The Collected Works of John Buchan (Illustrated). Buchan John
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far gone in liquor, but three glasses of champagne would never have touched a head like Bill’s. I saw what was up with him. He was not drunk, but drugged.
“They’ve doped the wine,” I cried. “They put it there for me to drink it and go to sleep.”
There is always something which is the last straw to any man. You may insult and outrage him and he will bear it patiently, but touch the quick in his temper and he will turn. Apparently for Bill drugging was the unforgivable sin. His eye lost for a moment its confusion. He squared his shoulders and roared like a bull.
“Doped, by God!” he cried. “Who done it?”
“The men who shut me in this room. Burst that door and you will find them.”
He turned a blazing face on the locked door and hurled his huge weight on it. It cracked and bent, but the lock and hinges held. I could see that sleep was overwhelming him and that his limbs were stiffening, but his anger was still strong enough for another effort. Again he drew himself together like a big cat and flung himself on the woodwork. The hinges tore from the jambs and the whole outfit fell forward into the passage in a cloud of splinters and dust and broken plaster.
It was Mr Docken’s final effort. He lay on the top of the wreckage he had made, like Samson among the ruins of Gaza, a senseless and slumbering hulk.
I picked up the unopened bottle of champagne—it was the only weapon available—and stepped over his body. I was beginning to enjoy myself amazingly.
As I expected, there was a man in the corridor, a little fellow in waiter’s clothes with a tweed jacket instead of a dress-coat. If he had a pistol I knew I was done, but I gambled upon the disinclination of the management for the sound of shooting.
He had a knife, but he never had a chance to use it. My champagne bottle descended on his head and he dropped like a log.
There were men coming upstairs—not Chapman, for I still heard his hoarse shouts in the dining-room. If they once got up they could force me back through that hideous room by the door through which Docken had come, and in five minutes I should be in their motor-car.
There was only one thing to do. I jumped from the stair-head right down among them. I think there were three, and my descent toppled them over. We rolled in a wild whirling mass and cascaded into the dining-room, where my head bumped violently on the parquet.
I expected a bit of a grapple, but none came. My wits were pretty woolly, but I managed to scramble to my feet. The heels of my enemies were disappearing up the staircase. Chapman was pawing my ribs to discover if there were any bones broken. There was not another soul in the room except two policemen who were pushing their way in from the street.
Chapman was flushed and breathing heavily: his coat had a big split down the seams at the shoulder, but his face was happy as a child’s.
I caught his arm and spoke in his ear. “We’ve got to get out of this at once. How can we square these policemen? There must be no inquiry and nothing in the papers. Do you hear?”
“That’s all right,” said Chapman. “These bobbies are friends of mine, two good lads from Wensleydale. On my road here I told them to give me a bit of law and follow me, for I thought they might be wanted. They didn’t come too soon to spoil sport, for I’ve been knocking furriners about for ten minutes. You seem to have been putting up a tidy scrap yourself.”
“Let’s get home first,” I said, for I was beginning to think of the bigger thing.
I wrote a chit for Macgillivray which I asked one of the constables to take to Scotland Yard. It was to beg that nothing should be done yet in the business of the restaurant, and above all, that nothing should get into the papers. Then I asked the other to see us home. It was a queer request for two able-bodied men to make on a summer evening in the busiest part of London, but I was taking no chances. The Power-House had declared war on me, and I knew it would be war without quarter.
I was in a fever to get out of that place. My momentary lust of battle had gone, and every stone of that building seemed to me a threat. Chapman would have liked to spend a happy hour rummaging through the house, but the gravity of my face persuaded him. The truth is, I was bewildered. I could not understand the reason of this sudden attack. Lumley’s spies must long ago have told him enough to connect me with the Bokhara business. My visits to the Embassy alone were proof enough. But now he must have found out something new, something which startled him, or else there had been wild doings in Turkestan.
I won’t forget that walk home in a hurry. It was a fine July twilight. The streets were full of the usual crowd, shop-girls in thin frocks, promenading clerks, and all the flotsam of a London summer. You would have said it was the safest place on earth. But I was glad we had the policeman with us, who at the end of one beat passed us on to his colleague, and I was glad of Chapman. For I am morally certain I would never have got home alone.
The queer thing is that there was no sign of trouble till we got into Oxford Street. Then I became aware that there were people on these pavements who knew all about me. I first noticed it at the mouth of one of those little dark side-alleys which run up into mews and small dingy courts. I found myself being skilfully edged away from Chapman into the shadow, but I noticed it in time and butted my way back to the pavement. I couldn’t make out who the people were who hustled me. They seemed nondescripts of all sorts, but I fancied there were women among them.
This happened twice, and I got wary, but I was nearly caught before we reached Oxford Circus. There was a front of a big shop rebuilding, and the usual wooden barricade with a gate. Just as we passed it there was a special throng on the pavement, and I, being next the wall, got pushed against the gate. Suddenly it gave, and I was pressed inward. I was right inside before I realised my danger, and the gate was closing. There must have been people there, but I could see nothing in the gloom.
It was no time for false pride. I yelled to Chapman, and the next second his burly shoulder was in the gap. The hustlers vanished, and I seemed to hear a polite voice begging my pardon.
After that Chapman and I linked arms and struck across Mayfair. But I did not feel safe till I was in the flat with the door bolted.
We had a long drink, and I stretched myself in an armchair, for I was as tired as if I had come out of a big game of Rugby football.
“I owe you a good deal, old man,” I said. “I think I’ll join the Labour Party. You can tell your fellows to send me their whips. What possessed you to come to look for me?”
The explanation was simple. I had mentioned the restaurant in my telephone message, and the name had awakened a recollection in Chapman’s mind. He could not fix it at first, but by-and-by he remembered that the place had cropped up in the Routh case. Routh’s London headquarters had been at the restaurant in Antioch Street. As soon as he remembered this he got into a taxi and descended at the corner of the street, where by sheer luck he fell in with his Wensleydale friends.
He said he had marched into the restaurant and found it empty, but for an ill-favoured manager, who denied all knowledge of me. Then, fortunately, he chose to make certain by shouting my name, and heard my answer. After that he knocked the manager down, and was presently assaulted by several men whom he described as “furrin muck.” They had knives, of which he made very little, for he seems to have swung a table as a battering-ram and left sore limbs behind him.
He was on the top of his form. “I haven’t enjoyed anything so much since I was a lad at school,” he informed me. “I was beginning to think your Power- House was a wash-out, but Lord! it’s been busy enough to-night. This is what I call life!”
My spirits could not keep pace with his. The truth is that I was miserably puzzled—not afraid so much as mystified, I couldn’t make out this sudden dead-set at me. Either they knew more than I bargained for, or I knew far too little.
“It’s all very well,” I said, “but I don’t see how this is going to end. We can’t keep up the pace long. At this rate it will be only a matter of hours till they get me.”
We pretty