Lost Horizon (13 page)

“Yes, of course, but I wish you’d let me know what you’re talking about.”

“Just this. Barnard was traveling on a forged passport and he isn’t Barnard at all.”

Conway raised his eyebrows with an interest that was very much less than concern. He liked Barnard, so far as the man stirred him to any emotion at all; but it was quite impossible for him to care intensely who he really was or wasn’t. He said: “Well, who do you think he is, then?”

“He’s Chalmers Bryant.”

“The deuce he is! What makes you think so?”

“He dropped a pocketbook this morning and Chang picked it up and gave it to me, thinking it was mine. I couldn’t help seeing it was stuffed with newspaper clippings—some of them fell out as I was handling the thing, and I don’t mind admitting that I looked at them. After all, newspaper clippings aren’t private, or shouldn’t be. They were all about Bryant and the search for him, and one of them had a photograph which was absolutely like Barnard except for a mustache.”

“Did you mention your discovery to Barnard himself?”

“No, I just handed him his property without any comment.”

“So the whole thing rests on your identification of a newspaper photograph?”

“Well, so far, yes.”

“I don’t think I’d care to convict any one on that. Of course you might be right—I don’t say he couldn’t
possibly
be Bryant. If he were; it would account for a good deal of his contentment at being here—he could hardly have found a better place to hide.”

Mallinson seemed a trifle disappointed by this casual reception of news which he evidently thought highly sensational. “Well, what are you going to do about it?” he asked.

Conway pondered a moment and then answered: “I haven’t much of an idea. Probably nothing at all. What
can
one do, in any case?”

“But dash it all, if the man
is
Bryant—”

“My dear Mallinson, if the man were Nero it wouldn’t have to matter to us for the time being! Saint or crook, we’ve got to make what we can of each other’s company as long as we’re here, and I can’t see that we shall help matters by striking any attitudes. If I’d suspected who he was at Baskul, of course, I’d have tried to get in touch with Delhi about him—it would have been merely a public duty. But now I think I can claim to be of duty.”

“Don’t you think that’s rather a slack way of looking at it?”

“I don’t care if it’s slack so long as it’s sensible.”

“I suppose that means your advice to me is to forget what I’ve found out?”

“You probably can’t do that, but I certainly think we might both of us keep our own counsel about it. Not in consideration for Barnard or Bryant or whoever he is, but to save ourselves the deuce of an awkward situation when we get away.”

“You mean we ought to let him go?”

“Well, I’ll put it a bit differently and say we ought to give somebody else the pleasure of catching him. When you’ve lived quite sociably with a man for a few months, it seems a little out of place to call for the handcuffs.”

“I don’t think I agree. The man’s nothing but a large-scale thief—I know plenty of people who’ve lost their money through him.”

Conway shrugged his shoulders. He admired the simple black-and-white of Mallinson’s code; the public school ethic might be crude, but at least it was downright. If a man broke the law, it was every one’s duty to hand him over to justice—always provided that it was the kind of law one was not allowed to break. And the law pertaining to checks and shares and balance-sheets was decidedly that kind. Bryant had transgressed it, and though Conway had not taken much interest in the case, he had an impression that it was a fairly bad one of its kind. All he knew was that the failure of the giant Bryant group in New York had resulted in losses of about a hundred million dollars—a record crash, even in a world that exuded records. In some way or other (Conway was not a financial expert) Bryant had been monkeying on Wall Street, and the result had been a warrant for his arrest, his escape to Europe, and extradition orders against him in half a dozen countries.

Conway said finally: “Well, if you take my tip you’ll say nothing about it—not for his sake but for ours. Please yourself, of course, so long as you don’t forget the possibility that he mayn’t be the fellow at all.”

But he was, and the revelation came that evening after dinner. Chang had left them; Miss Brinklow had turned to her Tibetan grammar; the three male exiles faced each other over coffee and cigars. Conversation during the meal would have languished more than once but for the tact and affability of the Chinese; now, in his absence, a rather unhappy silence supervened. Barnard was for once without jokes. It was clear to Conway that it lay beyond Mallinson’s power to treat the American as if nothing had happened, and it was equally clear that Barnard was shrewdly aware that something
had
happened.

Suddenly the American threw away his cigar. “I guess you all know who I am,” he said.

Mallinson colored like a girl, but Conway replied in the same quiet key: “Yes, Mallinson and I think we do.”

“Darned careless of me to leave those clippings lying about.”

“We’re all apt to be careless at times.”

“Well, you’re mighty calm about it, that’s something.”

There was another silence, broken at length by Miss Brinklow’s shrill voice: “I’m sure I don’t know who you are, Mr. Barnard, though I must say I guessed all along you were traveling
incognito
.” They all looked at her enquiringly and she went on: “I remember when Mr. Conway said we should all have our names in the papers, you said it didn’t affect you. I thought then that Barnard probably wasn’t your real name.”

The culprit gave a slow smile as he lit himself another cigar. “Madam,” he said eventually, “you’re not only a smart detective, but you’ve hit on a really polite name for my present position, I’m traveling
incognito.
You’ve said it, and you’re dead right. As for you boys, I’m not sorry in a way that you’ve found me out. So long as none of you had an inkling, we could all have managed, but considering how we’re fixed it wouldn’t seem very neighborly to play the high hat with you now. You folks have been so darned nice to me that I don’t want to make a lot of trouble. It looks as if we were all going to be joined together for better or worse for some little time ahead, and it’s up to us to help one another out as far as we can. As for what happens afterwards, I reckon we can leave that to settle itself.”

All this appeared to Conway so eminently reasonable that he gazed at Barnard with considerably greater interest, and even—though it was perhaps odd at such a moment—a touch of genuine appreciation. It was curious to think of that heavy, fleshy, good-humored, rather paternal looking man as the world’s hugest swindler. He looked far more the type that, with a little extra education, would have made a popular headmaster of a prep school. Behind his joviality there were signs of recent strains and worries, but that did not mean that the joviality was forced. He obviously was what he looked—a “good fellow” in the world’s sense, by nature a lamb and only by profession a shark.

Conway said: “Yes, that’s very much the best thing, I’m certain.”

Then Barnard laughed. It was as if he possessed even deeper reserves of good humor which he could only now draw upon. “Gosh, but it’s mighty queer,” he exclaimed, spreading himself in his chair. “The whole darned business, I mean. Right across Europe, and on through Turkey and Persia to that little one-horse burg! Police after me all the time, mind you—they nearly got me in Vienna! It’s pretty exciting at first, being chased, but it gets on your nerves after a bit. I got a good rest at Baskul, though—I thought I’d be safe in the midst of a revolution.”

“And so you were,” said Conway with a slight smile, “except from bullets.”

“Yeah, and that’s what bothered me at the finish. I can tell you it was a mighty hard choice—whether to stay in Baskul and get plugged, or accept a trip in your Government’s aeroplane and find the bracelets waiting at the other end. I wasn’t exactly keen to do either.”

“I remember you weren’t.”

Barnard laughed again. “Well, that’s how it was, and you can figure it out for yourself that the change of plan which brought me here don’t worry me an awful lot. It’s a first-class mystery, but, speaking personally, there couldn’t have been a better one. It isn’t my way to grumble as long as I’m satisfied.”

Conway’s smile became more definitely cordial. “A very sensible attitude, though I think you rather overdid it. We were all beginning to wonder how you managed to be so contented.”

“Well, I
was
contented. This ain’t a bad place, when you get used to it. The air’s a bit snappy at first, but you can’t have everything. And it’s nice and quiet for a change. Every fall I go down to Palm Beach for a rest cure, but they don’t give you it, those places—you’re in the racket just the same. But here I guess I’m having just what the doctor ordered, and it certainly feels grand to me. I’m on a different diet, I can’t look at the tape, and my broker can’t get me on the telephone.”

“I dare say he wishes he could.”

“Sure. There’ll be a tidy-sized mess to clear up, and I know it.”

He said this with such simplicity that Conway could not help responding: “I’m not much of an authority on what people call high finance.”

It was a lead, and the American accepted it without the slightest reluctance. “High finance,” he said, “is mostly a lot of bunk.”

“So I’ve often suspected.”

“Look here, Conway, I’ll put it like this. A feller does what he’s been doing for years, and what lots of other fellers have been doing, and suddenly the market goes against him. He can’t help it, but he braces up and waits for the turn. But somehow the turn don’t come as it always used to, and when he’s lost ten million dollars or so he reads in some paper that a Swede professor thinks it’s the end of the world. Now I ask you, does that sort of thing help markets? Of course, it gives him a bit of a shock, but he still can’t help it. And there he is till the cops come—if he waits for ’em. I didn’t.”

“You claim it was all just a run of bad luck, then?”

“Well, I certainly had a large packet.”

“You also had other people’s money,” put in Mallinson sharply.

“Yeah, I did. And why? Because they all wanted something for nothing and hadn’t the brains to get it for themselves.”

“I don’t agree. It was because they trusted you and thought their money was safe.”

“Well, it wasn’t safe. It couldn’t be. There isn’t safety anywhere, and those who thought there was were like a lot of saps trying to hide under an umbrella in a typhoon.”

Conway said pacifyingly: “Well, we’ll all admit you couldn’t help the typhoon.”

“I couldn’t even pretend to help it—any more than you could help what happened after we left Baskul. The same thing struck me then as I watched you in the aeroplane keeping dead calm while Mallinson here had the fidgets. You knew you couldn’t do anything about it, and you weren’t caring two hoots. Just like I felt myself when the crash came.”

“That’s nonsense!” cried Mallinson. “Any one can help swindling. It’s a matter of playing the game according to the rules.”

“Which is a darned difficult thing to do when the whole game’s going to pieces. Besides, there isn’t a soul in the world who knows what the rules are. All the professors of Harvard and Yale couldn’t tell you ’em.”

Mallinson replied rather scornfully: “I’m referring to a few quite simple rules of everyday conduct.”

“Then I guess your everyday conduct doesn’t include managing trust companies.”

Conway made haste to intervene. “We’d better not argue. I don’t object in the least to the comparison between your affairs and mine. No doubt we’ve all been flying blind lately, both literally and in other ways. But we’re here now, that’s the important thing, and I agree with you that we could easily have had more to grumble about. It’s curious, when you come to think about it, that out of four people picked up by chance and kidnapped a thousand miles, three should be able to find some consolation in the business.
You
want a rest-cure and a hiding place; Miss Brinklow feels a call to evangelize the heathen Tibetan.”

“Who’s the third person you’re counting?” Mallinson interrupted. “Not me, I hope?”

“I was including myself,” answered Conway. “And my own reason is perhaps the simplest of all—I just rather like being here.”

Indeed, a short time later, when he took what had come to be his usual solitary evening stroll along the terrace or beside the lotus pool, he felt an extraordinary sense of physical and mental settlement. It was perfectly true; he just rather liked being at Shangri-La. Its atmosphere soothed while its mystery stimulated, and the total sensation was agreeable. For some days now he had been reaching, gradually and tentatively, a curious conclusion about the lamasery and its inhabitants; his brain was still busy with it, though in a deeper sense he was unperturbed. He was like a mathematician with an abstruse problem—worrying over it, but worrying very calmly and impersonally.

As for Bryant, whom he decided he would still think of and address as Barnard, the question of his exploits and identity faded instantly into the background, save for a single phrase of his—“the whole game’s going to pieces.” Conway found himself remembering and echoing it with a wider significance than the American had probably intended; he felt it to be true of more than American banking and trust company management. It fitted Baskul and Delhi and London, war making and empire building, consulates and trade concessions and dinner parties at Government House; there was a reek of dissolution over all that recollected world, and Barnard’s cropper had only, perhaps, been better dramatized than his own. The whole game
was
doubtless going to pieces, but fortunately the players were not as a rule put on trial for the pieces they had failed to save. In that respect financiers were unlucky.

But here, at Shangri-La, all was in deep calm. In a moonless sky the stars were lit to the full, and a pale blue sheen lay upon the dome of Karakal. Conway realized then that if by some change of plan the porters from the outside world were to arrive immediately, he would not be completely overjoyed at being spared the interval of waiting. And neither would Barnard, he reflected with an inward smile. It was amusing, really; and then suddenly he knew that he still liked Barnard, or he wouldn’t have found it amusing. Somehow the loss of a hundred million dollars was too much to bar a man for; it would have been easier if he had only stolen one’s watch. And after all, how
could
any one lose a hundred millions? Perhaps only in the sense in which a cabinet minister might airily announce that he had been “given India.”