I shrank all the more because my
visit in the autumn to Reggie Dacre had shaken me more than I
cared to confess. It had been the only occasion for years when I
had entered a London building other than my club. To the club,
where I was as much at home as in my own house, all those in town
with whom I now and then had to transact business were good enough
to come. This penetration of strange hospitals was an agitating
adventure. Apart, however, from the mere physical nervousness
against which, as I say, I fought, there was another element in my
feelings with regard to Boyce's summons. If I talk about the Iron
Hand of Fate you may think I am using a cliche of melodrama.
Perhaps I am. But it expresses what I mean. Something unregenerate
in me, some lingering atavistic savage instinct towards freedom,
rebelled against this same Iron Hand of Fate that, first clapping
me on the shoulder long ago in Cape Town, was now dragging me,
against my will, into ever thickening entanglement with the dark
and crooked destiny of Leonard Boyce.
I tell you all this because I don't want to pose as a kind of
apodal angel of mercy.
I was also deadly anxious as to the nature of the communication
Boyce would make to me, before his mother should be informed of
his arrival in London.
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