The September Society (31 page)

Greeted with his own father, Payson showed the shock in his face. “How do you do?” he said feebly.

The father rose. “I didn’t know whether or not to tell you, George,” he said. “I had to make amends here first.”

It was Dallington who said, “Perhaps we should withdraw.”

So he, McConnell, Lenox, Edmund, and Jenkins went into the hallway for about ten minutes and studiously ignored the
muffled voices through the door. At the end of that time the younger Payson came out, tears on his face, and invited them to come back into the room.

“How did you know?” he asked Lenox straight away.

“I had assumed for a long while that Geoffrey Canterbury was a man named John Lysander, a member of the September Society.”

“Lysander!” spat out the elder Payson.

“It never quite added up. Why would he have been helping you? But there was the description to go on, and in particular the scar. Which I assume you’ll tell us about, George? Why the two of you had identical scars? When Lady Annabelle came to me it was the first thing I remembered about you. To have forgotten it so promptly was shameful on my part, though in my defense I believed you to be dead … and then while you and I were hiding at that meeting, Payson, we heard Butler mention ’an old friend unexpectedly returned.’ It was then that I remembered the scar, and combining that fact with the pocket watch … it simply seemed inevitable once I started to think about it.”

“Hardly inevitable, I should have said.”

“But why this sudden interest in the son of a long-dead man? They must have hoped to draw your father out by threatening you, killing you, whatever they planned to do. At any rate, I remembered that your father had once haunted this famous Eastcheap establishment, and guessed that if he were to lie low it would be here.”

“Famous for it,” said Edmund. “He was here night and day.”

“Voluntarily then, involuntarily now,” added James Payson. “This is the only place in London that I know inside and out, besides the Beefsteak Club.” He laughed. “And that might have been conspicuous.”

“I couldn’t remember the address or the name, but Edmund did, and so here we are.”

“And all extremely anxious to discover the origin of this entire horrible matter,” said Jenkins.

The elder Payson sighed and lifted his eyes to the half-ring of men standing around him. His hand was in his son’s.

Then he spoke. “It’s a simple enough story,” he said. “Or rather, two simple enough stories, one old, one new, the two of them intertwined. Any Englishman who has left this island for the wider empire can tell you that terrible things are done in the name of the Queen, bless her. A little less than twenty years ago, just after you were born, George, and just between the Anglo-Sikh wars, I took part in one of those atrocities.

“My battalion and I were monitoring an area along the Sutlej Frontier in Punjab, and if I never lay eyes on it again it will be too soon. There were about thirty thousand troops there—it was our most important strategic position in India, you see, geographically, politically, and culturally—and we always got by far the best of the few little local skirmishes. We had won the first Anglo-Sikh war handily, and though the locals resented us we ruled with a firm hand. As a result, I and the other officers led an idle life there. Each of us had a small house and four or five native servants, and there was always a card game or a drink to be had in the officers’ mess. Despite the heat, which none of us liked, it wasn’t a bad kip.

“I was still pretty wild then, I’m afraid—Edmund and Charles remember me from Oxford—and my best friend in all of India was another like me, a man named Juniper. He wasn’t in the army, though. He was an orphan, all alone in the world, with a few hundred pounds he had inherited, and when he came of age he set out for Lahore to make his fortune. The two of us drank together, hunted together, and even lived in the same house for some time together. They called us the twins, because there was some slight resemblance between us and because we were so inseparable.

“As you can gather, it wasn’t too bad a life. I had a close
friend, all the gin I wanted, some shooting, and a game of cards most evenings. But then one day I did something foolish.

“I was chappy enough with John Lysander at the time, and one evening the two of us and an official of the East India Company attached to our battalion—a lad named Simon Halloran, as green as he could be—decided to venture into the strictly Punjabi part of Lahore. An adventure, we figured. Well, at the first teahouse we stopped into we were kidnapped by (you’ll scarcely credit this) a group of about ten boys, all of them armed to the teeth. They blindfolded us and led us out into the countryside. I’ve always had a keen enough sense of direction, and though they tried to turn us around and confuse us I knew which way we were going. Mark that—it comes back in a moment.

“Well, it was a hairy enough situation. The head of the village these boys belonged to searched us all over and eventually decided to send a message to the Queen by killing one of us. As you can no doubt guess, it was Halloran—nonmilitary, I suppose. He cut Halloran’s throat right in front of our eyes, and for good measure gave Lysander and myself identical cuts, to mark us out as dangerous to his fellow tribesmen.”

Payson’s hand went to his throat.

“It raised a terrible ruckus back at camp, as goes without saying, and as I knew where this village was we received permission to go capture this headman who had decided to kill Halloran. Well, we did go back, and—well, the less we say of it, the better.” His eyes looked ghostly as he said this. “We’re not allowed to take back anything in this life, and we did what we did, you see.

“In the end it was three nonofficers who came across the village headman. My batman, Major Butler’s batman, and a clever lance corporal named Hallowell. They came and fetched the officers—all of us bloody and exhausted, about twenty-five of us—and when we entered the tent we saw that somehow this small village had amassed an absolutely remarkable treasure.

There were chests of rubies, bags of uncut diamonds, gold, silver, piles and piles of the stuff. Most spectacular of all was the largest, purest sapphire I’ve ever seen, perhaps the largest sapphire in the world. As large as a hawk’s egg.”

Softly, Lenox muttered, “September’s birthstone.”

The elder Payson turned to him. “Yes, that’s right. Welcome to the little joke. This raid took place in September, and the name must have seemed inevitable. In any event, there was an instant unanimous decision. We would take it, never tell the army, and retire back to England rich men. All of us officers, and the three nonofficers, too.

“But there was a problem. Another official of the East India Company, Halloran’s boss. An older, white-haired fellow named Braithwaite, who stepped in straight away and claimed the money as the company’s. From which he would receive a finder’s fee, of course.

“One thing to understand about our battalion: We were the left behind. They were all like me, wild, angry, driven out of England by their behavior. A little pirate ship out in the desert. Well, it didn’t take any time at all for them to decide to kill Braithwaite. Only two of us stood against it. Captain Larch and myself. Larch put his foot down; I simply said that I wouldn’t be a part of it. Larch and Braithwaite died—victims of the battle, as it was later presented, both with their throats cut—and I lived. In fact, in official regiment history Larch and I are the only dead officers of our particular era …

“Fortunately Juniper and I had long planned to return to London on six months’ leave, and almost immediately we left. I hoped it would all blow over—I think I saw both of you then, Charles and Edmund, and more importantly I saw you, George, beautiful infant that you were—but when we returned, nothing was forgotten, and the next few weeks were the worst of my life. A dozen times I wished I had gone along with the plan. All of them would be rich, not a single one of
them was speaking to me, and I knew that all of them doubted my staying silent.

“The blow fell pretty quickly. I was out hunting with Juniper, the only friend I had left for five thousand miles in any direction. We were in a growth of scrub about a mile away from the campsite, trying to track a flock of birds, when Hallowell ambushed us from about ten yards away. He shot Juniper dead on the spot and then fired at me. I wasn’t hit, but I fell, hoping to fool him. And I did. Hallowell ran off. I listened to his footsteps receding …” He took a breath. “I often think about Juniper, all alone in the world as he was. His death wasn’t worthy of him.

“I saw straight away that I had an opportunity to escape. I had never been that fond of the military, and now India was too hot to hold me. So I ran back to camp, careful to avoid notice, and grabbed my uniform and a few of my things—pictures from home and so forth, you can imagine—and went about the ugly, bloody job of changing Juniper into me.”

“What about the scar?” McConnell asked.

“That was the catch, of course. But leave anything out in the scrub of India long enough and some animal will get interested. Juniper was unrecognizable when they found him. To discourage any rumors—either of suicide or murder—Lysander and Butler made up a story about me getting shot over cards by a native. Preposterous, of course, but they shouted it from the rooftops. One thing they couldn’t hide was the state of my body.”

“The third page of that report we saw, Thomas,” said Lenox, looking up at his friend. “It must have described the decomposition.”

It was eerie for Lenox, to hear two tales so similar from a father and son. Both had lost their friends. Both had gone on the run. Both had behaved cannily. And both had avoided death. For now, anyway.

He shifted in his seat uncomfortably, the wound in his chest still painful, and waited for Payson to go on.

W
here did you go?” asked Dallington curiously.

“China. I had a good deal of money because I had just been paid six months’ wages, and I went to Shanghai and found work. It wasn’t long before I became pretty useful to a few important gentlemen there—well, it’s a story for another time. I’m long since retired by now.”

Here was the crucial question. “But then why return?” asked Lenox. “Why was the Society interested in your son when they knew you to be dead?”

“Wilson,” said Payson.

“Wilson?”

“It was the worst luck you could possibly have. I had come back to England because I couldn’t stand being away from George any longer. I thought I would find somewhere quiet to live, perhaps in northern Scotland, and watch my boy from afar. One day this summer I had to see him, and I went to Lincoln. And on High Street I saw Wilson, there with his son. It was only for a split second, but he knew it was me. I could see it in his eyes.

“Only Lysander and Hallowell had known—or thought
they knew—Juniper to be alive, still. It must have been a right shock to old Wilson. So he ran off and told the Society.”

“How do you know?” asked Jenkins.

“He wasn’t a bad chap, Wilson. Certainly not the worst of them. He told them about me, but when they began to consider killing George, he found a way to pass George a note. I was living in Oxford by then, and with the help of Red Kelly, whom I had known long ago in my early days in the army, when our regiments had trained together—an old gambler and drinker, Red—”

“I was going to ask after him,” said Lenox. “A friend of yours back then?”

“The most loyal friend I had. My private. When he was wounded I found him a job as a porter at Lincoln—not that I had had a glittering career there, but still, the Payson name carried some weight.”

“Red! See, Lenox—I knew he knew something!” The young George Payson said this excitedly to Lenox. “He was the one who passed me the notes from Canterbury! How did he help you, Dad?”

“Passed Wilson’s note addressed to you on to me. It warned you to leave Oxford. I knew then that he had told the Society, and that they had resolved on killing you to draw me out. I was dangerous to them. Still am, I suppose.”

“And Wilson died for his troubles,” said McConnell.

“Precisely,” Lenox agreed.

“The rest is plain enough to you, I suppose. It became my only aim, my only concern in life, to save my son. But I didn’t dare tell you who I was, George. I didn’t want you to know I was still alive, in case they came after you with questions. The only way I could show you how I felt was that damned pocket watch.”

“No, Dad, I loved it. It gave me hope while I was out there running.”

As the father and son looked at each other, tears brimming in the eyes of both, there was a strange silence in the room; perhaps the silence of sons thinking about their own fathers.

“At least you’re both safe now,” said Jenkins, with a great sigh.

Then a startling voice spoke from behind them in a tone full of hatred. “Are they? Can you be sure of that, Inspector?”

It was Lysander. And he had a gun.

Of course, thought Lenox. That’s why I missed him at the meeting. He stayed back in case something precisely like this happened.

“Well, Lysander,” he said. “You have us at your mercy.”

But the detective spoke too hastily.

Lysander had seen all but one of them—McConnell, obscured by the door Lysander had opened, in one swift, athletic movement that made Lenox grateful for all the doctor’s games of polo and golf, slammed the door into Lysander and pounced on the shocked man as he fell. The gun screamed into the surprised silence of the room and fired one harmless bullet into the wall.

After that it took a great deal of time to sort everything out, and by then the pain in Lenox’s chest was more and more intense. McConnell gave him a solution in water from his medical kit, which helped slightly. Still, though, he decided that Jenkins could handle the questioning for that evening.

Just then, two constables came clattering up the stairs and into the room. Only one of them spoke, a small, strong-looking chap.

“Inspector Jenkins, sir, begging a moment of your time.”

“Yes, Constable Roland?”

“During our search of the club’s premises, we found something, sir.” Here Roland paused.