CHAPTER I_The Power-House

Produced by Al Haines

By JOHN BUCHAN

The

POWER-HOUSE

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY * BOSTON

The Riverside Press Cambridge

THIS BOOK OR PARTS THEREOF IN ANY FORM

PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

MAJOR-GENERAL

SIR FRANCIS LLOYD, K.C.B.

_MY DEAR GENERAL:_

_A recent tale of mine has, I am told, found favour in the dug-outs

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 too 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._

CONTENTS

Preface by the Editor

CHAPTER

I. Beginning of the Wild-Goose Chase

II. I First Hear of Mr. Andrew Lumley

III. Tells of a Midsummer Night

IV. I Follow the Trail of the Super-Butler

V. I Take a Partner

VI. The Restaurant in Antioch Street

VII. I Find Sanctuary

VIII. The Power-House

IX. Return of the Wild Geese

PREFACE BY THE EDITOR

We were at Glenaicill--six of us--for the duck-shooting, when Leithen

told us this story. Since five in the morning we had been out on the

skerries, and had been blown home by a wind which threatened to root

the house and its wind-blown woods from their precarious lodgment on

the hill. A vast nondescript meal, luncheon and dinner in one, had

occupied us till the last daylight departed, and we settled ourselves

in the smoking-room for a sleepy evening of talk and tobacco.

Conversation, I remember, turned on some of Jim's trophies which

grinned at us from the firelit walls, and we began to spin hunting

yarns. Then Hoppy Bynge, who was killed next year on the Bramaputra,

told us some queer things about his doings in New Guinea, where he

tried to climb Carstensz, 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 Ypres

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 Leithen, 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 Leithen 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 honour and glory.

"All the same," he went on, "I once played the chief part in a rather

exciting business without ever once budging from London. And the

joke of it was that the man who went out to look for adventure only

saw a bit of the game, and I who sat in my chambers saw it all and

pulled the strings. 'They also serve who only stand and wait,' you

know."

Then he told us this story. The version I give is one he afterwards

wrote down when he had looked up his diary for some of the details.

CHAPTER I

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 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 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 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.

Tommy sniffed the spring breeze like a supercilious stag.

"This about finishes me," he groaned. "What a juggins I am to be

mouldering here! Joggleberry is the celestial limit, what they call

in happier lands the pink penultimate. And the frowst on those back

benches! Was there ever such a moth-eaten old museum?"

"It is the Mother of Parliaments," I observed.

"Damned monkey-house," said Tommy. "I must get off for a bit, or

I'll bonnet Joggleberry or get up and propose a national monument to

Guy Fawkes, or something silly."

I did not see him for a day or two, and then one morning he rang me

up and peremptorily summoned me to dine with him. I went, knowing

very well what I should find. Tommy was off next day to shoot lions

on the Equator, or something equally unconscientious. He was a bad

acquaintance for a placid sedentary soul like me, for though he could

work like a Trojan when the fit took him, he was never at the same

job very long. In the same week he would harass an Under Secretary

about horses for the Army, write voluminously to the press about a

gun he had invented for potting aeroplanes, give a fancy-dress ball

which he forgot to attend, and get into the semi-final of the

racquets 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 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 adjacent in Yorkshire, and on

platforms abused each other like pickpockets.

Tommy enlarged on the misfits of civilised life. He maintained that

none of us, except perhaps the sailor and the cavalryman, were at our

proper job. He would have had Wytham--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 for military history. Tommy's

perception did not go very deep. He told Chapman he should have been

a lumberman in California. "You'd have made an uncommon good logger,

Chipmunk, and you know you're a 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, I'm getting out of this hole. Paired

for the rest of the session with a chap who has lockjaw. I'm off to

stretch my legs and get back my sense of proportion."

Some one 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, 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 to my tracks if things got

troublesome."

I braced myself for some preposterous confidence, for I was

experienced in Tommy's vagaries. But I own 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 half-penny 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 neighbourhood of Afghanistan and written an exciting

book about it.

Then he married a pretty cousin of Tommy's, who happened to be the

only person that ever captured my stony heart, and settled down in

London. I did not go to their house, and soon I found that very few

of his friends saw much of him, either. His travels and magazine

articles suddenly stopped, and I put it down to the common course of

successful domesticity. Apparently I was wrong.

"Charles Pitt-Heron," said Tommy, "is blowing up for a most

thundering mess."

I asked what kind of mess, and Tommy said he didn't know. "That's

the mischief of it. You remember the wild beggar he used to be,

always off on the spree to the Mountains of the Moon, or somewhere.

Well, he has been damping down his fires lately and trying to behave

like a respectable citizen, but God knows what he has been thinking!

I go a good deal to Portman Square, and all last year he has been

getting queerer."

Questions as to the nature of the queerness only elicited the fact

that Pitt-Heron had taken to science with some enthusiasm.

"He has 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 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

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 a 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. Pitt-Heron two days before with a letter from

some Embassy chap. Unfortunately, the man in question had gone off

to New York next day, but Konalevsky told me one thing which helped

to clear up matters. It seemed that the letter had been one of those

passports that Embassies give to their friends--a higher-powered sort

than the ordinary make--and Konalevsky 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 to-morrow 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 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 have forgotten what I said, but it was some plea for caution. I

could not see the reason for these heroics. Pitt-Heron did not

interest me greatly, and the notion of Tommy as a defender of the

hearth amused me. I thought that he was working on very slight

evidence and would probably make a fool of himself.

"It's only another of the man's fads," I said. "He never could do

things like an ordinary mortal. What possible trouble could there

be? Money?"

"Rich as Croesus," 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 cheque."

"Then I give it up. Whatever it is it looks as if Pitt-Heron would

have a companion in misfortune before you are done with the business.

I'm all for your taking a holiday, for at present you are 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 in 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 chockful 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 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 from Victoria, and my work was pretty well

ruined for the day. I felt oddly restless, and the cause was not

merely Tommy's departure. My thoughts kept turning to the

Pitt-Herons--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 scepticism 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

Muscovy. 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

knout coercing Tommy and Pitt-Heron in a Russian fortress which faded

away into the Carlton Hotel.

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 of 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 had been a day when we were the closest of

friends.

I found her alone, a perplexed and saddened lady with imploring eyes.

Those eyes questioned me as to how much I knew. I told her presently

that I had seen Tommy and was aware of his errand. I was moved to

add that she might count on me if there were anything she wished done

on this side of the Channel.

She was very little changed. There was still the old exquisite

slimness, the old shy courtesy. But she told me nothing. Charles

was full of business and becoming very forgetful. She was sure the

Russian journey was all a stupid mistake. He probably thought he had

told her of his departure. He would write; she expected a letter by

every post.

But her haggard eyes belied her optimism. I could see that there had

been odd happenings of late in the 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 certain 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

byways of life for 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 cause for all my vigilance.