It was in the incredibly voluminous pockets of this overcoat that the old peddler carried his stock in trade, paper-wrapped bottles of different sizes, and the nickels and dimes and quarters of his daily trafficking. And as the streams of life purled past him, like water past a stone, he seemed to ask nothing of the world on which he looked out with such deep-set and impassive eyes. He seemed content with his lot. He seemed to have achieved a Nirvana-like indifferency towards all his kind.
Yet there were times, as he waited beside his stand, as lethargic as a lobster in a fish-peddler's window, when his flaccid, exploring fingers dug deeper into one of those capacious side-pockets and there came in contact with two oddly shaped wristlets of polished steel. At such times his intent eyes would film, as the eyes of a caged eagle sometimes do. Sometimes, too, he would smile with the half-pensive Castilian smile of an uncouth and corpulent Cervantes.
But as a rule his face was expressionless. About the entire moss-green figure seemed something faded and futile, like a street-lamp left burning after sunrise. At other times, as the patrolman on the beat sauntered by in his authoritative blue stippled with its metal buttons, the old peddler's watching eyes would wander wistfully after the nonchalant figure. At such times a meditative and melancholy intentness would fix itself on the faded old face, and the stooping old shoulders would even unconsciously heave with a sigh.
As a rule, however, the great green-clad figure with its fringe of white hair—the fringe that stood blithely out from the faded hat brim like the halo of some medieval saint on a missal—did not permit his gaze to wander so far afield.
For, idle as that figure seemed, the brain behind it was forever active, forever vigilant and alert. The deep-set eyes under their lids that hung as loose as old parchment were always fixed on the life that flowed past them. No face, as those eyes opened and closed like the gills of a dying fish, escaped their inspection. Every man who came within their range of vision was duly examined and adjudicated. Every human atom of that forever ebbing and flowing tide of life had to pass through an invisible screen of inspection, had in some intangible way to justify itself as it proceeded on its unknown movement towards an unknown end. And on the loose-skinned and haggard face, had it been studied closely enough, could have been seen a vague and wistful note of expectancy, a guarded and muffled sense of anticipation.
Yet to-day, as on all other days, nobody stopped to study the old cement-seller's face. The pink-cheeked young patrolman, swinging back on his beat, tattooed with his ash night-stick on the gas-pipe frame and peered indifferently down at the battered and gibbeted crockery.
"Hello, Batty," he said as he set the exhibit oscillating with a push of the knee. "How 's business?"
"Pretty good," answered the patient and guttural voice. But the eyes that seemed as calm as a cow's eyes did not look at the patrolman as he spoke.
He had nothing to fear. He knew that he had his license. He knew that under the faded green of his overcoat was an oval-shaped street-peddler's badge. He also knew, which the patrolman did not, that under the lapel of his inner coat was a badge of another shape and design, the badge which season by season the indulgent new head of the Detective Bureau extended to him with his further privilege of a special officer's license. For this empty honor "Batty" Blake—for as "Batty" he was known to nearly all the cities of America—did an occasional bit of "stooling" for the Central Office, a tip as to a stray yeggman's return, a hint as to a "peterman's" activities in the shopping crowds, a whisper that a till tapper had failed to respect the Department's dead-lines.
Yet nobody took Batty Blake seriously. It was said, indeed, that once, in the old regime, he had been a big man in the Department. But that Department had known many changes, and where life is unduly active, memory is apt to be unduly short.