Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 27, No. 2, September 24, 1927

Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 27, No. 2, September 24, 1927

A Fellowship of Evil by John Hunter

“Four of us met that night in a shanty in South Africa and founded a partnership of a sort—”

Chapter I Four Strangers

Through the long, narrow chink where the heavy curtains failed to meet could be seen the riding lights of vessels swinging on the tideway of the dark river. Directly below, a white glare told of the Embankment lamps, and across the farther bridge lighted trams made thunderous progress. Big Ben chimed the half hour after midnight.

Very faintly, to the ears of the two men in the luxurious sitting room of the riverside suite, came the strains of dance music from the ballroom beneath them. Apart from this, the place was heavily still with that stillness which seems always to rest on the upper regions of great hotels.

Mr. William Smith sat back in his deep, padded chair and puffed reflectively at his cigar, his somewhat mild blue eyes never swerving in their regard of the man seated opposite him. He was rather unimposing — William Smith.

Of average height and build, with the slightest of stoops about his shoulders, there was no hint in his outward physical appearance of the virile strength contained within his apparently non-muscular body. Only his thick, heavily knockled fingers were out of the ordinary.

His sparse, fair to ginger hair had been allowed to grow very long at the left temple, and was brushed and plastered down across the bald patch on the top of his head, leaving a “parting” at the left hand side which just escaped the top of his ear. His clean-shaven face was burned brown by suns such as England never knows.

His mouth was overlarge, ugly, and a complete set of too perfect false teeth showed hideously white through the slightly parted lips. His blue eyes held a quality of ingenuous inquiry which had proved Smith’s passport through life.

He was in dinner clothes, neat, quiet, and his only personal ornamentation was a single diamond winking on the index finger of his left hand. Smith knew a lot about diamonds. He had dealt in them illicitly when the name of Bill Smith was something to whisper from the Rand to Table Mountain.

“Well, my lord?” he asked gently.

The tall, dark man opposite him flared: “Oh, for God’s sake stop calling me ‘my lord.’ ” He got to his feet, lithe, easy, just too well dressed, but with a little air of distinction about him which separated him from William Smith by a gulf which might never be bridged. “Let us drop all these hints and get down to facts. Was Trevelyan one of your... your — confederates?”

“I know Trevelyan very well,” admitted Smith gently.

Lord Bordington caught his breath. He stood, glaring down at Smith for a few moments, his hands hard clenched. Smith sipped at the Scotch and soda by his side. In those seconds of unspoken physical threat he took his eyes, for the first time, from Bordington.

Bordington sat down. Something seemed to have gone from him — something striking and keen. He looked smaller as he huddled in the chair. He repeated: “Give me the facts. All of them.”

Smith smiled. “You’ve done well, my lord. Six months ago you were a poor man. You will remember Bordington was for sale — one hundred thousand pounds was the price, wasn’t it? — and nobody would buy it.

“Great name, great collection of pictures, great traditions — all going to the deuce, because you have the misfortune to live in what I might term the gold age, the age when gold is all men strive for.

“Have you ever reflected, by the way, on the power of money? I don’t mean the power of its possession; but its actual power. It’s dead — yellow, minted gold, printed paper, written checks; but it controls you and me and all the destinies of the earth. A long while ago man was a fool. He created money for his own convenience and now money is likely to destroy him. Already it is his master.” He shrugged his shoulders. “For my part” — with an ugly grin — “I am content to be a slave.”

Bordington looked at him hollowly. “I don’t want to listen to cheap philosophy. I want to know why you asked me to call here and see you. Who — what — is this Fellowship of Strangers?”

“An interesting question,” observed Smith. “And one I will willingly answer, seeing that you are hardly likely to betray the confidence. The Fellowship of Strangers was formed about twenty years ago in a certain town in South Africa which shall be nameless, but which lies between the Matoppo hills and the Great Karoo. Tells you very little, eh?

“Let me see, I said twenty years. Perhaps it was a little longer. Anyhow, the last echoes of the Boer War were dying. There were a number of masterless men kicking around. I was one of them. I was about twenty-six at the time.