“Dr. Parker is my companion.”
He looked me up and down suspiciously, pushing his thin lips out and sucking them in, his eyes narrowed. His skin was the color of parchment, and his clothes, like his hat, were green with age.
“But you have the advantage of us, sir,” said Pons.
“My name is Ebenezer Snawley.” Then he turned to me and stuck out an arm. “They’re Pip’s,” he said, referring to the clerical cuffs, which I saw now they were. “No need for him to wear ’em. He’s inside, and I’m out, and it would be a shameful waste to spend good money on gloves for the few times I go out in such weather.” His eyes narrowed a trifle more. “Are you a medical man?”
I assured him that I was.
“Have a look at that, Doctor,” he said, indicating a small growth on one finger.
I examined it and pronounced it the beginning of a wart.
“Ah, then it’s of no danger to my health. I thank you. As you’re not in your office, no doubt there’ll be no fee.”
“Doctor Parker is a poor man,” said Pons.
“So am I, sir. So am I,” said Snawley. “But I had to come to you,” he added in an aggrieved voice. “The police only laugh at me. I applied to them to have the nuisance stopped.”
“What is the nature of the nuisance?” asked Pons.
“Aha! you’ve not told me your fee for consultation,” said Snawley.
“I am accustomed to setting my fee in accordance with the amount of work I must do,” said Pons. “In some cases there is no fee at all.”
“No fee? No fee at all?”
“We do on occasion manifest the spirit of Christmas,” continued Pons.
“Christmas! Humbug!” protested our client.
“Do not say so,” said Pons.
“Christmas is a time for well-meaning fools to go about bestowing useless gifts on other fools,” our client went on testily.
“But you did not come to discuss the season,” said Pons gently.
“You are right, sir. I thank you for reminding me. I came because of late I have been much troubled by some fellow who marches up and down before my house bawling street songs.”
“Are they offensive songs?”
Our visitor shook his head irritably. “Any song is offensive if I do not wish to hear it.”
“Scurrilous?”
“Street songs.”
“Do you know their words?”
“Indeed, and I do, Mr. Pons. And I should. ‘Crack ’em and try ’em, before you buy ’em eight-a-penny. All new walnuts. Crack ’em and try ’em, before you buy ’em. A shilling a-hundred. All new walnuts,’ ” he said in mimicry. “And such as ‘Rope mat! Doormat! You really must buy one to save the mud and dust; think of the dirt brought from the street for the want of a mat to wipe your feet!’ Indeed I do know them. They are old London street cries.”
Pons’s eyes now fairly glowed with pleasure. “Ah, he sells walnuts and rope mats.”
“A ragbag of a fellow. Sometimes it is hats-three, four at a time on his head. Sometimes it is cress. Sometimes flowers. And ever and anon walnuts. I could not chew ’em even if I bought ’em-and there’s small likelihood of that. Catch me wasting good money like that! Not likely.”
“He has a right to the street,” observed Pons.
“But Mr. Pons, sir, he limits himself to the street along my property. My house is on the corner, set back a trifle, with a bit of land around it-I like my privacy. He goes no farther than the edge of my property on the one side, then back around the corner to the line of my property on the other. It is all done to annoy me-or for some other reason-perhaps to get into the house and lay hands on my valuables.”
“He could scarcely effect an entrance more noisily,” said Pons, reflectively. “Perhaps he is only observing the Christmas season and wishes to favor you with its compliments.”
“Humbug!” said Snawley in a loud voice, and with such a grimace that it seemed to me he could not have made it more effectively had he practiced it in front of a mirror.
“Is he young?”
“If any young fellow had a voice so cracked, I’d send him to a doctor.” He shook his head vigorously. “He can’t be less than middle-aged. No, sir. Not with a voice like that. He could sour the apples in a barrel with such a voice.”
“How often does he come?”
“Why, sir, it is just about every night. I am plagued by his voice, by his very presence, and now he has taken to adding Christmas songs to his small repertoire, it is all the more trying. But chiefly I am plagued-I will confess it-by my curiosity about the reason for this attention he bestows upon me. I sent Pip-Pip is my clerk, retired, now, like myself, with his wife dead and his children all out in the world, even the youngest, who finally recovered his health-I sent Pip, I say, out to tell him to be off, and he but laughed at him, and gave him a walnut or two for himself, and sent one along for me! The impudence of the fellow!” His chin whiskers literally trembled with his indignation.
Pons had folded his arms across his chest, clasping his elbows with his lean fingers, holding in his mirth, which danced around his mouth and in his eyes. “But,” he said, visibly controlling himself, “if you are a poor man, you can scarcely be in possession of valuables someone else might covet.”
Plainly now our client was torn between the desire to maintain the face he had put upon himself, and to lift a little of it for us to see him a trifle more clearly; for he sat in dour silence.
“Unless,” pursued Pons, “you have valuables of a more intangible nature. I suspect you are a collector.”
Our visitor started violently. “Why do you say so?”
“I submit that coat you are wearing cannot be newer than 1890, the waistcoat likewise. Your cane is gold-headed; I have not seen such a cane about since 1910. Heavy, too. I suspect it is loaded. And what you have left outside is a period piece-obviously your own, since you drove it yourself. No one who had worn your clothing steadily since it was made could present it still in such good condition.”
“You are as sharp as they say you are,” said our client grudgingly. “It’s true I’m a collector.”
“Of books,” said Pons.
“Books and such,” assented Snawley. “Though how you can tell it I don’t pretend to know.”
“The smell of ink and paper make a special kind of mustiness, Mr. Snawley. You carry it. And, I take it, you are particularly fond of Dickens.”
Snawley’s jaw dropped; his mouth hung momentarily agape. “You amaze me,” he said.
“Dr. Parker charges me with amazing him for the past year and a half, since he took up residence here,” said Pons. “It will do you no harm. It has done him none.”
“How, Mr. Pons, do you make out Dickens?”
“Those street songs you know so well are those of Dickens’s day. Since you made a point of saying you should know them, it is certainly not far wide of the mark to suggest that you are a Dickensian.”
A wintry smile briefly touched our client’s lips, but he suppressed it quickly. “I see I have made no mistake in coming to you. It is really the obligation of the police, but they are forever about getting out of their obligations. It is the way of the new world, I fear. But I had heard of you, and I turned it over in mind several days, and I concluded that it would be less dear to call on you than to ask you to call on me. So I came forthwith.”
“Nevertheless,” said Pons, his eyes twinkling, “I fancy we shall have to have a look at that fellow who, you say, is making such a nuisance of himself.”
Our client made a rapid calculation, as was evident by the concentration in his face. “Then you had better come back with me now,” he said, “for if you come at any other time, the price of the conveyance will surely be added to the bill.”
“That is surely agreeable with me,” said Pons. “If it will do for Parker.”