THE PONY-SKIN COAT
It came smash on to my hat, slipped off the brim on to my shoulder, then fell to the pavement. I did not know what had happened. I took off my black felt hat and looked at it. There was a great dent in the crown; if it had not been for my hat something would have happened to my head. And my shoulder hurt. Then I looked at the pavement. At my feet was what seemed to be some sort of canvas bag. I picked it up. It was made of coarse brown canvas, perhaps five inches square, and was stuffed full of what felt to be some sort of metal. It was heavy, weighing perhaps a pound. No wonder it had dented my hat made my shoulder smart. Where could the thing have come from?
As I was wondering I became conscious that a man was moving towards me from the other side of the road moving rapidly. I had been vaguely aware as I came striding along that there was someone on the other side of the road. Now he was positively rushing at me was within a foot before I realised that he was making for me. He said something in some guttural foreign tongue I supposed it to be a foreign tongue, although, so far as I knew, I had never heard it spoken before and made a grab at the bag which had struck me. I put it behind my back in my left hand; my right I placed against his chest and pushed.
"What are you up to?" I inquired.
The inquiry was foolish; it was pretty plain what he was up to he was after that bag. The effect on him was curious. He was so slight and apparently weak that though I had used scarcely any force at all he staggered backwards across the pavement into the road. When I looked at him he raised his arms above his head as if to ward off a blow. He struck me as a man who might be recovering from a severe illness. His hairless face was white and drawn, thin to the verge of emaciation. He wore an old, soft black felt hat which was certainly not English. The whole man was un-English his oddly shaped, long, black frock-coat, so old and shabby that, so to speak, only the threads of the original material seemed to be left; the ancient trousers, so tight and narrow that only thin legs could have got into them; the unblacked, elastic-sided boots everything about him suggested something with which I was unfamiliar.
If he startled me, I seemed to terrify him. When, as it seemed, he realised what kind of man I was to look at no one can say there is anything alarming in my appearance he swung round and tore off down the street as if flying for his life. I stared after him.
"You're a curiosity," I told myself. "What's the meaning of this, I wonder."
I looked at the brown canvas bag, then had another look at my hat. It was badly dented. Whoever was responsible for the damage would have to buy me a new one. I could not walk about with my hat in that condition; at that moment I could not afford to spend money on a substitute. Who was responsible for the damage? I looked about me at the house I was passing up at the windows. I was just in time to catch a glimpse of a head protruding from a window on the top floor. It was only a glimpse I caught; it was withdrawn the moment I looked up. An impression was left upon my mind of a beard and long black hair. No doubt the owner of the head was looking to see what had happened to the canvas bag which he had dropped from the window. A nice, careless sort of person he was, not to take the trouble, in the first instance, to find out who or what was beneath. That wretched bag of his might have killed me. Then, after seeing what had happened, instead of expressing contrition, to snatch back his head as if he wished me to suppose that he had seen nothing! I called out to him:
"Hi! You up there!"
He took not the slightest notice of my call, but I felt sure he had heard. I did not want his canvas bag; I did want a new hat so I knocked at the door of the house. That door had been originally stained to imitate oak, but the stain had peeled off in patches, so that you could see the deal beneath. The instant I touched it with the knocker the door flew open; it opened so rapidly that it is no exaggeration to say that it flew. The moment it opened someone came through the door, took me by the shoulders, drew me into the house unexpectedly, before I could offer the least resistance and shut the door with a bang. So soon as the door was banged the same person continued to grip my shoulders with what seemed to me to be actual ferocity, hauled me along a narrow, darkened passage into a room which was at the end. To say that I was taken by surprise would be inadequately to describe my feelings. I was amazed, astounded, confused, bewildered. Some person or persons I was aware that in that darkened passage there were more persons than one had been guilty of an outrage. A liberty had been taken with me which was without the slightest justification.
"What on earth," I demanded, as soon as I was in the room and had regained a little of my breath, "is the meaning of this? Who are you, sir, that you should handle me as though I were a carcase of beef?"
I put my question to a huge man, well over six feet, broader than he was tall, with a big head and dark, square-jowled face. He had dark hair, which was longer than we wear it in England, and a long frock-coat, fashioned somewhat like that worn by the man on the other side of the road, only not so shabby. Altogether he gave me the idea that he was a giant, in stature and in strength.
It seemed that my words had affected him in a way I had not intended; he glowered at me in a manner to which I objected on every possible ground. Stretching out his immense arm he again grabbed my shoulder with the immense hand at the end of it, and without speaking a word drew me towards him as if I were a puppet which he could handle as he liked. It was no use my attempting to offer resistance. Shaken, disconcerted, confused, I really was like a puppet in his grip. He caused me actual pain. I have a notion that, without intending it, I called out "Don't! you hurt!" Whereupon he hurt me more than before, as if he understood, though, judging by what followed, I doubt if he did. With his face within a foot of mine, he glared; I have seldom felt more uncomfortable.
I was aware that the others were glaring also; there were five other men in the room. My words seemed to have affected them all. They were all glaring; more unprepossessing-looking men I do not remember to have seen.
Close by me on my right was a little man, so short as to be almost a dwarf. Behind him was a big, fat, fair fellow, with an untidy fair beard which seemed to be growing all over his face. Then there was a dark, thin man; something had happened to his nose it was not only broken, it looked as if it had been cut right in two, a long time ago,and never properly joined. Then there was a man who might have been an Englishman; he was well-dressed, properly barbered, red-faced. English or not, there was something sensual about the man which I instinctively disliked. At sight of him I had a ridiculous feeling that he was of the sort of stuff of which murderers are made.
From the spectacular point of view, the fifth man was the most remarkable of the lot. He seemed to be crooked, as if something had twisted his body so that he could not hold himself straight. He had a very long, thin face, with small, reddish-looking eyes which matched his reddish hair. His mouth was a little open, as if he found it difficult to keep it closed; he had a trick of putting the first finger of his right hand between his yellow teeth and gnawing at the tip. Not one of the men in that room was good to look at; but he, I think, was the worst of them all. If these were not undesirable aliens, then their appearance belied them. I wondered what foreign land had been relieved of their presence.
The room itself was not a pleasant one. It was not clean; I doubt if it had known any sort of cleansing process for goodness knows how long. The ceiling was black, the walls grimy, the floor suggestive of undesirable things, the one window obscured by dust and dirt. There was scarcely any furniture an old deal table which looked as if it had had pieces cut out of it, five or six wooden chairs of various patterns, a rickety couch covered with horse-hair, with flock coming out of a hole in the middle, a little painted cupboard in a corner, with glasses, bottles, and plates on the top, no carpet to hide the filthy boards. The most prominent object in the room was what looked to me like a pile of clothing which was heaped on the couch. A less attractive apartment one could scarcely imagine.
The company matched the room. It struck me that that was the kind of apartment to which they had been accustomed all their lives; they seemed so ill-clothed, unkempt, badly washed. Even the man who looked like an Englishman I felt sure was not fond of soap and water. They stared at me with such unfriendly eyes, as if each in his heart would like to murder me. What I had done to cause them annoyance I could not imagine, yet it was sufficiently obvious that they were seriously angry with me about something.
They were silent for some moments, then broke into a babel of speech. The huge man spoke first. They did not wait for him to finish whatever it was he wished to say; directly he opened his mouth they all began to talk together. I know French when I hear it, I know German, and Dutch; I believe, also, that I know the sound of Spanish and Italian. What language they were talking I had not the faintest notion. I had never heard such sounds before; they seemed to me like guttural grunts. They gesticulated, shaking their fists, extending their hands towards me in a way I did not like at all. They seemed to be quarrelling expressing opinions about me which it was perhaps as well I did not understand.
Then, when I was wondering what the talk was all about, the huge man suddenly put out his arm and snatched the canvas bag, which I was still holding, from my hand. When he held it up in the air they simply yelled. In an instant, to my discomfort, each man had a weapon in his hand. The little man near me, and the red-headed man, had each a long, thin knife dreadful-looking weapons. The others had revolvers. They made a general move in my direction; I really thought for a moment that they were going to kill me in cold blood for some offence of which I had not been guilty, but the huge man extended his great left arm, holding it rigid as if it were a bar of iron, and held them back. Then the talk began again. I am aware that when people talk in a language of which you know nothing it often sounds as if they were quarrelling when they are doing nothing of the kind. About the anger of those five men there could be no shadow of doubt. I half expected to see them vent it on each other if they could not get at me. There were, for me, some moments of uncomfortable tension.
Then the decently dressed man said something which induced the giant to hand him over the canvas bag. They all gathered round to look at it, poking at it with their unpleasant fingers. Presently there was an interval of comparative silence; then the decently dressed man said to me, addressing me in English:
"Who are you?"
"I am an inoffensive stranger," I told him.
"What is your name?"
"Hugh Beckwith." I felt it the part of wisdom to answer his questions as briefly and clearly as I could.
"What are you doing with this?" He held out the bag.
Then I did become a little voluble.
"Someone dropped it out of the window of a room upstairs. It fell on my head and smashed my hat just look at that!" I held out the hat for him to look at. "If it hadn't been for my hat it might have killed me. I knocked at the door first of all to return the bag, which is no property of mine, and then to point out that whoever dropped it from the window must buy me a new hat."
The red-faced man looked at me for some seconds, as if he were trying to make up his mind how much of what I said was true. Then he said something in that guttural tongue. In an instant they rained on him what I had no doubt was a torrent of questions. He explained, telling them, probably, what it was I had said. They regarded me with suspicious eyes, as if they did not believe a word of it. Then the red-faced man returned to English.
"What are you?"
"I am a clerk."
"What kind of a clerk?"
"I am a clerk in a dried-fruit firm at least I was until a couple of hours ago. This morning they dismissed me."
"Dismissed you why? What had you been doing?"
"Nothing absolutely nothing! One of the partners was in a bad temper, and let it loose on me. Because I asked him what I had done he paid me a week's wages and told me to leave at once. The injustice of it made me so mad that I have been walking about the streets ever since. Now this happens! What I have done to you to cause you to behave to me like this is beyond me altogether."
"You are very talkative, full of explanations plausible. I wonder if, by any chance, you are connected with the police an artist in your own line. You are playing the part very well if you are."
I stared at him. "I'm no more connected with the police than you are."
"Than I am!" He laughed, oddly. "That's an unfortunate remark. I have been connected with the police a good deal in my time, as it is possible you know."
"I know nothing of the sort! I know nothing about you of any kind. Who are you?"
He spoke with marked deliberation, a pause between each word.
"I am who I am; we all of us are who we are. If you are trying to trick us we'll tear your tongue out by the roots. In spite of what you say you probably know that we should make nothing of a little jest like that."
"I declare to you I don't know why you doubt me I have no thought of trickery. If you will come with me to where I live I will prove that what I said is true."
"No, thank you; I would rather not come with you to where you live. We would rather keep you here."
There was an ominous something in the tone in which he said this which grated on my nerves. The huge man said something, as if he were impatient at being kept in ignorance of what it was that we were saying. The red-faced man replied to him. The clamour was renewed. So angry were their voices, so excited their gestures, that I felt as if every moment I was going in peril of my life. Then the red-faced man asked another question.
"What proof can you give us here that what you say is true? We should like to search your pockets."
They did not wait for my permission; before I could speak the big man took me in some deft way by the scruff of the neck and literally tore my coat off my back. Before I could even expostulate he had turned the pockets inside out. There were two letters in the inside pocket in their original envelopes, my name and address on each. As if he could not make much of them, he passed them to the red-faced man. In the right-hand outside pocket there were a pipe and tobacco and a box of matches, which he threw upon the table. In the left-hand pocket was my handkerchief, which he stretched out and examined. My name was on it in ink "H. Beckwith." There was nothing else in the pockets of my coat; having satisfied himself on that point, he dropped it on to the table.
I supposed that they had taken liberties enough with my attire; there was proof on the envelopes and in the letters they contained that I was who I claimed to be, which must have been plain to the red-faced man. But I was mistaken in imagining that they had subjected me to enough indignity. Before I had even guessed his intention, the huge fellow had even stripped me of my waistcoat, amid what were clearly the jeers of his companions. They regarded the way in which I was being treated as a joke. The big man turned out my waistcoat pockets my watch and chain, pen-knife, pencil-case, the little bone instrument with which I manicured my finger nails. The others snatched up each of the articles as he put it down. I saw that the red-headed man had taken off his filthy coat and was trying on my jacket. I did remonstrate then.
"It is no use, I suppose," I said to the English-speaking person, "to point out that you are treating me in a way for which you have no excuse; at least, you have in your hands proof of the truth of what I said; and, anyhow, I shall be obliged if you would ask your friend behind you not to put himself into my jacket."
I believe that until I called his attention to the fact he did not notice what the other was doing; then, glancing round, he said something to him in his guttural lingo. The fellow answered. What he said I had no notion; it was clearly something which those who understood found amusing. The little fellow by me shrieked with laughter, as if in the enjoyment of some tremendous joke. The fat, fair fellow pressed his hands to his sides as if he feared he might be tickled to the bursting-point. The red-haired man stood as straight as his twisted body permitted, stretching out his arms, as if asking the others to observe the fit of my jacket on his crooked form. As they all shouted and laughed he put his hand on the English-speaking person's shoulder and said something to him in a peremptory insistent tone, as if he were issuing an order. When the other seemed reluctant to do as he was told to do, they pressed round him, repeating, so I took it, in a sort of chorus, what the red-haired man had said. As if he found them difficult to resist, he said something to the giant. In an instant the monster, putting his arms about my neck, began to unbutton my braces. It was useless for me to resist; his strength was so much more than mine that I was helpless. To render me more helpless still the others gave him their assistance. They tore my trousers off, my boots, my shirt they stripped me to the skin, hooting with laughter all the while.
The red-haired man, who had been disrobing while they stripped me, put on my garments as they tore them off. Presently he was arrayed from head to foot in my clothes: I am bound to say he presented a much more pleasant appearance than in his own. They fitted him better than might have been expected. I was about his height, and slim they might almost have been made for him. He was enraptured, gesticulating, exclaiming, capering. I was afraid that they would suggest that I should don his filthy rags in place of my own. I should not have been able to resist if they had. But all at once the little fellow gave a sort of screech, pointing to the couch. What he was after I could not guess but they knew. The fat man caught up what seemed to be the heap which I had noticed.
It resolved itself into garments. An old fur coat of a fashion which I had never seen before: baggy breeches, enormous boots, a tall, round, brimless something, covered with some mangy black skin, which I took to be a hat. Left on the couch, when the garments had been removed, was a large piece of coarse brown paper, on which were half a dozen labels, which I took to be the wrapper in which the garments had come to the house.
The fat man held up the garments one after the other, displaying them to the best advantage; they shouted at the sight of each. When they had seen them all they yelled in chorus. The red-faced man said to me:
"You cannot go about naked; as a respectable clerk it is impossible. Here are two suits you can have your choice. Will you have the one which our friend is willing to offer you in exchange for your own, or will you have the other? This is the uniform of a drosky driver of St. Petersburg. The drosky is the Russian cab; the drosky driver is a splendid fellow; he is perhaps a little given to drink, but still a splendid fellow. This uniform, which has come to us this morning God knows from whom or why it has been sent is not so gay as some of them, and is perhaps a little worn. Now, quick; which do you choose this or the other?"
He professed to give me my choice, but I did not have it really. The huge man, assisted by his friends, put me in that drosky driver's uniform. There were no braces for the breeches; they fastened them on to me with a strap, drawing it so tight that I could scarcely breathe. The top boots came above my knees; they were so large that I could have kicked them off. In the coat, made, I fancy, of some sort of pony skin, there was room enough for another as well as for me. The coarse hair with which it was covered had come off it in a dozen places; it must have been very many years old. An unpleasant odour from it assailed my nostrils. As if to crown the insults which they were piling on me, they placed upon my head the tall, black, brimless thing which I had rightly supposed to be a hat. Like the other things it was much too large for me. The monster corrected that defect by clapping it with his huge palm upon the top with such force that he drove it down right over my eyes. I raised my hands to free myself I could see nothing. While I was still struggling my head had got fixed in the thing I heard the door open and the sound of a woman's voice.
When I had got my head sufficiently out of the ridiculous, heavy structure they had given me to serve as a hat the room was in confusion; I mean in even greater confusion than it had been. The six men were grouped about a girl, their eyes fixed on her. I felt that she regarded them as if they were so much dirt. She was a dainty example of her sex short, slender, well set up, carrying her head in a fashion which suggested that she looked upon the world with scorn. She was quite young; I doubt if she was more than twenty. She had an abundance of fair hair, which she wore gathered in a knot and parted on one side. Her attire was simple and in exquisite taste, and, I had a notion, cost money. She looked as if she had just stepped out of a drawing-room, wearing neither hat nor jacket. That there was a decent apartment, suitable for a lady's use, in that house, I could not imagine. In her elegant simplicity she looked singularly out of place in that company, in that unclean room. I had a notion that she might be thinking the same of me. Her big oval eyes were fixed upon my form as if she were wondering what I was doing there. She was addressing the others in the dissonant, guttural tongue, in which she seemed to be as much at home as they were somehow, coming from her lips, it sounded a little more musical. Obviously she was asking questions about who I was and how I came to be there. When she had obtained their answers she seemed suddenly to become possessed with excitement, which she seemed to impart to them. They glared at me in the unpromising fashion they had done at first. Certainly something like murder was in their eyes. Surely this slip of a girl could not be inciting them to commit further acts of violence. I appealed to her, taking advantage of a pause in her speech.
"You speak English?" She answered neither yes nor no; but just stood with her head thrown back and looked at me. I felt sure she understood that she did speak English. "I appeal to you," I went on, "for protection. I have done nothing to incur the resentment of your" I hesitated, changing from one form of words to another "of these gentlemen. I merely knocked at the door to return something which had fallen on to my head from a window above. The instant I knocked they assailed me, dragged me in here, subjected me to all sorts of indignities, and now they have deprived me of my clothing and forced me to wear these disgusting things. I beg you to explain to them that I am an innocent and peaceable stranger, and that I desire to quarrel with no one. All I want them to do is to give me back my own clothes and let me go."
"All you want them to do is to give you back your own clothes and let you go."
The echo came from the red-faced man, who, leaning upon the table, kept his eyes fixed on my face. There was an ominous something about everything he said. Perhaps it was my imagination to me his simplest words seemed to convey a threat. I hated the man! English though he might be, I feared and disliked him more than any of the others. What seemed to be his sneering echo of my remark, whether she understood it or not, seemed to have upon the girl anything but a pacific effect. She said something in short, quick tones which seemed to move the men to anger. They moved towards me with in their hands the weapons which had appeared before. The short man had a knife whose blade, I should think, was sixteen or eighteen inches long an evil-looking thing. He raised it as if to strike at me. I thought he would strike. Such a blade would go right through me, spitting me like a lark on a skewer. I did not propose to let him do that if I could help it. I stepped back, picked up an old wooden chair, swung it over my shoulders, and brought it down upon that small gentleman. It was the only weapon of defence I could find. The tumult which ensued! I doubt if I did the little scoundrel with his horrible knife much harm he moved aside so swiftly that the side of the chair but grazed his shoulder. Judging by the behaviour of his friends and companions one might have thought that I had killed him, without the slightest provocation. They rushed at me with uplifted knives and pointed revolvers. The girl shouted half-a-dozen words which undoubtedly conveyed a command. Knives and revolvers were lowered in an instant. I still held the chair, prepared to defend myself with it somehow. Before I guessed his intention, the huge man wrenched it away, gripping my wrists in his two great hands. In spite of me he drew them behind my back and held them there. The fat fellow with a beard produced from somewhere what looked to me like a piece of clothes-line. While the monster squeezed my elbows so cruelly with his iron fingers all the sense seemed to go out of my arms with the clothesline his colleague tied my wrists together, so that I stood before them with my hands pinioned behind my back. It was nothing short of a cowardly outrage. I started to tell them so. I did not fear them; I began with the most perfect frankness to let them know it; but I had not uttered a dozen syllables before again the girl said something. The big man clapped his filthy hand across my mouth. The little man left the room, returning almost instantly with what looked to me like a dirty duster. He tore a strip off one side. Although I shouted and raved and did my best to stop them they forced the foul rag into my mouth and kept it in its place by passing the strip of material across the gag and tying it at the back of my head.
Just as the knot was tied the door was opened and still another man came in an elderly man with a long black beard, and coarse black hair, which he wore in greasy ringlets. I had a feeling that his was the head of which I had caught a glimpse as it was being drawn back through the window of the upper room that probably he was the man who had dropped the canvas bag. The instant he entered he broke into what seemed to me to be noisy ejaculations. I had not a notion what he was talking about, but whatever it was its utterance seemed to fill his listeners with what looked very like panic fear. I thought that they were going to make a general stampede, but the girl stopped them. Acting, as I took it, upon her instructions, the big man and the fat man seized me on either side and ran me from the room, almost pitching me down a narrow, rickety flight of stairs, and pushed me through a door into pitch black darkness. I heard the door locked and bolted on the other side, and knew that in the very heart of London, for no reason at all that I could understand, I was a prisoner indeed.
I do not know how long it was before I realised, even in the faintest degree, what had happened; they had thrust me through the door with such unnecessary violence that, stumbling over some unseen obstacle, I had fallen flat on my face. The fall shook me. It was some moments before I was sufficiently recovered to endeavour to raise myself from where I had fallen. Then, gagged and pinioned as I was, I got on to my feet. Let a person unaccustomed to such exercises lie flat on his stomach and raise himself without the use of his hands; it will quickly be found that the thing is not to be done in an instant. I first of all rolled over on my back doing that with difficulty; then, after a series of jerks, I raised myself to a sitting posture; then, with a lop-sided, crab-like motion, on to my knees: finally, somehow, I gained my feet.
When I had done that I was no better off. My turnings and twistings had taught me not only that the ground was uneven, but also that there were objects on it of all sorts and shapes and sizes, which, in the darkness, it was not easy to avoid. For instance, I sat upon what I believed to be a broken bottle; possibly only the thickness of the skin coat I was wearing prevented its doing me an injury. I had no wish to stumble over something which I could not see, and possibly fall on something worse than a broken bottle.
My sensations during the first few minutes which I passed in that gloomy place I am not able to describe. I think what I felt chiefly was anger; I was half beside myself with rage. My inclination was to seek for something anything which would explain what had occurred. Who were the people who occupied the house? What had I done, or what did they imagine I had done, which had caused them to subject me to such treatment? That they were afraid of something was obvious but what? I realised before I had been in that filthy room a couple of minutes that they were all in what struck me as a state of almost panic terror. Their nerves were all on end: they were suffering from what, when I was a youngster, we used to call the "jumps." They were afraid of everything.
Who did they suppose had knocked at the door? They were afraid of him, whoever it was; but they feared still more when they saw it was not the person they expected. In their terror they would have murdered me. The English-speaking ruffian's inquiry as to whether I was connected with the police suggested a possible explanation. Probably the occupants of the house were criminals, hiding from justice, in continual alarm that vengeance was upon them. Of what crime had they been guilty? They were not Englishmen. Since I was wearing the costume of the St. Petersburg equivalent to our cab-drivers, possibly they were Russian.
I had no personal knowledge of Russia or the Russians, but I had read things which caused me to feel that in that part of the world people were constantly guilty of all sorts of crimes of violence. Those men had been guilty of some dreadful deed in their own country; to avoid the consequences they had fled for their lives; so conscious were they that the pursuit was probably still hot-foot after them that every trivial event put them in a tremor of fear that the avenger of blood was upon them.
Lately ill-luck seemed to have dogged my footsteps. That morning, at a moment's notice, I had lost a situation which I had held for nearly four years, I vow and protest for no fault of my own. Messrs. Hunter & Barnett, of Commercial Buildings, Southwark, had presented me with the key of the street for no other reason than that the junior partner had probably had a row with his wife I believe he was always having them and wanted to get even with someone. So he fired me. Hunter was away; possibly when he returned he would ask Barnett a question or two. But he would not return for two or three weeks, and meanwhile what redress had I? There had been talk of my marrying Catherine in three or four months. It looked like it! situations are easier to lose than find. On the top of that trouble had come this! I had been robbed of my clothes, put into filthy garments which had once adorned a cab-driver; and now, gagged and pinioned, I was locked up in some sort of cellar in which the darkness was Egyptian. Heaven only knew how long I should be kept there. And it had all come upon me because I had had the ill-luck to be passing along the pavement in an unknown street at a moment when someone had chanced to be dropping something from a window which had fallen upon my hat and broken it, and I had knocked at the door of the house to return the something to its proper owner.
In other words, I had done nothing to deserve the plight which I was in. Had I had the dimmest suspicion what the occupants of the house were like I would have walked miles and miles to avoid the street which it was in. What made me so mad was the consciousness that all those things had come upon me because, with the best intentions in the world, I had raised a knocker.
But while I raged I knew that anger would not mend the situation. What I wanted was a cool head and a clear one; presence of mind; to make the best use of such wits as I had. Frenzy was no use I was not going to get through the door that way.
When I had realised that much I began to grow calmer. After what seemed to me to be a long interval of waiting I moved gingerly in the direction in which I believed the door was to be brought up suddenly by a wall; whether it was of brick or stone I could not tell. When I fell I lost all sense of direction before I gained my feet; I groped my way along that wall for quite a distance before I came upon the door. It was not at all where I had supposed it to be.
When I had satisfied myself that it was the door I stood still and listened. I could hear nothing; possibly sounds from above did not penetrate to that underground pit. Although I strained my ears to listen not a sound came to me.
What was I do? Every sense I had revolted at the idea that I should do nothing; that I should just stay there, helpless as a trussed fowl, waiting for someone to come and let me out. No one might ever come; at least until too late for their coming to be of use to me. At that moment the house might be empty; those guilty wretches might have fled for their lives. The bearded man had brought them agitating news of some sort. Conceivably he had come to tell them that the officers of the law were on their track; in which case, unless I misjudged them, they certainly would not stand upon the order of their going. With all possible haste they might have rushed from the place, never to return. In that case what would become of me? With that disgusting rag in my mouth, which felt each second as if it would choke me, I could not utter a sound. Suppose someone did come to the house the police, for instance; I could not hear them. Possibly they might not discover the presence of a cellar at the foot of those mean, rotten stairs. What could I do?
I suppose I stayed in that condition of helpless inaction for five or six hours, wandering, to the best of my ability, all over the cellar. I could not be sure that I did not traverse the same piece of ground twice, but I did my best to learn with my feet what kind of place it was. I walked from wall to wall, counting my steps as I went by which I judged it to be about sixteen feet across in one direction and fifteen in the other. What it had been used for I could not make out possibly as some sort of lumber room. There seemed to be all sorts of queer things upon the floor whose nature I could not ascertain. I should have liked to be able to strike a match, and see what some of them were.
As time went on I became both hungry and tired. I had been a little late that morning; there had only been time for me to scamp my breakfast. I had had no dinner, which I always had at the Borough Restaurant as near as possible to one o'clock, and which was to me the meal of the day. I began to feel the want of it. It is odd how hungry one can get if one knows it is impossible to get anything to eat and thirsty.
I do not know how long I had been there when it first began to dawn upon me that my hands were not so tightly tied as they had been. I had become weary of standing, and found that leaning against the wall afforded a little rest. I was unwilling to sit down; one experience of the difficulty of rising from a sitting posture with my hands tied behind was enough. My hands and arms and wrists were growing more and more painful; they were in an unnatural position. If I could only loosen my wrists a little I might be eased. With this idea I gave my wrists a little tug, and found that they were looser than I had supposed; they had been tight enough when that fat man tied them the cord had cut into my skin and galled me terribly; but I take it that unconsciously I had been continuously fidgeting, with the result that my bonds had gradually slackened.
I was startled to find how slack they actually were. By opening my left hand so as to make it as thin as possible I managed, after one or two tugs and twists, to withdraw it from the slackened noose and both hands were free. The relief it was I
The first use I made of my freedom was to relieve myself of the horrid rag which they had stuffed into my mouth. What a comfort it was to be able to open one's mouth wide, and to breathe as one chose. I was all at once a much better man than I had been. In my sudden exhilaration I jumped to the conclusion that now I could use my hands I could be through that door in less than no time. But I was wrong. I picked up all sorts of things from the floor bricks, bottles, and all sorts of odds and ends and brought them to bear against the door which shut me in.
It resisted them all. So far as I could judge I made no impression on it of any kind. It was a pretty solid piece of work I had learnt that already. Nothing I could get hold of availed to force it open.
The disappointment was acute; I had been so sure. When I recognised that I was beaten I just sank down on the ground and stopped there. I was no longer afraid of being unable to raise myself, but I was worn and weary, hungry and thirsty, uncomfortable in my ill-fitting attire, conscious of grime and dirt I would have given a good deal for a wash sick at heart. I had never pretended to be a hero; I felt singularly unheroic then. If I could only have been at home in my room, just about to sit down to supper, with the prospect of a comfortable bed to follow, what a happy man I should have been. How many men who work in the city clerking for forty or fifty shillings a week are prepared to face what I had gone through then? How many of them, after my experiences, would have been fit and cheerful? I admit that I was not; I was in a state of abject misery.
All at once what seemed to me to be the dreadful silence was broken by the barking of a dog. I sat up straighter and listened. Was the animal in the house? Had it just come in? With whom? It barked once, a short, sharp bark, and then no more. Silence again. Then after what appeared to me to be a prolonged interval, another bark; a single note, as it were, of exclamation. All through the night the dog kept barking. I arrived at the conclusion by degrees that the noise it made was proof that the house was empty. The inmates were gone; the dog, shut in one of the upstairs rooms, had been forgotten; possibly it had been asleep. Waking at last, it had possibly waited to be released, When no one came it expostulated, and continued, as I have said, to expostulate all through the night. Sometimes it would give a series of yaps spreading over a long period; then, as if tiring, it would cease and possibly snatch another snooze; after an interval it would begin again, now and then bursting into a series of explosive cries as if to show its anger at the way it was being neglected. Probably, too, it was hungry, and that was its way of calling attention to the fact.
I doubt if it was as hungry as I was; I feel sure it had more sleep.
I altered my position, sitting close to the wall, so that I had it to rest my back against. I will not say I did not close my eyes because I did, again and again, to shut out the darkness. But I did not sleep a wink. And when my eyes were closed the darkness became more visible; I fancied I could see things which I knew perfectly well were not there; yet I had to open them again to make sure. Then that dog would bark; I was conscious of what seemed to be the ridiculous desire to get within reach of him and to comfort him.
I know now that I was in that cellar for close on four-and-twenty hours. They thrust me in about noon on the one day; I was out of it about noon on the next. They were interminable hours. I should have suffered more than I did had it not been for a queer little thing. It is curious what a trifle can divert a man when, for want of occupation and all the comforts of life, he feels that he is going mad.
What happened to me was this. There were two big pockets in that drosky driver's coat, one on either side. I thrust my hands deep down in them for the sake of whatever solace they could afford. Fidgeting about with my fingers I gradually became aware that in the lining of the one on the right-hand side there seemed to be something of the nature of a pea, or a small round bullet. It might either have lost its way through a hole which I could not find, or been sewn in. It was, as I have said, a trifle, but it occupied me at intervals through that dreary night to try to work it loose to ascertain what the thing might be.
It was on one side of the pocket, in the seam. I actually searched for a piece of broken glass, or something of the kind, and had to grope about all over the floor to find it. There was a box of matches in the pocket of the coat of which they had deprived me If I had only had it then! The story of that night would have been altogether different and the story, I think I may say, of all that followed.
I found a piece of glass at last; with its sharpest edge I dug at the seam of the pocket. It was sharp enough to cut me I was conscious that the blood was flowing from a gash which it made on my finger; it was not sharp enough to cut that tough material. With my finger nails and the glass together I did loosen some of the stitches, enough of them to thrust a finger through the opening. But even then I could not reach the thing I was after. It seems absurd when one looks back, but I daresay I spent two or three of those dragging hours in trying to get at it without success. I could feel it on both sides of the material. The pocket was lined; the thing was sewn, or fastened somehow, between the lining and the stuff of which the pocket was made. I decided that after all it was nothing but a pea or a large round shot; yet I had an idea that when I pressed it hard it yielded which neither a pea nor a shot would do. It was preposterous how annoyed I became at not being able to work it loose. Of such folly can an ordinary, level-headed man be capable.
I was still trying to work the thing loose when the events happened which resulted in my release if release it could be called. The first unusual incident of which I became aware was the barking of the dog. It had been silent for some time when, all at once, it broke out into what sounded very like a paroxysm of barking not the yaps in which it had been occasionally indulging, but a sustained volley of full-lunged, open-mouthed, frenzied barking.
Something, I told myself, had happened to excite that dog.
I listened to learn if I could discover any reason. Presently, while the dog still barked, there was a knocking, as I judged, at the front door; not one modest knock, but a peal of loud, insistent assaults with the knocker. I got up from where I was sitting and groped my way to the cellar door.
"Who's that?" I asked myself, as I stood with my face close to the woodwork. "That sounds as if someone were in a hurry to get in who does not mean to be denied."
Crash! crash! crash! came the knocker. Then a tearing noise which at first I could not understand; then footsteps were heard.
"They've forced the door open, that's what it is they've not waited for an invitation. Who are they? what do they want? Had I better call their attention to my presence?"
I hesitated a moment, then yelled with the full force of my lungs; almost regretting having done so the second after. I could not tell if anyone had heard. The point was, Were those above the sort of persons I would like to have hear me? After all, I might pass from the frying-pan into the fire. Clearly, whoever had come into the house were men of violence; if they were more violent than those whose acquaintance I had already made it might fare ill with me.
While I stood against the door, still in two minds, a hubbub arose, a pistol shot was fired, then another; there were shouts, angry voices somewhere a struggle was taking place. Above the din there was the barking of the dog. It was an agreeable uproar at least to have to listen to, after having been locked up for more than four-and-twenty hours, without light, or food, or drink, or sleep, or even a stool to sit upon. Eager though I was to be out of my prison, I did not feel moved to call the attention of people who seemed to be fighting for their lives to the fact that I was there. Almost better stay where I was than fall into the hands of ruffians, who in my weakened, helpless condition, would make nothing of slitting my throat.
Yet they found me. Suddenly I heard steps descending what I knew were the stairs leading to my cellar. A dog came with them the barking dog. Was the creature leading them to me? I picked up from the floor two bottles; with one held in either hand I awaited their coming. At least I would break one on someone's head before they had me I cared not whose the head might be. The footsteps paused just outside the cellar door. Voices muttered sinister voices they sounded to me. The key was turned in the lock, bolts were drawn, the door flung open, and the same instant I dashed through it.
Two men stood just outside it; I did not stop to see what kind of men they were; I struck at each with my bottles. I struck both, with what result I did not wait to learn. I know that one of them struck at me with some bright thing which he had in his hand, which I took to be a knife, and missed. I imagined I kicked the dog; I was not conscious of its presence, but a dog yelped as if it had been badly hurt. I supposed that it was hurt by me, though willingly I would not hurt a living thing.
I reached the top of the stairs before anyone could touch me. A man was waiting there for my arrival; I fancy the rapidity of my movements, my agility, took him by surprise. I still had my two bottles; I struck at him first with one and then with the other; one of them shivered into splinters as if it had come into contact with something metallic. The man dropped down. I turned to the left to find myself in the filthy room whose acquaintance I had already made. Someone was after me I fancied more than one. The window was open; I made for it. Without hesitation I screwed myself through it the window was small, my coat was huge it had to be a squeeze. Without looking what was below I let myself drop. But I did not drop. The skirt of my preposterous coat caught on a nail in the wall, or on something of the kind. I turned upside down. For some seconds I was suspended in that position between heaven and earth. I kept my senses enough to see that the ground was not very far beneath me. I gave myself a sort of jerk I fancy the nail gave way I went toppling to earth.