The Green Overcoat/Chapter 12

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 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 productive 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, 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 somewhat impatiently. "I mean a damned great roll of paper."

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

"Show him in, Thurston, show him in," 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 scattered 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 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 this, 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 'll 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 'll show you," he said fiercely, but in a more business-like tone than before. "You 'll see! … And when you 've seen, I 'll thank you to think twice before you get me in a worse hole than ever," and as he said 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 backyard, 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 Greystones!" and he chuckled.

"You needn't laugh, Kirby!" thundered the aged Postlethwaite. "Oh, you 'll laugh the other side of your mouth before I 've done! Ruined, Kirby! Smashed! Destroyed! And no clue!"

Mr. Kirby put up his hand.

"Please, Mr. Postlethwaite, please," he said. "If the place is burnt down I congratulate you."

"'Tisn't!" snapped Postlethwaite.

"Well, if it 's partially burnt down all the better. They 're more ready to pay when. …"

"Not burnt at all!" snarled Mr. Postlethwaite 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! Destroyed!"

"What was?" said Mr. Kirby, beginning to be irritated as he thought 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 'll 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 young fellows for a month. I knew all about them, at least one of them, the one who 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. "I 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 Postlethwaite 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 between four walls. But if you say that kind of thing outside you might find yourself in . 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. Postlethwaite 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 'm 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 Greystones or with any other of old Mr. Postlethwaite'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.

"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."

"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.

"No, I 'm not," returned Mr. Kirby in a soothing tone. "Come, there 's nothing more to be done here. I 'll write to those young men. I 'll write at once. I 'll hear the day after tomorrow, and I 'll 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. Kirby as they reached the door. "I know a man in a cottage here, I 'll 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 'll 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 Greystones, Postlethwaite?"

He knew what was coming. Mr. Postlethwaite'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 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—

"If I 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 doubtfully.

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 reassuring 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.

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.

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—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 second year work in future to be combined with the Medical. Announce this at end of first hour.'"

Mr. Kirby pursed his lips and considered those words. It was a Professor's memorandum … 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 made it out at last, 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. Remember 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, and stretched for the University Calendar, 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 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 pleasure 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 been larking with younger men that night when old Postlethwaite's house was turned upside down, why, he thought it would probably be Gaunt.

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."

"What do you mean?" said Mr. Brassington, 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 reasonable 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!"

"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. Brassington, 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.

"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. Brassington 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 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.

"Oh, Nonsense!" said Mr. Kirby, almost at the end of his patience. "Supposing someone 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 commission?"

"If I get the man" began Mr. Brassington 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, Brassington. 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 superstition. 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.

"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 counterfoil 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 'll be waiting."

"I 'll come," said Mr. Brassington—as though asking why.

"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 'll 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 pound?"

Mr. Kirby left the smoking-room. On his way out through the hall he did something 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?"

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. Brassington must have asked. The point is, which … What? … Spell it! M—O—N—T … Oh, yes … Old Sammy!" Then came a pause. "What? … 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.