Chapter 17: My Unpersuasive Manner

As I left the house a man came across the pavement as if with the intention of knocking at Philip Lawrence’s door. At sight of me coming down the steps he stopped short. It was young Moore. His appearance set the blood tingling in my veins; his hat was cocked at an acute angle on one side of his head; a cigar was stuck in the corner of his mouth. There was something in his bearing, and about the way in which he spoke, which showed that he had been drinking.

“What are you doing in that house? You answer me that! Seems to me that you’ve got a finger in every pie.”

He addressed me in tones which were probably audible in Piccadilly.

“Might I ask you, Mr. Moore, to pitch your voice a little lower?”

“You may ask, but as for paying attention to anything you ask—not me. I’m not afraid of any one hearing what I’ve got to say. This is the public street, this is, and if you so much as lay a hand on me—— Here, drop that! Help! Police!”

As I moved towards him, he sprang out of my reach, shouting in a fashion which could not fail to attract attention. Indeed a man, apparently a respectable artisan, who had passed us a few seconds before, turned to look at us.

“What’s the matter there?”

Mr. Moore was quite at his ease.

“Nothing—at least, not yet there isn’t. But there will be soon, if he so much as lays a finger on me.”

The man went on.

“You seem to be a pretty sort of idiot,” I observed.

He flicked the ash off his cigar with a jeering laugh.

“We can’t all be as wise as you, nor as big. Size goes for something, you great overgrown monster. Barnum’s museum is where you ought to be, not walking about the streets.”

I hardly knew what to make of him. If I had had him in a room I might have taught him manners; out in the street he had me at an advantage. He was plainly disposed to court, rather than avoid, a public scandal, while I was anything but inclined to find myself an object of interest to a curious crowd. While I hesitated he went on:

“A nice sort you seem to be, all round. A pretty lot of lies you stuffed me with this morning—Adair and you together. On my honour! Making out that Eddie Lawrence had had his throat cut, and the Lord knows what! Setting me thinking that my sister’d cut it for him—my goodness! What is your little game? I wish she had!” He burst into boisterous laughter. “Bessie cut Eddie Lawrence’s throat!—that would be an elegant joke! I only wish she’d done it! D’ye hear? I say I only wish she’d done it! You can put that into your pipe and smoke it.”

He swaggered off up the street. I made no attempt to stop him—crediting him with the wild utterances of a drink-fuddled brain. I did wonder what errand had brought him to Philip Lawrence’s; for that he had been going there when I interrupted him I felt sure. But that, in his present condition, I should get no information on that point, or any other, from him was evident.

I returned home. As soon as I entered the sitting-room, I became conscious that some one was in the bedroom beyond.

“If that is Hume again——”

It would have gone hard with him, if it had been; but it was not. It was Inspector Symonds and a colleague. It came upon me, with a rush of sickening recollection, that I had actually gone out without putting the room to rights, but with all my possessions lying about just as Hume and I had left them. On the bed was still that irrepressible cloak. Why had I not burnt the thing? Or torn it into rags? Or got rid of it somehow? Anything would have been better than allowing it to continue in existence. The two men were examining it minutely from top to bottom.

“What—what are you doing here?”

There was a choking something in my throat. They had taken me by surprise; and I was conscious that this was not a case in which physical force could be advantageously employed.