Anthony Cade's commission from Jimmy McGrath

Anthony Cade's commission from Jimmy McGrath is the practical favor that brings Anthony to England and draws him into the converging disputes over Count Stylptitch's memoirs, Virginia Revel's letters, and the political crisis surrounding Herzoslovakia. Jimmy cannot carry out the errands himself, so Anthony travels under Jimmy's name and takes responsibility for delivering both the manuscript and the letters; that borrowed identity later complicates the investigation at Chimneys.

The commission and its two errands

Jimmy's memoir assignment arose after a parcel containing Count Stylptitch's reminiscences finally reached him in Africa, following him from place to place. The count had recently died in Paris, and the enclosed note instructed Jimmy to deliver the manuscript to a London publishing firm by October 13 in exchange for £1,000. The deadline and the prospect of payment gave the commission urgency, while Jimmy's existing plan to travel into the interior made it inconvenient for him to go to England himself.

The manuscript was not an ordinary literary delivery. Count Stylptitch had entrusted it to Jimmy, who had once preserved the count's life; its contents threatened to become a political matter. Agents in Paris had secretly arranged for the memoirs to be conveyed away before the count's death, and officials learned that they had been sent to James McGrath, a Canadian then in Africa. When news of Jimmy's expected arrival in England reached Lord Caterham, the private errand was already part of a larger effort to control the manuscript and its consequences.

Jimmy added a second, personal task: Anthony was to take a bundle of letters to their intended recipient, Virginia Revel, and put them directly into her hands. Jimmy considered it unsafe simply to post them. He suspected that Virginia might have a jealous husband who could open the letters, and the letters looked old enough that she might even be dead. Rather than risk either possibility, he decided that someone should carry them to England and deliver them in person.

Anthony takes Jimmy's place

Anthony quickly understood how the two tasks fitted together. Jimmy would continue with his planned gold-hunting expedition, while Anthony went to England to collect the £1,000 for him; Anthony asked what share he would receive, and Jimmy proposed a quarter. The exchange establishes the commission as both a friendship-based favor and a practical bargain, with the publisher's payment giving the journey a definite financial stake.

Jimmy trusted Anthony to manage the London end because Anthony knew how to navigate the relevant social world. Jimmy described himself as a Canadian from the backwoods who would make mistakes, contrasting his own inexperience with Anthony's schooling at Eton and Harrow. Anthony accepted the letters assignment as well as the manuscript errand. Jimmy then took the bundle from a drawer and placed it on the table, turning the second request into a concrete charge entrusted to his friend.

The arrangement required Anthony to use Jimmy's name. Since the passage had been booked in Jimmy's name, Anthony travelled as James McGrath. Later, when explaining his arrival at Chimneys, he described the journey as a commission from his friend in Bulawayo and acknowledged that he had come under the assumed name. His account presented the impersonation as a consequence of the booking, not as a separate scheme to claim Jimmy's identity for its own sake.

From private favor to public suspicion

Anthony's account of the commission became a turning point when he disclosed Jimmy's name in front of George Lomax: George visibly reacted, showing that the apparently modest errand touched people and interests already implicated in the political affair. The contrast between Anthony's stated purpose and the listeners' response exposes how a personal commission can acquire consequences beyond what its two friends intended.

The memoirs and the identities attached to their delivery also complicated the political negotiations. Superintendent Battle later told Herman Isaacstein that Isaacstein, George, and the Herzoslovakian Loyalist Party were in serious difficulty. In that setting, the manuscript's route through Jimmy to Anthony was not merely postal logistics: control of Count Stylptitch's testimony intersected with attempts to manage the Herzoslovakian question. The commission placed Anthony in the middle of that conflict without making him its original political organizer.

Anthony's borrowed name fed further confusion as the plot developed. At Dover, Hiram P. Fish followed Anthony under the mistaken impression that he was King Victor. Anthony later explained that the same pattern of substitution lay behind the mystery there: a real person had been kidnapped and a false one had taken his place. The incident makes the commission's initial identity switch resonate with the larger plot's repeated use of impersonation, while keeping distinct Anthony's practical use of Jimmy's booked passage from King Victor's deliberate deceptions.

The commission's reach

The two errands give the story separate but overlapping routes into its central intrigue. The memoirs carry a political risk and a fixed deadline; the letters carry a private risk, because Jimmy fears interception and wants their recipient to receive them personally. Anthony accepts both, and his journey transforms Jimmy's remote obligations in Africa into actions conducted amid the surveillance and suspicion at Chimneys.

The commission also supplies a reason for Anthony to be at the center of events without making him a member of the official political circle. When Battle argues that Anthony has been drawn into the affair and has a right to know what is happening, he treats Anthony's involvement as an established fact. The friend's errand has become an entry point into a conspiracy whose participants include officials, financiers, and political loyalists.

Its significance lies in this double movement: a favor grounded in personal trust sets the machinery of the plot in motion, while the name used to carry it creates a resemblance to the story's more dangerous impostures. Jimmy's requests are concrete—deliver a manuscript by October 13, claim the promised payment, and put the letters into Virginia's own hands—but their fulfillment entangles Anthony in questions of secrecy, political leverage, and mistaken identity. The commission remains personal in origin even as its consequences become public and perilous.