Sinister Street Volume Ii Part 94

"Dawkins," said the inspector.

"How curious!" Michael laughed.

"Yes, sir," the inspector laughed.

"Lunch in the gun room, Dawkins. You must be hungry."

"Well, sir, I could do with a snack, I daresay." He followed his namesake from the room, and outside Michael could hear them begin to chatter of the coincidence.

"But supposing I'd been in the same state of life as Meats," Michael said to himself. "What devil's web wouldn't they be trying to spin round me?"

He was seized with fury at himself for his cowardice. He had thought of nothing but his own reputation ever since Meats had been arrested. He had worried over the opinion of a police inspector; had been ashamed of the appearance of the rooms; had actually been afraid that he would be implicated in the disgraceful affair. So long as it had been easy to flatter himself with the pleasure he was giving or the good he was doing to Meats, he had kept him with money. Now when Meats had been dragged away, he was anxious to disclaim the whole acquaintanceship for fear of the criticism of a big man with a bristly mustache. The despair in Meats' last cry to him echoed round this library. He had seen society in action: not all the devils and fiends imagined by mediaeval monks were so horrible as those big men with bristly mustaches. What did they know of Meats and his life? What did they care, but that they were paid by society to remove rubbish? Justice had decreed that Meats should be arrested, and like a dead rat in the gutter he was swept up by these scavengers. What compact had he broken that men should freeze to stones and crush him? He had broken the laws of men and the laws of G.o.d; he had committed murder. And were not murders as foul being committed every moment? Murdered ambition, murdered love, murdered pity, murdered grat.i.tude, murdered faith, did none of these cry out for vengeance?

Society had seized the murderer, and it was useless to cry out. Himself was as impotent as the prisoner. Meats had sinned against the hive: this infernal hive, herd, pack, swarm, whichever word expressed what he felt to be the degradation of an interdependent existence. Mankind was become a great complication of machinery fed by gold and directed by fear.

Something was needed to destroy this gregarious organism. War and pestilence must come; but in the past these two had come often enough, and mankind was the same afterward. This ant-hill of a globe had been ravaged often enough, but the ants were all busy again carrying their mean little burdens of food hither and thither in affright for the comfort of their mean little lives.

"And I'm as bad as any of them," said Michael to himself. "I know I have obligations in Leppard Street, and I've run away from them because I'm afraid of what people will think. Of course, I always fail. I'm a coward."

He could not stay any longer at Hardingham. He must go and see about Mrs. Smith now. Society would be seizing her soon and bringing her miserable life to an end in whitewashed prison corridors. He must do something for Meats. Perhaps he would not be able to save him from death, but he must not sit here ringing bells for butlers called Dawkins to feed inspectors called Dawkins.

Stella came in with the first roses of the year.

"Aren't they beauties?"

"Yes, splendid. I'm going up to town this afternoon."

"But not for long?"

"I don't know. It depends. Do you know, Stella, it's an extraordinary thing, but ever since you've practically given up playing, I feel very much more alive. How do you account for that?"

"Well, I haven't given up playing for one thing," Stella contradicted.

"Stella do you ever feel inspired nowadays?"

"Not so much as I did," she admitted.

"I feel now as if I were on the verge of an inspiration."

"Not another Lily," she said quickly, with half a laugh.

"You've no right to sneer at me about that," he said fiercely. "You must be very careful, you know. _You'll_ become flabby, if you aren't careful, here at Hardingham."

"Oh, Michael!" she laughed. "Don't look at me as if you were a Major Prophet. I won't become flabby. I shall start composing at once."

"There you are!" he cried triumphantly. "Never say again that I can't wake you up."

"You did not wake me up."

"I did. I did. And do you know I believe I've discovered that I'm an anarchist?"

"Is that your inspiration?"

"Who knows? It may be."

"Well, don't come and be anarchical down here, because Alan is going to stand at the next election."

"What on earth good would Alan be in Parliament?" Michael asked derisively. "He's much too happy."

"Michael, why are you so horrid about Alan nowadays?"

He was penitent in a moment at the suggestion, but when he said good-bye to Stella he had a curious feeling that from henceforth he was going to be stronger than her.

On reaching London, Michael went to see Castleton at the Temple, and he found him in chambers at the top of dusty stairs in King's Beach Walk.

"Lucky to get these, wasn't I?" said Castleton. By craning out of the window, the river was visible.

"I suppose you've never had a murder case yet?" Michael asked.

"Not yet," said Castleton. "In fact, I'm going in for Chancery work. And I shall get my first brief in about five years, with luck."

Michael inquired how one went to work to retain the greatest criminal advocate of the day, and Castleton said he would have to be approached through a solicitor.

"Well, will you get hold of him for me?"

Castleton looked rather blank.

"If you can't get him, get the next best, and so on. Tell him the man I want to defend hasn't a chance, and that's why I'm particularly anxious he should get off."

They discussed details for some time, and Castleton was astonished at Michael's wish to aid Meats.

"It seems very perverse," he said.

"Perverse!" Michael echoed. "And what about your profession? That is really the most perverse factor in modern life."

"But in this case," Castleton argued, "the victim seems so utterly worthless."

"Exactly," said Michael. "But as society never interfered when he was pa.s.sively offensive, why, the moment he becomes actively offensive, should society have the right to put him out of the way? They never tried to cure him for his own good. Why should they kill him for their own?"

"You want to strike at the foundations of the legal system," said the barrister.

"Exactly," Michael agreed; and the argument came to an end because there was obviously nothing more to be said.

Castleton promises to do all he could for Meats, and also to keep Michael's name out of the business. As Michael walked down the stairs, it gave him a splendid satisfaction to think how already the law was being set in motion against the law. A blow for Inspector Dawkins. And what about the murdered girl? "She won't be helped by Meats' death,"

said Michael to himself. "Society is not considering her protection now any more than it did when she was alive." _No slops must be emptied here_: and as Michael read the ascetic command above the tap on the stairs he wondered for a moment if he were, after all, a sentimentalist.

Mrs. Cleghorne was very voluble when he reached Leppard Street.

"A nice set-out and no mistake!" she declared. "Half of the neighborhood have been peeping over my area railings as if the murder had been done in here. Mr. Cleghorne's quite hoa.r.s.e with hollering out to them to keep off. And it never rains but what it pours. There's a poor woman gone and died here now. However, a funeral's a little more lively than the police nosing round, though her not having a blessed halfpenny and owing me three weeks on the rent it certainly won't be anything better than a pauper's funeral."