men talked. Sometimes they would shout angrily, and there were sounds of blows and women’s screams, and a frowsy little crowd, eager for sanguinary details, gathered at the door of No. 19.
Amber went up the stairs two at a time, whistling cheerfully. He had to stop halfway up the second flight because two babies were playing perilously on the uncarpeted stairway.
He placed them on a safer landing, stopped for a moment or two to talk to them, then continued his climb.
On the topmost floor he came to the door of a room and knocked.
There was no reply and he knocked again.
“Come in!” said a stern voice, and Amber entered.
The floor was scrubbed white, the centre was covered by a bright, clean patch of carpet, and a small gate-legged table exposed a polished surface. There were two or three pictures on the walls, ancient and unfashionable prints, representing mythological happenings. Ulysses Returned was one, Perseus and the Gorgon was another. Prometheus Bound was an inevitable third.
The song of a dozen birds came to Amber as he closed the door softly behind him. Their cages ran up the wall on either side of the opened window, the sill of which was a smother of scarlet geranium.
Sitting in a Windsor chair by the table was a man of middle age. He was baldheaded, his moustache and side whiskers were fiery red, and, though his eyebrows were shaggy and his eyes stern, his general appearance was one of extreme benevolence. His occupation was a remarkable one, for he was sewing, with small stitches, a pillowcase.
He dropped his work on to his knees as Amber entered.
“Hullo!” he said, and shook his head reprovingly. “Bad penny, bad penny — eh! Come in; I’ll make you a cup of tea.”:
He folded his work with a care that was almost feminine, placed it in a little workbasket, and went bustling about the room. He wore carpet slippers that were a little too large for him, and he talked all the time.
“How long have you been out? — More trouble ahead? keep thy hands from picking and stealing, and thy mouth free from evil speaking — tut, tut!”
“My Socrates,” said Amber reproachfully.
“No, no, no!” the little man was lighting a fire of sticks, “nobody ever accused you of bad talk, as Wild Cloud says — never read that yarn, have you? You’ve missed a treat. Denver Dad’s Bid for Fortune, or the King of the Sioux — pronounced Soo. It’s worth reading. The twentyfourth part of it is out to-day.”
He chattered on, and his talk was about the desperate and decorative heroism of the Wild West. Peter Musk, such was his name, was a hero worshipper, a lover of the adventurous, and an assiduous reader of that type of romance which too hasty critics dismiss contemptuously as “dreadfuls.” Packed away behind the bright cretonne curtains that hid his bookshelves were many hundreds of these stories, each of which had gone to the creation of the atmosphere in which Peter lived.
“And what has my Peter been doing all this long time?” asked Amber.
Peter set the cups and smiled, a little mysteriously.
“The old life,” he said, “my studies, my birds, a little needlework — life runs very smoothly to a broken man an’ a humble student of life.”
He smiled again, as at a secret thought.
Amber was neither piqued nor amused by the little man’s mystery, but regarded him with affectionate interest.
Peter was ever a dreamer. He dreamt of heroic matters such as rescuing grey-eyed damsels from tall villains in evening dress. These villains smoked cigarettes and sneered at the distress of their victims, until Peter came along and, with one well-directed blow, struck the sallow scoundrels to the earth.
Peter was in height some four feet eleven inches, and stoutish. He wore big, round, steel-rimmed glasses, and had a false tooth — a possession which ordinarily checks the pugilistically inclined, and can reasonably serve as an excellent excuse for prudent inaction in moments when the finger of heroism beckons frantically.
Peter moreover led forlorn hopes; stormed (in armour of an impervious character) breached fortresses under flights of arrows; planted tattered flags, shot-riddled, on bristling ramparts; and between whiles, in calmer spirit, was martyred for his country’s sake, in certain little warlike expeditions in Central Africa.
Being by nature of an orderly disposition, he brought something of the method of his life into his dreams.
Thus, he charged at the head of his men, between 19, Redcow Court, and the fish-shop, in the morning, when he went to buy his breakfast haddock. He was martyred between the Borough and the Marshalsea Recreation Grounds, when he took a walk; was borne to a soldier’s grave, amidst national lamentations, on the return journey, and did most of his rescuing after business hours.
Many years ago Peter had been a clerk in a city warehouse; a quiet respectable man, given to gardening. One day money was missing from the cashier’s desk, and Peter was suspected. He was hypnotized by the charge, allowed himself to be led off to the police station without protest, listened as a man in a dream to the recital of the evidence against him — beautifully circumstantial evidence it was — and went down from the dock not fully realizing that a grey-haired old gentleman on the bench had awarded him six months’ hard labour, in a calm unemotional voice.
Peter had served four months of his sentence when the real thief was detected, and confessed to his earlier crime. Peter’s employers were shocked; they were good, honest, Christian people, and the managing director of the company was — as he told Peter afterwards — so distressed that he nearly put off his annual holiday to the Engadine.
The firm did a handsome thing, for they pensioned Peter off, paying him no less than 25s. a week, and Peter went to the Borough, because he had eccentric views, one of which was that he carried about him the taint of his conviction.
He came to be almost proud of his unique experience, boasted a little I fear, and earned an undeserved reputation in criminal circles. He was pointed out as he strolled forth in the cool of summer evenings, as a man who had burgled a bank, as What’s-his-name, the celebrated forger. He was greatly respected.
“How did you get on?”
Amber was thinking of the little man’s many lovable qualities when the question was addressed to him,
“Me — oh, about the same, my Peter,” he said with a smile.
Peter looked round with an extravagant show of caution.
“Any difference since I was there?” he whispered.
“I think C. Hall has been repainted,” said Amber gravely.
Peter shook his head in depreciation.
“I don’t suppose I’d know the place now,” he said regretfully; “is the Governor’s room still off A. Hall?”
Amber made no reply other than a nod.
The little man poured out the tea, and handed a cup to the visitor.
“Peter,” said Amber, as he stirred the tea slowly, “where can I stay?”
“Here?”
Peter’s face lit up and his voice was eager.
Amber nodded.
“They’re after you, are they?” the other demanded with a chuckle. “You stay here, my boy. I’ll dress you up in the finest disguise you ever saw, whiskers an’ wig; I’ll smuggle you down to the river, an’ we’ll get you aboard—”
Amber laughed.
“Oh, my Peter!” he chuckled. “Oh, my lawbreaker! No, it’s not the police — don’t look so sad, you heartless little man — no, I’m avoiding criminals — real wicked criminals, my Peter, not petty hooks like me, or victims