Just ahead of Part Twenty-Five of our summer diversion, Bulldog Drummond by Sapper, a quick thank you not just for all your kind words about The Mark Steyn Club in general but especially about Tales for Our Time. We always like to hear what you appreciate and what you don't - and, if you've a particular favourite you think would suit this series, by all means pass it along.
In tonight's episode, after his American chum very adroitly blows the safe, Drummond begins to comprehend the scale of what they're up against:
"I told you he was a big man, Captain," remarked the American, leaning back in his chair and looking at the open book through half-closed eyes...
"In any country to-day you've got all sorts and conditions of people with more wind than brain. They just can't stop talking, and as yet it's not a criminal offence. Some of 'em believe what they say, like Spindle-shanks upstairs; some of 'em don't. And if they don't, it makes 'em worse: they start writing as well. You've got clever men, intellectual men ...and they're the worst of the lot. Then you've got another class—the men with the business brain, who think they're getting the sticky end of it, and use the talkers to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for them. And the chestnuts, who are the poor blamed decent working-men, are promptly dropped in the ash-pit to keep 'em quiet.
"They all want something for nothing, and I guess it can't be done. They all think they're fooling one another, and what's really going at the moment is that Peterson is fooling the whole bunch. He wants all the strings in his hands, and it looks to me as if he'd got 'em there. He's got the money—and we know where he got it from; he's got the organisation—all either red-hot revolutionaries, or intellectual windstorms, or calculating knaves. He's amalgamated 'em, Captain; and the whole blamed lot, whatever they may think, are really working for him."
Drummond, thoughtfully, lit a cigarette.
"Working towards a revolution in this country," he remarked quietly.
Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear Part Twenty-Five of our adventure simply by clicking here and logging-in. Earlier episodes of Bulldog Drummond can be found here, and over sixty other Tales for Our Time here.
Thank you for all your comments on this first venture into Sapper's oeuvre. Melissa Ward, a California Steyn Clubber, says of last night:
My favorite line from this part 'I'm going to fight you in order to decide which of us two ceases to adorn the earth.' Sounds like a perfect British film noir line.
Maybe, Melissa. But I think of it more as the kind of sentence an author writes when he's sufficiently confident in his characters and narrative to be no longer fearful of tiptoeing into the potentially over-ripe: it's a great line - even if all those creative-writing professors they hire to do the book reviews on NPR would probably insist he cut it.
For more on The Mark Steyn Club, please see here. And, if you've a chum who enjoys classic fiction, we've introduced a special Mark Steyn Gift Membership.
See you for the penultimate episode of Bulldog Drummond tomorrow.
