The green overcoat

n=r. o

CO

. Or (Ctyauti^ng

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

The

Green Overcoat

By

HILAIRE BELLOC

With Illustration* by

G. K. CHESTERTON

NEW YORK .,
Me BRIDE, NAST & COMPANY
1913

First published in 1919.
Seconi impression, August, 19 IX.
Third impression, November, 19 IS.
fourth impression, January, 1913.

'

?-s^

>• % 1 m^ '•' W

S)cMcatc& to
MAURICE BARING.

\

DEDICATION.

MY DEAR MAURICE,

You wrote something called The Green
Elephant, and I have written something called
The Green Overcoat.

It is on this account that I dedicate to you
my work The Green Overcoat, although (and
I take this opportunity of reproaching you
for the same) you did not dedicate to me
your work The Green Elephant.

An overcoat and an elephant have much in
common, and also, alas ! much in which they
differ. An elephant can be taken off, and so
can an overcoat ; but, on the other hand, an
overcoat can be put on, and an elephant can
not. I understand that your elephant was
not a real elephant ; similarly my overcoat
is not a real overcoat, but only an overcoat
in a book. An overcoat is the largest kind
of garment, and an elephant is the largest kind
of beast, unless we admit the whale, which is

Vll

DEDICATION.

larger than the elephant, just as a dressing-
gown is larger than an overcoat ; but this
would lead me far ! Then, again, the elephant
does not eat meat, or bite ; nor does an over-
coat. He is most serviceable to man ; so is
an overcoat. There are, however, rogue
elephants which are worse than useless, and
give less profit to their owner than if he had
no elephant at all. The same is true of
overcoats, notably of those which have got
torn in the lining of the left armpit, so that
the citizen on shoving his left arm therein
gets it into a sort of cul-de-sac, which is
French for blind-alley.

The elephant is expensive, so is the over-
coat. The elephant is of a grave and settled
expression, so is an overcoat. An overcoat
hanging by itself upon a peg is a grave and
sensible object, which in the words of the
philosopher " neither laughs nor is the cause
of laughter/' So is an elephant encaged.

Again, man in conjunction with the elephant
is ennobled by tha* conjunction, whether he
ride upon its back or upon its neck or walk
by its side, as does the keeper at the Zoo.
The same is true of overcoats, which, whether
we have them upon our backs or carry them
over our arms, add something to our

viii

DEDICATION.

appearance. I could suggest many oilier
points in common were this part of my work
lucrative, and, as it were, in the business ;
but it is not, and I must end. I might remind
you that elephants probably grow old (though
no man has lived to see it), that overcoats
certainly do ; that elephants are of divers
sex, and this is true also of the overcoat.
On the other hand, an overcoat has no feet
and it has two tails or none, whereas the
elephant has four feet and but one tail, and
that a very little one.

I must wind up by telling you why I have
written of an " overcoat " and not a " great-
coat/' " Greatcoat " is the more vernacular ;
" overcoat " I think the more imperial. But
that was not my reason. I wrote " overcoat "
because it was a word similar in scansion and
almost equivalent in stress-scheme (wow!) to
the word " elephant." Of course, if I had
considered length of syllable and vowel-value
it would have been another matter, for
" elephant " consists in three shorts, "over-
coat" in a long, short and long. The first
is a what-you-may-call-'um, and the second
a thingumbob.

But I did not consider vowel sounds, and
I was indifferent to longs and shorts. My

ix

DEDICATION.

endeavour was to copy you, and to have a
title which would get people mixed up, so
that the great hordes of cultivated men and
women desiring to see your play should talk
by mistake of The Green Overcoat.

And then their aunts, or perhaps a prig-
visitor, would say : " Oh, no, that is the
book ! " In this way the book would be
boomed. That was my game.

If people had done this sort of thing before
it would not work now ; but they haven't.

Now, Maurice, I end this preface, for I
cannot think of anything more to write.

H. BELLOC.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.
IN WHICH THE GREEN OVERCOAT TAKES A JOURNEY 13

CHAPTER II. :

IN WHICH A PHILOSOPHER WRESTLES WITH THE

PROBLEM OF IDENTITY ..... 29

CHAPTER III.
IN WHICH THE GREEN OVERCOAT APPEARS AS A

POINT OF RELIGION BY NOT BEING THERE . . 46

CHAPTER IV.

IN WHICH IT IS SEEN THAT UNIVERSITY TRAINING

FITS ONE FOR A BUSINESS CAREER °7

CHAPTER V.
IN WHICH SOLITUDE is UNABLE TO DISCOVER THE

CHARMS WHICH SAGES HAVE SEEN IN HER FACE 84

CHAPTER VI.
IN WHICH PROFESSOR HIGGINSON BEGINS TO TASTE

THE SWEETS OF FAME ...» I°4

CHAPTER VII.
IN WHICH PROFESSOR HIGGINSON GOES ON TASTING

THEM ...... , * * I3^

CHAPTER VIII.
IN WHICH PROFESSOR HIGGINSON GETS THOSE SWEETS

BY THE WAGON-LOAD, AND ALSO HEARS HOW MEN

I ARE MADE ....... J58

CHAPTER IX.
IN WHICH THE GREEN OVERCOAT BEGINS TO ASSERT

ITSELF ........ I75

xi

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER X.
IN WHICH A DESCENDANT OF THE CRUSADERS REFUSES

TO HARBOUR STOLEN GOODS . . . . 1 86

CHAPTER XI.
IN WHICH A POLE is LESS SCRUPULOUS . . . 204

CHAPTER XII.

IN WHICH THE READERKIN WILL, IF HE HAS AN OUNCE
OF BRAINS, BEGIN TO CATCH THE INEVITABLE
DENOUMONG OF THE IMBROGLIO . . . 215

CHAPTER XIII.
IN WHICH THE SUBLIMINAL CONSCIOUSNESS GIVES

ITSELF AWAY . . " >'*' .... 243

CHAPTER XIV.

IN WHICH, INCREDIBLE AS IT MAY SEEM, A NON-POLE

HAS THE BETTER OF A POLE .... 264

CHAPTER XV.

IN WHICH THREE YOUNG MEN EAT, AND NOT ONLY

EAT, BUT DRINK V f+ "rv -< 4vt . * 274

CHAPTER XVI.

IN WHICH CROSS-EXAMINATION IS CONDUCTED " EN
ECHELON," AND IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT

MEANS I CAN'T HELP YOU .... . . . 287

CHAPTER XV...

IN WHICH A PROFESSOR PROFESSES NOTHING, A
LECTURE is NOT DELIVERED, AND YET SOMETHING
HAPPENS ,, . '. . ' . , . 298

CHAPTER XVLI.
IN WHICH THE GREEN OVERCOAT TRIUMPHS AND

COMES HOME . yr* ,.*r •»«,.- • . . 321

Xll

The Green Overcoat.

CHAPTER I.

In which the Green Overcoat takes a Journey.

PROFESSOR HIGGINSON — to give him his true
name — was a psychologist, celebrated through-
out Europe, and recently attached to the
modern and increasingly important University
called the Guelph University, in the large
manufacturing town of Ormeston. His
stipend was £800 a year.

He was a tall, thin man, exceedingly shy
and nervous, with weary, print-worn eyes,
which nearly always looked a little pained,
and were generally turned uneasily towards
the ground. He did not dress carefully. He
was not young. He had a trick of keeping
both- hands in his trouser pockets. He
stooped somewhat at the shoulders, and wore
a long, grey beard. He was a bachelor,

13

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

naturally affectionate by disposition, but
capable of savagery when provoked by terror.
His feet were exceedingly large, and his min<
was nearly always occupied by the subject
which he professed.

This excellent man, in his ill-fitting evening
suit, had just said good-bye after an agonised
party, upon Monday, the 2nd of May, at the
house of Sir John Perkin, a local merchant
of ample but ill-merited fortune.

It was as yet but midnight, the rooms were
full, and he hoped to slip out early and
almost unobserved.

Professor Higginson sidled aimlessly into
the study that was doing duty as a cloakroom,
sidled out again on remembering that he had
not left his things there, and next turned to
gaze almost as aimlessly at a series of pegs
on which he hoped to find a familiar slouch
hat, rather greasy, and an equally familiar
grey Inverness which was like his skin to
him. The slouch hat was there. The
Inverness was gone.

Was it gone ? The Professor of Psychology
was a learned man, and his sense of reality
was not always exact. Had he come in that
Inverness after all? r . . The more he
thought about it the less certain he was.

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

He remembered that the May night, though
very cold, Lad been fine as he came. He had
no precise memory of taking off that Inverness
or of hanging it up. He walked slowly,
ruminating upon the great problem, towards
the door of the hall ; he inwardly congratu-
lated himself that there was no servant
present, and that he could go through the
dreadful ordeal of leaving the house without
suffering the scrutiny of a human being. No
carriage had yet drawn up. He opened the
door, and was appalled to be met by a violent
gust and a bitter, cold, driving rain.

Now the Professor of Psychology was, like
the domestic cat, of simple tastes, but he
hated rain even more than does that animal.
It bitterly disagreed with him, and worse
still, the oddity of walking through the streets
in evening clothes through a raging downpour,
with a large expanse of white shirt all drenched,
was more than his nerves could bear.

He was turning round irresolutely to seek
once again for that Inverness, which he was
now more confident than ever was not there,
when the Devil, who has great power in these
affairs, presented to his eyes, cast negligently
over a chair, a GREEN OVERCOAT of
singular magnificence.

15

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

The green of it was a subdued, a warm and
a lovely green ; its cloth was soft and thick,
pliable and smooth ; the rich fur at the collar
and cuffs was a promise of luxury in the
lining.

Now the Devil during all Professor Higgin-
son's life had had but trifling fun with him
until that memorable moment. The oppor-
tunity, as the reader will soon discover, was
(from the Devil's point of view) remarkable
and rare. More, far more, than Professor
Higginson's somewhat sterile soul was involved
in the issue.

The Green Overcoat appeared for a few
seconds seductive, then violently alluring,
next — and in a very few seconds — irresistible.

Professor Higginson shot a sin-laden and
frightened glance towards the light and the
noise and the music within. No one was in
sight. Through the open door of the rooms,
whence the sound of the party came loud and
fairly drunken, he saw no face turned his way.
The hall itself was deserted. Then he heard
a hurl of wind, a dash of rain on the hall
window. With a rapidity worthy of a greater
game, and to him most unusual, he whisked the
garment from the chair, slipped into the
shadow of the door, struggled into the Green

16

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

Overcoat with a wriggle that seemed to him to
last five weeks — it was, as a fact, a conjuror's
trick for smartness — and it was on ! The
Devil saw to it that it fitted.

It was all right. He would pretend some
mistake, and send it back the very first thing
next morning ; nay, he would be an honest
man, and send it back at once by a messenger
the moment he found out his mistake on
getting to his lodgings. So wealthy an over-
coat could only belong to a great man — a man
who would stay late, very late. Come, the
Green Overcoat would be back again in that
house before its owner had elected to move.
He would be no wiser ! There was no harm
done, and he could not walk as he was through
the rain.

Alas ! These plausible arguments proceeded,
had the Professor but known it, from the
Enemy of Souls ! He, the fallen archangel,
foresaw that coming ruin to which his lanky
and introspective victim was unhappily blind.
Dons are cheap meat for Devils.

The door shut upon the learned man. He
went striding out into the drenching storm,
down the drive towards the public road.
And as he went he carried a sense of wealth
about him that was very pleasurable in spite

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

of the weather. He had never known such
raiment !

His way down the road to his lodgings would
be a matter of a mile or more. The rain was
intolerable. He was wondering as he reached
the gate whether there was any chance of
a cab at such an hour, when he was overjoyed
to hear the purring of a taxi coming slowly up
behind him. He turned at once and hailed it.
The taxi halted, and drew up a little in front
of a street light, so that the driver's face was
in shadow. He gave his address, opened the
door and stooped to fold up his considerable
stature into the vehicle.

He had hardly shut the door, and as he
was doing so, felt, or thought he felt, some
obstacle before him, when the engine was let
out at full speed. The cab whirled suddenly
round in the opposite direction from that
which he had ordered, and as Professor
Higginson was jolted back by the jerk into
his seat, his left arm clutched at what was
certainly a human form ; at the same moment
his struggling right arm clutched another,
crouched apparently in the corner of the

cab.

He had just time to begin, " I beg your —
when he felt each wrist held in a pair of strong

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

hands and a shawl or cloth tightening about
his mouth. All that he next attempted to
say was lost to himself and to the world.
He gave one vigorous kick with his long legs ;
before he could give a second his feet were held
as firmly as his hands, and he felt what must
have been a handkerchief being tied un-
comfortably tightly round his ankles, while
his wrists were still held in a grasp that
suggested something professional.

Professor Higginson's thoughts were drawn
out of their daily groove. His brain raced and
pulsed, then halted, and projected one clear
decision — which was to sit quite quiet and
do nothing.

The driver's back showed a black square
against the lamp-lit rain. He heard, or would
hear, nothing. He paid no heed to the
motions within, but steered furiously through
the storm. For ten good minutes nothing
changed.

The beating rain outside blurred the window-
panes, and the pace at which they drove
forbade the Philosopher any but the vaguest
guesses at the road and the whereabouts.

The public lights of the town had long since
been left behind ; rapid turns had begun to
suggest country lanes, when, after a sharper

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

jolt than usual, the machine curved warily
through a gate into a narrow way, the brakes
were put on sharply, the clutch was thrown
out, and the cab stopped dead. It was halted
and its machine was panting down in some
garden, the poverty and neglect of which
glared under the acetylene lamps. The
disordered, weedy gravel of the place and its
ragged laurels stood out unnaturally, framed
in the thick darkness. The edge of the light
just caught the faded brick corner of an old
house.

Professor Higginson had barely a second in
which to note a flight of four dirty stone steps
leading to a door in the shadow, when his
captors spoke for the first time.

" Will you go quietly ? ' said the one
crouching before him — he that had tied his
ankles.

The Professor assented through his gag with
a voice like the distant lowing of a cow. The
strong grip that held his wrists pulled his arms
behind him, the taxi door was opened, and he
was thrust out, still held by the hands. He
poised himself upon his bound feet, and
whoever it was that had spoken — he had a
strong, young voice, and looked broad and
powerful in the half-light behind the lamps —

90

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

began unfastening the handkerchief at his
ankles. Professor Higginson was not a
soldier. " He was of the Academies. He broke
his parole, y

The moment his feet were free he launched
a vigorous kick at his releaser (who hardly
dolged it), emitted through his gag a dull
sound full of fury, and at the same instant
foand himself bumped violently upon the
ground with his legs threshing the air in all
directions. It was the gentleman who held
his wrists behind him that was the author of
this manoeuvre, and even as he achieved it
he piped out in a curious high voice that
contrasted strangely with the strength he had
just proved —

" Hit him, Jimmy ! Hit him in the face ! "

" Not yet/1 said Jimmy ominously. " Jerk
him up, Melba ! '

At some expense to the Professor's nerves
Melba obeyed, and the learned Pragmatist
found himself once more upon his feet. He
kicked out vigorously behind, but only met
the air. It was as he had dreaded ! He had
to deal with professionals !

" All right, Jimmy ? " came in a you™, v;Gll-
Englished and rather tired drawl from the
driver.

21

(t

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

The engine was still panting slightly.

" Yes, Charlie/' said Jimmy cheerfully.

Off you go ! "

" Good night/' said the young, well-
Englished and rather tired drawl again.

The clutch caught, the engine throbbed
faster, the untidy gravel crunched under the
motor as it turned a half circle to find the
gate, and in doing so cast a moment of fierce
light upon the stained and dirty door of the
house.

The gagged victim noted that the door was
open : there had been preparation, and the
signs of it did not reassure him.

His captor thrust him against that door, into
the dark hall within. The other one, the one
he had heard called " Jimmy " followed, shut
the door, and struck a match.

There was revealed in the flare a passage
between perfectly bare walls, dusty, un-
carpeted floor boards, still bearing the faint
marks of staining at their edges, a flight of
stairs with flimsy bannisters, many of them
broken — for the rest, nothingness.

" Melba " (if I may call that gentleman by
the name his associate had given him) was
busy at the Professor's wrists with something
more business-like than a handkerchief. He

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

was tying them up scientifically enough (and
very tight) with a piece of box-cord.

Jimmy, opening the door of a room on the
ground floor that gave into this deserted
passage, lit a candle within. Mr. Higginson
found himself pushed through that door on to
a chair in the room beyond. A moment later
he was bound to that chair, corded up in a
manner uncomfortably secure to its rungs and
back by his ankles, elbows and knees. It was
Melba that did the deed. Jimmy, coming in
after, turned the key in the door, and joined
his companion. Then the pair of them stood
gazing at their victim for a moment, and the
Professor had his first opportunity in all that
bewildering night of discovering what kind
of beings he had to deal with.

Melba was a stout, rather pasty-faced young
man, with fat cheeks and blue, protuberant
eyes, not ill-natured. He had very light,
straight hair, and his face in repose seemed
to clothe itself with a half smile which was
permanent. It was surprising that such a
figure should have that strength of forearm
which the Philosopher had unfortunately
experienced. But there is no telling a man
till he strips, and Melba, who might very well
have been a young lounger of the French

TtlE GREEN OVERCOAT.

Boulevards, was, as a matter of fact, an
oarsman of an English University. He rowed.
It was his chief recreation. He also read
French novels, and was a fair hand at writing
mechanical verse. But that is by the way,
nor could the Professor as yet guess anything
of this. He glared at the youth over his gag
and took him in.

Jimmy was quite another pair of shoes.
He was tall also, but clean cut and very dark,
with the black eyes and hair and fresh colour-
ing of a Gael. No trace of his native accent
remained with him. Indeed, he had been
born south of the border, but his supple
strength and the balance of his body were those
of the mountains. He had race. Unlike his
colleague, he looked as strong as he was.
Jimmy, if you care to know it, did not row ;
he swam and dived. He swam and dived
with remarkable excellence, and was the
champion, or whatever it is called, of some
district or other of considerable size. He was
also of the University that had nourished
Melba — Cambridge.

These two young men, a little blown, and
perhaps a little excited, but manfully con-
cealing their emotions under a gentlemanly
indifference, seated themselves on either side

24

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

of a table with the Professor gagged and
bound upon the chair before them. So seated,
they watched their prey.

Melba slowly filled an enormous pipe from
an enormous pouch, keeping his round, blue
eyes fixed and ready for any movement upon
the Professor's part.

Jimmy lit a black cigarette with some
affectation, blew a cloud of thin, blue smoke,
and addressed the prisoner —

" Before we come to business, Brassington,"
he said, " how will you behave if we ungag
you ? "

An appreciative and pacifist lowing pro-
ceeded from the gag.

" That Js all very well/' broke in Melba in
his falsetto, " last time you said that you
broke your word ! '

" Wmmmmmm ! ' replied the Professor,
shaking his head in emphatic negation.

" Yes, but you did/7 continued Melba
shrilly. " You tried to kick Jimmy, and you
tried to kick me, too, after I dumped you."

j immy waved his hand at Melba, command-
ing silence.

" Look here, sir/' he said, " we had to do
it. We don't like it, and in a way we're sorry ;
but we had to."

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

The Professor recalled all that he had read
of lunacy in its various forms (and that was a
great deal more than was good for him), but
he could see no trace of insanity in either
of the two faces before him. If anything,
the innocence of youth which they betrayed,
coupled with an obviously strained and
unnatural determination, was quite the other
way.

Melba chimed in with his high voice again —

" And lucky you didn't get something
worse ! '

" Don't, Melba ! " said Jimmy authorita-
tively.

He was evidently the moderate man of the
two, the man of judgment, and instinctively
the learned victim determined to lean upon
him in whatever incongruous adventures
might threaten.

" We had to do it," continued Jimmy,
" because there wasn't any law. Mind you,
we haven't done this without asking ! But
when there isn't any law you have to take the
law into your own hands, haven't you,
Melba ? " he said, turning to his accomplice.

" Yes," piped Melba, " civil and criminal.
He ought to have a lathering."

His blue, prominent eyes had a glare of

26

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

ferocity in them, and Professor Higginson
hated him in his heart.

Jimmy again assumed control.

" If there had been a law, sir, we 'd have
sued you. We are sorry " (this repetition a
little pompously) " and we do not want to
expose you. Personally/' he added, flicking
the ash from his cigarette and putting on the
man-of-the- world, " I find it an ungrateful
thing to constrain an older man. But it will
all be over soon, and what is more, we will do
it decently if you pay like a gentleman/'

At the word " pay " Professor Higginson's
inexperience of the world convinced him that
he was in the hands of criminals. He had
read in certain detective stories how criminals
were not, as some imagined, men universally
deprived of collars, clad in woollen caps and
armed with bludgeons, nor without exception
of the uncultivated classes. He could re-
member many cases (in fiction) of the
gentlen an criminal, nay, of the precocious
gentleman-criminal — and apparently these
were of the tribe.

For the second time that evening he came
to a rapid decision and determined to pay.

He had upon him thirty shillings in gold, it
was a sovereign and half sovereign, in the

27

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

right-hand waistcoat pocket of his evening
clothes, and he thought he also had in the
right-hand trousers pocket a few loose shillings
and coppers. It was a great deal to sacrifice.
For all he knew, it was compounding a felony ;
but he would risk that. He would think of
it as a rather high hotel bill — and he would be
free ! He nodded his gagged head, mooed cheer-
fully, and looked acquiescent with his eyes.

" That 's right ! " said Jimmy, greatly
relieved (for in his heart he had never dared
hope for so easy a solution). " That 's right ! '
and he sighed contentedly. " That 's right,"
he repeated for the third time. " We are
really very sorry, sir ! But it '11 seem all right
afterwards. When you have kept your side of
the bargain we shall certainly keep ours/1 He
said it courteously. "All we want is the money,
and when we have the money and you are
free, why, sir, I hope you will not grudge us
what we have done."

So it was all going to end happily after all ?
The Professor almost felt himself at liberty
again, hurrying home through the night —
hurrying anywhere at his free will, loosed from
that accursed place, when Jimmy added —

" Of course, you will have to sign the
letter ? <«

28

CHAPTER II.

In which a Philosopher wrestles with the Problem
of Identity.

THE Professor was in deeper water than ever.
He had been called some name or other at
the beginning of this conversation. What
name he could not remember. What the
friendlier of the two beasts meant by " a
letter " he could not conceive until Jimmy,
continuing, partly enlightened him.

" You will have to sign the brief note we
have drafted here to accompany your pay-
ment. It 's obvious."

Professor Higginson dimly guessed that he
was wanted to safeguard them in some way
against the consequences of his kidnapping.

. . . Well, he had made up his mind, and
he would not depart from it. He nodded
again cheerfully enough, and his eyes were as
acquiescent as ever.

Jimmy leaned forward, and in set tones of
some gravity, said formally —

" We understand, this gentleman and If

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

that you acknowledge the payment due to us,
and if we take off the — er — the impediment
which we were compelled to put over your
mouth, you will act up to your promise and
you will pay us ? '

For the third time the Professor nodded
vigorously.

" And you will sign the note ? '

He nodded even more vigorously once
again.

" Very well/' said Jimmy in the tone of a
great arbitrator who has managed to settle
matters without unpleasantness. " Melba,
be good enough to untie your aunt's shawl,
which for the moment prevents this gentleman
from performing his promise by word of
mouth."

Melba did as he was bid, jerking — as Mr.
Higginson thought — the knot in the fabric
rather ungently. He treasured it up against
him.

The shawl was off, Melba was seated again,
and Professor Higginson breathed the night
air untainted by the savour of an ancient
human garment, and an aunt's at that.

" I need not repeat all I have just been
saying," said Jimmy, " but you must confirm
it before we go further."

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

" I do," said the Professor, with a curiously
successful affectation of cheerfulness for so
untrained an actor. " Yes, certainly, gentle-
men, I confirm it."

There was, if anything, a little precipitancy
in his manner, as though he were eager to pay,
as he most certainly was to get rid of those
ropes round his arms and legs.

There was another thing bothering the
Pragmatist. The Green Overcoat, which still
wrapped him all about, was being woefully
delayed. If the delay lasted much longer the
owner might miss it ... and then, the
tight cords at its elbows were doing it no good.
They might actually be marking it. The
thought made Professor Higginson very un-
comfortable indeed. He had no idea whose
it was, but it certainly belonged to someone
of importance. . . . He wished he had
never seen it.

He was not to be the last to wish that, but
Hell is a hard taskmaster and the Professor
was caught.

" We think," said Jimmy a little pompously,

" at least, I think " (after glancing at

Melba).

" I don't," said Melba.

" Well, / think," continued Jimmy, "and I

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

think we ought to think, that you are doing
the right thing, and, well, I like to tell you so."

The" relations between Jimmy and his
prisoner were getting almost cordial. He
pushed the table so that that prisoner, when
he was untied, should be able to write upon
it. He put before him a type-written sheet
of note-paper, an envelope, an ink-bottle, and
a pen, which, with the exception of the
benches on which he and his companion sat,
the table and the .chair, were all the furniture
the place contained.

" And now, sir/1 added Jimmy, going
behind the Psychologist and releasing his
elbows, " now, sir " (here he wound the rope
round the Professor's waist, secured it, and
left his legs still tied to the chair rungs),
" now, sir, perhaps we can come to business ! '

Poor Mr. Higginson had never been so
cramped in his life. He was far from young.
The circulation in his lower arms had almost
stopped. He brought them forward pain-
fully and slowly and composed them upon
the table, then his right hand slowly sought
his waistcoat pocket, where reposed the
sovereign and half-sovereign of his ransom.

" Of course/1 he began, intending to explain
the smallness of the sum, for he could not but

33

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

feel that it was very little gold for so con-
siderable a circumstance of paper formalities

and violence, " of course " when Jimmy

interrupted him.

" I need not tell you the sum/1 said that
youth rather coldly.

"Oh, no," twittered Melba, "he knows
that well enough ! " Then added, " G-r-r-r ! "
as in anger at a dog.

"Well — er — gentlemen, I confess*' — began
Mr. Higginson, hesitating

" To be frank/' said Jimmy rather sharply,
" we all three know the sum perfectly well,
and you perhaps, sir, with your business
habits and your really peculiar ideas upon
honour, best of all. It 's two thousand
pounds/' he concluded calmly.

11 Two thousand pounds ? 'J shrieked the
Professor.

" What did you expect ? ' broke in Melba
an octave higher. " A bonus and a presenta-
tion gold watch ? "

" Two thousand pounds ! " repeated the
bewildered Philosopher in a gasping undertone.

" Yes/' rapped out Jimmy smartly,
" two thousand pounds ! Really !

After all that has passed "

" But/' shouted the Professor wildly, saying

34

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

the first words that came to him, " I haven't
got such a sum in the world. I — I don't know
what you mean ? '

Jimmy's face took on a very severe and
dreadful expression.

" Mr. Brassington/' he began in a slow and
modulated tone.

" I 'm not Mr. Brassington, whoever Mr.
Brassington may be/' protested the unhappy
victim, half understanding the portentous
error. " What on earth do you take me for ? '

Jimmy by this time was in a mood to stand
no nonsense.

" Mr. Brassington/' he said, " you broke
your word to us once this evening when you
k eked out at Melba, and that ought to have
been a lesson to me. I was foolish enough to
believe you when you gave your word a second
time. I certainly believed it when you gave
it a third time after we released you/' (It
was a very partial release, but no matter.)
" Now," said he, setting his lips firmly, " if
you try to shuffle out of the main matter, I
warn you it will be the worse for you, very
much the worse for you, indeed. You will be
good enough to sign us a cheque for two
thousand pounds, and to sign the type- written
acknowledgment in front of you/'

35

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

Men in bewilderment do foolish things even
when they are men of judgment, and Professor
Higginson certainly was not that. His next
words were fatal.

" Do you suppose I carry a cheque-book on
me ? '' he roared.

" Melba/' said Jimmy quietly, in the tones
of a general officer commanding an orderly,
" go through him/'

The Professor having said a foolish word,
followed it by a still more foolish action. He
dived into the right-hand pocket of the Green
Overcoat with a gesture purely instinctive.
Melba was upon him like a fat hawk, almost
wrenched his arm from its socket, and drew
from that right-hand pocket a noble great
cheque-book of a brilliant red, with a leather
backing such as few cheque-books possess,
and having printed on it in bold plutocratic
characters —

" JOHN BRASSINGTON, ESQR.,
' LAUDERDALE/ )

CRAMPTON PARK, ORMESTON."

Melba conveyed the cheque-book solemnly
to Jimmy, and the two young men sat down

again opposite their involuntary creditor,

&•

36

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

spreading it out open before them in an
impressive manner.

" Mr. Brassington," said Jimmy, " what
do I see here ? Everything that I should
have expected from a man of your prominence
in the business world and of your known
careful habits. I see neatly written upon
the fly-leaf, ' Private Account,' and the few
counterfoils to the cheques already drawn
carefully noted. I perceive/' continued
Jimmy, summing up boldly, " the sum of £50
marked ' self ' upon the second of this month.
The object of your munificence does not
surprise me. Upon the next counterfoil I see
marked £173 los. It is in settlement of a
bill — a garage bill. I am glad to see that you
recognise and pay some of your debts. The
third counterfoil," he said, peering more
closely, " relates to a cheque made out only
yesterday. It is for £5, and appears to have
been sent to your son, who, as you know, is
our honoured friend/'

[t I protest ..." interrupted Professor
Higginson loudly.

" At your peril ! ' retorted Melba.

1 You will do well, Mr. Brassington, to let
me finish what I have to say/' continued
Jimmy. /'I say your son, our honoured

37

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

friend, as you know well — only too well !
These three cheques are your concern, not
ours. No further cheque has been drawn,
and on the fourth cheque form, Mr. Brassing-
ton, you will be good enough to sign your
name. You will make it out to James
McAuley — a small c and a big A, if you
please ; an ey, not an a — in your letters you
did not do me the courtesy to spell my name
as I sign it. You will then hand me the
instrument, and I will settle with my
friend/'

At the words " my friend " he waved
courteously to Melba, gave a ridiculous little
bow, which in his youthful folly he imagined
to be dignified.

The Professor sat stolidly and said nothing.
His thoughts hurried confusedly within him,
and the one that ran fastest was, " I am in a
hole ! "

" I do assure you, gentlemen/' he said at
last, " that there is some great mistake. I
have no doubt that — that a Mr. Brassington
owes you the money, no doubt at all. And
perhaps you were even justified in the very
strong steps you took to recover it. I should
be the last to blame you." (The liar !) " But
as I am not Mr. Brassington, but, if you want

38

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

to know, Professor Higginson, of the Guelph
University, I cannot oblige you."

When the Professor had thus delivered
himself there was a further silence, only inter-
rupted by Melba's addressing to him a very
offensive epithet. " Swine ! " he said.

" Are we to understand, Mr. Brassington/'
said Jimmy, when he had considered the
matter, " that after all that you have said
you refuse to sign ? Did you imagine " (this
with rising anger in his voice) " that we
would compromise for a smaller sum ? '

" I tell you I am not Mr. Brassington ! "
answered the Psychologist tartly.

" Oh ! ' returned Jimmy, now thoroughly
aroused and as naturally as could be, " and
you aren't wearing Mr. Brassington^ clothes,
Brassington, are you ? And this isn't Mr.
Brassington's cheque-book, is it, Brassington ?
And you 're not a confounded old liar as well
as a cursed puritanical thief ? Now, look
here, if you don't sign now, you '11 be kept
here till you do. You '11 be locked up without
food, except just the bread and water to keep
you alive ; and if you trust to your absence
being noticed, I can tell you it won't be. We
know all about that. You were going to
Belgium for a week, weren't you, by the night

39

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

train to London ? You were taking no
luggage, because you were going to pick up
a bag at your London office, as you always
do on these business journeys. You were
going on business, and I only hope the busi-
ness will wait. Oh, we know all about it,
Brassington ! We have a clear week ahead
of us, and you won't only get bread and water
in that week ; and I don't suppose anybody
would bother if we made the week ten days."

I have already mentioned in the course of
this painful narrative the name of the Infernal
Power. My reader will be the less surprised
to follow the process of Professor Higginson's
mind in this terrible crux. He sat there
internally collapsed and externally nothing
very grand. His two masters, stern and
immovable, watched him from beyond the
table with its one candle. It was deep night.
There was no sound save the lashing of the
storm against the window-panes.

He first considered his dear home (which
was a pair of rooms in a lodging in Tugela
Street, quite close to his work). Then there
came into his mind the prospect of sleepless
nights in a bare room, of bread and water,
and worse. * « «

What was " worse " ?

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

His resolution sank and sank. The process
of his thought continued. The eyes of the
two young men, hateful and determined,
almost hypnotised him.

If the money of this ridiculous John Brass-
ington, whoever he might be, was there in his
pocket, he would stand firm. He hoped he
would stand firm. But after all, it was not
money. It was only a bit of paper. He
would be able to make the thing right. , * .
He was very ignorant of such things, but he
knew it took some little time to clear a
cheque. . . . He remembered someone
telling him that it took three days, and inci-
dentally he grotesquely remembered the same
authority telling him that every cheque cost
the bank sevenpence. „ . . The rope hurt
damnably, and he was a man who could not
bear to miss his sleep, it made him ill. . „ .
And he was feeling very ill already. He could
carefully note the number of the cheque,
anyhow. Yes, he could do that. He had
this man Brassington's address. He had
the name of the bank. It was on the cheques.
He would have the courage to expose the
whole business in the morning. He would
stop that cheque. He clearly remembered
the Senate of the University having made a

4.1

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

mistake two years before and how the cheque
was stopped. ... It was a perfectly easy
business. ... Of course, the actual signing
of another man's name is an unpleasant thing
for the fingers to do, but that is only nervous-
ness— next door to superstition. One must
be guided by reason. Ultimately it would
do no harm at all, for the cheque would never
be cleared.

Professor Higginson leant lovingly upon
that word " cleared." It had a technical,
salutary sound. It was his haven of refuge.
Cheques had to go up to London, hadn't
they ? and to go to a place called a Clearing
House ? He knew that much, though
economics were not his department of learning.
He knew that much, and he was rather proud
of it — as Professors are of knowing something
outside their beat.

While the Mystery of Evil was thus pressing
its frontal assault on poor Professor Higgin-
son's soul, that soul was suddenly attacked in
flank by a brilliant thought : the cheque
would enable him to trace his tormentors !

Come, that really was a brilliant thought !
He was prouder of himself than ever. He
would be actually aiding justice if he signed !
The police could always track down someone

4*

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

where there was paper concerned. No one
could escape the hands of British Law if he
had once given himself away in a written
document !

This flank attack of the Evil One deternrr ned
the Philosopher. In a subdued voice he broke
the long silence. He said — ^

" Give me the pen \ "

Jimmy solemnly dipped the pen in the ink
and handed it to him, not releasing the cheque-
book, but tearing out the cheque form for
him to sign ; and as he did so the unseen
Serpent smiled. In a hand as bold as he could
assume Professor Higginson deliberately
wrote at the bottom right hand-corner the
fatal words " JOHN BRASSINGTON."

He was beginning to fill in the amount, when
to his astonishment the cheque was snatched
from his hands, while Jimmy thundered out —

" Do you suppose, sir, that you can deceive
us in such a childish way as that? Does a
man ever sign his cheque like a copybook ? "

He glared at the signature.

" It 's faked ! That 's no more your sif na-
ture, Old Brassington, than it 's mine ! " he
shouted. " That 's how you write." <•

With the words he pulled a note from his
pocket and tossed it to the unhappy man.

43

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

Melba made himself pleasant by an inter-
jection—

" What a vile old shuffler it is ! " he said.

And Mr. Higginson saw written on the note,
dated but a week before —

" James Macaulay, Esq.,

" Sir,

" I will have no further correspondence
with you upon the matter.

" I am,
" Your obedient Servant,

" J. BRASSINGTON."

It was a strong, hard but rapid hand, the
hand of a man who had done much clerk's
work in his youth. It had certainly no re-
semblance to the signature which the Psy-
chologist had appended to the cheque form,
and that form now lay torn into twenty
pieces by the angry Jimmy, who had also
torn up the counterfoil and presented him
with another cheque.

" I can't do it, gentlemen ! ' he said
firmly — it was indeed too true — " I can't
do it ! "

Melba lumped up suddenly.

44

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

" I 'm not going to waste any more time
with the old blighter ! ' he said shrilly.
'' Come on, Jimmy ! ' and Jimmy yielded.

They blew out the candle, left the room
with a curse, turning the key in the lock from
the outside, and the unfortunate Mr. Higginson
was left bound tightly to his chair in complete
darkness, and I am sorry to say upon the verge
of tears.

Nature had done what virtue could not do
and the Professor was stumped.

45

CHAPTER III.

In which the Green Overcoat appears as a point
of religion by not being there.

IN the smoking-room of Sir John Parkin's
house upon the same evening of Monday, the
2nd of May, sat together in conversation a
merchant and a friend of his, no younger,
a man whose name was Charles Kirby, whose
profession was that of a solicitor. The name
of the merchant who had retired apart to enjoy
with this friend a reasonable and useful
conversation, was Mr. John Brassington. He
was wealthy, he dealt in leather ; he was a
pillar of the town of Ormeston, he had been
its mayor. He was an honest man, which is
no less than to say the noblest work of God.

Mr. John Brassington was, in this month of
May, sixty years of age. He was tall, but
broad in shoulder though not stout. He
carried the square grey whiskers of a forgotten
period in social history. He had inherited
from his father, also a mayor of Ormeston,
that good business in the leather trade ; it was

46

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

a business he had vastly increased. He had
not been guilty in the whole of his life of any
act of meanness or of treachery where a
competitor was concerned, nor of any act of
harshness in the relations between himself
and any of his subordinates. His expression
was in one way determined, in another rather
troubled and uncertain ; by which I mean
that there were strong lines round the mouth
which displayed a habit of decision in business
affairs, some power of self-control, and a well
ordered life ; but his lips were mobile and
betrayed not a little experience of suffering, to
which we must attribute certain extremes
which his friends thought amiable, but which
his critics (for he had no enemies) detested.

Mr. Brassington had married at thirty-one
years of age a woman quiet in demeanour, and
in no way remarkable for any special talent or
charm. She was the daughter of a clergyman
in the town. She brought him a complete
happiness lasting for four years. She bore
him one child, and shortly after the birth of
that child, a son, she died.

Now Mr. Brassington, like most of his kind,
was a man of strong and secret emotions.
He loved his country, he was attached to the
pictures which the public press afforded him

47

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

•

of his political leader, and he adored his wife.
Her death was so sudden, the habit of his
married life, though short, had struck so deep
a root in him, that from the moment of losing
her he changed inwardly, and there began to
appear in him those little exaggerations of
which I have spoken. The best of these was
too anxious an attachment to the son who must
inherit his wealth. The next best a habit of
giving rather too large and unexpected sums
of money to objects which rather too suddenly
struck him as worthy. To these habits of
mind he had added excursions into particular
fields of morals. In one phase he had been
a teetotaller. He escaped from this only to
fall into the Anti-Foreign-Atrocities fever. He
read Tolstoy for one year, and then passed
from that emotion into a curious fit of land
nationalisation. Finally, he settled down for
good into the Anti-Gambling groove.

By the time this last spiritual adventure
had befallen Mr. Brassington he was nearer
fifty than forty years of age, and the detesta-
tion of games of hazard was to provide him
for the rest of his life with such moral occupa-
tion as his temperament demanded.

Certain insignificant but marked idiosyn-
crasies in his dress accompanied this violence

48

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

of moral emotion. For some reason best
known to himself, he never carried an
umbrella or a walking-stick. He wore driving
gloves upon every possible occasion, suitable
and unsuitable, and he affected in particular,
in all weathers not intolerably warm, a
remarkable type of Green Overcoat with which
the reader is already sufficiently acquainted.
The irreverent youth of his acquaintance had
given it a number of nicknames, and had
established a series in the lineage of this
garment, for as each overcoat grew old it was
regularly replaced by a new one of precisely
the same cloth and dye, and lined with the
same expensive fur.

He told not a soul — only his chief friend
and (of course) his servants had divined it —
but Mr. Brassington lent to that Green
Overcoat such private worship as the
benighted give their gods. It was a secret
and strange foible. He gave to it in its
recurrent and successive births power of
fortune and misfortune. Without it, he would
have dreaded bankruptcy or disease. In the
hands of others, he thought it capable of
carrying a curse.

The son to whom his affections were so
deeply devoted bore the three names of

49

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

Algernon Sawby Leonidas (Sawby had been
his mother's family name), and was now
grown up to manhood. He had been at
Cambridge, had taken his degree the year
before, but had lingered off and on for his
rowing, and " kept his fifth year." He divided
his time between London lodgings and the last
requirements of his college.

On that day in May with which I am dealing
it was to consult upon this son of his that
Mr. Brassington had left the crowd at Sir
John Perkin's and had shut himself with
Charles Kirby into the smoking-room.

Mr. Kirby was listening, for the fifteenth or
twentieth time, to his friend's views upon
Algernon Sawby Leonidas, which lad, in
distant Cambridge, was at that moment doing
precisely what his father and his father's
lawyer were about, drinking port, but with no
such long and honest life behind him as theirs.

It was Mr. Kirby 's way to listen to anything
his friends might have to say — it relieved
them and did not hurt him. In the ordinary
way he cared nothing whether he was hearing
a friend's tale for the first or for the hundredth
time ; he had no nerves where friendship was
concerned, and friendship was his hobby.
But in this late evening he did feel a movement

5°

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

of irritation at hearing once again in full
detail the plans for Algernon's life spun out
in their regular order, as though they were
matter for novel advice.

Mr. Brassington was at it again — the old,
familiar story ! How, properly speaking, the
Queen should have knighted him when she
came to Ormeston during his mayoralty ; how,
anyhow, King Edward might have given him
a baronetcy, considering all he had done
during the war. How he didn't want it for
himself, but he thought it would steady his
son. How he would have nothing to do with
paying for such things ; how he had heard that
the usual price was £25,000 ; how that was
robbing his son ! Robbing his son, sir ! Robbing
his son of a thousand pounds a year, sir !
How Mr. Brassington would have that
baronetcy given him for the sake of his son, of
hearty goodwill, or not* at all.

Mr. Kirby listened, more and more bored.

" I 've told you, Brassington, twenty times !
They came to me about it and }^ou lost your
temper. They came to me about it again the
other day, and it's yours for the asking, only,
hang it all! you must do something public
again, they must have a peg to hang it on."

Whereat Mr. Kirby's closest and oldest

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

friend went at him again, recited the baronetcy
grievance at full length once more, and
concluded once more with his views upon
Algernon Sawby Leonidas.

When Mr. Brassington had come to the end
of a sentence and made something of a pause,
Mr. Kirby said —

" I thought you were going to Belgium ? "

Mr. Brassington was a little pained.

" I have arranged to take the night mail,"
he said gravely. " I shall walk down. Will
you come to the station with me ? "

" Oh, yes ! " said Mr. Kirby briskly. " It '11
give me a nice walk back again all through the
rain. If you think all that about Algernon
you shouldn't have sent him to Cambridge."

" I sent him to Cambridge by your advice,
Kirby," said Mr. Brassington with dignity.

" I would give it again," said Mr. Kirby,
crossing his legs. " It 's an extraordinary
thing that a rich man like Perkin has good
port one day and bad port another. . . .
He ought to go to Cambridge. I have a
theory that everyone should go to Cambridge
who can afford it, south-east of a line drawn
from "

" Don't, Charles, don't," said Mr. Bras-
sington, a little pained, " it 's very serious 1 '*

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

Mr. Kirby looked more chirpy than ever.

" I didn't say your ideas were right ; I
don't think they are. I said that if you had
those ideas it was nonsense to send him to
Cambridge. Why shouldn't he drink ?
Why shouldn't he gamble? What's the
harm ? "

"What's the ? " began John Bras-

sington, with a flash in his eyes.

" Well, well," said Kirby soothingly, " I
don't say it 's the best thing in the world.
What I mean is you emphasise too much.
You know you do. Anyhow, John, it doesn't
much matter ; it '11 all come right."

He stared at the fire, then added —

" Now, why can't I get coals to burn like
that ? Nothing but pure white ash ! '

He leant forward with a grunt, stirred the
fire deliberately, and watched the ash with
admiration as it fell.

" Kirby," said John Brassington, " it will
break my heart ! "

" No it won't ! " said Mr. Kirby cheerfully.

" I tell you it will ! " replied the other with
irritation, as though the breaking of the heart
were an exasperating matter. " And one

thing I am determined on — determined "

The merchant hesitated, and then broke out

33

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

abruptly in a loud voice, " Do you know that
I have paid his gambling debts four times
regularly ? Regularly with every summer
term ? ':

" It does you honour, John,1' said Mr.
Kirby.

" Ah, then," said Mr. Brassington, with a
sudden curious mixture of cunning and firm-
ness in his voice, " I haven't paid the last,
though ! "

" Oh, you haven't ? " said Mr. Kirby,
looking up. He smelt complications.

" No, I haven't . . . ! I gave him fair
warning," said the elderly merchant, setting
his mouth as squarely as possible, but almost
sobbing in his heart. " Besides which it 's
ruinous."

" I wonder if he gave the young bloods fair
warning ? " mused Mr. Kirby. " Last Grand
National "

" Oh, Lord, Charles ! " burst out Mr.
Brassington, uncontrollable. "D'ye know
what, what that cub shot me for ? Curse it
all, Kirby, two thousand pounds ! "

"The devil!" said Charles Kirby.

" It is the Devil," said John Brassington
emphatically.

And it was, though he little knew it, for

M

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

it was in that very moment that the Enemy of
Mankind was at work outside in the hall upon
the easy material of Professor Higginson. It
was in that very moment that the Green
Overcoat was enclosing the body of the
Philosopher, and was setting out on its
adventures from Sir John Perkin's roof.
Even as Mr. Brassington spoke these words
the outer door slammed. Kirby, looking up,
suddenly said —

" I say, they 're going ! What about your
train ? "

" There 's plenty of time/' said Brassington
wearily, " it 's only twelve. Do listen to what
I am saying/'

" I 'm listening/' said Kirby respectfully.

" Well," went on Mr. Brassington, " there 's
the long and the short of it, I won't pay/'

Mr. Kirby poked the fire.

" The thing to do," he said at last in a
meditative sort of tone, " is to go down and
give the young cubs Hell ! 'J

" I don't understand you, Charles/' said
Mr. Brassington quietly ; "I simply don't
understand you. I was written to and I hope
I replied with dignity. I was written to again,
and I answered in a final manner. I will not
pay."

53

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

" I have no doubt you did," said Mr. Kirby.
" It 's a curious thing how eagerly a young
man will -take to expectations ! "

" You simply don't know what you 're
saying, Charles," answered Mr. Brassington ;
" and if I didn't know you as well as I do, I 'd
walk out of the room."

" I know what I am saying exactly/'
riposted Mr. Kirby with as much heat as his
quizzical countenance would allow. " I was
going to follow it up if you hadn't interrupted
me. I say it 's a curious thing how a young
man will be moved by expectations. That 's
why they gamble. Thank God, I never
married ! They like to see something and
work for it. That 's why they gamble.
You v;on't understand me, John," he said,
putting up a hand to save an interruption ;
" but that 's why when I was a boy my father
put me into the office and said that if I worked
hard something or other would happen, some-
thing general and vague — esteem, good con-
science, or some footling thing called success/'

" I wish you wouldn't say ' footling/ '
interjected John Brassington gravely.

" I didn't," answered Mr. Kirby without
changing a muscle, " it 's a horrible word.
Anyhow, if my dad had said to me, ' Charles,

56

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

my boy, there 's £100 for you in March if you
keep hours, but if you 're late once not a
farthing/ by God, John, I 'd have worked
like a nigger ! >:

Mr. Brassington looked at the fire and
thought, without much result.

" I can't pay it, Charles, and I won't/' he
said at last. " I 've said I wouldn't, and
that 's enough. I have written and said I
wouldn't, and that's more. But even if I
had said nothing and had written nothing, I
wouldn't pay. He must learn his lesson."

" Oh, he '11 learn that all right ! " said Mr.
Kirby . carelessly. " He 's learning it now
like the devil. It 's an abominable shame,
mind you, and I don't mind telling you so.
I 've a good mind to send him the money
myself."

" If you do, Charles," said John Brassington,
with one of his fierce looks, " I '11, I '11 "

" Yes, that 's what I was afraid of," said
Mr. Kirby thoughtfully. " You 're an ex-
ceedingly difficult man to deal with. ... I
shouldn't have charged him more than five
per cent. You '11 lose your train, John."

John Brassington looked at his watch again.

" You haven't been much use to me,
Charles," he said, sighing as he rose.

*

57

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

£ " Yes, I have, John/' said Mr. Kirby, rising
in his turn. " What do you do with your
evening clothes when you run up to town by
the night train like this ? "
f- " I change at my rooms in town when I get
in, Charles," said Mr. Brassington severely,
" you know that as well as I do — and I wear
my coat up to town/'

' They say you wear it in bed/' was Mr.
Kirby 's genial answer. " I '11 come out and
help you on with it, and we '11 start."

The two men came out from the smoking-
room into the hall. They found a number of
guests crowding for their cloaks and hats.
They heard the noise of wheels upon the drive
outside.

" I told you how it would be, John/' said
Mr. Kirby. " You won't be able to get
through that crush. You won't get your coat
in time, and you '11 miss the train."

" That 's where you 're wrong, Charles/'
said Mr. Brassington, with a look of infinite
organising power. " I always leave my coat
in the same one place in every house I know/'

He made directly for the door, W7here a large
and sleepy servant was mounting guard,
stumbled to a peg that stood in the entrv, and
discovered that the coat was gone.

58

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

There followed a very curious scene.

The entry was somewhat dark. It was
only lit from the hall beyond. Mr. Kirby,
looking at his friend as that friend turned
round from noting his loss, was astonished to
see his face white — so white that it seemed too
clearly visible in the dark corner, and it
was filled with a mixture of sudden fear and
sudden anger. From that face came a low
cry rather than a phrase —

" It 's gone, Charles ! "

The louty servant started. Luckily none
of the guests heard. Mr. Kirby moved up
quickly and put his hand on Brassington's
arm.

" Now, do manage yourself, John/' he
said. " What 's gone ? "

" My Green Overcoat ! " gasped Mr. Bras-
sington in the same low tone passionately.

" Well ? "

"Well! You say ' well'— you don't
understand ! '

" Yes, I do, John," said Mr. Kirby, with a
sort of tenderness in his voice. " I under-
stand perfectly. Come back here with me
Be sensible."

"I won't stir!" said Mr. Brassington
irresolutely. <

59

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

Mr. Kirby put a hand affectionately upon
his old friend's shoulder and pushed him to
the door of the smoking-room they had just
left. He shut that door behind him. None
of the guests had noticed. It was so much
to the good.

" It 's gone ! It 's gone ! " said John
Brassington twice.

He had his hands together and was inter-
lacing the fingers of them nervously.

Mr. Kirby was paying no attention ; he
was squatting on his hams at a sideboard,
and saying —

"It's lucky that I do John Perkin's
business for him, I 'm being damned familiar."

He brought out a decanter of brandy,
chucked the heel of Mr. Brassington's port
into the fire, and poured out a glassful of the
spirit.

" I always forget your last craze, John,"
he said ; " but if I was a doctor I should tell
you to drink that."

John Brassington drank a little of the
brandy, and Mr. Kirby went on —

" Don't bother about Belgium to-night,
my boy. In the first place, take my overcoat.
I am cleverer than you in these crushes, I
don't even hang it on a peg. I leave it " (and

60

It's gone! It's gone I" said John Brassington twice

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

here he reached behind a curtain), " I leave
it here/' and he pulled it out.

It was no more than an easy mackintosh
without arms. He put it on his unresisting
friend, who simply said —

" What are you going to do, Charles ? "

" I am going to take orders/' said Charles
Kirby, suddenly pulling out "from his pocket
a square of fine, black silk, and neatly adjust-
ing it over his shirt front. " I haven't got a
parsons dog collar on, but a man can walk
the streets in this. After all, some of the
clergy still wear the old-fashioned collars and
white tie, don't they ? "

John Brassington smiled palely.

" Oh, it 's in the house ! " he said. " It 's
sure to be in the house somewhere ! "

" Now, John," said Charles Kirby firmly,
" don't make a fool of yourself. Don't ask
for that coat. It 's the one way not to get it.
Stay where you are, and I '11 bring you news."

He went out, and in five minutes he came
back with news.

" Fifty people went out before we got up,
John. No one knows who they were. The
idiot at the door could only remember the
Quaker lot and My-lord, and Perkin 's so
fussed that he can do nothing but swear, and

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

that 's no use. You 've simply got to come
along with me, and we '11 walk home through
the rain. Take Belgium at your leisure."

" It isn't Belgium that 's worrying me ! "
said poor Mr. Brassington.

" No, / know/' said Charles Kirby sooth-
ingly. " / understand."

The two men went out into the night and
the storm. Charles Kirby enjoyed bad
weather ; it was part of his manifold per-
versity. He tried to whistle in the teeth of
the wind as they went along the main road
towards the Crampton Park suburb of the
town. Brassington strode at his side.

" You didn't order a carriage," said Kirby
after a little while ; " you didn't know it was
going to rain. I suppose that Green Overcoat
of yours has got luck in the lining ? '

" It has a cheque-book of mine in the
pocket," said John Brassington.

" Yes, but that 's not what you 're bother-
ing about," said Mr. Kirby. " You 're
bothering about the luck. For a man who
hates cards, John, you 're superstitious."

For some paces Brassington said nothing,
then he said —

" Long habit affects men."

" Of course it does," said Mr. Kirby, with

to

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

the fullest sympathy. " That is why so many
people are afraid of death. They Jre afraid of
the change of habit."

And after that nothing more was said until
they came to the lodge gates of that very
large, ugly, convenient and modern house,
which John Brassington had built and for no
reason at all had called " Lauderdale."

" Shall I come up to the door with you,
John ? " said Mr. Kirby.

" If you don't mind/' answered Brassington
doubtfully.

"Not a bit/' said Mr. Kirby cheerfully.
" If I had grounds as big as yours I shouldn't
go through them alone/'

The two men walked up the short way to
the main door. When it was opened for them,
the first thing Mr. Brassington said to his
servant was —

" Has anyone brought back my overcoat ? 'J

The servant had seen nothing of it.

" It 's not here," said Mr. Brassington,
turning round to Mr. Kirby. " Come in."

"No, I won't, John," said Mr. Kirby.
" I '11 ring you up in the morning. I '11 do
better than come in, I '11 try and find it for
you."

" You 're a good friend, Charles," said John

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

Brassington, with meaning and simplicity.
He had got a blow.

" Meanwhile, John," said Kirby, standing
outside and dripping in the rain, " remember
it 's doing some other fellow heaps of good.
Heaps and heaps and heaps ! I should like
a drink."

" Come in," said Brassington again.

" Very well," said Kirby as he came in ;
" but I won't take off my hat."

Mr. Brassington had wine sent for, and
Charles Kirby drank.

" It 's too late to drink wine," he said when
he had taken three or four glasses. " It 's a
good thing that I don't care about the office,
isn't it? Goodnight."

The servant held the door open for him,
and Brassington walked off ; but when the
master of the house was out of sight and
hearing, Mr. Kirby stopped abruptly on the
steps, and turning to the servant just before
the door was shut upon him, said —

" Who did you speak to to-day about your
master's overcoat ? ''

The man was so startled that he blurted
out — •

" Lord, sir, I never said a word ! It was
the coachman who spoke to the young

65

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

gentleman when the young gentleman saw it.
He didn't borrow it, sir. He was a friend of
Mr. Algernon's/'

" Was he ? " said Mr. Kirby. " Well, all
right," and he turned to go down the drive.
He reflected that it was a mile and a half to
his own home ; but then, there was the storm
still raging and he liked it, and, thank Heaven,
he never got up earlier than he could help.
He therefore proceeded to whistle, and as he
whistled, to consider curiously the soul of that
old friend of thirty years, whom he loved with
all his heart. Next he made a picture of a
young gentleman, a friend of his friend's son,
coming and asking to see the Green Overcoat,
and learning it by heart. Why ? Mr. Kirby
didn't know. He stacked the fact up on a
shelf and left it there.

CHAPTER IV.

In which it is seen that University training fits
one for a business career.

THE dawn in the month of May comes much
earlier than most well-to-do people imagine.
It comes earlier than most people of the class
which buys and reads novels know, and as by
this time I can be quite certain that the
reader has either bought, hired, borrowed, or
stolen this enchanting tale, I feel safe in
twitting him or her or it upon their ignorance.
The dawn in May comes so incredibly early
that the man who makes anything of a night
of it is not sleepy until broad daylight. Now,
even those who have formed but a superficial
acquaintance with the adventures of Professor
Higginson will admit that he had made a
night of it. Such a night as even the sacred
height of Montmartre and the great trans-
pontine 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

67

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

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 remem-
bered 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

68

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

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

69

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

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 Univer-
sities 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 apart-
ment, 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.

It was broad daylight by the time he had
completed his circumnavigation and detailed
survey. In the half light he had hoped

In this fashion Professor Higginson began an odyssey.

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

that the window might give upon the
garden ; now that everything was fully re-
vealed 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

72

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

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 ! Pro-
fessor 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

73

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

free hands the bottom left-hand corner of the
cheque form, and he traced, Professor Higgin-
son 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 luck-
less 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 re-
gained 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 wras free. . . . Yes,
he had done right. He must be free first.
.... Free, in spite of the bonds which cut

74

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

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 un-
wanted 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 — mar-
vellous creative influence of necessity even in
the academic soul ! — he remembered that
glass could cut.

75

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

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 out\tard 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

76

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

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 Pro-
fessor 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 —

77

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

" 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

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

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. Pro-
fessor 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 '11 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

79

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

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 de-
meanour 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

80

The now hardened soul proceeded to trace, to pencil,
to sign.

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

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.

" If '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 '11 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 '11 let you out the moment the cheque 's
cleared. And there 's plenty of food and

good wine, Mr. Brassington, really good wine
i»

" 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 1 >J

With these words he gave some mysterious

82

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

signal to Melba. The baize door was swung
open and a large oaken door within it was
unbolted ; the chair and the wretched man
upon it were run rapidly through, the bolt
shot, and Jimmy, standing outside, asked,
as in duty bound —

" You ;re not hurt ? You 're all right ? "

A hearty oath assured him that all was

well. He tramped with his companion down

the stairs, and Mr. Higginson was again a

prisoner and alone.

CHAPTER V.

In which Solitude is unable to discover the charm*
which Sages have seen in her face.

THE Philosopher cursed gently, and then
listened.

The steps of his tormentors grew fainter as
they reached the lower part of the house.
Then he heard, or thought he heard, the
distant crunching of boots on gravel. After
that came a complete silence.

It occurred to the ill-used gentleman that
he was free. He pulled savagely at the loose
cords : got one leg to move and then the
other; gradually unrolled the cord and
attempted to stand.

At first he could not. Nine hours of such
confinement had numbed him. He felt also
an acute pain, which luckily did not last long,
where his circulation had been partially
arrested at the ankles. In a few minutes he
could stand up and walk. It was then that
he began to observe his new surroundings.

He found himself in a large and very high

84

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

room, with a steep-pitched roof, soaring and
sombre, quite twenty feet above him. The
walls were bare of ornament, but still covered
with a rich dark red paper, darker, cleaner
patches on which marked places where pic-
tures had hung. On the height of the roof,
looking north, was a large skylight which lit
the whole apartment. There was a good
writing-table with pigeon-holes and two rows
of drawers on either side. Upon this writing
table stood a little kettle, a spirit stove, a
bottle of methylated spirit, a tin of milk
cocoa, three large loaves, a chicken, tinned
meats, a box of biscuits, and, what was not
at all to be despised, an excellent piece of
Old Stilton Cheese. The thoughtful provider
of these had even added a salt-cellar full of
salt. There stood also upon the floor beside
these provisions a large stone jar, which upon
uncorking and smelling it he discovered to
contain sherry.

The room had also a fireplace with a fire
laid, a full coal-scuttle, an excellent arm-
chair, a few books on a shelf — and that was
all.

The Professor having taken stock of these
things, did the foolish thing that we should all
do under the circumstances. He went to the

85

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

big oak door, banged it, rattled it, kicked it,
and abused it. It stood firm.

The next thing he did was also a thing which
any of us would have done, though it had
more sense in it — he shouted at the top of his
voice. He kept up that shouting in a number
of incongruous forms in which the word
" Help " occurred with a frequency that
would have been irritating to a hearer had
there been one, but audience he had none.

He knocked furiously at either wall of the
long room. He turned at last exhausted, and
perceived with delight a low door, which he
had failed at first to notice ; it was in the
gloom of the far corner. He made for this
door. To his delight it opened easily, and
revealed beyond it nothing but darkness.
There were matches upon the mantelpiece ;
he struck one and peered within. He saw a
neat little bed, not made by expert women,
rather (he thought) by these jailers of his,
and through a farther door he saw what might
be a bathroom, fairly comfortably appointed.

Such was Professor Higginson's prison. It
might have been worse, and to the pure in
heart prison can be no confinement for the
soul. But either Professor Higginson's heart
was not pure or something else was wrong

86

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

with him, for when he had taken stock of his
little luxuries he treated them to a long male-
diction, the scope and elaboration of which
would have surprised him in other days.
* * * *

Necessity, which is stronger than the Gods,
knows no law, and is also the mother of
invention. She is fruitful in stirring the
pontifical instinct, the soul of the builder,
of the contriver, in man.

Necessity awoke that primal power in the
starved Higginsonian soul. When the Pro-
fessor of Subliminal Consciousness had
prowled round and round the room like a
caged carnivorous thing some twenty times,
seeking an outlet, harbouring disordered
schemes, a clear idea suddenly lit up his
cloudy mind.

It was glass again ! The skylight was made
of glass, and glass is a fragile thing !

He stood with his hands in his trouser
pockets looking up to that large, slanting
window in the roof and taking stock. It was
made to open, but the iron rod which raised
and lowered it had been disconnected and
taken away. He thought he could perceive
in certain small dots far above him the heads
of screws recently driven in to secure the outer

87

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

edge of the skylight and make it fast. He
estimated the height. Now your Professor
of Subliminal Consciousness in general is no
dab at this ; but that great Governess of the
Gods, Necessity, to whom I have already paid
eight well-merited compliments, threw him
back in this matter also upon the primitive
foundations of society, and the Philosopher
was astonished to find himself applying the
most ancient of measures. He reckoned by
his own height taken against the wall. He
was a man of six feet. The lowest part of the
window was about twice his own height from
the floor — a matter of twelve feet ; its summit
another six or eight.

Then Professor Higginson, having for the
first time in his life measured, began the ancient
and painful but absorbing task of building next.

It is the noblest of man's handicrafts ! He
had heard somewhere that the stretch of a
man's arms is about his own height, and in
this spread-eagle fashion he measured the
bed, the desk, the chairs, the bookshelves.

He carefully put the food down upon the
floor, tipped the desk up lengthways on one
end. He did this at a terrible strain — and
was annoyed to see ink flowing out suddenly
and barely missing his trouser leg. ,

88

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

With a strength he had not believed to be
in him, he wheeled the iron bed out of the
inner room, and managed to get it hoisted by
degrees on top of the desk thus inverted. He
next hoisted up the arm-chair, getting his head
under the seat of it, suffering some pain in
his crown before he got it on to the bed. He
passed up the three wooden chairs to keep it
company, and then with trembling heart but
firm will he began to climb.

It is a pity that too profound a study of
Subliminal Consciousness destroys Faith,
for if the Professor had but believed in God
this^would have been an admirable oppor-
tunity for prayer. Twice in the long ascent
he thought the bed was down on the top of
him ; twice he felt a trembling that shook his
unhappy soul — the floor seemed so far below !
At last he stood triumphant like the first
men who conquered the Matterhorn ; he was
ready to erect upon so firm a base the last
structure he had planned.

Quaint memories of his childhood returned
to him as he fixed the wooden chairs one upon
the other, and jammed the lowest of them in
between the arms of the padded easy- chair,
which was to support the whole.
, If the first part of the ascent had proved

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

perilous, this last section — the gingerly
mounting of a ladder of chair rungs and legs
uneasily poised upon a cushioned seat — was
as hazardous as ever human experiment had
been. The frail structure creaked and
trembled beneath him, as, with infinite caution
and testing, he swung one long leg after the
other up the frail scaffolding. An unworthy
eagerness made his heart beat when he was
within the last rung of the top chair seat.
The glass of the skylight was all but within his
reach .... he could almost touch it with
his outstretched hand as he tried the last step.

But already ominously the wooden child of
his fancy, the engine he had made, was be-
ginning to betray him. He felt an uneasy
swinging in the tower of chairs. He tried to
compensate it by too sudden a movement of
his body, and then — CRASH ! — and in the
tenth of a second all was ruin.

He felt his head striking a rung of wood, a
cushion, an iron bar, his hands clutching at
a chaotic and cascading ruin of furniture, and
he completed his adventure sitting hard upon
the floor with the legs of the wooden chairs
about him, the stuffed arm-chair upside down
within a foot of his head, the iron bedstead
hanging at a dangerous slant above the end

90

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

of the desk, and the wood of this last gaping
in a great gash. He had certainly failed.
* * * *

There is no soul so strong but defeat will
check it for a moment. All the long hours
remaining of that day, even when he had
eaten food and drunk wine, he despaired of
any issue.

As darkness closed in on him he raised the
energy to get the bed down on to the floor again.
He made it up as best he could (the sheets
were clean, the pillows comfortable), and he
slept.

Upon the Wednesday morning he woke —
but now I must play a trick upon the reader,
lest worse should befall him. I must beg him
to allow the lapse of that Wednesday, and to
consider the Professor rising with the first
faint dawn of Thursday. Why they should
keep him thus confined, how long they
intended to do so, whether those fiendish
youngsters wrere determined upon his slow
starvation and death, what was happening to
that miserable cheque and therefore to his
future peace of mind through the whole term
of his life, where he was, by what means, if
any, he might be restored to the companion-
si lip of his kind — all these things did the

91

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

Professor ruminate one hundred times, and
upon none could he come to any conclusion.
Such an occupation were monotonous for the
reader to follow, and even if he desires to
follow it I cannot be at the pains of writing
it out ; so here we are on Thursday morning,
the 5th of May, forty-eight hours after he,
the Philosopher, had Done the Deed and
handed that sad forgery to his captors.

If the truth must be told, repose and isola-
tion had done Professor Higginson good.

In the first place, he had read right through
the few books he had found set out for him,
and thus became thoroughly acquainted for
the first time in his life with the poet Milton,
the New Testament, and Goschen on Foreign
Exchanges, for such was the library which had
been provided for him.

As he rose and stretched himself in that
disappointing dawn, he found the energy to
go through his empty ceremony of howling
for aid, but it soon palled and his throat began
to hurt him.

He looked up again at that skylight showing
clear above the half darkness of the room, and
was struck % quite suddenly with a really
brilliant scheme. He remembered bitterly
the painful misfortune of his first attempt,

o*

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

rubbed a sore place, and wished to Heaven
that his present revelation had come first.

He proceeded to execute at once the prompt-
ings of his new scheme. He took the sheets
of his bed and tied them one to another, the
pillow cases he linked up upon the tail of these,
and, to make certain of the whole matter, he
ended by tying on the counterpane as well.
He tied them all securely together, for he
intended the rope so made to bear his
whole weight. Taking one of the broken
chairs, he secured it stoutly to one end
of the line ; he chose his position carefully
beneath the skylight, he swung the chair, and
at the end of the third swing hurled it up into
the air at the glass above him.' It was his
plan to break that glass. The chair would
catch upon the ridge of the roof outside, and
he would manage in his desperation to swarm
up the tied sheets and win his way through
the broken pane to the roof. The chair was
heavy, and he failed some twenty times.
Twice the chair had struck him heavily on the
head as it fell back, but he persevered.

Perseverance is the one virtue which the
Gods reward, and at long last the Professor saw
and heard his missile crashing clean through
the skylight. He was as good as free, save

93

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

that — such is the academic temper !— he had
forgotten to catch hold of the other end of
the line.

He heard the chair rattle loudly down the
roof outside, he saw its long tail of knotted
sheets swiftly drawn up through the broken
skylight, he leapt up to clutch it just too
late, and marked in despair the last of his
bedclothes flashing up past and above him
like a white snake, to disappear through the
broken window from his gaze. Two seconds
afterwards he heard the chair fall into the
garden some fifty feet below, and he noted
with some disgust that a quantity of broken
glass had come down upon his food.

It was, as I have said, in the first grey light
of the third day — the Thursday — that he had
thus gratuitously shed his bedding. For some
moments after that failure he sat down and
despaired. He also felt his head where the
chair had struck it.

As he turned round helplessly to discover
whether some object might not suggest a
further plan, he was astonished to see the
great oaken door standing ajar. He pulled
it open to its widest extent ; the green baize
door beyond swung to his touch, and he was
a free man.

94

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

Someone had slipped those bolts in the
night, and if that someone were Jimmy,
Jimmy had kept his word.

It was with no gratitude that Professor
Higginson cautiously and fearfully descended
the stairs. He knew so little of men, that he
dreaded further capture and some vigorous
young scoundrel leaping upon him from an
unexpected door. He passed three flights,
each untenanted, furnitureless and quite
silent, until he reached the hall.

The front door stood wide open. The
delicious breath of the early summer morning
came in, mixed with the twittering of birds.
Still wondering and half doubting his good
fortune, Professor Higginson was about to
step out, when he remembered — what ? — the
Green Overcoat. He must face the ordeal of
those stairs again. It was the bravest thing
he had ever done in his life. It was the only
brave thing he had ever done in his life. But
fear of worse things compelled him. If that
Green Overcoat were found and he were
traced — he dared not think of the con-
sequences.

His recent experience was far too vivid for
him to dream of putting it on. He carried
the great weight of it over his arm, and in the

95

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

first steps he took in the open air towards the
lodge, under that pure sky in which the sun
had not yet risen, it was his honest and his
firm intention to take it straight to Crampton
Park, to discover " Lauderdale," to restore
it to its owner and to explain all.

The lodge he found to be empty and even
ruinous. A mouldy gate stood with one of
its bars broken, hanging by a single hinge,
ajar. He passed out upon a lonely country
lane. He was glad it was lonely. An elderly
don in an exceedingly dirty shirt, clad in
evening clothes \vhich had been through
something worse than a prize fight, his collar
crumpled and vile, no tie, and boots half
buttonless, would be foolish to desire any
general companionship of human strangers
upon a May-day morning. It was up to him
to find his whereabouts, and to make the best
of his way to his lodgings and to proper
clothing. Then, he hoped, by six at the latest,
he could do what the voice of duty bade him
do. He felt in his pocket, and was glad to
find his latch-key and his money safe, for
with these two a man commands the world ;
but as he felt in his pockets he missed some-
thing familiar. What it was he could not
recollect — only, he knew vaguely something

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

he expected was not there, a memorandum
or what not. He set it down for nervousness,
and went his way.

The rolling landscape of the Midlands was
to his left and right. The lane ran along a
ridge that commanded some little view upon
either side. It led him northwards, and he
could see in the clear air, for the moment
smokeless, the tall chimneys of Ormeston.
They were perhaps five miles away, and the
Professor prepared to cover that distance.
His heart was shot with a varied emotion, of
exultation at his morning freedom, of terror
that his evil deeds might have gone before
him. But he was determined upon his duty
under that cold dawn. He went swinging
forward.

The east put on its passing cloudless colours,
and beyond the rim of fields, far outward
beyond the world, Phoebus Apollo rose un-
heralded and shone with his first level beams
upon the misguided man.

Now almost as Apollo rose whether proceed-
ing from Apollo's influence or from that of
some Darker Power, hesitation and scheming
entered once more into the heart of Professor
Higginson,

First, he found that he was getting a little
tired of the way, Five miles was a long

97

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

distance. Then he remembered his deter-
mination to give up the Coat. It was heavy.
Why carry it five miles and make a fool of
himself at the end of them ?

By the second mile he had come to the
conclusion that it was ridiculous to knock up
what was probably a wealthy merchant's
household (" Lauderdale" sounded like that,
so did Crampton Park) at such unearthly
hours. The man was certainly wealthy — he
had seen his name in the papers when he had
got his chair a few months before.

In the third mile Mr. Higginson determined
not to fulfil his difficult mission until he had
groomed himself and could call upon this
local bigwig at a reasonable hour. Such men
(he remembered) were influential in provincial
towns.

In the midst of the fourth mile he saw
before him the first of the tall standards
which marked the end of an electric tramway,
and at that point stood a shelter, very neat,
provided by some local philanthropic
scoundrel. It sent up a grateful little curl
of smoke which promised coffee.

The Professor came to the door of the
shelter, timidly turned its handle, and peered in.

Three men were within. Two seemed to

98

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

be night-watchmen, one of whom was con-
cocting the brew, the other cutting large
slices of bread and butter. The third man —
short, stubbly, and of an expression wholly
dull and vicious — was not in their uniform.
He had the appearance of a man whose pro-
fession was very vague, and seemed to be
lounging there for no better purpose than
cadging a cup from pals. He was remarkable
for nothing but a Broken Nose.

The Professor smelt the delicious steam.
He came in through the doorway, and all
three men looked up.

It is a beautiful trait in our national
character that the poor will ever welcome
the wealthier classes, particularly when these
betray upon their features that sort of imbecile
ignorance of reality and childish trust in rogues
which is common to all the liberal professions
save that of the law, which is rare in
merchants, which is universal in dons.

If the mass of our people love a guileless
simplicity in their superiors, when it is accom-
panied by debauch they positively adore it ;
and the excellent reception the Professor met
with upon his entry was due more than any-
thing else to the conviction of his three
inferiors that an elderly man in tattered

99

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

evening clothes and abominable linen must
have spent the night before in getting out-
rageously drunk.

His offer of no less than a shilling for a piece
of bread and a cup of coffee was gratefully
accepted. The word " Sir IJ was used at
least eighteen times in the first three minutes
of conversation.

The Professor felt that he was with friends,
and his self-discipline weakened and weakened
by degree after degree. It sank with the
coffee and the bread, it sank lower with the
respectful tones in which he was addressed ;
then without warning it vanished, and that
soul which had already fallen to forgery and
intemperate language went down a further
step to Sheol.

The Devil, who had been away during the
last two days attending to other business,
must have caught the Professor as he passed
that lodge-gate and have hastened to his side.
At any rate, Mr. Higginson deliberately sized
up the three men before him, determined with
justice that the lounger, the Man with the
Broken Nose, was the most corruptible and
at the same time the least dangerous if any-
thing should come to the (dreadful word !)
police.

100

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

He led up to his subject carefully. He said
that Crampton Park was in the neighbourhood,
was it not ? He had heard that it lay some-
where to the left in a western suburb of the
town. He professed to have found the Green
Overcoat in the hall of the house where —
where he had passed the night, and as he used
these words the three toilers discreetly smiled.
He professed to have promised to return it.
He professed to remember — with grateful
unexpectedness — the^name of the house to
which he had promised to send it. It was
" Lauderdale." He professed an ignorance
of the name of its owner. The Professor
professed far more that morning of sin than
his academic professorship entitled him to do.

He found the lounger (with the Broken
Nose) somewhat indifferent to his motives,
but very much alive to the economics of the
situation ; and when the bargain was struck
it was for half a crown that the bad proletarian
man (with the Broken Nose) took the Green
Overcoat over his disreputable arm, promising
to deliver it at " Lauderdale " in the course of
the morning.

An immense weight was lifted from the
unworthy mind of Professor Higginson. Must
I tell the whole of the shameful tale ? The

101

The bad proletarian man (with the Broken Nose) took
the Green Overcoat.

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

Professor, as he rose to leave the Shelter,
positively added to his fellow-citizen of the
Broken Nose —

" Oh ! And by the way ! Of course, he
will ask who the Coat is from. . . . Say it
is from Mr. Hitchenbrook." He pretended
to feel in his pocket. " No, I haven't got a
card ; anyhow, say Mr. Hitchenbrook — Mr.
Hitchenbrook, of Cashington," he added
genially, to round off the wicked lie.

Thus relieved of duty and thus divorced
from Heaven, Professor Higginson nodded
authoritatively to the Broken Nose, ^cheer-
fully to the other two men (who touched their
hair with their forefingers in reply), and strode
out again to follow the tram lines into the

town.

* * * *

Now here, most upright of readers, you will
say that the Philosopher has fallen to his
lowest depth, and that no further crime he
may commit can entertain you.

You are in error. The depths of evil are
infinite, and the Professor, as he walked down
the long road which brought him to Ormeston,
was but entering that long road of the spirit
which leads to full damnation.

103

CHAPTER VI.

In which Professor Higginson Begins to Taste
the Sweets of Fame.

WHEN Professor Higginson reached the door
of his lodgings the Ormeston day had begun.

The house was one of a row of eighteenth-
century buildings, dignified and a trifle
decayed, representing in the geology of the
town the strata of its first mercantile fortunes.
It was here that the first division between
the rich and poor of industrial Ormeston had
begun to show itself four generations ago, and
these roomy, half-deserted houses were the
first fruits of that economic change.

But Professor Higginson was not thinking
of all that as he came up to the well-
remembered door (which in the despair of the
past eights he had sometimes thought he
would never see again). He was thinking of
how he looked with his horribly crushed and
dirty shirt front, his ruined collar, and his
bedraggled evening clothes upon that bright
morning. In this reflection he was aided by

104

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

the fixed stares of the young serving-maids
who were cleaning the doorsteps and the un-
restrained remarks of youths who passed him
in their delivery of milk. The first with their
eyes, the second more plainly with their lips,
expressed the opinion that he was no longer
of an age for wanton pleasures, and he was
annoyed and flustered to hear himself com-
pared to animals of a salacious kind, notably
the goat.

It was not to be wondered at that, being
what he was, a man who had never had to
think or act in his life, Professor Higginson's
one desire was to put his familiar door between
himself and such tormentors.

He rang the bell furiously and knocked
more furiously still. An errand-boy, a
plumber's apprentice upon his way to work,
and a road scavenger joined a milkman, and
watched him at this exercise in a little group.
It was a group which threatened to become
larger, for Ormeston is an early town. Pro-
fessor Higginson, forgetting that Mrs. Randle,
his landlady, might not be up at such an hour,
gave another furious assault upon the knocker,
suddenly remembered his latch key, brought
it out.^nd was nervously feeling for the key-
hole amid jeers upon his aim, when the door

105

fHE GREEN OVERCOAT.

was suddenly opened and the considerable
figure of Mrs. Randle appeared in the passage.

For one moment she looked as people are
said to look at ghosts that return from Hell,
then with a shriek that startled the echoes of
the whole street, she fell heavily against the
Professor's unexpecting form, nearly bringing
it down the steps.

Mr. Higginson was guilty of a nervous
movement of repulsion. A little more and he
would have succeeded in shaking off the
excellent but very weighty woman who had
thus greeted his return, but even as he did so
he heard the odious comments of the Ormeston
chivalry, notably the milkman, who told him
not to treat his wife like a savage. The
plumber also called it cruel. It was therefore
with some excuse that the great Psychologist
thrust the lady of the house within and
slammed the door behind him with his heel.

Mrs. Randle was partially recovered, but
still woefully shaken. He got past her
brutally enough, pushed into the ground
floor room in the front of the house, and sat
down. He felt the exhaustion of his walk and
the irritation of the scene which had just
passed to be too much for him. Mrs. Randle,
with a large affection, stood at the table

lot

GREEN OVERCOAT.

before him, leaning heavily upon it with her
fists, and saying, " Oh, sir ! ' consecutively
several times, until her emotion was sufficiently
calm to permit of rational speech. Then she
asked him where he had been.

" It 's the talk of the whole town, sir ! Oh !
and me too ! Never, I never thought to see
you again ! " at which point in her interro-
gation Mrs. Randle broke suddenly into a
flood of tears, punctuated by sobs as explosive
as they were sincere.

She sat down the better to enjoy this relief,
and even as she had risen to its climax, and
the Professor was being moved to louder and
louder "objurgation, the bell rang and the
hammer knocked in a way that was not to be
denied. The unfortunate man caught what
glimpse he could from the window, and was
horrified to see two officers of the law sup-
ported by a crowd grown to respectable
dimensions, the foremost members of which
were giving accurate information upon all
that had happened.

The Philosopher summoned the manhood
to open the door and to face his accusers.
They were not so startled as Mrs. Randle, who
now came up with red and tearful face and
somewhat out of breath (but her weeping

107

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

largely overlain with indignation) to protest
against -the violation of her house.

The first of the policemen had hardly begun
his formal questioning of Professor Higginson,
when the second, looking a little closer,
recognised his prey. That subtle air which
no civilian can hope to possess, and by which,
like the savages of Central Africa, the British
police convey thought without words or
message, acted at once upon the second man,
and he adopted a manner of the utmost
respect. To prove his zeal he dispersed the
crowd of loungers, saluted, and told the
Professor that it was his duty to ask him
formally certain questions ; whereat his
colleague — he that had first recognised the
great man — added with equal humility that
as Mr. Higginson had been lost, and the
University moving the police in the matter,
it was only their duty to ask what they should
do, and what light Mr. Higginson could throw
on the affair. There was a report of fighting.
To this Mrs. Randle interposed, without a
trace of logic, " Fighting yourself ! "

The Professor was very glad to answer any
questions that might be put to him, and very
much relieved when he found that these were
no more than what the police required to trace

108

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

the misadventure of so prominent a citizen :
at whose hand he had suffered, or what
adventure had befallen him ; was it murder —
but they saw it was not that ; whether the
reward which had been offered should be
withdrawn, and what clues the Professor
could furnish.

Mr. Higginson looked blankly at these men,
then his eyes lit with anger. He was upon
the very point of pouring out the whole story
of his woes, when with that cold wind upon
the heart which the condemned feel when they
awake to reality upon the morning of execu-
tion, he remembered the cheque and was
suddenly silent.

" You 'd better leave me ! ' he muttered.
" You 'd better leave me, officer ! '

" We were instructed, sir," began the senior
man more respectfully than ever — then Pro-
fessor Higginson bolted to refuge.

" Well, I will see you in a minute ; I must
put myself right. I am all "

" We quite understand, sir/' said the police-
men, taking their stations in the ground floor
room, and drawing chairs as with the intention
of sitting down and awaiting his pleasure.

" I will see you when I can. Mrs. Randle,
please bring me some hot water."

109

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

And with these words the poor man
dashed upstairs to his bedroom upon the first
floor.

There are ways of defeating a woman's will
when she has passed the age of forty, and
these are described in books which deal either
with an imaginary world of fiction or with a
remote and unattainable past. No living
man has dealt with the art, nor can wizards
show you an example of it,

Therefore, when Mrs. Randle returned with
the hot water, it was Mrs. Randle that won.

The Professor poked his head through the
door and reached out for the can. Mrs.
Randle broke his centre, marched for the wash-
hand stand, poured out the grateful liquid,
tempered it with cold, motherly tested its
temperature with her large red hand, and the
while opened fire with a rattle of questions,
particularly begging him not to tell her any-
thing until he was quite rested. Of course,
there were the police (she said), and she would
have to tell her own tale, too, and oh, dear,
if he only knew what it had been those days !
With the Mayor himself, and what not ! At
each stage in her operations she was careful
to threaten a fit of crying.

Professor Higginson's tactics were infantile,

no

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

They were those of his sex. He took off his
evening coat and waistcoat preparatory to
washing. Upon minor occasions in the past,
mere affairs of outposts, Mrs. Randle had
taken cover before this manoeuvre ; to-day
the occasion was decisive, and she stood
firm.

" and the Principal of the University

too, sir ! And his dear young lady ! And, oh !
when they put that news in the paper, which
wasn't true, thanks be to God "

Here, as Mrs. Randle approached tears
again, the desperate philosopher threw his
braces from his shoulders, plunged his face
and hands into the water, and fondly hoped
that when he lifted it again the enemy would
have fled. But Mrs. Randle was a widow,
and the first sound he heard as the water ran
out of his ears was the continuing string of
lamentations and questionings.

" Where 's the towel ? " he asked abruptly.

" Where it 's been since last Monday, sir/'
said Mrs. Randle. " Since that last Blessed
Monday when we thought to lose you for ever !
I never thought to change it ! I never thought
to see you back all of a heap like this ! "

" Last Monday? " hesitated Mr. Higginson
genuinely enough. His calendar had got a

in

To-day the occasion was decisive and she stood firm,

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

little muddled. " What 's to-day ? " he said it
easily. Then he saw a look on her face.

There is a rank in society in which to forget
the day of the week has a very definite conno-
tation— it means ... it means something wrong
with the Brain. Like a flash an avenue of
salvation was suggested to the hunted man
by Mrs. Handle's look. He could lose those
few days ! They could disappear from his
life — utterly — and with them that accursed
business of the Green Overcoat and the fatal
cheque-book it had hidden in its man-
destroying folds!

In the very few seconds which creative
work will take under the influence of hope
and terror, the scheme began to elaborate
itself in the narrow mind of the poor, perse-
cuted don. He flopped down upon a chair,
paused suddenly in the vigorous rubbing of
his face with the towel, passed his hand over
the baldness of his forehead, and muttered
vacantly —

" Where am I ? "

" You 're here, sir ! Oh, you 're here ! "
said good, kind Mrs. Randle in an agonised
tone, positively going down upon her knees
(no easy thing when religion has departed with
youth) and laying one hand upon his knee.

113

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

The Professor laid his left hand upon hers,
passed his right hand again over his face, and
gasped in a thin voice —

" Where 's here ? ';

" In Quebec Street in your own room,
sir ! Oh, sir, don't you know me ? I 'm
Martha Handle?'^;

The Professor looked down at her with
weary but forgiving eyes.

" I do now/' he said ; "it comes back to
me now."

" Oh, Lord ! " said Martha Handle, " I '12
send the giri for the chemist ! ' and she was
gone.

Women may be stronger than we men, my
brothers, but we are more cunning ; and when
she had gone the Professor, dropping the mask
and dressing with extreme alacrity, made
himself possible in morning clothes, His
plan had developed still further in the few
minutes it took him to go downstairs, and as
he entered the room where the policemen
awaited him, he was his own master and
theirs.

They rose at his entrance. He courteously
bade them be seated again, and not allow-
ing them to get any advantage of the first
word, told them the plain truth in a few

114

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

simple and cultivated sentences, such as
could not but carry conviction to any in-
sufficiently salaried official.

" I think it well, officer/' he said, addressing
the senior of the two men, " to tell you the
truth here privately. I will, of course, put
the whole thing later before the proper
authorities/'

The policemen looked grave and acquiescent.

" The fact is/' replied Professor Higginson
rapidly, " I had been working very hard at
my Address — which you may have heard of."

The two men looked at once as though they
had. *

" It was for the Bergson Society," he ex-
plained courteously, and the older policeman
nodded as though he were a member himself.

" Well," went on Professor Higginson in
the tone of a man who must out with it at
last, " the fact is, there followed — there
followed, I am sorry to say, there followed
something like a stroke — at any rate, bad
nervous trouble. . . . / have suffered —
apparently for some days — from a complete
loss of memory."

And having put the matter plainly and
simply in such a fashion, Professor Higginson
was silent.

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

" We quite understand, sir/1 said the
senior of the two policemen gravely, sympa-
thetically and respectfully. " There shan't
be a word from us, sir, except of course "

" No/' said Professor Higginson firmly,
" I am determined to do my duty in this
matter ; those whom it is proper to tell "

At this moment Mrs. Randle, accompanied
by a half-dressed servant, herself in an untied
bonnet and somewhat out of breath, was
heard at the open door with the reluctant
and sleepy chemist, who was her medical
adviser, v

" And he was that bad he thought I was
his poor old mother, who 's been dead these
twenty years ! 'J went Mrs. Handle's voice
outside.

But a moment afterwards, as she came into
the inner room, she saw the Professor seated
and clothed and in his right mind. He
rejected her exuberance.

" Now, Mrs. Randle," he said rather sharply,
and forgetting for a moment the natural
nervous weakness to be expected of one who
had suffered Such Things, " I have told the
officers here and I desire you to know it as
well/'

He glanced at the chemist, rapidly decided

Nt

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

that the more people knew his tale the better,
and said with intentional flattery —

" I thank you, sir, for coming ; you are a
medical man."

Then he continued, turning to the policemen
again —

" You understand ? There is unfortunately
very little to say. My last recollection is of
leaving Sir John Perkin's house — he was
giving a party on — on . . . wait a moment
... it was Monday. I remember having
a sort of shock just after getting out of his
gate, and then I do not remember anything
more until I was approaching this house. It
will be Tuesday to-day ? '

" No, sir/' said the policeman, with grave
reverence for one so learned, so distinguished,
and at the same time so unique in misfortune.
It reminded him of the wonderful things in
the Sunday papers, and he believed. " No,
sir ; to-day is Thursday."

" Thursday ? " said the Professor, affect-
ing bewilderment with considerable skill.
" Thursday ? " he repeated, turning to the
chemist, who said solemnly —

" Thursday, sir ! "

" Oh, poor dear ! " immediately howled
Mrs. Randle.

117

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

" Be quiet," shouted Professor Higginson
very rudely. "If it is Thursday," he con-
tinued to the others, dropping his voice again,
" this is a more serious thing than I had
imagined. Why, three whole days . . .

and yet, wait " (and here he extended one

hand and covered his eyes with the other)
" I seem to have an impression of ...
cold meat -v . ?.» a room . . . voices
. , . no, it is gone."

The younger policeman pulled out a note-
book and an extreme!}' insufficient pencil,
which was at once short, thick, and bald-
headed.

" Lost any valuables, sir ? ' he began.

The Professor slapped his pockets, and then
suddenly remembered that he had changed
his clothes.

" No," he mused. "No, not to my know-
ledge. I had my watch " (he began to tick
off on his fingers) " and a few shillings change
. . V But for the life of him he couldn't
decide whether to lose valuables or not. On
the whole he decided not to.

" No," (after careful thought), " no, I lost
nothing. My boots were very damp as I took
them off, if that is any clue."

The younger policeman was rapidly putting

118

1HE GREEN OVERCOAT.

it all down in the official shorthand.
Habit compelled him to make the outline,

" The Prisoner persistently denied " He

scratched it out and put, "The Professor told

us that he had not " Then came the

second question —

" In what part of the town, sir, might it be
that you knew yourself again, sir, so to
speak ? "

" I have told you, close by here/' said
Professor Higginson.

" Yes, but coming which way like ? '

Here was a magnificent opening ! He had
never thought of that. He considered what was
the most central quarter of the town, what least
suggested a suburb. He remembered a dirty
old mid- Victorian church, now the cathedral,
in the heart of the city, and he said —

" St. Anne's, it was close to St. Anne's/'

Then he remembered — most luckily — that
there were witnesses to his having come up
the street from exactly the opposite quarter,
and he added —

" At least that 's where I began to remember
a little ; but I wandered about, I didn't
remember the street for a good hour, and even
when I came here I was still troubled . . .
Mrs. Randle will tell you "

119

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

" Oh," began Mrs. Randle, " Lord knows,

he gave a cry that loud on seeing me " but

the policeman did not want to hear this.

He put this third question —

" About what time might this be ? "

" About/' said the Professor, speaking
slowly but thinking at his fastest, " about
. . . about three hours ago. It was still
dark. It was getting light. I remember
going through the streets, getting a little
clearer from time to time as to what I was
doing and where I was."

The manoeuvre was not without wisdom.
Had he made the time shorter there would
have been inquiries, and they might have lit
upon the three men in the shelter, and that
detestable Green Overcoat might have come
in once more to ruin his life. As it was, who-
ever the middle-aged person in battered
evening clothes may have been who had
entered the shelter on that morning, it could
not be he. The policeman strapped the
elastic over his note-book again.

" That '11 do, sir," he said kindly.

Mrs. Randle was swift to find a couple of
glasses of beer, which beverage the uncertain
hours of their profession permit the constabu-
lary to consume at any period whatsoever

J20

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

of the day or night, and what I may
call " The Great Higginson Lost Memory
Case " started on its travels round the
world.

During the remainder of that day — the
Thursday — Professor Higginson was prodigal
enough of his experience. It was a great
thing for a Professor of Subliminal Psychology
to have come in direct touch in this way with
one of the most interesting of psychical
phenomena. Everyone he met in the next
hours had a question to ask, and every ques-
tion did Professor Higginson meet with a
strange facility ; but, alas ! with renewed and
more complex untruth. Had he any recol-
lections ? Yes . . . Yes. Were there faces ?
Yes, there were faces. Drawn faces. He
could say more (he hinted), for the thing was
still sacred to him.

One cross-questioned a little too closely
about the sense of Time. Had he an idea of
its flight during that singular vision ? Yes.
Yes ... In a way. He remembered a conversa-
tion— a long one — and a flight : a flight
through space.
• - What ! a flight through space ?

He told the story with much fuller details
that very morning about noon to his most

121

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

intimate personal friend, the editor of the
second paper in Ormeston.

He told it again at the club at lunch to a
small audience with the zest of a man who
is describing a duel of his. He told it to
a larger audience over coffee after lunch.
He went back to arrange matters at the
University, and to say that he could take
up his work the next morning.

It was to the Dean (who was also a Pro-
fessor of Chemistry), to the Vice-Principal,
and to the Chaplain that he had to unbosom
himself on this official occasion. All were
curious, and by the time they had cheered
him, the desperate man's relation had grown
to be one of the most exact and beautiful
little pieces of modern psychical experience
conceivable. All the functionings of the sub-
conscious man in the absence of a co-ordina-
ting consciousness were falling into place, and
the World that is beyond this World had
been visited by the least likely of the sons
of men.

As one detail suggested another, the neces-
sity for a coherent account bred what mere
experience could never have done.

Now and then in these conversations Pro-
fessor Higginson thought he heard a note of

122

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

doubt in some inquirer's voice. It spurred
him to new confirmations, new lies.

For his mathematical colleague he swore
to the fourth dimension ; for his historical one,
to a conspectus of time. " Little windows into
the past/' he called it, the horrid man !

Then — then in a moment of whirl he did the
fatal thing. It was a Research man called
Garden who goaded him.

Garden had said —

" What were the faces ? What were the
voices ? How did they differ from dreams ? "

Professor Higginson felt the spur point.

" Garden/' he said, facing that materialist
with a marvellously solemn look, " Garden
, . . How do you know reality ? I saw
. . . I heard." He shuddered, success-
fully. " Garden/' he went on abruptly,
" have you ever loved one — who died ? '

" Bless you, yes ! " answered Garden cheer-
fully.

" Garden ! '' continued the Philosopher in
a deep but shaken voice, "I too have lost
where I loved — and " (he almost whispered
the rest) " and we held communion during that
brief time."

" What ! " said Garden. He stared at the
tall, lanky Professor of Psychology. He didn't

123

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

believe, not a word. But it was il.e first f ->e
he had come across that sort of ui; it

shocked him. " What ! The Dead ? v

Mr. Higginson nodded twice with fixed lips
and far-away eyes.

" There is proof/' he said, and was gone.

* * * *

Garden stared after him, then he shrugged
his shoulders, muttered/' Mad as a hatter ! "
and turned to go his way. It was about five
o'clock.

* * * *

Among other things which the Devil had
done in that period with which this story
deals was the planting in Ormeston of a
certain servant of his, by name George
Babcock.

George Babcock had come to Ormeston
after a curious and ill-explained, a short and
a decisive episode in his life. He had begun
as a young theorist, who had startled Europe
from the foreign University where he was
studying by a thesis now forgotten abroad,
but one the memory of which still lingered
in England, for a paper had boomed it. ^

It had been a scornful and triumphant
refutation of the Hypnotists of Nancy.

124

A certain servant oj his, by name George Babcock

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

George Babcock had rolled the Nancy school
over and over, and for a good five years the
young English writer, with his perfect com-
mand of German, had been the prophet of
common sense. " Hypnotism/' as that school
called their charlatanry, was done for, a series
of clumsy frauds, a thing of illusions, special
apparatus and lies.

Unfortunately for civilisation, the super-
stitions of the Hypnotists, as we know, pre-
vailed, and European science has grown
ashamed since that day of its earlier and
manlier standpoint. It has learnt to talk of
auto-suggestion. It has fallen so low as to
be interested in Lourdes.

Long before 1890 George Babcock's book
was ruined abroad. But George Babcock was
a man with a knowledge of the road, and while
his reputation, dead upon the Continent,
was at its height in England, he suddenly
appeared, no longer as a theorist, but as a
practising doctor in London. He had bor-
rowed the money for the splash on the strength
of that English reputation, which he retained,
and for ten years he was a Big Man. It was
said that he had saved a great deal of money.
He certainly made it. Then there came — no
one knows what. The professionals who were

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

most deeply in the know hinted at a quarrel
with Great Ladies upon the secrets of his
trade — and theirs.

At any rate, for another three years after
the little episode, George Babcock's name took
a new and inferior position in the Daily Press.
It appeared in the lists of City dinners, at
meetings, at the head of middle-class
" leagues " and " movements " that failed.
When it was included in the list of a country-
house party that party would not be of quite
the first flight, and, what was terribly signifi-
cant to those few who can look with judg-
ment and pity on the modern world, articles
signed by the poor fellow began to appear in
too great a quantity in the magazines. He
even published three books. It was very sad.

Then came the incorporation of the Uni-
versity of Ormeston, or, as people preferred
to call it from those early days, the Guelph
University, after the name of a patron, and
the Prime Minister's private secretary had
been sent to suggest, as the head of the Medical
School, the name of George Babcock.

He was neither a knight nor a baronet, but
Ormeston did not notice that. The old
glamour of his name lingered in that pros-
perous town. A married cousin of the Mayor

127

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

of that year, whose wife dined out in London,
reported his political power. The merchants
and the rest in the newly-formed Senate of
the University timidly approached the Great
Man, and the Great Man jumped at it.

He had now for five years been conducting
his classes at the absurdly low salary of £900
a year.

George Babcock remained after all his
escapades and alarms — such as they may have
been — a man of energy and of singular
organising power, an Atheist of course, and
one possessed both of clear mental vision and
a sort of bodily determination that would not
fail him until his body failed. His face and
his shoulders were square, his jaw too was
strong, the looseness of his thick mouth was
what one would expect from what was known
about him by those who knew. His eyes
were fairly steady, occasionally sly ; his brows
and forehead handsomely clean ; his hair
thick and strongly grey.

This was the figure Garden saw coming up
the street towards him as Professor Higginson
shambled off, already a distant figure, nearing
the gates of the College (for it was in the street
without that the Philosopher had met the
Research man and made that fatal move").

128

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

To say that Garden was glad to meet
Babcock would be to put it too strongly ; no
one was ever glad to meet Babcock. But to
say that he was indifferent to the chance of
blabbing would not be true ; no one is in-
different to the chance of blabbing.

" I say, Babcock/' he said, checking the
advancing figure with his raised hand, " old
Higginson 's gone mad/'

Babcock smiled uglily.

" Yes, he has/' said Garden, " saying all
sorts of things about that little trouble he had.
Saw ghosts ! '

" They all do/' said Babcock grimly.

" Oh, yes, I know," answered Garden, eager
for the importance of his tale, "but he 's got
it all pat ! Says he can prove it ! '

Garden nodded mysteriously.

" He gave me some details, you know,"
went on Garden most irresponsibly ; then he
pulled himself up. He wanted to have
something important to say, but he was a
nervous man in handling those tarradiddles
which are the bulk of interesting conversa-
tion.

Babcock looked sceptical.

" What sort of details ? ' he sneered.

"Oh, I 'm not allowed to tell you," said

129

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

Garden uneasily, " but it was very striking,
really it was/'

Then suddenly he broke away. He felt
he might be led on, and he didn't want to
make a fool of himself. He rather wished he
hadn't spoken. Babcock let him go, and as
Garden disappeared in his turn the Doctor
paced more slowly. He was not disturbed,
but he was interested.

Everyone in the University had heard of
Higginson's Spiritual Experience, everyone
was already talking of it ; that wasn't the
odd part. The odd part (he mused) was
a man like Garden taking it seriously. . . .

The more Mr. Babcock thought of it the
more favourably a certain possibility pre-
sented itself.

He made his way towards the telephone-
room at the Porter's Lodge, asked them to
call up a number in London, and waited
patiently until he obtained it.

He took the full six minutes, and it will
interest those who reverence our ancient
constitution to know that the person to whom
George Babcock was talking was a peer — one
of those few peers who live at the end of a
wire, and not only a peer but the owner of
many things.

130

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

The man at the other end of the wire was
the owner of railway shares innumerable, for
the moment of stores of wheat (for he was
gambling in that), but in particular of many
newspapers, chief of which a sheet which had
thrust back into their corners all older, milder
things, and had come to possess the mind of
England. This premier newspaper was called
The Howl ; nor did the writer of that letter
own The Howl only, but altogether some
eighty other rags ; nor in this country only
was he feared, though he was more feared in
this country than in any other.

It was his boast that he could make and
unmake men, and every politician in turn had
blacked his boots, and he had made judges,
and had at times decided upon peace and
war. A powerful man ; known to his
gutter (before he bought his peerage) as Mr.
Cake ; a flabby man — and vulgar ? Oh ! my
word !

This man at the other end of the wire knew
much, too much, about George Babcock, and
George Babcock knew that he knew it. From
time to time George Babcock, sickening at
the recollection of such knowledge privy only
to him and to his lordship, was moved to
services which, had he been a free man, he

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

would not have undertaken. He was about
to perform such a service now.

He told the story briefly to that telephone
receiver. He insisted on the value of it. The
man at the other end of the wire was very
modern. He had a list of the expresses before
him. He told George Babcock to expect a
letter that would come up by the six o'clock
and reach Ormeston at 8.5. George Babcock
would get his instructions by that train.
At 8.5, therefore, George Babcock, bound
to service and not over-willing, was on the
platform, took the packet from the guard,
feed him, opened it, and read.

The letter was not type-written. It was a
familiar letter, and it was signed of course by
a single uninitialed name, for was not its
author a peer ?'

* * * *

Meanwhile, the unfortunate Professor of
Psychology was wandering within the College
buildings from room to room, from friend to
friend, and spreading everywhere as he went
a long and tortuous train of falsehood and of
doom.

Just before dinner, sitting with the Vice-
Principal's wife in her drawing-room, he added
one very beautiful little point which had

M2

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

previously escaped him— how during what must
have been the middle of his curious trance he
had heard the most heavenly singing— he who
could not tell one note from another on
ordinary days! The Chaplain had already
used him before ten o'clock as a proof of the
immortality of the soul in his notes for
next Sunday's sermon, and a local doctor
had been particularly interested to hear, as
they met just before dinner, that though he
may have had food and drink during that long
period, the only thing he could remember was
cold meat, and that only as something seen,
not as something consumed.

" What kind of cold meat ? " the doctor
had said ; but Professor Higginson, whose
brain was not of the poet's type, had only
answered, " Oh, just cold meat."

Thus by the evening of that Thursday was
the dread process of publicity begun.

That night, while all slept, in the two
Ormeston newspaper offices, shut up in their
little dog kennels, the leader writers were
scribbling away at top speed, dealing with
Subliminal Consciousness and the Functions
Unco-ordinated by Self-cognisant Co-ordina-
tion, the one from the Conservative, the other
from the Liberal standpoint.

133

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

Even the Socialist weekly paper which went
to press on Friday was compelled to have a
note upon the subject ; but knowing that it
must bring in some reference to the nationalis-
ation of the means of production and the
Parsonic Fraud, it basely said that Professor
Higginson was, like every other supporter of
the Bourgeois State, a so-called Christian,
in which slander, as I need hardly inform the
reader, there was not a word of truth.

And so, having dined well with his Vice-
Principal and had his fill, Professor Higginson
set out by night to seek his lodgings.

134

CHAPTER VII.

In which Professor Higginson goes on tasting
them.

PROFESSOR HIGGINSON was glad to get back
to his lodgings on that Thursday night ; he
was beginning to feel the weariness of the
Lion.

I will not deny that some vanity had arisen
in him, for he felt the approach of a little
local fame. Now vanity, especially when it
is connected with the approach of a little
local fame, is not good for Professors, even in
this world ; for their chances in the next it is
fatal. It is a foible only too acceptable as an
instrument to the Enemy of Souls.

Full of this vague sensation of well-being,
it was a shock to Professor Higginson to
find Geoge Babcock waiting for him in his
rooms.

Hidden in the right-hand pocket 6f George
Babcock' s coat was the letter. It was not
type-written. It was a familiar letter. It was

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

signed by a single uninitiated name, fui its
author was a peer.

Higginson came into the room nervously,
less and less pleased to see who his visitor
was, but that visitor had something very
definite \r do.

" I say, Higginson/' he cried suddenly,
rising as suddenly at his colleague's entry
into the room, " you know I don't believe a
word of it ! "

" A \vord of what ? " said Higginson tartly.

" Oh, you know," said Babcock, sitting
down again as did Higginson also, and fixing
the psychologist witL his strong eyes.
" You 've told everybody, and everybody's
talking. All this ' psychical experience/
Higginson ! All these — damn it, why you 're
talking ghosts now ! '

He sat back and waited.

" Babcock," said Higginson, in much the
same tones as he had used to fire upon the
less defended Mr. Garden, " Babcock, you
won't believe a plain human tale? The
Evidence of a witness ? True evidence,
Babcock ? "

" Oh, I believe you had some — some, well,
let 's say some mental experience, all right ;
but I don't believe in all that monkey business.

136

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

... No ! ... I 'm interested, Hig-
ginson. That 's why I Ve come/' He leant
forward. " I 'm really interested."

" You don't believe that I saw . . . what
I say I saw ? ' said Higginson solemnly.

" Why, my dear Higginson, you know —
one sees things when one 's asleep. Simple ? '
" You don't believe," reiterated Hig-
ginson, " that I heard what I say I heard ? '
" Oh, I believe that right enough,"
answered Babcock impatiently. " What 's
* hearing ' ? My dear fellow, for one case
of optical suggestion there are ten cases of
aural ! "

" Suggestion be ! " cried Professor

Higginson too suddenly.

" It 's a funny thing, Higginson," said
Babcock, looking curiously at him and pinning
his colleague down with that look, " it 's a
funny thing that you spook Johnnies don't
seem to know what evidence is. ... Ever
heard a clever counsel briefed in Poison?
. . . I have."

" I " began Professor Higginson, but

Babcock interrupted.

" Now, I knew a fellow once in Italy, not
like you, my dear Higginson, not half so
honest a man, but he had got hold of what

X37

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

convinces people. . . . It 's not what 's
true, it 's what convinces."

Babcock smiled oddly as he said this.

" He didn't publish it ... and " (this
more slowly) " I will tell you what it was, for
it impressed me. He came into my room
early one morning — I knew him well enough —
and he told me the whole story of Adowa.
The telegraph hadn't brought it, Higginson "
(shaking a finger). " We hadn't heard of it.
No one in Europe, no one in Egypt. The
fight was . . . well, 'lowing for longitude
. . . not twrelve hours old. And, mind
you, he didn't give a sort of hint ; he didn't
work your telepathy stunt/' Babcock began
to emphasise. " He described the whole
thing quite clearly : with little men and
bushes and hot sand standing clear, like
three or four little coloured pictures. Eh ?
Coloured. Painted. You could smell the heat.
And he saw a sort of local storm on the scrub
in the valley ; he did ! — least, he said he did !
He saw the poor fellows left behind — the
wounded, you know : he saw the faces of the
torturers." Babcock stopped a second and
changed his tone. He looked unpleasantly
in earnest. " He told me I might make
money over it," he went on. " I was in

138

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

touch with one of the English papers. Like
a fool, I didn't believe him. After that the
telegrams came in . . ."

Professor Higginson was watching his
colleague ; his head stood forward on his long
neck. He was fascinated and a little
frightened.

" Well," said Babcock, sitting down again
and speaking with less apparent purpose,
" that 's all. I think he was a charlatan.
I don't know how he got the thing. I Ve
known news spread in Africa among savages
a thousand miles in half a day. . . . Any-
how, that sort of thing might convince. To
tell you the honest truth, Higginson, your
story doesn't/'

Poor Mr. Higginson flushed. He did not
like to be talked to like that. Babcock
waited for his reply. It came at last, and
came in the expected form.

" I can tell you, Babcock," began Higginson
slowly, " something I Ve told no one else.
You Ve driven me to do it. You know —
you Ve heard — that . . . that, well, that
I saw : that I not only heard singing, but
saw ? I saw a multitude of men — and women,
Babcock."

He passed his hand over his face and wished

139

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

himself well out of it — but Sin is a hard
master.

" Well ? " asked Babcock, quite unchanged
in face.

" Well," proceeded Professor Higginson,
still more slowly, " this is what I have got to
tell you. Many, all of those faces — and mind
you they talked to me, Babcock, they talked
to me " (the Professor was warming to his
work) — " I didn't know. But I knew one,
Babcock," and here Higginson's voice fell (as
his trick had grown to be during these recitals)
to a deeper tone. " Do you know who it
was ? ... It was poor Morris ! "

Babcock rose again and came and stood
over the wretched Philosopher. The Philoso-
pher looked up like a child, an erring child.

" Good Heavens ! " sighed Babcock.
" What extraordinary ideas you have !
That 's not what people notice. Why, men
can do that in their sleep." Then with sudden
vigour, " What else did you see, Higginson ?
Something you couldn't have known ? Some-
thing nobody knew ? "

Professor Higginson thought. Detailed
imaginative fiction had never been in his line,
though he had dealt in it pretty freely all that
day. He thought hard and confusedly ; but

M*

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

what he said at the end of the process was
startling enough.

" Very well, Babcock, listen to this. There
was in that crowd a figure very different from
the others — a mad figure, you will say. Most
mournful eyes, Babcock, and — well, it 's
unpleasant, but it smelt of seaweed. "
, " Oh ! " said Babcock. " Was it dressed ? "

Mr. Higginson thought a minute.

" Yes, it was dressed," he ventured, groping
his way. " Yes, it was dressed. ... It
was very oddly dressed. You know . . .
you see ... it had dripping wet clothes
on, dark blue. But, Babcock" (here Higgin-
son had an inspiration, and very proud of
it he was), " it had no arms ! "

" Oh/' said Babcock, musing, " it had no

arms/'

There was a gap in their conversation, an
end to Babcock's pushing, an end to Higgin-
son's lying. A let up. An interval of repose.

It was Babcock who broke it.

" Well/' he sighed, " I can't make head or
tail of all this, Higginson ! Anyhow, I must
be going. It 's interesting. I know you
think you had these experiences, but, frankly,
all that kind of thing 's beyond me. I don't
think it 's there. I think it floats in men's

141

But, Babcock, it had no arms/"

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

brains— false, like dreams/' and he got up
to go.

But for the next half hour he was at the
telephone again, talking to London and to the
Ancient Aristocracy of Britain and to The Howl.

When he rose from the machine it was just
eleven. The Howl prints news up to two
o'clock. Smart Rag !

Next morning (Friday), when he came
downstairs, Professor Higginson received a
slight but very unpleasant shock. It was a
shock of a kind one does not often receive.

Like all the rest of the world, Professor
Higginson read The Howl at breakfast. The
Howl is very well edited ; it gives you your
thrill in a short compass, and every day has
some new Portent to present.

That day the Portent was Sleeping Sickness
on a Huge Scale in London. Ten millionaires
were down with it and a politician was
threatened. It wasn't true, and there was a
leader on it. But true or false, it was of less
consequence to Mr. Higginson than one fairly
prominent but short item upon the front page.
It was not the chief item on it ; the chief item
was some rubbish about a man it called " the
Kaiser." It was perhaps the second or the
third piece of news in importance.

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

END OF A MYSTERIOUS CAREER.

NOBLEMAN FOUND DROWNED ON
BRETON COAST.

ROMANTIC STORY.

BREST, Thursday, May $th.

Fishermen from the remote and old-world
village of Karamel report a gruesome discovery
upon their rock-bound coast. The Count
Michaelis de Quersaint, a well-known eccentric
character in this district, evidently lost his life
by shipwreck some few days ago in the neigh-
bourhood. It was the Count's habit to cruise
up and down this coast during the summer
months incognito, in a small ten-tonner, with
a couple of men for crew, the unfortunate
man having been born without arms, like a
certain famous Irish landlord of the last
generation, and being very sensitive upon the
point. The boat has not been found, but the
bodies of three men, one of which is un-
doubtedly the Count, have been washed up
on the rocks. The features are unrecognisable,
but there can be no doubt of Count Michaelis's
identity. The corpse was clothed in the blue-
serge yachting suit which the Count habitually
wore on these expeditions, and the body was

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

that of a man without arms. In the opinion
of Dr. Relebecque, whom the Government
has dispatched to Karamel, the disaster must
have taken place about four days ago, and
most probably during the gale of last Monday
night.

The corpse was dressed in blue. It was
drowned. It had no arms — a sort of
monster.

Professor Higginson was unhappy, very
unhappy indeed. He also felt sick.

Gusts of fear swept over his simple soul.
There were moments when he almost smelt
the pit, and he groaned in spirit.

So powerful was the effect upon him, that
he was half persuaded of some connection
between his foolish lie and doubtful super-
human powers. He didn't like it. It gave
him a sense of possession. It left him not his
own master.

He would not take up the paper again. He
left it folded upon his table, and went out a
little groggily to walk up the street to College
and to take his class.

But when Professor Higginson appeared
before his class he was nervously conscious
that a great number of young eyes were

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

watching him with quite as much amusement
as interest.

Not that he was stared at. Provincials
are too polite for that, and the earnest pro-
vincials who attend their Universities are
perhaps the politest class in England. But
whenever he looked up from his notes he met
the glance shy and suddenly withdrawn, now
from the left, now from the right, which told
him that of the fifty or sixty students before
him not one was ignorant of the Great
Adventure.

His subject that morning was The Hyper-
graphical Concatenation of the Major Sensory
Criteria and Psycho-hylomorphic Phenomena
in their Relation of the Subjective to the
Objective Aspects of Reflex Actions — a
fascinating theme ! And one which, upon any
other day, he would have analysed with the
mouldy bravura that he had cultivated.

But that morning something flagged. The
interest of the class was elsewhere, and Pro-
fessor Higginson knew only too well where it
was ! His misfortune or accident was
already so much public property that the
youths and maidens and the respectful
dependants and servitors of the University
as well were universally acquainted with it.

u*

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

He felt again that touch of vanity in the midst
of his embarrassment !

The great clock of the University buildings
boomed out noon. He shut his notes, looked
with his weary eyes at the young faces before
him, now lifted to his own, and said —

" Next time we will take the Automatic
Functions of Guest and Bunny. It is new
ground, and I think it will interest you."

A timid, fair-haired girl to the rear of the
left centre asked whether they need buy the
third edition ; she only had the second. He
said, full of thought for her purse, that there
was no necessity to do such a thing, whereat
the student added —

" But, Professor Higginson, it deals with
the Subliminal Phenomena of a Loss of
Mem "

"That'll do! That '11 do!" cried Pro-
fessor Higginson sharply.

He could have sworn that he heard a titter !
He looked up wearily at the window as his
class tramped out.

It was raining.

When he had changed his Cap and Gown for
the bowler hat, umbrella and mackintosh of
his civilisation, he stepped out under the arch-
way into the street, glad to be rid of his duties

'47

1HE GREEN OVERCOAT.

for the day, profoundly glad to be alone. He
had fallen, as his habit was, into a conversation
with himself, half aloud, happily oblivious of
the suspicious glances of passers-by, which he
would have imagined to be testimony to his
unhappily growing fame, when he received a
sharp blow upon the back from the open hand
of some vigorous person, and turned round
with an exclamation to see no less than
Babcock — again.

Professor Higginson turned under his
umbrella to catch that figure at his side, and
saw beyond it a very different figure — a figure
draped entirely in a long raincoat of some sort
trailing almost to the ground ; peeping above
the front of that coat was a clerical dog-
collar, and above the clerical dog-collar a long
face, the eyes of which always looked towards
some spot far off.

" Well, Higginson/' said Babcock, " you Ve
done it now ! "

" Done what ? " said Professor Higginson,
knowing only too well what he had done.

" Made yourself famous/' said George
Babcock shortly.

" I don't know that ! " said Professor
Iligginson, and he nervously wondered
whether the drip upon his back were from his

148

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

own umbrella or his neighbour's. " Of course,
a thing like that will be talked about/'

" It 's what you said about the heavenly
singing that did it/1 said George Babcock
brutally ; and as he said it Professor Hig-
ginson, glancing at him sideways, saw a
definite curl downwards upon the big, loose lips.

As they passed the door of the University
Common Room, Babcock halted and said —

" Well, I 'm going in ! Are you coming
with me, Higginson ? '

" No ! " said Professor Higginson, with
singular determination.

" All right/' said Babcock, not insisting.
" Charles will see you home. I ought to have
told you, this is my wife's brother Charles ;
he 's a parson," he added rudely, as though
the external signs of that profession were
absent. " You go with him, Charles. It 's
on your way. Tell Clara I 'm coming. Back
before one/*-*

And George Babcock the strong pushed
through the swing doors of the Club, and left
his brother-in-law and his colleague in the
rain outside.

Professor Higginson and the religious person
walked for a few minutes in silence. For one
thing the Philosopher did not know the name

149

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

of the minister, and it was the minister who
first broke that silence.

" You Ve heard singing ! ' he said
abruptly, and as he said it he still stared in
front of him as at some distant point beyond
this world, and steered himself by his great
nose. He did not look at his companion, and
he repeated in tones of subdued wonder,
" You heard singing. I read it in the
Ormeston paper to-day. "

Professor Higginson had never in his life
been rude to a man at the first meeting. He
did not know how it was done.

" Yes," he said . . . " after a fashion/'

" Ah ! 'J said the Reverend Charles, and
they went on another fifty yards in silence
through the rain. The streets were quite
deserted.

Professor Higginson wafe appalled to find
his companion's hand laid firmly upon his
shoulder ; the other hand held the umbrella
above. The parson looked immensely into
his eyes.

" I wish I were you/' he said, " or, rather,
I don't wish I were you." Then he loosed
hold, and they walked on together again.

Professor Higginson was profoundly un-
comfortable. He was Professor of Subliminal

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

Psychology, and far be it from him to fall into
the vulgar errors of the materialist, but the
man did seem to him a little cracked ; and
when he whispered for the third time, " You
heard singing ! " Professor Higginson was in
that mood wherein weak men run. Now Pro-
fessor Higginson prided himself that he was
not a weak man.

The Reverend Charles began talking very
loudly to himself, not in the half-tones of self-
communion common to the academic temper,
but quite out loud, almost as though he were
preaching.

" Singing ! ' Lovely chaunting voices,
singing to the sound of harps, and in that
light which dieth not, for they that stand in
it are the inheritors of the world to come/ . . .
; . . That 's from Pearson," he added
abruptly, changing to a perfectly natural
tone. " Do you know Pearson's work ? "

" No," said Professor Higginson, immensely
relieved at the change in the tone. " No, to
tell the truth, I do not."

" He saw what you saw," said the Reverend
gentleman, nodding gravely under his
umbrella as he strode forward ; " but he
hadn't your chance of convincing the world.
No ! "<

15*

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

And here he shook his head as gravely as
he had nodded it.

The rain still fell. The wet street still
stretched out before them.

" It has been given to many men/' began
the Reverend Charles again in a totally
different tone, this time the intellectual
interrogative, " to see the hidden places, but
your chance ? "

Professor Higginson said nothing, he was
beginning to feel uncomfortable again. He
was not a materialist — what man of his great
attainments could be ? But on the other hand
there was such a thing as going too far in the
other direction. Then he reasoned with
himself. The Reverend Charles had no
weapon. He, the Professor, was a tall man,
and — hang it all ! he had no right to be
certain that the man was mad.

They had come to Professor Higginson's
door. There, in the pouring rain, Professor
Higginson put in the latch key, opened the
door, and asked in common courtesy whether
his colleague's brother-in-law would come in.

His colleague's brother-in-law half shut a
dripping umbrella, held out a huge and bony
hand,fixed the embarrassed Don with luminous,
distant eyes, grasped his nervously offered

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

hand in return, and said sadly, with a world
of meaning —

" No ! I will not come in ! I will leave you
to Those Voices of the Great Peace ! "

Then it was that Professor Higginson
noticed, standing in the mean little hall
humbly enough, a mean little man, short,
wearing a threadbare coat, and a drenched
bowler hat.

" Professor Higginson/' said this apparition
gently, " Professor Higginson, I presume ? "

" What ? " snapped the Professor, still
holding the Parson's hand, like the handle of
a pump.

" May I see you a moment ? I represent
The Sunday Machine.''

" No/' thundered Professor Higginson,
dropping the reverend hand in his excite-
ment. " I 'm tired, it 's not lunch time yet,
I don't know what you mean ! "

The little man was at once flabbergasted
and hurt. The Reverend Charles smiled a
cadaverous smile, but one as luminous as his
eyes.

" May I supply the place ? " he said in a
voice that was musical in two tones.

He stood there winningly in the open
doorway with his dripping umbrella and

153

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

his huge, unoccupied right hand still held
out.

The little reporter, not quite understanding
what he should do, grasped that great hand,
just as Professor Higginson hand grasped it,
and then stood helpless.

Professor Higginson was at the end of his
patience. He said sharply —

" You must come again ! You must come
again ! This isn't the moment/'

In another minute he would have apolo-
gised for his abruptness, but the little
journalist had pride and had already gone
out, without an umbrella, thrusting his
pathetic little note-book into his threadbare
pocket ; and the Reverend brother-in-law,
after giving one great revealing look into the
darkness of the hall, had gone out also.
Professor Higginson heard the door slam
behind him: His curiosity prompted him to
gaze upon them out of a window. They were
going off together through the rain, into the
heart of the town, and it seemed to the
Philosopher that the Parson was more
animated than before. He turned to his
companion continually, and his gestures were
broad. More fame was brewing!

All that Friday afternoon he kept his room.

154

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

He forbade Mrs. Randle to admit a soul. He
went to bed early and slept ill. The wages of
sin is death.

Professor Higginson came down next
morning in a very miserable mood. A vast
pile of letters stood beside his plate, and there
also he saw The Howl, folded, keeping its
dreadful secret — he was sure it had one for
him.

The sheet, with its harmless outer cover,
its advertisements of patent poisons and its
bold title menaced him. It fascinated him too.
He hesitated, reached for it, opened it, and
the blow fell.

To his horror, there stared him in the face
two great lines — nay, three, of huge block
headline type, counting more in the front
page of that day than the sleeping sickness,
than the might of Germany, or the turpitude
of Kalmazoo.

They ran thus—

EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE!
REVELATIONS OF A GREAT PSYCHOLOGIST.

PROFESSOR HIGGINSON TESTIFIES TO
SUPERNATURAL EXPERIENCES.

RECOGNITION OF THE DEAD.

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

There are parts of the body that grow cold
under' excitement of an unpleasant type.
Among these may be noted the forehead,
certain muscles upon either side of the
vertebrae, and the region of the knees.

Had Professor Higginson been free to note
these interesting phenomena proceeding in his
own person, it might have been of advantage
to science. All he knew was that he felt
extremely ill. He pushed his breakfast plate
away from him, folded the paper into two,
rose from the table, and stood bending over
the mantelpiece with his head upon his hand.
Then he mastered himself, sat down, and
began to read this —

Orraeston, May $th, Friday.
(From our Special Correspondent.)

I am authorised to publish an experience
altogether unique which has befallen one of
the most respected members of the Guelph
University, Ormeston, and one, moreover,
whose peculiar functions at the University
give him an unchallenged authority on the
matter in question.

Professor Higginson, who holds the Chair
of Subliminal Psychology in the University, is
in the possession, through a recent experience,
of undoubted proofs of the existence of the

156

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

soul of beings of human origin in a state of
consciousness of other than terrestrial con-
ditions.

What followed, and what his pained eyes
most wearily discerned, was the nature oi
the proof : the impossibility that anyone in
Ormeston should have heard of that drowned
thing upon the French coast ; the hour in
which Professor Higginson had told a colleague
of the experience — fully four hours before
the discovery itself was made — five hours
before the belated Breton telegram had
reached The Howl from its Paris office. The
whole thing was a convincing chain. And
with that dreadful knowledge men have that
they are in for it, Professor Higginson laid
the paper down, and wondered how much
must be endured before the blessed touch
of death.

CHAPTER VIII.

In which Professor Higginson gets those sweets
by the wagon -load, and also hears how Men
are Made.

PROFESSOR HIGGINSON stared at the pile of
letters. He remembered that it was a
Saturday — a free day ! He groaned at such
freedom.

Fame is like the trumpet she bears. The
trumpet has for the civilian an exhilarating
sound ; for the house near barracks, too
familiar with it, a mechanical one ; for the
mounted trooper at reveillee it has nothing but
a hideous blare.

Fame had come to Professor Higginson
under her less pleasing aspect. He marvelled
that so much fame had already risen.
He trembled at what The Howl might now
raise. A paltry lapse of memory ! A thing
that might happen to anyone ! And now all
this!

Professor Higginson had under-estimated his
position in the scientific world of guess-work.

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

There are not many Professors of Psy-
chology. Only three have written books.
That his own should have been translated
into several languages had in the past given
him pleasure, for he was a provincial man,
and in that curious mixture which makes
your academic fellow the funny thing he is,
the enormity of false pride jostles a very real
simplicity.

He opened one letter, then another, then
another : he intended to answer each
laboriously at some length with his own hand.
He had said nothing of confidence or of
privacy to any man, and these letters were
the firstfruits of what might be to come !

The Howl is read by all England before
nine. There is a post comes into Ormeston
at three in the afternoon. By that post, amid
a mass of material which it appalled him to
observe, and which included every kind of
advertisement from every sort of tout, there
was shot at the Philosopher over two hundred
letters of more material kind.

He purposed an attempt to answer even
these in as much detail as his first batch and
with his own hand. His Great Adventure
was becoming a matter of appreciable interest
to himself, and half to conquer, in some

'59

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

moments, his anxiety and dread. There
came interludes — as he sat that afternoon
opening envelope after envelope, and scribbling
notes for replies — when he really felt as though
what he were writing was true, and could
describe with glowing precision all that strange
psychic phase in which the Sub-Conscious
self kicks up its heels and gambols at random
unrestrained by the burden of objectivity.

Two letters in particular he wrote with the
utmost care. One to a Cabinet Minister — an
inveterate meddler who dabbled in such things
in the intervals of his enormous occupations —
the other to an ex-Cabinet Minister — another
inveterate meddler who also dabbled in such
things in the intervals of his.

Professor Higginson had never written to
such great men before. He worked really
hard, and he composed two masterpieces.
Upon the addressing of his first ten envelopes
he spent the best part of twenty minutes with
books of reference at his side. He wrote
courteously and at enormous length to a Great
Lady whose coronet stood out upon the paper
like a mountain, and whose signature he could
yet hardly accept as real, so tremendous
a thing did it seem to him that such an one
as She should have entered his life.

J6Q

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

He wrote in extraordinary French to the
great Specialist at Nancy who had written to
him in English. He wrote in English to the
great Specialist of Leipsic who had written
to him in a German he did not understand,
but whose signature and European name
warranted the nature of the reply. So passed
all Saturday's leisure.

Then came Sunday morning — and a perfect
ocean of post !

It was a mass of correspondence which no
two secretaries could have dealt with in
thirty-six hours, and which he left hopelessly
upon his table until some expert friend might
tell him how such heaps were cleared.

His immense work of the day and of the
night before in answering the Great had left
him weary and already disgusted with his
new public position. His terrors returned.

He had overstrained himself. The room
was blurred before him. He rose from his
breakfast and thought to take the air — but
the empty Sabbath streets brought him no
relief.

The Sunday Popular Papers were hot on
his trail. Their great flaring placards stood
outside the news shops.

" Is there a Heaven ? " in letters a foot

1*1

11

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

long, and underneath, " Professor Higginson
says 'Yes/" almost knocked him down as
they stared at him from one hoarding. In
the loud bill outside a chapel he saw his name
set forth as the " subject of the discourse/'
and before he could snatch away his eyes he
had caught the phrase : " The First Witness."
All were welcome. . . . He was the First
Witness ! ... Oh, God !

He could not pursue his walk. He felt
(quite unnecessarily) that the mass of the
people whom he passed noted him, and spoke
of him among themselves as the Author of the
Great Revelation. He wished again for the
hundredth time that he had never meddled
with a lie. Then Satan jerked the bit : Pro-
fessor Higginson remembered what the truth
would have brought him ; he thought of the
dock. And then he ceased to wish for
anything at all.

Just as he was turning back from that via
dolorosa of newspaper placards and sermon-
notices in the public street, he remembered
the mass of correspondence, and at that
moment Heaven sent him a friend — it was
Babcock. The set face and hard, bepuffed
eyes seemed to shine on him like a light of
doom; the great loose mouth seemed eager

162

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

and hungry to devour a victim of such
eminence.

Professor Higginson did not let him take
the offensive.

" Babcock/' he almost shouted in his agony,
" you know about letters and things ? "

Babcock never looked bewildered. He
nodded his head determinedly and said —

" Go on."

" Well/' continued Professor Higginson,
fiercely determined that the great subject
should not turn up, and talking as though by
steam, " letters, you know about letters,
letters, hundreds and hundreds of them. Must
deal with them, must deal with them this
morning — now ! " he almost screamed.

The heavy Babcock rapidly diagnosed the
case within his mind. He forbore to
exasperate the patient.

" That 's all right/' he said about as
soothingly as ogres can. " That 's all right.
What you want is a shorthand writer/'

" Two ! " shouted Higginson, still dragging
his companion along.

But the heavy Babcock had organising
power.

" What 's the good of two ? " he said
contemptuously. " You haven't got two

163

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

mouths — nor two brains either/' he added
unnecessarily.

" I want help ! " said Professor Higginson
wildly. " Help ! "

"What you want/* said the heavy Babcock,
with a solid mental grip that mastered his
victim, " is someone to open all those
letters, and sort 'em out, one from the other,
and see what ought to be said, eh ? Kind
of thing that ought to be said. Got a
telephone ? '

" No — yes — no/' said Professor Higginson
as he reached his door.

" You ought to have — a man of your
position/' said Babcock. They had reached
the door. " I '11 come in and help you," he
added.

He did so. He set to work at once did
Babcock — strongly and well. He reproved
his unhappy colleague again for not having
a telephone, sent out a servant in a cab with
the address of a shorthand writer and of a
typist, newspaper people obtainable of a
Sunday, and he ordered a machine. Then
he proceeded with tremendous rapidity to
slice open the great heap of envelopes with
a butter knife.

He sorted out their contents at a pace that

164

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

appalled and yet fascinated the Professor of
Psychology. By the time the assistants had
come he had them in four heaps : —

(1) Big-Wigs,

(2) Money,

(3) Refusals, and

(4) (largest of all) Trash.

Then did he take it upon himself without
leave to call out to the shorthand writer —

" First sentence — I hope you will excuse
my dictating this letter — The pressure of my
correspondence during the last few days has
been as you may imagine far too great, etc.,
etc/ "

It was a noble, rotund, convenient sentence.
It had done work in its time. Higginson
listened, more fascinated than ever.

'Thirty copies of that, please/' said Babcock
sharply. Then he condescended to explain.

"That'll come after the 'Dear Sir or
Madam/ "

Higginson nodded and added faintly —

" Or ' My Lady/ or whatever it may be/'
1 Yes/' said Babcock, suddenly glancing at
him with a gimlet look, " after the opening
thing whatever it is, ' My Lord Duke, or My
Lord Cardinal, Excellence, or My Lord
Hell-to-Pay/ "

105

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

He busied himself again with the papers.

"/Those," he said, shuffling rapidly a body
of over forty and suddenly tearing them
across, " that 's trash ; principally lunatics.
I can tell 'em by the hand."

Higginson gazed on helplessly ; he thought
such destruction imprudent, but he said
nothing.

" These," went on Babcock, groaning with
intelligent interest, and licking his forefinger
to deal with the papers, " these are refusals/'

He turned leaf after leaf as though he were
counting Bank Notes, and decided upon the lot.

"Yes; all refusals."

" May I look ? " said Professor Higginson
a little weakly.

" Yes, if you like," said Babcock, throwing
over the pile without looking up, and turning
to the next.

The Professor discovered that his colleague
was right enough. They were invitations all
of them, and not invitations to accept. Over
a third were from money-lenders. He made
a plaintive appeal to keep certain of these
last, whose gorgeous crests, ancient names,
and scented paper fascinated him. Babcock
merely grunted and said, putting his hand
upon another much smaller pile —

166

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

" These are money, Higginson, money.'9

He read them out. An offer to write for
a magazine ; a much more lucrative offer to
write for The Only Daily Paper — but to write
exclusively — and so forth.

" That 's the one to take/' said Babcock,
he pulled out a note with an American heading,
ticked it, and tossing it to the Professor, said—

" Shall I answer it for you ? '

" No," said Higginson, trying to be firm.

" Oh, very well then," said Babcock,
" dictate it yourself."

And the Professor with infinite verbiage
gratefully accepted an exclusive article of
three thousand words for the sum of £250.

It was the turn of the Big-Wigs, and the
learned Babcock with unerring eye skipped
an actor and a Duchess of equal prominence,
and fished out The Great Invitation.

It was the first document upon which he
had condescended to linger, and though it
was short, he spent some moments over it.
His face grew grave.

" That 's a big thing ! " he said solemnly,
handing it over almost with reverence to the
Professor of Psychology.

The Professor read a good London address
simply stamped upon a good piece of note

167

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

paper. He saw a signature, " Leonard
Barclay/' which he vaguely remembered in
some connection or other. He read an in-
vitation to deliver an address for the Research
Club upon any day he might choose, but if
possible during the next week. The Research
Club would take for the occasion the large
room at Gorton's. That was all.

" Lucky beast ! " murmured Babcock, not
quite loud enough for the typist to hear, as
he fixed the reading Higginson with his eye.

The reading Higginson laid down the letter,
nodded inanely, and said —

"Well, ought I to take that, Babcock?
Who are the Research Club ? "

"Who are the Research Club? Wuff !
What a man ! They make men ! " said Babcock
bitterly, " that 's what they are ! Do you
mean to say you don't know?" he went on,
leaning over and talking earnestly in a low
tone. " Do you mean to say you haven't heard
of the Research Club ? "

" Somewhere, I dare say," said Professor
Higginson confusedly.

But he hadn't. It was a great moment
for Babcock. He had not been among the
" nuts " for nothing.

" Come/' said he, like a man who is leading

z68

He read an invitation to deliver an address for the
Research Club.

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

up to a great business, " you know who
Leonard Barclay is ? '

" No — yes/' said Professor Higginson.

" Just like your telephone/' sneered
Babcock. " You don't know. Well, I '11 tell
you. Leonard Barclay 's the private secretary
of Mrs. Camp, and he 's the man who started
the Connoisseurs in Bond Street, and who
wrote the book about Colombo. Now do
you understand ? '

Professor Higginson dared not say he didn't.
But he still looked helpless.

" Good God, man ! " Babcock wrent at him
again, "he's in the very middle of it. I've
known invitations from the R.C. sent by lots
of people, but never by him \ '

" Oh ! " said Higginson, with an appearance
of comprehension, though in truth the
mysteries of our plutocracy were for him
mysteries indeed. "Is he in Parliament ? '

" Parliament ! " sneered Babcock. "You '11
be asking me if he 's the Lord Mayor next.
He 's Leonard Barclay. . . . Oh, curse it !
He 's it ! He 's in the middle of the pudding.
Why, man alive, he made " (and Babcock
with glorious indiscretion quoted right off
the reel) " the Under-Secret ary for the Post
Office, the General in command of the 5th

170

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

Army Corps, the Permanent Commissioner of
Fine Arts, and a Bishop — a Bishop who really
counted."

He paused for breath, and he emphasised
his words slowly as he leant back again.

" Do you know, Higginson, that Leonard
Barclay was the man who let Lord Cowfold
leave the country ? ''

* " What ! " said the astonished and provincial
Professor. " What do you mean ?
Lord Cowfold ? — why, he was at Ormeston
only last May opening the Bulldog Club/'

" Well, he 's in Assisi now/' said Babcock
grimly, " Assisi in Italy ; and he can thank
Leonard Barclay that he 's not in Dartmoor —
Dartmoor in Devonshire. Lord, man, you 're
in luck ! "

" But I don't understand/' began Pro-
fessor Higginson, and then he was silent.

" Well, then, I '11 tell you," said Babcock,
gloating in triumph, " though it 's difficult to
believe you ! The Research Club is Bake-
well and the Prime Minister and Fittleworth
and Capley and about twenty more like that,
and when you talk before it, you don't only
talk before it, Higginson, you talk before
anything that counts in Europe and happens
to be in England at the time."

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

" But I never heard of it," said his
colleague impotently, with the feeling as he
said it that that was no great proof of any-
thing.

" No," answered Babcock grimly, " one
doesn't always hear of those things."

He jotted down a few words in pencil on
a bit of paper and shoved it over to the
Professor.

" There," he said, " copy that out in your
own hand. I wouldn't type-write a thing of
that sort if I were you — and write it on the
University paper."

Professor Higginson peered at the note and
read —

" MY DEAR MR. BARCLAY,

" I shall really be very happy. I think
Wednesday a very good night. Shall we call
it Wednesday ? Unless I hear from you I
shall take it for granted ; and at Gorton's.
The usual hour, I suppose ? "

Professor Higginson gasped.

" But isn't that very familiar, Babcock,"
he said doubtfully.

" Yes, it is," said Babcock, " that 's the
point."

173

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

" And I don't know the hour," said Higgin-
son, still hesitating.

" But I do," said Babcock. " It 's half-past
five. Listen, Higginson, and don't be a fool.
That 's how men are made in this country.
Do as I tell you."

Professor Higginson, wondering vaguely how
he could be " made," and what happened
when a man was so dealt with by those that
govern us, took a sheet of the University
paper, and wrote out carefully that horribly
familiar note. He hesitated at the super-
scription.

" What is he ? " he asked.

" Who ? " said Babcock.

" Why, this Mr. , this something

Barclay."

" You Ve got it there, you fool," said
Babcock without courtesy. " Leonard Bar-
clay, Leonard Barclay, Esq. Simple enough,
isn't it ? "

"I thought," murmured Professor Higginson,
" I didn't know — er it was possible that he
might have had a "

" Father ? " blurted out Babcock. " Not
that I know of. No one knows where he
comes from, 'xcept Mrs. Camp, and she comes
from Chicago." i

173 -*

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

With which words Babcock, the fallen angel,
stared before him in reverie, and saw rising
upon the background of that dull provincial
room all his old lost paradise : the glories of the
Merschauer's house in Capon Street, and the
big day at Cowfold House, and the crowds,
and the lights that surround our masters
and his.

Thus it was that there fell upon this worthy,
stilted and hitherto rather obscure provincial
pedant the Great Chance of English life :
to receive a note from the private secretary
of the widow of Mr. Camp, of Chicago, and
to speak before the Research Club, where,
as it seems, Men are Made !

'74

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

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

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 suspi-
cious 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

176

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

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

'77

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

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 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

178

Green Overcoat seemed heavier and heavier.

THE GREEN OVERCOAT. 4

j

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 remem-
bered 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

180

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

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.

181

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

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.

182

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

Far up the line of streets the first strokes
of the Knocker-up were heard.

The Man with the Broken Nose found him-
self 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 bitter-
ness 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

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

crusading name, Mr. Montague, sat 1 uddled
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

184

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

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 ? Fc r 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 con-
ceivably 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.

185

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^he overcoat and like a skin,
that vast, greasy dressing-gown wherein for
so many years he had shuffled across the

1 86

THE GREEN OVERCOAT

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 some-
thing 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

187

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

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 '11 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

188

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

them, saving them — punishing them reluc-
tantly 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 pro-
pertied 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

189

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

there ! It 's right as Rechts. May I die 1
Tis surely."

He looked up anxiously, and put a pro-
tecting hand upon it.

The policeman moved it roughly forward
and saw a label upon the back. He remem-
bered the sale and let it go again.

11 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.

190

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

11 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
tj 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

191

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

whispered sadly. " I did truly do it t'
oblige."

" We know, Sammy," said the big man,
winking again ponderously, " that 's a by-
blow ! That 's a come-by-chance ! You

shan't suffer for it, only if we find that widow

»
• « •

Mr. Montague was reassured and smiled
that smile, and the inferior policeman grinned
also an honest grin. He was there to learn
the tricks of the' trade, and he only hall
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 '11 know*if anyone does,
and no harm '11 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

192

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

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 bed-
room. He sat down upon the only rickety
chair, his inferior standing, almost at atten-
tion, 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 alms in it."

Mr. Montague shook his head in some
despair, and continued to listen.

" Anyhow, it Js not here," continued Mr.
Ferguson. " You wouldn't fake it, Sammy ;
it 's not worth it, otherwise we 'd have looked
upstairs," he added knowing'y.

13

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

Mr. Montague smiled in reply, a genuine
smile. The policemen knew when to go up-
stairs 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 memorv
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

194

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

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. ,j

* * * * '

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

195

The two Englishmen and the Crusader
drank together.

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

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.

He sat, a skeleton effigy with his too-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 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 !

197

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

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 sacri-
legious 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,

198

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

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 stand-
ing 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

i99

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

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 unmis-
takable 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

aoo

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

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

201

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

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.

202

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

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.

203

CHAPTER XI.

In which a Pole is less scrupulous.

THE name of the lounger was James. That
was his Christian name. What his family
name might be it is impossible to discover at
this distance of time, for he had been born
in 1868, brought up in 'the workhouse, ap-
prenticed to a ropemaker, passed various
terms in jail under various aliases, gone to
sea, naturalised as an American citizen,
returned to England as valet in the service of
a tourist, been dismissed a few years before
for theft, and was at this moment a member
of the New Bureaucracy, to wit, a Watcher and
Checker under the Ormeston Labour Exchange.
He was paid (by results, zs. 6d. for each con-
viction) to see that the poor did not cheat the
higher officials of that invaluable Public office,
to worm out the true history of applicants at
the Exchange and to provide secret evidence
against them, that they might be imprisoned
and black-listed if they concealed their past

204

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

from the Secretary — a Valued Servant of the
State.

James, then, wandered out into God's great
world upon that happy morning with a bundle
under his arm. Two conflicting thoughts
disturbed him. First, where he might sell
the content at the highest price, and,
secondly, where he might sell it with the
greatest security. Such divergent issues
disturb the great men of our time as well as
wandering men bearing alien coats ; they are
at the root of modern affairs.

The more he thought of it the more did
James determine by the feel that the bundle
was clothes ; why, then, his market was a shop
in the Lydgate, an old quarter of the town,
now full of slums, wherein dwelt a certain
Pole of the name .of Lipsky. This man, by
common repute, was well with the police, and
in our Er^lish towns that, with the poor, is
everything Lippy would not give him full
value, but he could give him full security. He
would give him perhaps but a quarter of the
value, but he would at least give him a free
run with the money and no awkward questions
for the men in blue.

Such an advantage is it to have assured the
police of one's integrity.

205

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

Nevertheless, he thought it of advantage
to discover of what value the bundle might be.
Even if he was to get but a quarter of its value
from the Pole, he would like to know what it
was that he was to get a quarter of.

He lollopped lazily down the street. His
time was his own. He peered through a
neglected doorway into an empty yard,
stepped into it, behind the screen of a hoard-
ing, looking first up and down to see whether
any of the tyrants were about. Seeing no
helmet and therefore no tyrant, he untied the
parcel and pulled out the coat within. He
was agreeably surprised. He had expected
slops, but this was not slops. He was no
valuer, but he would imperil for ever the true
end of man's soul and suffer the companionship
of demons for eternity (such were the rash
hazards he took) if it were not two quid, and
played properly it might be three.

Wait a moment, there might be something
in the pockets. He felt in the left-hand
pocket — nothing ; in the right-hand pocket,
there nothing but that solid, oblong cheque
book with four cheques torn out. At first he
thought of throwing it away, for it identified
the owner of the garment. Then he remem-
bered things called " clues/' and threw far

206

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

from him the very idea instead of the cheque
book. He tried to decipher the name, but
could not. James could read and write when
he had left school, but that was a long time
ago. He had done more useful work since
then.

Next he remembered the suspicious haste
of Mr. Montague. He began to wonder
whether the bundle was quite safe. He
determined to hurry; and as for the price,
why, he would take what he could get.

He fastened up the parcel again, and in a
sobriety of mind which was new to him and
not altogether pleasant, he took the road to
the Lydgate. Mr. Montague might have
spared his fears. The day was early, James
had as yet no pence, he could not board a
tram. But somehow or other the bundle was
unnaturally clumsy or unnaturally heavy.

He felt a distaste for it. The distaste
enlarged, something had gone wrong. As he
went down that morning street alone, reso-
lutely 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

207

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

the poor should mislike such memories ;
James misliked them abominably. Perhaps
he was more sensitive for the moment than
are most of the poor. . . .

Yes ! How she did drink, damn her. . . .
Why the Hell was he thinking of such things ?
And how clear her voice was. . . . Then
he saw the name " Lipsky " over the way.
He was at the Lydgate already. Could a
man be drunk in the flush of morning and
without liquor ? Nay, drink dulled such
things, and he had heard that voice awfully
clear within him.

He trudged into the shop, shaking his mind
free, and thinking of the sovereign — or two
sovereigns at least.

The gentleman in charge — there was but
one — exchanged mutual recognitions with
James. The one was a Pole and the other an
Englishman; but both were human, and
therefore brethren. Then James untied the
parcel. But when James had untied the
parcel it was apparent that though both were
human, Lipsky was a Pole and not a man of
the Midlands, for he thrust it from him with
his palms outward, sliding his wrists upon the
counter, and moving his fingers like small
snakes in the air. Lippy was not taking any.

208

THE GREEN OVERCOAT

James looked at him, and did not under-
stand.

" I got it straight, I did ! " he said.

Lippy didn't want to look at it.

" I don't want it, there ! " burst out James
(he could not for his life have told you why),
and Lippy, leaning over familiarly but
insolently, told him (in Polish English) that
if he tried to sell it he wo aid 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 01 cloth lay between them,
was unreal and fantastic. Each felt it, each
in his utterly different mind. For such
things, if you will excuse me, happen to the
poor also, as we all know they do to the rich,
whether through drink or what-not I can't
tell, whether for drink or what-not it is for
them to determine. There was fate, and there
was compulsion, and there was the profound
ill-ease of the soul hovering over that dirty
counter in the slums as they hover over the
tables of politicians when similar bargains are
toward in a larger world. James tied his
bundle up again and went out without a
word.

209
M

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

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 ythe
simplicity of his class, he thought the evil to
be attached to the fact that the coat was
stolen. Unlike his betters, he had never
dreamt that stealing was right. He had
always known that it was wrong. ... He
had a mind to put the Green Overcoat down
in the thoroughfare and leave it there.
In spite of the risk, he would have done so in
another moment had he not heard shuffling
footsteps coming up rapidly behind him and
felt a soft Polish hand upon his shoulder. It
was Lippy.

The Poles when they enter the Second Hand

810

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

Clothes Trade prove themselves commercial.
Their ancient chivalry seems to desert them
in this line of business, and something material
creeps into their gallant hearts. Lippy had
reproached himself, Lippy had been tortured
as he had seen the lounger's figure slowly and
doubtfully receding burdened with a thing of
so much value.

With the disappearance of the Green Over-
coat the supernatural warnings (for which he
despised himself) had disappeared, and he
remembered only its very mundane value.
He could not bear the loss, and he had
followed.

The lounger James turned round startled,
and instinctively thrust the bundle towards
the man who, he instinctively knew, had
repented of his first decision. Lippy seized
it, guiltily, furtively, violently, and without
a word he was on his way back to his shop.
But as for James, he went his way noting
suddenly the pleasantness of the morning ;
that excellent Watcher and Checker under the
Labour Exchange of Ormeston, that Pillar of
Free Labour, that Good Servant of the State,
that member of our New Bureaucracy of
Social Reform, was himself again. He went
forward whistling, and he found it in a few

an

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

moments quite easy to forget the Thing and
all the memories that had cropped up with
the Thing. He had passed it on, and Lippy
was holding the baby.

In the few steps to his shop the Pole had
no time to repent, though his mind was ill at
ease. Mr. Montague was a strange man. He
had strange wisdom. He could read strange
books. And if Mr. Montague had come to
warn him, well . . .

Lippy dismissed the superstitious fear. He
opened the bundle, he gazed on the Sacred
Green Thing, he felt the pockets (of course),
he saw the cheque book and the wealthy
name. He shuddered — but he gloried. Then
he fastened the whole up again, put the bundle
into a great drawer under his counter, sighed
a mechanical sigh of mechanical relief, and
began to busy himself with the arranging and
ticketing of his goods for the day.

But as that day wore on the Pole was not
himself. He was too nervous, too snappy
with customers, too much affected by slight
sounds when the evening came, and all that
night he lay but dozing, waking continually
in starts from disordered dreams of un-
accountable vengeance.

The next day, the Friday, Lippy was very

213

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

ill. No movement of conscience disturbed
him, he had not wronged his own ; yet in
his fever he suffered dreadfully from some
unreasoning sense of evil.

The old woman who chared for him was for
calling a doctor. All Monday Lippy, weak-
ening in his sick-bed, fought against the
expense. As it was, he had been compelled
to pay a doubtful boy — a non-Pole, and there-
fore ill suited to commerce — to mind the shop,
and twice he left his bed, at the risk of his
life, and tottered down to see that no harm
was coming to his business. On each occasion
as he neared that counter with its drawer and
its secreted bundle a more violent trouble
had returned, and he had had to be helped
up dazed and trembling to his wretched bed
and room above.

So Monday passed, and what happened on
the Tuesday and why, a return to others
who had meddled with the Green Overcoat
will explain : Why on the morning of Tuesday
Lippy woke refreshed in body, but very
weak ; why he had an odd feeling that things
were mending, how he could not tell ; why
it was that in the early afternoon of that day
he heard in the shop below a voice addressing
his assistant in an accent very unusual to

313

THE GFSEN OVERCOAT.

Such shops ; why Lippy listened carefully
at the door and thought he knew the voice.

The voice you will find, Readerkin, was
that of Mr. Kirby, and Mr. Kirby was asking
in the most direct fashion possible for the
coat, for the Green Overcoat ; he made no
bones about it, he put it square. Very
hurriedly did Lippy dress, and very hurriedly,
weak as he was, did he totter down the stairs
that Tuesday Morning.

CHAPTER XII.

4

In which the Readerkin will, if he has an ounce

of brains, begin to catch the inevitable Denoumong

of the Imbroglio.

MONDAY is the first working day of the week :
and upon Monday — at least on some Mondays
— Mr. Kirby actually went to his office.

Mr. Kirby so far loved duty or routine
or respected the tradition of centuries — or
anything else you like — as to visit his office
upon some Mondays at sometime or other in
the forenoon. It was a superstition with
which he could not break, sensible as he would
have been to have broken with it. His
ample and increasing income proceeded mainly
from investment ; he was utterly devoid of
avarice ; he had neither family nor heirs.
He was delighted that his junior partners
should do the work, and they were welcome
to the financial result of it. But still, the
firm was Kirby and Blake, and his name was
Kirby, and I think he had an inward feeling,
unexpressed, that he stood a little better with

215

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

his fellow-citizens of Ormeston, and with his
very numerous friends, if he kept up the
appearance of visiting the place — on some
Mondays.

Anyhow, visit it he did — usually as long
after eleven as he dared ; and leave it he did
— usually as long before one as his conscience
would let him. Invariably did he say that
he would return in the afternoon, and almost
invariably did he fail to do so, save perhaps
to look in vacantly, ask a few irrelevant
questions, glance at his watch, say that he
was late for some appointment — and go out
again.

There were, indeed, occasions when the
familiar advice upon which the chief of his
acquaintances depended necessitated a formal
interview at the office : commonly he preferred
to conduct such things in their private houses
or his own. Fortune favoured him in this
much, that the very short time he spent at
his place of business was not usually pro-
ductive of anxiety or even of a client whom he
personally must see. But upon this Monday,
as it so happened, his luck failed him.

It was a quarter to twelve when he came
briskly in wearing that good-humoured and
rather secret smile, nodded to the clerks,

216

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

passed into his own room, and proceeded to
do his duty as a solicitor by reaching for the
telephone, with the object of reserving a table
for lunch at the club. As he was in the midst
of this professional occupation, a clerk, to his
intense annoyance, begged him to receive
as a matter of urgency a Mr. Postlethwaite.
The name was familiar to Mr. Kirby, and he
groaned in spirit.

" Oh, Mr. Blake can see him ! " he said
impatiently. " No, he can't ; no, I remember,
he can't."

He scratched his chin and managed to frown
at the forehead without relaxing that small
perpetual smile.

" Send him in here," he sighed ; " and look
here, Thurston, has he got anything with
him ? "

" Not that I could see, Sir," answered the
clerk respectfully.

" Oh, I don't mean a dog or a sister-in-law,"
replied Mr. Kirby without dignity and some-
what impatiently. " I mean a damned great
roll of paper."

" Well, sir," said Thurstcn the clerk with
continued respect, " he certainly carried
something of that sort in his hand."

" Show him in, Thurston, show him in,"

217

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

said Mr. Kirby louder than ever, and leaning
back in his chair, . . .

He knew this" old Postlethwaite of old,
a man of grievances, a man whom it was
the lawyer's business to dissuade from law ;
a man whom he couldn't quite call mad,
but a man whom Mr. Kirby certainly did
not trust with any member of the firm ;
a man with whose considerable business in
Blattered freeholds (quite twenty of them up
and down the suburbs of Ormeston, and nearly
all of them unfortunate investments) Kirby
in a moment of generosity or folly — perhaps
rather of freakishness — had undertaken for his
firm to let and sell and value, and now he
wished he hadn't !

For as Mr. Postlethwaite grew older, he
grew more frightening, and he was a man now
nearly seventy years of age. But his years
had in no way diminished his almost epileptic
vigour. Mr. Kirby could hear the terrible
tramp of his great boots and the exclamations
of his great voice in the corridor. The door
opened, and he came in. He stood tall and
menacing in the entry, and slammed the door
behind him. His abundant white hair
tumbled in great shocks over his head, his
ill-kept beard bristled upon all sides from his

218

THE GREEN OVERCOAT

face, and his eyes, which were reddish in
colour (horrible thought !), glared like coals.
His greeting was not friendly, but it was at
least direct.

" You got me into t1 is, Kirby/' he shouted
by way of good morning, " and you 've got
to get me out ! ''

If Mr. Kirby disliked business, he certainly
loved an adventure. His permanent smile
grew more lively. His sinewy neck seemed to
shorten, he thrust his determined chin a trifle
forward, and said with a wave of his hand —

" Pray sit down, Mr. Postlethwaite, I
am entirely at your service."

" I '11 not sit down/' roared the redoubtable
Postlethwaite. " You got me into this, and
you 've got to get me out ! "

" And of which/' said Mr. Kirby, in a tone
of intelligent politeness, " of which of your
tomfooleries may you be speaking ? '

Mr. Postlethwaite, like most of his kind,
was rather relieved by insults than fired by
them.

" I '11 show you," he said fiercely, but in

a^ more business-like tone than before.

' You '11 see ! ... And when you Ve seen,

I '11 thank you to think twice before you get

me in a worse hole than ever," and as he said

219

41 ' J

"/'// noi sit down" roared the redoubtable
Postlethwaite.

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

these words he spread out upon Mr. Kirby's
table a fairly large sheet of cartridge paper,
neat, but bearing marks of age, and having
drawn upon it in the various colours of the
architect the elevation and plans of a house
standing in small grounds. There was marked
a lodge, a ground floor, a first floor and a
second ; at the back a small enclosed back-
yard, 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!1' and he chuckled.

"You needn't laugh, Kirby!" thundered
the aged Postlethwaite. " Oh, you '11 laugh
the other side of your mouth before I 've
done 1 Ruined, Kirby ! Smashed ! De-
stroyed ! And no clue ! >J

Mr. Kirby put up his hand.

" Please, Mr. Postlethwaite, please/' he
said. " If the place is burnt down I con-
gratulate you."

" Tisn't ! " snapped Postlethwaite.

" Well, if it 's partially burnt down all the
better. They 're more ready to pay when

THE GREEN OVEKCOA1.

" Not burnt at all ! " snarled Mr. Postle-
thwaite loudly. " Broken ! Destroyed !
Smashed ! Went there this morning ! Didn't
find anybody ! ''

" They 'd gone out ? " said Mr. Kirby, with
a look of aquiline cunning.

" No one anywhere ! Nothing anywhere !
No one on the ground floor ! No one first
floor ! No one top floor ! No one in the
studio ! But there ! Smashed ! Broken 1
Destroyed ! "

" What was ? "t said Mr. Kirby, beginning
to be irritated as hejthought of the possible
delay to his lunch.

" What ? " shouted Mr. Postlethwaite,
" everything I tell you ! Skylight, chairs,
everything. Broken chair in the garden with
a lot of sheets tied on. Damned foolery!
Broken chairs, broken glass, empty bottle,
beastly dirty mess of food. Now/' he added,
with rising passion, " I '11 have the law on this,
and it 's you who did it, Kirby, it 's you
persuaded me ! "

"Mr. Postlethwaite/' said Mr. Kirby
quietly, " what I did try to persuade you was
to spend a little money on the place. As
you wouldn't, and as a tramp wouldn't look
at it, I advised you to let it to those j'oung

333

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

fellows for a month. I knew all about them,
at least one of them, the one \vho came to me
— James McAuley. He's perfectly all right.
Said he wanted to paint with his friend.
I know his father, big doctor in London.
Boy was at Cambridge. They 're as right as
rain, Postlethwaite. If they 've hurt your
property we can get compensation. The
month 's not up by a long while, and hang it,
I did get you prepayment ! '

" We can't get compensation? " huffed Mr.
Postlethwaite. "/ 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 Postle-
thwaite glaringly. " All smashed ! Broken !
Destroyed ! "

" Did you find any letter, or note, or
anything ? '

" Nothing. Told you. Quite empty. And
a dirty piece of rope chucked up into the rafters
as well," he added, as though that were the
worst and last of his grievances. " Where are
those young scoundrels ? "

"My dear Mr. Postlethwaite," said the
lawyer suavely, " it isn't actionable here

223

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

between four walls. But if you say that kind
of thing outside you might find yourself in
Queer Street. Those excellent young men —
that excellent young James McAuley — paid
you for the month in advance. You 've no
proof they did the damage/'

" They 're responsible," said Mr. Postle-
thwaite doggedly, " so are you. Last man
six months ago was a vegetarian. Tried to
raise spirits in the place. Did raise them.
Haunted now, for all I know. All your
fault."

" Now, Mr. Postlethwaite," said Mr. Kirby
firmly, " one thing at a time. If you have let
Greystones get into that condition against my
advice, you have been exceedingly lucky to
get two tenants, mad or sane, for even a few
weeks in the course of a year. Upon my soul,
I Jm getting tired of Greystones, and all the
rest of 'em. I Ve a good mind . . . "

As a matter of fact, Mr. Kirby had no good
mind to give up his connection with Grey-
stones or with any other of old Mr. Postle-
thwaite's follies. They were almost the
only thing in his profession which amused
him.

" Well, what you going to do ? " snapped
the old gentleman again.

224

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

" Go round and see it, I think," said Mr.
Kirby, " and you come with me."

Mr. Postlethwaite was somewhat mollified.
His lawyer was taking a little trouble. It was
as it should be.

They took a taxi and found themselves,
twenty minutes or so outside the town, passing
the deserted lodge and the scarecrow, mouldy
gate, and drawing up before the stone steps
of that deserted, unfurnished, ramshackle
house which had been Professor Higginson's
purgatory for three long days. The two men
went in together, and Mr. Kirby noted that
old Postlethwaite had been accurate enough.
There were the dirty windows, the uncarpeted
staircase, the bench and table in the right-hand
ground-floor room which were the sole -furniture
of the lower part of the house ; and there,
when they came upstairs to it, was the
wreckage in the studio — the broken skylight,
the scraps of food, the wooden chairs lying
smashed on the floor.

' ' Where did you find the third chair ? Funny
sort of house. Silly of you not to mend it ! " he
said, with a return to his habit of irrelevance.

" Told you ! " said Mr. Postlethwaite.
" Outside on the ground. Lot of sheets tied
to it like the tail of a kite."

225

15

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

" Box kites have no tails/' murmured Mr.
Kirby, " he must have thrown it."

" Who ? " asked Mr. Postlethwaite eagerly.

"I don't know," said Mr. Kirby with
charming innocence.

" You 're making a fool of me ! " said old
Mr. Postlethwaite savagely.

11 No, I 'm not," returned Mr. Kirby in a
soothing tone. " Come, there 's nothing more
to be done here. 1 11 write to those young men.
I '11 write at once. I '11 hear the day after to-
morrow, and I '11 let you know."

" The day after to-morrow ! " shrieked old
Mr. Postlethwaite. " And the house wide
open, and anyone coming in through that
skylight?"

" It 'd be a charity," said the lawyer. " It
will shelter the little birds."

Mr. Kirby made to put his arm into the
angry old gentleman's and to lead him down
the stairs, when he noticed something on the
floor. It was a scrap of paper. He picked it
up, glanced at it hurriedly, and put it in his
pocket. Then — the gesture had taken but
a moment — he was holding Mr. Postlethwaite's
arm and taking him down the stairs.

" You ought to have a caretaker here for
a day or two anyhow, Postlethwaite," said Mr.

226

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

Kir by as they reached the door. " I know a
man in a cottage here, I '11 send him/'

Mr. Postlethwaite was agreeable. Mr.
Kirby called at the cottage and sent the man
up. Then he came back to the cab.

" I '11 try and get to hear from McAuley
to-day," went on the lawyer, as they got into
the taxi again and returned to Ormeston.
" By the way, what would you take for Grey-
stones, Postlethwaite ? "

He knew what was coming. Mr. Postle-
thwaite's face grew dark and determined.
Then there passed over it a not very sane leer.
He nudged the lawyer in the ribs —

" Twenty-five thousand/' he said, " not a
penny less."

" Make it pence," said Mr. Kirby, with more
than usual gravity.
: Old Mr. Postlethwaite disdained to reply.

" Town 's growing out that side," he said
in a tone of immense cunning. " Not a penny
less."

" Well," said Mr. Kirby in a weary tone,
" if you won't set fire to it, I don't know how
you 're going to realise, and upon my soul
I don't care."

The taxi had drawn up at the door of Mr.
Kirby's club. He resolutely refused to pursue

227

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

matters further with the aged speculator in
freehold values.

" Postlethwaite," he said, " you may take
it from me if you are wise. Wait . . .'

Then he added most unprofessionally —
H "HI got thirty thousand would you give
me half the difference as commission ? "

Old Postlethwaite looked up suddenly and
brightly like a bird.

" What ! Five thousand ? " he said doubt-
fully.

He shook his head. He knew that it was
not very professional. He looked to see
that no one was coming out of the club, and
then he whispered —

" Three thousand, Kirby, three thousand !
And that 's ten per cent./' he added half
regretfully.

"All right/' said Mr. Kirby with due
solemnity, " you wait ! ' and with a re-
assuring smile he dismissed that poor old man
to dream of impossible sums.

Whether Mr. Kirby thought that the house
could have fetched five hundred pounds — or
nothing at all — does not really matter to my
story, for most undoubtedly he had no hope
or intention of selling the wretched place at
all unless some lunatic should clamour for it.

228

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

He went into the club as into a city of
refuge, and prepared to consider a number of
little disconnected events that were shaping
themselves into a very pretty scheme Things
were beginning to entertain him vastly. It
was the sort of work he liked.

First he countermanded his lunch. He
wanted to think, not eat. Next he pulled
from his pocket the little slip of paper he had
picked up at Greystones. He read it carefully.
It told him little, but that little was curious.

The paper was University paper. It had
the University Arms. It seemed to be jotted
notes, v,

He laid it down a moment, and considered
one or two other unaccountable, disconnected
matters. Brassington's Coat, Brassington's
Secret God, the Green Coat. Brassington's
fetish — gone. Gone quite unexplained, and
gone — let 's see — just a week ago. Missed
that Monday night at Purcell's. A young
gentleman, " a friend of the young master's/'
who had called at " Lauderdale " that day
and had asked too many questions about Mr.
Brassington's movements. Mr. Kirby smiled
broadly, and remembered suddenly the letting
of Greystones some days before. How old
Jock McAuley's son — Jimmy the name was

229

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

•—had come with pompousness of youth and
bargained to have Greystones for a month.
" To paint/' he said. " To paint with a
friend ! " Yes ... To paint things red !
Mr. Kirby smiled broadly again. He saw
nothing clear. He saw an imbroglio forming,
and he gloried in such things !

It looked as though that young man and
his friend had painted thoroughly ! . . .
They had had a lark . . . and what a lark !
Well, they must pay the piper ! . . . They
had made a night of it. ... With whom ?

Mr. Kirby lay back in his very comfortable
chair in the smoking-room of the club and
pondered. •&•& \. Someone who went to the
lectures at the Guelph University here in
Ormeston had been in that rough and tumble
in Greystones. ... It had been a students'
rag he supposed.

He took up the crumpled slip of paper once
more and opened it out again carefully. As
he tried to connect the disjointed phrases
scribbled upon it he got a bit puzzled.

What student would want such notes as
these ?

" Memorandum : Home does not agree
with Latouche. Mention this to-morrow in
the first hour. Return both essays.

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

" The second year work in future to be
combined with the Medical. Announce
this at end of first hour/1

Mr. Kirby pursed his lips and considered
those words. It was a Professor's memo-
randum . . . 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 mc.de it out at la§t, though
it was hurriedly written as though it were
a sort of after-thought : —

" Ask the Senate next Monday to cancel
Saturday afternoon, difficult hour. Re-
member Garden's number, to ring up 637
Ormeston Central."

Mr. Kirby folded the paper in its original
creases, put it back into his pocket-book, ard
stretched for the University Calendar t which
was among the reference books on a table
beside him.

There was more than one of these Saturday
afternoon lectures. The Senate had arranged
them for popular courses, and the University
men rather resented them. There was one

231

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

with History for its subject, one whole set
called " Roman Art of the First Century "
(and Mr. Kirby grinned), one course on the
Geological Formation of Oil Areas, one course
on Psychology, and one on French Literature.

History, Art, Geology, Psychology, French.

Methodically, but with all the pkasure of
the chase, Mr. Kirby turned to the Professors
in occupancy of the five various chairs.
Poison, Gaunt, Baker, Higginson, Rolls.

Then he bethought him which of these
comic things the enfranchised and cultured
proletariat could bear least. He decided very
rightly that it lay between Roman Art and
Psychology. Gaunt was the Art man, a
charlatan. He knew him. He remembered
doing his best to prevent the appointment.
The Psychology man, Higginson, he had
met here and there, as everyone met the
University people in Ormeston, but he could
call up no very clear picture of him : his was
a recent appointment, and the town did not
yet know the new Professor well.

If it were either of those two men who had
leen larking with younger men that night
when old Postlethwaite's house was turned
upside down, why, he thought it would
probably be Gaunt.

232

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

The problem which was beginning to
fascinate and enthrall Mr. Kirby would have
advanced a stage or two further towards its
solution had not the swing door of the smoking-
room been flung up, and had there not burst
through it, like a shell, the excited and angry
form of Mr. Brassington.

Mr. Kirby hated business : he hated worry.
His delight was to think things out. And
therefore it was that Providence, which
chastens those whom it loves, disturbed him
with this sudden and most unquiet apparition
of his close friend. Mr. Brassington's usually
careful clothes were crumpled, his face was all
a-sweat, his tie was quite dreadfully on one
side, almost under his ear.

The merchant staggered up to the lawyer, put
one hand on his shoulder, and said hoarsely —

" Forgery ! "

Mr. Kirby firmly pushed his friend down
into a chair.

" Forgery ? " he asked in an interested tone,
looking Mr. Brassington straight in the face.

Mr. Brassington nodded.

" Well, my dear Brassington," continued
Mr. Kirby, " I will do what I can for you,
but I warn you it is a very difficult crime to
defend a man for."

233

THE GREEN OVERCOA1.

" What do you mean ? " said Mr. Brassing-
ton, bewildered.

" Besides which/' went on Mr. Kirby in a
judicial tone, " unless you plead lunacy "

" I don't understand a word you 're saying
Kirby," shouted Mr. Brassington. " There 's
been forgery ! Do you hear ? Forgery !
Someone 's been forging my name ! "

" O — o — oh ! " said Mr. Kirby in a reason-
able tone. " Someone 's been forging your
name ? Much more sensible ! Bring it off ? "
he added cheerfully.

" If I didn't know you so well, Kirby
. . ." began Mr. Brassington savagely, then
dragging from an inner pocket an already
dirty cheque, and presenting it with a
trembling hand, he said —

" There, look at that ! "

Mr. Kirby looked at it in front, then he
looked at it behind. He saw that a Mr. James
McAuley had touched two thousand. He
looked at the front again. He turned it round
and looked at the endorsement. He looked
closely at the signature.

" No," he said, putting the slip of paper
close to his eyes, " that 's not your signature,
as you say, but " (musing thoughtfully) " it 's
very, very like it ! "

234

THE GR£EN OVERCOAT

" Kirby," said Mr. Brassington, in tones
quite new and dreadfully solemn, " I 've a
son myself . . . but that young man shall
suffer the full weight of the law ! "

Mr. Kirby was looking out of the window.

" What young man ? " he said innocently.

" James McAuley," said Mr. Brassington in
a slow, deep tone, making the most of the long
vowel.

" How do you know he 's a young man ? "
said Mr. Kirby, looking round with interest.

" How do I know ? " shouted Mr. Brass-
ington, beginning to storm again. " Why,
that 's the impudent scoundrel that robbed
my poor son, sir ! Robbed him at cards !
And I tell you what, Kirby," he added, his
voice rising more and more angrily, " I tell
you what, he 's calculating on it, that 's what
he 's doing. He 's counting on my wanting to
hush it up. My wanting to hush up my poor
son's fatal weakness."

" Fatal what ? " said Mr. Kirby.

" Weakness/'said Mr. Brassington, suddenly
pulled up.

" Oh ! " said Mr. Kirby quite coolly. " So
he 's the chap that forged the cheque, is he ? >:

" Of course ! " said the indignant Mr.
Brassington,

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

" Well," replied Mr. Kirby, " I hope you 've
got proof, that 's all ! And I hope, if you
haven't got proof, that you haven't been
talking to anybody else ! For if you can't
prove that he did it it 's slander, you know.
You 're a rich man, Brassington ! You 're
the kind of man these gentry like to go
for, eh ? "

Mr. Brassington, like most of his fellow-
subjects, lay in a panic terror of lawyers and
their arts. He was appreciably paler when he
answered in a far more subdued tone.

" I don't exactly say he did it, I wouldn't
say more than I can prove, would I ? Only/'
and here his voice rose again, " he 's got the
money out of me somehow, and . . . "

" Now look here, Brassington/' said Mr.
Kirby quietly, " will you leave this with
me?"

As Mr. Kirby said this he put his head
somewhat on one side, thrust his hands into
his pockets, and got the seated Mr. Brass-
ington into focus.

" No — er — yes — if you like/' said Mr.
Brassington. " How long ? "

Mr. Kirby put his hand before his face and
leant his elbow upon the mantelpiece.

" I don't know," he said after a few

236

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

moments. " It may be three or four days,
or it may be more, or it may be less. Look
here/' he added, " will you let me send
for you if I get a clue ? I think I shall
get one . . . What a huge balance you
must keep."

" If that young scoundrel " began Mr.

Brassington again.

" Now, my dear Brassington/' said Mr.
Kirby soothingly, " my dear Brassington, the
man may be as innocent as, well "

" You don't suspect my son, I suppose ? "
broke in Mr. Brassington fiercely.

Mr. Kirby laughed pleasantly.

" Good Lord, no ! " he said. " Don't you
see, Brassington, life 's a complicated place.
Supposing a man knew that your son owed
McAuley this "

"Owed it!" thundered Mr. Brassington.
" And how in the name of justice can this
accursed gambling "

" Now ! Now ! Now ! " said Mr. Kirby.
" We won't go into that ! The point is that
supposing someone did know that this chap
McAuley, at any rate, thought it was owed
him ? "

" He couldn't have thought so/' said Mr.
Brassington stubbornly.

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

" Oh, Nonsense ! " said Mr. Kirby, almost
at the end of his patience. " Supposing some-
one knew that McAuley would take the
money, there "

" Well ? " said Mr. Brassington.

" Well, then, don't you see, he might make
himself out a go-between and take a com-
mission ? "

" If I get the man " began Mr. Brass-
ington 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, Brass-
ington. All you hard-headed, business men,
or whatever you call yourselves, those that
have got any brains at least (and there aren't
many) show their brains by a little super.
stition. That 's my experience. I don't
blame you. Only look here. If I get it for
you . . .. " and he began musing.

" I 'm not superstitious, Kirby," said Mr.
Brassington uncomfortably.

He rose as though the very mention of the
garment had disturbed him.

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

" 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 cheque ? "

" No, I can't," said Brassington. " Book 's
gone. It was in the Overcoat."

" Oh, the book 's gone too ! " said Mr.
Kirby. " Well, I hope you 've stopped all
the remaining numbers in the Cheque Book ? "•

" Yes," said Mr. Brassington doggedly.

Mr. Kirby thought a moment.

" Brassington," he said, " I Ve got to be
in London on Wednesday. And I 'm going
to the Rockingham. I 'm going to give a
dinner. Will you come ? Will you come
early — and, I say — bring your son — bring
Algernon. Come by five o'clock. I '11 be
waiting."

" I '11 come," said Mr. Brassington — as
though asking why.

239

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

" I may have news for you/' said Mr. Kirby.

Brassington looked at him doubtfully, and
he was gone. '

Hardly was his friend out of the room when
Mr. Kirby, with something of the gesture that
a dog with a good nose will make when he is
getting interested, made for the writing table,
and noted the appointment.

" Before I forget it," he murmured.
" Wednesday, the Rockingham, five — and
dinner 's seven. I wish I hadn't had to make
a day in such a hurry — but it '11 serve . . .
I can always change it," he thought.

Then he visualised young McAuley quite
carefully and clearly. He did these sort of
things better when his eyes were fixed upon
a glare. He gazed, therefore, hard at a sunlit
white wall in a court opposite the club window,
and as he did so he saw McAuley again quite
clearly. The fresh, vigorous, young Celtic
face with its dark and sincere eyes. . . .
And he wondered who on earth could have
taken that young man in ! Then he sighed
a little, and said to himself, aloud —

" But it 's easy to believe anything for two
thousand pounds ! " $

Mr. Kirby left the smoking-room. On his
way out through the hall he did something

240

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

that would have astonished those many
million innocents who swallow our daily
press.

He went to the telephone and rang up 246.
246 answered very gruffly ; then, suddenly
appreciating that it was Mr. Kirby who was
talking, 246 answered with extraordinary
courtesy.

Since I may only report what happened at
my end of the line, let the reader gather what
it was that Mr. Kirby said.

He said —

" Is that you Robinson ? M

Next he said —

" Any other inspector there ? "

The third thing he said was —

" No ! No ! Mr. Brassington's coat !
Advertised, you fool ! "

The fourth thing he said was —

" It isn't a question of whether the receiver
admitted it, but what receiver you traced
it to."

The fifth thing was said very impatiently —

" Oh, yes, yes, of course, I know Mr. Brass-
ington must have asked. The point is,
which . . . What ? . . . Spell it !
M— O— N— T . . . Oh, yes . . .
Old Sammy ! " Then came a pause. " What ?

241

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

. . . Didn't go any further ? . . . Done
nothing more all these days ? . . . Good
Heavens ..." A shorter pause. Then,
" All right . . . Oh, never mind about
what you didn't find ! " and he rang off.

Thus did Mr. Kirby discover all he wanted
to know.

Strange ! But there are quite . unofficial
people, not even dressed up in blue clothes
and a helmet who are in touch with such
things as receivers of stolen goods, and the
financiers of the poor and the local Trust in
Crime. Men who. can promote or dismiss the
mighty Perlice Themselves ! — and these beings
are often Lawyers.

Now that he was fairly in cry, he did what
no dog does — not even the dogs that boast
they are hounds — he slacked off. He lunched
well. He smoked half through the afternoon.
With the evening he lounged off to his office
before it should close to see if anything new
awaited him there : and something did.

CHAPTER XIII.

In which the Subliminal Consciousness gives
itself away.

THE work of the Sunday had tired Professor
Higginson. He did not know that glory could
weary man so much.

He rose very late upon the Monday morn-
ing : he rose certainly without ambition, and
almost without fear. He was dead beat. By
the time he had breakfasted it was noon. He
had no class on Monday. In the early after-
noon he was due at the Council of the
University. He remembered the agenda,
more or less. He had to talk particularly
about those Saturday lectures. He hated
them — but first of all he must ring up his
colleague Garden, who was with him in the
matter.

Garden had the telephone — sensible man !
But Garden wouldn't allow his number in the
book. ... It was ? ... It was 37
something ? . , . Wait a minute ! Pro-
fessor Higginson remembered a scrap of paper

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

with a memorandum. That had the number.
He had put it down last Monday on a scrap
of paper after the Senate meeting for just
that occasion, to ring up Garden before the
Council.

He had a good memory. He prided himself
on that. He clearly remembered jotting the
number down on a scrap of University paper
in the Senate room. It was the meeting before
he went to Perkin's — just before his troubles
began !

Professor Higginson felt for that scrap of
paper intuitively in the watch pocket of his
waistcoat. He could carry such things there
for days. It was not in the watch pocket of
his waistcoat.

He searched in all the pockets of the suit
he was wearing. One puts things which one
is in the habit of carrying instinctively into a
pocket, and one often does not remember
when one did it — especially if one is given to
lapses of The Primary Consciousness and
Subliminal Thingumbobs !

By a process only too familiar to the less
fortunate members of the professional classes,
he fingered carefully every edge of the pocket
lining until he found a large hole, whereat he
as carefully explored all the vague emptiness

244

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

of the lining beneath, and as he explored it
he began to worry, for there was nothing
there. Then the Professor of Subliminal
Psychology suddenly remembered ! He had
taken it out when he dressed that evening for
Perkin's. He had put it on to the dressing
table. He remembered the white paper on
the white cloth, and he remembered telling
himself not to forget it. He had put it into
the pocket — the waistcoat pocket — of his one
evening suit.

He went through that one suit very
thoroughly. He found nothing. He thought
he might have dropped it when he last
changed. He stretched upon the floor and,
lighting matches with infinite difficulty, he
peered under the bed and under the wardrobe,
examining every inch of the worn Brussels
carpet. Not a scrap of paper appeared.

Then — suddenly — he got a touch of nausea.
It was borne in upon him more and more
certainly that the last time he had carried
that memorandum — and worn that suit — was
at Perkin's party, and the days that followed
and the nights. That bit of paper must have
dropped during one of his struggles or one
of his athletic feats in the Accursed House 1
That gave the matter a very new importance.

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

If that ill-omened scrap were still in the empty
house ! *. . . Worse still, supposing some-
one had found it ? ... It was a clue.

Professor Higginson lost no time. He took
the tram, and when he reached the end of it,
with infinite precautions of looking to right
and left, pretending to go down side lanes,
lingering at gates, he managed at last to
comfort himself with the assurance that no
one watched him — as indeed no one did.
Every inch was, for him, alive with spies, and
he exaggerated the importance of his move-
ments, for he was a Don.

An hour or so after he had left the town he
saw the neglected shrubs, the rotting gate,
the beweeded gravel path ; and, standing up
gaunt and terrible before him, the Accursed
House within its wasted grounds.

He went up stealthily to the door. It was
locked. Still gazing over his shoulder with
nervous precaution, he made an effort to find
some postern, but the high wall was blind
everywhere, and the courtyard at the back
was enclosed upon all sides.

With a confused but terrible recollection of
some tag which tells us that no man falls at
once to the lowest depths of turpitude, and
with a sigh for the relic of his honour, he tried

246

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

one of the great front windows. It was
fast.

Then Lucifer once again inspired that
unhappy man with cunning beyond his own.
He whipped out a pocket-knife, opened the
thin blade, inserted it in the crack of the
sash and began to tamper, yes, to tamper,
with the catch. He felt it giving, as he
pushed gently and with infinite care lest any
sound should betray him, when his heart
suddenly stopped beating, and his blood ran
dead cold, at the sound of a voice just behind
him delivering this summons —

" What yer at ? "

He dropped the knife and leapt round. A
sturdy fellow, short and thick-set, clothed in
old bargee trousers and a pea-jacket, and with
that face of labour which the police call
" villainous " in their reports, was watching
him unmoved.

" What yer at ? " repeated the badly-
shaven lips.

" I — I was making an experiment/1 said
Professor Higginson at random.

" Yer was/' said the thick-set man, and
spat. " And now yer '11 cut."

Professor Higginson was dignified.

" My good man/' he said

247

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

" None o' that/' said the good man, advanc-
ing his face in an ugly fashion ; " I '11 let yer
know I 'm the caretaker. Ook it. If there
was a copper in this Sahary Desert I 'd put
him on yer for a twofer."

Now a " twofer " is an insignificant cigar,
of which two are sold for a penny ; but though
Professor Higginson did not know this, he
understood the general drift of the remark,
and he slowly began to edge away.

" I 've a mind/' said the pea- jacketed one,
folio ving him growling to the gate, " to tell
Mr. Kirby."

" Mr. who ? " said Professor Higginson
eagerly.

" Mr. Kirby/1 repeated the man, sullenly.
" It 's his job this house is/'

Professor Higginson felt in his trouser
pocket and produced a florin. The caretaker
took it, though it only confirmed his suspicions.

" Is that the name of the agent for this
house ? Could I get an order from him ?
I want to look for — I mean I want to get
inside ! "

" Yus ! Yer do ! " said the man. Then :
" That 's the name of Mr. Kirby, and if
yer Ve sense yer '11 get to his orfices afore

me/'

248

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

It was a plain hint, but Professor Higginson
was not grateful. He was considering what
advantage this information was to him, and
as he slowly considered it he at last clearly
grasped that advantage. He would be back
at that house within three hours : back with
the key and an order to view. And it would
go hard with him if he did not find that
dangerous scrap of paper. He had not wasted
his florin.

" Thank you/' he said rapidly, and was
gone.

He reached the tram again before it was
mid-afternoon. Once in the town he looked
up a directory in a shop, found Kirby and
Blake's direction, and made his way at once
to that office.

Mr. Kirby had come in just an hour before.
He had sat drawing caricatures on blotting-
paper with stubs of pencil, or gazing at the
ceiling. He had written private letters with
his own hand, and addressed to people who
had no known connection with the firm, and
he seemed to have attached himself thus to
his business premises, during that one excep-
tional afternoon, for the advantage of
seclusion and of the telephone more than of
anything else. Moreover, he had asked

249

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

peevishty 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/1 and showed him into a room where bound
copies of Punch and a Graphic three years
old, also a list of bankrupts, beguiled the
leisure of clients as they waited their turn.

" Will you send up your card ? " added the
clerk innocently.

" No/' worried and feebled the Philoso-
pher— he had no card — " say it is Professor
Higginson, and that he wants to see Mr.
Kirby most particularly/' ?

" Is Mr. Kirby expecting you ? " continued
the clerk.

" How should I know ? " said Mr. Higginson
half savagely. And the mystified young man
was more mystified still when, on giving the
name to his employer, that employer jumped
up and beamed as though he had been left a
legacy, or had heard of a dear friend's return
from the dead.

" Oh, show him up ! " he said merrily.
" Show him up ! Show him up at once ! ''
and the chief of that great business went half-
way to the door to meet his visitor.

250

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

He took him warmly by both hands as he
bade him be seated. He asked in the most
concerned way about his present state of
health, after the terrible adventure which was
now the talk of thousands. He hoped that
the heat of the room with its blazing fire was
not inimical to the Professor's convalescence.

Professor Higginson was rather curt for
such a genial host.

" I won't detain you, Mr. Kirby," he said,
"it is very good of you to have given me a
moment or two of your valuable time." He
thought a moment. He was not good at
plots, or rather he had had to construct too
many lately in too short a time. At last he
began tentatively

" Perhaps you know, Mr. Kirby — I am
afraid it is widely known — in fact, you do
know, for you have just told me as much —
that I — that in fact I have had an unfortu-
nate— er — lapse."

Mr. Kirby nodded sympathetically.

" Pray do not insist, my dear Professor,"
he murmured ; " most touching, most in-
teresting. Now with your expert knowledge
of the phenomena of consciousness "

Professor Higginson interrupted.

" The point is, Mr. Kirby, that knowing

251

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

you to be in touch with the — what shall I
say — the residence business "

" Yes ? " said Mr. Kirby, with a polite
inflection.

"Well, the fact is," blurted out the
Philosopher, " my case presents a point of
the highest possible interest, the highest
possible scientific interest, in which you might
help me. It is about a house/' And here
the Professor stopped dead.

Mr. Kirby watched him with crossed legs,
joined finger-tips, and a very hierarchical
expression.

Professor Higginson continued —

" I have an instinct, purely subliminal, mind
you " (Mr. Kirby nodded, but never took his
eyes off the Professor's face, and the Pro-
fessor'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 I " Mr. Kirby nodded again.
" I— I— I had a sort of dream "

" Wait a moment, Professor," said Mr.
Kirby respectfully, " we must get all this
quite clear. At first I understood that your
complete loss of memory involved a breach
in the continuity of consciousness — a blank as

252

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

it were. I read all the reports, of course " (his
tone was profoundly reverent), " and I will
not trespass upon sacred things. But at first
there was a blank, was there not ? ';

Professor Higginson put on his lecturing
tone. " We are using technical terms, my
dear sir/' he said in a somewhat superior
manner, " indeed, highly technical terms.
Primary consciousness I certainly lost. I
think I may go so far as to say that I am
unaware of any action of secondary conscious-
ness/' Mr. Kirby still nodded gravely,
following every word. " But subliminal
consciousness is a very different matter !
That, my dear sir/' continued the Professor,
smiling awkwardly, " is my own department
as it were. Now the subliminal consciousness
is peculiarly active in dreams, and I certainly
did have a very vivid dream."

" But if your memory was wrong/' said
Mr. Kirby with a calculatedly puzzled look,
" I mean if your memory failed about it "

The Professor shook his head impatiently.

" You don't understand," he said. " Please
let us be clear. There 's no question . of
memory at all."

" Not at all, not at all," said Mr. Kirby
politely, " only a dream."

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

" It was a vision — a high vision/' said the
Philosopher. " I recollect some things clearly.
A sort of studio roof. A big sort of skylight
window. I remember that. Now of course
I never can have been in such a house,"
continued Professor Higginson. " It 's one
of the first laws of subliminal consciousness
that impressions are conveyed from one centre
to another, transversely as it were, and not
jsither directly or in the ordinary line from a
superior to an inferior plane. To put it
conversationally, not from above to below,
nor from below to above. Hum ! "

" Of course ! " said Mr. Kirby. " Naturally.
Quite clear/'

" The whole theory of telepathy depends
upon that," went on Professor Higginson,
glancing up cautiously at the lawyer and
dropping his eyes again.

" It could depend on nothing else/' said
Mr. Kirby gracefully.

" Well, you see/' said the Psychologist, " I
wasn't in the house, that 's quite certain ; I
had and have no objective knowledge of the
house. Every psychologist of repute will bear
evidence to that. It 's the mere A B C of the

science."

" Your reputation," said Mr. Kirby, " would
354

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

weigh more than that of any colleague," and
the Professor was gratified.

" You understand clearly/' went on Mr^
Higginson. " I never was in that house —
yet I am certain such a house exists, and —
well — for reasons that are very private — it is
really of interest to me to discover where it
may be, for though my science assures me
that I had no sort of physical connection with
it during that extraordinary experience, yet
I am confident that its connections, inhabi-
tants or owners, will give me a clue to what
is now the chief interest of my life — and I
may add, I hope without boasting, now one
of the chief subjects before scientific Europe.
In the interest of Science I should see that
house. I should visit it ... Soon.
Indeed, to-day. ... I wonder if you can
help me ? ... The house looked north/'
he continued abruptly, shutting his eyes and
groping with his hands to add a wizard effect
to the jerky sentences. " There was a drive
up to it with laurel bushes, a rather weedy
drive. There were four stone steps to the
door, I remember those steps well, and — oh !
there was a lower ground-floor room with one
window looking on to a backyard. . . .
If I can find that house and have an orden

i THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

from its owner to visit it I shall be pro-
foundly 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/1

" If you can ! — oh ! if you can get me an
order now, to-day ! " burst out the Professor,
opening his eyes suddenly and cutting short
in his desperation. " I — I — well, I should like
to look over that house. It would be of the
highest possible scientific interest. Can you/'
he added nervously, and as though he was
in a hurry to catch a train or something of
that sort, " can you let me have the keys —
now ? "

" My dear sir/1 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/1

He glanced at his notes again.

" Oh, yes, your firm are the agents/1 said
the Professor eagerly, and then added,
suddenly appreciating that he was giving
himself away, " I remember receiving with

256

" / remember receiving, with extraordinary vividness,
that spiritual impress."

17

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

fxtraordinary vividness during that curious
vision the spiritual impress that your firm
vvere 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 marvellous
sense of the atmosphere, of the — er — conno-
tations of the locality — the dream locality. "

"Well," began Mr. Kirby slowly, "of
course, we could not refuse you, Professor
Higginson, in a matter of such high scientific
importance. . . . We might have to get the
leave of the owner, but in the normal course
of things we could let you look over it, only,
you see/' he went on with a puzzled expression,
" you really haven't told me enough to fix me
yet as to what house it can be. ... We
have so many to remember/' he mused. . . .
" It is a peculiar sort of a house. Unfurnished,
I think you said? " he continued, looking at
his notes, "except on the top floor, where
there was a studio. Now, Professor," and
here he looked suddenly at his visitor, " can't
you recollect any other detail, some sort of
faint impression ? "

" N — no," said Professor Higginson timidly.

258

THE GREEN OVERCOAT

" You must remember the circumstances
were extraordinarily '

" For instance/' said Mr. Kirby imper-
turbably, " have you any recollection of
where the bed was ? Was it in a sort of little
dark room beyond the studio ? It is an
extraordinary thing/' he continued, pulling
up his sock as he said it, " that one cannot
keep one's sock up on one's leg without those
horr ble little garters, which I for one will
not wear."

" Now you suggest it," said Professor
Higginson slowly and with something of the
feeling that a mule may have when it feels the
drag on the rope, " now you suggest it I have
a recollection of something of the sort. : . ;
And by the way, I seem also to remember a
delicious heavenly music."

" Ah ! " said Mr. Kirby, and he gazed at a
point on the carpet about eleven feet away,
" wonderful thing music, only seven notes,
and see what a lot you can get out of 'em !
I will smoke a cigar if you don't mind," and
he lit one. " Now, were there three chairs in
the room, and do you remember anything of
a rope ? " said Mr. Kirby. %

" I 'mnot — quite — sure — about — the rope/'
lied Professor Higginson, pausing between

259

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

• every word, " but the chairs ? Ye — es ! I think
I did see chairs — wooden chairs/1
; " And was the skylight broken ? "

" No — yes — possibly — very probably/'
floundered the Philosopher.

"Then I've got it," said Mr. Kirby
briskly, " I 've spotted it ! You were quite
right when you said you 'd never been there
in the flesh. At least, I don't think you ever
can have been there. It isn't in this town at
all. It isn't in England. It's a place my
firm looks after in the Hebrides — wonderful
old place, you know — deserted. A Manse it

was. Now the history of that house "

he was continuing volubly, when the Professor
checked him.

" Not at all ! Not at all ! " he said angrily,
" I tell you it is somewhere close by here ! In
Ormeston ! "

" My dear sir ! >: said Mr. Kirby, opening
wide eyes, " how can you know that a duplicate
of the house I am thinking of ? "

" I 've told you already," snapped Higgin-
son. " In these visions one has connotations
of atmosphere, and so on."

" Well,£said Mr. Kirby, after that outburst,
shaking his head slowly from side to side,
" then I 'm of no use, none at all. I do know

a6o

THE GREEN OVEKCOAi.

by chance that place in the Hebrides, saw
it only last year. Doing it to oblige a cousin.
Would have been most interesting, most
interesting, if it had been that. Don't you
think it could be that ? They 're full of
second sight in those parts/ '

" No," said Professor Higginson, rising with
determination and in some anger, " no, I
do not think it could be that."

" Well, then," said Mr. Kirby hopelessly,
" I don't see how I can help you. Don't you
think two connotations may have got mixed
up?"

" No, I don't," said the Professor shortly,
more and- more possessed of the feeling that
things were going wrong with him. " I don't
think so. It 's impossible. These things have
their laws, sir, just as nature has, I mean
ordinary nature, common nature, what we — er
— call Natural Laws."

Mr. Kirby nodded agreeably

" I don't think," went on Professo*
Higginson, " that I ought to take up any
more of your time."

" Oh, but I should particularly like to hear
more," said Mr. Kirby with enthusiasm.

" I 'm afraid it 's no use," said Professor
Higginson, and he made to go out.

261 .'

THE GREEN OVERCOAT,

He was actually at the door, when Mr
Kirby added —

" Professor Higginson, I Ve half promised
some friends to ask you to dine in London
after your lecture. It was a great liberty —
but they knew I lived in Ormeston. I wonder
whether I might presume ? Shall I drop you
a line ? It 's the Rockingham. I might
tell you something then. I might find
out."

" Yes/* said Professor Higginson with no
enthusiasm, but he badly wanted to see that
house and search it for that haunting scrap
of paper, and he didn't want to lose touch
with the Order to View, " yes, by all
means."

" You see/' added Mr. Kirby apologetically,
" by the time you come to dine with me in
London on Wednesday I might be able to
suggest a lot of things — an almost unfurnished
downstairs room with a big deal table in it,
and oaken stairs, uncarpeted, and, oh ! all
the sort of things that you would expect in
a house of that kind/'

" Yes/' said Professor Higginson, flabber-
gasted.

" Well, well," said Mr. Kirby more cheer-
fully, and shaking him cordially by the hand.

262

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

" I won't keep you ; next Wednesday in
town ! I '11 write ! " and he sauntered back
into his room.

The great Psychologist slowly paced the
street outside, then despair gave him relief,
and he went home to bed.

CHAPTER XIV.

In which, incredible as it may seem, a non-Pole
has the better of a Pole.

ON Tuesday morning Mr. Kirby woke eager
for action. Things were fitting in. It was
great fun.

Mr. Kirby loved to fit things in — he ought
to have been a soldier.

He calculated with a pleasing exactitude.
That morning — thanks to the stupid police
and the telephone — he would find the Green
Overcoat ; that afternoon and evening he
would invite such other guests as pleased him
to dine with him next day, the Wednesday,
in London, after Professor Higginson's great
lecture upon the Immortality of the Soul. It
was an interesting subject, the Immortality
of the Soul.

To make certain that all his guests should
be there, he would try to talk to one of them
in London over the telephone from Ormeston
that night. . . . One of them called James
McAuley. He liked the boy. While he was

264

THE GREEN OVERCOAT

about it he thought he would get a friend
of McAuley's to come as well. He didn't
know the name of the friend, but no matter ;
one should always ask one's friends'
friends.

So deciding, Mr. Kirby, delighted at the
brightness of the day, walked merrily towards
a quarter of Ormeston which we have already
visited, and which is not the choice of the rich.
He walked through the dirty, narrow little
streets, prim in his excellent kit, well-groomed
and flourishing. He was old-fashioned
enough to have a flower in his button-hole,
and he had been very careful with his hat.
He was going to see someone he knew, some-
one he had known professionally in the past,
and with whom a few years ago he had had
very interesting business. He was going to
see a man who bore a fine old crusading
name, but who must have come down some-
what in the world, though doubtless he had
kept his family pride. He was going to see
a Mr. Montague.

He knocked at the door in a sharp, com-
manding sort of way. It was opened quickly,
and the little old figure appeared within,
armed with insolence. When the eyes
recognised Mr. Kirby, the face of that little

265

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

old figure turned in a moment from insolence
to servility.

" Good morning, Samuel/' said Mr. Kirby
briskly. " No, I won't come in, thank you.
I only want you to tell me something. I 'm
sorry to trouble you. Where 's that Green
Overcoat of Mr. Brassington's ? He lost it a
few days ago, and a friend of mine told me
that you were quite likely to know."

I will waste neither my time nor the reader's
in describing Mr. Montague's face at hearing
this question ; but I will say this much, that
it looked like one of those faces carved in hard
stone, which antiquity has left us, quite white,
not expressionless, but with an expression
concealed, and as one might swear, dumb.
But the face spoke. It said in a very un-
natural voice, a voice lacking breath —

" I swear to God I don't know, Mr. Kirby.
If I knew, I swear to God I 'd tell you."

" Just tell me what you did with it," said
Mr. Kirby easily and rapidly, looking at his
watch. " I 've got to fit a lot of things in."

" I swear to God, sir," said the face, " I
gave it away."

Mr. Kirby's smile grew stronger, then
suddenly ceased. He believed him.

" Was that all, Samuel ? " he asked,

266

. ned in a moment from insolence to servility.

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

turning to go. There was a grave suggestion
of peril in his voice.

The face said only —

" Well, I had to warn my own lot, Mr.
Kirby ; I had to warn my nephew, sir. I had
to warn Lipsky not to touch it, not touch it
on any account, Mr. Kirby ! '

" Lipsky in the Lydgate ? ' said Mr.
Kirby. " Then he 's got it ! Good morning,
Samuel/' and the lawyer strode away.

He was sorry to have gone out of his way
by a quarter of a mile, but he was glad to have
got the information he desired.

The little closed shop in the Lydgate seemed
to have something deserted about it as he
came near. Mr. Kirby was familiar with the
stack of old suits outside, the big placarded
prices, the occasional announcements of a
sale. To-day things seemed less promising
and less vivacious, as though the master's
hand were not there. Mr. Kirby had known
that master also in the past — all in the way
of business — and if anything had happened
to him he would have regretted it like the
passing of a landmark. He walked straight
into the shop, and there, instead of the
Pole Lipsky, what he saw was an obvious
non-Pole, an inept Midland youth with flaxen

268

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

hair, a stammerer, and a very bad sales-
man.

Mr. Kirby addressed his young compatriot
quickly but courteously.

" Would you be kind enough to give me
Mr. Brassington's Green Overcoat ? " he said.

11 Wh-wh-wh-what ? " said the non-Pole,
utterly at sea.

There is a type in the modern world which
is not destined to commercial success, and
certain forms of the non-Polish type present
extreme examples of the kind.

" Mr. Brassington's Green Overcoat/' re-
peated Mr. Kirby steadily and hard.

Upstairs Lipsky, rising from his sick bed,
heard. He heard the unusual voice, he heard
the name, and, as I have written some pages
back, he came down.

There is always a common bond between
intelligence and intelligence, though the intelli-
gence of the one man be that of an English-
man and of the other man be that of a Pole ;
and as Lipsky entered the shop Mr. Kirby
and he at once picked up communications,
and the assistant at once dropped out of the
scheme.

"Oh, Mr. Lipsky/' said Mr. Kirby
courteously, " I 'm afraid you Ve been ill !

269

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

I 'm sorry for that ! But the fact is I 'm
rather in a hurry, and have come for Mr.
Brassington's Green Overcoat/'

" Yes, Mr. Kirby, certainly/' said the
shopkeeper.

He did not understand this race which was
not his, but he knew perfectly well that Mr.
Kirby would not betray him.

" Very glad you 've called, Mr. Kirby. I
just got it done up to send round to Mr.
Brassington's this minute. My assistant took
it in, sir/'

" I " began the non-Pole.

" Silence ! ' thundered Mr. Kirby to his
compatriot, and Mr. Lipsky was very grateful.

Mr. Lipsky continued eagerly —

" You 11 find it all right, Mr. Kirby. There 's
th: cheque book in the pocket, that 's how I
knew it ! "

" Yes, of course/' said Mr. Kirby airily,
" that 's all right/'

" You won't take it, Mr. Kirby," said Mr.
Lipsky respectfully ; " I '11 have it sent."

" Yes, certainly," nodded Mr. Kirby, as he
\veut out of the shop. " No hurry, any time
this afternoon — to my private house, not my
office, you know."

Mr. Lipsky came" to the door and smiled

270

" My assistant took it in. sir."

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

him out — such a smile! Yes, Mr. Lipsky
knew that private house of Mr. Kirby's ! He
had been granted two or three interviews
there. He knew it extraordinarily well.

The lawyer went back through the sunlit
streets at a loose end. He felt unusually
leisured, though he was a leisured man. Like
the peri in the poem, his task was done.

He basked through that afternoon. He
rang up the Rockingham Hotel in London to
reserve a room and to order dinner for the
next day. He rang up his friend Brassington
again, to be sure of the appointment, and to
be sure that Brassington was bringing his
son. Then, when evening came, he took down
the big London telephone book and looked up
the number of Sir Alexander Me Auley, the great
doctor. It was years since Mr. Kirby had
seen him ; but they had known each other
well in the past, and he would not mind the
liberty. Besides which, what Mr. Kirby
wanted as he called up Trunks after dinner
that Tuesday evening was not Sir Alexander,
but his son, Mr. James. Time pressed, and
Mr. Kirby was very keen on talking to Mr.
James Me Auley.

He got Sir Alexander's house. He heard
that Mr. James McAuley was out. He got

272

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

the name of the restaurant where the youth
was dining with some friends. He rang up
that restaurant, and at last, a little after half-
past nine, he had the pleasure of hearing
Jimmy's fresh voke at the end of the wire.

What that conversation was I must, in
my next chapter, take the reader to the
other end of the wire to inform him; but
hardly had he put down the receiver when
the door-bell rang and the non-Pole, carrying a
bundle for Mr. Kirby, appeared in the hall.
Evidently Mr. Lipsky was a good business
man. He would not disturb the routine of
his shop ; things that did not belong to
business hours he did outside business hours,
and he knew how to get the most out of his
assistant's time.

There stood in Mr. Kirby's study a large
Ottoman. He lifted the lid of that Victorian
piece of furniture, and bid the boy put the
bundle in.

Mr. Kirby was wholly devoid of super-
stition. None the less, he went out of the
house shortly after, and during the hour or
two at his disposal he took the Midland air.
Of course, there was nothing in Mr. Brassing-
ton's private twist about Green Overcoats, but
why should a sensible man run any risks at all ?

273
19

CHAPTER XV.

»•*•

In which three young men eat, and not only eat,
but drink.

THERE are few restaurants left in London
where gentlemen may meet with some sort of
privacy and with the chance of eating reason-
able food. It might be more accurate to say
there are none. But whether there are any
left or not, I am going to invent one for the
purposes of this story, and to inform you
that on this same Tuesday night upon which
Mr. Kirby was telephoning to Sir Alexander
McAuley, Jimmy and Melba were very kindly
entertaining Algernon Sawby Leonidas
Brassington — Mr. Brassington, Jun., for
short — at dinner in a private room at
Bolter's.

Bolter's, I need hardly inform such a woman
of the world as my reader, is the one place
left in London where a man can dine well and
yet at his ease. It stands in a little street off
Regent Street eastward, and by a happy
accident has been worthy of its reputation

374

THE GREEN OVEPXOAT.

for seventy years. Either it has not paid
Bolter's, or Bolter's has been too proud, but
anyhow the Whelps of the Lion are quite
ignorant of Bolter's, so are the cousins of the
noble beast, so certainly are the greater part
of such degraded natives of the European
Continent as we permit to visit our Metropolis
and to stare at our Imperial Populace.

Even the young bloods for the most part
have not heard of Bolter's, and as it never
spends a penny on advertisements, its name,
on the rare occasions when it appears in an
article or a letter, is ruthlessly struck out in
proof by the blue pencil of the editor.

Bolter's is known and loved by perhaps
two hundred families. It is a tradition, and
as you may well imagine, enormously expen-
sive. If you are two dining at Bolter's, you
may expect to spend £7, and if you are three,
£10. If you are very rich, it is worth your
while to dine at Bolter's. If you are only
moderately rich, it is worth your while.
If you are poor, it is also worth your while to
go to prison for not paying — so excellent is
the food.

All this I tell the reader in order that he
may know how and why Jimmy and Melba
were entertaining their friend. That friend,

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

though his father was a very wealthy man,
was a little awed by the surroundings. He
had heard of Bolter's — once or, twice, not
more — from the fringes of tha't governing
world in which some of his University friends
lived. He remembered the son of a Cabinet
Minister complaining of Bolter's, and a peer
of the realm (a former furniture dealer and
picture broker and for that matter money-
lender) saying that Bolter's was filthy. Such
praise was praise indeed. He remembered
that ladies did not go to Bolter's. He re-
membered talk of a dinner at Bolter's just
before a little group of men had gone out in
his first year to India, and now that he was
sitting in Bolter's he felt duly impressed. He
knew that Jimmy's people were " in " what
he could never be "in." Melba was more
of an enigma to him, but anyhow Melba was
thick with Jimmy and Jimmy's lot. In other
words, he knew that Jimmy and Melba were
both en the right side of a certain line which
runs round very definitely through the core
of English society and encloses a very narrow
central space ; but, on the other hand, he
knew — he had the best of reasons for knowing
—that they were not exactly flush. He knew
they couldn't be flush because whereas he,

276

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

Leonidas, had in the past won £1,800 off
them at cards — and spent it — they, Jimmy
and Melba, had won £2,000 off him — and had
never got it ! For his father (unlike their
fathers) had refused to pay. But Mr. Brass-
ington, Jun., was not the man to introduce
a subject of that kind. It is a subject of the
kind that jars on toffs, unless indeed the toffs
themselves introduce it. And on this
particular occasion they did.

Mr. Brassington, Jun., had drunk reason-
ably, Jimmy largely, Melba immoderately.
They had come to that one of the many
courses which consisted in a very small
frozen bird, when Jimmy playfully threw a
bone at his guest (who ducked and missed it),
and followed his action with the words —

" You didn't think we should run to this,
did you, Booby ? '

" Well," said Algernon Sawby Leonidas
Brassington delicately, " of course, I knew
that you wanted me to settle, and God knows
I tried/'

" That 's all right/' said Melba, in a voice
still clear and articulate. " Your father 's
paid/' e«

And having said this, he burst into some-
what unreasoning laughter, choked, and

277

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

dranK a large tumbler of wine to cure his
choking.

Booby was bewildered.

^ My ... father 's . . . paid ? " he
said slowly.

Jimmy nodded to confirm the great truth.

" Touched last week, Booby," he said.

" Where ? " wondered the astonished Booby.

" At the bank/' said Melba, and Jimmy
added, " Oddly enough."

" Not the whole thing ? " said Booby, his
face changing in expression as he said it.

Melba's mouth being full for the moment,
he did no more than lift up his eyes, nod and
grunt. Jimmy, who was occupied in a swill,
put down the inebriant, drew a breath, and
said —

"The whole boodle!"

It was perhaps well for the two young men
principally concerned that they were rapidly
getting drunk, for in early youth the vice of
drunkenness, so fatal to maturer years, will
often lead to astonishing virtues. And long
before they came to the cheese Jimmy and
Melba had discovered that they must talk of
the matter seriously. Indeed, Jimmy verged
on the sentimental^' Melba upon the stupidly
pompous, as the ordeal approached. It was

278

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

over coffee that they faced it, and brandy was
their aid.

" Look here, Booby," said Jimmy, after he
and Melba had spent a silent five minutes
mentally egging each other on, " you ought
to know the truth, it 's only fair. We made
your father sign."

Algernon Sawby Leonidas Brassington had
a sudden retrospective vision of his father,
and he could make no sense out of the words.

" You made him ? ' he said, flushing a
little. " Cursed if you did ! He 'd make you
more like ! "

An illogical phrase enough, but one suffi-
ciently full of meaning.

" Possibly," said Jimmy, with the insulted
dignity of a person who has dined. " If you
don't want to hear about it you needn't."

" Shut up, Jimmy," said Melba diplo-
matically.

He tried to make his high and now un-
certain voice kind as he went on to the younger
Mr. Brassington —

" You see, Booby, it 's like this. Th' wa3
a lillel comprulsion — y' know. There was
scene, wasn't there, Jimmy ? "

" Oh, ' yes, scene, right 'nough J "^ said
Jimmy. v* *

279

THE GREEN OVERCOAT,

1 Well, anyhow, he gave us the cheque,
and then, you know, WP had to prevent its
getting out — his getting out, I mean/'

" I don't understand a word you say," said
Booby.

" No," said Jimmy too thoughtfully, glaring
at the fire. " We were 'fraid that."

" If there 's a row, Booby," said Melba
affectionately, " if there 's real row, y' ought
to be warned. That 's what we think."

" That 's it," said Jimmy.

Then under the impression that their ordeal
was over and their duty done, the two con-
spirators lapsed into silence. It was a silence
which might have lasted some minutes.

It Was broken by the ringing of an electric
bell in the corridor outside, a sound muffled
by the door, and the German reservist
whom his unscrupulous Government secretly
paid to wait at table at Bolter's, came in to
tell Mr. McAuley that he was wanted at the
telephone.

The god Bacchus, when he came out of Asia
with those panthers of his, came into Europe
the master cf many moods, and Jimmy was
a young man careless and content as he lifted
the receiver. He heard a clear and rather
high voice ask him whether he was Mr.

280

Mr. McAuley was wanted at the telephone.

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

McAuley. It was a voice he seemed to
remember. ^It was the voice of Mr. Kirby.

" I asked them at home where you were/'
said the voice, " and they told me I should
find you if I rang up Bolter's/'

" Thank you," said Jimmy too loudly —
but he had no cause for gratitude!

" I am talking from Ormeston," said the
voice ; " my name is Kirby/'

Jimmy's mood began to change.

" I 've asked for six minutes/' the voice
went on, " but I may as well tell you at once.
It 's about that house you took — Greystones.
Now, Mr. McAuley, in your own interests,
would you be good enough to take the 10.15
from King's Cross. I '11 meet you at Ormeston
Station."

The very brief heroic mood not unknown
to the god Bacchus now rushed over Jimmy.

" Upon my word, sir ! ' he began. Then
in the twinkling of an eye another mood —
one of alarm — prompted him to add, "Is it
anything really urgent ? '; And his third
mood was panic.

Good Lord ! He could imagine one or two
terribly urgent things in connection with
Greystones. What if old Brassington were
lying there dead ? What if he had exploded,

282

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

and told the police in spite of his own
shame ?

" Mr. Kirby ! " he cried in a changed voice
into the little black cup, " Mr. Kirby ! " The
wire was dumb, there was only the buzzing
and spitting and little fiendish snarls which
the marvellous invention has added to modern
life. " Mr. Kirby ! " said Jimmy still higher
and for the third time, but it was a woman's
voice that answered —

(< Another three minutes ? ' it said snap-
pishly, and then the wire went dead.

Twice more and once again did poor Jimmy
implore the voice, but Mr. Kirby knew the
nature of man, especially of youthful man.
He had not attempted to persuade. In the
study of his own house at Ormeston he had
already replaced the receiver, and was taking
down from the book-shelf a volume of Moliere.
He loved that author, and there was a good
two hours before he need meet the night mail
at the station.

After a quarrel with the clerk-in-charge
and sundry foolish troubles, Jimmy abandoned
the machine. He came back to his two com-
panions. They were in the thick of some silly
vinous argument or other. They looked up at
his entry, and they saw that he was changed.

283

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

" What 's matter, Jimmy ? " said Melba.

" I — I — I want to talk to you/' said Jimmy
nervously, and singularly sober. He looked
at Booby.

" Oh, don't mind me/' said Booby.

" Well, but we do," said Jimmy ruefully,
and he drew Melba into the passage outside.

" There 's a row up," he said.

" What about ? " said Melba.

" Old Brassington," said Jimmy in a
nervous whisper.

" Peached ? He wouldn't dare," whispered
Melba incredulously.

" Why not ? ' said Jimmy, agonised.
" I 've been called, you know. Called up
from Ormeston. Urgently. By the lawyer.
There 's a thing in the law, Melba, called
' duress/ "

" Oh, rats ! He can't prove anything ! >J

" Damn it all ! " said Jimmy, " we don't
know that."

" He wouldn't make a fool of himself/'
continued Melba uncomfortably.

0" You can't ever tell with these old jossers.
Anyhow, that lawyer chap my father knows,
the man we got the house from, has rung me
up, and I 've got to go and see him in Ormeston
to-night by the 10.15."

284

THE GREEN OVERCOAT,

Melba said nothing.

" Would you go ? ' continued Jimmy,
seeking valiance from his friend.

" No/' said Melba stoutly.

" Tisn't you that have got to do it," said
Jimmy bitterly. " 'Twas me he called up.
I signed, you know, Melba. It 's my name
they Ve got/'

" If it was me " began Melba.

'Tisn't you/' said Jimmy rudely, and as
he said it Booby came out.

" If you two are going to talk business/' he
said suspiciously, " I 'm going home to my

rooms."

" Fact is, Booby," said Jimmy, " I Ve just
heard about my aunt ; she 's dying."

Booby was concerned.

" Oh, dear ! " he said.

" Yes," went on Jimmy rapidly, bringing
out his watch, and seeing that it lacked only
seven minutes of ten, " it 's bad, very bad !
I can't wait."

He thrust himself into his coat, looked over
his shoulder as he ran down the stairs, and
with the very disconcerting cry; " Keep
Booby !/' hurled at his companion, he sought
the street and a taxi, and was half-way to
King's Cross before he remembered that Melba

285

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

-i-

must pay for the dinner. But the thought
was small comfort compared with the trial
that was before him. And for an hour and
three-quarters as the train raced up north to
the Midlands he comforted himself less and
less at the prospect.

CHAPTER XVI.

In which cross-examination is conducted " en
echelon," and if you don't know what that means
I can't help you. ^

CHEERFUL, more than cheerful, all smiles, Mr.
Kirby was standing at midnight upon the
arrival platform of the great station at
Ormeston as the night mail came in. He saw
the slender figure of a young man whose every
gesture betrayed an absurd anxiety coming
bewildered up from the end of the train, and
looking about him as though seeking a face.

It was a fine cordial welcome that greeted
James McAuley, not in the least what he had
expected. He was enormously relieved.

" My dear Mr. McAuley," said the lawyer,
with a fine generosity of impulse and in the
heartiest of tones, " how very good of you to
come ! I confess I was very much in doubt
whether you would understand the urgency
of my message at such short notice. You
see," he added, lying expansively, " they cut
us off."

287

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

" Yes," said Jimmy, thinking that explained
all.

11 It was a terrible nuisance," pattered on
Mr. Kirby, as he led the boy outside to a cab ;
" that 's the worst of the telephone. It 's a
great help in one way, but . . . Why, you
haven't brought a bag ! "

" No," said Jimmy. " I shall go back by
the night mail."

" As you will, my dear sir," said the lawyer.

He gave the address of his house, and they
drove off.

When they got into the study and were
served with drink, Jimmy remembered his
anxieties. He considered that imperative
message and that hurried journey. The
business must be very urgent indeed. He
was the more certain of it as he watched Mr.
Kirby 's face change to an expression more
settled and less familiar. As Mr. Kirby said
nothing, Jimmy volunteered another remark.

" I was giving young Brassington a dinner,"
he said. " Perhaps you know him ? He
was at King's with me." Mr. Kirby said
nothing. " He belongs to this town," added
Jimmy.

Mr. Kirby opened fire in a grave and
measured voice.

388

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

" Mr. McAuley," he said, " I know that you
know young Mr. Brassington."

The words seemed to have a little more
meaning than Jimmy liked.

" I am an intimate friend of Mr. Brassington,
Senior. We think a good deal of him in
Ormeston, Mr. McAuley."

Jimmy crossed his legs, leant back in his
chair, sipped his wine, and put on an uncon-
cerned, man-of-the-world visage, not unlike
that of a criminal about to be hanged.

Mr. Kirby, with his head thoughtfully
poised upon the fingers of his right hand, and
looking steadily away from Jimmy's face,
said —

"Yes, we know "Mr, Brassington, and we
respect him highly."

Jimmy could bear the tension no longer.

" What is it you want to say to me about
Grey stones," he said suddenly.

" Oh, yes, Greystones," said Mr. Kirby,
" of course ! But your mention of the Brass-
ingtons made me turn my mind to that sad
loss Mr. Brassington has had. I dare say his
son told you. I am afraid he can't recover —
but the bank admits it is a forgery."

" Forgery ! " shrieked Jimmy.

It suddenly occurred to him that Booby's

280

19

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

fiendish father had discovered an awfully
effective line of attack.

" Well, well," said Mr. Kirby, " that 's not
business. Of course, I shouldn't have
troubled you as I have about other people's
business. But about Greystones, Mr.
McAuley, the trouble is — of course, I do not
blame you, but you will see you are legally
responsible — well, the trouble is that after
you left the place — painting, weren't you, I
think ? — we found the studio in — well, in an
odd condition ; and, you see/' he went on,
shifting his position, and still conversational,
" between you and me, the owner of the house
is a little — why, almost a little odd." Mr.
Kirby smiled as he proceeded. " It 's not
my business to talk about one client to
another," he said, " but you '11 understand
me. Fact is, it really sounds too ridiculous,
and I did what I could to stop him ; but you
will understand why I telephoned. He said
he 'd summons you to-morrow. He says it 's
twenty-one pounds."

Jimmy heard not a word. He was thinking
of vastly more important things.

Mr. Kirby continued —

" Of course, I would have paid and
communicated with you afterwards, Mr,

290

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

McAuley." Mr. Kirby laughed professionally.
'* You are legally responsible, whoever it was
got in and did the harm. The time isn't up,
you see, and you know the absurdity of the
thing is that a man can issue a writ like that !
Why, bless you, you can go and buy a pair of
boots on credit and find the writ waiting for
you when you get home ! It 's ridiculous, but
it 's the law."

Jimmy's face was hot and his eyes were too
bright.

" It was not a forgery, Mr. Kirby ! " he said.

" Not a what ? " said Mr. Kirby, looking
up with a fine affectation of confusion. "I'm
not talking about that, Mr. McAuley. Really,
poor Brassington's loss is none of our business.
But if you 're interested, and if you 're going
to see young Brassington, you might tell him
that his father 's put the whole thing in my
hands, and I am going to have details of the
cheque and who it was made out to to-morrow
by post at my office."

"Mr. Kirby," said Jimmy, in the most
agitated of voices, " I solemnly swear to God
that that cheque was not forged ! "

•"Really, Mr. McAuley," said Mr. Kirby,
" I don't see what you have to do with "

" Yes, but you will see," interrupted Jimmy

291

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

bitterly, " you will see. To-morrow morn-
ing ! "

" Come, come," said Mr. Kirby, " I can't
have all this unofficial information. It isn't
fair, you know, not fair to my position as a
lawyer. If only you '11 let me know about
that little sum for damages at Greystones,
since the landlord is so "

" Mr. Kirby," burst out the unfortunate
James, " the matter will not brook a moment's
delay ! That cheque — Mr. Brassington's
cheque, the cheque you say was forged — was
made out to me ! 'J

" What / " shouted Mr. Kirby, springing
to his feet.

" That cheque, Mr. Kirby," went on James
firmly, " was made out to me. I passed it
through the bank, and I have that money in
my bank, at least a good deal of it, and I have
paid it away — my part of it — nearly all to my
creditors."

Then he remembered again that Melba
would have to pay for the dinner, but it was
very small comfort.

Mr. Kirby drew a prolonged breath.

" Really, my dear sir ! " he said.

" Yes, Mr. Kirby," continued Jimmy, " to
me. And I have passed it into my account

* > 292

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

and I have disbursed the money. I am not
ashamed of it ; and I will answer for it to any
man. It was the payment of a just debt, and
it was given to me by Mr. Brassington himself,
there ! "

" My dear Mr. McAuley," began Kirby
again.

" I arm telling you the plain truth, and I
have witnesses who can go into the box and
swear. Not all that wretched, snivelling
old fellow can do "

" An old friend, Mr. McAuley," said Mr.
Kirby suavely, " an old friend ! "

" Well," compromised Jimmy, " I will say
Puritan. Not all that old Puritan's money
can get over the plain facts. We can swear to
it, both of us. The place and the time. It was
the morning after, and it was at Greystones."

" The morning after what ? " said Mr.
Kirby.

" Tuesday, the morning after that party,
of course. Exactly a week ago. The date 's
on the cheque, and what 's more, Mr. Kirby,
I have Mr. Brassington's letter signed by him
on that occasion and admitting the debt and
his payment of it.".

" Really," said Mr. Kirby, " indeed ! This
is most astonishing."

293 /

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

" He was there," said Jimmy, " in that
ridiculous Green Overcoat of his, and he
pulled the cheque book out of his pocket. At
least, it was in his pocket," corrected Jimmy,
with a careful fear of tripping up over a verbal
inaccuracy where the law was concerned.
" He tried to get out of it, but we wouldn't
have it, Mr. Kirby, and so — and so he
paid."

" You are perfectly certain it was Mr.
Brassington ? " said Mr. Kirby.

" No manner of doubt in the world," said
Jimmy calmly. " We got him to come with
us as he left the party, and we put it before
him ; and as I tell you, he did hestitate, but
he paid at last, and it was a just debt. I may
as well tell you, Mr. Kirby, it was his son's
debt. We had lost more than that to our
friend in the past, and we paid honourably,
and we weren't going to be welched."

" After all, Mr. McAuley," said Mr. Kirby,
after a little thought, " I have asked you if
you are sure it was Mr. Brassington, and the
thing is important. Was he a tall, rather
lanky man, with a nervous way with him and
loosely dressed ? Did he thrust his hands
into his pockets ? Did he try to talk about
philosophy or his being a Philosopher, or

294

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

something of that sort ? Had he very large
feet ? "

' Yes, I think/ ' said Jimmy reminiscently.
" Yes, he was tall and spare, and he was
nervous, distinctly, even violently you might
say. Yes — he had large feet, very, and he
said something about being a Philosopher or
Philosophy. And at first he had his hands
in his pockets — but afterwards you know,
well "

" Well, look here/' said Mr. Eirby thought-
fully, " it was Mr. Brassington as you say —
tall and spare and very nervous, and on that
Philosophy crank, which is King Charles's
head to him, and in that Green Overcoat of
his. Oh, it must have been him all right !
But why didn't you go to his house and ask
him for the cash ? What 's all this business
about Greystones ? '

Jimmy kept silent. At last he said —

" That 's his business, Mr. Kirby, and he
can tell you that end of the story/'

" Well, look here," said Mr. Kirby, " I have
really no right to get anything of this sort out
of you." 9

" It 's the truth," said Jimmy.

" Yes, I know," said Mr. Kirby ; " but you
have to be starting for that night mail, and "

295

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

(he mused) " I tell you what, I '11 stop that
ridiculous business about Greystones in the
morning. I 've got to go up to town. Do
you think you could see me to-morrow in
town ? What with your father's public
position and Mr. Brassington's, Mr. McAuley,
it 's much better to have the whole of that
other thing out in private. Couldn't you come
early and stay to dine ? "

" Yes," said Jimmy, rising to go, " I could ;
but wait a minute. I have promised my
father to go to a big lecture — he wants me to
take my sister."

" Where ? " said Mr. Kirby carelessly.

" At the Research Club," said Jimmy.
" Don't know who 's giving it. It 's about
ghosts. It '11 be over by six. Where will you
be stopping ? "

"I shall be at the Rockingham Hotel/'
said Mr. Kirby, helping the young man on
with his coat as they stood at the door. " It 's
close to where the Research Club meets, and
I '11 expect you any time from six o'clock
onwards. I shan't go out. Good night," he
said heartily, shaking Jimmy's hand with all
the confidence in the world. " I don't under-
stand it yet, but you 're both honourable men,
and I fancy there 's been some mistake."

296

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

Jimmy reserved his opinion and went off to
his train.

The lawyer went back into his study, knelt
on the floor, lifted the lid of the ottoman
with his right hand, put the fingers of his left
upon the open under lip of that piece of
furniture to steady himself, and gazed
quizzically and sadly at the Green Overcoat.

" A beast ! " he said. " A fate-bearing,
disreputable beast ! "

But even as he said it the heavy lid slipped
from the palm of his right hand. He had but
just time to withdraw his left hand before it
crashed down.

Mr. Kirby got up a little shakily. He was
a man of imagination, and he winced internally
as he thought of crushed fingers.

" Try that on again ! " he murmured,
wagging his head savagely at the Green
Overcoat where it basked hidden within the
ottoman ; " try that on again, and I '11 rip
you up ! "

With that he switched off the light and made
his way to bed, maturing his plans for to-
morrow. But he rather wished he had some
outhouse or other in which to hide the garment.
He felt a little afraid of all sorts of things — for
instance, fire.

297

CHAPTER XVII.

In which a Professor professes nothing, a Lecture
is not delivered, and yet something happens.

[T was the morrow Wednesday, in London,
at Galton's Rooms, and near five o'clock.

Professor Higginson was feeling exceedingly
nervous. He came into the little room where
it was customary to receive the Lecturer when
the Research Club organised one of its great
functions at Galton's, and he was not over-
pleased to see three gentlemen waiting for
him. He had hoped there would be no one
but a servant, or at the most the secretary.
He was holding a little brown bag in his
hand. It contained his MSS. and a cap and
gown. He asked whether he was to wear his
cap and gown.

" O — 0 — ah ! I suppose so, what ? " said
one of the gentlemen who was beautifully
groomed, and had iron grey hair, and what is
more wore a single eye-glass.

" That 's all right, Biggleton, isn't it ? '

He turned to a very portly man, quite bald,

298

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

who kept his e}/Tes so close shut that one might
have thought him blind ; but Professor
Higginson knew at that word that he was
standing in the presence of Lord Biggleton,
and he suffered that mixture of pleasure
and apprehension which Dons suffer in the
presence of the great.

He wondered who the first speaker might
be. If this bald-headed man with eyes shut
fast like a pig was Lord Biggleton, why then
the well-groomed man with iron-grey hair and
the single eye-glass, who was so familiar,
might be the greatest in the land!

He was not to be informed. All old
Biggleton said was —

"What's that, Jack? Yes," and stead-
fastly refused to open his eyes ; but Professor
Higginson, unobservant as he was, could see
that they were not absolutely fast, but that
between the upper and the lower lid there
gleamed an intense and dangerous cunning.

It was always said that Lord Biggleton
might have had the Premiership if he had
chosen, but certainly a man with those eyes
had reached whatever eminence he cared to
reach. There was no meeting them. They
lay in ambush behind the heavy lids, and did
useful work through the slits beneath.

299

Professor Higginson knew at that word that he was in
the presence of Lord Biggleton.

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

All this did not put the Professor at his ease.
He pulled out his MSS. and let it drop. A
third man picked it up, and handed it to him
again with a ready smile. Professor Higginson
on iirst coming into the room had taken him
for a young man, for he had the cut and the
facial lines of youth ; but as the light from
the window fell upon him as he picked up the
papers, the face that smiled was a face well
over fifty, perhaps nearer sixty. Professor
Higginson was not a little astonished to see
the same smile suddenly appearing and dis-
appearing on the face three or four times about
nothing in particular, and directed towards no
one. A little more experience of the world
would have enabled him to label the features
and the man, for that smile goes with the
Ministry of the Fine Arts, and no less a one
than Sir John Hooker stood before him. But
Mr. Higginson had got no further than Lord
Biggleton, that was enough for him !

He struggled into his gown with difficulty,
and wondered whether a fourth man who
helped him on was a Home Secretary or a
Field-Marshal or what.

They made a little procession, Biggleton
putting upon the Professor's back a powerful
pushing hand by way of encouragement, the

301

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

&

well-groomed man with the eye-glass saying
" What ? " twice to himself inanely, and the
Minister for the Fine Arts leading the way
with a gait like a dromedary's.

They passed through a door and a lifted
curtain, and came into the great room. There
was a small raised platform to which the
Professor was guided, the three men walked
back into the body of the hall, and the
Professor found himself alone, and without
friends, gowned, with his body of MSS. before
him upon a desk, and over-looking three or
four hundred of the richest and therefore the
most powerful men and women in England —
with not a few of their hangers-on.

In moments of strain sub-conscious im-
pressions are the strongest, as no one should
know better than a Professor of Psychology ;
and Professor Higginson was free to confess in
later years that in the first moments of nervous
agony which he suffered as he looked over that
mass of Cabinet Ministers, fine ladies, actresses,
money-lenders, black-mailers, courtesans and
touts, the chief thing that impressed him was
the enormous size of the women's hats !

He grasped the desk firmly, cleared his
throat, and began to read.

" The hope of a life beyond the grave "i,

302

" The hope of a life beyond the grave ;k

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

Here Professor Higginson lifted his head
and fumbled for a moment with his collar-
stud. It was an unfortunate, it was a tragic
move ! For as he lifted his eyes during that
one instant he saw a sight that froze his blood.
Squeezing with many apologies through the
standing mass at the end and sides of the great
room was a very well-dressed young gentle-
man, close-knit, dark in features, an athlete,
and the features above the smart coat and
collar were features that he knew !

The form edged its way, bearing before it
with exquisite skill an exquisite top hat,
inverted. It was making for the front row
of chairs, where one or two places still re-
mained reserved and unused, and, as that form
advanced, subliminal fear — the Oldest of the
Gods — towered up over Professor Higginson's
soul. It was Jimmy!

The young man had made his way to the
front row of chairs ; he had sat down ; he had
carefully deposited his hat beneath it. The
mass of those who govern us were beginning
to turn their faces, some in annoyance, some in
amusement, towards him — the two duchesses,
the four actresses, the eight courtesans had
already lifted to their eyes long-handled
spectacles of scorn, when the dreadful little

304

~ GREEN OVERCOAT.

silence was broken by the Professor mumbling
once more mechanically with eyes staring
before him his opening sentence —

" The hope of a life beyond the grave "

The young man had looked up and had seen
the Professor's face ! The Professor had seen
the sudden recognition in the young man's
eyes !

That day he read no more. With a curious
unformed cry, such as a hunted animal will
give when it is too suddenly roused from its
retreat, he snatched his papers up, stumbled
down the three steps of the platform, bolted
through the curtain and the door — and was off !

He was off, racing through the little ante-
room, he was flying down the stone staircase
three steps at a time. The Subliminal Self
was out on holiday ; it was working top-
notch, and Lord ! how it drove the man !

In the room thus abruptly abandoned by
its principal figure there was confusion and
not a little of that subdued delight with
which the rich always hail some break in the
monotony of their lives.

Most of the men were standing up, the less
bulky of the ladies had followed their example,
perhaps a hundred people were talking at
once, when, not thirty seconds after the

THE GKEEN OVERCOAT.

Professor had performed his singular gym-
nastic feat, one in that audience had put two
and two together, and had been struck by an
inspiration from heaven. And the fine frocks,
and the good coats and trousers and the tcp
hats, and the lorgnettes and the single eye-
glasses got a sharp second shock at seeing
Jimmy, who had so lately arrived, leap with
the quick and practised gesture of an athlete
to the platform, cut across it like a hare, and
disappear in his turn through the curtain and
the door beyond.

He was after him ! . . . Down the long
corridor which ran along the basement of
Galton's, to the side door where professionals
entered, tore the Professor. He had reached
its end, when, glancing over his shoulder, he
saw that face he would not see, and as he
passed the door-keeper he shouted in an
agonised cry, " Stop him ! " and plunged into
the street.

The door-keeper was the father of a family,
a heavy drinker, and a man of peace. But for
all he knew there was a shilling in it some-
where, and he stood up — ah, how unwisely !
— to meet the charge of that young Cambridge
bone and muscle which was thundering down
the passage in pursuit.

3Q<>

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

He spread out his arms awkwardly to
enforce his message of delay, and before he
knew what had happened he was down on the
stone floor, holding desperately to something
living that struggled above him, but himself
oblivious of his name and place. As he came
to, the first thing he was conscious of was some
considerable pain in the right arm upon which
he lay. The next was a sharp memory of foot-
ball in early youth, and the next was the sight
of an over-well-dressed young man holding a
top hat in his clenched hand, and sprinting
a hundred yards away up the street.

The delay had been one of only a few
seconds, but ten seconds is a hundred yards.

Jimmy saw a little knot of people running
ahead. They took a turning and were lost to
him ; but Jimmy was too eager to suffer a
check. Either Brassington was not Brassing-
ton, or there were two Brassingtons, or there
was no Brassington, or pursy old merchants
were Dons, or the world was standing on its
head ! But anyhow, one man knew the truth,
and that one man must be gripped tight, and
the truth had out of him — quick — quick !

Painful alternatives followed through
Jimmy's mind as he ran — prison, suicide,
enlistment — for in such an order of evils does

307

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

luxury put the British Army. But one
obvious purpose stamped itself upon him :
the man who knew must be got hold of,
privately and securely, and must tell him all —
and must tell him soon. He picked up the
scent again from a gentleman leaning against
an area railing (who sold it for a trifling sum),
and hotly followed up his quarry — not two
minutes behind.

At top speed, hatless and gowned, clutching
his notes, the tall and lanky Don careered,
as might a camel career whom some massive
lion pursues in the deserts of the East. Not
often are the streets of London afforded so
great a spectacle as that of a Philosopher,
muddily splashed, gowned and hatless, with
long loose legs and wild head in air, racing
with a mob at his heels.

Those Londoners who happened to be at
once at lesiure and unconstrained by conven-
tion— news-boys and boot-blacks, loungers,
rambling thieves — pelted after him in a small
but increasing crowd. Mr Higginson heard
their steps, and, what was worse, he saw
amongst them a policeman. He dashed down
an alley that opened to his left, turned up a
court, and ran to ground with a promptitude
that was amazing. For in the little court

308

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

and under a dark arch of it he had seen the
swing-door of a low and exceedingly ill-
favoured public-house.

Once within the refuge, he sat down gasping.
An elderly woman crowned with false hair
was watching him severely from behind the
bar as he sank, with head thrown back, and
leaning upon the wooden partition attempting
to recover himself. Outside he heard to his
immense relief the thundering feet go past.
They had missed his doubling !

Mind speaks to mind in moments of strong
emotion without the medium of words.
Professor Higginson recognised that unless he
drank something he would be thrown to the
wolves. He had never been in a public-
house in his life. He had no conception of its
habits. But the woman's eye was strong
upon him, and he had to give an order. He
gave it in this form —

" I think I should like — no, I think on the
whole I should prefer a glass of, let us say,
ale.1'

" Four Ale ? " said the woman severely.

" No, one," said Professor Higginson,
whereat she fired suddenly and said —

" None of your lip, young man ! V (Pro-
fessor Higginson was in his fifty-seventh year,

309

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

and looked it.) " None of your funny
business ! Who are yer, any way ? I Ve half

a mind " but the thought of profit recalled

her.

She had already seized the handle of the
pump and drawn him his glass, when the noise
of feet returned, less tumultuous, and an
exceedingly unpleasing voice was saying that
there was no thoroughfare. An official-sound-
ing voice was replying with dignity, and
Professor Higginson went to pieces — inwardly
altogether, outwardly not a little — when he
saw entering through the swing-door a police-
man, a policeman who, when he looked the
Philosopher up and down with due care, asked
him, " What 's this ? " and received no coherent
reply.

" That 's what I was asking myself/' said
the woman with the false hair vigorously.
" Come in here all of a blow, muttering, with
something wicked in his eyes, as you can see.
I was ordering of him out when you came
in!"

Professor Higginson had exhausted that vein
of invention which the Evil One had hitherto
so liberally supplied. He sank upon the dirty
little beer-stained stool behind him, and
jibbered at the avenger of the law.

310

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

" I 've lost my memory/' he said.

" Lost your what?" said the policeman,
half threatening and half in doubt, hesitating
in his venal mind between a really good cop
and the disastrous results of interfering with
a toff ; when, before a reply could be given
to so simple a query, an authoritative voice
and strong step were heard together pushing
through the crowd outside, and there came
into the mean place the excellently dressed
figure and strong young face of Jimmy.

They say that the youngest generals make
the best tacticians, though sometimes the
worst strategists. Jimmy acted like lightning.

" There you are ! " he said genially to Mr.
Higginson — and a little shriek automatically
cut itself short in the Professor's throat and
ended in a gurgle.

" There you are ! " he said again, laying a
powerful left hand upon Mr. Higginson's
shoulder — and it was pitiful to see the
Pragmatist shrink as he did so.

Jimmy turned round and gazed in a pained
but authoritative way at the policeman, who
instinctively touched his helmet, recognising
the master-class.

" It 's my father, officer/' said Jimmy,
gently and sadly.

311

//'* my father, officer" said Jimmy.

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

" I 'm sure/' said the policeman, finding a
little coin as large as a sixpence, but much
more valuable, which had suddenly appeared
in his great palm, " I 'm glad you Ve come,
sir ! I was worrying what to do ! ''

" Oh, you needn't worry ! " said Jimmy
kindly again ; then, with a pained look, he
added, " It 's not so serious as it looks ! "

He almost broke down, but he struggled
manfully, and the policeman followed him
with solemn respect.

" It will be all right. It 's over-work/'

He turned to Higginson and said with
pathetic reverence, "Come, dad/' and he
exercised upon the Professor's arm so authori-
tative a grip that instinctively that Philosopher
rose.

Conflicting doubts and fears were in that
academic mind, and when the doubts and fears
in the academic mind run not in one current,
then is the academic mind so confused that it
is impotent. If he fought or struggled he
would be arrested. If he was arrested and
in the hands of the law there might come
out at any moment ... oh, Lord ! and
if he acquiesced — what then ? What would
that young fiend do to him ? Where would
he take him ? Between the two he did

3'3

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

nothing, but stood helpless there, hating
Jimmy, hating the whole organisation of
British credit, hating its cheque books and
its signatures, hating the majestic fabric of
his country's law, hating its millions, hating
the wretched mass of poverty that waited
tip-toe and expectant outside, and now and
then peeped in through the swing-doors.

As Jimmy led the older man out firmly by
the arm the little mob would have followed.
But the policeman who has touched coin is a
different animal from a policeman before
feeding time. He savagely struck at the
dirty lads and frowsy women who made up the
little assembly, and cleared them off in loud
tones, aiming a violent kick which just missed
the little child who dodged it. The gentlemen
must be left in peace. He touched his helmet
again to the said gentlemen. He very tact-
fully sauntered slowly behind as Jimmy
hurried his prize rapidly down the alley
and into the broad street outside.

A quarter of a mile away, or a little more, the
swell crowd would be coming out of Galton's.
Five minutes in the open street with a gowned,
hatless figure would mean another crowd.
Jimmy decided again with admirable rapidity.

" Come into the Rockingham with me,"

314

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

he said, still keeping his arm tightly linked in
the Professor's.

" To the where ? ' said Mr. Higginson,
recognising the name. "What do you want
with me ? " He was not exactly dragging
back, but sending signals of resistance through
the nervous gestures he made.

" Simply to talk with you ; only ten
minutes, Mr. Brassington."

" I am not Brassington."

" Yes. I know. At least, I must see you for
ten minutes/' said Jimmy, rapidly making for
the fine great portal of the Rockingham.
That great portal meant safety and retreat,
and it was not one hundred yards up the
broad pavement.

Professor Higginson yielded. They went past
the magnificent porter, through the lounge ;
they were stared at a little, but no more.

Jimmy took his capture to a corner of the
smoking-room, sat him down in comfort, and
asked him what he drank.

The Professor, with a confused memory of
a recent experience, muttered, " A little ale,"
but when it came he did not drink it, for ale
was something which he could not touch.
Jimmy, drinking brandy, spoke to him in a
low tone, and with enormous earnestness.

315

TH£ GREEN OVERCOAT,

" Professor Higginson," he began, " there 's
been some bad mistake, some very bad
mistake/'

" I don't understand what you mean/' said
Professor Higginson doggedly.

" Good heavens ! ' said Jimmy, really
startled, and looking him full in the face.
" You mean to say you don't . . ."

" I lost my memory," muttered Professor
Higginson savagely, looking at the floor, " I
should have thought you Would have heard
about it. I lost it," he said, with rising voice
and passion, " after the brutal treatment "

" Oh, then, you remember that ! " said
Jimmy coolly.

" Dimly," replied the Professor through his
set teeth. He was getting to feel ugly.
" Very dimly. And after that my memory
fails altogether."

" Well," said Jimmy, leaning back at his
ease, and drinking his brandy, " I '11 refresh it
for you. We gave you your cheque book, Mr.
Brassington "

" I tell you my name 's not Brassington,"
whispered the Professor in a mixture of anger
and fear. " If you talk like that at the top of
your voice someone '11 hear you ! "

11 You 're not Mr. Brassington ? " said

3x6

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

Jimmy, eyeing him steadily. " That 's what
you said on the night when you — when you
lost your memory."

"Is it ? ' answered the Philosopher
sullenly. " Then I told the truth. Damn it
all, man," he said, exploding, " isn't it plain
who I am ? Didn't you see the people in that
room ? And don't you " (here a recollection
of his own importance swelled him), " don't
you know what my position is in the Guelph
University ? "

" Certainly, Professor Higginson," said
Jimmy, in exactly the same tone in which
he had said " Mr. Brassington " a minute
before. •"" I quite understand. Unfortunately,
during that terrible mental trouble of yours
you signed something "

" Then it doesn't count," said Professor
Higginson, shaking his head very rapidly from
side to side like a dog coming out of a pond,
" it doesn't count ! " he said again in a still
higher tone, " it doesn't count ! I won't have
it ! I don't understand a word you say ! "
and he sank back with every symptom of
exhaustion.

" There 's nothing to get nervous about,
Professor Higginson," said Jimmy quietly, as
he leant forward to emphasise his wordsA

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

" Supposing you did sign something, it
wouldn't be any harm, would it ? As a
matter of fact, you signed a cheque "

" Doesn't count ! " said Professor Higginson,
staring in front of him, and beginning to get
a little yellow.

" No, of course it doesn't," said Jimmy sooth-
ingly, " but it was Mr. Brassington's cheque."

" I don't believe it ! *' said Professor
Higginson, still yellower, " and it doesn't
count, anyhow ! I 've taken legal advice, and
I know it doesn't count ! "

" Oh, you 've taken legal advice — about
something you don't remember ? ' said
Jimmy with a curious smile. " However, it 's
silly to go on like this. The point is," he
added rather earnestly, " that that cheque
was made out to me."

" Then, I 've got you ! " said the worthy
Don triumphantly, though in truth he had
but the vaguest idea of how or why, but he
wanted to keep his end up in general, and he
thought the phrase was useful.

" Yes," said Jimmy, with a glance of quiet
affection and control, " and I 've got you ;
and what 's more, I 've got a witness. Your
unfortunate loss of memory prevents your
knowing that, Professor Higginson/'

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

The Professor's lips were framing once more
the ritual formula, " It doesn't count," when
his eyes fixed with a horrid stare upon the
short but pleasing figure of Mr. Kirby, which
walked into the room, nodded genially at him,
then as genially at Jimmy.

The solicitor drew up a chair and sat down
before the two men.

" Didn't know you knew each other/' he
said in his cheerful, rather jerky voice.

" We don't " had almost framed itself on the
Professor's lips, when he thought better of it,
and to his horror heard Jimmy say that the
Professor and he had met on board ship in the
Mediterranean some years ago — and how glad
he was to come across him again.

"It is a funny thing how small the world
is/' said Mr. Kirby simply. " You meet a
man under one set of circumstances, and you
get to know him quite intimately — so that you
will remember him all your life — and then you
think never to see him again, when he turns up
quite unexpectedly, doesn't he ? ... You
know Mr. Brassington ? " he added genially,
looking at the Professor.

" I — I — I — I know the name," said the
wretched man.
^ " Oh, you must know the man himself/'

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

said Mr. Kirby in his heartiest manner.
" He 's one of the best men in your town, and
he 's got a particular devotion to intellectual
things, you know. You know him, I think ? "
he continued, turning round to the younger
man.

" Yes/' said Jimmy solemnly, " yes ; at
least, I don't know that I ever met Mr.
Brassington, but I was at college with his son,
you know that, Mr. Kirby."

" You don't know him ? " said Mr. Kirby,
in mild astonishment. " Well, you'll be glad
to meet him, he likes young men ; and between
you and me, he 's a useftd kind of man to know.
You know his son ? I 'm sure he 's talked of
you often enough ! I ought to remember
that ! "

Jimmy winced. There was an interval of
silence, during which all three men were
occupied apparently, with idle thoughts. It
was broken by Mr. Kirby saying, as he looked
at both his acquaintances in turn —

" Mr. Brassington and his son are in the
hotel now, I '11 go and fetch them."

CHAPTER XVIII.

In which the Green Overcoat triumphs
comes home.

IN a couple of minutes Mr. Kirby returned.
He had Mr. Brassington closely locked by
the right arm, and was walking easily
with him into the room. Booby sheepishly
followed.

" Mr. McAuley," said Mr. Kirby genially,
" this is Mr. Brassington.1 '

Young men do not control their faces well
(unless they are the sons of scoundrels and
have inherited their fathers' talents). Jimmy
looked exactly like a man who knows nothing
of the sea and has just come to the lump on
the bar.

Mr. Brassington gave a very violent move-
ment, which Mr. Kirby, his arm securely
linked in his friend's, checked with a wrench
of iron.

" You don't know Professor Higginson, I
think, do you, Brassington ? "«

331

Mr. McAulcy," said Mr. Kirby genially, " this
is Mr. Brassingten."

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

He introduced the two men, and the Philo-
sopher knew more of the Merchant than the
Merchant did of the Philosopher.

" And now/' continued Mr. Kirby plea-
santly, but a little pompously (it was not in
his nature to be pompous, but the occasion
needed it), " now we all go upstairs. I 've
asked one of Mr. McAuley's friends to dinner.
He is also a friend of yours, Mr. Algernon/' he
said, turning to Booby kindly. " I don't
know him myself, but Mr. McAuley vouches
for him, and that ought to be enough for us,
eh ? By the way, just before we dine, would
you mind coming into my sitting-room, all of
you, there 's something I want to discuss —
something that you all want to hear, I 'm
sure, something political," he added, lest
panic should seize the more guilty of the tribe.

He led the procession upstairs. Melba was
waiting in the hall. Jimmy picked him up
on the way, and squeezed his hand for courage.

They all filed into Mr. Kirby's private
sitting-room, and they found it conveniently
large.

As for their host, he began fussing about
like a man who is arranging a meeting of
directors, and finally took his seat at the head
of the large table.

323

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

" I think you 'd better sit here, Brassing-
ton/1 he said, pointing to a chair on his right »
" And you, Professor Higginson, would you
come here ? " pointing to the chair upon his
left. " The rest/1 he added abruptly, " can
sit where they like. My lord ! it 's beginning
to rain ! "

They sat awkwardly round him. Mr,
Brassington, at least, was used enough to his
irrelevancy not to notice the last remark, but
Professor Higginson stared. He had had
enough to do with mental aberration in the
last few days ; he didn't want any more
of it.

" It 's beginning to rain," continued Mr.
Kirby, turning to Mr. Brassington, " and
I 'm sure you didn't bring your Overcoat.
It 's May, and you didn't think you 'd want
it. Well, I 've taken the liberty of an old
friend, and I 've got it here ; it 's hanging
up." He jerked his head backwards.

They followed his gesture with their eyes,
and sure enough the Green Overcoat was
hanging there ponderously and silently upon
a peg. It had one will and one purpose, and
it had accomplished it : it had found its
master.
•^ " You 're a careless fellow, Brassington/*

324

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

said Kirby, hitting that Capitalist rather
affectedly upon the shoulder. " Do you
know you left your cheque book in the
pocket ? "

" Yes/1 said Mr. Brassington not very
pleasantly, " I did."

Mr. Kirby left not a moment for
thought.

" Well, gentlemen, I haven't come to talk
about that. I Ve come to give you some
good news. I saw Hogg this morning. You
all know Hogg ? He 's the man who handles
the dibs at Westminster. He 's a really good
fellow, collects stuffed frogs, has hundreds of
'em ! Well, they 've done the straight thing
at last, and " (turning to Mr. Brassington)
" they Ve put you in the Birthday Honours,
Brassington ! "

Mr. Brassington jumped.

" It's a Baronetcy!"

Then at last Mr. Kirby was silent.

It grew clearer and clearer to Mr. Brassing-
ton that the presence of all these gentlemen
round the table was not needed ; but in the
course of the next few minutes he had cause
to change his mind.

Professor Higginson, as the only elderly
man present, thought it was his duty to say,

325

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

" I congratulate you, sir/1 to which Bras-
sington answered shortly, " Yes."

Mr. Kirby stroked his chin.

" Professor Higginson," he said pleasantly,
" why did you forge that cheque ? "

" Wha — " half gasped, half roared the
Philosopher, and then he made a great gulping
noise with his throat.

The clock on the mantelshelf ticked loudly.
Jimmy tried to sit still. Mr. Brassington
didn't try to do anything of the sort. He had
half risen, when Mr. Kirby with a firm hand
pushed him back into his chair. / .

For a minute nothing was said. Mr. Kirby
occupied the minute by tapping slowly at
intervals with his fountain pen upon the
table. At the end of the interval Professor
Higginson saved himself by speech.

'He pushed his chair back from him, and
stood up as a man does to address the Flap-
Doodles at a political meeting.

" Mr. Brassington/' he said, ignoring all
the others, " it was I who forged your name.
I was imprisoned, I was tortured, I was
constrained by these " (and his voice
trembled as he pointed to Jimmy and
Melba), " these two young scoundrels, sir,
these "

326

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

" That'll do, Professor Higginson," said
Mr. Kirby, " it 's actionable.1'

And at that dread word from a lawyer the
Professor sat down defeated.

" Kirby/' said Mr. Brassington, turning to
his friend, addressing him alone, and trying
to speak without excitement in a low tone,
" I don't understand."

" No, Brassington, you wouldn't," said
Kirby kindly, turning as familiarly to him.
" You see, Professor Higginson here borrowed
your coat."

" He ?" began Mr. Brassington ex-
plosively.

" Yes, yes," continued Mr. Kirby/' don't
mix up big things with little, that 's what he
did — any man would have done it. It was
a terrible night, and someone had taken his
cape. He just borrowed your coat. It was
that night at Perkin's, you remember ? The
night you were going to Belgium and didn't —
ten days ago ? '

" Oh, yes, I remember well enough," said
Mr. Brassington bitterly.

" Well, there you are," said Mr. Kirby with
the utmost simplicity. " It 's all quite
natural. Just a misunderstanding. Always
happening. They thought he was you. Eh ?

327

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

So, why ! they just took him off and kid-
napped him. That 's all ! "

All this explanation Mr. Kirby delivered in
the easy tones of the man of the world who is
setting things to rights and preventing
hysterical people from tearing each other's
eyes out.

" There you are/' went on Mr. Kirby,
flourishing his hands gently in front of him,
" there you are ! Mr. McAuley couldn't get
his money. Thought he 'd got you. Cheque
book, no conscious fraud. . . ."

Here Mr. Brassington was no longer * to be
controlled. He pushed back his chair, leant
over the table, looked at poor Jimmy with a
Day of Judgment look, and said with intense
determination —

" You shall answer for it, sir, and I will not
listen to your father or to your friends."
~;Mr. Kirby looked up at the ceiling, then he
looked straight down the table, then he looked
up at Mr. Brassington, and Mr. Brassington
sat down.

" Brassington," said Kirby, when he had
got his audience, " you have no action
against Mr. McAuley, your action is against
Professor Higginson. If you bring it, Pro-
fessor Higginson is ruined, and your son

328

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

is besmirched, and you look a fool, and the
Government has done with you ; and,
Brassington, remember that you owed that
money."

" I did nothing of the sort/' said the
merchant sternly.

" Father/7 said the wretched Booby, " I 'd
won more than that off Jimmy, I had, really !
And when I lost back again, unless he 'd
been paid I don't know what would have
happened. I 'd have cut my throat, father/'
said Booby.

He meant it, but it was exceedingly un-
likely.

James McAuley for the first time defended
his honour.

" Upon my soul, sir, I thought that I was

dealing with you, and, good God, if a debt

»
» . •

Mr. Kirby intervened.

" Be quiet, Mr. McAuley/' he said authorita-
tively, " you are a young man, and I am
trying to save you. Brassington/' he con-
tinued, turning to his friend, and still talking
in a strict, authoritative tone, " the money is
irrecoverable. Your son had won it, and his
winnings had gone in University debts. I
know what they are. His friend won it back

329

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

— he was still a loser, mind — and p.t once he
settled debts of his own, which he could not
bear. You have nothing to recover but
revenge, and if you take that revenge you
publicly ruin your own son, you make yourself
a laughing stock, you throw away your future
honours and his, and you disgrace a man
of high Academic distinction whom you know
perfectly well to have acted only weakly and
foolishly. You or I might have acted in
precisely the same fashion. He has not had
a penny of your money/'

" I am the loser/1 said Mr. Brassington
quietly. " I have lost through ridicule and
I have lost materially — I have lost Two
Thousand Pounds/1

" The Government/' said Mr. Kirby, with
a sudden change of tone to the commonplace,
" inform me, Brassington, that you 've
planned a very generous act. They inform
me — anyhow, Hogg informed me this morn-
ing, or, to be more accurate, I informed Hogg
— that, as the most \ rominent citizen of
Ormeston, you have put Ten Thousand
Pounds at the disposal of Professor Higginson,
whose present fame throughout the world "
(he bowed pleasantly to the Don, who was fool
enough to bowinreturn) "Ineednot — er^-dwell

330

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

upon — you have put Ten Thousand Pounds, I
say, at his disposal for Research work in the
magnificent field of Subliminal Intimations of
a Future Life, in which he is at this moment
our chief pioneer/'

" I ? " said the bewildered Brassington,
catching the table. " I promised Professor
Higginson £10,000 for Research Work ? "

" Yes, you," said Mr. Kirby firmly ; " it '11
be in the papers to-morrow, and very right
the Government were/' he continued, " to
recognise generosity of that sort by a
Baronetcy! Hogg told me he heard it was
only a thousand or two, but I gave him the
real figures/1 *

11 But I never " began Mr. Brass-
ington.

"Well, there you are/' interrupted Mr*
Kirby in a matter-of-fact tone, " They think
it, and that 's the important thing, YQM>
of course/' and here he turned to Professor
Higginson, " you will never see that money,
It isn't there/'

"No," said the Professor humbly^

A German in the livery of Cinderella's
coachmen solemnly entered the room and
told them in broken English that the
was served. >

331

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

Mr. Kirby rose briskly, and they all rose
-with him.

He went to the Green Overcoat, held it up
before him with both hands, and said to Mr.
Brassington —

" Now, Brassington, which is it to
be ? "

The Merchant, not knowing what he did,
slipped into the familiar garment.

How warm was its fur, how ancient its
traditional comfort about his person ! What
a companion!

" I leave it to you, Kirby/' he said in a
changed voice. " I 've ^only to move and
I shall do harm all round, and if I sit
tight I save eight thousand pounds — and
I win."

They were moving to the door, when sud-
denly Mr. Brassington added —

" Good Heavens ! what am I doing in this
coat ? I thought I was going out ! "

" Never mind," said Mr. Kirby, " take it
off again. Familiar things remain. They
.are the only things that do."

And sure enough the bargain held.

Now as to what followed, Reader, or as I
332

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

hope Readers (for it would be a pity to have
only one), I am too tired to tell you much,
and there is also an excellent rule that when
you 've done telling a story you should tack
nothing on.

How the miserable Professor was deluged
with begging letters ; how he nearly went
mad until Babcock suggested a plan ; how
that plan was to pretend that he had left all
the ten thousand pounds to the University
upon his death and could not touch it ; how
his colleagues marvelled that with this new
fortune he went on plodding as industriously
as ever ; how Sir John Brassington secretly
but thoroughly enjoyed his Baronetcy ; how
Mr. Kirby delivered three addresses for
nothing upon Racial Problems, two in
Ormeston and one in the East End of London ;
how Professor Higginson was compelled for
many years to review the wildest books
about spooks, and to lecture until he was as
thin as a rail (often for nothing) upon the
same subject — all these things you will have
to read in some other book, which I most
certainly do not mean to write, and which
I do not think anybody else will write for
you.

How the Guelph University looked whei?

333

THE GREEN OVERCOAT.

it found there was no Ten Thousand Pounds
at all after Professor Jtngglnson's death none
of us know, for the old idiot is not yet dead,
How they will look does not matter in the
least, for the whole boiling of them are only
people in a story, and there is an end of
them.

THE END.

J. W. Arrowtmitb Ltd., Printers, Qu»j Street, Bristol, England."

PR 6003 .E45 G72 1912

SMC

Belloc, Hilaire,

1870-1953.
The green overcoat /

ANB-0646 (sk)