The Leithen Stories by John Buchan

highly-undemocratic anarchism fairly revolted his soul. Besides, he adored Tommy Deloraine.
    Routh, he told me, had been a young engineer of a superior type, with a job in a big shop at Sheffield. He had professed advanced political views, and, although he had strictly no business to be there, had taken a large part in trade union work, and was treasurer of one big branch. Chapman had met him often at conferences and on platforms, and had been impressed by the fertility and ingenuity of his mind and the boldness of his purpose. He was the leader of the left wing of the movement, and had that gift of half-scientific, half-philosophic jargon which is dear at all times to the hearts of the half-baked. A seat in Parliament had been repeatedly offered him, but he had always declined; wisely, Chapman thought, for he judged him the type which is more effective behind the scenes.
    But with all his ability he had not been popular. ‘He was a cold-blooded, sneering devil,’ as Chapman put it, ‘a sort of Parnell. He tyrannised over his followers, and he was the rudest brute I ever met.’
    Then followed the catastrophe, in which it became apparent that he had speculated with the funds of the union and had lost a large sum. Chapman, however, was suspicious of theselosses, and was inclined to suspect that he had the money all the time in a safe place. A year or two earlier the unions, greatly to the disgust of old-fashioned folk, had been given certain extra-legal privileges, and this man Routh had been one of the chief advocates of the unions’ claims. Now he had the cool effrontery to turn the tables on them, and use those very privileges to justify his action and escape prosecution.
    There was nothing to be done. Some of the fellows, said Chapman, swore to wring his neck, but he did not give them the chance. He had disappeared from England, and was generally believed to be living in some foreign capital.
    â€˜What I would give to be even with the swine!’ cried my friend, clenching and unclenching his big fist. ‘But we’re up against no small thing in Josiah Routh. There isn’t a crime on earth he’d stick at, and he’s as clever as the old Devil, his master.’
    â€˜If that’s how you feel, I can trust you to back me up,’ I said. ‘And the first thing I want you to do is to come and stay at my flat. God knows what may happen next, and two men are better than one. I tell you frankly, I’m nervous, and I would like to have you with me.’
    Chapman had no objection. I accompanied him to his Bloomsbury lodgings, where he packed a bag, and we returned to the Down Street flat. The sight of his burly figure and sagacious face was relief to me in the mysterious darkness where I now found myself walking.
    Thus began my housekeeping with Chapman, one of the queerest episodes in my life. He was the best fellow in the world, but I found that I had misjudged his character. To see him in the House you would have thought him a piece of granite, with his Yorkshire bluntness and hard, downright, north-country sense. He had all that somewhere inside him, but he was also as romantic as a boy. The new situation delighted him. He was quite clear that it was another case of the strife between Capital and Labour – Tommy and I standing for Labour, though he used to refer to Tommy in public as a ‘gilded popinjay,’ and only a month before had described me in the House as a ‘viperous lackey of Capitalism.’ It was the best kind of strife in which you had not to meet your adversary with long-winded speeches, but might any moment get a chance to pummel him with your fists. He made me ache with laughter. The spying business used to rouse him to fury. Idon’t think he was tracked as I was, but he chose to fancy he was, and was guilty of assault and battery on one butcher’s boy, two cabbies, and a gentleman who turned out to be a bookmaker’s assistant. This