A somewhat delightful brother of mine may be inclined to suspect a portrait in "Peter." Let me assure him that I have known many Peters.
Printed in Great Britain
by Burleigh Ltd., at THE BURLEIGH PRESS, Bristol
WRITTEN FOR
A SOLDIER, A DOCTOR
AND
A SCIENTIST
YOU THREE,
This fulfilled promise, possibly, by now, nearly forgotten by you, will find the four of us in different countries, or even different continents; but find you it will, to recall to your minds a memory of five long weeks, during which we formed a perfect square; when, alike under the Colombo palms or the hot rocks of Aden, among the lights of Port Said or in the shadow of Gibraltar, the discussion, ever and again, would veer round to that which the fool hath said in his heart.
People on this earth evolve and alter; it is to you, as I knew you then, that this is addressed. Try to put back the clock and think as you thought then.
I have still in your neat hand-writing, "C"—I wonder whether your prescriptions are as clear to read?—the account of your conversion to that Spiritualistic Theosophy which used to make "L.B." impatient. I inserted the page in the first book I wrote for you all, but which, to the agent's surprise, I suddenly withdrew, doubting lest I was still too near the Three of you and those endless conversations to have made my characters impersonal enough and, also, doubting the fairness of putting into cold print anything which had been given me in the special circumstances of our friendship.
So Cyprian and Ferlie come late on the scene to show you by their problem much that I have left unsaid (even to you, "L.B.") during the star-spangled nights in tropical waters and, afterwards, in the grey streets of Westminster and those greyer and darker streets elsewhere, down which the Other Half live and the Men in Black go to and fro.
Let me say now, since it was hardly permitted for me to tell you then, that what you did was one of the bravest things I have ever known a man do. This, in case you have, in retrospection, doubted and regretted the impulse as abnormal or unbalanced.
Some travellers across my horizon last winter recognized your photograph, and I gathered from them that you are now on the way to be reckoned among the Senior and the Great.