The Leithen Stories by John Buchan Page A

side of him got to be an infernal nuisance, and I had many rows with him. Among other things, he chose to suspect my man Waters of treachery – Waters, who was the son of a gardener at home, and hadn’t wits enough to put up an umbrella when it rained.
    â€˜You’re not taking this business rightly,’ he maintained one night. ‘What’s the good of waiting for these devils to down you? Let’s go out and down them.’ And he announced his intention, from which no words of mine could dissuade him, of keeping watch on Mr Andrew Lumley at the Albany.
    His resolution led to a complete disregard of his Parliamentary duties. Deputations of constituents waited for him in vain. Of course he never got a sight of Lumley. All that happened was that he was very nearly given in charge more than once for molesting peaceable citizens in the neighbourhood of Piccadilly and Regent Street.
    One night on my way home from the Temple I saw in the bills of the evening papers the announcement of the arrest of a Labour Member. It was Chapman, sure enough. At first I feared that he had got himself into serious trouble, and was much relieved to find him in the flat in a state of blazing anger. It seemed that he had found somebody whom he thought was Lumley, for he only knew him from my descriptions. The man was in a shop in Jermyn Street, with a car waiting outside, and Chapman had – politely, as he swore – asked the chauffeur his master’s name. The chauffeur had replied abusively, upon which Chapman had hailed him from the driver’s seat and shaken him till his teeth rattled. The owner came out, and Chapman was arrested and taken off to the nearest police-court. He had been compelled to apologise, and had been fined five pounds and costs.
    By the mercy of Heaven the chauffeur’s master was a money-lender of evil repute, so the affair did Chapman no harm. But I was forced to talk to him seriously. I knew it was no use explaining that for him to spy on the Power-House was like an elephant stalking a gazelle. The only way was to appeal to his incurable romanticism.
    â€˜Don’t you see,’ I told him, ‘that you are playing Lumley’s game? He will trap you sooner or later into some escapadewhich will land you in jail, and where will I be then? That is what he and his friends are out for. We have got to meet cunning with cunning, and lie low till we get our chance.’
    He allowed himself to be convinced and handed over to me the pistol he had bought, which had been the terror of my life.
    â€˜All right,’ he said, ‘I’ll keep quiet. But you promise to let me into the big scrap when it comes off.’
    I promised. Chapman’s notion of the grand finale was a Homeric combat in which he would get his fill of fisticuffs.
    He was an anxiety, but all the same he was an enormous comfort. His imperturbable cheerfulness and his racy talk were the tonics I wanted. He had plenty of wisdom, too. My nerves were getting bad those days, and, whereas I had rarely touched the things before, I now found myself smoking cigarettes from morning till night. I am pretty abstemious, as you know, but I discovered to my horror that I was drinking far too many whiskies-and-sodas. Chapman knocked me off all that, and got me back to a pipe and a modest nightcap. He did more, for he undertook to put me in training. His notion was that we should win in the end by superior muscles. He was a square, thick-set fellow, who had been a good middle-weight boxer. I could box a bit myself, but I improved mightily under his tuition. We got some gloves, and used to hammer each other for half an hour every morning. Then might have been seen the shameful spectacle of a rising barrister with a swollen lip and a black eye arguing in court and proceeding of an evening to his country’s legislature, where he was confronted from the opposite benches by the sight of a Leader of the People in the same vulgar