The Leithen Stories. Buchan John
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 at 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 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 Crœsus,’ 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 you 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 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 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 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