BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE. No. MCLXXVIII. DECEMBER 1913. VOL. CXCIV. THE POWER-HOUSE. BY JOHN BUCHAN. know how one tale begets another, and soon the whole place was humming with odd recollections, for five of us had been much about the world. All except Leithen, the man who was 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. WE were at Glenaicill-six to climb Carstensz, and lived of us-for the duck-shooting, for six months in mud. You when Leithen told me this story. Since five in the morning we had been out on the skerries, and had been blown home by a gale 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. Jim had just finished a fairly steep yarn about his experiences on a Boundary Commission near Lake Chad, and Leithen got up to find a drink. Conversation, I remember, turned on some of Jim's trophies which grinned at us from the firelit walls, and we began to spin hunting yarns. "Lucky devils," he said. Then Hoppy Bynge, who was "You've had all the fun out killed next year on the of life. I've had my nose to Bramaputra, told us some the grindstone ever since I queer things about his doings left school." in New Guinea, where he tried VOL. CXCIV.—NO. MCLXXVIII. I said something about his 3 A having all the honour and glory. "All the same," he went on, "I once played the chief part in a rather exciting business, without ever 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. I came out of the House of Commons one afternoon early in May with Tommy Deloraine. 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 suoceeded, 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 in Parliament Square and bits of gay colour, 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. "Damned monkey - house," said Tommy. "I must get off for a bit or I'll get up and propose a national memorial to Guy Fawkes." I did not see him for a day or two, and then one morning he rang me up and peremptorily summoned me to dine with him. I went, knowing very well what I should find. Tommy was off next day to shoot lions on the Equator, or something equally unconscientious. He was a bad acquaintance for a placid sedentary soul like me, for though he could work like a Trojan when the fit took him, he was never at the same job very long. In the same week he would harass an Under Secretary about horses for the Army, write voluminously to the press about a gun he had invented for potting aeroplanes, give a fancy-dress ball which he forgot to attend, and get into the semi-final of the racquets championship. I waited daily to see him start a new religion. That night, I recollect, he had an odd assortment of guests. The Irish Secretary was there, a gentle being for whom Tommy professed public scorn and private affection; a sailor; an Indian cavalry fellow; Chapman, the Labour member, whom Tommy called Chipmunk; myself, and old Milson of the Treasury. Our host was in tremendous form, chaffing everybody, and sending Chipmunk into great rolling gusts of merriment. The two lived The two lived adjacent in Yorkshire, and on platforms abused each other like pickpockets. "I'm getting out of this hole," he announced. "Paired for the rest of the session with a chap who has lockjaw. I'm off to stretch my legs and get back my sense of proportion.' Some one asked where he was going, going, and was told "Venezuela, to buy Government bonds and look for birds' nests." But when the others had gone and we were sitting in the little back smoking-room on the first floor, he became serious. "I've taken on a queer job, Leithen," he said, "and I want you to hear about it. None of my family know, and I would like to leave some one behind me who could get on my trail. You remember PittHeron?" I remembered Pitt-Heron very well. He had been at Oxford with me, but he was no great friend of mine, though Tommy and he for about two years were inseparable. He 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 went down, for he had made some wild journey in the neigh bourhood 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 naturally 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 solemnly, "is blowing up for a most thundering mess. You remember the wild beggar he used to be. Well, he has been damping down his fires lately and behaving 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. He's got a laboratory at the back of the house 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. They've got an odd, secretive look about them, and Charlie is becoming like them. won't answer a plain question or look you straight in the face. Ethel sees it too, and she has often talked to about it. bolted!" He And now the chap's "What on earth-" I began, but Tommy cut me short. "Bolted without a word to a mortal soul. He told Ethel had heard that Charles was aiming for Moscow. That was good enough for me. I'm off to-morrow to run him to ground." 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 some things 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 find any trace of where he had gone. I was just setting out for Scotland Yard this morning when Tomlin, the valet, rang me up and said he had found a card in the waistcoat of the dress clothes that Charles had worn the night before he left. It had some name on it like Konalevsky, 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 Mr PittHeron two days before with a letter from some Embassy chap. Unfortunately the man in question had gone off to New York York next day, but Konalevsky told me one thing which helped to clear matters. It seemed that the letter had been one of those passports that Embassies give to their friends a higherpowered sort than the ordinary make-and Konalevsky gathered from something he up "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 am going to hale 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 was not greatly interested in Pitt-Heron, 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. But on going home that night I thought a good deal about Ethel Pitt-Heron, that adorable child unequally yoked to a perverse egoist. Next morning when Tommy came to see me in the Temple I found my. self talking sympathetically about his job. The prospect of travel always went to his head like wine. He was in wild spirits, and had for ing Pitt-Heron in gratitude for his provision of an occupation. He talked of carrying him off into the Caucasus when he had found him, to investigate the habits of the Caucasian stag. gotten his anger at the default- from Victoria, and the next afternoon I found my steps wending in the direction of Portman Square. I lived at the time in Down Street, and I told myself I would be none the worse for a walk in the Park before dinner. I had a fancy to see Mrs Pitt-Heron, for, though I had only met her twice since her marriage, there was a day when we were the closest of friends. I found her alone, a perplexed and saddened lady with imploring eyes. Those eyes questioned me as to how much I knew. I told her frankly that I had seen Tommy and was aware of his errand. I added that she might count upon me if there was anything she wished done on this side of the Channel. I remember the scene as if it were yesterday. It was a hot May morning, and the sun which came through the dirty 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 chockful of amusing things. Life goes roaring on and you hear only the echo in your stuffy rooms. You can hardly see the sun for the cobwebs on your glass. Charles is a fool, but I'm blessed if he isn't wiser than you. Don't you wish you were coming with me?" 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 the 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 11 She told me nothing. Charles was full of business and becoming very forgetful. 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 family. 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 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 |