Dedication, preface, and Chapter one of the Powerhouse. This is a LibriVox
recording. All Librivot's recordings are in the public domain. For more information or
to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by expatriate in Bangor,
Maine. The Powerhouse by John Buchan, Dedication to Major General Sir Francis Lloyd
K C B. My Dear General. A recent tale of mine has I
am told, found favor in the dugouts and billets of the British Front,
as being sufficiently short and sufficiently exciting for men who have little leisure to read.
My friends in that uneasy region have asked for more. So I have
printed this story, written in the smooth days before the war, in the
hope that it may enable an honest man here and there to forget for an
hour the two urgent realities. I have put your name on it because among
the many tastes which we share, one is a liking for precipitous yarns.
J. B. Preface by the editor. We were at glennaesal six of
us for the duck shooting when Lythan told us this story. Since five in
the morning, we had been out on the Skerries, and had been blown
home by a wind which threatened to root the house and its wind blown woods
from their precarious lodgment on the hill. A vast nondescript meal, luncheon and
dinner in one had occupied us till the last daylight departed, and we settled
ourselves in the smoking room for a sleepy evening of talk and tobacco conversation.
I remember turned on some of Jim's trophies, which grinned at us from the
fire lit walls, and we began to spin hunting yarns. Then Hoppy Binge,
who was killed next year on the Brahmaputra, told us some queer things
about his doings in New Guiar, where he tried to climb Karstens and live
for six months in mud. Jim said he couldn't abide mud. Anything was
better than a country where your boots rotted. He was to get enough of
it last winter in the Epre salient. You know how one tale begets another,
and soon the whole place hummed with odd recollections. For five of us
had been a good deal about the world, all except lythan the man who
was afterwards Solicitor General and they say, will get to the woolsack in time.
I don't suppose he had ever been farther from home than Monte Carlo,
but he liked hearing about the ends of the earth. Jim had just finished
a fairly steep yarn about his experiences on a boundary commission near Lake Chad,
and lythan got up to find a drink. Lucky Devils, He said,
you've had all the fun out of life. I've had my nose to the
grindstone ever since I left school. I said something about his having all the
honor and glory all the same. He went on, I once played the
chief part in a rather exciting business without ever once budging from London. And
the joke of it was that the man who went out to look for adventure
only saw a bit of the game, and I, who sat in my
chambers, saw it all and pulled the strings. They also serve who only
stand and wait. You know. Then he told us this story. The
version I give is one he afterwards wrote down when he had looked up his
diary for some of the details. Chapter one, beginning of the Wild Goose
Chase. It all started one afternoon early in May when I came out of
the House of Commons with Tommy do Lorraine. I had got in by an
accident at a by election when I was supposed to be fighting a forlorn hope,
and as I was just beginning to be busy at the bar, I
found my hands pretty full. It was before Tommy succeeded in the days when
he sat for the family seat in Yorkshire, and that after afternoon he was
in a powerful bad temper. Out of doors, it was jolly spring weather.
There was greenery and Parliament Square in bits of gay color, and a
light wind was blowing up from the river. Inside a dull debate was winding
on, and an advertising member had been trying to get up a row with
the speaker. The contrast between the frowsy place and the cheerful world outside would
have impressed even the soul of a government whip. Tommy sniffed the spring breeze
like a supercilious stag. This about finishes me, he groaned. What a
juggins I am to be moldering here. Joggleberry is the celestial limit what they
call in happier lands the pink penultimate and the froust On those back benches was
there ever such a mothy and old museum. It is the mother of parliaments,
I observed, damned monkey house, said Tommy, I must get off
for a bit or a bonnet joggleberry, or get up and propose a nat
monument to guy fawked, or something silly. I did not see him for
a day or two, and then one morning he rang me up and peremptorily
summoned me to dine with him. I went, knowing very well what I
should find. Tommy was off next day to shoot lions on the equator or
something equally unconscientious. He was a bad acquaintance for a placid, sedentary soul
like me, for though he could work like a trojan when the fit took
him, he was never at the same job very long. In the same
week he would harass an under secretary about horses for the army, write voluminously
to the press about a gun he had invented for potting aeroplanes, give a
fancy dress ball which he forgot to attend, and get into the semi final
of the rackets Championship. I waited daily to see him start a new religion.
That night I recollect he had an odd assortment of guests. A cabinet
minister was there, a gentle being for whom Tommy fast public scorn and private
affection. A sailor, an Indian cavalry fellow, Chapman, the labor member,
whom Tommy called Chipmunk, myself an old millson of the treasury. Our
host was in tremendous form, chaffing everybody and sending Chipmunk into great rolling gusts
of merriment. The two lived adjacent to Yorkshire, and on platforms abused each
other like pickpockets. Tommy enlarged on the misfits of civilized life. He maintained
that none of us, except perhaps the sailor and the cavalrymen, were at
our proper job. He would have had Wyntham, that was the minister,
a cardinal of the Roman Church. And he said that Milson should have been
the warden of a college full of port and prejudice. Me. He was
kind enough to allocate to some reconstructed imperial general staff, merely because I had
a praise from military history. Tommy's perception did not go very deep. He
told Chapman he should have been a lumberman in California, you'd have made an
uncommon good logger, chipmunk, and you know you're a dash bad politician.
When questioned about himself, he became reticent as a newspaper say, I doubt
if I'm much good at any job, he confessed, accepting ginger up my
friends anyhow, and getting out of this hole, paired for the rest of
the session with a chap who has lockjaw. I'm off to stretch my legs
and get back my sense of proportion. Someone asked him where he was going,
and was told Venezuela to buy government bonds and look for birds nests.
Nobody took Tommy seriously, so his guests did not trouble to bid him the
kind of farewell a prolonged journey would demand. But when the others had gone
and we were sitting in the little back smoking room on the first floor,
he became solemn, portentously solemn, for he wrinkled up his brows and dropped
his jaw in the way he had when he fancied he was in earnest.
I've taken on a queer job life, and he said, and I want
you to hear about it. None of my family know, and I would
like to leave someone behind me who could get on to my tricks if things
got troublesome. I braced myself for some preposterous confidence, for I was experienced
in Tommy's vagaries, but I owned to being surprised when he asked me if
I remembered pitt Heron. I remembered pit Heron very well. He had been
at Oxford with me, but he was no great friend of mine, though
for about two years Tommy and he had been inseparable. He had had a
prodigious reputation for cleverness with everybody but the college authorities, and used to spend
his vacations doing mad things in the Alps and the Balkans, and writing about
them in the halfpenny Press. He was enormously rich cotton mills and Liverpool ground
rents, and being without a father, did pretty much what his fantastic taste
dictated. He was rather a hero for a bit after he came down,
for he had made some wild journey in the neighborhood of Afghanistan and written an
exciting book about it. Then he married a pretty cousin of Tommy's, who
happened to be the only person that ever captured my stony heart and settled down
in London. I did not go to their house, and soon I found
that very few of his friends saw much of him either. His travels and
magazine articles suddenly stopped, and I put it down to the common course of
successful domesticity. Apparently I was wrong. Charles pitt Heron said, Tommy is
blowing up for a most thundering mess. I asked what kind of mess,
and Tommy said he didn't know. That's the mischief of it. You remember
the wild beggar he used to be, always off on the spree to the
mountains of the Moon or somewhere. Well. He has been damping down his
fires lately and trying to behave like a respectable citizen. But God knows what
he has been thinking. I go a good deal to Portman Square, And
all last year he has been getting queerer questions as to the nature of the
queerness. Only elicited the fact that Heron had taken to science with some enthusiasm.
He's got a laboratory at the back of the house used to be the
billiard room, where he works away half the night. And Lord, the
crew you meet there, every kind of heathen Chinese and Turks, and long
haired chaps from Russia and fat Germans. I've several times blundered into the push.
They've all got an odd secretive air about them, and Charlie is becoming
like them. He won't answer a plain question or look you straight in the
face. Ethel sees it too, and she has often talked to me about
it. I said, I saw no harm in such a hobby. I
do, said Tommy grimly. Anyhow, the fellow has bolted. What on
earth I began but was cut short, bolted without a word to a mortal
soul. He told Ethel he would be home for luncheon yesterday and never came.
His man knew nothing about him, hadn't packed for him or anything,
but he found he had stuffed something into a kit bag and gone out by
the back through the mews. Ethel was in terrible straits and sent for me,
and I ranged all yesterday afternoon like a wolf on the scent. I
found he had drawn a biggish sum in gold from the bank, but I
couldn't find any trace of where he had gone. I was just setting out
for Scotland Yard this morning when Tomlin, the valet, rang me up and
said he had found a card in the waistcote of the dress clothes that Charles
had worn the night before he left. It had a name on it,
like Konilevsky, and it struck me that they might know something about the business
at the Russian embassy. Well, I went round there, and the long
and short of it was that I found there was a fellow of that name
among the clerks. I saw him, and he said he had gone to
see mister Pitt Harron two days before with a letter from some embassy chap Unfortunately,
the man in question had gone off to New York next day. But
Konilevsky told me one thing which helped to clear up matters. It seemed that
the letter had in one of those passports the embassies give to their friends,
a higher powered sort than the ordinary make, and Koonilevsky gathered from something he
had heard that Charles was aiming for Moscow. Tommy paused to let his news
sink in. Oh, that was good enough for me. I'm off tomorrow
to run him to ground. But why shouldn't a man go to Moscow if
he wants, I said, feebly. You don't understand, said the sage
Tommy. You don't know old Charles as I know him. He's got into
a queer set, and there's no knowing what mischief he's up to. He's
perfectly capable of starting a revolution in Armenia or somewhere, merely to see how
it feels like to be a revolutionary. That's the damn thing about the artistic
temperament. Anyhow, he's got to chuck it. I won't have Ethel scared
to death by his whims. I'm going to hail him back from Moscow,
even if I have to pretend he's an escaped lunatic. He's probably like enough
one by this time, if he has taken no clothes. I've forgotten what
I said, but it was some plea for caution. I could not see
the reason for these heroics. Pitt Heron did not interest me greatly, and
the notion of Tommy as a defender of the hearth amused me. I thought
that he was working on very slight evidence and would probably make a fool of
himself. It's only another of the men's fads. I said. He never
could do things like an ordinary mortal, but possible trouble. Could there be
money richest. Crisus, said Tommy, a woman blind as a bat to
female beauty the wrong side of the law. Don't think so he could settle
any ordinary scrape with a check. Then I give it up. Whatever it
is, it looks as if pitt Heron would have a companion in misfortune before
you are done with the business. I'm all for your taking a holiday,
for at presence you're a nuisance to your friends and a disgrace to your country's
legislature. But for goodness sake, curb your passion for romance. They don't
like it in Russia. Next morning, Tommy turned up to see me Chambers.
The prospect of travel always went to his head like wine. He was
in wild spirits and had forgotten his anger at the defaulting pit Heron. In
gratitude for his provision of an occupation, he talked of carrying him off to
the Caucasus when he had found him to investigate the habits of the Caucasian stag.
I remember the scene as if it were yesterday. It was a hot
May morning, and the sun which came through the dusty window in Fountain Court,
lit up the dust and squalor of my working chambers. I was pretty
busy at the time, and my table was well nourished with briefs. Tommy
picked up one and began to read it. It was about a new drainage
scheme in west Ham. He tossed it down and looked at me pityingly,
poor old beggar, He said, to spend your days on such work.
When the world is chalk full of amusing things, life goes roaring by,
and you only hear the echo in your stuffy rooms. You can hardly see
the sun for the cobwebs on these windows of yours. Charles is a fool,
but I'm blessed if he isn't wiser than you. Don't you wish you
were coming with me? The queer thing was that I did I remember the
occasion, as I have said, for it was one of the few on
which I have had a pang of dissatisfaction with a calling I had chosen.
As Tommy's footsteps grew faint on the stairs, I suddenly felt as if I
were missing something, as if somehow I were out of it. It is
an unpleasant feeling, even when you know that the thing you are out of
is foolishness. Tommy went off at eleven from Victoria, and my work was
pretty well ruined for the day. I felt oddly restless, and the cause
was not merely Tommy's departure. My thoughts kept turning to the pitt Heron's,
chiefly to Ethel, that adorable child unequally yoked to a perverse egoist, but
a good deal to the egoist himself. I have never suffered much from whimsies,
but I suddenly began to feel a curious interest in the business, an
unwilling interest, for I found it in my heart to regret my robust skepticism
of the night before. And it was more than interest. I had a
sort of presentiment that I was going to be mixed up in the affair more
than I wanted. I told myself angrily that the life of an industrious common
law barrister could have little to do with the wanderings of two maniacs in Muscovie.
But try as I might, I could not get rid of the obsession.
That night. It followed me into my dreams, and I saw myself
with a canout coercing Tommy and pitt Heron in a Russian fortress, which faded
away into the Carlton Hotel. Next afternoon, I found my step to wending
in the direction of Portman Square. I lived at the time in down Street,
and I told myself I would be none the worse of a walk in
the park before dinner. I had a fancy to see missus pitt heron,
for though I had only met her twice since her marriage, there had been
a day when we were the closest of friends. I found her alone,
a perplexed and saddened lady with imploring eyes. Those eyes questioned me as to
how much I knew. I told her presently that I had seen Tommy and
was aware of his errand I was moved to add that she might count on
me if there were anything she wished done on this side of the channel.
She was very little changed. There was still the old exquisite slimness, the
old shy courtesy. But she told me nothing. Charles was full of business
and becoming very forgetful. She was sure the Russian journey was all a stupid
mistake. He probably thought he had told her of his departure he would write.
She expected a letter by every post, but her haggard eyes belied her
optimism. I could see that there had been odd happenings of late in the
pit Heron household. She either knew or feared something. The latter, I
thought, for her air was more of apprehension than of painful enlightenment. I
did not stay long, and as I walked home, I had an awkward
feeling that I had intruded. Also, I was increasingly so that there was
trouble brewing, and that Tommy had more warrant for his journey than I had
given him credit for. I cast my mind back to gather recollections of pitt
Heron, But all I could find was an impression of a brilliant, uncomfortable
being who had been too fond of the by ways of life. From my
sober tastes, there was nothing crooked in him in the wrong sense, but
there might be a good deal that was perverse. I remember consoling myself with
the thought that though he might shatter his wife's nerves by his vagaries, he
would scarcely break her heart. To be watchful, I decided, was my
business, and I could not get rid of the feeling that I might soon
have caused for all my vigilance. End of chapter one recording by expatriate in
Bangor, Maine, Chapter two of The Powerhouse by John Buchan. The Sleverrivok's
recording is in the public domain. Recording by Expatriot in Bangor, Maine,
Chapter two. I first hear of mister Andrew Lumley a fortnight later to be
accurate. On the twenty first of May. I did a thing I rarely
do and went down to South London on a county court case. It was
an ordinary taxicab accident, and as the solicitors for the company were good clients
of mine and the regular county court junior was ill in bed, I took
the case to oblige them. There was the usual dull conflict of evidence.
An empty taxicab, proceeding slowly on the right side of the road and hooting
decorously at the corners, had been run into by a private motor car which
had darted down a side street. The taxi had been swung round and its
bonnet considerably damaged, while its driver had suffered a dislocated shoulder. The bad
feature in the case was that the motor car had not halted to investigate the
damage, but had proceeded unconscientiously on its way, and the assistance of the
London Police had been called in to trace it. It turned out to be
the property of a mister Julius Pavia, a retired East India merchant who lived
in a large villa in the neighborhood of Blackheath, and at the time of
the accident it had been occupied by his butler. The company brought an action
for damages against its owner. The butler, Tooke by name, was the
only witness for the defense. He was a tall man with a very long,
thin face and a jaw, the two parts of which seemed scarcely to
fit. He was profuse in his apologies on behalf of his master, who
was abroad. It seemed that on the morning in question, it was the
eighth of May, he had received instructions from mister Pavia to convey a message
to a passenger by the Continental Express from Victoria, and had been hot on
this errand when he met the taxi he was not aware that there had been
any damage, thought it only a slight grazing of the two cars, and
on his master's behalf consented to the judgment of the court. It was a
commonplace business but Tuke was by no means a commonplace witness. He was very
unlike the conventional butler, much like one of those successful financiers whose portrait you
see in the picture papers. His little eyes were quick with intelligence, and
there were lines of ruthlessness around his mouth, like those of a man often
called to decisive action. His story was simplicity itself, and he answered my
questions with an air of serious candor. The train he had to meet was
the eleven a m from Victoria, the train by which Tommy had traveled.
The passenger he had to see was an American gentleman, mister Wright Davies.
His master, mister Pavia, was in Italy, but would shortly be home
again. The case was over in twenty minutes. But it was something you
need in my professional experience, for I took a most intense and unreasoning dislike
to that bland butler. I cross examined with some rudeness, was answered with
steady courtesy, and hopelessly snubbed. The upshot was that I lost my temper,
to the surprise of the County Court judge. All the way back,
I was both angry and ashamed of myself. Half way home, I realized
that the accident had happened on the very day that Tommy left London. The
coincidence merely flickered across my mind, for there could be no earthly connection between
the two events. That afternoon I wasted some time in looking up Pavia in
the directory. He was there, sure enough, as the occupier of a
suburban mansion called the White Lodge. He had no city addressed, so it
was clear that he was out of business. My irritation with the man had
made me inquisitive about the master. It was a curious name he bore,
possibly Italian, possibly go Anee. I wondered how he got on with this
highly competent butler. If Twuke had been my servant, I would have wrung
his neck or bolted before a week was out. Do you ever notice that
when you hear a name that strikes you, you seemed to be constantly hearing
it for a bit. Once I had a case in which one of the
parties was called Jubber, a name I had never met before, but I
ran across two other jobbers before the case was over. Anyhow, the day
after the Blackheath visit, I was briefed in a big stock exchange case which
turned on the true ownership of certain bearer bonds. It was a complicated business
which I need not trouble you with, and it involved a number of consultations
with my lay clients, a famous firm of brokers. They produced their books
and my chambers were filled with glossy gentlemen talking a strange jargon. I had
to examine my clients closely on their practice in treating a certain class of bearer
security, and they were very frank in expounding their business. I was not
surprised to hear that pitt Heron was one of the most valued names on their
lists. With his wealth, he was bound to be a good deal in
the city. Now. I had no desire to pry to pit Heron's private
affairs, especially his financial arrangements, but his name was in my thoughts at
the time, and I could not help looking curiously at what was put before
me. He seemed to have been buying these bonds on a big scale.
I had the indiscretion to ask if mister pitt Heron had long followed this course,
and was told that he had begun to purchase some six months before.
Mister pitt Herron volunteered. The stockbroker is very closely connected in his financial operations
with another esteemed client of ours, mister Julius Pavia. They are both attracted
by this class of security. At the moment I scarcely noted the name.
But after dinner that night I began to speculate about the connection. I had
found out the name of one of Charles's mysterious new friends. It was not
a very promising discovery. A retired East India merchant did not suggest anything wildly
speculative. But I began to wonder if Charles's preoccupation to which Tommy had been
witness might not be connected with financial worries. I could not believe that the
huge pit Heron fortune had been seriously affected, or that his flight was that
of a defaulter. But he might have got entangled in some shady, steady
business which preyed on his sensitive soul somehow or other. I could not believe
that mister Pavia was a holy, innocent old gentleman. His butler looked too
formidable. It was possible that he was blackmailing pit Heron, and that the
latter had departed to get out of his clutches, but on what ground.
I had no notion as to the black maleable thing that might lurk in Charles's
past, and the guesses which flitted through my brain were too fantastic to consider
seriously. After all, I had only the flimsiest basis for conjecture. Pavia
and pit Heron were friends. Tommy had gone off in quest of pitt Heron.
Pavia's butler had broken the law of the land in order, for some
reason or other to see the departure of the train by which Tommy had traveled.
I remember laughing at myself for my suspicions, and reflecting that if Tommy
could see into my head, he would turn a deaf ear in the future
to my complaints of his lack of balance. But the thing stuck in my
mind, and I called again that week on missus pitt Heron. She had
had no word from her husband and only a bare line from Tommy giving his
Moscow address. Poor child, it was a wretched business for her. She
had to keep a smiling face to the world, invent credible tales to account
for her husband's absence, and all the while anxiety and dread were gnawing at
her heart. I asked her if she had ever met a mister Pavia,
but the name was unknown to her. She knew nothing of Charles's business dealings,
but at my request she interviewed his bankers, and I heard from her
next day that his affairs were in perfect order. It was no financial crisis
which had precipitated him abroad. A few days later I stumbled by the merest
accident upon what sailors call a cross bearing. At the time I used to
devil a little for the Solicitor General and note cases sent to him from the
different government offices. It was thankless work, but it was supposed to be
good for an ambitious lawyer. By this prosaic channel I received the first hint
of another of Charles's friends. I had sent to me one day the papers
dealing with the arrest of a German spy at Plymouth. For at the time
there was a sort of epidemic of roving Teutons who got themselves into compromising situations
and gravely troubled the souls of the Admiralty and the War Office. This case
was distinguished from the common rock by the higher social standing of the accused.
The spy as a photographer or bagman who attempts to win the bibulous confidence of
minor officials. But this specimen was no less than a professor of a famous
German university, a man of excellent manners, wide culture, and attractive presence,
who had dined with port officers and danced with admiral's daughters. I have
forgotten the evidence or what was the legal points submitted for the law officer's opinion.
In any case, it matters little, for he was acquitted. What
interests me at the time was the testimonials as to character which he carried with
him. He had many letters of introduction. One was from pitt Heron to
his wife's sailor uncle. And when he was arrested, one Englishman went so
far as to wire that he took upon himself the whole cost of the defense.
This gentleman was a mister Andrew Lumley stated in the papers sent me to
be a rich bachelor, a member of the Athenaeum in Carlton clubs, and
a dweller in the Albany. Remember that till a few weeks before I had
known nothing of pitt Heron's circle. And here were three bits of information dropping
in on me unsolicited. Just when my interests had been awakened, I began
to get really keen, for every man, at the bottom of his heart
believes that he is a born detective. I was on the lookout for Charles's
infrequent friends, and I argued that if he knew the spy and the spy
knew mister Lumley, the odds were that pitt Heron and Lumley were acquaintances.
I hunted up the ladder in the Red Book. Sure enough, he lived
in the Albany, belonged to half a dozen clubs, and had a country
house in Hampshire. I tucked the name away in a pigeon hole of my
memory, and for some days asked every one I met if he knew the
philanthropist of the Albany. I had no luck till the Saturday, when lunching
at the club, I ran against Jenkinson, the art critic. I forget
if you know that I have always been a bit of a connoisseur, and
of my I used to dabble in prints and miniatures. But at that time
my interests lay chiefly in old wedgewood, of which I had collected some good
pieces. Old Wedgwood is a thing which few people collect seriously, but the
few who do are apt to be monomaniacs. Whenever a big collection comes into
the market, it fetches high prices, but it generally finds its way into
not more than half a dozen hens. Wedgewoodites all know each other, and
they are less cutthroat in their methods than most collectors of all I have ever
met. Jenkinson was the keenest, and he would discourse for hours on the
feel of good jasper and the respective merits of blue and sage green grounds.
That day he was full of excitement. He babbled through luncheon about the Wentworth
sale, which he had attended the week before. There had been a pair
of magnificent plaques with a unique Flaxman design which had roused his enthusiasm. Urns
and medallions and what not had gone to this or that connoisseur, and Jenkinson
could quote their prices, but the plaques dominated his fancy, and he was
furious that the nation had not acquired them. It seemed that he had been
to South Kensington and the British Museum in all sorts of dignitaries, and he
thought that he might yet persuade the authorities to offer for them if the purchaser
would resell. They had been bought by Lutran for a well known private collector
by the name Andrew Lumley. I pricked up my ears and asked about mister
Lumley. Jenkinson said he was a rich old buffer who locked up his things
in cupboards and never let the public get a look at them. He suspected
that a lot of the best things at recent sales had found their way to
him, and that meant that they were put in cold storage for good.
I asked if he knew him. No, he told me, but he
had once or twice been allowed to look at his things for books he had
been writing. He had never seen the man, for he always bought through
agents, but he had heard of people who knew him. It is a
silly old he said. He will fill half a dozen houses with priceless treasures
and then die, and the whole show will be sold at auction, and
the best things carried off to America. It's enough to make a Patriot swear
there was balm and gilead. However, mister Lumley apparently might be willing to
resell the Wedgewood plaques if he got a fair offer. So Jenkinson had been
informed by Lutran in that very afternoon he was going to look at them.
He asked me to come with him, and, having nothing to do,
I accepted. Jenkinson's car was waiting for us at the club door. It
was closed for the afternoon was wet. I did not hear his directions to
the chauffeur, and we had been on the road ten minutes or so before
I discovered that we had crossed the river and were traversing south London. I
had expected to find the things in Lutran's shop, but to my delight I
was told that Lumley had taken delivery of them at once. He keeps very
few of his things in the Albany, except his books, I was told.
But he has a house at black which is stuffed from cellar to garrett.
What is the name of it, I asked, with a sudden suspicion.
The White Lodge, said Jenkinson. But that belongs to a man called
Pavia, I said, I can't help that the things in it belonged to
old Lumley. All right, I know, for I've been three times there
with his permission. Jenkinson got little out of me for the rest of the
ride. Here was excellent corroborative evidence of what I had allowed myself to suspect.
Pavia was a friend of pit Heron. Lumley was a friend of pit
Heron. Lumley was obviously a friend of Pavia, and he might be Pavia
himself. For the retired East India merchant, as I figured him, would
not be above an innocent impersonation. Anyhow, if I could find one or
the other, I might learn something about Charles's recent doings. I sincerely hoped
that the owner might be at home that afternoon when we inspected his treasures.
For so far I had found no one who could procure me an introduction to
that mysterious old bachelor of artistic and Philo Teutonic tastes. We reached the White
Lodge about half past three. It was one of those small, square Late
Georgian mansions which you see all around London. Once a country house among fields,
now only a villa in a pretentious garden. I looked to see my
super butler took but the door was opened by a female servant who inspected Jenkinson's
card of admission and somewhat unwillingly allowed us to enter. My companion had not
exaggerated when he described the place as full of treasures. It was far more
like the shop of a bond street art dealer than a civilized dwelling. The
hall was crowded with Japanese armor and lacquer cabinets. One room was lined from
Florida's ceiling with good pictures, mostly seventeenth century Dutch, and had enough Chippendale
chairs to accommodate a public meeting. Jenkinson would fain have prowled around, but
we were moved on by the inexorable servant to the little back room where lay
the the objects of our visit. The plaques had been only half unpacked,
and in a moment Jenkinson was busy on them with a magnifying glass, purring
to himself like a contented cat. The housekeeper stood on guard by the door.
Jenkinson was absorbed, and after the first inspection of the treasures, I
had leisure to look about me. It was an untidy little room, full
of fine Chinese porcelain and dusty glass cabinets, and in a corner stood piles
of old Persian rugs. Pavia. I reflected, must be an easy going
soul entirely oblivious of comfort if he allowed his friend to turn his dwelling into
such a pantechnicon. Less and less did I believe in the existence of the
retired East Indian merchant. The house was Lumley's, who chose to pass under
another name during his occasional visits. His motive might be innocent enough, but
somehow I did not think so. His butler had looked too infernally intelligent.
With my foot I turned over the lid of one of the packing cases that
had held the wedgewoods. It was covered with a litter of cotton, wool
and shavings, and below it lay a crumpled piece of paper. I looked
again and saw that it was a telegraph form. Clearly, somebody with a
telegram in his hand had opened the cases and had left it on the top
of one, whence it had dropped to the floor and been covered by the
lid when it was flung off. I hope and believe that I am as
scrupulous as other people. But then and there came on me the conviction that
I must read that telegram. I felt the gimlet eye of the housekeeper on
me, so I had recourse to craft. I took out my cigarette case
as if to smoke, and clumsily upset its contents amongst the shavings. Then
on my knees, I began to pick them up, turning over the litter
till the telegram was exposed. It was in French, and I read it
quite clearly. It had been sent from Vienna, but the address was on
some code suive a bohare sorronoff those were the words. I finished my collection
of the cigarettes and turned the lid over again on the telegram, so that
its owner, if he chose to look for it diligently, might find it.
When we sat in the car going home, Jenkinson absorbed in meditation on
the plaques. I was coming to something like a decision. A curious feeling
of inevitability possessed me. I had collected, by accident a few odd disjointed
pieces of information, and here by the most amazing accident of all was the
connecting link. I knew I had no evidence to go upon which would have
convinced the most credulous common jury. Pavia knew pit Heron so probably did lumly.
Lumly new Pavia possibly was identical with him. Somebody in Pavia's house got
a telegram in which a trip to Bokhara was indicated. It didn't sound much,
yet I was absolutely convinced, with the queer sub conscious certitude of the
human brain, that pit Heron was or was about to be in Bokhara,
and that Pavia Lumy knew of his being there and was deeply concerned in his
journey. That night, after dinner, I rang up missus pit Heron.
She had had a letter from Tommy, a very dispirited letter, for he
had had no luck. Nobody in Moscow had seen or heard of any wandering
Englishman remotely like Charles, and Tommy, after playing the private detective for three
weeks, was nearly at the end of his tether and spoke of returning home.
I told her to send him the following wire in her own name.
Go on to Bokhara, have information you will meet him there. She promised
to send the message next day and ask no further questions. She was a
pearl among women. End of chapter two recording by Expatriate in Bangor Main.
Chapter three of the Powerhouse by John Buchan the sleebrivox recording is in the public
domain. Recording by expatriate in Bangor, Maine. Chapter three tells of a
midsummer night. Hitherto I had been the looker on. Now I was to
become a person of the drama. That telegram was the beginning of my active
part in this curious affair. They say that everybody turns up in time at
the corner of Piccadilly's circus if you wait long enough. I was to find
myself like a citizen of Baghdad in the days of the Great Khliph, and
yet never stir from my routine of flat chambers, club and flat I am
wrong. There was one episode out of London, and that perhaps was the
true beginning of my story. Whitsuntide that year came very late, and I
was glad of the fortnight's rest, for Parliament and the law courts had given
me a busy time. I had recently acquired a car and a chauffeur called
Stag, and I looked forward to trying it in tour in the West Country.
But before I left London, I went again to Portman Square. I
found ethel pit Heron in grave distress. You must remember that Tommy and I
had always gone on the hypothesis that Charles's departure had been in pursuance of some
mad scheme of his own which might get him into trouble. We thought that
he had become mixed up with highly undesirable friends and was probably embarking in some
venture which might not be criminal, but was certain to be foolish. I
had long rejected the idea of blackmail, and convinced myself that Lumley and Pavia
were his colleagues. The same general notion, I fancy had been in his
wife's mind. But now she had found something which altered the case. She
had ransacked his papers in the hope of finding a clue to the affair which
had taken him abroad, but there was nothing but business letters, notes of
investments, and such like. He seemed to have burned most of his papers
in the queer laboratory at the back of the house, but stuffed into the
pocket of a blotter on a bureau in the drawing room, where he scarcely
ever wrote. She had found a document. It seemed to be the rough
draft of a letter, and it was addressed to her. I give it
as it was written. The blank spaces were left blank in the manuscript.
You must have thought me mad or worse to treat you as I have done.
But there was a terrible reason which some day I hope to tell you
all about. I want you, as soon as you get this, to
make ready to come out to me at blank. You will travel by blank
and arrive at blank. I enclose a letter which I want you to hand
in deepest confidence to Knowles, a solicitor. He will make all arrangements about
your journey and about sending me the supplies of money I want. Darling,
you must leave as secretly as I did, and tell nobody anything, not
even that I am alive. That least of all, I would not frighten
you for worlds. But I am on the edge of a horrible danger,
which I hope, with God's help and yours, to escape. All obviously
the draft of a letter which he intended to post to her from some foreign
place. But can you conceive a missive more calculated to shatter a woman's nerves?
It filled me, I am bound to say, with heavy disquiet.
Pit Heron was no coward, and he was not the man to make too
much of a risk. Yet it was clear that he had fled that day
in May under the pressure of some mortal fear. The affair, in my
eyes, began to look very bad. Ethel wanted me to go to Scotland
Yard, but I dissuaded her. I had the utmost esteem for Scotland Yard,
but I shrank from publicity at this stage. There might be something in
the case too delicate for the police to handle, and I thought it better
to wait. I reflected a great deal about the pit heron business the first
day or two of my trip, but the air and the swift motion helped
me to forget it. We had a fortnight of superb weather and sailed all
day through a glistening green country under the hazy blue head heavens of June.
Soon I fell into the blissful state of physical and mental ease which such a
life induces. Hard toil, such as deer stalking, keeps the nerves on
the alert and the mind active, but swimming all day in a smooth car
through a heavenly landscape mesmerizes brain and body. We ran up the Thames Valley,
explored the Cotswolds, and turned south through Somerset till we reached the fringes
of Exmoor. I stayed a day or two at a little inn high up
in the moor, and spent the time tramping the endless ridges of hill,
or scrambling in the arbutous thickets where the moor falls and steeps to the sea.
We returned by Dartmoor and the south coast, meeting with our first Rain
and Dorset, and sweeping into sunlight again on Salisbury Plain. The time came
when only two days remained to me. The car had behaved beyond all my
hopes, and stag a somber and silent man, was lyrical in his praises.
I wanted to be in London by the Monday afternoon, and to insure
this I made a long day of it on the Sunday. It was the
long day which brought our pride to a foal. The car had run so
well that I resolved to push on and sleep in a friend's house near Farnhum.
It was about half past eight and we were traversing the somewhat confused and
narrow roads in the neighborhood of Wolmer Forest, when as we turned a sharp
corner we ran full into the tail of a heavy carrier's cart. Stagg clapped
on the brakes, but the collision, though it did no harm to the
cart, was sufficient to send the butt end of something through our glass screen,
damage the tire of the near front wheel, and derange the steering gear.
Neither of us suffered much hurt, but Stag got a long scratch on
his cheek from broken glass, and I had a bruised shoulder. The carrier
was friendly but useless, and there was nothing for it but to arrange for
horses to take the car to Farnham. This meant a job of some hours,
and I found, on inquiry at a neighboring cottage that there was no
inn where I could stay within eight miles. Stag borrowed a bicycle somehow and
went off to collect horses, while I morosely reviewed the alternatives before me.
I did not like the prospect of spending the June night beside my derelict car,
and the thought of my friend's house near Farnham beckoned me seductively. I
might have walked there, but I did not know the road, and I
found that my shoulder was paining me, so I resolved to try to find
some gentlemen's house in the neighborhood where I could borrow a conveyance. The south
of England is now so densely peopled by Londoners that even in a wild district
where there are no inns and few farms, there are certain to be several
week end cottages. I walked along the white ribbon of road in the scented
June dusk. At first it was bounded by high gorse, then came patches
of open heath, and then woods. Beyond the woods, I found a
park railing and presently an entrance gate with a lodge. It seemed to be
the place I was looking for, and I woke the lodge keeper, who
thus early had retired to bed. I asked the name of the owner,
but was told the name of the place instead. It was high ashes.
I asked if the owner was at home, and got a sleepy nod for
answer. The house, as seen in the half light, was a long,
whitewashed cottage, rising to two stories in the center. It was plentifully
covered with creepers and roses, and the odor of flowers was mingled with the
faintest savor of wood. Smoke pleasant to a hungry traveler in the late hours.
I pulled an old fashioned bell and the door was opened by a stolid
young parlor maid. I explained my errand and offered my card. I was,
I said, a member of Parliament and of the bar, who had
suffered a motor accident. Would it be possible for the master of the house
to assist me to get to my destination near Farnham. I was bidden enter,
and wearily seated myself on a settle in the hall. In a few
minutes an ancient housekeeper appeared, a grim dame whom at other times I should
have shunned. She bore, however, a hospitable message. There was no
conveyance in the place, as the car had gone that day to London for
repairs. But if I cared to avail myself of the accommodation of the house
for the night, it was at my service. Meantime my servant could be
looking after the car, and a message would go to him to pick me
up in the morning. I gratefully accepted, for my shoulder was growing troublesome,
and was conducted up a shallow oak staircase to a very pleasant bedroom with
a bathroom adjoining. I had a bath, and afterwards found a variety of
comforts put at my service, from slippers to razors. There was also some
element from my wounded shoulder. Clean and refreshed, I made my way downstairs
and entered a room from which I caught a glow of light. It was
a library, the most attractive I think I have ever seen. The room
was long, as libraries should be, and entirely lined with books, save
over the fireplace, where hung a fine picture which I took to be a
ray burn. The books were in glass cases which showed the beautiful, shallow
moldings of a more artistic age. A table was laid for dinner in a
corner. For the room was immense, and the shaded candlesticks on it,
along with the late June dusk, gave such light as there was. At
first I thought the place was empty, but as I crossed the floor,
a figure rose from a deep chair by the hearth. Good evening, mister
lythan a voice said, it is a kindly mischance which gives a lonely old
man the pleasure of your company. He switched on an electric lamp, and
I saw before me what I had not guessed from the voice an old man.
I was thirty four at the time and counted anything over fifty old,
but I judged my host to be well on in the sixties. He was
about my own size, but a good deal bent in the shoulders, as
if from study. His face was clean shaven and extraordinarily fine, with every
feature delicately chiseled. He had a sort of habsburg mouth and chin very long
and pointed, but mottled with a grace which made the full lower lips seem
entirely right. His hair was silver, brushed so low on the forehead as
to give him a slightly foreign air, and he wore tinted glasses as if
for reading. Altogether, it was a very dignified and agreeable figure who greeted
me in a voice so full and soft that it belied his obvious age.
Dinner was a light meal, but perfect in its way. There were souls,
I remember, an exceedingly well cooked chicken, fresh strawberries, and a
savory We drank a ninety five periegouet and some excellent madera. The stolid parlor
maid waited on us, and as we talked of the weather and the Hampshire
roads. I kept trying to guess my host's profession. He was not a
lawyer, for he had not the inevitable lines on the cheek. I thought
that he might be a retired Oxford Dunn, or one of the higher civil
servants, or perhaps some official of the British Museum. His library proclaimed him
a scholar, and his voice a gentleman. Afterwards, we settled ourselves in
arm chairs, and he gave me a good cigar. We talked about many
things, books, the right furnishing of a library, a little politics,
and deference to my mp ship. My host was apathetic about party questions,
but curious about defense matters, and in his way an amateur strategist. I
could fancy him indicting letters to the Times on national service. Then we wandered
into foreign affairs, where I found his interest acute and his knowledge immense.
Indeed, he was so well informed that I began to suspect that my guesses
had been wrong, and that he was a retired diplomat. At that time,
there was some difficulty between France and Italy over customs duties, and he
sketched for me with remarkable clearness the weak points in the French tariff administration.
I had been recently engaged in a big South American railway case, and I
asked him a question about the property of my clients. He gave me a
much better account than I had ever got from the solicitors who briefed me.
The fire had been lit before we finished dinner, and presently it began to
burn up and light the figure of my host, who sat in a deep
arm chair. He had taken off his tinted glasses, and as I rose
to get a match, I saw his eyes looking abstractedly before him. Somehow
they reminded me of pitt Heron. Charles had always a sort of dancing light
in his a restless intelligence which was at once attractive and disquieting. My host
had this and more. His eyes were paler than I had ever seen in
a human head, pale, bright and curiously wild. But whereas pitt Herons
had only given the impression of reckless youth, this man spoke of wisdom and
power, as well as of endless vitality. All my theories vanished, for
I could not believe that my host had ever followed any profession. If he
had, he would have been at the head of it, and the world
would have been familiar with his features. I began to wonder if my recollection
was not playing me false, and I was in the presence of some great
man whom I ought to recognize. As I dived into the recesses of my
memory, I heard his voice asking if I were not a lawyer. I
told him, yes, a barrister with a fair common law practice and some
work in Privy Council appeals. He asked me why I chose the profession.
It came handiest, I said, I am a dry creature who loves facts
and logic. I am not a flier. I have no new ideas.
I don't want to lead men, and I like work. I am the
ordinary educated Englishman, and my sort gravitates to the bar. We like feeling
that if we are not the builders at any rate, we are the cement
of civilization. He repeated the words cement of civilization in his soft voice,
in a sense, you are right, but civilization needs more than the law
to hold it together. You see, all mankind are not equally willing to
accept as divine justice what is called human law. Of course, there are
further sanctions, I said, police and armies and the good will of civilization.
He caught me up quickly. The last is your true cement. Did
you ever reflect, mister lythan how precarious is the tenure of the civilization we
boast about. I should have thought it fairly substantial, I said, And
the foundations grow daily? Firmer, he laughed. That is the lawyer's view.
But believe me, you are wrong. Reflect and you will find that
the foundations are sand. You think that a wall as solid as the earth
separates civilization from barbarism. I tell you the division is a thread sheet of
glass. A touch here, a push there, and you bring back the
rain of Saturn. It was the kind of paradoxical undergraduate speculation which grown men
indulge in sometimes. After dinner. I looked at my host to discover his
mood, and at the moment a log flared up again. His face was
perfectly serious. His light wild eyes were intently watching me. Take one little
instance, he said. We are a commercial world and have built up a
great system of credit. Without our checks and bills of exchange and currency,
the whole of our life would stop. But credit only exists because behind it
we have a standard of value. My Bank of England notes our worthless paper
unless I can get sovereigns for them if I choose forgive this elementary disquisition.
But the point is important. We have fixed a gold standard because gold is
sufficiently rare, and because it allows itself to be coined into a portable form.
I am aware that there are economists who say that the world could be
run on a pure credit basis, with no metal currency at the back of
it. But however sound their argument may be, in the abstract, the
thing is practically impossible. You would have to convert the whole of the world's
stupidity to their economic faith before it would work. Now, suppose something happened
to make our standard of value useless. Suppose the dream of the alchemists came
true and all metals were readily transmutable. We have got very near it in
recent years, as you will know if you interest yourself in chemical science.
Once gold and silver lost their intrinsic value, the whole edifice of our commerce
would collapse. Credit would become meaningless because it would be untranslatable. We should
be back at a bound in the age of barter, for it is hard
to see what other standard of value could take the place of the precious metals.
All our civilization, with its industries and commerce, would come toppling down
once more, Like primitive man. I would plant cabbages for a living,
and exchange them for services in kind for the cobbler and the butcher. We
should have the simple life with a vengeance, not the self conscious simplicity of
the civilized man, but the compulsory simplicity of the savage. I was not
greatly impressed by the illustration. Of course, there are many key points in
civilization, I said, and the loss of them would bring ruin. But
these keys are strongly held, not so strongly as you think. Consider how
delicate the machine is growing. As life grows more complex, the machinery grows
more intricate and therefore more vulnerable. Your so called sanctions become so infinitely numerous
that each in itself is frail. In the dark ages, you had one
great power, the terror of God in his church. Now you have a
multiplicity of small things, all delicate and fragile, and strong only by our
tacit agreement not to question them. You forget one thing, I said,
the fact that men really are agreed to keep the machine going. That is
what I call the good will of civilization. He got up from his chair
and walked up and down the floor, a curious dusky figure, lit by
the rare spurts of flame from the hearth. You have put your finger on
the one thing that matters civilization is a conspiracy. What value would your police
be if every criminal could find a sanctuary across the channel, or your law
courts if no other tribunal recognized their decisions. Modern life is the silent compact
of comfortable folk to keep up pretenses, and it will succeed till the day
comes when there is another compact to strip them bare. I do not think
that I have ever listened to a stranger conversation. It was not so much
what he said, you will hear the same thing from any group of half
baked young men as the air with which he said it. The room was
almost dark, but the man's personality seemed to take shape and bulk in the
gloom. Though I could scarcely see him, I knew that those pale,
strange eyes were looking at me. I wanted more light, but did not
know where to look for a switch. It was all so eerie and odd,
that I began to wonder if my host were not a little mad.
In any case, I was tired of his speculations. We won't dispute on
the indisputable, I said, But I should have thought that it was the
interest of all the best brains of the world to keep up what you call
the conspiracy. He dropped into his chair again. I wonder, he said,
slowly, do we really get the best brains working on the side of
the compact? Take the business of government? When all is said, we
are ruled by the amateurs in the second rate. The methods of our departments
would bring any private firm to bankruptcy. The methods of parliament, pardon me,
would disgrace any board of directors. Our rulers pretend to buy expert knowledge,
but they never pay the price for it that a business man would pay.
And if they get it, they have not the courage to use it.
Where is the inducement for a man of genius to sell his brains to
our insipid governors? And yet knowledge is the only power now as ever,
a little mechanical device will wreck your navies, a new chemical combination will upset
every rule of war. It is the same with our commerce. One or
two minute changes might sink Britain to the level of Ecuador, or give China
the key of the world's wealth. And yet we never dream that these things
are possible. We think our castles of sand are the ramparts of the universe.
I have never had the gift of the gab, but I admire it
in others. There is a morbid charm in such talk, a kind of
exhilaration of which one is half ashamed. I found myself interested in more than
a little impressed. But surely, I said. The first thing a discoverer
does is to make his discovery public. He wants the honor and glory,
and he wants money for it. It becomes part of the world's knowledge,
and everything is readjusted to meet it. That was what happened with electricity.
You call our civilization a machine, but it is something far more flexible.
It has the power of adaptation of a living organism. Well, that might
be true if the new knowledge really became the world's property. But does it.
I read now and then in the papers that some eminent scientists has made
a great discovery. He reads a paper before some academy of science, and
there are leading articles on it in his photograph adorns the magazines. That kind
of man is not the danger. He is a bit of the machine,
a party to the compact. It is the men who stand outside it that
are to be reckoned, with the artists in discovery, who will never use
their knowledge till they can use it with full effect. Believe me, the
biggest brains are without the ring which we call civilization. Then his voice seemed
to hesitate. You may hear people say that submarines have done away with the
battleship, and that air craft have annulled the mastery of the sea. That
is what our pessimists say. But do you imagine that the clumsy submarine or
the fragile aeroplane is really the last word of science. No doubt they will
develop, I said, But by that time the power of the defense will
have advanced. Also, he shook his head. It is not so.
Even now. The knowledge which makes possible great engines of destruction is far beyond
the capacity of any defense. You see only the productions of second rate folk
who are in a hurry to get wealth and fame. The true knowledge,
that deadly knowledge, is still kept secret. But believe me, my friend,
it is there. He paused for a second, and I saw the
faint outline of the smoke from his cigar against the background of the dark.
Then he quoted me one or two cases, slowly, as if in some
doubt about the wisdom of his words. It was these cases which star.
They were of different kinds, a great calamity, a sudden breach between two
nations, a blight on a vital crop, a war, a pestilence.
I will not repeat them. I do not think I believed in them then,
and now I believe less. But they were horribly impressive, as told
in that quiet voice in that somber room on that dark June night. If
he was right, these things had not been the work of nature or accident,
but of a devilish art. The nameless brains that he spoke of,
working silently in the background now and then showed their power by some cataclysmic revelation.
I did not believe him. But as he put the case, showing
with strange clearness the steps in the game, I had no words to protest.
At last I found my voice what you describe as super anarchy, And
yet it makes no headway. What is the motive of those diabolical brains,
he laughed, How should I be able to tell you? I am a
humble inquirer, and in my research as I come on curious bits of fact,
but I cannot pry into motives. I only know of the existence of
great extra social intelligences. Let us say that they distrust the machine. They
may be idealists and desire to make a new world, or they may simply
be artists, loving for its own sake the pursuit of truth. If I
were to hazard a guess, I should say that it took both types to
bring about results, for the second find the knowledge, and the first the
will to use it. A recollection came back to me. It was of
a hot upland meadow in Tyrol, where, among acres of flowers and beside
a leaping stream, I was breakfasting after a morning spent in climbing the white
crags. I had picked up a German on the way, a small man
of the professor class, who did me the honor to share my sandwiches.
He conversed fluently but quaintly in English, and he was, I remember,
a Nietzschean, and a hot rebel against the established order. The pity,
he cried, is that the reformers do not know, and those who know
are too idle to reform. Some day there will come the marriage of knowledge
and will, and then the world will march. You draw an awful picture,
I said, But if those extra social brains are so potent, why,
after all, do they effect so little. A dull police officer with
the machine behind him can afford to laugh at most experiments. And anarchy,
true, he said, And civilization will win until its enemies learn from it
the importance of the machine. The compact must endure until there is a counter
compact. Consider the ways of that form of foolishness, which today we call
naiolism or anarchy. A few illiterate bandits in a Paris slum defy the world,
and in a week they are in jail. Half a dozen crazy Russian
intellectuals in Geneva conspire to upset the Romanovs and are hunted down by the police
of youth Europe, all the governments, in their not very intelligent police forces,
join hands, and hey, presto, there is an end of the
conspirators. For civilization knows how to use such powers as it has, While
the immense potentiality of the unlicensed is dissipated in vapor. Civilization wins because of
the world wide league. Its enemies fail because they are parochial. But supposing
again, he stopped and rose from his chair. He found a switch and
flooded the room with light. I glanced up, blinking to see my host
smiling down on me, a most benevolent and courteous old gentleman. He had
resumed his tinted glasses. Forgive me, he said, for leaving you in
darkness while I bored you with my gloomy prognostications. A recluse is apt to
forget what is due to a guest. He handed the cigar box to me
and pointed to a table where whiskey and mineral waters had been set out.
I want to hear the end of your prophecies, I said you were saying.
I said, supposing anarchy learn from civilization and became international. Oh.
I don't mean the bands of advertising donkeys who call themselves international unions of workers
and such like rubbish. I mean if the real brain stuff of the world
were internationalized. Suppose that the links in the cordon of civilization were neutralized by
other links in a far more potent chain. The earth is seething with incoherent
power and unorganized intelligence. Have you ever reflected on the case of China.
There you have millions of quick brains stifled in trumpery crafts. They have no
direction, no driving power, so the sum of their efforts is feudile.
And the world laughs at China. Europe throws her a million or two on
loan now and then, and she cynically responds by begging the prayers of Christendom.
And yet I say, supposing it's a horrible idea, I said,
And thank God, I don't believe it possible. Mere destruction is too barren
a creed to inspire a new Napoleon. And you can do with nothing short
of one. It would scarcely be destruction, he replied gently. Let us
call it iconoclasm, the swallowing of formulas, which has always had its full
retinue of idealists. And you do not want a Napoleon. All that is
needed is direction, which could be given by men of far lower gifts than
a Bonaparte. In a word, you want a powerhouse, and then the
age of miracles will begin. I got up for the hour was late and
I had had enough of this view. We talk. My host was smiling,
and I think that smile was the thing I really disliked about him.
It was too what shall I say, superior and olympian. As he led
me into the hole, he apologized for indulging his whims. But you,
as a lawyer, should welcome the idea. If there is an atom of
truth in my fancies, your task is far bigger than you thought. You
were not defending an easy case, but fighting in a contest where the issues
are still doubtful. That should encourage your professional pride. By all the rules,
I should have been sleepy, for it was past midnight and I had
had a long day in the open air. But that wretched talk had unsettled
me, and I could not get my mind off it. I have reproduced,
very crudely the substance of my host's conversation, but no words of mine
could do justice to his eerie persuasiveness. There was a kind of magnetism in
the man, a sense of vast powers and banked up fires, which would
have given weight to the tritis platitudes. I had a horrible feeling that he
was trying to convince me, to fascinate me, to prepare the ground for
some proposal. Again and again I told myself it was crazy, nonsense,
the heated dream of a visionary. But again and again I came back to
some details which had a horrid air of reality. If the man was a
romancer, he had an un common gift of realism. I flung open my
bedroom window and let in the soft air of the June night, and the
scents from leagues of clover and pines and sweet grasses. It momentarily refreshed me,
for I could not believe that this homely and gracious world held such dire
portents. But always that phrase of his, the powerhouse, kept recurring.
You know how twisted your thoughts get during a wakeful night, And long before
I fell asleep towards morning, I had worked myself up into a very complete
dislike of that bland and smiling gentleman my host. Suddenly it occurred to me
that I did not know his name, and that set me off on another
train of reflection. I did not wait to be cold, but rose about
seven dressed and went downstairs. I heard the sound of a car on the
gravel of the drive, and to my delight saw that Stagg had arrived.
I wanted to get away from the house as soon as possible, and I
had no desire to meet its master again in this world. The grim housekeeper
who answered my summons, received my explanation in silence. Breakfast would be ready
in twenty minutes. Eight was mister Lumley's hour for it, Mister Andrew Lumley,
I asked, with a start, mister Andrew Lumley. She said,
so that was my host's name. I sat down at a bureau in the
hall and did a wildly foolish thing. I wrote a letter beginning dear mister
Lumley, thanking him for his kindness in explaining the reason of my early departure.
It was imperative, I said that I should be in London by mid
day. Then I added, I wish I had known who you were last
night, for I think you know an old friend of mine, Charles pitt
Herron. Breakfastless, I joined Stag in the car, and soon we were
swinging down from the uplands to the shallow vale of the way. My thoughts
were very little on my new toy or on the midsummer beauties of Surrey,
the friend of pitt Heron, who knew about his going to Bokhara, was
the maniac who dreamed of the Powerhouse. There were going to be dark scenes
in the drama before it was played out. End of chapter three. Recording
by Expatriot in Bangor, Maine. Chapter four of The Powerhouse by John Buchan.
This Librivok's recording is in the public domain. Recording by Expatriot in Bangor,
Maine, Chapter four. I followed the trail of the super Butler.
My first thought as I journeyed towards London was that I was horribly alone in
this business. Whatever was to be done, I must do it myself.
For the truth was I had no evidence which any authority would recognize. Pitt
Heron was the friend of a strange being who collected objects of art, probably
under an alias, in South London, and had absurd visions of the end
of civilization. That, in cold, black and white was all my story
came to. If I went to the police, they would laugh at me,
and they would be right. Now. I am a sober and practical
person, but slender though my evidence was, it brought to my mind the
most absolute conviction I seemed to know pitt Heron's story as if I had heard
it from his own lips. His first meeting with Lumley, in their growing
friendship, his initiation into secret and forbidden things, the revolt of the decent
man, appolled that his freakishness had led him so far, the realization that
he could not break so easily with his past, and that Lumly held him
in his power. And last, the mad flight under the pressure of overwhelming
terror. I could read too the purpose of that flight. He knew the
Indian frontier as few men know it, and in the wild tangle of the
pomiers he hoped to baffle his enemy. Then from some far refuge he would
send for his wife and spend the rest of his days in exile. It
must have been an omnipotent terror to drive such a man, young, brilliant,
rich successful, to the fate of an absconding felon. But Lumley was
on his trail. So I read the telegram I had picked up on the
floor of the Blackheath House, and my business was to frustrate the pursuit.
Some one must have gone to Bohara, some creature of Lumley's, perhaps the
super butler I had met in the county court. The telegram for I had
noted the date had been received on the twenty seventh day of May. It
was now the fifteenth of June. So if someone had started immediately on its
receipt, in all probability, he would by now be in Bokhara. I
must find out who had gone, and endeavor to warn time. I calculated
that it would have taken him seven or eight days to get from Moscow by
the trans Caspian. Probably he would find pit Heron gone, but inquiries would
set him on the track. I might be able to get in touch with
him through the Russian officials. In any case, if Lumley were stalking pit
Heron, I, unknown and unsuspected, would be stalking Lumley. And then
in a flash I realized my folly. The wretched letter I had written that
morning had given the whole show away. Lumley knew that I was a friend
of pitt Heron, and that I knew that he was a friend of pitt
Heron. If my guess was right, friendship with Lumley was not a thing
Charles was likely to confess to, and he would argue that My knowledge of
it meant that I was in Charles's confidence. I would therefore know of his
disappearance and its cause, and alone in London, would connect it with the
decorous bachelor of the Albany. My letter was a warn to him that he
could not play the game unobserved, and I too would be suspect in his
eyes. It was no good crying over spilt milk in lumly suspicions must be
accepted. But I confess the thought gave me the shivers. The man had
a curious terror for me, a terror I cannot hope to analyze and reproduce
for you. My bald words can give no idea of the magnetic force of
his talk, the sense of brooding and unholy craft. I was proposing to
match my wits against a master's one, too, who must have at his
command an organization far beyond my puny efforts. I have said that my first
feeling was that of loneliness and isolation. My second was one of hopeless insignificance.
It was a boy's mechanical toy arrayed against a powerhouse, with its shining
wheels in monstrous dynamos. My first business was to get into touch with Tommy.
At that time I had a friend in one of the embassies whose acquaintance
I had made on a dry fly stream in Hampshire. I will not tell
you his name, for he has since become a great figure in the world's
diplomacy, and I am by no means certain that the part he played in
this tale was strictly in accordance with official etiquette. I had assisted him on
the legal side in some of the international worries that beset all embassies, and
we had reached the point of intimacy, which is marked by the use of
Christian names and by dining frequently together. Let us call him Monsieur Felix.
He was a grave young man, slightly my senior, learned, discreet and
ambitious, but with an engaging boyishness cropping up now and then under the official
gold lace. It occurred to me that in him I might find an ally.
I reached London about eleven in the morning and went straight to Belgrave Square.
Felix I found in the little library off the Big Secretary's room, a
sun burnt sportsman, fresh from a Norwegian salmon river. I asked him if
he had half an hour to spare, and was told that the day was
at my service. You know Tommy Doulraine, I asked. He nodded,
and Charles pitt Heron, I have heard of him. Well, here is
my trouble. I have reason to believe that Tommy has joined pit Heron in
Bokhara. If he has, my mind will be greatly relieved. For though
I can't tell you the story, I can tell you that pit Heron is
in very considerable danger. Can you help me? Felix reflected That should be
simple enough. I can wire in cipher to the military governor. The police
there are pretty efficient, as you may imagine, and travelers don't come and
go without being remarked. I should be able to give you an answer within
twenty four hours. But I must describe Tommy. How does one do that
in telegraphees? I want you to tell me another thing, I said.
You remember that pitt Heron has some reputation as a Central Asian traveler. Tommy,
as you know, is as mad as a hatter. Suppose these two
fellows at Bokhara wanting to make a long trek into wild country? How would
they go? You've been there and know the lie of the land. Felix
got down a big German atlas, and for half an hour we poured over
it. From Bokhara, he said, the only routes for Madmen ran to
the south, east and north. You got into Siberia, west lay the
trans Caspian Desert. But southward you might go through the Hissar Range by Pomirsky
Post to Gilgit in Kashmere. Or you might follow up the Oxus and enter
the north of Afghanistan. Or you might go by merv into northeastern Persia.
The first, he thought the likeliest route if a man wanted to travel fast.
I asked him to put in his cable a suggestion about watching the Indian
roads, and left him with a promise of earth enlightenment. Then I went
down to the temple, fixed some consultations, and spent a quiet evening in
my rooms. I had a heavy sense of impending disaster, not unnatural in
the circumstances. I really cannot think what it was that held me to the
job, for I don't mind admitting that I felt pretty queasy about it,
partly no doubt, liking for Tommy and Ethel, partly regret for that unfortunate
fellow pitt Heron. Most of all, I think dislike of Lumly that Bland
Superman had fairly stirred my prosaic antipathies. That night, I went carefully over
every item in the evidence to try and decide on my next step. I
had got to find out more about my enemies. Lumly, I was pretty
certain would baffle me, but I thought I might have a better chance with
the super Butler. As it turned out, I hid his trail almost at
once. Next day I was in a case at the Old Bailey. It
was an important prosecution for fraud, and I appeared with two leaders for the
bank concerned. The amazing and almost incredible thing about this story of mine is
the way clues kept rolling in unsolicited, and I was to get another from
this dull prosecution. I suppose that the explanation is that the world is full
of clues to everything, and that if a man's mind is sharp set on
any quest, he happens to notice and take advantage of what otherwise he would
miss. My leaders were both absent the first day, and I had to
examine our witnesses alone. Towards the close of the afternoon, I put a
fellow in the box, an Oldish drink sodden clerk from a Cannon Street bucket
shop. His evidence was valuable for our case, but I was very doubtful
how he would stand across examination as to credit. His name was Routh,
and he spoke with a strong North Country accent. But what caught my attention
was his face. His jaw looked as if it had been made in two
pieces which did not fit, and he had little, bright, protuberant eyes.
At my first glance, I was conscious of a recollection. He was
still in the box when the court rose, and I informed the solicitors that
before going further, I wanted a conference with a witness. I mentioned also
that I should like to see him alone. A few minutes later he was
brought to my chambers and I put one or two obvious questions on the case
till the managing clerk who accompanied him announced, with many excuses, that he
must hurry away. Then I shut the door, gave mister Routh a cigar,
and proceeded to conduct a private inquiry. He was a pathetic, being
only too ready to talk. I learned the squalid details of his continuous misfortunes.
He had been the son of a dissenting minister in Northumberland, and had
drifted through half a dozen occupations till he found his present unsavory billet. Truth
was written low charge on his statement. He had nothing to conceal, for
his foible was folly, not crime, and he had not a rag of
pride to give him reticence. He boasted that he was a gentleman and well
educated too, but he had never had a chance. His brother had advised
him badly. His brother was too clever for a prosaic world. Always through
his reminiscences came this echo of fraternal admiration and complaint. It was about the
brother I wanted to know, and mister Routh was very willing to speak.
Indeed, it was hard to disentangle fact from his copious outpourings. The brother
had been an engineer, and a highly successful one, had dallied with politics
too, and had been a great inventor. He had put mister Routh on
to a South American speculation, where he had made a little money, but
speedily lost it again. Oh, he had been a good brother in his
way, and had often helped him. But he was a busy man,
and his help never went quite far enough. Besides, he did not like
to apply to him too often. I gathered that the brother was not a
person to take liberties with. I asked him what he was doing now,
Ah, said mister Rouve. That is what I wish I could tell you.
I will not conceal from you that for the moment, I am in
considerable financial straits, and this case, though my hands are clean enough,
God knows, will not make life easier for me. My brother is a
mysterious man whose business often takes him abroad. I have never known even his
address, for I write always to a London office from which my communications are
forwarded. I only know that he is in some big electrical business, for
I remember that he once let drop the remark that he was in charge of
some power station. No, I do not think it is in London,
probably somewhere abroad. I heard from him a fortnight ago, and he told
me he was just leaving England for a couple of months. It is very
annoying for I want badly to get into touch with him. Do you know,
mister Routh, I said, I believe I have met your brother.
Is he like you? In any way. We have a strong family resemblance,
but he is taller and slimmer. He has been more prosperous and has
lived a healthier life. You see, do you happen to know? I
asked if he ever uses another name? I don't think that the man I
knew was called Routh. The clerk flushed. I think it highly unlikely that
my brother would use an alias. He has done nothing to disgrace a name
of which we are proud. I told him that my memory had played me
false, and we parted on very good terms. He was an innocent soul,
one of those people that clever rascals get to do their dirty work for
them. But there was no mistaking the resemblance. There without the brains and
force and virility went my super butler of Blackheath, who passed under the name
of Tuke. The clerk had given me the name of the office to whose
address he had written to his brother. I was not surprised to find that
it was that of the firm of stockbrokers for whom I was still acting in
the Arabahd's case, where I had heard Pavia's name. I rang up the
partner whom I knew and told him a very plausible story of having a message
for one of mister Pavia's servants, and asked him if he were in touch
with them and could forward letters. He made me hold the line and then
came back and told me that he had forwarded letters for Tuke, the butler,
and one Routh, who was a groom or footman. Tuke had gone
abroad to join his master, and he did not know his address, but
he advised me to write to the White Lodge. I thanked him and rang
off. That was settled anyhow. Tuke's real name was Routh, and it
was Tuke who had gone to Bokhara. My next step was to ring up
mc gillivray at Scotland Yard and get an appointment. In half an hour's time.
McGillivray had been at the bar I had read in his chambers, and
was now one of the heads of the Criminal Investigation Department. I was about
to ask him for information which he was in no way bound to give me,
but I presumed on our old acquaintance. I asked him first whether he
had ever heard of a secret organization which went under the name of the Powerhouse.
He laughed, out loud at my question. I should think we have
several hundreds of such pet names on our records. He said, everything from
the Lodge of the bold Faced Ravens to Solomon Seal number ten. Fancy nomenclature
is the relaxation of the tired anarchist. In matters very little. The dangerous
fellows have no names, no numbers even which we can get hold of.
But I'll get a man to look up our records. There may be something
filed about your powerhouse. My second question, he answered differently, Routh Routh.
Why, yes, there was a Routh we had dealings with a dozen
years ago when I used to go the Northeastern circuit. He was a trade
union official who bagged the funds, and they couldn't bring him to justice because
of the ridiculous extra legal status they possessed. He knew it and played their
own privileges against them. Oh yes, he was a very complete rogue.
I once saw him at a meeting in Sunderland, and I remember his face,
sneering eyes, diabolically clever mouth and with it all as smug as a
family butler. He has disappeared from England. At least we haven't heard of
him for some years, but I can show you his photograph. Mc gillivray
brought from a lettered cabinet a bundle of cards, selected one and tossed it
towards me. It was that of a man of thirty or so, with
short side whiskers and a drooping mustache. The eyes, the ill fitting jaw,
and the brow were those of my friend mister Tuke, brother and patron
of the sorrowful mister Routh, who had already that afternoon occupied my attention.
Mc gillivray promised to make certain inquiries, and I walked home in a state
of elation. Now I knew for certain who had gone to Bokhara, and
I knew something too, of the traveler's past. A discredited genius was the
very man for Lumley's schemes, one who asked for nothing better than to use
his brains outside the ring fence of convention. Somewhere in the waste of Turkestan,
the ex trade union official was in search of pit Heron. I did
not fancy that mister Tuke would be very squeamish. I dined at the club
and left early, going home. I had an impression that I was being
shadowed. You know, the feeling that someone is watching you, a sort
of sensation which the mind receives without actual evidence. If the watcher is behind
where you can't see him, you have a cold feeling between your shoulders.
I dare say it is a legacy from the days when the caveman had to
look pretty sharp to keep from getting his enemy's knife between the ribs. It
was a bright summer evening, and Piccadilly had its usual crowd of motor cars
and buses and foot passengers. I halted twice, once in Saint James's Street
and once at the corner of Stratton Street, and retraced my steps for a
bit, and each time I had them pcression that someone a hundred yards or
so off had done the same. My instinct was to turn round and face
him, whoever he was, but I saw that that was foolishness. Obviously,
in such a crowd, I could get no certainty in the matter,
so I put it out of my mind. I spent the rest of the
evening in my rooms, reading cases and trying to keep my thoughts off Central
Asia. About ten I was wrung up on the telephone by Felix. He
had had his answer from Bokhara. Pitt Heron had left with a small caravan
on June second by the main road through the Hissar Range. Tommy had arrived
on June tenth, and on the twelfth had set off with two servants on
the same trail, traveling the lighter of the two. He should have overtaken
pitt Heron by the fifteenth at latest. That was yesterday, and my mind
was immensely relieved. Tommy in such a situation was a tower of strength,
for whatever his failings in politics. I knew no one and I would rather
have with me to go tiger shooting. Next day, the sense of espionage
increased. I was in the habit of walking down to the Temple by way
of Pall Mall and the Embankment, but as I did not happen to be
in court that morning, I resolved to make a detour and test my suspicions.
There seemed to be nobody in down street as I emerged from my flat,
but I had not walked five yards before turning back. I saw a
man enter from the Piccadilly end, while another moved across the Hertford Street opening.
It may have been only my imagination, but I was convinced that these
were my watchers. I walked up Park Lane, for it seemed to me
that by taking the tube at the Marble Arch station I could bring matters to
the proof. I have a knack of observing small, irrelevant details, and
I happened to have noticed that a certain carriage in the train which left Marble
Arch about nine thirty stopped exactly opposite the exit at the Chancery Lane station,
and by hurrying up the passage, one could just catch the lift, which
served an earlier train, and so reached the street before any of the other
travelers. I performed this maneuver with success, caught the early lift, reached
the street, and took cover behind a pillar box, from which I could
watch the exit of passengers from the stairs. I judged that my tracker,
if he missed me below, would run up the stairs rather than wait for
the lift. Sure Enough, a breathless gentleman appeared, who scanned the street
eagerly and then turned to the lift to watch the emerging passengers. It was
clear that the espionage was no figment of my brain. I walked slowly to
my chambers and got through the day's work as best I could, for my
mind was preoccupied with the unpleasant business in which I found myself entangled. I
would have given a year's income to be honestly quit of it, but there
seemed to be no way of escape. The maddening thing was that I could
do so little. There was no chance of forgetting anxiety in strenuous work.
I could only wait with the patience at my command, and hope for the
one chance in a thousand which I might seize. I felt miserably that it
was no gain for me. I had never been brought up to harry wild
beasts and risked my neck twice a day at polo. Like Tommy de Lorraine,
I was a peaceful, sedentary man, a lover of a quiet life,
with no appetite for perils and commotions. But I was beginning to realize
that I was very obstinate. At four o'clock I left the temple and walked
to the embassy. I had resolved to banish the espionage from my mind,
for that was the least of my difficulties. Felix gave me an hour of
his valuable time. It was something that Tommy had joined pitt Heron, but
there were other matters to be arranged in that far country. The time had
come, in my opinion, to tell him the whole story. The telling
was a huge relief to my mind. He did not laugh at me,
as I had half feared, but took the whole thing as as gravely as
possible. In his profession. I fancy he had found too many certainties behind
suspicions to treat anything as trivial. The next step, he said, was
to warn the Russian police of the presence of the man called Saranov and the
super butler. Happily we had materials for the description of tuk or Routh,
and I could not believe that such a figure would be hard to trace.
Felix cabled again in cipher, asking that the two should be watched more,
especially if there was reason to believe that they had followed Tommy's route. Once
more, we got out the big map and discussed the possible ways. It
seemed to me a land created by providence for surprises. For the roads followed
the valleys, and to the man who traveled light, there must be many
short cuts through the hills. I left the embassy before six o'clock, and,
crossing the square, engrossed with my own thoughts, ran full into Lumley.
I hope I played my part well, though I could not repress a
start of surprise. He wore a gray morning coat and a white top hat
and looked the image of benevolent respectability. Ah, mister Lyithn, he said,
we meet again. I murmured something about my regrets at my early departure
three days ago, and added the feeble joke that I wished he would hurry
on his twilight of civilization, for the burden of it was becoming too much
for me. He looked me in the eyes with all the friendliness in the
world. So you have not forgotten our evening's talk. You owe me something,
my friend, for giving you a new interest in your profession. I
owe you much, I said, for your hospitality, your advice, and
your warnings. He was wearing his tinted glasses and peered quizzically into my face.
I am going to make a call in Grosvenor place, he said,
and shall beg in return the pleasure of your company. So you know,
my young friend pitt heron with an ingenuous countenance, I explained, that he
had been at Oxford with me, and that we had common friends. A
brilliant young man said Lumly like you. He has occasionally cheered an old man's
solitude, and he has spoken of me to you. Yes, I said,
lying stoutly. He used to tell me about your collections. If Lumley
knew Charles Well, he would find me out, for the latter would not
have crossed the road for all the treasures of the louver. Ah. Yes,
I have picked up a few things, if ever you should care to
see them. I should be honored you are a connoisseur of a sort.
You interest me, for I should have thought your taste lay in other directions
than the dead things of art. Pit Heron is no collector. He loves
life better than art, as a young man should. A great traveler.
Our friend, the Lawrence Oliphant or Richard Burton of our day, we stopped
at a house in Grosvenor Place, and he relinquished my arm. Mister lythan
he said a word from one who wishes you no ill. You are a
friend of pitt Heron, but where he goes you cannot follow. Take my
advice and keep out of his affairs. You will do no good to him,
and you may bring yourself into serious danger. You are a man of
sense, a practical man. So I speak to you frankly, but remember
I do not warn. Twice he took off his glasses, and his light
wild eyes looked me straight in the face. All benevolence had gone, and
something implacable and deadly burned in them. Before I could say a word in
reply, he shuffled up the steps of the house and was gone. End
of chapter four. Recording by expatriate in Bangor, Maine. Chapter five of
The Powerhouse by John Buchan. The Slebrivat's recording is in the public domain.
Recording by Expatriot in Bangor, Maine, Chapter five. I take a partner
That meeting with Lumley scared me badly, but it also clinched my resolution.
The most pacific fellow on earth can be gingered into pugnacity. I had now
more than my friendship for Tommy and my sympathy with pet Heron to urge me
on. A man had tried to bully me, and that roused all the
worst stubbornness of my soul. I was determined to see the game through at
any cost. But I must have an ally if my nerves were to hold
out. And my mind turned at once to Tommy's friend Chapman, I thought
with comfort of the bluff independence of the labor member. So that night at
the house I hunted him out in the smoking room. He had been having
a row with the young bloods of my party that afternoon and received me ungraciously.
I'm about sick of you, fellows, he growled. I shall not
attempt to reproduce Chapman's accent. He spoke rich Yorkshire with a touch of the
droll of the western Dales. They went and spoiled the best speech, though
I say it as shouldn't, which this old place has heard for a twelve
month. I've been working for days at it. In the library, I
was telling them how much more bread cost under protection, and the jew Hilderstein
started a laugh because I said kilometers for kilograms. It was just a slip
of the tongue, for I had it write in my notes, And besides,
there foreign words don't matter a curse. Then that young lord assists for
East Claygate gets up and goes out as I was getting into my puration,
and he drops his topper and knocks off Old Higgins's spectacles, and all the
idiots laughed. After that, I gave it them hot and strong and get
cold to order, and then waddles him as used to be as good as
socialist as me replied for the government and his blamed board, and said that
the board thought this, and the board thought that, and was damned if
the board would stir its stumps. Well, I mind the day when I
was hanging onto the board's coat tails in Hyde Park to keep it from talking
treason. Took me a long time to get Chapman settled down and anchored to
a drink. I want you, I said, to tell me about Routh.
You know the fellow I mean, the ex union leader. At that
he fairly blazed up. There you are, you Tories, he shouted,
causing a pale Liberal member on the next sofa to make a hurried exit.
You can't fight fair. You hate the unions, and you rake up any
rotten old prejudice to discredit them. You can find out about Roud for yourself,
for I'm damned if I help you. I saw I could do nothing
with Chapman unless I made a clean breast of it. So for the second
time that day I told the whole story. I couldn't have wished for a
better audience. He got wildly excited before I was half through with it.
No doubt of the correctness of my evidence ever entered his head. For like
most of his party, he hated anarchism worse than capitalism, and the notion
of a highly capitalized, highly scientific, highly undemocratic anarchism fairly revolted his soul.
Nights. He adored Tommy de Lorraine Round, he told me, had
been a young engineer of a superior type, with a job in a big
shop at Sheffield's. He had professed advanced political views, and although he had
strictly no business to be there, had taken a large part in trade union
work, and was treasurer of one big branch. Chapman had met him often
at conferences and on platforms, and had been impressed by the fertility and ingenuity
of his mind and the boldness of his purpose. He was the leader of
the left wing of the movement, and had that gift of half scientific,
half philosophic jargon which is dear at all times to the hearts of the half
baked. A seat in Parliament had been repeatedly offered him, but he had
always declined. Wisely, Chapman thought, for he judged him the type which
is more effective behind the scenes. But with all his ability, he had
not been popular. He was a cold blooded, sneering devil. As Chapman
put it to Parnell. He tyrannized over his followers, and he was the
rudest brute I ever met. Then followed the catastrophe in which it became apparent
that he had speculated with the funds of his union and had lost a large
sum. Chapman, however, was suspicious of these losses, and was inclined
to suspect that he had the money all the time in a safe place.
A year or two earlier, the unions, greatly to the disgust of old
fashioned folk, had been given certain extra legal privileges, and this man Routh
had been one of the chief advocates of the union's claims. Now he had
the cool effrontry to turn the tables on them and use those very privileges to
justify his action and escape prosecution. There was nothing to be done. Some
of the fellows, said Chapman, swore to wring his neck but he did
not give them the chance. He had disappeared from England and was generally believed
to be living in some foreign capital. What I would give to be even
with the swine, cried my friend, clenching and unclenching his big fist.
But we're up against no small thing. In Josiah Routh, there isn't a
crime on earth he'd stick at, and he's as clever as the old devil
his master. If that's how you feel, I can trust you to back
me up, I said, And the first thing I want you to do
is to come and stay at my flat. God knows what may happen next.
And two men are better than one, I tell you frankly, I'm
nervous and I would like to have you with me. Chapman had no objection.
I accompanied him to his Bloomsbury lodgings, where he packed a bag,
and we returned to the down street flat. The sight of his burly figure
and sagacious face was a relief to me in the mysterious darkness where I now
found myself walking. Thus began my housekeeping with Chapman, one of the queerest
episodes in my life. He was the best fellow in the world. But
I found that I had misjudged his character. To see him in the house,
she would have thought him a piece of ran it with his Yorkshire bluntness
and hard, downright North Country sense. He had all that somewhere inside him.
But he was also as romantic as a boy. The new situation delighted
him. He was quite clear that it was another case of the strife between
capital and labor, Tommy and I standing for labor. Though he used to
refer to Tommy in public as a gilded popinjay, and only a month before
had described me in the house as a viprous lackey of capitalism. It was
the best kind of strife in which you had not to meet your adversary with
long winded speeches, but might any moment get a chance to pummel him with
your fists. He made me ache with laughter. The spying business used to
rouse him to fury. I don't think he was tracked as I was,
but he chose to fancy he was, and was guilty of assault and battery
on one butcher's boy, two cabbys, and a gentleman who turned out to
be a bookmaker's assistant. This side of him got to be an infernal nuisance,
and I had many rose with him. Among other things, he chose
to suspect my man Waters of treachery, Waters, who was the son of
a gardener at home and hadn't wits enough to put up an umbrella when it
rained, you're not taking this business rightly. He maintained, one night,
what's the good of waiting for these devils to down you. Let's go out
and down them. And he announced his intention, from which no words of
mine could dissuade him of keeping watch on mister Andrew Lumley at the Albany.
His resolution led to a complete disregard of his parliamentary duties. Deputations of constituents
waited for him in vain. Of course, he never got a sight of
Lumley. All that happened was that he was very nearly given in charge more
than once for molesting peaceable citizens in the neighborhood of Piccadilly and Regent Street.
One night, on my way home from the Temple, I saw in the
bills of the evening papers the announcement of the arrest of a labor member.
It was Chapman, sure enough, at first feared that he had got himself
into serious trouble, and was much relieved to find him in the flat in
a state of blazing anger. It seemed that he had found somebody whom he
thought was lumly, for he only knew him from my descriptions. The man
was in a shop in German Street with a car waiting outside, and Chapman
had, politely, as he swore, asked the chauffeur his master's name.
The chauffeur had replied abusively, upon which Chapman had hailed him from the driver's
seat and shaken him till his teeth rattled. The owner came out and Chapman
was arrested and taken off to the nearest police court. He had been compelled
to apologize and had been fined five pounds in costs. By the mercy of
heaven. The chauffeur's master was a money lender of evil repute, so the
affair did Chapman no harm, but I was forced to talk to him seriously.
I knew it was no use explaining that for him to spy on the
powerhouse was like an elephant stalking the gazelle. The only way was to appeal
to his incurable romanticism, don't you see? I told him that you are
playing Lumley's game. He will trap you sooner or later into some escapade which
will lend you in jail. And where will I be? Then? That
is what he and his friends are out for. We've got to meet cunning
with cunning, and lie low till we get our chance. He allowed himself
to be convinced and handed over to me the pistol he had bought, which
had been the terror of my life. All right, he said, I'll
keep quiet, but you promised to let me into the big scrap when it
comes off, I promised. Chapman's notion of the Grand Finale was a Homeric
combat in which he would get his fill of fisticuffs. He was in anxiety,
but all the same he was an enormous comfort. His imperturbable cheerfulness and
his racy talk were the tonics I wanted. He had plenty of wisdom too.
My nurves were getting bad those days, and whereas I had rarely touched
the things before, I now found myself smoking cigarettes from morning till night.
I am pretty abstemious, as you know, but I discovered to my horror
that I was drinking far too many whiskys and sodas. Chapman knocked me off
all that and got me back to a pipe in a modest nightcap. He
did more, for he undertook to put me in training. His notion was
that we should win in the inn by superior muscles. He was a square,
thick set fellow who had been a good middleweight boxer. I could box
a bit myself, but I improved mightily under his tuition. We got some
gloves and used to hammer each other for half an hour every morning. Then
might have been seen the shameful spectacle of a rising barrister with a swollen lip
and a black eye, arguing in court, and proceeding of an evening to
his country's legislature, where he was confronted from the opposite benches by the sight
of a leader of the people in the same vulgar condition. In those days,
I wanted all the relief I could get, for it was a beastly
time. I knew I was in grave danger. So I made my will
and went through the other doleful performances consequent on the expectation of a speedy decease.
You see I had nothing to grip on, no clear job to tackle,
only to wait on the off chance. With an atmosphere of suspicion thickening
around me. The spying went on. There was no mistake about that,
but I soon ceased to mind it. Though I did my best to give
my watchers little satisfaction. There was a hint of bullying about the spying.
It is disconcerting at night to have a man bump against you and look you
greedily in the face. I did not go again to Scotland Yard, but
one night I ran across McGillivray in the club. He had something of profound
interest to tell me. I had asked about the phrase the powerhouse. Well,
he had come across it in the letter of a German friend, a
private letter in which the writer gave the results of his inquiries into a curious
affair which a year before had excited Europe. I had forgotten the details,
but it had something to do with the slav States of Austria and an Italian
students' union, and it threatened at one time to be dangerous. Mcgilivray's correspondent
said that in some documents which were seized he found constant allusion to a thing
called the craft house, evidently the headquarters staff of the plot, and the
same word craft house had appeared elsewhere in a sonnet of a poet anarchist who
shot himselves in the slums of Antwerp, in the last ravings of more than
one criminal, in the extraordinary testament of Professor M of Jena, who,
at the age of thirty seven took his life after writing a strange mystical message
to his fellow citizens. McGillivray's correspondent concluded by saying that, in his opinion,
if this craft house could be found, the key would be discovered to
the most dangerous secret organization in the world. He added that he had some
reason to believe that the motive power of the concern was English. McGillivray,
I said me for some time, and I fancy you think me a sober
and discreet person. Well, I believe I am on the edge of discovering
the secret of your craft house. I want you to promise me that if
in the next week I send you an urgent message, you will act on
it. However fantastic it seems, I can't tell you more. I ask
you to take me on trust and believe that for anything I do, I
have tremendous reasons. He knit his shaggy gray eyebrows and looked curiously at me.
Yes, I'll go bail for your sanity. It's a good deal to
promise. But if you make an appeal to me, I will see that
it is met. Next day I had news from Felix Tuke, and the
man called Sarronov had been identified. If you are making inquiries about anybody,
it is fairly easy to find those who are seeking for the same person.
And the Russian police in tracking Tommy and pitt Heron had easily come on the
two gentlemen who were following the same trial. The two had gone by Samarkand,
evidently intending to strike into the hills by a shorter route than the main
road from Bokhara. The frontier posts had been worn and the stalkers had become
the stalked. That was one solid achievement. At any rate. I had
saved pitt Heron from the worst danger. For first I had sent him Tommy,
and now I had put the police on guard against his enemies. I
had not the slightest doubt that enemies they were Charles knew too much, and
Tuke was the man appointed to reason with him, to bring him back if
possible, or if not. As Chapman had said, the ex union leader
was not the man to stick at trifles. It was a broiling June.
The London season was at its height, and I had never been so busy
in the courts before. But that crowded and garish world was little more than
a dream to me. I went through my daily tasks, dined out,
went to the play, had consultations, talked to my fellows, but all
the while I had the feeling that I was watching somebody else perform the same
function. I believe I did my work well, and I know I was
twice complimented by the Court of Appeal, but my real interests were far away.
Always I saw two men in the hot glens of the Oxus, with
the fine dust of the loose rising in yellow clouds behind them. One of
these men had a drawn and anxious face, and both rode hard. They
passed by the closes of apricot and cherry and the green watered gardens, and
soon the oxes ceased to flow wide among rushes and water lilies and became a
turbid hill stream. By and by the roadside changed, and the horses of
the travelers trod on mountain turf, crushing the irises and marigolds. In time,
I could feel the free air blowing from the roof of the world,
and see far ahead the snowy saddle of the pass which led to India.
Far behind the riders, I saw two others, and they chose a different
way, now over waterless plateau, now in rugged nullahs. They rode the
faster, and their route was the shorter. Sooner or later they must catch
up the first riders. And I knew, though how I could not tell
that death would attend the meeting. I and only I, sitting in London,
four thousand miles away, could prevent disaster. The dream haunted me at
night, and often, walking in the strand or sitting at a dinner table,
I have found my eyes fixed clearly on the shining upland, with the
thin white mountains at the back of it, and the four dots, which
were men hurrying fast on their business. One night I met Lumly. It
was at a big political dinner given by the chief of my party in the
House of Lords, fifty or sixty guests and a blaze of stars and decorations.
I sat near the bottom of the table and he was near the top,
sitting between a famous general and an ex viceroy of India. I asked
my right hand neighbor who he was, but he could not tell me.
The same question to my left hand neighbor brought an answer. It is old
Lumly. If you never met him. He doesn't go out much, but
he gives a man's dinner now and then, which are the best in London.
No, he's not a politician, though he favors our side, and
I expect has given a lot to our funds. I can't think why they
don't make him appear. He's enormously rich, and very generous, and the
most learned old fellow in Britain. My chief, my neighbor, was an
under secretary, knows him and told me once that if he wanted any out
of the way bit of knowledge, you could get it by asking Lumly.
I expect he pulls the strings more than anybody living, but he scarcely ever
goes out. And it's a feather in our host's cap to have got him
tonight. You never see his name in the papers either. He probably pays
the press to keep him out, like some of those millionaire fellows in America.
I watched him through dinner. He was the center of the talk at
his end of the table. I could see the blue ribbon bulging out on
Lord more Cam's breast as he leaned forward to question him. He was wearing
some foreign orders, including the Legion of Honor, and I could hear,
in the pause of conversation echoes of his soft, rich voice. I could
see him beaming through his glasses on his neighbors, and now and then he
would take them off and look mildly at a speaker. I wondered why nobody
realized as I did, what was in his light wild eyes. The dinner
I believed was excellent, and the company was good, but down at my
end, I could eat little, and I did not want to talk.
Here in this pleasant room, with servants moving softly about, and a mellow
light on the silver from the shaded candles, I felt the man was buttressed
and defended beyond my reach. A kind of despairing hatred gripped me when I
looked his way, For I was always conscious of that other picture the Asian
desert, pitt Heron's hunted face, and the grim figure of tuk on his
trail. That and the great secret wheels of what was too inhuman and to
be called crime, moving throughout the globe under this man's hand. There was
a party afterwards, but I did not stay no more did lumly, and
for a second I brushed against him in the hall at the foot of the
big staircase. He smiled on me affectionately. Have you been dining here?
I did not notice you. You had better things to think of, I
said, By the way, you gave me good advice some weeks ago.
It may interest you to hear that I have taken it. I am so
glad, he said softly. You are a very discreet young man. But
his eyes told me that he knew I lied. End of chapter five.
Recording by Expatriot in Bangor, Maine. Chapter six of the Powerhouse by John
Buchan. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Expatriot in
Bangor, Maine, Chapter six, The Restaurant in Antioch Street. I was
working late at the temple next day, and it was nearly seven before I
got up to go home. Mc gillivray had telephoned me in the afternoon saying
he wanted to see me and suggesting dinner at the club, and I had
told him I should come straight there from my chambers, But just after six
he had rung me up again and proposed another meeting place. I've got some
very important news for you and want to be quiet. There's a little place
where I sometimes dine, Rappaccini's and Antioch Street. I meet you there at
half past seven. I agreed, and sent a message to Chapman at the
flat, telling him I would be out to dinner. It was a Wednesday
night, so the house rose early. He asked me where I was dining,
and I told him, but I did not mention with whom. His
voice sounded very cross, for he hated a lonely meal. It was a
hot, still night, and I had had a heavy day in so heavy
that my private anxieties had almost slipped from my mind. I walked along the
embankment and up Regent Street towards Oxford's Circus. Antioch Street, as I had
learned from the directory, was in the area between Langham Place and Tottenham Court
Road. I wondered vaguely why McGillivray should have chosen such an out of the
way spot, but I knew him for a man of many whims. The
street, when I found it, turned out to be a respectable little place,
boarding houses and architect's offices, with a few antiquity shops and a picture
cleaners. The restaurant took some finding, for it was one of those discreet
establishments common enough in France, where no edibles are displayed in the British fashion,
and muslin half curtains decked the windows. Only the door, mat lettered
with the proprietor's name, remained to guide the hungry. I gave a waiter
my hat and stick, and was ushered into a garish dining room apparently full
of people. A single violinist was discoursing music from beside the grill. The
occupants were not quite the kind one expects to find in an eating house in
a side street. The men were all in evening dress with white waistcoats,
and the women looked either demi mondenz or those who followed their taste in clothes.
Various eyes looked curiously at me as I entered. I guessed that the
restaurant had by one of those odd freaks of Londoners become for a moment the
fashion. The proprietor met me half way up the room. He might call
himself Rappaccini, but he was obviously a German. Mister Gilvray, He nodded,
he has engaged a private room. Will you follow, sir? A
narrow stairway broke into the wall on the left side of the dining room.
I followed the manager up it and along as short corridor to a door which
filled its end. He ushered me into a brightly lit little room, where
a table was laid for two. Mister Gilvry, comes off in here,
said the manager. If you'll be late, sometimes everything is ready, sir.
I hope you'll be pleased. It looked inviting enough, but the air
smelt stuffy. Then I saw that, though the night was warm, the
window was shut and the curtains drawn. I pulled back the curtains, and
to my surprise saw that the shutters were closed. You must open these,
I said, or will stifle The manager glanced at the window. I'll send
a vator, he said, and departed. The door seemed to shut with
an odd click. I flung myself down in one of the arm chairs,
for I was feeling pretty tired. The little table beckoned alluringly, for I
was also hungry. I remember there was a mass of pink roses on it.
A bottle of champagne with a cork loose stood in a wine cooler on
the sideboard, and there was an unopened bottle beside it. It seemed to
me that Micgilivray, when he dined here, did himself rather well. The
promised waiter did not arrive, and the stuffyess was making me very thirsty.
I looked for a bell, but could not see one. My watch told
me it was now a quarter to eight, but there was no sign in
mc gillivray. I poured myself out a glass of champagne from the open bottle
and was just about to drink it when my eye caught something in a corner
of the room. It was one of those little mid Victorian corner tables I
believe they call them what nots, which you will find in any boarding house,
littered up with photographs and coral and presents from Brighton. On this one
stood a photograph in a shabby frame, and I thought I recognized it.
I crossed the room and picked it up. It showed a man of thirty
with short side whiskers, an ill fitting jaw, and a drooping mustache.
The duplicate of it was in mcgilivrey's cabinet. It was mister Routh, the
ex union leader. There was nothing very remarkable about that, after all,
but it gave me a nasty shock. The room, now seen the Sinister
Place as well, is intolerably close. There was still no sign of the
waiter to open the window, so I thought I would wait for mcguilivrey downstairs.
But the door would not open, the handle would not turn. It
did not seem to be locked, but rather to have shut with some kind
of patent spring. I noticed that the whole thing was a powerful piece of
oak with a heavy framework, very unlike the usual flimsy restaurant doors. My
first instinct was to make a deuce of a row and attract the attention of
the diners below. I own I was beginning to feel badly frightened. Clearly
I had gotten too some sort of trap. Mcguilivray's invitation might have been a
hoax, for it is not difficult to counterfeit a man's voice on the telephone.
With an effort, I forced myself into calmness. It was preposterous to
think that anything could happen to me in a room not thirty feet from where
a score or two of ordinary citizens were dining. I had only to raise
my voice to bring inquirers. Yes, but above all things I did not
want to row. It would never do for a rising lawyer and a member
of Parliament to be found shouting for help in an upper chamber of a Bloomsbury
restaurant. The worst deduction would be drawn from the open bottle of champagne.
Besides, it might be all right. After all, the door might have
got stuck. Mc Guilivray at that very moment might be on his way up.
So I sat down and waited. Then I remembered my thirst and stretched
out my hand to the glass of champagne. But at that instant I looked
towards the window and set down the wine untasted. It was a very odd
window. The lower end was about flushed with the floor, and the hinges
of the shutters seemed to be only on one side. As I stared,
I began to wonder whether it was a window at all. Next moment my
doubts were sold. The window swung open like a door, and in the
dark cavity stood a man. Strangely enough, I knew him. The figure
was not one that is readily forgotten. Good evening, mister Docker, I
said, will you have a glass of champagne. A year before, on
the Southeastern Circuit, I had appeared for the defense in a burglary case.
Criminal law was not my province, but now and then I took a case
to keep my hand in, for it is the best training in the world
for the handling of witnesses. This case had been peculiar. A certain Bill
Docker was the accused, a gentleman who bore a bad reputation in the eyes
of the police. The evidence against him was strong, but it was more
or less tainted, being chiefly that of two former accomplices, a proof that
there is small truth in the proverbial honor among thieves. It was an ugly
business, and my sympathies were with the accused, for though he may very
well have been guilty, yet he had been the victim of a shabby trick.
Anyhow, I put my back into the case, and after a hard
struggle got a verdict of not guilty. Mister Docker had been kind enough to
express his appreciation of my efforts, and to ask in a hoarse whisper,
how I had squared the old bird, meaning the judge he did not understand
the subtleties of the English law of evidence. He shambled into the room,
a huge, hulking figure of a man, with a thickness of chest,
which, under happier circumstances might have made him a terror in the prize ring.
His features wore a heavy scowl which slowly cleared to a flicker of recognition.
By God, it's the lawyer chap, he muttered. I pointed to
the glass of Champagne. I don't mind if I do. He said,
here's health. He swallowed the wine at a gulp and wiped his mouth on
his sleeve. Have a drop yourself, governor, he added, a glass
of bubbly. Will cheer you up well, mister Docker, I said,
I hope I see you fit. I was getting wonderfully collected now that the
suspense was over. Pretty fair, sir, pretty fair, able to do
my day's work like an honest man. And what brings you here? A
little job I'm on. Some friends of mine wants you out of the road
for a bit, and they've sent me to fetch you. It's a bit
of luck for you that you've struck a pal. We needn't have no unpleasantness,
seeing we're both what you might call men of the world. I appreciate
the compliment, I said, But where do you propose to take me?
Dunno, it's some lay near the docks. I've got a motor car waitin
at the back of the house. But supposing I don't want to go my
orders admit no excuse, he said solemnly. You're a sensible chap and can
see that in a scrap I could down you easy, very likely, I
said, But man, you must be mad to talk like that. Downstairs
there is a dining room full of people. I have only to lift my
voice to bring the police. You're a kid, he said scornfully. Them
geezers downstairs are all in the job. That was a flat catching rig to
get you up here, so as you wouldn't suspect nothing. If you was
to go down now, which you ain't going to be allowed to do,
you wouldn't find a blame soul in the place. I must say, you're
a bit softer than I hoped, after the handsome way you talked over the
old juggins with a wig at Maidstone, mister Docker took the bottle from the
wine cooler and filled himself another glass. It sounded horribly convincing. If I
was to be kidnapped and smuggled away, Lumley would have scored half a success,
not the whole. For as I swiftly reflected, I had put Felix
on the track of tuc and there was every chance that Tommy and pitt Heron
would be saved. But for myself it looked pretty black. The more my
scheme succeeded, the more likely the powerhouse would be to wreak its vengeance on
me. Once I was spirited from the open air world into his dark labyrinths,
I made a great effort to keep my voice even and calm. Mister
Docker, I said, I once did you a good turn, but for
me, you might be doing time now instead of drinking champagne like a gentleman.
Your pals played you a pretty low trick, and that was why I
stuck out for you. I didn't think you were the kind of man to
forget a friend. No more, I am, said he. The man
who says Bill Docker would go back on a pal is a liar. Well,
here's your chance to pay your debts. The men who employ you are
my deadly enemies and want to do me in. I'm not a match for
you. You're a stronger fellow and can drag me off and hand me over
to them. But if you do, I'm done with. Make no mistake
about that. I put it to you as a decent fellow. Are you
going to go back on the man who has been a good friend to you?
He shifted from one foot to another, with his eyes on the ceiling.
He was obviously in difficulties. Then he tried another glass of Champagne.
I dursn't, Governor, I dursn't let you go. Then I work for
would cut my throat as soon as look at me. Besides, it ain't
no good if I was to go off and leave you, There'd be plenty
more in this house as we'd do the job. You're up against it,
Governor. But take a sensible view and come with me. They don't mean
you no real harm. I'll take my Bible oath on it, only to
keep you qu light for a bit, but you've run across one of their
games. They won't do, you know her if you speak em fair,
be a sport and take it smiling like you're afraid of them. I said,
yes, I'm afraid, black afraid. So would you be if you
knew the gents. I'd rather take on the whole rat Lane crowd. You
know them as I mean, on a Saturday night when they're out for business,
than go back to my gents and say as how I had shirked the
job. He shivered. Good lord, they'd freeze the heart out of a
bull pup. You're afraid, I said, slowly. So you're going to
give me up to the men you're afraid of, to do as they like
with me. I never expected it of you, Bill, I thought you
were the kind of lad who would send any gang to the devil before you'd
go back on a pal. Don't say that, he said, almost plaintively.
You don't half know the hole I'm in. His eyes seemed to be
wandering, and he yawned deeply. Just then a great noise began below.
I heard a voice speaking, a loud peremptory voice. Then my name was
schey, life'n life'n are you there? There could be no mistaking that broad
Yorkshire tongue. By some miracle, Chapman had followed me and was raising cane
downstairs. My heart leaped with a sudden revelation. I'm here, I yelled
up stairs, Come up and let me out. Then I turned with a
smile of triumph to Bill. My friends have come. I said, you're
too late for the job. Get back and tell your master's that. He
was swaying on his feet, and he suddenly lurched towards me. You come
along, By god, you think you've done me. I'll let you see.
His voice was growing thick, and he stopped short. What the hell's
wrong with me, he gasped, and going all queer. I he was
like a man far gone in liquor, But three glasses of champagne would never
have touched a head like Bill's. I saw what was up with him.
He was not drunk, but drugged. They've doped the wine, I cried.
They put it there for me to drink it and go to sleep.
There is always something which is the last straw to any man. You may
insult and outrage him, and he will bear it patiently, but touch the
quicken his temper and he will turn. Apparently, for Bill, drugging was
the unforgivable sin. His eye lost for a moment its confusion. He squared
his shoulders and roared like a bull. Doped by God. He cried,
who done it? The men who shut me in this room? Burst that
door, and you will find them. He turned a blazing face on the
locked door and hurled his huge weight on it. It cracked and bent,
but the lock and hinges held. I could see that sleep was overwhelming him,
and that his limbs were stiffening, but his anger was still strong enough
for another effort. Again, he drew himself together like a big cat and
flung himself on the woodwork. The hinges tore from the jambs, and the
whole outfit fell forward into the passage in a cloud of splinters and dust and
broken plaster. It was mister Docker's final effort. He lay on the top
of the wreckage he had made, like Sampson among the ruins of Gaza,
a senseless and slumbering hulk. I picked up the unopened bottle of champagne.
It was the only weapon available, and stepped over his body. I was
beginning to enjoy myself amazingly, as I expected. There was a man in
the corridor, a little fellow in waiters clothes with a twee jacket instead of
a dress coat. If he had a pistol, I knew I was done,
But I gambled upon the disinclination of the management for the sound of shooting.
He had a knife, but he never had a chance to use it.
My champagne bottle descended on his head, and he dropped like a log.
There were men coming upstairs, not Chapman, for I still heard his
horse shouts in the dining room. If they once got up, they could
force me back through that hideous room by the door through which Docer had come,
and in five minutes I should be in their motor car. There was
only one thing to do. I jumped from the stairhead right down among them.
I think there were three, and my descent toppled them over. We
rolled in a wild, whirling mass and cascaded into the dining room, where
my head bumped violently on the parquet. I expected a bit of a grapple,
but none came. My wits were pretty wooly, but I managed to
scramble to my feet. The heels of my enemies were disappearing up the staircase.
Chapman was pawing my ribs to discover if there were any bones broken.
There was not another soul in the room except two policemen who were pushing their
way in from the street. Chapman was flushed and breathing heavily. His coat
had a big split down the seams at the shoulder, but his face was
happy as a child's. I caught his arm and spoke in his ear.
We've got to get out of this at once. How can we square these
policemen? There must be no inquiry and nothing in the papers. Do you
hear? It's all right? Said Chapman. These bobbies are friends of mine,
two good lads from Wensleydale on my road here. I told them to
give me a bit of law and follow me, for I thought they might
be wanted. They didn't come too soon to spoil sport, for I'd been
knocking ferners about for ten minutes. You seem to have been putting up a
tidy scrap yourself. Let's get home first, I said, for I was
beginning to think of the bigger thing. I wrote a chit for mc gillivray,
which I asked one of the constables to take the Scotland yard. It
was to beg that nothing should be done yet in the business of the restaurant,
and above all, that nothing should get into the papers. Then I
asked the other to see us home. It was a queer request for two
able bodied men to make on a summer evening in the busiest part of London.
But I was taking no chances. The Powerhouse had declared war on me,
and I knew it would be war without quarter. I was enough fever
to get out of that place. My momentary lust of battle had gone,
and every stone of that building seemed to me a threat. Chapman would have
liked to spend a happy hour rummaging through the house, but the gravity of
my face persuaded him. The truth is I was bewildered. I could not
understand the reason of this sudden attack. Lumley's spies must long ago have told
them enough to connect me with the Bokhara business. My visits to the embassy
alone were sufficient proof. But now he must have found out something new,
something which startled him, or else there had been wild doings in Turkestan.
I won't forget that walk home in a hurry. It was a fine July
twilight. The streets were full of the usual crowd, shop girls in thin
frocks, promenading clerks, in all the flotsam of a London summer. You
would have said it was the safest place on earth. But I was glad
we had the policeman with us, who, at the end of one beat,
passed us on to his colleague. And I was glad of Chapman,
for I am morally certain I would never have got home alone. The queer
thing is that there was no sign of trouble till we got into Oxford Street.
Then I became aware that there were people on those pavements who knew all
about me. I first observed it at the mouth of one of those little
dark side alleys which up into mews in small dingy courts. I found myself
being skillfully edged away from Chapman into the shadow. But I noticed it in
time, and butted my way back to the pavement. I couldn't make out
who the people were who hustled me. They seemed nondescripts of all sorts,
but I fancied there were women among them. This happened twice and I got
wary, but I was nearly caught. Before we reached Oxford's Circus. There
was a front of a big shop rebuilding and the usual wooden barricade with a
gate. Just as we passed it, there was a special throng on the
pavement, and I, being next the wall, got pushed against the gate.
Suddenly it gave and I was pressed inward. I was right inside before
I realized my danger, and the gate was closing. There must have been
people there, but I could see nothing in the gloom. It was no
time for false pride. I yelled to Chapman, and the next second his
burly shoulder was in the gap. The hustlers vanished, and I seemed to
hear a polite voice begging my pardon. After that, Chapman and I linked
arms and struck across Mayfair. But I did not feel safe till I was
in the flat with the door bolted. We had a long drink and I
stretched myself in an arm chair, for I was as tired as if I
had come out of a big game of rugby footbowl. I owe you a
good deal old man, I said, I think I'll join the labor party.
You can tell your fellows to send me their whips. What possessed you
to come to look for me? The explanation was simple. I had mentioned
the restaurant in my telephone message and the name had awakened a recollection in Chapman's
mind. He could not fix it at first, but by and by he
remembered that the place had cropped up in the rout case. Ralph's London headquarters
had been at the restaurant in Antioch Street. As soon as he remembered this,
he got into a taxi and descended at the corner of the street,
whereby sheer luck, he fell in with his Wensleydale friends. He said he
had marched into the restaurant and found it empty but for an ill favored manager
who denied all knowledge of me. Then, fortunately he chose to make certain
by shouting my name and heard my answer. After that he knocked the manager
down, and was presently assaulted by several men whom he described as foreign muck.
They had knives of which he made very little for. He seems to
have swung a table as a battering ram and left sore limbs behind him.
He was on the top of his form. I haven't enjoyed anything so much
since I was a lad at school, he informed me. I was beginning
to think your power house was a wash out. But Lord has been busy
enough to night. This is what I call life. My spirits could not
keep pace with his. The truth is that I was miserably puzzled, not
afraid so much as mystified. I couldn't make out this sudden dead set at
me. Either they knew more than I bargained for, or I knew far
too little. It's all very well, I said, but I don't see
how this is going to end. We can't keep up the pace long At
this rate. It will be only a matter of hours till they get me.
We pretty well barricaded ourselves in the flat, and at his earnest request,
I restored to Chapman his revolver. Then I got the clue I had
been longing for. It was about eleven o'clock while we were sitting smoking when
the telephone bell rang. It was Felix who spoke, I have news for
you, he said. The hunters had met the hunted, and one of
the hunters is dead. The other is a prisoner in our hands. He
has confessed. It had been black murder and intent. The Frontier police had
shadowed the two men into the cup of a Glen, where they met Tommy
and pitt Heron. The four had spoken together for a little and then two
had fired deliberately at Charles and had grazed his ear, whereupon Tommy had charged
him and knocked the pistol from his hand. The assailant had fled, but
a long shot from the police on the hillside had toppled him over. Tommy
had felled Sarronov with his fists, and the man had abjectly so surrendered.
He had confessed, Felix said, But what the confession was he did not
know. End of chapter six. Recording by Expatria in Bangor, Maine.
Chapter seven of The Powerhouse by John Buchan. This Librivat's recording is in the
public domain. Recording by Expatria in Bangor, Maine, Chapter seven. I
find sanctuary. My nervousness and indecision dropped from me at the news I had
won the first round and I would win the last. For a suddenly became
clear to me that I had now evidence which would blast Lumly. I believed
that it would not be hard to prove his identity with Pavia in his receipt
of the telegram from Saranov. Tuke was his creature, and Tuke's murderous mission
was his doing. No doubt, I knew little and could prove nothing about
the big thing, the powerhouse. But conspiracy to murder is not the lightest
of criminal charges. I was beginning to see my way to checkmating my friend,
at least so far as pitt Heron was concerned. Provided and it was
a pretty big proviso that he gave me the chance to use my knowledge that
I foresaw was going to be the difficulty. What I knew now Lumley had
known hours before. The reason of the affair at Antioch Street was now only
too clear. If he believed that I had damning evidence against him, and
there was no doubt he suspected it, then he would do his best to
stop my mouth. I must get my statement lodged in the proper quarter at
the earliest possible moment. The next twenty four hours I feared were going to
be too sensational for comfort. And yet I cannot say that I was afraid
I was too full of pride to be in a funk. I had lost
my awe of Lumley through scoring a point against him. Had I known more,
I should have been less at my ease. It was this confidence which
prevented me doing the obvious safe thing, ringing up mc gillivray, telling him
the gist of my story, and getting him to put me under police protection.
I thought I was clever enough to see the thing through myself, and
it must have been the same over confidence which prevented Lumely getting at me that
night. An organization like his could easily have got into the flat and done
for us both. I suppose the explanation is that he did not yet know
how much I knew, and was not yet ready to take the last steps
in silencing me. I sat up till the small hours, marshaling my evidence
in a formal statement and making two copies of it. One was destined for
mc gillivray and the other for Felix, for I was taking no risks.
I went to bed and slept peacefully, and was awakened as usual by waters.
My man slept out and used to turn up in the morning about seven
It was all so normal and homely that I could have believed my adventures of
the night before a dream. In the summer sunlight, the ways of darkness
seemed very distant. I dressed in excellent spirits and made a hearty breakfast.
Then I gave the docile Chapman his instructions. He must take the document to
Scotland Yard, asked to see mc gillivray and put it into his hands.
Then he must ring me up at once at down Street and tell me that
he had done this. I had already telephoned to my clerk that I would
not be at the temple that day. It seems a simple thing to travel
less than a mile in the most frequented part of London in broad daylight and
perform an easy act like carrying a letter. But I knew that Lumley's spies
would be active and would connect Chapman sufficiently with me to think him worth following.
In that case there might be an attempt at violence. I thought it
my duty to tell him this, but he laughed me to scorn. He
proposed to walk, and he begged to be shown the man who would meddle
with him Upman. After last night was prepared to take on all comers.
He put my letter to mc gillivray in his inner pocket, buttoned his coat,
crushed down, his felt hat on his head, and defiantly set forth.
I expected a message from him in half an hour, for he was
a rapid walker. But the half hour passed, then the three quarters,
and nothing happened. At eleven I rang up Scotland Yard, but they had
no news of him. Then I became miserably anxious, for it was clear
that some disaster had overtaken my messenger. My first impulse was to set out
myself to look for him, but a moment's reflection convinced me that that would
be playing into the enemy's hands. For an hour I wrestled with my impatience,
and then a few minutes after twelve I was wrung up by Saint Thomas's
Hospital. A young doctor spoke and said that mister Chapman had asked him to
tell me what had happened. He had been run down by a motor car
at the corner of Whitehall. Nothing serious, only a bad shake in some
scalp wounds. In a day or so he would be able to leave.
Then he added, what drove the blood from my heart. Mister Chapman personally
wished me to tell you. He said that the letter has gone. I
stammered some reply, asking his meaning. He said, he thinks I was
told that while he was being assisted to his feet, his pocket was picked
and a letter taken. He said, you would know what he meant.
I knew only too well what he meant. Lumly had got my statement and
realized precisely how much I knew and what was the weight of evidence against him
before he had only suspected. Now he knew. He must know too that
there would be a copy somewhere which I would try to deliver. It was
going to be harder than I had fancied to get my news to the proper
ears, and I had to anticipate the extreme of violence on the part of
my opponents. The thought of the peril restored my coolness. I had locked
the outer door of my flat and telephoned to the garage where I I kept
my car, bidding Stag call for me at two o'clock. Precisely then,
I lit a pipe and strove to banish the whole business from my thoughts.
Per fussing would do me no good. Presently, it occurred to me to
ring up Felix and give him some notion of the position. But I found
that my telephone was now broken and connection was impossible. The spoken as well
as the written word, was to be denied me. That had happened in
the last half hour, and I didn't believe it was by accident. Also,
my man Waters, whom I had sent out on an errand after breakfast,
had never returned. The state of siege had begun. It was a
blazing hot midsummer day. The water carts were sprinkling Piccadilly, and looking from
my window I could see leisurely and elegant gentlemen taking their morning stroll. A
florists cart full of roses stood below me in the street. The summer smell
of town, a mixture of tar flowers, dust and pechuli, rose in
gusts through the air. It was the homely London I knew so well,
and I was somehow in exile from it. I was being shepherded into a
dismal isolation which, unless I won help, might mean death. I was
cool enough now, but I will not deny that I was miserably anxious.
I cursed my false confidence the night before. By now I might have had
mc gillivray and his men by my side. As it was, I wondered
if I should ever see them. I changed into a flannel suit, lunched
off sandwiches in a whiskey and soda, and at two o'clock looked for Stag
in my car. He was five minutes late, a thing which had never
happened before. But I never welcomed anything so gladly as the sight of that
car. I had hardly dared to hope that it would reach me. My
goal was the Embassy in Belgrave Square, but I was convinced that if I
approached it directly, I should share the fate of Chapman. Worse for from
me, they would not merely snatch the letter. What I had once read
written, I could write again, And if they wished to ensure my silence,
it must be by more drastic methods. I proposed to baffle my pursuers
by taking a wide circuit round the western suburbs of London, returning to the
Embassy. When I thought the coast clear. It was a tremendous relief to
go down the stairs and emerge into the hot daylight. I gave Stag his
instructions and lay back in the closed car with a curious, fluttering sense of
anticipation. I had begun the last round in the wild game. There was
a man at the corner of down Street who seemed to peer curiously at the
car. He was doubtless one of my watchers. We went up Park Lane
into the Edgeware Road, my instructions to Stag being to make a circuit by
Harrow and Brentford. Now that I was ensconced in my car, I felt
a trifle safer, and my tense nerves relaxed. I grew drowsy and allowed
myself to sink into a half doze. The stolid back of Stag filled my
gaze as it had filled it a fortnight ago on the Western Road, and
I admired lazily the brick red of his neck. He had been in the
guards, and a bower bullet at Modern River had left a long scar at
the nape of his neck, which gave to his hair the appearance of being
badly cut. He had told me the story on Xmore. Suddenly I rubbed
my eyes. There was no scar there. The hair of the chauffeur grew
regularly down to his coat collar. The resemblance had been perfect. The voice
was Stag's, but clearly it was not Stagg who now drove my car.
I pulled the blind down over the front window, as if to shelter myself
from the sun. Looking out, I saw that we were some distance up
the Edgeware Road, nearing the point where the Marlabon Road joins it. Now
or never was my chance, for at the corner there is always a block
in the traffic. The car slowed down in obedience to a policeman's uplifted hand,
and very gently I opened the door on the left side. Since the
car was new, it opened softly, and in two seconds I had stepped
out, shut it again, and made a dive between a butcher's cart and
a motor bus for the sidewalk. I gave one glance back and saw the
unconscious chauffeur still rigid at the wheel. I dodged unobtrusively through the crowd on
the pavement with my hand on my breast pocket, to see that my paper
was still there. There was a little picture shop near by to which I
used to go occasionally, owned by a man who was an adept at cleaning
and restoring. I had sent him customers, and he was likely to prove
a friend. So I dived into his doorway, which made a cool pit
of shade after the glaring street, and found him spectacles on nose, busy
examining some dusty prints. He greeted me cordially and followed me into the back
shop. Mister Levison, I said, have you a back door? He
looked at me in some surprise. Why yes, there is the door into
the lane which runs from Edgeley Street into Connaught Mews. Will you let me
use it? There is a friend outside whom I wished to avoid. Such
things happen, you know, he smiled comprehendingly. Certainly, sir, come
this way, and he led me through a dark passage hung with dingy old
masters, to a little yard filled with a debris of picture frames. There
he unlocked a door in the wall, and I found myself in a narrow
alley. As I emerged, I heard the bell of the shop door ring.
If any one inquires, You have not seen me here, remember,
I said, and mister Levison nodded. He was an artist in his small
way, and like the scent of a mystery. I ran down the lane
and by various cross streets made my way into Bayswater. I believed that I
had thrown my trackers for the moment off the scent, but I had got
to get to the embassy, and that neighborhood was sure to be closely watched.
I came out on the Bayswater Road pretty far west and resolved to strike
southeast across the park. My reason was that the neighborhood of Hyde Park Corner
was at that time of day certain to be pretty well crowded, and I
felt more security in a throng than in the empty streets of Kensington. Now
that I come to think of it, it was a rash thing to do,
for since Lumly knew the full extent of my knowledge, he was likely
to deal more violently with me than with Chapman, and the seclusion of the
park offered him too good a chance. I crossed the riding track and struck
over the open space where the Sunday demonstrations are held. There was nothing there
but nurses and perambulators, children at play and dogs being exercised. Presently,
I reached Grosvenor Gate, where on the little green chairs. Well dressed people
were taking the air. I recognized several acquaintances and stopped for a moment to
talk to one of them. Then I emerged in Park Lane and walked down
it to Hamilton Place. So far I thought I had not been followed,
but now once more I had the indefinable but unerring sensation of being watched.
I caught a man looking eagerly at me from the other side of the street,
and it seemed to me that he made a sign to some one farther
off. It was now less than a quarter of a mile between me and
Belgraft Square, but I saw that it would be a hard course to cover.
Once in Piccadilly, there could be no doubt about my watchers. Lumley
was doing the thing in style. This time. Last night it had only
been a trial trip, but now the whole energies of the powerhouse were on
the job. The place was filled with the usual mid season crowd, and
I had to take off my hat several times. Up in the bow window
of the Bachelor's Club, a young friend of mine was writing a letter and
sipping a long drink with an air of profound boredom. I would have given
much for his aunui for my life at the moment was painfully exciting. I
was alone in that great crowd, isolated and proscribed, and there was no
help save in my own wits. If I spoke to a policeman, he
would think me drunk or mad. And yet I was on the edge of
being made the victim of a far subtler crime than fell within the purview of
the Metropolitan Force. Now I saw how thin is the protection of civilization.
An accident and a bogus ambulance, a false charge and a bogus arrest.
There were a dozen ways of spiriting me out of this gay, bustling world.
I foresaw that if I delayed, my nerve would break, so I
boldly set off across the road. I jolly nearly shared the fate of Chapman.
A car which seemed about to draw up at a club door, suddenly
swerved across the street, and I had to dash to an island to escape
it. It was no occasion to hesitate, so, dodging a bus and
missing a motor bicycle by a hair's breath, I rushed across the remaining distance
and reached the railings of the green Park. Here there were fewer people,
and several queer things began to happen. A little group of workmen with their
tools were standing by the curb, and they suddenly moved towards me. A
pavement artist who looked like a cripple, scrambled to his feet and moved in
the same direction. There was a policeman at the corner, and I saw
a well dressed man go up to him, say something and nod in my
direction, and the policeman, too began to move towards me. I did
not await them. I took to my heels and ran for my life down
Grosvenor Place. Long ago, at Eton I had won the school mile,
and at Oxford I was a second string for the quarter. But never at
Eton or at Oxford did I run as I ran then. It was blisteringly
hot, but I did not feel it, for my hands were clammy and
my heart felt like a cold stone. I do not know how the pursuit
got on, for I did not think about it. I did not reflect
what kind of spectacle I must afford running like a thief in a London thoroughfare
on a June afternoon. I only knew that my enemies were around and behind
me, and that in front, a few hundred yards away lay safety.
But even as I ran, I had the sense to think out my movements
and to I realized that the front door of the Embassy was impossible. For
one thing, it would be watched, and for another, before the solemn
footman opened it, my pursuers would be upon me. My only hope was
the back door. I twisted into the mews behind the north side of the
square, and as I turned, I saw two men run up from the
square as if to cut me off. A whistle was blown and more men
appeared, one entering from the far end of the mews, one darting from
a public house door, and one sliding down a ladder from a stable loft.
This last was nearest me and tried to trip me, but I rejoiced
to say that a left hand or on the chin sent him sprawling on the
cobbles. I remembered that the Embassy was the fifth house from the end,
and feverishly I tried to count the houses by their backs. It is not
so easy as it sounds. For the modern London householder studs his back premises
with excrescences which seemed to melt into his neighbors. In the end, I
had to make a guess at the door, which, to my joy,
was unlocked. I rushed in and banged it behind me. I found myself
in a stone passage with on one side a door opening on a garage.
There was a wooden staircase leading to an upper floor, and a glass door
in front, which opened into a large, disused room full of boxes.
Beyond were two doors, one of which was locked. The other abutted on
a steep iron stairway, which obviously led to the lower regions of the house.
I ran down the stairs was no more than a ladder, crossed a
small courtyard, traversed a passage, and burst into the kitchen, where I
confronted an astonished, white capped chef in the act of lifting a pot from
the fire. His face was red and wrathful, and I thought that he
was going to fling the pot at my head. I had disturbed him in
some delicate operation, and his artist's pride was outraged. Monsieur, I stammered
in French, I seek your pardon for my intrusion. There were circumstances which
compelled me to enter this house by the back premises. I am an acquaintance
of his Excellency, your patron, and an old friend of Monsieur Felix.
I beg you, of your kindness to direct me to Monsieur Felix's room,
or to bid some one take me there. My abject apologies mollified him.
It is a grave offense, Monsieur, he said, an unparalleled offense to
enter my kitchen at this hour. I fear you have irremediably spoiled the new
castlele dish that I was endeavoring to compose. I was ready to go on
my knees to the offended artist. It grieved me, indeed to have interfered
with so rare an art which I have often admired at his Excellency's table.
But there is danger behind me, and an urgent mission in front. Monsieur
will forgive me. Necessity will sometimes overrule the finest sensibility. He bowed to
me, and I bowed to him, and my pardon was assured. Suddenly
a door opened, another than that by which I had entered, and a
man appeared, whom I took to be a footman. He was struggling into
his livery coat, but at the sight of me he dropped that. I
thought I recognized the face as that of the man who had emerged from the
public house and tried to cut me off. Here, mister Alphonse, he
cried, help me to collar this man. The police are after him.
You forget my friend. I said that an embassy is privileged ground which the
police can't enter. I desire to be taken before his excellency. So that's
your game, he shouted. But two can play at that. Here,
give me a hand, moussu and we'll have him in the street in a
jiffy. There's two hundred of the best in our pockets if we hands them
over to them as wants them. The cook looked puzzled and a little frightened.
Will you will allow them to outrage your kitchen? An embassy kitchen too
without your consent? What have you done, he asked in French, Only
what your patron would approve. I replied in the same tongue, The assassins
have a grudge against me. He still hesitated while the young footman advanced on
me. He was fingering something in his trousers pocket which I did not like.
Now was the time when, as they say in America, I should
have got busy with my gun, but alas I had no gun, I
feared supports for the enemy. For the footman, at the first sight of
me, had run back the way he had come, and I had heard
a low whistle. What might have happened I do not know. Had not
the God appeared from the machine in the person of Hewans, the butler.
Hewins, I said, you know me, I have often dined here,
and you know that I am a friend of Monsieur Felix. I am on
my way to see him on an urgent matter, and for various reasons I
had to enter by Monsieur Alphonse's kitchen. Will you take me at once to
Monsieur Felix. Hewins bowed, and on his imperturbable face there appeared no sign
of surprise. This way, sir, was all he said. As I
followed him, I saw the footman plucking nervously at the something in his trousers
pocket. Lumley's agents apparently had not always the courage to follow his instructions to
the letter, for I made no doubt that the order had been to take
me alive or dead. Found Felix alone and flung myself into an arm chair.
My dear Chap, I said, take my advice and advise his excellency
to sack the red haired footman. From that moment I date that sense of
mastery over a situation which drives out fear. I had been living for weeks
under a dark pole, and suddenly the skies had lightened. I had found
sanctuary. Whatever happened to me, now, the worst was past, for
I had done my job. Felix was looking at me curiously, for jaded,
scarlet, disheveled. I was an odd figure for a London afternoon.
Things seem to have been marching fast with you, he said, they have,
But I think the march is over. I want to ask several favors.
First, here is a document which sets out certain facts. I shall
ring up mc gillivray at Scotland Yard and ask him to come here at nine
thirty this evening. When he comes, I want you to give him this
and ask him to read it at once. He will know how to act
on it. Felix nodded. And the next give me a telegraph form.
I want a wire sent at once by some one who can be trusted.
He handed me a form, and I wrote out a telegram to Lumley at
the Albany, saying that I proposed to call upon him that evening at h
sharp in asking him to receive me. Next, said Felix. Next and
last, I want a room with a door which will lock, a hot
bath, and something to eat. About seven, I might be permitted to
taste Monsieur Alphonse's new casserole dish. I rang up mc gillivray, reminded him
of his promise, and told him what awaited him at nine thirty. Then
I had a wash, and afterwards, at my leisure, gave Felix a
sketch of the day's doings. I have never felt more completely at my ease.
For whatever happened. I was certain that I had spoiled Lumley's game.
He would know by now that I had reached the embassy, and that any
further attempts on my life and liberty were futile. My telegram would show him
that I was prepared to offer terms, and I would certainly be permitted to
reach the Albany unmolested to the meeting with my adversary. I looked forward without
qualms, but with the most lively interest. I had my own theories about
that distinguished criminal, and I hoped to bring them to the proof. Just
before seven I had a reply to my wire. Mister Lumley said he would
be delighted to see me. The telegram was directed to me at the embassy,
though I had put no address on the one I sent. Lumley,
of course, knew all my movements. I could picture him sitting in his
chair like some chief of staff, receiving every few minutes the reports of his
agents. All the same Napoleon had fought his waterloo. End of chapter seven.
Recording by Expatriate in Bangor, Maine, Chapter eight of The Powerhouse by
John Buckie. This Librivot's recording is in the public domain. Recording by Expatriate
in Bangor, Maine, Chapter eight, The Powerhouse. I left Belgrave Square
about a quarter to eight and retraced my steps along the route, which for
me that afternoon had been so full of tremors. I was still being watched.
A little observation told me that but I would not be interfered with,
provided my way lay in a certain direction. So completely without nervousness was I
that at the top of Constitution Hill. I struck into the green park and
kept to the grass till I emerged into Piccadilly, opposite Devonshire House. A
light wind had risen and the evening had grown pleasantly cool. I met several
men I knew going out to dinner on foot, and stopped to exchange greetings
from my clothes. They thought I had just returned from a day in the
country. I had reached the Albany as the clock was striking. Eight.
Lumley's rooms were on the first floor, and I was evidently expected for The
porter himself conducted me to them, and waited by me till the door was
opened by a man servant. You know those Rococo Late Georgian Albany rooms,
large square, clumsily corniced. Lumley's was lined with books, which I saw
at a glance were of a different type from those in his working library at
his country house. This was the collection of a bibliophile, and in the
light of the summer evening, the rows of tall volumes in vellum and Morocco
lined the walls like some rich tapestry. The valet retired and shut the door,
and presently from a little inner chamber came his master. He was dressed
for dinner and wore more than ever the air of the eminent diplomat. Again
I had the old feeling of incredulity. It was the lumly I had met
two nights before at dinner, the friend of viceroys and cabinet ministers. It
was hard to connect him with Antioch Street or the red haired footman with a
pistol, or with Tuke. Yes, I decided, Tuke fitted into the
frame. Both were brains cut loose from the decencies that make life possible.
Good evening, mister lythen, he said, pleasantly, as you have fixed
the hour of eight, may I offer you dinner? Thank you, I
replied, but I have already dined. I have chosen an awkward time,
but my business need not take long, So he said, I am always
glad to see you at any hour, and I prefer to see the Master
rather than the subordinates who have been infesting my life during the past week.
We both laughed. I am afraid you have had some annoyance, mister Lython,
he said, but remember I gave you fair warning, true, and
I have come to do the same kindness to you. That part of the
game, at any rate is over over, he queried, raising his eyebrows.
Yes, over, I said, and took out my watch. Let
us be quite frank with each other, mister lump. There is really very
little time to waste. As you have doubtless read the paper which you stole
from my friend this morning, you know more or less the extent of my
information. Let us have frankness by all means. Yes, I have read
your paper, A very creditable piece of work. If I may say so,
you will rise in your profession, mister lythan. But surely you must
realize that it carries you a very little way in a sense. You are
right. I am not in a position to reveal the full extent of your
misdeeds, of the powerhouse and its doings. I can only guess. But
pitt Heron is on his way home, and he will be carefully safe guarded
on that journey. Your creature Sorroenov has confessed. We shall know more very
soon. In meantime, I have clear evidence which implicates you in a conspiracy
to murder. He did not answer, but I wished I could see behind
his tinted spectacles to the look in his eyes. I think he had not
been quite prepared for the line I took. I need not tell you,
as a lawyer, mister lythan he said at last, that what seems good
evidence on paper is often feeble enough in court. You cannot suppose that I
will tamely plead guilty to your charges. On the contrary, I will fight
them with all the force that brains and money can give. You are an
ingenious young man, but you are not the brightest jewel of the English bar.
That also is true. I do not deny that some of my evidence
may be weakened at the trial. It is even conceivable that you may be
acquitted on some technical doubt. But you have forgotten one thing. From the
day you leave the court, you will be a suspected man. The police
of all Europe will be on your trail. You have been highly successful in
the past, and why because you have been above suspicion, an honorable and
distinguished gentleman, belonging to the best clubs, counting as your acquaintances the flower
of our society. Now you will be a suspect, a man with a
past, a center of strange story. I put it to you, how
far are you likely to succeed under these conditions, he laughed. You have
a talent for character drawing, my friend, What makes you think that I
can work only if I live in the limelight of popularity. The talent you
mentioned, I said, as I read your character, and I think I
am right. You are an artist in crime. You are not the common
cutthroat who acts out of passion or greed. Now I think you are something
subtler than that. You love power, hidden power. You flatter your vanity
by despising mankind and making them your tools. You scorn the smattering of inaccuracies
which passes for human knowledge, and I will not venture to say you are
wrong. Therefore you use your brains to frustrate it. Unhappily, the life
of millions is built on that smattering. So you are a foe to society.
But there would be no flavor in controlling subterranean things if you were yourself
a mole working in the dark. To get a full flavor the irony of
it all, you must live in the light. I can imagine you laughing
in your soul as you move about our world, praising it with your lips,
patting it with your hands, and kicking its props away with your feet.
I can see the charm of it, but it is over. Now
over, he asked over, I repeated. The end has come, the
utter, final and absolute end. He made a sudden, odd, nervous
movement, pushing his glasses close back upon his eyes. What about yourself,
he said, hoarsely. Do you think you can play against me without suffering
desperate penalties? He was holding a cord in his hand with a knob on
the end of it. He now touched a button in the knob, and
there came the faint sound of a bell. The door was behind me,
and he was looking beyond me towards it. I was entirely at his mercy,
but I never budged an inch. I do not know how I managed
to keep calm, but I did it, and without much effort. I
went on speaking, conscious that the door had opened and that some one was
at my back. It is really quite useless trying to frighten me. I
am safe because I am dealing with an intelligent man and not with the ordinary
half witted criminal. You do not want my life in silly revenge. If
you call in your men and strangle me between you what earthly good would it
do you? He was looking beyond me, and the passion, a sudden,
white hot passion, like an epilepsy, was dying out of his face.
A mistake, James, he said, you can go the door closed
softly at my back. Yes, a mistake. I have a considerable admiration
for you, mister Lumley, and should be sorry to be disappointed. He
laughed, quite like an ordinary mortal. I am glad this affair is to
be conducted on a basis of mutual respect. Now that the melodramatic overture is
finished, let us get to the business by all means, I said,
I promised to deal with you frankly. Will let me put my last cards
on the table at half past nine? Precisely the duplicate of that statement of
mind which you annexed this morning will be hinded to Scotland yard. I may
add that the authorities there know me and are proceeding under my advice. When
they read that statement, they will act on it. You have therefore about
one and a half or say one in three quarter hours to make up your
mind. You can still secure your freedom, but it must be elsewhere than
in England. He had risen to his feet and was pacing up and down
the room. Will you oblige me by telling me one thing? He said.
If you believe me to be, as you say, a dangerous criminal,
how do you reconcile it with your conscience to give me a chance of
escape? It is your duty to bring me to justice. I will tell
you why I said, I too have a weak joint in my armor.
Yours is that you only succeed under the disguise of high respectability. That disguise,
in any case, will be stripped from you. Mine is pit Heron.
I do not know how far he has entangled himself with you, but
I know something of his weakness, and I don't want his career ruined and
his wife's heart broken. He has learned his lesson and will never mention you
and your schemes to a mortal soul. Indeed, if I can help it,
he will never know that any one shares his secret. The price of
the chance of escape I offer you is that pitt Heron's past be buried forever.
He did not answer. He had his arms folded, walking up and
down the room, and suddenly seemed to have aged enormously I had the impression
that I was dealing with a very old man, mister lythan he said at
last. You are bold, You have a frankness which almost amounts to genius.
You are wasted in your stupid profession, but your speculative powers are not
equal to your other endowments, so you will probably remain in it, deterred
by an illogical scruple from following your true bent, your true metier, believe
me, is what shallow people call crime. Speaking without prejudice, as the
idiot's solicitors say, it would appear that we have both weak spots in our
cases. Mine, you say is that I can only work by using the
conventions of what we agreed to call the machine. There may be truth in
that. Yours is that you have a friend who lacks your ironclad discretion.
You offer a plan which saves both our weaknesses. By the way, what
is it, I looked at my watch again. You have ample time to
catch the night Express to Paris, and if not, then I am afraid
there may be trouble with the police between ten and eleven o'clock, which,
for all our sakes would be a pity. Do you know you interest me
uncommonly, For you confirm the accuracy of my judgment. I have always had
a notion that some day I should run across to my sorrow. Just such
a man as you, a man of very great intellectual power, I can
deal with. For that kind of brain is usually combined with a sort of
high strung imagination on which I can work the same with your over imaginative men.
Yes, pitt Heron was of that type. Ordinary brains do not trouble
me, for I puzzle them. Now, you are a man of good
average intelligence. Pray forgive the lukewarmness of the phrase. It is really a
high compliment, for I am an austere critic. If you were that and
no more, you would not have succeeded. But you possess also a quite
irrelevant gift of imagination, not enough to upset your balance, but enough to
do what your mere lawyer's talent could never have done. You have achieved a
feat which is given to few. You have partially understood me. Believe me,
I rate you high. You are the kind of four square being bedded
in the concrete of our civilization on whom I have always felt I might some
day come to grief. No, no, I am not trying to wheedle
you. If I thought I could do that, I should be sorry,
for my desernment would have been at fault. I warn you. I said
that you are wasting precious time. He laughed, quite cheerfully. I believe
you are really anxious about my interests, he said. That is a triumph.
Indeed, do you know, mister lythen it is a mere whimsy of
faith that you are not my disciple. If we had met earlier, and
under other circumstances, I should have captured you. It is because you have
in you a capacity for discipleship that you have succeeded in your opposition. I
abominate you in all your works, I said, But I admire your courage.
He shook his head gently. It is the wrong word. I am
not courageous. To be brave means that you have conquered fear. But I
have never had any fear to conquer. Believe me, mister lythan I am
quite impervious to threats. You come to me to night and hold a pistol
to my head. You offer me two alternatives, both of which mean failure.
But how do you know that I regard them as failure. I have
had what they call a good run for my money. No man since Napoleon
has tasted such power. I may be willing to end it. Age creeps
on, and power may grow burdensome. I have always sat loose from common
ambitions and common affections. For all you know, I may regard you as
a benefactor. All this talk looks futile when it is written down, But
it was skillful enough, for it was taking every atom of exhilaration out of
my victory. It was not idle brag. Every syllable rang true, as
I knew in my bones. I felt myself in the presence of something enormously
big, as if a small barbarian was desecrating the colossal zeus of Phidius with
a coal hammer. But I also felt it inhuman, and I hated it,
and I clung to that hatred. You fear nothing, and you believe
nothing, I said, Man, you should never have been allowed to live.
He raised a deprecating hand. I am a skeptic about most things,
he said, But believe me. I have my own worship. I venerate
the intellect of men. I believe even its undreamed of possibilities when it grows
free like an oak in the forest, it is not dwarfed in a flower
pot. From that allegiance, I have never wavered. That is the god
I have never forsworn. I took out my watch. Permit me again to
remind you that time presses true, he said, smiling. The Continental Express
will not wait upon my confession. Your plan is certainly conceivable. There may
be other and easier ways. I am not certain. I must think perhaps
it would be wiser if you left me now, mister lythan if I take
your advice. There will be various things to do. In any case,
there will be much to do. He led me to the door, as
if he were an ordinary host, speeding an ordinary guest. I remember that
on my way he pointed out a set of aldines and called my attention to
their beauty. He shook hands quite cordially, and remarked on the fineness of
the weather. That was the last I saw of this amazing man. It
was with profound relief that I found myself in Piccadilly, in the wholesome company
of my kind. I had carried myself boldly enough in the last hour,
but I would not have gone through it again for a king's ransom. Do
you know what it is to deal with a pure intelligence, a brain stripped
of every shred of humanity. It is like being in the company of a
snake. I drove to the club and telephoned to mc gillivray, asking him
to take no notice of my statement till he heard from me in the morning.
Then I went to the hospital to see Chapman. That leader of the
people was in a furious temper, and he was scarcely to be appeased by
my narrative of the day's doings. Your labor member is the greatest of old
sticklers for legality. In the outrage he had suffered that morning had grievously weakened
his trust in public security. The Antioch Street business had seemed to him eminently
right. If you once got mixed up in melodrama, you had to expect
such things. But for a member of Parliament to be robbed in broad daylight
next door to the House of Commons upset the foundations of his faith. There
was little the matter with his body, and the doctor promised that he would
be allowed up next day, but his soul was a mass of bruises.
It took me a lot of persuasion to get him to keep quiet. He
wanted a public exposure of Lumley, a big trial, a general ferreting out
of secret agents, the whole winding up with a speech in Parliament by himself
on this last outrage of capitalism. Gloomily, he listened to my injunctions to
silence, but he saw the reason of it and promised to hold his tongue
out of loyalty to Tommy. I knew that pitt Heron's secret was safe with
him. As I crossed Westminster Bridge on my way home. The night expressed
to the Continent rumbled over the river. I wondered if Lumley was on board,
or if he had taken one of the other ways of which he had
spoken. End of Chapter eight. Recording by a patriot in Bangor, Maine.
Chapter nine of The Powerhouse by John Buchan. This LibriVox recording is in
the public domain. Recording by expatriot in Bangor, Maine, Chapter nine,
Return of the Wild Geese. I do not think I was surprised at the
news I read in the Times next morning. Mister Andrew Lumley had died suddenly
in the night of heart failure, and the newspapers woke up to the fact
that we had been entertaining a great man unawares. There was an obituary in
Leader type of nearly two columns. He had been older than I thought,
close on seventy, and the time spoke of him as a man who might
have done anything he pleased in public life, but had chosen to give to
a small coterie of friends what was due to the country. I read of
his wit and learning, his amazing connoisseurship, his gifts, his personal charm.
According to the writer, he was the finest type of cultivated amateur,
a Beckford with more than a Beckford's wealth, and none of his folly.
Large private charities were hinted at, and a hope was expressed that some part,
at least of his collections might come to the nation. The halfpenny papers
said the same thing in their own way. One declared he reminded it of
Atticus, another of Mycenus, another of Lord Houghton. There must have been
a great run on biographical dictionaries in the various offices. Chapman's own particular.
Rags said that although this kind of philanthropist was a dilettante in a back number.
Yet mister Lumley was a good specimen of the class and had been a
true friend to the poor. I thought Chapman would have a fit when he
read this. After that he took in the morning post. It was no
business of mine to explode the myth. Indeed, I couldn't even if I
had wanted to, for no one would have believed me unless I perduce proofs,
and these proofs were not to be made public. Besides, I had
an honest compunction he had had, as he expressed, it, a good
run for his money, and I wanted the run to be properly rounded off.
Three days later I went to the funeral. It was a wonderful occasion.
Two eminent statesmen were among the pole bearers, Royalty was represented, and
there were wreaths from learned societies and scores of notable people. It was a
queer business to listen to that stately service, which was never read over stranger
dust. I was thinking all the time of the vast subterranean machine which he
had controlled, and which now was so much old iron. I could dimly
imagine what his death meant to the hosts who had worked blindly at his direction.
He was a Napoleon who left no marshals behind him. From the powerhouse
came no wreaths or newspaper tributes. But I knew that I had lost its
power de mortuis et cetera. My task was done, and it only remained
to get pitt Heron home. Of the three people in London besides myself who
knew the story, Mcguilivray, Chapman and Felix, the two last might be
trusted to be silent, and Scotland Yard is not in the habit of publishing
its information. Tommy, of course, must some time or other be told.
It was his right, but I knew that Tommy would never breathe a
word of it. I wanted Charles to believe that his secret died with Lumley,
for otherwise I don't think he would have ever come back to England.
The thing took some arranging, for we could not tell him directly about Lumley's
death without giving away the fact that we knew of the connection between the two.
We had to approach it by a roundabout road. I got Felix to
arrange to have the news telegraphed to and inserted by special order in a Russian
paper which Charles could not avoid seeing. The device was successful. Calling at
Portman Square a few days later, I learned from Ethel pitt Heron's glowing thing
that her troubles were over. That same evening, a cable to me from
Tommy announced the return of the Wanderers. It was the year of the Chilean
Arbitration, in which I held a junior brief for the British government, and
that in the late sitting of Parliament kept me in London after the end of
the term. I had had a bad reaction from the excitements of the summer,
and in these days I was feeling pretty well hipped and overdone. On
a hot August afternoon, I met Tommy again. The sun was shining through
my temple chambers, much as I had done when he started. So far
as I remember, the west Ham Brief, which had aroused his contempt,
was still adorning my table. I was very hot and cross and fagged,
for I had been engaged in the beastly job of comparing half a dozen maps
of a despicable little bit of South American frontier. Suddenly the door opened and
Tommy lean and sunburnt, walked in still at the old grind. He cried,
after we had shaken hands. Fellows like you, give me a notion
of the meaning of eternity, the same uneventful sedentary life, I replied.
Nothing happens except that my scale of fees grows. I suppose nothing will happen
till the conductor comes to take the tickets. I shall soon grow fat.
I notice it already, my lad. You want a bit of waking up,
or you'll get a liver. A little sensation would do you a lot
of good. And you, I asked, I congratulate you on your success.
I hear you have retrieved pitt Heron for his morning family. Tommy's laughing
eyes grew solemn. I have had the time of my life, he said.
It was like a chapter out of the Arabian Nights with a dash of
Fenimore Cooper. I feel as if I had lived years since I left England
in May. While you have been sitting among your musty papers, we have
been riding like moss troopers and seeing men die, come and dine to night
and hear about our adventures. I can't tell you the full story, for
I don't know it, but there is enough to curl your hair. Then
I achieved my first and last score at the expense of Tommy de Lorraine.
No, I said, you will dine with me instead, and I will
tell you the full story. All the papers on the subject are over there
in my safe End of Chapter nine recording by expatriate in Bangor, Maine.
End of the Powerhouse by John Buchan,