Programming note: Tomorrow, Wednesday, I'll be presenting another Clubland Q&A taking questions from Steyn Club members live around the planet at our regular hour: 3pm North American Eastern - that's 8pm British Summer Time/9pm Central European.
Meanwhile, welcome to Part Five of a rather English adventure set amidst globalist plots in the leafy lanes - Bulldog Drummond by Sapper. In tonight's episode, Bulldog has motored down to Godalming in the Home Counties - to a delightful house called The Larches, which happens to be next door to a far more sinister abode called The Elms:
The girl looked at him resignedly. "You're hopeless," she remarked—"absolutely hopeless."
"Absolutely," agreed Hugh, blowing out a cloud of smoke. "Wherefore your telephone message? What's the worry?"
She bit her lip and drummed with her fingers on the arm of her chair. "If I tell you," she said at length, "will you promise me, on your word of honour, that you won't go blundering into The Elms, or do anything foolish like that?"
"At the present moment I'm very comfortable where I am, thanks," remarked Hugh.
"I know," she said; "but I'm so dreadfully afraid that you're the type of person who ... who..." She paused, at a loss for a word.
"Who bellows like a bull, and charges head down," interrupted Hugh with a grin.
Will he "blunder into The Elms" before the night is out? Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear me read Part Five of our adventure simply by clicking here and logging-in. Earlier episodes of Bulldog Drummond can be found here, and previous Tales for Our Time here.
Thank you for your enthusiastic reception of this latest Tale. Robert, a First Fortnight Founding Member of The Mark Steyn Club, writes from Ottawa:
I never got on to Bulldog Drummond, although my Mum urged me to have a look at them to try and wean me off Biggles!!!!
W E Johns' WW1, interwar, and most of his WW 2 stories are well worth adding to Tales for our Time.
Well, Robert, as with Ian Fleming and 007, Captain Johns based his hero at least in part on Bulldog Drummond. Not sure whether I'm up for a full-length Biggles caper, but he turns up, prominently, in the course of this Steyn Show monologue on the Royal Air Force's decision to dispense with white men:
Actually, after re-watching that, I may do that first Biggles story just for the pleasure of tweeting out its title.
There are two ways to enjoy our Tales for Our Time - either as a slug of nightly audio Ovaltine twenty minutes before you lower your lamp. Which means cliffhangers-a-go-go. Or you can save them up for a binge-listen on a long weekend car journey - in which case you're hanging on a cliff only for the few seconds it takes to click the next episode. Better a binger than a whinger, as the old Australian proverb has it.
If you'd like to join us in The Mark Steyn Club, we'd love to have you: please see here. And, if you've a chum who enjoys classic fiction, we've introduced a special Steyn Gift Membership: you'll find more details here.
Please join me tomorrow evening for Part Six of Bulldog Drummond.