Manalive · Part II · Chapter 2 2 (2/5)

“These persons, if not silent, were at least applausive during the speech of Mr. Percy. He descended to their level with witticisms about rent and a reserve of labour. Confiscation, expropriation, arbitration, and such words with which I cannot soil my lips, recurred constantly. Some hours afterward the storm broke. I had been addressing the meeting for some time, pointing out the lack of thrift in the working classes, their insufficient attendance at evening service, their neglect of the Harvest Festival, and of many other things that might materially help them to improve their lot. It was, I think, about this time that an extraordinary interruption occurred. An enormous, powerful man, partly concealed with white plaster, arose in the middle of the hall, and offered (in a loud, roaring voice, like a bull’s) some observations which seemed to be in a foreign language. Mr. Raymond Percy, my colleague, descended to his level by entering into a duel of repartee, in which he appeared to be the victor. The meeting began to behave more respectfully for a little; yet before I had said twelve sentences more the rush was made for the platform. The enormous plasterer, in particular, plunged towards us, shaking the earth like an elephant; and I really do not know what would have happened if a man equally large, but not quite so ill-dressed, had not jumped up also and held him away. This other big man shouted a sort of speech to the mob as he was shoving them back. I don’t know what he said, but, what with shouting and shoving and such horseplay, he got us out at a back door, while the wretched people went roaring down another passage.

“Then follows the truly extraordinary part of my story. When he had got us outside, in a mean backyard of blistered grass leading into a lane with a very lonely-looking lamppost, this giant addressed me as follows: ‘You’re well out of that, sir; now you’d better come along with me. I want you to help me in an act of social justice, such as we’ve all been talking about. Come along!’ And turning his big back abruptly, he led us down the lean old lane with the one lean old lamppost, we scarcely knowing what to do but to follow him. He had certainly helped us in a most difficult situation, and, as a gentleman, I could not treat such a benefactor with suspicion without grave grounds. Such also was the view of my Socialistic colleague, who (with all his dreadful talk of arbitration) is a gentleman also. In fact, he comes of the Staffordshire Percys, a branch of the old house and has the black hair and pale, clear-cut face of the whole family. I cannot but refer it to vanity that he should heighten his personal advantages with black velvet or a red cross of considerable ostentation, and certainly⁠—but I digress.

“A fog was coming up the street, and that last lost lamppost faded behind us in a way that certainly depressed the mind. The large man in front of us looked larger and larger in the haze. He did not turn round, but he said with his huge back to us, ‘All that talking’s no good; we want a little practical Socialism.’

“ ‘I quite agree,’ said Percy; ‘but I always like to understand things in theory before I put them into practice.’

“ ‘Oh, you just leave that to me,’ said the practical Socialist, or whatever he was, with the most terrifying vagueness. ‘I have a way with me. I’m a Permeator.’

“I could not imagine what he meant, but my companion laughed, so I was sufficiently reassured to continue the unaccountable journey for the present. It led us through most singular ways; out of the lane, where we were already rather cramped, into a paved passage, at the end of which we passed through a wooden gate left open. We then found ourselves, in the increasing darkness and vapour, crossing what appeared to be a beaten path across a kitchen garden. I called out to the enormous person going on in front, but he answered obscurely that it was a shortcut.

“I was just repeating my very natural doubt to my clerical companion when I was brought up against a short ladder, apparently leading to a higher level of road. My thoughtless colleague ran up it so quickly that I could not do otherwise than follow as best I could. The path on which I then planted my feet was quite unprecedentedly narrow. I had never had to walk along a thoroughfare so exiguous. Along one side of it grew what, in the dark and density of air, I first took to be some short, strong thicket of shrubs. Then I saw that they were not short shrubs; they were the tops of tall trees. I, an English gentleman and clergyman of the Church of England⁠—I was walking along the top of a garden wall like a tom cat.

“I am glad to say that I stopped within my first five steps, and let loose my just reprobation, balancing myself as best I could all the time.

“ ‘It’s a right-of-way,’ declared my indefensible informant. ‘It’s closed to traffic once in a hundred years.’

“ ‘Mr. Percy, Mr. Percy!’ I called out; ‘you are not going on with this blackguard?’

“ ‘Why, I think so,’ answered my unhappy colleague flippantly. ‘I think you and I are bigger blackguards than he is, whatever he is.’

“ ‘I am a burglar,’ explained the big creature quite calmly. ‘I am a member of the Fabian Society. I take back the wealth stolen by the capitalist, not by sweeping civil war and revolution, but by reform fitted to the special occasion⁠—here a little and there a little. Do you see that fifth house along the terrace with the flat roof? I’m permeating that one tonight.’

“ ‘Whether this is a crime or a joke,’ I cried, ‘I desire to be quit of it.’

“ ‘The ladder is just behind you,’ answered the creature with horrible courtesy; ‘and, before you go, do let me give you my card.’

“If I had had the presence of mind to show any proper spirit I should have flung it away, though any adequate gesture of the kind would have gravely affected my equilibrium upon the wall. As it was, in the wildness of the moment, I put it in my waistcoat pocket, and, picking my way back by wall and ladder, landed in the respectable streets once more. Not before, however, I had seen with my own eyes the two awful and lamentable facts⁠—that the burglar was climbing up a slanting roof towards the chimneys, and that Raymond Percy (a priest of God and, what was worse, a gentleman) was crawling up after him. I have never seen either of them since that day.

“In consequence of this soul-searching experience I severed my connection with the wild set. I am far from saying that every member of the Christian Social Union must necessarily be a burglar. I have no right to bring any such charge. But it gave me a hint of what such courses may lead to in many cases; and I saw them no more.

“I have only to add that the photograph you enclose, taken by a Mr. Inglewood, is undoubtedly that of the burglar in question. When I got home that night I looked at his card, and he was inscribed there under the name of Innocent Smith.

Moon merely went through the form of glancing at the paper. He knew that the prosecutors could not have invented so heavy a document; that Moses Gould (for one) could no more write like a canon than he could read like one. After handing it back he rose to open the defence on the burglary charge.

“We wish,” said Michael, “to give all reasonable facilities to the prosecution; especially as it will save the time of the whole court. The latter object I shall once again pursue by passing over all those points of theory which are so dear to Dr. Pym. I know how they are made. Perjury is a variety of aphasia, leading a man to say one thing instead of another. Forgery is a kind of writer’s cramp, forcing a man to write his uncle’s name instead of his own. Piracy on the high seas is probably a form of seasickness. But it is unnecessary for us to inquire into the causes of a fact which we deny. Innocent Smith never did commit burglary at all.

“I should like to claim the power permitted by our previous arrangement, and ask the prosecution two or three questions.”

Dr. Cyrus Pym closed his eyes to indicate a courteous assent.

“In the first place,” continued Moon, “have you the date of Canon Hawkins’s last glimpse of Smith and Percy climbing up the walls and roofs?”

“Ho, yus!” called out Gould smartly. “November thirteen, eighteen ninety-one.”

“Have you,” continued Moon, “identified the houses in Hoxton up which they climbed?”

“Must have been Ladysmith Terrace out of the highroad,” answered Gould with the same clockwork readiness.

“Well,” said Michael, cocking an eyebrow at him, “was there any burglary in that terrace that night? Surely you could find that out.”

“There may well have been,” said the doctor primly, after a pause, “an unsuccessful one that led to no legalities.”

“Another question,” proceeded Michael. “Canon Hawkins, in his blood-and-thunder boyish way, left off at the exciting moment. Why don’t you produce the evidence of the other clergyman, who actually followed the burglar and presumably was present at the crime?”

Dr. Pym rose and planted the points of his fingers on the table, as he did when he was specially confident of the clearness of his reply.

“We have entirely failed,” he said, “to track the other clergyman, who seems to have melted into the ether after Canon Hawkins had seen him as‑cending the gutters and the leads. I am fully aware that this may strike many as sing’lar; yet, upon reflection, I think it will appear pretty natural to a bright thinker. This Mr. Raymond Percy is admittedly, by the canon’s evidence, a minister of eccentric ways. His con‑nection with England’s proudest and fairest does not seemingly prevent a taste for the society of the real low-down. On the other hand, the prisoner Smith is, by general agreement, a man of irr’sistible fascination. I entertain no doubt that Smith led the Revered Percy into the crime and forced him to hide his head in the real crim’nal class. That would fully account for his nonappearance, and the failure of all attempts to trace him.”

“It is impossible, then, to trace him?” asked Moon.

“Impossible,” repeated the specialist, shutting his eyes.

“You are sure it’s impossible?”

“Oh dry up, Michael,” cried Gould, irritably. “We’d ’ave found ’im if we could, for you bet ’e saw the burglary. Don’t you start looking for ’im. Look for your own ’ead in the dustbin. You’ll find that⁠—after a bit,” and his voice died away in grumbling.

“Arthur,” directed Michael Moon, sitting down, “kindly read Mr. Raymond Percy’s letter to the court.”

“Wishing, as Mr. Moon has said, to shorten the proceedings as much as possible,” began Inglewood, “I will not read the first part of the letter sent to us. It is only fair to the prosecution to admit the account given by the second clergyman fully ratifies, as far as facts are concerned, that given by the first clergyman. We concede, then, the canon’s story so far as it goes. This must necessarily be valuable to the prosecutor and also convenient to the court. I begin Mr. Percy’s letter, then, at the point when all three men were standing on the garden wall:⁠—