G K Chesterton- The Dover Reader

by G. K. Chesterton

  “There is one thing I don’t understand,” I said. “Why you are both vicars.”

  A shade crossed the brow of the temporary incumbent of Chuntsey, in Essex.

  “That may have been a mistake, sir,” he said. “But it was not our fault. It was all the munificence of Captain Fraser. He requested that the highest price and talent on our tariff should be employed to detain you gentlemen. Now the highest payment in our office goes to those who impersonate vicars, as being the most respectable and more of a strain. We are paid five guineas a visit. We have had the good fortune to satisfy the firm with our work; and we are now permanently vicars. Before that we had two years as colonels, the next in our scale. Colonels are four guineas.”

  “We are now permanently vicars”

  IV. THE SINGULAR SPECULATION OF THE HOUSE-AGENT

  LIEUTENANT DRUMMOND Keith was a man about whom conversation always burst like a thunderstorm the moment he left the room. This arose from many separate touches about him. He was a light, loose person, who wore light, loose clothes, generally white, as if he were in the tropics; he was lean and graceful, like a panther, and he had restless black eyes.

  He was very impecunious. He had one of the habits of the poor in a degree so exaggerated as immeasurably to eclipse the most miserable of the unemployed: I mean the habit of continual change of lodgings. There are inland tracts of London where, in the very heart of artificial civilisation, humanity has almost become nomadic once more. But in that restless interior there was no ragged tramp so restless as the elegant officer in the loose white clothes. He had shot a great many things in his time, to judge from his conversation, from partridges to elephants, but his slangier acquaintances were of opinion that “the moon” had been not unfrequently amid the victims of his victorious rifle. The phrase is a fine one, and suggests a mystic, elvish, nocturnal hunting.

  He carried from house to house and from parish to parish a kit which consisted practically of five articles. Two odd-looking, large-bladed spears, tied together, the weapons, I suppose, of some savage tribe, a green umbrella, a huge and tattered copy of the “Pickwick Papers,” a big game rifle, and a large sealed jar of some unholy Oriental wine. These always went into every new lodging, even for one night; and they went in quite undisguised, tied up in wisps of string or straw, to the delight of the poetic gutter boys in the little grey streets.

  “They went in quite undisguised, tied up in wisps of string or straw, to the delight of the poetic gutter boys”

  I had forgotten to mention that he always carried also his old regimental sword. But this raised another odd question about him. Slim and active as he was, he was no longer very young. His hair, indeed, was quite grey, though his rather wild almost Italian moustache retained its blackness, and his face was careworn under its almost Italian gaiety. To find a middle-aged man who has left the army at the primitive rank of lieutenant is unusual and not necessarily encouraging. With the more cautious and solid this fact, like his endless flitting, did the mysterious gentleman no good.

  Lastly, he was a man who told the kind of adventures which win a man admiration, but not respect. They came out of queer places, where a good man would scarcely find himself, out of opium dens and gambling hells; they had the heat of the thieves’ kitchens or smelled of a strange smoke from cannibal incantations. These are the kind of stories which discredit a person almost equally whether they are believed or no. If Keith’s tales were false he was a liar; if they were true he had had, at any rate, every opportunity of being a scamp.

  He had just left the room in which I sat with Basil Grant and his brother Rupert, the voluble amateur detective. And as I say was invariably the case, we were all talking about him. Rupert Grant was a clever young fellow, but he had that tendency which youth and cleverness, when sharply combined, so often produce, a somewhat extravagant scepticism. He saw doubt and guilt everywhere, and it was meat and drink to him. I had often got irritated with this boyish incredulity of his, but on this particular occasion I am bound to say that I thought him so obviously right that I was astounded at Basil’s opposing him, however banteringly.

  I could swallow a good deal, being naturally of a simple turn, but I could not swallow Lieutenant Keith’s autobiography.

  “You don’t seriously mean, Basil,” I said, “that you think that that fellow really did go as a stowaway with Nansen and pretend to be the Mad Mullah and ”

  “He has one fault,” said Basil, thoughtfully, “or virtue, as you may happen to regard it. He tells the truth in too exact and bald a style; he is too veracious.”

  “Oh! if you are going to be paradoxical,” said Rupert contemptuously, “be a bit funnier than that. Say, for instance, that he has lived all his life in one ancestral manor.”

  “No, he’s extremely fond of change of scene,” replied Basil dispassionately, “and of living in odd places. That doesn’t prevent his chief trait being verbal exactitude. What you people don’t understand is that telling a thing crudely and coarsely as it happened makes it sound frightfully strange. The sort of things Keith recounts are not the sort of things that a man would make up to cover himself with honour; they are too absurd. But they are the sort of things that a man would do if he were sufficiently filled with the soul of skylarking.”

  “So far from paradox,” said his brother, with something rather like a sneer, “you seem to be going in for journalese proverbs. Do you believe that truth is stranger than fiction?”

  “Truth must of necessity be stranger than fiction,” said Basil placidly. “For fiction is the creation of the human mind, and therefore is congenial to it.”

  “Well, your lieutenant’s truth is stranger, if it is truth, than anything I ever heard of,” said Rupert, relapsing into flippancy. “Do you, on your soul, believe in all that about the shark and the camera?”

  “I believe Keith’s words,” answered the other. “He is an honest man.”

  “I should like to question a regiment of his landladies,” said Rupert cynically.

  “I must say, I think you can hardly regard him as unimpeachable merely in himself,” I said mildly; “his mode of life ”

  Before I could complete the sentence the door was flung open and Drummond Keith appeared again on the threshold, his white Panama on his head.

  “I say, Grant,” he said, knocking off his cigarette ash against the door, “I’ve got no money in the world till next April. Could you lend me a hundred pounds? There’s a good chap.”

  Rupert and I looked at each other in an ironical silence. Basil, who was sitting by his desk, swung the chair round idly on its screw and picked up a quill-pen.

  “Shall I cross it?” he asked, opening a cheque-book.

  “Really,” began Rupert, with a rather nervous loudness, “since Lieutenant Keith has seen fit to make this suggestion to Basil before his family, I ”

  “Here you are, Ugly,” said Basil, fluttering a cheque in the direction of the quite nonchalant officer. “Are you in a hurry?”

  “Yes,” replied Keith, in a rather abrupt way. “As a matter of fact I want it now. I want to see my—er—business man.”

  Rupert was eyeing him sarcastically, and I could see that it was on the tip of his tongue to say, inquiringly, “Receiver of stolen goods, perhaps.” What he did say was:

  “A business man? That’s rather a general description, Lieutenant Keith.”

  Keith looked at him sharply, and then said, with something rather like ill-temper:

  “He’s a thingum-my-bob, a house-agent, say. I’m going to see him.”

  “Oh, you’re going to see a house-agent, are you?” said Rupert Grant grimly. “Do you know, Mr. Keith, I think I should very much like to go with you?”

  Basil shook with his soundless laughter. Lieutenant Keith started a little; his brow blackened sharply.

  “I beg your pardon,” he said. “What did you say?”

  Rupert’s face had been growing from stage to stage of ferocious irony, and he answered:

 
“I was saying that I wondered whether you would mind our strolling along with you to this house-agent’s.”

  The visitor swung his stick with a sudden whirling violence.

  “Oh, in God’s name, come to my house-agent’s! Come to my bedroom. Look under my bed. Examine my dust-bin. Come along!” And with a furious energy which took away our breath he banged his way out of the room.

  Rupert Grant, his restless blue eyes dancing with his detective excitement, soon shouldered alongside him, talking to him with that transparent camaraderie which he imagined to be appropriate from the disguised policeman to the disguised criminal. His interpretation was certainly corroborated by one particular detail, the unmistakable unrest, annoyance, and nervousness of the man with whom he walked. Basil and I tramped behind, and it was not necessary for us to tell each other that we had both noticed this.

  Lieutenant Drummond Keith led us through very extraordinary and unpromising neighbourhoods in the search for his remarkable house-agent. Neither of the brothers Grant failed to notice this fact. As the streets grew closer and more crooked and the roofs lower and the gutters grosser with mud, a darker curiosity deepened on the brows of Basil, and the figure of Rupert seen from behind seemed to fill the street with a gigantic swagger of success. At length, at the end of the fourth or fifth lean grey street in that sterile district we came suddenly to a halt, the mysterious lieutenant looking once more about him with a sort of sulky desperation. Above a row of shutters and a door, all indescribably dingy in appearance and in size scarce sufficient even for a penny toyshop, ran the inscription: “P. Montmorency, House-Agent.”

  “Our eyes were fixed where his were fixed, upon something on the counter. It was a ferret”

  “This is the office of which I spoke,” said Keith, in a cutting voice. “Will you wait here a moment, or does your astonishing tenderness about my welfare lead you to wish to overhear everything I have to say to my business adviser?”

  Rupert’s face was white and shaking with excitement; nothing on earth would have induced him now to have abandoned his prey.

  “If you will excuse me,” he said, clenching his hands behind his back, “I think I should feel myself justified in ”

  “Oh! Come along in,” exploded the lieutenant. He made the same gesture of savage surrender. And he slammed into the office, the rest of us at his heels.

  P. Montmorency, house-agent, was a solitary old gentleman sitting behind a bare brown counter. He had an egglike head, frog-like jaws, and a grey hairy fringe of aureole round the lower part of his face; the whole combined with a reddish, aquiline nose. He wore a shabby black frock coat, a sort of semiclerical tie worn at a very unclerical angle, and looked, generally speaking, about as unlike a house-agent as anything could look, short of something like a sandwich-man or a Scotch Highlander.

  We stood inside the room for fully forty seconds, and the odd old gentleman did not look at us. Neither, to tell the truth, odd as he was, did we look at him. Our eyes were fixed, where his were fixed, upon something that was crawling about on the counter in front of him. It was a ferret.

  The silence was broken by Rupert Grant. He spoke in that sweet and steely voice which he reserved for great occasions and practised for hours together in his bedroom. He said:

  “Mr. Montmorency, I think?”

  The old gentleman started, lifted his eyes with a bland bewilderment, picked up the ferret by the neck, stuffed it alive into his trousers pocket, smiled apologetically, and said:

  “Sir.”

  “You are a house-agent, are you not?” asked Rupert.

  To the delight of that criminal investigator, Mr. Montmorency’s eyes wandered unquietly towards Lieutenant Keith, the only man present that he knew.

  “A house-agent,” cried Rupert again, bringing out the word as if it were “burglar.”

  “Yes … oh, yes,” said the man, with a quavering and almost coquettish smile. “I am a house-agent … oh, yes.”

  “Well, I think,” said Rupert, with a sardonic sleekness, “that Lieutenant Keith wants to speak to you. We have come in by his request.”

  Lieutenant Keith was lowering gloomily, and now he spoke.

  “I have come, Mr. Montmorency, about that house of mine.” “Yes, sir,” said Montmorency, spreading his fingers on the flat counter. “It’s all ready, sir. I’ve attended to all your suggestions— er—about the br ”

  “Right,” cried Keith, cutting the word short with the startling neatness of a gunshot. “We needn’t bother about all that. If you’ve done what I told you, all right.”

  And he turned sharply towards the door.

  Mr. Montmorency, house-agent, presented a picture of pathos. After stammering a moment he said: “Excuse me … Mr. Keith … there was another matter … about which I wasn’t quite sure. I tried to get all the heating apparatus possible under the circumstances … but in winter … at that elevation …”

  “Can’t expect much, eh?” said the lieutenant, cutting in with the same sudden skill. “No, of course not. That’s all right, Montmorency.

  There can’t be any more difficulties,” and he put his hand on the handle of the door.

  “I think,” said Rupert Grant, with a satanic suavity, “that Mr. Montmorency has something further to say to you, lieutenant.”

  “Only,” said the house-agent, in desperation, “what about the birds?”

  “I beg your pardon,” said Rupert, in a general blank.

  “What about the birds?” said the house-agent, doggedly.

  Basil, who had remained throughout the proceedings in a state of Napoleonic calm, which might be more accurately described as a state of Napoleonic stupidity, suddenly lifted his leonine head.

  “Before you go, Lieutenant Keith,” he said. “Come now. Really, what about the birds?”

  “I’ll take care of them,” said Lieutenant Keith, still with his long back turned to us; “they sha’n’t suffer.”

  “Thank you, sir, thank you,” cried the incomprehensible house-agent, with an air of ecstacy. “You’ll excuse my concern, sir. You know I’m wild on wild animals. I’m as wild as any of them on that. Thank you, sir, but there’s another thing …”

  The lieutenant, with his back turned to us, exploded with an indescribable laugh and swung round to face us. It was a laugh, the purport of which was direct and essential, and yet which one cannot exactly express. As near as it said anything, verbally speaking, it said: “Well, if you must spoil it, you must. But you don’t know what you’re spoiling.”

  “There is another thing,” continued Mr. Montmorency weakly. “Of course if you don’t want to be visited you’ll paint the house green, but ”

  “Green!” shouted Keith. “Green! Let it be green or nothing. I won’t have a house of another colour. Green!” and before we could realise anything the door had banged between us and the street.

  Rupert Grant seemed to take a little time to collect himself; but he spoke before the echoes of the door died away.

  “Your client, Lieutenant Keith, appears somewhat excited,” he said. “What is the matter with him? Is he unwell?”

  “Oh, I should think not,” said Mr. Montmorency, in some confusion. “The negotiations have been somewhat difficult—the house is rather ”

  “Green,” said Rupert calmly. “That appears to be a very important point. It must be rather green. May I ask you, Mr. Montmorency, before I rejoin my companion outside, whether, in your business, it is usual to ask for houses by their colour? Do clients write to a house-agent asking for a pink house or a blue house? Or, to take another instance, for a green house?”

  “Only,” said Montmorency, trembling, “only to be inconspicuous.” Rupert had his ruthless smile. “Can you tell me any place on earth in which a green house would be inconspicuous?”

  The house-agent was fidgeting nervously in his pocket. Slowly drawing out a couple of lizards and leaving them to run on the counter, he said:

  “No; I can’t.”

  “You ca
n’t suggest an explanation?”

  “No,” said Mr. Montmorency, rising slowly and yet in such a way as to suggest a sudden situation. “I can’t. And may I, as a busy man, be excused if I ask you, gentlemen, if you have any demand to make of me in connection with my business. What kind of house would you desire me to get for you, sir?”

  He opened his blank blue eyes on Rupert, who seemed for the second staggered. Then he recovered himself with perfect common sense and answered:

  “The lieutenant … swung round to face us”

  “I am sorry, Mr. Montmorency. The fascination of your remarks has unduly delayed us from joining our friend outside. Pray excuse my apparent impertinence.”

  “Not at all, sir,” said the house-agent, taking a South American spider idly from his waistcoat pocket and letting it climb up the slope of his desk. “Not at all, sir. I hope you will favour me again.”

  Rupert Grant dashed out of the office in a gust of anger, anxious to face Lieutenant Keith. He was gone. The dull, starlit street was deserted.

  “What do you say now?” cried Rupert to his brother. His brother said nothing now.

  We all three strode down the street in silence, Rupert feverish, myself dazed, Basil, to all appearance, merely dull. We walked through grey street after grey street, turning corners, traversing squares, scarcely meeting any one, except occasional drunken knots of two or three.

  In one small street, however, the knots of two or three began abruptly to thicken into knots of five or six and then into great groups and then into a crowd. The crowd was stirring very slightly. But any one with a knowledge of the eternal populace knows that if the outside rim of a crowd stirs ever so slightly it means that there is madness in the heart and core of the mob. It soon became evident that something really important had happened in the centre of this excitement. We wormed our way to the front, with the cunning which is known only to cockneys, and once there we soon learned the nature of the difficulty. There had been a brawl concerned with some six men, and one of them lay almost dead on the stones of the street. Of the other four, all interesting matters were, as far as we were concerned, swallowed up in one stupendous fact. One of the four survivors of the brutal and perhaps fatal scuffle was the immaculate Lieutenant Keith, his clothes torn to ribbons, his eyes blazing, blood on his knuckles. One other thing, however, pointed at him in a worse manner. A short sword, or very long knife, had been drawn out of his elegant walking-stick, and lay in front of him upon the stones. It did not, however, appear to be bloody.