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 reached the Albany as the clock was striking eight. Lumley's rooms
were on the first floor, and I was evidently expected, for the porter
himself conducted me to them and waited by me till the door was
opened by a man-servant.
You know those rococo, late Georgian Albany rooms, large, square,
clumsily corniced. Lumley's was lined with books, which I saw at a
glance were of a different type from those in his working library at
his country house. This was the collection of a bibliophile, and in
the light of the summer evening the rows of tall volumes in vellum
and morocco lined the walls like some rich tapestry.
The valet retired and shut the door, and presently from a little
inner chamber came his master. He was dressed for dinner and wore
more than ever the air of the eminent diplomat. Again I had the old
feeling of incredulity. It was the Lumley 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, Mr. Leithen," 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, Mr.
Leithen," 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, Mr. Lumley. 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, Mr. Leithen. But surely you must realise 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, Saronov, has
confessed. We shall know more very soon, and 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, Mr. Leithen," 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 honourable 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 centre of
strange stories. 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
cut-throat 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 flavour in controlling subterranean things if you were
yourself a mole working in the dark. To get the full flavour, 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, Mr.
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. Well,
let me put my last cards on the table. At half-past nine precisely
the duplicate of that statement of mine which you annexed this
morning will be handed 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 and 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
armour. Yours is that you only succeed under the disguise of high
respectability. That disguise, in any case, will be stripped from
you. Mine is Pitt-Heron. I do not know how far he has entangled
himself with you, but I know something of his weakness, and I don't
want his career ruined and his wife's heart broken. He has learned
his lesson, and will never mention you and your schemes to a mortal
soul. Indeed, if I can help it, he will never know that anyone
shares his secret. The price of the chance of escape I offer you is
that Pitt-Heron's past be buried for ever."
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.
"Mr. Leithen," 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 _métier_,
believe me, is 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 saves both
our weaknesses. By the way, what is it?"
I looked at my watch again. "You have ample time to catch the night
express to Paris."
"And if not?"
"Then I am afraid there may be trouble with the police between ten
and eleven o'clock."
"Which for all our sakes would be a pity. Do you know you interest
me uncommonly, for you confirm the accuracy of my judgment. I have
always had a notion that some day I should run across to my sorrow
just such a man as you. A man of very great intellectual power I can
deal with, for that kind of brain is usually combined with the sort
of high-strung imagination on which I can work. The same with your
over-imaginative man. Yes Pitt-Heron was of that type. Ordinary
brains do not trouble me, for I puzzle them. Now you are a man of
good average intelligence. Pray forgive the lukewarmness of the
phrase; it is really a high compliment, for I am an austere critic.
If you were that and no more you would not have succeeded. But you
possess also a quite irrelevant gift of imagination. Not enough to
upset your balance, but enough to do what your mere lawyer's talent
could never have done. You have achieved a feat which is given to
few--you have partially understood me. Believe me, I rate you high.
You are the kind of four-square being bedded in the concrete of our
civilisation, 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 discernment would have been
at fault."
"I warn you," I said, "that you are wasting precious time."
He laughed quite cheerfully.
"I believe you are really anxious about my interests," he said.
"That is a triumph indeed. Do you know, Mr. Leithen, it is a mere
whimsy of fate that you are not my disciple. If we had met earlier
and under other circumstances I should have captured you. It is
because you have in you a capacity for discipleship that you have
succeeded in your opposition."
"I abominate you and 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, Mr. Leithen, I am quite impervious to threats. You come
to me to-night and hold a pistol to my head. You offer me two
alternatives, both of which mean failure. But how do you know that I
regard them as failure? I have had what they call a good run for my
money. No man since Napoleon has tasted such power. I may be
willing to end it. Age creeps on and power may grow burdensome. I
have always sat loose from common ambitions and common affections.
For all you know I may regard you as a benefactor."
All this talk looks futile when it is written down, but it was
skilful enough, for it was taking every atom of exhilaration out of
my victory. It was not idle brag. Every syllable rang true, as I
knew in my bones. I felt myself in the presence of something
enormously big, as if a small barbarian was desecrating the colossal
Zeus of Pheidias 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 sceptic about most things," he
said, "but, believe me, I have my own worship. I venerate the
intellect of man. I believe in its undreamed-of possibilities, when
it grows free like an oak in the forest and 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, Mr. Leithen. If I take your
advice there will be various things to do.... In any case there will
be much to do...."
He led me to the door as if he were an ordinary host speeding an
ordinary guest. I remember that on my way he pointed out a set of
Aldines and called my attention to their beauty. He shook hands
quite cordially and remarked on the fineness of the weather. That
was the last I saw of this amazing man.
It was with profound relief that I found myself in Piccadilly in the
wholesome company of my kind. I had carried myself boldly enough in
the last hour, but I would not have gone through it again for a
king's ransom. Do you know what it is to deal with a pure
intelligence, a brain stripped of every shred of humanity? It is
like being in the company of a snake.
I drove to the club and telephoned to Macgillivray, 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 Labour
Member is the greatest of all sticklers for legality, and the outrage
he had suffered that morning had grievously weakened his trust in
public security. The Antioch Street business had seemed to him
eminently right; if you once got mixed up in melodrama you had to
expect such things. But for a Member of Parliament to be robbed in
broad daylight next door to the House of Commons upset the
foundations of his faith. There was little the matter with his body
and the doctor promised that he would be allowed up next day, but his
soul was a mass of bruises.
It took me a lot of persuasion to get him to keep quiet. He wanted a
public exposure of Lumley, a big trial, a general ferreting out of
secret agents, the whole winding up with a speech in Parliament by
himself on this last outrage of Capitalism. Gloomily he listened to
my injunctions to silence. But he saw the reason of it and promised
to hold his tongue out of loyalty to Tommy. I knew that Pitt-Heron's
secret was safe with him.
As I crossed Westminster Bridge on my way home the night express 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.