The reader will probably appreciate this story most if they are a fan of the works of M R James. Those who are not should hunt some out and explore them - Halloween or Christmas are the perfect time to do so. The master of the Ghost Story might not appreciate this tribute to his genius but it is proffered with humble appreciation none the less.
"Another snifter old boy - keeps the cold out don't you know."
"Don't mind if I do." The club was, as usual, enjoying Russian levels of heating on this dark December night. However, the excuse for another glass of that superb warming spirit was not to be neglected.
"Ha ha," laughed my companion, "say what they like about the United Universities Club but they can never deny that we retain a superb cellar!"
"Hear hear," sounded from a couple of nearby deep armchairs and more than one glass was raised in acknowledgement of the sentiment expressed.
"I believe we have good old Solon to thank for this particular case. Have you ever met the old boy?"
I shook my head My friend had perhaps forgotten that I had only been a member there for a short period.
"A most extraordinary cove but a man with a good few stories to tell. Given the nature of some of those he does relate it makes you wonder about those he chooses not to. Did any of you fellows happen to be here the night that he came into this very room and spoke about the Dark Pilgrimage?"
He had our attention now. Mr Solon was a man with a certain reputation. His wide travels and his notorious researches had put him beyond the pale of certain strands of polite society. However, we were all men of the world and scorned such close-minded attitudes. What Solon said was worthy of any scholar's attention.
"As I say old Solon was seated in that very chair. He had come in late and far from his usual self. Any of you who have met him will know that he is the most level-headed of fellows. Imperturbable I would have said if I had not seen him that night. Because he looked pale as he sat in that chair, pale and shaken to his very marrow."
"He did not seem to take note of us as his intelligent eyes looked searchingly into the unknown. Then he gathered himself together and began to speak. I still do not know if he was speaking for our benefit or purely to arrange his own thoughts. However, that tale he told has, I'll wager, never left the minds of those three of us who heard it. Sinclair has since been lost in the Amazon of course. Farquhar was already an old man and has since gone to his reward. Glossop was lost in the sinking of the 'Ajaccio' off Madeira last Summer. Then there is Solon himself. His recent trip to Nepal was undertaken for his health according to the yellow press. I suspect the truth is that he has gone to consult with the Tibetan masters and I suspect that he will choose not to return."
"Which leaves only myself. A strange thought and as I mull it over a heavy responsibility. For this story of Solon's deserves to be heard and to live on in the event that I should," he waved a hand airily, "be knocked over by an omnibus crossing the Tottenham Court Road or some such foolish nonsense."
The spirits were just as fiery and the heating just as efficient but for one fleeting moment there seemed a chill in the air of that sumptuously luxurious club-room.
My friend cleared his throat. "I feel a need to tell the story - just as old Solon told it to us that night. To the very best of my memory because he would never agree to repeat it. Not even to any of his original three hearers." He paused. "I would understand if any of you fellows chose to leave. It is not for everybody and it does not seem to have been a lucky tale for its original audience."
Needless to say nobody moved. My friend had set his stage with perfect skill and while Tutankhamen might have set a curse on those that plundered his tomb it was hard to suggest similar behaviour by the notoriously genial and generous Mr Solon.
"Let me begin. That afternoon Mr Solon was undertaking researches at a certain library well known to many of us. He was engrossed in his study of a unique hand-written manuscript when...
***
The heavy tick of the walnut grandfather clock gently sounded through the comfortable study rooms of the Library. Mr Solon leaned back to rest his eyes from studying the faded Arabic script on the priceless manuscript which occupied the desk in front of him. The personal first hand account of Ibn Foszlan.
A bowdlerised version was well known of course, even its shrouded details had astonished and outraged public sentiment. The Old Queen might be long dead but even after the Great War such spasms of Victorian morality retained their power.
It was the detail of this unexpurgated document that enthralled Mr Solon. Ibn Foszlan had travelled through that mix of peoples and religions so long ago but his observations had been acute. He had recorded details of ritual practices and social activities that could be found nowhere else. At least that was the general opinion.
Mr Solon was in the perfect position to refute any such claim. Who else had studied the arcane rituals and esoteric social constructions of the East as he had? Perhaps only one man and even that one had shared his knowledge on that long-ago weekend in the Rue de Lafayette.
He unconsciously glanced over to the more public area of the great University Library. The newspapers there were recording the tragic events in China, a war of almost unimaginable viciousness. A war to match the march of the Mongols or the depredations of the Huns. Mr Solon believed that Shanghai's little European cantonment, the leafy Rue de Lafayette and its equivalents, remained a relatively peaceful haven. For the moment at least. However, his old contact had long since left there and had last been heard of at one of the great temples of the interior. Who could tell if he had lived to see the war? Who could tell his subsequent fate if he had? One sadly had to assume the worst.
It made it all the more valuable that Mr Solon had been allowed to share at least some of the knowledge accrued by that notorious Serbian, if indeed he was a Serbian, adventurer in his chequered career. An unmatched knowledge of the ancient lore of a score of religious traditions in the great cultural melting-pot that the West simply called 'China'. Among them a certain psycho-sexual tradition that uncannily matched what he had read in the thousand-year old words of Ibn Foszlan.
Mr Solon carefully replaced his spectacles. He was a precise and fastidious little man only a couple of inches above five feet in height. A thick graying thatch of hair betrayed his age but lively intelligent eyes indicated that his zest for life was far from diminished.
To look at him one would have had no difficulty in identifying Mr Solon as a typical scholar of his time. Measured, calm, perhaps a little stuffy even. Many knew of his repute as the greatest living authority on the East. A status he accepted - assuming that the authorities mentioned were purely Western ones and that, even then, his old Shanghai contact was no longer a contestant. Compared to that remarkable Doctor he modestly considered himself a mere neophyte.
Curiosity had always fuelled Mr Solon. Had caused him to amass that great store-house of unconsidered scraps of information within his capacious brain. Details of every aspect of the East - most especially of those aspects ignored by the missionaries who formed so great a proportion of his intellectual colleagues in the field. Scraps that had made him the most sought-after consultant for those companies seeking to exploit the Chinese market. A sadly diminished trade now, of course, but on the other hand Mr Solon had already amassed Government bonds that would allow him to exist comfortably so long as he lived. It had also allowed him to provide an excellent education to his son. The young man showed promise - was already a Fellow of a prestigious college in this very University. It pleased Mr Solon that his family's intellectual traditions would last one more generation at least.
He frowned and rubbed his nose. His concentration had lapsed. Access to this manuscript was a magnificent opportunity not to be wasted in idle musings. The graphic detail of Ibn Foszlan's descriptions of those remarkable orgies along the Volga so long ago should have held his attention in an iron vice. In truth such matters held interest for him only as an intellectual curiosity. He had enjoyed a happy marriage but those days were long over. Now he lived in Chester Terrace the existence of a widower, a contented hermit alone save for his two tortoiseshell cats.
Mr Solon returned to his task and soon completed it. The account was relatively short but its every word was precious in confirming his long-held theories. Such exact likenesses with those tales told him long ago in Shanghai could not be mere coincidence. There was a hidden mystical congruence stretching across not merely thousands of miles but also across numerous centuries.
Now Mr Solon's heart did indeed beat fast. Not for the sexual nature of the descriptions but rather for their occult significance. The great tide of esoteric practice and learning that had flowed into the Western tradition. A cultural river that still flowed, unheralded and unobserved, to this very day. He himself had reason to know that some fools had sought to play with the forces bound into such traditions. They had sometimes destroyed others and almost always had destroyed themselves. Such knowledge was to be handled with extreme caution.
He collected his materials and prepared to return the priceless manuscript. Only then did Mr Solon look up and realise that he was not alone. How long had he been under observation by this remarkable visitor?
Remarkable in many ways. Even an old widower like Mr Solon could hardly fail to notice the young woman's beauty. Even when, as now, it was shrouded by an expression of confusion laced with terror. The power of that terror struck him so forcibly that it was several moments before he recalled that no woman, however beautiful, should have been seen in these hallowed, if sadly misogynistic, academic chambers.
"Mr Solon sir, it is you?" Her voice was every bit as pleasing as her figure. Truly a young lady of the sort that he had read about one day in an idle moment. An 'It' girl. She could grace any of those posters advertising the motion pictures that were the cultural phenomena of the age.
