The Man Who Lost Himself Part 44

They pa.s.sed hop gardens and hamlets, broad meadows and grazing cattle, bosky woods and park lands.

Jones, though he had taken the goggles off, saw little of the beauty around him. He was recognising facts, and asking questions of himself.

If Hoover or the police were to call at the garage, what would happen?

Knowing the route of the car could they telegraph to towns on the way and have him arrested? How did the English law stand as regards escaped gentlemen with hallucinations? Could they be arrested like criminals?

Surely not--and yet as regards the law, who could be sure of anything?

Jim, the speechless driver, could tell him nothing on these points.

Towards dusk they reached a fairly big town, and in the very centre of the main street, Jim stopped the car to light the headlamps. A policeman, pa.s.sing on his beat, paused to inspect the operation and then moved on, and the car resumed its way, driving into a world of twilight and scented hedges, where the glowworms were lighting up, and over which the sky was showing a silvery sprinkle of stars.

Two more towns they pa.s.sed unhindered, and then came the fringe of London, a maze of lights and ways and houses, tram lines, and then an endless road, half road, half street, lines of shops, lines of old houses and semi gardens.

Jim turned in his seat. "This here's the Kent Road," said he. "We're about the middle of it, which part did you want?"

"This will do," said Jones, "pull her up."

He got out, took the four and sixpence from his pocket, and gave Jim two s.h.i.+llings for a tip.

"Going all the way back to-night?" asked he, as he wriggled out of the coat, and handed it over with the goggles.

"No," said Jim. "I'll stop at the last pub we pa.s.sed for the night.

There ain't no use over taxin' a car."

"Well, good night to you," said Jones. He watched the car turning and vanis.h.i.+ng, then, with a feeling of freedom he had never before experienced, he pushed on London-wards.

With only two and sixpence in his pocket, he would have to wander about all night, or sit on the embankment. He had several times seen the outcasts on the embankment seats at night, and pitied them; he did not pity them now. They were free men and women.

The wind had died away and the night was sultry, much pleasanter out of doors than in, a general term that did not apply to the Old Kent Road.

The old road leading down to Kent was once, no doubt, a pleasant enough place, but pleasure had long forsaken it, and cleanliness. It was here that David Copperfield sold his jacket, and the old clothiers' shops are so antiquated that any of them might have been the scene of the purchase. To-night the old Kent Road was swarming, and the further Jones advanced towards the river the thicker seemed the throng.

At a flaring public house, and for the price of a s.h.i.+lling, he obtained enough food in the way of sausages and mashed potatoes, to satisfy his hunger, a half pint tankard of beer completed the satisfaction of his inner man, and having bought a couple of packets of navy cut cigarettes and a box of matches, he left the place and pursued his way towards the river.

He had exactly tenpence in his pocket, and he fell to thinking as he walked, of the extraordinary monetary fluctuations he had experienced in this city of London. At the Savoy that fatal day he had less than ten pounds, next morning, though robed as a Lord, he had only a penny, the penny had been reduced to a halfpenny by the purchase of a newspaper, the halfpenny swelled to five pounds by Rochester's gift, the five pounds sprang in five minutes to eight thousand, owing to Voles, the eight thousand to a million eight thousand, owing to Mulhausen, Simms and Cavendish had stripped him of his last cent, the Smithers affair had given him five pounds, now he had only ten pence, and to-morrow at nine o'clock he would have eight thousand.

It will be noted that he did not consider that eight thousand his, till it was safe in his pocket in the form of notes--he had learned by bitter experience to put his trust in nothing but the tangible. He reached the river and the great bridge that spans it here, and on the bridge he paused, leaning his elbow on the parapet, and looking down stream.

The waning moon had risen, painting the water with silver; barge lights and the lights of tugs and police boats shewed points of orange and dribbles of ruffled gold, whilst away down stream to the right, the airy fairy tracery of the Houses of Parliament fretted the sky.

It was a nocturne after the heart of Whistler, and Jones, as he gazed at it, felt for the first time the magic of this wonderful half revealed city with its million yellow eyes. He pa.s.sed on, crossing to the right bank, and found the Strand. Here in a bar, and for the price of half a pint of beer, he sat for some twenty minutes watching the customers and killing Time, then, with his worldly wealth reduced to eightpence, he wandered off westward, pa.s.sing the Savoy, and pausing for a moment to peep down the great archway at the gaily lit hotel.

At midnight he had gravitated to the embankment, and found a seat not overcrowded.

Here he fell in with a gentleman, derelict like himself, a free spoken individual, whose conversation wiled away an hour.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE BLIGHTED CITY

Said the person after a request for a match: "Warm night, but there's a change in the weather coming on, or I'm greatly mistaken. I've lost nearly everything in the chops and changes of life, but there's one thing I haven't lost--my barometer--that's to say my rheumatism. It tells me when rain is coming as sure as an aneroid. London is pretty full for the time of year, don't you think?"

"Yes," said Jones, "I reckon it is."

They talked, the gentleman with the barometer pa.s.sing from the weather to politics, from politics to high finance, from high finance to himself. He had been a solicitor.

"Disbarred, as you see, for nothing, but what a hundred men are doing at the present moment. There's no justice in the world, except maybe in the Law Courts. I'm not one of those who think the Law is an a.s.s, no, there's a great deal of common sense in the Law of England. I'm not talking of the Incorporated Law Society that shut me out from a living, for a slip any man might make. I'm talking of the old Laws of England as administered by his Majesty's Judges; study them, and you will be astonished at their straight common-sense and justice. I'm not holding any brief for lawyers--I'm frank, you see--the business of lawyers is to wriggle round and circ.u.mvent the truth, to muddy evidence, confuse witnesses and undo justice. I'm just talking of the laws."

"Do you know anything of the laws of lunacy?" asked Jones.

"Something."

"I had a friend who was supposed to be suffering from mind trouble, two doctors doped him and put him away in an asylum--he was quite harmless."

"What do you mean by doped him?" asked the other.

"Gave him a drug to quiet him, and then took him off in an automobile."

"Was there money involved?"

"You may say there was. He was worth a million."

"Anyone to benefit by his being put away?"

"Well, I expect one might make out a case of that; the family would have the handling of the million, wouldn't they?"

"It all depends--but there's one thing certain, there'd be a thundering law case for any clever solicitor to handle if the plaintiff were not too far gone in his mind to plead. Anyhow, the drugging is out of order--whole thing sounds fishy."

"Suppose he escaped," said Jones. "Could they take him back by force?"

"That's a difficult question to answer. If he were cutting up s.h.i.+nes it would be easy, but if he were clever enough to pretend to be sane it might be difficult. You see, he would have to be arrested, no man can go up and seize another man in the street and say: You're mad, come along with me, simply because, even if he holds a certificate of lunacy against the other man the other man might say you've made a mistake, I'm not the person you want. Then it would be a question of swearing before a magistrate. The good old Laws of England are very strict about the freedom of the body, and the rights of the individual man to be heard in his own defence. If your lunatic were not too insane, and were to take refuge in a friend's house, and the friend were to back him, that would make things more difficult still."

"If he were to take refuge in his own house?"

"Oh, that would make the thing still more difficult, very much more so.

If, of course, he were not conducting himself in a manner detrimental to the public peace, firing guns out of windows and so forth. The laws of England are very strict about entering a man's house. Of course, were the pursuers to go before a magistrate and swear that the pursued were a dangerous lunatic, then a right of search and entry might be obtained, but on the pursuers would lie the onus of proof. Now pauper lunatics are very easily dealt with: the Relieving Officer, on the strength of a certificate of lunacy, can go to the poor man's cottage or tenement, and take him away, for, you see, the man possessing no property it is supposed that no man is interested in his internment, but once introduce the property element and there is the very devil to pay, especially in cases where the lunatic is only eccentric and does not come into court with straws in his hair, so to speak."

"I get you," said Jones. He offered cigarettes, and presently the communicative one departed, having borrowed fourpence on the strength of his professional advice.

The rest of that night was a very good imitation of a nightmare. Jones tried several different seats in succession, and managed to do a good deal of walking. Dawn found him on London Bridge, watching the birth of another perfect day, but without enthusiasm.

He was cheerful but tired. The thought that at nine o'clock or thereabouts, he would be able to place his hands on eight thousand pounds, gave him the material for his cheerfulness. He had often read of the joy of open air life, and the freedom of the hobo; but open air life in London, on looking back upon it, did not appeal to him. He had been twice moved on by policemen, and his next door neighbours, after the departure of the barometer man, were of a type that inspired neither liking nor trust.

He heard Big Ben booming six o'clock. He had three hours still before him, and he determined to take it out in walking. He would go citywards, and then come back with an appet.i.te for breakfast.

Having made this resolve, he started, pa.s.sing through the deserted streets till he reached the Bank, and then onwards till he reached the Mile End Road.