to disregard any stupid and petty feelings about this country and that country, and to regard the world outlook at the present moment from one point of view and one point of view only – our own.’

  The gaunt American gave a hoarse chuckle.

  ‘It will be my object after dinner,’ continued the Count, ‘to try and prove to you that we have a comm
on point of view. Until then – shall we merely concentrate on a pious hope that the Hôtel Nationale will not poison us with their food?’

  ‘I guess,’ remarked the American, ‘that you’ve got a pretty healthy command of languages, Count.’

  ‘I speak four fluently – French, German, English, and Spanish,’ returned the other. ‘In addition I can make myself understood in Russia, Japan, China, the Balkan States, and – America.’

  His smile, as he spoke, robbed the words of any suspicion of offence. The next moment the head waiter opened the door, and the four men sat down to dine.

  It must be admitted that the average hostess, desirous of making a dinner a success, would have been filled with secret dismay at the general atmosphere in the room. The American, in accumulating his millions, had also accumulated a digestion of such an exotic and tender character that dry rusks and Vichy water were the limit of his capacity.

  Herr Steinemann was of the common order of German, to whom food was sacred. He ate and drank enormously, and evidently considered that nothing further was required of him.

  Von Gratz did his best to keep his end up, but as he was apparently in a chronic condition of fear that the gaunt American would assault him with violence, he cannot be said to have contributed much to the gaiety of the meal.

  And so to the host must be given the credit that the dinner was a success. Without appearing to monopolise the conversation he talked ceaselessly and well. More – he talked brilliantly. There seemed to be no corner of the globe with which he had not a nodding acquaintance at least; while with most places he was as familiar as a Londoner with Piccadilly Circus. But to even the most brilliant of conversationalists the strain of talking to a hypochondriacal American and two Germans – one greedy and the other frightened – is considerable; and the Count heaved an inward sigh of relief when the coffee had been handed round and the door closed behind the waiter. From now on the topic was an easy one – one where no effort on his part would be necessary to hold his audience. It was the topic of money – the common bond of his three guests. And yet, as he carefully cut the end of his cigar, and realised that the eyes of the other three were fixed on him expectantly, he knew that the hardest part of the evening was in front of him. Big financiers, in common with all other people, are fonder of having money put into their pockets than of taking it out. And that was the very thing the Count proposed they should do – in large quantities…