Tales for Our Time is a unique feature of The Mark Steyn Club - and, we're pleased to say, one of our most popular: our nightly audio serialisations of classic literature from Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four to Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, via some neglected but highly pertinent gems such as Conan Doyle's tale of proto-jihadists preying on foolish westerners, The Tragedy of the Korosko.
Our current caper is The Quest of the Sacred Slipper, Sax Rohmer's Mohammedan mystery from 1914. Thank you for all your perceptive comments about this latest yarn. Paul, a Colorado Steyn Clubber, is fairly disgusted by our protagonist:
". . . it's not loaded!" Good grief. This is a Barney Fife line. Even Dr. Watson knew enough to keep bullets in his revolver, or at least check it before he tried to shoot it. This fellow Cavanagh seems to have all the self-preservation sense of the Schmoos in Al Capp's L'il Abner.
In the poor chap's defence, Paul, he's like a lot of Englishmen before the passage of the various Firearms Acts. He's not what today's Mounties would call a "gunperson", but in the course of a not terribly explosive life he happens in the course of his adventures to have acquired hither and yon a few revolvers now lying around in sundry drawers of his flat that he does not have cause to open very often. He's a gifted amateur, not a highly trained professional like, er, Barney Fife.
In tonight's episode Cavanagh has yet another visitor at the door:
I opened the door; and there, wearing European garments but a green turban ... stood Hassan of Aleppo!
When I say that amazement robbed me of the power to speak, to move, almost to think, I doubt not you will credit me. Indeed, I felt that modern London was crumbling about me and that I was become involved in the fantastic mazes of one of those Oriental intrigues such as figure in the Romance of Abu Zeyd, or with which most European readers have been rendered familiar by the glowing pages of "The Thousand and One Nights."
"Effendim," said my visitor, "do not hesitate to act as I direct!"
Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear me read Part Fourteen of our tale simply by clicking here and logging-in. Earlier episodes can be found here.
I'll be back here tomorrow with another episode of The Quest of the Sacred Slipper. If you're minded to join us in The Mark Steyn Club in this our ninth season, you're more than welcome. You can find more information here. And, if you have a chum you think might enjoy Tales for Our Time (so far, we've covered H G Wells, Jane Austen, Dickens, Wodehouse, Kipling, Kafka, Gogol, Baroness Orczy, Victor Hugo, Louisa May Alcott, O Henry, John Buchan, Scott Fitzgerald and more), we have a special Gift Membership that makes a perfect birthday present.
