I left the Embassy before six o’clock and, crossing the Square engrossed with my own thoughts, ran full into Lumley.
I hope I played my part well, though I could not repress a start of surprise. He wore a grey morning-coat and a white top-hat and looked the image of benevolent respectability.
“Ah, Mr. Leithen,” he said, “we meet again.”
I murmured something about my regrets at my early departure three days ago, and added the feeble joke that I wished he would hurry on his Twilight of Civilisation, for the burden of it was becoming too much for me.
He looked me in the eyes with all the friendliness in the world. “So you have not forgotten our evening’s talk? You owe me something, my friend, for giving you a new interest in your profession.”
“I owe you much,” I said, “for your hospitality, your advice, and your warnings.”
He was wearing his tinted glasses and peered quizzically into my face.
“I am going to make a call in Grosvenor Place,” he said, “and shall beg in return the pleasure of your company. So you know my young friend, Pitt-Heron?”
With an ingenuous countenance I explained that he had been at Oxford with me and that we had common friends.
“A brilliant young man,” said Lumley. “Like you, he has occasionally cheered an old man’s solitude. And he has spoken of me to you?”
“Yes,” I said, lying stoutly. “He used to tell me about your collections.” (If Lumley knew Charles well he would find me out, for the latter would not have crossed the road for all the treasures of the Louvre.)
“Ah, yes, I have picked up a few things. If ever you should care to see them I should be honoured. You are a connoisseur? Of a sort? You interest me for I should have thought your taste lay in other directions than the dead things of art. Pitt-Heron is no collector. He loves life better than art, as a young man should. A great traveller our friend—the Laurence Oliphant or Richard Burton of our day.”
We stopped at a house in Grosvenor Place, and he relinquished my arm. “Mr. Leithen,” he said, “a word from one who wishes you no ill. You are a friend of Pitt-Heron, but where he goes you cannot follow. Take my advice and keep out of his affairs. You will do no good to him, and you may bring yourself into serious danger. You are a man of sense, a practical man, so I speak to you frankly. But, remember, I do not warn twice.”
He took off his glasses, and his light, wild eyes looked me straight in the face. All benevolence had gone, and something implacable and deadly burned in them. Before I could say a word in reply he shuffled up the steps of the house and was gone. …
V
I Take a Partner
That meeting with Lumley scared me badly, but it also clinched my resolution. The most pacific fellow on earth can be gingered into pugnacity. I had now more than my friendship for Tommy and my sympathy with Pitt-Heron to urge me on. A man had tried to bully me, and that roused all the worst stubbornness of my soul. I was determined to see the game through at any cost.
But I must have an ally if my nerves were to hold out, and my mind turned at once to Tommy’s friend Chapman. I thought with comfort of the bluff independence of the Labour member. So that night at the House I hunted him out in the smoking-room.
He had been having a row with the young bloods of my party that afternoon and received me ungraciously.
“I’m about sick of you fellows,” he growled. (I shall not attempt to reproduce Chapman’s accent. He spoke rich Yorkshire with a touch of the drawl of the western dales.) “They went and spoiled the best speech, though I say it as shouldn’t, which this old place has heard for a twelvemonth. I’ve been workin’ for days at it in the Library. I was tellin’ them how much more bread cost under Protection, and the Jew Hilderstein started a laugh because I said kilometres for kilogrammes. It was just a slip o’ the tongue, for I had it right in my notes, and besides there furrin’ words don’t matter a curse. Then that young lord as sits for East Claygate gets up and goes out as I was gettin’ into my peroration, and he drops his topper and knocks off old Higgins’s spectacles, and all the idiots laughed. After that I gave it them hot and strong, and got called to order. And then Wattles, him as used to be as good a socialist as me, replied for the Government and his blamed Board and said that the Board thought this and the Board thought that, and was damned if the Board would stir its stumps. Well I mind the day when I was hanging on to the Board’s coattails in Hyde Park to keep it from talking treason.”
It took me a long time to get Chapman settled down and anchored to a drink.
“I want you,” I said, “to tell me about Routh—you know the fellow I mean—the ex-Union-Leader.”
At that he fairly blazed up.
“There you are, you Tories,” he shouted, causing a pale Liberal member on the next sofa to make a hurried exit. “You can’t fight fair. You hate the Unions, and you rake up any rotten old prejudice
