CHAPTER IX.
In which the Green Overcoat begins to assert itself.
"And what," say you (very properly), "what of the Green Overcoat all this time? After all, it is the title of the book, and I am entitled to hear more about the title. I did not get this book to hear all about a hotch-potch of human beings, I got it to read about the Green Overcoat. What of the Green Overcoat?"
Softly! I bear it in mind.
The adventures of the Green Overcoat throughout those days, when it had taken vengeance upon the human beings who had separated it from its beloved master, may be simply told.
The police in this country know from hour to hour what we do and how we do it; if they were better educated, they would even be able to know why we do it. The travels of any object not honestly come by—if it remain at least in the hands of the poor—may be traced in good time'(by the conscientious historian who has access to Scotland Yard) as unerringly as a North Hants fox who, before entertaining the hunt, has been kept in a motor pit for three days.
When Professor Higginson had charged the Man with the Broken Nose with the task of restoring the Green Overcoat to its owner, and had generously prepaid the proletarian for his services upon that occasion, I regret to say that the citizen entrusted with the fulfilment of such a duty most shamefully neglected it.
He did indeed proceed a certain distance in the direction of Crampton Park under the open morning sun, whistling as he went, with the object of convincing his probably suspicious and certainly jealous comrades in the Shelter of his integrity. But when he had got to cover behind a row of cottages, the strange action to which he descended betrayed the baseness of his moral standard.
He no longer continued in the direction of Crampton Park: not he! He dodged at a brisk pace with the heavy thing upon his arm, zigzagging right and left through the streets of the slum-suburb, and soon left the houses for a deserted field which a blank wall hid from neighbouring windows, and to which I must suppose that he had upon various occasions betaken himself when he desired privacy in some adventure.
Seated upon a rubbish heap which adorned that plot of ground, the Man with the Broken Nose first very carefully felt in either pocket of the bargain, and found nothing but a cheque book.
He pulled it out and held it hesitatingly for a few moments in his stubby right hand.
The Man with the Broken Nose was not without his superstitions—superstitions common, I fear, to his class—and one of these was Cheque Books. He knew indeed that with a Cheque Book great things could be done, but he knew not how. He had not possession of the magic password, or of the trick whereby this powerful instrument governs the modern world. He wondered for a moment a little thickly in his early morning mind whether a price were given for such things. For himself he regretfully concluded it was a mystery. He put it back. But even as he did so something in the heap of rubbish gave way, he slipped, and was suddenly acutely conscious of a warm wet feeling in his right calf: it came from a broken bottle.
His leg in the slipping of the rubble had met the glass, and the glass had won; nor did that great Green Overcoat, all sumptuously lined with fur, give a hint of its dread amusement.
The blood was pouring severely from the wound. The Man with the Broken Nose had suffered accidents before; he knew that this might be serious. He lifted his trouser leg, saw the bad gash, and for a moment gently pressed the lips of the wound together.
"It's a jedgment!" he said. "It's a jedgment!" he repeated to himself.
But even so manifest a sign from On High would not deter him from his purpose. He tore from his shirt a strip wherewith to bind his leg, and limped with increasing pain back towards the streets of the town.
He was seeking a house not unknown to him, for it was a place where those who have few friends can always find a friend, the residence of a Mr. Montague, Financier and Master of those mean streets; and as he limped, carrying his booty upon his arm, he cursed.
The Green Overcoat seemed heavier and heavier.
The morning sun brought him no gladness. The Green Overcoat seemed heavier and heavier with every yard of his way, until at last he stood before a house like any other of those unhappy little houses wherein our industrial cities rot, save that its glass was a little dirtier, its doorstep more neglected, its paint more faded than that of its neighbours.
For a moment the Man with the Broken Nose hesitated. The day was extremely young. Mr. Montague might not care to be aroused. It was important for him and for many like him that he should keep Mr. Montague's good will. Then he remembered that in a little time the Knocker-up would come his rounds, and that that wretched street of slaves would wake to work for the rich in the city.
The thought decided him. He rapped gently with his knuckles on the ground floor window. There was no response. He rapped a second time. A terse but unpleasant oath assured him that he had aroused whoever slept therein. A minute or two later he heard shuffling slippers moving cautiously across the passage. The door was opened a crack, and a very short man, very old, hump-backed one would almost say, with a beard of prodigious growth and beastliness tucked into a dressing-gown more greasy than the beard, stood in the darkness behind the half-open door.
"I do 'umbly beg pardon," began the Man with the Broken Nose, making of the Green Overcoat a sort of shield and offering at once. "I do 'umbly beg pardon, Mr. Montague, but I thought"
"Curth what you thought!" said the bearer of that ancient crusading name, in a voice so husky it could hardly be heard. "Curth what you thought! Come in!"
The Man with the Broken Nose slipped in with something of the carriage that a poor trapper might show who should take refuge from a bear in the lair of a snake.
"I 'umbly beg pardon," he began again in the darkness of the passage, and the old bearded apparition with the crusading name answered—
"Shut your mouth!"
The Man with the Broken Nose obeyed.
The cautious, shuffling slippers led the way. A match was struck. The little dangerous figure reached up on tip-toe and lit a flaring unprotected gas-jet. The only window giving upon that passage was boarded.
"Take it inter the light, Mr. Montague, take it inter the light!" said the visitor eagerly, making as though to open the door of a further room which would be flooded with the morning sun.
His hand was upon the latch. With a curious, hardly audible snarl, Mr. Montague caught that hand a sharp blow on the wrist, and it said much for Mr. Montague's high standing with the Ormeston poor that the Man with the Broken Nose took no offence.
Under the flaring gas-jet Mr. Montague was turning the Green Overcoat over and over again.
"Give yer a quid," he said after about three minutes of close inspection.
"Why, Mr. Montague, sir!" the other had just begun, when he heard a hiss which formed the words, "Wish you may die!" and felt upon his shoulder the grip that was not like the grip of a human hand, but like the grip of a talon.
The Man with the Broken Nose was not prepared to argue. There had been one or two things in his full and varied life which if Mr. Montague had mentioned them even in a whisper would have made him less inclined to argue still, and he knew that Mr. Montague had a way of whispering sometimes into the ear of Memory things which a better breeding would have respected.
Mr. Montague knew the value of time. Far up the line of streets the first strokes of the Knocker-up were heard.
The Man with the Broken Nose found himself a moment later standing in the street with one sovereign in his hand for a twenty-guinea garment, and looking at the shut door and the meaningless, dirty windows which contained his prize.
He wished the new owner joy in Hell, he wished it aloud with that amazing bitterness which the poor of our great cities distil more copiously than any men on earth: for of all men upon all the earth they are the most miserable.
He took out the sovereign he had just received, and his mood changed. He spat on it for luck. He felt himself going curiously lightly, and then he remembered of what a burden he was rid. He walked without difficulty, and only in a hundred yards or two did he remember his wound. It seemed to have healed quickly. It had not opened. He almost felt as though it were healing—and now I am concerned with him no more. The Green Overcoat is out of his keeping, and has no intention of returning to it.
But in the filthy little room of that filthy little house the filthy little bearer of the old crusading name, Mr. Montague, sat huddled upon his bed—a bed he made himself, or rather left unmade from week to week—and examined carefully upon his knee the fur, the cloth, the make of the gorgeous apparel.
He smiled, and as he smiled he sneered. For God had so made Mr. Montague that sneering and smiling were with him one thing.
There was value in that piece of cloth upon his knee, but it was of two kinds: value to anyone who would buy, more value, perhaps, to some owner that would recover. He considered either chance, and even as he considered them and sat staring at the expanse of Green Cloth an odd thing happened; not in the external world, nor within the walls of that room, but within the old man's mind. He thought suddenly of Death!
A tremor passed over the whole surface of his skin, downwards from his neck to his feet. He coughed and spat—clear of the Green Overcoat—upon the floor; and he cursed for a moment in a language that was not English. Then the thought passed as suddenly as it had come, and he was himself again, but the weaker for that moment. His hand trembled as he set it to do what every hand appeared so prone to do when the Green Overcoat came near it. He put that trembling hand into the left-hand pocket and found nothing. He had expected as much. Was it likely that his visitor would have left anything? For form's sake he put it into the right hand pocket in turn; and thence, to his amazement, he drew out the Cheque Book!
He looked at it stupidly for a moment, not understanding how such a prize should conceivably have been abandoned. Then he smiled again that not cheerful smile, and slowly consulted the name of the bank and of the owner, and the counterfoils one by one.
The sums that stood therein called to him like great heralds; they made his puny old chest heave and certain muscles in him grow rigid.
He was in the midst of the tale when his whole being fainted within him, as it were—stopped dead at the noise of a violent rain of blows upon his outer door.