 CHAPTER 9 IN WHICH THE GREEN OVERCOAT BEGINS TO ASSERD 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 hot 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 Hunts 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 fulfillment 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 neighboring windows, and to which I must suppose that he had upon various occasions be taken 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 checkbook. 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 checkbooks. He knew indeed that with a checkbook 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 a 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 judgment, he said. It's a judgment, 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, or it was a place where those who have few friends can always find a friend, the residence of Mr. Montagu, financier and master of those mean streets, and as he limped carrying his booty under his arm he cursed. 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 neighbors. For a moment the man with the broken nose hesitated. The day was extremely young. Mr. Montagu might not care to be aroused. It was important for him, and for many like him, that he should keep Mr. Montagu'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 open to crack and a very short man, very old, humpbacked, 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 humbly beg pardon, began the man with the broken nose, making of the green overcoat a sort of shield and offering at once. I do humbly beg pardon, Mr. Montague, but I thought, «Kirth, what you thought!» said the bearer of that ancient crusading name in a voice so husky it could hardly be heard. «Kirth, 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 a lair of a snake. I humbly 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 tiptoe and lit a flaring unprotected gas jet. The only window giving upon that passage was boarded. «Take it, enter the light, Mr. Montague! Take it, enter the light!» said the vista 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 but 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 ormiston 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 you 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-ginny 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 distill more copiously than any men on earth, for of all men upon 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 trimmer 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 said 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 check-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 counter-foils 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. End of Chapter 9. Chapter 10, 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 undwinking 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 shriveled 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 preemptory order and a voice which he knew. Mr. Montague coaxed on, with quiet 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 break the door, you 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 a 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 folks never are. I believe you sleep dinnertime 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, You will have your fun! He led the two men in. It was curious to note how the Englishmen in 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 had to wipe his boots, but there was no mat. Mr. Montague sniffed and smiled, or sneered, or sneered and smiled. Mr., he said to the second of the two, I don't know your 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 have 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 Armiston 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 property 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. Swelp. 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 recognized 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 you kick that with your foot now? Come, don't you? He whispered through his defective throat imploringly, don't you there? It's right as wrecks. May I die to Shirley? 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 had warned him. He picked up that book and opened it. It was a copy of Halladon's History of Ormiston. 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 wider paper crinkly and crisp, unmistakable. Mr. Ferguson pulled out a five-pound note. Wish I may begin the husky old voice almost inaudibly, and then ceased. Mr. Ferguson turned round and winked enormously. Contrary wise, Sammy, which you meant 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 you're bright, he whispered eagerly. Ah, I know you would, said the big midlander with a good-humored 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 you, Mr. Ferguson, sir. I won't. Bright. I did it to blight a witter. 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 diamonds we wouldn't. But we're bound to go the bank, you know, he added in his duty of 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 to oblige. We know, Sammy, said the big man, winking again ponderously, that's a byblow, 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, Grin Dossel, 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 pocketbook. We're after something particular. Now you'll know if anyone does, and no harm will come to you, Samuel, so think. You've heard of Mr. Brassington? Mr. Montague was about to shake his head when he suddenly remembered that everyone in Ormiston knew Mr. Brassington, and instead of shaking his head, he nodded abstractedly. All his narrow keen mind was full of the name Brassington, which he had seen written so bold and large on the cover of the rich check-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 hurled 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 all us 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. As we'd have looked upstairs,' he added, knowingly. Mr. Montague smiled and replied, a genuine smile. The policeman 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 comparison. "'Blarsed 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 you should see any thing 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'd lyse a bed,' he said. Then he winked sharply, like a bird, and Mr. Ferguson was thoroughly content. One last piece of ritual had begun 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 there, 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 dittos 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 prepping 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. He cursed it lengthily, and with a nasty voice in a language that was 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. He sat, a skeleton effigy with his two large bearded head, draped only in the aged night-shirt of his solitude, and by I know not what disastrous processes of the mind now shrink from, now turn towards, the pieces of green cloth lined 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, 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 sentries, 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 figured, and felt sacrilegious as he did so, the right-hand pocket. He touched within it the checkbook. There arose in him almost simultaneously a vision of what one could do with the checkbook of a really wealthy man, a man with a large balance for his private whims, a man known to be generously careless. Then 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 checkbook, 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 ramshackled 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 Ormiston 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 Ormiston, 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 crapless than ever. And as the aged receiver, with a few hoarse words in his low tones, hended 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 dreadmaster, 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 half-penny and went right to the lid-gate, 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. But 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 Lipsky's? The tram passed by the door of that little clothes-shop, a pole 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 slopshop. The elder man lent 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 color. It was like cheese changing to chalk. Va said the pole. Not keep it. Why not? Keep it. Sell it. That's business. Keep it as long as should be, and sell it at the best price. Not keep it. Them superstition. Mr. Montague said no more. He had done his duty. Whatever the pole might suffer, if my chance that green overcoat should come his way, his conscience was clear. The office which Crusaders owed 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 Linn Gate 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. End of Chapter 10. Chapter 11 of the green overcoat by Halaire Belarc. This recording is in the public domain. Chapter 11, 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 rope maker, passed various terms in jail under various aliases, gone to sea, naturalized 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 Ormiston labor exchange. He was paid, by results, two shillings six pence for each conviction, to see that the poor did not cheat the higher officials of that invaluable public service to worm out the true history of applicants at the exchange, and to provide secret evidence against them that they might be imprisoned and blacklisted 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 disturbed the great men of our time as well as wandering men bearing alien coats, there at the root of modern affairs. The more he thought of it the more did James determine, by the feel, that the bundle was closed. Why, then his market was a shop in the lid gate, 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 would 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 lulled 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 forever 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 too quid, and played properly it might be three. 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 checkbook, with four checks 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 checkbook. 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 Lidgate. Mr. Montague might have spared his fears. The day was early. James had as yet no pints. 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, dammer. 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 Lidgate already. Could a man be drunk in the flush of morning and without liquor? May drink dull 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 gentlemen 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 a brethren. Even 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 incidentally 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 hoovering over that dirty counter in the slums, as they hover over the tables of politicians when similar bargains are tore in the 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 bedders, 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 Lippi. 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. Lippi had reproached himself. Lippi 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. Lippi seized it, guiltily, furtively, violently, and without a word he was on his way back to his shop. But as for James he went on his way, noting suddenly the pleasantness of the morning, that excellent watcher and checker, under the labor exchange of Ormiston, that pillar of free labor, 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 Lippi was holding the baby. In the few steps to his shop, the pole had no time to repay a pint, 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... Lippi dismissed the superstitious fear. He opened the bundle he gazed on the sacred green thing. He felt the pockets, of course, he saw the checkbook and the wealthy name, he shuddered. And 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 bedosing, waking continually in starch from disordered dreams of unaccountable vengeance. The next day, the Friday, Lippi 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 cared for him was for calling a doctor. All Monday Lippi, 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 mine 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 selected 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, Lippi woke refreshed in body that 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 Lippi listened carefully at the door, and thought he knew the voice. The voice you will find, reader-kin, was that of Mr. Kirby, and Mr. Kirby was asking in the most direct fashion possible for the coat, for the green overcoat. He had no bones about it. He put it square. Very hurriedly did Lippi dress, and very hurriedly, weak as he was, did he totter down the stairs that Tuesday morning. END OF CHAPTER XI. CHAPTER XII. In which the reader-kin will, if he has an ounce of brains, begin to catch the inevitable denouement of the embryo. Monday is the first working day of the week, and upon Monday, at least on some Mondays, Mr. Kirby actually went into 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 some time 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 Ormiston, 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 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 homes or his own. Fortune favored 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-humored 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. Apostlethoit. 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 Apostlethoit of old, a man of grievances, a man whom it was the lawrous 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 Ormiston, 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 in value, and now he wished he hadn't. For as Mr. Apostlethoit 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 vigor. 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, in his eyes which were reddish in color, 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 a determined chin a trifle forward, and said with the wave of his hand, Press it down, Mr. Apostlethrate, I'm entirely at your service. I'll not sit down, roared the redoubtable Apostlethrate. 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. Apostlethrate, like most of his kind, was rather relieved by insults than fired by them. 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 whole 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 colors of the architect the elevation in 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 grey stones, and he chuckled. You needn't laugh, Kirby, thundered the aged Possethwaite. Oh, you'll laugh the other side of your mouth before I've done. Rwound, Kirby, smashed, destroyed, and no clue. Mr. Kirby put up his hand. Please, Mr. Possethwaite, please, he said. If the place has burnt down I congratulate you. Tisn't, snapped Possethwaite. Well, if it's partially burnt down all the better, they're more ready to pay when, not burnt at all, snarled Mr. Possethwaite loudly, broken, destroyed, smashed, went there this morning, didn't find anybody. They'd gone out, said Mr. Kirby, with the 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. Possethwaite. 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 who persuaded me. Mr. Possethwaite, 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 Macaulay. He's perfectly all right. Said he wanted to paint with his friend. I know his father, a big doctor in London. Boy was at Cambridge. They're all right as rain, Possethwaite. 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. Possethwaite. 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 Possethwaite 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 to the rafters as well. Yet it is, though, that were the worst and the last of his grievances. Where are those young scoundrels? My dear Mr. Possethwaite, said the lawyer swobbly, 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 McCauley, paid you for the month in advance. You've no proof that they did the damage. They're responsible, said Mr. Possethwaite 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. Possethwaite, 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 them. I have 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. Possethwaite's follies. They were almost the only thing in his profession which amused him. Well, what are 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. Possethwaite was somewhat mollified. This 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, moldy 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 Possethwaite 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 chair's line 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. Possethwaite, outside on the ground. Lot of sheets tied to it, like the tail of a kite. Wax kites have no tails, murmured Mr. Kirby. He must have thrown it. Who? Has Mr. Possethwaite eagerly? I don't know, said Mr. Kirby with charming innocence. You're making a fool of me, said old Mr. Possethwaite, 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 it once. I'll hear the day after tomorrow, and I'll let you know. The day after tomorrow? Shrieked old Mr. Possethwaite. And the house right open and anyone coming in through that skylight? It be a charity, said the lawyer. It will shelter the little birds. Mr. Kirby made to put his arm into the angry old man'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. Possethwaite's arm and taking him down the stairs. You ought to have a caretaker here for a day or two anyhow, Possethwaite, said Mr. Kirby as they reached the door. I know a man in a cottage here, I'll send him. Mr. Possethwaite 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 Macaulay today, went on the lawyer as they got into the taxi again and returned to Ormiston. By the way, what would you take for Greystone's Possethwaite? He knew what was coming. Mr. Possethwaite'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 pints, said Mr. Kirby, with more than usual gravity. Old Mr. Possethwaite disdained to reply. Town's growing, out that side, he said in a tone of a mince-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 realize. 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. Possethwaite, 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 differences, commission? Old Possethwaite 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 percent. He added half forgetfully. 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 vetch at place at all, unless some lunatic should clamor 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 a 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. Brassenton's coat, Brassenton's secret god, the green coat. Brassenton'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 masters who had called at Lauderdale that day and had asked too many questions about Mr. Brassenton's movements. Mr. Kirby smiled broadly and remembered suddenly the letting of Greystones some days before. How old Jack McCawley'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 embrolio 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 you 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 Gulf University here in Ormiston had been in that rough and tumble in Greystones. It had been a student's 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 Lutoche. Mention this tomorrow in the first hour. Return both essays. The second year worked in future to be combined with the medical. Announce this at the 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 afterthought. Asked the Senate next Monday to cancel Saturday afternoon, difficult hour. Remember Garden's number to ring up 637 Armiston Central. Mr. Kirby folded the paper in its original creases, put it back into his pocketbook, and stretched out for the university calendar, which was among the reference books on the 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 Grand, 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, Paulson, Gaunt, Baker, Higginson, Rolls. Then he bethought him which of these comic things the enfranchised and cultured Poletariat 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 Ormiston, 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 Possilthraith'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 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 the 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 the word you're saying, Kirby, shouted Mr. Brassington. There's been forgery to you here. Forgery, someone's been forging my name. 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, again Mr. Brassington savagely, then dragging from in her pocket an already dirty check and presenting it with 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 McCauley 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 using 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 McCauley, said Mr. Brassington, in a slow, deep tone, making the most of the long vow. 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 imputant 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 check, is he? Of course, said the inignant 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 the man these gentry'd 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 hear 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 to one side, thrust his hands into his pockets, and got the seated Mr. Brassington in the focus. No—or—yes, if you like, said Mr. Brassington. How long? Mr. Kirby put his hand before his face, and linked 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 sin 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 the collay this— Oded? 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 chapped collay 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 the collay 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 again, 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 businessmen, 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 roses, 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 counter-foil to that check? 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 have stopped all the remaining numbers in the checkbook. 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. How 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 was 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 dinners, 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 visualized young Macaulay quite carefully and clearly. He did these sorts 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 Macaulay again quite clearly. The fresh, vigorous, young Celtic face in 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 astounded those many million innocents who swallow our daily press. He went to the telephone and rang up two-four-six. Two-four-six answered very gruffly, and then suddenly appreciating that it was Mr. Kirby who was talking, two-four-six 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. Bessenton'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. Bessenton 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 short 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 of the local trust in crime. Men who came promoter dismissed the mighty perlise themselves, and these means 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 lunged well. He smoked half through the afternoon. With the evening he lunged off to his office before it should close to see if anything new awaited him there. And something did. Chapter 13 of The Green Overcoat by Hillar Belak This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 13, 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 requested 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 three seven 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 Perkins, 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, the subliminal thingum bobs. By process, only to 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, where at 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 Perkins. He had put it onto 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 Perkins' 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-omand scrapped were still in the empty house, were 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, pretended 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 routing gate, the beweated gravel path, and standing up gaunt and terrible before him the accursed house within its wasted grounds. He went stealthily to the door. It was locked. Still gazing over his shoulder with nervous precaution he made an effort to find some poster, 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 honor 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 you're at! He dropped the knife and lucked round. A sturdy fellow, short and thick-set, clothed in old bargy trousers and a p-jacket, and with the face of labor which the police call villainous in their reports was watching him unmoved. What you're at! he repeated the badly shaven lips. I—I was making an experiment, said Professor Higginson at random. You're was, said the thick-set man and spat. And now you're cut, Professor Higginson was dignified. My good man, he said. None of that, said the good man, advancing his face in an ugly fashion. I'll let you know I'm the caretaker. Look it! If there was a copper in this Saharia desert, I'd put him on ye for a tufer. Now, a tufer 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 p-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. Yes, you do, said the man. Then— That's the name of Mr. Kirby. And if you've since, you'll get to his offices before 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 in 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 pencils, or gazing at the ceiling. He had written private letters with his own hand, and addressed 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 to 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 professor, 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 halfway to the door to meet his visitor. He took him warmly by both hands as he made 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 minute 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 or 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's about a house. And here the professor stopped dead. Mr. Kirby watched him with crossed legs, joined fingertips, and a very hierarchical expression. Professor Higginson continued. I have an instinct, purely subliminal, mind you, Mr. Kirby nodded, that 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 had a sort of dream. Wait a moment, professor, said Mr. Kirby respectfully. We must get all this quite clear. At first I understand 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 the 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 particularly active in dreams, and I certainly did have a very vivid dream. But if your memory was wrong, said Mr. Kirby with a calculated, 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 center 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. 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 ABC of the science. Your reputation, said Mr. Kirby, would weigh more than that of any colleague, and the professor was gratified. You certainly understand, 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, today. 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 onto 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, today, burst out the Professor, opening his eyes suddenly and cutting short in his desperation, 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 supernatural impress that your firm were the agents. 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 marvelous sense of the atmosphere, of, 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 it over, only you see, he went on with a puzzle 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 house, unfinished, I think you said, he continued looking at his notes, except on the top floor where there was a studio. Now, Professor, in here he looked suddenly at his visitor. Can't you recollect any other details, some sort of faint impression? No, said Professor Higginson timidly. You must remember the circumstances were extraordinarily. For instance, said Mr. Kirby in perturbably, 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 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 them. 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, yes, I think I did see chairs, wooden chairs, and was the skylight broken? No, yes, possibly, very probably, floundered the Professor. 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 flash, 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 man said was, now the history of that house, he continued 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 Ormiston. 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, not 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, but we are called natural laws. Mr. Kirby, not at 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 of 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 have promised some friends to ask you to dine in London after your lecture. It was a great liberty, but they knew I lived in Ormiston. 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 chairs, uncarpeted, and all that sort of things that you would expect in a house of that kind. Yes, said Professor Higginson, flabbergasted. Well, well, said Mr. Kirby, more cheerful 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. End of Chapter 13