But just as I noticed him, he raised his head slowly and looked at me. Not, I mean, as one does when being addressed from a pulpit-I was delivering the eulogy, after all-but… and how can I describe this? He raised his eyes and fixed me with a most extraordinary stare. Although he was at the back of the chapel and I at the front, his gaze penetrated straight to my very soul and filled me with such sadness that I was instantly overcome and was forced to break off my prepared speech. I fear I muttered something incomprehensible in conclusion and sat down as a great crushing wave of grief washed over me.
Afterwards, when I had collected myself somewhat, I looked for Pemberton at the reception, but he failed to appear. Six months later we met again. Caitlin had taken the sprog-we now had a delightful little cherub named Annie to amuse and amaze us-to her aunt's house for a summer visit. I could not get away from the office to go with them, so stayed home, fending for myself. I was sitting in the smoking room at the club, reading the paper, and waiting for the dinner gong, when I became aware that someone was watching me. Glancing up, I saw Pemberton sitting across from me, and looking very much the way he had looked the day I'd seen him at the funeral.
'Are you alone this evening?' he asked, politely, but without preamble.
'Mr Pemberton,' I said, 'what a pleasant surprise. I did not hear you sit down. Yes, I am dining alone this evening-wife off to the country for a fortnight. I'm sick of my own cooking, so thought I might pop round to see if the Old Stag still provides a decent haunch of an evening.'
'Oh, excellent as ever, I assure you,' he replied. 'In fact, I would be most gratified if you would join me for dinner. I have been wanting to talk to you for some time.'
'How very kind of you. I would be delighted, sir.'
The gong sounded at that moment, and the tall gentleman stood. 'I asked to have a table waiting. I hope you don't mind if we go right in. We have much to talk about, I think.'
Talk we did, to be sure. We spoke briefly of poor Angus' untimely death, as I expected we would, and he said, 'I was very touched by your tribute to Alisdair at his funeral. I know his parents were very grateful for your friendship with him,' he paused, and added, 'as was I.'
Conversation then passed to other things. Our discussion ranged the length and breadth of the British Empire, I think: Egypt, the Sudan, India, Hong Kong, and a few dozen other countries I can't remember. He seemed to know about, or have interests in, all these places, and spoke not as a casual observer, but as one with an intimate familiarity.
Much of what he said that night I found incredible. Indeed, I went home thinking I had passed the evening with a madman. Harmless, perhaps, but mad as a hatter. Definitely.
In the weeks and months that followed, however, I found myself returning time and again to something he had told me-a peculiar phrase he'd used, or startling observation he'd made-and little by little it began to make sense. Curiosity took hold of me, and I found myself wondering what else he knew.
I determined to see him again. As I did not know any other way to get in touch with him, I left a note at the Old Stag, thinking that if he came to the club more regularly than I, the porter could give it to him next time he popped in. Sure enough, within a fortnight I received a reply. It came on gold-trimmed, cream-coloured stationery, very expensive, and said, simply: 'Delighted to see you again. Would dinner on the sixteenth suit? Best regards, Pemberton.'
Taking this to mean that we would meet at the club, I turned up on the night just before eight, and settled into my customary chair. By eight-thirty, I was beginning to think I'd missed the boat, when he came striding in. Looking neither left nor right, he marched to where I was sitting and shook me by the hand, apologized for being late, and pulled me with him into the dining room where, as before, he had a table waiting.
Our talk that night was no less wide-ranging than previously, but this time I listened most intently to all he said, and tried very hard to remember any detail he might mention about himself. At the end of the evening, I had learned very much about maritime exploration in Polynesia, and Renaissance philosophy in France, but almost nothing about my host. As we made our farewells, he took me by the hand and looked straight into my eyes, and said, 'I wonder if you would care to make the acquaintance of two of my closest friends.'
This took me off guard, and I must have hesitated, for he said, 'I see I've made you uncomfortable. Forgive me. It was only a thought.'
'No, no,' I protested, 'I would be honoured to meet your friends, Mr Pemberton. Truly, I -'
'Pembers, please. I feel we know each other well enough, don't you, Gordon?'
'Of course,' I agreed; and it seemed he had taken me into his confidence – an intimacy I was certain he did not bestow lightly.
'Splendid,' he said. We arranged a time for our next meeting, and bade one another good evening.
In the cab on the way home that night, I thought about what had taken place over dinner. Nothing of import, certainly. In fact, I felt distinctly let down. I suppose I had been expecting something extraordinary, and had to settle for the merely ordinary instead. Nor did our eventual dinner with his two friends seem remarkable in any way. They were agreeable enough gentlemen: one a short, well-upholstered Welshman named Evans, and the other a slender, grey-haired chap of French extraction by the name of De Cardou. Both were slightly 'olde worlde' in a pleasant sort of way, and, like our host, refined and voluble, eager and able to talk about anything and everything, yet never giving away the tiniest detail of their personal lives.
I, on the other hand, despite my best efforts, seemed utterly incapable of holding back anything. The ease with which they pulled out of me the minutia of my existence-from my boyhood days to the workaday office routine-was astonishing. The end result was that they learned a very great deal about me, and I almost nothing about any of them. Nevertheless, we seemed to have passed some unseen gate that night, for from then on I was the recipient of Pemberton's cordial attention. That is to say, I found myself increasingly in the orbit of his affairs.
There was, it seemed, no one he did not know, and whose good opinion he had not secured by some kindly act. The net result of this closer acquaintance was that my personal fortunes increased rapidly, if discreetly. Owing to a downturn in the wool trade at the time of my father's passing a few years earlier, I had inherited the unenviable position of satisfying several outstanding bills of credit. While I had been dutifully, if doggedly, paying off the creditors little by little, within a year of that watershed meeting, the previously limited horizons of my position had expanded dramatically. Promotions and advancements came my way with remarkable rapidity, and with commensurate financial reward. Caitlin and I at last began to entertain some hope that we might yet attain to some small standard of luxury in which we might have the leisure to travel.
About this time, too, I began increasingly to have the feeling that I was being watched. Do not take from this that the feeling was disagreeable or malign in any way. Indeed, I hasten to assure you that it was not – much the reverse, in fact. I felt protected, as if unseen angels stood guard around myself, Caitlin and the children, ever ready to aid and defend us.
Nor was I mistaken. But it was not until many years later that I was to learn the fearful cost of this security paid out on my behalf.