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Title: The green overcoat
Author: Hilaire Belloc
Illustrator: G. K. Chesterton
Release date: July 22, 2026 [eBook #79154]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: McBride, Nast & Company, 1912
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79154
Credits: Carla Foust, Matthew Sleadd and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREEN OVERCOAT ***
Transcriber’s Notes
Italic represented by underscores surrounding the _italic text_.
Small capitals have been converted to ALL CAPS.
THE GREEN OVERCOAT.
The
Green Overcoat
By
HILAIRE BELLOC
_With Illustrations by_
G.K. CHESTERTON
NEW YORK
MCBRIDE, NAST & COMPANY
1912
_All rights reserved_
Dedicated to
MAURICE BARING.
DEDICATION.
MY DEAR MAURICE,
You wrote something called _The Green Elephant_, and I have written
something called _The Green Overcoat_.
It is on this account that I dedicate to you my work _The Green
Overcoat_, although (and I take this opportunity of reproaching you for
the same) you did not dedicate to me your work _The Green Elephant_.
An overcoat and an elephant have much in common, and also, alas!
much in which they differ. An elephant can be taken off, and so can
an overcoat; but, on the other hand, an overcoat can be put on, and
an elephant can not. I understand that your elephant was not a real
elephant; similarly my overcoat is not a real overcoat, but only an
overcoat in a book. An overcoat is the largest kind of garment, and an
elephant is the largest kind of beast, unless we admit the whale, which
is larger than the elephant, just as a dressing-gown is larger than an
overcoat; but this would lead me far! Then, again, the elephant does
not eat meat, or bite; nor does an overcoat. He is most serviceable
to man; so is an overcoat. There are, however, rogue elephants which
are worse than useless, and give less profit to their owner than if
he had no elephant at all. The same is true of overcoats, notably of
those which have got torn in the lining of the left armpit, so that
the citizen on shoving his left arm therein gets it into a sort of
_cul-de-sac_, which is French for blind-alley.
The elephant is expensive, so is the overcoat. The elephant is of a
grave and settled expression, so is an overcoat. An overcoat hanging by
itself upon a peg is a grave and sensible object, which in the words of
the philosopher “neither laughs nor is the cause of laughter.” So is an
elephant encaged.
Again, man in conjunction with the elephant is ennobled by that
conjunction, whether he ride upon its back or upon its neck or walk by
its side, as does the keeper at the Zoo. The same is true of overcoats,
which, whether we have them upon our backs or carry them over our arms,
add something to our appearance. I could suggest many other points
in common were this part of my work lucrative, and, as it were, in
the business; but it is not, and I must end. I might remind you that
elephants probably grow old (though no man has lived to see it), that
overcoats certainly do; that elephants are of divers sex, and this is
true also of the overcoat. On the other hand, an overcoat has no feet
and it has two tails or none, whereas the elephant has four feet and
but one tail, and that a very little one.
I must wind up by telling you why I have written of an “overcoat” and
not a “greatcoat.” “Greatcoat” is the more vernacular; “overcoat” I
think the more imperial. But that was not my reason. I wrote “overcoat”
because it was a word similar in scansion and almost equivalent in
stress-scheme (wow!) to the word “elephant.” Of course, if I had
considered length of syllable and vowel-value it would have been
another matter, for “elephant” consists in three shorts, “overcoat” in
a long, short and long. The first is a what-you-may-call-’um, and the
second a thingumbob.
But I did not consider vowel sounds, and I was indifferent to longs and
shorts. My endeavour was to copy you, and to have a title which would
get people mixed up, so that the great hordes of cultivated men and
women desiring to see your play should talk by mistake of _The Green
Overcoat_.
And then their aunts, or perhaps a prig-visitor, would say: “Oh, no,
that is the _book_!” In this way the book would be boomed. That was my
game.
If people had done this sort of thing before it would not work now; but
they haven’t.
Now, Maurice, I end this preface, for I cannot think of anything more
to write.
H. BELLOC.
CONTENTS.
_Page_
CHAPTER I.
IN WHICH THE GREEN OVERCOAT TAKES A JOURNEY 13
CHAPTER II.
IN WHICH A PHILOSOPHER WRESTLES WITH THE
PROBLEM OF IDENTITY 29
CHAPTER III.
IN WHICH THE GREEN OVERCOAT APPEARS AS A
POINT OF RELIGION BY NOT BEING THERE 46
CHAPTER IV.
IN WHICH IT IS SEEN THAT UNIVERSITY TRAINING
FITS ONE FOR A BUSINESS CAREER 67
CHAPTER V.
IN WHICH SOLITUDE IS UNABLE TO DISCOVER THE
CHARMS WHICH SAGES HAVE SEEN IN HER FACE 84
CHAPTER VI.
IN WHICH PROFESSOR HIGGINSON BEGINS TO TASTE
THE SWEETS OF FAME 104
CHAPTER VII.
IN WHICH PROFESSOR HIGGINSON GOES ON TASTING
THEM 135
CHAPTER VIII.
IN WHICH PROFESSOR HIGGINSON GETS THOSE SWEETS
BY THE WAGON-LOAD, AND ALSO HEARS HOW MEN
ARE MADE 158
CHAPTER IX.
IN WHICH THE GREEN OVERCOAT BEGINS TO ASSERT
ITSELF 175
CHAPTER X.
IN WHICH A DESCENDANT OF THE CRUSADERS REFUSES
TO HARBOUR STOLEN GOODS 186
CHAPTER XI.
IN WHICH A POLE IS LESS SCRUPULOUS 204
CHAPTER XII.
IN WHICH THE READERKIN WILL, IF HE HAS AN OUNCE
OF BRAINS, BEGIN TO CATCH THE INEVITABLE
DENOUMONG OF THE IMBROGLIO 215
CHAPTER XIII.
IN WHICH THE SUBLIMINAL CONSCIOUSNESS GIVES
ITSELF AWAY 243
CHAPTER XIV.
IN WHICH, INCREDIBLE AS IT MAY SEEM, A NON-POLE
HAS THE BETTER OF A POLE 264
CHAPTER XV.
IN WHICH THREE YOUNG MEN EAT, AND NOT ONLY
EAT, BUT DRINK 274
CHAPTER XVI.
IN WHICH CROSS-EXAMINATION IS CONDUCTED “EN
ÉCHELON,” AND IF YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT THAT
MEANS I CAN’T HELP YOU 287
CHAPTER XVII.
IN WHICH A PROFESSOR PROFESSES NOTHING, A
LECTURE IS NOT DELIVERED, AND YET SOMETHING
HAPPENS 298
CHAPTER XVIII.
IN WHICH THE GREEN OVERCOAT TRIUMPHS AND
COMES HOME 321
The Green Overcoat.
CHAPTER I.
_In which the Green Overcoat takes a Journey._
Professor Higginson—to give him his true name—was a psychologist,
celebrated throughout Europe, and recently attached to the modern and
increasingly important University called the Guelph University, in the
large manufacturing town of Ormeston. His stipend was £800 a year.
He was a tall, thin man, exceedingly shy and nervous, with weary,
print-worn eyes, which nearly always looked a little pained, and
were generally turned uneasily towards the ground. He did not dress
carefully. He was not young. He had a trick of keeping both hands in
his trouser pockets. He stooped somewhat at the shoulders, and wore
a long, grey beard. He was a bachelor, naturally affectionate by
disposition, but capable of savagery when provoked by terror. His feet
were exceedingly large, and his mind was nearly always occupied by the
subject which he professed.
This excellent man, in his ill-fitting evening suit, had just said
good-bye after an agonised party, upon Monday, the 2nd of May, at the
house of Sir John Perkin, a local merchant of ample but ill-merited
fortune.
It was as yet but midnight, the rooms were full, and he hoped to slip
out early and almost unobserved.
Professor Higginson sidled aimlessly into the study that was doing duty
as a cloakroom, sidled out again on remembering that he had not left
his things there, and next turned to gaze almost as aimlessly at a
series of pegs on which he hoped to find a familiar slouch hat, rather
greasy, and an equally familiar grey Inverness which was like his skin
to him. The slouch hat was there. The Inverness was gone.
Was it gone? The Professor of Psychology was a learned man, and his
sense of reality was not always exact. Had he come in that Inverness
after all?... The more he thought about it the less certain he was.
He remembered that the May night, though very cold, had been fine as
he came. He had no precise memory of taking off that Inverness or of
hanging it up. He walked slowly, ruminating upon the great problem.
Towards the door of the hall; he inwardly congratulated himself that
there was no servant present, and that he could go through the dreadful
ordeal of leaving the house without suffering the scrutiny of a human
being. No carriage had yet drawn up. He opened the door, and was
appalled to be met by a violent gust and a bitter, cold, driving rain.
Now the Professor of Psychology was, like the domestic cat, of simple
tastes, but he hated rain even more than does that animal. It bitterly
disagreed with him, and worse still, the oddity of walking through the
streets in evening clothes through a raging downpour, with a large
expanse of white shirt all drenched, was more than his nerves could
bear.
He was turning round irresolutely to seek once again for that
Inverness, which he was now more confident than ever was not there,
when the Devil, who has great power in these affairs, presented to
his eyes, cast negligently over a chair, a GREEN OVERCOAT of singular
magnificence.
The green of it was a subdued, a warm and a lovely green; its cloth
was soft and thick, pliable and smooth; the rich fur at the collar and
cuffs was a promise of luxury in the lining.
Now the Devil during all Professor Higginson’s life had had but
trifling fun with him until that memorable moment. The opportunity,
as the reader will soon discover, was (from the Devil’s point of
view) remarkable and rare. More, far more, than Professor Higginson’s
somewhat sterile soul was involved in the issue.
The Green Overcoat appeared for a few seconds seductive, then violently
alluring, next—and in a very few seconds—irresistible.
Professor Higginson shot a sin-laden and frightened glance towards the
light and the noise and the music within. No one was in sight. Through
the open door of the rooms, whence the sound of the party came loud
and fairly drunken, he saw no face turned his way. The hall itself was
deserted. Then he heard a hurl of wind, a dash of rain on the hall
window. With a rapidity worthy of a greater game, and to him most
unusual, he whisked the garment from the chair, slipped into the shadow
of the door, struggled into the Green Overcoat with a wriggle that
seemed to him to last five weeks—it was, as a fact, a conjuror’s trick
for smartness—and it was on! The Devil saw to it that it fitted.
It was all right. He would pretend some mistake, and send it back the
_very first thing_ next morning; nay, he would be an honest man, and
send it back _at once_ by a messenger the moment he found out his
mistake on getting to his lodgings. So wealthy an overcoat could only
belong to a great man—a man who would stay late, very late. Come, the
Green Overcoat would be back again in that house before its owner had
elected to move. He would be no wiser! There was no harm done, and he
could not walk as he was through the rain.
Alas! These plausible arguments proceeded, had the Professor but known
it, from the Enemy of Souls! _He_, the fallen archangel, foresaw that
coming ruin to which his lanky and introspective victim was unhappily
blind. Dons are cheap meat for Devils.
The door shut upon the learned man. He went striding out into the
drenching storm, down the drive towards the public road. And as he went
he carried a sense of wealth about him that was very pleasurable in
spite of the weather. He had never known such raiment!
His way down the road to his lodgings would be a matter of a mile or
more. The rain was intolerable. He was wondering as he reached the
gate whether there was any chance of a cab at such an hour, when he
was overjoyed to hear the purring of a taxi coming slowly up behind
him. He turned at once and hailed it. The taxi halted, and drew up a
little in front of a street light, so that the driver’s face was in
shadow. He gave his address, opened the door and stooped to fold up his
considerable stature into the vehicle.
He had hardly shut the door, and as he was doing so, felt, or thought
he felt, some obstacle before him, when the engine was let out at full
speed. The cab whirled suddenly round in the opposite direction from
that which he had ordered, and as Professor Higginson was jolted back
by the jerk into his seat, his left arm clutched at what was certainly
a human form; at the same moment his struggling _right_ arm clutched
_another_, crouched apparently in the corner of the cab.
He had just time to begin, “I beg your——” when he felt each wrist held
in a pair of strong hands and a shawl or cloth tightening about his
mouth. All that he next attempted to say was lost to himself and to the
world. He gave one vigorous kick with his long legs; before he could
give a second his feet were held as firmly as his hands, and he felt
what must have been a handkerchief being tied uncomfortably tightly
round his ankles, while his wrists were still held in a grasp that
suggested something professional.
Professor Higginson’s thoughts were drawn out of their daily groove.
His brain raced and pulsed, then halted, and projected one clear
decision—which was to sit quite quiet and do nothing.
The driver’s back showed a black square against the lamp-lit rain. He
heard, or would hear, nothing. He paid no heed to the motions within,
but steered furiously through the storm. For ten good minutes nothing
changed.
The beating rain outside blurred the window-panes, and the pace at
which they drove forbade the Philosopher any but the vaguest guesses at
the road and the whereabouts.
The public lights of the town had long since been left behind; rapid
turns had begun to suggest country lanes, when, after a sharper jolt
than usual, the machine curved warily through a gate into a narrow way,
the brakes were put on sharply, the clutch was thrown out, and the cab
stopped dead. It was halted and its machine was panting down in some
garden, the poverty and neglect of which glared under the acetylene
lamps. The disordered, weedy gravel of the place and its ragged laurels
stood out unnaturally, framed in the thick darkness. The edge of the
light just caught the faded brick corner of an old house.
Professor Higginson had barely a second in which to note a flight
of four dirty stone steps leading to a door in the shadow, when his
captors spoke for the first time.
“Will you go quietly?” said the one crouching before him—he that had
tied his ankles.
The Professor assented through his gag with a voice like the distant
lowing of a cow. The strong grip that held his wrists pulled his arms
behind him, the taxi door was opened, and he was thrust out, still
held by the hands. He poised himself upon his bound feet, and whoever
it was that had spoken—he had a strong, young voice, and looked broad
and powerful in the half-light behind the lamps—began unfastening the
handkerchief at his ankles. Professor Higginson was not a soldier. He
was of the Academies. He broke his parole.
The moment his feet were free he launched a vigorous kick at his
releaser (who hardly dodged it), emitted through his gag a dull sound
full of fury, and at the same instant found himself bumped violently
upon the ground with his legs threshing the air in all directions. It
was the gentleman who held his wrists behind him that was the author
of this manœuvre, and even as he achieved it he piped out in a curious
high voice that contrasted strangely with the strength he had just
proved—
“Hit him, Jimmy! Hit him in the face!”
“Not yet,” said Jimmy ominously. “Jerk him up, Melba!”
At some expense to the Professor’s nerves Melba obeyed, and the learned
Pragmatist found himself once more upon his feet. He kicked out
vigorously behind, but only met the air. It was as he had dreaded! He
had to deal with professionals!
“All right, Jimmy?” came in a young, well-Englished and rather tired
drawl from the driver.
The engine was still panting slightly.
“Yes, Charlie,” said Jimmy cheerfully. “Off you go!”
“Good night,” said the young, well-Englished and rather tired drawl
again.
The clutch caught, the engine throbbed faster, the untidy gravel
crunched under the motor as it turned a half circle to find the gate,
and in doing so cast a moment of fierce light upon the stained and
dirty door of the house.
The gagged victim noted that the door was open: there had been
preparation, and the signs of it did not reassure him.
His captor thrust him against that door, into the dark hall within. The
other one, the one he had heard called “Jimmy” followed, shut the door,
and struck a match.
There was revealed in the flare a passage between perfectly bare
walls, dusty, uncarpeted floor boards, still bearing the faint marks
of staining at their edges, a flight of stairs with flimsy bannisters,
many of them broken—for the rest, nothingness.
“Melba” (if I may call that gentleman by the name his associate had
given him) was busy at the Professor’s wrists with something more
business-like than a handkerchief. He was tying them up scientifically
enough (and very tight) with a piece of box-cord.
Jimmy, opening the door of a room on the ground floor that gave into
this deserted passage, lit a candle within. Mr. Higginson found himself
pushed through that door on to a chair in the room beyond. A moment
later he was bound to that chair, corded up in a manner uncomfortably
secure to its rungs and back by his ankles, elbows and knees. It was
Melba that did the deed. Jimmy, coming in after, turned the key in the
door, and joined his companion. Then the pair of them stood gazing at
their victim for a moment, and the Professor had his first opportunity
in all that bewildering night of discovering what kind of beings he had
to deal with.
Melba was a stout, rather pasty-faced young man, with fat cheeks and
blue, protuberant eyes, not ill-natured. He had very light, straight
hair, and his face in repose seemed to clothe itself with a half smile
which was permanent. It was surprising that such a figure should have
that strength of forearm which the Philosopher had unfortunately
experienced. But there is no telling a man till he strips, and
Melba, who might very well have been a young lounger of the French
Boulevards, was, as a matter of fact, an oarsman of an English
University. He rowed. It was his chief recreation. He also read French
novels, and was a fair hand at writing mechanical verse. But that is
by the way, nor could the Professor as yet guess anything of this. He
glared at the youth over his gag and took him in.
Jimmy was quite another pair of shoes. He was tall also, but clean cut
and very dark, with the black eyes and hair and fresh colouring of a
Gael. No trace of his native accent remained with him. Indeed, he had
been born south of the border, but his supple strength and the balance
of his body were those of the mountains. He had race. Unlike his
colleague, he looked as strong as he was. Jimmy, if you care to know
it, did not row; he swam and dived. He swam and dived with remarkable
excellence, and was the champion, or whatever it is called, of some
district or other of considerable size. He was also of the University
that had nourished Melba—Cambridge.
These two young men, a little blown, and perhaps a little excited, but
manfully concealing their emotions under a gentlemanly indifference,
seated themselves on either side of a table with the Professor gagged
and bound upon the chair before them. So seated, they watched their
prey.
Melba slowly filled an enormous pipe from an enormous pouch, keeping
his round, blue eyes fixed and ready for any movement upon the
Professor’s part.
Jimmy lit a black cigarette with some affectation, blew a cloud of
thin, blue smoke, and addressed the prisoner—
“Before we come to business, Brassington,” he said, “how will you
behave if we ungag you?”
An appreciative and pacifist lowing proceeded from the gag.
“That’s all very well,” broke in Melba in his falsetto, “last time you
said that you broke your word!”
“Wmmmmmm!” replied the Professor, shaking his head in emphatic negation.
“Yes, but you did,” continued Melba shrilly. “You tried to kick Jimmy,
and you tried to kick me, too, after I dumped you.”
Jimmy waved his hand at Melba, commanding silence.
“Look here, sir,” he said, “we had to do it. We don’t like it, and in a
way we’re sorry; but we _had_ to.”
The Professor recalled all that he had read of lunacy in its various
forms (and that was a great deal more than was good for him), but he
could see no trace of insanity in either of the two faces before him.
If anything, the innocence of youth which they betrayed, coupled with
an obviously strained and unnatural determination, was quite the other
way.
Melba chimed in with his high voice again—
“And lucky you didn’t get something worse!”
“Don’t, Melba!” said Jimmy authoritatively.
He was evidently the moderate man of the two, the man of judgment,
and instinctively the learned victim determined to lean upon him in
whatever incongruous adventures might threaten.
“We _had_ to do it,” continued Jimmy, “because there wasn’t any law.
Mind you, we haven’t done this without asking! But when there isn’t any
law you have to take the law into your own hands, haven’t you, Melba?”
he said, turning to his accomplice.
“Yes,” piped Melba, “civil and criminal. He ought to have a lathering.”
His blue, prominent eyes had a glare of ferocity in them, and
Professor Higginson hated him in his heart.
Jimmy again assumed control.
“If there had been a law, sir, we’d have sued you. We are sorry” (this
repetition a little pompously) “and we do not want to expose you.
Personally,” he added, flicking the ash from his cigarette and putting
on the man-of-the-world, “I find it an ungrateful thing to constrain an
older man. But it will all be over soon, and what is more, we will do
it decently if you pay like a gentleman.”
At the word “pay” Professor Higginson’s inexperience of the world
convinced him that he was in the hands of criminals. He had read in
certain detective stories how criminals were not, as some imagined, men
universally deprived of collars, clad in woollen caps and armed with
bludgeons, nor without exception of the uncultivated classes. He could
remember many cases (in fiction) of the gentleman-criminal, nay, of the
precocious gentleman-criminal—and apparently these were of the tribe.
For the second time that evening he came to a rapid decision and
determined to pay.
He had upon him thirty shillings in gold, it was a sovereign and
half-sovereign, in the right-hand waistcoat pocket of his evening
clothes, and he thought he also had in the right-hand trousers pocket a
few loose shillings and coppers. It was a great deal to sacrifice. For
all he knew, it was compounding a felony; but he would risk that. He
would think of it as a rather high hotel bill—and he would be free! He
nodded his gagged head, mooed cheerfully, and looked acquiescent with
his eyes.
“That’s right!” said Jimmy, greatly relieved (for in his heart he had
never dared hope for so easy a solution). “That’s right!” and he sighed
contentedly. “That’s right,” he repeated for the third time. “We are
really very sorry, sir! But it’ll seem all right afterwards. When you
have kept your side of the bargain we shall _certainly_ keep ours.” He
said it courteously. “All we want is the money, and when we have the
money and you are free, why, sir, I hope you will not grudge us what we
have done.”
So it was all going to end happily after all? The Professor almost felt
himself at liberty again, hurrying home through the night—hurrying
anywhere at his free will, loosed from that accursed place, when Jimmy
added—
“Of course, you will have to sign the letter?”
CHAPTER II.
_In which a Philosopher wrestles with the Problem
of Identity._
The Professor was in deeper water than ever. He had been called some
name or other at the beginning of this conversation. What name he could
not remember. What the friendlier of the two beasts meant by “a letter”
he could not conceive until Jimmy, continuing, partly enlightened him.
“You will have to sign the brief note we have drafted here to accompany
your payment. It’s obvious.”
Professor Higginson dimly guessed that he was wanted to safeguard them
in some way against the consequences of his kidnapping.
... Well, he had made up his mind, and he would not depart from it. He
nodded again cheerfully enough, and his eyes were as acquiescent as
ever.
Jimmy leaned forward, and in set tones of some gravity, said formally—
“We understand, this gentleman and I, that you acknowledge the payment
due to us, and if we take off the—er—the impediment which we were
compelled to put over your mouth, you will act up to your promise and
you will pay us?”
For the third time the Professor nodded vigorously.
“And you will sign the note?”
He nodded even more vigorously once again.
“Very well,” said Jimmy in the tone of a great arbitrator who has
managed to settle matters without unpleasantness. “Melba, be good
enough to untie your aunt’s shawl, which for the moment prevents this
gentleman from performing his promise by word of mouth.”
Melba did as he was bid, jerking—as Mr. Higginson thought—the knot in
the fabric rather ungently. He treasured it up against him.
The shawl was off, Melba was seated again, and Professor Higginson
breathed the night air untainted by the savour of an ancient human
garment, and an aunt’s at that.
“I need not repeat all I have just been saying,” said Jimmy, “but you
must confirm it before we go further.”
“I do,” said the Professor, with a curiously successful affectation of
cheerfulness for so untrained an actor. “Yes, certainly, gentlemen, I
confirm it.”
There was, if anything, a little precipitancy in his manner, as though
he were eager to pay, as he most certainly was to get rid of those
ropes round his arms and legs.
There was another thing bothering the Pragmatist. The Green Overcoat,
which still wrapped him all about, was being woefully delayed. If the
delay lasted much longer the owner might miss it ... and then, the
tight cords at its elbows were doing it no good. They might actually be
_marking_ it. The thought made Professor Higginson very uncomfortable
indeed. He had no idea whose it was, but it certainly belonged to
someone of importance.... He wished he had never seen it.
He was not to be the last to wish that, but Hell is a hard taskmaster
and the Professor was caught.
“We think,” said Jimmy a little pompously, “at least, I think——” (after
glancing at Melba).
“I don’t,” said Melba.
[Illustration: _The Professor was caught._]
“Well, _I_ think,” continued Jimmy, “and I think we ought to think,
that you are doing the right thing, and, well, I like to tell you so.”
The relations between Jimmy and his prisoner were getting almost
cordial. He pushed the table so that that prisoner, when he was untied,
should be able to write upon it. He put before him a type-written sheet
of note-paper, an envelope, an ink-bottle, and a pen, which, with the
exception of the benches on which he and his companion sat, the table
and the chair, were all the furniture the place contained.
“And now, sir,” added Jimmy, going behind the Psychologist and
releasing his elbows, “now, sir” (here he wound the rope round the
Professor’s waist, secured it, and left his legs still tied to the
chair rungs), “now, sir, perhaps we can come to business!”
Poor Mr. Higginson had never been so cramped in his life. He was far
from young. The circulation in his lower arms had almost stopped. He
brought them forward painfully and slowly and composed them upon the
table, then his right hand slowly sought his waistcoat pocket, where
reposed the sovereign and half-sovereign of his ransom.
“Of course,” he began, intending to explain the smallness of the
sum, for he could not but feel that it was very little gold for so
considerable a circumstance of paper formalities and violence, “of
course——” when Jimmy interrupted him.
“I need not tell you the sum,” said that youth rather coldly.
“Oh, no,” twittered Melba, “he knows _that_ well enough!” Then added,
“G-r-r-r!” as in anger at a dog.
“Well—er—gentlemen, I confess”—began Mr. Higginson, hesitating.
“To be frank,” said Jimmy rather sharply, “we all three know the sum
perfectly well, and you perhaps, sir, with your business habits and
your really peculiar ideas upon honour, best of all. It’s two thousand
pounds,” he concluded calmly.
“_Two thousand pounds?_” shrieked the Professor.
“What did you expect?” broke in Melba an octave higher. “A bonus and a
presentation gold watch?”
“Two thousand pounds!” repeated the bewildered Philosopher in a gasping
undertone.
“Yes,” rapped out Jimmy smartly, “two thousand pounds!... Really! After
all that has passed——”
“But,” shouted the Professor wildly, saying the first words that came
to him, “I haven’t got such a sum in the world. I—I don’t know what you
mean?”
Jimmy’s face took on a very severe and dreadful expression.
“Mr. Brassington,” he began in a slow and modulated tone.
“I’m not Mr. Brassington, whoever Mr. Brassington may be,” protested
the unhappy victim, half understanding the portentous error. “What on
earth do you take me for?”
Jimmy by this time was in a mood to stand no nonsense.
“Mr. Brassington,” he said, “you broke your word to us once this
evening when you kicked out at Melba, and that ought to have been a
lesson to me. I was foolish enough to believe you when you gave your
word a second time. I certainly believed it when you gave it a third
time after we released you.” (It was a very partial release, but no
matter.) “Now,” said he, setting his lips firmly, “if you try to
shuffle out of the main matter, I warn you it will be the worse for
you, very much the worse for you, indeed. You will be good enough to
sign us a cheque for two thousand pounds, and to sign the type-written
acknowledgment in front of you.”
Men in bewilderment do foolish things even when they are men of
judgment, and Professor Higginson certainly was not that. His next
words were fatal.
“Do you suppose I carry a cheque-book on me?” he roared.
“Melba,” said Jimmy quietly, in the tones of a general officer
commanding an orderly, “go through him.”
The Professor having said a foolish word, followed it by a still more
foolish action. He dived into the right-hand pocket of the Green
Overcoat with a gesture purely instinctive. Melba was upon him like a
fat hawk, almost wrenched his arm from its socket, and drew from that
right-hand pocket a noble great cheque-book of a brilliant red, with a
leather backing such as few cheque-books possess, and having printed on
it in bold plutocratic characters—
“JOHN BRASSINGTON, ESQR.,
‘LAUDERDALE,’
CRAMPTON PARK, ORMESTON.”
Melba conveyed the cheque-book solemnly to Jimmy, and the two young men
sat down again opposite their involuntary creditor, spreading it out
open before them in an impressive manner.
“Mr. Brassington,” said Jimmy, “what do I see here? Everything that
I should have expected from a man of your prominence in the business
world and of your known careful habits. I see neatly written upon the
fly-leaf, ‘_Private Account_,’ and the few counterfoils to the cheques
already drawn carefully noted. I perceive,” continued Jimmy, summing up
boldly, “the sum of £50 marked ‘self’ upon the second of this month.
The object of your munificence does not surprise me. Upon the next
counterfoil I see marked £173 10s. It is in settlement of a bill—a
garage bill. I am glad to see that you recognise and pay _some_ of your
debts. The third counterfoil,” he said, peering more closely, “relates
to a cheque made out only yesterday. It is for £5, and appears to have
been sent to your son, who, as you know, is our honoured friend.”
“I protest ...” interrupted Professor Higginson loudly.
“At your peril!” retorted Melba.
“You will do well, Mr. Brassington, to let me finish what I have to
say,” continued Jimmy. “I say your _son_, our honoured friend, as you
know well—only too well! These three cheques are your concern, not
ours. No further cheque has been drawn, and on the _fourth_ cheque
form, Mr. Brassington, you will be good enough to sign your name. You
will make it out to James McAuley—a small c and a big A, if you please;
an _e_y, not an a—in your letters you did not do me the courtesy to
spell my name as I sign it. You will then hand me the instrument, and I
will settle with my friend.”
At the words “my friend” he waved courteously to Melba, gave a
ridiculous little bow, which in his youthful folly he imagined to be
dignified.
The Professor sat stolidly and said nothing. His thoughts hurried
confusedly within him, and the one that ran fastest was, “I am in a
hole!”
“I do assure you, gentlemen,” he said at last, “that there is some
great mistake. I have no doubt that—that a Mr. Brassington owes you
the money, no doubt at all. And perhaps you were even justified in
the very strong steps you took to recover it. I should be the last to
blame you.” (The liar!) “_But as I am not Mr. Brassington_, but, if you
want to know, Professor Higginson, of the Guelph University, I cannot
oblige you.”
When the Professor had thus delivered himself there was a further
silence, only interrupted by Melba’s addressing to him a very offensive
epithet. “Swine!” he said.
“Are we to understand, Mr. Brassington,” said Jimmy, when he had
considered the matter, “that after all that you have said you refuse to
sign? Did you imagine” (this with rising anger in his voice) “that we
would compromise for a smaller sum?”
“I tell you I am not Mr. Brassington!” answered the Psychologist tartly.
“Oh!” returned Jimmy, now thoroughly aroused and as naturally as could
be, “and you aren’t wearing Mr. Brassington’s clothes, Brassington, are
you? And this isn’t Mr. Brassington’s cheque-book, is it, Brassington?
And you’re not a confounded old liar as well as a cursed puritanical
thief? Now, look here, if you don’t sign now, you’ll be kept here till
you _do_. You’ll be locked up without food, except just the bread
and water to keep you alive; and if you trust to your absence being
noticed, I can tell you it won’t be. We know all about that. You were
going to Belgium for a week, weren’t you, by the night train to
London? You were taking no luggage, because you were going to pick up a
bag at your London office, as you always do on these business journeys.
You were going on business, and I only hope the business will wait.
Oh, we know all about it, Brassington! We have a clear week ahead of
us, and you won’t _only_ get bread and water in that week; and I don’t
suppose anybody would bother if we made the week ten days.”
I have already mentioned in the course of this painful narrative the
name of the Infernal Power. My reader will be the less surprised to
follow the process of Professor Higginson’s mind in this terrible crux.
He sat there internally collapsed and externally nothing very grand.
His two masters, stern and immovable, watched him from beyond the table
with its one candle. It was deep night. There was no sound save the
lashing of the storm against the window-panes.
He first considered his dear home (which was a pair of rooms in a
lodging in Tugela Street, quite close to his work). Then there came
into his mind the prospect of sleepless nights in a bare room, of bread
and water, and _worse_....
What was “worse”?
His resolution sank and sank. The process of his thought continued. The
eyes of the two young men, hateful and determined, almost hypnotised
him.
If the money of this ridiculous John Brassington, whoever he might be,
was there in his pocket, he would stand firm. He hoped he would stand
firm. But after all, it was not money. It was only a bit of paper. He
would be able to make the thing right.... He was very ignorant of such
things, but he knew it took some little time to clear a cheque....
He remembered someone telling him that it took three days, and
incidentally he grotesquely remembered the same authority telling him
that every cheque cost the bank sevenpence.... The rope hurt damnably,
and he was a man who could not bear to miss his sleep, it made him
ill.... And he was feeling very ill already. He could carefully note
the number of the cheque, anyhow. Yes, he could do that. He had this
man Brassington’s address. He had the name of the bank. It was on the
cheques. He would have the courage to expose the whole business in the
morning. He would stop that cheque. He clearly remembered the Senate
of the University having made a mistake two years before and how the
cheque was stopped.... It was a perfectly easy business.... Of course,
the actual signing of another man’s name is an unpleasant thing for the
fingers to do, but that is only nervousness—next door to superstition.
One must be guided by reason. Ultimately it would do no harm at all,
for the cheque would never be cleared.
Professor Higginson leant lovingly upon that word “cleared.” It had a
technical, salutary sound. It was his haven of refuge. Cheques had to
go up to London, hadn’t they? and to go to a place called a Clearing
House? He knew that much, though economics were not his department
of learning. He knew that much, and he was rather proud of it—as
Professors are of knowing something outside their beat.
While the Mystery of Evil was thus pressing its frontal assault on
poor Professor Higginson’s soul, that soul was suddenly attacked in
flank by a brilliant thought: the cheque would enable him to trace his
tormentors!
Come, that really was a brilliant thought! He was prouder of himself
than ever. He would be actually _aiding_ justice if he signed!
The police could always track down someone where there was paper
concerned. No one could escape the hands of British Law if he had once
given himself away in a written document!
This flank attack of the Evil One determined the Philosopher. In a
subdued voice he broke the long silence. He said—
“Give me the pen!”
Jimmy solemnly dipped the pen in the ink and handed it to him, not
releasing the cheque-book, but tearing out the cheque form for him to
sign; and as he did so the unseen Serpent smiled. In a hand as bold as
he could assume Professor Higginson deliberately wrote at the bottom
right-hand corner the fatal words “JOHN BRASSINGTON.”
He was beginning to fill in the amount, when to his astonishment the
cheque was snatched from his hands, while Jimmy thundered out—
“Do you suppose, sir, that you can deceive us in such a childish way as
_that_? Does a man ever sign his cheque like a copybook?”
He glared at the signature.
“It’s faked! That’s no more your signature, Old Brassington, than it’s
mine!” he shouted. “That’s how you write.”
With the words he pulled a note from his pocket and tossed it to the
unhappy man.
Melba made himself pleasant by an interjection—
“What a vile old shuffler it is!” he said.
And Mr. Higginson saw written on the note, dated but a week before—
“James Macaulay, Esq.,
“Sir,
“I will have no further correspondence
with you upon the matter.
“I am,
“Your obedient Servant,
“J. BRASSINGTON.”
It was a strong, hard but rapid hand, the hand of a man who had done
much clerk’s work in his youth. It had certainly no resemblance to the
signature which the Psychologist had appended to the cheque form, and
that form now lay torn into twenty pieces by the angry Jimmy, who had
also torn up the counterfoil and presented him with another cheque.
“I can’t do it, gentlemen!” he said firmly—it was indeed too true—“I
can’t do it!”
Melba jumped up suddenly.
“I’m not going to waste any more time with the old blighter!” he said
shrilly. “Come on, Jimmy!” and Jimmy yielded.
They blew out the candle, left the room with a curse, turning the key
in the lock from the outside, and the unfortunate Mr. Higginson was
left bound tightly to his chair in complete darkness, and I am sorry to
say upon the verge of tears.
Nature had done what virtue could not do and the Professor was stumped.
CHAPTER III.
_In which the Green Overcoat appears as a
point of religion by not being there._
In the smoking-room of Sir John Perkin’s house upon the same evening
of Monday, the 2nd of May, sat together in conversation a merchant
and a friend of his, no younger, a man whose name was Charles Kirby,
whose profession was that of a solicitor. The name of the merchant who
had retired apart to enjoy with this friend a reasonable and useful
conversation, was Mr. John Brassington. He was wealthy, he dealt in
leather; he was a pillar of the town of Ormeston, he had been its
mayor. He was an honest man, which is no less than to say the noblest
work of God.
Mr. John Brassington was, in this month of May, sixty years of age.
He was tall, but broad in shoulder though not stout. He carried the
square grey whiskers of a forgotten period in social history. He had
inherited from his father, also a mayor of Ormeston, that good business
in the leather trade; it was a business he had vastly increased. He
had not been guilty in the whole of his life of any act of meanness
or of treachery where a competitor was concerned, nor of any act of
harshness in the relations between himself and any of his subordinates.
His expression was in one way determined, in another rather troubled
and uncertain; by which I mean that there were strong lines round the
mouth which displayed a habit of decision in business affairs, some
power of self-control, and a well ordered life; but his lips were
mobile and betrayed not a little experience of suffering, to which we
must attribute certain extremes which his friends thought amiable, but
which his critics (for he had no enemies) detested.
Mr. Brassington had married at thirty-one years of age a woman quiet in
demeanour, and in no way remarkable for any special talent or charm.
She was the daughter of a clergyman in the town. She brought him a
complete happiness lasting for four years. She bore him one child, and
shortly after the birth of that child, a son, she died.
Now Mr. Brassington, like most of his kind, was a man of strong and
secret emotions. He loved his country, he was attached to the pictures
which the public press afforded him of his political leader, and he
adored his wife. Her death was so sudden, the habit of his married
life, though short, had struck so deep a root in him, that from the
moment of losing her he changed inwardly, and there began to appear
in him those little exaggerations of which I have spoken. The best of
these was too anxious an attachment to the son who must inherit his
wealth. The next best a habit of giving rather too large and unexpected
sums of money to objects which rather too suddenly struck him as
worthy. To these habits of mind he had added excursions into particular
fields of morals. In one phase he had been a teetotaller. He escaped
from this only to fall into the Anti-Foreign-Atrocities fever. He read
Tolstoy for one year, and then passed from that emotion into a curious
fit of land nationalisation. Finally, he settled down for good into the
Anti-Gambling groove.
By the time this last spiritual adventure had befallen Mr. Brassington
he was nearer fifty than forty years of age, and the detestation of
games of hazard was to provide him for the rest of his life with such
moral occupation as his temperament demanded.
Certain insignificant but marked idiosyncrasies in his dress
accompanied this violence of moral emotion. For some reason best known
to himself, he never carried an umbrella or a walking-stick. He wore
driving gloves upon every possible occasion, suitable and unsuitable,
and he affected in particular, in all weathers not intolerably warm,
a remarkable type of Green Overcoat with which the reader is already
sufficiently acquainted. The irreverent youth of his acquaintance had
given it a number of nicknames, and had established a series in the
lineage of this garment, for as each overcoat grew old it was regularly
replaced by a new one of precisely the same cloth and dye, and lined
with the same expensive fur.
He told not a soul—only his chief friend and (of course) his servants
had divined it—but Mr. Brassington lent to that Green Overcoat such
private worship as the benighted give their gods. It was a secret and
strange foible. He gave to it in its recurrent and successive births
power of fortune and misfortune. Without it, he would have dreaded
bankruptcy or disease. In the hands of others, he thought it capable of
carrying a curse.
The son to whom his affections were so deeply devoted bore the three
names of Algernon Sawby Leonidas (Sawby had been his mother’s family
name), and was now grown up to manhood. He had been at Cambridge, had
taken his degree the year before, but had lingered off and on for his
rowing, and “kept his fifth year.” He divided his time between London
lodgings and the last requirements of his college.
On that day in May with which I am dealing it was to consult upon this
son of his that Mr. Brassington had left the crowd at Sir John Perkin’s
and had shut himself with Charles Kirby into the smoking-room.
Mr. Kirby was listening, for the fifteenth or twentieth time, to his
friend’s views upon Algernon Sawby Leonidas, which lad, in distant
Cambridge, was at that moment doing precisely what his father and his
father’s lawyer were about, drinking port, but with no such long and
honest life behind him as theirs.
It was Mr. Kirby’s way to listen to anything his friends might have to
say—it relieved them and did not hurt him. In the ordinary way he cared
nothing whether he was hearing a friend’s tale for the first or for
the hundredth time; he had no nerves where friendship was concerned,
and friendship was his hobby. But in this late evening he did feel a
movement of irritation at hearing once again in full detail the plans
for Algernon’s life spun out in their regular order, as though they
were matter for novel advice.
Mr. Brassington was at it again—the old, familiar story! How, properly
speaking, the Queen should have knighted him when she came to Ormeston
during his mayoralty; how, anyhow, King Edward might have given him a
baronetcy, considering all he had done during the war. How he didn’t
want it for himself, but he thought it would steady his son. How he
would have nothing to do with paying for such things; how he had heard
that the usual price was £25,000; how that was robbing his son! Robbing
his son, sir! Robbing his son of a thousand pounds a year, sir! How Mr.
Brassington would have that baronetcy given him for the sake of his
son, of hearty goodwill, or not at all.
Mr. Kirby listened, more and more bored.
“I’ve told you, Brassington, twenty times! They came to me about it and
you lost your temper. They came to me about it again the other day, and
it’s yours for the asking, only, hang it all! you must do _something_
public again, they must have a peg to hang it on.”
Whereat Mr. Kirby’s closest and oldest friend went at him again,
recited the baronetcy grievance at full length once more, and concluded
once more with his views upon Algernon Sawby Leonidas.
When Mr. Brassington had come to the end of a sentence and made
something of a pause, Mr. Kirby said—
“I thought you were going to Belgium?”
Mr. Brassington was a little pained.
“I have arranged to take the night mail,” he said gravely. “I shall
walk down. Will you come to the station with me?”
“Oh, yes!” said Mr. Kirby briskly. “It’ll give me a nice walk back
again all through the rain. If you think all that about Algernon you
shouldn’t have sent him to Cambridge.”
“I sent him to Cambridge by your advice, Kirby,” said Mr. Brassington
with dignity.
“I would give it again,” said Mr. Kirby, crossing his legs. “It’s an
extraordinary thing that a rich man like Perkin has good port one day
and bad port another.... He ought to go to Cambridge. I have a theory
that everyone should go to Cambridge who can afford it, south-east of a
line drawn from——”
“Don’t, Charles, don’t,” said Mr. Brassington, a little pained, “it’s
very serious!”
Mr. Kirby looked more chirpy than ever.
“I didn’t say your ideas were right; I don’t think they are. I said
that if you had those ideas it was nonsense to send him to Cambridge.
Why shouldn’t he drink? Why shouldn’t he gamble? What’s the harm?”
“What’s the——?” began John Brassington, with a flash in his eyes.
“Well, well,” said Kirby soothingly, “I don’t say it’s the best thing
in the world. What I mean is you emphasise too much. You know you do.
Anyhow, John, it doesn’t much matter; it’ll all come right.”
He stared at the fire, then added—
“Now, why can’t I get coals to burn like that? Nothing but pure white
ash!”
He leant forward with a grunt, stirred the fire deliberately, and
watched the ash with admiration as it fell.
“Kirby,” said John Brassington, “it will break my heart!”
“No it won’t!” said Mr. Kirby cheerfully.
“I tell you it _will_!” replied the other with irritation, as though
the breaking of the heart were an exasperating matter. “And one thing
I am determined on—determined——” The merchant hesitated, and then
broke out abruptly in a loud voice, “Do you know that I have paid his
gambling debts four times regularly? Regularly with every summer term?”
“It does you honour, John,” said Mr. Kirby.
“Ah, then,” said Mr. Brassington, with a sudden curious mixture of
cunning and firmness in his voice, “I haven’t paid the last, though!”
“Oh, you haven’t?” said Mr. Kirby, looking up. He smelt complications.
“No, I haven’t...! I gave him fair warning,” said the elderly merchant,
setting his mouth as squarely as possible, but almost sobbing in his
heart. “Besides which it’s ruinous.”
“I wonder if he gave the young bloods fair warning?” mused Mr. Kirby.
“Last Grand National——”
“Oh, Lord, Charles!” burst out Mr. Brassington, uncontrollable. “D’ye
know what, what that cub shot me for? Curse it all, Kirby, two thousand
pounds!”
“The devil!” said Charles Kirby.
“It is the Devil,” said John Brassington emphatically.
And it was, though he little knew it, for it was in that very moment
that the Enemy of Mankind was at work outside in the hall upon the
easy material of Professor Higginson. It was in that very moment that
the Green Overcoat was enclosing the body of the Philosopher, and was
setting out on its adventures from Sir John Perkin’s roof. Even as Mr.
Brassington spoke these words the outer door slammed. Kirby, looking
up, suddenly said—
“I say, they’re going! What about your train?”
“There’s plenty of time,” said Brassington wearily, “it’s only twelve.
Do listen to what I am saying.”
“I’m listening,” said Kirby respectfully.
“Well,” went on Mr. Brassington, “there’s the long and the short of it,
I won’t pay.”
Mr. Kirby poked the fire.
“The thing to do,” he said at last in a meditative sort of tone, “is to
go down and give the young cubs Hell!”
“I don’t understand you, Charles,” said Mr. Brassington quietly; “I
simply don’t understand you. I was written to and I hope I replied with
dignity. I was written to again, and I answered in a final manner. I
will not pay.”
“I have no doubt you did,” said Mr. Kirby. “It’s a curious thing how
eagerly a young man will take to expectations!”
“You simply don’t know what you’re saying, Charles,” answered Mr.
Brassington; “and if I didn’t know you as well as I do, I’d walk out of
the room.”
“I know what I am saying exactly,” riposted Mr. Kirby with as much heat
as his quizzical countenance would allow. “I was going to follow it up
if you hadn’t interrupted me. I say it’s a curious thing how a young
man will be moved by expectations. That’s why they gamble. Thank God, I
never married! They like to see something and work for it. That’s why
they gamble. You won’t understand me, John,” he said, putting up a hand
to save an interruption; “but that’s why when I was a boy my father put
me into the office and said that if I worked hard something or other
would happen, something general and vague—esteem, good conscience, or
some footling thing called success.”
“I wish you wouldn’t say ‘footling,’” interjected John Brassington
gravely.
“I didn’t,” answered Mr. Kirby without changing a muscle, “it’s a
horrible word. Anyhow, if my dad had said to me, ‘Charles, my boy,
there’s £100 for you in March if you keep hours, but if you’re late
_once_ not a farthing,’ by God, John, I’d have worked like a nigger!”
Mr. Brassington looked at the fire and thought, without much result.
“I can’t pay it, Charles, and I won’t,” he said at last. “I’ve said I
wouldn’t, and that’s enough. I have written and said I wouldn’t, and
that’s more. But even if I had said nothing and had written nothing, I
wouldn’t pay. He must learn his lesson.”
“Oh, he’ll learn that all right!” said Mr. Kirby carelessly. “He’s
learning it now like the devil. It’s an abominable shame, mind you, and
I don’t mind telling you so. I’ve a good mind to send him the money
myself.”
“If you do, Charles,” said John Brassington, with one of his fierce
looks, “I’ll, I’ll——”
“Yes, that’s what I was afraid of,” said Mr. Kirby thoughtfully.
“You’re an exceedingly difficult man to deal with.... I shouldn’t have
charged him more than five per cent. You’ll lose your train, John.”
John Brassington looked at his watch again.
“You haven’t been much use to me, Charles,” he said, sighing as he rose.
“Yes, I have, John,” said Mr. Kirby, rising in his turn. “What do you
do with your evening clothes when you run up to town by the night train
like this?”
“I change at my rooms in town when I get in, Charles,” said Mr.
Brassington severely, “you know that as well as I do—and I wear my coat
up to town.”
“They say you wear it in bed,” was Mr. Kirby’s genial answer. “I’ll
come out and help you on with it, and we’ll start.”
The two men came out from the smoking-room into the hall. They found
a number of guests crowding for their cloaks and hats. They heard the
noise of wheels upon the drive outside.
“I told you how it would be, John,” said Mr. Kirby. “You won’t be able
to get through that crush. You won’t get your coat in time, and you’ll
miss the train.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Charles,” said Mr. Brassington, with a look
of infinite organising power. “I always leave my coat in the same one
place in every house I know.”
He made directly for the door, where a large and sleepy servant
was mounting guard, stumbled to a peg that stood in the entry, and
discovered that the coat was gone.
There followed a very curious scene.
The entry was somewhat dark. It was only lit from the hall beyond. Mr.
Kirby, looking at his friend as that friend turned round from noting
his loss, was astonished to see his face white—so white that it seemed
too clearly visible in the dark corner, and it was filled with a
mixture of sudden fear and sudden anger. From that face came a low cry
rather than a phrase—
“It’s gone, Charles!”
The louty servant started. Luckily none of the guests heard. Mr. Kirby
moved up quickly and put his hand on Brassington’s arm.
“Now, do manage yourself, John,” he said. “What’s gone?”
“My Green Overcoat!” gasped Mr. Brassington in the same low tone
passionately.
“Well?”
“Well! You say ‘well’—you don’t understand!”
“Yes, I do, John,” said Mr. Kirby, with a sort of tenderness in his
voice. “I understand perfectly. Come back here with me. Be sensible.”
“I won’t stir!” said Mr. Brassington irresolutely.
Mr. Kirby put a hand affectionately upon his old friend’s shoulder and
pushed him to the door of the smoking-room they had just left. He shut
that door behind him. None of the guests had noticed. It was so much to
the good.
“It’s gone! It’s gone!” said John Brassington twice.
He had his hands together and was interlacing the fingers of them
nervously.
Mr. Kirby was paying no attention; he was squatting on his hams at a
sideboard, and saying—
“It’s lucky that I do John Perkin’s business for him, I’m being damned
familiar.”
He brought out a decanter of brandy, chucked the heel of Mr.
Brassington’s port into the fire, and poured out a glassful of the
spirit.
“I always forget your last craze, John,” he said; “but if I was a
doctor I should tell you to drink that.”
John Brassington drank a little of the brandy, and Mr. Kirby went on—
“Don’t bother about Belgium to-night, my boy. In the first place, take
my overcoat. I am cleverer than you in these crushes, I don’t even hang
it on a peg. I leave it” (and here he reached behind a curtain), “I
leave it here,” and he pulled it out.
[Illustration: _“It’s gone! It’s gone!” said John Brassington twice_]
It was no more than an easy mackintosh without arms. He put it on his
unresisting friend, who simply said—
“What are you going to do, Charles?”
“I am going to take orders,” said Charles Kirby, suddenly pulling out
from his pocket a square of fine, black silk, and neatly adjusting it
over his shirt front. “I haven’t got a parsons dog-collar on, but a man
can walk the streets in this. After all, some of the clergy still wear
the old-fashioned collars and white tie, don’t they?”
John Brassington smiled palely.
“Oh, it’s in the house!” he said. “It’s sure to be in the house
somewhere!”
“Now, John,” said Charles Kirby firmly, “don’t make a fool of yourself.
_Don’t ask for that coat._ It’s the one way not to get it. Stay where
you are, and I’ll bring you news.”
He went out, and in five minutes he came back with news.
“Fifty people went out before we got up, John. No one knows who they
were. The idiot at the door could only remember the Quaker lot and My
lord, and Perkin’s so fussed that he can do nothing but swear, and
that’s no use. You’ve simply got to come along with me, and we’ll walk
home through the rain. Take Belgium at your leisure.”
“It isn’t Belgium that’s worrying me!” said poor Mr. Brassington.
“No, _I_ know,” said Charles Kirby soothingly. “_I_ understand.”
The two men went out into the night and the storm. Charles Kirby
enjoyed bad weather; it was part of his manifold perversity. He tried
to whistle in the teeth of the wind as they went along the main road
towards the Crampton Park suburb of the town. Brassington strode at his
side.
“You didn’t order a carriage,” said Kirby after a little while; “you
didn’t know it was going to rain. I suppose that Green Overcoat of
yours has got luck in the lining?”
“It has a cheque-book of mine in the pocket,” said John Brassington.
“Yes, but that’s not what you’re bothering about,” said Mr. Kirby.
“You’re bothering about the luck. For a man who hates cards, John,
you’re superstitious.”
For some paces Brassington said nothing, then he said—
“Long habit affects men.”
“Of course it does,” said Mr. Kirby, with the fullest sympathy. “That
is why so many people are afraid of death. They’re afraid of the change
of habit.”
And after that nothing more was said until they came to the lodge gates
of that very large, ugly, convenient and modern house, which John
Brassington had built and for no reason at all had called “Lauderdale.”
“Shall I come up to the door with you, John?” said Mr. Kirby.
“If you don’t mind,” answered Brassington doubtfully.
“Not a bit,” said Mr. Kirby cheerfully. “If I had grounds as big as
yours I shouldn’t go through them alone.”
The two men walked up the short way to the main door. When it was
opened for them, the first thing Mr. Brassington said to his servant
was—
“Has anyone brought back my overcoat?”
The servant had seen nothing of it.
“It’s not here,” said Mr. Brassington, turning round to Mr. Kirby.
“Come in.”
“No, I won’t, John,” said Mr. Kirby. “I’ll ring you up in the morning.
I’ll do better than come in, I’ll try and find it for you.”
“You’re a good friend, Charles,” said John Brassington, with meaning
and simplicity. He had got a blow.
“Meanwhile, John,” said Kirby, standing outside and dripping in the
rain, “remember it’s doing some other fellow heaps of good. Heaps and
heaps and heaps! I should like a drink.”
“Come in,” said Brassington again.
“Very well,” said Kirby as he came in; “but I won’t take off my hat.”
Mr. Brassington had wine sent for, and Charles Kirby drank.
“It’s too late to drink wine,” he said when he had taken three or four
glasses. “It’s a good thing that I don’t care about the office, isn’t
it? Good night.”
The servant held the door open for him, and Brassington walked off; but
when the master of the house was out of sight and hearing, Mr. Kirby
stopped abruptly on the steps, and turning to the servant just before
the door was shut upon him, said—
“Who did you speak to to-day about your master’s overcoat?”
The man was so startled that he blurted out—
“Lord, sir, I never said a word! It was the coachman who spoke to the
young gentleman when the young gentleman saw it. He didn’t borrow it,
sir. He was a friend of Mr. Algernon’s.”
“Was he?” said Mr. Kirby. “Well, all right,” and he turned to go down
the drive. He reflected that it was a mile and a half to his own home;
but then, there was the storm still raging and he liked it, and, thank
Heaven, he never got up earlier than he could help. He therefore
proceeded to whistle, and as he whistled, to consider curiously the
soul of that old friend of thirty years, whom he loved with all his
heart. Next he made a picture of a young gentleman, a friend of his
friend’s son, coming and asking to see the Green Overcoat, and learning
it by heart. Why? Mr. Kirby didn’t know. He stacked the fact up on a
shelf and left it there.
CHAPTER IV.
_In which it is seen that University training fits
one for a business career._
The dawn in the month of May comes much earlier than most well-to-do
people imagine. It comes earlier than most people of the class which
buys and reads novels know, and as by this time I can be quite certain
that the reader has either bought, hired, borrowed, or stolen this
enchanting tale, I feel safe in twitting him or her or it upon their
ignorance.
The dawn in May comes so incredibly early that the man who makes
anything of a night of it is not sleepy until broad daylight. Now,
even those who have formed but a superficial acquaintance with the
adventures of Professor Higginson will admit that he had made a night
of it. Such a night as even the sacred height of Montmartre and the
great transpontine world of London hardly know. Providence had not left
him long to curse and despair in darkness bound to his chair. He was
already exhausted, but he could still think and act, when he perceived
that a sickly light was filling the room. So dawned upon him Tuesday,
the third of May, a date of dreadful import for his soul.
It was then that the Psychologist remembered that his arms were free.
In that wide reading of his to which I have several times alluded,
and which replaced for him the coarser experiences of life, Professor
Higginson had learned of Empire Builders and strong men who with no
instrument but their good Saxon teeth had severed the most dreadful
fetters. How then should _he_ fail, whose two hands were at liberty, to
divest himself of his mere hempen bonds?
He cursed himself for a fool—in modulated internal language—for not
having thought of the thing before.
He first surveyed all that his eyes could gather. The box-cord
surrounded the Green Overcoat with a sevenfold stricture. It was
continuous. It curled round the rungs and the legs of the chair, it
tightly grasped his ankles and his knees. Somewhere or other it was
knotted, and he must find that knot.
Heaven, or (as the Professor preferred to believe) Development has
given to the human arm and hand an astonishing latitude and choice of
movement. Since the knot wasn’t in sight, it must be behind him. He
felt gingerly along the cord with either hand, so far as either hand
would reach, but found it not.
He next decided that the knot must be beneath him. The chair had wide
arms, to which his body was strictly bound. He bent as far as he could
first to one side and then to the other, but he could discover no knot
upon the seat beneath.
Once more he leant backwards (at some considerable expense of pain),
and with the extreme tip of his right middle finger just managed to
touch a lower rung at the back of the chair; there at last he found the
accursed tangle. There he could tickle the outer edge of the damnable
nexus of rope. There was the knot! Just out of reach!
In one strenuous and manly attempt to add one inch to his reach in that
direction, he toppled the chair backwards and fell, striking the back
of his head heavily against the floor.
The Professor was not pleased. He was horribly hurt, and for a moment
he lay believing that all things had come to an end. But human
instinct, fertile in resource, awoke in him. He swung his head and
shoulders upwards spasmodically in a desperate effort to redress
himself. Finding that useless, he deliberately turned over on his side,
from this on to his knees, and so upon all fours, with the chair still
tightly bound to him and riding him like a castle.
Having attained that honourable position—which is by all the dogmas of
all the Universities the original attitude of our remote ancestors—he
made a discovery.
In this native posture he was capable of progression, of progression
with the chair burdening his back like the shell of a tortoise, and
with his legs dragged numbly after him, but still of progression, for
he could put one hand before the other after the fashion of a wounded
bear, and so drag the remainder of his person in their wake.
In this fashion, as the light gradually broadened on the filthy and
deserted apartment, Professor Higginson began an odyssey painful and
slow all over the floor of his prison. He inspected its utmost corners
in search of something sharp wherewith to cut the cord, but nothing
sharp was to be found.
[Illustration: _In this fashion Professor Higginson began an odyssey._]
It was broad daylight by the time he had completed his circumnavigation
and detailed survey. In the half-light he had hoped that the window
might give upon the garden; now that everything was fully revealed by
the dawn, he was disappointed. The one window, as he cricked his neck
to look up at it, gave upon nothing better than the brick wall of a
narrow, dirty backyard. He slowly retraced his steps, or rather spoor,
to the position he had originally occupied, and then with infinite
labour, grabbing at the edge and legs of the table, tilted the chair
right side uppermost, and resumed the position of Man Enthroned.
He was exhausted.
He was exhausted; but the new day always brings some kind of vigour in
its train, and the Professor began once more to think and to determine,
though the soul within him was a wet rag and his _morale_ wholly gone.
He was angry, so far as a man can be properly angry when weakened by
such extremes of ill. He hated now not only those two young men, but
all men. He would be free. He had a right to freedom. He would recover
his own freedom by whatever means, and when he had recovered it, then
he would do dreadful deeds!
There was no sound in the great lonely house. The rain outside had
ceased. The ridiculous birds, grossly ignorant of his sorrows, were
skreeling for dear life like ungreased cartwheels. It was a moment
when wickedness has power, and oh! Professor Higginson, with firmer
face than ever he had yet set, made up his mind to be free.... Once
free, he would undo all ill and wreak his vengeance.
He first took up from the table that note signed John Brassington in
strong, swift English writing. He scanned it long and well.
He next took up the cheque form that had been left him; he lifted it
with a gesture of purpose too deliberate for such a character as his,
and one that nothing but the most severe fortune could have bred in it.
He felt in a pocket for a bit of pencil, and then—this time not on all
fours, but dragging himself round the edges of the table and the burden
of the chair along with him—he made for the window.
The angels and the demons saw Professor Higginson do this dreadful
thing! He put against the lowest pane (which he could well reach)
the signed note of John Brassington. The pure light of heaven’s day
shone through it clear. He held firmly above it with one of his free
hands the bottom left-hand corner of the cheque form, and he traced,
Professor Higginson traced, he traced lightly and carefully with the
pencil, he traced with cunning, with care, and with skill the “J”—and
the “o”—and the “h”—and the “n,” and the capital “B”—and the “r”—and
the “a”—and the “s”—and all the rest of the business!
The Good Angels flew in despair to their own abode, leaving for the
moment the luckless race of men. The Bad Ones, as I believe, crowded
the room to suffocation; but to use mere mortal terms, Professor
Higginson was alone with his wicked deed.
It was too late to retrace his steps. He had hardened his heart. With
a series of ungainly hops, aided by the edge of the table, he regained
the inkpot and the pen, and covered with a perfection surely unnatural
the pencil tracing he had made. Professor Higginson had forged!
It would all come right. There was the “clearing” ... and the thing
called “stopping a cheque,” and anyhow—damn it, or rather dash it, a
man was of no use for a good cause until he was free.... Yes, he had
done right. He must be free first.... Free, in spite of the bonds which
cut him as he leant half forward, half sideways, with his eyes closed
and his hands dropping on the arms of the chair ... free to take good
deep breaths ... regular breaths, rather louder ones he thought—then,
as men on active service go to sleep in the saddle, and sailors sleep
standing at the helm from fatigue, so, bound and cramped, the Professor
of Psychology and Specialist in Subliminal Consciousness in the Guelph
University of Ormeston, England, slept.
When Professor Higginson awoke the birds had ceased their song and had
gone off stealing food. The air was warm. A bright sun was shining
upon the wall of the dirty courtyard. He pulled out his watch. It
was a quarter to nine. He felt at once reposed and more acutely
uncomfortable, fresher and yet more in pain from the bonds round his
legs and middle, and less friendly with the hard chair that had been
his shell and was now his unwanted seat. As he looked at the watch, he
remembered having broken the glass of it sometime ago. He remembered a
splinter of that glass running into his hand, and—marvellous creative
influence of necessity even in the academic soul!—he remembered that
glass could cut.
He felt like a Columbus. He wished he could patent such things. He
began gingerly to lift the glass from the case of his watch. It broke,
and I am sorry to say did what it had done before—it ran into his
finger. He sucked the wound, but was willing to forget it in his new
found key to delivery. With a small fragment of the splintered thing
he began very painfully sawing at a section of the rope that bound
him. He might as well have tried to cut down a fifteen-year oak with a
penknife. All things can be accomplished with labour at last, but the
life of man is a flash.
He looked desperately at the window, and another dazzling conception
struck him. Surely his brain was burgeoning under the heat of
nourishing adversity! It occurred to him to break a window-pane!
He did so. The glass fell outward and crashed on the courtyard below.
With desperate courage but infinite precautions, he pulled at a jagged
piece that remained. Here was something much more like a knife!
Triumphantly he began to saw away at the cords, and to his infinite
relief the instrument made a rapid and increasing impression. A few
seconds more at the most and he would have severed the section. He
would have two ends, and then, as his new-born cunning told him, he had
but to follow up and unroll them and he would be free. But just as the
last strand was ready to give, as the biceps muscle of his arm was only
just beginning to ache from the steady back and forth of his hand, he
heard hateful voices upon the stairs, the loud trampling of four young
and hardy booted feet upon the uncarpeted wood, the key turned in the
lock, and Jimmy and Melba, if I may still so call them, occupied the
entry.
With nervous and desperate fingers Professor Higginson was loosening
as best he might the tangle of his now severed bonds, when they were
upon him, and I greatly regret to say that the higher voiced of the two
young men was guilty of the common-place phrase, “Ah! you would, would
you?” accompanied by a sudden forced locking of the elbows behind,
which, bitterly offensive as it was, had come to be almost as stale as
it was offensive to the Pragmatist of Guelph University.
Even to Melba the Professor seemed a different man from the victim of a
few hours before. He turned round savagely. He positively bit. In his
wrath he said—
“Let me go, you young devil!”
Mr. James McAuley in that same scurried moment had seen and picked up
the cheque. He echoed in graver tone—
“Let him go, Melba, don’t be a fool! Mr. Brassington,” he added, “you
would really have been wiser to have done this last night. We had no
intention to put any indignity upon you, but you know we had a right to
our money. After all, we warned you....”
Then, seeing the type-written sheet unsigned, he said—
“It’s no good to us without this, Mr. Brassington.”
Mr. Higginson, lowering and furtive like a caged cheetah, snarled and
pulled the paper towards him. It was stamped with the business heading
of the Brassington firm. It was brief and to the point:
“James McAuley, Esq.
“Dear Sir,
“After consultation with those best fitted
to advise me, I have decided, though I still
regard the necessity placed upon me as a
grievous injustice, to liquidate my son’s
foolish debt.
“I enclose my cheque for £2,000, for which
you will be good enough to send me a receipt
in due form, and I am,
“Your obedient servant,
Then came the blank for signature. Professor Higginson with a very ugly
face, uglier for his hours of torture, turned on the young men.
“I am to sign that, am I?”
“If you please, Mr. Brassington,” said Jimmy unperturbed.
“Well, then, I’ll thank you to leave the room, you young fool, and your
friend with you.”
Melba and Jimmy looked at each other doubtfully.
“I cannot, will not do it,” barked the wretched scientist, “if you stay
here!”
“After all, Mr. Brassington, we had all this out last night——”
“Yes, and I wouldn’t do it until you were gone, would I?” said
Professor Higginson, scoring a point.
“After all, he can’t do anything through that window, Melba, can he?
Let’s come out and wait. But I warn you, sir,” he added, turning to
the fallen man, “we shall hear all that you do, and we shall stop
immediately outside the door.”
“Go to Hell!” said Professor Higginson, using the phrase for the second
time in his life, and after an interval of not less than twenty-three
years.
Whereupon the young men retired, and the now hardened soul proceeded
once again to trace, to pencil, and to sign.
“It’s ready!” he shouted to the door as his pen left the paper.
His tormentors re-entered and possessed themselves of the document, and
then, though Melba remained an enemy, Jimmy’s demeanour changed.
“Mr. Brassington,” he said, “we are very much obliged to you, very much
obliged, indeed.”
“So you ought to be,” said Professor Higginson suddenly.
“Henceforward I beg you will regard these premises as your own,” said
Jimmy.
With these words he suddenly caught the Professor down upon the chair,
took that chair upon one side, Melba took it upon the other, and they
held and carried the unfortunate man rapidly through the open door, up
three flights of uncarpeted stairs, until, assuring him of the honesty
of their intentions, they deposited him upon a landing opposite a
comfortable-looking green baize door. Then they stood to recover their
breath, still holding him tightly upon either side, while Jimmy as
spokesman repeatedly assured him that they meant him no ill.
[Illustration: _The now hardened soul proceeded to trace, to pencil,
and to sign._]
“It’s nothing but a necessary precaution, Mr. Brassington, we do assure
you,” he puffed. “You see, the cheque must be cleared. Not that we
doubt your honour for a moment! You’ll find all you want in there.
You can untie yourself now that you’ve cut the rope, you know, and
there’s everything a man can possibly want. It’s a solemn matter of
honour between us, Mr. Brassington, that we’ll let you out the _moment_
the cheque’s cleared. And there’s plenty of food and good wine, Mr.
Brassington, really good wine——”
“And ginger-ale, if you like the slops,” added Melba; “a man like you
would.”
“We are very sorry,” said Jimmy, by way of palliating the insult, “but
you must see as well as we do that it has to be done. Not that we doubt
your honour! Not for a moment!”
With these words he gave some mysterious signal to Melba. The baize
door was swung open and a large oaken door within it was unbolted; the
chair and the wretched man upon it were run rapidly through, the bolt
shot, and Jimmy, standing outside, asked, as in duty bound—
“You’re not hurt? You’re all right?”
A hearty oath assured him that all was well. He tramped with his
companion down the stairs, and Mr. Higginson was again a prisoner and
alone.
CHAPTER V.
_In which Solitude is unable to discover the charms
which Sages have seen in her face._
The Philosopher cursed gently, and then listened.
The steps of his tormentors grew fainter as they reached the lower part
of the house. Then he heard, or thought he heard, the distant crunching
of boots on gravel. After that came a complete silence.
It occurred to the ill-used gentleman that he was free. He pulled
savagely at the loose cords: got one leg to move and then the other;
gradually unrolled the cord and attempted to stand.
At first he could not. Nine hours of such confinement had numbed him.
He felt also an acute pain, which luckily did not last long, where his
circulation had been partially arrested at the ankles. In a few minutes
he could stand up and walk. It was then that he began to observe his
new surroundings.
He found himself in a large and very high room, with a steep-pitched
roof, soaring and sombre, quite twenty feet above him. The walls were
bare of ornament, but still covered with a rich dark red paper, darker,
cleaner patches on which marked places where pictures had hung. On the
height of the roof, looking north, was a large skylight which lit the
whole apartment. There was a good writing table with pigeon-holes and
two rows of drawers on either side. Upon this writing table stood a
little kettle, a spirit stove, a bottle of methylated spirit, a tin
of milk cocoa, three large loaves, a chicken, tinned meats, a box of
biscuits, and, what was not at all to be despised, an excellent piece
of Old Stilton Cheese. The thoughtful provider of these had even added
a salt-cellar full of salt. There stood also upon the floor beside
these provisions a large stone jar, which upon uncorking and smelling
it he discovered to contain sherry.
The room had also a fireplace with a fire laid, a full coal-scuttle, an
excellent arm-chair, a few books on a shelf—and that was all.
The Professor having taken stock of these things, did the foolish thing
that we should all do under the circumstances. He went to the big oak
door, banged it, rattled it, kicked it, and abused it. It stood firm.
The next thing he did was also a thing which any of us would have done,
though it had more sense in it—he shouted at the top of his voice. He
kept up that shouting in a number of incongruous forms in which the
word “Help” occurred with a frequency that would have been irritating
to a hearer had there been one, but audience he had none.
He knocked furiously at either wall of the long room. He turned at last
exhausted, and perceived with delight a low door, which he had failed
at first to notice; it was in the gloom of the far corner. He made
for this door. To his delight it opened easily, and revealed beyond
it nothing but darkness. There were matches upon the mantelpiece; he
struck one and peered within. He saw a neat little bed, not made by
expert women, rather (he thought) by these jailers of his, and through
a farther door he saw what might be a bathroom, fairly comfortably
appointed.
Such was Professor Higginson’s prison. It might have been worse, and
to the pure in heart prison can be no confinement for the soul. But
either Professor Higginson’s heart was not pure or something else was
wrong with him, for when he had taken stock of his little luxuries he
treated them to a long malediction, the scope and elaboration of which
would have surprised him in other days.
* * * * *
Necessity, which is stronger than the Gods, knows no law, and is also
the mother of invention. She is fruitful in stirring the pontifical
instinct, the soul of the builder, of the contriver, in man.
Necessity awoke that primal power in the starved Higginsonian soul.
When the Professor of Subliminal Consciousness had prowled round and
round the room like a caged carnivorous thing some twenty times,
seeking an outlet, harbouring disordered schemes, a clear idea suddenly
lit up his cloudy mind.
It was glass again! The skylight was made of glass, and glass is a
fragile thing!
He stood with his hands in his trouser pockets looking up to that
large, slanting window in the roof and taking stock. It was made
to open, but the iron rod which raised and lowered it had been
disconnected and taken away. He thought he could perceive in certain
small dots far above him the heads of screws recently driven in to
secure the outer edge of the skylight and make it fast. He estimated
the height. Now your Professor of Subliminal Consciousness in general
is no dab at this; but that great Governess of the Gods, Necessity, to
whom I have already paid eight well-merited compliments, threw him back
in this matter also upon the primitive foundations of society, and the
Philosopher was astonished to find himself applying the most ancient of
measures. He reckoned by his own height taken against the wall. He was
a man of six feet. The lowest part of the window was about twice his
own height from the floor—a matter of twelve feet; its summit another
six or eight.
Then Professor Higginson, having for the first time in his life
_measured_, began the ancient and painful but absorbing task of
_building_ next.
It is the noblest of man’s handicrafts! He had heard somewhere that
the stretch of a man’s arms is about his own height, and in this
spread-eagle fashion he measured the bed, the desk, the chairs, the
bookshelves.
He carefully put the food down upon the floor, tipped the desk up
lengthways on one end. He did this at a terrible strain—and was annoyed
to see ink flowing out suddenly and barely missing his trouser leg.
With a strength he had not believed to be in him, he wheeled the iron
bed out of the inner room, and managed to get it hoisted by degrees
on top of the desk thus inverted. He next hoisted up the arm-chair,
getting his head under the seat of it, suffering some pain in his crown
before he got it on to the bed. He passed up the three wooden chairs to
keep it company, and then with trembling heart but firm will he began
to climb.
It is a pity that too profound a study of Subliminal Consciousness
destroys Faith, for if the Professor had but believed in God this
would have been an admirable opportunity for prayer. Twice in the
long ascent he thought the bed was down on the top of him; twice he
felt a trembling that shook his unhappy soul—the floor seemed so far
below! At last he stood triumphant like the first men who conquered
the Matterhorn; he was ready to erect upon so firm a base the last
structure he had planned.
Quaint memories of his childhood returned to him as he fixed the wooden
chairs one upon the other, and jammed the lowest of them in between the
arms of the padded easy-chair, which was to support the whole.
If the first part of the ascent had proved perilous, this last
section—the gingerly mounting of a ladder of chair rungs and legs
uneasily poised upon a cushioned seat—was as hazardous as ever human
experiment had been. The frail structure creaked and trembled beneath
him, as, with infinite caution and testing, he swung one long leg after
the other up the frail scaffolding. An unworthy eagerness made his
heart beat when he was within the last rung of the top chair seat. The
glass of the skylight was all but within his reach ... he could almost
touch it with his outstretched hand as he tried the last step.
But already ominously the wooden child of his fancy, the engine he had
made, was beginning to betray him. He felt an uneasy swinging in the
tower of chairs. He tried to compensate it by too sudden a movement of
his body, and then—CRASH!—and in the tenth of a second all was ruin.
He felt his head striking a rung of wood, a cushion, an iron bar, his
hands clutching at a chaotic and cascading ruin of furniture, and he
completed his adventure sitting hard upon the floor with the legs of
the wooden chairs about him, the stuffed arm-chair upside down within a
foot of his head, the iron bedstead hanging at a dangerous slant above
the end of the desk, and the wood of this last gaping in a great gash.
He had certainly failed.
* * * * *
There is no soul so strong but defeat will check it for a moment. All
the long hours remaining of that day, even when he had eaten food and
drunk wine, he despaired of any issue.
As darkness closed in on him he raised the energy to get the bed down
on to the floor again. He made it up as best he could (the sheets were
clean, the pillows comfortable), and he slept.
Upon the Wednesday morning he woke—but now I must play a trick upon
the reader, lest worse should befall him. I must beg him to allow the
lapse of that Wednesday, and to consider the Professor rising with the
first faint dawn of Thursday. Why they should keep him thus confined,
how long they intended to do so, whether those fiendish youngsters were
determined upon his slow starvation and death, what was happening to
that miserable cheque and therefore to his future peace of mind through
the whole term of his life, where he was, by what means, if any, he
might be restored to the companionship of his kind—all these things did
the Professor ruminate one hundred times, and upon none could he come
to any conclusion. Such an occupation were monotonous for the reader to
follow, and even if he desires to follow it I cannot be at the pains
of writing it out; so here we are on Thursday morning, the 5th of May,
forty-eight hours after he, the Philosopher, had Done the Deed and
handed that sad forgery to his captors.
If the truth must be told, repose and isolation had done Professor
Higginson good.
In the first place, he had read right through the few books he had
found set out for him, and thus became thoroughly acquainted for the
first time in his life with the poet Milton, the New Testament, and
Goschen on Foreign Exchanges, for such was the library which had been
provided for him.
As he rose and stretched himself in that disappointing dawn, he found
the energy to go through his empty ceremony of howling for aid, but it
soon palled and his throat began to hurt him.
He looked up again at that skylight showing clear above the half
darkness of the room, and was struck quite suddenly with a really
brilliant scheme. He remembered bitterly the painful misfortune of his
first attempt, rubbed a sore place, and wished to Heaven that his
present revelation had come first.
He proceeded to execute at once the promptings of his new scheme. He
took the sheets off his bed and tied them one to another, the pillow
cases he linked up upon the tail of these, and, to make certain of
the whole matter, he ended by tying on the counterpane as well. He
tied them all securely together, for he intended the rope so made to
bear his whole weight. Taking one of the broken chairs, he secured it
stoutly to one end of the line; he chose his position carefully beneath
the skylight, he swung the chair, and at the end of the third swing
hurled it up into the air at the glass above him. It was his plan to
break that glass. The chair would catch upon the ridge of the roof
outside, and he would manage in his desperation to swarm up the tied
sheets and win his way through the broken pane to the roof. The chair
was heavy, and he failed some twenty times. Twice the chair had struck
him heavily on the head as it fell back, but he persevered.
Perseverance is the one virtue which the Gods reward, and at long
last the Professor saw and heard his missile crashing clean through
the skylight. He was as good as free, save that—such is the academic
temper!—he had forgotten to catch hold of the other end of the line.
He heard the chair rattle loudly down the roof outside, he saw its long
tail of knotted sheets swiftly drawn up through the broken skylight,
he leapt up to clutch it just too late, and marked in despair the last
of his bedclothes flashing up past and above him like a white snake,
to disappear through the broken window from his gaze. Two seconds
afterwards he heard the chair fall into the garden some fifty feet
below, and he noted with some disgust that a quantity of broken glass
had come down upon his food.
It was, as I have said, in the first grey light of the third day—the
Thursday—that he had thus gratuitously shed his bedding. For some
moments after that failure he sat down and despaired. He also felt his
head where the chair had struck it.
As he turned round helplessly to discover whether some object might not
suggest a further plan, he was astonished to see the great oaken door
standing ajar. He pulled it open to its widest extent; the green baize
door beyond swung to his touch, and he was a free man.
Someone had slipped those bolts in the night, and if that someone were
Jimmy, Jimmy had kept his word.
It was with no gratitude that Professor Higginson cautiously and
fearfully descended the stairs. He knew so little of men, that he
dreaded further capture and some vigorous young scoundrel leaping upon
him from an unexpected door. He passed three flights, each untenanted,
furnitureless and quite silent, until he reached the hall.
The front door stood wide open. The delicious breath of the early
summer morning came in, mixed with the twittering of birds. Still
wondering and half doubting his good fortune, Professor Higginson was
about to step out, when he remembered—what?—the _Green Overcoat_. He
must face the ordeal of those stairs again. It was the bravest thing
he had ever done in his life. It was the only brave thing he had ever
done in his life. But fear of worse things compelled him. If that
Green Overcoat were found and he were traced—he dared not think of the
consequences.
His recent experience was far too vivid for him to dream of putting
it on. He carried the great weight of it over his arm, and in the
first steps he took in the open air towards the lodge, under that
pure sky in which the sun had not yet risen, it was his honest and
his firm intention to take it straight to Crampton Park, to discover
“Lauderdale,” to restore it to its owner and to explain all.
The lodge he found to be empty and even ruinous. A mouldy gate stood
with one of its bars broken, hanging by a single hinge, ajar. He passed
out upon a lonely country lane. He was glad it was lonely. An elderly
don in an exceedingly dirty shirt, clad in evening clothes which had
been through something worse than a prize fight, his collar crumpled
and vile, no tie, and boots half buttonless, would be foolish to desire
any general companionship of human strangers upon a May-day morning. It
was up to him to find his whereabouts, and to make the best of his way
to his lodgings and to proper clothing. Then, he hoped, by six at the
latest, he could do what the voice of duty bade him do. He felt in his
pocket, and was glad to find his latch key and his money safe, for with
these two a man commands the world; but as he felt in his pockets he
missed something familiar. What it was he could not recollect—only, he
knew vaguely something he expected was not there, a memorandum or what
not. He set it down for nervousness, and went his way.
The rolling landscape of the Midlands was to his left and right. The
lane ran along a ridge that commanded some little view upon either
side. It led him northwards, and he could see in the clear air, for
the moment smokeless, the tall chimneys of Ormeston. They were perhaps
five miles away, and the Professor prepared to cover that distance.
His heart was shot with a varied emotion, of exultation at his morning
freedom, of terror that his evil deeds might have gone before him. But
he was determined upon his duty under that cold dawn. He went swinging
forward.
The east put on its passing cloudless colours, and beyond the rim of
fields, far outward beyond the world, Phœbus Apollo rose unheralded and
shone with his first level beams upon the misguided man.
Now almost as Apollo rose whether proceeding from Apollo’s influence or
from that of some Darker Power, hesitation and scheming entered once
more into the heart of Professor Higginson.
First, he found that he was getting a little tired of the way. Five
miles was a long distance. Then he remembered his determination to
give up the Coat. It was heavy. Why carry it five miles and make a fool
of himself at the end of them?
By the second mile he had come to the conclusion that it was ridiculous
to knock up what was probably a wealthy merchant’s household
(“Lauderdale” sounded like that, so did Crampton Park) at such
unearthly hours. The man was certainly wealthy—he had seen his name in
the papers when he had got his chair a few months before.
In the third mile Mr. Higginson determined not to fulfil his difficult
mission until he had groomed himself and could call upon this local
bigwig at a reasonable hour. Such men (he remembered) were influential
in provincial towns.
In the midst of the fourth mile he saw before him the first of the tall
standards which marked the end of an electric tramway, and at that
point stood a shelter, very neat, provided by some local philanthropic
scoundrel. It sent up a grateful little curl of smoke which promised
coffee.
The Professor came to the door of the shelter, timidly turned its
handle, and peered in.
Three men were within. Two seemed to be night-watchmen, one of whom
was concocting the brew, the other cutting large slices of bread and
butter. The third man—short, stubbly, and of an expression wholly dull
and vicious—was not in their uniform. He had the appearance of a man
whose profession was very vague, and seemed to be lounging there for
no better purpose than cadging a cup from pals. He was remarkable for
nothing but a Broken Nose.
The Professor smelt the delicious steam. He came in through the
doorway, and all three men looked up.
It is a beautiful trait in our national character that the poor will
ever welcome the wealthier classes, particularly when these betray upon
their features that sort of imbecile ignorance of reality and childish
trust in rogues which is common to all the liberal professions save
that of the law, which is rare in merchants, which is universal in dons.
If the mass of our people love a guileless simplicity in their
superiors, when it is accompanied by debauch they positively adore it;
and the excellent reception the Professor met with upon his entry was
due more than anything else to the conviction of his three inferiors
that an elderly man in tattered evening clothes and abominable linen
must have spent the night before in getting outrageously drunk.
His offer of no less than a shilling for a piece of bread and a cup
of coffee was gratefully accepted. The word “Sir” was used at least
eighteen times in the first three minutes of conversation.
The Professor felt that he was with friends, and his self-discipline
weakened and weakened by degree after degree. It sank with the coffee
and the bread, it sank lower with the respectful tones in which he was
addressed; then without warning it vanished, and that soul which had
already fallen to forgery and intemperate language went down a further
step to Sheol.
The Devil, who had been away during the last two days attending to
other business, must have caught the Professor as he passed that
lodge-gate and have hastened to his side. At any rate, Mr. Higginson
deliberately sized up the three men before him, determined with
justice that the lounger, the Man with the Broken Nose, was the most
corruptible and at the same time the least dangerous if anything should
come to the (dreadful word!) police.
He led up to his subject carefully. He said that Crampton Park was in
the neighbourhood, was it not? He had heard that it lay somewhere to
the left in a western suburb of the town. He professed to have found
the Green Overcoat in the hall of the house where—where he had passed
the night, and as he used these words the three toilers discreetly
smiled. He professed to have promised to return it. He professed to
remember—with grateful unexpectedness—the name of the house to which he
had promised to send it. It was “Lauderdale.” He professed an ignorance
of the name of its owner. The Professor professed far more that morning
of sin than his academic professorship entitled him to do.
He found the lounger (with the Broken Nose) somewhat indifferent to
his motives, but very much alive to the economics of the situation;
and when the bargain was struck it was for half a crown that the bad
proletarian man (with the Broken Nose) took the Green Overcoat over his
disreputable arm, promising to deliver it at “Lauderdale” in the course
of the morning.
[Illustration: _The bad proletarian man (with the Broken Nose) took the
Green Overcoat._]
An immense weight was lifted from the unworthy mind of Professor
Higginson. Must I tell the whole of the shameful tale? The Professor,
as he rose to leave the Shelter, positively added to his fellow-citizen
of the Broken Nose—
“Oh! And by the way! Of course, he will ask who the Coat is from....
Say it is from Mr. Hitchenbrook.” He pretended to feel in his
pocket. “No, I haven’t got a card; anyhow, say Mr. Hitchenbrook—Mr.
Hitchenbrook, of Cashington,” he added genially, to round off the
wicked lie.
Thus relieved of duty and thus divorced from Heaven, Professor
Higginson nodded authoritatively to the Broken Nose, cheerfully to the
other two men (who touched their hair with their forefingers in reply),
and strode out again to follow the tram lines into the town.
* * * * *
Now here, most upright of readers, you will say that the Philosopher
has fallen to his lowest depth, and that no further crime he may commit
can entertain you.
You are in error. The depths of evil are infinite, and the Professor,
as he walked down the long road which brought him to Ormeston, was but
entering that long road of the spirit which leads to full damnation.
CHAPTER VI.
_In which Professor Higginson Begins to Taste
the Sweets of Fame._
When Professor Higginson reached the door of his lodgings the Ormeston
day had begun.
The house was one of a row of eighteenth-century buildings, dignified
and a trifle decayed, representing in the geology of the town the
strata of its first mercantile fortunes. It was here that the first
division between the rich and poor of industrial Ormeston had begun to
show itself four generations ago, and these roomy, half-deserted houses
were the first fruits of that economic change.
But Professor Higginson was not thinking of all that as he came up to
the well-remembered door (which in the despair of the past nights he
had sometimes thought he would never see again). He was thinking of how
he looked with his horribly crushed and dirty shirt front, his ruined
collar, and his bedraggled evening clothes upon that bright morning.
In this reflection he was aided by the fixed stares of the young
serving-maids who were cleaning the doorsteps and the unrestrained
remarks of youths who passed him in their delivery of milk. The first
with their eyes, the second more plainly with their lips, expressed
the opinion that he was no longer of an age for wanton pleasures, and
he was annoyed and flustered to hear himself compared to animals of a
salacious kind, notably the goat.
It was not to be wondered at that, being what he was, a man who had
never had to think or act in his life, Professor Higginson’s one desire
was to put his familiar door between himself and such tormentors.
He rang the bell furiously and knocked more furiously still. An
errand-boy, a plumber’s apprentice upon his way to work, and a road
scavenger joined a milkman, and watched him at this exercise in a
little group. It was a group which threatened to become larger, for
Ormeston is an early town. Professor Higginson, forgetting that Mrs.
Randle, his landlady, might not be up at such an hour, gave another
furious assault upon the knocker, suddenly remembered his latch key,
brought it out, and was nervously feeling for the keyhole amid jeers
upon his aim, when the door was suddenly opened and the considerable
figure of Mrs. Randle appeared in the passage.
For one moment she looked as people are said to look at ghosts that
return from Hell, then with a shriek that startled the echoes of the
whole street, she fell heavily against the Professor’s unexpecting
form, nearly bringing it down the steps.
Mr. Higginson was guilty of a nervous movement of repulsion. A little
more and he would have succeeded in shaking off the excellent but very
weighty woman who had thus greeted his return, but even as he did so
he heard the odious comments of the Ormeston chivalry, notably the
milkman, who told him not to treat his wife like a savage. The plumber
also called it cruel. It was therefore with some excuse that the great
Psychologist thrust the lady of the house within and slammed the door
behind him with his heel.
Mrs. Randle was partially recovered, but still woefully shaken. He
got past her brutally enough, pushed into the ground floor room in
the front of the house, and sat down. He felt the exhaustion of his
walk and the irritation of the scene which had just passed to be too
much for him. Mrs. Randle, with a large affection, stood at the table
before him, leaning heavily upon it with her fists, and saying, “Oh,
sir!” consecutively several times, until her emotion was sufficiently
calm to permit of rational speech. Then she asked him where he had been.
“It’s the talk of the whole town, sir! Oh! and me too! Never, I never
thought to see you again!” at which point in her interrogation Mrs.
Randle broke suddenly into a flood of tears, punctuated by sobs as
explosive as they were sincere.
She sat down the better to enjoy this relief, and even as she had risen
to its climax, and the Professor was being moved to louder and louder
objurgation, the bell rang and the hammer knocked in a way that was not
to be denied. The unfortunate man caught what glimpse he could from the
window, and was horrified to see two officers of the law supported by
a crowd grown to respectable dimensions, the foremost members of which
were giving accurate information upon all that had happened.
The Philosopher summoned the manhood to open the door and to face his
accusers. They were not so startled as Mrs. Randle, who now came up
with red and tearful face and somewhat out of breath (but her weeping
largely overlain with indignation) to protest against the violation of
her house.
The first of the policemen had hardly begun his formal questioning
of Professor Higginson, when the second, looking a little closer,
recognised his prey. That subtle air which no civilian can hope to
possess, and by which, like the savages of Central Africa, the British
police convey thought without words or message, acted at once upon the
second man, and he adopted a manner of the utmost respect. To prove
his zeal he dispersed the crowd of loungers, saluted, and told the
Professor that it was his duty to ask him formally certain questions;
whereat his colleague—he that had first recognised the great man—added
with equal humility that as Mr. Higginson had been lost, and the
University moving the police in the matter, it was only their duty
to ask what they should do, and what light Mr. Higginson could throw
on the affair. There was a report of fighting. To this Mrs. Randle
interposed, without a trace of logic, “Fighting yourself!”
The Professor was very glad to answer any questions that might be
put to him, and very much relieved when he found that these were no
more than what the police required to trace the misadventure of so
prominent a citizen: at whose hand he had suffered, or what adventure
had befallen him; was it murder—but they saw it was not that; whether
the reward which had been offered should be withdrawn, and what clues
the Professor could furnish.
Mr. Higginson looked blankly at these men, then his eyes lit with
anger. He was upon the very point of pouring out the whole story of his
woes, when with that cold wind upon the heart which the condemned feel
when they awake to reality upon the morning of execution, he remembered
the cheque and was suddenly silent.
“You’d better leave me!” he muttered. “You’d better leave me, officer!”
“We _were_ instructed, sir,” began the senior man more respectfully
than ever—then Professor Higginson bolted to refuge.
“Well, I will see you in a minute; I must put myself right. I am all——”
“We quite understand, sir,” said the policemen, taking their stations
in the ground floor room, and drawing chairs as with the intention of
sitting down and awaiting his pleasure.
“I will see you when I can. Mrs. Randle, please bring me some hot
water.”
And with these words the poor man dashed upstairs to his bedroom upon
the first floor.
There are ways of defeating a woman’s will when she has passed the age
of forty, and these are described in books which deal either with an
imaginary world of fiction or with a remote and unattainable past. No
living man has dealt with the art, nor can wizards show you an example
of it.
Therefore, when Mrs. Randle returned with the hot water, it was Mrs.
Randle that won.
The Professor poked his head through the door and reached out for the
can. Mrs. Randle broke his centre, marched for the wash-hand stand,
poured out the grateful liquid, tempered it with cold, motherly tested
its temperature with her large red hand, and the while opened fire
with a rattle of questions, particularly begging him not to tell her
anything until he was quite rested. Of course, there were the police
(she said), and she would have to tell her own tale, too, and oh, dear,
if he only knew what it had been those days! With the Mayor himself,
and what not! At each stage in her operations she was careful to
threaten a fit of crying.
Professor Higginson’s tactics were infantile. They were those of his
sex. He took off his evening coat and waistcoat preparatory to washing.
Upon minor occasions in the past, mere affairs of outposts, Mrs. Randle
had taken cover before this manœuvre; to-day the occasion was decisive,
and she stood firm.
“——and the Principal of the University too, sir! And his dear young
lady! And, oh! when they put that news in the paper, which wasn’t true,
thanks be to God——”
Here, as Mrs. Randle approached tears again, the desperate philosopher
threw his braces from his shoulders, plunged his face and hands into
the water, and fondly hoped that when he lifted it again the enemy
would have fled. But Mrs. Randle was a widow, and the first sound he
heard as the water ran out of his ears was the continuing string of
lamentations and questionings.
“Where’s the towel?” he asked abruptly.
“Where it’s been since last Monday, sir,” said Mrs. Randle. “Since
that last Blessed Monday when we thought to lose you for ever! I never
thought to change it! I never thought to see you back all of a heap
like this!”
“Last Monday?” hesitated Mr. Higginson genuinely enough. His calendar
had got a little muddled. “What’s to-day?” he said it easily. Then he
saw a look on her face.
[Illustration: _To-day the occasion was decisive and she stood firm._]
There is a rank in society in which to forget the day of the week has
a very definite connotation—it means ... it means something wrong
with the Brain. Like a flash an avenue of salvation was suggested to
the hunted man by Mrs. Randle’s look. He could _lose_ those few days!
They could disappear from his life—utterly—and with them that accursed
business of the Green Overcoat and the fatal cheque-book it had hidden
in its man-destroying folds!
In the very few seconds which creative work will take under the
influence of hope and terror, the scheme began to elaborate itself in
the narrow mind of the poor, persecuted don. He flopped down upon a
chair, paused suddenly in the vigorous rubbing of his face with the
towel, passed his hand over the baldness of his forehead, and muttered
vacantly—
“Where am I?”
“You’re here, sir! Oh, you’re here!” said good, kind Mrs. Randle in an
agonised tone, positively going down upon her knees (no easy thing when
religion has departed with youth) and laying one hand upon his knee.
The Professor laid his left hand upon hers, passed his right hand again
over his face, and gasped in a thin voice—
“Where’s here?”
“In Quebec Street in your own room, sir! Oh, sir, don’t you know me?
I’m Martha Randle.”
The Professor looked down at her with weary but forgiving eyes.
“I do now,” he said; “it comes back to me now.”
“Oh, Lord!” said Martha Randle, “I’ll send the girl for the chemist!”
and she was gone.
Women may be stronger than we men, my brothers, but we are more
cunning; and when she had gone the Professor, dropping the mask and
dressing with extreme alacrity, made himself possible in morning
clothes. His plan had developed still further in the few minutes
it took him to go downstairs, and as he entered the room where the
policemen awaited him, he was his own master and theirs.
They rose at his entrance. He courteously bade them be seated again,
and not allowing them to get any advantage of the first word, told them
the plain truth in a few simple and cultivated sentences, such as
could not but carry conviction to any insufficiently salaried official.
“I think it well, officer,” he said, addressing the senior of the two
men, “to tell you the truth here privately. I will, of course, put the
whole thing later before the proper authorities.”
The policemen looked grave and acquiescent.
“The fact is,” replied Professor Higginson rapidly, “I had been working
very hard at my Address—which you may have heard of.”
The two men looked at once as though they had.
“It was for the Bergson Society,” he explained courteously, and the
older policeman nodded as though he were a member himself.
“Well,” went on Professor Higginson in the tone of a man who must out
with it at last, “the fact is, there followed—there followed, I am
sorry to say, there followed something like a stroke—at any rate, bad
nervous trouble.... _I have suffered—apparently for some days—from a
complete loss of memory._”
And having put the matter plainly and simply in such a fashion.
Professor Higginson was silent.
“We quite understand, sir,” said the senior of the two policemen
gravely, sympathetically and respectfully. “There shan’t be a word from
us, sir, except of course——”
“_No_,” said Professor Higginson firmly, “I am determined to do my duty
in this matter; those whom it is proper to tell——”
At this moment Mrs. Randle, accompanied by a half-dressed servant,
herself in an untied bonnet and somewhat out of breath, was heard
at the open door with the reluctant and sleepy chemist, who was her
medical adviser.
“And he was that bad he thought I was his poor old mother, who’s been
dead these twenty years!” went Mrs. Randle’s voice outside.
But a moment afterwards, as she came into the inner room, she saw the
Professor seated and clothed and in his right mind. He rejected her
exuberance.
“Now, Mrs. Randle,” he said rather sharply, and forgetting for a moment
the natural nervous weakness to be expected of one who had suffered
Such Things, “I have told the officers here and I desire you to know it
as well.”
He glanced at the chemist, rapidly decided that the more people knew
his tale the better, and said with intentional flattery—
“I thank you, sir, for coming; you are a medical man.”
Then he continued, turning to the policemen again—
“You understand? There is unfortunately very little to say. My last
recollection is of leaving Sir John Perkin’s house—he was giving a
party on—on ... wait a moment ... it was _Monday_. I remember having
a sort of shock just after getting out of his gate, and then I do not
remember anything more until I was approaching this house. It will be
Tuesday to-day?”
“No, sir,” said the policeman, with grave reverence for one so learned,
so distinguished, and at the same time so unique in misfortune. It
reminded him of the wonderful things in the Sunday papers, and he
believed. “No, sir; to-day is Thursday.”
“_Thursday?_” said the Professor, affecting bewilderment with
considerable skill. “Thursday?” he repeated, turning to the chemist,
who said solemnly—
“Thursday, sir!”
“Oh, poor dear!” immediately howled Mrs. Randle.
“Be quiet,” shouted Professor Higginson very rudely. “If it is
Thursday,” he continued to the others, dropping his voice again, “this
is a more serious thing than I had imagined. Why, three whole days ...
and yet, wait——” (and here he extended one hand and covered his eyes
with the other) “I seem to have an impression of ... cold meat ... a
room ... voices ... no, it is gone.”
The younger policeman pulled out a note-book and an extremely
insufficient pencil, which was at once short, thick, and bald-headed.
“Lost any valuables, sir?” he began.
The Professor slapped his pockets, and then suddenly remembered that he
had changed his clothes.
“No,” he mused. “No, not to my knowledge. I had my watch” (he began to
tick off on his fingers) “and a few shillings change....” But for the
life of him he couldn’t decide whether to lose valuables or not. On the
whole he decided not to.
“No,” (after careful thought), “no, I lost nothing. My boots were very
damp as I took them off, if that is any clue.”
The younger policeman was rapidly putting it all down in the official
shorthand. Habit compelled him to make the outline, “The Prisoner
persistently denied——” He scratched it out and put, “The Professor told
us that he had not——” Then came the second question—
“In what part of the town, sir, might it be that you knew yourself
again, sir, so to speak?”
“I have told you, close by here,” said Professor Higginson.
“Yes, but coming which way like?”
Here was a magnificent opening! He had never thought of that. He
considered what was the most central quarter of the town, what least
suggested a suburb. He remembered a dirty old mid-Victorian church, now
the cathedral, in the heart of the city, and he said—
“St. Anne’s, it was close to St. Anne’s.”
Then he remembered—most luckily—that there were witnesses to his having
come up the street from exactly the opposite quarter, and he added—
“At least that’s where I began to remember a little; but I wandered
about, I didn’t remember the street for a good hour, and even when I
came here I was still troubled.... Mrs. Randle will tell you——”
“Oh,” began Mrs. Randle, “Lord knows, he gave a cry that loud on seeing
me——” but the policeman did not want to hear this.
He put this third question—
“About what time might this be?”
“About,” said the Professor, speaking slowly but thinking at his
fastest, “about ... about three hours ago. It was still dark. It was
getting light. I remember going through the streets, getting a little
clearer from time to time as to what I was doing and where I was.”
The manœuvre was not without wisdom. Had he made the time shorter there
would have been inquiries, and they might have lit upon the three men
in the shelter, and that detestable Green Overcoat might have come in
once more to ruin his life. As it was, whoever the middle-aged person
in battered evening clothes may have been who had entered the shelter
on that morning, it could not be _he_. The policeman strapped the
elastic over his note-book again.
“That’ll do, sir,” he said kindly.
Mrs. Randle was swift to find a couple of glasses of beer, which
beverage the uncertain hours of their profession permit the
constabulary to consume at any period whatsoever of the day or night,
and what I may call “The Great Higginson Lost Memory Case” started on
its travels round the world.
During the remainder of that day—the Thursday—Professor Higginson was
prodigal enough of his experience. It was a great thing for a Professor
of Subliminal Psychology to have come in direct touch in this way with
one of the most interesting of psychical phenomena. Everyone he met in
the next hours had a question to ask, and every question did Professor
Higginson meet with a strange facility; but, alas! with renewed and
more complex untruth. Had he _any_ recollections? Yes.... Yes. Were
there faces? Yes, there were faces. Drawn faces. He could say more (he
hinted), for the thing was still sacred to him.
One cross-questioned a little too closely about the sense of _Time_.
Had he an idea of its flight during that singular vision? Yes. Yes....
In a way. He remembered a conversation—a long one—and a flight: a
flight through space.
What! a flight through space?
He told the story with much fuller details that very morning about noon
to his most intimate personal friend, the editor of the second paper
in Ormeston.
He told it again at the club at lunch to a small audience with the
zest of a man who is describing a duel of his. He told it to a larger
audience over coffee after lunch. He went back to arrange matters at
the University, and to say that he could take up his work the next
morning.
It was to the Dean (who was also a Professor of Chemistry), to the
Vice-Principal, and to the Chaplain that he had to unbosom himself on
this official occasion. All were curious, and by the time they had
cheered him, the desperate man’s relation had grown to be one of the
most exact and beautiful little pieces of modern psychical experience
conceivable. All the functionings of the sub-conscious man in the
absence of a co-ordinating consciousness were falling into place, and
the World that is beyond this World had been visited by the least
likely of the sons of men.
As one detail suggested another, the necessity for a coherent account
bred what mere experience could never have done.
Now and then in these conversations Professor Higginson thought he
heard a note of doubt in some inquirer’s voice. It spurred him to new
confirmations, new lies.
For his mathematical colleague he swore to the fourth dimension; for
his historical one, to a conspectus of time. “Little windows into the
past,” he called it, the horrid man!
Then—then in a moment of whirl he did the fatal thing. It was a
Research man called Garden who goaded him.
Garden had said—
“What _were_ the faces? What _were_ the voices? How did they differ
from dreams?”
Professor Higginson felt the spur point.
“Garden,” he said, facing that materialist with a marvellously solemn
look, “Garden.... How do you know reality? I _saw_ ... I _heard_.” He
shuddered, successfully. “Garden,” he went on abruptly, “have you ever
loved one—who died?”
“Bless you, yes!” answered Garden cheerfully.
“Garden!” continued the Philosopher in a deep but shaken voice, “I too
have lost where I loved—and” (he almost whispered the rest) “and _we
held communion during that brief time_.”
“What!” said Garden. He stared at the tall, lanky Professor of
Psychology. He didn’t believe, not a word. But it was the first time
he had come across that sort of lunacy, and it shocked him. “_What!_
The Dead?”
Mr. Higginson nodded twice with fixed lips and far-away eyes.
“There is proof,” he said, and was gone.
* * * * *
Garden stared after him, then he shrugged his shoulders, muttered, “Mad
as a hatter!” and turned to go his way. It was about five o’clock.
* * * * *
Among other things which the Devil had done in that period with which
this story deals was the planting in Ormeston of a certain servant of
his, by name George Babcock.
George Babcock had come to Ormeston after a curious and ill-explained,
a short and a decisive episode in his life. He had begun as a young
theorist, who had startled Europe from the foreign University where he
was studying by a thesis now forgotten abroad, but one the memory of
which still lingered in England, for a paper had boomed it.
It had been a scornful and triumphant refutation of the Hypnotists of
Nancy.
[Illustration: _A certain servant of his, by name George Babcock._]
George Babcock had rolled the Nancy school over and over, and for a
good five years the young English writer, with his perfect command of
German, had been the prophet of common sense. “Hypnotism,” as that
school called their charlatanry, was done for, a series of clumsy
frauds, a thing of illusions, special apparatus and lies.
Unfortunately for civilisation, the superstitions of the Hypnotists, as
we know, prevailed, and European science has grown ashamed since that
day of its earlier and manlier standpoint. It has learnt to talk of
auto-suggestion. It has fallen so low as to be interested in Lourdes.
Long before 1890 George Babcock’s book was ruined abroad. But George
Babcock was a man with a knowledge of the road, and while his
reputation, dead upon the Continent, was at its height in England, he
suddenly appeared, no longer as a theorist, but as a practising doctor
in London. He had borrowed the money for the splash on the strength
of that English reputation, which he retained, and for ten years he
was a Big Man. It was said that he had saved a great deal of money. He
certainly made it. Then there came—no one knows what. The professionals
who were most deeply in the know hinted at a quarrel with Great Ladies
upon the secrets of his trade—and theirs.
At any rate, for another three years after the little episode, George
Babcock’s name took a new and inferior position in the Daily Press.
It appeared in the lists of City dinners, at meetings, at the head
of middle-class “leagues” and “movements” that failed. When it was
included in the list of a country-house party that party would not be
of quite the first flight, and, what was terribly significant to those
few who can look with judgment and pity on the modern world, articles
signed by the poor fellow began to appear in too great a quantity in
the magazines. He even published three books. It was very sad.
Then came the incorporation of the University of Ormeston, or,
as people preferred to call it from those early days, the Guelph
University, after the name of a patron, and the Prime Minister’s
private secretary had been sent to suggest, as the head of the Medical
School, the name of George Babcock.
He was neither a knight nor a baronet, but Ormeston did not notice
that. The old glamour of his name lingered in that prosperous town.
A married cousin of the Mayor of that year, whose wife dined out in
London, reported his political power. The merchants and the rest in the
newly-formed Senate of the University timidly approached the Great Man,
and the Great Man jumped at it.
He had now for five years been conducting his classes at the absurdly
low salary of £900 a year.
George Babcock remained after all his escapades and alarms—such as they
may have been—a man of energy and of singular organising power, an
Atheist of course, and one possessed both of clear mental vision and
a sort of bodily determination that would not fail him until his body
failed. His face and his shoulders were square, his jaw too was strong,
the looseness of his thick mouth was what one would expect from what
was known about him by those who knew. His eyes were fairly steady,
occasionally sly; his brows and forehead handsomely clean; his hair
thick and strongly grey.
This was the figure Garden saw coming up the street towards him as
Professor Higginson shambled off, already a distant figure, nearing
the gates of the College (for it was in the street without that the
Philosopher had met the Research man and made that fatal move).
To say that Garden was glad to meet Babcock would be to put it too
strongly; no one was ever glad to meet Babcock. But to say that he was
indifferent to the chance of blabbing would not be true; no one is
indifferent to the chance of blabbing.
“I say, Babcock,” he said, checking the advancing figure with his
raised hand, “old Higginson’s gone mad.”
Babcock smiled uglily.
“Yes, he has,” said Garden, “saying all sorts of things about that
little trouble he had. Saw ghosts!”
“They all do,” said Babcock grimly.
“Oh, yes, I know,” answered Garden, eager for the importance of his
tale, “but he’s got it all pat! Says he can prove it!”
Garden nodded mysteriously.
“He gave me some details, you know,” went on Garden most irresponsibly;
then he pulled himself up. He wanted to have something important to
say, but he was a nervous man in handling those tarradiddles which are
the bulk of interesting conversation.
Babcock looked sceptical.
“What sort of details?” he sneered.
“Oh, I’m not allowed to tell you,” said Garden uneasily, “but it was
very striking, really it was.”
Then suddenly he broke away. He felt he might be led on, and he didn’t
want to make a fool of himself. He rather wished he hadn’t spoken.
Babcock let him go, and as Garden disappeared in his turn the Doctor
paced more slowly. He was not disturbed, but he was interested.
Everyone in the University had heard of Higginson’s Spiritual
Experience, everyone was already talking of it; that wasn’t the
odd part. The odd part (he mused) was a man like Garden taking it
seriously....
The more Mr. Babcock thought of it the more favourably a certain
possibility presented itself.
He made his way towards the telephone-room at the Porter’s Lodge, asked
them to call up a number in London, and waited patiently until he
obtained it.
He took the full six minutes, and it will interest those who reverence
our ancient constitution to know that the person to whom George Babcock
was talking was a peer—one of those few peers who live at the end of a
wire, and not only a peer but the owner of many things.
The man at the other end of the wire was the owner of railway shares
innumerable, for the moment of stores of wheat (for he was gambling in
that), but in particular of many newspapers, chief of which a sheet
which had thrust back into their corners all older, milder things, and
had come to possess the mind of England. This premier newspaper was
called _The Howl_; nor did the writer of that letter own _The Howl_
only, but altogether some eighty other rags; nor in this country only
was he feared, though he was more feared in this country than in any
other.
It was his boast that he could make and unmake men, and every
politician in turn had blacked his boots, and he had made judges, and
had at times decided upon peace and war. A powerful man; known to his
gutter (before he bought his peerage) as Mr. Cake; a flabby man—and
vulgar? Oh! my word!
This man at the other end of the wire knew much, too much, about George
Babcock, and George Babcock knew that he knew it. From time to time
George Babcock, sickening at the recollection of such knowledge privy
only to him and to his lordship, was moved to services which, had he
been a free man, he would not have undertaken. He was about to perform
such a service now.
He told the story briefly to that telephone receiver. He insisted on
the value of it. The man at the other end of the wire was very modern.
He had a list of the expresses before him. He told George Babcock
to expect a letter that would come up by the six o’clock and reach
Ormeston at 8.5. George Babcock would get his instructions by that
train. At 8.5, therefore, George Babcock, bound to service and not
over-willing, was on the platform, took the packet from the guard, feed
him, opened it, and read.
The letter was not type-written. It was a familiar letter, and it was
signed of course by a single uninitialed name, for was not its author a
peer?
* * * * *
Meanwhile, the unfortunate Professor of Psychology was wandering within
the College buildings from room to room, from friend to friend, and
spreading everywhere as he went a long and tortuous train of falsehood
and of doom.
Just before dinner, sitting with the Vice-Principal’s wife in her
drawing-room, he added one very beautiful little point which had
previously escaped him—how during what must have been the middle of
his curious trance he had heard the most heavenly singing—he who could
not tell one note from another on ordinary days! The Chaplain had
already used him before ten o’clock as a proof of the immortality of
the soul in his notes for next Sunday’s sermon, and a local doctor had
been particularly interested to hear, as they met just before dinner,
that though he _may_ have had food and drink during that long period,
the only thing he could remember was cold meat, and that only as
something seen, not as something consumed.
“What kind of cold meat?” the doctor had said; but Professor Higginson,
whose brain was not of the poet’s type, had only answered, “Oh, just
cold meat.”
Thus by the evening of that Thursday was the dread process of publicity
begun.
That night, while all slept, in the two Ormeston newspaper offices,
shut up in their little dog kennels, the leader writers were scribbling
away at top speed, dealing with Subliminal Consciousness and the
Functions Unco-ordinated by Self-cognisant Co-ordination, the one from
the Conservative, the other from the Liberal standpoint.
Even the Socialist weekly paper which went to press on Friday was
compelled to have a note upon the subject; but knowing that it must
bring in some reference to the nationalisation of the means of
production _and_ the Parsonic Fraud, it basely said that Professor
Higginson was, like every other supporter of the Bourgeois State, a
so-called Christian, in which slander, as I need hardly inform the
reader, there was not a word of truth.
And so, having dined well with his Vice-Principal and had his fill,
Professor Higginson set out by night to seek his lodgings.
CHAPTER VII.
_In which Professor Higginson goes on tasting
them._
Professor Higginson was glad to get back to his lodgings on that
Thursday night; he was beginning to feel the weariness of the Lion.
I will not deny that some vanity had arisen in him, for he felt the
approach of a little local fame. Now vanity, especially when it is
connected with the approach of a little local fame, is not good for
Professors, even in this world; for their chances in the next it is
fatal. It is a foible only too acceptable as an instrument to the Enemy
of Souls.
Full of this vague sensation of well-being, it was a shock to Professor
Higginson to find George Babcock waiting for him in his rooms.
Hidden in the right-hand pocket of George Babcock’s coat was the
letter. It was not type-written. It was a familiar letter. It was
signed by a single uninitialed name, for its author was a peer.
Higginson came into the room nervously, less and less pleased to see
who his visitor was, but that visitor had something very definite to do.
“I say, Higginson,” he cried suddenly, rising as suddenly at his
colleague’s entry into the room, “you know I don’t believe a word of
it!”
“A word of what?” said Higginson tartly.
“Oh, you know,” said Babcock, sitting down again as did Higginson
also, and fixing the psychologist with his strong eyes. “You’ve told
everybody, and everybody’s talking. All this ‘psychical experience,’
Higginson! All these—damn it, why you’re talking _ghosts_ now!”
He sat back and waited.
“Babcock,” said Higginson, in much the same tones as he had used to
fire upon the less defended Mr. Garden, “Babcock, you won’t believe a
plain human tale? The Evidence of a witness? _True_ evidence, Babcock?”
“Oh, I believe you had some—some, well, let’s say some mental
experience, all right; but I don’t believe in all that monkey
business.... No!... I’m interested, Higginson. That’s why I’ve come.”
He leant forward. “I’m _really_ interested.”
“You don’t believe that I saw ... what I say I saw?” said Higginson
solemnly.
“Why, my dear Higginson, you know—one _sees_ things when one’s asleep.
Simple?”
“You don’t believe,” reiterated Higginson, “that I heard what I _say_ I
heard?”
“Oh, I believe that right enough,” answered Babcock impatiently.
“What’s ‘hearing’? My dear fellow, for one case of optical suggestion
there are ten cases of aural!”
“Suggestion be ——!” cried Professor Higginson too suddenly.
“It’s a funny thing, Higginson,” said Babcock, looking curiously at him
and pinning his colleague down with that look, “it’s a funny thing that
you spook Johnnies don’t seem to know what evidence is.... Ever heard a
clever counsel briefed in _Poison_?... I have.”
“I——” began Professor Higginson, but Babcock interrupted.
“Now, I knew a fellow once in Italy, not like you, my dear Higginson,
not half so honest a man, but he _had_ got hold of what convinces
people.... It’s not what’s true, it’s what convinces.”
Babcock smiled oddly as he said this.
“He didn’t publish it ... and” (this more slowly) “I will tell you
what it was, for it impressed me. He came into my room early one
morning—I knew him well enough—and he told me the whole story of Adowa.
The telegraph hadn’t brought it, Higginson” (shaking a finger). “We
hadn’t heard of it. No one in Europe, no one in Egypt. The fight was
... well, ’lowing for longitude ... not twelve hours old. And, mind
you, he didn’t give a sort of hint; he didn’t work your telepathy
stunt.” Babcock began to emphasise. “He described the whole thing quite
clearly: with little men and bushes and hot sand standing clear, like
three or four little _coloured_ pictures. Eh? _Coloured._ Painted. You
could _smell_ the heat. And he saw a sort of local storm on the scrub
in the valley; he did!—least, he _said_ he did! He saw the poor fellows
left behind—the wounded, you know: he saw the faces of the torturers.”
Babcock stopped a second and changed his tone. He looked unpleasantly
in earnest. “He told me I might make money over it,” he went on. “I was
in touch with one of the English papers. Like a fool, I didn’t believe
him. After that the telegrams came in....”
Professor Higginson was watching his colleague; his head stood forward
on his long neck. He was fascinated and a little frightened.
“Well,” said Babcock, sitting down again and speaking with less
apparent purpose, “that’s all. I think he was a charlatan. I don’t
know how he got the thing. I’ve known news spread in Africa among
savages a thousand miles in half a day.... Anyhow, that sort of thing
_might_ convince. To tell you the honest truth, Higginson, _your story
doesn’t_.”
Poor Mr. Higginson flushed. He did not like to be talked to like that.
Babcock waited for his reply. It came at last, and came in the expected
form.
“I can tell you, Babcock,” began Higginson slowly, “something I’ve told
no one else. You’ve driven me to do it. You know—you’ve heard—that ...
that, well, that I _saw_: that I not only heard singing, but _saw_? I
saw a multitude of men—and women, Babcock.”
He passed his hand over his face and wished himself well out of it—but
Sin is a hard master.
“Well?” asked Babcock, quite unchanged in face.
“Well,” proceeded Professor Higginson, still more slowly, “this is
what I have got to tell you. Many, all of those faces—and mind you
they talked to me, Babcock, they _talked_ to me” (the Professor was
warming to his work)—“I didn’t know. But I knew one, Babcock,” and
here Higginson’s voice fell (as his trick had grown to be during these
recitals) to a deeper tone. “Do you know who it was?... It was poor
Morris!”
Babcock rose again and came and stood over the wretched Philosopher.
The Philosopher looked up like a child, an erring child.
“Good Heavens!” sighed Babcock. “What extraordinary ideas you have!
_That’s_ not what people notice. Why, men can do that in their sleep.”
Then with sudden vigour, “What _else_ did you see, Higginson? Something
you couldn’t have known? Something nobody knew?”
Professor Higginson thought. Detailed imaginative fiction had never
been in his line, though he had dealt in it pretty freely all that day.
He thought hard and confusedly; but what he said at the end of the
process was startling enough.
“Very well, Babcock, listen to this. There was in that crowd a figure
very different from the others—a mad figure, you will say. Most
mournful eyes, Babcock, and—well, it’s unpleasant, but it smelt of
seaweed.”
“Oh!” said Babcock. “Was it dressed?”
Mr. Higginson thought a minute.
“Yes, it was _dressed_,” he ventured, groping his way. “Yes, it _was_
dressed.... It was very _oddly_ dressed. You know ... you see ... it
had dripping wet clothes on, dark blue. But, Babcock” (here Higginson
had an inspiration, and very proud of it he was), “_it had no arms_!”
“Oh,” said Babcock, musing, “it had no arms.”
There was a gap in their conversation, an end to Babcock’s pushing, an
end to Higginson’s lying. A let up. An interval of repose.
It was Babcock who broke it.
“Well,” he sighed, “I can’t make head or tail of all this, Higginson!
Anyhow, I must be going. It’s interesting. I know you _think_ you had
these experiences, but, frankly, all that kind of thing’s beyond me.
I don’t think it’s _there_. I think it floats in men’s brains—false,
like dreams,” and he got up to go.
[Illustration: “_But, Babcock, it had no arms!_”]
But for the next half hour he was at the telephone again, talking to
London and to the Ancient Aristocracy of Britain and to _The Howl_.
When he rose from the machine it was just eleven. _The Howl_ prints
news up to two o’clock. Smart Rag!
Next morning (Friday), when he came downstairs, Professor Higginson
received a slight but very unpleasant shock. It was a shock of a kind
one does not often receive.
Like all the rest of the world, Professor Higginson read _The Howl_ at
breakfast. _The Howl_ is very well edited; it gives you your thrill in
a short compass, and every day has some new Portent to present.
That day the Portent was Sleeping Sickness on a Huge Scale in London.
Ten millionaires were down with it and a politician was threatened.
It wasn’t true, and there was a leader on it. But true or false, it
was of less consequence to Mr. Higginson than one fairly prominent but
short item upon the front page. It was not the chief item on it; the
chief item was some rubbish about a man it called “the Kaiser.” It was
perhaps the second or the third piece of news in importance.
END OF A MYSTERIOUS CAREER.
NOBLEMAN FOUND DROWNED ON
BRETON COAST.
ROMANTIC STORY.
BREST, _Thursday, May 5th_.
Fishermen from the remote and old-world village of Karamel report a
gruesome discovery upon their rock-bound coast. The Count Michaelis
de Quersaint, a well-known eccentric character in this district,
evidently lost his life by shipwreck some few days ago in the
neighbourhood. It was the Count’s habit to cruise up and down this
coast during the summer months _incognito_, in a small ten-tonner,
with a couple of men for crew, the unfortunate man having been
born without arms, like a certain famous Irish landlord of the
last generation, and being very sensitive upon the point. The boat
has not been found, but the bodies of three men, one of which is
undoubtedly the Count, have been washed up on the rocks. The features
are unrecognisable, but there can be no doubt of Count Michaelis’s
identity. The corpse was clothed in the blue-serge yachting suit
which the Count habitually wore on these expeditions, and the body
was that of a man without arms. In the opinion of Dr. Relebecque,
whom the Government has dispatched to Karamel, the disaster must have
taken place about four days ago, and most probably during the gale of
last Monday night.
The corpse was dressed in blue. It was drowned. It had no arms—a sort
of monster.
Professor Higginson was unhappy, very unhappy indeed. He also felt sick.
Gusts of fear swept over his simple soul. There were moments when he
almost smelt the pit, and he groaned in spirit.
So powerful was the effect upon him, that he was half persuaded of some
connection between his foolish lie and doubtful superhuman powers. He
didn’t like it. It gave him a sense of possession. It left him not his
own master.
He would not take up the paper again. He left it folded upon his table,
and went out a little groggily to walk up the street to College and to
take his class.
But when Professor Higginson appeared before his class he was nervously
conscious that a great number of young eyes were watching him with
quite as much amusement as interest.
Not that he was stared at. Provincials are too polite for that, and
the earnest provincials who attend their Universities are perhaps the
politest class in England. But whenever he looked up from his notes he
met the glance shy and suddenly withdrawn, now from the left, now from
the right, which told him that of the fifty or sixty students before
him not one was ignorant of the Great Adventure.
His subject that morning was The Hypergraphical Concatenation of the
Major Sensory Criteria and Psycho-hylomorphic Phenomena in their
Relation of the Subjective to the Objective Aspects of Reflex Actions—a
fascinating theme! And one which, upon any other day, he would have
analysed with the mouldy bravura that he had cultivated.
But that morning something flagged. The interest of the class was
elsewhere, and Professor Higginson knew only too well where it was! His
misfortune or accident was already so much public property that the
youths and maidens and the respectful dependants and servitors of the
University as well were universally acquainted with it. He felt again
that touch of vanity in the midst of his embarrassment!
The great clock of the University buildings boomed out noon. He shut
his notes, looked with his weary eyes at the young faces before him,
now lifted to his own, and said—
“Next time we will take the Automatic Functions of Guest and Bunny. It
is new ground, and I think it will interest you.”
A timid, fair-haired girl to the rear of the left centre asked whether
they need buy the third edition; she only had the second. He said, full
of thought for her purse, that there was no necessity to do such a
thing, whereat the student added—
“But, Professor Higginson, it deals with the Subliminal Phenomena of a
Loss of Mem——”
“That’ll do! That’ll do!” cried Professor Higginson sharply.
He could have sworn that he heard a titter! He looked up wearily at the
window as his class tramped out.
It was raining.
When he had changed his Cap and Gown for the bowler hat, umbrella and
mackintosh of his civilisation, he stepped out under the archway into
the street, glad to be rid of his duties for the day, profoundly glad
to be alone. He had fallen, as his habit was, into a conversation
with himself, half aloud, happily oblivious of the suspicious glances
of passers-by, which he would have imagined to be testimony to his
unhappily growing fame, when he received a sharp blow upon the back
from the open hand of some vigorous person, and turned round with an
exclamation to see no less than Babcock—again.
Professor Higginson turned under his umbrella to catch that figure at
his side, and saw beyond it a very different figure—a figure draped
entirely in a long raincoat of some sort trailing almost to the ground;
peeping above the front of that coat was a clerical dog-collar, and
above the clerical dog-collar a long face, the eyes of which always
looked towards some spot far off.
“Well, Higginson,” said Babcock, “you’ve done it now!”
“Done what?” said Professor Higginson, knowing only too well what he
had done.
“Made yourself famous,” said George Babcock shortly.
“I don’t know that!” said Professor Higginson, and he nervously
wondered whether the drip upon his back were from his own umbrella or
his neighbour’s. “Of course, a thing like that will be talked about.”
“It’s what you said about the heavenly singing that did it,” said
George Babcock brutally; and as he said it Professor Higginson,
glancing at him sideways, saw a definite curl downwards upon the big,
loose lips.
As they passed the door of the University Common Room, Babcock halted
and said—
“Well, I’m going in! Are you coming with me, Higginson?”
“No!” said Professor Higginson, with singular determination.
“All right,” said Babcock, not insisting. “Charles will see you home.
I ought to have told you, this is my wife’s brother Charles; he’s
a parson,” he added rudely, as though the external signs of that
profession were absent. “You go with him, Charles. It’s on your way.
Tell Clara I’m coming. Back before one.”
And George Babcock the strong pushed through the swing-doors of the
Club, and left his brother-in-law and his colleague in the rain outside.
Professor Higginson and the religious person walked for a few minutes
in silence. For one thing the Philosopher did not know the name of the
minister, and it was the minister who first broke that silence.
“You’ve heard singing!” he said abruptly, and as he said it he still
stared in front of him as at some distant point beyond this world, and
steered himself by his great nose. He did not look at his companion,
and he repeated in tones of subdued wonder, “You heard singing. I read
it in the Ormeston paper to-day.”
Professor Higginson had never in his life been rude to a man at the
first meeting. He did not know how it was done.
“Yes,” he said ... “after a fashion.”
“Ah!” said the Reverend Charles, and they went on another fifty yards
in silence through the rain. The streets were quite deserted.
Professor Higginson was appalled to find his companion’s hand laid
firmly upon his shoulder; the other hand held the umbrella above. The
parson looked immensely into his eyes.
“I wish I were you,” he said, “or, rather, I don’t wish I were you.”
Then he loosed hold, and they walked on together again.
Professor Higginson was profoundly uncomfortable. He was Professor
of Subliminal Psychology, and far be it from him to fall into the
vulgar errors of the materialist, but the man did seem to him a
little cracked; and when he whispered for the third time, “You heard
singing!” Professor Higginson was in that mood wherein weak men run.
Now Professor Higginson prided himself that he was not a weak man.
The Reverend Charles began talking very loudly to himself, not in the
half-tones of self-communion common to the academic temper, but quite
out loud, almost as though he were preaching.
“Singing! ‘Lovely chaunting voices, singing to the sound of harps,
and in that light which dieth not, for they that stand in it are the
inheritors of the world to come.’... That’s from Pearson,” he added
abruptly, changing to a perfectly natural tone. “Do you know Pearson’s
work?”
“No,” said Professor Higginson, immensely relieved at the change in the
tone. “No, to tell the truth, I do not.”
“He saw what you saw,” said the Reverend gentleman, nodding gravely
under his umbrella as he strode forward; “but he hadn’t your chance of
convincing the world. No!”
And here he shook his head as gravely as he had nodded it.
The rain still fell. The wet street still stretched out before them.
“It has been given to many men,” began the Reverend Charles again in a
totally different tone, this time the intellectual interrogative, “to
see the hidden places, but your chance?”
Professor Higginson said nothing, he was beginning to feel
uncomfortable again. He was not a materialist—what man of his great
attainments could be? But on the other hand there was such a thing as
going too far in the other direction. Then he reasoned with himself.
The Reverend Charles had no weapon. He, the Professor, was a tall man,
and—hang it all! he had no right to be certain that the man was mad.
They had come to Professor Higginson’s door. There, in the pouring
rain, Professor Higginson put in the latch key, opened the door, and
asked in common courtesy whether his colleague’s brother-in-law would
come in.
His colleague’s brother-in-law half shut a dripping umbrella, held out
a huge and bony hand, fixed the embarrassed Don with luminous, distant
eyes, grasped his nervously offered hand in return, and said sadly,
with a world of meaning—
“No! I will not come in! I will leave you to Those Voices of the Great
Peace!”
Then it was that Professor Higginson noticed, standing in the mean
little hall humbly enough, a mean little man, short, wearing a
threadbare coat, and a drenched bowler hat.
“Professor Higginson,” said this apparition gently, “Professor
Higginson, I presume?”
“What?” snapped the Professor, still holding the Parson’s hand, like
the handle of a pump.
“May I see you a moment? I represent _The Sunday Machine_.”
“No,” thundered Professor Higginson, dropping the reverend hand in his
excitement. “I’m tired, it’s not lunch time yet, I don’t know what you
mean!”
The little man was at once flabbergasted and hurt. The Reverend Charles
smiled a cadaverous smile, but one as luminous as his eyes.
“May I supply the place?” he said in a voice that was musical in two
tones.
He stood there winningly in the open doorway with his dripping umbrella
and his huge, unoccupied right hand still held out.
The little reporter, not quite understanding what he should do, grasped
that great hand, just as Professor Higginson hand grasped it, and then
stood helpless.
Professor Higginson was at the end of his patience. He said sharply—
“You must come again! You must come again! This isn’t the moment.”
In another minute he would have apologised for his abruptness, but
the little journalist had pride and had already gone out, without an
umbrella, thrusting his pathetic little note-book into his threadbare
pocket; and the Reverend brother-in-law, after giving one great
revealing look into the darkness of the hall, had gone out also.
Professor Higginson heard the door slam behind him: His curiosity
prompted him to gaze upon them out of a window. They were going off
together through the rain, into the heart of the town, and it seemed
to the Philosopher that the Parson was more animated than before. He
turned to his companion continually, and his gestures were broad. More
fame was brewing!
All that Friday afternoon he kept his room. He forbade Mrs. Randle to
admit a soul. He went to bed early and slept ill. The wages of sin is
death.
Professor Higginson came down next morning in a very miserable mood. A
vast pile of letters stood beside his plate, and there also he saw _The
Howl_, folded, keeping its dreadful secret—he was sure it had one for
him.
The sheet, with its harmless outer cover, its advertisements of patent
poisons and its bold title menaced him. It fascinated him too. He
hesitated, reached for it, opened it, and the blow fell.
To his horror, there stared him in the face two great lines—nay, three,
of huge block headline type, counting more in the front page of that
day than the sleeping sickness, than the might of Germany, or the
turpitude of Kalamazoo.
They ran thus—
EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE!
REVELATIONS OF A GREAT PSYCHOLOGIST.
PROFESSOR HIGGINSON TESTIFIES TO
SUPERNATURAL EXPERIENCES.
RECOGNITION OF THE DEAD.
There are parts of the body that grow cold under excitement of an
unpleasant type. Among these may be noted the forehead, certain muscles
upon either side of the vertebræ, and the region of the knees.
Had Professor Higginson been free to note these interesting phenomena
proceeding in his own person, it might have been of advantage to
science. All he knew was that he felt extremely ill. He pushed his
breakfast plate away from him, folded the paper into two, rose from the
table, and stood bending over the mantelpiece with his head upon his
hand. Then he mastered himself, sat down, and began to read this—
Ormeston, _May 5th_, Friday.
(From our Special Correspondent.)
I am authorised to publish an experience altogether unique which
has befallen one of the most respected members of the Guelph
University, Ormeston, and one, moreover, whose peculiar functions at
the University give him an unchallenged authority on the matter in
question.
Professor Higginson, who holds the Chair of Subliminal Psychology in
the University, is in the possession, through a recent experience,
of undoubted proofs of the existence of the soul of beings of
human origin in a state of consciousness of other than terrestrial
conditions.
What followed, and what his pained eyes most wearily discerned, was the
nature of the proof: the impossibility that anyone in Ormeston should
have heard of that drowned thing upon the French coast; the hour in
which Professor Higginson had told a colleague of the experience—fully
four hours before the discovery itself was made—five hours before
the belated Breton telegram had reached _The Howl_ from its Paris
office. The whole thing was a convincing chain. And with that dreadful
knowledge men have that they are in for it, Professor Higginson laid
the paper down, and wondered how much must be endured before the
blessed touch of death.
CHAPTER VIII.
_In which Professor Higginson gets those sweets
by the wagon-load, and also hears how Men
are Made._
Professor Higginson stared at the pile of letters. He remembered that
it was a Saturday—a free day! He groaned at such freedom.
Fame is like the trumpet she bears. The trumpet has for the civilian an
exhilarating sound; for the house near barracks, too familiar with it,
a mechanical one; for the mounted trooper at reveillée it has nothing
but a hideous blare.
Fame had come to Professor Higginson under her less pleasing aspect. He
marvelled that so much fame had already risen. He trembled at what _The
Howl_ might now raise. A paltry lapse of memory! A thing that might
happen to anyone! And now all this!
Professor Higginson had under-estimated his position in the scientific
world of guess-work.
There are not many Professors of Psychology. Only three have written
books. That his own should have been translated into several languages
had in the past given him pleasure, for he was a provincial man, and in
that curious mixture which makes your academic fellow the funny thing
he is, the enormity of false pride jostles a very real simplicity.
He opened one letter, then another, then another: he intended to answer
each laboriously at some length with his own hand. He had said nothing
of confidence or of privacy to any man, and these letters were the
firstfruits of what might be to come!
_The Howl_ is read by all England before nine. There is a post comes
into Ormeston at three in the afternoon. By that post, amid a mass of
material which it appalled him to observe, and which included every
kind of advertisement from every sort of tout, there was shot at the
Philosopher over two hundred letters of more material kind.
He purposed an attempt to answer even these in as much detail as his
first batch and with his own hand. His Great Adventure was becoming a
matter of appreciable interest to himself, and half to conquer, in some
moments, his anxiety and dread. There came interludes—as he sat that
afternoon opening envelope after envelope, and scribbling notes for
replies—when he really felt as though what he were writing was true,
and could describe with glowing precision all that strange psychic
phase in which the Sub-Conscious self kicks up its heels and gambols at
random unrestrained by the burden of objectivity.
Two letters in particular he wrote with the utmost care. One to a
Cabinet Minister—an inveterate meddler who dabbled in such things in
the intervals of his enormous occupations—the other to an ex-Cabinet
Minister—another inveterate meddler who also dabbled in such things in
the intervals of his.
Professor Higginson had never written to such great men before.
He worked really hard, and he composed two masterpieces. Upon the
addressing of his first ten envelopes he spent the best part of twenty
minutes with books of reference at his side. He wrote courteously and
at enormous length to a Great Lady whose coronet stood out upon the
paper like a mountain, and whose signature he could yet hardly accept
as real, so tremendous a thing did it seem to him that such an one as
She should have entered his life.
He wrote in extraordinary French to the great Specialist at Nancy
who had written to him in English. He wrote in English to the great
Specialist of Leipsic who had written to him in a German he did not
understand, but whose signature and European name warranted the nature
of the reply. So passed all Saturday’s leisure.
Then came Sunday morning—and a perfect ocean of post!
It was a mass of correspondence which no two secretaries could have
dealt with in thirty-six hours, and which he left hopelessly upon his
table until some expert friend might tell him how such heaps were
cleared.
His immense work of the day and of the night before in answering the
Great had left him weary and already disgusted with his new public
position. His terrors returned.
He had overstrained himself. The room was blurred before him. He rose
from his breakfast and thought to take the air—but the empty Sabbath
streets brought him no relief.
The Sunday Popular Papers were hot on his trail. Their great flaring
placards stood outside the news shops.
“Is there a Heaven?” in letters a foot long, and underneath,
“Professor Higginson says ‘Yes,’” almost knocked him down as they
stared at him from one hoarding. In the loud bill outside a chapel he
saw his name set forth as the “subject of the discourse,” and before
he could snatch away his eyes he had caught the phrase: “The First
Witness.” All were welcome.... _He_ was the First Witness!... Oh, God!
He could not pursue his walk. He felt (quite unnecessarily) that the
mass of the people whom he passed noted him, and spoke of him among
themselves as the Author of the Great Revelation. He wished again for
the hundredth time that he had never meddled with a lie. Then Satan
jerked the bit: Professor Higginson remembered what the truth would
have brought him; he thought of the dock. And then he ceased to wish
for anything at all.
Just as he was turning back from that _via dolorosa_ of newspaper
placards and sermon-notices in the public street, he remembered the
mass of correspondence, and at that moment Heaven sent him a friend—it
was Babcock. The set face and hard, bepuffed eyes seemed to shine on
him like a light of doom; the great loose mouth seemed eager and
hungry to devour a victim of such eminence.
Professor Higginson did not let him take the offensive.
“Babcock,” he almost shouted in his agony, “you know about letters and
things?”
Babcock never looked bewildered. He nodded his head determinedly and
said—
“Go on.”
“Well,” continued Professor Higginson, fiercely determined that the
great subject should not turn up, and talking as though by steam,
“letters, you know about letters, letters, hundreds and hundreds of
them. Must deal with them, must deal with them this morning—now!” he
almost screamed.
The heavy Babcock rapidly diagnosed the case within his mind. He
forbore to exasperate the patient.
“That’s all right,” he said about as soothingly as ogres can. “That’s
all right. What you want is a shorthand writer.”
“Two!” shouted Higginson, still dragging his companion along.
But the heavy Babcock had organising power.
“What’s the good of two?” he said contemptuously. “You haven’t got two
mouths—nor two brains either,” he added unnecessarily.
“I want help!” said Professor Higginson wildly. “Help!”
“What you want,” said the heavy Babcock, with a solid mental grip that
mastered his victim, “is someone to open all those letters, and sort
’em out, one from the other, and see what ought to be said, eh? Kind of
thing that ought to be said. Got a telephone?”
“No—yes—no,” said Professor Higginson as he reached his door.
“You ought to have—a man of your position,” said Babcock. They had
reached the door. “I’ll come in and _help_ you,” he added.
He did so. He set to work at once did Babcock—strongly and well. He
reproved his unhappy colleague again for not having a telephone, sent
out a servant in a cab with the address of a shorthand writer and of
a typist, newspaper people obtainable of a Sunday, and he ordered a
machine. Then he proceeded with tremendous rapidity to slice open the
great heap of envelopes with a butter knife.
He sorted out their contents at a pace that appalled and yet
fascinated the Professor of Psychology. By the time the assistants had
come he had them in four heaps:—
(1) Big-Wigs,
(2) Money,
(3) Refusals, and
(4) (largest of all) Trash.
Then did he take it upon himself without leave to call out to the
shorthand writer—
“First sentence—I hope you will excuse my dictating this letter—The
pressure of my correspondence during the last few days has been as you
may imagine far too great, etc., etc.”
It was a noble, rotund, convenient sentence. It had done work in its
time. Higginson listened, more fascinated than ever.
“Thirty copies of that, please,” said Babcock sharply. Then he
condescended to explain.
“That’ll come after the ‘Dear Sir or Madam.’”
Higginson nodded and added faintly—
“Or ‘My Lady,’ or whatever it may be.”
“Yes,” said Babcock, suddenly glancing at him with a gimlet look,
“after the opening thing whatever it is, ‘My Lord Duke, or My Lord
Cardinal, Excellence, or My Lord Hell-to-Pay.’”
He busied himself again with the papers.
“Those,” he said, shuffling rapidly a body of over forty and suddenly
tearing them across, “that’s trash; principally lunatics. I can tell
’em by the hand.”
Higginson gazed on helplessly; he thought such destruction imprudent,
but he said nothing.
“These,” went on Babcock, groaning with intelligent interest, and
licking his forefinger to deal with the papers, “these are refusals.”
He turned leaf after leaf as though he were counting Bank-Notes, and
decided upon the lot.
“Yes; all refusals.”
“May I look?” said Professor Higginson a little weakly.
“Yes, if you like,” said Babcock, throwing over the pile without
looking up, and turning to the next.
The Professor discovered that his colleague was right enough. They were
invitations all of them, and not invitations to accept. Over a third
were from money-lenders. He made a plaintive appeal to keep certain of
these last, whose gorgeous crests, ancient names, and scented paper
fascinated him. Babcock merely grunted and said, putting his hand upon
another much smaller pile—
“These are _money_, Higginson, _money_.”
He read them out. An offer to write for a magazine; a much more
lucrative offer to write for The Only Daily Paper—but to write
exclusively—and so forth.
“That’s the one to take,” said Babcock, he pulled out a note with an
American heading, ticked it, and tossing it to the Professor, said—
“Shall I answer it for you?”
“No,” said Higginson, trying to be firm.
“Oh, very well then,” said Babcock, “dictate it yourself.”
And the Professor with infinite verbiage gratefully accepted an
exclusive article of three thousand words for the sum of £250.
It was the turn of the Big-Wigs, and the learned Babcock with unerring
eye skipped an actor and a Duchess of equal prominence, and fished out
The Great Invitation.
It was the first document upon which he had condescended to linger, and
though it was short, he spent some moments over it. His face grew grave.
“That’s a big thing!” he said solemnly, handing it over almost with
reverence to the Professor of Psychology.
The Professor read a good London address simply stamped upon a good
piece of note-paper. He saw a signature, “Leonard Barclay,” which he
vaguely remembered in some connection or other. He read an invitation
to deliver an address for the Research Club upon any day he might
choose, but if possible during the next week. The Research Club would
take for the occasion the large room at Gorton’s. That was all.
“Lucky beast!” murmured Babcock, not quite loud enough for the typist
to hear, as he fixed the reading Higginson with his eye.
The reading Higginson laid down the letter, nodded inanely, and said—
“Well, ought I to take that, Babcock? Who _are_ the Research Club?”
“Who are the Research Club? Wuff! What a man! They _make_ men!” said
Babcock bitterly, “that’s what they are! Do you mean to say you don’t
_know_?” he went on, leaning over and talking earnestly in a low tone.
“Do you mean to say you haven’t _heard_ of the Research Club?”
“Somewhere, I dare say,” said Professor Higginson confusedly.
But he hadn’t. It was a great moment for Babcock. He had not been among
the “nuts” for nothing.
[Illustration: _He read an invitation to deliver an address for the
Research Club._]
“Come,” said he, like a man who is leading up to a great business,
“you know who Leonard Barclay is?”
“No—yes,” said Professor Higginson.
“Just like your telephone,” sneered Babcock. “You _don’t_ know. Well,
I’ll tell you. Leonard Barclay’s the private secretary of Mrs. Camp,
and _he’s_ the man who started the Connoisseurs in Bond Street, and who
wrote the book about Colombo. _Now_ do you understand?”
Professor Higginson dared not say he didn’t. But he still looked
helpless.
“Good God, man!” Babcock went at him again, “_he’s in the very middle
of it_. I’ve known invitations from the R.C. sent by lots of people,
but never by _him_!”
“Oh!” said Higginson, with an appearance of comprehension, though in
truth the mysteries of our plutocracy were for him mysteries indeed.
“Is he in Parliament?”
“Parliament!” sneered Babcock. “You’ll be asking me if he’s the Lord
Mayor next. He’s Leonard Barclay.... Oh, curse it! He’s _it_! He’s in
the middle of the pudding. Why, man alive, he made” (and Babcock with
glorious indiscretion quoted right off the reel) “the Under-Secretary
for the Post Office, the General in command of the 5th Army Corps, the
Permanent Commissioner of Fine Arts, and a Bishop—a Bishop who really
counted.”
He paused for breath, and he emphasised his words slowly as he leant
back again.
“Do you know, Higginson, that Leonard Barclay was the man who let Lord
Cowfold leave the country?”
“What!” said the astonished and provincial Professor. “What do you
mean?... Lord Cowfold?—why, he was at Ormeston only last May opening
the Bulldog Club.”
“Well, he’s in Assisi now,” said Babcock grimly, “Assisi in Italy; and
he can thank Leonard Barclay that he’s not in Dartmoor—Dartmoor in
Devonshire. Lord, man, you’re in luck!”
“But I don’t understand,” began Professor Higginson, and then he was
silent.
“Well, then, I’ll tell you,” said Babcock, gloating in triumph, “though
it’s difficult to believe you! The Research Club is Bakewell and the
Prime Minister and Fittleworth and Capley and about twenty more like
that, and when you talk before it, you don’t _only_ talk before it,
Higginson, you talk before anything that counts in Europe and happens
to be in England at the time.”
“But I never heard of it,” said his colleague impotently, with the
feeling as he said it that _that_ was no great proof of anything.
“No,” answered Babcock grimly, “one doesn’t always hear of those
things.”
He jotted down a few words in pencil on a bit of paper and shoved it
over to the Professor.
“There,” he said, “copy that out in your own hand. I wouldn’t
type-write a thing of that sort if I were you—and write it on the
University paper.”
Professor Higginson peered at the note and read—
“MY DEAR MR. BARCLAY,
“I shall really be very happy. I think
Wednesday a very good night. Shall we call
it Wednesday? Unless I hear from you I
shall take it for granted; and at Gorton’s.
The usual hour, I suppose?”
Professor Higginson gasped.
“But isn’t that very familiar, Babcock,” he said doubtfully.
“Yes, it is,” said Babcock, “that’s the point.”
“And I don’t know the hour,” said Higginson, still hesitating.
“But I do,” said Babcock. “It’s half-past five. Listen, Higginson, and
don’t be a fool. That’s how men are _made_ in this country. Do as I
tell you.”
Professor Higginson, wondering vaguely how he could be “made,” and what
happened when a man was so dealt with by those that govern us, took a
sheet of the University paper, and wrote out carefully that horribly
familiar note. He hesitated at the superscription.
“What is he?” he asked.
“Who?” said Babcock.
“Why, this Mr. ——, this something Barclay.”
“You’ve got it there, you fool,” said Babcock without courtesy.
“Leonard Barclay, Leonard Barclay, Esq. Simple enough, isn’t it?”
“I thought,” murmured Professor Higginson, “I didn’t know—er it was
possible that he might have had a——”
“Father?” blurted out Babcock. “Not that I know of. No one knows where
he comes from, ’xcept Mrs. Camp, and _she_ comes from Chicago.”
With which words Babcock, the fallen angel, stared before him in
reverie, and saw rising upon the background of that dull provincial
room all his old lost paradise: the glories of the Merschauer’s house
in Capon Street, and the big day at Cowfold House, and the crowds, and
the lights that surround our masters and his.
Thus it was that there fell upon this worthy, stilted and hitherto
rather obscure provincial pedant the Great Chance of English life: to
receive a note from the private secretary of the widow of Mr. Camp, of
Chicago, and to speak before the Research Club, where, as it seems, Men
are Made!
CHAPTER IX.
_In which the Green Overcoat begins to assert
itself._
“And what,” say you (very properly), “what of the Green Overcoat all
this time? After all, it is the title of the book, and I am entitled to
hear more about the title. I did not get this book to hear all about a
hotch-potch of human beings, I got it to read about the Green Overcoat.
What of the Green Overcoat?”
Softly! I bear it in mind.
The adventures of the Green Overcoat throughout those days, when it had
taken vengeance upon the human beings who had separated it from its
beloved master, may be simply told.
The police in this country know from hour to hour what we do and how
we do it; if they were better educated, they would even be able to
know why we do it. The travels of any object not honestly come by—if
it remain at least in the hands of the poor—may be traced in good time
(by the conscientious historian who has access to Scotland Yard) as
unerringly as a North Hants fox who, before entertaining the hunt, has
been kept in a motor pit for three days.
When Professor Higginson had charged the Man with the Broken Nose
with the task of restoring the Green Overcoat to its owner, and had
generously prepaid the proletarian for his services upon that occasion,
I regret to say that the citizen entrusted with the fulfilment of such
a duty most shamefully neglected it.
He did indeed proceed a certain distance in the direction of Crampton
Park under the open morning sun, whistling as he went, with the object
of convincing his probably suspicious and certainly jealous comrades
in the Shelter of his integrity. But when he had got to cover behind a
row of cottages, the strange action to which he descended betrayed the
baseness of his moral standard.
He no longer continued in the direction of Crampton Park: not he! He
dodged at a brisk pace with the heavy thing upon his arm, zigzagging
right and left through the streets of the slum-suburb, and soon
left the houses for a deserted field which a blank wall hid from
neighbouring windows, and to which I must suppose that he had upon
various occasions betaken himself when he desired privacy in some
adventure.
Seated upon a rubbish heap which adorned that plot of ground, the Man
with the Broken Nose first very carefully felt in either pocket of the
bargain, and found nothing but a cheque book.
He pulled it out and held it hesitatingly for a few moments in his
stubby right hand.
The Man with the Broken Nose was not without his
superstitions—superstitions common, I fear, to his class—and one of
these was Cheque Books. He knew indeed that with a Cheque Book great
things could be done, but he knew not how. He had not possession of
the magic password, or of the trick whereby this powerful instrument
governs the modern world. He wondered for a moment a little thickly
in his early morning mind whether a price were given for such things.
For himself he regretfully concluded it was a mystery. He put it back.
But even as he did so something in the heap of rubbish gave way, he
slipped, and was suddenly acutely conscious of a warm wet feeling in
his right calf; it came from a broken bottle.
His leg in the slipping of the rubble had met the glass, and the glass
had won; nor did that great Green Overcoat, all sumptuously lined with
fur, give a hint of its dread amusement.
The blood was pouring severely from the wound. The Man with the Broken
Nose had suffered accidents before; he knew that this might be serious.
He lifted his trouser leg, saw the bad gash, and for a moment gently
pressed the lips of the wound together.
“It’s a jedgment!” he said. “It’s a jedgment!” he repeated to himself.
But even so manifest a sign from On High would not deter him from his
purpose. He tore from his shirt a strip wherewith to bind his leg, and
limped with increasing pain back towards the streets of the town.
He was seeking a house not unknown to him, for it was a place where
those who have few friends can always find a friend, the residence of
a Mr. Montague, Financier and Master of those mean streets; and as he
limped, carrying his booty upon his arm, he cursed.
[Illustration: _The Green Overcoat seemed heavier and heavier._]
The morning sun brought him no gladness. The Green Overcoat seemed
heavier and heavier with every yard of his way, until at last he stood
before a house like any other of those unhappy little houses wherein
our industrial cities rot, save that its glass was a little dirtier,
its doorstep more neglected, its paint more faded than that of its
neighbours.
For a moment the Man with the Broken Nose hesitated. The day was
extremely young. Mr. Montague might not care to be aroused. It was
important for him and for many like him that he should keep Mr.
Montague’s good will. Then he remembered that in a little time the
Knocker-up would come his rounds, and that that wretched street of
slaves would wake to work for the rich in the city.
The thought decided him. He rapped gently with his knuckles on the
ground floor window. There was no response. He rapped a second time.
A terse but unpleasant oath assured him that he had aroused whoever
slept therein. A minute or two later he heard shuffling slippers moving
cautiously across the passage. The door was opened a crack, and a very
short man, very old, hump-backed one would almost say, with a beard
of prodigious growth and beastliness tucked into a dressing-gown more
greasy than the beard, stood in the darkness behind the half-open door.
“I do ’umbly beg pardon,” began the Man with the Broken Nose, making
of the Green Overcoat a sort of shield and offering at once. “I do
’umbly beg pardon, Mr. Montague, but I thought——”
“Curth what you thought!” said the bearer of that ancient crusading
name, in a voice so husky it could hardly be heard. “Curth what you
thought! Come in!”
The Man with the Broken Nose slipped in with something of the carriage
that a poor trapper might show who should take refuge from a bear in
the lair of a snake.
“I ’umbly beg pardon,” he began again in the darkness of the passage,
and the old bearded apparition with the crusading name answered—
“Shut your mouth!”
The Man with the Broken Nose obeyed.
The cautious, shuffling slippers led the way. A match was struck.
The little dangerous figure reached up on tip-toe and lit a flaring
unprotected gas-jet. The only window giving upon that passage was
boarded.
“Take it inter the light, Mr. Montague, take it inter the light!” said
the visitor eagerly, making as though to open the door of a further
room which would be flooded with the morning sun.
His hand was upon the latch. With a curious, hardly audible snarl, Mr.
Montague caught that hand a sharp blow on the wrist, and it said much
for Mr. Montague’s high standing with the Ormeston poor that the Man
with the Broken Nose took no offence.
Under the flaring gas-jet Mr. Montague was turning the Green Overcoat
over and over again.
“Give yer a quid,” he said after about three minutes of close
inspection.
“Why, Mr. Montague, sir!” the other had just begun, when he heard a
hiss which formed the words, “Wish you may die!” and felt upon his
shoulder the grip that was not like the grip of a human hand, but like
the grip of a talon.
The Man with the Broken Nose was not prepared to argue. There had been
one or two things in his full and varied life which if Mr. Montague
had mentioned them even in a whisper would have made him less inclined
to argue still, and he knew that Mr. Montague had a way of whispering
sometimes into the ear of Memory things which a better breeding would
have respected.
Mr. Montague knew the value of time. Far up the line of streets the
first strokes of the Knocker-up were heard.
The Man with the Broken Nose found himself a moment later standing in
the street with one sovereign in his hand for a twenty-guinea garment,
and looking at the shut door and the meaningless, dirty windows which
contained his prize.
He wished the new owner joy in Hell, he wished it aloud with that
amazing bitterness which the poor of our great cities distil more
copiously than any men on earth: for of all men upon all the earth they
are the most miserable.
He took out the sovereign he had just received, and his mood changed.
He spat on it for luck. He felt himself going curiously lightly, and
then he remembered of what a burden he was rid. He walked without
difficulty, and only in a hundred yards or two did he remember his
wound. It seemed to have healed quickly. It had not opened. He almost
felt as though it were healing—and now I am concerned with him no more.
The Green Overcoat is out of his keeping, and has no intention of
returning to it.
But in the filthy little room of that filthy little house the filthy
little bearer of the old crusading name, Mr. Montague, sat huddled
upon his bed—a bed he made himself, or rather left unmade from week to
week—and examined carefully upon his knee the fur, the cloth, the make
of the gorgeous apparel.
He smiled, and as he smiled he sneered. For God had so made Mr.
Montague that sneering and smiling were with him one thing.
There was value in that piece of cloth upon his knee, but it was of
two kinds: value to anyone who would buy, more value, perhaps, to some
owner that would recover. He considered either chance, and even as he
considered them and sat staring at the expanse of Green Cloth an odd
thing happened; not in the external world, nor within the walls of that
room, but within the old man’s mind. He thought suddenly of Death!
A tremor passed over the whole surface of his skin, downwards from his
neck to his feet. He coughed and spat—clear of the Green Overcoat—upon
the floor; and he cursed for a moment in a language that was not
English. Then the thought passed as suddenly as it had come, and he was
himself again, but the weaker for that moment. His hand trembled as he
set it to do what every hand appeared so prone to do when the Green
Overcoat came near it. He put that trembling hand into the left-hand
pocket and found nothing. He had expected as much. Was it likely that
his visitor would have left anything? For form’s sake he put it into
the right hand pocket in turn; and thence, to his amazement, he drew
out the Cheque Book!
He looked at it stupidly for a moment, not understanding how such a
prize should conceivably have been abandoned. Then he smiled again that
not cheerful smile, and slowly consulted the name of the bank and of
the owner, and the counterfoils one by one.
The sums that stood therein called to him like great heralds; they made
his puny old chest heave and certain muscles in him grow rigid.
He was in the midst of the tale when his whole being fainted within
him, as it were—stopped dead at the noise of a violent rain of blows
upon his outer door.
CHAPTER X.
_In which a Descendant of the Crusaders refuses
to harbour stolen goods._
For just that time—how long it is or how short no man who has felt it
can tell—for just that time it takes the body to recover itself from
a halt of the blood, the old man sat immovable, his eyes unnaturally
bright and unwinking like a bird’s.
Then motion returned to him, and it was a motion as rapid as a lizard’s.
His greasy old dressing-gown was off. The ample, the substantial, the
English Green Overcoat was on that miserable, shrivelled form of the
old man with the crusading name. His sticks of arms were struggling
wildly into the massive sleeves, when that thundering at the door came
again, and with it a loud, peremptory order in a voice which he knew.
Mr. Montague coaxed on, with quite other gestures, over the overcoat
and like a skin, that vast, greasy dressing-gown wherein for so many
years he had shuffled across the lonely floors of his four-room house.
He was in the passage, and was trying to shout, forcing his voice
huskily—
“You’ll break the door! You’ll break the door!”
He opened it. Two men were outside whom he knew. Each was burly and
strong. Each carried upon a well-fed body a large, sufficient, beefy
face. Each had the bearing of a trained, drilled man. The one who stood
somewhat forward as the superior had something approaching to kindness
in his intelligent eyes, and both had the eyes of brave men—though not
of loyal ones.
“Well, Sammy?” said the one in command.
“Oh, Mr. Ferguson! Mr. Ferguson!” came in Mr. Montague’s half-voice.
“Well, Sammy,” said Mr. Ferguson again, “you nearly lost some of your
paint that time! You weren’t asleep, Sam,” he said, winking; “you ——’s
never are! I believe you sleep dinner-time, like the owls.”
The inferior of the two visitors grinned as in duty bound at the
excellent joke. Mr. Montague smiled with the smile of an aged idol.
“Mr. Ferguson! Mr. Ferguson!” he rasped in that half-voice of his,
“yer will have yer fun!”
He led the two big men in. It was curious to note how these Englishmen
of the Midlands showed a sort of deference in their gesture, an old
inherited thing, as they entered another man’s house. The lesser of
them made to wipe his boots, but there was no mat. Mr. Montague sniffed
and smiled or sneered, or sneered and smiled.
“Mister,” he said to the second of the two, “I don’t know yer name?”
He did not say this in a very pleasant way.
“Never mind, Samuel,” said Mr. Ferguson heartily, “he’s only just
joined the force. You’ll know him soon enough.” And he laughed out loud
in a manner very different from Mr. Montague’s.
“And now then, Samuel,” he added, “we haven’t much time to lose.”
He pulled himself up (he had been a soldier) and he led the way
mechanically to the second little ground-floor room at the back, which
he had visited often and often before in his capacity of that member of
the Ormeston police who best knew and could best deal with receivers.
Mr. Ferguson was, you see, the providence of these financiers, managing
them, saving them—punishing them reluctantly when it was absolutely
necessary, but generally keeping them (as a matter of policy) upon a
string, and through them controlling his knowledge of all the avenues
by which the more adventurous of the poor played Tom Tiddler’s ground
upon the frills of the propertied classes.
Mr. Montague shuffled as he had shuffled so often before, he shuffled
cautiously after the burly man. As he shuffled he protested for the
mere sake of ritual, and chuckled the while a little to himself as
though he were thinking aloud—
“Me! Me of all men! S’help!”
Mr. Ferguson went in. There was not much in the place. Five or six
articles of furniture recently sold at an auction, which the policeman
recognised as being legally acquired; an exceedingly dirty oil-picture
in an even dirtier frame, which his innocent eyes thought might be an
old master. He kicked it with his foot.
“What’s that?” he said.
Mr. Montague was alarmed.
“Don’t yer kick that with your foot now; come, don’t yer!” he whispered
through his defective throat imploringly. “Don’t yer there! It’s right
as Rechts. May I die! ’Tis surely.”
He looked up anxiously, and put a protecting hand upon it.
The policeman moved it roughly forward and saw a label upon the back.
He remembered the sale and let it go again.
“Yes,” he said, “that’s all right, Samuel.”
A dusty book, the binding half torn off of it, lay upon a shelf,
worthless if anything was. Mr. Ferguson took it up mechanically,
hardly knowing what he was at; but as he did so he heard an almost
imperceptible sound coming from the old receiver’s mouth, a sort of
gasp. It was a sound that betrayed anxiety, and it warned him. He
picked up that book and opened it. It was a copy of Halidon’s _History
of Ormeston_. He turned the leaves mechanically, and was banging it
down again, when there appeared a thing unusual in the leaves of such
a book—a corner of much whiter paper, crinkly and crisp, unmistakable.
Mr. Ferguson pulled out a five-pound note.
“Wish I may——” began the husky old voice almost inaudibly, and then
ceased.
Mr. Ferguson turned round and winked enormously.
“Contrariwise, Sammy! Wish you _mayn’t_! Long life to you,” he said.
He turned again to the book, carefully turned its leaves, picked out
one by one ten five-pound notes, shook it roughly upside down, and
concluded there were no more.
“Artful!” he said admiringly.
Mr. Montague knew all the ropes.
“I can tell yer, bright!” he whispered eagerly.
“Ah, I know you would!” said the big Midlander with a good-humoured
laugh. “Not flash goods are they?”
“No, Mr. Ferguson, no,” came the whisper again, pathetically eager,
“nor my own savings neither. I won’t lie to yer, Mr. Ferguson, sir! I
won’t! Bright! I did it t’ oblige a widder!”
“I understand,” said Mr. Ferguson genially, putting a reassuring hand
upon Mr. Montague’s shoulder. “Bless you! We wouldn’t lose you, Sam,
not for di’monds, we wouldn’t! But we’re bound to go the bank, you
know,” he added in his duty tone, “and we’re bound to prosecute if we
find who did the pinching!”
Mr. Montague was reassured.
“I am a sort of banker, Mr. Ferguson,” he whispered sadly. “I did
truly do it t’ oblige.”
“We know, Sammy,” said the big man, winking again ponderously, “that’s
a by-blow! That’s a come-by-chance! You shan’t suffer for it, only if
we find that widow....”
Mr. Montague was reassured and smiled that smile, and the inferior
policeman grinned also an honest grin. He was there to learn the tricks
of the trade, and he only half understood them.
“Look here, Samuel,” said the big man, turning round suddenly and
squarely, “we’re not after that, you know! We’re not after a general
rummage either this time.” (He carefully folded, tied up and pocketed
the bank-notes as he spoke, taking their numbers one by one with a
pencil upon his pocket-book.) “We’re after something pertickler. Now
you’ll know if anyone does, and no harm’ll come to you, Samuel, so
think! Ye’ve heard o’ Mr. Brassington?”
Mr. Montague was about to shake his head, when he suddenly remembered
that everyone in Ormeston knew Mr. Brassington and instead of shaking
his head he nodded it—abstractedly. All his narrow, keen mind was full
of the name Brassington, which he had seen written so bold and large
upon the cover of the rich cheque-book that warmed with a heavenly glow
a certain pocket just beneath his dressing-gown upon the right-hand
side.
Mr. Ferguson said no more, but led the way back ponderously into the
dirty little bedroom. He sat down upon the only rickety chair, his
inferior standing, almost at attention, feeling there was something
solemn about the moment. Mr. Montague sat upon the dirty little huddled
bed, and watched the two Englishmen with weary unconcern.
“Samuel,” said Mr. Ferguson in a new and graver tone, “_you_ know all
the lays and the lags about here, don’t you?”
Mr. Montague did not reply; he tried to begin to smile, but stopped the
smile with a cough.
“Well, now, there’s a Green Overcoat of Mr. Brassington’s. Maybe you
know it. Most do. He’s allus in it.”
Mr. Montague shook his head in some despair, and continued to listen.
“Anyhow, it’s not here,” continued Mr. Ferguson. “You wouldn’t fake
it, Sammy; it’s not worth it, otherwise we’d have looked upstairs,” he
added knowingly.
Mr. Montague smiled in reply, a genuine smile. The policemen knew when
to go upstairs and when not.
“It’s not worth twenty quid,” went on Mr. Ferguson earnestly, “if you
should see it. It’s not worth” (he sought in his mind for a comparison)
“blarst me! it’s not worth six months,” he concluded with emphasis.
Mr. Montague accompanied this speech by a continued slow shaking of the
head and an inverted vague look in his little bright eyes, as though he
were seeking for some memory of the thing—some glimpse of it within his
wide circle of acquaintances.
“It’s not here,” said Mr. Ferguson for the last time, rising, “I can
see that, and I know ye, but if ye should see anything of it——”
The old man’s whisper was close to the policeman’s ear, for he also had
risen. It came reassuring and husky.
“I know which ways I lies abed!” he said. Then he winked, sharply, like
a bird, and Mr. Ferguson was thoroughly content.
One last piece of ritual had to be gone through before this cog in our
vast and admirable administrative system had ground through and done
its work. The little old bearded man shuffled to a corner and brought
out a bottle and three glasses. He poured out generously into theirs,
slightly into his, and they all three—the two Englishmen and the
Crusader—drank together.
Mr. Montague had seen the inside of a prison once—it was thirty years
before, and for a few weeks only. He was new to this country then. Mr.
Ferguson knew that Mr. Montague cherished no passionate desire to see
those sights again, and the big policeman went out into the morning sun
and walked off with his subordinate down the street. They walked in
those absurd twin suits of dittoes and regulation boots, which, when
the Police go out in civilian disguise, shriek “The Force! The Force!”
to all the poor before whom the vision passes.
* * * * *
Mr. Montague from within his little room peered through the curtains.
His face was no longer the same. It was the face of a man younger and
yet more evil.
He slipped off his greasy lizard-skin of a dressing-gown as though he
were preparing deliberately for some evil deed. He tore and struggled
himself out of that maleficent green, fur-lined cloth; he spat on
it; then he rubbed clean the place where he had spat, and cursed it
lengthily and with a nasty voice in a language that is not ours. Now
and then his talons of hands made as though to tear the fabric. He
snarled at it and clawed at it twice—but he would not damage it; it
would fetch twenty pounds.
[Illustration: _The two Englishmen and the Crusader drank together._]
He sat, a skeleton effigy with his too large, bearded head, draped
only in the aged nightshirt of his solitude, and, by I know not what
disastrous processes of the mind, now shrank from, now turned towards
the pieces of green cloth lying squat on the bed as though it had been
a living thing. Then he began muttering about his ten five-pound notes.
He gave them names, turning them into strange foreign money. There was
more in the bank. Oh, there was more! But all the days he had kept
them hidden—waiting for the thing to blow over! And how cheap he had
bought that paper, and how well he thought to have hidden it; what a
certain scheme against curious eyes! Those five flimsy papers between
the leaves of such a book, and all those regular visits of the Force,
regular as the month came round, and never such a thing as a loss
before!
In his old head, so clear, so narrow and so keen, there ran in spite of
reason the craft of dead centuries and tales of demons inhabiting human
things. He had not eaten. He had been awakened too early from sleep. He
had suffered agony and loss. It was the fault of the Green Overcoat! of
the accursed thing before him! But that thing was worth twenty pounds.
For a moment he fingered (and felt sacrilegious as he did so) the
right-hand pocket. He touched within it the cheque book. There arose
in him almost simultaneously a vision of what one could do with the
cheque book of a really wealthy man, a man with a large balance for his
private whims, a man known to be generously careless; and as he had
that vision there came with it another vision—the vision of the inside
of a British prison, the nearest thing to Hell which God permits on
earth.
It was the second vision that conquered. The old man drew his fingers
from that cheque book as a man in cold weather draws his fingers
reluctantly from the fire.
Then, with sudden haste, and muttering all the while those curious
curses in a tongue which is not ours, he folded the thing together,
drew from beneath the ramshackle bed (where there was a great store of
it) a large sheet of dirty and thick paper, and one of many lengths of
string that there lay rolled.
He made a bundle of the Green Overcoat, hurriedly, misshapenly. He drew
on a pair of trousers, covered his upper body with a great ulster, most
unsuitable to the season, groped for a round hat that had done ten
years’ service; pulled on his thin, pointed, elastic-sided boots, and
shuffled out into the sun carrying his parcel under his arm. He was
not free from Hell until he was free of it. But it would fetch twenty
pounds!
As the old man shuffled down the street eyes watched him from window
after window. He was to the broken poor of Ormeston what certain
financial houses are to The Masters of Europe. They feared, they hated,
they obeyed him; and while he shuffled on few men whom he met would
fail, if he met them alone, to do his bidding.
Mr. Montague’s God sent him a man standing alone, or rather lounging
alone, a man reclining against the corner wall of a house called, I
regret to say, “The Pork Pie,” and already doomed in the eyes of the
unflinching magistrates of Ormeston: doomed at a price to one of their
own members who was the proprietor thereof: a price to be paid in
public gold.
The transaction between the receiver and the lounger was not long in
doing. Mr. Montague approached the lounger with that unmistakable
air of a master, which you will also note when, in another world, a
financier approaches a politician. With that unmistakable air of the
servant which, in another world, you will note when the politician
receives the financier, did the lounger receive Mr. Montague.
The lounger did not stiffen or straighten himself to express his
inferiority to the old man. There was nothing military in their
relations. But he contrived as he lounged to look more abject, more
crapulous than ever. And as the aged receiver with a few hoarse words
in his low tones handed the parcel over, the lounger took it. He was
pleased to hear Mr. Montague’s command, though it had been given with
a filthy oath, that he might sell where he would the contents of that
paper, but Mr. Montague (who knew what happened to every man) demanded
half the proceeds, and so left him. When these words had passed the
old man shuffled off, and the lounger thought of him no more, save as
a dread master, whom he would certainly serve, to whom he would most
certainly pay his due, and also as a benefactor in a way.
But when he had rid himself of the violent and dreadful thing, and
given his order and claimed his due, what Mr. Montague did was this.
He boarded a tram in a neighbouring parallel street. He paid his
halfpenny, and went right to the Lydgate, an old quarter of the town,
now full of slums, wherein dwelt a certain Pole of the name of Lipsky.
He had taken the most rapid means he could, but even so he glanced
nervously over his shoulder lest a lounger with a parcel should be
following.
What Lipsky, a Pole, with his distant strange name, might mean to a man
bearing that old crusading, western name of Montague no one has ever
known.
Some say he was a son, which was surely impossible; some a cousin,
which is unlikely; for do the Montagues wed the Lipskys?
The tram passed by the door of that little clothes shop—a whole front
of slops with huge white ticket-prices on them—and above the word
“Lipsky” in large letters of gold on brown. Mr. Montague shuffled off
the tram and shuffled to the door of that place of business.
He found Mr. Lipsky alone at the counter within.
Mr. Montague had not a moment to spare, and in that moment he had
passed the word about the Green Overcoat.
Mr. Lipsky was incredulous. There was no one else in the little
slop-shop. The elder man leant over the counter and whispered in his
ear. And the word that he whispered was not an English word. The
younger man took on a different colour. It was like cheese changing to
chalk.
“Vah!” said the Pole. “Not keep it? Vy not? Keep it, sell it—that’s
business! Keep it as long as should be and sell it at best price. Not
keep it? Them’s superstition!”
Mr. Montague said no more. He had done his duty. Whatever the Pole
might suffer—if—by chance—that Green Overcoat should come his way,
_his_ conscience was clear. The office which Crusaders owe to Poles was
fulfilled. He had not despoiled his brethren.
He was off, was Mr. Montague, shuffling out of the little shop
hurriedly across the tramway line of the Lydgate, and back by devious
and narrow ways to his mean house. An odd relief filled him as he
walked, and an odd lightness as he entered. He had got rid of an
accursed thing. And it so happened that when he reached that filthy
little room of his, as sleep was overpowering him, he knelt and prayed
to a God of the Hills, a strange and vengeful but triumphant God, who
had saved his servant Montague.
CHAPTER XI.
_In which a Pole is less scrupulous._
The name of the lounger was James. That was his Christian name. What
his family name might be it is impossible to discover at this distance
of time, for he had been born in 1868, brought up in the workhouse,
apprenticed to a ropemaker, passed various terms in jail under various
_aliases_, gone to sea, naturalised as an American citizen, returned
to England as valet in the service of a tourist, been dismissed a few
years before for theft, and was at this moment a member of the New
Bureaucracy, to wit, a Watcher and Checker under the Ormeston Labour
Exchange. He was paid (by results, 2_s._ 6_d._ for each conviction) to
see that the poor did not cheat the higher officials of that invaluable
Public office, to worm out the true history of applicants at the
Exchange and to provide secret evidence against them, that they might
be imprisoned and black-listed if they concealed their past from the
Secretary—a Valued Servant of the State.
James, then, wandered out into God’s great world upon that happy
morning with a bundle under his arm. Two conflicting thoughts disturbed
him. First, where he might sell the content at the highest price, and,
secondly, where he might sell it with the greatest security. Such
divergent issues disturb the great men of our time as well as wandering
men bearing alien coats; they are at the root of modern affairs.
The more he thought of it the more did James determine by the feel
that the bundle was _clothes_; why, then, his market was a shop in the
Lydgate, an old quarter of the town, now full of slums, wherein dwelt
a certain Pole of the name of Lipsky. This man, by common repute, was
well with the police, and in our English towns that, with the poor, is
everything. Lippy would not give him full value, but he could give him
full security. He would give him perhaps but a quarter of the value,
but he would at least give him a free run with the money and no awkward
questions for the men in blue.
Such an advantage is it to have assured the police of one’s integrity.
Nevertheless, he thought it of advantage to discover of what value the
bundle might be. Even if he was to get but a quarter of its value from
the Pole, he would like to know _what_ it was that he was to get a
quarter of.
He lollopped lazily down the street. His time was his own. He peered
through a neglected doorway into an empty yard, stepped into it, behind
the screen of a hoarding, looking first up and down to see whether any
of the tyrants were about. Seeing no helmet and therefore no tyrant,
he untied the parcel and pulled out the coat within. He was agreeably
surprised. He had expected slops, but this was not slops. He was no
valuer, but he would imperil for ever the true end of man’s soul and
suffer the companionship of demons for eternity (such were the rash
hazards he took) if it were not two quid, and played properly it might
be three.
Wait a moment, there might be something in the pockets. He felt in the
left-hand pocket—nothing; in the right-hand pocket, there nothing but
that solid, oblong cheque book with four cheques torn out. At first
he thought of throwing it away, for it identified the owner of the
garment. Then he remembered things called “clues,” and threw far from
him the very idea instead of the cheque book. He tried to decipher
the name, but could not. James could read and write when he had left
school, but that was a long time ago. He had done more useful work
since then.
Next he remembered the suspicious haste of Mr. Montague. He began to
wonder whether the bundle was quite _safe_. He determined to hurry; and
as for the price, why, he would take what he could get.
He fastened up the parcel again, and in a sobriety of mind which
was new to him and not altogether pleasant, he took the road to the
Lydgate. Mr. Montague might have spared his fears. The day was early,
James had as yet no pence, he could not board a tram. But somehow or
other the bundle was unnaturally clumsy or unnaturally heavy.
He felt a distaste for it. The distaste enlarged, something had gone
wrong. As he went down that morning street alone, resolutely trudging,
he heard within him the echoes of a voice he did not wish to hear. It
was the voice of a woman, not sober, but holding to him. He thought he
could not have remembered such a thing after ten years, and of a summer
morning. It is odd that even the poor should mislike such memories;
James misliked them abominably. Perhaps he was more sensitive for the
moment than are most of the poor....
Yes! How she did drink, damn her.... Why the Hell was he thinking of
such things? And how clear her voice was.... Then he saw the name
“Lipsky” over the way. He was at the Lydgate already. Could a man be
drunk in the flush of morning and without liquor? Nay, drink dulled
such things, and he had heard that voice awfully clear within him.
He trudged into the shop, shaking his mind free, and thinking of the
sovereign—or two sovereigns at least.
The gentleman in charge—there was but one—exchanged mutual recognitions
with James. The one was a Pole and the other an Englishman; but both
were human, and therefore brethren. Then James untied the parcel. But
when James had untied the parcel it was apparent that though both
were human, Lipsky was a Pole and not a man of the Midlands, for he
thrust it from him with his palms outward, sliding his wrists upon the
counter, and moving his fingers like small snakes in the air. Lippy was
not taking any. James looked at him, and did not understand.
“I got it straight, I did!” he said.
Lippy didn’t want to look at it.
“I don’t want it, there!” burst out James (he could not for his life
have told you why), and Lippy, leaning over familiarly but insolently,
told him (in Polish English) that if he tried to sell it he would not
long be a free man. James thought this treason, and in his heart he
was determined on revenge. What had he done to Lippy to receive such a
threat? The whole air about these men as they met, and as this lump of
cloth lay between them, was unreal and fantastic. Each felt it, each
in his utterly different mind. For such things, if you will excuse me,
happen to the poor also, as we all know they do to the rich, whether
through drink or what-not I can’t tell, whether for drink or what-not
it is for them to determine. There was fate, and there was compulsion,
and there was the profound ill-ease of the soul hovering over that
dirty counter in the slums as they hover over the tables of politicians
when similar bargains are toward in a larger world. James tied his
bundle up again and went out without a word.
One beefy part of him suggested that the coppers were too close on the
trail and that Lippy knew it; but another part of him, more permanent,
more real, deeper, smelt the truth. He himself had suffered dread; he
felt vaguely that Lippy knew the cause of that dread, and that for both
of them there was something strange about the Thing. The Soul was in
trouble.
Oh! James knew it very well. The big bundle under his left arm so
weighed upon that primal part of us, which is within, that all the
things least desired and most carefully forgotten of his life returned
again under its influence and maddened him. With the simplicity of his
class, he thought the evil to be attached to the fact that the coat
was stolen. Unlike his betters, he had never dreamt that stealing was
right. He had always known that it was wrong.... He had a mind to put
the Green Overcoat down in the thoroughfare and leave it there. In
spite of the risk, he would have done so in another moment had he not
heard shuffling footsteps coming up rapidly behind him and felt a soft
Polish hand upon his shoulder. It was Lippy.
The Poles when they enter the Second Hand Clothes Trade prove
themselves commercial. Their ancient chivalry seems to desert them in
this line of business, and something material creeps into their gallant
hearts. Lippy had reproached himself, Lippy had been tortured as he had
seen the lounger’s figure slowly and doubtfully receding burdened with
a thing of so much value.
With the disappearance of the Green Overcoat the supernatural warnings
(for which he despised himself) had disappeared, and he remembered only
its very mundane value. He could not bear the loss, and he had followed.
The lounger James turned round startled, and instinctively thrust the
bundle towards the man who, he instinctively knew, had repented of his
first decision. Lippy seized it, guiltily, furtively, violently, and
without a word he was on his way back to his shop. But as for James,
he went his way noting suddenly the pleasantness of the morning; that
excellent Watcher and Checker under the Labour Exchange of Ormeston,
that Pillar of Free Labour, that Good Servant of the State, that member
of our New Bureaucracy of Social Reform, was himself again. He went
forward whistling, and he found it in a few moments quite easy to
forget the Thing and all the memories that had cropped up with the
Thing. He had passed it on, and Lippy was holding the baby.
In the few steps to his shop the Pole had no time to repent, though his
mind was ill at ease. Mr. Montague was a strange man. He had strange
wisdom. He could read strange books. And if Mr. Montague had come to
warn him, well....
Lippy dismissed the superstitious fear. He opened the bundle, he gazed
on the Sacred Green Thing, he felt the pockets (of course), he saw the
cheque book and the wealthy name. He shuddered—but he gloried. Then he
fastened the whole up again, put the bundle into a great drawer under
his counter, sighed a mechanical sigh of mechanical relief, and began
to busy himself with the arranging and ticketing of his goods for the
day.
But as that day wore on the Pole was not himself. He was too nervous,
too snappy with customers, too much affected by slight sounds when the
evening came, and all that night he lay but dozing, waking continually
in starts from disordered dreams of unaccountable vengeance.
The next day, the Friday, Lippy was very ill. No movement of
conscience disturbed him, he had not wronged his own; yet in his fever
he suffered dreadfully from some unreasoning sense of evil.
The old woman who chared for him was for calling a doctor. All Monday
Lippy, weakening in his sick-bed, fought against the expense. As it
was, he had been compelled to pay a doubtful boy—a non-Pole, and
therefore ill suited to commerce—to mind the shop, and twice he left
his bed, at the risk of his life, and tottered down to see that no harm
was coming to his business. On each occasion as he neared that counter
with its drawer and its secreted bundle a more violent trouble had
returned, and he had had to be helped up dazed and trembling to his
wretched bed and room above.
So Monday passed, and what happened on the Tuesday and why, a return
to others who had meddled with the Green Overcoat will explain: Why on
the morning of Tuesday Lippy woke refreshed in body, but very weak; why
he had an odd feeling that things were mending, how he could not tell;
why it was that in the early afternoon of that day he heard in the shop
below a voice addressing his assistant in an accent very unusual to
such shops; why Lippy listened carefully at the door and thought he
knew the voice.
The voice you will find, Readerkin, was that of Mr. Kirby, and Mr.
Kirby was asking in the most direct fashion possible for the coat, for
the Green Overcoat; he made no bones about it, he put it square. Very
hurriedly did Lippy dress, and very hurriedly, weak as he was, did he
totter down the stairs that Tuesday Morning.
CHAPTER XII.
_In which the Readerkin will, if he has an ounce
of brains, begin to catch the inevitable Denoumong
of the Imbroglio._
Monday is the first working day of the week: and upon Monday—at least
on _some_ Mondays—Mr. Kirby actually went to his office.
Mr. Kirby so far loved duty or routine or respected the tradition of
centuries—or anything else you like—as to visit his office upon _some_
Mondays at sometime or other in the forenoon. It was a superstition
with which he could not break, sensible as he would have been to have
broken with it. His ample and increasing income proceeded mainly from
investment; he was utterly devoid of avarice; he had neither family nor
heirs. He was delighted that his junior partners should do the work,
and they were welcome to the financial result of it. But still, the
firm was Kirby and Blake, and his name _was_ Kirby, and I think he had
an inward feeling, unexpressed, that he stood a little better with his
fellow-citizens of Ormeston, and with his very numerous friends, if he
kept up the appearance of visiting the place—on some Mondays.
Anyhow, visit it he did—usually as long after eleven as he dared; and
leave it he did—usually as long before one as his conscience would
let him. Invariably did he say that he would return in the afternoon,
and almost invariably did he fail to do so, save perhaps to look in
vacantly, ask a few irrelevant questions, glance at his watch, say that
he was late for some appointment—and go out again.
There were, indeed, occasions when the familiar advice upon which the
chief of his acquaintances depended necessitated a formal interview
at the office: commonly he preferred to conduct such things in their
private houses or his own. Fortune favoured him in this much, that
the very short time he spent at his place of business was not usually
productive of anxiety or even of a client whom he personally must see.
But upon this Monday, as it so happened, his luck failed him.
It was a quarter to twelve when he came briskly in wearing that
good-humoured and rather secret smile, nodded to the clerks, passed
into his own room, and proceeded to do his duty as a solicitor by
reaching for the telephone, with the object of reserving a table
for lunch at the club. As he was in the midst of this professional
occupation, a clerk, to his intense annoyance, begged him to receive as
a matter of urgency a Mr. Postlethwaite. The name was familiar to Mr.
Kirby, and he groaned in spirit.
“Oh, Mr. Blake can see him!” he said impatiently. “No, he can’t; no, I
remember, he can’t.”
He scratched his chin and managed to frown at the forehead without
relaxing that small perpetual smile.
“Send him in here,” he sighed; “and look here, Thurston, has he got
anything with him?”
“Not that I could see, Sir,” answered the clerk respectfully.
“Oh, I don’t mean a dog or a sister-in-law,” replied Mr. Kirby without
dignity and somewhat impatiently. “I mean a damned great roll of paper.”
“Well, sir,” said Thurston the clerk with continued respect, “he
certainly carried something of that sort in his hand.”
“Show him in, Thurston, show him in,” said Mr. Kirby louder than ever,
and leaning back in his chair....
He knew this old Postlethwaite of old, a man of grievances, a man
whom it was the lawyer’s business to dissuade from law; a man whom
he couldn’t quite call mad, but a man whom Mr. Kirby certainly did
not trust with any member of the firm; a man with whose considerable
business in scattered freeholds (quite twenty of them up and
down the suburbs of Ormeston, and nearly all of them unfortunate
investments) Kirby in a moment of generosity or folly—perhaps rather of
freakishness—had undertaken for his firm to let and sell and value, and
now he wished he hadn’t!
For as Mr. Postlethwaite grew older, he grew more frightening, and he
was a man now nearly seventy years of age. But his years had in no
way diminished his almost epileptic vigour. Mr. Kirby could hear the
terrible tramp of his great boots and the exclamations of his great
voice in the corridor. The door opened, and he came in. He stood
tall and menacing in the entry, and slammed the door behind him. His
abundant white hair tumbled in great shocks over his head, his ill-kept
beard bristled upon all sides from his face, and his eyes, which were
reddish in colour (horrible thought!), glared like coals. His greeting
was not friendly, but it was at least direct.
“You got me into this, Kirby,” he shouted by way of good morning, “and
you’ve got to get me out!”
If Mr. Kirby disliked business, he certainly loved an adventure. His
permanent smile grew more lively. His sinewy neck seemed to shorten, he
thrust his determined chin a trifle forward, and said with a wave of
his hand—
“Pray sit down, Mr. Postlethwaite, I am entirely at your service.”
“I’ll not sit down,” roared the redoubtable Postlethwaite. “You got me
into this, and you’ve got to get me out!”
“And of which,” said Mr. Kirby, in a tone of intelligent politeness,
“of which of your tomfooleries may you be speaking?”
Mr. Postlethwaite, like most of his kind, was rather relieved by
insults than fired by them.
[Illustration: _“I’ll not sit down,” roared the redoubtable
Postlethwaite._]
“I’ll show you,” he said fiercely, but in a more business-like tone
than before. “You’ll see!... And when you’ve seen, I’ll thank you to
think twice before you get me in a worse hole than ever,” and as he
said these words he spread out upon Mr. Kirby’s table a fairly large
sheet of cartridge paper, neat, but bearing marks of age, and having
drawn upon it in the various colours of the architect the elevation and
plans of a house standing in small grounds. There was marked a lodge, a
ground floor, a first floor and a second; at the back a small enclosed
backyard, and in the side elevation could be seen let into the high
steep roof of the topmost story a large skylight. It was beautifully
tinted in blue.
“Architects do imitate nature well!” said Mr. Kirby half to himself.
“It’s Greystones!” and he chuckled.
“You needn’t laugh, Kirby!” thundered the aged Postlethwaite. “Oh,
you’ll laugh the other side of your mouth before I’ve done! Ruined,
Kirby! Smashed! Destroyed! And no clue!”
Mr. Kirby put up his hand.
“Please, Mr. Postlethwaite, please,” he said. “If the place is burnt
down I congratulate you.”
“’Tisn’t!” snapped Postlethwaite.
“Well, if it’s partially burnt down all the better. They’re more ready
to pay when....”
“Not burnt at all!” snarled Mr. Postlethwaite loudly. “Broken!
Destroyed! Smashed! Went there this morning! Didn’t find anybody!”
“They’d gone out?” said Mr. Kirby, with a look of aquiline cunning.
“No one anywhere! Nothing anywhere! No one on the ground floor! No
one first floor! No one _top floor_! No one in the studio! But there!
Smashed! Broken! Destroyed!”
“What was?” said Mr. Kirby, beginning to be irritated as he thought of
the possible delay to his lunch.
“What?” shouted Mr. Postlethwaite, “everything I tell you! Skylight,
chairs, everything. Broken chair in the garden with a lot of sheets
tied on. Damned foolery! Broken chairs, broken glass, empty bottle,
beastly dirty mess of food. Now,” he added, with rising passion,
“I’ll have the law on this, and it’s you who did it, Kirby, it’s you
persuaded me!”
“Mr. Postlethwaite,” said Mr. Kirby quietly, “what I did try to
persuade you was to spend a little money on the place. As you wouldn’t,
and as a tramp wouldn’t look at it, I advised you to let it to those
young fellows for a month. I knew all about them, at least one of
them, the one who came to me—James McAuley. He’s perfectly all right.
Said he wanted to paint with his friend. I know his father, big
doctor in London. Boy was at Cambridge. They’re as right as rain,
Postlethwaite. If they’ve hurt your property we can get compensation.
The month’s not up by a long while, and hang it, I did get you
prepayment!”
“_We_ can’t get compensation?” huffed Mr. Postlethwaite. “_I_ shall!”
“Yes, _you_ will, of course,” corrected Mr. Kirby quietly. “Do make
some sort of connected story for me. When did you go to Greystones?”
“Just come from it,” said the aged Postlethwaite glaringly. “All
smashed! Broken! Destroyed!”
“Did you find any letter, or note, or anything?”
“Nothing. Told you. Quite empty. And a dirty piece of rope chucked up
into the rafters as well,” he added, as though that were the worst and
last of his grievances. “Where are those young scoundrels?”
“My dear Mr. Postlethwaite,” said the lawyer suavely, “it isn’t
actionable here between four walls. But if you say that kind of thing
outside you might find yourself in Queer Street. Those excellent young
men—that excellent young James McAuley—paid you for the month in
advance. You’ve no proof they did the damage.”
“They’re responsible,” said Mr. Postlethwaite doggedly, “so are you.
Last man six months ago was a vegetarian. Tried to raise spirits in the
place. _Did_ raise them. Haunted now, for all I know. All your fault.”
“Now, Mr. Postlethwaite,” said Mr. Kirby firmly, “one thing at a time.
If you have let Greystones get into that condition against my advice,
you have been exceedingly lucky to get two tenants, mad or sane, for
even a few weeks in the course of a year. Upon my soul, I’m getting
tired of Greystones, and all the rest of ’em. I’ve a good mind....”
As a matter of fact, Mr. Kirby had no good mind to give up his
connection with Greystones or with any other of old Mr. Postlethwaite’s
follies. They were almost the only thing in his profession which amused
him.
“Well, what you going to do?” snapped the old gentleman again.
“Go round and see it, I think,” said Mr. Kirby, “and you come with me.”
Mr. Postlethwaite was somewhat mollified. His lawyer was taking a
little trouble. It was as it should be.
They took a taxi and found themselves, twenty minutes or so outside
the town, passing the deserted lodge and the scarecrow, mouldy gate,
and drawing up before the stone steps of that deserted, unfurnished,
ramshackle house which had been Professor Higginson’s purgatory for
three long days. The two men went in together, and Mr. Kirby noted
that old Postlethwaite had been accurate enough. There were the
dirty windows, the uncarpeted staircase, the bench and table in the
right-hand ground-floor room which were the sole furniture of the lower
part of the house; and there, when they came upstairs to it, was the
wreckage in the studio—the broken skylight, the scraps of food, the
wooden chairs lying smashed on the floor.
“Where did you find the third chair? Funny sort of house. Silly of you
not to mend it!” he said, with a return to his habit of irrelevance.
“Told you!” said Mr. Postlethwaite. “Outside on the ground. Lot of
sheets tied to it like the tail of a kite.”
“Box kites have no tails,” murmured Mr. Kirby, “he must have thrown it.”
“Who?” asked Mr. Postlethwaite eagerly.
“_I_ don’t know,” said Mr. Kirby with charming innocence.
“You’re making a fool of me!” said old Mr. Postlethwaite savagely.
“No, I’m not,” returned Mr. Kirby in a soothing tone. “Come, there’s
nothing more to be done here. I’ll write to those young men. I’ll write
at once. I’ll hear the day after to-morrow, and I’ll let you know.”
“The day after to-morrow!” shrieked old Mr. Postlethwaite. “And the
house wide open, and anyone coming in through that skylight?”
“It’d be a charity,” said the lawyer. “It will shelter the little
birds.”
Mr. Kirby made to put his arm into the angry old gentleman’s and to
lead him down the stairs, when he noticed something on the floor. It
was a scrap of paper. He picked it up, glanced at it hurriedly, and
put it in his pocket. Then—the gesture had taken but a moment—he was
holding Mr. Postlethwaite’s arm and taking him down the stairs.
“You ought to have a caretaker here for a day or two anyhow,
Postlethwaite,” said Mr. Kirby as they reached the door. “I know a man
in a cottage here, I’ll send him.”
Mr. Postlethwaite was agreeable. Mr. Kirby called at the cottage and
sent the man up. Then he came back to the cab.
“I’ll try and get to hear from McAuley to-day,” went on the lawyer, as
they got into the taxi again and returned to Ormeston. “By the way,
what would you take for Greystones, Postlethwaite?”
He knew what was coming. Mr. Postlethwaite’s face grew dark and
determined. Then there passed over it a not very sane leer. He nudged
the lawyer in the ribs—
“Twenty-five thousand,” he said, “not a penny less.”
“Make it pence,” said Mr. Kirby, with more than usual gravity.
Old Mr. Postlethwaite disdained to reply.
“Town’s growing out that side,” he said in a tone of immense cunning.
“Not a penny less.”
“Well,” said Mr. Kirby in a weary tone, “if you won’t set fire to it, I
don’t know how you’re going to realise, and upon my soul I don’t care.”
The taxi had drawn up at the door of Mr. Kirby’s club. He resolutely
refused to pursue matters further with the aged speculator in freehold
values.
“Postlethwaite,” he said, “you may take it from me if you are wise.
_Wait_....”
Then he added most unprofessionally—
“If I got thirty thousand would you give me half the difference as
commission?”
Old Postlethwaite looked up suddenly and brightly like a bird.
“What! Five thousand?” he said doubtfully.
He shook his head. He knew that it was not very professional. He looked
to see that no one was coming out of the club, and then he whispered—
“Three thousand, Kirby, three thousand! And that’s ten per cent.,” he
added half regretfully.
“All right,” said Mr. Kirby with due solemnity, “you wait!” and with a
reassuring smile he dismissed that poor old man to dream of impossible
sums.
Whether Mr. Kirby thought that the house could have fetched five
hundred pounds—or nothing at all—does not really matter to my story,
for most undoubtedly he had no hope or intention of selling the
wretched place at all unless some lunatic should clamour for it.
He went into the club as into a city of refuge, and prepared to
consider a number of little disconnected events that were shaping
themselves into a very pretty scheme. Things were beginning to
entertain him vastly. It was the sort of work he liked.
First he countermanded his lunch. He wanted to think, not eat. Next he
pulled from his pocket the little slip of paper he had picked up at
Greystones. He read it carefully. It told him little, but that little
was curious.
The paper was University paper. It had the University Arms. It seemed
to be jotted notes.
He laid it down a moment, and considered one or two other
unaccountable, disconnected matters. Brassington’s Coat, Brassington’s
Secret God, the Green Coat. Brassington’s fetish—gone. Gone quite
unexplained, and gone—let’s see—just a week ago. Missed that Monday
night at Purcell’s. A young gentleman, “a friend of the young
master’s,” who had called at “Lauderdale” that day and had asked too
many questions about Mr. Brassington’s movements. Mr. Kirby smiled
broadly, and remembered suddenly the letting of Greystones some days
before. How old Jock McAuley’s son—Jimmy, the name was—had come with
pompousness of youth and bargained to have Greystones for a month. “To
paint,” he said. “To paint with a friend!” Yes.... To paint things
red! Mr. Kirby smiled broadly again. He saw nothing clear. He saw an
imbroglio forming, and he gloried in such things!
It looked as though that young man and his friend had painted
thoroughly!... They had had a lark ... and what a lark! Well, they must
pay the piper!... They had made a night of it.... With whom?
Mr. Kirby lay back in his very comfortable chair in the smoking-room
of the club and pondered.... Someone who went to the lectures at the
Guelph University here in Ormeston had been in that rough and tumble in
Greystones.... It had been a students’ rag he supposed.
He took up the crumpled slip of paper once more and opened it out again
carefully. As he tried to connect the disjointed phrases scribbled upon
it he got a bit puzzled.
What student would want such notes as these?
“Memorandum: Horne does not agree with Latouche. Mention this
to-morrow in the first hour. Return both essays.
“The second year work in future to be combined with the Medical.
Announce this at end of first hour.”
Mr. Kirby pursed his lips and considered those words. It was a
Professor’s memorandum ... and it was not the sort of notes that a
Professor would hand to a pupil either.
There was something else jotted in the same hand, but written smaller,
in the corner. He peered at it and made it out at last, though it was
hurriedly written as though it were a sort of after-thought:—
“Ask the Senate next Monday to cancel Saturday afternoon, difficult
hour. Remember Garden’s number, to ring up 637 Ormeston Central.”
Mr. Kirby folded the paper in its original creases, put it back into
his pocket-book, and stretched for the University _Calendar_, which was
among the reference books on a table beside him.
There was more than one of these Saturday afternoon lectures. The
Senate had arranged them for popular courses, and the University men
rather resented them. There was one with History for its subject,
one whole set called “Roman Art of the First Century” (and Mr. Kirby
grinned), one course on the Geological Formation of Oil Areas, one
course on Psychology, and one on French Literature.
History, Art, Geology, Psychology, French.
Methodically, but with all the pleasure of the chase, Mr. Kirby turned
to the Professors in occupancy of the five various chairs. Polson,
Gaunt, Baker, Higginson, Rolls.
Then he bethought him which of these comic things the enfranchised
and cultured proletariat could bear least. He decided very rightly
that it lay between Roman Art and Psychology. Gaunt was the Art man,
a charlatan. He knew him. He remembered doing his best to prevent the
appointment. The Psychology man, Higginson, he had met here and there,
as everyone met the University people in Ormeston, but he could call
up no very clear picture of him: his was a recent appointment, and the
town did not yet know the new Professor well.
If it were either of those two men who had been larking with younger
men that night when old Postlethwaite’s house was turned upside down,
why, he thought it would probably be Gaunt.
The problem which was beginning to fascinate and enthrall Mr. Kirby
would have advanced a stage or two further towards its solution had
not the swing-door of the smoking-room been flung up, and had there
not burst through it, like a shell, the excited and angry form of Mr.
Brassington.
Mr. Kirby hated business: he hated worry. His delight was to think
things out. And therefore it was that Providence, which chastens
those whom it loves, disturbed him with this sudden and most unquiet
apparition of his close friend. Mr. Brassington’s usually careful
clothes were crumpled, his face was all a-sweat, his tie was quite
dreadfully on one side, almost under his ear.
The merchant staggered up to the lawyer, put one hand on his shoulder,
and said hoarsely—
“Forgery!”
Mr. Kirby firmly pushed his friend down into a chair.
“Forgery?” he asked in an interested tone, looking Mr. Brassington
straight in the face.
Mr. Brassington nodded.
“Well, my dear Brassington,” continued Mr. Kirby, “I will do what I can
for you, but I warn you it is a very difficult crime to defend a man
for.”
“What do you mean?” said Mr. Brassington, bewildered.
“Besides which,” went on Mr. Kirby in a judicial tone, “unless you
plead lunacy——”
“I don’t understand a word you’re saying, Kirby,” shouted Mr.
Brassington. “There’s been forgery! Do you hear? Forgery! Someone’s
been forging my name!”
“O—o—oh!” said Mr. Kirby in a reasonable tone. “Someone’s been forging
_your_ name? Much more sensible! Bring it off?” he added cheerfully.
“If I didn’t know you so well, Kirby ...” began Mr. Brassington
savagely, then dragging from an inner pocket an already dirty cheque,
and presenting it with a trembling hand, he said—
“There, look at that!”
Mr. Kirby looked at it in front, then he looked at it behind. He saw
that a Mr. James McAuley had touched two thousand. He looked at the
front again. He turned it round and looked at the endorsement. He
looked closely at the signature.
“No,” he said, putting the slip of paper close to his eyes, “that’s not
your signature, as you say, but” (musing thoughtfully) “it’s very, very
like it!”
“Kirby,” said Mr. Brassington, in tones quite new and dreadfully
solemn, “I’ve a son myself ... but that young man shall suffer the full
weight of the law!”
Mr. Kirby was looking out of the window.
“What young man?” he said innocently.
“James McAuley,” said Mr. Brassington in a slow, deep tone, making the
most of the long vowel.
“How do you know he’s a young man?” said Mr. Kirby, looking round with
interest.
“How do I know?” shouted Mr. Brassington, beginning to storm again.
“Why, that’s the impudent scoundrel that robbed my poor son, sir!
Robbed him at cards! And I tell you what, Kirby,” he added, his voice
rising more and more angrily, “I tell you what, he’s calculating on it,
that’s what he’s doing. He’s counting on my wanting to hush it up. My
wanting to hush up my poor son’s fatal weakness.”
“Fatal what?” said Mr. Kirby.
“Weakness,” said Mr. Brassington, suddenly pulled up.
“Oh!” said Mr. Kirby quite coolly. “So he’s the chap that forged the
cheque, is he?”
“Of course!” said the indignant Mr. Brassington.
“Well,” replied Mr. Kirby, “I hope you’ve got proof, that’s all! And
I hope, if you _haven’t_ got proof, that you haven’t been talking to
anybody else! For if you can’t prove that he did it it’s _slander_,
you know. You’re a rich man, Brassington! You’re the kind of man these
gentry like to go for, eh?”
Mr. Brassington, like most of his fellow-subjects, lay in a panic
terror of lawyers and their arts. He was appreciably paler when he
answered in a far more subdued tone.
“I don’t exactly say he did it, I wouldn’t say more than I can prove,
would I? Only,” and here his voice rose again, “he’s got the money out
of me somehow, and....”
“Now look here, Brassington,” said Mr. Kirby quietly, “will you leave
this with me?”
As Mr. Kirby said this he put his head somewhat on one side, thrust his
hands into his pockets, and got the seated Mr. Brassington into focus.
“No—er—yes—if you like,” said Mr. Brassington. “How long?”
Mr. Kirby put his hand before his face and leant his elbow upon the
mantelpiece.
“I don’t know,” he said after a few moments. “It may be three or four
days, or it may be more, or it may be less. Look here,” he added, “will
you let me send for you if I get a clue? I think I shall get one....
What a huge balance you must keep.”
“If that young scoundrel——” began Mr. Brassington again.
“Now, my dear Brassington,” said Mr. Kirby soothingly, “my dear
Brassington, the man may be as innocent as, well——”
“You don’t suspect my son, I suppose?” broke in Mr. Brassington
fiercely.
Mr. Kirby laughed pleasantly.
“Good Lord, no!” he said. “Don’t you see, Brassington, life’s a
complicated place. Supposing a man knew that your son owed McAuley
this——”
“Owed it!” thundered Mr. Brassington. “And how in the name of justice
can this accursed gambling——”
“Now! Now! Now!” said Mr. Kirby. “We won’t go into that! The point is
that supposing someone _did_ know that this chap McAuley, at any rate,
thought it was owed him?”
“He couldn’t have thought so,” said Mr. Brassington stubbornly.
“Oh, Nonsense!” said Mr. Kirby, almost at the end of his patience.
“Supposing someone knew that McAuley would take the money, there——”
“Well?” said Mr. Brassington.
“Well, then, don’t you see, he might make himself out a go-between and
take a commission?”
“If I get the man——” began Mr. Brassington again.
“Yes, yes, I know,” said Mr. Kirby, “but you’ve left that to me, and
it’s very wise of you.... There’s another thing you ought to have left
to me. I’m good at that sort of thing. And that’s your Green Overcoat.”
Mr. Brassington started.
“Oh, I know you’re superstitious, Brassington. All you hard-headed,
business men, or whatever you call yourselves, those that have got any
brains at least (and there aren’t many) show their brains by a little
superstition. That’s my experience. I don’t blame you. Only look here.
If I get it for you ...” and he began musing.
“I’m not superstitious, Kirby,” said Mr. Brassington uncomfortably.
He rose as though the very mention of the garment had disturbed him.
“It’s just a coincidence. Things do go wrong,” he added.
When he had said this he moved to go.
“I’m sorry,” said Kirby, “I didn’t know you felt so strongly about it.
Or rather I did know, and I oughtn’t to have spoken.”
Mr. Brassington was still confused. He did not answer, and he made to
go out.
Mr. Kirby did not detain him, but just as his friend was opening the
door he said—
“Brassington, can you show me the counterfoil to that cheque?”
“No, I can’t,” said Brassington. “Book’s gone. It was in the Overcoat.”
“Oh, the book’s gone too!” said Mr. Kirby. “Well, I hope you’ve stopped
all the remaining numbers in the Cheque Book?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Brassington doggedly.
Mr. Kirby thought a moment.
“Brassington,” he said, “I’ve got to be in London on Wednesday. And I’m
going to the Rockingham. I’m going to give a dinner. Will you come?
Will you come early—and, I say—bring your son—bring Algernon. Come by
five o’clock. I’ll be waiting.”
“I’ll come,” said Mr. Brassington—as though asking why.
“I may have news for you,” said Mr. Kirby.
Brassington looked at him doubtfully, and he was gone.
Hardly was his friend out of the room when Mr. Kirby, with something of
the gesture that a dog with a good nose will make when he is getting
interested, made for the writing table, and noted the appointment.
“Before I forget it,” he murmured. “Wednesday, the Rockingham, five—and
dinner’s seven. I wish I hadn’t had to make a day in such a hurry—but
it’ll serve.... I can always change it,” he thought.
Then he visualised young McAuley quite carefully and clearly. He did
these sort of things better when his eyes were fixed upon a glare. He
gazed, therefore, hard at a sunlit white wall in a court opposite the
club window, and as he did so he saw McAuley again quite clearly. The
fresh, vigorous, young Celtic face with its dark and sincere eyes....
And he wondered who on earth could have taken that young man in! Then
he sighed a little, and said to himself, aloud—
“But it’s easy to believe anything for two thousand pounds!”
Mr. Kirby left the smoking-room. On his way out through the hall he did
something that would have astonished those many million innocents who
swallow our daily press.
He went to the telephone and rang up 246. 246 answered very gruffly;
then, suddenly appreciating that it was Mr. Kirby who was talking, 246
answered with extraordinary courtesy.
Since I may only report what happened at my end of the line, let the
reader gather what it was that Mr. Kirby said.
He said—
“Is that you Robinson?”
Next he said—
“Any other inspector there?”
The third thing he said was—
“No! No! Mr. Brassington’s coat! Advertised, you fool!”
The fourth thing he said was—
“It isn’t a question of whether the receiver admitted it, but what
receiver you traced it to.”
The fifth thing was said very impatiently—
“Oh, yes, yes, of course, I know Mr. Brassington must have asked. The
point is, _which_.... What?... Spell it! M—O—N—T.... Oh, yes ... Old
Sammy!” Then came a pause. “_What?..._ Didn’t go any further?... Done
nothing more all these days?... Good Heavens....” A shorter pause.
Then, “All right.... Oh, never mind about what you _didn’t_ find!” and
he rang off.
Thus did Mr. Kirby discover all he wanted to know.
Strange! But there are quite unofficial people, not even dressed up
in blue clothes and a helmet who are in touch with such things as
receivers of stolen goods, and the financiers of the poor and the
local Trust in Crime. Men who can promote or dismiss the mighty Perlice
Themselves!—and these beings are often Lawyers.
Now that he was fairly in cry, he did what no dog does—not even the
dogs that boast they are hounds—he slacked off. He lunched well. He
smoked half through the afternoon. With the evening he lounged off to
his office before it should close to see if anything new awaited him
there: and something did.
CHAPTER XIII.
_In which the Subliminal Consciousness gives
itself away._
The work of the Sunday had tired Professor Higginson. He did not know
that glory could weary man so much.
He rose very late upon the Monday morning: he rose certainly without
ambition, and almost without fear. He was dead beat. By the time he
had breakfasted it was noon. He had no class on Monday. In the early
afternoon he was due at the Council of the University. He remembered
the agenda, more or less. He had to talk particularly about those
Saturday lectures. He hated them—but first of all he must ring up his
colleague Garden, who was with him in the matter.
Garden had the telephone—sensible man! But Garden wouldn’t allow
his number in the book.... It was?... It was 37 something?... Wait
a minute! Professor Higginson remembered a scrap of paper with a
memorandum. _That_ had the number. He had put it down _last_ Monday on
a scrap of paper after the Senate meeting for just that occasion, to
ring up Garden before the Council.
He had a good memory. He prided himself on _that_. He clearly
remembered jotting the number down on a scrap of University paper in
the Senate room. It was the meeting before he went to Perkin’s—just
before his troubles began!
Professor Higginson felt for that scrap of paper intuitively in the
watch pocket of his waistcoat. He could carry such things there for
days. It was not in the watch pocket of his waistcoat.
He searched in all the pockets of the suit he was wearing. One puts
things which one is in the habit of carrying instinctively into a
pocket, and one often does not remember when one did it—especially if
one is given to lapses of The Primary Consciousness and Subliminal
Thingumbobs!
By a process only too familiar to the less fortunate members of the
professional classes, he fingered carefully every edge of the pocket
lining until he found a large hole, whereat he as carefully explored
all the vague emptiness of the lining beneath, and as he explored it
he began to worry, for there was nothing there. Then the Professor
of Subliminal Psychology suddenly remembered! He had taken it out
when he dressed that evening for Perkin’s. He had put it on to the
dressing table. He remembered the white paper on the white cloth, and
he remembered telling himself not to forget it. He had put it into the
pocket—the waistcoat pocket—of his one evening suit.
He went through that one suit very thoroughly. He found nothing. He
thought he might have dropped it when he last changed. He stretched
upon the floor and, lighting matches with infinite difficulty, he
peered under the bed and under the wardrobe, examining every inch of
the worn Brussels carpet. Not a scrap of paper appeared.
Then—suddenly—he got a touch of nausea. It was borne in upon him
more and more certainly that the last time he had carried that
memorandum—and worn that suit—was at Perkin’s party, _and the days that
followed and the nights_. That bit of paper must have dropped during
one of his struggles or one of his athletic feats in the Accursed
House! That gave the matter a very new importance. If that ill-omened
scrap were still in the empty house!... Worse still, supposing someone
had found it?... It was a clue.
Professor Higginson lost no time. He took the tram, and when he reached
the end of it, with infinite precautions of looking to right and left,
pretending to go down side lanes, lingering at gates, he managed at
last to comfort himself with the assurance that no one watched him—as
indeed no one did. Every inch was, for him, alive with spies, and he
exaggerated the importance of his movements, for he was a Don.
An hour or so after he had left the town he saw the neglected shrubs,
the rotting gate, the beweeded gravel path; and, standing up gaunt and
terrible before him, the Accursed House within its wasted grounds.
He went up stealthily to the door. It was locked. Still gazing over
his shoulder with nervous precaution, he made an effort to find some
postern, but the high wall was blind everywhere, and the courtyard at
the back was enclosed upon all sides.
With a confused but terrible recollection of some tag which tells us
that no man falls at once to the lowest depths of turpitude, and with
a sigh for the relic of his honour, he tried one of the great front
windows. It was fast.
Then Lucifer once again inspired that unhappy man with cunning beyond
his own. He whipped out a pocket-knife, opened the thin blade, inserted
it in the crack of the sash and began to tamper, yes, to tamper, with
the catch. He felt it giving, as he pushed gently and with infinite
care lest any sound should betray him, when his heart suddenly stopped
beating, and his blood ran dead cold, at the sound of a voice just
behind him delivering this summons—
“What yer at?”
He dropped the knife and leapt round. A sturdy fellow, short and
thick-set, clothed in old bargee trousers and a pea-jacket, and with
that face of labour which the police call “villainous” in their
reports, was watching him unmoved.
“What yer at?” repeated the badly-shaven lips.
“I—I was making an experiment,” said Professor Higginson at random.
“Yer was,” said the thick-set man, and spat. “And now yer’ll cut.”
Professor Higginson was dignified.
“My good man,” he said——
“None o’ that,” said the good man, advancing his face in an ugly
fashion; “I’ll let yer know I’m the caretaker. Ook it. If there was a
copper in this Sahary Desert I’d put him on yer for a twofer.”
Now a “twofer” is an insignificant cigar, of which two are sold for a
penny; but though Professor Higginson did not know this, he understood
the general drift of the remark, and he slowly began to edge away.
“I’ve a mind,” said the pea-jacketed one, following him growling to the
gate, “to tell Mr. Kirby.”
“Mr. who?” said Professor Higginson eagerly.
“Mr. Kirby,” repeated the man, sullenly. “It’s his job this house is.”
Professor Higginson felt in his trouser pocket and produced a florin.
The caretaker took it, though it only confirmed his suspicions.
“Is that the name of the agent for this house? Could I get an order
from him? I want to look for—I mean I want to get inside!”
“Yus! Yer do!” said the man. Then: “That’s the name of Mr. Kirby, and
if yer’ve sense yer’ll get to his orfices afore me.”
It was a plain hint, but Professor Higginson was not grateful. He was
considering what advantage this information was to him, and as he
slowly considered it he at last clearly grasped that advantage. He
would be back at that house within three hours: back with the key and
an order to view. And it would go hard with him if he did not find that
dangerous scrap of paper. He had not wasted his florin.
“Thank you,” he said rapidly, and was gone.
He reached the tram again before it was mid-afternoon. Once in the town
he looked up a directory in a shop, found Kirby and Blake’s direction,
and made his way at once to that office.
Mr. Kirby had come in just an hour before. He had sat drawing
caricatures on blotting-paper with stubs of pencil, or gazing at
the ceiling. He had written private letters with his own hand, and
addressed to people who had no known connection with the firm, and he
seemed to have attached himself thus to his business premises, during
that one exceptional afternoon, for the advantage of seclusion and
of the telephone more than of anything else. Moreover, he had asked
peevishly once or twice whether such and such a one had rung him up or
called for him.
When, therefore, Professor Higginson came into the office and asked
whether he could see Mr. Kirby, said the clerk to him, “Certainly,
sir,” and showed him into a room where bound copies of _Punch_ and
a _Graphic_ three years old, also a list of bankrupts, beguiled the
leisure of clients as they waited their turn.
“Will you send up your card?” added the clerk innocently.
“No,” worried and feebled the Philosopher—he had no card—“say it
is Professor Higginson, and that he wants to see Mr. Kirby most
particularly.”
“Is Mr. Kirby expecting you?” continued the clerk.
“How should I know?” said Mr. Higginson half savagely. And the
mystified young man was more mystified still when, on giving the name
to his employer, that employer jumped up and beamed as though he had
been left a legacy, or had heard of a dear friend’s return from the
dead.
“Oh, show him up!” he said merrily. “Show him up! Show him up at once!”
and the chief of that great business went half-way to the door to meet
his visitor.
He took him warmly by both hands as he bade him be seated. He asked in
the most concerned way about his present state of health, after the
terrible adventure which was now the talk of thousands. He hoped that
the heat of the room with its blazing fire was not inimical to the
Professor’s convalescence.
Professor Higginson was rather curt for such a genial host.
“I won’t detain you, Mr. Kirby,” he said, “it is very good of you to
have given me a moment or two of your valuable time.” He thought a
moment. He was not good at plots, or rather he had had to construct too
many lately in too short a time. At last he began tentatively——
“Perhaps you know, Mr. Kirby—I am afraid it is widely known—in fact,
you _do_ know, for you have just told me as much—that I—that in fact I
have had an unfortunate—er—lapse.”
Mr. Kirby nodded sympathetically.
“Pray do not insist, my dear Professor,” he murmured; “most touching,
most interesting. Now with your expert knowledge of the phenomena of
consciousness——”
Professor Higginson interrupted.
“The point is, Mr. Kirby, that knowing you to be in touch with
the—what shall I say—the residence business——”
“Yes?” said Mr. Kirby, with a polite inflection.
“Well, the fact is,” blurted out the Philosopher, “my case presents a
point of the highest possible interest, the highest possible scientific
interest, in which you might help me. It is about a house.” And here
the Professor stopped dead.
Mr. Kirby watched him with crossed legs, joined finger-tips, and a very
hierarchical expression.
Professor Higginson continued—
“I have an instinct, purely subliminal, mind you” (Mr. Kirby nodded,
but never took his eyes off the Professor’s face, and the Professor’s
eyes on their side never left the floor), “purely subliminal, but a
strong instinct that during those days I was—I saw—no, I mean I was
spiritually present in a _House_—a sort of, well, _House_!” Mr. Kirby
nodded again. “I—I—I had a sort of dream——”
“Wait a moment, Professor,” said Mr. Kirby respectfully, “we must get
all this quite clear. At first I understood that your complete loss of
memory involved a breach in the continuity of consciousness—a blank as
it were. I read all the reports, of course” (his tone was profoundly
reverent), “and I will not trespass upon sacred things. But at _first_
there was a blank, was there not?”
Professor Higginson put on his lecturing tone. “We are using technical
terms, my dear sir,” he said in a somewhat superior manner, “indeed,
highly technical terms. Primary consciousness I certainly lost. I think
I may go so far as to say that I am unaware of any action of secondary
consciousness.” Mr. Kirby still nodded gravely, following every word.
“But _subliminal consciousness_ is a very different matter! That, my
dear sir,” continued the Professor, smiling awkwardly, “is my own
department as it were. Now the subliminal consciousness is peculiarly
active in dreams, and I certainly did have a very vivid dream.”
“But if your memory was wrong,” said Mr. Kirby with a calculatedly
puzzled look, “I mean if your memory failed about it——”
The Professor shook his head impatiently.
“You don’t understand,” he said. “Please let us be clear. There’s no
question of memory at all.”
“Not at all, not at all,” said Mr. Kirby politely, “only a dream.”
“It was a vision—a high vision,” said the Philosopher. “I recollect
some things clearly. A sort of studio roof. A big sort of skylight
window. I remember that. Now of course I never can have been in such
a house,” continued Professor Higginson. “It’s one of the first laws
of subliminal consciousness that impressions are conveyed from one
centre to another, transversely as it were, and not either directly or
in the ordinary line from a superior to an inferior plane. To put it
conversationally, not from above to below, nor from below to above.
Hum!”
“Of course!” said Mr. Kirby. “Naturally. Quite clear.”
“The whole theory of telepathy depends upon that,” went on Professor
Higginson, glancing up cautiously at the lawyer and dropping his eyes
again.
“It could depend on nothing else,” said Mr. Kirby gracefully.
“Well, you see,” said the Psychologist, “I wasn’t in the house, that’s
quite certain; I had and have no _objective_ knowledge of the house.
Every psychologist of repute will bear evidence to that. It’s the mere
A B C of the science.”
“Your reputation,” said Mr. Kirby, “would weigh more than that of any
colleague,” and the Professor was gratified.
“You understand clearly,” went on Mr. Higginson. “I never was in that
house—yet I am certain such a house exists, and—well—for reasons that
are very private—it is really of interest to me to discover where it
may be, for though my science assures me that I had no sort of physical
connection with it during that extraordinary experience, yet I am
confident that its connections, inhabitants or owners, will give me
a clue to what is now the chief interest of my life—and I may add, I
hope without boasting, now one of the chief subjects before scientific
Europe. In the interest of Science I should _see_ that house. I should
visit it.... Soon. Indeed, to-day.... I wonder if you can help me?...
The house looked north,” he continued abruptly, shutting his eyes and
groping with his hands to add a wizard effect to the jerky sentences.
“There was a drive up to it with laurel bushes, a rather weedy drive.
There were four stone steps to the door, I remember those steps well,
and—oh! there was a lower ground-floor room with one window looking on
to a backyard.... If I can find that house and have an order from its
owner to visit it I shall be profoundly grateful—I thought you might
help me.”
“I’ve got it all down,” said Mr. Kirby, scribbling hurriedly, “and
I will certainly find it for you. The cause of Science, Professor
Higginson, is a sacred cause.”
“If you _can_!—oh! if you _can_ get me an order _now_, _to-day_!”
burst out the Professor, opening his eyes suddenly and cutting short
in his desperation. “I—I—well, I should like to look over that house.
It would be of the highest possible scientific interest. Can you,” he
added nervously, and as though he was in a hurry to catch a train or
something of that sort, “can you let me have the keys—now?”
“My dear sir,” said Mr. Kirby, looking up gently, “my dear sir, I
really cannot yet be certain what house it may be, nor whether our firm
are the agents for it, nor even whether it’s to let, though I think it
may be one I have in my mind.”
He glanced at his notes again.
“Oh, yes, your firm are the agents,” said the Professor eagerly, and
then added, suddenly appreciating that he was giving himself away, “I
remember receiving with extraordinary vividness during that curious
vision the spiritual impress that your firm were the agents.”
[Illustration: “_I remember receiving, with extraordinary vividness,
that spiritual impress._”]
Mr. Kirby said nothing and looked nothing, and the Professor eagerly
went on to cover his tracks—
“You must know that in these purely subliminal phenomena, there is a
marvellous sense of the _atmosphere_, of the—er—_connotations_ of the
locality—the dream locality.”
“Well,” began Mr. Kirby slowly, “of course, we could not refuse you,
Professor Higginson, in a matter of such high scientific importance....
We _might_ have to get the leave of the owner, but in the normal course
of things we could let you look over it, only, you see,” he went on
with a puzzled expression, “you really haven’t told me enough to fix
me yet as to what house it can be.... We have so many to remember,” he
mused.... “It is a peculiar sort of a house. Unfurnished, I think you
said?” he continued, looking at his notes, “except on the top floor,
where there was a studio. Now, Professor,” and here he looked suddenly
at his visitor, “can’t you recollect any other detail, some sort of
faint impression?”
“N—no,” said Professor Higginson timidly. “You must remember the
circumstances were extraordinarily——”
“For instance,” said Mr. Kirby imperturbably, “have you any
recollection of where the bed was? Was it in a sort of little dark room
beyond the studio? It is an extraordinary thing,” he continued, pulling
up his sock as he said it, “that one cannot keep one’s sock up on one’s
leg without those horrible little garters, which I for one will _not_
wear.”
“Now you suggest it,” said Professor Higginson slowly and with
something of the feeling that a mule may have when it feels the drag
on the rope, “now you suggest it I _have_ a recollection of something
of the sort.... And by the way, I seem also to remember a delicious
heavenly music.”
“Ah!” said Mr. Kirby, and he gazed at a point on the carpet about
eleven feet away, “wonderful thing music, only seven notes, and see
what a lot you can get out of ’em! I will smoke a cigar if you don’t
mind,” and he lit one. “Now, were there three chairs in the room, and
do you remember anything of a rope?” said Mr. Kirby.
“I’m not—quite—sure—about—the rope,” lied Professor Higginson, pausing
between every word, “but the chairs? Ye—es! I think I _did_ see
chairs—wooden chairs.”
“And was the skylight broken?”
“No—yes—possibly—very probably,” floundered the Philosopher.
“Then I’ve got it,” said Mr. Kirby briskly, “I’ve spotted it! You were
_quite_ right when you said you’d never been there in the flesh. At
least, I don’t think you ever can have been there. It isn’t in this
town at all. It isn’t in England. It’s a place my firm looks after in
the Hebrides—wonderful old place, you know—deserted. A Manse it was.
Now the history of that house——” he was continuing volubly, when the
Professor checked him.
“Not at all! Not at all!” he said angrily, “I tell you it is somewhere
close by here! In Ormeston!”
“My dear sir!” said Mr. Kirby, opening wide eyes, “how can you know
that a duplicate of the house I am thinking of——?”
“I’ve told you already,” snapped Higginson. “In these visions one has
connotations of atmosphere, and so on.”
“Well,” said Mr. Kirby, after that outburst, shaking his head slowly
from side to side, “then I’m of no use, none at all. I do know by
chance that place in the Hebrides, saw it only last year. Doing it to
oblige a cousin. Would have been most interesting, most interesting, if
it had been _that_. Don’t you think it _could_ be that? They’re full of
second sight in those parts.”
“No,” said Professor Higginson, rising with determination and in some
anger, “no, I do not think it could be that.”
“Well, then,” said Mr. Kirby hopelessly, “I don’t see how I can help
you. Don’t you think two connotations may have got mixed up?”
“No, I don’t,” said the Professor shortly, more and more possessed of
the feeling that things were going wrong with him. “I _don’t_ think so.
It’s impossible. These things have their laws, sir, just as nature has,
I mean ordinary nature, common nature, what we—er—call Natural Laws.”
Mr. Kirby nodded agreeably.
“I don’t think,” went on Professor Higginson, “that I ought to take up
any more of your time.”
“Oh, but I should particularly like to hear more,” said Mr. Kirby with
enthusiasm.
“I’m afraid it’s no use,” said Professor Higginson, and he made to go
out.
He was actually at the door, when Mr. Kirby added—
“Professor Higginson, I’ve half promised some friends to ask you to
dine in London after your lecture. It was a great liberty—but they knew
I lived in Ormeston. I wonder whether I might presume? Shall I drop you
a line? It’s the Rockingham. I might tell you something then. I might
find out.”
“Yes,” said Professor Higginson with no enthusiasm, but he badly wanted
to see that house and search it for that haunting scrap of paper, and
he didn’t want to lose touch with the Order to View, “yes, by all
means.”
“You see,” added Mr. Kirby apologetically, “by the time you come to
dine with me in London on Wednesday I might be able to suggest a lot of
things—an almost unfurnished downstairs room with a big deal table in
it, and oaken stairs, uncarpeted, and, oh! all the sort of things that
you would expect in a house of that kind.”
“Yes,” said Professor Higginson, flabbergasted.
“Well, well,” said Mr. Kirby more cheerfully, and shaking him cordially
by the hand, “I won’t keep you; next Wednesday in town! I’ll write!”
and he sauntered back into his room.
The great Psychologist slowly paced the street outside, then despair
gave him relief, and he went home to bed.
CHAPTER XIV.
_In which, incredible as it may seem, a non-Pole
has the better of a Pole._
On Tuesday morning Mr. Kirby woke eager for action. Things were fitting
in. It was great fun.
Mr. Kirby loved to fit things in—he ought to have been a soldier.
He calculated with a pleasing exactitude. That morning—thanks to the
stupid police and the telephone—he would find the Green Overcoat; that
afternoon and evening he would invite such other guests as pleased him
to dine with him next day, the Wednesday, in London, after Professor
Higginson’s great lecture upon the Immortality of the Soul. It was an
interesting subject, the Immortality of the Soul.
To make certain that all his guests should be there, he would try to
talk to one of them in London over the telephone from Ormeston that
night.... One of them called James McAuley. He liked the boy. While he
was about it he thought he would get a friend of McAuley’s to come as
well. He didn’t know the name of the friend, but no matter; one should
always ask one’s friends’ friends.
So deciding, Mr. Kirby, delighted at the brightness of the day, walked
merrily towards a quarter of Ormeston which we have already visited,
and which is not the choice of the rich. He walked through the dirty,
narrow little streets, prim in his excellent kit, well-groomed and
flourishing. He was old-fashioned enough to have a flower in his
button-hole, and he had been very careful with his hat. He was going to
see someone he knew, someone he had known professionally in the past,
and with whom a few years ago he had had very interesting business. He
was going to see a man who bore a fine old crusading name, but who must
have come down somewhat in the world, though doubtless he had kept his
family pride. He was going to see a Mr. Montague.
He knocked at the door in a sharp, commanding sort of way. It was
opened quickly, and the little old figure appeared within, armed with
insolence. When the eyes recognised Mr. Kirby, the face of that little
old figure turned in a moment from insolence to servility.
“Good morning, Samuel,” said Mr. Kirby briskly. “No, I won’t come in,
thank you. I only want you to tell me something. I’m sorry to trouble
you. Where’s that Green Overcoat of Mr. Brassington’s? He lost it a few
days ago, and a friend of mine told me that you were quite likely to
know.”
I will waste neither my time nor the reader’s in describing Mr.
Montague’s face at hearing this question; but I will say this much,
that it looked like one of those faces carved in hard stone, which
antiquity has left us, quite white, not expressionless, but with an
expression concealed, and as one might swear, dumb. But the face spoke.
It said in a very unnatural voice, a voice lacking breath—
“I swear to God I don’t know, Mr. Kirby. If I knew, I swear to God I’d
tell you.”
“Just tell me what you did with it,” said Mr. Kirby easily and rapidly,
looking at his watch. “I’ve got to fit a lot of things in.”
“I swear to God, sir,” said the face, “I gave it away.”
Mr. Kirby’s smile grew stronger, then suddenly ceased. He believed him.
[Illustration: _Turned in a moment from insolence to servility._]
“Was that all, Samuel?” he asked, turning to go. There was a grave
suggestion of peril in his voice.
The face said only—
“Well, I had to warn my own lot, Mr. Kirby; I had to warn my nephew,
sir. I had to warn Lipsky not to touch it, not touch it on any account,
Mr. Kirby!”
“Lipsky in the Lydgate?” said Mr. Kirby. “Then he’s got it! Good
morning, Samuel,” and the lawyer strode away.
He was sorry to have gone out of his way by a quarter of a mile, but he
was glad to have got the information he desired.
The little closed shop in the Lydgate seemed to have something deserted
about it as he came near. Mr. Kirby was familiar with the stack of old
suits outside, the big placarded prices, the occasional announcements
of a sale. To-day things seemed less promising and less vivacious,
as though the master’s hand were not there. Mr. Kirby had known that
master also in the past—all in the way of business—and if anything
had happened to him he would have regretted it like the passing of a
landmark. He walked straight into the shop, and there, instead of the
Pole Lipsky, what he saw was an obvious non-Pole, an inept Midland
youth with flaxen hair, a stammerer, and a very bad salesman.
Mr. Kirby addressed his young compatriot quickly but courteously.
“Would you be kind enough to give me Mr. Brassington’s Green Overcoat?”
he said.
“Wh-wh-wh-what?” said the non-Pole, utterly at sea.
There is a type in the modern world which is not destined to commercial
success, and certain forms of the non-Polish type present extreme
examples of the kind.
“Mr. Brassington’s Green Overcoat,” repeated Mr. Kirby steadily and
hard.
Upstairs Lipsky, rising from his sick-bed, heard. He heard the unusual
voice, he heard the name, and, as I have written some pages back, he
came down.
There is always a common bond between intelligence and intelligence,
though the intelligence of the one man be that of an Englishman and of
the other man be that of a Pole; and as Lipsky entered the shop Mr.
Kirby and he at once picked up communications, and the assistant at
once dropped out of the scheme.
“Oh, Mr. Lipsky,” said Mr. Kirby courteously, “I’m afraid you’ve been
ill! I’m sorry for that! But the fact is I’m rather in a hurry, and
have come for Mr. Brassington’s Green Overcoat.”
“Yes, Mr. Kirby, certainly,” said the shopkeeper.
He did not understand this race which was not his, but he knew
perfectly well that Mr. Kirby would not betray him.
“Very glad you’ve called, Mr. Kirby. I just got it done up to send
round to Mr. Brassington’s this minute. My assistant took it in, sir.”
“I——” began the non-Pole.
“Silence!” thundered Mr. Kirby to his compatriot, and Mr. Lipsky was
very grateful.
Mr. Lipsky continued eagerly—
“You’ll find it all right, Mr. Kirby. There’s the cheque book in the
pocket, that’s how I knew it!”
“Yes, of course,” said Mr. Kirby airily, “that’s all right.”
“You won’t take it, Mr. Kirby,” said Mr. Lipsky respectfully; “I’ll
have it sent.”
“Yes, certainly,” nodded Mr. Kirby, as he went out of the shop. “No
hurry, any time this afternoon—to my private house, not my office, you
know.”
[Illustration: “_My assistant took it in, sir._”]
Mr. Lipsky came to the door and smiled him out—such a smile! Yes, Mr.
Lipsky knew that private house of Mr. Kirby’s! He had been granted two
or three interviews there. He knew it extraordinarily well.
The lawyer went back through the sunlit streets at a loose end. He felt
unusually leisured, though he was a leisured man. Like the peri in the
poem, his task was done.
He basked through that afternoon. He rang up the Rockingham Hotel in
London to reserve a room and to order dinner for the next day. He rang
up his friend Brassington again, to be sure of the appointment, and
to be sure that Brassington was bringing his son. Then, when evening
came, he took down the big London telephone book and looked up the
number of Sir Alexander McAuley, the great doctor. It was years since
Mr. Kirby had seen him; but they had known each other well in the past,
and he would not mind the liberty. Besides which, what Mr. Kirby wanted
as he called up Trunks after dinner that Tuesday evening was not Sir
Alexander, but his son, Mr. James. Time pressed, and Mr. Kirby was very
keen on talking to Mr. James McAuley.
He got Sir Alexander’s house. He heard that Mr. James McAuley was out.
He got the name of the restaurant where the youth was dining with
some friends. He rang up that restaurant, and at last, a little after
half-past nine, he had the pleasure of hearing Jimmy’s fresh voice at
the end of the wire.
What that conversation was I must, in my next chapter, take the reader
to the other end of the wire to inform him; but hardly had he put down
the receiver when the door-bell rang and the non-Pole, carrying a
bundle for Mr. Kirby, appeared in the hall. Evidently Mr. Lipsky was a
good business man. He would not disturb the routine of his shop; things
that did not belong to business hours he did outside business hours,
and he knew how to get the most out of his assistant’s time.
There stood in Mr. Kirby’s study a large Ottoman. He lifted the lid of
that Victorian piece of furniture, and bid the boy put the bundle in.
Mr. Kirby was wholly devoid of superstition. None the less, he went
out of the house shortly after, and during the hour or two at his
disposal he took the Midland air. Of course, there was nothing in Mr.
Brassington’s private twist about Green Overcoats, but why should a
sensible man run any risks at all?
CHAPTER XV.
_In which three young men eat, and not only eat,
but drink._
There are few restaurants left in London where gentlemen may meet with
some sort of privacy and with the chance of eating reasonable food. It
might be more accurate to say there are none. But whether there are
any left or not, I am going to invent one for the purposes of this
story, and to inform you that on this same Tuesday night upon which
Mr. Kirby was telephoning to Sir Alexander McAuley, Jimmy and Melba
were very kindly entertaining Algernon Sawby Leonidas Brassington—Mr.
Brassington, Jun., for short—at dinner in a private room at Bolter’s.
Bolter’s, I need hardly inform such a woman of the world as my reader,
is the one place left in London where a man can dine well and yet at
his ease. It stands in a little street off Regent Street eastward, and
by a happy accident has been worthy of its reputation for seventy
years. Either it has not paid Bolter’s, or Bolter’s has been too proud,
but anyhow the Whelps of the Lion are quite ignorant of Bolter’s, so
are the cousins of the noble beast, so certainly are the greater part
of such degraded natives of the European Continent as we permit to
visit our Metropolis and to stare at our Imperial Populace.
Even the young bloods for the most part have not heard of Bolter’s, and
as it never spends a penny on advertisements, its name, on the rare
occasions when it appears in an article or a letter, is ruthlessly
struck out in proof by the blue pencil of the editor.
Bolter’s is known and loved by perhaps two hundred families. It is a
tradition, and as you may well imagine, enormously expensive. If you
are two dining at Bolter’s, you may expect to spend £7, and if you
are three, £10. If you are very rich, it is worth your while to dine
at Bolter’s. If you are only moderately rich, it is worth your while.
If you are poor, it is also worth your while to go to prison for not
paying—so excellent is the food.
All this I tell the reader in order that he may know how and why Jimmy
and Melba were entertaining their friend. That friend, though his
father was a very wealthy man, was a little awed by the surroundings.
He had heard of Bolter’s—once or twice, not more—from the fringes of
that governing world in which some of his University friends lived. He
remembered the son of a Cabinet Minister complaining of Bolter’s, and a
peer of the realm (a former furniture dealer and picture broker and for
that matter money-lender) saying that Bolter’s was filthy. Such praise
was praise indeed. He remembered that ladies did not go to Bolter’s.
He remembered talk of a dinner at Bolter’s just before a little group
of men had gone out in his first year to India, and now that he was
sitting in Bolter’s he felt duly impressed. He knew that Jimmy’s people
were “in” what he could never be “in.” Melba was more of an enigma to
him, but anyhow Melba was thick with Jimmy and Jimmy’s lot. In other
words, he knew that Jimmy and Melba were both on the right side of
a certain line which runs round very definitely through the core of
English society and encloses a very narrow central space; but, on the
other hand, he knew—he had the best of reasons for knowing—that they
were not exactly _flush_. He knew they _couldn’t_ be flush because
whereas he, Leonidas, had in the past won £1,800 off them at cards—and
spent it—they, Jimmy and Melba, had won £2,000 off _him_—and had never
got it! For his father (unlike _their_ fathers) had refused to pay. But
Mr. Brassington, Jun., was not the man to introduce a subject of that
kind. It is a subject of the kind that jars on toffs, unless indeed the
toffs themselves introduce it. And on this particular occasion they did.
Mr. Brassington, Jun., had drunk reasonably, Jimmy largely, Melba
immoderately. They had come to that one of the many courses which
consisted in a very small frozen bird, when Jimmy playfully threw a
bone at his guest (who ducked and missed it), and followed his action
with the words—
“You didn’t think we should run to this, did you, Booby?”
“Well,” said Algernon Sawby Leonidas Brassington delicately, “of
course, I knew that you wanted me to settle, and God knows I tried.”
“That’s all right,” said Melba, in a voice still clear and articulate.
“Your father’s paid.”
And having said this, he burst into somewhat unreasoning laughter,
choked, and drank a large tumbler of wine to cure his choking.
Booby was bewildered.
“My ... father’s ... paid?” he said slowly.
Jimmy nodded to confirm the great truth.
“Touched last week, Booby,” he said.
“Where?” wondered the astonished Booby.
“At the bank,” said Melba, and Jimmy added, “Oddly enough.”
“Not the whole thing?” said Booby, his face changing in expression as
he said it.
Melba’s mouth being full for the moment, he did no more than lift up
his eyes, nod and grunt. Jimmy, who was occupied in a swill, put down
the inebriant, drew a breath, and said—
“The whole boodle!”
It was perhaps well for the two young men principally concerned that
they were rapidly getting drunk, for in early youth the vice of
drunkenness, so fatal to maturer years, will often lead to astonishing
virtues. And long before they came to the cheese Jimmy and Melba had
discovered that they must talk of the matter seriously. Indeed, Jimmy
verged on the sentimental, Melba upon the stupidly pompous, as the
ordeal approached. It was over coffee that they faced it, and brandy
was their aid.
“Look here, Booby,” said Jimmy, after he and Melba had spent a silent
five minutes mentally egging each other on, “you ought to know the
truth, it’s only fair. We _made_ your father sign.”
Algernon Sawby Leonidas Brassington had a sudden retrospective vision
of his father, and he could make no sense out of the words.
“You _made_ him?” he said, flushing a little. “Cursed if you did! He’d
make _you_ more like!”
An illogical phrase enough, but one sufficiently full of meaning.
“Possibly,” said Jimmy, with the insulted dignity of a person who has
dined. “If you don’t want to hear about it you needn’t.”
“Shut up, Jimmy,” said Melba diplomatically.
He tried to make his high and now uncertain voice kind as he went on to
the younger Mr. Brassington—
“You see, Booby, it’s like this. Th’ was a lillel comprulsion—y’ know.
There was scene, wasn’t there, Jimmy?”
“Oh, yes, scene right ’nough!” said Jimmy.
“Well, anyhow, he gave us the cheque, and then, you know, we had to
prevent its getting out—his getting out, I mean.”
“I don’t understand a word you say,” said Booby.
“No,” said Jimmy too thoughtfully, glaring at the fire. “We were ’fraid
that.”
“If there’s a row, Booby,” said Melba affectionately, “if there’s real
row, y’ ought to be warned. That’s what we think.”
“That’s it,” said Jimmy.
Then under the impression that their ordeal was over and their duty
done, the two conspirators lapsed into silence. It was a silence which
might have lasted some minutes.
It was broken by the ringing of an electric bell in the corridor
outside, a sound muffled by the door, and the German reservist whom his
unscrupulous Government secretly paid to wait at table at Bolter’s,
came in to tell Mr. McAuley that he was wanted at the telephone.
The god Bacchus, when he came out of Asia with those panthers of his,
came into Europe the master of many moods, and Jimmy was a young man
careless and content as he lifted the receiver. He heard a clear and
rather high voice ask him whether he was Mr. McAuley. It was a voice
he seemed to remember. It was the voice of Mr. Kirby.
[Illustration: _Mr. McAuley was wanted at the telephone._]
“I asked them at home where you were,” said the voice, “and they told
me I should find you if I rang up Bolter’s.”
“Thank you,” said Jimmy too loudly—but he had no cause for gratitude!
“I am talking from Ormeston,” said the voice; “my name is Kirby.”
Jimmy’s mood began to change.
“I’ve asked for six minutes,” the voice went on, “but I may as well
tell you at once. It’s about that house you took—Greystones. Now, Mr.
McAuley, in your own interests, would you be good enough to take the
10.15 from King’s Cross. I’ll meet you at Ormeston Station.”
The very brief heroic mood not unknown to the god Bacchus now rushed
over Jimmy.
“Upon my word, sir!” he began. Then in the twinkling of an eye another
mood—one of alarm—prompted him to add, “Is it anything really urgent?”
And his third mood was panic.
Good Lord! He could imagine one or two terribly urgent things in
connection with Greystones. What if old Brassington were lying there
dead? What if he had exploded, and told the police in spite of his own
shame?
“Mr. Kirby!” he cried in a changed voice into the little black cup,
“Mr. Kirby!” The wire was dumb, there was only the buzzing and spitting
and little fiendish snarls which the marvellous invention has added to
modern life. “Mr. Kirby!” said Jimmy still higher and for the third
time, but it was a woman’s voice that answered—
“Another three minutes?” it said snappishly, and then the wire went
dead.
Twice more and once again did poor Jimmy implore the voice, but Mr.
Kirby knew the nature of man, especially of youthful man. He had not
attempted to persuade. In the study of his own house at Ormeston he had
already replaced the receiver, and was taking down from the book-shelf
a volume of Molière. He loved that author, and there was a good two
hours before he need meet the night mail at the station.
After a quarrel with the clerk-in-charge and sundry foolish troubles,
Jimmy abandoned the machine. He came back to his two companions. They
were in the thick of some silly vinous argument or other. They looked
up at his entry, and they saw that he was changed.
“What’s matter, Jimmy?” said Melba.
“I—I—I want to talk to you,” said Jimmy nervously, and singularly
sober. He looked at Booby.
“Oh, don’t mind me,” said Booby.
“Well, but we do,” said Jimmy ruefully, and he drew Melba into the
passage outside.
“There’s a row up,” he said.
“What about?” said Melba.
“Old Brassington,” said Jimmy in a nervous whisper.
“Peached? He wouldn’t dare,” whispered Melba incredulously.
“Why not?” said Jimmy, agonised. “I’ve been called, you know. Called
up from Ormeston. Urgently. By the lawyer. There’s a thing in the law,
Melba, called ‘duress.’”
“Oh, rats! He can’t prove anything!”
“Damn it all!” said Jimmy, “we don’t know that.”
“He wouldn’t make a fool of himself,” continued Melba uncomfortably.
“You can’t ever tell with these old jossers. Anyhow, that lawyer chap
my father knows, the man we got the house from, has rung me up, and
I’ve got to go and see him in Ormeston to-night by the 10.15.”
Melba said nothing.
“Would you go?” continued Jimmy, seeking valiance from his friend.
“No,” said Melba stoutly.
“’Tisn’t you that have got to do it,” said Jimmy bitterly. “’Twas me he
called up. I signed, you know, Melba. It’s _my_ name they’ve got.”
“If it was me——” began Melba.
“’Tisn’t you,” said Jimmy rudely, and as he said it Booby came out.
“If you two are going to talk business,” he said suspiciously, “I’m
going home to my rooms.”
“Fact is, Booby,” said Jimmy, “I’ve just heard about my aunt; she’s
dying.”
Booby was concerned.
“Oh, dear!” he said.
“Yes,” went on Jimmy rapidly, bringing out his watch, and seeing that
it lacked only seven minutes of ten, “it’s bad, very bad! I can’t wait.”
He thrust himself into his coat, looked over his shoulder as he ran
down the stairs, and with the very disconcerting cry, “Keep Booby!”
hurled at his companion, he sought the street and a taxi, and was
half-way to King’s Cross before he remembered that Melba must pay for
the dinner. But the thought was small comfort compared with the trial
that was before him. And for an hour and three-quarters as the train
raced up north to the Midlands he comforted himself less and less at
the prospect.
CHAPTER XVI.
_In which cross-examination is conducted “en
échelon,” and if you don’t know what that means
I can’t help you._
Cheerful, more than cheerful, all smiles, Mr. Kirby was standing at
midnight upon the arrival platform of the great station at Ormeston as
the night mail came in. He saw the slender figure of a young man whose
every gesture betrayed an absurd anxiety coming bewildered up from the
end of the train, and looking about him as though seeking a face.
It was a fine cordial welcome that greeted James McAuley, not in the
least what he had expected. He was enormously relieved.
“My dear Mr. McAuley,” said the lawyer, with a fine generosity of
impulse and in the heartiest of tones, “how very good of you to come!
I confess I was very much in doubt whether you would understand the
urgency of my message at such short notice. You see,” he added, lying
expansively, “they cut us off.”
“Yes,” said Jimmy, thinking that explained all.
“It was a terrible nuisance,” pattered on Mr. Kirby, as he led the boy
outside to a cab; “that’s the worst of the telephone. It’s a great help
in one way, but ... Why, you haven’t brought a bag!”
“No,” said Jimmy. “I shall go back by the night mail.”
“As you will, my dear sir,” said the lawyer.
He gave the address of his house, and they drove off.
When they got into the study and were served with drink, Jimmy
remembered his anxieties. He considered that imperative message and
that hurried journey. The business must be very urgent indeed. He was
the more certain of it as he watched Mr. Kirby’s face change to an
expression more settled and less familiar. As Mr. Kirby said nothing,
Jimmy volunteered another remark.
“I was giving young Brassington a dinner,” he said. “Perhaps you know
him? He was at King’s with me.” Mr. Kirby said nothing. “He belongs to
this town,” added Jimmy.
Mr. Kirby opened fire in a grave and measured voice.
“Mr. McAuley,” he said, “I know that you know young Mr. Brassington.”
The words seemed to have a little more meaning than Jimmy liked.
“I am an intimate friend of Mr. Brassington, Senior. We think a good
deal of him in Ormeston, Mr. McAuley.”
Jimmy crossed his legs, leant back in his chair, sipped his wine, and
put on an unconcerned, man-of-the-world visage, not unlike that of a
criminal about to be hanged.
Mr. Kirby, with his head thoughtfully poised upon the fingers of his
right hand, and looking steadily away from Jimmy’s face, said—
“Yes, we know Mr. Brassington, and we respect him highly.”
Jimmy could bear the tension no longer.
“What is it you want to say to me about Greystones,” he said suddenly.
“Oh, yes, Greystones,” said Mr. Kirby, “of course! But your mention of
the Brassingtons made me turn my mind to that sad loss Mr. Brassington
has had. I dare say his son told you. I am afraid he can’t recover—but
the bank admits it is a forgery.”
“Forgery!” shrieked Jimmy.
It suddenly occurred to him that Booby’s fiendish father had
discovered an awfully effective line of attack.
“Well, well,” said Mr. Kirby, “that’s not business. Of course, I
shouldn’t have troubled you as I have about other people’s business.
But about Greystones, Mr. McAuley, the trouble is—of course, I do not
blame you, but you will see you are legally responsible—well, the
trouble is that after you left the place—painting, weren’t you, I
think?—we found the studio in—well, in an odd condition; and, you see,”
he went on, shifting his position, and still conversational, “between
you and me, the owner of the house is a little—why, almost a little
_odd_.” Mr. Kirby smiled as he proceeded. “It’s not my business to talk
about one client to another,” he said, “but you’ll understand me. Fact
is, it really sounds too ridiculous, and I did what I could to stop
him; but you will understand why I telephoned. He said he’d summons you
to-morrow. He says it’s twenty-one pounds.”
Jimmy heard not a word. He was thinking of vastly more important things.
Mr. Kirby continued—
“Of course, I would have paid and communicated with you afterwards,
Mr. McAuley.” Mr. Kirby laughed professionally. “You are legally
responsible, whoever it was got in and did the harm. The time isn’t up,
you see, and you know the absurdity of the thing is that a man _can_
issue a writ like that! Why, bless you, you can go and buy a pair of
boots on credit and find the writ waiting for you when you get home!
It’s ridiculous, but it’s the law.”
Jimmy’s face was hot and his eyes were too bright.
“It was _not_ a forgery, Mr. Kirby!” he said.
“Not a what?” said Mr. Kirby, looking up with a fine affectation of
confusion. “I’m not talking about that, Mr. McAuley. Really, poor
Brassington’s loss is none of our business. But if you’re interested,
and if you’re going to see young Brassington, you might tell him that
his father’s put the whole thing in my hands, and I am going to have
details of the cheque and who it was made out to to-morrow by post at
my office.”
“Mr. Kirby,” said Jimmy, in the most agitated of voices, “I solemnly
swear to God that that cheque was not forged!”
“Really, Mr. McAuley,” said Mr. Kirby, “I don’t see what you have to do
with——”
“Yes, but you _will_ see,” interrupted Jimmy bitterly, “you will see.
To-morrow morning!”
“Come, come,” said Mr. Kirby, “I can’t have all this unofficial
information. It isn’t fair, you know, not fair to my position as a
lawyer. If only you’ll let me know about that little sum for damages at
Greystones, since the landlord is so——”
“Mr. Kirby,” burst out the unfortunate James, “the matter will not
brook a moment’s delay! That cheque—Mr. Brassington’s cheque, the
cheque you say was forged—was made out to me!”
“_What!_” shouted Mr. Kirby, springing to his feet.
“That cheque, Mr. Kirby,” went on James firmly, “was made out to _me_.
_I_ passed it through the bank, and I have that money in my bank, at
least a good deal of it, and I have paid it away—my part of it—nearly
all to my creditors.”
Then he remembered again that Melba would have to pay for the dinner,
but it was very small comfort.
Mr. Kirby drew a prolonged breath.
“Really, my dear sir!” he said.
“Yes, Mr. Kirby,” continued Jimmy, “to _me_. And I have passed it into
my account and I have disbursed the money. I am not ashamed of it; and
I will answer for it to any man. It was the payment of a just debt, and
_it was given to me by Mr. Brassington himself_, there!”
“My dear Mr. McAuley,” began Kirby again.
“I am telling you the plain truth, and I have witnesses who can go into
the box and swear. Not all that wretched, snivelling old fellow can
do——”
“An old friend, Mr. McAuley,” said Mr. Kirby suavely, “an old friend!”
“Well,” compromised Jimmy, “I will say Puritan. Not all that old
Puritan’s money can get over the plain facts. We can swear to it, both
of us. The place and the time. It was the morning after, and it was at
Greystones.”
“The morning after what?” said Mr. Kirby.
“Tuesday, the morning after that party, of course. Exactly a week
ago. The date’s on the cheque, and what’s more, Mr. Kirby, I have Mr.
Brassington’s letter signed by him on that occasion and admitting the
debt and his payment of it.”
“Really,” said Mr. Kirby, “indeed! This is most astonishing.”
“He was there,” said Jimmy, “in that ridiculous Green Overcoat of his,
and he pulled the cheque book out of his pocket. At least, it was in
his pocket,” corrected Jimmy, with a careful fear of tripping up over a
verbal inaccuracy where the law was concerned. “He tried to get out of
it, but we wouldn’t have it, Mr. Kirby, and so—and so he paid.”
“You are perfectly certain it was Mr. Brassington?” said Mr. Kirby.
“No manner of doubt in the world,” said Jimmy calmly. “We got him to
come with us as he left the party, and we put it before him; and as I
tell you, he did hesitate, but he paid at last, and it was a just debt.
I may as well tell you, Mr. Kirby, it was his son’s debt. We had lost
more than that to our friend in the past, and we paid honourably, and
we weren’t going to be welched.”
“After all, Mr. McAuley,” said Mr. Kirby, after a little thought, “I
have asked you if you are sure it was Mr. Brassington, and the thing is
important. Was he a tall, rather lanky man, with a nervous way with him
and loosely dressed? Did he thrust his hands into his pockets? Did he
try to talk about Philosophy or his being a Philosopher, or something
of that sort? Had he very large feet?”
“Yes, I think,” said Jimmy reminiscently. “Yes, he was tall and spare,
and he was nervous, distinctly, even violently you might say. Yes—he
had large feet, very, and he said something about being a Philosopher
or Philosophy. And at _first_ he had his hands in his pockets—but
afterwards you know, well——”
“Well, look here,” said Mr. Kirby thoughtfully, “it was Mr. Brassington
as you say—tall and spare and very nervous, and on that Philosophy
crank, which is King Charles’s head to him, and in that Green Overcoat
of his. Oh, it must have been him all right! But why didn’t you go to
his house and ask him for the cash? What’s all this business about
Greystones?”
Jimmy kept silent. At last he said—
“That’s his business, Mr. Kirby, and he can tell you that end of the
story.”
“Well, look here,” said Mr. Kirby, “I have really no right to get
anything of this sort out of you.”
“It’s the truth,” said Jimmy.
“Yes, I know,” said Mr. Kirby; “but you have to be starting for
that night mail, and” (he mused) “I tell you what, I’ll stop that
ridiculous business about Greystones in the morning. I’ve got to go up
to town. Do you think you could see me to-morrow in town? What with
your father’s public position and Mr. Brassington’s, Mr. McAuley, it’s
much better to have the whole of that _other_ thing out in private.
Couldn’t you come early and stay to dine?”
“Yes,” said Jimmy, rising to go, “I could; but wait a minute. I have
promised my father to go to a big lecture—he wants me to take my
sister.”
“Where?” said Mr. Kirby carelessly.
“At the Research Club,” said Jimmy. “Don’t know who’s giving it. It’s
about ghosts. It’ll be over by six. Where will you be stopping?”
“I shall be at the Rockingham Hotel,” said Mr. Kirby, helping the young
man on with his coat as they stood at the door. “It’s close to where
the Research Club meets, and I’ll expect you any time from six o’clock
onwards. I shan’t go out. Good night,” he said heartily, shaking
Jimmy’s hand with all the confidence in the world. “I don’t understand
it yet, but you’re both honourable men, and I fancy there’s been some
mistake.”
Jimmy reserved his opinion and went off to his train.
The lawyer went back into his study, knelt on the floor, lifted the lid
of the ottoman with his right hand, put the fingers of his left upon
the open under lip of that piece of furniture to steady himself, and
gazed quizzically and sadly at the Green Overcoat.
“A beast!” he said. “A fate-bearing, disreputable beast!”
But even as he said it the heavy lid slipped from the palm of his right
hand. He had but just time to withdraw his left hand before it crashed
down.
Mr. Kirby got up a little shakily. He was a man of imagination, and he
winced internally as he thought of crushed fingers.
“Try that on again!” he murmured, wagging his head savagely at the
Green Overcoat where it basked hidden within the ottoman; “try that on
again, and I’ll rip you up!”
With that he switched off the light and made his way to bed, maturing
his plans for to-morrow. But he rather wished he had some outhouse or
other in which to hide the garment. He felt a little afraid of all
sorts of things—for instance, fire.
CHAPTER XVII.
_In which a Professor professes nothing, a Lecture
is not delivered, and yet something happens._
It was the morrow Wednesday, in London, at Galton’s Rooms, and near
five o’clock.
Professor Higginson was feeling exceedingly nervous. He came into
the little room where it was customary to receive the Lecturer when
the Research Club organised one of its great functions at Galton’s,
and he was not over-pleased to see three gentlemen waiting for him.
He had hoped there would be no one but a servant, or at the most the
secretary. He was holding a little brown bag in his hand. It contained
his MSS. and a cap and gown. He asked whether he was to wear his cap
and gown.
“O—O—ah! I suppose so, what?” said one of the gentlemen who was
beautifully groomed, and had iron-grey hair, and what is more wore a
single eye-glass.
“That’s all right, Biggleton, isn’t it?”
He turned to a very portly man, quite bald, who kept his eyes so close
shut that one might have thought him blind; but Professor Higginson
knew at that word that he was standing in the presence of Lord
Biggleton, and he suffered that mixture of pleasure and apprehension
which Dons suffer in the presence of the great.
He wondered who the first speaker might be. If this bald-headed man
with eyes shut fast like a pig was Lord Biggleton, why then the
well-groomed man with iron-grey hair and the single eye-glass, who was
so familiar, might be the greatest in the land.
He was not to be informed. All old Biggleton said was—
“What’s that, Jack? Yes,” and steadfastly refused to open his eyes; but
Professor Higginson, unobservant as he was, could see that they were
not absolutely fast, but that between the upper and the lower lid there
gleamed an intense and dangerous cunning.
It was always said that Lord Biggleton might have had the Premiership
if he had chosen, but certainly a man with those eyes had reached
whatever eminence he cared to reach. There was no meeting them. They
lay in ambush behind the heavy lids, and did useful work through the
slits beneath.
[Illustration: _Professor Higginson knew at that word that he was in
the presence of Lord Biggleton._]
All this did not put the Professor at his ease. He pulled out his MSS.
and let it drop. A third man picked it up, and handed it to him again
with a ready smile. Professor Higginson on first coming into the room
had taken him for a young man, for he had the cut and the facial lines
of youth; but as the light from the window fell upon him as he picked
up the papers, the face that smiled was a face well over fifty, perhaps
nearer sixty. Professor Higginson was not a little astonished to see
the same smile suddenly appearing and disappearing on the face three or
four times about nothing in particular, and directed towards no one. A
little more experience of the world would have enabled him to label the
features and the man, for that smile goes with the Ministry of the Fine
Arts, and no less a one than Sir John Hooker stood before him. But Mr.
Higginson had got no further than Lord Biggleton, that was enough for
him!
He struggled into his gown with difficulty, and wondered whether a
fourth man who helped him on was a Home Secretary or a Field-Marshal or
what.
They made a little procession, Biggleton putting upon the Professor’s
back a powerful pushing hand by way of encouragement, the well-groomed
man with the eye-glass saying “What?” twice to himself inanely, and
the Minister for the Fine Arts leading the way with a gait like a
dromedary’s.
They passed through a door and a lifted curtain, and came into the
great room. There was a small raised platform to which the Professor
was guided, the three men walked back into the body of the hall, and
the Professor found himself alone, and without friends, gowned, with
his body of MSS. before him upon a desk, and over-looking three or four
hundred of the richest and therefore the most powerful men and women in
England—with not a few of their hangers-on.
In moments of strain sub-conscious impressions are the strongest,
as no one should know better than a Professor of Psychology; and
Professor Higginson was free to confess in later years that in the
first moments of nervous agony which he suffered as he looked over
that mass of Cabinet Ministers, fine ladies, actresses, money-lenders,
black-mailers, courtesans and touts, the chief thing that impressed him
was the enormous size of the women’s hats!
He grasped the desk firmly, cleared his throat, and began to read.
“The hope of a life beyond the grave——”
[Illustration: “_The hope of a life beyond the grave——_”]
Here Professor Higginson lifted his head and fumbled for a moment with
his collar-stud. It was an unfortunate, it was a tragic move! For as
he lifted his eyes during that one instant he saw a sight that froze
his blood. Squeezing with many apologies through the standing mass
at the end and sides of the great room was a very well-dressed young
gentleman, close-knit, dark in features, an athlete, and the features
above the smart coat and collar were features that he knew!
The form edged its way, bearing before it with exquisite skill an
exquisite top hat, inverted. It was making for the front row of chairs,
where one or two places still remained reserved and unused, and, as
that form advanced, subliminal fear—the Oldest of the Gods—towered up
over Professor Higginson’s soul. It was Jimmy!
The young man had made his way to the front row of chairs; he had sat
down; he had carefully deposited his hat beneath it. The mass of those
who govern us were beginning to turn their faces, some in annoyance,
some in amusement, towards him—the two duchesses, the four actresses,
the eight courtesans had already lifted to their eyes long-handled
spectacles of scorn, when the dreadful little silence was broken by
the Professor mumbling once more mechanically with eyes staring before
him his opening sentence—
“The hope of a life beyond the grave——”
The young man had looked up and had seen the Professor’s face! The
Professor had seen the sudden recognition in the young man’s eyes!
That day he read no more. With a curious unformed cry, such as a hunted
animal will give when it is too suddenly roused from its retreat, he
snatched his papers up, stumbled down the three steps of the platform,
bolted through the curtain and the door—and was off!
He was off, racing through the little ante-room, he was flying down the
stone staircase three steps at a time. The Subliminal Self was out on
holiday; it was working top-notch, and Lord! how it drove the man!
In the room thus abruptly abandoned by its principal figure there was
confusion and not a little of that subdued delight with which the rich
always hail some break in the monotony of their lives.
Most of the men were standing up, the less bulky of the ladies had
followed their example, perhaps a hundred people were talking at
once, when, not thirty seconds after the Professor had performed his
singular gymnastic feat, one in that audience had put two and two
together, and had been struck by an inspiration from heaven. And the
fine frocks, and the good coats and trousers and the top hats, and
the _lorgnettes_ and the single eye-glasses got a sharp second shock
at seeing Jimmy, who had so lately arrived, leap with the quick and
practised gesture of an athlete to the platform, cut across it like a
hare, and disappear in his turn through the curtain and the door beyond.
He was after him!... Down the long corridor which ran along the
basement of Galton’s, to the side door where professionals entered,
tore the Professor. He had reached its end, when, glancing over his
shoulder, he saw that face he would not see, and as he passed the
door-keeper he shouted in an agonised cry, “Stop him!” and plunged into
the street.
The door-keeper was the father of a family, a heavy drinker, and a man
of peace. But for all he knew there was a shilling in it somewhere,
and he stood up—ah, how unwisely!—to meet the charge of that young
Cambridge bone and muscle which was thundering down the passage in
pursuit.
He spread out his arms awkwardly to enforce his message of delay,
and before he knew what had happened he was down on the stone floor,
holding desperately to something living that struggled above him, but
himself oblivious of his name and place. As he came to, the first thing
he was conscious of was some considerable pain in the right arm upon
which he lay. The next was a sharp memory of football in early youth,
and the next was the sight of an over-well-dressed young man holding a
top hat in his clenched hand, and sprinting a hundred yards away up the
street.
The delay had been one of only a few seconds, but ten seconds is a
hundred yards.
Jimmy saw a little knot of people running ahead. They took a turning
and were lost to him; but Jimmy was too eager to suffer a check. Either
Brassington was not Brassington, or there were two Brassingtons, or
there was _no_ Brassington, or pursy old merchants were Dons, or the
world was standing on its head! But anyhow, _one man knew the truth_,
and that one man must be gripped tight, and the truth had out of
him—quick—quick!
Painful alternatives followed through Jimmy’s mind as he ran—prison,
suicide, enlistment—for in such an order of evils does luxury put the
British Army. But one obvious purpose stamped itself upon him: the man
who knew must be got hold of, privately and securely, and must tell
him all—and must tell him soon. He picked up the scent again from a
gentleman leaning against an area railing (who sold it for a trifling
sum), and hotly followed up his quarry—not two minutes behind.
At top speed, hatless and gowned, clutching his notes, the tall and
lanky Don careered, as might a camel career whom some massive lion
pursues in the deserts of the East. Not often are the streets of
London afforded so great a spectacle as that of a Philosopher, muddily
splashed, gowned and hatless, with long loose legs and wild head in
air, racing with a mob at his heels.
Those Londoners who happened to be at once at leisure and
unconstrained by convention—news-boys and boot-blacks, loungers,
rambling thieves—pelted after him in a small but increasing crowd. Mr
Higginson heard their steps, and, what was worse, he saw amongst them
a policeman. He dashed down an alley that opened to his left, turned
up a court, and ran to ground with a promptitude that was amazing.
For in the little court and under a dark arch of it he had seen the
swing-door of a low and exceedingly ill-favoured public-house.
Once within the refuge, he sat down gasping. An elderly woman crowned
with false hair was watching him severely from behind the bar as he
sank, with head thrown back, and leaning upon the wooden partition
attempting to recover himself. Outside he heard to his immense relief
the thundering feet go past. They had missed his doubling!
Mind speaks to mind in moments of strong emotion without the medium of
words. Professor Higginson recognised that unless he drank something he
would be thrown to the wolves. He had never been in a public-house in
his life. He had no conception of its habits. But the woman’s eye was
strong upon him, and he had to give an order. He gave it in this form—
“I think I should like—no, I think on the whole I should prefer a glass
of, let us say, ale.”
“Four Ale?” said the woman severely.
“No, one,” said Professor Higginson, whereat she fired suddenly and
said—
“None of your lip, young man!” (Professor Higginson was in his
fifty-seventh year, and looked it.) “None of your funny business!
Who are yer, any way? I’ve half a mind——” but the thought of profit
recalled her.
She had already seized the handle of the pump and drawn him his glass,
when the noise of feet returned, less tumultuous, and an exceedingly
unpleasing voice was saying that there was no thoroughfare. An
official-sounding voice was replying with dignity, and Professor
Higginson went to pieces—inwardly altogether, outwardly not a
little—when he saw entering through the swing-door a policeman, a
policeman who, when he looked the Philosopher up and down with due
care, asked him, “What’s this?” and received no coherent reply.
“That’s what I was asking myself,” said the woman with the false hair
vigorously. “Come in here all of a blow, muttering, with something
wicked in his eyes, as you can see. I was ordering of him out when you
came in!”
Professor Higginson had exhausted that vein of invention which the Evil
One had hitherto so liberally supplied. He sank upon the dirty little
beer-stained stool behind him, and jibbered at the avenger of the law.
“I’ve lost my memory,” he said.
“Lost your _what_?” said the policeman, half threatening and half in
doubt, hesitating in his venal mind between a really good cop and the
disastrous results of interfering with a toff; when, before a reply
could be given to so simple a query, an authoritative voice and strong
step were heard together pushing through the crowd outside, and there
came into the mean place the excellently dressed figure and strong
young face of Jimmy.
They say that the youngest generals make the best tacticians, though
sometimes the worst strategists. Jimmy acted like lightning.
“There you are!” he said genially to Mr. Higginson—and a little shriek
automatically cut itself short in the Professor’s throat and ended in a
gurgle.
“There you are!” he said again, laying a powerful left hand upon Mr.
Higginson’s shoulder—and it was pitiful to see the Pragmatist shrink as
he did so.
Jimmy turned round and gazed in a pained but authoritative way at
the policeman, who instinctively touched his helmet, recognising the
master-class.
“It’s my father, officer,” said Jimmy, gently and sadly.
[Illustration: _“It’s my father, officer,” said Jimmy._]
“I’m sure,” said the policeman, finding a little coin as large as a
sixpence, but much more valuable, which had suddenly appeared in his
great palm, “I’m glad you’ve come, sir! I was worrying what to do!”
“Oh, you needn’t worry!” said Jimmy kindly again; then, with a pained
look, he added, “It’s not so serious as it looks!”
He almost broke down, but he struggled manfully, and the policeman
followed him with solemn respect.
“It will be all right. It’s over-work.”
He turned to Higginson and said with pathetic reverence, “Come, dad,”
and he exercised upon the Professor’s arm so authoritative a grip that
instinctively that Philosopher rose.
Conflicting doubts and fears were in that academic mind, and when the
doubts and fears in the academic mind run not in one current, then is
the academic mind so confused that it is impotent. If he fought or
struggled he would be arrested. If he was arrested and in the hands
of the law there might come out at any moment ... oh, Lord! and if he
acquiesced—what then? What would that young fiend do to him? Where
would he take him? Between the two he did nothing, but stood helpless
there, hating Jimmy, hating the whole organisation of British credit,
hating its cheque books and its signatures, hating the majestic fabric
of his country’s law, hating its millions, hating the wretched mass of
poverty that waited tip-toe and expectant outside, and now and then
peeped in through the swing-doors.
As Jimmy led the older man out firmly by the arm the little mob would
have followed. But the policeman who has touched coin is a different
animal from a policeman before feeding time. He savagely struck at
the dirty lads and frowsy women who made up the little assembly, and
cleared them off in loud tones, aiming a violent kick which just missed
the little child who dodged it. The gentlemen must be left in peace.
He touched his helmet again to the said gentlemen. He very tactfully
sauntered slowly behind as Jimmy hurried his prize rapidly down the
alley and into the broad street outside.
A quarter of a mile away, or a little more, the swell crowd would be
coming out of Galton’s. Five minutes in the open street with a gowned,
hatless figure would mean another crowd. Jimmy decided again with
admirable rapidity.
“Come into the Rockingham with me,” he said, still keeping his arm
tightly linked in the Professor’s.
“To the where?” said Mr. Higginson, recognising the name. “What do you
want with me?” He was not exactly dragging back, but sending signals of
resistance through the nervous gestures he made.
“Simply to talk with you; only ten minutes, Mr. Brassington.”
“I am not Brassington.”
“Yes. I know. At least, I must see you for ten minutes,” said Jimmy,
rapidly making for the fine great portal of the Rockingham. That great
portal meant safety and retreat, and it was not one hundred yards up
the broad pavement.
Professor Higginson yielded. They went past the magnificent porter,
through the lounge; they were stared at a little, but no more.
Jimmy took his capture to a corner of the smoking-room, sat him down in
comfort, and asked him what he drank.
The Professor, with a confused memory of a recent experience, muttered,
“A little ale,” but when it came he did not drink it, for ale was
something which he could not touch. Jimmy, drinking brandy, spoke to
him in a low tone, and with enormous earnestness.
“Professor Higginson,” he began, “there’s been some bad mistake, some
very bad mistake.”
“I don’t understand what you mean,” said Professor Higginson doggedly.
“Good heavens!” said Jimmy, really startled, and looking him full in
the face. “You mean to say you don’t....”
“I lost my memory,” muttered Professor Higginson savagely, looking at
the floor, “I should have thought you would have heard about it. I
lost it,” he said, with rising voice and passion, “after the brutal
treatment——”
“Oh, then, you remember that!” said Jimmy coolly.
“Dimly,” replied the Professor through his set teeth. He was getting to
feel ugly. “Very dimly. And after that my memory fails altogether.”
“Well,” said Jimmy, leaning back at his ease, and drinking his
brandy, “I’ll refresh it for you. We gave you your cheque book, Mr.
Brassington——”
“I tell you my name’s not Brassington,” whispered the Professor in a
mixture of anger and fear. “If you talk like that at the top of your
voice someone’ll hear you!”
“You’re not Mr. Brassington?” said Jimmy, eyeing him steadily. “That’s
what you said on the night when you—when you lost your memory.”
“Is it?” answered the Philosopher sullenly. “Then I told the truth.
Damn it all, man,” he said, exploding, “isn’t it plain who I am? Didn’t
you see the people in that room? And don’t you” (here a recollection of
his own importance swelled him), “don’t you know what my position is in
the Guelph University?”
“Certainly, Professor Higginson,” said Jimmy, in exactly the same
tone in which he had said “Mr. Brassington” a minute before. “I quite
understand. Unfortunately, during that terrible mental trouble of yours
you signed something——”
“Then it doesn’t count,” said Professor Higginson, shaking his head
very rapidly from side to side like a dog coming out of a pond, “it
doesn’t count!” he said again in a still higher tone, “it doesn’t
count! I won’t have it! I don’t understand a word you say!” and he sank
back with every symptom of exhaustion.
“There’s nothing to get nervous about, Professor Higginson,” said Jimmy
quietly, as he leant forward to emphasise his words. “Supposing you
did sign something, it wouldn’t be any harm, would it? As a matter of
fact, you signed a cheque——”
“Doesn’t count!” said Professor Higginson, staring in front of him, and
beginning to get a little yellow.
“No, of course it doesn’t,” said Jimmy soothingly, “but it was Mr.
Brassington’s cheque.”
“I don’t believe it!” said Professor Higginson, still yellower, “and it
doesn’t count, anyhow! I’ve taken legal advice, and I know it doesn’t
count!”
“Oh, you’ve taken legal advice—about something you don’t remember?”
said Jimmy with a curious smile. “However, it’s silly to go on like
this. The point is,” he added rather earnestly, “that that cheque was
made out to me.”
“Then, I’ve got you!” said the worthy Don triumphantly, though in truth
he had but the vaguest idea of how or why, but he wanted to keep his
end up in general, and he thought the phrase was useful.
“Yes,” said Jimmy, with a glance of quiet affection and control, “and
I’ve got _you_; and what’s more, I’ve got a witness. Your unfortunate
loss of memory prevents your knowing that, Professor Higginson.”
The Professor’s lips were framing once more the ritual formula, “It
doesn’t count,” when his eyes fixed with a horrid stare upon the short
but pleasing figure of Mr. Kirby, which walked into the room, nodded
genially at him, then as genially at Jimmy.
The solicitor drew up a chair and sat down before the two men.
“Didn’t know you knew each other,” he said in his cheerful, rather
jerky voice.
“We don’t” had almost framed itself on the Professor’s lips, when
he thought better of it, and to his horror heard Jimmy say that the
Professor and he had met on board ship in the Mediterranean some years
ago—and how glad he was to come across him again.
“It is a funny thing how small the world is,” said Mr. Kirby simply.
“You meet a man under one set of circumstances, and you get to know him
quite intimately—so that you will remember him all your life—and then
you think never to see him again, when he turns up quite unexpectedly,
doesn’t he?... You know Mr. Brassington?” he added genially, looking at
the Professor.
“I—I—I—I know the name,” said the wretched man.
“Oh, you must know the man himself,” said Mr. Kirby in his heartiest
manner. “He’s one of the best men in your town, and he’s got a
particular devotion to intellectual things, you know. _You_ know him, I
think?” he continued, turning round to the younger man.
“Yes,” said Jimmy solemnly, “yes; at least, I don’t know that I ever
met Mr. Brassington, but I was at college with his son, you know that,
Mr. Kirby.”
“You don’t know him?” said Mr. Kirby, in mild astonishment. “Well,
you’ll be glad to meet him, he likes young men; and between you and me,
_he’s a useful kind of man to know_. You know his son? I’m sure he’s
talked of you often enough! I ought to remember _that_!”
Jimmy winced. There was an interval of silence, during which all three
men were occupied apparently with idle thoughts. It was broken by Mr.
Kirby saying, as he looked at both his acquaintances in turn—
“Mr. Brassington and his son are in the hotel now. I’ll go and fetch
them.”
CHAPTER XVIII.
_In which the Green Overcoat triumphs and
comes home_.
In a couple of minutes Mr. Kirby returned. He had Mr. Brassington
closely locked by the right arm, and was walking easily with him into
the room. Booby sheepishly followed.
“Mr. McAuley,” said Mr. Kirby genially, “this is Mr. Brassington.”
Young men do not control their faces well (unless they are the sons of
scoundrels and have inherited their fathers’ talents). Jimmy looked
exactly like a man who knows nothing of the sea and has just come to
the lump on the bar.
Mr. Brassington gave a very violent movement, which Mr. Kirby, his arm
securely linked in his friend’s, checked with a wrench of iron.
“You don’t know Professor Higginson, I think, do you, Brassington?”
[Illustration: _“Mr. McAuley,” said Mr. Kirby genially, “this is Mr.
Brassington.”_]
He introduced the two men, and the Philosopher knew more of the
Merchant than the Merchant did of the Philosopher.
“And now,” continued Mr. Kirby pleasantly, but a little pompously (it
was not in his nature to be pompous, but the occasion needed it), “now
we all go upstairs. I’ve asked one of Mr. McAuley’s friends to dinner.
He is also a friend of yours, Mr. Algernon,” he said, turning to Booby
kindly. “I don’t know him myself, but Mr. McAuley vouches for him,
and that ought to be enough for us, eh? By the way, just before we
dine, would you mind coming into my sitting-room, all of you, there’s
something I want to discuss—something that you all want to hear, I’m
sure, something political,” he added, lest panic should seize the more
guilty of the tribe.
He led the procession upstairs. Melba was waiting in the hall. Jimmy
picked him up on the way, and squeezed his hand for courage.
They all filed into Mr. Kirby’s private sitting-room, and they found it
conveniently large.
As for their host, he began fussing about like a man who is arranging
a meeting of directors, and finally took his seat at the head of the
large table.
“I think you’d better sit here, Brassington,” he said, pointing to
a chair on his right. “And you, Professor Higginson, would you come
here?” pointing to the chair upon his left. “The rest,” he added
abruptly, “can sit where they like. My lord! it’s beginning to rain!”
They sat awkwardly round him. Mr. Brassington, at least, was used
enough to his irrelevancy not to notice the last remark, but Professor
Higginson stared. He had had enough to do with mental aberration in the
last few days; he didn’t want any more of it.
“It’s beginning to rain,” continued Mr. Kirby, turning to Mr.
Brassington, “and I’m sure you didn’t bring your Overcoat. It’s May,
and you didn’t think you’d want it. Well, I’ve taken the liberty of an
old friend, and I’ve got it here; it’s hanging up.” He jerked his head
backwards.
They followed his gesture with their eyes, and sure enough the Green
Overcoat was hanging there ponderously and silently upon a peg. It had
one will and one purpose, and it had accomplished it: it had found its
master.
“You’re a careless fellow, Brassington,” said Kirby, hitting that
Capitalist rather affectedly upon the shoulder. “Do you know you left
your cheque book in the pocket?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Brassington not very pleasantly, “I did.”
Mr. Kirby left not a moment for thought.
“Well, gentlemen, I haven’t come to talk about that. I’ve come to give
you some good news. I saw Hogg this morning. You all know Hogg? He’s
the man who handles the dibs at Westminster. He’s a really good fellow,
collects stuffed frogs, has hundreds of ’em! Well, they’ve done the
straight thing at last, and” (turning to Mr. Brassington) “they’ve put
you in the Birthday Honours, Brassington!”
Mr. Brassington jumped.
“It’s a Baronetcy!”
Then at last Mr. Kirby was silent.
It grew clearer and clearer to Mr. Brassington that the presence of all
these gentlemen round the table was not needed; but in the course of
the next few minutes he had cause to change his mind.
Professor Higginson, as the only elderly man present, thought it was
his duty to say, “I congratulate you, sir,” to which Brassington
answered shortly, “Yes.”
Mr. Kirby stroked his chin.
“Professor Higginson,” he said pleasantly, “why did you forge that
cheque?”
“_Wha—_” half gasped, half roared the Philosopher, and then he made a
great gulping noise with his throat.
The clock on the mantelshelf ticked loudly. Jimmy tried to sit still.
Mr. Brassington didn’t try to do anything of the sort. He had half
risen, when Mr. Kirby with a firm hand pushed him back into his chair.
For a minute nothing was said. Mr. Kirby occupied the minute by tapping
slowly at intervals with his fountain pen upon the table. At the end of
the interval Professor Higginson saved himself by speech.
He pushed his chair back from him, and stood up as a man does to
address the Flap-Doodles at a political meeting.
“Mr. Brassington,” he said, ignoring all the others, “it was I who
forged your name. I was _imprisoned_, I was tortured, I was constrained
by these” (and his voice trembled as he pointed to Jimmy and Melba),
“these two young scoundrels, sir, these——”
“That’ll do, Professor Higginson,” said Mr. Kirby, “it’s actionable.”
And at that dread word from a lawyer the Professor sat down defeated.
“Kirby,” said Mr. Brassington, turning to his friend, addressing him
alone, and trying to speak without excitement in a low tone, “I don’t
understand.”
“No, Brassington, you wouldn’t,” said Kirby kindly, turning as
familiarly to him. “You see, Professor Higginson here borrowed your
coat.”
“He——?” began Mr. Brassington explosively.
“Yes, yes,” continued Mr. Kirby, “don’t mix up big things with little,
that’s what he did—any man would have done it. It was a terrible night,
and someone had taken his cape. He just borrowed your coat. It was that
night at Perkin’s, you remember? The night you were going to Belgium
and didn’t—ten days ago?”
“Oh, yes, I remember well enough,” said Mr. Brassington bitterly.
“Well, there you are,” said Mr. Kirby with the utmost simplicity.
“It’s all quite natural. Just a misunderstanding. Always happening.
_They_ thought _he_ was _you_. Eh? So, why! they just took him off and
kidnapped him. That’s all!”
All this explanation Mr. Kirby delivered in the easy tones of the man
of the world who is setting things to rights and preventing hysterical
people from tearing each other’s eyes out.
“There you are,” went on Mr. Kirby, flourishing his hands gently in
front of him, “there you are! Mr. McAuley couldn’t get his money.
Thought he’d got you. Cheque book, no conscious fraud....”
Here Mr. Brassington was no longer to be controlled. He pushed back
his chair, leant over the table, looked at poor Jimmy with a Day of
Judgment look, and said with intense determination—
“You shall answer for it, sir, and I will not listen to your father or
to your friends.”
Mr. Kirby looked up at the ceiling, then he looked straight down the
table, then he looked up at Mr. Brassington, and Mr. Brassington sat
down.
“Brassington,” said Kirby, when he had got his audience, “you have no
action against Mr. McAuley, your action is against Professor Higginson.
If you bring it, Professor Higginson is ruined, and your son is
besmirched, and you look a fool, and the Government has done with you;
_and_, Brassington, remember that you owed that money.”
“I did nothing of the sort,” said the merchant sternly.
“Father,” said the wretched Booby, “I’d won more than that off Jimmy, I
had, really! And when I lost back again, unless he’d been paid I don’t
know what would have happened. I’d have cut my throat, father,” said
Booby.
He meant it, but it was exceedingly unlikely.
James McAuley for the first time defended his honour.
“Upon my soul, sir, I thought that I was dealing with you, and, good
God, if a debt....”
Mr. Kirby intervened.
“Be quiet, Mr. McAuley,” he said authoritatively, “you are a young man,
and I am trying to save you. Brassington,” he continued, turning to his
friend, and still talking in a strict, authoritative tone, “the money
is irrecoverable. Your son had won it, and his winnings had gone in
University debts. I know what they are. His friend won it back—he was
still a loser, mind—and at once he settled debts of his own, which he
could not bear. You have nothing to recover but revenge, and if you
take that revenge you publicly ruin your own son, you make yourself a
laughing stock, you throw away your future honours and his, and you
disgrace a man of high Academic distinction whom you know perfectly
well to have acted only weakly and foolishly. You or I might have acted
in precisely the same fashion. _He_ has not had a penny of your money.”
“I am the loser,” said Mr. Brassington quietly. “I have lost through
ridicule and I have lost materially—I have lost Two Thousand Pounds.”
“The Government,” said Mr. Kirby, with a sudden change of tone to the
common-place, “inform me, Brassington, that you’ve planned a very
generous act. They inform me—anyhow, Hogg informed me this morning,
or, to be more accurate, I informed Hogg—that, as the most prominent
citizen of Ormeston, you have put Ten Thousand Pounds at the disposal
of Professor Higginson, whose present fame throughout the world” (he
bowed pleasantly to the Don, who was fool enough to bow in return) “I
need not—er—dwell upon—you have put Ten Thousand Pounds, I say, at
his disposal for Research work in the magnificent field of Subliminal
Intimations of a Future Life, in which he is at this moment our chief
pioneer.”
“I?” said the bewildered Brassington, catching the table. “I promised
Professor Higginson £10,000 for Research Work?”
“Yes, _you_,” said Mr. Kirby firmly; “it’ll be in the papers to-morrow,
and very right the Government were,” he continued, “to recognise
generosity of that sort by a Baronetcy! Hogg told me he heard it was
only a thousand or two, but I gave him the real figures.”
“But I never——” began Mr. Brassington.
“Well, there you are,” interrupted Mr. Kirby in a matter-of-fact tone.
“They think it, and that’s the important thing. _You_, of course,”
and here he turned to Professor Higginson, “_you_ will never see that
money. It isn’t there.”
“No,” said the Professor humbly.
A German in the livery of Cinderella’s coachmen solemnly entered the
room and told them in broken English that the dinner was served.
Mr. Kirby rose briskly, and they all rose with him.
He went to the Green Overcoat, held it up before him with both hands,
and said to Mr. Brassington—
“Now, Brassington, which is it to be?”
The Merchant, not knowing what he did, slipped into the familiar
garment.
How warm was its fur, how ancient its traditional comfort about his
person! What a companion!
“I leave it to you, Kirby,” he said in a changed voice. “I’ve only to
move and I shall do harm all round, and if I sit tight I save eight
thousand pounds—and I win.”
They were moving to the door, when suddenly Mr. Brassington added—
“Good Heavens! what am I doing in this coat? I thought I was going out!”
“Never mind,” said Mr. Kirby, “take it off again. Familiar things
remain. They are the only things that do.”
And sure enough the bargain held.
* * * * *
Now as to what followed, Reader, or as I hope Readers (for it would be
a pity to have only one), I am too tired to tell you much, and there is
also an excellent rule that when you’ve done telling a story you should
tack nothing on.
How the miserable Professor was deluged with begging letters; how he
nearly went mad until Babcock suggested a plan; how that plan was to
pretend that he had left all the ten thousand pounds to the University
upon his death and could not touch it; how his colleagues marvelled
that with this new fortune he went on plodding as industriously as
ever; how Sir John Brassington secretly but thoroughly enjoyed his
Baronetcy; how Mr. Kirby delivered three addresses for nothing upon
Racial Problems, two in Ormeston and one in the East End of London; how
Professor Higginson was compelled for many years to review the wildest
books about spooks, and to lecture until he was as thin as a rail
(often for nothing) upon the same subject—all these things you will
have to read in some other book, which I most certainly do not mean to
write, and which I do not think anybody else will write for you.
How the Guelph University looked when it found there was no Ten
Thousand Pounds at all after Professor Higginson’s death none of us
know, for the old idiot is not yet dead. How they will look does not
matter in the least, for the whole boiling of them are only people in a
story, and there is an end of them.
THE END.
J. W. Arrowsmith Ltd., Printers, Quay Street, Bristol, England.
Transcriber Notes
p15 Capitalised “Towards” in (great problem. Towards).
p34 Added period to the end of (Mr. Higginson, hesitating.)
p35 “k cked” changed to (kicked out at Melba).
p59 Added period to end of (Come back here with me.)
p73 Removed d from skreedling (skreeling for dear life)
p79 Removed quotes after “added,” at (he added, turning).
p93 “of” changed to (off his bed and tied).
p95 Added period to end of (door stood wide open.)
p114 Period replaced question mark in (I’m Martha Randle.)
p135 “Geoge” changed to (find George Babcock waiting).
p155 Added second a in Kalamazoo (turpitude of Kalamazoo)
p165 Single close quote removed (far too great, etc., etc.”)
p198 Added period to end of (which God permits on earth.)
p202 Added apostrophe (Them’s superstition!)
p229 Added period to end of (into a very pretty scheme.)
p261 Added period to end of (Mr. Kirby nodded agreeably.)
p262 Added period to Mr (at the door, when Mr. Kirby).
p294 “hestitate” changed to (he did hesitate, but).
p308 “lesiure” changed to (once at leisure and unconstrained).
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