CHAPTER IV.
In which it is seen that University training fits one for a business career.
The dawn in the month of May comes much earlier than most well-to-do people imagine. It comes earlier than most people of the class which buys and reads novels know, and as by this time I can be quite certain that the reader has either bought, hired, borrowed, or stolen this enchanting tale, I feel safe in twitting him or her or it upon their ignorance.
The dawn in May comes so incredibly early that the man who makes anything of a night of it is not sleepy until broad daylight. Now, even those who have formed but a superficial acquaintance with the adventures of Professor Higginson will admit that he had made a night of it. Such a night as even the sacred height of Montmartre and the great transpontine world of London hardly know. Providence had not left him long to curse and despair in darkness bound to his chair. He was already exhausted, but he could still think and act, when he perceived that a sickly light was filling the room. So dawned upon him Tuesday, the third of May, a date of dreadful import for his soul.
It was then that the Psychologist remembered that his arms were free.
In that wide reading of his to which I have several times alluded, and which replaced for him the coarser experiences of life. Professor Higginson had learned of Empire Builders and strong men who with no instrument but their good Saxon teeth had severed the most dreadful fetters. How then should he fail, whose two hands were at liberty, to divest himself of his mere hempen bonds?
He cursed himself for a fool—in modulated internal language—for not having thought of the thing before.
He first surveyed all that his eyes could gather. The box cord surrounded the Green Overcoat with a sevenfold stricture. It was continuous. It curled round the rungs and the legs of the chair, it tightly grasped his ankles and his knees. Somewhere or other it was knotted, and he must find that knot.
Heaven, or (as the Professor preferred to believe) Development has given to the human arm and hand an astonishing latitude and choice of movement. Since the knot wasn't in sight, it must be behind him. He felt gingerly along the cord with either hand, so far as either hand would reach, but found it not.
He next decided that the knot must be beneath him. The chair had wide arms, to which his body was strictly bound. He bent as far as he could first to one side and then to the other, but he could discover no knot upon the seat beneath.
Once more he leant backwards (at some considerable expense of pain), and with the extreme tip of his right middle finger just managed to touch a lower rung at the back of the chair; there at last he found the accursed tangle. There he could tickle the outer edge of the damnable nexus of rope. There was the knot! Just out of reach!
In one strenuous and manly attempt to add one inch to his reach in that direction, he toppled the chair backwards and fell, striking the back of his head heavily against the floor.
The Professor was not pleased. He was horribly hurt, and for a moment he lay believing that all things had come to an end. But human instinct, fertile in resource, awoke in him. He swung his head and shoulders upwards spasmodically in a desperate effort to redress himself. Finding that useless, he deliberately turned over on his side, from this on to his knees, and so upon all fours, with the chair still tightly bound to him and riding him like a castle.
Having attained that honourable position— which is by all the dogmas of all the Universities the original attitude of our remote ancestors—he made a discovery.
In this native posture he was capable of progression, of progression with the chair burdening his back like the shell of a tortoise, and with his legs dragged numbly after him, but still of progression, for he could put one hand before the other after the fashion of a wounded bear, and so drag the remainder of his person in their wake.
In this fashion, as the light gradually broadened on the filthy and deserted apartment. Professor Higginson began an odyssey painful and slow all over the floor of his prison. He inspected its utmost corners in search of something sharp wherewith to cut the cord, but nothing sharp was to be found.
In this fashion Professor Higginson began an odyssey.
It was broad daylight by the time he had completed his circumnavigation and detailed survey. In the half light he had hoped that the window might give upon the garden; now that everything was fully revealed by the dawn, he was disappointed. The one window, as he cricked his neck to look up at it, gave upon nothing better than the brick wall of a narrow, dirty backyard. He slowly retraced his steps, or rather spoor, to the position he had originally occupied, and then with infinite labour, grabbing at the edge and legs of the table, tilted the chair right side uppermost, and resumed the position of Man Enthroned.
He was exhausted.
He was exhausted; but the new day always brings some kind of vigour in its train, and the Professor began once more to think and to determine, though the soul within him was a wet rag and his morale wholly gone. He was angry, so far as a man can be properly angry when weakened by such extremes of ill. He hated now not only those two young men, but all men. He would be free. He had a right to freedom. He would recover his own freedom by whatever means, and when he had recovered it, then he would do dreadful deeds!
There was no sound in the great lonely house. The rain outside had ceased. The ridiculous birds, grossly ignorant of his sorrows, were skreedling for dear life like ungreased cartwheels. It was a moment when wickedness has power, and oh! Professor Higginson, with firmer face than ever he had yet set, made up his mind to be free.. … Once free, he would undo all ill and wreak his vengeance.
He first took up from the table that note signed John Brassington in strong, swift English writing. He scanned it long and well.
He next took up the cheque form that had been left him; he lifted it with a gesture of purpose too deliberate for such a character as his, and one that nothing but the most severe fortune could have bred in it.
He felt in a pocket for a bit of pencil, and then—this time not on all fours, but dragging himself round the edges of the table and the burden of the chair along with him—he made for the window.
The angels and the demons saw Professor Higginson do this dreadful thing! He put against the lowest pane (which he could well reach) the signed note of John Brassington. The pure light of heaven's day shone through it clear. He held firmly above it with one of his free hands the bottom left-hand corner of the cheque form, and he traced, Professor Higginson traced, he traced lightly and carefully with the pencil, he traced with cunning, with care, and with skill the "J"—and the "o"—and the "h"—and the "n," and the capital "B"—and the "r"—and the "a"—and the "s"—and all the rest of the business!
The Good Angels flew in despair to their own abode, leaving for the moment the luckless race of men. The Bad Ones, as I believe, crowded the room to suffocation; but to use mere mortal terms, Professor Higginson was alone with his wicked deed.
It was too late to retrace his steps. He had hardened his heart. With a series of ungainly hops, aided by the edge of the table, he regained the inkpot and the pen, and covered with a perfection surely unnatural the pencil tracing he had made. Professor Higginson had forged!
It would all come right. There was the "clearing" … and the thing called "stopping a cheque," and anyhow—damn it, or rather dash it, a man was of no use for a good cause until he was free. …. Yes, he had done right. He must be free first.. … Free, in spite of the bonds which cut him as he leant half forward, half sideways, with his eyes closed and his hands dropping on the arms of the chair … free to take good deep breaths … regular breaths, rather louder ones he thought—then, as men on active service go to sleep in the saddle, and sailors sleep standing at the helm from fatigue, so, bound and cramped, the Professor of Psychology and Specialist in Subliminal Consciousness in the Guelph University of Ormeston, England, slept.
When Professor Higginson awoke the birds had ceased their song and had gone off stealing food. The air was warm. A bright sun was shining upon the wall of the dirty courtyard. He pulled out his watch. It was a quarter to nine. He felt at once reposed and more acutely uncomfortable, fresher and yet more in pain from the bonds round his legs and middle, and less friendly with the hard chair that had been his shell and was now his unwanted seat. As he looked at the watch, he remembered having broken the glass of it sometime ago. He remembered a splinter of that glass running into his hand, and—marvellous creative influence of necessity even in the academic soul!—he remembered that glass could cut.
He felt like a Columbus. He wished he could patent such things. He began gingerly to lift the glass from the case of his watch. It broke, and I am sorry to say did what it had done before—it ran into his finger. He sucked the wound, but was willing to forget it in his new-found key to delivery. With a small fragment of the splintered thing he began very painfully sawing at a section of the rope that bound him. He might as well have tried to cut down a fifteen-year oak with a penknife. All things can be accomplished with labour at last, but the life of man is a flash.
He looked desperately at the window, and another dazzling conception struck him. Surely his brain was burgeoning under the heat of nourishing adversity! It occurred to him to break a window-pane!
He did so. The glass fell outward and crashed on the courtyard below. With desperate courage but infinite precautions, he pulled at a jagged piece that remained. Here was something much more like a knife! Triumphantly he began to saw away at the cords, and to his infinite relief the instrument made a rapid and increasing impression. A few seconds more at the most and he would have severed the section. He would have two ends, and then, as his new-born cunning told him, he had but to follow up and unroll them and he would be free. But just as the last strand was ready to give, as the biceps muscle of his arm was only just beginning to ache from the steady back and forth of his hand, he heard hateful voices upon the stairs, the loud trampling of four young and hardy booted feet upon the uncarpeted wood, the key turned in the lock, and Jimmy and Melba, if I may still so call them, occupied the entry.
With nervous and desperate fingers Professor Higginson was loosening as best he might the tangle of his now severed bonds, when they were upon him, and I greatly regret to say that the higher voiced of the two young men was guilty of the common-place phrase, "Ah! you would, would you?" accompanied by a sudden forced locking of the elbows behind, which, bitterly offensive as it was, had come to be almost as stale as it was offensive to the Pragmatist of Guelph University.
Even to Melba the Professor seemed a different man from the victim of a few hours before. He turned round savagely. He positively bit. In his wrath he said—
"Let me go, you young devil!"
Mr. James McAuley in that same scurried moment had seen and picked up the cheque. He echoed in graver tone—
"Let him go, Melba, don't be a fool! Mr. Brassington," he added, "you would really have been wiser to have done this last night. We had no intention to put any indignity upon you, but you know we had a right to our money. After all, we warned you. …"
Then, seeing the typewritten sheet unsigned, he said—
"It 's no good to us without this, Mr. Brassington."
Mr. Higginson, lowering and furtive like a caged cheetah, snarled and pulled the paper towards him. It was stamped with the business heading of the Brassington firm. It was brief and to the point:
"James McAuley, Esq.
"Dear Sir,
"After consultation with those best fitted to advise me, I have decided, though I still regard the necessity placed upon me as a grievous injustice, to liquidate my son's foolish debt.
"I enclose my cheque for £2,000, for which you will be good enough to send me a receipt in due form, and I am,
"Your obedient servant,
Then came the blank for signature. Professor Higginson with a very ugly face, uglier for his hours of torture, turned on the young men.
"I am to sign that, am I?"
"If you please, Mr. Brassington," said Jimmy unperturbed.
"Well, then, I 'll thank you to leave the room, you young fool, and your friend with you."
Melba and Jimmy looked at each other doubtfully.
"I cannot, will not do it," barked the wretched scientist, "if you stay here!"
"After all, Mr. Brassington, we had all this out last night"
"Yes, and I wouldn't do it until you were gone, would I?" said Professor Higginson, scoring a point.
"After all, he can't do anything through that window, Melba, can he? Let 's come out and wait. But I warn you, sir," he added," turning to the fallen man, "we shall hear all that you do, and we shall stop immediately outside the door."
"Go to Hell!" said Professor Higginson, using the phrase for the second time in his life, and after an interval of not less than twenty-three years.
Whereupon the young men retired, and the now hardened soul proceeded once again to trace, to pencil, and to sign.
"It 's ready!" he shouted to the door as his pen left the paper.
His tormentors re-entered and possessed themselves of the document, and then, though Melba remained an enemy, Jimmy's demeanour changed.
"Mr. Brassington," he said, "we are very much obliged to you, very much obliged, indeed."
"So you ought to be," said Professor Higginson suddenly.
"Henceforward I beg you will regard these premises as your own," said Jimmy.
With these words he suddenly caught the Professor down upon the chair, took that chair upon one side, Melba took it upon the other, and they held and carried the unfortunate man rapidly through the open door, up three flights of uncarpeted stairs, until, assuring him of the honesty of their intentions, they deposited him upon a landing opposite a comfortable-looking green baize door. Then they stood to recover their breath, still holding him tightly upon either side, while Jimmy as spokesman repeatedly assured him that they meant him no ill.
The now hardened soul proceeded to sign, to trace, to pencil, and to sign.
"It 's nothing but a necessary precaution, Mr. Brassington, we do assure you," he puffed. "You see, the cheque must be cleared. Not that we doubt your honour for a moment! You 'll find all you want in there. You can untie yourself now that you 've cut the rope, you know, and there 's everything a man can possibly want. It 's a solemn matter of honour between us, Mr. Brassington, that we 'll let you out the moment the cheque 's cleared. And there 's plenty of food and good wine, Mr. Brassington, really good wine"
"And ginger-ale, if you like the slops," added Melba; "a man like you would."
"We are very sorry," said Jimmy, by way of palliating the insult, "but you must see as well as we do that it has to be done. Not that we doubt your honour! Not for a moment!"
With these words he gave some mysterious signal to Melba. The baize door was swung open and a large oaken door within it was unbolted; the chair and the wretched man upon it were run rapidly through, the bolt shot, and Jimmy, standing outside, asked, as in duty bound—
"You 're not hurt? You 're all right?"
A hearty oath assured him that all was well. He tramped with his companion down the stairs, and Mr. Higginson was again a prisoner and alone.