Programming note: Steyn will be doing double-duty on Serenade Radio tomorrow, Sunday, hosting the pre-dawn broadcast of Mark Steyn on the Town at 5am British Summer Time - that's 12 midnight Eastern/9pm Pacific on Saturday in North America - and back with Steyn's Song of the Week at the other end of the day: 5.30pm London/12.30pm New York. You can listen from almost anywhere on the planet by clicking the button at top right here.
~Thank you for all your kind comments on our latest Tale for Our Time. Harry Royle, a very recent addition to the Steyn Club ranks from the English Home Counties, was startled by yesterday's accompanying image:
Hi Mark,
Looking at your illustration for Part 22, I was amazed to discover that Bulldog Drummond's gang of fighters for liberty has now been joined by the interplanetary Colonel Dan Dare, hero of the 1950s boy's comic Eagle, who I am sure you are familiar with.
Keep up the good work, and don't lose heart with the twisted 'justice' systems currently operating on both sides of the Atlantic.
In fact, Harry, that's not the cap of a colonel in the Interplanet Space Fleet, but of a comparatively lowly chauffeur. So, if you run into Dan Dare, he won't thank you for the confusion - rather like the uniformed admiral standing outside the Algonquin Hotel whom Robert Benchley mistook for the doorman and instructed to call him a cab. When the admiral explained who he was, a somewhat squiffy Benchley responded, "Okay, call me a battleship."
Incidentally, there is a bust of Dan Dare on display in an English town that has been much in the news this past week - Southport.
Which brings us to Part Twenty-Three of our latest Tale for Our Time: a thriller by Sapper that introduced one of the great figures of post-Great War popular literature. In tonight's episode of Bulldog Drummond, the Duchess of Lampshire is hosting one of the most eminent occultists from India:
"In that box lies the power unknown to mortal man, though the priests of the Temple City have sometimes discovered it before they pass beyond. Length you know, and height, and breadth—but in that box lies more."
"You don't mean the fourth dimension, do you?" demanded a man incredulously..
"I know not what you call it, sahib," said the Indian quietly. "But it is the power which renders visible or invisible at will..."
"I say, that's a bit of a tall order, isn't it, Mr. Rum Bar?" protested the Duke a little feebly. "Do you mean to say you can put something into that box, and it disappears?"
"From mortal eye, Protector of the Poor, though it is still there," answered the Indian. "And that only too for a time. Then it reappears again. So runs the legend."
"Well, stuff something in and let's see," cried young Laidley, starting forward, only to pause before the Indian's outstretched arm.
"Stop, sahib," he ordered sternly. "To you that box is nothing; to others—of whom I am one of the least—it is sacred beyond words." He stalked away from the table, and the guests' disappointment showed on their faces...
"You would not ask me to commit sacrilege?" Quietly he replaced the material in his belt and turned away, and Hugh's eyes glistened at the cleverness with which the man was acting.
Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear Mark read Part Twenty-Three of our adventure simply by clicking here and logging-in. Earlier episodes can be found here.
If you've only joined our club as recently as Harry Royle and missed our earlier serials (Conan Doyle's The Tragedy of the Korosko, H G Wells's The Time Machine, George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, plus Kipling, Dickens, Gogol, Kafka, Conrad, Baroness Orczy, Jane Austen, John Buchan, L M Montgomery, Scott Fitzgerald, Victor Hugo and more), you can find them all here in an easily accessible Netflix-style tile format.
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Please join Mark tomorrow for Part Twenty-Four of Bulldog Drummond.
