CHAPTER II

IN WHICH THE FOUR GENTLEMEN ABOVE US OBTAIN THEIR CHARACTERS AND PRIMROSE TERRACE IS RUDELY DISTURBED

One of the first questions which I put to Mrs. Wiles referred very naturally to the other residents of the house. The twins had severally and collectively assured us that they offered hospitality to none but gentlemen, and that four of the nicest gentlemen living were at present under their roof; but the twins have no discrimination. To them a gentleman is a gentleman--that is to say, a trousered creature who lives on bacon, makes (compared with a lady) no trouble at all, and pays his rent. Mrs. Wiles has a more observant eye, and to her, therefore, I resorted for the finer shades. The house, it appears, has three floors and a basement. The first floor is ours; above are four rooms, two of which, at the back, belong to Mr. Lacey and the two in front to Mr. Furley; above these is the top floor with four more rooms, two of which in front belong to Mr. Carstairs and two at the back to Mr. Spanton.

Of all these, Mr. Carstairs most perplexes Mrs. Wiles, and Mr. Lacey most pleases her. Mr. Carstairs, whom she refers to as "a nermit," I occasionally see on the doorstep--a tall, stooping man, once handsome, with a face as profoundly sad as any of Mr. Wiles's charges. "He does nothing," says Mrs. Wiles. "Retired, I suppose. And no one ever comes to see him. But he's always polite and considerate."

What the gentleman has retired from, I gather, has been this many a day and night the question which has occupied the curiosity of the basement; since what is a basement without interest in floors? That there is a mystery is certain, for has he not those two damning provocations to suspicion--a profound reticence and an inner cupboard of which he keeps the key?

From what Naomi tells me of what Mrs. Wiles tells her, the desire of the basement and its particular friend, Miss Cole (who drops in pretty regularly for a cup of tea), to find the key of this cupboard left by accident in the lock amounts to a passion. If they only knew it, they are foolish; for compared with a closed cupboard, all the open cupboards in the world are negligible. Speculation is as much superior to certainty as anticipation to fruition.

Miss Cole, who is one of London's spinster _rentiers_, with so little life of her own that other people's lives take the first place in her thoughts, and enough of an income to make her envied by her carefully chosen friends--chosen, as is too often our way, because they are humbler and capable of envy--darkly hints at crime itself, her simple line of reasoning being that no honest person has secrets.

But Mrs. Wiles has no patience with such suggestions. "A secret he may have," she says, "but there's no harm in it, I'll be bound. But that Miss Cole always thinks the worst."

"Of course she does, poor woman," I said. "How would she get on if she didn't?" and was promptly rebuked by Naomi for my cynicism.

But Mrs. Wiles, who is an old campaigner, only laughed. "I believe you're right, sir," she said. "We're a funny lot, aren't we?"

And there, perhaps, is as true an epitaph as human nature could get.

Mr. Spanton, who has the next room to Mr. Carstairs, is a young gentleman who calls himself a Socialist. "But do you think," Mrs. Wiles asks earnestly, "that Socialists ought to have silk pyjamas? And his toilet requisites: like a lady's! But quite civil and pleasant spoken, although rather too particular about his things, and sharp with you if you dust the pictures and leave them crooked, as who that is yuman can help doing?"

The Misses Packer evidently have a very soft place in their hearts for Mr. Spanton. "Such a fastidious gentleman, and of the best family. You can tell that by the places where he gets his clothes. All his hosiery from Bond Street itself, and Miss Cole, who is often in the West End of an afternoon, tells us that she has seen the shop, and the Royal arms are over it. How such a gentleman can talk about the country as he does, and take such an interest in the poor, is a marvel; but Miss Cole, who has a friend in the household at Buckingham Palace and hears all kinds of things, says that Socialism is quite a hobby with some of the aristocrats now. And look at Lady Warwick! Such a beautiful place as she has--Warwick Castle, where we went once with our dear father in a char-à-banc from Birmingham, when we were visiting his sister there. And Guy's Cliff, too, you know. And another day we were at Stratford-on-Avon and saw Miss Corelli's house. Such lovely window-boxes; and there, to think that Lady Warwick should be a Socialist!"

"Mr. Furley, in the first floor front, has a funny business," says Mrs. Wiles. "You'd never guess what it is. I gave Wiles three guesses and he didn't get near it--at least not nearer than conducting a matrimonial agency. He's a cinema gentleman. He makes picture plays for the theatres. Many's the ticket he's given Wiles and me to see his pieces free in the Tottenham Court Road. I love the cinema plays, especially the sad ones, but Wiles is all for the comics. It's funny we should have a cinema gentleman here now, isn't it, because before he came his rooms were occupied by a gentleman who wrote a real play--I mean a play for a real theatre. He gave us tickets too. Isn't that a coincidence--two gentlemen running who were able and willing to give tickets? I often tell people of it and laugh. It wasn't a bad play, either," Mrs. Wiles continued, "although there was rather too much talk in it and it ended unhappily. At any rate it didn't end with wedding bells, as I hold plays should."

When, however, I pointed out to her that life rarely ended there, but in a manner of speaking only began there--her own life, for example--she was forced to confess I was right.

"I never thought of that before," she said, but quickly added, with admirable sagacity, "Still, that's life, and plays are plays; and they've nothing whatever to do with each other, have they?

"But the nicest gentleman here," she went on, "is Mr. Lacey. Always full of his jokes, and so kind. Mr. Furley is kind too, but he doesn't think. Mr. Lacey's kindness is special to yourself, if you know what I mean. And you should see his rooms--they're just like a museum, and if I dare to lift so much as a piece of crumpled-up paper he's all over me. The things he calls me, you'd be astonished; but so different from Mr. Spanton. Mr. Spanton cuts, but Mr. Lacey says them in such a way that I only laugh; and yet if a stranger that didn't know his ways were to hear, they'd think it awful. The language! In a Court of Law they'd nearly hang him for it. But there, there's few things we say or do, I often think, as wouldn't get the rope round our necks in a Court of Law if the right kind of barrister gentleman asked the questions. It makes me shiver reading the cross-examinations."

How long she would have continued, I cannot say, had she not been interrupted by the sound of voices in the street, which proceeded from a comedy storm in which the part of Boreas was played by her hero, the first-floor-back. For Mr. Lacey, although normally genial and out for fun, has in reserve for injustice a hurricane temper which he keeps in some cave of the winds within his brain. It was this that we now witnessed in action from our open window. An organist, who was English and who had but one leg, had been playing for a few minutes to a delighted audience of children. The tune was "Every nice girl loves a sailor," which is, I believe, old, but as sound in melody as the sentiment which it conveys is sound in fact. Then suddenly a policeman had arrived and waved the musician to a less select neighbourhood. Lacey, who appears to have been watching from the door step, was in the theatre of war in a moment. From our private box we could hear everything.

"Why do you send this man away?" Lacey had evidently asked.

The policeman said that he had been requested by residents not to allow street music thereabouts.

"When?" Mr. Lacey inquired.

"Oh, at different times."

"Not this morning?"

"No."

"Very well, then, give the man his chance."

"It couldn't be done," said the policeman.

"It shall be done," said Lacey. "If anyone is to be arrested let it be me," and he told the organ-grinder to continue.

At this moment a resident came out of the opposite house, and, ignoring Lacey entirely, requested the constable to move the music on.

This was meat and drink to Lacey. He turned his back on the organ and the officer and settled down to action with the householder.

Why, might he ask, was the music to be moved on?

Because the householder objected to it.

Was anyone in the house ill?

No.

And what was the householder's objections?

Such things were a nuisance and should not be permitted.

Had the householder noticed that the man had but one leg?

He had: but that was the man's affair. It had nothing to do with the case. He might, on the contrary, be a centipede for all the householder cared. The case merely was that Primrose Terrace was a quiet part, with rents accordingly, and one expected with reason to be exempt from organs.

"Very well," said Lacey. "Then understand that I too reside in Primrose Terrace and I like organs. If a sufficient number of unimaginative blockheads like yourself, who live here, decide against organs you can have a notice prohibiting them put up at the end of the street, like the other self-protective snobs all over London. But until you do, the organs shall come here, I promise you that. And you, constable," he said, turning to the policeman, "understand that I, a resident in Primrose Terrace, wish to hear street music."

"But I can't take orders from private persons," said the policeman.

"Good," said Mr. Lacey. "That's just what I wanted you to say. I shall now make it my business to see your inspector and inform him that you take orders from private persons for harrying the poor, but refuse them for encouraging the poor. Then we shall see where we are."

And, so saying, he handed the organ-grinder a shilling and walked off to the police station.

That is Lacey. Right or wrong, that is Lacey. But, as a matter of fact, fundamentally he is always right--although his idea of Tightness and Society's idea do not agree.

I need hardly say that the result of Lacey's visit to the police station was the speedy erection of a notice-board forbidding street music; for he is rarely successful in his crusades. But the crusade is the thing: not the result of it.