Free The Leithen Stories by John Buchan Page B

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 mestraight 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.

FIVE
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.
    â€˜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 Hilder-stein started a laugh because I said kilometres for kilo-grammes. It was just a slip o’ the tongue, for I had it right in my notes, and besides, these 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 blessed if the Board would stir its stumps. Well I mind the day when I was hanging on to theBoard’s coat-tails 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.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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 to discredit them. You can find out about Routh for yourself, for I’m damned if I help you.’
    I saw I could do nothing with Chapman unless I made a clean breast of it, so for the second time that day I told the whole story.
    I couldn’t have wished for a better audience. He got wildly excited before I was half through with it. No doubt of the correctness of my evidence ever entered his head, for, like most of his party, he hated anarchism worse than capitalism, and the notion of a highly-capitalised, highly-scientific,