I rang up the partner whom I knew and told him a very plausible story of having a message for one of Mr. Pavia's servants, and asked him if he were in touch with them and could forward letters. He made me hold the line, and then came back and told me that he had forwarded letters for Tuke, the butler, and one Routh who was a groom or footman. Tuke had gone abroad to join his master and he did not know his address. But he advised me to write to the White Lodge.
I thanked him and rang off. That was settled anyhow. Tuke's real name was Routh, and it was Tuke who had gone to Bokhara.
My next step was to ring up Macgillivray at Scotland Yard and get an appointment in half an hour's time. Macgillivray had been at the Bar—I had read in his chambers—and was now one of the heads of the Criminal Investigation Department. I was about to ask him for information which he was in no way bound to give me, but I presumed on our old acquaintance.
I asked him first whether he had ever heard of a secret organisation which went under the name of the Power-House. He laughed out loud at my question.
"I should think we have several hundreds of such pet names on our records," he said. "Everything from the Lodge of the Baldfaced Ravens to Solomon's Seal No. X. Fancy nomenclature is the relaxation of the tired anarchist, and matters very little. The dangerous fellows have no names, no numbers even, which we can get hold of. But I'll get a man to look up our records. There may be something filed about your Power-House."
My second question he answered differently. "Routh! Routh! Why, yes, there was a Routh we had dealings with a dozen years ago, when I used to go the North-Eastern circuit. He was a trade-union official who bagged the funds, and they couldn't bring him to justice because of the ridiculous extra-legal status they possess. He knew it, and played their own privileges against them. Oh, yes, he was a very complete rogue. I once saw him at a meeting in Sunderland, and I remember his face—sneering eyes, diabolically clever mouth, and with it all as smug as a family butler. He has disappeared from England—at least we haven't heard of him for some years, but I can show you his photograph."
Macgillivray took from a lettered cabinet a bundle of cards, selected one and tossed it towards me. It was that of a man of thirty or so, with short side-whiskers and a drooping moustache. The eyes, the ill-fitting jaw, and the brow were those of my friend, Mr. Tuke, brother and patron of the sorrowful Mr. Routh, who had already that afternoon occupied my attention.
Macgillivray promised to make certain inquiries, and I walked home in a state of elation. Now I knew for certain who had gone to Bokhara, and I knew something, too, of the traveller's past. A discredited genius was the very man for Lumley's schemes—one who asked for nothing better than to use his brains outside the ring-fence of convention. Somewhere in the wastes of Turkestan the ex-trade-union official was in search of Pitt-Heron. I did not fancy that Mr. Tuke would be very squeamish.
I dined at the club and left early. Going home, I had an impression that I was being shadowed.
You know the feeling that some one is watching you, a sort of sensation which the mind receives without actual evidence. If the watcher is behind where you can't see him you have a cold feeling between your shoulders. I daresay it is a legacy from the days when the cave-man had to look pretty sharp to keep from getting his enemy's knife between the ribs.