Читать книгу The Green Overcoat - Hilaire Belloc - Страница 5

Professor Higginson—to give him his true name—was a psychologist, celebrated throughout 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, naturally affectionate by disposition, but capable of savagery when provoked by terror. His feet were exceedingly large, and his mind 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? … The more he thought about it the less certain he was. He remembered that the May night, though very cold, had 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 congratulated 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.

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 Higginson's life had had but trifling fun with him until that memorable moment. The opportunity, 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 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 overcoat 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 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 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 uncomfortably 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 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—began unfastening the handkerchief at his ankles. Professor Higginson was not a soldier. He was of the Academies. He broke his parole.

The moment his feet were free he launched a vigorous kick at his releaser (who hardly dodged it), emitted through his gag a dull sound full of fury, and at the same instant found 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 manœuvre, 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," 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 young, well-Englished and rather tired drawl from the driver.

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, uncarpeted 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 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 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 colouring 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 concealing their emotions under a gentlemanly indifference, seated themselves on either side 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 proceeded from the gag.

"That 's 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," continued Melba shrilly. "You tried to kick Jimmy, and you tried to kick me, too, after I dumped you."

Jimmy waved his hand at Melba, commanding 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 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 authoritatively.

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 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 remember many cases (in fiction) of the gentleman-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 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 cheerfully, 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 'll seem all right afterwards. When you have kept your side of the bargain we shall certainly keep ours." 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?"