The Green Overcoat . Hilaire Belloc

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?"

      CHAPTER II.

       Table of Contents

       In which a Philosopher wrestles with the Problem of Identity.

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