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 bagdad 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 stagg, and i looked forward to trying it in a tour in the west country. but before i left london i went again to portman square.
i found ethel pitt-heron in grave distress. you must remember that tommy and i had always gone on the hypothesis that charles's departure had been in pursuance of some mad scheme of his own which might get him into trouble. we thought that he had become mixed up with highly undesirable friends, and was probably embarking in some venture which might not be criminal but was certain to be foolish. i had long rejected the idea of blackmail, and convinced myself that lumley and pavia were his colleagues. the same general notion, i fancy, had been in his wife's mind. but now she had found something which altered the case.
she had ransacked his papers in the hope of finding a clue to the affair which had taken him abroad, but there was nothing but business letters, notes of investments, and such like. he seemed to have burned most of his papers in the queer laboratory at the back of the house. but, stuffed into the pocket of a blotter on a bureau in the drawing-room where he scarcely ever wrote, she had found a document. it seemed to be the rough draft of a letter, and it was addressed to her. i give it as it was written; the blank spaces were left blank in the manuscript.
"you must have thought me mad, or worse, to treat you as i have done. but there was a terrible reason, which some day i hope to tell you all about. i want you as soon as you get this to make ready to come out to me at ... you will travel by ... and arrive at ... i enclose a letter which i want you to hand in deepest confidence to knowles, the 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..."
that was 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 have 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 heavens of june. soon i fell into the blissful state of physical and mental ease which such a life induces. hard toil, such as deer-stalking, keeps the nerves on the alert and the mind active, but swimming all day in a smooth car through a heavenly landscape mesmerises brain and body.
we ran up the thames valley, explored the cotswolds, and turned south through somerset till we reached the fringes of exmoor. i stayed a day or two at a little inn high up in the moor, and spent the time tramping the endless ridges of hill or scrambling in the arbutus thickets where the moor falls in 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 stagg, a sombre and silent man, was lyrical in his praises.
i wanted to be in london by the monday afternoon, and to insure this i made a long day of it on the sunday. it was the long day which brought our pride to a fall. the car had run so well that i resolved to push on and sleep in a friend's house near farnham. it was about half-past eight, and we were traversing the somewhat confused and narrow roads in the neighbourhood of wolmer forest, when, as we turned a sharp corner, we ran full into the tail of a heavy carrier's cart. stagg clapped on the brakes, but the collision, though it did no harm to the cart, was sufficient to send the butt-end of something through our glass screen, damage the tyre of the near front-wheel, and derange 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 farnham. this meant a job of some hours, and i found on inquiry at a neighbouring cottage that there was no inn where i could stay within eight miles. stagg borrowed a bicycle somehow and went off to collect horses, while i morosely reviewed the alternatives before me.
i did not like the prospect of spending the june night beside my derelict car, and the thought of my friend's house near farnham beckoned me seductively. i might have walked there, but i did not know the road, and i found that my shoulder was paining me, so i resolved to try to find some gentleman's house in the neighbourhood where i could borrow a conveyance. the south of england is now so densely peopled by londoners that even in a wild district where there are no inns and few farms there are certain to be several week-end cottages.
i walked along the white ribbon of road in the scented june dusk. at first it was bounded by high gorse, then came patches of open heath, and then woods. beyond the woods i found a park-railing, and presently an entrance-gate with a lodge. it seemed to be the place i was looking for, and i woke the lodge-keeper, who thus early had retired to bed. i asked the name of the owner, but was told the name of the place instead—it was high ashes. i asked if the owner was at home, and got a sleepy nod for answer.
the house, as seen in the half-light, was a long white-washed cottage, rising to two storeys in the centre. it was plentifully covered with creepers and roses, and the odour of flowers was mingled with the faintest savour of wood-smoke, pleasant to a hungry traveller in the late hours. i pulled an old-fashioned bell, and the door was opened by a stolid young parlour-maid.
i explained my errand, and offered my card. i was, i said, a member of parliament and of the bar, who had suffered a motor accident. would it be possible for the master of the house to assist me to get to my destination near farnham? i was bidden enter, and wearily seated myself on a settle in the hall.
in a few minutes an ancient housekeeper appeared, a grim dame whom at other times i should have shunned. she bore, however, a hospitable message. there was no conveyance in the place, as the car had gone that day to london for repairs. but if i cared to avail myself of the accommodation of the house for the night it was at my service. meantime my servant could be looking after the car, and a message would go to him to pick me up in the morning.
i gratefully accepted, for my shoulder was growing troublesome, and was conducted up a shallow oak staircase to a very pleasant bedroom with a bathroom adjoining. i had a bath, and afterwards found a variety of comforts put at my service, from slippers to razors. there was also some elliman for 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 raeburn. the books were in glass cases, which showed the beautiful shallow mouldings of a more artistic age. a table was laid for dinner in a corner, for the room was immense, and the shaded candlesticks on it, along with the late june dusk, gave such light as there was. at first i thought the place was empty, but as i crossed the floor a figure rose from a deep chair by the hearth.
"good evening, mr. leithen," 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 chiselled. he had a sort of hapsburg mouth and chin, very long and pointed, but modelled with a grace which made the full lower lip 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 soles, i remember, an exceedingly well-cooked chicken, fresh strawberries and a savoury. we drank a '95 perrier-jouet and some excellent madeira. the stolid parlour-maid waited on us, and, as we talked of the weather and the hampshire roads, i kept trying to guess my host's profession. he was not a lawyer, for he had not the inevitable lines on the cheek. i thought that he might be a retired oxford don, 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 armchairs and he gave me a good cigar. we talked about many things—books, the right furnishing of a library, a little politics in deference to my m.p.-ship. my host was apathetic about party questions, but curious about defence matters and in his way an amateur strategist. i could fancy him inditing letters to the times on national service.
then we wandered into foreign affairs, where i found his interest acute, and his knowledge immense. indeed he was so well informed that i began to suspect that my guesses had been wrong, and that he was a retired diplomat. at that time there was some difficulty between france and italy over customs duties, and he sketched for me with remarkable clearness the weak points in the french tariff administration. i had been recently engaged in a big south american railway case, and i asked him a question about the property of my clients. he gave me a much better account than i had ever got from the solicitors who briefed me.
the fire had been lit before we finished dinner, and presently it began to burn up and light the figure of my host, who sat in a deep arm-chair. he had taken off his tinted glasses, and as i rose to get a match i saw his eyes looking abstractedly before him.
somehow they reminded me of pitt-heron. charles had always a sort of dancing light in his, a restless intelligence which was at once attractive and disquieting. my host had this and more. his eyes were paler than i had ever seen in a human head—pale, bright, and curiously wild. but, whereas pitt-heron's had only given the impression of reckless youth, this man's 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 recognise.
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 civilisation."
he repeated the words "cement of civilisation" in his soft voice.
"in a sense you are right. but civilisation 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 civilisation."
he caught me up quickly. "the last is your true cement. did you ever reflect, mr. leithen, how precarious is the tenure of the civilisation 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 civilisation from barbarism. i tell you the division is a thread, a sheet of glass. a touch here, a push there, and you bring back the reign of saturn."
it was the kind of paradoxical, undergraduate speculation which grown men indulge in sometimes after dinner. i looked at my host to discover his mood, and at the moment a log flared up again.
his face was perfectly serious. his light wild eyes were intently watching me.
"take one little instance," he said. "we are a commercial world, and have built up a great system of credit. without our cheques 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 alchemists came true, and all metals were readily transmutable. we have got very near it in recent years, as you will know if you interest yourself in chemical science. once gold and silver lost their intrinsic value, the whole edifice of our commerce would collapse. credit would become meaningless, because it would be untranslatable. we should be back at a bound in the age of barter, for it is hard to see what other standard of value could take the place of the precious metals. all our civilisation, 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 from the cobbler and the butcher. we should have the simple life with a vengeance—not the self-conscious simplicity of the civilised man, but the compulsory simplicity of the savage."
i was not greatly impressed by the illustration. "of course, there are many key-points in civilisation," 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 and 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 called the 'good-will of civilisation.'"
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. civilisation 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 recognised their decisions? modern life is the silent compact of comfortable folk to keep up pretences. 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 eery 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 and the second-rate. the methods of our departments would bring any private firm to bankruptcy. the methods of parliament—pardon me—would disgrace any board of directors. our rulers pretend to buy expert knowledge, but they never pay the price for it that a business man would pay, and if they get it they have not the courage to use it. where is the inducement for a man of genius to sell his brains to our insipid governors?
"and yet knowledge is the only power—now as ever. a little mechanical device will wreck your navies. a new chemical combination will upset every rule of war. it is the same with our commerce. one or two minute changes might sink britain to the level of ecuador or give china the key of the world's wealth. and yet we never dream that these things are possible. we think our castles of sand are the ramparts of the universe."
i have never had the gift of the gab, but i admire it in others. there is a morbid charm in such talk, a kind of exhilaration of which one is half ashamed. i found myself interested 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 honour 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 civilisation a machine, but it is something far more flexible. it has the power of adaptation of a living organism."
"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 civilisation."
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 defence 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 defence. you see only the productions of second-rate folk who are in a hurry to get wealth and fame. the true knowledge, the 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 startled 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 sombre 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 super-anarchy, and yet it makes no headway. what is the motive of those diabolical brains?"
he laughed. "how should i be able to tell you? i am a humble inquirer, and in my researches 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 honour to share my sandwiches. he conversed fluently, but quaintly in english, and he was, i remember, a nietzschean, and a hot rebel against the established order. "the pity," he cried, "is that the reformers do not know, and those who know are too idle to reform. some day there will come the marriage of knowledge and will, and then the world will march."
"you draw an awful picture," i said. "but if those extra-social brains are so potent, why after all do they effect so little? a dull police-officer, with the machine behind him, can afford to laugh at most experiments in anarchy."
"true," he said, "and civilisation 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 to-day we call nihilism 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 intellectuels in geneva conspire to upset the romanoffs and are hunted down by the police of europe. all the governments and their not very intelligent police forces join hands, and hey, presto! there is an end of the conspirators. for civilisation knows how to use such powers as it has, while the immense potentiality of the unlicensed is dissipated in vapour. civilisation wins because it is a world-wide league; its enemies fail because they are parochial. but supposing——"
again he stopped and rose from his chair. he found a switch and flooded the room with light. i glanced up blinking to see my host smiling down on me, a most benevolent and courteous old gentleman. he had resumed his tinted glasses.
"forgive me," he said, "for leaving you in darkness while i bored you with my gloomy prognostications. a recluse is apt to forget what is due to a guest."
he handed the cigar-box to me, and pointed to a table where whisky 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 civilisation 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 internationalised. suppose that the links in the cordon of civilisation were neutralised by other links in a far more potent chain. the earth is seething with incoherent power and unorganised 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 futile, 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 power-house, and then the age of miracles will begin."
i got up, for the hour was late, and i had had enough of this viewy 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 hall he apologised 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 are 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 eery 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 tritest platitudes. i had a horrible feeling that he was trying to convince me, to fascinate me, to prepare the ground for some proposal. again and again i told myself it was crazy nonsense, the heated dream of a visionary, but again and again i came back to some details which had a horrid air of reality. if the man was a romancer he had an uncommon 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 "power-house," 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 stagg had arrived. i wanted to get away from the house as soon as possible, and i had no desire to meet its master again in this world.
the grim housekeeper, who answered my summons, received my explanation in silence. breakfast would be ready in twenty minutes; eight was mr. lumley's hour for it.
"mr. andrew lumley?" i asked with a start.
"mr. andrew lumley," she said.
so that was my host's name. i sat down at a bureau in the hall and did a wildly foolish thing.
i wrote a letter, beginning "dear mr. lumley," thanking him for his kindness and explaining the reason of my early departure. it was imperative, i said, that i should be in london by midday. 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-heron."
breakfastless i joined stagg in the car, and soon we were swinging down from the uplands to the shallow vale of the wey. my thoughts were very little on my new toy or on the mid-summer beauties of surrey. the friend of pitt-heron, who knew about his going to bokhara, was the maniac who dreamed of the "power-house." there were going to be dark scenes in the drama before it was played out.
