The Man Who Bought London | Page 2

for he had no wish to meet his quarry face to face.
The Embankment was deserted save for the few poor souls who gravitated hither in the hope of meeting a charitable miracle.
King Kerry stopped now and again to speak to one or another of the wrecks who ambled along the broad pavement, and his hand went from pocket to outstretched palm not once but many times.
There were some who, slinking towards him with open palms, whined their needs, but he was too experienced a man not to be able to distinguish between misfortune and mendicancy.
One such a beggar approached him near Cleopatra's Needle, but as King Kerry passed on without taking any notice of him, the outcast commenced to hurl a curse at him. Suddenly King Kerry turned back and the beggar shrunk towards the parapet as if expecting a blow, but the pedestrian was not hostile.
He stood straining his eyes in the darkness, which was made the more baffling because of the gleams of distant lights, and his cigar glowed red and grey.
"What did you say?" he asked gently. "I'm afraid I was thinking of something else when you spoke."
"Give a poor feller creature a copper to get a night's lodgin'!" whined the man. He was a bundle of rags, and his long hair and bushy beard were repulsive even in the light which the remote electric standards afforded.
"Give a copper to get a night's lodging?" repeated the other.
"An' the price of a dri--of a cup of coffee," added the man eagerly.
"Why?"
The question staggered the night wanderer, and he was silent for a moment.
"Why should I give you the price of a night's lodging--or give you anything at all which you have not earned?"
There was nothing harsh in the tone: it was gentle and friendly, and the man took heart.
"Because you've got it an' I ain't," he said--to him a convincing and unanswerable argument.
The gentleman shook his head.
"That is no reason," he said. "How long is it since you did any work?"
The man hesitated. There was authority in the voice, despite its mildness. He might be a "split"--and it would not pay to lie to one of those busy fellows.
"I've worked orf an' on," he said sullenly. "I can't get work what with foreyners takin' the bread out of me mouth an' undersellin' us."
It was an old argument, and one which he had found profitable, particularly with a certain type of philanthropist.
"Have you ever done a week's work in your life, my brother?" asked the gentleman.
One of the "my brother" sort, thought the tramp, and drew from his armoury the necessary weapons for the attack.
"Well, sir," he said meekly, "the Lord has laid a grievous affliction on me head--"
The gentleman shook his head again.
"There is no use in the world for you, my friend," he said softly. "You occupy the place and breathe the air which might be better employed. You're the sort that absorbs everything and grows nothing: you live on the charity of working people who cannot afford to give you the hard-earned pence your misery evokes."
"Are you goin' to allow a feller creature to walk about all night?" demanded the tramp aggressively.
"I have nothing to do with it, my brother," said the other coolly. "If I had the ordering of things I should not let you walk about."
"Very well, then," began the beggar, a little appeased.
"I should treat you in exactly the same way as I should treat any other stray dog--I should put you out of the world."
And he turned to walk on.
The tramp hesitated for a moment, black rage in his heart. The Embankment was deserted--there was no sign of a policeman.
"Here!" he said roughly, and gripped King Kerry's arm.
Only for a second, then a hand like teak struck him under the jaw, and he went blundering into the roadway, striving to regain his balance.
Dazed and shaken he stood on the kerb watching the leisurely disappearance of his assailant. Perhaps if he followed and made a row the stranger would give him a shilling to avoid the publicity of the courts; but then the tramp was as anxious as the stranger, probably more anxious, to avoid publicity. To do him justice, he had not allowed his beard to grow or refrained from cutting his hair because he wished to resemble an anchorite, there was another reason. He would like to get even with the man who had struck him--but there were risks.
"You made a mistake, didn't you?"
The beggar turned with a snarl.
At his elbow stood Hermann Zeberlieff, King Kerry's shadower, who had been an interested spectator of all that had happened.
"You mind your own business!" growled the beggar, and would have slouched on his way.
"Wait a moment!" The young man stepped in his path. His hand went into his pocket, and when he withdrew