Dedication, preface and chapter one of the Powerhouse. This is a librivos recording.
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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 Glennaisal six of us for
the duck shooting when Lython told us this story. Since five in the morning,
we had been out on the scerries, 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 Year, where he tried to climb carstens and lived 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 Epra a 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 lythen 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
lythen 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 everyone's 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 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 naw monument to
Guy Faux 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, right 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 semifinal 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 a fast public scorn and private affection. A
sailor, an Indian cavalry fellow, Chapman, the labor member whom Tommy called
Chipmunk, myself an old Nilsen 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 Wintham, 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 craze 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 uncome and good logger,
Chipmunk, and you know you're a dashed, bad politician. When questioned about
himself, he became reticent, as the newspapers say. I doubt if I'm
much good at any job, he confessed, except to ginger up my friends
anyhow, and getting out of this hole, paired for the rest of the
session with a chap who has lock jaw. 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 onto 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 pitt 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 earness 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 Tumland. The valet rang me up and said he had found
a card in the westcot of the dress clothes that Charles had worn the night
before he left. It had a name on it like kona Levski, 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 Heern
two days before with a letter from some embassy chap. Unfortunately, the man
in question had gone off to New York next day. But kona Levski 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 kona Levsky gathered from something he had
heard that Charles was aiming for Moscow. Tommy paused to let his news sink
in. Well, 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 damned 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 have forgotten what
I said, but it was some plea for caution. I could not see
the reason for these heroics. Pitte 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 man's fads, I said. He never
could do things like an ordinary mortal, but possible trouble could there be money
rich as Creeses 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 pitte Heron would have a companion in misfortune before you
are done with the business. I'm all for your taking a holiday for at
presents. 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 pitt 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 chock 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 pit 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 stepped wending in the
direction of Portman's 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 eye. 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 in 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 pitt
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 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, Slavey Vox recording is
in the public domain. Recording by expatriate 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, Took 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 Duke was by no means a commonplace witness. He was very unlike the
conventional butler, much likeer, 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 union 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 Unease. I wondered how he got on with this highly competent
butler. If Tuke had been my servant, I would have wrung his neck
or bolted before a week was out. You ever notice that when you hear
a name that strikes you, you seem 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 Jubbers 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 the 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 pitt 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 Herron 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 witnessed, might
not be connected with financial worries. I could not believe that the huge pitt
Heron fortune had been seriously affected, or that his flight was that of a
defaulter. But he might have got entangled in some shady, stidy business which
preyed on his sensitive soul somehow or other. I could not believe that mister
Pavia was a wholly innocent old gentleman. His butler looked too formidable. It
was possible that he was blackmailing pitt 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, mailable 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 pitt
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 from 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 Herron. 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. In all the while anxiety and dread were gnawing at her heart.
I asked her if she had ever met 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 twutons who got themselves into compromising situations and gravely troubled
the souls of the Admiralty in the War Office. This case was distinguished from
the common rock by the higher social standing of the accused. Generally 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 everyone 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 a old way I
used to dabble in prints and miniatures, but at that time my interest lay
chiefly in old Wedgewood, of which I had collected some good pieces. Old
Wedgewood 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 hands. 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
whatnot 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 would be sold at auction, and the best things carried
off to America. It's enough to make a Patriot swear there was balm in
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 pitt Heron. Lumly was a friend of pitt 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 hope 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 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 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. Suivey abohare sorrownoff?
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 pitt Heron, so probably did Lumly. Lumly knew 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 a queer subconscious certitude of the human brain, that pitt
Heron was or was about to be in Bochara, and that Pavia Lumley knew
of his being there and was deeply concerned in his journey. That night,
after dinner, I rang up Missus pitt Heern. 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 Bochara,
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, Maine, Chapter three of
The Powerhouse by John Buchan. The Slabry Box 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 Circus if you wait long enough. I was to find myself
like a citizen of Baghdad in the days of the Great Caliph, 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 Pitte 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 to 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 Knoles, 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, pitt 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 pitt 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 ovens 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 Exmore. 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 arbutus
thickets where the More falls and steeps to the sea. We returned by Dartmoor
and the South coast, meeting with our first rain in 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
in 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 Farnum. It was about half past
eight and we were traversing the somewhat confused and narrow roads in the neighborhood of
warmer 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, damaged the tire of
the near front wheel, and deranged the steering gear. Neither of us suffered
much hurt, but Stagg 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 Farnum. 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 Farnum beckoned me seductively. I might have walked there, but
I did not know the road, and I found that my shoulder was painting
me. So I resolved to try to find some gentleman'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 in
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 Farnum. 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. The 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 Lython. 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 Hapsburg mouth, and chin very long and pointed,
but modeled 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 perier souet and some excellent madera. The stolid parlor maid
waited on us, and as we talked of the weather in 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 armchair.
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 Herron. 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. The 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 lythen? 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
indulgence. Sometimes. After dinner, I had 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 are 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 Alchymists
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 goodwill 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 recognize 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 by 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 and 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 scientist has made a great
discovery. He reads a paper before some academy of science, and there are
leading articles on it, and 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 aircraft 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 to me. 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 is superanarchy, 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
in 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 extrasocial 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 neilism 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 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 it is the world widely.
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 learned 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 coordin 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 feudal. 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 tritus 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 a 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 called, 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 Stag 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 Lumly,
I asked, with a start, mister Andrew Lumly. 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 veil 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 Bocara, was the
maniac who dreamed of the power House. There were going to be dark scenes
in the drama before it was played out. End of chapter three. Recording
by expatriate in Bangor, Maine. Chapter four of The Powerhouse by John Buchan.
This Liabri Box recording is in the public domain. Recording by expatriate 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 Lumly in their growing friendship,
his initiation into secret and forbidden things, the revolt of the decent man,
uphold 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 Pomers
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. Someone
must have gone to Bokhara, some creature of Lumley's, perhaps the superbotler 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 me. I calculated that it would
have taken him seven or eight days to get from Moscow by the trans Caspian.
Probably he would find pitt 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 pitt Herron, I,
unknown and unsuspected, would be stalking Lumly. And then in a flash
I realized my folly. The wretched letter I had written that morning had given
the whole show away. Lumly knew that I was a friend of pitt Herron,
and that I knew that he was a friend of pitt Herron. 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 war 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 bold 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 and 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 sunburnt sportsman
fresh from an 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 de Lorraine, 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 pitt 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 pitt 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 trunk 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 roots 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 Hyssar Range by Pamirsky Post to
Gilgit in Kashmir. 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 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 a 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. 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 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 raud. 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 Roud, I said, I believe if 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. Is 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 Auerbahn'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 Rouf, 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 Rouf, and it was Tuke who had gone to Boccara. My next
step was to ring up mc gillivray at Scotland Yard and get an appointment.
In half an hour's time. Mc gillivray 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's 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. McGillivray 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 Rouve, who had already that
afternoon occupied my attention. McGillivray promised to make certain inquiries, and I walked
home in a state of elation. Now I knew for certain who had gone
to Bocara, 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 pitt
Heron. I did not fancy that mister Tooke 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 in 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 the fresh and that some one
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 rung 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 to 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
prenuous 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 game 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
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 Tuke 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 shortcuts 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 Lithon, 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 Lumly
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. Pitt 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 Lithon,
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 Slavrivots recording is in the public
domain. Recording by expatriate in Bangor, Maine, Chapter five. I take
a partner. That meeting with Lunely 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 Pete Heron
to urge me on. A man had tried to bully me, and that
roused all the worse 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 twelvemonth. 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 right in my notes.
And besides, there foreign words don't matter a curse. Then that young
lord assist for East Claygate gets up and goes out as I was getting into
my pureration, 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 a socialist as me, replied for the government in his blamed board,
and said that the board thought this, and the board thought that, and
was damned if the board would stir it stumps. Well, I mind the
day when I was hanging onto the board's coattails in Hyde Park to keep it
from talking treason. It took me a long time to get Chapmans settled down
and anchored to a drink. I want you, I said, to tell
me about Rooth. 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 Routh 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 withed 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. Beside, he adored Tommy de Lorraine Routh,
he told me, had been a young engineer of a superior type, with
a job in a big shop at sheffields 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 effrontery 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 wasn'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 Bloomsberry
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, he would have thought him a
piece of ran it with his Yorkshire bluntness and hard downright North country, since
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 cabbies,
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 roused 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 I 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 Germyn 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
a 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 land you in jail.
And where will I be? Then? That is what he and his friends
are out for. We have 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 Homerit 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 nerves 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 whiskies 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 end by superior muscles. He was a square, thickset 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 mc
gillivray 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 a states of Austria and an Italian students' union, and it threatened
at one time to be dangerous. McGillivray's correspondent said that in some documents which
were seized he found constant allusion to a thing called the kroft House, evidently
the headquarters staff of the plot, and the same word croft 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 croft 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, you've own
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 look 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 Tuken. The man called Saranov
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 Herron had easily come on the two gentlemen who
were following the same trial. The two had gone by samarcand, evidently intending
to rike 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 in anxious face, and both rode hard. They passed by
the closes of Apricot and cherry and the green watered gardens, and soon the
oxus 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 billionaire 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 moore 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 believe,
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 Twok 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 lumbly 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
Expatriate in Bangor, Maine. Chapter six of the Powerhouse by John Buchan.
The slab revox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Expatriate 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. McGillivray 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, Rappacchini's in 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 court, so heavy that
my private anxieties had almost slipped from my mind. I walked along the embankment
and up Regent Street, towards Oxford 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 mc gillivray 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 architects 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 doormat, 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. Ingle Violinis was discoursing music from beside the grille. 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 mondins, 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 Gilvrai. 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 a 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 Gilvrai comes often 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 we'll stifle. The manager glanced at the window. I'll send a
vader, 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 corkloose stood in a wine cooler on the sideboard,
and there was an unopened bottle beside it. It seemed to me that
mc gillivray, when he dined here, did himself rather well. The promised
waiter did not arrive, and the stuffy this 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 of
mcgillivraye. 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 knots, which you will find in any boarding house
littered up with photographs in 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 McGillivray'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 is intolerably close. There was still no sign of the waiter to open
the window, so I thought I would wait for McGillivray 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 got
into some sort of trap. McGillivray'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 of
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 a 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 gilivray 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. 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? Don't oh,
if some lay near the docks. I've got a motorcar waiting 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, wouldn't
find a blamed 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 Tuk, 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 dursont,
Governor, I dursont let you go. Then my 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 for a
bit, for 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, then 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 bullpup. 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 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 sho did lyfen Lifen? Are
you there? There could be no mistaking that broad Yorkshire tongue. By some
miracle, Chapman had followed me and was raising Caine downstairs. My heart leaped
with a sudden revelation. I'm here, I yelled upstairs, 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 masters 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
Bills. 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 men. You may insult and outrage him,
and he will bear it patiently. But touch the quick in 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 jams, 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 waiter's 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. In 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 in 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 been knockin' ferners
about for ten minutes. You seem to have been puttin 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 Gilovray 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 power House had declared war on me, and
I knew it would be war without quarter. I was in a 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 him
enough to connect me with the Boccara 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 one 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 when 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 foot bowl. 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 route case. Ralu'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,
where, by 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 in 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 Saranov with his fists, and the man had abjectly 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 Expatriate 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 suddenly became
clear to me that I had now evidence which would Blastlumly. I believed that
it would not be hard to prove his identity with Pavia and his receipt of
the telegram from Saranov. Tuk 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 Lumly 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 Lumly 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 overconfidence which prevented Lonely 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 it 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 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 rung 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 seriou only a bad shake and 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 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, for 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
an elegant gentleman taking their morning stroll. A florist cart full of roses stood
below me in the street. The summer smell of town, a mixture of
tar flowers, dust and patuli, rose in gusts through the hot 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
one 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 and 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's
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 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 bow or bullet
at Mata 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 Staggs, 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, shuttered again, and
made a dive between a butcher's car 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 nearby 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 him 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 at 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 out of the street, and it seemed to me that he made
a sign to someone farther off. It was now less than a quarter of
a mile between me and Belgrave 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 en wei from 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 hare'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 from 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 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 stair it 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 in 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, in
unparalleled offense, to enter my kitchen at this hour. I fear you have
irremediably spoiled the new casserole dish that I was endeavoring to compose. I was
ready to go on my knees to the offended artist. It grieves me,
indeed, to have interfered with so rare an art which I have often admired
at his Excellency's table. That there is danger behind me in 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. 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, Mussou, 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
Hwans, the butler. Hwans, 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 Alfonse's kitchen. Will
you take me at once to Monsieur Felix. Hwans 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. Don Felix alone and
flung myself into an armchair. 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 passed, 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. Elix nodded, and the next give me
a telegraph form. I want a wire sent at once by someone 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 eight 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 to
thirty. Then I had a wash, and afterwards that 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 Glumly's game.
He would know by now that I had reached the embassy, and that
any further attempts on my life and liberty were feudile. 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. Lumly,
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 Buck. This Librivot's recording is in the public domain. Recording by
Expatriate in Bangor, Maine, Chapter eight, The power House. 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 manservant. You know those Rococo, Late George and 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 Lython, 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 lythan,
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 lum. 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 Lython. 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 power house and its doings. I can only guess.
But pitt Heron is on his way home, and he will be carefully
safeguarded on that journey. Your creature Saranov 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 Lython, 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. No, 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 someone
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 mine which you annex 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 strict from you.
Mine is pitte Herren. 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 in 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 pitte 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 Lython, 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 mitier, believe me as what shallow people call crime,
speaking without prejudice. As the idiot 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 iron clad discretion. You offer a plan which says 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 overimaginative 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 betted 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 warned 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
Lython, it is a mere whimsie of faith that you are not my disciple.
If we had met earlier, in 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 Lython, I am quite impervious to threats. You
come to me tonight 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 made 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 bragg
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 Phidias 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 it's 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 Lython. 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 up
all deans, 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 all 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 Herren'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
expatriot in Bangor, Maine. Chapter nine of The Powerhouse by John Buchan.
This librevox recording is in the public domain. Recording by expatriate 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 social
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 as 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 mycenas 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
produce as 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 pollbearers, 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 or newspaper tributes, but I knew that it
had lost its power. De mortuis et c 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, McGillivray, 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 sometime 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 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 Phenimore 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 tonight 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