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 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 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.
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? Thems 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.