Elk 04 White Face Read Online Free PDF Page A

thousands of pounds’ worth of goods left by absent-minded riders. In the police books he was marked “Reliable; honest; very excellent record.”
    You could see him and his cab on certain nights prowling along Regent Street, his long, white hair hanging over the collar of his coat, his fierce white moustache bristling from his pink, emaciated face, choosing his fares with a nice discrimination. He had no respect for any man save one. In his more than seventy-year-old arms he packed a punch that was disconcerting to the punchee.
    The doctor unfastened a door and passed through into Gallows Court. That narrow and unsavoury passage was alive with children—bare-legged, unwashed and happy. Nobody offered the doctor a friendly greeting. The frowsy men and women lounging in the doorways or at the upstairs windows favoured him with incurious glances. He was part of the bricks and mortar and mud of the place, one with the brick wall which separated his yard from this human sty. He belonged there, had a right in Gallows Court, and, that being so, might pass without notice or comment.
    The last house in the court was No. 9; smaller than the others; the windows were clean, and even the lower one, which was heavily shuttered, had a strip of chintz curtain. He knocked at the door—three short quick raps, a pause and a fourth. This signal had been agreed as between himself and old man Wicks; for Gregory had been annoyed by runaway knocks and by the appearance on his doorstep of unwelcome visitors. He knew the regular hour at which the milkman called and the baker, and could cope with them. Whosoever else knocked at the door during the daytime received no answer. Marford heard the shuffle of feet on uncarpeted stairs and the door was opened.
    “Come in, Doctor.” Gregory’s voice was loud and hearty. He had been a shouter all his life, and age had not diminished the volume of his tone. “Don’t make a row; I expect the lodger’s asleep,” he said as he closed the door with a slam.
    “He must be a very good sleeper if you don’t wake him, you noisy old man!” said Marford, with his quiet smile.
    Gregory guffawed all the way up the stairs, opened the door of his room and the doctor passed in. “How are you?”
    “Fit as a flea, except this other little trouble, and I’m not going to mention that. I’m doing fine. Doctor. Sit down. Where’s a chair? Here we are! What I owe to you, Doctor! If the people in Tidal Basin knew what you’ve done for me—”
    “Yes, yes,” said Marford good-humouredly. “Now let me have a look at you.”
    He turned the old man’s face to the light and made a careful examination.
    “You’re no better and no worse. If anything you’re a little better, I should think. I’ll test your heart.”
    “My heart!” said the other scornfully. “I’ve got the heart of a lion! There was an Irish family moved in here and the woman wanted to borrow a saucepan, and when I told her just what I thought of people who borrow saucepans, along came her husband—a new fellow, full of brag and bluster! I gave him one smack in the jaw and that was his finish!”
    “You shouldn’t do it, Gregory. It was a stupid thing to do. I heard about it from one of my other patients.”
    The old man was chuckling gleefully.
    “I needn’t have done it at all,” he said. “Any of the boys round here would have put him out if I’d said the word. I dare say the lodger would, but of course I wouldn’t have wakened him up.”
    “Is he here to-day?”
    Gregory shook his head. “The Lord knows! I never hear him come in or go out, except sometimes. I’ve never known a quieter fellow. Reformed, eh, Doctor? I’ll bet you I know who reformed him! You’d never dream”—he lowered his voice—“that he was a man who’d spent half his life in stir—”
    “You’re giving him a chance,” said Marford.
    He was going, when the old man called him back. “Doctor, I want to tell you something. I made my will to-day—not