CHAPTER IX

RETURN OF THE WILD GEESE

I do not think I was surprised at the news I read in _The Times_ next morning.

Mr. Andrew Lumley had died suddenly in the night of heart failure, and the newspapers woke up to the fact that we had been entertaining a great man unawares. There was an obituary in "leader" type of nearly two columns. He had been older than I thought--close on seventy--and _The Times_ spoke of him as a man who might have done anything he pleased in public life, but had chosen to give to a small coterie of friends what was due to the country. I read of his wit and learning, his amazing connoisseurship, his social gifts, his personal charm. According to the writer, he was the finest type of cultivated amateur, a Beckford with more than a Beckford's wealth and none of his folly. Large private charities were hinted at, and a hope was expressed that some part at least of his collections might come to the nation.

The halfpenny papers said the same thing in their own way. One declared he reminded it of Atticus, another of Maecenas, another of Lord Houghton. There must have been a great run on biographical dictionaries in the various offices. Chapman's own particular rag said that, although this kind of philanthropist was a dilettante and a back-number, yet Mr. Lumley was a good specimen of the class and had been a true friend to the poor. I thought Chapman would have a fit when he read this. After that he took in the _Morning Post_.

It was no business of mine to explode the myth. Indeed I couldn't even if I had wanted to, for no one would have believed me unless I produced proofs, and these proofs were not to be made public. Besides I had an honest compunction. He had had, as he expressed it, a good run for his money, and I wanted the run to be properly rounded off.

Three days later I went to the funeral. It was a wonderful occasion. Two eminent statesmen were among the pallbearers, Royalty was represented, and there were wreaths from learned societies and scores of notable people. It was a queer business to listen to that stately service which was never read over stranger dust. I was thinking all the time of the vast subterranean machine which he had controlled, and which now was so much old iron. I could dimly imagine what his death meant to the hosts who had worked blindly at his direction. He was a Napoleon who left no Marshals behind him. From the Power-House came no wreaths or newspaper tributes, but I knew that it had lost its power....

_De mortuis_, etc. My task was done, and it only remained to get Pitt-Heron home.

Of the three people in London besides myself who knew the story--Macgillivray, Chapman and Felix--the two last might be trusted to be silent, and Scotland Yard is not in the habit of publishing its information. Tommy, of course, must some time or other be told; it was his right; but I knew that Tommy would never breathe a word of it. I wanted Charles to believe that his secret died with Lumley, for otherwise I don't think he would have ever come back to England.

The thing took some arranging, for we could not tell him directly about Lumley's death without giving away the fact that we knew of the connection between the two. We had to approach it by a roundabout road. I got Felix to arrange to have the news telegraphed to and inserted by special order in a Russian paper which Charles could not avoid seeing.

The device was successful. Calling at Portman Square a few days later I learned from Ethel Pitt-Heron's glowing face that her troubles were over. That same evening a cable to me from Tommy announced the return of the wanderers.

It was the year of the Chilian Arbitration, in which I held a junior brief for the British Government, and that and the late sitting of Parliament kept me in London after the end of the term. I had had a bad reaction from the excitements of the summer, and in these days I was feeling pretty well hipped and overdone. On a hot August afternoon I met Tommy again.

The sun was shining through my Temple chambers, much as it had done when he started. So far as I remember the West Ham brief which had aroused his contempt was still adorning my table. I was very hot and cross and fagged, for I had been engaged in the beastly job of comparing half a dozen maps of a despicable little bit of South American frontier.

Suddenly the door opened, and Tommy, lean and sunburnt, stalked in.

"Still at the old grind," he cried, after we had shaken hands. "Fellows like you give me a notion of the meaning of Eternity."

"The same uneventful sedentary life," I replied. "Nothing happens except that my scale of fees grows. I suppose nothing _will_ happen till the conductor comes to take the tickets. I shall soon grow fat."

"I notice it already, my lad. You want a bit of waking up or you'll get a liver. A little sensation would do you a lot of good."

"And you?" I asked. "I congratulate you on your success. I hear you have retrieved Pitt-Heron for his mourning family."

Tommy's laughing eyes grew solemn.

"I have had the time of my life," he said. "It was like a chapter out of the Arabian Nights with a dash of Fenimore Cooper. I feel as if I had lived years since I left England in May. While you have been sitting among your musty papers we have been riding like moss-troopers and seeing men die. Come and dine to-night and hear about our adventures. I can't tell you the full story, for I don't know it, but there is enough to curl your hair."

Then I achieved my first and last score at the expense of Tommy Deloraine.

"No," I said, "you will dine with me instead and _I_ will tell you the full story. All the papers on the subject are over there in my safe."

THE END

* * * * *

BOOKS BY JOHN BUCHAN

_Novels_

The House of the Four Winds The Free Fishers Greenmantle Huntingtower John Burnet of Barns The Three Hostages John Macnab Midwinter The Dancing Floor Witch Wood Mr. Standfast The Thirty-Nine Steps The Half-Hearted The Runagates Club The Courts of the Morning Salute to Adventurers Castle Gay The Path of the King The Blanket of the Dark The Gap in the Curtain A Prince of the Captivity The Man From the Norlands Adventures of Richard Hannay (Omnibus) Mountain Meadow The Power-House

_Biography, History, and Essays_

The People's King A History of the Great War A Book of Escapes and Hurried Journeys The Last Secrets History of the Royal Scots Fusiliers Lord Minto The Nations of Today (Editor) Two Ordeals of Democracy Homilies and Recreations The Northern Muse (Editor) Montrose Oliver Cromwell Augustus Pilgrim's Way

_Books Especially for Young People_

Prester John The Magic Walking Stick Lake of Gold