The Mysterious Commission by Michael Innes Read Free Book Online

don’t understand why, as a family, you should be so keen on having him supposed dead.’
    ‘It does appear to call for a word of explanation, I agree. So what shall I say? At least you may exclude – what I am sure will be a great relief to you – the more psychopathological motivations. The death-wish within the family, and things of that sort. On the contrary, I think I can honestly claim that we are a devoted little clan. Again, it had nothing to do with missing heirs, lost wills, unmentionable vices, or anything of the sort. You may be absolutely reassured, my dear fellow, as to that.’
    Honeybath wondered how much of what Arbuthnot said he was at all seriously expected to swallow. The speculation prompted another sip at his brandy, but this afforded him little comfort. The brandy was Arbuthnot’s brandy, and drinking it simply enhanced his sense of having got himself into a false position. It would be impossible to maintain that he had been dragged into the depths of the countryside and tumbled into this unaccountable mansion while vigorously screaming, biting and scratching. He had come of his own free will, and upon a very substantial financial consideration. This chatter, so far, was dawning on him as an insulting diet of poppycock. But it wasn’t being offered so crudely that he could very reasonably stand up and walk out (or attempt to walk out – since the sense of an element of all but naked imprisonment was growing on him). But at least he could maintain a note not too abjectly accommodating.
    ‘Look here,’ he said, ‘I really must be treated to some sense. I accept it that your uncle’s nervous state is such that you want this portrait-painting to be a very quiet affair. I even accept the implication – although it is an outrageous one – that you cannot safely trust my discretion not to go round the clubs and pubs making a funny story out of you – so that I must leave as I have come, not knowing who the devil any of you really are. But this business of your uncle having to be brought back briefly from the dead – ’ Honeybath hesitated for a moment; it was not for the first time that words were in danger of failing him. ‘It’s just a bit too much, you know. You say you’re going to explain it. Will you kindly do so?’
    ‘My dear fellow, I’m on the verge of precisely that!’ The urbane character calling himself (no doubt wholly faithlessly) Basil Arbuthnot looked innocently surprised. ‘It’s merely a matter of coming a little along the road of our Mr X’s notable career. To all the business in – well, I’ll call it Outer Mongolia. Not that it was Outer Mongolia. There! You see how absolutely candid I’m being with you.’
    ‘I think I’m coming to estimate your candour accurately enough. But go on. Just for the moment, it’s all I ask.’
    ‘I can see that my uncle’s very eminence – which I could so easily have concealed from you – must make the fact and character of his mission almost implausible. I grant that most freely. But consider! He was the one man in England with the authority and the knowledge to put it through. And the courage, I can honestly add. The danger, the strain, the long drawn-out concentration required must be evident in the issue – in the issue, that’s to say, on its unhappy, and not on its blessedly triumphant, side. It cost him his reason. I don’t see that you could ask for fuller proof than that.’
    ‘Do I understand you to be asserting that your uncle, after scaling unknown peaks–’
    ‘In Outer Mongolia – yes.’
    ‘–and collecting a Nobel Prize, and being enrolled, or just not enrolled, by command of the Sovereign, among the twenty-four Members of the Order of Merit, then started in as a secret agent, or something of that kind?’
    ‘Very much something of that kind. He got what was needed. He got it out . And then they caught him, and gave him a very bad time. In the end, they simply buried him, without much troubling