Free The Peculiar Exploits of Brigadier Ffellowes by Sterling E. Lanier Page B

of New York took on something of the appearance of patches of torch and fire light in the heat and murk.
     
                  "Haven't you left out one qualification, Sir?" said a younger member. "What about time? Surely, to get these Dracula castle effects and so on, you have to have centuries to play with a complaisant bunch of peasants, hereditary aristocrats, the whole bit. In other words a really old country, right?"
     
                  Ffellowes stared at the opposite wall for a bit before answering. Finally he seemed to shrug, as if he had come to a decision.
     
                  "Gilles de Rais ," he said, "is perhaps the best example known of your Dracula syndrome, so I admit I must agree with you. In general, however, only in general. The worst case of this sort of thing which ever came to my personal—and very personal it was—knowledge took place in the early 1930's in one of your larger Eastern states. So that while time is certainly needed, as indeed for the formation of any disease, the so-called modern age is not so much of a protection as one might think. And yet there was great age, too."
     
                  He raised his hand and the hum of startled comment which had begun to rise died at once.
     
                  "I'll tell you the story. But I'll tell it my way. No questions of any sort whatsoever. There are still people alive who could be injured. I shall cheerfully disguise and alter any detail I can which might lead to identification of the family or place concerned. Beyond that, you will simply have to accept my word. If you're interested on that basis ...?"
     
                  The circle of faces, mine included, was so eager that his iron countenance damned near cracked into a grin, but he held it back and began.
     
                  "In the early days of your , and indeed everyone's, Great Depression, I was the most junior military attaché of our Washington embassy. It was an agreeable part of my duties to mix socially as much as I could with Americans of my own age. One way of doing this was hunting, fox-hunting to be more explicit. I used to go out with the Middleburg Hunt and while enjoying the exercise, I made a number of friends as well.
     
                  "One of them was a man whom I shall call Canler Waldron. That's not even an anagram, but sounds vaguely like his real name. He was my own age and very good company. He was supposed to be putting in time as a junior member of your State Department.
     
                  "It was immediately obvious that he was extremely well off. Most people of course, had been at least affected a trifle by the Crash, if not a whole lot, but it was plain that whatever Can's financial basis was, it had hardly been shaken. Small comments were revealing,' especially his puzzlement when, as often happened, others pleaded lack of funds to explain some inability to do a trip or to purchase something. He was, I may add, the most generous of men financially, and without being what you'd call a 'sucker,' he was very easy to leave with the cheque , so much so one had to guard against it.
     
                  "He was pleasant-looking; black-haired, narrow-faced, dark brown eyes, a generalized North European type and as I said about my own age, barely twenty-six. And what a magnificent rider! I'm not bad, or wasn't then, but I've never seen anyone to match Canler Waldron. No fence ever bothered him and he always led the field, riding so easily that he hardly appeared to be conscious of what he was doing. It got so that he became embarrassed by the attention and used to pull his horse in order to stay back. Of course he was magnificently mounted; he had a whole string of big black hunters, his own private breed he said. But there were others out who had fine 'cattle' too: no, he was simply a superb rider.
     
                  "We were chatting one