The Prophet of Berkeley Square. Robert Hichens
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is eleven hundred Z, if you please?” he asked the Shaftesbury Avenue policeman.
“Jellybrand’s sir? On the right between the cream shop and the engine warehouse, just opposite the place where they sell parrots, after that there patent medicine depot.”
The Prophet bowed, thinking of the blessings of knowledge. In a moment he stood before the library and glanced at its dirty window. He saw several letters lying against the glass. One was addressed to “Miss Minerva Partridge.” He stepped in, wondering what she was like.
Jellybrand’s Library was a small, square room containing a letter rack, a newspaper stand, a bookcase and a counter. It was fitted up with letters, papers, books, and a big boy with a bulging head. The last-named stood behind the counter, stroking his irregular profile with one hand, and throwing a box of J nibs into the air and catching it with the other. Upon the Prophet’s entrance this youth obligingly dropped the nibs accidentally upon the floor, and arranged his sharp and anemic face in an expression of consumptive inquiry. The Prophet approached the counter softly, and allowed the sable with which his coat was trimmed to rest against it.
“Did a boy messenger call here a few days ago with a note for Mr. Malkiel?” he asked.
The young librarian assumed an attitude of vital suspicion and the expression of a lynx.
“For Malkiel the Second, sir?” he replied in a piercing soprano voice.
“Yes,” said the Prophet. “A boy messenger with four medals. There was a crest on the envelope—an elephant rampant surrounded by a swarm of bees.”
A dogged look of combined terror and resolution overspread the young librarian’s countenance.
“There’s been no elephant and no swarm of bees in here,” he said with trembling curtness.
“You are sure you would have remembered the circumstance if there had been?”
“Rather! What do you think? We don’t allow things of them sort in here, I can tell you.”
The Prophet drew out half a sovereign, upon which a ray of sunshine immediately fell as if in benediction.
“Does Mr. Malkiel—?
“Malkiel the Second,” interrupted the young librarian, whose pinkish eyes winked at the illumination of the gold.
“Malkiel the Second ever call here—in person?”
“In person?” said the young librarian, very suspiciously.
“Exactly.”
“I don’t know about in person. He calls here.”
“Ah,” said the Prophet, recognising in the youth a literary sense that instinctively rejected superfluity. “He does call. May I ask when?”
“When he chooses,” said the young librarian, and he winked again.
“Does he choose often?”
“He’s got his day, like Miss Partridge and lots of ’em.”
“I see. Is his day—by chance—a Thursday?”
It was a Thursday afternoon.
“I don’t know about by chance,” rejoined the young librarian, his literary sense again coming into play. “But it’s—”
At this moment the library door opened, and a tall, thin, middle-aged man walked in sideways with his feet very much turned out to right and left of him.
“Any letters, Frederick Smith?” he said in a hollow voice, on reaching the counter.
“Two, Mr. Sagittarius, I believe,” replied the young librarian, moving with respectful celerity towards the letter rack.
The Prophet started and looked eagerly at the newcomer. His eyes rested upon an individual whose face was comic in outline with a serious expression, and whose form suggested tragic farce dressed to represent commonplace, as seen at Margate and elsewhere. A top hat, a spotted collar, a pink shirt, a white satin tie, a chocolate brown frock coat, brown trousers and boots, and a black overcoat thrown open from top to bottom—these appurtenances, clerkly in their adherence to a certain convention, could not wholly disguise the emotional expression that seems sometimes to lurk in shape. The lines of Mr. Sagittarius defied their clothing. His shoulders gave the lie to the chocolate brown frock coat. His legs breathed defiance to the trousers that sheathed them. One could, in fancy, see the former shrugged in all the abandonment of third-act despair, behold the latter darting wildly for the cover afforded by a copper, a cupboard, or any other friendly refuge of those poor victims of ludicrous and terrific circumstance who are so sorely smitten and afflicted upon the funny stage.
Mr. Sagittarius, in fine, seemed a man dressed in a mask that was unable to deceive. His lean face was almost absurd in its irregularity, its high cheek-bones and deep depressions, its sharp nose, extensive mouth and nervous chin. But the pale blue eyes that were its soul shone plaintively beneath their shaggy, blonde eyebrows, and even an application of pomade almost hysterically lavish could not entirely conceal the curling gloom of the heavy, matted hair.
“Yes, two, Mr. Sagittarius,” cried the young librarian, approaching from the rack.
The gentleman held out a hand covered with a yellow dogskin glove.
“Thank you, Frederick Smith,” he said.
And he turned to leave the building. But the Prophet intercepted him.
“Excuse me,” said the Prophet. “I beg your pardon, but—but—” he looked at the young librarian and accidentally let the half sovereign fall on the counter. It gave the true ring. “I believe I heard you mention—let drop the name Mr. Sagittarius.”
“I don’t know about let drop,” began the youth in his usual revising manner. “But I—”
At this point the gentleman in question began to move rather hastily sideways towards the door. The Prophet followed him up and got before him near the letter rack, while the young librarian retrieved the half sovereign and bit it with his teeth.
“I really beg your pardon,” said the Prophet, while Mr. Sagittarius stood still in the violent attitude of one determined to dodge so long as he has breath. “I am not at all in the habit of”—Mr. Sagittarius dodged—“of intruding upon strangers—” Mr. Sagittarius dodged again with such extraordinary abruptness and determination that he nearly caused the young librarian to swallow the Prophet’s golden bribe. “I see you don’t believe me,” the Prophet continued, flushing pink but still holding his ground, and indeed trying to turn Mr. Sagittarius’s flank by a strategic movement of almost military precision. “I see that plainly, but—” Mr. Sagittarius ducked to the left, endeavouring to cover the manoeuvre by an almost simultaneous and extremely passionate feint towards the Prophet’s centre, which was immediately withdrawn in good order—“but your remark—arkable name, Saag—itt-ittarius, suggested to me that you are rea-eally the man I seek.”
He had now got Mr. Sagittarius into a very awkward bit of country between the letter P. in the rack, under which reposed Miss Partridge’s correspondence, and the newspaper bureau, with the counter immediately on his rear, and taking advantage of this circumstance, he continued rapidly:
“May I ask whether you recently received a letter—one moment!—envelope—crest—I only want to know if you have received—only—an elephant rampant—swarm of—of bees—”
“I have never received a rampant elephant and a swarm of bees,” cried Mr. Sagittarius with every symptom of unbridled terror. “Help, Frederick Smith!”
“Right you are, Malkiel the Second!” cried the young librarian, hastily pocketing the half sovereign and making a feverish lunge at nothing in particular over the counter. “Right you are!”
“Malkiel the Second!” ejaculated the Prophet. “Then you