The Green Overcoat . Hilaire Belloc

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

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