Varney versus Spring-heel Jack 29: March 1887.

Twenty-Nine: March 1887.

Archie Purdey-James paused mid-stride as he ascended the stone steps leading into his club. The Strand moved on around him, yet his failed to notice its passing. Instead, he was preoccupied with what the last two months had brought him. In truth, very little: yet was that not the most intriguing part of the whole puzzle?

He shook his head and sniffed hard, bringing himself back to reality. He had a role to assume, and distraction from idle speculation would not help with his task. He took the last few steps at a brisk pace, watched with some bemusement by the old man who was permanently seated in a wing-backed chair by the full-length window. This gentleman being a fixture who observed everything, found the Purdey-James he knew inside the club, and this sprightly gentleman, a strange contradiction. If he had been able to see the lobby o the club clearly from his position, he would have found the way in which Archie seemed to slow down and stoop slightly upon entering all the more confounding.

Purdey-James was immediately approached by a porter: it was customary for the staff to serve from the moment a member appeared, but even this was a little too quick for Purdey-James’ tastes. For a moment he verged on telling the man where to go; quick reflection, however, on the need to stay in character saw him dither before ordering a Scotch and soda and the Thunderer. While the servant scurried away to fulfil the order, Archie searched the lower rooms of the club. The lounge, the library, and the dining rooms, waving away with imperious impatience the approaches of other liveried club servants. For all the world, he appeared to be an irascible rich industrialist, on the cusp of middle-age, irritated because he could not find a place to settle at his favourite club. A spoilt, pampered, and self-made man whose self-obsession in business now came out as petulant selfishness in the confines of his club.

That was exactly as he wished it to appear. In truth, he was in search of one particular club member, and while he carried out this search he wished to be undisturbed, and his true purpose kept hidden. He had been a member of this club for three years, and had joined mostly for reasons that his fellow members would have recognised. That was his exterior life, as he viewed it. The interior was the secret life, known only to a few. And Featherstonehaugh had viewed his joining the club with favour.

‘Contacts, my dear old Archie, are invaluable in our line, as they are in any other. Perhaps more so…’

As he moved from room to room in search of his prey, he went over the few facts that he had gleaned in the last couple of months. His quarry, Haining, had made some trips abroad that had not been strictly in the line of business. There had been a couple of occasions when the local consulate had stepped in to avoid scandal. Not of the usual kind, though: Haining seemed to have some very arcane interests. In-between times, when he had been in this country, he had almost literally gone to ground. Little was seen of him, and those few occasions when his head did appear above the parapet had been seemingly random and bizarre. Why the search for a country estate? Likewise, the search for a new house in London, and one with such specific requirements?

A successful businessman was allowed his follies and foibles, but not when he had a scientific brain that could be invaluable in the hands of enemy powers. What kind of enemy was another matter: some of the things Purdey-James had discovered seemed to hint at matters that went beyond mere Patriotism and Empire.

Ah! The man he had been looking for: Purdey-James mentally composed himself in character as he spied the fat man seated by the fireside.

Time to contrive acquaintance. For the Queen, of course.