'How very kind of you. I would be delighted, sir.'

The gong sounded at that moment, and the tall gentleman stood. 'I asked to have a table waiting. I hope you don't mind if we go right in. We have much to talk about, I think.'

Talk we did, to be sure. We spoke briefly of poor Angus' untimely death, as I expected we would, and he said, 'I was very touched by your tribute to Alisdair at his funeral. I know his parents were very grateful for your friendship with him,' he paused, and added, 'as was I.'

Conversation then passed to other things. Our discussion ranged the length and breadth of the British Empire, I think: Egypt, the Sudan, India, Hong Kong, and a few dozen other countries I can't remember. He seemed to know about, or have interests in, all these places, and spoke not as a casual observer, but as one with an intimate familiarity.

Much of what he said that night I found incredible. Indeed, I went home thinking I had passed the evening with a madman. Harmless, perhaps, but mad as a hatter. Definitely.

In the weeks and months that followed, however, I found myself returning time and again to something he had told me-a peculiar phrase he'd used, or startling observation he'd made-and little by little it began to make sense. Curiosity took hold of me, and I found myself wondering what else he knew.

I determined to see him again. As I did not know any other way to get in touch with him, I left a note at the Old Stag, thinking that if he came to the club more regularly than I, the porter could give it to him next time he popped in. Sure enough, within a fortnight I received a reply. It came on gold-trimmed, cream-coloured stationery, very expensive, and said, simply: 'Delighted to see you again. Would dinner on the sixteenth suit? Best regards, Pemberton.'

Taking this to mean that we would meet at the club, I turned up on the night just before eight, and settled into my customary chair. By eight-thirty, I was beginning to think I'd missed the boat, when he came striding in. Looking neither left nor right, he marched to where I was sitting and shook me by the hand, apologized for being late, and pulled me with him into the dining room where, as before, he had a table waiting.

Our talk that night was no less wide-ranging than previously, but this time I listened most intently to all he said, and tried very hard to remember any detail he might mention about himself. At the end of the evening, I had learned very much about maritime exploration in Polynesia, and Renaissance philosophy in France, but almost nothing about my host. As we made our farewells, he took me by the hand and looked straight into my eyes, and said, 'I wonder if you would care to make the acquaintance of two of my closest friends.'

This took me off guard, and I must have hesitated, for he said, 'I see I've made you uncomfortable. Forgive me. It was only a thought.'

'No, no,' I protested, 'I would be honoured to meet your friends, Mr Pemberton. Truly, I -'

'Pembers, please. I feel we know each other well enough, don't you, Gordon?'

'Of course,' I agreed; and it seemed he had taken me into his confidence – an intimacy I was certain he did not bestow lightly.

'Splendid,' he said. We arranged a time for our next meeting, and bade one another good evening.

In the cab on the way home that night, I thought about what had taken place over dinner. Nothing of import, certainly. In fact, I felt distinctly let down. I suppose I had been expecting something extraordinary, and had to settle for the merely ordinary instead. Nor did our eventual dinner with his two friends seem remarkable in any way. They were agreeable enough gentlemen: one a short, well-upholstered Welshman named Evans, and the other a slender, grey-haired chap of French extraction by the name of De Cardou. Both were slightly 'olde worlde' in a pleasant sort of way, and, like our host, refined and voluble, eager and able to talk about anything and everything, yet never giving away the tiniest detail of their personal lives.

I, on the other hand, despite my best efforts, seemed utterly incapable of holding back anything. The ease with which they pulled out of me the minutia of my existence-from my boyhood days to the workaday office routine-was astonishing. The end result was that they learned a very great deal about me, and I almost nothing about any of them. Nevertheless, we seemed to have passed some unseen gate that night, for from then on I was the recipient of Pemberton's cordial attention. That is to say, I found myself increasingly in the orbit of his affairs.

There was, it seemed, no one he did not know, and whose good opinion he had not secured by some kindly act. The net result of this closer acquaintance was that my personal fortunes increased rapidly, if discreetly. Owing to a downturn in the wool trade at the time of my father's passing a few years earlier, I had inherited the unenviable position of satisfying several outstanding bills of credit. While I had been dutifully, if doggedly, paying off the creditors little by little, within a year of that watershed meeting, the previously limited horizons of my position had expanded dramatically. Promotions and advancements came my way with remarkable rapidity, and with commensurate financial reward. Caitlin and I at last began to entertain some hope that we might yet attain to some small standard of luxury in which we might have the leisure to travel.

About this time, too, I began increasingly to have the feeling that I was being watched. Do not take from this that the feeling was disagreeable or malign in any way. Indeed, I hasten to assure you that it was not – much the reverse, in fact. I felt protected, as if unseen angels stood guard around myself, Caitlin and the children, ever ready to aid and defend us.

Nor was I mistaken. But it was not until many years later that I was to learn the fearful cost of this security paid out on my behalf.

In the following months and years, the curious friendship between Pemberton and myself was to develop in unforeseen ways as I gradually discovered him to be the hidden architect of my continued good fortune. At length, and quite by accident, I learned my secret benefactor was a widower long alone in the world. Thenceforth, I seized every opportunity to repay his philanthropy by including him in the small celebrations of our family life.

In short, Pemberton became an unseen presence in our household. Upon the birth of our second child, Alexander, I asked him to stand as godparent. He accepted with great enthusiasm, and turned up at the christening with a case of port for the lad's coming of age, and a silver spoon engraved with his name and a family crest. 'It is the Murray crest,' he pointed out when Caitlin asked.

'Murray crest? You didn't tell me you were aristocratic, darling,' she replied light-heartedly.

'Believe me, I had no idea,' I answered.

Whereupon Pemberton became very serious. 'Obscure it may be,' he said. 'Yet, the Murray is one of the most ancient and honourable clans in the bloody history of our contentious race.' To the infant Alexander, nestled in Caitlin's arms, he said, 'You can be proud of your heritage, lad.' Then, as if searching back through the mists of time, he placed his hand on the babe's forehead, and said, 'May the holy light illumine your journey, and may your feet never stray from the true path.'

A curious benediction, you may think, but no more so than many of the things people are apt to say on such occasions, and offered with such sincerity that we did not remark on it at the time. As I came to know him better, and spent more time in his company, I found that he was often given to spouting strange little prophecies.

It would happen like this: a comment in passing, or an item in the evening newspaper, would catch his attention and he would offer a pithy forecast of the outcome-if it was in doubt-or the likely result of certain actions being carried forward into the future. In time, I came to heed his predictions and warnings for the simple reason that they most often came to pass exactly as he said they would. I do not mean to make him sound like a carnival fortuneteller reading the future; it was nothing so crude as that. In fact, prophecy is my word; he merely called them 'projections', meaning that he guessed.