The Six Mean Men

by Tom Gallon

By TOM GALLON

THE tall, thin man with the pinched face was conspicuous by reason of the fact that he wore no overcoat, and the icy blast that came, with a sort of bitter rage, round the corners of streets that Christmas evening seemed to demand that all men should wear overcoats.

Perhaps the fact that the tall, thin man shivered a little as he moved undecidedly from one point to the other in the narrow street had induced the policeman on duty at the corner to move slowly down to the man once, and to ask him, with a civility that was really not too civil, if he was waiting for anyone. The tall, thin man had looked the constable up and down in a fashion that was half insolent, and had answered in a voice that was quite refined, if a little husky, that of course he was. And the constable, only half satisfied, but rather nonplussed, had gone on his way again.

The tall, thin man was desperate. There was no particular reason for him to remain in that street; it was quite as hopeless a street as every other street in London so far as he was concerned. He was on the outside of things, and no single door in all the great city would open by so much as an inch of space to let him squeeze through. And the man was very hungry and very cold and absolutely hopeless. He knew perfectly well that in a minute or two, solely on account of a suspicious police constable, he would have to move away again, and start off on that endless march of the streets that might bring something, but would most probably bring just nothing at all. For the moment, however, the constable was out of the way, and the tall, thin man could stand still and look at the lighted windows of the houses, and forget even to wonder what was going to happen to him.

A man suddenly came round the corner of the street, and moved with jerky, rapid strides towards a certain door. With a quick glance in the direction of the spot from which the constable had come, the tall, thin man moved across the road, with the deliberate intention of interviewing a prosperous citizen on what was probably his own doorstep. Half across the road he stopped, for the prosperous citizen had swung away from what was presumably his own doorstep, and was making off towards the end of the street again. The movement brought him in closer proximity to the other man, and so they met practically face to face.

"I beg your pardon, sir," said the tall, thin man, with no possible suggestion in his voice of the whine of the ordinary beggar, "but I am really greatly in need of assistance. For the matter of that, I am starving for the want of food. That is a simple statement, and a true one."

The beggar was quite prepared to be swept aside. He had tried the sorry game on two other occasions that day, and had met with that fate. In this case, however, the procedure was different. The man he had accosted took a step towards him and seemed to blink at him through his glasses; he pushed back his hat from his forehead and studied the other man more closely.

"You speak like a gentleman," he blurted out.

"We can set that aside," answered the other, with an attempt at light-heartedness. "What a man may have been does not matter; it is rather what a man is at the moment."

"Quite so, quite so," answered the other. "And, when I come to look at you, it seems obvious that yours is a case of very real hunger—eh? No nonsense about that—eh?"

"It is a simple fact," answered the other quietly.

The man he had accosted seemed to think over that point for an exasperatingly long time; the man who had accosted him had an uneasy remembrance of the constable, who might turn the corner at any moment.

"And I suppose that, when a man is in your condition, he will do practically anything to relieve what one might call the immediate pangs—eh?" Thus the man in the spectacles, looking searchingly into the eyes of the other.

"My dear sir, I would do anything short of actual murder, I think," answered the other.

The man with the spectacles made a sudden quick movement—almost as though he danced quickly on his feet—and indicated with a wave of his hand the doorway he had so recently left. "Then, in that case, sir," he answered, "perhaps you will be so good as to come with me."

He was gone across the road before the other could even thank him. He stood for a moment in the doorway of the house again, and seemed to search for the keyhole. A moment later the door opened, and he stood there, beckoning sharply with his hand. After a mere moment of hesitation, the tall, thin man crossed the road and stepped after him into a lighted hall. The door was closed and he faced his host.

That host was a man about as tall as himself, and certainly quite as thin. In entering the hall he had slipped from his shoulders a heavy caped overcoat, disclosing the fact that he was in evening-dress. He took from his head a soft black wideawake hat and hung it up with the overcoat; then he stood looking at his visitor with pursed lips and in that exasperating silence he had employed before at the beginning of the interview in the road. Suddenly he turned, with a gesture that compelled silence, and opened a door at the end of the hall and signed to the vagrant to go in. He followed himself and closed the door.

"I should think biscuits would do, to go on with, and perhaps whisky," he said, in a voice that was as jerky as his walk. "Something more substantial shall follow."

He stooped and unlocked a sideboard and took out a jar of biscuits. With a little nervous clatter he set a decanter and glasses on a centre table. He stood back politely and waved a hand to indicate that the other man should help himself.

"You are most kind, sir," said the famished man, with a curious little catch in his voice. "Something more than kind, sir."

He stepped across to the table and poured out some of the spirit into a glass; he took a biscuit from the jar and began to munch it. As he drank the whisky, some colour seemed to come into his pinched face; some new emotion made him choke over his drink a little. Mastering that, he turned, with the glass in his hand, towards his host, with the beginnings of a speech of thanks upon his lips.

"It isn't every man that would help a poor devil in distress——"

The speech died upon his lips, and he made a slow movement to set down the glass upon the table beside him. For that other tall, thin man, looking at him steadily through his glasses, had a revolver pointed directly at him, and had, moreover, his back planted against the door.

"Now, don't make a fuss, and don't make a noise," said the man with the revolver. "Perhaps, in a sense, I am as desperate as you are, and I have the advantage of being armed. Therefore keep quite still and listen to what I have to say."

His voice was so very shaky, and the weapon he held wobbled about so curiously in his nervous fingers, that the vagrant gave a queer laugh as he looked at him. Perhaps the whisky had given him courage; certain it is that he stepped quickly across the room and took the revolver from the nerveless hand of his host.

"Why, man, what the devil do you think you're going to get out of me?" he demanded, with a laugh that had something of bitterness in it. He tossed the revolver on to the table and coolly took up his glass again. "Now say what you have to say, without any melodrama in it. It might be well, by the way, if you took a little of this stuff, to put some colour into your face."

He poured some of the whisky into a glass, and stepped across the room and held it out to the other man. That man, after looking at him doubtfully through his spectacles for a moment or two, and after looking stupidly at the glass, took the glass and gulped down its contents. It was evidently something to which he was not accustomed. He coughed and blinked his eyelids and slapped his chest before handing back the glass.

"I assure you that I had no intention of frightening you," he said politely.

"You didn't," answered the other, with a short laugh. "But as you seem somewhat unused to firearms, I thought you might hurt yourself. Will you explain what the particular game is?"

"If you will be so kind as to sit down," was the reply. "We can then discuss the matter in all its details. You will find that chair a comfortable one; there is a box of cigars to your hand, and I can strongly recommend them. It is early yet"—he glanced at a heavy gold watch he drew from his pocket—"and I have no doubt that it will not take you long to get ready. I count myself particularly fortunate in having lighted upon a gentleman"—he jerked a little bow in the direction of the vagrant—"and a very cool gentleman, too, at that." He jerked another bow and sank into a chair and adjusted his glasses.

The vagrant took a long look at him. Any suspicion that had been in his mind that his singular host was mad faded away while he took that scrutiny; the eyes behind the glasses were clear and steady and eminently sane. The only thing that could be said was that the owner of the eyes was apparently in a very nervous and worried condition.

"Let us begin, my dear sir, with an exchange of names," said the host. "My name is Andrew Wrench, and this is my house. One cannot live in a house like this without a certain considerable amount of means; therefore you may take it that I am not in any way in an impoverished condition."

"I presume that it is necessary that I should give you my name," said the other, with a little troubled look on his face. "I am not particularly proud of it; a man is never proud of anything he has dragged in the dust. My name is Luke Hardwick, and you may take it that I am certainly in a very impoverished condition, or I should scarcely have begged from you to-night. Without going into details, I may mention that my life, in some respects, has been one the record of which would absolutely shock a man like yourself. It began with one misfortune almost in boyhood, and other misfortunes have followed. I am not whining, because the fault has been my own, for the most part. My reluctance to tell you my name arises from the fact that that name has appeared in the records of Scotland Yard, and that I have been a inmate of one of His Majesty's prisons."

"Capital!"exclaimed the other, rubbing his hands. "I have been very lucky indeed, even in a selection that was quite accidental. You are the very man for my purpose."

"That largely depends on the purpose," retorted Hardwick, with a short laugh.

"I will explain," said Andrew Wrench. He rose from his chair and walked across to a bureau and opened it. Inside there appeared to be an untidy litter of papers of all sorts and descriptions, thrown in higgledy-piggledy. He went diving amongst these for a moment or two, and presently drew forth a cutting from a newpaper pasted on half a sheet of notepaper.

"Read that," he said, in a dramatic voice.

Hardwick took the paper and read it. According to a scrawled note in ink upon it, it was a cutting from The Daily Wire of a week previous. {[dhr|1em]} "Advertiser, interested from a common-sense point of view, especially at this season of the year, in the broader question of charity, wishes to communicate with half a dozen other gentlemen who may probably share his views, and may be ready to deplore with him the absurd and reckless pauperising of the masses for a mere sentimental idea. Address, in first instance, A. W., Box—at the address of this paper." {[dhr|1em]} Hardwick held out the paper and looked interrogatively at the other man. Wrench pursed up his lips and gave a gloomy nod.

"I inserted that," he said.

"Did you get any replies?" asked Hardwick carelessly.

The other man pointed to the bureau. "Hundreds," he said. "From charitable institutions of every description, as well as from individuals. Dozens of letters have come, pointing out how wrong-headed I show myself to be over this matter of charity; appealing letters from people who feel that, at least at Christmas-time, I should look at what I call that broader question of charity in a totally different way. My dear sir, I have been overwhelmed."

Hardwick laughed and puffed at that unaccustomed cigar. "You will pardon my saying that I do not yet know exactly where I come in," he said.

"I am trying to explain," said Andrew Wrench. "In this advertisement I have made a direct appeal to men who apparently hold the same views that I am supposed to do. The advertisement was purely an experimental one; I wanted to discover if there were people who held this business of charity in utter abhorrence."

"And you found quite a number, suppose?"

Andrew Wrench shook his head. "On the contrary, I was quite agreeably surprised. I suppose there are a great many people who, in secret, at least, are extremely mean; but the devil of the thing is that they won't admit it. I have found plenty of people posing as benefactors to society and to the human race whom I am quite convinced have never given away anything in their lives. I can assure you that the difficulty of selecting people who are willingly and cheerfully mean has been very great. I refer, of course, to people who boast of their meanness, and even flaunt it in your face."

"That's honest, at all events," said Hardwick.

"I have discovered exactly six persons who, by their own confession, are the meanest dogs in existence. It has been a process of elimination, and the selection, as I have said, has been a difficult one. But I have got together my six mean men, and they are all coming here to dinner to-night."

Andrew Wrench spoke with something of an air of triumph; at the same time his eyes behind the glasses had rather a frightened look in them. Hard wick leaned forward in his chair and looked at the man quizzically; perhaps he began to see daylight.

"You have asked the six meanest men you have been able to find haphazard in London to dinner. May I take it that you wanted a man of my stamp to put before them as an example of what they ought to have done, had their hearts been in the proper places this Christmas night?"

"You are quite wrong," said Andrew Wrench. "I don't require you for that purpose. The truth of the matter is that I require you to play the host to-night—in my place."

"I see. You require me to pose as a sort of horrible example."

"I do not," said the other testily. "I really wish you would endeavour to see the situation from my point of view. I have got into communication with these six men, whom I have never seen in my life. Under strange and fantastic circumstances they have accepted my invitation to dinner this Christmas night——"

"Being mean men, they would very naturally take advantage of an invitation to dinner which cost them nothing," broke in Hardwick. "What did you expect to do with them?"

"I merely desired to study them—to hear frank confessions from their own lips concerning the meanness of which they have boasted to me in their letters. And now, when the moment has arrived, I confess to you that I am terribly afraid."

"What do you think they'll do to you?" demanded Hardwick.

"I don't know; I tremble to think," said Andrew Wrench, with a little nervous movement of his hands. "It is the mere idea of coming in contact with them. Men of that sort, who can glory in their meanness at a time when every man's purse-strings should be loosened, are dangerous to society. They will know, for the first time, that I am a man in a comfortable position in life; the house that is open to them to-night may appear to be open to them on any other night of the year. I am completely at their mercy—the six meanest dogs in London."

"And you want me to take your place and play the host? Is that all?"

"That is simply all," said Andrew Wrench. "The idea occurred to me in a moment when I ran against you and heard you make an appeal to me in the voice of a gentleman. I have never seen these six persons, and they have never seen me. They expect to meet me to-night, or to meet a man calling himself Andrew Wrench. I offer you a dress-suit for the occasion, a good dinner, and a sovereign."

"And what are you going to do?" asked Hardwick, after a pause.

"There is a dear, good fellow, a friend of mine, with a very jolly family. He has always been pressing me to spend Christmas with him. I shall drop in and take potluck, as he would express it, and probably have the time of my life."

"And what measures do you take to insure that I do not lay hold of all the portable property I can, and decamp in your absence?" asked Hardwick coolly.

"My good man, I am a student of human nature, and my scrutiny of you declares that you are not a rogue, in the ordinary sense' of the term. More than that, I shall tell my man-servant Parker, who has been with me for years, exactly what I am doing, and he will naturally keep a watch on yon. That, of course, is only as a precaution," he added whimsically. "Now, is it a bargain?"

"Well, seeing that if I said 'No,' you would probably show me the door, and I should miss my dinner, I suppose I'd better say that it is a bargain. There's only one stipulation I would make. As it will be a sort of business of six to one, and I don't know exactly what your mean men may be like, I'll trouble you for the loan of the revolver."

"I'll make you a present of the beastly thing, if you like," said Andrew Wrench, with a nervous laugh. "I only got it because I didn't know what might happen to myself to-night. Now, if you will he good enough to come upstairs with me, I'll introduce you to my dressing-room and to clean linen and a good suit of clothes. Here is the sovereign I promised you; I might forget."

"At any rate, I'm glad I shall have the revolver," said Hardwick, with a chuckle. "I'm not complaining of the pay, but to take one's life in one's hands, even for twenty shillings and a dinner, with six strange men whose characters must be of the worst, is a bit of a risk."

"If you think that I should pay you more——"

"Not a penny," said Hardwick hastily, as he began to strip off his shabby clothes. "The pay is handsome for a poor devil such as I am, and the actual sport of the thing appeals to me. I had not hoped for anything of this kind, I assure you. Will you be so good as to tell your man to bring me some hot water, and may I borrow one of your razors?"

Some quarter of an hour later a very immaculately dressed, tall, thin man, whom no one would have recognised as the shabby vagrant who had stood in the pitiless weather outside the house, emerged from the dressing-room and came downstairs to face his host. That host was chuckling like a schoolboy as he surveyed the transformed Hardwick; he walked all round him, as though very well pleased with what he had done.

"Capital! Splendid!" he ejaculated, rubbing his hands. "I am indeed in luck. Quite without suggesting anything profane, one might say that you had dropped straight from heaven. For the night you will please remember that you are Mr. Andrew Wrench, while a very happy and a very relieved man, in the person of the real Andrew Wrench, is going off to take pot-luck with an old friend and with that old friend's family. Very nice girls, I assure you, and they know all the real Christmas games by heart. Good night to you. I hope you'll have a very pleasant time. Punish the wine as much as you like. Parker has instructions that you are to make yourself completely at home."

They shook hands, and Andrew Wrench departed somewhat hurriedly, the man-servant helping him on with that heavy caped overcoat in the hall. The door slammed upon him, and Hardwick could picture him literally running down the street, in his joy at having escaped.

Luke Hardwick, left in possession of the house, found himself standing on the hearth-rug in front of the drawing-room fire, contemplating a card which he held in his hand. Andrew Wrench had nervously given it to him a moment or two before his departure. It contained, drawn carefully upon it, an oblong plan of the table, with the names of the guests carefully written down where their places were indicated, and with the name of "Andrew Wrench" at the head of the table. Three names on each side, and the opposite end of the table left vacant. Even while he was contemplating this, a ring came at the bell. Hardwick's hand slipped almost unconsciously to the butt of the revolver in the pocket of his dinner jacket.

"No sound of wheels," murmured Hardwick to himself. "The first mean man has walked, even on such a night as this."

They came in close proximity to each other. Six times the bell rang, with a very short interval between each summons. They came into the drawing-room in different fashions—this man with something of shyness, that man with more of boldness, and that other one with something of a swagger. They faced the tall, thin man in evening-dress standing before the fire on the hearth-rug, and they rubbed their hands and they looked about them at the furniture and the costly pictures on the walls, but to each other they said never a word.

The transformed vagrant, on the other hand, seemed quite at his ease. He had shaken hands with each man as he came in; he had made a remark upon the bad character of the night; with a display of knowledge that was remarkable, he had pointed out the value of certain pictures upon the walls. All the time he had been carefully studying the faces. They were such a depressing set of faces that he was quite relieved when the wonderful Parker opened the door of the drawing-room and announced that dinner was served.

Hardwick took his place at the head of the table, after bowing his guests into their places; each of them had scrutinised the tiny card upon the top of a wine-glass, denoting where he was to sit. Leaning back in his place, Hardwick looked round upon the six faces, and his heart hardened within him.

They had been well chosen. Never in all his life and in all his varied experience, even in a prison, had he seen six faces of such a type. It was as though some magic hand had swept away from each face everything it could possibly have held of kindliness or good nature. Every line upon every face was a mean line; every face was formed in a mould that was curiously like all the other faces. The thing was a grotesque nightmare.

Only their bodies were different. One man had a great rotund body, on which the mean face, perched above it, looked even meaner than the other faces. There, at that end of the table, was a man with a stunted body and a head too big for the body, and the appetite of a wolf; and his face was mean, like all the other faces. They all ate ravenously, and they all eyed each other with a certain quick suspicion. They drank everything that was put before them. Parker filled their glasses, and gradually, as the wine flowed down their throats, their tongues were loosened and they began to talk. And they talked always to that silent man at the head of the table.

"Well, I suppose we've all had your letter, Mr. Wrench," said the man with the huge body, "and I suppose we all know what we're gathered here for to-night. Men of good, sound principles, with no nonsense about us—men who can look after their own, and not likely to be fools enough to trouble about anybody or anything outside—eh?"

"You catch my meaning perfectly, Mr. Jacob Fishburn," said Hardwick, with a swift glance at the card beside his plate. "We'll have no talk here to-night of sentimental things nor charity—that horrible word!—nor of any Christmas cheer save that which is on this board for ourselves."

"I should think not, indeed," piped the man with the small body, from the end of the table. "It's very good to find one sensible man at least in a silly world. Your good health, Mr. Wrench."

"My thanks to you, Mr. Ebenezer Garland," said Hardwick, with another quick glance at the card. "A man after my own heart, I can well understand."

"Never gave a penny to anything in my life, and never shall," said Ebenezer Garland, with a chuckle. "There are quite a lot of fools in the world ready to do that."

"I liked the look of your advertisement the first moment my eye lighted on it," said a man at the other side of the table, a tall, cadaverous-looking man with a tight-lipped mouth. "I said to myself that here was someone who knew how to look after himself. I was interested in a moment. To show you the sort of man I am, I may tell you that a wretched drab of a woman begged of me as I walked up the street here to-night—something about she wanted food for the love of God. I spoke to the policeman at the corner about her; he'll attend to her wants, I've no doubt."

There were murmurs of "Wise man," "Sensible thing to do," "Quite right and proper," on either side of the table. The lips of Hardwick tightened a little. The faces that had seemed mean before seemed terrible now and menacing. He turned to the waiting Parker and spoke to him almost sharply.

"Parker, put the cigars and the coffee and liqueurs on the table. After that you needn't wait. I will ring if anything is required."

The man-servant did as he was bid. When finally he stepped softly to the door and went out, Hardwick rose to his feet. He selected a cigar from the box and carefully cut off the end; he lighted the cigar and moved slowly away from the table to the door. This man of mystery to his guests was naturally watched by their fascinated eyes; he was careful that he should be watched. He turned the key in the door, and took out the key and dropped it into his pocket. As he strolled back to his seat at the table, each mean face about him was a startled face, with a dropped jaw and with a lighted cigar held near to it, but forgotten.

"Gentlemen," said Hardwick, standing at his end of the table, "our little comedy is drawing to a close. This has been an experiment on my part—this drawing together of six gentlemen who have boasted that they are the meanest men to be discovered in London even on Christmas night. There is one thing, however, that you have forgotten—that sometimes a good meal has to be paid for. And the price in your cases will be, I fear, a somewhat heavy one. To use a vulgarism, you will pay through your noses."

"Here, what's the game?" demanded Mr. Fishburn of the huge body. "You don't frighten us, you know."

The man at the head of the table turned his face in Fishburn's direction; his eyes were smiling dangerously. Very quietly he drew the revolver from his jacket pocket and held it within a couple of inches of Fishburn's nose.

"As you are so very certain of what I can and cannot do, you shall pay first," said, Hardwick. "Empty your pockets—quick!"

There was a stirring about the table, and men were rising to their feet. Hardwick's stern voice sent them down into their seats again.

"Heaven help the first man who moves!" he said. "You're trapped, gentlemen. I wanted to discover if men could be quite so mean as you are, and could boast of their meanness. There's many a poor wretch walking the streets to-night; some of your wealth, at least, shall go to help them. You will be good enough, every one of you, to empty your pockets and to put the contents in front of you on the table. You've got to be quick, because my time's short for dealing with you—every pocket to be turned inside out!"

With glances at each other of resentment, as though, perhaps, each felt that he had been drawn into this thing by the others, they began to empty their pockets. Standing with the revolver held in the crook of his arm, he watched the men, and directed each sharply to put back certain things that were useless to him; it was only the money he wanted, and that must be in actual coin. It took some time for the sorting of the things, and all the time he watched, with the revolver held ready.

"Now, gentlemen," he said at last, "you are free to go. I've no doubt that there is a settled determination in your minds that you will speak to the first policeman you meet, or will at the earliest opportunity bring the authorities to this house; but I know perfectly well that you won't do that. It's all very well for you to nod your heads and decide now what you're going to do, but I tell you you won't do it. The laugh is on my side, and you won't want the story of the six mean men spread about. You'll be rather glad to hold your tongues. You've had a good dinner, and I am merely asking you to pay for it. If you should be so very unwise as to tell your story, I shall tell mine, and shall publish, if necessary, in the newspapers some very remarkable letters, which may set other people laughing besides myself. The man-servant is in the hall, and will hand you your coats and hats. My revolver is fully loaded, and I shall not allow anyone to play tricks."

Six men were assisted into six overcoats by an imperturbable servant. Their host watched them from the house and saw the door closed upon them. Then Hardwick walked back into the dining-room and very quickly gathered up the money that lay in little heaps upon the table, and dropped it into his pockets.

"By the way, Parker," he said at last, "will you be good enough to give this sovereign to your master? Tell him I have not earned it."

Half an hour later a tall, thin man in evening-dress partly obscured by an overcoat—Hardwick had annexed that from the hall as he left the house—stood outside St. George's Hospital, which is nigh unto the gates of Hyde Park. A policeman watched him as he drew out a handful of gold and took some sovereigns from the little cluster and dropped them one by one into the box in the wall of the hospital.

"One likes to do some good on Christmas night, constable," Hardwick murmured gently, as he walked away, jingling the other coins in his pocket.

The constable looked after him and nodded his head comprehendingly. "Funny jossers you do meet, to be sure," he said to himself. "One of them eccentric millionaires, I suppose."

Copyright 1914, by Tom Gallon, in the United States of America.