‘He probably is, old man. And enjoying it more than he would London society with Lady Jane.’
Whirled through the throng, Adam was finally catapulted out of it into a part of the room where the crowds were thinner and it was possible to walk freely. In front of him was a languidly drooping young man, wearing a monocle, a moustache and a look of snooty disdain.
‘Wemarkable! Weally quite wemarkable!’
The languid man was talking to an older and plumper companion. Adam found it difficult to decide whether his speech impediment was natural or affected.
‘Weginald Womilly was welating this extwaordinawy stowy about a woman he met in Wussia. Appawently, she…’
Adam was never to know exactly what the woman in Russia did because the speaker and his friend passed out of earshot. A faint fragrance of perfumed oil lingered after them. Adam’s attention was now caught by the approach of Mr Moorhouse.
Mr Moorhouse’s ancient dress coat was spectacularly creased; he looked as if several hefty men had recently forced him to the floor and sat upon him.
‘Is he here, Mr Moorhouse?’
‘Is who here, Carver?’
‘The man who was asking for me.’
‘Asking for you?’
Adam felt his patience with the forgetfulness of the elderly departing but summoned it back. ‘The gentleman who visited the club last week and asked if I was there.’
‘Ah!’ Mr Moorhouse’s face could have been used as an illustration of sudden enlightenment. ‘Creech.’
‘Creech?’
‘His name is Samuel Creech.’
‘I don’t remember you telling me the name last week, Mr Moor-house.’ Try as he might to disguise it, Adam could feel a note of exasperation enter his voice. Mr Moorhouse did not appear to notice it.
‘Didn’t know it then, old boy. Baxendale’s only just introduced me to the fellow. They’re both over there. Somewhere.’ The old man waved vaguely at the throng. ‘Oh, I say, there’s that bounder Burton over by the door,’ he went on. ‘Surprised he has the gall to turn up at a dinner for Speke, when you think what went on between them.’ Mr Moorhouse’s commentary was interrupted by a deep boom that echoed around the room. ‘Ah, there goes the gong. Better move along, I suppose.’
The reverberation was heard twice more. The gong was one that had been appropriated from a Buddhist temple in Kandy sixty years earlier by a founding member and brought back to London. Since then, it had been used to summon the members of the Marco Polo Club to dinner. As the echoes of its third rumble echoed in their ears, they began to troop into the large, wood-panelled hall in which their formal dinners were held.
The man serving at Adam’s table was clearly unaccustomed to his duties. Instead of appearing discreetly and quietly at the diner’s elbow to offer each dish, and then retiring, he arrived amidst a clatter of clashing plates and serving spoons. He then remained within touching distance of the table long after diners had helped themselves, as if intent on joining the conversation at an opportune moment. On two occasions during the opening courses, Adam’s neighbour on his left irritably waved the man away, only for him to reappear seconds later, thrusting forward further plates of food with a threatening air.
Adam spent the first twenty minutes of the meal in conversation with Hoathly, a retired army officer, whose account of his travels in the Gold Coast had briefly excited the public a decade earlier. Hoathly was telling him, in greater detail than was necessary, about the funeral rites of the Ashanti. From time to time, Adam glanced at the man to his left who had finally persuaded the inexperienced waiter to keep his distance and was talking to his neighbour, a bearded giant who, Adam remembered reading in the press, had returned last year from a plant-hunting expedition up the Orinoco. What was the Orinoco man’s name? Dawson? Davidson? As Hoathly prosed on in the background about death on the Gulf of Guinea, Adam struggled to recall. Dodson, that was it. William Dodson. He had just published a book entitled Plant-Collecting Along the Lower Orinoco, which Adam had seen in the window of Hatchards only the other day. It sometimes seemed as if every member of the Marco Polo apart from Mr Moorhouse had published at least one book about his travels. There was little wonder that Adam’s own opus had long since ceased to attract attention. The competition was too much for it.
‘Of course, when the king is buried, the sacred stool is ritually blackened and…’
Hoathly was still talking about the Ashanti. The man to Adam’s left had now finished his conversation with Orinoco Dodson. He turned to his right.
‘Your name is Carver,’ he said, with an abruptness that suggested Adam had been disputing this. ‘My name is Samuel Creech.’
Now that the man had turned towards him, Adam could see the distinctive scar above his eye that Mr Moorhouse had described.
‘It is a coincidence that we should be seated next to one another, Mr Creech. I understand from my friend Mr Moorhouse that you have been asking for me.’
‘It is no coincidence. I arranged it with Baxendale. I have matters of the highest importance to discuss with you.’ Creech lowered his voice. ‘I would have spoken to you before now but I could not persuade this gentleman to cease from his prattle of South American orchids.’
‘I’m delighted to think that I might have some connection with matters of the highest importance,’ Adam said. ‘But I cannot, for the life of me, guess what they might be.’
‘It is simple enough, Mr Carver. You went with Burton Fields to Macedonia, did you not?’
‘I did indeed.’
‘I believe you also did some travelling on your own account.’
‘A little.’
‘I think I recall from reading your book that you found shelter in several villages south of Salonika.’
‘I did.’
‘Koutles? Barbes? Do I recall the names correctly?’
‘I’m flattered, Mr Creech. You have obviously read my book with great attention.’ Adam smiled amiably at his neighbour. He was beginning to wonder where the conversation was leading. ‘I can scarcely remember the villages in question myself. They were little more than collections of filthy hovels.’
‘But you were there for several days?’
‘Yes, we saw the sun come up over the shanties on more than one occasion. Not quite Homer’s rhododaktylos eos, as I recall.’
Creech, who clearly did not recognise the quotation, stared at the young man for a moment as if he thought he might have been taken suddenly ill.
‘The dawn was not exactly rosy-fingered in Koutles,’ Adam explained.
‘Ah, of course. It is many years since I have read Homer.’ Creech dismissed Adam’s remarks with a shake of the head and continued with his interrogation. ‘Professor Fields was not with you when you visited the two villages?’
‘No — Fields stayed in our encampment further north.’
‘No one was with you during your visit?’
‘Only Quint. Only my servant.’
Adam was growing ever more puzzled by Creech’s questions. Why, he wondered, was he interested in Koutles and Barbes, which Adam recollected only as dirty and impoverished villages he was glad to leave?
‘A very great secret lies hidden in the hills where you travelled, Mr Carver.’ Although he was still speaking in the ordinary, restrained tones of dinner-table conversation, Samuel Creech was clearly filled with barely repressed excitement.
He glanced over his shoulder, as if to see whether or not the overeager waiter was still nearby, and then lowered his voice until it was little more than a fierce whisper. Adam had to strain to hear it above the din of the Marco Polo club dining room. ‘It is a secret that has been lost in darkness for centuries. But I know of a manuscript that can bring it back into the light. Its revelation will be a sensation.’