bearded man shuffled to a corner and brought out a bottle and three glasses. He poured out generously into theirs, slightly into his, and they all three—the two Englishmen and the Crusader—drank together.
Mr. Montague had seen the inside of a prison once—it was thirty years before, and for a few weeks only. He was new to this country then. Mr. Ferguson knew that Mr. Montague cherished no passionate desire to see those sights again, and the big policeman went out into the morning sun and walked off with his subordinate down the street. They walked in those absurd twin suits of dittoes and regulation boots, which, when the Police go out in civilian disguise, shriek "The Force! The Force!" to all the poor before whom the vision passes.
****
Mr. Montague from within his little room peered through the curtains.
His face was no longer the same. It was the face of a man younger and yet more evil.
He slipped off his greasy lizard-skin of a dressing-gown as though he were preparing deliberately for some evil deed. He tore and struggled himself out of that maleficent green, fur-lined cloth; he spat on it; then he rubbed clean the place where he had spat, and cursed it lengthily and with a nasty voice in a language that is not ours. Now and then his talons of hands made as though to tear the fabric. He snarled at it and clawed at it twice—but he would not damage it; it would fetch twenty pounds.
