Tuesday morning Mr. Kirby woke eager for action. Things were fitting in. It was great fun.
Mr. Kirby loved to fit things in—he ought to have been a soldier.
He calculated with a pleasing exactitude. That morning—thanks to the stupid police and the telephone—he would find the Green Overcoat; that afternoon and evening he would invite such other guests as pleased him to dine with him next day, the Wednesday, in London, after Professor Higginson's great lecture upon the Immortality of the Soul. It was an interesting subject, the Immortality of the Soul.
To make certain that all his guests should be there, he would try to talk to one of them in London over the telephone from Ormeston that night. … One of them called James McAuley. He liked the boy. While he was about it he thought he would get a friend of McAuley's to come as well. He didn't know the name of the friend, but no matter; one should always ask one's friends' friends.
So deciding, Mr. Kirby, delighted at the brightness of the day, walked merrily towards a quarter of Ormeston which we have already visited, and which is not the choice of the rich. He walked through the dirty, narrow little streets, prim in his excellent kit, well-groomed and flourishing. He was old-fashioned enough to have a flower in his button-hole, and he had been very careful with his hat. He was going to see someone he knew, someone he had known professionally in the past, and with whom a few years ago he had had very interesting business. He was going to see a man who bore a fine old crusading name, but who must have come down somewhat in the world, though doubtless he had kept his family pride. He was going to see a Mr. Montague.
He knocked at the door in a sharp, commanding sort of way. It was opened quickly, and the little old figure appeared within, armed with insolence. When the eyes recognised Mr. Kirby, the face of that little old figure turned in a moment from insolence to servility.
"Good morning, Samuel," said Mr. Kirby briskly. "No, I won't come in, thank you. I only want you to tell me something. I 'm sorry to trouble you. Where 's that Green Overcoat of Mr. Brassington's? He lost it a few days ago, and a friend of mine told me that you were quite likely to know."
I will waste neither my time nor the reader's in describing Mr. Montague's face at hearing this question; but I will say this much, that it looked like one of those faces carved in hard stone, which antiquity has left us, quite white, not expressionless, but with an expression concealed, and as one might swear, dumb. But the face spoke. It said in a very unnatural voice, a voice lacking
"I swear to God I don't know, Mr. Kirby. If I knew, I swear to God I 'd tell you."
"Just tell me what you did with it," said Mr. Kirby easily and rapidly, looking at his watch. "I 've got to fit a lot of things in."
"I swear to God, sir," said the face, "I gave it away."
Mr. Kirby's smile grew stronger, then suddenly ceased. He believed him.
"Was that all, Samuel?" he asked, turning to go. There was a grave suggestion of peril in his voice.
The face said only—
"Well, I had to warn my own lot, Mr. Kirby; I had to warn my nephew, sir. I had to warn Lipsky not to touch it, not touch it on any account, Mr. Kirby!"
"Lipsky in the Lydgate?" said Mr. Kirby. "Then he 's got it! Good morning, Samuel," and the lawyer strode away.
He was sorry to have gone out of his way by a quarter of a mile, but he was glad to have got the information he desired.
The little closed shop in the Lydgate seemed to have something deserted about it as he came near. Mr. Kirby was familiar with the stack of old suits outside, the big placarded prices, the occasional announcements of a sale. To-day things seemed less promising and less vivacious, as though the master's hand were not there. Mr. Kirby had known that master also in the past—all in the way of business—and if anything had happened to him he would have regretted it like the passing of a landmark. He walked straight into the shop, and there, instead of the Pole Lipsky, what he saw was an obvious non-Pole, an inept Midland youth with flaxen hair, a stammerer, and a very bad salesman.
Mr. Kirby addressed his young compatriot quickly but courteously.
"Would you be kind enough to give me Mr. Brassington's Green Overcoat?" he said.
"Wh-wh-wh-what?" said the non-Pole, utterly at sea.
There is a type in the modern world which is not destined to commercial success, and certain forms of the non-Polish type present extreme examples of the kind.
"Mr. Brassington's Green Overcoat," repeated Mr. Kirby steadily and hard.